Mereja

Author: Serkadis

  • Klout Launches Klout For Business

    Klout announced the launch of Klout for Business on Thursday with the tagline, “Find the influencers in your audience.”

    Klout for Business is a set of tools including Klout Perks and audience insights to help businesses get influencers to share stuff about their brands.

    “Initially, Klout for Business will give businesses a complimentary set of analytics with pointed insights into how and where influencers are engaging with their brands in social media,” says Klout’s Matthew Thomson. “Businesses will be able to look at an easy-to-read dashboard that tells you, at-a-glance, whether you are engaging your influencers on the networks where they are most actively exerting their influence and on which Klout Score ranges you could stand to amp up your efforts. Most importantly, Klout can tell you which topics your audience influences others on, helping you maximize your content efforts to drive consideration for your brand.”

    “Klout reaches over 70% of today’s digital influencers and attracts new users every day,” he says. “Klout for Business will continue to develop into a portal where we intend to help brands and agencies streamline their understanding, management and engagement with this important segment of the digital population. Our goal is to help brands and influencers build relationships that transcend the current advertiser-consumer dynamic.”

    You can check out the product here.

  • Beyond the Like button: Putting social networks to work for us

    Your Facebook wall might be filled with photos of Lil Bub and Grumpy Cat, but underneath the hood, social networks actually do a lot of work. And there’s a growing class of social networks being used by companies and organizations that are tapping into machine learning to solve problems, explained Jeffrey Davitz, CEO of social data startup Solariat, and GigaOM’s Structure:Data event in New York on Wednesday.

    These types of networks, called active networks, crunch piles of user data and use artificial intelligence to augment human tasks and goals. In contrast to other AI systems where humans augment algorithms, active networks use machine learning to augment human decisions. “It’s the flip of Watson,” said Davtiz.

    Both Davitz, and fellow panelist David Gutelius, the Chief Social Scientist at Jive Software, previously worked on active networks developed for military applications through the CALO project (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes), which was one of the largest AI projects in history backed by DARPA. The teams built cyber assistants as part of military social networks that could use data on social interactions to give recommendations, like areas to avoid in a conflict zone, or more effective strategies.

    Active networks could be used for other applications, too, like fending off cyber security threats, and making working groups within a company work more effectively together. The “collective capability” of the digital assistant and humans is new, and the industry is just getting started, said Gutelius. Apple’s Siri was a spinoff of the CALO effort.

    The challenge of designing and building these types of networks is figuring out where the machine learning agent leaves off and the human social networks takes up, said Gutelius. The key to the design is making the technology recede into the background, and make it unobtrusive, said Gutelius, who says he spent six months trying to get a particular social network interface for military offers work.

    While using machine learning over large data sets to serve up ads inside social networks isn’t new, Gutelius and Davitz see an era where social network data can be used to help people and solve important problems.

    Check out the rest of our Structure:Data 2013 coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:


    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
    Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

  • How to control a lawn irrigation system with Android and Arduino

    Those crazy Googlers are at it again.

    Two of the company’s engineers created a way to control a lawn irrigation system using a number of technologies, including Android, Ardiuno, Python, Dart and Google App Engine. J.J Barrons and Joe Fernandez demo their custom solution in this brief video, showing the simple Android app that’s used to control the system, along with the hardware required to make it all work.

    The two took things a step further with a web-based, fun interface to sprinkle the lawn; that’s the part that uses Python, Dart and Google App Engine. Best of all: If you have the inclination to put a similar “Irrduino” system together yourself, the two engineers are sharing the source code at the aptly-named web address of http://bit.ly/waterjoeslawn.

    As impressed as I am by the project, I’d love to see the Googlers take it one step further. Perhaps my first addition would be a tie-in to the local weather that automatically disables the sprinkler system in the event of rain or other precipitation.

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
    Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

  • Mediacom Launches New Generation Broadband Service

    Thanks to the folks from Mediacom for sending me this update.

