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Earlier this week, when the Samsung Galaxy S 4 broke a record by selling 4 million units in just 5 days, the company predicted the 10-million mark to be surpassed by the end of the month. That figure is still still on track, with Samsung co-CEO JK Shin stating “We are confident that we will pass more than 10 million sales of the S4 next week. It is selling much faster than the previous model S3.” Just how much faster? The Galaxy S 3 took 50 days to pass the 10 million sales mark, while the S4 was debuted less than a month ago. Quite impressive.

In other news, Shin said that the Galaxy Note III will be unveiled in September at the IFA in Berlin. He confirmed that the device will have  5.9-inch OLED display.

source: Korean Times

Come comment on this article: Samsung Galaxy S 4 to reach 10 million sales by next week, Note III to have 5.9-inch OLED display

A purported image of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 tablet was published on Friday along with supposed specs. SamMobile obtained the image of the unannounced tablet from an unnamed source, and the device shown in the image looks very similar to Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet, pictured above, with slight variations such as the sensor layout above the display. Not much can be gleaned from the render, though the blog also claims to have knowledge of the tablet’s specs, which include an 8-inch TFT display with 1,280 x 800-pixel resolution, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1.5GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, a 5-megapixel rear camera, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, a 4,450 mAh battery and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. The leaked image of the tablet follows below.

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In an unexpected end to a week of speculation and rumor, E! News claims to have confirmed that pop star Beyoncé Knowles is, in fact, pregnant. The site cites unnamed “multiple sources” in its confirmation of the celebrity pregnancy.

If true, the child would be the second for Beyoncé and her husband, rap producer Jay-Z. The couple already have one daughter, named Blue Ivy. Before their daughter was born, Beyoncé also suffered a miscarriage, about which she wrote a sad song.

As rumors of the pregnancy heated up early this week, an unnamed source denied the claims, stating that it wouldn’t make sense for Beyoncé at this time. The singer is currently on the European half of her world tour, titled “The Mrs. Carter Show.” The show continues in North America throughout June and July.

On Tuesday Beyoncé cancelled a scheduled show in Antwerp, Belgium. At the time, reports held that the show was cancelled due to Beyoncé’s “dehydration and exhaustion.” The cancellation further fueled rumors that the singer might be pregnant and possibly experiencing morning sickness.

Beyoncé has since issued an apology for the missed concert:

Music is a big part of a smartphone’s feature set. We’ve already talked about the best available music streaming services, but sometimes music streaming isn’t an option, whether that’s because you’re dealing with a pesky data cap, you’re somewhere without a reliably fast internet connection, or you would just rather keep your music on your device. Whatever the reason, we’re going to go over the top music playing apps for your Android device.

Poweramp is one of the most robust music playing apps available. It’s packed with features and even includes theme support. If you’re looking for something that almost acts like a desktop music player, Poweramp is as close as you’re going to get.

One of the best features that Poweramp does extremely well is audio processing. It supports nearly any format you put your music in, and offers a 10-band graphic equalizer, as well as separate bass and treble adjustment, replay gain correction, and some basic mixing tools. Overall, those features make it one of the best-sounding players available. If you’re picky about your music quality, this is definitely the first app to take a look at.

Aside from the excellent audio processing, Poweramp does also have a full suite of other features. It’ll get missing artwork for you, as well as song lyrics. It supports Last.FM scrobbling, tag editing for songs, and several different widgets, including lock screen controls. There’s not too much else you could ask out of a music player. You can get a 15 day trial of the app, but the full version is only $3.99.

Play Store Download Link (Trial)

Play Store Download Link (Full)

Winamp is a popular, feature-rich desktop music player, and the mobile version is just as great. As a free application, Winamp features a great interface for playing local music files, as well as wireless syncing, support for iTunes, and lock screen and widget support. It also has a lot of integration with the Android OS, allowing other apps to interact with your Now Playing music as well as scrobbling support and a ton of SHOUTcast radio stations.

If the free version isn’t quite doing enough for you, Winamp offers a few in-app purchases to really extend how much the app can do. The first in-app purchase bundle adds song lyrics support for your music, and the lyrics will auto-scroll for you while you’re listening to music. It’s a really cool, polished feature for the extremely detail-oriented music lover. The second in-app purchase is an album art bundle. It automatically retrieves artwork for your music, as well as updated tags for your files that are incorrect or missing. The last available upgrade is the pro bundle, which is also available as a standalone application, throws in a ton of features like a 10-band graphic equalizer, support for .FLAC files, and personalized radio recommendations.

