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The Twitter #Music Website Fills Out Its Artist Profiles With Tweeted Tracks And Similar Artists
Jun 12, 11:46PM
It looks like Twitter #Music has gotten a couple of improvements on the web — specifically to its individual artist profiles. Previously, the artist page just pointed to the other artists that they were following. So the profile page for Fun., for example, pointed to the other musicians followed by Fun. on Twitter. (Clearly I'm writing this post to include as much #random punctuation. as possible.) Now it also includes a list of Fun.'s most tweeted tracks and links to artists who are similar.Google Says It's Seeing A Significant Jump In Phishing Attempts In Iran Ahead Of Elections
Jun 12, 11:31PM
Google says it's seeing a massive increase in email-based phishing campaigns that originate within Iran and target Iranian users. These attacks, Google says, started about three weeks ago and the company believes that they are politically motivated. Iran's next election is scheduled for Friday and this "significant jump" in phishing activity in the region started about three weeks ago.MySpace Punishes Its Few Remaining Friends By Vanishing Their Blogs
Jun 12, 11:04PM
Obviously MySpace has very few friends left to alienate -- Tom has long since moved on -- but that hasn't stopped it annoying the hell out of its few remaining fans by forcing through an update to its shiny new music discovery platform that's swallowed their old blog content, with no guarantee it's ever going to be retrievable.New Active Authentication Allows Azure Customers To Identify And Secure Office 365, Other Apps
Jun 12, 11:01PM
Microsoft is now offering multi-factor authentication for Windows Azure to allow enterprises to secure employee, partner and customer access to cloud applications. According to the Azure blog, the capability will allow customers to enable the authentication capability for Windows Azure Active Directory (AD) that will identify and help secure access to Office 365, Windows Azure, Windows Intune, Dynamics CRM Online and other apps that are integrated with Windows Azure AD. According to the Azure blog, developers can also use the Active Authentication SDK to build multi-factor authentication into their custom applications and directories. Here’s how it works. People sign in with their user names and passwords. They then open an app on their mobile device through an automated phone call or text message — the idea being that it will better identify the true user, prevent unauthorized access to data and applications in the cloud. That in turn will reduce the risk of a breach and enabling regulatory compliance. Active Authentication is built on the Phone Factor service which Microsoft acquired last fall. There are different options for set up. A customer can add it their Windows Azure AD tenant and turn it on for users. They can also add the service to custom applications by adding a few lines of code. The service also offers automated enrollment. Customers can choose to pay on a per user, per month basis or by the number of users enabled for multi-factor authentication each month. Adding AD to Windows Azure has opened Microsoft customers up to a much deeper way for IT to manage the use of its cloud infrastructure. It centralizes permissions. With Active Authentication, an IT manager can have a bit more peace that the people logging in are actually the people who should be accessing the network. Microsoft is by no means the first to offer multi-factor authentication for its IaaS. Amazon Web Services has multi-factor authentication. Google also offers two-factor authentication.Airbnb's Parisian Guests Want To Live Like Locals, With 70% Staying Outside Typical Hotel Districts
Jun 12, 10:00PM
Airbnb has released the results of a new economic study in one of its major international markets. After a similar study conducted in San Francisco last year, Airbnb this time is profiling the effect that its peer-to-peer marketplace on housing accommodations has had for hosts and nearby businesses in Paris.Google App Engine Gets New Release, No Signs Of Slowing Cloud Push
Jun 12, 9:31PM
Google just launched Google App Engine 1.8.1 with a host of new features, most notable among them a long-awaited search API and push-to-deploy feature similar to pushing code to a Git repository. The new features follow a busy Google I/O that witnessed the company showing its strongest push ever into the cloud services market. Until the announcements, Google had been quiet about Google Cloud Platform. But now with general availability, the team is pushing out new features weekly and connecting different parts of the organization in a way it had not done before.Congressman King Wants To Punish Journalists Who Published NSA Leaks
Jun 12, 9:07PM
First Amendment pioneer and current Republican U.S. Congressman Peter King thinks that journalists should be punished for publishing the leaked documents about the National Security Agency’s top-secret spying program. Unfazed by Anderson Coopers perfect jaw-line, Representative King said in a CNN interview: "Actually, if they–if they knew that this was classified information–I think action should be taken, especially on something of this magnitude. I know that the whole issue of leaks has been gone into over the last month. I think something on this magnitude, there is an obligation, both moral but also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something which would so severely compromise national security. As a practical matter, I–I guess it happened in the past several years, a number of reporters who have been prosecuted under us, so the answer is yes to your question." It should be noted that since the landmark 1971 case, The New York Times Co. vs. the United States, the Supreme Court has held that newspapers could not be punished for publishing leaks like the Pentagon Papers. In fairness to King, he has been remarkably consistent with his outrage. In 2010, he thought prosecutors should go after both WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange and The Times for publishing the leaked cables. The only person to likely be prosecuted is the whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was last seen in Hong Kong before disappearing.Hublished Gets Funding From NYU Prof. (AKA FirstMark Capital's Lawrence Lenihan) During Spring Class
