Maxim Bange

Experts hebben de Tweede Kamer voor de gevolgen gewaarschuwd van het plan om te bezuinigen op de AIVD. Tijdens een hoorzitting noemden zij die plannen desastreus. De veiligheidsdienst moet de komende 5 jaar 70 miljoen bezuinigen.

Customers can expect speeds of around 14Mbps

There are several rumoured iPhone 5s features that Apple didn't show off at its iPhone event, some of which feature in smartphone rivals from Apple's competitors. Here, we highlight some of those features and ponder: why didn't Apple include them in the iPhone 5s?

GestureWorks is smearing the lines between PC and tablet gaming with its Windows 8 app, Gameplay. The application lets you custom-design gestures and virtual buttons for most games, and place them wherever you see fit. It probably works fine with Castle Crashers’ simplistic mayhem (pictured above), but we aren’t so sure we’d want to explore Skyrim without a mouse and keyboard. Regardless, maybe now you can give those Steam sale impulse buys a whirl while you’re on the go.

Filed under: Gaming, Tablets

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Source: GestureWorks (1), (2) (PDF)

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According to Russian security firm

UK chip-designer ARM has emerged as one of the companies set to benefit from Apple’s iPhone launch, with analysts saying the Cambridge-based company will receive increased royalties as a result of its chip being at the core of the iPhone 5S.

The final piece of One World Trade Center was lifted into place earlier this year, making it the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere at a symbolic 1,776 feet.

It's the first time the skyscraper at Ground Zero has stood at full height on the anniversary of September 11.

The 104-story tower is scheduled to be completed in early 2014, according to the Associated Press. Its anchor tenant will be publisher Conde Nast.

In addition to the skyscraper, formerly known as the "Freedom Tower," the World Trade Center will be home to three other office buildings, including the new home of the Port Authority. 

Nearly 10 million people have visited the 8-acre Memorial Plaza, built in the footprint of the World Trade Center, since it opened two years ago. The artifact-filled 9/11 Memorial Museum is scheduled to open in the spring of 2014.

Thousands of people watched as the spire of One World Trade Center was lifted into place in early May. The Port Authority of NY & NJ mounted a GoPro camera on the spire as it was being raised, capturing some incredible footage:

Take a look at the entire video taken by The Port Authority of NY & NJ below:

SEE ALSO: Here Are Some Of The Poignant Artifacts You'll See At The New 9/11 Memorial Museum

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This picture, posted to Weibo, shows two cans of Chinese Red Bull. One is fake — can you tell which one?

Here's another shot, showing the Red Bull after it was poured:

If you can't tell the difference, you may be in for a little bit of trouble when visiting China.

The South China Morning Post reports that that police have detained 13 people across 10 provinces in China this week, part of an effort to clamp down on the fake Red Bull trade. Police have confiscated 3,820 boxes of cans and other materials worth a total of 25 million yuan ($4 million).

The fake Red Bull is apparently a profitable business, earning 3.7 yuan (60 cents) profit on each fake can sold. However, it may have a downside for consumers — posts on Chinese Weibo reportedly show someone receiving hospital treatment after drinking the phony Red Bull, according to Market Watch.

So, in case you are wondering, according to the Weibo user who uploaded the photograph the can on the right contains the fake energy drink.

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MarketWatch bond reporter Ben Eisen points out that the Verizon bond deal – the largest corporate bond offering ever, at $49 billion – is bigger than the entire economy of Luxembourg (which sports a GDP of $42 billion, according to the IMF).

To put the offering further into perspective, here are a few other economies smaller than the size of the Verizon deal, which prices today:

• Honduras (GDP $38 billion)
• Latvia (GDP $37 billion)
• Afghanistan (GDP $31.8 billion)
• Democratic Republic of Congo (GDP $27.5 billion)
• Jamaica (GDP $25.2 billion)
• Cyprus (GDP $23.6 billion)

Read more about the deal at MarketWatch »

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A huge number of business books fall into the category of "success studies." They use examples of great companies or executives to make a point or give advice on how to excel. 

