Dish Network has made a $ 25.5 billion bid to acquire wireless operator Sprint Nextel, hoping to edge out a rival bid from Japanese operator SoftBank.
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Tag Archives: launches - Page 2
Dish Network launches $25.5B bid for Sprint Nextel
Posted by Gsurface
on April 15, 2013
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Alipay Launches Sound Wave Mobile Payments System In Beijing Subway
Posted by Gsurface
on April 15, 2013
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Alipay has launched in a new payment system in the Beijing subway that uses sound waves to connect smartphones with ticketing machines. The sound wave payment system was introduced with the Alipay Wallet mobile app in January and uses white noise (link via Google Translate) generated by a smartphone to carry digital information to another device. Initially used for smartphone-to-smartphone transactions, the Beijing Subway launch marks the first time the system has been used with a payment kiosk for consumer transactions, according to Xinhua (link via Google Translate).
After 7 Years & 50K Storefronts Created, Shopify Launches Major Redesign To Simplify Online Store-Building
Posted by Gsurface
on April 12, 2013
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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
Mark Zuckerberg launches FWD.us political action group
Posted by Gsurface
on April 11, 2013
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The group, which also includes tech heavyweights like Reid Hoffman and Marissa Mayer, will focus on pushing for immigration reform, with Zuckerberg noting that the U.S. immigration policy is “unfit for today’s world.” [Read more]
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Blippy Team Launches Tophatter iPhone App With Surprisingly Fun Live Auctions
Posted by Gsurface
on April 11, 2013
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The team behind share-your-purchase-information startup Blippy has started talking about its new direction. After pivoting from Blippy to another e-commerce project, it has pivoted again and is now working on a live auction website called Tophatter, and it launched an iPhone app today.
Like Blippy, Tophatter is a social shopping product. The vision, according to CEO Ashvin Kumar and COO Andrew Blachman, is to bring a fun, personal touch back to online auctions — the closest equivalents, Kumar said, aren’t sites like eBay, but instead the Home Shopping Network and QVC.
TechCrunch
Hapyrus Launches Service For Amazon Redshift, An Emerging Alternative To Hadoop And Hive
Posted by Gsurface
on April 11, 2013
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Hapyrus has launched FlyData, technology that enables it to automatically upload and migrate data to Amazon Redshift, the data-warehouse service that can scale to petabyte size. Amazon has claimed that Redshift will increase the speed of query performance when analyzing any size data set, using the same SQL-based business intelligence tools analysts use today. Hapyrus Co-Founder Koichi Fujikawa says their service, a big data router, makes Redshift even more effective and an alternative to Hadoop and Hive, the most widely recognized combination used for processing and analyzing data. After setup, FlyData runs in the background, moving the data to Redshift. Fujikawa said Hapyrus sets up a virtual private cloud on AWS. Customers can integrate their own virtual private network to transfer the data. Hapyrus competes against the likes of Informatica and Talend. Its current focus is on integrating with AWS, but going forward it will integrate data from a variety of sources. Fujikawa said in an email that Informatica and Talend provide complex data-integration solutions for big enterprise customers — mainly for on-premise systems. “We provide our data-integration service for cloud components like Redshift for any size of companies, from startups to relatively big organizations,” he said. Fujikawa says Redshift can be 10 times faster than Hadoop and Hive. Customers he hears from say they are seeking alternatives for the everyday kind of work that needs to get done. They can get stymied by the time and the expense that a query takes when using Hadoop and Hive. But there are also complexities with using Redshift, as Airbnb discovered: First, in order to load your data into Redshift, it has to be in either S3 or Dynamo DB already. The default data loading is single threaded and could take a long time to load all your data. We found breaking data into slices and loading them in parallel helps a lot. On its nerd blog, Airbnb said Redshift lacks some of the features that come with Hadoop. But data analysts are liking it so much that they want to use it pretty much exclusively. The Airbnb nerd blog makes the point that, in the end, Redshift and Hadoop may be more compatible than anything else. “Redshift, as a data warehouse, should be compared to Vertica, Greenplum, AsterData, Impala, Hadapt, and CitusData,” said Drawn to Scale Co-Founder Bradford Stephens in a recent email interview. “They’re just different things.” The smallest of startups take
