Category: News

 

The cat is out of the bag as both Sprint and T-Mobile will carry the Samsung Galaxy S 4. The S 4 can be found on both carrier’s websites, with Sprint having a big banner that uses Samsung’s tag line: “Countdown To The Next Big Thing”. Additionally, there is also a countdown clock with just under 13 and half hours to go at the time of this writing. T-Mobile has it on their site as well however it is a little less in your face, with just a little box with “Coming Soon” on it.

We have already seen Verizon and AT&T confirm the S 4, as well as Telus in Canada, and even Walmart has started taking preorders for the device. So the fact that Sprint and T-Mobile has joined the game, should be of no surprise for Samsung’s new flagship phone. Sprint is offering the device for $249 with a new two-year contract. Existing customers can get it for $149 with a new two-year contract. In a hope to gain new customers, Sprint has extended that price offer to new customers willing to switch their numbers. So if you switch your number to Sprint, you can also pick up the S 4 for only $149 with a new two-year contract.

T-mobile is more mum on their plans. There is however, a sign up page for anyone who wants to receive information on the phone. If you don’t feel like signing up for it, don’t worry we already signed up, and will always pass along any info we get to the readers.

Source: Sprint, T-Mobile
via: Gotta Be Mobile

 

Come comment on this article: Samsung Galaxy S 4 officially confirmed by Sprint and T-Mobile

Kickstarter has just announced a new way to explore projects on the site. It’s called “Video Mode” and it’s a “full-screen presentation where you can watch every single live project video”

Video mode is an interesting new way to jump around to various Kickstarter projects. One you enter, you’ll be shown a fullscreen video from a random project. If the video interest you, and you wish to learn more about the project, just click the green “explore this project” button and you’ll be directed to that project’s main page.

Or, if the particular project bores you are just looks plain stupid, you can move on. At this point, you have three options:

One, you can be taken to a project that’s completely different from the one you’re currently viewing. Or, you can find a similar project video by a) geography (something near Evanston) or b) category (something else in Short Film).

“Since Kickstarter launched in 2009, over 75,000 project videos have been uploaded to Kickstarter. From day one, we’ve been blown away by the amazing videos you’ve created — from the singer Allison Weiss setting the standard early on, to the incredible Wes Anderson spoof the Inman Park Squirrel Census produced, and all of the amazing “Oh hey, I didn’t see you there” videos. For a long time we’ve been wanting to find a good way to show these off, so people could explore projects through the medium of video,” says Kickstarter.

Kickstarter launched its first-ever iOS app back in February, and has since announced a couple of milestones including $100 million total pledges to games through the site.

Dancer-turned-actress Julianne Hough has had a wild few months in the tabloids. Apart from revealing that she was abused as a child and showing some leg through a torn dress at the Golden Globes, Hough’s love life has been the topic of much speculation. The dancer broke up with longtime boyfriend Ryan Seacrest in March, and since that time has been linked to actor Alex Pettyfer. Now, it seems that Hough has a new romantic interest that she is showing off in public.

This week, rumors are swirling following the revelation that Hough was spotted at the music festival Coachella holding the hand of an unknown man. According to a report from the New York Post, Hough was spotted with this mystery man at an exclusive Armani Exchange party held at the event. The report cites an anonymous “spy” as saying the man was “a hunky Australian mystery man named Tommy.”

Hough recently starred in the movie adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks novel Safe Haven. She has also been cast in a Diablo Cody-directed movie titled Paradise.

Facebook is adding a new Timeline section to highlight the groups to which you belong. The new Groups section will appear on the About tab on the new Timeline.

Facebook launched their new Timeline design, a one-column format with more focus on interests, in early March. The main Timeline page got a facelift, streamlining stories and moving other information and activities to the left-hand side. More relevant to this story, the About section also got retooled. Each interest now has its own section, and you can also add custom apps like Instagram or Foursquare activity if you so choose.

Facebook is still in the process of rolling out the new Timeline.

