The Verge - Reports

Pandora still hasn't named CEO as losses widen

2013-05-23T22:09:39Z

Pandora, the web's top radio service, reported that the company's losses widened in its fiscal first quarter amid increasing competition and as the company prepares for another bruising fight on Capitol Hill. In addition, Pandora still hasn't named a new leader two months after CEO Joe Kennedy announced he planned to step down as soon as a replacement could be found.

Whoever Pandora may be considering as Kennedy's successor, it's clear leadership thinks it can find someone better than Barry McCarthy, one of the company's board members who was instrumental in helping to turn Netflix into one of the web's top entertainment sites. Tucked into documents Pandora filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 8th, the company said that McCarthy, who was Netflix's longtime CFO and a Pandora board member for two years, is leaving the board. Pandora said that McCarthy decided not to stand for re-election when his term expires on June 5. The company did not give a reason for McCarthy's departure and a Pandora spokeswoman declined to comment but he sounds like someone who might have been a natural in the CEO's job.

"People keep saying that Pandora is the top web radio service. But YouTube is really the largest." Pandora is one of the leaders in the music industry's shift to streaming services. Instead of offering users the chance to buy and own individual songs, which they must store themselves, Pandora and Spotify offer to stream songs from their servers to PCs and other web-connected devices. But while the popularity of these new services grows, it is still unclear whether they will be profitable. Pandora said today that its losses widened from last year: the company reported a $28.6 million loss compared to the $20.2 million loss it recorded during the same period a year ago. On an adjusted basis, Pandora's loss was equal to 10 cents per share, which was in line with analyst expectations. The good news as that the $125 million in sales during the quarter was a 55 percent improvement over the last year. Kennedy's replacement, whoever it is, will inherit a mixed bag

Kennedy's replacement, whoever it is, will inherit a mixed bag. Pandora has a large audience of more than 70 million active users. On Wall Street, investors appear to be warming up to the stock. Pandora's shares were trading at more than $16 in early morning trading, more than twice the $7.08 the stock sank to in November — but only just above the company's June 2011 IPO price. Pandora is off to a big head start among internet music services to get into cars. That's a $17 billion advertising market, and Pandora already has deals with BMW, Ford Motor and General Motors.

But the company also faces some big threats, not the least of which is iRadio. Apple, the largest music retailer, is readying a service that music industry sources is a Pandora-like radio service with some significant features that outdo Pandora. Apple's iRadio, the unofficial name, will play songs randomly just like Pandora but iRadio will supply users with some on-demand features, such as fast forward and rewind, according to music industry sources. Google is also pushing into Pandora's space. The search giant last week launched All Access, a radio service that offers users the ability to listen to any song from its library whenever they want.

That's not all: Google is expected to launch a YouTube music subscription service sometime this year. One executive from a top record label said that this is what Pandora should really be worried about. "People keep saying that Pandora is the top web radio service," the exec said. "But YouTube is really the largest." Music videos are some of the most popular fare with YouTube's 800 million unique monthly visitors and The New York Times reported that YouTube is trying to license an audio-only feature from the top labels. Pandora also faces some big threats, not the least of which is Apple

To help lower its overhead, Pandora is lobbying Congress to reduce the statutory rate that webcasters pay for songs. The company made a run at that goal last year with the so-called Internet Radio Fairness Act, but the bill found little support on Capitol Hill; another attempt is being readied for this year. Pandora recently made an appeal to musicians to support its effort and groups representing artists immediately attacked it, illustrating the fact that Pandora is at war with its own suppliers.

Obama promises more oversight for drone strikes, progress on closing Guantanamo Bay

2013-05-23T19:32:10Z

Over four years into his tenure, President Barack Obama says he is reining in drone strikes. In a speech on the future of counterterrorism, Obama announced that he had signed a presidential guidance statement on drone warfare, codifying the cases in which it is justifiable. Targets, he says, must pose a "continuing, imminent threat" to US persons, and it must be nearly certain that the target is present in an area and non-combatants will not be injured or killed.

"His citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper ... should be protected from a SWAT team."

He also insisted that Congress had been briefed on all strikes outside Iraq and Afghanistan, including the attack on radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the only American citizen known to have been targeted in a strike. But this does not mean that Congress had the option to stop the strike, or that members outside select committees were briefed. "For the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any US citizen — with a drone, or a shotgun — without due process," said Obama. "Nor should any President deploy armed drones over US soil. But when a US citizen goes abroad to wage war against America and is actively plotting to kill US citizens, and when neither the United States nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot, his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a SWAT team."

Among other things, Obama brought up proposals to establish a special court that could decide when strikes were justified, or an independent unit of the executive branch that would serve as an arbiter. While he said he looked forward to discussing these options with Congress, he expressed concern that they would either raise constitutional issues or add too much bureaucracy to the process.

