Category: News

Windows-based tablets haven’t been big successes so far, whether they use the desktop-centric Windows 8 or the tablet-centric Windows RT. iMore’s Rene Ritchie does some sharp analysis of Microsoft’s latest marketing campaign and concludes that the company simply does not understand why people are buying tablets in the first place. Essentially, Microsoft doesn’t get that its central criticism of the iPad — that is, that it’s more of a toy that can’t be used for doing serious work — is precisely why consumers are drawn to it in the first place. Simply put, consumers have PCs at their offices if they want to do work. When they’re at home, they want to play around with their tablets instead; they like having toys.

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Russian search engine Yandex announced a new change to its algorithm that looks at a person’s search history from within a particular search session to deliver results and suggestions based on what it says is the “full picture” of the user’s search behavior.

“We all know what it takes to understand another person,” the company says. “It’s a lot. Even if all you need to understand is what a person is looking for online. We have been trying to do this for years. A person’s interests and preferences give a good clue as to what they want to find. We used to look into a user’s search history as far as a few months back to choose for them the search results that would be most relevant to their scope of interests.”

Yandex. Pesonalised Search Results from Yandex on Vimeo.

“Updating our knowledge of users’ interests once a day allows us to understand their more-or-less stable interests, such as a love of books or football, or that they speak Russian and live in Saint Petersburg,” says Yandex. “More than half of all searches on Yandex, however, are about something that interests the searcher at the very moment of searching and stops interest them the moment after. To be able to cater to such momentary searches, we now analyse search sessions in real time.”

The company notes that the change helps it deliver more relevant results to users who don’t actually have another search history on the search engine.

Yandex’s real-time processing system processes over 10 terabytes of data per day.

More on the changes here.

Corey Feldman, who was one half of one of the most awesome ’80s duos ever, says he’s elated to have the leather jacket back that he wore in “Dream A Little Dream”.

The jacket was stolen from the House Of Blues in 2011 and, according to Feldman, was worth $100,000. When a Boston-area man found the jacket at a flea market, he returned it and was rewarded with a trip to L.A., where he was honored onstage at one of Feldman’s rock shows. In addition, the actor donated proceeds from his show to the charity of the man’s choice, which happened to be OneFundBoston.org, an organization that benefits survivors of the Boston bombings.

Feldman starred with his best friend, Corey Haim, in the 1989 film; the two would remain friends over the years and even appear on a reality show together before Haim’s death in 2010.

Seven people, including four children, are dead after a tractor-trailer collided with a minivan in upstate New York on Wednesday.

According to an Associated Press report, a tractor-trailer was traveling on a Truxton, New York road just outside of Cortland at around 6 pm Wednesday evening. The semi’s cargo of crushed cars became disconnected from its trailer, causing the trailer to cross the roadway and hit a minivan.

The minivan was reportedly carrying two families. Four children and three adults in the minivan died in the accident, while one man survived and is currently receiving treatment at Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse. The two passengers in the semi were not injured.

One of the two families in the minivan was reportedly from Truxton, a small town of around 1,100 people. The crash occurred on Route 13, a rural, two-lane road that passes through Truxton and serves at the town’s Main Street.

Crash kills seven outside of Syracuse

Foundation Capital said on Thursday that it has named Harsh Patel as entrepreneur-in-residence. Prior to joining Foundation Capital, Patel served as president of Bina Technologies, a data analytics firm. Foundation Capital is a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, Calif.

PRESS RELEASE

MENLO PARK, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Foundation Capital today announced that veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist Harsh Patel has joined the firm as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR). Patel comes to Foundation Capital with strong experience in the technology startup world, having served as an engineer, founder, operator and investor throughout his career.
Prior to joining Foundation Capital, Patel served as President of Bina Technologies, a data analytics company pioneering a new approach in genomics – a key enabler for personalized medicine. Before that, Patel was a partner with New York-based RRE Ventures and In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA. As a VC he led a number of early-stage investments, most notably Palantir Technologies, Tendril and Flipswap (now ERecyclingCorps). He has also been an active angel investor and advisor to a number of seed-stage companies including Badgeville, SnappyTV, Bunndle and GrubWithUs. Earlier in his career he was Co-Founder and CTO of a SaaS platform for small business eCommerce and led R&D efforts building enterprise systems for Fortune 500 companies.
“I’ve always been drawn to my entrepreneurial roots and have looked for opportunities to get deeply involved with companies at the early stage,” said Patel. “With the vast operational experience of its partners and their strong track record, Foundation Capital is the ideal place to anchor for the near future. It’s a rare chance to have an investing role while also getting back on the other side of the table.”
Patel is exploring several areas of interest that resonate from his past experience. One key focus is the application of large-scale data solutions to business problems affecting major markets – healthcare, financial services, government and education. Another is the impact of mobility and M2M communications in re-imagining core consumer and business services. In his role as an EIR Patel will help the firm evaluate new opportunities in these themes and others.
“The Foundation EIR program is designed to identify people who can offer a unique perspective to the partnership to make it stronger, and Harsh fits the criteria many times over,” said Steve Vassallo, general partner at Foundation Capital. “He has the rare ability to think both as an investor and entrepreneur. His versatility and impressive background will make him a tremendous asset to Foundation Capital.”
About Foundation Capital
At Foundation Capital, we’re dedicated to the proposition that one entrepreneur’s idea, with the right support, can become a business that changes the world. We helped Atheros create the mobile Internet, EnerNOC invent the energy demand response market, and Netflix revolutionize media distribution and consumption, among many others. We’re currently invested in more than 80 high-growth ventures in the areas of consumer, information technology, software, semiconductors, and clean technology including BoardVantage, Chegg, Coverity, Lending Club, MobileIron, Simply Hired, Sunrun, TubeMogul and Venafi. Foundation Capital’s eighteen initial public offerings include Envestnet, Financial Engines, Netflix, NetZero, Responsys and Silver Spring Networks. For more information, please visit www.foundationcapital.com.

