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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
July 19, 2014 1:08 PM
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Thanks to strong growth of its online payments business, eBay reported better-than-expected second quarter results yesterday. Net income increased to $676 million from $640 million in the same quarter a year ago. Overall revenue climbed 13% to $4.37 billion, as eBay's payments business once again outgrew the company's core business, the marketplace, by a wide margin.
The PayPal unit now accounts for 45% of eBay's net revenue and is on track to become the company's main revenue source in the near future. eBay's marketplace business was hurt by a severe security breach in the past quarter, as a cyberattack left the company no choice but to ask its 145 million users to change their passwords.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
July 15, 2014 9:18 AM
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This spring, even as some 200 million people were using Instagram on their smartphones, a small team of engineers moved the photo sharing service from Amazon’s cloud computing service—where it was built in 2010—into a data center operated by Facebook, which bought Instagram in 2012. “The users are still in the same car they were in at the beginning of the journey,” says Instagram founder Mike Krieger, “but we’ve swapped out every single part without them noticing.” Facebook calls it the “Instagration,” and it was an unprecedented undertaking for Mark Zuckerberg and company. Facebook has moved other acquired properties like FriendFeed into its data centers, but typically, they were small projects that involved shutting a service down before moving it into the Facebook universe. The Instagram switch was the live migration of an enormous—and enormously popular—operation. “The service couldn’t take any disruption,” says Facebook engineer George Cabrera. Facebook won’t say how many virtual machines were needed to run Instagram on Amazon, but it was in “the thousands.” And the service now stores over 20 billion digitals photos. For Instagram, the move was a way of more effectively plugging into a wide range of computing tools that have long helped drive Facebook’s vast online empire. And for the engineers overseeing Facebook’s worldwide network of data centers, it’s a template for merging their operation with applications the company may acquire in the years to come. “We were patient zero,” Krieger says. But the “Instagration” also provides a lesson or two for the broader tech community as it builds more and more apps atop cloud computing services like Amazon—apps they might one day migrate to private data centers. The key to the migration was a specialized Amazon service known as the Virtual Private Cloud.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
July 10, 2014 7:35 AM
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Auto-Tune has been embraced by the music industry for its ability to create polished, listenable recordings when an artist lacks the natural talent to hit every note. That's the nice way of saying it. Engineers also turn to Auto-Tune when dealing with truly wretched "singers." And they're using it everywhere. All the time. Pop star Britney Spears became the latest showcase of all that Auto-Tune makes possible this month after an unaltered studio session voice track leaked online. It's for a song called "Alien" from Spears' 2013 album Britney Jean. The finished song (with copious amounts of pitch correction) can be heard here. This version sounds nothing like that. Spears, who by now should be a recording studio veteran in every sense, is off the mark from start to finish. It's bad enough to be almost unlistenable at first, and doesn't get much better as the song progresses.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
July 9, 2014 6:30 AM
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“You should presume that someday, we will be able to make machines that can reason, think and do things better than we can,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in a conversation with Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla. To someone as smart as Brin, that comment is as normal as sipping on his super-green juice, but to someone who is not from this landmass we call Silicon Valley or part of the tech-set, that comment is about the futility of their future. And more often than not, the reality of Silicon Valley giants, who are really the gatekeepers of the future, is increasingly in conflict with the reality of the real world! What heightens that conflict — the opaque and often tone-deaf responses from companies big and small! Silicon Valley (both the idea and the landmass) means that we always try to live in the future. We imagine what the future looks like and then we try and build it. Sometimes that future delights us and we embrace it whole heartedly, like with iPhones and Android-based smartphones. And sometimes, that future seems so dystopian that society is scared and unnerved by the unknown.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
July 8, 2014 4:05 AM
