Category: News

O.J. Simpson has captured the fascination of millions over the years; as the former football hero-turned-actor who ran from police in a now infamous highway chase after the murder of his wife, his story seemed like something out of a movie. But the reality behind the calm courtroom facade he carried was all too real for his ex-girlfriend, who says he constantly compared her to his slain wife.

“It was very hard to deal with that everyday, comparing me to Nicole. ‘Nicole did this, Nicole did that. You should do this, that’s what she did,’” Christie Prody said. “I was young, and so he could try to shape me, mold me, into what he wanted. He would say things to me like, ‘You better watch out so something bad doesn’t happen to you like Nicole.’”

Prody stayed with Simpson for twelve years after they began dating when she was just 21. She says he made her dye her hair blonde (Nicole Brown-Simpson was a blonde) and, because she was so young, she did what he said in order to please him. She says that his court appearance last week–which was a hearing granted to try and overturn his 2008 robbery conviction–was the first time she’d seen him in years, and his puffy appearance surprised her.

“I had to take a double take,” she said. “I can’t believe he’s gotten a lot bigger and very grey since I last saw him. Image was the most important thing to him. Being good looking was important to him. And even more so, the girl on his arm had to be good looking.”

She says that despite his altered appearance, he’s still the same guy deep down.

“O.J. is very charming,” she said. “He’s very charming and he tells you what you want to hear. He’s very believable.”

A letter carrier whose calling card was “The Bishop” was sentenced this week for mailing pipe bombs to investment firms.

According to an Associated Press report, John Tomkins of Iowa was sentenced to 37 years in prison this week for mailing “dud” pipe bombs to investment firms and investment advisers. The 48-year-old mail carrier had mailed the ineffective pipe bombs with letters signed “The Bishop,” an idea he stated he got from criminals in movies. He will serve a manditory minimum sentence of 30 years.

Tomkins’ crimes were reportedly a scheme to influence the value of stocks that he owned. The letters mailed along with the intentionally disabled bombs had threatened financial executives and their families if stock prices were not raised for certain companies.

According to the AP report, it took U.S. authorities two years to track down Tomkins. The crimes were eventually pinned to him using the stock market records of two companies Tomkins had mentioned in his threats.

Americans continue to spend big on their internet needs, and that is reflected in the robust demand for broadband during the first three months of 2013. Data collected by Leichtman Research Group, a Durham, NH-based market research company, shows that the top broadband providers in the U.S. added 1.1 million (net) new connections over that period, bringing the total number of broadband subscribers to about 82.4 million.

According to their research, cable companies have about 47.5 million broadband subscribers, while the remainder are with the phone companies. Cable companies added about 800,000 new subscribers, about 72 percent of the total for the month. The top two phone companies — AT&T and Verizon — saw a decline of 696,000 DSL accounts but added a total of 919,000 fiber subscribers. FIber-based broadband now accounts for about 40 percent of AT&T and Verizon’s total broadband customer base.

Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for Leichtman Research Group, pointed out that typically the first quarter is better than the second and third quarters of the year, and “2013 began with another strong first quarter.” Net broadband additions in Q1 2013 were about 500,000 more than in Q4 2012, and that bodes well for rest of the year.

A resurgent housing market and stronger economy along with our growing need for speed and connectivity are the reasons why demand for U.S. broadband is booming. Here are some numbers to give you an idea as to who is winning and who is losing.

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Jennifer Lawrence is becoming one of the hottest actresses in Hollywood, who can seem to do no wrong. Whether she’s smoking some weed with no make-up on, or making a reference to beating Meryl. While she is most likely enjoying this hot streak, she most likely doesn’t want that to turn into literal fire. Which nearly happened at a party taking place at the 66th Annual Cannes Film Festival.

Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth were in the V.I.P section for a party celebrating the release of ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’. All was going well, until an 8-foot column that housed a large number of candles fell onto them as they enjoyed drinks on a sofa. Any huge Jennifer Lawrence and/or Liam Hemsworth can rest easy, as neither of them were harmed in the accident.

