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APPLE SLAPS BACK: Government's E-Books Case Is 'Fundamentally Flawed' (AAPL, AMZN)

Owen Thomas — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:42:00 -0400

The government's antitrust complaint against Apple and six book publishers over e-book pricing is "fundamentally flawed as a matter of fact and law," according to a response it's filed with the court overseeing the case.

Ars Technica says that Apple "pulls no punches" in its response, which accuses the government of siding with Amazon, which Apple says is the real monopolist in the market for electronic books. Amazon, Apple points out, sold 9 out of every 10 e-books before Apple introduce its iBookstore.

The company also states repeatedly that Apple "lacks sufficient information and belief" to respond to most of the government's allegations.

Translated from the legalese, that's a fancy lawyer way of saying "We have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."

That's a feisty response, which means this is going to be a fun case to watch.

Historically, books have been sold like most physical goods—purchased at a wholesale price and sold at a retail price. That's how Amazon sold print books, and that's how it started out selling e-books. It took a loss on some e-books in order to keep prices low and spur sales of its Kindle e-reader.

Publishers worried that Amazon's low prices would set consumers' expectations for e-books prices at a permanently lower level than what physical books sold for. (Never mind that those expectations are probably pretty reasonable and something consumers would arrive at on their own.)

Apple, meanwhile, always sold media and apps, including some e-book apps, through an agency model—taking a cut of the transaction rather than profiting from the difference between the wholesale and retail price. Under the agency model, book publishers, just like app makers in the app store, picked a price for the e-books they published.

Apple makes a big deal out of its prior use of the agency model in its response.

Meanwhile, Amazon has argued that publishers have a monopoly on the titles they publish. Which, in a sense, they do: Copyright law doesn't let one publisher go around and sell another publisher's books. If you want a particular title, you have to go to that publisher.

That's the argument Amazon offered when it had a spat with Macmillan and briefly pulled all of the publisher's titles—both print and electronic—from its website, then acceded to Macmillan's demands that it adopt agency pricing.

Call this case Jeff Bezos's revenge.

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This Is Why Your Company Won't Ditch Microsoft For Apple (APPL)

Julie Bort — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:59:00 -0400

Apple still really hasn't figured out how to make it big in the enterprise—even though it's having a lot of accidental luck there as employees bring in their own iPhones, iPads and Macs.

But it doesn't care. It's banking that the Bring Your Own Device trend will continue and that it won't need to cater to IT departments. And that's a shame for a lot of reasons.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster—who predicts that Apple shares will hit $1,000—says that Apple is taking the "long road" toward enterprise adoption.

In a research note issued today, he writes:

"We believe that Apple thinks about the consumer and enterprise opportunities as significantly different verticals. If Apple's intent was to dominate the enterprise markets, we believe the company would employ a meaningfully different sales and marketing strategy."

For instance, Apple isn't interested in offering a lot of long-term support for older operating systems. But enterprises often want to stick with what works. Many are still using Windows XP and only now moving to Windows 7, even though XP is more than a decade old.

Plus Apple doesn't really have a clue on how to deal with malicious hackers. As it gets more popular, it is attracting more interest from people keen on exploiting security holes.

Apple botched its first really big challenge: When a researcher reported to Apple that it had found 600,000 infected Macs working together in a hacker botnet, Apple tried to shut down the researcher.

Businesses want companies to quickly fix security flaws. So stories like that don't make enterprises want to yank out Microsoft and spend millions with Apple instead.

Now, Apple hasn't had to cater to business users ... yet. It's been focused on making the best products for consumers and letting those consumers bring their products to work.

But that is surely a missed opportunity. As Munster writes, "We do not expect Apple to make any significant changes on how it addresses the enterprise opportunity, thus it may still be a moderate road to majority market share at the corporate level in phones and longer road in computers. While we expect future iPhone and iPad growth in the enterprise, we don’t expect the Mac to have the same enterprise success."

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We're Skeptical That Smartphone-Tablet Hybrids Will Take Off

Matt Rosoff — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:51:28 -0400

This post is from Business Insider Intelligence, a new research and analysis service that's currently in beta testing. Check out our free trial offer here.

Yesterday, ABI Research released a report about smartphone-tablet hybrids -- which the firm calls "phablets" -- predicting that 239 million of them would ship by 2016. (See chart.)

The firm defines a hybrid as a device with phone functionality and a touch screen between 4.6 and 5.5 inches. That's larger than most smartphones, but smaller than the smallest tablets like the Kindle Fire, which has a 7-inch screen.

The canonical example of this kind of device is Samsung's Galaxy Note.

It was widely panned by reviewers at its release last year -- particularly for its included stylus, which seemed like an old-fashioned anachronism since the success of the touch-only iPad. But the device has been a surprise hit, with more than 5 million sold in five months, according to Samsung.

So does the early success of the Note translate to a new market in hybrids? We're skeptical, and here's why.

ABI told us that it made several assumptions in its report. We evaluate each one below.

Between 7 and 10 hybrid devices will be on the market this year. TRUE. This seems reasonable. ABI lists seven that are already on the market, or coming soon: the Samsung Galaxy Note, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Samsung Galaxy S3, HTC One X, Sony Xperia Ion, LG Optimus 4X HD, and the Huawei Ascend D1.

Every major phone manufacturer will have a model with a big screen by 2015. IMPOSSIBLE TO JUDGE. This will depend on the market success of the early models. If they flop, handset makers will stop building them.

Apple will release a smartphone-tablet hybrid in 2013. DOUBTFUL. This is where ABI's reasoning may break down. Rumors from usually reliable sources say that Apple is releasing a small iPad this fall, but that device will have a 7- to 8-inch screen, and will not make phone calls. Apple has also reportedly put out orders for 4-inch screens for its next iPhone. But neither of those are hybrids, and Apple has little reason to put one out: the iPhone and iPad are both smash hits, with sales increasing every quarter every quarter. Many consumers have both devices. Why cannibalize iPad sales with a larger iPhone?

