10 Things Really Amazing Employees Do

Here are ten traits that any great employer should recognize and reward instantly.

As a longtime employer of dozens, I was always grateful to have good employees. It takes a lot to recruit and maintain top talent. Every once in a while special employees come along that just really seem to get it. They drive the entire company forward in ways that were unimaginable. Advancement and reward is never an issue for these rock stars because they understand the power of cause and effect, and only a worthy company can retain them and afford them.

Here are 10 things amazing employees seem to do effortlessly. Here's how to help your great employees be even more amazing.

1. Enthusiastically Learn All Aspects of Business

They understand they're part of something bigger and more worthwhile than just their job. They look to learn other areas of the business and be fluent in finance and management so they'll positively impact multiple areas of the company.

What you can do: Invest in material and seminars on business basics like accounting, marketing, and management so all employees have easy access to learn and grow.

2. Steward the Company

They treat the company as if it were theirs. They look to make prudent decisions about expenses and opportunities with the long-term future of the company in mind. They easily assess risk vs. reward, selflessly when making decisions.

What you can do: Be transparent in your business. The more you share your financials and philosophy, the easier it is for employees to make the right decisions.

3. Generate Viable Opportunities

You don't have to be in sales or marketing to help a company grow. Strong networkers from all divisions see company growth as a collective effort and constantly keep their eyes open for ways to more than pay for themselves.

What you can do: Make sure all your employees understand your value proposition and can easily identify opportunities. Then reward them openly for their efforts.

4. Resolve Issues Before They Are Issues

My favorite days running companies are when I notice positive change in procedure when I was totally unaware of the need for change. Amazing employees are always looking to improve systems proactively, and they do.

What you can do: Communicate a clear written vision of where the company is going and encourage initiative so people feel safe and empowered to make change.

5. Tell It Like It Is

Amazing employees understand that hiding bad news helps no one. They find kind ways to bring uncomfortable information to the surface, but they DO bring it to the surface. They tell people what's necessary before major damage is done.

What you can do: Foster an open communication environment where people are not only given permission to tell the truth, but also absolutely required.

6. Demonstrate High Standards, With Low Maintenance

I always feel relaxed when I can trust an employee to perform a task to the same high standards I would expect from myself. Not all can do this without constant attention or difficulty. Amazing employees quietly drive their own high standards.

What you can do: Set the example and the tone for high performance with minimal drama. Publicly reward those who can execute in the same manner.

7. Grow Themselves, and Others

They not only drive their own career but they inspire others to do the same. These employees lead by example in how to advance without creating animosity or resentment. They see and create their perfect future, and also bring others along.

What you can do: Encourage personal development and peer growth through dedicated group time and learning for career advancement.

8. Research, Apply, and Refine

No employer expects people to know everything. In this fast changing world, I choose employees who will learn over those who know. The best employee proactively explores options, takes action and then improves without direction from the top.

What you can do: Invest time in exploration and expansive thinking. Encourage people to explore deep visionary projects with time and reward for the findings.

9. Stimulate Happiness

Amazing employees aren't always sunshine and roses. They do know how to keep it real. But they understand the dynamics of people, stress, and the blend of work, life and friendship. They are self-aware and able to direct their own path that brings out their best with family, friends and career. They exude positive energy even in stressful times and share it around, making for a happier office.

What you can do: Create an environment where people can openly express themselves. Encourage them to work hard in fulfilling ways and achieve their dreams.

10. Facilitate Amazing Bosses

Amazing employees make me grow as an employer. They self-confidently get their value and help me get mine. They make me want to be worthy of working with somebody of such high caliber, without ever saying it directly of course.

What you can do: Make effort to genuinely show appreciation for any of the behaviors above so people feel their value and will grow to full potential. Then they will do the same for you.

An Inc. 500 entrepreneur with a more than $1 billion sales and marketing track record, Kevin Daum is the best-selling author of Video Marketing for Dummies. @awesomeroar

When it comes to big data, don't forget the network

March 5, 2013 | By Tim McElligott

Most of the focus in the big data marketplace has rightfully been on the storage, retrieval, analysis and security of information. But another important factor, especially when data is being shared across many entities, is the network that connects it all. The network got its share of attention recently as Mobile World Congress shed the light on mobile.

Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research, said in Network World that so far, big data has been a data center issue, but that the issues are bigger than that. It is now also a network concern.

Mobile operators already have capacity concerns, that's a given, Kerravala said. But with mobile applications really just beginning to come to market and making better use of location, presence and other data, the increasing "dependence on these devices increase and network performance becomes a key differentiator for mobile operators."

He said core networks will have to migrate to 40G and 100G backbones, which will present more challenges for analyzing all that network traffic when the spigots are opened up.

The rest of the mobile economy is counting on the reliability and real-time delivery of usage data to fuel their own strategic marketing and service delivery plans. If operators want to monetize their big pipes, they will have to respond with reliable service and data delivery.

Andy Huckridge, director of service provider solutions at Gigamon, echoed this sentiment in a statement about the company's mobile operator product announcement last week. He said "Big data is no longer a problem unique to enterprise data centers. Mobile carriers are now facing a deluge of traffic in their pipes, from an increasingly mobile workforce and the proliferation of smart devices and applications."

Gigamon introduced its Visibility Fabric architecture, which will facilitate a cost-effective solution for connecting single or multiple 40GB and 100GB pipes to 10GB and 1GB analytic tools. 

