Evernote & Moleskine Merge Paper & Pixels in "Smart Notebook"

Evernote signed a treaty with Moleskine Friday at the Evernote Trunk Conference, formally declaring a truce in its war on paper. It announced the Evernote Smart Notebook from Moleskine, along with a new version of Evernote for iOS that will bridge the gap that's familiar to anyone with an urgent need to capture ideas.

Despite Evernote’s efforts to move people to go paperless, Moleskine’s fancy journals are still a booming business. But according to the presentation at the Evernote Trunk Conference, 60% of Moleskine owners also use digital notes. While Evernote has long had optical character recognition built in, so stored photos of printed text are searchable on your computers, there’s still a big divide between our hand-written and digital outboard brains.

See also: Evernote: A 0-to–60 MPH Guide

Today’s update to Evernote for iOS adds a new mode called Page Camera, which is optimized for bringing handwritten pages into Evernote. It fixes the contrast and shadows, so the handwriting is more visibile. That makes the notes more legible to you, but it also enables Evernote to read and search the text.

While this works for any page, the Smart Notebook from Moleskine has some enhanced features. It comes with stickers that enable Evernote’s camera to automatically tag your hand-written notes, so they end up in the right place in your digital archive. The small version of the notebook is $24.95, the large is $29.95, and they ship October 1. They’re available for preorder now, and Evernote Trunk Conference attendees received one after the announcement.

Evernote’s OCR is great at print, but it also has some of the best computer scientists in the field of handwriting recognition behind it. Some of its core team members were on the Apple Newton team and wrote the CalliGrapher handwriting recognition engine. In May, Evernote acquired Penultimate, the best digital handwriting app for iPad, so now that team gets to optimize Evernote’s OCR with data from all that digital handwriting.

To fend off concerns about privacy when storing all these personal notes, CEO Phil Libin stated explicitly that Evernote is “not a big-data company.” User information is private, and it’s only used to optimize the tools themselves. “We want Evernote to be a cognitive aid,” Libin said.

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Etsy Bans Body-Part Sales. Where Do I Find Them Now?

It's right there in fine print: "No human remains or body parts (excluding hair and teeth)."

This month the community sale site Etsy changed its sales policy and banned human skulls, bones, skeletons, organs and bodily fluids. That means, right up until an August 8 policy change, you could have bought and sold all that and more on the site.

Looks like people have to look elsewhere for blood and bones. 

But fret not, fetishists. Hair and teeth are still acceptable trade goods on Etsy. Why, exactly? 

In a recent blog post, Etsy cited a desire to maintain a safe community. Etsy wouldn't comment for this story, but the posts says the change was made to reflect the perspective of Etsy's shoppers and the company itself. Hmm. Does this mean people weren't buying the human skulls anymore, or maybe there was some kind of legal crackdown we're not aware of. In addition to the body part ban, the site also just cracked down on the sale of crack pipes - good job! Maybe the site's management felt like it was time to cleanse body and soul?

Etsy's staff is contacting violators and explaining the rule changes in an effort to shut down human body part traffickers. The site is also asking members to contact Etsy if they find banned items (which also include firearms and smoking products.)

All the same, Etsy isn't going after purveyors of animal parts, such as a preserved doe deer heart on sale for $75. Yup, a deer heart in a jar for less than a hundred bucks. What a steal!

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Should Your Company Just Say "No" To Dropbox?

As the business world increasingly turns to mobile devices and cloud-based file-sharing services to store or collaborate on important documents, the amount of information that’s falling into the wrong hands keeps climbing.

The numbers tell the tale: 90% of organizations had a leak of sensitive or confidential information over the past year. That’s one of the take-aways from a new study from security analysts at the Ponemon Insitute.

Services like Dropbox, Bitcasa YouSendIt and others are useful and efficient ways to get documents and files from one worker to another, especially in this age of mobile devices and distributed workforces. Plus, they’re cheap (or free) and easy for individual workers or small departments to set up.

But increasing use of these tools in the workplace, even for legitimate business reasons such as collaboration, puts a lot of private information at risk. And companies are starting to notice.

How bad is the situation? According to the Ponemon study, 60% of organizations have employees who frequently or very frequently put confidential files on services like Dropbox without permission. And just about that same percentage (59%) reported that what controls they do have in place were inefffective at managing who has access to sensitive files.

