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Tag Archives: News
All I’ve Heard From My Family Since The Acquisition News Began
Posted by Gsurface
on May 22, 2013
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The Evolution Of Hacker News
Posted by Gsurface
on May 18, 2013
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The idea of a VC having its own news aggregator was a bit outlandish in 2007. But Y Combinator was in an unusual position in those days anyway. Startup accelerators had been a highly visible part of the dot-com crash, and Silicon Valley was still skeptical of the concept nearly a decade later. So YC set out to be something different — a community of hackers building companies on their own terms.
Hacker News was initially built by YC co-founder Paul Graham as a demonstration of Arc, a new programming language he’d been working on. He quickly realized that it could help bring together the companies he was supporting and the rest of the folks who wanted in. With 1.6 million page views and 200,000 unique visitors on a given weekday, it’s now a key part of the venture firm’s success.
Even without big Apps news at I/O, small changes matter
Posted by Gsurface
on May 18, 2013
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Apps, Google's flagship product for enterprise IT, had a minor presence at this week's I/O developer conference, but some announcements at the show and in prior weeks deserve attention from customers of the cloud email and collaboration suite.
Computerworld News
No big-bang Apps news at I/O, but some announcements merit attention
Posted by Gsurface
on May 18, 2013
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Apps, Google's flagship product for enterprise IT, had a minor presence at this week's I/O developer conference, but some announcements at the show and in prior weeks deserve attention from customers of the cloud email and collaboration suite.
Computerworld News
NewsRel Uses Machine Learning To Summarize News Stories And Put Them On A Map
Posted by Gsurface
on April 28, 2013
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After 24 hours of staring at their screens, the teams that participated have now finished their projects for our Disrupt 2013 NY Hackathon and are currently presenting their project on stage. With over 160 hacks, there are far too many cool ones to write about, but one that stood out to me was NewsRel, an iPad-based news app that uses machine learning techniques to understand how news stories relate to each other. The app uses Google Maps as its main interface and automatically decides which location is most appropriate for any given story. The app currently uses Reuters‘ RSS feed and analyzes the stories, looking for clusters of related stories and then puts them on the map. Say you are looking at a story about the Boston Marathon bombings. The app, of course, will show you a number of news stories about it clustered around Boston, then maybe something about the president’s comments about it from Washington and another article that relates it to the massacre during the Munich Olympics in 1972. In addition to this, the team built an algorithm that picks the most important sentences from each story to summarize it for you. As you scroll through the stories, the app always recalculates the related stories on the fly, too, which makes for a pretty interesting news reading experience. Besides the map, the team also decided to develop the user interface around gestures, so you swipe down to read the full story on the news service’s webpage and you can swipe left and right to scroll from one story to the next The team members have a background in machine learning and iOS engineering. The met during their undergrad studies a few years ago and decided to team up for the Hackathon. They told me that they plan to keep working on the app and release it in the near future.
TechCrunch
Beyond The Box Launches A TweetDeck For Sports To Bring Realtime News And Analysis To Your iPad
Posted by Gsurface
on April 28, 2013
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Like many avid sports fans, Shailo Rao, Sagar Savant and Vam Makam are well-familiar with how frustrating it can be to find quality, relevant sports content — especially on Twitter and other social media. Rao tells me over coffee that, as a PhD student at Stanford, he spent years trying to create and maintain a single realtime feed of content he actually cared about. Because no company or publication was addressing this at the time, he was forced to manually curate a huge roster of RSS feeds from his favorite websites and Twitter accounts.
TechCrunch
Hackers take control of several CBS News Twitter accounts
Posted by Gsurface
on April 21, 2013
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It looks like CBS is the latest victim in a series of Social Network account hacks that seem to be prevalent this year. Today, CBS stated that several of its Twitter accounts, including 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, CBSDenver, and its official Twitter account were all compromised earlier today. The hackers used the accounts and tweeted
Anonymous Raises Over $54,000 For Dedicated Your Anon News Website
Posted by Gsurface
on April 17, 2013
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hypnosec writes “Anonymous knocked the doors of Indiegogo in a bid to raise some crowd-sourced dough to expand its news coverage by establishing a dedicated site instead of tweets and tumblr blog posts and managed to raise 27 time as much money as initially targeted. The initial target was to raise $ 2000 to fund the site development work as well as pay for initial hosting. Anonymous is planning to host news, reports and blogs from independent online reporters under its, already in use, Your Anon News brand.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
LinkedIn to buy Pulse, maker of mobile news reader app
Posted by Gsurface
on April 12, 2013
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LinkedIn, the world&’s largest professional networking site, continues to beef up its content publishing platform with its agreement to acquire Pulse, which makes a mobile news aggregation, reader and content distribution application.
