LightSquared may seek FCC deadline extension

LightSquared appears to be looking for a two-week extension to file its report with the Federal Communications Commission on interference issues. The company appears to think it needs until July 1, 2011 to file the report, because all the information required for the report had not yet been submitted.

'There's a lot of work to be done today," said LightSquared spokesman Chris Stern. "We don't have all the data." Apparently, eight different working groups are involved in putting the report together.

LightSquared may seek FCC deadline extension | Reuters

SoLoMo (social, location, and mobile) is About Annotation of the Real World

"Location," like "social," is one of those buzzwords whose implications often are missed. Location isn't just a point of interest on a Google map. The next generation of mobile will be capable of interacting with every aspect of a consumer's experience in store, factory, or business process. In other words, the location information will be used to correlate online resources to real people as they move about, outside or inside a retail location, some believe.

The same sort of thing will happen as software becomes more social. Lots of people think "social" means "social networking." Sometimes it does, but the larger point is that collaboration and history are the key elements of a "social" application. Rankings, ratings, reviews, visits, "likes," bookmarks and retweets are some of the ways people indicate that something is valuable, useful or interesting. It is annotation of the real world.

And that's the important thing about location and social. Mobile happens to be important because the mobile device is both a sensor and a display that always is with a person, allowing the annotation to be activated.

A survival guide to SoLoMo

How to Encourage Mobile App Discovery

Mobile apps are used as marketing tools by many brands, but they need to be marketed themselves in order for app users to find and then download them.

Mobile app users depend heavily on word-of-mouth and social media. May 2011 research from MTV Networks found that recommendations from people they know and user reviews or recommendations were nearly tied as the top factor in discovering a new entertainment app for purchase or free download.

How to Encourage Mobile App Discovery and Usage - eMarketer

Gary Vaynerchuk: “99.5 Percent Of Social Media Experts Are Clowns”

Most of us would not go this far, but entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk believes "99.5 percent of the people that walk around and say they are a social media expert or guru are clowns.” That's a logical consequence of his belief that we are i the early stages of a social media bubble.

Gary Vaynerchuk: “99.5 Percent Of Social Media Experts Are Clowns”

Americans Watching More TV, Mobile and Web Video

Americans are spending more time watching video content on traditional TVs, mobile devices and the Internet than ever before, Nielsen reports. (Click twice on the image for a larger view).

Overall TV viewership increased 22 minutes per month per person over last year, remaining the dominant source of video content for all demographics. In addition, Nielsen data shows that consumers are willing to pay for high-quality TV content, with broadcast-only homes less than a tenth of U.S. TV households.

Though still accounting for just a handful of hours per month, mobile video viewing continues to see marked gains, increasing 41 percent over last year and more than 100 percent since 2009.

Timeshifted TV continues to grow, both in the penetration of DVR devices in the home and the time spent.

Internet video streaming also saw increases in time spent; this behavior is the highest among a younger and diverse subset of the population.

Cross Platform Report: Americans Watching More TV, Mobile and Web Video | Nielsen Wire

Search is Increasingly Social

SEOmoz has released their 2011 search engine ranking factors and while some facets of ranking well remain consistent, social seems to be emerging as an increasingly crucial part of the search rank formula. That's one argument for increasing use of social features and networks as part of an overall effort to improve search rankings.

The Future of Search is Increasingly Social

Some Insight on Google's Search Ranking Approach

Ranking Factors Data 2011: SMX Elite Sydney

View more presentations from Rand Fishkin

Why You Should Buy A Chromebook

Chromebooks now are on sale online at Best Buy and Amazon.com. Samsung and Acer are the first suppliers to build them.

The launch will be greeted by some skepticism, given the rise of tablets and the decline of netbooks. See Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-chromebook-launch-2011-6#ixzz1PLw7vKDo.

Despite negative media attention, the Chromebooks show a lot of potential for some users, some would argue. Why You Should Buy A Chromebook.

FCC Report on LightSquared Might Not Settle Much

A report by engineers studying interference issues betweeen LightSquared and GPS and other interests is due to be released June 15, 2011. But the study might only point out the need for further tests, as observers say LightSquared and other companies cannot agree on whether the problem actually can be fixed by using new filters or other methods of preventing interference.

