Could San Francisco Automate Strike-Threatening Train Drivers?

For the past week, the entire San Francisco Bay Area has been on the brink of a full-fledged train strike. The unpredictable negotiations have left commuters in limbo: it’s too risky to schedule business meetings, but there is not enough uncertainty to arrange alternative transportation. As a result, BART has lost an estimated $168,000 after a 5 percent fear-based drop in traffic.

During last summer’s BART strike, a few outspoken Silicon Valley technologistsincurred the wrath of the civil libertarian press for suggesting that San Francisco should simply automate the train operators and be done with the labor mess. Rather than join the techies vs. worker rage fest, I decided to simply ask the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) authority if it was technically possible to automate train drivers, just like Paris and other cities have done around the world.

BART’s answer was conspicuously dismissive. After exchanging emails for a month, they declined my request for an interview and instead gave me this statement:

“BART’s response to your inquiry is that you have posed valid theoretical questions best answered by researchers who study the future of train technology, not by the people who are focused on using the existing technology safely.
Thanks for your continued patience.”

In other parts of the world, unions and tech-happy politicians are unafraid to engage in a vigorous public debate over the cost and safety of automating trains. The mayor of London has proposed the tube go completely driverless by 2020, using Paris as a model of where unions can work out their opposition to the job-wrecking technology.

Our own Congress has proposed fully automated trains for the U.S. by 2015. But in San Francisco, the home of the robotic car, the silence is deafening.

So I decided to take BART up on its suggestion and ask around. I was surprised at how many people feared talking about the subject, but most of the experts who would speak said that it is definitely possible to automate BART and might be cheaper and safer, too.

“It would be possible to replace the train operators with automated control systems,” says Tom Rubin, a veteran transportation consultant in Oakland and former financial auditor of the BART system.

“There may be labor union issues that require personnel on the train,” said Peter Torrellas, Chief Technology Officer of Mobility and Logistics at Siemens. But “it is technically possible to have driverless trains that are safe.” Torrellas was forbidden by his communications team from commenting on the BART system. However, I got around their constraints by asking if there were a train system in the U.S. that couldn’t be automated. Torrellas said there was no technical barrier to automation.

Okay, there’s probably no technical barrier to automation, but is it worth the money? That’s hard to estimate, because the only way to really tell is if BART had the political willpower to commission a public report. Moreover, city projects areplagued with cost overrun, often by two to three times the initial estimates.

In Scotland, driverless trains were part of a $70 million total upgrade plan. Rubin was willing to give us a (very) cautious ballpark estimate, estimating that the government could save around $250 million.

BART will shell out $400 million in labor costs for the $1.6 billion transit system, which pays train operators some of the highest wages in the country ($66,000 – $74,000 a year). More specifically, there are roughly 500 unionized train operators and station attendants, averaging $92,156 a year, with benefits. Automation never fully replaces every worker, but BART would save a maximum of around $46,078,000 per year in labor costs — or more, if it ends up increasing the number of trains from 669 to 1,000.

Though Rubin says automation could cost tens of millions of dollars, ultimately it would save the city a lot of money. Siemens (which has a vested interest in automation) also concurred that automation saves cities money. Lastly, a spokesman from the International Association of Public Transport noted that metro automation typically saves 15 percent, but he couldn’t comment on BART.

We should emphasize that these numbers are ballpark and unverified since, again, BART has apparently never bothered to ask. BART may have some unknown and unique challenges that could make it much more (or less) expensive.

Aside from costs, safety is another serious concern. Even though BART is largely automated, train operators still need to check that passengers have safely made it through the doors and there are no track obstructions. Torrelles says that advances in object detection prevent automated systems from driving until all limbs are inside the train and there’s nothing lying on the track.

Not all experts I spoke to thought automation was advisable. Former Canadian IT manager for SkyTrain, George Slade, told me that there were managerial and physical issues at stake.

“With full automation most employees are really just waiting around most of the time waiting for something to break,” writes Slade to me through a Help A Reporter Out (HARO) inquiry. “This includes a lot of miss behavior [sic]. One of the other managers informed me when I started that working at SkyTrain was like being in high school again.”

Additionally, Slade argues that San Francisco has “secure and clear guide-way” on the track for the train. Rubin replies to us that securing the tracks would be a “(comparatively) ‘easy’ fix” and still be worth the roughly $250 million in savings over a decade.

The disappointing answer is that no one seems to know — exactly — if automating BART is worth the cost. One reason might be that officials are too afraid of union interests to explore the question.

Based on the responses I received, BART is either concealing facts about the possibility of automation, or its management hasn’t seriously considered it, which means BART is either negligent or ignorant. Both possibilities should concern tax payers.

Facebook Buys Mobile Data Analytics Company Onavo, Reportedly For Up To $200M… And (Finally?) Gets Its Office In Israel

Big news for a Monday/late Sunday night (depending on where you are): Onavo, the Tel Aviv-based mobile analytics company, has just announced that it has been acquired by Facebook. Onavo will become the anchor for Facebook in Israel — its first office in the country. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed; we are trying to find out. Right now we’re seeing reports of between $100 million and $200 million.

