Zonkey
Yahoo! to ‘share something special’ in New York on Monday
Yahoo! will hold a “product-related news event” this upcoming Monday with CEO Marissa Mayer in attendance to “share something special.”
Did you get your invitation yet?
That’s the word first tweeted by CNBC on Friday afternoon. Yahoo! later confirmed that it was holding a 5pm press event in New York City – “by invitation only,” of course.
We can only speculate what the event will reveal, but we here at The Reg wouldn’t be at all surprised if it had something to do with the recent Tumblr rumblings that are hypothesizing that Mayer Co. are prepared to shell out a billion clams for the customizable social-networking site that lets its users “Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, email or wherever you happen to be.”
We sincerely doubt that the event will have anything to do with a Mexican appeals court, a failed buyout of French startup Dailymotion, original TV shows, another Dropbox announcement, more Mayer musings on the “fourth wave” of the internet, or the axing of more products – although something Summly-related is an outside possiblity.
But a hastily called presser in the Big Apple, attended by the CEO herself? That sounds more like a billion-dollar event. ®
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/17/monday_yahoo_event_in_new_york_city/
Man lists 12,000 call menu options
17 May 2013
Last updated at 11:55
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
The BBC’s Mark Norman meets Nigel Clarke to find out about his one-man mission against call centre menus
Retired IT manager Nigel Clarke, from Kent in the UK, has launched a website listing the call centre menu sequences for accessing thousands of services.
He started the project after growing frustrated about the number of options and amount of recorded information on call centre menus.
Mr Clarke discovered that some automated menus have nearly 80 options.
It can take over four minutes to get to the service required if the caller listens to each stage in full, he said.
As an example, speaking to an adviser at HM Revenue and Customs only required pressing four buttons but it could take six minutes to get through each menu level, Mr Clarke said.
HMRC said it was working on improvements to the service.
“HMRC is looking at ways to improve its interactive voice responses and is getting ready for the introduction of new speech recognition technology,” said a spokesman.
“This technology will react to what the caller says instead of asking them to select an option by pushing a button on their phone. HMRC plan to introduce these improvements later this year.”
Labour of love
Mr Clarke said the website pleasepress1.com was a “labour of love” which he built after seven years of creating post-it notes of sequences he used regularly.
He used Skype and recording software to make thousands of calls, with the bulk of the work being carried out in the last six months.
Reporting a water leak to Lloyds TSB’s home insurance department requires dialling a total of seven numbers, one at each stage of the call (1, 3, 2, 1, 1, 5, 4), and it takes more than four minutes to navigate the 78 menu options, according to the website.
“The companies have these systems in place for a reason,” said Mr Clarke.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
I’m not against the system, but I am against bad design”
End Quote
Nigel Clarke
“I’m not against the system, but I am against bad design.”
In an ideal world, he said, companies should just offer different phone numbers for different services.
“No menu is best – but if it is a necessity then design it properly. I think two levels maximum is ideal. Some stretch to three. You don’t really want much more than that.”
Mr Clarke said he was inspired to build the website after being surprised by the “emotional response” he got from people whenever he mentioned it.
He says he doesn’t intend to devote himself full-time to maintaining it.
“I’d like the companies themselves to say, ‘we care about our customers, we’ll publish our menus’,” he said.
When tested by the BBC, some of the sequences did not seem to result in significant time savings, while others ended with the user being transferred straight to a customer adviser rather than going through each level of the automated system.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22567656#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
Eric Schmidt defends Google’s tax affairs following Commons criticism
Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has defended his company’s financial affairs after a Commons committee branded the internet giant devious and unethical for sheltering its multibillion-pound profits from UK taxes.
Writing in the Observer, Schmidt said his company’s accounts were complicated but complied with international taxation treaties that allowed it to pay most of its tax in the United States.
Schmidt said that he understood why Google’s apparent sidestepping on UK taxation had generated controversy and called for a reform of international tax law.
“At a time when families are having to tighten their belts and funding for vital public services is under pressure, corporate taxation is rightly a hot topic,” Schmidt wrote. “And as a company that has always aspired to do the right thing, we understand why Google is at the centre of that debate.”
