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They say nothing is certain but death and taxes. Google has experience avoiding the latter and wants you to plan for the former. While I can only assume that Google would prefer you stick around and use its services and click on the ads for as long as possible, the company has a Plan B. Despite the incredible attempts being made by both medical science and Ray Kurzweil, the search giant goes in another direction. Instead of memorializing you online as some sites allow you to plan for, Google prefers you simply plan what happens to your account when the Grim Reaper comes calling.

The company has released a new settings page so you choose what happens when your account becomes inactive. While Google will not actually come out and use the word “death”, it certainly does an excellent job implying that this is what is meant — perhaps the company did not consult with Mr. Kurzweil, its director of engineering and author of the book The Singularity Is Near: A True Story About the Future.

Google’s new settings page provides a number of options, including, first and foremost, an alert system to let you know your account has become inactive — you know, just in case you have not “moved on”. The alert can be set to message you by either email or text before phase two kicks in — handy for those who opt to be buried with their phones. As the company puts it “there are many situations that might prevent you from accessing or using your Google account”.

If the worst has come to pass then you can also choose what happens from that point on. Customers can add contacts whom they wish to be notified regarding the fact that their Google account is no longer active, share data with those included on the list and even set the account to be deleted on their behalf. The page claims “using Inactive Account Manager, you can decide if and when your account is treated as inactive, what happens with your data and who is notified”.

It is a sad, but inevitable need that Google is filling with this new service. Perhaps the company and Kurzweil could devote more time to circumventing this need than preparing for it. This may be a bit more important than self-driving cars and glasses that shoot video.

Photo Credit: Fer Gregory/Shutterstock

Jay-Z has been in the headlines a lot this week for more than one reason. Reports came out that he was looking to divest his ownership share of the Brooklyn Nets. His trip (with Beyonce) to Cuba has also been talked about a lot in on political sites.

The couple took a trip to the country to celebrate their anniversary. Senator Marco Rubio said the cuban government was using the trip for “propaganda purposes”. He put out a statement saying the Obama Administration should “clarify its enforcement policy on Americans that travel to cuba:

“U.S. law clearly bans tourism to Cuba by American citizens because it provides money to a cruel, repressive and murderous regime. Since their inception, the Obama Administration’s ‘people to people’ cultural exchange programs have been abused by tourists who have no interest in the Cuban people’s freedom and either don’t realize or don’t care that they’re essentially funding the regime’s systematic trampling of people’s human rights.

“According to recent news reports, Jay-Z and Beyonce’s Cuba trip, which the regime seized on for propaganda purposes, was fully licensed by the Treasury Department. If true, the Obama Administration should explain exactly how trips like these comply with U.S. law and regulations governing travel to Cuba and it should disclose how many more of these trips they have licensed.”

Well, Jay-Z has responded to critics with a song called “Open Letter,” which is available on SoundCloud:

Jay-Z mentions Obama in the song, but the White House is distancing itself from the whole thing, saying the President had nothing to do with the trip.

Altus Capital Partners, a Wilton, Conn.-based middle market private equity firm, has appointed Heidi Goldstein to the position of principal. Goldstein joined the firm in 2006 and served most recently as a vice president.

PRESS RELEASE:

Altus Capital Partners, Inc., a leading private equity investment firm focused on niche middle market manufacturing companies in the U.S., today announced it has named Heidi Goldstein as Principal. Ms. Goldstein has been a member of Altus Capital since March 2006, most recently as Vice President, and has been actively involved in many of the successful investments made by the firm during that period.

Russell J. Greenberg, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, said, “Heidi’s much-deserved promotion is in recognition of her fine work and many accomplishments. As Principal, I know that she will continue to make important contributions to Altus Capital in the years ahead as we continue to build the firm and create growth opportunities for our portfolio companies.”

Ms. Goldstein has over 15 years’ combined experience in private equity, debt financing and high yield investments. She joined Altus Capital from GE Antares Capital, where she participated in the underwriting and portfolio management of leveraged transactions. Earlier, she worked in the private equity and the high yield investment group at Dilmun Investments, Inc., the U.S.-based investment advisor of Bahrain International Bank. Ms. Goldstein serves on the Board of Directors of International Imaging Materials, Inc., an Altus Capital portfolio company. She earned a BS in Finance at the University of Connecticut.