Specifically, Israeli paper Calcalist is reporting $150-200 million; other sources tell us the range is more like $100-$200 million. Both Calcalist and another Israeli paper, The Marker, are writing that some 30 Onavo employees will join Facebook and work in the company’s new office in the country (which is Onavo’s office, for now).

Onavo, which was founded in 2010, has two parts to its business: a consumer-facing apps to help optimise device and app performance and battery life on iOS and Android devices; and an analytics business for mobile publishers to chart how well its own apps are performing, and to chart that against apps of its competitors. It had raised some $13 million in venture funding from investors like Sequoia, Horizons Ventures, Motorola and Magma Venture Partners.

The rationale for the deal is easy to see on a few levels.

Facebook has been focusing on building up its mobile business, which is seeing the most growth and is the platform that most users in developing markets are turning to first when signing up for and using the social networking service, so this means beefing up Facebook’s mobile operations in general. Indeed, the company’s co-founders, Guy Rosen (CEO) and Roi Tiger (CTO) even cite Facebook’s recent Internet.org initiative in the company’s short blog post announcing the deal (below). “Today, we’re eager to take the next step and make an even bigger impact by supporting Facebook’s mission to connect the world,” the pair write.

More practically, though, Onavo will give the company a much deeper technology bench to measure how those mobile services are working — who is using them, and how to make them work in the most optimised way on mobile devices. This can be applied in a number of areas both for basic user experience and commercial ends. (One commercial end: performance of mobile ads.)

It will also be a very strong play to attract more mobile developers to Facebook overall, much like Facebook’s acquisition of Parse last year. Just as Parse gave Facebook its first paid B2B service for developers, it will be interesting to see whether Facebook expand that B2B offering with its new Onavo assets. (For the record, an Onavo spokesperson has just declined to comment on these kinds of details.)

Facebook was reportedly interested in buying Waze, the social/mobile mapping company that eventually got sold to Google. One of the sticking points of that deal (reportedly) was that Facebook wanted all of Waze in Menlo Park’s HQ. Today’s deal shows that Facebook clearly isn’t adverse to having a presence in the country after all.

But Onavo is not the first Israeli company that Facebook has acquired. There have been two others: one also to further its mobile operations, with feature phone interface developer Snaptu (bought for up to $70 million in March 2011); and one to expand its photo sharing and storage platform, acquiring facial recognition specialist Face.com in June 2012 for $50-60 million.

More to come. Blog post below.

We are excited to announce that Facebook has agreed to acquire our company.

Three years ago, we started Onavo with the goal of helping today’s technology consumers and companies work more efficiently in a mobile world. We developed the award-winning Onavo mobile utility apps, and later launched Onavo Insights, the first mobile market intelligence service based on real engagement data. Our service helps people save money through more efficient use of data, and also helps developers, large and small, design better experiences for people.

We’ve built world-class products and a remarkably talented team which has pioneered important breakthroughs in data compression technology and mobile analytics. Today, we’re eager to take the next step and make an even bigger impact by supporting Facebook’s mission to connect the world.

As you know, Facebook and other mobile technology leaders recently launched Internet.org, formalizing Facebook’s commitment to improving access to the internet for the next 5 billion people — this is a challenge we’re also passionate about.

We’re excited to join their team, and hope to play a critical role in reaching one of Internet.org’s most significant goals – using data more efficiently, so that more people around the world can connect and share. When the transaction closes, we plan to continue running the Onavo mobile utility apps as a standalone brand. As always, we remain committed to the privacy of people who use our application and that commitment will not change.

We are incredibly proud of the talented team we have assembled, and, recognizing this, Onavo’s Tel-Aviv office will remain open for business and will become Facebook’s new Israeli office.

We’ll continue to advance the work we are doing in collaboration with Facebook’s great team. Thank you to everyone who has joined us on this journey. We’d like to extend a special thanks to our investors, who believed in us and in our vision from the early days. We’re excited for what’s next.

Ditto Defeats Patent Claim After Teaming Up With A ‘Troll’

Earlier this year, I wrote about a startup called Ditto, which launched a campaign on Indiegogo to fund patent battles against 1-800-CONTACTS and Lennon Imaging Technology — or, as Ditto characterized it, to “save” the startup from “patent trolls.”

Since then, Ditto’s story has taken a couple of turns. Over the summer, the company partnered with IPNav and its founder Erich Spangenberg. Spangenberg is an odd ally, since Ditto co-founder and CEO Kate Endress described him and IPNav as “one of the largest patent trolls in the country.” However, as outlined in an IndyStar article, he reached an agreement with Endress where IPNav is paying for Ditto’s legal costs, and if it wins, it gets a $1 million stake in the startup.

Endress said this approach seems to be working, with Ditto scoring a victory this week. As I mentioned above, the company was actually facing two suits, including one from Lennon, which is a “non-practicing” company that owns intellectual property but doesn’t offer any products or services of its own. A judge has granted Ditto’s motion to have Lennon’s lawsuit dismissed — I’ve embedded the motion and the court order granting the dismissal at the end of this post.

