Google Acquires Songza

Google has reached a deal to acquire Songza, the playlist site it had been rumored to be scouting for several weeks. Financial terms weren’t revealed, but a source with knowledge of the situation said the price was substantially higher than the $15 million figure reported by the New York Post in early June.

Songza employs about 50 music curators, who program playlists designed for moods, activities, times of day, or even weather in the listener’s area -- say, “Southern Soul Barbecue” or “Black Tie Bump ‘N Grind.” Google plans to hire all of Songza’s staff, and leave the Songza.com web site intact for now.

Google plans to incorporate Songza’s playlists into its Google Play Music All Access subscription service, enhancing its radio function. Google Play already has some human-curated playlists, but largely relies on algorithms for much of its radio-style programming. Songza may also be integrated into a paid YouTube service, which Google acknowledged it is readying.

“Over the coming months, we’ll explore ways to bring what you love about Songza to Google Play Music,” Google said in a statement announcing the deal. “We'll also look for opportunities to bring their great work to the music experience on YouTube and other Google products.”

“No immediate changes to Songza are planned, other than making it faster, smarter, and even more fun to use,” Songza said in a separate statement.

Expert-curated playlists were a differentiating factor for Beats Music, the service Apple acquired along with the Beats Electronics headphone business in a $3 billion deal announced in May. Beats allows users to fill in the blanks of a sentence describing a type of music they’d like to hear in their present circumstances -- “I’m on a boat and feel like celebrating with my family to R&B” -- and generates an appropriate playlist.

Songza began in 2010 as Songza Sets, a discovery-oriented product within MP3 store Amie Street. Its founding team sold Amie Street to Amazon the same year, and focused on Songza instead. Amazon invested in both Songza and Amie Street.

The deal gives a payday to company management and investors, including two prominent music-business figures: Scooter Braun and Troy Carter, the managers of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, respectively. Songza raised about $6.7 million during its lifespan.

A Google executive, VP of retail sales John McAteer, invested in the company as part of a 2012 convertible note worth $1.5 million. Songza most recently closed a $4.7 million round in September 2013, with investors including Metamorphic Ventures, Deep Fork Capital, Lerer Ventures, William Morris Endeavor, and author Gary Vaynerchuk, as well as Braun and Carter. Other prior investors include former NBA star Baron Davis, artist manager Julius Erving Jr., 24/7 Real Media co-founder Geoff Judge, and 1-800 Flowers.

Although Amazon added music to its Prime service last month, including a number of playlists, none of them came from Songza, according to CEO Elias Roman. The executive did not reply to requests for comment about today’s deal.

Amie Street acquired the original Songza, a search engine that located and streamed music files found on the web, in 2008. Designed by user interface expert, Mozilla designer and serial entrepreneur Aza Raskin, Songza derived its moniker from its creator’s name.

Although the windily named Google Play Music All Access was described in a March report from IFPI as “the fastest-growing [music] subscription service in 2013,” its market share remains very small compared with Spotify’s 10 million paying users worldwide. Google Play Music All Access has a library of 25 million songs, is available in 28 countries, and gives users a locker to store up to 20,000 of their own songs that can be played from various devices.

Google also made a bid for 8tracks, a site that hosts user-generated playlists, last fall. A source closer to that company told Billboard last month that a proposed deal was an “acquire-hire” arrangement, in which 8tracks’ staff would be at least as important to the buyer as its playlists and technology. But the profitable 8tracks chose to remain independent, the source said, due to factors beyond the deal’s proposed price.

Source: Billboard

Google fixes lengthy, widespread Gmail glitch

A Gmail glitch that took about 10 hours to fix and hit close to 50 percent of the webmail service's users has been fixed, ending one of the longest, most widespread Gmail disruptions in years.

Affected users endured email delivery delays and difficulties downloading attachments due to a still unexplained bug first acknowledged by Google at around 10:30 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time Monday. The company declared it patched at 10 p.m.

On its Google Apps Status site, the company pegged the start of the problem at close to 9 a.m. and its resolution at 6:30 p.m.

Prevention

On Tuesday, Google offered more details about the cause of the problem and the steps it's taking to prevent it from happening again.

The cause was a "very rare" dual network failure, which brought down two separate, redundant network paths, according to a blog post from Sabrina Farmer, senior site reliability engineering manager for Gmail.

"The two network failures were unrelated, but in combination they reduced Gmails capacity to deliver messages to users," she wrote.

Over the next few weeks, Google staffers will work on bulking up network and backup capacity for Gmail, as well as on making Gmail's message delivery more resilient in the event of a network crash, according to Farmer.

"Finally, were updating our internal practices so that we can more quickly and effectively respond to network issues," she wrote.

The issue affected individuals who use the free version of Gmail as well as businesses, schools and government agencies that pay for it as part of the Google Apps cloud collaboration and email suite.

In the U.S., the disruption covered most of the workday on both coasts, which heightened the impact of the bug for millions.

People who depend on Gmail for critical tasks took to Twitter, discussion groups and other online forums to express their frustration.

The last time Google gave an official figure for active Gmail users was more than a year ago, when it said there were more than 425 million.

Assuming conservatively that the service now has about 450 million active users, Monday's disruption likely affected more than 200 million users, plus senders on other email platforms whose messages weren't received in a timely fashion.

Even Google gets data outages

Google said that the severity and length of the impact varied among users. About 29 percent of messages received were delayed by an average of 2.6 seconds, but some mail was "severely delayed."

"We apologize for the duration of today's event; we're aware that prompt email delivery is an important part of the Gmail experience, and today's experience fell far short of our standards," the company wrote on the status site.

The incident is a big deal for both Google and those affected, but it shouldn't on its own dissuade CIOs from using the suite, said Forrester Research analyst TJ Keitt.

