Plus Goldman Sachs loses BlackBerry faith, how China's 4G will change displays, Shazam's predictive power, and more
A burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
*Welcome to the internet of thingies: 61.5% of web traffic is not human >> The Atlantic*
Alexis Madrigal:
The point is: It's so easy to build bots that do various things that they are overrunning the human traffic on the web.
Now, to understand the human web, we have to reckon with the logic of the non-human web. It is, in part, shady traffic that allows ad networks and exchanges to flourish. And these automated ad buying platforms — while they do a lot of good, no doubt about it — also put pressure on other publishers to sell ads more cheaply. When they do that, there's less money for content, and the content quality suffers.
The ease of building bots, in other words, hurts what you read each and every day on the Internet. And it's all happening deep beneath the shiny web we know and (sometimes) love.
--------------------
*A visual history of The Next Big Thing >> Medium*
Peter Sweeney:
If the history of The Next Big Thing teaches us anything, it's that new media invariably dominates old media, regardless of how hard the incumbents try to keep new media down.
Equally clear, the essence of The Next Big thing won't be technological.
You begin by thinking it's trivial, but it isn't.
--------------------
*Goldman Sachs has entered the iPhone ae >> Daily Intelligencer*
in 2010, JPMorgan Chase and UBS, two of Goldman's competitors, began testing pilot BYOD [Bring Your Own Device] programs. (BlackBerrys are a "magnet for mockery and derision," said the New York Times last year, but they are also just bad phones.)
Goldman Sachs will not be mocked, nor will it suffer the indignity of second-class smartphones. And so, according to several people close to the bank, Goldman began allowing employees to use iPhones as their official work phones this week.
Goldman is among the slowest major institutions to let its employees use iPhones at work.
Because of security concerns; staff have to download a specific app to access corporate email and other info. But it's another loss for BlackBerry.
--------------------
*PayPal president David Marcus: Bitcoin is good, NFC is bad >> Internet & Media - CNET News*
Marcus is paying close attention to payment changes as part of his effort to re-energize an eBay service that grew sluggish and complacent after the early dot-com years. He's trying to foster innovation at the company and cater to developers, particularly those at start-ups.
Although he has some concerns about bitcoin, he's unequivocal about near-field communications (NFC), the very short-range radio communication that can let people tap a credit card or mobile phone to a payment terminal.
"It's technology for the sake of technology or for the sake of pushing the agenda of the companies supporting it, versus solving real people's problems," Marcus said of NFC.
"Instead swiping or using a PIN pad, they're tapping. How is that really better? How is that changing your life? People don't want that," he said…
"Why do you need to be at a place in a store to make a payment? [NFC is] too little too late."
--------------------
*China 4G licenses to impact smartphone display market >> DisplaySearch Blog*
[China Mobile's 3G system] TD-SCDMA's top speed was slower than the other two 3G standards, and more importantly, there was limited supply of TD-SCDMA devices. Due to this, China Mobile started to lose its customer base in the 3G market, especially for high ARPU (average revenue per user) subscribers…
On the contrary, both China Unicom and China Telecom had little interest in LTE TDD. They reaped the benefit of their 3G investments, especially by gaining high ARPU users. They preferred LTE FDD to LTE TDD, because they have multiple options in LTE-FDD network equipment and devices.
As the 4G licenses the China government officially granted are for LTE TDD, China Mobile now has an advantage. In Q3'13, China Mobile released 207,000 LTE TDD base station orders through bidding and expected to release another 300,000 to 400,000 base station orders in 2014.
China is the largest smartphone market in the world, with 30% of global smartphone shipments, according to the Smartphone Quarterly. While 3G is still the mainstream for commercial business, telecom carriers, especially China Mobile, will start offering 4G contracts and encourage consumers to upgrade to 4G LTE-TDD smartphones. Bigger screens, higher resolution, better display performance and lower power consumption will all be critical for 4G upgrades.
Huge, huge numbers. It's hard enough to understand mobile, but figures like this emphasise how gigantic China is.
--------------------
*Shazam predicts future pop stars by analyzing listener data >> CITEworld*
In 2013, the service predicted Haim and French Montana would hit it big this year. Haim had a number of hits and recently played on "Saturday Night Live." Montana, a Moroccan-born rapper, had his first album debut at number four on the charts and worked extensively with established American rappers.
In 2012, Shazam predicted A$AP Rocky and Lana Del Rey would be breakout artists, and both were resounding successes. Rocky reached number one on the U.S. charts, and Del Rey went to number one in the US and 10 other countries.
