Ulysse Sabbagh

I read this:

With Apple rumored to be attempting to acquire a security solutions provider, a new move by AuthenTec to sell a portion of its business suggests Apple is most interested in its fingerprint scanning technology.

Apple bought this company in July for about 350 million dollars. And it makes me think: if Apple puts a fingerprint sensor on the home button of the iPhone, they could enter the mobile payments industry by the big door. Plus, they already have so many credit cards with one-click purchases on iTunes and the App Store, it really looks like a logical next step. 

I read this:

With Apple rumored to be attempting to acquire a security solutions provider, a new move by AuthenTec to sell a portion of its business suggests Apple is most interested in its fingerprint scanning technology.

Apple bought this company in July for about 350 million dollars. And it makes me think: if Apple puts a fingerprint sensor on the home button of the iPhone, they could enter the mobile payments industry by the big door. Plus, they already have so many credit cards with one-click purchases on iTunes and the App Store, it really looks like a logical next step. 

RIM’s CEO Thorsten Heins was caught using a yet-to-be-launched BlackBerry 10 phone taking pictures next to Andrew Bocking, another RIM exec during the last Lakers game.

Isn’t surprising that they both took photos at the same type and that the person who took the photo had an HD camera? This leak looks awfully staged.

I know that even bad press is good press or whatever, still, a CEO leaking his product to create the buzz is quite a desperate measure. 

The word GIF was named the word of the year by the Oxford Dictionaries. Here is TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey explaining why.

This is because communication takes place in the world; it’s rich, it’s improvised, it’s distracted. Not so on the internet. Most conversation is in text — inflexible, sterile text. What a stifling restriction for anything other than the most basic communications! It’s no surprise that constellations of impenetrable argot have arisen to circumvent these restrictions. The humble emoticon is an invaluable tool for shading a statement one way or another, and a further natural outgrowth of that is things like rage faces and celebrity gifs.

The word GIF was named the word of the year by the Oxford Dictionaries. Here is TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey explaining why.

This is because communication takes place in the world; it’s rich, it’s improvised, it’s distracted. Not so on the internet. Most conversation is in text — inflexible, sterile text. What a stifling restriction for anything other than the most basic communications! It’s no surprise that constellations of impenetrable argot have arisen to circumvent these restrictions. The humble emoticon is an invaluable tool for shading a statement one way or another, and a further natural outgrowth of that is things like rage faces and celebrity gifs.

October 2012 was the 332nd month in a row with above-average global temperatures

October 2012 was the 332nd month in a row with above-average global temperatures

www.wired.co.uk/news/arch…

That’s more than 27 years so basically no one in my generation has ever experienced temperature colder than average. 

Scott Johnson, writing for the New York Times explains how his father’s era of spying was simpler and safer than how spies operate today. He reminisces of the walks he had with his father, in Belgrade. Johnson saw his father stop and watch trees. He later discovered his father was a CIA operative. 

Those trees were, in effect, the 1970s equivalent of the gmail draft folders that the former C.I.A. director David H. Petraeus and his mistress, Paula Broadwell, shared to hide — or so they thought — their lovers’ tracks from prying eyes.

Excellent read. 

Scott Johnson, writing for the New York Times explains how his father’s era of spying was simpler and safer than how spies operate today. He reminisces of the walks he had with his father, in Belgrade. Johnson saw his father stop and watch trees. He later discovered his father was a CIA operative. 

Those trees were, in effect, the 1970s equivalent of the gmail draft folders that the former C.I.A. director David H. Petraeus and his mistress, Paula Broadwell, shared to hide — or so they thought — their lovers’ tracks from prying eyes.

Excellent read. 

“As a start-up valuation increases, the options definitely decrease,” said Jon Callaghan, a partner with True Ventures who has been investing since the early 1990s. When you’re valued at more than $1 billion, he said, “you have to have a flawless execution, as it’s upping the ante quite a bit.”

You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.

Nick Bilton ranting about entrepreneurs who wish to get their startup to the 1 billion dollar valuation club. Startups which have crossed 1 billion:

Twitter is valued at $8.5 billion; LivingSocial at $5 billion; Dropbox, $4 billion; Square, $3.25 billion; Spotify, $3 billion; Rovio, $3 billion; Airbnb, $2.5 billion; Pinterest, $1.5 billion; Box, $1.2 billion; Gilt Groupe, $1.1 billion; and Evernote, $1 billion.

“As a start-up valuation increases, the options definitely decrease,” said Jon Callaghan, a partner with True Ventures who has been investing since the early 1990s. When you’re valued at more than $1 billion, he said, “you have to have a flawless execution, as it’s upping the ante quite a bit.”

You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.

Nick Bilton ranting about entrepreneurs who wish to get their startup to the 1 billion dollar valuation club. Startups which have crossed 1 billion:

Twitter is valued at $8.5 billion; LivingSocial at $5 billion; Dropbox, $4 billion; Square, $3.25 billion; Spotify, $3 billion; Rovio, $3 billion; Airbnb, $2.5 billion; Pinterest, $1.5 billion; Box, $1.2 billion; Gilt Groupe, $1.1 billion; and Evernote, $1 billion.

