Category: News

TEDGlobal 2013, themed “Think Again,” will take place from June 10 to 14, which for some may be too long of a wait. So until then, we’ve compiled a list of the conference’s speakers who tweet — an amazing 55 of them. Start following these bold thinkers now — individually or in a single click — so you can get to know them before they’re on the TED stage.

1. Sandra Aamodt, @sandra_aamodt

2. Mustafa Abushagur, @MustafaAG

3. Alessandro Acquisti, @ssnstudy

4. Anant Agrawal  https://twitter.com/edXOnline

5. Manal Al-Sharif, @manal_alsharif

6. Nassim Assefi, @nassefi

7. Benjamin Barber, @BenjaminRBarber

8. Natasha Bedingfield, @natashabdnfield

9. Carin Bondar, @DrBondar

10. Tania Bruguera, @immigrantmove

11. Stephen Burt, @accommodatingly

12. Grégoire Courtine, @gcourtine

13. Abha Dawesar, @abhadawesar

14. Toby Eccles, @tobyecc

15. Shereen El-Feki, @shereenelfeki

16. Elizaveta  https://twitter.com/elizavetaka

17. Dina El-Wedidi, @ElwedidiDina

18. May El-Khalili, @beirutmarathon

19. Tim Exile, @timexile

20. Chrystia Freeland, @cafreeland

21. Greg Gage, @BackyardBrains

22. Gabriella Gomez-Mont, @ToxicoCultura

23. Charmain Gooch, @Global_Witness

24. Lesley Hazleton, @accidentaltheo

25. Yaron Herman, @yaronherman

26. Erik Hersman, @WhiteAfrican

27. Annette Heuser, @AnnetteHeuser

28. Adrian Hong, @adrianhong

29. Salvatore Iaconesi, @xdxd_vs_xdxd

30. Just a Band, @justaband

31. Lian Pin Koh, @lianpinkoh

32. Bernie Krause, @BernieKrause

33. Lissie, @lissiemusic

34. Elizabeth Loftus, @lissiemusic

35. Mariana Mazzucato, @MazzucatoM

36. Kelly McGonigal, @kellymcgonigal

37. Alexa Meade, @alexameade

38. An Xiao Mina, @anxiaostudio

39. Holly Morris, @hollymorris

40. Dambisa Moyo, @dambisamoyo

41. George Papandreou, @GPapandreou

42. Juan Pardinas, @jepardinas

43. Trita Parsi, @tparsi

44. Gavin Pretor-Pinney http://idlermag.com

45. Andreas Raptopoulos, @andreasx

46. Apollo Robbins, @ApolloRobbins

47. Charles Robertson, @RencapMan

48. RuthAnne, @ruthannemusic

49. Sonia Shah, @soniashah

50. Toby Shapshak, @shapshak

51. Jose Miguel Sokoloff, @jmsokoloff

52. Daniel Suarez, @itsDanielSuarez

53. Le Trio Joubran, @LeTrioJoubran

54. Eben Upton, @Raspberry_Pi

55. Naomi Wolf, @naomirwolf

56. Anant Agrawal, @edXOnline

57. Elizaveta, @elizavetaka

58. Gavin Pretor-Pinney, @idlermag

Read all about these speakers here »

Cooltech Applications said Wednesday that it raised €8 million (US$10.4 million) from historical shareholders and two new investors: Demeter Partners and 123Venture. Strasbourg, France-based Cooltech is a specialist in magnetic refrigeration.

PRESS RELEASE

COOLTECH APPLICATIONS, the specialist in Magnetic Refrigeration, has successfully raised €8 M to enable the final industrialization stage of its thermal machine to be implemented prior to its international commercialization by the end of this year.

Cooltech Applications, the first company to propose a global solution which is both ecological and industrial for the refrigeration and air conditioning markets using Magnetic Refrigeration technology, has recently raised €8 M of new capital from both its historic shareholders and two new investors: Demeter Partners and 123Venture.

‘This new fundraising will enable Cooltech Applications to finalize the industrialization of its thermal machine, which is established by the launch of a first line for ‘Series Production’, to enable sales to start by the end of this year as well as to accelerate its international commercialization ‘, announced Sophie Paturle, Partner at Demeter Partners.

Created in August 2003 and based near Strasbourg, Cooltech Applications has developed and industrialized through a € 20 M euro launch aid project – ‘MagCop’ which has been co-financed by France’s Oséo-ISI organization, as a truly authentic and rare rupture technology based upon Magnetic Refrigeration principles. The technology being industrialized addresses a wide range of applications in both the refrigeration and air conditioning markets – commercial refrigeration, industrial or domestic, air conditioning of vehicles and buildings – these varied global markets being measured in Billions of Euros.

‘Reducing the cost of creating ‘cold’ in its various forms has become an indispensible element of our modern global society, where its production and use is currently accompanied by pollution and an energy consumption that needs to be reduced’ added Sophie Paturle. ‘In eliminating completely the need for gas and reducing by half the electricity required for an equal performance in a classic system, the Magnetic Refrigeration technology certainly appears to be the only valid response to-date to face both environmental and economic challenges.”

