Links

Lesenswerte Analysen und Hintergrundberichte zu aktuellen Entwicklungen:

• Aggregation Theory „I suspect that nearly every industry will belatedly discover it has a critical function that can be digitized and commodified, precipitating this shift.“ Ja.
• Who’s Actually Buying iPods These Days? — BirchTree „iPods remain somewhat relevant amongst the very young and very old. But once again, the rise of affordable tablets has made even those markets shrink by the day. It’s hard to think the iPod line is going to do anything but continue shrink even with this refresh.“
• Reda-Report zu EU-Urheberrecht angenommen: Keine Einschränkung von Panoramafreiheit, keine Mehrheit für LSR „Zusammengenommen zeichnet sich an Hand der Abstimmung über den Reda-Report zumindest im EU-Parlament eine große Mehrheit für zumindest moderate, aber doch Reformen des EU-Urheberrechts ab.“
• Introducing Quip Desktop – Quip Blog Quip wird mittlereile von Tausenden Unternehmen benutzt. (Wir nutzen es intern bei neunetz.fm für die Podcast-Vorbereitungen. Ich bin seit Jahren begeistert.) Mit den Desktop-Apps erlangt Quip ein interessantes Rundumangebot, das Vorteile sowohl gegenüber Office als auch gegenüber Google Docs hat:“The best part of Quip Desktop is its speed. Every document opens instantly.When you’re using Quip Desktop, all your documents and messages are synced to your computer’s hard drive. So when you open a document, it opens immediately — no downloading and no waiting.“
• „Eigentum verpflichtet. Musik-Miete nicht.“ Streaming vs. Kaufen
• Why On-Demand Shipping Service Shyp Is Turning Its Couriers Into Employees | Fast Company Überraschende Entwicklung, die vor allem eins bedeutet: Shyp wird ab sofort sehr viel langsamer wachsen und expandieren.
• “EU plans to destroy net neutrality by allowing Internet fast lanes” Glyn Moody at Ars Technica UK:“In a fact sheet on the agreement, the European Commission tries to hide the reality that net neutrality is being destroyed by defining something called the open Internet : “Under today’s agreement, paid prioritisation in the open Internet will be banned. Based on this new legislation, all content and application providers will have guaranteed access to end-users in the open Internet. This access should not be dependent on the will or particular commercial interest of Internet service providers.”But running alongside this “open Internet,” on the same network, there will be “specialised services,” which are not open and where paid prioritisation is permitted: “The new EU net neutrality rules guarantee the open Internet and enable the provision of specialised or innovative services on condition that they do not harm the open Internet access.” The caveat is vague, and in practice will not prevent “specialised services” competing with those offered on the “open Internet”—the Commission mentions “internet TV” as an example of a specialised service—so large companies will be able to offer premium services at attractive prices, which startups with limited resources will find hard to match.“

  Nothing’s set in stone just yet:

  „Calling the details of the deal “blurry” and “ambiguous,” particularly on “specialised services,” Joe McNamee of the digital rights group EDRi wrote today: “This is ‘just’ a provisional agreement. First, the explanatory recitals need to be finalised. Then, the EU institutions need to decide if they are really prepared to create such legal uncertainty for European citizens and business. This will become clear in the coming weeks.”“

• Why WeWork Might Be Worth $10 Billion Ben Thompsons on WeWorks $10 Billion valuation in its newest round (paywall):“The biggest bull case for Uber isn’t simply that it replaces taxis, or even that it takes a big bite out of traditional logistics companies. Rather, it’s that Uber replaces the very concept of car ownership.It can be argued that a potentially similar seismic shift is happening with work: it’s not simply that WeWork appeals to new startups in the way that Uber appeals to tech workers in San Francisco; it’s that the economy is fundamentally transforming from the traditional big corporate model that has dominated for the last 70 years to one based on individual actors and ever-shifting worker alliances that come together to work on a specific project and then disband. In this vision WeWork’s communal aspects are not just a nice perk but in fact a fundamental part of how work gets done, and WeWork itself the best possible way to bet on this new economy’s long tail.“

  New York-based WeWork is essentially providing office space as a service. Think something similar like a coworking space (a little bit more expensive but flexible and with additional services) but by a big provider.

• Mixed tech messages from France Liam Boogar at Rude Baguette:“What I want to talk about is how France is sending mixed messages abroad.Few were aware that, at the same time as Paris was making headlines worldwide for its anti-Uber offensive – some video shots recalled all too well the 2009 Paris suburb riots, only they were happening inside of Paris – a two-day conference was going on in New York City to promote French technology abroad.“
• Perfekt Schlafen: Wie Sleepz zur Börsenhoffnung wurde „Die bmp Holding, bekannt u.a. für seine Brand Eins Beteiligung, will bzw. muss zu einer Art ECommerce Alliance (bzw. Rocket Internet) werden, nachdem die Finanzaufsicht die Regularien für reine Beteiligungsgesellschaften verschärft hat.Zu den Übernahmekandidaten zählen aufstrebende Matratzenstartups wie Bruno, die hierzulande Casper & Co. nacheifern, oder Bettenriese & Co.“
• In eigener Sache: News von Golem.de bei Xing lesen – Golem.de „Ähnlich wie bei den Nachrichtenseiten von Facebook können Verlage Artikel auf ihrer Xing-Seite veröffentlichen. Die Nutzer sehen das Vorschaubild und einen Auszug aus der Meldung. Mit einem Klick auf den Beitrag werden Leser zum Originalartikel weitergeleitet. Nutzer können Beiträge wie bei anderen Netzwerken kommentieren.Die Xing-News-Seiten gibt es für die Bereiche Marketing und Werbung, Internet und Technologie, Medien, Automobil sowie Wirtschaft und Management. Derzeit sind außer Golem.de unter anderem die FAZ, die Süddeutsche, t3n und Business Punk vertreten.“
• ReplayKit schneidet Gameplay von App-Store-Spielen mit – direkt auf dem iPhone. „Einen ersten Blick aufs neue Framework geben die letzten 22 Minuten dieser WWDC-Session: „Going Social with ReplayKit and Game Center“. Insbesondere Entwickler_innen von App-Store-Spielen sollten motiviert sein ReplayKit einzubinden, wenn so die Erfolge und Leistungen aus ihren Spielen in kurzen Clips durch Facebook und Twitter schwimmen.“
  Interessant. Das hatte ich übersehen.
• Source Rise „We connect journalists to nonprofit sources from all over the world.
  It’s simple, powerful, free PR for nonprofits.“

Die Linktipps gibt es regelmäßig Donnerstags. Sie können auf Twitter und auf App.net abonniert werden.

