Fired Taco Bell Exec Files $5 Million Lawsuit Against Uber Driver He Drunkenly Attacked

Um, because the best defense is a good offense?

Especially after the incident was captured on video, posted on YouTube and your lawyers state that you want to 'apologize sincerely?' JL

Dan Mangan reports in CNBC:

Golden said that because of the "overwhelming media coverage" of the video, (he) "has suffered severe emotional distress, humiliation, anxiety, fear, pain and suffering and the loss of his job.That video shows Golden repeatedly slapping Caban and pulling the driver's hair after Caban is heard telling Golden to leave the vehicle because he's "too drunk" to provide directions home.

Satellite Tracking Being Considered For Delivery Drones

Drone deliveries will be fine...as long as they are being tracked by someone other than hobbyists besotted by the wonder of it all or managers whose bonuses depend on the drones getting somewhere in a certain time frame despite inconveniences like people, airplanes and tall buildings. JL

Andy Pazstor and Jack Nicas report in the Wall Street Journal:

Amazon said in a statement that it supports an approach based “on safety and performance outcomes” that allows different technologies because “locking into a specific prescribed set of technologies…will quickly become outdated."

What's Holding Up Artificial Intelligence?

Programming creativity is both a contradiction in terms and a fiendishly elusive concept. JL

David Deutsch comments in Aeon:

If one works towards programs whose ‘thinking’ is constitutionally incapable of violating predetermined constraints, one is trying to engineer away the defining attribute of an intelligent being, of a person: namely creativity.

To Be One of the Wealthiest 50% in the World, You Need Only $3,210 in Assets

This can't be good for champagne and caviar futures. JL

Ana Swanson reports in the Washington Post:

To be in the top 10 percent, a person needed to have only $68,800 in wealth. To be in the top percentile, the threshold climbed to $760,000. Just 62 people in the world had the same wealth as the poorer half of humanity – 3.6 billion people.

Google Paid Apple $1 Billion To Keep Its Search Bar on iPhone, According To Court Documents

Keep those lawsuits coming. They're so educational. JL

Lucy Schouten reports in the Christian Science Monitor:

Although Google has long been the default search engine on iOS, Microsoft's search engine Bing is the default for both Siri and Spotlight on Apple devices. Google and Apple have tried to prevent details about their search engine deal from becoming publicly available, but the numbers surfaced as part of a years-long court proceeding between Google and Oracle

Uber and Airbus Are Partnering On a New Helicopter Service

Will drones be next? JL

Dante D'Orazio reports in The Verge:

In 2013, (Uber) had helicopter rides from Manhattan to the Hamptons, and during the United States Formula 1 Grand Prix in Austin, it also offered rides to the race track. The rides cost a minimum of several hundred dollars; in the case of the Hamptons rides, they were $3,000 a pop.

Electric Vehicle Performs Well in Dakar Rally, World's Toughest

Formerly called the Paris-Dakar (Senegal) rally from Europe to Africa, it is now held in South America.

Issues of endurance and dependability in difficult conditions are being addressed, increasing the odds that these cars will become increasingly unremarkable and thus, common. JL


Jonathan Gitlin reports in ars technica:

Cars, trucks, bikes, and quads all compete in the two-week long, 5,700-mile (9200km) race, through stunning but remote and arduous terrain. Recharging takes an hour using a fast charging system, something the team was able to do at various checkpoints along the route with the help of a support truck.

Bend and Beer: Craft Breweries and Yoga Instructors Team Up

Great taste, less stress...? JL

The Associated Press reports:

The trend has caught on quickly with yoga-beer partnerships throughout Florida, New York and California. They both lead to relaxation. And they both have a little bit of a social aspect. And it’s a very relaxing place to do yoga.

Why Bosses No Longer Want Your Resume

In a rapidly evolving economy relying on traditional markers of success in order to select talent may no longer be rational. The question is how to prevent managers from substituting one set of restrictive biases with another. JL

Rachel Feintzeig reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Rising interest in anonymous hiring reflects the growing awareness of unconscious bias, attitudes or stereotypes that affect decisions. Bosses say blind hiring reveals true talents and results in more diverse hires. And the notion that career success could stem from what you know, and not who you know, is a tantalizing one.

As More Pay By Smartphone, Banks Scramble To Keep Up

The financial sector focused on wholesale banking for much of the past two decades, concentrating on big clients and big deals.

