By Irwin Lazar An emerging class of applications threatens to disrupt the UC market by bringing consumer-like functionality, and more importantly, ease of access, into the business world.
The Chinese government has been working for a long time on replacing foreign, largely American, technology with home-grown alternatives, but conditions are much better for them than in the past.
Now that I have an Android Wear watch that can keep up with my daily running, I've been on the lookout for a solid set of Bluetooth headphones. I typically run…
Google's new Android software comes with an important feature for photography enthusiasts: the ability to shoot raw images.
This means users will be able to see what photos look like before the phone's camera processes it and translates it to a JPEG file.
The ability to shoot in raw is common on high-end DSLR cameras, but hasn't made its way to mobile until now.
So why does this matter? The average person probably doesn't care much about shooting photos in raw.
In fact, it would probably be more of an inconvenience than an improvement. The camera software in phones are built to compress and translate images into a JPEG or similar file format since it's easy to share and edit, as CNET's Stephen Shankland notes in his feature about raw coming to the Android platform.
But those who do know a thing or two about photography could benefit greatly from the new feature. Unlike JPEG or PNG, raw gives you the freedom and flexibility to edit and manipulate particular parts of an image.
Raw photos are essentially pure image data captured through a camera without any compression or modifications — meaning photographers can fiddle with it any way they want using software like Photoshop, as Shankland explains. In other words, when you're shooting in raw the camera's software doesn't make any assumptions about how colors and other elements of an image should look.
It might not be the most noticeable addition to Android, but it opens up the door for mobile phones to replace professional cameras in certain circumstances. And, it certainly gives Android a leg up over the iPhone in that particular regard. Although the iPhone takes fantastic images, it doesn't allow you to shoot in raw like you can with phones running Android 5.0.
Google filed a lawsuit against Mississippi attorney general Jim Hood on Friday, the Washington Post reports.
Google has accused Hood of helping launch an illegal campaign against Google and acting as a pawn for Hollywood lobbyist group Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
Hood issued a subpoena for information about how Google hides ads promoting the sale of illegal and prescription drugs on its search engine and through YouTube. The lawsuit would block this subpoena, the Post reports.
Among the 32,000 emails leaked in a massive cyberattack against Sony Pictures Entertainment were emails between Hood and the MPAA. Last week The Verge reported the MPAA was working with movie companies on a project to stop a company identified by the name "Goliath," which is thought to be a code word for Google.
The MPAA has historically taken issue with Google because, from Hollywood's perspective, Google enables illegal movie downloading and piracy. Google has tweaked its search engine algorithm to make it harder to find pirated movies, but for Hollywood, that's not enough. The movie companies think Google should stop people from searching and finding pirated movies entirely.
Google alleges the MPAA and six other studios are trying to "secretly revive SOPA." SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, was a controversial piece of legislation that would let the federal government and private companies — like major movie companies — create a "blacklist bill" that would censor certain websites, like sites hosting pirated movies.
"Google voluntarily strives to exclude content that violates either federal law or Google’s own policies, by blocking or removing hundreds of millions of videos, web pages, advertisements and links in the last year alone," Google says in the suit. "These extensive efforts comply with and go well beyond Google’s legal obligations."
The lawsuit says Hood's subpoena is a violation of the First Amendment because it is "overbroad" and asks a private company to censor material.
Even though Google takes industry-leading measures in dealing with problematic content on our services, Attorney General Hood proceeded to send Google a sweeping 79-page subpoena, covering a variety of topics over which he lacks jurisdiction.The Verge reported that the MPAA and its members discussed such subpoenas and certainly knew about this subpoena’s existence before it was even sent to Google.
Attorney General Hood told the Huffington Post earlier this week that the MPAA "has no major influence on my decision-making,” and that he “has never asked [the] MPAA a legal question” and “isn't sure which lawyers they employ.” And yet today the Huffington Post and the Verge revealed that Attorney General Hood had numerous conversations with both MPAA staff and Jenner & Block attorneys about this matter.
The FCC on Friday announced a $90 million settlement with T-Mobile, making it the latest phone carrier to pay a penalty for "cramming," which involves adding unauthorized charges to customers' bills for subscriptions or "premium" text…
BlackBerry on Friday reported a bigger-than-expected drop in third-quarter revenue, sending shares of the struggling smartphone maker lower, even as it eked out a small adjusted profit and began generating cash flow again.
Revenue fell to $793 million from $1.19 billion a year earlier, falling short of analysts’ expectations of $931.5 million. BlackBerry’s Nasdaq-listed shares fell 5.7 percent to $9.50 in premarket trading.
“Revenue missed consensus by a sizable amount, which is especially troubling because it included one month of new BlackBerry Passport sales,” said Morningstar analyst Brian Colello, referring to its unconventional new smartphone, which has a large, square touchscreen and keyboard.