Anyway, Facebook tells Inside Facebook that the new Groups section on your Timeline will only show the “open” groups that you belong to. Both closed and secret groups should be hidden from the new panel, something that should please those concerned with privacy in light of Facebook’s problems with Groups visibility.

Groups will join individual boxes for your friends, photos, music, movies, Tv shows, books, games, likes, and app activity on the About section on your Timeline. Facebook just unveiled the new Games section a couple of weeks ago.

Apple went from investors’ darling to Wall Street whipping boy in a matter of months, and the stock is now down more than 35% from the record high it hit last September. Shares plummeted to levels not seen since 2011 on Wednesday afternoon thanks in part to a recent note from Jefferies & Company analyst Peter Misek, who said Apple could be in for another couple of “disappointing” quarters as nearly all of its major mobile launches will happen later than expected this year.

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This afternoon, Dan Pfeiffer sent the message below to the White House email list asking people to pledge to speak out in favor of reducing gun violence. If you didn't get the email, be sure to sign up.

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Designers Dave and Calvin Laituri have joined forces to kickstart Pucs, small, stainless-steel icecube replacements that promise to chill your drink without wetting it down. The Pucs are milled of solid steel and come in a handsome wooden tray that you can place right into the freezer.

The Pucs are rechargeable in that they will not degrade and hold their temperature for quite a while – the creators suggest adding and removing them as you see fit – and the will even reduce the temperature of hot beverages.

The team is looking for $2,500 to ship the first batch and they’re nearly at $2,000.

While the Pucs aren’t that amazingly new – similar rocks and metal cubes have been available for years – the process that the creators are going through is particularly interesting. Hardware startups don’t all have to be making smart watches or robotic arms. A cool, fun project like this is what makes crowdfunding so unique. First, the lads don’t have to make thousands of these, ship them, and hope they sell through a distributor. Whereas household goods are traditionally sold at big box stores and discounters, this process allows the creators to build just as many as they need and, when they’re ready to make more, they have a solid word-of-mouth list that they can approach for updates and further orders.

Is the American Civil Liberties Union an iPhone shop, or is the organization really looking out for your best interests? I ask because the complaint filed yesterday with the Federal Trade Commission (and revealed today) is the kind of marketing Apple probably couldn’t afford. This thing is a goldmine of FUD (you know, fear uncertainty and doubt) — Christmastime good, when Santa packs the room with presents and they’re all for you.

But, wait, Google gets gifted, too! Because the complaint is more about carriers dragging their bums updating Android than any fundamental security problem with the platform. The operating system has “known, exploitable security vulnerabilities for which fixes have been published by Google, but have not been distributed to consumers’ smartphones by the wireless carriers and their handset manufacturer partners”, according to the legal filing.

The 16-page complaint is a wonder. The FTC is charged with protecting consumers, for which the ACLU accuses U.S. carriers inflict much harm by way of Android phones: Devices “that do not receive regular, prompt security updates are defective and unreasonably dangerous”.

There’s a well-spring of FUD marketing for Apple here. “The wireless carriers have failed to warn consumers that the smartphones sold to them are defective, that they are running vulnerable software, and that other smartphones are available that receive regular, prompt updates to which consumers
could switch”, the ACLU complaint states. Apple makes the majority of handsets sold in the United States receiving timely updates. Google ranks second with devices like Nexus 4.

But there is plenty of goodwill for Google, which struggles to get carriers and manufacturers to update Android in timely fashion. Only one-quarter of Android devices accessing Google Play in the 14 days before April 2 run current version Jelly Bean, which released in July. ACLU does Google goodness by demanding that carriers are accountable for releasing updates that, at the least, patch vulnerabilities.

“The slow rate of adoption of the most recent versions of Android does not reflect a failure by consumers to seek out and install operating system updates”, according to the complaint. “Instead, it reflects the fact that for most Android smartphones in use, updates to the most recent version of the operating system simply have not been made available for consumers to install”.

