American Express is the latest victim in a wave of attacks on the online operations of American banks, David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth on Friday in The New York Times.
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Sunday, March 31, 2013
Advice From the Digital Age Emily Posts
The Emily Posts of the Digital Age
Advice on everything from proper behavior in the men’s room to how to open Champagne can be found in videos on the Web. But what may be the fastest-growing area of social advice is the Internet itself and the proper displays of what has been called “netiquette.â€
Are manners dead Cellphones, Twitter and Facebook may be killing off the old civilities and good graces, but a new generation of etiquette gurus, good-manner bloggers and self-appointed YouTube arbiters is rising to make old-fashioned protocols relevant to a new generation.
Grace Bonney has added a weekly etiquette column to Design Sponge, her home décor blog.
Their apparent goal: to help members of Generation Y navigate thorny, tech-age minefields like Paperless Post invites, same-sex weddings and online dating â€" not to mention actual face-to-face contact with people they encounter in the offline world.
For instance, you may not think you need a tutorial on shaking hands when being introduced to someone for the first time, but Gloria Starr, an image consultant based in Newport Beach, Calif., begs to differ.
“When you shake hands, it’s two or three times up and down â€" from the elbow and not the wrist,†Ms. Starr says in one of her 437 YouTube videos, helpfully bobbing her right hand up and down in demonstration. Then “smile and introduce yourself.â€
Or how about the way to conduct yourself at the gym Videos on gym etiquette are a particularly hot Web topic of late, said Kevin Allocca, the trends manager for YouTube. One video, “Don’t Be That Guy at the Gym,†shows five men demonstrating various sweat-soaked faux pas, like the “meathead†who grunts loudly each time he performs a rep, or the self-anointed “coach†who offers unsolicited (and largely unwelcome) advice to other gym-goers. Posted last April, it has been viewed some 3 million times.
No arena of modern life, it seems, is too obscure or ridiculous for consideration. An instructional Web site called Howcast.com has a popular channel on YouTube that tackles weighty issues like how to handle flatulence in yoga class or how to behave at a nude beach. “If it would be unseemly to gape at that body part while it’s fully clothed,†the latter video instructs, “it’s downright rude to gawk at it undressed.â€
On another video, one veteran of the fast-food industry proffers advice on how to act at a drive-in window (“Do not scream ‘hello’ as soon as you pull up to the speaker. Wait to be greetedâ€), while there are more than 500 videos on the momentous subject of how to properly set the dinner table.
But perhaps the fastest-growing area of social advice â€" one that has spawned not just videos but also Web sites, blogs and books â€" is the Internet itself, and the proper displays of what’s been termed “netiquette.†There are YouTube videos on using emoticons in business e-mails, being discreet when posting on someone’s Facebook wall, limiting baby photos on Instagram, retweeting too many Twitter messages and juggling multiple online chats.
“We’re living in an age of anxiety that’s a reflection of the near-constant change and confusion in technology and social mores,†said Steven Petrow, an author of five etiquette books including “Mind Your Digital Manners: Advice for an Age Without Rules,†to be published in 2014. (Mr. Petrow is a regular contributor to The New York Times, writing an advice column on gay-straight issues for the Booming blog.)
“Whether it’s wondering how many times it is acceptable to text a date before being seen as a stalker, or what the role of parents is at a same-sex wedding,†he said, “etiquette gurus are popping out from under tablecloths everywhere to soothe all those living in fear of newfangled faux pas.â€
Such advice is dished out on Web sites run by protocol professionals like the dapper Thomas Farley, a television talk-show staple, and Elaine Swann, a San Diego County-based consultant, and in the online newsletter Dot Complicated, published by Randi Zuckerberg, the former Facebook executive.
“Many of these emerging etiquette issues are complicated because there are no clear-cut, black-and-white answers,†Ms. Zuckerberg said. A recent post on Dot Complicated dealt with how to respond to a request for money, something that Ms. Zuckerberg, C.E.O. of Zuckerberg Media, said she has had to deal with quite frequently. (Her advice: “Say no and say it quickly.â€)
Young people “are getting sick of the irony, rudeness and snark that is so prevalent in their online lives,†said Jane Pratt, the editor in chief of xoJane, a women’s lifestyle site where etiquette posts are a popular feature. “The return of etiquette is in part a response to the harshness of the interactions they are having in the digital sphere.â€
“Nice is very cool right now,†she added.
THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY is scurrying to catch up, with a flurry of new etiquette books. “Etiquette is a popular publishing subject right now because, yes, it’s true, good manners never go of style,†said Christine Carswell, the publisher of Chronicle Books, which will publish “The Forgetful Gentleman†by Nathan Tan in May.
Last year alone, three books that tackle such subjects were published by contributors to The Times: Henry Alford’s “Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That: A Modern Guide to Mannersâ€; Philip Galanes’s “Social Q’s: How to Survive the Quirks, Quandaries and Quagmires of Todayâ€; and the former “Ethicist†columnist Randy Cohen’s “Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything.â€
Other notable titles include “Miss Jane Austen’s Guide to Modern Life’s Dilemmas,†by Rebecca Smith, a British novelist who says she is a direct descendant of the “Pride and Prejudice†author, and “What Would Michelle Do A Modern-Day Guide to Living with Substance and Style,†by Allison Samuels, a Daily Beast senior writer, who looks to the White House for guidance.
The social quandaries seem to be endless. Are you obligated to respond to Facebook party invitations Is it rude to listen to your iPod while car-pooling
A version of this article appeared in print on March 31, 2013, on page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Emily Posts of the Digital Age.
Machines of Laughter and Forgetting
Machines of Laughter and Forgetting
UNTIL very recently, technology had a clear, if boring, purpose: by taking care of the Little Things, it enabled us, its human masters, to focus on the Big Things. “Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible,†proclaimed that noted connoisseur of contemplation Oscar Wilde.
Fortunately, he added a charming clarification: “Human slavery is wrong, insecure and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.â€
Wilde was not alone. “Civilization,†wrote the philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead in 1911, “advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.†Whitehead was writing about mathematics, but technology, with its reliance on formula and algorithms, easily fits his dictum as well.
On this account, technology can save us a lot of cognitive effort, for “thinking†needs to happen only once, at the design stage. We’ll surround ourselves with gadgets and artifacts that will do exactly what they are meant to do â€" and they’ll do it in a frictionless, invisible way. “The ideal system so buries the technology that the user is not even aware of its presence,†announced the design guru Donald Norman in his landmark 1998 book, “The Invisible Computer.†But is that what we really want
The hidden truth about many attempts to “bury†technology is that they embody an amoral and unsustainable vision. Pick any electrical appliance in your kitchen. The odds are that you have no idea how much electricity it consumes, let alone how it compares to other appliances and households. This ignorance is neither natural nor inevitable; it stems from a conscious decision by the designer of that kitchen appliance to free up your “cognitive resources†so that you can unleash your inner Oscar Wilde on “contemplating†other things. Multiply such ignorance by a few billion, and global warming no longer looks like a mystery.
