5 Things Motorola's New CEO Must Do

Google today said that it has finally closed its acquisition of Motorola. First announced in August 2011, the $12.5 billion deal took longer than expected to clear regulatory hurdles in China. China gave Google the green light on May 19 and Google now owns Motorola Mobility, for which it paid $40 per share in cash.

Now that the deal is complete, Google has already made changes to the company's leadership. Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha, who led the company for about three and a half years, is stepping aside and being replaced by Dennis Woodside, a Google veteran. According to Google, Woodside played a pivotal role in the acquisition process. Jha will work with Google to help complete the leadership transition, but only temporarily.

"I'm happy to announce the deal has closed," said Google CEO Larry Page. "Motorola is a great American tech company, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation. It's a great time to be in the mobile business, and I'm confident that the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come."
[ Read about Google's plan to sell "pure Android" smartphones through its Google Play Store. See Why Google's Nexus Plan Makes Sense. ]
One concession Google had to make in order to garner approval from Chinese antitrust regulators was a commitment to Android's openness. Google agreed to keep the platform open to other handset makers for a period of at least five years from the closing of the acquisition. Google explained in its press release that Motorola Mobility will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. Motorola Mobility will be operated as a separate business.
Google and Motorola need to get to work. Motorola Mobility's new CEO Dennis Woodside has already made some changes. He's bringing in a refreshed executive team and mixing them up with a number of existing execs from the Motorola side of the business. Aside from forming a new management team, here are five other things Woodside needs to do.
Focus on Fewer, Better Phones. Motorola has followed the industry trend of launching more than a dozen handsets each year, ranging from entry-level devices to high-end smartphones. The company needs to pull back and bring superior products to market rather than employ the shotgun approach.
Differentiate Hardware. Creating unique handsets is becoming more and more difficult, but differentiation is key to selling in the crowded smartphone market. Motorola can't be afraid to take risks on new technology to achieve this goal.
Foster and Improve Existing Business Partners. Motorola has relationships with carriers worldwide--relationships that were in place long before Google came along. Google and Motorola need to tread lightly and make sure these relationships can move forward productively. If wireless network operators, for example, start to think that Google is going to be another Apple and exert too much control over Android devices, they might not be willing to sell Motorola's devices.
Make a Swift Decision About the Cable Box Business. Motorola Mobility's other business is to provide set-top boxes to cable television subscribers. This is a decent business, but it isn't why Google bought Motorola. Google picked Motorola due to its 17,000 mobile technology patents. The cable box business can be a boon for Google TV, which has failed to really catch on since its 2010 launch. Google and Motorola need to either plow forward with it in a unique and appealing way or divest it so the company can concentrate on its core businesses.
Be Careful With Those Patents (And Settle with Microsoft). The 17,000 patents provide Google, Motorola, and Android licensees some protection in the current smartphone patent war among the hardware vendors. Motorola and Google would do well to sidestep these battles. More importantly, Motorola recently lost a patent case with Microsoft. Microsoft won a ban on Motorola imports. If the ban goes into effect, Motorola won't be allowed to import its key smartphones and sell them in the U.S. Google and Motorola need to sit down with Microsoft and hammer out an agreement for the patents at hand and move past this distraction.
Woodside seems bullish on Motorola's chances moving forward. Let's hope he can do good things with Motorola and get the company back in the game.
"Motorola literally invented the entire mobile industry with the first-ever commercial cell phone in 1983," said Woodside. "Thirty years later, mobile devices are at the center of the computing revolution. Our aim is simple: to focus Motorola Mobility's remarkable talent on fewer, bigger bets, and create wonderful devices that are used by people around the world."

Difference in business models of Facebook and Orkut

A social network service focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities. A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web based and provide means for users to interact over the internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Although online community services are sometimes considered as a social network service in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-centered service. Social networking sites tend to share some conventional features. Most often, individual users are encouraged to create profiles containing various information about themselves. Users can often upload pictures of themselves to their profiles, post blog entries for others to read, search for other users with similar interests, and compile and share lists of contacts.