That still leaves Ditto’s case against 1-800-CONTACTS (which is owned by WellPoint). Endress has pointed out in the past that the larger company is suing her startup over a patent that it didn’t acquire until its CEO had visited the Ditto website. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said 1-800-CONTACTS was “little better” than a patent troll, while a company spokesperson sent me a statement claiming that 1-800-CONTACTS “offered to discuss an amicable resolution to the lawsuit through licensing or other options.” (Both sides accuse the other of misrepresenting their discussions.)

So the startup isn’t out of the woods yet. But when I spoke to Endress yesterday, she sounded optimistic — she noted that not only has partnering with Spangenberg given Ditto more resources for its legal fights, but it has also freed the Dittos team’s time to actually focus on building the business (a site where shoppers can virtually try on eyeglasses) again.

And although the Indiegogo campaign only resulted in about $10,000 of funding, Endress said that talking about her story has “resulted in nothing but good things” — she’d encourage other startups facing patent threats to follow Ditto’s lead rather than staying silent.

Oh, and when I asked about how Spangenberg feels about being called a troll, so Endress noted that when asked about using patents to attack other companies, he told the IndyStar, “I don’t stand accused. I stand guilty of that.”

“He’s not doing this out of the goodness of his heart,” Endress said. “He sees a big opportunity here.”

Ditto Motion To Dismiss by TechCrunch

Ditto Court Order by TechCrunch

 

The End Of The Library

A simple link. That’s all it took to unleash a hailstorm of angry emails, messages, tweets, and comments. Why? I dared wonder if libraries will continue to exist in the future.

I mean, it’s not that crazy a notion, right? (Ifyou’re a librarian, you’re not allowed to answer that.)

Last Monday, I linked to this piece by Art Brodsky for Wired from my blog. In it, he argues that beyond the recent hoopla around e-book pricing, the real problem with e-books is what they’re doing to libraries. That is, killing them.

As Brodsky notes:

Imagine walking into a library or bookstore and needing three or four pairs of different glasses to read different books manufactured to specific viewing equipment. Or buying a book and then having to arbitrarily destroy it after say, two weeks. That’s just nuts. But it’s the current situation we’re in with ebooks.

He’s referring to the fact that Amazon, Apple, Google, and others now have their own e-book stores which sell goods which only work on certain devices or within certain applications.

Also, while the economics of e-books at a library should theoretically be better (since there is no more physical product, and any replacements or new copies are just a download away), they’re actually far worse:

Take the example of J.K. Rowling’s pseudonymous book, Cuckoo’s Calling. For the physical book, libraries would pay $14.40 from book distributor Baker & Taylor — close to the consumer price of $15.49 from Barnes & Noble and of $15.19 from Amazon. But even though the ebook will cost consumers $6.50 on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, libraries would pay $78 (through library ebook distributors Overdrive and 3M) for the same thing. Somehow the “e” in ebooks changes the pricing game, and drastically. How else does one explain libraries paying a $0.79 to $1.09 difference for a physical book to paying a difference of $71.50 just because it’s the electronic version? It’s not like being digital makes a difference for when and how they can lend it out.

And so, with these things in mind, it’s hard not to imagine a future where the majority of libraries cease to exist — at least as we currently know them. Not only are they being rendered obsolete in a digital world, the economics make even less sense. One can easily envision libraries making their way to the forefront of any budget cut discussions.

I know this sucks. Libraries have been an invaluable part of human history, propagating our culture and knowledge over centuries. But recognizing the changing times and pointing out the obvious shouldn’t be considered blasphemy. It is what it is.

The internet has replaced the importance of libraries as a repository for knowledge. And digital distribution has replaced the role of a library as a central hub for obtaining the containers of such knowledge: books. And digital bits have replaced the need to cut down trees to make paper and waste ink to create those books. This is evolution, not devolution.

It’s hard for me to even remember the last time I was in a library. I was definitely in one this past summer in Europe — on a historical tour. Before that, I think it was when I was in college. But even then, ten years ago, the internet was replacing the need to go to a library. And now, with e-books, I’m guessing the main reason to go to a library on a college campus is simply because it’s a quiet place to study.

I do recall the last several times I went to a library in high school — it was to borrow some CDs. (Which may or may not have been subsequently ripped onto a computer…)

The point is, times have changed. And things continue to change with increasing speed. So where does that leave libraries?

Undoubtedly, some of the largest, most prestigious libraries will live on. But the people lurking in them may increasingly look like Gandalf in the bowels of Minas Tirith looking through the scrolls of Isildur.

Meanwhile, some other spaces currently known as libraries may live on as cultural and/or learning centers. Others like the notion of using libraries as some sort of newfangled technology demo pits. Tablets over here! 3D printers over here! One article even likened them to Apple Stores.

There is also the notion of libraries shifting their focus to go further up the stack, as it were, to help content creators earn a better living from their writing. Eli Neiburger of the Ann Arbor District Library has written extensively about this. (Multiple people dismayed by my original link, pointed me to Neiburger’s thoughts.)