Whitehead, it seems, was either wrong or extremely selective: on many important issues, civilization only destroys itself by extending the number of important operations that we can perform without thinking about them. On many issues, we want more thinking, not less.
Take privacy. Opening browser tabs is easy, as is using our Facebook account to navigate from site to site. In fact, we often do so unthinkingly. Given that our online tools and platforms are built in a way to make our browsing experience as frictionless as possible, is it any surprise that so much of our personal information is disclosed without our ever realizing it
This, too, is not inevitable: designed differently, our digital infrastructure could provide many more opportunities for reflection. In a recent paper, a group of Cornell researchers proposed that our browsers could bombard us with strange but provocative messages to make us alert to the very information infrastructure that some designers have done their best to conceal. Imagine being told that “you visited 592 Web sites this week. That’s .5 times the number of Web pages on the whole Internet in 1994!â€
The goal here is not to hit us with a piece of statistics â€" sheer numbers rarely lead to complex narratives â€" but to tell a story that can get us thinking about things we’d rather not be thinking about. So let us not give in to technophobia just yet: we should not go back to doing everything by hand just because it can lead to more thinking.
Rather, we must distribute the thinking process equally. Instead of having the designer think through all the moral and political implications of technology use before it reaches users â€" an impossible task â€" we must find a way to get users to do some of that thinking themselves.
Alas, most designers, following Wilde, think of technologies as nothing more than mechanical slaves that must maximize efficiency. But some are realizing that technologies don’t have to be just trivial problem-solvers: they can also be subversive troublemakers, making us question our habits and received ideas.
Recently, designers in Germany built devices â€" “transformational products,†they call them â€" that engage users in “conversations without words.†My favorite is a caterpillar-shaped extension cord. If any of the devices plugged into it are left in standby mode, the “caterpillar†starts twisting as if it were in pain.
Does it do what normal extension cords do Yes. But it also awakens users to the fact that the cord is simply the endpoint of a complex socio-technical system with its own politics and ethics. Before, designers have tried to conceal that system. In the future, designers will be obliged to make it visible.
While devices-as-problem-solvers seek to avoid friction, devices-as-troublemakers seek to create an “aesthetic of friction†that engages users in new ways. Will such extra seconds of thought â€" nay, contemplation â€" slow down civilization They well might. But who said that stopping to catch a breath on our way to the abyss is not a sensible strategy
Evgeny Morozov, author of “To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism,†is a guest columnist.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on March 31, 2013, on page SR12 of the New York edition with the headline: Machines of Laughter and Forgetting.
Letting Down Our Guard With Web Privacy
Letting Down Our Guard With Web Privacy
Jeff Swensen for The New York Times Intriguing experiments by Alessandro Acquisti, a behavioral economist, suggest that people often reveal more than they mean to online.
SAY you’ve come across a discount online retailer promising a steal on hand-stitched espadrilles for spring. You start setting up an account by offering your e-mail address â€" but before you can finish, there’s a ping on your phone. A text message. You read it and respond, then return to the Web site, enter your birth date, click “F†for female, agree to the company’s terms of service and carry on browsing.
Shoppers at a mall were offered $10 discount card â€" and an extra $2 discount if they agreed to share their shopping data. Half declined the extra offer.
But wait: What did you just agree to Did you mean to reveal information as vital as your date of birth and e-mail address
Most of us face such decisions daily. We are hurried and distracted and don’t pay close attention to what we are doing. Often, we turn over our data in exchange for a deal we can’t refuse.
Alessandro Acquisti, a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, studies how we make these choices. In a series of provocative experiments, he has shown that despite how much we say we value our privacy â€" and we do, again and again â€" we tend to act inconsistently.
Mr. Acquisti is something of a pioneer in this emerging field of research. His experiments can take time. The last one, revealing how Facebook users had tightened their privacy settings, took seven years. They can also be imaginative: he has been known to dispatch graduate students to a suburban mall in the name of science. And they are often unsettling: A 2011 study showed that it was possible to deduce portions of a person’s Social Security number from nothing but a photograph posted online. He is now studying how online social networks can enable employers to illegally discrimnate in hiring.
Mr. Acquisti, 40, sees himself not as a nag, but as an observer holding up a mirror to the flaws we cannot always see ourselves. “Should people be worried I don’t know,†he said with a shrug in his office at Carnegie Mellon. “My role is not telling people what to do. My role is showing why we do certain things and what may be certain consequences. Everyone will have to decide for themselves.â€
Those who follow his work say it has important policy implications as regulators in Washington, Brussels and elsewhere scrutinize the ways that companies leverage the personal data they collect from users. The Federal Trade Commission last year settled with Facebook, resolving charges that it had deceived users with changes to its privacy settings. State regulators recently fined Google for harvesting e-mails and passwords of unsuspecting users during its Street View mapping project. Last year, the White House proposed a privacy bill of rights to give consumers greater control over how their personal data is used.
Mr. Acquisti has been at the forefront, testifying in Congress and conferring with the F.T.C. David C. Vladeck, who until recently headed the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said Mr. Acquisti’s research on facial recognition spurred the commission to issue a report on the subject last year. “No question it’s been influential,†Mr. Vladeck said of Mr. Acquisti’s work.
Companies, too, are interested; Microsoft Research and Google have offered Mr. Acquisti research fellowships. Over all, his research argues that when it comes to privacy, policy makers should carefully consider how people actually behave. We don’t always act in our own best interest, his research suggests. We can be easily manipulated by how we are asked for information. Even something as simple as a playfully designed site can nudge us to reveal more of ourselves than a serious-looking one.
“His work has gone a long way in trying to help us figure out how irrational we are in privacy related decisions,†says Woodrow Hartzog, an assistant professor of law who studies digital privacy at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. “We have too much confidence in our ability to make decisions.â€
This is perhaps Mr. Acquisti’s most salient contribution to the discussion. Solutions to our leaky privacy system tend to focus on transparency and control â€" that our best hope is knowing what our data is being used for and choosing whether to participate. But a challenge to that conventional wisdom emerges in his research. Giving users control may be an essential step, but it may also be a bit of an illusion.
IF iron ore was the raw material that enriched the steel baron Andrew Carnegie in the Industrial Age, personal data is what fuels the barons of the Internet age. Mr. Acquisti investigates the trade-offs that users make when they give up that data, and who gains and loses in those transactions. Often there are immediate rewards (cheap sandals) and sometimes intangible risks downstream (identity theft). “Privacy is delayed gratification,†he warned.
Mr. Acquisti, lean and loquacious, grew up in Italy. His father, Giancarlo, was a banker by profession and a pianist on the side. Mr. Acquisti inherited his father’s passion for music; last year he helped him write an opera about Margherita Luti, the woman believed to be the painter Raphael’s lover and muse. Mr. Acquisti’s other passion is motorcycle racing â€" he rides a red Ducati â€" though the pursuit of tenure, which he acquired last year, has lately kept him off the racing circuit.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in Rome and master’s degrees in the subject from Trinity College in Dublin and the London School of Economics, and he became interested in the economics of privacy while studying for a doctorate in the interdisciplinary School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 31, 2013, on page BU1 of the New York edition with the headline: Letting Down Our Guard.