According to an inside source, “They both jumped up when it happened, and thankfully no one was hurt. Liam and Jennifer both seemed pretty calm about it and laughed it off. They almost caught fire – – literally.”

Although she came close to getting burned, it sounds like she had a good time getting together with the cast of The Hunger Games at Cannes.

Jennifer Lawrence is no stranger to near accidents, as proven by her endearing fall at the Oscars earlier this year.

Goats aren’t typically known for holding up traffic, but one goat did just that this morning in New Jersey.

The AP reports that a goat had escaped onto the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey this morning. Five police officers were called to scene to help catch the goat, but they had no luck for nearly two hours. It appears the goat was rather nimble and kept jumping back and forth over the divider causing problems for both sides of traffic.

Thankfully, nobody was hurt as a result of the goat running along the highway. There was, however, a small accident involving four cars as the drivers were attempting to avoid the animal.

Where did the mischievous goat come from? The police aren’t sure, but its tag did say U.S. Department of Agriculture. They assume that it had somehow escaped from a truck heading to a slaughterhouse.

Here’s some amateur footage of the police trying to catch the escaped goat:

Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were once quite the pair. Their marriage lasted five years before the two called it quits in 2005. Looking back on it, Pitt says his marriage to Aniston was “pathetic.”

In an upcoming interview with the World War Z star in Parade Magazine, Pitt reflects upon his marriage with the Friends star. He told the magazine that his marriage with Aniston had basically devolved into him “sitting on a couch, holding a joint, hiding out.” He then said that it started to feel “pathetic.”

He went on to say that he was so absorbed in trying to “find a movie about an interesting life” that his real life became uninterested. He partially blames his marriage to Aniston for the feeling by saying that he was “trying to pretend the marriage was something that it wasn’t.”

This all may sound like Pitt blames Aniston for the above, but that’s not the case says the star. He says that he means he was becoming dull to himself in the marriage, and the blame fell on himself. He holds that Aniston “is an incredibly giving, loving and hilarious woman.”

As for his current life, Pitt says that he’s “satisfied” in his relationship with Angelina Jolie. The two raise children they have adopted from around the world and are regular activists for various causes. In fact, Jolie was raising awareness for breast cancer last week when she announced that she had undergone a double mastectomy to reduce her chances of developing the cancer. In the op-ed announcement, she urged other women to get tested for breast cancer, and to not be afraid of the surgery.

[h/t: NY Post] [Image: Georges Biard]

Arnold Schwarzenegger and his ex-wife Maria Shriver were on track to be divorced after it came to light that Schwarzenegger had fathered a child with a member of his household staff. That divorce may notwbe on hold for a pretty weird reason.

TMZ reports that sources close to both Schwarzenegger and Shriver have said that they aren’t in any rush to finalize the divorce. Of course, you can’t look too deep into this. It seems that they both aren’t ready to jump into divorce because neither have anything to gain.

Wait, what? It’s reported that couple are worth $400 million together. The divorce settlement would have them splitting that right down the middle. Neither side would be better off monetarily after a divorce.

Of course, there’s another, more logical reason, for both of them to hold off on the divorce. Sources close to both told TMZ that they may still have feelings for each other. At this point, however, it’s still very much in the air as they’re Schwarzenegger and Shriver are both sending mixed signals in regards to their future plans.

Either way, it seems that Schwarzenegger and Shriver aren’t quite done with each other yet.

The Samsung Galaxy S 4 is by all accounts the next big thing, but its predecessor isn’t dead just yet. Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile announced today at the CTIA that they will offer a 4G LTE-capable Galaxy S3 beginning next month. The device will run on Sprint’s 4G LTE network, which is currently available in 88 markets nationwide.

On Boost Mobile, the S3 will be compatible on their $55 Android Monthly Plan with Shrinking Payments. For each payment made on time, the monthly cost drops by $5 until you are paying $40/month. For Virgin Mobile users, the Galaxy S3 will be work on their unlimited data and messaging plans that start at $35 a month. At this point, pricing for the phone has not yet been announced.

