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When the state of New York, led by members of the lunatic left-wing fringe, hailed strict new gun control measures which included a seven-round limit on ammunition magazines, those of us who understand or have experienced the heated dynamics of armed confrontation were…

There are more holistic doctors to choose from than ever before. From naturopaths to MDs practicing integrative medicine, the expanded array of choice opens up a variety of holistic health options. As with any profession, there are some doctors who love their work and…

A few weeks after Ken Lerer quit AOL-owned Huffington Post to work on his venture fund Lerer Ventures, I stopped by in his office to catch up and talk about the New York landscape. And during our conversation, he pointed out that New York is still a big media town, except different kind of media. If you stand on Broadway and look above the 34th street, you can see the media of the past. Look down the Broadway, you see the future. What he meant was that it was in Soho, Nomad and East Village (and Brooklyn) where companies like Foursquare, Tumblr and Thrillist made home. They were the new kind of media, one that married technology, social and content.

I was reminded of that conversation today, when the news emerged that Yahoo board had approved the $1.1 billion cash offer for Tumblr, the social sharing platform. It would be one of the biggest exits for a New York-based startup. Sure there have been other exits — Google paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, but that was a company that belonged to a different Internet era. There was AOL buying Huffington Post for $315 million, eBay bought Hunch for about $80 million, Skype took out GroupMe for about $85 million and more recently Salesforce ponying up $689 million for Buddy Media. But Yahoo snapping up Tumblr is a whole different league.

The new New York

Why? Because Tumblr, in many ways is a visible manifestation of this new New York, one where startups that combine technology with content (one of New York’s core industries) for a new world. It is a success story that matches the fable like qualities of Instagram-Facebook deal. Of course, a real comparison would have been Twitter and Tumblr — both companies were started around the same time, both are essentially content sharing and amplification systems and both have enjoyed a similar growth curve. Twitter has grown bigger with an eye on an IPO and Tumblr is now going to be part of Yahoo.

But that is a comparison for another day, for New York community is clearly excited about this deal. A Silicon Alley insider who wished to remain anonymous put it best when he described this deal as sign that finally in New York people who build things are getting rich versus people (Wall Street) who take things. A bit hyperbolic, but the point is well made. I think this exit allows the young New York startup community to look up to David Karp in a manner folks here look up to Kevin Systrom of Instagram.

BetaWorking

John Borthwick, who is co-founder of New York-based Betaworks believes that it is an important turn of the cycle and the sale of a social media company of this helps solidify and legitimize the entire New York startup ecosystem. Borthwick’s incubator was a seed investor in Tumblr and that investment will pay handsomely.

Borthwick points out that the knock-on effects of this sale are going to help the new-tech centric New York gain momentum. Just as PayPal helped spawn a series of other companies, many in New York are optimistic that Huffington Post and Tumblr are going to result in many more startups. HuffPo’s progeny include Buzzfeed and Rebel Mouse, and Tumblr’s talent is likely to do more interesting things, he argued.

Lerer, grand wizard of the New York tech scene believes that New York is no longer an after thought. “This is just beginning,” said Lerer who has invested in 150 companies (of which 80 percent are in New York.) And with content being central (something he shared in a conversation at Paidcontent Live), Lerer believes that New York will become a bustling startup city.

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• Social third-quarter 2012: analysis and outlook
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Pinterest plans to announce a new type of pin on Sunday that will highlight a large number of major U.S. retail brands, marking the company’s “first step” in integrating images with associated brands, and making it easier to click through links and purchase items. The move could be the start of a change in consumer perception of the site from a place for wishful thinking to a site where one can purchase those wishes. While this is just a first step, and the company said it is not currently making money from the integration, the power of the companies joining at launch suggests Pinterest could become on par with Facebook and Twitter when it comes to attracting sizable brand marketing budgets in the not-so-distant future.

Pinterest is launching three distinct types of pins, with one type each for food, retail products, and movies. The new format will only work with items pinned from the launch partner sites, but the number of partners is wide-reaching, and will grow. If you click on a food pin, it will now include the ingredient list and relevant information below the photo, auto-generated from the original site. Product photos will show where you can find the item for sale, and the movie pins will show information about the movie such as its rating, cast and release date.

The list of brands participating in the launch demonstrates the strong interest from U.S. retailers in getting on board with Pinterest. Some of the launch partners include: eBay, Etsy, Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, Overstock, REI, Sephora, Sony, Target, Urban Outfitters, Wal-Mart, Bon Appetit, Epicurious, Martha Stewart Living, Whole Foods, Netflix, Rotten Tomatoes, and many others. Companies who want to be included in the program can apply on Pinterest’s website.

A Pinterest representative sought to emphasize that the new pins are not a form of advertising, but are instead supposed to make pins more “actionable,” a term the company has been using for a while now, including in our interview with CEO Ben Silbermann just last week.

“We want to make pinning actionable,” he told us at the time. “Our focus has been to become a very valuable service.”

One major complaint with Pinterest, which has given an advantage to sites like Wanelo or Nasty Gal, is that users frequently share or re-pin the same photo thousands of times, but when you actually click the photo to see where it came from the link is broken.

If more and more companies and popular blogs integrate their photos of inventory with Pinterest under the new pin structure, it could make items more trackable on the site — which would be handy for consumers and crucial if Pinterest wants to eventually profit from the traffic it generates.

And it’s not an insignificant amount of web traffic. While Pinterest doesn’t officially release any stats, a recent ComScore report put the number of users at more than 48 million unique visitors globally, and a February Pew report on social media put the percentage of online adults using Pinterest at 15 percent, which is slightly less than the 16 percent on Twitter, and more than the 13 percent on Instagram — and far more than the 6 percent on Yahoo’s apparent new friend Tumblr.

