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Friday, July 19, 2013

Apple Buys 2 Mapping Companies

Apple is deepening its mapping skills, buying two start-ups that specialize in location technology.

Apple said on Friday that it had bought the two small companies, HopStop and Locationary, giving Apple more expertise in an area where it has struggled. HopStop is an application that can be used to get directions within cities and shows real-time traffic delays. The other start-up, Locationary, is based in Toronto and specializes in maps and mapping data, according to its Web site.

Apple would not disclose terms of the deals. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time,” said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman, “and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

Apple has been deepening its mapping software since it introduced Apple Maps on iOS devices last year. The company promoted the new maps as a major feature of the iPhone 5. But the software was filled with problems, often sending people in the wrong direction and making some satellite photos look like modern artwork rather than maps.

In September, Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, posted an apology letter on the company’s Web site saying he was “extremely sorry” for the anguish caused by the app. Some problems still plague the app, and these acquisitions are most likely part of Apple’s effort to improve its service.

HopStop was founded in 2005 with the idea that someone could type two addresses into a Web site and get reliable directions for public transportation. The company overhauled its mobile app in 2013 to add traffic data. The app’s traffic data is based on updates from people using the application, much like Waze, a company bought by Google last month for about $1 billion.

The news of the HopStop acquisition was reported earlier by Bloomberg News. The Locationary acquisition was reported earlier by AllThingsD.



Obama’s Remarks on Race Prompt Emotional Outpouring on Twitter

Twitter erupted after President Obama spoke Friday in deeply personal terms about his experience as a black man in the United States, as he sought to explain the perspective of African-Americans in the aftermath of the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case.

Many people thanked the president for openly discussing what has been a frustrating and painful time for many African-Americans. As my colleague John Eligon reported, many black parents have struggled in recent days to explain to their children how an unarmed teenager on his way home from a store could have been killed and no one convicted of a crime.

Among those who praised Mr. Obama’s remarks was Robert Zimmerman Jr., the brother of George Zimmerman, who was tried and found not guilty in the shooting death of Mr. Martin because the jury believed he was acting in self-defense.

“I’m glad he spoke out today,” Mr. Zimmerman said in an interview on Fox News. “And no matter what your opinion of the verdict is, there have to be things that bring us together. There have to be teachable moments that we learn from what happened here.”

He also posted on Twitter:

Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, the parents of Trayvon Martin, said in the opening paragraphs of a statement:

We are deeply honored and moved that President Obama took the time to speak publicly and at length about our son, Trayvon. The president’s comments give us great strength at this time. We are thankful for President Obama’s and Michelle’s prayers, and we ask for your prayers as well as we continue to move forward.

We know that the death of our son Trayvon, the trial and the not guilty verdict have been deeply painful and difficult for many people. We know our family has become a conduit for people to talk about race in America and to try and talk about the difficult issues that we need to bring into the light in order to become a better people.

Many of the thanks came from young black people, who have been part of a national conversation about race on social media since Mr. Martin was killed in February 2012.

Mr. Obama had been criticized in recent days, including by Jesse Jackson, for not addressing the impact of the verdict on the black community. On CNN, Mr. Jackson called on the president to offer “moral leadership.”

Such leadership, a Twitter user who identified himself as a “strong black man” said, is “all we want from him.”

One Twitter user speculated that Mr. Obama had needed some time before making his thoughts public.

Others viewed his remarks as “stoking racial tension” in the United States, as one Twitter user, identified as Scott Good, posted.

With the president speaking openly about the effect his race has had on ordinary moments in life, some people took the opportunity to share their own experiences with racism and discrimination.

Others wondered why it was a surprise to anyone that Mr. Obama would discuss race.



As Detroit Wobbles, So Does Microsoft

A day of reckoning arrived on Thursday for a once vibrant icon of industry. Separately, Detroit filed for bankruptcy.

It seems almost appropriate that Microsoft delivered one of its worst financial performances in memory on the same day that Detroit became the largest American city to file for bankruptcy protection. For years, people have noted parallels between the decline of the auto industry and the maturing of the PC business, comparisons that have become more credible as evidence accumulates of a shift to a post-PC era.

The parallels aren’t diminished by the fact that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, is a Detroit native, whose father was a longtime Ford manager, and that Mr. Ballmer has sought the counsel of Alan Mulally, Ford’s chief executive, on Microsoft management issues.

The gloom had gotten so heavy that investors, who have not been kind to Microsoft for the past decade or so, had even started to cut the company some slack. Since the beginning of the year, they seemed to see encouraging signs that Microsoft, the software company more closely identified with the PC business than any other, was figuring out how to adapt to mobile, cloud computing and other megatrends disrupting the tech business. Its shares were up more than 30 percent for the year when the week began.

Now Wall Street is back to doubting Microsoft. Investors punished its stock on Friday, driving it down more than 11 percent.

In a research note on Friday, Rick Sherlund, an analyst with Nomura Equity Research and a veteran Microsoft watcher, noted how Wall Street had warmed to Microsoft’s message lately. “Not so fast,” Mr. Sherlund wrote. “It was discouraging to read down the table and see that every division was below expectations.”

Mr. Sherlund added that the disappointing results could increase the prospects that an activist shareholder would agitate for change at the company, perhaps initially by seeking a seat on the board of directors.

One of the most troubling signs of Microsoft’s troubles is the nearly $1 billion charge it took to cover slow sales of Surface RT, a member of its new family of tablet computers.