Lesenswerte Analysen und Hintergrundberichte zu aktuellen Entwicklungen:

• Everyone in Buenos Aires Is Communicating by Voice Memo Now | Motherboard „These messages are sent almost exclusively through WhatsApp, which has around 11 million users in Argentina. Federico Novick, who is from Buenos Aires and is doing graduate research in Internet Studies in the US, said many people in Latin America use WhatsApp instead of SMS because it’s relatively cheap.“
• Der Handel von morgen – K5 Marktausblicke 2025 | Exciting Commerce Wichtige Zahlen und Einblicke.
• „CDs are the best format in the sense that they are so worthless as physical objects“ Die Bevorzugung von Vinyl oder Papierbüchern ist materialistisch und kunstfern.
• “Software companies are leaving the UK because of government’s surveillance plans” Ars Technica UK:“The company behind the open-source blogging platform Ghost is moving its paid-for service out of the UK because of government plans to weaken protection for privacy and freedom of expression. (..)“

   

  Small independent companies from people with strong principles are only the beginning. Bigger companies will leave because being based in the UK (or the US) will cost them more and more money. Given the current reality of economic espionage being done by GCHQ and NSA I don’t see how most B2B companies will be able to be based in these countries and have clients abroad. (Especially given the fact that the UK wants to implement a law for mandatory backdoors to encrypted data.)

• Nach Taylor Swifts öffentlicher Beschwerde: Rechteinhaber werden künftig für Streams in 3 Probemonaten bei Apple Music bezahlt Sehr eigenartiges Verhalten von Apple.
• VUT: 3 Probemonate bei Apple Music ohne Lizenzzahlungen gefährdet Existenz von Musikern Sehr eigenartige Argumente vom VUT.

Die Linktipps gibt es immer Donnerstags. Sie können auf Twitter und auf App.net abonniert werden.

Lesenswerte Analysen und Hintergrundberichte zu aktuellen Entwicklungen:

• Independent Maps Startup Mapbox Raises 52.6M $Maps are only going to get more important.An independent player is important but I doubt Mapbox will stay that way for long.(It is interesting that the bidding war for Nokias HERE maps service is fierce but not as fierce as it should be given the market developments and rising importance of maps. Also: Googles microsoftiness of trying to do everything kind of killed Google maps as an option for a lot of third parties because an increasing number of companies don’t want to have a potential future competitor looking into their cards.)
• Why China is ground zero concerning city focused apps and services MarkDMill:“Getting transit directions in China was far more important for Apple than getting US transit directions. Consider just a few numbers:The US has ten cities with a population over 1 million. China has 171.The US has 34 cities with a population over 500,000.  China has 450.

  In 2014, China had 62M vehicles of all kinds registered, in a country of 1.3 billion. This is expected to reach 200M by 2020.

  Most people in China get transportation by public transit. Having a mapping service in China without transit directions would be like having one in the US without driving directions.“

  The reason why Apple with a little help by Alibaba is starting with 300 cities in China for transit directions and why for example Uber and others are going all in when it comes to China.

  China is ground zero concerning city focused apps and services.

  (Via Stratechery)

• So EU Commissioner Gunther Oettinger tells us he met just 6 lobbyists in 4 months
  Karsten Gerloff at FSFE about the public lists of meetings for the commissioner and his team:“The one for Oettinger’s cabinet (i.e. his team) looks reasonably complete. The list for the Commissioner himself, however, is a different story. Apparently, we are to believe that he has met just six lobbyists in the past four months. That would be an astounding lack of activity for the person in charge of some of the EU’s most contested policy issues: data protection, copyright reform and net neutrality.Since the Commission apparently doesn’t fully respond to informal prodding, the excellent Kirsten Fiedler over at EDRi has filed an official request for access to documents. If you, like me, are curious about what’s keeping the EU’s digital czar busy, you can follow the request at AskTheEU.org.“
• No bubble
  Insightful (US-centric) presentation by Benedict Evans of a16z on the bubble matter
• Apple Music: ~73% Ausschüttung außerhalb USA, keine Lizenzzahlungen für Trialperiode

Die Linktipps gibt es immer Donnerstags. Sie können auf Twitter und auf App.net abonniert werden.

Lesenswerte Analysen und Hintergrundberichte zu aktuellen Entwicklungen:

• For Facebook Europe is growing slowly
  Reuters: Exclusive: Facebook earns 51 percent of ad revenue overseas – executives:
  „While Europe is growing slower than the United States, the Asia Pacific region is ahead and a focus for Facebook.“
• “SpaceX founder files with government to provide Internet service from space”
  The Washington Post:
  „The plan calls for launching a constellation of 4,000 small and cheap satellites that would beam high-speed Internet signals to all parts of the globe, including its most remote regions. Musk has said the effort “would be like rebuilding the Internet in space.”If successful, the attempt could transform SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, Calif., from a pure rocket company into a massive high-speed-Internet provider that would take on major companies in the developed world but also make first-time customers out of the billions of people who are currently not online.“It is hard to overstate how large a business this could be.It is the kind of ambitious projects (don’t do it, don’t say ‘moonshot’) that is lacking in Europe.
• Spotify: 20 Mio. zahlende Abonnenten, 75 Mio. Nutzer, 3 Milliarden $ an Musiker ausgezahlt
• Apple Music ab 30. Juni auch in Deutschland verfügbar
• Spotify sammelt 526 Millionen $ bei Bewertung von 8,5 Milliarden $ ein
• Facebook With Messenger First Company After Google To Hit 1 Billion Downloads On Android
  TechCrunch:
  „Only two companies have apps with over 1 billion Google Play downloads, and the other is Google.“Facebook, the mobile wild card.
• Windows Phone grows in European markets
  Interesting statistics from market analyst Jan Dawson on Twitter: Installed base is still low in Europe, even in markets like Italy, but if these numbers stay up this could look very different in a year or two.
• “advantages of a multifunction device are obvious, the advantages of a multifunction app aren’t”
  Dr. Drang:
  „The elevator pitch is that Apple Music is three things, an attempt to tie it to the 2007 introduction to the iPhone. But while the advantages of a multifunction device are obvious, the advantages of a multifunction app aren’t. The App Store’s success is largely based on tightly focused apps, not sprawling suites.“​
• Apple Music and the question wether Apple can still say “No”
  Ben Thompson about Apples Tim Cook saying that Apple Management never just adds things for the sake of them but says constantly “no” to stay focused:
  „“That” sure sounds like Apple Music: there is this (streaming music) and that (curated lists) and this (BeatsOne radio) and that (Ping Connect) and no cogent thread to tie them together beyond the assumption that Apple must do a music service because that is what they do. That’s what big companies do.Imagine an alternate reality where the Watch had the exact same Watch face functionality (including complications), the exact same notifications and communications capabilities, the exact same performant Apple apps, the exact same unexpectedly strong battery life, but no apps beyond a promise they were “coming soon.” Surely reviewers would gripe, but with a “It’s already great, and it’s going to get better” sort of vibe. Yet Apple couldn’t bring themselves to say “no”.“Maybe it’s time for Cook to spend less time talking about how “the management team of Apple would never let that happen” and make absolutely sure that a loss of focus is not, in fact, happening.“
• Helsinki’s free, fast city-wide Wi-Fi network vs. Germany’s lack of public Wi-Fi
  Quartz on Helsinki’s free, city-wide Wi-Fi network:
  „The result is not necessarily blanket coverage, but wherever there is a building or space controlled by the city, there is Wi-Fi coverage. And it isn’t particularly expensive. Otranen says the cost is included in overall maintenance of the city’s internet and is not broken out separately, though Simo Volanen of Helsinki’s IT department estimates that the outside base stations cost some €40,000 to buy and install ($45,000) and have an annual maintenance cost of about €4,000. This does not include the cost of running the network, which Helsinki does for its own purposes in any case.The reason Helsinki is able to do this, and London or New York are not, is partly down to the way Finland is run. Finnish cities have tremendous power, including powers of taxation. Helsinki residents pay a municipal tax of 18.5% of their income in addition to national income tax. Finnish cities have the usual powers—streets, rubbish collection—but also handle things like healthcare, education, and cultural institutions. That means that their municipal footprints are much bigger than London’s, for example, where city authorities have fewer day-to-day responsibilities.“
• Newspapers “original sin” myth
  Revisionist online journalism history and the ‘original sin’ myth | yelvington.com:
  „I’ve written about this “original sin” notion before. The most charitable thing I can say about it is: This is bullshit.I was there. Here’s what really happened.Before the World Wide Web, there were dozens of newspapers online, and with maybe one or two exceptions they attempted to charge for access to content. Dave Carlson’s Online Timeline should be required reading for anyone who wants to opine about this topic.​(..)But it wasn’t newspapers leading that land rush. It was everybody else.

