Former Amazon Executive Dies in Bicycle Accident

Joy Covey, 50, a pioneering tech executive, was killed Wednesday when her bicycle collided with a delivery van in a remote stretch of Silicon Valley.

Ms. Covey joined Amazon.com when it was a newly hatched dot-com with big ideas. As its chief financial officer, she played an important role in turning those ideas into a reality. She helped take the company public and was a much-quoted advocate for Amazon’s plans to ignore Wall Street and invest for the future. That radical notion has been the foundation for Amazon’s growth into a $61 billion retailing and entertainment behemoth.

Ms. Covey, an avid bicyclist and outdoorswoman, died at the scene of the accident, which was on Skyline Boulevard, the road that runs down the hills from San Francisco toward San Jose.

The police said that a minivan apparently making deliveries for OnTrac, a shipping service used by Amazon and other retailers, was turning into a side road when the accident occurred. The police said that neither drugs nor alcohol appeared to be a factor in the collision.

“It appears the driver was making deliveries, but we’re still working on our investigation,” said Art Montiel, a California Highway Patrol spokesman.

OnTrac, which is based in Phoenix, said the van was driven by a 22-year-old “contract driver.”

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family affected by this tragic accident,” said Laura Peterson, OnTrac’s vice president of marketing.

Mary Osako, an Amazon spokeswoman, said: “It’s a very sad day at Amazon. Joy was a wonderful human being and treasured colleague, and we will miss her very much.”

In its early days, Amazon prided itself on its unconventional hires, telling staffing agencies to “send us your freaks.” Ms. Covey did not have a traditional background. She dropped out of high school at age 15 and worked as a grocery clerk. She attended Cal State Fresno and later, Harvard Law School, where, she said, she did not fit in.

“We’d go to lunch and people would talk about their favorite 17th-century poets, and I’d be thinking, ‘Could I even name five poets? From any century?’ ” she once said.

But after joining Amazon in late 1996, when its revenue was less than $20 million, she thrived. She sold Wall Street the debt that the company needed to expand. Her personal wealth in the company was worth more than $200 million.

As the senior woman in a red-hot company at a time when all things Internet were new and interesting, Ms. Covey drew attention far in excess of what a typical chief financial officer garnered.

In one profile, headlined “A Real Amazon,” Forbes wrote: “One morning she flew to an early analyst meeting and realized too late that she had left her dress shoes on the plane. So she eyed women in the baggage claim area, spotted a suitable pair worn by one of them â€" and approached with a $120 cash offer for the emergency footwear. The stranger said no but offered a second pair from her suitcase. Done.”

Ms. Covey left Amazon in 2000, as the dot-com boom was ending. Survivors include a young son.

Former Congresswoman Lauds Syria’s ‘Free Health Care’ After Meeting Assad

Writing on Facebook from Damascus, Cynthia McKinney, a former Democratic Congresswoman from Georgia, praised Syria for its “free health care.”

Ms. McKinney, a liberal activist who traveled to the Syrian capital as part of a delegation led by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, posted the update late Wednesday, after meeting with President Bashar al-Assad. In addition to Assadcare, she noted, Syrians living under the Baathist dynasty also “enjoy free education.”

She concluded her brief report with kind words for Ogarit Dandash, a young Assad supporter who had offered herself as a human shield to defend Syrian government military installations from American air strikes. As Ms. McKinney explained, Ms. Dandash “founded ‘Over Our Dead Bodies,’ a group of young people who climbed atop Mount Qasioun and dared U.S. bombs to target them. They are still there in defiant resistance to any war against Syria. Mount Qasioun should be the site of a peace party, not bombing strikes.”

A Sept. 3 video report from The Wall Street Journal on young Syrians camped outside military installations who vowed to act as human shields in the event of American strikes.

As my colleague C. J. Chivers reported this week, Mount Qasioun is Damascus’s most prominent military position. It is also, according to data gathered by United Nations weapons experts, most likely the location from which rockets carrying sarin gas were fired at rebel-held areas outside the city on Aug. 21, killing hundreds of men, women and children.

Military installations on the high ground above the Syrian capital were the target of air strikes in May, thought to have been carried out by Israel. In an apparent salute to the pro-government activists on Mount Qasioun, Ms. McKinney ended her update with a link to a YouTube video showing fires on the mountain after those strikes, set to thrilling music.

Video showing fires on Mount Qasioun in Damascus after air strikes in May.

Former Congresswoman Lauds Syria’s ‘Free Health Care’ After Meeting Assad

Writing on Facebook from Damascus, Cynthia McKinney, a former Democratic Congresswoman from Georgia, praised Syria for its “free health care.”