A company spokesperson said Pinterest is currently not profiting from the new integration with brands. But the strong interest on the part of the companies and the launch of a tech platform to support them paves the way for making money in the future. After all, Pinterest just raised $200 million in new funding — it has to be looking to make money at some point.

It’s an inevitable move for Pinterest to accelerate its growth, as we noted in a story on the small team’s unique symbiosis between design and engineering. But the site needs to make sure it crafts a business model that fits with its content, much as Twitter has built up promoted tweets.

Pinterest is still in the early days of that growth, but all sorts of e-commerce companies, from the startup Wanelo to behemoth Amazon, will be watching closely as this unfolds.

Updated at 9:14 PM to note that the new recipe pins will show the full ingredient list, not the full recipe.

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With rumors surfacing yesterday about a possible HTC One running a stock Android install, another rumor surfaced that may be more interesting for current owners of the device or those not willing to wait for confirmation of the “Google experience” HTC One. Over on Twitter, developer @LlabTooFer responded to an inquiry about Android 4.2′s availability on the HTC One with “2-3 weeks I think.” @LlabTooFer has been a reliable source of information about HTC software updates in the past.

Along with the rumor about Android 4.2 coming to the HTC One, @LlabTooFer also posted recently about an update that was in the works for last year’s HTC One X which would bring it up to Android 4.2 and Sense 5.0. If all the rumors are true, it looks like HTC is working to bring the Android 4.2 goodies to a large swath of their customers. If they succeed and establish a reputation of quick work to keep devices up to date with Android versions, that could be a positive step in helping them regain some lustre and marketshare.

source: @LlabTooFar

Come comment on this article: Android 4.2 for HTC One only 2-3 weeks away?

Last night I tweeted a link to this video, about the legendary scientist Nikola Tesla pitching Silicon Valley venture capitalists, and commented that the truth is sometimes funnier that comedy. And I was surprised by the sheer number of people who agreed with that sentiment. I went to sleep thinking about that reaction, and also thinking about it in the context of the decline of long-term thinking in our society.

If Tesla (I assume you know who he is) did indeed walk into a VC meeting, he wouldn’t get the attention or the money for his idea because it wouldn’t fit the time-scale of what venture-capital investments have become. Having followed the business of technology for a long time, I have seen that time-scale get shorter and shorter. I guess it’s the price to be paid for the excesses of the internet bubble of the 1990s.

The Bubble After Effects

During that time the business changed from funding innovation to funding concepts and eventually to projects. The fallout of the internet bubble was that venture-capital firms shifted focus. This shifting time-frame is one of the main reasons we are seeing fewer and fewer investments in hardcore technologies and more of the dollars being shifted to the softer aspects of technology.

Yes, bloggers like me like to harp on the fact that many investors are infected by short-termism. But let’s not forget that some of these folks have taken big risks, and sometimes have failed big, too.

Cleantech has ruined many reputations and resulted in billion dollar loses. Yes, there are a couple rare big bet successes that will come out of cleantech, like Tesla Motors and Nest, but the overall trend has been losses.

Now many of the investors that aggressively backed cleantech are trying to find a more cautious approach to cleantech that more closely aligns with the traditional short VC time frame. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Beyers, which lead the charge on cleantech investments only to be left wounded, has recently changed tact in many ways, and in particular to go after social so it can get back into the quick returns on its investments.

That’s the trend that all investors, in some respects are, moving toward. They’re all looking for the next Facebook or the next Twitter, but no one wants to look for the next Juniper or the next Intel or even the next ARM. I am not saying Facebook and Twitter are not great companies and have not scaled dramatically and impacted the world. What I am pointing to is the fact that Silicon Valley funds fewer and fewer silicon companies.

Why are we assuming that we are all done with developing new kinds of chips for uses that we are not even imagining yet? Are we done inventing the routing technologies of the future?

It’s hard to invest in the future

Think of it this way: Had Vinod Khosla not backed Pradeep Sindhu to work on Juniper, we would all be living in Cisco’s vision of the internet future and using its hardware, which it would have made and sold at its own pace and at its own prices. Today, if you need to build a big company like that, you need to have deep pockets. Luckily Andy Bechtolsteim has those and that is why Arista Networks exists and is proving to be a major disrupter.

The point is not to just rant, but to note that there is a lot more innovation to be done. All of today’s stars — from Dropbox to SnapChat to every little hot company that pops up — is built on those basic building blocks, and we have to continue to make better, cheaper and beefier building blocks.

Yes, I understand that there is a chill around chip stocks, and Wall Street investors are showing more interest in pokes than petabyte speeds. I don’t necessarily think that this kind of rational thinking is bad for the investors, but when it comes to fundamental innovation, it points to a a real challenge ahead. And forget what Wall Street thinks, isn’t venture capital really risk capital? Risk, unfortunately, is a four-letter word around these parts these days.

Failure is an option

Forget chip startups, does anyone think that the Sand Hill Road firmament could have funded Amazon Web Services, a disruptive economic force, if they had a chance? Probably not. How about the iPhone? The same story. If you look at those two examples, and add Google’s self-driving car, Google Glass and what companies like Tesla are doing, you understand that patience is a virtue. Unfortunately, patience is in short supply in the Valley these days.

I wrote this on the first anniversary of Steve Jobs’ death, and I want to resurface it:

A dear friend put it best when he said that Jobs allowed himself the freedom to dream big and most of us need to learn from him and supersize our dreams. While that is true of everyone, the Silicon Valley of 2012 needs to pay heed. Silicon Valley of quick flips, petty jealousies and rampant short-termism needs to remind itself of a greater purpose than a public offering. Change is more than a headline. It takes patience. It is more profound. And it is thinking about more than just us.

