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Category: News

  • Encouraging more girls to code not just a first-world problem for Technovation Challenge

    Growing up in India, Tara Chklovski said she felt that young girls and boys were equally encouraged to study engineering and the sciences. So when she came to the U.S. in her early twenties, she was surprised to see women leaning away from careers in technology.

    “I was struck by how, in a first-world country, you have women who don’t see themselves as inventors and problem-solvers,” she said. “Women don’t see science and engineering as fields that are accessible to them.”

    Chklovski had planned to pursue a PhD in aerospace engineering and then work for an aviation company. But, along the way, she decided to switch gears and launch the non-profit Iridescent Learning, with a mission of bringing a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curriculum to high school girls and encouraging women engineers, scientists and other high-tech professionals to be mentors.

    And now that the program is gaining traction in the U.S., she’s expanding its scope to countries around the world.

    Meetups meet massive open online classes

    Through its annual Technovation Challenge, girls across the country take part in a 12-week mobile app development program that includes involvement from female tech leaders like Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Edmodo CEO Crystal Hutter. Participants meet with their team and a teacher or local mentor each week in person, as well as follow online instructions through P2PU, an online open education project.

    “[The program is] like a hybrid between meetups and Coursera,” said Chklovski.

    This year, for example, the program challenged more than 100 teams of girls to create a mobile app that solves an issue in their community. Some of the finalists, who will pitch their ideas to judges from Google, Dropbox, the Office of Naval Research and other STEM organizations this week, include an app that pairs nonprofits and volunteers and a mobile service for school attendance taking. The top team will win $10,000 and support to bring their app to market.

    Given the dearth of programming instruction in the U.S. schools — it’s not offered at 90 percent of U.S. schools, despite the fact that programming jobs are growing at double the pace of other jobs, according to Code.org — more startups and nonprofits are stepping up to fill the instructional void.

    But, as Silicon Valley knows so well, the need for technical training is even more pronounced among women and girls. While about 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees go to women, the percentage of computer science degrees earned by women is in the low double-digits. In addition to Iridescent, organizations like Girls Who Code, Girl Develop It and Black Girls Code are zeroing on the gender gap in technology with programs that give women and girls technical training and support networks.

    Inspiring women inventors in the developing world

    In the seven years since its launch, Iridescent has raised millions of dollars from the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research and it’s partnered with top tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Twitter and LinkedIn to mentor and educate more than 17,000 girls in NY, LA, Chicago, Boston and the Bay Area through its several programs.

    For the first time this year, international teams competed in the Technovation Challenge. But Chklovksi said she wants to reach beyond more affluent teams overseas to girls in the developing world.

    While Iridescent can shoulder the cost of providing teams with mobile phones and corporate partners with international networks can help provide access to other technology, Chklovski said that as they expand, a bigger challenge may be infrastructure issues — for example, reaching areas that don’t have widespread Internet access. For teams in those regions, she said, they’re moving content to USB drives so students aren’t dependent on the Internet.

    Other teams may face cultural barriers. This year, a team from Ghana that wanted to participate in the challenge ran into difficulties because it was only culturally-appropriate for middle-aged men to have mobile phones, not young girls. Translating the program’s content from English into different languages will likely be another issue as Iridescent boosts its presence in the developing world.

    But Chklovski said they’re learning from their efforts and are working with their partners’ local networks around the world to troubleshoot problems that pop up. And to be extra sure teams in more remote areas can still complete the program, she said that for next year they’re removing the 12-week schedule so that teams have ample time to complete the curriculum.

    “[The idea] is girls in third world countries looking at a phone and saying, ‘I can fix this’,” she said. “It’s having the confidence to think of themselves as inventors. We’re changing the way the public sees girls and the way that girls see themselves.”

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  • UCLA study shows that individual brain cells track where we are and how we move

    Leaving the house in the morning may seem simple, but with every move we make, our brains are working feverishly to create maps of the outside world that allow us to navigate and to remember where we are.
     
    Take one step out the front door, and an individual brain cell fires. Pass by your rose bush on the way to the car, another specific neuron fires. And so it goes. Ultimately, the brain constructs its own pinpoint geographical chart that is far more precise than anything you’d find on Google Maps.
     
    But just how neurons make these maps of space has fascinated scientists for decades. It is known that several types of stimuli influence the creation of neuronal maps, including visual cues in the physical environment — that rose bush, for instance — the body’s innate knowledge of how fast it is moving, and other inputs, like smell. Yet the mechanisms by which groups of neurons combine these various stimuli to make precise maps are unknown.
     
    To solve this puzzle, UCLA neurophysicists built a virtual-reality environment that allowed them to manipulate these cues while measuring the activity of map-making neurons in rats. Surprisingly, they found that when certain cues were removed, the neurons that typically fire each time a rat passes a fixed point or landmark in the real world instead began to compute the rat’s relative position, firing, for example, each time the rodent walked five paces forward, then five paces back, regardless of landmarks. And many other mapping cells shut down altogether, suggesting that different sensory cues strongly influence these neurons.
     
    Finally, the researchers found that in this virtual world, the rhythmic firing of neurons that normally speeds up or slows down depending on the rate at which an animal moves, was profoundly altered. The rats’ brains maintained a single, steady rhythmic pattern.
     
    The findings, reported in the May 2 online edition of the journal Science, provide further clues to how the brain learns and makes memories.
     
    The mystery of how cells determine place
     
    “Place cells” are individual neurons located in the brain’s hippocampus that create maps by registering specific places in the outside environment. These cells are crucial for learning and memory. They are also known to play a role in such conditions as post-traumatic stress disorder and Alzheimer’s disease when damaged.
     
    For some 40 years, the thinking had been that the maps made by place cells were based primarily on visual landmarks in the environment, known as distal cues — a tall tree, a building — as well on motion, or gait, cues. But, as UCLA neurophysicist and senior study author Mayank Mehta points out, other cues are present in the real world: the smell of the local pizzeria, the sound of a nearby subway tunnel, the tactile feel of one’s feet on a surface. These other cues, which Mehta likes to refer to as “stuff,” were believed to have only a small influence on place cells.
     
