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With the PC industry in decidedly bad shape lately, PC vendors have been looking for alternative ways to generate revenues in a computer market that’s increasingly tilted toward mobile devices. IDG News, via PCWorld, reports that Asus plans to release its first Chromebook in the second half of 2013 while hoping to continue the success it’s had so far in shipping Android tablets. Asus has no illusions that Chromebooks will be mass consumer products, but Asus CEO Jerry Shen tells IDG News that the “Chromebook is good, not on the consumer side, but it’s good in the education and government side, and some for the commercial side.” IDG notes that Asus shipped 3 million Android tablets in the first quarter of 2013, so it’s clear that the company is more than willing to look beyond Microsoft for operating systems for its devices.

Intel announced today their new Silvermont microarchitecture, a new design for 22nm Tri-Gate SoC chips. The architecture will offer three times the performance of current generation Atom processors while using five times less power. The new chips may help Intel get their chips into top-tier phones that seem to be dominated by Qualcomm chips. Besides making use of the 22nm SoC process, the chips also “revolutionary” 3-D Tri-Gate transistors. Intel says the architecture will also offer:

• A new out-of-order execution engine enables best-in-class, single-threaded performance.
  

• A new multi-core and system fabric architecture scalable up to eight cores and enabling greater performance for higher bandwidth, lower latency and more efficient out-of-order support for a more balanced and responsive system.

• New IA instructions and technologies bringing enhanced performance, virtualization and security management capabilities to support a wide range of products. These instructions build on Intel’s existing support for 64-bit and the breadth of the IA software installed base.

• Enhanced power management capabilities including a new intelligent burst technology, low- power C states and a wider dynamic range of operation taking advantage of Intel’s 3-D transistors. Intel® Burst Technology 2.0 support for single- and multi-core offers great responsiveness scaled for power efficiency.

Building on the Silvermont architecture, Intel is planning to produce quad-core Bay Trail processors to be used in tablet devices by the end of 2013. The chips may also be used in some entry-level laptops or desktops using non-traditional form factors. For smartphones, Intel is working on the Merrifield version of the chips, which are also slated to be ready before 2013 draws to a close.

Intel has had some success getting their high end chips into devices from Lenovo and ZTE. The question remains as to whether they can break through into a market largely controlled by Qualcomm, Samsung and NVIDIA.

source: Intel

Come comment on this article: Intel announces new Silvermont architecture for low-power, high-performance applications

Amanda Bynes has been something of a headline hog recently; between her alleged strange behavior during most of 2012–reported hit and runs, walking around nude at a tanning salon, locking herself in a bathroom at a cupcake shop, and deleting her Twitter account–and her recent move to New York, the former child actress is no stranger to news stories. That’s why she’s so irritated that everyone keeps using the same old pictures of her, wearing her old face.

“The reason I’ve asked all magazines and blogs to stop using old photos of me is I don’t look like that anymore! I had a nose job to remove skin that was like a webbing in between my eyes,” she said on her reinstated Twitter account over the weekend.

Bynes claims she was going to keep the surgery hush-hush, but now that she’s seeing these old photos everywhere it’s getting under her skin.

“I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but I look so much prettier in my new photos that I don’t want old photos used anymore!,” she said. “When will they stop? I will never look like that again!”

Bynes recently tweeted out some topless photos of herself after announcing that she’d gotten a new haircut–which included having half her head shaved–and appears to be loving her new look.

Amanda before:

And after:

Apple may be developing a lower-cost iPhone to sell in emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil, but it’s increasingly having difficulty finding wireless carriers willing to meet its terms for selling its mobile devices. Bloomberg reports that Apple “is missing out on a chance to court as many as 2.8 billion new smartphone customers, many of them in Asia, as wireless-service providers balk at conditions imposed by the iPhone maker and drag their heels in signing on as partners.”

Continue reading…

In all the discussions I’ve had with hardware makers about their products, one thing is becoming clear: in the end, the cheap part is never cheap. Take a look at this post about a Kickstarter project for example. A maker, Michael Ciuffo, had recently funded a very cool QR code clock that used a simple array of LEDs to display the time in QR code.