Maybe this video is a reminder to all of us that while we might be living in great times, the future is still to be invented.

More about the video: The video is in support of a Kickstarter campaign that hopes to collect enough money to build a statue of Nikola Tesla. While to many Tesla might be a car, in reality Tesla was a scientist who worked on difficult things. As an aside, we at GigaOM are fortunate that our New York offices are in the Radio Wave Building, the very building where Nikola Tesla lived.

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Joshua Pearce, PhD, is a researcher at Michigan Tech who rearches open source and low-impact solutions to engineering problems. He is also the founder of the Printers For Peace contest, an effort to bring together clever 3D-printed ideas that have loftier aims. You can win one of two 3D printers if you submit a winning project.

We asked Pearce a few questions about his goals for the project and about the future of 3D printing.

John Biggs: Why Printers For Peace?

Joshua Pearce: I think it is clear that low-cost open-source 3D printing has enormous potential to do real good for the world – particularly for the poor as it radically reduces the cost of high-value products like scientific tools and consumer goods. This threatens a lot of entrenched interests because the average Joe can fabricate extremely complex products at home for pennies, which is disruptive to say the least. I have noticed a clear bias in 3D printing news coverage – any advances on the low-end of the spectrum are generally ignored or vilified. The media frenzy about 3D printed guns is actually having terrifying consequences – and I don’t mean the guns. A California senator has already proposed registration, background checks, and licensing for 3D printers!

Michigan Tech and Type A Machines sponsored the contest to get the more positive truth about 3D printers into the conversation. There are over 90,000 open-source 3D printable designs available and only one low-quality gun. We do not want to lose the baby with the bathwater. Our aim is to raise awareness of the power of 3D printing to change the world for the better.

JB: What do you think will happen now that the 3D printed gun is out of the bag? It was inevitable, obviously, but what does it mean?
JP: The 3D printed gun is a red herring. Anyone who wants a gun can make a much better one using more traditional tools found in any machine shop and many garages — or just buy one. I am, however, very concerned that the debate about 3D printed guns will be used to squash the incredible technological development we are seeing in the open-source 3D printing community.

JB: What’s the coolest Printers for Peace project you’ve seen so far?

JP: The contest just opened, but there are some really cool designs already developed that I think would make good starting points for derivatives. I really like some of the small-scale 3D printed windmill designs – and there is a graduate student working on what looks to be a printable recyclebot. I would love to see a reliable 3D printed treadle pump as this is one of the most successful appropriate technologies for lifting rural farmers out of poverty in the developing world.

JB: What’s next? 3D printed bazookas? 3D printed heart stents? Where do you see this headed, in either direction?

JP: I think it is clear that existing manufacturers will continue to move from using high-end 3D printing for rapid prototyping into actual manufacturing creating entirely new classes of jobs (e.g. automobile parts, human body parts, etc.). This is exciting, but not nearly as exciting as what is happening on the low-end of the spectrum. As open-source 3D printable designs continue to grow exponentially the value of owning a 3D printer is climbing as their quality improves and actual costs continue to decline. Thus, low-cost open-source 3D printers will become ubiquitous household items, which people use to make a wide array of consumer goods, replacement parts, and highly customized products. Following shortly after I hope to see recyclebots become similarly widespread – with people recycling their waste plastic inhome to make their own products. The implications for improving human well-being are staggering.

Today, President Obama delivered the commencement address to the 2013 graduates of Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA.

“It is one of the great honors of my life to be able to address this gathering here today,” President Obama told the graduates. He spoke about Morehouse’s history, and “ the unique sense of purpose that this place has always infused — the conviction that this is a training ground not only for individual success, but for leadership that can change the world.”

“Your generation is uniquely poised for success unlike any generation of African Americans that came before it,” President Obama said.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t have work — because if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that too few of our brothers have the opportunities that you’ve had here at Morehouse.  In troubled neighborhoods all across this country — many of them heavily African American — too few of our citizens have role models to guide them.  Communities just a couple miles from my house in Chicago, communities just a couple miles from here — they’re places where jobs are still too scarce and wages are still too low; where schools are underfunded and violence is pervasive; where too many of our men spend their youth not behind a desk in a classroom, but hanging out on the streets or brooding behind a jail cell. 

My job, as President, is to advocate for policies that generate more opportunity for everybody — policies that strengthen the middle class and give more people the chance to climb their way into the middle class.  Policies that create more good jobs and reduce poverty, and educate more children, and give more families the security of health care, and protect more of our children from the horrors of gun violence.  That's my job. Those are matters of public policy, and it is important for all of us — black, white and brown — to advocate for an America where everybody has got a fair shot in life. Not just some. Not just a few. 

read more

There’s plenty of buzz about the concept of making our cities “smarter” — that is, loading them up with sensors and data-driven services to improve efficiency and quality of life. Hell, even Google has taken to loading up its event venues with scores of sensors.

Most of the discussion out there deals with how local governments are working toward this lofty, nebulous goal, but a team called Acrobotics Industries is trying to put the onus on the citizens. To that end the team has kicked off a $50,000 Kickstarter campaign for a small sensor array called the Smart Citizen kit in hopes that people will start collecting and sharing their environmental data with the world.

“There’s a problem with the way current cities were built,” Acrobotic’s COO Francisco Zabala told me. “Beijing’s air quality is insanely bad — we think we have it bad in L.A. — and it’s not getting any better.