How does Shazam do it? It combines the number of people that have used the app to identify a song to along with positive music critic reviews to see who are generating the most interest.
Seems obvious enough, but first you have to get the app to be widely used - then you can do this.
--------------------
*Hits, no errors: the secret of mobile success >> Tech.pinions*
Steve Wildstrom on error messages on desktop and tablets:
This is not to say that apps and even the OS in tablets never crash. But they do it quietly and gracefully, without generating an error message or requiring any action. When an iOS or Android app crashes, it usually just quietly shuts down and restarts itself, generally without loss of data and without affecting any other running apps. Even a system crash, rare in my experience, causes a reboot in which the tablet mostly or completely restores its pre-crash state.
App updates are another place where tablets shine. Both Android and iOS automatically install app updates in the background. By contrast, as I was working on my Mac today, a Window popped up informing me that skyDrive needed to be updated. I gave permission for the update, which then proceeded to open at least six more windows–I lost count–each of which required some action on my part. If the software needs updating, just go ahead an update it (the auto-update feature can be disabled on both Android and iOS, but I doubt that many users do.)
I think the geekiest among us underestimate how important this well-mannered behaviour is to a lot of users.
--------------------
*Google's European antitrust fight: still battling >> The Economist*
The core of the case against Google is the claim that it uses its dominance of search to skew internet users towards its own specialised services (for shopping, hotels, flights and so forth) and away from those of rivals. Part of the company's proposed answer to this has been to insert links to other shopping sites below Google's own.
Two American professors retained by FairSearch Europe—David Franklyn of the University of San Francisco and David Hyman of the University of Illinois—have tested how these links might work in practice. In a trial using 2,500 British subjects asked to look for specific items (eg, iPods or Nikon cameras) they found that Google Shopping scooped 36.7% of the clicks. The three rival links attracted just 5% between them. (Other clicks went to other parts of the page.) In the mobile version of Google's proposed solution, Google shopping got 43.3% against just 0.25% for the single link marked "other sites".
--------------------
You can follow Guardian Technology's linkbucket on Pinboard
To suggest a link, either add it below or tag it with @gdntech on the free Delicious service. Reported by guardian.co.uk 17 hours ago.
A burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
*Welcome to the internet of thingies: 61.5% of web traffic is not human >> The Atlantic*
Alexis Madrigal:
The point is: It's so easy to build bots that do various things that they are overrunning the human traffic on the web.
Now, to understand the human web, we have to reckon with the logic of the non-human web. It is, in part, shady traffic that allows ad networks and exchanges to flourish. And these automated ad buying platforms — while they do a lot of good, no doubt about it — also put pressure on other publishers to sell ads more cheaply. When they do that, there's less money for content, and the content quality suffers.
The ease of building bots, in other words, hurts what you read each and every day on the Internet. And it's all happening deep beneath the shiny web we know and (sometimes) love.
--------------------
*A visual history of The Next Big Thing >> Medium*
Peter Sweeney:
If the history of The Next Big Thing teaches us anything, it's that new media invariably dominates old media, regardless of how hard the incumbents try to keep new media down.
Equally clear, the essence of The Next Big thing won't be technological.
You begin by thinking it's trivial, but it isn't.
--------------------
*Goldman Sachs has entered the iPhone ae >> Daily Intelligencer*
in 2010, JPMorgan Chase and UBS, two of Goldman's competitors, began testing pilot BYOD [Bring Your Own Device] programs. (BlackBerrys are a "magnet for mockery and derision," said the New York Times last year, but they are also just bad phones.)
Goldman Sachs will not be mocked, nor will it suffer the indignity of second-class smartphones. And so, according to several people close to the bank, Goldman began allowing employees to use iPhones as their official work phones this week.
Goldman is among the slowest major institutions to let its employees use iPhones at work.
Because of security concerns; staff have to download a specific app to access corporate email and other info. But it's another loss for BlackBerry.
--------------------
*PayPal president David Marcus: Bitcoin is good, NFC is bad >> Internet & Media - CNET News*
Marcus is paying close attention to payment changes as part of his effort to re-energize an eBay service that grew sluggish and complacent after the early dot-com years. He's trying to foster innovation at the company and cater to developers, particularly those at start-ups.
Although he has some concerns about bitcoin, he's unequivocal about near-field communications (NFC), the very short-range radio communication that can let people tap a credit card or mobile phone to a payment terminal.