Most of them use businesses that aren't actually exceptional, but just lucky, according to Deloitte Services Director Michael Raynor.

He's the co-author of the recently published book "The Three Rules: How Exceptional Companies Think," which aims to separate chance from true greatness.

Raynor says when they examined other authors' success studies, the "overwhelming majority" of companies they used weren't good enough for long enough to convince him that their success was more than luck. 

The difference between his research and everything else that's been done was the sheer depth. They looked at 25,000 different companies over 37 years. Additionally, they looked at return on assets (ROA), a metric that shows stable performance, rather than shifts in market or investor opinion.

Out the 25,000 companies the authors examined, only 344 were found to be truly great over the long term.

To find out why, they tested a variety of strategies or behaviors that might account for outperformance, like customer focus, the ability to innovate and risk taking. But in the end, it wasn't any strategy that was consistent across all of these companies; it was a certain way of thinking that defined everything they did. The authors boil it down to three rules: 

Better before cheaper

You can often sell more than a competitor by slashing prices. But eventually the competitor will bring prices down as well. The only way to consistently win is to find a way to make your product better, more available, build an appealing brand, or provide better service. In other words, you must differentiate yourself in a meaningful way beyond price.

Revenue before cost

The companies that were most successful over the long run didn't get there by being the leanest, least expensive operations. They won out by charging higher prices and increasing volume. Cost-cutting can be an effective short-run strategy, but it doesn't last.  

And there are no other rules

The key is that beyond those first two rules, and even in following them, there are endless options and variations. The ingenuity of the strategies and products that allow businesses to charge more and make more money than their competitors are endless and often unique.

Anything that goes against those first two rules should be changed.

It sounds simple, but given that only a tiny subset of companies survive at all, let alone thrive for decades, it's clear that the reality is very complex.  

Knowing the rules is the easy part, and most people would agree with them. 

"What you tend to see is that as soon as you face even the mildest of headwinds people start reaching for the price-cutting and cost-cutting levers," Raynor says. "When you think of the range of options you have to consider if you're going to commit to differentiation based on value rather than on price, the number of different ways that you do it is, in theoretical terms, infinite and, in practical terms, overwhelming."

The price and cost levers, as Raynor calls them, are right there in front of a manager. Those cuts are easier to execute, and results seem more certain. That's a difficult temptation for business owners to avoid. Rather than confront the ways of making a product different, or better, or finding a new market, too many companies slash costs and prices at the first hint of adversity. 

That's not the path to long-term success. The three rules are simple to understand, but extremely hard to follow. The best companies don't take the easy way out; they find a way to provide more value at every turn, and get consumers to pay for it. 

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Montreal Gazette

President Barack Obama commemorates 12th anniversary of 9/11 attacks Telegraph.co.uk President Barack Obama observed the 12th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington with a moment of silence and a visit to the Pentagon Memorial. Mr Obama was joined by First Lady ... Obama pays tribute to the fallen of Sept. 11, 2001Norwich Bulletin Pentagon Reviews Counterterror Measures Before 9/11 AnniversaryNational Journal Nation pauses on 9/11 to pay tribute to victimsDaily Astorian China Daily -Washington Post (blog) -Jerusalem Post all 557 news articles »

A behind-the-scenes video from Ubisoft shows the making of its live-action Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag trailer, "Defy."

For authenticity's sake, the production team built a full-scale replica of most of an Age of Sail battleship including different decks and all the relevant rigging, and weathered it accordingly. The set construction took about 50 to 60 workers hammering and sawing away for about three weeks, according to the video.

Working with live action filming was different than making a cutscene in a game, says SFX supervisor Franck Lambertz, as you can't control absolutely everything like you can in a world that you've built yourself in CGI.

About 70 percent of the cast on film was made of stuntmen, says producer Ben...