On a conference call on Friday, BlackBerry Chief Executive Officer John Chen said hardware sales in the quarter were weaker than expected as production was limited and the company could only fulfill all device orders early in the fourth quarter.
At an analyst conference in San Francisco last month, Chen said revenue could slide faster than expected as its revenue profile changes.
BlackBerry had long made money charging system access fees, but now offers some basic services for free. As older devices are retired, that erodes revenue, but the company is aiming to boost hardware sales with its new Passport and Classic phones, buying time to scale up its software business in 2015.
Cash flow was positive $43 million in the third quarter, versus negative cash flow of $36 million in the second quarter. BlackBerry had said it was targeting break-even cash flow by the end of the fiscal year in February 2015.
Colin Gillis, tech analyst at BGC Partners in New York, said Chen did a good job controlling expenses.
“The fact that he overachieved by turning cash flow positive this quarter – that’s a great milestone,” said Gillis. “It gets easier from here.”
Excluding, a one-time non-cash debenture charge and restructuring charges, the company reported a profit of 1 cent a share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected a loss of 5 cents.
The Waterloo, Ontario-based company reported a net loss of $148 million, or 28 cents a share, in the quarter ended Nov. 29. That compared with a year-earlier loss of $4.4 billion, or $8.37 a share.
BlackBerry launched its long-awaited Classic smartphone on Wednesday, hoping to help win back market share and woo customers still using older versions of its physical keyboard devices. The phone resembles its once wildly popular Bold and Curve handsets.
Separately, BlackBerry completed its acquisition of Secusmart, a privately held firm specializing in voice and data encryption.
(By Allison Martell and Alastair Sharp with additional reporting by Euan Rocha and Jeffrey Hodgson; Editing by W Simon and J Benkoe)
Companies spend trillions of dollars on technology every year. The best investors can see which new companies are serving the needs of big enterprises, and invest accordingly.
To uncover the hottest new trends in business tech next year, we spoke to some of the most successful enterprise-focused VCs in Silicon Valley.
1. “Big Data” will continue to mature into a huge market
Last year was a big year for “Big Data,” a buzzy term that refers to new tools that let companies analyze massive amounts of data from new sources like tiny sensors or web site visits. There were massive fundings in companies like Cloudera, DataStax, and DataGravity, while Hadoop provider Hortonworks and data analytics firm New Relic went public.
Steve Herrod of General Catalyst says this represents even more opportunities for next year. “2015 will be a fun year as these companies all focus on revenue.”
Greylock’s Jerry Chen sees Hadoop maturing beyond a data hub, becoming a broader application platform. “The next generation of business critical apps will be built on Hadoop, just like ERP apps were built on relational databases like Oracle.”
But “Big Data” won’t just be tied to Silicon Valley or tech companies. Emergence Capital’s Kevin Spain says, “New sensors and drones will revolutionize data collection in industries such as agriculture and land surveying.” Bessemer’s Brian Feinstein and Kent Bennett say this will lead to more software development for data collection across all industries, including traditionally old sectors like oil & gas.
“The hottest job in corporate America will be the chief data officer,” Norwest Venture’s Matt Howard says.
2. Challengers to AWS
Most startups use Amazon Web Services for hosting their services, which explains why AWS is the fastest growing business within Amazon. But many VCs expect its growth to slow next year.
General Catalyst’s Steve Herrod says AWS will continue to be a big player but will face increased competition from Google and Microsoft. NEA’s Jon Sakoda agrees that AWS is dominant in the space, but says Google will challenge it in the developer ecosystem, while Microsoft will re-double its efforts on Azure. Bessemer’s Ethan Kurzweil says AWS’s dominance will weaken “as alternatives that are specially tailored to a specific use case or company emerge.”
But this may also present more opportunities for AWS, Herrod says, as it will push it “further into the medium and larger companies that dominate IT spending.”
3. Enterprise mobile apps
Emergence Capital’s Kevin Spain argues 80% of the global workforce are underserved by technology on the job. There are 2.5 billion non-desk workers in areas like construction, manufacturing, and healthcare, that need apps specifically tailored to meet their needs.
“At $40 per worker per year, it could be the next $100 billion opportunity for enterprise technology. I predict we will start seeing more enterprise mobile use cases in 2015 that generate real revenue,” he says.
In fact, Spain's point relates to what Andreessen Horowitz’s Steven Sinofsky wrote on Re/code: “Work will happen first on mobile platforms, for both team agility and organizational security.” He says businesspeople everywhere are already using iPads all the time, with “enterprise apps, email and browsing (and now Office), doing enterprise work.”
