Microsoft has overhauled their master Microsoft Services Agreement (MSA) that covers Bing, MSN, Outlook.com/Hotmail, etc., and sent out a mass emailing to let folks know how serious they are. There’s good mixed with bad here.
Business
Elon Musk on the importance of colonizing Mars
[VIDEO] CNBC did a short interview with Elon Musk (see the original post) that I found interesting. Though the questions asked were simplistic, Musk’s responses were telling, gave a sense of his seriousness of purpose. There are plenty of critics out there, but there’s no denying his talent. If he says he’s going to put a human on Mars by 2026, I believe him.
US patent office cancels Redskins trademark registration, says name is disparaging
Washington Post:
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has canceled the Washington Redskins trademark registration, calling the football team’s name “disparaging to Native Americans.”
Obviously, this case could have huge implications. It is expected that owner Dan Snyder will appeal the decision.
Kanye, Jay-Z, Samsung, and the Beats deal
I thought this was interesting, in part because of the politics of the Beats deal and the obvious connections with Samsung and Apple.
Microsoft once again paying bloggers for coverage, this time for Internet Explorer
An agency sent Michael Arrington an email praising his “aesthetic and blogging style” and offering him the chance to spread the word on the new Internet Explore in a “cool visual way” with compensation clearly implied.
Inside Amazon’s house of ambition
Ever wondered how Amazon really works? The linked article gives you an insider’s look at all the moving pieces that work together to let you buy practically anything you’d ever want. Interesting article, but not a puff piece. Good stuff.
Jonathan Ive on Apple’s design process and product philosophy
Apple settles e-book antitrust case, avoids trial
Reuters:
Apple Inc reached an out-of-court settlement with U.S. states and other complainants in an e-book price-fixing class action lawsuit on Monday, effectively avoiding a trial in which the iPad maker faced more than $800 million in claims.
Apple is currently awaiting the results of its appeal of last July’s finding that Apple was liable for colluding with publishers. Yesterday’s settlement proposal has to be approved by the judge and is contingent on the outcome of the appeal.
The thriving black market for Facebook likes
Even though Facebook forbids the buying and selling of Facebook pages, there is a thriving black market with a “likes” cartel. There’s a dark side to this, with DDoS attacks part of the cost of doing business. Like so:
“Bro.”
The message had been sent by someone who wasn’t his friend on the social network, someone using the alias “Anthony.*” It was a name Fyk had come to know and dread.
Minutes later, the traffic on his website, FunnierPics.net, nosedived. Google Analytics showed the number of active readers drop from 3,000 to zero instantly.
When Fyk, known online as Jason Michaels, clicked over to his company’s Facebook page, WTF Magazine, he found another message from Anthony.
“Site’s down :(.”
Fyk’s business was under attack, and not for the first time. He’d spent the past few years locked in ferocious virtual combat over his Facebook pages, battling a shadowy group of adversaries that he and his friends call Script Kiddies, on the assumption that they’re young hackers who exploit low-level vulnerabilities on others’ sites.
Fascinating read.
Inside Metal: How Apple plans to unlock the secret graphics performance of the A7 chip
Bitcoin back in the iOS App Store
One announcement from WWDC that didn’t get much fanfare was a rule change concerning virtual currencies.
Apps may facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies provided that they do so in compliance with all state and federal laws for the territories in which the app functions
This allowed the Coin Pocket app in to the App Store.
The New York Times Sunday profile of Tim Cook
I found this profile frustrating, vexing. The tone is objective, but the prose manages to be damning at the same time, working in all the standard, shopworn stereotypes the Apple community has gotten used to having thrown their way.
Read the Only Apple piece by John Gruber instead. Spot on.
The cloud giants
Who controls the cloud? Interesting article on the companies battling it out for cloud supremacy.
Review of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Tab S
The kicker:
More than three years after Google first got serious about tablets with Android 3.0 Honeycomb, it’s not even the league next door to the league inhabited by the iPad, which now has more than a half-million apps designed especially for it.
Google in talks to take stake in Virgin’s space tourism business
Why would Google make a deal with Virgin’s space tourism arm?
Google is in talks with Virgin Galactic about a deal that will hand it crucial access to satellite-launch technology and an equity stake in Sir Richard Branson’s $2bn (£1.2bn) space tourism venture.
The key is satellite launch technology, something Google needs.
Fortune’s profile of Tony Fadell
Fortune:
An entire decade passed before Fadell asked VCs for cash again. But what a decade it was. Fadell abandoned Fuse Systems and joined Apple to lead the team that created the iPod. That singular achievement–the iPod rejuvenated Apple and reordered the music industry–transformed him from a struggling startup guy to an accomplished executive who’d withstood the sound and fury of Steve Jobs. Fadell became known around Silicon Valley as the mercurial “godfather” of the iPod, and he added another dazzling line to his résumé by assisting in the development of the iPhone. When he stepped down from Apple’s management team in 2008, there was much speculation about his next move.
Terrific read.
All our patent are belong to you
Elon Musk posted this on the Tesla blog today:
Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.
Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.
This is a pretty huge step. Some might see this as self-serving on Musk’s part, but I see this as altruistic, through and through.
LeBron James to get $30 million as his end of Apple-Beats deal
My favorite line from this article:
For wearing headphones, he would get $11 million more than he makes per year for doing what he does best, playing basketball.
