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A pilot's spilled coffee has been blamed for accidentally activating a hijacking alert and prompting a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Germany to stop in Canada on Monday.
The pilot of Flight 940 triggered an emergency code after spilling coffee on radio equipment while en route to Frankfurt, Transport Canada said.
The aircraft landed safely at Pearson International Airport in Toronto.
The incident is still being investigated by safety officials.
Canada's defence department was contacted after an emergency was declared. But United Airlines dispatch staff quickly confirmed the incident to be a communication issue and not a hijacking.
A Transport Canada report said the US Federal Aviation Administration indicated the pilot "had inadvertently squawked a 7500 code after spilling coffee on the aircraft's radio equipment, which interfered with the communications equipment".
Instead of flying the plane over the Atlantic, the captain decided to reroute the plane to Toronto in order for it to be fixed, United Airlines spokesperson Rahsaan Johnson said on Monday.
A second aircraft took passengers back to Chicago from Toronto, allowing them to board another flight for Frankfurt on Tuesday.
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Owners of Microsoft's Xbox gaming console have blamed its new Kinect hands-free controller of causing their consoles to fail.
Console owners told the BBC that their machines crashed shortly after plugging in Kinect.
Kinect allows gamers to control onscreen action with body movements.
Microsoft has denied any link between Kinect and the three flashing light error signal, known as the "red ring of death".
Ten-year old Adam Winnifrith told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours he had only used his Xbox with the Kinect a couple of times before it failed.
Warning signals
"We plugged it in the day we got it but only played it a few times before we got the red lights. The next day when we tried it again we still had the red rings of death and haven't been able to use it since."
It is quite a shame as we got loads of new games for the Xbox too and I never had a chance to play them."
Adam's father James bought the Kinect for Adam and his four-year-old and eight-year-old brothers. Unfortunately for the Winnifrith family the warranty on their Xbox expired on 16 December, 2010.
"It's very disappointing. We were planning to have a big New Year's Day party with karaoke microphones and a Take That competition. But now the Xbox is just sitting idle," he said.
He says he is planning to ask Microsoft if they would consider fixing it as it is only just out of warranty.
Online gaming forums have also been buzzing with accounts of consoles showing the Red Ring of Death shortly after plugging in Kinects.
"I have never had a single issue with my Xbox. i got Kinect for Christmas and the screen starting freezing randomly. Then on New Year's eve... BAM I got the red ring. Very sad," read one.
"Yep, I got the Red rings of death on Christmas day The very same day my kids got a Kinect," read another.
Microsoft said the Kinect had been "designed to work with every Xbox 360 sold to date."
"There is no correlation between the three flashing red lights error and Kinect. Any new instances of the three flashing red lights error are merely coincidental," it added.
Microsoft sold more than 2.5 million of the devices in its first month on sale.
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Dozens of dead birds have been found lying in a residential street in Sweden, days after thousands of birds fell to their deaths in the US.
Police in the town of Falkoeping have told Swedish media that between 50 and 100 jackdaws had died.
Some are said to have been hit by cars but others have no visible injuries.
Parallels have been drawn with the mysterious death of about 3,000 red-winged blackbirds in the US state of Arkansas on New Year's Eve.
Veterinary officials told Swedish radio that the case in Falkoeping was rare although they said there could be a number of reasons such as "disease or poisoning".
Aftonbladet newspaper quoted one resident, Drilon Hulaj, who said that as he drove home late on Tuesday night the street in front of him was dotted with "hundreds of dead birds".
Mr Hulaj said he had been immediately reminded of the events in the town of Beebe, Arkansas. Scientists have said the blackbirds there many have been affected by fireworks.
There have been no reports of fireworks or storms in Falkoeping at the time.
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eeping Women in Science on a Tenure Track
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
More women are obtaining Ph.D.’s in science than ever before, but those women — largely because of pressures from having a family — are far more likely than their male counterparts to “leak” out of the research science pipeline before obtaining tenure at a college or university.
That’s the conclusion of a study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who warned that the loss of these scientists — together with the increased research capabilities of Asian and European countries — may threaten America’s pre-eminence in science.
The study, “Keeping Women in the Science Pipeline,” found that women who are married with young children are 35 percent less likely to enter a tenure-track position after receiving a Ph.D. in science than are married men with young children and Ph.D.’s in science. Not only that, the married women with young children are 28 percent less likely than women without children to achieve tenure in the sciences.
Moreover, women Ph.D.’s with young children are 27 percent less likely than men with children to receive tenure after entering a tenure-track job in the sciences. The report notes that single women without young children are roughly as successful as married men with children in attaining tenure-track jobs.
According to the report, plans to have children affect women postdoctoral scholars more than their male counterparts. Women who had children after becoming postdoctoral scholars in the University of California system were twice as likely as their male counterparts to shift their career goals away from being professors with a research emphasis — a 41 percent shift for women versus 20 percent for men.
“Of course, not all women want children or marriage,” noted the report, written by three researchers at the University of California, Berkeley: Mary Ann Mason, Marc Goulden and Karie Frasch. “As one faculty colleague put it, ‘Motherhood would only keep me from my passion: science.’”
Tenured male scientists are considerably more likely to be married with children than tenured female scientists — 73 percent for men versus 53 percent for women. The report noted that among tenured science professors, women are nearly three times more likely to be single without children than men — 25 percent to 9 percent.
The report said that one reason many women Ph.D.’s leave the research science pipeline is that only a small fraction of research universities offer paid maternity leave to graduate students or postdoctoral scholars. According to the report, 13 percent of universities provide at least six weeks’ paid maternity leave to graduate students, while 58 percent of universities provide it to faculty.
The report found huge time demands on faculty, especially women. “The time pressures of academia are unrelenting for most faculty in the sciences, who work on average about 50 hours a week up through age 62,” the report states. “When combined with care-giving hours and house work, U.C. women faculty with children, ages 30 to 50, report a weekly average of over 100 hours of combined activities (compared to 86 hours for men with children). And women faculty with children provide an average of more than 30 hours a week of care giving up through age 50.”
The report urges universities to adopt more family-friendly policies to help prevent women Ph.D.’s in the sciences from dropping out of research careers. It recommends giving paid maternity leave to graduate students and “stopping the clock” on tenure for women scientists who give birth, perhaps by giving an extra year before making tenure decisions, in effect giving them extra time to do research and publish. The report also criticized policies that require postdoctoral scholars to begin their work within a certain number of years after receiving their Ph.D. “The lock-step timing of academia needs to be more flexible,” the report says.
“America’s researchers do not receive enough family-responsive benefits, particularly the more junior researchers,” the report concludes. “All major research universities should look to build a family-friendly package of policies and resources.”