Facebook and Orkut are two of the most popular social networking sites, with both offering very similar features and capabilities. Comparing FaceBook vs. Orkut from a market share perspective show that both are considerably behind orkut with Facebook owning just over 11.5% of the market share and Orkut having less than 1%. Facebook has become very popular in North America over the last few months whereas Orkut is extremely popular in India.

Social networks operate under an autonomous business model, in which a social network’s members serve dual roles as both the suppliers and the consumers of content. This is in contrast to a traditional business model, where the suppliers and consumers are distinct agents. Revenue is typically gained in the autonomous business model via advertisements, but subscription-based revenue is possible when membership and content levels are sufficiently high. The business model used is community model whose viability is based on user loyalty. Users have a high investment in both time and emotion. Revenue can be based on the sale of ancillary products and services or voluntary contributions; or revenue may be tied to contextual advertising and subscriptions for premium services. The Internet is inherently suited to community business models and today this is one of the more fertile areas of development, as seen in rise of social networking.

The differences between orkut and facebook business model can be categorised under the following headings :

How it select its customers
Facebook’s selection of customers is a very important part of the company’s business model.Orkut is  not very specific and has a variety of users. This fact is what makes Facebook’s selection of customers so important. Zuckerberg developed a personal niche for his site in making it specifically for high school (recently), college and university communites, primarily in the United States.

How it defines and differentiates its product offerings
The second aspect of a business model is how the company defines and differentiates its
product offerings. One of the key elements to Facebook’s success is differentiation,
particularly from the social networking giant, Orkut. What makes a student with an
existing Orkut account want to register with Facebook? The answer to this question
lies in how Facebook sets itself apart from other social networking sites. Facebook is the
only brand of these sites that is for students and students only. Also, to narrow down the
potential networks even more, members are mostly restricted to viewing detailed
information about students only at their school. As a result of this, more intimate
communities are created based on the school.

Facebook’s features are very similar to the features of Orkut. The major features include: profile, friends, groups, messages, wall, and photos. The profile is what makes up the users’ personal sites. Here they post information about themselves as well as a photo. The friends feature is one of the major ways that students are able to become connected through the site. Users can search the site and send friend requests to other users to acknowledge online friendships. The other way that the site connects students is through the groups feature. Students with particular interests, views, or hobbies are able to form and join online groups. The messages and wall features allow users to interact directly within the online community. Messaging is a private way of contacting members, almost like e-mail. Also, as an alternative to messaging, there is a “poking” feature, which is basically a way of saying “What’s up.” The wall acts as a sort of message board and offers more public
communication between users. The recently added photos feature is part of the users
profile in which they can post photos of themselves and others for people within their
college to see.

Utility for its customers
At first it was simply a site to connect college students but now it is becoming a staple in the college social scene. The utility that Facebook creates for its customers is essential in
creating traffic. Orkut has failed in the past for being too one-dimensional and unreal. Facebook was able to recognize these mistakes and capitalized greatly in forming a very real online social network. In theory, the services provided by these two companies are very similar. The difference is what makes the individual keep coming back to the site. Facebook is useful in a variety of ways including:

Forming study group
Finding roommates
Keeping in touch with friends at distant schools
Finding others with like interests
Keeping up with social events
Getting information on fraternities/sororities
Acquiring customers
Facebook is able to easily acquire and keep customers due to its increasing popularity.
Through groups and classes one can be connected to thousands of students. Networking
is very important in college and Facebook helps students to establish these with little
effort on their part. Facebook acquires customers as students realize their personal need
for online networking, a need that is becoming more and more necessary everyday. When
students meet they often tell each other to facebook them as a means of furthering a
friendship. Someone without an account misses out on this completely.
Keeping the customers is a very easy task once they are on Facebook. Users continue to
visit the site to partake in one of the newest activities, “facebooking.” Facebooking
defined is the act of simply browsing though facebook.com with no specific purpose.
More specifically, the verb “facebook” (as in “to facebook”) is used across campuses for
the looking up of a certain individual and:-

Adding him/her as a friend
Sending him/her a message
‘Poking’ him/her
Writing on his/her ‘wall.’
These faetures bring about major opportunities for the communication that college students are looking for. Most new users go through a period of Facebook addiction sometime in their college career. The degree of which Facebook is used as a means of communication requires that it be checked on a daily basis. Throughout the course of the day one can get messaged, poked, or have their wall written on. Also, with the new photos feature, one can get tagged in a picture by one of their friends. There are so many places where something new to one’s profile can occur, and this makes it very addicting.

