Ryan Matthew Pierson says, “High-quality audio recording was once the exclusive domain of professional studios, radio stations and other settings tricked out with top-notch equipment. But now, thanks to advances in technology and lower pricing, professional-level audio recording has moved within reach of practically anyone. So if you’ve ever wanted to reach a broad audience as a podcaster, there’s no time like the present. These days, the difference in quality produced by professional set-ups—with layers of soundproofing and pricey microphones—don’t sound all that different... [...]

Matt Asay says, “Deep linking is hot, and for good reason: it can make mobile search much more powerful by making it more predictive. In a world governed by small screen sizes and large intent, that’s a huge asset. And it’s why deep linking startup URX recently introduced AppViews, a product with the not-so-modest goal of “understand[ing] what a user is doing and what could make them happier.” To better understand not only AppViews but the innovative deep linking marketplace, and whether the increased intelligence buried in deep links will lead to privacy concerns, I... [...]

Gregory Ferenstein says, “Google’s entire multi-billion dollar software utopia is designed to find the perfect search result. Back in 2005, before U.S. and EU government regulators painted Google as a monopoly, now-Chairman Eric Schmidt was quite open about the search giant’s end game. He said that Google should ultimately only give one search result for each inquiry—the right one for you at that moment. “When you use Google, do you get more than one answer? Of course you do,”he told public television host Charlie Rose at the time. Schmidt continued: Well, that’s a bug. We should... [...]

Owen Thomas says, “PayPal is making some of the advances it’s pushed in mobile-app payments available on the Web, the company announced Tuesday. Its in-app checkout experience, which it calls One Touch, is now rolling out to websites which already use PayPal’s payment technology. Consumers will notice a new option to stay logged into PayPal, which will remember their payment options. In a marked change, PayPal will no longer force shoppers to change their payment method from a default bank-account withdrawal; instead, the service will remember the credit or debit card or bank account... [...]

Matt Asay says, “Mobile commerce is booming. Indeed, according to Forrester’s estimates, by 2018, mobile commerce (excluding travel/food services) will exceed 53% of US online sales. But in a striking reversal to the norm, wherein the rich get access to the future first, mobile commerce is thriving first with the comparatively poor. This suggests that to truly see the future of mobile, you might first want to take a look at India or other emerging economies. The Money Is In Commerce While the history of mobile has been consumed with peddling 9-cent apps, and now in-app purchases, the... [...]

Yael Grauer says, “Yahoo is planning an internal reshuffle that could effectively end the independence of its most popular acquisition, the visual blogging platform Tumblr. The Information reports that CEO Marissa Mayer spoke about the major changes inside the company at an offsite meeting with executives. She also reportedly asked Tumblr CEO David Karp which Yahoo executive he’d like to report to from now on. Yahoo spent $1.1 billion to acquire Tumblr in May 2013, and it looks like the company is finally planning to seek a return on that investment. Tumblr’s highly visual format makes it... [...]

Lauren Orsini says, “Yahoo is planning an internal reshuffle that could effectively end the independence of its most popular acquisition, the visual blogging platform Tumblr. The Information reports that CEO Marissa Mayer spoke about the major changes inside the company at an offsite meeting with executives. She also reportedly asked Tumblr CEO David Karp which Yahoo executive he’d like to report to from now on. Yahoo spent $1.1 billion to acquire Tumblr in May 2013, and it looks like the company is finally planning to seek a return on that investment. Tumblr’s highly visual format makes... [...]

Brian P. Rubin says, “On Wednesday, Google opened the beta of its latest developer tool—the App Runtime for Chrome, or ARC—to anyone on any computer running the latest version of the Chrome browser. With the ARC Welder app installed in your browser, you can theoretically run any Android app in a virtual environment without having to use any actual Android devices. Better yet, ARC Welder makes porting an Android app into a Chrome app ridiculously simple. In theory, ARC should also let anyone run an Android app install file (typically referred to as APKs because of their .apk file extensions)... [...]

Matt Asay says, “Big data is big news, but it’s still in its infancy. While most enterprises at least talk about launching Big Data projects, the reality is that very few do in any significant way. In fact, according to new survey data from Dimensional, while 91% of corporate data professionals have considered investment in Big Data, only 5% actually put any investment into a deployment, and only 11% even had a pilot in place. Perhaps the biggest reason is that Big Data technologies are still way too hard to use—and sometimes insufficient for the kinds of data enterprises want to put... [...]

David Nield says, “Google has pushed out a couple of app updates for Android, as it often does, but there’s more going on here than a few code tweaks. The new features introduced today in both Gmail and Google Drive are signs of the pressure the tech giant is starting to feel from competing apps on its own platform. There are plenty of fronts that Google now has to fight on simultaneously, from self-driving cars to video content. But with eyeballs shifting to mobile and rivals such as Cyanogen in the wings, smartphone apps are one of the most important fronts of all”. Why Google... [...]