72527493
submission
bizwriter writes:
Companies are trying to get around EEOC restrictions on age-discriminatory language (like "recent college graduate") by saying that they want "digital natives." So far, no one has complained to the EEOC, but that could change.
70532455
submission
bizwriter writes:
University of Oxford researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne estimated in 2013 that 47 percent of total U.S. jobs could be automated and taken over by computers by 2033. That now includes occupations once thought safe from automation, AI, and robotics. Such positions as journalists, lawyers, doctors, marketers, and financial analysts are already being invaded by our robot overlords.
60275189
submission
bizwriter writes:
General Motors put together its take on a George Carlin list of words you can't say. Engineering employees were shown 69 words and phrases that were not to be used in emails, presentations, or memos. They include: defect, defective, safety, safety related, dangerous, bad, and critical. You know, words that the average person, in the context of the millions of cars that GM has recalled, might understand as indicative of underlying problems at the company. Oh, terribly sorry, "problem" was on the list as well.
45965097
submission
bizwriter writes:
If innovation is fascinating and has enormous implications for business, reading patent applications themselves will make most people's eyes glaze over. But every now and then something quirky happens. Take this attorney who, angry over a patent examiner's rejection of his client's application, wondering if the examiner is drunk or just mentally slow.
30193621
submission
bizwriter writes:
A patent filing made public last week suggests that Google may be trying to implement a motion-detection interface, like Microsoft Kinect. The patent application is for technology that turns a mobile device's camera into a motion-input system. In other words, it could be goodbye to fingerprints and streaks on the front of your tablet or smartphone. Google could incorporate such a feature into Android in general or keep it as a differentiating advantage for its acquisition of Motorola.
27293692
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27075416
submission
bizwriter writes:
A new patent for Amazon just put the company squarely in the location tracking controversy. It covers a system to not only track, through mobile devices, where individuals or aggregated users have been, but determine where they're likely to go next to better target ads, coupons, or other messages that could appear on a mobile phone or on displays that individuals are likely to see in their travels. The system could also use someone's identity to further tailor the marketing according to demographic information.
24491162
submission
bizwriter writes:
Apple has spared no effort in trying to injure its arch mobile rival through the courts, like blocking Android vendors from important markets through patent and trademark infringement suits. Now it’s developing an additional angle: an attempt to patent in-application purchases from third parties, as an application filed on April 26, 2010 and made public on Thursday made clear.
22999860
submission
bizwriter writes:
In a stunning and painful decision for Samsung, Apple (AAPL) got a German court to issue a preliminary injunction against the Galaxy Tab. According to patent analyst and blogger Florian Mueller, that means Samsung cannot for the time being sell its tablet in the entire European Union, except for the Netherlands.
22495240
submission
bizwriter writes:
An amended S-1 filing for Zynga’s eventual IPO offers details of its relationship to Facebook. There’s plenty of interesting stuff there in the open, but some partially redacted sections hint at why Zynga is so dependent on Facebook as a channel to get to its market — and why Facebook doesn’t deploy its own games.
22035532
submission
bizwriter writes:
Zynga finally filed its IPO paperwork today, as it wants to raise $1 billion. And while the reports of how well it did were significantly overstated, this is a company that still makes significant revenue and profit. If you thought that the LinkedIn’s (LNKD) IPO was hyped and hyper, Zynga’s going to put that all to shame.
21980336
submission
bizwriter writes:
Facebook has been on a roll of late, nailing a number of patent grants that will help it retain dominance in social networking by creating barriers for competitors. Yesterday came patent number 7,970,657, Giving gifts and displaying assets in a social network environment. Although it doesn't directly prevent other social networks from enabling gift giving among users, a clever legal and technical maneuver makes it far more difficult.
21507286
submission
bizwriter writes:
Google announced that it will support authorship HTML tags, a way to associate Web content with the individuals who create it. Suddenly, search engines know when one person was responsible for a body of work, no matter where content appears on the Web. If Google incorporates this into page relevance and ranking, as it is considering, the result could change the balance of power between those who create and those who publish.
21357456
submission
bizwriter writes:
Google has moved beyond investing and using solar power and has started on serious R&D work in the area. It's first patent application in solar energy technology just became public, and the company is staffing a new R&D group "to develop electricity from renewable energy sources at a cost less than coal" at "utility scale."
21009694
submission
bizwriter writes:
Facebook has done well with the Friendster patents and patent applications that it acquired. Just last week, a patent application for passing personal info between users based on degrees of separation became public. Now, thanks to the Friendster IP purchase, Facebook pretty much owns the technology for publicly identity-tagging digital media of any sort in a database.