"Data centers hosting multi-tenant collaboration services aren't immune to disruptions. So, when they happen, the way to judge the vendor is on how well they identify and resolve the problem, and then inform the public to how they resolved the issue," Keitt said.

Using that criteria, Google's updates throughout the duration of the incident could have been more transparent and detailed regarding the nature of the problem and the strength of the fix that was put in place, he said via email.

"They have clearly not communicated this publicly, so I hope they've been forthcoming with this information with their clients," Keitt said.

Meanwhile, Matthew Cain, a Gartner analyst, said the incident raises fundamental questions about what is considered downtime, especially as it relates to service-level agreements from cloud application vendors.

"If message delivery is delayed 15 minutes, is that considered downtime? What about 2 hours?," he said via email. "The move to cloud email puts a spotlight on these essential questions about how to meter and compensate for subpar messaging performance that is not traditionally classified as 'downtime.'"

Updated 10:15 a.m. 9/24/2013 with information from Google's Sabrina Farmer

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2049306/google-fixes-lengthy-widespread-gmail-malfunction.html

A Constitutional Primer from Google

Whether you’re a high school student struggling through U.S. history class or a legal expert helping a budding nation write a new constitution, Google’s new tool for examining and comparing founding documents from around the globe is a neat new resource.

Launched Monday, Constitute is a digitized archive of founding documents from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe that also helps visitors examine hundreds of constitutional themes, such as rights, duties, culture and identity. As Google’s Brendan Ballou explains, “If you are writing a constitution and want to know what African constitutions have to say about the rights of women after 1945, you can do that in just a few clicks.”

Using seed funding from Google Ideas, the internet conglomerate partnered with researchers from the Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP), who hatched the idea to source and reference the content in 2008.

With the turmoil in Somalia, Syria and Egypt leading to either new constitutions or or revised ones in those nations, exploring the international landscape of constitutions feels especially timely.

Watch the Google video below to learn more about how it works:

Source: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/09/24/a-constitutional-primer-from-google/

New Google Play Edition devices have a new camera app, drawer, and wallpaper

The new HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S 4 with stock Android have been released, and with their version of Android 4.2.2 comes a few unique touches to the UI. The camera app, which was rumored to get an update in 4.3, has a new stacked menu system for easier navigation. Another big change is that the app drawer has been switched from a 4×4 layout to a 4×5 layout to take advantage of the different screen sizes of the One and S4.

Other minor changes are the addition of a new red Phase Beam wallpaper to add to the purple and blue versions, and a new custom boot animation. The lockscreen clock on the S4 is a little different from Nexus devices, probably so that the phone correctly works with Samsung’s S-View flip covers.

Source: Computer World

Changing SEO Strategies Post-Google Penguin

The Google Penguin algorithm update is the latest spam-fighting wave to crash against the shore of search and it has heralded something of a new dawn for SEO, especially in terms of offsite strategy.

In 2011, Google ran an algorithm update, known as the Panda update. It may sound cute and cuddly, but the Panda update was the first major algorithm update to focus on the quality on of onsite content -- pushing sites with rich content and a great user experience to the top of its search rankings, and relegating low-quality sites to the bottom.

Whilst the Panda algorithm, which is still refreshing 18 months on, is arguably more concerned with onsite factors, its not-too-distant relative, Google Penguin, was designed to focus on the other significant realm of SEO: offsite.

The Google Penguin update has led to the ice cracking under many websites tried and tested offsite strategies, which until now have involved the use of a high quantity of low-quality links.

Google has long advised web users to make sure their content adheres to the "Google Webmaster Guidelines," and the presence of the heavily referred to "Web Spam team" has contributed to the common consensus the days of low-level linkbuilding were numbered. Indeed, with the rise of personalized search and social signals seeming to be an increasing factor in ranking, it could be argued those SEO-ers who have not started to adapt their strategy could be left out in the cold.

It was around mid-March 2012 that webmasters began to receive messages warning of detected unnatural links pointing to domains, and gave advice on how to spot them:

"...artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site which could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass Page Rank or participating in link schemes."

Search personalities such as Google's Matt Cutts and SEOmoz's Rand Fishkin have long spoken against using the black hat techniques of high volume, low-quality linkbuilding, but this was a first from Google, in the sense of the volume of sites contacted.

Over 700,000 messages were sent by the end of Q1 -- more than the whole of 2011 and for many, this represented the beginning of the end for many SEOers current offsite strategies. And if it didn't, the ranking drops and the subsequent Webmaster Tools messages should have.

"We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results."

Now, Google's initial messages sent in March 2012 were the equivalent of an organic visibility death sentence, but their hard-lined message was blurred when a new wave of messages were sent in July, only this time sites which hadn't been participating in shady link schemes were receiving them too.

How could a site which had never built any links be receiving such messages?

Matt Cutts was quick on the scene and cleared things up via his Google+ account, insisting the latest batch of messages were not to induce panic, but were sent as a transparency exercise to allow greater clarity as to what Google likes and doesn't like. Another round of Webmaster messages were sent insisting Google would only take action against specific links which contravened their guidelines, and not on the domain as a whole (as they previously did back in March).

Confused?

Whichever way you look at it, the future is NOT in low-level link building, so start planning and move one step ahead with a new offsite strategy immediately.

Most SEOers reacted by balancing the following two strategies:

1) Identifying possible links that may contravene the Google Webmaster Guidelines, contacting the sites and requesting that these links be removed. Google has de-indexed a substantial portion of "spammy" sites, so removing these links from your site should become a top priority before a site could/should be submitted for a reconsideration request.

Since so many historical links pointing to a site had been de-valued or de-indexed, all previous link equity would have been removed, thus weakening the authority and trust of your site.

How could a severely weakened offsite profile be strong again?

