http://www.informationweek.comInformationWeeken-usCopyright 2012, UBM LLC.2013-05-16T15:03:00ZAt Google I/O, Google arrived late to the music party and did not have enough to say about vertical industries and mobile commerce.http://www.informationweek.com/software/productivity-applications/google-io-3-misses/240155061?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/google-apps-to-microsoft-office-365-10-l/240154989"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/993/GoogleApps_Office365_01_tn.jpg" alt="Google Apps To Microsoft Office 365: 10 Lessons" title="Google Apps To Microsoft Office 365: 10 Lessons" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Google Apps To Microsoft Office 365: 10 Lessons</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> After day one of Google I/O, I identified a few <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/productivity-applications/google-io-3-hits-up-close/240155039">clear wins for Google users</a>. Here's a look at the flip side. <P> In these three areas, Google didn't shine: <P> <strong>1. Google Play Redesign; New Music Service</strong> <P> Google has revamped its Play store. Much of this is based on making the store more personal, and once again this personalization is fed by Google+. Since I've only bought a few things on Google Play (beyond Android apps), and my Google+ social graph isn't all that robust, Play's recommendations for me were off the mark. I suspect it will get better in time. <P> But Google also added Google Play Music All Access, which combines your acquired music (uploaded into, or acquired from Google Play Music) with a brand new subscription service ($9.99 per month. Google is offering it for $7.99 per month, if you take the 30-day free trial, before the end of June). With free services like Pandora, and paid services like Spotify, Google is, again, a bit late to this party. <P> It's difficult to provide a recommendation after a very limited experience using All Access, but so far I like it. The ability to combine music I like with new music discovery, and then customize that discovery by eliminating or re-ordering tracks was a vast improvement over other services. I also liked that I could create a radio station based on a track I was enjoying. <P> Google worked with the major record labels to create a library with more than a million tracks. There's an Explore feature that provides recommendations powered by experts. There's so much to discover here, I've only scratched the surface. "Radio without rules," announced Chris Yerga, Google's Android engineering director. <P> This one is a miss not because it's lacking as a service. It's just that being late to the game puts Google at a disadvantage. <P> <strong>2. Vertical Industries Get Short Shrift</strong> <P> Since Sundar Pichai, Google's senior VP of Android, Chrome & Apps brought it up ... one of the things professionals love about their Apple devices is access to some superb applications. Pichai highlighted Google's work in education, but he admitted that Google's journey here really starts with students and teachers using Google Apps. Pichai bragged that seven out of eight Ivy League schools were running Google Apps (Dartmouth is the lone holdout). But Google is investing more in education, hoping to get more students outfitted with tablets or Chromebooks. <P> Pichai also announced Google Play for Education. It is organized by subject categories and grade levels, and includes a variety of applications with recommendations from educators. <P> The problem for Google, again, is that <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/apples-education-phenomenon-ipad/240145351"> Apple has a big head start and is killing it in U.S. schools</a>, breaking its own sales records in that vertical market. Apple even hosts its own education event, and there's an independent <a href="http://ipadsummitusa.org/"> iPad Summit for the education market</a>. <P> Similarly, developers have created some killer applications for medical professionals, and it's difficult to find a doctor who doesn't rely heavily on an iPad or iPhone. <P> While it's good that Google is addressing this shortcoming, Google Play for Education will make only a small dent. <P> <strong>3. Where's The Commerce?</strong> <P> After much fanfare around mobile commerce, the dominant mobile platform (Android) has an empty wallet so far. If Google plans to know all of our habits and obsessions, there's no better (or more lucrative) avenue to that knowledge than what we purchase. Because Google Wallet is still in its infancy, it probably doesn't come as a shock that there weren't any big moves at I/O around the product. But that's disappointing. <P> Google did have several payment sessions for developers, and I sat in on one that provided some instruction on linking loyalty programs into Google Wallet. Also, Google did make two somewhat understated announcements. First, it added an <a href="http://googlecommerce.blogspot.com/2013/05/fast-and-easy-checkout-for-android-apps.html"> Instant Buy API</a>. This provides signed-in users the ability to simply select Google Wallet without providing any additional information (like shipping and billing). <P> Second, Google added <a href"http://googlecommerce.blogspot.com/2013/05/send-money-to-friends-with-gmail-and.html">Google Wallet functionality to Gmail</a>, which will let you e-mail money. This does not work from mobile devices yet, only from Gmail on the desktop; the recipient doesn't need to have Gmail, but needs Google Wallet. <P> Although all of these are welcome enhancements, we need to see more merchants and partners buy into Google Wallet. If Google is going to put its weight behind ideas like anticipatory search, conversational user experiences and social connective tissue between services, then Google Wallet must go there, too.2013-05-16T13:18:00ZGoogle Maps, Search and Google+ changes stand out among news announced at Google I/O thus far. Take a closer look.http://www.informationweek.com/software/productivity-applications/google-io-3-hits-up-close/240155039?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/google-apps-to-microsoft-office-365-10-l/240154989"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/993/GoogleApps_Office365_01_tn.jpg" alt="Google Apps To Microsoft Office 365: 10 Lessons" title="Google Apps To Microsoft Office 365: 10 Lessons" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Google Apps To Microsoft Office 365: 10 Lessons</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> The opening keynote at Google I/O began and a developer conference broke out. <P> The only honest-to-goodness new product Google unveiled at its annual developer conference was Google Play Music All Access, a subscription-based Spotify competitor. There wasn't a new Motorola phone, nothing like Google TV or Nexus Q or Google Glass, no new tablets, nor skydiving co-founder ... just one, Google CEO Larry Page, who finally spoke after more than a year of speculation about his health. <P> Despite the lack of glitz, Google managed to shine brightly. On one hand, the company made most of its core products better, with sometimes profound and promising enhancements. On the other hand, Google continued its quest to be the company that collects and manages the world's data, making it all more useful. <P> <strong>[ A new Android version did not materialize. See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/business/google-io-wheres-android/240155015">Google I/O: Where's Android?</a> ]</strong> <P> Developers are a crucial accelerant for Google. Many of the company's technologies are, after all, services as much as they are products. The more developers exploit Google Maps, Google+, Google Drive, Google Wallet and other Google services through APIs, the richer those services become. Consider that more than 1 million websites use Google Maps, and that exposes Maps to more than 1 billion people every week -- a number that easily surpasses visits to native Google Maps alone, according to Google Maps VP Brian McClendon. <P> I spent a little time with some of the new enhancements just to get a feel for what's in store. Take a closer look at three highlights: <P> <strong>1. Google Maps Rethought</strong> <P> Google has the world's dominant mapping service, thanks to years of data discovery through Street View trucks, a variety of crowdsourced data, and aerial imagery, which is especially useful for 3-D geometry. <P> Now, Google has redesigned Maps. "The map is the user interface," said Maps lead designer, Jonah Jones. That's an apt description. Zoom in or out on the map as you normally would, or just start clicking on destinations on the map. Or type a destination in the search bar, which quickly turns into an information-packed card. For instance, I searched for parks in Colorado, and dozens of them were populated on the map. I could even filter my search by getting recommendations from experts or friends, from my Google+ Circles, naturally. (This will likely limit the amount of useful data I get from this feature since my Circles aren't as lively as either my Twitter or Facebook connections). I could even narrow my search to dog parks. <P> The map displays content-rich pins that provide deeper information, some of it available simply by hovering, then more in-depth via selecting the item. Further exploration reveals immersive images (user generated -- with some you can actually tour the inside of a landmark building), street views and more. Getting directions layers various routes (depending on mode of transportation) right onto the map. Maps includes transit routes and schedules, and even puts the schedule into a Google Calendar view right on Maps. (I couldn't seem to make this present itself, but Google showed it off in its demonstration.) <P> The map can discover new places, and lets you explore a geographic area based on categories, like restaurants or cafes. Maps can create a customized experience, adapting to what you do, Jones said. <P> A new Google Maps for mobile (iOS and Android) is also in the works, and will have similar features. It will include the ability to rate destinations, swipe through result sets and Zagat information on restaurants. It will offer live incident alerts, better routes and re-routing around incidents, said Daniel Graf, Google's director of Maps. <P> To get the new Maps, you need to <a href="maps.google.com/preview">request an invitation</a>. <P> <strong>2. Google Search Gets Smarter</strong> <P> It's "the end of search as we know it," proclaimed Amit Singhal, Google's senior VP and Google Fellow. Last year at Google I/O, the company unveiled Google Now, with the promise that it would become your mobile digital assistant, answering questions, following your personal interests and travel habits, and anticipating your needs. It was a start. <P> As we all use Google services, Google Search learns. And it learns not just about people, places and things, Singhal said, but the relationships among them. The Google knowledge graph can anticipate your informational needs. Singhal demonstrated how a search for the population growth of India can also provide a comparison to the population growth of China and the U.S., which tends to be the next thing people want to know. <P> You should be able to ask Google for information on your upcoming flights, or a package that is about to arrive, or even vacation photos, Singhal said. But you should also be able to simply converse with it using both natural language and voice recognition. Google VP Johanna Wright demonstrated a concept known as "hotwording," where a spoken phrase ("OK Google") awakens it to voice-provided search query. Wright demonstrated the exploratory aspects in Maps, asking Google for things to do in Santa Cruz, Calif., calling up directions and so on. As Wright conversed with Google, it provided spoken answers. <P> Google Now will get public transit cards, and cards for media based on your perceived interests (music, TV, books, video games). You can also set reminders through Google Now. These new features haven't started showing up for me yet, so I wasn't able to test them. <P> The power of conversational, anticipatory search is exciting, to be sure. And the ability to tap into other Google services on a personalized basis is incredibly helpful, but getting the most out of Google Now, and Google search generally, requires using more Google services -- Google Calendar, Maps, Play, Wallet, Activity Recognition and so forth. Are consumers willing to let Google's applications and services see deep into their activities and obsessions? <P>Google is bound and determined to make Google+ matter more. For now, it's third in a three-horse race, but that hasn't stopped the company from making improvements, starting with a multi-column design that presents more content. The goal: "Design and depth," said Google's senior VP of engineering, Vic Gundotra. The menu of options slides in and out; cards flip and fade. <P> Google is adding the concept of hashtags to Google+ entries, and Gundotra said that these are automatically generated. (I'm still seeing plenty of cards without hashtags; Gundotra said that users can disable this feature, or correct it.) The hashtags are used not just to search content, but to explore it. The tags are displayed on the cards, and when you select one, the card flips, revealing more content around the tag; you can flip through various related posts. This is the "depth" part of the "design and depth" concept. <P> Google also spun out Hangouts, a video-chat service that was one of the most useful Google+ features. Now Hangouts will become Google's messaging app, essentially replacing Google Talk, but combining video, presence and group communication features. It will work on Android and iOS, as well as in the Chrome browser and directly from Gmail. The first thing you'll notice is that Hangouts starts with a list of conversations. It's easy to add people to the conversations, to switch from text to video, to add photos. Conversations can also be saved and stored in the cloud. (See this related article on The Verge for <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4318830/inside-hangouts-googles-big-fix-for-its-messaging-mess">a deeper dive into the evolution of Hangouts</a>.) <P> Finally, Google has enhanced the Google+ photo features, promising that the company's technology will take over labor-intensive photo enhancing tasks. For one thing, it includes a Highlights function that uses a variety of filters to display your most important photos, based on aesthetic quality, affinity (it recognizes who is important to you) and more. I don't have many photos in Google+, so I uploaded as many as I could and found that the Highlights did a reasonably good job of selecting photos, although it wasn't clear how I could instruct Google+ to filter differently. I also suspect that affinity is based on Google+ Circles, and there just isn't enough data there (in my own photos, or Circles) to provide any insight. <P> You can also have Google+ automatically enhance your images -- say if they are over- or under-exposed, or grainy, or lack structure in part of the image. The software can soften your skin -- it recognizes faces and treats human faces like a photo touch-up professional would. I experimented with this a bit, and did see some improvements, but I was mostly working with photos I had already kept because they didn't have those aforementioned problems. <P> You can also use features that Google calls "Auto Awesome." These include "Smile" (Google will construct a new image from multiple photos to make sure each subject is smiling), panoramic mode and motion. With motion, Google stitches together similar photos for an animated GIF. It worked amazingly well. <P> I'm not sure that the 41 new features Google has added to Google+ will make Facebook tremble, but they will give people more reason to try out the service, or use it more -- if not for the service itself, then for the benefits it provides to other applications like Search and Google Maps. We're likely to see Google continue to push here, because without a strong, populated social offering it loses a vital thread between almost every other service.2013-05-14T10:59:00ZSocial is becoming embedded into applications and business processes. Soon it will cease to be a category.http://www.informationweek.com/social-business/news/industry_analysis/social-business-not-dead-just-business-a/240154840?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityIt wasn't long ago that companies such as Jive and Yammer were proclaiming the era of the social enterprise. Knowledge workers no longer would be slaves to email. The best parts of social media would find their way to the workplace (sans photos of drunken friends). Knowledge and data would be found and shared with ease. Communication would be neither push nor pull but one or the other in the most appropriate times. <P> And indeed the social enterprise has shown its worth. Insurance giant <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/allstate-shares-hard-lessons-in-driving/240012728">Allstate's 10-day innovation blitzes</a> spring to mind: Practical applications of internal crowdsourcing and collaboration techniques to inspire new business ideas have become part of Allstate's culture. In vertical industries like education, social collaboration solutions like <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/edmodo-social-collaboration-for-teachers/240152473">Edmodo</a> are re-writing how teachers and students interact and learn. <P> The question now isn't whether such tangible results, or even less lofty ones, are worth pursuing. They are. The challenge now is how to wire social constructs into all business practices. Soon enough, social business will simply be business as usual. <P> The technologies and platforms are still important, and will become more so, but companies will harness their power more in the context of business tasks and within "non-social" applications. <P> <strong>[ Join us at the <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/?_mc=MP_BTMADNAV ">E2 Conference</a> in Boston, June 17 - 19, where we will feature discussions like this in our conference tracks and on our keynote stage, including some of the companies discussed here. ]</strong> <P> Adam Pisoni, Yammer's co-founder and now the general manager of engineering in Microsoft's Office division, talks about a future filled with context. "Social feeds are just a user interface," Pisoni says, emphasizing that social messages are encoded with information such as location, conversation participants, roles and other data often derived from mobile (and, in the future, wearable) devices. That infusion of informational structure and relevance is changing the potential of social interaction. Business users connect not for the sake of conversation (being social), but to complete a task, share knowledge and discover opportunity -- doing so with context is far more efficient and effective. Marketing opportunities might be more ripe for exploitation when, say, location and weather data are factored in, for example. (Pisoni will be part of the <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/keynotes-speakers/">E2 keynote lineup</a>, and we'll cover that ground.) <P> Yammer competitor Jive, another early social business leader, finished its most recent fiscal quarter with 33% year-over-year revenue growth, including strong customer renewal numbers. The vendor's latest product reflects its work on partnerships: <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/jive-software-adds-virtual-work-spaces-integrates-box-7000014290/">integrations with Box.com and Salesforce.com</a> -- to drive specific business outcomes, around shared documents and projects, or sales opportunities, for example. Jive's goal is to make other business processes work better within Jive, to make it a hub of communications to simply "get work done," a company spokeswoman says. <P> <a href="http://www.citeworld.com/social/21805/jive-buys-streamonce-embraces-email">Jive's recent acquisitions of Clara and StreamOnce</a> point toward that more streamlined social future. <a href="http://www.streamonce.com/">StreamOnce</a>, for example, brings LinkedIn, email, Marketo (marketing automation), Salesforce (CRM) and Workday (HR) into the social sphere. (Jive CTO and co-founder Matt Tucker and Marketo CMO Sanjay Dholakia will also be part of the <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/keynotes-speakers/">E2 Conference keynote lineup</a>.) <P> <strong>Social Business In Context</strong> <P> Salesforce is the most visible driver of social business in the context of an enterprise application, making Chatter a core service of its cloud-based CRM offering. Now, having hammered home the social enterprise message, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/salesforcecoms-new-message-its-the-custo/240149492">CEO Marc Benioff is talking more about customer-centricity</a>, where other data points, such as location awareness and identity management (read: more context), are important. "All of these things are taking us to a customer revolution, and it's the next logical step for our industry," Benioff said at a recent gathering in New York. <P> Just last week, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/salesforce-communities-portal-killers/240154044">Salesforce announced Communities</a>, which brings the notion of context full circle. Collaboration systems, Salesforce says, are "disconnected from the business." <P> Alex Dayon, Salesforce.com's president of applications and platforms, says: "The next generation of enterprise apps are social with business data embedded at the core and accessible from any device." The goal is to deliver more data with more context to more constituents (in its case, communities of sales and marketing partners). <P> Workday CTO Stan Swete talks about integrating social platforms and social techniques with Workday objects. For example, Workday's HR suite features built-in commenting and exposes shared professional experiences among workers. (Swete will be a featured keynote speaker at the <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/keynotes-speakers/">E2 Conference</a>.) <P> Kenandy, another emerging leader in cloud-based ERP (manufacturing and financial applications), is built on Salesforce's Force.com platform, and it's decidedly social. A manufacturing company can create a purchase order, find out if the supplier has parts via Chatter and embed that interaction into the context of the purchase order. "Social in the context of doing business," is how a Kenandy spokesman phrases it. Sound familiar? <P> Enterprise application vendor <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/infor-bets-500-million-on-enterprise-app/240153410">Infor last month rolled out Infor Ming.le</a>, a collaboration feature where users can follow not just people but KPIs, data, documents and workflows. One customer Infor cited is using the technology internally and with partners, in the context of inventory lookups, so that information about part availability, approvals and other communication is all accessible in one place. <P> Naturally, the pure plays such as Jive and Yammer see social interactions through the lens of a platform, whereas application vendors see that interaction through their own application viewfinders. Either way, the implicit message is that context and relevance (and, yes, Salesforce, the customer) will drive the true value of social business. <P> Social is simply the means to a business end.2013-04-25T12:57:00ZSocial, mobile, cloud, big data -- they all can help you move more quickly and reach new customers. Attend the E2 Conference in Boston.http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/attend-e2-conquer-your-enterprise-challe/240153654?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/productivity-applications/office-2013-10-questions-to-ask/240150037"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/959/01_Intro_175.jpg" alt="Office 2013: 10 Questions To Ask" title="Office 2013: 10 Questions To Ask" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle">Office 2013: 10 Questions To Ask</div> <span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for slideshow)</span> </div><!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->Despite all the hoopla about consumer products driving technology innovation, we will look back on this era as a time of tremendous change in enterprise software. The roots of these changes began last decade, and the fruits will be harvested for decades to come, but the real work is just happening now inside customer companies. <P> Those companies have started to architect software around extracting better, more timely insight about and from their customers, or simply to deliver a better customer experience that builds brand loyalty. <P> Process improvement, automation and cost efficiency are the priorities of the past. And now that companies can listen to, predict and model customer behavior with some degree of accuracy, they've come to a singular conclusion: Let's get on with it. <P> <strong>[ Tread carefully on this social network. Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/productivity-applications/8-linkedin-etiquette-mistakes/240149086?itc=edit_in_body_cross">8 LinkedIn Etiquette Mistakes</a>. ]</strong> <P> This new sense of urgency has produced new delivery mechanisms (cloud, appliance, mobile, Web); raised the importance of integration and customization; elevated attention to user experience to an obsession; given rise to entirely new categories of software (or at least new names, such as talent acquisition, human capital management, revenue acquisition management); invited once-consumer-focused vendors to also serve enterprise customers; and extended IT decision-making authority outside the realm of CIOs and business unit directors. <P> If any of these trends sounds familiar or scary or exciting or, most of all, critical -- and why wouldn't they? -- then (cue shameless plug) consider attending the E2 Conference in Boston from June 17 to 19, where our <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/conference/">tracks</a> and <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/conference/keynotes-speakers.php">keynotes</a> will dive deeply into these issues. <P> We'll be talking with the top executives at vendors such as Workday and Kenandy, companies built to disrupt the notion of what enterprise software should do and how it should be deployed and managed. We'll be speaking with top execs at Google and Evernote, two Web-centric vendors most often associated with consumers but whose software is tugging on the heartstrings of enterprise end users. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --><div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"><div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a><div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div><span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span></div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> Naturally, we'll be discussing social media and how it's changing the workflows of internal employees and the way companies listen to and interact with customers. We'll be talking with pure-play social companies such as Jive and Yammer, among others. <P> And we'll be having a grounded series of conversations about big data and analytics with big thinkers at the likes of Informatica, Datameer and 10Gen. <P> Out of all of these conversations will emerge a better sense of the entire customer experience, from listening to delivering something meaningful. This concept goes beyond big data and sentiment analytics and social business. Some call it the customer cloud or the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/marketing/240145115">marketing cloud</a>, or maybe it's the era of the "big customer," as Wells Fargo analyst Jason Maynard likes to call it. Industry players such as Marketo have turned heads here. Meanwhile, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/240150503/oracle-revises-social-offerings">Oracle</a> and other major vendors are making acquisitions to try to turn the tables back in their direction. This is anyone's game to win, and we'll get a good glimpse at some of the newest offerings and efforts in a panel that includes Marketo and Oracle. <P> Of course, we'll hear from real customers, too, including the CIO of the nimble (and World Series champion) San Francisco Giants and the CIO of the city of Boston. And we'll be asking some nitty gritty questions. Can companies really measure the return on their social business investments? And if companies manage to collect all of this fantastic customer data, are they ready -- organizationally and culturally as well as technologically -- to take advantage of it? <P> Please join us for the new, modern day enterprise software conference: E2. Learn more <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">here</a>.2013-04-25T09:06:00ZSamsung's Galaxy S 4 smartphone features solid hardware and a variety of innovative software capabilities. Take a closer look.http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-galaxy-s-4-11-clever-tricks/240153554?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilitySamsung has packed so many new features into the Galaxy S 4, its newest flagship smartphone, it's a bit mind-boggling. Even after several days of testing, I was still finding new additions, such as the ability to add and customize the settings that appear from the notification screen, and some of the new content-sharing mechanisms between Samsung devices. <P> If you're in the market for your next smartphone, the Galaxy S 4 should be near the top of your list. Its screen is slightly larger than its predecessor's, the Galaxy S 3 (5 inches vs. 4.8 inches), and yet the phone is roughly the same physical size, a bit lighter and slimmer, even. Its screen resolution has been beefed up in a meaningful way, to 1080 by 1920 pixels and 441 pixels per inch. And it boasts a quad-core 1.9-GHz processor under the hood. <P> But there's much more magic in the Galaxy S 4 software. Some of it was a little quirky, some of it a bridge too far, but most of it got me pretty excited about the future of smartphones. <P> I picked some of my favorite Galaxy S 4 features, and in the slideshow that follows, I'll try to give you a glimpse of how they work (or didn't in one case), or at least how they look. <P> It's a bit difficult to show some of the air gestures -- such as the ability to wave your hand up or down, left or right to scroll through pictures, flip between browser tabs or scroll up and down a Web page. And it's a bit difficult to show smart scrolling, where the phone is seeing the tilt of your head as you read, and scrolling up and down automatically in accord. But those were also among my favorite features once I got used to them. <P> I included one camera feature, called dual shot, but not because it was my favorite. This feature lets you take a picture using both the front and rear-facing cameras. I got the feeling Samsung added this mainly because it could, and to see what people do with it. I couldn't think of much of a reason for using it, other than to goof around. <P> With S Translator, S Health, and the combination of IR Blaster and the WatchON app -- a universal remote for your television and DVR -- Samsung is trying to make the Galaxy S 4 an even more invaluable companion in your life. Combined with Google Now and Google Maps, and all of the usual features built into Android and available from the Google Play store, it's going to be difficult to untether yourself from this device. Now dig into our slideshow.The Samsung Galaxy S 4 uses infrared proximity sensors to detect hand gestures. Air View lets you hover a finger over email and "explode" messages for quick viewing. I found this extremely useful for quick message scanning. <P> <strong>RECOMMENDED READING:</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/mobile/android-smartphone-sellers-should-patch/240153205">Android Smartphone Sellers Should Patch, Refund Or Perish</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphone-battery-life-back-to-the-futu/240151953">Smartphone Battery Life: Back To The Future</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-ceo-hints-at-new-motorola-hardwar/240153257">Google CEO Hints At New Motorola Hardware</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-reports-15-million-android-activa/240153016">Google Reports 1.5 Million Android Activations Per Day</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-investigated-for-anti-htc-smear/240152981">Samsung Investigated For Anti-HTC Smear Campaign</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/10-best-and-worst-cellphones-of-all-time/240152362">10 Best And Worst Cellphones Of All Time</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-iphone-5s-best-and-worst-rumors/240150387">Apple iPhone 5S: Best And Worst Rumors</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/mobile-world-congress-2013-9-hot-gadgets/240149064">Mobile World Congress 2013: 9 Hot Gadgets</a>The Galaxy S 4 includes an Optical Reader app that can OCR documents, and transform paper business cards into phone, Google and Microsoft Exchange contacts. Though this definitely qualifies as a cool feature, the business card capability was a bit lacking, with misspellings, the inability to detect cell phone or mobile numbers in some cases, and other errors that I had to clean up. <P> <strong>RECOMMENDED READING:</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/mobile/android-smartphone-sellers-should-patch/240153205">Android Smartphone Sellers Should Patch, Refund Or Perish</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphone-battery-life-back-to-the-futu/240151953">Smartphone Battery Life: Back To The Future</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-ceo-hints-at-new-motorola-hardwar/240153257">Google CEO Hints At New Motorola Hardware</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-reports-15-million-android-activa/240153016">Google Reports 1.5 Million Android Activations Per Day</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-investigated-for-anti-htc-smear/240152981">Samsung Investigated For Anti-HTC Smear Campaign</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/10-best-and-worst-cellphones-of-all-time/240152362">10 Best And Worst Cellphones Of All Time</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-iphone-5s-best-and-worst-rumors/240150387">Apple iPhone 5S: Best And Worst Rumors</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/mobile-world-congress-2013-9-hot-gadgets/240149064">Mobile World Congress 2013: 9 Hot Gadgets</a>The Optical Reader app can translate words in various languages, say from a menu or a book. <P> <strong>RECOMMENDED READING:</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/mobile/android-smartphone-sellers-should-patch/240153205">Android Smartphone Sellers Should Patch, Refund Or Perish</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphone-battery-life-back-to-the-futu/240151953">Smartphone Battery Life: Back To The Future</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-ceo-hints-at-new-motorola-hardwar/240153257">Google CEO Hints At New Motorola Hardware</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-reports-15-million-android-activa/240153016">Google Reports 1.5 Million Android Activations Per Day</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-investigated-for-anti-htc-smear/240152981">Samsung Investigated For Anti-HTC Smear Campaign</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/10-best-and-worst-cellphones-of-all-time/240152362">10 Best And Worst Cellphones Of All Time</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-iphone-5s-best-and-worst-rumors/240150387">Apple iPhone 5S: Best And Worst Rumors</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/mobile-world-congress-2013-9-hot-gadgets/240149064">Mobile World Congress 2013: 9 Hot Gadgets</a>Speaking of language translation, S Translator can do so between spoken or written words, across several mainstream languages. Someone will have to tell me if S Translator got it right, though. <P> <strong>RECOMMENDED READING:</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/mobile/android-smartphone-sellers-should-patch/240153205">Android Smartphone Sellers Should Patch, Refund Or Perish</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphone-battery-life-back-to-the-futu/240151953">Smartphone Battery Life: Back To The Future</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-ceo-hints-at-new-motorola-hardwar/240153257">Google CEO Hints At New Motorola Hardware</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-reports-15-million-android-activa/240153016">Google Reports 1.5 Million Android Activations Per Day</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-investigated-for-anti-htc-smear/240152981">Samsung Investigated For Anti-HTC Smear Campaign</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/10-best-and-worst-cellphones-of-all-time/240152362">10 Best And Worst Cellphones Of All Time</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-iphone-5s-best-and-worst-rumors/240150387">Apple iPhone 5S: Best And Worst Rumors</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/mobile-world-congress-2013-9-hot-gadgets/240149064">Mobile World Congress 2013: 9 Hot Gadgets</a>Samsung's multi-window view lets you use a customizable tab of applications. The tab, if turned on, can be used not only for quick access to those applications, but also to drag an application onto the main window, to see two applications in view at once. This feature is not new to the S 4. <P> <strong>RECOMMENDED READING:</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/mobile/android-smartphone-sellers-should-patch/240153205">Android Smartphone Sellers Should Patch, Refund Or Perish</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphone-battery-life-back-to-the-futu/240151953">Smartphone Battery Life: Back To The Future</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-ceo-hints-at-new-motorola-hardwar/240153257">Google CEO Hints At New Motorola Hardware</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-reports-15-million-android-activa/240153016">Google Reports 1.5 Million Android Activations Per Day</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-investigated-for-anti-htc-smear/240152981">Samsung Investigated For Anti-HTC Smear Campaign</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/10-best-and-worst-cellphones-of-all-time/240152362">10 Best And Worst Cellphones Of All Time</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-iphone-5s-best-and-worst-rumors/240150387">Apple iPhone 5S: Best And Worst Rumors</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/mobile-world-congress-2013-9-hot-gadgets/240149064">Mobile World Congress 2013: 9 Hot Gadgets</a>The S 4 comes with an IR Blaster and WatchOn, an app that turns your phone into a universal TV and DVR remote. I tested it with my Vizio TV, on the Cox Cable Network, using a Motorola set-top box/DVR and it worked very well, except for the DVR controls. <P> <strong>RECOMMENDED READING:</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/mobile/android-smartphone-sellers-should-patch/240153205">Android Smartphone Sellers Should Patch, Refund Or Perish</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphone-battery-life-back-to-the-futu/240151953">Smartphone Battery Life: Back To The Future</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-ceo-hints-at-new-motorola-hardwar/240153257">Google CEO Hints At New Motorola Hardware</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-reports-15-million-android-activa/240153016">Google Reports 1.5 Million Android Activations Per Day</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-investigated-for-anti-htc-smear/240152981">Samsung Investigated For Anti-HTC Smear Campaign</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/10-best-and-worst-cellphones-of-all-time/240152362">10 Best And Worst Cellphones Of All Time</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-iphone-5s-best-and-worst-rumors/240150387">Apple iPhone 5S: Best And Worst Rumors</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/mobile-world-congress-2013-9-hot-gadgets/240149064">Mobile World Congress 2013: 9 Hot Gadgets</a>The WatchOn app has, among other things, the ability to display TV listings in a guide format. Just pick the show and it changes the channel right from the phone. <P> <strong>RECOMMENDED READING:</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/mobile/android-smartphone-sellers-should-patch/240153205">Android Smartphone Sellers Should Patch, Refund Or Perish</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphone-battery-life-back-to-the-futu/240151953">Smartphone Battery Life: Back To The Future</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-ceo-hints-at-new-motorola-hardwar/240153257">Google CEO Hints At New Motorola Hardware</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-reports-15-million-android-activa/240153016">Google Reports 1.5 Million Android Activations Per Day</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-investigated-for-anti-htc-smear/240152981">Samsung Investigated For Anti-HTC Smear Campaign</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/10-best-and-worst-cellphones-of-all-time/240152362">10 Best And Worst Cellphones Of All Time</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-iphone-5s-best-and-worst-rumors/240150387">Apple iPhone 5S: Best And Worst Rumors</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/mobile-world-congress-2013-9-hot-gadgets/240149064">Mobile World Congress 2013: 9 Hot Gadgets</a>Samsung has upgraded its bundled S Health application. To the left is the main menu. Food Tracker, for instance, is new. The application also takes advantage of a pedometer in the phone to track steps taken, and calories burned. <P> <strong>RECOMMENDED READING:</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/mobile/android-smartphone-sellers-should-patch/240153205">Android Smartphone Sellers Should Patch, Refund Or Perish</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphone-battery-life-back-to-the-futu/240151953">Smartphone Battery Life: Back To The Future</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-ceo-hints-at-new-motorola-hardwar/240153257">Google CEO Hints At New Motorola Hardware</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-reports-15-million-android-activa/240153016">Google Reports 1.5 Million Android Activations Per Day</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-investigated-for-anti-htc-smear/240152981">Samsung Investigated For Anti-HTC Smear Campaign</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/10-best-and-worst-cellphones-of-all-time/240152362">10 Best And Worst Cellphones Of All Time</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-iphone-5s-best-and-worst-rumors/240150387">Apple iPhone 5S: Best And Worst Rumors</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/mobile-world-congress-2013-9-hot-gadgets/240149064">Mobile World Congress 2013: 9 Hot Gadgets</a>Food Track, a utility within S Health, lets you input meals and counts calories. It also has a fairly precise custom search that lets you look up specific products, even by brand name. <P> <strong>RECOMMENDED READING:</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/mobile/android-smartphone-sellers-should-patch/240153205">Android Smartphone Sellers Should Patch, Refund Or Perish</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphone-battery-life-back-to-the-futu/240151953">Smartphone Battery Life: Back To The Future</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-ceo-hints-at-new-motorola-hardwar/240153257">Google CEO Hints At New Motorola Hardware</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-reports-15-million-android-activa/240153016">Google Reports 1.5 Million Android Activations Per Day</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-investigated-for-anti-htc-smear/240152981">Samsung Investigated For Anti-HTC Smear Campaign</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/10-best-and-worst-cellphones-of-all-time/240152362">10 Best And Worst Cellphones Of All Time</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-iphone-5s-best-and-worst-rumors/240150387">Apple iPhone 5S: Best And Worst Rumors</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/mobile-world-congress-2013-9-hot-gadgets/240149064">Mobile World Congress 2013: 9 Hot Gadgets</a>The S 4 senses temperature and humidity, which come into play in S Health (they are the "comfort" settings). And yes, those numbers are permanent here in Southern California. Sorry. <P> <strong>RECOMMENDED READING:</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/mobile/android-smartphone-sellers-should-patch/240153205">Android Smartphone Sellers Should Patch, Refund Or Perish</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphone-battery-life-back-to-the-futu/240151953">Smartphone Battery Life: Back To The Future</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-ceo-hints-at-new-motorola-hardwar/240153257">Google CEO Hints At New Motorola Hardware</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-reports-15-million-android-activa/240153016">Google Reports 1.5 Million Android Activations Per Day</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-investigated-for-anti-htc-smear/240152981">Samsung Investigated For Anti-HTC Smear Campaign</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/10-best-and-worst-cellphones-of-all-time/240152362">10 Best And Worst Cellphones Of All Time</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-iphone-5s-best-and-worst-rumors/240150387">Apple iPhone 5S: Best And Worst Rumors</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/mobile-world-congress-2013-9-hot-gadgets/240149064">Mobile World Congress 2013: 9 Hot Gadgets</a>The Galaxy S 4 camera offers tons of new modes, from Drama Shot (several pictures taken in motion) and Animation (keeps some parts of the picture still, and animates parts you choose) to Eraser (automatically detects and removes people who walk into your shot) and Dual Shot, which uses the front and rear cameras to superimpose one picture onto the other. We had good silly fun with these. <P> <strong>RECOMMENDED READING:</strong> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/security/mobile/android-smartphone-sellers-should-patch/240153205">Android Smartphone Sellers Should Patch, Refund Or Perish</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/smartphone-battery-life-back-to-the-futu/240151953">Smartphone Battery Life: Back To The Future</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-ceo-hints-at-new-motorola-hardwar/240153257">Google CEO Hints At New Motorola Hardware</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/google-reports-15-million-android-activa/240153016">Google Reports 1.5 Million Android Activations Per Day</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-investigated-for-anti-htc-smear/240152981">Samsung Investigated For Anti-HTC Smear Campaign</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/10-best-and-worst-cellphones-of-all-time/240152362">10 Best And Worst Cellphones Of All Time</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-iphone-5s-best-and-worst-rumors/240150387">Apple iPhone 5S: Best And Worst Rumors</a> <P> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/mobile-world-congress-2013-9-hot-gadgets/240149064">Mobile World Congress 2013: 9 Hot Gadgets</a>2013-04-24T11:06:00ZSamsung Galaxy S4 may be today's best smartphone, with solid hardware and software tricks such as eye tracking and a gesture UI.http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/samsung-galaxy-s4-oozes-innovation/240153538?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilitySamsung's new Galaxy S4 oozes so much innovation it almost trips over itself. <P> The good news is you can turn much of it off and you're still left with possibly the best smartphone on the market. The better news is that Samsung has attempted eye tracking and a gesture UI, among other cleverness, and given us all a glimpse of the future. <P> The trouble is, that future isn't quite now. It's more parlor trick than necessity, and sometimes more trouble than it's worth. <P> I've been testing the Galaxy S4 for almost a week. My favorite features were the phone's size and display quality, the air gestures (when they worked), S Translator, the additions to S Health, and Smart Scroll (when I figured it out). WatchOn, the universal TV remote app, holds promise, but I'm not ready to throw away my real remotes just yet; and the camera features were mere toys that quickly lost their luster after a little fooling around. <P> You'll find more detail on some existing key components of the Galaxy device software, like S-Beam, WiFi Direct, Share Shot and AllShare Play, in my earlier review of the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-hands-on-test-wows/240002352">Samsung Galaxy S3</a>. Those features are also included in the Galaxy S4. I have not tested the HTC One for comparison, but include some details on it from a specification standpoint. <P> The Samsung Galaxy S4 is available now at T-Mobile, and will become available over the next several days at various carriers (although Verizon still hasn't released details). AT&T is offering the 16-GB version for $199.99 while Sprint has it for $249.99 ($149.99 if you're switching from another carrier), and T-Mobile has it for $149.99 and 24 monthly payments of $20 each. (Sprint and AT&T require 2-year contracts.) The HTC One 32-GB version, for comparison sake, is $199.99 on AT&T and Sprint. These phones are also available at various retailers, like Best Buy. Sprint said unexpected inventory problems will slightly delay its full product launch. It expects to make the Galaxy S4 available in its website on Saturday, with retail stores and other channels receiving devices as inventory becomes available <P> <strong>The Hardware</strong> <P> There's been much <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/samsung-rethinks-smartphone-build-qualit/240152904">hullabaloo over the cheapness of the Galaxy series of phones</a>. The S4, like its predecessors, is made of polycarbonate. The comparable HTC One and iPhone 5 are aluminum, with clean surfaces. Many critics believe the metal and unibody-style designs feel more substantial. It comes down to personal preference, but the S4 felt substantial enough to me, even after carrying around an iPhone for the past two years. <P> Even for those queasy about plastic, the Galaxy S4 is remarkable. It is slightly lighter (130 grams) and thinner (7.9 mm) than the Galaxy S3 (133 grams and 8.6 mm), and while it retains the same physical dimensions (width and height), the screen size jumps to 5 inches (the S3 was 4.8 inches), and packs in the pixels at 441 ppi on its full HD Super AMOLED display (1080 x 1920). The S3 was 720 x 1280, and about 306 ppi. <P> The difference is noticeable and stunning. I've never felt as if my smartphone could serve as a place to read the news for an hour in the morning, but I did on the S4, eschewing my tablet for media consumption on most days, just for convenience. I'm not convinced these big smartphones will replace tablets, or even so-called phablets like the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, but they do pretty well in a pinch. <P> Just for comparison purposes, the S4's screen size is bigger than the comparable HTC One (4.7 inches), but the HTC One packs a few more pixels (468 ppi) in a similar display (1080 x 1920). The HTC One is slightly heavier (143 grams) and a bit thicker (9.3 mm). The iPhone 5 has a 4-inch display, lower resolution (1136 x 640), and lower pixel density (326 ppi). The iPhone 5 is lighter (112 grams) and slightly slimmer (7.6 mm) than the Galaxy S4. Pick your weapon wisely. <P> The Galaxy S4 uses a Qualcomm quad-core processor running at 1.9 GHz, comes in 16-GB and 32-GB versions, and includes a microSD slot that can accommodate 64 GB of external memory. The HTC One also has a quad-core processor, clocked at 1.7 GHz, and comes in 32-GB and 64-GB versions. <P> The S4 starts to pull away from its competitors with its sensors. Like most modern smartphones, including the HTC One and the S3, the Galaxy S4 includes an accelerometer, gyro, proximity and compass sensors, but it also adds temperature, humidity and gesture sensors. More on those when we talk about Samsung's software features. (Samsung also includes a barometer sensor in its Galaxy phones.) <P> The Galaxy S4 includes a 2600 mAh battery vs 2100 mAh for the S3, giving the S4 about 23% more power capacity for all of the extra sensors and high-end display. I didn't do full battery testing, but it's safe to assume the S3 and S4 are comparable. Using the S4 constantly, with screen brightness set high, I was able to drain the battery fairly easily in a few hours, but this is by no means normal use. <P> The Galaxy S4 Comes in "black mist" and "white frost," or, as we say here on earth, black and white. <P> <strong>Software Magic</strong> <P> If today you can't seem to put your smartphone down because you're checking social networks, exchanging emails and texts, taking photos and Pinteresting and Instagramming and God knows what else, Samsung seems to want to make us even more pathetically hopeless at human social skills. <P> The Galaxy S4 has enough mind-blowing features to replace your best friend, by which I mean your TV remote of course. For those who can't even be bothered with fancy touch-based displays, the S4 has gesture controls. The health-obsessed will love the additions to Samsung's S Health, and world travelers will enjoy S Translator. <P> In other words, the Samsung Galaxy S4 demonstrates what the next always-on, personal digital assistant could become, even if this version of it still has too many rough edges. Let's dive a little