Ms. Mason, the report’s principal author and a director of the Center for Economics and Family Security at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, noted that since 2003, the University of California system had adopted more family-friendly policies, like giving new mothers leave of two semesters without teaching in addition to their child-birth leave and giving six weeks’ paid maternity leave to graduate students.
Thanks in large part to such policies, Professor Mason said, 64 percent of assistant professors in the University of California system have children, up from 27 percent in 2003.
“It shows that you can change the workplace culture,” she said.
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f you think Google Docs is too barebones, especially for presentations, take a look at the video above. The animation was created by Tu+, Namroc, and Metcalf Anything using only Google Docs. It was their entry in the Google Demo Slam, which showcases creative videos of Google products in action. The video has already been watched more than one million times.
I can barely create a bar chart in PowerPoint, so I find this particularly impressive. Although I must admit that whenever I try to create charts in Google Docs I fail miserably there as well. Maybe we should hire these guys to do our charts.
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Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details
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by Jason Kincaid on Jan 5, 2011
Fragmentation. Curation. Recommendations. Take your pick: Android is getting all three, compliments of a new Amazon-run application marketplace due to launch later this year. Today, Amazon has launched the developer-facing part of the store, inviting devs to submit their applications so that they’re ready when the app store is ready for its consumer debut later this year (Amazon isn’t giving a firm date on the full launch).
We reported on this impending news back in September, so it isn’t a huge surprise. But it’s going to bring some very interesting dynamics to the way Android applications are purchased and distributed. In some senses, this is the Android equivalent of Apple’s App Store — even more so than Google’s official Android Market.
I spoke with Aaron Rubenson, category leader for Amazon Mobile Services, and
Ameesh Paleja, general manager for the Engineering Division of Mobile Services, about the new store, and it clearly has the potential to be a big deal.
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Sales Are At A Trickle On Google’s Chrome Web Store
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by Jason Kincaid on Jan 4, 2011
In December, after months of anticipation and discussions with third-party developers, Google finally unveiled the Chrome Web Store — an online portal that lets users purchase and ‘install’ web applications like TweetDeck, MOG, and hundreds of others. It’s one of the first platforms that helps developers monetize web applications using a unified payment system (in this case, Google Checkout), and it’s going to be deeply integrated into Google’s Chrome browser. Unfortunately, as far as we can tell, nobody is really buying anything on it.
The UI for the Chrome Web Store looks very similar to iTunes, and, just like iTunes, one of the most prominent sections is a list of ‘Top Paid’ applications. Sitting at the top of the list is Toddler Jukebox, a colorful little app selling for $1.99 that lets you play twelve children’s songs, like ‘Wheels on the Bus’. And, according to the Web Store stats, it’s been installed six times this week. Ouch.
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The Other Android Blueprint: FacebookPhone, TwitterPhone, And Ugh, VerizonPhone?
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by MG Siegler on Jan 4, 2011
Kevin Marks has a good post today about the “two faces of Android.” What he means by that is that there’s the fully open source face, and the Google face. In other words, the face that lets you do whatever you desire, and the face that makes you follow some rules in order to include Google’s own apps and possibly their branding.
As Marks notes, it’s an interesting dichotomy because with regard to the former, “there is already a Cambrian Explosion of new Android devices going on in China and India.” And that’s likely to continue and accelerate. But there’s also the potential for this divide to get a lot more interesting. This will happen when other companies start using Android as the base for their own branded OSes.
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The AdMob Exodus Continues; Sales Exec Leaves Google For Mobile Ad Firm Mojiva
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by Leena Rao on Jan 4, 2011
There have been reports floating around that mobile ad network AdMob was having a rough transition at parent company Google. The best evidence of this is that CEO and AdMob founder Omar Hamoui left Google only five months after the mobile ad network was officially acquired by the search giant. And a number of other execs and employees have followed Hamoui’s lead to join startups. Today, another AdMob vet and former Google exec, Tony Nethercutt, is leaving the search giant to join mobile ad firm Mojiva, as General Manager, North America.
Nethercutt, the former VP of Sales for AdMob and the first ad exec hired by the startup back in its early days, joined Google as a Team Manager for Mobile Display Advertising following the acquisition. Prior to working for AdMob, Nethercutt helped grow a team of sales, account management, and sales operations staff at YouTube (Prior to its acquisition by YouTube). He also worked in sales and management roles at Yahoo and DoubleClick.
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Prediction No. 4 (Mobile Wallets) Already Coming True
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by Erick Schonfeld on Jan 4, 2011
Okay, that was fast. This weekend I put up my annual prediction post, Seven Technologies That Will Rock 2011. Already, one of them is already looking pretty solid: Prediction No. 4 on the rise of mobile wallets.
Well, it looks like Google (and PayPal) are getting serious about NFC technologies. Today, Businessweek reports:
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Facebook Now Worth More Than Yahoo And eBay
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by Erick Schonfeld on Jan 3, 2011
Facebook’s latest round of financing from Goldman Sachs at a $50 billion valuation, which is about the same valuation its shares are trading on SecondMarket, clearly puts it in the pantheon of the most valuable Internet companies. At $50 billion, Facebook is now worth more than Yahoo (which has a $22 billion market cap) and eBay ($37 billion), and almost worth more than both of them combined—and that is before it has even gone public. On the valuation scale of publicly traded Internet companies, however, it is still smaller than Amazon ($83 billion) and Google ($193 billion).
Facebook passed Yahoo in implied valuation last summer. And that feels about right. But is Facebook actually worth $50 billion? Its revenues for 2010 are rumored to be around $2 billion, which gives it a multiple of 25 times revenues. Google, in contrast, is trading at about 9 times estimated 2010 revenues. Of course, Facebook is growing much faster. And what really matters is profits. Facebook is believed to be profitable, but nobody really knows how profitable and there is still a sense that it hasn’t quite perfected its monetization model for social ads.
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The “Digital Newsstand” Race Becomes: Who Is More Willing To Trick Users, Apple Or Google?
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by MG Siegler on Jan 2, 2011
Breaking news: old school publishers seem hell-bent on insuring their content doesn’t catch on in the red-hot tablet space.
A story in the Wall Street Journal this evening details how Google, Apple, Amazon and others are all racing to try to do deals with major publishers in order to set up their “digital newsstands”. Of course, all of this has been going on for months now as the publishers seem to be aware that tablets (okay, really just the iPad so far) are actually taking off this time and they’d be wise to get on board. The problem, naturally, is that they want to be on board on their terms. And those, naturally, are old school terms. In other words, out-of-date and somewhat sleazy terms.