The Child, the Tablet and the Developing Mind
I recently watched my sister perform an act of magic.
We were sitting in a restaurant, trying to have a conversation, but her children, 4-year-old Willow and 7-year-old Luca, would not stop fighting. The arguments â€" over a fork, or who had more water in a glass â€" were unrelenting.
Like a magician quieting a group of children by pulling a rabbit out of a hat, my sister reached into her purse and produced two shiny Apple iPads, handing one to each child. Suddenly, the two were quiet. Eerily so. They sat playing games and watching videos, and we continued with our conversation.
After our meal, as we stuffed the iPads back into their magic storage bag, my sister felt slightly guilty.
“I don’t want to give them the iPads at the dinner table, but if it keeps them occupied for an hour so we can eat in peace, and more importantly not disturb other people in the restaurant, I often just hand it over,†she told me. Then she asked: “Do you think it’s bad for them I do worry that it is setting them up to think it’s O.K. to use electronics at the dinner table in the future.â€
I did not have an answer, and although some people might have opinions, no one has a true scientific understanding of what the future might hold for a generation raised on portable screens.
“We really don’t know the full neurological effects of these technologies yet,†said Dr. Gary Small, director of the Longevity Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind.†“Children, like adults, vary quite a lot, and some are more sensitive than others to an abundance of screen time.â€
But Dr. Small says we do know that the brain is highly sensitive to stimuli, like iPads and smartphone screens, and if people spend too much time with one technology, and less time interacting with people like parents at the dinner table, that could hinder the development of certain communications skills.
So will a child who plays with crayons at dinner rather than a coloring application on an iPad be a more socialized person
Ozlem Ayduk, an associate professor in the Relationships and Social Cognition Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, said children sitting at the dinner table with a print book or crayons were not as engaged with the people around them, either. “There are value-based lessons for children to talk to the people during a meal,†she said. “It’s not so much about the iPad versus nonelectronics.â€
Parents who have little choice but to hand over their iPad can at least control what a child does on those devices.
A report published last week by the Millennium Cohort Study, a long-term study group in Britain that has been following 19,000 children born in 2000 and 2001, found that those who watched more than three hours of television, videos or DVDs a day had a higher chance of conduct problems, emotional symptoms and relationship problems by the time they were 7 than children who did not. The study, of a sample of 11,000 children, found that children who played video games â€" often age-appropriate games â€" for the same amount of time did not show any signs of negative behavioral changes by the same age.
Which brings us back to the dinner table with my niece and nephew. While they sat happily staring into those shiny screens, they were not engaged in any type of conversation, or staring off into space thinking, as my sister and I did as children when our parents were talking. And that is where the risks are apparent.
“Conversations with each other are the way children learn to have conversations with themselves, and learn how to be alone,†said Sherry Turkle, a professor of science, technology and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and author of the book “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.†“Learning about solitude and being alone is the bedrock of early development, and you don’t want your kids to miss out on that because you’re pacifying them with a device.â€
Ms. Turkle has interviewed parents, teenagers and children about the use of gadgets during early development, and says she fears that children who do not learn real interactions, which often have flaws and imperfections, will come to know a world where perfect, shiny screens give them a false sense of intimacy without risk.
And they need to be able to think independently of a device. “They need to be able to explore their imagination. To be able to gather themselves and know who they are. So someday they can form a relationship with another person without a panic of being alone,†she said. “If you don’t teach your children to be alone, they’ll only know how to be lonely.â€
E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com
Friday, March 29, 2013
The Internet Loves Kim Jong-un Gags, but What Does North Korea’s Propaganda Mean
As my colleague Choe Sang-Hun reports, North Korea’s state news agency released the latest in a series of saber-rattling images on Friday, this time showing the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, studying what the agency called “plans to strike the mainland U.S.â€
Since mocking North Korean propaganda featuring Mr. Kim has become something of a reflex for his peers in the West, the Internet’s attention was quickly focused on the comic possibilities of a military chart behind the young leader in the photograph, tracing what appeared to be trajectories of North Korean missiles aimed at major cities in the United States.
After one blogger’s detailed analysis of the image suggested that the unlikely target of Austin, Texas was in the firing line, Twitter lit up with a spate of “Why Austin†jokes, as Max Fisher of The Washington Post explained.
When pondering what all this means, it is easy, perhaps too easy, to focus on the accidental comedy in these photographs of North Korea’s unimposing young leader, and in the series often-bizarre propaganda videos and poorly Photoshopped images of war games that preceded them.
A recent North Korean propaganda video, posted online by The Telegraph.
To find out what an expert on North Korean propaganda made of the current campaign, The Lede contacted B.R. Myers, a North Korea analyst at Dongseo University in the South Korean port city of Busan. Mr. Myers, who spent eight years studying the nation’s propaganda for his book, “The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters,†answered questions from The Lede on Friday via Gchat. Below is a transcript of the complete conversation, edited for clarity (with links to related articles added to some of Mr. Myers’s answers).
Q.
We are wondering, essentially, what you make of these recent videos flowing from North Korea. Is this really some sort of escalation in rhetoric for them or has the Internet just woken up a bit more to the phenomenon
A.
The rhetoric itself has not escalated significantly over last year. And it’s been almost 20 years since North Korea first talked of turning Seoul into a sea of fire. I get the feeling that North Korea’s long-range missile launch and the nuclear test have both lent a new force to the old rhetoric.
Video from North Korean state television of a military parade this week, posted online by The Telegraph.
Q.
Is the impression we get via these Web videos similar to what they broadcast on television, and what you see in other forms, or are we in the news business guilty of hyping the most inflammatory material do you think
A.
That’s a good question. We need to keep in mind that North and South Korea are not so much trading outright threats as trading blustering vows of how they would retaliate if attacked. The North says “If the U.S. or South Korea dare infringe on our territory we will reduce their territory to ashes,†and Seoul responds by saying it will retaliate by bombing Kim Il-sung statues. And so it goes. I think the international press is distorting the reality somewhat by simply publishing the second half of all these conditional sentences. And I have to say from watching North Korea’s evening news broadcasts for the past week or so, the North Korean media are not quite as wrapped up in this war mood as one might think. The announcers spend the first ten minutes or so reporting on peaceful matters before they start ranting about the enemy.
The regime is exploiting the tension to motivate the masses to work harder on various big first-economy projects, especially the land-reclamation drive now underway on the east coast. Workers are shown with clenched fists, spluttering at the U.S. and South Korea, and vowing to work extra hard as a way of venting their rage.
It is all very similar to last year’s sustained vilification of South Korea’s then-president Lee Myung-bak, when you had miners saying that they imagined Lee’s face on the rocks they were breaking, and so on. The regime can no longer fire up people with any coherent or credible vision of a socialist future, so it tries to cast the entire workforce â€" much as other countries do in times of actual war â€" as an adjunct to the military. Work places are “battlegrounds,†and all labor strengthens the country for the final victory of unification, etc.
