A few days ago I landed in England and, expecting little, slipped an old UK SIM card into my phone. I’d bought it when living in London five years ago, and hadn’t used it in over a year. But to my amazement it was still active — as was the money I’d added to its pay-as-you-go account sixteen months earlier…and then I received a friendly text message informing me that my data costs were now L1 per 100MB. Another SMS popped up when I emerged from the Channel Tunnel in France a few days later, informing me it would cost me 8p to send texts and 7p per minute to receive calls.
Can you imagine any of that happening with an American phone company?
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The writing’s on the wall. Mobile is the future, and it requires different skill than the web. Entrepreneurship is more fetishized than ever, making standard hiring tough. The result is days like today where Yahoo, Twitter, Salesforce, and Box all bought startups, and Facebook and Microsoft were reported to be in talks for major acquisitions. Big is a scary thing to be right now.
Over the last few years, Israeli IT startup 
Cross-platform is the buzzword of all the big tech companies now. Every Google earnings call, like clockwork, CEO Larry Page lately dedicates considerable time upfront to talking about how the search giant is focusing on making sure users have a seamless experience and equal access to services as they switch between devices. In general, that’s already a reality if you know where to look. But there’s so much more potential.
Twitter rolled out sweeping updates to all of its mobile properties this week, mostly to support the new Twitter Cards, but unfortunately, those who are using the service on Android aren’t so happy. The app has always been a bit buggy on the Android platform, but the issues that are being reported are more than just a little problematic. Users have experienced not being able to open the “Me” tab which allows you to access your DMs and switch accounts, important parts of the service. I’ve experienced this bug from the second that the update was released, and I’ve heard that Twitter is working on the issue. It’s not affecting all devices, but this tweet search shows it as being pretty widespread. You’re presented with a blank screen and a small spinner, with no information or message that says that the service is having any problems. At first, I thought that I just had a poor connection, but after using the app with Wi-Fi turned on, it became clear that this was a big ol’ bug: Since Twitter has been streamlining all of its apps, and site, it’s a glaring issue when one of the four tabs don’t work. While no timeframe is being offered, and Twitter hasn’t made an official statement on the issue, it’s safe to say that the beautiful redesign that the Android app received is overshadowed by these issues. If you’re having the same issue, you might have to revert to using the mobile version of the site, as I’ve done. Or, you could search for yourself and get to your profile that way. The nice part about Google Play is that as soon as Twitter updates the app with a new build, it will go live for everyone to grab without any submission process like Apple’s. Hurry up, Twitter, people are cheesed off about not being able to get their DMs from cute girls and stuff. [Photo credit: Flickr]
The Google April Fool’s train continues with the announcement of “Gmail Blue.” Yes, it’s a version of Google’s email service where everything is the color blue. The YouTube one from earlier was OK, and the Nose one was just so-so, but I’d actually use this product if it existed, especially since it took six years to “develop the technology.” Can you imagine something like this actually happening? Some people flipped out about the new compose screen becoming the default, so they’d lose their mind if Google changed all of the colors in the email service. The real bit of news here? Gmail turns nine tomorrow. Yes, we’re all old. The video for Gmail Blue is pretty damn hilarious and worth checking out. Be sure to count the number of buzzwords used: I can’t help but wonder if this is a not-so-subtle poke at Facebook, which of course is well-known for having the color blue all over the place within its apps and site. One of our readers, Edd Friedman, smartly suggested in the comments that this could be Google making fun of Microsoft Windows Blue. Makes sense. The line about brown being a disaster? Commenter syntaxsyntax999 thinks it’s a riff on the Zune. Regardless, hearing Googlers have a sense of humor about themselves and their “moonshot thinking” was enjoyable. Get ready for more April 1st funnery from Google, and the rest of the Internet, tomorrow.