But even Neiburger admits that this is likely only a possibility for niche and/or independent writers. The big name publishers and big ticket books are never going to go for this. And again, this may mean a future where libraries have less of a focus on actual books.

All of these prospects for the future of libraries sound nice on paper (figuratively, not literally, of course). But I’m also worried that some of us are kidding ourselves. These theoretical places are not libraries in the ways that any of us currently think of libraries.

That’s the thing: it seems that nearly everyone is actually in agreement that libraries, as we currently know them, are going away. But no one wants to admit it because calling for the end of libraries seems about as popular as the Dewey Decimal System.

It’s almost like some people want to interpret anyone talking about the end of libraries as talking about the end of learning — and, by extension, the end of civilization. The reality is that learning has evolved. It’s now easier than ever to look something up. And the connected world has far better access to basically infinitely more information than can be found in even the largest library — or all of them combined. This is all a good thing. A very good thing. Maybe the best thing in the history of our civilization. Yet we retain this romantic notion of libraries as cultural touchstones. Without them, we’re worried we’ll be lost and everything will fall apart.

So we’re coming up with all these other ways to try to keep these buildings open. Co-working spaces! Media labs. Art galleries? We’ll see. But it’s impossible to see a world where we keep libraries open simply to pretend they still serve a purpose for which they no longer serve.

I’m sorry I have to be the one to write this. I have nothing but fond memories of libraries from my youth. Of course, I also have fond memories of bookstores. And we all know how that has turned out…

Nexus 5 Gets Bluetooth Certification Ahead Of Rumored Oct. 15 Launch Date

Google’s next Nexus Android reference smartphone is likely just around the corner, and today theBluetooth SIG published a certification of a device which matches its model identification code. The “LG-D821″ is already essentially confirmed as the new Nexus 5, and it approval today by the Bluetooth SIG means that it’s probably on track for a rumored launch early next week.

Reports from CNET UK suggest we’ll see the Nexus 5 make its official debut on October 15, and that the next version of Android, version 4.4 or ‘KitKat,’ will arrive on the same day. KitKat is so-named thanks to a cross-promotional effort between Google and Nestlé, but it’s been rumored to be a relatively minor update, and TechCrunch has heard separately from a well-placed source that indeed, KitKat will be mostly business as usual compared to version 4.3, with the next update down the line offering up much more substantial changes.

Google’s Nexus 5 is said to have a 4.95-inch 1080p display, along with a Snapdragon 800 2.3GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, an 8 megapixel rear camera and a 1.2 megapixel front shooter, LTE support and Bluetooth 4.0. It’s all powered by a 2300mAH battery, which is just slightly more capacious than the 2100mAH battery on the current Nexus 4. It’s also powering a much more powerful device, so it’ll be interesting to see how that affects what kind of mileage you get on a single charge.

If it’s priced right, a new LTE-capable Nexus in time for the holidays could be a very good option for buyers looking to get a strong smartphone for relatively little money upfront. Last year, supply was very constrained early on, however, so if you’re interested in one, it’s probably a good idea to be ready to order when they do get made official.

As Google Eyes ‘Android’ Branding For Smart TV, The Question Is Where Android Won’t Be

Google is reportedly in the process of rebranding its Google TV efforts as “Android TV,” according to a new report from GigaOM’s Janko Roettgers. The switch reflects the fact that Google TV is already an Android-based product, and the new name is apparently in use with developer and OEM partners already, pending a formal switch from the old to the new branding.

The use of Android TV is more than just a surface change; GigaOM says that Google will begin using much more recent versions of Android in its TV products, giving manufacturers the chance to upgrade to 4.2 in an effort to make it easier for developers to target smartphone, tablet and television end points for their software and apps.

This would not be a surprising move for Google. When it first launched its Google TV efforts, the Google brand was arguably stronger than Android, and more generally recognizable to consumers. Now, Android has much more mindshare, and the average consumer is probably well aware that Android is Google’s mobile OS. Plus, the Google TV brand hasn’t done much to help further Google’s cause with living room users, and in fact was widely perceived as an early flop before slowly gaining back ground among users and OEM partners.

Android TV would inject some fresh life into the longtime experiment, and would also make it more apparent to developers that Google wants software makers to think of the television as simply an extension of its development platform for smartphones and tablets. Google now recognizes that there’s value in making Android an OS without specific hardware constraints, and we’ve seen their executives note this on multiple recent occasions.

Google CEO Larry Page said during the company’s earnings call in April that the head-mountedGoogle Glass smart device does indeed run on Android, as many suspected. But he didn’t stop there: Page also noted that Android “has been pretty transportable across devices,” adding that that will likely “continue” in the future. Google also recently acquired Android-based smartwatch maker WIMM labs, so it’s clearly keen to explore how the OS can power those devices. You could even see a stripped down version powering the more advanced Fitbits and other activity trackers of the next generation.

In the end, I think we’ll see Android positioned as the operating system of the future of computing devices. Connected home, connected car, connected industry and retail, all of this represents places Google can gird as Windows and MS fade from prominence. Google has a beachhead staked out with television already thanks to its existing efforts, but a switch to Android TV could really help accelerate their progress in that area.

