Tech News Stop - Sharing by Wasim Akhtar

::::How Social Video Could Kill YouTube::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337626946_temp.jpg" border="0" width="300" height="200" align="left" /></div>Startups like SocialCam and Viddy, two of the fastest growing social networks for sharing video on smartphones, may be on a collision course with Google-owned YouTube. While initial indicators are far from conclusive, rumblings of a possible market tsunami are afoot.<div id="more" class="asset-more" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; clear: both; text-align: left">From January to March, people spent 10% less time watching YouTube videos online, while users of mobile video apps increased their viewing time by 52%, according to San Francisco-based Flurry, a mobile advertising and analytics platform provider. In March, each active user averaged 425 minutes on YouTube and 231 minutes on mobile video apps.While the numbers are interesting, Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry, acknowledges they do not prove that mobile apps are taking viewer time from YouTube. That kind of proof would have to come from a statistical study.Nevertheless, Farago believes the numbers are a canary in the coal mine. With increasing processing power, higher bandwidth and high-definition cameras, smartphones are becoming a good platform for capturing memorable moments and then sharing them with friends and family. So, it is certainly possible that people are spending less time watching online video, and more time creating and sharing it. "When you put all that together with a Viddy or SocialCam, which are very cool, fun, editing, sharing tools, you start to get the perfect storm, or the planets align," he said.So what's so special about apps like Viddy or SocialCam? Simplicity. YouTube has a mobile app, but it can be a multistep process to post video. While the steps may not seem difficult, they're enough of a hassle to prevent people from bothering. That weakness is what mobile video apps are attacking. SocialCam, for example, does not require a separate step for uploading. The app automatically moves the video to SocialCam servers, which then shares it based on the user's preferences.This kind of simplicity is only possible from startups that begin and end with the smartphone or tablet. The online world of websites and PCs is so last generation to them. The generational shift from the PC to mobile devices in accessing the Web is the kind of rapid change that can mark the downfall of companies as powerful as Google and Facebook in as little as five years, Eric Jackson, founder and managing member of Ironfire Capital, recently argued in Forbes.In roughly 20 years, the world has seen three Internet generations starting with the Web portals (Yahoo, AOL, Amazon, eBay and Google), then the social media companies (Facebook, LinkedIn, Groupon), and now mobile. Each new generation brings changes that the older generation can't quite adapt to fast enough, Jackson argues. Yes, the seniors can try to buy their way in, such as Facebook paying $1 billion for Instagram, but they are still left with trying to bolt the new platform onto the older platform, which is still driving profits.While older companies struggle to reinvent their legacies, Viddy, SocialCam and other startups remain focused on the technology people are quickly moving to today - in this case, mobile devices. This razor-sharp focus has led to Viddy and SocialCam amassing more than 60 million users. Meanwhile, the previous generation is reaching for the oxygen mask to try to keep up.Of course, with Google's billions of dollars behind it, YouTube, which has a mobile app, has the resources to adapt. However, having money and even millions of users may not be enough to keep up with the speed of change. Just ask Yahoo and AOL.</div> 

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::::Amazon Streamlines Mechanical Turk With Automatic Categorization App::::

