Category: News

Apple (AAPL) looks like it’s making a more aggressive push into emerging markets as The Economic Times reports that the company will triple the number of exclusive stores in India by 2015. Exclusive Apple stores are different from the iconic company-owned Apple stores that we typically see in the United States in that they’re third-party franchises that only sell Apple products. All the same, The Economic Times says that Apple wants to have 200 exclusive franchises up and running in India over the next two years and is also planning “to expand its presence in multi-brand stores” as well. The move to bolster its retail presence in India comes amid speculation that Apple will release a budget version of its iPhone sometime this year to appeal to consumers in emerging markets such as China and India.

Flipboard has carved out a niche as one of the leading news and content-consumption apps for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, with its digital-magazine look and easy user interface. Now the company wants to turn all of those content consumers into publishers as well: a new version of the app will be released today that gives users the tools to create their own topic-specific magazines. It’s a little like Pinterest merged with Tumblr, crossed with a better-looking and more social version of Google Reader.

Chief technology officer Eric Feng said in an interview prior to the launch of the new version that this is much more than just an evolution of Flipboard — it’s a major push into a whole new area, namely curation and publishing of content by individual users. “It’s one of the most ambitious efforts we have ever undertaken,” said the former CTO of Hulu. “It’s been more than 18 months since the inception of the idea, so this is a pretty big deal for us. We were originally focused on discovery and filtering of content, but now we are moving into curation in a big way.”

Flipboard has always had curated topics such as technology and sports, where the service uses a combination of human editors and algorithms — based on frequency of sharing and other metrics — to highlight specific content. In effect, the new tools allow any Flipboard user to take on the same role as an editor and create their own magazine around a topic, and share it with other users.

Reader magazines get promoted in Flipboard

In a nutshell, users with the new features (which are available only for iPhone and iPad currently, but will appear in an Android version soon, according to the company) can simply click a “plus” sign next to a blog post or article they are reading — as well as any video or audio content that appears in their stream — and add that piece of content or “flip it into” to a magazine, which will then be available to them or any other user who searches for that topic.

And Flipboard isn’t just giving users that ability within the app: the service is also launching a bookmarklet that will allow users to pull in content from anywhere on the web — whether it’s a blog post, a news website or Twitter and Facebook — and add it to their custom-created magazine. In a sense, Flipboard is trying to capitalize on the same curatorial impulse that makes people create collections about specific topics on Pinterest or re-blog photos on Tumblr, and in many ways this move is a shot across the bow of those other services.

It’s also clearly a threat to the existing publishing industry, since a Flipboard user can now create their own custom publication using the content that comes from dozens of different magazines, blogs, websites and other sources. So Flipboard is trying to bring publishers in as well and get them to create their own custom magazines — such as a magazine about the Beatles created with archival content from Rolling Stone. It has even built e-commerce functionality into the app so users can click and buy directly from within an article or ad.

But the most subversive aspect of the new features from a media-industry point of view is that they can be used by anyone — including advertisers. If an advertiser can create their own magazine by pulling in their own editorial content as well as content from other sources, and build e-commerce functionality into it, then it gives new meaning to the idea of brands as publishers and media entities.

Bringing users into the editorial process

The new version of the app will have a section called “By Our Readers” in the table of contents, which will include a mix of magazines that have been created by users on a variety of topics — a small group of beta testers (including GigaOM) have had access to this function for several months. As with the other Flipboard sections, some of the magazines that are highlighted will be chosen based on the number of times they have been shared, and others will be chosen by editors.

Like most news-aggregation and recommendation apps such as Pulse and Zite (which is owned by CNN), Flipboard users have always had the ability to share specific stories or items, but the new magazine-creation features effectively allow a user to spend some time creating a collection of content they can then share all at once. Feng used the example of an editor who is getting married soon and created an entire magazine with content about weddings.

In a way, the new version of the app also picks up where Google Reader and other RSS services left off. Instead of just passively consuming text and photos in a chronological timeline or series of folders, Flipboard turns everything into part of a magazine-style experience. According to Feng, many users have already imported their Google Reader feeds into the app, and those feeds will be available once Google sunsets the service in July.

