Stories I Found Of Interest (weekly)

• Windows Firefox stiffs Adobe Flash, plays H.264 YouTube vids • The Register

  • Mozilla is averse to proprietary codecs because they're typically buried under patents and require a licensing fee. By using the video support built into the operating system, the open-source browser maker can sidestep these constraints.
  • The organisation had hoped patent-free codecs, such as Google’s VP8, would succeed at the expense of H.264 on the web, but that hasn’t happened. Google bought VP8 in 2009 as WebM from On2 Technologies for $124.6m and released it under a royalty-free licence in May 2010.
  • As Firefox on Android gained support for the codec, Mozilla chief technology officer Brendan Eich wrote at the time: “H.264 is absolutely required right now to compete on mobile. I do not believe that we can reject H.264 content in Firefox on Android or in B2G and survive the shift to mobile.

• Kleiner Partners' View of the Future of Tech - WSJ.com

  • The biggest single trend is urbanization, people moving from rural to urban areas. And if they urbanize the way we did—they can't, the planet can't afford it. Our green investing doesn't depend on government policies. It's about basic supply and demand.

• Facebook Preps to Bring Video Ads to News Feed | Digital - Advertising Age

  • Facebook is set to unveil a new video-ad product in the first half of next year in its largest attempt to date to attract big swaths of ad dollars from TV advertisers, according to several industry executives who have been briefed on the company's plans over the past few weeks
  • In what's sure to be a controversial move, the visual component of the Facebook video ads will start playing automatically -- a dynamic known as "autoplay" -- according to two of the executives.

• Star Scientific to stop making tobacco products - Yahoo! Finance

  • Dissolvable tobacco is finely milled tobacco pressed into shapes like tablets that slowly dissolve in a user's mouth. They are gaining the attention of tobacco companies looking to offset a decline in cigarette use as smokers face tax hikes, growing health concerns, smoking bans and social stigma

• What Instagram's New Terms of Service Mean for You - NYTimes.com

  • Instagram released an updated version of its privacy policy and terms of service on Monday, and they include lengthy stipulations on how photographs uploaded by users may be used by Instagram and its parent company, Facebook
  • The potentially lucrative move will let advertisers in Facebook’s ad network use data and information that users have shared on Instagram, like details about favorite places, bands, restaurants or hobbies, to better target ads at those users
  • Instagram will also be able to use your photographs and identity in advertisements. “You agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you,” the new terms say. This means that photographs uploaded to Instagram could end up in an advertisement on the service or on Facebook. In addition, someone who doesn’t use Instagram could end up in an advertisement if they have their photograph snapped and shared on the service by a friend.
  • the company says ads will not necessarily be labeled as ads.

• IT News Online > - - Frost & Sullivan: Life Sciences Organizations Cannot Afford to Miss the "Next Big Thing"

  • New analysis from Frost & Sullivan's (http://www.healthcare.frost.com) Global Life Sciences Trends and Opportunities research finds that the industry consists of several billion dollar markets totaling $1.35 trillion in 2012, which is anticipated to reach $5.01 trillion in 2015.  This global life sciences analysis discusses three technologies with "bench to bedside" potential, including next-generation sequencing, microRNA and digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

• Below the Surface | asymco

  • Early data shows that the PC market has not experienced a “pop” from Windows 8. Market watchers have been anticipating this pop since every previous version of Windows has led to a surge in shipments. PC vendors have also been hoping for this to lift their volumes. Volumes have been stagnant for a while, as the following chart shows:

     

  • The question is whether Microsoft will be successful in shifting to this new computing model? Microsoft’s problem is not that it has difficulty offering an operating system for tablets. The problem is that the economics of both systems and application software on tablets is destructive to its margins.
  • The problem for Microsoft is that pricing systems software at $50 and a suite of apps at $67 for a tablet that costs $200 to the end-user is prohibitive.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.