Why Silicon Valley wants employees to step away from their devices; Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion reviewed.
OS X Mountain Lion: Quick, familiar, cheap , and drenched in iOS goodness [TECHCRUNCH]
It must be said that Mountain Lion isn’t really all that different from Lion — hence, the variation of the name (even though mountain lions are technically cougars — insert joke here). But unlike the jump from Leopard to Snow Leopard, which focused on performance and tightening code rather than features, the jump from Lion to Mountain Lion does pack some new goodies.
3 things to watch for in Facebook’s earnings [FORTUNE]
So far, it’s been a rough ride. The stock has been trading at around $29 this week — a 24% drop from the price at which it closed on its first day — as investors question the strength of its advertising business and fret over how the company will make money on mobile platforms. Here are three things to keep in mind for Thursday’s 5PM EST earnings call.
Silicon Valley worries about addiction to devices [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
“If you put a frog in cold water and slowly turn up the heat, it’ll boil to death — it’s a nice analogy,” said Mr. Crabb, who oversees learning and development at Facebook. People “need to notice the effect that time online has on your performance and relationships.”
Square expects new financing and a loftier value [DEALBOOK]
Square, the mobile payments start-up best known for its pint-size credit card reader, is close to raising roughly $200 million, which would give the company an implied valuation of $3.25 billion, people briefed on the matter said. This financing round is expected to be led by Suhail Rizvi, the head of Rizvi Traverse Management, a small private equity firm that has made investments in Twitter and Playboy, these people added.
Can Skype ‘wiretap’ video calls [CNN]
“Reportedly, Microsoft is re-engineering these supernodes to make it easier for law enforcement to monitor calls by allowing the supernodes to not only make the introduction but to actually route the voice data of the calls as well,” Tim Verry, from the website ExtremeTech, wrote last week. (Supernodes are third-party computers that act as a sort of directory service for routing calls.)