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Tag : fresno

Apple Eyes HTC in Latest Patent Lawsuit

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 9:59 am

Apple Eyes HTC in Latest Patent Lawsuit

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, gather round for the latest round of: Patent Lawsuit Theater! The players in this round are Apple and HTC. Apple is alleging that HTC infringes on 20 of its patents related to the iPhone user interface.

As in the Nokia/Apple skirmish, Apple filed its lawsuit concurrently in both the U.S. District Court in Delaware and with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC).

The ITC, as fans of this ongoing mobile patent circus may recall, is investigating Apple’s alleged patent infringement at Nokia’s behest.

We haven’t been able to pull the full lawsuit from the U.S. District Court, so it’s unclear what exact patents or claims Apple is claiming that HTC violates — although we highly doubt that it has anything to do with the Sense UI, seeing as that pre-dated the iPhone — but we’ll update this post with a link as soon as that appears.

The most interesting aspect of this particular case (for now) is actually in the announcement. In it, Apple CEO Steve Jobs says:

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it… We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Seriously, this whole game is getting ridiculous. I know these are multibillion-dollar companies, but perhapstheir resources could be better spent, I don’t know, innovating their products rather than trying to sue one another into oblivion?

Update: Engadget has been given a statement from HTC that basically says this entire thing comes as a shock. From Engadget:

We only learned of Apple’s actions based on your stories and Apple’s press release. We have not been served yet so we are in no position to comment on the claims. We respect and value patent rights but we are committed to defending our own innovations. We have been innovating and patenting our own technology for 13 years.

Furthermore, Engadget is working on pulling the files together, but the full suit isn’t in the court’s system yet. Additionally, Engadget says that Apple has submitted over 700 pages of exhibits to District Court. 700 pages and that the ITC complaints call out virtually every HTC product that’s been on the market in the last eighteen months.

Kudos to Engadget and Nilay Patel for finding all of this stuff out.

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Social Networks Play a Major Part in How We Get News [STATS]

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 1:23 pm

Social Networks Play a Major Part in How We Get News [STATS]

The latest study from Pew Internet analyzes the news Americans are consuming and various different ways they find news. Based on a sample of 2,259 adults, the study reveals that three fourths of the people (75%) who find news online get it either forwarded through e-mail or posts on social networking sites, and half of them (52%) forward the news through those means.

This translates to a large portion of all Americans. According to the report, 59% of those surveyed get news from a combination of online and offline sources.

However, the study also shows that very few people nowadays (7%) are getting information from a single media platform. In fact, nearly half of Americans (46%) claim they get news from four to six media platforms on a typical day. And while TV is still the biggest source of news (78% of Americans say they get news from a local TV station), Internet sits at second place (61% of users get news online), ahead of radio and newspapers. Interestingly enough, relatively few people — only 17% — claim they read news in a national newspaper such as The New York Times or USA Today.

Also interesting is the division between news consumers according to their relationship to news. Thirty-three percent of cellphone owners now access news on their phones, and 28% use personalized news, meaning they have a customized page that includes news from sources they’ve chosen. Perhaps most importantly, news consumers today participate in the creation of news; 37% have contributed to news creation, commented on news or shared it via social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

The entire report is available here.

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How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 1:14 pm

Professors who wish to engage students during large lectures face an uphill battle. Not only is it a logistical impossibility for 200+ students to actively participate in a 90 minute lecture, but the downward sloping cone-shape of a lecture hall induces a one-to-many conversation. This problem is compounded by the recent budget cuts that have squeezed ever more students into each room.

Fortunately, educators (including myself) have found thatTwitter is an effective way to broaden participation in lecture. Additionally, the ubiquity of laptops and smartphones have made the integration of Twitter a virtually bureaucracy-free endeavor. This post describes the two main benefits professors find when using Twitter in lecture.

Increased Participation

Classroom shyness is like a blackhole: Once silence takes over, it never lets go. In my own experience, in a class of hundreds, the fraction of students who speak up is small, and a still tinier fraction contribute regularly.

That’s why, Dr. Monica Rankin of the University of Texas at Dallas was pleasantly surprised when her experiment with Twitter began pulling more students into discussion. “It’s been really exciting because, in classes like this, you’ll have three people who talk about the discussion material, and so to actually have 30 or 40 people at the same time talking about it is really interesting,” said Megan Malone, Teaching Assistant to Dr. Monica Rankin’s United States history course, in the video below.

During lecture, students tweet comments or questions via laptop or cell phone, while the TA and Dr. Rankin respond to a real-time feed displayed prominently in front of the room. Students who manage to live off the grid for 50 minutes can still pass in hand-written notes for the TA to tweet after class.

Students in another Twitter-friendly classroom at Purdue University agree that digital communication helps overcome the shyness barrier. “It’s just an easy way to answer questions in class without embarrassing yourself and raising your hand in a big lecture hall,” said one student. Studies frequently discover that greater participation translates into better academic performance, motivation, and a likelihood of adopting different points of view, which is why it is so striking that Twitter can foster that type of communication.