We'd add the following notes as well:

Apart from the Galaxy Note, past hybrids have flopped.This includes early models from Microsoft partners using the brief-lived Pocket PC for Smartphones platforms and the Dell Streak (which ran Android). This suggests limited demand for a phone that requires two hands to use.

Microsoft is focusing on a different kind of hybrid. Microsoft is entering the tablet market in a big way in 2012, but the company is explicitly focusing on blending tablets with traditional notebook PCs -- not with smartphones. While Windows Phone is moving to the same core technology as Windows 8, the user interface and features of each platform are expected to remain distinct. Microsoft also has a very good business reason not to promote blended devices: it reportedly charges between $30 and $150 for an OEM license of Windows, versus less than $20 for a license for Windows Phone. That said, some PC OEMs might experiment by putting Windows 8 or Windows RT (the ARM-based variant of Windows) into a small tablet and adding a telephony stack.

In conclusion, despite the early success of the Galaxy Note, it's too early to tell whether phone-tablet hybrids will be a real business, and ABI's predictions of 200 million sold by 2015 should be treated with healthy "show me" skepticism.

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Oracle Exec Slams Sun Hardware, Saying 'We Bought A Dog' (ORCL, HPQ)

Julie Bort — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:50:00 -0400

It's Hewlett-Packard's turn to show off a bunch of juicy emails. They show Oracle executives badmouthing Sun hardware.

HP and Oracle are like the enterprise technology world's Hatfields and McCoys. They've been suing each other over Oracle's decision to stop making software for HP's expensive Itanium servers. And they've been using the court of public opinion to make their case.

Last week, Oracle wrote a public letter to HP customers and included a bunch of emails trying to show how HP lied to them about how long Itanium would be around.

So turnaround is fair play. Arik Hesseldahl of AllThingsD posted a cache of emails on Scribd, a document-sharing site of e-mails admitted as testimony in the case. In them, Oracle executives have allegedly been caught saying nasty things about Sun's hardware.

In an archived IM exchange between Oracle executives identified as Keith Block (VP, North America sales and consulting) and Anje Dodson (Oracle's VP of HR), Block says this about Sun hardware:

"We bought a dog. Mark wants us to sell the dog. ... Nobody wants to sell Sun. ... It baaaallllloooooooows."

There's also some interesting stuff about how the two decided the bonus of someone named Linda and stuff about hating Mark Hurd. (She seemed to get $33,000).

Here's a snapshot:

After all of these emails on both sides, one thing is clear. There are no nice guys here—and neither HP nor Oracle seems to care that much about the customer. IBM should be eating this up!

Don't miss: Oracle Drops A Bomb In It's Fight With HP: Lots Of Damaging Emails

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CHART OF THE DAY: Facebook Has The Worst IPO Of The Decade (FB)

Jay Yarow — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:43:00 -0400

Facebook's IPO has been the worst performing IPO of the decade after five days, according to this chart from Bloomberg.

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Apple Will Start Selling Nest Thermostats In Its Retail Stores (AAPL)

Seth Fiegerman — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:03:00 -0400

Next time you walk into an Apple store, don't be too surprised if you see a few thermostats on sale somewhere between the iPads and the MacBooks.

iLounge reports that Apple's retail stores will soon start selling the Learning Thermostat from Nest, a startup founded by Apple's former senior vice president and iPod designer Tony Fadell.

9to5Mac has since confirmed that the thermostats are currently listed in Apple's inventory database and will go on sale "very soon."

The Nest thermostat, which first went on sale at the end of last year, analyzes your usage habits to help manage your energy consumption at home.

This is somewhat surprising because as far as we can tell, Apple only sells products that are related to other Apple products. It sells plenty of third-party items like Square dongles, headphones and iPad cases, but all of these items support the sale of more Apple gadgets.

The Nest thermostat does have an iPhone app, but that's about it. Buying a Nest doesn't necessarily mean buying an iPhone.

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Use These 9 Gadgets To Take Your iPhone Photography Skills To The Next Level

Kevin Smith — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:56:00 -0400

Taking photos using the iPhone's native camera is pretty simple.

The photos and videos typically come out great without much effort due to the excellent camera.

But what if you want to take your photo/video skills to the next level?

Check out these awesome accessories that will take your iPhone photography skills from amateur to pro.

iPhone SLR Mount

This awesome mount is in fact real and takes pictures using either a Canon EOS or Nikon SLR lenses (not included) to give your phone powerful depth of field and manual focus. Telephoto, wide angle, macro, or your fixed-fifty lenses all attach to this mount.

Price: $249.99

Pico Flex Skater Dolly

This dolly adds stability and smoothness to your recordings. Use it for your next person Hollywood production. Another awesome feature is that this dolly can be set up in 30 seconds.

Price: $74.99

iPhone Lens Dial

This case attaches to your phone and gives you Fisheye, Wide Angle and Telephoto lenses all in one. The case is built from aluminum and is pretty sturdy and to switch between lenses is as easy as turning the dial.

Price: $249.99

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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Yahoo Kills Its Flipboard Killer, Livestand, After Just Six Months (YHOO)

Jason Del Ray, AdAge — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:22:58 -0400

Read it at AdAge >

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Meet The Tim Cook Of Google (GOOG, AAPL)

Matt Lynley — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:11:00 -0400

Apple was able to leapfrog its competition thanks in part to brilliant supply chain management that is still years ahead of the competition.

That's because Tim Cook, who was Steve Jobs' second-in-command, handled all of Apple's supply concerns for its devices.

