By analyzing data from a live 3G network in a major city, the mobile network analytics firm Actix has found that only 5% of iPads are used outdoors. iPads account for just 1% of data sessions, they use 4X more data than an average 3G device. Read more »
Microsoft and Barnes & Noble are teaming up to take on Amazon and Apple. The $300 million investment in the Nook subsidiary of Barnes & Noble gives Microsoft about 17.6% ownership of this business unit and values it at about about $1.7 billion, more than Barnes & Noble itself. Read more »
The rise of smartphones is bringing about massive changes in the mobile industry, according to data collected by researchers. Data revenues are moving on up and data usage is zooming at a time when voice and messaging sales have stalled for carriers. Read more »
South Korea, Japan and some European countries dominate the top lists when it comes to broadband, a report from Akamai finds. The quarterly State of the Internet report puts the South Korean city of Taegu at the top of the 100 fastest cities. Read more »
It has been a crazy busy week for me and my reading list was much longer that normal. I have culled the seven best pieces for you to read and enjoy this weekend. Some of them might have lessons for all of us. Read more »
Apple acquired app discovery service Chomp earlier this year, betting that it would help make app discovery easier and better on its iTunes Appstore. The casualty of that acquisition is the Chomp for Android (search and) app which seems to have been discontinued. Read more »
The demand for Apple’s iPad is going through the roof and nowhere is its impact more visible than inside corporations. It is one of the reasons why demand for corporate Wi-Fi gear is going strong and benefitting the likes of Meraki and Aruba Networks. Read more »
Apple will host its annual June 11 through June 15 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, the company announced today. The five-day conference will give developers a peek into the future of iOS and OS X. The tickets for the event are going to cost about $1,599. Read more »
Google’s much awaited Drive has arrived. Sign-up and get 5 GB free. While they are a competitor for the likes of Dropbox and Box.net, the real target for Google might be Microsoft and its Sharepoint service, as company is harping on collaboration-and-sharing as its core features. Read more »
The slow death march of DSL continues!. Last week, Verizon reported a loss of about 89,000 DSL connections, but increased demand for faster FiOS Internet. Today, numbers from AT&T follow the same trend. Read more »
Apple’s iPhone stayed in high demand at AT&T during the first quarter of 2012. The company sold 5.5 million smartphones of which 4.3 million were iPhone activations. In comparison, Verizon activated about 3.2 million iPhones during the first quarter of 2012. Read more »
If you are like me, you don’t have enough time during the day to read all the good/fun stuff that is published during the day. Don’t worry, I just found some cool stuff for you to enjoy before you turn those lights off. Read more »
“Content” is an industry that is going through a renaissance.Despite the current challenges and there are opportunities. All these threats and opportunities will be part of the discourse at paidContent 2012, which will be held on May 23, 2012, at the TimesCenter in New York City. Read more »
Dropbox is launching a new easy link sharing service, that allows you to share documents, photos and videos over the web, without having ta dropbox account. With Google rumored to be launching its online storage service soon, this is a nice counterpunch by Dropbox Read more »
It is supposed to be a pretty wonderful weekend around here, so I don’t plan on getting in front of the computer much. I hope you spend time enjoying yourself as well. Still, here are some stories I found that are worth reading. Read more »
What will Facebook do with the ginormous amount of money it will raise as part of its forthcoming IPO? No one knows – except a big piece of it will go towards building its backend infrastructure that can manage a billion users and all those Facebook connections. Read more »
Cisco in an internal memo outlined its plans for the changing nature of networking. It also acknowledged a $100 million investment in Insieme, a company started by three Cisco executives and that it can buy it for upto $750 million. Read the memo & what it means. Read more »
When you think of Verizon these days it is all about LTE, spectrum heists and the iPhone. There is rest of the phone company that is doing what it does – sell voice, video and data center services. And of the lot, FiOS broadband is booming. Read more »
Brent Schlender, a veteran journalist who wrote for Fortune and the Wall Street Journal found some interview tapes that shed new light on Steve Jobs’ life. The highlight of these tapes for me was Pixar and the role it played in shaping Jobs & Apple’s future. Read more »