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Why We Desperately Need a New (and Better) Google
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by Vivek Wadhwa on Jan 1, 2011
This semester, my students at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley researched the VC system from the perspective of company founders. We prepared a detailed survey; randomly selected 500 companies from a venture database; and set out to contact the founders. Thanks to Reid Hoffman, we were able to get premium access to LinkedIn—which provided a wealth of information. But some of the founders didn’t have LinkedIn accounts, and others didn’t respond to our LinkedIn “inmails”. So I instructed my students to use Google searches to research each founder’s work history, by year, and to track him or her down in that way.
But it turns out that you can’t easily do such searches in Google any more. Google has become a jungle: a tropical paradise for spammers and marketers. Almost every search takes you to websites that want you to click on links that make them money, or to sponsored sites that make Google money. There’s no way to do a meaningful chronological search.
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An iPhone Lover’s Take On The Nexus S
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by MG Siegler on Dec 31, 2010
There’s a scene in Iron Man 2 in which Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) shows off the mechanical soliders he has been working on — his would-be “Iron Man-killers”. Unfortunately, while they may look somewhat impressive, his machines malfunction and the demo goes horribly awry. His knock-offs are junk. This scene reminds me a lot of what the first Android phone, the G1, was like when compared to the iPhone. Luckily for Google, things have improved substantially since then — and without the help of a Russian Mickey Rourke. Well, presumably anyway.
We’ve already done a big, comprehensive review of the Nexus S, the latest and greatest Android device. But as I like to do (see: the bottom of this post), I’m going to look at it from the angle of an iPhone diehard. After all, this is widely considered to be the best Android device yet. So will it be enough to make any iPhone user jump ship? And since this is currently the only device running Android 2.3 “Gingerbread”, what’s the overall state of the OS?
First of all, the Nexus S is a great smartphone. I’ve been using it for a little over two weeks now and I think I can safely say that in a world where there was no iPhone, this is the device I would use. While I like a number of fundamental things about Windows Phone more, Android is more mature. And more importantly, the ecosystem is far more built-out. Plus, the Google apps on the device are enough to entice anyone.
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So Much For FREE!: Apple Will Sell $2B in Apps in 2011
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by Sarah Lacy on Dec 30, 2010
I’ve often wondered if the early Web pioneers had it all to do over again if Web companies would have put less of an emphasis on free.
People have been conditioned against paying for services or content on the Web, and the Web elite only have each other to blame. For all the talk of Web companies getting users first and “figuring out” how to make money later, the only two jaw-droppingly, multi-billion-dollar, innovative new ways to advertise online have been Google’s paid search ads and Groupon’s solution to unlocking local ad dollars on a mass scale. Those who win big–like Google– just perpetuate the cult of free content and services as a way of spoiling would be competitors. Witness a big disconnect between popularity and money. Exhibit A: Yahoo.
But on the mobile Web it’s a do-over, and it’s a totally different playbook from FREE!
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Google As A Carrier. It’s Not A Question Of “If They Will”, But Rather “When They’ll Try”
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by MG Siegler on Dec 30, 2010
CNNMoney published an interesting piece by David Goldman this morning entitled, Google: Your new phone carrier? In it, Goldman lays out what he sees as the preliminary steps Google has taken to become a wireless carrier themselves down the road. He also gives some reasons for why they would and would not want to do that. In my mind, the concept is much more straightforward. Goldman ends the title of his piece with a question mark — but it should be a period.
It’s not a question of “if” Google will try to become a carrier. It’s just a matter of “when” they’ll try to.
Now, to be clear, that doesn’t mean I think they’ll actually be able to become a carrier. The biggest hurdle there has nothing to do with the technology needed, the money needed, or the expertise. Rather, the major issue would be the government. Would they allow Google, already one of the biggest corporations in the United States, to enter a new area that could extend their control (particularly in the advertising space)? Probably not. Actually, I have a feeling it might have more to do with Verizon and AT&T lobbying dollars influencing the government to block Google in such a cause.
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Yext Organizes The Anti-Google Local Advertising Alliance (Screenshots)
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by Erick Schonfeld on Dec 29, 2010
Google, as you may have heard, is making a big push into local advertising. It is currently offering $100 million in AdWords credits to new small businesses that sign up and promotes Google Places results for all local searches. Quite frankly, this is scaring the shit out of competitors like Citysearch, Yellowbook, SuperPages, WhitePages, and Yelp. They all rely on Google search results for people to find a good portion of their listings, and if Google displaces them collectively for local business listings, their businesses will be destroyed.
In local, Google is already a big snowball getting bigger and bigger. So how do they fight back? They enter into an anti-Google alliance, of course. The company organizing this alliance is Yext, a New York City startup which specializes in pay-per-call advertising for local businesses and dashboards to help them manage their reputations and listings online. On Monday, it will launch a new feature called “Tags” which will let small businesses highlight their names with a little tag and customizable message across about a dozen local listings sites. Launch parters for this “Tag Alliance” (I like my name better) will include MapQuest, Citysearch, Yellowbook, Local.com, SuperPages, White Pages, MerchantCircle, and Topix, with more to come.
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Next New Networks Raises $1 Million Amid YouTube Acquisition Rumors
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by Robin Wauters on Dec 29, 2010
While Google’s YouTube is reportedly in talks to buy Web content producer Next New Networks, the New York-based startup has just raised $1 million in debt financing. According to this SEC filing, the fledgling company is raising a round totaling $1.2 million.
Listed as investors are Ross Levinsohn from Fuse Capital, Bijan Sabet from Spark Capital, Goldman Sachs and Saban Capital Group.
The potential acquisition of NNN, which also manages a network of independent filmmakers alongside producing its own channels, would give YouTube its first step into producing Web videos in-house.
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Footage Of Android’s Revamped Music Player Leaks
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by Jason Kincaid on Dec 27, 2010
Earlier this week, some folks over on the XDA developers forum got their hands on a leaked test build of a revamped Android music player. This evening the footage was spotted by Engadget, and now the word is spreading like wildfire: Android is going to get a default music player that isn’t totally mediocre.
Alright, maybe I’m being a little harsh — the music player that ships with the stock build of Android can play music just fine. But it’s also underwhelming, especially when compared to the iPhone’s much slicker music application. It’s drab and there’s nothing like Apple’s Cover Flow — but all that’s changing.
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IncrediMail Inks New Two Year Deal With Google, But Are They Too Dependent?
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by Robin Wauters on Dec 27, 2010
IncrediMail, an Israel-based, NASDAQ-listed company that develops email clients and desktop software, has inked a new 2-year agreement with Google, which will go into effect January 1, 2011. This is good news for the software company – the partnership between the two firms is quite crucial for IncrediMail’s bottom line.