The CEOs Are Wrong: Smart Machines Will Replace Millions Of Jobs

Smart machines are coming to the business world, but don’t tell that to the CEOs. Sixty-percent of CEOs surveyed by Gartner Research say the emergence of smart machines capable of absorbing millions of middle-class jobs within 15 years is a “futurist fantasy.”

The survey results reflect the anxiety about automation of the work world and the advent of smart machines that Gartner says will have a widespread and deep business impact by 2020.

That CEOs are dismissive about smart machines should come as no surprise. Their perspectives reflect a common human reaction that a self-learning intelligent agent or robot will replace lots and lots of jobs. The reality is actually quite different. People will adapt to smart machines in their lives. It’s just out of the question that they would not. Without these smart machines, the work people do will be almost impossible to perform. Cloud services are early evidence that machines are replacing people. To keep data centers running, machines are programmed to adapt to different types of workloads.

According to Gartner, CEOs underestimate how fast smart machines will take millions of middle-class jobs in the coming decades. Kenneth Brant, research director at Gartner, said in a statement that the pace of “job destruction” will happen faster than the ability to create new ones.

The difference will come as machines evolve from automated tasks to more advanced self-learning systems that are as capable of doing very specialized jobs. In Gartner’s view, it’s this specialized work where jobs will likely be eliminated over the next several years. In particular, IT will feel the pain as there won’t be the need to do much of the manual work that technicians perform today.

There will be a thriving market for intelligent agents, virtual helpers, expert systems and a host of other services that leverage advancements in machine learning. Amazon, Google, GE and IBM will all become dealers in an emerging arms race that supplies the huge demand that will come from companies who need more digital workers to stay competitive.

What that means for the rest of us is still the question. There are stories every day about new advances that foretell what is to come. Apple’s Siri, Google’s new Hummingbird algorithm and the rapid advances in IBM’s natural language processing all point to a time that may seem like a fantasy now but will just be the way “things” work in the years to come.

BlackBerry Reportedly Leaning Towards Breaking Up Assets As Fairfax Deal In Doubt

Canada’s beleaguered smartphone pioneer BlackBerry is apparently warming to the idea of a break-up, Bloomberg reports, as the Fairfax Financial buyout bid for the entire company looks a little more uncertain due to a failure to secure the appropriate amount of funding, or partners to help them do so.

The companies reportedly approached by BlackBerry as potential suitors, including SAP, Cisco and Samsung, are only interested in parts of BlackBerry, not the whole kit and caboodle, according to Bloomberg. If a break-up went through, it would give BlackBerry the chance to auction off the most lucrative parts to the highest bidders, who might be more likely to compete with one another once they don’t have to worry about also taking on the unprofitable parts of the business and mitigating the risk associated with those assets.

Reuters reported earlier this month that Google, SAP and Cisco were among companies that were interested in buying BlackBerry or its parts, and the company had also approached LG, Intel and Samsung according to that report. Bloomberg’s new information echoes that, and adds that SAP is considering the value of attempting to acquire portions of the company, while Intel is looking only at patents. None of the companies covered by Bloomberg are interested in making a bid for the entire company as it exists now.

In terms of what is and isn’t appealing to potential buyers about BlackBerry, it’s pretty clear that the enterprise business is among the most attractive targets. The phone business is not considered an asset at all, RJF analyst Steven Li tells Bloomberg, owing to its steadily declining handset sales figures. There is some good news in the phone business, however, as Canadian telco Rogers reversed its decision not to carry the BlackBerry Z30 smartphone. Still, interest in BlackBerry hardware at home in Canada isn’t representative of the appetite for its devices elsewhere.

BlackBerry seems destined for a break-up in the end, unless Fairfax can pull in some last-minute support to help its bid for the company as a complete unit. It’s much more likely that we’ll see it parted out, however, which, while sad for the brand and its defenders, could at least mean something bearing the BlackBerry name survives, if under new ownership and management.

What I Learned About Facebook As A Feedback Panelist

Today when I opened Facebook, as I do every day, at some point, at least once, I was surprised to see the social network asking me for some time and input. Generally speaking, it asks “What’s on your mind?” or something similar in the status update entry field, but this was different; this was a genuine request for me to complete a survey as part of a new Facebook Feedback Panel program, and provide meaningful feedback about FB itself, and the experience of being a user.

This was weird for a number of reasons: First, it hasn’t seemed all that interested in my feedback in the past, and second, it prompted me to be self-reflexive about when and why I use Facebook, and what I hope to find there. That second point is important, because it’s rare that I look inward about my social media usage habits in any forum, and Facebook has been around for so much of my digital life that it’s become almost invisible. Finally, the questions Facebook asked in its survey also reflect its own goals in doing the asking to begin with.

ME AND FACEBOOK

The survey covered News Feed, and how I felt about it, what it provided me as a user. It was telling that I couldn’t really cop to getting much use value out of the stories in my News Feed. When asked about why I felt like relevance was decreasing, I was struck by the fact that I don’t really feel like I ‘know’ anyone on Facebook anymore. While back when I first started using the network, it seemed a great way to stay in touch with classmates with whom I might otherwise lose contact, now it seems like a catalogue of a lot of people I probably should’ve just lost contact with but never did.