'Where government and private GPS Users and LightSquared will disagree is on the potential for a technical solution,' said Jim Kirkland, vice president and general counsel of Trimble Navigation Limited, a GPS technology company.

The Federal Communications Commission will have to referee the growing disagreement between LightSquared and GPS makers and users, including the Defense Department and Federal Aviation Administration, which is planning to upgrade the U.S.'s existing air traffic control system to one that relies on GPS technologies.

Report to FCC Will Find LightSquared Interferes with GPS - WSJ.com (subscription required)

DOJ Clears Google's Bid for Nortel Patents

U.S. antitrust enforcers have given Google clearance to pursue its $900 million opening bid for some 6,000 patents being sold next week by defunct Canadian telecommunications-equipment maker Nortel Networks Corp., the Wall Street Journal reports.

After an antitrust review, the Justice Department concluded that Google's potential ownership of the patents wouldn't raise any major competitive concerns, these people said.

The clearance could give Google a leg-up against rivals in its bid for the patents, part of its effort to acquire an arsenal of patents that could help it ward off lawsuits by competitors.

Difference Between Apple and Google Cloud Approaches

For many of us, who are just end users, it probably doesn't matter that Google and Apple take arguably different approaches to how applications execute in the cloud and on the device. Developers, architects and geeks think it is more important.

At a high level, some might summarize the difference as Google viewing matters as "cloud and web." For Apple, cloud computing means "cloud and software."

All of the cloud computing services Google offers to consumers, like email, word processing and spreadsheets, happen within the browser. To Google, the point of cloud computing is to replace desktop software with the web. Apple is said to prefer execution within an app.

And of course, many will argue that there are many nuances. Some might say that Google tends to work with the browser are the frame, while Apple tends to work with the screen as the frame, for example. We dumb end users might have our own preferences. But I suspect most end users will appreciate elements of both approaches.

Daring Fireball: It's All Software

After Google Instant, Now Instant Pages

After Google Instant, which guesses at what a user is going to type next when conducting a search, Google now is adding "Instant Pages" that do the same thing for whole web pages. Instant Pages fetches the top search result and keeps it ready in the background while a user is choosing which link to click, saving perhaps two to five seconds on typical searches.

Let’s say you’re searching for information about the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, so you search for "dc folklife festival." As a user scans the results, deciding which one to choose, Google is already prerendering the top search result. That way when the user clicks, the page loads instantly.

Instant Pages will prerender results when we’re confident you’re going to click them.

Official Google Blog: Knocking down barriers to knowledge

Google Introduces Speech Search for Images

Searching with speech recognition started first on mobile, and so did searching with computer vision, Google says. Google Goggles has enabled you to search by snapping a photo on your mobile phone since 2009 and now Google is introducing "Search by Image" on the desktop.

Next to the microphone on images.google.com, you’ll also see a little camera for the new "Search by Image" feature. If you click the camera, you can upload any picture or plug in an image URL from the web and ask Google to figure out what it is.

Official Google Blog: Knocking down barriers to knowledge

Google Adds Speech Driven Search for PCs and Chrome Browsers

Google has been supporting voice search on Android devices for a year or so. Now Google has added speech recognition into search on desktop for Chrome users. If you’re using Chrome, you’ll start to see a little microphone in every Google search box.

Simply click the microphone, and you can speak your search. This can be particularly useful for hard-to-spell searches like "bolognese sauce" or complex searches like "translate to spanish 'where can I buy a hamburger'".

Voice Search on desktop is rolling out now on google.com in English.

Official Google Blog: Knocking down barriers to knowledge

Netflix Streams Putting Pressure on Premium Cable Channels

According to The Diffusion Group’s (TDG’s) latest analysis of Netflix Streamers, people who stream Netflix content to their net-connected devices, the inclination to downgrade PayTV services has doubled in just the last 12 months.

In March 2011, TDG queried a random sample of adult broadband users that subscribe to cable, satellite, or telcoTV service as to the likelihood they would downgrade their PayTV service in the next six months.

In general, the percentage of Netflix streamers likely to downgrade their PayTV service increased from 16 percent in 2010 to 32 percent in 2011.

That should make sense. Netflix primarily is a source of movie content. What do premium channels provide? Primarily movies.

TDG: Proclivity to Downgrade PayTV Services Increasing among Netflix Streamers