Business - MIT Technology Review

Now Television Advertisers Know You're Tweeting

Fri, 24 May 2013 20:28:51 +0000

If you tweet about a TV show or its ads, don’t be surprised if the advertisers “sponsored tweet” you back.

People love to tweet about television shows they are watching; this much, we know. But now the analytics technologies are producing the payback: televsion advertisers will find out and tweet them back.

Stories from Around the Web (Week Ending May 24, 2013)

Fri, 24 May 2013 17:30:00 +0000

A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.

Inside Google’s Secret Lab
A bit light on detail and insight, but they got more out of Google than anyone else has.
—Tom Simonite, IT editor

Seven Must-Read Stories (Week Ending May 24, 2013)

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:15:00 +0000

Another chance to catch the most interesting, and important, articles from the previous week on MIT Technology Review.

Marketing to the Big Data Inside Us

Fri, 24 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

In your DNA are clues to your health, your ancestry, and maybe even your purchasing preferences.

Companies market to you according to your shopping habits, your age, your salary, and your social-media activities. In the future, they may be able to advertise to you on the basis of your DNA.

Next-Generation Consumer
3-D Printer Arrives, but a Lawsuit Looms

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:07:00 +0000

Formlabs is bringing down the costs of a better 3-D printing technique, but it must survive a patent lawsuit.

Desktop 3-D printers are about to become available with higher-definition capabilities, with a new startup shipping its first model this month.

Bitcoin Hits the Big Time, to the Regret of Some Early Boosters

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:30:26 +0000

The first major conference for the digital currency suggests it is gaining legitimacy, but in a manner disappointing to some early enthusiasts.

This past Sunday, Doug Scribner took out five $100 bills and began feeding them into what looked like a small, white ATM in San Jose Conference Center in California. The machine swallowed the bills smartly and credited him with an equivalent value in bitcoins, an intangible, digital currency that is backed by not gold or any government, but by math.

In a Data Deluge, Companies Seek to Fill a New Role

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:05:00 +0000

A job invented in Silicon Valley is going mainstream as more industries try to gain an edge from big data.

The job description “data scientist” didn’t exist five years ago. No one advertised for an expert in data science, and you couldn’t go to school to specialize in the field. Today, companies are fighting to recruit these specialists, courses on how to become one are popping up at many universities, and the Harvard Business Review even proclaimed that data scientist is the “sexiest” job of the 21st century.

How Apple Avoids Taxes through R&D Spending

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:42:34 +0000

In Washington, CEO Tim Cook defended Apple’s R&D cost-sharing arrangements.

Apple CEO Tim Cook came under fire in Washington today at a U.S. Senate hearing focused on the elaborate strategies Apple used to avoid paying tens of billions of dollars in corporate taxes.

Intel Fuels a Rebellion Around Your Data

Mon, 20 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

The world’s largest chip maker wants to see a new kind of economy bloom around personal data.

Intel is a $53-billion-a-year company that enjoys a near monopoly on the computer chips that go into PCs. But when it comes to the data underlying big companies like Facebook and Google, it says it wants to “return power to the people.”

SAP Makes Big Data Real– And Real-Time

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:15:00 +0000

The following View from the Marketplace was provided by SAP, the sponsor of our Big Data Gets Personal Business Report.

The Impending Headache of Google Glass Apps

Fri, 17 May 2013 18:47:06 +0000

Glass apps will require people to create new content filters. Maybe that’s just a losing battle.

Would you want your daily horoscope beamed to your right eye? That’s the vision of the future I saw when I tried out the fashion magazine Elle’s app for Google Glass yesterday, one of several apps announced at the extravagant software developer love-fest the internet company puts on every year.

Smartphone Tracker Gives Doctors Remote Viewing Powers

Fri, 17 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Here’s the smartphone technology that alerts a doctor when patients are headed for trouble.

At the Forsyth Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, nurses can see into the lives of some diabetes patients even when they’re not at the clinic. If a specific patient starts acting lethargic, or making lengthy calls to his mom, a green box representing him on an online dashboard turns yellow, then red. Soon, a nurse will call to see if he is still taking his medication.