Come comment on this article: Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile to offer Samsung Galaxy S 3 beginning in June

Yahoo turned some heads this week when it announced that it was paying $1.1 billion to buy blogging platform Tumblr, but this isn’t the first time it has spent at least $1 billion to acquire another company. As NPR points out, Yahoo has bought several companies over the past 15 years that it has valued at $1 billion or higher, including most famously its $3.7 billion acquisition of GeoCities in 1999. Other failed Yahoo acquisitions include the $5.7 billion it paid for multimedia website Broadcast.com and the $1.63 billion it paid for search advertising pioneer Overture. In fact, all of these acquisitions make the $30 million that Yahoo paid for Flickr back in 2005 seem like a relative success story, since Flickr is still an operational service that the company is still pouring resources into. That said, when Flickr is seen as the best-case scenario for a Yahoo acquisition, it’s easy to see why Tumblr users are nervous.

Open-source multi-messaging client Instantbird 1.4 has been released for Windows, Mac and Linux. The latest version of Instantbird, which provides a central location for accessing multiple IM accounts including AIM, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and Google Talk, strengthens its Twitter integration by updating to the Twitter API v1.1, a necessary step to ensure it’s able to communicate with Twitter after June 11.

Other Twitter changes include the timeline being updated to include all people the user is currently following in the Participants list, while the character counter has also been improved to take into account automatic link shortening, making retweets easier.

Other changes in version 1.4 include improvements to the IRC authentication process, which now handles bouncers such as ZNC much better than previously. Users can now also easily override self-signed, invalid or out-of-date certificates for IRC servers.

The log viewer has also been updated so conversations are now grouped by date, while each account now keeps debug logs that are easily accessible via the Account Manager — right-click the account in question, choose Copy Debug Logs and then paste the contents into a text window such as that of an email or a plain text editor.

Instantbird is built upon the Firefox core, and version 1.4 is now built on Mozilla 20.0.1, and uses libpurple 2.10.7. One side-effect of this change is that it is no longer compatible with Macs running OS X 10.5 or earlier.

The update is rounded off by a large number of bug fixes, which are detailed in the program’s change logs for interested parties. Instantbird 1.4 is available now as a free, open-source download.

Oaktree Capital LLC, the world’s largest distressed debt investor, said its two founders could each receive as much as $79.9 million in a secondary offering of its shares if the firm clears net proceeds of $367.6 million, Reuters is reporting.

(Reuters) – Oaktree Capital LLC, the world’s largest distressed debt investor, said its two founders could each receive as much as $79.9 million in a secondary offering of its shares if the firm clears net proceeds of $367.6 million.

In a regulatory filing late on Monday, Oaktree said its chairman Howard Marks and president Bruce Karsh, which founded the firm in 1995, would each cut their stake from 14.4 percent to a minimum of 13.4 percent.

The sale, to be priced late on Wednesday could earn the founders more than Oaktree’s $380.3 million initial public offering in 2012, which was downsized on weak investor demand. Oaktree’s shares have since rallied more than 30 percent, making cashing out more attractive.

A portion of how much fund managers make, as well as their long-term commitment to the firm, hinges on their ownership. Investors’ interests are best aligned when both sides make a lot of money when deals work out, so getting money by cashing out, even in part, can be a sensitive issue among some fund investors, who pay attention to how much managers earn and how they are remunerated.

Depending on whether the underwriters exercise in full their option to purchase shares in the offering, this could raise between $69.5 million and $79.9 million for each of the two founders, Oaktree said. Marks and Karsh earned $72.5 million apiece in the firm’s IPO in April 2012, when they each cut their stakes from 15.6 percent to 14.4 percent.