The in-app purchases add some really cool features, but compared to an app like Poweramp, it can be a little more expensive and complex to get them all set up. However, I personally prefer Winamp’s interface, and the wireless syncing support and iTunes support are really handy features that many users need. The free version of the app is great by itself, though, and it’s definitely worth trying out before making a decision. All the additional features can then be unlocked through the free app.

Play Store Download Link (Free)

Play Store Download Link (Pro)

If you’re looking for a more simple music playing application, MixZing may be a better option than the previous apps we’ve mentioned. It isn’t as feature-filled, but sometimes less clutter makes for a better app.

MixZing’s biggest draw is its attractive interface and playlist support. The interface is very clean, and the free version of the app fully supports downloading missing album artwork to keep everything uniform. It also has a robust built-in tag editor for your music organization needs, as well as an equalizer for your music. However, where MixZing really stands out is the playlist support. A unique Mood Player selects music in your library based on the “mood” of each song and creates playlists based off of those specific moods. It’s a bit like Pandora, but centered more around emotions. It’s a really cool feature, and something that makes MixZing stand apart from the crowd.

MixZing isn’t going to win over any users by throwing tons of features at them, but the features it offers, it does extremely well. It’s also easily one of the simplest music players available in the Play Store, so if you need something light, this should be on your list. There’s a free version of the app, as well as a paid version to remove ads.

Play Store Download Link (Free)

Play Store Download Link (Pro)

doubleTwist is almost like the Swiss Army Knife of music players. Like Winamp, doubleTwist boasts iTunes support, but it goes a bit further by letting you sync music wirelessly through iTunes. On top of that, doubleTwist has lots of AirPlay features baked in for streaming your music collection to other devices. If you’re unfamiliar with it, AirPlay is Apple’s proprietary streaming protocol, similar to DLNA on many other devices. The biggest advantage to using AirPlay is the out-of-the-box support for things like a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, and it’s the simplest way to utilize an Apple TV with your Android device, if you have one.

Aside from the deep iTunes support, doubleTwist also offers standard features like album artwork collection, smart playlists, and wireless podcast subscription syncing. And, doubleTwist has their newly introduced Magic Radio built in, which is like a blend of Pandora with your personal music library. It plays suggestions based on your music tastes, but throws in songs you own to keep things slightly familiar. It’s a nice spin on music discovery and it’s a great feature for the app. The service runs $3.99 per month, which is a bit cheaper than some other similar music services.

doubleTwist offers their pro features in bundles, similar to Winamp’s approach. If you buy the full Pro key, however, you do get a discount. The AirSync bundle, Music Lover bundle, and Podcasts bundle are all $4.99 a piece and they unlock all of doubleTwist’s handy, usually wireless, features. You can also opt for the Pro bundle to save $5 on purchasing all three bundles separately. I think doubleTwist does a better job of streamlining the add-ons than Winamp does, and that makes up for a few features that Winamp has on doubleTwist.

Even if you’re just looking for a straightforward music player, the free version of doubleTwist is a great choice. It sports a clean interface, as well as other music player standard features like scrobbling and widgets. It is missing a graphic equalizer, though, which may or may not be a big deal to you, depending on how picky you are about how your music sounds.

Play Store Download Link

These are just a few of the many available music players available on the Play Store. Generally, these are the most solid, highly rated apps that cover all of the basic things you’ll need, like widget support and easy ways to manage files. Are there any of your favorite apps that didn’t make the list? Sound off in the comments.

Come comment on this article: Best Android music playing applications

This cover of Radiohead’s 15 Step appeared on YouTube back in January, but got some extra attention today when frontman Thom Yorke himself (or at least whoever runs his Facebook page) shared it with fans.

Luckily for the video’s creator, IAmAhYell, those who are simply fans of Radiohead on Facebook also get to see it, thanks to a Facebook feature that says things like, “Thom Yorke is posting about a Page you like: Radiohead.”

Radiohead has over ten million fans. It should be a good day for IAmAhYell’s YouTube views.

Jelly Industries, a startup from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, has closed a Series A round led by Spark Capital. SV Angel also invested, according to an announcement on Jelly’s site. Other investors in the company include Jack Dorsey, Square’s co-founder and CEO; Bono; Reid Hoffman of Greylock Discovery Fund and Al Gore. Stone is co-founder and CEO of Jelly, which is based in San Francisco.

