The Great Tech War Of 2012

Before Netscape: the forgotten Web browsers of the early 1990s When Tim Berners-Lee arrived at CERN, Geneva's celebrated European Particle Physics Laboratory in 1980, the enterprise had hired him to upgrade the control systems for several of the lab's particle accelerators. But almost immediately, the inventor of the modern webpage noticed a problem: thousands of people were floating in and out of the famous research institute, many of them temporary hires. "The big challenge for contract programmers was to try to understand the systems, both human and computer, that ran this fantastic playground," Berners-Lee later wrote.

design principles Defeating an enemy; overcoming an obstacle; surviving in the face of adversity: success and failure are at the very core of the game-player's experience. Games offer players a number of choices, some of which lead to success and some of which lead to failure or non-success. Together with the challenges presented to the player, the fact that the player might fail lends significance to the player's choices and actions. Although failure can be a negative experience, it is also the very thing that makes success meaningful. There are two kinds of failure in games. One kind of failure concerns the player's inability to satisfy a particular success condition that nevertheless remains satisfiable, and another kind of failure takes place whenever the player encounters a particular failure condition.

Tech Titans Building Boom The serene countryside around the Columbia River in the northwestern United States has emerged as a major, and perhaps unexpected, battleground among Internet powerhouses. That’s where Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo have built some of the world’s largest and most advanced computer facilities: colossal warehouses packed with tens of thousands of servers that will propel the next generation of Internet applications. Call it the data center arms race. The companies flocked to the region because of its affordable land, readily available fiber-optic connectivity, abundant water, and even more important, inexpensive electricity. Lies that Losers Tell ’Cause right now you're just a liara straight mentirosatoday u tell me somethingy manana es otra cosa—Mellow Man Ace, Mentirosa When a company starts to lose its major battles, the truth often becomes the first casualty. CEOs and employees work tirelessly to develop creative narratives that help them avoid dealing with the obvious facts. Despite their intense creativity, many companies often end up with the exact same false explanations.

How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley In less than two years, Yuri Milner's fund has gone from zero equity to more than $12 billion in assets.Photo: Greg Girard This is my first trip to Moscow, and Yuri Milner, the world’s most successful investor in social media, is taking me to his parents’ apartment, which he bills as a typical middle-class Moscow dwelling. It’s drab Soviet brick outside. How a Computer Game is Reinventing the Science of Expertise [Video] A crowd observes the match playing on the main stage at the StarCraft 2 championships in Providence, RI. Credit: Major League Gaming If there is one general rule about the limitations of the human mind, it is that we are terrible at multitasking. The old phrase “united we stand, divided we fall” applies equally well to the mechanisms of attention as it does to a patriotic cause. When devoted to a single task, the brain excels; when several goals splinter its focus, errors become unavoidable. But clear exceptions challenge that general rule.

The Competition Among Google, Amazon, Facebook And Apple hide captionApple, Google, Facebook and Amazon are expanding rapidly into markets like media, TV, movies, finance, advertising, retail and mobile phones. Stephanie d'Otreppe/NPR In the old days, Amazon sold books, Google was a search engine, Facebook was a social network and Apple sold computers. But that's not the case anymore. Google and Apple now sell phones. 6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers In the beginning, there was just you and your partners. You did every job. You coded, you met with investors, you emptied the trash and phoned in the midnight pizza. Now you have others to do all that and it's time for you to "be strategic." Whatever that means. "Groupon Is A Disaster" Dan Frommer, Business Insider NEW YORK (AP) -- Only a few months ago, Groupon was the Internet's next great thing. Business media christened it the fastest growing company ever.