The Surface devices were Microsoft’s first attempt to pull an Apple and make its own computer hardware. And the company decided that the Surface RT, the less expensive model, would run on chips made by ARM, instead of the more powerful (and expensive) chips made by Intel. Microsoft went through the hassle of making its Windows operating system work on ARM chips, because its tablet strategy would not seem credible otherwise. ARM chips power most of the world’s smartphones and tablets because they are well suited for battery-powered devices.

But Surface RT devices have sold poorly â€" so poorly that Microsoft was forced to cut the price of the device by $150, to $349. Another version of Surface that runs on Intel chips, which have the benefit of running traditional PC applications, has not sold well either, by all reports.

Microsoft will not give up. Unlike Detroit, Microsoft is not short on money. With more than $77 billion in cash and cash equivalents, the company has years to finance to find a successful new business formula. Last week, it announced a corporate reorganization that could sharpen its product making.

But the process will take time. In an interview on Thursday, Amy Hood, the company’s chief financial officer, made it clear that company is not expecting a sudden change in its fortunes in the mobile market.

“I expect this to be a journey where we continue to make incremental progress,” she said.



As Detroit Wobbles, So Does Microsoft

A day of reckoning arrived on Thursday for a once vibrant icon of industry. Separately, Detroit filed for bankruptcy.

It seems almost appropriate that Microsoft delivered one of its worst financial performances in memory on the same day that Detroit became the largest American city to file for bankruptcy protection. For years, people have noted parallels between the decline of the auto industry and the maturing of the PC business, comparisons that have become more credible as evidence accumulates of a shift to a post-PC era.

The parallels aren’t diminished by the fact that Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, is a Detroit native, whose father was a longtime Ford manager, and that Mr. Ballmer has sought the counsel of Alan Mulally, Ford’s chief executive, on Microsoft management issues.

The gloom had gotten so heavy that investors, who have not been kind to Microsoft for the past decade or so, had even started to cut the company some slack. Since the beginning of the year, they seemed to see encouraging signs that Microsoft, the software company more closely identified with the PC business than any other, was figuring out how to adapt to mobile, cloud computing and other megatrends disrupting the tech business. Its shares were up more than 30 percent for the year when the week began.

Now Wall Street is back to doubting Microsoft. Investors punished its stock on Friday, driving it down more than 11 percent.

In a research note on Friday, Rick Sherlund, an analyst with Nomura Equity Research and a veteran Microsoft watcher, noted how Wall Street had warmed to Microsoft’s message lately. “Not so fast,” Mr. Sherlund wrote. “It was discouraging to read down the table and see that every division was below expectations.”

Mr. Sherlund added that the disappointing results could increase the prospects that an activist shareholder would agitate for change at the company, perhaps initially by seeking a seat on the board of directors.

One of the most troubling signs of Microsoft’s troubles is the nearly $1 billion charge it took to cover slow sales of Surface RT, a member of its new family of tablet computers.

The Surface devices were Microsoft’s first attempt to pull an Apple and make its own computer hardware. And the company decided that the Surface RT, the less expensive model, would run on chips made by ARM, instead of the more powerful (and expensive) chips made by Intel. Microsoft went through the hassle of making its Windows operating system work on ARM chips, because its tablet strategy would not seem credible otherwise. ARM chips power most of the world’s smartphones and tablets because they are well suited for battery-powered devices.

But Surface RT devices have sold poorly â€" so poorly that Microsoft was forced to cut the price of the device by $150, to $349. Another version of Surface that runs on Intel chips, which have the benefit of running traditional PC applications, has not sold well either, by all reports.

Microsoft will not give up. Unlike Detroit, Microsoft is not short on money. With more than $77 billion in cash and cash equivalents, the company has years to finance to find a successful new business formula. Last week, it announced a corporate reorganization that could sharpen its product making.

But the process will take time. In an interview on Thursday, Amy Hood, the company’s chief financial officer, made it clear that company is not expecting a sudden change in its fortunes in the mobile market.

“I expect this to be a journey where we continue to make incremental progress,” she said.



Video and Transcript of Obama’s Complete Remarks on Race

As my colleague Mark Landler reports, President Obama made a surprise appearance on Friday in the White House briefing room to address the verdict in the killing of Trayvon Martin, and spoke in personal terms about the experience of being a black man in the United States.

The White House has released video and a transcript of the president’s complete remarks.

Video of President Obama’s complete remarks on race and the killing of Trayvon Martin.



Video and Transcript of Obama’s Complete Remarks on Race

As my colleague Mark Landler reports, President Obama made a surprise appearance on Friday in the White House briefing room to address the verdict in the killing of Trayvon Martin, and spoke in personal terms about the experience of being a black man in the United States.

The White House has released video and a transcript of the president’s complete remarks.

Video of President Obama’s complete remarks on race and the killing of Trayvon Martin.



Motorola’s Not-So-Secret Secret Smartphone

Motorola Mobility’s efforts to keep secret the details of its first flagship smartphone since the company was bought by Google have run up against reality.

Rumors about Motorola’s smartphone, usually called Moto X, have leaked all over the Web, from small tech blogs to mainstream news outlets. And Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, has even been out in public using what appeared to be the new device.

Motorola won’t confirm details about the new device. But all the early exposure, some of it the company’s own doing, makes it seem like this pseudo-secrecy could just be a way to prime the hype pump.