He ordered the parts from an online supplier – 500 in total – and begin testing them. In all he saw 38 of the 500 fail in basic tests. In short, his “quick and easy” shipment of components from an inexpensive vendor resulted in a 7.6% failure rate.

“I found out this week that sometimes goods and services purchased in China can be of low quality,” he wrote.

In a similar vein, I once spoke to a hardware broker in Shenzhen who sold bargain-basement phones to the developing world. While his products were far from amazing, he did find similar failure rates in all of the phones he sold, resulting in the need to hire a separate QA tester who powered on and tried all the phones before he shipped them, thereby reducing his profit.

I want to make it clear that this is no jingoistic rant, but this is, in short, the biggest problem with off-shoring hardware manufacturing. However, because the perception is that local – and by local I mean a general U.S. or European audience – is expensive, this quality problem is endlessly repeated.

“When you off-shore hardware, every mistake, and there will be mistakes, causes a delay chain that multiplies by physically shipping prototypes, samples, tester units and more half-way around the world,” said Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries. “One of the best things you can do is keep your supply chain as close as possible.”

It is telling, however, that the company just invested in a $175,000 pick and place machine for their SoHo office.

“This is why we like to manufacture here in SoHo, have our injecting molding in North America, PCBs made in the USA and services like large volume laser cutting here in NYC,” she said.

The proximity of a vendor to your assembly point allows you to, in a pinch, drive to complain. As it stands, Ciuffo’s vendor was kind enough to respond and resend extra pieces but after a 35 day wait on the original LEDs he had already added a month to his build time. While the price of the pieces was obviously low enough for him to consider the opportunity, the cost in time and potentially QA headaches becomes an intangible.

But therein lies the problem: you can’t always source, say, an array of LEDs locally. Chances are the pieces are pulled from the same factory you’d be going to in Shenzhen and, barring a bit of QA on arrival, you might be running into the same problems. However, as companies like Adafruit begin catering to the hobbyist and local manufacturers begin catering to smaller batch hardware creators, I could definitely see it becoming easier to become a true hardware locovore.

We, as consumers, should also require that the things we buy be locally sourced. While I am well aware that manufacturing is not all puppy dogs and rainbows, there is something to be said for a sourcing infrastructure that allows a Kickstarter project lead to make a few calls and flow a bit of money back into the community, state, or country. You either pay for cheap hardware up front or later on, in support costs. An active slow hardware movement would allow far more control over the process of making cool things and would, in the end, benefit us all by raising quality across the board.

The parents of a 4-year old North Carolina girl have been arrested and charged with felony child abuse after she was found tied to a baby gate and physically abused.

26-year old Gerald Thomas Swineheart and 28-year old Marlaine Coffey had their daughter taken into protective custody after she was discovered bound to the gate with plastic zip ties, of the sort electricians use.

Police have not said whether the abuse was ongoing or if this was the first incident, but Swineheart was charged with pushing and kicking the girl until her teeth cut into her lip. His bond is set at $100,000, while Coffey’s is set at $50,000.

Why did it take until March 31st to get this child OUT of this house and why is the lesser charge on the… fb.me/2fLhZukZF

— nola watson (@lv1nother) May 6, 2013

Breaks my heart!!! Police: Couple zip-tied 4-year-old to baby gate | North Carolina News – WYFF Home wyff4.com/news/north-car… via @wyffnews4

— MommyPowers! (@MommyPowers) May 6, 2013

 

Yes friends… when it rains— it pours. You all remember that one sexy and mysterious Motorola phone we mentioned recently? You know— that mysterious Motorola XT1055 smartphone we’d told you about last week is very much the real deal and on its way? Well it appears that the mysterious device may very well arrive out here in the States dressed in Verizon clothing. While nothing is concrete yet, benchmarks for an unknown obake_verizon device recently appeared on the AnTuTu benchmarking site, posting an impressive score of 18,218, while coincidentally— the XT1055 scored a 18,252. Additionally, each device features the same Snapdragon quad-core chip and the Android 4.2.2 flavor of Jelly Bean— which suggests that each device may very well be the same.

As with most leaks, it is important to note that the scores and devices may be faked, so there’s a possibility that this the possibility of some super-powerful Google MOTO devices may be a product of false hope. Then again— the beat is certainly beating louder and louder at the XT1055/obake_verizon, so we have no doubt that many of you out there are super excited at this puppy being a reality.