About Altus Capital Partners

Based in Wilton, CT with an office in Lincolnshire, IL, Altus Capital Partners, Inc. invests alongside management in profitable small to medium-sized manufacturing companies based in the U.S. that have proprietary technologies, processes and products. The Altus investment team is led by three partners who, in 17 years of successfully investing together, have acquired 23 platform companies.

For more information on Altus, please visit www.altuscapitalpartners.com.

SOURCE: Altus Capital Partners

The post Altus Capital Partners Names Heidi Goldstein as Principal appeared first on peHUB.

Germany’s Federal Patent Court on Wednesday handed Apple (AAPL) a significant victory in its ongoing legal battle with Samsung. The court ruled that one of Samsung’s (005930) patents that the company had declared was essential to 3G wireless standards was entirely invalid, FOSS Patents reported. Samsung had used its 3G patent and other wireless standard-essential patents in an attempt to receive an injunction against Apple’s products. The iPhone maker was willing to license the company’s technology, however, and Samsung withdrew its injunction requests, although it continued to pursue damages. The invalidation ruling in Germany is expected to impact Samsung’s lawsuits in other countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The company will have an opportunity to appeal the decision.

Last week I asked if you would buy Samsung’s newest smartphone, which goes on sale later this month. With a large enough sample size — 1,700 responses so far — time is come to share the results. Seventy percent say they will buy Galaxy S4, although not all immediately. Just 20 percent answer flat-out “No”.

I should qualify the headline: “You likely will buy Samsung Galaxy S4, if you’re not American. Over here, more people are bugaboo about iPhone. Apple had 38.9 percent smartphone subscriber share in February compared to 21.3 percent for its South Korean rival, according to comScore. Elsewhere, Samsung rules, selling more general handsets and smartphones than any other manufacturer, according to Gartner. (Woe to damn provincial Americans!)

Polls like this reflect potential trends and shouldn’t be treated as applying to a whole category of buyers. We don’t qualify respondents and presume the majority are BetaNews readers — or at least gadget geeks. Something else, and this applies to buying polls everywhere: What people say they will do isn’t often what they do. The poll captures sentiments about buying intentions.

Continuing, 18 percent of poll respondents say they will preorder (some international carriers take them already), while 28 percent plan to buy as soon as the S4 is available. “I have already ordered my S4”, BetaNews reader Lawrence Jolly says. “I currently use an S2 that I am very happy with, happy enough to stay with if I am honest however, it is on a contract and the 2 years is up. I am also very keen to go to 4g when that becomes available, something I cannot do on my S2”.

Jolly is “very happy with Android, the S2 was my first Android phone. If the S4 serves me half as well I will be delighted. In truth there is not a lot between all the high-end phones, I like the choice I get with Android though”.

That’s a sentiment Glenn Hughes shares. “I think we have reached the ‘good enough’ point, at least with current technology. I’m much more interested in low-cost phones on pre-paid carriers like Virgin than I am in gimmicky new features. This will probably hold true until the next truly revolutionary new feature-set comes along, which I’m guessing, will be either a big leap in voice interface technology, or some other form of intuitive human interface, along the lines of Google’s project glass, or some such”.

“Meh” is a reaction too commonly expressed around the InterWebs about iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 (hey, just read BetaNews comments). Both are supposed to be flagship, cutting-edge smartphones that the geek crowd looks at with some disdain. The original iPhone was a remarkable advance n handset user interfaces, unmatched by anything that followed. Hughes isn’t alone putting pre-paid before features. According to NPD, all the growth in U.S. smartphone sales is pre-paid.

Long-time BetaNews reader extremely_well is “getting two Galaxy S4s. One for the wife — I’ll take her S2 to replace my aging Nexus One — and one to ship overseas. I’ll probably get the Galaxy Note 3 for myself in 6 months, too. With T-Mobile’s new plans…it really makes sense to own top-end models; they lose only $25-$30 of their value monthly”.

