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Steve Jobs: Inventor And Artist

2011-10-06T05:23:47Z

In an era in which accolades often seem devalued by overuse, Steve Jobs was that rare figure who really did leave an imprint as enormous as his outsized reputation. As much as anyone who lived during his years, he altered and updated the nature of many aspects of modern reality.

He was an icon in the technology world, an inspiration to countless startups, and an obsession for legions of competitors who grew used to being overtaken time and again by the next consumer electronics revolution unleashed by his company, Apple.

He goes down as one of the most prolific innovators in the history of business, one man at the center of myriad products whose release and emphatic consumer embrace serve as a handy way to divide the chapters of recent history -– from personal computer to iPod to iPhone to iPad.

Jobs died Wednesday at the age of 56, Apple announced, triggering a global outpouring of commentary about a life that was extraordinary by any measure. Though he shared little publicly about his personal life, his aura remains a force in the lives of millions of people around the world through the products that he pioneered and meticulously designed, earning a reputation as a sometimes intimidating taskmaster, yet also a source of fierce inspiration among the people he led.

His iDevices -- an inimitable blend of elegance, simplicity and technology -- nearly always managed to seem years ahead of their time. They not only revolutionized the way users connected with and consumed entertainment, art, and information, but also spawned new industries, from digitally downloaded music and television shows, to web versions of magazines and mobile apps. His signature blend of persnickety attention to technology and design all at once helps explain how Jobs managed to be likened variously to Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, while also being celebrated as an artist.

His career did not unfold neatly. Jobs helped launch Apple in 1976, resigned from the company in 1985, and returned twelve years later to resuscitate the PC-maker from the brink of bankruptcy.

Fourteen years later, Jobs had grown Apple into the world’s most valuable technology company through his scrupulous attention to detail and his ability to, in his own words, marry technology with liberal arts and humanities to “make our hearts sing.”

Though Jobs' family said only that he "died peacefully today surrounded by his family," the former Apple CEO reportedly died of complications from pancreatic cancer, with which he was diagnosed in 2004 and continued to battle during his tenure as chief executive of Apple. Jobs remained CEO up until six weeks before his death.

"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," the company said in a statement.

Few industrialists have ever commanded such a large and worshipful following. In the hours following the news of Jobs’ death, world leaders and titans of industry added tributes to a global chorus of praise.

President Barack Obama said Jobs was "among the greatest of American innovators -- brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it. "

"The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented," Obama declared in a statement.

"Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook.

"The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come," said Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

Around the web, Apple users shared their memories of Jobs and products he pioneered, recounting their first iMacs, marriage proposals issued via iPods, and ditching class to watch Jobs' keynotes. Fans left flowers, candles and signs reading "I love Steve" outside Apple stores in cities across the country.

Jobs' story has been told many times by many tellers, and retains hallmarks of a classic mystical journey: the unusual circumstances of his birth, his days of monastic contemplation, a startling rise to power and acclaim followed by a wrenching departure from the fold, setting up the triumphant return, and an untimely death.

EARLY DAYS

Born in San Francisco in 1955, he was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, and grew up in the California milieu that Joan Didion would liken to Bethlehem. He grew his hair long, bummed meals from a Hare Krishna temple, and took Timothy Leary's advice literally, dropping out of Reed College, a liberal arts school in Portland, Ore., after only a semester. (Years later, he would say he quit school to avoid draining his parents’ savings.) He journeyed to India in search of nirvana, hallucinated, and came back a bald-headed Buddhist.

The Buddha preached a message of simplicity, and Jobs carried that message to the kingdom of the geek. "He just wanted to get that technical stuff out of the way," said Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Jobs. "Look at the Macintosh. All of a sudden, instead of typing a command, you just reach up with your pointer and drag it somewhere. You didn't have to learn a lot of stuff. You didn't have to have a big manual. He stuck to that philosophy in every product."

It was a monk's philosophy, maybe, but it earned him the riches of a Midas. The earliest Apple models were blockbusters. Yet the Macintosh, while profitable, didn't quite perform up to expectations. Soon Jobs was pushed out the door.

"They ran him out," said Jeff Gamet, managing editor of The Mac Observer. "Jobs flew a pirate flag over the Mac development building. He had this kind of renegade idea about how the company needed to run and what they needed to be doing with the hardware, and the executives and board of directors was looking at the company as, well, 'We have shareholders and obligations to the shareholder and we have to look at the profit margins all the time.' They didn't think they should be spending as much money as they were."

Wozniak remembered his friend's departure slightly differently: "I felt it was a little disloyal to Apple,” he said. "He still had the freedom to stay at Apple and work on products. But he wanted to do other things. He left because he felt that in his heart he was meant to build great computers."

Jobs attempted to do that by starting a new company, NeXT, in 1985. And although it may be the rare MacBook user who can recall the NeXT machines in any detail, that company proved to be the staging ground for many of Apple's later successes. It was at NeXT that Jobs developed the operating system that would evolve into Apple's OS X.

According to Gamet, the accessibility and elegance of the system held great appeal for Apple, which had floundered in Jobs' absence.

"I think it's safe to say that Apple's position at the time was dire," Gamet said. "They were losing money, they had a very convoluted product line-up, and they were charging too much for the Macs that they were selling at the time, and they were also suffering from public image problems.

"Every week a new rumor was coming out about who was going to buy Apple. Sometimes it was Disney, sometimes it was an oil company, and of course the week I heard the rumor that Dunkin' Donuts was going to buy Apple -- which of course was a totally bogus rumor, but people really believed it -- I thought, yeah, this company's really in trouble."

HIS RETURN

Apple bought NeXT in 1997, Jobs took a consultant job with his old company and by the dawn of the next millennium, he was the permanent CEO. And it was at this point that the company embarked on the run of technological and commercial breakthroughs that yielded the iPod, iPhone and iPad.

"Steve Jobs is important to us because the gifts he gave mankind are innumerable. He gave us the gifts of elegance, of clarity, of drive," wrote TechCrunch's John Biggs in a reflection on Jobs' contributions. "He gave us computers that spawned industries, phones that paid millions of salaries. He made it so I can Facetime from the road with my children before they go to bed and not have to worry about connection issues, downloads, fiddling. The stuff he made just works."