Now Google is trying to do the same thing: build phones and devices that people will love and leapfrog the competition. It will face the same challenges Apple faced.

So, who is the Tim Cook of Google?

Enter Mark Randall. His title is "Supply Chain at Google." That's all you need to know.

Randall was, most recently, a supply-chain expert who managed procurement for Amazon's Kindle division.

He developed the supply chain for the Kindle and Kindle Fire—two devices that faced nearly the same strong demand as the iPhone and iPad.

The Kindle Fire isn't too bad of a device, either, and Amazon was able to develop a tablet that was much, much cheaper than the competition without sacrificing too much.

Randall's expertise appears to be finding ways to minimize the cost of what are traditionally expensive products with cheap, efficient supply chains.

Before working in Amazon's Kindle division, he worked in the company's Toys division, where he scouted new toys to sell at bargains.

In an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2008, Randall said he wanted to "make sure people are getting the best value" at the height of the recession.

Does this mean Google is seeking to undercut Apple at its own game, much in the same way Amazon took on the iPad with the Kindle Fire?

We'll find out.

But the Motorola deal has closed, and Google CEO Larry Page has extremely high hopes for his new hardware division.

If it's going to work, Randall really has to become the Tim Cook of Google.

DON'T MISS: Here Are The Companies Google Is Depending On For Motorola Phones To Survive

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Facebook Goes Back To Getting Clobbered

Joe Weisenthal — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:04:00 -0400

UPDATE: Now it's off over 5.2 percent.

ORIGINAL POST: Ugly day.

Facebook down over 4 percent.

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"The Microsoft Investor" Is Your Source For All Things MSFT

Business Insider — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:58:00 -0400

What is it? The Microsoft Investor offers a compilation of important news and trends affecting Microsoft, along with our own analysis and commentary. You'll receive this newsletter straight to your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.

Signing up is quick and easy. Use the form below to enter your information then click the "Sign Up" button.

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After A Week With The Windows Phone, I See A Lot Of Flaws In The iPhone

Kevin Smith — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:55:00 -0400

I've been using the Samsung Focus 2 Windows Phone for a little over a week now. The experience has been interesting to say the least.

This is the first time I've ever used a Windows Phone for more than 10 minutes.

So I know you're wondering, just how is it?

The experience pleasantly surprised me. The interface was zippy. I liked the grid layout.

The Focus 2 isn't the best all-around phone out on the market. I was actually okay with that, because certain specific features made it attractive to me.

Number one, it can access AT&T's faster LTE network, which made surfing the Web, social networking, and downloading new books awesome. The screen also impressed me.

Those are the kind of things you skip over in a superficial test, but that matter increasingly the more time you spend with a device.

Read my full review of the Focus 2 for all the details on this new device—or keep reading to get a glimpse into what it's really like to live with a Windows Phone for a week.

Day 1: The screen is amazing

This feels different. I'm very used to swiping left and right when using my iPhone. With Windows Phone, everything is vertical. This isn't a bad thing. It just takes a little getting used to.

The layout is cool. I like the live boxes and how they update when new information is available.

I can't take my eyes off the screen. It's bright, and has three different settings—low, medium, high—making everything easy to see.

Samsung really is the king of screens. (Unlike many other phone makers, it actually manufacturers its own screens.) This may not be a "retina" display, but it's still amazingly sharp even on the lowest brightness setting.

I'm really starting to like this device.

Day 2: I wish the app store had more apps ...

I'm searching and searching for all my favorite apps and not even a handful of them are available.

This sucks.

Apps are what really make these phones personalized and the selection in the Windows Marketplace is subpar.

A lack of popular apps is really crippling Windows Phone.

Day 3: I love reading on the 4-inch screen.

Reading on my iPhone screen really annoys me. It's not that big and despite it being bright and having a retina screen, it's always felt scrunched.

The Windows Phone is different. I found myself zipping through books on the Kindle app while commuting to and from work. I really liked it.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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MUNSTER: 10 Reasons Apple's Stock Is Headed To $1,000 (AAPL)

Seth Fiegerman — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:46:00 -0400

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster doubled down on his $910 price target for Apple stock in the next 12 months in a research note released Friday, citing the increasing demand for mobile products.

Looking further into the future though, Munster points to 10 key factors which he believes could help Apple's stock hit $1,000 in the next "couple of years." These factors range from the products in Apple's pipeline to the potential for sales abroad.

Apple has a powerful product roadmap for the remainder of 2012.

Apple is expected to release several major product updates this year, starting with a refreshed Mac in the next six weeks and the iPhone 5 in October, followed by a new iPad early next year and perhaps even the much rumored Apple TV.

Not only will these new products boost sales for the company, but according to Munster, these will reaffirm the company's reputation as an innovator.

The iPhone 5 will be the biggest consumer product launch of 2012.

The iPhone 5 in particular will be a huge deal for the company.

Munster writes in the research note that the new iPhone will be "the biggest consumer product launch of 2012 as well as the biggest device upgrade cycle in smartphone history."

Piper Jaffray expects that the new iPhone will feature several big changes including a larger 4-inch screen, 4G LTE and a redesigned exterior with a metallic back panel similar to the iPad.

The Apple television will ship in 2013 and boost the company's revenues.

Munster continues to believe that Apple's long-awaited television will finally start shipping in 2013 and will end up selling millions of units in its first few years on the market.

As Munster writes in his note, "Piper Jaffray Analyst Michael Olson estimates the 2013 internet connected TV market at 110 million units. We believe Apple could ultimately capture 10 percent of the market within 1-3 years after launch."

This in turn will boost Apple's revenues. Munster estimates that Apple's revenues in 2013 will increase by 1 percent with every one million televisions it sells.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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Cisco's Android Tablet For Businesses Bombed And Now It's Dead (CSCO)

Julie Bort — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:35:40 -0400

Cisco has killed its year-old Cius tablet, the company said in a blog post.