“I’m waiting another year for the S5”, John Crane shares. “My 2-year contract will be up and AT&T will be in the mood to deal. I hope” Larry Brown “just bought a Note 2 and I am very happy with it”.

It seems that Nadya Suleman believes she is in danger of being forgotten. The ‘Octomom’, best known for giving birth to octuplets in 2009, is featured this week in new pictures featured in In Touch magazine. The photos depict the single mom in clothing made famous by actress Angelina Jolie.

Nadya told In Touch that Jolie is her idol, though she states that Jolie, who has six children, has it “easy.” Suleman has fourteen children.

In January 2013 it was reported that Suleman is on welfare after a rocky 2012. Last summer the ‘Octomom’ starred in a solo porn movie titled Octomom Home Alone, which features Suleman masturbating. Around the same time, Suleman appeared at a strip club in Florida to pay her bills. She was admitted to rehab in October, reportedly for an addiction to prescription Xanax.

(Image courtesy In Touch)

LinkedIn has decided to take another step toward being a platform for news, officially announcing the acquisition of Pulse, the news reader app similar to Flipboard.

The transaction is valued at around $90 million, which is at the high-end of the “somewhere between $50M and $100M” range that we heard when rumors of the acquisition began swirling about a month ago.

With this move, LinkedIn says they want to be “the definitive professional publishing platform where all professionals can publish, discover, and share.”

Pulse’s Ankit Gupta and Akshay Kothari say that Pulse will remain the same, and their team is committed to improving upon their apps.

“With LinkedIn by our side, our team will continue to make Pulse the best it can be. We’re still working together on the product you love, and will continue to provide an innovative and visual news reading experience. For now, the Pulse apps will remain the same, and our two teams are excited to work together to create cool and useful new offerings.”

LinkedIn’s Deep Nishar explains what the Pulse acquisition means to them:

“We believe LinkedIn can be the definitive professional publishing platform – where all professionals come to consume content and where publishers come to share their content. Millions of professionals are already starting their day on LinkedIn to glean the professional insights and knowledge they need to make them great at their jobs. We believe we can help all professionals make smarter and more informed business decisions leveraging all the great business knowledge flowing through LinkedIn in the form of news, Influencer posts, industry updates, discussions, comments and more,” he says.

“Pulse is a perfect complement to this vision. Pulse’s core value proposition is to help foster informed discussions that spark the decisions shaping the world around us through news and information. This shared view that the power of professional information and knowledge can transform lives and the world makes LinkedIn and Pulse a particularly great fit. We couldn’t be more thrilled to be working side by side with the Pulse team to create new and better ways to help professionals contribute to and leverage this collective body of business knowledge to help them be great at what they do and from wherever they work.”

The first sign of integration comes in the form of a new “LinkedIn Influencer” feed on Pulse.

Pulse was founded back in 2010. Since then, it has amassed 30 million users in over 190 countries. It also boasts content from over 750 publishers.

What’s the first thing we usually blame a crash on? Perhaps the driver was under the influence, or maybe even texting. In one case, however, the cause was a little more terrifying, at least for the driver.

CNN reports that Jerimiah Clyde Hartline, 19, caused a major crash in Southern California after the stolen semi-trailer truck he was driving slammed into a number of vehicles. Hartline says his erratic driving that caused the crash was the result of him trying to shake off zombies that were clinging to the vehicle.

The police say that Hartline was under the influence of a substance that caused the zombie hallucinations. As he was trying to shake off the imaginary zombies, Hartline collided with a Toyota Tacoma than then collided with 4Runner, and so on. As is the case with these kind of collisions, a number of vehicles were involved. There were thankfully no deaths, but the police say those in the Tacoma were “seriously injured.”

So, how did all this happen in the first place? Police say that Hartline, originally from Tennessee, was traveling with Daniel Martinez, the truck driver, after he had been kicked out of his home. As the truck made a scheduled stop in California, Hartline stole the vehicle as Martinez was filling out paperwork.

After the crash, Hartline hopped into a white van demanding that be taken elsewhere. The driver held him until police could arrest him. He was charged with taking a vehicle without the owner’s consent and receiving known stolen property.

