technology

Buzz in the tech world turns today to First Lady Michelle Obama announcing the launch of the IT Training and Certification Partnership. It is a new public-private program that address one of the issues that can prevent our troops from gaining employment in the private sector: Active military personnel typically do not have the industry-recognized certifications that reflect the IT skills and expertise they gained through their military service. This announcement is the second major partnership developed through the Military Credentialing and Licensing Task Force, which was established last June by the Department of Defense at President Obama’s direction. The new Partnership will provide opportunities for up to 161,000 service members to gain industry-recognized, nationally portable certifications necessary for 12 high-demand technology professions, including computer programmers, quality assurance engineers, and IT security analysts. The targeted professions are expected to generate more than 1.8 million job opportunities by 2020, and have an average annual salary of more than $81,000. What say about this, Technorati?

Today Yahoo reported its first quarter financial performance, and naturally the technorati chimed in.  Information announced included revenue of $1.14 billion, and earnings per share of $0.35 on a GAAP basis, and $0.38 on a non-GAAP basis. Analysts had expected revenue of $1.1 billion, and earnings per share of $0.25. For the quarter, Yahoo had display revenue of $455 million, and search revenue of $425 million. Both of those figures are down on a year by year basis. Still, as the company noted in its release, its GAAP income on a yearly basis is up, rising from $169 million in the first quarter of 2012, to $186 million in the past quarter. The company now has a total of $5.4 billion in cash, equivalents and marketable debt. However, that figure is down from $6 billion at the end of 2012, reflecting a decline in Yahoo’s total cash position.  Still with us? Yahoo’s true cash accounts are down substantially in the last three months, slipping from $2.67 billion at the end of the year, to a mere $1.17 billion. So what does it all mean to the tech commenter?  Let's see....

Naturally people have quite a bit to say over the latest (and all) Facebook developments.  This bit of news is no different.  The launch of the new Facebook Home app has reopened the privacy debate over whether the social networking site is becoming too much apart of our lives.  Home integrates all of the social network’s services into the operating system of Android phones. Instead of having to download apps to use Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and Facebook Camera, access to these features is consolidated into Facebook Home, which appears on the user’s home screen. The criticism that has arisen is that Facebook wants to compile more information on its users so that it can sell more advertising. Facebook has responded to the criticism following the launch in a blog post to say that the data Home would collect is no different from what the social networking site already tracks and that it is used internally to improve the user experience. For tech-savvy people, who share personal information frequently the hype around Home could be seen as a non-issue, or not.... Let's check it out.