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Microsoft

Should Microsoft Put Office On the iPad?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Microsoft is working on a touch-friendly version of Office for Windows 8, writes GeekWire's Todd Bishop. But what about Microsoft Office on the iPad? 'The decision,' Bishop says, 'will say a lot about Microsoft’s priorities in this new era. The company can give Windows 8 a boost if it makes Office exclusive to Windows-based tablets. But that’s also a risk. The iPad’s momentum not only in the home but in the workplace opens the door for Office alternatives to take hold on the Apple tablet, posing a challenge to Microsoft Office.' Over at Miminal Mac, Patrick Rhone feels Microsoft has bigger problems than the lack of Office apps for iOS and Android. 'Like the curtain finally falling from the Wizard of Oz to find just a small, frail, man pretending to be far more powerful and relevant than he really was,' writes Rhone, 'Microsoft’s biggest miss was allowing the world to finally see the truth behind the big lie — they were not needed to get real work done. Or anything done, really. And that will be what ultimately kills them.' Perhaps, but BusinessInsider — which finds it just can't quit Excel — also makes a case for why Microsoft should put Office on every platform. Speaking of the future of Office, did you ever notice how people use MS-Word to convince people to use Google Docs?"
Patents

Informed Consent a Must, Apple Told USPTO in 2010

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Responding to the furor over reports of no-permission-needed address book collecting by the likes of Path, Twitter, Yelp and Foursquare, Apple pledged Wednesday that 'any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.' But if you work for the USPTO, GeekWire reports, you've heard this iTune before: 'Personal information from users should be collected for legitimate and reasonable uses of the entity,' Apple told the USPTO in a pair of 2010 patent applications that were disclosed Thursday. 'Further, such collection should occur only after receiving the informed consent of the users.' Hey, if at first you don't succeed, right? BTW, by 'explicit user approval', is Apple talking about one-party consent, a la The HP Way?"
Education

Microsoft Continues Assault on Education in Washington State->

Submitted by
reifman
reifman writes "Washington State has cut more than $693 million in education funds in the last two years to offset its growing $5 billion biennial deficit. Last month, Microsoft General Counsel and Senior Vice President Brad Smith wrote in The Seattle Times that "steady declines in public resources now threaten our ability" to provide for the public education of all children but Smith didn't disclose his management of the company's lobbying efforts and Nevada tax dodge which have cost the state more tha $4.3 billion in revenues. The company has tried to discredit this blogger but recently refused to release tax data that would prove its claims. For the first time, we've published audio of Smith acknowledging and defending the company's Nevada tax dodge."
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Google

Will Google's Valentine Doodle Win Over Santorum?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "'It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be,' was the 2003 marriage quote that launched presidential candidate Rick Santorum's 'Google Problem'. So, whether intentional or not, it's kind of funny that this year's Google Valentine Day's Doodle concludes with a happy ending that is, you know, man on alien, cat on dog, man on man, princess on frog, black on white, and milk on cookie. Hey, you can't fight love. BTW, today is also special in that it marks Google's first patent-protected Valentine's Day Doodle!"
Google

Is Santorum's 'Google Problem' a Google Problem?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Fortune contributor Dan Mitchell argues that GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum's 'Google problem' isn't Google's problem at all. 'The fact that searching for 'santorum' puts the profane, anti-Rick Santorum site SpreadingSantorum.com (NSFW) at the top of Google's search results,' insists Mitchell, 'is not an example of a 'Google bomb,' despite the widespread use of that term to describe the result.' In the same camp is Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan, who also says that Santorum has a search engine problem, not a Google problem. 'It’s just that everyone fixates on Google,' Sullivan adds. Which is perhaps to be expected, since Google is the King of Search and also has ties to SpreadingSantorum creator Dan Savage, having featured the sex-advice columnist in Google's the-web-is-what-you-make-of-it Chrome ad campaign (for Savage's admirable It Gets Better Project, not SpreadingSantorum). So, considering Google's vaunted search quality guidelines, is some kind of change in order? Sullivan, while making it clear he opposes Santorum's views, nonetheless suggests Google is long overdue to implement a disclaimer for the 'Santorum' search results. 'They are going to confuse some people,' he explains, 'who will assume Google’s trying to advance a political agenda with its search results.'"
China

Travel Light to China 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes "What may once have sounded like the behavior of a raving paranoid is now considered standard operating procedure for officials at American government agencies, research groups and companies as the NY Times reports how businesses sending representatives to China give them a loaner laptop and cellphone that they wipe clean before they leave and wipe again when they return. “If a company has significant intellectual property that the Chinese and Russians are interested in, and you go over there with mobile devices, your devices will get penetrated,” says Joel F. Brenner, formerly the top counterintelligence official in the office of the director of national intelligence. The scope of the problem is illustrated by an incident at the United States Chamber of Commerce in 2010 when the chamber learned that servers in China were stealing information from four of its Asia policy experts who frequently visited China. After their trips, even the office printer and a thermostat in one of the chamber's corporate offices were communicating with an internet address in China. The chamber did not disclose how hackers had infiltrated its systems, but its first step after the attack was to bar employees from taking devices with them “to certain countries,” notably China. "Everybody knows that if you are doing business in China, in the 21st century, you don’t bring anything with you," says Jacob Olcott, a cybersecurity expert at Good Harbor Consulting. "That’s ‘Business 101’ — at least it should be.”"
Google

Sergey: In Soviet Russia, Rocket Detonates You!

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "'We were all foolish enough to go on this adventure,' Google co-founder Sergey Brin told the assembled Brainiacs at Google's Solve for X event last week, recalling the time he and Google co-founder Larry Page took their Gulfstream on a $100K journey to watch a 2008 Soyuz launch in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. 'If the rocket blows up, we're all dead,' Sergey overheard a Russian guard say. 'It was incredibly close,' Sergey continued. 'We drove in toward this rocket and there were hundreds of people all going the other way. It was really an astonishing sight. If you ever have the opportunity, I highly recommend it. It's really not at all comparable to the American launches that I've seen...because those are like five miles away behind a mountain, and the Russians are not as concerned with safety.' Sergey received film credit for the recently-opened Man on a Mission, a documentary on the Russian Soyuz mission that wound up putting Ultima creator Richard Garriott into orbit (for $30 million) instead of changing the course of Google history. BTW, with that new beard he's sporting, could a remake of 'Lenny' be Sergey's next film role?"
IBM

IBM Seeks Patent on Judging Programmers by Commits 5

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "How'd you like to be deemed unworthy of a job based upon a scan of your GitHub updates? That's what proposed in a newly-published IBM patent application for Automated Analysis of Code Developer's Profile, which proposes weeding out developer candidates for certain roles based on things like the amount of changes one typically makes with each commit, how frequently and regularly one makes commits, what hours of the day one makes commits, the percentage of commits with conflicts that one resolves, and the 'depth' of one's commit comments ('shallow', 'mid-range' or 'deep'). Big Blue explains that commit or repository interactions can be used to produce a 'conclusion report' that compares a developer to others who have profiles on the repository, which helps management 'avoid wasted time with ineffective developers."
Education

Khan Academy: Is It Different This Time?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes "Everyone from gleeful journalists to investors have anointed Khan Academy a "revolution in education",' laments Mathalicious. 'It’s not.' While conceding that 'the world is better for it [Khan Academy],' the post adds: 'We’d be equally foolish to hold it up as the panacea for all that ails education. Khan Academy is great for what it is — a supplemental resource; homework help — but we’ve turned it into something it’s not. Indeed, something it was never intended to be.' So, has Khan Academy been oversold, or are things really different this time?"

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