Category: News

OurCrowd, a VC-crowdfunding platform, said on Wednesday that it has completed financing for Zula, a mobile communications platform. Although financial terms were not disclosed, OurCrowd said that Zula’s funding pushed OurCrowd’s total raised for early stage companies to above $12 million.

PRESS RELEASE

JERUSALEM–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Israel’s hybrid VC-crowdfunding platform OurCrowd announced today that it closed financing for Jeff Pulver’s latest startup, Zula, pushing its total raised for early stage companies above $12 million. This $12 million is in addition to the $5.5 million in funding OurCrowd raised for its own platform in February this year. Zula is OurCrowd’s 18th completed funding round.
OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved says “Passing this funding milestone makes OurCrowd this year’s fastest-growing vehicle for angels and accredited investors to find and back early stage companies online. From our roots in Israel we have actually taken the global lead in funds raised.”
Zula co-founder Jeff Pulver said, “I am excited about the value that OurCrowd brings to early stage investors who invest in startup companies. Not only did we raise our seed round online in less than a week, but we had people from all over the world invest in Zula thanks to this platform.” Zula provides an innovative cloud-based mobile collaboration platform for teams. It is lead by Jacob Ner-David, who co-founded DeltaThree, and Pulver, who is a well-known early investor in Twitter and FourSquare.
“While initially focusing on the Israeli early stage ecosystem, OurCrowd has now brought together investors and companies from around the world,” explained Medved. “The fact that this year we have raised more money for our companies than our Silicon Valley competitors is a vote of confidence that the Start-up Nation is indeed a global innovation leader.”
OurCrowd identifies companies seeking early stage investment and brings the best of these opportunities online, where only accredited investors may participate in specific venture capital funding rounds. This extensive and active global network of investors and mentors has allowed OurCrowd to also provide critical support to its startups. In order to increase involvement in the platform, OurCrowd has recently completed a series of face to face meetings around the world with thousands participating in meetings held in Israel, South Africa, UK, Norway, and multiple US cities such as Boston, Chicago, Palo Alto in Silicon Valley, Seattle, San Diego and Los Angeles.
About OurCrowd
OurCrowd is a hybrid VC-crowdfunding platform for accredited investors only who wish to invest in Israeli and global early stage companies. Managed by a team of well-known investment professionals and led by serial entrepreneur Jon Medved, OurCrowd selects opportunities, invests its own capital and brings these startups to its accredited membership. Members choose those deals they invest in via OurCrowd-managed partnerships. OurCrowd investors must meet stringent accreditation criteria and invest a minimum of $10,000 per deal. OurCrowd provides post investment support to its portfolio companies, assigning industry experts as mentors and taking board seats.

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Brian Urlacher, a 13-year veteran of the NFL, announced today that he will be retiring from football. Urlacher has played his entire professional career as a linebacker for the Chicago Bears.

Urlacher played college football at the University of New Mexico, where he set a school record for tackles in one season. He was drafted by the Bears in the first round of the 2000 NFL Draft, and later that year was named NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year.

Urlacher announced his retirement via his Twitter account. He linked to a message that made it clear that, although he could keep playing in the NFL, he feels that he wouldn’t be able to live up to his past performance or maintain his passion for the job. Urlacher goes on to thank all of the people that helped him during his career and states that he has “no regrets.”

How much is a truly great developer worth? A lot, according to Hubspot and it’s willing to pay a $30,000 bounty to anyone (anyone!) who refers a great developer that the marketing automation software maker ends up hiring.

The company’s pitch:

HubSpot loves developers. Like, heart-pounding, chest-thumping, breathless love. Care to play matchmaker?

We’ll give you $30,000 if you refer us to a developer who makes us feel that way.

The company has openings in its Cambridge and Dublin locations and has cash to spend. It netted $35 million in a financing round last November, bringing total funding to about $100 million. One of the priorities for that money was staffing up, CEO Brian Halligan said at the time.