Drone strike oversight proposals include establishing an independent committee to evaluate threats

Obama's speech is the latest in a gradual lifting of the veil of secrecy that has surrounded the drone strike program. While American drone strikes have been common knowledge for some time, the White House rarely discussed specific details until the past year. In the past months, more information has emerged about the program, including a leaked paper laying out the circumstances under which the Department of Justice can order a strike. Congress has also shown an increasing interest in oversight, holding the first hearing on the program last month.

Obama, like other officials, has said that drone strikes minimize civilian deaths

CIA head John Brennan has previously called civilian casualties from drone strikes "exceedingly rare," saying that targeted strikes can minimize casualties more than almost any other method of attack. Obama admitted that there was a "wide gap" between official estimates of civilian casualties and reports by NGOs, though he did not disclose the former. While he said these casualties are a "hard fact," though, "it is false to assert that putting boots on the ground is less likely to result in civilian deaths, or to create enemies in the Muslim world."

Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress that four American citizens had been killed by strikes since 2009. One, Anwar al-Awlaki, was specifically targeted as a high-ranking al-Qaeda member, and three others were killed as part of an attack on someone else — including al-Awlaki's son Abdulrahman. Over these years, the number of drone strikes have steadily decreased, something that is attributed partly to a weakening of al-Qaeda and partly to Obama's attempts to "refine" the program. Obama has also said that as military operations in Afghanistan wind down, the need for drone strikes will decrease.

But this is not the only contentious issue the White House must address. In his speech, Obama made yet another tentative step towards closing the detainment center at Guantanamo Bay, which currently keeps 166 prisoners in limbo. Today, he lifted the ban on sending detainees to Yemen and announced that he would appoint an envoy at the State and Defense Departments whose "sole responsibility" would be to transfer prisoners to other countries where their cases could be evaluated.

"We are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are?"

The New York Times has reported that over a hundred detainees are on a hunger strike, with dozens on forced feeding schedules, and their plight has raised public concern over the facility higher than it's been in years. This attention almost certainly spurred this section of Obama's speech, where he referenced the strike: "Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are?"

He also attempted to allay concerns about his administration's aggressive targeting of people who leak information to reporters. Over the past weeks, it's been revealed that the Justice Department conducted surveillance of journalists at the Associated Press and Fox News, attempting to identify whistleblowers responsible for security leaks. Obama reiterated that he intended only to prosecute officials who leak data, not reporters, pointing to his push for a media shield law.

As Obama drew near the end of his speech, he was interrupted: activist Medea Benjamin of anti-war group Code Pink accused him of dragging his feet on Guantanamo's closure, and of avoiding discussing the death of al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son. "Is that how we treat people?" she asked. "Apply the rule of law. You are a constitutional lawyer." In response, Obama admitted that "the voice of that woman is worth paying attention to ... These are tough issues, and the suggestion that we can gloss over them is wrong." But as he continued with his speech, the question remains: how much progress will actually be made in the wake of his words?

Ride-sharing app Lyft raises a $60 million war chest to fight regulators and creep factor

2013-05-23T16:00:03Z

Over the last two months, ride-sharing service Lyft says it has gone from giving 14,000 rides a week, to more than 30,000 rides a week. The burst in popularity is the reason Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capital firms, is betting big time on the startup, said Scott Weiss, an investing partner at the firm. And the massive infusion of cash — $60 million — couldn't have come at a better time as Lyft is planning a push into international markets, a fight with New York City regulators, and a marketing campaign to make catching a ride with a total stranger seem socially acceptable.

"By the end of 2014, we have definite plans to go international," said John Zimmer, Lyft's co-founder. "We need to capture the hearts and minds of new communities, and we need to win over regulators too. This investment will allow us to do all that, and a lot more." Lyft launched in May 2012 in San Francisco and has since rolled out to Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In its first year, Lyft found substantial government resistance to its ride-share business, which relies on someone with a car picking up and transporting around a person they don't know. The California Public Utilities Commission handed down $20,000 in fines for public safety violations.

To enter New York and global markets, Lyft has a fight on its hands

California regulators have now mostly come to terms with ride-sharing services like Lyft. "We work collaboratively with regulators when we can, like we're doing in California now," Zimmer said. "But that's not always the case." Two places pushing back against ride-sharing services are Austin and New York, though at this point, Lyft has avoided those locales rather than publicly clash with regulators. Meanwhile, its competitor SideCar is in the midst of suing Austin for the right to operate there. Zimmer wouldn’t say what specific international markets are next for Lyft, but he did say he has his eye on New York City, which is currently taking the stance that ride-sharing services such as Lyft are illegal. Zimmer said Lyft doesn’t believe its business is inherently illegal, though the company does knows that in order to operate in New York and many overseas markets, it will have to spend some of its new $60 million in funding, the majority of which is coming from Andreessen Horowitz, on legal hurdles with regulators. "We believe we can launch in New York and we want to launch in New York," he said. "Hopefully, by the end of 2014, we will have done so."

