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Strata Week: Are customized Google maps a neutrality win or the next “filter bubble”?

By Jenn Webb
May 17, 2013

Google aims for a new level of map customization Google introduced a new version of Google maps at Google I/O this week that learns from each use to customize itself to individual users, adapting based on user clicks and searches. …

Google Glass and the Future

By Mike Loukides
April 29, 2013

I just read a Forbes article about Glass, talking about the split between those who are “sure that it is the future of technology, and others who think society will push back against the technology.” I don’t see this as …

Strata Week: Revolutionizing human resource management with work-force science

By Jenn Webb
April 26, 2013

Big data replaces gut instinct in HR management In a post at the New York Times, Steve Lohr took a look this week at a new data discipline: work-force science. The field pairs big data with human resources to help …

Commerce Weekly: Wal-Mart looks outside the (big) box to battle Amazon

By Jenn Webb
April 4, 2013

Wal-Mart wants to crowdsource delivery, while Google chases same-day On the heels of launching its in-store delivery locker program to compete with Amazon Locker, Wal-Mart has announced it’s toying with the idea of having in-store customers deliver online orders to …

The demise of Google Reader: Stability as a service

By Mike Loukides
March 21, 2013

Om Malik’s brief post on the demise of Google Reader raises a good point: If we can’t trust Google to keep successful applications around, why should we bother trying to use their new applications, such as Google Keep? Given the …

Four short links: 15 March 2013

By Nat Torkington
March 15, 2013

Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large Scale Field Experiment (PDF) — We find that new and infrequent users are positively influenced by ads but that existing loyal users whose purchasing behavior is not influenced by paid search account …

Commerce Weekly: Visa pursues NFC mobile payments

By Jenn Webb
February 28, 2013

Visa looks to kick-start NFC Visa is taking aim at the NFC mobile payment holy grail. On Friday, the company announced the Visa Ready Partner Program. Leena Rao reports at TechCrunch that the initiative “aims to help mobile device manufacturers, …

Commerce Weekly: Visa pursues NFC mobile payments

By Jenn Webb
February 28, 2013

Visa looks to kick-start NFC Visa is taking aim at the NFC mobile payment holy grail. On Friday, the company announced the Visa Ready Partner Program. Leena Rao reports at TechCrunch that the initiative “aims to help mobile device manufacturers, …

Commerce Weekly: Best Buy wants to end showrooming, Google wants to start

By Jenn Webb
February 21, 2013

Google takes on brick-and-mortar; Best Buy takes on ecommerce The Google retail store rumor ignited again this week. Seth Weintraub reported at 9to5Google that “[a]n extremely reliable source has confirmed to us that Google is in the process of building …

Commerce Weekly: Best Buy wants to end showrooming, Google wants to start

By Jenn Webb
February 21, 2013

Google takes on brick-and-mortar; Best Buy takes on ecommerce The Google retail store rumor ignited again this week. Seth Weintraub reported at 9to5Google that “[a]n extremely reliable source has confirmed to us that Google is in the process of building …

Author platforms and the Black Box Effect

By Anne Hill
February 20, 2013

If you’ve spent as much time reading author blogs as I have, you may have noticed a disturbing pattern. In nearly every “here’s how I did it” post in which the author explains her route to greater visibility and sales, …

Commerce Weekly: Google targets Amazon’s shopping platform

By Jenn Webb
February 7, 2013

Google acquires Channel Intelligence, pursues Amazon shoppers In a recent post at Wired, Marcus Wohlsen took a look at the success of Google’s switch last fall to all-paid product listings — such as the top result for a search for …

Commerce Weekly: Google targets Amazon’s shopping platform

By Jenn Webb
February 7, 2013

Google acquires Channel Intelligence, pursues Amazon shoppers In a recent post at Wired, Marcus Wohlsen took a look at the success of Google’s switch last fall to all-paid product listings — such as the top result for a search for …

Book Publishing Unbound

By Neil Ayres
February 6, 2013

Brand Perfect’s new report looks at how traditional publishers are contending with the challenges being brought about by increasingly fragmentary digital publishing, and highlights some of the most successful commercial projects that are responding to them. On the state of …

Four short links: 29 January 2013

By Nat Torkington
January 29, 2013

FISA Amendment Hits Non-Citizens — FISAAA essentially makes it lawful for the US to conduct purely political surveillance on foreigners’ data accessible in US Cloud providers. [...] [A] US judiciary subcommittee on FISAAA in 2008 stated that the Fourth Amendment …

Four short links: 24 January 2013

By Nat Torkington
January 24, 2013

Google’s Driverless Car is Worth Trillions (Forbes) — Much of the reporting about Google’s driverless car has mistakenly focused on its science-fiction feel. [...] In fact, the driverless car has broad implications for society, for the economy and for individual …