    Digital Families Gain Faster, 50-meg Internet Speeds; Broadband Boost for Carlton, Lake, Itasca, Pine and St. Louis Counties

    GRAND RAPIDS, MN – March 19, 2013 — Mediacom Communications announced today that it has more than doubled the speeds of its broadband Internet service to provide homes and businesses throughout its Northern Minnesota service areas with download speeds of 50 mega-bits-per-second (Mbps) and upload speeds of 5 Mbps. The higher-speed Internet service, Ultra 50, is 150-percent faster than the 20 Mbps service many customers have been using.

    Mediacom’s Ultra 50 broadband service became available in recent weeks after upgrades to the company’s fiber-optic communications network were completed in Cloquet, Eveleth, Hibbing and Two Harbors. Ultra 50 is the result of the cable industry’s innovative channel bonding technology known as DOCSIS 3.0 that uses a cable modem to deliver faster Internet speeds used for bandwidth-intensive applications such as movie downloads, file sharing, and online gaming.  The 50-meg service is ideal for homes and businesses where multiple devices or multiple Internet connections are used to send or receive data.

    “From the largest cities to the smallest towns, Americans are consuming more bandwidth and demanding a faster Internet,” Jensen said.  “With recent launches, Mediacom delivers the high speeds of Ultra 50 broadband service through an extensive area of Minnesota, from Worthington to Litchfield in the southern and central areas of the state, and now extending north to include communities in Itasca, St. Louis, Carlton, Pine and Lake Counties.”

    The DOCSIS technology of Mediacom Ultra 50 allows a consumer to download a high-definition (HD) movie (6 gigabytes) in just 16 minutes.  That compares to the 4.4 hours it would take to download the same movie using a common 3 Mbps DSL service from a traditional phone company, according to Mediacom Regional Vice President Bill Jensen.

    “This broadband boost demonstrates Mediacom’s commitment to continually invest in technology and expand our fiber network to ensure that consumers in all of our service areas can connect to reliably fast broadband service,” Jensen said.

    Jensen explained that new Internet applications have rapidly developed and changed how today’s consumers use the Internet.  “We watch news, sports and movies online; we frequently check updates for weather or sports scores, find recipes, play games, share digital photos with friends and family.  The list goes on and on.”

    Mediacom was among the earliest cable companies to offer the new-generation broadband service of DOCSIS 3.0, which it makes available to both residential and business customers.  Each Mediacom Ultra 50 customer is equipped with a new, more powerful modem configured for the higher Internet speeds.

    “The broadband speed of Mediacom Ultra 50 is in greater demand today than even just 12 months ago,” Jensen said. “It has become essential for families using multiple devices that connect to the Internet — tablets, laptops, smart phones or gaming consoles.  With the dramatic changes in the way today’s families and businesses use the Internet, the need for more bandwidth has never been greater.  The speed of Ultra 50 delivers a reliably better experience for the whole family or office.”

    Mediacom Communications is the nation’s eighth largest cable television company and one of the leading cable operators focused on serving the smaller cities in the United States, with a significant concentration in the Midwestern and Southeastern regions. Mediacom Communications offers a wide array of broadband products and services, including traditional and advanced video services such as digital television, video-on-demand, digital video recorders, high-definition television, as well as high-speed Internet access and phone service. Through Mediacom Business, the Company offers affordable broadband communications solutions that can be tailored to any size business.

    # # #

    IMPACT AREA:  higher-speed broadband service, Mediacom Ultra 50, is available to residents and businesses in the areas listed below.

    Carlton County:  Cloquet, Esko, Carlton, Moose Lake, Moose Lake Township, Thomson, Windemere

    Itasca County: Calumet, Cohasset, Coleraine, Grand Rapids, Harris Township, Keewatin, La Prairie, Marble, Nashwauk, Taconite

    Lake County:  Beaver Bay, Silver Bay, Two Harbors

    Pine County:  Sturgeon Lake

    St. Louis County:  Hibbing, Chisholm, Buhl, Kinney, Mt. Iron, Virginia, Fayal, Eveleth, Gilbert, McKinley, Biwabik, Aurora, Hoyt Lakes, White Township, Proctor, Midway Township, Hermantown

    It sounds as if there are tiers of service available beyond their standard Mediacom Prime which is 15 Mbps; they offer Prime Plus speed at 30 Mbps (down) x 2 Mbps (up). They mentioned to me that more and more people are starting to take advantage of the higher level services, which I think helps indicate that while build and they will come may not work for minimum speeds – folks will upgrade with less coaxing once great bandwidth is available.

