Revere Digital

[Commentary] SF Gives was born out of the strife and opportunity facing San Francisco and the Bay Area. We all have to take responsibility for the future of our region; tech and business leaders are not exempt.

We are blessed with economic prosperity thanks to the tech boom, but this boom also brought with it tens of thousands of new neighbors and growth. The change we are experiencing is undeniable, and it’s the already marginalized among us -- the one in five people living in poverty in our community -- that suffer most.

There are misunderstandings on both sides of the rising tide of prosperity. It’s good for companies to want to be here, to thrive and to inspire risk-taking and entrepreneurship. But those companies must recognize the indelible nature of their footprint, not only on the business sector, but also on housing and the overall cost of living. In that growth, we need to ensure that all of our residents have access to a better life, but it will take investments and it will take leadership.

[Lurie is CEO and Founder, Tipping Point Community]

[Commentary] California, with its renowned universities and the great minds they produce, coupled with the widespread proliferation of high-speed networks and Internet technologies, has been at the center of the mobile revolution.

This state, with the help of companies like Apple, is exporting innovation across the country and around the world. As a result, we have contributed to a story of success that allows the great mass of people to communicate and share through greater accessibility to smartphones and high-speed connectivity.

That is why, as someone who is passionate about technology, I am troubled to see Apple now engage in tactics that may hinder the progress under way. The ongoing Apple-Samsung legal conflict could pose a threat to the adoption of technology with ripple effects throughout California’s tech economy. Whether directly connected to a particular product or service developed within the state or farther away, our economy benefits from greater consumer adoption of innovative, mobile technologies. At the same time, the exorbitantly high patent royalty fees Apple is demanding, if granted, would dramatically increase the price of some smartphones, and place an unnecessary financial burden on consumers who prefer those devices over the Apple iPhone.

[Terpstra, Former Special Advisor for Information Technology, Office of the Governor, California]

Apple has twisted Samsung’s words to make it appear that it was looking to copy the iPhone, but that wasn’t the case, lawyers for the Korean electronics giant argued in closing statements in the companies’ patent infringement case.

The iPhone, Samsung argues, doesn’t even employ at least three of the specific patents for which infringement is claimed in the case.

“You can’t copy if it’s not there,” said Samsung attorney Bill Price, one of four lawyers that will tag-team the company’s closing argument. In the case, Apple has accused a number of Samsung phones and tablets of infringing five patents and argued it is due more than $2 billion in damages.

The pursuit of that large amount is what prompts Apple to talk about copying and stealing, Price said. He also made the case that all Samsung did is what most other phone makers did -- start using Google’s Android to compete with the iPhone. “The Android platform is the world’s alternative to iOS,” Price said.

[Commentary] My iPhone- and Mac-wielding friend from the US had been eager to make the jump to Android. She was willing to defect from Apple to join in on the Xiaomi hype, so I purchased an Mi3 for her.

After one week, I nudged her for feedback, and her response shocked me: “I’m going to get the iPhone 6 when it comes out. Android is too complicated.”

Her feedback hints at the core of why Apple’s operating system, despite iOS fatigue setting in, continues to hold its ground in the US while the rest of the world has embraced Android.

Speculation suggests that Apple’s closed ecosystem is slowly losing to Android on the back of Android’s commanding 78.1 percent global market share, according to the IDC. In the global market, iOS accounts for just 17.6 percent. However these same metrics within the US market size up a stronger competitor: iOS accounts for 41.6 percent of the US market, with a 1.2 percent gain in Q4 2013 compared to Android’s 51.5 percent share.

[Shen, Co-Founder and CEO, AppFlood]

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated a much-leaked proposal to restrict how many licenses the country’s two largest wireless companies can win in an auction of TV airwaves in 2015.

In a blog post, he said regulators need to ensure that the nation’s largest carriers, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, don’t scoop up all of the TV airwaves. The licenses to be auctioned off are coveted by wireless companies because they allow signals to penetrate buildings and travel long distances, which makes them cheaper to use. The rules are designed to prevent “one or two bidders” from sweeping the auction, Chairman Wheeler wrote. They should make it easier for Sprint, T-Mobile and other smaller carriers to scoop up prime airwaves licenses for their LTE networks.