2) Agreeing and implementing a new content-focused strategy built around engagement with relevant communities.

The ideal way of obtaining natural links is by creating content that is so useful/informative/entertaining that it begs to be shared, retweeted, '+1'd, and embedded on blogs that attract the same demographic of users that visit your site. This might also mean some actual natural traffic from your offsite efforts (something low-level linkbuilding does not provide!).

Creating content to be shared is a longer-term strategy than the quick fix of buying low-level links. But a natural strategy should engage the right audience along the way, moving SEO into the realm of more creative marketing. It also means that the great content which has been produced can take on a life of its own and be shared and linked to long after its inception.

Guest blogging, too, is a natural way of building brand recognition. Partnership with popular blogs in your industry means that more people will read your content, and the potential for natural back links, and natural traffic as a result of this, should not be underestimated.

So, Google Penguin has arrived and ruffled the feathers of SEO and offsite strategies. With so much great, unique content being shared such as infographics, widgets and videos, Google deemed now the perfect time to rid its index of low quality sites with low quality content, destabilising many offsite strategies, and penalizing those who implemented them.

For SEO offsite strategy, it means adopting a longer term strategy revolving around unique, high-quality content and utilizing social platforms to drive engagement and exposure. Creativity should be at the heart of offsite strategies moving forward, and if it isn't you may well be left out in the cold... like a Penguin.

Source: Huff Post

Google Cloud vs. Amazon Cloud: How They Stack up

Google's new IaaS cloud boasts strong compute performance but lacks the breadth of features in Amazon Web Services' 4-year-old Elastic Compute Cloud, according to one industry analyst's side-by-side comparison of the services.

Neither company provides details of the silicon chips within its servers, but analyst Chris Gaun from Ideas International (recently acquired by Gartner) has used information in public statements to determine the hardware behind each vendor's cloud. Google has said it uses Intel Sandy Bridge processors and that each unit of its Compute Engine delivers performance matching that of at least a 1.0- to 1.2-GHz 2007 Opteron chip. Other media have reported that Google uses 2.6-GHz processors, which leads Gaun to believe the company has Xeon E5-2670 chips, the only ones on the market at the time of Google's announcement that deliver that level of raw compute power.

Gaun believes Google is running the high-capacity chip across its cloud infrastructure, while Amazon makes it available in certain instance types for Elastic Compute Cloud customers, including in its recently announced high I/O extra large cluster compute offering. "Google seems to be running only the latest and greatest chips on the market, while Amazon has a wide variety of chips for customers to use," Gaun says.

Amazon isn't standing pat either. AWS on Wednesday, for example, announced the ability to set the input/output operations per second (IOPS) in Elastic Block Storage.

There are other differences between Google Compute Engine, which is still in limited preview mode, and Amazon cloud services. AWS has 11 different sizes of compute instances, ranging from small virtual machines with 1.7GB of memory, to extra-large compute clusters with 60.5GB of memory, whereas Google has only four. Google also makes the fiber-optic links between its own data centers available to cloud customers. AWS has a variety of accommodating features in its cloud though, such as the EBS volumes, relational database services, load balancers and others.

The two companies are appealing to different customers, Gaun says. While AWS is targeting technology-reliant businesses that are turning to the cloud to host their websites, databases and storage, Google is focused initially on research and development teams that may have a need for high-performance computing to complete a project, for example. The strategy is seen in the pricing models: AWS offers reserved instance pricing discounts, in which customers agree to use a compute instance for months or even years. Google's cloud is priced by smaller time chunks and therefore aimed at shorter-lived projects.

Gaun says if Google wants to compete in a broader market with Amazon, it will likely have to offer a discounted pricing option for long-term use. That may come in time, Gaun predicts, given that the company's cloud computing offering isn't even generally available yet.

Source: PCW

Google debuts super fast broadband service in Kansas City

Google has kept its long-stated promise of super high-speed Internet access by debuting a new fiber-based Internet service in Kansas City with speeds more than 100 times faster than most U.S. Internet systems.

Google Fiber TV service is priced at $120 a month for a package that includes television channels, one gigabyte per second Internet speeds and one terabyte of cloud storage. For $70 a month, the service is available without the television channels.

Advanced level subscriptions offers the ability to record eight TV shows at one time and store up to 500 hours of high-definition programming on the cloud. The subscriber can use a tablet or smart phone as a voice-activated remote control if desired. The service comes with router and a Nexus 7 tablet that can act as the system’s remote control.

The TV service allows subscribers to search live channels, Netflix, YouTube, recorded shows and tens of thousands of hours of on-demand programming.

“The Internet is a huge positive force, and yet we are at a crossroad,” said Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer. Internet speeds, he said, have leveled out for broadband since around 2000 and Google will be making it 100 times faster with the new service.

“We will make Kansas City a place where bandwidth flows like water,” Milo Medin, vice president of access services at Google, told the Los Angeles Times.

Google invested in building out fiber in Kansas City, Missouri in 2011 after earlier inviting cities to help identify communities that would be interested taking part in the project. For months, the company has been laying a network of fiber optic cable in the city.

Ron Josey, an analyst at ThinkEquity, told the newspaper that Google has long been frustrated by Internet speeds offered by other providers. A faster online infrastructure, he said, would let Google create more products.

“This is their way of showing, if we offer a better pipeline, look at what we can do on the Web in terms of innovation,” Josey said.

Sameet Sinha, an analyst at B. Riley & Co., said the project hopes to stimulate others to follow Google’s lead. “They want to get the government to notice that higher broadband should be a strategic priority,” he told the newspaper. “Second, it could force cable companies to start offering higher-speed Internet.”

