There were two bullet points in the announcement of the partnership between Microsoft and Nokia this morning that stood out to me as being not like the others:
Bing would power Nokia's search services across Nokia devices and services, giving customers access to Bing's next generation search capabilities.
Nokia Maps would be a core part of Microsoft's mapping services. For example, Maps would be integrated with Microsoft's Bing search engine.
Now, there is plenty of talk about how the partnership helps Microsoft more than Nokia, why Nokia screwed up choosing a mobile platform that costs money over a free Android model, how this is or isn't going to help Windows Phone worldwide, and how it is or isn't going to help Nokia get back into the U.S. mobile market.
But all this is focused on the mobile realm, which I don't particularly think is much affected by this partnership in the short term. But an interesting viewpoint surfaced at work today: what if the partnership wasn't as much about mobile as the companies would have you believe?
One of Microsoft's great crusades is to dent Google's market share as a search leader. The Bing integration with Nokia opens up a new mobile realm to Microsoft's search efforts and puts Bing in a competitive spot in a mobile space Google is trying to dominate.
What else does Nokia have to trade? Better and cheaper map data. Nokia's 2007 acquisition of Navteq for $8.1 billion was the largest acquisition in the company's history. It fought Google for the privilege and forming a strategic partnership with that company would have admitted a gross misallocation of resources on Nokia's part.
Nokia also faces a bigger threat from Google than it does Apple. They obviously believed so when acting to buy Navteq. Now, the low-margin Android phones are destroying Nokia's established user base in feature phones, where it will no longer able to compete with an outdated Symbian.
Microsoft gets map data and an extended market share for Bing, Nokia takes a slice of search revenue it didn't have to develop, salvages something out of their enormous takeover three years back, and sticks it to the company they fear the most right now. What if the partnership's as much about search and data as it is mobile?
No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?What is this life if, full of care,
When President Obama and two-thirds of the world's leaders gather in New York City, it is up to the U.S. Secret Service to keep them all safe. Granted unprecedented access, our author tells the story of how the agency pulls off the most complicated security event of the year, from counter-surveillance to counter-assault, hotel booking to event scheduling.
Connor O'Brien remains skeptical about the abstract permanence of "the cloud."Great subtitle, another good article from Conner O'Brien. This one's on the cloud, permanence, and 404s.
Gotta admire a CEO who can tell his company it's on fire.
I'm passionately ambivalent about technology. My excitement about where things are going is balanced equally by my anxiety. That might sound awfully unpleasant, but it's a powerful feeling. The more I think about technology – the more I focus in on the contradictions – the more ambivalent I become. I've got no philosophy to sell, nothing to argue. I'm just here to think, and write, and dig deeper.
Connor O'Brien hits about as close to my philosophy as I've ever read. I'm passionate about technology, concerned about how it's affecting society. I'm ambivalent about the latest specs or gadget, only curious as to whether or not it makes life better, that is, more purposeful, more beautiful, or less noisy, not necessarily easier.
6 months in, I just realized it takes all of two seconds to setup iCal to pull down my Exchange work calendar. Now it looks like I do something all day! I'll pass on having my email, though.
For the last 100 years or so, written English has been formalized by mass literacy and the printed word: media has meant books and newspapers printed in a set style, following accepted norms. However there has always been – and always will be – a vibrant spoken and ever-changing, living language that runs through our culture. In these latter days, the Internet (blogs, cell phones, chat rooms and email) has put text-production in the hands of everyone. We are seeing now the emergence of that living language into the visible culture which hitherto was controlled by the elite.
— via http://raphael.doxos.com/2011/01/drifting/
Through stacks of unread books, seas of feeds, people, invitations, events, and unanswered emails, if we stand still long enough, if we listen and look, if we pause, we see that nothing is ever the same again tomorrow.
— Liz Danzico
The Johns Hopkins University Center for Advanced Modeling in the Social, Behavioral and Health Sciences is being launched by Dr. Joshua M. Epstein. A former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Epstein is an internationally recognized pioneer in the field of "agent-based" simulation modeling, which creates virtual worlds populated by "agents" that act like real people.