An interview with Mark Blyth, professor at Brown University and author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.

Download this podcast

A written transcript will be available by April 18.

IDC’s report on plummeting PC shipments has hit Microsoft (MSFT) hard and now Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini has downgraded the company from Hold to Sell while predicting that its market share will “gradually deteriorate” unless it makes bold changes to turn itself around. Per Bloomberg, Bellini writes that Microsoft “faces critical secular challenges given the deteriorating PC demand backdrop” and that its market share will “gradually deteriorate unless Microsoft successfully repositions itself as a more meaningful participant in the new era of consumer compute” that includes tablets and smartphones. Bellini’s note is very similar to a note released Wednesday by BGC analyst Colin Gillis, who said that Microsoft’s “minimal participation” in the mobile market represented “an increasingly urgent problem that may prove difficult to reverse.”

Verizon Wireless has always stuck to the premium of end of the mobile pricing spectrum, leaving budget prepaid plans to its competitors. But it may be changing its strategy. On Thursday it introduced a $35 prepaid plan, which is by far the cheapest thing it offers under the Verizon logo.

FierceWireless first reported on the new plan, but we confirmed the details with Verizon today. The $35 tier targets text junkies using basic phones, offering unlimited SMS and web surfing but only 500 voice minutes. Four feature phones — the LG Cosmos 2 and Extravert and the Samsung Gusto 2 and Intensity III — are available under the plan, and it’s not transferable to other devices. Extra minutes cost an additional 25 cents.

Verizon is no stranger to prepaid, but unlike Sprint and T-Mobile, it hasn’t focused much effort on the segment. At the end of 2012, Verizon had only 5.7 million prepaid subscribers out of 98.2 million retail accounts. In addition, much of Verizon’s recent attention has been directed at the upper tier of the prepaid market — tablets and data modems as well as no-contract smartphones plans.

By delving far below the $50 price tier, Verizon is venturing into the territory of prepaid-only players like Cricket Communications and MetroPCS, mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) like Tracfone and Sprint’s no-contract arms Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile. Prepaid has enjoyed enormous growth over the last several years, so you can see why Verizon is interested, though it’s extremely late to the party.

Verizon’s new love of prepaid likely has something to do with its rapidly emptying CDMA network. Since launching LTE two years ago, 50 percent of all of Verizon’s data traffic has migrated to those new 4G systems. Verizon essentially made 3G a fallback network for its next-generation of high-end smartphone users, and to fill the gap left over it’s only offering prepaid services over 2G and 3G phones.

The four feature phones on Verizon’s basic plan are no exception. While you get unlimited data with the plans, you’d have to try very hard to rack up even a modest data usage on these devices. They sport Opera browsers and a few email and social networking apps, but you won’t get access to any advanced applications. What’s more, they only hold CDMA 1X 2G radios, so connection speeds are quite slow.

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A Beaver killed a man in Belarus, after the man tried to take its picture, according to a report from Sky News.

The man, who was on a fishing trip with some friends approached the animal, which bit him on the leg, severing a main artery and causing him to bleed to death.

The unusual nature of this story has drawn a lot of attention to it on the web, and serves as a reminder that nature (and the animal kingdom in particular) can be quite unpredictable. The report cites unnamed “experts” who say that beaver attacks are rare and that “those animals that do go for humans are usually rabid”.

Interestingly, since the incident was reported, other tales of agressive beavers have surfaced.

Sky News itself points to a video of a beaver attack in Russia:

A report from Daily Freeman back in 2010 describes beavers getting agressive in the Catskills. Jay Braman reported at the time:

On July 13, at least one beaver attacked and bit two swimmers and two people tubing in the creek about a mile upstream from the Shandaken hamlet of Phoenicia. Reports indicate that two boys between the ages of 10 and 13 were been bitten — the younger boy twice and the older boy seven times.

Around the same time, the Calgary Sun put out a report: Killer Beaver Has Dog Walkers On Guard in Red Deer, saying:

On Monday, the city’s parks department received a complaint from Alberta Animal Services that a beaver in Three Mile Bend in northeast Red Deer had fatally attacked a dog while it was swimming in the water, said parks superintendent Trevor Poth.