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U.S. Venture Partners said on Thursday that it has expanded its team. Dr. Jacques Benkoski has been promoted to partner while Mike Maciag has been named as an executive-in-residence and Craig Parker as the firm’s entrepreneur-in-residence. USVP is an early-stage venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, Calif.

PRESS RELEASE

MENLO PARK, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), a leading early-stage venture capital firm, announced today the firm expanded its team by promoting Dr. Jacques Benkoski to Partner and adding two new EIRs, Mike Maciag and Craig Parker. The firm is also proud to announce that Benkoski received the 2013 International Fund Award for Innovative Venture Capitalist of the Year, United States.
USVP’s promotion of Jacques Benkoski to Partner recognizes his leadership in fostering USVP as an active investor in the Israeli market and in the IT markets in the U.S. Since 2005, Jacques has been involved with USVP investments in Chute, HelloFax, Plumgrid, Qnovo, Quixey, RiskIO, SupplyFrame, in addition to his active involvement with Israeli companies Trusteer, Zerto, and previously Dune Networks. He is currently Chairman of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the American Technion Society, and an active board member of the California Israel Chamber of Commerce.
Benkoski was recognized by the International Fund Awards as a thought leader as exemplified by his designing and implementing USVP’s unique and successful Israel investment strategy. The awards are given based on nominations, in-house research and industry knowledge. The International Fund Awards celebrate excellence within Private Equity, Venture Capital and Infrastructure.
An Executive-in-Residence for USVP, Mike Maciag served as the CEO of Electric Cloud for over seven years. Prior to joining Electric Cloud, Mike founded MS2 (acquired by Agile Software), an enterprise software company. Prior to MS2, Mike led Electronics for Imaging and NetFrame Systems, to successful public offerings.
Craig Parker joins USVP as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Craig was the SVP of Corporate Development and Strategy for Human Genome Sciences (acquired by Glaxo Smithkline). Previously, he was SVP of Corporate Development and Finance at Proteolix, a USVP portfolio company. He was formerly a managing director and head of biotechnology equity research at Lehman Brothers, and General Manager and SVP of the Specialty Therapeutics Franchise of Immunex (acquired by Amgen).
Coming off a record year in 2012 with over $500M in distributions, the firm continues its strong investment pace with a series of active investments during Q2 2013. Over the past two months, USVP made initial and follow-on investments in Exablox, Skytree, Clustrix, Zerto, eFFECTOR Therapeutics, Cleave Biosciences, PlaceIQ and Chute, continuing its momentum and strengthening its portfolio.
About U.S. Venture Partners
USVP is a leading venture capital partnership, helping entrepreneurs transform their ideas and efforts into world-changing companies. USVP focuses on early-stage ventures in information technology and health care, where innovation is unbridled and has led to the creation of economic wealth and millions of jobs over the past thirty-plus years of the firm’s existence. Areas of particular interest to our investment professionals include data center and network technology, consumer and business services, digital media, communications, semiconductors, biopharmaceuticals and medical devices. The USVP team consists of former entrepreneurs, technologists, corporate executives, financial professionals and industry domain experts. Find more about USVP’s portfolio company news by following us on Twitter @USVP_ or liking us on Facebook.

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Mercator MedSystems closed a $6.5 million Series B financing co-led by New York-based Volcano Capital and two San Francisco-based firms, Crocker Capital and Aphelion Capital. Washington D.C.-based Windy City Inc. and SET Technology Gmbh, a German-based investment fund, are also participating in the financing. 

PRESS RELEASE

SAN LEANDRO, CA – (May 30, 2013) Mercator MedSystems, Inc., a privately-held medical technology company reinventing the treatment of disease deep inside the body, today announced the closing of a $6.5 million Series B financing. The funding will be used to initiate sales of its Cricket™ and Bullfrog® Micro-Infusion devices in Europe, the United States and Australia – and support clinical validation of its product platform to treat peripheral artery disease (PAD). PAD is a critical health issue affecting 12-14 percent of the general population and nearly 70 percent of those over the age of 70; approximately 23 million Western Europeans and 17 million Americans suffer with the disease.
 
The Series B financing was co-led by three national venture capital investment firms, New York-based Volcano Capital and two San Francisco-based firms, Crocker Capital and Aphelion Capital®.  Washington D.C.-based Windy City Inc. and SET Technology Gmbh, a German-based investment fund, are also participating in the financing.  With this series of financing, Mercator Medsystems has raised a total of $18.5 million in equity.
 