The heart (or brain, I guess) of the Smart Citizen project is an Arduino-powered kit that gets tucked away inside (or outside, if you’ve got the right kind of enclosure) of a user’s home to track local environmental variables — think temperature, humidity, air composition, ambient brightness, and sound levels. It’s arguably neat enough to keep tabs on the environmental conditions at your home while you’re not there, but the real value here is when a host of users set up their Smart Citizen sensors and fire up them up en masse.

It’s the team’s hope that Smart Citizen kits will sell widely enough that regular people will be able to get an accurate glance at environmental conditions with a finer sort of granularity than you’d get by firing up, say, the Weather Channel app. For what it’s worth, Zabala concedes that the Smart Citizen project is largely geared toward making people aware of climate change and global warming without getting too political or divisive about it.

“I believe that climate is changing for the worse, but our approach is more personal,” Zabala said. “By raising awareness we’re working toward a solution without banging on people’s heads.”

As it happens, a few of those Smart Citizen kits have already been fired up. A quick look at a demo version of the sensor-tracking website reveals that a handful of the little things are live in Zabala’s native Barcelona — the Smart Citizen team ran an earlier, more local crowdfunding campaign (Zabala called it a “proof of concept run”) that saw a number of users in Spain install and fire up their sensor arrays all around the city. Hovering over a bright blue spot displays the latest environmental data (users can define how often they want those updates to occur), while greyed out units haven’t been fired up lately.

Thanks to how the Smart Citizen kit is constructed, users will eventually be able to monitor more than just the environmental criteria this early kit supports. Zabala said that the Acrobotics team is currently working on swappable daughterboards that will allow the Smart Citizen kit to be used for soil and water testing, too — perfect for you city-dwelling gardeners. If you’re suddenly itching to monitor your surroundings more acutely, you’ll be able to lay claim to a fully constructed Smart Citizen for $155 — the more handy among you can save a little money by springing for the $105 unassembled kit instead.

Alan O’Day, a singer/songwriter who penned several hits for others before finding his own success, has died from complications of cancer. He was 72 years old.

O’Day wrote successful songs for artists like The Righteous Brothers, Cher, and Helen Reddy in the early ’70s before finding his own fanbase with “Undercover Angel” in 1974. Later, he wrote songs for popular television shows, such as the children’s cartoon “The Muppet Babies”.

“Alan continued to write and perform until his last days,” a statement from 1st Phase Records reads. “Alan was a generous man who gave his heart and soul to the music industry.”

‘Undercover Angel’ Singer Alan O’Day Dies at 72 j.mp/12EFki8 via @thr sad to read. Undercover Angel is still a great song.

— JJ Lair (@jjmonmouth) May 19, 2013

Even though he had one major hit as a singer, Alan O’Day was a wonderful songwriter who sadly did not receive the… fb.me/zFCb4WgN

— Ronnie Dark (@RonnieDarkWax) May 19, 2013

This makes me sad. ‘Undercover Angel’ Singer Alan O’Day Dies at 72 j.mp/12EFki8 via @thr

— Piss on the IRS (@62dw) May 19, 2013

Thefirst time I met Alan O’ Day was @ a songwriter’s gathering years back. RIP old friend. U will be missed, but your music willlive on.

— Gregory Watton (@thewattonshow) May 19, 2013

Christine White, who played the wife of William Shatner’s tormented air-traveler in the “Twilight Zone” episode “Nightmare At 20,000 Feet”, has died. She was 86 years old.

White had more than 50 acting credits under her belt, but perhaps none were so remembered and revered as that of Julia Wilson, whose husband battles a gremlin only he can see on the wing of the plane they’re traveling on in the infamous “Twilight Zone” episode. She also appeared on such popular television shows as “Father Knows Best”, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”, and “Perry Mason”.

White, who was born in Washington, returned there from New York in order to care for her ailing mother after a long acting career.

Thoughts go out to the family of my Twilight Zone co-star Christine Lamson. MBB

— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) May 19, 2013

RIP Christine White, seatmate to William Shatner in iconic ‘Twilight Zone, ‘ dead at 86 today.com/entertainment/… via @nbcnews

— Larry Richman (@larry411) May 19, 2013

Obit of actress who had fabulous 25 minutes of fame in best Twilight Zone ever – gremlin on the wingnyti.ms/11NX6CT

— Les Hinton (@leshinton) May 19, 2013

“There’s something on the wing … ” “Twilight Zone” Actress, D.C. Native Christine White dies aged 86: bit.ly/10OesZY

— NBCWashington (@nbcwashington) May 19, 2013

Chris Brown has had some threats made on his life this week, and police are launching an investigation to find the responsible party.

Reportedly, someone called Brown’s lawyer’s office to make the threats, and while it hasn’t been released just what was said, attorney Mark Geragos took them seriously enough to phone police immediately.

Brown has been the subject of much controversy since a violent altercation with former girlfriend Rihanna in 2009, after which he was arrested and she was left bruised and bloodied. Despite a restraining order that would have made it impossible for the two of them to be within 50 yards of one another, they resumed a relationship last year that was widely speculated upon on social media outlets like Twitter. His lawyer, who represented him after the domestic violence incident, says his client has changed only for the better since then.

“He’s grown and matured, and as he would tell you, is still making good music,” he says.

How terrible that he has to live in fear of violence, oh wait. RT@skyyhookradio Chris Brown Gets Death Threats… wp.me/p2bAWr-9Md1

— Soul Khan (@soulkhan) May 19, 2013

Oh HELL no. RT @tmz: Chris Brown — Death Threats Made Against Singer, LAPD Investigating tmz.me/Z4Vq6h

— † Deidra ♊. (@_deidraaa) May 19, 2013

Death threats have been made against Chris Brown. Has he been talking to himself again?

