Transformations in Business

If you’d like less government surveillance, the alternative answer to political control is more competition in the industries that handle and store information.

Federal wiretapping as we know it only became serious in the twenties, after the government blessed the establishment of a telephone monopoly headed by the great Bell company, A. T. & T. The Treasury department, which headed the federal-law-enforcement effort against prohibition, led the way. 

The national-security state tends to love monopolies—a coöperative monopoly augments and extends the power of the state, like a technological prosthesis.

Microsoft is rolling out a series of social features to make creating on the web even easier, from a new meme generator tool to creating animated photographs you can share on social networks.

The updates are coming to the company's Socl online community, which was first designed as an experiment aimed at students. Developed by Microsoft Research FUSE Labs and launched in 2011, the community has since attracted more than 400,000 registered users across all demographics, especially those with a creative spirit. In that vein, the new features will allow users to create more digital content that is shareable with other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

Read more at: http://mashable.com/2013/06/18/microsoft-socl-blink/

This ALISON Free Online Course - Completing the Accounting Cycle - will be of great interest to entrepreneurs and business professionals who would like to get a thorough introduction to accounting principles, and to any learner who is interested in accounting as a future career.

Read more at: http://alison.com/courses/Completing-the-Accounting-Cycle

Microsoft is launching Office for iPhone, bringing Word, Excel and PowerPoint to the world's most popular smartphone.

The version of Office the iPhone's getting is Office Mobile, which is nearly identical to the apps that already exist on Windows Phone. It includes phone-friendly versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but not other Office apps such as Outlook.

Read more at: http://mashable.com/2013/06/14/office-iphone/

Remember that time a couple of Norwegian 20 year-olds posted a picture to Facebook? Sure you do. The one where the girl, Catherine, agreed to have sex with her friend Peter if the picture got a million Likes?

It turned out to be a joke for the benefit of the pair's friends. Still, the picture zoomed past a million Likes in less than a day. Now the story has become a subject of an academic white paper by a trio of Facebook data scientists. The paper investigates how this picture, along with a similarly viral posting from President Obama, made the big time.

Read more at: http://mashable.com/2013/06/13/facebook-million-shares/

Pink Floyd is coming to Spotify -- if "Wish You Were Here" is streamed 1 million times.

The music service announced the program on Friday.

Pink Floyd's catalog is owned by EMI Records. Spotify inked a deal with EMI in 2011, but Pink Floyd's catalog — including Dark Side of the Moon, which sold 50 million copies worldwide — was not included in that deal.

Apple is looking into launching an iPhone with a 4.7-inch or even a 5.7-inch screen, Reuters reports, citing sources with knowledge of the matter.

The company is also considering launching a cheaper variant of the iPhone, that would cost around $99 and come in 5-6 colors.

The moves are described as being "under discussion," meaning they may never actually happen. If they do, however, it would mean Apple has more or less abandoned its position as the standard-setter in the smartphone market and become just another trend-follower.

Read more at: http://mashable.com/2013/06/13/apple-might-launch-a-bigger-iphone-as-well-as-a-cheaper-colorful-one/

Booz Allen Hamilton has released a new statement on Edward Snowden, its now-former employee and National Security Agency surveillance leaker. In addition to sharing that the company fired Snowden yesterday over code-of-ethics violations, Booz Allen reports that the Maryland native's annual salary was $122,000 — far less than the $200,000 Snowden himself claimed to be making.

But the reality is, Snowden is part of a larger economy that tech companies and members of Congress ignore when they discuss high-skilled jobs and immigration. As more of the broader economy moves toward an IT-reliant future, many of the job market's more mundane openings are also falling into the science, technology, math and engineering categories. 

Read more at: http://mashable.com/2013/06/12/snowden-underground-economy/

Apple has officially taken the wraps off of iOS 7 at its Worldwide Developer Conference today. iOS 7 is the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system that debuted back in 2007 on the original iPhone. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, iOS 7 is the biggest change to the platform since the iPhone was introduced five years ago. The new design is evident in everything from sharper, flatter icons, slimmer fonts, a new slide-to-unlock function, and a new control panel that slides up from the bottom of the screen for frequently accessed settings. The stock apps have all been redesigned — including a major revamp of the weather app with new animations that are scarily reminiscent of Yahoo's great-looking Weather app graphics.

 Read more at: http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/10/4407630/apple-announces-ios-7

Have you ever redirected a page hoping to see a boost in rankings, but nothing happened? Or worse, traffic actually went down?

A perfect 301 redirect works as a simple “change of address” for your content. Ideally, this means everything about the page except the URL stays the same including content, title tag, images, and layout.

When done properly, we know from testing and statements from Google that a 301 redirect passes somewhere around 85% of its original link equity.

Read more at: http://moz.com/blog/save-your-website-with-redirects

Facebook revealed more detail on how frequently it gets information requests from government agencies in a public statement late Friday. In a post on the company's press site, Facebook General Counsel Ted Ullyot said it received between 9,000-10,000 requests over the six-month period ending on Dec. 31, 2012.

That adds up to roughly 1,500 requests per month. Ullyot said the nature of the requests from "government entities" is quite varied, including things like a local sheriff trying to locate a missing child to national security agencies investigating terrorist activity.

Read more at: http://mashable.com/2013/06/14/facebook-requests/

It would be great if we all had the time, skills, and patience to learn computer coding, especially since technology pervades so many areas of our life. But thankfully, there are applications and web developers out there who provide ways for the rest of us to produce apps with little or no coding skills.

A program has just been released called Infinite Monkeys, a web-based tool geared toward niche communities who want to share content on the iPhone and Android platforms.

 Read more at: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-smartphone-app-infinite-monkeys-coding-knowledge-required/

Project management is about planning, executing, and coordinating projects by taking charge and directing a team to ensure deadlines are met and projects completed within the time set and without going over budget.

This page explains more about project management degrees, provides links to suitable schools where you can take them, outlines the prospects, and more ...

Read more at: http://onlineanddistancelearning.com/project-management-degrees

Find out more about MBA in banking degree programs, what the courses are, where to find them, what the prospects are for careers in banking, and more ...

Read more at: http://onlineanddistancelearning.com/mba-in-banking