“We are thrilled to have achieved this milestone in light of the particularly harsh financing environment for young medical technology companies,” said Mercator’s Chief Executive Officer, Thomas M. Loarie. “Mercator has an exceptional technology platform that provides a new avenue for treating a number of intractable diseases, including vascular disease, cardiac repair, hypertension, and cancer.”
 
Mercator MedSystem’s Micro-Infusion approach was created at the labs of The University of California, Berkeley in 2000. The company’s proprietary family of FDA 510(k)-cleared Micro-Infusion devices provides targeted treatments via the vascular system. This novel delivery system could reinvent the treatment of disease by allowing clinicians to accurately and efficiently deliver small volumes of drugs and biologics (such as stem cells) to tissues deep in the body, treating the root cause of significant medical conditions. This novel “outside in” mechanism, treating the outside of the vessel wall, or adventitia, as a therapeutic target “may provide the right path to address the vessel injury response cascade that typically accompanies a vascular intervention,” Loarie explained.
 
Volcano Capital partner Douglas Wall commented, “We recognize the tremendous versatility of Mercator’s micro-infusion platform in treating cardiovascular disease, as well as its promise to improve clinical benefits in the bronchial and oncology spaces.  We have great confidence that Mercator’s unique adventitial delivery device could save and vastly improve the quality of life for millions of patients worldwide, while delivering economic efficiencies to the health care system, as well.”
 
As a result of this financing, Volcano Capital partner, Doug Wall, Aphelion Capital®’s founder Ned Scheetz, and Windy City, Inc. President Joel Kanter will join the Board of Directors, which is comprised of Kirk P. Seward, Ph.D., Chief Science and Technology Officer, Mercator MedSystems; Thomas M. Loarie, Chief Executive Officer, Mercator Medsystems; Charles Crocker, Principal of Crocker Capital; and Neil P. Desai, Ph.D., Vice President, Strategic Platforms at Celgene Corporation.
In addition to its equity financing, Mercator Medsystems has secured $2 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Small Business Administration and other federal agencies since 2010.
~  ~   ~ 
 
San Leandro, CA-based Mercator MedSystems, Inc. (www.mercatormed.com) is a venture-backed, privately held medical technology company spun out of The University of California, Berkeley. The company develops catheter-guided micro-infusion systems for targeted delivery of drugs and biologics to treat the root cause of significant medical conditions, including cardiovascular disease, oncology, hypertension and heart disease. 
 

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On Tuesday, May 21, Microsoft raised the curtain on its first new gaming console in nearly seven years: the Xbox One. In order to better understand how the Xbox One is being received by the larger tech community, we surveyed GigaOM’s own readership on the new offering. So which new feature of the Xbox One was chosen to have the biggest impact? Read this analysis to find out.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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Tumblr announced today that it will start to bring sponsored posts to users’ dashboards on the web.

“Just like in our mobile apps, these posts will simply blend in with the posts from the blogs you follow,” the company says in a short blog post.

Sponsored posts were launched for the mobile dashboard last month. Launch partners included Ford, Universal, Viacom, Denny’s, Purina, Capital One and AT&T.

“Since we launched our first sponsored post on Tumblr Radar one year ago, we’ve been proud to see our partners bring their most creative work to Tumblr,” the company says. “Their posts have already earned more than 10 million likes and reblogs”.

The dollar sign (pictured) is an indication that a post is an ad, and matches those used on the Radar ads.

As TechCrunch points out, people (teenagers) are “freaking out” about the ads, which is to be expected. The initial freak-out period will no doubt die down, as people realize the ads are pretty much like everything else you see on Tumblr anyway. The format hasn’t done much to alienate users from Facebook or Twitter either.

Yahoo, of course, announced that an agreement to acquire Tumblr earlier this month, along with plans to put more ads on it.

Visier said Thursday that it has raised $15 million in Series B financing led by Summit Partners. Existing investor Foundation Capital also participated. Visier, with headquarters in Vancouver, B.C. and San Francisco, Calif., provides workforce analytics through the cloud to HR professionals.

PRESS RELEASE

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA—(May 30, 2013) —Visier, the innovation leader in workforce analytics and planning solutions, today announced that it has raised $15 million in Series B financing. The round was led by growth equity investor Summit Partners and included existing investor Foundation Capital. Visier will use the capital to fuel investments in innovation and fund strategic growth initiatives that support its aggressive, global go-to-market strategy.
Since its founding in 2010, Visier has re-defined how enterprise organizations approach workforce analytics by delivering out-of-the-box HR analytics that combine the sophistication of predictive capabilities with the ease-of-use of consumer applications. Visier Workforce Analytics gives business leaders and HR professionals the insight they need to take action to reduce workforce costs, improve productivity, attract and retain top talent, and optimize their people strategy to meet their business strategy.
“Visier’s first two years were spent creating a revolutionary way to approach analytics,” said John Schwarz, Founder and CEO of Visier. “Since taking that solution to the market last year, customers have consistently told us they have never seen anything like Visier, and they are delighted with how Visier Workforce Analytics is helping to transform their businesses.  With this capital infusion from top-tier investors Summit Partners and Foundation Capital, Visier will accelerate the release of new product offerings, continue to drive innovation in analytics, and grow market share through international expansion.”
Led by business intelligence visionaries including former Business Objects CEO John Schwarz, Visier’s leadership team has a proven track record of successful technical, operational and strategic management with companies including Business Objects, Crystal Decisions, SAP, IBM and Symantec.