But the retail side of banking has undergone a technologically-induced transformation and, as the following article explains, the banks, like the car companies may have realized it and tried to capitalize too late.  JL

Steve Lohr reports in the New York Times:

By 2014, the percentage reporting weekly visits to bank branches fell to 28 percent, while the weekly mobile banking share tripled, to 27 percent. For young Americans, most relationships with the financial system are electronic.

WhatsApp Nears a Billion Users: Is It Finally Time to Make Money?

Given the number of competing services adding users when you're free is not exactly easy, but it's a different challenge when you actually have to make money.

WhatsApp's global reach gives it some advantages. Whether it can figure out how to capitalize on them is another question. That said, being owned by Facebook, a company that also endured skepticism when it made that transition, suggests that it will get lots of experienced help. JL

Cade Metz reports in Wired:

WhatsApp has a greater global reach than nearly any other app. A lot of companies are global. And these companies may be willing to embrace this kind of messaging because WhatsApp gives them more efficient access to more people than any other medium. The company can refine this kind of communication—and eventually charge a fee for it.

Why Technology Has So Quickly Changed Our World

Until recently, technology adoption cycles were often measured in decades. From the wheel to the steam engine, to electricity, the automobile and the telephone, humanity needed time to figure out how to incorporate these wonders into its quotidian routines.

But the latest, computer and internet based cycle had a built in, evolutionary advantage: it relies on its inherently rapid communications base to spread usage faster and wider. Penetration rates have grown deeper, more quickly than ever before.

The challenge now facing the economic and social systems attempting to optimize the use of these wonders is how to more broadly share their benefits so that their inherently powerful and disruptive impact enhances the prospects of the individuals and enterprises engaged so that it becomes self-sustaining. JL

Martin Wolf reports in the Financial Times:

The penetration of recent innovations in technology has been astonishingly rapid. At the end of 2015, there were more than 7bn mobile phone subscriptions, a penetration rate of 97 per cent, up from around 10 per cent in 2000. Penetration of internet access grew from 7 per cent to 43 per cent. Economically, this has led to the transformation of industries. Socially, it has altered human interactions. Politically, it has affected relationships between the rulers and the ruled.

General Motors Launches Zipcar Competitor

General Motors converting a threat like car-sharing into an opportunity. Now that's disruptive. JL

Andrew Hawkins reports in The Verge:

General Motors is predicting that around 30 million people will be using car sharing over the next decade. The fundamental dis-economics of the conventional owner-driver model is driving a lot of this change and is what creates the opportunity.

How Working a Gig Has Evolved To Not Be As Romantic As It Sounds

A 'gig' in the traditional sense was a job you could take or leave. Your life didn't depend on it. Increasingly, for many, that is no longer the case. JL

Katherine Martinko comments in The Tree Hugger:

The idea of a gig is alluring only if you know you can hit the road when it gets joyless. Otherwise it's just an old word for a job you can't count on having tomorrow.

Intel Reboots 'Intel Inside' Brand Strategy To Reflect New Reality

The 'Intel Inside' campaign was appropriate for the early tech era in which most consumers were awed by but not entirely confident of their ability to manage the devices and software about to transform their lives.

Now, though not everyone is an expert, the majority in most developed economies are conversant enough with technology to have strong opinions about what brands they prefer and why. Intel is attempting to get closer to the consumer and to the investable funds following their choices. JL

Dean Takahashi reports in Venture Beat:

Intel’s longstanding history of being ruthlessly focused on Intel Inside has effectively rendered the brand invisible. "We have been trapped inside the box, distanced from the consumer, with no clear role or relationship with the consumer.” The transformation of the brand is in line with Intel’s deeper strategy to create Intel-branded products that are sold on the market by Intel

Nielsen to Use Facebook and Twitter For New Ratings System

Social listening and viewing may provide the only realistic approximation of the way in which people now consume media. Without it, audience ratings are about as relevant as the pocket watch. JL

Emily Steel reports in the New York Times:

Nielsen has failed to keep pace with the digital transformation that has reshaped the industry. As a result, it is not accurately capturing the real audience for shows. The new ratings will measure programs on both traditional television and streaming services during the time period when the show is televised. With the new offering, Nielsen is building a stronger force in the so-called social listening market.

Why Tech Startups Need To Grow Faster

There is lots of capital and plenty of good ideas. What is often missing is the strategic acuity and managerial ability to scale.