In a way, in-flight WiFi still seems like the future. It’s the internet, in the air, while traveling at 30,000+ feet. Clearly, just having access isn’t good enough, as a smattering of opponents have stepped into a segment long dominated by Gogo with snazzier, satellite-based alternatives. Over the past few years, ViaSat has stepped up in an effort to offer flyers something that Gogo’s existing services won’t: streaming video. While Gogo’s air-to-ground network is great for latency, it struggles with bandwidth, as anyone on a crowded flight from JFK to SFO will likely attest. Today, Gogo has taken the wraps off of GTO (Ground to Orbit), described as a hybrid technology that will be “capable of delivering more than 60Mbps to the aircraft.” For those keeping score, that’s a 20-fold increase from where Gogo started just a few years ago.

We spoke to a company representative leading up to the reveal, who confirmed that GTO is a proprietary offering, and will lean on satellites for the downlink while using existing ground-based transceivers for the uplink. For users, that means that latency will remain low, uploads will remain sluggish, and downloads will improve dramatically. Gogo points out that precious little will need to change for airlines to take advantage; there’s a new antenna, which is actually half as large as the existing one, but most everything else will remain the same. Virgin America will be the launch partner of the new service, which is expected to be available in the second half of 2014; we asked if any other airlines were onboard beyond that, but were left to make assumptions for ourselves.

Filed under: Transportation, Internet

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Source: Gogo

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Lenovo outed no fewer than five new notebooks just last week, but it doesn’t want to stop there. With a distinct focus on business, the world’s biggest notebook maker has come to the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) with a refreshed range of T, W, L and E Series laptops, outfitting them with Intel’s fourth-generation Haswell processors, better graphics, improved security and faster connectivity. Do Lenovo’s new buttoned-down notebooks offer more than their glossy counterparts? Find out after the break.

Filed under: Laptops, Lenovo

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Source: Lenovo Newsroom

The post Lenovo brings Haswell to rest of ThinkPad line-up, including monstrous ThinkPad W540 appeared first on AIVAnet.

Israël betaalt ruim 1 miljoen dollar schadevergoeding aan de familie van 'gevangene X'. Dat meldt de Israëlische tv-zender Channel 2. De schadevergoeding betekent niet dat de staat verantwoordelijkheid erkent voor zijn dood.

'Gevangene X' werkte voor de Israëlische geheime dienst Mossad. Om redenen die de staat geheim houdt, werd hij begin 2010 in de gevangenis gezet. Daar pleegde hij aan het eind van het jaar zelfmoord. Zijn zaak kwam pas begin dit jaar aan het licht en leidde tot veel beroering in de Israëlische media en in de politiek.

'Gevangene X' bleek Ben Zygier te zijn, een Australische jood die was geëmigreerd naar Israël en daar bij de geheime dienst Mossad was gaan werken. Omdat hij de dienst in gevaar zou hebben gebracht of hebben verraden, zou hij zijn opgepakt. Door toedoen van Zygier zouden informanten in Libanon zijn opgepakt.

Emotioneel labiel

Uit onderzoek dat onder invloed van de publiciteitsgolf tot stand kwam, bleek dat medewerkers van de gevangenis die toezicht op Zygier moesten houden nalatig zijn geweest en allerlei fouten hebben gemaakt. Ben Zygier was emotioneel labiel en er bestond een risico dat hij een einde aan zijn leven zou maken. Hij hing zich op in de badkamer van zijn cel.

De familie van Zygier wilde dat de staat Israël nalatigheid zou erkennen. De schadevergoeding betekent dat er geen rechtszaak komt. De staat vermijdt zo dat geheime informatie over Zygier en zijn werk voor de Mossad naar buiten komt.

Het is Franse ministers en hun departementen verboden smartphones en tablets te gebruiken om gevoelige informatie te verwerken en verzenden, zo wijst premier Jean-Marc Ayrault erop. Het verbod is waarschijnlijk het gevolg van de recente NSA-onthullingen.

Apple is down 4% in pre-market trading. 

Investors are selling after yesterday's iPhone launches failed to excite.

We've seen analysts downgrading the stock, and rejiggering their models to factor in the new phones.