“Visier is a market leader in the workforce analytics software industry. The company has created an amazing experience for business users, and solved the challenge of delivering real business insight—not analytic infrastructure—through the cloud in a fraction of the time required to get traditional analytics solutions up and running,” said Greg Goldfarb, a Managing Director with Summit Partners who is joining the Visier Board. “As a long-time investor in software companies, Summit Partners is pleased to support this extraordinary management team that has built a rapidly growing company that is so focused on delivering business value to its customers.”

Visier is the choice of enterprise leaders that understand their greatest investment is their people. Representative customers include ConAgra Foods, CareFusion, Informatica, and Hyatt Hotels.
About Visier
Headquartered in Vancouver, B.C. and San Francisco, CA, Visier delivers workforce analytics through the cloud to empower HR professionals with the most critical insights for optimizing their people strategy to meet their business strategy. Visier’s unique analytics combine the sophistication of predictive capabilities with the ease-of-use of consumer applications. Founded in 2010 by business intelligence experts–including former Business Objects CEO John Schwarz–the company’s leadership team has a proven track record of technical, operational and strategic management success with companies such as IBM, SAP and Symantec. The company has received numerous industry awards for its innovative technology and products. For more information, please visit http://www.visier.com.
About Foundation Capital
At Foundation Capital, we’re dedicated to the proposition that one entrepreneur’s idea, with the right support, can become a business that changes the world. We helped Atheros create the mobile Internet, EnerNOC invent the energy demand response market, and Netflix revolutionize media distribution and consumption, among many others. We’re currently invested in more than 80 high-growth ventures in the areas of consumer, information technology, software, semiconductors, and clean technology including BoardVantage, Chegg, Coverity, Lending Club, MobileIron, Simply Hired, Sunrun, TubeMogul and Venafi. Foundation Capital’s eighteen initial public offerings include Envestnet, Financial Engines, Netflix, NetZero, Responsys and Silver Spring Networks. For more information, please visit http://www.foundationcapital.com.
About Summit Partners
Summit Partners (http://www.summitpartners.com) is a growth equity firm that invests in rapidly growing companies across North America, Europe and Asia. Founded in 1984, Summit has raised nearly $15 billion in capital and provides equity and credit for growth, recapitalizations, and management buyouts. Summit has invested in more than 365 companies globally in technology, healthcare and other growth industries. These companies have completed 130 public offerings, and more than 135 have been acquired through strategic mergers and sales. Notable investments in the software sector include: Clearwater Analytics, McAfee, RightNow Technologies, Hyperion Software, GoldenGate Software, Postini, ProClarity and Unica. Summit Partners has offices in Boston, Menlo Park, London and Mumbai.
In the United States of America, Summit Partners operates as an SEC-registered investment advisor. In the United Kingdom, this document is issued by Summit Partners Limited, a firm authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Summit Partners Limited is a limited company registered in England and Wales with company number 4141197, and its registered office is at 20–22 Bedford Row, London, WC1R 4JS, UK. This document is intended solely to provide information regarding Summit Partners’ potential financing capabilities for prospective portfolio companies.

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Summit Partners has invested in RuffaloCODY. Financial terms weren’t announced. Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based RuffaloCody provides technology-enabled fundraising and enrollment management services for higher education and nonprofit organizations. Lazard Middle Market provided financial advice to RuffaloCODY.

PRESS RELEASE

CEDAR RAPIDS, IA (May 30, 2013)—RuffaloCODY, the leading provider of technology-enabled fundraising and enrollment management services for higher education and high affinity-based nonprofit organizations, announced today that Summit Partners, a growth equity investor in rapidly growing companies, has made an investment in the company. Lazard Middle Market advised RuffaloCODY on this transaction.

“This commitment by Summit Partners will assist RuffaloCODY with plans to significantly expand our national and international presence and extend service offerings in both existing and new markets,” said Duane Jasper, RuffaloCODY President and CEO. “Summit’s experience working with high-growth organizations like RuffaloCODY will help accelerate our cutting-edge development and innovation.”

Added Al Ruffalo, RuffaloCODY Founder and Executive Chairman, “Our four-year partnership with exiting equity investors North Bridge Growth Equity and Westview Capital Partners was very successful, and provided a strong foundation for future growth. They helped double our business and solidify our market presence, and we are grateful for the support and confidence they placed in our firm.”

 

RuffaloCODY has delivered outstanding results and continued growth, providing nonprofit clients with data-driven services and initiatives unique to the marketplace. The company has been recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of America’s fastest-growing private companies for more than seven consecutive years, and it has also received recognition for job creation.

 

“We are investing in a strong management team, a compelling business model, and a market-leading company,” said Len Ferrington, a Principal with Summit Partners who will be joining the RuffaloCODY Board, along with Summit Managing Director C.J. Fitzgerald. “We look forward to assisting Duane Jasper, Al Ruffalo and the RuffaloCODY team as they continue to grow the company.”