Computerworld News
LinkedIn acquires Pulse news reader for $90 million
Posted by Gsurface
on April 11, 2013
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LinkedIn has been pretty clearly repositioning itself as a source for news as of late, and it’s now made that shift even clearer with a fairly major acquisition. The company announced today that it has acquired Pulse, maker of news reader apps for mobile devices (in addition to a web-based offering) at a cost of some $ 90 million. In its own blog post announcing the news, Pulse says that its apps will remain as they are for now, although they will now offer a “LinkedIn Influencer” feed featuring the company’s hand-picked contributors. According to Pulse, its apps currently have over 30 million users around the globe, with approximately 40 percent of those outside the US; for its part, LinkedIn recently topped 200 million users.
Former News Corp. president wants Hulu for $500 million, says report
Posted by Gsurface
on April 7, 2013
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Peter Chernin, who’s also a former Hulu board member, wants to buy the video-streaming service he helped launch, Reuters reports. [Read more]
CNET News
Facebook Home ‘Airplane’ ad brings one traveler’s News Feed aboard — literally
Posted by Gsurface
on April 7, 2013
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Sure, Facebook had a weird ad with Blink-182 for the HTC Status, but its sneak peek at its newest TV spot for the First and Home is on another level. Posted today on its Facebook profile, the campy piece literally brings one traveler’s feed to life inside the cabin of his flight during boarding. We won’t spoil the goods for you, but it’s interesting to see Facebook’s first thrust at marketing this skin and smartphone combo out to the masses. Catch the full clip after the break.
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Software, Mobile, HTC, Facebook
Source: Facebook
Former News Corp. president reportedly places $500 million bid for Hulu
Posted by Gsurface
on April 6, 2013
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It is no secret that Disney and News Corp. have been looking into selling video-streaming service Hulu, with sources having dropped information over the past weeks about what is happening behind the scenes. Word had it the two companies were, at one point, looking at buying out the other to take control of the service,
Facebook starts testing targeted ads in News Feed
Posted by Gsurface
on March 27, 2013
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Facebook has started displaying targeted ads in some users' desktop News Feeds in a test of Facebook Exchange ad delivery system.
Computerworld News
Yahoo Buys UK Teen’s Smartphone News App
Posted by Gsurface
on March 26, 2013
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judgecorp writes “Seventeen year old Nick D’Aloisio has sold his smartphone app Summly to Yahoo for an undisclosed sum. The app — created when he was 15 — aggregates news stories by topic and condenses them for time-strapped readers. D’Aloisio and his team will go to work at Yahoo when the deal closes. From the article: ‘Summly was founded by 17-year old Nick D’Aloisio when he was just 15 from his home in London. The service works by sorting news stories by topic and condensing them into bite-sized chunks for time-conscious readers. The Summly application will be closed down and integrated with Yahoo’s existing range of mobile applications. D’Aloisio and the Summly team will be joining Yahoo as part of the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2013.’”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Yahoo buys Summly news app for $30m
Posted by Gsurface
on March 25, 2013
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Pew Research Finds Opinion Dominates MSNBC More Than Fox News
Posted by Gsurface
on March 23, 2013
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Hugh Pickens writes writes “Jack Mirkinson reports that Pew Research Center’s annual “State of the Media” study found that, since 2007, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC have all cut back sharply on the amount of actual reporting found on their airwaves. Cheaper, more provocative debate or interview segments have largely filled the void. Pew found that Fox News spent 55 percent of the time on opinion and 45 percent of the time on reporting. Critics of that figure would likely contend that the network’s straight news reporting tilts conservative, but it is true that Fox News has more shows that feature reporting packages than MSNBC does. According to Pew MSNBC made the key decision to reprogram itself in prime time as a liberal counterweight to the Fox News Channel’s conservative nighttime lineup. The new MSNBC strategy and lineup were accompanied by a substantial cut in interview time and sharply increased airtime devoted to edited packages. The Pew Research examination of programming in December 2012 found MSNBC by far the most opinionated of the three networks, with nearly 90% of MSNBC’s primetime coverage coming in the form of opinion or commentary.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google Reader Who? Feedly Became Top News App On iPhone, iPad & Android This Week; New App Now Awaiting Approval
Posted by Gsurface
on March 23, 2013
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Where are the users headed following news of Google Reader’s shutdown? To Feedly, it seems. We already heard the company announce it had passed half a million new users, but more importantly, Feedly is now winning on mobile, too. According to new U.S. App Store and Google Play data, Feedly is leaving competitors like Newsblur and Reeder far behind. Even though Google Reader will remain for a few months more, Feedly became the number one news app across all three top mobile platforms (iPhone, iPad and Android) this week. It even climbed into the “Top Overall” section within all three stores.