Another challenge facing the company is Uber, which is cooking up a ride-sharing service of its own specifically to smother Lyft, SideCar, and others. Zimmer said he didn’t want to comment on Uber, and instead merely focus on what Lyft is doing. Weiss, on the other hand, said he believes the two can coexist. "Uber is about black cars, it's going for the upper end of the market," he said. "Lyft is for anybody who has a car. It could be like Neiman Marcus versus Walmart. They're both good businesses, but Lyft may prove out to be a bigger market." Just how big Lyft can get will be contingent on how much its marketing efforts will be able to normalize the concept of ride sharing.

If Uber is Neiman Marcus, Lyft is Walmart

"Picking up someone you don't know is a little dodgy," Weiss said. "It's not for everybody, but they’ve reached a critical mass. They've figured out how to get over the trust barrier." Weiss said the key for Lyft winning the trust of new riders is letting them know about the process the company uses to vet drivers, which includes DMV and criminal background checks, as well as credit checks and a scrutinization of a driver’s Facebook profile. Weiss, who was appointed to Lyft's board of directors after this latest investment round, said the company digs deeper into who its drivers are than any typical taxi service or limo service. "I've been looking at this general market for a long time," he said. "I've been tracking these guys. Over 50 percent of their passengers are female, which is crazy for a business like this. It speaks to the trust, the community they've built up."

Now the company needs to find a way to communicate this process through marketing, so it can sell new cities on the idea that a car adorned with Lyft's signature pink mustache is safe to get into, even if driven by a stranger, Zimmer said. "If you think about all the other services you use, there's a black car or a yellow car and you see it and think, 'oh, I trust it,'" he said. "But why do you trust it? Because it's a social norm. We have to build our social norm. We need to raise awareness about all we're doing to build security into our community of drivers."

The science of tornado prediction: can technology keep us safe from future storms?

2013-05-23T15:48:21Z

A satellite image of this week's tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, captured by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. (Credit: NASA.)

It's been nearly 150 years since scientists first made efforts to forecast the arrival of tornadoes. But as indicated by this week's storm in Moore, Oklahoma — which killed 24 people and ravaged thousands of homes — they still can't anticipate these potentially deadly weather events with much time to spare. In Moore, residents only had 16 minutes notice that a tornado was forming.

The first guide to tornado forecasting, published in 1888, set the basis for predicting the storms. But today, with new technology that offers a closer glimpse at weather conditions, the complexity of tornado forecasting is greater than ever. "Tornadoes are predicted by looking at present and near-future conditions — including moisture and wind throughout the atmosphere" explains James Elsner, PhD, a climate and weather researcher from Florida State University.

Meteorologists still have to rely on observations

Data is collected from a number of sources — radar, observation stations, weather balloons, planes and satellites, and a network of 290,000 volunteer storm spotters — and then fed into vast mathematical simulations that churn out detailed local forecasts of what may happen in a few hours' time. While it's relatively easy to say that an area half the size of a state may experience tornadoes, pinning down exactly where a twister will touch down is a much tougher job, and can only be done on a timescale of minutes — computer simulations aren't yet reliable enough at the scale of an individual storm, so meteorologists still have to rely on observations.

"Tornadoes can form in different ways," says Elsner. The same conditions that spawn a tornado during one storm might not do so in another. Plus, once the conditions are finally right, the tornado is often down on the ground before anyone has time to react. "They can form quickly and become violent in a matter of minutes," Elsner adds.

Tornado-generating storms need very specific conditions to form — moisture, temperature, and something known as wind shear, where the wind changes in strength and direction with height. The atmosphere also needs to be "unstable" — a term that indicates that if you give a bubble of air a shove, it'll accelerate upward. When you have those ingredients, the stage is set for the development of a thunderstorm that rotates, known as a supercell.

Plenty of supercells never spawn a tornado

Even when all those factors align, the chances of a tornado hitting the ground are very small. The number of strong, violent tornadoes that occur in a 10,000 square mile area, per year, is 0.1 across the entire US, and only 0.6 in Tennessee, the state with the highest frequency. In other words, plenty of supercells never spawn a tornado, as many a disgruntled stormchaser will tell you.

The average time between a tornado warning being issued and a twister touching down has been refined from 5 minutes to 13 minutes over the last couple of decades. It's an improvement, but hardly adequate to keep everyone in a tornado's path safe from harm.

NOAA image from four-dimensional storm sell investigator. (Credit: NOAA.)

But new techniques to ameliorate that timeframe are on the way. In 2007, meteorologists at the US government's National Severe Storm Laboratory (NSSL) developed a prototype, called the four-dimensional storm cell investigator. This radar can create and manipulate dynamic, 3D cross-sections, so that meteorologists can "slice and dice" storms and view that data from multiple angles and across time. "Scanning up and down with our radar helps," says Elsner. By looking at that structure, it's also possible to see common tornado signatures signatures, like the "hook echo" — a hook-shaped feature that indicates tornadogenesis.