We know that great developers and engineers can write their own tickets, but $30,000 is a big number to give to a friend of a developer. It’s also a great way for any software developer to build a database of potential hires down the road. I’ve heard of smaller incentives before – Hubspot itself once offered $10,000 — but this is a lotta scratch.

If you know of others please let me know in the comments section below.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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According to the 2013 BrandZ list of top global brands, Google ranks second, valued at $113.669 billion. Although the company is still short of Apple’s value of $185.536 billion, they still passed by IBM, who currently rank third at $112.536 billion.

One notable name is Samsung, which is currently ranked at number 30, having jumped up a whole 25 places. This can clearly be pointed to their increased advertising on their Galaxy line and exploding sales figures.

Google’s second-place ranking shows steady growth for the company, but their spot behind Apple says that they’re still the company to beat. Google looks to continue closing in on Apple in the current year.

Source: Marketing Week

Come comment on this article: Google passes IBM to become second most valuable brand, still behind Apple

CDN provider EdgeCast has built a complete separate, dedicated network to serve eCommerce, dubbed EdgeCast Transact. It’s PCI compliant, and incorporates device detection and dozens of commerce-specific optimizations. This “share nothing” approach to network architecture is unique in the content delivery industry, and might start a trend of offering exclusive footprints to specific sets of customers.

“Nowhere do speed and availability matter more than in eCommerce,” said Ted Middleton, EdgeCast VP of product management. “The Internet’s top retailers told us they wanted a discrete, secure, global network that they didn’t have to share with other types of content, so we spent the past year building exactly that.”

Edgecast designed, tested and built the new network in major metropolitan centers around the world over the course of a year. It’s based on the same proven methods Edgecast has been using for the past six years on its content delivery network.

The new solution offers optimized communication path to serve content and handle transactions regardless of conditions on the broader internet or with other EdgeCast CDN networks. eCommerce customers completely avoid competition for resources with other customers in different segments.

Security being a major concern, the network is architected with robust redundancy and failover, elastic provisioning for holiday-type traffic spikes, and credit card detection and removal algorithms.

Performance optimizations include secure pre-establishment of sessions between origin and end user. Mobile device detection and front end optimization is built in. Optimization is executed directly on edge servers for the best possible performance.

EdgeCast also aligns the network’s operating policies with eCommerce business cycles, conducting code freezes during the busiest shopping times to ensure 100 percent availability and stability.

In a heart-wrenching story out of Oklahoma, a tiny black dog which was discovered alive among the wreckage was actually guarding the body of its owner, who had died in the F-5 stage tornado that leveled a good part of Moore.

The Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Department posted a photo of the dog before they realized what was going on; now, the photo has gone viral and the pup will be adopted by the deputy.

“May 20, 2013 we posted this picture of a dog on our Twitter account “scared, but this little pup survived”,” the department posted on their Facebook account. “Today we found out the story behind the picture. The dog was standing guard over a deceased individual, possibly it’s owner, in Moore following the tornado there. The dog was taken to a shelter and the deputy who found the pup, if possible, plans on adopting the dog. Man’s best friend to the end.”

The stories coming out of Moore, Oklahoma are tragic and heartbreaking as we hear tales of children losing their lives and parents awaiting word on whether their kids made it out of the storm alive. Some bright spots can be found, however, such as the woman who was reunited with her dog as she gave an interview on camera.

AlephCloud said on Wednesday that it has closed $7.5 million in Series B financing. The lead investor was Handbag, LLC, a venture capital firm founded by former Crosspoint general partner Seth Neiman. AlephCloud also added that Neiman has joined the company’s board of directors. AlephCloud is a Silicon Valley startup that provides new technology for managing cloud content privacy and provenance in public clouds.