HP sidesteps Autonomy drama, Israel-Palestine makes news
Posted by Gsurface
on March 21, 2013
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All 11 board nominees elected at annual shareholder meeting despite controversy over HP’s botched $ 11.1 billion software acquisition. [Read more]
CNET News
Chirpify opens up Facebook's News Feed for business
Posted by Gsurface
on March 19, 2013
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Facebook's News Feed is a popular landing page for photos and updates from friends, but now it can also function as a digital storefront of sorts, through a partnership with e-commerce startup Chirpify.
Computerworld News
Javascript file hints at possible Google Play News feature
Posted by Gsurface
on March 16, 2013
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The folks over at Android Police did some sleuthing and discovered some surprising tidbits within a Javascript file on Google Play’s website. According to information found within the file, Google is prepping a new feature called “Google Play News,” with various sentences scattered within it indicating that it will offer newspapers in the same way
More Bad News For Mobile Maker HTC As Haptics Company Immersion Applies To Restart Patent Litigation & Push For Damages
Posted by Gsurface
on March 12, 2013
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HTC has something else to worry about: it’s facing the prospect of having to fork out for damages if it loses a patent litigation court case to haptics company Immersion. Immersion had been content to stay its U.S. lawsuit against HTC — in order to wait for the completion of an ITC patent investigation — but has now asked for the stay to be lifted so it can seek immediate damages.
TechCrunch
If Grumpy Cat was the biggest news of all, is SXSW in trouble?
Posted by Gsurface
on March 11, 2013
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Few expect SXSW to turn out a Twitter-like success every year. But if a small feline is far and away the biggest news of a show with tens of thousands of attendees, trouble may be brewing. [Read more]
CNET News
Facebook’s updated News Feed cuts through clutter, boredom
Posted by Gsurface
on March 8, 2013
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Facebook’s redesigned News Feed may help keep users flooded with information from quitting the social network, anlaysts said.
Computerworld News
Friday Poll: Is Facebook your top social-media news source?
Posted by Gsurface
on March 8, 2013
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With the announcement of changes to the Facebook News Feed, the social-media giant is moving into territory previously cornered by Twitter. Is it your top news source, or do you get your social-media news fix elsewhere? [Read more]
CNET News
Facebook’s revamped News Feed: The new normal
Posted by Gsurface
on March 8, 2013
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How do you know when the news feed revolution is over? When they all start to look the same. [Read more]
CNET News
Facebook Unveils a New-Look News Feed
Posted by Gsurface
on March 7, 2013
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Facebook’s new News Feed: Bigger is better
Posted by Gsurface
on March 7, 2013
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The social networking giant today unveiled changes to the site that incorporates bigger images and allows customization, as well as tailors results to previous “Likes.” [Read more]
CNET News
Facebook overhauls News Feed with sorting feature, bigger pictures and more
Posted by Gsurface
on March 7, 2013
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A wish list for Facebook’s News Feed includes highlighted friends, improved mobile
Posted by Gsurface
on March 7, 2013
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Facebook is set to unveil an updated News Feed on Thursday and analysts have a wish list of changes that users might welcome.
Computerworld News
Facebook’s News Feed, A Skittish Gift Horse
Posted by Gsurface
on March 3, 2013
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Remember Facebook Questions? Checkins? Spotify listens? They had their time at the top of the news feed because Facebook favors new products, but their prominence diminished as they matured. This and competition for space between posts may explain why New York Times writer Nick Bilton gets fewer Likes on shares to his public followers than a year ago. The news feed is a bumpy ride.