FCC's Genachowski: We'll investigate ruling on unlocked phones

March 4, 2013 | By Phil Goldstein

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said that the agency will look into a government ruling restricting consumers from unlocking their cell phones to see if it harms competition and whether the executive branch can do anything about it. As of now, a White House petition to rescind the ruling has received 114,244 signatures, well above the 100,000-threshold needed to trigger a White House response. The "ban raises competition concerns; it raises innovation concerns," Genachowski said at a recent TechCrunch CrunchGov event.

The petition, started Jan. 25 by OpenSignal co-founder Sina Khanifar, asked that "the White House ask the Librarian of Congress to rescind this decision, and failing that, champion a bill that makes unlocking permanently legal." Currently, if U.S. mobile customers want to unlock their handset and bring it to another carrier, they now need express permission from their current carrier to do so, according to a government ruling that went into effect Jan. 26. In effect, the Library of Congress, which governs copyright law, said that there is no copyright exemption for unlocking cellphones, making unauthorized unlocking potentially illegal.

Despite Genachowski's indication that the FCC will look into the ruling, it's not clear what he or the FCC can do since the Library of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office are part of the legislative branch, not the executive branch. Therefore, Congress would need to pass a law overturning the decision since the Obama administration cannot force the Library of Congress to do so. "It's something that we will look at at the FCC to see if we can and should enable consumers to use unlocked phones," Genachowski said. 

tw telecom's Intelligent Network

Verizon's Shammo: We'll convert 300,000 homes to fiber in 2013

March 4, 2013 | By Sean Buckley

Verizon's (NYSE: VZ) ongoing plan to migrate customers from its aging copper-based voice and DSL products to fiber-based FiOS will gain momentum in 2013 as it looks to reduce network maintenance costs on problematic copper lines.

Speaking on Monday at the Deutsche Bank 21st Annual Media, Internet & Telecom Conference, Fran Shammo, CFO and EVP of Verizon, said the company is focused on playing up the broadband side of FiOS and the speeds that consumers can get with a Fiber to the Home (FTTH) connection.

"[Y]ou think about our copper to fiber migration, which we started last year where we did 200,000 homes, and this year we'll do 300,000 homes," he said.

The copper to fiber migration was accelerated in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy damaged a major portion of Verizon's copper-based facilities, particularly in New York City and in parts of New Jersey.

While Verizon will provide a similar rate and speed for any customer who migrates from copper to fiber, consumers have the option to upgrade to a higher speed when they are ready.

"As we move people from copper to fiber, we price them at the same rate, but then we give them the choice to upgrade that speed from 15 Mbps to 25 or 50 Mbps," Shammo said. "What we are seeing is that people are willing to pay for that additional speed so we can monetize that fiber network more."

On the consumer side of Verizon's wireline business, FiOS has continued to perform well. FiOS will be responsible for almost 70 percent of consumer revenue, and it has reduced losses of traditional landline phone customers to 3 to 4 percent.

At the end of Q4 2012, Verizon had a total of 5.4 million FiOS Internet and 4.7 million FiOS video connections, representing year-over-year increases of 12.6 percent and 13.3 percent respectively. FiOS customer ARPU was more than $150 in the quarter as consumers took higher speeds and bundled TV and voice services with FiOS broadband data services.

"We are starting to monetize the FiOS networks more through speed of the Internet and our content costs are growing around 3 to 4 percent while our competitors are at the 10 percent range," Shammo said. "There are a lot of things working in the FiOS favor, and FiOS on the consumer side will increase margin and increase profit."

However, Shammo said gains in FiOS will be offset by its new Redbox venture and its Digital Media Services, both of which will start generating a small amount of revenue this year.

In addition to the consumer markets, Shammo said the company is "looking at the FiOS backbone to deliver enterprise solutions," but he did not provide any details about what those plans are. 

Read more: Verizon's Shammo: We'll convert 300,000 homes to fiber in 2013 - FierceTelecom http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/verizons-shammo-well-convert-300000-homes-fiber-2013/2013-03-04#ixzz2Mb6jbvrq

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FTC responds to Google lobbying scandal

Luke Stangel

Mar 1, 2013, 12:57pm PST

The chairman of the FTC today responded to reports that Google partially paid for a banquet where he received an award, saying he didn’t know who the banquet’s sponsors were.

Bloomberg reports Google donated $25,000 to Common Sense Media, an advocacy group, which used the money to throw a party in April 2012 honoring FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz.

At the time, the FTC was investigating Google for alleged antitrust violations. The government settled their investigation in January

In funding the party, Common Sense Media also took donations from Comcast, AOL and a charitable arm of Goldman Sachs.

Google is the tech industry’s largest lobbyist. In 2012, Google spent $18.2 million on Washington D.C. lobbyists, nearly twice the amount it spent in 2011.

tw telecom, Level 3 dominate the competitive Ethernet market

March 1, 2013 | By Sean Buckley

Competitive service providers, according to Vertical Systems Group's latest Ethernet Leaderboard, are finding their way into the hearts and minds of the business service market.

Taking a spot on the Competitive Provider Leaderboard are seven CLECs: tw telecom (Nasdaq: TWTC), Level 3 (NYSE: LVLT), XO, Cogent (Nasdaq: CCOI), Zayo, Reliance Globalcom and Integra.

