VentureBeat |
- Our favorite tech long reads of 2011
- Five tech industry predictions for 2012
- Sir Jony: Apple design guru Jonathan Ive gets knighted
- SOPA is for lazy companies and campaign donations — not piracy prevention
| Our favorite tech long reads of 2011 Posted: 01 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST
Here are a few of our favorite tech-related #longreads of 2011. Share your own picks in the comments. How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet, the Most Menacing Malware in HistoryBy Kim Zetter, Wired.com It's a 2833-word story about malware. It's also an incredibly gripping, suspenseful and well-crafted piece of journalism tracing the discovery and deciphering of Stuxnet, a virus using zero-day exploits to infiltrate Iran's nuclear program. This Tech Bubble is DifferentBy Ashlee Vance, Businessweek Silicon Valley is pumping out new money-makers and social networks everyday, but is finding the best way to serve ads really innovation? Vance asks some hard questions about the waste of talent in the current tech bubble and the possible fallout when it pops. What Happened to the Future?By The Founders Fund Follow the previous article with Peter Theil's Founders Fund manifesto, posted in July. They’re interested in funding innovation over cash-cows, focusing on aerospace, biotech, artificial intelligence, energy and the Internet. How I Failed, Failed, and Finally Succeeded at Learning How to CodeBy James Somers, The Atlantic Developer James Somers uses his own failed attempts to pick-up a programing language to explore a different way to teach: "Get your student to want to find something out." Project Euler uses the same puzzle/answer approach that finally helped Somers crack the code of learning. Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest StartupBy Victoria Barret, Forbes Inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs: Dropbox grew from idea on a bus to a profitable digital storage company with 45 million users in four years. Barret gets close to co-founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi to tell the story of the rapidly growing company. The Web Is a Customer Service MediumBy Paul Ford, Ftrain.com If you produce content for this crazy medium we call the Web, Ford has insight into how you can tap into consumers’ innate need to give feedback and be heard. Another great piece by Ford was Facebook and the Epiphanator: An End to Endings? in New York Magazine. Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck?One comment on a New York Times article inspires filmmaker Errol Morris to investigate his deceased brother’s role in inventing e-mail. His brother, Noel Morris, was an MIT student in the 70s with Tom Van Vleck, who is credited with co-creating one of the first email programs. Errol interviews Van Vleck and digs into his own family’s past in this article packed with great images and ephemera from an exciting time in technology’s history. Robots Say the Damnedest ThingsBy Jon Ronson, GQ Ronson has a series of entertaining, random and sometimes insightful conversations with robots. Artificial-intelligence fans should also check out Brian Christian's "Mind vs. Machine" from The Atlantic. Xbox: The making of a bad-ass machineBy Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat Yes, this is one of ours, but it's also a great read (really!). Our own lead games writer, Dean Takahashi, is something of an Xbox expert. He's been following the story of the console since it was created 10 years ago, and is intimately acquainted with the people who made it happen, the drama behind the scenes, and the ways this incredible piece of machinery went from concept to hit product. A Sister's Eulogy for Steve JobsBy Mona Simpson, New York Times There was a lot of analyzing, musing and eulogizing in the wake of Steve Jobs' death, but my favorite was a simple piece by Jobs' sister, Mona Simpson, that ran in the New York Times. Its personal and honest depiction of the human side of Jobs was a welcome chaser to all the genius/saint/tyrant coverage. Another interesting Jobs piece was "What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs, Really?" by Steve Silberman on PLoS. And just for kicks, my favorite non-tech long read of the year… Inside the mind of the octopusBy Sy Montgomery, Orion Magazine A love letter to the octopus: “Although an octopus can taste with all of its skin, in the suckers both taste and touch are exquisitely developed. Athena was tasting me and feeling me at once, knowing my skin, and possibly the blood and bone beneath, in a way I could never fathom.” Filed under: media, VentureBeat        
      This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Five tech industry predictions for 2012 Posted: 31 Dec 2011 12:37 PM PST The past year in technology was pretty wild. The really big Internet IPO returned and the massive venture capital funding bubble inflated, which seems difficult considering that the venture capital industry is far smaller than it was three years ago. But look at some of the crazy valuations on revenue-less photo-sharing startups like Color and Path. And there is clearly another bubble inflating in the cloud computing sector, with every company that uses a distributed architecture now calling itself a "cloud company." So what does 2012 have in store? Here are my predictions.
