Let's say you run mobile app startup that people love--millions of users, spectacular growth. Then, for one unfortunate weekend, your service goes offline for a couple of days. Your engineers do their best to make sure it never happens again, but you're growing fast. Is your company doomed?

That was the scenario faced by several prominent startups earlier this month, prompting a column that appeared in Wired that argued the outages could have been perilous:

"On one level, a dust-up like this is just part of life as a startup. Things go wrong, people get upset, problems are solved, lessons are learned. But the stakes are higher when you're Dropbox--or any other tech startup that has ascended to the misty heights of the billion-dollar club. This weekend's Dropbox outage, along with recent problems for Uber and Snapchat, show just how close such companies skate to complete disaster--not because of anything they necessarily did wrong, but because of the very nature of their businesses."

The argument goes: When you're dependent on doing one thing well, ceasing to do that one thing well even for a short period will sow mistrust in your users. Should your servers go down at the wrong time, fickle customers will flee en masse to another service that also does that one thing. The cardinal sin is being unreliable.

But let's look at all the prominent technology companies who had problems with reliability for years, and users stuck through them.

Twitter is the obvious archetype here. A recent feature over at Time chronicles the company's history of downtime:

In 2007, when Twitter first came to prominence at the South by Southwest interactive festival, the social network became notorious for its downtime. Between server overload and scheduled maintenance, the site was offline for almost six days total that year, according to Pingdom, a service that tracks website performance. Things were not much better in 2008, when the site crashed during Steve Jobs's keynote at MacWorld in January. Cofounder Biz Stone described the site as being in constant "emergency maintenance mode" at the time. By May the quickly growing site had created a standalone blog just to tell users when Twitter was down.

Remember how popular the Fail Whale was? Incidentally, Twitter actually went down while I was researching this article.

Just a few others:

• Year after year, the tech world heaps praise upon Evernote. It's growing and it seems to have a great internal culture. But user forums are rife with complaints about poor sync performance on almost every platform that Evernote has an app--which is all of them. Still Evernote remains popular, most likely due to a responsive support team and the fact that the service becomes more useful the more wrapped up in it you become.
• When Apple Maps first launched in the Fall of 2012, it was immediately panned, and for good reason: It was useless at finding places. Over a year later, the application hasn't shaken it's reputation for being unreliable, but it's managed to justify its continued existence thanks to its useful developer tools.
• While Rdio's apps are elegantly designed, users frequently find them to be a buggy mess. For a long time, its Windows Phone app hardly worked, and even desktop clients sometimes struggle. Even in their complaints, users remain fond of the service, though. Perhaps being more aesthetically pleasing than the competition has its benefits.
• Box is well-regarded for being a secure alternative to Dropbox or Google Drive in spite of a persistent issue that keeps it from working for lots of high-volume users. The user forums are absolutely full of instances of issues regarding user permissions, sometimes even preventing them from syncing properly at all.

A woman is attacked and stabbed while out running. A Crime Scene Investigator works through the night to collect and catalog all the evidence--just hand-writing the evidence labels for a complex scene can consume several hours. Exhausted, the CSI goes home at 6 a.m. to grab a few hours sleep before writing up the report he uses to brief the criminal investigators assigned to the case.

Almost 24 hours have already passed since the stabbing occurred. That in itself is a problem; the first 48 hours after a crime has been committed are considered critical since the ability to track an offender, and often the value of the evidence itself, diminishes over time. Every hour that passes reduces the likelihood that the perpetrators will be caught.

Still, crime scene investigation is currently a tedious, manual, and largely paper-based process of documenting the conditions at a crime scene and collecting physical evidence. Smaller law enforcement agencies often only have one or two police officers trained as CSIs and they cannot be experts in all types of evidence. Then there's the often a lengthy time lag between the collection of evidence and the point at which it becomes useful in the criminal investigation because of the manual process of collection, documentation, and lab work. These are the problems which an iPad app called CrimePad is designed to address.

Jane Homeyer, a forensic scientist and FBI trainer, is one of the founders of Visionations, the company which makes CrimePad.

"It wasn't about the software. It wasn't about the app," she says. "It was about an opportunity to transform how people work crime scenes."

Crime Scene "Accounting"

Homeyer was already mulling over these issues during the eight years she spent at the Northern Illinois Police Crime Laboratory, of which she eventually became the executive director. A colleague at the lab, Jeff Gurvis, who is an expert is blood spatter analysis, was toying with similar ideas at around the same time. Homeyer later moved on to the FBI where Gurvis also did some work as an consultant training FBI employees. In 2012, the two colleagues decided to start a company together to tackle some of the problems they saw in their profession.

CrimePad is a tool for making a complete electronic record of a crime scene. This isn't as straightforward as it sounds. No two crime scenes are the same and they vary hugely in complexity from a straightforward burglary to multiple scenes and homicides as in the case of the Boston marathon bombings. A wide range of evidence may be found at a single scene: trace evidence like paint residue or broken glass, impressions like fingerprints, footwear and tool marks, bodily fluids, hair and fibers, weapons evidence and documents. There is no standard data format or taxonomy for crime scene investigation data. One department may consider money to be part of document evidence, whereas another will put it into a different category since it's held in the vaults separate to all other evidence.

A CSI will walk through the scene in a prescribed manner in order to disturb it as little as possible, take photographs and video, make sketches, take measurements, perform techniques to collect evidence like taking a latent fingerprint, tag, log, and describe all the evidence collected. The total record of the scene needs to provide a level of detail sufficient for someone who was not there, like the criminal investigators or the legal teams involved in a later court case, to reconstruct it.

In CrimePad, data is entered only once, at the scene itself when the information has the highest fidelity to reality, and is used to generate labels, crime scene reports, access logs, evidence logs, and all the other documentation required. CrimePad also allows you to relate different objects and locations in a way which isn't possible in the current manual process.

"This photo is a photo of the same thing I did a sketch of, is the same thing I did this fingerprint processing of, is the same thing that I collect this standard evidence on," says Homeyer.

An important part of a CSI's job is testifying in court about the evidence collected. "Later on when that person goes to court and the prosecutor says 'I'm going to have you testify about this firearm,'" Homeyer continues. "Instead of them going back through their notes, now they can say 'show me everything about this firearm that I did at the crime scene.'" That's crucial when sometimes two or three years elapse before a case goes to court.

CrimePad Customers

CrimePad is currently being used by local police departments in California, Virginia, and Tennessee as well as by another state-wide agency (which does not wish to be identified) with special agents who support local police.

Max Houck is director of the Washington D.C. Department of Forensic Science. His department is planning to trial CrimePad. In response to recommendations in the Justice Department's 2009 report "Strengthening forensic Science in the U.S.," Houck's department is one of the first in the U.S. to move from the standard practice of using specially trained police officers process crime scenes to deploying civilian crime scene scientists. Within two years, its crime scene teams will consist entirely of civilians.

"Our crime scene scientists are definitely knowledge workers," says Houck. "They traffic in information and that's why we are thinking of using CrimePad. It helps get them away from essentially being accountants at the scene and having to worry about where's my form, where's my clipboard, is my pen out of ink, do we call this number one or number two? Are we calling this the front room or the living room? All those little decisions, you want to push those to rote activity with accuracy so they can be there and think. A product like CrimePad has the potential to help the scientists to use their brain. That's their number one tool."

A number of units in Houck's lab are evaluating CrimePad in a training format and he will probably seek grants to fund more extensive field testing. "We've got facilities here in the laboratory that which we can use to mock up controlled scenes," he says. "The Metropolitan police has the tactical village, which is about four or five city blocks of a controlled warehouse environment that mimics external situations so they can do breaches, they can do hostage situations, they can do a wide variety of policing training, but we could also take the CrimePad over there in a more realistic setting but still controlled."

Calling In The Experts

Crime Scene investigation and forensic science are increasingly complex and high-tech affairs. That comes with its own problems. "The O.J. Simpson case pointed out deficiencies in how police work crime scenes," says Homeyer "and largely the case collapsed because they didn't handle the evidence correctly. They didn't take advantage of everything because they are asked to wear 10 different hats, and now because of the advances in science that gap is even greater."

"Policing is a complicated, technical, and demanding profession," adds Houck. "So is science. And asking one person to do both is like saying my neurosurgeon should also be my dentist."

Despite this most smaller CSI teams still consist of police officers who are not experts in how to handle every type of evidence, whether that evidence is questioned documents (anything from a damaged suicide note to electronic documents like caller ID), paint traces, or firearm evidence.

For this reason CrimePad is adding a feature which will allow investigators at a scene to call on remote experts in real time. Instead of the consultation with an expert happening at the lab, it can happen at the scene itself, allowing evidence which would otherwise be overlooked or impossible to retrieve to be collected. Using remote experts also means having fewer people at the scene itself, reducing the possibility of contamination.

Homeyer's cofounder Gurvis already trains and certifies the (non-homicidal) Dexters of the world in blood spatter analysis. Visionations is developing a set of criteria to rate the skill sets and capabilities of experts in blood spatter and other specialities to ensure that they would be accepted as such in court. The company plans to introduce access to experts into their SaaS offering.

Moving To Real Time

CrimePad has already been used by CSIs to share relevant information from the crime scene with criminal investigators in real time. A lead is any piece of information on which action should be taken to further the investigation such as a witness or suspect to locate, a vehicle check, address check, or weapons check. One CrimePad customer had a police officer at a complex crime scene dedicated to recording leads in Excel sheets and then calling the criminal investigators on the radio to go through them. The company built leads into the product so that CSIs can now share them directly.

Houck is less convinced about the merits of real-time sharing. "I'm not sure that real time is actually what we want," he says. "What you want is actionable, valid information in as timely a fashion as possible. Any one scene might throw up five or six different individuals. Do you really want the police chasing all of those down? That might be a waste of their time. You can't collect everything and then dump it on the lab and say sort it out. That's how you get backlogs, which is one of the things that plagues crime labs across the country. What you want to be able to do is take all the noise of crime scene and turn it into usable signal."

Currently, it can take days to identify even a simple fingerprint, so the ultimate aim for CrimePad is real-time analysis of evidence performed at the scene itself and linked to various police systems and databases."There's a lot of science which can happen at a crime scene if you have people who are trained to do it," says Houck.

"We know there are opportunities emerging that we could take advantage of pretty much today to give the investigators the information almost real time as the evidence is being collected," says Homeyer. "There's DNA technology on a chip. You see some of the technologies which could be integrated with sampling and testing results, connecting to national databases for both fingerprints and DNA, convicted offender databases, stand-off technology for detection of hazardous materials. That's just not done today."

Given In Evidence

Ultimately, CSIs must produce evidence which is admissible in court so CrimePad's founders have devised training materials covering not just the use of the application itself, but how to introduce the application into court. Since CrimePad was released in 2013, several cases in which it was used have gone through the court process, but the use of an iPad app for documenting evidence is still novel in most courtrooms.

"There's a reason police officers are slow to change something that works, something that has already been admitted into court," says Homeyer. "We have to make sure that we lay that foundation so that when this does get to the courtroom, it too will be admitted into court. In large cases defense attorney's go after technicalities. It will get challenged. It's only a matter of time before a case is prominent enough that they go after every angle they can get and new technology is ripe for that."

Houck is less concerned." As long as you can show that it's accurate," he says. "That we have complete documentation that wouldn't be any different from what we would do normally, or is even better, and that it's valid, it's trustworthy, I think it would be a pretty easy sell."

