Blog Entries tagged 'Google'

Making Sense of Google's Leadership Changes

tom.hoffman24@gmail.com — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:00:00 +0100

Since Google co-founder Larry Page took the reins as CEO from Eric Schmidt on Jan. 20, there's been no shortage of speculation as to why the changes were made now, what this means for Schmidt's own future and what the changes portend for the world's leading search company.

One thing that is clear is that Page steps into the role at a time when Google is being pressed by shareholders to return to its innovative roots and suppress growing competition from companies such [...]

Security Company Awards Cash to Bug Finders

caragarretson@gmail.com — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 23:00:00 +0100

Security vendor Barracuda Networks is jumping on the ‘bug bounty' bandwagon, offering rewards to researchers who can identify vulnerabilities in the company's firewall and Web filtering products.

The company says its Bug Bounty Program is "an initiative that rewards researchers who identify and report security vulnerabilities in the company's security product line," adding that it is the "first security vendor to offer such a bold program.&q [...]

The Next BI Frontier: Talent Analytics

tom.hoffman24@gmail.com — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100

If you're an executive or a manager, you probably know who your top performers are. You may even know what motivates some of them. But do you really know how to get the most out of your staff or your direct reports?

In the latest edition of the Harvard Business Review, Thomas H. Davenport, Jeanne Harris and Jeremy Shapiro examine how leading-edge companies such as Google, Harrah's Entertainment and Sprint are applying sophisticated approaches to analyzing employee data i [...]

Is the First-Mover Advantage a Myth?

epearlma@yahoo.com — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100

It's common knowledge in Silicon Valley that you have to be first out with a new product or service in order to enjoy the "first-mover advantage" that lets early birds catch the worm and the dominant market share. This advantage typically leads entrepreneurs to act with haste to be first to market or be forever doomed to a minor role in their niche.

Steve Blank , author, professor and serial entrepreneur (he was part of eight startups in over 21 years, the last o [...]

Google buys BlindType

caragarretson@gmail.com — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0100

Last Friday software developer BlindType announced in a blog post that it has been bought by Google.

BlindType makes software that it plans to sell to mobile device manufacturers and mobile OS makers. The software aims to bring tactile feedback back to typing on mobile devices, which was lost with the introduction of the touch screen that doesn't offer such feedback, the company explains.

Existing prediction and auto-correction software requires that the virtual keyboard be f [...]

Facebook Joining Smartphone Battle?

rgarretson@gmail.com — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 23:00:00 +0100

Facebook moved quickly to quash reports over the weekend that it was secretly building its own mobile phone to blunt the increasing power of the iPhone and Android platforms. But the fuss appears to be a largely semantic one. Facebook is clearly trying to weave the popular social network into the fabric of mobile society. And in doing so it appears headed straight into the ongoing battle for mobile supremacy currently raging among Apple, Google, RIM, Microsoft and others.

Attempting to [...]

Google Apps Gets Two-Step Authentication

caragarretson@gmail.com — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 23:00:00 +0100

During its Atmosphere conference on cloud computing that's being held in Paris this week, Google announced plans to make its Google Apps offering more secure by adding two-step authentication.

Security is believed to be the No. 1 concern facing businesses that are contemplating moving their data, applications, or both to the cloud. Cloud providers are attempting to quell these concerns by adding security technology to their offerings, hoping to convince customers that data sto [...]

Google Acquires Game Maker SocialDeck

caragarretson@gmail.com — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100

Google earlier this week made its fifth acquisition for the month of August. The target this time was SocialDeck, which develops social gaming technology for mobile devices and social networks. The company's games include PetHero, Shake&Spell, and ColorConnect, and it also develops a social-networking platform called Spark that connects players across devices.

SocialDeck announced news of the acquisition on its Web site, with very few details.

"We started this company [...]

Google Chrome Tablet Ready for Black Friday?

meggebrecht@ciozone.com — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100

A Chrome OS-based tablet made by HTC will be offered through Google's new best friend Verizon starting on Nov. 26, according to a new report (or rumor, as the case may be).

Citing an unnamed source, AOL's Download Squad blog says that the new tablet will run on an NVidia Tegra 2 chip, and will feature a 1280x720 screen, 2GB of RAM, at least a 32 GB SSD, and Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G connectivity. There's a lot missing among that handful of details, however. For one, why [...]

Verizon iPhone Would Shake Market

meggebrecht@ciozone.com — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100

Rumors that Apple is ready to end its exclusive contract with AT&T by bringing the iPhone to a rival carrier are nearly as old as the smartphone itself. As AT&T customers have grown more and more annoyed with the dubious performance of the carrier's network, the rumors have gotten louder. When a move finally becomes more than rumor, the fallout will be huge, says a new survey.