Poth said it’s believed the same beaver is responsible for injuring another dog that was also swimming at the time a couple weeks earlier.

Beavers are territorial creatures, who will not hesitate to defend their homes.

You definitely know that Google is killing Google Reader. You’ve either seen or been part of the outrage. Google will be officially shuttering their popular (but not popular enough) product on July 1st, but as you would expect they’re slowly removing its presence to help ease us all into the transition.

And you probably know that Digg is working to build a replacement. They announced this literally hours after Google made their announcement that they were killing the product. Digg has said from the start that they want to build something that’s fast and simple, and could serve as a true replacement for Google Reader.

Today, Digg has published the results of a survey they sent out to over 17,000 people (8,000+ responses so far), which sought to uncover exactly what people want in the upcoming Digg Reader.

And here’s the most important finding:

What you’re looking at it a word cloud, charting the responses to the question “if there’s one thing you could remove from Google Reader, what would it be?”

Nothing. Google Reader users don’t want anything more. They just want Google Reader. Or, since the second-most tracked word was “google,” they simply want a Reader that functions exactly like Google Reader – with or without Google’s hand.

The survey feedback also uncovered some stats about RSS reader users, like most subscribe to a good number of feeds (roughly 70% subscribe to more than 51) and 80% check their feeds multiple times a day. Nearly 80% said that they use Google Reader for both work and play, and over 40% said that Google Reader is the only RSS reader that they use (the nest most popular feed reader was Feedly).

Some of the feedback gave Digg an idea of what was most important to include in their upcoming reader. For instance, 67% said that they use keyboard shortcuts in Google Reader at least some of the time. That prompted Digg to proclaim that those are “definitely on the list.”

On the flip side, there was search:

“This was an interesting data point. While 25% reported never using search, over just over half said that they sometimes do. Search is a huge investment in terms of development time and infrastructure costs. We don’t yet know if we’ll have the necessary infrastructure up and running in time for our initial beta launch, but it’s definitely on the roadmap,” says Digg.

There’s definitely going to be a hole in the market for a Google Reader-like reader come July 1st when it all goes dark – even with other options already available. Whether or not Digg can step up into that role remains to be seen. Let’s think positively.

Today in the East Room, President Obama told the story of Emil Kapaun, an Army Chaplain from Kansas who served in the US Army during the Korean War. It's a powerful story, and probably best told in the President's own words: 

read more

LinkedIn confirmed Thursday that it has acquired the social news reader Pulse, explaining how the company wants to use Pulse’s tools to improve the content on LinkedIn’s site. AllThingsD had previously reported that the acquisition would take place, and LinkedIn put the price tag at $90 million, which fits with what Om’s sources told him last month.

LinkedIn explained the acquisition in a press release, noting that the demand for content on the site that relates to people’s professions is growing, and that the Pulse team can help LinkedIn improve the types of news people are seeing:

“We believe LinkedIn can be the definitive professional publishing platform – where all professionals come to consume content and where publishers come to share their content. Millions of professionals are already starting their day on LinkedIn to glean the professional insights and knowledge they need to make them great at their jobs. We believe we can help all professionals make smarter and more informed business decisions leveraging all the great business knowledge flowing through LinkedIn in the form of news, Influencer posts, industry updates, discussions, comments and more.”

Around the time of the acquisition reports back in March, my colleague Mathew Ingram wrote for paidContent why it would make perfect sense, as the company grows into more of a dual recruiting and media business, with users who are interested in business news. In fact, LinkedIn’s executive editor Daniel Roth will be speaking on our panel about the rise of new media entities next week at our PaidContent Live conference in New York.

Pulse wrote in a blog post why it’s joining the company, pointing again to LinkedIn’s demand for knowledge on its site:

“LinkedIn is the perfect partner as we continue our journey. The company shares our passions and values, our belief in the power of knowledge and elevated discussion, particularly for professionals looking for insights to help make them better at what they do. We believe this important step is the key to an even better experience for our community, and we’re excited for what’s to come.”

