PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Experiencing Connectivity Problems

Owners of Sony and Microsoft’s PlayStation and Xbox gaming consoles are reporting problems with connecting to their respective online services, the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. At the time of this writing, Sony says its network is “intermittently available” due to high volume, which may be tied to the start of a beta period for the upcoming Bungie-Activision shooter Destiny. The beta doesn’t start for a few more days on Xbox, however, and Microsoft says its video and music stores are also experiencing some connectivity problems.

BlackRock Partner Susan Wagner Joins Apple’s Board

BlackRock founding partner Susan L. Wagner has been elected to Apple’s board of directors, succeeding Bill Campbell, who, after 17 years, is retiring as the board's longest-serving member.

Wagner helped build BlackRock into one of the world’s largest asset-management companies, with more than $4.32 trillion under management. She held a variety of leadership positions with the firm, including serving as its vice chairman until 2012.

"Sue is a pioneer in the financial industry and we are excited to welcome her to Apple's board of directors," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. "We believe her strong experience, especially in M&A and building a global business across both developed and emerging markets, will be extremely valuable as Apple continues to grow around the world."

Wagner graduated with honors from Wellesley College with a bachelor’s degree in English and Economics, and earned an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago. At BlackRock, she championed the advancement of women within the company — a coveted perspective in Silicon Valley, where companies like Apple are criticized for lack of diversity. She serves on the boards of BlackRock, Swiss Re, Wellesley College and Hackley School.

Campbell's relationship with Apple dates to 1983, when he joined the company as vice president of marketing. The Intuit chairman enjoyed a close relationship with the late Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs, and his coaching of senior executives in Silicon Valley was so well known, he was sometimes referred to as the “CEO Whisperer.”

"When Bill joined Apple's board, the company was on the brink of collapse,” Cook said. “He not only helped Apple survive, but he's led us to a level of success that was simply unimaginable back in 1997.”

Airbnb Founder on Vagina Logo: “Go Ahead, Laugh All You Want”

Airbnb launched a new corporate logo yesterday, and everyone — including their dinner guests last night — had an opinion about it.

At the Verdi Club in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, many of the guests, chosen for their prominence within the Airbnb hosting community, seemed to think the squat, circular pink shape looked like female body parts, though there was little agreement which one.

Dinner was catered by Nopalito, Bi Rite, Delfina, Rice Paper Scissors and Mission Pie. Airbnb co-founder and CTO Nathan Blecharczyk stood up, welcomed everyone and told the story of a young boy becoming ill and his father turning to Airbnb to pay his medical bills. Over his head was a neon sign that glowed: “belonging.”

He sat down for pulled pork, guacamole and refried beans. Needing information about the nature of the logo, I asked the woman next to him if I could have her seat. How was he doing tonight?

"It's just like: Go ahead, laugh all you want, guys," he said. "We wouldn't want to design a logo that caters to the lowest common denominator. This was a yearlong undertaking for dozens of people, it’s something meaningful, and no one pauses to really understand that."

The new logo, created by U.K. design firm The Design Studio, drew comparisons to various body parts now only because it didn't have the Airbnb brand attached to it yet, said Blecharczyk. Bélo, as Airbnb is calling the shape, will soon mean something new.

"If you looked at the Nike swoosh, you might say it's a check mark, but once you understand the context, it means something else," he said. "The symbol is not supposed to be a symbol, it's supposed to be something with meaning. The bélo is a vehicle for rich, deep, emotional, human stories."

He picked back up the conversation he’d been having with his tablemates. Hosts were irate about the potential for legal regulation, which Airbnb is constantly battling. A muscular man in a t-shirt said, "The tenants union is a poison pill." A clean-cut blond added, "Politicians are just taking money from [hotel] lobbyists." Blecharczyk offered compromise positions like, "What if landlords and tenants split the earnings?" No one was interested.

A mariachi band came marching out.

The conversation returned to the logo. In the jocular world of tech bros, hearing any circular shape being called a vagina is not the most surprising thing. But last night was Airbnb's community dinner — for hosts young and old, for world travelers, for tastemakers — and even they made some genitalia jokes.

"You heard about the woman 3-D printing her vagina? People are just so focused on vaginas already, so that's probably it," said 25-year-old Christy, who works in marketing. "No one could have predicted this."

