Tag Archives: Google

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Netflix Headed For A Brick Wall?
It was bound to happen, subscriber backlash over pricing, and recent news that major content providers are cutting ties with Netflix. Read more of the story here: http://thom.ws/mUNE5C

Is Steve Balmer Actually Surprised At The Crappy Windows Phone 7 Sales?
Steve, you have to actually build a brand, a community, and a solid app store before you can start to capture market share. Oh, and if you have to battle the retail sales folks for pushing people away from your product, you will have an even harder time selling your product. You have some serious holes in your plan. Read more here: http://thom.ws/qgZ7yI

MOG Launches Free Version Of Music Service
MOG announced today that they are offering an ad-supported free version of their music service. The interesting thing here is they are trying to gamify the service, giving users free music,  based on the amount of sharing, playlist creation, and the number of referrals to the service. This could be interesting. According to their press release “Tastemakers and influencers can easily get a lifetime of free on-demand music.” Read more here: http://thom.ws/o4P0CC

Chegg Buys Zinch In A Move Towards A Social Education Platform
You may not have heard of either of these companies, but they are leaders in their own industries. Chegg is an online book rental service for college students, and Zinch is an online service that connects high school students with college recruiters. On the surface, this is an odd acquisition, but more and more companies are buying complimentary services and products to increase their over all sales. Read more here: http://thom.ws/nvLUNG

Samsung Wants To Own Your First, Second, And Third Screen
Samsung is making a push to build technology that directly competes with Apple and it’s AirPlay technology. The company has had some success in the past, but this push could be fueled by the back and forth patent infringement claims made by both Apple and Samsung. Read more here: http://thom.ws/qZK9T4

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1. Sources: PopCap In Late Stage Acquisition Discussions With EA For $1 Billion+
 PopCap Games is in late stage acquisition discussions for a sum of over $1 billion — we’ve now heard from two sources that the buyer is Electronic Arts.

2. Google Invests $102 Million More Into California’s Alta Wind Energy Center
 According to an official company blog post today, Google is increasing its investment into California’s Alta Wind Energy Center (AWEC) by $102 million, bringing its total investment in the renewable energy facility to $157 million.

3. Tips for taking good handheld photos at night
The problem with taking photographs in low-light situations is that the camera has little alternative but to leave the shutter open longer to soak up more light. These tricks and tools will help you take better nighttime photos, without having to pack a tripod.

4. Music Discovery Platform exfm Goes Mobile With A Killer App For iOS
The artist formerly known as Extension Entertainment, now known simply as exfm, has officially gone mobile today, releasing its first mobile app for iOS. I’ve been enjoying exfm for a few months now through the startup’s Chrome extension, so I’m very excited to be able to finally bring that experience with me on-the-go.

5. A New Mobile Social Games King In The U.S.? Former Facebookers Take Storm8 To 210 Million Downloads
On the heels of PopCap’s billion dollar acquisition comes some interesting news from the social games front: Game developer Storm8 is today announcing a few impressive stats. Among other things, the company is claiming that it has become the “largest mobile social games developer in the U.S.”, boasting over 210 million downloads across iOS and Android. While those numbers are certainly impressive, with Angry Birds raking in over 200 million downloads, I think Rovio, Zynga, PopCap, Outfit7 and quite a few others might have a thing or two to say about that, each of which has fairly sizable user bases in the U.S. Then again, Rovio is in fact Helsinki-based and Outfit7 is international as well so Storm8′s claim to American soil likely stands — at least in relation to the Angry Birds and Talking Tom Cat makers, respectively.

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6. Google Launches New DOM Snitch Chrome Extension To Keep You Safe From Malicious JavaScript
Google has this week announced via its security blog a new tool its created called the DOM Snitch which is an experimental Chrome extension that enables developers to identify insecure practices commonly found in client-side code.

7. Amazon’s “state of the cloud” — it isn’t stacking up
When it comes to the cloud, just forget about the stack. Cloud computing is evolving beyond the data structure of interchangeable layers, said Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President at Amazon, during his “state of the cloud” address at GigaOm’s Structure conference.

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1. Five years from now, there’ll be no such thing as a webpage
Every time Facebook changes its interface, an outcry erupts in my News Feed. Without fail, my network transforms into a village and Mark Zuckerberg is our Frankenstein. Minor tweaks send us into an outrage, and we want Facebook’s head on a platter for our momentary confusion. But then a few days pass, and instead of anger, we see adaptation. The voices of dissent subside and we’re back to business as usual. After all, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who can recount exactly what the first Facebook profile was like. Furthermore, it’d be difficult to find someone who cares.