A debris ball signature can verify tornadoes with 70 to 80 percent accuracy

This new radar has also helped forecasters establish more accurate tornado signatures, like the "debris ball," wherein material being carried in the vortex of a tornado can be spotted before the storm touches down. A debris ball signature can verify tornadoes with 70 to 80 percent accuracy. The four-dimensional storm cell investigator is still being tweaked and improved, but it's hoped that the technology will roll out to more radar stations across the US in the coming decade.

NOAA image of a debris ball in a storm. (Credit: NOAA.)

In addition to better radar, other investigators are working on more sophisticated computer modeling systems — capable of incorporating an unpredictable melee of variables into accurate predictions. "There's pressure, there's temperature, and none of the radars and current sensing instruments can get that at the resolution we really need to fundamentally understand the tornadoes," project leader Amy McGovern, PhD, a meteorologist at the University of Oklahoma, told Science Nation earlier this year.

Her computer models include these variables, giving meteorologists new opportunities to spot signatures that indicate the formation of a tornado — and potentially warn of tornadoes much sooner. This approach is being extensively tested by the research meteorologists at the NSSL, who are keen to get their hands on as many new tools as they can for their forecasting arsenal. Right now it's pumping out much more data than the forecasters need, so getting it to show the usable information and hide the junk is the next important step.

None of this burgeoning technology is foolproof

Unfortunately, none of this burgeoning technology is foolproof. Modeling storm systems is a promising technique, but because storms are incredibly sensitive to tiny changes, using a model — rather than observations — means that forecasters will inevitably lose accuracy. It's these tiny changes that tip a storm between forming a tornado or not, making McGovern and co.'s job incredibly difficult.

NOAA photo of a 2008 Oklahoma tornado. (Credit: Sean Waugh NOAA/NSSL.)

Piling on the pressure is the fact that false positives can do a tremendous amount of harm to residents' confidence in forecasts. Even when urgent warnings are issued, many people don't immediately seek shelter — sometimes because they don't have one, but often because they ignore sirens.

"A lot of times people don't react until they see it."

"We'd like to think that as soon as we say there is a tornado warning, everyone would run to the basement," Ken Harding, a weather service official in Kansas City, told the Huffington Post last year. "That's not how it is. They will channel flip, look out the window or call neighbours. A lot of times people don't react until they see it."

To address that problem, meteorologists are experimenting with issuing new warnings in Kansas and Missouri that use words like "mass devastation," "unsurvivable" and "catastrophic" to get people to pay attention. Two tiers of warnings for thunderstorms and three tiers for tornadoes have been created, based on severity. It's hoped that this might give people more context on the level of the danger that the storm poses, making them less likely to ignore it.

More accurate, effective forecasts being issued further in advance

If these techniques — improved radar analysis, better computer models and refined warnings — can be combined, we should see more accurate, effective forecasts being issued further in advance. And that might very well be increasingly important: no long-term trends have yet been established that indicate more tornadoes in the years to come, but Elsner suspects that tornado tracks, at least, are getting longer and wider. That usually means more powerful tornadoes. "Climate change increases the available energy for tornadoes through a warmer and moister atmosphere," he says. "We're battling the critics on this now. Stay tuned."

Temping fate: can TaskRabbit go from side gigs to real jobs?

2013-05-23T15:00:07Z

Not long ago, Chris Mok worked in the advertising department for Macy’s in San Francisco, booking models for the department store’s catalogs. Then, in 2009, he was laid off along with 1,400 people as part of a reorganization. For a while Mok helped his wife with her floral business, and after the company used TaskRabbit to help them deliver leis, he applied to become a contractor with them. Users post errands they need done, along with how much they're willing to pay; Mok bids for the right to do them, with TaskRabbit taking a cut of the sale. Now he works as a TaskRabbit full time, assembling furniture, painting, and hanging flat-screen televisions, among many other jobs. Mok, 47, says he loves the service for the chance it gives him to work, make money, and manage his own schedule. "Now I feel like I could make a career out of being a handyman," he said. "But I had a nice job at Macy’s."

As more contractors like Mok make TaskRabbit a full-time job — 10 percent of the company's contractors already have— the company is taking steps to become a full-service temporary employment agency. The San Francisco startup is introducing a service today that lets businesses hire contractors for traditional "temp" jobs, like administrative assistant and call center work. It’s the company’s latest effort to rethink jobs and careers in a US labor market still rife with long-term unemployment, where many businesses are hiring temps rather than investing in full-time employees and the benefits they require.

"Really what we want to do is revolutionize how people work — and also how people find people to do work," said Anne Raimondi, TaskRabbit’s chief revenue officer. For many Americans, finding work has never been harder. Last month, 37 percent of the unemployed — 4.4 million people — had been without a job for more than six months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That’s down significantly from April 2010, when 6.7 million people were classified among the long-term jobless, but still more than triple the number from before the recession started in 2007.