The question of how best to transport items across a network--be that traffic over the Internet, or cars over the U.S. highway system--is one that has challenged mathematicians and computer scientists for decades. A new paper by MIT researchers may be within one iteration of solving it.

The paper puts forward a groundbreaking solution to the "max flow" problem: an algorithm which can greatly decrease the amount of time it takes to determine the most effective paths through a network. In doing so, it represents a leap forward in networking technology that could solve optimization problems as we currently know them.

So how does it work?

The Max Flow Problem

In optimization theory, the "max flow" problem refers to to the process of figuring out how much capacity is available between any given start and end point. First surfacing in 1954 as a way of modeling the behavior of the Soviet railway network, the problem (and its potential solutions) can stand in for any number of things.

"It's an abstraction for a pretty wide range of constrained optimization problems," says Jonathan Kelner, one of the recent paper's authors, and an associate professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT as well as a member of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Typically a network is represented as a graph, with a series of nodes or "vertices." The lines between vertices are called "edges," with each edge carrying a maximum capacity limit. The job of max flow algorithms is to calculate the most efficient way to use this capacity without exceeding the constraints.

The reason previous optimization algorithms could do with an overhaul is because the kind of networks we deal with on a regular basis are getting bigger and bigger.

As with data sets, over the past few years there has been an explosion in the size of graphs being studied. If you're looking to route Internet traffic, analyze data relating to the human genome, or look at all the connections on Facebook, the resulting graph can easily wind up possessing millions, billions--or potentially even trillions--of edges.

Spotting The Bottlenecks

The issue with this is that many of the traditional max flow algorithms work by approaching graphs one edge at a time: saturating it before moving to the next for an additional throughput. When dealing with larger graphs, the approach has the potential to consume massive amounts of time and resources. The result are algorithms which scale substantially worse than linearly--meaning that the more complex a problem becomes, the slower computers get at solving them.

What makes the so-called KLOS algorithm (its name is taken from the last names of the researchers who worked on it: Jonathan Kelner, Yin Tat Lee, Lorenzo Orecchia, and Aaron Sidford) different is the way that it approaches the max flow problem. Instead of saturating edges one at a time, MIT's algorithm sends flow along every path simultaneously.

"We pretended the graph was a network of electrical resistors," Kelner says--explaining an insight he first put forward in a co-authored paper back in 2011. "If you imagine tying a battery to the source and watching what the electrical current does, you would see that instead of picking one path an electrical current will travel along every path. You will almost never have an edge with zero electrical current on it."

A second neat quality of the KLOS algorithm is its ability to pinpoint bottlenecks or trouble spots on the graph, and then to use this knowledge to help increase flow, by sending the most optimal amount of flow over them. The result is an algorithm which scales with the size of the graph in close to linear time.

Optimization Reaches Critical Mass

Currently the KLOS algorithm exists only in theory. That may change in the near future, however.

"I consider the algorithm we published to be one iteration away from a real-world algorithm," says Kelner. "The first goal of this project was to get the theory to work, and to prove that it is possible to get an algorithm with this scaling. I wouldn't suggest implementing the algorithm as it's currently written, but it does contain several insights that can applied in the case of a practical algorithm."

These insights, heuristics, and subcomponents can be used to make optimization problems more efficient and scaleable.

"Max flow is a pervasive problem with numerous potential applications," says Aaron Sidford, one of the graduate students who also worked on the paper. "Thanks to this work we now have a several new techniques for quickly extracting information from graphs. This is an area worth studying because it is the generalization of so many other problems and often a good test best for algorithmic innovations. It's something that we study theoretically, with the hope of eventually making practical improvements."

When it comes to optimization, the potential applications are almost unlimited. Online traffic routing problems, as noted, is one possible real-world implementation. Another might be in a resource-hungry field like data analysis or image segmentation.

As graphs continue to get larger, the subject of optimization will only become more important. Another paper published in 2013 by U.C. Berkeley computer scientist Jonah Sherman describes a different algorithm for scaling in near-linear time.

"There's a lot of really exciting work being done in this area at the moment," says Sidford. "I feel like we have a critical mass in terms of the technology and ideas involved. I hope that our work is one data point in a larger class of new optimization methods."

It doesn't matter what side of the argument you fall on--whether you think everyone should learn to code or not. Kimono is a new tool that makes the act of scraping a website for its structured data to turn into an API (or an app) much quicker than picking a side in the debate. Pretty soon anyone with an idea for manipulating data will be able to in a few clicks, programming experience or not.

Kimono is a bookmarklet that activates visual, click-to-define, datasets and then turns those into a structured API or directly produces a dynamic web app. The idea of visual programming, using some sort of WYSIWYG editor to build apps has grown steadily, but until now the options have been too complicated or too simplified. Google tried with its Android App Inventor and more recently Microsoft has tried with its Windows Phone App Studio. Both aimed big, but couldn't deliver on the promise to build anything desirable. With Kimono, however, the results produced with the clicks at least align with expectations.

Getting started extracting data can be covered with the minute-and-a-half introduction video. The supplemental videos, which are also short, round out the product a little further. Once you've clicked on data and created an API, you're presented different code snippets--Curl, jQuery, Node, PHP, Python, and Rudy--ready to copy and paste.

Poking around, I quickly made a daily updating web app of articles written for Fast Company. I also made one for movie times at a local theater as well as top songs from YouTube. Beyond your own imagination, Kimono is currently limited to non-authenticating sites, but the developer has said it's something they're working on.

Even though it may be obvious to the developer community the benefit for companies to allow access via API, a lot of big corporations still don't see it that way. Rhapsody is a great example of a first mover that wanted to do everything in-house and couldn't keep up with demand. Rhapsody made itself irrelevant just as competition from Rdio and Spotify heated up, and not allowing access may eventually lead to it going out of business.

Then again, Kimono offering anyone the ability to turn a site's data into a structured API in seconds may flip the whole conversation on its head. If successful, the choice to offer an API may no longer lie with a company, but in the hands of a third-party developer.

Glassdoor has released its yearly list of the most unusual questions employers asked in interviews to stretch the interviewees' creativity and problem-solving capabilities.

The number one question comes from an interview with Zappos: "If you could throw a parade of any caliber through the Zappos office what type of parade would it be?"

Others reflected the company's core competencies better. "How does the internet work?" asked Akamai, a cloud-service company.

Some tested compassion and empathy levels: "What is your least favorite thing about humanity?" asked ZocDoc.

"How honest are you?" asked Allied Telesis, an IP/Ethernet network provider.

While others asked about relatability, "What is the funniest thing that has happened to you recently?" asked Applebee's.

Other favorites:

• How lucky are you and why? (Airbnb)
• If you were a pizza deliveryman how would you benefit from scissors? (Apple)
• Do you believe in Big Foot? (Norwegian Cruise Line)
• Can you instruct someone how to make an origami "cootie catcher" with just words? (LivingSocial)
• How many snow shovels sold in the US last year? (TASER (yikes))

Not everybody thinks the brainteasers are worth much anyway. Research has shown that many people don't even know how interpret the puzzlers:

Participants in experiments did a better job of assessing a person's skill level after listening to responses to conventional questions than they did after hearing answers to puzzle questions. [It is] theorized that because the questions are, by nature, difficult and ambiguous, people listening to the answers were impressed with something that sounded right, whether or not it actually was.

Alternatively, make sure the person you're interviewing with is someone you'd want to work for--think about their job history. Ask about their employee retention and how long they worked at their previous jobs before becoming a manager or starting their own company. It'll usually give you a pretty good idea about their propensity for handling stress.

For the most comprehensive advice for landing your next job, here's our referential hiring guide.

The biggest debate among developers in 2013 was if Apple's complete overhaul of iOS was a good or a bad thing. Now almost six months since its public release, the dust has settled and most developers would agree that, all in all, iOS 7 was a smart move on Apple's part. But in order to keep Apple's all-important developer base happy in 2014, it's going to have to fix the larger issues that still plague the iOS ecosystem. Here are the top four feature requests developers told me they have for Apple this year.

It's Time To Reinvent The App Store

"My only wish for this year would be that Apple reinvents the App Store," says Ales Bellotti, when I ask him what the best thing is that Apple could do for developers in 2014. Bellotti is the developer behind a number of popular utility apps for iOS, including My Scans PRO. "It is very hard to make your app visible and earn some money. There are hundreds of great apps in the store we never see."

Bellotti's wish is something I have heard from dozens of iOS developers and it pinpoints one of the most lacking things about the iOS ecosystem: a comprehensive system of accurate and relevant discovery so users can find the most useful apps to fulfill their needs.

Currently discoverability on the App Store is a bit of a crapshoot, which hurts both users and developers. And here the fault lies squarely with Apple. After all, search is the one thing the company could never say they are better at than their closest rival Google. Apple is clearly aware of this issue, as they bought app discovery firm Chomp for a reported $50 million back in 2012, but so far it doesn't appear much has come of the acquisition.

But good discoverability isn't the only thing haunting developers. Many also take note with the App Store's current user ratings and reviews system and hope Apple works to fix it in 2014.

"A fix is long overdue," says Scott Dunlap, developer of the critically acclaimed Habit List to-do app for iOS. "The store is littered with fake reviews and ratings, and developers spam their own titles to get better placement. A short description is fine, but a lot of apps are simply listing keywords in their app title. Apple should crack down on blatant gaming."

That's something Bellotti agrees with and he also hopes that Apple allows for a way for developers to respond to reviews. "We often get some stupid one-star reviews we cannot answer. For example, for our My Scans scanner app [which is a utility, not a game] one reviewer wrote, 'The baddest game ever' and gave it one star. There should be a way to reply to the review."

Of course, the problems plaguing a ratings system in need of an overhaul and a discoverability system in need of improvement go hand in hand. As long as accurate and relevant discoverability is an issue, unscrupulous developers will find other ways, including paying for good reviews for their apps and leaving negative reviews for competitors' apps, to boost their standing in the App Store, leaving the ethical developers with the stellar apps at an unfair advantage.

Paid App Upgrades and Trials

Discoverability and ratings weren't the only things developers told me they had issues with as far as the App Store was concerned. Virtually all of the developers I spoke with said the next most important thing Apple could do to improve the iOS developer ecosystem was to allow for paid app upgrades and trial versions of software, something they say would help both developers and end users and ultimately, they believe, lead to better sales and happier customers.

"The ability to try apps before buying would remove a lot of the marketing gimmicks and lobbying--and the unbearably low prices," says Raphael Sebbe, developer of Prizmo, a respected document scanning app for iOS. "The current situation is that users are forced to buy a few apps when they only want one, probably starting with the one with the best marketing and hopefully finishing with the one they really need."

Sebbe argues that the current approach of no "try before you buy" is a disservice toward users and can ultimately turn them off from spending their money on any other untested apps.

"Just yesterday I needed an app that would turn my iPhone into an AirPlay mic. I bought three of them and none worked the way I wanted. I finished frustrated, feeling that I wasted some money and ended up deleting the apps. Is this really the best buying experience that Apple can provide? This is in sharp contrast with the values of clarity and honesty that Apple products in general and iOS 7 in particular are about. Doesn't Apple allow trying their Macs and iPhone in Apple Stores? Why not apps? In-app purchases are being pushed to realize that, but it's not their purpose and it's complex for developers. iOS could easily change the situation by providing free, time-limited app trials."

Time-limited app trials weren't the only things developers wish Apple would change with their pricing strategy. Almost every developer I spoke with also said they are waiting for the day Apple allows for paid app upgrades in the App Store.