Essentially, everyone expected the iPhone 5C to be less expensive. Without a carrier contract, the 5C will cost $549 in the U.S. and $733 in China.

At those prices, it's just another high-end phone. 

As Walter Piecyk at BTIG, who maintained his buy rating, said, "Yesterday’s announcements were merely a slight modification on a phone release game plan that Apple has been executing on for years."

Instead of making the iPhone 5 $99 after a carrier subsidy, Apple went with the iPhone 5C. The upshot with the 5C is that the plastic case makes it cheaper and easier to make, which should boost margins. 

Apple also announced that it was going to start selling cases, which should also increase margins, and add some extra profits into the mix. 

But, the fundamental problem is that Apple didn't do anything to significantly increase its addressable market yesterday. 

Yesterday's announcement won't change the fact that Apple is getting smoked in China, where it already sells high-end, expensive phones. Analysts were thinking that Apple was ready to release a mid-range phone to increase unit sales. 

Apple didn't announce a deal with China Mobile, the giant Chinese carrier. But, an announcement is expected. It's supposed to come in November now.

However, Piecyk points out that 80% of China Mobile customers are pre-paid, which means they don't get a subsidy on their phone purchase. He estimates that 80% of the pre-paid buyers will be looking to get their first smartphone in the next 3-5 years. 

By pricing the 5C at $700+ Apple is giving up a huge chunk of the market. 

Apple has never, ever indicated that it was interested in chasing market share. 

But, Steve Jobs was notorious for saying one thing, then doing another. Investors and analysts may have thought that his successor, Tim Cook, would do the same thing. They're wrong. 

Cook said earlier this year, "winning has never been about making the most." 

That's not just lip service. He clearly doesn't want to chase market share. 

Today, investors are coming to terms with it.

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Mark Timmer zal op de Universiteit Twente promoveren op zijn onderzoek naar model checking. Daarbij worden computersystemen gemodelleerd en vervolgens automatisch op fouten gecontroleerd. Dit concept zou bepaalde bugs met wiskundige zekerheid kunnen voorkomen.

We hate to open too negatively here, but let’s just say that this seems like one of those ideas that’s just too good to be true. But heck, much stranger things have happened in the world of consumer electronics, and certainly the maker and crowdfunding communities have gone a ways toward helping us rethink our devices. What about a smartphone that could score a 10 every time iFixit teared it down? A simple, modular handset that you could configure and reconfigure it to your heart’s content and upgrade simply instead of throwing it all away? Phoneblok is still firmly in the chipper YouTube video concept phase, but its creators are hoping that, with enough social push at the same time, the company will be able to attract some big names to its big idea. Crazy? Sure. But crazier things have happened.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: Phone Bloks

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Albert Heijn gaat in een van zijn kipschotels andere kip gebruiken. Nu zit in het product 'AH Excellent ovenschotel Kip met Pesto' zogeheten plofkip. Het supermarktbedrijf vervangt die door kip met 1 Beter Leven-Ster.

De 'Excellent Kip met Pesto' was door Stichting Wakker Dier genomineerd voor de Liegebeest 2013-verkiezing. De supermarkt vertelde over Excellent dat dit "het beste is wat er te koop is in de culinaire wereld", terwijl er volgens Wakker Dier "gewoon plofkip in zat".

Wakker Dier is blij met de aanpassing van Albert Heijn en zet, althans voor dit jaar, een streep door de nominatie van AH. "We gaan ervan uit dat de supermarktketen volgend jaar alle Excellent-producten heeft voorzien van het Beter Leven-kenmerk, anders wordt AH in 2014 alsnog genomineerd", aldus Hanneke van Ormondt van de dierenwelzijnsorganisatie.

Versnelling

Albert Heijn zegt in een reactie dat de nominatie van Wakker Dier heeft gezorgd voor een versnelling: "In de zomer hebben we al besloten dat we alle Excellent-producten voorzien van kip met één of twee sterren van de Dierenbescherming. Eind oktober was de bedoeling om hiermee naar buiten te komen, maar door de Liegebeest-nominatie hebben we dat vervroegd naar vandaag. Wij zitten niet te wachten op een Liegebeest-trofee, en Wakker Dier zit niet te wachten op een winnaar die al heeft aangekondigd producten aan te passen", aldus de woordvoerder.