PRESS RELEASE

SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–AlephCloud, a startup developing a new technology for managing content privacy and provenance in public clouds, today announced that it has closed a $7.5 million Series B round of financing. The funding was led by Handbag, LLC, a new wave venture capital firm created by noted Silicon Valley investor and former Crosspoint general partner Seth Neiman. The new investment brings the total amount raised to $9.5 million.
AlephCloud also announced that Mr. Neiman has joined the company’s board of directors. His investing group, which provides institutional investments without the institution, is composed of VCs and CEOs who helped create much of the technology used to build Internet and data center infrastructures.
“With the advent of personal devices and data sharing in public clouds, the traditional ‘moat and citadel’ approach to content protection is broken,” said Neiman. “AlephCloud technology will redefine content and device management for the cloud era.”
Last week AlephCloud was one of only six startups selected from a pool of more than 100 companies for Orange Fab, the technology accelerator program managed by Orange Silicon Valley.
According to a recent report from Gartner, Inc., “Personal cloud services are simple, available free of charge and elegantly solve sync and share problems, which is why smart-device users are adopting these services. They represent a serious security and compliance threat for an IT organization, because employees can share corporate documents with third parties, or store documents on home PCs and other personal devices, completely out of an IT organization’s control.”1
“IT Consumerization, which is characterized by BYOD (bring your own device) and BYOC (bring your own cloud), is making it almost impossible for enterprises to manage the operating systems and devices that employees use to access corporate information,” said Jieming Zhu, CEO of AlephCloud. “To maintain privacy, control, and compliance, organizations must be able to protect their content wherever it resides. We have the opportunity to completely change the dynamics of trust in public clouds.”
AlephCloud was founded by Jieming Zhu and CTO Roy D’Souza. Zhu is a former Chief Technologist at HP Storage and a veteran of several successful startups including Xsigo (acquired by Oracle), LogLogic, machine data analysis for security and compliance (acquired by TIBCO), and Brocade. D’Souza was most recently architect at Microsoft Azure Trust Services, a pioneering effort to implement cryptographically enforced security with federated key management for cloud services. He was also co-founder and CTO of Mimosa Systems, an email compliance vendor acquired by Iron Mountain.
About AlephCloud
Based in Sunnyvale, CA, AlephCloud is a startup developing a new technology for managing content privacy and provenance in public clouds. AlephCloud was founded in 2011 by enterprise technology visionaries who believe that only information owners should decide who sees their content, not cloud providers and not even us. Visit www.alephcloud.com to learn more or follow us on twitter@alephcloud.

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Foursquare has just released an update to their iOS app that lets users apply more filters to all of their searches.

“Looking for a cheap brunch spot that your friends go to, but you haven’t tried yet? With new filtering options in Explore, you can narrow down your search results to find exactly what you’re looking for. Tap the search bar at the top of the screen, then select different options like, ‘price,’ ‘haven’t been,’ ‘saved’ or ‘open now’ to find the perfect spot,” says Foursquare.

Before today’s update, Foursquare allowed users to narrow their searches in variety of ways – by category, trending places, recently opened locations, place they haven’t been before, places friends have been, and so on. With today’s update, Foursquare is letting users narrow their searches through multiple filters.

Here’s what the new filter screen looks like. It’s accesible via a “filter” button when open up the search box.

As you can see, users can now apply different filters at the same time, including price, previous check-ins, open now, and locations that are currently offering specials. You can sort your results by best match of by distance.

Minor update? Maybe. But it’s a useful one. And it also falls in line with Foursquare’s recent push to become a true player in the local search game.

You can grab the update today over at the App Store.

After the PS4 was unveiled, the guys over at VideoGamer made an abridged version of the event that poked fun at everything wrong with modern gaming. Now they’re back at it again for yesterday’s Xbox One unveiling.

It may be a little unfair to call EA Sports Executive Vice President Andrew Wilson a “fist bump in human form,” but he did come off as a little too bro-tastic during yesterday’s unveiling. In fact, that seems to have been a theme during yesterday’s unveiling – entertainment for those who are classified as “bros.” Twitter seems to have picked up on it as well.

