ZDNET

When I first heard that major, real-world tech trade shows were coming starting as early as Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona in late June. I didn’t see how they could do it. In the United States, thanks to widespread Covid-19 vaccinations, life may return to something like normal, but it’s a different story in much of Europe. So, it came as no surprise when IFA Berlin, the world’s largest consumer and home electronics trade show, decided not to open its doors.  An email from Messe Berlin and gfu Consumer & Home Electronics, IFA’s sponsoring organizations, announced that “IFA 2021 will not take place in September.” Why? The reasons were simple enough. “Ultimately, several key global health metrics did not move as fast in the right direction as had been hoped for – from the rapid emergence of new COVID-19 variants, for example in South Asia, to continued uncertainties about the speed of the rollout of vaccination programs around the world.” Another factor was that the Messe Berlin exhibition halls were continuing to be used “to support the fight against COVID-19 by converting parts of its area into a vaccination center and an emergency hospital facility.”  While coronavirus infections continue to decline in Europe, Germany alone had 9,796 new cases in the most recent daily count.  Martin Ecknig, Messe Berlin’s CEO explained:  “We did not take this decision lightly. IFA Berlin is arguably the most important event of the year for brands and retailers alike. IFA Berlin connects our industry with trade visitors, media, and real consumers like no other event. However, the health and safety of everybody have to be absolutely paramount. The efforts to contain this pandemic – from the roll-out of vaccination programs to the resumption of international travel – did not happen at the pace we had hoped for. Given these developments, this difficult and disappointing decision was inevitable.” That may have been the case with IFA, but another major global technology show set in Europe, MWC, still plans to go on. Even though major telecom companies such as Qualcomm. Ericsson, Google, IBM, Lenovo, Nokia, Oracle, Samsung, and Sony have all backed out of the in-person conference, MWC’s sponsor GSMA insists the show will go on.  In part, this may be because the Spanish government desperately wants tourists to return to the country.  The Spanish minister for industry, commerce, and tourism, Reyes Maroto, said “Spain expects to welcome around 45 million foreign tourists in 2021, just over half the number who came in 2019 before the pandemic struck. Spain and GSMA set up a special, permissive travel authorization for  MWC registrants.  In any case, the European Union (EU) is expected to allow quarantine-free travel for vaccinated visitors to enter the EU. Approved vaccinations include all those from the US trio of vaccine makers: Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.  Me? I love Barcelona and Berlin, but even though I am vaccinated I wouldn’t have gone. We’re still not out of the woods yet. Talk to me later about trade shows towards the end of the year. Related Stories: source

Anthony Eisen, co-founder and CEO of Australia’s buy now, pay later platform Afterpay, has told the audience of Macquarie Technology Summit that Australia has an opportunity to be an exporter of top tech talent. “Australia is an incredibly attractive place where you can base global talent that doesn’t have limitations anymore in terms of being able to do business globally, particularly if it’s tech-based,” he said on Thursday. “I think there’s a real opportunity to make this more of an export-style industry for our country. I think the government recognises that, and they’re doing more and more to facilitate it.” He described Australia’s tech talent pool as being “very strong” and something Afterpay has reaped the benefit of first-hand. “We’ve seen Australian talent, when they have the opportunity to build globally scalable platforms, just shine very strongly, particularly as Australians in our company have moved internationally with our business,” he said. Recent statistics by Hays, however, indicate that Australia and New Zealand’s tech sector has continued to suffer from a severe skills shortage, particularly as international borders remain shut. For Eisen though, he believes distance should no longer be an excuse for why talent cannot be easily sourced. “The tyranny of distance is lost with technology-based businesses. The most fabulous thing about the opportunity to build a platform that’s scalable is that it does transcend borders, especially when you look at what we’ve been through with COVID,” he said.   He pointed out how Afterpay has continued to run its head office out of Australia, despite operating in countries including the United States, United Kingdom, and Asia. “We haven’t regionalised our business, we’ve globalised our business, and while we have global functions now, it’s not about concentration in a geography … and that’s why I also say Australia can be a global head office in a lot of ways,” he said.  “The global leadership team is spread out … [and] is split between Sydney, Melbourne, San Francisco, London, and we have a core group in Asia as well, so just approaching it that way I think is quite important and something we’re trying to get better at as we grow.”  