This article was translated from Swedish using Google Translate.
After the financial crisis of 2008, the country has not recovered.
“We had two pillars that supported us. Nalle Wahlroos described it pretty well when he said that iPhone struck down Nokia and iPad hit the forest industry. “
So Steve Jobs struck Finland?
“Yes, Steve Jobs took our jobs,” said Alexander Stubb.
BBC:
After widespread criticism, Google has begun reinstating some links it had earlier removed under the controversial “right to be forgotten” ruling.
Articles posted online by the Guardian newspaper were removed earlier this week, but have now returned fully to the search engine.
Google has defended its actions, saying that it was a “difficult” process.
TechCrunch:
Nielsen’s U.S. music report on the first half of 2014 shows digital music consumption rapidly shifting from downloads to streaming. On-demand streaming was up 42% over the first half of 2013, racking up 70 billion play in the first half of 2014. Meanwhile, digital track sales fell 13% to 593.6 million and album sales fell 11.6% to 53.8 million. The report on US trends (not international) makes Apple’s acquisition of Beats looks smart, as its iTunes download sales model is quickly dying out. As a whole, dismal digital and physical sales dragged total music sales plus streaming industry down 3.3%.
How do you keep track of all the digital detritus in your life? I’ve got an encrypted file containing all my critical info, including account numbers, passwords, and lists of various things, like the location of my car title. My kids all know the location of this file and the password to decrypt the file.
Reading this article, I’m wondering if that’s enough.
Tech Crunch:
Amazon is refusing to comply with a request from the Federal Trade Commission to implement stricter controls that would prevent children from making in-app purchases.
US District Court Judge Lucy Koh oversees a case pitting Apple against GPNE. GPNE is suing Apple for infringing on one of its patents.
The case itself is important, in that GPNE is demanding payment for every iPhone sold. To my untrained eye, the claim seems laughable, were it not for the fact that much money is being spent to defend this case.
Judge Koh issued this order:
In an unusual order, a federal judge last week told Apple that it may not call a Hawaii-based company names like “patent troll” or “privateer” or “bandit,” nor tell a jury that the company is engaged in a “shakedown” or “playing the lawsuit lottery.”
Reuters:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc said a contractor emailed confidential client data to a stranger’s Gmail account by mistake, and the bank has asked a U.S. judge to order Google Inc to delete the email to avert a “needless and massive” breach of privacy.
This raises some questions. Who owns a specific piece of email? Who has the right to delete it? Is it owned by the sender? The recipient? Google?
She’s got a tough and important job:
Harvey was the 25th employee at Twitter, where her official title is vice president of trust and safety, but she’s more like Silicon Valley’s chief sanitation officer, dealing with the dirtiest stuff on Twitter: spam, harassment, child exploitation, threats of rape and murder.
Fascinating read.
Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office said it would look into the Facebook experiment. That’s one problem for Facebook. Another is a potential class-action suit:
Critics of Facebook’s study have raised the specter that the company could face a class-action lawsuit over the study. According to a report in Forbes, the company added mention of research to its terms of service months after the study was conducted.
CNET:
Amazon said Szabadi, who left the company in May after nearly six years, can’t solicit business from any of his former customers for 18 months after his departure. He joined Google as a lead for the reseller ecosystem team in May.
In response, Szabadi’s lawyer told Amazon that Szabadi has also signed an agreement with Google, vowing not to do business with any AWS clients that he remembers having “material direct contact” with, or that he knows “confidential information” about, according to the court document. The agreement is in effect for six months.
Google is not backing down and is planning a strong defense for the suit. said a person familiar with the company’s strategy.
Google completed its long rumored acquisition of Songza for a reported US$39 million. Songza is a music curation service that lets you select playlists based on elements like genre, mood, and decade. It runs on iOS, Android, ChromeCast, and the web.
My iPhone is a bit of a mess. My front page contains the apps I use the most, but the rest of my pages are in a random order that slightly resembles the order in which I purchased the apps, shuffled in my attempts to move apps to my front page. Sound familiar?
The linked article talks you through the relatively simple process of sorting all your apps in alphabetical order. This might not work for all people, but it does make it much easier to home in on an app when you have 9 pages of apps.
Read the full post for an exception and solution.
James Kendrick writes for ZDNet. He is currently using an Android phone and writes about the logic behind his decision to by pass the Windows Phone, which he was considering, and move to whatever phone Apple releases next.
Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall. In a nutshell, Apple replaced last year’s winner, Berkshire Hathaway. Apple won the award two years ago as well.
This past Friday, this article appeared on AVClub.com and caused quite a stir.
My guess is, the folks at Facebook who authored this study were surprised by the outpouring of criticism. Yesterday, one of those people, Adam Kramer, posted his response to this criticism.
Note that if you follow the headline link to read Adam’s response in full, you’ll be taken to a Facebook page, with all that that entails.
[VIDEO] In the hands of a master, hand-drawn animation can bring complex emotions to life. The embedded video is stylish and elegant, drawn by one of the best, Glen Keane. Keane is the son of Family Circus creator Bill Keane and has created a number of classics for Disney, including The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, and Tangled. Not a bad resume.
In the linked article, Harry McCracken points out that the video below was created by Keane for Google’s “Spotlight Stories” project and that animation tools are no match for a master of the craft.
But the thing which makes it interesting and moving isn’t the technology: It’s the fact that it consists of a series of drawings by a human being who happens to be a master draftsman, rather than the digital stop-motion puppetry that is computer animation.
Keane may have used more modern tools than his counterparts at Disney did in the 1930s and 1940s, but the basics of his craft haven’t changed at all.
I agree that the human in the equation is, at least currently, irreplaceable. But I do think that automation tools make it possible to create incredibly sophisticated and complex animations that would not have been possible even 20 years ago. To me, the seminal year was 1995, the year Toy Story was released.
I think McCracken is right, the basics haven’t changed, but I think the tools have evolved beyond belief. I did enjoy Keane’s animation Duet, shown below, but my all-time favorite remains the first 7 minutes of Pixar’s Up. To me, that is emotional storytelling without peer.
[VIDEO] Apple rolled out the latest iPhone 5s ad yesterday. This one was called Parenthood. The ad was part of the With the power of iPhone 5s, you’re more powerful than you think series. It featured the song The Life of Dreams by Julie Doiron.
Bill and Melinda Gates gave the new Stanford graduates some excellent words to live by.
Dan Frommer:
Never mind the watches themselves, which seem awkwardly large, must be charged daily, don’t handle sunlight very well, and simply aren’t cool.
This last bit, “simply aren’t cool” says a lot.
This is a heartbreaking story, made harder by the fact that I met one of the principals of this story, Marcin, when I was in New York visiting another startup. I liked Marcin and I liked the concept. Unfortunately, the business model was just not strong enough. Lessons here for everyone.
The video is from last year, but new to me. Sergiy Putyatov is one of the fastest guitarists in the world. His official Guinness Record is 27 notes per second. Astonishing.
Apple announced a 16GB iPod touch with a 5 Megapixel camera for $199. Not too shabby. Though it’s clearly not a replacement for the iPhone, if you have regular WiFi access, this is a pretty nice alternative, one that doesn’t come with a monthly contract.
An interview with the top players in any major company is going to be interesting, but I thought this interview lacked vision. Worth reading, but there was far more breadth than depth.
One exchange that stood out for me, was the discussion on privacy.
You’ll need to activate the phone in-store.
[VIDEO] Nick Offerman can make anything funny. This short won the audience award for best film at the LA Film Festival. Love the concept, love the execution. Really well done.
Huge audience, especially for today’s matches.
Quartz:
Most promising app startups with venture capital investments that we analyzed are either building apps for iOS and Android simultaneously or are still iOS-only. Looking at 119 recent Y Combinator incubator participants and Google Ventures seed investments, of those offering apps, more than 90% had iOS apps, about half had both iOS and Android apps, and fewer than 10% only had Android apps. Among those with both, their iOS app typically launched several months ahead of their Android app.
Why is this true? Read on.
I came across the linked article on commonly mispronounced words. Pretty good list. The first one really surprised me.
Children’s writer Theodor Seuss Geisel, more commonly known as Dr. Seuss, pronounced his middle name (and pen name) as soice, not soose.
Today, the Supreme Court ruled against Aereo. Looks like that’s the end of the line for this experiment.
“Come with me if you want to live.”
That’s how it started. One moment I was ordering a Ketel and tonic at the bar, and the next some hulking bodybuilder with a bad accent was getting blasted out the window.
Lovely bit of writing.