A Community of Learners

The dynamic of an intellectual ecosystem, where students dive deep into class readings and argue contentious issues outside of class, is difficult to create if discussion ends when class is over. Fortunately, Twitter has no time limit. In fact, Dr. Rankin’s colleague David Parry, Professor of Emerging Media at the University of Texas, found that Twitter chatter during class spilled over into the students’ free time.

“The first thing I noticed when the class started using Twitter was how conversations continued inside and outside of class,” Parry wrote. “Once students started Twittering I think they developed a sense of each other as people beyond the classroom space, rather than just students they saw twice a week for an hour and a half.” As a result, classroom conversation became more productive as “people were more willing to talk, and [be] more respectful of others.”

Parry’s experience is in line with results of one of the first education studies of Twitter, which found that students do indeed carry on discussion outside of the classroom.

In part, students find themselves checking the feed after hours because the public trail of Twitter chatter doubles as an excellent study aid. As one student from Rankin’s class put it, “The significant terms that we’ve talked about in discussions, we’ll tweet that, and you can [go] back [to] that, and it’s a pretty good study aid.” This, in turn, keeps Twitter on their minds, fueling the cycle of involvement.

Conclusion

For schools hit hard by the recession, Twitter is an inexpensive solution to the growing problem of increasing class sizes. It is a tried-and-true platform to let conversations flourish. Indeed, Dr. Parry declared that “it was the single thing that changed the classroom dynamics more than anything I’ve ever done teaching.”


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Fresno Tweetup Goes Wild – fresnobeehive.com

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 8:03 am

Fresno Tweetup Goes Wild – From FresnoBeeHive.com

By Mike Oz |

Tweet_up_zoo_final.jpg

The Beehive and Chaffee Zoo are partnering for Fresno Tweetup Goes Wild. It’s a chance for local Twitter users to meet and mingle inside the zoo, at a discounted, after-hours event. It’s our sequel to last summer’s Great Fresno Tweetup.

This event is Saturday, April 24, from 5-8 p.m. Chaffee Zoo will be closed to the public, so it’s an exclusive event for local Twitter users. Tickets will cost $5, and kids 10 and younger are free with their parent(s).

There will be food, drinks, games and live music — all of which you can expect more details right here on The Beehive as the event gets closer.

A few notes on how the Tweetup will work:

  • You MUST message either Chaffee Zoo (@fresnozoo) or The Beehive (@fresnobeehive) on Twitter to get on the list for $5 tickets.

  • You’ll pick up your tickets along with a nametag at the will-call table before the event.

  • The Zoo says all its usual animals will be out during the Tweetup. We’ve also got a few fun things scheduled — like a Twitpic Scavenger Hunt.

  • Mark any and all Tweets about the event with the hashtag #wildfresno. And follow that hashtag for all the chatter about Fresno Tweetup Goes Wild.

  • If you’re not Twitter, you’ve got plenty of time to join and get into the swing of things. Be sure to follow @fresnobeehive and @fresnozoo first thing.

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Remarkable Stats on the State of the Internet [VIDEO]

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 10:46 am

Remarkable Stats on the State of the Internet [VIDEO]

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Individual stats like Facebook passing the 400 million usermark, Twitter hitting 50 million tweets per day, and YouTube viewers watching 1 billion videos per day are impressive on their own, but what if we looked at Internet-related stats collectively? Jesse Thomas did just that in his video State of the Internet.

The video — created and animated by Thomas with data from multiple sources — highlights some remarkable figures and visually depicts the Internet as we know it today. It’s a must-watch video for anyone trying to wrap their minds around just how immersed web technologies have become in our everyday lives.

You can watch the video below, but we’ve also included some of the most intriguing figures shared in the video:

- There are 1.73 billion Internet users worldwide as of September 2009.

- There are 1.4 billion e-mail users worldwide, and on average we collectively send 247 billion e-mails per day. Unfortunately 200 billion of those are spam e-mails.

- As of December 2009, there are 234 million websites.

- Facebook gets 260 billion pageviews per month, which equals 6 million page views per minute and 37.4 trillion pageviews in a year.

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Facebook Friending Made Simple: Just Shake Your iPhone

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 9:09 am

Ever wanted to Facebook friend someone you just met right on the spot? Until today, that wasn’t easy. But now, if you have an iPhone, all it takes is a single bump, courtesy of the Bump iPhone app.

For those of you unfamiliar with the app, Bump allows you to share contact information with friends simply by bumping your phone once with another friend’s phone (note: they much touch to work, you can’t just shake it in the air). The app then connects your iPhones and transfer contact information like phone numbers and addresses (for more, read our original review).

Now a new update to the app has brought it a couple of new features, but the one people will be talking about though is the Facebook integration. If you link your Facebook account to Bump and swap contact information with another person who has done the same, you can choose right then and there to initiate a friend request. Once done, a prompt will appear where the other party can accept or deny the friend request.

Jake Mintz, Co-Founder of Bump Technologies, told me that he and his team worked closely with Facebook to make this happen. He’s “pretty sure” that Bump’s the first app that can initiate and accept friend requests; we can’t think of any mobile apps off the top of our heads that do, so we think it’s likely Bump is the first.

