LeadSongDog writes “The Globe and Mail is reporting that the ‘Pebble’ smartwatch has matched the $ 15M record for Kickstarter funding after initially being panned by the VC crowd.” One advantage that the Pebble has over rumored watches from big names like Google and Apple is existing.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This week many TV networks are putting on “upfront” where they lay out their content plans for the next year, and The CW President Mark Pedowitz announced it’s bringing full TV episodes streaming to the Apple TV. The CW already has ad supported full episode streaming on several platforms including iOS and Android, Windows 8 and it launched last month on the Xbox 360 (pictured above). Pedowitz indicated the network is working to reach more viewers on more platforms, so Apple TV is probably not the last. In a note to MacRumors The CW confirmed it will mirror the experience on other platforms, with episodes available the day after they air, no cable TV authentication required and supported by advertisements. Les Moonves is president of CBS (which is a part owner of The CW, along with Warner Bros.) and previously remarked on turning down participation in an Apple subscription service funded by advertising revenue. Of course, CBS now does full episode streaming on mobile iOS devices, so we’ll see if this a sign of more changes on the way, although with no release date we don’t know how long we’ll have to wait.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Apple
Source: Deadline
Sure, Mountain View may be bolstering its gaming efforts on mobile platforms and the web, but it’s seen fit to give Google+ Games the pink slip. After June 30th, the game section on the titan’s social network will go dark, but Page & Co. note that some titles will still be playable on other sites. Depending on developer support, folks who’ve turned hard-earned cash into in-game credits may still be able to spend unused coin during a grace period or when playing the same games through other websites. It’s not entirely clear why Google is sunsetting the portal, but it could certainly be part of its grand plan to focus on fewer things.
Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Google
Source: Google
colinneagle sends this quote from an article at NetworkWorld: “I run a very nifty desktop utility called Rainmeter on my PC that I heartily recommend to anyone who wants to keep an eye on their system. One of its main features is it has skins that can monitor your system activity. Thanks to my numerous meters, I see all CPU, disk, memory and network activity in real time. the C: drive meter. It is a circle split down the middle, with the right half lighting up to indicate a read and the left half lighting up for write activity. The C: drive was flashing a fair amount of activity considering I had nothing loaded save Outlook and Word, plus a few background apps. At the time, I didn’t have a Rainmeter skin that lists the top processes by CPU and memory. So instead, I went into the Task Manager, and under Performance selected the Resource Monitor. Under the Processes tab, the culprit showed its face immediately: AppleMobileDeviceService.exe. It was consuming a ridiculous amount of threads and CPU cycles. The only way to turn it off is to go into Windows Services and turn off the service. There’s just one problem. I use an iPhone. I can’t disable it. But doing so for a little while dropped the CPU meters to nothing. So I now have more motivation to migrate to a new phone beyond just having one with a larger screen. This problem has been known for years. AppleMobileDeviceService.exe has been in iTunes since version 7.3. People complained on the Apple boards more than two years ago that it was consuming up to 50% of CPU cycles, and thus far it’s as bad as it always has been. Mind you, Mac users aren’t complaining. Just Windows users.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
To combat confusion, Netflix says it has altered its API to prevent third-party tools from broadcasting inaccurate movies expiration dates. [Read more]
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After her 14-year-old son was shot, a mom goes to WebMD and searches “gunshot wounds” to try to solve the problem, police say. It is seven hours before she takes him to hospital. [Read more]
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Are you using an iPhone 5 on T-Mobile? Are you in an area with re-farmed 1900MHz HSPA+ spectrum? Well rejoice! Some enterprising folks over at TmoNews have hacked Apple’s carrier update for T-Mobile to boost data speeds on the 1900MHz (PCS) HSPA+ band. Better yet, this tweak applies to both T-Mobile’s iPhone 5 and the AT&T / unlocked versions — no jailbreak required. White the official carrier update enabled LTE for the iPhone 5 on T-Mobile, it also decreased data speeds on re-farmed PCS HSPA+ spectrum for many users. The hacked file makes a number of adjustments: it enables Release 9 for dual-carrier HSPA+ and sets the band preference to “auto” from AWS. Follow the source link below for more details and step-by-step instructions.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple
Source: TmoNews
Carmageddon for Android has been released, hitting phones and tablets today having raised more than $ 625,000 in a Kickstarter campaign last year. The classic game – which requires players drive roughshod across the tracks, mowing down pedestrians and colliding with fellow drivers as they go – was a notorious success in the late 1990s, banned
We’ve wondered what HTC would do after a Dutch court banned it from using HDR Microphones in its oft-delayed One handset, and now we know. It looks like the company has quietly nixed references to the Nokia-developed component on its website, raising the possibility that the handsets currently being manufactured won’t have the STMicroelectronics unit on board. None of this should affect phones that are already on the market, but we’ve reached out to HTC to find out what this means for future One owners and will let you know more when we do.