Oaktree said it is basing their potential reward on an offering price of $54.72 per share. Oaktree shares ended trading at $55.62 on Tuesday, down 0.5 percent.
Marks, 67, and Karsh, 57, were worth $1.7 billion each as of March 2013, according to Forbes. Other Oaktree insiders have also registered to sell shares in the secondary offering.

Oaktree had $78.8 billion in assets under management as of the end of March, including money from 75 of the 100 largest U.S. pension plans, 400 corporations, ten sovereign wealth funds and more than 300 universities, endowments and charities.

The firm invests in distressed debt, senior loans, high-yield bonds, private equity, convertible securities, real estate and listed equities.

Earlier this month, Marc Rowan and Joshua Harris, who together with Leon Black founded Oaktree rival Apollo Global Management LLC (APO.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) in 1990, grossed $110.6 million and $55.3 million respectively in a secondary offering of shares.

Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse are acting as joint global coordinators and Goldman Sachs & Co, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo Securities are acting as joint bookrunners for Oaktree’s secondary offering.

The post Oaktree Founders Could Reap Up to $80 million Each in Stock Sale appeared first on peHUB.

Melissa McCarthy has reportedly fired an extra from the set of her latest film, “Tammy”, because the woman was abusing her child.

The woman brought her child to the outdoor shoot in Wilmington, North Carolina and reportedly had trouble disciplining him all day. Witnesses say he disrupted the set and his mother couldn’t control him, and at one point she reached down, grabbed his arm, and picked him up by the wrist. McCarthy allegedly fired the woman and told her that abuse of any kind would not be tolerated.

McCarthy is co-directing the film with her husband as well as starring in it as Tammy, a woman who gets fired from her job only to come home and catch her husband cheating on her. The film is a passion project for McCarthy, who also co-wrote the screenplay. She spoke a little about the movie and her scenes with Susan Sarandon, who plays her character’s grandmother and road-trip buddy.

“They both have their issues they’re not acknowledging and they’re leaving town without knowing where they’re going,” McCarthy said. “I love that there’s something that happens in a car with people where all bets off. You’re off your rhythm, off your schedule, you’re forced to be completely adaptable or die.”

So far, McCarthy has had no comment about the extra’s termination.

Most PC users could benefit from working at the command line occasionally, but the rather basic interface is enough to put most people off. You don’t have to live with the standard Windows setup, though. There are plenty of tools which claim they can help, and one of the latest, ConsoleHoster, improves on the default command window in several ways.

Getting started with the program is certainly very easy. Download, unzip and launch it (there’s no installation required), click “Project 1” and your first command session appears. The blue text on a green background is a little distracting, but otherwise it’s straightforward enough. The main part of the window is split into two panes; you enter your commands in the lower, and any output appears above it.

One immediate benefit of this arrangement is that you can resize the ConsoleHoster window, and unlike a regular command line window, the text reformats itself to fit. Which means you’re not wasting time with horizontal scrolling just because you want to review what you did earlier.

In addition, an Explorer-type pane on the right side of ConsoleHoster provides an easier way to view files and folders. If you change to a new drive — just enter D:\ , say — then the Explorer view updates accordingly, so you can check out files and folders without needing to enter DIR and browse through any response.

ConsoleHoster provides various other tools to assist with navigation. You can change the current directory in a command line session by shift+clicking a folder in the Explorer view, for instance. And you’re able to add files or folders to a Favorites list, allowing you to return to that location later in a single click.

The program also has “Global Command” buttons, shortcuts to frequently used commands. Some very basic examples are included (“DIR”, “CD \”, “CD ..”), but you can easily add more, then recall them at will with a click.

And, perhaps most usefully, none of these settings are global. Instead they’re assigned to “Projects”, individual command line sessions which can have their own color scheme, starting folder, favorite locations, global commands and so one. As a result, you’re able to create different command line sessions for different purposes. And then you can run as many of these command windows as you need at the same time, switching between them via a simple tabbed interface.