If you want to see a more true to life version of the unveiling (that’s still hilarious), check out the condensed version of the unveiling from this morning.

Clearwire’s Board of Directors has approved a revised offer from Sprint to acquire a remaining 50% stake in the company. Sprint had previously offered $2.97 per share, or $2.2 billion, for the wireless broadband wholesaler. After several shareholders voiced their concerns about the sale, Sprint decided to raise its offer to $3.40 per share. The revised bid valued Clearwire at $10.7 billion and represented a 14% premium over the original bid. The board is recommending shareholders vote in favor of the acquisition when they meet on May 31st. Clearwire’s press release follows below.

Continue reading…

Happy Cloud, an online games provider, said on Wednesday that it has raised $4.25 million in Series A funding. The lead investor was Avalon Ventures. Jesselson Capital and Shaman Ventures also participated in the round. The funding will help Happy Cloud beef up its team and prepare the launch of a games-on-demand service offering. Also, Tamir Buchler, an ecommerce veteran, was named Happy Cloud’s CEO.

PRESS RELEASE

NEW YORK – May. 22, 2013 – Today Happy Cloud, Inc. announced its Series A fundraising round of $4.25 million and introduced eCommerce veteran Tamir Buchler as CEO. Led by Avalon Ventures and joined by Jesselson Capital and Shaman Ventures, this round brings Happy Cloud’s total funding to $7 million and allows the company to build out its team and prepare for the upcoming launch of a games-on-demand service offering nearly instant access to demos. Happy Cloud leverages its unique data streaming technology to enable on-demand access to games.
“Game quality and capacity continue to reach new heights, and as the gaming industry evolves, the need for a scalable on-demand technology becomes even more relevant,” explained Rich Levandov, managing director, Avalon Ventures. “We’ve seen many solutions raise lots of capital and fail because they don’t scale. Happy Cloud is the only scalable technology of its kind and will dramatically disrupt the industry while creating value for the entire gaming world.”
“We are excited to have Tamir Buchler on board,” said Michael Jesselson of Jesselson Capital. “He has strong leadership skills and has a proven track record of driving revenue growth for consumer-facing platforms.”
Buchler comes from IAC/InterActiveCorp where he was previously COO and CRO of the comparison shopping network Pronto.com. He will focus on growing Happy Cloud’s licensing business as well as launch its consumer-facing game portal.
“Happy Cloud adds unparalleled value to the gaming ecosystem by eliminating barriers to entry and giving users what they want,” Buchler noted. “By offering free on-demand access to the best high-end games, we can bring new gamers on board, increase conversions and keep gamers engaged. Happy Cloud is a scalable solution that can effect change in the same way iTunes and Netflix have transformed media consumption by offering seamless, instant access.”
Visit www.thehappycloud.com to learn more about Happy Cloud.

About Happy Cloud, Inc.
Happy Cloud is a cloud-based game service that provides distribution to PC, console and Android game publishers and a games-on-demand service for consumers. Its distribution system dramatically reduces abandonment rates and increases paid user conversions. Happy Cloud was founded in 2009 and is based in New York.

The post Happy Cloud Raises $4.25 Mln in Series A Funding appeared first on peHUB.

Cloudscaling said on Wednesday that it has closed its Series B funding at $10 million. Investors included Trinity Ventures, Juniper Networks and Seagate. Cloudscaling is a provider of elastic cloud solutions and is based in San Francisco, Calif.