Jun 12, 9:00PM
Hublished is still in private beta, so details are sparse on what the new content distribution platform (which reportedly helps content producers market their work through a webinar, e-book, podcast marketplace/network) is up to. However, we do know that the company has received over $150k in funding before its forthcoming beta launch next month. So where did this cash come from?Orbeus Launches Visual Recognition (But Not Creepy Facial Recognition) APIs For Google Glass
Jun 12, 8:33PM
Google took swift action to ban Google Glass applications with facial recognition capabilities recently, following the launch of an API which would have allowed developers to build apps that could identify the faces of people who a Glass wearer encountered. Today, however, another company called Orbeus is launching its own face and scene detection API platform ReKognition for Glass, which sidesteps the privacy issues at hand, as it's unable to detect someone's identity.Yahoo Acquires Advanced iOS Photography App Maker GhostBird Software
Jun 12, 8:26PM
Yahoo has just quietly announced that they've acquired GhostBird Software, the creators of advanced iOS photography apps, KitCam and PhotoForge2. Though details of the deal are still underwraps, Yahoo is explicitly saying that they acquired GhostBird for the sake of advancing Flickr.ZenPayroll Now Gives Employers A Way To Pay Contractors That ADP Can't
Jun 12, 7:58PM
ZenPayroll launched in December with $6.1 million from a group of new enterprise kingpins. Following the launch of a service for accountants in April, the Y Combinator startup today announced the capability to pay contractors through its platform. The new service automates the process of paying contractors and doing the required filings with the Internal Revenue Service. With the new capability, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) covers the entire workforce. With ZenPayroll, independent contractors can be paid through direct deposit and payments with reported at the end of the year on IRS Form 1099. Once a contractor is added, an employer can also record historical payments made outside of the software. Contractor payments are available immediately through ZenPayroll and pricing is the same for both employees and contractors — $25 per company, plus $4 per employee or contractor, per month. When a company grows past 10 employees or contractors, the rate drops to $2 for each additional person ZenPayroll will do the proper filing for the contractor workers. Zen Payroll will also make sure the contractor gets a copy for income tax reporting purposes. There are more than 43 million contractors in the United States. Can you believe that? That's one-third of the workforce. Most of the work to pay those people is done manually, said Co-Founder and CEO Joshua Reeves. And people make mistakes. Then the IRS fines them. No fun. The traditional services like Paychex and ADP are just not flexible enough to pay contractors in the manner that ZenPayroll does. But a service like ZenPayroll makes automation inevitable across the entire back-office. Once a part of a process gets automated, it’s often the other parts that follow. We see it across the market. The human touch is great but the humanity can be too often lacking in old systems that treat the individual in a coarse, industrial way. Automation may seem scary, like some robotic sci-fi nightmare. But automation can often make life seem a bit more bearable as we just try to keep up to date and out of the crosshairs of the IRS.Apple Showcases The Transformative Power Of iOS Apps In New Video
Jun 12, 7:29PM
Apple has just posted a lengthy, nearly 10 minute video (via 9to5Mac) about how apps built for its platform are used around the world to make changes that significantly impact people's lives. It's a very different approach from the typical Apple commercial, which is generally a short affair focusing on what apps are doing to add a little bit of levity or convenience to the average consumer's life.With iOS 7, Apple Shows It Will Tolerate QR Codes – But Not Further Their Cause
Jun 12, 7:08PM
Apple had a great big belly laugh at the expense of near field communications (NFC) at its WWDC keynote this year, but it also quietly adopted a tech that has received an equal amount of general scorn (if not more): the QR code. Apple actually built a QR code reader into iOS 7 – yes, right into the OS – but in a way that makes clear its presence is more of a mildly unpleasant but useful tool in promoting its own tech, rather than anything to be truly upheld and encouraged.Apple's Golden State: Just Doing What's Right
Jun 12, 6:29PM
Among his last advice he had for me, and for all of you, was to never ask what he would do. "Just do what's right." That's what Tim Cook told the audience of Apple employees at the memorial for Steve Jobs, following his passing in 2011. Now, nearly two years later, we're starting to see that plan being executed.Google Launches Cube Slam, An Open Source Pong Clone, To Show Off The Power Of WebRTC And WebGL
Jun 12, 6:20PM
Google today launched Cube Slam, an open source pong clone that you can play against the computer or a friend in the browser. That by itself wouldn't be all that exciting, but Google created this game to show off the power of WebRTC, Web Audio and WebGL.Red Hat Launches Linux-Based OpenStack Platform, Targets VMware For Control Of The Data Center