<img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337626373_temp.png" border="0" alt="Image" align="left" />The idea behind Amazon's Mechanical Turk is pretty simple - break programming work down into bite-sized chunks, and put it in front of a large workforce that can do the work quickly and cheaply. Part of the challenge of that is making it easy for requesters to create the bites that workers are chewing on. The new categorization app from Amazonremoves some of the hurdles of creating HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) that ask workers to pick the best category for items. The result could make the crowdsource coding marketplace even more usable and popular.<div id="more" class="asset-more" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; clear: both; text-align: left">Creating a request for Mechanical Turk isn't overly difficult, but it takes a bit of time editing HTML and answering a lot of questions for which first-time users don't have a lot of context - for example, deciding the qualifications for workers, or whether they need to be "masters" to take on a task.Amazon is streamlining all that with the Categorization App by making assumptions about what its users would want, providing suggested pricing and helping to create the form that workers will see.Right now, Amazon is providing an app only for categorization questions. Mechanical Turk offers templates for many more, including image filtering, image tagging, data extraction, data collection and several others. Expect that Amazon will add apps for most of these types of questions in the near future.<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; padding: 0px">Boosting MT Revenues</h2>Obviously, Amazon is trying to streamline the process for creating MT tasks in order to boost its revenue. More tasks means more money. But there's a bit more to it than that.With the Categorization App, Amazon's assumptions all lead to more money per HIT. Users no longerhave to decide what kind of worker to farm tasks out to; rather, Amazon makes that decision, automatically choosing the most expensive (master) workers. To increase accuracy, each HIT will be shown to two users by default, doubling the revenue.Amazon will also suggest a pay level, to ensure that HITs are "priced attractively" to workers. Requesters can change this, but if a significant number of requesters accept the default pricing, that will probably drive HIT prices up over time.<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.2em; padding: 0px">Better Requests</h2>Another reason that Amazon would want to create an app for MT requests is that a lot of requests are not very good. Amazon is in a position to evaluate the existing requests, and has found them wanting.One problem? Too many categories. Amazon says that the maximum number of categories that workers can keep in mind is seven to 10. Yet they see requests with more than 150 categories!The app limits requesters to 10 items. It requires that requesters provide instructions. It's not foolproof, but it provides better odds that requesters will generate reasonable HITs. If requesters want more categories, they need to start from scratch with a custom template.If you're using Mechanical Turk now, what do you think of the Categorization App? Would you prefer to see Amazon simplify the service further, or is it already well-suited for the kind of crowdsourcing that you're doing?</div> 

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::::CORRECTED - Facebook investors left guessing after Nasdaq glitch::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337626237_temp.jpg" border="0" align="left" /></div> <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/reuters/INtechnologyNews/~4/zEtik0pQ1JI" border="0" width="1" height="1" />Individual investors were left in the dark for hours on Friday about whether their buy and sell orders for newly issued Facebook (FB.O) shares had actually been executed, in the latest of a series high-profile exchange glitches in recent years.Massive demand for the social networking giant's initial public offering, which set a trading volume record for U.S. market debuts, led to a 30 -minute delay in the start of trading in the stock. But it was what happened after trading started that had some on Wall Street fuming.The Nasdaq Stock Market, where Facebook is listed, had problems sending electronic messages back to the brokerages that handle orders from individual, or "retail," investors, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.Because the electronic acknowledgements didn't come back from the exchange, the brokers were unable to tell their clients that trades had been executed. Such acknowledgements usually occur almost instantaneously. The delay meant that, in one of the most anticipated stock offerings ever, frustrated brokers and investors didn't know if orders had actually gone through."Nasdaq's delay in passing back executions is causing a lot of heartburn on the Street," said one source. "We had to tell clients we didn't get the print back," said another.Nasdaq officials did not return repeated calls for comment. In a note to traders, the exchange operator, Nasdaq OMX Group (NDAQ.O), said at 1:57 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time that trade execution messages were finally delivered to brokers and market makers. The stock started trading about 11:30 a.m.Later the exchange said it intended to reach a resolution on orders entered from 11 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. ET through an "offline matching process."FLYING BLINDSome traders said they were still not getting confirmations toward the end of the trading day."We're flying completely blind," said an East Coast-based Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MS.N) broker who had put in more than 30 orders for clients over the course of the day, including a few before the opening bell.As of 3:15 p.m., Nasdaq had only confirmed that just a few very small trades had gone through, said the broker, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak, under Morgan Stanley's rules.Around the same time, some brokers at Raymond James & Associates, the brokerage arm of Raymond James Financial (RJF.N), still had not received confirmations on all of their pre-IPO orders that were at or above $42 a share, said one broker, who declined to be identified because he was not permitted to speak to the press."We have seen these kinds of things happen in crazy markets, but not when it's just crazy with one individual security," the broker said.A Bank of America (BAC.N) Merrill Lynch broker, however, said he had no problems whatsoever in the process.The end result was confusion that lingered after the close of trading."There are massive problems here that are going to require the Street to spend a significant amount of time to clean up, particularly the market makers and the order-sending firms," said one of the sources, who requested anonymity.After the market closed, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it would review the trading glitches surrounding Facebook's debut.MARKET GLITCHESInvestor confidence in the equity markets, where trading is largely computer-driven, has wavered since the "flash crash" in May 2010 when $1 trillion in shareholder equity was temporarily wiped out in a matter of minutes.In March, the botched IPO of BATS Global Markets, the third-largest U.S. stock exchange, refocused attention on the potential for marketplace mishaps. A series of unforeseen glitches hit the company's market debut on its own exchange and caused it to take the extremely rare step of withdrawing its IPO.The debacle also led to a fouled trade in shares of Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and caused a temporary halt in the stock.When data-mining software maker Splunk (SPLK.O) went public on Nasdaq on April 19, it was very well-received and its shares soared, tripping a circuit breaker that temporarily halted the stock, but its shares continued trading on NYSE Arca during the halt, and those trades had to be canceled.Just last Thursday, the IPO of Andina Acquisition Corp (ANDA.O), a small Nasdaq-listed company, went awry and a batch of trades had to be canceled.The next day, Nasdaq ran the first of four days of tests on its IPO systems in the week leading up to the Facebook's debut."They were trying to beef up their equipment in anticipation of this so they need to continue to invest in their equipment because it's a little unsettling when market structure doesn't function correctly," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan, a broker in San Francisco.STOCK ENDS NEARLY FLATThe day started with a burst of activity, with 83 million Facebook shares crossing the tape in the first minute of trading. After that, volume naturally declined, but investors said some traders might have backed away due to the lack of news on executions from Nasdaq.As the share price dipped to $38, where Facebook was initially priced, volume ticked up. Traders cited support from underwriters, including lead underwriter Morgan Stanley, as the stock neared the floor.It was possible that the Nasdaq's problems were behind the price movement, said one of the sources. "There was definitely some uncertainty around the open because people didn't have their positions," the source said.Facebook shares did not fall below the IPO price of $38 and closed at $38.23.