    Could it be that these different sensory modalities led place cells to create individual maps, wondered Mehta, a professor with joint appointments in the departments of neurology, physics and astronomy. And if so, do these individual maps cooperate with each other, or do they compete? No one really knew for sure.
     
    Virtual reality reveals new clues
     
    To investigate, Mehta and his colleagues needed to separate the distal and gait cues from all the other “stuff.” They did this by crafting a virtual-reality maze for rats in which odors, sounds and all stimuli, except distal and gait cues, were removed. As video of a physical environment was projected around them, the rats, held by a harness, were placed on a ball that rotated as they moved. When they ran, the video would move along with them, giving the animals the illusion that they were navigating their way through an actual physical environment.
     
    As a comparison, the researchers had the rats — six altogether — run a real-world maze that was visually identical to the virtual-reality version but that included the additional “stuff” cues. Using micro-electrodes 10 times thinner than a human hair, the team measured the activity of some 3,000 space-mapping neurons in the rats’ brains as they completed both mazes.
     
    What they found intrigued them. The elimination of the “stuff” cues in the virtual-reality maze had a huge effect: Fully half of the neurons being recorded became inactive, despite the fact that the distal and gate cues were similar in the virtual and real worlds. The results, Mehta said, show that these other sensory cues, once thought to play only a minor role in activating the brain, actually have a major influence on place cells.
     
    And while in the real world, place cells responded to fixed, absolute positions, spiking at those same positions each time rats passed them, regardless of the direction they were moving — a finding consistent with previous experiments — this was not the case in the virtual-reality maze.
     
    “In the virtual world,” Mehta said, “we found that the neurons almost never did that. Instead, the neurons spiked at the same relative distance in the two directions as the rat moved back and forth. In other words, going back to the front door-to-car analogy, in a virtual world, the cell that fires five steps away from the door when leaving your home would not fire five steps away from the door upon your return. Instead, it would fire five steps away from the car when leaving the car. Thus, these cells are keeping track of the relative distance traveled rather than absolute position. This gives us evidence for the individual place cell’s ability to represent relative distances.”
     
    Mehta thinks this is because neuronal maps are generated by three different categories of stimuli — distal cues, gait and “stuff” — and that all are competing for control of neural activity. This competition is what ultimately generates the “full” map of space.
     
    “All the external stuff is fixed at the same absolute position and hence generates a representation of absolute space,” he said. “But when all the stuff is removed, the profound contribution of gait is revealed, which enables neurons to compute relative distances traveled.”
     
    The researchers also made a new discovery about the brain’s theta rhythm. It is known that place cells use the rhythmic firing of neurons to keep track of “brain time,” the brain’s internal clock. Normally, Mehta said, the theta rhythm becomes faster as subjects run faster, and slower as running speed decreases. This speed-dependent change in brain rhythm was thought to be crucial for generating the ‘brain time’ for place cells. But the team found that in the virtual world, the theta rhythm was uninfluenced by running speed.
     
    “That was a surprising and fascinating discovery, because the ‘brain time’ of place cells was as precise in the virtual world as in the real world, even though the speed-dependence of the theta rhythm was abolished,” Mehta said. “This gives us a new insight about how the brain keeps track of space-time.”
     
    The researchers found that the firing of place cells was very precise, down to one-hundredth of a second, “so fast that we humans cannot perceive it but neurons can,” Mehta said. “We have found that this very precise spiking of neurons with respect to ‘brain-time’ is crucial for learning and making new memories.”
     
    Mehta said the results, taken together, provide insight into how distinct sensory cues both cooperate and compete to influence the intricate network of neuronal activity. Understanding how these cells function is key to understanding how the brain makes and retains memories, which are vulnerable to such disorders as Alzheimer’s and PTSD.
     
    “Ultimately, understanding how these intricate neuronal networks function is a key to developing therapies to prevent such disorders,” he said.
     
    In May, Mehta joined 100 other scientists in Washington, D.C., to help shape President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies), with the goal of trying to tease out how this most complicated of organs works.
     
    Other authors of the study included Pascal Ravassard, Ashley Kees and Bernard Willers, all lead authors, and David Ho, Daniel A. Aharoni, Jesse Cushman and Zahra M. Aghajan of UCLA. Funding was provided by the W.M. Keck foundation, a National Science Foundation career award grant and a National Institutes of Health grant (5R01MH092925-02).
     
    The UCLA Department of Neurology, with over 100 faculty members, encompasses more than 20 disease-related research programs, along with large clinical and teaching programs. These programs cover brain mapping and neuroimaging, movement disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, neurogenetics, nerve and muscle disorders, epilepsy, neuro-oncology, neurotology, neuropsychology, headaches and migraines, neurorehabilitation, and neurovascular disorders. The department ranks in the top two among its peers nationwide in National Institutes of Health funding.
     
    For more news, visit the UCLA Newsroom and follow us on Twitter.

  • Connected Kitchen Scale From Chef Sleeve Tracks Your Nutrition Bite-By-Bite

    smart-food-scales

    Chef Sleeve has been selling its iPad-protecting plastic sleeves since 2011 to keep kitchen gunk off the iPad you’re using while you cook. They also make a dishwasher-safe, non-porous chopping board with a built in iPad stand (below right), and a smaller stand in the same recycled paper composite finish. But Chef Sleeve’s grand plan is to create a range of connected devices for the kitchen that link up with an iPad app to let people track their nutrition in a highly granular, yet low hassle, way.

    To that end it’s just kicked off a Kickstarter campaign for its next product: a smart Bluetooth scale, which it’s calling Smart Food Scales, that will enable people to weigh ingredients and snacks and then determine the exact amount of fat, salt, sugar, vitamins and so on in the ingredients they’re using in recipes or the snacks they’re eating at home.

    “This is our first smart product. We now want to activate these pieces of hardware and take the iPad even further and enhance the experience in the kitchen,” says Chef Sleeve’s Michael Tankenoff. “The Bluetooth scale will sync up with our iOS app on iPad or iPhone. Say you’re weighing strawberries. We house the USDA database of food information, so you select strawberries. Not only will it tell you the weight, but it tells you all the nutritional information.