Despite all this apparent functionality, ConsoleHoster has various problems, particularly with the Explorer view. This can be horribly slow when expanding large folder trees, for instance. It doesn’t consistently synchronize with your command session. Right-clicking files and folders gets you ConsoleHoster options only, nothing else (not even a “Properties”). And sometimes right-clicking got us nothing whatsoever, although we could never figure out why.

Still, ConsoleHoster is free, extremely lightweight (0.5MB unzipped) and with no unwanted extras. Its ability to run multiple command line sessions in a single tabbed interface may already be useful, to some. The program is being updated every few days, so we’d guess any technical issues will be resolved soon. And we’ll be interested to see where the project goes next.

Microsoft’s new Xbox One has many new features, but one in particular raised some eyebrows Tuesday: The new game console will always be on, and users will be able to launch games, live TV or even a Skype call with simple voice commands, and without ever picking up a controller or remote control. Does that mean, as the Verge mused, that Microsoft will always be listening to each and every word spoken in your living room?

The answer is yes, no, and better get used to it. Microsoft hasn’t actually said how many aspects of the Xbox One are going to work, but the demo it gave at its campus in Redmond, Wash. Tuesday contained some solid hints on the particulars of its voice control. To wake up the device and launch live TV, play a game or do anything at all with it, users will first have to say “Xbox on.”

That’s what people who work on speech recognition call “hot words” – easily recognizable phrases that can be detected by a system without too much effort. Once a user says that magic word or phrase, the actual speech recognition kicks into high gear.

That means that the Xbox One continuously listens for someone to say “Xbox on,” and that everything else that’s spoken is automatically disregarded. Listening for these hot words is done locally and doesn’t require much in terms of system resources. For example, there’s no need to record anything, since all that matters are the hot words. But once those words are uttered, the Xbox One is going to use advanced speech recognition to figure out what users are actually talking about.

Again, Microsoft hasn’t said exactly how this is going to work, but a spokesperson told me that some of the personalization offered by the device is “one of the benefits of Xbox One being connected to and powered by the cloud.” I’d expect that the same is true for speech recognition, much in the same way that Google uploads everything you say to its servers when you use voice search on your Android phone.

 

The use of hot wording to wake up technology from a state of low-level listening to launch active speech recognition isn’t new. It’s also at work in Google Glass, where users get the device’s attention by saying “okay glass.” Google Now simply uses “Google” as a hot word to launch voice input. And the Xbox 360 starts to accept voice commands once users yell “Xbox” at the device’s Kinect sensor.

The difference between how the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One approach voice recognition isn’t so much about technology, even though Xbox users probably hope that the new iteration is going to work better. What makes people feel uncomfortable is that the Xbox One, and with it its microphone, are meant to be always on.

However, the always-on microphone of the Xbox One is just a sign of things to come. Voice input is going to become a key component of a growing number of internet-connected devices and appliances in your home, car and office, and many of them will use hot words to switch from low-level listening to active speech recognition.

In fact, you are likely looking at one of those devices right now: Laptops, tablets and mobile phones all contain microphones, and they’re all waiting to become hot words-aware any day now. Google just demonstrated how it is going to add hot wording to search on the desktop at last week’s Google I/O conference, allowing users to start a voice search query by simply saying “okay Google” without touching a single button.

Of course, all of this doesn’t mean that there are no privacy issues around hot wording and always-on microphones. Companies should make it clear how exactly they’re using the technology as it is becoming more widely distributed, and there should always be a way to opt out and rely on alternative input methods. It may also be a good idea to indicate to users  when exactly a device is reverting back from active speech recognition to a state of passive listening. But I’d expect that most consumers quickly get used to the constantly running mic, always listening for those magic words.

Image courtesy of Flickr user visual.dichotomy.

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Compare Metrics, an analytics software startup that helps brands harness disconnected information to drive sales, has raised $4.2 million led by Austin Ventures. The round also included investors Mike Maples, Bob Greene, Julie Allegro, and Ralph Mack.

