How are prepare for 2014 at work

Turn in all expense reports
Credit: Forbes

Whether you have a few days off or you’re working right through the holidays—there are a few things you’ll want to do around the office before 2013 comes to an end.

“Sometimes this depends on your industry or job, but I think all professionals–no matter their role–can use this time of worldwide renewal to do at least a little bit of wrapping up and preparing for the New Year,” says Sara Sutton Fell, chief executive and founder of FlexJobs.“This ritual is important because many of us are so busy that if we’re not given a specific time of year to do this, it may never get done.” And if we want to see real career progress and advancement, we have to take stock of where we’ve been and what we’ve done, so we know how to move forward, she says. 

Anna Sidana, the vice president of corporate marketing at BrightEdge, agrees that it’s necessary to end the year right at work. She says it is important to start the New Year with a fresh perspective, because this provides an opportunity to refocus on professional goals to ensure that you are expending your energies on projects that are going to make a difference and further your career. “Making a conscious decision to think about the New Year as a new beginning provides a natural milestone to reassess your career and its progress,” she says. “It is a chance to plan any changes and initiatives you might want to begin, however small.”

By wrapping up loose ends and projects, making any outstanding phone calls and addressing unresolved e-mails before the holidays, people can come back to the office with a renewed focus on the New Year, Sidana says.

“Taking the time to close the year out allows you to start the New Year off on the right foot, headed in the right direction,” adds Ryan Kahn, a career coach, founder of The Hired Group, star of MTV’s Hired! and author of Hired! The Guide for the Recent Grad.

Close out any outstanding projects. Your time off during the holidays is there for you to recharge and refresh. “Don’t leave loose ends or missed deadlines lingering over you,” Kahn says. “Spend the extra time now to make sure you can enjoy worry-free time off.” Plus, when you return to your workplace in 2014, you’ll have one less thing on your to-do list.

Complete all end of month/year reports. If you’re responsible for end-of-month or end-of-year reports, get those done before 2014, if possible, Sutton Fell says.

Turn in all expense reports.  This can be a challenge when recent charges have not been posted to the credit card—but try to make sure you’ve completed as many of your 2013 expense reports as possible, says Jay Canchola, an independent human resources consultant.

Set an out-of-office response on your voice mail and e-mail. This may seem obvious, but it’s often overlooked, Kahn says. “You may be on vacation, but others may not be. Don’t risk inadvertently damaging any relationships.”

Coordinate travel plans and contact information. In addition to your out-of-office reply, you’ll want to make sure your team, and especially your manager, are aware of your travel plans and know how to reach you in case of an emergency, Kahn says. “You should also get a sense of where they will be and how to get in touch with them. This will eliminate any potential stress or surprises heading into your time off — and also demonstrate responsibility.”

Update your professional profiles. Ensure your LinkedIn profile, résumé and other professional resources are up-to-date, especially if your New Year’s resolution includes searching for a new job, Sidana says.

List your accomplishments. Reflect on the last 12 months and make a list of your accomplishments, Sutton Fell says. “Quantify anything that you can, and be as detailed as possible. Include what you did, why you did it, who was affected by it, and how it benefited the company. This information can be used in the future, either during your performance review, when requesting a raise or promotion, or in your résumé when applying for new jobs.” And you should do it now because once the New Year begins, you might not be able to recall all the details.

Lay out your goals. On the flip side, make a list of what you hope to do in the New Year, Sutton Fell says. “These can be both for your current job and for your own professional edification.”

“Planning goals for yourself and your team gives you a head start when you return after the holiday,” Sidana adds.

Are there projects you want to be involved with, or tasks you want to take on? Do you want to take a class or join a professional association? “Write these down and post them where you’ll see them regularly, either in your office at work or even on your refrigerator at home,” says Sutton Fell.

Reinforce your network. The holidays are the perfect excuse to send out cards or check-in with contacts you may not have been in touch with as much you’d like to be, Kahn says. “If you missed the opportunity to send out holiday cards, consider sending out New Year’s greetings.”

Complete all benefits forms. The end of the year is often a deadline for employee benefit changes, so check with your HR department and make sure you have all changes completed and paperwork signed, Sidana suggests.

Give thanks. Acknowledge how others have helped you in your career over the course of the year, Kahn says. “Let them know that you appreciate their efforts.”

Get organized. Clear your desk and e-mail and voicemail inboxes. This way, if you do take a few days off during the holidays, you’ll return in 2014 to a nicely organized workspace—which can significantly reduce any stress.

Disconnect. Take the time to enjoy being on vacation (even if you only have a day or two off) and spending time with loved ones. If you can avoid checking your e-mail or phone messages, do it. You’ve earned a break, Kahn concludes. You’ll return to the office in 2014 feeling refreshed and ready for what lies ahead.

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Who should run Microsoft next?

Microsoft chairman and co-founder Bill Gates. Photo: Bloomberg

Bill Gates. But since he won't, Farhad Manjoo has another guy in mind...