FrieslandCampina, McDonald's, Arla Natura en het Duurzaam Paling Fonds blijven genomineerd voor de Liegebeest-trofee 2013.

As President Barack Obama entertains a Russian proposal for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons stockpiles, experts are expressing skepticism of the unprecedented task of securing and destroying a massive WMD stockpile in an active warzone.

"The Russian proposal sounds attractive, but very quickly, operational problems could derail obtaining international control, much less actually destroying the arsenal," Amy Smithson, an expert on chemical weapons at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington, D.C., told The Wall Street Journal.

Those operational problems involve numerous political, diplomatic, and security obstacles.

First, as Eli Lake of the Daily Beast reports, the U.S. will be "relying on one of Syria's chief weapons suppliers to disarm a regime the president has accused of gassing its own people." (Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel even said that Russia has supplied Syria with chemical weapons.)

So step one is deciding if Putin can be trusted. The New York Times reports that "many officials, including some in the White House, wondered whether Mr. Putin was playing Mr. Obama rather than helping out."

Russia has blamed chemical attacks in Syria on the rebels, and on Tuesday the Kremlin rejected any suggestion that a necessary U.N. Security Council resolution would blame the Syrian government for deploying chemical weapons or include a potential use of force by the West.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Russia's plan was aimed at "knocking the legs out from under American aggression," and several analysts think that the Bashar al-Assad's regime could simply use the move to buy time.

Jeffrey White, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former Defense Intelligence Agency official, told USA Today that the tentative agreement "gives the regime permission to fire as much as it wants" as long as it doesn't use chemical weapons.

After all of the negotiation obstacles comes the hard part, which is securing and destroying chemical weapons while a 30-month civil war rages on.

A senior administration official told the New York Times that securing chemical arms in a war zone “just the first nightmare of making this work.”

“It’s a gargantuan task for the inspectors to mothball production, install padlocks, inventory the bulk agent as well as the munitions. Then a lot of it has to be destroyed — in a war zone,” Amy E. Smithson, an expert on chemical weapons at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California, told The New York Times. “What I’m saying is, ‘Beware of this deal.’ It’s deceptively attractive.”

Cheryl Rofer, who supervised a team responsible for destroying chemical warfare agents at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, told Foreign Policy that the disarmament work "is simply too dangerous to do while people are shooting at each other." That means there would need to be a full cease-fire between Assad and the rebels, which is highly unlikely and impossible to enforce (for the same reasons why the first one panned).

The process in Syria would be "exceedingly difficult" because, even with ceasefire, the destruction and deactivation of those weapons would take years and require tens of thousands of troops to protect inspectors.

“We’re talking boots on the ground,” said one former United Nations weapons inspector from Iraq, adding that any troops sent ot carry out the task "will be a target for someone, for one group or another. Because no matter who you are, you get mortared somewhere by one of the parties.”

Even after all of that, the plan requires trusting Assad to unveil an entire stockpile of weapons that was built over decades as a deterrent to Israel's nuclear option.

"The Libyans basically decided to show us everything," Paula DeSutter, who helped oversee the dismantling of Libya's chemical-weapons program as part of the George W. Bush administration, told the Wall Street Journal. "I can't believe this will be the case with the Syrians."

SEE ALSO: How Vladimir Putin Hijacked The White House's Response To Syria

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The Moto X is a return to form for Motorola, and it represents the first device it has produced from start to finish as a Google company. But while the Moto X is a good smartphone in its own right, half of the story is Motorola's surprising decision to move its final assembly to the US. This, according to the company, is what enables it to offer a quick turnaround time and direct fulfillment for customized, built-to-order devices.