  • Samsung Galaxy Note III, Galaxy Tab 3 reportedly set for September debut

    Galaxy Note 3 Release Date
    The next major addition to Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy Note lineup — the Galaxy Note III “phablet” — may be set to debut at the IFA 2013 conference, which kicks off on September 2nd this year. The report comes from SamMobile, which has a good track record when reporting details about unannounced Samsung devices. The blog also claims that Samsung’s next major Galaxy tablet iteration, the Galaxy Tab 3, will debut at IFA 2013 as well. No specs or details regarding launch timing were provided for either device.

  • Big data is still hard, but it gets better

    What’s standing between your staff and big data analysis? That was the existential question posed of DJ Patil and Jeff Hammerbacher at the GigaOM Structure:Data event today in New York. The two had different takes on how easy it was to give people the power to use data, with Hammerbacher, who is the co-founder of Cloudera, saying that it’s pretty simple today.

    He did say that today many aspects of the input and ingress of data will end up being automated, much like systems administrators responsible for running the data center have seen many of their tasks automated.

    Patil, who is now a data scientist in residence at Greylock Partners, was a bit more focused on end users. He shared his visit to a nonprofit called DoSomething.org earlier today, and said that people there had plenty of curiosity and a desire to play with data and ask questions, but they didn’t always know what to ask to get the insights they seemed to want. “We need another layer to help those people figure out what they want to ask,” he said.

    From Patil’s perspective we need tools that will help us tell stories with data and let people play with it in ways that can help people come to new conclusions or see new relationships. “This is less of a machine learning problem than a ‘Can I try a bunch of things with the data?’ kind of problem,” said Patil.

    And for those who are still intimidated by playing around with big data Patil has this to say, “Most people doing sophisticated analysis they don’t really know what they are doing.”

    Check out the rest of our Structure:Data 2013 coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:


    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
    Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

  • Pinterest Buys Livestar, Shuts Down App

    Pinterest just announced that it has agreed to acquire Livestar, an app that helps people find local recommendations from friends and others. The app will be shutting down, and he engineering talent will be part of the Pinterest team.

    “We think the Livestar team is a natural fit for Pinterest because of their commitment to inspiring people to do things in their everyday lives through social and expert recommendations,” a spokesperson for Pinterest says in an email.

    “The Livestar engineering team will be joining Pinterest in the coming weeks,” she says. “CEO and founder Fritz Lanman will not be joining the team, but he will continue to advise Pinterest. An active angel investor in startups including Pinterest, Fritz will continue to invest and advise startups and will be undertaking a new, yet to be announced project.”

    “Our goal at Livestar is to help people find great recommendations from friends, critics and strangers with similar taste,” says the Livestar team in its own announcement. “Over the last two years, the Livestar community has shared millions of ratings and reviews. Today we wanted to let you know that we’ll be making our next move: the Livestar engineering team will be joining Pinterest.”

    The Livestar app will be shutting down immediately.

    Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

  • ‘Do no harm’: Patient-centered end-of-life care means happier patients who live longer

    New doctors take an oath to do no harm, but many physicians, in their zeal to prolong people’s lives, often end up exposing patients to aggressive treatments that don’t improve outcomes and that drive up health care costs.
     
    Researchers from the UCLA Department of Urology have found that patient-centered end-of-life care — ensuring that a dying person’s wishes are known and followed — results in happier, less depressed patients who are in less pain and survive longer. By eliminating aggressive measures that patients might not want, this type of care also helps to keep costs down for those with advanced cancers and other diseases that can’t be effectively treated.
     
    “We can improve care while reducing costs by making sure that everything we do is centered on what the patient wants and what his or her specific goals are, and then tailoring a treatment plan to ensure we provide the specific care he or she wants,” said Dr. Jonathan Bergman, a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at UCLA and co-author of a new perspective paper published March 20 in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Surgery.
     
    Medical care during the final stages of life is often poorly coordinated and fails to take into account a patient’s preferences, the UCLA researchers say. It also consumes the lion’s share of health care dollars. A 2004 study found that 30 percent of Medicare resources are expended on the 5 percent of beneficiaries who die each year, and one-third of the costs in a patient’s last year of life are amassed during the final month.
     