‘Following an in-depth market study, we selected the industrial refrigerated counter sector as a first market entry point for commercial applications’, announced Christian Muller, CEO and Founder of Cooltech; ‘Production of cold in the supermarket chains represents up to 40% of the electricity consumed, in addition to the 15% of the total related logistic costs, hence magnetic refrigeration will generate an important economic advantage to our future client base. Followed with the supplying of the hybrid & electric vehicle sectors, which has battery performance issues leading to limitations in terms of autonomy, which is even further reduced by 30% if air conditioning is also functioning. The magneto caloric technology – with an inherent defrost capacity due to reversible functionality – appears to be one of the key facilitating technologies for the development of electric vehicles into mass market product, while equally applicable to hybrid vehicles, where it will significantly improve both the autonomy and ecological footprint. This, to cite only the two first markets we are going to target’.

‘This new fund raising round has provided the acceleration factor required to confirm Cooltech’s international leadership in the area of industrial magnetic refrigeration solutions, allowing the company to maintain an ambitious development strategy’ confirmed Jean-Michel Barbier, Managing Partner of TechFund Europe and fund manager of the AIRFI FCPR. ‘Its mastery of the magnetic refrigeration technology combined with a profound expertise in areas as varied as magnetism, mechanical systems, fluid & thermal dynamics as well as chemistry constitutes a real technological barrier. In addition, Cooltech Applications holds title to a very large number of international patents protecting these various technological elements’.

‘Cooltech Applications is the first company to have created an operational system where the performance required for industrialization has been proved and hence the only company actually engaged in commercializing a magneto-caloric Thermal machine. This machine has been conceived to be both simple in terms of architecture and modular, allowing a competitive unit price for the numerous potential applications while equally meeting the client based specifications, in particular temperature and power. Cooltech Applications represents a rare opportunity in France to develop a completely new eco-industry’, added Marc Guittet, Partner at 123Venture.

Demeter Partners
Demeter Partners is the leading investment capital firm in Europe for Cleantech with more than 350 M€ under management. Based in Paris, it was founded in 2005 and is owned by the management board. Demeter Partners specializes in eco-industries (water, air and waste treatment, site remediation,) and eco-energies (energy efficiency, renewable energies…) mostly for companies located in France, Germany and Spain. So far, Demeter has invested in more than 40 companies. Demeter invests within a wide range of companies: from innovating start-ups to mid-cap companies and supports them at all stages : creation, growth, transfer, with unitary mandates ranging from 0.5 to 15 M€.

Demeter has offices in Paris (France), Madrid (Spain) and Berlin (Germany).
www.demeter-partners.com

123Venture
123Venture is an independent Fund specialized in renewable energy and real estate. With over 815 M€ of funds under management, 123Venture has become a sectorial reference in funding of SME’s, small and medium sized enterprises. 123Venture has participated in over 260 SME investments in 9 countries.
www.123venture.com

TechFund Europe
TechFund Europe is a private equity firm focusing on early-stage investments in breakthrough technology companies. Investments are focused on core and enabling technology including digital media, networking, communications, and energy. TechFund’s objective is to identify innovative companies early in their corporate development and assist those companies to rapidly build viable businesses, sustain growth over many years, and create enduring enterprises. TechFund Europe leverages its network of strategic partners and proactively assists its portfolio companies in accelerating their development. TechFund Europe Management has a pan-European focus and co-manages parts of FCPIs (Fonds Commun de Placement dans l’Innovation) and FIPs (Fonds d’Investissement de Proximité).

www.TechFund.com

Cooltech Applications
Cooltech Applications is the first company in the world to propose a solution which is ecologic, economic and industrially viable, targeting the global refrigeration and air conditioning markets using magnetic refrigeration technology. Created in 2003 and based next to Strasbourg’s airport, the company employs 33 odd staff of whom the majority are high level engineers with either scientific or industrial backgrounds. Heavily supported by the French Government’s innovation arm – OSEO, Cooltech Applications has been engaged since 2010 in a 20 Million Euro industrialization project ‘MAGCOP’. This program, actually now in its final phase, has permitted the industrial development and production line to be developed for a thermal machine to be produced in volume.
Since its debut, the company has been financed by the investment funds: ACE Management, TechFund Europe (FCPR Airfi) & Sodiv in addition to the two significant industrial groups: Marcel Dassault Industrial Group and Erasteel Cie from Eramet Group. Erasteel, as MagCop project partner, develops high performance magnetocaloric materials such as lanthane-based alloys, an essential element of the magnetic refrigeration technology.

The post Cooltech App Raises €8 Mln appeared first on peHUB.

Backed by a lot of hype and millions in funding, Foursquare turned the idea of “gamification” into one of the most buzzed-about ways to design your mobile app and attract users. The idea was that if checking into Foursquare gives me the hope of becoming mayor of my favorite coffee shop, I’ll be more likely to check in and frequent that business. Or so the theory went.