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NASA will employ Google smartphones with advanced 3D sensing and vision technology to control Star Wars-inspired small, round hovering robots on the International Space Station. The phones, part of Google’s Project Tango, will be used for NASA’s Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES). The system may eventually assume chores from astronauts or potentially dangerous tasks outside the International Space Station (ISS). The 5-inch handsets will accompany a cargo spacecraft scheduled for launch on July 11, according to Reuters. Project Tango devices, first introduced by Google in February, use sensors to build visual maps of rooms using 3D scanning. Google believes the sensors, used in combination with advanced computer vision techniques, can revolutionize indoor navigation and gaming, among other opportunities. NASA’s soccer-ball-sized SPHERES robots, guided by the Google handsets, will be used around the space station’s microgravity interior, moving an inch per second via small spurts of carbon dioxide.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
July 2, 2014 6:36 AM
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Paris-based long-distance ride-sharing startup BlaBlaCar announced a $100 million Series C funding round led by Index Ventures today. As part of the round, Index’s Dominique Vidal and Martin Mignot will be joining the board. Here, Dominique and Martin explain why Index is so excited about what lies ahead for the company. The best consumer companies tend to be the simplest. They do one thing particularly well. So well, in fact, that its customers soon take them for granted, and forget that they ever lived without them, and that the premise the company is based on, was once viewed as unthinkable, even slightly ridiculous. BlaBlaCar falls squarely into that category.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 26, 2014 5:46 PM
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If it wasn’t clear that media usage is shifting from desktop to mobile, here’s a nifty chart provided for us by Statista, using data from the latest comScore report released Thursday. According to comScore, this is the first time mobile apps have accounted for more than 50% of all digital media consumption. As far as content goes, mobile users tend to use radio and photo applications the most, followed by mapping and instant messaging applications, and of course, games.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 24, 2014 3:51 AM
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The Russian government has decided to domestically produce a computer chip which for use in government offices and state-run firms. The move is meant to elbow processors from the likes of AMD and Intel out of government use due to concerns about US spying and processor back doors. Electronics Weekly says Russian President Putin decided to push forward this processor development initiative. It follows a move, four years ago, when the Russian government said that all its computers would be moving to Linux. The Russian processor is currently referred to as the 'Baikal' microprocessor, named after most voluminous freshwater lakein the world. The chip is being designed by T-Platforms, a Russian supercomputer maker, alongside state defence corporation Rostec with co-financing from Russian state-run technology firm Rosnano. The Russian News Agency ITAR-TASS reports that there are going to be two initial Baikal chips; the Baikal M and the Baikal M/S. These chips will be designed upon the foundation provided by the ARM Cortex-A57 64-bit processor and be employed in personal computers and microservers.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 24, 2014 3:21 AM
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The company's cameras are used primarily for home monitoring. Its two most popular cameras sell for $199 and $149. In addition to its hardware business, Dropcam also sells cloud storage for its videos. Last year the company said 39% of its customers pay for the video storage service. Dropcam will probably look to Nest's success in the "Internet of Things" space for guidance. It plans to move beyond video surveillance and hopes to incorporate movement sensors into its products, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 20, 2014 10:11 AM
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The US Supreme Court just issued a rare unanimous ruling that will make it harder for technology companies to patent ideas and processes—and harder for patent trolls to force companies to choose between paying up for violating broad patents or facing time-consuming, expensive litigation. The case, between two financial companies, concerned software for clearing financial...
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 18, 2014 9:36 AM
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Red Hat announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire eNovance, a leading provider of open source cloud computing services, including
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 11, 2014 12:29 PM
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Are all creative and innovating cities similar or all different? Areas of intensive innovation are frequently located in large cities, like San Francisco is the creative side of Silicon Valley. Such areas mostly appear spontaneously, stemming from the need for cheap rents and attractive living conditions. In Paris, Lisbon, Helsinki and Berlin, such areas are valuable in terms of creativity, quality of life and economic growth. How can such new spaces be created, promoted and mapped to make larger cities more attractive?