Besides exporting tech talent, being able to attract talent to Australia and see them establish companies locally is equally important, Eisen said.  “I think as Australia gets more and more on the map, being able just to attract that experience onto our shores is really important to mix with the talent that we have here,” he said. “Australia has now produced a whole lot of pretty fantastic global startups that have become scale-ups, terrific companies … but the more and more companies from Australia that can grow in that fashion, I think it’s really leading the light.” During his virtual Q&A, Eisen also took the opportunity to highlight that Afterpay would soon be launching Money By Afterpay, which Eisen described as where “customers will actually be able to deposit money and they’ll have savings goals, and budgeting goals, and different services that go around our platform.” In March, Afterpay, together with Zip Co, agreed to a buy now, pay later code of practice that was developed by the Australian Finance Industry Association as a vow to be transparent and focus on the needs of the customer. RELATED COVERAGE source

Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto Antitrust and intellectual property law expert Thomas Vinje believes enforcement has been largely ineffective when it comes to rebalancing the power many of the larger tech companies purportedly have, as many consider fines to simply be the cost of doing business. Addressing a Global Competition Review webinar on Thursday, Vinje said that in digital markets, once dominance is established, it tends to remain in place. He said that was true of IBM and Microsoft in the past and it is now true of Google, Apple, and Facebook. He rejected the notion put forward by some that the market will just level itself out once precedents are set by some breakthrough companies disrupting the ecosystem. “Digital markets do not move fast once dominance is established,” he said. “It’s often said — I’ve heard many say — we don’t need to act, we don’t need to enforce antitrust laws because these markets move so fast that any problems will be solved by the market. Frankly, that is just not what has happened … it’s not how these things work.” He would argue such markets do not generally correct themselves once dominant positions are established, as they are often protected by very intense network and scale effects. It’s one of the reasons why antitrust enforcement has not acted as the silver bullet, he said. “By the time enforcement is finished, the dominant company has typically achieved the aims, its aims, and reversing the harm is really rarely possible,” he said. “So I’d suggest the conquering moves fast but the resulting system is long lasting … and innovation is lost by virtue of that.” The second reason Vinje suggests as to why antitrust enforcement has been largely ineffective in this realm is that remedies are often not effectively formulated. “Frankly, in Europe at least, appropriate enforcement action is not undertaken,” he said, pointing to exceptions such as Microsoft and its Internet Explorer browser choice battle with EU regulators. “There was an effective browser choice screen, heavily negotiated, and it was largely effective, unlike the choice screen that Google has implemented in reaction to the commission’s Android decision.” See also: Android antitrust: Google hit with giant €4.34 billion fine by Europe According to Vinje, the fines imposed by regulators are being regarded by dominant companies as not being “anything other than the cost of doing business”. “Google is a good example, they’ve been fined over €8 billion in the span of a few years and I, at least, see no signs of Google remedying its conduct,” he added. “Antitrust enforcement needs to be complemented by regulation.” Addressing the actions of the companies that have been caught up in allegations of dominance, Vanje said these companies probably do consider their actions to be of good faith, but employees have started to see the bigger picture. “I think it’s human nature to believe in what one is doing, and to believe in oneself, and it’s human nature if you’re working for a company to believe in that company … they believe in what they’re doing, they believe they’re only acting correctly, and they believe that the antitrust enforcement is inappropriate, they genuinely believe it,” Vanje explained. “What can happen, and I think the reputational thing is bound to happen, after facing antitrust enforcement for a sufficient number of years and having the light shined on it, and having a lot of publicity about it, and I understand this happened inside Microsoft … the Kool-Aid dissipated and they came to actually see, ‘Wait a minute, what we’re doing is not entirely kosher, the issues that are being raised actually have some legitimacy’.” He said this has led to a significant cultural shift within the company. Also appearing at the webinar was chair of Australia’s competition watchdog Rod Sims, who is leading the charge for the country’s digital platforms attack. He considers the best way forward for reining in tech giant dominance to be international