Last month, Motorola’s chief executive, Dennis Woodside, made it known during an onstage interview that Moto X devices would be made in the United States. He coyly admitted that the phone was in his pocket, but shook his head when asked to show it off.

No matter: Mr. Schmidt apparently took care of the visual while at a business conference packed with reporters, holding a new Motorola phone to his ear. “I’m not allowed to comment on the nature of this phone,” Mr. Schmidt said, according to Rachel C. Abrams of Variety.

Mr. Schmidt didn’t need to say much. A day before Independence Day, Motorola advertised the phone in newspapers. The ad hinted that the device would be customizable â€" “The first smartphone that you can design yourself.” Joanna Stern of ABCNews was quick to clarify that customers would be able to choose the colors of the phone case and add an engraving.

But what can the phone do exactly? Google executives have offered some clues that future Motorola phones would include artificial intelligence and sensors that recognize people’s voices in a room. Spoiling the surprise, the tech blog Ausdroid spotted a video on the Web from Rogers Wireless, a Canadian carrier, showing the Moto X.

The video, which Rogers asked Ausdroid to take down because of copyright infringement, suggested several details, like that the phone constantly listens for a user’s commands and reacts to them. The initiating command is “O.K., Google Now,” similar to the “O.K., Glass” command to control Google Glass. The video also said that the phone would be released in August.



Motorola’s Not-So-Secret Secret Smartphone

Motorola Mobility’s efforts to keep secret the details of its first flagship smartphone since the company was bought by Google have run up against reality.

Rumors about Motorola’s smartphone, usually called Moto X, have leaked all over the Web, from small tech blogs to mainstream news outlets. And Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, has even been out in public using what appeared to be the new device.

Motorola won’t confirm details about the new device. But all the early exposure, some of it the company’s own doing, makes it seem like this pseudo-secrecy could just be a way to prime the hype pump.

Last month, Motorola’s chief executive, Dennis Woodside, made it known during an onstage interview that Moto X devices would be made in the United States. He coyly admitted that the phone was in his pocket, but shook his head when asked to show it off.

No matter: Mr. Schmidt apparently took care of the visual while at a business conference packed with reporters, holding a new Motorola phone to his ear. “I’m not allowed to comment on the nature of this phone,” Mr. Schmidt said, according to Rachel C. Abrams of Variety.

Mr. Schmidt didn’t need to say much. A day before Independence Day, Motorola advertised the phone in newspapers. The ad hinted that the device would be customizable â€" “The first smartphone that you can design yourself.” Joanna Stern of ABCNews was quick to clarify that customers would be able to choose the colors of the phone case and add an engraving.

But what can the phone do exactly? Google executives have offered some clues that future Motorola phones would include artificial intelligence and sensors that recognize people’s voices in a room. Spoiling the surprise, the tech blog Ausdroid spotted a video on the Web from Rogers Wireless, a Canadian carrier, showing the Moto X.

The video, which Rogers asked Ausdroid to take down because of copyright infringement, suggested several details, like that the phone constantly listens for a user’s commands and reacts to them. The initiating command is “O.K., Google Now,” similar to the “O.K., Glass” command to control Google Glass. The video also said that the phone would be released in August.



Cheers for Navalny in Court and Online

Video of opposition activist Aleksei Navalny’s release from court in Kirov, Russia on Friday, posted online by Radio Svoboda, a Russian-language news site financed by the United States.

As my colleague David Herszenhorn reports, supporters of the anti-corruption blogger Aleksei Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s most dogged opponents, described his sudden release pending appeal on Friday as a reaction to street protests a day earlier.

Video from the courtroom in Kirov, where a judge had sentenced him to five years in prison on Thursday, showed that there was applause as Mr. Navalny was set free, for the moment. An image of the charismatic blogger’s warm embrace of his wife, Yulia â€" published by Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper that once featured the work of the murdered Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya â€" was shared with relief by his supporters.

The photographer who captured the hug, Evgeny Feldman, jokingly compared it to another image, of Mr. Putin embracing a citizen he is more fond of, the French tax exile Gérard Depardieu.

Mr. Navalny himself used a still frame of the hug in a post on his popular blog thanking those who took to the streets to call for his freedom, though he was careful to erase the logo of Russia Today, or RT, the Kremlin-owned network that captured the moment on video.

A screenshot from the blog of Aleksei Navalny, showing the Russian activist embracing his wife, Yulia, in court on Friday. At lower left, the logo of the state-owned Russia Today network was covered with a black square. A screenshot from the blog of Aleksei Navalny, showing the Russian activist embracing his wife, Yulia, in court on Friday. At lower left, the logo of the state-owned Russia Today network was covered with a black square.

A Russia Today news report on the opposition activist’s release stressed that he had just been convicted on embezzlement charges and featured an interview with an analyst who claimed that “for many in the West, the Navalny trial is just a pretext for criticizing Russia.”

Mr. Navalny’s longtime press secretary, Anna Veduta, also shared an image of his co-defendant, Pyotr Ofitserov, with his wife.

The activist’s many fans online also gleefully shared video and photographs of him emerging from the court to be greeted by a scrum of reporters, including Nataliya Vasilyeva of The Associated Press, and a supporter with a plate of blini.

Video from Radio Svoboda showed Aleksei Navalny emerging from court in Kirov, Russia on Friday.

Meanwhile, as my colleague Ellen Barry noted, Judge Sergei Blinov, who sentenced Mr. Navalny to five years in prison on Thursday, was also spotted slipping out of the court, with less fanfare.