Currently users can buy an app once and get free updates to that app for life. On the surface this seems like its a boon for users, but it ultimately hurts them in the long run, one very prominent developer who wished to remain anonymous told me:

"Look, if you're a small developer--no matter how popular your app is--it still costs a lot of time and money to add major new features to it. I'm not getting any additional income for those free updates, so in order for me to make up for my expenses I need to add a ton of new users. That's not always doable, especially for successful apps which have a limited audience. The result is I've sat on several big new features for the last 10 months and will be rolling them out in an entirely new app this year instead of adding them to the app my loyal users have already paid for. Is it fair to my existing users? No. Will it piss them off? Probably. But being able to put food on the table for my children is more important. Apple could eliminate these dilemmas if they wanted to--they just choose not to."

Users Now Expect The Cloud To "Just Work"--So Fix iCloud

Outside of the App Store, iCloud was the next most important topic on developers' minds. Cloud computing has exploded in the last few years and many users now expect to be able to access their files from anywhere at anytime. Dropbox has brought reliable sync and cloud access to thousands of apps with great success (and praise from developers), but getting Apple's iCloud to work reliably and consistently in those same apps rarely ever happens.

"When using Core Data, Apple needs to make iCloud sync work flawlessly," Habit List's Dunlap tells me. "This is currently our biggest request, but developers with more resources than us have yet to get it working reliably."

To see how widespread iCloud reliability issues occur, one only has to take a brief glance at the longhelp documents many developers post to guide users through iCloud troubleshooting. But many developers have told me that even if they enter into lengthy email exchanges with their users in order to help them to try to sort out iCloud issues, their users end up blaming them and not Apple for iCloud's faults, which makes the perceived reliability of their app take a hit.

However, reliability of iCloud's backend is only part of the problem of Apple's cloud solutions, Raphael Sebbe says. Instead, Apple needs to reenvision how iCloud stores your documents and allows users to access them.

"The success of Dropbox in all these document productivity apps reveals that Apple's solution really isn't good enough," says Sebbe. "I don't want silo apps each managing their own TXT, PDF, or VIDEO documents."

Instead Sebbe says Apple needs to introduce what he calls "iCloud Document Streams" (modeled after iCloud's Photo Stream capability) that allows any compatible app to read or write to a document in the stream. This is something cloud storage leader Dropbox allows developers to do relatively easily.

"Another thing Dropbox got right," Sebbe adds, "is the ability to share folders between people. iCloud document streams could be shared with other people. Sending a copy of a file to a colleague by mail really shouldn't be the recommended way of collaboration in 2014."

Build A More Interoperable, Multitasking iOS

Making developers happy isn't only achieved by improvements outside of iOS. While Apple's mobile OS saw plenty of design changes in 2013 along with some pretty cool new features for developers, such as iBeacons, improvements to MapKit, AirDrop support, background refresh, and more, all of the developers I talked to had a laundry list of improvements they want to see Apple make in 2014. Overwhelmingly the majority of these centered around interoperability, multitasking, and access to deeper APIs.

"I'd like iOS to allow for actionable notifications," Dunlap tells me. "In our app, users can set reminders for their habits. When one pops up, the user should have the option to mark items as complete. Instead they have to stop what they're doing, tap a button to launch Habit List, mark the item as done, quit out, and relaunch the app they were previously using--when a single tap is all that's needed."

Dunlap also says he'd like to see Apple allow access to new APIs, including Siri, something he says will become even more important as iOS is further integrated with our cars.

Increased API access is something all developers stated they wanted--even if those APIs appeared seemingly insignificant.

"This feature request may sound a bit boring," says Christopher White, a Brooklyn-based iOS engineer, "but one thing I've always needed access to within almost every app is either the current user's phone number or favorite phone contacts. Right now there is no API to get either of these and so every app has to ask the user to enter their phone number. The phone app on iOS is separate from the actual underlying address book and the address book API so you have no way to know who a user's favorite contacts are so that you can, for instance, make it easier for a user to invite one of their closest friends to use an app."

Numerous developers also hope to see Apple open up iOS more in the next major release. Virtually every developer I spoke with, understandably, hopes that Apple may one day allow for the ability to let the user set their own default apps for email, calendars, and more, though no developer thinks this will become a reality anytime soon. Many developers also want Apple to seize on the advances in the iPad Air and make it a truly powerful workstation by allowing for multiple user accounts so iOS could handle multiple business users or family member accounts instead of developers having to spend a lot of their time coding for multiple users inside individual apps.

Making the iPad into a more powerful--and true usurper to a PC--workstation is also something Sebbe believes will be achievable only after Apple improves the ability of apps to interact with one another.

"I, along with many other developers, was expecting improved interacting between apps at WWDC 13, but nothing arrived," Sebbe explains. "URL schemes are good but too limited. They removed shared pasteboards in iOS 7--breaking some apps along the way. Having apps that provide OS-wide services, be it storage, like Dropbox and Google Drive, or social services, or anything else, that any app could interact with would be great. Think of the kind of Twitter interactions that are currently available in iOS, but that any app could provide to other apps. There were some rumors at some point of view controllers from an app that could be displayed in another app--that would be great! Both Android and Windows Phone have surpassed Apple on that front, so now is a good time for Apple to do something."

Most Developers Believe Apple Cares About Their Wants

While the above suggestions may make it seem like developers are overly critical of the iOS development ecosystem Apple has created, that criticism only comes from a desire to see Apple improve upon what virtually all the developers I spoke with told me they see as an already great ecosystem to be a part of.

And despite these criticisms, almost all of the developers I spoke with believed that Apple really does listen to their feedback and work to make changes (albeit slowly at times) that make their work lives easier.

Habit List's developer Dunlap says for proof of this one need not look any further than the latest iOS 7.1 beta.

"Apple's always been quick to iterate after each major release, and that's certainly happening with the current beta," Dunlap says. "But it also seems as if they are doing a better job of listening to developers. They took a step back from the ultra thin fonts, made changes to the lock screen, and allowed for reduced motion. In this release they've increased the transition speeds, toned down some of the icons, and added optional button shapes. I may not agree with all of their solutions, but these were some of developers' biggest criticisms and it's nice to see Apple being more open to feedback."

In Spike Jonze's Her, emotionally vulnerable protagonist Theodore Twombly falls in love with "Samantha," one of the many copies of OS1, the world's first artificially intelligent operating system. The film has been praised not only for its unique portrayal of technology's future role in our lives, but for the insight it shines into our need to connect with not just other human beings, but anything that seems to possess humanity. Matter of fact, Her is one of the few sci-fi films to ever be nominated for Best Picture. But as futurist Sarah DaVanzo tells me, Her is anything but sci-fi. It's our future and it's coming sooner than we think.

You're the chief cultural strategy officer at Sparks & Honey and you guys recently put out a report called "The Future of Relationships" in collaboration with the Museum of Sex. What does the report explore and what were its findings?

The report explores the currents of change that are shaping modern relationships including technologies (social media being the most obvious) and shifting demographics, politics, mores, taboos, gender roles, family structures, etc. The very definition of a "relationship" is evolving. For example, a Gen-Z 17-year-old considers a hookup a relationship.

Humans relate to one another differently. The report covers how relationships begin differently, behave differently, evolve differently, and end differently. The report covers advances in technology leading to advances from technology--think: i-flirting. The report points to a future of greater acceptance, openness, and increased happiness, as well as the threat of opposites.

That's a lot to cover in one report. Before we get to the meat of its conclusions, tell me about how you optioned and analyzed the data.

Through the daily rigor of "cultural listening." Online, offline, qual, quant. Lots and lots of data inputs. We use tools to listen to online discussions, analyze images and memes, and even employ the new science of emoji semiotics--i.e., extracting meaning from emoji usage and context. Our fieldwork is cultural anthropology. We parse databases and research looking for changes in consumer behavior and cultural insights. We spend a lot of energy analyzing the past in what we call "pattern analyses." We ask our network of global scouts and experts to confirm or dispelling hunches, aka hunch farming.

Doing all this daily enables us to see patterns and connections that would not be seen otherwise. Just like binge watching Breaking Bad allows you to fully appreciate the nuances of the characters, see complex subplots and notice that Marie always wears purple. People are often surprised how disciplined our work is. It's not divining or crystal ball gazing. It's data-driven.

And in order to make sense of all this data you guys created your own proprietary software and data analytics system called the Culture Mapping Platform. How does that work?

It's a methodology that includes software and data analytics. We measure trends and cultural shifts on three metrics: one--energy, two--prediction and three--reach. We've developed algorithms to assign "scores" to cultural events in terms of their cultural energy (or wave intensity) and how long it will likely live, and finally how many people it will impact. We identify what will make a trend reach its "tipping point" to mass adoption, and conversely its "dipping point."

Every day hundreds of data points are scored and cataloged in our Cultural Database. We use software to visualize and analyze trends, which are all mapped in the form of waves. Our "radar of possibilities" is a bit like an air traffic control radar screen to help us keep an eye on the cultural traffic patterns. Imagine watching the ripple patterns of waves collide--and we're looking for the "cultural collisions" that either intensify or dissipate a trend.

Okay, now lets get to that big question on everyone's minds: Is technology really changing our relationships that much?

Yes. Technology disrupts institutional and traditional notions of what constitutes a relationship.

The definition of a relationship is the "connection" between two or more concepts, objects or people: Technology is the ultimate connector. For example, Netflix has over 76,000 sub-genres of viewership interest, and there are 88,000 Meetups this week alone, pointing to the infinite range of people's interests and desire for self-expression.

Technology is the practical application of science, and we've experienced exponential profound scientific recent breakthroughs, from Google Glass to microbial mapping (imagine microbial matchmaking?). While the jury is out on Google Glass, it points to a future where partners can be more responsive, communicative, and appreciative. Wearables allow people to share experiences vicariously and savor life's moments. Online dating is the digital replacement of the analog cultural, religious, and economic communities that were historically predominant matchmakers.

A more extreme example of how scientific advancements are rebooting our concept of classic relationships is the dilemma brought on by the mother-daughter womb transplants in Sweden. How do relationships change when body parts are borrowed? How do my relationships with my grandmother and mother change if my mother and I are born from the same womb (grandma's womb)? Further, what if my mother raises me genderless? How might that impact my relationships?

What is the number one example of how technology makes our relationships better?

Information. Being informed and kept up to date with what's going on in people's lives allows us to reach out. Technology enhances our ability to assist and support when people are in need. From alerts, such as suicidal signals from status updates to crowdsourcing problem solving--think: Emily's List--the free flow of information enables us to be sensitive, prepared, and responsive. This openness also means there are fewer secrets, leading to more honest and transparent relationships.

What is the number one example of how technology makes our relationships worse?

Information. Too much information, TMI. Information overload distracts us from being in the here and now. We become addicted and too reliant on data. Any obsession will make one lose touch with reality.

Your report says that big data will soon change the foundation of modern relationships even more. How?

We generate data with every action. In the near future, sensors will be embedded in everything, and everything will be connected to the Internet. Everything can be recorded, measured, predicted, and optimized. Why not then the data surrounding our relationships? Our bodies emit data in the form of biometrics: electromagnetism, sweat, breath, heartbeat… Scientists can even "hear" rhythms of protein cells. Our thoughts and emotions are being digitized. Like the Cadbury Joy Jacket, we will "opt in" or "opt out" of broadcasting our actions, moods, thoughts, feelings, etc. so connecting and responding to people will be easier.