Unsurprisingly, ACLU demands change, and as I read the document so beneficial to Google maybe I should wonder if the group is an Android shop — or if the search-and-information giant isn’t somehow involved here. I ask in part because the section about browsers could have been written by a Google marketer: “The majority of Android phones used by consumers are also running an out of date, insecure version of the default Android web browser”. Well, maybe Google wouldn’t so strongly word such a sentence but benefits if more people use Chrome mobile.

The complaint singles out major cellular carriers — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless.

“If the mobile carriers are not going to provide important security updates, the FTC should at a minimum force them to provide device refunds to consumers and allow consumers to terminate their contracts without penalty so that they can switch to a provider who will”, Chris Soghoian, ACLU senior policy analyst, says today.

The ACLU requests that the Commission investigate the major wireless carriers and enjoin their unfair and deceptive business practices. Specifically, the ACLU requests that the Commission:

A. Compel the major wireless carriers to warn all subscribers using carrier-supplied Android smartphones with known, unpatched security vulnerabilities about the existence and severity the vulnerabilities, as well as any reasonable steps those consumers can take to protect themselves, including purchasing a different smartphone.

B. Compel the major wireless carriers to permit consumers under contract who are using carrier-supplied Android smartphones which have not received prompt, regular security updates to end their contracts early, without any early termination fee.

C. Compel the wireless carriers to permit consumers who are using carrier-supplied Android smartphones less than two years old which have not received prompt, regular security updates to either:

1. Exchange, at no cost, their existing device for another phone that will receive prompt, regular updates directly from Apple, Google, Microsoft or another mobile operating system vendor.
2. Return the phone and receive a full refund of the original purchase price.

If you’re looking for an excuse to get out of your contract and switch to iPhone or another Android, ACLU may offer a way.

Social media advertising is all the rage today, but Jeff Dachis, CEO and founder of marketing consultancy The Dachis Group, questions whether brands are really getting the concept. Inserting what are essentially billboards into people’s Facebook feeds doesn’t count as true engagement, he said Wednesday at GigaOM’s paidContent Live conference in New York City.

“This shift from what I believe to be mass communications to a mass of communicators has created a strong fundamental shift in the way brands are going to be built going forward,” he said. “They’re going to have to figure out how to engage with people instead of advertising at them.”

For Dachis that means direct engagement with people influential in their field through social media channels. Those influencers can then, in turn, amplify their message through the same social media outlets, he said.

Speaking on the same panel as Dachis, Google VP of Partner Business Solutions Bonita Stewart took issue with the idea that older formers digital marketing were ineffective. Contrary to popular belief, Stewart said, some display CPM rates are increasing, and Google’s publisher partners are seeing a lot of success using a combination of traditional advertising and new social marketing tools such as Hangouts.

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

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• Social media in Q1: commerce and discovery dominated
• Players and Strategies for Real-Time In-Stream Advertising
• Social 2013: The enterprise strikes back

Big data may be a rising star in health care but small data can play a powerful role, too. At the TEDMED conference on Wednesday, Deborah Estrin, a computer science professor at New York City’s Cornell Tech, gave a compelling case for how your “digital exhaust,” including location data, searches and social media posts, could provide a valuable window into your wellbeing.

“We’re continuously generating digital breadcrumbs from the services we interact with,” she said. But “there are no existing vehicles that package that data about me in a format that’s useful for me and that make it accessible to me. [And] there should be because there’s a lot that I can learn about my personal health from my digital behavior.”

Search engines, social networks and mobile carriers capture and analyze that data to serve up advertising, improve services and provide personalization. But delivered to the user, Estrin said, that data could generate a “digital social pulse” for tracking health in more implicit ways than Fitbits (see disclosure), Nike Fuelbands and other quantified self-type devices.

For example, she said, an app could process data from a mobile carrier to determine whether new supplements for early-stage arthritis are actually helping a patient. If the patient is checking her phone earlier in the morning and moving around more frequently, that could indicate that the medicine its doing its job.

Service providers may balk at the prospect of releasing their troves of user activity data – and Estrin acknowledged that they would likely worry about PR headaches and privacy issues. But not only should enhanced transparency provide the foundation for a strong privacy policy, she argued that access to their data would make smartphones and data services even more valuable to customers.