Google’s Social Network Gets Smarter

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:22:00 +0000

With dozens of new features, Google’s social network is becoming more like a photo service and a news site.

Despite the 190 million people that Google says use its social network every month, Google Plus has always struggled to escape Facebook’s shadow and seem like a hopping social destination.

Google Wants to Help Apps Track You

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:19:21 +0000

Google will help people who build Android apps follow their users around without draining too much battery life.

Google is giving mobile app creators more ways to tap into people’s activities and locations without draining too much phone battery power.

Aereo's on a Roll

Wed, 15 May 2013 16:58:48 +0000

Aereo CEO says he’s boosted by winning a round in court—and that “lines are very, very long” for his Internet TV offering, despite ABC’s new competing streaming service.

The legal battles are not over for Internet TV startup Aereo. But for now CEO Chet Kanojia, whom I had a chance to interview yesterday, says things couldn’t be better—with “very, very long” lines in markets across the United States for his streaming local TV service that has the broadcast industry in full battle cry.

Treading Carefully, Google Encourages Developers to Hack Glass

Wed, 15 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Breaking its own restrictions, Google will show developers how to build any kind of app for Google Glass.

Google has set plenty of restrictions on the functionality of apps for Glass, the head-mounted display it is now shipping out to early adopters. At the company’s annual developer conference, I/O, which kicks off today, it will show app creators how to break those rules.

Augmenting Social Reality in the Workplace

Wed, 15 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

A new line of research examines what happens in an office where the positions of the cubicles and walls—even the coffee pot—are all determined by data.

Can we use data about people to alter physical reality, even in real time, and improve their performance at work or in life? That is the question being asked by a developing field called augmented social reality.

Share-Your-Car Startup RelayRides Acquires New Hardware

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:13:32 +0000

Making it easier for people to rent their own cars could lead to growth in car sharing.

With peer-to-peer car sharing, it is getting easier and easier to get away without owning a car in a city. But one barrier to growth of these kinds of marketplaces is the need to transfer the key.

It’s Time to Talk about the Burgeoning Robot Middle Class

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:00:00 +0000

How will a mass influx of robots affect human employment?

In the book Race Against the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT’s Sloan School of Management present a chart showing U.S. productivity, GDP, employment, and income from 1953 to 2011. The chart looks as you would expect from 1953 until the mid-1980s, with every one of the measures rising together: employees work more productively, companies make more money, and more hires occur as the middle class swells.

China Comes to Silicon Valley at One Startup Accelerator

Tue, 14 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

A year after launch, a startup program is helping U.S. companies reach China—and vice versa.

When Jon Bonanno, chief commercial officer of the clean-tech startup Empower Micro Systems, got up to face a small, packed room in Santa Clara, California, last week, it wasn’t like the polished “demo days” run by the highest-profile Silicon Valley startup accelerators. There was no stage, not even a screen for the projector. The sound system buzzed with painful feedback. The 100 or so guests stood or sat in folding chairs under bright fluorescent lights in a space adjoining a large startup workplace that contained a distinct no-no of Silicon Valley office culture: cubicles.

With Personal Data, Predictive Apps Stay a Step Ahead

Mon, 13 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Apps that proactively help people with their lives represent a significant departure from earlier approaches to software.

A new type of mobile app is departing from a long-standing practice in computing. Typically, computers have just dumbly waited for their human operators to ask for help. But now applications based on machine learning software can speak up with timely information even without being directly asked for it. They might automatically pull up a boarding pass for your flight just as you arrive at the airport, or tell you that current traffic conditions require you to leave for your next meeting within 10 minutes.

Memoto Camera Logs Your Life

Fri, 10 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

A clip-on camera that snaps a picture every 30 seconds.

Logging Life with a Lapel Camera

Fri, 10 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

A startup believes people will want a photographic record of their lives, taken at 30-second intervals.

“We want to provide people with a perfect photographic memory,” says Martin Källström, CEO of Memoto. His startup is creating a tiny clip-on camera that takes a picture every 30 seconds, capturing whatever you are looking at, and then applies algorithms to the resulting mountain of images to find the most interesting ones.

Brooklyn Developer Offers Up His Personal Data on Kickstarter

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:13:39 +0000

A man data mined himself to fund an app that helps others sell their own personal data.