 

Come comment on this article: Benchmark for mysterious “Obake” smartphone for Verizon surfaces, does its best to remind us of the XT1055 smartphone in the process

After dealing with a market that’s been flooded with low cost solar panels for over two years, solar panel makers are now starting to reverse that trend. First Solar is sold out of its solar panels into the third quarter of the year, company executives said Monday.

The announcement came after SunPower executives said last week that demand in the hot Japanese market exceeded what the company could deliver during the first quarter. Last month, market research firm IHS reported that the average wholesale prices for silicon panels delivered to Europe rose for the first time in several years.

The shift has come at a heavy cost to solar manufacturers like First Solar and SunPower, however. For over two years, solar panel makers have had to reduce production or even shutter factories while posting losses quarter after quarter. Dozens have filed for bankruptcy, including Germany’s Alfasolar, as reported by PV Magazine Monday. The bankruptcy of Suntech Power’s main subsidiary in March rattled the industry, particularly those who have bought the Chinese company’s solar panels.

First Solar, which makes solar panels and develops solar power plants, closed its big manufacturing plant in Germany last year and suspended plans to build new factories in Vietnam and Arizona. Those moves as well as First Solar’s efforts to reduce its spending on administration and, to a lesser extent, research development and sales, have allowed the company to survive the downturn. First Solar brought in new top executives over the past year and presented a convincing plan last month for improving its technology and sales in emerging markets for the next several years.

For the past three years, First Solar’s executives have discussed in earnest the need to grab market share in emerging markets such as India, China, the Middle East and Latin America. Germany was once its largest market, but the country, which has steadily reduced its government incentives for solar energy generation, accounted for just three percent of its sales in 2012, according to First Solar’s 2012 annual report.

In an earnings discussion with analysts on Monday, First Solar’s CEO Jim Hughes pointed out that the company has expanded its market reach since early 2012. Back then, it was talking mostly about sales in the United States, Canada, India, Europe and Australia. Its purchase of a Chilean solar power developer earlier this year created a new talking point about Latin America. The Chilean company was developing about 1.5 GW of projects when First Solar announced the acquisition. Overall, First Solar is working on about 1.8 GW of projects in Latin America, though those projects are under development and the company isn’t promising that all of them will succeed.

Hughes also announced that the company has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese city of Ordos in Inner Mongolia for the second phase of a 2GW plan that it first announced in 2009. The second phase will see First Solar supplying 300 MW-500 MW of solar panels, and construction could start in the second half of 2014. The first phase, a 30MW project, is set to start construction in the third quarter of this year, he added.

Meanwhile, the company is building some of the world’s largest solar power plants right here in California. One of them, the 230MW Antelope Valley Solar Ranch One in Los Angeles County, has run into “weather-related delays” during the first quarter of this year. That partly contributed to lower earnings from the previous quarter. Completion of the project is now set for the end of this year rather than the second quarter.

The company generated $755 million in sales for the first quarter of this year, down $320 million from the previous quarter but up $258 million from the year-ago period. It posted $59.1 million in net income, or $0.66 per share for the first quarter, $154.2 million in net income, or $1.74 per share for the fourth quarter of 2012. It reported $449.4 million, or $5.20 per share, in losses for the first quarter of 2012.

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A recent report suggested Windows 8 may have hurt the declining global PC market rather than helped it, and new inside data points to a continued negative trend in April. According to Digitimes’ research arm, the top-5 PC vendors in the world saw their notebook shipments plummet a combined 20% sequentially in March. The site thinks overall shipments will likely fall yet again in the second quarter as a result, and Q2 shipments could be down 15% year-over-year. HP, Acer and Lenovo saw the worst April shipment plunges according to Digitimes and excess inventory is reportedly building as vendors ready their next-generation laptop models.

Anti-rootkit tools used to be bulky, complex, packed with so much low-level jargon that even most Windows experts might struggle to figure out what was going on. And they were risky to use, too, with the authors often employing unauthorised low-level coding tricks which could easily blue-screen your PC just by running a regular scan.