alignment. “[Legislation has] got to be really well researched and put together in an extremely considered way,” the ACCC chair said. “Having a thousand flowers blooming is great, we get creativity, we get thought about how else you go about it … but we need alignment of direction. We don’t really want some people going this way and others going that way. “I think it’s important we get [laws] right and bring some level of international alignment.” Sims cited the five US antitrust Bills targeting major digital platforms and the new Bill on app marketplaces, the European Commission’s draft Digital Markets Act, Germany’s new competition legislation for digital firms, the UK’s proposal to apply new rules to particular digital firms with “strategic market status”, as well as regulatory developments in Japan, and draft legislation in South Korea targeting app marketplaces. “In terms of enforcement, there are now so many cases against the dominant platforms it is difficult to keep track of them all,” he added. “Here in Australia … the ACCC has a number of investigations and active litigation on foot. We currently have two cases in court, one against Google and the other against Facebook, which both relate to how the companies use users’ data.” Sims also pointed to proceedings Epic Games has brought against both Apple and Google. “The key point, I think, from all of the above, is that while these enforcement actions and market studies are necessary to tackle the problems arising from dominant digital platforms, they are not enough on their own,” Sims said. RELATED COVERAGE source

Image: Getty Images Three former Netflix employees along with two others have been charged for allegedly performing insider trading of Netflix. The charges, pressed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), accuse the five individuals of generating over $3 million in total profits by trading on confidential information about Netflix’s subscriber growth. According to the SEC’s complaint, Sung Mo Jun, who is a former Netflix software engineer, headed a long-running scheme to illegally trade on non-public information concerning the growth of Netflix’s subscriber base, a key metric Netflix reports for its quarterly earnings announcements. The complaint alleges that Sung Mo Jun, while employed at Netflix in 2016 and 2017, repeatedly tipped subscriber growth information to his brother, Joon Mo Jun, and his close friend, Junwoo Chon, who both used it to trade in advance of multiple Netflix earnings announcements. The SEC’s complaint further alleges that after Sung Mo Jun left Netflix in 2017, he obtained confidential Netflix subscriber growth information from two other individuals, Ayden Lee and Jae Hyeon Bae, who still worked at Netflix at the time. The Jun brothers and Chon allegedly tried to evade detection by using encrypted messaging applications and paying cash kickbacks. The SEC’s complaint was filed in a Seattle federal court, with the two Juns, Chon, Lee, and Bae each receiving a charge for violating the Securities Exchange Act’s antifraud provisions. The US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington has also raised a parallel action for the same charges. In the most recent quarter, Netflix reported it gained an additional 1.54 million paying subscribers while unveiling plans to add video games to its service in a bid to expand its revenue streams. At the start of this year, Netflix said it was spending $500 million for original content from South Korea this year alone. Related Coverage source

The United States Trade Representative (USTR) has wrapped up a year-long investigation into DSTs (Digital Services Taxes) that affect US tech firms. It will impose tariffs on six countries, but will hold off implementing them for 180 days to allow negotiations to continue. Among the countries within the USTR investigation, and now subject to the suspended tariffs, are Austria, India, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the UK.  G20 nations floated the idea of a digital services tax in 2019 under a plan to levy more taxes from tech giants, most of which are headquartered in the US.  SEE: Guide to Becoming a Digital Transformation Champion (TechRepublic Premium) On April 1 2020, the UK introduced a 2% tax on the revenues of search engines, social media services and online marketplaces if they make money from UK users.   France also implemented the tax and was threatened with retribution from former US president Donald Trump, but was not named in the USTR’s latest announcement regarding suspended US trade tariffs. France was also under investigation over its digital services tax. The 180-day suspension will allow the US to complete multilateral negotiations on international taxation at the OECD and in the G20 process, the USTR said.   The US launched its investigation into the DST schemes on June 2, 2020 in Austria, Brazil, the Czech Republic, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and the UK.   “The United States is focused on finding a multilateral solution to a range of key issues related to international taxation, including our concerns with digital services taxes,” said USTR ambassador Katherine Tai.  “The United States remains committed to reaching a consensus on international tax issues through the OECD and G20 processes. Today’s actions provide time for those negotiations to continue to make progress while maintaining the option of imposing tariffs under Section 301 if warranted in the future.” SEE: GDPR: Fines increased by 40% last year, and they’re about to get a lot bigger In January, the USTR announced that it had determined the UK’s DST “is unreasonable or discriminatory and burdens or restricts U.S. commerce and thus is actionable under Section 301.” The UK’s digital services tax applies to companies with digital services revenues exceeding £500 million and UK digital services revenues exceeding £25 million. source

