As Apps Race to Car Dashes, Walking a Line on Safety

SEATTLE â€" Nestled in the driver’s seat of a Mini, one of the stylish, pint-sized coupes, Bryan Trussel fiddled with an app called Glympse that allows people to share their locations with others for short periods.

Rather than staring down at the screen of his iPhone, Mr. Trussel’s eyes were locked on the dashboard, where the app was displayed on a large, circular screen. Glympse is part of a wave of smartphone apps breaking free of small screens to get onto dashboard displays so they become a bigger part of people’s lives.

“There is a lot of attention and money going into this space,” said Mr. Trussel, the chief executive of Glympse.

Automakers are proceeding carefully with in-car apps because of the safety concerns around distracted driving. (Mr. Trussel, it should be noted, was giving his demo in a parked car.)

Although there’s not a lot they can do to stop people from burying their noses in their smartphone screens when they’re in cars, automakers can exercise control over whether and how smartphone apps integrate with their dashboard displays. Carmakers argue that in-dash apps are safer to use, in part because dashboard displays are closer to a driver’s view of the road than a smartphone is likely to be.

“For us, the ability to integrate a smartphone like an iPhone into a car to make operating it easier and safer is critically important,” said David Bloom, manager of the app center of the BMW Group’s technology office in Mountain View, Calif.

BMW’s effort to integrate Glympse into its cars, a deal being announced this week in New York, is a good example of how car and app makers are working together. BMW is also announcing the plans to integrate several other apps â€" including Audible, Rhapsody and TuneIn â€" into its cars, including its Mini family of vehicles, on top of Pandora, MOG and other apps that are already integrated with BMW displays.

People with iPhones running the Glympse app must plug their devices into a cable inside BMWs to see the app on their dashboards. They can use iDrive, a control knob on the center console of BMWs, to switch between functions of the app. The Glympse app still runs on an iPhone when it’s on a BMW dashboard screen, but its menus are projected in a format designed for the car’s display. Glympse has announced similar integration deals with Ford and Mercedes.

Glympse was conceived partly as a way to make it unnecessary for people to text others about their locations â€" a spouse expecting them at home, say, or a group of colleagues anxiously awaiting their presence at a lunch meeting. The app lets you share your location in increments from minutes up to four hours. Before you get rolling in a car, you can send a Glympse message that allows any recipient to see you on a map as you make progress to your destination.

In many newer cars, drivers can link music apps on their smartphones to the car stereo system over a cable or wirelessly through Bluetooth. This usually allows only a rudimentary level of control over the apps from a dashboard display, like skipping to the next song.

The app that Glympse designed for BMWs provides access to a deeper selection of the app’s functions, but the company still worked closely with the carmaker to edit out access to features, like those that rely on text entry, to make it safer to use behind the wheel.

“We try and curate the experience so it’s not distracting,” said Philip Johnston, product manager for the BMW Group application integration platform

Instagram and the New Era of Paparazzi

Earlier this week, a rare and new photo of the pop star Beyoncé and her daughter, Blue Ivy, quickly spread around the Internet, on various celebrity and gossip sites.

There was nothing particularly unusual about the photo itself: It was a simple shot of the singer, smiling, carrying her sleepy daughter as they exited a restaurant in Brooklyn.

But the paparazzi-style photo did not come from a typical photographer: It came from Instagram.

Raquel Sabz, who goes by the online name “Rich Girl on a Budget,” appears to have posted the photograph on Instagram and Twitter late Sunday night. (The photo has since been deleted from Instagram, although her Twitter post remains online.) Not long after, Splash News purchased the photo for an undisclosed amount and distributed it to a number of sites, including People.com, NYDailyNews.com and The Huffington Post.

Ms. Sabz declined requests for an interview and referred to Splash News for more information about the sale and transactions. Inquiries to Splash News did not result in an interview.

Molly Goodson, a senior editor and the vice president for content at PopSugar, a celebrity news site, was among those who purchased the photograph of Beyoncé with her child.

The average person has eyes in places where regular paparazzi don’t have them, she said. “The whole world becomes a photo agency at that point. More so than ever before.”

Ms. Goodson said that during her six-year tenure at PopSugar, she has seen the rapid rise of Instagram as a popular source for images of famous people in the wild. This is partly because of the spread of smartphones with more-than-decent cameras, and the ability to publish instantly anywhere, anytime, within seconds and reach millions by posting photos publicly across the network of social media sites.