PRESS RELEASE:

Compare Metrics, an Adaptive Commerce company that empowers brands to harness disconnected information from across the web to power individualized discovery experiences and drive sales, today announced that it has received $4.2 million in first-round financing. The financing was lead by Austin Ventures and includes follow-on investment from the existing syndicate, including Mike Maples (Floodgate), Bob Greene (Contour Venture Partners), Julie Allegro (Allegro Venture Partners) and Ralph Mack (Mack Capital), as well as new independent investors, including Tom Meredith and Adam Ross. This brings the company’s total funds raised to $4.2 million, $3.5 million of which comes from Austin Ventures in leading the series A. The round will be used to support aggressive growth as companies, especially retailers, embrace the Compare Metrics solution as the next generation leap in product discovery and decision analytics.

“Compare Metrics is transforming the way people are making buying decisions,” said Compare Metrics’ co-founder and CEO Garrett Eastham , a thought-leader on semantic search and human-computer interaction. “We believe the future of online consumer discovery is not about creating the ultimate algorithm to tell consumers what they want but about giving consumers the best tools to articulate their personal desires and confidently follow their unique decision-making path.”
Technology Is Not a Replacement for Thought
“With the ever-expanding breadth of structured and unstructured information on the web, it’s understandable that consumers feel overwhelmed and often paralyzed when trying to make a buying decision. This effect is most obvious in the average retailer’s lower online conversion rate of 3-5%,” said Eastham. “Studies point to a lack of product information or simply not being able to find ‘the right product’ as the primary reasons for such low purchasing confidence. However you look at it, consumers are looking for a better discovery experience.”
The Compare Metrics solution is evolutionary, but it is inspired by simple, fundamental cognitive principles regarding how the brain processes information using visual and informational cues to make a decision. Core to the solution is a philosophy of combining the art of human-processing with the science of algorithmic data analysis and optimization to provide an ever-improving experience for each consumer. It’s a symbiotic relationship between the strongest processor in the world – the human brain – and advanced and purposeful big data processing.
Compare Metrics was co-founded in late 2012 by Garrett Eastham , Mikael Solomon and Stephen Goodwin . The solution was inspired by cognitive science research Eastham led at Stanford University to understand the impact of different computer interfaces on the decision-making process. The team has grown the idea into an innovative technology platform built from the ground-up, grown a highly scalable content curation team and content management system, and has signed market-leading customers.
“Compare Metrics will forever change the way that brands engage with and understand their customers,” said Brett Hurt , a veteran technology entrepreneur who founded Coremetrics and Bazaarvoice, currently works with Austin Ventures as a Venture Partner, and who also serves the Austin tech community as an angel investor and entrepreneurial catalyst. “Through all of my years – since 1998 – pioneering solutions that bring retailers into the digital age, an ongoing challenge has been providing each consumer with the unique mix of information they need to make a purchase decision. By curating a totally new layer of brand and consumer-created product meta data, Compare Metrics is better positioning brands to offer each customer a discovery experience tailored to how they actually think while shopping.” Brett backed Compare Metrics as a seed investor and has joined the company as the independent Chairman of the Board of Directors.
“The entrepreneurs we seek to back are those we see taking a provocative approach to address big problems,” said Chris Pacitti , General Partner at Austin Ventures. “When Garrett, Mikael and Stephen approached us in late 2012 with a solution that married the strengths of the human decision-making engine with big data processing and optimization, we knew they were onto something unique and promising. Market excitement has validated our early assumptions, and we look forward to being an on-going part of Compare Metrics’ growth and success.”
Compare Metrics Leadership
Austin-based Compare Metrics has assembled a team of executives and advisors with deep expertise in human-computer interaction, social commerce and retail software and analytics.
As Co-Founder and CEO, Garrett Eastham drives overall business and product strategy while also leading the day-to-day execution of the company’s vision. Most recently, Garrett helped launch Bazaarvoice Inc.’s big data solution used to track all interaction data across the platform. He holds a BS in Computer Science from Stanford University where his research work in semantic search and human computer interaction (HCI) formed the theoretical basis for the Compare Metrics solution and architecture.
Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Mikael Solomon is responsible for defining the positioning of Compare Metrics in the online commerce space. This includes execution on strategic partnerships and corporate development plans to maximize the company’s longterm value and success. As an entrepreneur with over 6 years of experience, Mikael got his start as the Founder of Stanford Student Startups, a student operated incubator, where he advised and launched several companies. He brings direct retail experience from his previous work with McMaster-Carr and has extensive experience in the Financial Services industry, formerly at Morgan Stanley.
Co-Founder and CTO Stephen Goodwin is laser focused on ensuring that the Compare Metrics infrastructure and platform remain reliable, fast and innovative. Stephen is a seasoned software engineer with deep experience pushing the boundaries of search technologies for some of the best-known engines in the world, including Microsoft Bing and Indeed.com.
In addition, Compare Metrics has assembled a world-class advisory board of thought-leaders in the retail and technology industries. These advisors bring deep experience from leading institutions including Bazaarvoice, Mass Relevance, and Invodo, among others. A full list of advisors is available here.
About Compare Metrics
Compare Metrics offers Adaptive Commerce solutions that drive next generation product discovery and allow consumers to forge their own distinct path to a buying decision. The solution scales merchandising to support every consumer shopping scenario while creating new intelligence into how and why your shoppers buy. With this new-found ability to understand and react to what customers really care about, retailers have seen increased shopper engagement, increased conversion, as well as improved relevancy and efficiency in demand generation and marketing strategies.
Founded and led by a team steeped in experience building proven retail technology and pushing the boundaries of machine learning and natural language processing, Compare Metrics is changing the way consumers discover and decide on the right products for them. Based in Austin, TX, the company is privately held and supported by trusted venture capital partners and advisors. More information about Compare Metrics is available at the company’s Web site: www.comparemetrics.com.
About Austin Ventures
Austin Ventures (“AV”) has worked with talented entrepreneurs to build valuable companies for over 30 years. With $3.9 billion of capital raised, AV is the most active venture capital firm in Texas and one of the most established in the nation. AV invests in early stage and middle market companies, and its strategy is to partner with talented executives and entrepreneurs to build industry-leading companies predominantly in Texas. Visit Austin Ventures for more information.

