Also: HP’s Meg Whitman has no plans to break up the company; when to sell your company.
But the feature everyone is going to go crazy with — and the feature you probably most want to use — is Glass’ ability to take photos and video with a “you are there” view. I won’t lie, it’s amazingly powerful (and more than a little scary) to be able to just start recording video or snapping pictures with a couple of flicks of your finger or simple voice commands.
At one point during my time with Glass, we all went out to navigate to a nearby Starbucks — the camera crew I’d brought with me came along. As soon as we got inside however, the employees at Starbucks asked us to stop filming. Sure, no problem. But I kept the Glass’ video recorder going, all the way through my order and getting my coffee. Yes, you can see a light in the prism when the device is recording, but I got the impression that most people had no idea what they were looking at. The cashier seemed to be on the verge of asking me what I was wearing on my face, but the question never came. He certainly never asked me to stop filming.
A titan’s How-To on breaking the glass ceiling [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
And yet no one knows whether women will show up for Ms. Sandberg’s revolution, a top-down affair propelled by a fortune worth hundreds of millions on paper, or whether the social media executive can form a women’s network of her own. Only a single test “Lean In Circle” exists. With less than three weeks until launch — which will include a spread in Time magazine and splashy events like a book party at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s home — organizers cannot say how many more groups may sprout up.
HP’s Whitman says ‘no plans to break up the company [COMPUTERWORLD]
“We have no plans to break up the company. I feel quite strongly that we are better and stronger together,” Whitman said on HP’s quarterly earnings call Thursday, responding to a question from an analyst about the company’s plans.
Rumors that HP might break itself up have persisted since former CEO Leo Apotheker said two years ago that HP might sell off its underperforming PC business. HP later replaced Apotheker and said it would keep the division.
Visual effects industry does a disappearing act [THE WALL STREET JOURNAL]
But there may not be much celebrating at the El Segundo, Calif., offices of Rhythm & Hues Studios Inc., the 26-year-old company that served as lead effects producer for the film. On Feb. 13, just eight days after “Pi” won four prizes at the annual Visual Effects Society Awards, Rhythm & Hues filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and earlier that week laid off 254 of its 718 employees in the Los Angeles area, according to court documents.
When to sell your company [MEDIUM]
Every business has natural growth limits. If someone offered you $10 million for your coffee shop that does $250,000 a year in sales, it’s pretty clear you should sell—from a purely financial perspective. Finances are only one perspective, but if you have many shareholders, it’s one you are obligated to take seriously.
In 2002, Google reportedly turned down a $3 billion offer from Yahoo!. That looks like a no-brainer in retrospect, because Google is such a behemoth. And it was probably clear to Larry and Sergey at the time that if they were successful, the company is worth many, many times more than that.
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