There's only one guy in the world who should be running Microsoft right now. Everyone knows his name (rhymes with Gill Bates), and everyone knows why he'd be perfect. Microsoft's problem isn't that it doesn't make money – it does, gobs of it, every quarter, like clockwork. (Microsoft's latest earnings report, issued in July, was universally described as "disastrous" because the company made only $US5 billion ($A5.6 billion) in profit.) Microsoft's problem is not that it doesn't make products that the world isn't using widely. Windows 8, its latest operating system, has been selling at a rate of 10 million licences a month. That's not as good as some of its earlier versions of Windows, but it's better than almost any other tech product in the world.

In other words, Microsoft's problem isn't the present. It's the future – and the path from here to there. And nobody is better suited to navigating that path than Bill Gates. Thirty years ago, Gates set forth an almost unimaginably bold goal for his tiny software company – "a computer on every desk and in every home." You can quibble with the way he achieved this – monopolistically, uncreatively – but you can't argue with the results. Windows crossed 1 billion users a few years ago, and now it has about 1.25 billion active users – more than any other computing platform anywhere. Gates managed this feat through force of will. Because he was the company's founder and – by all accounts – a hard-ass who sweated the details, Gates managed to stifle the in-fighting and bureaucracy that ordinarily consumes big firms (and that has been endemic at Microsoft for at least a dozen years). Under Gates, everyone at Microsoft knew what his or her purpose was when they went into work every morning – and, miraculously, they achieved that mission.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner: Future Microsoft visionary? Photo: AFP

Now what? Microsoft won the big game, and then, as happens in this business, the game changed. For the last decade under Steve Ballmer, Microsoft has been ricocheting from one goal to another – from making music players to tablets to touchscreen mobile operating systems to search engines to cloud servers to video games. A couple of these initiatives succeeded commercially, and some of them have been critically acclaimed flops. (I'm a big fan of Windows Phone, but its market share is way behind that of Apple's iOS and Google's Android.) Overall, though, the company's actions have been scattershot. Microsoft hasn't advocated an overarching vision for the future, or any goal on the order of Gates' PC-on-every-desk plan. It's a deficit felt both by the people who work there and, more importantly, the potential customers it wants to attract. To the world, Microsoft has become a generic tech firm – a cold, anodyne name selling slightly interesting widgets based on innovations other people put out years before.

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Bill Gates isn't coming back to Microsoft. He has said so a million times, and – given that he's now doing something much better for the world – it wouldn't be a net positive for humanity. So I'll waste just a single paragraph explaining why he'd be perfect. There are lots of bold thinkers in the tech industry who could outline a new, daring goal for Microsoft – say, that it should abandon Windows in favour of making a new cloud-based operating system that stores all your data online. But the firm's legendary inertia would stymie many of them. At Microsoft, Windows is inviolable. This is a company that slaps the Office and Windows brand on everything it does (even Microsoft's user interfaces that have no "windows", like the one on its phone, are called Windows), and where anything that might detract from these cash cows is killed before it's released. Given all the money they make, sticking with Windows and Office has long seemed a reasonable strategy, one that Gates himself has advocated throughout the company's history. (A business professor might say that Microsoft is trapped in the classic innovator's dilemma.) But this tension illustrates precisely why Gates would be so effective. Only he has the institutional authority to liberate Microsoft from the Windows/Office golden noose. Only he could outline some new plan for the firm and command the troops to get in line.

If Gates isn't going to do it, it now falls to him – as the most important member of Microsoft's board – to find the second-best person to head the company in the wake of Ballmer's announcement that he'll be stepping down as chief executive. He could choose one of the firm's insiders, such as Terry Myerson, who heads Microsoft's OS division, or Julie Larson-Green, who runs the hardware and games business. Suggestions for outsiders who could run Microsoft range from the inspired but unlikely – Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg – to the nuts: ousted Apple mobile software chief Scott Forstall.

Steve Ballmer: To step down as Microsoft CEO within a year. Photo: Bloomberg

My own favourite idea – first advocated by Sulia CEO Jonathan Glick – is Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn's CEO. Weiner has been a standout executive, pushing the business-oriented social network to routinely top analysts' financial expectations and, thus, helping its stock price soar. More importantly, though, Weiner has skilfully navigated LinkedIn around several obvious strategic hurdles – why use it when we have Facebook and Twitter? He's done so by focusing on the long term, even going so far as to schedule 90 minutes a day of doing "nothing" into his calendar in order to force himself to think. That's exactly the kind of vision Microsoft needs – and, if Gates comes out strongly in favour of this sort of CEO, he might even bring a grand new idea to fruition.

There are loads of problems in the tech world that no one else is solving. We're getting dozens of new sensor-based devices – activity trackers, digital bathroom scales, home thermostats, smart spectacles – and there's no good computing platform to connect all of them into a seamless experience. Everyone's personal media – photos, videos, music – is scattered across loads of devices and services, and it's still too hard to get everything in one place. Both at home and at work, securing your data from thieves or other calamities is still a huge hassle – and the world is waiting for the company to make security painless and easy. That's true of privacy, too.

