Last Saturday, a controversial referee’s call disallowed a goal that would have given the Russian men’s hockey team a 3-2 lead. The game ended up going to overtime and was won in shootouts by team USA. The ruling was that the net was off its moorings at the time of the goal. Interestingly, US goalie Jonathan Quick was the one who knocked the goal off its mooring, albeit unintentionally.

That rule will now be changed, giving the referee the opportunity to make a judgment call and award the goal if the ref feels that the goal would have been scored regardless of the displaced net.

Personally, I loved the game. I would rather win cleanly than benefit from an obscure rule. Here’s hoping the Russian team makes it far enough so we get a rematch. That will be a game to watch.

What happens when a company gives a leadership role to someone who was a leader at Apple?

Apple Inc. (AAPL) is known for producing great products, like the iPod. Now Google Inc. (GOOG) with its acquisition of Nest Labs Inc. and its Apple alumni founder Tony Fadell, is hoping it produces great leaders who can replicate that success as well.

It’s a gamble that has proved disappointing for companies from Palm Inc. to J.C. Penney Co.

Fadell, who oversaw development of Apple’s iPod, was a star attraction in Google’s $3.2 billion purchase of home-management startup Nest. Just as Apple’s music player sparked the company’s shift from a niche computer maker into dominance in mobile devices, Nest may help Google push its software and services into a new generation of connected household items.

Fadell will have to break the run of ex-Apple executives who have yet to replicate the iPhone maker’s success at their new employers. Managers at Apple — distinguished by its secretive culture and narrow focus on a few products — don’t necessarily flourish at companies with more traditional and cooperative structures.

“Apple is not known for producing leaders — it produces products,” said Ram Charan, a management consultant who has acted as an adviser to Jack Welch, former General Electric Co. chairman and chief executive officer, and Ivan Seidenberg, former chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications Inc.

Fascinating read.

This year, we’re going to hear a lot about iBeacon technology. A wide variety of sports stadiums and shops have started to incorporate iBeacons into their overall flow. This could be a tremendous experience. Or an annoyance.

The key is to anticipate the consumer needs and think benefits, not features. Every unasked for iBeacon interaction should have a clear benefit to the receiver. Unasked for marketing pushes will get old very quickly and tarnish the technology in consumer’s minds.

From the linked article:

The next six months will see some winning and losing iBeacon-enabled experiences, and businesses will need to quickly mature their approaches and become more customer-centric. Our key recommendations include:

• Establish the expectation for valuable, relevant messages through your app’s regular push notifications
• Use individual app preferences and behaviors to tailor beacon-triggered messages
• Use responses to those messages as additional signals about users’ interests and preferences for ongoing segmentation
• Build logic and trigger management into iBeacon deployments, including frequency caps and timing delays so you don’t over-message your audience
• Leverage dwell times and distances from iBeacon to finesse messaging

To keep shoppers tuned in and turned on, relevancy rules. If it’s done well, your customers will feel as if they’ve gained a personal shopper — an advocate, even — someone looking out for them, finding them the best deals and delivering personalized service where and when it’s needed most.

These are good thinking points. Let’s get this right. I’m looking forward to the coming wave.

Of course, Candy Crush’s ridiculous strength could also be King’s greatest weakness.

We’ve seen this before.

What a great story.

The new version of Samsung’s Gear smartwatch will run on Tizen, not Google’s Android operating system, the latest attempt by the South Korean electronics giant to develop more of its own software and services, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Samsung will unveil the updated Gear watch, and a new HTML5 version of the Tizen operating system, at an event at the Mobile World Congress later this month in Barcelona, Spain, the people said.

If true, this is the first of Samsung’s devices to use the new operating system, but it won’t be the last. Google should be very worried.

Sweet Jesus, where does CNBC come up with these assholes. For a good analysis of what this moron said, go check out what John Moltz has to say.

BlackBerry Ltd Chief Executive John Chen fired a salvo at T-Mobile US Inc on Tuesday, calling ill-conceived a promotion run by the company that encourages customers using BlackBerry smartphones to upgrade to iPhones.

I’d be pissed off if I ran a company that made shitty products. Chen should worry about fixing that first.

Some nice examples illustrating the points.

This is a really good look at advertising and how the old school buyers are trying to deal with Amazon and Apple. Buyers are used to getting information, but neither company will share customer habits or other data with them. Welcome to the 21st Century. Guess who is sharing customer information more freely? Google.

This is pretty early in Johnny Cash’s career. Great video.

Jim and Dan talk about the Pirates of Silicon Valley, Apple, Microsoft, the heart of innovation, Guns n Roses, and more.

Sponsored by Hover (use code SLED for 10% off your first purchase once you sign up), FreshBooks (enter AMPLIFIED in the “How Did You Hear About Us” section to support the show and to enter for your chance to win a birthday cake!), Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME214 for 25% off), and MailChimp.

This looks good, especially having apps available for both platforms.

Samsung’s Galaxy S5 will have a fingerprint sensor in the home button, just like the iPhone. Who didn’t see that coming?

Ryan Neudorf really seems to like it.

P.S. Kickass paint job on the travel trailer.

Banerjee noticed that braille printers can cost more than $2,000 and wondered if he could drop the price, according to his father, Niloy. A Mindstorms kit is $350 and easily modifiable, giving Banerjee most of the parts he needed to build the printer.

Big fan of Lego Mindstorms. We have several in our house. This is one talented kid.

I am going to give this a try. I love the idea of being able to play Zelda on my iPad. Very cool!

Not a good defense in my opinion.

[Via Neowin]

King games have been downloaded on 500 million mobile devices, almost one game for every person in Brazil and the U.S. What’s more, about 408 million of those consumers play at least one game a month; some 124 million play every day.

Those are staggering numbers. But is this success long term?

In anyone else’s hands, I would worry about the user experience with touch controls embedded in the chassis. The potential for bad experience is huge if major changes are made to the keyboard, trackpad and screen. But Apple has consistently delivered in this area. Looking forward to seeing what the future holds for laptops.

Donovan Hutchinson shows you how to use transforms to create a 3D object and animate it with nothing but CSS.

It’s like there’s nothing that can’t be done with CSS these days.

Just beyond description.

Saved is the tool that makes budgeting and tracking your expenses delightfully simple. Saved helps you visualize your budget and savings every single day of the year to track how much you’ll be able to spend on your loved ones, holidays, and vacations.

It’s free to download.

Fucking crazy Canadians.

I really enjoyed this. I’ve seen logos that I had to stare at in order to figure out what it was—that’s not a good design.

Betabeat:

For those of us in the startup, Silicon Valley-makes-the-world-go-round tech industry, the name Sam Biddle incites fear (in the timid), disgust (in the short-tempered) and a chuckle (for those with a good sense of humour).

But before the 27-year old Brooklyn-based tech stroke gossip blogger wrote his first word, there was another Sam Biddle, the “real Sam Biddle”, as she jokes, who has beaten cancer and raised two children while building a global empire for nail artisans.

Anyone else have this issue? I share a fairly common name and have gotten all kinds of misdirected tweets for an NFL football commentator, a pastor in Haiti and Larry King’s wife.

I agree completely with Gruber. If you make a decision for your company, own it and explain it clearly for your customers. Don’t bullshit.

Congrats to Shawn.