"It's technology for the sake of technology or for the sake of pushing the agenda of the companies supporting it, versus solving real people's problems," Marcus said of NFC.
"Instead swiping or using a PIN pad, they're tapping. How is that really better? How is that changing your life? People don't want that," he said…
"Why do you need to be at a place in a store to make a payment? [NFC is] too little too late."
--------------------
*China 4G licenses to impact smartphone display market >> DisplaySearch Blog*
[China Mobile's 3G system] TD-SCDMA's top speed was slower than the other two 3G standards, and more importantly, there was limited supply of TD-SCDMA devices. Due to this, China Mobile started to lose its customer base in the 3G market, especially for high ARPU (average revenue per user) subscribers…
On the contrary, both China Unicom and China Telecom had little interest in LTE TDD. They reaped the benefit of their 3G investments, especially by gaining high ARPU users. They preferred LTE FDD to LTE TDD, because they have multiple options in LTE-FDD network equipment and devices.
As the 4G licenses the China government officially granted are for LTE TDD, China Mobile now has an advantage. In Q3'13, China Mobile released 207,000 LTE TDD base station orders through bidding and expected to release another 300,000 to 400,000 base station orders in 2014.
China is the largest smartphone market in the world, with 30% of global smartphone shipments, according to the Smartphone Quarterly. While 3G is still the mainstream for commercial business, telecom carriers, especially China Mobile, will start offering 4G contracts and encourage consumers to upgrade to 4G LTE-TDD smartphones. Bigger screens, higher resolution, better display performance and lower power consumption will all be critical for 4G upgrades.
Huge, huge numbers. It's hard enough to understand mobile, but figures like this emphasise how gigantic China is.
--------------------
*Shazam predicts future pop stars by analyzing listener data >> CITEworld*
In 2013, the service predicted Haim and French Montana would hit it big this year. Haim had a number of hits and recently played on "Saturday Night Live." Montana, a Moroccan-born rapper, had his first album debut at number four on the charts and worked extensively with established American rappers.
In 2012, Shazam predicted A$AP Rocky and Lana Del Rey would be breakout artists, and both were resounding successes. Rocky reached number one on the U.S. charts, and Del Rey went to number one in the US and 10 other countries.
How does Shazam do it? It combines the number of people that have used the app to identify a song to along with positive music critic reviews to see who are generating the most interest.
Seems obvious enough, but first you have to get the app to be widely used - then you can do this.
--------------------
*Hits, no errors: the secret of mobile success >> Tech.pinions*
Steve Wildstrom on error messages on desktop and tablets:
This is not to say that apps and even the OS in tablets never crash. But they do it quietly and gracefully, without generating an error message or requiring any action. When an iOS or Android app crashes, it usually just quietly shuts down and restarts itself, generally without loss of data and without affecting any other running apps. Even a system crash, rare in my experience, causes a reboot in which the tablet mostly or completely restores its pre-crash state.
App updates are another place where tablets shine. Both Android and iOS automatically install app updates in the background. By contrast, as I was working on my Mac today, a Window popped up informing me that skyDrive needed to be updated. I gave permission for the update, which then proceeded to open at least six more windows–I lost count–each of which required some action on my part. If the software needs updating, just go ahead an update it (the auto-update feature can be disabled on both Android and iOS, but I doubt that many users do.)
I think the geekiest among us underestimate how important this well-mannered behaviour is to a lot of users.
--------------------
*Google's European antitrust fight: still battling >> The Economist*
The core of the case against Google is the claim that it uses its dominance of search to skew internet users towards its own specialised services (for shopping, hotels, flights and so forth) and away from those of rivals. Part of the company's proposed answer to this has been to insert links to other shopping sites below Google's own.
Two American professors retained by FairSearch Europe—David Franklyn of the University of San Francisco and David Hyman of the University of Illinois—have tested how these links might work in practice. In a trial using 2,500 British subjects asked to look for specific items (eg, iPods or Nikon cameras) they found that Google Shopping scooped 36.7% of the clicks. The three rival links attracted just 5% between them. (Other clicks went to other parts of the page.) In the mobile version of Google's proposed solution, Google shopping got 43.3% against just 0.25% for the single link marked "other sites".
--------------------
You can follow Guardian Technology's linkbucket on Pinboard
To suggest a link, either add it below or tag it with @gdntech on the free Delicious service. Reported by guardian.co.uk 17 hours ago.