Today with social media we can easily see which people have the most influence (followers, fans, retweets, shares, etc.). Social graphs clearly depict one's sphere of relationships and sub-relationships--think: Reddit and subReddit--but imagine if you could identify the individuals that you communicate with the most frequently across all channels, and use that data to prioritize… or re-establish connections with those you've neglected? What about the people you communicate with most passionately? Google Glass should be able to read voice inflection and eye dilation, an indicator of interest--as well the person I'm engaging with--to assess mutual interest. Creepy, sure. But it could be helpful in certain situations.

That all seems like it could be a bit distracting, which you say leads to one of the findings of your report: Most human relationships now involve a new "love triangle" and that this could all lead to future competition between partners and technology.

According to a study, 62% of women admitted to checking their cell phone WHILE having sex and 32% regularly check social media in coitus. Obviously, having your "FoMo Face" focused on a device screen and not on the person(s) you're with isn't good for connecting with said person(s). Presence is getting rarer. I predict employers and romantic partners will "test" for FQ (focus quotient) as a predictor of future compatibility.

We know that Gen-Z kids weaned on screens are challenged spatially and socially, unable to read maps and maintain eye contact. Aside from distraction, social media posturing makes people feel bad about themselves and their relationship status. Worse than a mother asking, "so, are you seeing anyone?"

If given the choice, wouldn't you rather have a living flesh sex toy instead of silicon? The technology exists to 3-D-printed living cells to manufacture body parts (3-D-printed ears, hearts, X). Combine that thought with point-and-scan object recognition scanning software on your average smartphone. Voila! You've got a new generation of "Plaster Casters."

Things certainly seemed a lot simpler when I was a teenager in the 1990s. How are modern-day teen relationships different today than they were back in my day?

You have more choice because you have more ways to connect with people; think of all the friend of friend possibilities. You can save time by screening for compatibility--HowAboutWe. You can connect with someone that was never in your universe of possibility--Cosplay. You can connect with someone faster to satisfy your impulses--Grindr. You can craft your online persona to be the best you--Facetune. You can carry on a long distance relationship easier--Skype. You can interact with your partner more frequently--Snapchat. You can savor moments from your relationship from your life log--Narrative. You can find things to do together--Club Free Time.

On the other hand, you might learn things online about your partner that you shouldn't. Your partner might overly share about you. Or simply, your messages can be taken out of context, or facts about you misconstrued and misused. In a teen hormone surge, you might impetuously announce your relationship status to the surprise of the other. You might fall victim to revenge social media, or worse; you might become addicted to porn and become incapable of intimacy without porn stimuli.

Speaking of porn, there's no doubt it's become mainstream in the last 10 years thanks to the Internet. Is that a good or a bad thing?

Polysexuality, polyamory, polyandry, and polygamy are more openly discussed today and tacitly accepted. Millions of women are reading Dinosaur and Big Foot erotica novels. Cosplay is now mainstream. The Internet gives people access to new concepts (e.g., yoga S&M) and galvanizes fringe groups (there's Meetup for that!) and in turn is fostering self-acceptance and even pride. Isn't social media a form of soft porn in that it fosters expression and voyeurism that heretofore was in the closet? Isn't binge watching TV also a form of porn?

Conservative estimates are that 30% of Internet traffic is porn viewed across all five screens. Despite this amplification, we're seeing a "c-word" counter-trend: as in celibacy and cuddling. "Professional cuddling" is threatening to replace the oldest profession. Science confirms the health benefits of touch (Temple Grandin's "hug machine") so singletons are turning to professional healing huggers who take cuddling very seriously. There was a CNN feature on this burgeoning industry. Likewise haptic wearables enable remote forms of sensory stimulation.

An example of how the concept of "intimacy" is changing, a judge in New York City decided that two friends can adopt together. This ruling broadens the established law, which allows "two unmarried adult intimate partners" to adopt, by defining "intimate" as not necessarily sexual. Does this means that I can be intimate with my professional cuddler, while not being sexual? What is more intimate than intimate? Perhaps we need to invent new lexicon to express the nuances and complexities of modern relationships?

Let's talk about the movie Her. It seems like every geek's wet dream, but are our technological capabilities really moving in that direction? And if so, do you think humans could actually form real attachments and relationships with software?

People fall in love with their cars, art, material possessions, and inanimate objects. Weren't Japanese warriors in love with their swords? In modern Japan, droves of people are falling in love with Paro the adorable furry life-like interactive robotic seal, which is used for dementia therapy. I held a Paro in my arms at CES and my mind and heart were tricked given how lifelike and responsive it was to me. It triggered something in my amygdala and my attachment response to Paro was involuntary. It felt real. And, it felt good.

Getting existential, some might argue that our realities are simply some intelligent design software, so who's to say the feelings I have with people and things in "real life" today isn't just a form of code? The collective conscious of our culture is toying with this notion; Look at all the films, TV shows, and novels about parallel, looping meta Inception-like universes.

But without spoiling the ending of Her, the OSs seem to have a tougher time dealing with our humanity than the other way around. If the OS you've come to rely on and feel comfortable with sends you a Dear John letter, you WILL feel rejection. A positive message coming out of Her, however, is that even if we form relationships with software we won't lose our humanity. Technology is more likely to complement than replace relationships.

But doesn't that make you sad? Aren't humans supposed to have human relationships?

We mustn't assume that the only valid relationships are human-to-human connections. That's akin to saying the only valid relationships are opposite sex or monogamous. In the animal kingdom we see every imaginable type of relationship, including pets who are deeply attached to their toys or their owner's leg.

As society evolves alongside technology, expect the spectrum of relationships to become more diverse--50 Shades of Grey to the nth degree. And along with it, our human experiences. That's got to be a good thing. Doesn't increasing the richness of our relationships--in its array of shapes and forms--expand us and help us to grow and feel? The danger is being lopsided and extreme, for example exclusively engaging in virtual relationships. As in everything, balance, variety, and moderation is good.

Could any good come from a human/artificial intelligence relationship?

A lot of people are looking forward to the Singularity. As artificial intelligence becomes self-generative and sentient it will learn and discover things that humans have not (yet). It will conceive new concepts and present new thoughts and philosophies to humans; thoughts that our brains can't generate on their own. This should be as mind-expansive, enlightening, and catalytic to humans as the discovery of gravity. AI is often depicted as sinister and out of control, but there is a spiritual side to it. There's always humanists, spiritual leaders, and theologians in attendance at debates about 2045.

In a future where software is written to try to get humans to form actual feelings for it, would coders have any kind of moral obligations to their human users?

Yes, there should be checks and balances, just like subliminal seduction messages in advertising are illegal. We wouldn't want to find ourselves in the situation where everyone is heartbroken by their OS at the same time--imagine what that could do to GDP? But the onus is also on humans to be mindful. A job of the future will likely be an AI Relationship Coach.

Perhaps we'll have vestigial emotions? Humans have evolved physically over millennia, yet we rarely speak of human emotional evolution, as if our emotional portfolio is the same as it was during Plato's time. We have vestigial organs, so isn't it possible that we could evolve-out of certain emotions that would enable us to deal better with AI relationships? On the other hand, it's just as plausible that our AI interactions weed out emotions such as "envy" or "insecurity" and we find ourselves worrying about "GMEs" not GMOs--genetically modified emotions as opposed to objects.

But before we get to the level where coders are making intelligent AIs we can love, what would you like to see them work on today that would make some facet of our sexual relationships better through technology?

An app to help couples achieve orgasm every day of the year. Our health tracking devices provide metrics, advice, and the ability to compete with others to achieve health goals. Why not apply the same technology and science to orgasm goals? Imagine a Kickstarter for an O-tracking device in the "oHealth" category. What better invention than software that coaxes partners to be more present, more intimate, and more attentive? Who wouldn't enjoy a system that helps people experience pleasure more frequently? A system that encourages people to work harder at being selfless and more giving?

The year is 2050. What will human beings relationships be like with each other and with their software?

Thirty-five years ago we were starting to understand the full impact of the AIDS epidemic. The first generation of kids grew up in families of dual income families and same-sex relationships were taboo. Mobile phones were the size of a brick. Fax machines were hot. Porn entered the home via tape or video on demand. The Internet was nascent. Brooke Shields was shocking in Pretty Baby.

With Moore's Law at work, it's difficult to imagine 2050 (post-Singularity) but I'll posit that the future is more dirty, wet, and living than the white, slick, sterile imagery depicted in sci-fi today. Microbial ecosystems will form our operating systems. Software will be embedded in the wetware of our bodies. Our sexual, emotional, and intellectual desires will be satisfied as soon as they surface. In this world we could find ourselves paralyzed by satisfaction.

New words will be in our vocabulary to describe the nuanced differences between all of our relationships with the tangible and intangible. There will be language (and glyphs, as we become more visual) to describe new manifestations of "family" and community. The very term "AI" will be obsolete because "artificial" will be meaningless in a "transhumanist" era. By then it's likely we will have created life.

Of course with every trend this is a balancing counter-trend. So, as the post-human pendulum swings in one direction, the natural interaction pendulum swings the other direction. We will likely see pockets of people--perhaps even whole states or nations--rejecting technological co-mingling in favor of pure human-to-human interaction. With this we will see a balancing rise in asceticism. We will see people choosing heartbreak and messy relationships to experience the human condition. There's hope for the analog love letter and flower bouquet.

No central website exists where makers--the folks in the DIY tech community--can gather around and show off what they've built. As the model stands right now, makers show off their projects on Instructables, link their code to GitHub, then blog about it on WordPress. In most cases when a maker posts a tutorial for a project that goes viral and brings big bucks of revenue to the distributors of the components, he will never see a penny. Without a platform to hang out on and share stories, or a reward system for sharing great ideas, people don't have much incentive to build beyond their own curiosity.

Arduino is to makers what Hobby Lobby is to arts and crafts--the main supplier for the components and little hardware boards used for inventive DIYs. But what if they could be more? What if in addition to being a one-stop shop for tech components they could also be a community more like Pinterest?

Over the span of three months, 42 million visits to the Arduino website came from recurring users--the die-hard makers. Arduino interpreted that figure as an opportunity to morph its site into the ultimate maker's clubhouse. Now, after hundreds of commits to their website, Arduino.cc is a social experience. The new model even allows for translation of tutorials into other languages.

"That was really important since the communications in Arduino are spread out across the globe," says creative director Giorgio Oliveiro. When I was building my own project using the Arduino Yun, I learned a little Japanese and German in order to understand tutorials from two makers on the other side of the puddle. Makers are everywhere. Here's how cofounder Massimo Banzi and Oliveiro are trying to bring them together.

Little Changes, Big Stakes

Oliveiro and Banzi understood that beyond just making Arduino profiles more "social," the big change would come from a reward system. Now, a maker can make a percentage of the sales their tutorial generates. This will attract users to post their content online versus other sites like Instructables because tutorials posted on Arduino measure the click-through purchases and reward the original curators. This is even a plus for people just making the tutorials, because before this users needed to click around before they found the hardware and other materials for a specific DIY.

The incentive model hopes to create pay for makers of stellar tutorials. "If their tutorials bring sales to the store, we need to provide some reward to whoever wrote that tutorial. In a way we're trying to create this loop where people create beautiful projects, put them online as tutorials, and publish the code. In exchange we can help them promote their tutorials through the blog, and in a way, these tutorials become things people actually use," says Banzi.

Among other changes, the rise of the new Wi-Fi-powered Arduinos, such as the Linux based Yun, spurred the demand for a unified coding editor online. Since these boards are connected to the Internet, it's much easier to update the code without having to dig them up and plug them into your computer for an upgrade. With the unified coding editor Arduino plans to launch, you can just type up the code, from your phone or your tablet, save it, and run it on the board. No need to go digging the devices out of tubes in your kitchen or irrigation systems.

