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Acronis Offers A Way To Back Up The VMware vCloud
Sep 03, 6:00AM
Acronis has launched a new way to back up the VMware vCloud, filling a needed space for any IT manager realistically considering the virtualization company's offerings.
Vimeo Offers $10,000 For Exclusive Rights To Indie Films From The Toronto International Film Festival
Sep 03, 4:45AM
Vimeo is seeking to add more exclusive content to its platform, offering some independent filmmakers a $10,000 advance to make their movies available online through Vimeo On Demand. The offer for direct distribution sales will be available to films premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival this week.The Mediated Life Is Not Worth Living
Sep 03, 4:26AM
I spent last week in Black Rock City, where on Saturday night I and 60,000 others stood within a ring of hundreds of vehicles transformed into spectacular art, and watched a gargantuan wooden effigy erupt, burn, and collapse, amid one of the most dazzling fireworks displays in ever. It was quite a moment. And I looked at the crowd around me and I thought to myself: what is wrong with these people?Spotify Makes Its Biggest Hardware Play Yet With Spotify Connect, Synching Music At Home And Beyond
Sep 03, 3:59AM
Spotify is today adding a new feature to its iOS app that represents the streaming company's most ambitious move yet to position itself as the go-to music app on connected devices -- and in the process entice more people to pay the $9.99 per month required to use the app. It's launching Spotify Connect, a new button in the app that will let users seamlessly shift Spotify music playing between their handsets and different WiFi-connected devices in the home, starting with audio devices from 10 manufacturers.Microsoft Enters Into $7.2B Deal To Buy Nokia's Devices And Services Business And License Its Patents
Sep 03, 3:29AM
In a surprise move, Microsoft announced Monday evening that it has inked a deal with Nokia to acquire "substantially all of Nokia's Devices & Services business, license Nokia's patents, and license and use Nokia's mapping services." The total price of the deal is EUR 5.44 billion in cash, which is currently worth $7.17 billion in U.S. dollars. The Devices and Services business acquisition accounts for EUR 3.79 billion of that, with the patent licensing deal making up the remaining EUR 1.65 billion.Inside Hack Reactor, The Coding Bootcamp That Wants To Be The CS Degree Of The Future
Sep 03, 2:01AM
At the same time that unemployment and low wages continue to plague the larger U.S. economy, Silicon Valley and the rest of the tech industry is having a hiring crisis -- many tech companies just can't seem to find enough people with the coding skills needed to fill the relatively well-paying jobs of building the software and web products of the future. And even though there is no shortage of higher education programs out there right now, there seems to be some sort of training gap when it comes to software programming.Online Marketplace GlobeIn's Network Of Artisans Has Grown To Nearly 30 Countries
Sep 03, 2:00AM
Startup GlobeIn is building an online marketplace for artisans from around the world. When it first launched in February, it said it was working with more than 100 sellers in nine countries. Now the site lists 238 artisans from 29 countries, including recent additions like Mexico, Guatemala, and Canada. That growth is particularly impressive given the type of artisans that GlobeIn is trying to serve — the kind who might not be online at all if not for the startup. To bring them online, GlobeIn has a network of "Artisan Helpers" — travelers who photograph the products, record stories, and help the artisans use the required technology.With Time Warner Cable Deal, CBS Seeks To Ensure Its Digital Future
Sep 03, 1:14AM
CBS and Time Warner Cable finally reached a deal today, ending a long, protracted blackout of the broadcast network on TWC's cable system. While getting the deal done will mean that Time Warner Cable viewers will be able to watch Week One of the NFL season next week — and no one wanted to miss that — the deal is also designed to help CBS monetize its content on a growing number of new platforms.Turning Apple TV Into Ouroboros
Sep 02, 11:00PM
Apple has been ‘pulling the string’ on the Apple TV for seven years now. Think about that one for a minute: it’s had a set-top box since before the iPhone. During that time, the landscape of online video entertainment has completely changed, largely as a result of the iPhone, iPad and iTunes Store. While Apple has a long way to go in order to make the Apple TV a decent solution for countries outside of the US, it has made some progress and continues to very slowly iterate on the original premise of an in-home media streaming device. A large part of that is iCloud, which now allows users to watch any purchases they’ve made from iTunes on any device, including ATV. But there’s still a lot of work to be done if the device is going to become a major pillar of Apple’s business, as I believe that it could be — and should be if cards are played right. The Apple TV, whether it comes in its current hockey-puck form or married to a flat-panel display, has the potential to create an ouroboros of ecosystem lock-in that could pin closed many doors for other laggards like Google and the much more competitive Amazon. If the iPad benefited from the iPhone and its app ecosystem and the Mac benefited from the iPad’s millions of newly exposed users, so could an Apple TV that offered hundreds or thousands of ‘apps’ that were familiar to users. Those users would happily buy into a system that offered them easy and convenient access to their in-network content as well as their ‘out of network’ content. This cyclical thinking has worked well as Apple expanded from phones to tablets, and should continue to work on the strength of those efforts. In order to do so, Apple will need to make some aggressive moves to mature the device. In fact, it needs to move away from being a device at all and finally make the jump to being a platform. I’m not sure anyone disagrees with that, as everywhere you turn people are talking about the potential of apps on Apple TV. Unless you’re blind, you can see the possibilities inherent in turning Apple’s following of hundreds of thousands of developers loose on a screen that’s hosted in your living room. Unlike some very smart folks, however, I’m not so sure that a full AppleApple, Microsoft And Google Could Learn Something From Mozilla's App Store Prototype