— Warren Holstein (@WarrenHolstein) May 19, 2013

Drake at it again RT @tmz: Chris Brown — Death Threats Made Against Singer, LAPD Investigating tmz.me/Z4Vq6h

— James Snuka (@Superfly_Snook) May 19, 2013

LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOMFG RT @tmz: Chris Brown — Death Threats Made Against Singer, LAPD Investigating tmz.me/Z4Vq6h

— . (@kvrdashian) May 19, 2013

According to a GL Benchmark test, a device with the model number GT-P5200 is going to include a 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Atom Z2560 Clover Trail+ processor working with a PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU. The GT-P5200 name seems to code for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, as the GT-P5100 was the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1.

There were reports earlier this month of the same device running a 1.6GHz processor on the AnTuTu Benchmark site, which matches perfectly with the current information. It is rumored that Samsung is working on three variants of this device, one coming with only WiFi capabilities, one with both 3G and WiFi, and another with 4G LTE and WiFi.

We expect the device to launch with a 10.1-inch screen with a 1280 by 800 resolution. There’s no word yet on when the new Galaxy Tab will launch, and how much it will cost.

Source: GFX Bench

 

Come comment on this article: Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 rumored to ship with Intel processor

We had another busy week at TalkAndroid so here’s a recap of all the top stories. Google I/O was this week, so it’s no surprise that it dominated the headlines. Google officially unveiled their new unified messaging service called Hangouts and their new gaming service called Play Games Services. They also unveiled their new streaming music serviced called Play Music All Access. The only hardware announcement was the Galaxy S 4 Google Edition. All in all, it was an exciting event that featured a lot of new stuff for development, which is what Google I/O is all about. Even though I/O was the focal point for the week, there was still a lot of other news, so it’s time to get caught up and get ready for another exciting week.

Guides

Best Android music playing applications [May 2013]

Reviews

Quiz of Seers [Brain & Puzzle]

WeVideo – Video Editor [Media]

Google I/O

Re-experience all three exciting hours of the Google I/O 2013 keynote right here

Google I/O 2013 Keynote: Android activations account for nearly 1/7th of the world’s population with 900 million total activations

Google I/O 2013 Keynote: Play Store will bring more personalized recommendation, apps that will be “Designed for Tablets” and new All Access music subscription service

Google announces unlocked Samsung Galaxy S 4 with stock Android coming June 26 for $649

Google Play Developer Console gets a major injection of new features

Google announces Google Play for Education at Google I/O 2013

New Google Maps makes the Map the UI just a little better and easier for all

Google Search gets expanded functionality for users, brings new cards and improved Voice Search abilities

Google Hangouts officially announced at Google I/O, now live in the Google Play Store

Google Hangouts requires permissions to receive, read, and send SMS messages, could support be added soon?

Google Hangouts “easter eggs” revealed, include ponies and dinosaurs

Gmail and Google Wallet can now help you get money to people in your life

Google TV gets bumped to Android 4.2.2 and the latest version of Chrome

Hands on with the Map Diving simulator

Hands on with NVIDIA Shield

Quick look at the Google Street View Trekker

Hands on with WeVideo’s video editing solution for Chromebooks

Accessories

Samsung TecTiles 2 Now available to purchase

Apps – New

Blackberry Messenger officially coming to Android devices this summer!

BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10.1 launches with full Android support

HTC Backup now available for AT&T users as free download from Google Play

Karateka Classic: Director’s Cut launches tomorrow for Android and iOS for a buck

Classic Sonic the Hedgehog by Sega launched to Google Play for $2.99

Apps – Updates

Android games begin to integrate with Google Play Games service, more to come

TuneIn Radio gets updated to allow Google Play Music Store purchases

Pinterest app for Android receives update

Time Warner Cable’s TWC TV app updated to allow streaming away from home

YouTube for Google TV updated, features new homescreen UI

SMS integration within Google Hangouts on its way

PBA Bowling Challenge adds multiplayer support thanks to Google Play’s game service

Fitbit adds Bluetooth 4.0 sync support for Samsung Galaxy S 4 in new update

Carriers

Google Wallet arrives for additional Sprint and U.S. Cellular smartphones

AT&T blocking Google Hangout video chats on mobile networks

Gaming Hardware

NVIDIA to begin accepting SHIELD handheld gaming device pre-orders from today

Google

Google Play developers now able to reply to user reviews

15GB of free storage now offered between Drive, Gmail and Photos

Google announces Gladstone, Missouri will be receiving Google Fiber

Google Sync Services quietly adds a couple new settings

Next version of Android to feature Bluetooth Smart support, expected in the coming months

Game over June 30th for Google+ Games

Google makes Android easier to use for visually-impaired users with TalkBack and BrailleBack

Google Glass

MedRef aims to help the medical field better, oh and it brings facial recognition to Google Glass in the process

New concept video surfaces, showcases how awesome, yet practical the head can truly be

Google Glass successfully unlocked, boots up with Ubuntu at I/O

Congress wants to know a little more about Google Glass privacy guidelines, sends a friendly letter to Larry Page in the process

Hardware

NVIDIA Tegra 4 devices to be announced this quarter

Phones – HTC

HTC One $100 trade up program ends this Sunday, no extensions planned

HTC employee hints at an HTC One with stock Android

HTC First reportedly to be discontinued by AT&T barely a month into its release

Verizon offering HTC Droid DNA for free through new coupon code promotion

Phones – Meitu

China’s MeituKiss phone catered to females equipped with 8-megapixel front camera

Phones – Morotola

Possible Motorola X Phone benchmark shows up on GFX Bench

Phones – Nexus

Another white Nexus 4 appears in the wild, preparing for a Google I/O release?