Yet for someone steeped in Buddhist teachings, Jobs' management style wasn't exactly placid. "Everybody’s got a Steve-Jobs-scream-to-my-face story," said Leander Kahney, author of the blog cultofmac.com. "Nose-to-nose, spittle coming out of his mouth."

All Things D’s Walt Mossberg, who developed a close relationship with Jobs, notes that the Apple co-founder "certainly had a nasty, mercurial side to him," but said "the dominant tone he struck was optimism and certainty, both for Apple and for the digital revolution as a whole." Mossberg recalls 90-minute phone conversations he had with Jobs in 1997 on the weekends, discussions that "revealed ... the stunning breadth of the man."

Jobs was also highly regarded for his vision and ability to see years into the future, and also for his exacting attention to detail. Google executive Vic Gundotra shed light on Jobs’ exacting nature in an anecdote he shared on his Google+ profile in August, following Jobs’ resignation. Gundotra described an urgent phone call he received from Jobs:

"So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I've already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve.
"I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?"

Of course this was okay with me. A few minutes later on that Sunday I received an email from Steve with the subject "Icon Ambulance". The email directed me to work with Greg Christie to fix the icon.

Jobs was famously wise, and the commencement address he delivered at Stanford University in 2005 remains an iconic text among his adherents.

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart," he told those assembled. "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."

Steve Jobs: Inventor And Artist

2011-10-06T05:23:47Z

His career did not unfold neatly. Jobs helped launch Apple in 1976, resigned from the company in 1985, and returned twelve years later to resuscitate the PC-maker from the brink of bankruptcy.

"Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," the company said in a statement.

President Barack Obama said Jobs was "among the greatest of American innovators -- brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it. "

"The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come," said Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

EARLY DAYS

According to Gamet, the accessibility and elegance of the system held great appeal for Apple, which had floundered in Jobs' absence.

HIS RETURN

"So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I've already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve.
"I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?"

Of course this was okay with me. A few minutes later on that Sunday I received an email from Steve with the subject "Icon Ambulance". The email directed me to work with Greg Christie to fix the icon.

Jobs was famously wise, and the commencement address he delivered at Stanford University in 2005 remains an iconic text among his adherents.

Google Earth Celebrates 1,000,000,000

2011-10-05T12:49:41Z

Google is throwing quite a party for Google Earth.

Since Google released Google Earth in 2005, the 3D virtual globe has been downloaded over 1 billion times, a number that includes downloads of the mobile apps, plug-in and desktop client.

Google is taking advantage of the milestone to kick off a big publicity push that seeks to educate consumers about the myriad uses for Google Earth, via blog posts, infographics and an all-new website that showcases creative ways people have used the app. Though the tool is obviously well known -- no one reaches 1 billion downloads without becoming mainstream -- Google's efforts suggest that users' ongoing engagement with Google Earth may be falling short of what it could be.

Peter Birch, product manager for Google Earth, said many users think of the tool primarily as a novelty that lets them "fly" to their house.

"They don't have much of a sense what Earth can be used for," said Birch. "Really, it's a very powerful platform for sharing information."

To highlight Google Earth's relevance for everyone from researchers to jet setters, Google has launched a new Google Earth-centric site, One World Many Stories, that presents stories of how people have used the application in innovative ways.

Google writes:

Visit www.OneWorldManyStories.com to learn about people like Professor David Kennedy of the University of Western Australia, who’s used Google Earth to scan thousands of square kilometers in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Professor Kennedy has discovered ancient tombs and geoglyphs dating back at least 2,000 years, all without leaving his desk in Perth. Architect Barnaby Gunning, after the April 6, 2009 earthquake near L'Aquila Italy, encouraged his fellow citizens to start rebuilding the city virtually in 3D. Their online urban planning will aid city planners and architects. Retired English teacher Jerome Burg created Google Lit Trips, which uses Google Earth to match places in famous books to their geographical locations, encouraging students to create connections between the stories they read in school and the world they live in.

Demand for Google's online globe has skyrocketed over the last few years: The last time Google shared statistics on Google Earth was in 2009, when the company said Google Earth had been downloaded 700,000 times.

"None of us ever conceived we'd have that many downloads," said Birch. "The initial enthusiasm caught a lot of people off guard."

So how can Google Earth reach 2 billion? In addition to improving access to Google Earth through mobile devices, Birch said his team also hopes to see users contribute more of their own images, maps and other content to Google Earth.

"Something we want to do more is bring in more user content and make it easy for people to find and publish mapping data, whether historical imagery or photographs," said Birch. "Getting more people to be able to create and share is really where we're going."

WATCH:

In Apple’s World, Talking Is The New Typing

2011-10-05T12:00:00Z

In Apple’s world, talking is the new typing.

The iPhone’s touchscreen ushered in an entirely new way to handle phones that relied on swipes, taps and fingers in place of keys, buttons and styluses. Now, Apple is once again making a push to redefine the way we use our cellphones by having users speak, not type, their commands.

The newest version of the iPhone, the iPhone 4S, boasts a longer battery life, faster processor, higher-quality camera and more advanced antennas than its predecessor, as well as both CDMA and GSM capabilities, meaning it can be used globally.

But the key feature that distinguishes the iPhone 4S and marks an important new direction for Apple is the phone’s voice-controlled personal assistant Siri, which Apple claims will help "you get things done just by asking.” By speaking into their phones, consumers can use Siri to dictate messages, place calls, schedule appointments, search the web or ask for directions.

Just as Apple was years behind companies like Nokia and IBM in introducing a touchscreen phone, it’s also hardly the first to embrace voice recognition technology, a feature competitors like Google and Microsoft have already integrated into their own mobile operating systems.

Yet history shows that Apple has repeatedly delivered features long after its rivals, only to have its own products take the lead. If the technology is everything Apple promises it to be, Siri is poised to radically transform how people use their phones, and will offer the iPhone a key advantage over other smartphones.