Microsoft's next leader could choose to focus the company on fixing one of these problems, or he or she could pick something entirely different. But please, just choose something big. Microsoft is a huge untapped reservoir of money and talent. It could do great things, if it had a leader who gave it half a chance.

Read more http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/who-should-run-microsoft-next-20130828-hv1jg.html

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1st 'Made in the U.S.A.' smartphone doesn't cost more to make

Motorola's new Moto X phone is the first smartphone manufactured in the U.S.

AP: Motorola's new Moto X phone is assembled in Texas where labor costs are generally more expensive compared to Asian factories.

NEW YORK — Motorola's new Moto X phone doesn't cost more to make simply because it's assembled in Texas, research firm IHS said Wednesday.

The Moto X is the first smartphone to carry the "Made in the U.S.A." designation. Labor costs are higher in the U.S. compared with Asian factories, where phones are typically made. But IHS said the Moto X is about 5 percent cheaper to make than Samsung Electronic Co.'s flagship Galaxy S4 phone. The firm said the Moto X's overall production cost is just 9 percent more than that of Apple's iPhone 5.

The findings come as little surprise, as the labor cost of a phone is just a small part of its production cost. IHS estimates that labor and other assembly costs Motorola $12 per phone for the Moto X, bringing the production cost to $226. That compares with $207 for the iPhone 5 and $237 for the Galaxy S4. IHS said Motorola is able to keep the cost of parts low by using standard components that don't break much new ground.

By assembling the phone in Fort Worth, Texas, Motorola is able to let customers order custom designs online for delivery within four days. Standard black or white models are available immediately at retail stores.

"With the Moto X, Motorola is reaping the public-relations and customization upsides of producing a smartphone in the United States, while maintaining competitive hardware costs," said Andrew Rassweiler, senior director for cost benchmarking services at IHS.

IHS said the estimated $12 for assembly is about $3.50 to $4 more than other leading phones.

"Our initial estimate suggests the additional costs of onshoring the Moto X are relatively low," IHS said.

The phone went on sale last Friday, starting with AT&T. It's coming to other carriers, including Verizon this week. The Moto X's price is about $200 with a two-year service agreement.

The Moto X is Motorola's first phone designed from the start under its new owner, Google Inc. The Internet search company bought Motorola Mobility for $12.4 billion last year.

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The 7 R’s of Personal Management by Brian Tracy

You can further your personal effort to increase your salary by engaging in the seven Rs of personal management. These seven Rs are: rethinking, reevaluating, reorganizing, restructuring, reengineering, reinventing, and refocusing.

In rethinking, you take time on a regular basis to think about who you are and where you are going, especially when you discontented for any reason. You can ask yourself this question: How much should I earn? and What am I worth? Since everything is changing so rapidly around you, more options are available to you now than ever before. And because it is very likely that you are going to be doing something completely different in a few years anyway, you can begin thinking today about where you want to be in the future. You can rethink and re-plan your entire career, and do it in a way to earn more money.

Reevaluate Your Situation

Reevaluating is the process of standing back and looking at yourself in terms of the marketplace. Whenever you experience frustration, continual roadblocks, or stress at work, you need to take time to reevaluate your situation and be sure that you are on the right track.

Your problems at work may be caused by your not working at the right job for you, or working at the wrong company, or with the wrong people. Your dissatisfaction may be caused by your selling a product or service that is wrong for you, or for many other reasons. Perhaps your heart is no longer in your work. It gives you little or no pleasure. Sometimes, the very best thing to do in a situation like this is to change the work you are doing or the company for which you are working, so that your work life is more consistent with your talents, abilities, desires, and values. Ask yourself, what is my future with this company?

Reorganize Your Life

In reorganization, you examine your daily activities and question whether or not you should do things differently if you want to get better results. Look for ways to work with greater efficiency and perform your tasks more effectively. Continually try to increase your output relative to your input of time and money. Look for ways to earn more money in a more efficient way.

Restructure Your Activities

In restructuring, you continually look at the specific things you do that contribute the most value to your company and to your customers. You focus more and more of your time and talent on the 20 percent of activities that contribute 80 percent of the value of all the things that you do. You concentrate on those activities that represent the highest payoff for everyone involved. This is a how to earn more money.

Reengineer Your Career

In reengineering your personal service corporation, you stand back and look at the entire process of your work, from the first thing you do in the morning to the actual results that you get for your company or your customer. You analyze this process and look for ways to streamline it by reducing steps, consolidating activities, outsourcing parts of the work, and even changing the process completely so that you can achieve the same or better results with less time and fewer resources. Reengineering shows you the way how to earn more. Reengineering is an ongoing process of simplifying your work and your activities so that you can get things done in less time.

Reinvent Yourself Regularly

In reinventing, you stand back from your work and imagine starting over again. Imagine that your job or industry disappeared completely. Imagine for a moment that you had to move across the street or across the country and begin your career or your business all over. What would you do differently? Where do you want to be in your career in three to five years? What changes would you have to make in reinventing your business to create the future that you desire? Ask yourself how much should I earn?

One of the best ways to reinvent yourself is to determine what it is that you really enjoy doing more than anything else, and then to begin figuring out how you can find or create a job doing more of it.