Ms. McKinney, a liberal activist who traveled to the Syrian capital as part of a delegation led by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, posted the update late Wednesday, after meeting with President Bashar al-Assad. In addition to Assadcare, she noted, Syrians living under the Baathist dynasty also “enjoy free education.”

She concluded her brief report with kind words for Ogarit Dandash, a young Assad supporter who had offered herself as a human shield to defend Syrian government military installations from American air strikes. As Ms. McKinney explained, Ms. Dandash “founded ‘Over Our Dead Bodies,’ a group of young people who climbed atop Mount Qasioun and dared U.S. bombs to target them. They are still there in defiant resistance to any war against Syria. Mount Qasioun should be the site of a peace party, not bombing strikes.”

A Sept. 3 video report from The Wall Street Journal on young Syrians camped outside military installations who vowed to act as human shields in the event of American strikes.

As my colleague C. J. Chivers reported this week, Mount Qasioun is Damascus’s most prominent military position. It is also, according to data gathered by United Nations weapons experts, most likely the location from which rockets carrying sarin gas were fired at rebel-held areas outside the city on Aug. 21, killing hundreds of men, women and children.

Military installations on the high ground above the Syrian capital were the target of air strikes in May, thought to have been carried out by Israel. In an apparent salute to the pro-government activists on Mount Qasioun, Ms. McKinney ended her update with a link to a YouTube video showing fires on the mountain after those strikes, set to thrilling music.

Video showing fires on Mount Qasioun in Damascus after air strikes in May.

Despite Early Criticism, Apple’s iOS 7 Quickly Gains Traction

Consumers are downloading Apple’s latest mobile operating system in droves, despite some harsh criticism from designers, app developers and journalists who had tried early versions of the software.

Chitika, an online advertising network that pulls data through apps that serve its ads, estimated that 18 percent of all iOS devices downloaded the new software, iOS 7, within 24 hours of its release on Wednesday. Chitika based its estimate on a sampling of millions of ad impressions in North America. The adoption rate of iOS 7 appeared to surpass that of its predecessor, iOS 6, which was downloaded on 14.8 percent of iOS devices on its first day of release, according to Chitika.

This is good news for Apple. It is beneficial for Apple, and any handset maker, to keep customers running the latest software. Older smartphones don’t run the new software system as well as the latest models, and some features won’t work at all. For example, iOS 7’s new camera filters work with newer iPhones, but not the older iPhone 4. Running the new operating system encourages people with old iPhones to buy a new model to take advantage of the new features.

If there’s one thing to learn from new versions of Apple’s mobile software, iOS, it might be that everyday people don’t care about what so-called tech influencers have to say. Many developers and designers scrutinized early versions of iOS 7 before its release, saying it was awkward to use and the design was not attractive.

Similarly, before iOS 6 was released last year, journalists and app developers criticized the operating system for its spotty maps app, which replaced Google’s mapping data with Apple’s own. Still, Apple in January said that 300 million iOS devices had upgraded to iOS 6 five months after its release. (Around that time, Apple had sold roughly 500 million iOS devices; it has now sold 700 million.)

The latest operating system has a far different design than earlier versions, but consumers appear to be reacting mostly positively to the change. Topsy, a company that does Twitter analytics, sampled seven million Twitter posts about iOS 7. About 1.2 million of the tweets were positive and 1.1 million were negative; the rest were neutral. Most of the negative tweets were from people complaining about having to wait to download the software update, Topsy said.

Despite Early Criticism, Apple’s iOS 7 Quickly Gains Traction

Consumers are downloading Apple’s latest mobile operating system in droves, despite some harsh criticism from designers, app developers and journalists who had tried early versions of the software.

Chitika, an online advertising network that pulls data through apps that serve its ads, estimated that 18 percent of all iOS devices downloaded the new software, iOS 7, within 24 hours of its release on Wednesday. Chitika based its estimate on a sampling of millions of ad impressions in North America. The adoption rate of iOS 7 appeared to surpass that of its predecessor, iOS 6, which was downloaded on 14.8 percent of iOS devices on its first day of release, according to Chitika.

This is good news for Apple. It is beneficial for Apple, and any handset maker, to keep customers running the latest software. Older smartphones don’t run the new software system as well as the latest models, and some features won’t work at all. For example, iOS 7’s new camera filters work with newer iPhones, but not the older iPhone 4. Running the new operating system encourages people with old iPhones to buy a new model to take advantage of the new features.

If there’s one thing to learn from new versions of Apple’s mobile software, iOS, it might be that everyday people don’t care about what so-called tech influencers have to say. Many developers and designers scrutinized early versions of iOS 7 before its release, saying it was awkward to use and the design was not attractive.

