Category: News

On Tuesday, Microsoft detailed another update addressed to Windows Azure, the software giant’s cloud platform, aimed at fending off the attack from Amazon S3, Google Cloud Platform and other major competitors. One of the most noteworthy new features is support for developing native Android Apps in Windows Azure Mobile Services.

Microsoft has released the Android Client SDK (Software Development Kit) through GitHub, under the Apache 2.0 license. Windows Azure Mobile Services also features support for Android push notifications, which can be enabled by registering for Google Cloud Messaging, getting the API key and pasting it in the corresponding “Push” tab.

Android support is available for green droid devices running Android 2.2 (Froyo) and newer, and also features authentication using Google, Facebook, Microsoft or Twitter credentials. Microsoft has additionally announced that it welcomes contributions via GitHub from members of the community.

Windows Azure can now be used to create and manage SQL Reporting Services through the management portal and monitor cloud and mobile services, websites and virtual machines. Microsoft touts improvements for Service Bus, storage (users can download blog storage files), Media Services (which touts improved content and samples and can be used to monitor metrics for on-demand streaming) and cloud service.

The software giant has also increased the localization support to include five new languages (Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Korean, Portuguese and Russian), and expanded the availability of Mobile Services in the East-Asia region, which Microsoft describes as a measure “to reduce latency for applications with customers in Asia”.

Photo Credit: Novelo/Shutterstock

OneSource Virtual, a provider of business process cloud-sourcing services, has raised $15 million in fresh capital from Halyard Capital.

PRESS RELEASE
OneSource Virtual (OneSource), a Workday partner, today announced a $15 million investment from Halyard Capital that will support the growth and expansion of OneSource’s service offerings and capabilities.

Founded in 2008, OneSource Virtual has grown dramatically, more than doubling revenue in each of the past three years. The company has pioneered a new industry standard as the first organization to offer business process cloud-sourcing services and continues to enhance its solutions for its corporate customers. OneSource has a unique position in the Workday partner ecosystem with its ability to process North American payroll, benefits, taxes and garnishments within a customer’s Workday environment. In addition, OneSource provides deployment, training and support services to Workday customers. Workday is a leader in enterprise cloud applications for human resources and finance.

“Halyard’s investment in our organization is a testament to our success to date and it opens up opportunities for accelerated growth in the years to come,” said Brian Williams, co-founder and CEO for OneSource Virtual. “Through our partnership, we look forward to supporting our clients’ successes and expanding OneSource Virtual in other markets.”

Recently ranked number 54 on the list of America’s Most Promising Companies by Forbes, OneSource is changing the way organizations of all sizes leverage technology through the use of a truly cloud-based solution.

“We are impressed with the tremendous growth OneSource Virtual has sustained over the past few years and are proud to be partnering with the company’s outstanding management team,” said Jonathan Barnes, partner at Halyard Capital. “Halyard’s investment in OneSource supports our investment thesis that there is a substantial market need to provide world-class, outsourced services to enterprise customers of all sizes.”

For additional information about OneSource Virtual’s offerings and services, please visit www.onesourcevirtual.com.

About OneSource Virtual
OneSource Virtual is a team of certified Workday experts specializing in the deployment and delivery of the Workday platform to small- and medium-sized businesses while offering business process outsourcing services on one unified platform to companies of all sizes. OneSource Virtual is an established, strategic partner dedicated to delivering dynamic solutions to improve our clients’ business through a truly cloud-based, future-proof technology and efficient processes. Growing and global companies and business leaders partner with OneSource to best manage, analyze and grow their business’ value. Visit us at www.onesourcevirtual.com.

About Halyard Capital
Halyard Capital, a private equity firm with more than $600 million of capital under management, is focused on leveraged buyout and growth equity investments in Software, Information and Business Services companies. The firm has extensive experience and a proven track record within these industries, having invested in businesses that include Practice Insight, Digital Fortress, EducationDynamics, Datamyx and Presidio.