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Vivid Games S.A., developer of the Real Boxing title, released the official FIM Speedway GP 2013 game to the Google Play Store today. The new racing title promises console-quality graphics, lifelike physics, and improved controls. Players race against computer generated opponents, which are supposed to be smarter in this update for the 2013 season, modeled on real-life riders across 16 different real-world tracks. Along with traditional views, the new title adds a “Helmet Cam” that provides a first person point-of-view. Hit the break for some screen shots and short video highlighting game features. If you want to try Official Speedway GP 2013, use one of the Google Play download links to grab the $1.99 title that required Android 2.3 or higher.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Google Play Download Link

Come comment on this article: Official Speedway GP 2013 brings motorcycle racing action to Google Play

Lindsey Vonn is currently undergoing intense physical therapy for her right leg, but it evidently isn’t enough to keep her from cheering on her new man.

Vonn, who is currently dating golf star Tiger Woods, showed up at The Masters Tournament on Thursday to show support. According to a report from the New York Times, the blonde ski pro was wearing a dress that was long enough to cover the leg brace she currently has on her right leg. Vonn told the publication that she would see Woods play the first hole and watch the rest of the tournament from the clubhouse.

Vonn and Woods officially announced that they were dating back in March, though rumors of their relationship go back as far as January. It was later revealed that Kim Kardashian ex Kris Humphries was also courting the skiing star.

Vonn’s rehab is the result of a horrific crash she endured at a competition in Austria in February. She later had surgery performed on her right knee. Vonn has set a goal of competing in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and is now chronicling her recovery on social media.

BlackBerry’s next software update could arrive with the company’s second handset, the BlackBerry Q10. Pre-orders for the smartphone with physical keyboard have already started and now a BlackBerry enthusiast site claims to have information on the updated software, which will also be pushed to the currently available BlackBerry Z10.

Some of the expected improvements, says the BBNews blog, are support for sending PIN-based text messages in the BlackBerry Hub, an update to the camera to support HDR photos, and BlackBerry Link, which is a way to browse data files on a remote computer. The blog, based in Poland, isn’t one I’ve followed prior, but the reported features don’t sound far-fetched. Even if these functions do arrive on BlackBerry 10 devices soon, they can’t come soon enough.

A survey by Raymond James, reported by AllThingsD on Thursday, show that 71 percent of survey participants would never use a BlackBerry. That compares to 31.3 percent who have no interest in using Android, while 19.7 percent say nothing would get them to buy an iPhone.

Additionally, analysts are starting to dig deeper in BlackBerry 10 sales figures and finding that return rates are rising. “In several cases, returns are now exceeding sales, a phenomenon we have never seen before,” noted analyst Detwiler Fenton in statement to Bloomberg. Fenton says the unintuitive interface is a barrier, which could be the case, although there are only a handful of gestures needed to use the phone in my experience.

The bigger issue in my mind? Marketing. I haven’t seen the type of media blitz on television or elsewhere that Samsung and Apple typically use to promote their products. Software improvements are welcome — as are more native apps from top-tier development shops — but even the best products on the planet will never reach their sales potential without good old marketing.

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Weaponized iPhone accessories are nothing new, but it’s rare that we get to hear about them in cases involving celebrity assaults. Web entrepreneur and former porn star Jenna Jameson has been making headlines this week after being arrested on assault charges.

Jameson was reportedly accused of hitting someone at a house in Newport Beach, California on Saturday. Since then, new details have emerged. TMZ reports:

Jameson allegedly went all Naomi Campbell on the transgender gofer, but with a dangerous twist … a BRASS KNUCKLES CASE on her iPhone 5 … according to legal docs.

Shocking details of the arrest have now emerged in Britney Markham’s restraining order request, filed by attorney Adam Krolikowski. She claims Jameson barged into a Newport Beach salon and started bitching at her, and eventually punched her in the stomach and back with the weaponized device.

Yep, iPhone knuckles. Photos of them have appeared on Instagram (via TMZ):

Like what you see? Google Shopping appears to offer a wide range of “iPhone knuckles” despite removing some weapons last year.

Jameson has also posted a stun gun photo on her Instagram account:

Last year, Jameson was arrested for D.U.I.