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::::Nasdaq alters IPO procedures after Facebook glitch::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337625503_temp.jpg" border="0" width="300" height="200" align="left" /></div>Nasdaq OMX Group Inc (NDAQ.O) said it is changing its initial public offering trading procedures following glitches in Facebook Inc's (FB.O) market debut that left some traders unsure if their orders for shares had been completed.The exchange operator said in a statement on Monday that modifications to its IPO procedures would prevent a repetition of the Friday problems with Facebook.Nasdaq Chief Executive Robert Greifeld said in a conference call with reporters on Sunday that there had been a malfunction in the trading system's design for processing order cancellations.That led to a more than 40-minute delay in Facebook's debut, following which some traders were unable to find out if their buy and sell orders had been executed.The Securities and Exchange Commission said it was investigating the issues.Nasdaq said on Monday it has engaged federal regulators to untangle the problems that occurred, which could eventually result in financial restitution for investors who did not get shares at the desired price.The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority will review requests from investors whose orders were not filled at the opening price of $42 or were filled at a lower price, Nasdaq said in a statement.Shares of Facebook tumbled below their issue price of $38 on Monday and were down 12.3 percent at $33.52 in Monday trade.Facebook was the first U.S. company to go public with a valuation greater than $100 billion.

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::::Websites of Supreme Court of India & All India Congress hacked::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337340832_temp.jpg" border="0" align="left" /></div> Hacker group Anonymous had brought down for a few hours the websites of The Supreme Court of India (SupremeCourtofIndia.nic.in) and All India Congress (Aicc.org.in). The Group had earlier attacked government and corporate websites to protest what the it perceives was injustice. Till the time of filing this report, the Supreme Court site has been restored.On its Twitter account, they posted "Namaste #India, your time has come to trash the current government and install a new one. Good luck. | #SaveTPB#Anonymous #Censorship" (Hear message posted by Anonymous, warns "Operation India engaged").Anonymous has given Internet Censorship as the reason for attack. The hacking comes after the websites like Vimeo, PirateBay etc have been blocked by most of the Indian ISPs apparently on government request. Anonymous has reportedly named the operation " MT Operation India. 