The relationship between Incredimail and Google has always been a little rocky, to say the least. Three years ago, Google terminated its AdSense partnership with the company, sending IncrediMail’s shares down more than 45 percent.
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2011: The Year Android Explodes! Killing Innocent Women, Children, And iPhone Users
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by MG Siegler on Dec 26, 2010
The top headlines today got me thinking back to 2008. Back then, I was writing for VentureBeat, and we used to talk quite a bit internally about iPhone versus Android. Yes, even back then it was a hot debate. And yes, back then, I was obviously in the iPhone camp. And this annoyed those who saw the promise of Android. “But Android will eventually become much larger than the iPhone,” was the basic argument used against me. But it wasn’t really against me. Even back then, I would openly acknowledge that Android would eventually far surpass the iPhone in terms of units shipped. I mean, how could it not?
And so Fortune’s headline today that “2011 will be the year Android explodes“, has been a long time coming. In his article, Seth Weintraub brings up a number of excellent points about how exactly Android is poised to grow even faster in 2011 than it already did in 2010. Though I suspect a number of his points paint too rosy a picture in terms of the outcome of such downward pressures on costs. I find it very hard to believe, for example, that the carriers (in the U.S., in particular) won’t find a way to screw us in 2011. It’s an artform they’ve perfected over the past two decades. But on paper, at least, it all sounds great.
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Facebook Overthrows Yahoo To Become The World’s Third Largest Website
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by Erick Schonfeld on Dec 24, 2010
We’ve seen this one coming all year. Facebook is now the third largest website in the world, taking the No. 3 spot from Yahoo, according to comScore. Facebook drew an estimated 648 million unique visitors from across the globe in November, 2010, compared to 630 million for Yahoo. In October the two sites were dead even with 633 million worldwide unique visitors each (actually Facebook had already passed Yahoo by a smidgeon in October with about half a million more visitors). The only two Web properties left which are bigger than Facebook are Microsoft (869 million worldwide visitors) and Google (970 million) when you look at all of their sites collectively.
The evidence leading up to this overthrow has been building up for a long time. Facebook became the fourth largest Website in the world nearly 18 months ago, and quickly passed Yahoo in pageviews. Today, Facebook accounts for nearly a quarter of all display ads in the U.S., which is more than twice as much as Yahoo.
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An iPhone Lover’s Take On Windows Phone
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by MG Siegler on Dec 23, 2010
Back in October, after the official launch of Windows Phone 7, I wrote up some initial thoughts after having played with a few prototype devices in the months leading up to the launch. Many seemed surprised by my mostly positive reactions. It seemed to me at the time that Microsoft may have actually brought a gun to a gun fight with Windows Phone — as opposed to a sword, or a knife, or a mop.
At the same time, I noted, “Now they just have to run a marathon. Up a mountain. Against competitors that they gave a 20 mile head-start to.” And the early indications point to that race not going so well for Microsoft early on. But still, I think there might be some hope for the platform, for two reasons. First, I’ve actually had the chance to use a finished device for a while now — and I like it. Second, Microsoft has a seemingly endless supply of money.
As I’ve done with a number of other smartphones, the following is my take on Windows Phone from the perspective of an iPhone lover. In my mind, the latest iPhone (currently, the iPhone 4) is still the device to beat out there in the smartphone market, and so I look at all these new devices from that perspective. Is Windows Phone good enough to make me consider switching? Is there anything about it that’s better? Worse? Etc.
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Google And NORAD Team Up Once Again To Track Santa
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by Alexia Tsotsis on Dec 23, 2010
Needed any more sign that Christmas is upon us? The annual Google and North American Aerospace Defense partnership to track Jolly Saint Nick is back in action starting tomorrow at 2:00 am.
Apparently NORAD has been tracking Santa since 1955, hilariously because a telephone misprint in a Sears catalogue misdirected Santa hotline callers to a NORAD higher ups phone line. Google got in on the Santa tracking game in 2004 and partnered up with NORAD in 2007, bringing Google services like Maps, Earth and YouTube into the mix.
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NEWS MICROSOFT
Microsoft Corp Dev Exec Bails, Raises Angel Round For Hot Stealth Startup
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by Michael Arrington on Jan 3, 2011
Microsoft Senior Director of Corporate Strategy and Acquisitions Fritz Lanman quit his job a few weeks ago. I heard rumblings about this and assumed he’d be focusing an angel investing full time – for the last couple of years he’s done it as a part time hobby.
But nope, that’s not what he’s doing. He’s started a new company that’s creating a “social utility” mobile application called 5Star. And he’s raised somewhere around $1 million in an angel round from first tier angel investors, says a source.
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Apple: Actually, $50 Billion Isn’t Cool Either. You Know What’s Cool? $300 Billion.
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by MG Siegler on Jan 3, 2011
Last night, the Internet was set ablaze by the news that Facebook was taking more money at a valuation of a cool $50 billion. That’s massive. But it’s actually only 1/6th of the value of another closely-watched company in the tech space: Apple.
Apple hit the $300 billion market cap milestone today after their stock surged 2 percent to open 2011. That makes them only the second public company with such a high value, the other is Exxon Mobil.
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Welcome To The Hostel Microsoft. Such A Lovely Place.
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by MG Siegler on Dec 29, 2010
It was almost exactly a year ago that we wrote about the Googlle Institute of Software Studies, a cleverly-named online university based out of India. After our post on the institution offering students such degrees as a “GCPA” — Googlle Certified Professional in Advanced Computing — it didn’t take long for the website of the school to be shut down. But the person who originally tipped us off to those shenanigans is now back with another fun one. And apparently, it’s based out of the same city in India.
Say hello to the “Hostel Microsoft”.
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Facebook Overthrows Yahoo To Become The World’s Third Largest Website
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by Erick Schonfeld on Dec 24, 2010
We’ve seen this one coming all year. Facebook is now the third largest website in the world, taking the No. 3 spot from Yahoo, according to comScore. Facebook drew an estimated 648 million unique visitors from across the globe in November, 2010, compared to 630 million for Yahoo. In October the two sites were dead even with 633 million worldwide unique visitors each (actually Facebook had already passed Yahoo by a smidgeon in October with about half a million more visitors). The only two Web properties left which are bigger than Facebook are Microsoft (869 million worldwide visitors) and Google (970 million) when you look at all of their sites collectively.
The evidence leading up to this overthrow has been building up for a long time. Facebook became the fourth largest Website in the world nearly 18 months ago, and quickly passed Yahoo in pageviews. Today, Facebook accounts for nearly a quarter of all display ads in the U.S., which is more than twice as much as Yahoo.
