After years of struggling, photographic services giant Kodak is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company, which was long known for selling film and other photography-related products, had tried everything from branching out into more modern offerings to using its trove of patents to sue others. Alas, the times have caught up with Kodak.
The news comes almost exactly one year after the last roll of Kodachrome film was developed and at a time when the most widely-used camera on Flickr isn't even one of the many digital point-and-shoots or SLR's that had already chipped away at Kodak's dominance; It's the iPhone 4.
From the folks who brought you the Pivot Conference and Hasai Marketing comes an infographic that tells the story of 7 companies that, you guessed it, made significant pivots in strategy to successful ends. Included are gaming companies, social networking sites and group buying pioneers.
From instagram's departure from a check-in model (ala Foursquare), to YouTube's online video dating histories, this infographic should remind you that no matter what you are building, be ready to change directions if necessary.
Folio Magazine, the trade journal of print magazine editorial and publishing managers, put out an interesting list of the pubs with the greatest number of Twitter followers, and how their follower lists have changed since the beginning of the year. Not surprisingly Time and People lead the list, both with more than two million followers apiece. The top 11 magazines all have more than one million followers. Eight magazines posted growth of more than 100 percent since January, with Seventeen leading the way, close to 150 percent growth at 282,000 followers.
MasterCard, the longtime credit card and payments processor, wants to reposition itself as a technology company. Throughout the latter half of 2011, it has been pushing hard on the technosphere to make sure that journalists and bloggers know the company is doing some cool stuff around payments research and the cutting edge of technology, like NFC, audio signals and QR codes that can lead to purchases through smartphones.
It now comes as no surprise that MasterCard has announced a partnership with Intel on a multi-year strategic partnership that is intended to enhance the security and payment experience for digital commerce. These are two titans in the tech and financial industries and shows one of the first steps of these two industries merging in the future.
Over the weekend I finished reading the authorized biography of Steve Jobs,
by Walter Isaacson. It's a hefty 650 pages and spans the entire life and career of Steve Jobs, the iconic Apple co-founder who sadly passed away a month ago. The biography is well worth reading, I gave the book 5/5 stars. I'll even say that it should be required reading for technology entrepreneurs and anybody who wants to be a leader in our industry. The biography is a sympathetic one, so don't expect to read a great deal of criticism about Steve Jobs. Despite that, it's a well-rounded portrayal of a man destined to be remembered as one of the great product visionaries of our time.
There's plenty to learn from the biography. Here are three of the main lessons that I took from the book. Each comes from an aspect of Steve Jobs' own personality, which he managed to instill into his company Apple. (Note: don't worry, there aren't any spoilers in this post!)
Today, Alpha Software has released version 11 of its Alpha Five tool. It helps developers build Web applications to solve a business problem once and make the app available on major platforms. Using Microsoft .NET and HTML5, Alpha Five enables developers to avoid Flash, Silverlight and other plugins that limit the compatibility of apps with major devices like the iPad.
Applications built with tools like Alpha Five will work the same on all your devices. The forms, dialogs and security features, as well as the calendars, video players and image galleries, are backed on the server side. Users won't have to worry about which device to use, and developers won't have to reinvent the wheel for each one.
Google just launched a new layout for search results about places. To the right of the text search results, there's now a panel that shows a map view along with photos and business details. Certain businesses will have the little pegman on their images. Clicking him will take you into a 360-degree interior view of the place.
Other places in the search results have a ">>" symbol that instantly opens the same preview. The new layout and 3D features will come to restaurants, landmarks, museums, hotels and more. The features will roll out in more than 40 languages over the next few weeks. It's a flashy feature, but Google has its reasons.
According to the Google-sponsored research site ourmobileplanet.com, Spain is leading the way on smartphone adoption in Europe. Spanish smartphone penetration has reached 33%, outpacing Great Britain with 30% and France with 27%.
Spaniards are big multi-taskers, too. 50% of Spanish smartphone users actively browse the Web while listening to music, and 35% use the Internet on their smartphone and another device simultaneously. But given how much Spaniards love their smartphones, here's a surprising statistic: Only 10% of Spain's large companies have mobile websites.
Amazon just released its third quarter sales, indicating that net income is at $63 million, or $0.14 a share, down from $231 million, or $0.51 a share a year ago. This is a 73% drop in quarterly profit from the third quarter of 2010. Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S reports that analysts expected Amazon's third-quarter earnings to land at 24 cents per share on a revenue of $10.95 billion.
In an SEC filing earlier today, Chicago-based daily deals site Groupon announced that they plan to sell 30 million shares at $16 to $18 each. Groupon is raising between $480 million and $540 million, setting the company's valuation at $11.4 billion. It will trade on NASDAQ as 'GRPN.'