PRESS RELEASE

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwired – May 22, 2013) – Cloudscaling, the elastic cloud company, has closed its Series B funding with Trinity Ventures and two new investors, Juniper Networks, through its Junos® Innovation Fund, and Seagate. The new round raised $10 million.
In April, Cloudscaling announced Open Cloud System 2.5, the world’s most advanced OpenStack-powered cloud infrastructure system. At the same time, Cloudscaling signaled the first step of its partnership with Juniper through the integration of Juniper’s virtual network control (VNC) technology, JunosV Contrail, into Open Cloud System (OCS). OCS is a turnkey, OpenStack-powered cloud infrastructure system for enterprises, SaaS providers and cloud service providers. Cloudscaling and Juniper plan to continue delivering innovative, joint networking solutions that are open and standards-based to support elastic cloud services and a new generation of enterprise workloads.
Cloudscaling also joined the Seagate Cloud Builder Alliance Partner program in April. As part of the program, Cloudscaling and Seagate are focused on the development of optimized storage solutions for OpenStack-powered cloud infrastructure.
Since Q1 of this year, Cloudscaling has secured key customer wins with LivingSocial, EVault, Ubisoft and DataFort, launched a channel partner program and announced support for OpenStack Grizzly in the third generation of OCS technology, Open Cloud System 2.5.
Supporting Quotes
“This financing round caps a tremendous year of momentum for the company. That momentum affirms the voice of the market, clearly stating that customers want more than OpenStack. They want an on-premise, OpenStack-based private or public cloud turnkey system solution that delivers architectural and behavioral fidelity with major public clouds like Amazon Web Services. Our Open Cloud System product delivers on that need to enable hybrid cloud application deployments that span private and public cloud services.”
Michael Grant
CEO
Cloudscaling
“Cloudscaling has executed on a vision of elastic cloud infrastructure as a turnkey solution that many agree with but few have delivered. The team has gained new customers and partners at an accelerating pace, highlighting their success at tapping an emerging, growing need among enterprise, SaaS and service provider segments.”
Dan Scholnick
general partner
Trinity Ventures
“Juniper Networks and Cloudscaling share a vision of how cloud infrastructure should be built and operated to support a new generation of cloud-aware workloads. Collaborating to integrate our technology into OCS was just the first step. We are excited to continue our work with Cloudscaling and support the company as a strategic investor.”
Jeff Lipton
vice president, venture and strategic investments
Juniper Networks
“Seagate and Cloudscaling are working together on innovative solutions of jointly-optimized cloud systems supported by Seagate products. We are pleased to deepen our relationship with them as an equity investor and be part of a collaborative effort to define and promote open source standards for cloud computing.”
Rocky Pimentel
EVP and chief sales and marketing officer
Seagate
About Juniper Networks’ Junos Innovation Fund
The Junos Innovation Fund is a corporate venture capital fund launched in 2010 and backed solely by Juniper Networks. It invests in leading early-stage and growth-stage technology companies that expand and enhance the Junos® ecosystem.
About Cloudscaling
Cloudscaling is the leader in elastic cloud infrastructure. The company’s core product, Open Cloud System (OCS), is the world’s most advanced OpenStack-powered cloud infrastructure system. OCS is designed to meet the requirements of next-generation dynamic applications, delivering the agility, performance, and economic benefits of leading cloud providers, but deployable in the customer’s data center and under the IT team’s control. Cloudscaling is backed by Trinity Ventures and headquartered in San Francisco. For more information, please visit www.cloudscaling.com

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Connected living room devices are here to stay. Smart TV’s, set-top boxes like Apple TV, Roku and Google TV all aim to make sure of this. Opera, known mostly as a web browser, has been branching out into this market as well, with its Mediaworks project. However, instead of apps, and despite the name, Mediaworks is an advertising network.

Now the company’s subsidiary, AdMarvel, announces what it calls “a forward step in the evolution of online video advertising into the connected TV space”. Opera explains that “AdMarvel for Connected TVs will provide publishers and advertisers with a dynamic, rich ad-serving platform combined with sophisticated ad exchange, ad serving and ad management functionality on connected TVs”.

While more ads is never what a customer wants to hear, Opera promises that by helping publishers and developers find the right buyers at the right price for their inventory it will provide more relevant targeted ads for the end-user, which I suppose could be considered a plus, if you happen to be in the market for a particular item.