If any one vendor served as the proprietary bogeyman to motivate the creation of an open source private cloud stack, it’s VMware. For more than a decade, the virtualization giant owned the core infrastructure of Global 2000 data centers, only to have the industry fight back in 2010 with the non-profit OpenStack Foundation. As the industry rallied around open-source OpenStack, proprietary VMware looked to be reeling.
That was then. This is now.
Today VMware is emerging as a serious champion of OpenStack, pivoting quickly to prove that they were not going to be the next victim of Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma.” With few customers lining up to use vCloud Director, VMware has augmented its otherwise proprietary approach with OpenStack.
VMware also found an unlikely OpenStack champion: Mirantis, the last remaining private pure-play OpenStack vendor. Mirantis was the first OpenStack vendor to announce support for VMware’s hypervisor technology, vCenter.
Boris Renski
Today, the two companies published a Mirantis OpenStack reference architecture for VMware vCenter Server and VMware NSX. Publicly available for download, Mirantis OpenStack lets customers deploy and control workloads that run on VMware vSphere in their VMware vCenter Server clusters within Mirantis OpenStack.
I spoke with Boris Renski, Mirantis co-founder and CMO, and board member of the OpenStack Foundation, to understand his company’s coopetition with VMware and how he thinks the virtualization giant will fare with OpenStack customers.
ReadWrite: I thought VMware was the enemy of OpenStack–the proprietary private cloud solution?
Renski: I can’t speak for VMware, but I can assure you that from our perspective as the largest standalone OpenStack vendor, we take VMware very seriously. They recognize that their sophisticated customer base wants to get more value out of their investments in VMware while also wanting the flexibility of working with alternative open source cloud solutions like OpenStack. Big companies are not going to allow a single vendor to determine their computing fate. When Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of VMware, gives a keynote address at VMworld committing the company to OpenStack support, it sends a message that they’re here to stay.
Every infrastructure vendor does “OpenStack something” today. I separate those vendors into two buckets: ones who have a real OpenStack strategy backed by an engineering investment and ones who use OpenStack as a checkmark in their marketing story.
The more I work with VMware, the more it becomes clear to me that VMware Integrated OpenStack is a strategic move that follows customer demand. This motivates our announcement today, where we have made it easier for VMware customers to run OpenStack alongside VMware’s solutions.
RW: The same Gelsinger who moans that , "We all lose if [applications] end up in these commodity public clouds" like Amazon Web Services and, presumably, OpenStack," right? Let's get real. VMware is battling at the technology level to ensure that customers continue to embrace its ESXi hypervisor technology to fight for market share.
BR: I’ll concede that, powered by the KVM hypervisor, OpenStack indirectly competes with ESXi.
But it’s important to remember that cloud infrastructure has two very different use cases. One is the systems administrator use case. Systems administrators want to manage process, policy and security while provisioning infrastructure to their internal customers. Historically, both VMware and Red Hat designed their solutions with the systems administrator use case as their focus–VMware with vCenter and Red Hat with RHEL Virtualization.
The other is the developer use case. Developers don’t want to deal with the systems administrators or processes; they want direct, self-service access to their infrastructure. Both VMware and Red Hat are effectively using their existing “system administrator” offerings to wedge themselves into organizations to go after developers. The key difference is that VMware is a standard for at least 60% of systems administrators, whereas the RHEL Virtualization footprint in the enterprise is virtually non-existent.
RW: It makes sense that an enterprise would look to a company like Mirantis for OpenStack software and support, given that you're a core contributor and have been selling your own OpenStack distribution into the Global 2000 market now for more than a year with some noted successes, like the $30M Ericsson deal earlier this year. From your perspective, why would an enterprise customer look to VMware for OpenStack? Wouldn't they more likely turn to a “known” OpenStack vendor like Mirantis or Red Hat?
BR: Actually, I think VMware will overtake Red Hat in OpenStack sales in 2015. In fact, I doubt Red Hat will manage to stay in the top three in OpenStack revenues and workloads managed next year. Mirantis is seeing great customer traction, and we aim to keep the lead (grins). I predict we will be followed by HP and VMware.
Yes, VMware. How has VMware vaulted into the top ranks so quickly?
The main reason OpenStack is so popular is because it enables one to leverage existing infrastructure investments. For example, if you already have storage from NetApp, a load balancer from A10 and vCenter licenses, you can layer OpenStack right on top and have yourself a cloud. This works great for Mirantis because we have no ulterior infrastructure agenda. It poses a problem for vendors who have to compete with existing infrastructure investments.
Enterprises invested a lot more in VMware infrastructure than they did in RHEL. They will have no reason to switch to “RHEL Integrated OpenStack” when it functions as a rip-and-replace of VMware with no less lock-in. VMware Integrated OpenStack will be a shoo-in.
Oracle just reported earnings for the quarter ended Nov. 30, and it's a beat — the first one in a while after three straight quarters of misses.