“In long term, it will be as disruptive in terms of changing our interactions as the touchscreen was,” Forrester analyst Charles Golvin said of Apple’s Siri technology.

What differentiates Siri from competing services is its ability to not only recognize words spoken in a normal tone of voice, but its capacity to pick up on the contextual meaning of a phrase.

Questions or instructions can be delivered in natural language and Siri will detect the user’s intent with a “staggering” degree of accuracy, according to one user. Ask Siri, “Do I need an umbrella today?” or “Is the weather going to get worse today?” and it will bring up the local weather report. Apple demonstrated how the “Do I need a raincoat?” delivered the reply, “It sure looks like rain today.”

Though the technology is state-of-the-art, Apple may face an uphill battle in convincing users to talk to their phones.

Frustrated by past experiences using glitchy voice recognition services that required yelling and repetition, or would work only in silent rooms, several Apple users at the Apple store in Manhattan's Soho neighborhood said they were dubious Siri would offer an improvement over existing offerings and expressed little interest in trying the technology.

“I’ve never seen voice activated features work well or a situation when background noise wouldn’t complicate it,” said Cliff Baker. “Maybe it’d be convenient to use it in the car, but otherwise it’s nice not having to verbalize some conversations.”

Some users also noted that there was something socially awkward about talking to a phone without having at person on the other end.

“It feels strange talking to a phone and having a phone talk back to me,” said Melvin Rodriguez “It shows we’re just getting lazier and lazier.”

Teen Billmar Morales had a similar take.

“You’ll look kind of dumb talking to the phone, especially in public,” he said.

Golvin also points out that Siri requires users to simultaneously familiarize themselves with cutting-edge technology and revert to previous ways of handling their phones.

“It used to be that mainly what you did on a phone was punch a few buttons then talk. Now talk is the last thing you do. Our phones are much more visual,” said Golvin. “We’re asking people to go back to what they used to do and behaviors they moved away from. In general, consumers don’t like voice interfaces, they’re not comfortable with them.”

And of course, it remains to be seen just how many people will actually buy Apple’s iPhone 4S.

Though analysts remain optimistic that Apple's latest product will sell handsomely, fans were left with one burning question about the new iPhone 4S Apple unveiled Tuesday: Where’s the iPhone 5?

“I was waiting for the iPhone 5,” said Anthony Santos. “I think we’re all a little disappointed.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated the iPhone's launch date.

If Mad Men's Don Draper Had Social Media

2011-10-03T11:16:00Z

If Don Draper, the Madison Avenue powerhouse of "Mad Men" fame, were around today to tap the power of social media, he might unleash a campaign that looked something like Shopularity. Draper told stories about products. Shopularity, the brainchild of programmer Jordan Holberg, gives people a way to tell their own stories about products.

Shopularity describes itself as a popularity contest, version 2.0. Individuals compete to win free, high-end products, like iPads or designer handbags, with the person who tallies the most votes walking away with the prize. The company launched in May of this year and is being funded by Holberg, who so far has purchased all the prizes, but hopes to attract funding and partners to provide future goodies.

The marketing magic comes in how Shopularity turns consumers into evangelists for a brand, each contestant vying to outdo the others with personal ad campaigns that pitch friends and family on why the contestant must have the gadget or garment on offer.

"People trust their friends over companies," said Shama Kabani, the head of the digital marketing firm Marketing Zen and author of "The Zen of Social Media Marketing." "We've seen an almost 50 percent increase in clients inquiring about digital PR -- reaching out to bloggers and leveraging people's influence or status to drive a grassroots effort."

To win votes, Shopularity contestants use any means they can imagine to convince anyone else who will listen why the item being offered is the ultimate must-have for them. Users have posted YouTube videos of their pleas, recruited friends to post tweets and even promised perks in exchange for votes, such as pledging to donate $100 to an animal shelter if they win.

"All the content users create is basically a giant ad for a product. That's viral marketing and word-of-mouth marketing the way it was supposed to be," said Holberg, pitching his own product. "You're turning these fans and followers into your most passionate and evangelical consumers. They're walking, talking advertisements for you that are not just putting your message out there, but putting your message out there in a way that gets their friends' attention."

Critics suggest that Shopularity's barrage of "vote for me!" pleas will annoy the contestants' online acquaintances and drive people from the site. But Holberg said contestants have an incentive to create compelling "commercials" to win votes.

Some contestants' "war cries" -- Shopularity's term for the short pitches that individuals feature on their profiles to solicit votes -- do sound like slogans for the products being offered.

"Perfect for a new mom! Help me kick butt in the kitchen with a little on on my hip," said Cassie B. about the KitchenAid mixer.

"I would SOO LOVE to win this so cooking and baking is easier!!!" wrote one of Cassie's rivals.

Shopularity's broad-based approach, which allows anyone to sign up for a chance to win a product, contrasts with another new online marketing strategy: targeting people who are considered influential in their fields, from food to fashion, and offering them freebies in the hopes these individuals will endorse a brand's goods.

Marketing experts say that one of Shopularity's greatest flaws is its failure to give companies a way to identify and reach the people they most want to woo.

"The level of quality of the people you're attracting is debatable. This KitchenAid mixer is a product for the cooking connoisseur. You're attracting individuals who just are trying to win the product," said Kabani. "What this site is missing is relevancy."

Holberg argued that Shopularity will help surface popular individuals, those who have clout with their peers and charisma -- exactly the type of influential customer companies are seeking. "This is a great way to identify people with spheres of influence," he said.

Experts also ask whether contests can ever do more than distribute free products to lucky winners and doubt that, even with the additional social media connections that Shopularity provides, the site can attract consumers who will become paying customers.

"Contests don't bring in new people who want to buy," said Peter Shankman, a marketing expert and social media strategist. "They bring in people who want to win free shit."

New Site Lets You Tell The World Exactly What Your Ex Did Wrong

2011-09-27T22:50:53Z

Bad breakup? Now you can tell the world exactly what your ex did wrong.

ExRated, a new website that allows people to review their exes, aspires to be a Yelp for former flames.