Startups like Personal and the Locker Project have started building tools that help people manage and use their personal information. And Ginger.io uses sensor data from mobile phones and other devices to identify signals of behavior change to understand users’ mental and physical health.

But Estrin wants to encourage an entire ecosystem of apps. And, along with colleagues at the mobile health non-profit OpenM Health and Cornell Tech, she’s beginning to build prototypes that demonstrate the benefits of using small data for personal health, as well as create the architecture for service providers, app developers and others to create additional small data health apps and algorithms. (You can learn more about Cornell’s small data initiative here.)

“We need an open architecture, so that a rich market of apps and services can grow up around that data just like http created the World Wide Web and led to the rich array of internet services,” she said.

Image by Digital Storm via Shutterstock.

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

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• The quantified self: hacking the body for better health
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

A company you’ve never heard of is being blamed for dragging Apple’s stock down to its lowest point since late 2011, $401.68. Cirrus Logic, which makes audio chips, reported revenues of $170 million for first quarter, missing analysts’ expectations by nearly $30 million. The reason Apple investors reacted the way they did is because Apple is believed to be Cirrus Logic’s biggest client: if its sales are down, it signals Apple’s mobile device sales could be down too.

According to Bloomberg:

Cirrus will record a net inventory reserve of $23.3 million for the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended in March, the Austin, Texas-based company said in a statement yesterday. Most of that — $20.7 million — is from a high-volume product from one customer, Cirrus said, without naming the client.

Bloomberg reports that the unnamed client is Apple, and that 90 percent of Cirrus Logic’s revenues come from selling audio chips that Apple puts inside of iPhones and iPads. If Cirrus Logic has huge amounts of unsold inventory, the thinking is that it’s because Apple had no need for them — that it possibly overestimated the number of iPhones and iPads it was able to sell during the first three months of 2013.

Even if that’s true, there’s more than one possible explanation for Cirrus Logic’s excess supply of chips. Apple could have switched providers of those chips, for instance. Apple CEO Tim Cook warned when similar negative supplier reports caused a massive freakout among investors a week before earnings last quarter: “I’d stress that even if a particular data point were factual, it would be impossible to interpret [the meaning] for our overall business. Yields can vary, supplier performance can vary … there’s an inordinately long list of things that would make any single data point not a great proxy for what’s going on.”

And here we are again, a week from Apple reporting its fiscal second quarter earnings, which will take place April 23. The signs that this isn’t going to be a blowout quarter are there: Apple had no major new product introductions between January and March, and it might also be drawing down production on some models of iPhones and iPads as it may be preparing for new devices this summer.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• The connected planet: Smartphones aren’t the only player
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues

Online note-taking company Evernote revealed something very interesting via its CEO Phil Libin, who told IDG News Service that his company wants to design hardware products and eventually make them itself. Libin said Evernote will move soon to start releasing Evernote-branded gadgets, which will be co-designed and manufactured by external OEM partners.

Libin didn’t share too much in terms of details around what kind of products we might see bearing the Evernote logo, offering only that they’d look to create devices that are “new and magical” in the IDG interview, instead of wading in to compete with others in existing categories.

Evernote has already done some work with hardware partners and products, like the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine. The book allows users to snap a photo of its pages, which use “specially formatted paper” designed to work specifically with Evernote, and have their handwritten notes converted to a digital format. It seems likely this is the type of product Libin is referring to: ones that uniquely suit Evernote’s vision of a pervasive, constantly connected digital notebook that stores any kind of media.

So while we probably won’t see an Evernote Phone or Evernote Tablet, other opportunities would seem to abound. Image- and audio-capturing devices, for instance, with direct connections to Evernote make a lot of sense in the same vein ans the Moleskine connected notebook.

A hardware ecosystem would probably still be a secondary concern for Evernote, which remains focused on the problem of building apps that work seamlessly across devices according to Libin, but it could be a route toward greater visibility among the general public, and toward greater engagement from existing users.