But now, more than four years after the startup launched at SXSW and more than $70 million in venture funding later, it seems gamification isn’t enough to keep Foursquare going. The company is rapidly embracing the concept of local search, launching a new version on Wednesday morning that highlights the “Explore” tab as a primary focus, and making clear that the quintessential Foursquare experience is no longer about being mayor of something: Foursquare wants to be your personalized version of Yelp.

“We’re crunching all our data to show the best of what’s nearby, anywhere in the world, the second you open up the app,” the company wrote Wednesday.

The app looks substantially different than before, eliminating the different tabs at the bottom that used to let users navigate from check-ins to search to profile, and instead creating one primary feed. The new design has a large check-in button at the bottom, and shows the Explore tab at the top of the main screen. It places more emphasis on where your friends are checking in nearby, and popular businesses at the moment.

Foursquare has been moving toward local search as its primary focus over the course of the last two years or so. Foursquare first launched the “Explore” tab in March 2011, allowing users to discover businesses nearby, but didn’t add a desktop equivalent until January 2012, when the company started to get serious about the feature. In October, the company opened up the search engine to everyone on the web, not just registered users, and CEO Dennis Crowley explained that they wanted users to start seeing Foursquare as more than just a place for check-ins. The company established an American Express partnership in June allowing customers to link their credit cards to unlock deals, and expanded tools for local merchants.

But it’s not just that Foursquare is tired of the whole mayor business — local search presents more opportunities to make money, and Foursquare needs to make money. A report in The Wall Street Journal in November said that Foursquare’s investors, who have put $20 million in June 2010 and then another $50 million in June 2011 into the company, wanted to see more growth than the company was experiencing. Despite bringing in more than $70 million dollars, Foursquare still only had about 8 million active users at the time, which isn’t all that substantial for a four year old company (Twitter now has more than 200 million active users, for comparison). And reports said it was bringing in only $2 million in revenue for 2012 – even after all of the new tactics for improving local search to make money.

So what’s the solution? Clearly, it’s to double down on local search.

“One of the challenges is to get people to think about Foursquare less as points and badges and more about local search and discovery,” Crowley explained to GigaOM back in October. “We really see Foursquare as reinventing ourselves with local search and recommendations. We’ve been telling users for a long time and now we can tell the same story and illustrate it for folks.”

The move presents challenges, obviously, in that Yelp is a clearly established leader in this market, and has a serious head start in convincing most businesses to set up pages there. However, Foursquare does add a social element to its business discovery that isn’t as much of a focus for Yelp. While Yelp has built a business around reviews, which are social to a certain extent, and interaction with reviewers, if I open Foursquare right now I’ll immediately see what businesses my friends have recommended. And for some people, a friend’s suggestion could be more powerful than a five star Yelp review.

Foursquare made one of the most high-profile attempts at re-building local commerce around the idea of loyal customers through app check-ins, but it seems that convincing people outside of Silicon Valley to check into their favorite establishments hasn’t worked. And without mass participation, that’s not a big enough audience to build a profitable business. Steve Wozniak might continue to maintain his mayorship of several Baskin Robbins, and the company will need people to continue checking in to build its data.

But for Foursquare, it’s time to start checking into more traditional forms of gathering revenue with discounts and desktop search.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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I’m on record for the past two years saying that larger screened smartphones are what many people want. I saw the light in late 2010 when I tried my first 7-inch tablet. Yes a tablet is very different from a phone, but I still see much convergence and opportunity here. What got me excited? The experience of a highly portable device with larger display made content consumption so much more enjoyable.

Since then we’ve seen flagship smartphones, mostly running Android, with displays first at 4-inches, quickly followed by 4.3 and 4.5-inches, now up to 5-inches and even beyond. You’d think that’s great if people want larger screens on their phones, and according to T-Mobile, 77 percent of their customers do. But can this growth in Android flagship phone displays actually hurt the most used mobile phone platform? It already has lost at least one customer.

See you later, Android!

Sascha Segan at PC Mag is done with Android and screen sizes are the sole reason. After speaking with several phone manufacturers, the issue is one of “moar”, he says: Consumers in the U.S. and Canada equate value with phones packed with as many features and top hardware components as possible. We want more screen space, more functions, more of everything in our mobile devices. So based on the trend of larger screens, Segan isn’t likely to switch back to Android any time soon, if ever. As he put it:

“But the Android world has been seized by the tyranny of moar. To switch back, I need a decent one-handed phone. Like about 25 million other Americans and Canadians, I take public transportation to work, and I really like to play games standing up.”

I know Segan personally as we’re peers in our industry and often see each other at trade shows and launch events. Truth be told, we’re both smaller than average in size. And yet, while I understand his complaint, I’m actually fine with larger devices. Why the difference? I am, and always have been (even with the original iPhone), primarily a two-handed smartphone user.