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Samsung (005930) is still the world’s leader in smartphone, tablet and PC shipments, but two recent big-name product launches are helping Apple (AAPL) quickly close the gap. IDC’s latest data on “smart connected device” shipments — that is, total shipments for PCs, tablets and smartphones — show that Apple accounted for 20.3% of all shipments in the fourth quarter of 2012, just below Samsung’s 21.2% share of total shipments. IDC says that Apple’s surge resulted from a “combination of Apple’s iPhone 5 and iPad mini,” which shouldn’t be surprising given that most reports have shown both are selling very well. The big question is how long Apple will keep pace with Samsung once the company releases the Galaxy S 4 next month, especially since Samsung has reportedly set a lofty goal of selling 100 million units of its new flagship smartphone.

IDC continues to send smoke signals that a blistering fire rages across the planet, sure to scorch the earth where PC manufacturers hoped to plant new computer sales. Emerging markets are engulfed in a blaze of smartphone and tablet adoption that leaves little hope for a desktop or notebook revival. I simply cannot overstate the speed this thing moves.

Eight days ago, the analyst firm revised downward PC shipment forecast for 2013, singling out changing buying patterns among emerging markets. Today IDC reaffirmed the forecast, while releasing final full-year 2012 PC, smartphone and tablet shipments. The data is grim pickings.

There is a long-standing trend of what I call technology skip, where emerging markets jump over something established for something new. For connected devices that means smartphones being adopted first before PCs. But still personal computers, eventually. Uh-oh. The trend is now something else.

“In emerging markets, consumer spending typically starts with mobile phones and, in many cases, moves to tablets before PCs”, Megha Saini, IDC research analyst, says. “The pressure on the PC market is significantly increasing and we can see longer replacement cycles coming into effect very soon and that, too, will put downward pressure on PC sales”.

So in mature markets, buyers hold on to PCs longer, often buying tablets meanwhile. Elsewhere, tablets replace PCs as the step up from smartphones. Best case scenario, computer purchase is delayed but more likely, worst case, will never come to be. Turns out, 2012 was a record-breaking year for tablet shipment growth everywhere, but nowhere like emerging markets.

IDC now counts together PCs, smartphones and tablets as “smart connected devices”, of which there were 1 billion shipped in 2012, generating $576.9 billion revenue. Tablets, which units grew by 78.4 percent year over year, largely accounted for the market’s expansion. Shipments surged by 111.3 percent in emerging markets and 62.8 percent in mature ones, outpacing other categories.

Laptops fell by 8.1 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively, in mature and emerging markets, while desktop PCs declined by 4.8 percent and 3.8 percent. Meanwhile smartphones soar, with shipments up 20.6 percent in established regions and by 69.7 percent in emerging markets.

Looking at 2013, growth cools for the more-portable devices, but still greatly exceeds PCs. The analyst firm expects smartphone and tablet shipments to grow by 35.1 percent and 60.7 percent, respectively, in emerging markets, while desktops fall 3.5 percent but laptops rebound to 4.1 percent.

IDC predicts that tablet shipments will surpass desktops this year, and notebooks in 2014. The forecast contradicts another by NPD DisplaySearch, which contends tablets will out-ship laptops this year.

Many analysts had expected emerging markets to be fertile ground for PCs following Windows 8’s launch. But converging events, some economic, others technological, make tablets good-enough alternative — and more familiar.

The importance of familiarity cannot be understated. Tablets running Android or iOS, for example, are easy transitions from smartphones — versus PCs where buyers must learn something new. Meanwhile, consumers carry forward their time and monetary investment in apps rather than having to buy and learn new ones.

The PC is by no means dead, but the tablet trend accelerates across the globe now.

Photo Credit: Milkovasa/Shutterstock

Facebook’s approach to advertising can feel incoherent, especially when it flings random marketing messages all over a user’s page. In recent months, however, the social network has introduced tools that make its ad operation more sophisticated — and are likely to net it much more money.

News of the latest tune-up came on Tuesday as Facebook announced it will let marketers buy “sponsored stories” in a user’s News Feed on the basis of websites that the user has previously visited. Until now, Facebook only let brands buy stories based on a user’s profile — which is created from information the user told Facebook (age, location, “Likes” and so on).

The opportunity to use so-called “retargeting” is likely to be a hit with advertisers who regard ads based on a person’s browsing history to be especially effective and who consider Facebook’s news feed to be prime real estate. One industry executive told AdExchanger that News Feed response rates are 10 to 50 times higher than ads on the right side of the page.