ANNOUNCEMENT

A group of jellies is called a bloom, and this group just closed its Series A. Our round was led by Spark Capital with additional investment by SV Angel. With this investment, Spark General Partner Bijan Sabet joins Jelly’s board of directors. We’re also proud to announce a group of committed individual investors who share our optimistic worldview and believe in our vision.

Jack Dorsey, Co-founder and CEO of Square
Bono, Musician and Activist
Reid Hoffman with the Greylock Discovery Fund
Steven Johnson, Author and Entrepreneur
Evan Williams and Jason Goldman via Obvious
Al Gore, Politician, Philanthropist, Nobel Laureate
Greg Yaitanes, Emmy Winning Director
Roya Mahboob, Afghan Entrepreneur and Businesswoman

We chose angels like Al Gore, a Partner at KPCB and Chairman and Co-founder of Generation Investment Management, Greg Yaitanes, a Hollywood director, and Roya Mahboob, an entrepreneur doing amazing work for women in Afghanistan partly because they work in divergent fields. Knowledge diversity is something we prize highly and is also something that will be represented in our product.

As mobile devices have taken an increasingly central role in our lives, humanity has grown more connected than ever—herein lies massive opportunity. With this capital raise, Jelly has the means to hire more great talent and continue building what we think of as the natural next step for our connected society. We will share more about Jelly from a product perspective when we move beyond early prototyping.

The post Spark Capital Leads Series A for Jelly Industries appeared first on peHUB.

Google I/O 2013 has created a lot of buzz and of course, a lot of words. Here is my pick of some of the best pieces about Google’s annual developer conference and the news coming out from there, and here’s a link to some of our best pieces from the week.

• Google please be a benevolent internet overlord. Dan Gillmor writes for The Guardian and shows why he continues to be one of the clearest thinkers when it comes to the internet, companies and us, the people.
• Mark Sigal’s 6 key takeaways from the Google I/O keynote. A really good roundup.
• Everything Google is trying to kill. Classic Gizmodo piece where in they tell us that Adobe, Spotify, Skype, Pandora, PayPal, Textbooks, Flickr and Siri are some of things Google is trying to put out of business.
• Tyler Hayes thinks Google’s Play music service is going to have a tougher time in the market than most people think.
• At Google conference, cameras in the bathroom. Okay, bullet dodged.
• Great piece on how Google got its unified messaging act together and built the new Hangouts.
• Welcome to the Google Island. Only Mat Honan can do this.
• Even Google’s own developers won’t be seen wearing Google glasses. Or so says FastCompany.
• The Design that conquered Google. New Yorker picks up on the design plus data symbiosis I have been writing about and focuses on Google’s liberal use of the cards metaphor.
• All the mashed potatoes. John Gruber in full effect.

In one of many interesting Google I/O sessions, Google shows developers how to tap into Freebase, the open core of its Knowledge Graph, to enhance their own apps with Knowledge Graph data.

The session takes a look at the Freebase APIs, and discusses how they can enhance applications to better understand people, places and things.

During the Google I/O keynote, Google SVP Amit Singhal said that Knowledge Graph already has over 570 million entities, and it continues to grow. He also announced the launch of Knowledge Graph in olish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

Yesterday, President Obama demonstrated his continued commitment to increasing the diversity of our federal judiciary, so that it better reflects the nation it serves. He nominated four distinguished women to serve on four different courts—women who not only have the necessary intellect, integrity and fair-mindedness to serve as federal judges, but whose nominations also represent important “firsts” in their state or district:

• If confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, Judge Carolyn McHugh would be the first woman from Utah to serve on that court.  Currently, the Tenth Circuit only has one woman judge serving among its nine active members. 
• Pamela Reeves and Elizabeth Wolford would be the first women to serve as district court judges in the Eastern District of Tennessee and Western District of New York, respectively, if confirmed.
• Debra Brown would be the first African-American district court judge to serve in the Northern District of Mississippi and the first African-American woman to serve as an Article III judge in the entire state of Mississippi, if confirmed. 

President Obama’s judicial nominees already have broken the gender barrier in circuit courts in six states, as well as nine district courts, and have shattered dozens of glass ceilings for minorities.  And on Monday, the Senate will consider the nomination of Michael McShane to be a district court judge in Oregon; if confirmed, he would be the fifth openly gay judge appointed by President Obama, compared to only one in history before.

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One of the most valuable allies in the fight against SOPA last year was Google. The search giant gave millions of Internet users the tools necessary to contact their representatives to voice their opposition to the bill. Now Google is back giving tips on how developers and users can influence tech policy.