Source: BroadcastEngineering

Google Play Grows Up: New Developer Policies Will Clean Up Google's App Store

Google Play, Google's Android app store, is close to eclipsing Apple's App Store in pure numbers, but there's one area in which it's lacking. The former Android Market has a ton of rogue apps -- including copycat games, spam, and malware.

And now, Google is looking to clean up its act.

The difference between Google's and Apple's app stores is that Apple polices every app submitted to the store, often with a draconian approval process. Google's market, on the other hand, is a free-for-all: anyone can submit apps, and there's virtually no screening process. Google has been keeping an eye on its store, and removing known malicious apps, but now we're looking at a potential crackdown.

In a letter to developers Wednesday, Google outlined a new set of rules, which it hopes will eliminate some of the spammy apps in the Google Play store. Developers have 30 days to comply with the new policies, or risk their app being removed from the store.

The new rules are quite comprehensive. All Google Play apps must use Google's own payment system for downloads or in-app purchases (except for physical goods and goods consumed outside the app). To reduce copycat apps, Google says app developers shouldn't "pretend to be someone else" and may not "represent that [their] app is authorized by or produced by another company or organization if that is not the case." Apps also should not have names or icons too similar to apps that ship with Android.

Google also gets specific in the new rules about not transmitting viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and malware, as well as about misleading product descriptions, repetitive content, ratings gaming, and apps that send automated SMS and email messages. There are also new rules regarding suspicious ad practices in apps: developers can no longer make ads look like system notifications or collect personal user data.

Google's new developer policies for the Google Play store show that the company is finally looking to mature its app marketplace. This makes sense, since Google Play is now similar in size to Apple's App Store, with 600,000 apps to Apple's 650,000. Even though studies indicate that a majority of Apple App Store apps are never downloaded, Apple undoubtedly has the upper hand when it comes to app quality. With its latest move, Google could be closing in soon.

Source: PCW

5 things Marissa Mayer will change about Yahoo

Now we know why Yahoo chose not to appoint interim CEO Ross Levinsohn as its full-time leader: the company got Marissa Mayer instead. Mayer, the head of the Google Search group and the 20th employee at the search company, will start immediately at Yahoo.

Google and Yahoo started as similar companies. Both were search giants, but at different points in their respective histories they diverged. The subsequent tale of the tape shows that Google's direction -- guided by strong leaders -- was the more successful path.

Here's what we can expect Mayer will bring to Yahoo.

The engineering culture that Mayer helped build at Google. Google has historically been run with an engineering mindset. The best Google services are fast, functional, and continually tested and improved as time goes on. Mayer herself was proud of talking about how even a tiny change in the position of an item on the Google Search page would be tested and evaluated over and over again. The company's main products were driven by data, not art.

Over time this has changed (see the Nexus Q, for example), but for its main products, Google is still driven by the numbers.

Mayer will likely bring this same rigor to Yahoo's products, in particular, the home page, Yahoo's portal to the Web. Her expertise in relentlessly tweaking products to extract maximum utility out of them could also extend to Yahoo Mail, still one of the largest e-mail providers. Yahoo applies a lot of data tricks in delivering its home page to its vast audience, but the key will be extracting more dollar value from the billions of Yahoo pages viewed.

Mayer has not run an entire company, though, so it may be a challenge for her to adjust the culture of Yahoo.

And it is the organizational culture at Yahoo that needs to most help. "Yahoo takes too long to make decisions," says Salim Ismael, who ran the Brickhouse project at Yahoo -- a group set up outside the standard reporting structure at the company so it could innovate more quickly. "On the Internet you need speed, and you need to take risk. Yahoo accidentally adopted a matrix organization structure that's antithetical to both," he says.

Yahoo could also use some of Google's ruthlessness in killing projects. The company gleefully reported on its 2012 spring cleaning project (which, for all we know, is ongoing). In a large, interlinked structure, which Yahoo apparently has, it's difficult to make the right decisions about killing products.

Google, though, maintains an optimism about its direction even as it chops down its underperformers. That's due, in part, to its capability to learn from its mistakes and not punish people involved in them. Even though Google killed social experiments like Buzz and Wave, it forged ahead with Google+. Even though its structured knowledge product Knol died, Google Search inherited a lot from the project.

And this points to another big strength of Google: the company is very good at working on long-term visions. Social has become key to the company's growth despite early failures. Google is also becoming a media company, throwing big money into hardware initiatives like Google TV and the Nexus Q media streamer, products that, in their initial incarnations, are not going to be remembered as successes. Google is also pushing to take a few market share points from Apple and Amazon in the media sales market.

It's much easier for a company that has resources like Google to play the long game, but a new CEO with Mayer's background and energy should be able to divert some funds to play some long-range bets and recruit some top talent back into the Yahoo fold.

Finally, there's the engineering-friendly culture of experimentation, or to put it in more shareholder-friendly terms, an R&D focus. Google is doing original research in areas that appear to be orthogonal to its mission -- self-driving cars, augmented-reality eyeglasses, and even energy. But these projects can pay off in numerous ways and their value can (but not always) feed back to the mainline business. On the other hand, Yahoo doesn't have the resources today to focus much beyond fixing what is broken at the company.

Can a media company be successfully run as an engineering company? Google, it needs to be said, actually is a media operation. It makes its money selling media advertising, and gathers 72 hours a minute of video on YouTube. Can the same discipline work at Yahoo? There's probably no one better to give it a shot than Marissa Mayer.

Source: CNET

Flipboard Finally Invades Android!

Flipboard has emerged out of beta testing and is now available on Google Play. The app, which had been exclusively for Samsung Galaxy S III users for some time, may now be downloaded by those whose Android-based devices are compatible with the app.

Flipboard is a news reading app dubbed as a social magazine that has proven itself popular with users of iOS devices. It collects content from various sources such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, BBC, The Verge, National Geographic, Oprah, and USA Today and arranges them in a magazine format.