And yet I still use FB quite regularly, if by ‘use’ I employ the broad definition of ‘open a tab, go to facebook.com.’ But as the survey revealed when it prompted reflection on my usage habits, that’s happening less frequently, and it’s likely tied to the decreased stream relevance. Of course, many of the social network’s recent efforts have been around reinjecting some relevance into the News Feed, by bringing in things like actual news sources, public posts and more. But the detritus of old connections still makes it a net inconsequential, or at worst, net negative experience.

THE AD QUESTION

This survey also covered ads, both in the News Feed and on the site in general. The questions asked about the relevance of the ads, their general level of quality, their potential to offend and much more. Facebook is clearly aware that ads could be a contributing factor to any issues it’s having with the engagement level of individual users. And in selecting the types of statements it’s choosing to seek agreement/disagreement from users, it’s also generally aware what’s wrong with the type of advertising its platform engenders.

The relevance issues I mentioned above in the first section aren’t caused by ads, but they aren’t helped by them, either. To be fair, I’m never going to tell anyone that I find any ads “Interesting” or “Helpful” – the entire concept of advertising is at odds with those descriptors in my book. But it’s still true that in general, I find Facebook’s ads particularly uninteresting, and not at all relevant, let alone helpful.

BROADER ENGAGEMENT ISSUES

Facebook has also been sending out more emails to prompt users who haven’t been overly active to come back and play. As you can see in the screenshot below, users are receiving notices about activity in their network to try to get them to re-engage. It’s a common tactic among social startups and companies of all stripes, but combined with efforts like this Feedback Panel, it indicates a need to identify the source of an engagement problem and counteract it.

My Experience As A Fourth Grade Hacker

When Alexandra Jordan presented at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, the fourth grader from Sunnyvale, CA proved to be something of an audience favorite.

Jordan conceived of and coded her own hack, a playdate app called Super Fun Kid Time, which she is planning to launch in November.  In honor of the International Day of the Girl — formally recognized by the United Nations on October 11th, 2012 — we asked Jordan to write a guest post on her experiences as a young coder. 

A few weeks ago my dad and I went to the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon in San Francisco. I really enjoyed it and here are some of the reasons:

There were several booths and stalls and every so often I got to explore. It was a gigantic space and it didn’t feel cramped. There were so many different computers. The hackathon also had a great atmosphere for programming. The thing is when you program you HAVE TO be in a good environment so you can concentrate. Finally I think it’s awesome to be around so many professional programmers.

Presenting on stage to so many people gave me lots of confidence. So many people were excited about my project Super Fun Kid Time. It is a play date finder for kids. I built it because parents always forget to exchange details before summer vacation. Since I presented at TechCrunch Disrupt, 5,000 people have signed up for Super Fun Kid Time and we haven’t even launched yet!

Now other people want to launch it in countries like Brazil and Australia.

So many people wanted to talk to me after the event. Everyone was very supportive. It was wondrous. The National Center for Women in Information Technology at the University of Colorado sent me a gift package including a tee-shirt even though they were dealing with a bad flood. Doug from Microsoft even gave me a new computer for programming. I was interviewed by lots of people including Good Morning America.

About a week ago my dad and I did another hackathon in New York. After seeing me and my dad on TechCrunch a company called ooVoo invited us. They helped us add video chat to Super Fun Kid Time for up to 12 people. It was a daytime only hackathon, which meant I didn’t miss a thing. There were four floors to explore and they were all different. I was interviewed by the BBC, which will make my grandpa happy. (He loves the BBC)

I like programming because I like being able to sit down and just do it, I like how it makes you think and I like working on projects with my dad. I also like reading, writing, drawing, math, TV and word games.

My motivation is to be a great person, to help the world, to make discoveries and to prove that girls and women can do anything. My inspiration is my dad and my family and friends, but also women programmers. I have been inspired by the women in tech that I met at TechCrunch Disrupt and at ooVoo and others.

We have several other future project ideas but one of my ideas is Safe Tube, a social filter for YouTube. My brother is autistic and sometimes when searching YouTube he finds videos that are inappropriate.

SafeTube would solve that problem. That was actually my first hackathon idea. I also want to learn to program my Raspberry Pi. In the future I would like to make technology for veterinarians because I like animals. But first we have to focus on launching Super Fun Kid Time because so many people are waiting to use it.

After launch, I am planning on starting a tech club for girls after school. This will be for one hour a week. It will teach other girls to code, because if girls learn to program when they are young they won’t be discouraged later.

It is important to have more women in tech because women in the past have been held back. It is important to find their way back despite this. Also women like things made by women. If your company has no women programmers then your product will not contain the ideas of women, and you might not be successful.

This year, International Day of the Girl has strategically focused its efforts on girls’ education. You can find more posts around the International Day of the Girl here.