TechCrunch
YC-Backed Backlift Launches A Back-End Service For Front-End Developers
Posted by Gsurface
on April 10, 2013
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Backlift, a Y Combinator-backed startup that’s launching today, describes itself as a back-end service for front-end developers. The service takes all of the work of setting up a server environment out of the equation and just lets front-end developers focus on their work. All a user needs is a Dropbox account – Backlift uses Dropbox as a file syncing service – and a text editor. With Backlift, a developer doesn’t need to know how to set up Rails, Django or node.js to get started. As Backlift founder Cole Krumbholz told me last week, the idea behind the service is to allow developers to jump right into working on their front-end code. For many people, he said, front-end tools can be a bit daunting and he wants Backlift to be a great learning tool, but he also aims to make it a platform for prototyping and, in the long run, a platform for hosting applications. To get started, users simply sign in with their Dropbox account, create a new app from based on a number of templates, including numerous backbone.js sample apps, a Google Maps API-based site, and basic Bootstrap-based sites. You can also use other popular technologies like AngularJS, CoffeeScript and Handlebars. Backlift then creates a new folder in your Dropbox account (and hence on your desktop, too) and you can start editing it with your favorite text editor. Every time you save an edit, Dropbox will sync with Backlift and you can immediately see the changes on your site (syncing starts less than a second after you have saved your changes). Given that most applications need to work with at least some data, Backlift also offers a basic API for working with data, as well as an admin dashboard for adding users and browsing, importing and exporting the data in your database. One of the companies that has been using Backlift extensively during the beta phase is Automatic.com – the YC-backed company that recently launched its hardware for turning any car into a connected car. “We have our own Amazon S3 servers, however Backlift is a much easier, faster, and secure way of working on the site as we got it ready for launch and showed investors,” Automatic.com’s visual and interactive designer Gabriel Valdivia told me. The service, Krumbholz told me, will evolve constantly and the team plans to launch quite a few new features in the near future
TechCrunch
Samsung launches GALAXY S 4 TV ads showcasing features
Posted by Gsurface
on April 10, 2013
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Samsung’s GALAXY S 4 is quickly approaching, and it’s expected to launch at the beginning of next month, with pre-orders starting later this month. In the meantime, Samsung is prepping to launch a television ad campaign for the new phone. Several television commercials have popped up on Samsung Netherlands’ YouTube channel, showing off some of
Crucial launches 2.5″ M500 SSD starting at $130
Posted by Gsurface
on April 10, 2013
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Crucial has launched its M500 2.5-inch SSD drives, which are available in a wide variety of capacities with prices starting as low as $ 129.99. The drive is aimed at those looking for a solid-state drive that outpaces HDDs and doesn’t completely break the bank, with Crucial boasting that the M500 can easily take on modern
Salesforce.com launches new services for mobile app development
Posted by Gsurface
on April 9, 2013
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Salesforce.com is giving customers and partners access to a new set of tools and services for building mobile applications on its cloud platform.
Computerworld News
HP Launches Moonshot
Posted by Gsurface
on April 9, 2013
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New submitter linatux writes “HP has announced their ‘Moonshot 1500 server’ — up to 1,800 servers per 47U rack are supported. The tech certainly seems to be an advance on what is currently available — will it be enough to revive HP’s server fleet?” From Phoronix: “Moonshot began with Calxeda-based ARM SoCs, but in the end HP settled for Intel Atom processors. Released today were HP’s Moonshot system based on the Intel Atom S1200. Hewlett-Packard claims that their Moonshot System uses 89% less energy, 80% less space, 77% less cost, and 97% less complexity than traditional servers.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
HopStop Launches Crowd-Sourced Transit Alerts Through HopStop Live!