His remarks follow Google’s mauling at the hands of the Commons Public Accounts Committee on Thursday. Members reacted in disbelief after it emerged that they paid just £3.4m of tax on £3.2bn of sales taken from UK customers last year as their sales were technically “closed” in low-tax Ireland.
Schmidt insisted that corporation tax should be paid on a company’s profits rather than its revenues and said because his was a multinational corporation whose engineers were chiefly based in the United States, Google’s taxes should be channelled there. This, he said, obeyed rules laid out by politicians.
“We pay more taxes in the US than in any other country – around $2bn in corporate income taxes to the US government in 2012,” he wrote. “It’s the same for UK-based technology or pharmaceutical companies, which pay the majority of their corporation tax in the UK, as that is where most of the activity that generates their profits takes place.”
Schmidt said that the debate over international taxation showed it could benefit from reform. He added that because Google was able to generated large revenues, it was also able to plough money back into the UK economy.
“While profit has become something of a dirty word, it’s important to remember that many corporations reinvest their profits in research and product development, which in turn tends to lead to job creation, further economic growth and, ultimately, more tax. For example, Google has just announced plans to invest more than £1bn in new offices in London’s King’s Cross. It’s been estimated that this investment will generate some £80m a year in new employment taxes and £50m in stamp duty. This is in addition to the significant amounts we already pay in UK tax through corporate, local and employment taxes.”
Schmidt’s comments came as Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said he believed some multinationals, including Google were not fulfilling their social responsibilites.
Miliband told the Observer: “Now, what is the politicians’ responsibility: change the law. But it is also to talk about the kind of society we want to create and what the responsibilities of a company like Google are.
“I don’t think they are living up to their responsibilities at the moment and I will be very clear about that on Wednesday.
“It is part of a culture of irresponsibility. If everyone approached their tax affairs as some of these companies have approached their tax affairs we wouldn’t have a health service, we wouldn’t have an education system.”
Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/18/eric-schmidt-google-tax
Man lists 12,000 call menu options
17 May 2013
Last updated at 11:55
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
The BBC’s Mark Norman meets Nigel Clarke to find out about his one-man mission against call centre menus
Retired IT manager Nigel Clarke, from Kent in the UK, has launched a website listing the call centre menu sequences for accessing thousands of services.
He started the project after growing frustrated about the number of options and amount of recorded information on call centre menus.
Mr Clarke discovered that some automated menus have nearly 80 options.
It can take over four minutes to get to the service required if the caller listens to each stage in full, he said.
As an example, speaking to an adviser at HM Revenue and Customs only required pressing four buttons but it could take six minutes to get through each menu level, Mr Clarke said.
HMRC said it was working on improvements to the service.
“HMRC is looking at ways to improve its interactive voice responses and is getting ready for the introduction of new speech recognition technology,” said a spokesman.
“This technology will react to what the caller says instead of asking them to select an option by pushing a button on their phone. HMRC plan to introduce these improvements later this year.”
Labour of love
Mr Clarke said the website pleasepress1.com was a “labour of love” which he built after seven years of creating post-it notes of sequences he used regularly.
He used Skype and recording software to make thousands of calls, with the bulk of the work being carried out in the last six months.
Reporting a water leak to Lloyds TSB’s home insurance department requires dialling a total of seven numbers, one at each stage of the call (1, 3, 2, 1, 1, 5, 4), and it takes more than four minutes to navigate the 78 menu options, according to the website.
“The companies have these systems in place for a reason,” said Mr Clarke.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
I’m not against the system, but I am against bad design”
End Quote
Nigel Clarke
“I’m not against the system, but I am against bad design.”
In an ideal world, he said, companies should just offer different phone numbers for different services.
“No menu is best – but if it is a necessity then design it properly. I think two levels maximum is ideal. Some stretch to three. You don’t really want much more than that.”
Mr Clarke said he was inspired to build the website after being surprised by the “emotional response” he got from people whenever he mentioned it.
He says he doesn’t intend to devote himself full-time to maintaining it.
“I’d like the companies themselves to say, ‘we care about our customers, we’ll publish our menus’,” he said.