deeper. <P> <strong>--> Remote Control/WatchOn</strong> <P> The S4 comes with an IR Blaster and Samsung's WatchOn app, which turns your phone into a universal remote for your TV and set-top box/DVR. It was simple to set up: It asked me for my TV manufacturer, my cable provider and the set-top/DVR box brand, and suddenly I was able to turn everything on and off, change channels, access an online TV guide and see offerings from Netflix and the Samsung Media Hub. I could even set reminders for shows. Sadly, the reminder for the next season of <em>Arrested Development</em> still hasn't popped up.But here come the quirks and shortcomings: The channel guide didn't show premium channels, like HBO, and the DVR controls were suboptimal. I was lucky if I could play something on my stored TV show list (and I did get lucky once). <P> The WatchOn menus were very confusing -- at publication time, I still hadn't received a full explanation from Samsung -- and the full set of capabilities, which include the ability to switch content from TV to phone and back, require a Samsung SmartTV. (I will update this if I get a better explanation.) <P> <strong>--> Gesture UI</strong> <P> I anticipated the S4's gesture controls most of all, and while I find them impressive, I'm a little less enamored of them from a practical standpoint. <P> Air View borrows from the Galaxy Note phone/tablet hybrid, where users can hover with the S Pen to pull up things like the initial text of an email message; the Galaxy S4 uses the phone's new infrared proximity sensor to detect your finger hovering a couple of centimeters above the display. Handy, I suppose, for those who like to eat and read (the example a Samsung spokeswoman gave), but also just a handy way to scan deeper into email without actually opening them, I found. I'm not sure I can live without this, now. <P> Air View can magnify text within the browser, which I found more annoying than helpful. The feature also works with a special version of Flipboard, where you can hover and explode a few stories' headlines at a time. <P> The S4 provides simple (up and down, left and right) hand-waving gestures as well (here the gestures can be inches, not centimeters away), which was a fun way to move between pictures in the photo gallery, between tabs within the browser, or even to scroll through text on a Web page. The waving worked reasonably well in my testing, and I found it handy at times, but no easier than touch gestures. (And it earned me a few odd stares out in public, although that can tend to happen anyway.) <P> The gestures sometimes worked when I didn't expect them to -- sometimes I would inadvertently move my hand while reading and suddenly lose my place, or swipe to another tab. <P> And finally there's Smart Scroll and Smart Pause, which track head and eye location. Smart Scroll detects how you're reading a Web page, for example, and as your head tilts slightly as you reach the bottom, the page scrolls down. I could very easily control this and it was a very good way to read. Don't be concerned: you're not going to be committing violent head nods while reading; it's quite a bit more subtle than that. <P> Smart Pause stops a playing video when you turn your face away from the screen -- other smartphones have adopted this feature as well. Smart Stay leaves the screen on as long as you're looking at (avoiding the annoying need to re-enter your password when the display timer elapses). And Smart Rotation changes the orientation of the screen as you need it to. <P> All of these features work only with a very small handful of applications (browser, email, photo gallery), and all (except for Flipboard) native to the S4. I assume there will be an SDK for third parties, but a Samsung spokesman would only say the company is working to extend these capabilities to more native (first party) Samsung apps as well as to third-party developers. <P> Keeping all of these sensors on (most are off by default, and easily found and enabled) naturally will impact battery life. A Samsung spokesman was checking on details regarding just how much. (Again, I'll update here when I have more details.) <P> <strong>--> S Health</strong> <P> Samsung has updated S Health, which may not immediately replace apps like MapMyFitness, MyFitnessPal or FitBit just yet, but it should put some healthy fear into all of them. Just by way of comparison, the new Food Tracker utility within this app looks up food and found many of the things I ate, even by brand name; I've always found MyFitnessPal exceedingly good at this, but now to have it integrated into an overall health-related set of utilities is more compelling. <P> S Health includes an Excercise Mate and Walking Mate, which track calories burned and steps taken (using a built in pedometer). Samsung is planning to add a line of accessories, starting with S Band, which will serve as a pedometer when you don't have the phone. (Um, why would you ever let that happen?) Finally, S Health also includes the ability to detect ambient temperature and humidity, using new phone sensors.I'll test S Health in more depth when accessories are ready. <P> <strong>--> Grab Bag</strong> <P> I tested a variety of other key features worth noting. First the OCR Reader application. This lets you scan and convert paper documents, scan QR codes, or even detect and process business cards (yes, people still have those) into your contact database. It will even translate languages, say from a menu, a book or your mom's new Kanji face tattoo. <P> I tested a few business cards with the OCR reader app, and while it was a good way to start putting business card information into the contact database, it still requires some cleanup work. It didn't distinguish mobile numbers from office numbers, spelled names wrong (like mine), and made a variety of other errors. The ability to transform business cards into your Google, Exchange or on-device contacts database is extremely promising. <P> S Translator is also promising. It lets you translate spoken (or written) words between several mainstream languages. I did some very limited testing, due to my very limited foreign language skills. <P> Finally, the Galaxy S4 is the first Samsung device to get the company's Knox capability. Introduced in February, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/samsung-bets-big-on-knox-byod-technology/240149264">Knox is Samsung's newest mobile security and device management technology</a>. Knox, like Samsung's SAFE, goes beyond the standard (or sub-standard, as it were) Android management APIs. Essentially Samsung has created its own security and management layer on top of Android. <P> One of Knox's key tenets is the ability to allow end users to have both a personal and work profile, keeping apps and data segregated depending on defined policies and roles, protecting the consumer from draconian business measures, and the corporation from negligent personal endeavors. While Knox is technically available, Samsung was unable to set up a test service, or allow me to run this on my own (our company is in the process of rolling out an MDM solution that supports Knox). We'll try to provide a look at this when it is available. <P> <strong>Camera Tricks</strong> <P> As smartphone cameras have moved to replace run-of-the-mill handheld consumer cameras, companies like Samsung have been busy making the best of the little physical real estate they have, and the S4 is no different. Samsung's rear-facing (main) camera is a whopping 13 megapixels; its 2-MP front-facing camera is also very good. Like smartphone cameras from other manufacturers, the S4 cameras can take both still and video images, and can do both simultaneously -- that is, you can take still images while you're shooting video. <P> But the Galaxy S4 can go much further. You're forgiven if some of these features make you marvel and scratch your head at the same time. I found way too many answers looking for a problem. <P> Take, for instance, the ability to shoot a picture with both the front and rear cameras at once. You can superimpose the front-facing camera image on top of the other, change its size, move it around, put it into a few different frame formats (heart shaped, postage stamp, or none at all). Samsung representatives talked about the fun you could have putting one person's face on someone else's body, and I did have some initial fun playing around with it, but in the end it just seemed silly. <P> There's the Drama Shot feature, which lets you capture a series of motion images and put them all together in a single shot. Or the Animation capability, which lets you carve out one portion of a photo as a still, and animate a different part -- again, to what end I have no idea. The output is an animated GIF that can be viewed without a Samsung device. I'll try to post a few on my Facebook page in the next few days. <P> One useful feature was the camera's Eraser mode: if someone walks into your shot (if done on purpose, it's apparently called Photo Bombing), it detects and automatically removes them. <P> There's a panaroma mode, best shot mode (it picks, or lets you pick from the best in a series of snapshots it automatically takes) and so on. <P> Many other phones have some of these features as well. It seems pixel quality is no longer the only end game, and smartphone manufacturers are tossing out lots of ideas to see what sticks. <P> Indeed, there are many similar aspects to the Samsung Galaxy S4 overall. In some ways, Samsung may have tried to skate to where the proverbial puck was going, only to find it may have arrived there a bit ahead of schedule.2013-04-16T09:06:00Z"Freakishly smart" sensors embedded in a basketball send shooting and dribbling data to a smartphone app and provide new level of coaching.http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/94fiftys-sensor-laden-basketball-shoots/240152926?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilitySomeone tell Lakers center Dwight Howard that his free throw woes are over: A new basketball packed with motion sensors can teach him how to stop heaving bricks. <P> The product, <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/490228395/94fifty-freakishly-smart-sensor-basketballs">94Fifty</a>, developed by <a href="http://www.infomotionsports.com/">InfoMotion Sports Technologies</a>, promises to bring the geeky worlds of mobile computing and data analytics to a court near you. The ball and its "freakishly smart" sensors collect shooting and dribbling data, feed that data to a smartphone app that helps players make adjustments in real time while practicing, and provide a wealth of coaching drills and assistance. Just stopping at that, the technology makes a <a href="http://store.nike.com/us/en_us/?l=shop,pdp,ctr-inline/cid-1/pid-691776/pgid-670534">Nike Fuel Band</a> or a <a href="http://www.fitbit.com/">FitBit</a>, which use sensors to quantify distance and speed, seem like the digital equivalent of Chia Pets. <P> But like so many innovations in the era of The Internet of Practically <em>EVERYthing</em>, there's much more behind 94Fifty. Its promise isn't limited to basketball, or even sports. Founder Mike Crowley says the technology has potential applications for any activity that requires the precision and practice that create muscle memory, from playing musical instruments to performing surgical procedures. <P> <strong> [ Want to see 94Fifty in person? Crowley will demonstrate how it works when he speaks at the E2 Conference, June 17 to 19 in Boston at the Marriott Copley Place. Check out all of the conference speakers and sessions and register for the <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKBOD">E2 Conference</a> here. ]</strong> <P> <strong>A Basketball Aha Moment</strong> <P> Crowley, a serial entrepreneur who has started medical device and enterprise application integration companies, hit upon the idea for 94Fifty while indulging in excessive basketball watching -- a common affliction that, untreated, produces a certain springtime madness. <P> Crowley traced a noticeable erosion in fundamental on-court skills to all of the new technology that competes for the attention of young athletes. Instead of trying to fight it, Crowley decided to use that very same technology to fix the problem. <P> "In any technology evolution you have these hurricanes" from which innovations emerge, Crowley said. "These forces were all coming together ... you could just see it coming." And along came <a href="http://nikeplus.nike.com/plus/products/gps_app/">Nike+ Running</a> and similar, wearable sensor-based athletic technologies. But those technologies don't factor in interaction, like between a player and a ball or an opponent, he noted. <P> Crowley's aha moment came when it occurred to him that the key element is the ball, not shoes and other clothing, and he began working on the technology in 2008, producing a team version of the product in 2011. (This ranged in price from $2,500 - $5,000 and required a laptop.) 94Fifty is a consumer-oriented version, priced at $295 for the ball and smartphone apps. <P> A basketball takes a tremendous pounding banging against various kinds of court surfaces and (especially in Howard's case) a steel rim, so this isn't like tagging docile cattle or instrumenting a traffic light. <P> The 94Fifty has nine sensors seated on a circuit board that weighs less than 20 grams, and those sensors detect the ball's spin and acceleration and provide a 360-degree view of any force, Crowley said. <P> He wouldn't reveal the secrets behind the sensor array, but he said there's also a great deal of engineering involved to ensure that the sensors don't wiggle. The board can't impact the weight and balance of the basketball either: A shooter's touch relies on extreme precision, and even a misplaced ounce can alter everything. <P> As if that's not enough, the operating system that runs 94Fifty must look for motion patterns, spot problems and communicate it all as feedback in less than 100 milliseconds via Bluetooth to a smartphone. It must also store that data, rank it against previous player data, and even help players use it to compete with other athletes in 94Fifty games. And don't forget the wireless charging through the ball's skin. <P> Pause to insert the famous <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7SdhtxuJYA">Dikembe Mutombo "not in my house" finger wag</a>. <P> <strong>Test Drives In Motor City</strong> <P> The 94Fifty, named after the dimensions of a college basketball court, was in field testing for more than a year before the team version began shipping. The company takes the balls to Detroit to put them through automobile shake tests and a variety of heat and humidity conditions, Crowley said. <P> On the software side, 94Fifty was designed to help players with ball handling and shooting. When a shot isn't working it generally doesn't have enough backspin, the arc of the shot is too flat or the shooter's release isn't quick enough. The sensors detect those elements (including the shot's arc down to the degree), and the software infers shooting weaknesses, like an incorrect release point, not enough leg strength or deep-rooted psychological issues. (OK, that last one I made up.) <P> The accompanying application can let players focus on particular aspects of their game, or put their scores into a game, where they compete against other players, not just on how many shots they make, but also on the quality of the shot. <P> The idea here is to burn technique in, Crowley explained, to create muscle memory, so that a player can react to situations almost without thinking, with confidence. And this is where 94Fifty diverges from wearable technology. Crowley characterized his technology as "points of force," where what gets measured is the force applied to an object. "We can infer things from forces," he said, and get "accurate snapshots about muscle memory." <P> That notion of muscle memory and confidence applies beyond basketball. The technology will find its way into soccer, the next natural sport for it. But Crowley said he has heard from music companies that want to instrument violin bows, and medical device companies that want to help clinicians improve and speed up their surgical skills. "Quality muscle memory is everywhere in the world ... it's part of what makes us a dominant species," he said. "The opportunities are everywhere." <P> <strong>Coming To A School Near You</strong> <P> The 94Fifty project was funded further through <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/">Kickstarter</a>, the crowdsourced micro-funding platform, where InfoMotion reached its goal of $100,000 in 35 days. Crowley said the company has $4 million of equity capital invested into the business, none from institutional financing. Texas Instruments is a key component supplier, and both Kickstarter and TI have helped provide exposure. <P> 94Fifty is being used at all levels (high school, college and even the NBA), and around the world. The Atlanta Hawks (NBA) and Atlanta Dream (WNBA) use the product, along with Michael Conley, a rising star on the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies. Other customers include the University of Wisconsin and Purdue University men's basketball teams, the UCLA women's team, and international teams like Olympia Milano (Italy), Pellacastrano Biella (Italy) and Guler Lecacy (Turkey). <P> Beginning early this week, customers can pre-order the ball directly through the company's website. The ball begins shipping in the fall in limited quantities. Retail outlets could carry the ball, but InfoMotion Sports Technologies hasn't committed to any deals just yet, according to Crowley. <P> <i>E2 is the only event of its kind, bringing together business and technology leaders across IT, marketing and other lines of business looking for new ways to evolve their enterprise applications strategy and transform their organizations to achieve business value. Join us June 17-19 for three days of 40+ conference sessions and workshops across eight tracks, and discover the latest insights in enterprise social software, big data and analytics, mobility, cloud, SaaS and APIs, UI/UX and more. <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/boston/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for E2 Conference Boston today</a> and save $200 off Full Event Passes, $100 off Conference, or get a FREE Keynote + Expo Pass! </i>2013-04-04T10:52:00ZOracle President Safra Catz says the company's sales team will soon answer its critics. But Oracle must do much more than rev up the growth numbers. http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/how-oracle-must-reclaim-its-cool/240152231?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityOracle President and CFO Safra Catz, addressing an investment-oriented crowd at the Wells Fargo Technology Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday, again defended Oracle's <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324103504578374884239534960.html"> much-maligned third-quarter financial performance</a>, reemphasizing what she has called <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/software/oracles-bad-quarter-is-self-inflicted/240151468?cid=nl_IW_daily_2013-03-22_html&elq=54601f3f8c1b483898ea48fe8ec5dc19">sloppy sales execution</a>, dismissing the soft financials as a typical Q3 phenomenon, and reassuring the audience with a wonky explanation of how conservatively the company accounts for deferred revenue. <P> Catz delivered her soliloquy with typical sarcasm and competitive barbs, topped with a defiant assurance ("mark my words") that as one of the most successful companies in the world, Oracle would soon find itself and its founder, Larry Ellison, championed on <em>BusinessWeek</em>'s cover as "cool again," as it was more than a decade ago. <P> Let's hope print media lasts long enough to see the day. <P> To be cool again, Oracle must do much more than put this hiccup of a quarter behind it. "Sometimes we have 'Q3.'" Catz said, noting that Q1 and Q2 were pretty good. "And it was really 'Q3' this time &#8230; it gets a little messy every once in awhile." She admitted that the shortfall caught her by surprise. <P> Part of the market's skepticism has to do with a nagging disconnect between the company's exuberance about its latest innovations (Exa-systems, Fusion, cloud delivery platforms, the overall stack approach) and what the numbers suggest is a lack of customer exuberance for those products, even during good quarters. <P> Catz said repeatedly, and in various contexts, that Oracle is in transition. It has hired new sales teams, for instance. "We're not stopping hiring," she said, characterizing the ramp-up time as a nine-to-15-month process. "For the first three months, they're just looking for the men's room." But she didn't equivocate about the future, saying that sales productivity is increasing. Catz compared Oracle's salespeople to old-school Wall Street pros: "You eat what you kill," she said. "They produce because that's their job." <P> Catz also talked about an evolving Oracle sales model, built around more specialized teams (products rather than just territories) and more feet on the street. That approach is starting to work, Catz said. "It's not obvious that it's happening," she said. "It's not showing, but it will." <P> And then in her typically metaphorical way, Catz added: "It always reminds me of little kids, if you ever watch the way they grow. All of a sudden they get a little fat, then they grow up." Next year at this time, she said, prodded by Summit host Jason Maynard, Oracle will be "all grow'd up." <P> More transition is happening in Oracle's product line, thanks to $5 billion in annual R&D, new product launches and several acquisitions. For example, Oracle has finally started shipping its Fusion suite ("You call it Fusion ... maybe I'm old," Catz told Maynard. "I call it applications."), providing new cloud models for those applications, and new hardware architectures for processing big data (its Exa line). Oracle just announced additions to its <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/unix-linux/oracle-sparc-t5-cant-make-sun-rise/240151815">Sparc product line</a>, about which Catz said: "it's been a tough transition, to be honest." <P> To underscore the point, Catz gave a confusing explanation of Oracle's hardware numbers: In Q3, people didn't buy lots of hardware because they were waiting on the new stuff, she said, before adding that the new Sparc systems "will take a while to catch on." <P> The company's storage business is doing well, Catz said, and while Oracle is "becoming a nuisance [to competitors], it's not even close to being a real battle yet at all." Tape, she said, "is an old business, and that hasn't been going anywhere for a long time, and that kind of drags us down a smidge." <P> On the surface, Catz's honesty is refreshing. She admitted, as she has before, that Oracle is still No. 2 in enterprise applications behind SAP, and that the Sparc T5 and M5 will only "give IBM a run for their money." <P> Catz is also right to characterize Oracle as a company in transition. It has prospered for a long time on a set of products that are starting to feel traditional, even if they have been modernized. Those products remain vital to enterprise customers, for sure, but they aren't going to transform Larry and Oracle into cool again. <P> In going on the offensive, Catz came off as a bit defensive about what Oracle has done and too cavalier about what it's poised to do. "We have database, we have middleware, we have applications ... our market share is basically everybody else combined," Catz proclaimed. Probably. <P> She continued: "The underlying platform of most of these [cloud] companies ends up being Oracle ... or they have all come to Oracle to offer our database. How is it that all of these companies that are theoretically competing with you are basically <em>stalking you</em> to have your product on their cloud?" Damn good question. <P> "On premises: it's not a dirty word," Catz said. True enough. <P> Before Catz turned to face Maynard for his questions, she said: "I don't know what they are, but I know my answers already." She was joking, but in hindsight an irony blossoms. <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <!-- GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 15px; width:244px; float:right;"> <div style="margin:0; border-top:1px solid black; border-bottom:1px solid black; padding:6px;"> <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1217/217ID_GlobalCIO_75.jpg" width="75" height="75" border="0" align="right" alt="Global CIO" style="margin:0 0 6px 6px;"></a> <div style="margin:0 0 6px 0; font-size:1.3em; font-weight:bold; color:#113e53;">Global CIOs: A Site Just For You</div> <span style="font-size:.9em; font-weight:bold;">Visit <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/">InformationWeek's Global CIO</a> -- our online community and information resource for CIOs operating in the global economy.</span> </div> </div> <!-- /GLOBAL CIO GLOBE --> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P> If Oracle wants to be cool again, it must do more than rev up the growth numbers. It has been there and done that. Instead, it needs to deliver on its promise of building the so-called <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/240002622/oracles-recent-software-buys-fuel-customer-experience-strategy ">customer experience platform</a>. <P> Oracle is swinging for the fences with its big data and in-memory offerings, and it has been quickly and loudly acquiring the pieces for end-to-end <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/240150503/oracle-revises-social-offerings ">social relationship management</a>, from <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/oracle-buys-rightnow-in-cloud-play/231901477">RightNow</a> to <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/social_crm/240000870/oracle-buys-vitrue-for-social-marketing ">Vitrue</a> to Collective Intellect to its most interesting puzzle piece, marketing automation software vendor <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/marketing/240145115/oracle-buys-eloqua-watch-out-salesforce">Eloqua</a>. The potential is stunning. <P> In the next year, Oracle's numbers need to start reflecting customer uptake. Oracle needs to pull the pieces together, not just into an interesting story, but an integrated platform. <P> In the next year, Oracle needs to get all grow'd up. And that would most definitely be cool. <P> <i>Every company says it wants to innovate, yet few know how to create an organization and culture to drive it, fund it, measure it and ultimately profit from it. At the inaugural InformationWeek CIO Summit at Interop Las Vegas, leading CIOs will gather to discuss the CIO's and IT organization's critical role in driving innovation at their companies. Use Priority Code MPIWK by April 29 to save an additional $200 off All Access and Conference Passes. <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/conference/cio.php?