A senior FCC official told reporters they’re trying to do a balancing act between wanting to raise money while ensuring that smaller carriers have a chance to win licenses. This is a reasonable approach, the official said. It’s not clear if the wireless carriers will agree.

When the rules were leaked, AT&T complained about the set-aside for smaller companies and threatened to boycott the auction. Now, AT&T has backed down from the threat, saying, “our desire to participate in this auction and our hope for a successful auction is unchanged,” in a letter disclosing a meeting AT&T officials had with Chairman Wheeler’s aides.

The latest Apple-Samsung patent megatrial is nearing its end, with the final witness testimony scheduled to take place.

The two sides have just a few minutes remaining in the 25 hours granted to each to present its case. The jury will get to start early, with the lawyers and Judge Koh sticking around to hash out a bunch of details including final jury instructions and the form that the jurors will use to decide the case.

Judge Lucy Koh released a proposed jury form, but both sides objected to it, saying it could lead to confusion. Each side submitted proposals of their own in early April.

Apple is seeking more than $2 billion in damages, while Samsung says that figure is a “gross exaggeration” and is looking for only a few million dollars on its counterclaim.

Ahead of testimony, the lawyers in the case and Judge Lucy Koh are discussing the impact of a new ruling from the Federal Circuit in a related case involving Apple and Motorola. In particular, that case deals with one of the patents in this case -- the ’647 patent related to “quick links”.

[Commentary] If you’re like me, you woke up scratching your head this morning after seeing that Facebook had acquired the company behind Moves, a popular fitness app.

Does Facebook want to enter the fitness app market, especially as others seem so ready to do the same? I doubt it. Here’s why.

Moves is a fitness app, yes. But using your iPhone’s accelerometer and other hardware, Moves’ core technology automatically recognizes your movements throughout the day, while logging your habitual routes and the places you usually visit. The company spits out a visualized map of your activity, which it calls a “daily storyline” of your life. And all of this is done passively, as the technology runs in the background on your smartphone while using minimal battery power.

This is exactly the type of data and technology Facebook loves. Facebook wants to be the be-all, end-all for your online identity -- that’s why it asks you about where you’re going, where you’re from and the type of stuff you like to do. It’s all an effort to build a complete digital profile of exactly who you are.

The TV Industrial Complex is worried about cord-cutters -- people who are bailing on their pay-TV subscriptions and turning to the Web instead.

And the TV Industrial Complex is even more worried about cord-nevers -- twentysomethings who have grown up with Web video, haven't signed up for pay TV and may never sign up.

So here are a couple of soothing data points for the TV guys: About 75 percent of millennials are paying for cable, satellite or telecommunications television. And that number has stayed fairly steady since 2007, even though their Web video options have exploded since then.

Those data points come from ESPN, citing Nielsen. The sports powerhouse delivered them at an investor event earlier this month. So it would be reasonable if you took them with big helping of salt: “TV Business Doing Well, Says TV Business”.

Having taken pictures of more than 6 million miles’ worth of road, Google is more than doubling the amount of global Street View imagery by adding all of its archive photography.

The company’s Google Maps Web application will now include a time machine feature where users can move a slider to see all historical images of a place. As much as possible, pictures of the same place have been aligned so they have the same perspective as one another.

That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to move the slider back and forth to see historical images of Rome compared to the present day ruins -- Street View imagery only goes back eight years, at most. But it does mean you’ll be able to play with some recent history, like the building of the Freedom Tower in Lower Manhattan, the building of the 2014 World Cup stadium in Fortaleza, Brazil, and the destruction left by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Onagawa, Japan.

A Google lawyer testified that the company, pursuant to its contractual obligations, agreed to take over defense of some of the claims in Apple’s current patent lawsuit as well as to indemnify Samsung should it lose on those claims.

Apple played deposition testimony from Google lawyer James Maccoun, who verified emails in which Google agreed to provide partial or full indemnity with regard to four patents as well as to take over defense of those claims.

Of the four patents Google over which offered to cover at least some costs, two were dropped from the case before the trial began. The two patents that remain in the case, the ’414 and ’959 patents, cover background synchronization and universal search, respectively.

Although Google was seen as a shadow figure in the case -- most of the patents in this trial have to do with functions of Android or Google’s apps -- this was the first evidence shown to the jury that Google is playing a central role in the defense.