21st Century Innovative Technologies and Developments as also discoveries, curiosity ( insolite)...

Google announced this morning its intent to acquire business intelligence platform Looker for $2.6 billion in an all-cash deal. Google plans to add this to the services portfolio of the Google Cloud platform, providing the last mile link into BigQuery.

While Google has carved out a reputation for machine learning and AI, the acquisition of Looker is intended to broaden its portfolio in business intelligence. The acquisition of Looker follows the recent acquisition of Alooma, which adds ETL tools, and the earlier acquisition of Cask Data, which has resulted in the Google Cloud Data Fusion data pipelining tool.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Apple has acquired Pullstring, a startup that helps customers publish voice apps, according to Axios.
The acquisition could be part of an effort by Apple to catch up to Amazon, the current leader in the voice assistant space.
Pullstring was last valued at $163.57 million, according to PitchBook, but the terms of the deal were not specified in the report.
Apple has acquired Pullstring, a company that helps companies publish voice apps for platforms like Amazon's Alexa and the Google Assistant, according to a new report from Axios.

The move could help Apple bolster its Siri virtual assistant, which is far more limited in terms of its features and the products it works with when compared to Amazon's digital butler, Alexa. Amazon is considered to be the market leader in the digital assistant space, and that lead only lengthens when you look at smart speaker use specifically.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

https://www.scoop.it/topic/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Apple

Im vergangenen Quartal ging der Umsatz von IBM um 2,1 Prozent zurück. Der Aktienkurs von IBM ist im vergangenen Jahr um 19 Prozent gefallen. Zum Ende des dritten Quartals verfügte das Unternehmen über liquide Mittel in Höhe von 14,7 Milliarden US-Dollar.

Red Hat ist ein US-amerikanischer Softwarehersteller und hat seinen Hauptsitz in Raleigh, North Carolina. Entwickelt wird die weit verbreitete Linux-Distribution Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Das Unternehmen ist auch am Fedora-Projekt beteiligt. Das Unternehmen erzielte im vergangenen Geschäftsjahr, das im Februar 2018 endete, einen Umsatz von 2,9 Milliarden US-Dollar.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Reuters - Apple Inc has acquired a startup focused on making lenses for augmented reality glasses, the company confirmed on Wednesday, a signal Apple has ambitions to make a wearable device that would superimpose digital information on the real world.

The Apple logo is seen on a computer screen in this illustration photo taken in Bordeaux, France, February 1, 2017. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo
Apple confirmed it acquired Longmont, Colorado-based Akonia Holographics. “Apple buys smaller companies from time to time, and we generally don’t discuss our purpose or plans,” the iPhone maker said in a statement.

Akonia could not immediately be reached for comment. The company was founded in 2012 by a group of holography scientists and had originally focused on holographic data storage before shifting its efforts to creating displays for augmented reality glasses, according to its website.

In augmented reality, digital information is overlaid on the real world as in the popular game Pokemon Go. Mobile phones use their camera system to do this on the phone’s screen, but major technology firms are racing to create glasses that will show digital information on transparent lenses.

Akonia said its display technology allows for “thin, transparent smart glass lenses that display vibrant, full-color, wide field-of-view images.” The firm has a portfolio of more than 200 patents related to holographic systems and materials, according to its website.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

After a week of rumors, Microsoft today confirmed that it has acquired GitHub, the popular Git-based code sharing and collaboration service. The price of the acquisition was $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock. GitHub raised $350 million and we know that the company was valued at about $2 billion in 2015.

Former Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman (and now Microsoft corporate vice president) will become GitHub’s CEO. GitHub funder and former CEO Chris Wanstrath will become a Microsoft technical fellow and work on strategic software initiatives. Wanstrath had retaken his CEO role after his co-founder Tom Preston-Werner resigned following a harassment investigation in 2014.

GitHub says that as of March 2018, there were 28 million developers in its community, and 85 million code repositories, making it the largest host of source code globally and a cornerstone of how many in the tech world build software.

But despite its popularity with enterprise users, individual developers and open source projects, GitHub has never turned a profit and chances are that the company decided that an acquisition was preferable over trying to IPO.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Google reprend à LogMeIn sa plateforme IoT Xively
par Charlie Braume, le 16 février 2018 16:26

Le géant du Cloud muscle ses offres IoT en rachetant une solution et surtout une équipe pour 50 millions de dollars.

Les grands Clouds publics se préparent maintenant à la bataille de l’IoT. Ainsi pour muscler sa Google Cloud Platform et renforcer ses ressources dans ce domaine, le géant de Mountain View annonce son intention de racheter à LogMeIn sa plateforme IoT Xively. L’opération est chiffrée à 50 millions de dollars, Google reprenant à cette occasion une équipe de 45 personnes. LogMeIn avait acquis Xively (anciennement Cosm and Pachube) en 2014 pour 12 millions de dollars. S’appuyant actuellement sur la plateforme cloud de LogMeIn (Gravity), elle génèrerait selon LogMeIn un chiffre d’affaires annuel de 3 millions de dollars.