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register for Interop today</a>! In Las Vegas, May 6-10. </i> <P>2013-03-26T09:06:00ZI love the keyboard and UI. But the BlackBerry Z10 is missing too many key apps -- and betting big on enterprise IT's approval.http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/blackberry-z10-my-first-week/240151664?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobility<!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --><div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"><a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/blackberry-10-visual-tour-of-next-gen-pl/240147378"><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/galleries/automated/944/01_P1080161_tn.JPG" alt="BlackBerry 10: Visual Tour Of Smartphones, OS" title="BlackBerry 10: Visual Tour Of Smartphones, OS" class="img175" /></a><br /><div class="storyImageTitle"> BlackBerry 10: Visual Tour Of Smartphones, OS</div><span class="inlinelargerView">(click image for larger view and for slideshow)</span></div> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->I spent the past week with the new BlackBerry Z10, using it for work email and appointments, reading documents, research on the Web, and for personal applications as well, including navigation, following March Madness and social communications. Since my current phone contract ends in a few months, I evaluated the Z10 with an eye toward what it would take for me to make a switch back to BlackBerry. I wouldn't rule it out. It's an extremely capable smartphone. But these decisions come down to more than just the phone. <P> The BlackBerry Z10 is the first smartphone to run the long-awaited BlackBerry 10 OS, rewritten from the ground up on QNX, the real-time operating system purchased in 2010. QNX runs various systems in hundreds of automobile models and also the BlackBerry Playbook, and its success on this next set of smartphones, from the touch-based Z10 to the hard keyboard Q10, could quickly determine the company's fate. <P> If that fate comes down simply to a phone, the Z10 will breathe new life into BlackBerry. It is a better mobile experience, practically from start to finish. It is (finally!) a modern-day smartphone, and BlackBerry has completely rethought the user experience, from the flow-full navigation, to its all-encompassing Hub, to its superior keyboard and more. For most of the common uses of a smartphone -- email, social media, Web browsing, a narrow set of apps -- the Z10 more than holds its own. <P> <strong>[ Will the One save HTC's bacon? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/for-htc-the-one-cant-come-soon-enough/240150122?itc=edit_in_body_cross">For HTC, The One Can't Come Soon Enough</a>. ]</strong> <P> The problem is, BlackBerry's fate won't come down to just the phone. BlackBerry 10 OS doesn't have nearly the application marketplace of other smartphone platforms (including, by the way, the legacy BlackBerry OS), despite recently surpassing the 100,000 app mark. It also doesn't have some of the gleaming new jewels of other devices, like the Samsung Galaxy S 4's eye tracking, or Nokia's Carl Zeiss camera technology, or Apple's Siri, or Google Now. <P> What it does have is a legacy of enterprise acceptance, backed by the company's world-class BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES), now extended in some particularly BYOD-friendly ways to the Z10, and even iOS and Android devices. BlackBerry also has a global footprint that cannot be underestimated. Those items alone could keep BlackBerry from fading into the night, but they aren't nearly enough to bring the company back to glory. <P> Just for comparison, the BlackBerry Z10 is slightly taller, slightly wider, slightly thicker and even slightly heavier than the iPhone 5. Its display, at 4.2 inches, is also bigger, its resolution (1280 pixels by 768 pixels) is higher (the iPhone's is 1136 pixels by 640 pixels), and its pixel density is better (356 pixels per inch vs. 326 PPI for the iPhone 5). Those aren't likely to be dealmakers, but it's safe to say the Z10 hardware is quite good, even if it's not nearly as thin or light, or with as big a display as the Samsung Galaxy S series. <P> The BlackBerry Z10 battery life was, in my testing, much better than that of the iPhone 4S, but that seems a bit like comparing the gas consumption of an everyday sedan to a Humvee. The iPhone is a battery guzzler. I tried to use both the Z10 and the iPhone similarly, and even attempted to drain the Z10 by running its map app constantly while driving, to no avail. The iPhone simply ran out of juice hours before the Z10. <P> <P>The Z10's big differences come by way of navigation, and here BlackBerry has outdone itself. I gave up my BlackBerry almost two years ago, and have been using an iPhone and an Android phone ever since. It has taken me the better part of the week to get used to the Z10's navigation, but it's starting to make sense. BlackBerry uses the terms "peek" and "flow," and that's truly what happens -- simple thumb swipes move you between screens. Little pulls let you see how many new messages you have across all of your email and social media accounts, and then quickly jump to those messages. A swipe from the bottom wakes up the phone, or minimizes an app; a swipe from the top brings up a settings menu. <P> I had to spend a bit of time configuring my email displays -- turning off sent or filed messages, for example, or turning on the conversation view so that message threads were consolidated. These are things that iOS and Android seem to default to, and I found it to be a minor annoyance on the Z10. I could never quite get a clean, up-to-date view of my inbox, even after working with an analyst BlackBerry provided to work through some of my questions and challenges. This particular issue could simply be user error. <P> BlackBerry makes a big deal about its Hub, which is essentially a universal inbox that combines multiple email accounts, but also any applications that access the Hub API. These include messages within the typical social applications, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as text messages, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and voice calls. I also got alerts from the <em>USA Today</em> and <em>The New York Times</em> apps. It's a handy way to see everything, and the inclusion of accounts beyond email makes it that much better. <P> The BlackBerry 10 OS, like other smartphone OSes, shows screens full of apps, which I was easily able to organize into folders and rearrange as I would in iOS or on Android. However, BlackBerry also added Active Frame, a screen that displays up to eight running applications. These are supposed to be "live" applications, but other than <em>The Guardian</em>, I didn't see any of my minimized (widgetized?) applications displaying any changes in real time. But it was a more logical access point for running applications. By the way, any application that is registered with the BlackBerry Hub will receive alerts, whether the app is running or not. <P> BlackBerry crafted the original killer keyboard, and for its next act, it has created the killer touch keyboard. There are, of course, great <a href="http://www.talkandroid.com/guides/beginner/best-android-keyboard-replacements-for-phones-and-tablets-january-2013/">third-party keyboards for Android</a>. But that notwithstanding, using the BlackBerry Z10 keyboard was fantastic. OK, at the most basic level, it's just a touch keyboard and I fat-fingered plenty of messages. <P> But it places subtle word suggestions on top of the keyboard, and you just flick them into your message. According to BlackBerry, it learns your phraseology and its suggestions get better over time -- probably a week wasn't enough time, but I seriously wrote an entire sentence by flicking suggested words. <P> The phone also includes voice dictation, and it worked moderately well. I could dictate messages, call up a Web search, send a text message or make an appointment. Like most voice dictation systems, it wasn't always accurate. Voice dictation is available from the keyboard, the app, and pressing the play/pause button on the side of the phone. <P> One of my favorite little features is the integration of all of my outbound and social communication services. For example, when I look at an appointment, if it's with someone in my contact database, it shows me all of the relevant connections (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), and it shows me some of the most recent activity, such as any recent e-mail exchanges or LinkedIn messages. Unfortunately, it doesn't show that person's most recent Facebook status updates, for example, or recent Tweets, but it's still a handy way to see recent interactions in advance of an appointment. <P> Smartphone cameras get plenty of use, and at 8 megapixels (1.3 MP for the front-facing camera), the Z10's does fine. It also includes a nifty Time Shift feature that let me capture several frames and then pick the one where all of my subjects were smiling. I was able to edit my photos in the picture app, including applying various filters and effects, and then post them easily onto social sharing sites.BlackBerry has obviously worked hard on its Web browser. It's nearly impossible to do any sort of actual benchmarking without creating cached, static versions of websites (the variables of what a page loads and what a network experiences one millisecond to the next cannot be fixed), but in casual use, side-by-side with various other devices, the BlackBerry either held its own or vastly outpaced its competitors when fetching Web pages. <P> When the browser came across sites running Flash, it gave me the option to turn Flash on, rather than just running it by default. <P> Now to the tough part: Yes, it's early days yet, but there are still far too many key applications missing to make the Z10 worth buying right now. Take banking: there's no Bank of America or Wells Fargo or any other sort of banking app -- if your money is in Emirates NBD, though, you're in good shape. There's no PayPal, there's no Amex. This is one of the major new conveniences of using smartphones, and the BlackBerry 10 OS must get some key apps here soon. <P> There are virtually no Google apps. No Google Plus, no Gmail app, no Google Maps, no Google Drive -- only Google Talk. There are Box and SugarSync, but no Dropbox (there is a connector). There's Cisco WebEx, but no Skype. There's no Evernote, but BlackBerry has written a connection from its Remember app and I was able to pull in all of my Evernote documents. Unfortunately, they're just listed in alphabetical order (I have hundreds), and the only logical way to find something is to use the BlackBerry Universal Search function (not a bad idea, I must say). <P> There are apps for <em>The Wall Street Journal</em> and <em>The New York Times</em>, and they're quite well done -- the <em>New York Times</em> app is very similar to the iPhone version. There's an app for <em>The Guardian</em>, ESPN's ScoreCenter and CBS Sports. There is no Flipboard. There's Slacker, but no Pandora or iHeartRadio, no Fandango or Netflix. And so on. Name a category, and many of the major apps just aren't there. I didn't extensively test the BlackBerry Maps app, but it did bring me to a very precise and not-well-marked address in Chinatown in Los Angeles. <P> BlackBerry says that in the coming weeks we'll see apps from CNN, eBay, MLB at Bat, MTV News, Skype and <em>The Daily Show</em> Headlines, among others. Some of its 100,000 apps are Android app ports (a BlackBerry spokeswoman said that fewer than 20% are Android ports); BlackBerry has created a <a href="http://developer.blackberry.com/android/files/webinars/BlackBerry_Runtime_for_Android_Apps.pdf"> runtime for Android apps</a>, and the company claims that 70% of Android apps are pretty much ready to run as is.BlackBerry has made some significant changes in its enterprise support. For one, BlackBerry devices can use Microsoft ActiveSync, so they can connect directly to a Microsoft Exchange server (or Office 365) without going through BES at all. However, when a BlackBerry 10 device connects to BES, ActiveSync gets tunneled using BlackBerry protocols (and thus, it takes advantage of 256-bit, end-to-end encryption, as always). <P> BlackBerry senior VP for enterprise software Peter Devenyi said that BES uses a new set of protocols for this communication. Thus, BlackBerry 10 only works with a BES 10 server. The good news is that BlackBerry lets an enterprise run a BES 10 server on top of or alongside BES 5. In fact, you can manage BlackBerry 10 devices, older BlackBerry phones and even iOS and Android devices all from a single console. Android and iOS communication happens the same way: ActiveSync wrapped in BlackBerry protocols, all running over the BlackBerry infrastructure without the need for VPNs or opening ports on firewalls. <P> The BES server is, of course, free -- you simply pay for each licensed BlackBerry it manages (or Android or iOS device). More good news: the company is allowing a one-for-one trade-in for all of 2013. That is, for every BES 5 key an enterprise gives up, it can replace it with a BES 10 key at no additional cost. Naturally, BlackBerry wants to give all of its loyal customers a reason to quickly and cost effectively migrate users to BlackBerry 10. <P> One of the much-touted new features of BlackBerry 10 involves BES 10 and Balance. <a href=http://crackberry.com/blackberry-balance>BlackBerry Balance</a> has been around for a while, and it lets BlackBerry users keep personal applications and data separate from their work activities. Balance has been redesigned for BlackBerry 10, and with a simple swipe downward, you get the choice to be in personal or work mode. Each mode is clearly differentiated. Because our parent company doesn't run a BES 10 server, I couldn't test this functionality. <P> Balance only works when the Z10 (or other BlackBerry 10 device) is enrolled into the BES. Corporations can control what's in the work mode, allowing only the use of certain applications -- or enforcing the use of a set of workplace applications. There are two different BlackBerry Worlds, the app marketplace. Work applications contain a briefcase icon. There are applications, such as calendars and email, where all personal and work data get brought together, but there's no data leakage between these worlds. This container approach to separating data is very compelling. <P> The BES 10 management of iOS and Android devices uses the standard management hooks provided by each OS, but BlackBerry just announced that it is beta testing Secure Workspace, which will provide a Balance-like solution for iOS and Android. It is a closed beta for now. <P> Without some of the fancy features of other phones, BlackBerry's support for strong enterprise-class features is still its biggest standout. The company's recognition of the onslaught of other devices in the workplace, by way of direct BES support, bodes well for its general outlook and survival. But survival doesn't necessarily equal success. <P> When buyers decide on a new phone, it is less and less about the actual phone, and more about the overall environment they're buying into. In many ways, that environment is powered by a cloud (Apple iCloud, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive) that collects and aggregates key user data (about location, music and other media, monetary exchange, browsing history, and much more), and turns it into something personal and possibly both dangerous and exciting: the phone as personal digital assistant. Look no further than what Google is doing with its <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/reviews/google-now-points-to-future-of-mobile/240004326"> Google Now service, which is, perhaps, the future of mobile</a>. <P> BlackBerry has none of this, and it will live and die with BlackBerry 10, these new phones, and the hope that features like BlackBerry Balance, and the endorsement of IT, will win the day. <P> <i><a href="http://www.cloudconnectevent.com/santaclara/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Cloud Connect</a> returns to Silicon Valley, April 2-5, 2013, for four days of lectures, panels, tutorials and roundtable discussions on a comprehensive selection of cloud topics taught by leading industry experts. Join us in Silicon Valley to see new products, keep up-to-date on industry trends and create and strengthen professional relationships. Use Priority Code MPIWK by March 30 to save an extra $200 off the advance price of Conference Passes. Register for <a href="http://www.cloudconnectevent.com/santaclara/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Cloud Connect</a> now. </i>2013-03-06T09:28:00ZMobile World Congress 2013 was notable for its workmanlike flavor. What didn't happen there was also conspicuous.http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/business/no-google-no-microsoft-no-problem-mwc-20/240150119?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityMobile World Congress has always been a special tradeshow because of its ability to attract the entire mobile computing and communications ecosystem: handset and operating system makers, application developers, carriers and infrastructure vendors. <P> If claustrophobia is a measure of the 2013 Barcelona event's success, it's at the top of its game. Ericsson and Huawei carved pavilions the size of small villages and employed multiple layers of imposing body guards. Samsung, HTC and Nokia had enormous booths as well, but they were mere shopping malls compared to the Huawei village. HTC created a theater with all of the requisite ambience: black backdrops with a dark green glow for maximum drama, all to bathe the acrobats who stopped conference attendees in their tracks. Samsung set up a mini-booth at the top of the escalators within the subway stop for the event venue. <P> But that was the extent of the fanfare. The show took on a workmanlike flavor in 2013, a reflection of where the mobile industry is in its young life. The major themes included carrier-based Software-Defined Networking, <a href="http://www.lightreading.com/carrier-wifi/mwc-2013-hot-network-techs-ericsson/240149913"> Small Cells</a>, H.265 and <a href="http://portal.etsi.org/NFV/NFV_White_Paper.pdf"> network functions virtualization (NFV)</a>. <P> For those running enterprise data centers, much of this will sound familiar. NFV, for instance, involves using commodity servers to run various network functions in software, virtualizing network and control plane services based on capacity and necessity. In some ways, it sounds like software-defined networking, but the authors of the white paper that defines NFV (essentially the major global carriers) are careful to say that "network functions can be virtualized and deployed without an SDN being required and vice-versa." <P> Companies like <a href="http://www.lightreading.com/software-defined-networking/huawei-unfolds-sdn-roadmap/240148644"> Huawei, which rolled out its SoftCOM SDN initiative</a> shortly before Mobile World Congress, were careful to point out that this technology is only in the prototype stage for carriers. <P> In other words, the mobile industry is at a point where the carriers must find new ways to boost their network capacity, deliver content faster and with higher quality, and do all of that more cost-effectively. It isn't a new story, but it's a much more urgent one given the proliferation of mobile devices and the fact that mobile traffic is suddenly overtaking all other network traffic. <P> Sure, shiny new devices were still on hand. Huawei and Alcatel Lucent each introduced beautiful new ultra-thin smartphones. Lenovo had some too, but they're aimed at users outside the U.S. for now. Samsung introduced the Note 8, a smaller tablet with pen, and optimized for a limited form of multi-tasking. Hewlett-Packard announced an uninspiring seven-inch Android tablet, but the price -- $169 -- raised eyebrows. <P> Mobile World Congress also was notable for what didn't happen. Years ago, Google arrived with its CEO at the time, Eric Schmidt, and a booth that brought out the kid in every attendee: troughs of candy, a smoothie bar, bean bag chairs and a twisting slide right in the middle. This year, there was no Google, unless you count the <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20130226/googles-rubin-no-need-for-retail-stores-to-sell-android-devices/"> press gathering Andy Rubin</a> held on February 26. Or Google's annual Android party, with Florence and the Machine and Tinie Tempah providing the entertainment. <P> It was three years ago when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer appeared in a densely packed hotel ballroom to announced Windows Phone, a major surprise at the time. Last year, Microsoft showcased dozens of Windows 8 hardware devices. But this year, Microsoft merely threw a small reception. <P> Nokia CEO Stephen Elop took to an early morning press conference on February 25 to announce a handful of entry-level and midrange mobile devices, but it was hardly worth the ballyhoo. It's the typical OEM-Microsoft story: Build a high-end device (the Lumia 920) and then start to push those high-end features down into devices that are more affordable, to stir mass consumption. Then continue to build new devices at the high end, labeling them as either "iconic" or "flagship," an irksome habit among Nokia, Samsung and HTC, made more annoying by their decision to unveil them at independent launch events. <P> HTC unveiled its next big thing, the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/htc-one-key-to-turnaround-hopes/240148820"> HTC One</a>, a week before MWC at its own event. Samsung is holding an event on March 14, and all indications are that its much-awaited <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/samsung-galaxy-s-iv-what-to-expect/240147656">Galaxy S IV</a> will see the light of day. <P> During Nokia's show-within-a-show announcement for the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/nokia-lumia-720-520-stake-windows-phone/240149436"> Nokia 105, 301, Lumia 520 and Lumia 720</a>, the company -- in homage to Apple -- trotted out its designer, as if the mobile phones needed an unveiling of fashion industry proportions. True to form, Nokia's designer Marko Ahtisaari appeared, his head shaven, wearing an all-black suit, almost a parody of a designer, calling to mind Mike Myers' Dieter character of SNL fame. <P> These designer showcases have become an embarrassing ritual. I parodied <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/htc-nokia-im-too-sexy-for-this-smartphon/232601640">HTC and Nokia last year</a>, and this year not much changed. The Nokia phones, the gathered were told, are "pure." They are also "human" and "warm," terms that might be appropriate if the phone gave end-of-day foot massages. "It feels good in the hand," Marko Ahtisaari said in a trademark phrase that always calls to mind the steering wheel of a Porsche, not a smartphone. <P> Nokia has hung its hat on colorful phones (those from its rivals typically come in either white, black or metallic silver) and just the "beautiful essentials." As if for further clarity, Ahtisaari added: "What we leave out is as important as what we put in." <P> Nokia's message, dressed in Albus Dumbledore-speak, was that consumers use a mobile phone for a constant set of simple functions: taking photos and sharing, listening to music, getting directions and performing a few simple business functions. In other words, the smartphone is becoming less about the hardware and more about the function and the platform (Windows Phone 8, in Nokia's case). To that end, Nokia continues to raise the bar with its cameras (though it seems to be saving its exciting 41-megapixel <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/nokia-preps-true-pureview-windows-phone/240146816"> PureView</a> technology for whatever the next future high-end Lumia phone will be) and a self-portrait mode that guides its user by voice. <P> People can share photos by "slamming" phones together (not too hard, please), a technique that uses Bluetooth. This slamming extends to non-Nokia devices. Nokia includes its free Nokia Music service -- themed music playlists that users can pin to the Windows start screen. <P> Nokia is also opening some of its APIs, and the company named Burton, Foursquare and GoPro as partners taking advantage of Nokia's imaging and location-based services. Nokia has also partnered with Dreamworks to create interactive entertainment products that will appear on phones in the second half of 2013, Elop said. Elop also highlighted how companies such as Coca-Cola are dispensing Lumias to their workforces, thanks to Nokia's tight partnership with Microsoft and the phone's tight integration with Office, Exchange, Lync, Office 365 and SharePoint applications. <P> Imagine if Ericsson or Huawei stole a page from the Nokia playbook. NFV would also be human: warm, but smelly, like food traveling the digestive system. Software-Defined Networking would most certainly be more about what is left out, rather than what gets put in. <P> No, the 2013 Mobile World Congress wasn't mostly about purity or warmth or humanity at all. It was about laying a foundation. Even if it doesn't feel good in your hand. <P> <i>Attend Interop Las Vegas May 6-10 and learn the emerging trends in information risk management and security. Use Priority Code MPIWK by March 22 to save an additional $200 off the early bird discount on All Access and Conference Passes. Join us in Las Vegas for access to 125+ workshops and conference classes, 300+ exhibiting companies, and the latest technology. <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/?_mc=MP_BTMEDIWKAXE">Register today</a>! </i> <P>2013-03-01T12:40:00ZHungry, time-pressed Mobile World Congress reporters prove mobile payments may, in fact, be as exciting as advertised.http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/ebay-paypal-fuel-future-of-mobile-commer/240149753?