TechCrunch
It’s The End Of The News As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Posted by Gsurface
on March 2, 2013
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Their downside to pet projects is that they invariably teach you something you didn’t really want to know. This time, it was that most of the people who do what I do are doomed.
Let me explain. Mostly for fun, I’ve recently built1 a news aggregator I call Scanvine, which ranks stories and authors and publications by how often they’re shared on social media. (TechCrunch does quite well, thanks for asking.) So I’ve been paying attention to a much broader spectrum of news during this last week…which was also the week that Marissa Mayer announced that Yahoo! would no longer condone working at home.
Oh, the hysteria that ensued.
TechCrunch
News Corp. and Disney allegedly in talks over the future of Hulu
Posted by Gsurface
on March 2, 2013
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Facebook set to launch new look for News Feed
Posted by Gsurface
on March 2, 2013
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The social network sent press invitations to a March 7 event at the company’s offices in Menlo Park, Calif. “Come see a new look for News Feed,” the invite reads.
Computerworld News
Hulu part-owners Disney, News Corp. reportedly discuss buying each other out
Posted by Gsurface
on March 2, 2013
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The new owner of Hulu could turn out to be… one of the existing owners. After an aborted sale attempt in 2011, new rumors suggest current part owners Disney and News Corp are talking over the possibility of one buying the other’s stake out. The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg both tag people with knowledge of the situation as their sources, indicating a disagreement over the video streaming website’s business model — it announced $ 695 million in revenue last year — as a reason for the talks.
Reportedly News Corp. prefers a subscription based model, while Disney sees an advertising-focused approach as best. Both of them own about a third of the site, while Comcast / NBC Universal owns most of the remaining third but can’t vote, and according to the rumors would remain as a minority investor if a buyout took place. Also playing into this is CEO Jason Kilar’s announcement he will leave the company by the end of Q1, so hopefully any decision on its future are made by the time a new leader is in place.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD
Source: Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal
Has dark matter finally been found? Big news coming
Posted by Gsurface
on February 18, 2013
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Tesla vs. The Times: What one review means for the future of auto news
Posted by Gsurface
on February 14, 2013
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It’s been hard to miss, this brouhaha that’s been boiling over between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and The New York Times — specifically with reporter John M. Broder. Broder published a piece over the weekend called “Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway” in which he panned the Model S for inaccurate range estimates and drastically reduced range in cold weather. In fact, about the only thing he didn’t hate was the tow truck driver who was ultimately dispatched to pick up he and the charge-depleted Tesla he had been driving through Connecticut.
Musk, likely still stinging from an even more vitriolic 2011 takedown by Top Gear, was quick to take to Twitter and call the article “fake.” He later backed that up with comprehensive data logs recorded, apparently, without Broder’s knowledge. That data, at least at surface value, shows the Times piece is at best misleading — at worst libelous.
Case closed? Oh no, this is just beginning. In posting this data, and in chastising Broder’s driving habits, Musk inadvertently refocused the situation onto himself. Instead of asking how the Times allowed this piece to be published, many are instead asking whether it’s right for Tesla to be placing any sort of expectations on reviewers. And then, of course, there’s the disconcerting Big Brother aspect of the whole case. Who’s in the right? Who’s in the wrong? Let’s try to find out.
Bing Pulse launching with help from Fox News, aims to make State of the Union speech more interactive
Posted by Gsurface
on February 9, 2013
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Just in time for next week’s State of the Union address, Bing announced it’s teamed up with Fox News to launch Bing Pulse, a one-stop hub where folks can easily interact and share their thoughts with one another while President Barack Obama’s speech is taking place. The Microsoft-owned search engine says that Pulse will allow participants to vote on reactions to the event every five seconds, with the impending results being shown on the Bing Politics site. What’s more, Bing believes “this will be the largest live online poll in history,” which will be enhanced by the outfit’s new Beat “social sentiment tracker” – a service that’s set to collect and analyze data from Twitter in order to figure out what are the trendiest political topics during the speech. Folks interested in joining the Bing Pulse conversation should hit that more coverage link to get acquainted — and, of course, don’t forget to bookmark it so you’re all set come February 12th.