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OMERS Ventures, the venture capital investment arm of Canadian public sector pension fund OMERS, has added George Babu as a director responsible for identifying and executing investment opportunities in TMT sectors. Mr. Babu was previously general counsel and head of US operations for Stockholm-based social gifting startup Wrapp. OMERS Ventures was established with C$180 million under management in 2011.

PRESS RELEASE

OMERS Ventures, the venture capital investment arm of the OMERS pension plan, announces George Babu is joining its team as Director. In this role Mr. Babu will identify and execute investment opportunities in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) sectors, with a focus on human-computer interfaces, hardware platforms, mobile and enterprise software.

“OMERS Ventures is focused on investing in Canadian companies with the potential to become global leaders. As a very successful entrepreneur with diverse financial and operational knowledge, George will be a huge asset in helping us achieve this goal,” said John Ruffolo, CEO of OMERS Ventures.

Prior to joining OMERS Ventures, George acted as general counsel and head of U.S. operations for Stockholm-based social gifting startup Wrapp, where he negotiated key partnerships and built out the U.S. team in New York and San Francisco.

His many other accomplishments include co-founding and acting as head of finance and operations at Rypple, a social performance platform acquired by www.Salesforce.com in late 2011 and re-launched as Work.com. George also spent nine years at Research In Motion (RIM), initially with the Radio Frequency (RF) Research & Development team developing radio platforms, and then with the Intellectual Property (IP) team growing RIM’s patent portfolio and assisting in IP litigation across multiple countries.

George currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Faculty of Engineering Science at the University of Toronto. He holds a B.A.Sc. (Engineering Science, Electrical), J.D. and M.B.A. from The University of Toronto, is a Registered Patent Agent in Canada and is the holder of two patents.

About OMERS Ventures

OMERS Ventures (twitter:@OMERSVentures) is the venture capital investment arm of OMERS, one of Canada’s largest pension funds with nearly $61 billion in net assets. It is an initiative of OMERS Strategic Investments (OSI), an investment entity with a mandate to build long-term strategic relationships with like-minded partners. As both an institutional angel investor and a later-stage investor, OMERS Ventures is looking for successful companies with significant growth potential and market opportunities. We are seeking like-minded partners with a shared vision of building a vibrant and successful knowledge economy.

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It’s no secret that the Iditarod race can be dangerous. However, dog sledders are generally more prepared for disaster than others who may find themselves stranded in the harsh conditions along the race’s route.

The Associated Press is reporting that three people have been found dead along the Iditarod’s route in Alaska. The pilot, age 59, a woman, age 48, and the woman’s daughter, age 10, all died in the crash of a small aircraft in an area called Rainy Pass. All three were from Eagle River, a town located just north of Anchorage.

The AP report states that the plane took off from Anchorage earlier this week, bound for a small village named Takotna. A flight plan was not filed. A spokesman for the family of the passengers stated they were headed to the village to volunteer for the Iditarod.

After the plane did not make its scheduled return to Anchorage, the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center began searching for it. With the help of the military, state troopers, and private citizens, the plane was found on Tuesday morning in Rainy Pass. The bodies have been recovered and taken to Anchorage.

It’s been exactly one year since Google merged the Android Market, Google Music, and the Google eBookstore into a singular product called Google Play. So, happy first birthday, Google Play!

And for a week, Google is offering some free gifts to Play users in celebration.

“It was just a year ago today that we launched this amazing shop on the interwebs to offer the best in digital content. Since the best parties are the ones that send you home with a present, today we celebrate our birthday with a festive goodie bag full of gifts. Don’t delay in picking up these limited-time offers. Continue the celebration all week with even more special deals on music, movies, books, magazines and TV along with exclusive gaming gifts. It’s been an incredible first year and we look forward to sharing the gift of digital diversions for many more to come,” says the Google Play team.

Among the gifts for U.S. users (things should vary a bit by country) is free music from LCD Soundsystem and The Velvet Underground, the pilot of Breaking Bad, and offers from Fancy, Hotels.com app, and Gyft.