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityOn Monday, the first day of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, I waited in line for lunch with our TV team for well over an hour. We all got a simple ham sandwich, a Catalonian staple. And then we ran behind the rest of the day. <P> This annual conference attracts some 70,000 people. Moving around Fira Gran Via, the brand new venue for the event, is a bit like making your way through the crowd at a One Direction concert, minus the screaming girls. And for as long as the GSM Association has been hosting the Congress, it hasn't been able to feed its attendees in a reasonable timeframe. <P> Or so I thought. PayPal, thanks to a fortuitously scheduled meeting Monday afternoon, came to my rescue, and I won't ever think about mobile commerce the same way again. <P> Discussions around mobile commerce (and mobile payments) usually devolve into debates about the best technology for consumers to buy goods online or at the point of sale -- digital wallets, the NFC, the QR code, secure authentication mechanisms like chip and pin, etc. Or the discussion centers on who's in the best position to drive payment standards or run the payment rails. <P> I'm no longer convinced that any of those things will matter. Or rather, I think they will <i>all</i> matter. After all, mobile commerce involves an ecosystem that begins with a click, or an app on a device, and ends, as any commerce does, at a bank. In between lie payment processors, merchants, evolving point-of-sale equipment manufacturers, mobile operators, credit card companies and more. The alliances are forming quickly. <P> <strong>[ Considering Google Wallet for your bodega? See <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/smb/mobile/5-things-smbs-should-know-about-google-w/240004935?itc=edit_in_body_cross">5 Things SMBs Should Know About Google Wallet</a>. ]</strong> <P> At Mobile World Congress, for example, Visa and Samsung announced a partnership whereby Visa account information can be loaded onto Samsung's NFC devices, and Samsung will load Visa's PayWave app onto its smartphones. It's an ideal marriage of smartphone leader and payment leader so that consumers can gobble up goods more quickly. Visa senior business leader Brad Greene says the company's PayWave technology is integrated with 70 NFC devices, "with another 70 in the queue." <P> Each part of the ecosystem wants to accelerate a frictionless "customer experience," a gaggable buzz phrase thrust into every vendor PowerPoint presentation and speech these days. But here the phrase fits. <P> Back to my team's stomachs. For the rest of the week at Mobile World Congress, each day I went into the "local" tab of the PayPal app on my smartphone; found one of two restaurants using an application called <a href="http://www.kounta.com/beat-the-q-pos">Beat The Q</a>, created by Nick Cloete, the founder and CEO of Australia-based <a href="http://www.kounta.com/">Kounta</a>; ordered lunch for six of our TV crew; paid (using PayPal); and received a confirmation text, followed quickly by a text saying our food was ready. I would then pass by a long line of distressed attendees and pick up my to-go order. All of this happened within five minutes. <P> Suddenly, all was well with the world. Problem solved. But more came to mind. Imagine, I thought, if my local coffee shop were to let me do this, offer me discounts, suggest new brews, tempt me with new sweets or even use my location to automatically know how far away I am so it could make my coffee just in time and keep it piping hot. Toss <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/reviews/google-now-points-to-future-of-mobile/240004326">Google Now</a> into the mix with Kounta and PayPal, and it's entirely possible. Forget friction; this is the greasy-good stuff. For better or worse, Kounta's Cloete says merchants report that customers using this technology spend 20% more than those who don't. <P> It's exciting to think about, but it's not really here just yet. As David Strom points out in <a href="http://strom.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/ewallets/">Why eWallets Still Are Bad News</a>, there's still a lack of consumer confidence to overcome. Merchant confidence is hardly any better. Two merchants were operating Beat The Q at Mobile World Congress, and while Kounta has signed up 500 merchants worldwide, including the Australian <a href="http://www.sonoma.com.au/">Sonoma Bakery</a>, none of them is a global household name and there's no one in the U.S. yet. (I offered the names of my favorite watering holes, though.) <P> I liked that PayPal generated and emailed me a receipt, but sometimes the app showed me being eight miles away, even when I was within 100 feet. Also, the merchant is supposed to use the PayPal profile picture to identify customers (and, ostensibly, to greet them), but anyone could have grabbed my food before I arrived. It's also probable that if even a fraction of Mobile World Congress attendees used the app, they would have had to rename it "Chaos At The Q." I selfishly held off writing about it until the show was over. <P> But these are, as they say, first-world problems. There's plenty more innovation grease on its way. EBay executives told me that the mobile divisions of both eBay and PayPal are now gone, that mobile is just baked into their companies. At its stand at Mobile World Congress, eBay was showing off all kinds of applications, like a Toys "R" Us kiosk where the shopper enters buying criteria and gets suggestions based in part on data eBay has in its database of shopping habits. <P> An eBay spokesman talked about customers using a mobile device to announce they're in a store, either actively (by checking in) or passively (discovery). Or a customer's smartphone turning on a camera view of his store surroundings and showing him only places where his clothing size or shopping desires would suggest he has interest. <P> For now, I'll be happy enough with a cafe con leche, extra caliente, extra grande. I'll be there in cinco minutos, but I'll skip the jamon sandwich. No mas.2013-02-27T10:00:00ZThreats are now often disguised as gift offers, product giveaways, and payment protection insurance.http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/sms-spam-delivers-more-malware-scams/240149552?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityEvery lesson we should have learned from our experiences with spam and fraudulent email is quickly being replicated in SMS messaging, according to a <a href="http://www.cloudmark.com/releases/docs/threat_report/Cloudmark_2012_Annual_Threat_Report.pdf"> threat report</a> produced by the GMSA in conjunction with <a href="http://www.cloudmark.com/"> messaging security provider Cloudmark</a>. <P> According to the report, there were 350,000 attack variants and more than 50,000 unique attacks in December 2012 alone, demonstrating the rapid increase in attacks, Cloudmark CTO Neil Cook said. He added that the industry is now seeing a 300% year-over-year growth. <P> Most of these threats are in the form of bulk marketing, especially in places like India and China, whereas in North America and Europe the attacks are more insidious, resulting in the loss of personal data. These attacks take the form of gift offers, iPad giveaways, and payment protection insurance (PPI) in the U.K. <P> Cook said that there was even an Android botnet attack, known as the <a href="http://securitywatch.pcmag.com/none/306149-sms-botnet-spamsoldier-lures-victims-with-fake-games"> SpamSoldier botnet</a>. For more, watch the video embedded below. <P> <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <div style="display:none"> Informationweek.com run-of-site player, used to publish article embedded videos via DCT. The same ads will be served on this player regardless of embed location. </div> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. --> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <object id="myExperience2190843829001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="480" /> <param name="height" value="270" /> <param name="playerID" value="1223625539001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAF14eAc~,GZC-YoxXnehVitUBmX0u2QYfPEVvZG_k" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="2190843829001" /> </object> <!-- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. --> <script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> <P> <i>Attend Interop Las Vegas, May 6-10, and attend the most thorough training on Apple Deployment at the NEW Mac & iOS IT Conference. Use Priority Code DIPR02 by March 2 to save up to $500 off the price of Conference Passes. Join us in Las Vegas for access to 125+ workshops and conference classes, 350+ exhibiting companies, and the latest technology. Register for <a href="http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/?CID=MP_ILV_IWK_Article_TL&_mc=DIPR02">Interop</a> today!</i> <P>2013-02-25T09:08:00ZDominant Android player Samsung promises IT-centric and end-user friendly ways to make devices safe and manageable.http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/samsung-bets-big-on-knox-byod-technology/240149264?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobility<!-- Image Aligning Right --> <div class="inlineStoryImage inlineStoryImageRight"> <img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1357/Knox2_175.jpg" alt="Samsung Smartphone Running Knox" title="Samsung Smartphone Running Knox" class="img175" /> <div class="storyImageCaption">Samsung Smartphone Running Knox</div> </div> <!-- / Image Aligning Right --> You're forgiven if you've never heard of <a href="http://www.samsung.com/us/business/samsung-for-enterprise/index.html?cid=omc-mb-cph-1112-10000022">Samsung SAFE</a> (Samsung For Enterprise), or if your impression of Android's place in the enterprise ranks right up there with opening random file attachments sent by seemingly well-intended Nigerian benefactors. Hoping to change that impression, Samsung bought six Oscar Awards television commercials starring SAFE, while announcing its new upgrade Knox, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. <P> Knox is eye-opening, not only because it promises significant IT-centric and end-user friendly ways to make Samsung devices safe and manageable, but also because Samsung is the dominant Android player (and Android is the dominant smartphone ecosystem, at 70% of the market by some estimates). At a time when IT's admiration for BlackBerry has waned, and Microsoft Windows Phone wobbles like a newborn foal, Samsung is seizing an enormous opportunity. The company claims it has sold 100 million Galaxy devices globally, for example. <P> But Knox is formidable in its own right. SAFE offered Microsoft ActiveSync support for email and calendaring, on-device encryption (256-bit), VPN support (Cisco's and Juniper's), and APIs for Mobile Device Management (MDM) products, supported by the likes of MobileIron, Sybase Afaria, Zenprise, SOTI and AirWatch. Those APIs enabled almost 340 IT policies, Samsung's Tim Wagner, VP and general manager of enterprise sales said. Many devices run SAFE, but Samsung has only certified the Samsung Galaxy SIII and Galaxy Note 2. <P> <strong>[ What is on Samsung's to-do list? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/samsung-looking-to-elbow-past-blackberry/240149135">Samsung Looks To Elbow Past BlackBerry In The Enterprise</a>. ]</strong> <P> By way of contrast, <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/rim-bes-10-too-little-too-late/240147106">BlackBerry's new BES 10</a> uses an AES256 encrypted tunnel between BES and BlackBerry devices, so things like email and browsing happen over this encrypted tunnel without having to provision a VPN session. <P> Knox offers even more APIs and even more MDM policies (Samsung wouldn't say how many). It supports VPN on a per-application basis, and it lets IT departments manage devices using Active Directory. It provides a container-based solution for separating work applications from personal applications, and supports single sign-on for accessing the container. Anything that is copied within a container, or downloaded within a container, can't be taken outside of that container. IT can't get into the personal container. <P> Not only does this provide IT with a safe way to say "yes" to employees bringing their own devices (provided they're Samsung devices), but it also lets them flush the work container without impacting personal applications and data if an employee leaves, a big bone of contention in many BYOD environments. <P> However, these containers don't necessarily expose data plan usage. Some CIOs I've talked to want to let employees bring their own devices, even pay the carrier bill, but don't want to pay for personal data usage charges. Wagner suggested that carriers will have to work that part out. <P> Containers are accessed via icons in the shortcut bar or on the screens, or via the menu bar. IT can force logins for the containers. When you're in the container, the screen's appearance changes. <P> BlackBerry, the so-called standard-bearer for enterprise mobility (at least until recently) offers BlackBerry Balance, which does essentially the same thing as Knox Containers. But the new BlackBerry Hub unifies applications, regardless of whether those applications run in work or personal profiles. A simple swipe down the middle of the screen separates those profile views. <P> The Knox security features are also noteworthy. For instance, Knox devices will provide secure boot. They will also run SE (security enhanced) Android, which is an implementation of <a href="http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/"> SE Linux, developed by the NSA</a>. And finally, Samsung runs <a href="http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/trustzone.php"> TrustZone</a>, a technology built into the ARM Cortex-A processor. Samsung has focused some of its efforts on the strict guidelines provided by the federal government, and especially the department of defense. These enhancements include SRG compliance (<a href="http://www.govzine.com/node/104584">Defense Information Systems Agency's Security Requirements Guide</a>), CAC capability (common access card, or really the ability to turn your phone into a secure thin client on a DOD network), FIPS compliance (both on the device and through the air) and <a href="http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SMA/ispab/documents/minutes/2012-02/feb1_mobility-roots-of-trust_regenscheid.pdf"> root of trust</a> (a customized secure boot image for the government). <P> Wagner said Samsung's goal is to make Knox available in Q2 2013, but he was a little vague on the specifics. Devices that Samsung deems "iconic" (like the Samsung Galaxy SIII smartphone) will get a maintenance release, but bare metal-oriented features like secure boot won't be supported. Samsung's Galaxy S IV is rumored to be coming out soon, which is likely another reason for Samsung's evasiveness about timing. Samsung announced the Note 8 tablet at Mobile World Congress, but Wagner said that Knox on tablets is still in development and won't be available on any tablets at launch. The Note 8 will be SAFE certified, and then will get Knox. <P> Samsung's move here is smart: educate end users (via mass market messages, through retail channels, through carriers), and provide enterprise-class features that IT will love -- features that rival what BlackBerry has provided with BES. What better way to support consumer desires than to have IT endorse Samsung -- better for Samsung, that is. <P> But in fact it would be smart for BES to use Samsung's APIs (if Samsung allowed it; the company wouldn't comment on the subject) as a way to offer better support for Android. BlackBerry Fusion, which extends mobile device management to iOS and Android, is now integrated into the BES management console, but has largely been viewed as a me-too response to what third-party MDM products provide. <P> <i>Attend Interop Las Vegas, May 6-10, and attend the most thorough training on Apple Deployment at the NEW Mac & iOS IT Conference. Use Priority Code DIPR02 by March 2 to save up to $500 off the price of Conference Passes. Join us in Las Vegas for access to 125+ workshops and conference classes, 350+ exhibiting companies, and the latest technology. Register for <a href="http://www.interop.com/?CID=MP_ILV_IWK_Article_TL&_mc=DIPR02">Interop</a> today!</i>2012-12-20T09:06:00ZWe get a lot of bad public relations pitches during a year, but these 12 speak for themselves. Enjoy, but please think carefully before paying for a FaceTime facelift.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/pr-gone-wild-2012-12-hall-of-shamers/240144612?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityIn the name of honest journalism (and, sure, an excuse to finally clean out our spam folders), we went looking for the most cringe-worthy press pitches of 2012 from our brethren in public relations and we found some gems. <P> Many of them are sexual in nature. Not sure what that's about, given that we are a technology publication. <P> Names have been withheld to protect the innocent -- or left in for maximum impact. <P> <strong>1. And Skype makes my ass look big.</strong> <P> "Robert K. Sigal, M.D., board-certified plastic surgeon in the Washington, D.C.-area plastic surgery practice The Austin-Weston Center for Cosmetic Surgery, is seeing firsthand technology's direct effect on the demand for plastic surgery. 'Patients come in with their iPhones and show me how they look on FaceTime,' says Dr. Sigal. 'The angle at which the phone is held, with the caller looking downward into the camera, really captures any heaviness, fullness and sagging of the face and neck. People say 'I never knew I looked like that! I need to do something!' I've started calling it the 'FaceTime Facelift' effect. And we've developed procedures to specifically address it." [Editor's note: A killjoy, even from the grave, Steve Jobs suggests holding the phone differently.] <P> <strong>2. In May, we'll host <em>soldiering</em> competitions at moonshine distilleries in Arkansas.</strong> <P> "On April 28, 2012 Boulder-based SparkFun Electronics, a provider of parts, knowledge and passion for electronics creation, will host its first annual SparkFun <em>Soldering</em> Competition. The competition, open to the public, will take place at Oskar Blues Home Made Liquids and Solids [Editor's note: a brewery] in Longmont, Colo." <P> <strong>3. Also, men who do the dishes don't have to cuddle afterwards.</strong> <P> "If you're working on any pieces about unexpected Father's Day Gifts or Best Gifts for Guys, I have a surprising addition: A Dyson Vacuum. Why would you ever give a dude a vacuum for Father's Day, you ask? Men who do more housework have more sex, according to a study in the Journal of Family issues, and Dyson's newest technology comes perfectly equipped for spaces small and large - unlike any other vacuum you've ever tried." <P> <strong>4. And while you're at it, will you please write something nice, too?</strong> <P> "New Technology Saves Homes and Business! The Flood Stops Here.... Please write an article on our new product!" [Editor's note: A pitch for the Wassaic DoorDam.] <P> <strong>5. You mixed your metaphor in my sexual innuendo. </strong> <P> [Editor's note: From a press release for the book <em>Stop Calling Him Honey... And Start Having Sex! How Changing Your Everyday Habits Will Make You Hot for Each Other All Over Again.</em>] <P> "I'm not sure if familiarity breeds contempt in marriage, but I'm sure it breeds boredom in the bedroom. If you and your partner are in a sexual rut, Davis and Arana will help dig you out by offering you concrete advice for rekindling the juiciness you felt when you first met. Their counter-intuitive yet effective suggestions will bring out the sexual siren in you and bring back passion to your relationship." <P> <strong>6. An iPad can also make your face look like it's sagging and heavy, but we happen to know where you can get a FaceTime Facelift.</strong> <P> [Editor's note: From Dr. Robert Oexman, Director of the Sleep to Live Institute.] <P> "The bright light of the iPad and other tablets spark alertness, inhibit melatonin production, and can even bring on a bout of insomnia. That's why medical experts warn against curling up with a tablet to read before bed &#8211; if you want a good night's sleep." <P> <strong>7. When we say "exclusive," we mean we're desperate for anyone to be interested. (Did we mention that men who attend have more sex?)</strong> <P> "I'd like to offer you an exclusive opportunity to experience the future of remote patient monitoring with a personal trial of the BodyGuardian RMS during the mHealth Summit, December 3-5, 2012. <P> Demonstration spots are limited, so reply to this email today to secure a time." <P> <strong>8. If you can't use the McAfee "ploy" -- a new PR strategy whereby you create an international manhunt for your company's founder -- try the next best thing.</strong> <P> "Bitdefender's founder didn't kill somebody like McAfee's might have, but the company is working on killing some of the top security threats of 2012; threats that will continue to have major impact 2013. Here are the most aggressive . . . ."</strong> <P> <strong>9. Sometimes I forget to take my ADD meds and I can't remember where I . . . did you just say spectrum allocation?</strong> <P> [Editor's note: From Vulcan Wireless.] <P> "In 2012, the University of Alabama men's basketball team received an unexpected boost from a student who used an unusual tactic aimed at the opposition. Known as "The Face," Jackson Blankenship attended Crimson Tide men's basketball games armed with an oversized cardboard cutout of his own face holding an alarmed expression designed for one purpose: to make opposing team players miss their shots. Having recently appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and in a video gone viral Blankenship is now infamous for his ability to distract. <P> This brings to mind the FCC's proceeding to determine whether to restore interoperability in the Lower 700 MHz band,...." <P> <strong>10. You thought the presidential election was all about fixing the economy and the Latino vote.</strong> <P> "I am the Public Relations Manager of SeekingArrangement.com, the world's largest Sugar Daddy dating website. Since this is the election year, we decided to conduct a poll, asking over 30,000 female voters on our website which of the two Presidential Candidates they would rather have as their Sugar Daddy, and why. <P> Even though Romney is by far much wealthier than Obama, Obama beat Romney by 3 to 1, winning the hearts of women in all swing states and most Republican strongholds. Women who chose Obama over Romney say he is more personable, trustworthy and sexy. While some may discount our poll results, it may hold clues as to what Romney must do to change his vanilla image in order to win over the hearts of minds of voters, and more specifically female voters, this November." <P> <strong>11. What could be more romantic for Red Sox fans? And if you don't like this idea, you should definitely try Cleveland.</strong> <P> [Editor's note: Sent to our Boston-based editor.] <P> "I am the Public Relations Manager for MissTravel.com, the fastest growing Travel Dating website that was recently featured on Good Morning America, The Today Show, CNN, etc. I am writing to you today because we are releasing our "Top 20 US Romantic Destinations" study based on over 20,000 romance trips taken or planned by members of our website. <P> Most relevant to you is the fact that New York City is ranked Number 2 on the list of most popular US destinations to fall in love. So why is New York City ranked so high on the list of travel destinations for romance seekers all over the world? Some of the activities our members have done while they were traveling in New York City include taking in a Yankees game, having a first kiss on top of the Empire State Building and eating at The Central Park Boathouse." <P> <strong>12. And we only read Playboy for the articles.</strong> <P> [Editor's Note: Journalists themselves sometimes make, um, unusual pitches. This came from an editor in a list of story pitches.] <P> "A story about adult clubs and their deployment of IT - especially their adoption of social media marketing techniques and the challenges/successes they see." <P> <i>For the 16th consecutive year, InformationWeek is conducting its U.S. IT Salary Survey. To date, more than 200,000 IT professionals have participated in this survey. Take our <a href="http://informationweek.2013ITSalarySurvey.sgizmo.com/s3/?iwid=pl">InformationWeek 2013 U.S. IT Salary Survey</a> now, and be eligible to win some great prizes. Survey ends Jan. 18. </i>2012-12-12T10:50:00ZSugarSync CEO describes new features, takes questions on cloud security in the latest episode of <em>InformationWeek</em> Valley View.http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/infrastructure/sugarsync-adds-search-collaboration-to-c/240144279?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityThe personal cloud space is pretty crowded, with platform players (Microsoft, Apple, Google) in the mix, as well as third parties like DropBox and Box. SugarSync has also been a standout, if sometimes forgotten, player, and with version 2.0 the company hopes to continue apace. <P> <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <div style="display:none"> Informationweek.com run-of-site player, used to publish article embedded videos via DCT. The same ads will be served on this player regardless of embed location. </div> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. --> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <object id="myExperience1998777570001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="480" /> <param name="height" value="270" /> <param name="playerID" value="1223625539001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAF14eAc~,GZC-YoxXnehVitUBmX0u2QYfPEVvZG_k" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="1998777570001" /> </object> <!-- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. --> <script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> <P> SugarSync is slightly different from other services in that users target documents or folders, and those are kept in sync in SugarSync's cloud. The convenience of setting it once is one of the product's core benefits, and as with other cloud storage technology, SugarSync runs on a variety of platforms, including most mobile offerings. <P> SugarSync CEO Laura Yecies recently joined us on Valley View, our live, monthly Web TV program, and stuffed a great deal of information about version 2.0 into her two-minute elevator pitch. That includes the addition of search, a new client interface and the ability to collaborate, especially in the enterprise. Yecies faced some pretty tough questions from our judges, especially around security, but generally they liked the product too. You can watch all of this in the video above.2012-12-12T10:04:00ZClearStory CEO discusses how "converged analysis" lets users analyze data from internal and external sources, in latest episode of <em>InformationWeek</em> Valley View.http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/clearstory-puts-big-data-into-business-users-hands/240144264?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityThere seems to be an unwieldy number of technological approaches to getting at big data, but one of the big struggles today is getting that data into the hands of business users. ClearStory Data attempts to solve that problem by analyzing internal and external data in a scalable way, while also providing a simple, usable window into that data without lots of querying complexity. <P> <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <div style="display:none"> Informationweek.com run-of-site player, used to publish article embedded videos via DCT. The same ads will be served on this player regardless of embed location. </div> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. --> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <object id="myExperience1998726015001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="480" /> <param name="height" value="270" /> <param name="playerID" value="1223625539001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAF14eAc~,GZC-YoxXnehVitUBmX0u2QYfPEVvZG_k" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="1998726015001" /> </object> <!-- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. --> <script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> <P> As ClearStory CEO and founder Sharmila Mulligan pointed out on a recent episode of <em>InformationWeek</em>'s Valley View (a live, monthly Web TV program), there are 7,000 open data APIs, from sources like Netflix and Facebook, and other premium data sets. ClearStory, she said, is driving toward a converged analysis. <P> It's difficult to get a complex idea across in two minutes, but that's what we asked Mulligan to do as part of her elevator pitch. You can watch that, as well as get the reaction of our judges, in the video above.2012-12-12T09:35:00ZWhy poll just one data scientist when you can tap the expertise of 65,000? See how Kaggle aims to make that easier in the latest episode of Valley View.http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/kaggle-crowdsources-the-data-scientist-problem/240144262?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityMuch has been written about the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/information-management/meet-the-elusive-data-scientist/240142235">elusive data scientist</a>, about how <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/wanted-qualified-data-scientists-people/240115300">difficult finding highly skilled data scientists</a> has become. Many organizations are taking creative approaches, like <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/hire-a-data-science-team-not-a-data-sci/240142966">creating data science teams</a>. <P> <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <div style="display:none"> Informationweek.com run-of-site player, used to publish article embedded videos via DCT. The same ads will be served on this player regardless of embed location. </div> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. --> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <object id="myExperience1998552981001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="480" /> <param name="height" value="270" /> <param name="playerID" value="1223625539001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAF14eAc~,GZC-YoxXnehVitUBmX0u2QYfPEVvZG_k" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="1998552981001" /> </object> <!-- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. --> <script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> </ br> <P> However, Kaggle has an even more creative approach: Crowdsource the problem to some 65,000 data scientists, using open (or closed) data-mining competitions. Kaggle has hosted 150 such competitions, some on behalf of customers like Allstate Insurance (conducted to help in predicting insurance claims), according to Kaggle's CEO Anthony Goldbloom, who was a recent guest on <em>InformationWeek</em>'s Valley View (a live, monthly Web TV show). <P> You can watch Goldbloom's elevator pitch, and see what our judges thought in the video above.2012-12-10T10:49:00ZAfter getting to know Bill Schlough, <em>InformationWeek</em>'s L.A. baseball diehard Fritz Nelson has just one question: Why isn't this guy with the Dodgers?http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/9-inspiring-innings-with-sf-giants-cio-b/240144103?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityIf writing about Bill Schlough, CIO of the San Francisco Giants and InformationWeek's 2012 Chief of The Year, were a nine-inning baseball game, it might look a little something like this. <P> <strong>Pre-game warm-up:</strong> <P> Earlier this year one of our reporters and our video crew joined Schlough at a Giants home game, to learn how the organization creates a superior fan experience using technology. <P> Schlough spent all day with our editorial team, taking them down to the field, arranging interviews with players Angel Pagan and Brandon Crawford, Giants CEO Larry Baer and manager Bruce Bochy. <P> That game turned out to be Matt Cain's historic no hitter, and as it was developing Schlough took the editors down to the field to be in the moment, and then celebrated with them after. <P> I would come to learn that here, as with most everything Schlough does, he is gracious, thorough, dependable and completely present. I would come to learn that Schlough is a winner in his job, but also in life. <P> (You can <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/video/1724150892001"> watch that video report</a> here.) <P> <strong>Inning 1:</strong> The Giants are playing the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. The Giants are ahead in the series 2 games to 0, and they're in Detroit for game 3. Hoping to see how accessible Schlough will be so that I can tell him we've selected him as our CIO of the year, I send him a simple hello email, congratulating him and the team on their World Series run. <P> <strong>[ Read the full story on Schlough's innovative work: <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/san-francisco-giants-bill-schlough-it-ch/240144065">San Francisco Giants' Bill Schlough: InformationWeek IT Chief Of The Year</a>. ]</strong> <P> He replies almost immediately. He's in Detroit. He accepts my congratulations. He says something playfully snotty about my Los Angeles Dodgers and sends me some <a href="http://www.latimes.com/sports/baseball/mlb/dodgers/la-sp-plaschke-giants-20121026,0,2185694.column">reading material</a>. I decide to wait until the World Series is over to tell him about our selecting him as Chief of the Year. <P> <strong>Inning 2:</strong> I'm warming him up. The Giants have just swept the Tigers, and I congratulate him again, as much as it pains me. He replies: "It's just a bummer you didn't do another hatchet job on us this year so that you could issue another retraction." He's referring to <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/telecom/voip/dear-sf-giants-cio-im-sorry/228200051">this hatchet job and retraction</a>. <P> He's really going to make this difficult, isn't he? <P> <strong>Inning 3:</strong> Schlough is genuinely excited when I tell him the Chief of the Year news, then skeptical or cautious. His response: "Wow! First a World Series Championship, then a parade, now this? I'm kinda speechless and wondering if there is a catch. Like you need me to appear in all photos wearing Dodger gear." <P> Schlough jumps over my highest hurdles. He puts me in touch with everyone I ask for to learn more about him, including the CEO of the Giants (Baer), the CFO (John Yee), the VP of baseball operations (Bobby Evans), his three direct reports and several line of business heads. He even suggests I talk with the top IT execs of the San Diego Padres, the Los Angeles Dodgers (what?) and the Dallas Cowboys, as well as the CTO of Major League Baseball and the CEO of baseball's Advanced Media unit. He contacts all of them in advance. Everyone agrees to talk with me. Some of the meetings Schlough sets up for me personally. <P> <strong>Inning 4:</strong> It's a typical overcast day in San Francisco when I arrive at AT&T Park, and it's quiet. It's the off-season. Inside the gate are gorgeous championship coats just sitting in a box. I could easily take one, but what would I use to burn it? <P> Schlough sets me up in a conference room: home base (plate?) for the day. We talk in his office, which is cluttered but impeccably organized. I ask for an org chart, and he reaches to get it, almost without looking. <P> For lunch, we get salads next door at an eatery. He nods or says hello to at least 10 random people. He seems to know everyone. He takes me onto the field (yes, the one where the Giants play), and we eat our lunches there. Above the blaring music, as if there were a game and it was between innings, we talk about raising children and about sports and leadership, and about his volunteer efforts away from work, like with Junior Achievement. <P> And he makes it all sound easy. And I get the sense that for him, it probably is. <P> <strong>Inning 5:</strong> It becomes apparent that there's something special brewing for later in the day. He won't tell me what it is. <P> I meet Schlough's staff: Dan Quill, who heads up application development; Dave Woolley, who's in charge of strategic IT initiatives; and Ken Logan, senior IT director. <P> I do my best to poke around at the edges, trying to get them to give me some dirt on Schlough, but they're having none of it. Woolley: Schlough is "a CIO, a VP, but he's the type of guy who leads by example. He'll be right there when we have to clean out a closet . . . . Schlough is superman. He'll do whatever it takes to help the team." <P> Wait, does this count? "He doesn't eat. He doesn't sleep. I think he might be an alien," Woolley says. Maybe he meant that in a positive way. <P> And here's Quill, on the IT team's early morning travel habits: "If you leave after 6 a.m., it's like he's broken a rule or something." <P> <strong>Inning 6:</strong> Now we go down to the field. Schlough has gathered the entire IT team. A man appears, walking almost like a guard at Buckingham Palace. He's wearing white gloves, and in his arms, under a Tiffany-blue cloth, is some sort of large structure. It's the Commissioner's Trophy. <P> When the Giants won the World Series two years ago (after decades of futile efforts, while the Dodgers busily collected a cool half dozen), that trophy was carefully guarded. Now the entire IT team gets a picture with it. They even let me hold it -- such agony, for this Dodgers fan. I swore I overheard Schlough tell Mr. White Glove to disinfect it afterward. <P> <center><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1354/fritz_nelson_trophy_4.jpg" width="600" height="375" alt="Fritz Nelson with World Series Trophy" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin-bottom:7px;" /><br /></center></p> <P> <strong>Inning 7:</strong> I talk with other people about Schlough. I must have talked with nearly every Giants employee and everyone associated with Major League Baseball. They all give me some slightly different version of the same thing: how Schlough is a leader, how he could be CIO of nearly any organization, how he is so well respected and liked, how effective he is. (Why isn't he with the Dodgers?!) <P> Jason Pearl, who heads up sponsorship marketing: "Bill pushes limits. He doesn't see roadblocks, he sees opportunity." <P> CEO Baer: "He's a highly versatile player. He has a breadth of understanding of baseball and the sports industry that goes beyond the sports technology. . . . [he's] made a huge difference in the organization." <P> <strong>Inning 8:</strong> There are more people and more stories about Schlough. Even the Dodgers CIO, Ralph Esquibel: "He tends to be one of the most outspoken individuals among CIOs in baseball. He's very open, very straightforward, very honest." <P> Evans, the baseball operations VP, says that Schlough demands high performance and gets the most out of people, but that he also understands the big picture. Quill calls Schlough progressive, different and someone who lets his team members perform without interference. Woolley says Schlough's goal-setting keeps the team focused. Logan says Schlough is organized, structured and communicates, and the team is well aware of what they're working toward. <P> Linda McCracken, president of Junior Achievement for Northern California: "In addition to taking a genuine interest in our students' goals, Bill takes time to be a role model and speak to students about his career choice, how he has worked to expand technology in his job, to answer career questions, and to even make tickets available to students so they might experience the excitement of a professional sports game." <P> And then there's Sue Peterson, who heads up the Giants Community Enrichment program: "He's both a personal and professional champion of the Giants community fund . . . Bill goes a step beyond just what we ask . . . . he gives his personal time . . . . He has helped us with personal donations. He motivates his staff, his friends. He rallies his department to give time." And so on. <P> <strong>Inning 9:</strong> Would it come as a surprise that Schlough graduated from Duke University and has an MBA from Wharton? That he worked at EDS and Booz-Allen? That he is a board member of the Bay Area Sports Olympic Committee, where he played an instrumental role in getting San Francisco into contention to host the Summer Olympics in 2012 and 2016? How about that he's excited about trying again for 2024? His license plate, BASOC CEO Anne Cribbs tells me, reads: "SF20xx?" <P> Bill Schlough is never done accomplishing things. <P> The Giants have won two World Series in three years, and they sell out every game. What else is there to achieve? The thought doesn't even register with him. There's always more to do, and if it's not on the baseball field, it's with merchandising opportunities or new club venues like <a href=" http://www.sfgate.com/giants/article/Giants-Mission-Rock-plan-is-in-city-s-ballpark-3457427.php">Mission Rock</a>, the community gathering center the Giants plan to open near the stadium. <P> This will surprise you: Schlough was the interim CEO of the minor league San Jose Giants, and is now the team's chairman. Not bad for an ex-Unix administrator. <P> <strong>Extra Innings:</strong> Schlough is one of those people who thinks in things like "the three p's," as in people, process and passion. His team has a mission statement that it wrote together. It consists of three, color-coded one-sentence steps. <P> He urges me, for our Chief of the Year piece, to use photos of his team, not him. <P> I'm finishing my story on Schlough, and I need a few fun facts. He's at the winter baseball meetings, where the Giants signed the oxymoronically named Angel Pagan as well as Marco Scutaro. Somewhere past midnight he sends me the information he has gathered. <P> And then he adds that he said hello to Tommy Lasorda for me. <P> That is Bill Schlough. <P> He once brought me a Brian Wilson bobblehead doll and led a crowd in a chant of "Dodgers suck." And I liked it. <P> I can't stand the Giants. And I hate Duke. But it's impossible to not like Bill Schlough.2012-12-10T08:00:00ZThe Giants' CIO and his team are innovating in areas such as analytics-based scouting and in-stadium wireless, keeping the World Series champions ahead of the game. http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/san-francisco-giants-bill-schlough-infor/240144065?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityEvery member of the San Francisco Giants IT department has a 2010 World Series ring, and one day during the 2013 season they'll also get their 2012 World Series rings.</p> <P> Buster Posey, the National League's Most Valuable Player, Pablo Sandoval, the World Series MVP, and 23 other players were on the field, but Ken Logan, senior IT director, Dave Woolley, director of strategic IT initiatives, Dan Quill, director of application development, and eight other IT all stars also made the Giants' Western Division championship, playoff run and final sweep of the Detroit Tigers possible.</p> <P> This notion may seem over the top, but it is what they believe, and they can draw the chalk lines from technology initiatives to Commissioner's Trophies, from dynamic ticket pricing to the Digital Dugout to a World Series victory, like Tinker to Evers to Chance.</p> <P> That's the magic of Bill Schlough, the CIO of the San Francisco Giants and <i>InformationWeek</i>'s 2012 Chief of the Year: He believes.</p> <P> <strong>The Player</strong> <P> Schlough greets me dressed like a banker, suited up for a short trip to HP Pavilion for the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame induction reception. He's chairman of the San Jose Giants, a Class A minor league team where he served as interim CEO from August 2011 through January 2012, before hiring his successor.</p> <P> Schlough isn't just a believer. He's a doer, a versatile executive who meets regularly with department heads such as baseball operations VP Bobby Evans and sponsorship/business development VP Jason Pearl, as well as with sponsors he insists on calling partners. He often speaks at their customer conferences.</p> <P> Schlough has been the CIO of the Giants for 14 years, but it seems unimaginable that a former Unix admin could run a baseball team. Giants CEO Larry Baer says Schlough was chosen to run the San Jose team because of his versatility. "He has a breadth of understanding of baseball and the sports industry that goes beyond sports technology," he says. To Baer's credit, he thinks employees with high potential need new challenges. "We don't pigeonhole people," he says.</p> <P> Adds baseball operations VP Evans: "He has the desire to grow. He doesn't get satisfied with where he's at. He's not afraid to take chances to achieve big things."</p> <P> <strong>The Innovator</strong> <P> In a business where all that matters is winning, what has Schlough, his IT organization and the Giants actually accomplished? Here are some highlights.</p> <P> <b>&#187 Dynamic ticket pricing:</b> There's no better, or more dangerous, intersection between a team and its customer than ticketing, which usually begins online and ends at a turnstile. And while it's difficult to pick out a single IT innovation among so many, the Giants were a pioneer in this area. In 2000, when AT&T Park opened, the Giants' ticketing team, working with Schlough and the IT team, rolled out dynamic ticket pricing, where competitive forces drive the cost of attending a ballgame.</p> <P> If a game is part of a crucial series or against an in-division rival, or the pitching matchup is especially compelling, or the game is simply selling out fast for whatever reason, ticket prices rise -- thanks to software from 5-year-old vendor <a href="http://www.qcue.net/" target="_blank">Qcue</a>. Conversely, prices fall if the game isn't a big draw.</p> <P> Schlough openly admits the Giants borrowed the dynamic pricing idea from the airline industry. The organization won't directly correlate revenue gains to the ticket pricing effort, but it's worth noting that the team's ticket sales have risen 7% to 8% over the past two years, an increase that also lifts concession and parking sales. The Giants have sold out 100% of their home games since Oct. 1, 2010, the second longest such streak in Major League Baseball (behind the Boston Red Sox). The Giants' paid attendance in 2012 came to 3.3 million. </p> <P> Meantime, the team has increased season ticket sales from 21,000 in 2010 to 28,000 in 2011 and 29,000 in 2012. Knowing that season ticket holders don't normally attend every game, the Giants created a secondary online ticket market, called Double Play Ticket Window, in 2000, before StubHub existed. Working with a now-defunct SAP-Intel joint venture called Pandesic, the Giants invented a way to activate and deactivate the bar codes on tickets, making exchanges simple and safe. After Pandesic went bust in 2000, the Giants built the platform again in partnership with Tickets.com, which was subsequently acquired by MLB Advanced Media, which now licenses the technology to StubHub. While the Giants still make a small profit from Double Play, Schlough considers it a fan service rather than a business venture.</p> <P><b>&#187 One giant Wi-Fi hotspot:</b> The Giants have also become the bellwether for enabling a digital fan experience at the ballpark, and a lightning rod for criticism. Baseball purists don't cotton to dancing mascots, eardrum-bursting music and other family-friendly entertainment, and they can't fathom why fans need to use laptops and tablets at a baseball game. But Giants fans live and breathe the fumes of Silicon Valley. Business pros pound out emails between innings; other fans update their social networks and check scores and video highlights from around the league.</p> <P> When the Giants opened AT&T (formerly Pacific Bell) Park in 2000, mobile was in its relative infancy and modern social networking didn't exist. As early as 2004, Schlough sculpted a wireless experience for fans, even if only a handful of them were on the network. But on opening day of 2008, several months after the advent of the iPhone, the ballpark's network was saturated.</p> <P> Luckily, the Giants had a partner with both the resources and the motivation to help: AT&T. Terry Stenzel, an AT&T VP, won't forget his first phone call from Schlough. "I knew I was in trouble," he says, "but I didn't feel like it." That is, Schlough made Stenzel feel like a partner in solving the problem. </p> <P> To be clear, this wasn't just about fans being able to access Facebook. Schlough was concerned about employees being able to reach one another, a matter of fan safety. It took almost the entire 2008 season for Schlough and AT&T to build up the wireless infrastructure, and even then, Stenzel says, the problems didn't go away as demand continued to soar. "Every year, it's almost a rip and replace," Giants IT director Logan says.</p> <P> The wireless network extends from the seats to the concession stands and even outside the stadium. After all, Stenzel notes, the "fan experience starts in the parking lot." From Game 1 of the 2010 World Series through the 2012 season, the Giants and AT&T boosted network capacity to handle an almost eightfold increase in traffic, from 55 GB to 433 GB.</p> <P> Quill, the Giants' app dev director, remembers when fans started streaming the games in the ballpark, putting even more stress on the network. The Giants worked with MLB's Advanced Media group to arrive at the ability to cache some of that video locally to relieve some of the traffic pressure.</p> <P> Maps is one of the most used applications at the park, because fans like to connect with friends and family after a game, Stenzel says. Surprisingly, fans also stream a lot of music at games. While 40% of all Web activity at games is just browsing, he says that for the first time ever at a sporting event, uploads have surpassed downloads. </p> <P> Fans want to associate themselves with being at a World Series or other big game, and there's plenty to associate themselves with, like celebrity national anthems and fly-by military exercises. It's enough to make a purist want to stay home. But then again, this is precisely what Schlough's team fights. As he puts it: "Our biggest competition is the couch."</p> <P> <b>&#187 The "big rig":</b> There are several ways to look at what <i>The Los Angeles Times</i> called "<a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/02/sports/la-sp-all-star-balloting-20120703" target="_blank">baseball's big rig</a>," a reference to the clever method Schlough and his team employed to help deliver a few Giants players to last season's All-Star game. <P> Online fan voting is theoretically limited to 25 times per person, and the biggest baseball markets have always had the advantage. In 2012, MLB allowed mobile balloting for the first time. "What other park in the world has the infrastructure to be able to tell our fans to pull out their mobile devices and vote right now," Schlough says. And that's what the Giants did, starting with a big series with the Los Angeles Dodgers a week before the voting period closed. <P> The Giants built a voting command center, via kiosks located around the park, and they encouraged mobile voting during games over the high-definition scoreboard. Vote often, the Giants told fans. (Major League Baseball has a rich tradition of cities stuffing the All-Star ballot box. The <i>Cincinnati Enquirer</i> famously started a campaign in 1957 in which it sent prefilled ballots to bars throughout Cincinnati. After the Reds monopolized the All-Star roster, MLB commissioner Ford Frick ended fan balloting -- it returned 20 years later.)</p> <P> Schlough is unapologetic. Indeed, he's gleeful that players such as outfielder Melky Cabrera (No. 4 in the voting a week earlier -- this was a month before he was suspended for 50 games after testing positive for steroids) and third baseman Sandoval (whose stats at the time paled in comparison to those of the Mets' David Wright) were voted All-Star game starters. Such selections build player and team morale, he rationalizes. So what if a little technology greased the skids?</p> <P> Evans, the Giants' VP of baseball operations and a 20-year team veteran, is a little more cautious. He doesn't want anyone, especially the All-Star players, to think they didn't earn their votes. "The players who got in deserved it," he says, noting that Cabrera was leading the league in batting average at the time (and was named the All-Star game's MVP); Sandoval eventually was the World Series MVP; and the third Giant voted an All-Star starter, Posey, ended up earning the league's MVP. </p><b>&#187 Big data:</b> Baseball, more than any other sport, is a game of statistics, one put on steroids (sorry, Melky) by the wide embrace of "sabermetrics" of <i>Moneyball</i> fame. While teams evaluate factors such as player performance and optimal positioning on the field by analyzing thousands of slivers of data, MLB Advanced Media (BAM) is beginning to let a handful of teams -- the Giants among them -- take the concept further with <a href="http://www.sportvision.com/baseball/fieldfx" target="_blank">Sportvision's Fieldf/x</a>, a video system that helps teams analyze player reaction times, or what Evans calls biomechanics.</p> <P> "You're going to be able to get an amazing matrix on speed and response time," says app dev director Quill, adding that Fieldf/x "will revolutionize how defense is analyzed," like how fast an outfielder comes in for a ball, moves laterally or reacts to line drives. "In some cases, it's just making the data more accurate, and in other cases it's giving us information that just didn't exist before."</p> <P> While BAM CEO Bob Bowman is careful to note that MLB plays no team favorites, he says Schlough and his organization have two essential qualities when it comes to digital media: ideas and execution. "They always say yes," he says.</p> <P> Fieldf/x generates a million records per game. Schlough does the math for me: 30 frames per second, tracking nine defensive players, the home plate umpire, a batter and the ball, multiplied by the amount of time a game takes (about 30 minutes of action). Quill says that when teams accumulate three years' worth of data -- enough to give them a high level of confidence in that data -- we'll be talking about 5 billion records. As Quill and Schlough like to point out, 5 billion records is on par with the amount of data a typical bank deals with. Indeed, when we met last month Schlough was due to meet with the head of a large bank's data analytics operations, at the bank's request.