[Thanks, Ted]
Filed under: Cellphones, HTC, Nokia
Via: XDA-Developers
Source: HTC
At TechCrunch Disrupt 2013 NY, eBay’s CEO John Donahoe talked to Bloomberg’s chief content editor Norm Pearlstine about how the company screens its acquisitions and how he keeps founders from leaving after the acquisition. Since becoming eBay’s CEO, Donahoe said, the company has made about 20 acquisitions. Currently, fifteen of the founders that joined eBay and PayPal after their companies were acquired are still at eBay and most of them are in executive positions. After the company acquired Zong in 2011, for example, Zong’s founder David Marcus became PayPal’s vice president for mobile. After essentially getting tested in that position, he became the President of PayPal last year. Similarly, when eBay acquired Hunch (also in 2011), its team of co-founders, including Chris Dixon, Tom Pinckney and Matt Gattis joined the company (with Dixon leaving after about a year). Today, this team is in charge of eBay’s homepage. Donahoe believes that in order to keep founders from leaving, eBay needs to give them the opportunity to grow inside the company. Because of this, he is also most interested in acquiring companies where the management team believes that they can execute their vision inside eBay. “We are always looking for companies that have a strong vision,” Donahoe said. “And then we allow them to innovate at a higher level.” The kind of founders he likes, he said, are “founders come to us and say we founded our company to do x and would like to take it to the next level.” In his view, this strategy has been a key ingredient to eBay’s and PayPal’s success. Acquisitions, in his view, drive innovation inside a large company like eBay and bringing in founders as executives – and giving them monetary incentives to stay as well, of course – is a key part of this strategy. As for the details of these incentives, Donahoe noted that “most of the founders make money in the acquisition In some cases the acquisition price is tied to staying for a two-three year period. But yes – we provide incentives to stay. We provide good compensation, but at the end of the day, we need to create a culture where they can realize their visions.” He does, for example, regularly meet with founders to discuss the state of the company. These discussions have, for example, lead to the redesign of the eBay’s homepage. It’s that kind of impact,
TechCrunch
After four years of helping scientists understand how stars and planets form, the Herschel space telescope has stopped working.
Computerworld News
Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference sold out in two minutes this year. But the company says videos of confab sessions will be available and that “Tech Talks” will be coming to various cities. [Read more]
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More than 50 million users of the daily deals site LivingSocial are being asked to reset their passwords after hackers attacked the company's servers and potentially made off with personal data.
Computerworld News
Apple’s sell-out WWDC developer conference – tickets for which were snapped up in just two minutes – has prompted a “Tech Talks” roadshow, with the Cupertino firm taking its dev outreach mobile. The new events, set to be held in multiple – currently unspecified – cities, will presumably see a “mini-WWDC” staged for those developers
Venture capitalist Jim Breyer is giving up his seat on Facebook’s board in June, which he’s held since April 2005. The split is amicable, and stems from his desire to concentrate on his new board seat with the Harvard University Corporation Board. Breyer joined the Facebook board after his venture firm Accel became one of Facebook’s earliest investors, leading its $ 12.7 million Series A.
TechCrunch
Matthew Keys says he was told his termination was related to his tweet activity during the Boston Marathon bomber manhunt, but that his federal indictment was not mentioned. [Read more]
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EE, the U.K.’s first and still only 4G network operator, has broken out 4G-specific customer numbers for the first time — confirming that after five months of 4G trading it has hit a total of 318,000 4G-specific customers. The carrier has previously reported total postpaid 3G and 4G additions for its Q4 quarter, when it said it saw 201,000 net gains in the quarter.
TechCrunch
Streaming service adds 3.04 million streaming subscribers in aftermath of debut of “House of Cards” mini-series. [Read more]
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Jolla, the Finnish startup comprised of ex-Nokians who left to keep the MeeGo fire burning, has confirmed it will be showing off its first handset next month, and kicking off a “pre-sales” campaign to allow fans to register to buy its first phone. Although Jolla has demoed its Sailfish UI in some detail it has not shown off the hardware design so next month will be another big reveal.
