Infotechia

Chart of the week: Who uses social networking sites? Read...

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:02:06 -0500

Chart of the week: Who uses social networking sites?

Read more: The tone of life on social networking sites

"No, let’s put the blame where it belongs, on us, the users of the Internet. We rely on free..."

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:34:37 -0500

“

No, let’s put the blame where it belongs, on us, the users of the Internet. We rely on free services like Gmail while insisting on “privacy,” a term that we probably can’t even define to our collective satisfaction. We accept terms of service contracts and privacy policies that explain in excessive detail how we will not get privacy, how our information will be used, and then we object.

So instead of privacy, let’s talk about control. You do have some of that, still. Make some choices about how your information will be used—because it will be used—instead of accepting default settings.

”

- Thomas Claburn

How Higher Education Is Going Digital [INFOGRAPHIC]

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:25:38 -0500

How Higher Education Is Going Digital [INFOGRAPHIC]:

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 Written About The Tech World Is Bullshit'

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:05:05 -0500

Stowe Boyd: MG Siegler Says 'Most Of What Is Written About The Tech World Is Bullshit':

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 innovation to Secretary of..."

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:41:04 -0500

“A person’s contacts are so sensitive that Alec Ross, a senior adviser on innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, said the State Department was supporting the development of an application that would act as a “panic button” on a smartphone, enabling people to erase all contacts with one click if they are arrested during a protest.”

- Disruptions: So Many Apologies, So Much Data Mining

The future will be made out of glass… and silicon…...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:25:24 -0500

The future will be made out of glass… and silicon… and rare earths… and plenty of smarts…

Corning’s new ‪video A Day Made of Glass 2: Same Day. Expanded Corning Vision features many of the same moves as Tom Cruise in Minority Report, but without the dystopia…

Take a gander.‬

Apple Controls 75% Of The Profits In The Key Mobile OEM Space

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:00:05 -0500

Apple Controls 75% Of The Profits In The Key Mobile OEM Space:

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 share, they’re destroying everyone else. That includes Samsung.

(And if you can’t see Sony, LG, and Motorola on that chart, it’s because they’re making little or no profit.)

Apple now makes an astounding 75% of the profit in the industry amongst their peers. That’s with just 9 percent unit share (smartphones and feature phones are combined), as Dediu points out. Amazing.

Just doing it for the world, is all...

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:43:54 -0500

…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 contemplate the product..."

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:35:32 -0500

“There is a big structural problem for both Google and Facebook as they contemplate the product consequences of consumer reactions to their product roadmap. In a centralized platform it is incredibly hard to create easy-to-understand controls that give each user the ability to control, at a granular level, what they share and who with. Grand policy shifts, like that which came out of F8 and which we are now seeing from Google, tend to assume all users are the same and will want the same thing.
In reality, users are more complex. I might want to save a private video to a personal storage space one moment, share something with a select group of friends another moment, and broadcast something to the world five minutes later. The web services infrastructure that both Facebook and Google are based on does not easily permit such fine grained control for users without also imposing serious effort. As we all know, that leads users to stick with the default settings most of the time.
So, despite good intent by the teams at both companies, one-size-fits-all decisions are the norm.”

- Keith Teare

digithoughts: Google vs Facebook, round II Projected Facebook...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:32:28 -0500

digithoughts:

Google vs Facebook, round II

Projected Facebook revenue and net income based on Google’s revenue growth and profit margins for year 0-7 after IPO. IPO Year: Google = 2004, Facebook = 2012

Maybe not a likely scenario, but an interesting perspective. Facebook revenue and net income in 2019? US$ 95.7 Billion and US$ 24.5 Billion respectively.

smarterplanet: Business Analytics - Turning Data Into Insight...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:31:46 -0500

smarterplanet:

Business Analytics - Turning Data Into Insight (by IBM)

In an era of Smarter Analytics, it is imperative that businesses leverage the massive quantities of data available to them. In order to remain competitive, data must be transformed into insight and integrated into business processes.

Connect w/ Simon Thomas at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/simon-thomas/1/228/45

The Obama campaign worked with Square to develop a custom-built...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:08:21 -0500

The Obama campaign worked with Square to develop a custom-built mobile payment app for Obama For America, and gave Fast Company a first look. The app is currently available to staff and will be available in the Store in the near future. See more->

"The challenge is that the Internet is a global resource but there are no geographic boundaries on..."

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:39:53 -0500

“The challenge is that the Internet is a global resource but there are no geographic boundaries on the Internet, yet laws are established by nation states, they are established by geography…”

- Kevin Johnson, chief executive officer at the US-based Internet infrastructure provider Juniper Networks

Tablet and E-Reader Sales Soar The report, from the Pew...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:27:08 -0500

Tablet and E-Reader Sales Soar

The report, from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, found that the share of adults who owned tablet computers increased to 19 percent in early January from 10 percent in November through mid-December. The survey found the same percentage increase in the number of adults who owned e-readers.

Full Story: NYT

"We knew on Friday we were doing well when ‘The Grey’ was trending on Twitter"

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:35:42 -0500

“We knew on Friday we were doing well when ‘The Grey’ was trending on Twitter”

- Open Road Chief Executive Tom Ortenberg

Free Courses, Elite Colleges

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:00:06 -0500

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 Vassar College. While Udemy is a for-profit enterprise, the Faculty Project courses will be free.

The goal is to “elevate the brand,” according to Gagan Biyani, Udemy’s president and co-founder. The company says it has no immediate plans to monetize the Faculty Project, and would never do so without the input and permission of its faculty contributors.

The inaugural Faculty Project courses include many humanities electives normally reserved for small classrooms of undergraduates. Among them: “Elixir: A History of Water and Humans,” “Select Classics in Russian Literature” and “The Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness.” Garland and the project’s other professorial recruits are developing, pro bono, mini-lecture-based versions of courses they offer on their home campuses. Udemy says it does not require the professors to relinquish ownership of the courses.

» via Inside Higher Ed

Tweets still must flow, even if some are censored

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:11:05 -0500

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 pace and is veering out of control.

Read More

Rosetta Reservations

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 13:20:14 -0500

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 American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), said teaching a Spanish class completely online threatens educational standards and leaves students floundering behind their peers in traditional courses.

But James Madison University officials say the academic demands in an online class they offer through Rosetta Stone are the same ones that students face in their Harrisonburg, Va., lecture halls. Of course, the people making these statements aren’t Spanish professors – many language professors at the university don’t like the idea, but weren’t in a position to stop it. The university’s foreign language department chair is skeptical, arguing the software is best used as extra practice for students and not a course in itself.

» via Inside Higher Ed

"I think their decision to artificially promote Google Plus pages above more relevant pages on..."

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:06 -0500

“I think their decision to artificially promote Google Plus pages above more relevant pages on competing social networks is the modern-day equivalent of the ’90s era search engines turning their homepages into “portals”. A search engine should be designed to send users quickly and accurately away to whatever sites on the Internet they’re looking for. The ’90s-era search engine portals blew this, because the whole portal idea was to keep users on their sites rather than send them away. This Google Plus integration is the same thing — an attempt to keep users on Google.com for another page view or two.”

- 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 industrialization,..."

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:55:56 -0500

“…the lecture was the most effective way to convey information. We had the industrialization, we had the invention of celluloid, of digital media, and, miraculously, professors today teach exactly the same way they taught a thousand years ago.”

- Sebastian Thrun on why he’s leaving Stanford to found Udacity.com