Sep 02, 10:00PM
App Stores are broken. It’s virtually impossible to find the interesting apps among the thousands of low-quality offerings. If an app isn’t in the top 10 of its respective category, chances are you won’t find it. Apple’s “Genius” feature was so dumb, it was dropped in iOS 7 and replaced with an even less interesting “Apps Near Me” feature that shows you the apps the people around you are using. Microsoft is trying to fix the top 10 myopia by launching a more curated app store experience in Windows 8.1, but even there, existing rankings still play a major role. Mozilla, which is only now getting into the mobile game thanks to its Firefox OS initiative, has had the advantage of seeing what its competitors have been doing for the last few years. While the current Firefox OS Marketplace isn’t all that revolutionary (though it’s focus on web apps gives it an interesting new spin on the app store concept), the organization laid out plans for an app store prototype last week that puts some interesting new twists on what its competitors are doing. In today’s app stores, Mozilla argues, “you only see the content picked by whoever maintains the app store. It's hard to feel that personal connection.” Even if you want to browse for new apps, you don’t know what to search for, unless your friends tell you about an app or you read about it somewhere. In its prototype, the Firefox OS Marketplace team is using a news feed-like experience to tailor the app store experience to the individual user. The idea here is to allow users to follow content they are interested in without implementing a complicated “follow” mechanism. In the prototype, users simply express their interest by clicking on a small heart-shaped icon “to see the updates and related content in the future.” In the long run, however, Mozilla envisions that users will curate the majority of the feed. It’s not clear what exactly this curation process will look like – and it’s something some third-party app stores have also tried – but it’s a concept few of the other vendor stores have tried so far and given the importance of social signals. Android’s store, of course, tells you when an app has also been downloaded by your friends, but that’s still a very different experience from essentially offering curated lists from your friends. TheIf You're Buying Textbooks This Week, Get Educated, Not Schooled
Sep 02, 9:00PM
When a semester's worth of textbooks can add up to a couple (or three or four) hundred dollars, hitting the checkout line at the campus bookstore is a distressing experience for many students, to say the least.Andreessen Horowitz's Scott Weiss On Why There Will Be 30 New Franchises In The Enterprise
Sep 02, 8:45PM
The future of enterprise software is anything but boring. Andreessen Horowitz partner Scott Weiss aptly predicted his guest post titled "30 New Franchises" a few weeks ago, there a massive opportunity to create new multi-billion-dollar enterprise franchises despite incumbents throwing massive amounts of money to acquire these franchises. These companies, such as Box and many others, are choosing to stay independent. Weiss himself should now--he sold his enterprise company IronPort Systems to one of the most well known incumbents in the space, Cisco, back in 2007. And we decided to create an enterprise panel at Disrupt SF around Weiss' predictions, with the CEO's of Box, Zendesk and Nebula (you can still buy tickets here).Sebastian Thrun And Gavin Newsom To School Us At Disrupt SF
Sep 02, 8:31PM
Former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun believes that in 50 years there will only be ten institutions in the world that offer higher education, and that Udacity — a startup that offers STEM-heavy free online courses — will be one of them. Thrun may be on to something: As the platforms for information distribution broaden due to the Internet, more heavily regulated legacy industries like finance, health and education will inevitably see their outdated structures dissolve and be replaced by something new. The jury is still out on what exactly that something new is for education, though startups like Udacity, Coursera, Edmodo and Khan Academy are paving the way, from elementary school onwards. But despite technological advances, many universities are reluctant to give up on their elite status as the keepers of knowledge. And many K-12 schools struggle with paradox of choice when it comes to which startup platforms to experiment with. How do you know what will help students learn and what will eventually be a time suck? “We might have a system with vastly different tiers, in which some people get the ‘full campus experience’ with nice buildings and live professors while (many) others study as best they can from home with packaged classes and giant peer review forums,” educator Nicholas Jenkins asserts, “But let’s hope we end up somewhere in the middle. Debt is going to be as big a driver of these changes as technology. Or rather, the impacts of debt and technology will converge to drive the transformation.” Jenkins is a Stanford Professor who emailed me earlier today, pitching the Stanford English department’s latest attempt at leveraging technology for learning: Kindred Britain. Thrun will be joining California Lieutenant Governor and UC Regent Gavin Newsom on stage at Disrupt SF to school us on how the education space will play out over the next two years, two decades and two centuries … Because it will take a long time — and a pile of money — to build the next great educational institution. Image via Wikipedia Sebastian Thrun Sebastian has set his sights on democratizing higher education. Co-founder and CEO of Udacity, Sebastian is also a Research Professor at Stanford University and a Google Fellow, as well as the inventor of the autonomous car and project lead on Google Glass. Thrun is a former Director of the Stanford AI Lab. He led the development of the robotic vehicle Stanley whichHex Airbot Shatters Crowdfunding Goal For Its Cheap, 3D Printed Drones
