Products
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With improved hardware and better Web-based apps, the next Chromebooks could be exciting
This is the year Google started taking Chromebooks seriously. In February the company introduced the Chromebook Pixel, a touch-screen equipped laptop that costs more than many Windows or OS X-powered notebooks, ending the Chromebook category’s status as cheap laptops that happen to run Chrome OS instead of Windows. And now it seems that Google plans to make... -
Andreessen and Thiel debate whether we’re still innovating
Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel will pretty much debate anyone, anytime, anywhere about most anything. They’re both frighteningly good at it. It’s not fun to be on the other side of the barrage of obscure facts and rhetorical tricks both can easily employ. So, The Milken Institute decided to sick them on one another. At an event earlier this week,... -
With 1 million songs played per week, JoyTunes gets $1.5 million to make piano lessons a game
The key to education, or so I’ve learned over our month long content series on the topic, is to make learning fun and engaging. This applies whether the subject is math or photography. The most successful teachers bring their subject matter to life and inspire their students to seek mastery. Israeli startup JoyTunes has proven, in both its... -
Four takeaways from the IDC’s tablet market report
The IDC has released its quarterly report on the global tablet market, quantifying the rise — or fall — of 7-and 10-inch devices around the world. Given how important tablets are becoming to mobile computing, the rate at which they are replacing desktop and laptop PCs, and all the hullabaloo around graphs and charts and what-have-you, I figured it’d... -
Do you have to be an educator to remake higher education?
Silicon Valley is enamored with the narrative of the 20-something founder who doesn’t know enough of the industry he is disrupting to do otherwise. But sometimes, experience matters. I’m biased, but I’d argue that knowing a thing or two about journalism helps when building a modern media company. And last week, Lynda Weinman– founder of lynda.com– said her secret to... -
Notes from an “app discoverability” panel that wasn’t
Panelists rarely talk about what they say they’re going to talk about. Sessions meant to be about the hardware revolution evolve into a discussion of Kickstarter’s merits, a pow-wow about which hot-button startup might go public next becomes a call to avoid going public at pretty much any cost, and Google can be called out during a... -
New Zealand’s WIP makes collaborative video editing dead easy
One of the things I’ve been struck by when talking to startups in New Zealand this week is their ability to work quickly and build products with very little funding. Several companies that have come to my attention so far fall into that camp – Stqry, which took just four weeks to come to life, is a good example –…
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Moxie’s new Social Knowledgebase product helps teams access and preserve institutional knowledge
A week after making its enterprise social collaboration software free to use, Moxie Software today launched its Social Knowledgebase application to combine collaboration with knowledge management. The underlying premise is that the most valuable information in any organizations is in the minds of its individual employees. That knowledge not only needs to be made available in real-time to... -
The real problem with the tech workforce? Computer science moves faster than educators
We’ve got two more clips from our in-depth sit down with Udacity’s founder Sebastian Thrun. In previous segments we talked about what has worked for Udacity as a business and Thurn’s radical thoughts on teaching. In these segments we talk less about Udacity as a company and more about the problems with education on a macro level. In... -
PIGLT turns to the crowd to help fill higher education piggybanks
There has been a lot of innovation in recent years in the way education is delivered. But technology has done little to change the way that higher education, specifically, is paid for. Students still lobby for grants and scholarships. Families still save for years only to still require massive loans in most cases. As the rising cost of education far... -
Why BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins is both right and wrong about tablets
Reading BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins’ predictions for the future of computing feels a lot like reading the script to a particularly ludicrous, tech-focused episode of “The Colbert Report” or “The Daily Show,” except, unlike the hosts of those shows, Heins isn’t in on the joke. “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,”... -
Tibbr’s new enterprise social apps work with other SaaS apps and any mobile device for more GTD
As enterprise employees untether, BYOD (bring your their own devices), telecommute, and pursue any number of other work structure related buzzwords, tools for powering collaboration and communication have become increasingly mission critical. The best of these tools must work equally effectively across devices, platforms, networks, and a variety of other physical and conceptual barriers standing in the way of worker... -
SocialParent: The social network for families
At the Launch Festival a new social network emerged. Your reaction to that first sentence had to be just like mine: Argh! Not another one! But it wasn’t until I just spent the weekend with my new God Daughters at a birthday party, that I realized this one in particular is much needed: SocialParent. It’s a social network just for... -
Google Now on iOS is neither Google nor Now
By now you’ve probably heard that Google has brought Google Now, its virtual assistant, to iOS. And it’s true — Google has brought Google Now’s most-obvious feature, the information-packed Cards that tell users about the weather, traffic, flight information, and a whole slew of other categories, to the iPhone and iPad. But this isn’t the Google Now that’s... -
How Sebastian Thrun plans to “fix computer science”
We couldn’t let our month on online education end without a sit down with Sebastian Thrun. While he hasn’t had the billion dollar exits, Thrun is one of the only entrepreneurs today who could hold a candle to Elon Musk in the ballsy, futurist Renaissance man department. He helped invent Google’s self driving car and Google glass, but left all... -
How anyone can be a sports announcer with YouCommentate
I grew up in a family of football fans. How could you not be a football fan though, growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 90s with the five-time Super Bowl Champion 49ers and their high-scoring West Coast offense? It was an exciting time, and I feel fortunate that, as a kid, my dad turned down the...