Jon Furniss/Getty Images Editor’s Note: ZDNET’s “Technology that Changed Us” series was first published in 2018. We’ve updated this installment to improve its accuracy and ensure that it reflects recent technology developments. In this 50-year retrospective, we’re looking at technologies that had an impact on the world, paved the way for the future, and changed us, in ways good and bad. Also: The 1970s | The 1980s | The 1990s | The 2000s | The 2010s 2000: Google AdWords It’s not hard to see the impact AdWords had on the online advertising industry, but one thing is for sure: Nothing has been the same. AdWords took the risk out of advertising — mostly. Also: Google’s new gen AI tools help hyper-target your ad campaigns Instead of buying an ad for a period of time and paying the fee, advertisers could buy a certain level of performance in terms of click-throughs. But it was also up to the advertiser to properly construct their ads, with better-performing ads rising to the top. This is a huge business. By the end of 2024, Google’s ad revenue was more than $200 billion. Runners up: Microsoft C#. Oh, and we survived Y2K. Apple iPod second generation (Image: Fhke on Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license) 2001: Apple iPod We continue to look at products that laid the foundation for the modern world. Windows XP and OS X (now MacOS) 10.0 were both released in 2001, and served as the foundation for our current desktop operating systems. Also: The best over-ear headphones of 2025 But it was the iPod that continued the tech world’s inexorable move to a mobile-first environment. There were many MP3 players before the iPod. However, the iPod was introduced with what was — for that time — such shockingly generous storage capacity that music lovers could take their entire music collection with them wherever they went. Runners up: Macintosh OS X and Windows XP. 2002: The Tor Project Tor, based originally on an onion router project developed for the US Navy, is designed to keep communications secure, even at a level that can surpass VPNs. The idea behind an onion router is that there are layers of security (like layers in an onion) that would have to be peeled away to find out a user’s identity. Since Tor transmits through a series of IP addresses, the destination IP address will never know the address of the originating IP. Also: How to use Tor browser (and why you should) In a world where privacy is becoming ever more difficult to secure, where governments, terrorists, and criminals are actively spying on users everywhere, a tool to protect privacy becomes ever more important. Unfortunately, like many technologies, privacy provided to the innocent can also be used by bad guys. Even so, the non-profit Tor project exists to preserve and protect identities the world over. Tor, by itself, may not have changed the world as much as something like Android has. But Tor enabled the world changers to work safely and freely, and that’s its ultimate contribution. One of Google’s first Android builds on the Sooner phone. 1.bp.blogspot.com 2003: Android founded Most people think of the Android operating system as something Google developed, but that’s not the whole story. Android was founded as a company, initially intended to build an operating system for digital cameras. At one point, the company was so close to closing down, it couldn’t pay its rent. That was then. Today, Android is the most successful (in terms of user numbers) operating system in history. Unfortunately, it’s also fragmented almost beyond recognition, and suffers from many security concerns and forks. Even so, Android is dominant numerically, and will likely remain so for years. Runners up: iTunes on Windows, DDR2 SDRAM, and H.264. TheFacebook.com: This was the default homepage for users who were not logged in. (Image: web.archive.org) 2004: Facebook founded In addition to Facebook, the company Mark Zuckerberg founded in 2004 as TheFacebook and now known as Meta owns Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger, along with ZDNET’s 2023 Product of the Year, the Quest 3. Together this juggernaut dominates messaging and social media to a degree never before seen. Also: How to protect your privacy from Facebook – and what doesn’t work Not only has Facebook transformed how people connect and communicate, it’s also created its own vast walled garden, filled with details about nearly every human on the planet. How it uses that data, how it manipulates that data, and how it protects that data will be a problem for all of us for years to