  Newspaper companies actually intended to implement the old paid-content model on the new Internet, and went so far as to form a consortium called New Century Network.

  ​(..)

  The World Wide Web wasn’t about newspapers. It was about everything, and in the big picture of everything, journalism – online or not – is a tiny little sliver.

  ​(..)

  The Internet was a mammal appearing at the end of the age of dinosaurs. People with big ideas were creating big things, people with little ideas were creating little things, and people with no ideas were complaining about the Internet.“

  ​It is funny how the exact same bullshit gets published in German newspapers and on their websites to this day.

• Why large US companies might become a regular exit option now for Berlin startups
  Philip Moehring makes a few arguments, among them this:
  „The amount of offshore capital large companies have, with repatriation costing anywhere between 20–40% in taxes. This is like a discount on the exit amount.“Very good point.

Die Linktipps gibt es immer Donnerstags. Sie können auf Twitter und auf App.net abonniert werden.

Lesenswerte Analysen und Hintergrundberichte zu aktuellen Entwicklungen:

• 300 million reasons for Apple software on Windows Jan Dawson on why Apple has to make software for Windows:“However, there are still several hundred million iPhone users who don’t own or use Macs on a daily basis, many of whom do use Windows PCs, either by choice or because work, cost constraints, or other reasons require them to. This Windows + iPhone group is actually substantially bigger than the Mac + iPhone group Apple has spent so much time serving, probably around three hundred million or more“
• More Thoughts on Microsoft acquiring Berlin’s 6Wunderkinder Robin Wauters on Tech.eu with more background on Microsoft buying 6Wunderkinder:“Tech.eu has also learned, and confirmed, that two of 6Wunderkinder’s early investors, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and T-Venture (previously the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom) sold all of their shares to Earlybird VC and Sequoia in secondary transactions, respectively.

  Does that mean Earlybird, Atomico and Sequoia were the only investors in 6Wunderkinder left on the cap table? No, it does not.“

• Geleakter Vertrag: SoundCloud plant werbefreie Abonnements
• Amazon Offices: Amazon baut Berlin zum Techhub aus —Exciting Commerce
• Windeln.de mit ersten Präsentationsunterlagen und Quartalszahlen —Exciting Commerce „Im 1. Quartal ist Windeln.de um 87% gewachsen und rechnet für 2015 mit einem Wachstum zwischen 70% und 80% – auf dann zwischen 172 Mio. und 182 Mio. Euro.“
• ShoCard Is A Digital Identity Card On The Bitcoin Blockchain
• Apple-Auto angeblich bis 2020 | heise online
• Hellofresh vervierfacht seine Umsätze 2014 auf 70 Mio. Euro
• A modern and Open Source Web client for XMPP | Kaiwa Eine XMPP-Alternative zu den Chatfunktionen von Slack. (Es hat natürlich nicht die Integrationen anderer Internetdienste wie Slack. Aber: XMPP hat sich enorm weiterentwickelt in den letzten Jahren. Sinnvoll für kritische interne Kommunikation. (z.B. bei der Presse))
• No Facebook Messenger for Me | Joshua Wise’s domain
• Twitter CFO Anthony Noto privately analyzes Facebook • Dustin Curtis
• Amazon Fire TV now shows on-screen info about movies and TV shows „X-Ray will be available for owners of those devices who use Amazon Instant Video to watch movies and TV shows. It accesses the data base of IMDB.com, also owned by Amazon, which displays information about said films and episodes directly on the screen when a button on the remote is used.“
• Versendet sich wieder: WDR 5 spart an seinen Podcasts „Der Sender gibt relativ viel Geld aus, um Sendungen herzustellen, und spart dann an ihrer Verbreitung. Rein rechnerisch reduzieren sich durch die Einstellung der Podcasts bei den betroffenen Sendungen die Kosten pro Ausgabe um rund 16 Euro.“
• Informationsrechtler Thomas Hoeren zur Neuregelung der Störerhaftung: „Entwurf in jeder Hinsicht unsinnig“ „Langsam wird man müde und verbittert, wenn man sich die Qualität der Gesetzgebung in Deutschland ansieht.“
• Die Störerhaftung muss weg – Telefonat mit der CSU | Freifunk Augsburg „Seitens der CSU wurde auf die Interessen der Urheberrechtsinhaber verwiesen, das jedoch mit dem Argument gekontert wurde, dass Freifunk mit dem Ziel angetreten ist freie WLANs aufzubauen und nicht das Urheberrecht zu reformieren.“
• Ways to think about market size. „In the same way, saying that you’re aiming for x% of a $ybn industry is unambitious – great companies change the y, not the x.“
• Notes on cars „Who looked at the Model T Ford and predicted Wal-Mart?“
• Sync 2.0: Skip The Cloud, Share Direct | The Official BitTorrent Blog
• House of Cards Stacks the Deck for Monument Valley’s Success Across Major App Stores – appFigures „Almost exactly 5 hours after the third season became available to watch, the game began to ascend the ranks at lightening speed.“
• The Rise of Opaque Intelligence Wenn Menschen sich nach Algorithmen richten (müssen), aber deren Ergebnisse nicht nachvollziehen können..
• Aufeminin.com to Buy Livingly Media „European Web site Aufeminin.com, owned by Axel Springer AG, said it has agreed to buy Livingly Media Inc., based in San Carlos, Calif., which publishes women’s lifestyle sites Zimbio.com, StyleBistro.com and Lonny.com.“
• Got an iPad and this app? You’ve got a second Mac screen | Gigaom Eine vergleichbare Funktion wird sicher bei iOS 9 auf OS-Ebene Einzug halten.
• “How will they make money?” is the wrong question — I. M. H. O. — Medium „In all of these cases, the primary challenge with building a large consumer company is not “how will you make money,” but “how do you get to be a long-standing durable network and define a new set of behaviors or verbs?” Once you can do that, it’s very likely you will be able to monetize at significant scale.“

Die Linktipps erscheinen immer Donnerstags. Sie können auch auf Twitter  abonniert werden.