Cloud IoT Core en béta
Google se fixe comme objectif de fournir aux entreprises un service complet de gestion de données IoT appelé actuellement Cloud IoT Core .et proposé en version béta. Il s’agit de connecter de manière efficace et sûre, de traiter et de gérer les données d’une multitude d’objets distants. Antony Passemard, Product Management, IoT & Pub/Sub, Google Cloud, estime à 20 milliards le nombre d’objets connectés en 2020.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Internet+Of+Things

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=IoT

TechCrunch has learned that Amazon has acquired Body Labs, a company with a stated aim of creating true-to-life 3D body models to support various b2b software applications — such as virtually trying on clothes or photorealistic avatars for gaming.

One source suggested the price-tag Amazon paid for Body Labs could be $100M+. However a second well-placed source suggested it’s closer to $70M than $100M — so we’re pegging it at between $50M and $70M.

An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment on the acquisition.

New York based Body Labs was founded in March 2013, according to CrunchBase, and had raised more than $10M across two investment rounds — closing an $8M Series A in November 2015.

The company says its AI, computer vision, and body modeling expertise stems from research started at Brown University and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Apple kauft Hersteller von Bildanalyse-Software
Apple hat das französische Startup Regaind übernommen. Das Unternehmen hat eine Technik zur Bildanalyse entwickelt.
Das iPhone erkennt bald möglicherweise nicht nur, was auf einem Foto drauf ist, sondern auch das Bessere von zwei ähnlichen Fotos. Apple hat ein Unternehmen gekauft, dessen Software Bilder bewerten kann.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Apple

Das israelische Startup Mobileye stellt Roboter-Augen her - auch in den selbstfahrenden Teslas steckt die Technologie. Jetzt hat sich Intel das Startup gekrallt: für 15,3 Milliarden Dollar.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

F-Secure has announced the acquisition of Digital Assurance to add security consultancy services to its portfolio.

With a legacy of offering assessment services to governments and companies in the financial, petrochemical, retail, communication and defense industries, UK-headquartered Digital Assurance will allow F-Secure to offer a wider range of products and services, and add an established team of cybersecurity specialists which will help F-Secure bring its advanced technology and security expertise to a greater number of organizations in the UK.

Digital Assurance develops a range of security testing, information assurance and security training products and services to reduce the cost and complexity of mandatory and regulatory compliance.

Through the acquisition, Digital Assurance will become part of F-Secure’s Cyber Security Services business unit.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Under CEO Satya Nadella's leadership, Microsoft continues to focus on the enterprise productivity market with its flagship service, Office 365. By emphasizing the need for a modern workforce to collaborate across geographies, departments, disciplines, and even organizations, Microsoft has given Office 365 users a plethora of tools and applications that enable cooperation and collaboration like never before.

But Microsoft is not done developing its collaboration tools just yet. In April 2017, the company announced it was acquiring Intentional Software for an undisclosed amount. Intentional Software is led by former Microsoft executive and Office product development guru Charles Simonyi, who once led the team that created Microsoft products like Word and Excel.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Google acquires cloud migration platform Alooma
Frederic Lardinois@fredericl / 3 hours ago

Google today announced its intention to acquire Alooma, a company that allows enterprises to combine all of their data sources into services like Google’s BigQuery, Amazon’s Redshift, Snowflake and Azure. The promise of Alooma is that it handles the data pipelines and manages them for its users. In addition to this data integration service, though, Alooma also helps with migrating to the cloud, cleaning up this data and then using it for AI and machine learning use cases.

“Here at Google Cloud, we’re committed to helping enterprise customers easily and securely migrate their data to our platform,” Google VP of engineering Amit Ganesh and Google Cloud Platform director of product management Dominic Preuss write today. “The addition of Alooma, subject to closing conditions, is a natural fit that allows us to offer customers a streamlined, automated migration experience to Google Cloud, and give them access to our full range of database services, from managed open source database offerings to solutions like Cloud Spanner and Cloud Bigtable.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Amazon has announced that it's buying mesh networking fim Eero. The company was founded in 2015 and is based in San Francisco. According to Crunchbase it employs between 51 and 100 people.

In January 2018, the company laid off 30 employees, around 20% of the company. It has raised around $90 million in four funding rounds so far.

The company's product is selling simple, powerful networking hardware that's easy to use. Eero says that you can take its product out of the box and have it up and running in 10 minutes.


It has two main products, a smaller repeater that plugs into a power outlet and a larger device that can cover 1,500 sq feet with Wi-Fi. The hardware scales so that larger houses can add more devices to provide comprehensive wireless coverage.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Apple übernimmt Videoeffekte-Spezialisten Spektral
Apple hat das dänische Startup Spektral übernommen, das sich auf Videoeffekte wie Greenscreens in Kombination mit Maschinenlernen spezialisiert hat. Die Übernahme soll bereits Ende 2017 erfolgt sein, wurde aber erst jetzt publik.