During Google I/O 2013, Derek Slater, Jen Pahlka and others hosted a session titled “Beyond SOPA: What You Can Do To Influence Tech Policy:”

From SOPA/PIPA and CISPA, to immigration and patent reform, government is taking a renewed interest in the Internet and the businesses we’re building on it — in some cases, there is even a new focus on the use of technology which can solve government problems.

As a result, government is looking for input from our community of entrepreneurs and developers about what our needs are as a community, and how they can build better public policy in our interest.

So, what are the most efficient, easy ways for you to get involved? Join us for a panel of some leaders in the Internet advocacy space to learn how you, as a developer, can get more involved in creating better policies that can affect your business.

A Navy SEAL was killed and seven other soldiers have been injured in a training accident that occurred this week in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

According to a Louisville Courier-Journal report, 23-year-old Navy SEAL Jonathan Kaloust died Wednesday after his Humvee flipped during training exercises. Seven other soldiers who were injured in the incident have been treated for minor injuries and released.

Kaloust was assigned to the Navy SEAL team in Forty Story, Virginia. According to the Courier-Journal, Kaloust was from Massapequa, New York and attended State University of New York Binghamton University before joining the Navy in 2011.

This is not the first military training death to happen in 2013. Earlier this year, two Navy divers accidentally drowned during training exercises in a test pond at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

Though Fort Knox is most well-known as the location of the U.S. Treasury’s Gold Bullion Depository, the U.S. Army Human Resources Command, the 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Infantry Division, and the 3rd Recruiting Brigade of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command are all located at the facility, in addition to several other divisions.

It’s pretty fascinating that Facebook and Google debuted new messaging paradigms within six weeks of each other. Facebook Home’s one key feature is the prominent placement of its “chat heads” messaging alerts on the home screen. Google is launching a new messaging app particularly focused on group messaging. The debuts of these two initiatives fit within the same timeline: a sudden realization in 2012 that smartphone messaging had started evolving, followed by the feverish development of a new product that would finally launch in the spring of 2013. Facebook and Google are very much on the defense here. So what happened in 2012 that suddenly awakened these slumbering giants?

Continue reading…

Great Hills Partner said Friday that Charlie Papazian, a Vice President on its investment team, passed away due to complications from an injury. Papazian joined Great Hill in 2001 and returned to the firm after graduating from Harvard Business School in 2008. “He was an incredibly smart, diligent and humble professional, but most importantly, he was a wonderful person with a big heart and a great sense of humor,” Great Hill said of Papazian.

PRESS RELEASE

Boston, MA – May 17, 2013 – Great Hill Partners mourns the loss of Charlie Papazian, a Vice President on its investment team, due to complications from an injury suffered last August.  Charlie passed away peacefully surrounded by his family on May 9. Charlie originally joined Great Hill Partners in 2001 and returned to the firm after graduating from Harvard Business School in 2008.  He was an incredibly smart, diligent and humble professional, but most importantly, he was a wonderful person with a big heart and a great sense of humor.  Charlie leaves behind his beloved wife Christie and their daughter Molly, whom he adored.

Here is what we sent to our limited partners earlier today:

To Our Partners:

It is with great sorrow that we are writing to inform you of the loss of our friend and colleague, Charlie Papazian.  Due to complications from an injury suffered last August, Charlie passed away peacefully surrounded by his family on May 9.  As many of you know, Charlie originally joined Great Hill Partners in 2001, returned to the firm after graduating from Harvard Business School in 2008, and most recently served as a Vice President on our investment team.  He was an incredibly smart, diligent and humble professional, but most importantly, he was a wonderful person with a big heart and a great sense of humor.  Charlie leaves behind his beloved wife Christie and their daughter Molly, whom he adored.

Charlie was an integral part of our Great Hill family.  For those of you who had the chance to meet Charlie, we are sure you will join us in missing him dearly.

Great Hill Partners

The post Papazian, a Great Hill’s VP, Passes Away appeared first on peHUB.

While it’s unlikely that the fate of your nation depends on it, there may be times when being able to pass on sensitive files to other people is a necessity. The obvious example is to encrypt those files in some way, either by storing them in a password-protected location or by encrypting them on the fly before passing them on.

The problem with this approach is that it’s rather visible. Your encrypted files by their very nature advertise the fact they contain some form of sensitive data, attracting unwanted attention. So what can you do about it? The answer lies with steganography, and a free tool for Windows called SteganPEG 1.0.