    “For example, you’re preparing a salad — you put your bowl on the scale, add your lettuce, select lettuce, reset to zero, add your tomatoes, select tomatoes, reset to zero, keep going, build this recipe and when you’re done, now you know exactly the nutritional value of that salad that you have every day.”

    As well as the health conscious and people watching their weight, Chef Sleeve envisages the scales being useful for individuals with conditions such as diabetes to help them track their sugar intake, or people with specific nutritional deficiencies who need to make sure they’re getting enough of certain vitamins in their diet.

    The company is looking to raise $30,000 via its Kickstarter campaign, which runs until the end of the month. It’s showing the following prototype screenshots (below) of the planned iPad software. It also intends to open up its API at some point in the future, so that third-party developers can build apps for the smart scales — although it’s going to be careful about how it does this, as it wants to keep any other apps wholesome (scales can, after all, be used to weigh non-foodstuffs too).

    After the scales, Chef Sleeve says it will look to launch other connected devices that tie back in to its iOS app to keep adding to a range of smart kitchen devices. A thermometer could be next, says CEO Santiago Merea. A chopping board with an integrated scale could also be on the cards “at some point” — but he says the company is being mindful about its mainstream consumer buyer. “We need to be careful about our demographic. We’re not going to throw rockets at them,” he told TechCrunch. “We want the design to be very homey, very crafty.”

    If the uptake of the scales is strong, it could end up generating some fascinating data for Chef Sleeve — such as what, when and how people eat — which it said it will look to feed back into its product development.

    “Our pledge is going to be to not store any personal information at all — because we don’t need to but we also don’t want the risk of being hacked,” said Merea. ”Food is personal… So we’re not storing any personal information but we don’t need to. With that data we can also even help our customers. It’s going to be really cool what we can do with this.”

    Chef Sleeve already has stores interested in carrying the smart scales, according to Merea. It’s hoping to get into speciality kitchenware stores with the smart scales, a shift of its retail strategy which, to date, has been mostly focused on selling via Amazon (and its own website).

  • LinkedIn again posts strong quarterly earnings thanks to job seekers and HR pros

    In case you missed it: LinkedIn remains a very profitable public social web company, it’s trying to become a major media platform and corporate recruiting is where the money’s coming from. There weren’t too many surprises from the company’s first quarter earnings released on Thursday, but another quarter of strong numbers and exceeded expectations reinforce the trends we’ve been seeing from LinkedIn over the past year.

    linkedinLinkedIn posted its first quarter earnings on Thursday, reporting revenue of $324.7 million, which beat analyst expectations of $317.08 million. The company saw first-quarter earnings of $0.45 per share excluding one-time charges, compared to analyst expectations of $0.31 per share. The first quarter revenue of $324.7 million is up 72 percent over the $188.5 million in revenue from the same quarter of 2012.

    As we’ve written before, the company’s corporate recruiting efforts, called the “Talent Solutions” portion of the business, has become the primary money-maker for LinkedIn, and that remained true for this quarter. The Talent Solutions section grew to become 57 percent of the company’s revenue this quarter with $184.3 million in revenue, up from 53 percent of the company’s revenue last quarter. It allows companies and professional recruiters to pay for access to the product that lets them track candidates, post job openings, and manage submissions.

    The company reported $22.6 million in net income and non-GAAP net income of $52.4 million, which translated to earnings per share excluding one-time charges of $0.45.

    The company noted earlier this year that a good deal of its new user acquisitions were coming from overseas, and in fact nearly 40 percent of the company’s revenue this quarter came from international markets. The company also noted Thursday that they’ve seen huge growth from students on LinkedIn as well. LinkedIn’s SVP of engineering, Kevin Scott, will be talking about the challenges in leading engineering for the growing business this summer at our Structure conference in San Francisco.

    LinkedIn has emerged as one of the most profitable social web companies on the public market right now, consistently posting strong numbers and coming off particularly strong fourth quarter earnings. Since February, the company has launched a variety of products and new features, having recently re-designed its consumer-facing mobile app as well as its Recruiter page for corporate recruiters. The company also launched the brand-new LinkedIn Contacts product, which is a separate mobile app that serves as an integrated contacts app for super-networkers. LinkedIn also acquired the social news reader Pulse, and is clearly looking to make the main feed on the site more of a hub for business-related news and media.

    CEO Jeff Weiner also noted that LinkedIn will be selling sponsored content in the main LinkedIn feed, which fits with the company’s goal to populate the feed with more business-related news, photos and videos. Once LinkedIn becomes a destination for people to find current news, it gives the company more chances to sell ads. But even as the number of users on LinkedIn appears to be growing, it’s all relative: LinkedIn is only at 225 million registered users, up from 200 million in January, and those are just registered, not active. So take that for whatever it’s worth.

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  • HTC CEO given ‘One’ last chance

    HTC One sales CEO Peter Chou
    HTC’s profits plummeted 98% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2013 and chief executive Peter Chou’s future may depend on the success of the company’s new flagship smartphone. HTC was at one point the top-selling smartphone vendor in the United States, however the company’s lead vanished as rivals began innovating faster. Samsung and Apple now ship 22 times more handsets globally than HTC.

    Continue reading…

  • Why we should stop asking Twitter to introduce a correction feature

    Every time a breaking news event like the Boston bombings occurs and Twitter becomes a hot mess of real-time news reports, hoaxes, fake accounts and misinformation, there is a great hue and cry for some kind of correction mechanism or editing ability for incorrect tweets — and a tool with the somewhat cringe-worthy name Retwact has been the latest beneficiary of that impulse. But even if we could design such a thing and make it work, is that really what Twitter needs? As appealing as the idea might seem, I don’t think it is.

    Retwact — whose full name is Retweet Retraction — is the brainchild of a programmer named Stonly Baptiste, a developer in Pennsylvania. In a nutshell, the service archives your incorrect tweet with a correction or apology of your choosing, then shoots a link out to all of your followers to try and encourage them to read the corrected version. In addition, it also sends an @ mention and link out to the first 100 people who retweeted your original incorrect message, in the hope that they might also help spread the correction.