The company changes course and Sinofsky gets a new mission: Windows 8 isn’t going to be a mere clean-up job, it’s not an “embrace and extend” improvement, but a new ”reimagined” Windows, a PC Plus that will straddle the PC and tablet worlds. The new OS will provide a radically new look-and-feel, a touch-screen interface in addition to a keyboard and mouse (or trackpad), and it will stray from the comfy x86 monogamy to also work on ARM processors.

A little over three years later, right after delivering Windows 8, Sinofsky is abruptly sacked. (Excuse me, he’s “amicably” sacked… by his own “personal and private” choice).

Excellent article by Jean-Louis Gassée. 

The company changes course and Sinofsky gets a new mission: Windows 8 isn’t going to be a mere clean-up job, it’s not an “embrace and extend” improvement, but a new ”reimagined” Windows, a PC Plus that will straddle the PC and tablet worlds. The new OS will provide a radically new look-and-feel, a touch-screen interface in addition to a keyboard and mouse (or trackpad), and it will stray from the comfy x86 monogamy to also work on ARM processors.

A little over three years later, right after delivering Windows 8, Sinofsky is abruptly sacked. (Excuse me, he’s “amicably” sacked… by his own “personal and private” choice).

Excellent article by Jean-Louis Gassée. 

littlebigdetails:

Facebook - The notifications icon shows a different side of the globe depending on your location.

/via Thomas Park

Cool.

The economic crisis is making Europe fatter

The economic crisis is making Europe fatter

rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/1…

Fascinating article in the IHT magazine. Because incomes are decreasing, European consumers are starting to make food choices based on price rather than quality. Something the United States knew for quite a long time:

Europe is discovering what many in the United States have known for a long time: when times are tough one of the first things to go out the window is health and nutrition. Low-income Americans have disproportionate levels of obesity, and many ascribe that fact to diets that include fast food like that at McDonald’s as a staple.

The article contains reports and statistics about behaviour related to food consumption. 

Excellent article by Jon Evans of TechCrunch. He first sums up well what are Facebook’s strengths as of today:

First, of course, there’s the network effect; with a billion active users, everyone goes there because that’s where everyone is. (Of course, there are individuals and subcultures who avoid FB — perhaps quoting Yogi Berra, “Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded” — but whether they like it or not, they’re a tiny minority among the networked of the world.)

Second, their Open Graph strategy means that Facebook isn’t just Facebook; they’re woven into the bones, and in some cases arguably the DNA, of millions of other apps and web sites. Every “Log In with Facebook,” “Share to Facebook,” and “Like” button across the Web and within every app store is Facebook territory. They don’t just own all the end users: Developers, executives, marketers, startups — they all want access to the Facebook empire, which means, to a considerable extent, becoming part of the Facebook empire.

He then gives some of the factors that could accelerate Facebook’s certain demise such as users turning away for another service or that users are getting bored of social networks in general. His last point is of interest:

So the only thing that I think will actually kill Facebook, in the end, is the same thing that’s slowly killing Microsoft today: a platform shift. Not the shift to mobile; they’re riding that one out nicely. The next platform shift. When it happens, maybe Facebook’s death spasms will finally trigger a long-awaited spate of innovation and creativity from them, as seems to have happened in Redmond of late. If I were a betting man I’d put my money on wearable computing as the platform of the future — something like Google Glass plus Kinect, bearing in mind that each of those is but the Altair II of its field, and I’m talking about their descendants a decade or more hence.

Wearable computing is then the next platform shift that will kill Facebook. But what if Facebook had already planned a few things to enable people to “like” objects in the real world? 

Excellent article by Jon Evans of TechCrunch. He first sums up well what are Facebook’s strengths as of today:

First, of course, there’s the network effect; with a billion active users, everyone goes there because that’s where everyone is. (Of course, there are individuals and subcultures who avoid FB — perhaps quoting Yogi Berra, “Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded” — but whether they like it or not, they’re a tiny minority among the networked of the world.)

Second, their Open Graph strategy means that Facebook isn’t just Facebook; they’re woven into the bones, and in some cases arguably the DNA, of millions of other apps and web sites. Every “Log In with Facebook,” “Share to Facebook,” and “Like” button across the Web and within every app store is Facebook territory. They don’t just own all the end users: Developers, executives, marketers, startups — they all want access to the Facebook empire, which means, to a considerable extent, becoming part of the Facebook empire.

He then gives some of the factors that could accelerate Facebook’s certain demise such as users turning away for another service or that users are getting bored of social networks in general. His last point is of interest:

So the only thing that I think will actually kill Facebook, in the end, is the same thing that’s slowly killing Microsoft today: a platform shift. Not the shift to mobile; they’re riding that one out nicely. The next platform shift. When it happens, maybe Facebook’s death spasms will finally trigger a long-awaited spate of innovation and creativity from them, as seems to have happened in Redmond of late. If I were a betting man I’d put my money on wearable computing as the platform of the future — something like Google Glass plus Kinect, bearing in mind that each of those is but the Altair II of its field, and I’m talking about their descendants a decade or more hence.

Wearable computing is then the next platform shift that will kill Facebook. But what if Facebook had already planned a few things to enable people to “like” objects in the real world?