Users can both vet their prospects and vent about old lovers: see what past partners have to say about your upcoming date by searching for his or her name on the site, or leave a rating of your ex, along with any tips for the next guy or gal.

“You wouldn’t go to a restaurant that hasn’t been reviewed. Especially in the era of Internet dating, why would you go on a date with a person who hasn’t been reviewed?” said ExRated founder Tom Padazana, who said the site’s motto is “forewarned is forearmed.”

“I hope this will be a research tool to help people make more educated decisions in dating," he added. "And as the site grows, I think hopefully it will make people better dates because the possibility of being reviewed is out there.”

Exrated is one of a growing number of sites that allow individuals to comment anonymously on others’ performance, personality and preferences. Honestly.com, an “online resource for building, managing and researching professional reputation,” allows colleagues to review their coworkers. College students can discuss their peers' sexual exploits and pledging plans on Blipdar, branded the “leading website for venting, sharing and being yourself,” or dish about their teachers on RateMyProfessors.com.

Yet Exrated is among the first to focus on something as intimate, and potentially incendiary, as romantic relationships, pushing the limits on privacy by pairing real names with any salacious details an ex anonymously chooses to share.

Reviewers fill out a two-page questionnaire that includes details on the type of relationship they had with the person (i.e. “occasional gallop” or “over six months”); tips for getting along with that individual; and their take on what type of relationship he or she is “best suited for,” such as “arm candy,” “drinking buddy,” or “one night stand.” Exes are given an overall score, as well as more detailed rankings for traits like hygiene, intelligence, mojo and thoughtfulness.

Padazana maintains that the site has instituted safeguards against defamatory posts, including the ability to flag abusive posts and a 140-character limit on reviews.

“We’re encouraging people to be succinct so they don’t have the room to get into the dirty-nitty gritty of bad relationships,” Padazana said. “I plan on it being a place where people can’t air their dirty laundry but rather constructively discuss what happened in past relationships.”

But a quick tour of Exrated surfaced no shortage of acrimonious reviews.

“Bring your own Zoloft,” one user wrote of a woman. "Fun in bed, but absolute bonkers out of it. Everyone's conspiring against her, so she thinks (hey, like guys writing bad reviews about her!).”

"Sexy European? More boring Midwest," another said. “OK, she's from Paris, which already gives her hot points, but I've dated girls from Kansas more exciting than her. What's *yawn* in French?”

Though Exrated enables two exes who have rated the same person to connect online, the site does not allow people who have been reviewed to dispute their ratings or offer their side of the story, nor can users preemptively create profiles and invite others to rate them. An ex’s only recourse to combat a bad listing is to recruit a friend who’ll post something positive -- or anonymously rate themselves. Moreover, Exrated offers no guidelines on what it deems acceptable or abusive.

“This is not going to foster constructive discussion,” predicted Internet safety expert Sameer Hinduja, who is co-director of Cyberbullying Research Center. “The only way this site will go viral and get a larger userbase is if the content is salacious, related to sexual exploits, inflammatory, or controversial.”

Yet many exes have received top ratings and even flattering endorsements from their ex-lovers. One is described as a “sweetie” (albeit a finicky eater), while a “good guy” with a five-star rating is called a “very special person -- idealistic, creative, and someone who stands behind his word.”

Hinduja argued the site would be undone by its reliance on unsubstantiated, nameless reviews, pointing to the rise and fall of sites like Juicy Campus, a college gossip site that let users comment anonymously and shut down after less than two years.

“Other sites like this have been flashes in the pan,” he said. “People realize they can’t put stock in anonymous comments. It makes you assume you have something to hide if you won’t say something face to face.”

Will Exrated even get 15 minutes in the spotlight? A paltry number of ratings have been posted so far -- a search for reviews of men and women in New York turned up just 21 entries, including two this reporter created as a test -- and Exrated faces the same catch-22 all new social media sites confront: people will only use the service once enough other users are already using it.

Even Padazana has yet to post a review of his ex-girlfriend.

“She’ll get a good review,” he promised.

Would you use a site like this? What do you think of this idea? Let us know in the comments below.

Wikipedia Co-Founder On Site's Social Media Hold-Out

2011-09-26T23:30:59Z

In an age when airport terminals tweet and even dry cleaners ask to be “liked” on Facebook, social media has a surprise holdout: Wikipedia.

The online encyclopedia pioneered new ways for individuals to share, connect and collaborate online a full seven years before Facebook was conceived and now offers 17.9 million articles accessed by more than 400 million users a month, making it the fifth most popular website worldwide.

But Wikipedia is keeping mainstream social networking sites at arm’s reach, eschewing features such as Facebook's “like” buttons and Google-plus links on its site. It's a move that underscores the power the Wikipedia community has to determine the direction of the site, as well as the encyclopedia's reticence to align itself with any single web company.

The site maintains profiles on services such as Twitter, but Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales told The Huffington Post that the encyclopedia has no plans to deepen its integration with social media companies.

“We’ve never been particularly good at partnering with people. Our community strives for neutrality in all respects: this applies to what is contained in the encyclopedia, but our community is also passionate about being vendor neutral,” Wales said during an interview Monday at the OMMA Global conference in New York City. “In the Wikipedia context, these decisions are community driven, even at that very, very core level. Communities can sometimes be quite paranoid about certain things.”

Wales also said he has doubts about the degree to which users would care to share their activity on Wikipedia, expressing concerns with Facebook’s latest push to promote a “new class” of social applications that, once approved, would publicize any interaction a user has with the apps. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg praised these apps as a way to facilitate “frictionless” sharing and “realtime serendipity” when he unveiled them last week.

“Things like sharing what you’re reading, that’s where Facebook bumps up against the line of what people find slightly weird and creepy,” Wales said. “If I go to read something on Wikipedia, that’s my own personal business…You should feel safe and private knowing that whatever you want to learn, you go to Wikipedia to learn it and you don’t have to worry that you’ve accidentally told Facebook you want to learn it.”

The increasing popularity of social networking sites, to which Americans devote 22 percent of their time online according to Nielsen, has had a negligible influence on Wikipedia, Wales said.