Publishing News: It’s time to embrace mobile

By Jenn Webb
December 14, 2012

Here are a few stories from the publishing space that caught my attention this week. Readers are going mobile, so too should publishers In a recent video interview with Shama.TV, Cheezburger Network CEO Ben Huh talks about the future of …

Four short links: 11 December 2012

By Nat Torkington
December 11, 2012

Burrito Bomber — drone that delivers burritos. (via BoingBoing) Copyright Hardliners Adopt the Language of Reform — Sadly, in the end, Barnier’s “copyright fit for the Internet age” looks depressingly like the current, dysfunctional version: one based on a non-existent …

Commerce Weekly: Same-day delivery war heats up

By Jenn Webb
December 6, 2012

Here are a few stories that caught my attention in the commerce space this week. The high price of instant gratification The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Bensinger took a look this week at the e-commerce same-day delivery trend, a service …

Global ebook distribution complexities

By Ruediger Wischenbart
November 28, 2012

A publisher at the Sharjah International Book Fair asked me about Google providing access to ebooks in Arabic. How could they do so without asking Arab publishers for permission, he was wondering. This was a simple question requiring a complicated answer. …

Publishing News: Publishing’s worst-case fate, Amazon as US Steel

By Jenn Webb
November 16, 2012

Here are a few stories from the publishing space that caught my attention this week. Applying an historical perspective to the fate of the publishing industry NPR’s Adam Davidson looked this week at the Penguin-Random House merger from an industrial …

Creating reader community with open APIs

By Leonhard Dobusch
November 15, 2012

I spoke at the “Frankfurt Digital Night” at this year’s Frankfurt Book fair, making essentially three points (see slides embedded below): first, publishing requires – and has always required – a commitment to creating and courting communities of readers. Second, there …

TOC’s Global Ebook Market report

By Joe Wikert
November 8, 2012

One year ago that we published the first edition of our Global Ebook Market report. We focused on the major English language territories but also featured coverage of several other popular languages as well. A lot has changed in the …

B&N sorely needs to make a mark

By Jenn Webb
November 6, 2012

Ahead of its 7-inch Nook HD and 9-inch HD+ release this week, B&N has reduced the price of its Nook Color and Nook tablets. The Nook Color dropped $10 to $139, and the tablets dropped $20 to $179 for the …

Curiosity turned loose on GitHub data

By Mac Slocum
November 2, 2012

I’m fascinated by people who: 1. Ask the question, “I wonder what happens if I do this?” and then follow it all the way through. 2. Start a project on a whim and open it up so anyone can participate. …

Publishing News: Amazon gets a brick-and-mortar bookstore, sort of

By Jenn Webb
October 26, 2012

Here are a few stories from the publishing space that caught my attention this week. U.K. bookstore teams up with Amazon Charlotte Williams and Lisa Campbell report this week at The Bookseller that Waterstones bookstore in the U.K. launched its …

Strata Week: Data mining for votes

By Jenn Webb
October 19, 2012

Here are a few stories from the data space that caught my attention this week. Presidential candidates are mining your data Data is playing an unprecedented role in the US presidential election this year. The two presidential campaigns have access …

Publishing News: Judge rules fair use in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust

By Jenn Webb
October 12, 2012

Here are a few stories from the publishing space that caught my attention this week. HathiTrust book scanning ruled fair use Last week, Google reached a settlement agreement with McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education, Penguin, John Wiley & Sons, and Simon & …

Strata Week: A realistic look at big data obstacles

By Jenn Webb
October 12, 2012

Here are a few stories from the data space that caught my attention this week. Big obstacles for big data For the latest issue of Foreign Policy, Uri Friedman put together a summarized history of big data to show “[h]ow …

Commerce Weekly: Will NYC taxis get Square?

By Jenn Webb
October 11, 2012

Here are a few stories that caught my attention in the commerce space this week. Square may be courting cabs Square not only is gearing up to launch in Starbucks stores in November — it may also be looking to …

Publishing News: Google and publishers settle lengthy legal battle

By Jenn Webb
October 5, 2012

Here are a few stories from the publishing space that caught my attention this week. Publishers and Google reach an agreement to disagree Seven years of litigation came to a close this week as Google reached a settlement agreement with …

Apple’s maps

By Mike Loukides
September 29, 2012

I promise not to make any snarky remarks about Apple’s maps disaster, and the mistakes of letting a corporate vendetta get in the way of good business decisions. Oops, I lied. But it’s good to see that Tim Cook agrees, …

Four short links: 28 September 2012

By Nat Torkington
September 28, 2012

Mobile Content Strategy — Mobile is a catalyst that can help you make your content tighter without loss of clarity or information. If you make your content work well on mobile, it will work everywhere. Excellent presentation, one I want …

Acer, Alibaba, Android, and Andy

By Zigurd Mednieks
September 16, 2012

Alibaba alleges that Google put the arm on Acer, and caused the Alibaba/Acer product announcement to be withdrawn by threatening Acer that their relationship with Google would not be as close if Acer went forward with an Aliyun product.