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An iPhone Lover’s Take On Windows Phone
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by MG Siegler on Dec 23, 2010
Back in October, after the official launch of Windows Phone 7, I wrote up some initial thoughts after having played with a few prototype devices in the months leading up to the launch. Many seemed surprised by my mostly positive reactions. It seemed to me at the time that Microsoft may have actually brought a gun to a gun fight with Windows Phone — as opposed to a sword, or a knife, or a mop.
At the same time, I noted, “Now they just have to run a marathon. Up a mountain. Against competitors that they gave a 20 mile head-start to.” And the early indications point to that race not going so well for Microsoft early on. But still, I think there might be some hope for the platform, for two reasons. First, I’ve actually had the chance to use a finished device for a while now — and I like it. Second, Microsoft has a seemingly endless supply of money.
As I’ve done with a number of other smartphones, the following is my take on Windows Phone from the perspective of an iPhone lover. In my mind, the latest iPhone (currently, the iPhone 4) is still the device to beat out there in the smartphone market, and so I look at all these new devices from that perspective. Is Windows Phone good enough to make me consider switching? Is there anything about it that’s better? Worse? Etc.
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Is Microsoft Plotting A Yelp Competitor Named Postbox?
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by Robin Wauters on Dec 23, 2010
Earlier this year, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported that Microsoft, not just Google, made a serious attempt to acquire business directory and reviews site Yelp. According to “two people involved in the negotiations”, the Redmond software giant even bid as high as $700 million for the company. Yelp instead opted to remain independent, for better or worse.
Google is attacking it with Places and Hotpot.
And now some information has surfaced that indicates Microsoft could be planning a Yelp rival as well.
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Microsoft: 1.5 Million Windows Phone 7 Handsets “Sold” In First Six Weeks
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by Robin Wauters on Dec 21, 2010
Achim Berg, Microsoft’s VP of business and marketing for Windows Phones has revealed in a faux-interview with Microsoft News Center that partner phone manufacturers have sold over 1.5 million Windows 7 Phone devices to carriers and retailers in its first six weeks on the market.
Windows Phone 7 launched in Europe and the Asia Pacific region on October 21 and in the United States and Canada on November 8.
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Bing Search Summit: It’s All About Sweating The Small Stuff
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by Jason Kincaid on Dec 15, 2010
Today Microsoft is holding a ‘Bing Search Summit’ in San Francisco, where it’s showcasing some of the latest addition to its search engine, as well as some new features for its mobile applications on iPhone and Android.
The overarching theme here has been to highlight numerous minor enhancements the Bing team has been making to help improve its search experience. The goal: boil search down to the tasks that most people are typically conducting on Bing.
Microsoft says that the vast majority of Bing queries fall under 155 query segments, which include things like Music (4.6% of searches), Consumer Electronics (1.6%), and Recipes (1.1%). Bing wants to take these segments and figure out which verbs they typically involve: music has “download songs” and “read lyrics”, electronics has “read reviews”, and so on.
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Google Creates A Better Way To Turn IE Into Chrome: A Business-Ready Windows Installer
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by MG Siegler on Dec 15, 2010
In September 2009, we wrote about something very interesting that Google was doing in order to penetrate the business market: they were essentially turning IE into Chrome. Chrome Frame was a plugin for Microsoft’s browser that would recreate the Chrome browsing experience inside of IE. The reason Google did this is that they realized that many users at work were not able to install Chrome because their computers were on lockdown by their IT department. Well today, Google has announced a more straightforward way to get Chrome at work: an MSI installer — aka, a standard Windows installer for businesses.
“Today, we’re announcing that Chrome offers controls that enable IT administrators to easily configure and deploy the browser on Windows, Mac, and Linux according to their business requirements,” Google writes on the Chrome blog. This new installer allows businesses that use standard deployment tools to install Chrome for all their managed users, the company says. Google has also outlined some policies to show what Chrome will respect with regard to security and settings that can be set by admins.
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In Defense Of Chrome OS
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by MG Siegler on Dec 14, 2010
Looking over the tech news today, you’d think Chrome OS is dead. Nevermind that it hasn’t even officially launched yet. Dead.
Early reviews for the Cr-48, the prototype device (which Google has no plans to officially release) running Chrome OS, have ranged from mediocre to poor. And Paul Buchheit, the man often credited with creating Gmail for Google back in the day, kicked up the firestorm this morning when he predicted that Chrome OS would be “killed” next year in favor of Android.
So that’s it, right? Not so fast.
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Windows Phone 7 Developers Can Finally See How Their Apps Are Selling
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by Greg Kumparak on Dec 9, 2010
When it comes to selling things — be it apps, t-shirts, or clumps of hair — you’ve gotta be able to monitor sales. You’ve have to know what’s working, what’s not, and most importantly, whether or not your efforts are going to put bread on the table next month.
It was a bit surprising, then, that Windows Phone 7′s app market launched without any sort of sales monitoring tools. Since its European launch back in mid-October, most WP7 developers have sort of been in the dark as to how their applications were doing.
Fortunately, Microsoft is doing away with this rather nasty hang-up; as of this morning, developers are getting their first look at how their apps have been performing over the past few months.
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Microsoft: “Yeah, We Tried To Acquire Facebook.”
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by Alexia Tsotsis on Dec 9, 2010
While on the “How To Get Acquired” panel here at Le Web. Microsoft exec Fritz Lanman just admitted it on stage here at Le Web, “Facebook had a lot of similarities to Microsoft back in the day.”
“Yeah we tried to acquire Facebook” Lanman responded to Le Web founder Le Meur, Facebook had a lot of similarities to Microsoft back in the day.”
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Microsoft’s WP7 Platform Guy Won’t Talk Sales Numbers Either (Le Web)
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by Robin Wauters on Dec 8, 2010
We’re here at Le Web 2010 in Paris, where organizer Loic Le Meur is doing an on-stage Q&A with Charlie Kindel, General Manager for the Windows Phone Developer Ecosystem at Microsoft.
Asked how many phones Microsoft has sold to date, Kindel declined to answer the question (sound familiar?). He only said they “plan to sell a lot in 2011″, referring to it as a “long-term project”. Which, in my mind, means sales are really disappointing right now, admittedly only one and a half month in.
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Microsoft Doesn’t Expect Windows Phone 7 Sales To Catch Up To iOS or Android Any Time Soon
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by Greg Kumparak on Dec 7, 2010
If your product is selling well, you brag about it. If it isn’t, you don’t. It’s a basic strategy, driven by the idea that talk of heavy sales in turn generates even heavier sales.