A recent North Korean news report posted online by a supporter of the government.
Q.
That’s very interesting â€" I have to say we don’t even see the South Korean threats…. Are regular TV transmissions from the North blocked in the South, over the airwaves
A.
Yes, they are blocked as a rule. After a relaxation of the rules governing access to North Korean materials during the “Sunshine Policy†years, the government here has again become quite strict about such things.
Q.
A few final questions. First, does it seem to you that there has been any observable change in the propaganda since the change at the top Second, what did you make of that strange episode with the U.S. TV crew bringing Dennis Rodman to Pyongyang Was that a sign of a potential opening or just the sort of event that has gone on for years with visitors less well-known to Americans And finally, are you at all concerned that our coverage of the propaganda in the western media as something wacky and sort of comic is inappropriate, in that it shifts focus away from the hard realities of life in North Korea
A.
To answer the first question, I think that the international press exaggerated the extent to which Kim Jong-un departed from the leadership style of his father. He has a Kim Il-sung haircut, and the propaganda apparatus is happy to play up the resemblance, but from the start of the hype in 2008-2009, he was presented to the masses as a taejang or four-star general. That was years before he was officially promoted to that rank, by the way. And the first documentary about his life played up his military-first credentials, portraying him as an even more exclusively military figure than his father had been. Kim Jong-il, after all, spent his first decade or so of public life posing as an expert on film and ideology.
When Kim Jong-un took his wife around with him, the West was quick to see this as a sign of Gorbachev-like tendencies, when in fact Kim Jong-il had taken his second wife (the current leader’s mother) around with him on public visits; even though her presence wasn’t broadcast, it’s clear from the video footage of those visits that has since become public that the North Korean people knew who she was and accepted her as a kind of first lady. In any case, one of the main slogans of the propaganda is “Kim Jong-un is Kim Jong-il.†He’s compared to his father much more often than to his grandfather. And he is certainly continuing on the same military-first path.
Q.
Fascinating â€" we’ve previously quoted your explanation of the state’s military-first nature.
A.
Second, the Dennis Rodman affair was very similar to the New York Philharmonic affair of 2008. In both cases the North Koreans were able to convey the impression of openness to the wishfully thinking West while at the same time showing to their own people the international appeal of their leader. All visitors to the country are treated in the media as pilgrims or as penitents.
As for your third question, I think the media underestimates the extent to which North Korea reads its own press. This is why you have Americans pleading in op-ed pages for “subversive engagement†with Pyongyang, as if the North Koreans would not think of actually reading one of our newspapers. And all the ridicule naturally poses a problem to a regime that derives almost all its legitimacy and popular support from the perception of its strength and worldwide renown. That doesn’t mean we need to censor ourselves the way the South Korean press did during the “Sunshine Policy†years, but we do need to realize how serious the situation is.
In a North Korean “historical†novel published last year, “Oseongsan,†a general looks at a twenty-year old Kim Jong-un and says, “That’s the man who’s going to lead the holy war of unification.†I have a hard time just chuckling about things like that.
Can I mention one more thing
Q.
Absolutely, yes.
A.
One of the few things that has restrained the North Koreans over the decades has been Pyongyang’s reluctance to alienate the South Korean left. I wonder now if, after two successive elections of the more hardline presidential candidate (the current president having been elected with an absolute majority of votes), the North may have given up on South Korean public opinion altogether.
The rapid aging of the South Korean electorate certainly does not bode well for the prospect of another “Sunshine Policy†in the near future. This may be one reason why the propaganda apparatus’ denigrated President Park as a “skirt†â€" a clear indication, by the way, that we are not dealing with a far-left regime up there but a far-right one. And I notice from the TV broadcasts that many of the people in the man-on-the-street interviews talk of how they would love to give the “sea of fire†treatment to Seoul and Washington almost as if they were the same enemy territory. If the regime has given up on winning over the South Korean electorate, things could get much more dangerous than they already are.
Ex-Soldier Accused of Joining Terrorist Group in Syria Left Trail of Videos
YouTube Video posted online shows former U.S. soldier Eric Harroun with Syrian rebel fighters.As my colleague Scott Shane reports, a former American soldier was charged on Thursday with fighting alongside a rebel group linked to Al Qaeda on the battlefields of the Syrian civil war.
Eric Harroun, 30, was arrested on Wednesday after arriving at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, D.C., and charged in Alexandria, Va., on Thursday with “conspiring to use a destructive device outside the United States.â€
He is accused of entering Syria in January and fighting alongside the Nusra Front, which was designated a terrorist organization in December 2012 and is accused of ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq. It is one of hundreds of rebel militias that have emerged over the last two years to battle the government of President Bashar al-Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for four decades. The conflict has so far claimed more than 70,000 lives.
Mr. Harroun, a Phoenix native who served in the United States armed forces from 2000 until 2003, has been far from discrete about his activities in Syria, posting at least two videos of himself with Nusra fighters to YouTube and speaking with two journalists based in Israel for Foreign Policy magazine.
The authors of the Foreign Policy article, Ilan Ben Zion and Greg Tepper, wrote that in online communications with Mr. Harroun, “he seemed paranoid about being tracked by U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies†and referred to the men with anti-Semitic slurs. He also frequently changed his story.
During conversations on March 4 and March 16, Harroun said that Jabhat al-Nusra “picked [him] up†after the rebel group he had been traveling with was largely wiped out in a firefight with Assad forces. On March 16, however, he denied that he was a member of the organization, insisting that he was only a member of a rebel group that was part of the mainstream [Free Syrian Army].
Nevertheless, that retraction didn’t stop Harroun from bragging, unprompted, that he had met Jabhat al-Nusra’s elusive leader, known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammed al-Julani. He said that the two had met twice in January at an unspecified location near the Syrian-Iraqi border, and described the terrorist leader merely as a “humble man of few words.†He refused to describe Julani’s reaction to meeting an American fighter in the FSA.
In a video posted to YouTube on Jan. 15, Mr. Harroun appears to be reclining into the arms of a Syrian rebel as several more crowd around him, smiling and stroking their beards as he delivers a brief threatening statement to Mr. Assad and pro-government paramilitaries known as the shabiha.
The title of the video refers to Mr. Harroun as a “U.S. mujahid,†or holy warrior. If the accusation that Mr. Harroun entered Syria in January is true, that means the video was recorded very soon after he arrived in the country.
Video posted online shows Mr. Harroun surrounded by rebel fighters threatening Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
“Bashar al-Assad, your days are numbered,†said Mr. Harroun in the video, as rebel fighters around him looked on. Some appear amused by him, others confused or unsure of what to make of the American fighter in their midst. “You’re going down in flames. You should just quit now while you can and leave. You’re gonna die no matter what. Where you go, we will find you and kill you. Do you understand And your shabiha is going to die also with you.â€
In another video posted online in February, Mr. Harroun can be seen driving in a jeep down a narrow dirt road through fields toward a crashed military helicopter. Several rebel fighters ride with him in the car, whose windshield bears the emblem of the Free Syrian Army, a rebel coalition that receives aid from the United States and which pointedly does not include the Nusra Front.