To accomplish this, Motorola partnered with Flextronics to refab a factory in Texas formerly used by Nokia. In a mere six months, the factory was completely updated and transformed to Motorola's specifications, which including the hiring of 2,500 workers to make it run. Motorola did not actually make a final...

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I consider myself to be a normal person.

I'm an iPhone user who writes about technology for a living, but not often gadgets. That means I don't care about how fast the new iPhone runs, what operating system it's using, or the name of its processor.

I care about aesthetics, price, and some of the features, but only if they're really cool. 

So, fellow normals, here are the only things you need to know about the new iPhones Apple just announced.

BuzzFeed had a great Q&A on the new iPhones, but here are a few extra questions you may need answered.

Eh, I guess I should know the names of these phones. What are they again?

The iPhone 5C and the iPhone 5s.

Think "C" as in color, because those are the plastic phones that come in the really bright pastels.

Think "S" as in swanky or sophisticated, because those are the beautiful, more expensive metal devices. (If you ask Apple, the "S" stands for "speed" because the iPhone 5S has a zippy new processor that's about twice as fast as the iPhone 5.)

How much am I going to have to spend on these phones?

 The iPhone 5c is the cheaper option, but it's still kind of pricey. If you want less storage space (16GB) and will commit to a two-year contract from your wireless carrier, you'll pay $99. If you want more storage space (32 GB) and a two-year contract, you'll pay $199.

The iPhone 5s costs $199 for 16GB storage, $299 for 32GB and $399 for 64GB with a two-year contract.

What colors are the new iPhones?

The iPhone 5c comes in green, white, blue, pink, and yellow. There are a lot of fun-colored cases for the iPhone 5c too. The cases cost $29.

The iPhone 5s comes in gold and white, black and space gray, or silver and white.

What's this gold phone I keep hearing about? Is it tacky or cool?

That's the iPhone 5s and it's surprisingly beautiful. Most of the phone is white. Only the back and home button rim are a shimmering gold. It's elegant.

How big is the new iPhone? Did Apple finally make a phone with a giant screen?

The new iPhones have a 4-inch screen. That's the same size as the iPhone 5 screen that was introduced last year. (iPhones used to have 3.5-inch screens.) They're definitely not phablets, which are phones with screens so large that they're almost tablets.

The iPhone 5c looks like the iPhone 5, but it's just a little thicker and heavier. It's a tad longer than the iPhone 5 at 125 mm.

The iPhone 5S is the same thickness and weight as the iPhone 5.

What features are noticeably different in the iPhone 5S and 5C?

Aside from the color, when you turn on the phone you'll notice a few changes. That's because the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C use a new operating system, iOS 7. iOS 7 has a brand new design. All the basic apps like Messages, Mail, Weather, and Calendar will have a new look.

The iOS 7 font is a lot thinner than it was before.  If you want to get nitty gritty, the new font is "Helvetica Neue." It looks like this:

Siri is smarter now on both devices. It has access to your photos, Twitter search, and Wikipedia pages.

If you're on the iPhone 5S, you'll also notice improved camera features and a fingerprint sensor that can be used to unlock your phone.

The iPhone 5S also has a better camera.

The camera has image stabilization so you don't accidentally take blurry photos. It can take four quick photos at once and merge them together for one perfect photo. The camera also takes better low-light shots thanks to a new type of flash with two LED lights.

The iPhone 5S also allows you to take slow motion videos and edit parts of videos to play in slow motion.

Tell me more about the fingerprint sensor.

The fingerprint sensor is called Touch ID. It is only available on the iPhone 5S. It is located on the home button and it makes the phone harder to hack than passwords.

Touch ID recognizes three types of finger prints: the arch, loop and whorl. To set up the sensor, you'll scan your fingerprint a few times. Apple will then store it securely.

Here's what those fingerprint types look like:

The fingerprint sensor means you'll stop typing in a password every time you want to buy something on iTunes or download a new app. It also means you won't have to lock your phone with a type-in password. Your finger is the key.

Ok, so when can I buy these new phones?