It’s a bit telling, then, that Microsoft is doing their damnedest to get around having to shed any light on Windows Phone 7′s sales thus far. In an onstage interview with Walt Mossberg at the Dive Into Mobile conference, Microsoft’s Director of Windows Phone Program Management Joe Belfiore skirted the issue not one, not two, but three times.
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Windows Home Server Is Dead, Long Live Windows Home Server?
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by Matt Burns on Dec 1, 2010
Windows Home Server is easily one of the best products to ever come out of Redmond. It brings most of the functionality of a full-fledged server without any of the hassle. OEMs like HP and Acer quickly jumped on the platform a few years ago and outed fantastic products lines centered around WHS that allowed nearly any consumer to set up a comprehensive back-up solution, media vault, and network-attached storage unit — all on a small form factor PC that sucks less energy than a traditional computer. It’s seemingly a winning product for Microsoft, hardware makers and even us consumers. But that perception is apparently wrong. Microsoft is now prepping the next version of WHS named Vail, which reportable does not include features and functions that previously defined the platform.
Of course these moves have caused the WHS server fan base to erupt in an Internet ragestorm fueled by confusion and abandonment issues. The thought that Windows Home Server is now dead in the water was further defined today when Microsoft confirmed reports that HP, which shipped the first widely adapted WHS, will not produce servers based on the next-gen OS. Dead, canceled, or some other name with synonymous lifeless might not be the correct description as Microsoft is clearly working on the platform, but the next version of WHS is seemingly different enough in its core philosophy and target demographic to warrant a name change or even death decree.
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After A Four Year Run, Firefox Is No Longer The Top Browser On TechCrunch — Chrome Is
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by MG Siegler on Nov 30, 2010
It has finally happened. It took a little longer than anticipated, but Chrome has now passed Firefox as the browser most often used to visit TechCrunch. For the month of November, Chrome is number one for the first time, edging out Firefox 27.80 percent to 27.67 percent.
Back in early September, on Chrome’s second birthday, we noted that Google’s browser had been making huge gains over the past couple of years and was only about 3 percent away from passing longtime leader (again, in terms of browsing traffic to TechCrunch) Firefox. The quickly progressing Firefox 4 beta likely slowed Chrome’s march to the top a bit, but it couldn’t fully hold it back. Now the question is: can Chrome hang on?
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Windows Live Spaces Transition To WordPress Creates 1 Million New Blogs
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by Erick Schonfeld on Nov 29, 2010
Last September at TechCrunch Disrupt, Microsoft announced that all 7 million Windows Live Spaces blogs would be transitioning to Wordpress.com. It turned out that number was inflated, and a subsequent internal email put the real number of transitioned blogs at 300,000.
Well, the number of Windows Live Spaces blogs which have transitioned over to Wordpress.com is now at “over half a million” and another half a million new Wordpress blogs have been created by Windows Live users. So that brings the total new Wordpress blogs created as a result of the partnership to one million.
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Video Review: The Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360
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by Greg Kumparak on Nov 19, 2010
Oh, Microsoft. You just can’t seem to help but be the last one to every party you attend. You launched the Kin just as messenger phones began to die, then you launched Windows Phone 7 when the smartphone wars were so far underway that most folks had already declared an allegiance.
And now you’ve got your motion gaming platform, the Kinect, hitting the shelves years after the Nintendo Wii and months after the Playstation Move. I’ve spent the last week living with a Kinect in my life. How does it fare? Find out after the jump.
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Keen On… Marc Davis: Why Social is Changing Everything (TCTV)
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by Andrew Keen on Nov 16, 2010
As John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins told Charlie Rose at Disrupt in May, we are now entering the third great wave of technology innovation – the age of social and mobile. Doerr is, of course, right. Barely a day goes without a reminder of this third wave – from Kleiner Perkins $250 million sFund to the increasing ubiquity of smartphones to the seemingly unstoppable rise of social businesses like Facebook, Zynga and Twitter.
There are few people who have thought as long and hard about the impact of this third wave on both the web and the world as Marc Davis, the former Chief Scientist at Yahoo! Mobile and now a Partner Architect at Microsoft. Davis’ core argument is that we are moving from what he calls a “web of pages” to a “web of people.” The web and the world are “becoming one,” Davis believes, thereby making this third wave one of the most significant cultural, political and social events of the early 21st century.
Video ahead.
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Dear Microsoft, Hotmail Is Down For Me And It’s Been More Than An Hour
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by Robin Wauters on Nov 15, 2010
Dear Microsoft,
Remember me? I’m that guy at TechCrunch who actually defends you and your products, when appropriate, and whenever people start talking that crazy talk about you.
I would like to genuinely thank you for your part in making Web-based email popular with Hotmail – now called Windows Live Hotmail I see – and all. My wife still proudly hands out her @hotmail.com address whenever someone asks her how she can be reached, even though she is known to occasionally use Facebook and Skype. And yes, I still think she rocks.
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Phones: Better for Verizon Than for Consumers?
Pricing plans aren't available yet, but consumers will likely have to pay high tariffs to enjoy all the downloads, video chat, and digital media
By Kevin Tofel
Now that Verizon's (VZ) LTE network is available to use with USB data sticks, the next logical question is: When are the 4G handsets arriving? Recent Verizon comments, combined with lead-up teasers for CES, suggest such handsets will arrive sooner rather than later. One reason why: Verizon can't wait to get more devices on the speedy new network.
When Verizon launched the LTE network earlier this month, the operator said it would offer LTE handsets in the first half of 2011, some of which will be shown at January's Consumer Electronics Show. Motorola (MOT), a key partner for Verizon's Android (GOOG) devices, was assumed to be building the first phone for Verizon's LTE network. In a Wall Street Journal interview earlier this week, Verizon Chief Operating Officer John Stratton confirmed Motorola's effort, saying such devices are on the horizon, and that "Motorola will be right there."
But Motorola isn't alone in building LTE handsets for Verizon. Earlier this month, HTC Chief Executive Peter Chou made it clear his company will also offer such phones this year. The company bet early on Android, which has helped boost revenue, and although HTC could build a Windows Phone 7 (MSFT) device for Verizon's LTE network, an HTC Android device is more likely to compete with Motorola. The company already builds a 4G phone for Sprint (the Evo) (S) as well several for T-Mobile's fast HSPA+ network. And Engadget today found an HTC teaser site showing a new 4G phone that will be unveiled on Jan. 6, presumably at CES.
WHY SOONER IS BETTER
Although these devices will be shown off in a few weeks at CES, they aren't likely to be sold for at least a few months after that. Verizon, however, wouldn't mind if they were launched sooner—for two reasons. First, the availability of LTE handsets in the first quarter offers a feeling of "underpromise and overdeliver" to customers and investors alike. The phones would give Verizon hardware that competes with handsets marketed as 4G already available from Sprint and T-Mobile.