It’s not that these consumer cloud services are inherently insecure. But as Wired’s Mat Honan learned a few weeks ago, nearly any service can be socially hacked (though proper precautions can help.

The problem is that mobile and remote workers want to have access to their files where and when they need them. But the idea of just having critical company information out in a public cloud makes a lot of companies nervous. Risks of data loss and falling out of compliance are too high to ignore.

“Consumer file-sharing services are effective, for consumers, but they lack the security, reliability and granular permission settings that business requires,” said Andrew Dixon, Sr., Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Igloo Software, a cloud-based business collaboration company. “And that means they can quickly become just another way for information to fall into silos or slip into the wrong hands.”

Some companies are already reacting with strong policies regulating use of such file-sharing services. IBM, for instance, has banned employee access to services like Dropbox and iCloud. Even the iPhone’s Siri is turned off for fear that sensitive information could be discovered from search query data stored at Apple.

This might be going too far for many companies. Especially if they don’t provide some sort of alternative. IBM has its own custom-built solution for file sharing, but many smaller operations can’t afford such measures.

Not surprisingly, new ventures are stepping to try and fill the void. The solution is use a collaborative platform with secure file sharing capabilities, according to Yorgen Edholm, CEO of Accellion, which markest just such a product.

“Organizations need to give their employees a secure way of sharing files or every mobile device will continue to be a potential sieve for confidential data,” Edholm wrote in a recent article on Forbes, “Before deploying a file-sharing solution, organizations should educate themselves about the risks of various file-sharing technologies and the requirements for enterprise-class mobile security.”

In other words, if you can’t beat ‘em, join 'em. By implementing a broader solution for collaboration that has easy-to-use and secure file sharing features, IT managers can reduce workers’ temptation to venture out on a consumer service.

Make a collaborative platform safe, make it easy and your sensitive documents might just stay where they belong.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Why Microsoft is Celebrating Apple’s Patent Win Over Samsung

Microsoft was pretty much a bystander in Apple’s patent battle with Samsung, but the Windows folks couldn’t be happier with Apple’s $1.05 billion victory. By signing a patent deal with Apple and taking its own direction for smartphones, Microsoft is now better positioned to become a viable alternative to the Apple ecosystem.

Trouble for Samsung - which will appeal the ruling - threatens to tarnish the entire Android ecosystem (though Google may believe Android itself is immune, see Two Ways Samsung’s Court Loss To Apple Is Actually Good For Google). But Microsoft’s patent cross-license with Apple means we won’t be seeing similar suits between Apple and Microsoft. 

So is this a genuine opportunity for Microsoft and its Windows Phone operating system?

No. Not directly.

Microsoft still has to convince consumers to buy into its ecosystem and raise its U.S. market share from a few percentage points to something more substantial. But the decision could encourage phone makers to lean away from Android and more toward Windows Phone, gaining Microsoft “shelf share” that could someday lead to actual sales.

“Microsoft can actually benefit from the Apple-Samsung verdict, as Windows Phone doesn’t look as expensive or controversial as Android,” said Patrick Moorhead, principal at Moor Insights & Strategy, in an email. “What once was a ‘free’ OS, Android now costs the Microsoft license fee, the potential Apple license fee, and the threat of legal battles with Apple. This could push smartphone vendors like HTC, Sony, LG and even Huawei and ZTE closer to Windows Phone.”

The doomsday scenario goes like this: In September, Apple will ask the court for an injunction, preventing Samsung from selling the infringing devices within the United States.

If Apple successfully bars the phones at the heart of the case from the U.S. market, the result will be a gaping hole on store shelves. While the ruling doesn’t include Samsung’s latest flagship phone, the Galaxy S III, an injunction would likely force Samsung to concede market share or spend heavily to aggressively develop new, non-infringing models to fill the gap. 

Apple then marches through the ranks of other Android phone manufacturers, filing similar suits, winning fines and royalty payments, and possibly injunctions as well. Consumers are left wondering whether or not the phone they preordered will be barred from shipment before launch date - an unlikely scenario, but one that would undermine consumer confidence in Android.

Eventually, Apple would turn against Motorola Mobility, now owned by Google, for a final showdown - though Google’s “core” version of Android could be a tougher nut to crack As Google noted in a statement, Most of these [patents] don’t relate to the core Android operating system.”