    Correcting tweets would be complicated

    As it turns out, this latter feature appears to have run afoul of Twitter’s terms of service, which are designed to prevent spam accounts, and Retwact’s account was suspended on Thursday. Baptiste says that he plans to go ahead with the other features regardless, and may even make his project — which received a lot of support on Y Combinator’s Hacker News forum — open source.

    Fail2

    The impulse behind a tool like Retwact is an obvious one: as Wired writer Mat Honan notes, there is a sinking feeling whenever you tweet or retweet something that is incorrect (or turns out to be incorrect), and it would be nice to be able to retract or remove not just that tweet but all the subsequent retweets of it as well, to clear up the public record. Honan joins a growing chorus of critics asking for a correction mechanism (or trying to design one, as some members of this post-Boston Branch discussion did).

    Adding that kind of editing or retraction/clarification ability seems to be something that is within Twitter’s grasp: in the same way that it has built hooks into Twitter’s code so that media companies can embed video clips and other data within its “Cards” or expanded tweet feature, it would theoretically be possible for Twitter to add a hook that would connect a mistaken tweet with its subsequent corrected version, so that both would follow each other around the social web.

    As Twitter engineer Nick Kallen has explained, however, the likelihood of Twitter actually building in this feature seems somewhere between slim and nil — in part because they driving force behind most of the company’s changes over the past year or so (with the exception of expanded tweets) has been to strip functionality and features away rather than to add them. An editing or correction function could also theoretically be abused in a number of ways.

    Twitter is a real-time stream

    But more than that, I think Kallen puts his finger on the problem when he says that adding correction features would change the nature of what Twitter is in a fairly fundamental way. The whole point of the service is that it is a stream of content that never stops — and the only way to correct a tweet is to send out another one. In that sense, it mimics conversation, which is also inherently un-correctable except through more conversation. It may be flawed and messy, but that’s the way information works now, for better or worse.

    twitter-bird

    And yes, this has obvious flaws, because the correction never travels quite as far as the original mistake (as Craig Silverman of Regret The Error has pointed out). But over time, I firmly believe that Twitter becomes what Sasha-Frere Jones of the New Yorker called a “self-cleaning oven” for news.

    On top of that, I don’t think adding an editing or correction function like Retwact would actually help all that much. People would continue to believe whatever they want to believe — as wrong as that might be — and no matter how thorough the mechanism was, it wouldn’t stop those who created their own manual retweets or retweets of retweets. I also think that having errors emerge and get stamped out over time is a positive process that creates more skepticism about real-time news, something that we need to encourage. It is a process, not a finished product.

    So as much as I cringe internally whenever I send out a mistake — which I have done, and will no doubt continue to do — I hope Twitter ignores the requests of its critics to implement an official editing or correction function.

    Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Shutterstock / Hirurg

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  • Time Warner Cable CEO’s response on Aereo: Yeah, we could do that

    Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt is thinking about delivering over the air television to consumers via the internet. The CEO of the nation’s second largest cable provider told the Washington Post in an interview Thursday that he found Aereo’s actions “interesting,” and something his company might consider.

    From the Washington Post article:

    “What Aereo is doing to bring broadcast signals to its customers is interesting,” Time Warner Cable chief executive Glenn Britt said in an interview with The Washington Post. “If it is found legal, we could conceivably use similar technology.”

    That’s a big admission from Britt, and illustrates both how rapidly the internet is changing the television industry. But what would be an even bigger admission would be if Britt would consider delivering that public broadcast package beyond its existing subscriber base.

    A modest proposal

    In short, would Britt be willing to break the unspoken agreement that has kept the telcos and cable providers from infringing on each other’s turfs even as IP technology has made it possible for them to deliver their TV packages over the top?

    If Time Warner Cable were to implement an Aereo-like business model and offer it to anyone, it might hurt Aereo but it would set off a war between the telcos and cable companies to deliver their services over the top. In many cases, the technology isn’t stopping this revolution, but the business implications would give them pause.

    If Comcast’s Xfinity service were available everywhere and so were Verizon’s FiOS packages, then pay TV will have been decoupled from the entwork. All you would be left with are dumb pipes and whole lot of companies offering to provide the same channels of television. Would we need 20 “premium cable offerings?”

    My hunch is no, which would have trickle down effects on the money the networks make as well as hasten the rise of a la carte pay TV packages, or even simply paying for a show. However, all of this speculation is premature as Britt cushioned his statements by telling the Washington Post that his company is only watching Aereo’s legal battle and that it doesn’t have concrete plans.

    Taking action on this sort of talk would hugely piss off the broadcasters that own some of the channels that Time Warner Cable depends on to keep its subscribers happy, and may just be a feint in the ongoing fight between cable providers and content companies about retransmission fees.

    Back in the real world

    But Britt is clearly a fan of shaking things up. Unlike many ISPs that view Netflix as a threat to their triple play bundle, Time Warner Cable sends out advertisements touting Netflix as a reason to upgrade broadband speeds. He’s also letting consumers stream live TV to their Roku boxes with a Time Warner Subscription (that might come in handy should it elect to make an Aereo-style over the top offering). And he’s also been more vocal about the need for more flexible packages of channels for consumers.

    He reiterated that to the Washington Post:

    “The structure needs more flexibility,” Britt said. A customer shouldn’t have to pay for less popular channels like VH1 Honors in order to get Nick Jr. and MTV. “There are fellow citizens who are struggling financially and can’t afford large programming packages. We want the ability to offer those customers smaller, more affordable packages.”

    It’s better to keep a customer paying you something, rather than decamping because they don’t want to pay for a $150 cable bill. Britt seems to get that, and wants to find a middle ground before the internet and over the top TV offerings take that ground out from under his feet. I wonder if he’s willing to take it even further.

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  • Solis Closes Second Fund at $61 Mln

    Solis Capital Partners has closed its second fund at $61 million. Solis, of Newport Beach, Calif., said it invests in companies in several industries including business services, niche manufacturing and software, typically headquartered in the Western United States.

    PRESS RELEASE

    Solis Capital Partners (Solis), a lower middle-market private equity firm, today announced the closing of its second fund, Solis II, at $61 million in capital commitments.

