Government agencies will never be as nimble as a Silicon Valley startup, but, at SXSW, Bryan Sivak, CTO of the Dept. of Health and Human Services, describes how the tech world is influencing his agency. Read more »
Yahoo says that its new edict banning remote working is necessary to build the right kind of culture. But how is making things less appealing for potential employees going to help Yahoo become more innovative? Read more »
Hyperlocal used to be a popular buzzword in media circles, but NBC says it has shut down one of the pioneers of the genre — data-driven startup EveryBlock — because it wasn’t a good fit with its core strengths. Read more at paidContent »
TechStars, the national startup accelerator program based in Boulder, Colo., is partnering with Chicago’s Excelerate Labs to create the rebranded TechStars Chicago. Read more »
The conventional wisdom is that we have a radio spectrum shortage. That’s not the case, according to President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. What we need is a much more efficient way to allocate what we have, and that includes a plan for shared use. Read more »
Historically, the public and private sectors have had different priorities. But Chris C. Kemp, CEO of Nebula and co-founder of OpenStack, says it doesn’t have to be that way. The key to aligning their goals is open-source projects. Read more »
According to David E. Weekly, CEO Oha.na, Silicon Valley is stupid in three important ways — its startups are stupid, its government is stupid, and its investors are stupid. Companies are successful here because business intelligence is distributed, and the ultimate arbiter of correctness is the market. Read more »
UBS analyst Steven Milunovich argues that the biggest threat to Apple’s dominance in the long run is not a plethora of copycat smartphone and tablet makers — but a competitor out-innovating Apple, which could be ushered in by Samsung losing and Apple winning. Read more »
Can you name America’s largest startup? It’s not Facebook or Amazon. It isn’t even a technology company. This giant startup is the Transportation Security Administration, and its massive scale offers a roadmap for entrepreneurs eager to turn big ideas into sustainable businesses. Read more »
Is your city thriving, or does it lag behind? If it lags, can it catch up? UC Berkeley economics professor, Enrico Moretti’s new book, The New Geography of Jobs examines how innovation clusters are causing massive shifts in where jobs, people and wealth are distributed. Read more »
What’s happening in the e-book market is not fundamentally different from what happened in the music industry. The retail price of recorded music has plunged thanks to digital technology and the record labels lost market power. At the same time, innovation has flourished at the retail ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Although the writing has been on the wall for traditional print-based media for some time, few companies have made any dramatic steps to try and adapt because they are too busy running their existing businesses. That’s why digital-native entities will almost always win. Read more »
“Google is a crack dealer” is a phrase Larry Page never wanted to hear: but as the company’s relationships with developers begin to fracture across the board — from the web to mobile to apps — it is losing its grip on its own destiny. Read more »
According to a Pew Research Center report that looked at 38 newspapers, both large and small, some are seeing massive declines in digital revenue while others are seeing dramatic increases. One of the main reasons for this discrepancy, the report suggested, are cultural differences within newspapers. Read more »
For a company that manages to debut a new product line every few years that seizes the public’s attention worldwide, it is rather amazing to see how little Apple spends on research and development as a percentage of its sales compared to its peers. Read more »
Startups often rail against copycat companies, arguing that they steal their business and their ideas. But maybe the secret to beating clones isn’t to waste time trying to shut them down — it’s to accept them and focus on being bigger, better and faster. Read more »
A British company surveys workers and finds not only are they more productive when working remotely, but they also feel less creative at the office. Where do they get their most innovative ideas? At the pub (assumedly with a limited quantity of libations). Read more »
“Cloud first” markets — those where companies’ first serious engagements with information technology are in the form of cloud computing — are beginning to emerge. For the BRIC economies in particular, this might mean a chance to adopt low-cost solutions that will give companies a clear ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The future of work is already here. It is just already distributed, one might say. The freelance economy, microtasking, mobile workers, coworking spaces, crowdsourcing: All of these point to how work is increasingly shifting from the twentieth-century model of Taylorism (think scientific management applied to labor processes such as assembly-line production and fixed workplaces) to a more flexible, hyperspecialized and connected workforce. This report examines the new world of work, from the devices and software services we use to the growing role of social media, the importance of a group-centric mentality and how the roles of employees, managers and organizations are evolving. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Hard to believe, but we’re already gearing up for the Crunchies, which will be held January 31, 2012, at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. Once again, GigaOM is co-hosting the annual event, which celebrates innovation and new technology, along with TechCrunch and VentureBeat. Read more »
Creating a Facebook app for your newspaper — or an iPhone app, or an app for Amazon’s new Kindle Fire tablet — is a nice project, but real innovation consists of rethinking how a media company functions in a digital age on a more fundamental level. Read more »