Refocus Your Energies

The final R stands for refocusing. This is really the key to the future. It is your ability to concentrate your energies single-mindedly on doing those few things that make all the difference in your life.

In most cases, people are unsuccessful because they spend too much time doing things that contribute little to their lives. They spend more and more time doing things that have less and less value. On the other hand, highly successful people do not do a lot of things, but the few things they do, they do extremely well.

This seems to be the secret to great success and achievement in every area of life.

Become a Master of Change

The advantage of practicing the seven Rs is that they allow you to regain control over your present and future. With a sense of control comes a feeling of personal power, greater self-confidence and self-esteem . When you focus on these techniques you learn how to earn more money, feel happier, and have control of your own life and future, rather than allowing them to be determined by the unpredictable winds of change.

1:38 PM | 0 comments | Read More

JPMorgan Agrees to Pay $410 Million in Power Market Manipulation Case

Andrew Burton/ReutersThe headquarters of JPMorgan Chase in New York.

JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $410 million to the nation’s energy regulator, a move that will allow the bank to settle accusations that traders in its Houston offices manipulated electricity markets in California and Michigan.

The agreement announced on Tuesday is a record settlement for the regulator, theFederal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has ramped up its policing of Wall Street trading in recent months.

“We are pleased to put this matter behind us,” said Brian Marchiony, a spokesman for JPMorgan. “Due to reserves previously set aside, this settlement will not have a material impact on earnings.”

While the commission fined the bank, it stopped short of penalizing individual JPMorgan executives. That decision is a reversal from earlier this year, when the agency warned JPMorgan that it might seek to sanction Blythe Masters, the influential leader of the bank’s commodities business. Initially, investigators also planned to recommend that the agency hold three of her employees “individually liable.”

The accusations of market manipulation initially surfaced this spring in a confidential commission document, reviewed by The New York Times. The document, a warning that investigators would recommend that the agency pursue civil charges, had originally concluded that Ms. Masters gave “false and misleading statements” under oath.

From the outset, JPMorgan argued that Ms. Masters never made false statements.

The accusations against JPMorgan originated from its rights to sell electricity from power plants that it acquired after the bank took over Bear Stearns in an emergency rescue in 2008.

The plants that the bank inherited were outdated and inefficient. Still, the regulator said, traders in Houston found a work around. To transform the power plants into profit generators, the agency said, JPMorgan’s traders adopted eight different “schemes” from September 2010 to June 2011.

The trading strategies offered electricity at prices that appeared falsely attractive to state energy authorities. The effort prompted authorities in California and Michigan to make excessive payments that helped drive up energy prices, the regulator said.

As part of the settlement on Tuesday, JPMorgan will pay a civil penalty of $285 million to the Treasury Department. JPMorgan will also pay $125 million in “unjust profits,” the energy commission said on Tuesday. That money will go to ratepayers in both California and the Midwest, where the agency said JPMorgan’s trading practices drove up prices for electricity.

Under the deal, the bank must also make annual reports to the commission for three years detailing its power business in the United States. While JPMorgan admitted to the facts of the trading strategies, outlined in the settlement, the bank did not admit or deny wrongdoing.

The case is the regulator’s latest crackdown on a big bank. In January, the commission reached a $1.6 million settlement with Deutsche Bank involving accusations of improper trading in California.

The commission also recently ordered Barclays to pay a $470 million penalty for suspected manipulation of energy markets in California and other Western states. Unlike JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank, however, Barclays is fighting the charges.

Original sources: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/jpmorgan-to-pay-410-million-in-power-market-manipulation-case/?ref=business

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5 Transitions Great Leaders Make That Average Leaders Don't

The secret to leadership is there aren’t any real secrets. The best leaders have simply gone to school on improving their tradecraft. While the capabilities possessed by the best leaders might seem otherworldly to many, they are merely the outcome of hard work, experience, perspective, and yes, a bit of luck. The best leaders have just learned to make certain transitions that less effective leaders curiously remain blind to.

Some leaders hit their stride early in their career, others find their path later in life, and regrettably, far too many leaders never seem to get their footing. Great leaders discover pivot points and transitions that create a certain rhythm and balance, while average leaders tend to be somewhat tone deaf and awkward. We all recognize great leadership when we see it, but many fail to see what it is that actually makes the leader great. 

Following are 5 key transitions great leaders make that average leaders do not.

Find Purpose– Purpose is the one thing all great leaders have in common. Great leaders have a clearly defined purpose, while average leaders just show up to work. Purpose fuels passion and work ethic. It is these characteristics that afford great leaders a competitive advantage over those who don’t understand the dynamics of this linkage.

 The best leaders recognize a common purpose, shared values, and aligned vision are the hallmarks of any great organization. These three elements set the foundation for a sustainable culture. Leaderswho fail to bring people together around these three constructs sentence their company first to the chaos of mediocrity, and ultimately to the pain of obsolescence. Great leaders create culture by design, while average leaders allow culture to evolve by default.