TechCrunch
American Airlines restored access to its reservation system on Tuesday afternoon after a four-hour long outage that grounded its flights across the U.S.
Computerworld News
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Motherboard about the immediate aftermath of yesterday’s bomb attack in Boston, which attempts to explain the (unsurprisingly) poor accessibility of the cellular network after the blasts: “Gut instinct suggests that the network must’ve been overloaded with people trying to find loved ones. At first, the Associated Press said it was a concerted effort to prevent any remote detonators from being used, citing a law enforcement official. After some disputed that report, the AP reversed its report, citing officials from Verizon and Sprint who said they’d never had a request to shut down the network, and who blamed slowdowns on heavy load. (Motherboard’s Derek Mead was able to send text messages to both his sister and her boyfriend, who were very near the finish line, shortly after the bombing, which suggests that networks were never totally shut down. Still, shutting down cell phone networks to prevent remote detonation wouldn’t be without precedent: It is a common tactic in Pakistan, where bombings happen with regularity.)”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Cellular networks in Boston were still operating on Monday evening following the explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, contrary to earlier reports that they had been shut down to prevent remote bomb detonations.
Computerworld News
If you saw our review of the 11.6-inch Taichi 21, you’ll know that its unusual dual-screen design had a pretty bad impact on battery life. ASUS is taking another crack at the whip, however, this time with the 13.3-inch Taichi that is finally shipping after a major hold-up and promises a big boost to stamina — a max of seven hours of use rather than five. If this claim stands scrutiny, then the Ultrabook’s other advantages should come back into play: namely the presence of pen or multi-touch input on the outer screen, excellent viewing angles and speakers, and a range of configurations based on either a Core i5 or i7 with SSD storage. We have no idea how pricing will compare to the $ 1,300 base of the 11-incher and the Taichi 31 hasn’t appeared at any major retailers yet — i.e., it still isn’t quite as “available” as ASUS claims — but we’ll bring you an update when that changes.
Via: TechPowerUp
Source: ASUS
World’s largest exchange serving the digital currency reports a “stronger than usual DDos” after lengthy suspension of operations. [Read more]
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Forrester recently predicted that the online retail market will grow to $ 370 billion over the next four years, up from $ 231 billion this year — a 10 percent compound annual growth rate. In other words, the message is clear: The eCommerce juggernaut ain’t slowing down any time soon. In 2013, every business needs some kind of online presence; the problem, of course, is that many small business owners don’t have the technical know-how (or capital) to set up their own eCommerce marketplace.
TechCrunch
Velcroman1 writes “The House Intelligence Committee is warning that ‘time is running out’ before the next major cyberattack: The Russians, Iranians, Chinese, and others are likely already on your computer. ‘You have criminal organizations trying to get into your personal computer and steal your personal stuff. And by the way, the Chinese are probably on your computer, the Russians are probably on your personal computer, the Iranians are already there,’ House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R.-MI) said. ‘They’re trying to steal things that they think are valuable or use your computer to help them steal from someone else,’ he said. ‘That’s a real problem.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Twitter acquired the mini-video-taking app Vine last October before it ever launched, sending everyone into a frenzy about the company getting into the video space. In late January, Twitter finally launched the app to much applause. Since then, it’s gone through temporarily being removed from the featured section due to an issue over adult content, to being used in interesting ways by brands and celebrities. Today, it all paid off, as it hit the top of the charts for free apps in the U.S., according to co-founder and Creative Director Rus Yusupov: https://twitter.com/rus/status/321406005076451328 https://twitter.com/bobby/status/321406757983358977 It’s a pretty impressive feat for any app that’s not a game to hit this spot, and it’s also impressive for Twitter to have another presence on the list, in addition to their own core app. Clearly the push from Twitter helped the cause. The top app on the free store gets quite a bit of downloads after it hits the spot, eventually coming back down to earth after a quick explosion. The charts are based on new downloads and trajectory of its current popularity, therefore Twitter’s own app sits at #35, which just means that a lot of people have already downloaded it. Its closest competition in the social sphere? Snapchat. And even then, there are a few games in between the two. The good news for Vine and Twitter is that the service is iOS-only at the moment, which means there is quite a bit more growth for the app to experience, much like Instagram did when it went over to the Android platform. Nearly half of all Instagram users are Android users. The multi-app approach is working for companies, and all you have to do is look at Facebook’s success with Messenger, Instagram and the quick-hit Poke.