Physical media is dead. It is being replaced with “apps” From music playlists to catalogs to retail stores to television — it wouldn’t surprise me if in near future everything is an app. It is a scary future for some, and yet full of opportunities. Read more »
Past one month has been interesting, to put it mildly. Facebook snapped up Instagram for $1 billion and Zynga lookout OMGPop for $200 million However, here are three key lessons (and takeaways) between these two deals and what they say about both these companies. Read more »
Path, a niche mobile social network has raised $40 million in new funds. It has also drawn comparisons with Instagram, a mobile photo service that was acquired by Facebook. Many are betting it would be the next big acquisition. I disagree, and here is why. Read more »
This week’s group of articles reflect the change that technology is bringing upon society in general and the Internet, specifically. It also reflects some of the many things I am contemplating these days. Hope you enjoy them. Read more »
Jeff Jonas is now an IBM Fellow, according to a post on The Smarter Planet blog. We obviously think the world of him — Jonas has been a featured speaker at our Structure Data events twice. Read more »
Punch is an iPad-only satire magazine that combines pop culture references and popular Internet memes with interactive game play. The New York-based start-up launched its app, and well let’s just say, it can be quite draining on your productivity. Read more »
What we know about Bilton’s new book deal. Read more »
Being a cynical optimist by nature, whenever I fall head over heels in love (no, not in the romantic sense) with a product, and the startup and the founder(s), I know that startup/product is going to be a winner. The Instagram-Facebook deal is decent testimony. Read more »
Google announced a new project – Take Action – that asks you to tell your story about the Internet and share it with the social web. Its motive: build grassroots momentum and keep check on widely reviled legislations such as SOPA, PIPA and their new variants. Read more »
One of the great things about Instagram is its passionate community. The news of Facebook buying Instagram for a billion dollars is getting thumbs down from the Instagrammers, once again showing that it is people not corporations that control the social networks and how they evolve. Read more »
What is about Instagram that has made Facebook open up its checkbook and spend nearly a billion dollars in stock and cash to buy up a company only in its third year. There are many reasons, and the biggest one is fear. Read more »
Facebook has acquired Instagram for nearly one billion dollars, the company announced this morning in a blog post. The deal is a combination of cash and stock. With this sale, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, cofounders of Instagram are the newest mega-millionaires in Silicon Valley. The duo […] Read more »
It is the long weekend. And unless you are traveling, you might have enough time to sit and read and ruminate on different things. I have seven stories that are food for thought. The topics range from baseball to DNA to future of news. Read more »
On the occasion of the first anniversary as the chief executive officer, Larry Page shared a letter with company’s investors. While reading the letter, some stats caught my eye that are simply staggering, regardless of how one feels about the company. Read more »
Instagram, the mobile photo sharing app earlier this week released its Android app, an event that I believe has turbocharged the already briskly growing social photo service. New data crunched by Amsterdam-based startup, Skylines shows that is exactly what is happened. Here is what it means. Read more »
Instagram has finally arrived on the Android (not all of the phones, but quite a few of them.) And predictably, the reaction to the release of the app has been tremendous. Instagram is being downloaded 2000 times a minute, setting up the company for bigger things. Read more »
I loved this talk by Jer Thorp, currently the data-artist-in-residence at the New York Times. His work has appeared in my publications but it is the first time I have seem him speak about humanizing data. This talk for Tedx Vancouver is highly recommended. Read more »
A report in the Wall Street Journal suggests that the Securities & Exchange Commission is looking into the company’s recent actions. Groupon recently revised the its very first set of financial results. The reinstatement of revenues shows that Groupon is plagued by much deeper problems. Read more »
Square snagged one of the founding engineers of Google Wallet, making people wonder if it was going to embrace NFC. My guess – not likely, for they believe that their app-based approach has lot less friction. With recent talent exodus, something is not right at Google Wallet. Read more »
Here we go — of all the stories I read this week, here are the ones that I think are worth reading. Much of it is about the tech industry, mostly because I ended up being too work-focused as I recovered from my New York trip. Read more »