In a technologically-linked global economy where shareholders are often algorithms whose 'ownership' is most accurately measured in nanoseconds, success is determined by the ability to grow. Fast. JL

John Gapper reports in the Financial Times:

Growing to a certain size and then slowing, retaining family control of the company rather than taking outside capital to expand rapidly, used to satisfy many companies. But it is not sufficient in global technology — the laggards face being dominated by scaled-up giants.

Is Uber Getting Dangerously Close To Undermining Its Own Business Model?

Uber is famously self-confident. Their executives' and investors' belief appears to be that regulators' or judges' response to their actions don't really matter because - as they saw with Mayor DiBlasio in New York and as AirBnb demonstrated in the San Francisco vote on restricting its services - the people who love them will rally to their defense and public officials will cave in to popular demand.

There appears to be some logic in believing that attitude will carry the day until, that is, it doesn't. The question then is what's Plan B - and what does it do to the $60 billion valuation on which they are counting? JL

Alison Griswold reports in Quartz:

Uber is incentivizing drivers to work particular hours—ones in which it expects higher and more frequent fares—by guaranteeing better payments. If Uber’s price cuts and subsequent fare guarantees are causing drivers to work particular time windows (like shifts), for a minimum hourly rate (like a wage), during which they have to accept 90% of trips (and probably can’t take any from competitors)—how is that much different (from employees)?

Ownership At Every Level

Events are moving too fast for traditional lines of authority. Own it or lose it. JL

Doug Ramsay comments in Medium:

Organizations can no longer rely on traditional command-and-control management if they want to keep up with today’s fast-moving world. The traditional model just takes too long as the people on the ground wait for orders to cascade down before taking action. Instead, the teams executing the work need to demonstrate leadership and make decisions as they move quickly. What drives that leadership? A sense of ownership at every level.

CEOs Worried About Declining Trust in Business

Loss of trust in business! Gee, wonder why...JL 

David Sirota reports in International Business Times:

A new survey shows a sharp jump in the number of American executives saying they are concerned that the public’s distrust of corporations is a significant threat to their growth prospects. A full 63 percent of chief executive officers told researchers that a lack of trust in business has become a significant worry

Connected: Installing the Future of New York

Public connectivity is not new. Pay phones were a feature of the urban landscape for almost a century.

But now, like old railroad lines and manufacturing lofts, they are being repurposed to serve a more contemporary need. JL


Ian Frazier reports in The New Yorker:

By 2020, the 8,178 curbside pay phones in the city will be transformed into Links. Its sides light up with ads are the revenue producers for the city as well as for Google and other investors that run Links. A keypad allow passersby to call anyplace in the U.S. for free. A touch screen gives access to a Web browser. Below is a USB port for charging devices, and headphones. The Link offers free Wi-Fi that’s a hundred times faster than the usual Wi-Fi.

Before I Can Fix This Tractor We Have To Fix Copyright Law

Oh, you thought just because you bought the machine you owned the right to the operating software that makes it work? How quaint. JL

Kyle Wiens reports in Slate:

When the repair involves a tractor's computer, it actually takes an army of copyright lawyers, dozens of representatives from U.S. government agencies, an official hearing, hundreds of pages of legal briefs, and nearly a year of waiting. Waiting for the Copyright Office to make a decision about whether people like me can repair, modify, or hack their own stuff.

Cisco Reports a Rapid Rise in Unauthorized Cloud Use

Comparable to what happened when people wanted to use their own smartphones, laptops and databases. The days of IT department and CIO control are fading further. JL

Don Clark reports in the Wall Street Journal:

CIOs estimate their organizations use 91 cloud computing services, on average. But a more accurate average is 1,120. Such activity, known in the industry as shadow IT, is up nearly 70% from roughly six months ago. People gravitate to the place that has the least amount of friction.

How Measurement Fails Us

The problem is more philosophical than operational. Too many of the metrics employed in contemporary management are expressions of distrust and disbelief.

Their use is based on a fundamentally negative world view rooted in desire for control grounded in fear of failure.

Measurement is a tool optimally employed to encourage mutually beneficial forward progress. JL

Robert Wachter comments in the New York Times:

Even superb and motivated professionals believe that the boatloads of measures, and the incentives to “look good,” led them to turn away from the essence of their work. We’re hitting the targets, but missing the point.

Would You Really Be More Productive With a Digital Assistant?