Video posted online shows Mr. Harroun driving towards a downed military helicopter in a jeep with rebel fighters.
Mr. Harroun spoke with his companions in a mix of broken Arabic and English, and also occasionally addressed the camera. “Let’s blast these fools,†he said. “We’re gonna smoke ‘em. Every day, all day.†He then lead the rebels in a call-and-response religious victory chant, screaming “takbeer!†The fighters responded, “God is great!â€
“Bashar al-Assad this is what’s left of your airforce,†said Mr. Harroun as they approached the crashed aircraft. He then switched back into Arabic to curse Mr. Assad’s mother and the mothers of his supporters. Due to his broken Arabic, he also accidentally cursed God’s mother.
When they arrived at the crashed aircraft, it’s cockpit was splattered with blood but it’s pilot and crew were nowhere to be seen.
A third video posted online shows Mr. Harroun and the same driver, with whom he appeared to be friends, in a jeep in the desert near another downed aircraft. The video contains several expletives in both Arabic and English.
A video posted online shows Mr. Harroun celebrating near a downed Syrian military helicopter.
“We smoked†them “didn’t we†Mr. Harroun asked the driver of the jeep. “Hell yeah. We smoked ‘em out. I don’t know, ten Twentyâ€
The driver simply flashes a broad, happy grin and gives Mr. Harroun two thumbs up.
Shoe Tossed at Musharraf Misses Mark, Video Shows
Pakistan’s former military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, narrowly escaped being struck in the head by a shoe hurled at him outside a courtroom in Karachi on Friday, video of the incident showed.
The footage, broadcast in a loop on Pakistani television, showed the shoe passing just in front of General Musharraf’s face as he made his way through the court building, surrounded by a scrum of security officers, journalists and protesters.
A video report from Pakistan’s Geo TV showed a protester hurling a shoe at the country’s former military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, on Friday outside a courtroom in Karachi.
An analysis of the footage from Geo News, which slowed the video down and traced the path of the shoe in forensic detail, suggested that the attacker, standing behind photographers jostling for a shot of the former ruler, was forced to make an awkward throw, raising the projectile high overhead before flinging it down at the general.
Quoting witnesses, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported that the shoe had come from a group of about 20 lawyers who “had gathered to protest against the former military ruler at the Sindh High Court building, shouting, ‘He’s a dictator and he should be hanged.’â€
General Musharraf was in court to obtain an extension of pre-trial bail in several legal cases filed against him for his actions after he took power in a coup in 1999. He returned to the country from exile this week, hoping to make a political comeback in the nation’s upcoming elections.
A Euronews video report on the incident showed protesting lawyers inside the court building, and explained the charges against General Musharraf.
A Eurnoews report on the failed shoe attack on Pakistan’s former military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Protesters outside the court building also waved their shoes in the air during the general’s bail hearing. As Omar Waraich, a journalist who covers Pakistan for Time magazine noted on Twitter, being shown or struck with the sole of a shoe is a form of insult pioneered in the Muslim world.
However, the meme has spread rapidly across the globe in recent years, since an Iraqi journalist hurled two shoes at President George W. Bush in 2008. Last month in Cairo, an attacker hurled a shoe at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during the Iranian president’s visit.
The attack was condemned by several Pakistani journalists and commentators not know for their sympathy for the general.
The general made no mention of the near miss on his Twitter feed, where he thanked the court for extending his bail and mentioned “posing for pictures with excited fans.â€
Earlier in the week, General Musharraf took some flak on the social network for posting a photograph of himself working out in a gym after his return to Pakistan. Some saw the image as an effort to show that the 69-year-old was still vital, as he heads into an election in competition with, among others, Imran Khan, the trim former captain of Pakistan’s cricket team, who is a decade younger.
One on One: Jerry Weissman, Silicon Valley’s Storyteller
Jerry Weissman may produce more revenue than almost any director in history. His big successes haven’t been plays or movies, though. For more than two decades, Mr. Weissman, a former television and stage director, has coached the executives of technology companies on the theater of the initial public offering.
Mr. Weissman’s company, Power Presentations, works with chief executives on the “roadshow,†a major step toward a stock offering. The presentations consist of speeches, slide shows and question-and-answer sessions with prospective investors. Getting that story right builds enthusiasm for a company’s shares, sending initial stock prices higher.
His clients have included Intuit, eBay, Cisco, Dolby, Netflix and most recently Trulia, the real estate Web site. His clients also include executives at established companies like Microsoft, where he helps with other kinds of presentations, like conference speeches and product marketing.
Mr. Weissman, who is based in Burlingame, Calif., has written several books on his craft, the most recent of which is “Winning Strategies for Power Presentations.†I caught up with him recently, in between client meetings.
Q.
How different is an I.P.O. pitch from a conference presentation
A.
I have worked on I.P.O.’s, private placements, product launches, board meetings, keynotes, conference talks and partner meetings. The goal is always the same: Tell a crisp, clean story; make sure your PowerPoint doesn’t become “death by PowerPoint†by cluttering things up or confusing the audience; show poise and confidence; and show you can handle tough questions.
Q.
If it’s that easy, how do you stay employed
A.
They’ve been selling stuff to a different audience, people who want to buy software or computers. They have to rotate the benefit of their product to a different audience. If the audience is potential investors, those people have only two interests: return on investment and risk management.
Most of my clients come at the task of telling their story like engineers, in a logical fashion. But they assign six slides to Tom, eight points from Dick and four items from Harry, and that creates a patchwork of ideas that don’t flow and ideas that don’t match each other. Then they see the audience squirm at what they’ve done, and that raises their discomfort level, which the audience feels. After that, it’s lost.
They need to merge the logic with the art, and that goes back 2,300 years, to Aristotle. Give things a beginning, a middle and an end.
Q.
How do you do that
A.
You set the context by defining who the audience is and what you want to achieve by talking to them. Then you let the ideas flow about what you can say, you brainstorm like crazy without throwing out anything. You distill that into four or five key ideas. Then you put it into a logical flow that is meaningful for what the audience wants.
Q.
How long have you been doing this
A.
It will be 25 years on Sept. 1.
Q.
What has changed
A.
My specialty is I.P.O.’s. The biggest change there is NetRoadshow, which is a Web site where people post a video of their pitch. That means they have to put something tight into the can. Then they go on the road, and if they’re good, it’s 90 percent audience questions about investing. If it’s not good, it’s all about how people didn’t understand what they were talking about. So, I train them to make a video, then I train them for a Q.&A. session that is tougher than anything they’ll face on the road.
The other change is that sometimes people just post slides on the Web, and get on the phone and talk. Either way, the new media means they have to learn to tell stories without making eye contact. It’s even more important that you have a clear story that flows. In the questions, you listen to make sure you understand the key issues. You paraphrase the question to level the playing field for the rest of the audience, and to make sure it addresses the question. And you pitch yourself, so you can end up saying “…and that’s why we are the best.â€
Q.
How is the I.P.O. market doing
A.
