Category: News

The value of Bitcoin fell more than 10 percent overnight on Tuesday, apparently in response to Homeland Security’s decision to seize funds at a key exchange, Mt. Gox, where speculators trade the cyber-currency. The price has since returned to early-week levels, however, while new details came out about the nature of fed’s investigation. Here’s a look at the median price:

In any case you missed it yesterday, the federal government took its most serious action to date against Bitcoin-related activity when it shut down money transfers between Mt. Gox and payment processing service, Dwolla. Dwolla is one of the few easy ways Americans can buy and sell Bitcoins at Mt. Gox.

On Wednesday, Ars Technica unearthed the search warrant that Homeland Security used to seize a bank account that Mt. Gox used to obtain dollars from Dwolla. The account was registered to Mugillum Sigillum LLC, a Delaware subsidiary of Japan-based Mt. Gox.

In an affidavit, a federal agent states that Mt. Gox owner, Mark Karpeles, lied when opening the bank account in 2011. Specifically, Karpeles said “no” to questions asking if he would be engaged in a currency business and money transmissions.

This misrepresentation means Karpeles has apparently violated a law prohibiting unlicensed money transmission businesses. Breaking the law can result in a 5-year prison term and permits the feds, under another statute, to seize property and keep it.

So what does all this mean for Bitcoin aficionados? In short, the investigation is more bad news for Mt. Gox and Karpeles than for the currency itself. The loss of Dwolla as a payment mechanism at Mt. Gox will crimp a popular source of liquidity for speculators but more options are appear poised to come along. These include Coinbase, which recently received $5 million from Fred Wilson’s Union Square Ventures, and OpenCoin which just got backing from Google Ventures.

To hear what all the Bitcoin fuss is about, come join us on Thursday in San Jose for a GigaOM meet-up from 6 to 9 where we’ll be talking with CEO who use it as well as engineers from Facebook and Google about the currency’s perils and possibilities. The event is free (and filling up fast!) thanks to our friends at Ribbit Capital. It includes cocktails too.

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Apple announced Wednesday that the App Store has hit 50 billion app downloads, a singificant milestone for the company only a few months after it announced 40 billion downloads back in January.

Apple’s App Store downloads and downloads from the Google Play store became roughly even last fall, as Erica Ogg wrote recently, and then in the first quarter of 2013, Google pulled ahead in sheer number of mobile app downloads worldwide. However, Apple got 74 cents for every dollar spent on apps during the that quarter, according to a report by Canalys published in April, and the 50 billion downloads now puts Apple back with a slight lead.

The company announced the number of downloads on the first day of Google’s I/O conference, as Google announced that its Google Play store has seen 48 billion app downloads since launch in late 2008. However, it’s good to remember that app downloads only tell part of the story — someone could download an app and never use it again.

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Very early reviews of Google Hangouts seem to be mixed. Many people love the new service, but many are also unhappy with the fact that SMS messaging is not integrated. These users have quickly dominated the app’s reviews in the Play Store, pleading for the feature to be added to what is supposed to be a unified messaging system.

However, a quick look at the permissions Google Hangouts requires reveals that SMS support could be coming soon. Among the permissions the app has access to – receiving text messages (SMS), reading text messages (SMS or MMS), and sending SMS messages – none of which the app currently seems to actually be using.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this means SMS support will be added sooner than later (maybe with Android 4.3?), making it even more of a truly unified messaging system. After the break you can read the message permissions Google Hangouts requires.

GOOGLE HANGOUTS HAS ACCESS TO THE FOLLOWING:

RECEIVE TEXT MESSAGES (SMS)
– Allows the app to receive and process SMS messages. This means the app could monitor or delete messages sent to your device without showing them to you.
READ INSTANT MESSAGES
– Allows apps to read data from the Google Talk content provider.
READ YOUR TEXT MESSAGES (SMS OR MMS)
– Allows the app to read SMS messages stored on your device or SIM card. This allows the app to read all SMS messages, regardless of content or confidentiality.
SEND SMS MESSAGES
– Allows the app to send SMS messages. This may result in unexpected charges. Malicious apps may cost you money by sending messages without your confirmation.

Come comment on this article: Google Hangouts requires permissions to receive, read, and send SMS messages, could support be added soon?

Fred White, who was a sports broadcaster for the Royals, has died from complications of melanoma just a day after announcing his retirement. He was 76 years old.