You'll be able to pre-order the iPhone 5C online on September 13 either directly from Apple or from your wireless carrier. Both phones will be available for purchase on September 20 in multiple countries, including the United States.

Are the new iPhones worth the upgrade? Which one should I get?

If your carrier says you're due for a phone upgrade, then yes. You should buy either the iPhone 5C or iPhone 5S.

But which one?

It depends on which features matter most to you. If you don't care about having a slightly heavier phone, the iPhone 5C is a good bet. If you want to look ultra stylish, get a better camera, and not type in passwords, it might be worth splurging on the 5S.

If you have an iPhone 5, you're probably okay waiting another year to upgrade. If you have an iPhone 4 or 4S, you should definitely consider buying either the iPhone 5S or 5C.

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Freshmen at colleges across the U.S. are settling into their dormitories as a new school year kicks off. But campus living is nothing new: Harvard's oldest dorm is nearly 300 years old.

Dorms have modernized over time. Today, students can expect to find wireless Internet, air conditioning, and cheerful study rooms on move-in day. But some things haven't changed much. A century ago, students still slept in single beds, hung family photos on their walls, and hung out with friends in their dorm rooms.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison's archives department recently put together a fantastic collection of photos showing how student housing has changed over the past 110 years. They kindly shared their collection with us.

This woman's dorm room from 1898 isn't much different from modern day dorms: Pennants, books, and a chair for studying.

Photographs and mementos kept things homey in this room, in 1899.

Male students raised a glass in a boarding house or fraternity in this 1909 photo.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

One of the lead designers of Facebook's ad exchange says Twitter's $350 million acquisition of mobile ad company MoPub makes Twitter a superior product — potentially — in terms of mobile advertising.

Former Facebook ad targeting product manager Antonio Garcia-Martinez helped create FBX, which allows advertisers to target users inside Facebook based on their web browsing history. He is now an advisor to one of Facebook's larger ad-buying clients, Nanigans.

Here's how he sees the Twitter MoPub acquisition:

This makes Twitter the most interesting company in advertising right now.

It’s a bigger, ballsier bet than my former employer [Facebook] ever made, and it puts Twitter way ahead of any other social media player. I hate the douchey cant of MBA-speak, but to the extent we can use the term ‘game changer’ without puking in our mouths, this move is that.

What Twitter can do with MoPub, and Facebook has not, Garcia says, is create a mobile ad network that uses Twitter's data on its users as a targeting device. In mobile, everyone else's targeting is just guessing. The tracking cookies that enable targeting to exist on the desktop computer environment are largely missing from the mobile environment. But people stay logged in to Twitter on both desktop and mobile, and with MoPub Twitter now has a way to target people properly in both media, Garcia says:

They know whom you’ve followed, what you’ve Tweeted, as well as what pages on the Web you’ve browsed. Remember, there are Tweet buttons over the entire Internet, which means they know what websites you’ve visited. That’s very valuable data they can suddenly inject into the real-time ebb and flow of browsing data. It’s also longer-lived. What marketers call the ‘intent window’ of camera shopping might last only last a week or two, but your interest in Lady Gaga indicates a certain demographic category that won’t change for years. And only Twitter knows that (well, and Facebook, but they’re not doing much with it).

How does this technically work? Since you’re logged into Twitter on a desktop browser and on a mobile device, the browser cookie from your computer and the device ID from your device are joined. Twitter will join those two in a data-safe way on their back-end that allows the data to flow across user experiences, without losing control of the underlying identity. Doing that, they have within reach that heretofore unattainable Holy Grail of marketers: a permanent, stable, and immutable key that identifies everybody online, on every device, all the time.

Garcia is overstating the case somewhat. Twitter hasn't got this up and running yet. And Facebook has the same capabilities as Twitter.

The only difference between the two is that Twitter has now made a bold play that clearly indicates it wants to set up both an internal Twitter ad exchange — TFX? — and an external mobile ad network.

Facebook already has its FBX internal ad exchange, but, oddly, it put plans for its external mobile ad network on hold.

Now Twitter may have jumped ahead.