Jun 12, 6:13PM
Red Hat launched an enterprise Linux-based OpenStack platform today that provides a way to build out cloud services from either inside the data center or from a services provider. Red Hat Enterprise Linux will integrate a vanilla version of OpenStack to create the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. It will mean that Red Hat applications can run in an IaaS platform and provide support for web and mobile oriented applications that are more cloud aware. It will serve as the main platform for Red Hat's cloud strategy. The news is significant as it positions Red Hat as a clear leader for building out OpenStack clouds. The company is also using OpenStack to offer an alternative to the virtualized environments long dominated by VMware. Red Hat has made a significant push in OpenStack over the last year. It is now the number one contributor to the open cloud effort. It will buttress its OpenStack cloud with a network of certified partners. It has also made investments in Mirantis, which will provide a services component to Red Hat OpenStack build outs. The combination of Red Hat’s servers with OpenStack is intended to give developers more ability to differentiate the services they run while leaving Red Hat with the responsibility of maintaining Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server and the OpenStack code. With the news, Red Hat is also making a big push into the data center, VMware's place of power in the enterprise. The new offering integrates the open-source KVM virtualization platform with Red Hat Linux. It will also include Red Hat CloudForms, a hybrid platform that will give customers a way to gain visibility and control over their virtual infrastructures. According to the company, it will let users deploy, monitor, and manage cloud services across Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, VMware vSphere, and other virtualization solutions, hypervisors, and platforms. The enterprise has that sucking sound about it. You can almost hear the enterprise moving to the cloud. With that shift means a different power structure. Red Hat’s news today shows it has the technology and is positioned to be one of the winners in the battles ahead.Facebook Just Hijacked Every Ad Mentioning Twitter Hashtags
Jun 12, 6:11PM
“[Twitter bird logo] #brand” just became an endangered species. Hashtags are becoming universal as Facebook will start supporting them. That neutralizes an important growth vector for Twitter. Before, each print or tv ad mentioning a hashtag nagged people to join Twitter. Now they can join the real-time conversation through the social network they already use. Businesses and events want their social mentions to achieve maximum reach, so advertising a “Twitter hashtag” doesn’t make much sense when they could promote a universal hashtag. I expect we’ll either see the Twitter logo drop off before displayed hashtags, or the Facebook logo added. Whether hashtags get popular on Facebook remains to be seen. Subscribe, its Twitter-style asymmetrical following feature for celebrities and journalists, hasn’t quite become a hit. And hashtags will be posed with the challenge that much of what’s posted on Facebook is only shared with friends, not the public. Facebook hashtags have one thing going for them. For really popular events, I might not care what strangers are posting about on a Twitter hashtag. But when you click on or search a Facebook hashtag, it may find a way to prioritize surfacing what your friends are saying. Personally, I’d care more to see what my buddies and acquaintances said about the Game Of Thrones #redwedding than have those truly social mentions drowned out by millions by people I’ve never met. Facebook hashtags may flop and even with a little traction, Twitter will likely remain the king of real-time conversation. But today’s news could reduce the unique value-add of Twitter. It’s part of Facebook’s on-going “good enough” strategy to box out competitors. Someone else might do it better, but Facebook does it at scale on a network people don’t have to start on anew.How Google's Acquisition Of DNNresearch Allowed It To Build Its Impressive Google+ Photo Search In 6 Months
Jun 12, 5:57PM
During its I/O developer conference, Google quietly introduced a massively improved version of its photo search feature in Google+, which now uses advanced computer vision to let you search your personal photos. The company didn't make a big deal about this tool, but it works extremely well. Today, Google is opening up a bit more about how it got to acquire DNNresearch and how the new photo search uses Google's Knowledge Graph and recent advances in image recognition to provide these results.Apple's e-Book Market Share On The Rise, Desktop OS X iBooks Launch Should Help
Jun 12, 5:42PM
Apple has been quietly growing its share of the U.S. e-book market according to its testimony during the current e-book price fixing court case against it, and now accounts for 20 percent of e-book sales overall stateside (via MacRumors). That's about twice as much as has been speculated in the past by market-watchers, and it indicates that Apple, while nowhere near the dominant force that Amazon is, might be slowly winning a sizeable chunk of the digital book space.Thank You, Google Overlords
Jun 12, 5:39PM
Running a website not optimized for smartphones? Guess what, you've been put on notice. Google is using its influence and the power of its algorithm to finally force web publishers to fix their mobile website configuration issues, or risk getting downranked in Google Search. Directing smartphone users to 404's? You lose. Sending smartphone users looking for specific content to some generic mobile homepage? See ya. Using Flash for your video embeds on mobile? Farewell.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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