Lesenswerte Analysen und Hintergrundberichte zu aktuellen Entwicklungen:

• Wann sehen wir die ersten 10-Milliarden-Giganten im Online-Handel? Turbulente Wachstumszeiten im Onlinehandel.
• Ad Spend in Germany May Have Passed €28 Billion in… – newnetland eMarketer quotes a report bei Axel Springer SE:“Television—by far the most lucrative sector—attracted an estimated €13.28 billion ($17.62 billion) last year, compared with €12.31 billion ($16.33 billion) in 2013.

  Another traditional medium, newspapers, retained the second-place ranking and claimed €4.75 billion ($6.30 billion) in 2014, nearly €23 million ($30.52 billion) more than the previous year. Germany’s advertisers’ rising spend on printed news titles contrasts sharply with a pattern seen in many other developed economies, where brands are increasingly shifting their focus from print to digital publications.”

  For comparison: digital ad spending is at 3.06 billion Euro according to Axel Springer.

  Either that is aggressive spinning by Axel Springer or Germany is even more averse to a digital media landscape then one might have thought.

  See comments by eMarketer for more:

  „The same applies to mobile internet ads, which we value at $1.32 billion in 2014—more than five times the figure suggested by the Axel Springer report.“

  (via @zeigor)

• Hyperloop Is Real: Meet The Startups Selling Supersonic Travel – Forbes „Money won’t be an issue. Pishevar says that once he gets liquid on his Uber stake (IPO, anyone?), he will personally fund half of Hyperloop Tech’s $80 million round. If they or any others then show results, billions will flood in. “We’re looking at the end of one civilization and the beginning of another, and this transportation infrastructure we’re building is the beginning of that new lattice,” says Pishevar, as understated as ever. “There’s no turning back.”“
• Market Monitor Q4 2014 : Big Three Mobile Phone… – newnetland Market Monitor Q4 2014 : Big Three Mobile Phone Markets Beyond China – Counterpoint Technology Market Research:Tarun Pathak of Counterpoint Research:

  „India, Indonesia and Bangladesh Mobile phone shipments approaching 100 Million units per quarter run rate as smartphone demand continue to climb in Asia beyond China.“

• Apple’s Growth Scorecard „Regardless of extreme growth, pricing power, headroom and, most importantly, customer loyalty, the company’s prospects are seen as dismal in contrast to its underperforming peers.[2]
  Such is the plight of the anomalous.“
• In search of objects – newnetland In search of objects:Benedict Evans:

  „You can also see this in the Apple Watch. Like the iPhone and the Mac before it, it represents a step in the movement of technology from something you enjoy making (or changing, or configuring) to something you enjoy using, and from something where the technical specifications were all that mattered to one where the technology is in the background and exists only to deliver some other kind of experience. A watch that lets your partner touch you on the wrist from afar is not exactly a technology product – it’s ‘just’ enabled by technology.“

• $34 Handheld Smartphone Device Diagnoses HIV and Syphilis in a Flash | Singularity HUB
• How many iOS devices did/will Apple ship? „The actual figure was 259.5 million.“
• Autonome Autos können Zahl der PKW bis zu 43 Prozent reduzieren „Sobald die Haushaltsmitglieder die Autos nicht parallel, sondern zeitversetzt (Fahrten zur Arbeit, zum Einkauf, Freizeit…) nutzen, könnte ein autonomes Auto den Zweitwagen oder gar Drittwagen leicht ersetzen.“

Die Linktipps gibt es immer Montags, Mittwochs und Freitags. Sie kÖnnen auf Twitter und auf App.net abonniert werden.

Lesenswerte Analysen und Hintergrundberichte zu aktuellen Entwicklungen:

• Die nächsten drei Milliarden-Unternehmen im Online-Handel | Exciting Commerce „Während Amazon 2015 schon über 100 Milliarden Umsatz machen wird (“Wo steht Amazon in 5 Jahren?”), haben drei weitere Online-Händler 2014 erstmals die Umsatzmilliarde erreicht: ASOS und Ocado in England und Zulily in den USA.“
• Samsung TVs start inserting ads into your movies — Tech News and Analysis „Thought you could watch that video on your local hard drive without ads? Think again: A number of owners of Samsung’s smart TVs are reporting this week that their TV sets started to interrupt their movie viewing with Pepsi ads, which seem to be dynamically inserted into third-party content.“Das ergibt businessseitig keinen Sinn für Samsung. Es ruiniert ihre Marke.
• Zur netzpolitischen Dimension (8) von »The Daily Show with Jon Stewart« | netzpolitik.org „Das in dem SZ-Beitrag von Johannes Kuhn angesprochene “popkulturelle Trauma” ist deshalb in Deutschland auch ein Beleg für die große popkulturelle Bedeutung von Piraterie. Mehr noch als bei Serien und Filmen lebt The Daily Show von der Tagesaktualität des Formats. Alles andere als unmittelbarer Zugang ist eigentlich keine Option. Mangels legalem Angebot lässt sich die weitverbreitete Trauer über ein Ende der Daily Show eigentlich nur mit der Nutzung illegaler Streaming-Portale erklären.Abgesehen davon ist das Phänomen Daily Show wohl auch mit ein Grund für den erst kürzlich von Quentin Hardy in seinem New-York-Times-Blog bemerkten VPN-Boom.“
• Apple CEO Tim Cook Speaking Live at 2015 Goldman Sachs Technology Conference – Mac Rumors Tim Cook: „I don’t believe we’ve been a hardware company for as long as I’ve been here. Our customers would feel the same. When they buy a Mac, they buy an experience with hardware, software, and services. Same with iPhone and iPad. Now financially we report services separately, and this adds up to like $18 billion for the last year. But when you think about it when we sell an iPhone, you get the experience, but we’re also selling future updates to keep that experience fresh. We don’t apportion that out, so services would actually be even higher. But because we own the whole widget and control the entire experience, everything is important. Doing them all and doing them all at a very high integrated level.“
• Box hands cloud encryption keys over to its… – newnetland Ars Technica:Today, Box says it has a new product that gets the job done. Called “Enterprise Key Management (EKM),” the service puts encryption keys inside a customer’s own data center and in a special security module stored in an Amazon data center. The Box service still must access customer’s data in order to enable sharing and collaboration, but EKM makes sure that only happens when the customer wants it to, Box says.

  When asked if the service would prevent Box from handing data over to the government, a company spokesperson said, “Unless the customer provides authorization to Box to provide the content that’s asked for, Box is prevented from sharing the content. When customers use Box EKM we are not able to provide decrypted content because we don’t have the encryption keys protecting the customer’s content.”

  A (for Box’ business) necessary and welcome development.