Disclosure: The author owns Facebook stock.

SEE ALSO: Twitter Acquires MoPub for $350 Million In Order To Build A Mobile Ad Exchange

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LONDEN - British Airways biedt reizigers op bepaalde korte-afstandsvluchten, die alleen met handbagage reizen, voortaan een speciaal tarief aan op vluchten naar Londen Heathrow en Londen City. Dit heeft BA woensdag bekendgemaakt. Eerder deed BA dit al met vluchten naar Londen Gatwick. De maatschappij zegt dat dit laatste “een succes” is geworden en dat de regeling daarom wordt uitgebreid.

If social commerce is ever going to fulfill its ambitions, it must go after all parts of what is known as the consumer purchase funnel.

The classic funnel might be divided into three main stages: consumers discover new products on Facebook or Pinterest, then form an opinion, and finally move on to the purchase stage. 

Social commerce is all about inspiration and product discovery, but entrepreneurs and retailers are anxious to transform that interest at the "top-of-the-funnel," into sales. 

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we analyzed the most recent data and spoke to leaders in the social commerce space to understand how their companies are adding value at different stages of the retail and e-commerce purchase funnel. To do so they're building social networks around e-commerce platforms, partnering with brands, or otherwise transforming social commerce's strengths in Pinterest-style digital window-shopping into a clear value proposition.

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Here's how social commerce companies are driving sales: 

• It's not about click-to-buy: Social commerce is not simply transactional — it's not just about offering a click-to-buy link next to an offer on Facebook. Social commerce will never be what some have wanted it to be, an "Amazon killer." 
• What will help social commerce grow as a sales driver? The key is to help connect the funnel end-to-end, or to connect different mediums — say, social media and TV — to help coax a consumer down the funnel. 
• There are a few ways to encourage purchases: Retargeted advertising may be one missing link. It enables social commerce to connect the sales funnel from end-to-end by serving ads that remind users of products they have browsed across the Web but have not yet purchased. So far, only Facebook has developed this capability.
• Also: Clever merchandising and user interfaces allow for sticky merchant-to-consumer relationships that can help nudge a consumer toward purchase over time. 
• Finally, referrals shouldn't be discounted: Another solution is for social commerce to develop as a sales referral engine, and take a cut of the sales. If social commerce sites have a large enough audience, even a low referral and conversion rate will result in a good revenue stream.

• Explains how time-sensitive offers on social media can motivate users to snap out of casual browsing or social media-grazing and into a buying mood
• Includes interviews with three social commerce industry leaders
• Discusses why Twitter has a unique opportunity at the bottom of the funnel
• Looks at Pinterest's prospects as a top-of-funnel platform
• Examines Facebook's mothballing of its physical gifts program and the success of its ad-retargeting platform, FBX
• Reveals average order values and order volume for a leading social commerce platform
• Breaks down the share of social media-generated e-commerce sales for each social network
• Looks at the demographics of social commerce consumers
• Compares Twitter, Facebook and more traditional digital methods of retail customer acquisition such as search engines

The report also includes an exclusive collection of eight charts and datasets, and a full-resolution version of our social commerce sales funnel graphic. Subscribers to BI Intelligence also have full access to our ongoing coverage of social commerce, including our May 2013 Social Commerce Report. 

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Suggests firm could be experiencing component shortages

Apple skids as the stock gets downgraded by analysts who weren't impressed with the company’s efforts to woo more customers with a lower-priced smartphone.

Apple has quietly discontinued its iOS Cards app that allowed users to customize, order, and automatically mail out letters. The app was introduced nearly two years ago alongside the iPhone 4S, but it was never included on a device by default. Though the app wasn't Apple's first foray into printing — it had done that for years in iPhoto — it was billed as a fun and simple way to get just a little more tactile at a time when most cards are going digital. Apple says that all cards ordered before 4PM ET yesterday, shortly after its press conference, will be delivered, but suggests that interested parties should head back over to iPhoto for future letter customizations, where a similar tool continues to function.

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