It is also partly because of celebrities who have taken their public images into their own hands and publish photos on Instagram and Twitter, as well as support staffers, like hairstylists and makeup artists, who do the same. Ms. Goodson gave the Oscars as an example, with the first images of celebrities attending the affair trickling out through the Web, rather than through traditional sources.

“That was the first place you would see any dresses or what Jennifer Lawrence is wearing,” she said. “It’s not the photo agency or TV.”

It’s a striking shift from the way those photos were distributed historically.

Before, she said, the asking price for photos could stretch into the hundreds of thousands, depending on the rarity of the sighting. But now, because most people see them first on sites like Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, it’s harder to command a hefty price tag. Photos can go for a fraction of their historically high cost, she said.

“It’s certainly devalued by the fact that it’s already out there,” she said.

One on One: Nolan Bushnell, Video Game Legend and Steve Jobs’s Boss

There are a lot of highlights to Nolan Bushnell’s career - he was a founder of Atari, the pioneering video game company, as well as of the Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theater chain - but one of the more glorious footnotes is that he was one of Steven P. Jobs’s first and only bosses.

In 1974, Mr. Jobs sauntered into Atari’s office in Silicon Valley and demanded a job, which he got despite his sandals and scruffy appearance.

Mr. Jobs, who died in 2011, only spent a short time at Atari before leaving to co-found Apple, but Mr. Bushnell maintained a friendship with him.

Now Mr. Bushnell, 70, has compiled some of his memories of his former employee and blended them with advice about hiring and nurturing creative talent in a book called “Finding the Next Steve Jobs,” which was released Tuesday. The following are edited excerpts of an interview with Mr. Bushnell about the book:

Q.

How did you meet Steve Jobs

A.

We hired him. He basically showed up on our front door and wanted a job. Alcorn [Allan Alcorn, an early Atari engineer] was looking for engineers at the time, and though Steve wasn’t a full-fledged engineer, he seemed like he had all the right stuff. I met him that day.

Q.

How long did he work for you

A.

He worked for us for about a year and went to India and came back and worked for us again.

Q.

What inspired you to write a book about how to hire the next Steve Jobs

A.

I’ve always wanted to do a book on creativity. The idea for that title came from my publisher, who felt it was a timely thing and that Steve Jobs kind of underlined the power of creativity.

Q.

The Steve Jobs that worked for you must have been very different from the Steve Jobs in the latter part of his career. When you’re writing about Steve Jobs, are you writing about the man you first met or do you think your book is also geared to more mature executives

A.

I think the anecdotes I have about Steve, I felt that they tracked pretty much not just his maturation and his coming of age, but I think it also talks about the pathway of his process.

This is more about creativity than it is about Steve. What I really wanted to do is use Steve as an example of an out-of-the-box thinker. The book is about the prescriptives you can you use to really not keep the creatives out of your company, which too many people do.

Q.

Why do they keep them out of their company

A.

Because they don’t know any better. The truly creative people tend to be outliers. The minute the H.R. department says “college degree required,” you’re going to eliminate an awful lot of extremely talented people. We’re moving away from a credentialed society to a merit society.

Q.

What was it like having Steve Jobs in your office How was he different from other people who worked for you at the time

A.

He was very intense. One of the things that was remarkably different about Steve is he was very interested in things other than the technology we were working on. We used to engage in relatively deep conversations about philosophy. He enjoyed introspection. Determinism versus free will. Rationalism, that sort of thing.

Q.

Steve Jobs was also known as somebody who spoke his mind, often brutally so. What advice do you give to people about dealing with personalities like that in the workplace

A.

Grow up. The only thing that really offends me are people who are offended. When I was around Steve and somebody complained that he was being rough, I didn’t have much sympathy for them.

I said, “Was he right or wrong” “Well, he might have been right.” I said, “Well, okay, don’t be a baby.”

Latest Updates on Supreme Court Same-Sex Marriage Hearing

The Lede is following the Supreme Court hearing on Tuesday, the first of two days of arguments over same-sex marriage rights. Day One focuses on Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

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The Lede is following the Supreme Court hearing on Tuesday, the first of two days of arguments over same-sex marriage rights. Day One focuses on Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

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New Suitors for Dell Raise Specter of Founder’s Loss

8:43 p.m. | Updated

The emergence of two new bidders for Dell Inc. over the weekend has set off a flurry of scrambling among the would-be owners of the embattled computer company, potentially leading to months of new talks.