Posted by Gsurface
on April 8, 2013
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HopStop, the location services app that helps you navigate the wacky world of public transportation, has today unveiled its biggest product launch ever, with the release of HopStop Live! The service is integrated with HopStop’s default iPhone app, as well as having its own standalone app called “Live!” The apps let users crowd-source information in real-time about delays to subways or trains, giving even more clarity to the morning commute. HopStop already accounts for delays that are marked on the MTA’s web site for service disruptions, but that isn’t an all-encompassing view. Many times, trains will be delayed because of police investigations or accidents, and the corresponding delay alert doesn’t appear online for many hours after, or not at all. Still, these delays can really bork up a day, and so HopStop is letting its massive user base start calling out issues for fellow users. Though crowd-sourcing public transit delays has been done before — most notably by Waze and NextTrain, along with some other mobile apps — HopStop brings a new level of scale to the recipe. As of today, HopStop has announced that its userbase has surpassed 2 million monthly active users, and the app access data points for 700 transit agencies, 20,000 lines, and 750,000 stops. Here’s what CEO Joe Meyer had to say about it: The real-time public transportation space has attracted so much attention over the past twelve months with a countless number of new transit apps all professing to have the answer to real-time. The problem with the vast majority of these is that as impressive and headline-grabbing as their goals or claims may be –they all lack the critical ingredient for any crowd-sourced service to be useful –a big enough crowd of endemic users. Over the past nine years, HopStop has grown to be the biggest independent player in the transit routing market, and today’s launch of HopStop Live! will leverage our large user base and strong commitment to product excellence to define the future of real-time public transportation information. The main goal is that users will build and foster mini-communities around their particular commute, keeping each other in the know about delays and service disruptions in a way that official lines of communication are too slow for. For now, the HopStop Live! service is only available for iPhone, but the company is working on rolling it out to other major platforms in
TechCrunch
Liquid Robotics launches autonomous sea-faring data center
Posted by Gsurface
on April 8, 2013
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The new Wave Glider SV3 is essentially a fully autonomous floating server rack, a system its maker fashions as the Amazon Web Services of the open ocean. [Read more]
CNET News
Alibaba Group Launches Daily Deals Site Juhuasuan Overseas In Hong Kong & Taiwan
Posted by Gsurface
on April 8, 2013
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Alibaba Group announced that it has launched Juhuasuan Overseas, a combination of C2C retail platform Taobao Marketplace and group shopping site Juhuasuan, in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Juhuasuan Overseas will offer merchandise and services from selected Taobao sellers in the same daily deals format as the original Juhuasuan, which is accessible only to customers in mainland China because cross-border shipping is not supported. Juhuasuan Overseas currently offers between 12 and 20 new group shopping deals each day, and will begin selling localized lifestyle services and travel deals to Hong Kong customers in a few weeks. Daphne Lee, director of Taobao International Business, said in a statement that the new Web site will leverage Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com’s (one of Alibaba Group’s B2C e-commerce platforms) 2 million existing customers in Hong Kong and Taiwan. According to Alibaba Group, there were 1.4 million registered Taobao users in Hong Kong and 600,000 in Taiwan as of the end of 2012. Originally launched under Taobao Marketplace in March 2010, Juhuasuan was spun-off as an independent subsidiary of Alibaba Group in October 2011. Though it faced competition from other Chinese group-buying Web sites like Lashou, 55tuan, and Meituan, Juhuasuan has grown in part by partnering with local service providers throughout the country. That tactic has helped Juhuasuan grow into China’s top group-buying site, with 34 percent market share according to research group Dataotuan, double the share held by its next largest competitor, Meituan.
TechCrunch
Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 launches today: UK first on tour
Posted by Gsurface
on April 7, 2013
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It’s time to grab hold of the next massive smartphone/tablet hybrid experience from Samsung, this time in the form of the phonecall-capable Galaxy Note 8.0 releasing in the UK today. This device will be available around the world soon and very soon, but for now we’re working with the basic wi-fi edition in the greater
Heroku Launches 2X Dynos With 1GB Of RAM For Increased Concurrency, More Memory-Intensive Applications
Posted by Gsurface
on April 5, 2013
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Cloud application platform Heroku is coming off a streak of bad news after it was accused of misleading its customers about how some aspects of its service worked and potentially costing its users quite a bit of money in the process. Today, Heroku is putting the spotlight back on features again, with the launch of the public beta its larger 2X dynos, which, in some ways, will also help alleviate the job queuing issues that sparked the recent debate. The 2X dynos (dynos are basically the containers that run an application process on Heroku) will offer exactly what the name implies: twice the memory (1GB instead of 512MB) and also twice as many CPU shares as the basic dynos (now called 1X). During the beta phase, the 2X dynos will cost the same as $ 0.05 per hour as the 1X dynos. After that, they will cost, as their name implies, $ 0.10 per hour. Heroku is also exploring the option to launch even larger dynos (4X+) in the future. Heroku argues that these larger dynos will allow for increasing concurrency on single-threaded Rails apps using the Unicorn HTTP server for Rack applications. Heroku also says that the larger dynos will work well for JVM languages that can take advantage of the vertical scale the 2X dynos provide. In addition, the company says, this should help with performing memory-intensive background jobs for image processing and geospatial processing.