Facebook also said it will be selling the News Feed through its FBX exchange, which is like an automated real-time auction house where advertisers bid to appear on your Facebook page. Until now, the tool was only available for Facebook’s right-hand ads.

Building an ad juggernaut

Opening up the News Feed for retargeting is likely to yield a nice cash boost for Facebook but, in the bigger picture, the move is part of a larger story of the company’s efforts to use different forms of data to build an all-knowing ad juggernaut.

Facebook is also, for instance, combining its own data with offline marketing information to help companies hone in on customers. As the New York Times reported, the clothing company JackThreads matched its database of two million customer emails against Facebook’s own email records — and found that two-thirds of them were on the social network. For Facebook, such opportunities are just the tip of the iceberg; the company is also working to tap into offline data on a large scale by partnering with loyalty card programs that collect drugstores and supermarket information.

All of this means that Facebook’s advertisers will be able to draw on three powerful sources of data (browsing history, offline data and Facebook records) in order to blast ads into one of the prime locations on the web — users’ News Feeds. For Facebook investors, this prospect is especially enticing given that this model can transfer nicely to mobile devices where users are spending more and more of their time. Facebook isn’t allowing marketers to buy mobile ads on its exchange just yet, but it’s a safe bet this will happen soon.

In short, Facebook appears well on its way to create a marketers’ paradise and a torrent of ad revenues. But there are still two factors that could scuttle these plans. The first is the familiar spectre of increased privacy regulation – but that is a threat Facebook and others like Google  have so far swatted away successfully. Instead, the larger peril may be the prospect of too much advertising undermining Facebook’s user experience and its vaunted design. As this all-ads screenshot from today shows, Facebook still has a ways to go in cleaning up an ad experience that too often remains irrelevant and ugly:

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Google (GOOG) has Google I/O, Apple (AAPL) has WWDC and Microsoft (MSFT) has its Build conference to attract developers who have either developed or are interested in developing apps for its platforms. Microsoft on Tuesday announced that this year’s Build conference would be held from June 26th through June 28th in San Francisco, with registration set to begin on April 2nd at 9:00 a.m. PDT. This will be Microsoft’s first developer conference since the launch of Windows 8 last fall and will likely feature a good deal of new information on the next-generation Windows Blue platform that’s being designed to offer improvements on Microsoft’s first-generation touch-based PC operating system.

As we wrote this morning, Y Combinator introduced its winter startup batch on Tuesday in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum, launching 47 companies to the investors and press who were interested to see what Silicon Valley’s most notable incubator has been cooking up.

We picked five startups to watch from the morning batch, and talked about some of the changes in this year’s program. The third batch later on Tuesday is off the record. But here are five startups to watch from the second batch on Tuesday afternoon:

Swapbox

As someone who frequently misses package deliveries when UPS or FedEx won’t leave things on my doorstep, I totally understand the pain Swapbox is trying to solve. The company is doing almost exactly what Bufferbox launched at YC’s demo day last August — before the company was bought out by Google. Swapbox is planning to put delivery boxes in retail locations across major cities, starting with San Francisco, charging customers $2 to have packages safely delivered. Having had great experiences using Amazon lockers in San Francisco, I can see why it would make sense to have lockers that any company or delivery service could work with. The key will be having enough lockers in locations that they can be useful, and making sure it’s easy to ship packages to those addresses.

Terascore

As more students start bringing computers, phones, and tablets into the classroom, Terascore is looking to make it easier for teachers to administer digital tests. By doing so, its trying to banish paper bubble sheets and number two pencils forever. The company charges teachers for access to the platform, and then lets them administer, grade, and return assessments to students online. Obviously the challenge with this idea is finding classrooms where all students have computer access — despite gains in technology, not every classroom does. But as the founders noted, eventually this will be the case, and at that point, it makes sense that digital testing will follow.

Meldium

Meldium is a startup that knows that for a lot of small businesses and offices, managing access to shared passwords often involves an Excel spreadsheet or not-terribly-secure means of passing around information. The company provides a cloud-based solution for employees to safely share passwords to more than 20 web apps at the moment, and will be adding more, basing its pricing on the number of apps and users a client needs access to.