"It's a little weird, the rebrand. I think it's pretty obvious what it looks like," said Angelo Maddox, who manages more than 10 Airbnbs. "But maybe continuous loops are in right now?"

Next to him was a graphic designer, who weighed in agreeing that, yes, loops were in. (The new logo looks quite similar to the one sported by Automation Anywhere.)

"I'd say it's female because it's curved, not just that the overall thing is, you know, what we're not saying," said Justin Beaver, a graphic designer who told me his name with some hesitation. "It's very feminine. The triangular shape is stable. It's pink, so it feels safe. The interior loop, there's home."

Some wondered if maybe Airbnb's internal office culture was so strong, no one bothered to ask for outside opinions.

"I wonder if there was maybe a sense of insular thinking there," said Jeff Snell, who works in security research. "It's about these high-minded ideals, and when you believe in it, you see it as the ideals, you don't see a scrotum or boobs, you see togetherness and belonging."

Servers dropped off giant fortune cookies at each table. Each contained quotes like: "You belong somewhere you feel free," from Tom Petty.

As the dinner wrapped up, Jay, a middle-aged man in a suit, and Sue, an older woman in turquoise earrings and a tunic top, sat at a table in the back eating pie and doing a Rorschach test with the logo.

"It looks like my 4-year-old daughter’s version of a female body parts," said Jay.

"No, no. It looks like buns," said Sue.

"Buns?" Jay asked. “Buns?!”

"Buns," Sue said. "Like my grandson running away."

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Taligent and the Ignominious History of Apple/IBM Alliances

It somehow slipped my mind yesterday, but Bill Campbell’s departure made me recall Taligent, the ill-fated “universal operating system” boldly promised and jointly developed by Apple and IBM back in the early 1990s. (Campbell had nothing to do with it; he re-joined Apple as a board member in 1997 after the NeXT reunification. Taligent was one of several pie-in-the-sky fiascos that left Apple in such desperate straits that they had to buy NeXT.) Wikipedia:

Pink was then spun off from Apple as a joint project known as Taligent. The original Apple team was expanded with the addition of a very small number of IBM engineers, as well as a new CEO from IBM, Joe Guglielmi (apparently to the distaste of many of the Apple people).

“In 1992, the earth shook: IBM and Apple clasped hands and pronounced themselves allies. From this union sprang Taligent, a small Cupertino, California, company that’s now developing nothing less than a universal operating system.” —Macworld, 1994

During its first year, IBM persuaded Taligent to replace its internally developed object-oriented microkernel, called Opus, with the microkernel that IBM was using as the base for IBM’s Workplace OS. The change in underlying technology had both positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, Pink would become a personality on top of the IBM Workplace OS. This would create easy migration paths between OS/2, AIX, Mac OS, and Pink by allowing any combination of operating system personalities to run simultaneously on a single computer. On the negative side, this created issues over how to integrate Taligent’s object-oriented device-driver model with Workplace OS’s procedural device-driver model.

The “positive side” was a total pipe dream.

The other previous Apple/IBM collaboration that springs to mind is the PowerPC platform. That was no fiasco, and even saw some good years, but ultimately ended badly. Just two years after Apple’s grand announcement of the G5 CPU, Apple announced it was switching to Intel processors.

 ★ 

Tim Cook Tells WSJ He Does 80 Percent of His Work on iPad

Daisuke Wakabayashi, reporting yesterday on the Apple/IBM team-up:

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook says he does 80% of the work of running the world’s most valuable company on an iPad.

“There’s no reason why everyone shouldn’t be like that,” Mr. Cook said in an interview, explaining why Apple struck a partnership with International Business Machines Corp. to develop applications catered to big businesses, or enterprises. “Imagine enterprise apps being as simple as the consumer apps that we’ve all gotten used to. That’s the way it should be.”

I’m sure “80 percent” is a rough guess, perhaps even somewhat exaggerated in the iPad’s favor, but there’s a dogfooding aspect to Tim Cook being a heavy iPad user who uses it for actual work.

Here’s my question (prompted by this thread on Twitter): Does IBM CEO Ginni Rometty use an iPhone? I don’t think it’s a deal-breaker if she doesn’t, but I do think it matters if she does — it’s an “actions speak louder than words” thing. Commitment and vision start at the top.