    “We are pleased with the success of Solis II, especially in this challenging fundraising environment,” said Daniel Lubeck , Managing Director and Founder of Solis. “We are encouraged by the support and strong interest from new institutional investors, and are gratified that so many of our Solis I investors have committed to Solis II. This is great validation of our team, strategy and processes which have consistently created value independent of economic cycles.”
    “Solis’ consistent top quartile performance and fundamentals-based approach were essential for our fundraise success,” said Craig Dupper, Partner at Solis. “In Solis II, we will continue our proven method of generating superior returns through growth and improvement of lower middle-market businesses.”
    Solis invests in companies in a variety of industries including business services, niche manufacturing and software, typically headquartered in the Western United States. “Solis II enables us to continue partnering with business owners and managers who have a need for capital and desire to maximize their companies’ potential,” said Lubeck.
    Solis completed the first Solis II investment in March last year, acquiring an interest in gen-E, an information technology process automation (ITPA) software and services company based in San Clemente, CA. For additional information, see www.gen-e.com.
    Solis Capital Partners is private equity investment firm specializing in the lower middle-market. It is headquartered in Newport Beach, CA, with an office in San Diego, CA. Utilizing its Solis 360°® process, the firm partners with business owners and managers to create value through enterprise growth and improvement. Solis focuses on companies in the Western U.S. with revenues of $15 – $100 million in the service, niche manufacturing, and software sectors, and has produced superior investment returns since its founding in 2002. The firm is actively investing through Solis II. For additional information, see www.soliscapital.com.

    The post Solis Closes Second Fund at $61 Mln appeared first on peHUB.

  • Zimmer Buys Knee Creations

    Zimmer Holdings has acquired Knee Creations. Financial terms weren’t announced. West Chester, Pa. Knee Creations is a provider of knee treatments. Knee Creations was funded with an angel equity round and a Series A equity round of financing, together with debt, led by Viscogliosi Brothers, Praefinium and Philadelphia Medical Investment Group.

    PRESS RELEASE

    Zimmer Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: ZMH; SIX: ZMH) announced today that it has acquired the business assets of West Chester, Pennsylvania-based Knee Creations, LLC. The acquisition enhances Zimmer’s product portfolio of knee treatments through the addition of Knee Creations’ Subchondroplasty® procedure. Subchondroplasty is an innovative, proprietary joint-preservation treatment that has been shown to deliver sustained relief to patients with knee pain, with or without arthritis. It is the first procedure to address an unmet clinical need between early interventions, including NSAIDs and arthroscopy, and total joint replacement.
    “Zimmer is committed to developing the most comprehensive range of therapies for knee patients, from early intervention and joint preservation products to patient specific instrumentation and personalized joint replacements,” said Jeff McCaulley, President, Zimmer Reconstructive. “The acquisition of Knee Creations’ revolutionary Subchondroplasty treatment provides Zimmer with another clinically differentiated offering that addresses an unmet clinical need.”
    Marc R. Viscogliosi , a founder and Chairman of the Board of Managers of Knee Creations, LLC, stated, “On behalf of the Knee Creations board and its whole investor base, we are pleased that Zimmer will be the new owner of this business and technology, enabling it to further flourish for the benefit of patients and physicians. As a global leader, we believe Zimmer can make the greatest impact with the revolutionary Subchondroplasty procedure platform.”
    Subchondroplasty is a percutaneous outpatient intervention that addresses the defects associated with subchondral bone marrow edema (BME). BMEs are related to stress fractures or micro-fractures and are diagnosed using MRI. Left untreated, these defects have been shown to lead to cartilage degeneration, limited function, pain and greater risk for joint deterioration.
    In this minimally invasive, arthroscopically-assisted procedure, navigation instruments are used to inject a specialized bone void filler to treat the bone defect and begin the healing process, without violating the joint. Since its introduction in November 2010, more than 1,500 Subchondroplasty procedures have been completed.
    Viscogliosi & Company, LLC (V&CO) acted as exclusive financial advisor to Knee Creations. V&CO is a FINRA registered brokerage dealer, investment bank and advisory firm that represents buyers, sellers and owners of surgeon driven, patient-focused innovative products and technologies.
    About Zimmer Holdings, Inc.
    Founded in 1927 and headquartered in Warsaw, Indiana, Zimmer designs, develops, manufactures and markets orthopaedic reconstructive, spinal and trauma devices, dental implants, and related surgical products. Zimmer has operations in more than 25 countries around the world and sells products in more than 100 countries. Zimmer’s 2012 sales were approximately $4.5 billion. The Company is supported by the efforts of more than 8,500 employees worldwide.
    About Knee Creations, LLC
    Founded by Viscogliosi Brothers, LLC in 2007, and based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Knee Creations, LLC operates as a provider of unique knee treatments. The Company is focused on integrating cutting-edge scientific research into first-of-a-kind surgical solutions to treat defects associated with subchondral bone marrow edema (BME). The company was funded with an angel equity round and a Series A equity round of financing, together with debt, led by Viscogliosi Brothers, LLC, Praefinium and Philadelphia Medical Investment Group, LLC.
    Zimmer Safe Harbor Statement
    This press release contains forward-looking statements within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about the orthopaedics industry, management’s beliefs and assumptions made by management. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terms such as “may,” “will,” “expects,” “believes,” “anticipates,” “plans,” “estimates,” “projects,” “assumes,” “guides,” “targets,” “forecasts,” and “seeks” or the negative of such terms or other variations on such terms or comparable terminology. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, see our periodic reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be set forth in our periodic reports. Readers of this document are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, since, while we believe the assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, there can be no assurance that these forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate. This cautionary statement is applicable to all forward-looking statements contained in this document.

    The post Zimmer Buys Knee Creations appeared first on peHUB.

  • Wong Joins Think Finance

    Think Finance said Thursday that Martin Wong was named the company’s first chief integrity officer. Wong joins Think Finance from Cigna Corp., where he served as deputy general counsel and chief compliance officer.

    PRESS RELEASE
    Think Finance, a company that develops online financial products that bridge the gap between payday loans and credit cards, today announced it has named Martin Wong as the company’s first Chief Integrity Officer.

