February 2012
11 posts
“No, let’s put the blame where it belongs, on us, the users of the...”
– Thomas Claburn
How Higher Education Is Going Digital... →
People are talking about digital tech’s opportunity to improve the classroom. Much of the discussion has been focused on digital textbooks. Apple’s recent announcement of iBooks for education has caused a stir over whether texts delivered on an expensive and propriety device like the iPad are rea…
Stowe Boyd: MG Siegler Says 'Most Of What Is... →
MG Siegler confesses that he and many other tech writers have been doing a piss-poor job:
MG Siegler, Content Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink via ParisLemon
Most of what is written about the tech world — both in blog form and old school media form — is bullshit. I won’t try to put some…
“A person’s contacts are so sensitive that Alec Ross, a senior adviser on...”
– Disruptions: So Many Apologies, So Much Data Mining
Apple Controls 75% Of The Profits In The Key... →
Speaking of crazy charts… these great ones by Horace Dediu of Asymco are just bonkers.
In the first, you’ll see that Apple retains the top rank in profitability among mobile phone OEMs for the third straight year…
In the second chart, you’ll see that Apple snatched the revenue crown back from Samsung last quarter.
But the third one is the best. It’s not just that Apple is ahead in profit...
Just doing it for the world, is all...
…Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.
- Mark Zuckerberg (from ‘The Hacker Way’ letter to investors)
“There is a big structural problem for both Google and Facebook as they...”
– Keith Teare
January 2012
20 posts
“The challenge is that the Internet is a global resource but there are no...”
– Kevin Johnson, chief executive officer at the US-based Internet infrastructure provider Juniper Networks
“We knew on Friday we were doing well when ‘The Grey’ was trending on...”
– Open Road Chief Executive Tom Ortenberg
Free Courses, Elite Colleges →
infoneer-pulse:
Udemy, a company that allows anyone to create and sell courses through its online platform, has announced a new area of its site, called The Faculty Project, devoted to courses by professors at a number of top institutions, such as Colgate, Duke University, Stanford University, Northwestern University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia, Dartmouth College and...
Tweets still must flow, even if some are censored
bitshare:
What the heck is happening to the Internet? It seems lately that it’s going to hell in a hand basket. Sure the Internet has always been a place where volatile things can happen, but it could be avoided on an individual basis. Now it appears the places that we come together as a community to interact and socialize in places that have become sacred is evolving and changing at a rapid...
Rosetta Reservations →
infoneer-pulse:
Depending on whom you ask, Rosetta Stone is either modernizing higher education or jeopardizing the quality of foreign language instruction by offering classes for transferrable college credit.
Rosemary Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association and a Spanish professor, calls the idea “scandalous.”
David McAlpine, president of the board of directors for the...
“I think their decision to artificially promote Google Plus pages above more...”
– Daring Fireball Linked List: Google’s Problem: Relevance
Exactly right. That’s what I meant when I wrote this a year ago. Google won search because they prioritized the best answer above anything else. They have crossed that line and it will hurt.
(via bijan)
“…the lecture was the most effective way to convey information. We had the...”
– Sebastian Thrun on why he’s leaving Stanford to found Udacity.com
“Innovation is at its most powerful when it works through imagination. While...”
– John Seely Brown
A Rainbow At Its Peak
Horace Dediu presents yet another amazing way to look at the rapidly evolving computer industry (here are Dediu’s other fascinating looks of the past few days).
The PC looks like a rainbow at its peak.
The Macintosh looks like a roller coaster with a misleading small first hill that tricks riders.
Android, iPhone, and iPad look like fireworks just taking off…
“Truth wasn’t a threat when you only communicated with your audience through the...”
– VW: what a social media fail looks like | Greenpeace UK (via mediafuturist)
“Consider Gutenberg time. The printed book did not begin to take on its own form...”
– Not So Fast | Think Quarterly by Google (via interestingsnippets)
blog.bufferapp.com: 6 Incredible Examples Of How... →
futuramb:
1.) Twitter Accurately Predicts Politician’s Victory at New Hampshire Primary
2.) Twitter knows how you will be feeling this Friday
3.) Did Twitter predict the revolution in Egypt?