“It hasn’t affected us at all,” he said.

Wales, who spoke highly of individual Wikipedia contributors he has met, including an avid editor in Kazakhstan and a retiree with an interest in baronetcy, acknowledged that there were elements of the encyclopedia that resembled a social networking site: it forges connections between individuals around the world, offers a platform through which people can communicate and provides an outlet for their contributions. The key difference, he noted, is that on Wikipedia, the conversations that take place between the members of the community have the end goal of creating content and building a site for an audience of readers.

The greatest challenge Wikipedia now faces is expanding into developing countries, according to Wales. As part of its effort to offer more entries in a greater number of languages, Wikipedia has plans to open its first office outside the United States in India.

“Wikipedia’s vision statement is to provide a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet in their own language, so it’s core to our mission that we focus a lot on the developing world where Wikipedia is behind where it could be,” Wales said. “We already have a free encyclopedia in English, and we want to improve it, but really, I’m more and more focused on growth in the developing world.”

At the same time, Wikipedia is struggling to retain its dwindling pool of editors and diversify its pool of contributors, nearly 90 percent of whom are male.

Wikipedia already has plans to simplify its editing software, which the organization hopes will entice more users who don't have an extensive tech background to contribute to the site.

To date, however, Wales said something far more basic has been the most important factor contributing to Wikipedia’s success: fun.

"It's fun and people enjoy doing it," said Wales of editing the online encyclopedia, adding that he contributes to Wikipedia almost daily and is particularly interested in the House of Lords article. "People do fun and interesting things because they’re fun and interesting."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Wales described Wikipedia as "actually building something." He was referring to Wikia, a for-profit company co-founded by Wales.

Wikipedia Co-Founder On Site's Social Media Hold-Out

2011-09-26T23:30:59Z

In an age when airport terminals tweet and even dry cleaners ask to be “liked” on Facebook, social media has a surprise holdout: Wikipedia.

The increasing popularity of social networking sites, to which Americans devote 22 percent of their time online according to Nielsen, has had a negligible influence on Wikipedia, Wales said.

“It hasn’t affected us at all,” he said.

At the same time, Wikipedia is struggling to retain its dwindling pool of editors and diversify its pool of contributors, nearly 90 percent of whom are male.

Wikipedia already has plans to simplify its editing software, which the organization hopes will entice more users who don't have an extensive tech background to contribute to the site.

To date, however, Wales said something far more basic has been the most important factor contributing to Wikipedia’s success: fun.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Wales described Wikipedia as "actually building something." He was referring to Wikia, a for-profit company co-founded by Wales.

New Feature Could Be Big Business For Facebook, Big Burden For Users

2011-09-23T00:30:47Z

The “completely new class of social apps” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Thursday at the f8 developer conference will feed Facebook even more information about its users and supercharge sharing on the social networking site.

But what promises to be big business for Facebook could prove to be a burden for users, who will see any activity they take on certain Facebook apps published instantly on the social networking site.

Thanks to the new version of Facebook's Open Graph developer platform -- a change Facebook called the “most significant update to Platform since it launched in 2007” -- once users have agreed to let an app access their profile, interactions with that app will automatically be fed into their friends’ “tickers," the stream of updates that now appears to the right of the Facebook News Feed. Listen to a song on music streaming service Spotify, and your friends will be able to see the track the moment you click play. Read an article on one of the news reader apps, and the app will broadcast to Facebook the headline of the story together with your name. The actions shared with Facebook will vary by app, with a cooking app posting different updates than a fitness app, for example.

Zuckerberg noted that the change to apps will allow users to share a “magnitude more” than before: not only does he see the potential for new industries such as “lifestyle” and “media” brands, to integrate social features in more robust ways, but the new Open Graph eliminates the need for an app to ask each time it posts to a user’s stream.

This allows the process of sharing to become more automated and more frequent, which in turn gives Facebook a host of new data about its 800 million users that it can then leverage to sell and personalize ads.

But this wasn’t what Zuckerberg highlighted during his keynote at the conference. Instead, the CEO focused on Facebook's users and the benefit this new category of apps will bring to them. He pitched these more social apps as a seamless way to share and as a source of “realtime serendipity.”

“Spotify isn’t going to have to prompt me every time I do something and it adds an activity to my timeline, so it’s a frictionless experience,” he said. “You discover a huge amount of new music this way.”

Though the sharing settings will vary by app and Facebook allows users to control which friends see the updates posted by each app, as well as delete the posts, the change nonetheless underscores Facebook’s continual willingness to push the limit on privacy. It furthermore highlights a new era in which Facebook will not have to ask each time it posts information about its users.

At the very least, there is the potential for some embarrassing personal preferences to come to light, such as a predilection for bad pop music or a compulsion for stories about Kate Middleton. Depending on what apps choose to integrate with Facebook’s new Open Graph and in what way, there could also be far more intimate details that are revealed -- the Nike Plus app will offer a good deal about your fitness level, for example -- though of course users can deactivate an app any time they choose.

Even Facebook chief technology officer Bret Taylor took some heat for his taste for Kenny G, which came to light when Zuckerberg demonstrated how Spotify synced with Taylor’s profile.

“Bret, we might have to talk about that after f8,” Zuckerberg teased.

Some users had their reservations about Facebook’s latest changes.

“It is getting kinda creepy now. Facebook wants to know everything. I might go buy a goat and live in a cave,” tweeted @Gabriellala.

@EJC added, “Facebook is going to be so much better for creepy stalkers now.”

Facebook's users could find themselves overwhelmed not only by how much they're sharing, but by how much others are sharing with them. PC Mag's Mark Hachman explains:

What a user does not have control over, apparently, is how to filter the ticker feed. In one example demonstrated by chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, a user playing the Facebook game "Words with Friends" was able to share each and every word the player played, with a link to the word and game board so that Zuckerberg could follow along in real time. Theoretically, a Facebook user with a large collection of socially-active friends will turn that ticker into a blur, with game moves, songs, videos, movies, articles, and other activities all contributing to the frequent updates. If brands are dependent on using the ticker to push their information, it's unclear how well that work.

