Cookbook: Round Up of Travel and Tech #16

Good day from Jakarta, the city of traffic and growth.

It is hard to keep up with the news when you change planes and time zones faster than your shirts, but in a good roundup from last week, we see Facebook starting to shine strongly.

Non-Travel Starters

Facebook has now connected more than 1 Billion ‘extra’ people via its Internet.org initiative, adding one country after another. For those accessing the net via Internet.org, Facebook will BE the internet. Smart. Ambitious. And will pay off. Link.

Additionally, Facebook released a publishing platform Instant Articles last week, with The New York Times and Buzz Feed as first adopters. It looks a lot better than Paper (a previous project) and it means the publishers’ content will be hosted on Facebook. Scary a bit — as the News Feed becomes less and less relevant for users, who are moving to purpose-built apps (Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram), the core could easily move into the biggest newspaper on earth. Link.

Google wants to do Facilitated Booking across all ad links, adding a buy button that allows you to complete the payment immediately. The could become the largest marketplace in the world, should merchants decide that (a) paying for placement + giving so much control makes sense and (b) switch to the payment method Google suggests (Google Wallet), potentially eating up margins further, also makes sense. A big one, if executed correctly. Link.

Verizon acquired AOL for $4.4Bn, now HuffPost and TechCrunch work for a phone company. Interesting story here — telcos have suffered by the expansion of data and lack of content — Facebook is subsidizing the net, messaging and photo apps are reducing voice plans to nothing, especially given the rise of VoIP. Is that the beginning of a trend for telcos to own content? Link.

Snacks

After the mile hack problem United experienced, it now announces a 1 million mile award to a friendly hacker who finds vulnerability in the system. Link.

Speaking of vulnerabilities, a hacker flew on a United flight and claimed to have gained control to the systems more than 20 times, one time controlling the engine. Now that’s some serious business. I hope that’s not true. Link.

Lyft gets investment from activist Carl Icahn — that seems like a good endorsement of a company that is set to be a close second in the race for on demand transportation. Link.

Meanwhile, Uber might be pairing up with Yidao Yongche in China to battle with the mega-merger giant Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, which joined forces in a $6Bn merger in February. Link.

Flight reviews are on the rise. Expedia and others enter the game to give yet another view of why a certain flight is better than another. An interesting space to watch. Link.

Dessert

Two guys fly in human-jets over Dubai. I wonder when that will be the mode of air transportation. Impressive. Link.

The new Steve Jobs movie is coming and what better time to show the trailer than the show finale of Mad Men. Short, vague, and beatiful, the trailer rings true to me quite a bit, especially the first few phrases. “Youcan’t write code. You are not an engineer. What do you do?” Link.

Some Cool Reading (Watching)

CB Insights releases a report on Unicorns. Sequioa (disclosure: investor in Skyscanner) gets in early. Download the report, it is a great read. Link.

In the season of commencements across the globe, when a new disillusioned, debt-laden cohort of educated young women and men enter the workforce, some words of wisdom always go a long way. While not all commencement addresses are out, here’s a few good ones.

Apple’s Tim Cook speaks at George Washington University, covering the theme of healthy those of skepticism and north stars. If you don’t have the time (20 min), here’s the quote that captured me:

[Y]our values matter. They are your North Star. And work takes on new meaning when you feel you are pointed in the right direction. Otherwise, it’s just a job, and life is too short for that.

20 min youtube Link.

Another one from my alma mater, Harvard, from last year — Sheryl’s humorous, yet thoughtful points on honesty — to start with yourself and be honest, even if it hurts. (20 min). Link.

*** Expressed views and opinions are my own.

Photo Credit: National Geographic is amazing. I thought I’d use their Photo of the Day on the day of the post as the picture on top. Please share and give credit to the photographs and National Geographic. Here’s the link for your daily inspiration: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/