"Really what we want to do is revolutionize how people work."

TaskRabbit was created in 2008 after its founder, Leah Busque, realized she needed to buy dog food but didn’t have time to get it herself. Working by herself at first, and later with a staff of 65 funded by nearly $40 million in venture capital, Busque built a marketplace for getting errands done. "Neighbors helping neighbors — it’s an old school concept upgraded for today," the company says. "We call it service networking, and it’s changing everything." The service has now launched in nine cities, has just under 11,000 contractors available, and has a goal of adding 1,000 more each month.

But beneath the friendly neighborhood exterior lies a darker reality — people often come to TaskRabbit looking for work after being laid off from corporate jobs where they had steady incomes, health benefits, 401(k) matches, and a clear path for career advancement. The education levels of the company’s contractors help tell the story: 70 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree, 20 percent have master’s degrees, and 5 percent have a PhD.

Five percent of TaskRabbits have a PhD

Now TaskRabbit will begin placing at least some of those contractors into longer-term assignments. "It’s essentially replacing going to a temp agency — which our customers were trying to do already," Raimondi said. About 35 percent of the tasks posted on the site each month come from businesses; many are seeking temporary office managers and administrative assistants. TaskRabbit’s new service streamlines the process by handling all the necessary paperwork for tax withholding, unemployment insurance, and worker’s compensation.

It’s a move to disrupt traditional staffing agencies like Manpower and Kelly Services, undercutting them on price while providing both employer and contractor with a more transparent set of facts from which to make decisions. (Employers can view contractors’ LinkedIn profiles before hiring them, for example, something that is impossible at most temp agencies.)

This is the gig economy at scale, where workers have increasing options for short-term work even as their prospects of returning to the full-time world diminish. Employers have added 184,000 temp jobs in the past year, according to the BLS, 7.4 percent more than the previous year. Meanwhile, without giving specific figures, TaskRabbit says that in the past 12 months it quadrupled its user base and quintupled its revenues.

Susana Jung managed logistics for a renewable energy company in Silicon Valley before being laid off about four years ago. After taking some time off, she began searching for work online only to find that available jobs paid far less than she expected. "What they asked you to do, for the amount of pay — it was terrible," she said. Jung signed up with TaskRabbit after her brother told her about it, and now runs errands for the company full time. She is no longer actively looking for a corporate job. "TaskRabbit has really been good to me," she said.

With its ranks growing quickly, TaskRabbit's focus is turning to how it can make the freelance life more attractive. The next step: benefits. TaskRabbit is having early conversations with employers and contractors about what they would like to see in a health insurance plan. "More people are going to be managing their careers in a very different way going forward," Raimondi said. "And benefits are a very important part of that."

The next step for TaskRabbit: health benefits

Perhaps the best sign for TaskRabbit is that many contractors say they would continue taking jobs through the service even if one of their temporary gigs turned into full-time employment. (One TaskRabbit is an engineer at Google who does lawn care on weekends to help pay off his student loans faster, according to the company.) Mok is among those who say he expects to remain at TaskRabbit even if he starts his own handyman business, which he has considered.

Last month US employers initiated 1,199 layoffs of more than 50 workers, affecting 116,849 people. Even the happiest TaskRabbits — and everyone interviewed for this story roundly praised it — acknowledged that they sometimes missed the stability and benefits afforded by traditional jobs like those. The company won't say what the average worker makes using the service, saying it varies widely depending on the number and types of jobs a contractor is willing to work. But in many cases it is likely to be less than they would make in the white-collar business world — the most successful contractor made $5,000 in a month, the company says.

"I like to think of it as a great backup — I’ve always got TaskRabbit to fall back on," Mok said. "You just go on the website. Even if you don’t have any work lined up for the day, you can pretty much keep yourself busy if you just start."

TV tweets: Twitter partners with networks to make live TV fun... and profitable

2013-05-23T14:51:56Z

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo took the stage in Manhattan this morning to talk with a crowd of the biggest advertisers and brands from Madison Avenue. He brought up a slide of a recent tweet, featuring a picture of race cars spinning out of control. "Usually when there is a crash at the Daytona 500 the ratings go down," Costolo said. "The race stops, the caution flags come out, and people change the channel. But this time Brad Keselowski, one of the drivers, snapped an image of the fire from his car following close behind, and tweeted it out. Not sure why he had his phone in the car, but the point is, the ratings shot up. This is inside-out, unfiltered communication. We're the only public, real-time, conversational media on the planet. There are some other platforms that manage one or two of these, but none that are all three."

Fire!My view twitter.com/keselowski/sta…
— Brad Keselowski (@keselowski) February 28, 2012

Twitter has already partnered with the NBA and ESPN to push instant replays of sports highlights to Twitter users who are talking about the game or who follow the teams involved. Today it announced a raft of new partners, including A&E, Bloomberg Television, Clear Channel, MLB and several others who will be using the company's Amplify program to push clips, extras, and other goodies to Twitter users who are watching live.