What do you make of the changes? Are these new apps creepy or convenient? Are you excited about the new information you'll discover, or worried about what might come to light? Weigh in below.

Google's Rivals Say Web Giant Is 'Trying To Kill Them'

2011-09-20T20:40:55Z

This article has been updated
Yelp, which has long dominated Google search results, has a new competitor that it's taking very seriously: Google itself.

The prime territory at the top of Google search results that Yelp could once lay claim to is now frequently taken over by Google's own listings. A search for "Los Angeles restaurants" turns up a link to Yelp -- but it's buried halfway down the page below Google Places, a feature that showcases business listings together with reviews, maps and prices.

As federal authorities ratchet up their scrutiny of Google’s practices, accusing the company of antitrust violations, at the center of the action is the company's use of its dominant position as a search engine to steer users to Google-owned sites. A growing group of critics and competitors assert that Google now uses search to bring traffic to its new sites in travel, shopping and dining that are playing a significant role in Google’s overall business.

“Google is not just competing in these verticals, but cheating. They are manipulating the search results,” said Gary Reback, a Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer who was an advocate for the antitrust suit against Microsoft in the 1990s and is now representing several companies, including ShopCity and Foundem, that claim to be affected by Google’s policies.

Google maintains on its blog that it does not have a policy of promoting its own content in search results, but strives to “deliver the best answers to users” and “never [takes] actions to hurt specific websites for competitive reasons.” It also notes that it takes only one click for consumers to switch to a competing search engine.

"We rank search results to deliver the best answers to users, and that is the only consideration -– not political viewpoints, and not advertising dollars," a Google spokesman told the Huffington Post. "Every search engine has shifted away from 'ten blue links' to embedding answers and different types of information directly in the search results, which helps give consumers the answers they’re looking for."

The valuable real estate Google is handing over to its own products -- and the fact that it powers two-thirds of all searches in the U.S. and claims three-quarters of all search ad revenues -- has prompted the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the company unfairly promotes its own offerings or manipulates ads to the disadvantage of other businesses. In addition to the ongoing FTC probe, a Senate panel has convened a Sept. 21 antitrust hearing called “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?” at which former Google CEO Eric Schmidt will testify.

The Internet companies that now vie with Google’s own offerings on its site accuse the company of using backhanded tactics to crush rivals and have lawyered up to oppose what they see as anticompetitive behavior.

Reback said sites like Nextag, a price comparison site, and Yelp pose “a threat to Google” by competing for users and ad dollars, and accused Google of “trying to kill them” by promoting its own services in search.

Travel and review sites such as Kayak, TripAdvisor and Yelp have argued publicly that by putting its own results ahead of others, Google stands to squelch the competition by making it more unlikely that users will have reason to visit these third-party sites. A group of tech companies, including Microsoft, TripAdvisor, Travelocity, Kayak, Hotwire and Expedia formed an advocacy group called FairSearch.org, with the mission to raise awareness about “how Google threatens competition and consumer choice” and to protest using “dominance to foreclose competitors from the search marketplace,” according to the group’s website.

“The concern is that Google is in many ways the main street of the Internet,” said Robert Birge, Kayak's chief marketing officer. “They’ve taken all of the real estate that anyone will ever click on and put a Google product there.”

Though many companies do not publicly disclose what share of their web traffic comes from Google, data available from third-party research firms indicate the search engine drives a vital number of users to its competitors -- which means they have much to lose if Google bumps them down the page of search results, where the likelihood of getting clicks decreases dramatically.

“The whole promise of the web was that you could be a little guy and be the best and people could find you and would find you,” Reback said. “It’s great to get merchants on the Internet, but if no one can find them, they won’t go very far.”

In a call with investors earlier this year, Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi described Google as a “big traffic generator for us and something that we always watch.” During the first nine months of 2010, 15 percent of Kayak’s ad revenues and 8 percent of its total revenues came from Google, according to the company’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Google maintains that it generates no more than 8 percent of search engine traffic to the top 10 online travel sites. But opponents of Google’s acquisition of ITA Software, a flight information company, claimed that Google sends around 30 percent of all search traffic to travel websites -- and could end up directing that traffic internally.

Though many competitors may not take issue with the search engine’s policies, some companies allege there is a reluctance to speak out against Google for fear of reprisal. Keeping quiet, they may figure, will keep their Google ranking from going down.

“Kayak was initially reluctant ever to speak out against Google because we did not want retaliation by such a formidable company,” Birge said. “They control the algorithm in terms of where we show up on the page and where we show up in paid search ads. They’re very influential in the market.”

Yet smaller tech startups expressed few concerns with Google’s search practices, and actually welcomed Google as a rival.

Several entrepreneurs said they stood to benefit from Google launching products that would compete with their own. Steve Huffman, the co-founder and CTO of flight and hotel search site Hipmunk, said the debut of Google Flight Search brought considerable media attention and record-setting traffic to his website.

“We should be so fortunate that Google launches Flight Search every week,” Huffman said. “We had our best traffic day since we launched on the day that they launched. We got mentioned in almost every story on Google Flight Search. It was a great opportunity for us to grab a lot of users.”

For a startup, having Google as a competitor could increase the possibility that it becomes an attractive acquisition target, either for Google or one of its rivals, entrepreneurs say.

“I think Google entering your space is viewed as an opportunity for a lot of people to be very successful,” said Justin Kan, the founder of Justin.tv, a kind of YouTube for live streaming video, and Kiko, an online calendar app that went out of business following the launch of Google Calendar. “If your company beats Google, it becomes potentially a very interesting acquisition for Google and for other companies in the Internet space.”

While regulators worry that Google’s growth could lead to anticompetitive behavior, these startup CEOs say Google’s enormity actually gives them an advantage and argue that their smaller staff and narrow focus allows them to be more nimble than the 20,000-person Mountain View, Calif., corporation.

“We are ten people competing against multiple thousands of people and that’s to our advantage,” Huffman said. “We are smaller and so we’re more agile when it comes to being able to innovate and change direction.”