To check out the full list of offers, check out the birthday page.

The European Commission on Wednesday fined Microsoft (MSFT) €561 million, equal to roughly $731 million, for failing to properly inform users of alternative Web browser options. The company was required to offer users a browser choice screen in Windows 7 that would allow them to easily choose their preferred Web browser, however it failed to do so from May 2011 through July 2012. The Commission found that more than 15 million Windows users in Europe did not see this screen over the course of a year. Microsoft acknowledged its mistake, noting that it takes “full responsibility for the technical error that caused this problem and have apologized for it.” The company does not plan to appeal the fine. The European Commission’s press release follows below.

Continue reading…

Which are the companies tackling the future of media with new technology? A good place to start might be the six companies chosen by Matter, one of San Francisco’s newest startup accelerators.

The companies have been chosen for the accelerator program that’s looking to build the future of public media and information. From the start, CEO Corey Ford said he was committed to finding companies to do the things that matter, and these six are the accelerator’s first bet.

“We have a similar mission to public media and good journalism outlets, but this isn’t just about saving public media or saving journalism. It’s about building a place for entrepreneurs to build something that makes people more informed and empowered,” Ford said in an interview when Matter launched in December.

(The accelerator is not linked to former GigaOM writer Bobbie Johnson’s science and tech publication also called Matter.)

The six companies play at the intersection of content and tech, providing services like analytics for video, publishing platforms, or outlets for digital expression. But Ford emphasized that while the companies all have basic plans in mind, the final products could change significantly before the accelerator’s demo day on June 13.

These are the six companies that will debut in June:

• ChannelMeter – A video analytics platform aimed that lets publishers measure online engagement with videos on sites such as YouTube.
• InkFold – A mobile product that allows consumers to read and interact with the news.
• OpenWatch – An investigative network and citizen media project that aims to let users document abuses of power.
• SpokenLayer – A company that transforms text on the web into audio.
• Station Creator – A television platform allowing users to distribute their own broadcasts online from the cloud.
• Zeega – A company that’s re-thinking publishing and storytelling by allowing users to mix content from across the web.

“It’s really about execution. When you launch something like this, you’re wondering who is out there, and who will be part of this. And the awesome thing is that I can now answer, emphatically, there are talented invidudals out there,” Ford said. “We’re going from an abstract vision of who we’re serving to now we have our actual customers.”

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Few professionals were sitting at their desks in 2004, eyeing the empty slots in their calendars and wishing that somebody would just invent a new way of communicating to fill those long and lonely minutes. People’s calendars were already full.

Social media demanded attention. It had to be put into the rotation, but that doesn’t mean we took something else off our calendars to accommodate it. Instead we just added it to the marketing teams’ tasks, challenging them to figure it out until they could make a business case for hiring full-time social media staffers.

Flash forward a decade, and any organization with serious social media ambitions has those full-time staffers. They’ve expanded teams and reassigned resources by eliminating now-deprecated communications channels. (Paper newsletter, anyone?)

For individuals however, it’s harder to expand and reassign resources. What are the rest of us taking off our plates to make room for the time we spend on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook? Not much.

If social media is worth doing, than it’s worth making time for. Anyone who’s spending more than an hour a week on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook has presumably made at least a subconscious calculation of the benefits of participating (or better still, an explicit set of goals for what they expect to accomplish with the time invested in social media usage).

But all too many of us decide that social media is worth doing without deciding what is worth giving up for it. And unless you’re one of the miraculous few who does have plenty of empty space on your dance card, you must give something up in order to make time for social networking.

How do you decide what to eliminate? You can prioritize what to keep and what to retire by answering these questions:

What am I learning from social media? If you use social media as a news gathering, training or learning resource, ask which of your prior news tracking or learning activities can be retired. If you’re now reading 10 blog posts a week on professional best practices, maybe you don’t need to attend that annual training workshop anymore.

