Fast Company

Jake Levine thinks the Internet is stuck inside our computers. We turn on our screens, check e-mail, write a Word document, head over to Facebook, maybe watch some Netflix, then turn them off.

"That tends to build some anxiety," said Levine, the former general manager at Digg. "You have software built on those devices that is designed to demand your attention, to focus you. What we end up feeling at the end of all of that is anxious."

That’s where Levine's new venture, comes in. He wants to take some of the more serene parts of the Internet out of that stress-inducing device sitting on your desk, and put them on your wall through a different kind of device.

"I'm building an Internet-connected screen that will bring the Internet to your wall, a screen that is worthy of that beautiful mess of human expression that pervades our connected lives," Levine explained in a Medium post.

It sounds a lot like a smart TV. But, the similarities between the two end at the screen. Both the hardware and software of Levine's invention are designed for "passive" or "ambient" use, more like a picture frame and less like a tablet.

Alex Rainert, the head of design at Project Florida who is testing the device, said it doesn't feel like a gadget at all.

Brazil is a place where the Internet landscape is diverging from the United States in a way that benefits ordinary digital citizens: On April 21, Brazil's congress passed a legally binding “Internet Bill of Rights.”

The Brazilian Internet Bill of Rights, called the Marco Civil, guarantees network neutrality, regulates government surveillance on the Internet, and places limits on data companies can collect from Brazilian customers. In addition, Internet service providers won't be held liable for content published by their customers and will be legally required to remove offensive material via court order.

President Dilma Rousseff said “The Marco Civil guarantees net neutrality, a fundamental principle for maintaining the free and open nature of the Internet. The new Marco Civil establishes that telecommunications companies must treat any and all data packages equally, and also forbids the blocking, monitoring, filtering, or analysis of the content of such packages. Our model for the Marco Civil can now influence the global debate on the path to ensuring real rights in the virtual world.”

Jeffrey Katzenberg has an intriguing prediction for the future of film distribution.

The DreamWorks Animation chief says that within 10 years, movies will only get three weekends in the theater, and then will be available everywhere, at which point viewers will pay based on the size of the screen they watch it on.

"A movie will come out and you will have 17 days [of theatrical exclusivity], that’s exactly three weekends, which is 95% of the revenue for 98% of movies," said Katzenberg. "On the 18th day, these movies will be available everywhere ubiquitously and you will pay for the size. A movie screen will be $15. A 75" TV will be $4.00. A smartphone will be $1.99. When that happens, and it will happen, it will reinvent the enterprise of movies."

Given the rapidly growing use of smaller screens to consume media, a reduced theatrical window makes sense to allow for multi-platform distribution. The "pay by the inch you watch" element, however, is a little more left-field. Right now, services that offer the same media on multiple screens, such as Netflix and iTunes, charge by flat subscription or single purchase price, regardless of screen size.

It seems that there would have to be some gradual shift in these business models to change consumer expectations of the cost of multi-platform delivery.

Tech outlets across the web have named it “brogramming culture.” And tons of organizations tirelessly work to combat it. It is the overwhelming scarcity of women in tech.

The general method to improve female-to-male ratios in tech companies is to attract women to the field early on, by encouraging them to take computer science classes in high school and college.

Recently the toys and games industry has targeted the youngest girls, with products like Computer Engineer Barbie and GoldiBlox. And now, a tech executive wants to get the entertainment industry on board.

Anthony Onesto, director of talent development at Razorfish, is finishing up an Indiegogo campaign to get a new children's cartoon off the ground, called Ella the Engineer. The campaign aims to raise $25,000 by April 27th to produce the pilot, aiming for outlets like Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. Thinking of his daughters, he realized that girls are poorly exposed to the possibilities of a tech career from a young age.

“There is no hero, no heroine in their lives, particularly in the media and the shows that they are watching, that has this computer science background,” he says.

[Commentary] The Internet is ablaze with chatter of how Facebook is “backstabbing” advertisers and “corroding” the relationships between brands and the followers they have worked so hard to attain.

But before you sever your social marketing ties with Facebook, take a second and review the situation. Facebook isn’t necessarily backstabbing marketers (although they are trying to make money). Instead, the social network is simply growing up and going down the natural path of marketing evolution -- one that we’ve already seen with Search.