The competitive Ethernet services market, according to Vertical Systems Group, is part of the broader Ethernet services ecosystem, which also includes incumbent providers and cable MSOs.

What stands out about the competitive Ethernet service market is that it includes a diverse landscape of players.

"We have a lot of different types as companies; they are not as homogenous as the cable companies or the incumbents," said Rosemary Cochran, principal of VSG, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "They came from different places with different models."

Insurgents take charge

Taking the top spot on the competitive provider Leaderboard is tw telecom, which took an early bet on Ethernet when most traditional service providers were still stuck on delivering traditional T1 and Frame Relay services. 

Already present in over 75 markets with a deep set of fiber assets, tw telecom has seen consistent Ethernet growth each quarter. In Q4 2012, the CLEC reported that data and Internet services revenues increased 4.6 percent sequentially to $197.8 million as the result of an increase in strategic Ethernet and VPN-based product sales.

One of tw telecom's differentiators is its one-to-many national Ethernet interconnection solution and Dynamic Capacity capabilities. The one-to-many feature enables other competitive providers to instantly expand their out-of-region Ethernet and network reach, while its Dynamic Capacity product allows existing customers to dial up bandwidth as needed.

"tw telecom is clearly the leader here," Cochran said. "The focus on building new capabilities like Dynamic Bandwidth and user-controlled network management has given them a boost on the Ethernet side."

Taking the number two and three spots are Level 3 and XO, although, Cochran noted, it's a "real dead heat between the two."Level 3 expanded its Ethernet and VPN service presence by acquiring Global Crossing, while XO built a greater metro Ethernet presence with a mix of fiber and Ethernet over Copper (EoC).

New stars rising

Outside of the top three Ethernet competitive providers is a group of rising stars that have been taking charge of growing opportunities through a mix of organic growth and targeted acquisitions.

One of the latest entries to rise in the competitive Ethernet market is Integra.

Initially focused on the SMB market, Integra expanded its presence in larger businesses via its ongoing fiber buildouts into new buildings complemented by a growing EoC footprint. As its appeal grows among larger customers as a solutions provider with various IP products, the CLEC rebranded itself as "Integra," dropping "Telecom" from its name.

Joe Harding, Integra's VP of marketing, said in a recent interview with FierceTelecom that 61 percent of Integra's customers bill $1,000 a month, while its fastest growing segment is multi-location customers that spend $5,000 a month.

In tandem with Ethernet, the service provider has been building out other new services, including managed security and wavelength services.

"Integra has had very strong growth and very price competitive serving the Western states," Cochran said.

Zayo, meanwhile, has been growing its retail Ethernet base through various acquisitions over the past seven years to increase its fiber footprint in key regions such as Washington, D.C. and Southern states.

One of the most significant and largest acquisitions it made was AboveNet, a competitive provider focused on providing higher end bandwidth solutions to market segments such as the financial industry and the research and education arena. This has had an effect on its retail Ethernet base.

By acquiring AboveNet, Zayo expanded its fiber footprint and service portfolio, and gained a set of sales people to sell retail services.

"Zayo is well positioned because they have picked up the AboveNet customer base, including financial companies," Cochran said.

Finally, Cogent and Reliance are making progress with their own focused Ethernet market methods.

Touting itself as the low-cost Ethernet provider, Cogent has been primarily focused on providing Dedicated Internet Access (DIA). Similar to other competitive providers, Cogent continues to enhance its reach, adding 35 new on-net buildings in Q4 2012, ending the quarter with a total of 1,867 on-net buildings.

"Cogent's portfolio is more focused on DIA and private lines and they stick to where their footprint is," Cochran said. "They are not going out and doing NNIs with those customers because that's not their focus, but they are growing."

While Reliance has been quiet on the marketing side, the service provider brings two benefits to business customers that have Ethernet needs: international reach for MNCs (multinational corporations), and U.S. Ethernet services assets it purchased from Yipes, one of the early Ethernet service providers.

"They have maintained a level there through what they bought through Yipes plus the multinational companies that need U.S. presence, just as AT&T and Verizon have multinational customers," Cochran said. 

Despite the differences of all of these players, the competitive telecom industry is filling the void for larger businesses to address the needs of both small and medium-sized businesses that feel underserved by traditional large telcos.   

IBM, Deutsche Telekom Team on Smarter Cities Effort

By Darryl K. Taft  |  Posted 2013-02-23

IBM and Deutsche Telekom announced a collaboration to deliver integrated solutions for Smarter Cities projects around the world.

IBM and Deutsche Telekom have announced a new partnership to deliver an integrated solutions portfolio that enables cities to make better use of their services through intelligent data capture and analysis.

The jointly delivered Smarter Cities solutions will build on IBM's expertise from thousands of smarter city engagements combined with Deutsche Telekom's Machine-to-Machine (M2M) capabilities, which include M2M solutions integration and advanced network connectivity.

The M2M communication technology facilitates the automated exchange of information between terminal equipment such as machines, vehicles and containers or with a central control center – creating an interconnectivity often referred to as the “Internet of Things,” IBM said.

”Cities are asking their trusted providers to deliver new ways to help them become more innovative,” said Michael J Dixon, general manager of the IBM Global Smarter Cities effort, in a statement. “This initiative demonstrates how IBM is working with clients and partners to find new and sustainable ways to solve pressing client challenges."