    In this role, Mr. Wong will oversee the company’s compliance with all state and federal laws and will be responsible for ensuring Think Finance offers the most clear, transparent and fair products in the industry. He will also work with the company’s product teams to develop new features and capabilities that continue to raise the bar for emergency credit options in the market.

    Mr. Wong joins Think Finance from Cigna Corporation, where he served as Deputy General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, helping Cigna meet increasing regulatory requirements and ethical standards as the company expanded internationally. Prior to joining Cigna, he was Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary for Western Union Company. Before this, he held several senior level positions at Citi, where he worked for more than twenty years. He began his career as General Counsel for Centel Information Systems, Inc.

    “We’re excited to welcome Martin to Think Finance and to enhance our management team with the new Chief Integrity Officer role,” said Think Finance Global Chief Executive Officer Ken Rees. “Martin’s extensive international experience and expertise with ethical and regulatory issues will be a valuable asset for Think Finance as we continue to grow the business in a responsible way.”

    “Think Finance has a longstanding commitment to responsible practices,” said Mr. Wong. “I look forward to helping the company adhere to this commitment and uphold its reputation as the leading technology and analytics provider for alternative financial services.”

    Mr. Wong graduated with a Bachelor of Public Administration from Loyola University-New Orleans and also holds a JD from the University of Baltimore School of Law.

    About Think Finance

    Think Finance develops online financial products that bridge the gap between payday loans and credit cards. Using our technology and analytics platform, Think Finance and the lenders we work with have provided over $3.5 billion in credit to 1.5 million consumers in the U.S. and abroad and have saved customers over $1 billion compared to payday loans. Think Finance is privately held and is backed by some of Silicon Valley’s most respected venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures. The company was recently named No. 2 on Forbes’ America’s Most Promising Companies list. Learn more at www.ThinkFinance.com.

    The post Wong Joins Think Finance appeared first on peHUB.

  • These might be the first photos of Google’s ‘X Phone’

    Google X Phone Photos

    Google and Motorola are working on a top-secret “X Phone” that hasn’t really been top-secret for quite some time. While we’ve heard rumblings and rumors here and there, we have yet to see any leaked photos of the mysterious smartphone. Until now — perhaps. Evleaks, who often leaks photos and accurate specs of unreleased smartphones, published four photos of an unknown Motorola handset wrapped in a protective black box to keep its design a secret. While evleaks has not been able to confirm if this is indeed the unbreakable X Phone, a model number on the back reads “XFON ATT,” which certainly suggests that it may be AT&T’s version of the upcoming handset that may revitalize Motorola. There are conflicting reports regarding when Google might unveil the new handset, but there will be plenty of time at the three-hour keynote at this year’s Google I/O conference if it’s ready in time. The leaked photos of the phone follow below.

    Continue reading…

  • Barrett Joins De Luna Partners

    Michael J. Barrett has joined De Luna Partners as a partner. Barrett will be involved in all facets De Luna Partners origination and fundraising for private equity, alternative assets funds, and global equity strategies. Barrett was previously Managing Director, Private Equity at Mesirow Financial in Chicago.

    PRESS RELEASE

    De Luna Partners, a private placement and third party marketing firm that works with private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, and global equity managers announced today that Michael J. Barrett has joined the firm as Partner. Mr. Barrett will be involved in all facets De Luna Partners origination and fundraising for private equity, alternative assets funds, and global equity strategies.
    Mr. Barrett brings over 28 years of institutional investing and fundraising experience to De Luna Partners. As Managing Director, Private Equity at Mesirow Financial in Chicago he was one of five senior investment professionals responsible for building a $3.5 billion private equity platform that includes both private equity fund of funds and direct/co-investment partnerships.  He also led the business development and fundraising efforts within the private equity department since 2004 which resulted in a significant expansion of the number of limited partners/investors and capital under management sourced from institutional investor sectors including public and private pensions, Taft-Hartley, endowments, foundations and high net worth/family offices in North America, Europe and Australia.
    De Luna Partners founder, John de Luna noted, “Michael’s experience of having participated in virtually every aspect of private equity fund management, from being a founding team member of Mesirow’s private equity partnership fund (fund of funds) in 1999 to performing due diligence, financial modeling and post-investment monitoring in connection with acquisitions and growth equity financings of middle market brings a wealth of insight that benefit the general partners and investment managers with whom we work.  His asset class expertise in private equity, natural resources, real assets and real estate, as well as his deep institutional relationships is an enhancement to our team”.
    Mr. Barrett graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor of Science in Accountancy, and from the DePaul University, Kellstadt Graduate School of Business with a Masters of Business Administration.
    In addition to Mr. Barrett, De Luna Partners’ senior team includes John de Luna and Sara Mongerson. Collectively they average over 24 years of deep and diverse experience in institutional fundraising and client service.

     

    The post Barrett Joins De Luna Partners appeared first on peHUB.

  • CIT Provides $96 Mln to Harvest Partners for TruckPro Refi

    CIT Group Inc. said it provided $96 million senior secured credit facility to Harvest Partners to support its refinancing of TruckPro. Memphis, Tenn.-based TruckPro distributes aftermarket parts and accessories for heavy duty vehicles.

    PRESS RELEASE

    CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT) cit.com, a leading provider of financing and advisory services to small businesses and middle market companies, today announced that it provided a $96 million senior secured credit facility to Harvest Partners, a leading middle market private equity firm, to support its refinancing of TruckPro, LLC, a leading independent distributor of aftermarket parts and accessories for heavy duty vehicles.

    CIT Corporate Finance served as Co-Lead Arranger and Documentation Agent for the transaction. Financing was provided by CIT Bank, the U.S. commercial bank subsidiary of CIT. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

    “We’re pleased to put our industry expertise to work for Harvest Partners,” said Jay Baldinelli, Managing Director, CIT Sponsor Finance. “This transaction demonstrates our ability to provide innovative, cost effective debt solutions and further supports our clients’ growth objectives.”

    Chris Whalen, Managing Director at Harvest Partners, said, “CIT played an integral role in our efforts to streamline TruckPro’s capital structure. CIT’s deep industry knowledge and their flexible and competitive financing structures, coupled with our long-standing relationship made them the perfect partner for this transaction.”