Goldbely

Goldbely is trying to make it easier for consumers to purchase and ship specialty foods across the country, accessing items like Austin-based Salt Lick Barbecue or New York-based Magnolia Bakery cupcakes in a short period of time. The company pointed to the success of companies like Harry & David in building a consumer base around food shipping, and is looking to do the same with a wider selection of products. The company announced Tuesday that it’s entering a partnership with Facebook Gifts, meaning you might have access to better food Gifts on Facebook pretty soon.

Medisas

Medisas provides software services for hospitals, and its first product focuses on cloud-based software that allows doctors and nurses to manage the transition of care of patients when doctors switch from shift to shift. When one doctor leaves a shift and needs to pass along information about the patient, that process often takes place with hand-written paper notes, and Mediasas wants to create software that will bring the transition online, ideally cutting down on the doctor-to-doctor errors that can affect patient care.

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The Humble Mobile Bundle is back again and six Android games are up for grabs. As with any Humble Bundle, you get to name your own price and decide exactly how your money is divided among charities, developers, or Humble Bundle itself. The games available this time around are Contre Jour, Anomaly Korea, Plants vs. Zombies, Bladeslinger, The Room, and Metal Slug 3. In order to receive The Room and Metal Slug 3 as well, you’ll have to pay more than $5.56, the average. At the time of writing this, over 27,000 Humble Mobile Bundles have been sold generating over $150,000. You can watch the video after the break to learn more about the games.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Source: The Humble Mobile Bundle

Come comment on this article: The Humble Mobile Bundle Is Back: Choose Your Own Price For 6 Android Games

Google (GOOG) on Tuesday revealed that it has chosen the winners of its “if I had Glass” competition. The company kicked off the contest on February 20th by asking users to come up with the most unique applications they could for its highly anticipated Google Glass wearable computing headset while offering early access to the new gadget as a reward for winners. Google said that it was bombarded with “creative, diverse, and (sometimes) crazy applications” shortly after announcing the contest last month.

Continue reading…

Can a person change a world rife with problems — villages without basic healthcare, girls turned away from schools, hospitals unable to get life-saving vaccines to the people who need them? For three years, TEDxChange, a partnership between the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the TEDx program, has said yes, by spotlighting people who are taking risks, thinking big ideas and making change happen.

On Wednesday, April 3, the conversation continues at TEDxChange 2013: Positive Disruption. TEDxChange will begin at 9 am Pacific time, April 3, at the Gates Foundation Campus in Seattle and will stream live online at TED.com and TEDxChange.org. The program will run for 90 minutes.

Hosted by Melinda Gates, TEDxChange features seven speakers:

Julie Dixon, director of Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication;

spoken-word poet David Fasanya;

Halimatu Hima, Niger’s first Youth Parliament president;

M. Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of law and of theology at the University of Notre Dame;

Salim Shekh and Sikha Patra, 15-year-olds working to eradicate polio from their communities; and

Roger Thurow, an author of the book Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty and a recipient of Action Against Hunger’s Humanitarian Award.

Around the world, you can gather at an independently organized TEDx event to watch a live broadcast of TEDxChange. This year, at 200 events in 65 countries, including Amsterdam, Kyoto, Delhi, Bogotá and New York, TEDxers will consider TEDxChange’s theme of Positive Disruption — the power of disruption for good. Spaces are still available at many of these events; to join the positive disruption and find a TEDxChange livestreaming event near you to attend, click here.

Here, TEDxChange host Melinda Gates chats with TED Curator (and former TEDxChange host) Chris Anderson to talk about positive disruption. Below, their conversation:

Chris: Melinda, I’m really looking forward to TEDxChange and am excited to see you host this year. Tell me a bit about the speakers you’ve lined up…

Melinda: Thanks Chris! With only one week to go, I’m focused on preparations for my role as host. It’s quite different from the work I did leading up to my talk last year – and given the impressive job you’ve done as TEDxChange host until now, yours are big shoes to fill.

Luckily, I’ll be sharing the stage with some truly talented and inspiring people. I was really struck by Roger’s book The Last Hunger Season. At TEDxChange, he’ll be telling the story of Ethiopia’s smallholder farmers and how their lives have been transformed with access to the technologies we take for granted in the U.S. and Europe. I have such admiration for Cathy Kaveny, who shares my belief in the power of faith communities to bring about positive change in the developing world. I’m excited, too, to see Halima again. We met in Niger – the country with the highest fertility rate in the world. The insights and stories she shared from her country contributed to my ongoing learning on the importance of advocating for access to contraceptives as a way to unlock the potential of entire communities.