 

In addition, the company recently announced plans to move into a new 88,000-square-foot-facility near the Kirkwood Community College campus early next year. The new facility will house all Cedar Rapids operations and provide space for the anticipated growth from 500 to 800 full-time staff over the next few years. RuffaloCODY plans to hire in the areas of software development, project management, data management and graphic design, as well as various client and corporate support positions.

 

About RuffaloCODY

Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Cedar Rapids, IA, RuffaloCODY (www.ruffalocody.com) employs more than 500 full-time staff throughout the United States, Canada and Australia. The company is the leading provider of technology-enabled fundraising and enrollment management services for higher education and high affinity-based nonprofit organizations. Today, RuffaloCODY serves more than 900 nonprofit organizations and institutions of higher education.

 

About Summit Partners

Summit Partners (www.summitpartners.com) is a growth equity firm that invests in rapidly growing companies. Founded in 1984, Summit has raised nearly $15 billion in capital and provides equity and credit for growth, recapitalizations and management buyouts. Summit has invested in more than 365 companies globally in technology, healthcare and other growth industries. These companies have completed 130 public offerings, and more than 135 have been acquired through strategic mergers and sales. Summit Partners has offices in Boston, Menlo Park, London and Mumbai. Notable companies financed by Summit Partners include AlphaSmart, Heald College, Hyperion Solutions, McAfee Associates, RightNow Technologies, Trident University International, Unica, WebEx Communications and Wildfire Interactive.

 

In the United States of America, Summit Partners operates as an SEC-registered investment advisor. In the United Kingdom, this document is issued by Summit Partners Limited, a firm authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Summit Partners Limited is a limited company registered in England and Wales with company number 4141197, and its registered office is at 20–22 Bedford Row, London, WC1R 4JS, UK. This document is intended solely to provide information regarding Summit Partners’ potential financing capabilities for prospective portfolio companies.

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WASHINGTON — NASA transferred operational control Thursday of the Landsat 8 satellite to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in a ceremony in Sioux Falls, S.D.

The event marks the beginning of the satellite’s mission to extend an unparalleled four-decade record of monitoring Earth’s landscape from space. Landsat 8 is the latest in the Landsat series of remote-sensing satellites, which have been providing global coverage of landscape changes on Earth since 1972. The Landsat program is a joint effort between NASA and USGS.

NASA launched the satellite Feb. 11 as the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM). Since then, NASA mission engineers and scientists, with USGS collaboration, have been putting the satellite through its paces — steering it into its orbit, calibrating the detectors, and collecting test images. Now fully mission-certified, the satellite is under USGS operational control.

“Landsat is a centerpiece of NASA’s Earth Science program,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in Washington. “Landsat 8 carries on a long tradition of Landsat satellites that for more than 40 years have helped us to learn how Earth works, to understand how humans are affecting it and to make wiser decisions as stewards of this planet.”

Beginning Thursday, USGS specialists will collect at least 400 Landsat 8 scenes every day from around the world to be processed and archived at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science Center in Sioux Falls. The newest satellite joins Landsat 7, which launched in 1999 and continues to collect images. Since 2008, USGS has provided more than 11 million current and historical Landsat images free of charge to users over the Internet.

“We are very pleased to work with NASA for the good of science and the American people,” said U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell in Washington. “The Landsat program allows us all to have a common, easily accessible view of our planet. We are especially proud that Landsat images have not only been the starting points for some of the world’s best commercial innovations in earth imagery, but also are available free of charge.”

Remote-sensing satellites such as the Landsat series help scientists observe the world beyond the power of human sight, monitor changes to the land that may have natural or human causes, and detect critical trends in the conditions of natural resources.

The 41-year Landsat record provides global coverage at a scale that impartially documents natural processes such as volcanic eruptions, glacial retreat and forest fires and shows large-scale human activities such as expanding cities, crop irrigation and forest clear-cuts. The Landsat Program is a sustained effort by the United States to provide direct societal benefits across a wide range of human endeavors including human and environmental health, energy and water management, urban planning, disaster recovery, and agriculture.

With Landsat 8 circling Earth 14 times a day, and in combination with Landsat 7, researchers will be able to use an improved frequency of data from both satellites. The two observation instruments aboard Landsat 8 feature improvements over their earlier counterparts while collecting information that is compatible with 41 years of land images from previous Landsat satellites. 

Apple and China Mobile have been locked in bitter contract negotiations for years. Apple wants the same kind of deal it has with Verizon or Vodafone. China Mobile wants something much, much sweeter. But as months slide by, Apple’s position weakens and China Mobile’s grows stronger. In April, China Mobile hit 730 million subscribers, growing by another 4 million subscribers in just one month. China Mobile is now adding more 3G subscribers per month than its smaller rivals China Unicom and China Telecom.

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Sequencing an extinct genome is no longer a pipe dream, says evolutionary biologist and ancient DNA specialist Hendrik Poinar in today’s talk. It’s a modern reality, and we’re not too far from seeing a revived extinct species walking the Earth again — maybe even a woolly mammoth. In this talk from TEDxDeExtinction, Poinar talks about how he and fellow scientists are getting closer to completing a woolly mammoth genome, an intricate puzzle that consists of discovering, entangling and connecting over 5 billion base pairs.

