MacBook Pro Screen Gorgeous • iOS 6 Passbook • IPv6 Day • Wattpad Ebook Site raises $17.3M • RebelMouse is You • Silicon Valley Startup Absurdities •Facebook App Center •Big Data on Demand •HipSwap •Next Generation of Search •Windows 8, Google, Facebook and the Innovator’s Dilemma •Ubuntu, meet Azure •Flame Malware “World-Class” • Dish Network Gets It • Just One More: DIY Electronic Derailleur
New MacBook Pro Retina Screen is Gorgeous
That’s probably why engineers from our office headed straight over to the Apple store Monday morning.
iOS 6 Passbook Feature for Boarding passes, Movie tickets, more
Passbook, a new feature in iOS 6, consolidates Boarding passes, Movie tickets, loyalty cards and mnore into one place.
IPv6 Day
On June 6, 2011, major internet companies and other organizations ran the IPv6 protocol for 24 hours to show the feasibility of the switch from the old IPv4 protocol, which has already run out of available addresses in some regions, to the new IPv6 protocol. On June 6, 2012, major organizations permanently enabled IPv6. IPv4 and IPv6 will run in parallel for years to come, but the permanent enabling of IPv6 marks a major milestone in internet history. With 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses, there is no danger of running out of addresses again while the internet exists.
Free Ebook Startup Wattpad Raises $17.3M
$17.3 million is a lot of money for a startup round by any standard. Perhaps investors are so bullish because Wattpad’s eight million users are more engaged with their online community than even Pinterest users. Users develop their stories online, posting drafts and getting feedback that drives the creation of the final product.
RebelMouse is You
New Site RebelMouse Automatically builds your personal “Social Front Page”
Silicon Valley Startup Absurdities
Great Article in the Wall Street Journal about absurdities of the Silicon Valley startup culture, from the proposed TacoCopter drone delivery service to the successful iPoo social networking app for people sitting on toilets. To make a new company sound credible, you just need to pitch it with the right buzzwords. Currently those are “social,” “local” and “mobile,” or “SoLoMo” for short. For help envisioning what app your next startup should launch, use itsthisforthat.com to generate ideas.
Facebook App Center
Facebook’s new app center gives users personalized recommendations for Android and iOS social apps they might like. This could be helpful to users if the apps are curated well. With so many apps available, finding high quality ones that meet users’ needs can be tough. Facebook isn’t monetizing the app center directly, but will benefit from increased usage of social apps that drive more Facebook engagement.
Big Data on Demand
Startup Qubole is offering on-demand Hadoop access, accessible through the Hive framework/query language, which provides an interface traditional SQL data warehouse analysts will find familiar. This and similar offerings mean you don’t have to be part of a big organization to leverage big data.
HipSwap is Pinterest and Craigslist’s Love Child
If Pinterest bore Craigslist’s child, it would look a lot like HipSwap. HipSwap enables local marketplaces just like Craigslist, but with a decidedly more visual flair.
The Next Generation of Search
Interesting article at Ars on major changes Google and Microsoft have recently incorporated into their search engines. They extract data from unstructured information on webpages and create structured graphs of objects and relationships. To understand the power of the new architectures, imagine a film object and a DVD object. A query result returned in response to a search query about this week’s release of the DVD “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” might be generated starting from the “film distribution medium” entity that is the DVD, but could link to the original film entity for information on the director and cast.
Windows 8 and the Innovator’s Dilemma
Interesting blog post applying Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma to Windows 8. Sometimes companies have to ignore the voice of the customer in order to succeed.
Google, Facebook and the Innovator’s Dilemma
Microsoft is not the only company that has to deal with user unhappiness in the face of new designs. This article relates how Google and Facebook deal with users when they introduce user experience innovations.
Ubuntu, meet Azure
Ubuntu Linux is coming to the Windows Azure cloud. Microsoft is a much different company that it was a decade ago.
Flame Malware “World-Class”
Cryptography experts quoted by Ars Technica believe that the Flame malware that targeted Iranian computers was developed by world-class experts, most likely in the employ of a nation-state. It used an MD5 collision attack sign malicious code with a fraudulent certificate and spoofed the Windows Update mechanism to distribute the code.
- Ars Technica
- Wired: Interestingly Flame shares some code with the U.S./Israeli developed Stuxnet, leading researchers to hypothesize that they share a common origin.
The only Pay-TV Guy who Gets it
Unlike virtually all his Pay-TV company officer peers, Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen actually gets it. He explains that Dish is offering a new ad-skipping feature because the next generation of users will just use the internet to bypass distribution channels that force users to consume things they don’t want to.
Just One More: DIY Electronic Derailleur
This DIY electronic derailleur enables more accurate shifting and automatic trimming—so no chain rub. Another cool project based on an Arduino board.
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