Chris: And the theme, Positive Disruption, why did you choose it?

Melinda: Positive Disruption really comes down to courage. I’m very fortunate that my work at the foundation means I have the opportunity to travel. Wherever I go in the world, I meet so many amazing people with the courage to believe that, for the world’s poorest people, change is possible. And the commitment to make that dream a reality.

Chris: What are you hoping comes out of this event? Why does an event like this matter?

Melinda: At this year’s TED conference in Long Beach, Bono spoke about the progress that has been made in the fight against poverty. But too often these stories of progress remain untold. We started TEDxChange in 2010 to give voice to the issues that still affect so many around the world today –  HIV/AIDS, nutrition, access to life-saving vaccines. My hope for this year’s event is that it will give more people the courage to be disruptive and in doing so, unlock the potential of many others all over the world.

Chris: Lastly, why TEDx?

Melinda: The TEDx community is such an awesome force for change. It’s incredible that 200 TEDx organizers, from Kabul to Amsterdam, are holding TEDxChange events this year. I’m reminded of the work of one of our speakers, Julie Dixon, who will talk about influence as a currency for change. The TEDx community has already shown that it has real influence on global conversations—but also the heart to use that influence to change lives for the better.

Most of us have faced that sense of dread that comes when our phones lay drained and dysfunctional right when we need them the most. Sure, we could beat ourselves up for not charging them as long as we should have (or perhaps making a bad choice of phones), but that’s where this particularly cute Kickstarter project comes into play. Devotec’s Fuel micro charger is a terribly tiny rechargeable external battery for when a smartphone’s charge goes south at an inopportune moment.

How small is it? Think “clip it to your keychain small.” And it’s shaped like a little gas can! How quaint.

As you could probably guess from its size, there’s only so much juice you’ll be able to squeeze out of this thing. The Fuel’s internal battery is only capable of holding about 500mAh worth of charge, which Devotec figures will give your smartphone up to a half hour of extra talk time — more than enough to fire off a few frenzied emails or to make a brief emergency call or two. I’ve come to appreciate bulkier fare like Mophie’s PowerStation Duo, but folks looking for a pint-sized lifesaver that won’t weigh down their bags will find something to like here.

For this first production run, Devotec is focusing mostly on churning out Fuel chargers with microUSB connectors, but the team is also plugging away on Lightning versions for the iPhone 5s in your life. There’s still no ETA on when to expect them though, so iPhone 5 owners may want to look elsewhere for now — after all, the first-party microUSB-to-Lightning adapter costs nearly as much as the Fuel itself.

Devotec’s Kickstarter campaign launched less than a week ago and the team has already blown past its $20,000 funding goal, but you can still lock in your order for a microUSB model for around $18 at this point. The final retail version will cost $25, so the cheapskates among you may want to jump on this now (like I just did).

TEDxSamsung celebrates TEDx’s fourth

TEDx is now 4! This past Saturday, March 23, TEDx celebrated this milestone with a global birthday party, convened by TEDx organizers, volunteers and fans worldwide. There were cakes, candles, wishes and even a kite or two — all paired with enough enthusiasm to last another four years and beyond.

With 6,417 events in 149 countries and 1,777 cities over the past four years, and now over 25,000 talks online, the TEDx program would be nothing without its ever-expanding network of dedicated and hard-working volunteers.

So, take a moment and toast them and 4 years of TEDx with a selection of favorite sweet treats and tweets from TEDx’s 4th:

Video of 4 years of #TEDxBrussels for the 4th Birthday of #TEDx youtu.be/pK8q8XXQFRI #TEDxBday #4years cc @TEDx—
  (@TEDxBrussels) March 23, 2013

TEDxGolfLinksPark in Bangalore, India, made TEDx a very impressive birthday cake — with sprinkles!

The mini birthday banner on TEDxZurich’s Swiss birthday cupcake just melts all of our hearts.

TEDxPortauPrince and TEDxUAEU curators celebrate TEDx’s 4th birthday together at Haiti Partners’ Children’s Academy on the mountains outside Port-au-Prince. This cake might have the best view of all TEDx birthday cakes.