    Yet research has shown that by instituting patient-centered care, costs in the last week of a patient’s life can be reduced by up to 36 percent, and death, when it comes, is less likely to occur in an intensive care unit.
     
    UCLA researchers are currently testing the patient-centered care model on cancer patients at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center. One of the first things doctors do with these critically ill patients is determine their goals in a multidisciplinary environment, integrating a palliative care specialist at the outset. The physician and specialist see the patient on the same day to coordinate their care.
     
    “Unfortunately, the opposite is usually what happens,” Bergman said. “Patients come in with incurable diseases and there’s no discussion of prognosis and goals of care. Then a lot of very aggressive treatments can occur, due to inertia — patients are placed in an intensive care unit with oxygen and feeding tubes, and that’s not always in line with their goals.”
     
    Patients who want aggressive care should, of course, receive it, Bergman said. But the UCLA research team is discovering that many don’t want such treatments and simply have not been queried about their needs and desires.
     
    To change this, the perspective paper suggests that medical residents first be educated about patient-centered care. Physicians will be better prepared to practice in the 21st century and to maximize patient outcomes if they are guided toward appropriate care for their patients in life’s final stages, Bergman said.
     
    Second, changes should be considered to Medicare, which pays for the majority of care at the end of life. To date, meaningful policy discussions on this issue have proven elusive, Bergman notes, with talk about “death panels” and the like causing policymakers to shy away from such decision-making.
     
    “Given the disproportionate cost of care at the very end of life, the issue should be revisited,” the perspective paper states. “Addressing goals of care, not to deny aggressive care to those who want it, but to ensure that we deliver aggressive care only to those who do, reduces costs and improves outcomes.”
     
    Lastly, the UCLA researchers suggest that hospital “scorecards” be changed to reflect this new care model. The Joint Commission, which accredits hospitals, issues an annual report that ranks hospitals on quality and safety using evidence-based measures linked to patient outcomes. However, none of the 44 accountability measures or the six non-accountability measures in the report address end-of-life care or the assessment of patient preferences.
     
    “Adding such measures to the report would improve practice, as well as inform patient-centered care by empowering individuals to make educated decisions,” Bergman said. “Better care in life’s final stages should and can be led by physicians, who have accepted the mission of skillfully — and thoughtfully — caring for patients at every step of life’s journey.”
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Google: We Still Need Text To Index Your Content

    Google’s latest Webmaster Help video discusses Google’s need for text in indexing content. Matt Cutts responds to a question about how important text is in getting Google to understand their site. The user has a site that is mostly made up of images, and says that users like it better, bounce rate has declined, and conversions are up.

    “Google does still want text,” he says. “So there’s a couple options. One is: if you have an image that you’ve made of some text that’s really beautiful, you can include some textual content there. You can sort of say, ‘alt,’ you know, or the title – that sort of thing. So you can say, for an image, here’s some text to go along with that, and that can help.”

    He goes on to say that one reason a site might be having more user interaction, time on site, conversions, etc., is because it’s prettier. “And we see that,” he says. “Better design can help people enjoy and use your site more.”

    He also suggests considering Google Web Fonts.

  • Google Takes The Trekker To The Arctic For Street View Imagery

    Google announced today that it is debuting the Trekker for the first time in Canada, as it lends the devices out to some locals.

    Earlier this year, Google launched the first Trekker-based imagery for the Grand Canyon. Trekker is a backpack-based camera device, which takes panoramic imagery for Street View. You can see it in the photos below.

    “Two Trekkers will be worn by local mapping experts from Nunavut and members of the Google Maps team, and they’ll be used to collect panoramic Street View imagery of Canada’s most northern capital,” a Google spokesperson tells WebProNews. “This is Google’s first visit to an arctic climate in the winter… so don’t be surprised when the Street View team takes a detour to a nearby igloo!”

    “As usual, the imagery will take some time to prepare for publication on Google Maps,” she notes.