As soon as Mr. Navalny regained control of his phone, which he had handed to his wife as he was led to jail on Thursday, he thanked his supporters for pressing for his release and returned to jabbing at Mr. Putin’s government with the winning mix of righteous anger and comic jesting that has made him such a popular focal point for the opposition.

As the BBC correspondent Daniel Sandford explained, Mr. Navalny then called on his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers to join him in using the weeks ahead, before his appeal is heard, “to whack some more crooks.” (It was Mr. Navalny who started the damning Internet meme that Mr. Putin’s United Russia Party should instead by called the Party of Crooks and Thieves.)

His tweet was illustrated by an image of Mr. Navalny pointing out from the “aquarium” he was confined in during the court hearing, joking that even from there he could spot corrupt officials.

Immediately after his release on Friday, Mr. Navalny told journalists in the courtroom that his campaign to be elected Moscow’s mayor “will continue because it is about our communication with the voters, not with commissions,.” But, he added, “As to what form it will take â€" in the form of a boycott or as the continuation of my election campaign â€" I will make that decision after I return to Moscow and meet with my campaign team.”

Later, Mr. Navalny retweeted images of the enthusiastic young volunteers campaigning for him to be elected Moscow’s mayor in September, an office he would be ineligible for should his conviction be upheld.


Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.



A Tech Veteran Takes on the Skills Gap

Gary J. Beach has long been a close observer of technology, a frequent speaker on the conference circuit and a confidante of senior technology executives. He is a former publisher of Computerworld, Network World and CIO Magazine, where he is currently publisher emeritus.

More than six years ago, Mr. Beach decided to begin studying in earnest a much-debated issue, and a subject of ritual complaint among technology executives â€" the apparently lagging skills of the American workforce. The result, published on Thursday, is his book, “The U.S. Technology Skills Gap: What Every Technology Executive Must Know to Save America’s Future” (John Wiley & Sons).

Much of the book is an illuminating, idiosyncratic history of education in America, dating back to 1941. “The skills gap is really an education gap, and it affects us all,” Mr. Beach explained in an interview on Thursday.

Today’s headlines about the sorry state of math and science proficiency of American children are nothing new. In 1964, Mr. Beach writes, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement tested the math skills of eighth graders in 13 countries, and the American students came in next to last.

A scathing indictment of the United States public education system came in 1983, from an expert commission appointed by Ronald Reagan, “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.”

Then, America’s formidable economic challenger was Japan, a nation of high achieving math and science test-takers. Today, the ascendant power is China, which produces engineers at a torrid rate.

The Japan challenge faded. What’s different this time?

One difference, Mr. Beach suggests, is the historical moment. And he makes the argument by showing off his research chops, pointing to a fascinating if obscure source: the Yuasa Phenomenon. This is a theory expounded by a Japanese physicist and historian, Mitsutomo Yuasa, in the 1960s. Since 1540, he declared, the mantle of global scientific leadership has moved from one country to another every 80 to 100 years. The United States, by his reckoning, became the leader in science in 1920.

America, Mr. Beach writes, cannot compete with China or India in churning out engineers. Instead, the Untied States can thrive by being more innovative. Stronger math and science skills are needed, he writes, but so are other skills, which he calls the “5C’s â€" critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity and confidence.”

“A nation,” Mr. Beach writes, “whose citizens excel in the 5C’s, but not math and science, is a nation of liberal arts majors! A nation of math and science wizards who can’t think, communicate, collaborate or create, is a nation of machines. The successful countries of the 21st century will, and must, doboth well.”

Mr. Beach has some reasonably fresh recommendations for improving education in America. He would nearly double the starting salaries of bright young teachers to both attract more of them and place American starting salaries on a par with Finland and South Korea, two high-achieving nations in education.

To pay for that proposal, Mr. Beach suggests the creation of state education trust funds, modeled after the “Highway Trust Fund,” the Eisenhower creation to finance the construction and maintenance of the nation’s interstate highway system with a tax on gasoline.

Under the Beach plan, businesses would pay a yearly tax of $10 a worker and parents would pay $10 for each child between the ages of six to 17. That would raise $4.3 billion a year and pay for hiring 143,000 new math and science teachers.

Now, the whole notion of a skills gap has been challenged recently by some academics, notably Peter Cappelli, a professor of management at the Wharton School. They point to stagnant wages; if there were real shortages, businesses would pay more.

Mr. Beach sees a different world, based on his conversations with technology executives. “The skills gap is not fiction,” he said. But in the technology industry, he said, there is a global market for skills â€" a market accessible to workers anywhere with the know-how and an Internet connection. The online worldwide labor pool, Mr. Beach suggests, slows wage growth for many technology jobs.



Following Public Dots to a Missing Phone

In retrospect, I should have checked the cab seat when I got out. I should have taken the receipt. And maybe I should have had more empathy for those people, like my daughters, who have lost their smartphones.

Because there I was, at 1 a.m. on a recent night, just back from the airport with a sinking feeling that I’d left my iPhone in the taxi.

No immediate solution appeared, so after a fitful few hours of sleep, I began my quest to find my phone. Along the way, I was reminded, in this time of debate about how much personal information the government secretly keeps about us, just how much information is already publicly available.

My hunt started with a trip to the Apple store to get into my iCloud account (I didn’t know my password) and use the Find My iPhone service that I had turned on for my iPhone. I learned just how critical it is to have the program activated, although there were still several caveats.