When tested by the BBC, some of the sequences did not seem to result in significant time savings, while others ended with the user being transferred straight to a customer adviser rather than going through each level of the automated system.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22567656#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
Yahoo! to ‘share something special’ in New York on Monday
Yahoo! will hold a “product-related news event” this upcoming Monday with CEO Marissa Mayer in attendance to “share something special.”
Did you get your invitation yet?
That’s the word first tweeted by CNBC on Friday afternoon. Yahoo! later confirmed that it was holding a 5pm press event in New York City – “by invitation only,” of course.
We can only speculate what the event will reveal, but we here at The Reg wouldn’t be at all surprised if it had something to do with the recent Tumblr rumblings that are hypothesizing that Mayer Co. are prepared to shell out a million clams for the customizable social-networking site that lets its users “Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your browser, phone, desktop, email or wherever you happen to be.”
We sincerely doubt that the event will have anything to do with a Mexican appeals court, a failed buyout of French startup Dailymotion, original TV shows, another Dropbox announcement, more Mayer musings on the “fourth wave” of the internet, or the axing of more products – although something Summly-related is an outside possiblity.
But a hastily called presser in the Big Apple, attended by the CEO herself? That sounds more like a billion-dollar event. ®
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/17/monday_yahoo_event_in_new_york_city/
Man lists 12,000 call menu options
17 May 2013
Last updated at 11:55
Retired IT manager Nigel Clarke has put the sequence of numbers required to access thousands of company phone services on his new website.
Retired IT manager Nigel Clarke, from Kent in the UK, has launched a website listing the call centre menu sequences for accessing thousands of services.
He started the project after growing frustrated about the number of options and amount of recorded information on call centre menus.
Mr Clarke discovered that some automated menus have nearly 80 options.
It can take over four minutes to get to the service required if the caller listens to each stage in full, he said.
As an example, speaking to an adviser at HM Revenue and Customs only required pressing four buttons but it could take six minutes to get through each menu level, Mr Clarke said.
HMRC said it was working on improvements to the service.
“HMRC is looking at ways to improve its interactive voice responses and is getting ready for the introduction of new speech recognition technology,” said a spokesman.
“This technology will react to what the caller says instead of asking them to select an option by pushing a button on their phone. HMRC plan to introduce these improvements later this year.”
Labour of love
Mr Clarke said the website pleasepress1.com was a “labour of love” which he built after seven years of creating post-it notes of sequences he used regularly.
He used Skype and recording software to make thousands of calls, with the bulk of the work being carried out in the last six months.
Reporting a water leak to Lloyds TSB’s home insurance department requires dialling a total of seven numbers, one at each stage of the call (1, 3, 2, 1, 1, 5, 4), and it takes more than four minutes to navigate the 78 menu options, according to the website.
“The companies have these systems in place for a reason,” said Mr Clarke.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
I’m not against the system, but I am against bad design”
End Quote
Nigel Clarke
“I’m not against the system, but I am against bad design.”
In an ideal world, he said, companies should just offer different phone numbers for different services.
“No menu is best – but if it is a necessity then design it properly. I think two levels maximum is ideal. Some stretch to three. You don’t really want much more than that.”
Mr Clarke said he was inspired to build the website after being surprised by the “emotional response” he got from people whenever he mentioned it.
He says he doesn’t intend to devote himself full-time to maintaining it.
“I’d like the companies themselves to say, ‘we care about our customers, we’ll publish our menus’,” he said.
When tested by the BBC, some of the sequences did not seem to result in significant time savings, while others ended with the user being transferred straight to a customer adviser rather than going through each level of the automated system.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22567656#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
Foxconn still flogging iWorkers, but more lightly
The Fair Labor Association’s (FLA’s) latest report on workers at Chinese manufacturer Foxconn, Apple’s preferred source for many iThings, has found many staff are still working longer hours than is allowed under Chinese law.
The report (PDF) is based on audits of Foxconn plants in Guanlan, Longhua and Chengdu. The report was compiled after visits to those plants between January 15th and 25th, 2013, and says the methodology for its assessments meant “ assessors also conducted a walk-through of the facilities, examined records, and held interviews with management and workers.”