• Google confirms it put $900M into SpaceX’s $1B round | VentureBeat | Deals | by Harrison Weber Interessantes Investment.
• Noch ein Tor für Team Internet? Die Rolle der vernetzten Öffentlichkeit in der Debatte um Netzneutralität in den USA | netzpolitik.org „We conclude that a diverse set of actors working in conjunction through the networked public sphere played a central, arguably decisive, role in turning around the Federal Communications Commission policy on net neutrality.“
• Aquaris E4.5: Canonical bringt das erste Ubuntu-Smartphone – schubweise – Golem.de „Nach langer Entwicklung kommt endlich das erste Smartphone mit Ubuntu Phone auf den Markt. Allerdings wird das mit 170 Euro recht günstige Gerät nicht normal in den Handel kommen, sondern über zeitlich begrenzte Verkaufsaktionen erhältlich sein.“Ubuntu will kein zweites Fire Phone schaffen.
• The ingredients of a great newsletter — Fusion
• Google may lose interest in Android. Google’s… – newnetland “Google may lose interest in Android. Google’s money comes from a variety of services, such as search and Maps, that work great on all platforms, on mobile and desktop. Android may become a distraction. Google everywhere is more important than Google on Android.

  Non-Google Android, via Amazon, via China and India handset makers, may stumble upon the next big thing.

  ”
  – The Smartphone Wars Are Over. Nope. Two good points to think about.

• The networked individual – newnetland The networked individual:“Woolf’s famous line – “on or about December 1910 human character changed” – haunts the present. Sometime during the 2000s a combination of technology, broken economic life-chances and increased personal freedom changed human character all over again. From the demonstrations on Tahrir Square, to the small exam revision groups organised by women in hijabs in the coffee bars just off Tahrir Square, we are beginning to meet a new kind of person: the networked individual, with weak organisational loyalty, multiple personas and whose consciousness is produced by continual, multiplatform communication.“

  (via Fusion newsletter)

• Alibaba places China smartphone business bet with $590 million Meizu deal | Reuters Ein Spiel der Könige.

Die Linktipps erscheinen immer Donnerstags. Sie können auch auf Twitter und auf App.net verfolgt werden.

Lesenswerte Analysen und Hintergrundberichte zu aktuellen Entwicklungen:

• How did science come to speak only English? – Michael D Gordin – Aeon „In 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev almost lost credit for his development of the periodic table because he had published in Russian not German, and today publishing in a fast-paced field in anything other than English – and in anything other than a leading journal – leads to work being ignored.“
• Netflix Posts Earnings Beat, Plans More Shows | Re/code Netflix-CEO Reed Hastings: “last year our original content overall was some of our most efficient content. Our originals cost us less money, relative to our viewing metrics, than most of our licensed content, much of which is well known and created by the top studios.”
• Never trust a corporation to do a library’s job —… – newnetland Never trust a corporation to do a library’s job — The Message — Medium:“As it turns out, organizing the world’s information isn’t always profitable. Projects that preserve the past for the public good aren’t really a big profit center. Old Google knew that, but didn’t seem to care.

  The desire to preserve the past died along with 20% time, Google Labs, and the spirit of haphazard experimentation.

  Google may have dropped the ball on the past, but fortunately, someone was there to pick it up.”

• Die neuen Cryptowars und die Plattformdämmerung | ctrl+verlust „Wird die Ende-zu-Ende-Verschlüsselung in den Diensten wie angekündigt sauber implementiert – und es gibt keine Anzeichen, warum das nicht der Fall sein sollte – dann ist das der größte und wirksamste Schlag gegen die Massenüberwachung, der heute überhaupt technisch vorstellbar ist.“
• Der Maelstrom-Browser von BitTorrent macht DDoS-Attacken unmöglich | WIRED Germany „Was ist der Unterschied zu anderen Browsern? Chrome oder Firefox etwa rufen mit dem HTTP-Protokoll einzelne Internetseiten von einem Webserver ab. Maelstrom hingegen braucht keine Server, denn die Websites liegen als Torrent-Datei vor. Der Browser lädt dann die Seite dezentral aus dem Zwischenspeicher anderer Nutzer, die die gleiche Page schon einmal besucht haben. Jeder, der eine Website besucht, trägt so gleichzeitig dazu bei, sie weiter zu verbreiten.“

Die Linktipps gibt es immer Donnerstags. Sie können auch auf Twitter und auf App.net abonniert werden.

Lesenswerte Analysen und Hintergrundberichte zu aktuellen Entwicklungen:

• A Note To My Readers « The Dish „In just two years, you built a million dollar revenue company, with 30,000 subscribers, a million monthly readers, and revenue growth of 17 percent over the first year. You made us unique in this media world – and we were able to avoid the sirens of clickbait and sponsored content. We will never forget it.“
• Bad Assumptions – newnetland Ben Thompson on Bad Assumptions:“last quarter Apple’s revenue was downright decimated by the strengthening U.S. dollar; currency fluctuations reduced Apple’s revenue by 5% – a cool $3.73 billion dollars. That, though, is more than Google made in profit last quarter ($2.83 billion). Apple lost more money to currency fluctuations than Google makes in a quarter. And yet it’s Google that is feared, and Apple that is feared for.“We live in a very strange media world.
• Apple Pay Responsible for Two of Every Three Contactless Payments on Visa, MasterCard, and American Express – Mac Rumors Das Pay-Segment von iOS ist sicher.
• What the Web Said Yesterday – The New Yorker „Copyright is the elephant in the archive. One reason the Library of Congress has a very small Web-page collection, compared with the Internet Archive, is that the Library of Congress generally does not collect a Web page without asking, or, at least, giving notice. “The Internet Archive hoovers,” Abbie Grotke, who runs the Library of Congress’s Web-archive team, says. “We can’t hoover, because we have to notify site owners and get permissions.”“
• Noch mehr neue Töne zum Urheberrecht: »Harter Kopierschutz ist ein Bremsklotz« „Besonders bemerkenswert ist, dass diese Antwort auf eine allgemeine Frage nach Bremsklötzen kommt. Ergänzen ließe sich vielleicht noch die grundlegende Absurdität, dass Kopierschutz zahlende Kunden schlechter stellt als jene, die sich illegale Kopien besorgen.“
• Bonativo: Rocket nimmt Tengelmann mit 13,5% an Bord „Für Rocket Internet scheint Tengelmann der bevorzugte Partner (“Exchanges #79: Tengelmann erreicht das nächste Level”) für die angekündigte Foodoffensive zu sein.“
• Chart dump: Apple’s monster quarter Benedict Evans visualisiert Apples jüngste Quartalszahlen.
• „While building free hike calls, we kept two… – newnetland ““While building free hike calls, we kept two things in mind. Firstly, India is a very cost sensitive market and as a result we’ve ensured that our service is extremely efficient on data. It means our users can pack in many more minutes per MB when calling on hike. Secondly, we’ve made hike’s free calling service available globally in over 200 countries. Hikers from India can now speak with their loved ones in India and across the world for free.“”
  -Introducing Free Hike CallsChange is upon voice calls. Price for contracts will not change but functionality will.
• Why your big custom CMS project is doomed – One Man and His Blog „if you can retain your talent, the chances are you’ve got mediocre programmers working on your CMS, given how in-demand developers are right now.This is why pretty much every journalist I know, bar those working at Buzzfeed and Mail Online hate their CMSes with a passion.“
• Vessel Shows Off Video Service, New Interactive Ad Format | Re/code „Vessel will have hard time getting users unless it can sign up more video-makers for its service, which offers a free version and a $3-a-month one that will give people an early look at videos before they show up on YouTube or anywhere else.Part of this extended rollout is designed to attract more YouTube stars to sign on, and Vessel says they’re making progress, though most of YouTube’s biggest names remain with YouTube for now.“
• ‚Shifts‘ – Schichtplaner und Arbeitskalender – iPhoneBlog.de „In Deutschland arbeiten fast 20-Prozent durchgehend in Wechselschichten. Shifts verpackt die Dienstpläne für diese Berufe in eine zugängliche Kalenderübersicht.“

Die Linktipps gibt es immer Donnerstags. Sie können auch auf Twitter und auf App.net verfolgt werden.