Because of that feature, locating the phone was the easy step. The trick was getting it back.

The tracker showed the phone at a house at the entrance to a cul-de-sac a little east of Queens in Nassau County. But I didn’t have the house number. The police there told me they could assist me if I showed up at the location, but that they wouldn’t go to the house on their own. I needed to talk to someone in that house.

I initially didn’t have much luck searching online for a free reverse directory, and a librarian at a nearby branch would not give out resident information if they could find it in their reverse directories. But Zillow.com, the real estate site, let me identify the house number, which gave me enough information to look up county records. Those told a lot about the property â€" Colonial, two-family home, built in 1962, 2,150 square feet, last sold in 2004 for $430,00 â€" but had no owner information. A call to the assessor’s office turned up the homeowner’s name, and the white pages provided the phone number. It went to a generic voicemail.

While I waited for a call back, I searched the Open Data service on NYC.gov for a taxi driver with the resident’s name. One seemed to show up, though the first name started with a different letter. That gave me a taxi license for that driver, though not the coveted medallion number.

To triangulate, I turned to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. I wasn’t expecting much here, since when I called the night before I heard the after-hours recording, which made it clear that the commission has lots of drivers and lots of lost property reports, and that you have to fill out a form online. I got through to a helpful employee who was soon digging into the case. She took the license number and within a couple minutes had the driver on the line. But the person she had on the phone was not the right one â€" it was a woman, not a man. So the records showing a slightly different first name were indeed accurate.

But there was another option: because I paid with a credit card, the staffer told me, the medallion number of the driver would show up in that transaction. But it hadn’t yet been fully processed and there was no medallion number, according to my online statement and my credit union. But we did have the amount, $36.43, and the pick up and drop-off locations, so the staffer was going to see what she could do.

In the meantime, I called the house again and a man picked up. Though he wasn’t my driver, he said a taxi driver did live there and he gave me a cellphone number.

When I called that number, a man picked up and he said he had my phone. I got his name and medallion number and called the clerk at the taxi commission. She, too, had come up with a medallion number. They matched.

Less than 24 hours since his cab drove off with my phone on the back seat, the driver was outside our apartment again.

It is said that the chances of getting a phone back are not so good after someone hops into the cab you exited. As a tractor-trailer honked behind the cabby and I gave him $30 bucks for the effort and he handed me the phone, he told me we had been his last passengers after that airport run.

So in the end, it helped to have a little bit of luck, and a lot of data, on my side.



Why the Surface RT Failed and the iPad Did Not

At first glance, to most consumers, the Apple iPad and Microsoft Surface RT tablet computer look somewhat similar. They are both rectangular, have crisp screens and can boast a slick and clean design interface.

Yet on Thursday Microsoft announced that it was taking a $900 million write-down to reflect unsold inventory of the Surface RT. That’s a stark comparison to Apple’s iPad, which continues to break record sales and has sold more than 100 million devices.

So why is one still succeeding while the other has failed? I have a theory. But it begins with a story.

I often receive tech support phone calls from family members â€" my dad, grandfather, cousins â€" seeking help with a variety of computer problems. A few months ago I received such a call from my sister. She was having an issue with her iMac, and I started to walk her through a number of steps to diagnose the problem. Halfway though my narration, I asked her, “O.K., what’s the computer doing now?”

“My computer is restarting,” she said, triumphantly.

“Why, what happened?” I said, confused. “Did it crash?”

“No, I just got impatient so I unplugged it and plugged it back in.”

This is exactly one reason the Microsoft Surface RT failed to garner large sales: Impatience.

When Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, announced the Surface tablets last year, he stood on stage and touted a number of new and exciting features to try to separate the company’s offerings from the iPad. Among the new gizmos were additional ports, a USB drive, a microSD memory card slot, the ability to use a pen and a built-in flip-up stand.

Just thinking about all those options is enough to make your head spin.

Today’s consumers don’t want options. They are impatient. They want to tear their new shiny gadget from the box and immediately start using it. They don’t have time to think about SD cards or USB drives or pens or flip stands.

The surface RT didn’t allow that. Customers had to think about it.

Even the ads for the iPad and Surface RT are different. Apple simply shows the device, making the iPad the hero. Microsoft usually unveils snazzy ads that make the ads the hero, not the product.

Last year when the Surface RT was announced I wrote a post noting that one of the device’s new features did look appealing: the flap that doubled as a keyboard and might make it easier to type on a tablet. But Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst with Forrester Research who specializes in tablets, reminded me that too many options could easily overwhelm consumers.

“Microsoft will be its own worst enemy in this market,” Ms. Rotman Epps wrote at the time. “More so than Apple or Google. Apple gets this, and limits options to connectivity, storage and black… or white.”

Maybe it’s time for Microsoft to do the same thing. It could even skip the black or white option.



Online Reaction Is Swift as Texas Abortion Bill Is Signed

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas signs legislation restricting abortion via The Texas Tribune.

Advocates on both sides of the abortion debate took to Twitter on Thursday after Gov. Rick Perry of Texas signed the legislation, House Bill 2, which imposes sweeping new abortion restrictions that prompted weeks of protests online and in the state capital.

As my colleague, Manny Fernandez reported, a small group of protesters holding a sign that read “Shame” gathered in the State Capitol building in Austin to protest as more than 100 Republican lawmakers joined Governor Perry at Thursday's bill-signing ceremony.