Non-GAAP EPS came in a penny ahead of expectations at $0.96, and adjusted revenue was $9.61 billion versus expectations of $9.50 billion.
The all-important cloud revenue segment was up 5% to $7.3 billion. Oracle is increasingly moving more
The stock is up about 3% after hours on the pleasant surprise for investors.
We're updating this post as we go, hit refresh for the latest, or just click here.
Last quarter, Oracle posted its third earnings miss in a row, and Larry Ellison stepped down as CEO, handing the reins over to two trusted lieutenants, Safra Katz and Mark Hurd. Ellison is still executive chairman and chief technology officer, though, so he's not exactly sitting on the sidelines.
Rolled up in the list of changes to U.S.-Cuba policy announced on Wednesday was a win for cigar-lovers: American travelers who visit Cuba will be allowed to enter the U.S. with $400 worth of goods — $100 of which can consist of Cuban cigars and booze.
The U.S. hopes those travelers — which now includes families of Cubans, government officials, journalists, business travelers, educators and a handful of other authorized travelers — will provide support for the growth of "Cuba’s nascent private sector," injecting some much-needed capital into the communist island's economy. Read more...
U.S. wireless carrier Sprint is expected to face a $105 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission in coming weeks over unauthorized charges on customers’ cellphone bills, a practice known as cramming, according to FCC officials.
FCC commissioners are reviewing and will soon vote on the proposed fine over charges billed to Sprint customers for services they never requested, FCC sources said.
FCC officials spoke on a condition of anonymity because the proposed fine has not been made public.
FCC spokesman Neil Grace declined comment. Sprint spokeswoman Stephanie Vinge Walsh said the company does not comment on rumor and speculation.
The FCC has also been investigating cramming complaints against T-Mobile. The FTC in July filed a cramming complaint against T-Mobile in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
Prodded by state attorneys general, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon agreed in November to stop billing customers for third-party services.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, in announcing AT&T’s settlement in October, estimated that 20 million consumers a year are crammed.
The National Journal was first to report the news of the planned fine for Sprint.
(Reporting by Alina Selyukh; Editing by David Gregorio)
Phone calls, fax machines and hand-delivered letters are all being used to get work done, as employees are avoiding logging onto the internet in case hackers flash up another threatening message.
Sony employees first learned they had been hacked when the mysterious "Guardians of Peace" hacker group flashed up a threatening message on their work computers.
That wasn't the last communication, though. The hackers have issued threats and even displayed more images on Sony computers, meaning that they may still have access to the computer system.
Sony Pictures' London office has also been affected by the hack. Staff are using pens and paper, and the Wi-Fi network is out of bounds.
Google released its annual report of the year's most searched terms on Monday.
Google combs through the billions of things people search for and organizes them into lists. This year's most popular global search terms are a mix of celebrities, sporting events, pop culture phenomena, and more.
Here's Google's list of the 10 most popular search terms in the world for 2014, ranked from least popular to most popular.
Earlier this year, Peter Thiel caused a stir when he accused Twitter's management of being high on pot.
He later backed away from his comments, saying, “You could smoke a lot of pot and still have a great company, if the business model is as robust as Twitter’s."
And Thiel would know, because, as it turns out, he's investing in a marijuana startup.
Thiel's Founders Fund is leading a $75 million Series B round in a cannabis startup, Privateer, at a $425 million pre-money valuation, according to documents obtained by Business Insider.
Privateer was founded in 2011 and it's positioning itself to be the leader in the weed supply chain, which the company says is currently fragmented, poorly managed, and largely run underground, despite "proven demand."
It's quietly bought up another startup in the space, Leafly, which is like Yelp for weed products. In 2013, Privateer launched Lafitte Ventures, which focuses on medical marijuana, and launched Tilray, which mails medical weed to users and generated nearly $200,000 in revenue last year. Privateer is also exploring a testing facility (Arbormain) in Washington state. The founders may launch their own weed-focused investment fund too, so Privateer can pour money into external cannabis companies.
Medical marijuana is currently available in at least 22 states as well as Washington D.C. Privateer estimates that U.S. weed market could be a $20—50 billion opportunity. Privateer hopes to be the leader across everything from growing and processing various strains of marijuana to supply and shipping it. It also plans to get into the accessory business, selling things like pipes and vaporizers to users.
Privateer is already generating meaningful revenue, although the company is not profitable. In 2014 it expects to generate nearly $11 million in net revenue, up from $1.2 million in 2013. Most of that revenue (60-70%) is generated by Lafitte Ventures, and the rest is from Leafly. Privateer expects to reach profitability and generate $111 million in 2015 and $440 million in 2016.