For Twitter, it's a sign that its still-young advertising business has been a success, especially around live events. Twitter is looking to own the second screen, the conversation happening on mobile devices while people are tuned in to big events on TV. It's a broadcast model big brand advertisers are comfortable with and a huge $80 billion market that Twitter can tap into.

The company also announced a new ad targeting technology that it hopes will help it move beyond tentpole events like the Superbowl or presidential election to daily television habits. It's the result of Twitter's acquisition of BlueFin Labs. The company built tech that will allow Twitter to look for keywords across all the messages users post. If you're tweeting about Mad Men, Twitter knows that in real time. It can then match an ad you saw on TV, say for Trident, with an ad on Twitter, perhaps themed around Mad Men. It's a way for advertisers to extend and personalize the traditional marketing they do on TV into the mobile space.

"When we use Twitter and TV together, the marketing is twice as effective," said Bonin Bough, the man behind Oreo's award winning real-time marketing campaigns, including the cookie's massively successful tweet from the Superbowl blackout. The way regular people think about big live events shows a similar fusion, said Bough. "People told me they 'watched' the presidential debate on Twitter, that is the language we are using today."

Mailbox launches an iPad app, but Gmail poses a greater threat than ever

2013-05-23T12:00:02Z

In early February, Mailbox hit the App Store and impressed millions with its refreshing take on email visualization and triage. An epic waitlist added fuel to the fire, since most people had to wait weeks to gain access to the cloud-powered email app. Mailbox’s impact was so forceful that Dropbox didn’t even wait a month to sweep in and acquire the company within weeks of its launch.

Is an iPad app enough to keep up Mailbox's momentum?

Today, just over three months later, the company is releasing an iPad version of its app, but the Mailbox furor has all but died out. The email app bubble is still bubbling, evidenced by the launch of a several apps like Mail Pilot and Evomail, but these apps face increasing competition from Google itself, which powers the actual email service most of these apps rely on. After years of relative stagnation on the web and no mobile app, Gmail has been picking up the pace and rapidly adding features like the ability to send money to a friend and RSVP to events. It has also been stepping up its game in the design department, a stronghold for apps like Mailbox. Meanwhile, in the "Productivity" category of the App Store, Gmail for iOS is the number one ranked free app, while Mailbox is ranked number 53. Instead of breaking into a wholly untapped market on Android where its focus on design and speed would be well-received, Mailbox chose to build an iPad app. Is it enough to keep the ball rolling?

Mailbox CEO Gentry Underwood declined to talk about how many people are using the app. "I think about it like a stock price," he says. "As soon as you’re publicly traded, everyone’s making short-term decisions based on short-term gains. I want to be smart about making long-term decisions." The company’s first goal was to address one of the top requests from current Mailbox users: a companion iPad app. Mailbox for iPad is little more than a blown-up version of the iPhone app, ported feature-for-feature, button-for-button to the big screen. All the swipes you’ve come to know are here, as is the ability to snooze items for later, browse labels, and quickly reply to emails. The app sends and receives emails in a pinch, as you would expect. The only real difference from the mobile app is that the list of emails is on the left, and the content of emails is on the right, like in the iPad’s default Mail app. There are no signs yet of Dropbox's influence on the app.

"What are you asking us for? What’s best for Mailbox users?"

Mailbox’s new parent company thus far hasn’t pressured Underwood to integrate its storage features, or even to address the various platforms it has a presence on like PC, Mac, and Android. In fact, it’s been quite the contrary. When the Mailbox team first arrived at Dropbox headquarters in the SoMA neighborhood of San Francisco, it quickly became inundated with ideas from Dropboxers about how to integrate the two apps. "We put all the ideas on a big foam-core board and set up a meeting with Drew [Houston] and Arash [Ferdowsi]," says Underwood. "We asked about what was most important, and what we should prioritize. Drew looked at me with a surprised look and said, ‘What are you asking us for? What’s best for Mailbox users?’"

Down the line, Underwood does see places where Dropbox and Mailbox could integrate, like for attaching files to emails. Dropbox, in fact, already has an API in place that lets iOS developers embed Dropbox file-pickers inside their apps. But for now, Underwood is more concerned with adding functionality to Mailbox. One feature that’s in consideration would let users "snooze" emails not just to specific dates and times, but to specific devices. For example, you could snooze an email to your iPad, since that’s where you check email for an hour before bed.

"Getting locked out? It’s not something we worry much about."

As Mailbox adds new features, so will Gmail. Mute, one mail triage feature that many Gmail users hold dear, is still not a part of Mailbox. A worrisome scenario emerges where Mailbox falls behind as Gmail adds proprietary features only its users can take advantage of. Fortunately for Mailbox, new Gmail features don’t affect the open IMAP email standard both apps run on, whereas new Twitter features do affect an app like Tweetbot. "Getting locked out? It’s not something we worry much about," Underwood says. "It’s about how we can create the best experience possible around managing mail — by using our agility to do it better than anybody else." Underwood admits that competing with Gmail apps is tough without a desktop app. He and his team are still toying with ideas for how Mailbox on desktops should work, ranging from a Gmail extension (a la Boomerang) to a full-fledged desktop app for Mac and PC. "The jury’s still out, but we need to do it," he says. And yes, he says, Mailbox for Android is in the works.