Apple’s looming battle with Xiaomi
SeekingAlpha (free reg-wall):
Xiaomi, the world’s fastest growing phone vendor, has surpassed Apple (AAPL) in China. Canalys Report puts Xiaomi as the third biggest phone vendor in China in Q1 2014. Copycatting the iPhone has made Xiaomi, a four-year old company, the 6th largest global seller of smartphones.
The rapid rise of Xiaomi is due in part to Apple’s complacent attitude towards it. While Apple took Samsung to court for copying some of the features of the iPhone, Apple allowed Xiaomi to become a $10 billion company by selling iPhone clones using the Android OS. Xiaomi hired Google veteran Hugo Barra last year. Barra is spearheading Xiaomi’s expansion in 10 countries this year.
The linked article makes a pretty solid case comparing Samsung’s co-opting of the iPhone look-and-feel with Xiaomi’s approach. While Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung has made the headlines, there’s been nothing made about Xiaomi’s interface.
Taking Amazon’s new Prime Music service for a spin
Amazon just launched their Prime Music service, promising more than a million songs, all free to members of Amazon Prime. Since I’m an Amazon Prime member, thought I’d take it for a spin.
New open-world Zelda among Nintendo’s many E3 announcements
[VIDEO] Nintendo is doing everything they can to raise awareness and adoption of their stagnant Wii U console. They made inroads this week at E3 with a boatload of new games, led by the latest incarnation of their flagship Zelda series.
The latest Zelda game for Wii U is vast and beautiful, with a huge world for players to explore. Grass shimmers underfoot and everything feels grander in scope. Nintendo says it wants to break its own conventions for the franchise and give players more options for how they tackle challenges and puzzles.
Watch the trailer embedded in the original post to get a sense of things. Sadly, we’ll have to wait until next year to be able to get our hands on the new Zelda game. This is what Nintendo needed to do. Clearly, waiting until 2015 to finally make their platform relevant is not ideal. But Nintendo has the cash to ride this out. The question is, will the Wii U hardware still be competitive in 2015? That’s a long time between hardware revs.
Ongoing denial of service ransom attack crippling Feedly
From the Feedly blog:
Criminals are attacking feedly with a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). The attacker is trying to extort us money to make it stop. We refused to give in and are working with our network providers to mitigate the attack as best as we can.
Tequila billionaire aims to disrupt mobile phone model
Forbes:
John Paul DeJoria, the billionaire entrepreneur behind Paul Mitchell shampoo and Patron tequila is jumping into the wireless phone business.
His new company ROK Mobile (cofounded with British entrepreneur Johnathan Kendrick) is offering unlimited talk, text and data with an added sweetener of free music streaming. ROK Mobile is contract free and will cost $49.99 a month. DeJoria has inked music deals with Warner Music, Sony and Universal, giving users more than 20 million songs. Says DeJoria: “Everything you can find on iTunes, we have.”
$49.95 a month for unlimited talk, text, data and music is a price disruption.
Sony’s $99 PlayStation TV will challenge Apple TV this fall
I just can’t see this succeeding in the mainstream consumer market. Sony’s brand just doesn’t have the same relevance, same strength as it used to have. I can see Sony getting some traction with console gamers, but they’ll still have to battle Apple, Google, and now Amazon for even that mindshare.
Head of PayPal steps down to join Facebook
Reuters:
David Marcus, who has led eBay Inc’s fast-growing payments unit PayPal for the past two years, will step down this month to run Facebook Inc’s messaging products, the companies announced on Monday.
In the newly created role of vice president of messaging products, Marcus will oversee the Messenger service within Facebook’s social network as well as the free Messenger mobile app, but not WhatsApp, said Facebook spokeswoman Vanessa Chan.
Roughly 12 billion messages are sent every day on Facebook, and the Messenger app has more than 200 million users, according to the company.
Given the complete lack of a messaging component in PayPal, I wonder what drove Facebook to make this particular hire.
Here’s what Apple’s iCloud Drive will cost you, compared with its competition
Some of this is comparing Apples to oranges (sorry), since there are ecosystem advantages to building with iCloud, as opposed to, say, Box. Still, nice to see all this data on the same page.
A tiny technical change in iOS 8 could stop marketers spying on you
People have long been talking about MAC address tracking, the technique malware and marketers use to build a picture of where your device goes and the networks you log into. That may all be about to change, due to a change Apple made in iOS 8.
With iOS 8, the iPhone will become your digital hub
Interesting case being made for the iPhone, and not iCloud, being the center of the coming universe.
With iOS 8, Apple encourages this trend by pushing nascent ecosystems to focus on mobile. Nearly every aspect of the “new” ecosystem Apple showed this week revolves around having the iPhone as the center of your digital experience
Apple’s stock split FAQ
Before this morning’s opening bell, Apple was at a post-split price of $92.22. I wonder how long it will take for the stock to hit $100.
Patent troll on the verge of winning 1 percent of iPhone revenue
This is simply incredible.
In 2012, Apple won the year’s biggest patent verdict—more than $1 billion against Samsung. The company also lost one of that year’s biggest cases when an East Texas jury ordered it to pay $368 million to a company named VirnetX for infringing patents related to FaceTime and VPN On Demand functions used in iPhones, iPads, and Macs. VirnetX is a company some call a “patent troll” because its only business is now patent enforcement. Then, in March, US District Judge Leonard Davis ordered (PDF) an ongoing royalty to be paid to VirnetX. The number was downright stunning: 0.98 percent of revenue from iPhones and iPads sold in the US.