    EDITOR’S NOTE:

    View CIT’s corporate overview video (cit.com/corporatevideo) that showcases our support of the small business, middle market and transportation sectors.

    Follow us on Twitter: @citgroup, on LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/company/cit, on YouTube: YouTube.com/citgroupvideo, and on Facebook: facebook.com/citgroup. Individuals interested in receiving corporate news releases can register at cit.com/newsalerts or subscribe to the RSS feed at cit.com/rss.

    About Harvest Partners

    Founded in 1981, Harvest Partners, LP is a leading New York-based private equity investment firm pursuing management buyouts and growth financings. Harvest focuses on acquiring profitable companies in the business services, manufacturing and distribution, industrial services, midstream energy and consumer products and retail sectors. This strategy leverages Harvest’s over 30 years of experience in financing organic and acquisition-oriented growth companies. harvpart.com

    About TruckPro

    TruckPro, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee, distributes heavy duty truck parts through 65 locations in 17 states, primarily in the Southeast and Midwest United States. TruckPro was founded in 1952 and is one of the largest independent distributors of heavy duty truck parts in the country. The company distributes a full range of products to support customer requirements in the areas of brake systems, engines, electrical, drivetrain, and suspension for commercial and government customers. truckpro.com

    About CIT Corporate Finance

    CIT Corporate Finance provides lending, leasing and other financial and advisory services to the small business and middle market sectors, with a focus on specific industries, including: Chemicals, Commercial Real Estate, Communications, Energy, Entertainment, Gaming, Healthcare, Industrials, Information Services & Technology, Restaurants, Retail, and Sports & Media. cit.com/CorporateFinance

    About CIT Bank

    Founded in 2000, CIT Bank (Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender) is the U.S. commercial bank subsidiary of CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT). It provides lending and leasing to the small business, middle market and rail sectors. Through its online bank, BankOnCIT.com, CIT Bank offers a suite of savings options designed to help customers achieve a range of financial goals. As of March 31, 2013, it had $10.6 billion of deposits and $13.3 billion of assets. cit.com/CITBank

    About CIT

    Founded in 1908, CIT (NYSE: CIT) is a bank holding company with more than $35 billion in financing and leasing assets. A member of the Fortune 500, it provides financing and leasing capital and advisory services to its clients and their customers across more than 30 industries. CIT maintains leadership positions in small business and middle market lending, factoring, retail finance, aerospace, equipment and rail leasing, and vendor finance. CIT also operates CIT Bank (Member FDIC), its primary bank subsidiary, which, through its online bank BankOnCIT.com, offers a suite of savings options designed to help customers achieve a range of financial goals. cit.com

    The post CIT Provides $96 Mln to Harvest Partners for TruckPro Refi appeared first on peHUB.

  • Second gas leak at Samsung factory leaves three hospitalized

    Samsung Gas Leak
    Samsung has confirmed that highly poisonous hydrofluoric acid gas has leaked at its main chip plant in the city of Hwaseong, South Korea. The incident comes a little more than three months after an earlier gas leak left one worker dead and four others injured. In a statement to Engadget, the company confirmed that three external contract workers were partially exposed to diluted hydrofluoric acid at Samsung’s main semiconductor facility. The incident occurred as workers were “upgrading parts of an existing facility in line with Ministry of Employment and Labor requirements.” Samsung said that it has reported the incident to the proper authorities and will work with investigators to find the source of the leak. All three workers were admitted to the hospital for further examination.

  • Maya Angelou on Courage and Creativity

    An interview with Dr. Maya Angelou, renowned author. For more, read the Life’s Work section in the May issue of HBR.

    Download this podcast

    A written transcript will be available by May 10.

  • New MN Broadband Task Force Members: Andrea Casselton & Fred Underwood

    An abbreviated press release; I’m just pulling out the broadband related appointees…

    Notice of Appointments by Governor Dayton

    Today Governor Mark Dayton announced the following appointments to the Board of Psychology, the Governor’s Task Force on Broadband, and the Minnesota Higher Education Facilities Authority.

    Andrea Casselton – St. Paul, MN
    Governor’s Task Force on Broadband
    Member
    Effective: May 7, 2013
    Term Expires: January 5, 2015
    Replacing: Steve Peterson

    Fred Underwood – Cloquet, MN
    Governor’s Task Force on Broadband
    Member
    Effective: May 7, 2013
    Term Expires: January 5, 2015
    Replacing: Keith Modglin

    Fred Underwood is Director of  Technology at the Fond Du Lac Reservation.

    Andrea Casselton is the Director of the Office of Technology & Communications in St Paul.

  • Howard Kurtz Fired After Jason Collins Story

    Howard Kurtz, the writer whose piece on Jason Collins drew backlash earlier this week, has been fired from The Daily Beast.

    Kurtz alleged in his story that Collins, who has just come out as a gay man, didn’t come clean about his engagement to a woman. He also made several errors regarding Collins’ essay in Sports Illustrated, then updated his article to amend his original stance and ended up just making readers angry.

    Collins’ piece read, “When I was younger I dated women. I even got engaged. I thought I had to live a certain way. I thought I needed to marry a woman and raise kids with her. I kept telling myself the sky was red, but I always knew it was blue.”

    The Daily Beast retracted the article and released a statement about Kurtz’s errors, saying, “The Daily Beast sincerely regrets Kurtz’s error — and any implication that Collins attempted to hide or obscure the engagement.”

    Since coming out in the most recent edition of Sports Illustrated, Collins is being recognized as the first openly gay professional athlete in the U.S. The story went viral this week, but Kurtz’s blog post picked up major media attention and may have had a hand in his termination. Kurtz had this to say on Twitter:

    “I’ve enjoyed my time at the Daily Beast but as we began to move in different directions, both sides agreed it was best to part company,” he wrote. “This was in the works for some time, but want to wish all my colleagues continued success with a terrific website. Newsweek and the Beast are great brands, but the time had come for me to move on to other opportunities.”