It is smaller, compared with 10 years ago, but there is lots of other kinds of work. If I’m a bellwether, though, I’d say I have more companies knocking on my door for I.P.O. training this year than last, and more last year than the year before.
Facebook to Introduce Its Own Flavor of Android for Smartphones
Facebook next week will introduce a special version of Google’s Android software system modified to put the social network front and center on a smartphone. The software will debut on a handset made by HTC, said a Facebook employee who has been briefed on the product.
Facebook on Thursday evening sent invitations to members of the media for an event on April 4 at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. A person who works at Facebook, but asked not be named because he was not authorized to talk about the company’s plans, said the company would introduce a version of Android that makes Facebook’s software more prominent.
For instance, when the device is turned on, it will immediately display a Facebook user’s home screen, the source said, a fact earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal. Facebook’s camera and messaging apps will be the default apps for the core functions of the phone, the Facebook employee also said.
Derick Mains, a Facebook spokesman declined to comment on what would be unveiled at the event. But he said it would be a “significant mobile-focused announcement.â€
The Facebook employee said that the company’s portfolio of mobile apps has been the vanguard of the Android-based Facebook operating system. Over the past two and a half years Facebook has been creating standalone mobile applications. For example, this year the company introduced Poke, a private messaging app as a standalone app. Last year, it released a camera app that specialized in tagging and uploading photos to Facebook. And in 2011, it introduced Messenger, an app for free text messaging, which was later expanded to include free voice calls.
Amazon has also modified Android, for its Kindle Fire tablets.
Facebook has been exploring making its own smartphone for the past two years, but the project, which was codenamed “Buffy,†kept stalling internally as the company could not determine whether to make its own hardware or partner with a phone maker.
Facebook has recruited engineers who specialized in mobile phone development, including former Apple engineers who worked on the development of the Apple iPhone.
Can Line’s Messaging App Crack the American Market
Line, the mobile messaging application that has built up more than 110 million customers around the world, particularly in Asia, is hoping to make similar inroads in the United States.
The company, which is headquartered in South Korea, set up an outpost in San Francisco at the end of last year.
“People are really taking to this new way of communicating,†said Jeanie Han, the chief executive of the American offices. “We realize that this could translate over to the Western part of the world.â€
Cracking the American market will be tricky.
The iPhone, which has its own free message service called iMessage, is the most popular smartphone among customers of the two largest phone carriers in the United States.
Plus, Line will have difficulty competing with other applications like Snapchat, WhatsApp, GroupMe and Kik that are already popular among people who are looking for inexpensive and easy ways to send free messages to their friends.
Ms. Han declined to share information on what portion of Line’s pool of users is based in the United States other than to say it is “growing nicely.’
In addition to offering free messaging, Line sells games and virtual stickers, which have been very lucrative sources of revenue for the company, says Ms Han. Although virtual stickers are still a new concept to most Americans, Ms. Han says the suite of games her company offers have been extremely popular among Line’s small base of American customers.
“People spend more here in the States than any other top territory relative to the user base,†she said, adding that the United States is a “high priority.â€
When Line wanted to build up its customer base in Spain, where text messaging is expensive and data is still relatively cheap, the company introduced a mass-media marketing campaign, airing commercials on local television stations for a month. Ms. Han said those efforts worked, and now Spain is one of Line’s fastest new markets.
To appeal to American audiences, Ms. Han said that Line is working to establish partnerships with local brands, toy companies and movie studios to get customized games and content that American users will recognize and gravitate towards. Right now, most of Line’s games and stickers are steeped in Asian pop culture and feature manga-style characters.
“We want to really really localize our content offering,†she said.
Ms. Han, who has a decade of experience under her belt working in the movie industry, believes that the key to Line’s success in the United States will come from introducing it as a cool social activity, not as a way to save money on messaging.
“I see Line not as a tech company, but as an entertainment company,†she said. “We bring fun to people lives. That I know how to do really well.â€
Amazon to Buy Social Site Dedicated to Sharing Books
Amazon to Buy Social Site Dedicated to Sharing Books
Amazon, the dominant online bookseller, said late Thursday that it would buy Goodreads, the most visited social media site built around sharing books. The companies did not disclose a purchase price or other conditions of the sale, which will close in the next quarter.
The founders of Goodreads, Elizabeth Khuri Chandler and her husband, Otis Chandler, in their office in San Francisco.
With bookstores closing, Internet sites have become critical places for telling readers about books they might be interested in. This deal further consolidates Amazon’s power to determine which authors get exposure for their work.
Until the purchase, Goodreads was a rival to Amazon as a place for discovering books. Goodreads, which is based on networks of friends sharing reviews, was building a reputation as a reliably independent source of recommendations. It was also of great interest to publishers because members routinely shared their lists of books to be read.
By contrast, Amazon had several well-publicized cases involving writers buying or manipulating their reviews on its site. As a result, authors said Amazon was deleting reviews from its site at the end of 2012 as a way of cracking down.
The deal is made more significant because Amazon already owned part or all of Goodreads’ competitors, Shelfari and LibraryThing. It bought Shelfari in 2008. It also owns a portion of LibraryThing as a result of buying companies that already owned a stake in the site. Both are much smaller and have grown much more slowly than Goodreads.
Otis Chandler, a founder of Goodreads, said his management team would remain in place to guard the reviewing process that had made the site attractive to its 16 million members. “Amazon has a real history of building independent brands and running them as independent companies,†he said in a phone interview.
Reaction online, however, was swift and laced with skepticism. “Say hello to a world in which Amazon targets you based on your Goodreads reviews,†Edward Champion, a writer and editor, posted on Twitter. “No company should have this power.â€
The deal did get some support from Hugh Howey, whose book “Wool†was originally self-published on Amazon and promoted through Goodreads and became a best seller. “The best place to discuss books is joining up with the best place to buy books â€" to-be-read piles everywhere must be groaning in anticipation,†he said in the companies’ news release.
Russ Grandinetti, Amazon’s vice president for Kindle content, said the integration of the companies was beneficial. For example, it will make it “super easy,†he said, for authors that self-publish through Kindle “to promote their books on Goodreads.â€
A version of this article appeared in print on March 29, 2013, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Amazon to Buy Social Site Dedicated to Sharing Books.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Palestinians Fight Prison Sentences for Mocking Their President on Facebook
A Palestinian court on Thursday upheld a one-year jail sentence for a journalist convicted of insulting President Mahmoud Abbas with a pastiche image posted on Facebook. Another Palestinian was given the same sentence last month for posting a humorous caption beneath an image of Mr. Abbas kicking a soccer ball on the social network.
The journalist, Mamdouh Hamamreh, said that he did not create or publish the composite image that compared Mr. Abbas to a character from a Syrian historical drama who collaborated with French colonialists. The court, applying part of the old Jordanian legal code that criminalizes insulting the king to an Internet jibe against the Palestinian president, was not swayed by the journalist’s argument that he had played no part in the decision by the person who did upload the image to Facebook to draw it to his attention by adding his name as a tag to the text that accompanied it.
Hussein Ibish, a fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine in Washington, pointed on Twitter to what appeared to be a copy of the offending composite image.