Who am I meeting through social media? One of the great rewards of Twitter, LinkedIn and other professionally rich networks is the discovery of new colleagues or the deepening of professional conversations and ties. If you’re consistently expanding your professional network through the time you spend online, consider scaling back the number of face-to-face networking events you attend in order to build out your rolodex (and why don’t you retire the rolodex while you’re at it).

Who am I reaching through social media? Blogs, Slideshare, YouTube videos: social media provides an extensive array of opportunities for sharing your ideas and building your reputation. That may allow you to reduce the other kinds of reputation-builders that formerly filled your schedule. You may still get value from presenting to an audience of a thousand, but are you better off speaking pro bono to a room of 25 people, or writing a blog post that will be read by 250?

How am I replenished by social media? If you’ve made time for social media, it’s probably because you actually enjoy it. So tune into the emotional impact of the time you spend on Facebook or Twitter, as compared to the other kinds of activities or interactions that formerly filled up your leisure hours. What’s more relaxing: watching TV or catching up on Facebook news? What’s more fun: going to a bar, or kibitzing on Twitter? What’s more restorative: reading a blog post or reading a novel? Depending on your personal preferences, you may decide to shelve some of your less-satisfying hobbies in favor of some of your new social media activities.

One virtue of this kind of evaluation is that it not only allows you to evaluate which pre-Facebook activities are less valuable than social media, but also to notice where social media has crowded out professional or personal activities that offer more rewards than you get from spending that same hour on Twitter or LinkedIn. The key is to make these trade-offs conscious and explicit, rather than letting social media take over more rewarding activities, or letting it crowd out the remaining space in your life.

Because you are giving something up to make time for social media, even if what you’re giving up is sleep or (rarer still) empty space. Indeed, that empty space may be what’s most precious, because it’s the margin that ensures that when the next must-do activity appears on the horizon, you don’t go ten years without noticing you need to take something else off your plate.

Looking to make it easier for more enterprise employees to drill down on sales data with a web-based product, Looker Data Services has raised $2 million from First Round Capital and PivotNorth Capital.

Based in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, Calif., Looker has developed LookML, a proprietary language based on the SQL programming language for relational data, to enable users with little to no development background to make their own custom SQL queries of sales data. Once a customer signs up, Looker’s analysts review the customer’s data and, over a few days, custom-build the tool with options for querying the customer’s various databases in specific ways, said Lloyd Tabb, Looker’s founder and CEO. Once in place, Looker can run on a customer’s on-premise hardware or on hosted servers.

Many companies offer business analytics tools, and they come in different flavors. Oracle, IBM and other legacy IT vendors offer data warehouse appliances, although those can take engineers months to implement, Tabb said. Other BI vendors, including GoodData, Mixpanel and Tableau, can store customer data in the clouds, but those display bigger-picture trends in event data and don’t correlate well with user data, which aren’t in clouds, Tabb said. And then there’s Redshift, Amazon Web Services’ new data warehouse product.

Despite all the competition, Tabb believes Looker has a place in the market. The company, which is emerging from stealth mode about a year after its establishment, has more than 20 customers, including Simply Hired.

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Nearly every day in technology we hear about another startup team that’s been acquired. Now Exitround is looking to get in on the action by facilitating the search process for founders who might want to put their companies on the block, and helping corporate buyers investigate talent or tech up for sale — all while anonymizing the data to keep discussions discreet.

While an internal marketplace for acquisitions might sound a little wonky or industry-specific, the success of investment marketplaces like AngelList prove that democratizing an industry often dependent on who you know has real potential for success.

The company explained the rationale behind the site:

“Startup founders who are having difficulty raising a Series A round face a series of options: raise additional Seed capital, cut the burn and bootstrap, shut the doors, or occasionally consider a strategic acquisition by a complementary partner. This type of conversation with strategic acquirers is common for larger venture-backed companies, however, not as common or accessible for the large number of seed-funded companies out there. Exitround is the way for founders to more easily explore the strategic acquisition option.”