By using sensors embedded in an array of systems serving the public -- such as a traffic lights, public transport vehicles or parking spaces -- M2M technology can report on the status of the system being monitored via the Internet in real-time. Combining this technology with IBM’s Smarter Cities expertise will enable intelligent, real-time decision-making allowing for services such as intelligent traffic management, route optimization, bus or train arrival prediction, and parking space management. These are tenets of IBM’s Smarter Cities strategy, which is part of Big Blue’s overall Smarter Planet initiative. Both efforts leverage IBM’s big data and business analytics expertise and broad portfolio of products and services.

The Smarter Cities solutions from Deutsche Telekom and IBM will benefit municipalities as they deliver cost efficiencies through better use of their existing infrastructure and improved planning of resources, IBM said. This will help cities more quickly design and deploy next-generation intelligence systems that improve sustainability. It will also improve the quality of life for citizens, who will be able to anticipate traffic delays and bus or train arrivals when travelling, find public parking spots more easily, and gain improved access to an array of relevant city information and services.

“M2M is a technology with enormous growth potential as it adds real value to our daily lives, both in business and privately,” said Thomas Kiessling, Chief Product and Innovation Officer at Deutsche Telekom, in a statement. “Our joint Smarter Cities initiative gives us the opportunity to work with cities across the globe and offer them valuable end-to-end solutions that help support public welfare as well as their economic growth in the future.”

The alliance is based on the two companies’ common interest and complementary capabilities in growing the M2M end-to-end solutions market. As part of the collaboration, IBM will contribute its smarter cities expertise, as well as deliver technology systems that gather real time data from various services, applications and device end points, enabling massive amounts of big data to be transformed into insight to help cities make better operational decisions. Deutsche Telekom, with a business presence in more than 50 countries around the world and a well established global M2M ecosystem, will provide cities with pervasive M2M connectivity to these technologies and services, as well as SIM card access management and M2M solutions integration expertise.

To highlight the many potential ways this new technology can be applied, Deutsche Telekom and IBM will feature a variety of Smarter City demos in the GSMA Connected City Pavilion at the Mobile World Congress 2013 show running February 25 through February 28 in Barcelona. The Intelligent Transport and Smarter Parking demos will showcase how data collected from roads, buses and parking spots can be leveraged to predict traffic and bus arrival, anticipate delays and proactively coordinate resources to operate cities' transportation systems more effectively.

Deutsche Telekom is considered one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with more than 131 million mobile customers, 33 million fixed-network lines and over 17 million broadband lines as of September 30, 2012. M2M is a strategic priority for Deutsche Telekom in the coming years. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the number of connected devices will rise tenfold from 5 billion today to 50 billion by 2020. Deutsche Telekom is positioning itself to be a leading provider of cross-industry M2M solutions and offers its customers, in cooperation with competent partners, complete solutions from a single source.

Petition on Unlocking Smartphones Will Be Addressed by White House

By Michelle Maisto  |  Posted 2013-02-22

A petition asking the White House to reverse a ruling on unlocking devices has surpassed the 100,000 votes needed to garner an official response.

A Whitehouse.gov petition asking the White House to help change the fact that it's now illegal to unlock a mobile phone, even one no longer under contract with a wireless carrier, has exceeded 100,000 signatures—the minimum required for the White House to acknowledge it.

On Jan. 26, it became illegal to unlock a locked device, after an Oct. 26 2012 ruling by the Librarian of Congress went into effect. The ruling was based on the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which states, "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

A locked device can only be used on the wireless network of the carrier that sold it.

The petition, which was formed two days before the ruling became law, argued: "Consumers will be forced to pay exorbitant roaming fees to make calls while traveling abroad. It reduces consumer choice, and decreases the resale value of devices that consumers have paid for in full."

The petition adds that while the Librarian, in his ruling, states that phones are increasingly being offered unlocked, the "great majority" are still sold locked to the carrier that subsidized it.

"We ask that the White House ask the Librarian of Congress to rescind this decision," the petition concluded, "and failing that, champion a bill that makes unlocking permanently legal."

According to Thompson Reuters, the petition was initiated by Sina Khanifar, a San Francisco-based entrepreneur "who was threated with legal action by Motorola for launching and [unlocking a] tool in 2004."

The petition needed to reach 100,000 signatures by Feb. 23. As of Feb. 22, it had 107, 945 signatures.

Despite the ruling, it's not impossible to legally unlock a phone. AT&T will give customers whose contracts have expired a code to unlock their phones legally; those customers just have to call and ask.

T-Mobile has a policy of unlocking phones, also upon request, after 90 days of service. The policies of Verizon Wireless and Sprint are hazier.

According to Sherwin Siy, vice president of legal affairs at consumer watchdog group Public Knowledge, fines for illegally unlocking a phone can range from a fine of $2,500 to potentially being prosecuted for up to $500,000 and imprisoned for five years. For, yes, wanting to use a phone you paid for and own on a different carrier's network.

"Suffice to say, it's a little ridiculous to think that copyright laws are intended to prevent people from switching between different phone providers easily," Siy blogged the day before the ruling went into effect. "Instead of being used to reward authors and creators ... it's being used to lock customers in to their existing providers, hurting their ability to vote with their feet and switch to a competitor."