Facebook Removing Option To Be Unsearchable By Name, Highlighting Lack Of Universal Privacy Controls

“Who can look up your Timeline by name?” Anyone you haven’t blocked. Facebook is removing this privacy setting, notifying those who had hidden themselves that they’ll be searchable. It deleted the option from those who hadn’t used it in December, and is starting to push everyone to use privacy controls on each type of content they share. But there’s no one-click opt out of Facebook search.

To be fair, the “Who can look up your Timeline by name?” feature was likely misunderstood by lots of people. At first glance, you might assume it means that strangers can’t find your profile. But that’s incorrect. There have been lots of ways to navigate to your profile, like clicking your name on a photo you’re tagged in, finding your name in a friend’s friend list, or combing through Likes on a mutual friend’s News Feed post.

With the roll out of Graph Search, the avenues for sniffing out someone’s profile grew exponentially. Basically every piece of personal information (and soon the content you post about) could bring you up in a search. If you publicly list that you live in San Francisco, a Graph Search for “People who live in San Francisco” could lead someone to your profile.

It also led people to think search was broken in some cases. If I met someone through a Facebook Group and wanted to friend them, I might search for them and not be able to find them if they had used this privacy setting. But what’s more important are the safety implications.

Keeping this privacy option around gave people a false sense of security. For that reason, it’s wise for Facebook to remove it. But it should have provided an ever stronger universal privacy control for opting out of search, not a slew of weaker ones.

Over the new few months, users who’ve employed the privacy setting to avoid being searched by name will see a big announcement at the top of their Facebook homepage explaining what’s happening. They’ll have to confirm they understand the change before they’re put back into name search and the privacy setting disappears from their options.

After that, the way people can stay hidden is to manually restrict the visibility of each piece of their profile. And that is a bit of a chore. You’d have to go through every piece of personal information in your About section and set its visibility to ‘Friends’ or ‘Only me’. At least Facebook provides a quick way to restrict the visibility of all your old News Feed posts.

Serious privacy aficionados should remember that your current profile picture and cover image are always public, so you’d have to leave those blank if you didn’t want anyone to any idea of who you are beyond your name.

For people with stalkers, though, Facebook may have just gotten a bit more dangerous. Facebook tells me the way to keep a specific person from finding your profile or viewing any of your content is to block them. But what if your stalker just signs up for a fake profile with a new name? Then they could search and find you.

This is where there’s friction, as Facebook’s mission to connect the world, responsibility to make money for its investors, and its duty to keep people’s privacy safe come into conflict.

Facebook could surely offer an option to lock down all your personal information the same way it does for your old posts, but it doesn’t. It could offer a way to opt out of appearing in any type of search results, not just searches for your name, but it doesn’t. It wants your friends to be able to find you. It wants Graph Search to be a comprehensive utility. It wants the engagement and ad views your friendship and News Feed posts generate. But its protecting its access to these things by sacrificing your right to choose just how much your identity is indexed.

The Astonishing Story of Jeff Bezos' Biological Father Who Didn't Even Know Bezos Existed Until the End of Last Year

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  Reuters/REUTERS - Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos demonstrates the Kindle Paperwhite during Amazon's Kindle Fire event in Santa Monica, California in this September 6, 2012, file photo. NASA had hoped to turn over maintenance …more 

The last time Jeff Bezos, the 49-year-old CEO and founder of Amazon, saw his biological father, he was three years old. 

His biological father, whose name is Ted Jorgensen, was 18 when he impregnated Bezos' mother, Jacklyn Gise, who herself was 17. They were both still in high school at the time. They got married before their son was born. 

The marriage lasted only 17 months, reports Brad Stone at Bloomberg Businessweek, who has unearthed astonishing new details about Bezos' family's early years. 

Gise moved in with her parents because Jorgensen stayed out late, and drank too much, and was generally an inattentive father and husband says Stone. He agreed to a divorce, and paid a small amount of child support to Gise when he had money. Other times he missed the payments.

Three years after their divorce, Gise married another man, Miguel Bezos, a Cuban immigrant who taught himself English, and eventually worked at Exxon. Miguel adopted Jeff, and Jeff took his last name. Jorgensen had to sign off on the name change, which he did, Stone reports. 

For a brief period Jorgensen remembered the Bezos name, but through the years he forgot about it, and dropped completely out of touch with his ex-wife and his son.

Jorgensen's absence from Bezos' life was so complete that in a 1999 interview with Wired, Bezos said of Jorgensen, "I've never met him," although, in reality he lived with him for the first year of his life.

"The reality, as far as I'm concerned, is that my Dad is my natural father. The only time I ever think about it, genuinely, is when a doctor asks me to fill out a form," said Bezos in 1999.

Jorgensen, for his part, had a nearly identical attitude about Bezos. 

However, Stone managed to find Jorgensen, now 69, who owns a bike shop in Glendale, Arizona.

Here's how Jorgensen reacted when Stone introduced himself: "He had no idea what I was talking about. Jorgensen said he didn’t know who Jeff Bezos was and was baffled by my suggestion that he was the father of this famous CEO."

Stone jogged Jorgensen's memory, trotting out details about Bezos and his mother. Says Stone, "The old man’s face flushed with recognition. 'Is he still alive?' he asked, not yet fully comprehending."