White had a 40-year career with the Royals, some of which was spent in charge of the Royals Radio Network and as director of Broadcast Services. When he wasn’t broadcasting for the team, he was calling basketball games.

“Fred White has been synonymous with Royals baseball as long as anybody can remember,” Royals vice president of communications and broadcasting Mike Swanson said when the team announced White’s retirement. “There are so many people in Kansas City who, when they hear a voice, they knew it was Royals baseball, and Fred was that voice along with Denny for so many years. He had a huge influence on my life back in the ’70s, and I’m personally honored that I had a chance to work with him when I came back to town and wish him and his family nothing but the best.”

White reportedly died while under hospice care. Funeral arrangements are pending.

LinkedIn has recently updated their terms of use policies to make it clear that they don’t want prostitutes advertising their “skills” on the social networking site.

LinkedIn, which boasts over 225 million users, has become a huge source for employers and those looking to boost their careers in the past few years. Networking used to consist of mixers and business cards; now, the site makes it easier than ever to find the right job or hire. Naturally, prostitutes want in on it.

The company has made it explicitly clear that they don’t want their site to be used for illegal activity and revised their policy to read: “Users must not create profiles or provide content that promotes escort services or prostitution”. That includes anyone living in a state where prostitution is legal (we’re looking at you, Nevada). The full revision reads that no one may:

Upload, post, email, InMail, transmit or otherwise make available or initiate any content that, even if it is legal where you are located, create profiles or provide content that promotes escort services or prostitution.

The company made the changes after realizing that people were being endorsed for prostitution on the site and getting away with it because of the way their terms of use was worded.

“In the old [user agreement], we had it covered by saying that one could not use a profile to promote anything ‘unlawful,’” a LinkedIn rep told Mashable. “However, in some countries, that activity actually is lawful.”

There were several users promoting their services on the site as of this week; take a look here to see a few.

Continue reading…

Deutsche Bank on Wednesday said it named Jerry Miller head of asset & wealth management Americas, effective immediately. He will be based in New York and will report to Michele Faissola, Deutsche Bank’s head of asset & wealth management. Most recently, Miller was a Lightyear Capital senior advisor responsible for the acquisition of financial services companies.

PRESS RELEASE

Deutsche Bank announced today that Jerry W. Miller has been appointed Head of Asset &
Wealth Management Americas, effective immediately.
Miller is based in New York and reports to Michele Faissola, Head of Asset & Wealth
Management. He joins the Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management Executive Committee
and will chair the division’s America’s Executive Committee. Miller will also join the Deutsche
Bank North America Executive Committee, led by Jacques Brand, Chief Executive Officer of
Deutsche Bank North America.
Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management now manages a portfolio of nearly $400 billion of
invested assets for clients in North and Latin America and offers individuals and institutions
traditional and alternative investments across all major asset classes. It also provides tailored
wealth management solutions and private banking services to high-net-worth individuals and
family offices.
Miller has extensive leadership experience in both asset and wealth management. From 2006
to 2010 he worked at Morgan Stanley, first leading the Central Division of the Global Wealth
Management business, then as President and CEO of Van Kampen Investments. Before that
he spent more than two decades at Merrill Lynch, ultimately as a member of the senior
leadership team at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers.
He joins Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management from Lightyear Capital LLC, a private equity
firm, where he was a Senior Advisor responsible for the acquisition of financial services
companies, with a focus on investment management and wealth management firms.
Michele Faissola said: “Jerry is a talented leader and a highly respected figure in the industry.
I am delighted that a professional of his caliber shares our excitement about the opportunity
we have in the Americas and the quality of solutions we offer clients. Under his leadership,
we will continue to expand our Americas business, giving more clients the chance to benefit
from our global asset and wealth management expertise.”

The post Deutsche Bank Names Miller Head of Asset & Wealth Management Americas appeared first on peHUB.

The Samsung Galaxy S 4 Mini has once again appeared online in photos, and some valuable news has also been leaked. The phone will apparently be almost as fast as the Galaxy S 4, as it will be powered by a 1.6GHz Exynos 5210 SoC, backed up by either 1GB or 2GB of RAM.

