If you don’t know what Nest is, they make smoke detectors and thermostats. Now Nest, who just purchased Dropcam, is being acquired by Google for 3.2 billion dollars. Got that? According to Nest co-founder Matt Rodgers, Dropcam will be moving it’s headquarters from San Francisco to Palo Alto, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley. Dropcam’s home security cameras will run you little money a pop, but that’s just part of this story. Dropcam once tried to use existing cameras to support video achieves. But since most of the market wasn’t buying it, they made their own.
I’m pretty concerned about these acquisitions. It’s not just because one corporation will have so much power and dominance, leaving little if any room for competition. So Google wants to control the home thermostat and smoke detector market now?? But privacy issues come to mind. With Google and Nest owning Dropcam, can’t that give them a license to look into our homes and businesses, even during our most private moments? Nest insists we shouldn’t worry. They claim, “Dropcam will come under Nest?s privacy policy, which explains that data won?t be shared with anyone (including Google) without a customer?s permission.” I’ll believe it when I see it. Am I being too skeptical here?
Today, the early morning hours of June 19, 2014, is a day social media giant Facebook wants to forget.
This is the day Facebook suffered a major outage. This outage was felt worldwide, from the United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, France, India other parts of Asia and much of Africa. This includes Facebook mobile as well as the Web. Fortunately, the outage didn’t last long, and the site was back up within a few minutes. In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said ‘an issue’ caused to go offline, and apologized for any inconvenience the glitch caused. The ‘issue’ was never specified, either because they don’t know or aren’t telling us. Facebook experienced a glitch down last month.
The good news is the shut down could have lasted a lot longer. The other good news, at least for us in the United States, is that the glitch took place overnight. Can you imagine if it took place later in the day? I’ve read reports of people switching to Twitter while Facebook was down. Some say Twitter is more popular anyway and some say Facebook’s glory days are about over. If you said that, then you probably learned a lesson from all this. Facebook, like all social media, is still a very popular social media entity, especially among older people. If it goes down, even if it’s but a few minutes, it will be sorely missed. Ever hear of the saying, “Don’t know what you got until it’s gone?” Well, that’s what happened here. I think the consumers directly affected get that. Do Facebook employees and advertisers get that?
Some time ago, I talked about Google’s lack of employee diversity and what’s being done about it. There’s another Internet company facing the same dilemma.
According to Linkedin’s own reports, their diversity report card is probably worse than Google’s. Less than 40% of their employees are women. As far as ethnic breakdown is concerned, just two percent of it’s employees are African Americans and four percent are Hispanic. The only up side is 38% of their labor force is Asian. The gender component is global, from California to Brazil. The racial/ethnic component is limited to the US. Admittance to this problem is the first step. What are they going to do about it?
Like Google, they’re combating this lack on many fronts. They’ve partnered with Year Up, a wonderful organization that helps young, talented, people from underprivileged neighborhoods reach their dream profession, including computer technology and Internet/social media. They’ve also partnered with the Anita Borg Institute. They’re known for getting women into computing fields. They’ve teamed up with other organizations as well. But I still say it’s not jut Linkedin’s problem, but it’s America. These are great steps to take. But we need everyone, from schools to community activists to parents to employers to equip this next generation for an ever increasing technological world, especially in African-American and Latino neighborhoods. What are your suggestions?
Take London cab drivers. About 12,000 of them literally took to the streets in protest of Uber yesterday. Starting in the afternoon, and through the height of rush hour, cabbies staged a go-slow demonstration, deliberately causing traffic nightmares in one of Europe’s busiest cities. London cabbies’ union says Uber will open the door for unlicensed taxi drivers. But Londoners aren’t buying it. In fact, since in the past couple of days, Uber’s usage has increased 850%. As one person put it, “Londoners are voting with their fingers…”.
There’s more to this story. Plus, Uber tallies about how much a cab fare is going to take before the trip even begins. This is why I’m cynical about the London cabbies’ motives. Now I’ve never been in a London cab. I’ve never been to London, except for layovers at Heathrow. But I’ve been in enough cities around the world to know the some drivers will milk you out of the meter if you let them. And I’m not throwing all cabbies under the bus; the vast majority of my experiences in cabs have been good ones. But Uber’s system will keep taxis honest about what they’re charging, and some don’t like it one bit. You may say, “London’s just one city”. I wonder what other major cities in the world think about Uber. Changing computer technology is everywhere now, even catching a cab.? Who do you side with in this debate: the cabbies or the customers?
This is where Fatdoor comes in. Their goal is to combine social media and robots. For example, you throw a house party. Instead of taking pictures of it with your smartphone, you can call a drone/robot to take pictures for you. Or you can have this robot deliver your food. The robot is called Bot Appetit. It walks among our streets. It’s connected to Fatdoor and controlled by your smartphone device. Think of it as bike without a biker. Also connected to Fatdoor is Skytedoor. That’s the drone with two cameras to stream videos on Fatdoor’s network. I forgot: They don’t want you to call it drone. They prefer to call it a skateboard.
The makers of Fatdoor hope to have Bot Appetit running in Silicon Valley before the end of 2014. I’m sure it will catch on with many. This is what I’m cool with. I have great reservations about Skytedoor. It’s creepy enough someone can take a picture with their device and place it on social media, whether you approve or not. Now we’ve got drones…I meant skateboards with two cameras snapping away? And what if there’s a malfunction? Are we giving robots too much power, or have I been watching too much 80s science fiction movies?
It’s something that is difficult for many to talk about: race/ethnic/gender diversity. Google, the world’s leading Internet corporation, is tackling the issue within it’s own company.
And according to their own blog, the diversity numbers are lacking. Only 30% of Google employees are women. African-Americans make up 2% of Google’s work force; Hispanics make up 3%, while Asian-Americans make up 30%, Whites, over 60%. Google itself admit they have to do a better job with improving diversity. They have taken steps to bridge the gap, like donate tens of millions to women’s organizations and historically black universities to bring computer science to women and minorities. That’s scratching the surface.
Statistics say that in 2011, of all the B.S. computer science graduates, 17.6% were women. In previous decades, those numbers have been in the 20-37 percentile range. Among African-Americans and Hispanics, it’s around five percent. I respect Google’s financial contribution to increase diversity. But we don’t just need short term solutions that start at colleges. Google needs to start at the elementary school level, and I mean in Kindergarten and First Grade, if not sooner. Get young children interested in computer science early, especially in Black and Latino communities. So when the next generation comes around, they will be ready. Since Google can afford to, send Google employees to elementary, jr. high, high schools, and universities to lecture to kids about the importance of computer science. Tell them the rich opportunities they will have. I’d encourage schools to incorporate computer science education as early as they can. The younger they start, the less intimidating it will be. What else can bring these diversity numbers up?