Could others follow suit? It depends on how big phones get

Regardless, Segan makes an excellent point. In today’s market — and likely for some time — if you want a top o’ the line Android smartphone, you’ll either need hands sized like Andre the Giant (and pants pockets to match) or you’re going to use your handset with two hands in most circumstances. Who knows; small tablets might replace smartphones for many as our perceptions of portability evolve.

There’s an alternative of course: Android phones start getting too big for a large audience and consumers turn to smaller devices that run iOS, Windows Phone or BlackBerry 10. Obviously, one person leaving Android due to flagship phone sizes isn’t even close to being a trend. Looking forward, however, this could become an issue if handset makers continue down this path.

And I see no reason why those who make phones will stop with the “bigger is better” approach to design. The top selling Android phones these days tend to be larger than average. Add in the fact that we now have high-resolution 1080p display panels, and there’s even more room for phone screens to grow.

After all, after a certain pixel density, there’s little benefit to cramming more pixels in a smaller screen. The new 1080p screens should still look just as good to most people on a 6- or 7-inch device as they do on the 4.7-inch HTC One or 5-inch Samsung Galaxy S 4. Maybe “moar” is better for now? If not though, opportunities for Android competitors could get as big as the screen on Android flagship phones.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently categorized financial support for fossil fuel and renewable energy tax preferences by fuel area for fiscal year 2013. From the CBO analysis, in 2013:

-Renewable energy financial support from tax preferences is expected to …

Many American schools may be gaga for iPads, but elsewhere Google Apps and Chromebooks’ affordability are winning educators. Today, the search and information giant reveals that Malaysia will roll out Apps to “10 million students, teachers and parents”, Felix Lin, director of product management, explains. “As part of this initiative they are also deploying Chromebooks to primary and secondary schools nationwide”.

In the Malaysian Ministry of Education report, I don’t see this number but reference to 10,000 schools and separate ones identifying “2.9 million students enrolled in primary school” and “2.3 million students enrolled in lower and upper secondary school”. The current, official student tally from the Ministry’s website is 5.23 million students. Including teachers and parents likely explains the larger number.

The technology adoption, which the country hasn’t independently confirmed, is part of a 13-year long program to reform Malaysia’s education system. The report outlining the initiative doesn’t mention Google, Apps or Chromebooks. However, the report is from September and may be out of date.

“In the very near future, every student will have access to a 4G network at their school through 1BestariNet”, according to the report. “This network will serve as the basis for the creation of a virtual learning platform that can be used by teachers, students and parents to share learning resources, run interactive lessons, and communicate virtually”.

However, the country will deploy Acer and Samsung WiFi Chromebooks. Google would give no numbers, but I assume much less than the number for Apps.

That said, the twain are in some ways inseparable. IT specialist Derrick Wlodarz, who writes for BetaNews, asserts “that districts that have already invested in the Google Apps for Education path will naturally have the most seamless integration of Chromebooks”. He identifies benefits to schools:

I personally like the proposition that the Chromebook makes. Just as the Surface potentially affords a school district simple management through Active Directory, Google’s Chromebook takes this same notion and simplifies it a few degrees. Whereas a traditional IT department usually controls policies through Active Directory, a fleet of Chromebooks can be controlled by people with little technical background like teachers or even school execs…

When it comes to installation, Chromebooks require 69 percent less labor. And the biggest eye-opener for educational IT departments has to be the fact that Chromebooks require 92 percent less labor in long term support. With tightening school budgets, these are cost savings that are hard to laugh at.

“To date, more than 3,000 schools worldwide, from Edina, Minnesota to Port England, New Zealand, have deployed Chromebooks”, Lin says. Malaysia could add 10,000 to the number.

T-Mobile’s new contract-free plans might have garnered most of the attention after the company’s big announcement last month, but there is another part that will start making an impact soon. On Friday, after nearly six years without, T-Mobile will finally offer the iPhone. And they aren’t taking it lightly.

Earlier this week we saw Virgin Mobile take a shot at T-Mobile with an intriguing comparison chart. Included with it was a $100 offer to switch from T-Mobile to Virgin Mobile. As I mentioned in the post, this is a tactic we typically see from smaller carriers seeking to steal business from larger ones. T-Mobile still sits firmly as the No. 4 carrier in the nation, so it has plenty of competition from above. Like Virgin, it plans to take on that competition with an incentive.

Plenty of people already own the iPhone, and T-Mobile knows that. Why, then, would they come to them for iPhone service? The pricing, only $100 up front and $20 per month, might be one attractive factor. Not satisfied with just this, T-Mobile is offering a $100 trade-in credit. Just bring an iPhone 4, 4S, or 5 when you purchase a new one and you eliminate that $100 up-front charge. It gets better than that, too. Those trading in the 4S and 5 will receive additional bonuses which can saved them even more.