Rumors also reveal that the phone will feature a built-in IR blaster, meaning it will have remote control capabilities, allowing one to control a TV, set-top box, or a home theater system straight from the smartphone. The Galaxy S 4 Mini is also said to have a 4.3-inch super AMOLED screen with a resolution of 540 by 960 pixels.

The main camera will have 8MP of resolution, and a 2100mAh battery should keep the phone up and running throughout the course of the day. The phone is set for an official announcement on or around May 30th, which is when we should be hearing about the rumored Samsung Galaxy S 4 Activ and Samsung Galaxy S 4 Zoom as well.

Source: Phone Arena

Come comment on this article: Samsung Galaxy S 4 Mini leaks once again, release set for end of May

During today’s Google I/O keynote, Google’s Vic Gundotra said that Google+ would be getting 41 new features. Those new features were spread out across three key areas – stream, hangouts and photos.

Google is doing away with the old layout in favor of a multi-column layout that puts more emphasis on photos and video. The new layout will also sport “delightful animations” that see the sharebox and menus sliding around the UI.

Hangouts is still the major selling point of Google+, but Google has decided to spread the love a little more by releasing a separate Hangouts app. It’s still tied into Google+, however, and features all the sharing capabilities of its bigger brother.

Finally, photos on Google+ are soon going to get a major facelift as Google adds a number of photo editing features right into Google+. The best part is that you as a user don’t have to do anything. Features like Auto Highlight and Auto Enhance are automatically applied thanks to Google’s advanced algorithms.

All the above features will be rolling out to all Google+ users over the next week. In fact, the new layout design seems to be live now.

Last year at Google I/O, Google unveiled Compute Engine. Today, the company announced they’re making it available for anyone to start using.

They’re also adding the following new features:

In somewhat related news, Google has also made App Engine 1.8.0 available. It includes a limited preview of the PHP runtime (apparently the top requested feature).

“We’re bringing one of the most popular web programming languages to App Engine so that you can run open source apps like WordPress,” says Google’s Urs Hölzle. “It also offers deep integration with other parts of Cloud Platform including Google Cloud SQL and Cloud Storage.”

Google also introduced Google Cloud Datastore, a solution for non-relational data.

“Based on the popular App Engine High Replication Datastore, Cloud Datastore is a standalone service that features automatic scalability and high availability while still providing powerful capabilities such as ACID transactions, SQL-like queries, indexes and more,” explains Hölzle.

More on all of the Google Cloud Platform news here.

Nearly two weeks ago, Apple announced that they were just about to hit the 50 billion milestone in terms of apps downloaded in the App Store. Today, the company finally hit the mark.

Apple hit 40 billion app downloads back in January, so that means that they tacked on 10 billion downloads in around four months. If that rate hold with a bit of acceleration (which it currently is), Apple will hit 100 billion app downloads by the end of next year or sooner. It’s a truly impressive figure.

But it’s not that far out ahead of Google’s Android. Today, at the Google I/O conference, Google announced that Google Play has seen 48 billion app installs, with 2.5 billion installs in the last month alone.

That part about the “grand prize winner” mentioned above? Well, that references the fact that Apple is giving out a big prize in celebration of hitting 50 billion. The person who was lucky enough to download the 50 billionth app will receive a $10,000 App Store gift card.

This isn’t the first time that Apple has offered such a prize. In March of 2012, when Apple hit 25 million downloaded apps, they gave away another $10,000 App Store gift card. The winner was a man from China who downloaded the puzzle game Where’s My Water.

Mellanox, the company famous for its Infiniband chips but which is also branching out into Ethernet, says it intends to buy photonics startup Kotura in a cash deal valued at $82 million. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2013.

Koruta, which I profiled last November, makes a photonics chip that allows signals to pass between chips using light (photons) instead of electrons. This makes communications between chips faster, something becoming more important inside the data center as networks become flatter, faster and fatter.

The Kotura chip is a fiber-based transceiver that can deliver 100 gigabits per second inside the data center. The transceiver could live on a board next to the CPU or inside a switch and could eventually expand to deliver a terabit per second (Tbps). Currently it’s used in high-performance compute clusters, which are also the most-popular home for Infiniband. From my post in November:

While one 1 Tbps is crazy fast when you consider that many data centers are currently upgrading to 10 gigabit Ethernet between servers, it’s going to be necessary. Arlon Martin, VP of Marketing, Government Contracts & Industry Relations at Kotura, tells me that customers are building products for the high-performance computing sectors but also for real-time data processing. The goal is bringing a low-power and less expensive optical part into a rack of servers, able to scale up to terabit per second capacities.