TechCrunch
Less than a year after calling mobile one of its biggest risks, Facebook has made another big move to attack the mobile market with Facebook Home for Android devices.
Computerworld News
First time accepted submitter mebates writes “Two newly discovered protists, found in the guts of termites, were named after monstrous cosmic entitie featured in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos as an ode to the sometimes strange and fascinating world of the microbe. From the article: ‘The single-cell protists, Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque, help termites digest wood. The researchers decided to name them after monstrous cosmic entities featured in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos as an ode to the sometimes strange and fascinating world of the microbe. “When we first saw them under the microscope they had this unique motion, it looked almost like an octopus swimming,” says UBC researcher Erick James, lead author of the paper describing the new protists, published in the online journal PLoS ONE.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Zozi launched in 2010 to become the go-to destination for those looking for an (affordable) excuse to take break from the daily grind by offering daily deals on a wide range of local adventures — everything from cocktail classes in Atlanta to kayaking in San Francisco Bay. However, after fighting it out in the crowded daily deals space for two years, Zozi shifted its focus to offering high-end, exclusive adventures and get-aways.
Bufferbox, the Y Combinator company based in Canada that aimed to fix all of the issues that we have with receiving packages, has started to tease out a Bay Area, California launch. The company was acquired for a rumored $ 25M by Google back in November, with little or no discussion about the future plans for the product. It’s clear that this will be a huge part of Google’s recently announced Shopping Express service. We know that the package delivery system here in the United States is broken, and the government-funded postal service is pulling back on things like…delivering on the weekend. Google is clearly getting into the space in a big way, and the tease on Bufferbox’s homepage says it all: Right now, all you can do is give them your email address to “pre-register,” which gives Google a pretty good idea of the demand for the service. We’ve reached out to Google for more details, and will update if we do hear something more. This is definitely a space that we’re tracking closely, as another Y Combinator company doing something similar, Swapbox, recently launched in the Bay Area. Instead of shipping something to your address, it goes to your Bufferbox, so that you can pick it up whenever you like. Right now, when you have something shipped to you and miss the delivery person, you’re pretty much screwed and have to wait for them to come back, or worse, go pick up the item yourself at a factory. If your package does get delivered, it just sits on your doorstep, being gawked at by your neighbors. This is a bit similar to the notion of having a PO Box, but it isn’t a box or address that is static, you can get deliveries to any of the locations that you want. Additionally, these things should be available in the open, so you can get your packages at any time of the day or night, rather than before the post office closes. As we know, testing things out in the Bay Area is something that every company out here likes to do, including Google. This could be a booming business for the Mountain View company, as this is something that both consumers and small businesses would use repeatedly. It’s also a service that could be integrated into all of its current offerings. Imagine getting shipping notifications dropped into Gmail or
TechCrunch
On April Fools’ Day, the folks behind the popular Android ROM CyanogenMod updated its CM Stats feature and removed the opt-out option for users, which wasn’t an April Fools’ joke. CM Stats collects a few details about users’ devices, but with the opt-out feature removed, a handful of CyanogenMod users have complained. A day later,
Those of you who play Hammerpoint’s The War Z may want to change your passwords. Hackers have breached databases in The War Z that held personal player info. Players’ email addresses, passwords, in-game names, IP addresses, and game log-in credentials have all been compromised. Hammerpoint has temporarily shut down its servers for The War Z
Feedly, which today announced it has added more than 3 million new users to its free RSS service since Google decided to retire Reader, said that it plans to offer a paid option this year.
Computerworld News
Ever since officially releasing on Windows 7 back in February, Internet Explorer 10 has been slowly chipping away at previous versions of Microsoft’s web browser. Internet Explorer 10 gained 1.35 percentage points in March, thanks to the release of the browser on Windows 7 in late February. IE10 is now at 2.93% market share out
No, not really. In celebration of April Fool’s Day, YouTube went all out with their (highly unbelievable) prank. Now some of you may be saying, “You’re one day early YouTube, it’s March 31st”, but you have to keep in mind that its April 1st in some countries already, like Japan. In its April Fool’s Day
Hacking is still a loaded concept for many, often conjuring negative images of corporate espionage, fraudsters and prank-minded script kiddies. PBS’ Off Book wants to remind us that hacking wasn’t always seen this way — and, thanks to modern developments, is mending its reputation. Its latest episode shows that hacking began simply as a desire to advance devices and software beyond their original roles, but was co-opted by a sometimes misunderstanding press that associated the word only with malicious intrusions. Today, hacking has regained more of its original meaning: hackathons, a resurgence of DIY culture and digital protests prove that hacks can improve our gadgets, our security and even our political landscape. We still have a long way to go before we completely escape movie stereotypes, but the mini-documentary may offer food for thought the next time you’re installing a custom ROM or building your own VR helmet.