CEO and founder Jacob Mullins, who is also a senior associate at Shasta Ventures, was very clear that Exitround is not a public database where people can scan companies looking to sell. The site will prioritize privacy for all parties who are interested in participating, and potential buyers and sellers will have to fill out applications to be admitted to the site.

Mullins said the company is mainly looking to make sure the companies filling out profiles have some sort of seed funding, top incubator experience, or strong technology backgrounds that make them a good fit for the marketplace. But he said Exitround is generally open to a variety of companies joining the site.

Founders will fill out information on their companies, employees, technology experience, and funding, and then Exitround will collect the data into one big profile and anonymize it for potential buyer perusal. If the buyer is interested, Exitround will introduce the company and the buyer. Initially, Exitround is focused on small companies with some seed funding, but not necessarily those that have done a Series A yet, for example.

“There should be a place where people who are at least interested in selling their company should be able to discreetly raise their hand and connect with people who are potentially interested in buying that company,” Mullins said.

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When Google first introduced the world to Gmail back in 2004, its 1GB of free storage space for messages seemed unbelievably generous. How times change. Since then of course, it’s upped the figure to 10GB, but for a lot of people that’s nowhere near enough. Businesses get a much more substantial 25GB through Google Apps, but even that can be restrictive — especially if you have to send, receive and store a lot of large attachments.

Cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery firm Backupify can’t do anything about the lack of space for consumers, but it is offering a new free solution for firms. FreeSpace actively monitors the amount of space available in Google Apps Gmail accounts and makes it easy to free up as much space as you need, whenever you need it.

Currently if you hit the 25GB ceiling, you have to manually go through your inbox deleting messages to be able to continue sending and receiving emails from your choked account. If you’ve ever had to do this, you’ll know it’s a frustrating and incredibly time consuming process.

FreeSpace avoids that situation by automatically identifying large attachments and giving you the chance to download or delete them, freeing up space instantly and with the minimum of effort. It only targets the attachments, not the conversations themselves.

Explaining the reason for FreeSpace, Rob May, CEO of Backupify said: “As a backup provider for Google Apps we have seen first-hand the incredible data accumulation within our customers’ domains. We built FreeSpace to ease the burden of managing these growing accounts while still being able to preserve the valuable company data that they contain”.

Google Apps users interested in trying FreeSpace can sign up to the service here. Once you’ve chosen the account to use (specifying if you’re an admin or a user) the service will scan your account and display a list of attachments, including their size of course, for you to select and do with as you will. I’ve been using FreeSpace for a while, and frankly it’s incredibly handy and definitely something I’d recommend.

I just wish it was available for my close-to-bursting personal Gmail account.

Photo Credit: Marko Tomicic/Shutterstock

I knew this would happen. After battling to decide between Roku and Google TV and opting to buy the Vizio Co Star, Roku has gone and released its brand new Roku 3 box this morning, and also made me jealous of all the cool stuff the company has added into its latest set top box.

Roku’s vice president of business development, Jim Funk, made the announcement this morning that the company is “excited to introduce the new, fully loaded Roku 3 — our fastest, most powerful streaming player to-date”.

The box comes with a completely revamped user interface designed to provide quicker access and greater visibility, especially for customers who have installed a lot of channels. The Roku Channel Store and Search are now fully integrated into the home screen and have been redesigned with a new on-screen experience to make browsing simpler.

Gaming on the little box has also been improved because the new remote control is motion-sensitive. The Roku 3 comes with Angry Birds pre-installed to invite you to try out that functionality. In addition, the RC has a built-in headphone jack. When plugged in, it automatically switches the audio over to your ears and mutes any external speakers — handy for moving around while listening to music and not disturbing the rest of your home. However, the company failed to cite what the range for this capability is.

If you do not want to replace your existing box just yet then you can hold out and the new UI will begin rolling out to Roku 2 devices in April. Otherwise, the Roku3 is available now for $99. I wonder if my wife would kill me if I bought two set top boxes within a month of each other?