    Chris Kalluk, one of those local mapping experts, wrote about the experience in a post on the Google Maps blog. “I’m wearing the backpack to collect Street View imagery as I walk to the shore of Frobisher Bay, where the wind is the strongest and you can see the tide piling up mountains of sea ice,” he writes. “On the way I’ll pass sled dogs tied up outside houses, yapping in anticipation of their next trip. And I may stop to check out an igloo, built by Inuit craftsmen using methods passed down over a millennia.”

    “As part of its commitment to build a comprehensive and accurate map of Canada’s north, Google visited my home, Cambridge Bay, last August and published imagery of the trip that fall,” he adds. “But this visit to Iqaluit marks the first time the Google Maps team has ventured into an Arctic climate during the winter months, where average temperatures can dip below -30°C [-25°F].”

    Here are pictures of Kalluk (top) and Google Maps product lead Raleigh Seamster (bottom) in the streets of Iqalit with Trekker:

    Google Trekker in Arctic

    Arctic Trekker

    “At the end of the day, when it’s time to warm up, our community will gather around two dozen computers at the local library to conduct a MapUp workshop,” says Kalluk. “I’ll work with Iqaluit’s elders, local business owners, political leaders and high school students to show them how we can use Google Map Maker to add the streets, shops and points of interest – those places that make Iqaluit home – to Google Maps.”

    The Street View imagery from this endeavor will become available on Google Maps in a few months.

    Earlier this week, Google launched some new mountain top Street View imagery.

  • YouTube Data Integrated Into Google Trends

    Google announced today that it has now integrated YouTube search trends into Google Trends.

    “Google Trends enables you to take popular search queries and explore traffic patterns over time and geography,” says YouTube’s Kevin Allocca in a blog post. “Now we’ve added YouTube search data going back to 2008, making it another great tool to look at video trends. Visit Google Trends and enter any search you’d like and then, on the left, choose ‘limit to’ for YouTube. You can slice by region or category as well.”

    “Search query interest can often provide a more detailed picture into the life of a trend or topic. For example: for those of you wondering whether the ‘Harlem Shake’ is over… it’s not,” he adds. “You can also see interesting seasonal patterns. For example, cooking searches for ‘turkey’ in the US see dramatic spikes every November as people scramble to remember exactly how to prep that big meal before the relatives arrive.”

    Google also made a brief announcement about the integration in a Google+ post.

    YouTube has offered a look at its trends for years, but it makes sense to have the data integrated right with Google’s own trends. Google has often referred to YouTube as the second largest search engine, after all.

  • Man who received nation’s first ‘breathing lung’ transplant at UCLA thankful for gift of life

     
    Fernando Padilla could barely breathe or walk more than a few steps. An incurable disease, pulmonary fibrosis, was causing his lungs to turn to hardened scar tissue, and he was permanently tethered to an oxygen tank. His only hope was a double lung transplant.
     
    In November 2012, he got an early-morning call that a pair of donor lungs was available.
     
    Upon arriving at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, he was told of a new study testing an experimental device — a portable organ-preservation system that keeps donor lungs functioning and “breathing” in a near-physiologic state outside the body during transport to a recipient, instead of the standard method, in which the organs are kept in an icebox in a non-functioning, non-breathing state. 
     
    Padilla consented to participate in the study and was randomized to become the first patient at UCLA — and in the United States — to undergo the ‘breathing lung’ transplant using the TransMedics Organ Care System (OCS).
     
    “If they’ve got new technology to deliver the lungs still breathing, I think that would be better than trying to wake them back up again after being on ice,” said the former construction worker, who had helped build the very same hospital where he was now a patient. “I’m just following technology.”
     
    With the OCS, the lungs are removed from a donor’s body and are placed in a mobile high-tech box, where they are immediately revived to a warm, breathing state and perfused with oxygen and a special solution supplemented with packed red-blood cells. The device also features monitors that display how the lungs are functioning during transport. 
     
    “Lungs are very sensitive and can easily be damaged during the donation process,” said Dr. Abbas Ardehali, a professor of cardiothoracic surgery and director of the heart and lung transplantation program at UCLA. “The cold-storage method does not allow for reconditioning of the lungs, but this promising technology enables us to potentially improve the function of the donor lungs before they are placed in the recipient.”  
     