If you know what you’re doing then there’s still scope for a little low-level Windows exploration, of course, but most people just want something which will check their PC for threats, finding and removing them with the maximum speed, and minimum hassle. And that’s just what you get withTrend Micro Rootkit Buster.

The program comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, for instance (make sure you get the right one for your system), and both builds are portable. They’re not even zipped up – just download the relevant executable and launch it.

The Rootkit Buster interface is just as simple and straightforward. The program organizes the system areas it can check into three main areas — “Files or Master Boot Records”, “Services” and “Kernel Code Patches” — and each of these can optionally be disabled, if you can think of a good reason to do so.

Generally, though, all you then have to do is click “Scan Now, and watch as Rootkit Buster scans the system areas you’ve specified, delivering its verdict and disabling any threats (if present) in little more than a second.

As its extreme speed suggests, this isn’t the most thorough of security health checks, and Trend Micro Rootkit Buster is no substitute for a regularly updated, full-strength antivirus tool.

The program is convenient and easy to use, though. And new support for detecting malicious Master Boot Record modifications mean Trend Micro Rootkit Buster should be notably better at spotting and disabling at least some rootkits. So while it’s a little on the basic side, we’d recommend keeping a copy around, just in case you’re infected by something which your regular security package can’t remove.

Photo Credit: alexskopje/Shutterstock

The Marketplace Fairness Act, an internet sales tax measure that supporters say will help mom-and-pop retailers compete with online retailers, passed the U.S. Senate by a 69-27 margin on Monday and will soon go before the House.

The law calls for internet retailers with more than $1 million in annual revenue to collect sales taxes from out of state shoppers. State governments claim it will help them collect billions in unpaid revenue while brick-and-mortar retailers, who also support it, say it will level the playing field by forcing online competitors to collect tax.

Opponents of the law, which include libertarians and states like Oregon that have no sales tax, complain it will lead to regulatory burdens tied to collecting tax from numerous state and local governments. Supporters counter that the task will not be that onerous because the law would require states to provide merchants with free tax collection software.

For consumers, the law means paying more sales tax on online purchases. Right now, consumers typically pay only if the online merchant is located in their home state.

The bill will now go to the House where conservatives say they will oppose the bill; they may not succeed, however, as politicians from both parties have argued that the bill does not impose a new tax but instead helps collect taxes that are already owed. The Obama Administration supports the proposed law.

eBay, one of the law’s prime opponents, said in a statement that it will keep pushing for merchants who collect less than $10 million to be exempt.

To understand more about the law, see GigaOM’s primer on who’s for it and who’s against.

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No one rightly can accuse Adobe of playing the ostrich, digging in and pretending the cloud isn’t changing the market for desktop software. The developer of popular publishing tools like InDesign and Photoshop takes huge risks that will either make or break future revenue. A year ago, Adobe unveiled the Creative Cloud subscription service. Today, in Los Angeles, the company rebranded CS suite as CC and moved all future features, updates and versions to the cloud subscription service. You want new Photoshop, Adobe will take your money monthly, baby.

I cannot understate the risk taken here, as Adobe delivers double-whammy to customers. Changing an iconic brand is trouble enough — how people pay and what for, even more so. But the CC (for Creative Cloud) also demarks change, break from the old model for the new. With risks come rewards.

June Wedding

New versions of Dreamweaver, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and Premiere Pro will be available in June, but only as part of Creative Cloud. Users pay a monthly subscription fee rather than purchase software upfront. That means shelling out less and getting more for it, at least initially, and sacrificing some usage rights in the process. Buying software gets you a perpetual license. Subscription means the software deactivates after you stop paying, ending your rights to use the applications.

Standard pricing is $49.99 per month, which provides access to most Adobe software. You cannot buy the new CC versions in stores; subscribe and download instead. Student and teacher monthly pricing is $19.99, which is the same for single apps. Existing individual customers of CS3 or later pay $29.99 and business ones $39.99. CS6 users get in for $19.99 per month. A team option is $69.99 per month, or $39.99 for existing customers. If you qualify as existing, the discounted offer ends July 31.

I count 34 products currently available for the monthly fee — everything from Acrobat to Flash, Illustrator, Lightroom, Photoshop Touch and Premiere.