At the end of June, Bloomberg reported that Verizon Wireless will begin offering the iPhone i [...]

HTC Cracks Top 10, Android Makes Gains

meggebrecht@ciozone.com — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100

Gartner has released its second-quarter sales stats for the smartphone market, and there are some interesting -- though not particularly surprising -- results in there.

Riding the popularity of its EVO device, which has been a brisk seller despite its much-maligned battery life, HTC has climbed into the top-ten list of smartphone providers worldwide. Checking in at number eight, the Taiwanese company moved 5.9 million phones last quarter, up from 2.4 million in the same period in [...]

Why Gaming Matters to Google

rmatthewgee@gmail.com — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100

While I was goofing-off on the East Coast these past few weeks, Google apparently initiated a significant social gaming strategy by pumping a large investment into Zynga. I completely agree with the comments in the linked TechCrunch article regarding possible investment incentives, including, "Zynga allows them to rebuild the massive social graph, currently controlled by Facebook." Google's initiative continued the week before last, when it bought [...]

The Short, Sad Life of Google Wave

meggebrecht@ciozone.com — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 23:00:00 +0100

Well, that didn't last long. Google has announced it plans to pull the plug on Wave, a collaborative platform that once looked like it might become a Gmail-level success story for the search giant. In fact, there was talk that the platform, introduced last May, could replace e-mail altogether.

Despite "numerous loyal fans," wrote Google SVP of operations Urs Holzle in a blog, "Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked." Google has stopped work [...]

Security Woes Delay LA's Switch to Google

caragarretson@gmail.com — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100

Thanks to security concerns, it appears Google may have botched what could have been a great feather in its cap.

The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend that the city of Los Angeles was set to switch 20,000 employees to Google's cloud-based e-mail system, but is holding back due to concerns by the city's police department over the security of its information.

The new system was to be installed by June 30, according to an article in SFGate.com, but has hit a roadblock b [...]

Mobile Web Use Skyrocketing

meggebrecht@ciozone.com — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0100

As a new study from Pew shows, Google and Apple have good reason to adopt a mobile-first strategy, and concerns about Microsoft's future as it falls behind in the mobile race may be justified.

In surveying 2,252 adults in May, Pew found that 40 percent of them use cellphones to browse the Web or send e-mails or text messages. That may seem reasonable in a world where people stand in endless lines to get the latest iPhone (and news about the device's antenna problems domina [...]

One in Five Android Apps Could Represent Data Threat

meggebrecht@ciozone.com — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100

One in every five apps available in Google's Android Market give third-party applications access to private data, according to a new study from security vendor Smobile Systems.

Smobile, which just happens to offer mobile security software, says it arrived at that conclusion after studying the permissions requested by more than 48,000 applications in the store for Android-based devices.

Most of those data-accessing apps are probably benign -- social networking applicat [...]

Google Snagged Passwords, E-mail With Street View Cars

meggebrecht@ciozone.com — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100

The news just doesn't get any better for Google as it continues to feel the heat from regulators around the world over the interception of private Wi-Fi data by its Street View cars.

The latest? After an inspection of Wi-Fi data amassed by Google's snooping cars, French data protection agency CNIL says that it included passwords for e-mail and other accounts, extracted e-mail messages, as well as medical and banking information.

That's not exactly how Google h [...]

Google’s Bing-Like Background Gone in Under a Day

meggebrecht@ciozone.com — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100

When Google's famously Spartan search page gained a series of photographic backgrounds on Thursday, it did not go over well with users. It didn't take long for the search giant to return to its classic look.

The featured photos were intended to kick off Google's new background customization functionality, which the company announced last week. On Wednesday evening, Google said in a blog post that the photos would be featured on its homepage over the next 24 hours -- a [...]

Will Apple iPhone 4 Fend Off Google’s Android Army?

meggebrecht@ciozone.com — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100

Multi-tasking? Check. Hi-res display? Check. Zoom and flash? Check. Video calling? Check (sort of).

On Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the wrapper off the latest iPhone model at the company's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, but the new design and features were more or less what everyone had expected, thanks in part to the prototype that fell into the hands of tech blog Gizmodo earlier this year.

It will be interesting to see how analysts and (more importantl [...]

Google ‘Screwed Up’ With Wi-Fi Data, Says CEO

meggebrecht@ciozone.com — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 23:00:00 +0100

While not quite a moving apology, Google CEO Eric Schmidt's admission to the Financial Times that the company made mistakes in collecting data from private Wi-Fi networks is about as close as we're likely to get.

"We screwed up," he said about the interception of personal data by Google's Street View cars. "Let's be very clear about that. If you are honest about your mistakes it is the best defense for it not happening again."

So it' [...]