TechCrunch
Wedding Search Engine Loverly Launches Mobile App For Searching, Snapping & Sharing Inspiration While On The Go
Posted by Gsurface
on April 4, 2013
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Lover.ly, a search engine for weddings, is today launching a mobile application to complement its online experience. The new app also allows brides-to-be and others planning a wedding (or just dreaming about one), to save and share the inspiration they find while on the go by snapping photos.
Detroit Electric launches SP:01: A Telsa rival
Posted by Gsurface
on April 4, 2013
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Detroit Electric’s SP:01 is a pure electric car that boasts a 180-mile range and a high price. [Read more]
CNET News
Adafruit Launches Educational Show Aimed At Kids
Posted by Gsurface
on April 3, 2013
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anavictoriasaavedra writes “Adafruit Industries just posted the first episode in a new educational series aimed at teaching kids about electronics. The episode is entitled ‘A is for Ampere’ and teaches the basic theory behind electrical current. The subject seems like a common one for A-to-Z themed electrical tutorials. And yes, that’s Collin Cunnigham as André-Marie Ampère.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google+ launches support for full-size photo uploads from desktop
Posted by Gsurface
on April 3, 2013
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Android smartphone users with a Google+ account know the convenience of having the full size of their photographs uploaded to the account, providing a no-hassle backup of the content that is easy to access and share later on. Now that same full-size photo upload feature has been rolled out for desktop users, who can upload
Firefox 20 Launches With Per-Tab Private Browsing, New Download Manager And More WebRTC And HTML5 Features
Posted by Gsurface
on April 2, 2013
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Firefox 20 is now available for download. The emphasis of today’s release is on the new per-tab private browsing mode, which now allows Firefox desktop and Firefox for Android users to enable a single tab for private browsing instead of having to open a new window. Also new in this version is a new download manager for the desktop, the ability to customize the shortcuts on the home screen with your favorite sites and support for additional HTML5 and WebRTC features. The new version of Firefox for Android now also supports more devices that use less powerful ARMv6 processors, including the Samsung Galaxy Next, Dart, Pop and Q, as well as the HTC Aria and Legend. The new porn per-tab private browsing mode, Mozilla writes in today’s announcement, lets you “shop for a birthday gift in a private window with your existing browsing session uninterrupted. You can also use a private browsing window to check multiple email accounts simultaneously.” The feature that users will probably notice first, however, is the new download experience. Here is what it looks like: For developers, this new version introduces support for WebRTC’s getUserMedia call, which allows developers to access a users’ camera or microphone (with permission, of course). Firefox 20 also now supports blend modes for the and a number of <audio> and <video> improvements.