Filed under: Internet, Microsoft
Source: Bing
Facebook Ramps Up News Discovery Battle Against Apps Like Flipboard With “Articles Related To”
Posted by Gsurface
on February 2, 2013
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Rather than trust your friends and favorite Pages to post interesting stuff, Facebook is taking news discovery into its own hands with “Articles Related To…”. This special feed story shows you popular links that lead to content mentioning Pages you Like. It could be the next step in Facebook’s master plan to take on apps like Flipboard, Pulse, and Zite, keep you on site, and make publishers pay
Software Predicts Tomorrow’s News by Analyzing Today’s and Yesterday’s
Posted by Gsurface
on February 2, 2013
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Prototype software can give early warnings of disease or violence outbreaks by spotting clues in news reports.
Researchers have created software that predicts when and where disease outbreaks might occur based on two decades of New York Times articles and other online data. The research comes from Microsoft and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
Samsung fined $1000 over gas leak, according to Yonhap News
Posted by Gsurface
on January 30, 2013
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Korea’s Yonhap News agency is reporting that Samsung will be fined 1 million won (roughly $ 1,000) for not reporting its recent gas leak quickly enough. The gas leak led to the death of a maintenance contractor who was brought in to fix a pipe leaking hydrofluoric gas at one of Samsung’s semiconductor plants. Police are reportedly imposing the fine on both Samsung and its subcontractor, for failure to follow a rule stipulating that authorities should be “promptly” notified of any such leaks.
Filed under: Samsung
Source: Yonhap News
KashFlow Adds Tradeshift Support After Being Blindsided By News Of Intuit’s Strategic Investment In E-Invoicing Startup
Posted by Gsurface
on January 25, 2013
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This week’s news that Tradeshift, the business interactions and e-invoicing platform, has taken a ‘multi-million’ pound strategic investment from legacy accounting software maker Intuit is bound to have made others in the accounting software space sit up and take notice. One such player is the UK’s KashFlow who, in what could be perceived as a feisty move, has announced that it’s integrated with Tradeshift to enable SMBs who use its cloud-based accounting software to accept and issue e-invoices through the latter’s platform.
TechCrunch
Judge: News agencies shouldn’t have used Twitter photos
Posted by Gsurface
on January 16, 2013
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A judge rules that the AFP news agency and The Washington Post infringed on the copyrights of a photographer by publishing images that he’d posted to Twitter. [Read more]
CNET News
Good News for RIM
Posted by Gsurface
on January 10, 2013
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Honestly!
I’ve been waiting for good news to come out of RIM. Oh, how I’ve waited. (See “BlackBerry’s New OS: Too Little, Too Late?”; “BlackBerry Outages Spread to U.S.”; “RIM. Oh, RIM.” I could go on.) I’ve long vowed to write up a piece of good news about the beleaguered Canadian company, which once reined unchallenged over smartphones, should any come along. And it finally has.
Good News For Entrepreneurs On Fiscal Cliff: R&D Tax Credit Extended
Posted by Gsurface
on January 2, 2013
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The government gave the nation’s suit-and-tie mad scientists a tax break again this year, agreeing to extend the much-loved R&D tax credit. “We can’t keep cutting things like basic research and new technology and still expect to succeed in a 21st-century economy,” said President Obama, hailing Congress’s passage of a budget related to the so-called “fiscal cliff.”
TechCrunch
Autonomy founder fires back at HP after news of DOJ inquiry
Posted by Gsurface
on December 28, 2012
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After HP announced an investigation into its purchase of the software company, Autonomy founder says, “We can confirm that we have as yet had no contact from any regulatory authority.” [Read more]
CNET News
Google News now optimized for tablets
Posted by Gsurface
on December 16, 2012
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Google has announced that Google News has been optimized for tablet devices, such as the Nexus 7 and the iPad. When accessed from a tablet, Google News shows an updated design, which isn’t terribly different than what you see when accessing the website from a desktop browser. With the update comes a few features that
Yahoo considering purchase of news summarizing app Summly
Posted by Gsurface
on December 14, 2012
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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer eyes the app, according to All Things D. If true, the iPhone app would fit nicely with Mayer’s recent mobile-focused purchases. [Read more]
CNET News
Workplace Collaboration Service Convo Releases Updated iOS App With Redesigned News Feed And Comment System
TechCrunch