Software developer Federico Zannier has data-mined himself, and now he’s raising money on Kickstarter to build an iPhone app and Chrome browser extension so that others can easily do the same.

Stephen Wolfram on Personal Analytics

Wed, 08 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

The creator of the Wolfram Alpha search engine explains why he thinks your life should be measured, analyzed, and improved.

Don’t be surprised if Stephen Wolfram, the renowned complexity theorist, software company CEO, and night owl, wants to schedule a work call with you at 9 p.m. In fact, after a decade of logging every phone call he makes, Wolfram knows the exact probability he’ll be on the phone with someone at that time: 39 percent.

Has Big Data Made Anonymity Impossible?

Tue, 07 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

As the amount of data expands exponentially, nearly all of it carries someone’s digital fingerprints.

In 1995, the European Union introduced privacy legislation that defined “personal data” as any information that could identify a person, directly or indirectly. The legislators were apparently thinking of things like documents with an identification number, and they wanted them protected just as if they carried your name.

How Today’s Sensors Could Make Tomorrow’s Cars Safer

Fri, 03 May 2013 21:30:00 +0000

Sensors in cars today could do more to reduce traffic accidents, and costs are coming down.

Driverless cars haven’t hit the roads yet, but computers are already helping to slow down or stop a car in situations when a crash is imminent. Still, just like people, these systems require time to react. Using sensor technology already in its vehicles today, Toyota is aiming to reduce the impact of accidents happening at faster speeds.

Twitter Tests a Toolkit That Puts the Internet in Things

Fri, 03 May 2013 14:58:00 +0000

Platforms that combine networking with user interfaces will help companies test post-PC ideas.

Why should only computers, smartphones, and tablets be able to send a tweet? In the hopes of challenging this idea, Twitter recently developed a whimsical tweet-enabled cuckoo clock. It uses a toolkit that could help other designers and engineers test ways for new products to contribute to, and feed on, the social network’s chatter. Twitter created the clock, called #Flock, last month in partnership with London-based technology consultancy Berg; the clock responds to incoming tweets, @-messages, and retweets by animating small wooden puppets.

The Data Made Me Do It

Fri, 03 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

The next frontier for big data is the individual.

Would you trade your personal data for a peek into the future? Andreas Weigend did.

Intel's New CEO Faces a Major Challenge

Thu, 02 May 2013 22:40:32 +0000

Intel’s new chief executive must reverse the last decade of declining market share.

Intel’s new CEO Brian M. Krzanich, elected by the board today to replace retiring chief executive Paul Otellini, is a longtime Intel insider whose vision must now guide the company through a time of tumult in the computing industry.

Qualcomm Proposes a Cell-Phone Network by the People, for the People

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:25:00 +0000

Mobile network speeds in urban areas could dramatically increase if consumers connected small, public base stations to their home broadband.

Mobile chipmaker Qualcomm and some U.S. wireless carriers are investigating an idea that would see small cellular base stations installed in homes to serve passing smartphone users. That approach is believed to be a more efficient way of meeting the rising demand for data and fixing patchy coverage than building more traditional cell-phone towers.

Why Big Companies Are Investing in a Service that Listens to Phone Calls

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 11:00:00 +0000

A startup that converts conversations to text so it can offer instant information gets financing from Telefónica, Samsung, and Intel.

Would you give your wireless carrier permission to listen in on your phone calls? Telefónica, one of the world’s largest mobile carriers, is testing a technology that can understand conversations and quickly pull up relevant information. If that info turns out to be useful, customers may want to invite it to listen in.

Updating Nest: Smarter, Sexier, and Savvier than Ever

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:20:00 +0000

Bringing ordinary consumers into the pro-environmental fold is Nest’s great achievement.

Nest, the only company that has ever gotten journalists to use the words “sexy” and “thermostat” in the same sentence (see “A Smart, Sexy–Thermostat?!”), today announces a sexy thermostat software update for its sexy thermostat hardware. As the Verge and others report, Version 3.5 of Nest’s software brings data to solve a few basic problems. For one thing, the Nest thermostat is now smarter about knowing when its being directly hit by sunlight (which could lead it to think your house is hotter than it is). Nest is also getting smarter about fighting mold, automatically turning off the AC to keep things dry in periods of high humidity. And Nest’s Auto-away feature has reportedly grown stronger, too, so it’s better at saving power when you’re out of the house. Last week, Nest also announced some features that help reduce energy demand during peak periods (that only rolled out with a few partner grids).