Maybe if the PDA could intuit what you want and set itself up rather than relying on you to understand the manual? JL

Hayley Tsukayama reports in the Washington Post:

After managing all of my assistants for a few months, I'm inclined to agree that the most promising ones are those that can actually do something for you. At the very least, I'd like to at least be able to say these assistants save you enough time to pay you back for what you do setting them up. I can't say that yet, for any of the assistants I tested.

The Modern Purpose of a Brand

Whenever we read or hear that brands are no longer about selling something we should ask ourselves whether this is because we are at a moment of transition in which the customer's relationship with the product or service is changing OR whether this is the result of a change which the marketing community has not yet been able to figure out.

Either way, it is about lack of good information. That is a dire threat for some - and an unparalleled opportunity for others. JL

Blake Morgan comments in Forbes:

The purpose of the brand is no longer purely about creating a customer. Brands are like diseases that travel and infect people. They’re trying to colonize and survive – in this case in the minds of human beings.

The Cathedral of Computation

Are we maybe just a little too much in love with our data and the algorithms that massage it for us? JL


Ian Bogost comments in The Atlantic:

Science and technology have become so pervasive and distorted, they have turned into a new type of theology. In the age of software, we have come to think of them as operating “like computers.” But the changes, neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain’s plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level.

What Lies Ahead For Marketing in an Ad-Free Future?

The challenge is how to become unavoidable without being unpalatable. JL

Jack Neff comments in Advertising Age:

55% of viewership is now delayed via DVRs, video-streaming subscriptions or other options. And that number rises to 72% among millennials ages 14 to 25. For the first time, more people now watch TV on demand than live. Money is also flowing into the least avoidable forms of digital advertising, which happen to be owned by Google and Facebook. The two dominate digital ad revenue, accounting for 60% of the market

Drop in Venture Capital Funding Shows Caution Growing

Following the money, not the vaporware. JL

Leslie Hook reports in the Financial Times:

Venture capital investment in US tech start-ups fell by a third in the fourth quarter. The drop was most pronounced in semiconductors and business services, which fell by 60 per cent and 75 per cent respectively. Other sectors boomed, with funds invested in financial services nearly tripling compared with 2014. Investment in life sciences deals was up 12 per cent year-on-year.

The Other Side of Paradise: Reality's a Bitch in Glamorous Tech Start-Ups

If it were really fun and easy, would they pay the money they do? JL

The Economist reports:

A survey of 5,000 workers at both tech and non-tech firm found that many of them feel alienated, trapped, underappreciated. Only 19% of tech employees said they were happy in their jobs and only 17% said they felt valued in their work. 36% of techies felt they had a clear career path compared with 50% of workers in marketing and finance; and 47% of techies said they had good relations with their work colleagues compared with 56% of non-techies.

Why Top Companies and MBA Programs Are Teaching Improv

The business world, especially in the leadership tier, is increasingly structured to insulate those in it from failure. But success in the global economy increasingly requires enduring adversity and recovering from it.

Training leaders to expose themselves to risk is one way to develop those who can manage in this sort of environment. JL

Vivian Giang reports in Fast Company:

Curveballs don’t just happen on stage at improv classes; they also happen in the ever-changing business world. This is said to inspire adaptability, which becomes a particularly useful skill to have in the current global business landscape. Additionally, the improv classes force students to actively listen, which in turn make them better communicators.

Walmart's Closure of 164 Stores Is Really About the Failure of Its Small Store Strategy

Running out of suburbs and rural markets in which to open new stores, Walmart tried to enter the urban market using a smaller format tied to the needs of city dwellers with little time, few parking options - and often, no cars.

It seems that the company's cost structure and distribution system could not efficiently support this approach. The question is what that may portend for its future growth. JL

Brad Tuttle reports in CNN/Money:

Walmart’s announced in early 2014 that it would be doubling its smaller stores, designed to compete with dollar stores and small discount supermarkets. Fast forward to 2016 and, abruptly, Walmart announced that it is closing 154 stores in the U.S., including all 102 Walmart Express outlets, the company’s smallest format. Walmart built its business by using sheer size to keep costs down, thereby enabling it to offer shoppers low prices and still turn a profit. What worked for XXL stores wouldn’t work for mini-mart(s).

Marketing in the Moment, To Reach the Mobile Customer

The target is shrinking but the capabilities to hit have not kept up. Yet. JL

Robert Hof reports in the New York Times:

The attention span of consumers today is, what, eight seconds? You get one shot.To build brands, an effort that accounts for the majority of ad spending, companies need more than a moment. And few marketers currently have all the skills needed for moments-based marketing.