Lesenswerte Analysen und Hintergrundberichte zu aktuellen Entwicklungen:

• Die Politik ist das größte Problem für die Digitalisierung der deutschen Wirtschaft | Netzökonom
• Special report: How the rise of a mega solar panel farm shows us the future of energy — Tech News and Analysis "While rooftop solar systems deliver less solar power than utility solar farms do these days, down the road that could flip and the collective capacity from rooftop solar systems could become substantially larger. When that happens, it will be a challenge for utilities to move from a centralized clean power system to a distributed one, requiring significant investment in their grids."
• Estimating G+ User Activity: 6.6 million active… – newnetland „dredmorbius“ (on Ello of all things) about Google+ User Activity:

  Summary of findings:
  There are about 2.2 billion G+ profiles total.

  Of these, about 9% have any publicly-posted content.

  Of those, about 37% have as their most recent activity a YouTube comment, another 8% profile photo changes (45% of all “active” profiles).

  Only 6% of profiles which have ever been publicly active have any post activity in 2015 (18 days so far).

  Only around half of those, 3% of active profiles, are not YouTube comments.

  That is, 0.3% of all G+ profiles, about 6.6 million users, have made public G+ post in 2015. That’s ~367,000 users posting daily if each posts only once (the actual post frequency will vary somewhat).

  (via Chris Messina)

• Zero to One summary — Medium Zusammenfassung des Buches.
• How Couchsurfing became the Friendster of the sharing economy – Gigaom
• The Next Big Thing for nxtbgthng — Medium "In general, nxtbgthng will create a framework and infrastructure to put iPads, iPod touches and Apple TVs onto walls and create apps for them. iOS devices can no longer only be used as highly personal gadgets, but are great devices for public contexts like retail spaces, home automation, as communication systems or in offices. We will do App Store apps, create customized versions, make specific enterprise applications and we will also make the foundations of our work modular and available for licensing."
• SoundCloud Launches ‚Collection,‘ Repositions As Music Streaming Destination "This improvement is a small shift for SoundCloud today, but a notable one on their projected path. 2015 is a pivotal year for SoundCloud as they work to close deals with labels and rightholders to launch a paid music service"
• The State of Consumer Technology at the End of… – newnetland The State of Consumer Technology at the End of 2014:

  "Microsoft still sells a lot of Windows licenses, and businesses especially still rely on Office. Still, it’s striking how unimportant Microsoft’s defensive move into browsers ended up being, especially when you think about…

  Google seems strong, but as I’ve written previously, there is a lot about the company that feels like Microsoft: just as Microsoft jumped into the next epoch at the OS level for defensive reasons, Google too jumped ahead, also at the OS level, and also for defensive reasons. “Free” figured prominently in both strategies, and in the long run, it’s worth considering the possibility that Google’s Android dominance will have as much long term value to the company as Microsoft’s dominance of browsers – i.e., not very much at all. Ultimately, I expect an increasing amount of Google’s energy to go towards taking away what Microsoft has left: Chromebooks versus Windows, and Google Apps versus Office

  Facebook is in a unique position: while they were started as an Internet company, they were an exceptionally young one, and have clearly made a successful jump to mobile. Their position in mobile, though, while secure, is by no means dominant, and it’s interesting that they are in fact following the Microsoft/Google playbook: both the WhatsApp and Oculus acquisitions were about securing a stake in the OS for the next epoch”

• Mixcloud Celebrates 5 Years, 6 Million Uploads "over six million shows have been uploaded to the platform by a community of DJs, radio presenters and curators 650,000 strong. 200,000 of those uploads happened in the last month alone, translating into an average of four hours of content being uploaded to the rapidly growing platform every minute."
• Why It Is Time To Make YouTube Look Less Like Spotify And More Like Pandora
• Netflix exec: we want to be everywhere in the world in five years — Tech News and Analysis
• Europe introducing artificial barriers – newnetland Julia Reda, member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party on the shuttting down of Google News in Spain and the new ancillary copyright law in Spain:

  At a time when it has never been easier to deliver data to a huge global audience, a number of countries are introducing artificial barriers to content and to tools that allow its discovery.

• Facebook now has 4 products with more users than… – newnetland Good point by Kurt Wagner regarding Instagrams 300 million monthly users:

  Also, Facebook now has four products with more users than Twitter (284M): FB (1.35B) WhatsApp (600M) Messenger (500M) Instagram (300M)

• Politico & Axel Springer buy European Voice,… – newnetland Politico & Axel Springer buy European Voice, rebrand it as Politico in spring 2015:

  POLITICO & Axel Springer Announce Joint Acquisition of European Voice – POLITICO Press Release:

  POLITICO and Axel Springer, the owners of the POLITICO joint venture in Europe, announced today that they have acquired EUROPEAN VOICE and will rebrand the respected Brussels publication as POLITICO in the spring of 2015.

  Bad news for Europe. Axel Springer, a big German publisher of among others the popular tabloid ‘Bild’, is the leading force behind the ‘Leistungsschutzrecht’. That is an ancillary copyright intended to make Google pay press publishers for showing snippets in search results and on Google News and got introduced last year.

  Axel Springer is very aggressive in every imaginable way. (except for the innovative kind) Due to the popularity of Bild they have a lot of power in Germany. Expect them to try to influence the EU to very hardly regulate Google and other US tech giants.

  It will be interesting to see wether Politico will allow that kind of instrumentalisation of the publication. The relationship could easily become contengious over this. Because while Politico does this to extend its business, Axel Springer does it to extend its power in the EU.

• Apple should review App Review – newnetland Apple wants to enrich iOS by giving apps more ways to interact and present themselves on the platform. Extensions, the widgets, the new file approach. But this, this or this shows that Apple is quite unsure how to approach this change in their control of iOS. Or, to be more precise, they seem to want to expand the platform possibilities but at the same time keep control of the direction(s) all this is going in.

  The ‘today view‘ is for ‚viewing‘ what is going on ’today’. No matter that you can do more, that developers did more and that users wanted more. Or that Apple did not explicitly say you can not do way more than that.

  The problem is not that Apple doesn’t seem to want the richness that is possible, for whatever reason. The problem lies, as John Siracusa articulated very well on the recent episode of ATP, with the fact that Apple seems to be unable to articulate beforehand what exactly they allow developers to do and what direction it is they expect all this to go. This leads to invested time and energy by developers that now got wasted. ‚They‘ -big and small third-party-developers- don’t forget that. New features on iOS will not be as exploited as they could be going forward. That is unfortunate for the platform. (and hence everyone involved; Apple, devs, users)

  Apple won’t loose developers other this. The current mobile platforms are different enough to not have this kind of repercussions. But iOS is loosing potential apps. The tension between Apple as the platform provider and its developers should go down not up.