come. Runners up: Gmail, World of Warcraft, Spirit Mars Rover, and Dr. Bob Dylan. web.archive.org 2005: YouTube In 2005, it was difficult and expensive to distribute video. I did some videos for clients and the challenges and costs were enormous. All that changed when YouTube made internet videos free for everyone. Also: How to download YouTube videos for free Consumers are 27 times (not percent, times!) more likely to click through a video ad than through a standard banner. That alone should get your attention. According to Google parent Alphabet (which owns YouTube), more 18- to 49-year-olds watch YouTube videos on mobile than they watch any broadcast network. Google says the same demographic group dropped TV watching by 4 percent, but in 2015, increased YouTube watch time by 74 percent. Runners up: Reddit, Google Maps, and Xbox 360. 2006: Twitter (now known as X) What can you say about Twitter in 140 characters? #TurnsOut #YouCanSayALot. Although Twitter increased its character count to 280 in 2017, the micro-blogging service created a new way to reach a tremendous number of people, instantly. Perhaps nothing showcases Twitter’s power more than Donald Trump’s initial rise to US President. By using Twitter, Trump bypassed all the gatekeepers and built his own audience of dedicated fans. Also: How to delete your X/Twitter account for good (and protect your data) Of course, Twitter’s story since that time has been its own soap opera. Elon Musk

Getty Images Editorial Note: In response to Russia’s “unprovoked attack on Ukraine” on February 23, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published an updated set of cybersecurity recommendations for organizations. In the five years since I first explored the potential impact of a Digital Cold War on the IT industry, tensions with Russia have gotten worse, especially following a series of cyberattacks on systems in the United States. These include Russia’s involvement in the SolarWinds breach, as well as its interference with the 2016 US presidential elections via attacks on the Democratic National Committee infrastructure and the purchasing of tens of millions of ads on Facebook in an attempt to sow discontent among US voters. Under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, the nation has focused on international cybersecurity activity for many years. Ukraine invasion Under the pretext of “Peacekeeping operations,” Russia has now initiated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Presumably, Russia also has been responsible for recent cyberattacks on Ukrainian banks. In response, the United States, NATO nations, and allied countries have imposed numerous economic sanctions on Russia, including blocking its two state-owned banks from debt trading on US and European markets and freezing their assets under US jurisdictions, as well as freezing the assets of the country’s wealthiest citizens. Germany has halted its plans on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline. Further wide-ranging sanctions are expected as Russia continues its assault on Ukraine. On February the 23rd, President Biden condemned the military action and said, “President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering. Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way. The world will hold Russia accountable.” The economic impacts of this conflict will likely be significant, including a halt on Russian oil and natural gas exports to Western Europe and, presumably, the denial of civil and commercial air transit to Asia through Russian airspace. Although the United States, unlike Europe, is not a major consumer of Russian energy exports, it would be simplistic to say that Russia has no impact on US business at all. An extended conflict with Russia — coupled with the imposition of wide-ranging sanctions — will have a tangible impact on the global technology industry. Software companies with concerns about Russian connections Many companies with significant market share and widespread use within US corporations have various levels of connections with Russia. For example, some were founded in Russia and others are headquartered elsewhere but have a development presence within Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe. UK-incorporated Kaspersky Lab, for example, is a major and well-established player in the antivirus/antimalware space. It maintains its international headquarters and has substantial research and development capabilities in Russia, even though its primary R&D center was moved to Israel in 2017. It’s also thought that Eugene Kaspersky, the company’s founder, has strong personal ties to the Putin-controlled government. Kaspersky has repeatedly denied these allegations, but questions about the man and his company remain and will be further scrutinized, particularly as the conflict develops. In the past, evidence emerged that Kaspersky’s software was involved in compromising the security of a contract employee of the United States National Security Agency in 2015. Kaspersky Lab insists that, to the contrary, the evidence supporting this has not been properly established and has produced an internal audit of the findings. It’s also important to note that companies with no evidence of any