On Thursday, Facebook will hold a big event to unveil a “new look for the news feed.” Facebook’s news feed, the core part of the site’s experience, last received a major change in 2011.

According to a report at TechCrunch, Facebook will debut new content-specific news feeds, as well as tweak image sizes and add image-based ads.

“Multiple sources” confirm that Facebook is adding a few new ways to sort posts from your friends in your news feed. The first one of these new categories is a photo-only news feed that will take from both Facebook photos and Instagram photos. This will be the first major Instagram/Facebook integration since the photo-filtering app was purchased by Facebook last year.

Another content feed that will launch is for music, and will feature info from Spotify, Rdio, and others. You will also find info on nearby concerts, new albums, and a consolidation of all the posts from artist’s pages that you like. It’s possible that there could eventually be more of theses content-specific feeds for things like videos or apps.

Alongside the new photo feed comes a bigger focus on images in general – and yes that means within ads too. Facebook will reportedly unveil larger images throughout the news feed – in both organic posts from friends and in advertisements.

These changes will first affect the desktop news feed, and could later expand to mobile.

As always, we’ll be covering the event on Thursday. Check back with us to see what happens during the big reveal.

The latest version of Chrome Beta for Android includes support for the experimental speed boost found earlier this week in Google’s code. There’s just one catch: You have to enable the feature for faster browsing. Luckily, it’s not difficult to find the setting, which uses Google’s servers to optimize web pages before serving them up on your Android phone or tablet.

First, make sure you have the latest update of Chrome Beta for Android — obvious, yes, but required. Next open a tab in Chrome and type chrome://flags in the address bar to see Chrome’s extra settings. Find the “Experimental Data Compression Proxy” mode, enable it and you’re done. So what happens now when browsing over a standard web connection? Google’s Chromium blog explains:

“This feature is powered by a connection to a SPDY proxy running on Google’s servers, paired with content optimization performed by our open-source PageSpeed libraries, specifically tuned for Chrome Beta on Android.

By using SPDY, the proxy is able to multiplex multiple request and response streams in parallel over a single TCP connection to your phone or tablet…   ….In addition, only HTTP traffic is routed through and optimized by the proxy, so secure (HTTPS) requests will bypass the proxy and continue to connect directly to the destination. Furthermore, DNS lookups are performed by the proxy, instead of on the mobile device. Turning on this experimental feature also enables Safe Browsing.”

Note that secured web traffic stays secure as it bypasses Google’s proxy servers. That means you won’t be giving up your online bank passwords or any similar data that uses an HTTPS connection from your Android.

Ideally, this service will not only speed up the mobile web experience, it could also reduce the amount of mobile broadband you use. All images from web page requests will automatically be compressed using Google’s WebP format, which uses less data than other popular image formats such as .JPG and .PNG. Google will also remove “unnecessary whitespace, comments, and other metadata which are not essential to render the page” for faster, lighter page loads.

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Cincinnati-based SoMoLend Holdings, a debt-based crowdfunding platform, has closed its $2.18 million seed-stage-funding round, having inked a recent investment of $400,000 from QED Investors. The money will be used for continued development, and well as to expand marketing.

PRESS RELEASE
SoMoLend Holdings, LLC, a debt-based crowdfunding platform, announced today it has closed its $2.18 million seed-stage-funding round with the latest investment of $400,000 from QED Investors in Alexandria, Va.

The investment will be used to further enhance the software platform, including the addition of social networking features, as well as expand marketing and customer acquisition efforts and develop fund-raising tools and education programs.

“It is a major win to obtain our final round of seed funding from QED because of their expertise in the financial technology space,” said Candace Klein, founder and chief executive officer of SoMoLend.

“We’re thrilled to be associated with SoMoLend,” QED Partner Frank Rotman said. “The marketplace they are building will help bring needed capital to the small business community. Capital is the fuel that small businesses need to flourish, and SoMoLend is well positioned to be the catalyst that fills this gap in the marketplace.”