Do Employees Today Really Only Stay One or Two Years?

In a word, no. In a few words, the data show that when they are actually employed (...) they stay longer in their jobs today than they did a generation ago. Just sayin.' JL

David Sturt and Todd Nordstrom report in Forbes:

Assumptions in the corporate world today unfairly label employees as un-dedicated. They label an entire generation as “job-hoppers.” All of these assumptions are dangerous and costly. According to research from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employees today stay longer with a company than they did 25 years ago.

The Massive Void in Financial Technology

The question may be not whether financial technology is considered useful and accessible by consumers, but when they may decide it is better than the traditional alternative.

Market meltdowns could aid in accentuating the acceptability of change. JL 

Oscar Williams-Grut reports in Business Insider:

The problem is that while there's plenty of data on funding, volumes, and startup activity in the sector, there's much less information on the people actually using these services. Can (they) really deliver on their promise of democratising finance and giving the banks a run for their money.

Why Leadership Intangibles Are Important For Valuation

Valuations in the post-industrial service economy have relied increasingly on intangibles, those factors that drive business performance but are not captured by traditional financial reporting.

The dominance of technology in the broader economy and the companies that produce it has further emphasized the significance of these factors.

Ultimately, many of them derive their power from leadership and its component elements like communication, management skill and psychology. The issue in applying them is not whether can be measured, but with all the data now available, how smart organizations can do so. JL

Dave Ulrich is excerpted in SmartBlog:

Market to book value — which is what traditional accounting measures — represents only 10% to 15% of the value of companies. The more non-financial measures analysts use, the more accurate their earnings forecasts prove to be. Intangibles could be clustered into four broad categories all of which depend heavily on the behavior of leaders.

New York Police Department To Charge TV News $36,000 For Body Cam Footage

The cost of surveillance versus the price of transparency. Society has a stake in both. It will fascinating to see which one the courts and the citizenry consider a higher priority. JL

David Kravets reports in ars technica:

NYPD says it will cost $120 an hour to review, redact and process footage. The network is suing (PDF) the department in state court, complaining that the bill runs "counter to both the public policy of openness underlying FOIL, as well as the purported transparency supposedly fostered by the BWC (body worn camera) program itself.

Tech Companies Want AI To Solve Global Warming. Can It?

The usual concerns about ethics and unintended consequences may actually be taken seriously this time. JL

Will Knight reports in the MIT Technology Review:

A steady stream of advances— enabled by the latest machine-learning techniques—are empowering computers, from recognizing the contents of images to holding short text or voice conversations. These advances seem destined to change the way computers are used in many industries, but it’s far from clear how the industry will go from captioning images to tackling poverty and climate change.

The Most Edited Wikipedia Pages

Death, weather, pop culture, politics and, of course (?!), creationism...JL

Andrew Flowers and Carl Bialik report in 538:

Surprising entries that were edited heavily over the years: a compilation of mathematics concepts, in 2002; Sexual slang, in 2004; and List of works by Eugène Guillaume, in both 2013 and 2014. (Guillaume was a French sculptor, by the way. Thanks, Wikipedia!)

Google Maps Recommend Destinations Based on User's History

At what point will advertisers be permitted to influence Google's recommendations - and then further down the road, what's to prevent Google from penalizing those who don't follow its suggestions? JL

Alistair Barr reports in the Wall Street Journal:

It is part of a broader push by the company to answer questions, proactively, rather than waiting for people to type a search query into a white box online.This is in response to users switching online activity to smartphones, which are harder to type on than personal computers but provide more data for Google to make useful predictions.

What Millennials Want From a Job

How utterly rational, contrary to the usual criticisms in the mainstream media...JL

Business Insider reports:

When money is removed from the equation, work/life balance and opportunities to progress or take on leadership roles stand out. Those factors are followed by flexible working arrangements, deriving a sense of meaning, and training programs that support professional development.

The Year When the Machines Started Taking Over

Whether this will be good or bad remains to be seen, but there seems little doubt that most humans weren't really paying much attention. JL

Vivek Wadhwa reports in Tech Crunch:

2015 was the tipping point in the global adoption of the Internet, digital medical devices, blockchain, gene editing, drones, and solar energy.  2016 will be the beginning of an even bigger revolution.