Once the appropriate White House policy officials review the petition, explains the petition Website, someone will issue an official response, which will be posted to the petition page and emailed to everyone who signed the petition.

The site also quotes the First Amendment of the Constitution, which states that Congress can't prohibit the right for people to peaceably assemble or "to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

China's Cyber-War against U.S. IT Assets Demands a Strong Response

By Wayne Rash  |  Posted 2013-02-21

NEWS ANALYSIS: For a long time nobody in the government wanted to talk about the stealthy cyber-war the Chinese government was waging against the U.S. It's time to shine some light on what's been going on.

The news broke over Washington like the flash of an exploding meteor. China, according to The Washington Post, had hacked its way into the computers of virtually every institution in the city.

Every government agency, every defense contractor, and nearly every human rights group, Congressional office, law firm, embassy and news organization. The attacks on the nation's capital were so massive that it probably would be easier to list the organizations that had been missed, assuming there are any.

Worse, the attacks have been mostly successful. The Chinese state-sponsored hackers have collected terabytes of information. In fact, the collection of information is so massive that the biggest question isn't what they got, but how they plan to process it all.

What's worse is that the Chinese hacking attempts have been so massive that there are many indications that cyber-spies from Russia, France and Israel have also been snooping around Washington institutions, using the hacking activity by China as cover.

Right now, it's not clear how successful those three nations have been because they've either covered their tracks so well that we can't find out or they never accomplished much. Considering the players involved, my guess is that Russia and Israel probably got what they wanted and left without evidence. The motives and goals of the French are less clear.

But what is clear is that the Chinese attacks on Washington and on the U.S. government and its contractors are tantamount to waging a true cyber-war. These attacks aren't like the ones reported by Mandiant in which the spying was economic and was aimed at benefiting Chinese businesses and economic activity. The attacks on Washington are military spying, pure and simple.

So the question is why aren't U.S. government officials talking about it yet? Sure, there are many news organizations, including The Washington Post, that are admitting that they've been penetrated. Plenty of security experts are giving specifics of who or what has been attacked by whom and revealing details on what was taken. But the U.S. government is silent on the topic.

Initially, it was easy to see why this might be so. The U.S. military and intelligence community didn't want to admit their networks and databases had been penetrated, because they didn't want the Chinese to know how successful they'd been. But that time has passed. Everyone knows what the Chinese are up to, and everyone has been hacked. So, why the secrecy?

When criminal activity is going on, it frequently helps to make the activity public. Crooks hate exposure, which is why security lights and cameras work fairly well. The same is true of covert military and intelligence operations. The Chinese, like every other gang of spies, hate to be uncovered. They're embarrassed. They lose face.

This is exactly why the Chinese should have their collective noses rubbed in it. This is why the U.S., with proof of the attacks in hand, should say what happened, who did it and what they did, all the while pointing fingers at the Chinese government that sponsored the hackers. While there could be some diplomatic repercussions, I'm not sure how significant they might be. After all, China is already attacking us.

But there's one thing criminals and spies hate more than having a light shined on their activities: It's having to deal with the consequences of their actions. Right now, the Chinese are betting that we'll never take action of any kind and that they'll simply be allowed to break in to whatever they want and take whatever they want while the U.S. sits around whimpering furtively.

But perhaps the time has come to stop whimpering and start delivering consequences. We know who they are, we know where they are. We can deliver a response in the form of a cyber-attack of our own if only we could gather the political will.

But it would, in other words, take guts. It would take someone who is willing to make the Chinese pay for their actions by having their networks taken down, their data erased and their base of operations made useless.

Then it would mean that the Chinese would lie defenseless before us while we sucked them dry of the information they've gathered from us, as well as whatever else they may have handy. The military secrets of the Chinese, for example.

This sounds like war, you say? That's because it is. This is the long-talked-about "cyber Pearl Harbor." The nation's innermost secrets have been laid bare. Worst of all, we may not know for many years into the future how this relentless cyber-spying campaign has compromised the nation's security, its military readiness or the integrity of our critical infrastructure.

China has had a free hand with our IT systems. Returning the favor—in spades—is the least we can do.

Google switches on Google+ sign-ins, in-app posting

Third-party apps and Web sites can now incorporate a sign-on service that resembles Facebook Connect or Sign in with Twitter, but with some Googley twists.

by Declan McCullagh  February 26, 2013 8:05 AM PST

How a Web site can ask users to sign in with their Google accounts. Android and iOS apps follow a similar process.

(Credit: Google)

Google has just made its Google+ platform much more social.

The company today will announce a significant new challenge to Facebook and Twitter by allowing Google accounts to be used when signing into apps and Web sites, a move that could weave Google accounts more tightly into the fabric of the Internet.

Mobile and Web developers will be able to accept Google sign-ins and -- depending on the permissions that the app requests and the user chooses to authorize -- gain access to Google+ social sharing. This follows the lead of other services such as Google Drive and Google Calendar that already have permitted developers full access.

"This is one of the most significant launches that has come out of the Google+ platform," David Glazer, engineering director at Google+, told CNET.

Glazer offered the example of Fitbit, the personal fitness startup in San Francisco that's one of the companies that Google worked with prior to today's announcement.

Fitbit previously permitted people to create a new account or sign in with Facebook; it now will also allow sign-ins with Google accounts, complete with the customary security procedures including two-step authentication, if enabled. Fitbit customers can elect to share information through Google+ with specific people, certain circles, or nobody else at all.