Today, businesses understand that investing in paid search and search engine optimization is necessary to drive relevant traffic to their business. More recently, Google increased focus to the quality of content in paid and organic search. When companies try to game the system with generic, bland content or excessive links, their rankings and traffic drop.

If you want to keep rankings or traffic high, you have to pay Google to stay on top in sponsored links and keep up with SEO. We’re witnessing the same process underway at Facebook, so don’t take it personally. Facebook is not targeting or attacking the businesses they spent so many years cultivating -- it’s just the natural evolution in marketing.

[Revoy is the CEO of Viralheat]

[Commentary] Not every 18-year-old knows what they want to do with their life; few fully understand the market demand for different skills and competencies; and none know exactly how industries and the implications for their future careers will evolve.

Our traditional education model has many virtues, but it is front-loaded and not designed to accommodate the volatility of individual career aspirations or that of the market. A big part of the challenge is that the half-life of knowledge and skills is decreasing.

I look at our Coursera engineers, mostly in their mid to late 20s, and consider all the programming they’re doing in languages that literally did not exist when they were in school. The traditional model is also out of sync with the current generation of highly mobile millennials who, on average, change jobs every 3.2 years in the United States, according to Bureau of Labor statistics.

A front-loaded model focused on general and transferable skills and knowledge has a place, but it’s clear that it needs to be complemented with training that is more current and dynamic. In a high-skills economy, the labor market requires constant infusion of up-to-date skills to work well. Informal education is becoming increasingly relevant for individuals seeking to differentiate themselves in the job market, advance at their companies, or pursue a new career path.

More accessible and dynamic learning options are opening up -- there are a number of MOOCs; coding bootcamps like Dev Bootcamp; sites like Udemy, Code Academy, and Treehouse; and abundant content on YouTube EDU at your fingertips.

[Stiglitz is the Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at Coursera]

Accessing public Wi-Fi networks comes with its risks -- hackers snoop on network traffic -- but a new study finds 39% of US adults have sent sensitive information, including banking information and social security numbers, over such unsecured networks.

Polling 2,037 adults, a study conducted by Nielsen's Harris Poll for virtual private network company Private Wi-Fi found most people understood such risks, with 88% of respondents mentioning identity theft as a possible threat when using unprotected Wi-Fi networks.

That said, 26% of respondents said they have checked their bank accounts and 19% have paid bills while using public Wi-Fi. In addition, 8% admitted to sending emails containing sensitive information, such as social security numbers or account numbers, over these unprotected networks.

On March 8, the New York Times unveiled a new app called NYT Now that signals a major shift in how publishers package the news.

For $8 a month, NYT Now will offer users access to a limited number of stories, and those stories will be presented in a totally new way (for the Times, that is): as a series of cards, one per story, with an image and, at most, two bullet points summing up the news.

Samsung has developed a smartphone case that helps the visually impaired by enhancing their awareness of their surroundings. The Ultrasonic Cover for its Galaxy Core Advance smartphone helps owners sense the presence of people and objects up to two meters away.

[Commentary] For all the press attention directed at Comcast's recently announced bid to acquire Time Warner Cable, the merger's greatest long-term impact has been largely overlooked.

We tend to think of Comcast as a purveyor of cable TV first and foremost, and this may explain why media coverage of the merger tends to focus on the familiar dangers of letting a monopoly take control of an entertainment market with millions of customers, worth billions of dollars. While I don't want to undersell this concern, an equally pressing issue is that the merger places control over much of the country’s high-speed broadband with one media company.

In the short run, this keeps the cost of online access artificially high for US consumers, and inhibits improvements in service; in the long run, it could very well stifle digital innovation. As digital offerings move from entertainment to fundamental function, they become tools that cannot go down, or all hell breaks loose. An adaptive home security system that you can control from your smartphone is a great idea, unless you have to worry about exceeding your data cap -- or watch your access grind to a halt because everyone’s streaming the new House of Cards.

The companies that develop these applications know this too, and that uncertainty makes such innovation a bad investment. Mergers like this make it clear that we're still regulating broadband like entertainment, not like a utility, and this creates a bad environment for good design.

[Greco Design Director at Ziba, a design and innovation consultancy]