So what does Microsoft actually gain from all of this? Three things:

First, there’s the simple answer: Microsoft’s patent deal offers protection. While the relationships could certainly sour, Microsoft must feel like it can operate with relative impunity at the moment.

Second, Microsoft can continue down its own development path without feeling like Apple is looking over its shoulder. While Microsoft’s Modern UI (formerly known as Metro), the “live tiles” or widgets that continually update, the “charms” and the Windows “home” button seem easily differentiated from Apple’s design, it’s always a good idea to avoid expensive, time consuming lawsuits - even if you eventually prevail.

“[The deal should] provide a stronger opportunity for both of Microsoft’s new platforms - Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 - because they come with indemnification against Apple, suddenly making them far safer,” Rob Enderle, an independent consultant, told the BBC.

The third benefit may be the most important: tarnishing Android with the litigation brush leaves Microsoft looking squeaky clean by comparison. Manufacturers now have to factor in a “total cost of ownership” formula when choosing which mobile operating system to use - and that formula now has to include the very real threat of litigation.

From a consumer standpoint, the court case isn’t likely to sway Apple or Android partisans, but it could subtly push the general public away from Android.

They could run toward the safe bet: Apple. But they might be open to something new:

As Bill Cox, marketing director for Microsoft’s Phone division, tweeted following the verdict: “Windows Phone is looking gooooood right now.”

Driven by breakthrough thinking and a wide-open sense of what's possible, Alcatel-Lucent delivers the world's most advanced technologies to companies all across the globe. Our driving motivation is to realize the potential of the connected world - by providing the technologies needed to turn networks into engines of sustainable economic growth, social development and opportunity. We provide a comprehensive suite of software solutions and services offerings designed specifically to meet the needs and demands of communication network operators and strategic industries. These solutions allow our customers to optimize network costs and quickly deploy innovative, value added products and services for their subscribers that increase loyalty and create new revenue streams. To learn more about how we're turning the network into a platform, visit http://www2.alcatel-lucent.com/hln/network_evolution.php

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Inside The Mysterious World Of Online Reputation Management

In the Whack-a-Mole game of online reputation management, it’s not so much about completely erasing all the bad things that are being said about you on the Internet: it’s about replacing the stuff you don’t want people to see with things that you do want them to notice.

The Internet has a memory, and anything of note that happens to anyone is bound to find its way onto sites where everyone can see who you are and what you’ve been doing with yourself. All of it: the good, the bad and especially the really ugly.

It could be incidents that at the time, seemed funny or cool, but upon later examination turn out to a source of embarrassment. It could be the indiscretion at that beach party back in ‘05, or something more serious, like a minor drug possession charge when you were a kid. Or maybe your online persona is out of date - not reflecting a mid-life career change, for example.

Companies have similar issues, where their online presence can be marred by misdeeds or other issues, or could even be “hijacked” by outsiders or competitors with different agendas.

You might think that there’s little you or anyone else can do about how you’re perceived online - that you’re stuck with being defined by your unflattering court records or your ex-husband’s bitter complaints about your personality flaws.

But there’s a growing cottage industry of reputation management firms devoted to “fixing” these kinds of problems. But how exactly do they work?

According to Reputation Changer, the typical reputation management story goes something like this:

The client - an individual or a company - has a problem with negative search engine listings and social media contentThe client engages a reputation management firm to address the problemThe firm posts a series of positive content about the client is placed on the Internet.This new, positive, content, if delivered properly, begins to push down the negative content off the top pages of search engine resultsEventually, the negative listings no longer show up on the first page of search results, which represents a much better situation for the client.

How much better? An AOL study revealed that on Google, page one search results received 89.7% of all click-through traffic. The next page of results drives just 4.4% of traffic.

Based on the case studies displayed by Reputation Manager, the positive content is delivered through the use of press releases that emphasize the aspects the client would rather see on the Internet, as well as the creation of new websites with the client’s information prominently displayed, even within the URL.

A names-withheld case study from Reputation Changer offers a typical scenario: When an auto repair shop started getting hammered with negative reviews created by a local competitor, the service worked to emphasize the positive reviews the repair shop did receive, and made sure more content was posted to the Internet that highlighted the better qualities of the shop.