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Stop bitching about Millennials
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Bitcoin is legal, but ignoring the laws is not
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Yahoo board to meet Sunday to discuss Tumblr deal
The company’s board will meet on Sunday night to decide whether or not to approve a $1.1 billion offer for the blogging site, sources told AllThingsD. [Source: AllThingsD]
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Yahoo will reportedly unveil updates to Flickr
The press received invites to a product-related press event in New York on May 20. A source told Bloomberg that it is regarding updates to the photo sharing site. [Source: Bloomberg]
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Redbox instant to launch on Google TV and Roku
The streaming version of the red, DVD-dispensing kiosks will launch on Google TV in the next few weeks. Soon after, the company, which is a joint venture between Redbox and Verizon, will look to add support to Roku. [Source: GigaOm]
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Mars rover Opportunity breaks NASA record
It may live in the shadow of Curiosity, but NASA’s older rover has driven further than any other object on the surface of another body in our solar system. It’s cruised 22.22 miles, but that’s still short of the 23 miles a Soviet Union rover drove on the moon in 1973. [Source: The Verge]
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For the Internet of things, will it be verticals or horizontals?
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A bitcoin bubble could be good for everyone
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Vend raises $8M without turning to the Valley
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"Bang With Friends" removed from App Store
Bang With Friends (hidden slightly by the name BWF Official) has been removed from the App Store by Apple. So for the time being, iPhone users who want to hook up on the go are out of luck. [Source: CNET]
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The geography of Twitter and mainstream news
A new study looked at “the geography of Twitter” finds that, “There is a strong difference in the geographic profiles of Twitter and mainstream media and that the intensity of discourse mentioning a country does not necessarily match the intensity of discourse emanating from that country in social media.” [Source: Poynter]
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Amit Kapur defends the MySpace mafia
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Sony appoints Osamu Nagayama as chairman
It’s being reported that Sony is going to appoint Chief Executive Osamu Nagayama as the new chairman of the company. The appointment will be finalized at the next board meeting on June 20. [Source: Reuters]
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Panasonic may kill off Sanyo
Panasonic has decided to cut 90% of Sanyo’s 2,500 workforce over the next three years. In addition, it may decide to absorb the company it acquired in 2010 entirely. [Source: Reuters]
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Yahoo to hold a “product-related” press conference Monday; what could it possibly be about?
Rumors have been circulating about Yahoo’s possible buyout of Tumblr. Now CNBC has tweeted that Yahoo will hold a “product-related” event where CEO Marissa Mayer will speak. [Source: @CNBC]
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Google Play in-app purchases up 700%
At Google’s I/O 2013 today Google gave some statistics about Google Play’s revenue. One standout is that in-app purchases are rising significantly, going up 7 times as much as there were this time last year. [Source: TechCrunch]
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Twitter and NBA team up for playoffs
The NBA and Twitter have partnered up to stream playoff game highlights for the rest of the post-season. The video clips will be posted on NBA Digital’s Twitter account. [Source: Bloomberg]
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Yahoo Japan believes 22M IDs were leaked
Yahoo Japan reportedly detected an unauthorized attempt to access its system, which led to 22 million Yahoo IDs being leaked. However, the company claims no passwords or identity data for password reset were part of the leak. [Source: Reuters]
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PandoHouse Rock: A history of 3D printing
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Yahoo’s mobile app push may be working
According to data from Onavo, Yahoo’s recent push in mobile apps may be bearing fruit for the company. Yahoo Weather now has a 3% marketshare for US iPhone users, and other Yahoo apps are also doing well. [Source: GigaOm]
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MessageMe raises $10M
Messaging app MessageMe has raised $10 million in its first round of funding. The round was led by Greylock Partners’ John Lilly. [Source: VentureBeat]
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ShoeDazzle is talking to acquirers and investors
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BitInstant raises $1.5M in seed funding
New York-based BitInstant, a startup that operates a Bitcoin transaction platform, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. Winklevoss Capital led the round. [Source: TechCrunch]
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BBM will not support iPads or Android tablets
BlackBerry announced earlier this week that BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) was coming to both iOS and Android. However, it was revealed today that the messenger will only be coming to smartphones, and not to any tablets. [Source: BGR]
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AOL’s Patch brings on new CEO
AOL’s local content site Patch is bringing on a new CEO, Steve Kalin, who was the COO and President of the company. In addition to this, the memo announcing his arrival also reported that 3% of the staff was being laid off. [Source: AllThingsD]