Energy Department Backs New Way to Make Diesel from Corn

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:00:00 +0000

A novel chemical pathway could address the high cost of transporting cellulosic materials to make diesel fuel.

Within a year, a pilot plant in Indiana will start converting the stalks and leaves of corn plants into diesel and jet fuel. The plant will use a novel approach involving acid as well as processes borrowed from the oil and chemical industry, which its developers hope will make fuel at prices cheap enough to compete with petroleum.

How to Make Gas-Guzzling Vans into Efficient Hybrids

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 04:01:00 +0000

A Boston-based company shows how it converts delivery trucks and other commercial fleet vehicles into hybrids.

The Incompleteness of the Harm Principle

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:10:00 +0000

A response to Jason Pontin’s essay on free speech by the author of Principles for a Free Society.

Jason Pontin has written a perceptive analysis of a timeless question: what changes in law need to be adopted in order to account for technological advances (see “Free Speech in the Era of Its Technological Amplification”)? In answering that question, he takes the right approach by taking up John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, which at its core makes this claim:

A New Computer Screen Reaches Out to Touch You

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 21:29:34 +0000

An experimental new touch screen, the Obake, has a stretchable surface that to reacts user interaction in new ways.

An inexpensive new prototype device called the Obake adds a new dimension to touch screen technology. The surface of the device, developed by Dhairya Dand and Rob Hemsley of the MIT Media Lab, can react to how it’s being used by reaching out toward the user. It was relatively simple to make: the researchers used an open source software framework to enable the screen to react; the hardware costs between $50 and $60, Dand says.

Why Tech Companies May Really Want All Those Extra Visas

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:30:23 +0000

The shortage of workers in the IT industry may be overblown, a new study claims.

Internet and software executives are heavily lobbying for immigration reform legislation that would increase the pool of high-skilled foreign citizens who can work in the U.S., many receiving what are known as H-1B visas. They argue that a U.S. skills shortage is slowing growth in the industry. For example, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a recent a Washington Post editorial, says that each H-1B employee creates “two or three more American jobs in return.”

Google Trends Could Predict Stock Market Moves, Study Shows

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:13:52 +0000

A paper found that trading based on search query volumes for the term “debt” could yield large returns.

This week’s fleeting stock market crash prompted by a false report from the Associated Press’s hacked Twitter account has focused attention again on the growing Wall Street practice of mining news and social data to make trades.

Wanted: A Print Button for 3-D Objects

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:00:00 +0000

A lack of accessible design tools is holding back 3-D printing.

The largest companies in 3-D printing are racing to simplify design software so that it can become as easy to make an object as it is to send a document to a printer.

How Tumblr Forces Advertisers to Get Creative

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:25:05 +0000

What the blog network’s monetization plans say about the future of publishing.

Tumblr, sometimes unfairly shorthanded as the “hipster blogging service,” is now the ninth most visited site in the U.S. It’s a favorite of mobile phone users–to wit, Tumblr has even put out a dedicated app on Windows Phone 8, just this week. And yet Tumblr still isn’t profitable, six years in.

Apple’s R&D Spending Rises, But It’s Still Small Change

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:22:39 +0000

Apple plans to keep inventing new product categories without much of a boost from its cash reserves.

As its gross margins shrink and the company casts about for its next hit product categories, Apple is continuing to spend more on research and development than it has in the past (see “Can Apple Still Innovate on a Shoestring?”).

Software Predicts Which Companies Are an Easy Sell

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:53:57 +0000

A former Yahoo search engineer raises funds to bring sophisticated data mining and modeling to the business world.

A startup called Infer, led by a former Yahoo search engineer, plans to help salespeople identify potential business customers by gathering useful information from news sites and the Web. For example, marketing department job postings online might be one clue of a company’s readiness to buy marketing software.

Introduction to the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2013