Mediaworks is already the largest mobile ad-serving network. Connected TV’s is the next logical step, as the market has been growing quickly. “As connected TV households worldwide reach critical mass in the coming couple of years, the TV screen will become the next frontier in delivering relevant advertising to consumers,” says Mahi de Silva, CEO of Opera Mediaworks.

With the growth of these devices, it was inevitable that there would be a market for capitalizing on the customers. For now, the Opera TV Store ships on Sony Bravia TVs, Blu-ray disc players and devices such as TCL, Humax and MediaTek. This will certainly expand as device growth continues.

“What would be a good end of life?” Judy Macdonald Johnston asks in today’s talk, given at TED2013. Her answer — based on her own experience of helping two friends face death in a way that respected the incredible life they’d built — involves five practices, all of which can help maintain a high quality of life even as independence and bodily function decline.

Judy MacDonald Johnston: Prepare for a good end of lifeFirst, make a plan, which means “answering straightforward questions about the end you want.” Second, recruit advocates who have “the time and proximity to do this job well” and can thrive under the unique pressures of this task. Third, prepare important documents — like summaries of your medical history — for the hospital. Fourth, select caregivers who fit your needs and desires, which might take a few tries. And fifth, ponder and discuss last words: “What do you want to hear at the very end and from whom would you like to hear it?”

We talk about how to live the good life all the time. And yet, though we all face death, we’re less willing to talk about what would be a good conclusion to life. Here, some further reading, watching and listening on this hard but important topic.

1. Read: This Wild Darkness. In the mid-‘90s, Harold Brodkey wrote a series of essays, mostly for The New Yorker, about his experiences and emotions as he died of AIDS. In these essays — subsequently published in a single volume as This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death — Brodkey reckons with the realities of both his impending death and, through that lens, his life. His style can be self-aggrandizing, but ultimately, the book acts as a case study of how self-reflection through writing can make nearing death a little bit less terrifying. “The obsession with literary power games, with recognition and reputation, gradually subsides and gives way to something like acceptance,” Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times upon the book’s publication.
   .
2. Watch: A Will for the Woods. The new documentary A Will for the Woods, featured in our roundup 9 documentaries that you need to see in 2013, follows psychiatrist Clark Wang as he battles lymphoma and arranges his own burial. His resolve for a burial that helps, rather than harms, the environment spawns the first natural burial ground in the state of North Carolina. The film’s website notes that green burials were the norm “before the contemporary funeral industry propagated expensive and elaborate funerals as traditional,” and applauds the growing demand for them now.
   .
3. Bookmark: The Hospice Foundation. The Hospice Foundation of America offers several quite lovely pages (and for-sale booklets) about approaching your own, or a loved one’s, death. A page entitled “Signs of Approaching Death” explains what death looks like in a purely practical sense—something we don’t and can’t know the first time we confront it. The unknown tends to frighten us most, so having a bit more advanced warning of what’s to come might serve as a comfort. For example, the site explains that as you near death, fluid can build up in your lungs, casing a rattling as you breathe. “This breathing sound is often distressing to caregivers but it is not an indication of pain or suffering,” the site assures us. (There are also practical sections, as on advance care planning.)
   .
4. Bookmark: New Old Age. The New York Times’ “New Old Age” blog, which Johnston links to on her own website, explores what it’s like to care for adults over age 80.  Recent posts are on Vermont’s passage of the ‘Aid in Dying’ measure, a look at a recent study on dementia units, and what millennials need to ask their parents while they can.
   .
5. Listen: “When Prolonging Death Seems Worse Than Death.” Last year, Fresh Air’s Terry Gross interviewed Judith Schwarz, of the nonprofit Compassion & Choices, about end-of-life decisions for the terminally ill. In the interview, Schwarz argues that terminally ill patients should have the right to choose to die sooner. Beyond dealing with the realities of what terminal illness means, the interview offers a thoughtful, compassionate way of looking at the multiple and varied desires of the dying. That is: it’s a lesson in empathy and a reminder that though some ideas may frighten us, it behooves us to look at them in depth. In the story, Schwarz also prods us to consider what it really is like to live through a painful end-of-life, and suggests that in some cases, death is not the worst option on the table. And that’s okay.
   .
6. Bookmark: Seven Ponds. The website Seven Ponds aims to “promote a healthy attitude towards the process of death by encouraging a meaningful experience that is in harmony with the environment.” Their recommendations: cremation and natural burials (see #2, above!). “We see a world where everyone can experience death in their own personal way and feel it’s all okay,” writes Suzette Sherman, Seven Ponds’ founder. For her blog, go here.
   .
7. Watch: “Older, and Unafraid to Talk about It.” This New York Times interactive video gallery presents the stories of three seniors who have recently started therapy to work through the changes they’re facing as they near the ends of their lives. “I’m surrounded by people who are old, and I had to come to grips with that,” an 87-year-old woman says. And, from an 86-year-old man: “You can’t do the things you used to do. You can’t go where you wanted. People look at you differently. What psychiatry does is help you go through the problems and adjust your thinking.”

