John Shinal

Two of the largest US technology firms rolled out products recently that reflect a new normal for those who operate important online networks. Now under attack "constantly" by cyber criminals, government agents and other hackers, companies are finding the best way to keep their users and customers safe on the Internet is to innovate.

The new tools from Facebook and AT&T are designed to do just that in this heightened threat environment. After more than three years of development, AT&T demonstrated a new security tool in San Francisco (Ca) it says will allow it to respond to network threats 95% faster. The product, called Threat Intellect, combines machine learning analysis with all the data that AT&T has collected on myriad cyber threats. Facebook, meanwhile, launched a new encryption feature for users of its Messenger service. The so-called end-to-end encryption can be applied to any two users who select it for an online conversation. The technology produces a set of two encryption keys — known only to the users — that make it impossible even for Facebook to see the content of the messages.

San Francisco Bay Area residents born and raised on the East Coast (or anywhere else outside the region) often hear the same question repeatedly from friends and family: Why would anyone live where it's so expensive?

The latest figures available from the federal government show just well workers in the city and its closest environs are doing. The average worker in the San Francisco -- San Mateo -- Redwood City metro area was paid a mean hourly wage of $32.41, or 45 percent higher than the US mean of $22.33, as of May, 2013. That's based on the latest figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics that break down employment by income and geography.

Some jobs here pay particularly well compared to the rest of the US -- and those that pay the most are not the ones you might think. Indeed, the San Francisco metro area had just over 68,800 tech jobs as of 14 months ago. That's 6.6 percent of total jobs -- more than double the ratio for the entire US, where only 2.8 percent of all employment is in tech.

But a closer look at the numbers shows that tech workers are far from being the best-paid here, relative to the average American, compared to other professions.

[Commentary] AT&T's $67 billion debt-and-equity offer for DirectTV, along with Comcast's pending $45 billion deal for TimeWarner Cable, make clear that the market for digital entertainment delivered over the Web has moved from a high growth to a growth-and-consolidation phase.

With telecomunications networks in Dallas and New York squaring off against cable companies in Philadelphia and the Big Apple for control of the pipes that deliver Web video and music, the pricing power in digital entertainment is shifting decidedly east. That unfortunately may introduce a broader swath of online subscribers to the concept of service bundling, which has been no friend to consumers in the past. The ranks of network operators -- and consumer choices -- will be winnowed again, now that AT&T has loaded up with satellite services for its battle against Comcast, Verizon and other large network owners.

The companies in control of the delivery of digital music, shows, movies, sports and news delivery are now in a consolidation phase. Those tend to lead to more pricing power for industry survivors. As consumers face fewer choices, Google, Facebook and Amazon have been variously buying or building their own Internet server farms, attempting to get around the problem. Their need to do so looks likely to increase.

[Commentary]Less medical privacy may be good for your health. A growing body of research has found that information Americans share on social media websites about their health and lifestyle is more up to date and accurate than what they share with doctors, employers, insurance companies and government agencies.

In other words, we're more honest with our friends than we are with those who control our access to medical care. While that may simply reflect human nature, it has huge implications for health care as patients and providers look to the analysis of so-called big data to improve diagnosis and treatment. The findings suggest that improvement in medical services may depend as much on widespread availability of accurate patient data as it does on advances in technologies and procedures.

"The little secret of big data is that a lot of it isn't clean," says Eva Ho, a partner with the early-stage venture capital firm Susa Ventures and a former executive at both Google and Factual, an upstart Internet-search company. In health care, that means a patient's medical records can be filled with outdated or conflicting information that makes an accurate diagnosis more difficult.

The handheld vision Steve Jobs sold to AT&T in 2007 has come to pass. The problem for Apple investors is that the booming market the company created with the iPhone in 2007 -- and then boosted with the iPad three years later -- is now producing more growth for AT&T than it is for Apple itself.

AT&T reported its strongest growth in long-term wireless subscribers in five years, "with smartphones and tablets leading the way," as AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens said. Just as important, a surging number of AT&T customers are switching to so-called usage-based pricing -- paying based on how much wireless data they download from the Web -- rather than paying for the devices up front with the help of subsidies.

While the transition is putting a short-term hit on AT&T's balance sheet (as it has to write down the full price of such device sales immediately), the popularity of those plans also helped generate the company's strongest cash flow from operations in seven years.

"The move away from device subsidies accelerated in Q1," Stephens said, as the number of new and existing customers choosing so-called mobile share data plans tripled from a year earlier

[Commentary] Almost half a century after the first e-mail crashed the communication link between the computer science department at UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute, the Internet stands at a tipping point. Now, after a wave of telecom consolidation at the turn of the 20th century, only two of the original seven Baby Bells remain, in the form of Verizon and the reconstituted AT&T.

Along with a handful of giant cable providers and satellite giants, less than a dozen companies control the overwhelming majority of US Web traffic. In the fourth quarter of 2013, the number of TV-style commercials on digital entertainment delivered to US high-speed Internet subscribers of those companies roughly equaled the number of pieces of content they appeared next to. Moreover, Web-based video ads, and the TV shows, live events and movies that they are paired with, are growing in lock step at roughly 30% a year. With both business and consumers willing to pay for a broad array of products and services, the Internet has become the world's first global medium for delivering news and entertainment. Not surprising, then, that it's started to look a lot like television -- a medium that in the US is overwhelmingly commercial (save for PBS and local public access channels, home of the original video bloggers); and soon, it will likely be far more so. A US federal court ruling in January, which struck down rules concerning how Web traffic and capacity are priced, has already begun spurring a new wave of telecom consolidation, such as Comcast's $45 billion bid for rival Time Warner Cable.

The Internet, already half-commercialized, has just been further deregulated. Given its history and current data traffic trends, if there are going to be public spaces on the Internet of the future, online consumers may have to work hard indeed to find them.

Your favorite social apps will soon enhance more than just your lifestyle.

If you think it's cool sharing a dish at your favorite restaurant with your friends via Facebook or Twitter, imagine using social media to quit smoking, lose weight or avoid a debilitating knee injury or heart attack. "There's no more compelling app than one for your health or (the health of) your loved ones," says Dr Leslie Saxon, a cardiologist who runs the University of Southern California's Center for Body Computing.

The health care industry is ripe for innovation thanks to a wide array of wireless medical sensors that are either in development or already being tested, Saxon said. The health industry "is where the music industry was with the vinyl LP," Saxon says.

The goal of all this invasive technology will be to give patients more control over their medical data and, therefore, over their own health care, Saxon said during her talk, titled "The Future of Networked Humans." "Consumers will be able to curate their own sensors and track the data they want," Saxon says.

[March 10]