A composite image posted on Facebook compared the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, right, to a character from a Syrian historical drama who collaborated with the French colonial administration. The caption says the two men are “similar in every way.â€
The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms explained in a statement decrying the sentence:
Hamamrah’s case started in September 2009, when he was arrested and transferred to the public prosecutor. He was arrested due to a claim by the Palestinian intelligence service, that they found an offensive image of President Abbas posted on his own social networking page Facebook next to a character in a Syrian drama TV show “Ma’amoun Beik,†as a comparison to the character, who is known in the drama show for hiding his true evil face from a community in Syria and working as a spy for the French. In fact Hamamrah was not the person who posted this picture, or made any comments, and did not share it.
“We don’t have a king, we have a president,†Riham Abu Aita of the The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms told Reuters. “When images online are criminalized, it’s a very serious violation of basic rights of expression.â€
Late Thursday, the Palestinian Maan News Agency reported that the president’s office had decided to pardon the journalist.
As the Maan News Agency reported last month, a court in Nablus sentenced Anas Saad Awwad, 26, to a year in prison for adding a jokey caption to a digitally altered photograph of Mr. Abbas taken during a visit to the Real Madrid’s stadium in 2011.
A 2011 video report from Real Madrid TV on a visit to the club’s stadium by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.
Thaer Ganaim/PPO, via Getty Images A not-in-any-way sarcastic or insulting caption for a photograph of President Mahmoud Abbas in Madrid in 2011.According to his lawyer, Mr. Awwad was accused of Photoshopping a Real Madrid shirt over the president’s suit and adding the caption: “the new striker for Real Madrid.â€
“My son only commented on Facebook,†Mr. Awad’s father told the Electronic Intifada after he was sentenced last month. “You know how young people comment. He didn’t mean to insult the president. I ask the president to intervene personally to cancel the court’s decision.â€
Issam Abdeen of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq told The Associated Press that Mr. Awwad’s sentence was overturned on appeal earlier this month, but several other Palestinians face similar charges.
Failed Robbery Immortalized on Video
When police officers in the California town of Redding arrived at the scene of an attempted robbery one night earlier this month, they had little to go on, save for a blaring alarm and a broken window. Then they looked at the security-camera video. The tape revealed, as Anthony DeRosa of Reuters observed, an 18-second masterclass in “How Not to Rob a Convenience Store.â€
Surveillance-camera video, posted on YouTube by the Redding Record Searchlight, shows a failed attempt to rob a market in Redding, Calif.
The Redding Police Department has asked the public for help in identifying the suspect, who made life easier for the authorities by wearing a distinctive outfit and showing his face on camera before pulling down a stocking to conceal it.
The video, posted on YouTube by the Redding Record Searchlight, also shows that moments after he hurled a rock at the sliding-glass front door of Kent’s Meats & Groceries, triggering the alarm, the would-be robber apparently thought better of his crime and immediately turned to run away. Perhaps unable to see through his stocking, the man then fell twice as he made his getaway.
Failed Robbery Immortalized on Video
When police officers in the California town of Redding arrived at the scene of an attempted robbery one night earlier this month, they had little to go on, save for a blaring alarm and a broken window. Then they looked at the security-camera video. The tape revealed, as Anthony DeRosa of Reuters observed, an 18-second masterclass in “How Not to Rob a Convenience Store.â€
Surveillance-camera video, posted on YouTube by the Redding Record Searchlight, shows a failed attempt to rob a market in Redding, Calif.
The Redding Police Department has asked the public for help in identifying the suspect, who made life easier for the authorities by wearing a distinctive outfit and showing his face on camera before pulling down a stocking to conceal it.
The video, posted on YouTube by the Redding Record Searchlight, also shows that moments after he hurled a rock at the sliding-glass front door of Kent’s Meats & Groceries, triggering the alarm, the would-be robber apparently thought better of his crime and immediately turned to run away. Perhaps unable to see through his stocking, the man then fell twice as he made his getaway.
Samsung Galaxy S 4 Will Cost More Than iPhone on AT&T
Samsung’s new Galaxy smartphone is expected to pose a serious challenge to Apple’s iPhone. But shoppers may be turned off by the Galaxy’s higher price tag.
AT&T on Thursday said that customers can order the Galaxy S 4 on April 16 for $250. That is $50 more than the cheapest iPhone 5 on a contract. Generally, the price tag is the most important factor when consumers consider purchasing electronics, so the $50 difference between the starting prices of the two phones may steer AT&T customers toward the iPhone.
It is unclear why the Galaxy S 4 costs more than an iPhone. Samsung’s last flagship phone, the Galaxy S III, matched the iPhone’s price. Jan Dawson, a telecom analyst at Ovum, pointed out that according to estimates by IHS iSuppli, a components research firm, the parts for the Galaxy S 4 cost more than the iPhone 5’s. The S 4’s bigger screen, new processor and new sensors are adding to its cost, according to iSuppli.
AT&T and Samsung did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The iPhone 5 was the best-selling smartphone model over the holiday season, but Samsung, which sells multiple models of smartphones, is the biggest seller of smartphones in the world over all. Analysts have said the Galaxy S 4, which will be available on all four major American carriers, presents a major challenge to the iPhone, especially overseas. But they agree that the iPhone is likely to retain the No. 1 spot in the United States this year.
The Nimble Dance of a Rich Legacy Software Company
SAS Institute, the world’s largest private software company, is mainly known for two things. It was the pioneer maker of sophisticated software for analyzing data, long before anyone was using the terms analytics or Big Data.
SAS is also known for the seemingly lush life on its corporate campus in Cary, N.C., with on-site doctors, gyms, swimming pools, day care, even barbers. In 2012, SAS ranked second in Fortune magazine’s annual list of the best companies to work for, trailing only Google.
With big companies and start-ups plunging into the data analysis business in recent years, SAS looked vulnerable. The company’s software was not built for the new computing architecture of highly distributed, parallel computing, in which digital chores are cut up and spread across many microprocessors. And its software was designed for a world of mainly captive data, housed in corporate and government data bases, rather than the unruly realm of unstructured data, like Web pages and sensor signals.
In 2009, I wrote a long piece that looked at SAS and the challenges it faced. The headline read, “At a Software Powerhouse, the Good Life Is Under Siege.â€
On Wednesday, SAS executives came to New York for an event at the Pierre Hotel to show off its retooled technology to customers. The code has been rewritten to run on modern hardware â€" so-called massively parallel computers. A new version, coming in June, will be able to run entirely in remote “cloud†data centers. “It’s a complete cloud distribution, totally cloud-ready,†James Goodnight, co-founder and chief executive of SAS, said in an interview.
Those clouds can be private ones operated by companies or government agencies. But SAS has its own hosted data centers, and its software now also runs on Amazon’s Web Services cloud.
SAS has developed new visual tools â€" so users can do data analysis with a point-and-click on a laptop, or swipe-and-tap on an iPad tablet, as SAS demonstrated this week. The goal is to broaden the base of SAS users well beyond its traditional core of SAS-trained data experts. “Democratizing data is exactly what this is about,†said James Davis, an SAS senior vice president and chief marketing officer.