2. HP Working On Cloud Music Service For webOS
It seems that another company is in discussion with the record labels about bringing a music streaming service to their tablet and smartphone operating system, according to a recent report by Billboard, HP is in discussion with a number of record labels about launching their own music streaming service for webOS.

3. Mozilla gets tough on Firefox memory leaks
Mozilla will try to plug more memory leaks in Firefox with a new, aggressive approach that relies on weekly bug triage meetings.

4. Skype Is Coming To Your TV Through Comcast
Comcast will begin offering Skype video calling to customers next year. The two companies announced the deal this afternoon ahead of the National Cable and TV Association’s annual conference tomorrow.

5. Angry Birds looks to conjure some location-based Magic [Video]
Rovio is looking to take Angry Birds local with location-based integration, which will now enhance the game play for users when they visit real-world locations. The feature, called Magic, builds off a previously announced NFC feature for certain Nokia phones, which allows a very limited number of users to unlock additional levels when they tap two NFC phones together or tap an NFC tag at a location.

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6. Google Mobile Search Now Featuring Places Integration
The Google Search mobile landing page got a change overnight that deeply integrates Google Places, making it easier to find nearby restaurants, coffee shops, and bars directly from the front page. Other Places directories, like ATMs, fast food, and gas stations, can be searched locally with just one more tap of the finger.

7. Appcelerator Launches Titanium Studio: Mobile, Desktop & Web Development in One
Today, cloud platform provider Appcelerator is expanding beyond mobile and Web with a new offering designed for developers looking to build cross-platform applications. Now, in addition to building for smartphones, tablets and the mobile Web, developers can use the new Titanium Studio to build, test and deploy to desktop platforms including Windows, Mac and Linux as well as build HTML5 Web applications, all in one single development environment.

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1. PlayStation Branded 3DTV Announced, Coming Bundled With A Copy Of Resistance 3
Do you like the idea of all this new-fangled 3D technology in games but can’t stump up the cash for a new TV and 3D glasses? It seems like you aren’t the only one, and Sony has been listening to your pleas.

2. Google Maps can now tell you when your bus or train is late
Google has offered travel information in Maps for quite some time, but now it’s going real-time – in a handful of cities, at least.

3. Square Raising New Round, Joining Billion Dollar Valuation Club
There are a bevy of startups in the process of raising big rounds of capital at billion dollar or higher valuations – something that was a rare occurrence even a few months ago. We’re tracking most of these deals (and have written about the ones we’ve confirmed). Now, we’ve confirmed via multiple sources, is payment startup Square’s turn.

4. Tribalfish may just change the way you have discussions online
Tribalfish wants to solve the difficulty involved in conversations on the Internet. Twitter has helped us to solve part of the problem by allowing us to reach a wide variety of people, but it’s still a one-to-many conversation. Internet forums have been the better answer for longer, deeper conversation but they require you to go to a different destination for nearly every topic.

[ I have a few Tibalfish invites if you woud like one ]

5. Snapseed for iPad: Photo editing at the swipe of a finger
The iPad is quickly transforming itself into the photographer’s smorgasbord for quick photo editing. The list of free and paid photo editing apps keeps getting longer and longer, and if you’re anything like me, you’re probably grateful that more developers are coming up with new and exciting apps to edit your photos on the go.

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6. The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap
It all started because of the discovery problem.

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Today’s Tech Stories I found interesting:

1. Google Wallet
Google is getting into the mobile payment market.

2. Twitter Photo Sharing
Twitter is finally putting a photo sharing service online. But can we expect constant outages with Twtimg as well? One interesting note, especially for developers. Twitter is going to crate it’s own version of your stand alone client application. If you rely on Twitter for your core business, expect to be challenged, by the source.

3. Apple iCloud
Apple plans on announcing it’s newly minted iCloud (formerly MobileMe), among other new products, at WWDC on June 6th. Expect Twitter and other Interwebs to be inundated with traffic.

4. Craigslist switches to MongoDB
Cragislist is in the process of incorporating MongoDB as it’s primary database system. MongoDB is a document style repository versus a traditional relational database.

5. Five Best Set-Top Boxes for On-Demand Video
On-demand video is taking the net by storm. Just look at Netflix, who is now responsible for +20% of all Internet traffic. Gaming consoles are very popular, but boxes such as Boxee and Roku are priced very competitively, and stream the same channels like Netflix, Hulu+, and Amazon Video on Demand.

What cool Tech stories have you read today?