Kotura isn’t the only company trying to bring fiber optics into the data center. Plexxi is building fiber-based switches, while Facebook and the Open Compute Project in January announced their own plans to integrate photonics into their open hardware program. Intel, Cisco and IBM all have research or have acquired startups in this space as well. With its emphasis on fast networking, it makes sense for Mellanox to follow suit.

The company plans to continue offering the Kotura transceiver and open a research center in Monterrey Park, Calif., where Kotura is headquartered. From the Mellanox release:

“Operating networks at 100 Gigabit per second rates and higher requires careful integration between all parts of the network. We believe that silicon photonics is an important component in the development of 100 Gigabit InfiniBand and Ethernet solutions, and that owning and controlling the technology will allow us to develop the best, most reliable solution for our customers,” said Eyal Waldman, president, CEO and chairman of Mellanox Technologies.

At the time of my profile, Kotura had raised undisclosed millions from ARCH Venture Partners, Fuse Capital, GF Private Equity and others. It has an established customer base in the telecommunications business where it has sold product since 2006. But last year it began targeting the data center, where it apparently attracted Mellanox’s eye.

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Electric car maker Tesla announced on Wednesday that it could raise another $830 million in a combination of a new stock offering, and newly issued convertible senior notes. Tesla says it plans to sell another 2.70 million shares of common stock and $450 million worth of notes, in addition to an option for investors to purchase another 405,454 shares of stock and $67.5 million in notes.

On top of that Tesla says CEO Elon Musk plans to buy $100 million worth of common stock, of which $45 million will be bought in the offering, and $55 million will be bought directly from Tesla.

Tesla says it will use part of these funds — the notes specifically — to pay back the entirety of the loan to the Department of Energy early, and will also use some of the funds for other general corporate purposes. Tesla raised a $465 million loan from the DOE and has previously said it will pay that back in half the time it’s been allotted. So, that goal of half the time, has now been condensed even further.

Tesla has talked about raising more money for awhile, and many have speculated that company would want more funds to grow. This will be Tesla’s fourth offering (an S-3!). Back in 2011, Tesla also used a follow-on offering combined with a private placement to raise funds, and did so again, raising $221 million, in late 2012. The company went public in the Summer of 2010.

Tesla’s shares have been on a tear recently, and traded over $90 per share this week. On this news, Tesla stock was up 5.49 percent in after hours trading.

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Google announced today that Google TV is being updated to the latest version of Android and Chrome. This is, of course, one of a slew of announcements out of the Mountain View company today, with Google I/O currently in full swing.

Over the last three years since Google TV came out, its ecoystem has grown to 10 device manufacturers, 5 chipset makers and 5 TV operators across 10 countries. It uses thousands of apps through Google Play and Chrome.

Here’s what the Google TV team had to say about the news on Google+:

Google TV Developers46 minutes ago

Over the past few months Google TV has gathered momentum by launching powerful features for our users such as the highest quality voice search of any TV product and strong manufacturer adoption of the platform. At Google I/O, it’s time to talk about developers and enabling them to bring more great experiences to TV.

Today, Google TV is moving to the latest version of Android (Jelly Bean, 4.2.2), and we’ve refactored Google TV so that our TV OEM partners can update to future versions of Android in a matter of weeks rather than months. For developers, this means you can build TV experiences using the latest Android APIs, including the NDK. 

Today Google TV is also moving to the latest version of Chrome, and from now on Google TV benefits from Chrome updates on the same six week cycle that you’ve come to expect from Chrome. In Chrome on Google TV, we’ve added support for hardware-based content protection, enabling developers to provide premium TV content in HD within their web apps. 

Google TV-powered devices in market will start to receive updates in the coming months, and we expect to see new devices launched later this year.  If you are attending Google IO, please check out the “Android: As seen on TV!” session and stop by the Google TV Developer Sandbox area.
https://developers.google.com/tv/

---

Google I/O 2013: Android: As seen on TV!
Google TV gives developers a consistent Android platform to create and deliver applications, games and high quality media on the largest screen in the house. In this session we’ll show you how to unlock the potential of the current Google TV devices and explain the new features of the next generation Google TV platform. 37    29 Powered by socialditto

Nearly one year ago, James Holmes entered a Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado with tear gas and guns, killing 12 people and injuring over 60 others. The shooting took place during an opening weekend showing of The Dark Knight Rises, turning crowded summer movie blockbuster premieres into yet another place where Americans are now wary of guns (though at least one Missouri movie theater recently forgot this).

