Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Samsung Deserves Room To Play

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Samsung: Apple wouldn’t have sold a single iPhone without stealing our tech
Samsung has been researching and developing mobile telecommunications technology since at least as early as 1991 and invented much of the technology for today‘s smartphones. Indeed, Apple, which sold its first iPhone nearly twenty years after Samsung started developing mobile phone technology, could not have sold a single iPhone without the benefit of Samsung‘s patented technology.

For good measure, Apple seeks to exclude Samsung from the market, based on its complaints that Samsung has used the very same public domain design concepts that Apple borrowed from other competitors, including Sony, to develop the iPhone. Apple‘s own internal documents show this. In February 2006, before the claimed iPhone design was conceived of, Apple executive Tony Fadell circulated a news article that contained an interview of a Sony designer to Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive and others. In the article, the Sony designer discussed Sony portable electronic device designs that lacked “excessive ornamentation” such as buttons, fit in the hand, were “square with a screen” and had “corners [which] have been rounded out.”

Contrary to the image it has cultivated in the popular press, Apple has admitted in internal documents that its strength is not in developing new technologies first, but in successfully commercializing them. . . . Also contrary to Apple‘s accusations, Samsung does not need or want to copy; rather, it strives to best the competition by developing multiple, unique products. Samsung internal documents from 2006, well before the iPhone was announced, show rectangular phones with rounded corners, large displays, flat front faces, and graphic interfaces with icons with grid layouts.

Apple relied heavily on Samsung‘s technology to enter the telecommunications space, and it continues to use Samsung‘s technology to this day in its iPhone and iPad products. For example, Samsung supplies the flash memory, main memory, and application processor for the iPhone. . . . But Apple also uses patented Samsung technology that it has not paid for. This includes standards-essential technology required for Apple‘s products to interact with products from other manufacturers, and several device features that Samsung developed for use in its products.
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Apple's Surprise Enterprise Entries

Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase
Good Technology: iPad, iPhone dominating enterprise markets
While smartphone activations outnumber tablet new-installs by around three to one, Apple continues to dominate in the corporate tablet space, crushing all competition. ..... more than 80 percent of American employees continue business-related communication from their mobile devices after they have left the office. The amount of usage averages seven hours per week -- adding up to more than a month and a half of (typically unpaid) overtime per year. ...... top ten devices activated in the second quarter of 2012 are led by the iPhone 4S, followed by the iPad 3, iPhone 4, iPad 2, the Samsung Galaxy S II, Motorola Droid Razr, iPad, iPhone 3GS, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, and the Samsung Galaxy Note. ..... Windows Phone 7.5 accounted for 1.2 percent of the total smartphone activations, with Apple holding 70.8 percent and Android gaining ground to 28 percent...... The financial services industry leads mobile device activations .... the "bring your own device" movement in information technology.
Steve Jobs was all about the consumer space. But then there are unintended consequences. You build factories. You end up polluting rivers. Only I think the smartphone, tablet penetration of the enterprise is a good thing, though inevitable. It was only a matter of time.


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Google Awesomeness (2)


Google Awesomeness

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Google Gets Scientific, Adds A Voice-Enabled 34-Button Calculator To Desktop And Mobile Search
Oh Google. Sometimes you’re so awesome...... Google search has long featured a built-in calculator function but a recent update added a fully functional 34-button scientific calculator. Previously, when a user entered, say, 2+2, Google would simply display the sum above the search result. Now, when that equation is entered into the search bar, the answer pops up along with the new calculator. Best of all, this works in mobile browsers and voice search, too.
This is an example of Google competing with itself. You excel when you do that.


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Big Data: It Is About Taking It To The Masses

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GoodData brings in $25M to supply Big Data analytics
GoodData offers operational dashboards, metrics and performance reports, data storage, analytics, and collaboration tools in a single platform. The company focuses on user experience, so all the tricky, technical elements of big data are comprehensible to people outside of IT teams..... dramatic revenue growth of 500% year over year...... It was founded in the Czech Republic in 2007 and is now based in San Francisco. It has 180 employees.
Big Data has always been around. What is about to change is it is about to get to the masses. It is about to become as easy as email. Or as cumbersome, depends on how you look at it.

Your company needs electricity, it needs broadband, it also needs Big Data.


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Promoted Tweets, Promoted Updates

Logo for Foursquare
Logo for Foursquare (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Someone said FourSquare was the next Twitter. But that was a long time ago.

Foursquare Launches Promoted Updates, Its Newest Effort To Generate Revenue
Foursquare has partnered with about 20 merchants, from small mom and pop shops to national chains like Best Buy, to launch the pilot program. In the next few months, Foursquare hopes to turn Promoted Updates into a self-service tool merchants of all sizes can use on its platform..... Foursquare's 20 million users are checking in 5 million times per day. Foursquare currently has 120 employees.


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