This article has been updated to include a comment from Google.

UPDATE: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, along with other members of the tech industry including Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and Nextag CEO Jeff Katz, testified Wednesday at a hearing held by a U.S. Senate antitrust subcommittee that probed Google's search practices.

During the hearing, titled "The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?”, Katz asserted that Google "doesn't play fair," while Senator Mike Lee maintained that Google "cooked" its search results so that its own listings were "always third," according to the Wall Street Journal.

Schmidt countered, "Senator, may I simply say that I can assure you we've not cooked anything."

Schmidt also referenced Microsoft's own antitrust battles a decade before.

"We get it," he said. "By that I mean, we get the lessons of our corporate predecessors."

You can access the witness testimony here on the U.S. Senate's website, or read more about the hearing on HuffPost here.

Facebook Unveils Entirely New Relationship Category

2011-09-14T17:05:08Z

Facebook is rolling out a feature that introduces an entirely new relationship category to the social networking site.

Until now, users could only “friend” one another on Facebook. Starting today, they'll also be able to "subscribe" to each other thanks to a new setting that allows individual profiles to behave more like Facebook fan pages.

A user will have the option of adding a "subscribe" button to her profile to enable people who are not her friends to see her public updates in their News Feeds, rather than having to visit her profile page directly. She will receive a notification when someone has signed up to see her updates, and will have the option of controlling who can comment on and "like" her posts.

“Some people who post publicly have a public presence and want to interact with people beyond their friends,” Naomi Gleit, director of product at Facebook, told The Huffington Post. “This allows them to reach people beyond their friends.”

In a blog post, Facebook suggested that "journalists, artists and political figures" might take advantage of the new tool. “If you see a Subscribe button on your favorite blogger’s profile, this means you can subscribe. Just click the button to get their public updates right in your News Feed,” Facebook wrote.

Though it remains to be seen how -- and if -- users will take to this feature, the subscribe button appears to have the potential to shift the social dynamic on Facebook by changing how people connect and how they communicate.

Facebook etiquette may redefined as people are forced to decide whether it’s more appropriate to “friend” someone they just met or merely "subscribe" to him. Is it too forward to "friend" a boss instead of "subscribing" to her? Is it creepy to "subscribe" to a girl you just met? Will you be offended if a colleague chooses not to "subscribe" to you after you "subscribe" to her?

Facebook’s new feature marks yet another effort to encourage people to share more on the social networking site, this time by carving out a new space for individuals to post information to a far broader audience than their friends. It enables Facebook to function more like Twitter and suggests an effort to encourage public figures to update Facebook the same way they tweet -- frequently, publicly, with breaking news or short musings. If "subscriptions" catch on, could it change the nature of what people share on Facebook? Rather than primarily viewing it as a platform for communication among friends, some users that had seen Facebook as a place for personal updates could transition from sharing to broadcasting.

The subscribe button is also an attempt to improve the relevance of what Facebook users see in their News Feeds. Not only can it be used to sign up to see posts by non-friends, but it will also enable users to fine-tune what information appears about their friends.

The tab, which will be visible at the top of all friends’ profile pages under the heading "subscribed," lets users tell Facebook to show more, less, or the same amount of information about a person.

"Until now, it hasn’t been easy to choose exactly what you see in your News Feed. Maybe you don’t want to see every time your brother plays a game on Facebook, for example. Or maybe you’d like to see more stories from your best friends, and fewer from your coworkers," Facebook wrote. "With the Subscribed button, you can choose how much you see from them."

Facebook wants the status updates it displays to be interesting -- people will not return to the site as frequently if they’re shown posts from people they care little about -- and the subscriber tool enables Facebook to receive feedback on whose updates it should or should not include. Selecting "all updates" from a dropdown menu will tell Facebook you are interested in “everything" a friend posts; choosing "most updates" indicates you’re pleased with the status quo; and picking “only important” will limit the updates you view to major events.

“We want to give people more control over what people see in their News Feeds,” Gleit said. “Facebook is growing quickly and people have more and more friends, but they care about different people more or less, and different stories more or less.”

Gowalla Reinvents Itself From The Ground Up

2011-09-12T23:17:00Z

Gowalla, a location-based social network that has competed head to head with startups like Foursquare and Loopt, is rolling out a radical overhaul that will do away with "check-ins" and aims to transform the application into a social travel guide for cities around the world.

Gowalla's reinvention suggests the company may be having difficulty making inroads against competitors like Foursquare, which boasts 10 million users to Gowalla's 2 million and which allows users to redeem rewards by checking into establishments and events. Gowalla is not alone in rethinking its location strategy: Facebook recently announced that it was phasing out its own check-in tool, Places, which reportedly had little success attracting users.

Gowalla CEO Josh Williams said the change in strategy stemmed from the industrywide move toward combining check-ins with discounts and rewards, an area he said he had little interest in pursuing.

"Our goal was never to go into the local deals space," Williams explained. "It's not a product we want to build moving forward."

"We wanted to go back to our passion, which is inspiring people to visit new places and visit the world through the eyes of someone they trust," he said. "I think the check-in industry is going to be doing interesting things around loyalty rewards and daily deals, but that's something entirely separate from what we're trying to solve."

That may not be all that turned Gowalla off social deals. A considerable number of more established players, including Foursquare, Groupon and Google, are all angling to partner with local businesses to deliver location-based coupons to mobile phones -- competition that could make it problematic for Gowalla to offer a meaningful number of rewards.

The new Gowalla, which a spokesperson said has been "retooled from the ground up," provides guides to cities, campuses, parks and other locales with content from Gowalla's userbase at large, an individual user’s friends and Gowalla's editorial partners, including Disney and National Geographic, whose content will appear with the launch of the new app. Users will be able to access these recommendations without registering for a Gowalla account. Williams noted that Gowalla might eventually charge for access to premium content.

"The question was: How do we create something more akin to a social Lonely Planet that gives people recommendations on where to explore, whether locally or abroad, but with a social aspect layered on top of that," said Williams, referencing the popular Lonely Planet series of travel guides.