Steganography has a long history, dating back to Ancient Greek times when it was the process of writing hidden messages in such a way as only the sender and intended recipient would know they existed. With the rise of computers, steganography has taken on a different slant, whereby information — typically entire files — are hidden away inside other files.

The key to making steganography effective is by drawing no attention whatsoever to the existence of the hidden file. That means the host file must appear to function completely normally, so opening it arouses no suspicion. One of the best ways of doing this is by hiding your files inside images, which open up like any other image, betraying no evidence of the files stashed away inside.

This is how SteganPEG functions — once installed, fire up the program and you’ll immediately see it’s required for both creating the stenographic file and extracting the hidden files from it later, so your recipient will need their own copy. You also assign a password to your file, which is required in order to unlock its contents. It’s unlikely encryption is involved here, but as the key thing is to simply hide away the file, it’s not necessarily important, unless you’re peddling state secrets, of course.

Once assigned, pick your chosen JPEG image. When picking an image, make sure it’s not just large enough to store the files you wish to hide away inside, but also not too compressed. SteganPEG works by recompressing the original image to free up enough space for your files to reside in without increasing the size of the original image. This ensures it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb, but it does mean you may have to try different images before you find one that has enough flexibility for hiding your chosen file or files.

You can add multiple files to a single JPEG image so long as they won’t increase the size of the original file — a progress bar handily tells you how much space you’ve got left to play with. Once complete, click the Save Stegged Image button to save a copy of the file.

You can open this file like any other, then send it on to its intended recipient, who fires up their copy of SteganPEG, chooses “Read files from a JPEG image”, supplies the password and then loads the file in. If all is well, they can then save the original files out of the image, all without hopefully arousing any suspicion whatsoever.

SteganPEG 1.0.0 is available now as a free, open-source download for PCs running Windows XP or later. XP and Vista users will also need .NET Framework 3.5 or later installed.

WebRTC, the new technology that enables plugin-free voice and video chat within the browser, should be available on more than one billion unique endpoints (think: desktop browsers and mobile devices) “within a week,” according to Google’s WebRTC engineering lead Justin Uberti, who gave an update on WebRTC’s progress at Google I/O Friday.

WebRTC is going to reach that milestone thanks in part to Firefox 22, which was just released this week. The new version of Firefox comes with WebRTC enabled in its beta version, which should add a large number of users to the addressable market for WebRTC developers.

Uberti also said that WebRTC is going to come to iOS devices soon: Apple hasn’t joined the efforts to implement and standardize WebRTC yet, but Google wants to nonetheless give developers a way to address users on iPads and iPhones through the release of a native toolkit.

Of course, there is another holdout: Microsoft has been pushing forward with its own version of WebRTC, which some have seen as an effort to torpedo the standard. Uberti had a much more optimistic take on the differences Friday, saying that Microsoft has been “a great participant in the standards.” He added: “I’m very optimistic that we are going to see a version of (Internet Explorer) that supports this technology in the not-too distant future.”

Image courtesy of Flickr user  Tsahi Levent-Levi.

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Ever wondered what it might look like from a first-person perspective to be eaten by a grizzly bear? This video might give you an idea.

Don’t worry, it’s not a gross mauling video, but Brad Josephs’ “A Grizzly Ate My GoPro!!!” video is generating some viral buzz today, and with good reason.

Bitcoin is a cyber-currency of growing interest to speculators, the media and — most recently — the U.S. government. Many stories about Bitcoin, which is mined by computers and circulates without a central bank, contain sinister or science-fiction elements that make it hard to tell if the currency is for real or just an overblown gimmick.

On Thursday evening, GigaOM hosted a meetup in San Jose where six Bitcoin authorities, including investors and engineers, shared their views on how the currency is evolving and who is using it. Here are three of the larger ideas to emerge from the discussion (if you want to catch up on the basics of Bitcoin, see “Yes, you should care about Bitcoin and here’s why“):

Bitcoin can help ordinary people

Wences Casares, a venture capitalist and CEO of Lemon Wallet, grew up in Argentina, where he experienced first hand what happens when a government mismanages its currency: inflation, capital controls and the destruction of family savings. Today, the same thing is happening all over again as desperate Argentines try to convert their pesos into a store of value that the government can’t seize or destroy.