By choosing to continue negotiating with the Blackstone Group and the billionaire Carl C. Icahn, a special committee of Dell’s board has raised the possibility that Michael S. Dell may very well lose control of the company he founded nearly 29 years ago.

On Monday, the board committee deemed that the preliminary bids by Blackstone and Mr. Icahn were reasonably likely to become superior proposals. Both are offering more than the $13.65-a-share plan that Mr. Dell and his partner, Silver Lake, have put forth.

The latest developments complicate efforts by Mr. Dell and Silver Lake to take the company private in a risky bid to revitalize a once-dominant technology giant.

For the private equity firm Blackstone, the decision means a chance to trump Silver Lake after its rival had a head start of months. For Mr. Icahn, who owns a roughly 4.5 percent stake in Dell, the goal may simply be a higher buyout offer for shareholders, including himself.

Both Blackstone’s and Mr. Icahn’s conditional proposals were meant to extend negotiations with the Dell special committee, and still lack firm commitments for the necessary financing.

But the new competition may eventually prompt Mr. Dell and Silver Lake to raise their price. Any potential sweetening of their bid wouldn’t come for months, however.

Still, investors appeared heartened by the prospects of a higher offer. Shares in Dell jumped 2.6 percent on Monday to $14.51, which continues to be well above the existing offer by Mr. Dell and Silver Lake.

In a statement, Mr. Icahn said that he had had preliminary discussions with Blackstone and planned to review its proposal, raising the possibility that he might switch allegiance to his nominal competitor.

Mr. Dell, who has publicly committed to exploring working with other partners in good faith, could himself reach out to Blackstone as soon as this week, according to a person briefed on the matter. But Mr. Dell still has concerns about Blackstone’s offer, which may involve selling off Dell’s financial services arm or another division. He isn’t compelled to cooperate with any partner but Silver Lake, though his options to block a rival bid accepted by Dell’s special committee are limited.

As of Monday evening, the situation remained highly fluid. Representatives for Mr. Dell, Blackstone and Silver Lake declined to comment on Monday.

The plans put forth by Blackstone and Mr. Icahn address a major demand by some of the most vocal opponents of Mr. Dell’s current offer. Both have said that they would allow investors the chance to stay invested by keeping a portion of the company publicly traded.

This so-called stub would let shareholders share in any future Dell success, or continue to suffer if the technology giant falters.

Southeastern Asset Management, which owns about 8.4 percent of the company and is one of the most outspoken critics of Mr. Dell’s offer, said in a statement that it was pleased by the structure of the alternative bids.

In its preliminary proposal, Blackstone suggested that it would pay over $14.25 a share for Dell. Shareholders wishing to sell off their entire stakes would be able to do so.

While the firm did not specify what percentage of the company would remain publicly traded, people briefed on the matter said that the stub could be well over 10 percent of the remaining company.

But Blackstone and its partners, the investment firms Francisco Partners and Insight Venture Partners, are contemplating selling off businesses to help pay for their deal. At the top of their list is Dell’s financial services arm, which lends money to individual and corporate customers, according to people briefed on the matter.

Blackstone is expected to search for buyers for the unit, with General Electric’s GE Capital one potential candidate, these people said.

There is one possible complication for Blackstone and Mr. Dell: the private equity firm is not sure whether it would keep him as chief executive should it succeed. The buyout shop has interviewed potential candidates for the role, these people added.

Mr. Icahn proposed buying no more than 58.1 percent of Dell at $15 a share, with at least $5 billion of the purchase price being paid out of his own pocket. That means investors would most likely be able to sell only a portion of their holdings.

Both Blackstone and Mr. Icahn said in their proposals that they had held discussions with several major Dell shareholders, with the expectation that some would continue to own stakes in the company. (Mr. Icahn explicitly proposed owning a 24.1 percent stake if he were to succeed, while Southeastern would own 16.6 percent.)

By contrast, Mr. Dell and Silver Lake have offered to buy out all existing shareholders.

You May Not Have Posted It, but Facebook Knows

What You Didn’t Post, Facebook May Still Know

SAN FRANCISCO â€" Debra Aho Williamson, an advertising industry analyst and devoted coffee drinker, was intrigued by a promotion that popped up on her Facebook page recently. Sign up for a Starbucks loyalty card, it said, and get $5 off.

Facebook is tapping into outside data sources to learn even more about its users’ habits and preferences.

An example of a targeted ad that has appeared on Facebook, which last month partnered with four companies that collect behavioral data from store loyalty card transactions and other sources.