Distribution Strategy
Zuckerberg’s distribution strategy is the key element behind his idea, the internet.
Facebook provides a service that connects college students through a few clicks of the
mouse. This strategy is not new as it’s used by many social networking sites. In today’s
busy world, people don’t have the time and effort to put into physical networking with
others. Orkut uses this same idea which has been proven to be successful.

Promotion Strategy
Promotion hasn’t been a major issue due to Facebook’s instant success. Facebook has not
funded any major advertising campaigns in order to increase awareness because the
awareness was there from the start. Zuckerberg started Facebook as an online directory of
Harvard students and it was an instant hit. Within a month Facebook was available at
Columbia, Stanford, and Yale and by the summer it was available at about thirty different
universities. The promotion of the site has been mostly by word of mouth, as current
users rave to their friends about the site and its many features. Publicity in the media has
also helped the company’s promotion along. There have been a number of newspaper
articles as well as television interviews documenting the recent success story.

How it defines the tasks to be performed
The tasks to be performed were very simple from the beginning in creating Facebook.
Zuckerberg had a clear idea in his head of the service he wanted to provide the user with.
Essentially, it would be an online directory comprised of college students for their use
and benefit. Having been programming since the age of ten, Zuckerberg was able to
easily accomplish this task and took a few weeks to set up a website that allowed users to
interact. Through classes, groups, interests, and friends the site notifies the user how
he/she is connected. This feeling of connection is very important because that’s what the
general population of users are seeking. Another major task that Zuckerberg was faced
with was setting his social network site apart from the others. In order to demand traffic a
site must be unique in one way or another. This task was performed by making the site
exclusive to ones college, forming a more intimate community. Also, Zuckerberg added a
variety of features that the user could utilize while on the site such as messaging and
poking.

How it configures its resources
The major resources of Facebook are the servers that keep the site running despite the
heavy amounts of traffic. These servers are very essential because the services and
operations of Facebook depend solely on the website. A down server could result in the
loss of millions of page hits. With little funding at the beginning, Zuckerberg was forced
to keep Facebook relatively small because only so many servers could be purchased and
set up. However, the growing audience could not be contained and in the fall of 2004,
former Paypal CEO, Peter Thiel, invested $500,000 to buy servers to help support the
rapid growth. (Theil noted that this particular investments was one of the best venture
investments he’d ever made.) Facebook is able to create a more secure and efficient network by co-locating its servers, which is very important in the operations of the business.

How it captures profit
The big question behind Facebook and many other free online networking sites is: how
do they actually make money? The answer is mainly advertising. Advertisements on
Facebook are very valuable considering the amount of traffic the site is able to generate.
About 70% of its users log on the site daily and these users are all between the ages of 18 and 24. The advertising prospects are just too high for big companies to ignore.
Zuckerberg offers three different ways to advertise: banner ads, sponsored groups, and text announcements. Apple has its own sponsored group called “Apple Students” where it lists the hottest items, prices, and even gives away free stuff. Electronic Arts and Geffen
Records sponsor groups on the site as well. Text announcements, which are more geared
toward students who want to announce a party or event, are sold regularly for $9-$15 and
guarantee a certain number of hits. Banner ads are easily sold to many major companies
including the three listed above and Tiffany’s.

Conclusion
The main reason’s for users liking Facebook over Orkut are:

Simple and professional user interface
Explanation for being added as a friend
Unique groups or communities
Security of user’s profile and information
Many other fun applications

Firefox survives first round of surgery

After years of tough competition from dominance-seeking Google Chrome and Internet Explorer, Mozilla faces a second year in a row of forced adaptations. Its aggressive Firefox 2012 development plan calls for surgeries both minor and radical to integrate many new pieces into the browser, but it may not survive post-op. At least, not as you know it.
So far, the changes have resulted in a Firefox which, simply put, runs better. Two of the most tangible new tools have changed add-on behavior. The addition of add-ons to Firefox Sync let you mirror the same add-ons at work and at home, and you won't have to reinstall them manually if your computer crashes.
A second add-on change marks around 80 percent of add-ons as compatible by default with each new version of Firefox. This prevents the browser from worrying about the "maximum version compatibility" issue that was relevant back in Firefox 3, when updates were annual, but is much less of a problem when updates come every six weeks.
Other early 2012 victories for Firefox include Chrome migration; a new design for HTML5 media controls; better developer and Web platform tools; and a Firefox "hotfix" system for pushing out minor updates that don't require a browser restart. Granted, these are the equivalent of medicating a patient to lower a fever while the virus still infects the body, but they're good starts. They're just more about keeping up with the competition than they are about forging ahead.

The second quarter of 2012 doesn't look particularly life-saving, either. Some of the highlights of what Mozilla wants to achieve before the end of June include an improved Home Tab and New Tab experience; in-location bar search that ensures user privacy; automatic browsing session restore with tabs-on-demand; a panel-based download manager; and silent updates. These are achievements that Firefox is not boldly leading on. Some of them, such as the Home Tab and New Tab, and silent updates, are already in the Firefox Aurora development build, which means that they're well on their way to reaching most people.
Of course, there are basic feature improvements planned for the second half of 2012, too, such as preventing default search engine hijacks by add-ons. This will kill off one of the browser's biggest remaining annoyances. The Options menu will be changed from a pop-up to a menu in the main browser window, not unlike how Chrome presents its Preferences. Also following the footsteps of others will be a click-to-play option for plug-ins, and integrated language translation.
But the second half of 2012 is also when Mozilla anticipates that many of its loftier goals will mature. These include integrating a social sharing tool called Firefox Share; an interface update code-named Australis; its next-generation JavaScript engine called IonMonkey; a feature-ready beta version of Firefox for Windows 8; and an e-mail-based identification system that would allow people to log in to Firefox and pull down all their settings, bookmarks, add-ons, and passwords from a secure server.

This could be a Holy Grail for Mozilla's independent, open-Web initiatives, if it's able to successfully tie the browser login with its broader, site-based Mozilla Persona login plans to compete with Facebook and Google. Think about it: Mozilla competing with Facebook on logins. That's as big a David-and-Goliath scenario as Firefox 1.0 versus Internet Explorer 6.
It's not an idea I disagree with; on the contrary, I think Mozilla is one of the few organizations that has the public's trust and the technical background to pull something like this off. But I'm equally skeptical of its ability to make it happen this year, even on the browser level, because of the enormous resources it will take. Remember, the add-on sync that just debuted earlier this month came a year after sync shipped in-browser. These are not easy technical victories to win.
Further ahead lie other next-gen projects like a new kind of RSS called Push have yet to be added to the public calendar.
At a core level, Mozilla says, the plans call for reminding people that Mozilla is a nonprofit that takes seriously its mission statement of pursuing an open, accessible Web, and it's those core values that are dictating Firefox's direction. Of that, there is little doubt.

Just last year, though, we saw Firefox finally follow Chrome with a less-obtrusive interface, faster JavaScript engine, restartless add-ons, synchronization, more accessible development channels, and a rapid release cycle which barely caused a blip when Google debuted it, but became a source of much sturm und dang among a vocal but definite minority of Firefox users. Browser development is uneven, with the five major browsers often leapfrogging past each other, but the larger point of Firefox appearing to lag behind when it used to aggressively lead was not lost on the people using it.
A big part of the problem is that Firefox is not the only patient that Mozilla is working on. It's also attempting to give birth to a new mobile operating system called Boot to Gecko and marketplace that will host Web apps which can work across multiple platforms including Boot to Gecko. To top it all off, the company faces a brain drain of many of its high-profile, long-time employees.
Assuming Chrome stays on schedule, its high-end graphics and security tech called Native Client will debut in a few months. The powerful Internet Explorer 10 will come with deep integration into Windows 8 around October, and it looks like it will be harder than it is now to switch browsers. Plans for Safari and Opera aren't as open, but it's hard to imagine they're passively observing all these changes.

Lawmakers Ask Apple App Makers About Privacy

Two members of Congress are pushing ahead with an investigation into privacy issues in Apple’s App Store. After contacting Apple earlier this month with questions about app privacy, the lawmakers have now sent letters to 34 app developers requesting information about their data-collection techniques.

Representatives Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, and G.K. Butterfield, Democrat of North Carolina, sent joint letters on Thursday to makers of social networking apps, including Foodspotting, Twitter, Turntable.fm and Path, among others.

They said they chose the list of apps from the “Social Networking” subcategory within the iPhone Essentials area of Apple’s iTunes App Store.

On the Energy and Commerce Committee Web site, the two representatives wrote: “Following recent reports that apps could collect address book information and photos without notice and consent from users of Apple’s mobile devices, the members are seeking to better understand what, if any, information these particular apps gather, what they do with it, and what notice they provide to app users.”

The letters also state that the information will be used to “to begin building a fact-based understanding of the privacy and security practices in the app marketplace.”

Apple did not respond to a request for comment about the letters.

In the letters, the representatives cite reports from The New York Times revealing that apps can access users’ photographs and address books.

Mr. Waxman and Mr. Butterfield ask the app makers whether they have privacy policies in place, and if they have ever collected a user’s address book, photo gallery or phone number, among other questions.

The letters request written responses from the app makers by April 12.

Google, too, is facing some scrutiny about app privacy. After a report in The Times earlier this month that Android apps can also secretly access photo libraries, Senator Charles E. Schumer called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate both Apple and Google regarding app privacy issues.

Facebook is the world’s largest social network

with more than 800 million active users around the world, and roughly 200 million in the United States, or two-thirds of the population.

Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg in his dorm room at Harvard, Facebook grew from being a quirky site for college students into a popular platform that is used to sell cars and movies, win over voters in presidential elections and organize protest movements. It offers advertisers a global platform, with the exception of China, where Facebook does not operate.

Facebook took its first step toward becoming a publicly traded company on Feb. 1, 2012, when it filed to sell shares on the stock market. The service is on track to be the largest Internet initial public offering ever — trumping Google’s in 2004 or Netscape’s nearly a decade before that. In its filing, Facebook said it was seeking to raise $5 billion. The company will seek to have the ticker “FB” for its shares, but did not list an exchange.

Many close to the company say that Facebook is aiming for a far greater offering that would value it near $100 billion. At that lofty valuation, Facebook would be much bigger than many longer-established American companies, including Abbott Labs, Caterpillar, Kraft Foods, Goldman Sachs and Ford Motor.

Trading of the stock is expected to begin by late May 2012.

The filing sheds some light on how its meteoric run has turned the upstart into a formidable money-maker. The company, which makes the bulk of its money from advertising and the sale of virtual goods, recorded revenue of $3.7 billion in 2011, a 88 percent increase from the prior year. During that period, Facebook posted a profit of $1 billion. It is still a fraction of the size of rival Google, which recorded revenue of $37.9 billion in 2011, but many analysts believe Facebook’s fortunes will rapidly multiply as advertisers direct more and more capital to the Web’s social hive.

Facebook, unlike any other site, has come to define the social era of the Web. More than a portal, its value lies in its dynamic network of social connections and the massive amount of information shared by its users. Facebook, in many ways, is a data processor, archiving and analyzing every shred of information, from our interests, to our locations, to every article and link that we “like.” The collection of data is a potential goldmine for advertisers, keen to better understand and target consumers.

The social network has become something like an economy onto itself, fostering businesses like the music service Spotify. Game-maker Zynga, which went public late in 2011, generates more than 90 percent of its sales from Facebook.

Watch YouTube Videos Without Flash in HTML5

Running on Mac or Linux and tired of Adobe Flash eating up all your CPU cycles while you’re watching YouTube? Buggy plugins that crash your browser and freeze your PC? Proprietary formats that get in the way? Want to embrace HTML5 and the future? Well, now you can… one YouTube video at a time.

We’ve written an HTML 5 Video Viewer for YouTube, and you can use it to browse YouTube in true 21st Century HTML5 quality. And it’s super-simple to use.

Flash has been the bane of online websurfers ever since the 90s, especially on platforms where Adobe doesn’t bother to go the extra mile to ensure that their proprietary, binary implementations are stable and efficient. On Linux and Mac OS X, the flash implementation takes up over half the available CPU and at high-resolutions stuttering occurs. HTML5 poses the answer providing a way for browsers to use the native implementations to render videos directly in the browser without resorting to ActiveX and 3rd-party browser plugins… it just has yet to be embraced.

But now you can uninstall Flash and enjoy your online videos in peace. Just go to http://neosmart.net/YouTube5/ and enter the URL of a video to watch it in the embedded HTML5 viewer. Yes, you can skip, skim, pause, resume away to your heart’s content.

Even better, we’ve written a GreaseMonkey/UserScript to add a link to all YouTube video pages that points to the HTML5 version, leaving you with no excuse to still use the Flash interface!

All modern browsers that support basic HTML5 are supported. You’ll need to have an MP4 decoder installed on your PC. Happy viewing!

Mobile Social Cloud CRM for smaill business

allows any business to interact with customers on any major social network , via a mobile device. The company said in a statement that the service is "so simple that any company, even one without an IT staff, can get up and running over a weekend."

With nearly a quarter of all time spent online being spent on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, has become a leader in integrating social networks into its customer service offerings.

The company envisions a scenario such as a customer posting a critical comment on Facebook about its newly purchased widget. While a desktop-based customer service worker for the widget maker might be the first stop for responding to the comment, the actual resolution might be better handled by a technical service person, who could be out in the field.

With Desk.com, that ticket can then be picked up by the technical service employee, and resolved via a mobile device. The ticket can be reassigned, have its status or priority changed, or have its customer information  modified.

Hes said that, according to its data , nearly three-quarters of small businesses use mobile applications in their daily operations. With Desk.com, SMBs can use a help desk that integrates social networks, e-mail, phone and other Web components, making social networks into what the company described as "first-class citizens along with traditional support channels."

Hourly for 'Casual' Reps

He runs on any smartphone that supports HTML 5, such as Android -based devices and Apple's iPhone. Reporting includes information on how many cases customer service agents have opened, resolved, replied to, reassigned, or reopened, and a dozen pre-built reports offer such data as handling time, time to first response, and first contact resolution rate.

CRM has priced the offering to appeal to SMBs. The first seat is free, and then it's $49 per agent per month. There's also an hourly model for what the company calls "casual" customer support reps, at $1 per hour.
He is based on the technology that yours obtained when it purchased social customer service startup Assistly last fall. Assistly's product allowed companies to organize customer conversations on social networks into a to-do list, and provided tools for support staff to respond, see customer histories, automate procedures and produce analytical reports.

Social, Mobile, Simple

In our interview with Alex Bard, vice president and general manager, Bard explained this service Cloud, a key part of its "social enterprise " efforts, had previously been optimized for the mid-market and large enterprises, but his extending the cloud toward the lower end of the market.

Bard said that, in researching smaller companies' needs, Sales "kept hearing three things -- it has to be social at its core, it needs to be mobile, and it needs to be simple." He added that thousands of Assistly customers have been moved to sale, and the response has been "overwhelmingly positive."

Laura DiDio, an analyst with Information Technology Intelligence Corp., said Desk.com represents "the ultimate in the consumerization of IT, and a recognition of how we're no longer tethered to an office with a traditional PC ."

She noted that Salesforce made "a pretty quick turnaround" in readying Assistly for the new product launch, adding that the model of customer support from virtually any mobile device "will absolutely become a standard."