Privateer was founded by Brendan Kennedy, Michael Blue and Christian Groh. Kennedy, who is the company's CEO, and Groh, Privateer's COO, formerly worked with an affiliate of Silicon Valley Bank. Blue, the company's CFO, worked for a private equity firm, Herrington.
Thiel and Privateer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It’s why, on average, nine out of 10 seed-stage startups fail.
Here are some of the previously hot startups that fell off the map this year.
Aereo
Aereo was built on the simple idea of delivering broadcast TV through the internet. It sold little antennas that transmitted live TV to devices like a laptop or a smartphone.
And it grew like crazy. At the end of last year, Aereo had roughly 80,000 subscribers. It had raised almost $100 million in funding. Everyone thought it would eventually blow up the TV industry.
Fab saw huge success as an invite-only flash sales site. In 2012, the site had over 10 million members. By 2013, the company was valued at over $1 billion, after raising $150 million in funding.
But Fab failed to turn itself around when the flash sales industry started to go downhill. In October, Fab founder Jason Goldberg said Fab was burning through $14 million a month. It downsized to 185 employees from 750.
And last month, it was reported that Fab is in talks to be acquired by Irish company PCH for a mere $15 million.
Hailo
Hailo, the UK taxi hailing app, shut down its operations in North America this year, largely due to increased competition from market leaders, Uber and Lyft.
It says it’s shifting its focus to the Asian market, where it’s seeing lots of growth in Japan specifically. Depending on how well it does there, Hailo could make a return to the US and Canada, it says.
There were also some managerial changes too this year, as co-founder and CEO Jay Bregman left the company.
Hailo’s raised over $77 million so far, and has operations in 20 cities in Europe and Asia.
Microsoft started rolling out a new feature for Skype on Monday called Skype Translator which will translate communications from users using different languages in near real-time -- that is, as you're…
You are what you read, and if your goal is to build a massively successful company where you call the shots, you might want to start with the following books.
We asked wildly successful entrepreneurs and VCs, including Mark Cuban and Peter Thiel, for their top book recommendation. Here's what they said.
Bianca Male, Aimee Groth, and Alison Griswold contributed to this article.
"The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand
Self-made billionaire Mark Cuban tells Business Insider that this book is required reading for every entrepreneur.
It's also a favorite of Charlie O'Donnell, a partner at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. He says, "I don't know any book that sums up the entrepreneurial passion and spirit better than 'The Fountainhead' by Ayn Rand: 'The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.'"
This is one of the three books that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had his senior managers read for a series of all-day book clubs. Drucker helped popularize now commonplace ideas about management. For example, that managers and employees should work toward a common set of goals.
"The Effective Executive" explores the time-management and decision-making habits that best equip an executive to be productive and valuable in an organization.
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.
Jeff Bezos also had his executives read "The Innovator's Dilemma," one of the all-time most influential business books and a top pick of several other founders and VCs, whose reviews are below.
Steve Blank, a former serial entrepreneur who now teaches at U.C. Berkeley and other schools, says of the book: "Why do large companies seem and act like dinosaurs? Christensen finally was able to diagnose why and propose solutions. Entrepreneurs should read these books as 'how to books' to beat large companies in their own markets."
Chris Dixon, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz and a former cofounder and CEO of Hunch, notes: "'The Innovator's Dilemma' popularized the (often misused) phrase 'disruptive technology,' but there's a lot more than that one big idea. Great insights into the 'dynamics' (changes over time) of markets."
Small businesses in the UK have formed a support group to cope with the Amazon one-penny price glitch that has plunged hundreds of businesses trading through Amazon into chaos.
The error affected hundreds of items sold Friday between 7 p.m and 8 p.m. It was caused by a problem with the Northern Ireland-based RepricerExpress, an online tool for automated pricing.
The blunder could cost individual retailers thousands of pounds, warns The Register. Many took to social media to tell customers that their livelihoods were at stake — as some consumers celebrated their bargain purchases. It is thought that smaller, family-run businesses are most at risk. Businesses probably won't fulfill orders bought for a penny, but some of those orders were processed on Amazon, making them a pain to undo — and causing customer ill will.
A furniture seller called Mehboob Rasool told City A.M. that smaller businesses that sell on Amazon had clubbed together to hire a lawyer to represent them. He explained he had been charged nearly £5,000 in fees from Amazon after products worth thousands were bought with the massive reduction.
Seller Judith Blackford, owner of the kids' dress-up company Kiddymania, said she lost £20,000 overnight and was calling for support. She tweeted: "#supportkiddymania through the amaZon 1p crisis......please."
A statement from CEO Brendan Doherty reads: "We understand that you are angry and upset and we will endeavor to work to make good on this issue and to work to restore your confidence in our product and service."
Amazon said it canceled most of the orders placed when the one-penny pricing was in effect. However, the e-commerce giant is looking into a "small number of orders" that were successfully put through at the time.