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 11, 2014 1:03 AM
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Startup Assembly est une initiative pour démocratiser la culture de l'innovation et de l'entrepreneuriat auprès du plus grand nombre. Son initiateur Marc-Arthur Gauthey, 28 ans, entrepreneur et membre du collectif Ouishare, estime qu'il y a tout à inventer. Et que ce serait dommage de s'en priver. Tout autour de moi, j'observe des gens pour qui le monde change trop vite, emportant dans son mouvement les valeurs, les normes et les principes qui ont, jusque là, été le ciment de notre société. Voilà pourquoi le repli sur soi et la préférence nationale séduisent tant de nos citoyens : ceux qui se sentent laissés pour compte ont avant tout peur d'une époque qu'ils ne comprennent pas. Hors du petit monde des acteurs du numérique et des nouvelles technologies majoritairement jeunes, diplômés, masculins, citadins et ouverts sur le monde, une nouvelle fracture se dessine : la fracture entrepreneuriale. Elle est à la fois sociale, territoriale, générationnelle et sectorielle.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
July 16, 2014 1:56 PM
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Under Apple and IBM's "landmark" teaming, the former rivals will collaborate on creating mobile applications for specific enterprise solutions. IBM will also sell iPhones and iPads to its business customers. The deal reflects Apple's desire to get its iOS software more deeply embedded in the enterprise segment as well as IBM's push into the mobile market. The deal will include the creation of more than 100 industry-specific enterprise solutions including native apps developed for the iPhone and iPad; IBM cloud services optimized for iOS, including device management, security, analytics and mobile integration; new AppleCare service and support for enterprise users; and new packaged offerings from IBM for device activation, supply and management. Apple CEO Tim Cook and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said the deal reflects their unique capabilities. "If you were building a puzzle, they would fit nicely together with no overlap," Cook said of the relationship in an interview with Re/code. "We do not compete on anything. And when you do that you end up with something better than either of you could produce yourself." Rometty said Apple is the "gold standard for consumers," and said the partnership will allow the companies to help address the challenges affecting large companies. "We will get to remake professions and unlock value that companies don't yet have," she said. "We're addressing serious issues that before this had been inhibiting deployment of wireless in the enterprise." Analysts said the deal now makes IBM and Apple more central players in the enterprise mobility market. "They're now strongly associated with the premium mobile platform and mobile devices," Forrester Research Frank Gillet told Bloomberg. "If you want to do anything interesting in the enterprise, you now have to check with IBM on what they're doing with Apple."
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
July 14, 2014 9:22 AM
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For the last three years, Newsle has leveraged its disambiguation, natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to build an extremely compelling product that finds blogs and articles that mention you or anyone you care about – colleagues, bosses, industry thought leaders, etc. – and notifies you seconds after they’ve published. We’re excited to work with Newsle’s team to combine this technology with our core assets and build experiences that continue to make you and millions of other professionals more productive and successful.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
July 10, 2014 5:58 AM
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The telecommunications masters at Bell Labs have managed to deliver a world record connection speed of 10Gbps (10,000Mbps) over copper wires. Dubbed XG.fast, the newtechnology could be used to massively extend the life of existing copper wireline networks, offering telecom companies an alternative to laying costly fiber-optic networks to billions of homes that already have a telephone line — but more importantly, it might mean you finally get a serious upgrade from your ~10Mbps ADSL or ~50Mbps VDSL connection. Bell Labs, now an R&D division of global telecoms giant Alcatel-Lucent, developed XG.fast as an extension of G.fast. G.fast is the successor to VDSL2 — the technology that is used by most FTTC (fiber-to-the-cabinet) installations around the world. Paired with FTTC, VDSL2 offers speeds of up to 150Mbps, G.fast is up to around 1.25Gbps — and XG.fast is from 2Gbps all the way up to 10Gbps.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
July 9, 2014 5:50 AM
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Microsoft's virtual assistant for Windows Phones had correctly predicted a series of World Cup games during the group stage. While it's true that Cortana had chosen favorites to win group stage matches, the rival to Apple's Siri has continued its streak of correct predictions, including Tuesday's game. Before the match, Cortana let users know Germany was likely to win. Note that Cortana never said the game would be a close one.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
July 6, 2014 11:17 AM
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.../... le commerce du contenu et des données n’est que la partie visible de l’iceberg, En dessous, il y a les matériels et les réseaux. On parle souvent d’Internet comme si c’était un espace totalement immatériel. C’est faux. L’entreprise Google est un géant industriel. Elle possède des millions de serveurs dans le monde entier, regroupés dans des data centers, qui sont des usines informatiques. Pour assurer son approvisionnement énergétique, Google rachète des centrales hydro-électriques. Même chose pour les réseaux : Google et Facebook possèdent leurs propres câbles transatlantiques et leurs nœuds de communication. Leurs activités commerciales dépendent avant tout de leurs infrastructures matérielles.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 27, 2014 6:34 AM