The promotion not only highlights T-Mobile’s tough position in the current mobile market, but also its focus on being a value carrier. When it unveiled new plans, what stood out most was the value they provide over other plans. At $60 per month for unlimited minutes and messaging, plus 2.5GB of data, there’s not a large carrier in the country that can compete. Some prepaid carriers trump that offering, but they’re working off other carriers’ networks. Those with primary networks, such as Cricket and MetroPCS, don’t offer the level of coverage that T-Mobile does.

The offer runs between now and June 16, giving customers plenty of time to decide whether they’d like to trade in their old iPhone models for the new one. The only issue is that only the iPhone 4 has customers out of contract at this point. Since it was released in October of 2011, customers who upgraded still have a few months before they can exit their current plans. The trade-in credit, though, could virtually go towards an early termination fee, which can be in the double digits by this point in many contracts. The iPhone goes on sale this Friday at 9 a.m. local time.

In other T-Mobile news, their network could be getting stronger soon. For a few months now they’ve been going through the regulatory and shareholder approval processes for a merger with MetroPCS. While regulators have pushed the deal through, there has been a bit of turmoil on the shareholder side. News today suggests that T-Mobile will improve its offer for MetroPCS, perhaps allaying some concerns that MetroPCS’s top investors have expressed.

Apparently early shareholder voting hasn’t gone well, which has prompted the improved offer from T-Mobile. If some shareholders change their minds, the deal could go through quickly. The deal will be ratified or rejected at a shareholder meeting scheduled for this Friday.

The post T-Mobile Offering a Promotion of Its Own on iPhone Trade-Ins appeared first on MobileMoo.

It seems Fisker is finally succumbing to the relentless seas of misfortune. It’s been battered by storms, supplier problems and financial troubles. Founder Henrik Fisker has fled. Its workforce has been laid off. Nearly all of them. Things are grim. But should petrol-guzzling, tire-burning, fire-breathing gear heads like you care? Yes. Yes, you should.

You should care about Fisker for one simple reason: It’s disruptive. The automotive industry is big, old and stagnant. It moves at a glacial pace and changes very little. Fisker, and other new car companies, are free to innovate, to explore new technology, and to do crazy things like use a turbocharged Pontiac Solstice engine just to spin a generator.

But let’s back up. What, exactly, happened? Some of the first Karmas had a faulty hose clamp that could cause coolant to leak into the battery compartment. Then a few of the cars burst into flames without warning. A recall ensued. Then Fisker’s battery manufacturer, A123, went bankrupt, causing a crippling battery shortage. Then Superstorm Sandy totaled more than 300 brand-new Karmas at a port in New Jersey. Then the Department of Energy froze Fisker’s massive $528 million loan. Finally, Fisker himself stepped down as head of the company mid March, citing a disagreement with the rest of Fisker management.

Then, of course, there were rumors that the Chinese were going to buy out Fisker and save the day. Fisker co-founder Bernhard Kohler even said in an interview with Auto Bild that Chinese automaker DongFeng submitted a bid to bail the company out. No one knows, however, if the deal will go through.

Last week, even more bad news: Fisker laid off 160 employees on a calm Friday morning. Right now it looks like Fisker is going away. And that makes me sad.

The Karma is a beautiful car. An impractical, silly, insane and beautiful car. It weighs an absurd 5,300 pounds, yet can magically accelerate to 60 mph in just 6.3 seconds. It can only travel 32 miles on its massive batteries, after which time it revs up a 2-liter, 260-horsepower GM Ecotec four cylinder for juice. And revs up it does, sustaining a blistering wail regardless of throttle position. It is 16 feet long, yet has less luggage space than a MINI. It has 22-inch wheels. It is a Hot Wheels car writ large. And I love it.

It’s a shame that such a technologically advanced and stupendously ludicrous vehicle will be lost to bad luck and poor management. Automobiles are more than economically sensible means of transportation. They’re expressions of speed and power and beauty. They’re mobile art. We need more cars like the Karma, even if they aren’t economical, practical or even viable business propositions. Because, simply put, they’re inspiring.

Ed. Note: This is a cross post from HHS.gov. You can find the original post here.

America has come a long way in talking about mental health, yet we are still a country that too often confines mental health and addiction to the far edges of our discourse. We cannot ignore the fact that 60 percent of people with mental health conditions and nearly 90 percent of people with substance use disorders don’t receive the care they need. That is why the Affordable Care Act is so important to mental health. The health care law, along with previous parity legislation, will expand mental health and substance use disorder benefits and parity protections for 62 million Americans.

To continue these efforts, President Obama announced key steps earlier this year to make it easier for individuals struggling with mental health problems to get the help they need. And now, the President’s Budget will deliver on these commitments.

The President’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget includes a critical $205 million investment in programs to help identify mental health concerns early, improve access to mental health services and support safer school environments. And, it invests $30 million in tools and research that will expand our understanding of gun violence prevention, including key mental health issues.

read more

MarkLogic Corp. said it raised a $25 million round of growth capital in a deal led by Sequoia Capital and Tenaya Capital, and joined by Northgate Capital. MarkLogic CEO Gary Bloom also invested in the round. The company, which is developing the NoSQL database, has raised a total of $71.2 million.