</p> <P> Mix into that data pool the stats every team tracks, as well as the information teams are starting to collect about fans, including social media activity and ticket purchasing/sales patterns, and we're talking about a big data (and storage) problem. It's the IT organization's biggest challenge right now, Quill says.</p> <P> MLB's Bowman adds that the league's big data, which his organization centralizes and manages, requires teams to be "ready to move not within hours, but maybe within minutes and preferably in seconds."</p> <P> <b>&#187 Scouting:</b> Quill has been in every Giants draft room since 1999. "My systems have been used in the draft room," he says, "and that draft room created Buster Posey, it created [Madison] Bumgarner, created [Matt] Cain 10 years ago. All of those were related to how we scouted and how the organization figured out how to pick those players, and we assisted in that process."</p> <P> Quill has worked with Evans and the rest of the baseball operations staff to incorporate various systems, including <a href="http://www.sportvision.com/baseball/pitchfx" target="_blank">Fieldf/x and Sportvision's Pitchf/x</a>, into the Giants' scouting process. Beyond picking players, the IT organization's data and video analyses extend to advanced scouting, like figuring out how to pitch the Tigers and who to trade for. </p> <P> <b>&#187 High-definition video:</b> It's hard to say whether AT&T Park was the first to go 100% HD. The Giants were the third MLB team to introduce an HD video scoreboard, Schlough says, after the Braves and the Marlins. But replacing all of the stadium's TVs with HD sets transformed the fan experience, he says. "It's that simple to me," he says. "Change out the TVs and the park feels new."</p> <P> MLB's Bowman also talks about another aspect of video: delivering live video captured in the ballpark, which the Giants have been doing for years. Bowman's goal is to capture video, edit it and deliver it to the 2 million MLB.com subscribers within 20 seconds. The league can embed an ad, deliver the video to mobile devices and, of course, generate revenue. And Schlough's AT&T Park infrastructure makes such delivery, even live look-ins to other games, possible.</p> <P> After the Giants swept the Tigers in the World Series, Schlough's team produced a 360-degree interactive video of the victory parade. With only two days to get the video done, it mounted three cameras: one on the windshield of Sandoval's vehicle, one on a golf cart and one on the front of the podium at the City Hall stage. The final product, which <a href="http://www.mlb.com/sf/fan_forum/parade.jsp" target="_blank">you can view here</a>, is stunning.</p> <P> <center><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1354/354CS_team_585.jpg" width="585" height="390" alt="Schlough's IT team celebrates the Giants' World Series win" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin-bottom:7px;" /><br /><div class="storyImageCaption">Schlough's IT team celebrates the Giants' World Series win </div></center></p> <P><strong>The Integrator</strong></p> <P> When I met with Schlough in November, he and his team had already cooked up 50 IT projects for the off-season, and they had yet to meet with the team's various departments. Many of those projects, he says, are fairly boring: upgrading the Microsoft Exchange system, adding storage, shoring up disaster recovery. After they woke me up, I also heard about plans to deliver video and data to iPads, which players and managers carry around, and about delivering a better mobile experience overall (Quill's team takes an HTML5 approach).</p> <P> Schlough wouldn't go into details, but the Giants endured a cyber attack during the World Series, so he's also focused on enhancing the company's password and mobile device policies.</p> <P> The Giants are replacing the homegrown CRM system they've used for years, containing information on 700,000 customers, with Salesforce.com. They've also moved to a new ticketing platform, and these two systems (ticketing and CRM) will come together at a few points. The team is testing mobile point-of-sale systems in stores, for example.</p> <P> The goal is to integrate all customer data, from ticket purchasers to callers into the Giants' ShoreTel VoIP system, and to "track the value of every customer and accurately assess the likelihood of losing that customer, or how to retain that customer," Schlough says. The organization wants to cater to each customer based on past behavior and interaction.</p> <P> The Giants just hired a social media director, who reports to three people: the heads of communications, revenue and marketing. But he works most closely with Schlough. The Giants are building a physical social media hub in the ballpark. Schlough wants to install mobile device charging stations at the ballpark -- he tells me purposefully, because if I report it, he says, he'll be committed to following through.</p> <P> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; width:177px; float:right;"> <div style="border:1px solid #000000; padding:0;"> <div style="margin:0; padding:0px; font-size:1.4em; text-align:center; color:#ffffff; background-color:#000000;"> <strong>Tech Me Out To The Ballgame</strong> &#9;&#9;&#9;<img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1354/354CSballpark.jpg" width="175" height="181"> </div> <div style="margin:0; padding:10px;"> <span style="color:#cc0033; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;">334</span> Number of wireless access points at AT&T Park <div style="margin:10px 0 10px 0; padding 0; border-bottom:solid 1px #666666;"></div> &#9;&#9;&#9;<span style="color:#cc0033; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;">577</span> Number of HD TVs at the park <div style="margin:10px 0 10px 0; padding 0; border-bottom:solid 1px #666666;"></div> <span style="color:#cc0033; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;">805</span> GB of data that park spectators moved via Wi-Fi during Giants' two World Series home games <div style="margin:10px 0 10px 0; padding 0; border-bottom:solid 1px #666666;"></div> <span style="color:#cc0033; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;">870K</span> Total unique visitors to the park's Wi-Fi network at Giants games in 2012 season </div> </div> </div> <P> <strong>The Mensch</strong></p> <P> Schlough is well connected in sports IT circles. It's worth noting that the top IT execs of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres, two fierce in-division rivals, agreed immediately to speak with me about the Giants' CIO.</p> <P> Steve Reese, VP of IT for the Padres, says Schlough's greatest impact has been helping baseball understand "that IT should be part of the business process." Schlough drives initiatives that aren't just disruptive to the way traditional organizations think, Reese says, but that also impact the bottom line.</p> <P> Reese goes so far as to call Schlough "the Bill Walsh of IT," referring to the former San Francisco 49ers head coach, who not only was an offensive football genius, but whose progeny is a who's who of former NFL coaches, including Mike Holmgren, George Seifert and Dennis Green. </p> <P> One of Schlough's proteges is John Winborn, whom he hired in 1999 as a desktop support specialist and later promoted to MIS director, before seeing him off to the Padres. Winborn is now the CIO of the Dallas Cowboys. "I would not be here without his mentoring," Winborn says of Schlough, who's one of the first people he calls with tough problems.</p> <P> Ralph Esquibel, the senior director of technology for the hated Los Angeles Dodgers, says the Giants "have without a doubt been innovators in the league," and that while baseball hasn't been on the top of the innovation curve, "Bill doesn't fit that mold. ... He has tended not to follow the herd ... and they've been rewarded."</p> <P> The Giants' technology prowess has rubbed off on many baseball franchises. Esquibel says the Dodgers are building the largest stadium wireless infrastructure in North America -- more than double what the Giants have. Esquibel has a big challenge on his hands, given that Dodger Stadium is the third-oldest stadium in Major League Baseball, but he's undaunted -- a reflection of the pace Schlough has set for everyone else.</p> <P><strong>The Stalker?</strong></p> <P> Bill Schlough is impeccable. His office, bursting with books and memorabilia, feels a little cluttered, but everything has its place, like his bulletin board with inspirational quotes. Several awards and plaques hang on the wall, but they're hidden. His notes and projects are organized in neat stacks. </p> <P> I had planned to ask him about mentors, but he beats me to the punch, listing among them his late mother-in-law, whom he describes as someone who labeled everything and sweated the small stuff. One of his heroes is Pierre de Coubertin, who founded the International Olympic Committee, and he's a disciple of Gary Rogers, the former CEO of Dreyer's Ice Cream, who's a big believer in empowering teams. Schlough invited eight of his mentors to join him at his banquet table in Los Angeles when he was named to the Street & Smith's SportsBusiness Journal's 2010 "Forty under 40."</p> <P> I confess that it's difficult to find flaws in the man. Either that or he's got something on just about every associate I talked with.</p> <P> How about this: He doesn't really like music, and doesn't listen to it. String him up!</p> <P> On the morning I met with Schlough, he was up early stalking Randy Petersen, founder of InsideFlyer and Milepoint and, according to Schlough, the god of frequent fliers. Schlough set a goal early in his career to fly 1 million miles, and after achieving that milestone got United Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek (the boss of a friend) to sign Schlough's Up In The Air movie poster. And now he landed Petersen. One more signature to go: George Clooney's. (I'll take the bet that Schlough gets that one, too.)</p> <P> Schlough is an Ironman triathlete and dreams of qualifying for and competing in the annual world championship in Kona, Hawaii. Sports has always been a big part of his life. In college at Duke, he played club sports and won the Kevin Deford Gorter Memorial Award, given to the athlete who has contributed the most to sports at the university. Friend Christian Laettner, winner of a college basketball national championship and Olympic gold medal, doesn't have one of those. At EDS, Schlough worked on the soccer World Cup. </p> <P> But Bill Schlough, the technology executive and sports enthusiast, is best viewed as a leader who brings purpose and humility to that calling.</p> <P> Woolley, the Giants' director of strategic IT initiatives, says Schlough is "a CIO, a VP, but he's the type of guy who leads by example. He'll be right there when we have to clean out a closet." Woolley remembers when one of the Giants' sites in Arizona was down. Schlough volunteered immediately to get on a plane. "He'll do whatever it takes to help the team."</p> <P> Logan quipped about the Arizona trip: "He probably did it for the miles."</p> <P> Anne Cribbs, CEO of the Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee, says Schlough is adept at building consensus, especially among those with big egos. Other associates and direct reports describe him with words like "progressive" and "structured." Before I left AT&T Park, he provided me with a breakdown of help desk trouble tickets and an example of the day-of-game support manual. I hadn't asked for such things, but he must have thought it would be helpful.</p> <P> Schlough is also someone who "pushes limits," says Pearl, who heads up sponsorships for the Giants. "He doesn't see roadblocks. He sees opportunity."</p> <P> Baseball, it is said, is a game of inches. A little white ball traveling 90 miles per hour, a skinny stick. Your arm, his eye. A stare, a blink, a swing. </p> <P> Bill Schlough can't miss.</p> <P> <center> <div style="margin:0; padding:0 0 10px 10px; width:560px;"> <div style="border:1px solid #000000; padding:0;"> <div style="margin:0; padding:4px; font-size:1.2em; text-align:center; color:#ffffff; background-color:#CC0000;"> <strong>Bill Schlough At A Glance</strong> </div> <div style="margin:0; padding:8px; text-align:left;"> <b>Education:</b> BS in mechanical engineering from Duke University. MBA from the Wharton School. <div style="margin:10px 0 10px 0; padding 0; border-bottom:solid 1px #666666;"></div> <b>Professional experience:</b> At EDS (1992-1996) performed a variety of functions for clients such as AMD, World Cup USA, General Motors and Kmart. At Booz Allen Hamilton (1998-1999) provided IT strategy and other consulting services to media/entertainment industry clients. Since 1999, senior VP and CIO of San Francisco Giants <div style="margin:10px 0 10px 0; padding 0; border-bottom:solid 1px #666666;"></div> <b>Other affiliations:</b> Board member of the Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee, where he played a key role in getting San Francisco into contention to host the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics. Board member of Junior Achievement of Northern California (since 2003). Media center technical supervisor for 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. <div style="margin:10px 0 10px 0; padding 0; border-bottom:solid 1px #666666;"></div> <b>Recent books read:</b> Seth Godin's <i>The Dip</i> and Marshall Goldsmith's <i>What Got You Here Won't Get You There</i>. </div> </div> </div> </center> <P> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <center> <div id="printfeaturePDFpromo"><div class="printfeaturePDFCover"><a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/83/9496/IT-Business-Strategy/informationweek-december-17-2012.html?k=axxe&cid=article_axxe_os"><img src="http://twimgs.com/infoweek/1354/smallcov2.jpg" alt="InformationWeek: Dec. 17, 2012 Issue" title="InformationWeek: Dec. 17, 2012 Issue" /></a></div> <div class="printfeaturePDFCopy"><strong><a href="url_to_come">Download a free PDF of <nobr><em>InformationWeek</em> magazine</nobr></a><br /> (registration required)</strong></div> <div class="clearBoth"></div> </div> </center> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <P>2012-12-06T11:12:00ZOracle President Mark Hurd talks strategy with <em>InformationWeek</em>'s Fritz Nelson and some CIO customers. Watch the interview and read our analysis.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/mark-hurd-interview-oracle-leading-or-fo/240143976?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityOracle is undergoing a transformation right before our very eyes. Where once it was a database company, it&#8217;s now an application company, a cloud company, a hardware company. At its most recent customer conference, Oracle Open World, the company made several announcements that showed it&#8217;s serious about wanting to own the entire technology stack, from the hardware to the database to the middleware to the applications. <P> I had a chance to sit down with Oracle President Mark Hurd and a handful of Oracle customers, including Dan Drawbaugh, CIO of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which is spending $100 million on medical analytics and hopes to further the use of genomic data to deliver on the promise of precision medicine. <P> We put all of this analysis into a documentary video of sorts (play it directly below). I've also embedded the full interview further below (at the end of this article), along with a similar video interview I conducted in September with <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/sap-ceo-tackles-tough-cloud-questions/240008908">SAP co-CEO Jim Hagemann-Snabe, whom I also wrote about earlier</a>. <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <P> <div style="display:none"> Informationweek.com <http://Informationweek.com/> run-of-site player, used to publish article embedded videos via DCT. The same ads will be served on this player regardless of embed location. </div> <P> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. --> <P> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <P> <object id="myExperience1972253037001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="480" /> <param name="height" value="270" /> <param name="playerID" value="1223625539001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAF14eAc~,GZC-YoxXnehVitUBmX0u2QYfPEVvZG_k" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="1972253037001" /> </object> <P> <!-- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. --> <script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script> <P> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> <P> First, a few quick explanations and observations: <P> -- I asked Hurd to give Oracle grades in a few areas. These are the same areas I asked Hagemann-Snabe to grade SAP on. Hagemann-Snabe is much harder on his company than Hurd is on Oracle. Surprised? <P> -- I also wondered, given that many people still think of Oracle as a database company, what business Oracle considers itself in today. Hurd responded with the standard conference pitch, but I do think his answer is telling: Oracle plans to own every part of the technology stack, including the parts of the stack that run in the cloud. Does that ring true? <P> -- No matter how many ways I pressed Hurd, he gave his competitors very little credit. I even quibbled with his characterization of Salesforce.com as just a salesforce automation company, and he reiterated it, and then noted that Oracle is coming after Salesforce. Is Hurd just a fiercely competitive executive trying to fire up the company, just like his boss, CEO Larry Ellison, or is he sincere (and too dismissive) of Oracle&#8217;s competitors? <P> -- Oracle has turned Sun into the centerpiece of its engineered systems strategy. In essence, Oracle&#8217;s &#8220;Exa&#8221; line of products consists of a series of appliances that include compute, memory and storage to process enterprise-level application workloads, from analytics to transactions. This is still new territory for Oracle. I talked with Hurd about the Exa-systems in-memory architecture, and about whether this is just faster machinery or something truly transformational. <P> While Hurd spoke with precision about transformational cost savings and the technology shifts that make it possible (and they do sound impressive), he didn't talk about business transformation. Oracle isn&#8217;t alone in this regard; most technology companies still fail to relate their wares to strategic business outcomes. They become enamored of their technology because it does impressive things and can be fun to talk about. But CIOs have to speak a different language -- the language of customers and business results. I wrote about this disconnect at length in a piece that was meant as a <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/memo-to-oracle-sap-listen-to-pgs-languag/240008750">memo to Oracle and SAP</a>, exhorting them to listen to the language of Procter & Gamble CIO Filippo Passerini. I wrote: <P> <em>Passerini doesn't talk about DRAM or flash memory. Sure, he thinks about competitors, but instead of relying on partial truths, he simply looks at the data. Passerini set off on a mission a few years . . . The plan: to digitize, visualize, and simulate--to distill down the company's massive data to what matters, to provide a single version of the truth to 60,000 employees in an effort he calls "information democratization," to help the company speed products to market (but more cost effectively). "We didn't need to run faster," Passerini said, "we needed to change the way we ran."</em> <P> You can also hear similar language from UPMC's Drawbaugh (an enormously successful CIO who also happens to be on InformationWeek's Editorial Advisory Board) in the video above: "We'll measure success not from the technology perspective, but from the care provided to the patient," Drawbaugh says. The results, he adds, will be measured by clinicians and ultimately by the patients. The goal: medical breakthroughs. <P> -- I pressed Hurd about the company's new direction, some of its competitive rhetoric, and even whether Oracle is in a position of leadership and innovation or just playing catchup and finding itself in the role of follower. For instance, during the past year or so Ellison has been dismissive of the cloud, in-memory computing (which he once called "whacky") and multitenancy, which he bashed (at Salesforce.com's expense) last year only to clarify his statement this year (it's OK in the database, but not so much at the application layer). Now Oracle's all-in on each. Crafty or disingenuous? <P> Here's the full interview with Hurd. <P> <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <P> <div style="display:none"> Informationweek.com <http://Informationweek.com/> run-of-site player, used to publish article embedded videos via DCT. The same ads will be served on this player regardless of embed location. </div> <P> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. --> <P> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <P> <object id="myExperience1969471487001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="480" /> <param name="height" value="270" /> <param name="playerID" value="1223625539001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAF14eAc~,GZC-YoxXnehVitUBmX0u2QYfPEVvZG_k" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="1969471487001" /> </object> <P> <!-- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. --> <script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script> <P> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> <P> Here is my interview with SAP's Hagemann-Snabe. <P> <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <P> <div style="display:none"> Informationweek.com <http://Informationweek.com/> run-of-site player, used to publish article embedded videos via DCT. The same ads will be served on this player regardless of embed location. </div> <P> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. --> <P> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <P> <object id="myExperience1886761076001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="480" /> <param name="height" value="270" /> <param name="playerID" value="1223625539001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAF14eAc~,GZC-YoxXnehVitUBmX0u2QYfPEVvZG_k" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="1886761076001" /> </object> <P> <!-- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. --> <script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script> <P> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> <P> <i>Predictive analysis is getting faster, more accurate and more accessible. Combined with big data, it's driving a new age of experiments. Also in the new, all-digital <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/111912/?k=axxe&cid=article_axxt_os">Advanced Analytics</a> issue of InformationWeek: Are project management offices a waste of money? (Free registration required.)</i> <P>2012-12-05T10:20:00ZMicrosoft exec Greg Sullivan takes a deep dive into Windows Phone 8 on the most recent episode of InformationWeek Valley View.http://www.informationweek.com/mobility/smart-phones/windows-phone-8-challenger-keeps-fightin/240143825?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobility<!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <div style="display:none"> Informationweek.com run-of-site player, used to publish article embedded videos via DCT. The same ads will be served on this player regardless of embed location. </div> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. --> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <object id="myExperience1998339358001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="480" /> <param name="height" value="270" /> <param name="playerID" value="1223625539001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAF14eAc~,GZC-YoxXnehVitUBmX0u2QYfPEVvZG_k" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="1998339358001" /> </object> <!-- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. --> <script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> <P> Windows Phone 8 has been shipping for almost a month. Its bigger sibling, Windows 8, has probably received more ink and polarized Windows users more. No matter. Microsoft forges ahead, and it is clear that, for the first time in quite a while, Microsoft has made a series of risky moves with its operating systems, the most important piece of which is how they've begun to build a sort of co-dependency between the tablet, the desktop and mobile -- one that users can either reject, or buy into whole cloth. And not just users, but developers, too. <P> Now that Windows Phone 8 is getting battle-tested, we invited Greg Sullivan, Microsoft's senior product manager for Windows Phone, to talk with us on <em>InformationWeek's Valley View</em>, a live, monthly Web TV program. The video is embedded above. <P> We discussed (and saw) some of the latest hardware, from Nokia, HTC and Samsung (not yet available in the U.S.), and we quizzed Sullivan about the low price point carriers are offering Windows phones customers, as well as the fine line Microsoft has to walk with each of its hardware partners, especially given its cozy relationship with Nokia. We asked about Microsoft's somewhat frostier relationship with Sprint, which carried previous iterations of Windows Phone, but seems to be content to sit out Windows Phone 8 for now. <P> We talked about the relationship between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, about some of the new features in the smartphone platform, including customizable live tiles, Rooms (which he demonstrated) and various enterprise features, like better security, including full device encryption, secure boot and private application distribution, which can be delivered using the Company Hub. <P> There's plenty to get excited about, but we also challenged Microsoft's lack of a social platform, some of the missing major phone apps (Microsoft just announced the addition of Pandora, and others are on the way), and some of the early <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/software/windows8/5-ways-microsoft-can-save-windows-8/240142960">criticism of Windows 8</a>. Sullivan was humble: "We're in a position of challenger in this space," he said about Windows Phone 8. About Windows 8, he added: "Change is often hard ... but the benefits are really profound." <P> It's clear Microsoft sees a computing world with Windows still at its heart. Will customers prove them right again with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8?2012-12-04T11:14:00ZEvernote Business lets an organization deploy and manage the Evernote application on behalf of employees, extending information discoverability and sharing company-wide.http://www.informationweek.com/software/productivity-applications/evernote-for-business-end-of-butt-ugly-s/240143078?