Essentially, the new service, called Box OneCloud, gives iPad and iPhone users an app store of business productivity apps where all the files created by those apps are stored in the Box cloud. Microsoft-bashing aside, this is a pretty good idea.
Pinterest has an API done and ready for developers, but it hasn't released it to the public yet.
And it might not release it for a while, says an industry source familiar with Pinterest's plans. This source says that Pinterest fears having a "Twitter problem."
An API, or application programming interface, allows developers to build apps using Pinterest data.
Twitter released its API when it was still an immature company, allowing developers to build applications with features that it was missing. When Twitter matured, and it wanted to control its platform, it began adding those features, thus damaging those developers.
For instance, Twitpic, which built a way to share photos is now threatened because Twitter added native photo sharing. HootSuite, and Twitterrific, which build greatmobile apps were crushed when Twitter started putting more effort into its own mobile apps.
As Twitter began competing with its developers, the developer community turned against Twitter. It didn't really trust Twitter.
Pinterest doesn't want that to happen. It's a very young company and it's just getting started, says our source. It doesn't want developers to build features/applications that it plans on building, and then alienate those developers by building similar features.
Google has long been telling us how long it took to perform whatever search we sent its way. That little note may seem self-congratulatory to the average Internet user, but it's vitally important.
Slowing that number by just 4/10ths of a second, for example, would cut 8 million searches from Google's daily total of 3 billion. If its pages took one second longer to load, Amazon, for example, could lose as much as $1.6 billion in annual revenue.
These and other findings are included in a smart new infographic (see below) from OnlineGraduatePrograms that sheds light on the need for speed when it comes to Web page design. All of this emphasis on instant gratification comes at a time when the Internet is trending towards being more visual, meaning Web designers need to find ways to create image-heavy sites that still load quickly.
Business Insider spoke to McKinney to find out how employees at large companies can get their ideas into action and grow their careers.
1. Beware the corporate antibodies: "The frustration employees feel is because they run headlong into the corporate antibodies," he quips. "Corporate antibodies aren't just obstructionists (though some are). You need to understand why they are pushing back." For instance, some of them are "ego antibodies" which means "they view themselves as the idea person. You pitching an idea is threatening to them," McKinney says.
Deal with an ego antibody by coming to that person with a rough draft and taking whatever feedback the person gives you -- verbatim -- and adding it to your presentation. Credit the person generously. This makes the person feel ownership of the idea.
McKinney names several other types of antibodies in his book, such as the naysayers who automatically veto everything. These folks are afraid of change and you work with them by making them more afraid of not-changing. You point out why your idea will beat your competitors.
2. Perform "the bar room test" on your idea. "Go to your local pub. Go to the bar and order a drink. Then pick three random people, introduce yourself and, assuming the person is not blotto drunk, give them the three-minute pitch. Tell them the problem you want to solve."
If your bar buddies are interested, you've got a good idea. If not, either your idea isn't great, your presentations isn't -- or both.
3. Practice "strategic story telling." Most people's biggest problem is that "they don't know how to do the pitch. They are enthralled with speeds and deeds," he says. A good pitch tells an emotional story. Think of it like pitching a "Hollywood movie" where the business problem is the villain and your idea is the hero.
4. Don't fight the "rule of 18": "Any senior executive inside an organization can suffer 18 months of pain. But if that idea isn't a booming success within 18 months, it gets killed," he warns. It is best to pitch ideas that should work within 18 months so you can build some cred. But if your idea will take longer than 18 months to mature, you'll need to teach your executives to be patient. For that you will need a mentor and a champion.
5. Don't expect your boss to be your idea mentor. When finding a mentor, you probably need to look outside your direct chain of command. "If you find an executive who's passionate about the area you are working on they tend to be very receptive -- unless the guy's a jerk," he says. These folks will be willing to have coffee with you. If they like your idea, they'll advise you and give "air cover" he says. "In some cases I actually gave budget dollars."
Find these folks by looking for execs talking about the idea your area covers -- maybe they are blogging about it or chatting on LinkedIn groups. Maybe they are working on other, similar projects.
6. Be prepared to work, fail, and work some more. "The challenge for a lot of people is that they think the idea is fully formed," he says. But chances are some at least some of it will need work. "So fix it and stick it out again. Most people want the fun, the glory and the press coverage," he says. But if the first time you run into a roadblock you walk away, you'll never succeed. "Innovation is a skill you can learn. It's not magic. It's not a special gift from God. It's just plain hard work."
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The companies surveyed over 2,000 of the 280,000 developers on Appcelerator’s mobile development platform this year, and found that there has been “a steady erosion of interest” in Google’s Android operating system.
Interest in Android development for smartphone has dropped from 86% to just 78%, while interest in Android development for tablets has dropped from 75% to 67%. In comparison, interest in developing for Apple’s iOS operating system has remained stable.
Importantly, this failure generally has nothing to do with the technology that powers Google's products, which is often amazing.
Rather, it's the result of weaker product design.
Google TV, for example, was an absurdly complex flop that was apparently designed for consumers who have been dying to buy a TV that is as complicated as a computer (all four of them).
Google's email system, Gmail, for years forced consumers to use a "conversations" format that geeks raved about but that confused normal people who liked good old email.
Google's Android operating system, meanwhile, despite having many technological advantages over Apple's iOS, is still harder and more complicated to use that Apple's offering.