Video of white Google Nexus 4 surfaces

Google to debut Android 4.3 on white Nexus 4 June 10th

Phones – Panasonic

Panasonic launches P51 in Indian markets, packed with 5-inch screen and stylus

Phones – Samsung

Verizon Galaxy S 4 to launch in stores on May 23rd

Samsung Galaxy S 4 breaks the S 3 record by selling 4 million units in 5 days

Samsung officially outs Blue Arctic Galaxy S 4 in Japan

Samsung planning to free up storage space on Galaxy S 4 for users

Samsung Galaxy S 4 is the world’s first smartphone to recieve coveted TCO certification

Is success of Samsung Galaxy S 4 pushing company to look outside for components?

Samsung Galaxy S 4 to reach 10 million sales by next week, Note III to have 5.9-inch OLED display

Galaxy Note III not expected to offer flexible display or metal design

First photo taken from the Samsung Galaxy S 4 Zoom surfaces online

Samsung Galaxy S 4 Mini pictures leaked, smaller and less-powerful version of its bigger brother

Samsung Galaxy S 4 Mini specs leak, will feature high-powered Exynos 5210 chip

Samsung Galaxy S 4 Mini leaks once again, release set for end of May

Waterproof S 4 variant shows up in benchmark with downgraded processor, dubbed the Galaxy S 4 J Active

Samsung Galaxy S III comes to StraightTalk using Sprint’s LTE network

Samsung Galaxy Ace III gets Bluetooth SIG certification

Phones – Sony

Sony unveils Xperia ZR, a mid to high-end waterproof device made for underwater photography

Japan’s NTT DoCoMo releases summer 2013 device portfolio including Sony Xperia A

Phones – ZTE

ZTE reveals Grand X2 In with Intel CloverTrail+ processor capable of taking 24 photos per second

Tablets

Samsung working on a tablet/pc hybrid behind the scenes

HP Announces Slatebook 10 x2, a convertible tablet with Tegra 4

New project hopes to bring Android apps to HP Touchpad sans dual boot

Amazon Coins now available for Kindle Fire owners

Archos ChefPad appeals to the cook in us all

Notion Ink brings okay specs and an interesting display tweak with the Adam II

Ekoore Python S3 offers triple the operating system fun in one device

Upgraded ASUS Fonepad announced, will feature better processor and extra storage

Nexus 7 refresh expected in July, same price with updated specs

Photo and details leak of 8-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab 3

Archos officially announces 80 Xenon tablet, set for June launch at $199 asking price

Sony Xperia Tablet Z receives AOSP support

Updates

T-Mobile rolling out Android 4.1.2 update to Samsung Galaxy S III customers

Sony Xperia Z smartphone receives minor software update

Samsung start rolling out Jellybean 4.1.2 update to Galaxy Ace 2 users

Sprint HTC One receiving OTA update to fix key sensitivity

HTC One X rumored to get Sense 5.0 in new incoming update, brings Zoe and Blinkfeed along for the ride

HTC sales increase for One and Butterfly, Butterfly to receive Sense 5.0 update

Miscellaneous

Consumer preferences towards larger smartphone screens on the rise

Smartphone sales in Q1 2013 great for Android, amasses whopping 75% of market share

NVIDIA announces SHIELD pre-orders will begin May 20th and will have a cost of $349

CyanogenMod eclipses 5 million downloads and counting

Apple preparing to wage war once again with Samsung, adds Samsung Galaxy S 4 to list of patent infringements

Modaco Toolkit enables easy multi-user access for rooted 4.2 phones

Former Nokia consultant launches Adaia, aiming to make the first fully seaworthy Android phone

Yup, Android 4.3 is confirmed thanks to a search result listing on a developer website

Samsung grabs 95% of global Android smartphone profits in Q1 2013

 

Come comment on this article: TalkAndroid Weekly Recap for May 13 – May 19, 2013

Yahoo’s board of directors has agreed to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion, the Wall Street Journal and AllThingsD reported Sunday. The deal is expected to be announced Monday.

Tumblr founder David Karp, who owns at least 25 percent of the company, has agreed to stay on for at least four years, according to ATD. The WSJ says Tumblr would remain an independent company.

comScore pegged Tumblr’s worldwide traffic at 117 million visitors in April. The site has raised about $125 million in funding, putting its valuation at $800 million. As my colleague Mathew Ingram points out, the company’s revenues were less than $15 million in 2012, though Karp has estimated they will hit $100 million this year.

Yahoo is holding a press event on Monday afternoon in New York, but hasn’t specified what the event will be about. We’ll be there.

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The paradigm hasn’t changed since the advent of software: Applications run, and platforms are what they run on. But the underlying principles of application design and deployment do change every now and then – sometimes drastically, thanks to quantum-leap developments in infrastructure.

For instance, application design principles changed dramatically when the PC, x86 architecture, and client/server paradigm were born in the ’80s. And  it happened again with the advent of the web and open-source technology in the mid ’90s. Whenever such abrupt changes arise, application developers are forced to rethink how they build and deploy their software.

Today, we’re seeing a huge leap in infrastructure capability, this time pioneered by Amazon Web Services. It’s clear that to take full advantage of the new cloud infrastructure, applications that run successfully on AWS must be inherently different than applications that were built to run successfully on a corporate server – even a virtualized one. But there are a number of other particular ways in which today’s (and tomorrow’s) cloud applications will need to be designed differently than in the past. Here are the most crucial ones, and how the ways of the old world have been changed in the new one :

Scaling 

In the old world, scaling was accomplished by scaling up – to accommodate more users or data, you simply bought a bigger server.