Much like YouTube videos and tweets, Arduino added the option of making code embeddable. "The tutorial system becomes key to the whole thing because people are inventing ideas and walking others through them, and embedding allows you to explain it in a place easily," says Banzi.

Open Source And The Economy Of A BLT Sandwich

All of these changes are mainly trying to crack the mystery of "GitHub orphans" and why some projects take off and others don't. Often there are bits of code on GitHub, or sites like such, which start out as open source projects but get forgotten along the way because no one ever contributes code. Banzi believes communities are the driver for contribution in the maker community and attributes this reason for rethinking the website in the first place. "What you find is that if you can create a community around an open source project then it becomes really alive because everyone starts to contribute. If you don't have an ecosystem, the platform won't be successful," says Banzi. "If you start charging for everything, everything dies very quickly."

Banzi also ended up making a notable analogy in his attempt to explain why open source works. "There are millions of sandwich places around the world, the recipe for sandwiches is open. Nobody can patent the recipe for a BLTs but yet there's like a million restaurants doing BLTs. Everyday each one of them is adding a little source, each one is improving the recipe with technique, but effectively what goes inside the sandwich is out there and open and people still make money," says Banzi.

"The fact that knowledge on how to build something is out there doesn't mean that it stops people from creating products. I think it enables people to share the efforts that are needed to get the certain type of product or project started. Each person adds what some people call the secret source. You can take open source knowledge and add your own secret source. Or you can sell it or sell services around that product," says Banzi.

The Ecosystem Of Success: Fast Positive Reinforcement

As far as long-term goals go, Arduino is also looking to leverage the way it attracts beginners. "If users don't get some kind of positive reinforcement in a short amount of time, they start to think that they're stupid and that this is not for them. So they quit. They give up," says Banzi. "Getting people to have a small victory very quickly is key to build up their confidence to go forward."

"It's about sharing something understood and enjoyed by people who are in the same level as users. In open source projects, people are not putting so much effort in trying to coddle their average user. Those are both the short-term and long-term goals for Arduino," says Oliveiro.

This philosophy has led Arduino to become the obvious go-to choice for any beginner that wants to start a DIY tech project. Their libraries and code resources on how to program an Arduino are the largest in the electronic spectrum. "We want to create a platform that's going to take this and multiply the efficiency, and multiply the value that people get by being part of that community," says Banzi.

When clients and CTOs ask me what "the next mobile" is, my answer could be a wall device, some sort of gestural tech, or one of the thousands of wearables that we saw at CES this year. It wouldn't matter. What they're really asking me is what they should know to prepare themselves for what's next. My answer is Kickstarter.

Kickstarter is the greatest idea incubator of the 21st century, possibly ever, but it doesn't teach people how to ship a product. A study by the Wharton School of Business last year said that only 25% of Kickstarter projects deliver their goods on time, and even then, it's usually in small quantities. The founder of one fully funded project bragged to me over lunch that he was only a year late. If I was over a year late to anything, I'd be fired.

Stories like that are common, and probably the reason why Felix Salmon over at Reuters once called Kickstarter a "Skymall for vaporware." Which is awesome. My advice? Get a subscription to the Skymall that is Kickstarter, and put someone on it full time. Large companies can take that vaporware and make it a reality. Companies should be looking at Kickstarter and Indiegogo as a menu of what's available and a heat map of where user traction is. Then, buy next-gen tech companies while they're still inexpensive, put a team of experts on the problem, and push the product out through all of your established distribution channels.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Buy 'Em

Google just positioned themselves front and center of this trend by purchasing Nest for the not-so-inexpensive price tag of $3.2 billion. What they got for the price however, is proven design expertise in the connected hardware space and an established development team led by two hardware veterans. While it is rare, products backed by teams with the whole package aren't completely unheard of, and if you can afford it, make great buys. Estimote, which makes low-energy remote plastic beacons that give smartphone users an "enhanced shopping experience," works beautifully. So does Fitbit, the wearable activity monitor. But waiting until these products prove themselves in the market is a luxury only deep-pocket players can afford.

Finding The Right Match

For those looking at acquiring products that still deal in backers, not buyers, there are a few things you can learn from the Google/Nest matchup.

1. Follow the momentum. Break down what people are funding, how quickly it's getting funded, and what makes each project the best in its category.
2. Find teams with technical experience in their field, hopefully years of it, otherwise it's more of a creative endeavor than a potential product.
3. Acquire more than just the product. Look for teams where partnership means acquiring their niche expertise, and industry-specific credibility, as well as the hardware.
4. Finally, find the projects with a missing piece that aligns to one of your core competencies. Is it a hardware product without a beautiful software interface? A niche product that could realign its positioning to find a broader market? Or does the project need what every crowdfunded project needs: efficient development, processes, consumer-grade polish, market launch strategies, and distribution channels?

Ask More Of Your Startups

This year's CES saw companies like Univision and Unilever hiring tech startups to guide them around the show. According to Alex Gold, cofounder of Buzzstarter, "brands are essentially using startups as 'external innovation teams' since they're already in the trenches on a day-to-day basis." Why not take it a step further and actually outsource the emerging tech R&D to the guys on the ground floor, rather than just asking them for a tour of it? If you want to keep to your core missions, and keep clear of distractions, let your partners help you understand what's worth your resources, and how your brand fits into the ever-shifting, and sometimes shifty, world of new tech.

The best of both worlds

What I still find most intriguing is GE and Quirky--a cross between buying a team wholesale and looking to startup partners to help you pick and choose. In November, GE invested $30 million in the New York company. Started as an idea clearinghouse for home inventors, Quirky solicits ideas for new tech. It then picks the best ones, makes them, and distributes them to stores. With its massive corporate infrastructure and often inhibitive contracts and processes, GE just isn't able to behave as innovatively as Quirky does. But it has distribution networks that a new company couldn't hope to reach in 100 years.

GE and Quirky shared patents. They collaborated on a milk jug that can tell you when its contents are going sour, an egg container that sends you a text when its contents are about to expire, and a power strip that automatically connects to the Internet. Now they've cut a deal to co-develop six products a year for the next five years. That's the way modern business should work.

So what's the "next mobile?" Hopefully, you are. Being mobile isnt easy for huge companies that run about as flexibly as government, and there's no magic formula out there to teach corporations how to outmaneuver startups. But there are thousands of paying customers out there without a product to pay for. And Kickstarter has identified them for you. Go get them.

When you're launching a startup, what's the one thing you need? Initial funds? Organization? A plan? Well, yes--but also tools. Fortunately for entrepreneurs, there are tons of web apps out there--many of them free--to help handle the business side while you catapult your product into the market.

1. Backops.co

Great for: Back office number crunching

How it works: Keep all your accounting and HR reports in the cloud to keep everything straight--and saved.

2. Appical.net

Great for: Onboarding new employees.

How it works: Onboarding takes a lot of time--and a lot of paperwork. Appical is a standalone mobile platform that uses picture pages, video pages, and augmented reality to get employees implemented super fast.

3. Zao.com

Great for: Finding new employees via social networks.

How it works: Zao is basically a referral program based on social media. You can see how you're connected to candidates, use a sign-up wizard to post jobs, and makes it easy for people to refer friends based on skill set.

4. Pipedrive

Great for: Sales CRM.

How it works: Make customer relationship management your #1 priority by using Pipedrive on mobile or desktop. Set up a board that reflects your sales pipelines, using cards to document different clients and deals.

5. AnyPerk

Great for: Managing employee perks.

How it works: Use this customizable platform to request new perks in your area, and AnyPerk will see what they can do.

6. PowWow

Great for: Scheduling user meetings.

How it works: This app syncs with your Google Calendar to find open meeting times to schedule interviews. Send out the available times to participants and let them pick the time.

7. Branded Bridge Line

Great for: Conference calls

How it works: If you're really on a strict budget, then a conferencing platform like Skype is going to be your first thought. But keep in mind--that can backfire. Some clients get wary doing business with companies that might have to rely on a free service to conduct partnerships.

8. Expensify

Great for: Bookkeeping

How it works: Few startups can afford accountants, so save money and track budgets with Expensify. It handles your bank statements, and helps you come up with budgets and restrictions on your spending. Plus, it syncs up with other accounting apps.

9. EchoSign

Great for: Document signing

How it works: EchoSign is a simple concept: online signature software. If you need something signed by multiple parties, get it done by e-signing. E-sign a document, send it back, track its status, and check it off your to-do list.

10. Docracy

Great for: Collaborating on legal docs.

How it works: Managing legal documents can be painful and expensive for young companies. Docracy works like a GitHub for legal documents, allowing you to use open source boilerplate documents for things like contracts and partnerships.

Project Management

When you're launching a business, you need to make sure you're spending the right kind of time on the right kind of tasks. Enter project management.

11. 10,000 Feet

Great for: an all-encompassing view of your team's productivity and capacity.

How it works: Use this interactive scheduling system to see which team members have the capacity to take on tasks, which ones are tied up, and which projects are coming down the pipeline. Use the status bar to keep team members updated on where the company's at, adjust budgets, reschedules deadlines, and make sure the right people are working on the right things.

12. Pivotal Tracker

Great for: Bug and ticket tracking for engineering and customer support teams.

How it works: With Pivotal Tracker, your tech team can fix bugs, break tasks down into smaller projects, and stick closer to deadlines. Once you've used the tracker, it can even start to estimate how long a new project should take, based on your past projects and performance. You can accept or reject changes, keep track of how many tasks are getting completed, and monitor progress to find out what your biggest bottlenecks are.

13. Casual

Great for: a small or medium sized team that routinely does similar projects--mostly because once you create a workflow, you can then reuse the template.

How it works: Casual is less a scheduling assistant and more a workflow manager. It's great for the planning stages. You can set out the big picture, and then create a workflow that stems from the main idea.

Marketing Tools

14. Video Rascal

Great for: affordable marketing videos.

How it works: Part of starting a business is explaining to consumers (and potential investors) what your business does. Outsourcing video can cost upward of $1,000. Video Rascal creates animated videos on the cheap. They offer templates and examples of previous projects for inspiration.

15. Grader.com

Great for: someone new to SEO and analytics.

How it works: You need an easy way to actually track your marketing efforts. Grader.com "grades" your efficiency, and it can measure your authority on social media and your SEO efforts and explain your keyword rankings.

16. Campaigner

Great for: beginning email remarketing.

How it works:Campaigner is a great tool for anyone new to email remarketing. It offers email templates, contact lists, segmentation, and even email marketing training.

Social Media Tools

A must-have to spread awareness and get consumers to interact with your brand.

17. IFTTT

Great for: automating social media actions.

How it works: IFTTT (if this then that) is a great way to collect social data. Say you want to post a message on all of your social media presences. That takes time, having to visit all the channels. With IFTTT though, you can post once and have it syndicated to the rest. How? If this, then that. Twitter becomes your "if." You select the trigger you want, and then add a hashtag to your status that signals it's a tweet you want posted across all your other online social media presences.

18. Buzz Bundle

Great for: bundling keyword analytics with social media personas.

How it works: It bundles together keywords, brand mentions, reviews, and links while still managing your social media accounts. You can schedule posts out, comment in forums, and create multiple personas in the same place.

One of the biggest advantages of Buzz Bundle for a startup is that it can eliminate the need to hire a social media-only employee--you can create tons of personas from behind a proxy that makes it seem as if you're posting from different locations.

Alexis Caffrey is a freelance writer with a focus on technology, new media, and design. You can reach Alex via @AlexisCaffrey or alexiscaffrey.com.