The common thread of these anecdotes is that Google designs its products for geeky technologists, while Apple designs for normal humans.
And it turns out that geeky technologists are a small, weird niche of the broader consumer market, which is making it harder for Google to become a beloved mass-market brand.
The difference between Google's product design and Apple's product design starts with the difference between the types of people each company places the highest value on.
Google has an engineering culture, in which brilliant technologists are the rock stars.
Apple, meanwhile, has a product-design and marketing culture, in which "technology" merely serves to support a product's function and form.Pew research has a new survey showing that tablets and smart phones are now 27% of Americans' primary news source. The overwhelming share of this is phones, not tablets; and a reasonable view says this will rise to 50% in three years.
Makes sense: just as radio became one of the big purveyors of news because it was the medium that traveled with you, so should mobile.
But it is also a depressing development, portending, once again, the end of the world as we know it: the news business has been plunged into a crisis because web advertising dollars are a fraction of old media money. And mobile is now a fraction of web: the approximate conversion rate is $100 offline = $10 on the web = $1 in mobile.
In part, the reasons are purely mechanical: you can cram three or four ads on a web page, meaning an average web CPM (cost per thousand views) of $1.00 (if you're lucky) can become a rate-per-page per thousand (RPM) of $4.00 (versus $20-$40 CPMs in traditional media). Mobile CPMs are running at something closer to $0.25 – and we're only able to fit one ad on those miniature pages.
And to some extent, the problem defines the medium: who wants to pay for inattention and a cursory scrawl? (How much of mobile news is consumed by people behind the wheel, even?)
And yet, this resistance, or lack of interest, on the part of advertisers challenges the bedrock logic of marketing: follow your customers.
Brands and big agencies continue to announce their commitment to and excitement about the revolution at hand. They surely want to be seen as players and cool people. I don't know anybody in consumer marketing who isn't gaga about digital and mobile. But these are the same people and big brands who have doubled down on television, your dad's medium, making 2011 a golden TV advertising year.
Now, there's an optimistic and stubborn view that this must change, that agencies and brands can't hold on to the past for ever. Almost every digital executive and booster will, at this point in the conversation, outline his or her children's media consumption habits as anecdotal evidence in support of the coming digital ad boom. But, as it happens, the patterns seem to get only worse. According to a recent report by Kanter Media, broadcast TV was up was 7.7% in the fourth quarter of 2011 (up 2.4% for the year), while internet search advertising was down 6.4% (down 2.8% for the year); and internet display advertising was down 5.9% in the fourth quarter (and down 5.5% for the year). Mobile does not even get its own break-out category.
There is another bleak element here: a basic shift in how advertising is bought and sold. More and more digital space, both web and mobile, is moved through a real-time auction process: audiences (or demographic segments) are sold like soy beans. Curiously, for all other commodities, the auction process raises prices. In a virtually unlimited world of digital advertising space, it lowers them.
If the news business on the web is depressing, contributing to the existential angst that has gripped every established news organization, mobile turns the story apocalyptic: there is no foreseeable basis on which the news establishment can support itself. There is no way even a stripped-down, aggregation-based, unpaid citizen-journalist staffed newsroom can support itself in a mobile world.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Thomas Edison was the most famous inventor in the world. He hoarded useful materials, from rare metals to animal bones, and through careful, methodical testing, he made his new inventions work, and previous inventions work better. Churning out patent after patent, Edison’s particular form of innovation was about the what, and not about the how — the latter he could outsource and hire for.
“In 1910, few Americans knew the difference between a scientist, an engineer, and an inventor” explains Jon Gertner at the beginning of his lively book about a place that fostered a home for all three, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation. The difference was clear to Edison, who was generally disinterested in the theory behind his inventions, filling his Menlo Park complex with specialists to do the work he’d rather not. “I can always hire mathematicians,” he said, “but they can’t hire me.”
To try and understand a bit more about how people decide whether they want to use a voice-activated or touch-screen activated interface, I spoke with Alex Rudnicky, an expert in human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. The process he described is something like a marketplace, with voice and touchscreen interfaces competing for a user’s attention: The user weighs a host of factors, some circumstantial (am I in a crowded bar that will make it hard for Siri to hear me?) and others about the inherent nature of the task (Siri may prove better at “find a cheap Chinese restaurant within a mile” than Yelp’s interface, which requires you to sort through many options to nail that request).
This description fits in well with some of the Parks Associates qualitative findings, in which many people told them they use Siri when driving or otherwise have their hands full, John Barrett of the Parks Associates told me. Calculating the costs and benefits of each, a user will go with whatever’s easier, even if, Rudnicky says, they find the AI “annoying.” (Of course, this raises the question of just what it means for AI to be “annoying.” It seems that the robotic qualities people find annoying might cease to be so, if the AI were to just do it’s job effectively and quickly.)
Beyond these sorts of functional concerns, users may also weigh cultural norms. A study done by some human-computer interaction experts and Carnegie Mellon and SUNY Buffalo found that people preferred to give feedback via text than vocally to a robot (pdf), perhaps because they became sheepish talking to a robot around strangers. But if you’ve ever taken a public bus or subway in recent years, you know how fragile such inhibitions are. Rudnicky said we can expect self-consciousness about talking to robots to melt away over the next few years, much as it has for talking on a cellphone.