In the new world, scaling is typically done by scaling out. You don’t add a bigger machine, you add multiple machines of the same sort. In the cloud world, those machines are virtual machines, and their instantiations in the cloud are instances.

Resilience 

Before, software was seen as unreliable, and resilience was built into the hardware layer.

Today, the underlying infrastructure – the hardware – is seen as the weak link, and it is up to applications to accommodate for this. There is no guarantee that a virtual machine instance will always function. It can disappear at any moment and the application must be prepared for this.

By way of example, Netflix, arguably the most advanced user of the cloud today, has gone the farthest in adopting this new paradigm. They have a process called ChaosMonkey that randomly kills virtual machine instances from underneath the application workloads. Why on earth do they do this on purpose? Because they are ensuring uptime and resilience: By exposing their applications to random loss of instances, they force application developers to build more resilient apps. Brilliant.

Bursting

In the old world – think accounting and payroll applications – the application workload was reasonably stable and predictable. It was known how many users a system had, and how many records they were likely to process at any given moment.

In the new world, we see variable and unpredictable workloads. Today’s software systems have to reach farther out in the world, to consumers and devices that demand services at unpredictable moments and unpredictable loads. To accommodate such unforeseen fluctuations in individual application workloads required a new software architecture. We now have it in the cloud, but clearly it is still in its infancy.

Software variety

In the past we didn’t have much software variety. Each application was written in one language and used one database. Companies standardized on a single, or at least very few operating systems. The software stack was boringly simple and uniform (at least now in retrospect).

In the new world of cloud, the opposite is happening. Within a single application, many different languages can be used, many different libraries and toolkits can be employed, and many different database products can be used. And because in a cloud you can create and spin up you own image, tailored to your and your application’s specific needs, applications within one company must be able to operate under a spectrum of configurations.

From VM to cloud 

Even between the relatively new technology of hypervisors and the modern cloud thinking, there are differences. VMware, the pioneer and leader in virtualization, built its hypervisors to essentially behave the way physical machines did before.

But in the cloud world, the virtual machine is not a representation of a physical server; it’s a representation of units of compute. (Steve Bradshaw wrote about this topic in depth.)

User patience

In the old world, users were taught to be patient. The system may have needed a long time to respond to simple retrieval or update requests, and new features were added slowly to the application (if at all).

In the new cloud world, users have no patience. They hardly tolerate latency or wait times, and they look for improvements in the service every week, if not every day. Evidence of this can be found in self-service IT. Rather than file a ticket with IT and wait for a response several days later, users of IT can self-provision the resources they need.

Do these observations rhyme with what you are experiencing and taking action on in your organization? I look forward to comments and debate on this topic.

Marten Mickos is the CEO of Eucalyptus Systems. He previously served as CEO of MySQL AB, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems. He is a member of the board of directors of Nokia.

Have an idea for a post you’d like to contribute to GigaOm? Click here for our guidelines and contact info.

Photo courtesy of Mike Flippo/Shutterstock.com.

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It’s hokey, ridiculous and so far fetched it isn’t even funny. However Hot Wheels is back, and with their reemergence they bring one of the most entertaining little automotive movies of recent times. Four teams; Red, Yellow, Green & Blue compete for the title of “World’s Best Driver”. Some will be eliminated, others will succeed. You won’t know who the victors are though until you watch the full 22-minute flick. Check it out after the jump.

Source: HotWheels.com

Google I/O, which saw the public launch of Google Compute Engine, also spawned a “I know you are, what am I,” slapfest between two companies that would like to unseat Amazon Web Services as the king of public cloud. Apparently Google CEO Larry Page doesn’t think the company’s “Don’t be Evil” mantra applies to trash talking rivals. And someone should clue in him in that a billionaire whining about how other billionaires have done his company wrong is a tad unseemly. Especially coming as it did after Page bemoaned the “negativity” in press reports about Google technology.

“Every story I read about Google is us versus some other company or some stupid thing. Being negative is not how we make progress. The most important things are not zero sum.” Page said Google struggles “with people like Microsoft,” he said. As for Oracle, which is suing Google over Android’s use of Java, Google has “a difficult relationship with Oracle, including having to appear in court … Money is obviously more important to them than any collaboration.”

In comments emailed to CIO.com, Microsoft responded:

“It’s ironic that Larry is lending his voice to the discussion of interoperability considering his company’s decision — today — to file a cease and desist order to remove the YouTube app from Windows Phone, let alone the recent decision to make it more difficult for our customers to connect their Gmail accounts to their Windows experience.”

Page’s words came a few days after Microsoft announced interoperability between its Outlook.com email service and Gmail and just after word came out that Google demanded that Microsoft rip its home-built YouTube app from the Windows store (and remove the app off the Windows Phones that were already running it.)

So, who’s the winner in this melee? Neither vendor comes out looking good. For Microsoft to complain about Google’s business practices is laughable given its own track record. But for Google to claim it’s not evil while restricting consumer choice is also awful. Consumers might just say a pox on both their houses.

IBM spreads Watson around …

Watson, the natural-language-understanding software that played (and won) at Jeopardy, will be made more broadly available to third-party software makers, IBM CEO Ginny Rometty said last week. Thus Watson technology could be used perhaps even by IBM competitors, to build self-teaching computer systems, according to Bloomberg News.