Filed under: Misc, Networking, Internet, Alt
An anonymous reader writes “Ars Technica’s Peter Bright reports on a Netware 3.12 server that has been decommissioned after over 16 years of continuous operation. The plug was pulled when noise from the server’s hard drives become intolerable. From the article: ‘It’s September 23, 1996. It’s a Monday. The Macarena is pumping out of the office radio, mid-way through its 14 week run at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, doing little to improve the usual Monday gloom…Sixteen and a half years later, INTEL’s hard disks—a pair of full height 5.25 inch 800 MB Quantum SCSI devices—are making some disconcerting noises from their bearings, and you’re tired of the complaints. It’s time to turn off the old warhorse.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Editor’s note: Maria Rocio Paniagua currently works as a project manager at Innku, one of the top mobile and web workshops in Mexico.
Ondore, the leading Latin American big data analysis company that develops online reputation management systems, has closed its first investment round for $ 1.5 million dollars with Alta Ventures. The company says it will use the capital round to expand sales and marketing efforts in Latin America, as well as Spanish-speaking U.S.
TechCrunch
When Sequoia Capital India landed in Singapore, the buzz around town was that a big-name US fund being in the country was going to really jolt the market and provide serious cred to the startups here. The Indian team running operations here, however, appears to have spent the last year of its time in the island state helping its Indian funds expand into Singapore, rather than directly investing in startups here. Singapore is a popular choice as a base for foreign companies looking to expand into Southeast Asia. Early last year, Sequoia Capital India MD, Shailendra Jit Singh, expressed interest in having the fund’s companies expand into the region. Sequoia Cap in the US also appeared to have been eyeing activity in Singapore for a while—it had its first offsite meeting in the country in 2011, and was in discussion with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong about its presence here. The Prime Minister’s Office oversees its R&D arm, the National Research Foundation (NRF), which has been busy backing local venture capital firms here over the past few years. Its Technology Incubation Scheme is a program that matches funds picked by 11 appointed VCs here, in the proportion of 85 percent to 15 percent—the larger portion dished out by the government. This allows the VCs here to provide bigger sums of seed capital to startups, with much of the risk absorbed by the NRF. Former NRF projects head, Yinglan Tan, was also pulled over to Sequoia Capital India’s team in July last year, where he is now a venture partner based in Singapore. When I ran into Tan in Manila a couple of months ago, he was evasive about the funds they’re looking at in Singapore, but was happy to try to set up meetings with their existing funds in Singapore—all Indian-based startups, except for Airbnb and Evernote. Some of these companies that are being incubated in Singapore by Sequoia Cap include Via, Druva, Mu Sigma, Idea Device and Practo. The meetings never happened, but word on the street is that Tan has been meeting with some Singapore-based startups that are approaching Series A or B in size, and are looking to expand beyond the island. One that I know of provides Wi-Fi infrastructure. As for its current startups here, Via is pretty sizable. It operates a flight booking portal similar to Expedia and Zuji, and has about 1,200 employees,
TechCrunch
Welcome to The After Math, where we attempt to summarize this week’s tech news through numbers, decimal places and percentages
This week, there’s been a mixed bag of interesting news numbers, from T-Mobile’s New York event and the company’s new perspective on the phone network business, to San Francisco (again) for the Games Developers Conference. We also got to take a look at BlackBerry’s first financial results since the name change and its BB10 launch.
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Sony, Blackberry, T-Mobile
Talk that Facebook is developing its own smartphone is spreading again.
Computerworld News
The Russian Soyuz spacecraft, carrying a NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts, successfully rendezvoused and docked with the International Space Station late last night.
Computerworld News
Electronic Arts is laying off staffers at its Montreal office in another round of job cuts. The news comes less than two weeks after CEO John Riccitiello resigned, citing the company’s financial underperformance.
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