Adobe will continue to sell and update Creative Suite 6, but new features go to Creative Cloud. So this is a forced migration to the subscription service, if you want the new thing. I wondered a year ago if the scheme might affect Adobe revenue, since Creative Suite costs so much more upfront. Nope.

Looked at differently, laws of volume work greatly to Adobe’s advantage if monthly payments open up a huge number of students, sole-proprietorships and small businesses to buy into Creative Suite who otherwise couldn’t justify the expense — and that appears to be the case so far. The scheme also will pull forward customers running older CS versions, who either can’t afford or don’t see value paying for new applications, to upgrade by taking a subscription. They no longer have a choice, other than switching.

Marriage Bliss

The scheme also solves a big problem for Adobe, and it’s commonplace among big software publishers: New features come out too slowly, and when they do, many customers don’t get them right away because they want to maximize their investment in older software.

“Our customers will no longer have to wait 18 to 24 months to access new Photoshop innovation”, Winston Hendrickson, Adobe vice president, asserts. “When a new Photoshop feature is ready, whether it’s the next Healing Brush or something as mind-blowing as Content Aware Fill, we’ll deliver it via Creative Cloud”. Adobe releases updates as they’re ready, and all customers get them immediately.

Subscriptions smooth out Adobe revenue, too. Monthly pays are a sure thing for the contract period and something sustainable conceptually longer. Consider someone purchasing CS6 Design & Web Premium, which includes Acrobat X, Bridge, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash Pro, InDesign, Illustrator, Media Encoder and Photoshop. Adobe sells the suite for $1,899, with perpetual licensing. For $49.99 per month, a subscriber gets these applications and another 23. That’s $599.98 for a year, or less than what Adobe sells Photoshop CS6 ($699; $999, Extended) direct. The three-year cost ($1,799.64) is still less than the suite, and Adobe keeps subscriber software up-to-date.

The deal is sweeter, if taking advantage of the $29.99/month promotion, which applies to the first year. Cost is $359.98, or less than Dreamweaver CS6 ($359), for first 12 months or $1,559.74 after 3 years. The point: Adobe may point a gun to your head, so to speak, but the bang is more for your buck, with less outlay up front to get any of the applications and more of them available over time.

Photo Credit: Galushko Sergey/Shutterstock

The past few months have been tumultuous for Apple, which has seen its shares sink in value and has provided little buzz for new products ever since it launched the iPhone 5 and the iPad mini last fall. But according to Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes, Apple’s fortunes may be about to change for the better now that the company is preparing to launch several new products over the next few months that should help its shares reclaim some of the value they’ve lost.

Continue reading…

The parents of 7-month old Ryder have quite a hit on their hands with a video that looks like the baby is water skiing.

In fact, Ryder is simply being pulled along the shoreline of a lake in Queensland, Australia. He has such good balance!

The video has earned both encouraging and disparaging comments on YouTube, with some applauding the parents for spending outdoors time with their son at an early age and some wondering about the child’s safety. Although he’s not actually “water skiing”, he appears to be holding onto the bar on his own, and 7 months is pretty early to learn watersports.

See for yourself:

A tiny tweak to Google’s Gmail app for iOS takes it another step closer to building a layer of Google services on top of Apple’s iPhone. With the latest update, users can choose to set Gmail default links to open in YouTube, Chrome or Google Maps, as appropriate.

That’s instead of Apple’s default solution, which would be to link to YouTube on the web, Safari and Apple Maps, respectively.

It should come as welcome news to heavy users of Google services or those who simply want to be able to pick what apps to connect to on their phone. It’s also, as CNET noted, a sort of “end run” around Apple’s services. Even as Apple has decoupled its iPhone partnership with Google for everything except search — removing YouTube and Google Maps as default iOS apps in the second half of 2012 — the web company has still found a way to reach its users who have iPhones and iPads through Apple’s regulated App Store.

The Gmail update comes a week after the introduction of Google Now for iOS as part of the Google Search app. That service also takes advantage of Google services users’ activity across a variety of Google apps, including those used in iOS.

Google isn’t alone among Apple’s competitors who have aspirations of this kind: Amazon and Facebook have also been able to build a series of apps that can act as replacements for Apple’s core iOS services, from music and videos to making phone calls and texting.