We’ve reached out to Evernote directly to see if they can share more about their hardware plans, but they did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

[via Engadget]

If you were to build a car to compete in the WRC (World Rally Championship), the odds of you choosing something that’s relatively compact with all-wheel-drive would be pretty good. Cars like the Subaru Impreza and Mitsubishi EVO immediately come to mind, but a late model rear-wheel drive Toyota Supra?!? Hmm… that may not be the best choice. Norway’s Kenneth Moen however not only disagrees, but has set up one of the sweetest Supra’s I’ve ever seen. Click through and get ready to see (and hear) one of the coolest rally cars on the planet!

Source: TheSmokingTire.com

European power giant E.ON is building out a smarter grid across its various networks, including rolling out smart meters, and on Wednesday announced a new big data partnership with grid gear and software provider Ericsson. E.ON says it will increase its data delivery by 3000 percent, and Ericsson will provide software and services to manage that data.

The deal is focused around 600,000 smart meters in Sweden. But E.ON is one of the largest power and utility companies in the world and operates in 30 countries with 26 million customers, so clearly its a relationship with a lot of potential.

Ericsson competes with GE, Siemens, ABB and others to sell software, services and hardware to utilities and power companies. Increasingly utilities and power companies are interested in buying more data analytics tools as their networks are becoming IT networks that need to monitor, digest, and analyze data to run more efficiently. As global electricity grids add more clean energy (solar panels and wind turbines), and energy storage (battery farms), better data analytics and predictions tools will also be needed to keep the grid stable.

Some of the power gear vendors are turning to the big data startup leaders for partnerships around the latest analytics. For example, earlier this week Siemens announced that it’s working with data warehouse veteran Teradata.

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• Key technologies for the smart city
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Reduxio Systems said it raised $9 million in a Series A round led by Jerusalem Venture Partners and Carmel Ventures. Reduxio is developing a storage operating system.

PRESS RELEASE

REDUXIO, THE SCALE-OUT HYBRID STORAGE COMPANY, RAISES $9M IN A ROUND LED BY JERUSALEM VENTURE PARTNERS AND CARMEL VENTURES

The Israel-Based Company has Developed a New Storage Operating System that Leverages Flash to Bring Disruptive Functionality to the Enterprise

Apr. 17th, 2013, Tel Aviv, Israel – Reduxio Systems, a next generation hybrid innovator, announced today that it secured $9M in a Series A round led by two of Israel’s leading venture capitalist firms, Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) and Carmel Ventures.

Storage industry veterans Mark Weiner, Nir Peleg and Amnon Strasser founded Reduxio in 2012 after recognizing the challenges of integrating new key functionality and hardware advances into legacy storage systems.

“Designing a system from the ground up allowed us to break free of all the limitations and to fully take advantage of new network, server and drive architectures,” said Mark Weiner, CEO of Reduxio. “In this way, we can deliver revolutionary functionality to match the particular needs in cloud, virtual machine and structured data environments.”

“We are seeing a paradigm shift in storage, as SSDs and 10GbE adoption rates increase. Reduxio’s novel approach is a game changer,” Said Ori Bendori, General Partner at Carmel Ventures.

“We’re excited by the hybrid space and how Reduxio’s technology accelerates flash adoption in the enterprise,” said Kobi Rozengarten, General Partner at JVP and a veteran of the flash memory industry, “We invested in Reduxio early and used our incubator to partner from their founding.”

Reduxio’s cost-effective hybrid provides an alternative to the expensive all flash arrays. Mainstream vendors have been struggling to integrate SSDs into their legacy architectures and to have different key features work together. The fast growing storage needs of cloud and corporate cloud environments that are virtualized and application dependent are demanding more innovative solutions.Reduxio’s disruptive storage technologies provide a much needed solution to these challenges.