IBM has made the most possible PR use of Watson capabilities, working to embed that intelligence in medical and other applications. Last week, IBM took its show on the road to Washington D.C. last week to show Congress the progress Watson has made in healthcare applications.

… as SAP doubles down on HANA

German enterprise software giant SAP, in a move you could see coming miles away, said this week that HANA, it’s in-memory analytical database, will be the brains and guts of its ERP software going forward, according to InformationWeek and other  outlets.

Running do-or-die ERP and CRM applications on HANA is a big step up from data warehouses because ERP and CRM cannot go down for hours or a day without severe blowback. And yet at the annual SAPPHIRE conference last week SAP announced general availability of its core Business Suite applications on HANA. Or, as CRN put it, it “bet the farm” on HANA.

From around the interwebs:

Top 5 data center stories of the week, from Data Center Knowledge.

AWS is the McDonalds of cloud, who’s the Burger King? from GigaOM.

Tableau, Marketo software IPOs soar to cloud from Business Recorder.

Windows 8 is an enterprise non-starter because IT sees no value in changes from ComputerWorld.

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At this point in its history, Google is like that good friend who is extremely accomplished and successful but who you really, really hope doesn’t fall in love with a relative.

One of Silicon Valley’s greatest contributions to the tech industry is a company that most of us gladly put at the center of our online world every day in some form or another to help us manage our lives, yet it’s a company that makes us a little queasy when we stop to think about the side effects of its relentless push forward. Perhaps that was best evidenced this past week in San Francisco during Google I/O, when Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page took the stage at the end of the company’s seemingly interminable keynote to deliver a heartfelt speech about the role of technology in our lives and Google’s quest to make the world a better place.

Most of what Page said (in a hoarse, whispery voice that is a lingering gift from a bout of vocal-cord paralysis) was exactly the type of aspirational thinking you want to see from technology leaders: (all quotes courtesy of TechHive’s transcription of Page’s talk)

“And I’m amazed every day I come to work, the list of things that needs to be done is longer than the day before. And the opportunity of those things is bigger than it was before. And because of that we, as Google, and as an industry–all of you–really only have one percent of what is possible. Probably even less than that.”

As Page spoke, Google’s stock price rose noticeably. It closed the week at an all-time high of $909.19, a price which valued the company at just over $300 billion. While the advertising market that underwrites Google’s ambitions is going through a bit of flux as we switch the center of our online lives from desktop computing to mobile computing, it’s pretty clear from the breadth of products showcased at Google I/O that if even a few of Google’s long-term bets pay off, the company is well-positioned to be a force in technology for decades to come with products that are, at times, remarkably useful.

But then Page kept talking.

First he decried negativity in the tech industry, which while indeed a bit over the top at times, is a pretty silly thing to highlight considering that one of Google’s early goals — once it had established itself as a search superstar in the early 2000s — was to destroy Microsoft’s hammerlock on the tech industry. And one of its more recent goals was to prevent Apple from seizing control of the smartphone market with the iPhone.

Things like Google Docs were conceived in part to dent Microsoft’s monopoly over office-productivity software and move more people onto the web, where Google benefits. The early marketing campaigns that Google and its partners chose for Android were similarly adversarial, highlighting the fact that “Droid Does” as a response to Apple’s tight control of the App Store approval process. And in 2010, summoning perhaps the greatest rhetorical flair showcased at a Google I/O, Google’s Vic Gundotra compared Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to the faceless overlords of George Orwell’s books, warning that if it wasn’t for Android, we “faced a draconian future where one man, one phone, one carrier were our choice.”

That selective memory wasn’t enough. Page proceeded to uncork some of the most truly head-scratching things a Google CEO has ever said, and that’s something considering the pace at which former Google CEO and current Chairman Eric Schmidt used to poorly execute jokes about identity and privacy concerns with a condescending smarmy tone.

“You know, if you look different kinds of laws we make, and things like that, they’re very old. I mean, the laws when we went public were 50 years old. (A) law can’t be right if it’s 50 years old. Like, it’s before the Internet.”

Page did not follow up with a request to dismantle the Bill of Rights, but even casual thoughts that laws predating the Kennedy assassination have no relevance today should raise eyebrows when expressed by one of the world’s richest men, especially one who is sitting on a treasure trove of personally identifiable data. Sure, there are things like copyright laws that make less sense in today’s era, but why not single those out instead painting with such a wide brush?

And then there was this gem:

“There’s many, many exciting and important things you could do that you just can’t do ’cause they’re illegal or they’re not allowed by regulation. And that makes sense, we don’t want our world to change too fast. … I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out some new things and figure out: What is the effect on society? What’s the effect on people? Without having to deploy it into the normal world.”

Imagine: an area of the world set aside for totally unregulated and unsupervised experimentation. What could possibly go wrong?

So stands Google at this moment in its history. It has brought so many wonderful products into our lives, from search and Google Maps to Android and Google Fiber. Yet it is clearly bent on accelerating the pace of change in our world without fully comprehending, as Page’s comments show, the need to avoid fixing things that aren’t broken.

New technologies are always going to have positive and negative effects on society, and it’s our job as consumers, observers, and regulators to sort those out. Perhaps more than any other single company at present, Google is at the forefront of those positive and negative changes; organizing the world’s information and connecting the planet to the web so that personally identifiable databases of one’s likes, dislikes and peccadillos can be served up on a platter to the advertising industry.

That makes Google worth a lot of money. It also makes Google worth a lot of scrutiny. If Page thinks his company and industry is currently beset by what he considers “negativity,” he’s in for a surprise over the next decade.

Larry Page image courtesy Getty Images / Justin Sullivan. Billboard image courtesy Flickr user Thomas Leuthard.

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