It's already happening in fact, as growth of social media usage has begun to slow for upstarts such as FourSquare and stalwarts such as Facebook alike. Silicon Valley has been obsessed with social media, and investors have funded hundreds of "me too" startups to the tune of billions of dollars. There are social networks for pet owners, all manner of marginal Twitter apps, a ridiculous number of mobile photo-sharing apps, hundreds of apps targeting social media analytics and on and on and on. Just as location-based applications became a "feature" rather than the "big thing," social media will live on and become an integral part of what we do. But the party's over for investors and startups in this space. The big growth is behind us. Revenues from social media have not lived up to the promises, and the vast majority of those thousands of startups are either dying or on the ropes. It's time to jump on the next bandwagon, folks. 2. The bubble will pop for the current crop of tech IPOs. LinkedIn and Zynga will probably lose more than half their value. LinkedIn is a great company, but even its current valuation of $6 billion is hard to justify. Zynga's valuation is based more on hype than business reality. Groupon will probably lose most of its value as well because of the inability of the company to actually make a real operating profit that doesn't require odd accounting gyrations. But we'll see another bubble of inflated IPOs coming in the form of the next generation of social game companies, newfangled B2B technology players (if Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff doesn't buy them all first), and cloud computing companies. And there is little doubt that Facebook will be the IPO of the year — but likely at a lower valuation than is being speculated.
The Kindle Fire made waves with its $199 tablet, but we will probably see a new generation of Android-powered tablets that are priced at $100 or below. Tablet manufacturers don't have the financial incentive to make these too cheap because profits shrink along with price. Once these devices get in the $100 range, carriers may subsidize them as a way to get customers to buy data plans — just like they have done for years with smartphones. Or tablet manufacturers may offer these devices with internet service bundled for as little as $10-15 per month. For sophisticated consumers, these cheap tablets will seem rudimentary. But there are many new markets that will embrace these devices. And they enable a quantum leap for education systems, communications and information sharing in the developing world. India's $35 tablet is already a reality. The current version (pictured), produced by Montreal-based DataWind is underpowered and clunky, but the next versions will be very usable. Imagine the price pressure DataWind will put on the lower end (meaning everyone but Apple) of the U.S. market if it releases the Aakash tablet in the United States.
Former Apple CEO and chairman Steve Jobs revolutionized user interaction by popularizing the Windows interface and mouse. With SIRI, he did his magic once again. SIRI is light-years better at handling complex requests than anything on a smartphone to date — and is getting better with each software update. Apple will embed this technology in new devices such as the Apple TV, in future versions of iPads and iMacs. It will probably open the interfaces to other applications and set off the voice revolution. The type of voice command capabilities that we saw on "Star Trek" will start to become the reality. 5. "Cloudburst" shakes the tech industry. Cloud computing is advancing faster than our ability to secure systems. Companies are rapidly moving their most critical data and information from file cabinets and secured servers to shared servers on the Web. Cloud computing provides significant cost savings and operational advantages. But it also unleashes a Pandora's box of security concerns. We've already seen cloud break-ins originating from China. And a number of legitimate Internet companies have suffered when the FBI confiscated a shared server in a cloud hosting facility that also hosted rogue applications. One major security breach could throw cold water over the entire industry and slow down the corporate adoption that is expected to drive cloud growth this year and for many years to come. No doubt the tech world is in for another roller coaster ride—which will be a lot of fun. Washington Post columnist Vivek Wadhwa is a visiting scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, director of research for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and senior research associate for the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. Full disclosure: Washington Post Co. Chairman and chief executive Donald E. Graham is a member of Facebook's board of directors. Copyright 2011, WashingtonPost2012 thumbnail image via Shutterstock Filed under: cloud, mobile, social, VentureBeat        
   This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Sir Jony: Apple design guru Jonathan Ive gets knighted Posted: 31 Dec 2011 11:40 AM PST
Ive is responsible for designing hit products like the iPod, iPhone, iPad and many of Apple’s line of laptop computers. The knighthood, “for services to design and enterprise”, means Ive will be addressed as “Sir Jonathan” when in England or any member of the British Commonwealth. Ive described the honor as “absolutely thrilling”, noting that he was “both humbled and sincerely grateful”. “I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making,” Ive said in regards to the knighting. “I discovered at an early age that all I’ve ever wanted to do is design.” London-born designer joined Apple in 1996. He reports directly to the CEO, a move first made by Apple founder Steve Jobs. Ive holds a Bachelor of Arts and an honorary doctorate from Newcastle Polytechnic. In 2003, he was named Designer of the Year by the Design Museum London and awarded the title Royal Designer for Industry by The Royal Society of Arts. [Via BBC; photo via Apple.com] Filed under: deals, VentureBeat        
