1 Facebook pays a billion dollars for Instagram (San Francisco Chronicle) Facebook has taken steps to bolster its mobile strategy, acquiring popular photo-sharing application Instagram for about $1 billion in cash and stock. The purchase, the social network's largest and the most expensive by far for a smart phone app, gives Facebook a company that's adept at producing mobile apps as well as a passionate community of more than 30 million users. It also neutralizes a potential competitive threat from the San Francisco startup, whose 28-year-old co-founder has talked about building a large global business. The move comes on the eve of an expected initial public offering from Facebook that could value the company at $100 billion.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted that the deal was unusual for a company that traditionally has bought startups primarily for their engineering talent. The price tag makes it one of the priciest startup acquisitions ever, in the same league as Google's purchase of YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006.The acquisition came before Instagram began generating any significant revenue.
2 As TV biz sinks, Sony sheds 10,000 jobs (San Francisco Chronicle) Sony is cutting 10,000 jobs, an amount that represents 6% of its workforce, according to Japan's Nikkei newspaper. The Tokyo company, once the king of consumer electronics, is reeling from three consecutive annual losses and mounting competition from Apple and Samsung. "The job cuts are just a temporary fix for Sony," says Mitsuo Shimizu, an analyst at Cosmo Securities. "This wouldn't help address the company's real problems, like the slumping TV business."
3 An app to spot friends nearby (San Francisco Chronicle) As nearly half of all US adults own a smart phone and the number of Facebook users surpasses 845 million, the message is that more and more people are walking around with their social network in their pocket. An app, Highlight, is beginning to take advantage of that. Unlike Foursquare or other apps that require users to check in to a particular location, Highlight works by running in the background and continually sensing the place and people nearby. It taps into Facebook to know the person's network of friends, background and interests. "You're literally giving people a sixth sense," said Paul Davison, who founded Highlight with Benjamin Garrett.
The trouble comes when people don't realize just how much information they may be sending out and how much personal data the app may be tracking about them and where they've been. The apps may have all sorts of privacy settings, but are people aware of them and how best to use them? Davison has heard the questions, criticisms and more. For one, he responded, it's not possible for one person to track or stalk another person, because their profiles don't appear unless they're already near each other. They can also limit who sees their profiles, such as just friends of friends. And if they're in a place where they want to be anonymous, they can "pause" the app.
4 As sole resident moves on, Wyoming town is sold (The New York Times) For years, Don Sammons was the biggest shot in Buford. He owned everything. The gas station, the trading post, the cafe. In fact, he was the only man you could talk to, being the sole resident of Buford, all 10 acres of it, a windswept Wyoming outpost. Billing itself as the nation’s smallest town, unincorporated Buford went to auction last week after Mr. Sammons decided to move on after two decades of living here. The sale drew interest from people around the world who dreamed of owning a bucolic American town on the edge of the frontier.
The auction itself lasted less than 15 minutes before a mysterious Vietnamese man offered a winning bid of $900,000 for Buford, which has been around since the mid-1800s and was once a railroad town with a population of about 2,000. Mr. Sammons, 61, moved here from Newport Beach, Calif., in the ’80s along with his wife, searching for someplace quieter. After his wife died, he bought Buford in 1992 for $155,000 from a family who hailed from New Jersey. “People always ask me, ‘Didn’t you get lonely?’ ” he said. “But there’s a big difference between being lonely and being alone. There are people in New York City, who have millions of people around them, and they might feel very lonely.” In reality, Buford was not so lonely. More than a thousand people would stop by each day. The pumps stayed open 24 hours, but by nightfall the traffic died down.
Recently, though, Mr. Sammons had started feeling his work here was done. “I was kind of hoping my son might want to carry it on,” he said. “But he explained to me that it just isn’t his thing. And I certainly understand that.”
5 Why affairs are tough in internet age (The Guardian) There are those who mourn the art of letter-writing or the fax machine, but Joan Bakewell has suggested a more serious casualty of the internet age: the discreet extra-marital affair. Between 1962 and 1969, despite both being married and famous, Bakewell and the playwright Harold Pinter spent seven "wonderful" years as one another's secret bits on the side. "You couldn't do it today," she said in an interview. "People presumably still have affairs … But how do they manage it with [emails] and mobile phones and with spouses and partners asking: 'Where are you?'"
Now, I have no special knowledge on the subject but I'm sure that people have not lost their ability to lie. Camera-phones make it harder for famous adulterers to escape attention, but if you stay indoors, isn't anything still possible? Indeed, aren't there now more ways to contact your lover, without relying on the kitchen telephone? And, when you tire of one, there has surely never been an easier time to find a replacement. Bakewell or Pinter might have to be more crafty these days, but when the mood struck them I'm sure they'd find an internet full of volunteers.
6 Two-fifths Brit teachers cyberbullied (The Guardian) Teachers have been issued with death threats, accused of serious crimes including paedophilia and rape, and subjected to sexist and racist abuse, according to a poll revealing widespread cyberbullying by pupils – including some still at primary school – as well as parents.
The scale of bullying by pupils on social networking sites against those trying to educate them is suggested in an online survey due to be released by the teaching union. While the majority (60%) of pupils involved was between 11 and 16, others were younger – with one reported incident involving a five-year-old. Parents were also using social networks to comment about them, according to 16% of teachers. Of those who took part in the survey, more than two-fifths (42%) said they had been a victim of cyberbullying.