Similarly, before iOS 6 was released last year, journalists and app developers criticized the operating system for its spotty maps app, which replaced Google’s mapping data with Apple’s own. Still, Apple in January said that 300 million iOS devices had upgraded to iOS 6 five months after its release. (Around that time, Apple had sold roughly 500 million iOS devices; it has now sold 700 million.)

The latest operating system has a far different design than earlier versions, but consumers appear to be reacting mostly positively to the change. Topsy, a company that does Twitter analytics, sampled seven million Twitter posts about iOS 7. About 1.2 million of the tweets were positive and 1.1 million were negative; the rest were neutral. Most of the negative tweets were from people complaining about having to wait to download the software update, Topsy said.

Google Is Exploring an Alternative to Cookies for Ad Tracking

Google, the biggest online advertising company, is considering a new way to help advertisers track people across the Web and consolidate its power in the industry.

Google could create an anonymous identifier, tied to users of its Chrome browser on a specific device, that advertisers would use to target ads, according to a person briefed on the plan who declined to be identified because the plan is young and one of several options being considered.

The identifier would replace cookies, the tiny files that are the predominant way that advertisers track users across the Web and show ads based on users’ online behavior, but which are widely believed to be dysfunctional.

Google’s idea, first reported by USA Today, comes as advertisers are beginning to panic about finding alternatives to cookies, and as other efforts to establish standards for online tracking fall apart.

This week, a working group to establish a Do Not Track standard for online advertising lost an important member, the Digital Advertising Alliance. Apple’s Safari browser does not allow third-party cookies, and Mozilla has said Firefox will follow suit. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has Do Not Track turned on by default, but advertisers are under no obligation to follow it.

Tracking people on mobile devices is a challenge for advertisers, because apps do not use cookies.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau started a group last fall to explore the future of the cookie and alternatives, and many companies besides Google are coming up with options. Jordan Mitchell, co-chair of the group and a vice president at the Rubicon Project, a digital ad agency, called the current situation for advertisers unreliable and uneconomical and “a lose-lose-lose situation for advertisers, consumers, publishers and platforms.”

Apple popularized the idea of an anonymous identifier, which is part of its iPhone software for advertising in mobile apps. On the Web, it would offer advertisers a similar benefit as cookies â€" building a behavioral profile of people based on the sites they visit. But is easier for users to turn off with a single change in settings, or potentially to use a different ID for Web browsing they want to keep private.

Google is in a particularly influential spot to make such a change. Chrome is the most-used browser, and Google earns 41 percent of digital advertising revenue, according to eMarketer, far more than any of its competitors.

Though the ad identifier would be available to any ad network, advertiser or publisher that wanted to use it, it would also concentrate even more control over the digital advertising industry with Google.

In a statement, Google implied that it was exploring new alternatives to cookies, but declined to discuss specific plans.

“We believe that technological enhancements can improve users’ security while ensuring the Web remains economically viable,” the statement said. “We and others have a number of concepts in this area, but they’re all at very early stages.”

Daily Report: Pandora Wins Court Victory Over Licenses to Stream Music

Pandora Media won a battle in its continuing war with the music industry over royalties when a federal judge ruled on Tuesday that the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which represents thousands of members, cannot prevent Pandora from licensing all the songs in its catalog, Ben Sisario reports.

The ruling, by Judge Denise L. Cote of United States District Court in Manhattan, is a blow to music publishers, who have tried to get the best royalty rates for digital music by limiting the extent that performing rights societies like Ascap and Broadcast Music Incorporated represent their songs. The ruling could also hurt the societies themselves if they are perceived as preventing the publishers from getting higher rates.

Two years ago, the industry’s biggest publishers began withdrawing digital rights to their music from Ascap and BMI, forcing companies like Pandora to negotiate directly for a license to stream the music.

Sony/ATV, the world’s largest publisher, has said it received a 25 percent higher rate by licensing its songs to Pandora directly.

Pandora argued in a motion for summary judgment that allowing publishers to withdraw their digital rights violated Ascap’s longtime consent decree, which says that the organization must license its songs to any service that asks. The judge agreed, saying that Ascap must make all the songs in its catalog available to Pandora through 2015, when its current licensing terms with the Internet radio provider expire. If Ascap licenses a song for some purposes, the judge ruled, it must for others - like streaming â€" as well.

“ ’All’ means all,” Judge Cote wrote in her decision. The ruling precedes a larger rate-setting trial between Pandora and Ascap, which will begin on Dec. 4.