The second reasons is finances, although it depends on the pricing model that Verizon uses for the new phones. The faster the network, the more that people will use it. The average monthly customer on Teliasonera's 4G network, for example, gobbles up nearly 15 GB of data. That means customers could blow through a 5 GB data plan on 4G handsets far faster, which would either generate overage charges or cause customers to switch to larger data plans at higher monthly prices. In either case, Verizon is likely to see a jump in ARPU, or average revenue per user, once LTE handsets arrive. Although data pricing for LTE phones may differ, Verizon currently sells two LTE plans for data device: $50 a month buys 5 GB per month, while $80 doubles the limit. Each additional GB over the plan costs $10.
While I'm looking forward to previewing the phones themselves when I hit CES next month, the most pressing question I have isn't about the hardware, which I expect will have all the bells and whistles of high-end devices. And I already know from hands-on testing that the right hardware, combined with Verizon's LTE network, is a superfast experience. Instead, I'm wondering what all that speed will cost me, because I'll want to use it on my new LTE smartphone for downloads, video chat, and digital media enjoyment.
Until we have actual handset plan pricing, we won't know how the plans match up with consumer usage and expectations, of course. But I expect video chat and media consumption to be two key-use cases on the new devices. The new LTE network is superb for watching video, for example. As you can see in the short video below, I tested several online venues, such as YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix (NFLX), and the experience was just as good as on my wired home broadband.
It's true that video on the smaller screen of a smartphone won't eat up data as fast on the larger screen of a laptop; there's no need to pipe 1080p video on a screen that can display only a small percentage of those pixels. But adding that bandwidth-intensive activity with song downloads, app installs, and streaming video chat—not to mention using the smartphone as a 4G modem—and consumers could face big bills for the privilege of racing down Verizon's mobile autobahn.
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Employee Happiness: Zappos vs. HCL
Vineet Nayar, chief of HCL Technologies, compares his philosophy on the subject with that of Zappos.com boss Tony Hsieh
By Vineet Nayar
Should employees be happy?
I've pondered this question at length, and I'm hardly the only business leader to have done so. In fact, Zappos.com Chief Executive Tony Hsieh wrote Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose (Business Plus, 2010) to emphasize the importance of employee happiness as a driver of business results. Tony holds that employee passion is a key to employee happiness. Conversely, I have publicly stated that I'm not terribly concerned with employee happiness, but with employee passion.
In my own book, Employees First, Customers Second (Harvard Business Press, 2010), I argue that management must do everything possible to empower and support workers who create the most value for the company. Do we disagree, or are we saying the same thing in different ways? Allow me to answer that question, with Tony's generous help.
Before delving into the debate, I'd like to explain that, while our two organizations differ greatly, some notable similarities exist. Zappos and HCL Technologies are both successful in terms of revenue growth and have consistently high customer and employee satisfaction scores.
How do our attitudes toward happiness play out at Zappos and HCL? Let's review the journeys taken by our respective companies.
ENTHUSIASTIC CUSTOMER SERVICE
For Tony, the focus on happiness began in 1998 and was very personal in nature. He had just sold his startup company, LinkExchange, after realizing he no longer felt happy. After the sale, he became CEO of Zappos.com and vowed he would make work fun and meaningful, both for himself and for everyone at the company.
Tony didn't view Zappos as a shoe company or as an e-commerce player but as a provider of superior customer service. "We wanted to be known as a service company that just happens to sell shoes," Tony told me. To achieve that goal, Zappos developed a service offering like no other. The online retailer provides a huge selection and delivers every pair of shoes for free. Customers can return shoes, as long as they're in good condition, for up to a year after purchase. Zappos customer service reps often fulfil requests completely unrelated to the product they actually sell. One story has it that, after helping a customer find a pair of shoes, one salesperson also provided the number for the nearest pizza delivery place.
Tony says that Zappos can consistently deliver such exceptional customer service because the company makes culture its highest business priority. It conducts an intensive hiring process designed to identify people who will be happy, enthusiastic, and committed to the "Zappos Way." The e-tailer feels so strongly about the importance of matching employees to the culture that it offers new hires $2,000 to quit during the training period if they feel they can't maintain the expected level of zeal and commitment. Very few take the money. Once hired, many employees stay with the company for 10 years or more, a rarity today.
That, more or less, is how I understand Tony's views on employee happiness.
UPSIDE-DOWN PYRAMID
At HCL Technologies, our focus on employee passion stems from my personal experience. I was founder and CEO of Comnet, a small entrepreneurial unit of HCL. Comnet was an early, and very successful, player in the provision of remote IT management services. At Comnet we were a tight-knit group that related in the most basic of ways: To communicate, we simply yelled to each other across the room. We freely expressed ideas. There was very little hierarchy, and a great sense of working together for a common cause.
In 2005, HCL named me president. It was not only a much larger organization but also a very different kind of operation. When I joined, HCL offered IT services to major companies worldwide—blue-chip organizations such as Boeing (BA), Merck (MRK), and Dr Pepper Snapple (DPS). The business was service intensive and focused on short-term engagements in specific disciplines and business areas. Unlike Zappos workers, HCL employees did not serve the general public. But they did work directly with customers.
HCL's business and culture differed greatly from Comnet's. HCL was more hierarchical and the employees who worked directly with customers had the least power or influence. I quickly discovered that these very employees created the most value for customers and had a huge effect on the company's success. Early in my tenure, we decided to create a much broader service offering—end-to-end mission-critical IT services—which required developing long-term client partnerships. To accomplish that, we had to "turn the corporate pyramid upside down." We had to make management just as accountable to the employees who created value as those employees were accountable to the managers who created strategy. We named the initiative "Employees First, Customers Second" (EFCS).
ENGAGEMENT, NOT SATISFACTION
EFCS is a process of change, pursued through numerous activities and tools designed to increase transparency, build trust, empower frontline employees, and shift responsibility for change away from senior management and toward the workforce. One example is "The Smart Service Desk" (SSD), an online portal that allows frontline employees to seek solutions or access information from managers and determine when issues have been satisfactorily resolved. Another, the "Open 360 Review," lets employees evaluate their direct managers or any superior who influences their work.
Our EFCS initiative is not about making employees happy or comfortable. The goal is engagement, not satisfaction. Employees feel passionate because they know that management understands the importance of their role, respects them, and makes it easier for them to accomplish their work.
So are happiness and passion just two sides of the same coin? Are both about doing meaningful work and getting recognition for it? Being part of a winning team and feeling you contributed to its success? Connecting with other people who feel similarly engaged?