Its aim basically is to help users simplify their life since it has all they need on one app, and no longer have to sign in to multiple sites or visit them. A feature called Content Guide offers more content hand-picked by Flipboard’s editors. To make things easier, the app comes with an accompanying widget that acts as a shortcut to Flipboard.

The award-winning app furthermore integrates with read-later apps like Pocket, Instapaper, and Readbility. Users on shared devices may create their own account to bar others from reading their personal content. The app is available in localized versions like the UK, Canada, China, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Taiwan, and the US, enabling users to enjoy local content like news.

Flipboard cautions that it is best viewed on smartphones, which implies that its resolution is not excellent on tablets. To be more specific, Flipboard retains it small size even while opened on a large tablet screen.

This app is a nice addition to all those which promise to help users manage their online subscriptions and social networks. Its many awards, including TIME Magazine 50 Best Inventions of 2010, WIRED magazine Essential App of 2011, and TechCrunch Cruchies Best Touch Interface 2011, likewise make it an attractive offer.

The best part about this app, however, is that it is completely free of charge, which means that if it does not do what it promises, users can simply hit uninstall. The app has a minimum requirement of Android OS 2.2 Froyo.

Google's impossibly clever Alan Turing doodle

Normally, when Google creates doodles, it uses its brains to create art that everyone can grasp and feel.

For tomorrow in the U.S. (and today in places like New Zealand), however, the company has decided to offer no such creative mercies.

June 23, 2012 would have been the 100th birthday of Alan Turing. And you can hardly celebrate his memory with something fluffy and brightly colored.

Instead, there are a series of 1s and 0s and arrows pointing to left and right.



Turing was an exceptionally gifted mathematician, computer scientist and code breaker, whose Turing Machine (which this doodle commemorates) was the basis for so much in computing.

In an act of utter disgrace, for which the British government only apologized in 2009, Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952. He was chemically castrated and died in 1954 (aged 41) after biting into an apple laced with cyanide. At the time, an inquest declared this to be suicide. However, some believe his death was an accident.

This was the man who had helped crack the German Enigma code, a great step toward bringing a successful end to World War II. In return, he was prosecuted for gross indecency and given the choice of prison or experimental chemical castration.

He chose the latter. His conviction meant he could no longer work for the British government. (He was one of around 100,000 gay men convicted at the time.)

Then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in his 2009 apology:

While Mr. Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him.

His conviction was never overturned, this despite efforts in 2011. The British government declared that he was legally convicted at the time, and therefore wouldn't make an exception.

It did, however, make an exception for 300 World War I deserters in 2006. The reason for many of their desertions had been given as shell shock. British Member of Parliament John Leech has long tried to get the same kind of pardon for Turing.

How Alan Turing ushered in modern computing (photos)

Turing's work was so widespread that his influence infused so much of modern thinking. In 1950, for example, he created a test -- now known as the Turing Test -- that measured the intelligence of a machine.

He is credited with having designed the circuitry for early computers by himself. Turing's Pilot Ace computer was the one that, in 1954, worked out the cause of a mid-air explosion aboard a Comet jet.

London's Science Museum is this week opening a year-long exhibition called "Codebreaker: Alan Turing's Life and Legacy" (see video above). It includes a German Engima coding machine on loan from Mick Jagger.

As for Google's commemorative doodle, I have embedded a video showing how to solve it. Just so that you can be a codebreaker for a day.



Credit: CNET

The new mobile platform wars: It’s time to look beyond iOS vs. Android

It is shaping up to be a critical year for mobile tech.

If you’re tired of the endless iOS versus Android market share reports, take heart: There are new issues, and new challengers, making 2012′s mobile landscape more complex and more important than ever before.

Windows 8 is emerging as a viable threat to the iPad, while Android tablets continue to struggle. Google and Facebook are continuing to square off for domination of social interactions on your phone. And several mobile payments services, including Google Wallet, Isis, and PayPal’s offerings, are hoping to replace your credit card. More than ever, platforms are fighting to get and maintain a share of what you carry with you every day.

Meanwhile, the years-long iPhone versus Android battle has reached a bit of a standstill. Android continues to dominate in terms of overall smartphones sold (though Apple had a particularly great fiscal first quarter), and Apple remains triumphant in terms of actually making money from its devices.

We’re going to be discussing all of the above, and more, at our second Mobile Summit next month in Sausalito, California. If you haven’t yet scored one of the 180 invitations to this exclusive event, here’s a glimpse of what we’re expecting for the next year in mobile platform wars.

Tablet wars: Episode 3

We’re now three years into the post-iPad tablet generation, and it seems like the competition is finally beginning to get interesting. After suffering through mostly lackluster Android tablets over the last few years, Microsoft has emerged as a surprisingly refreshing tablet competitor with Windows 8. (Check out our in-depth preview with an early Windows 8 tablet.)

As I’ve written before, Microsoft is taking its approach to tablets a step beyond Apple with Windows 8, something that the company made abundantly clear during its unveiling for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview in Barcelona. Unlike Android or iOS, Windows 8 is a full-fledged desktop operating system, not just a souped-up mobile OS on a bigger screen. Microsoft is positioning Windows 8 as its OS approach for all computers in the next decade, not just tablets.

Indeed, Microsoft can show Android tablets a thing or two. Google has said that it’s going to be focusing even more on tablets this year, but I think the bigger problem for the search giant is its fundamental misunderstanding of tablets. They’re not just bigger mobile devices, as Android tablets initially were. Instead, tablets are more akin to PCs, thanks to their bigger screens and support for peripherals like keyboards.

The confusingly named new iPad will likely continue to dominate the tablet market (and the now-cheaper iPad 2 won’t do Android tablets any favors either). But Microsoft has a good shot at snagging the second-place spot this year — if it can keep Windows 8 tablets cheap and keep computer makers from ruining its shiny new OS with bloatware.