4.) Predict the future yourself with Twitter and Timeu.se
5.) Hedgefund to make bets based on Tweets – beats the market
6.) Predicting and stopping the spread of diseases with Twitter
Note: All of...
Golden Age of Publishing Entrepreneurship?
This is worth a read, but the open question is whether an existing analogue-based enterprise can pull off a transformation to digital and not lose its shirt. Or, putting it differently: does the future belong to start ups who can afford to lose investor money as they do the R&D, market groundwork and play craps?
“the dream of prediction also attracts a very different breed of prognosticators:...”
– The future of prediction - Boston.com (via infoneer-pulse)
“i think programming is finally being seen as it should be - as the literacy of...”
– Zach Sims
A VC: Some Thoughts On The Success Of Code Year
(via fred-wilson)
“The cutting edge of technology seems to be confined to the borders of our...”
– Tech Comes To The Real World (via courtenaybird)
2011: The year of domestic cyber threat - Opinion... →
December 2011
14 posts
“The future holds unimagined opportunities. Innovation, especially in the form of...”
– An open letter to university administrators by Clayton M. Christensen, Kim B. Clark professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and Henry J. Eyring, advancement vice president at Brigham Young University-Idaho
Washington Post
“On its face, “meaningful work” may sound elitist, an offshoot of late 20th...”
– Is Work Still Meaningful? - Ellen Ruppel Shell - Business - The Atlantic (via infoneer-pulse)
“And we morph again, from a manufacturing economy to a service economy to a...”
– Smart piece from Dan Frommer on why code should be the second language you teach your kids. Couldn’t agree more. (via arainert)
Adults Now Spend More Time With Mobile Devices... →
Adults are spending more time with their mobile devices than they’re spending with print media, according to a report released Monday by eMarketer.
According to the New York-based market research firm, the average adult consumer spends 65 minutes a day on their mobile device, while they spend only 44 minutes with print media—26 minutes with newspapers, and 18 minutes with magazines.
This is...
Libraries: Where It All Went Wrong →
infoneer-pulse:
Bill Gates and Microsoft were caught flat-footed by the take-up of the Internet. They had built an incredibly profitable and strong company which treated computers as disconnected islands: Microsoft software ran on the computers, but didn’t help connect them. Gates and Microsoft soon realized the Internet was here to stay and rushed to fix Windows to deal with it, but they...
“@stoweboyd: Verizon FiOS costs 6X as the comparable service in Hong Kong, 5X...”
– December 04, 2011 at 05:26AM via http://bit.ly/tEZzuL (via stoweboyd)
College Faculty Take the Lead in Developing Open... →
infoneer-pulse:
The average college student now spends $1,000 annually on books and supplies, and growing numbers of universities are finally getting serious about student complaints over the cost of course materials. But at schools that are open to the idea of adopting free or low-cost alternatives to $200 textbooks, concerns about the quality and variety of electronic materials already on the...
November 2011
7 posts
Google Health: First Failure of 2012 -... →
futuramb:
The idea that users would be willing to transfer personal health record data from health care providers, where data privacy is protected by law, to Google servers, where it is protected by non-binding privacy policies that can change at any time, was flawed from the start. Although Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil,” many users viewed this deal as a Faustian bargain.
This is an...
Textbooks Finally Take a Big Leap to Digital →
infoneer-pulse:
Amazon, which got its start selling books online, announced this year that, for the first time, its digital books had outsold paper books. This trend of going digital does not hold true for all books: While many popular consumer books have successfully made the switch into the new format, textbooks are still widely read on paper.
Textbooks are gaining, though, as publishers...
Will the real fake Steve Jobs please stand up?
So there’s yet another fake Steve Jobs book available from Taipei-based publisher ecorebooks.
“25 Lessons That Steve Jobs Taught the Young.” This time the author is listed as “Jao Tao” and the book has a blurb on the back cover in Chinese allegedly from “Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.” The publisher is also the same as before,namely Ecorebooks.
For those...