State Senator Wendy Davis, a Democrat from Fort Worth whose filibuster of the legislation helped block initial passage of the bill in late June, has used the debate as an opportunity to energize Democrats across the state. On Twitter, Ms. Davis posted:

Under the new law, Texas would become the 12th state to ban abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy. The new law would also restricts abortion to surgical centers and requires doctors at abortion clinics to have hospital admitting privileges. Abortion rights campaigners say the new requirements would force the closing of all but a handful of the state's 42 abortion clinics.

Cecile Richards, the daughter of former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, has been president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America since 2006. On Twitter, she said that efforts were under way to block the law from taking effect.

On the other side of the debate, the Republican-controlled Texas House Caucus posted.



Chants of ‘Russia Without Putin\' Ring Out as an Activist Blogger Goes Down Tweeting

Video posted online by the Russian news site Gazeta.ru showed protesters on Tverskaya Street in Moscow, after they were blocked from rallying in a nearby square by the police.

Last Updated, 9:49 p.m. Chants of “Russia without Putin!” could be heard in video streamed live from the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg on Thursday, where supporters of the jailed opposition activist Aleksei Navalny, hemmed in by riot police officers, gathered after the anti-corruption blogger was sentenced to five years in prison.

Video of protesters on Malaya Sadovaya Street in St. Petersburg on Thursday.

Mr. Navalny, who was still posting evidence of official corruption on his popular blog on the eve of the verdict, told my colleague Ellen Barry in April that he fully expected to be convicted on charges of corruption filed against him by state prosecutors last year, after he emerged as a leader of street protests against President Vladimir Putin. He also expressed confidence, however, that the opposition movement would eventually succeed.

Although he has warned that “romantic ideas” about the power of the Internet to effect change are often “exaggerated,” Mr. Navalny has used the Web to chip away at the positive image of Mr. Putin disseminated on state-controlled television. Even as his sentence was read out on Thursday in the city of Kirov, Mr. Navalny continued to send a stream of wry commentary, self-portraits and calls for fresh anti-Putin protests to hundreds of thousands of Twitter and Instagram followers from his phone.

As Glenn Kates explained in a post for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Mr. Navalny even found time to follow the discussion of his case on Twitter. He responded to another blogger who had captioned a frame grab of Mr. Navalny sending Twitter messages from court, “To put hipsters on trial is only to ruin the trial,” by writing simply, “АХАХАХА,” which is Russian for “AHAHAHA.”

After he snapped an Instagram photograph of the judge in his case, Sergei Blinov, reading the verdict out, Mr. Navalny noted with approval that someone then Photoshopped the image to make it look like the official was taking part in a satanic ritual.

At the end of the trial, Mr. Navalny signed off: “O.K. Don't miss me. And most importantly - do not be lazy.” Referring to the Russian government, he added, “The toad will not remove itself from the oil pipeline.”

Video of the complete court session posted online by a state news agency showed Mr. Navalny typing on his phone for a final time less than three minutes before he was handcuffed and led away.

Video of Aleksei Navalny's trial on Thursday in the Russian city of Kirov.

As The Lede reported earlier this week, Mr. Navalny spent much of his time in the run-up to the verdict starting a campaign to get himself elected as the mayor of Moscow. A YouTube clip of the activist and his supporters marching to an election office to make his candidacy official last week offers a sense of the infectious optimism and enthusiasm that might have unsettled his enemies in the Kremlin.

Video of Aleksei Navalny and his supporters marching to an election office in Moscow last week.

Journalists and bloggers in the Russian capital on Thursday, including Ilya Mouzykantskii, a contributor to The Lede, uploaded images and video of a tense standoff there between protesters and the police on Tverskaya Street, outside the Russian Parliament. As a video report posted on the Russian news site Lenta.ru showed, those streets were lined with protesters because the security forces had blocked access to the nearby square where the planned rally was to have taken place.

Video posted on YouTube on Thursday showed protesters chanting on Tverskaya Street, outside the Russian Duma, before being forced back by the police.

Video uploaded to YouTube by a photographer named Mitya Aleshkovsky showed protesters blocked from Manezh Square in Moscow.

A blogger's video showed that protesters who climbed the walls of the Russian state Parliament, or Duma, were eventually forced down by the police.

Video of protesters in Moscow on Thursday, blocked by riot police officers from the square where they had planned to rally.


Mr. Navalny's longtime press secretary, Anna Veduta, who was in tears at the end of his trial, later posted a screenshot on Twitter of the crowds jamming the streets outside the Duma.

Images collected from Twitter and Instagram by the news site Lenta.ru for a live blog on the protests offered ground-level views of the same scene.


Lenta's live-bloggers also pointed to similar images of the protesters in St. Petersburg, rallying on a pedestrian street lined with police officers to chant “Freedom!”

Reporting from Russia for Britain's Channel 4 News, Jonathan Rugman produced a video report that included footage of protests outside the court in Kirov and arrests by the riot police in Moscow, as well as a useful highlight reel of Mr. Navalny's career to date.

A Channel 4 News video report on the trial of Aleksei Navalny, and protests after the verdict in Kirov and Moscow.

As the Russian blogger Ilya Varlamov reported on Twitter and his own live blog, protesters remained on the street late Thursday.

Roman Volobuev, a filmmaker who was detained at the protest in Moscow, uploaded an image of the view from inside the police paddy wagon.