Apple certainly benefits by being able to offer the most popular services and apps on its platform, but at some point it must be concerning for Apple that the most basic services of its flagship device are being bypassed by superior apps coming from its fiercest competitors.

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At a time when it’s easy for tech entrepreneurs to find money, the top venture capital (VC) firms need more than cash to stand out. So in a quest to become a top-tier VC firm, Google Ventures not only needs to be an agressive investor; it needs to be as visible as possible.

The rise of Google’s venture capital arm is an interesting one, because unlike a lot of emerging VC firms, Google Ventures isn’t lacking in capital. Instead, the firm has to prove that it’s not just an offshoot of Google, but rather a VC firm in its own right that can compete with other top-tier firms for access to the best — and potentially most profitable — founders.

“We are not your typical strategic corporate fund,” the firm’s enterprise partner Karim Faris told Forbes, in a mantra you hear often from the group.

One way Google Ventures is working to attract young founders is the addition of young, visible partners like former Digg founder Kevin Rose and blogger-turned-VC MG Siegler. While it boasts Android founder Rich Miner as a partner, Miner is based in Boston, and the addition of Rose and Siegler can help Google Ventures build up its local presence and visibility. So far, Google Ventures has invested in a large number of companies including Nest, DocuSign, HomeAway, and Nextdoor.

One way Google Ventures is trying to distinguish itself from its Valley peers is by preaching a more hands-on approach to investing. Unlike the traditional model, where partners dispense advice to portfolio companies at board meetings or when the companies ask for it, Google Ventures has set up more of a lab-like atmosphere in Mountain View. It has designers, marketers, engineers and other staff on hand to assist and advise the portfolio companies however they need it.

This strategy has worked for firms like Andreessen Horowitz, which also launched around the same time as Google Ventures in 2009 and was originally derided for its flashy, PR-powered operation. But it has quickly become a top-tier firm in a short period of time, investing in companies like Facebook, Instagram, Github, Pinterest, and Twitter.

In November, Google Ventures announced that it now plans to invest $300 million a year, compared to more typical VC firms that invest about $200 million to $500 million over the course of several years. There’s no question that having the resources and support of Google behind the firm has an impact.

“We were lucky. Larry and I, we just wrote up the check,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin told GigaOM in an interview at the time.

When Google Ventures announced plans to increase the size of its fund, managing partner Bill Maris said Page had asked him what he would do with $1 billion. But with the firm already investing in about 80 companies a year and providing resources like engineering, design, and marketing guidance, he worried more about how to scale that kind of operation and provide enough partner attention for the companies that need it. So adding some new partners is a step in that direction.

Building a VC firm that can compete at the highest levels with the likes of Sequoia and Greylock only four years after launch isn’t an easy task, even if the firm had one of the hottest names in technology as partners. But if Google’s forays into driverless cars and Glass are any indication, the company has no problem setting its sights high.

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Schwarzenegger is certainly known for being intimidating in his films, and apparently his son Patrick is trying to follow in his footsteps.

The 19-year old got into the famous Sayer’s Club in Hollywood on Saturday and was enjoying himself a little too much; reportedly, he kept bumping into the house DJ’s equipment. When the DJ, Anthony Valadez, spoke to him about being more careful, Schwarzenegger allegedly threatened him loudly and then began throwing ice at him.

“I’m gonna beat the f–k out of the DJ,” Schwarzenegger reportedly said. “He kicks everybody out of his table, losing money for the club, losing money for the owner.”

The teen later posted on Twitter:

Excuse my language. I apologize

— Patrick Shriver (@PSchwarzenegger) May 6, 2013

Live and learn, hope everyone has a blessed day

— Patrick Shriver (@PSchwarzenegger) May 6, 2013

Because he was drinking while underage, Schwarzenegger was ejected from the club and will likely have employees on the lookout for his famous face in the future.

Patrick gained some headlines last year after reportedly taking issue with his famous dad once word got out about his affair; his Twitter handle includes his mother’s maiden name, not his surname.