Facebook and Google battle for your smartphone

One of the biggest reveals from Facebook’s S-1 filing (its first step towards an IPO) was the huge risk that mobile represented for the social networking giant. Facebook said it had an impressive 425 million users accessing through mobile, but at the time it didn’t have a way to monetize them. To address that problem, Facebook recently revealed its mobile ad plan, and it looks a lot like Twitter’s: sponsored posts within your friend stream (see the screenshot to the left).

Google, meanwhile, is still trying to coax consumers into Google+, but it will likely have less trouble making a buck from them. I expect to see sponsored posts from Google+ as well, but knowing Google’s ad mastery, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had some surprises up its sleeves.

There’s no doubt that mobile is the next big goal for social networking dominance. You can look to the rise of other mobile-only social networks, like Instagram and Foursquare, as one major indicator. And unless you’re Google, you’d be crazy to take on Facebook head-on when it comes to launching a mainstream social network (LinkedIn and Twitter have been successful by focusing on things completely different from Facebook).

Last year, Facebook launched its innovative Timeline feature, and Google officially launched Google+. With the initial ground laying already done on the desktop side, expect both social networks to spend more time and energy perfecting their mobile experience.

Battle for your mobile wallet

After years of hype, we’ll finally begin to see mobile payments become a reality in 2012. PayPal is expanding its payments program to all Home Depot stores, and it’s gearing up to show off its long-awaited mobile wallet app at South-by-Southwest in a few days. Google Wallet will make its way to even more Android phones, and the carrier-backed Isis will continue to piece together its mobile payments platform.

2012 will also mark the first time most consumers get their hands on mobile payments offerings. Many have dabbled in mobile payments with Starbucks’ uber popular mobile app, but that’s a relatively simple solution. It’ll be interested to see if complete mobile wallets — which will not only handle payments, but also keep track of your purchases, loyalty cards, and wrangle special offers — actually take off with mainstream consumers.

More so than the other platform battles, there’s a ton of money at stake in mobile payments. Juniper, for example, predicts mobile payments to hit a whopping $670 billion by 2015 (with about $74 billion of that being NFC payments).

Since we’re at such a nascent stage, any mobile payment success helps to legitimize the field, according to Isis CEO Michael Abbott. In an interview with VentureBeat at the Mobile World Congress, Abbott said he didn’t think the mobile wallet war actually existed, since all mobile payments solutions are fighting against payment options consumers are already used to.

At hacking contest, Google Chrome falls to third zero-day attack (Updated)

Google's Chrome browser on Friday fell to a zero-day attack that pierced its vaunted security sandbox, the third such attack in as many days at a contest designed to test its resistance to real-world threats.

A teenage hacker who identified himself only as PinkiePie said he spent the past week and half working on the attack. It combined three previously unknown vulnerabilities to gain full system access to a Dell Inspiron laptop that ran a fully patched version of Chrome on top of the most up-to-date version of Windows 7. He spent the past three days holed up in hotel rooms and conference areas refining the attack so it would break out of the sandbox, which was designed to prevent code-execution attacks like his, even when security bugs are identified.

"These kinds of things are finicky" PinkiePie told reporters as he finished a blueberry yogurt just minutes after making his booby-trapped website display a picture of a pink pony wielding a medieval axe. He said he "got lucky" because he found a way to break out of Google's sandbox relatively early and then spent the rest of the time identifying vulnerabilities that allowed him to remotely funnel code through the system.

PinkiePie said all three of the vulnerabilities resided in code that's native to Chrome. That meant it qualified for a $60,000 prize, the top reward for the Pwnium contest Google sponsored at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver. Members of the Chrome security team started analyzing the exploit and vulnerability details within minutes of the hack. Less than 24 hours later, Google put a fix into its distribution pipeline.

"Congratulations to PinkiePie (aka PwniePie) for a beautiful piece of work to close out the Pwnium competition!" an advisory accompanying the update for Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of Chrome stated. Referring to an exploit unleashed on Wednesday, it continued: "We also believe that both submissions are works of art and deserve wider sharing and recognition."

Additional details will be published once other WebKit packages that might also be vulnerable are patched.

Google is offering prizes of $60,000, $40,000 and $20,000 under the competition in an attempt to learn new strategies for fortifying Chrome against attacks that expose sensitive user data or take control of user machines. PinkiePie is only the second contestant to enter the contest. Both have demonstrated attacks that allowed them to take control of Chrome users' machines when they do nothing more than browse to an attack site.

On Wednesday, a Russian researcher named Sergey Glaznov bundled two vulnerabilities into his own remote code-execution attack. Less than 24 hours later, Google shipped an update fixing the holes. At the separate Pwn2Own contest a few feet away, a team of researchers successfully exploited Chrome on Wednesday.It's now almost certain that attack relied on Adobe Flash to break out of the safety perimeter.

The five vulnerabilities exposed during the third and final day of the contest are miniscule compared to the overall number of bugs Chrome's security team fixes each year. A member of the team said the value of Pwnium isn't in the number of bugs that come to light, but rather in the insights that come from watching how a reliable exploit is able to slip through carefully crafted defenses.

Updated to add official comment about $60,000 prize and the release of a patch.

Google Remains King in Searches, Hearts and Minds

The bad press Google received about changes in its privacy policy hasn't hurt the search giant's popularity among Net ferrets, according to reports released Friday by comScore and the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

During February, when the hysteria level about the privacy changes were at their height, Google still garnered 66.4 percent of all searches made on the Web, a slight increase over the previous month's 66.2 percent share, according to comScore.

In a distant second place was Microsoft's Bing, with 15.3 percent, compared to 15.2 percent in the previous month.