For those looking for the absolute fastest email experience on iPhone and iPad, Mailbox is still the best option, but it faces an uphill battle against the increasingly design-conscious Google. Powered by Dropbox, Mailbox may move forward unencumbered by server outages, but Google appears more motivated than ever to take its consumer experiences like email and messaging to the next level. Until Mailbox adds additional services like iCloud, Yahoo, and Exchange, it should be playing close attention.

Update: The latest version of Mailbox is now available in the iTunes App Store.

Square arrives in Japan, its first market outside North America

2013-05-23T07:52:15Z

At a press event in Tokyo today, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey announced the long-awaited Japanese debut of Square, the smartphone credit card processing service with the iconic white dongle. It’s a big deal for Dorsey's four-year-old company — its first expansion outside of North America, and in the third-largest economy in the world. But Japan also presents some unique challenges. Purchases of all kinds are still overwhelmingly done with cash here, and Square competitor PayPal launched its own PayPal Here payment system last year without much fanfare. But Dorsey thinks his company can take off where others have failed to.

"It really resonates with this market as well."

Following a presentation introducing the crowd to Square's plan for Japan, I asked the CEO what makes Square think it can succeed where PayPal so far hasn’t. "I think fundamentally it isn’t just about building a credit card terminal," he replied. "Especially in this market, where cash is still very, very dominant, we have found that people are looking more for a piece of software, a solution that allows them to account for their entire business… We’ve just found that’s a more complete solution in the United States and Canada and we think it really resonates with this market as well." During the presentation, a lot of attention was paid to the analytics produced by Square's integrated approach to payments, and the easy access to sales data could be a boon to business owners used to filling out reams of paperwork by hand.

For its expansion into Japan, Square is partnering with Mitsui Sumitomo Bank — a national institution that it thinks can help it spread into uncharted territory. It's also charging 3.25 percent for transactions, half a percentage point higher than what it's charging in the US and Canada. But that's still much lower than the five percent charged by SoftBank and PayPal Here, not to mention the banks, which Square VP Ricardo Reyes says can charge as much as eight percent. Square is banking that its more complete business solution has what it takes to truly succeed in Japan, and businesses might just find that they can save some money by jumping on board.

Should US companies be allowed to hack China in revenge? New report says yes

2013-05-22T20:46:48Z

It's no secret that major US companies have been victims of a growing number of hacks from overseas in recent years, allegedly by attackers looking to steal corporate information and intellectual property, such as patented software. The Department of Defense and US diplomats have also accused China's government and military of being behind some of these attacks. Now, a new report by a group of influential former government officials and private executives says that if intellectual property theft continues at future levels, Congress should consider passing laws allowing US companies to "counterattack" against such hackers, whoever they may be.

"physically disabling or destroying the hacker’s own computer or network."

The report, released today, calls this type of strategy "active network defense," and says it could include a wide range of tactics, such as "photographing the hacker using his own system’s camera, implanting malware in the hacker’s network, or even physically disabling or destroying the hacker’s own computer or network." To be clear, the report specifically says it doesn't recommend Congress authorize such activities by companies "under present circumstances," but notes that "in the future, if the loss of IP continues at current levels, these measures ought to be considered." In the mean time, the report says Congress should increase cyber security information-sharing between companies and the government by passing the controversial Cyber Information and Sharing Protection Act (CISPA), which the House already did in April, but which the Senate has not moved forward on.

The recommendations come from the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, a private organization that carries no legal power, but which is co-chaired by former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, Jr., previously the US ambassador to China, and Dennis Blair, the previous director of US national security. The group also includes a former Intel CEO and other former lawmakers and businesspeople. Huntsman and Blair penned an editorial in The Washington Post yesterday labeling China as the place where intellectual property theft is "most rampant," adding: "So far, our national response to this crisis has been weak and disjointed...The United States must make the theft of US intellectual property both risky and costly for thieves."

"I think it's an absolutely horrible idea."

But others disagree with this approach. "I think it's an absolutely horrible idea," said Jeffrey Carr, CEO of cyber security consulting firm Taia Global. "God forbid there be there should be some adoption of expanding the law to allow private companies to hack back." Carr told The Verge he was concerned that if such proposals were adopted by Congress or the White House, it could "trigger additional diplomatic problems." Carr pointed to the fact that the US imports many goods, including electronics from China, and said that the idea of hacking back against people based in China was "ridiculous when rely on them so much."