“Reduxio was born from the idea that the only way to truly introduce new and innovative functionality in conjunction with the newest hardware required a completely new base-architecture designed from the ground up – taking advantage of the latest advances,” said Reduxio CEO Weiner. “For the past decade, spinning disks have not kept up with the performance advances in the rest of the storage architecture. New functionality added to older systems is not always compatible as one layer of complexity is added onto the next. Reduxio is providing answers to these challenges.”
About Reduxio Systems

Reduxio’s hybrid arrays are specifically designed for the particular needs of today’s storage environments focusing on cloud, virtual machines and structured data sets. The ReduxOS operating system and next generation smart placement algorithms will reset price/performance and functionality requirements moving forward.

About Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP)

Based in the JVP Media Quarter in Jerusalem, JVP (www.jvpvc.com) is one of Israel’s largest and most active venture capital funds with over $900 million raised to date. Founded in 1993, JVP has helped build over 90 companies and has orchestrated 25 of the largest exits in the region with 14 industry sales and 11 IPOs on NASDAQ. Established in 1993 by JVP Founder and Chairman Erel Margalit, JVP’s General Partners are Gadi Tirosh and Kobi Rozengarten.

About Carmel Ventures

With over $600 million currently under management, many successful exits, and a growing portfolio of promising start-ups, Carmel is among Israel’s top-tier venture capital funds. Founded in 2000 by pioneers and leaders of the Israeli high tech industry, Carmel provides significant capital and active, hands-on support through the growth cycle of its portfolio companies and is recognized as a true company-building fund in Israel. Carmel, headquartered in Herzliya, is a member of the Viola Group, Israel’s premier technology focused Private Equity group with $2B under management. For more information, please visit www.carmelventures.com.

The post Reduxio Raises $9M From Jerusalem Ventures & Carmel Ventures appeared first on peHUB.

Twitter has announced the launch of keyword targeting in timelines as a new feature for its ad platform. It is rolling out today in all languages and markets (where Twitter Ads are supported).

The feature is available in the full Twitter Ads user interface, as well as through the Ads API. It lets advertisers reach users based on the keywords in recent tweets, as well as the tweets with which they have recently engaged.

“Advertising on Twitter works well because the experience is built into the fabric of the product: a Promoted Tweet, for instance, is simply a Tweet targeted using the interest graph formed from public user signals like follows,” writes Twitter Revenue product manager Nipoon Malhotra in a blog post. “Until today, the content of Tweets has only been one factor among many in shaping the interest graph. Today, it becomes a first-class citizen.”

“This is an important new capability – especially for those advertisers looking for signals of intent – because it lets marketers reach users at the right moment, in the right context,” says Malhotra. “For example: let’s say a user tweets about enjoying the latest album from their favorite band, and it so happens that band is due to play a concert at a local venue. That venue could now run a geotargeted campaign using keywords for that band with a Tweet containing a link to buy the tickets. That way, the user who tweeted about the new album may soon see that Promoted Tweet in their timeline letting them know tickets are for sale in their area.”

Twitter says users won’t notice any difference in their own Twitter experience. In other words, just because there’s a new targeting capability, users won’t start seeing more ads crammed into their timelines.

Following up this morning’s official announcement regarding availability of the Samsung Galaxy S 4, Samsung has also released details regarding several official accessories that will be available. These accessories should prove popular with new owners interested in protecting their new device, extending its usefulness, or just using the “Life Companion” to make life more interesting. U.S. Cellular is already using the accessories to entice buyers by throwing in a free S View flip cover with online pre-orders. The flip cover goes beyond the traditional smartphone cover by providing a small window to your screen that displays information like time, missed calls and text messages, and battery status.