Update: Perfect counterexample: Google chairman (and long-time CEO) Eric Schmidt admitting to still using a BlackBerry — a BlackBerry! — last year.

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Sue Wagner Joins Apple’s Board; Bill Campbell Retires

Apple PR:

"Sue is a pioneer in the financial industry and we are excited to welcome her to Apple's board of directors," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "We believe her strong experience, especially in M&A and building a global business across both developed and emerging markets, will be extremely valuable as Apple continues to grow around the world."

"We conducted an exhaustive search for someone who would further strengthen our board's breadth of talent and background, and we are delighted to have identified such an outstanding individual," said Art Levinson, Apple's chairman. "I'm confident that Sue is going to make an important and positive impact on our company."

Makes me wonder if the Beats deal is the start of a trend toward larger acquisitions by Apple.

Bill Campbell's relationship with Apple dates back to 1983, when he joined the company as vice president of Marketing. Next to Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Mike Markkula, Campbell is the longest-serving board member in the company's history.

"Bill's contributions to Apple are immeasurable and we owe him a huge debt of gratitude. On behalf of the board and the entire company, I want to thank him for being a leader, a mentor and a friend,” said Cook. "When Bill joined Apple's board, the company was on the brink of collapse. He not only helped Apple survive, but he's led us to a level of success that was simply unimaginable back in 1997."

Apple share prices hovered around $0.80 (split-adjusted) in August 1997, when Campbell joined the board. They closed today at $93. Not a bad run for a board member.

 ★ 

Trip ‘Claim’ Chowdhry Prediction of the Week

Famed analyst Trip Trip Chowdhry, two days ago:

IBM is only 2 days away from their earnings announcement, while AAPL is only 1.5 weeks away from their earnings announcement. The timing of this announcement makes us feel that IBM will very likely miss their revenue expectations and probably Apple may also miss their revenue expectations.

IBM’s actual results, today:

International Business Machines reported a second quarter boost in net income and revenue that topped Wall Street forecasts.

IBM reported non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $4.32 off revenue of $24.4 billion. Both numbers beat analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

(Thanks to Brian Resac. Also, no surprise that Trip Chowdhry thinks Apple is going to report a miss this quarter: he’s on the record as predicting that they’re going “to disappear” because they didn’t release a wristwatch last month.)

 ★ 

Stuart Scott Accepts Jimmy V Award

I can’t agree with this strongly enough:

When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live.

A wonderful speech. I cried.

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Turner Media Camp Demo Day Highlights Five New Startups

 It’s like summer camp, but for grownups, according to a video shown as Turner Media Camp’s third Demo Day kicked off. Warner Bros. and Turner’s media-focused accelerator culminated Thursday as a batch of startups made presentations to a room of investors. The five startups spent 12 weeks in workshops and networking events with media leaders. Read More

To Signal Broader Ambitions, Mobile Ad Company HasOffers Changes Its Name To Tune

 HasOffers has been a tricky startup to write about — partly because ad attribution isn’t inherently sexy, but mostly because of the name. Yes, there’s HasOffers the company and HasOffers the product, but at this point it’s probably best known for a different service, MobileAppTracking, which allows mobile developers to see which ads are actually leading to app… Read More

Fonts In Chrome For Windows Will Look Better Soon

 Google released the latest beta version of its Chrome browser today, and if you’re a Windows user on a machine that runs at least Vista, fonts will now look better on your screen. That’s because the Chrome 37 Beta now supports Microsoft’s DirectWrite API, a technology that improves the way fonts look on modern screens. Read More

Amazon Isn’t Killing Writing, The Market Is

 Amazon’s war on publishers reached a crescendo yesterday with the leak of Kindle Unlimited, a subscription plan that would allow readers to pay $9.99 per month for unlimited access to the Kindle ebook library. No longer content with simply demanding steeper discounts from publishers like Hachette — which is locked in a bitter fight with the ecommerce giant over book prices… Read More

With Echo, The Team Behind Laundry Startup Prim Fights Push Notification Overload

 Back in January, startup Prim shut down its door-to-door laundry service. Now its founders are ready to talk about what they’re doing next — and no, it’s not laundry-related. The team has built an app for Android lockscreens that helps users manage what can sometimes feel like a barrage of push notifications. Co-founders Xuwen Cao and Yin Yin Wu said this was an issue they… Read More