James Lewis, director of the public policy and technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank, is similarly wary of Congress greenlighting such private counterattacks. "This is a remarkably bad idea that would harm the national interest," he wrote in an essay shared with The Verge. "Our goal is to make cyberspace more stable and secure, not less."

The controversial idea of giving US companies legal protections to "hack back" against intruders on their networks has been proposed before by some legal experts and companies, and some companies are even alleged to already be engaging in the practice, despite the fact that there is no legal framework in the US permitting it. But the new recommendations from Huntsman's group may be the highest-profile yet, as they come from former Obama Administration officials. Meanwhile, the US and China's government have openly sparred in recent months over the issue of cyber attacks, accusing each other of perpetrating them. Two nations have also made gestures of cooperation on tackling the global problems of hacking and IP theft. It's unclear how the new report will impact these efforts, if at all. Still, these issues and more will certainly give President Obama a lot to talk about in his first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in June.

Road warriors: critics say big change to US traffic safety 'bible' could put drivers at risk

2013-05-22T16:20:02Z

A massive plan is underway to upgrade aging road signs in the US. The goal is to make them more reflective at night, and easier for drivers to see. But the main government instruction manual for doing so, the longtime bible of roadside signage and safety, could soon be chopped in half. Advocates worry the change will cause confusion for drivers and increase the risk of accidents. "The idea of dividing the baby and only keeping the parts that are mandated is, we think, shortsighted," said Henry Jasny, vice president and general counsel for the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a lobbying group made of up of insurance organizations and consumer rights' proponents.

"dividing the baby and only keeping the parts that are mandated."

Jasny told The Verge that his group is concerned about a government proposal, announced in early 2013, to cut the federal Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) into two documents — one containing all the standards required by law, and another containing advice from engineers in the field. The advisory document would be managed by a private company. Jasny and his cohorts think this will lead to greater inconsistencies in traffic signs and road markings around the country. Already, government statistics indicate that most crashes (52 percent) occur in intersections with traffic control devices, and other documents point out that improperly placed signs can actually increase the risk of collision.

Diagram from the 2012 version of the US Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (Credit: FHWA).

"The problem is, we’re going to have local engineers doing different things in each county, and things will vary from county to county ... it will create a safety risk that doesn’t currently exist out there." The Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety elaborated on these concerns in a letter submitted in March to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the agency in charge of the manual, which accepted 179 public comments on the proposed plan to split it in half, many of which were in favor of keeping it as a single document.

"it will create a safety risk that doesn’t currently exist."

But the FHWA argues that dividing the document into two separate books will cut down on costs and actually make things less confusing for local traffic engineers. "Our proposal would make it easier for state and local transportation engineers to better serve the driving public," said Victor Mendez, administrator of FHWA, when announcing the change earlier this year. The latest version of the manual, last updated in May 2012, runs just over 800 pages. The FHWA’s new plan would cut that down into "two smaller documents."

Right now, the manual contains just about everything a traffic engineer working for a municipal, county, or state government would ever want to know about the laws regulating traffic signs, signals, and road markings in the US, as well as recommended best practices for how and where to place certain items on roads. For example, one section is focused on new standards for "maintaining minimum retroreflectivity," for road signs — that is, the legally required minimum light a sign needs to reflect directly back at a driver at night when illuminated by their vehicle’s headlights so they can read it even in the dark. The manual even goes into painstaking detail about such uncommon features on US roads as roundabouts.

Diagram from the 2012 version of the US Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (Credit: FHWA).

Regulating the uniformity of millions of road signs across America's 3.9 million miles of roadway, has historically been a difficult and diffuse challenge, one that has tested civil engineers, scientists and policymakers alike. This is especially true because the majority of roads — 3.1 million miles — are rural, where oversight is more difficult. The first modern stop sign wasn’t created until the early 1900s, for example, and it took another 30 years for it to be codified in the first Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices in 1935. Since then, the manual has been slow to update, with only eight major new editions released over the past 80 years. But the FHWA announced sweeping changes to the MUTCD in the early 2000s, including a deadline of September 2015 for when local governments need to have plans in place for testing the reflectivity of their signs at night and upgrading ones that don't meet the standards.

"That’s never been defined."

Today, the MUTCD is facing something of an existential crisis that goes well beyond upgrading sign reflectivity. As Gene Hawkins, a professor of civil engineering at Texas A&M University, puts it: "Who is the MUTCD written for? Is it written for engineers, technicians, local elected officials? Should it contain step-by-step instructions or just basic principles? That’s never been defined." Hawkins is part of a national committee that provides recommendations to the FHWA, and the committee is currently attempting to draft a new strategy document to help answer these very questions, and is aiming to circulate an initial draft in June.

To be fair, the FHWA is trying to speed things up when it comes to traffic safety engineering guidelines. It published new technical documents on road sign reflectivity online just this April, for example, "in response to questions FHWA has fielded since the publications were originally posted," as a spokesperson told The Verge. The FHWA did not say when exactly it would split the manual into two.