While my iPhone 4 still mostly satisfies my needs, I have to confess: For the past two weeks, I haven’t been exactly faithful. I’ve been testing out Samsung’s latest and greatest, the Galaxy S II Android smartphone. Here’s how I feel about my indiscretion. Read more »
There’s a growing number of social networks providing plenty of ways for users to share the minutiae of their everyday lives. Storytree, on the other hands, wants to provide a platform for users to share rich memories with their family and friends. Read more »
I’m not sure if Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has been sniffing too much eInk from Kindles, but he has a patent for smartphones with airbags and springs. Ridiculous! Anyone who has dropped buttered toast knows a falling smartphone with airbags will land on the non-protected side. Read more »
Come August 20 and 21, the next Instagram and Hipstamatic could emerge in New York City, ready to do battle in the increasingly tough photo app market. Those are the dates for the Photo Hack Day, billed as the largest photo hackathon for developers. Read more »
Android Market is paced by a number of very prolific app makers and it also sees more updates per app than the App Store, according to app ratings analytics and discovery firm Mobilewalla. The company found that Android users are also focused more on popular apps. Read more »
Last week, Inmagic introduced IdeaNet, an innovation management platform. I spoke with Phillip Green, Inmagic’s CTO, about how the company approaches B2B collaboration and how its clients integrate innovation into customer interactions. I came away from the conversation with a new appreciation for keeping things simple. Read more »
New York doesn’t have to rival Silicon Valley; it can be its own success story, with its own unique culture. And that is what the region should be looking at first, rather than trying to gain some bragging-rights parity with the San Francisco Bay Area. Read more »
How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying is making a big push on Facebook, with a contest to find its biggest fan by asking users to record video testimonials. Those testimonials become great word-of-mouth advertising for other potential theater goers. Read more »
An interesting example of the practice of open innovation is the SAP Co-Innovation Lab, as SAP and its partners have found a way to integrate hardware and software innovation in a way that is open, but also protective of intellectual property. Read more »
Apple has included facial recognition technology in iOS 5, 9to5Mac discovered earlier this week. It’s not something Apple is advertising with the software update yet, but as it develops, it could become on of the most significant additions ever introduced to Apple’s mobile operating system. Read more »
Do you sleep? Have a laptop or desktop that sits idle during those eight hours? Need an extra $10 a month? If so, startup CPUsage has a proposition that you should hear. Read more »
A challenge of managing a virtual team is getting timely and thorough participation from team members. One way to ensure everyone has their say — or is at least given the opportunity to provide input — is to apply some principles of crowdsourcing to internal team communications. Read more »
Netflix may have become the new face of evil for wireline Internet service providers as they seek to impose caps or tiers on subscribers. But it also looks like Netflix is willing to play the part of consumer advocate, countering myths ISPs perpetrate around broadband scarcity. Read more »
It’s important to be proactive and figure out for yourself how your strengths and weaknesses drive your web working preferences. You can improve your job satisfaction and make you happier in your work by finding projects and jobs that play to your strengths and preferences. Read more »
Once you have the good ideas, what do you do with them? Innovation management tools can support the transition from good idea to great change or product. I spoke with Vincent Carbone, Brightidea co-founder and COO, about the company and his perspective on innovation management. Read more »
In the run-up to Thinking Digital, one of Britain’s top technology conferences, the entrepreneur behind the event says it is time for local startups to stop thinking that innovation and success can only happen in Silicon Valley. Herb Kim explains how to go beyond basic boosterism. Read more »
In five short years, cloud computing has gone from being a quaint technology to a major catchphrase. Amazon and others are now moving at Internet speed, trying to offer better security, faster networking, more compliance and a host of other products that are attempting to meet the demands of startups, consumers and enterprises alike. On GigaOM’s Structure channel, we cover the gear and software that comprises the cloud, the services and the people who are changing the industry. Now for the first time, we’ve decided to condense that knowledge into the Structure 50, a list of the 50 companies that are influencing how the cloud and infrastructure evolves. All of these players, big or small, have people, technology or strategies that will help shape the way the cloud market is developing and where it will eventually end up. Companies mentioned in this report include Amazon, Rackspace, Cloudera, China Telecom and SeaMicro. For a full list of companies, and to see the Structure 50 as one full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
MIT’s Media Lab is a hothouse of talent that helped usher in the digital revolution of the 1990s — but as the Internet has become dominated by large companies, its influence has waned. Now incoming director Joi Ito must help it regain its momentum. Read more »
ISPs have staked out a singular public rationale: Data caps are necessary to limit the consumption of “bandwidth hogs” in order to protect the network experience for everyone else. But is this really accurate and what can the application providers do to help? Read more »