    In addition, the technology could help transplant teams better assess donor lungs, since the organs can be tested in the device, over a longer period of time. It could also help address the shortage of available organs by allowing donor lungs to be safely transported across longer distances, expanding the donor pool for the more than more than 1,650 Americans who are currently on the waiting list for a lung transplant.
     
    Padilla’s donor lungs were transported, using the OCS, from a neighboring state to UCLA. His seven-hour transplant surgery was a success, and he now relishes every deep breath. The oxygen tanks are long gone. He walks several miles a day with his wife, plays with his grandkids and enjoys life with his family. They are immensely grateful to the organ donor who supplied him with the precious “gift of life.”
     
    “For patients with end-stage lung disease, lung transplantation can dramatically improve the patient’s symptoms and offer relief from severe shortness of breath,” added Dr. David Ross, a professor of medicine and medical director of UCLA’s lung and heart-lung transplantation program and UCLA’s pulmonary arterial hypertension and thromboendarterectomy program. “The ‘breathing lung’ technology could potentially make the transplantation process even better and improve the outcomes for patients suffering from lung disease.”   
     
    UCLA is currently leading the U.S. arm of the international, multicenter pivotal clinical INSPIRE study of the OCS, developed by medical device company TransMedics; Ardehali is the principal investigator for UCLA. The purpose of the trial is to compare donor lungs transported using the OCS technology with the standard icebox method. The INSPIRE trial is also underway at lung transplant centers in Europe, Australia and Canada and will enroll a total of 264 randomized patients. 
     
    The “breathing lung” device follows on the heels of TransMedics’ “heart in a box” technology, which delivers donor hearts in a similar manner. A national, multicenter study of the heart technology, also led by UCLA, is ongoing. 
     
    UCLA’s lung and heart-lung transplant program is the largest lung transplantation program on the West Coast and leads the nation in patient outcomes. The program pioneers novel technologies in lung preservation, recipient immune monitoring and immunosuppression and is responsible for significant advances in transplantation for extremely ill and high-risk transplant candidates.
     
    For more information about UCLA’s lung transplantation program and the INSPIRE trial, visit www.transplant.ucla.edu/lung. 
     
    Headquartered outside Boston, Mass., TransMedics Inc. is a privately held medical device company founded in 1998 to address the vital, unmet need for better, more effective organ transplant technologies. For more information, visit www.transmedics.com.
     
    To sign up to be an organ donor, please visit www.donatelife.net.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • New leak suggests next-gen Xbox won’t play used games

    Xbox 720 Used Game Block
    Following a number of reports claiming Microsoft’s (MSFT) next-generation video game console, codenamed “Durango,” will block users’ ability to play preowned games, a new report appears to back up those claims. In a series of purported screenshots from Microsoft’s Durango SDK published by Vgleaks.com, several earlier rumors regarding Microsoft’s next console appear to have been confirmed. Among them is the claim that game play from a disk will not be supported, and users will instead have to install games to the device’s hard drive in order to play.

    Continue reading…

  • Digg This: Digg Gets De-Indexed From Google

    Apparently Google doesn’t think Digg is worth much more than a few kilos of panda poop tea these days. Digg.com is currently MIA in Google’s index.

    While we’ve yet to hear comment on the matter from either Google or Digg, it looks like Digg has been penalized for something or other. Either that or Google made a huge mistake.

    Matt Sawyer first noticed the lack of Digg results, which State of Search picked up. You can see for yourself by searching: site:digg.com on Google and getting no results.

    If you just search for “digg,” digg.com is nowhere to be found. Instead, you’ll be treated to the Digg WIkipedia entry, the Digg Twitter account, and various other pieces of content about Digg.

    Some are already wondering if Digg was busted for paid links or other some other kind of link scheme kind of thing. I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough, and we’ll update as we learn more about what’s really going on.

    Digg, as you may know, recently said that it’s working on an alternative to Google Reader.

  • ‘Send to Kindle’, and read it later

    Last night something strange caught my attention, nearly enough to post a late-day story. Then this morning I got a little email nudge from Amazon PR, and thought: “Yeah. Why not?” The timing and broader ecosystem implications are interesting for service “Send to Kindle”. Just as Google whacks RSS — pulling feed icons from its products and setting Reader’s execution — Amazon provides a mechanism for saving content you come across, say, browsing at work for reading at home on your ebook reader or tablet.