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Tout le monde sait – surtout les journalistes – que les articles de presse contiennent parfois des erreurs factuelles. Une start-up parisienne baptiséeTrooclick a décidé d’éradiquer ce problème, en inventant un système automatisé de « fact checking » (vérification de l’exactitude des faits, dates, chiffres, etc.) dans les textes journalistiques publiés sur Internet. Elle vient de lancer une expérimentation centrée sur les articles en anglais traitant de la vie financière des entreprises : introduction en Bourse, fusions-acquisitions, publication de résultats... A ce jour, le système fonctionne avec une centaine de sites d’information : les rubriques financières de grands journaux comme le New York Times, le Wall Street Journal ou le Guardian, des agences Reuters et Bloomberg, et des sites spécialisés comme nasdaq.com oustreetinsider.com.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 24, 2014 12:51 PM
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The French-American networking company Alcatel-Lucent has invested €3 million ($4.1 million) in EBlink, a French wireless fronthaul specialist. Alcatel-Lucent is one of several telecommunications equipment players that’s very keen on putting as much as possible of the network into the cloud. Increasing numbers of mobile devices need denser networks made up of smaller cells, so it makes sense to virtualize the heavy-processing part of the base station and centralize it, so you can dynamically shift capacity around the network as you need it. Which is where EBlink comes in. The company specializes in wireless “fronthaul” – the connection between the small cell and a nearby fiber-connected macro site – for which it uses the unlicensed 5.8GHz band. EBlink claims to have the “highest spectral efficiency in the industry,” allowing it to provide an alternative to fiber “without sacrificing network performance.” Orange is already a customer.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 24, 2014 3:37 AM
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On June 18th, Facebook introduced Wedge, making good on its promise from last year to push into the $23 billion Ethernet switch market, currently dominated by Cisco. Wedge is part of the Open Compute Project (OCP), one of the most important tech projects Facebook has ever created. OCP began in 2012 as a radically new way to build and buy computer hardware. It creates free and "open source" designs where anyone can contribute to the designs and use them for free, ordering them from a contract manufacturer.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 24, 2014 3:09 AM
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The new range of Solowheels start from a much lower price point than the original $1,995 version. First, we have the Spirit, which is essentially the original version modernized with a more stylish look, a more powerful 1,500W motor (instead of 1,000W) and better battery cells. It also packs new features like headlights, tail lights plus Bluetooth connectivity for tracking its speed, mileage and battery status in its upcoming mobile app and dedicated wearable device. Surprisingly, the Spirit only costs $1,199.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 20, 2014 2:49 AM
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As you can see, the price of a PC has fallen, significantly through the years. And yet, the price of a gaming console has risen. Why is this? Thompson speculates, "Incumbents are driven by their best customers to add more and more features that drive up the price, causing the incumbents’ product to move further and further away from the average customer’s needs." As the price goes up, it becomes less appealing. One of the great things about Nintendo in the 80s was that it was an affordable computing device. These things are no longer relatively affordable.
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 11, 2014 6:41 PM
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As anybody who has ever had a computer virus or hard drive crash knows, the best defense for online attacks is a good back-up. Or lots and lots of back-ups, stashed in several different locations. That's essentially the plan that Estonia is contemplating for its entire digital infrastructure. The tiny Baltic nation is one of the most wired countries in...
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Scooped by
Philippe J DEWOST
June 11, 2014 2:27 AM
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Last week at Reading University, 30 judges text-chatted with a bunch of humans and a bunch of computer programs pretending to be human, and the judges tried to figure out who was who. That is the setup behind the famous Turing test—in which a computer program tries to convince an interlocutor, through free conversation on any subject whatsoever, that it is human—posited by legendary computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950 as a measure of artificial intelligence. The results out of Reading claim that one particular program, “Eugene Goostman,” has passed the Turing test, successfully tricking 10 out of 30 judges in five-minute conversations into thinking it was human. On closer inspection, though, the first question to ask is whether computers are getting smarter or people are getting dumber.
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AirBnB re-logoing seems to have triggered some laughter. Shall eBay follow and rebrand into PayPal ?