Other images of the detained filled social networks late Thursday.


Video and still images posted on Instagram by Mitya Aleshkovskiy, a photographer, showed that the protesters, chanting for Mr. Navalny remained on the nearby streets late into the night, as did Mr. Varlamov, with his distinctive pile of curly hair.



Late in the evening, a new update appeared on Mr. Navalny's Twitter feed, reading: “Thanks to all! It is a crazy feeling when you understand that you don't stand alone!”



BookVibe Picks Up the Buzz on Books

A persistent problem faced by users of social networks like Facebook and Twitter is the flood of information they create. If you are connected to more than a handful of people on one of those platforms, you will be deluged with far more status updates, photos, likes, advertisements and videos than any human being could ever digest.

That provides an opening for tools, like BookVibe, that scan your feeds to pull out specific, useful information.

BookVibe, created by a tiny start-up called Parakweet, basically analyzes the tweets of accounts that you follow on Twitter and compiles a list of book recommendations based on which titles those people are talking about.

The company uses artificial intelligence techniques to try to distinguish between someone expressing true affection for a book as opposed to merely mentioning it. When you pull up the recommendation, the service gives you the full tweets so that you can see the book reference in its original context. And on Wednesday, Parakweet unveiled a new feature that lets you look at the Twitter discussion surrounding half a million specific titles.

I currently follow 245 accounts on Twitter, many of them smart people in technology and journalism. Although I am a voracious consumer of news and magazines, I don't have time to read a whole lot of books, so I am always looking to make intelligent choices about the ones I do pick up.

So I checked BookVibe, which is free, to see what it recommended for me. It pulled up an eclectic list, from the 1972 children's classic “Watership Down” by Richard Adams (which my colleague Diego Sorbara called “a wonderful book”) to the 2012 novel “Forgotten Country” by Catherine Chung (which the author and food blogger Cheryl Tan said was “a beautiful debut novel”).

Intrigued by “Watership Down,” which I never read as a kid because it was about rabbits, I clicked through to learn more. I got a basic description of the book plus data that indicated it was being mentioned about 20 times a month on Twitter. There were many tweets from fans, including the Chadron State College professor Elisabeth Ellington, who proclaimed it “My #1 Top crying book.” A British Twitter user named John painted a more mixed picture: “I was obsessed with Watership Down as a child (even wrote fanfic) but it has more blood & death than most horror films.” And a student named Camille was clearly distressed at being forced to read it for school: “That book looks like it is NOT the business.”

Hmmm, perhaps I made the right decision back in junior high.

Would “Forgotten Country” be more promising? Although its BookVibe page said it was only getting a few mentions a month on Twitter, they were overwhelmingly positive. The Syracuse University student Kyra Nay wrote, “Beautifully clear prose. Complex meditation on family, sisterhood, immigrating & secrets.” And the book blogger Jaime Boler not only liked it but pointed out it was now available in paperback.

Much more my type of book. Since BookVibe provides easy links to Amazon.com to buy books, I added it to my list of saved items for my next order.

The service is still in beta, and it shows signs of being a work in progress. Extracting real meaning from the shorthand found in 140-word tweets can be a challenge for humans, let alone computers. Some books popped up on the recommended list because their author had mentioned them. Some reviews were missed because the Twitter user offered a link to an external review without summarizing it in the tweet.

But over all, I found BookVibe to a valuable single-purpose tool and an indication of what's possible as social media search technology becomes more sophisticated.

One of BookVibe's most intriguing features is what I call voyeur mode. Because most Twitter posts are public, BookVibe lets you see the books recommended for any Twitter user, offering a window into their possible tastes through the people they have decided to follow on Twitter.

So you can, for example, peek at the recommendations for the television book-club hostess Oprah Winfrey (“Gone Girl” is on the list, as is “The Kite Runner”), or for the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (“Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything” popped up, as did “The Autobiography of Malcom X”).

Ramesh Haridas, the co-founder and chief executive of Paraktweet, said in an interview that his team set out three years ago to figure out what kind of posts in the social stream had staying power and would be worth cataloging in some way.

“We decided that the most useful ones were updates about activities,” he said. “The quality of these updates was very, very good, especially movies and books.”

In addition to the free consumer-oriented BookVibe, which will soon come out in a Facebook version, the company sells a more in-depth set of tools to book publishers, authors and retailers to help them understand how books are selling and where and what people are saying about them.

Parakweet is also developing a similar recommendation service for movies, which it calls TrendFinder. (There is already an early version.)

The technology is promising enough that Parakweet was recently able to raise $2 million from angel investors, and Mr. Haridas said that several global media companies and retailers, which he declined to name, were testing the company's services.

By focusing on just a few topics, he said, Parakweet is able to offer more sophisticated results than those provided by the general-purpose search tools available on Twitter and Facebook. “It's very hard to be an all-purpose social media tool and provide actionable analytics,” he said.



Amazon Rejected as Domain Name After South American Objections

A group of Latin American countries appears to have succeeded in an effort to block Amazon, the online retailer, from using .amazon as a new suffix for Internet addresses.

A committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, an international governance group for the Internet, recommended this week that. amazon not be approved for use as a so-called global top-level domain - the letters that follow the dot in Internet addresses.

At a meeting in Durban, South Africa, Icann reviewed applications for new domain suffixes like these in what has been billed as the biggest expansion of Internet addresses. Scores of companies, countries and organizations have applied to use their names or other terms as global top-level domains, alongside the handful of existing ones like .com and .org.