Hendrik Poinar: Bring back the woolly mammoth! So, why do we, humans, have such a fascination with woolly mammoths?

“Woollys are a quintessential image of the Ice Age … We seem to have a deep connection with them as we do with elephants,” says Poinar in this sci-fi worthy talk. “I have to admit there’s a part of the child in me that wants to see these majestic creatures walk across the permafrost of the North.”

It may be even more of a possibility now, thanks to a new development in the quest to resurrect the woolly mammoth. Earlier this week, an incredible discovery on the permafrost of the Novosibirsk archipelago in the Arctic Ocean propelled the conversation of de-extincting mammoths forward: Blood, in liquid form, and muscle tissue was discovered inside the well-preserved body of a 10,000 to 15,000 year old female woolly mammoth.

Thanks to frozen carcasses with skeletons, stomach contents, tusks and now liquid blood left intact — as well as cave painting depictions by our human ancestors — scientists know more about the woolly mammoth than any other prehistoric animal. Here are ten facts about the magnificent woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, to help ignite your imagination.

1. Contrary to common belief, the woolly mammoth was hardly mammoth in size. They were roughly about the size of modern African elephants. A male woolly mammoth’s shoulder height was 9 to 11 feet tall and weighed around 6 tons. Its cousin the Steppe mammoth (M. trogontherii) was perhaps the largest one in the family — growing up to 13 to 15 feet tall.
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2. The ears of a woolly mammoth were shorter than the modern elephant’s ears.  Like their thick coat of fur, their shortened ears were an important cold-weather adaptation because it minimized frostbite and heatloss.
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3. Scientists can discern a woolly mammoth’s age from the rings of its tusk, like looking at the rings of a tree. The tusk yields more finite detail than a tree trunk, revealing a major line for each year and a line for the weeks and days in between. Scientists can even tell the season when a woolly mammoth died as the darker increments correspond to summers. The thickness or thinness of the rings indicate the health of the mammoth during that time; the tusk would grow more during favorable conditions.
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4. The woolly mammoth was not the only “woolly” type of animal. The woolly rhinoceros, also known as the Coelodonta, co-existed with the woolly mammoth, walking the Earth during the Pleistocene epoch. Like the woolly mammoth, the woolly rhino adapted to the cold with a furry coat, was depicted by human ancestors in cave paintings and became extinct around the same time.
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5. Cave paintings drawn by ice age humans show the important relationship they had with the woolly mammoths. The Rouffignac cave in France has 158 depictions of mammoths, making up about 70% of the represented animals that date back to the Upper Paleolithic period. There is also evidence of the use of bones and tusks by humans to create portable art objects, shelters, tools, furniture and even burials.
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6. Today, the hunt is on for woolly mammoth tusks in the Arctic Siberia. Due to global warming, the melting permafrost has begun revealing these hidden ivory treasures for a group of local tusk-hunters to find and sell. A tusk can range from 10-13 foot in length and a top-grade mammoth tusk is worth around $400 per pound. Mammoth ivory, unlike elephant ivory, is legal.
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7. The first fully documented woolly mammoth skeleton was discovered in 1799. It was brought to the Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Science in 1806 where Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius put the pieces together. Basing his task off of an Indian elephant skeleton, Tilesius was successful in reconstructing the first skeleton of an extinct animal except for one error. He put the tusks in the wrong sockets, so that they curved outward instead of inward.
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8. The coat of a woolly mammoth consisted of a “guard” of foot long hairs, and an undercoat of shorter hairs. Preserved mammoth hair looks orange in color, however researchers believe the pigment was changed because of prolonged burial in the ground.
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9. Even a kid can discover a preserved mammoth.  In September 2012 in Russia, an 11-year-old boy named Yevgeny “Zhenya” Salinder happened upon an extremely well-preserved woolly mammoth carcass while walking his dogs.  The remains were of a 16-year-old male woolly mammoth that died about 30,000 years ago. The discovery helped scientists conclude that the large “lumps” on a mammoth’s back were extra stores of fat to help it survive winters. The mammoth was nicknamed “Zhenya.”
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10. The final resting place of woolly mammoths was Wrangel Island in the Arctic. Although, most of the woolly mammoth population died out by 10,000 years ago, a small population of 500-1000 woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island until 1650 BC. That’s only about 4,000 years ago! For context, Egyptian pharoahs were midway through their empire and it was about 1000 years after the Giza pyramids were built. The reason for the demise of these woolly mammoths are unknown.

Like many Gmail users, I greeted the news of the introduction of tabs to the interface with a degree of anticipation — now it was just a matter of waiting for the feature to roll out so I could try it for myself. Earlier today I was randomly signed out of my Gmail account, and after signing back in and checking the settings menus, I could see that tabs were now available to me. Excitement was short-lived, however; it quickly became apparent that this new feature is a disaster.

On the face of it, there’s a lot to be said in favor of adding tabs to one’s inbox. The idea is that emails that match certain criteria are automatically sorted so your inbox is easier to manage. I have an enormous number of filters configured that sort and label messages but the prospect of having a series of tabs to access certain types of mail was definitely appealing.