Assessors found many improvements to working conditions, including “enforcement of ergonomic breaks, changing the design of workers’ equipment to guard against repetitive stress injuries, updating of maintenance policies to ensure equipment is working properly, and testing of emergency protective equipment like eyewashes and sprinklers.”
Work on extra toilets and fire escapes has commenced, and should be completed by August 2013.
An insight into the nature of Chinese Communism can also be found in the report’s “notable increases in the participation of workers in union committees and a corresponding decline in management participation in such committees”. And there we were thinking that a Communist country would have lots of workers on union committees! Silly us.
Use of interns has also fallen to a point at which the FLA is happy Foxconn has met targets set last year.
Long working hours are still a problem. Apple and Foxconn have said they’ll aim for forty hour weeks, plus up to nine hours overtime. The FLA report says many workers are still clocking up 60 hour weeks and labels working hours “the most challenging action item” on its list of things for Foxconn to do.
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/17/apple_labor_conditions_report/
Charlie Parsons buys stake in Gaydar
Charlie Parsons, the creator of shows including Survivor and The Big Breakfast, has backed a buyout of the dating business of the now-defunct Gaydar Radio operation.
As part of the deal, Henry Badenhorst, majority-owner of the Gaydar business he co-founded with fellow South African Gary Frisch, is to leave the business.
Charlie Parsons Creative, his boutique investment company, has backed the team led by managing director Trevor Martin, who will take on the role of chief executive.
Parsons, who co-founded The Word-maker Planet 24 with Lord Alli, has backed a management buy-out of the gay dating operation for an undisclosed sum.
The remaining Gaydar business – radio licences to the 11-year-old brand were sold off by previous owner QSoft Consulting in January – includes Gaydar.co.uk and GaydarGirls.com dating sites, as well as mobile sites and an app.
“Although Gaydar is one of the best known gay brands in the world, there are many opportunities to build on the success to date,” said Parsons. “I am delighted to invest in what is a very exciting business with such great potential.”
Parsons’ undisclosed investment makes him the majority shareholder and he will also take a seat on the board of Gaydar.
“Gaydar is not just a dating site, but a vibrant community, and it was important that anyone taking this company forward understood everything that the business stands for,” said Badenhorst. “I am very pleased that Charlie and his team have backed the existing management team to help Gaydar fully realise its potential.”
• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email media@guardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.
• To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.
Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/may/17/charlie-parsons-buys-stake-gaydar
Jail sentences for Lulzsec hackers
16 May 2013
Last updated at 15:19
Lulzsec hacker al-Bassam posted stolen data and login details online
British hackers who were behind a series of high profile cyber-attacks in 2011 have been sentenced.
The four men, Ryan Cleary, Jake Davis, Mustafa al-Bassam and Ryan Ackroyd, were part of the Lulzsec hacking group.
Cleary was jailed for 32 months, Davis for two years and Ackroyd for 30 months. Al Bassam was given a 20-month suspended sentence.
Targets included Sony Pictures, games maker EA, News International and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency.
Group effort
The actions of the group were “cowardly and vindictive”, said Andrew Hadik, a lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service.
“The harm they caused was foreseeable, extensive and intended,” he said. “Indeed, they boasted of how clever they were with a complete disregard for the impact their actions had on real people’s lives.
“This case should serve as a warning to other cybercriminals that they are not invincible,” he said.
Each man filled a different role during their cyber-attack spree. Ackroyd was the ring leader of the small group choosing targets and directing the efforts of the others. Davis acted as its press secretary, Cleary provided the software to carry out attacks and al-Bassam posted stolen data online.
Some of the four could face extradition to the US as US law enforcement agencies have lodged indictments against them.
Cleary has also pleaded guilty to possession of images showing child abuse, which were found by police on his hard drive. The sentence for this offence will be given at another hearing.
During the trial Ackroyd, 26, from Mexborough, South Yorkshire, admitted stealing data from Sony.
The former soldier was also responsible for redirecting visitors trying to visit the Sun newspaper’s site to a fake story about News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch committing suicide.