Other SoMoLend seed investors include: CincyTech, Queen City Angels, the North Coast Angel Fund, Blue Chip Partners, Shaker LaunchHouse, Eldar Investment LLC, Clarion Direct Investment LLC, Clifford Holekamp, Elizabeth Crowell, Bruce Terry, Bob Baron, Cheryl and Carlin Stamm and numerous other individual investors.

Klein founded SoMoLend in 2011 when she saw the need for small business to have alternative funding options. The SoMoLend crowdfunding platform enables small businesses to secure loans from customers, friends, family, accredited investors and institutional lenders, which is made possible by the JOBS Act signed into law in April 2012.

About SoMoLend
SoMoLend is the leading debt-based, crowdfunding platform that connects small business borrowers with individual and organizational lenders in a local area. SoMoLend.com automates the loan application process, as well as interest negotiations, funding progress and payments, and also provides fundraising campaign tools. SoMolend.com is a website owned by SoMoLend Holdings, LLC (SMLH). SMLH has entered into an agreement with GATE US LLC, a registered Broker/Dealer and member FINRA/SIPC. Upon completion of final rule changes and implantations regarding funding portals, all securities offered will be provided and overseen through GATE US LLC. By accessing this site and any pages thereof, you agree to be bound by its Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. SoMoLend.com is intended for accredited investors, friends and family, banks or corporate lenders only.

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The Kinect is arguably Microsoft’s most important innovation of the past decade, and has done more for changing the nature of computer interaction than pretty much any other recently created input devices. Today, Microsoft Research has demoed how it’s about to get even better, with the addition of hand recognition complete with refined gesture support.

Microsoft is showing off the new features at its TechFest even this week at Redmond HQ, and The Verge has a video of the new capabilities in action. As you can see from the video, you can use pinch-to-zoom, as well as hand gripping motions that allow for panning and scrolling too. The technique employs machine learning to recognize the difference between an open and closed hand, which is then integrated into Windows games and apps.

The video shows navigating maps, as well as playing Jetpack Joyride in Windows 8, and shows how a simple close finger gesture can be recognized as a mouse click essentially, which would be a very handy tool to add to Kinect’s Windows-based powers. The upgraded features are destined for Windows soon (though no specific timeline was given), though sadly there’s nothing to announce yet for bringing the enhanced gesture detection powers to Xbox.

The Kinect will soon have its own fair share of competitors when it comes to gesture-based input for desktop computing. The Leap Motion Controller ships May 13 to pre-order customers, and promises to deliver extremely fine gesture detection on both Windows and OS X, to the point where it should work for virtual painting and drawing applications, with a module much smaller and without the same physical space requirements as the Kinect. The MYO armband from Thalmic labs is also attracting a lot of early attention for its own, body sensor-based gesture control powers.

Microsoft did some terrific ground breaking in this space, but now the company has keep pace with a number of hungry young startups eager to blow it wide open. These new feature additions for Kinect for Windows should help Microsoft keep the competition interesting.

Samsung (005930) is reportedly set to buy a 3% stake in struggling panel maker Sharp Corporation for approximately $110 million. The deal will ensure Samsung sees “a smooth supply of large-sized TV panels and help bolster the Japanese company’s chances of survival,” Reuters reported on Wednesday. “Rather than the amount of investment, it is the partnership with Samsung that Sharp gains that is important,” noted Tetsuro Ii, CEO of investment firm Commons AM. “Sharp gains an opportunity to use the Samsung platform.” Sharp also builds display panels used in Apple’s (AAPL) iPad, and it is reportedly developing larger displays to be used in Apple’s much rumored HDTV that is currently in development.

As health-tracking companies battle it out for consumers’ hearts and minds — and wrists — Basis Science has announced that it has raised $11.5 million for its own sensor-based band that monitors a variety of health indicators.