Some of the other companies that have already incorporated Google+ sign-ins are TheFancy.com, Flixster.com, the UK Guardian newspaper, and USA Today. Michael Silverman, co-founder of TheFancy.com, said in a new YouTube video that Google+ is a "better" way to sign on to his company's site because "you don't have to create a whole new username and password -- you just click the button and you're ready to go."

Even though its social platform is approaching its two-year anniversary, Google has lagged behind its competitors when offering third-party sign-ins: Facebook Connect is a little over four years old, and Twitter has permitted sign-ins since 2009. LinkedIn offers a similar sign-in option.

"No social spam!"

Today's announcement partially responds to complaints that there has been no way for third-party developers to allow their users to post updates or news to Google+.

Google has moved cautiously, even slowly, in opening up its social network to developers. In September 2011, Google offered a limited API for only public Google+ data, and followed it with Google+ history access last summer.

Google+ head Vic Gundotra wrote last August that he was responsible for limiting third-party developers' write access to the service. His explanation: "I've repeatedly stated the reason -- I'm not interested in screwing over developers. When we open an API, we want developers to feel confident that the innovations they build are going to be long lasting. Releasing an API, and then later changing the rules of the game isn't fun for anyone, especially developers who've spent their life's energies building on the platform."

The problem, of course, is that your Google+ stream could be overwhelmed if third-party apps or Web sites post too frequently. It presents a Facebook EdgeRank-like challenge: how to balance users' desires to share with a desire by friends, family, and colleagues not to be spammed with dozens of app-generated messages an hour?

Glazer, the Google engineering director, said that his employer is confident that its algorithms can do a good job of finding that balance: "This is about taking relevance and applying it to social sharing....The principle is making the information available in the right place at the right time."

The way Glazer described it to CNET is that apps and Web sites will be able to post automatically to a page that can be viewed by someone visiting your Google+ home page and then clicking on the app's or site's icon -- essentially, an anti-spam-by-obscurity strategy.

Apps can also offer the option of sharing items with specific Google+ users, which will appear in their recipients' streams and not be relegated to obscurity. That form of more aggressive sharing requires affirmative user consent.

Today's announcement has a few twists:

• On Android devices only, using your Google account to sign into a Web site gives you the option to have that site's app automatically downloaded and installed on your mobile phone. You also have the option to decline. Apple does not allow that flexibility for iOS devices.

• Developers who are using custom programming environments -- for cross-platform coding, for instance -- may not benefit from the iOS or Android SDKs until those environments are updated. But they can still use Web-based authentication. (Details will be posted at developers.google.com/+.)

• Google+ streams now feature "interactive" posts with buttons that can trigger another app when tapped from a mobile device. Tapping the "Listen" button from an NPR Google+ post might launch NPR's app, for instance. Developers can select from a palette of about 100 different pre-defined buttons but are not currently permitted to create their own.

Verizon's Shammo: 50 Mbps is FiOS' sweet speed spot

Reaffirms copper-to-fiber transition initiative

February 26, 2013 | By Sean Buckley

Verizon (NYSE: VZ), like other established broadband service providers, is aware of Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) 1 Gbps FTTH experiment, but delivering those speeds is not an immediate concern.

Fran Shammo, EVP and CFO of Verizon, said on Monday during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference that they don't hear customers demanding Gbps broadband speeds.

"FiOS brings a very different perspective to the household with Fiber to the Home," he said. "We actually tested a 1 Gig circuit in New York three years ago so our FiOS product can deliver that but we just don't see the need yet from a household to have that much of a pipe into their home."

That's not to say that Verizon isn't being aggressive on the speed front. Last summer it introduced its FiOS Quantum product suite, which offers a 300 Mbps tier. The Quantum suite includes three other tiers: 50/25, 75/35, and 150/65 Mbps.

In an effort to entice more existing FiOS customers to subscribe to the higher tier products, Verizon launched a plan that will allow subscribers to upgrade to the 50/25 Mbps introductory Quantum tier for an additional $10 a month.

As it migrates more of its so-called "chronic" copper customers-- those that have more than three truck rolls a year--to fiber, Shammo said that they are purchasing not only higher speeds, but also more services like TV.

"With Quantum, we're allowing customers to buy up to the speed they want, including 300 Mbps for those who want it," he said. "What we're seeing as copper to fiber migrates, customers are buying up to that speed, and it looks like the speed that most customers are buying up to is 50 Mbps. That seems to be the sweet spot in the industry right now."

Shammo added that as consumers begin to use more connected devices in their homes, the telco will be able to address those needs with minimal investment "because I already put the fiber to the prem."

Verizon's copper to fiber migration was accelerated in late 2012 after Superstorm Sandy damaged a large portion of its copper wiring in New York City and New Jersey. Lowell McAdam, Verizon's CEO and chairman said during a recent investor conference that it will accelerate the migration of customers on its copper facilities to fiber in 2013.

In 2012, Verizon converted about 200,000 customers to fiber, but that number might be a bit higher due to Sandy's impact.

"The copper to fiber migration is another strategic initiative we're making to improve the wireline margin by reducing the cost of maintaining that copper plant," Shammo said.