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::::Pinterest funding could value startup at $1.5 bln::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337283077_temp.jpg" border="0" align="left" /></div>Silicon Valley startup Pinterest raised $100 million from a group led by Japanese online retailer Rakuten Inc (4755.OS), valuing the company at about $1.5 billion and underscoring the huge investor appetite for social-networking companies.The news comes a day before Facebook (FB.O) starts trading as a public company that could be worth more than $100 billion.Pinterest, an online scrapbook where users can "pin" images and follow others, has grown from less than one million users in May 2011 to about 20 million in April, according to IT research house comScore.The three-year old company, led by co-founder Ben Silbermann, had been seeking financing for several weeks, but many investors were wary about the billion-dollar valuation, venture capitalists said.That valuation puts Pinterest beyond the reach of all but a handful of potential acquirers, probably putting it onto a path for an eventual IPO rather than an acquisition.Still, the company attracted many interested parties."It was one of the most hotly contested and sought-after financing events in Silicon Valley in quite some time," Mike Jaconi, a Rakuten executive who was involved in the negotiations, told Reuters.Jaconi said Rakuten's presence in 18 countries helped it get a piece of Pinterest as the U.S. company was looking to expand internationally.Rakuten's CEO Hiroshi Mikitani will take on an advisory role at Pinterest, Jaconi said.A Pinterest spokeswoman said the Japanese company would integrate the "pin it" button on its websites.Rakuten, which offers services ranging from online golf reservations to internet banking, was joined in the investment by existing Pinterest shareholders Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital.Rakuten is aggressively expanding into global markets. Last year, it bought Canadian ebook company Kobo for $315 million and UK online shopping site Play.com for about 25 million pounds.HIGH VALUATIONSValuations for consumer-oriented tech startups have been rising dramatically, as illustrated by Facebook's $1 billion purchase of photo-sharing application Instagram last month.Pinterest's $1.5 billion valuation is up sharply from $200 million late last year.The company, like Instagram, has no significant revenue.A Pinterest spokeswoman declined to disclose the company's revenue, saying it is not focused on monetization for now. (Reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi and Sarah McBride; additional reporting by Bijoy Koyitty; Editing by Joyjeet Das and Don Sebastian)