TechCrunch
HTC One launches at AT&T on April 19 for $199.99
Posted by Gsurface
on April 2, 2013
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AT&T will also offer an exclusive 64GB version for $ 299.99. Pre-orders begin on April 4. [Read more]
CNET News
Epix pay-TV app launches on PlayStation 3
Posted by Gsurface
on April 2, 2013
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A separate app will launch for the PlayStation Vita in the coming weeks. [Read more]
CNET News
Nearly Two Years Later, Nebula Launches A Mainframe Style “Cloud Computer” Built On OpenStack
Posted by Gsurface
on April 2, 2013
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Nebula has launched its long awaited Nebula One, a hyped but often delayed integrated system that Co-Founder and former NASA CTO Christopher Kemp calls a “cloud computer” that takes mainframes and time sharing into the future with the cloud. Nebula launched at OSCON in 2011 with the goal of building systems that Kemp said would last “for generations to come.” It is now nearly two years later and Kemp says Nebula is officially here. Nebula One is built on what Kemp says is the company’s “Cloud Controller,” a hardware appliance that turns server racks into a scalable on-premise system that combines compute, storage and networking into one machine. It runs “Cosmos,” Nebula’s distributed enterprise cloud operating system, which configures servers that plug into the Nebula hardware. The technology is built for self-service and supports APIs for OpenStack and Amazon Web Services. It plugs into IBM, Dell or HP servers. Nebula, under Kemp’s direction, also has a flare for the dramatic: Nebula has some deep challenges ahead for it. The market is deeply competitive. There are orchestration providers such as Ubuntu JuJu. Mirantis helps companies integrate OpenStack. Startups such as Piston Cloud and Cloudscaling have developed their own cloud operating systems. But the mightiest competitors are companies such as IBM, EMC and Oracle that all are marketing this new generation of integrated systems. Kemp says a differentiator is its capability to abstract the complexity of what it takes to launch OpenStack. That will be Nebula’s best advantage. And now that is actually ready to ship then we will see how much traction this new cloud system actually gets.
TechCrunch
Virgin Launches Glass-Bottomed Plane
Posted by Gsurface
on April 1, 2013
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Jun Group Launches HyprMX To Help Mobile Publishers Manage Their Video Ads
Posted by Gsurface
on March 29, 2013
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Video ad distribution company Jun Group has launched a new, wholly-owned subsidiary called HyprMX, offering mediation tools for mobile publishers and developers manage video ads from multiple sources.
HyprMX CEO Corey Weiner said that Jun Group runs its ads through hundreds of publishers, and it found that some of those publishers needed more help managing their inventory: “They’re just not in the ad business — they’re in the content business, they’re in the games business.” So HyprMX helps those publishers run ads from multiple sources, including Jun Group.
TechCrunch
InMobi Launches App Publish, An Android App Distribution Platform Covering Hundreds Of Stores; Puts Its Metaflow Acquisition To Work
Posted by Gsurface
on March 27, 2013
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Mobile advertising network InMobi today took one more step in its bid to be a one-stop shop for developers’ app marketing needs, in the process taking advantage of the massive fragmentation that exists on the Android platform. It has launched App Publish, a distribution platform specifically for Android apps, which lets developers push their free, paid, or freemium apps to many different Android app stores at once. App Publish, which is free to use, is kicking off with about 130 app stores worldwide, and it will be adding more at the rate of around one to two per week, according to Charles McLeod, director of business development for InMobi.
Ooyala Launches Discovery Guide For Personalized Channels, Hook Plugin For Android Mobile Video Viewing
Posted by Gsurface
on March 27, 2013
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Video distribution platform Ooyala wants to get more people watching more video on more devices. That’s it’s job, right? Well, ahead of NAB, the company is launching a couple of features that will help do just that. That includes a new discovery engine that its clients can use to extend the amount of time people spend watching their videos.
TechCrunch
Amazon Web Services Launches CloudHSM, A Dedicated Hardware Security Appliance For Managing Cryptographic Keys
Posted by Gsurface
on March 26, 2013
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Amazon just announced the launch of CloudHSM, a new service that provides Amazon Web Services users who need to meet corporate, contractual and regulatory compliance requirements for data security a way to do so by using a dedicated Hardware Security Module (the ‘HSM’ in CloudHSM) within the Amazon cloud. Until now, Amazon argues, the only option for many companies that use its cloud services was to store their most sensitive data – or the encryption keys to it – in their own on-premise data centers. This, of course, made it hard for these companies to fully migrate their applications to the cloud. The new service, Amazon writes, can be used to support “a variety of use cases and applications, such as database encryption, Digital Rights Management (DRM), and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) including authentication and authorization, document signing, and transaction processing.” The actual appliances are Luna SA modules from SafeNet, Inc. The new CloudHSM service uses Amazon’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and the appliances are provisioned inside the user’s VPC with an IP address the user specifies. The service, Amazon says, provides businesses with secure key storage and protects these keys with “tamper-resistant HSM appliances that are designed to comply with international (Common Criteria EAL4+) and U.S. Government (NIST FIPS 140-2) regulatory standards for cryptographic modules.” Because the HSMs are located close to the user’s EC2 cloud computing instances, network latency should be very low. All of this, however, doesn’t come cheap. The upfront cost to provision a CloudHSM is $ 5,000 and the hourly cost are $ 1.88 per hour, which comes out to $ 1,373 on average per month. For businesses that need this kind of security, that’s probably a small price to pay, but this is clearly not a service that’s geared toward startups that just want to ensure their encryption keys and data are stored safely. The HSM client software can load balance requests across two or more CloudHSMs, though Amazon notes that it can take “several weeks” to provision more than two HSMs.