The list of accessories, with suggested retail prices, includes:

• S View flip cover – available in seven colors including Black Mist, White Frost, Light Blue, Pink, Green, Orange and Yellow, the S View flop cover provides a clear window so users can access information without waking their phone up ($59.55)
• Flip cover – a thin profile cover that snaps on the back of the Galaxy S 4 in order to maintain the phones slim profile, available in the same seven colors as the S View version ($39.99)
• Protective Cover+ – for users interested in a little more protection that what the flip covers provide, the Protective Cover+ also covers the sides of the device and provides protection against bumps, drops, and scratches while providing some extra grip for those who don’t like the smooth plastic of the phone, the cover will be available in White, Navy, Green, Blue and Pink ($29.99)
• Spare Battery Charging System – a spare battery charger that users can easily transport to charge their battery up when away from their home ($49.99)
• HM3300 Bluetooth Headset – an NFC compatible headset that uses Bluetooth for streaming music or audio once paired, available in Titan Gray, Marble White and Pebble Blue ($49.99)

In addition to the Galaxy S 4 specific accessories, Samsung has several accessories for their devices that will work with the Galaxy S 4, like their AllShare Cast Wireless Hub, Smart Dock, Universal Multimedia Dock, Universal Vehicle Navigation Mount, MHL 2.0 HDTV Adapter, Universal Battery Pack, HS-330 Headphones, and Galaxy Muse.

More accessories are expected to eventually hit the market like a wireless charging pad/cover, S Band activity monitor to be worn on the wrist, a Body Scale, and a real-time heart rate monitor.

source: DroidLife

Come comment on this article: Samsung announces official accessories for Samsung Galaxy S 4

Medium, the current company of Blogger and Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, has acquired Kickstarter-backed journalism startup Matter.

For a better idea of what Medium itself is, read this.

Matter describes itself as a publication based around a new way to create really great long-form journalism about science, technology and the future. Apparently Williams himself was one of the earliest Kickstarter backers for the project.

Paid Content points to this blog post from Matter discussing the acquisition. In that, Matter says, “He [Williams] and his team want Medium to be the best place on the internet to read and create high-quality content, and they suggested that we become part of that project.”

“Working with the team at Medium gives Matter a greater chance of success,” the company says. “The biggest draw for us is that they believe in high-quality writing, just like us, and want to see the journalism we produce be as successful as possible.”

Of course it remains to be seen just how successful Medium itself will become. However, Williams has an indisputable track record so far.

The Atlantic Magazine has long resisted the idea of a paywall, but Atlantic Media President Justin Smith revealed at GigaOM’s paidContent Live 2013 conference in New York Wednesday that the company is about to launch a paid product within the next two or three weeks.

Smith didn’t go into many details about the nature of the offering, but he made it clear that the company had no choice but to try every kind of monetization. “To say the ad model is gonna win over the pay model is foolish,” Smith said. The key would be to unlock multiple revenue streams, not to just put all your eggs in one basket.

Smith got some support for that notion from fellow panelist Raju Narisetti, senior vice president and deputy head of strategy at News Corp. Narisetti’s company may be seen as one of the driving forces behind paywalls, but he stressed Wednesday that News Corp. actually has been experimenting with lots of different options, ranging from tight paywalls for the Times all the way to free sites like All Things Digital. But he also defended paywalls against criticism, saying that newspapers were “courageous” for taking the step to charge for their content. “We have a lot of faith in our journalism,” he argued, including in the notion that people would pay for this kind of content.

Bob Bowman, President and CEO, MLB Advanced Media, strongly voiced support for this perspective. “Any publication out there should have a paid content product,” he said, arguing that all publications have avid fans that are willing to pay for content He asked, “Who are you to say: ‘we don’t want your money?’”

Of course, asking for money doesn’t always need to involve paywalls. That was a point driven home by ProPublica President, Richard Tofel, who revealed Wednesday that his nonprofit organization has received donations from 2,300 supporters last year, with 100 of the contributing on “quite significant levels.”

His prediction for monetizing and sustaining journalism? “Every major city in this country has a symphony,” Tofel said. Eventually, cultural institutions like symphony orchestras, libraries and museums would be complemented by nonprofit press institutions. Having nonprofit press is essential for many areas that can’t be covered by traditional media organizations anymore, he argued, whether those have a paywall or not.

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

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• Building a better paywall: strategies for monetizing news content
• NewNet Q1: Content Farms and Niche Networks on the Rise
• What the New York Times Can Learn From Rupert Murdoch’s Paywall