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityPhil Libin, CEO of Evernote, maker of the popular cloud-based personal productivity software for consumers, thinks enterprise software is "butt ugly." Evernote Business, announced Tuesday, offers a glimpse of what Libin thinks business users should expect: "beautiful experiences at work." <P> Evernote Business lets an organization deploy and manage the Evernote application on behalf of employees, extending information "discoverability" and sharing company-wide. The software includes Business Notebooks, collections of Evernote entries along topical lines, which can now be shared with co-workers; and the Business Library, which includes Business Notebooks and centralized administrative and company communications. <P> Evernote Business also adds Related Notes to the user interface. This feature digs into a company's Evernote trove, exposing information in a contextual way, depending on what the user is working on. <P> Administrators create the Business Library, which centralizes select information from all company users. Sharing and collaborating, Libin said, is much more natural now. "Every time you interact with Evernote, we take every opportunity to show you relevant things," he said. For example, when you search inside Evernote, it lists your notes and those shared with co-workers or stored in the Business Library. <P> <strong>[ Need help with your big data strategy? Read <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/6-steps-to-manage-big-data/240143055?itc=edit_in_body_cross">6 Steps To Manage Big Data</a>. ]</strong> <P> But it also works when you're not searching. These Related Notes come from any Notebook the user has joined. With Related Notes, when you start creating a note, it searches for related content, not just in your own notes, but across the business. In an era of information overload, Libin said, people are too bothered to search. "We're trying to find the Goldilocks moment here" -- finding just the right information at just the right time, he said. <P> In many ways, these new capabilities start to unlock the potential of an application like Evernote. Although Libin isn't particularly fond of characterizing Evernote Business as a wiki platform for SMBs, it's starting to feel like one, at least for those who think of wikis as a way to share and discover knowledge. What makes Evernote enticing here is that it's more of a serendipitous discovery than a forced organization of information. <P> <center> <div class="centeredStoryImage"> <img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/news/2012/12/Fritz_1204_evernote.jpg" width="550" height="596" alt="Evernote" title="Evernote" /> <!-- <div class="storyImageTitle">storyImageTitle here, remove comment marks if running, remove whole line if none</div> --> <div class="storyImageCaption">Here's a sample end-user view in Evernote Business, which does not resemble many wiki tools.</div> </div> </center> <P> <P> With wiki software, Libin said, users must explicitly use them -- that is, launch them, login and enter data in a company-defined scheme -- when they want to share information, whereas with Evernote that sharing happens as part of the experience. For example, if you've created an Evernote entry about a recent business trip related to a project, when another user creates an Evernote entry about that project, those entries are automatically linked. "We stand with the end user, Libin said. "We don't make enterprise software. We make software for people. We take the interest of the end user first, including parts of your life." <P> Evernote Business, priced at $10 per user per month, includes a Web-based administrative application that can be called from the Evernote desktop app. Employees already using the free version of Evernote get upgraded to a more premium version automatically. Evernote has also beefed up its support for business customers, who now get to talk live with a support person. <P> Evernote Business with just the basic features will ship on all major platforms (Mac, iOS, Android, Windows desktop) starting Tuesday. The serendipitous discovery feature will initially be available only on the Mac, then on the iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows next year. <P> A Web Clipper capability (described below), which brings Evernote Notes to a Google search, will be available only on Google Chrome at launch, but Libin says it will soon be available on Firefox, followed by Safari and Internet Explorer.Evernote is a free, Web-based service that lets users create and organize free-form notes. It has applications for all major desktop and mobile platforms. The company says more than 45 million people use Evernote, to house and organize a variety of unstructured content. <P> Evernote also creates Web Clippers for all of the major desktop browsers, so users can send Web pages directly into Evernote with a mouse click. Each user gets an Evernote email address, so you can send emails directly into Evernote as well. Evernote supports documents, lets users create voice notes and even tags entries with location. <P> Evernote also has a set of APIs, which about 20,000 developers tap to extend its capabilities and integration. <a href="http://trunk.evernote.com/">Evernote's Trunk</a> service provides access to many of those applications, which include news feeds, Skitch files (Evernote acquired this screen capture and augmentation tool), expense filing apps, a food and recipe app (called Evernote Food) and much more. <P> Today's personal Evernote also has a premium version, which costs $5 per month or $45 per year. One key feature of the premium version is that it lets Evernote users share information with one another. For instance, I use Evernote to plan various content projects for our websites and video shows, and I share those project notebooks with other users so that we have the same information. In fact, we collaborate on that data -- like any shared Web-based document, it allows for co-authorship, but not in real time, as with Google Docs. <P> The <a href="http://evernote.com/premium">premium version of Evernote</a> also gets you 1 GB of content upload each month (vs 60 MB for the free version), and allows note sizes of up to 100 MB (vs 25 MB in the free version). It includes offline notebook access, indexed and searchable PDF files. <P> <strong>How Evernote Business Works</strong> <P> But here's an extremely important point, especially in this age of BYOD: If you've already got a personal account, that information stays personal even if your company starts using Evernote Business. That is, there's no opportunity for an organization running Evernote Business to get at your personal, unshared documents. As a user, you can still choose to share that information, but you can also create a Business Notebook. This is simply a designation that the notebook is related to work. You still must explicitly share them with co-workers (one by one), and then those co-workers can view and edit and search those Notebooks. Publishing the Business Notebook in the Business Library makes it available to the entire company. <P> <center> <div class="centeredStoryImage"> <img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/news/2012/12/Fritz_1204_eb-admin_manage_notebooks.jpg" width="550" height="366" alt="Manage Notebooks" title="Manage Notebooks" /> <!-- <div class="storyImageTitle">storyImageTitle here, remove comment marks if running, remove whole line if none</div> --> <div class="storyImageCaption">You decide which notebooks to share with colleagues.</div> </div> </center> <P> "We have a strong point of view on how the product is supposed to be used," Libin said. Evernote Business is for fast-growing companies, he added. "If they say you can't make personal notes on company time, then they shouldn't be using it," he said. <P> Back to the Related Notes feature, Evernote isn't just matching tags and keywords, Libin said. The Evernote data team has been working on machine learning for years. The system uses semantic analysis to understand what's in the notes. He gave an example where he was typing in "ABQ," which happens to be the Albuquerque airport code, which created an association with the TV show Breaking Bad, which is filmed and set in that city. This wasn't a literal text string match, he said, but a true association the system made. <P> This capability even works outside of Evernote. For those who use Evernote Clipper in a Web browser (available for now only in the Chrome browser), upon performing a Google search, the user is presented with a list of relevant Evernote entries on the right-hand side of the Google Results page, including those from team members. See the view below: <P> <center> <div class="centeredStoryImage"> <img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/news/2012/12/Fritz_1204_evernote_google.jpg" width="550" height="312" alt="Google Evernote Search" title="Google Evernote Search" style="border:solid 2px #f1f1f1" /> <!-- <div class="storyImageTitle">storyImageTitle here, remove comment marks if running, remove whole line if none</div> --> <div class="storyImageCaption">Here's what you see when Google searches meet relevant Evernote material.</div> </div> </center> <P> <P> Down the road, Libin would like to extend Evernote's reach into other sources of enterprise information. SharePoint, for example, seems like a good target. Evernote will likely expect third-party developers to create some of those meaningful integrations, but given how entrenched SharePoint is, it might be wise for Evernote to do some of the early work here. After all, this is a case of Evernote crashing the enterprise party, even if it's bringing the coolest party favors. <P> Libin's prediction: "We're seeing the last couple of years of ugly business software." The technology people have gotten used to in their personal lives has set high expectations, he said, but when "they show up to work, everything's kind of crappy." <P> Business-class applications, he added, should offer better experiences. <P> That, he said, is where the money is.2012-11-30T13:00:00ZOnline payment darling Dwolla adds three new services as it tries to speed up merchant and consumer acceptance of its electronic transactions.http://www.informationweek.com/internet/ebusiness/dwolla-shakes-up-online-payments/240142982?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobility<a href="https://www.dwolla.com/">Dwolla</a>, a startup in the online payments markets, announced three new services Friday that it hopes will accelerate both merchant and consumer acceptance of Dwolla transactions, one of the big barriers that all payment startups -- and frankly, anyone offering anything other than credit cards or cash -- face; and that includes mobile wallets. <P> The three new services include a Dwolla guest checkout service, where customers can pay without having a Dwolla account and Dwolla Price, where merchants, thanks to the money they'll save on credit card fees, can choose to pass some of that saving back to customers as a way to entice them to use the Dwolla service -- in other words, the merchant and the customer save. It also introduced new point-of-sale system integrations (Dwolla's new partners include <a href="http://www.shopkeep.com/">ShopKeep</a> and <a href="http://change.io/">Change</a>) that let the merchant initiate a payment using a push notification to the customer's phone. <P> But maybe it makes sense to provide a little more context about Dwolla. As it happens, we just had Dwolla's CEO Ben Milne on <em>InformationWeek</em>'s Valley View, a monthly, live Web TV show on Wednesday (the video from that segment is embedded further below). <P> <strong>What is a Dwolla?</strong> <P> Little Dwolla, barely two years old, with all of about 40 employees in the technology hotbed of Iowa, has big intentions. It has created a modern payment network, and it aims to change how money moves and to upset what Dwolla CEO Ben Milne thinks is a costly, inefficient, fraud-riddled payments model. <P> Dwolla has largely been viewed as a PayPal competitor, or a mobile wallet, the de facto ways to facilitate peer-to-peer payments, or consumer-to-merchant payments. But Milne says that these systems are merely building on top of the existing credit card network, and thus simply add to the cost of maintaining those networks. Companies like PayPal, <a href="https://stripe.com/">Stripe</a> and Square may aggregate, or process transactions on behalf of all of the traditional components of the payment ecosystem, but each step still extracts its fee on every dollar the network settles, says Jordan Lampe, who heads up communications for Dwolla. <P> <center><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/1352/gc-landing.png" width="595" height="442" alt="Dwolla" hspace="0" vspace="0" border="0" style="margin-bottom:7px;" /><br /></center></p> <P> Instead, Dwolla is the network. The company's APIs expose the Dwolla infrastructure for banks, merchants and others to move money, arguably more cheaply and efficiently. <P> While the early focus in mobile and online commerce has been the typical customer-merchant transaction, Milne says the barrier to entry there is high. Not only must the customer want to use Dwolla, rather than a credit or debit card or cash, the merchant has to accept Dwolla as an option. Dwolla has built several easy ways for merchants to offer Dwolla payments through a kiosk, online, via e-commerce shopping cart extensions, through a merchant mobile app or even on some point-of-sale systems. But it is slow going. And to some extent, this is where the aforementioned three new services come into play. Even though the barriers to entry may be high, it doesn't mean Dwolla is giving up the fight; it's just arming itself for a long battle.In particular, the new Guest Checkout, which lets a consumer pay online with Dwolla, even without having a Dwolla account, is part of Dwolla's quest to create what the "ideal transaction." As Lampe puts it, Dwolla realized "we were our own paint point." Whether a consumer uses a credit card or a mobile or online payment application, there's still this notion of belonging to a membership club. Dwolla wants consumers to have the choice of not being in the club. <P> The new Dwolla Price feature is a way to reinforce the savings of using a new payments network that doesn't have multiple hands out, grabbing fractions of hard-earned dollars. <P> So far Dwolla has found more success in niche applications, like small businesses paying each other for ad-hoc needs or making wire transfers. It has also found success through partnerships, like with <a href="http://www.mfoundry.com/">mFoundry</a>, a mobile service provider with more than 800 bank clients who use (and provide customers) services like mobile deposit, loyalty programs and mobile bill pay ... and now a secure online payment network with lower fees and instant clearance (read: Dwolla). <P> Milne claims that Dwolla is more secure because it doesn't involve exchanging a relatively identifiable 16-digit number and expiration date. No personal or account data changes hands during a transaction. The user just has to be logged into the app, where they can select the merchant, and then pay. Simple. (Person to person payments can even be initiated using social applications like Facebook.) <P> There are merchants in all 50 states, Milne says, and those merchants are exposed to the Dwolla app (and thus, the consumer) using location. Dwolla transactions over $10 cost the merchant a 25-cent fee (<a href="https://www.paypal.com/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees">PayPal's published, non-discounted merchant rate</a> is 2.9% plus a 30-cent transaction fee) <P> Dwolla's aspirations don't stop there. The company has created FiSync, which provides real-time transfers for financial institutions. In other words, Dwolla aims to replace the automated clearing house (ACH), a 40-year-old network Dwolla claims is also riddled with fraud and inefficiency. <P> Milne admits that Dwolla has a long way to go. FiSync launched with a single, Iowa-based credit union. But Milne also says the market (defined as the money moving through ACH) is $34 trillion annually. <P> The man thinks big. <P> <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <P> <div style="display:none"> Informationweek.com run-of-site player, used to publish article embedded videos via DCT. The same ads will be served on this player regardless of embed location. </div> <P> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. --> <P> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <P> <object id="myExperience1998591213001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="480" /> <param name="height" value="270" /> <param name="playerID" value="1223625539001" /> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAF14eAc~,GZC-YoxXnehVitUBmX0u2QYfPEVvZG_k" /> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="1998591213001" /> </object> <P> <!-- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. 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Fritz writes about startups and established companies alike, but likes to exploit multiple forms of media into his writing.</em></p> <p> <!-- KINDLE EXCLUDE --> <strong>Follow Fritz Nelson and <em>InformationWeek</em> on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Google+:</strong></p> <P> <p><ul> <li><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics_library/misc/twitter_25.jpg" style="width: 25px; height: 25px;" alt="Twitter"> Twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/fnelson"; target="_blank">@fnelson</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/informationweek"; target="_blank">@InformationWeek</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/iwpremium"; target="_blank">@IWpremium</a></li><li><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics_library/misc/facebook_25.jpg" style="width: 25px; height: 25px;" alt="Facebook"> Facebook <a target="_blank" href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=606923988" target="_blank">Fritz Nelson Facebook Page</a> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/InformationWeek/10228569831">InformationWeek Facebook Page</a></li> <li><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics_library/misc/youtube_25.jpg" style="width: 26px; height: 25px;" alt="YouTube"> YouTube <a title="http://www.youtube.com/techwebtv"; target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/techwebtv"; id="rbll">TechWebTV</a></li> <li><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics_library/misc/linkedin_25.jpg" style="width: 25px; height: 26px;" alt="LinkedIn"> LinkedIn <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/fritz-nelson/2/76a/8b0" target="_blank">Fritz Nelson on LinkedIn</a> <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groupInvitation?groupID=102562&sharedKey=0A7330708165" target="_blank">InformationWeek LinkedIn Group</a></li><li><img src="http://twimgs.com/informationweek/graphics_library/misc/googleplus_25.jpg" style="width: 25px; height: 26px;" alt="Google plus"> Google+ <a href="https://plus.google.com/103216758509071451607/posts" target="_blank">Fritz Nelson on Google+</a></li> </ul></p> <!-- /KINDLE EXCLUDE -->2012-11-29T11:51:00ZOur most recent episode of Valley View took a deeper look at Windows Phone 8 with Microsoft's Greg Sullivan and checked out some intriguing startups. See all the highlights.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/valley-view-windows-phone-8-up-close/240142887?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobility<!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <P> <div style="display:none"> <P> Informationweek.com run-of-site player, used to publish article embedded videos via DCT. The same ads will be served on this player regardless of embed location. <P> </div> <P> <!-- <P> By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C <P> found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. <P> --> <P> <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <P> <object id="myExperience1995718393001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <P> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <P> <param name="width" value="480" /> <P> <param name="height" value="270" /> <P> <param name="playerID" value="1223625539001" /> <P> <param name="playerKey" value="AQ~~,AAAAAF14eAc~,GZC-YoxXnehVitUBmX0u2QYfPEVvZG_k" /> <P> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <P> <param name="isUI" value="true" /> <P> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <P> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="1995718393001" /> <P> </object> <P> <!-- <P> This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon <P> as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after <P> the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. <P> --> <P> <script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script> <P> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> <P> This week's Valley View, our live, monthly Web TV show, featured established players like Microsoft, Texas Instruments and SugarSync, plus newer companies like Dwolla, Exec, ClearStory and Kaggle. We heard about Windows Phone 8, e-payments, big data, the cloud and much more. <P> We featured a deeper look at Windows Phone 8, including some of the new devices that run it (from Nokia, HTC and Samsung), and talked about the work that Microsoft still has to do to effectively compete with Apple and Google. Microsoft Windows Phone exec Greg Sullivan acknowledged that his company was clearly the challenger in the mobile space right now. Sullivan showed us a few of the key features of the new mobile OS, including what's new for the enterprise. <P> We also talked about the future of money with Ben Milne, CEO of Dwolla, a company that not only competes with the likes of PayPal, but also aims to change the way money moves, to make electronic payments more secure, more efficient and less expensive. <P> You can watch all of that and more in the video embedded above. The episode also includes our fast-paced Elevator Pitch segment, where three hot companies (SugarSync, Kaggle and ClearStory) pitch us, our audience and our judges on what's great about their technologies. <P> <i>Upgrading isn't the easy decision that Win 7 was. We take a close look at Server 2012, changes to mobility and security, and more in the new <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/092412/?k=axxe&cid=article_axxt_os">Here Comes Windows 8</a> issue of InformationWeek. Also in this issue: Why you should have the difficult conversations about the value of OS and PC upgrades before discussing Windows 8. (Free registration required.)</i>2012-11-26T11:02:00ZWatch November 28 at 11 PT as our live Web TV show brings you up to speed on how Dwolla, Exec, SugarSync and others are upsetting the status quo.http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/next-valley-view-techs-feisty-upstarts/240142558?cid=SBX_iwk_related_commentary_Mobile_business_mobilityIn creating Valley View, our live monthly Web TV show, we set out to cover a wide variety of subjects. You'll find our <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/specialreport/valleyview">November 28 Valley View program (11 am PT)</a> to be the epitome of that notion. We've got a little bit of everything. <P> In our last Valley View (in October), we sat down with big, established players like Oracle and Cisco, and we heard how changing industry trends and small upstarts were creating market transitions that required these industry leaders to react. For November's show, we're going to kick off with the upstart side of the conversation, focusing on a couple of new companies threatening to unravel established businesses, or established ways of thinking. <P> In our opening segment, we'll talk with Ben Milne, CEO of <a href="https://www.dwolla.com/">Dwolla</a>, the new darling in the online payment space. Dwolla's success would threaten not only PayPal, but also credit cards and payment networks, and even the ACH (Automated Clearing House), the massive U.S. network that processes financial transactions. <P> <a href="https://iamexec.com/">Exec</a> is a relatively new concierge service. You can hire Exec's employees by the hour to perform a variety of useful tasks, such as running errands. We'll put Exec to the test to see how far we can push the service, and then we'll talk to Exec CEO Justin Kan. <P> But we won't just focus on the new; we'll also talk to a couple of established outfits, like Microsoft and Texas Instruments. First, we'll have Microsoft's Greg Sullivan, senior product manager, Windows Phone division. Microsoft just recently started shipping <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/windowsphone/">Windows Phone 8</a>. We'll have a chance to ask Sullivan how it's going, both on the customer side and on the developer side. <P> <a href="http://www.ti.com/">Texas Instruments</a> has been a stalwart in the semiconductor industry for more than 80 years, but that industry has been dominated largely by men. Our own <a href="http://igen.eetimes.com/profile/SylvieB">Sylvie Barak, reporter for EETimes</a>, sat down with Dipti Vachani, VP and GM of Texas Instrument's Single Core Processing Unit to talk about being a woman executive in the semiconductor industry. <P> As always, we'll feature some new technology in our Elevator Pitch segment, where we ask companies to pitch us (as if we were in an elevator) and then face our judging committee. For this month's segment, we've got a couple of big data players: <a href="http://www.kaggle.com/host/whatkaggleis">Kaggle</a> and <a href="http://clearstorydata.com/">Clearstory</a>, each with a unique approach to this incredibly interesting market. For instance, Kaggle essentially crowdsources the universe of data scientists to help companies solve big data problems. Clearstory tries to make big data more accessible for ordinary business people. <P> Finally, <a href="https://www.sugarsync.com/">SugarSync</a>, one of the early players in the personal cloud movement, will talk about how it is evolving to take on fierce competitive forces. The company just announced the <a href="http://www.sugarsync.com/blog/category/product-news/">beta version of SugarSync 2.0</a>, which has been completely redesigned to make it easier to use. As a long-time SugarSync user, I'm extremely interested to hear more about what the company has done. <P> Please join us Wednesday, November 28 at 11 am. You can watch live <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/specialreport/valleyview">here</a>. And you can register for the show <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/valleyview">here</a> -- this lets you get a calendar reminder and enters you into a drawing for an iPad Mini, which we'll give away at the end of the show. <P> <i>Upgrading isn't the easy decision that Win 7 was. We take a close look at Server 2012, changes to mobility and security, and more in the new <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/092412/?k=axxe&cid=article_axxt_os">Here Comes Windows 8</a> issue of InformationWeek. Also in this issue: Why you should have the difficult conversations about the value of OS and PC upgrades before discussing Windows 8. (Free registration required.)</i>