  It will be interesting to watch how Apple will handle this going forward. iOS will become more and more complex and richer with possibilities with the arrival of the Apple Watch and the integration of Smart Home devices and more.

  They can not expect to keep a close eye on every corner of their emerging super platform. The future of iOS is just too complex (and so the needed guidelines). And App Review doesn’t look right now like it can scale well. If they still try they might seriously hinder innovation on iOS.

• Epic’s Unreal game engine is the premier game… – newnetland “Epic’s Unreal game engine is the premier game development software for professional game studios. And starting last year, anyone can get access to their software (previously $100,000 per license) for a measly $20/month, plus 5% gross sales. On the surface, this seems insane and unsustainable considering the hundreds of man-years that go into its development. Epic isn’t crazy, they just remembered the cardinal rule of professional tool building: your customers use your product to make money. So instead of charging a massive up-front fee, they encourage customers to explore their toolset and build whatever they want. If you make a hit game, Epic makes their money. This approach is proving effective for Epic, particularly in next-gen consoles where it’s been difficult for indie game developers to make inroads.”
  – Professional App Pricing
• 10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy – Business Insider Das Bild zeigt die Folge von Distribution im stationären Handel. Wer Hunderte Produkte herstellt, kann besser über Regalpositionen verhandeln. Oder die Position ist gleich egal, weil das ganze Regal voll mit den eigenen Pseudokonkurrenz-Produkten ist. Die Regallosigkeit des Internets ändert das natürlich zwangsläufig.
• My Computer Language is Better than Yours "Not a single developer I talked to for this piece felt strongly that the new wave of programming languages represents a competitive power play on the part of the companies sponsoring them. Instead, they point out, every new language begins as an obsessional seed in the brain of an individual or small group: This has always bugged me. We can do better. Anyway, it takes patience and effort to learn a new coding language; developers choose carefully. Says Payne: “What I look for more when picking a new language is the other people who are flocking to that language — because those are the people you’re going to be dependent on for libraries, for documentation. You want to know if you’re moving into the right town, I guess.”"
• Anhörung im Bundestag: Experten zerpflücken das Leistungsschutzrecht – Golem.de ""Katastrophe, Schmerzpunkt, völliger Quatsch": Urheberrechtsexperten fordern einhellig die Abschaffung des Leistungsschutzrechts. Aber auch auf vielen anderen Gebieten sehen sie Reformbedarf."
• Charted
• Netzneutralität oder: Wie eine Debatte richtig falsch läuft | Falk Steiner
• The Cable Model and The Internet Model
• Making Makers Mainstream
• SE Android: In Lollipop wird das Rooten schwer – Golem.de "SE Linux in Android ist nicht neu. Seit 2012 wird das von Linux übernommene Sicherheitsframework speziell an Android angepasst und trägt sogar einen eigenen Namen: Security Enhancements für Android. Maßgeblich an der Entwicklung beteiligt ist unter anderem die NSA, die auch das ursprüngliche SE Linux entwickelt hat. Später wurde es von Red Hat weiterentwickelt und bereits 2003 offiziell in den Linux-Kernel integriert. Nicht alle Linux-Distributionen setzen es aber ein. Es gibt ähnliche Frameworks, etwa Apparmor, das von Canonical in Ubuntu verwendet wird."
• Non-Microsoft Nokia launches Android N1 tablet with Foxconn — Tech News and Analysis "The industrial design for the N1 came from Nokia, but the company is no longer in the manufacturing business and has licensed that design — along with its Z Launcher and various intellectual property — to Chinese manufacturer Foxconn, which rather interestingly will handle distribution and sales and customer care, and will even be responsible for liabilities and warranty costs."
• The Nexus 10, Lollipop, and the problem with big Android tablets | Ars Technica "The Nexus 10 actually runs Lollipop just fine—it's still an attractive-looking OS and performance is as good as it was in KitKat. It's just that there aren't many reasons to use an Android tablet with a screen this large, and if Google isn't willing to make its redesigned OS and apps work great on these big widescreen tablets, why should other developers bother?"
• The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase’s Worst Nightmare | Rolling Stone
• Breitbandausbau: Wie viele Nutzer unter einer lahmen Internetanbindung leiden – Golem.de "Massiv gestiegen ist demnach die Zahl derjenigen, die für die schlechte Internetversorgung die Regierung verantwortlich machen. Für 48 Prozent der Befragten zählt schnelles Internet inzwischen zur staatlichen Grundversorgung, ähnlich wie Strom oder ein Telefonanschluss. Vor einem Jahr waren es 40 Prozent, die dem Internet eine derart elementare Rolle zuschrieben."
• Facebook IQ | Real Life. Real Insight. Real Action.
• gloveler-Blog » Blog Archive Zweckentfremdungsverbot für Wohnraum – gelbe Karte für Privatvermieter – gloveler-Blog "Dabei geht es dem Dehoga, dem Lobbyverband der Hotelindustrie, nicht um bezahlbare Mieten; Hoteliers sehen vielmehr ihren Profit bedroht, da immer mehr Menschen privat übernachten. „Damit geht der Hotellerie rund ein Viertel der jährlich rund 370 Millionen Übernachtungen in Deutschland verloren“, beschwert sich Willy Weiland [9], Präsident des Dehoga."
• I’m Terrified of My New TV: Why I’m Scared to Turn This Thing On — And You’d Be, Too
• Zalando veröffentlicht Liste der Kursmanipulationen im ersten Börsenmonat | Exciting Commerce "Interessant zu sehen, wie der Kurs am ersten Tag hochgehalten wurde, um den Börsengang von Rocket Internet nicht zu gefährden."
• „In several months of reporting on Uber, I have… – newnetland “

  "In several months of reporting on Uber, I have yet to come across a single driver earning the equivalent of $90,766 a year. Those I’ve spoken with report that they gross around $1,000 a week after commission and sales tax—but before gas and other expenses—for annual income closer to $50,000. And despite broadcasting the $90,766 figure far and wide, Uber has so far proved unable to produce one driver earning that amount."

  ”
  – Uber driver salary: The ride-sharing company says its drivers make great money, but its math just doesn’t add up.