PRESS RELEASE

MarkLogic Secures $25 Million to Further Challenge Incumbent Relational Databases

Growth Capital to Meet Rising Demand for Enterprise-grade NoSQL Solutions

San Carlos, Calif. — April 10, 2013 — MarkLogic Corporation, the provider of the only enterprise NoSQL database platform, today announced that it has closed a $25 million round of growth capital led by Sequoia Capital and Tenaya Capital, with participation from Northgate Capital. MarkLogic CEO and former Oracle executive, Gary Bloom, also made a personal investment in this financing round. The company will use the capital to increase go-to-market capacity to meet the growing demand for enterprise NoSQL (Not Only SQL) technology from Fortune 500 companies, other large enterprises and government agencies.

“Enterprise customers are discovering that the relational databases they have relied on for years are not flexible and agile enough to manage complex and varied data formats that are required for modern applications. They also recognize that they cannot lower their standards for enterprise capabilities like transactional consistency, security, backup, recovery, high availability and alerting,” said Gary Bloom, CEO of MarkLogic Corporation. “Today, MarkLogic® Server is the only NoSQL database with the enterprise features that CIOs require. For organizations that want to build, deploy and manage applications for dynamically changing enterprise data, MarkLogic is faster and more affordable than traditional relational databases while maintaining the same standard of trust in performance.”

MarkLogic Server can ingest, manage and search structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data allowing organizations to provide holistic access to all data through information applications and analytics tools. MarkLogic can run directly on the Apache* Hadoop Distributed File System, and this week demonstrated new innovative functionality for dynamic provisioning, rebalancing, tiered storage and semantics at its annual MarkLogic World User Conference in Las Vegas. Presentations from MarkLogic World will be available on demand.

MarkLogic is widely deployed for mission-critical applications in financial services, healthcare, media, publishing, aviation, government, and education. In recent weeks, applications built on MarkLogic Server have gone live at Dow Jones, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which implemented the first phase of the Healthcare Information Exchange, and one of the world’s leading commercial banks.

“Organizations increasingly need a database optimally designed to handle semi-structured data, content-rich applications, and advanced analytics. While NoSQL databases were designed to address these requirements, most fail the test of meeting enterprise-grade capabilities in areas like security and availability,” said Evan Quinn, Sr. Analyst at ESG. “MarkLogic provides the schema-agnostic and scale out architecture of NoSQL with the same proven and trusted enterprise capabilities that CIOs and CTOs require in enterprise software.”

Additional highlights:
– Investors include Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital, Northgate Capital, Gary Bloom and other members of the MarkLogic executive team.
– $25 Million in new capital brings the total raised to $71.2 Million.
– A recent whitepaper developed by ESG analyst Evan Quinn that explores how organizations are realizing that the relational databases of yesterday are not the right tool to solve today’s complex data challenges can be accessed here.

About Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is the trusted business partner of founders who would like to turn imaginative ideas into enduring companies. As the “Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs,” the Sequoia Capital team has worked with innovators such as Steve Jobs of Apple, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner of Cisco, David Filo and Jerry Yang of Yahoo!, Max Levchin, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel of PayPal, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley of YouTube, and Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn.

About Tenaya Capital
Tenaya Capital is a leading venture capital firm with over $1 billion under management. The firm invests in high-growth technology companies in the enterprise software, consumer Internet, IT infrastructure, communications and electronics sectors. Tenaya Capital is currently investing out of Tenaya Capital VI. The firm has offices in Woodside, California, and Wellesley, Massachusetts. For more information, visithttp://www.tenayacapital.com

About Northgate Capital
Northgate Capital was formed in the late 1990’s with one goal: to provide institutional and family investors with superior identification of and unsurpassed global access to a very select group of alternative investment opportunities. Today, with a strong and growing group of top institutional and family investors, and a global footprint with offices in the United States, Hong Kong, India, Mexico City and the United Kingdom, Northgate is delivering on this aspiration.

About MarkLogic
For more than a decade, MarkLogic has delivered a powerful and trusted next-generation Enterprise NoSQL database that enables organizations to turn all data into valuable and actionable information. Organizations around the world rely on MarkLogic’s enterprise-grade technology to make better decisions faster. MarkLogic is headquartered in Silicon Valley with field offices in Washington D.C., New York, Austin, London, Frankfurt, Utrecht, and Tokyo. For more information, please visit http://www.marklogic.com.

MarkLogic is a registered trademark of MarkLogic Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

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The Samsung Galaxy S 4 will launch with one of two different processors depending on what country you live in, and according to the latest benchmarks, Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa outperforms Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 when running the latest test firmware. There are three different versions of the Galaxy S 4: The GT-I9500 running a Exynos 5 Octa at 1.6 GHz without LTE, GT-I9505 running a Snapdragon 600 at 1.9 GHz with LTE, and a Korean variant, the SHV-E300S running a Exynos 5 Octa at 1.8 GHz with LTE. In these new benchmarks, the GT-I9500 and GT-I9505 went head-to-head.