wrongdoing are suffering guilt by association. NGINX Inc is the support and consulting arm of an open source reverse proxy web server project that is very popular with some of the most high-volume internet services on the planet. The company is of Russian origin but was sold to F5 Networks in 2019. The founder of the company, Igor Sysoev, announced his departure in January of this year. Parallels, Inc., which Corel acquired in 2018, focuses extensively on virtualization technology. Their Parallels Desktop is one of the most popular solutions for Windows virtualization on the Mac. Historically, their primary development labs were in Moscow and Novosibirsk, Russia. The company was founded by Serguei Beloussov, who was born in the former Soviet Union and later emigrated to Singapore. Two of their products, Virtuozzo and Plesk, were spun off as their own companies in 2017. Parallels’ Odin, a complex management stack for billing and provisioning automation used by service providers and private clouds running on VMware’s virtual infrastructure stack and Microsoft’s Azure, was sold to Ingram Micro in 2015. Acronis, like Parallels, is another company founded by Beloussov. After founding Parallels in 1999, and being involved with both companies for some time, he became CEO of Acronis in May of 2013. The company specializes in cybersecurity products for end-to-end device protection, and in the past, has had bare-metal systems imaging, systems deployment, and storage management products for Microsoft Windows and Linux. The company maintains its global headquarters in Singapore. However, it has substantial R&D operations in Eastern Europe in addition to operations in Israel, Singapore, and the US. Veeam Software founded by Russian-born Ratmir Timashev, concentrates on enterprise backup solutions for VMware and Microsoft public and private cloud stacks. Like Parallels and Acronis, it is also multinational. For many years, it had much of its R&D based out of St. Petersburg, Russia. It was purchased by Insight Partners in 2020 and installed a new management team. However, it has yet to be determined how much Russian legacy code is in its products or continues to be contributed to them. These are only just a few examples. Numerous Russian software firms generate billions of dollars of revenue that have products and services that have significant enterprise penetration in the United States, EMEA, and Asia. There are also many smaller ones that perform niche or specialized services, such as subcontracting. It should also be noted that many mobile apps — including entertainment software for iOS, Android, Windows — also originate in  Russia. Russian services firms will also be impacted Many global technology giants in

 While Musk took the right approach in buying an established media brand, what’s missing is a description of his new strategy for Twitter. Getty Images How well does Elon Musk understand the media business? His $44 billion proposed acquisition implies that he has a better plan for monetizing Twitter than the current management but that’s unlikely given what he has said about his plans so far. The multi-talented Musk has proven his leadership skills in building successful companies as head of Tesla, SpaceX, and as former head of PayPal. Those businesses were not media businesses and media businesses are in a different industry – a market that’s declining in revenues and in quality. The media industry business model continues to be in flux – there is no reliable, sustainable model based on advertising. It’s been in a steady decline for two decades. The ad industry has managed to disintermediate media publishers via technologies that can target consumers directly, almost anywhere on the Internet, repeatedly. There’s no reason to pay high ad rates to target wealthy New York Times online readers when your ads can follow them wherever they go. But those advertisers don’t want their ads to appear next to controversial content, or fake news, or on scam websites.  Twitter has tried to eliminate controversial content, and remove people from its platform and newsfeeds. And this has calmed some of the advertisers’ concerns.  Musk, however, has been critical of Twitter’s policies in banning certain content and controversial people. Under Musk ownership of Twitter we can expect a revision of such standards and the allowing of controversial content and personalities.  Advertisers won’t be happy over such changes and there’s likely to be an exodus. And Musk’s version of free expression will likely not meet European Union regulations, which seek to stop publication of harmful content – and penalties can be severe.  Musk has the option of offering a paid subscription service that doesn’t require support from advertisers and won’t have to conform to their social and moral standards.  But that would create a far smaller-sized Twitter because it would likely become a place where extremist views are freely shared and thus less appealing to the majority of users. While Musk needs to figure out a viable revenue strategy, he has chosen the right approach in not launching his own Twitter-like service. It would have taken him two or more years to build such a brand and with a high risk of failure. It’s a much better strategy to acquire an established brand. Jeff Bezos, co-founder of Amazon, chose a similar strategy in buying an established media brand, when he purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million.  