TechCrunch
Logitech launches keyboard folios for iPad, iPad Mini (video)
Posted by Gsurface
on March 26, 2013
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The iPad was never designed to be a laptop, but some people can’t resist the urge to change a gadget’s nature. For that purpose, Logitech is outing keyboard folios for the iPad and iPad Mini that double as a hands-free viewing stand for those long-haul flights. Your fingers will be hovering over a Bluetooth keyboard with membrane scissor keys, covered in your choice of colored fabric shell. The hardware is marked down to be available in the US and Europe in April, setting you back $ 100 for the iPad edition and $ 89.99 for the 7.87-inch version — and if you’d like to learn more, you can check out the videos we’ve stashed after the break.
Filed under: Peripherals, Tablets, Apple
Source: Logitech
Pinterest Store Platform ShopInterest Extends Free Beta, Launches Affiliate Network For SMB Sellers
Posted by Gsurface
on March 25, 2013
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ShopInterest, the 500 Startups-backed e-commerce site that lets you sell from your Pinterest boards, is announcing plans to extend its beta period by six more months while it gets its SMB-focused selling solution off the ground. In addition, the company has launched an affiliate marketing program called the “ShopInterest Sales Network,” which allows sellers’ items to be sold through third-parties.
Posthaven Launches In Public Beta, Has Saved 850K Posts Since Posterous Announced Its Shutdown Date Of April 30th
Posted by Gsurface
on March 22, 2013
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Once Twitter acquired Posterous, we knew that it was going to shut down at some point, as there was no way that the micro-blogging service would support a fully-featured alternative platform. Once we found out the date it was shutting down, then things felt real. If you were using Posterous to post pictures, video or random thoughts, you’d have to find somewhere else to put them. That somewhere else was Posthaven, set up by Posterous co-founders Garry Tan and Brett Gibson. The day that Posterous and Twitter announced the shutdown date, Posthaven jumped into action. At the time, Tan told me that the timing was completely serendipitous, as he had no insight as to when the decision would be made to shut down shop. Immediately, the service signed people up without even fully launching, even having problems handling the traffic at times. Today, Posthaven is launching its public beta and is available to anyone would would like to pay $ 5 a month to host their Posterous data, forever. Yes, Tan and Gibson have promised to keep the service running as long as it has users. The best part about Posthaven is that you can continue to use it just like you did Posterous, so it’s not merely storing your old posts, you can keep going. Tan and Gibson describe Posthaven is that it’s “he only safe and complete importer option available for Posterous blogs.” This makes sense because, well, Posterous’ co-founders would know the system better than anyone else. When I spoke with Tan about the public beta launch, he told me that since launching on February 15th, Posthaven has imported 850,000 posts, including photos, videos, documents and audio files. Tan promises zero corruption for the files that you’re bringing in as well, a pretty worthwhile reason to spend the $ 5 a month. Some of the other Posterous importing options have suffered issues like loss of original file names and even names from commenters, which Posthaven pulls in without a problem. The service is as simple as it gets right now, but Tan and Gibson are working on adding new features. For example, you can now create up to ten blogs with one account and they’re working hard to add post-by-email, commenting, multiple contributors, email notifications and a bookmarklet. These are all features that people who used Posterous will remember, and will miss when it shuts down on April 30th.