This isn't exactly shocking. The tablet was a strange, overpriced beast for Cisco.

While Cisco's general idea with this tablet wasn't bad, the way Cisco went about it was odd. Cius was supposed to represent a new breed of communications for the enterprise. It was supposed to be something IT departments bought for employees instead of a telephone -- and maybe instead of a telephone and a PC.

It was chock full of Cisco's collaboration software for making calls and video conferences. It was supposed to be more secure because only apps from a corporate-owned app store could be loaded onto it. In other words: No Angry Birds.

The Cius never really sold well, sources told us, though Cisco officials wouldn't release actual numbers. In order to really use it as a phone replacement, you had to have the tablet (priced at about $700) and a docking station (another couple hundred bucks).

Cisco didn't sell Cius to consumers either. It could only be bought by companies.

In a blog post, the company said it was formally pulling the plug. "Cisco will no longer invest in the Cisco Cius tablet form factor, and no further enhancements will be made to the current Cius endpoint beyond what’s available today. However, as we evaluate the market further, we will continue to offer Cius in a limited fashion to customers with specific needs or use cases."

Despite the failure with Cius, we applaud Cisco for trying something new.

Cisco sees enterprise collaboration as a $45 billion market and it has been going after it with a vengeance, with mixed results. It has WebEx and a product called Jabber, a competitor to Microsoft Lync. Jabber is available on the iPad and has won over some surprise customers, like Groupon. Collaboration now represents 21% of Cisco's revenue but year-over-year revenue for the unit was flat last quarter.

Don't miss: Here's How Groupon Set Up A New Age Company

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Reddit Cofounder Creates 'Bat-Signal' To Save The Internet

Owen Thomas — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:51:00 -0400

Alexis Ohanian is basically an Internet superhero already for creating Reddit, the insanely popular news-discussion website.

Now he's formed the Internet Defense League, an organization which aims to mobilize the audiences of popular websites against legislation which threatens their interests.

Ohanian described the IDL to Forbes as a "Bat-Signal for the Internet" that would alert website operators to anti-Internet actions.

Ohanian played a key role in organizing Internet-wide protests against the Stop Online Piracy Act, a piece of legislation that would have made it easier for copyright holders to shut down websites they suspected of involvement with illegal file-sharing. (While he's no longer involved day to day with Reddit, he serves on the site's board of directors and is an influential voice in the Web community.)

Popular site operators like Cheezburger Network, Wikipedia, Google, and Wired participated in the SOPA blackout. But it took time to mobilize those supporters and persuade them to take joint action.

Unprepared for the populist revolt, the copyright lobby backed down on SOPA and a piece of related legislation, the Protect IP Act, or PIPA. But other legislation and trade agreements would similarly limit Internet freedom, Ohanian and his allies fear.

Fight for the Future, a nonprofit started around protests of SOPA and other pro-copyright legislation, is backing the IDL.

Ohanian is best known for the Internet mascots he's created for Reddit, Hipmunk, Breadpig, and other Internet ventures he's involved with.

But what we really want to know is whether he's willing to don a spandex getup, mask, and cape when the IDL's Bat-Signal goes on.

We'd vote for that.

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4 Ways Leading Companies Attract Top Tech Talent

Hope Gurion — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:32:17 -0400

The labor market is dominated by two conflicting stories. First, how will we get 12 million people back to work? The second (and least understood) concerns the battle many companies are waging to recruit tech talent. More than a third of IT employers have open positions they currently can’t fill, according to a recent CareerBuilder/ Sologig.com study. In the long-term, we’ll need more college grads and professionals to choose engineering and computer science fields. There is a silver lining to the current tech talent crunch: Competition breeds innovation, even in the talent acquisition space.

If a tech position sits unfilled for months, it’s the job of the CTO to ask, “What else can we be doing to make our company a destination for top talent?” Clearly, competitive compensation plays a huge role, but successful recruiting goes beyond being able to outspend the competitor. Fortunately, we can learn from leading companies who are creatively navigating the tight labor market in information technology. Simply put, four key strategies they use are:

Hack It
Pool It
Prove It
Train it

1. Hack It. Companies invest in technology to deliver customer value faster than their competitors, and nothing tests the bounds of possibility better than a “hackathon” – competitions that fuel immediate improvements and solutions. Developers want to work for companies where they can create new code and have an immediate impact.

Facebook made hacking famous, but tech companies have been using internal hack competitions to attract and retain talent for years. Yelp spotlights its hack day on its “Careers” page, as does CareerBuilder on its YouTube channel. ESPN promoted its hackathon on Front Row – the company’s behind the scenes blog – and had a documentary crew follow around teams of developers challenged to create new products in 36 hours. Allstate’s weekend hackathon saw 42 teams of developers compete to create the best mobile app; eight teams won cash prizes and the company moved forward with the winning app.

There are other opportunities to identify potential talent through Hackathons. Sponsor competitions at universities or in your backyard (check MeetUp). Yahoo and Facebook sponsor university hackathons. Also, ask your developers what competitions they’re passionate about or suggest some related to your initiatives in mobile, APIs, or their personal interests. For example, Code for America invites developers to generate web-based solutions for city governments across the country. These are opportunities for your developers to expand their networks for future referrals and to elevate their skills.

2. Pool It. The shortage of tech talent means most recruiters are forced to look beyond their own backyards. Consider Milwaukee, WI, which will have to replace more than 5,700 tech workers about to retire in the next five years. That’s on top of any new tech positions sure to be created. This is a challenge for several reasons: the pipeline of talent coming from local schools just isn’t there; fewer Americans are willing to relocate in a still-sluggish housing market; and Milwaukee, although home to many large companies and corporate offices, is not a Silicon Valley-type destination for tech workers.