7 Pak kids have laptops, no textbooks (Dawn) As the Punjab government distributes some 1,25,000 commissioned laptops among qualified students, and another 3,00,000 are said to be in the pipeline, students in the province face a shortage of textbooks, following many snags. While the government is at pains to explain that the laptops’ distribution is a trans-parent affair, no such explanation is offered regarding the commissioning, printing and distribution of the more basic provision of textbooks. The result is that hundreds of thousands of students fear having to go through the academic year without the prescribed books. The fiasco leads one to question the priorities of the Punjab government. What should come first, the provision of textbooks or the laptops? It is true that computer literacy centres have been set up in a large number of public schools across Punjab, but the drive to further IT education should not come at the cost of neglecting the provision of basic education of which textbooks are an indispensable tool.
8 Jagdish Bhagwati: Obama’s blunder at the Bank (Straits Times) The selection of a successor to Robert Zoellick as President of the World Bank was supposed to initiate a new era of open meritocratic competition, breaking the traditional hold that the US has had on the job. Indeed, Zoellick's own appointment was widely regarded as 'illegitimate' from that perspective. But US President Barack Obama has let the world down even more distressingly with his nomination of Jim Yong Kim for the post.
To begin with, it should have been clear that a most remarkable candidate - Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala - was already at hand. She had impressive credentials: degrees in economics from Harvard and MIT, experience working on a wide variety of development issues as a managing director of the World Bank, and stints as Finance Minister and Foreign Minister of Nigeria. What, then, does Obama's choice tell us about the sincerity of his feminist rhetoric? Does he draw the line wherever it suits him? Perhaps Obama believed that picking Kim, a Korean-American and public-health specialist who is currently President of Dartmouth College, would advance his immediate security agenda in Seoul (where he arrived immediately after announcing the nomination), as well as America's medium-term economic agenda in Asia.
9 Why the Indian soft state is losing the war to Maoists (First Post) For days now, Maoists in Odisha have been keeping the state government on tenterhooks with their demands for the release of their comrades in return for the two hostages they hold. And just when the Naveen Patnaik government appeared to have completely capitulated to the ‘ransom’ demand, the Maoists have gone ahead and raised the stakes, with demands for yet more releases.
On most occasions that the Indian state has found itself in hostage situations, it has buckled under pressure, and shown itself up to be a soft state. There are instances when even the most relentlessly uncompromising governments yield ground in hostage situations. Last year, the Israeli government negotiated the release of one of its soldiers who had been held hostage by Palestinian militants for five years. In return it released over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were involved in vile terrorist attacks on Israel. But what such terrorists-per-hostage calculations overlook is that Israel relentlessly goes after the released prisoners and in most cases recaptures them.
In India, however, governments at both the Central and state levels have failed abysmally to project that hard power that puts the fear of retribution in those who wage war on the state. The notable exception happened in 1984, when Kashmiri separatists in Birmingham abducted Ravindra Mhatre, an Indian diplomat in the UK, and sought the release of their leader Maqbool Butt, who was awaiting execution in Delhi. The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi refused to negotiate with the terrorists; Mhatre was killed, upon which Butt was promptly hanged. Since then, no government has had the spine to stand up to terrorists and Maoist abductors, although the attacks and abductions have only escalated in intensity.
10 Assam rhino population up (The Indian Express) Poachers may have been on the prowl and killing a number of rhinos, especially at Kaziranga National Park in Upper Assam. However, the population of the one-horned rhinoceros has shot up in the state very encouragingly, with the just-concluded census putting it at 2,505, over 300 more than what it was three years ago. In Kaziranga, which has the highest concentration of the one-horned rhinoceros, the figure has gone up from 2,048 in 2009 to 2,290 now, despite the death of roughly 120 rhinos between 2009 and 2011.
11When Justice Markandey Katju believes 90% of Indians are fools (The Wall Street Journal) Justice Markandey Katju, a former Supreme Court Justice turned chairman of the Press Council of India, has done it again, stating in an Indian Express op-ed that he was presenting us with an “unpleasant truth: 90% of Indians are fools.” He was humble enough to attribute a “great defect” to himself, too, though it was one couched in virtue: “I cannot remain silent when I see my country going downhill. Even if others are deaf and dumb, I am not. So I will speak out.”
His first example for reaching his controversial conclusion: “When our people go to vote in elections, 90% vote on the basis of caste or community, not the merits of the candidate. Example no. 2: “90% Indians believe in astrology, which is pure superstition and humbug. TV channels showing astrology have high TRP ratings.” Example no. 3: “Cricket has been turned into a religion by our corporatised media. Example no. 4: “I had criticised the media hype around Dev Anand’s death at a time when 47 farmers in India were committing suicide on an average every day for the last 15 years… In my opinion, Dev Anand’s films transported the minds of poor people to a world of make-believe, like a hill station where Dev Anand was romancing some girl.” Example no. 5: “During the recent Anna Hazare agitation in Delhi, the media hyped the event as a solution to the problem of corruption. In reality it was, as Shakespeare said in Macbeth, “…a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing.”
We reached Mr. Katju, 65 years old, by phone to ask whether his 90% estimate was derived from scientific thinking. He said: “It’s not a mathematical figure. It just means that a large proportion of Indians are mentally backward.”
12 The Everest then and now (The Economic Times) When Tenzing Norgay climbed Everest, he left a small cloth at the South Col. When his son Jamling Norgay reached the peak in 1996, the spot was littered with over a thousand used oxygen bottles and a tonne of rubbish.
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