    The concept is by no means new, not even for Amazon. There are several good cloud services dedicated to saving content for later reading or incorporating the capability. Instapaper comes to mind, and Feedly has an easy tap mechanism to save for later. What makes Send to Kindle different is device/app-specificity. Additionally, websites, including WordPress blogs, can place a button supporting the service.

    The button is the new thing, and, according to Amazon’s marketing spiel, “lets you easily send that content to your Kindle to read later, at your convenience. Just send once and read everywhere on any of your Kindle devices or free Kindle reading apps for iPhone, iPad and Android phones or tablets. No more hunting around for that website or blog that caught your eye — just open your Kindle and all the content you sent is right there”.

    What Amazon needs is developer support, and there is more process than just placing a button here. How little or much depends somewhat on site markup. From the developer info page: “If you use Facebook’s Open Graph, schema.org, or hNews, let us know and we will know where to look. If you don’t use any of these, select Custom CSS Selectors and tell us specifically how you mark the title, author and publication date”.

    The question to ask: Why bother? Amazon leads the ebook reader market, but IDC says the market is in steep decline as consumers choose tablets instead. There, Amazon trails Samsung some and iPad by considerable market share — 11.5 percent, 15.1 percent and 43.6 percent, respectively in fourth quarter, according to IDC. Why should any website bother with a Send to Kindle button? Early adopters answer the question — the aforementioned WordPress, Time and Washington Post, for starters. Amazon has fairly tight relationships with newspaper and magazine publishers, offering superb selection of periodicals.

    Even if there is only modest adoption of the button, Amazon provides plenty of other options at the “Send to Kindle” site: Browser plug-ins for Chrome and Firefox, OS X and Windows apps, email option and Android app.

    From a customer perspective, Send to Kindle fits into the larger Amazon digital lifestyle, for which tablets play a larger role. Only Amazon has done any meaningful Android customization on tablets, creating a curated experience similar to Apple’s. Like iOS, Amazon Android is tightly vertically and horizontally integrated with siloed services. For example, Kindle Fire is designed to mainly work within the Amazon content/retail sphere and little outside it. Amazon runs its own stores — everything from apps to movies — while shunning Google Play. Meanwhile, Kindle Fire supports the custom Silk browser rather than the stock Android one or Chrome.

    On devices/apps designed for reading, Send to Kindle fits. The point is digital lifestyle, which Amazon supports on multiple devices — PCs, smartphones and tablets — not just Kindles. Would you or do you use Send to Kindle?

  • Too Short Booked On DUI, Felony Narcotics Possession [Report]

    Famed rapper Todd Anthony Shaw, otherwise known as Too Short (or Too $hort if you prefer), has been arrested on suspicion of DUI and drug possession, according to reports.

    According to TMZ, law officials claim Shaw attempted to run from the police:

    Law enforcement sources tell TMZ, Short — real name Todd Anthony Shaw — was pulled over in L.A. a couple hours ago for some traffic violation … and when cops approached the vehicle, he appeared under the influence.

    Now here’s where it gets weird — when police attempted to administer a breathalyzer test, law enforcement sources tell us Too Short took off … and tripped as he ran down the street.

    Needless to say, he didn’t get away, and they booked him on DUI and felony narcotics possession, after he allegedly tried to get rid of the druges in the back of the police car.

    Too Short’s isn’t the only DUI in the news, as Teen Mom star Farrah Abraham was also arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence.

  • Concurrent gets $4M for higher-level Hadoop

    Concurrent, proprietor of the open-source Cascading framework for developing big data workflows, has closed $4 million Series A investment round from True Ventures  (see disclosure) and Rembrandt Partners. Cascading has been around for a few years, actually, but Concurrent only raised seed funding in 2011 and has been riding the wave of interest in making big data easier to do.

    In practice, Cascading is generally used as a higher-level method than MapReduce for writing Hadoop jobs, although it’s technically a framework that could support any number of distributed-processing frameworks. It’s used by a number of notable users, including Etsy, Airbnb and Climate Corporation. In February, the Cascading project expanded its scope to address the growing SQL-on-Hadoop trend with a project called Lingual.