Designing the next generation video game console is like a juggling act: You need to squeeze in enough top-notch components to stay competitive over a near-decade life-span. So why did Sony limit itself by imposing a strict 250w power consumption limit on the cutting-edge PS4?

Again, it's the juggling act. 250w is the upper safety limit for a two-pronged power plug going into the back of the PS4 system. Designers sacrificed more power for a plug footprint smaller than that of the three-pronged power cord as the Xbox has been using for years.

The plug trade-off reflects a greater design philosophy at Sony, which made the decision to include its "power brick" AC to DC converter inside the system. The result is not only a sleeker, smaller system but one that's engineered tightly enough to let the PS4 stand upright, (something the Xbox One can't do).

Will the 250w ceiling limit the system? Probably not. Sony has been using two prong power cords since the original PlayStation hit the market in 1994. Starting with the PS1, a smaller PlayStation released in 2000 alongside the brand-new PS2, each console has gotten slimmer with each redesign. With the release of the SuperSlim PS3 in 2012, the system's second redesign, it's safe to say that engineering efficiency is a company obsession.

Xbox One vs. Playstation 4: Which Burns Up More Power?

During gameplay or video streaming, the Xbox One uses less energy than the PS4. This is not the case, however, in standby mode, which is the most common state for these systems to be in. According to the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Xbox One is projected to use 253 kW in power over the course of a year, costing the typical player about $30 in power annually, while the PS4's 184 kW per year will cost consumers about $22.

The Xbox's 250w sounds like a lot compared to the PS4, which consumes about 140w of power during gameplay. But that benchmark applies to a contemporary game, so giving a wide power margin seems wise to future-proof against new games that need greater rendering and console resources. Truly comparing peak power usage for the PS4 and Xbox One will have to wait until more intensive games arrive.

There are other energy drains that fill the gap: Peripherals, like recharging controllers or wireless headsets, nickel and dime power usage for 1-4w per peripheral. In fact, the vaunted always-listening Xbox One's Kinect is largely responsible for the larger standby power drain compared to the PS4 mentioned in the NRDC report. Similarly, the voice-controlled PlayStation Camera peripheral for the PS4 would likely increase its energy consumption.

System design trends, however, tell us not to worry. The original PS3 was notoriously power-hungry, but its first slimming redesign cut power consumption from a game-running high of 206w down to just 96w. Likewise, the Xbox 360 revisions went from 177w at launch day to 88w for its Xbox 360 Slim. Both can still become more efficient, especially when streaming media compared to stand-alone devices, but both companies are moving in a power-saving direction.

Last weekend, Nintendo released its sales forecasts for 2014 and the outlook is not good. The company is dramatically scaling back their projections, expecting to sell 13.5 million handheld 3DS consoles and 2.8 million Wii U systems. Those numbers are revised from 18 million and 9 million, respectively.

While the 3DS was actually the best-selling console of 2013, brand confusion and heavy competition from mobile devices undoubtedly contributed to the Wii U's trouble. But one theme has been consistent: the company's crappy relationship with third-party developers.

Earlier this month, Eurogamer featured an essay written by an anonymous third-party developer who had worked on a launch title for Nintendo's Wii U. The developer cites a laundry list of terrible experiences: byzantine development tools, poor documentation, barely present support, and little financial incentive for developers making cross-platform titles:

There are some fleeting parallels between Wii U and the next-gen consoles--the combination of a low-power CPU with a much more powerful graphics chip--but the notion of next-gen titles being easily portable to the Wii U just doesn't work. The gulf in power is just too high, while the GPGPU that we'll see on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 isn't compatible with the older shader model four hardware found in the Wii U. Doubtless, the first-party developers at Nintendo will make the hardware sing--they always do--but the situation looks grim for those of us in third-party development, with the opportunity to progress on the hardware held back by both the quality of the tools and the lack of financial reward for tailoring our code to the strengths of the hardware

While some larger third-party developers have stated publicly that making games for the Wii U wasn't any more difficult than the competition, the situation changes altogether if you're an independent developer. If you're an independent developer, well, Nintendo doesn't care about you.

But such treatment of independent and third-party developers among large tech companies was the norm for a very long time. Only Apple, with its annual Worldwide Developers Conference going back to the mid-'90s, has ever shown prolonged and dedicated interest in supporting and informing third-party developers. It's a move that's paid huge dividends and changed the tech world in the long run.

Sony has also gotten bad reviews from indie game devs, though not as bad as Nintendo's. Sony made halfhearted attempts with gestures like its DevStation developer conference--which was only held in 2006, 2007, and 2012. But in this latest generation of gaming hardware, the company is showing a genuine interest in wooing independent game developers, scouting and signing indie games the way a college recruiter seeks out promising high school quarterbacks.

By contrast, Microsoft has come closest in recent years to reaching an Apple-esque gold standard when it comes to third-party developer relations. In 2011, it launched its first Build developer conference, consolidating two previous conferences for web designers and Windows developers into one annual event to connect with developers over all things Microsoft. Naturally, that includes Xbox. Furthermore, Microsoft's plans include giving every Xbox One dev kit functionality, a huge win for developers of all stripes--provided that the program's terms and conditions aren't problematic.

Will the competition and game development's changing tides force Nintendo to change its ways? Probably not. In fact, it probably doesn't even matter if the Wii U turns around or not, according to IGN's Keza McDonald:

Nintendo is an extraordinarily solvent company. As of the end of the last financial year, Nintendo had around $5bn in cash assets and another $5bn in bonds. That's $10bn essentially in the bank. Ten BILLION dollars. Which means that Nintendo could make a loss of the projected proportions for 20 or 30 years without running out of money.

In other words--don't expect better dev relations until 2044.

Image: Hightechdad

Ever gotten an email offering a guest post on your blog? One of Google's top search engine officials, head of Webspam Matt Cutts, announced this week that many of these campaigns are scam artists in writer's clothing.

Here's how it works. A marketer sends a form letter out to hundreds of people on an email list. Often, the list is filled with people who own or operate a website that needs fresh content. The marketer proposes that guest posts be published on the person's site. Those posts contain a "linkback" to one of the marketer's clients.

The site owner often takes the marketer's post, along with its "linkback," and publishes it him or herself. Sometimes, the site editor or owner actually gives an authorship to the marketer. Either way, a "linkback" appears in the guest post.

This is where Google's "bots" come into play. These computer programs ceaselessly push themselves throughout the Internet, tabulating connections between websites. They help to determine which sites are linking to what. The type of "linkback" can show respect to the site it links to, or be indifferent to it, through the code it is written in. Theoretically, if a product or site accumulates "linkbacks," it will appear higher in search engine rankings than sites that have not been doing so. The client pays the marketer for this, even though the method violates Google's quality guidelines.

"When a site links to you it passes on it's credibility to you," says Search Engine Journal editor-at-large John Rampton. "This tells Google and other search engines that the site that's being linked to is important. An easy way to think of this is how back in high school, if the cool kids say you're popular, you become popular."

Cutts said this "guest post outsourcing" has taken a once authentic practice and made it so "only the barest trace of legitimate behavior remains."

"So stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it's just gotten too spammy. In general I wouldn't recommend accepting a guest blog post unless you are willing to vouch for someone personally or know them well. Likewise, I wouldn't recommend relying on guest posting, guest blogging sites, or guest blogging SEO as a linkbuilding strategy." ~Matt Cutts, Head of Webspam, Google

Cutts enjoys a kind of mythical cult-leader status among many marketers and SEO professionals. In periodic blog posts and videos, he gives hints about how his search quality team might adjust Google's search algorithms in order to block or discourage abusive behavior from folks trying to boost site rankings. He also gives recommendations for how marketers should behave if they hope to climb the rankings honestly. That means that each time he speaks, huge numbers of online marketers are waiting and watching like hungry dogs at mealtime.

It turns out, this "automated guest posting" trend has been going on for several months if not years, and Cutts has been harping on it the whole time. This latest post caused some marketers to fear that guest posting itself might be banned somehow, but that's not the case. It's only the lower quality chum that is going to become more worthless in the eyes of the search algorithms.

These developments have caused editors of Search Engine Journal and many other marketing-centric blogs to tighten guest posting editorial guidelines. Some months back they started requiring that posts be longer and have fewer, more appropriate linkouts. "We set forth strict standards for all of our writers," said Rampton. "It makes some guest posters mad, but it's what we need to do to protect our site and its readers."

This brings to light something many people didn't realize was happening. There hasn't been much coverage of "guest post spam" aside from blogs devoted to this subject. It has left site owners who need fresh content wondering what they can do to avoid spam.

"One key thing to ask an SEO vendor for is references," said Anne Ward, a San Francisco SEO specialist who works with several national brands. "If they are experienced and trustworthy, it won't be a problem. If they can't provide you with a solid reference, chances are they don't have the experience they're saying they do. Also, If someone promises guaranteed rankings just run far, far away. Nobody can promise that, not even Matt Cutts."

At the heart of the problem is that some scammers still think they can get away with fooling people into providing them linkbacks. The simple truth is, a site owner can run into trouble if they are linking back inappropriately. "Linking for the sake of it has never worked consistently," Ward says. "Google wants you to follow their guidelines for determining content relevancy, which are fairly academic in nature."

Startup "success" is a matter of luck and timing--but mostly it's a matter of persistence. Companies that fail don't usually do so by objective measures--they just become so miserable to operate that the founders decide to euthanize it.

CB Insights collected 51 accounts of startup failures in multiple industries from 2007 to the present day to try to make sense of what compels people to pull the parachute in their early stage venture. After reading them all, I thought startup founder Brianne Garcia summed up the struggle well in her obituary for her company Parceld:

Most of us don't have big wads of cash and time to burn, so we have one shot and then we have to figure out how to pay the rent and feed ourselves. Those who achieve success in that one shot are just as lucky as they are admirable. And those who don't hit it big on the first try, but have the time and money to figure stuff out, are extremely privileged.

Yes, it helps to already be rich and lucky--but while every failed startup implodes in its own unique car crash of money, relationships, and broken dreams, a few common themes emerged. You must have a technical cofounder, seek continuous customer validation of your business idea, and avoid the perils of half-assed marketing. Focus, focus, and more focus was also a popular theme. The tips we have chosen below go beyond these more obvious mistakes.

Define Founder Roles And Expectations

The founders must agree on the roles they will play in the business as illustrated by the story of Teamometer.

Conflict and disagreement arrived early, because expectations of work and founder roles were not agreed upon and everyone had a different idea about their share of the load. The developer had no intention of being the project's developer. Everyone but me had other businesses, so time was constantly an issue and deliverables just didn't happen.

Since we were 3 business people, we spent all this time into idiot plans, budget forecasts, BUSINESS CARDS, fancy website… all useless things which in the end did not contribute to anything. The result of this was that in the end we had to hire a full-time (and paid) developer. So we had zero revenue, 4 co-founders and a paid employee (which was effectively the only one doing real work).

Your Product Is Just A Checkbox

Building a business is not just about building a product according to the founder of Saaspire.

You absolutely need to get your product right, but it is just one of several equally important things you need to get right to create a sustainable business. In our case our product was good, our business model was reasonable and well worked out, our marketing plan was terrible. It wasn't until pretty late in the game that we really tried to figure out how we'd go about selling our thing to customers.

Don't Always Listen To Your Users

Listening to your users is a more risky business than you might think says the founder of Sonar.