SAS, to be sure, faces a long list of rivals from giants like I.B.M. and Oracle, to data analysis software specialists like Tableau Software, TIBCO Spotfire and MicroStategy, and a host of ambitious start-ups. The market for Big Data technology will be a competitive hotbed for years, and how things will play out is uncertain.
But industry analysts say SAS has made considerable progress and shown real agility, especially for an established company.
“SAS is a real canary in the coal mine for how legacy software companies respond to massively parallel computing and Big Data,†said Merv Adrian, an analyst at Gartner. “And the company has done a pretty impressive job.â€
As a private company, SAS does not report its financial results. But Mr. Goodnight said its revenue grew 5.5 percent last year, held down by weakness in Europe and a strong dollar against the euro, which reduced reported sales. Europe is about the size of the United States as a market for SAS.
This year, Mr. Goodnight said, SAS hopes to achieve a 12 percent growth in revenue. The revamped product line with visual tools and cloud offerings are fueling that optimism.
The Nimble Dance of a Rich Legacy Software Company
SAS Institute, the world’s largest private software company, is mainly known for two things. It was the pioneer maker of sophisticated software for analyzing data, long before anyone was using the terms analytics or Big Data.
SAS is also known for the seemingly lush life on its corporate campus in Cary, N.C., with on-site doctors, gyms, swimming pools, day care, even barbers. In 2012, SAS ranked second in Fortune magazine’s annual list of the best companies to work for, trailing only Google.
With big companies and start-ups plunging into the data analysis business in recent years, SAS looked vulnerable. The company’s software was not built for the new computing architecture of highly distributed, parallel computing, in which digital chores are cut up and spread across many microprocessors. And its software was designed for a world of mainly captive data, housed in corporate and government data bases, rather than the unruly realm of unstructured data, like Web pages and sensor signals.
In 2009, I wrote a long piece that looked at SAS and the challenges it faced. The headline read, “At a Software Powerhouse, the Good Life Is Under Siege.â€
On Wednesday, SAS executives came to New York for an event at the Pierre Hotel to show off its retooled technology to customers. The code has been rewritten to run on modern hardware â€" so-called massively parallel computers. A new version, coming in June, will be able to run entirely in remote “cloud†data centers. “It’s a complete cloud distribution, totally cloud-ready,†James Goodnight, co-founder and chief executive of SAS, said in an interview.
Those clouds can be private ones operated by companies or government agencies. But SAS has its own hosted data centers, and its software now also runs on Amazon’s Web Services cloud.
SAS has developed new visual tools â€" so users can do data analysis with a point-and-click on a laptop, or swipe-and-tap on an iPad tablet, as SAS demonstrated this week. The goal is to broaden the base of SAS users well beyond its traditional core of SAS-trained data experts. “Democratizing data is exactly what this is about,†said James Davis, an SAS senior vice president and chief marketing officer.
SAS, to be sure, faces a long list of rivals from giants like I.B.M. and Oracle, to data analysis software specialists like Tableau Software, TIBCO Spotfire and MicroStategy, and a host of ambitious start-ups. The market for Big Data technology will be a competitive hotbed for years, and how things will play out is uncertain.
But industry analysts say SAS has made considerable progress and shown real agility, especially for an established company.
“SAS is a real canary in the coal mine for how legacy software companies respond to massively parallel computing and Big Data,†said Merv Adrian, an analyst at Gartner. “And the company has done a pretty impressive job.â€
As a private company, SAS does not report its financial results. But Mr. Goodnight said its revenue grew 5.5 percent last year, held down by weakness in Europe and a strong dollar against the euro, which reduced reported sales. Europe is about the size of the United States as a market for SAS.
This year, Mr. Goodnight said, SAS hopes to achieve a 12 percent growth in revenue. The revamped product line with visual tools and cloud offerings are fueling that optimism.
A Marshall McLuhan Approach to Weather Forecasting
If Marshall McLuhan had been a rocket scientist, he might have liked PlanetIQ’s approach to forecasting the weather. It uses signals from GPS satellites, but not for positioning. Instead, it measures distortion in these signals to learn about the atmosphere through which they passed. To quote McLuhan out of context, the medium is the message in this case: the manner of acquiring the information is more important than the information itself.
PlanetIQ sees an opening for itself because the United States network of weather satellites is aging and the replacement satellites are delayed and over budget. So PlanetIQ, a start-up based in Bethesda, Md., is using a physics trick to get information from existing satellites and plug it into computerized weather models.
The company wants to put 12 tiny satellites into orbit that will do nothing except watch the GPS satellites rise and set on Earth’s horizon. The signals sent from these satellites are bent by the atmosphere at an angle that indicates the air’s temperature, pressure and water vapor content. PlanetIQ’s satellites can determine the angle because the way the signals are bent delays their arrival. The GPS signal already encodes the time at which it was sent; the time it should have arrived had there been no bend can be computed if one knows the distance the signal was supposed to have traveled.
“GPS is a giant timing system,’’ said Anne Hale Miglarese, PlanetIQ’s president and chief executive.
The idea, called radio occultation, has great promise, according to experts. “There’s definitely a lot of interest,’’ said Crystal B. Schaaf, a professor of remote sensing at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. “Anything that gives us any information about the atmospheric profile is a godsend when you’re trying to trigger numerical prediction models.’’
“As meteorologists, we’ve relied for many years off launching weather balloons and getting these far-separated points,’’ Professor Schaaf said, adding that satellite observation would provide much more data.
In PlanetIQ’s system, each satellite would take 1,000 readings a day from the GPS satellites, with each reading measuring the temperature and pressure of the slice of Earth’s atmosphere through which the signal traveled. The fleet would generate about 5.5 million readings a day, which would be integrated by a computer on the ground into a 3-D map of atmospheric data.
PlanetIQ would also measure the earth’s magnetosphere, which indicates when a solar storm is in progress. Such storms can threaten power grids and other terrestrial activity.
The atmospheric measurements would not allow for much weather forecasting on their own, but they could supplement data from other sources to make forecasts more precise, Ms. Miglarese said.
Peter J. Minnett, chairman of the meteorology and physical oceanography department at the University of Miami, said that GPS receivers of the kind PlanetIQ proposes would probably be included in future weather satellites, but that it would take time to put a significant number in use. And the ability to launch new satellites as fast as the old ones decay is no longer assured, he said, because governments have limited resources.
Professor Minnett added that the idea of a commercial company collecting data and selling it to the government would be a shift from the current approach, in which agencies like NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gather the data and exchange it freely.
Commercialization is always tricky. PlanetIQ says it needs $160 million to get its satellites in orbit. To raise that money, it probably needs contracts with national weather services.
It is seeking to sign up NOAA, the parent agency of the National Weather Service, as an “anchor tenant†for its system. But so far, NOAA has been noncommittal.
A spokesman said, “We welcome any reliable data that helps the National Weather Service meet its mission requirements while also being cost-effective and properly reflected in our budget.â€
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