So how can companies outside of the Bay area compete? One answer is for local governments, associations, and companies to pool their resources. The majority of employers compete individually for talent, with little budget to make the impact needed to build a reputation as an employer of choice. It’s a financial stretch for many small or mid-sized companies to fund recruiting campaigns to fill just two or three open positions. Instead, take a page from Austin, TX. The Austin Technology Council is starting a program where a group of eight companies will each pay a reasonable sum to hire a contract recruiter to tour major universities, represent the companies, and develop a list of 100 top prospects. From there, the companies will pursue the candidates individually. Rent a bus and set up a “Tech Tour of Milwaukee” and invite students from campuses in surrounding areas.

Otherwise, expect that talent to board a bus headed for Silicon Valley.

Also, companies can do a better job working together to sell their market as a desirable place to start or grow a career. New York City recently launched MappedinNY, an interactive job map that visually maps 500 digital startups, investors and co-working spaces. There’s obviously only one New York, but it’s an idea that can be replicated in virtually any market.

3. Prove it. Never underestimate the power of culture. In a June 2011 MIT survey, engineering graduates reported the top three factors influencing their interest in a job were 1) creative and challenging work, 2) fit with the culture/environment, and 3) opportunity to make an impact. Developing a clear answer to “What’s in it for me?” can mitigate a candidate’s desire for the top salary, if you’re not paying above market. There’s really no bounds to what companies are doing – e.g. dog friendly offices, free haircuts, and even lessons from venture capitalists on how to create one’s own startup.

Every company says that it has a great culture. You have to prove it. Using video on your career site, YouTube, and social media channels is essential and affordable. Twitter depicts its office culture with a clever satire of a traditional recruiting video. Zappos has a blog devoted solely to the inner-workings of its famed office culture and values. Zynga reminds us that these videos don’t have to be flashy, just authentic. What’s more, employers frequently forget these details in their job listings on CareerBuilder and Sologig, but there are few better places to get a prospect excited before they click “apply.”

4. Train it. A lot of recruiters post jobs for requiring the hottest IT skills like java, mobile, ruby on rails, php) and wait . . . and then wait a little while longer. If you’re taking 4-6 months to hire a web developer – one of the hottest jobs in the country – consider a different option. Try retraining an existing non-tech employee or hire and train someone unemployed for the in-demand skill set. When I suggest this to companies, I often hear the objection “but I need someone experienced now.” Yet if the sorely needed position hasn’t been filled, why not consider the parallel path? Fortunately, 38 percent of employers in a recent CareerBuilder survey say that this year they’ll be hiring and training workers who don’t have prior experience in their particular industry.

If you don’t have the training infrastructure to make this happen, there are several options. Codecademy, Google Code University, and Udacity all offer free training and resources in the computer sciences. Code School – used by NASA, IBM and AT&T, among others – is a premium service offering courses in the most in demand development languages today. Check your community colleges for programs like Oakton Community College’s Programming and Database Design — many are offering these courses and can be partners to help you retrain employees or be new candidate sources.

The message of all this, regardless of your tactics: If you want the best innovators, you’d better get innovative in how you approach recruiting them.

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The Brilliant Career Advice Google CEO Eric Schmidt Gave Sheryl Sandberg (GOOG, FB)

Jay Yarow — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:10:00 -0400

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg gave the graduating class of the Harvard Business School a speech on their Class Day, which is the part of the run up to commencement.

We have the full speech, along with a video here.

But we want to highlight one of the best things in the speech. It's smart advice for just about everyone.

Here is the full bit, but really it can boiled down to this: "Don't be an idiot." We've added our own emphasis where appropriate:

As the world becomes more connected and less hierarchical, traditional career paths are shifting as well. In 2001, after working in the government, I moved out to Silicon Valley to try finding a job. My timing wasn’t really that good. The bubble had crashed, small companies were closing, big companies were laying people off. One woman CEO looked at me and said, we wouldn’t even think about hiring someone like you. After awhile I had a few offers and I had to make a decision, so what did I do? I am MBA trained, so I made a spreadsheet. I listed my jobs in the columns and my criteria in the rows, and compared the companies and the missions and the roles. One of the jobs on that sheet was to become Google’s first business unit general manager, which sounds good now, but at the time no one thought consumer internet companies could ever make money. I was not sure there was actually a job there at all. Google had no business units, so what was there to generally manage. And the job was several levels lower than jobs I was being offered at other companies. So I sat down with Eric Schmidt, who had just become the CEO, and I showed him the spread sheet and I said, this job meets none of my criteria. He put his hand on my spreadsheet and he looked at me and said, Don’t be an idiot. Excellent career advice. And then he said, Get on a rocket ship. When companies are growing quickly and they are having a lot of impact, careers take care of themselves. And when companies aren’t growing quickly or their missions don’t matter as much, that’s when stagnation and politics come in. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.

About 6 and half years later, when I was leaving Google, I took that advice to heart. I was offered CEO jobs at a bunch of companies, but I went to Facebook as COO. At the time people said, why are you going to work for a 23 year old? The traditional metaphor for careers is a ladder, but I no longer think that metaphor holds. It doesn’t make sense in a less hierarchical world. When I was first at Facebook, a woman named Lori Goler, a 1997 graduate of HBS, was working in marketing at eBay and I knew her kind of socially. And she called me and said, I want to talk with you about coming to work with you at Facebook. So I thought about calling you, she said, and telling you all the things I’m good at and all the things I like to do. But I figured that everyone is doing that. So instead I want to know what’s your biggest problem and how can I solve it. My jaw hit the floor. I’d hired thousands of people up to that point in my career, but no one had ever said anything like that. I had never said anything like that. Job searches are always about the job searcher, but not in Laurie’s case. I said, you’re hired. My biggest problem is recruiting and you can solve it. So Lori changed fields into something she never thought she’d do, went down a level to start in a new field and has since been promoted and runs all of the people operations at Facebook and has done an extraordinary job.