TEDxYouth@Budapest sent over this photo with birthday wishes in Hungarian: “Boldog 4. születésnapot TEDx!”

The TEDxAnnaba team in Algeria eschews forks and knives to eat their TEDx birthday cake faster. We approve.

The TEDxCordoba team tweeted this picture of coconut birthday cupcakes with well-wishes in Spanish. Gracias, TEDxCordoba!

And a bonus, TEDx staffers celebrate at TED HQ with a gift of TEDx birthday flowers from TEDxWWF organizer Wee Ping Tan:

Happy birthday, TEDx! Here’s to many more!

Two of Southern California's finest sports teams joined President Obama in the East Room to celebrate their championship seasons. The LA Galaxy was here for the second year in a row, as they repeated their dominance of the Major League Soccer in the 2012 season. The LA Kings, meanwhile, made their first visit to the White House after winning their first Stanley Cup.

And as President Obama pointed out, these teams share more than a hometown.

In 2012, they also shared "a pretty good comeback story." The President was referring to the Galaxy's injury plagued season, which culminated in a championship game they won after tying the score at the 60-minute mark. The King's triumph seemed even more improbable as they were the first hockey team in NHL history to win the Stanley Cup after entering the playoffs as an eight seed.

read more

Over the half year or so that the White House has been operating their We The People online petition site, we’ve seen that it can be used in a variety of ways.

There are the ridiculous petitions – the ones that have absolutely no basis in reality but I’m sure some people think they do. This would include the ones designed to have the Obama administration deport talk show hosts and let states secede because they’re unhappy about election results.

Then there are the meaningful petitions that deserve White House responses. This would include recent petitions like the one asking the Obama Administration to make cellphone unlocking legal or this anti-CISPA one.

Then, of course, there are the Stars Wars-related petitions. For a cultural phenomenon as powerful as Star Wars, it’s actually hard to believe that there aren’t more like this. You may remember the people’s attempt to get the U.S. government to build a fully functioning Death Star. It actually succeed, crossing the signature threshold and forcing an official White House response. But alas, the White House said that they do not support blowing up planets.

Today’s Star Wars-related governmental petition is a little more reasonable. It asks the Obama administration to “Create a national R2-D2 Day whose motto is ‘selfless not selfish’ and commemorates under appreciated heroes.”

Cute.

Here’s what creator S.M. from Alexandria, Virginia, has to say.

In the iconic Star Wars saga, R2-D2 always seems to save the day, getting his Jedi masters and the forces of the Republic out of harm’s way, and doing so with grace and humor. But the astromech droid never gets the full credit or honors he deserves for his deeds.

In that sense, R2 is a stand-in for all of the under appreciated and unheralded heroes in our everyday lives — in our workplaces, schools and communities.

We should all join together on a national holiday to pay homage to those who, like R2, live by the “selfless, not selfish” creed.

America sure does have some under-appreciated heroes. Sounds like a good idea to me.

In the past, Microsoft has been rather witty with its Internet Explorer 10 ads as it continued its self-deprecating “The Browser You Loved To Hate” ad campaign. It didn’t really sell people on the browser, but hey, the ads made us laugh or fondly remember how stupid Pongs were.

Unfortunately, the latest ads for Internet Explorer drop this trend of humor in favor of targeting the ever important 18 to 34 male demographic with ads about sports and video games. Sure, it’s an important demographic, but are they really going to care that they can pin ESPN’s Web site to the Start menu?

Likewise, will they care about playing the only touch-optimized HTML5 game on Internet Explorer 10?

Much like its previous ad campaign, Microsoft has also launched a Web site with the ad campaign called “Beauty of the Web.” I can appreciate the sentiment as the Web is quite beautiful, but it’s somewhat misleading as Internet Explorer still doesn’t natively support WebGL. Until it does, Internet Explorer won’t be able to display some of the more beautiful things on the Web.

We’re not sure if T-Mobile is now an “uncarrier,” as it declared at Tuesday’s event in New York City at which it finally introduced an iPhone 5 for its network, unveiled new pricing plans that could change the way people think about buying smartphones, and shed a little more light on how its LTE networks will operate. However, the carrier certainly came out swinging as it tries to embrace its underdog status and set itself apart from larger rivals.