    Software veteran Gary Nakamura is taking on the role of Concurrent CEO, replacing Cascading creator Chris Wenzel, who’ll stay on as the company’s CTO.

    api-diagram (1)

    Disclosure: Concurrent is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, the founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
    Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

  • HBO Show ‘Enlightened’ Ending After Just Two Seasons

    HBO has decided to pull the plug on its show Enlightened after just two seasons.

    Hollywood Reporter shares a statement from HBO:

    “It was a very difficult decision. We’ve decided not to continue Enlightened for a third season. We’re proud of the show, and we look forward to working with Mike White and Laura Dern in the future.”

    White and Dern would be the show’s co-creators. Dern also starred in the show.

    Enlightened’s description is as follows: “A self-destructive woman who has a spiritual awakening becomes determined to live an enlightened life, creating havoc at home and work.”

    It’s rated 7.0 on IMDB.

    If you’re in the market for an Enlightened coffee mug, you might want to keep an eye on this page in case the show’s merchandise goes on sale.

    The second season will be coming soon to DVD, HBO says.

  • Yahoo Brings Back Former Staff With Jybe Acquisition

    Yahoo announced today that it has acquired Jybe, which includes five former Yahoo employees.

    Yahoo Cloud Platform Group SVP Jay Rossiter discusses the acquisition in a blog post.

    “As part of this acquisition, we’re welcoming an extremely talented group of engineers and data scientists who will join Yahoo!’s platform organization, focused on targeting and personalization,” he writes. “This will be a ‘coming home’ for the team — all five are former Yahoos. Arnab Bhattacharjee was the VP of Yahoo! Search Technology (YST), one of the most well respected engineering and platforms groups in the company. He returns together with former key members of the YST and Hadoop teams — Tim Converse, Christian Kunz, Sameer Paranjpye, and Karthik Krishnamurthy.”

    “While the Jybe app has closed, we’re confident that their data- and science-driven experience will supercharge our efforts to build great products and experiences for the millions of people who come to Yahoo! every day,” he adds. “On a personal level, I’m thrilled to welcome back Arnab, Tim, Christian, Sameer and Karthik. I, too, am a recent ‘boomerang,’ returning to Yahoo! to participate in the incredible spirit of innovation and entrepreneurialism that’s taken over the company. As a technologist, there are rare moments in your career when you get to be a fundamental part of the transformation of one of the most iconic companies on the Internet. Now is that moment for the Jybe team, me, and all of the talented engineers, developers and technologists at Yahoo!– in Sunnyvale and around the world.”

    The Jybe team also put out an announcement. The team says:

    The Jybe team first set off two years ago to bring mobile users smart, personalized recomendations on food and entertainment. This has been a fun and furious journey for our tiny startup, as we applied our various technology backgrounds to recommendation and mobile app design. It’s now time to move ahead to join a larger company, and Yahoo! is the perfect match.

    For the five of us who will be joining Yahoo! this is a coming home – we are all former Yahoos. Three of us left Yahoo! to pursue our passion at Jybe, and two of us took a longer path via other startups and search-engine companies. We can’t wait to apply what we’ve learned about recommendation, personalization and the mobile experience to the hundreds of millions of people who come to Yahoo! every day. We look forward to (re)joining the world-class talent already working at Yahoo! and are excited to hit the ground running.

    To our awesome users, thank you so much for trying out the Jybe platform. We hope it made your life a little more entertaining. We will be closing down the Jybe service, but we are putting together a tool so you can download and keep all your data. We’re eager to start applying everything we’ve learned and built to the Yahoo! platform, so stay tuned. Exciting developments are ahead!

    CrunchBase describes Jybe as a startup focused on connecting people to the physical world around them.

    Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

  • The biggest advantage Samsung has over Apple and other smartphone vendors

    Samsung Component Business
    Apple (AAPL), the world’s most profitable smartphone maker, has a number of advantages over most of the competition. Momentum, complete control over its end-to-end user experience, design prowess and a number of major new revenue channels it may be preparing to tap can be listed among them. But there is one area where top rival Samsung (005930) has a huge edge over Apple and other smartphone companies, and a recent report illustrates just how important it really is.

    Continue reading…