Jodi Arias has done a complete 180 turn from where she was just a couple of weeks ago in her pleas to the jury.

The accused murderer recently said she would rather have the death penalty for the murder of her boyfriend, Travis Alexander, than life in prison.

“I said years ago that I’d rather get death than life, and that still is true today,” she said. “I believe death is the ultimate freedom, so I’d rather just have my freedom as soon as I can get it.”

Arias has undergone a lengthy trial for the murder of Alexander, who was found dead in his home in 2008 with gunshot and stab wounds. His throat was also slit. Arias eventually admitted to killing her boyfriend, but said she did it in self defense after he attacked her. Defense attorneys painted a picture of a young woman so in love that she wrote poetry and had steamy phone conversations with him, which were admitted into courtroom testimony. But the jury remained unconvinced, finding her guilty of first degree murder, which carries a sentence of either life in prison or the death penalty. The jurors still have to decide what to do, and whether or not Alexander was killed in an “exceptionally cruel” way.

Arias says she has recently learned that life in prison doesn’t have to mean no life at all, and promises to help others if she’s spared.

“I didn’t know then that if I got life instead of death that I could become employed and self-reliant. I didn’t know that if I got life there are many things I can do to affect positive change and contribute in a meaningful way. In prison there are programs I can start and people I can help.” said Arias.

Among her goals? Donating her hair to cancer survivors, creating prison literacy programs, and donating the proceeds from her “Survivor” t-shirts to victims of domestic violence.

“Some people may not believe that I am a survivor of domestic violence. They are entitled to their opinion. I’m supporting this cause because it’s very, very important to me,” she said.

The Miss USA pageant this week announced that Jonas Brother Nick Jonas will be co-hosting the 62nd annual Miss USA pageant. He will be joined on stage by Giuliana Rancic, the co-host of E! News. It will be her third year hosting the event. The pageant will take place on June 16 at the Planet Hollywood casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“We are excited to announce a veteran and a newcomer as hosts for this year’s MISS USA Competition,” said Paula Shugart, president of the Miss Universe Organization. “The diverse backgrounds of Rancic and Jonas in the entertainment industry will bring a new and exciting energy to the stage.”

In addition to hosting the pageant, Jonas will join his brothers Joe and Kevin on stage to perform during the competition. The Jonas Brothers are reportedly working on a new album, and have scheduled a new North American tour for this summer.

Jonas has confirmed that he will be hosting the Miss USA pageant, and has stated through his Twitter account that he is “excited” for the gig:

HTC has been keeping the spotlight on its HTC One, but that doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten about the mid-range market. The latest device in the Desire line has popped up in some benchmarks and goes by the lengthy name of HTC Desire 600 Dual-Sim. It sports a 1.2 GHz, unspecified processor, a 960 x 540 screen, and Android 4.1.2, and appears to heading to European markets only at launch. Unfortunately, we can’t get any other specs from the benchmark, but hopefully we’ll see HTC keep putting that Ultrapixel camera on devices other than its flagship phone. Then again, they keep the Ultrapixel marketing for the One line of devices. We’ll find out soon enough, either way.

source: GSMInsider

Come comment on this article: HTC Desire 600 Dual-Sim shows up in benchmarks, mid-range device headed for Europe

Google has launched a new Google Trends feature called “Top Charts,” which show you the top searches by region by month for various categories. It’s similar to the year-end Zeitgeist lists Google provides annually.