DIFFERENT TYPES OF BUSINESSES
The answer: The goal of both approaches is essentially the same, but the means to that end are not, because the businesses, roles, and employees differ. Zappos is a retail business, and its people deal with the general public. Their interactions are fairly brief in duration, very focused on a specific and relatively uncomplicated task (buying shoes), and do not involve huge quantities of money. A positive attitude, friendliness, enthusiasm, willingness to engage with and help strangers—these attributes are vital. Customers can tell when the employees they deal with seem essentially happy doing their jobs and when they don't. Many Zappos employees feel genuinely passionate about shoes, but their feelings about the product itself are less important than their belief in the quality of the service they provide.
While HCL is not in the retail business, our frontline people work with customers very closely for long periods of time. They engage in complex, business-critical projects that can have a major impact on thousands of people and cost millions of dollars. The quality of the day-to-day interactions between employee and customer matter, but not as much as the end result. Our customers are less influenced by the short-term attitude and contentedness of the employee and much more affected by how deeply engaged with and committed to the work the employee is. It is essential that HCL employees feel passionate about the IT solutions themselves, but less important that they always feel happy at work.
So a distinction exists between happiness and passion. But the goal remains similar: to create a vibrant, successful company whose employees are absolutely critical, not tangential. Whether or not that means they must be happy or passionate, or something else, depends on the company. Just make sure you genuinely put employees at the very center of your business. Your customers, whether buying shoes or IT solutions, will benefit.
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Gibbs is resigning as White House press secretary
With the exit of the press secretary -- along with adviser Axelrod -- a new White House taking shape
BY BEN FELLER, ASSOCIATED PRESS
AP
White House senior adviser David Axelrod, left, talks with press secretary Robert Gibbs during a news conference in December.
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary and one of the most visible and forceful advocates for President Barack Obama, said Wednesday he is quitting his job to become an outside political adviser. The change is among the many expected in the coming days as Obama redefines his leadership team to gear up for a re-election bid and a more powerful Republican Party.
Gibbs said he would be leaving the White House by early February. The top contenders to replace him are two of his deputies, Bill Burton and Josh Earnest, and Jay Carney, who is communications director to Vice President Joe Biden.
The move allows Gibbs to escape the grinding pace of the press secretary's job, make money giving speeches and spend more time with his wife, Mary Catherine, and their 7-year-old son, Ethan. From the outside, he will still be a key voice in Obama's decision-making, and he will end up back in a pivotal role in Obama's campaign for a second term.
The move will also change the dynamic of the White House, particularly combined with the coming departure of senior adviser David Axelrod, who, like Gibbs, has been at Obama's side for his entire presidential run. Obama is losing daily proximity to two of the aides who best know the way he thinks and who remember personally all the pledges of the campaign.
To the world outside of Washington's insular political scene, Gibbs is the rare White House staff member who is considered a familiar face. His sparring with reporters during his press briefings have filled hours of television the last two years.
Gibbs, 39, expressed huge gratitude for getting to serve in the White House. "Over the course of the next two years, we're going to be involved in discussions about which direction to take this country, and in 2012, we'll have a presidential election," he said. "I don't have any fears that there won't be plenty of roles (for himself) outside of the White House."
Obama is also weighing a change at the top staff job at the White House and perhaps in all of politics: his chief of staff. The interim holder of that job, Pete Rouse, may leave soon, and the president is considering bringing in William Daley, the banking executive and former Commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton.
In the coming days and weeks, Obama is expected to have a new chief economic adviser, a new senior political counselor, and two new deputy chiefs of staff. Collectively, the moves reflect that change is coming to the White House in ways that will alter the dynamic of the place -- and, in turn, will influence the agenda affecting the nation.
For all the insider intrigue that surrounds who is coming and going, the overlooked element is why.
One core factor shaping Obama's thinking is the new dynamic in Washington. Republicans have won control of the House and eroded the Democratic majority in the Senate, which fundamentally changes the White House agenda.
Obama's chief of staff must reorient his legislative and legal departments to deal with a Republican-led House. The White House will be on the defensive much more than the offensive, trying to protect and enforce the huge health care and Wall Street reform laws of the last year, and getting more organized to deal with aggressive Republican oversight.
Another issue at play is fatigue. People like Axelrod and Gibbs who have been with Obama from the start are ready for a break. So are others in a White House that has kept a crushing schedule. Some senior staff members are eager for fewer hours, more family time and a bigger private-sector salary. Staff members are being asked to either leave shortly or stay for the remaining two years of the term.
Soon to join the White House staff is David Plouffe, the architect of Obama's presidential campaign, who will essentially replace Axelrod as the top political adviser. Gibbs, in turn, will work out of the private office near the White House that has been used by Plouffe, who has written a book and counseled Obama since the end of the 2008 election.
Gibbs said he and Obama have been discussing the spokesman's departure for a while. "I'm going to continue to help him," Gibbs said, "so he's happy with that."
How Obama is rebooting his operation is the broader story, and the aides guiding him are a central part of it.
The White House goal is to become more efficient and less insular, to realign itself for divided government, to find fresh voices and to get Obama re-elected. A major emphasis will be to ensure that the campaign works in tandem with the White House, with Obama loyalists spread across the parallel operations or helping from outside both of them.
Among the expected changes:
--Daley is under serious consideration to replace Rouse as chief of staff, which is considered the most important gatekeeping job in American politics. Rouse, a camera-shy adviser to Obama who has served smoothly as interim chief of staff, had never wanted to do it for long. If Rouse decides to leave, Daley will likely come aboard. No other scenarios are being strongly considered. Obama and Rouse are expected to decide shortly.
--Gene Sperling, a Treasury official and deficit hawk with ties to Wall Street and the Clinton administration, is considered most likely to become Obama's chief economic adviser. That announcement could come as soon as Friday. Sperling would replace Lawrence Summers as director of the National Economic Council. The job becomes even more important considering that no task is more vital to Obama, both for the country's well-being and his own political fortunes, than boosting job growth in a time of high unemployment.
--Jim Messina, the deputy chief of staff who juggles operations, politics and legislative roles, is expected to leave to run Obama's re-election bid out of Chicago. He will likely be replaced by Alyssa Mastromonaco, whose portfolio would center on overseeing the operational aspects of the White House, including staffing and budgeting. Mona Sutphen, Obama's deputy chief of staff for policy, is also expected to leave her post.
--Axelrod, one of Obama's most trusted advisers and strategists, is leaving the White House after the State of the Union speech in January. He plans to recharge at home in Chicago and play a significant role in Obama's re-election bid.
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