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You'll Enjoy This Tidbit About How Morgan Stanley Decided Which Clients To Give Facebook Stock To...

Henry Blodget — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:00:00 -0400

Everyone's getting pretty sick of the whole Facebook IPO thing (ourselves included), but here's one more tidbit for you before the holiday weekend...

As you know, there was tremendous demand for Facebook stock prior to Facebook's IPO (and prior to small investors learning what big investors already knew, which was that Facebook had reduced its outlook for the second quarter).

Basically, there was way more demand for Facebook stock than there was shares.

So Morgan Stanley and the other underwriters had to figure out which small clients to give stock to.

You might think that this decision was made by size of account (assets under management), with the bigger clients getting the most stock.

But it wasn't!

At Morgan Stanley, a source reports, this decision was made as follows:

The individual clients who were the most profitable for the firm got the most stock.

In other words, the clients that had paid Morgan Stanley the highest fees in prior years got big allocations.

That's fair. It's not just on Wall Street that the best clients get the best service.

Of course, in this case, the strategy backfired--at least for those clients who didn't flip their Facebook stock on the first day of trading.

Morgan Stanley's best clients, the ones who got the most Facebook stock on the IPO, have now gotten the most hosed.

Whoops!

(By the way, this allocation decision wasn't made by Morgan Stanley's financial advisors, who have gotten reamed in this whole thing. It was made by corporate HQ. The FAs were pissed about it, too.)

[ I would like to confirm information like this with Morgan Stanley before I publish, but they're not responding to my emails or calls. I can't imagine why. ; ) ]

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Sheryl Sandberg's Full HBS Speech: Get On A Rocketship Whenever You Get The Chance

Jay Yarow — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:00:00 -0400

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg delivered a speech to the graduating class of Harvard Business School this week.

As usual, it's a great speech. We have the full video here, as well as a transcript from HBS below. (HBS warned us that one of their people, not a professional transcriber, wrote up the speech, so there might be typos.)

Sheryl Sandberg (MBA 1995) at HBS Class Day 2012: It’s an honor to be here today to address HBS’s distinguished faculty, proud parents, patient guests, and most important the class of 2012. Today was supposed to be a day of unbridled celebration, and I know that’s no longer true. I join all of you in grieving for your classmate….today still marks a distinct and impressive achievement for this class, so please join me in giving our warmest congratulations to the class….

When Dean Nohria asked me to speak here today, I thought, come talk to a group of people way younger and cooler than I am? I can do that, I do that every day, I like being surrounded by young people except when they say to me, What was it like being in college without the internet, or worse, Sheryl, can you come here, we need to see what old people think of this feature.

When I was a student here 17 years ago, I studied social marketing with professor Kash Rangan, and one of the many examples Kash used to explain the concept of social marketing was the lack of organ donors in this country, which kills 18 people every single day. Earlier this month, Facebook launched a tool to support organ donations, something that stems directly from Kash’s work. Kash, we are all grateful for your dedication.

So, it wasn’t really that long ago when I was sitting where you are, but the world has changed an awful lot. My section, section B, tried to have HBS’s first online class. We had to use an AOL chat room and dial up service (your parents can explain). We had to pass out a list of screen names, because it was unthinkable to put your real name on the internet. And it never worked. It kept crashing…the world wasn’t set up for 90 people to communicate at once on line. But for a few brief moments though, we glimpsed the future, a future where technology would power who we are and connect us to our real colleagues, our real family, our real friends. It used to be that in order to reach more people than you could talk to in a day, you had to be rich and famous and powerful, be a celebrity, a politician, a CEO, but that’s not true today. Now ordinary people have voice, not just those of us lucky to go to HBS, but anyone with access to Facebook, Twitter, a mobile phone. This is disrupting traditional power structures and leveling traditional hierarchy. Voice and power are shifting from institutions to individuals, from the historically powerful to the historically powerless, and all of this is happening so much faster than I could have imagined when I was sitting where you are today and Mark Zuckerberg was 11 years old.

As the world becomes more connected and less hierarchical, traditional career paths are shifting as well. In 2001, after working in the government, I moved out to Silicon Valley to try finding a job. My timing wasn’t really that good. The bubble had crashed, small companies were closing, big companies were laying people off. One woman CEO looked at me and said, we wouldn’t even think about hiring someone like you. After awhile I had a few offers and I had to make a decision, so what did I do? I am MBA trained, so I made a spreadsheet. I listed my jobs in the columns and my criteria in the rows, and compared the companies and the missions and the roles. One of the jobs on that sheet was to become Google’s first business unit general manager, which sounds good now, but at the time no one thought consumer internet companies could ever make money. I was not sure there was actually a job there at all. Google had no business units, so what was there to generally manage. And the job was several levels lower than jobs I was being offered at other companies. So I sat down with Eric Schmidt, who had just become the CEO, and I showed him the spread sheet and I said, this job meets none of my criteria. He put his hand on my spreadsheet and he looked at me and said, Don’t be an idiot. Excellent career advice. And then he said, Get on a rocket ship. When companies are growing quickly and they are having a lot of impact, careers take care of themselves. And when companies aren’t growing quickly or their missions don’t matter as much, that’s when stagnation and politics come in. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.

Lori has a great metaphor for careers. She says they’re not a ladder; they’re a jungle gym. As you start your post-HBS career, look for opportunities, look for growth, look for impact, look for mission. Move sideways, move down, move on, move off. Build your skills, not your resume. Evaluate what you can do, not the title they’re going to give you. Do real work. Take a sales quota, a line role, an ops job, don’t plan too much, and don’t expect a direct climb. If I had mapped out my career when I was sitting where you are, I would have missed my career.