So far, you can look at charts for: Actors, Animals, Athletes, Authors, Baseball Players, Baseball Teams, Basketball Players, Basketball Teams, Books, Business People, Car Companies, Cars, Chemical Elements, Cities, Cocktails, Colleges/Universities, Countries/Regions, DJs, Dog Breeds, Drinks, Energy Companies, Fashion Brands, Financial Companies, Foods, Games, Government Bodies, Kids’ TV, Medications, Movies, Musical Artists, People, Politicians, Quick Service Restaurants, Reality Shows, Retail Companies, Scientists, Soccer Players, Soccer Teams, Software Technologies, Songs, Space Objects, Sports Cars, Sports Teams, TV Shows, Teen Pop Artists, US Governors, and Whiskeys.

Each category lets you dive into a top ten list, with information about each subject, including how long they’ve been in the chart, the change by month, and when they peaked. You can also explore interest over time, regional interest and related terms for each subject.

Right now, the feature is only available in the U.S., but Google says more countries are coming soon.

TIBCO Software (TIBX) announced the launch of TIBCO Cloud Bus, its new subscription-based Integration Platform as a service (iPaaS) offering that leverages the company’s integration expertise and presents users with the ability to drastically shorten time to market and lower costs as they migrate applications and workloads to the cloud.

“With Cloud Bus, TIBCO is combining the deployment flexibility of the cloud with enterprise-class integration features in a single subscription service that customers can run anywhere – on-premise, in the cloud, in bare metal or virtualized environments,” said Matt Quinn, CTO for TIBCO Software. ”TIBCO Cloud Bus provides ready-made integrations across popular SaaS and critical on-premise applications, while allowing subscribers the ability to identify, configure and extend integration templates for their own business context with ease. Finally, and as you would expect from TIBCO, Cloud Bus includes extensive capabilities for real-time integration, meaning changes are reflected in all connected applications as they happen, without waiting for the next batch update.”

Single subscription model

TIBCO Cloud bus subscribers can deploy cloud applications and only pay for what they consume. The solution provides ready-made integrations for a variety of applications such as Salesforce.com and other vendors. Changes are reflected in all connected cloud applications as they happen, without waiting for the next batch update, and connectivity capabilities to deliver real-time integration.

“If a company’s approach to integration is too fixed or locked-in, it could limit the company’s ability to leverage the cloud or switch SaaS providers once it’s there,” said Quinn. ”TIBCO Cloud Bus offers a choice of deployment options, ready-made integrations, and real-time integration support that delivers the flexibility and time to value that enterprises are looking for in moving applications and workloads to the cloud.”

Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo says he hopes to be out on the field for the team’s mini-camp next month after undergoing a minor procedure to removal a cyst on his back.

The cyst removal, however, will keep Romo out of team activities for the next three weeks. The Cowboys’ mini-camp runs from June 11th to the 13th.

“That’s why I did it now. This will have no effect on training camp. No way will it have an impact. And I still think there’s a good chance I’m on the field for mini-camp,” Romo told The Dallas Morning News. ““It was something I felt like was nagging me just enough. I wanted to make sure to get it done now. I wanted to take care of it earlier rather than later.’’

Romo says that the back cyst began bothering him in April, and he wound up having the removal procedure a short time after that. He confirms that it wasn’t cancerous.

Training camp starts on July 19th, and Romo is adamant that the medical procedure will not have any lingering effects.

“If this was the regular season and I had to play next week, I could,” said Romo. “This is just about being smart.”