A lesson lost on many is profit doesn’t drive purpose, but purpose certainly drives profit – great leaders understand this; average leaders do not. Leaders who are driven by profit will find they may be successful for a season, but they’ll eventually come to realize a pure profit agenda is not sustainable over the long haul. 

Great leaders make the transition from profit to purpose and are handsomely rewarded for doing so. A unified purpose can endure all things.

People First– Leaders are nothing without people. Put another way, people will make or break you as a leader. You’ll either treat them well, earn their trust, respect and loyalty, or you won’t. You’ll either see people as capital to be leveraged or humans to be developed and fulfilled. You’ll either view yourself as superior to your employees, or as one whose job it is to serve them, learn from them, and leave them be better off for being led by you.

The best leaders don’t put people in a box – they free them from boxes. Ultimately, a leaders job isn’t to create followers, but to strive for ubiquitous leadership. Average leaders spend time scaling processes, systems, and models – great leaders focus on scaling leadership.

Develop Awareness– Great leaders are self aware, organizationally aware, culturally aware, contextually aware, and emotionally aware. They value listening, engaging, observing, and learning over pontificating. 

They value sensitivity over insensitivity and humility over hubris. Leaders who come across as if they know everything haven’t fooled anyone – except themselves.

Great leaders avoid the traps, gaps, and blind spots average leaders so easily step into. Leaders who choose to live in the bubble of their own thinking rather than understanding the benefits of seeking others input and counsel make things harder on everyone. The willingness to allow your positions and opinions to be challenged is a sign of strength not weakness. I’ve often said the most powerful and overlooked aspect of learning is unlearning. Leaders never willing to change their mind ensure only one outcome – a lack of growth and development.

Shun Complexity– Complexity is a leader’s enemy not their friend. Great leaders live to eliminate or simplify the complex, while average leaders allow themselves and those they lead to be consumed by it. 

Complexity stifles innovation, slows development, gates progress, and adversely impacts culture.Complexity is expensive, inefficient, and ineffective.

I’m not minimizing the fact we live in a complex world, and I’m not suggesting that profit cannot be found in complexity. But great leaders understand opportunity and profits are extracted from complexity through simplification, not by adding to the complexity. While many think it was Einstein who said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” the statement was actually borrowed from Leonardo de Vinci – both gentlemen were correct.

Get Personal– If I only had a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone say, “It’s not personal; it’s just business.” Great leaders understand nothing is more personal than leadership, and they engage accordingly. The best leaders understand a failure to engage is in fact a failure to lead. Average leaders remain aloof and distant – great leaders look to know and care for their people.

Average leaders are viewed as business executives, the best leaders are viewed as great human beings.The best leaders understand it’s not a weakness to get personal, to display empathy, kindness, and compassion – it’s the ultimate strength. Peak performance is never built on the backs of others, but by helping others become successful. Treat your people as if your life depends on it – it does.

The reality is anyone can lead, but very few lead well. Will you just show up for work and check the box, or will you lead well? Thoughts?

Follow him on Twitter @mikemyatt

4:57 PM | 0 comments | Read More

Google Introduces New Features for Android Apps and Games

Sundar Pichai, a senior vice president for Google, said the company’s Android operating system was installed on 900 million devices.

Google kicked off its annual developers conference in San Francisco on Wednesday with no new products to show. But it highlighted new tools and services that will allow software makers to make Android apps and games more powerful.

Several new features focus on improving mapping services inside apps. Developers can now embed Google’s maps directly into their apps, and the maps can support 3-D vectors so they can be easily rotated.

Google is also providing a toolkit for developers to embed a new low-power location mode that uses less than 1 percent of battery per hour when apps are using maps, said Hugo Barra, vice president of product management for Android.

For games, Google is providing developers the ability to embed a feature, Cloud Save, to save user data across different devices. For example, if a user finishes level one of a game on his tablet, he can take out his smartphone and start level two of the game on that device.

Sundar Pichai, a senior vice president of Google who oversees its Android and Chrome divisions, said Android was the most popular mobile operating system in the world. The operating system is now installed on 900 million devices, up from 400 million in 2012, Mr. Pichai said.

original source from: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/google-introduces-new-features-for-android-apps-and-games/?ref=technology

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Google Escalates the Competition in Map Services

Larry Page, chief executive, says the new maps have a cleaner and more intuitive layout.

 

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER +The New York Times 

Published: May 15, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO — Cartographers, beware: the map wars have begun.

First Apple built maps, and now Facebook wants its own mapping service. In the tech industry, maps have become essential, primarily because of the explosion of mobile devices, on which maps are a critical application. Maps are also seen as the gateway to commerce, both online and in the real world.

Yet even as maps have become a must-have service, Google, the leader in online mapping so far, is showing that experience pays dividends.

On Wednesday, Google unveiled a new Google Maps, by far the biggest redesign since it introduced Maps eight years ago. Google announced the maps at its annual I/O developers conference, where it also showed off new tools for search, photo editing and to-do lists, along with a music service and features for Android and Chrome apps. Many of the announcements had an undercurrent — one-upping Apple. From its new music and photo services to maps to voice commands that rival Siri on the iPhone, Google seemed to be offering alternatives to Apple products.