• App (S)teuer – brand eins online "Der Axel-Springer-Verlag hat bereits reagiert und alle kostenlosen digitalen Ausgaben für seine Printabonnenten eingestellt. Der »Spiegel« nimmt pro digitaler Ergänzung wieder einen Aufpreis von 50 Cent von seinen Abonnenten. Einige Buchverlage haben ihre E-Book-inside-Programme gestoppt. Auch zahlreiche Schulbücher werden künftig ohne digitale Version angeboten werden."
• Ubering While Black — Matter — Medium "But we also agree that the quality of our lives improved tremendously once we found a workaround to dealing with rude and racist cab drivers. There’s an “emotional cost” to those kinds of interactions, she said, and “Uber offers the path of least resistance.”"
• Markua
• Next Lock Screen Adapts Notifications and Shortcuts to Where You Are Microsoft baut einen Lockscreen für Android. Und es sieht interessant aus.
• Daring Fireball: The iPad Air 2 (And a Few Cursory Words Regarding the iPad Mini 3) "In short, I don’t think performance is any longer a reason to buy a MacBook Air instead of an iPad Air. The choice comes down to form factor and personal preference."
• The End Of Apps As We Know Them – Inside Intercom "It may be very likely that the primary interface for interacting with apps will not be the app itself. The app is primarily a publishing tool. The number one way people use your app is through this notification layer, or aggregated card stream. Not by opening the app itself.

  In a world where notifications are full experiences in and of themselves, the screen of app icons makes less and less sense. Apps as destinations makes less and less sense. Why open the Facebook app when you can get the content as a notification and take action — like something, comment on something — right there at the notification or OS level."

• The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed | WIRED "So companies like Facebook and Twitter rely on an army of workers employed to soak up the worst of humanity in order to protect the rest of us. And there are legions of them—a vast, invisible pool of human labor. Hemanshu Nigam, the former chief security officer of MySpace who now runs online safety consultancy SSP Blue, estimates that the number of content moderators scrubbing the world’s social media sites, mobile apps, and cloud storage services runs to “well over 100,000”—that is, about twice the total head count of Google and nearly 14 times that of Facebook."
• Amazon is doing the world a favor by crushing book publishers – Vox "After all, imagine a world in which publishers were good at marketing books. Then it would be almost trivial for Hachette to get what it wants out of Amazon. It could just not sell its books on Amazon! Unlike in the old days when it might have been inconvenient for someone who lived in a town with a Borders but no Barnes & Noble to go get a book that Borders didn't sell, it's trivially easy to click on some non-Amazon website to order a book. But you do need a customer who actually wants to buy the book."
• This study finds that social media use reduces political polarization instead of increasing it » Nieman Journalism Lab "Social media encourages connections between people with weak ties — not just your best friends, for instance, but also your high school classmates, that guy you met on a business trip who friended you, and the local guy you heard was funny on Twitter. Those people tend to be “more politically heterogeneous than citizens’ immediate personal networks,” which exposes you to more perspectives, not fewer."
• Digital Ad Revenue Hits $23 Billion In First Half Of 2014 10/21/2014 "The report, prepared by PwC US, estimates that search revenue rose 4% to $9.1 billion compared with the first half of the year in 2013. Mobile revenue rose 76% to $5.3 billion. Mobile search contributed $2.7 billion, mobile display contributed $2.5 billion, and other mobile media contributed $103 million."
• Daring Fireball: Apple Q4 2014 Quarterly Results "Year over year, iPhone sales were up (39M from 34M), iPad sales down (12M from 14M), and Mac sales were way up (5.5M from 4.5M)."
• Microsoft: We’ve Always Had Freemium, It’s Called Piracy "“Well, we’ve always had freemium. Sometimes our freemium was called piracy,” Nadella reveals."
• Twitter’s “peace offering” to developers is meaningless – Marco.org "Twitter is never happy being Twitter, and it seems at times that its leadership doesn’t realize or doesn’t value what makes it so great. (Ever wonder why there’s so much leadership turnover?) And they’re now under the financial pressures of being a high-profile public company. It’s a powder keg."
• The iPad’s Future "And liberation from the password or, more important, from lazy security, isn’t limited to IT-controlled environments. I hear from normal humans that they love the Apple Pay + Touch ID combination for their online shopping, an activity that was previously more convenient on a conventional PC."
• How Facebook and Google Now Dominate Media Distribution
• Amazon: it’s not the power, it’s the lost focus "My point is this. First, this is not the sort of customer service we get from evil monopolies. Second, it is the sort of customer service we get from a company that always puts its customers first. What a shame, therefore, that in the dispute with Hachette, Amazon has chosen another path — away from relentlessness. That’s why we should be upset not appealing to issues of antitrust concerns."
• Drafts 4 Review – MacStories Drafts 4 ist ein schönes Beispiel für das, was auf iOS 8 jetzt möglich geworden ist.
• The new anti-censorship tool in China: Evernote
• The News According To Nuzzel
• This new “Apple SIM” could legitimately disrupt the wireless industry – Quartz "A more compelling, user-friendly scenario might see your phone number and crucial services—messaging, voicemail, etc.—tied to your Apple SIM, and a vibrant marketplace where carriers compete for your business. This is already sort of what Apple is about to offer for the iPad."
  Nicht auf der Bühne erwähnt, weil das noch nichts ist, was in einer öffentlichen Debatte zu sehr Aufmerksamkeit erhalten darf. Keine guten Nachrichten für Mobilfunkanbieter. Sehr gute Nachrichten für alle anderen.
• CC gegen CC: Auftragskomponisten gegen Creative Commons in der ARD | netzpolitik.org "In einem Punkt haben die Briefschreiber des Composers Club Recht: CC-Lizenzen dürfen nicht zu Vergütungs-Dumping genutzt werden. Statt diesbezüglich eine Klarstellung einzufordern, ergeht sich das Schreiben aber in einer endlosen Liste an Halb- und Unwahrheiten. Wie sonst auch von Seiten der Urheberrechtslobby wird mit Vorliebe gegen Forderungen argumentiert, die niemand erhoben hat."
• Friedenspreis für Lanier: Auf einen “Blender” reingefallen? | Daniel Bröckerhoff "Auch in den Filmen der Kollegen von Tagesthemen und Heute Journal fehlt die Kritik an Lanier. Das ist für öffentlich-rechtliche Nachrichten mindestens bedauerlich, wenn nicht ein schwaches Bild.

  Genau wie in der FAZ, der Deutschen Welle, auf den HR-Sonderseiten zur Frankfurter Buchmesse, bei der WELT: Kein Wort über die Kritik, die bereits vor 4 Monaten von vielen Seiten geäußert wurde.

  Dass es auch anders geht, zeigt DRadio Kultur, in dem es Christoph Kappes interviewte, der mit Sascha Lobo gerade ein neues Buch-Portal gegründet hat.  Im Gespräch sagt er: “Lanier ist nicht das, was man ihm nachsagt” und man zeige eine “Unkenntnis des Preisträgers, den man ausgewählt hat”."

• Yannick Haan – Apocalypse Now! (und warum die Digitalisierung nicht das Ende der Welt bedeutet) "Wenn sich aber eine politische Debatte komplett von der Realität von Millionen von Menschen entfernt, dann wird sie im besten Fall nicht mehr wahrgenommen. Im schlimmsten Fall führt sie zu weiterer Politikverdrossenheit. Anstatt pseudo-intellektuellen Autoren immer und immer zuzuhören und ihre Worte zu wiederholen wird es Zeit endlich mal wieder den Millionen Menschen zuzuhören die das Internet alltäglich nutzen und die Digitalisierung wirklich formen."

Die Linktipps gibt es immer Donnerstags. Sie können auch auf Twitter und auf App.net verfolgt werden.