TechCrunch
Handy Photo launches for Android and iOS
Posted by Gsurface
on March 22, 2013
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AngelHack Launches A Startup Accelerator, Bringing Its Hackathon To 30+ Cities This Spring
Posted by Gsurface
on March 21, 2013
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AngelHack has always been a little different from your average hackathon — rather than taking place in one place over one weekend, it has become a global event that takes place in multiple stages. As a result, the projects are usually pretty polished, though not yet at the level of full-fledged startups. Now it’s taking another step in that direction with the launch of its very own accelerator.
The program will admit 40 teams into a 14-week program – 12 weeks of local mentoring, then two weeks in San Francisco pitch training, investor meetings, and events. In that sense, it follows the broader AngelHack model, where there are local hackathons which feed into a big competition among the finalists in Silicon Valley. In exchange for the mentorship (and tickets to this fall’s TechCrunch Disrupt), AngelHack takes 2 percent equity.
Yamaha PDX-B11 Bluetooth speaker launches
Posted by Gsurface
on March 21, 2013
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Yamaha has announced that it is now offering a new Bluetooth portable speaker designed for music fans that want to listen to their favorite tunes on the go. The Bluetooth speaker is called the PDX-B 11 and it is available for purchase right now. The speaker carries an MSRP of $ 179.95. The Bluetooth speaker is
YuppTV launches aimed at South Asians living in the US
Posted by Gsurface
on March 21, 2013
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Google launches Keep for personal notes
Posted by Gsurface
on March 21, 2013
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Google is looking to replace physical sticky notes with Keep, a new product designed for storing notes and other pieces of information.
Computerworld News
Google launches Keep to help you store your notes
Posted by Gsurface
on March 20, 2013
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The company launched the service, which is integrated with Drive, along with an Android app. [Read more]
CNET News
Realty Mogul Launches Its Real Estate Crowdfunding Platform (For Accredited Investors), Raises $500K
Posted by Gsurface
on March 20, 2013
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Realty Mogul, a site where accredited investors can can pool their money to back real estate deals, is going live today.
Co-founder and Jilliene Helman argued that in the current financial landscape, real estate is “one of the ways that people can still get yields.” She also acknowledged that there’s a lot of excitement right now about equity crowdfunding for startups, but she noted that investments on Realty Mogul can start paying off in a few months (in the form of rent checks or loan payments), rather than five or ten years: “Our big focus for investors is cash flow.”
TechCrunch
Amazon Launches ‘Send to Kindle’ Button For Web Developers & WordPress Blogs
Posted by Gsurface
on March 20, 2013
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Amazon just launched the Send to Kindle button, which clips Web content and saves it to Kindle readers and apps, for Web developers and WordPress bloggers. The button is also now available on The Washington Post, TIME, and Boing Boing.
TechCrunch
‘Star Trek’ inspires BlackBerry founder, launches quantum fund
Posted by Gsurface
on March 20, 2013
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Known for his long-standing interest in quantum technology, Mike Lazaridis creates a $ 100 million investment fund aimed at bringing science breakthroughs to the commercial world. [Read more]
CNET News
Intel launches Media Server Reference Design to speed up set-top box creation
Posted by Gsurface
on March 19, 2013
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It’s no secret that Intel wants more of a presence in the living room, even if it’s sometimes less than welcome. The chip giant’s new Media Server Reference Design might be key to getting that foot in at least a few doors. The kit combines both Atom CE5300-based hardware with software tools, the combination of which should fast-track media hubs and set-top boxes for those who don’t want to start from scratch. It’s more than just the expected media and TV engines; Intel also bundles in Hillcrest Labs’ Freespace engine to simplify motion remote control. MSRD kits should be available in April, although it’s likely to be months later before we learn whether or not home theater companies want to follow where Intel takes them.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Intel
Source: Technology@Intel
DrawChat Creator Launches His Mobile Ad Startup Namo Media, Raises $1.9M Round Led By Google Ventures
Posted by Gsurface
on March 18, 2013
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Late last year, former Googler Gabor Cselle had a problem. He’d launched a fun app called DrawChat, and it was starting to see some real usage — which would be great, except Cselle told me that DrawChat was always meant to be “a palate cleanser” and that he wanted to pursue a “billion-dollar thing.” So he auctioned off DrawChat (it was purchased by OneLouder, a division of Handmark) and got to work on his big idea, which he’s announcing today.