Apple hat einem Bericht von Borsen zufolge das dänische Startup Spektral Ende 2017 übernommen, wie erst jetzt bekanntwurde. Das Unternehmen hat sich auf die Kombination aus Maschinenlernen und Videoeffekten spezialisiert. Es hat eine Technik für Fotos und Videos entwickelt, die die Freistellung bewegter und unbewegter Motive von ihrem Hintergrund möglich macht, ohne dass der Nutzer dafür einen Greenscreen verwenden muss. Apple soll für die Übernahme 31 Millionen US-Dollar bezahlt haben.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Mozilla is growing, experimenting more, and doubling down on our mission to keep the internet healthy, as a global public resource that’s open and accessible to all. As our first strategic acquisition, Pocket contributes to our strategy by growing our mobile presence and providing people everywhere with powerful tools to discover and access high quality web content, on their terms, independent of platform or content silo.

Pocket will join Mozilla’s product portfolio as a new product line alongside the Firefox web browsers with a focus on promoting the discovery and accessibility of high quality web content. (Here’s a link to their blog post on the acquisition).  Pocket’s core team and technology will also accelerate Mozilla’s broader Context Graph initiative.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/curation-the-21st-century-way-to-learn-on-its-own-pace-and-to-organize-the-learning/

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2014/02/20/curation-tips-and-tricks-with-scoop-it-rescoop-and-tags/

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/learn-every-day-a-bit-with-curation/

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Curation

Microsoft has acquired Flipgrid, a social education app that utilizes short video clips to create collaborative lesson plans. The Minneapolis-based startup, which began life as Vidku, has had strong growth for an experience that has been alternatively described as Instagram and Snapchat for the cla…

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehre erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Nokia last week said that it was selling off its digital health business, after failing to develop it into a substantial business itself, but this week the Finnish company is announcing an acquisition that underscores how it is doubling down in another one of its business areas, the Internet of Things. Nokia has acquired SpaceTime Insight, a California-based IoT startup that provides predictive analytics based on machine learning algorithms.

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, Bhaskar Gorti, president of Nokia Software, said in an interview. The startup had raised between $50 million and $65 million in funding (based on figures from Crunchbase and PitchBook), and PitchBook last estimated its valuation at just over $103 million in 2016. Backers of the startup included the energy giant E.ON, Novus Energy Partners, Zouk Capital and more.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Apple rachète Shazam, l'appli de reconnaissance musicale.
Apple dépensera 400 millions de dollars (339,6 millions d'euros) pour l'entreprise qui a été récemment valorisée à un milliard de dollars (850 millions d'euros).

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Microsoft übernimmt Altspace VR

Es ist eine Mischung aus Virtual-Reality-Facebook und Second Life, und nach finanziellen Schwierigkeiten hat es einen neuen Eigner: Altspace VR gehört künftig zu Microsoft.

Für einen nicht genannten Betrag will Microsoft das kalifornische Unternehmen Altspace VR und damit auch dessen gleichnamiges Onlineportal kaufen. Über Altspace VR können sich Anwender ähnlich wie bei einem sozialen Netzwerk miteinander verbinden - allerdings normalerweise nicht über 2D-Bildschirme, sondern über Virtual-Reality-Geräte.

Letztlich erinnert das Ganze entfernt an eine VR-Version von Second Life, in der es neben Minispielen auch Übertragungen von politischen Debatten und Stand-up-Comedy gibt.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

TechCrunch has learned that Apple has acquired a small French startup called Regaind, according to multiple sources. As always, Apple is very quiet when it comes to acquisitions, but it’s always interesting to learn more about Apple’s interests.

We’ve reached out to Apple and the company sent us the following statement: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

This is Apple’s standard statement to confirm an acquisition. From what I understand, Apple acquired Regaind earlier this year. The company had raised a bit less than $500,000 (€400,000) from Side Capital.

Regaind has been working on a computer vision API to analyze the content of photos. Apple added intelligent search to the Photos app on your iPhone a couple of years ago. For instance, you can search for “sunset” or “dog” to get photos of sunsets and your dog.

In order to do this, Apple analyzes your photo library when you’re sleeping. When you plug your iPhone to a charger and you’re not using your iPhone, your device is doing some computing to figure out what’s inside your photos.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Apple

Microsoft today announced that it has acquired Cycle Computing, a twelve-year-old Connecticut-based company that focuses on helping enterprises orchestrate...

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Apple has acquired artificial intelligence startup Lattice Data for $200 million, according to a report in TechCrunch. 

The deal closed a few weeks ago and roughly 20 engineers from Lattice have joined Apple, according to the report, which cited an anonymous source. 

Lattice's technology focuses on "dark data," the mass of unorganized information stored in computer networks that is not in a proper format for companies to analyze or tap into. Lattice uses AI to make sense of all that data. 

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions

Google has acquired the VR game studio behind such popular gaming titles like Job Simulator and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality.

In a blog post, the founding team of the Austin-based Owlchemy Labs detailed that it has been acquired and will be joining the team at Google. “Today is a REAAAALLY BIG day for Owlchemy. We’re positively thrilled to announce that Owlchemy Labs has been acquired by Google!”

Owlchemy Labs, founded in 2010, has raised $5 million in seed funding from Capital Factory, Qualcomm Ventures, Colopl VR Fund, HTC and The Venture Reality Fund.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

http://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-innovative-technologies-and-developments/?&tag=Acquisitions