I keep seeing this topic push up about how data is affecting creativity. Some say we are losing our sense of narration and storytelling. It’s not this at all. We are just experiencing a shift that other civilizations have faced when the traditional means for storytelling transform to give a sense of the changing times facing society. That does not mean a rejection of the narrative form. The ancient Greeks developed a rich oral tradition for telling stories. Out of that they created a common language, which formed the foundation for fables, legends and myths. Now we see that data, shaped by software, creates a space to tell stories in new ways. Narrative methods to express our imagination will change as techniques emerge that allow us to use programming languages to carry on what we know for the next generations. Om Malik says it’s this sense of data storytelling that will become so important. Today, he explains, data is used as a blunt instrument. The ones that use data more effectively well remind of us how we relate to each other. Cloudera Co-Founder and Data Scientist Jeff Hammerbacher said on the Charlie Rose show earlier this month that it’s not that “numerical” imagination” is better than using “narrative” imagination. It’s just that now, for the first time in thousands of years, we need to think more about using data analytic methods for developing stories. For example, Hammerbacher is working as an assistant professor at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, developing a storage and data analysis infrastructure. Like Malik, Hammberbacher said it’s how we find ways to pair data that will give us insights. For instance, finding ways to integrate genetic databases and electronic health records that tell a story that both physicians and patients understand. Hammerbacher recounted a story to Rose about a lump that appeared on his chest. The doctor examined it and sent him to another doctor. Hammebacher asked the question: “Don’t you want to quantify what is in my body?” He followed by saying the amount of insight we get into a server at Facebook is greater than we have about our own bodies. The ones who can quantify our own human data and network it will give society new ways to explain who we are through dimensions we never imagined. Hammerbacher and Malik have views from different spaces across the information spectrum. But they
Do you have a favorite coffee shop or dressmaker in your neighborhood? Now you can do a lot more than simply rave about your favorite local business to a friend: microloan giant, Kiva, is bringing crowdfunding to U.S. businesses. Normally reserved for struggling, developing-world entrepreneurs, Kiva is piloting a new project, called Zip, to allow small business owners to solicit micro-investments from their neighbors. “This is a very big deal,” said President Bill Clinton, announcing the Zip pilot project in his hometown of Little Rock, Ark. “We have gotten ourselves in a situation now where the only people who can get real money are the people who don’t need to borrow it.” Mass online investing has been an entrepreneurial dream for years, but political hangups at the Securities and Exchange Commission have delayed progress on so-called “crowdfunding”. To this day, there are still regulations about the number of investors a business can have and their minimum personal wealth. Zip cleverly skirts regulation: “Kiva is a nonprofit and makes no money from the loans we facilitate, instead we depend upon optional donations,” explains co-founder Premal Shah. “Kiva lenders make no money from the money they lend, they only expect the money they put in as a loan to be paid back. Because of this model Kiva’s crowdfunding platform falls outside of SEC rules.” Lending money, regardless of regulation, so Kiva requires that small businesses have the confidence of a “Trustee,” on organizations or individuals who vouch for the credibility of the borrowers. Trustees function like any other noteworthy investor in a startup, but in a more public way that permits the masses to invest confidently without an elite network of established investors. To give microlending some viral flare, “When borrowers successfully repay their loan, they too can become Trustees and endorse other small business owners in their community.” Ideally, success begets more success, facilitating a cascade of local consumption and investing. Zip caters especially to local businesses with a social good edge. At Old Skool Cafe, at-risk youth serve piping hot Java, to give them a better future outside the prison system. Mandela Foods Cooperative specializes in cooking up healthy desserts. Loans start out as low as $ 25. You can check out Kiva’s pilot project here.
Matthew Inman is sick of memes about bacon and kitties. Better known as web comic artist The Oatmeal, Inman gave TechCrunch the lowdown on what’s funny, what’s not, and how he finds inspiration. In this video interview he shoots off his thoughts on 4Chan and The Harlem Shake. When asked about LolCats, he bluntly replied, “Tired of that”.
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