But the new maps service was the biggest announcement.

“The future of search starts with maps. That’s where all the commerce is going to be done and that’s what everyone’s fighting out,” said John Malloy, a partner at BlueRun Ventures, which invested in Waze, a crowdsourced mapping service that Facebook has shown interest in acquiring. “To monetize mobile traffic, maps are a critical ingredient.”

Google’s revision of its map service comes less than a year after Apple removed Google Maps from the iPhone and replaced it with its own version, which has had problems with accuracy. Facebook and Microsoft also think maps are so important that they need their own services.

When users who are logged into Google visit Maps, they will see the places they frequently visit highlighted, like restaurants, museums and their home. Google learns the places they go by drawing information from all of Google’s services — including search and Maps history, Google Plus posts and information in users’ Gmail in-boxes.

Like many of Google’s new announcements, the service hovers over the line between useful and creepy. Google revised its privacy policy to allow it to pull users’ information from across products. It says that makes them more useful, but it also means Google knows increasingly more about individuals.

When users visit a new city, Google will recommend places to go based on their preferences and those of people with similar tastes. The maps change in real time, so if you click on a museum, other museums in the city pop up and the small roads and landmarks needed to navigate to that museum appear.

“We can build a unique map for every place and every click,” said Bernhard Seefeld, the product management director for Google Maps. The new service is available only to people who sign up for it to start, It will come to mobile devices later.

Local search on maps is now easier to use, for advertisers as well as for consumers. Search results, which are labeled ads or offers, can be sponsored listings or coupons from nearby businesses.

Google Earth, which shows 3-dimensional satellite imagery, is now incorporated into the online version of Google Maps, instead of being accessible only as an app to download. Google can do this because of a new technology that renders graphics inside a browser, instead of downloading images from a server.

Google’s chief executive, Larry Page, said the new maps, which have a cleaner and more intuitive layout, fit into one of the company’s major themes.

“It’s getting technology out of the way,” said Mr. Page, standing in front of a giant, real-time black and gold view of the Earth from Google Earth. “All the context that’s in your life, all these different sensors are going to pick that up and make your life better.”

Google also emphasized that specific devices would not matter as much as the ability to do the same things across devices. 

“It’s a multiscreen world,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president for Android, Chrome and Google Apps, talking about not just laptops and phones but Internet-connected watches, thermostats, cars and Google Glass, too. “These are all displays with a lot of computing power and sensors, and that’s why we view this as one of the most important moments in computing.” 

Google took the opportunity to jab at Apple’s recent problems with inaccurate maps.

Referring to Google’s new iPhone maps app, Daniel Graf, Google’s director of maps, said, “People called it sleek, simple, beautiful, and let’s not forget, accurate.”

Google took on iPhoto by increasing the free photo storage on Google Plus and trying to use algorithms to edit photos as a human would. When users upload a batch of photos, Google’s algorithms will sort through them and try to choose the best.

And a new feature Google calls “auto awesome” stitches together a series of snapshots into a GIF, or merges multiple shots into a single image, so everyone in a group is smiling, for instance.

Google also introduced a streaming music feature, with the unwieldy name of Google Play Music All Access. Like Spotify or Rhapsody, it lets users listen to millions of songs online, instead of downloading them, for $9.99 a month. It also has a Pandora-like Internet radio feature.

With All Access, Google appeared to beat Apple to the streaming market. Apple is said to be developing an Internet radio feature for its mobile devices, although its progress has reportedly been slowed by negotiations with music companies over licensing rates.

An update to Google Now, a competitor to Apple’s Siri, lets people ask their phones to remind them to pick up milk the next time they are in a grocery store, and an alert will automatically pop up when they step into a 

Safeway. Ask, “How far from here to Santa Cruz?” and Google will use location information to know where “here” is.

Despite the flashy announcements, one type of news was noticeably absent from the event — major hardware or Android announcements, which are usually made here.

“We felt this time that I/O would be incomplete without the full Google story, and now the Google story is far more focused and sharper than it has been in the last few years,” said Amit Singhal, Google’s senior vice president of search.

The conference had uniquely Google additions, including 1,800 pounds of snacks and sensors placed throughout the building to capture data like motion, noise, temperature and pressure. During the event, Google visualized all this data in real time on an indoor map.

Six thousand software developers, a fair number of them wearing Google Glass, cheered loudly as Google made each announcement, including arcane technical ones about Android and Chrome apps. Perhaps they were fueled by all the free food.

Original source from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/technology/google-escalates-the-competition-in-map-services.html?ref=technology&_r=0 

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In-Room Entertainment Turns Away From TV

By JANE L. LEVERE @ +The New York Times 


Len Markidan, a marketing consultant, says his travel entertainment is the same as at home: “a Hulu subscription, Amazon Prime and Netflix.”

 LEN MARKIDAN, a 26-year-old marketing consultant based in San Francisco, is the type of business traveler who forced LodgeNet, the hotel guest-room entertainment provider, to file recently for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Mr. Markidan, who spends 40 percent of his time traveling on business and is an elite participant in the Hilton and Hyatt loyalty programs, takes his MacBook Pro and iPad with him on the road and watches all television programs by streaming them on his laptop, using a portable router to extend the Wi-Fi signal in his hotel room.