Sep 02, 8:30PM
Hex's tiny Airbot drone first turned heads earlier this year at China-based hardware accelerator Haxlr8r's second demo day, and now the team behind it is finally pushing to bring the inexpensive flier to market by way of a recent-launched Kickstarter campaign.Security Researcher Discovers Bug That Would Let Hackers Delete Any Photo Off Facebook
Sep 02, 7:13PM
In a nice example of how Facebook's bounty program should work (in contrast with that mess a few weeks ago), a security researcher has unearthed a bug that would let anyone delete just about any photo from Facebook — whether the photo was yours, mine, or Zuckerberg's — and was paid a solid chunk of cash for the discovery.Enfojer Wants You To Turn Your Instagram Snaps Into DIY B&W Prints
Sep 02, 5:55PM
Enfojer is a photo enlarger that wants to make it (relatively) easy to translate digital photos from your smartphone into analogue black and white prints -- so you can stick a few choice Instagram shots up on your wall. The photo enlarger uses the smartphone's own LED screen as the light source to expose the photographic paper, sharpened with its own lens.Plated, The Startup That Delivers Fresh Ingredients To Your Door, Launches In SF
Sep 02, 5:00PM
With the advent of online shopping and Amazon Prime 2-day shipping, humans are growing ever willing to pay for convenience and walk less. In the wake of this phenomenon, Plated has risen up out of TechStars accelerator in New York to deliver perfectly proportioned ingredients direct to your home for your very own cooking pleasure.Video Site Viki Had Talks With Google And Yahoo Before It Took A $200M Deal With Rakuten, Which Plans To Use The Translation Platform In E-Commerce
Sep 02, 4:55PM
Rakuten's $200 million acquisition of Viki -- the video streaming site where users worldwide contribute subtitles to premium content -- is a clear sign of how Rakuten wants to use digital content to build out its e-commerce marketplace. But the deal didn't happen in a vacuum. Before talks got serious between Japan's Rakuten and Singapore-based Viki, Viki CEO and co-founder Razmig Hovaghimian tells me the latter was in the process of raising a Series C round to keep growing its business and make more inroads to new markets. (Past investors in Viki, which had to date raised $24.3 million, included Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock and Charles River Ventures, along with a number of individuals). And it wasn't just VCs in the picture. A source also tells me that other suitors besides Rakuten included Google and Yahoo.Swayy Launches Into Public Beta To Curate Content For Your Social Media Audience
Sep 02, 4:00PM
While managing social media for different organizations and brands, I’ve spent hours scouring the web for relevant content to share on Twitter and Facebook. It takes a long time to find the right articles, schedule them accordingly and gauge social media reactions. Swayy, a content discovery tool, is launching its public beta to help brand managers and small businesses streamline the process down to a couple of minutes each day. By analyzing your posts, audience engagement and your followers’ interests, Swayy provides custom curated content that matches your brand’s image. After linking your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn account to the dashboard, Swayy provides a list of trending sources and topics that match your audience, so you’re tuned in to what your followers are interested in. But the platform’s main feature is its scrolling list of suggested content to share. Swayy crawls about 50,000 pieces of content every day from around the web, extracting key words and topics. Based on its processing engine, Swayy matches content to your trending topics and circles. From the social media dashboard, you can share or schedule articles on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Swayy measures the audience reactions based on retweets, responses and favorites, then adjusts its content offering accordingly. The platform also shows some basic analytics so users can track their progress over time. Co-founder Lior Degani tells me the idea is to find content to fit your audiences interests instead of your own. “You follow things you like to consume or things you will find interesting in the future,” he says. “We will analyze your community and provide you with the content just to feed your audience. So it will be easier to feed them, to keep your Twitter account and Facebook account and LinkedIn active with content.” The new public beta features some changes based on user feedback, including the ability to add your own topics and a new semantic language engine. Previously, Degani tells me, the content provided was more category-oriented, but has been altered to pick out more specific topics. At first glance, Swayy is a bit underwhelming, compared to similar tools such as HootSuite or Bottlenose. However, Degani tells me that Swayy is not looking to take on the social media management space, which also includes TweetDeck, Social Bro and more. Instead, Swayy is focused on becoming a content curation tool for businesses that lack a social media or branding team. TheXiaomi's App Market Has Nearly 2X The Average Downloads Of Competitors, Could Help Boost International Success
Sep 02, 3:58PM
Xiaomi, the break-out smartphone star of the Greater China market, is receiving lots of attention thanks to the somewhat salacious tale of ex-Android VP Hugo Barra and his recent move to the Chinese company. Xiaomi is looking to sell around 20 million smartphones by the end of 2013, and is doing so well that it's challenging Samsung, a formerly dominant force among OEMs, at home in China. The company sees tight margins on hardware – intentionally – but it might have another ace up its sleeve in terms of appealing to potential international carrier partners.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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