Yahoo, which uses Bing's search engine, slipped during the period, to 13.8 percent from 14.1 percent.

The Yahoo-Microsoft combined share also dropped during the month, to 29.1 percent from 29.3 percent in January.

Bringing up the rear of the standings were Ask, with a share that remained unchanged during the period at three percent, and AOL which fell to 1.5 percent from 1.6 percent.
Don't Search Me, Users Say

Pew's survey on search engines explains why Google remains the top dog in the market. It found that 83 percent of the more than 2200 people it surveyed used Google for their search needs.

Finishing behind Google in the poll was Yahoo, with 6 percent of the respondents. That's a far cry, Pew noted, from 2004 when 26 percent of those surveyed said they used Yahoo, compared to 47 percent for Google. Yahoo ditched its search engine for Bing in 2009.

Pew's survey uncovered strong negative feelings by searchers about engines collecting data about them. Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of the survey sample frowned on engines using data collected from them to rank future search results.

Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of the respondents did not want engines tracking their searches to personalize them in the future and 68 percent opposed targeted advertising because they did not want their online behavior scrutinized by a search engine.

As opposed as those surveyed were to those behaviors by search engines, however, only 38 percent of them had a clue on how to limit the data collected about them on the Net.

On the plus side for search engines, confidence in search results remain relatively high. For example, 91 percent of the respondents said they found or mostly found what they were looking for with the search engine that they used.

In addition, nearly three quarters (73 percent) believed search results were accurate and trustworthy, almost two-thirds (66 percent) thought results were fair and unbiased, and more than half believed that over time the quality of search results had improved (55 percent) and that they had improved in relevance and usefulness (52 percent), too.

While the reports from comScore and Pew suggest that Google's privacy changes and the heated discussion over search engine tracking that surrounded it haven't tarnished the image of search engines among their users, the Pew survey does indicate that searchers don't want their activity on the Internet tracked nor do they want their search results tampered with based on past behaviors.

Chinese users occupy President Obama's Google+ page

Summary: Chinese users have taken to flooding President Barack Obama’s Google+ page with requests for aid, thoughts on current events, and flattery.

Apparently taking advantage of loosening security in the country’s comprehensive Great Firewall of censorship, Chinese citizens have flocked to President Barack Obama’s Google+ page to leave a veritable flood of comments, most flattering.

It’s not exactly clear why or when the Chinese government opened Google+ to citizens, or why these new users have chosen President Obama’s official reelection campaign page as their rallying point. But the comments come in waves, and most posts to the page quickly hit the maximum limit of 500 comments. And as you may expect, most of these comments have been left under what appear to be pseudonyms.

English-language website ChinaSMACK translated several of the comments, but due to high traffic, the site’s availability has been sporadic. Fortunately, the Washington Post rounded up several of the most representative comments left by Chinese users:

“Dear President Obama, when will you send troops to liberate China?”
“Mr. President, we long for America’s freedom.”
“Hello Mr. President, I am Chinese. I hope that when you are dealing with the Chinese government that you won’t only focus on economic interests. The people here also need freedom and democracy. We need a free internet and a safeguarded life that is not too hard. Hope you can do your best to help us, thank you.”
“Obama, you do not contribute to world peace, but earlier get the Nobel peace prize, do not you feel ridiculous?”

As you can see, the comments range from fawning to mischievous to thoughtful. More than a few ask for a Green Card or American citizenship. And, of course, there are a few Americans who resent these Chinese users posting in their native language as opposed to English - or who simply use it as an opportunity for sarcasm.
The Chinese news media has been tracking these Google+ occupiers, and it doesn’t appear that the flood is going to level off any time soon. Facebook may have more of the social networking market than Google+, but apparently China sees a lot of value in the platform as a means of communication with the world outside the Great Firewall.

Mozilla Introduces Browser Add-on To Fight Google's New Spying Policy

Most people don't like reading long privacy policy descriptions online. Understandable. But if you were one of the few individuals who actually clicked that annoying little pop-up link that Google has been throwing in everyone's face for the last few weeks, then you got a glimpse at the future of corporate espionage.

Clearly the folks at Mozilla, makers of the popular Firefox web browser, clicked that link.

Here's what we know: Google brings in about $28 billion in advertising revenue. The new changes to its privacy policy are designed to push that figure even higher by providing corporate advertisers with increased access to your web browsing habits. The bold move comes amidst widespread concern that corporate data harvesting has gotten way out of hand and may even be illegal in some countries.

In response to Google's latest spying (some would say "tracking") efforts, Mozilla has unveiled a new add-on that provides web surfers the ability to see which companies are recording their browsing history.

The new add-on is called Collusion and allows users to fight back, in a sense. Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs says the software is designed to "pull back the curtain" on advertising firms and companies that track the public's online activity.

While Collusion won't stop the spying, it will at least give users a view of who is watching their clicks across the Internet.

"Collusion is an experimental add-on for Firefox and allows you to see all the third parties that are tracking your movements across the Web," said Mozilla in an official press release. "It will show, in real time, how that data creates a spider-web of interaction between companies and other trackers."

Mozilla has stated that its long-term goal is to construct a database of the worst spying offenders. That database would then be available to the public and could be used to shape buying habits and mount potential boycotts.

Collusion's debut was well-timed to coincide with increased international pushback against Google's plans to stream consumer data from web browsers and smart phones straight to corporate Adsense clients. A coalition of consumer groups from across Europe and the U.S. sent a letter to the web giant this week asking that it rethink the controversial new policy that the coalition described as "unfair and unwise."

Google responded to the criticism in a blog post saying, "Our privacy policies have always allowed us to combine information from different products with your account - effectively using your data to provide you with better service. However, we've been restricted in our ability to combine your YouTube and Search histories with other information in your account."