“For a lot of people my age and a lot of people in general, the way we consume entertainment at home is changing,” he said. “I no longer have a cable subscription — the way I watch entertainment at home is the same way I watch it on the road. I have a Hulu subscription, Amazon Prime and Netflix.”

Guest-room entertainment “is not an amenity that will drive my decision to stay at a hotel,” he said, adding, “I’m a lot more concerned with loyalty program perks.”

James Lingle of Highlands Ranch, Colo., a consultant to hotel companies and guest-room entertainment service providers like LodgeNet’s competitor iBahn, observed: “If you look back, typically the first thing a guest would do when they walked into the door of a hotel room would be to turn on the TV. Now people bring their entertainment with them, tablet-based devices like an iPad, accounts and memberships like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus, and they want to be able to use them.”

LodgeNet’s decline directly reflects these changes. According to its bankruptcy filing, the number of hotel rooms it served globally dropped to 1.5 million in 2011 from 2 million in 2009. It provided guest-room entertainment services to most major hotel chains, usually by installing and maintaining free televisions and offering video-on-demand entertainment, for which it and the hotels received fees. LodgeNet’s sales in 2011 were $421.3 million, a 21 percent drop from a high of $533.9 million in 2008.

Colony Capital, a real estate and hotel investment firm in Los Angeles, led a group that invested $70 million in a controlling interest in LodgeNet, based in Sioux Falls, S.D., and brought in a management team of former Starwood, Fairmont and Hilton executives. LodgeNet, which emerged from bankruptcy in late March, also signed an agreement with DirecTV to jointly offer entertainment to hotels and hospitals.

The revamped LodgeNet faces strong competition from companies including Swisscom Hospitality Services, based in Geneva; iBahn, based in Salt Lake City; Guest-Tek, of Calgary, Alberta; and Roomlinx, based in Broomfield, Colo. All are developing systems that let travelers consume entertainment the way Mr.

Markidan does — via the Internet, frequently through subscriptions they already have and use at home, either through Wi-Fi or a direct cable connection between their laptop or tablet and the guest-room television set.

Different types of hotels have different policies regarding Internet access. Many less expensive hotels offer it free, while more expensive ones often charge for it. What’s expected to happen next, speaking broadly, is that using the Internet for e-mail will be free, while many hotels will charge for uses requiring a lot of bandwidth, like  downloading or streaming videos, with the cost tied to the amount of bandwidth required.

“We will give customers more short-form content at very attractive prices, affinity packages of sports channels, just-missed TV, video games, as well as movies currently in theaters,” said Michael Ribero, Lodgenet’s new chief executive. “We want to give them the opportunity to watch what they want, even if it’s through Netflix and Amazon Prime.” He said LodgeNet will no longer provide television equipment in hotel guest rooms in exchange for video-on-demand fees. Instead, DirecTV will offer hotel owners lease financing for TVs, freeing capital that LodgeNet can invest in product and service improvements.

C. Scott Hansen, director of guest technology for Marriott International, said his company’s objective over the next several years was to connect every guest-room TV to the Internet. Marriott International also plans to limit the number of TV channels its brands offer to a targeted, all-high-definition lineup and to augment these with Internet-based, streaming content, via services like Netflix and YouTube.

Bandwidth capacity at many Marriott International hotels will need to be increased to support these services, an expense Mr. Hansen said would be offset by guests’ purchases of Internet access, commissions paid by services like Netflix for signing up new members and advertising revenue from companies that could use the TV or guest’s laptop or tablet screen for messages.

Josh Weiss, vice president of brand and guest technology for Hilton Worldwide, said his company offered a broad range of short, low-price TV programs, similar to those available from Netflix or iTunes, in many hotels, provided by LodgeNet and others. This content costs $2 to $5, far less than a full-length movie. Hilton Worldwide also offers a free, DirecTV service similar to DirecTV’s residential service at over 150 hotels across most of its brands and plans to expand this service this year.

Mike Blake, chief information officer of Commune Hotels and Resorts, said the company was considering keeping track of guests’ channel preferences, which would automatically come up whenever a guest turned on the TV in the hotel room. He said this service, which guests could opt in for, should be available by the fourth quarter of this year. Other new services under consideration include the ability to customize music playlists for guests and to stream personal photos on guest room TVs.

Apple TV in hotel rooms at the Aloft Cupertino, a Starwood hotel, lets guests play video and music and display photos from any Apple device on their television set. Starwood is evaluating offering this system and additional entertainment options at other Aloft and Starwood hotels.

CitizenM, a Dutch chain of what it calls “affordable luxury” hotels — now all in Europe, with two slated to open in Manhattan this year and next — provides a Samsung tablet in each guest room, with technology from Swisscom that provides a music library and free video-on-demand TV and also controls the blinds, lighting and temperature.