The post Compare Metrics Secures $4.2M in First Round Funding appeared first on peHUB.

BGR took an in-depth look at Leap Motion’s revolutionary motion-control PC accessory last year, and we loved the accuracy and shocking reliability of Leap’s technology. The controller was only compatible with Mac computers at the time, however. In a recent post on the company’s blog, Leap showed off its upcoming Windows 7 and Windows 8 integration, which it plans to launch on July 22nd. An accompanying video shows how well Leap’s controller works with Windows for swiping, scrolling, zooming in and out, flipping through photos, drawing and more. It’s not quite Minority Report, but we’re getting there. Leap Motion’s full video follows below.

Continue reading…

Lighter Capital, a Seattle-based online lending company, has appointed Jeff Seely to its board of directors. Seely is a trustee on the Washington State Investment Board and a member of the board of directors of Concur, a publicly traded, Redmond, Wash.-based company that’s focused on employee spend management software.

PRESS RELEASE:

Lighter Capital, a pioneer of Capital-as-a-Service (Caas), providing entrepreneurs with rapid access to growth capital through revenue-based financing, today announced the appointment of Jeff Seely to its Board of Directors.

Seely is a trustee on the Washington State Investment Board, which oversees more than $70 billion of pension assets for state employees, and a member of the board of directors of Redmond-based Concur (Nasdaq:CNQR), a company focused on employee spend management software. Seely previously served as the CEO of Recruiting.com from 2008 to 2010, and was chairman and CEO of ShareBuilder Corporation from 1998 until 2007, when it was sold to ING Direct for $220 million. Prior to ShareBuilder, Seely spent 15 years in investment banking at Robertson Stephens & Co., Dean Witter and Smith Barney, where he focused on financings, IPOs, and mergers and acquisitions for financial services firms and consumer businesses.