In the same year, fellow billionaire Pierre Omidyar, co-founder of eBay, launched his media venture First Look Media – a fresh new business. Omidyar’s strategy was to launch well-known journalists in their own online media ventures. The journalists would come with a ready-made audience and therefore there should be no need to pay a premium for an already established media business.  It did not work out that way for First Look Media, which suffered greatly from not knowing how to build a media venture from scratch. There is a description of its disastrous history here on Wikipedia.  While Musk took the right approach in buying an established media brand, what’s missing is a description of his new strategy for Twitter. So far, Twitter employees have not been told of any changes associated with the acquisition beyond that they should continue as normal since it will likely be about six months for the deal to be completed.  With Twitter as a private company, Musk’s management team will have an advantage in that it will be able to plan for longer-term revenue goals since it won’t be tied to the quarterly financial reports cycle of a public company.  Wall Street scrutiny of publicly traded companies affects their share price, which acts as a control on what management can do, forcing a short-term focus on the business. Privacy will give Twitter’s management greater freedom and also shield it from having to reveal key metrics. Free speech has never been free of serious social responsibilities – it’s something that Twitter has struggled to learn – and it’s a lesson that Musk will also need.  source

Project Management apps are an essential function for a healthy and productive organization. Without project management, who sets the bar for accountability and expectations?  Without the right software in place, how do you plan to drive a project to its completion? How will you help your team mitigate delays, due dates, or bumps in the road? How will you track projects through a project management system? Visibility, automation, customization, task track time, and more — it’s all essential to getting things done correctly and on time. When time is of the essence in the business world, efficiency and the ability to collaborate matter most of all. The best project management tools and document management tools will help you accomplish all this and more. Plus, it will give you the top-down transparency you need as a manager or supervisor to customize your projects in real-time. We have examined the top project management software offerings on the market right now, highlighted their features, and underlined the competitive advantages. We wanted to expand on past the standard workspace apps such as Mac Pro IOS systems, Android software or Slack messaging apps that you know about. Read on to discover ZDNet’s best solutions for your large or small team and make the right investment for your organization at large. Show less Microsoft Project Not unlike an Excel spreadsheet at its core Microsoft Project is an excellent piece of open-source software that will help calculate resource constraints, streamline the project, and help your organization stay on track with great interactive tools.  The top features of MS Project are: Built-in project templates Resource management Project cost and scheduling Projected timelines Reporting Business intelligence A single license usually costs around $600, but when bundled with the entire Microsoft Office suite of applications, this cost may be significantly reduced. Microsoft Project is not unlike an Excel spreadsheet at its core. The file can be passed around to the entire team for status updates, but there is limited internet connectivity. Microsoft Project will check most of the boxes as an enterprise solution, even if it seems a bit outdated on the surface. If you are looking for something with a streamlined unlimited user experience, Microsoft Projects might not be your best pick, but it gets the job done at a basic level. Show Expert Take Show less Show less Trello Outstanding visuals and a clean, modernized UX Trello is a fantastic project management tool thanks to outstanding visuals and a clean, modernized UX. It is well known for its main dashboard that all cross-functional units of the company can access. If using Trello, you are likely adopting an agile style of task management, which is far more common in small business settings these days. You can shift assignments across the dashboard to different times, days, or weeks. There is no re-writing a start of the finished date – simply click and hold the task, and drag-and-drop it to its appropriate location. Easy to learn, easy to master, and highly intuitive. The top features of Trello are: Unlimited task creation. Commentary and collaboration features. Organizing tasks by priority. File and image sharing. Finally, Trello boards are free for personal use. If you decide that Trello may be the right pick for your complex project management department, it only costs $9.99 per user per month. Show Expert Take Show less Show less Scoro Your “one-stop-shop” for all your business needs Scoro is another industry standard for cross-functional project team management, and we love the complete set of services it provides. Scoro assists in the management of everything from billing to reporting, production and development, and any other miscellaneous functions in your company. Whether you work with full-time employees or freelancers, the project management tools will work great for your team.  