So, what does Google think would be useful tabs to have as default? Forums, Updates, Promotions, Social and Primary, it seems. As there are only five tabs, each covers a multitude of sins. Forums will, supposedly, capture emails relating to groups and forums, as well as housing your mailing list subscriptions. Social — unsurprisingly — groups all social networking messages together.

Promotions is fairly self-explanatory — all of your offers, marketing mail (aka secondary spam) should end up here. But then things get a little odd. The Updates tab displays messages that are determined to be receipts, bills and statements. Everything else gets lumped together in the Primary tab.

OK, so these tabs may not be quite what you were expecting, but they can be customized, right? Right? Nope. The idea of tabs appealed to me at first as I thought I would be able to customize them to filter out emails from specific websites or people — such as a Family tab. But no. Google has decided that these are the only five tabs I can have and that I cannot rename them or create any more.

This is not the only problem. Tabs are completely unintuitive. When a new message is received from Facebook, for example, Gmail determines that this is a Social email and filters it accordingly. A notification appears in the Social tab to let me know that there is an unread email, but nowhere else. Because the message has bypassed my Primary tab, my Inbox label is not updated with a new message count.

If I happen to be browsing my starred messages, I am not informed of the arrival of a new mail. Why? Oh, one thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that tabs disappear when you are anywhere other than the inbox. But there’s more. Or less. Depending on how you look at it.

The new message notification on each of the tabs does not tell you how many unread messages you have in this tab. Rather it lets you know how many new messages have arrived since you last visited that tab. This means that should I see that a number of messages are on my Social tab, click that tab to see them but then navigate elsewhere before actually reading any of the messages, the message count is zeroed.

There are unread messages on my Social tab, but I am not told how many — I have to go and look. You might think that the craziness would end there, but it doesn’t. Gmail does a spectacularly bad job of determining where emails should go. It is possible to re-categorize emails to different tabs, but only when you are in the inbox or on a tab. Email cannot be categorized from folder or label views, which means it is nowhere near as user-friendly as it should be.

But the biggest problem is undoubtedly the way in which the unread mail count has altered. I want to see at a glance how many emails I have yet to read — I don’t want to have to look at five different tabs. The terrible automatic categorization — an inexact science, easily on a par with spam not being correctly identified — means I really don’t know when I have unread messages to attend to.

The five unread messages listed on the Social tab, are they emails that relate to Facebook and Twitter, or has that important work email I’ve been waiting for been misidentified? I have no way of knowing without looking at each tab manually thereby negating any timesaving their introduction was meant to bring about. The hoops you have to jump through to see everything in one place really beggars belief.

I love Gmail. I really do. It’s not perfect, and there is a lot of room for improvement, but it gets so much right that I’m willing to cut it a little slack. But now things are starting to go awry. Tabs are a seriously bad idea. Yes, they are optional, but they are so close to unusable that hardly anyone is going to persevere with them to see if they improve with time.

Change is good — it should be encouraged and embraced — but change needs to be for the better and it needs to have direction and purpose. Some of the recent changes to Gmail make me wonder just who is making the decisions and who the target audience for the various features is.

Part of the problem is the fact that Gmail now offers so many different ways to organize and navigate emails. Labels are handy, as are folders (especially the more recent nesting option) and priority inbox — in theory at least — makes it easy to focus on the emails that are most important.

But it doesn’t end there. Multiple inboxes can be displayed when Priority Inbox is enabled, conversations view can be used to group together related messages and line spacing can be adjusted to suit your liking.

Having choice is nearly always a good thing, but Google is taking it to the extreme with Gmail. It’s getting to the point that there are just too many options to choose from.  It’s a mess. I moved away from Hotmail years ago, seeking refuge in Gmail’s cleaner, tidier interface. But now Google’s webmail is starting to anger me. It’s starting to be frustrating to use. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way.

What do you think? Relieve yourself of your splenetic juices in the comments below.

Oh… if you were wondering. Tabs have now been disabled in my account.

Photo Credit: Roger Jegg – Fotodesign-Jegg.de/Shutterstock

Ultimate bad muthaphukka Samuel L. Jackson is looking to raise awareness (and cash, of course) for the Alzheimer’s society. And he’s doing it in a pretty amazing way.

Posted to reddit’s r/movies subreddit Wednesday, Jackson has made an offer reddit cannot refuse. Think up a 300-word or less monologue, post it in the comments, and whichever one gets the most upvotes will win. Win what? Well, it will be read, on video, by Jackson himself.

Here’s the post:

It’s simple, write 300 words and the most upvoted post I’ll read out loud in monologue form.

I’m doing this for one of my favorite non-profits, Alzheimer’s Society, as my family have been unfortunate enough to have been affected by the disease.

As a BONUS, I’m offering you all the chance to be flown to the UK for lunch with ME in return for just a tiny donation to this amazing cause. I’ll also sign a beloved Kangol hat and mail it to anyone that donates $200 or more!

Let’s go muthaphukkas give me something interesting to say!!!!