So is reputation management basically nothing more than glorified search engine optimization (SEO)? For Reputation.com’s CEO and Founder Michael Fertik, it’s using lot of knowledge and a lot of technology to craft a message that the client would rather see out on the Internet.

Just how much of what Reputation.com does is social engineering vs. technological engineering? Fertik says its a mix of the two, but there’s more technology than you would think.

The firm’s clients usually have an idea how they’d like to be viewed online, Fertik said. Working with that goal, Reputation.com applies the client’s data to its database of social expectations and data outlets that most closely relate to the client’s needs.

This is a massive dataset, Fertik explained, and his team of PhDs and engineers use big-data analytical tools to help find the best way to distribute content that more closely reflects what the client wants to project. “Our technology stack helps us to be more scalable,” Fertik said. 

Reputation.com’s tools help publish content on the appropriate outlets and monitor that its effectiveness in changing Google results and chatter on social media channels. The company also takes an active role in identifying factual errors in online content and working to correct those errors.

Fertik didn’t go into his company’s secret sauce, naturally, but a lot of what his company’s dataset manages for clients is the context of the information posted and how it affects reputation and sentiment. What works in the communications sector might not work so well in the medical sector. And context can be very different, he added, in Korea vs. the U.S.

Then there's temporal context: information about the Olympics today has a different impact than when the London Olympics were actually taking place a couple of weeks ago. Reputation.com's dataset algorithms will even track the mood of a monitored writer, determining clarity, sarcasm, or irony, just to name a few emotions. Determining the mood context of a writer can help determine if the content will work for or against the client's reputation. "Context is a lifetime project," Fertik said. "This is something that takes years to build."

Another example of how this dataset works is the sub-system devised to score the writing styles of individuals on the Internet who have publicly revealed their Myers-Briggs personality ratings. This score, based on grammar, linguistic skills and temperament, can match up individuals writing about the client to writers with the same Myers-Briggs rating in order to help determine the content writer's intent and motivation.

Fertik explained that his company sees two primary types of clients: those who need to deal with an emergency, such as some sort of attack on one’s reputation; and those who want to cultivate a different image for himself. Initially, the base clientele for Reputation.com were the professionals–doctors, lawyers, business owners - but it is now seeing more people and businesses facing life-altering situations. These moments can be good or bad, but they are usually something that needs to be managed for the long term.

Ironically, the reputation management industry has a reputation problem of its ownw: Thor Halvorssen, president of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, takes a dim view of reputation management firms that work with oppressive governments in Africa.

“PR agents do not create ‘economic opportunities’ – they alter reality so that certain deals and foreign aid can flow faster and in larger quantities – all the while being rewarded handsomely,” Halvorssen wrote in a recent BBC publication focusing on Africa.

Clearly aware of the issue, Fertik claimed his company doesn’t work with those trying to hide criminal activities. “There are certain kinds of people we won’t help,” he said.

Like many other things on the Internet, online reputation management is moving towards self-service solutions. Last week, Reputation Changer announced dashboard software designed to let its users monitor their own reputations. Other reputation management companies have similar tools in place or in the works. 

Here are three key tips for managing your own reputation online:

1. Accentuate the Positive. If there are reviews about you or your company online, be sure to highlight the better ones, either on your website or on your Facebook or Twitter account. If there are real negative reviews out there, by all means address them with a sincere conversation and apology.

2. Get the Word Out. You can manage your online reputation by getting your own content out there, either on a blog or strong use of social media platforms. Be real, be yourself and be present.

3. Keep Talking to Clients. Whether online or off, keep the lines of communication open with your customers. Listen to their concerns and you may be able head off small problems before they explode online.

Managing your reputation online is an ongoing process. Everyone makes mistakes, and there will always be troublemakers. But consistently putting forth content that tells your side of the story is essential to helping you and your company weather trouble spots and keep your reputations as positive as possible.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

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YouTube's "Gangnam Style" Viral Hit Portends Kpop Explosion

South Korean popster PSY’s “Gangnam Style” is an absurdist tour de force of a four minute viral video. It's also an object lesson in how YouTube is driving global culture. Now that kpop (short for South Korean pop music) has broken through to the mainstream, get ready for a whole lot more of it.   