Cselle said that the goal of his new startup Namo Media is to fix some of the big problems in mobile advertising. That’s a pretty common refrain among mobile ad startups, but Cselle has something specific in mind — creating native ads that are part of the stream of content in mobile apps. In other words, ads that are both less annoying and more lucrative. He isn’t ready to get specific about the product yet, only to talk about the general idea and the team (more on that in a second). He did compare his approach to Facebook’s, except for a wide range of “content heavy apps,” such as news apps or photo-sharing apps.
USC Launches 3-D Printed VR Headset Library
Posted by Gsurface
on March 17, 2013
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Hesh writes “The University of Southern California has launched a website that contains the blueprints for many of their custom VR headsets as well as new mods to the much anticipated yet unreleased Oculus Rift. Some are helping push DIY VR forward through custom sensor mounts to support, for example, stereo cameras and others add more functionality like new eye cups to help increase the already large FOV of the headset. This is truly an exciting time for VR; by GDC, developers will already have Rifts in hand and tinkerers can 3D-print their own designs now as well!”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Xiaomi Box launches in a three-city trial on March 19th at a lower price
Posted by Gsurface
on March 16, 2013
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The Xiaomi Box has had an arduous road to travel before it could go on sale: Chinese regulations reportedly kept it in limbo until local broadcaster iCNTV stepped in this January to get the ball rolling once again. The end is in sight now that a limited trial is set to start on March 19th. Changsha, Hangzhou and Shanghai will get about 10,000 total units of the Android media hub, whose price is dropping from the originally chosen ¥399 ($ 64) to an extra-frugal ¥299 ($ 48). The price slash could well make the set-top box that much more alluring, especially when it’s still poised to give both Android and iOS users some media sharing love. Could you please hurry up your release plans, Xiaomi?
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Via: The Next Web
Source: Xiaomi (translated)
Surface RT launches today in Japan, gets a cameo in Ghost In the Shell anime
Posted by Gsurface
on March 15, 2013
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It’s taken its sweet time to leap over that Rising Sun, but Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet has finally arrived in Japan. Priced at 57,800 yen ($ 600), it’s launching today in collaboration with Ghost In the Shell series, Arise, where the Surface RT will apparently be making some cameo appearances, with a view to referencing its touch interface. If you’re interested in seeing how Microsoft’s lightweight tablet might look in the robotic future, we’ve added a concept sketch after the break.
Filed under: Tablets, Microsoft
Source: Internet Watch (Japanese)
Samsung Launches The Galaxy S 4 With A Baffling, Overproduced Broadway-Style Show
Posted by Gsurface
on March 15, 2013
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I’m watching the livestream of the Samsung Galaxy S 4 launch event in New York, and I cannot stop laughing.
In theory, illustrating different features with real-world scenarios isn’t a terrible idea. And if you must hold your event in the Radio City, why not get theatrical? But what’s impressive here is how the skits are both terribly written and unconvincing (like, intentionally so, because that makes it better?), and yet Samsung is really committing to them — actors get played on and off with cheesy music, and there have been multiple dance numbers.
CBS launches full-episode streaming app on iOS
Posted by Gsurface
on March 14, 2013
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CBS has been absent from streaming services like Hulu and Netflix for quite some time, although they recently joined Hulu in January. The network has never really bought into the whole streaming fad in the first place, which has no doubt made a few streaming customers upset, since CBS has a handful of good shows
WhatsApp Messenger launches for BlackBerry 10 devices
Posted by Gsurface
on March 14, 2013
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If you’re BlackBerry fan that has adopted a BlackBerry 10 device, a new app is available for you to download today that many have been waiting for. The app is called WhatsApp Messenger and it is now available the BlackBerry World storefront. The app is a cross-platform mobile messaging application that allows users to exchange
Twitter launches Windows 8 and RT app, get it now via Windows Store
Posted by Gsurface
on March 14, 2013
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Twitter has announced the availability of its app for Windows 8 and Windows RT, which users can get now from the Windows Store. The sleek-looking app borrows its design from other Twitter apps, such as those available for Windows Phone and Android. The differences with the Windows 8 app, however, are in the details. As
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