“Jeff’s career has bridged the worlds of finance and technology in a very rare and highly successful manner, bringing a tremendous wealth of experience to Lighter Capital as we grow our Capital-as-a-Service offering,” said BJ Lackland, CEO of Lighter Capital. “His experience building a web-based financial services firm, being an investment banker to banks, and providing strategic guidance to pension funds and successful software businesses provides our Board with a veteran perspective that will be extremely valuable. I am very excited to have him as an active member of our board.”

Lighter Capital and Revenue-Based Financing is intended for early-stage businesses that have established success and are primed for growth, but are cash-constrained and need access to capital with no loss of control and no fixed repayment schedule. Lighter Capital has developed a software platform to automate the investment application and evaluation process, accelerating the loan process for entrepreneurs, while also improving Lighter Capital’s scale and investment returns.

About Lighter Capital

At Lighter Capital, we’re breaking down the barriers to small business growth funding. Our revenue-based finance model exchanges growth capital for a fixed percentage of the company’s revenues. This structure is more flexible, easier, and faster than traditional loans, making us “lighter” than the marble and mahogany of the antiquated banks. Since 2010, Lighter Capital has funded dozens of fast growing companies that had no interest in personal guarantees from a bank nor the dilution and control provisions from venture capitalists. Lighter Capital invests $50k to $1M into companies with revenues of $15k per month and up. For more information, or to apply, visit: http://www.lightercapital.com/

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Libraries are generally where you go to check out books; not where you go if you want to write one. This is an old assumption that Librii — a concept for a community-based, digitally-enhanced series of libraries in the developing world — would like to flip on its head. TED speaker Jane McGonigal has given this ambituous project a big thumbs up.

Librii is the brainchild of architect David Dewane, and aims to bring to Africa the kind of open information exchange and collaboration space that is easily found in highly-wired regions of the world. In Africa, only 3% of the population has access to broadband internet — but Librii isn’t just a place where people can go to connect to the internet and access online books and resources. Built by local workers and staffed by librarians, Librii will also focus on knowledge creation, compiling the ideas, insights and designs of the local community. It will even generate revenue for the community.

Librii was incubated with seed funding from the World Bank Institute and recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign, raising more than $52,000 for its inaugural location in Accra, Ghana. So what does this have to do with video game designer Jane McGonigal?

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better worldApparently, McGonigal’s 2010 TED Talk – “Gaming can make a better world” — planted the distant seed of this idea.

Dewane tells Metropolis Magazine that, after watching McGonigal’s talk, he began playing her online game EVOKE, which empowered players to solve social problems around the globe by developing real world ideas for projects that could have a big impact. About 15,000 project proposals were submitted through the game — and Dewane’s proposal for Librii was selected as one of 25 top possibilities.

McGonigal is very excited to see the idea materialize in reality.

“Librii fills me with almost a giddy anticipation for the future,” she tells Metropolis. “I can’t wait to see the creativity that flows out of Accra when young people are able to share their art and ideas with the rest of the world. Because I’ve backed the Kickstarter project, I’m a subscriber to the first connected library. I’ll get a digital copy of whatever gets created first—a book of advice or a collection of children’s stories. The library will encourage and inspire all kinds of creation.”

McGonigal is highly inspired to see her idea for a video game spin into a powerful idea that could affect the future of libraries. “It’s the power of TED,” she says.

ViewRay Inc., a Cleveland-based medical device company, has raised $15 million in fresh funding, raising the total amount raised by the company to nearly $100 million. The company’s machinery, which can produce real-time images of cancerous tumors while the tumors are being treated radiation, raised what has been in its biggest round, a $45 million Series C, last year. ViewRay’s investors include Aisling Capital, Fidelity Biosciences, Kearny Venture Partners, OrbiMed Advisors and Siemens Venture Capital.

According to a company spokeswoman, ViewRay did not publish a press release in tandem with its new funding.

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