"I would use your product if only you had X feature" is a dangerous signal to follow. Users do their best to anticipate what they want before they've seen it but, like entrepreneurs, they are often wrong. You are probably not the Steve Jobs of ______. Removing friction from existing user behaviors (e.g. checkins) almost always has a higher ROI than building castles in the sky (e.g. hypothesizing about your API). Find all the dead ends/local maxima in your current products before building new ones!

Stop Worrying About The Competition

In another tip from the excellent Sonar post, stop slavishly following your competition.

Are your competitors releasing a bunch of the same features that you have on your roadmap? Yes? Do you know what consumers want*? No? Great, then neither do your competitors. Get back to figuring out what users want! Lesson Learned: Be steady at the wheel. The only way one startup can kill another startup is by getting into the other's head and leading them off a cliff.

Figure Out Streamlined Metrics To Measure Your Progress

Intellibank's founder discussed about the dangers of over-measurement in the vein of Lean Analytic's one metric which really matters.

I once had a board member tell me that we were over-measured and under-prioritized. It stung. A lot. But it also made quite an impression. As a business leader you need to figure out the metric that matters most for your company and understand that the more you measure, the less prioritized you'll be. Don't fall into the trap of trying to measure everything. What I've learned is that in the early days, what matters most is having customers who love and use your product. Figure out the one or two best measures to determine this.

Don't Raise Too Much Money Too Early

To many startup founders, raising too much money may seem like the ultimate luxury problem. They would be wrong according to founder of Standout Jobs.

I raised too much money, too early for Standout Jobs (~$1.8M). We didn't have the validation needed to justify raising the money we did… Raising the money felt like winning. It felt like all (or most of) the justification we needed. It set us on a path of building a bigger product than we should have, and committing (falsely) to our own assumptions of what would work, without fully testing them.

Sometimes You Need To Do The "Wrong" Thing

A good business decision that makes you miserable is never a good decision according to Saaspire's postmortem.

We actually saw this bootstrapping problem coming way before it happened. We had plenty of time to correct course and focus our energy on building a stable consulting business before building the product. Why didn't we do it? We really didn't want to. It was one of those situations where we had to decide what we wanted in life. Lesson Learned: What the "right thing to do" is and what the "right thing for you to do" are not always the same thing. Be honest with yourself and your partners about what you want and what will make you happy.

Stop Reading. Start Doing.

And now that you have gotten through this entire post, the best advice of all from IonLab's founder.

Simply reading A-Z of books and essays is not important, you have to internalize the learnings by testing it out on the field and realizing the value for yourself instead of saying "that makes sense" and forgetting about it a few minutes later.

Bitcloud, which calls itself a distributed autonomous corporation, thinks it can reinvent the Internet by having individual users completing computing tasks like routing, storing, or computing in exchange for cash. It's called peer-to-peer bandwidth sharing.

"If you're interested in privacy, security, ending Internet censorship, decentralizing the Internet, and creating a new mesh network to replace the Internet, then you should join or support this project," Bitcoin advocates announced on Reddit last week.

The goal of Bitcloud is to use the same practices of Bitcoin--where miners are rewarded with cryptocurrency either by completing a task or in exchange for one--so as to get out from under corporations and ISPs. The project will completely remove Internet service providers like AT&T and Verizon from the equation.

The developers hope to decentralize the Internet by replacing applications like YouTube, Facebook, and Spotify, with WeTube, a video and audio streaming service. WeTube will allow users to share content without having to be concerned with privacy and censorship. And possibly for a fee, users can opt for ad-free content.

In Bitcloud, how much bandwidth an individual user contributes to the network will determine how much they will be rewarded. This is referred to as the "proof of bandwidth," much like Bitcoin's proof of stake. But instead of remuneration being based on the solution to a complex mathematical equation, it is based on a user's share of total bandwidth used within the Bitcloud network.

To help establish the network, the developers want to use Cloudcoins as currency; you will need Cloudcoins to use Bitcloud. The hope is to monetize the system through advertisements on public videos for example or by paying for cloud storage on the network. The developers admit that donations usually only get projects so far, and they realize that allowing people to make money this way could give the project a fighting chance at success.

Bitcloud is in the very early stages of development, but the team behind the project wanted to publicize the idea in order to attract developers, programmers, financial support, guidance, and/or ideas to the project. And as Bitcoin gains traction as a widely accepted currency--even the NBA is starting to accept Bitcoin--it doesn't seem too farfetched to have the Internet structured on a similar protocol of exchanges.

Credit card fraud is getting a major software upgrade. How can a gang of 13 men can steal more than $2 million from several gas pumps so easily? Using Bluetooth-enabled credit card skimmers that anyone can buy over the Internet.

Credit card skimmers are nothing new, but recent innovations in 3-D-printed card skimmers and skimmers that directly attach to a POS terminal have made it easier for thieves to get access to your credit cards at all sorts of places you shop.

This un-ironic and not-so-hard-hitting ABC exposé maps out how a credit card skimmer works and how to insert the hardware into ATMs or gas pumps: buy the skimmer, snag a universal key (like the ones used on vending machines) to open the gas pump, snap the skimmer into place, and voilà--you are ready to steal credit or debit card numbers.

This site devoted to Credit Card Skimming Devices, written by a European and Chinese team, is probably your best resource for more info on skimmers. In a post titled "Skimmer Package," the authors explain that the software in the Skimmer-Koro 16 enables a double-direction magnetic strip reading, so whichever direction you swipe, your card will be read. Through infrared rays and a Blu-ray Magnet, the Koro 16 reads the electromagnetic strip on your card and feeds the information to the skimmer receiver to which its attached.

The Koro 16 sends out a Bluetooth signal that can be received and processed with a BaseEXP-16 and will send a coded text message with the PIN code (the authors of the site urge you to buy their software to help with the encoding). The two devices will cost you between $2100-$3900, which is quite a small investment considering that credit card skimming is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year industry.

The 13 men charged by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. on Tuesday are facing a 426-count indictment that names four lead defendants. The charges run the gamut from several counts of money laundering to grand larceny. Investigators claimed that the gang of hackers placed card skimmers at Raceway and Racetrac gas stations in Texas, South Carolina, and Georgia, hauling in a total of $2.1 million.

The robbers were smart enough to keep every transaction under $10,000 to "avoid any cash transaction reporting requirements imposed by law and to disguise the nature, ownership, and control of the defendants' criminal proceeds," according to the statement from the Manhattan District Attorney's office.

As of December of last year, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that identity theft had cost Americans $24.7 billion for the year of 2012. That means roughly 16.6 million people have been affected by identity theft crimes.

Francis Bitoni, the mind behind Dita Von Teese's curve-hugging 3-D-printed dress, recently teamed up with Lagoa and MakerBot to host a 10-day workshop on the emerging field of 3-D garment design. Designers from every industry gathered at the Metropolitan Exchange to collaborate with Francis on his next creation.

Computational design is the newest trend slowly penetrating the fashion industry and high-powered rendering engines and MakerBots are the new pins and needles of couture. Learning it means learning a new set of four tools:

1. Maya by AutoDesk
2. Rhino by Rhino3D
3. Processing by Ben Fry and Casey Reas
4. Lagoa by Lagoa

Maya is used for generating designs from polygons. A polygon mesh is a 3-D image comprised of vertices, edges, and faces. The faces are generally made up of triangles, quadrilaterals, or other simple convex polygons which result in a delicate tessellation. A polygon mesh can only generate curvature with a series of vertices.

As seen above, we were able to design dresses to be printed in Maya. Creating curves with polygons requires a different approach to design than when sketching by hand.

Rhino (below) is for generating designs from NURBS. Nurbs (also known as Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines) allow for a designer to draw curvature and surfaces accurately by creating 2-D lines, circles, arcs, or curves mathematically. This makes for generous flexibility in generating a printable model as the geometry can be altered precisely.

Processing is for programming for mathematical visualizations

Programming languages that include a physics engine allow simulations of physical systems. The most recognizable application being video games, physics engines can also be used for data visualizations and for real-time simulations of all sorts. Visualizations rendered in processing make beautiful inspirations for products created through algorithmic design.

Using Processing, we can simulate a Maya-rendered object both repelling and attracting vector lines. This technique builds a firm foundation for computational design.

Lagoa is for browser-based rendering. Rendering can be thought of simply as artistic rendering, like a painter conveying abstraction or hyper-realism to an established scene. This is done by generating an image from models in a "scene" file, which can be altered with geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading to create a virtual scene. This data can be processed then output into an impressive presentation.

Computational design requires a language and skillset that belonged solely to animators and architects before it found its ways into fashion. If you're interested in taking a trip through the timewarp of the New Skins Workshop, consider signing up for their next workshop in England.

So, to polygon, or to nurb? The answer is both.

Facebook has never been a company lacking in foolish ambition--witness Facebook Home, Beacon, Places, and other monumental undertakings. But Facebook has shown restraint in one area: opening up its rich demographic data to third-party publishers.

Instead, Facebook has focused on assembling a proprietary advertising tech stack to optimize News Feed, and the sponsored content in it. Wall Street likes that, but now investors are asking if Facebook can monetize its data even more without compromising user experience and user trust. And that means creating an ad network of its own.

If investors are ready, app developers are too. "I don't know any mobile developer for whom advertising has been a sustainable source of revenue," says Amanda Moskowitz, founder and head of the NYC Mobile Forum.

Testing The Waters

Back in 2012, data suggested that the mismatch between mobile usage and advertising spend represented a $16 billion opportunity in the U.S. alone. Since then, mobile usage has continued to explode: For Facebook, monthly active users who accessed the platform only through mobile doubled from 2012 to 2013, reaching as high as 254 million in September 2013, according to the company's latest quarterly filing.

Facebook has been assembling the building blocks in fits and starts since June 2012, when it first ran ad units in partnership with Zynga alongside FarmVille and other games.

Then, in September 2012, Facebook began testing an advertising network. The pilot added a layer of demographic targeting based on Facebook user data to a network of existing mobile exchanges, delivering banner and interstitial ads on iOS and Android apps, as well as mobile websites.

But three months later, Facebook tapped the brakes. According to a company statement, the pilot was a success, but not a short-term priority: "While the results we have seen and the feedback from partners has been positive, our focus is on scaling ads in mobile news feed before ads off of Facebook. We have learned a lot from this test that will be useful in the future."

For the next nine months, Facebook developers were heads-down focused on perfecting Facebook Exchange, which enabled advertisers to run retargeting campaigns, and mobile app install ads. By September 2013, both of those ad models were hitting their stride--bringing in more direct response revenue in that time period than the last couple of years combined--and the company returned to the project of building its own ad network.

When Twitter announced in mid-December that it would be offering native ads to any app publisher, through its MoPub ad exchange, it was time for Facebook to counter with its next move.

Diving Into Mobile--And Beyond

In many ways, winning mobile is just the beginning. The real prize in this contest between Google and the major social publishers is cross-device attribution, or the ability to track users as they move between mobile and desktop, and increasingly between any object that bears an imprint of your identity.

"There's a tremendous value to understanding people," says Taylor Davidson, a director at kbs+ Ventures. "If Facebook is able to provide a logged-in view of a user across devices? Not many people can do that."

With advertisers looking for one-stop buying solutions complete with performance data, it's no wonder that Facebook and Twitter are racing to pull together the pieces.

What's at stake? Imagine a scenario as simple as buying a candy bar at your neighborhood drugstore. If you use a loyalty card linked to your email address, and you use that same email address for your Facebook account, advertisers can connect a page view to a purchase. Offering that data will unlock billions in brand advertisers' budgets, dollars that until now have remained in more traditional media. In a sense, Facebook's biggest competition is television, not Twitter.