The company tells Business Insider:
We are aware that a number of Marketplace sellers listed incorrect prices for a short period of time as a result of the third party software they use to price their items on Amazon.co.uk. We responded quickly and were able to cancel the vast majority of orders placed on these affected items immediately and no costs or fees will be incurred by sellers for these cancelled orders. We are now reviewing the small number of orders that were processed and will be reaching out to any affected sellers directly.
Just after college, I spent nearly six soul-crushing years in business casual clothing pushing paper from one side of a desk to the other. But a crippling caffeine addiction isn't the only thing I picked up from my time as a cubicle monkey. I also discovered the art of doing nothing without arousing the suspicions of my superiors.
Ford this week revealed Sync 3, a complete rewrite of its in-car, voice-controlled smartphone connectivity system. Sync 3 is better in nearly every way for end users, but Ford made some huge and eyebrow-raising changes to the platform under the hood that will impact developers, too. Here's the scoop.
By now you've likely heard that Microsoft has a cloud version of Office, called Office 365, that you pay for on subscription either monthly or annually.
Office 365 is a little unusual in that it is cloud software and you install it on your PC, to give you the best of all worlds. As you keep you paying for it, Microsoft automatically adds cool new features.
We asked Microsoft to send us a list of the best new things you could do with the software that most people didn't know it could do.
Multiple people can edit the same document at once
No more emailing attachments. Everyone can just pile on and work at once.
By the way, while this feature is new for Office 365, it's not unique to Microsoft. Google Apps offers the same. But the first time you see it in action, it's wild.
Skype with co-workers while working on a document
In the coming weeks, Microsoft will be rolling out a feature that lets you simply click a "Chat" button to begin chatting with everyone working in the document over Skype.
Even if you leave the Office document, you'll be able to continue the conversation via Skype on your desktop or phone, so can keep talking to the team as they make edits.
Link to files, don't attach them
If your company uses a business edition of Office 365, here's a nifty trick for sharing a file. Upload your file to Office 365's cloud storage. Fire up the cloud version of Outlook (known as Outlook Web App) and, instead of attaching a file, link to the file on your cloud.
This isn't unique to Office 365 — all cloud storage services allow you share documents via links. But Outlook will automatically grant edit permission to the people you are emailing. (You can change their permissions, too.)
In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that this demand will grow by 22% by 2022, which is above average.
There are tons of jobs on both the east and west coast for computer programmers, according to data collected by tech networking platform Experts Exchange.
The company compiled and analyzed data from job search engine Indeed to compile this infographic that shows which states have the most openings for computer programming jobs.
Surprisingly enough, California and New York aren't at the top of the list even though the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City are both known for their budding startup scenes.
Virginia and Maryland topped the list, and according to a product manager that worked on the infographic, it's likely due to the number of government-related computer programming jobs in the Washington DC region.
OMG Chrome got an interesting tip just before the big run up to January's Consumer Electronics Show. According to a source, Acer will be super-sizing its next Chromebook with a 15.6-inch…
It’s the busiest time of the year for shoppers and merchants alike, but Amazon Prime members have the added benefit of free two-day shipping from the online retail giant. The program's perks also include access to Amazon’s media libraries, where users can stream music, movies, and TV shows for just $99 a year.
Based on estimates charted for us by BI Intelligence, membership in Amazon Prime has spiked over the last year, and is expected to reach roughly 58 million worldwide by the end of 2014. Bundling so many services into Amazon Prime seems to be working: According to RBC data, 40% of Prime members have spent more than $200 on the website in the last 90 days, compared to only 13% of non-Prime members.
He's turning the reigns over to 17-year Cisco veteran Chuck Robbins.
Under Chambers, one of the longest-sitting CEOs in the tech industry, Cisco grew into a $47 billion company with more than 71,000 employees.
The company celebrated its 30-year anniversary in December. But for most of that time, the famous then-husband-and-wife team who founded the company, Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, have not been part of it, with no stake and no say. (They're now divorced.)
This is a classic Silicon Valley tale of power struggle every bit as dramatic as the ousting of Steve Jobs or the founding of Facebook immortalized by the movie "The Social Network."
In the early 1980's Bosack and Lerner worked for Stanford University and couldn't email each other from different buildings because the networks couldn't talk to each other. So they invented the tech that connected and translated one network to another, something called "the multi-protocol router."
Cisco sold its first router in 1986 and by the end of 1987, the fledgling company had about $1.5 million in sales. They needed cash to fund future growth and struck up a deal with the famed venture capitalist Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital who invested $2 million.
Valentine almost immediately appointed as CEO a man named John Morgridge, who had previously run an early computer company called GRiD.
Lerner and Morgridge got off to a rocky start and their relationship went downhill from there.