According to SamMobile, an insider scored 28018 points on AnTuTu with the GT-I9500. Compared to the GT-I9505 Galaxy S 4, it scored 23607 points as found by GSMArena. While we were hoping the Exynos 5 Octa would make its way into the Galaxy S 4 heading to the U.S. and UK, you shouldn’t notice too much of a performance difference in normal tasks. However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that it performs better with CPU-intensive apps and is more power efficient.

Source: SamMobile

Come comment on this article: Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa Defeats Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 In Latest Benchmarks

If money talks, then some young women are making a powerful statement with their pocketbooks. This is particularly true of a new segment of professional women in Asia called the “Gold Misses.”

Gold Misses is a play on the word “old misses,” which means unmarried women, but differentiates itself to highlight the group’s massive consumption power. Gold Misses have emerged in Asia as more and more women become better educated, enter higher paying jobs, and then delay marriage (PDF). Even after marriage, many working women have few or no children. The overall result is that professional women have more disposable income to purchase a wider range of products, such as houses, financial services, durables, and especially luxury goods.

Despite the global recession that has dampened demand in many industries, the luxury market is still holding strong. Such continued growth in this sector is being led by new drivers of sales — latecomer countries to luxury, such as China, and fresh lead users like the Gold Misses.

In South Korea, the Gold Misses have become consumer icons, as they influence the demand of not only their peers but also scores of wannabes who aspire to their glitzy lifestyle. In fact, the latter’s more ostentatious consumption pattern was the inspiration for Psy’s satirical “Gangnam Style” music video.

In China, the Gold Misses are called the shengnu, and its contrasting double meaning of “leftover women” and “holy (as in hard to approach) goddesses” reveals their evolving status in Chinese society. The number of never-married women in urban China is estimated to be about 7 million. But since this demographic trend is influenced by economic growth, that size will easily increase as China — and specifically its women — continue to advance.

In India as well, career-oriented women are flexing their spending muscle with income in urban centers doubling over the last decade, enabling them to independently purchase items like apartments, cars, and insurance plans as never before. Looking at China and India alone, BCG estimates that by 2020 their female economies combined will account for $5 trillion annually with professional women fueling some of the next wave of growth.

For companies wanting to better position themselves in this region and to this expanding segment, the following strategies can be some effective first steps:

1. Help them to stand out. These young women see themselves as cultural pioneers, whether as professionals or as consumers. Their purchasing behavior also reflects their desire to not just follow the herd mentality but instead to be trendsetters. The level of marketing individualization to them thus needs to be greater as compared to the communal style of marketing that is sometimes required in Asia. Such a strategy may have worked for Starbucks in China where, as in other places, its customized drinks and personalized service appeal to people who want to embrace their individuality.

2. Create ripple effects to their followers. The product and brand preferences of the Gold Misses can become the catalyst for mass demand among their followers who want to emulate, even at a basic level, their role models. For luxury brands, this kind of social hierarchy has led to greater sales of less expensive “logo” lines. Sometimes this dynamic occurs cross-nationally, such as between South Korea and Southeast Asia, where the former’s portrayal of successful women in soap operas impacts trends abroad, such as in clothing and hairstyle.

3. Establish a digital and social commerce presence. The Gold Misses enjoy and can afford to indulge themselves, but they do not have the time to shop. The solution here can be digital commerce. Asian women are prone to shop online two times more than their Western counterparts, and 81% of these purchases are made for herself only. Niche social networks like Pinterest and Instagram have experienced explosive popularity in places like Hong Kong and Singapore, and generate traffic to global and local downstream sites. For foreign firms, setting up such digital beachheads to an influential segment can ease their brick-and-mortar entries that come later on.

As Asia becomes a new hub of global economic activity, companies may capture new opportunities by tapping into one of that region’s future movers and shakers — its rising professional women.

Chelsea Clinton has some advice for those with the greatest potential to become change-makers — the young. At TEDxTeen, held in New York City on March 16, Clinton delivered this bold talk, saying that despite negative assumptions, today’s youth are in a unique position to do good. Teens today have big advantages over those who are older, says Clinton: they are more likely to take risks, they lack deeply engrained biases and they are digital natives. As a result, millennials – those coming of age in the 21^st century — are more likely to be confident, connected and open to change. This makes for vast potential.

So how can teens harness it? Clinton says that it’s a matter of finding what you’re passionate about and then not being afraid to try it — because you never know how great your impact could be. Clinton challenges young people to “dare greatly and act boldly,” because “the worst thing that happens in life,” as they say in the Clinton family, “is that you get caught trying.”

Clinton’s talk is especially salient, as she hosted the Clinton Global Initiative University last weekend. At CGI U, a thousand college students with a desire to serve others gathered to innovate solutions for problems on both the global and local scale — and to make commitments to act upon them.