Uploaded to YouTube on July 15th, Gangnam Style, by 34-year-old singer Park Jae-Sang,  has racked up 52.8 million views, collecting at least 2 million views every day since August 1. The video occupies the #2 spot on YouTube’s yearly chart, second to the infamous agit-prop film Kony 2012. 

Western press mentions of "Gangnam Style” abound, from France and Canada. The Atlantic “dissected” all the “subversive meanings” behind the song and video this week, and the Washington Post noted the “invisible horse dance” craze sweeping the media. Predominantly male (and not kpop friendly) redditors went gaga for Gangnam Style with the video sitting on the front page of the social news site on July 30. Gangnam Style even beat Justin Bieber as the most watched video on iTunes.

No other kpop song has seen this kind of global reception. Even Stephen Colbert’s fake feud with Rain in 2007 and 2008 did not bring Western success to the Kpop star. The song's words are very South Korean specific, referring to a ritzy neighborhood in the capital city Seoul.  The song wasn’t made for a global audience, and its reach has startled even PSY.

How did this happen? The answer isn’t just that the music video is ridiculous. Kpop has been creeping into the mainstream international market for years. YouTube has been instrumental in exposing the music to the global audience.

Because of the large fan base in Asia, any new music video uploaded to YouTube enjoys at least half a day on the video-sharing site’s front page due to high view counts. Today’s example is kpop girl group KARA’s latest video, sitting at the number 3 spot on YouTube’s music charts with 2.3 million views, right under “Call me Maybe” (which is under, you guessed it, "Gangnam Style").  

Not only do kpoppers use YouTube to stay on top of new hits (as it is nearly impossible to get the music outside of South Korea), kpoppers also make fan videos discussing the over-the-top fashion sense of kpop bands, unboxing videos of elaborate kpop merchandise, and English translation videos. 

The global success of “Gangnam Style” might very well change the musical, and cultural, landscape, especially if the Justin Bieber collaboration pans out. 

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First Look: State, A Streams App Of The Future

As streams of information become more popular on the Web, we need better ways to consume and manage them. Apps that allow you to aggregate content from different sources - Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news websites and more - may become very popular. That's if they can overcome the increasingly walled gardens of Facebook and Twitter. Which makes creating a streams app a risky proposition, because there is no guarantee they'll be able to access all of a user's social data. A new service called State is trying, though. It came onto my radar this week and it passed my initial "I'm still using it after 30 minutes of tinkering" test.

State is currently in private beta. At first glance, it looks part FriendFeed, part TweetDeck, part iGoogle, and part something wholly new.

In an email to me, co-founder Joshua Lewis explained that he and his business partner Galen Wolfe-Pauly built State to try and answer the question of "what the future of the web looks like when you replace static content with streams of data".

I mentioned a few services that State reminded me of, but for the founders it's more like "the Photoshop of cloud data." Lewis said that State is "a general purpose tool to manipulate, filter and publish streams of data." Incidentally, State's founders are already worried about the future of Twitter integration in State. It added App.net support soon after, partly as a hedge against Twitter pulling its data completely.

You can add streams of content from up to four services (so far): Twitter, App.net, Instagram and Dropbox. This is the part that reminds me of a start page, like early Netvibes or iGoogle, because you end up with panels of content across the web page. You can also connect to Instapaper, enabling you to save content for later reading.

Then, like TweetDeck, you're able to view various aspects of the stream. For Twitter, you can select to view content by home timeline, mentions, user, place, tag, search and list. The same principle applies to content from App.net and Instagram.

While State only connects to five services so far, you can imagine it eventually hooking into many more. This is where State reminds me of FriendFeed, the early feed management service acquired by Facebook just over three years ago. At the time it was acquired, FriendFeed could connect to 58 services.

One feature I really like in State is the ability to "follow" a page of streams that someone else has created. The State team has created several of these pages: News, Magazines, Food. Each page - or "workspace" to use the service's parlance - is made up of many different streams of content. The Magazine one features the Twitter streams of various magazine publishers. There is limited ability to filter - for example, you can select to view only images from a stream. But I imagine more filtering options will be added over time.

By default your pages are private, but you can choose to share or make them public.

To get a tour of some of State's other features, check out this demo. The service is in private beta, but you can register your interest here.

It's clearly early days for State, but already I'm enjoying playing with it and building pages of streams. Keep an eye on this young service.

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