However the clash of the internet titans ultimately plays out, it seems clear now that Google may be in danger of violating their self-imposed first commandment to "Never be evil." If public perception turns on them, Mozilla is well positioned to don the mantle of consumer advocate and become the premiere defender of web privacy.

Google Kills Hosted AdSense for Domains on Undeveloped Sites

Google sent out a message today to publishers using Adsense for Domains. After nearly 4 years of running the program, the company has decided to discontinue their hosted Adsense for Domains on undeveloped domain names. The company is recommending migrating your domain names to a parking company.

Domainers relished the release of the Adsense for Domains program as a possible way to “cut out the middle man” and bypass the parking companies, but most domainers who spoke with DNN have found that the program provided no additional benefits.

One part of the announcement that seems puzzling, Google claims that the “benefits to our partner network” don’t make sense to continue, yet Google recommends switching to parking domains through a parking company that uses a Google feed. Google is in essence including the middle-man in this scenario. The parking companies may be adding the benefit of aggregation, optimization and fraud screening that Google does not handle, but it would seem that this skill-set is in Google’s “wheelhouse” . After 4 years they could have easily handled these tasks if not great improved upon the optimization and screening already being done by smaller players.

See the full message from Google after the jump.

We’re contacting you because you’re using AdSense for Domains to monetize your undeveloped domains. After evaluating the benefits of our partner network, we’ve decided to retire the Hosted domains product within AdSense. Going forward, undeveloped domains will only be served through our existing AdSense for Domains distribution network.

Our records show that XXX of your Hosted domains will be affected by this upcoming change, which will follow the schedule below:

March 21: You’ll no longer be able to create new Hosted domains

April 18: Hosted domains will become inactive and it’ll no longer be possible to earn from them

June 27: Hosted domains will no longer be available in AdSense accounts

To continue monetizing your undeveloped domains, you can migrate your domain portfolio to any domain parking provider. Find out how in our Migration Guide:

Please note that this upcoming change won’t affect any other AdSense products you’re currently using or the availability of other products to you. In addition, reporting on your Hosted domains will remain available throughout the schedule above and for a period following the retirement.

For more information see the Help Center. We appreciate your understanding and thank you for your patience as we continue to develop new features and offerings within AdSense.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Google Shutting Down Hosted AdSense For Domains Program

Google is emailing participants in its hosted AdSense for Domains (AFD) today to inform them that the sometimes-controversial program is headed for closure in mid-April. The change will only affect domains that Google hosted.

“After evaluating the benefits of our partner network, we’ve decided to retire the Hosted domains product within AdSense,” Google wrote in the email. “Going forward, undeveloped domains will only be served through our existing AdSense for Domains distribution network.”

Google linked to a migration guide on its site (some links from which are not currently functioning), which advises that hosted domain AdSense participants move their sites to other third-party domain parking providers, such as DomainSponsor or Sedo, which already have relationships with Google to serve ads.

After April 18, Hosted domains will become inactive and owners will no longer be able to earn from them. On July 27, AdSense users will no longer be able to see the Hosted domains in their accounts. Account holders will not be able to create new Hosted after March 21.

It’s not clear what is happening, if anything, to AdSense for Domain participants who do not have their domains hosted by Google. We’ve reached out to Google for some clarification and will update when we hear back.

Yandex, Google’s Russian Rival, Is Twitter’s New Real-Time Search Partner

A significant step for Twitter in its international growth: Yandex, Russia’s search giant, today announced that it will carry Twitter data in all of its search results.

The news also underscores one possible route to revenue generation for Twitter: Yandex describes this as a licensing deal. The terms of it were not disclosed but Microsoft reportedly paid Twitter $30 million for a similar search agreement.

The agreement with Yandex will see Twitter’s data firehose appear both in Yandex’s blog search, as well as through a dedicated URL, twitter.yandex.ru.

The Yandex agreement is similar to the real-time Twitter search that used to be offered by Google — a partnership that ended last year around the time that Google was launching its own Google+ service.

Yandex says it has licensed the “full feed of all public tweets,” covering all languages — but seems to highlight specifically those tweets that are in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian or Kazakh, covering tweets from more than two million users. People will be able to search by usernames and hashtags, too. In total, Twitter has around 100 million active users, covering some 250 million tweets per day.

This looks like Twitter’s first big deal with a Russian portal, and could point to more local partnerships of its kind — useful for Twitter extending its coverage and usefulness beyond its home market and English.

For Yandex, the Twitter deal gives the search giant — which currently has around 60 percent of the market in Russia — a leg up in its own strategy to do more in social networking: Yandex already offers people Google-like features to share news and other content and this will enhance that.

Google AdSense In Your City Goes International: Coming to Europe, Australia and more

Back in mid-2010, Google announced the AdSense in Your City program. This is a series of events, which brings Google to various cities to work closely with publishers on best practices, give tips, and whatnot.

The initiative began in Mountain View, then expanded into places like Santa Monica, Chicago, New York and Boston.

About a month ago, Google announced that it was kicking off its North American tour for the series, with dates in Portland, Victoria, New Orleans, and Albuquerque.

Today, Google announced a more global initiative for the series. Events will be coming to Amsterdam, Bogota, Melbourne and Vienna.

“There’s plenty more to come in 2012 as well, when we’ll be visiting Auckland, Berlin, Buenos Aires, London, Mexico City, Paris, and Sydney, just to name a few,” says Arlene Lee of Google’s Inside AdSense team. “Members of the AdSense team will share the latest product updates and offer 1-to-1 optimization consultations, and you’ll hear from experts on areas such as DFP Small Business, Mobile, YouTube, and Webmaster Tools. You’ll also have the chance to meet other local publishers during the day to share your experiences.”

If you need an invite to an event, Google has a form here you can fill out to request one.