Article Submitted by iClimber.

With Kodak on the verge of bankruptcy, almost 1100 of its patents are up for sale for about 500+ million. However, this has brought together two bitter enemies, Google and Apple, who have teamed up to buy these patents. This might come as a surprise considering the ‘patent war’ that has made the news recently. However, it seems as if with this move, Tim Cook is more than happy to put Apple’s affinity for litigation behind them.

What both these companies also share in common is that they aren’t particularly too fond of the current patent system, which according to both CEOs, is bad for innovation. Apart from this, analysts also believe that by teaming up, they’re actually making a smart business decision, as both companies have spent plenty of money in court and have also been quietly bidding for Kodak’s patents on their own. However, this partnership does a lot to save costs as in teaming up together, Kodak won’t be tempted to up the bid by pitting these companies against each other. While this might be a shrewd choice, it will also help Kodak to pay off its debt, after being in business for almost 132 years.

Experts believe that this combined approach by both Google and Apple seem to be a much better one as opposed to the preposterous amount, $4.5 billion in all, paid by almost every tech giant for the Nortel patent while Google alone spent almost $12.4 billion for Motorola Mobility and its 20,000 patents. And even though both companies can easily come up with $500 million in the next four months, and rescue Kodak, it’s rather unfortunate to see the latter close its doors.

This article was submitted by iClimber, who offers social media marketing services.


With the year of 2012 drawing to a close, Facebook has posted the “Year in Review on 2012” for its viewers to take a walk down memory lane looking at past events, videos, songs, movies and locations that they liked. In addition, Facebook also reviewed the top trends in terms of popular public figures, top events and most listened to songs among others, compiled at FacebookStories.com/2012.

 

It should come as no surprise that the Presidential Elections, Barack Obama, the internet meme Tbh to be honest), The Hunger Games and the Avengers were indeed the most important people, memes and events of the year. When it comes to technology, Instagram was on top while the most listened-to song was ‘We are Young (feat Janella Monae) by Fun. If you haven’t viewed your own year in review, then you can go to Facebook.com/yearinreview in order to do so to see the top 20 moments of your year. It’s good to know that you might not know how Facebook comes up with these moments though.
Of course, if you want others to know what your top 20 moments were, you can Share it with your friends and family, by using the Share button.

When asked why this feature was enabled for users, Facebook revealed that it wanted to give people an interactive experience to look back at 2012 – a reminder of times forgotten in the past year which could create a sense of nostalgia. Prior to Facebook’s release, Twitter also did a personalized ‘Year in Review’ or its users.


Addressing an adoring crowd at Y Combinator’s startup school, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, said that sharing will increase exponentially in about 10 years.

In being interviewed by the co-founder Y Combinator, Paul Graham, Zuckerberg said, “It’s sort of a social-networking version of Moore’s Law. We expect this rate [of sharing] will double every 10 years. So in 10 years from now, people will be sharing about 1,000 times as many things as they do today.”

It’s clear that this is what newly public Facebook and Zuckerberg are counting on: for its 1 billion users to not only interact with their friends but also with brands.

Yet from the interview it was clear that this wasn’t about Facebook the business that is facing issues, whether the messy IPO, the ad business or even the word ‘mobile’, but really using this meeting as inspiration for the 1700 entrepreneurs that attended, and came from all over the country.

What they did focus on, in the interview, is Zuckerberg’s days at Harvard where he pursued psychology before he began to develop Facebook, and ultimately left school to build a company in Palo Alto. In fact, he also mentioned that he never built Facebook in order to start a company, and still does to his shareholders.

In commenting on the entrepreneurs of today, Zuckerberg said that they need to begin to focus on big, meaningful problems that they feel passionate about instead of the current trend of dealing with small issues.

In also speaking of copying stuff that others are doing, Zuckerberg said that this isn’t going to help companies be successful.