But compared to the networks, Facebook in particular has "a structural advantage when it comes to doing what a CMO wants, which is delivering the right message to the right person at the right time," says Jesse Pujji, CEO of Ampush, one of Facebook's 14 Preferred Marketing Developers.

Combine that structural advantage with performance data, as a Facebook ad network can and surely will do, and the company could be well on its way to rivaling AdSense in its dominance.

When Brazilian computer security expert Reginald Silva found a security hole in Facebook's servers, he quickly let the company know. And Facebook didn't just thank him--the social networking giant paid him a $33,500 reward, what the company said in a blog post is the largest single payout yet in its ongoing bug bounty program.

Bug bounties--rewards offered to anyone who finds critical defects in software--have existed at least since 1995, when Netscape cash prizes to anyone finding "significant security bugs" in Netscape Navigator 2.0. Mozilla, Netscape's successors in the browser wars, announced its own bounty program for Firefox and other products in 2004.

And since then, companies including AT&T, Etsy, Facebook, Google, Samsung, and Yahoo have all launched formal programs to offer cash rewards and public recognition for bug finders, according to a list maintained at BugSheet.com. Bug bounties help motivate hackers to disclose bugs responsibly rather than sell security holes on the black market, advocates say.

"Over the last two years, the Facebook Security Team has rolled out a successful whitehat program, paying researchers well in excess of 1 million dollars for helping us make our site more secure," wrote Facebook chief security officer Joe Sullivan in a post in August.

Facebook security engineer Collin Greene advises companies interested in starting a bug bounty program to be prepared to respond to bug reports quickly.

"Also, don't underestimate the workload," he says via email. "We received over 16,000 submissions in 2013, and each one was reviewed in depth by a security engineer. It's a lot of work, but it can also be incredibly rewarding if done well."

Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley who studied rewards offered by Mozilla and Google for bugs in Firefox and Chrome found in a paper presented last year that bug bounties can be more cost-effective than hiring security consultants to stamp out vulnerabilities.

They also offered some suggestions for companies interested in launching their own bounty programs, after estimating that Google's bounty program uncovered about 2.6 times as many bugs as Mozilla's over a three-year period, with the two companies each spending just under $600,000 on bounties.

The researchers said Google likely benefited from publicity for its bounty program, as boosted by its annual Pwnium challenge, and that researchers appreciated the company's consistently speedy approach to patching bugs. And, they said, Google's program offered a tiered system of rewards, with bigger payouts for more sophisticated bugs, which was more exciting for bug-hunters than Mozilla's standardized $3,000 payouts.

"This makes sense with an understanding of incentives in lotteries," the researchers wrote. "The larger the potential prize amount, the more willing participants are to accept a lower expected return, which, for [bug bounty programs], means the program can expect more participants."

For companies who want to offer a bounty program but aren't sure where to start, one startup called Bugcrowd advertises they'll handle the details of vetting researchers, verifying bugs, and paying out rewards.

"Bugcrowd does the grunt work while you get back to your day job," the company says.

To some extent, tech companies are caught in a bidding war with black-market exploit buyers willing to pay for backdoors into popular apps and websites for their own nefarious purposes. In a November blog post announcing an expansion of Microsoft's bounty program, senior security strategist Katie Moussouris said the program should help in "cutting down the time that exploits and vulnerabilities purchased on the black market remain useful."

And the Berkeley researchers pointed out that both Mozilla and Google have increased their bounties for browser security bugs.

"Doing so increases publicity, entices participants, and signals that a vendor is betting that their product has become more secure over time," they wrote.

But a fair share of the comments announcing Facebook's largest-ever payout to Silva for the bug he found, which exploited how Facebook processed XML data related to the OpenID shared sign-in system, argued he should have received far more.

In his own blog post, Silva jokingly cited a Bloomberg story where Facebook security director Ryan McGeehan pledged that even "a million-dollar bug" would be paid for under the program.

"Unfortunately, I didn't get even close to the one-million dollar payout cited above," Silva wrote.

George Crow was part of the original Macintosh team, working alongside Steve Jobs at Apple, then later went on to cofound NeXT with Jobs before returning to his Apple stomping grounds in 1998. He retired barely eight years ago and recalls Macintosh's early days and the current state of computing hardware.

How long was your tenure at Apple?

It's complicated because I started at Apple in 1981 and when Steve Jobs was forced out in '85, I went to cofound NeXT Computer with him. I was at NeXT for about eight years and when NeXT made the decision to get out of the hardware business, I left the company and consulted for smaller companies. Then, I went back to Apple in 1998. Then I retired in 2006. Of course, I retired right before the iPhone, which was a huge success. When I first went back in '98, they were really still struggling, and then after the iMac things really took off. By the time I left, it was clear Apple was going to be a long-term success. It was about 12 years, but I like to include NeXT since it's completely interwoven with their products now. OS 10 has really repackaged NeXT's software. I usually say I was with them for 25 years with an asterisk.

Does it feel like it's been 30 years?

It definitely doesn't feel like it's been 30 years; it's just amazing how fast time flies. It's just incredible. Another incredible thing is if you look at the change in specifications from the original Mac to the Macs we have on our desktops today, the change is just unbelievable. In fact, I get confused because we started out in kilobytes, and then we went to megabytes, then gigabytes, and now we're up to terabytes. For that to occur within a short span of 30 years, I think that's unbelievable.

Thirty years ago and the time leading up to it, did you expect it to get as big as it did and transform the computer industry the way it did?

I knew we were doing something important with the Macintosh and expected it to be successful, but I never dreamed that Apple would someday be the world's most valuable company. The Mac certainly had an immediate impact on the software industry and really was the product that spawned Windows, but as recently as 17 years ago, the Mac was on the verge of becoming irrelevant. It's interesting that the product that saved Apple, the iMac, was really the original Mac repackaged and updated to late '90s technology.

What were some of the biggest obstacles you guys had to get through in creating the Macintosh?

The challenges across the board were extreme--we were early adopters of the Motorola processor. Cost was really important because we were trying to do the first graphic interface computer at a quarter of the price of the Lisa, so cost was extremely critical. From the hardware perspective, it really came down to simplification and getting by with absolute minimum cost, which was a big challenge. I think both the logic board and analog board were breakthroughs because they were both so simple for what the system was able to do. We had to figure out how to manufacture at an automated factory in Fremont, and those weren't very common so we had to do a lot of new engineering just to get the manufacturing process going. And then the software was the real breakthrough with the Macintosh, but the big problem was with scheduling and the fact that it really wasn't ready when we decided to introduce the product. (Laughs) Of course, software is never ready. But it just shows how hard the software team had to work to make it so that it could even boot for the introduction. So it was really just a mammoth effort.

Obviously things are much different today, but what is some advice you would give to programmers, engineers, and entrepreneurs who need to make their products cheaper?

Since everything is highly integrated now, it's much different and everyone has the same building blocks. The things they have to look at now is business arrangements where they can get things assembled less expensively. You have to look at whether you're going to outsource internationally or whether you're going to try to make the product here. The challenges we had--there was a lot of work we had to do on basic design to reduce cost. Whereas now, the emphasis is on programming and doing a clever job with your software because the hardware blocks are pretty much already designed. There's no longer a whole lot of competition for hardware but for the user level, people need to get clever with product design that's easy to assemble, have a good manufacturing process, and of course software, which differentiates their product.

Can you recall any specific spats or arguments you and Steve Jobs got into regarding components to include or not include in the final Macintosh product?

I tended to be a pretty independent guy and Steve and I got along quite well but to a fair extent we both had volatile personalities so we would butt heads every once in a while. But, probably the most critical was the disk drive. Apple was designing their own floppy disk called Twiggy. Not too long before we shipped the Macintosh, it became obvious that Twiggy wasn't going to work. Steve had an unfortunate meeting with Sony and wasn't in favor of using them for the disk drive. So Steve said anyone who got caught working with Sony would get fired (Laughs). With my supervisor's approval we decided we were going to push ahead with the Sony anyway and do it underground. Fortunately we were successful and really contributed to the success of the product. Certainly, If we didn't have a disk drive, we would have had to delay a year or two. Another one was resolution. They wanted to use a lower resolution--standard TV resolution--and I was able to convince Steve that we could go up to a higher resolution without increasing cost. But Steve was very open-minded with everything. He was very opinionated but was very good at discussing it all with us engineers. He truly was a visionary. The problem we had with the Mac and the reason Apple wasn't immediately successful was because it was ahead of its time. We were trying to do things that weren't possible yet.

Is it bittersweet for you to not have him here on the 30th anniversary of the Macintosh?

Oh, absolutely. I worked with Steve for so long, I always feel loyalty to Steve and just a tremendous amount of respect so it's very sad he's not here. In fact, I was sad because when he was ill, of course, nobody was willing to admit he was ill and I didn't feel comfortable approaching him since we didn't have a real relationship after I left Apple. I'm sorry looking back. But the problem was he and Apple were trying to present this positive perspective that he was doing fine and I didn't feel it was my place to call him up and ask him if he was OK.

Do you wish you had reached out to him?

Emotionally, I do. But, intellectually I know why I didn't do it. I was no longer involved with Apple and not really a part of Steve's life and as much as I cared for him, he had bigger problems than talking to me. It was very difficult for me to not do it.

If you could do it all over again 30 years ago, would you change anything about how you created the product, whether it be design-wise or workflow?

Not really. There were some component issues I wish I caught, so there were some things I would have been able to do to make it more reliable. But overall, the design, I thought, was just world-class. The only thing I would change is when Steve had approached me to go to Apple about six months before I actually went. I was at Hewlett-Packard at the time and was really enjoying my job so I turned him down and didn't go to Apple till he came back six months later and invited me again. But I wish I had taken the first offer because I would have been there that much earlier on the Macintosh project.

What is your take on the current state Apple's innovation?

I don't have a strong opinion, but speaking as a user, I wish they would come out with something new. They've pretty much just been refining products since Steve died. And, I don't know if that means they are having a hard time innovating or if they are doing something so different it's taking a while. But I am anxious to see a product that's radically different and not just thinner and lighter.

Do you still keep in touch with the other members of the original Macintosh team?

I keep in touch with some pretty regularly. And the whole team has been getting together every five years for a reunion so I've been going to those. But the last time I saw a lot of people was when the Steve Jobs movie with Ashton Kutcher was released. Rod Holt, who I worked for when I first started at Apple, is a part owner of a movie theatre in San Francisco and he invited all the team members up for a command showing before the movie was actually released. And a lot of the team was there to see the movie.

What did you think of the movie?

I thought it wasn't bad. I felt that the information there was reasonably accurate, but what I felt it was missing was the excitement of the actual project. Kutcher did a fine job of portraying Steve and looking like him and it did pick up the highlights of what was going on but it didn't pick up the excitement and thrill of the project. Working with Steve was really fun and it was a roller coaster but it was exciting. And I just feel the movie didn't pick up that excitement.

What are you up to now?

My wife and I are doing a lot of traveling and I've also been on some non-profit boards. I like classical music and opera so I was on the board of Opera San Jose for about 10 years and now I'm on the San Francisco Merola opera board. I'm also on our condo board. Occasionally, I do a little consulting but I'm really trying to keep an eye on myself and make sure I'm really staying retired.

Are you doing anything to celebrate the 30th anniversary?

Tomorrow (Jan. 25) we're having a big get-together at the Flint Center (for Performing Arts) to celebrate. So I'm going to that along with most of the members of the Macintosh team. I'm looking forward to it--it's going to be great.