Here are the stories that emerged from the event:

• T-Mobile launches LTE with a bang, the iPhone 5 and no contracts
• It’s finally here: T-Mobile iPhone 5 goes on sale April 12
• T-Mobile is ending subsidies and contracts, but it’s still locking phones
• T-Mobile’s new LTE network is fast, but it’s going to get a lot faster
• Samsung Galaxy S 4 hits T-Mobile around May 1 for $99 plus monthly payments
• Why Apple doesn’t need a cheap iPhone if T-Mobile does it for them

T-Mobile image courtesy of Flickr user swruler9284

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Google’s PageRank algorithm is the inspiration for a new lung cancer study published in the journal Cancer Research.

Researchers fron the University of Southern California (USC), Scripps Clinic, The Scripps Research Institute, University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York used an algorithm described as “similar to the Google PageRank and to the Viterbi Algorithm for digital communication” to gain insnights about spread patterns of lung cancer.

“This research demonstrates how similar the Internet is to a living organism,” said USC Viterbi School of Engineering Professor Paul Newton, Ph.D., the lead and corresponding author of the study. “The same types of tools that help us understand the spread of information through the web can help us understand the spread of cancer through the human body.”

In fact, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen PageRank used to study other areas of science or even cancer. A Washington State University chemistry professor claimed to have adapted the PageRank algorithm to help determine molecular shapes and chemical reactions. Then, a study came out last year looking at improving outcome prediction for cancer patients by network-based ranking of marker genes, using the PageRank concept.

We first reported on this new study in December, but now the results are out.

The team learned that metastatic lung cancer doesn’t progress in a single direction from the primary tumor site to distant locations, according to a news release on the findings. They also say they learned that the first site to which the cells spread plays a key role in the progression of the disease, with the study showing that some parts of the body serve as “sponges” that are unlikely to further spread the cancer cells to other areas of the body. The study did identify other areas as spreaders for lung cancer cells, with the main spreaders being the adrenal gland and kidney, and the main sponges being the regional lymph nodes, liver and bone.

More on the study here.

Michelle Duggar may be one of the toughest women in the U.S. Having given birth to 19 children in 21 years, her body has no doubt seen more than its fair share of miles. Now, it appears that it could be time for Duggar to retire, at least from the baby-making portion of her motherhood.

Duggar’s latest pregnancy, in 2011, ended in a miscarriage. The youngest Duggar child, Josie, was born prematurely in 2011. After a short 25-week pregnancy, Josie was born weighing just 22 ounces. At 45 years old, Michelle Duggar is past the age where doctors begin to warn that pregnancies come with serious health risks for both mother and child. It now appears that the Duggar family is considering adoption as an alternative to another pregnancy.

Duggar told People magazine this week that she and her husband, Jim Bob, may adopt children into their overpacked family, saying, “We are open to the idea of adoption.”

Michelle told People that she and her family are praying to their god about adoption, though she makes it clear her children are encouraging them to expand the family further.

The Duggar family are the stars of the TLC reality TV show 19 Kids and Counting. In addition to their 19 children, the Duggars currently have two grandchildren, with more undoubtedly on the way.

(Image courtesy Jim Bob Duggar/Wikimedia Commons)

Google has been working with Brazilian nonprofit organization, Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS), and the two have now announced the Bolsa Floresta Platform, an online tool that lets you explore social, environmental and economical datasets for areas in the Amazon.

“One FAS’s most significative initiatives is the administration of the Bolsa Floresta — Brazil’s first internationally-certified incentive program for the preservation of traditional communities and environment in the Amazon rainforest,” says Gabriel Ribenboim in a guest post on the Google Maps blog. “As the largest payment for environmental services program in the world, Bolsa Floresta serves over 35,000 people, 15 state-protected reserve territories and covers an area of more than 10 million hectares.”

“Institutional transparency is a challenge for NGOs across the world,” says Ribenboim. “Tools that help track the impact of our efforts and present them in an accessible way are rare and normally require a significant investment. The Bolsa Floresta platform, built on Google technologies such as Google Maps Engine, Google Drive, YouTube and Street View helped us organize this kind of dataset in a way that is easy to visualize, understand and share with little in the way of programming complexity or investment.”

You can check out the map here, and toggle on and off layers for economics, social development, and cash payment for environmental services. Community organization is coming soon.