The Series B round was led by Mayfield Fund and included existing investors, DCM and Norwest Venture Partners. Basis said that Tim Chang, Managing Director at Mayfield, joins its board of directors and technology analyst and active digital health investor Esther Dyson and healthy living expert Deepak Chopra join its advisory board.

With the new funding, CEO Jef Holove said the company will focus on hiring, especially seeking expertise in cloud services, hardware and software, and scaling its manufacturing.

The new funding comes as interest in consumer health tracking devices, particularly those that worn on the wrist, is ballooning. Users can choose from the Nike Fuelband to the Jawbone Up to the Fitbit Flex (see disclosure below) to other options.

At $199, Basis is more expensive than the Up ($129), Fuelband ($149.99) and Flex ($99.95) and it’s bigger than its competitors’ sleek bands, which may be a turn off for those who want to downplay the accessory. But Holove said the Basis band uses four sensors to capture motion, heart rate, perspiration and skin temperature, as opposed to just one (an accelerometer) used by rivals. With those sensors, it can do more than just track activity and calories burned, it can monitor sleep and heart rate as well. He also said that its dashboard, which encourages healthy habits on top of displaying data, is better able to keep users engaged. He previously told GigaOM that, in the future, the company may upsell users on more advanced cloud services that could offer better analytics or more data storage.

“We believe our foundation… will continue to give a much more comprehensive picture of health than anything else on the market,” Holove said in an email. “As we gain more user feedback, we will also continue to evolve our healthy habits approach to build engagement over time.”

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Debt collector Encore Capital Group Inc. has agreed to buy Asset Acceptance Capital Corp. for $200 million to strengthen its position in a highly fragmented industry, Reuters reported. Encore’s offer of $6.50 per share represents a premium of 13 percent to Asset Acceptance’s Tuesday closing price. Warren, Michigan-based Asset Acceptance buys individual consumer accounts, including credit card, telecommunications, and consumer loans.

(Reuters) – Debt collector Encore Capital Group Inc (ECPG.O) has agreed to buy Asset Acceptance Capital Corp (AACC.O) for $200 million to strengthen its position in a highly fragmented industry.

Encore’s offer of $6.50 per share represents a premium of 13 percent to Asset Acceptance’s Tuesday closing price.

Warren, Michigan-based Asset Acceptance buys individual consumer accounts, including credit card, telecommunications, and consumer loans.

Its shareholders will have the option to receive their consideration in cash or Encore stock or a combination of both.

Encore bought Propel Financial, a tax lien company, for $187 million in May last year.

Encore shares closed at $30.07 on Tuesday on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Ashutosh Pandey in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

The post Reuters – Encore Capital to Buy Asset Acceptance Capital for $200M appeared first on peHUB.

Actifio, which says it helps companies simplify and streamline operations by consolidating multiple copies of content that proliferate across applications, now has $50 million in Series D funding led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) to push that vision. That brings its total venture backing to more than $105 million.

Waltham, Mass.-based Actifio wants companies to adopt its copy data store technology to reduce extra copies of the data they generate and collect to, ideally, a single “golden” copy.

Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, ATV, Greylock Israel, and North Bridge Partners also participated in this D round, which comes more than a year after a $33.5 million C round. Prior to that Actifio received $8 million in a July 2010 Series A round and $16 million just two months later in a Series B round.

CEO Ash Ashotush told me a few months ago that companies spend too much making and managing lots of copies of data. “If we employ virtualization technology, one copy of that data can be reused and reconstituted for any use—sharing and analysis,” he said.

At an Actifio users conference a few months ago, Keith Bucknall, lead technical architect  for the U.K.’s Equity Insurance Group, said Actifio is a key part of his company’s unified storage and backup platform that makes it easier to perform backup, data protection and recovery, as well as data migration and management.

TCV general partner, Rick Kimball, joins Actifio’s board which already includes Andreessen Horowitz’s Peter Levine, North Bridge Venture Partners’ Jamie Goldstein, ATV’s Bob Hower, Greylock Partners’ Erez Ofer, and Netezza founding CEO Jit Saxena.

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