Gowalla has not yet announced the launch date for the new app, which will be available for the iPhone and Android phones.

Some of the old features will be available to Gowalla users for a limited period of time following the relaunch. Check in while you can, as Williams noted the new app will not allow for check-ins.

Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Foursquare as having launched after Gowalla. The two companies both launched at SXSW in 2009.
SEE screenshots of the Gowalla app before and after:

New Ways To Memorialize 9/11

2011-09-09T19:00:00Z

John Vigiano II’s name is one of 2,983 etched into bronze panels at the National September 11 Memorial in Manhattan, a tribute to the thousands who lost their lives 10 years ago at the twin towers, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, as well as in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Yet the inscription offers little more about Vigiano. It notes his death, but not the life he lived.

The story of Vigiano as a son, a brother and a third-generation firefighter born in Queens, can be unlocked through a smartphone application developed by the National September 11 Memorial, one of several the organization has released.

The United States witnessed Sept. 11 without iPhones, Facebook or Twitter, but now, the country is harnessing all of these technologies, and more, as it reflects on the catastrophic event 10 years later. These new tools are transforming both how people share their stories of 9/11 and how they commemorate the terrorist attacks -- giving rise to a new breed of e-memorials that exist only online, can be accessed from the palm of a hand and include submissions from anyone who has a story to tell.

The 9/11 Memorial Guide app provides a photo and brief biography for each of the individuals whose names are listed on the monument at Ground Zero, supplementing the physical landmark by offering a view into who these heroes and victims were and how they were connected to the attacks.

Certain profiles also include audio recordings from the family members of the deceased. In these haunting and personal stories, people pause to take deep breaths as they describe their loved ones -- a woman recalls her grandchild aboard flight 175 who she will never watch grow up; a man with a deep voice and Brooklyn accent declares his undying love for his fiance, Karen, who was working at the north tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11.

“You see these names, then you can get additional information about these individuals and feel a personal connection,” said Sean Anderson, the chief technology officer of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. “The individual becomes not just a name, but a person.”

Through the app, we learn that Vigiano was a firefighter, like his father and grandfather before him, who was killed when the towers collapsed, along with his brother Joseph, a policeman. The Vigiano brothers’ father, John Vigiano Sr., recounts in a grave voice his son John's early ambitions to be “the next Donald Trump,” and Joseph's birthday celebrations at the firehouse as a young boy, where his cake would feature a cut-out of a building lit on fire in place of candles. These are details far beyond what a name etched in metal can provide.

The smartphone application underscores how technology allows for a new type of interactive memorial -- one that is crowdsourced, rather than curated, and is accessible by anyone, anywhere around the world.

“We can take the memorial experience and decouple it from the physical space,” Anderson explained. “We are able to memorialize wherever we are through technology.”

In honor of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, a slew of other companies have also created online archives by soliciting remembrances and testimonials from people around the world. Unlike traditional memorials, there is no physical place to gather, but instead a website to go to. And as opposed to carefully selecting which documents are included for presentation, these domains have been given over to their audiences and feature the stories that users have submitted.

TIME, for example, has created a black-and-white “Twitter-powered memorial wall” that showcases a rotating selection of user-generated tweets tagged “#beyond911.”

Broadcastr, a site that allows users to record two minute spoken messages and tag them to a particular location, is collecting and hosting oral histories about 9/11 that people can submit through Broadcastr’s app or website, at the World Trade Center site, or by calling a phone number (855-937-3636). The audio is then instantly accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.

YouTube has also created a “Reflections on 9/11” channel that highlights videos about Sept. 11 created by journalists, nonprofits, eyewitnesses and the site's userbase at large, which was invited to upload videos that capture their own reactions to the attacks.

Eighteen year-old Joyceelaine Cutliff was among those who heeded YouTube’s call to action, and she described her video, "Reflection: 9/11 And Its Tenth Anniversary," as a way to help herself, and others, make sense of the event.

“I feel like being a young person who is still trying to understand it, it is important to get my voice out there and keep the conversation going,” Cutliff said. “It’s not just a memory. It shaped our lives.”

CNN Buys iPad App

2011-08-30T17:08:52Z

CNN announced Tuesday that it has purchased Zite, the eight-person startup behind a personalized news reader iPad app of the same name.

While CNN said in a press release that it will keep Zite as a “separate, stand-alone business” that will improve its app and develop new products, KC Estenson, general manager of CNN Digital, told The Huffington Post that CNN might eventually integrate Zite’s personalization technology, which promises to “automatically [learn] what you like,” to deliver online audiences with content more customized to their interests.

“The technology that sits behind Zite is very powerful and you could imagine that coming over to to CNN’s core products to help make what CNN publishes more personalized and customized for each user,” Estenson said. “That’s a bet we want to make: sites and services that provide general interest news will need to become more personalized.”

Zite currently showcases articles from thousands of different sources based on an algorithm that takes into account Twitter history and reader behavior, among many other factors.

Yet following news of the acquisition, numerous Twitter users expressed concerns that Zite would be taken over by CNN content.

“I hope that my favorite dynamic news source won't turn into a monolith,” tweeted @ewaccess.

Zite CEO Mark Johnson said that his app would remain “source agnostic” and would not favor certain media companies’ content. Estenson stressed that CNN “didn’t buy [Zite] to alter it,” adding, “We bought it to make it better and stronger and give these guys more resources to get the app in the hands of more people.”

Johnson, who will remain CEO of Zite and report directly to Estenson, said he plans to tap into CNN resources to grow Zite’s user base, range of products and staff.

“In terms of product, we’re going to continue to improve the iPad app, which is our flagship product. We’ve got more ideas than fingers to type code right now,” Johnson said. “We’re excited to move the product forward and move on to other devices.”

“Hiring is a big priority," he added. "Expect us at least to double.”

CNN did not disclose the terms of the sale, though All Things D's Kara Swisher reported that Zite was sold for "$20 million to $25 million." Zite is currently available for free on Apple's iPad, but no iPhone or Android app has yet been released. CNN declined to specify how many users Zite currently has.