The 10 hottest wireline technologies in 2013

February 20, 2013

by Sean Buckley

What are the hottest technologies in the wireline segment of the telecom indistry this year? Welcome to FierceTelecom's annual look at the technology and trends that are reshaping telecommunications.

One thing that we noticed in compiling this list is that many of these technologies or trends build on top of what came before. While there may be one person, or a group of people, that are credited with the development of a technology, many technologies end up taking on various forms that were never initially envisioned.

Take the Metro Ethernet Forum's Carrier Ethernet 2.0 specification. A key piece of CE 2.0 specification is centered on developing an interconnection process for eight standard service types when service providers have to establish a connection with a carrier partner to fulfill a service order.

Meantime, Ethernet has become an accepted wide area technology used by service providers for backhauling traffic and as a service that service providers offer to their large enterprise and SMB clients. 

Bob Metcalfe, who invented Ethernet at Xerox's PARC Research Center in 1973 with partner David Boggs, said during the recent Metro Ethernet Forum in San Diego that he never envisioned that the technology would be used outside of the corporate LAN. 

Then, there's VDSL2 and its new partners, Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM) and Vectoring. Pioneered by John Cioffi, who is credited as the "father of DSL," these techniques help traditional telcos expand the rate and reach of the bandwidth they can deliver over their copper plant.

If the telecom industry could have started its rollout of the PSTN again today from scratch, it's likely they would have used fiber. The reality is that traditional telcos built their last-mile networks with copper. Despite aggressive moves by Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and its FiOS service, carriers including AT&T (NYSE: T) and large incumbent European operators such as Deutsche Telekom are in the process of trialing or using these technologies to expand their respective customer bases and deliver higher speed broadband services over their existing copper networks.

What CE 2.0 and emerging copper technologies illustrate is that what today's hot technology is often the outgrowth of an idea or invention from decades ago. None of the technologies that made our list would have been possible without the initial foresight to lay the foundations that others built upon.

Opinions over what technologies are truly "hot" can vary, so I encourage you to weigh in with your thoughts and suggestions on this year's list

Coherent optics and 100G

Carrier Ethernet 2.0

Ethernet over Copper

Fiber to the Tower

Optical Transport Network

Software Defined Network

SIP Trunking

VDSL2 with bonding or vectoring

Virtual Network Interface Device

XG-PON 

This Is iMeet - Extended Cut

The key to making employees more productive (without bribes)

By Rachel Foster / February 12, 2013

Gone are the days when employees would use a single computer and phone for all of their business communications. Technology such as smartphones, tablets, cloud services and web conferencing has made it possible for employees to work anytime and anywhere. Although this level of connectivity can lead to a number of business benefits, many organizations struggle with connecting remote employees and ensuring they have all the communications tools they need to be productive.

Dax Nair, Allstream’s director of marketing for unified communications, discussed these challenges on the latest episode of The Business to Business Show on 570 News Talk Radio. According to Nair, many organizations are limited with their existing communications infrastructure and should unify all of their communications into one seamless system.

“On top of the basic telephony and voicemail that people have been using every day, we can now add web conferencing, video conferencing, instant messaging and other communications tools into the mix,” said Nair. “Unified communications is the technology that enables businesses to seamlessly bring communications across organizations – from anywhere, at any time and on any device and network.”

One of the biggest benefits of unified communications is that it improves response times when trying to connect with customers, partners and vendors. For example, you may currently need to give out ten different phone numbers if you want someone to reach you. With unified communications, you can give out just one number and it will ring through to you no matter where you are or what device you have on hand. This is also a huge benefit when sales people are on the road trying to connect with decision makers to close deals.

When choosing a unified communications solution, Nair states that it is important to consider the level of complexity in your work environment, such as how dispersed your organization is. You should also consider whether you want team members from different locations to work together, as unified communications can help you leverage skill sets from across the country or around the world.

Jury still out on value of business intelligence gamification

Madan Sheina, Lead Analyst, Information Management, Ovum

Gamification is being touted as a way to immerse more enterprise users more deeply in business processes and tasks. Gamification borrows heavily from interactive and reward & recognition elements from online games, and maps them to business goals to drive interactivity, participation, and (hopefully) better results. The thinking is simple: the more interesting it is, the more likely people are to engage. So how can business analytics benefit from gamification’s immersive impact? And is it a game that businesses would find worth playing?

Gamified BI is about competing on analytics

Ovum believes gamification has potential to improve business decision-making. The search for and discovery of BI and analytic insights has a “game-like” feel to it. Many BI systems resemble a gamified system that seeks to engage business users and change organizational behaviors to improve business performance and outcomes. Gamified functions also typically generate a lot of data for analysis. The key is providing users with an immersive data experience that drives them to improve on that information through exploration and feedback. Technically, this is enabled by the ability to access, navigate, and manipulate large data sets quickly and easily.

BI can benefit from gamification designs that engage users in collective and continuous querying and analyzing of data to solve a business problem, much like how consumer-focused “gamified” applications such as Foldit work. But with gamification, winning is not as important (or as valuable) as the experience of taking part (or competing). It’s the latter that drives usage and a more immersive BI experience.

Ultimately, gamification can be seen as a way to further operationalize BI by embedding it seamlessly into everyday knowledge work, albeit in a competitively friendly and fun way.