“When I saw that, I thought, I’m already a member of their loyalty club,” she said. “Why don’t they know that”

Despite the streams of data Facebook has collected about people like Ms. Williamson, the social network needs to know its users much better if it is going to become, as the company hopes, the Web’s most effective advertising platform. And Facebook is scrambling to do just that.

In shaping its targeted advertising strategy, it is no longer relying solely on what Facebook users reveal about themselves. Instead, it is tapping into outside sources of data to learn even more about them â€" and to sell ads that are more finely targeted to them. Facebook says that this way, marketers will be able to reach the right audience for the right products, and consumers will see advertisements that are, as the company calls it, “relevant” to them.

In late February, Facebook announced partnerships with four companies that collect lucrative behavioral data, from store loyalty card transactions and customer e-mail lists to divorce and Web browsing records.

They include Acxiom, which aggregates data from a variety of sources, including financial services companies, court records and federal government documents; Datalogix, which claims to have a database on the spending habits of more than 100 million Americans in categories like fine jewelry, cough medicine and college tuition; and Epsilon, which also collects transaction data from retailers.

Acxiom and Datalogix are among nine companies that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating to see how they collect and use consumer data.

Facebook’s fourth partner is BlueKai, based in Cupertino, Calif., which creates tracking cookies for brands to monitor customers who visit their Web sites. That data can be used to show an advertisement when those users log on to Facebook.

“Our goal is to improve the relevance of ads people see on Facebook and the efficacy of marketing campaigns,” Gokul Rajaram, product director for ads at Facebook, said in an interview on Friday.

In announcing the partnerships, Facebook said it would allow, for instance, a carmaker to customize an advertisement to users interested in a new car.

The push to refine targeted advertising reflects the company’s need to increase its revenue. Its shares are worth far less than its ambitious initial public offering price of $38 a share last May, and Wall Street wants to see it take concrete steps to prove to advertisers that it can show the right promotions to the right users and turn them into customers.

The partnerships are part of a continuum of efforts by Facebook to hone targeted advertising. Last fall, it invited potential advertisers to provide the e-mail addresses of their customers; Facebook then found those customers among its users and showed them ads on behalf of the brands.

JackThreads, a members-only online men’s retailer, tried this tactic recently. Of the two million customer e-mails it had on file, Facebook found more than two-thirds of them on the social network, aided in part by the fact that JackThreads allows members to sign in using Facebook login credentials. Facebook then showed those customers ads for the items they had once eyed on the JackThreads site.

The nudge seemed to get people to open up their pocketbooks. Sales increased 26 percent at JackThreads, according to AdParlor, an agency that buys the company’s advertisements on Facebook.

Targeted advertising bears important implications for consumers. It could mean seeing advertisements based not just on what they “like” on Facebook, but on what they eat for breakfast, whether they buy khakis or jeans and whether they are more likely to give their wives roses or tulips on their wedding anniversary. It means that even things people don’t reveal on Facebook may be discovered from their online and offline proclivities.

Facebook says that in devising targeted ads, no identifying information about users is shared with advertisers. E-mail addresses and Facebook user names are encrypted and then matched. Users can opt out of seeing specific brand advertisements on their page, and they can opt out of receiving any targeted messages by visiting each third-party data partner’s Web site.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 26, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: What You Didn’t Post, Facebook Might Still Know.

You May Not Have Posted It, but Facebook Knows

What You Didn’t Post, Facebook May Still Know

SAN FRANCISCO â€" Debra Aho Williamson, an advertising industry analyst and devoted coffee drinker, was intrigued by a promotion that popped up on her Facebook page recently. Sign up for a Starbucks loyalty card, it said, and get $5 off.

Facebook is tapping into outside data sources to learn even more about its users’ habits and preferences.

An example of a targeted ad that has appeared on Facebook, which last month partnered with four companies that collect behavioral data from store loyalty card transactions and other sources.

“When I saw that, I thought, I’m already a member of their loyalty club,” she said. “Why don’t they know that”

Despite the streams of data Facebook has collected about people like Ms. Williamson, the social network needs to know its users much better if it is going to become, as the company hopes, the Web’s most effective advertising platform. And Facebook is scrambling to do just that.

In shaping its targeted advertising strategy, it is no longer relying solely on what Facebook users reveal about themselves. Instead, it is tapping into outside sources of data to learn even more about them â€" and to sell ads that are more finely targeted to them. Facebook says that this way, marketers will be able to reach the right audience for the right products, and consumers will see advertisements that are, as the company calls it, “relevant” to them.