In a nutshell, Scoro is your “one-stop-shop” for all your business needs, with a strong emphasis on team collaboration tools.  The top features of Scoro are the following: Contact management Time-tracking and billing Quoting and invoicing Team meeting scheduling and calendar view KPI dashboard Reports of project progress and budget Scoro is user-friendly and has a breezy learning curve for all employees. Instead of using Outlook to schedule meetings, Microsoft Project to build and track timelines, and Oracle for quoting and billing, Scoro can consolidate and streamline everything in one swoop. You can even try the free version of Scoro for 14 days. After that, the $26 per user per month will not break the bank. It’s worth the cost, in our book. Show Expert Take Show less Show less Teamwork Project Management Suite Web-based project management suite Teamwork is another web-based project management suite that offers a comprehensive toolkit for various operations and tasks. Collaboration is the keyword here, and that’s where Teamwork stands out. A central location for everyone to tap into is a huge upside and clarifies everything across the board.  The easy-to-use interface boasts the following features: Reporting Time Tracking and timesheets Gantt Charts Tasks with sub-tasks Milestone projection and management Different user permissions If you are interested in the Teamwork suite, you will be happy to know that this project management software tool integrates with Teamwork Desk and Teamwork Chat. Show Expert Take Show less Show less Easy Project Very similar to Microsoft Project Easy Projects project management software boats great visuals, Gantt charts, and a simple user interface.  It is very similar to Microsoft Project in terms of the end product, but Easy Project is built in an updated interface with a great visualization appeal.  The main features of Easy Project are: Configurable dashboards User and task tracking Gantt charts Project templates Portfolio management Easy Project lives up to its name in simplicity, and we like its customizable layout, but it may not be full-featured enough for enterprise use. This software can get any number of projects moving in the right direction, although you might want to upgrade once operations expand in scope and complexity. Show Expert Take Show less Show less Basecamp Boasts

Airbnb hosts in Ukraine are receiving bookings for rentals. Guests have no intention of staying – they say they just want to get money into the hands of locals.  As Russia’s invasion shows no signs of stopping despite heavy economic sanctions imposed by the EU, companies ranging from Oracle to Apple suspending business in the country, bans on travel, and the seizure of assets belonging to oligarchs, Airbnb users have come up with a grassroots movement to help those on the ground.  Across social media networks including Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok — as highlighted by Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky — Airbnb customers are sharing screenshots of bookings they have made but have no intention of using.  Airbnb has confirmed that the company has suspended “all guest and host fees on all bookings in Ukraine at this time.” The chief executive of the room booking platform also said on March 4 that “all operations” in Russia and Belarus will be suspended.  When attempting to make a test booking in both countries, Airbnb’s page said the “listing’s calendar is blocked and they aren’t accepting bookings right now.” Separately, Airbnb is working with hosts to provide free living accommodation for up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine, with rooms funded by Airbnb, Airbnb.org donors, and hosts themselves. Airbnb says it has assisted in providing temporary housing to over 54,000 refugees in the past five years, connected to conflicts in areas including Syria, Afghanistan, and Venezuela. At the time of writing, the United Nations (UN) estimates that over one million residents have fled Ukraine, the majority of which have crossed the border into Poland. Neighboring countries including Hungary, Moldova, Slovakia, and Romania have also accepted refugees.  It should be noted, however, that scammers and fraudsters will seek every opportunity they can to cash in, and they may try to use the Airbnb booking campaign and its good intentions to their advantage.  The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has provided online resources for refugees and there are more traditional methods to assist, with organizations including the Red Cross appealing for donations.  Previous and related coverage Have a tip? Get in touch securely via WhatsApp | Signal at +447713 025 499, or over at Keybase: charlie0 source