He has pleaded guilty to carrying out an unauthorised act to impair the operation of a computer.
Bassam, 18, from south London, Davis, 20, from Lerwick, Shetland, and Cleary, 21, from Wickford, Essex, all pleaded guilty to two charges – hacking and launching cyber-attacks against organisations including the CIA and Soca.
In addition, Cleary pleaded guilty to a further four charges, including hacking into the US Air Force’s computers and possession of indecent images of babies and children.
Prosecutor Sandip Patel said that unlike the others, Cleary was not a core member of Lulzsec although he had wanted to be.
“It’s clear from the evidence that they intended to achieve extensive national and international notoriety and publicity,” he said.
“This is not about young immature men messing about. They are at the cutting edge of a contemporary and emerging species of criminal offender known as a cybercriminal.”
Botnet attack
Lulzsec’s name is combination of the acronym Lol – meaning laugh out loud – and security.
It emerged as a splinter group from the hacking collective Anonymous two years ago.
Lulzsec carried out a 50-day series of cyber-attacks in 2011
Mr Patel said the spin-off lacked the “libertarian” political agenda of the larger group. Instead, its stated goal was to laugh at others’ flawed security measures “just because we could”.
This involved stealing emails, credit card details and passwords from their targets’ computer servers and crashing victims’ websites with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. This involved flooding organisations’ web servers with requests sent from hijacked computers used as part of a botnet.
Lulzsec’s original ringleader is alleged to be another man – US-based Hector Monsegur, also known as Sabu. He was arrested in June 2011 and later co-operated with the FBI to help it identify other members of Lulzsec. Monsegur has yet to be sentenced.
A 24-year-old Australian has also been arrested and accused of attacking and defacing a government website as part of Lulzsec’s campaign.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22552753#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
Tech startups, Silicon Valley, not all they’re cracked up to be
Technology startups are not quite the growth engine they’re assumed to be, according to a 30-year study by economic think-tank the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
The Kaufmann Foundation, to give the organisation its commonly-used short name, happily describes itself as “the world’s largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship.”
The study, titled “The Constant: Companies That Matter” (PDF) considers companies with the following three qualities:
- They must be scalable. They must, in other words, be able to grow to at least $100 million in revenues, and ideally, much larger.
- They must be disproportionate creators of jobs. They must be able to generate jobs quickly and broadly, even if they may not generate jobs in line with their revenue growth.
- They must be disproportionate creators of wealth. Both directly,through profits, salaries, and profit-sharing, and indirectly, through equity, options, and perhaps a public listing, they must put wealth back in the hands of the company’s ecosystem.
The study says it’s worth considering such companies because they are constantly emerging and are therefore worthy of study. That such companies also “make up more than 95 percent of the market capitalization of major stock market indices” , “produce more than 90 percent of the returns for the venture capital industry” and through their acquisitive ways have become ”an important source of liquidity and wealth for other entrepreneurs” also makes them worthy of study.
Research for the study saw its author trawl through US financial data dating back to 1980, with any company that achieved $100m in sales included. That methodology produced a finding that “on average, fifteen to twenty technology companies founded per year in the United States … one day get to $100 million in revenues.” About four of those are founded in California, with that State’s share of startups that matter falling over time.
The report also says that while technology companies’ produce lots of “companies that matter”, but makes a point of waving a sharp object in the direction of the tech startup bubble by pointing out that “Unsurprisingly, but contrary to some rhetoric, while information technology is important, it is not the most important contributor in percentage terms to the $100-million firms in the United States on a founding cohort basis.
That honour goes “… in percentage terms, [to] consumer discretionary and industrials.” The former category includes cars, entertainment and clothes. Industrials are concerned with construction, manufacturing and services. The sectors produce so many companies that matter, the study says, because they are the largest sectors of the US economy after the government.
$100m startups by industry, since 1930
The study’s not entirely fair to technology companies, because it insists telecommunications outfits are a different category. The definition of “industrials” is also problematic, as many technology companies offer professional services. Consumer discretionary is also a tricky one: do punters really need a fondleslab at home? ®
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/16/tech_startups_not_best_source_of_jobs_and_growth/