Clinton tells Parade Magazine that she was inspired to host the event by her grandmother, Dorothy Rodham. “She would always say life is not about what happens;” says Clinton, “it’s about what you do with what happens to you.” Rodham challenged her granddaughter to strive to live with a greater consciousness for helping others, even though Clinton naturally shies away from the spotlight. “[My grandma] thought I wasn’t doing enough with the opportunity I’d been given to be Chelsea Clinton,” she tells the magazine.

A man from Goodyear, Arizona has admitted to stabbing and killing both his wife and 27-year-old son.

According to a report from Phoenix CBS station CBS 5, 62-year-old Eugene ‘Gino’ Maraventano used a 14-inch kitchen knife to stab his wife while she slept. He then knocked on his son’s bedroom door and sliced his son’s throat when he answered the door. He called 911 four days after murdering his family and admitted to the crime.

Maraventano told police that he had been planning to kill his wife and then commit suicide. He stated that he tried slicing his wrists and taping a plastic bag around his head, but failed in his suicide attempts.

Maraventano’s wife, Janet, had been sick and tests for cancer had recently come back negative. The man told police he was afraid that he had given his wife a sexually transmitted infection, such as HIV, through his contact with prostitutes.

As for murdering his son, Maraventano told police that he didn’t think his son, who was unemployed, could get by on his own.

CBS 5 – KPHO

(Image courtesy Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office)

We’ll see how much of a ghost town Google+ is tonight when Halle Berry shows up for a hang out to promote the new Brad Anderson flick The Call.

Google+3 hours ago

Have you ever dreamed of meeting famous movie stars? Today you can Hangout with the award-winning actress Halle Berry live from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 

The actress will talk to Brazilian fans about her new movie The Call. 

---

Diamond Films Brasil originally shared:
Quer entrevistar a Halle Berry Ao Vivo para todo o Brasil?

Participe da promoção e concorra a fazer parte do Hangout On Air com atriz de Hollywood Halle Berry!

Acesse o site e participe! 106    1 Powered by socialditto

Last year, Berry was injured on the set of the film (which at the time was called The Hive). Now you have something to ask her about.

And of course, there’s always Catwoman.

Facebook has just announced that their antivirus marketplace has been opened up to 7 new languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, and Portugese.

“Last October we expanded our AV Marketplace to include new vendors in order to provide even more choice and protection to the over 1 billion people who use our service. Today, we look forward to opening up the Marketplace to even more of our users,” says Facebook.

“We hope this will help you protect your devices both on and off of Facebook.”

Facebook launched their AV Marketplace back in April of last year. The marketplace offers free versions of popular antivirus software for users, originally launching partnerships with Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos and Symantec.

Free antivirus is beneficial to Facebook users, obviously. The marketplace offers free trials of the software, upon which they can decide if they want to fork over the cash for full version.

It’s not just about giving users the ability to download free trials of anti-virus software. These partnerships allow Facebook to to incorporate their databases into Facebook’s own URL blacklist database, so that Facebook is better able to identify potential threats on the site before they become major problems.

Facebook beefed up the AV marketplace back in October, adding partnerships with avast!, AVG, Avira, Kaspersky, Panda, Total Defense, and Webroot.

Along the way, Facebook also launched the Malware Checkpoint, which lets users self-enroll in anti-virus protection. They also created a new [email protected] email address, where users can send reports on any phishing attacks they come across on the site.

You can check out all the products offered for PC, Mac, and Mobile here.

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk spoke in Austin at the Texas Capitol on Wednesday morning, calling for support of a bill that would make it legal for Tesla to sell its electric cars directly to the public from its own stores. Texas (like some other states) has franchise laws that forbid automakers from operating their own dealerships.

Tesla wrote in a statement:

Electric vehicles simply cannot be sold side by side with gas vehicles because they will always be a minority item in terms of sales and service volume. Existing franchise dealers have an inherent conflict of interest between selling gasoline cars, which constitute the vast majority of their business, and selling the new technology of electric cars.

Tesla’s resistance to the Texas Automobile Dealers Association reminds me of some of the newer transportation companies like Uber, Relay Rides, SideCar and Lyft are facing policy and legal opposition in some cities and states. Per usual, technology and business innovation is moving faster than policy can keep up with it.

Tesla already has two “stores” in Texas where they can show off the cars, but can’t talk about pricing and can’t actually sell anything directly to customers. And in true Tesla and Elon Musk competitive style, the new bill is pretty narrow specific for a company like Tesla. House Bill 3351/Senate Bill 1659, which was filed by Senator Craig Estes (R-Wichita Falls) and Representative Eddie Rodriguez (D-Austin), permits U.S.-based companies that make 100 percent electric cars (so no hybrids) to sell directly to customers. Tesla says it’s narrow so it affects the dealers as little as possible.

Tesla has been innovating around its stores since it launched the first one years ago. The company hired George Blankenship to lead the store experience, and Blankenship previously helped design Apple’s store experience. Here’s my interview with Blankenship at our RoadMap event November 2012 (RoadMap 2013 info is here).

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