You are entering a different business world than I entered. Mine was just starting to get connected. Yours is hyperconnected. Mine was competitive. Yours is way more competitive. Mine moved quickly, yours moves even more quickly. As traditional structures are breaking down, leadership has to evolve as well. From hierarchy to shared responsibility, from command and control to listening and guiding. You’ve been trained by this great institution not just to be part of these trends but to lead. As you lead in this new world, you will not be able to rely on who you are or the degree you hold. You’ll have to rely on what you know. Your strength will not come from your place on some org chart, your strength will come from building trust and earning respect. You’re going to need talent, skill, and imagination and vision, but more than anything else, you’re going to need the ability to communicate authentically, to speak so that you inspire the people around you and to listen so that you continue to learn each and every day on the job.

If you watch young children, you’ll immediately notice how honest they are. My friend Betsy in my section a few years after business school was pregnant with her second child and her first child was about 5 and said Mommy, where is the baby. And she said the baby is in my tummy. And he said aren’t the baby’s arms in your arms, and she said, no, the baby’s in my tummy. Are the baby’s legs in your legs? No, the whole baby is in my tummy. And he said, Mommy, then what is growing in your butt?

As adults, we are never this honest, and that’s not a bad thing. I have borne two children, the last thing I needed were those comments. But it’s not always a good thing either. Because all of us, and especially leaders, need to speak and hear the truth. The workplace is an especially difficult place for anyone to tell the truth, because no matter how flat we want our organizations to be, all organizations have some form of hierarchy. What that means is that one person’s performance is assessed by someone else’s perception. This is not a setup for honesty. Think about how people speak in a typical workforce. Rather than say I disagree with our expansion strategy or better yet, this seems truly stupid. They say: I think there are many good reasons why we’re entering this new line of business, and I’m certain the management team has done a thorough ROI analysis, but I’m not sure we fully considered the downstream effects of taking this step forward at this time. As we would say at Facebook on the internet, three letters: WTF.

Truth is better used by using simple language. Last year Mark decided to learn Chinese and as part of studying, he would spend an hour or so each week with some of our employees who were native Chinese speakers. One day, one of them was trying to tell him something about her manager, so she said this long sentence and he said simpler please. And then she said it again and he said, no, I still don’t understand, simpler please…and so on and so on. Finally, in sheer exasperation she burst out, my manager is bad. Simple and clear and very important for him to know. People rarely speak this clearly in the workforce or in life and as you get more senior, not only will people speak less clearly to you but they will overreact to the small things you say.

When I joined Facebook, one of the things I had to do was build the business side of the company, put some systems into place, but I wanted to do it without destroying the culture that made Facebook great. So one of the things I tried to do was encourage people not to do formal PowerPoint presentations for meetings with me, and I would say things like, Don’t do PowerPoint presentations for meetings with me. Why don’t you come in with a list of what you want to discuss, but everyone ignored me, they kept doing their presentations meeting after meeting, month after month. So about 2 years in, I said, OK, I hate rules but I have a rule, no more PowerPoint in my meetings and I mean it. About a month later I was about to speak to our global sales team on a big stage and someone came up to me and said, Before you get on that stage, you really should know everyone’s pretty upset about the no PowerPoint with clients thing…What? So I got on the stage and said, one, I meant no PowerPoint with me. But two, more importantly, next time you hear something that’s really stupid, don’t adhere to it, fight it or ignore it, even if it’s coming from me or Mark. A good leader recognizes that most people won’t feel comfortable challenging authority, so it falls upon authority to encourage them to question. It’s easy to say that you’re going to encourage feedback but it’s hard to do, because unfortunately it doesn’t always come in a format we want to hear.

When I first started at Google, I had a team of 4 people and it was really important to me that I interview everyone, being part of my team meant I had to know you. When the team had gotten to 100 people, I realized it was taking longer to schedule my interviews so one day at my meeting of just my direct reports, I said maybe I should stop interviewing, fully expecting them to jump in and say no, your interviews are a critical part of the process. They applauded. Then they fell over themselves explaining that I was the bottleneck of all time.

I was embarrassed, then I was angry and I spent a few hours just quietly fuming. Why didn’t they tell me I was a bottleneck, why did they let me go on slowing them down? Then I realized that if they hadn’t told me, that was my fault. I hadn’t been open enough to tell them I wanted that feedback and I would have to change that going forward. When you’re the leader, it is really hard to get good and honest feedback, no many how many times you ask for it. One trick I’ve discovered is that I try to speak really openly about the things I’m bad at, because that gives people permission to agree with me, which is a lot easier than pointing it out ijn the first place. To take one of many possible examples, when things are unresolved I can get a tad anxious. Really, when anything’s unresolved, I get a lot anxious. I’m quite certain no one has accused me of being too calm. So I speak about it openly and that give people permission to tell me when it’s happening. But if I never said anything, would anyone who works at Facebook walk up to me and say, hey Cheryl, calm down. You’re driving us all nuts. I don’t think so.

As you graduate today, ask yourself, how will you lead. Will you use simple and clear language? Will you seek out honesty? When you get honesty back, will you react with anger or with gratitude? As we strive to be more authentic in our communication, we should also strive to be more authentic in a broader sense. I talk a lot about bringing your whole self to work—something I believe in deeply.

Motivation comes from working on things we care about but it also comes from working with people we care about, and in order to care about someone, you have to know them. You have to know what they love and hate, what they feel, not just what they think. If you want to win hearts and minds, you have to lead with your heart as well as your mind. I don’t believe we have a professional self from Mondays through Fridays and a real self for the rest of the time. That kind of division probably never worked, but in today’s world, with a real voice, an authentic voice, it makes even less sense. I’ve cried at work. I’ve told people I’ve cried at work. And it’s been reported in the press that Sheryl Sandberg cried on Mark Zuckerberg’s shoulder, which is not exactly what happened. I talk about my hopes and fears and ask people about theirs. I try to be myself. Honest about my strengths and weaknesses and I encourage others to do the same. It is all professional and it is all personal, all at the very same time.