One option is Bitcoin. Casares explained how some people in his country are using “old Android phones” to acquire and exchange Bitcoins at a time when the government is clamping down on the trade in U.S. dollars. More remarkably, Casares noted, is that many of the people using Bitcoin don’t know much about technology — but they do know, through hard experience, about currencies and can recognize alternate sources of money.

Other speakers and audience members also described the potential of cyber-currencies like Bitcoin to ameliorate the broken or compromised banking infrastructure in places like Latin America and Asia.

In the larger picture, Bitcoin could be just one part of an impending revolution in the world’s money transfer networks. Specifically, new currencies and transfer platforms may provide a way for people, including those who rely on remittances, to escape the high transfer fees imposed by credit card and wire companies — and simply exchange money directly with one another around the world at almost no cost.

Bitcoin is complicated — and is going to stay that way for a while

Mike Hearn is a young engineer from Google who uses his 20 percent time to work on developing Bitcoin software. At the meetup, he chatted about infrastructure and security with Bennett Hoffman, a former Microsoft employee who is building a new Bitcoin exchange called Buttercoin.

The two engineers agreed that the system that creates Bitcoins is secure and stable, even if parts of the surrounding ecosystem (exchanges, wallets and so on) are not. Hearn said Bitcoin is not ready for “your grandma” just yet — and that is, in part, a choice by those who are building and fine-tuning the Bitcoin open source code bequeathed by the currency’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakaomot.

Hearn’s point is that he and others are focused now on improving the processing and ledger system that facilitates Bitcoin transactions; they are ensuring that it can scale in the same way that the Visa payment network is able to handle sales spikes. This focus on “the guts” of Bitcoin means that, for now, the software will remain complicated and will be a challenge to those who aspire to build consumer-facing interfaces on top of it.

This won’t, however, prevent Bitcoin from gaining traction in the real world. David Barrett, CEO of Expensify, explained earlier in the evening that his firm now allows companies to reimburse their employees’ expense reports in Bitcoin. According to Barrett, the Bitcoin option is not a gimmick but rather a cheap and practical solution for companies to pay employees across borders.

Bitcoin will be regulated — and that’s a good thing

Bitcoin watchers gasped this weekend when the Department of Homeland Security executed a seizure warrant against the owner of Mt. Gox, the Japanese exchange where many people trade the currency. The law enforcement action, which comes after U.S. securities regulators said they are looking at Bitcoin, posed a new liquidity threat to the currency and also reinforced its outlaw reputation.

Surprisingly, the Bitcoin backers at the event appeared to welcome the government’s growing involvement. According to Micky Malka of Ribbit Capital, which is investing in Bitcoin ventures, regulation is not just inevitable — but desirable.

“I’m already regulated by eight central banks,” said Malka, explaining that regulation is simply part of any mature financial system and that, in the case of Bitcoin, it is likely to introduce a new level of stability. Malka and others, including the Bitcoin Foundation, said they are less interested in libertarian fantasies than they are in establishing a rational and informed regulatory structure around the currency. Malka added that his biggest fear for Bitcoin is not the U.S. government but shenanigans by speculators.

The bottom line

The San Jose event felt at times like a cross between an investor seminar and a church revival, with the packed room sometimes applauding wildly at the blue skies of Bitcoin. But that doesn’t mean there’s not something very real going on here — a lot of very smart and credible people are putting a lot of time and money on the line in an effort to redefine the world’s financial infrastructure.

According to Wences Caseres, the moment feels like 1992, when the world was on the cusp of discovering the world wide web but hadn’t yet found the right user interface. He might be right.

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According to CNBC, Yahoo is set to host an event in New York City on Monday, and it’s important enough that CEO Marissa Mayer will be speaking at it.

According to the report, the event will be “product-related.” Of course, that’s a rather unspecific description, and could mean a variety of things.

Yahoo to hold a product-related news event in New York City on Monday; CEO Marissa Mayer to speak at event. $YHOO

— CNBC (@CNBC) May 17, 2013

This announcement does come on the heels of reports that Yahoo was in “serious” talks to buy or invest in Tumblr. That report indicated that Marissa Mayer has been in close talks with Tumblr CEO David Karp, but that Facebook may also be poised to throw their hat in the ring. any acquisition of Tumblr would be an expensive one – valuations put the company at upwards of $1 billion.

It may seem unlikely that Yahoo would announce an acquisition at an event like this, but it’s not completely out of the question. It seems a bit early for a Yahoo-Tumblr product, but who knows. It’s been a while since Yahoo scheduled anything like this, so we’ll be very interested to hear what they announce next week.

[CNBC via The Next Web]