Along with the Facebook integration, Bump now boasts custom profiles, which gives users more control over the contact information they share when “bumping” or create frequently-used share settings such as “work,” “personal,” or “fake” (just in case you can’t shake off that persistent and annoying guy/girl at the bar).

Jake says that this is the first of many social media integrations that will come to Bump. So yes, you can expect the ability to follow the people you meet via Twitter just by bumping iPhones in the near future.

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Google Adds Facebook Pages to Real-time Search

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 1:04 pm

Google Adds Facebook Pages to Real-time Search

Google has announced that it has added a new content source to its real-time search feature: Facebook Pages.

GoogleGoogle launched real-time search in December, providing a real-time feed of information from Yahoo Answers, TwitterTwitter, blogs, news websites, and other sources for hot or trending search results.

Two integrations have lagged though: MySpaceMySpace andFacebookFacebook. Eight days ago, Google added MySpace updates to its stream. And now Google has added Facebook Pages to the mix.

Still, Google’s stream doesn’t include public Facebook profiles, something only rival search engine BingBingcan access. This limits the usefulness of today’s update, but we still welcome the addition.

What This Means for Business

More ways to get found when you use our service.

More visibility for your campaign , a plus for your Facebook profile.

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Social Media: Party Like It’s 1999 | CTO Edge

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 7:58 am

Social Media: Party Like It’s 1999

In the past few weeks, I’ve heard more about social media infiltrating the enterprise more than any other topic in technology – even cloud computing (if you can believe that). It’s as though the sleeping giant has awoken and is now terrorizing the poor villagers below.

A plethora of social media companies are coming out of the woodwork, offering everything from a platform designed specifically for business use to intelligence-gathering algorithms that more effectively analyze users’ actions. And some of the newer companies have names that harken back to the dark days of the technology bubble in the late 1990s – names that don’t make a lot of sense but roll off the tongue and stick in the brain like a bad pop song.

Don’t get me wrong: I think social media in the enterprise is a useful tool and in the right element can go a long way in helping a company extend its reach. The companies that have sprung up in the name of social media, however, for the most part seem to be focusing on one element of social media in the hopes that their gee-whiz application is attractive enough to make their company a buyout target.

It’s as if the ghosts of 1999 are coming back to haunt us.

There is no denying that there is a lot of buzz. But I’ll be darned if I can find much substance. At least not yet.

Despite the transparency in these companies’ motives, I do believe consolidation is the way to go; after all, there is not one company out there that has all the bells and whistles needed to effectively reach an audience, measure the actions of that audience, and make the necessary adjustments to address the needs of that audience. Indeed, this little corner of technology still has a lot of growing up to do before it’s ready for prime time.

Meanwhile, I’m content to take a step back and watch social media go through its growing pains. If there’s a bubble about to burst, we’re safe in the fact that it’s just a small bubble for the moment.

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Milestone: iTunes Breaks 10 Billion Song Downloads

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 4:10 pm

Milestone: iTunes Breaks 10 Billion Song Downloads

It’s official: Apple has broken the 10 billion song barrier. Just a few minutes ago, Apple’s song download counter hit the mark, something it has been counting down to for the last two weeks.

Apple has been hitting some nice milestones recently. Just last month, Apple’s app store surpassed three billion downloads, a massive feat especially when you consider that iTunes has also been around longer than the app store.

The 10 billion mark is an important reminder of just how powerful Apple has become in the music industry, though. That’s billions in revenue that Apple has generated for the music industry, but also billions that Apple has pocketed for itself. And while digital competitors have popped up, none have come close to Apple’s music dominance.

How long until iTunes breaks 20 billion song downloads? We invite you to post your guesses in the comments!

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Google Execs Convicted in Italian Privacy Case | Governance | ITBusinessEdge.com

Posted by Christian Ramsey at 2:30 pm

Google Execs Convicted in Italian Privacy Case Feb 24, 2010 9:27:43 AM

According to The New York Times, an Italian court has convicted three Google executives of violating privacy laws for allowing a 2006 video of students bullying an autistic boy to air on the now-defunct Google Video site.

David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president and chief legal officer; Peter Fleischer, Google’s chief privacy counsel; and George Reyes, the company’s former chief financial officer, were sentenced to six months in prison. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the three don’t face extradition or jail timebecause Italy automatically suspends prison sentences of less than three years.

The ruling sets a legal precedent in Europe as to whether Internet companies can be held legally liable for content that is posted on video sites by third parties. BusinessWeek quotes Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, as saying:

It’s a bad decision. It sets a bad precedent. The individuals didn’t have any control over the private parties involved in the underlying dispute.

Certainly, as V3.co.uk notes, David Drummond agrees:

If individuals like myself and my Google colleagues, who had nothing to do with the harassing incident, its filming or its uploading onto Google Video, can be held criminally liable solely by virtue of our positions at Google, every employee of any Internet hosting service faces similar liability.

Google is no stranger to privacy issues. Its Street View service has drawn the ire of many, including Switzerland, which announced plans to sue Google for failing to obscure faces, license plates and other sensitive images. More recently, Google Buzz is creating a fair amount of rancor. The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission claiming that Google Buzz violates user privacy.

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