I recently started speaking up about the challenges women face in the workforce, something I only had the courage to do in the last few years. Before this, I did my career like everyone else does it. I never told anyone I was a girl. Don’t tell. I left the lights on when I went home to do something for my kids. I locked my office door and pumped milk for my babies while I was on a conference call. People would say, what’s that sound. I would say, what sound. I hear a beep. It’s a fire truck. But the progress we’ve made in the last decade has convinced me we need to start talking about this. I graduated from HBS in 1995 and I thought it was completely clear that by the time someone from my year was invited to speak at this podium, we would have achieved equality in the workforce. But women at the top c-level jobs are stuck at 15 or 16 % and has not moved in a decade. Not even close to 50%. We need to acknowledge openly that gender remains an issue at the highest levels of leadership. The promise of equality is not equality. We need to start talking about this. We need to start talking about how women underestimate their abilities compared to men and for women, but not men, success and likeability are negatively correlated. That means that as a woman is more successful in your workplaces, she will be less liked. This means that women need a different form of management and mentorship, a different form of sponsorship and encouragement, and some protection, in some ways more than men.

There aren’t enough senior women out there to do it, so it falls upon the men who are graduating today just as much or more as the women, not just to talk about gender but to help these women succeed. When they hear a woman is really great at her job but not liked, take a deep breath and ask why. We need to start talking openly about the flexibility all of us need to have both a job and a life. Couple of weeks ago in an interview I said I leave the office at 5 pm to have dinner with my children, and I was shocked at the press coverage. One of my friends says she wasn’t sure I could get more headlines if I had murdered someone with an ax! This showed me this is an unresolved issue for all of us, men and women; otherwise why did everyone write so much about it. And maybe most importantly, we need to start talking about how fewer women than men, even from places like HBS, even in this class, aspire to the very top jobs.

We will not close the leadership gap until we close the professional ambition gap. We need more women not just to sit at the table, but as president Obama said a few weeks ago at Barnard, to take their rightful seats at the head of the table. One of the reasons I was so excited to be here today is that Dean Nohria told me that this is the 50th anniversary of letting women into this school…Your dean is so passionate about getting more women into leadership positions and he told me he wanted me to speak this year for that reason. I met a woman from that first class once. She told me that when they first came in, they took a men’s room and converted it to a women’s room. But they left the urinals in. The urinals are long gone. Let’s make sure that no one ever misses them.

As you and your classmates spread out across the globe and walk across this stage tomorrow, I wish for you four things:

First, keep in touch via Facebook; this is critical to your future success! And since we’re public now, could you click on an ad or two.

Two, that you make the effort to speak as well as seek the truth.

Three, that you remain true to and open about your authentic self.

And four, most deeply, that your generation accomplish what mine has failed to do. Give us a world where half our homes are run by men and half our institutions are run by women. I’m pretty sure that would be a better world.

I join everyone here in offering my most sincere congratulations to the HBS Class of 2012. Give yourselves a huge round of applause.

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Samsung's Newest Android Phone Is Critical Smash Hit, And It Just Might Make You Want To Switch (GOOG)

Dylan Love — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:47:00 -0400

The Galaxy S III is one of the most eagerly anticipated Android phones to ever be released.

We've rounded up the reviews of a few people who were fortunate enough to gets their hands on it, and they were overwhelmingly positive about the device.

It's internals are impressive and the camera is unparalleled, but one reviewer maintains that it's no match for the HTC One X.

It absolutely bears mentioning that the Galaxy S III reviews out now are for the international version of the phone, which launches May 29. This is not the same model that will be available in the U.S. this summer.

It'll be close, but there will be small hardware and software differences.

Keep that in mind as you check out these reviews.

Jessica Dolcourt, CNET

"The global version of the Samsung Galaxy S III has high-end specs that include Samsung's highly anticipated quad-core Exynos 4 processor, a large HD Super AMOLED screen, and an 8-megapixel camera.

"On the software side, the Galaxy S III also hosts software extras that include file- and photo-sharing at a touch from phone to phone, Siri-like voice actions that also include room for customization, and a fistful of new ways to share content among your devices and friends."

Vlad Savov, The Verge

"[T]he Galaxy S III is a technological triumph. Not at first sight, perhaps, but Samsung has done the overwhelming majority of things right. The camera is easily the best I’ve used on an Android device, the processor claims the title of benchmarking champion, and the customizations layered on top of Ice Cream Sandwich are mostly unobtrusive and sometimes even helpful. They never really gel into one coherent user experience, meaning you’ll have to learn what each new feature does individually rather than intuiting it from the phone’s general behavior, however that’s a trifling complaint when compared to our usual disappointments with Android OEM skins...

"The extra-large size of this phone, even with its great ergonomics, may prove to be a stumbling block for those who can’t comfortably fit a 4.8-inch handset into their daily routine. Still, the popularity of the Galaxy Note has shown that phone buyers are willing to look to more exotic form factors in their pursuit of novelty and extra functionality — and the Galaxy S III suffers no shortage of either."

Sharif Sakr, Engadget

"The best thing about the Galaxy S III? That it's more than the sum of its parts. Individually, the slightly larger and better display, stronger processor and faster camera may not sound that special, but in daily operation they score major combo points: gathering up all the best bits of the older Galaxy S II and re-working them into a solidly modern (read: mid-2012) device.

"And the worst thing about the GS III? No matter how hard it tries, it just isn't greater than the sum of the HTC One X's parts."

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