Why we need Go

By Rachel Roumeliotis
September 13, 2012

The Go programming language was created by Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, and Robert Griesemer. Pike (@rob_pike) recently told me that Go was born while they were waiting a long while for some code to compile — too long. C++ and …

The many sides to shipping a great software project

By Andy Oram
September 9, 2012

Chris Vander Mey, CEO of Scaled Recognition, and author of a new O’Reilly book, Shipping Greatness, lays out in this video some of the deep lessons he learned during his years working on some very high-impact and high-priority projects at …

Commerce Weekly: Starbucks gives Square’s mobile payment a big push

By Jenn Webb
August 9, 2012

Here are a few stories that caught my attention in the commerce space this week. Square gets Starbucks, cash and Howard Schultz Square announced a new partnership with Starbucks this week. Peter Ha at TechCrunch reports: “Beginning this fall, Square …

Four short links: 8 August 2012

By Nat Torkington
August 7, 2012

Reconstructing Visual Experiences (PDF) — early visual areas represent the information in movies. To demonstrate the power of our approach, we also constructed a Bayesian decoder by combining estimated encoding models with a sampled natural movie prior. The decoder provides …

Commerce Weekly: Lessons for ecommerce in store closings and old supply chains

By Jenn Webb
July 5, 2012

An analyst says online commerce is a descendant (and a return) of the circa-1900s catalog model, Deutsche Telekom partners with MasterCard for its mobile wallet platform, and NFC keychains may spark technology solutions. (Commerce Weekly is produced as part of a partnership between O'Reilly and PayPal.)

Publishing News: Google's win may be Amazon's loss

By Jenn Webb
June 15, 2012

Book-scanning lawsuits against Google were dropped in France, perhaps spelling trouble for Amazon in Europe. Elsewhere, the Espresso Book Machine is proving a plus for retailers and authors, and Laura Hazard Owen digs into PricewaterhouseCoopers' data.

Publishing News: Google's win may be Amazon's loss

By Jenn Webb
June 15, 2012

Book-scanning lawsuits against Google were dropped in France, perhaps spelling trouble for Amazon in Europe. Elsewhere, the Espresso Book Machine is proving a plus for retailers and authors, and Laura Hazard Owen digs into PricewaterhouseCoopers' data.

End of a fishing expedition

By Mike Loukides
June 1, 2012

As the Oracle v Google trial shows, we get proper rulings on copyrights and patents when judges and jurors understand the technology they're ruling on.

Developer Week in Review: Oracle's big bet fails to pay off

By James Turner
May 25, 2012

Oracle fails to convince a jury that Google owes them big bucks, the annual refresh of Perl has arrived, and FreeBSD says goodbye to an increasingly restrictive GCC license.

Strata Week: Google unveils its Knowledge Graph

By Audrey Watters
May 17, 2012

In this week's data news, Google updates its search features with a Knowledge Graph, while the U.S. House of Representatives de-funds surveys that helped businesses construct theirs.

Strata Week: Google unveils its Knowledge Graph

By Audrey Watters
May 17, 2012

In this week's data news, Google updates its search features with a Knowledge Graph, while the U.S. House of Representatives de-funds surveys that helped businesses construct theirs.

Four short links: 17 May 2012

By Nat Torkington
May 17, 2012

The Mythology of Big Data (PDF) -- slides from a Strata keynote by Mark R. Madsen. A lovely explanation of the social impediments to the rational use of data. (via Hamish MacEwan) Scamworld -- amazing deconstruction of the online "get rich quick" scam business. (via Andy Baio) Ceres: Solving Complex Problems with Computing Muscle -- Johnny Lee Chung explains...

A federal judge learned to code

By Mike Loukides
May 16, 2012

The judge presiding over the Oracle/Google case learned Java, and that skill came in handy when coding specifics arose during the trial. It's proof that coding is a part of cultural competence, even if you never do it professionally.

Developer Week in Review: Java on trial

By James Turner
May 11, 2012

Google and Oracle continue to duke it out in court, with more than just Android at risk. One developer uses cat feeders as a way to look at good software, and the PHP developers take a second try at fixing a critical bug.

Four short links: 8 May 2012

By Nat Torkington
May 8, 2012

Gmail Vault -- app to backup and restore the contents of your gmail account. (via Hacker News) Leaving Apps for HTML5 (Technology Review) -- We sold 353 subscriptions through the iPad. We never discovered how to avoid the necessity of designing both landscape and portrait versions of the magazine for the app. We wasted $124,000 on outsourced software development....

Developer Week in Review: Are APIs intellectual property?

By James Turner
May 4, 2012

We look at the legal status of APIs and how the Oracle versus Google suit may be affecting it, along with the relative popularity of languages and the world's worst C programs.

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