In an interview from the 1990's, Lerner recalled, "The first time I met John Morgridge he had already been hired," and that the first thing he said to her was, "I hear that you're everything that's wrong with Cisco."
They disagreed on how best to serve customers. Morgridge didn't think the founders had a clue about sales.
"They were basically selling to their peer group, through word of mouth. The initial customer set started with the lunatic fringe — the kind of people who are way out on the leading edge," he recounted to Forbes years later.
Eventually, the the board sided with Morgridge and ousted her. Her husband Bosack quit in solidarity and they immediately sold their two-thirds stake in Cisco for about $170 million dollars.
That was a lot of money at the time, but had they held onto it for a few more years it would have been worth billions. Today, two-thirds of Cisco is worth about $90 billion.
Years later, Bosack didn't seem too choked up about selling, or even leaving, Cisco. In 1992 he told Forbes, "We had to ask ourselves the question, 'Do we want to run a company or do we want to make money?' For us, it was the latter," says Bosack.
Lerner didn't feel the same. "Len and I under-estimated our skills," she told Forbes in 1992. "I certainly could have run that business. I had my hands on the reins."
A couple of years ago, she recounted some hair-raising tales about sexism in the office to Businessweek, describing VCs as “old salesmen who never worked with women.” She described a meeting where a vice president announced that “he had just given his wife syphilis, and everybody laughed.”
Lerner has since gone on to lead an amazing life. Most people know she founded a cosmetics company bought a few years later by Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
But she's also become a Jane Austen scholar, famous in those circles for two reasons. She wrote a book called "Second Impressions," a historically accurate sequel to "Pride and Prejudice." And she bought a 125-year lease to Chawton House, and began to restore it. That's the estate owned by Austin's brother where Jane lived and wrote.
Lerner also owns an organic farm and a tavern in Virgina, and founded the Women in Mathematical Sciences Initiative at Shenandoah University, among a long list of other post-Cisco achievements.
Smartphones have gone from communications tools to our front door keys, light switches, remote controls, credit cards—and now driver’s licenses, at least in Iowa.
According to the Des Moines Register, Iowa's Department of Transportation will offer digital driver’s licenses via a free mobile app that will launch next year. The virtual version will be as legally valid as the physical IDs currently sitting in Iowans' wallets, but infinitely cooler—the on-screen versions will feature animated headshots that rotate in place.
People use their phones for everything these days, so storing a driver's license in there too seems very convenient. But the pros come with some potential cons that—if not properly addressed—could turn these virtual licenses into a ticket to some scary scenarios.
There aren't many details yet, but Iowa DOT Director Paul Trombino describes the software as a highly secure "identity vault app.” The user will be required to enter a PIN code before the digital license gets displayed.
Law enforcement officers will accept the onscreen version as a legitimate form of identification at traffic stops or airport screening points in the state.
The program will not be mandatory, however, so if residents don't want the new licenses with GIF-like headshots, they can stick with the traditional, static cards. There are valid reasons why they might.
Government-led technology initiatives don't always go smoothly, and there are high stakes in matters of identity. Trombino may boast about the app's security now, but it would need to be essentially hackproof, with heavy duty measures to guard against unauthorized tampering or even intentional counterfeiting of its digital assets.
Matters of Privacy
Then there's the pesky proposition of people handing over their phones to police officers. While the Supreme Court ruled against warrantless cell phone searches last summer (though not Canada), it's not clear whether giving devices to law enforcement officers constitutes consent in the eyes of the law.
Andrea Henry, the Iowa DOT's director of strategic communication, told CNET her department is working on ways to allay those privacy concerns. That may involve the police scanning the license while the phone stays in the owner's hand, or figuring out how to "lock the rest of your phone and only leave the driver's license app open," she said.
If Iowa doesn't have all the answers, it's because there's no precedent for this yet. More than 30 states—including Iowa—accept electronic proof of insurance, but motorists in the state are set to be the first in the nation to carry digital driver's licenses. In a sense, that makes Iowa a test case, giving the rest of the country a glimpse of what the future may hold.
The recent attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment is about as scary as it gets as emails which insulted the company’s hired talent or actors has been released. In just one incident a director called Angelina Jolie a spoiled, untalented, egomaniacal Brat. Then there were racially charged comments about President Obama. A leak of tens of thousands of salaries and social security numbers. The leak of contractor salaries, movies and discussions regarding costs related to movies. And we are just getting started… Expect more. Recently I saw an analyst say the leak is worth $100 million to Sony but I surmised the number is north of one billion thanks to reputational damage – salary leakage which gives competitors an advantage and of course we expect future partners and even employees to be critical of the company when doing business.