In late February, Facebook announced partnerships with four companies that collect lucrative behavioral data, from store loyalty card transactions and customer e-mail lists to divorce and Web browsing records.

They include Acxiom, which aggregates data from a variety of sources, including financial services companies, court records and federal government documents; Datalogix, which claims to have a database on the spending habits of more than 100 million Americans in categories like fine jewelry, cough medicine and college tuition; and Epsilon, which also collects transaction data from retailers.

Acxiom and Datalogix are among nine companies that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating to see how they collect and use consumer data.

Facebook’s fourth partner is BlueKai, based in Cupertino, Calif., which creates tracking cookies for brands to monitor customers who visit their Web sites. That data can be used to show an advertisement when those users log on to Facebook.

“Our goal is to improve the relevance of ads people see on Facebook and the efficacy of marketing campaigns,” Gokul Rajaram, product director for ads at Facebook, said in an interview on Friday.

In announcing the partnerships, Facebook said it would allow, for instance, a carmaker to customize an advertisement to users interested in a new car.

The push to refine targeted advertising reflects the company’s need to increase its revenue. Its shares are worth far less than its ambitious initial public offering price of $38 a share last May, and Wall Street wants to see it take concrete steps to prove to advertisers that it can show the right promotions to the right users and turn them into customers.

The partnerships are part of a continuum of efforts by Facebook to hone targeted advertising. Last fall, it invited potential advertisers to provide the e-mail addresses of their customers; Facebook then found those customers among its users and showed them ads on behalf of the brands.

JackThreads, a members-only online men’s retailer, tried this tactic recently. Of the two million customer e-mails it had on file, Facebook found more than two-thirds of them on the social network, aided in part by the fact that JackThreads allows members to sign in using Facebook login credentials. Facebook then showed those customers ads for the items they had once eyed on the JackThreads site.

The nudge seemed to get people to open up their pocketbooks. Sales increased 26 percent at JackThreads, according to AdParlor, an agency that buys the company’s advertisements on Facebook.

Targeted advertising bears important implications for consumers. It could mean seeing advertisements based not just on what they “like” on Facebook, but on what they eat for breakfast, whether they buy khakis or jeans and whether they are more likely to give their wives roses or tulips on their wedding anniversary. It means that even things people don’t reveal on Facebook may be discovered from their online and offline proclivities.

Facebook says that in devising targeted ads, no identifying information about users is shared with advertisers. E-mail addresses and Facebook user names are encrypted and then matched. Users can opt out of seeing specific brand advertisements on their page, and they can opt out of receiving any targeted messages by visiting each third-party data partner’s Web site.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 26, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: What You Didn’t Post, Facebook Might Still Know.

Daily Report: He Has Millions and a New Job at Yahoo. And Soon He’ll Be 18.

One of Yahoo’s newest employees is a 17-year-old high school student in Britain. As of Monday, he is one of its richest, too, Brian Stelter reports on Tuesday in The New York Times.

That student, Nick D’Aloisio, a programming whiz who wasn’t even born when Yahoo was founded in 1994, sold his news-reading app, Summly, to Yahoo on Monday for a sum said to be in the tens of millions of dollars. Yahoo said it would incorporate his algorithmic invention, which takes long-form stories and shortens them for readers using smartphones, in its own mobile apps, with Mr. D’Aloisio’s help.

“I’ve still got a year and a half left at my high school,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday, but, partly to abide by the company’s new and much-debated policy that prohibits working from home, he will make arrangements to test out of his classes and work from the Yahoo office in London.

Mr. D’Aloisio declined to comment on the price paid by Yahoo (the technology-oriented Web site All Things D pegged the purchase price at about $30 million), and he described himself not as the majority owner of Summly but as its largest shareholder.

Summly’s other investors, improbably enough, included Wendi Murdoch, Ashton Kutcher and Yoko Ono. The most important one was Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong billionaire, whose investment fund supported Mr. D’Aloisio’s idea early on, before it was even called Summly.

“They took a gamble on me when I was a 15-year-old,” Mr. D’Aloisio said, by providing seed financing that let him hire employees and lease office space. The fund read about Mr. D’Aloisio’s early-stage app on the Silicon Valley news site TechCrunch, found his e-mail address and startled him with a message expressing interest.

The others signed up later. “Because it was my first time around, people just wanted to help,” he said.