While Icann has approved several new dot-terms, including the Chinese word for game and the Russian word for network, English-language brand names derived from geographical locations have proved to be more complicated.

In the run-up to the Durban meeting, a group of Latin American countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, sent a letter to Icann, in which they argued that .amazon should be rejected because a river runs through it.

“In particular ‘.amazon' is a geographic name that represents important territories of some of our countries, which have relevant communities, with their own culture and identity directly connected with the name,” the letter said. “Beyond the specifics, this should also be understood as a matter of principle.”

The group had also objected to another application, from the outdoor clothier Patagonia, to use its name as an address suffix. That application was withdrawn before the Durban meeting.

The decision on. amazon, by the Governmental Advisory Committee of Icann, is not necessarily final. The Icann board could overrule the committee, though in practice it rarely does so.

“We're reviewing the G.A.C. advice and we look forward to working with Icann and other stakeholders to resolve these issues as the process moves forward,” Amazon said in a statement.

One thing that remains unclear is why the United States government, represented in the Government Advisory Committee by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an arm of the Commerce Department, went along with the decision.

The administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Before the meeting, it sent a letter to Icann in which it outlined its support for the use of names like. amazon as Internet suffixes, but added that it would stand aside if other governments objected.

“The United States affirms our support for the free flow of information and freedom of expression and does not view sovereignty as a valid basis for objecting to the use of terms, and we have concerns about the effect of such claims on the integrity of the process,” the administration said in the letter. “However, in the event the parties cannot reach agreement by the time this matter comes up for decision in the G.A.C., the United States is willing in Durban to abstain and remain neutral.”

One analyst said that while the specific reasons the United States government went along with the rejection were unclear, its position on Internet governance issues had been weakened by the recent leaks of information about a vast digital surveillance program by the National Security Agency. Several countries in South America - though not those in the Amazon basin or the Patagonian region - have offered the leaker, Edward J. Snowden, asylum.

“It is clear that the leaks of sensitive national security information have severely weakened the U.S. government's ability to fight for our economic interests and have left the U.S. isolated in the G.A.C.,” said Nao Matsukata, chief executive of FairWinds Partners, a Washington-based consulting firm that specializes in domain name strategy.

Milton Mueller, a professor at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, said there might have been an element of horse-trading. By yielding to a broader consensus on the advisory committee, Washington could have been seeking to shore up broader support for Icann, whose control over the Internet address system has long irked the governments of countries like Russia and China.

“My hypothesis is that the U.S. government has been scared to death for some time that if G.A.C. doesn't get enough of what it wants, governments will give up on the whole Icann regime,” Mr. Mueller said.



The Rules of In-Store Surveillance

You can tell when a powerful new technology, like tracking people as they shop, is coming of age. It starts trying to persuade people it is a force for good, and it broadens its reach and capabilities. Take the the observation and data collection techniques used by online retailers that are now moving into the physical world.

Cellphone signals, special apps and our movements tracked by software-enhanced cameras in stores are the equivalent of the tracking cookies in Internet browsers. Most people don't seem to mind being tracked online, if the low percentage of people who disable cookies is any indication. (Studies suggest the number is below 10 percent.) Offline tracking, though, still seems to be a concern. Nordstrom discontinued using one mobile phone tracking system, produced by Euclid Analytics, after shoppers complained. That may be because the systems are new, and some people see more harm than benefit from the surveillance.

On Tuesday, several companies involved in offline tracking announced that they would be working with a Washington-based research group, the Future of Privacy Forum, to develop a series of “best practices” for privacy controls for what it called “retail location analytics,” or tracking.

Euclid was among the sponsors, along with WirelessWerx, Mexia Interactive and ShopperTrak.

The Future of Privacy Forum is primarily supported by corporations, with extensive financing from the technology sector. According to Jules Polonetsky, its director and co-chairman, the organization also has an advisory board that includes “chief privacy officers, privacy academics and privacy advocates.”

On Thursday, Euclid also announced it was producing a series of analytics tools for specialty retailers, which it said would help stores make better decisions about things like operating hours and inventory. The product, which is primarily a comparison tool, also shows how rich the data from tracking people online can be.

“We're offering benchmarking, so we can say ‘Your customer capture rate is 8 percent, and this week the average for your sector is 10 percent,'” said Will Smith, the chief executive of Euclid. “The question is not whether something is good or bad, but what something means.”

Mr. Smith would not provide specifics, but said his company's product was now in hundreds of malls across the United States, and had captured information on thousands of shoppers at dozens of retailers. “We can tell if someone has visited multiple outlets of a store on the same day, which indicates they couldn't find the product they wanted at the first one,” he said. “You can assume a lot of others went to a competitor.”

Mr. Smith emphasized that the data Euclid supplied to retailers was made anonymous and delivered in aggregated forms, which he said made it unsuited to personally identifying customers. But the data gathered by the company, which Mr. Smith founded with the former head of Google Analytics, can be used to determine things like whether a Starbucks' customer with a loyalty card stays longer at the coffee shop, or how often a store is acquiring repeat shoppers.

Over time, it is likely that at least some customers will accept tracking, particularly if offered incentives like free mall parking in exchange for visiting a specific store. “People became used to Web analytics,” Mr. Smith said, “Amazon's customer experience is 10 times better because of the data it gathers on people. Shorter lines and good in-store service can also come from data.”



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