The post has received a lot of attention – too much, in fact. 4chan got wind of the content and, well, went all 4chan on it. I’ll let movies moderator girafa explain what happened:

Here’s what occurred: Within a few minutes of the posting of this thread, the internet forum 4Chan got wind of it and began a campaign to hijack this thread with the NavySeals copypasta, encouraging people to get accounts, upvote one comment and downvote the others. They even dox’d (found out the real identity of) the poster of the Alarm Clock monologue and have been harassing him all day.

Oh well, things look to be back on track – at least for now.

The contest (of sorts) ends on Thursday at midnight (PST). You can get to thinking, but this is the current most-upvoted monologue. It’s damn motivational, if I do say so myself (and full of colorful language, as you would expect).

(I call it “my new alarm clock.”)

Good morning, sunshine. It’s time to get up now. Another bright and beautiful day is out there, just waiting for you to go out and- stop. Do not hit that snooze button. Do not hit that god damned snooze button. You think anything great in this world ever got done by a lazy motherfucker who never even tried? You think it’s supposed to come easy? You think I’ve had it easy? Get your ass up. Get. Your ass. Up. Right now.

Beautiful things can be done in a day, god damn it. Tell someone you love them. Make art. Get into trouble, for fuck’s sake, hurt yourself, make someone happy, get laid. Quit your job, or destroy your job – whichever one it is you want to do, it starts with you rolling out of bed right now. And brush your teeth, god damn it, your breath smells like ass.

WAKE. UP. Now. Get the fuck out of bed. This is life. You’re not gonna make it out of here alive, you’re running out of time this very second, and you want to hit snooze? Did nobody tell you that you’re capable of great things? Do you need someone to tell you that shit? Here, if you’re gonna be a god damned fool, let me say it for you: I believe in you. I think you can do it. I think you’re the baddest, most batshit crazy and capable-of-anything motherfucker there ever was.

Now get the fuck out of bed and get something done.

Another popular idea was to have Mr. Jackson read The Raven, but replace the word “nevermore” with “motherfucker.” Good idea – except for two major issues. First, that poem is well over 1,000 words. And second, that’ll just throw off the rhyme, man. Not cool.

While you wait, enjoy this. I’m not sure that anything reddit comes up with can top this:

[Image via Samuel L Jackson, Twitter]

Incognito mode for Chrome is super helpful not just as a privacy feature, but also for letting your friends use Chrome without using your Google account. A recent comment from Android head Sundar Pichai suggests that we could see a similar feature hitting Android soon.

Speaking at the D11 conference, Pichai was asked if more privacy was needed in Google products. He pointed to Chrome’s privacy settings, incognito mode in particular, as features that help enhance privacy on the Web. He then said that he would like to bring those features to Android in the future.

Here’s the full response:

“When we did Chrome, we invested in incognito mode. Now you can do that on the phone. You’re completely not signed-in, and we don’t know anything about you… We do want more things like that, though. From a security, child safety, etc. standpoint. Chrome OS lets you be a guest user. We’re working on things like that on Android.”

Pichai didn’t provide anymore information beyond that so it’s not entirely clear what he meant. It’s easy to see that Google will be bringing more privacy options to Android, but does that mean the Android team is bringing something like incognito mode to the platform? Will Google allow users to completely drop off the grid when using Android devices?

In short, not likely. What this may mean is that Google will be introducing something like Kid’s Corner on Android. For those unaware, Kid’s Corner is a Windows Phone 8 feature that turns off all the communication functions of the device and restricts the user to a select number of apps. Google may also be bringing multiple user accounts to Android phones. It’s already a feature in Android tablets.

We’ve reached out to Google for more clarification on Pichai’s statement, and will update if/when we hear back.

Whatever it is, we’ll likely see it in the next version of Android that’s rumored for release sometime this year.

[h/t: Engadget]

Kim Kardashian had a bit of a Marilyn Monroe, “7 Year Itch” moment recently when a gust of wind caught the skirt of her babydoll dress and sent it pluming up around her.

Kardashian was on her way to a restaurant in Beverly Hills when it happened and was, of course, surrounded by paparazzi, who snapped pics of the almost-flash. She managed to keep the skirt down before her bare baby belly was shown, though.

Kardashian recently returned from a family vacation in Greece, where they shot scenes for their reality show. No doubt the photographers will be following her around more than usual until she gives birth, which should be sometime in July. For now, there are rumors going around that she’s getting procedures done on her face–such as Botox–due to pictures floating around that show her looking a bit puffy. However, it’s more than likely simply pregnancy that’s giving her a healthy glow and a fuller face.

Image: JAXN RAAK/AKM-GSI

On May 16, singer George Michael was injured in a car accident in Northwest London. The accident, which involved no third parties, landed the “Faith” singer in the hospital. Though a statement on the singer’s website indicated that Michael had only suffered “superficial cuts and bruises,” subsequent reports have indicated that his injuries were much more severe.

This week, Michael is out of the hospital. A new statement on the singer’s website relates that he has been discharged, though he is still needs time to “rest and recuperate.” There is no word on when Michael could be well enough to return to performing. The statement, in full:

We can confirm that George Michael has been discharged from hospital and continues to rest and recuperate. He is well and thanks everyone for all the messages of support.

According to a BBC News report, Michael was a passenger in a Range Rover that crashed. The singer had to be airlifted to a trauma center in London. Witnesses stated that Michael had a deep gash in his forehead following the accident.