  • Spark Core brings open hardware plus a cloud service to the internet of things

    What would you do with a Wi-Fi connected Arduino board and a cloud service that lets you write code to control your new Wi-Fi enabled computer? Would you design a refrigerator magnet that tweets? Maybe set your lights to flicker when your high school crush changes his or her relationship status? Or, why not build a multimillion-dollar product line of connected devices supported by the Spark Core service?

    e3d3de64a88fdb2ca0b32a91d638a301_large

    Spark Devices, a startup that’s part of the HAXLR8TR incubator in China, has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its Spark Core hardware and cloud service that advertises the first two ideas, but CEO and Co-founder Zach Supalla hopes that the last example is where the market eventually ends up. The company’s Kickstarter is already funded after a mere 75 minutes (the goal was a relatively low $10,000), but the hardware isn’t the really exciting offering here.

    Essentially the hardware is an Arduino with the nicest Texas Instruments Wi-Fi shield attached. A shield is what people add to their Arduino boards for extra functionality. They come in all kinds ranging from LCD screen to Wi-Fi. But the point is that anyone can make this: The real value is, as Supalla said, in the software.

    46e46bdc7e2640ff5eecaa335992046e_large

    In a chat this afternoon Supalla explained that the company’s four employees have been coming up with the Spark Core idea and platform since its first Kickstarter project (and business idea) failed. They had offered a connected light bulb called Spark Socket just a few weeks after the Philips Hue and the LIFX light bulb came out, and apparently the market for connected lightbulbs was subsequently saturated.

    Supalla didn’t let that slow him down. Like several other companies he recognized that while there are hundreds of thousands of makers out there willing to play around with connected devices, there were literally millions of people who would love to have the same kind of toys that DIYers hack together in a more polished form.

    SparkRCcar

    But the price of delivering that polished form was too high for Spark Devices; plus, there’s more value in software as open hardware becomes more tenable for businesses building consumer-grade hardware outside of DIYers. So Spark really wants to make the same play that Electric Imp is attempting, offering connectivity in an easy-to-integrate package with the primary value being a cloud-based platform for hosting and writing the code to build services associated with those connected devices.

    In short, it’s another platform as a service for the internet of things. Thus, with the hardware components it is most like Electric Imp, but on the software side it competes with a bunch of companies such as Carriots, ThingWorx and likely many more.

    So for those of you excited about pulling together a Wi-Fi powered RC car or a connected web cam, this project and hardware is for you. But to build a big business Spark Devices is going to have to entice more than makers.

    The good news is the team knows this, and has a small amount of seed funding to get it started. Let’s see what happens.

    Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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  • Checkpoint Closes Sale of CheckView to Platinum Equity

    Checkpoint Systems said Thursday that it completed the sale of its U.S. and Canadian CheckView business to Platinum Equity. Financial terms were not announced. Checkpoint announced the sale in march.

    PRESS RELEASE
    Checkpoint Systems, Inc. (NYSE: CKP) today announced that it has completed the sale of its U.S. and Canadian CheckView® business to an affiliate of Platinum Equity, a California-based private equity firm. On March 25, 2013, the Company announced that it had reached a definitive agreement with Platinum Equity to acquire all continuing business operations and assets associated with the U.S. and Canadian CheckView business.

    Checkpoint Systems, Inc.

    Checkpoint Systems is a global leader in shrink management, merchandise visibility and apparel labeling solutions. Checkpoint enables retailers and their suppliers to reduce shrink, improve shelf availability and leverage real-time data to achieve operational excellence. Checkpoint solutions are built upon more than 40 years of RF technology expertise, diverse shrink management offerings, a broad portfolio of apparel labeling solutions, market-leading RFID applications, innovative high-theft solutions and its Web-based Check-Net® data management platform. As a result, Checkpoint customers enjoy increased sales and profits by improving supply-chain efficiencies, by facilitating on-demand label printing and by providing a secure open-merchandising environment enhancing the consumer’s shopping experience. For more information, visit www.checkpointsystems.com.

    Forward-Looking Statement

    This press release includes information that constitutes forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements often address our expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” “seek,” or “will.” By their nature, forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Any such forward-looking statements may involve risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results encompassed within the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include: the impact upon operations of legal compliance matters or internal controls review, improvement and remediation, including the detection of wrongdoing, improper activities, or circumvention of internal controls; our ability to integrate acquisitions and to achieve our financial and operational goals for our acquisitions; changes in international business conditions; foreign currency exchange rate and interest rate fluctuations; lower than anticipated demand by retailers and other customers for our products; slower commitments of retail customers to chain-wide installations and/or source tagging adoption or expansion; possible increases in per unit product manufacturing costs due to less than full utilization of manufacturing capacity as a result of slowing economic conditions or other factors; our ability to provide and market innovative and cost-effective products; the development of new competitive technologies; our ability to maintain our intellectual property; competitive pricing pressures causing profit erosion; the availability and pricing of component parts and raw materials; possible increases in the payment time for receivables as a result of economic conditions or other market factors; changes in regulations or standards applicable to our products; the ability to successfully implement global cost reductions in operating expenses including, field service, sales, and general and administrative expense, and our manufacturing and supply chain operations without significantly impacting revenue and profits; our ability to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting; and additional matters disclosed in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities laws.

    The post Checkpoint Closes Sale of CheckView to Platinum Equity appeared first on peHUB.

  • Google+ Hangouts for desktop now allows remote control of other computers

    google-plus-hangouts-remote-desktop

    If you’re constantly heading over to the homes of friends and family to supply some tech support, Google+ now provides a much more simple solution, via Hangouts Remote Desktop.  Powered by the same technology behind Chrome Remote Desktop, this new feature will provide a much more efficient way of getting things done.

    Of course this application requires permission, so you don’t have to worry about hackers being able to swiftly commandeer your desktop without your approval.

    Instructions to use the application are after the break.

    In order to access Hangouts Remote Desktop, you’ll have to enter a Hangout, click View More Apps > Add Apps > Hangouts Remote Desktop.  Give this lightweight and simple tool a try and let us know what you think below in the comments!

    Source: +Daniel Caiafa

    Come comment on this article: Google+ Hangouts for desktop now allows remote control of other computers