Traditional lab tests for disease diagnosis can be too expensive and cumbersome for the regions most in need. George Whitesides’ ingenious answer, at TEDxBoston, is a foolproof tool that can be manufactured at virtually zero cost.

Adapted from photo by Mat Honan

Change happens slowly.
It took us years before we noticed that Microsoft was upending a tech industry that, until the 1990s, IBM dominated. However, if you squinted you saw this starting in the 1980s once the mainframe era was ending.

Then Google changed the game for Microsoft (a client) in the 2000s when the desktop lost some of its dominance to the broadband-enabled web – but like with IBM this shift started earlier, back in the 1990s.

Now, it could happen again.

Just as everyone thinks Google is unstoppable comes Facebook. Over time we may soon witness another shift as the web evolves from an intent-driven medium where you need tell it what you want to one where content and ads finds you through the lens of your friends and their digital footprints. However, if the desktop was the battleground in the 1990s and the web was in the 2000s then mobile is where the battle for dominance will take place next.

Consider these three data points, all of which are fresh…

* According to Mary Meeker, more people will connect to the Internet via mobile devices than PCs in five years
* Forrester reports that 17% of US consumers have smartphones. (That means that 83% don’t.)
* And Pew says that 55% of Americans connect wirelessly (And 45% therefore don’t)

And that’s just the US. Combine these three trends on a global level and it’s obvious that mobile is the future. Mobile is a far far larger market than mainframes, PCs or even the web. It will have lots and lots of winners in hardware, software and services. This is why I believe Facebook can’t sit on the sidelines anymore. They will be on every device, but they eventually will try to launch their own hardware too.

Consider this: Facebook is competing with Google for time, attention and ad dollars. With Google clearly serious about phones. And Apple buying up mobile ad companies. Facebook can’t solely rely just on others to carry their application if they want to dominate what will increasingly be a mobile market for content and ads. They will want to have a deeper relationship with their users. Deeper relationships means more data and more data means more moolah.

Facebook easily has the brand equity to launch their own phone (most likely with a partner at first) and marry it to your address book, photos, videos and events in ways that Google can never match because they are more social. Facebook gets connections and how to use the data to make your life better.

Scoble talks about the Google Reef. Sure it’s big. But in many ways it’s the Facebook reef that could be far larger.

How large? Consider these stats. A lot of people wouldn’t know Picasa from Picasso. But Facebook sees more than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month. A lot of people don’t know Yelp (a rumored Google acquisition) from Yodels, but Facebook has 700,000 local businesses that are a click away from 350M people – who oh yeah on average have 130 friends on the site and spend hours there, often from phones.

See the pattern? All of these are mobile experiences: your friends, your events, your photos and local businesses. They’re made for mobile phones. Mark my words. Facebook will launch a mobile phone. But this isn’t zero sum. There will be lots of winners.

VIA S-R

Apple today announced financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2010, corresponding to the fourth calendar quarter of 2009. For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $15.68 billion and net quarterly profit of $3.38 billion, or $3.67 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $11.88 billion and net quarterly profit of $2.26 billion, or $2.50 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.9 percent, compared to 37.9 percent in the year-ago quarter, and international sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue. The numbers represent the most profitable quarter in Apple’s history on record-breaking revenue, and include the highest Mac and iPhone quarterly sales in company history.

The company has adopted revised accounting standards that no longer require Apple to parcel out income from iPhone and Apple TV sales over a 24-month period from the date of sale, and the company has retrospectively revised financial results for previous quarters to reflect this change. Apple previously released two sets of financial numbers, one official set utilizing this subscription-based accounting for the iPhone and Apple TV and a second “non-GAAP” set that more accurately portrayed the company’s performance.

Apple shipped 3.36 million Macintosh computers during the quarter, a unit increase of 33 percent over the year-ago quarter. The company also sold 21 million iPods during the quarter, representing 8 percent unit decline over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone unit sales reached 8.7 million, up 100 percent from the year-ago quarter.

“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”
Apple’s guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2010 includes expected revenue of $11.0 billion to $11.4 billion and earnings per diluted share of $2.06 to $2.18.

Apple will provide live streaming of its Q1 2010 financial results conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story with coverage of the conference call highlights.

Conference Call Highlights:
- Apple opened 10 new stores in this quarter, bring the worldwide store total to 283
- A record 50.9 million people visited Apple stores this quarter
- New FASB rules requires Apple to estimate software upgrade revenue for Apple TVs and iPhones over the upcoming 24 months and recognize this revenue at the time of sale rather than later
- Tim Cook stated during the Q&A section, “We believe we are shipping the best product we’ve ever shipped and are very excited about the product pipeline.”
- In response to a question on the future guidance provided during the call, Cook stated “You may be alluding to the event on Wednesday,” and “We don’t have anything to share on that today. Stay tuned.”
- When asked about how the iPhone is performing in China, Cook stated that the company typically does not disclose sales by country, but Apple is focused on the long-term for that market and believe it has “significant potential.”
- Regarding iPhone inventory during the quarter, Apple could have sold “a lot more” but chose to manage inventory tightly instead.
- In answering a question about the complaints about the App Store approval process, Cook responded that it’s important to keep this in perspective given that there are over 100,000 apps in the store and over 90% of these have been approved within 14 days. The focus during the approval process is ensuring consumer privacy is respected and most rejections are because of bugs.
- When queried about possible new product categories for the future, Cook declined to comment in light of the upcoming event on Wednesday.
- Going back to the topic of the iPhone in China and other emerging markets, Cook commented that the company is very focused on these markets and they recognize the differences in customer populations and learn from them.
- Total capital expenditure is expected to be $1.9 billion (no change from previous guidance), with about $400 million going to retail and $1.5 billion in other areas – these expenditures will be focused on facilities, infrastructure, and manufacturing.
- Regarding the iPhone in business, Cook stated that 70% of the Fortune 100 are piloting or deploying the iPhone and the company “feels great” about this.
- When asked about the acquisitions of Lala and Quattro and Apple’s future direction, Peter Oppenheimer said the company had acquired Quattro to “offer developers a seamless way to make more money” in their apps, particularly free apps.
- Apple would not comment further to questions on expectations on mobile advertising and its impact on future revenue.
- Education was up 16% year-over-year and the company expects to continue to do well in this market with continued focus.

The conference call concluded just after 3:00 pm Pacific time. A replay of the conference call will be available for 2 weeks at phone numbers +1-888-203-1112 and +1-719-457-0820, using confirmation number 4035751, starting at approximately 5:00 pm Pacific time today. It will also be available in iTunes as a podcast shortly.

Info from Mac’s He Said She Said