Gawker Media’s auto-focused site Jalopnik hired a new editor recently — which isn’t all that surprising, since the blog network run by Nick Denton has been expanding in all sorts of directions lately, including into new countries. But Jalopnik’s new hire didn’t come from a job board or Craigslist or even LinkedIn: new weekend editor Mike Ballaban got his new job thanks to his active participation in the site’s comment section. At a time when online comments are coming under increasing fire as being useless and/or evil, Gawker’s move shows there is still some potential value in them.

Hiring a staffer from the comments isn’t something that came out of left field for Jalopnik: in fact, the site’s editor, Matt Hardigree, more or less telegraphed his intention to start doing this in February, when he launched the new version of the site’s comment system, which is based on Gawker’s proprietary Kinja platform — a model that essentially gives every commenter their own blog where their discussions are highlighted. As Hardigree put it in a note about the redesign:

You’ll also be able to republish articles from our site (and eventually all Gawker sites) and we’ll be able to do the same. If we do republish something you created you’ll get the byline, the credit, and it’ll be clear where it came from. When we look for the next generation of writers for our site, and other sites, we’ll be looking at who does well in Kinja.

Comments as “a farm system” for a blog

Hardigree said in a blog post about Ballaban’s hiring that while Jalopnik and other Gawker sites have hired commenters to be writers before — including Ryan Tate, now a writer at Wired, who was hired (ironically) after he trashed a job ad posted by Gawker — this is the first time it has taken someone from the pool of Kinja-based commenter/bloggers. The Jalopnik editor said he was “particularly impressed with [Ballaban’s] passionate Suzuki eulogy and evaluation of American cars.”

In a discussion we had with Nick Denton before the launch of the Kinja platform, the Gawker Media founder said one of his goals for the new system was to even the playing field between commenters and writers — to make it easier to highlight good content from readers, and give that the same prominence as writing from the actual staff of the network’s blogs. In a note earlier this year, he called it a “a farm system for the main Gawker teams.”

Other media outlets that have hired commenters include political blog network Daily KOS and The Atlantic, where Yoni Appelbaum was such a frequent and eloquent commenter on writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’ blog that the magazine asked him to be an occasional contributor and then eventually hired him. Coates’ blog is known for its thoughtful comments — so much so that the Atlantic writer actually thanked his commenters when he won a National Magazine Award for his writing.

Critics such as Buzzfeed writer John Herrman argue that there is little value in reader comments, and some high-profile bloggers have stopped allowing them. But blogs such as Coates’ and that of Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson (where at least one startup, Engagio, was born out of a discussion on his blog) show that there can be value in comments when a writer or a site takes an interest in engaging with readers. And in some cases, it can even turn into a job.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Shutterstock / Tang Yan Song

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Qualcomm Life, the Qualcomm subsidiary focused on wireless health, has snapped up HealthyCircles, a startup founded by a former Microsoft (sMSFT) HealthVault executive.

For the past couple of years, Qualcomm Life has helped doctors remotely monitor patients’ biometric data through its 2net platform, which provides a secure, universally interoperable network for collecting and sharing data from connected fitness and health devices. With the acquisition of HealthyCircles, the company will enable caregivers to integrate a richer set of data and share that data among a greater set of parties.

“It’s a great way to augment what we’re doing [around] biometric data with other sources of data,” said Qualcomm Life General Manager Rick Valencia. “It’s about creating the ties between patients, caregivers and family members.” The companies declined to share financial details on the deal.

HealthyCircles, which was founded by Dr. James Mault, a former executive behind Microsoft’s HealthVault, offers a software-as-a-service product for helping caregivers, patients and family members securely share information related to chronic care or outpatient care situations.

Through the HIPAA-compliant service, different doctors involved in a patient’s care can share and view medication history, lab data and other information provided by the care team, and the patient (and his caregivers) can share self-assessment data as well as view data submitted by doctors.

As more hospitals shift to an accountable care model encouraged by the Accountable Care Act and other health reform changes, they’re increasingly becoming responsible for managing patient care outside of the hospital setting. By bringing HealthyCircles capabilities onto the 2net platform, Valencia said, they can open up more sales opportunities for the platform and enable caregivers and patients to better communicate across settings.

As part of the acquisition, Valencia said Dr. Mault has become Qualcomm Life’s chief medical officer and he added that the company has doubled its headcount.

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