Invalid Argument is a new show on ReadWriteWeb featuring developers, designers and pixel-pushers of all kinds. It's a chance to discuss the tech news of the moment amongst people who know what they're talking about. At RWW, the best part of our job is talking to the people who create the tech that makes the news. But why keep all the fun for ourselves when we can share it with everyone?
Each week, we'll convene a hand-picked bunch of Web workers for a 30-minute Google+ Hangout On Air. It will be broadcast live for all to watch, and the video will be posted here on RWW with a summary. We've got a big Rolodex over here, but we won't rely on that for Invalid Argument. If you code, develop or design and want to talk to the tech world about it, now's your chance.
Facebook is about to jump into unfriendly waters. If founder Mark Zuckerberg thought the company faced fierce competitors in Silicon Valley, he is about to find that the denizens of Wall Street are not nearly so forgiving. There are risks to going public. How does the world perceive your company? Can the platform grow and maintain its edge? The trick for Facebook will be to balance the concerns of its shareholders with the need to push the boundaries of innovation. This is no easy task.
In its S-1 filing today, Facebook outlined a litany of risks for the company going forward. Monetizing the mobile user base in a system dominated by its competitors will be a major challenge going forward. Diversifying its portfolio away from its reliance on advertising will be a big task, one that Google has never quite figured out. We take a deep dive into Facebook's risk factors below.
"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made." - Immanuel Kant
Ours is an imperfect society. The nature of our reality, our desires and our need to possess, while maintaining a façade of moral righteousness, puts us at odds with the reality that exists within the systems we have created.
In recent days, the character of our era of consumerism has been put in question. We want what is new, shiny, fashionable. We want it now. With this desire we turn our heads from the consequences it takes to produce our toys, our symbols of status. When The New York Times reports that our gadgets are made in Chinese factories where working conditions can be horrendous, we express outrage and tweet the article from our iPads. The culture we have created comes with the cost of doing business.
Today could be the point in history at which we look back and say, "that was the day the Internet fundamentally changed." Today is the day the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) opens up its new registry for generic Top Level Domains and it will have a profound affect on how people find and consume information on the Web. Will it be a gold rush? Is this the end of the ".com" era as we have come to know it?
A top level domain is a core part of how the Internet organizes and parses the names of websites. The most common, of course, is .com, but other TLDs are .net, .org and country domains like .CO or .UK. ICANN's new gTLDs will allow companies, governments and other organizations to register unique strings. For instance, are we about to enter the era of .pepsi? See below for everything you need to know about the new domain name system.
In our trivia challenge earlier in the month we mention Grace Hopper, who invented the first complier, coined the word "bug" for a literal insect stuck inside one of the first room-sized computers, and helped develop COBOL. All this was done in and out of several stints in the US Navy and in private industry. In looking around the Web this week for some additional mementos on this wonderful woman, I came across this interview with David Letterman when she was nearing 80 and working as a "goodwill ambassador" for DEC. She certainly can hold her own in the interview.
The Internet is in an uproar over the Stop Online Piracy Act. The battles lines are drawn. Big Media (the record labels, movie studios and TV networks) support the bill while Big Tech (search engines, open source platforms, social networks) oppose it. The bill, introduced to Congress by Representative Lamar Smith, is ostensibly supposed to give the Attorney General the ability to eliminate Internet piracy and to "protect U.S. customers and prevent U.S. support of infringing sites."
There is a lot that may be wrong with SOPA, but putting the power to censor the Internet into the hands of the government is chief among citizens' concerns. The law would force Internet Service Providers and search engines to cut off access to infringing sites as well as give the government the ability to stop payment to those sites. How would SOPA work? What do you need to know about the bill heading into 2012? We take a deep dive into everything you need to know below.
It has been a little more than a week since the Kindle Fire has been available to the general public and fundamental approach that Amazon has taken to the device is beginning to take shape. This is not exactly a question of iPad vs. Kindle Fire nor the notion that the Fire is "a service, and not a product." Amazon's approach to the Android code is addition by subtraction. What has the Fire done to the Android platform and is it ultimately a recipe for success?
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology may be the birthplace of the American geek. Within MIT, its Media Lab drills down to the heart of the next wave of technology from creating buildings with 3D printing to prosthetic limbs to gesture-based user interfaces. For instance, the MIT Media Lab was where the idea for the technology seen in the movie Minority Report originated.
The unofficial motto of the MIT Media Lab is "demo or die." It is akin to the classic academic model of "publish or perish," except that students and faculty at the Media Lab are encouraged to actually create the products they are thinking up, as opposed to pontificating upon them in research papers. See below to check out some of the amazing waves of technology that will be bursting out of the Media Lab in the future.
Mobile payments has become a mainstream tech topic in the last couple of years, mirroring the rise of smartphones and application stores. E-commerce is becoming m-commerce. The focus point of the buzz has been the evolution of near-field communications as related to smartphones. The thing is, nobody in the payments industry expects NFC to be a player in mobile payments for years, if ever. In that case, what does the mobile payments ecosystem look like in the short term?
The current mobile payments market centers around several cores: direct carrier billing, mobile wallets, online and offline sales, mobile credit card readers and application stores. During meetings with various mobile payments experts and executives at CTIA last week, the most uttered phrase was: "This is not something I would use to buy a fridge." Where are mobile payments going?
In our continuing tradition of rounding up new mobile application releases we found interesting and/or exciting over the past month, we present you with this new list of apps for September 2011. There are some great game, new browser releases and innovative uses of augmented reality this month. There is also a new section for prominent updates you may have missed during the month. Check it out below.
The list, as always, is a bit subjective so please let us know in the comments if we missed an app or you have found one that you cannot live without.