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::::Survey says: Apple customer service a secret weapon::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337280078_temp.jpg" border="0" align="left" /></div>Tragedy struck just after 8 p.m. ET last Wednesday. Bounding down my apartment’s outside steps, I stumbled slightly, and in what resembled one of those slow-motion sequences you see on film, my iPhone 4 went flying out of my hand and over a balcony, landing three floors below with a plasticky smack and spray of glass shards.You could say I was shocked, stunned and horrified. To clear a few things up: No, as I told my inquiring editor, tequila shots were not involved. Yes, I realize it’s just a phone. But I don’t make a habit out of carelessly destroying expensive things — especially when I’m so close to the end of my AT&T two-year contract and looking forward to a no-penalty upgrade to a new phone circa, say, October.I’ll jump forward to the end: this is a happy story. I walked out of the Apple Store in Center City Philadelphia at 7 p.m. the following day with a brand new iPhone 4. But the journey was very impressive considering the level of service I received for a product that is not a refrigerator or pricey household appliance. Remember, we’re talking about a phone. (Note: I did not disclose my profession to the Apple Store staff for obvious reasons. Nor do I think every customer does or would have the same experience I did — your mileage at the Genius Bar may vary.)Apple is famous for customer satisfaction — it scores tops among cell phone owners andcomputer owners, according to the American Customer Service Index. It’s probably no coincidence that high customer satisfaction scores – and offering professional and prompt technical help goes a long way towards ensuring satisfaction — are happening at the same time as the historic expansion of Apple’s business and the ascendance of its stock price.After my Genius Bar appointment, Apple sent me its standard follow-up customer survey asking me about my experience. And since I write about Apple, I figured I’d share my answers here, in survey form. I was asked to rate my satisfaction with various aspects of Apple’s service on a scale of very dissatisfied to very satisfied.Overall, how satisfied were you with your in-store repair experience?Very satisfied. The morning after the fateful accident, I walked into the Center City store without an appointment. I was immediately greeted and told to come back for the next available time slot at the Genius Bar in 20 minutes. When I returned, I waited about a minute and 30 seconds before my designated Genius, Dan, walked up.That wait was the only thing about my experience that was short — but we’ll get to that in a minute. Despite a somewhat complicated situation due to a failed iCloud backup, I was consistently updated on what was going on with my device. And the employees acted like they cared about solving my problem. Customer service isn’t necessarily the most rewarding job, so it’s gratifying when an employee understands that your presence means there is a problem and that getting it fixed is important. (Apple has just over 34,000 retail employees, with about 100 assigned to each store. Horace Dediu at Asymco calculated that Apple retail sales employees make from $9 to $15 per hour, but Genius Bar workers can make up to $30 per hour.)Overall, how would you rate the professionalism and technical ability of the store employees responsible for your repair?Very satisfied. This was somewhat of an emergency situation for me — it’s hard to get work done as a reporter when your only phone is unusable for calls or apps you might be writing about. The Apple Store employees made me feel like getting a new iPhone right away was a priority for them.They also were very straightforward with me. They made sure I knew what my options were from the start: I could use my AT&T upgrade for a new iPhone 4S, which would start my two-year contract over again (no thanks), purchase a new iPhone 4S off contract for $500 (eek); or, if I left my broken device with Apple, they’d replace my same model with a new iPhone 4 for $149. I chose the latter.They also let me know that this is fairly routine. Dropping a phone three stories? Not weird at all — they’ve seen and heard worse. The phone’s screen had a lot of scary-looking shards of glass sticking up from it, and when I apologized for its state, my designated Genius shrugged: “I have chefs’ fingers. I deal with cracked screens like this all the time.”How many times were you contacted about the state of your repair?At least 10 times, and I hadn’t even left the store. While my new phone was re-syncing Dan would attend to his other Genius Bar appointments, but he’d continually pop back over to update me on the status of my phone. This went a long way toward making me feel like the situation was resolvable and that they cared about getting me a satisfactory outcome.Once your repaired product was returned to you, what happened?This actually wasn’t a simple get-a-replacement-phone-and-resync-it-with-my-latest-iCloud-backup situation. Turns out, after 25 minutes of syncing my new phone, none of my roughly 3,000 photos copied over. This was, you might say, problematic. After some troubleshooting, Dan said iCloud was the culprit: my last iCloud backup had failed. He said I should bring my computer that my phone was synced with in and he’d try again, and made me another appointment later that day.When I returned with my MacBook Air and my new iPhone, he battled further issues: iPhoto kept crashing, and the latest iTunes backup wouldn’t sync. He tried a few different approaches, and finally ended up finding a solution. This troubleshooting took almost an hour, again, thanks to the sheer number of photos I had on my device. Then once he figured out the fix, it was a least another 45 minutes of syncing.From the start of the discussion, how long was your interaction at the Genius Bar?Over the course of two different appointments, I spent just under four hours getting in-person tech support from the Apple Store. While that might sound excruciating, Dan was seriously heroic, never got flustered, and even took time to discuss one of my favorite topics while we were waiting: where to procure Philly’s best pizza. (Osteria on North Broad Street, if you’re wondering.) As someone who works from home or remote locations regularly, it wasn’t really a problem to be nearby the Apple Store all day. But that might be harder for people who have to report to offices.Plus, when his shift ended at 6 p.m., he found another Genius to check in on me while we waited for my syncing to finish so they’d be sure my problem was entirely fixed before I left the store.In the end, yes, it took a while, and iCloud has some serious issues to work out. But I left with a new phone, only $160 and some change poorer. And, perhaps more importantly, a lot of customer goodwill — an asset that even the most valuable company in the world can’t put a price on.

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