Bezos' biological father had disconnected so thoroughly from Bezos life that not only did he not remember his name, and not only did he not realize his son was one of the richest men in the world, but he wasn't even sure if his son was still alive. 

Jorgensen says that in his younger days "I wasn’t a good father or a husband." He eventually quit drinking, got his act together and opened his bike shop. He's married, but had no other children in his life beyond Bezos. 

A family friend told Stone later that Jorgensen felt overwhelmed with sadness and regret. He wants to get in touch Bezos, but it's unclear if that will ever happen. 

Stone has a book coming out about Amazon. It's excerpted at Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The stuff about his father starts at the bottom of the seventh page. 

http://Money4Refer.com/index.php?refcode=26127

Unface.me Is A Gossip Girl-Style Social Service For Anonymously Trolling Your Friends

A Russian startup called Unface.me has created a new social network inspired by the Gossip Girl TV series which lets users create an alter ego to — let’s face it — troll their friends, or even post even worst types of gossip entirely anonymously. The site connects with Facebook and Russian social network VKontakte so it can pull in users’ genuine friend networks, then furnishes them with a series of tools to poke fun, dish salacious gossip or vote on who of their friends is coolest and therefore who is not. Y’know, teen stuff.

Teens powered the rise of social networking giant Facebook. But today’s teens are arguably starting to be less enamoured with the platform their siblings spent  all their time on, what with so many other, more flexible ways to ping and poke each other. Facebook’s insistence on real names, and its standard comms toolset of public posts, private messages and IM isn’t helping here. Looked at through the hyper layered and stratified teenage lens, it’s pretty limting. Which is giving startups the opportunity to crowd in.

Zuck and co were also not as quick to respond to the growth in mobile messaging as they should have been. The long and short of it is that today’s teens are spoiled for choice; they don’t need Facebook to stay in touch — they have a whole arsenal of creative digital tools to get around being grounded.

Facebook’s difficulty, of course, is that it can’t keep up with the kids without risking alienating itsmassive user base of oldies. With such a whoppingly huge user base  that spans multiple age-groups comes a big responsibility not to put segments of users off. Keeping things fairly simple is the compromise path, but that too risks boring the kids — so they go looking to get their kicks elsewhere, whether it’s Snapchat or Unface.me.

Now it must be said that Unface.me is pretty rough round the edges — and focused pretty squarely on the Russia market for now. It isn’t necessarily anything more than a curiosity. It’s just come out of a closed beta, so its user base is small, with a test group of around 20,000 that it’s now looking to grow — having just opened up to the public. It says it’s also starting to advertise to get the word out. But as an experiment in extending social networking by adding an element of privacy it’s interesting to watch — also bringing to mind secret-sharing app Whisper.

Unface.me’s founders are three computer science graduates from Moscow State University, with respective specialisms in marketing, business development and web development. The startup is currently bootstrapped with funds from founders, friends and family.

“The inital idea came from the Gossip Girl series, but we decided to go further and develop a place where people can share their feelings freely and get honest opinions from their friends, but sharing secrets and gossips can be done too. We strongly believe that anonymity loosens up and helps discovering new facts about friends and yourself,” Unface.me’s Dmitrii Ponomarev tells TechCrunch.

The site has been in development for around a year and a half, with the closed beta kicking off six months ago.  The “mission” is to “let every person discuss freely anything or anyone”. And, judging by some of the public posts, there’s certainly plenty of that going on already. Indeed, it’s pushing into some pretty unpleasant territory, which is generally  what happens when you mix teens and gossip, regardless of the medium they’re using.

The key twist here is the mixture of unknown and known, says Ponomarev. Since the users are interacting with their real friends, pulled in from third party social networks, not random online strangers. From there they can choose to chat and post anonymously or under a fixed alterego. Or indeed using the real name they use on the linked social network.

“A user can anonymously write a story about his friends on yesterday’s party, share it anonymously via sms and watch the discussion,” explains Ponomarev. “Or he or she can post a photo of his new look and get really honest responses from friends because the are anonymous. Or he can start an anonymous chat with his friends and discuss something that matters with his friends but no one will know each others’ names… We’ve gone much further than just posting anonymous text messages.”

Teens are famously creative in their communications. Even within the Facebook straitjacket they find subtle and not so subtle ways to hack the limits — by ‘being in a relationship’ with all their BFFs, say, or asking each other to like a post for feedback on what they look like and so on. Unface.me looks like it’s picking up on that preference for teens to gamify their communications — and giving them even more layers to interact with each other.

Facebook can still be part of the mix, of course — as one of the foundation networks that Unface.me is using as its jumping off point. However, if more teenage chatter ends up going on anonymously outside Facebook’s walls that’s not an outcome that will end up pouring coin into Zuckerberg’s coffers as it restricts the flow of data. Addressing the innovation challenge posed by upstart startups that are offering cooler, more teen-friendly ways to do stuff is the sort of war that is  looking impossible for a single, central dominant service like Facebook to win. When it comes to the social networking/social messaging space, it’s definitely time to get the popcorn in.