Now, Holmes’ murder trial is about to begin, and prosecutors seem to have an incredible amount of evidence to demonstrate that he was the shooter. According to an Associated Press report, prosecutors this week filed a motion in court that states they have close to 3,500 potential witnesses that could be called on to testify. In addition, prosecutors estimated they have almost 40,000 pages of evidence that have been filed.

Holmes will be tried on multiple counts of first-degree murder. Prosecutors have turned down a plea offer from Holmes’ defense for the suspect to plead guilty if they agree not to seek the death penalty, stating they do intend to seek the death penalty. Holmes’ lawyer recently requested the suspect’s plea be changed to not guilty by reason of insanity, which the judge in the case is currently deciding whether or not to accept.

Google announced a lot of things today, but some it didn’t all make into the Google I/O keynote.

On the Gmail blog, Google announced new Google Wallet integration for Gmail, which comes in the form of an “Attach Money” button. Yep, you can send money as an attachment. A pretty good idea, as long as it doesn’t land in the spam folder.

The feature lets you send money by email even if the recipient does not have a Gmail address.

“It’s free to send money if your bank account is linked to Google Wallet or using your Google Wallet Balance, and low fees apply to send money using your linked credit or debit card,” says Google Wallet product manager Travis Green. “To send money in Gmail, hover over the attachment paperclip, click the $ icon to attach money to your message, enter the amount you wish to send, and press send.”

The feature will only be available for desktop at first, but will likely come to mobile Gmail in the future. In the meantime, you can still use the Google Wallet app or wallet.google.com.

The feature is rolling out over the coming months to U.S. Gmail users who are 18 and over.

Back in April of 2011, YouTube launched YouTube Live, which offered live streaming capabilities to a select number of partners. Today, they’re announcing a massive expansion of the program which will allow tons of new channels to live stream content as they wish.

Starting today, all YouTube channels in good standing (you know, following the YouTube Community Guidelines) with over 1,000 subscribers are eligible for live streaming. If you want to know if you are eligible, simply check your account features page. If you’re eligible, you’ll see an “enable” button and there you’ll be able to sign up. YouTube says that live streaming capabilities will officially come to these channels in the following weeks.

Here’s what YouTube has to say about what content creators will get with the YouTube Live expansion:

YouTube Live allows you to offer your audience a great viewing experience, with great streaming quality and instant scalability and reliability. Here are some key features:

Last month, YouTube for iOS finally got live streaming. And last week, YouTube pulled the curtain back on their long-rumored paid channels. Only a few select partners currently have access to those paid channels at launch, but in the future you can see how expanded live streaming and paid channel subscriptions could prove an interesting match.

Google has been full of announcements today as its developers conference, Google I/O, takes place. Not everything the company announced today came from I/O, however.

For one, the company announced on its Inside AdSense blog that it has added dome new features to AdSense to provide users with more detailed segmentation of traffic in their reports.

“The Countries report shows your performance broken down by the country of users who engaged with the ads on your pages,” says AdSense product manager Matt Goodridge. “In addition to viewing a country breakdown for reports by ad type, bid type, and targeting type, you’ll now also be able to see a Countries report when viewing the reporting dimensions URL channel, custom channel, and ad unit. This will allow you to segment your traffic further and get a better understanding of your account performance in different locations.”

“In order to help you get more granular insights into your performance on a site level, we’re introducing a new reporting type for Owned sites,” says Goodridge. “‘Owned’ sites are all sites specified as owned in the site management feature, and the new reporting dimension for Owned sites will be a subset of the Sites report. In contrast to the Sites report, however, you’ll be able to combine the Owned sites report with the Countries report. This will allow you to segment your traffic in more detail and understand the performance of your sites across different countries.”

Country breakdown of reports by URL channel, custom channel and ad unit will only be available for reports with date ranges starting March 9th and later. Historical data in Owned sites reports will be available from the date that a site was added or claimed as “owned”. Users will only be able to view country data breakdowns for Owned sites for reports with date ranges starting March 22 or later.