Gamification can enhance collaborative BI environments

Game-play concepts can be very relevant for enterprise collaboration. Games, by definition, are usually played in a competitive, multi-user environment and require interaction. BI processes are naturally collaborative in nature; few important business decisions are made in isolation. Participation requires similar game-play concepts that promote user behaviors that improve and share information.

However, gamification should not be mistaken for collaborative BI, which is about creating communities of users focused on solving a particular business problem with specific BI tools designed to answer specific queries. Collaborative BI systems allow users to perform a variety of actions, from creating content (analyses, reports, dashboards) to bookmarking to knowledge sharing. It is the act of contribution (and the recognition that accompanies it) that is intended to attract broader adoption and usage of the BI system as a whole.

While collaborative BI systems need to be backed by easily shared access to data and analysis tools, it goes beyond simply sharing information. The idea is that users benefit from the “experience” of interacting with not just the data, but also the organization as a whole. That’s where gamification comes into play. Rather than focusing on a specific query, it aims to provide a broader context on answering a business question from different perspectives by immersing users into a data and analysis experience.

Ovum believes that both are highly complementary. Gamification has a role to play in enhancing collaborative BI by encouraging participation and making the process more engaging through quasi-competitive environments. However, in order to succeed it must be designed with clear incentives and recognition, backed by functionality such as tagging, commenting, rating, and annotating reports.

Gamification as the new user interface for business analytics?

Arguably gamification can be seen as shaping a new user interface for conducting BI and analytics. However, it will not happen overnight. Attempts to put search-like interfaces in front of BI tools have largely failed. The mechanics of gaming, however, might force a change since existing BI and analytic interfaces, such as dashboards, will prove inadequate for enhancing the user experience. What’s needed is a much more appealing and intuitive user-interface design.

Gamified BI is still work in progress

Thus far, salesforce automation, CRM, and HR platforms are leading the way for integration of business applications and gamification platforms and functionality. However, Ovum canvassed all of the leading BI and analytics players and found that integration of gamification with BI is still in its infancy and at the periphery of vendors’ product designs. There are some pockets of interest starting to emerge, however – typically tied to collaborative and social BI integration efforts.

Perhaps a more interesting use case is using BI tools to analyze data generated by gamified systems – such as salesforce automation, CRM, and e-commerce systems. Bunchball, for example, currently uses gamification techniques to drive onboarding, training, and learning of complex software. The company has also built its own “analytics stack” using open source tools to provide customers with reports, dashboards, and a data warehouse that can be queried. Bunchball also maintains an internal team of data scientists that use Hadoop, predictive, and visualization tools to share analysis with customers.

BI vendors are treading carefully

As an emerging trend, gamification might be past the fad stage. But it is not yet clear whether fusing game principles with business processes and applications can become a viable, long-term concept that meets business objectives. Setting up and running token-like application environments can be tricky, and requires a fine balance to be struck between behavioral psychology and technology.

Right now there are only a handful of relevant, though still largely unproven, use cases to be seen. It’s hard to find anyone specifically focused on leveraging gamification to drive BI and analytic applications and processes. BI vendors are therefore naturally treading cautiously; badly thought-out gamification will invite skepticism, and may even back-fire.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future – for example, for specialized applications in war-gaming rooms for boards of directors or to encourage departments to compete against one another on analytics.

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Gartner: Samsung's sales dominance overshadowing Android brand

February 13, 2013 | By Jason Ankeny

Samsung Electronics dominated both worldwide smartphone sales and overall mobile phone sales in 2012, and research firm Gartner contends the manufacturer's brand is now eclipsing Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android brand in the minds of consumers.

Gartner reports that Samsung sold 64.5 million smartphones during the fourth quarter, up 85.3 percent over the final three months of 2011. The vendor sold 384.6 million phones last year, with smartphones accounting for 53.5 percent of that total, compared to 28 percent a year earlier. Samsung ended 2012 controlling 22 percent of worldwide mobile phone sales, ahead of Nokia (NYSE:NOK) at 19.1 percent and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) at 7.5 percent. Samsung's closest Android rival, ZTE, follows at 3.9 percent.

"With Samsung commanding over 42.5 percent of the Android market globally, and the next vendor at just 6 percent share, the Android brand is being overshadowed by Samsung's brand, with the Galaxy name nearly a synonym for Android phones in consumers' mind share," said Anshul Gupta, Gartner principal research analyst.

Worldwide mobile phone sales totaled 1.75 billion units in 2012, a 1.7 percent decline from 2011. Gartner chalks up the slide to weakening demand for feature phones as well as tough economic conditions, but notes smartphone sales reached a record 207.7 million units during the fourth quarter, a 38.3 percent year-over-year leap.

Android powered 69.7 percent of smartphones sold during the fourth quarter, compared to 51.3 percent a year earlier. Apple's iOS followed at 20.9 percent, sliding from 23.6 percent during the fourth quarter of 2011; BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY) is next at 3.5 percent, plummeting from 8.8 percent a year ago but remaining ahead of Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone, which increased from 1.8 percent.

Gartner predicts worldwide smartphone will close in on 1 billion units in 2013, with overall mobile phone sales estimated to reach 1.9 billion units. "2013 will be the year of the rise of the third ecosystem as the battle between the new BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone intensifies," Gupta said. "As carriers and vendors feel the pressure of Android's growth, alternative operating systems such as Tizen, Firefox, Ubuntu and Jolla will try and carve out an opportunity by positioning themselves as profitable alternatives."