The 85-year-old Peninsula Hong Kong this month will finish installation of a guest-room entertainment system that Ingvar Herland, Peninsula Hotels’ general manager of research and technology, said costs $10,000 to $25,000 a room. This proprietary system features fully customizable bedside and desk tablets preset in a choice of five languages, with six more to follow this year. The tablet allows the guest to order room, concierge and housekeeping services, and to control lighting, curtains, the temperature and privacy options. It also provides — via a flat-screen, Blu-ray, LED television — terrestrial programming, 90 international television channels, 450 Internet radio stations, free HD and 3-D movies, as well as free international voice-over-Internet protocol telephone calls.

Mr. Herland said the new system would be offered at the Peninsula Paris, opening next year, and would eventually replace existing systems at other Peninsula hotels.

Travelers should not expect a proliferation of new services like the Peninsula’s, said Bjorn Hanson, divisional dean of the Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University.

He said that although hotels in the United States this year were expected to spend a record percentage of profits on capital expenditures — like entertainment systems — profits per room also were expected to remain well below their 2006 peak. Companies offering new systems “that are expensive for hotel owners are doing so at a challenging time,” he said, adding that many hotel owners would consider premium cable service as an alternative.

One vanishing option is sex-related entertainment. Omni banned such programs in 1999, citing its support of “pro-family issues,” while Marriott International stopped offering it last year. “If you want it, you can access it online on your own,” said Mr. Hansen of Marriott.

2:06 PM | 0 comments | Read More

Facebook needs to keep mobile momentum

 

By Julianne Pepitone @CNNMoneyTech

Facebook finally decided to concentrate on mobile late last year, and its shares have recovered nicely from their post-IPO doldrums. To keep that momentum going, Facebook needs to prove that its mobile strategy is working.

Investors are scrutinizing the company's moves, and at first, even tepid mobile growth was enough to send Facebook shares soaring. That's because the company set expectations at rock bottom: Right after its May 2012 IPO, Facebook said it wasn't making "any meaningful revenue" from mobile.

Facebook turned a corner a few months later, when it launched a new Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) iOS app and began showing ads to mobile users. It worked: Mobile accounted for 14% of the company's ad revenue in the third quarter, which ended September 30. Investors were thrilled, sending shares up 21%.

But some of that goodwill didn't last.

A few months later, Facebook revealed that mobile comprised 23% of its ad revenue in the fourth quarter.

That was a solid bump, but investors focused on the fact that mobile user growth slowed slightly -- and shares fell by 10%.

Clearly, investors are no longer impressed by mere "we're working on it!" assurances. Still, shares are up nearly 16% since Facebook's (FB) strong third-quarter report in October.

Expectations are high for Facebook's first-quarter report, due Wednesday after the market closes. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect sales to have grown 36% over the previous year to $1.4 billion. Profit estimates came in at $308 million, after Facebook warned last quarter that its expenses will rise by 50% this year.

In the first four months of the year, the company has already released three major new products that are clearly aimed at maximizing ad revenue.

The first came last month, when Facebook unveiled a News Feed revamp centered around a more visual design that also includes bigger graphics for ads.

The second and third came too late to be included in Wednesday's results, but they're a clear sign of where Facebook is going. The beginning of this month brought Facebook Home, a custom startup screen for

Android smartphones that will eventually include ads. A week later, Facebook announced "Partner Categories," which lets advertisers target specific users based on their past buying history -- even if the purchases happened offline.

JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth said in a note to clients this month that he is "encouraged by newer formats and products." He also reminded his readers that social advertising is in its infancy.

Facebook is trying to prove that space has a viable business model. Its incremental moves have generated cautious optimism. Now it's time to give investors a real reason to believe.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/30/technology/social/facebook-earnings-preview/index.html

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Alibaba takes stake in 'China's Twitter'

By Charles Riley @CNNMoneyTech

A man checks his cell phone in Beijing. The micro-blogging service Weibo is increasingly popular in China

In a wedding of China's leading Internet darlings, online retailer Alibaba has taken a $586 million stake in the country's most popular micro-blogging service.

Alibaba, often referred to as China's eBay, has agreed to buy 18% of Sina Corporation's Weibo, signaling the retailer's intention to make a concerted move into social media.

The tie up will give Alibaba access to Weibo's user base, which includes tens of millions of active users. In return, Sina said it expects to receive $380 million in advertising and social commerce revenue over the next three years.

The deal values Weibo at $3.3 billion, significantly less than recent valuations of U.S.-based Twitter, which has many more active users. Both social media platforms face the same challenge: monetizing the consumers who use their services.

Sina (SINA) shares, which trade on the Nasdaq, increased almost 10% Monday after the deal was announced.

The agreement also contains a provision that will allow Alibaba to increase its Weibo stake to 30% at an unspecified date.

"We believe that the cooperation of our two robust platforms will bring unique and valuable services to Weibo users, as well as making the mobile Internet a core part of Alibaba's strategy." said Jack Ma, the chairman of Alibaba.

Alibaba is widely expected to pursue an initial public offering this year or next, and has announced that Ma will soonstep down as chairman.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/30/technology/alibaba-aina-weibo/index.html

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