   This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| SOPA is for lazy companies and campaign donations — not piracy prevention Posted: 31 Dec 2011 11:05 AM PST Personally, my political positioning is less about a single litmus test and more about the ideal that personal freedom is of utmost importance. It should only be trumped in the most serious of situations. As a natural extension of this belief, it means that less government is always preferable to more government — especially when it comes to the internet. Recently proposed legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act (as well as the Senate version, the Protect IP Act) would needlessly rip away many of our personal freedoms by transforming the internet into a bureaucratic cesspool. It would kill tech business innovation and strengthen powerful companies. So as an entrepreneur in the tech business world as well as a libertarian, there are many reasons to both personally and professionally stand against SOPA. (If you haven’t done your research yet, check out the many articles out there, including this one.) One thing that is consistent to any libertarian ideal is that legislation almost always has unintended consequences — things that the politicians never anticipated when they drafted the bill. In the world of technology & internet, these unintended consequences are even more stark, because the legislators barely know how to turn on their blackberry devices. And now they want to create board legislation that will govern the entire internet. Anyone see a problem here? SOPA has roots in the music & movie industries. According to many industry pundits, online piracy is the primary reason for destroying the profit margins & success enjoyed until the 2000′s. But we, as educated consumer, must ask ourselves: Was it online piracy that caused most of the music stores to shut down? Was it online piracy that fills the Walmart bargain bids with piles of $5 DVD’s? No. It was the rapid transition to digital content & the emergence of new distribution channels that catered to lower costs, more personalized consumption, and the desire to ‘access anywhere’. History shows us that laws can’t keep up with the pace of technology. And moreover, most laws that attempt to keep pace often have unintended consequences that hurt more than they help. In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled against the Grokster Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network, stating that networks are liable for the copyright material they share. Grokster was shutdown, which in theory should have been a huge win for the entertainment industry. But it wasn’t a win. Two years later P2P sharing was even more rampant because many developers created new P2P networks that simply avoided the parts of the law that got Grokster in trouble (decentralized servers, temporary storage of data, etc). To keep up, new laws would be required. Then those laws would have to be taken all the way to the supreme court. It’s a rather time consuming process. Moreover, we continue to incorrectly focus on creating laws (and subsequently enforcing said laws) as a way to stop piracy, despite several studies showing that it has little to no effect on the overall problem. People hate to hear it, but the free market is much more effective at solving piracy than anything else. Can you imagine what would happen if these companies spent their efforts on innovating and competing instead of trying to hold on to antiquated business models? The government has a history of creating laws that have unintended consequences. The Americans with Disabilities Act actually made it more costly to hire people with disabilities & reduced their employment (PDF). Another example is The Endangered Act, which resulted in landowners actually destroying habitats on purpose (PDF). With SOPA, the consequences aren’t bizarre or unforeseeable like the two previous examples. Leaders across the internet have actively outlined the potential for catastrophic results should SOPA become law. This is what makes the SOPA (and PIPA) acts so mystifying to most of us. How could our politicians vote for something that will be so bad? I’ll tell you how and bring it all home for you. Their lack of knowledge in crafting the bill is the same Achilles heel when it comes to understand its negative consequences. The supporters of this bill (a.k.a. the businesses that contribute to a politician’s reelection campaign fund) are suffering for reasons that have little to do with piracy. They could spend their time far more effectively than trying to enforce the unenforceable. The bottom line is that SOPA is bad legislation and it’s time for everyone to get involved. Don’t let elderly politicians, who pander to their donors, put restrictions on the internet that don’t even solve the problem of piracy. Laws are for honest people. The pirates will do what they want regardless. SOPA will just make it harder on the rest of us. [Foot image via ShutterStock]
Filed under: media, security, VentureBeat        
   This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
The Internet is flooded with thousands of tech articles every day. Buried amoung all of the breaking news, reblogs, how-tos and product reviews are some great long-form journalism gems. Instead of falling out of favor with today's short-attention-span-having readers, solid and deeply reported features actually saw a resurgence in 2011, thanks to tools such as 
1. Social media will lose its sizzle.
3. An explosion of the tablet market driven by sub-$100 tablets.
4. Voice recognition goes mainstream.
Apple Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jonathan Ive — a.k.a. the guy who has designed most of Apple’s most popular and iconic devices — was awarded knighthood today by the Queen of England as part of her annual list of honors.
Nicholas Holland is the founder of 
| You are subscribed to email updates from VentureBeat To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |