Misc

How one country lost a great talent and another country gained one


Here comes a little anecdote about how one country lost a great talent and another country gained one.

My girl friend had been studying in the U.S.. She graduated with a two-year Associate Degree in Computer Science, which she funded herself. Her dream was to continue Bachelor studies in the same field, in the U.S.. However, for her, as a foreign citizen with a Turkish passport, the plan simply turned out to be too expensive. As is widely known, proper education in the U.S. costs a fortune, especially if you are not U.S. resident (which also makes it almost impossible to take a student loan). Since her student visa did not permit her to apply for a job or do anything other than studying in the U.S., she basically was forced to leave the country. A fake marriage with an American to obtain a Greencard, which many in that situation at least think about, was no option for her. Continue Reading


Mini-posts: Snapchat vs Facebook, app unbundling, Stockholm’s tipping point


I’m trying out a new format with a post comprising of 2-3 mini-posts about trends and news from the tech world. A maximum of 10 sentences per post.

4 billion video views

Snapchat has announced 4 billion daily video views. Usually I would not pay any attention to such a vanity metric. But in this case, the number allows for an enlightening comparison: Just a couple of months ago, in April, Facebook reached the same milestone of 4 billion daily video views (sidenote: YouTube did so in the beginning of 2012). Facebook has almost 1 billion daily active users, compared to Snapchat’s nearly 100 million daily active users. The videos on Snapchat are extremely short, presumably much shorter than those on Facebook. That aside, an average Snapchat user views 10 times as many videos a day as a Facebook user. No surprise Snapchat is so hot.

Unbundling works – for Google and Facebook

Last year, many major Internet companies started to move certain features from their existing apps into newly launched, separate apps. “Unbundling” (or “app constellations“) was the latest trend, utilized by all the big names. A new comScore report shows for which companies this has worked the best: Facebook and Google (which in fact had been relying on this strategy for quite some time already). Among the top 10 most popular smartphone apps in the U.S. on iOS and Android combined, 3 are owned by Facebook (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram), and 5 by Google (YouTube, Search, Google Play, Google Maps, Gmail). Pandora Play and Yahoo Stocks are the only apps within the top 10 that are not owned by either company. Facebook’s initially controversial move to spin-off Messenger totally paid off. Meanwhile, unbundling did not work so well for other tech giants. Related news: Just this weekend, Google released Street View as yet another seperate app.

comScore

Stockholm’s tech tipping point

The VC fund SparkLabs recently published a ranking of the 10 hottest startup ecosystems in the world, and Stockholm ranked second after the Silicon Valley. While the accuracy of these kind of reports always can (and should) be questioned, the good result of the Swedish capital did not surprise me. In fact, it seems apparent to me that the city has reached its tipping point. From now on, past success and experience helps to build new, even bigger successes, with guaranteed international attention. Last Wednesday I attended a great conference, Stockholm Tech Fest. The amount of local bigshots among the speakers who shared their insights and experiences was astonishing. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, Skype-founder and seriel entrepreneur/VC Niklas Zennström, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Delivery Hero CEO Niklas Östberg (Berlin-based but Swedish), Truecaller Co-founder Nami Zarringhalam were among the speakers. I am truly excited about what comes next.

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The world changes. Deal with it.


The partly hostile reaction of European citizens to the ongoing and growing refugee crisis shows yet again that too many people struggle with accepting change as a natural part of life.

Millions are fleeing from war in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Northern Africa. Many of them look for a better life in Europe. But a significant number of European citizens does not approve. They are afraid of change. They think they are entitled to that everything stays the same.

This is a wrong assumption. Change is inevitable, and has always been. Each new shift of the century the world looked dramatically different than during the shift of the century before. But many people don’t want to acknowledge that. They grew up with the mindset of change being something to avoid A mindset of everything having to be in a certain way, forever. Or at least as long as they are alive. The fear of the reactionaries, xenophobes and racists in Europe is not that the values of democracy, freedom and secularism are threatened by immigration – even if they sometimes pretend so. Their actual fear is change. Continue Reading


What the Ashley Madison hack means for the digital age


With a certain amount of fascination and astonishment I am following how the story of the hack of the extramarital dating site Ashley Madison is evolving. It was especially insightful to learn about all the types of questions, worries and concerns that members, scammers and distrustful spouses/partners have about the user data that had been dumped on the Internet following the hack. Many users of the site seem terrified of the thought of being exposed as cheaters. Sadly, even suicide cases by Ashley Madison customers are being reported. Meanwhile, criminals are trying to capitalize on the desperation of users through extortion.

First and foremost, the incident teaches yet another lesson about that in our digital era, sensitive data is not really safe. That itself is not news though. What I find more interesting to muse about is how technology forces us to examine our ways of living and the social contracts and norms that are the foundation of our modern societies. Continue Reading


Apple TV: In 2 years from perfectly working game changer to source of frustration


A bit more than 2 years ago I bought an Apple TV. Shortly after I hardly could imagine living without the black little box. I expressed my enthusiasm both in a tweet and blog post (German only). What amazed me the most was the frictionless and smooth streaming of content from the iPhone and iPad through AirPlay and Apple TV to my TV set. It always worked perfectly and reminded me of why Apple’s legendary promise “It just works” was more than just a marketing slogan. Continue Reading


Writing less while saying more


When I started meshedsociety.com, my plan was to publish 3-4 articles each week in addition to a weekly list of curated links about the tech and digital world. But quickly I had to give up that ambition. One reason is that it costs time to write thoughtful pieces that are valuable and interesting for readers. And I simply have so many other things to do that I lack that time. Also I try to reduce a few “musts” from my life. There is little to be gained from being a workaholic.

But another reason for why I write less than I planned is that the weekly link list format (here is the most recent one, #32) turned out to be a great vehicle to put my thoughts about many of the most exciting, polarizing and world-changing digital developments and trends into words without having to create dozens of individual blog posts.

Let me explain.

Here is the thing about many online texts: They are not necessarily needed. In most cases, at least a few similar pieces have been written already. Particularly (but not only) when it comes to the technology press (including blogs), many pieces are referring to and are built on existing articles and debates. Writers discover a piece that catches their attention. They create their own post around it, summarize the key points and usually add some personal perspective and maybe one or two additional points of reference. Somewhere in middle of the text they (hopefully) link back to the original post. If they are pros, they make the whole piece look like they had the idea to it and found the linked article during research. In reality of course, it was the linked article which inspired them to pen the whole thing. Continue Reading


Skills for a world that constantly changes


You can read a German version of this article here.

For 50 years Moore’s Law has been changing the world at a stunning pace. The constant doubling of computing power that goes hand in hand with increased efficiency and reduced component size is causing a nonstop rapid evolution of what technology can do. Today’s next big thing will be outdated the day after tomorrow. The impact on the economy, on politics and our social life is huge. Forecasts about what comes next are getting harder and harder, even in the short term.

Because of this development, individuals are confronted with permanent uncertainty about what will happen in 10, 5 or even only in 2 years. The questions that are looking for an answer are numerous. Will my profession or customer group still exist? Are fixed employments to be replaced by freelancing and contract gigs? Will robots take away all our jobs? Will cars drive themselves soon? In which city or country am I going to live? How will we deal with climate change? Do we have to expect violent conflicts and wars in our close proximity? Is China about to take over the U.S. in regards to global power and thus changing the world order? Which new gadget will be as revolutionary as the smartphone? Can democracy be defended against the pressure of autocrats, fundamentalism, terrorism and mass surveillance? Is it even worth it to start a family and settle down? Will humans be able to conquer and live on Mars? And so on. Continue Reading


Once Uber’s self-driving cars arrive, what will be left to hate about the company?


Uber

Uber is one of the most controversial and most hated companies in tech. It is also beloved by many of its regular customers. But a seemingly never-ending series of scandals, hyper aggressive tactics and questionable business practices have brought the San Francisco-based company critics all over the world, from taxi drivers, competitors and journalists to politicians, union leaders and activists.

Most of the criticism involves aspects related to the human drivers of Uber. But Uber plans to abandon its drivers. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has made it clear in the past that his long-term vision is to make use of self-driving cars. A few days ago a report confirmed that the company is already actively testing the potential of autonomous cars.

Today no one knows when Uber’s self-driving cars will become reality and actually hit the streets, ready for passenger pickup. But assuming that not all experts are mistaken, self-driving cars will become reality, and Uber will use them.

That leads to an interesting question: What will be left to hate about Uber once its drivers are gone? Continue Reading


Searching Podcasts instead of Google


For Monday’s article about the rise of IBM’s Watson platform, I had to first learn a bit about Watson. I basically decided to write the post while getting ready for an hour of running and walking. Once I knew what I would write about, I got rather impatient, fearing that lack of time would make it hard to gather information and do the write-up during the remaining hours of the day. But then I realized that I could just open Apple’s Podcast app on my iPhone and search within the Podcast directory for episodes about Watson. I found a couple and thus arrived back home with a nice basic overview that I could base my continued research on.

During this process I realized one amazing side effect of the latest Podcast boom: Whatever topic of knowledge you take, there most likely is a Podcast or at least an episode hosted somewhere on the web. The challenge right now is to find it. Most Podcast apps offer rudimentary search features for names and descriptions. But usually the search capabilities were built to find full podcasts to subscribe to or episodes to listen to, not for on-demand information research. Text-based search within the audio data itself is not possible. Also not all Podcast content is indexed by the leading Podcast apps (e.g. no files hosted on SoundCloud). Continue Reading


Foursquare and the Art of Unexpected Gestures


Unexpected gestures of thankfulness and appreciation shown by companies to their users or customers are – at least in the Internet industry – a neglected instrument to create loyalty and brand ambassadors. Thus when it happens, it becomes even more powerful. Here is a good example:

The other day I found a mail by Foursquare in my inbox, titled “Your thank you gift”. In the mail the location recommendation service thanked me for having written 137 tips. “Tips” are small comments about locations. In my approximately 6 years as Foursquare user I have been writing the occasional tip. Apparently exactly 137 of them.

After the initial thank you note, the mail informed me that I would receive a complimentary $10 gift card that I can redeem at 40 major retailers (Amazon, Starbucks etc). Continue Reading