What is most interesting about the situation however is the attack was estimated to be sophisticated enough to get past 90% of firms! Moreover, it was so pervasive, it’s still flashing demands on the computers of Sony employees from Guardians of Peace or #GOP – the hacking group! And it’s not just bad for Sony. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times took a major credibility hit as it was revealed she offered to show her story to Sony Pictures co-chair, Bernard Weinraub before it was published. If that wasn’t enough, the medical records of many Sony employees and family members were also released.
News today tells of Sony launching a denial of server attack to make it difficult for sites hosting the information to disseminate it. AWS was supposed to be the vehicle being used according to Re/Code. Amazon is denying its servers are being used for such a purpose. The reality may be somewhere in-between as a company called MediaDefender or a similar concern is likely being used to seed torrent networks with false seeds of file names similar to those being shared on such networks. The goal is to have fake seeds chew up processing power on computers and yield nothing for the user.
We can expect an escalation in the war between hackers and companies looking to block stolen information. But then again, as some have accurately surmised, Sony may bear some responsibility here as placing thousands of passwords in a file named Password may not have been the smartest thing in the world.
Apparently no one in the company ever read Cookoo's Egg.
Microsoft's mobile Windows Phone operating system is over four years old.
In that time, it's only managed to grab between 3% and 5% of the global smartphone market share. And in that time, Android has exploded to grab ~85% of the market. iOS has ~10% of the market. Windows Phone may be more popular than BlackBerry now, but given the state of that company, that's hardly anything to be proud of.
While market share is sort of pointless to talk about in the mobile world, Windows Phone's tiny user base means developers aren't keen to bring their apps to to the platform. The result is a jumbled catalog of apps full of knockoffs, clones, and and apps of dubious origin.
Microsoft has about 500,000 apps in the Windows Phone store. If it cleaned out all the junk like you see above, it'd likely be a lot less than that. And the top-tier apps that matter — The Instagrams, Snapchats, Facebooks, and Twitters of the world — either don't exist on Windows Phone or are far behind in features compared to their iOS and Android counterparts.
It's the chicken or the egg scenario. Developers don't want to make apps for an OS few people are using and people don't want to buy a phone without good apps or support from US carriers. For example, two prominent Microsoft writers, Tom Warren of The Verge and Ed Bott of ZDNet, recently announced that they were ditching their Windows Phones precisely because of those problems.
But Microsoft has one more chance.
On Jan. 21, the company will give us a deeper look at Windows 10, its new operating system that will work on everything from computers to tablets to smartphones. One person familiar with Microsoft's plans told Business Insider that the head of Windows Phone, Joe Belfiore, will have a big part in that presentation.
Microsoft has also said that writing apps for Windows 10 will be a lot easier. In theory, developers will be able to write their apps for one device and easily be able to tweak them to work on other form factors. That could be a quick fix to Windows Phone's app problem and potentially help reinvigorate its stagnant sales growth.
At the same time, even if Windows Phones remain a dud after the Windows 10 launch, Microsoft might be OK with that. In a meeting with Business Insider and a small gathering of reporters in November, CEO Satya Nadella said he views Windows Phone as just one piece of the overall Windows ecosystem.
Companies spend trillions of dollars on technology every year. The best investors can see which new companies are serving the needs of big enterprises, and invest accordingly.
Building a successful startup is hard. 
You are what you read, and if your goal is to build a massively successful company where you call the shots, you might want to start with the following books.
Cisco sold its first router in 1986 and by the end of 1987, the fledgling company had about $1.5 million in sales. They needed cash to fund future growth and struck up a deal with the famed venture capitalist Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital who invested $2 million.
They disagreed on how best to serve customers. Morgridge didn't think the founders had a clue about sales.
But she's also become a Jane Austen scholar, famous in those circles for two reasons. She wrote a book called "Second Impressions," a historically accurate sequel to "Pride and Prejudice." And she bought a 125-year lease to Chawton House, and began to restore it. That's the estate owned by Austin's brother where Jane lived and wrote.
gets as emails which insulted the company’s hired talent or actors has been released. In just one incident a director called Angelina Jolie a spoiled, untalented, egomaniacal Brat. Then there were racially charged comments about President Obama. A leak of tens of thousands of salaries and social security numbers. The leak of contractor salaries, movies and discussions regarding costs related to movies. And we are just getting started… Expect more. Recently I saw an analyst say the leak is worth $100 million to Sony but I surmised the number is north of one billion thanks to reputational damage – salary leakage which gives competitors an advantage and of course we expect future partners and even employees to be critical of the company when doing business.
denying its servers are being used for such a purpose. The reality may be somewhere in-between as a company called MediaDefender or a similar concern is likely being used to seed torrent networks with false seeds of file names similar to those being shared on such networks. The goal is to have fake seeds chew up processing power on computers and yield nothing for the user.
Facebook Profile
Google+ Profile
Twitter Profile
