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Automattic, the company that operates blogging service WordPress.com, announced a $50 million investment from hedge fund Tiger Global on Friday.

(Reuters) – Automattic, the company that operates blogging service WordPress.com, announced a $50 million investment from hedge fund Tiger Global on Friday.

The investment comes on the heels of Yahoo’s $1.1 billion acquisition of blogging company Tumblr, showing the high prices fast-growing services that targeting Internet users can command. The valuation for Automattic was similar, Fortune reported. A spokeswoman for WordPress declined to comment.

WordPress powers the blogs at companies such as CNN.com and Techcrunch, a spokeswoman said.

The investment bought out shares of existing shareholders, including early employees, rather than directly funding the company, wrote WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg in a blog post.

“Allowing early investors to lock in some returns releases any short-term pressure there might be on the company for a liquidity event and allows us to focus fully on the long road ahead,” he wrote in his post.

The investment is part of a crop of financing where nontraditional investors make bets on venture-capital backed companies. They include private-equity firms such as Riving Traverse Management, which last year led a $200 million funding round in payments service Square, and mutual funds such as T. Rowe Price, which has invested in companies including micro blog service Twitter.

Many of these investors “come in with the ability to write checks larger than the entire size of most VCR funds,” wrote Mullenweg.

More top blogs run Word Press than any other publishing platform, according to a 2012 study conducted by Kingdom, a website monitoring service. Blogs it cited in the study include technology sites such as Tech Crunch and Boingboing and Hollywood news site Deadline.

While many organizations use Tumblr, it is heavily associated with individuals updating friends and others on their activities and interests, social-media style.

And while Tumblr’s revenue is advertising based, the bulk of WordPress’s revenue comes from fees to users who upgrade beyond its basic free service. It also derives significant revenue from charging large media companies to host their entire blogging platforms, said Automattic Chief Financial Officer Stuart West in a telephone interview. He declined to disclose figures.

Like Tumblr, WordPress is growing fast, with 50 million users today compared with 4 million five years ago, the company said. Tumblr launched five years ago and today has more than 100 million blogs in its network.

The largest single audience group for WordPress is users aged 25-34, according to consultancy comScore. For Tumblr, the largest group is users aged 18-24.

Earlier this year, Tiger led a $444 million equity investment in online survey company SurveyMonkey as part of a financing round that also allowed early investors and employees to cash out. Tiger partner Lee Fixel handled his firm’s investment in both SurveyMonkey and Automattic.

Tiger extended its offer to WordPress in April, before Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr was announced, West said.

Automattic’s venture backers include Polaris Partners, True Ventures, and the New York Times Co.

The post Tiger Global invests $50 million in Automattic’s WordPress.com appeared first on peHUB.

Amanda Bynes, you’re making me worry about you.

The 27-year old former actress showed up in court this morning after her arrest on Thursday for allegedly throwing a bong out a window and she looked a bit…disheveled, to say the least. Wearing a long blonde wig and no makeup, Bynes reportedly looked nervous and constantly fidgeted throughout proceedings. Her attorney says she threw a vase, not a bong, but the judge wasn’t amused no matter what the story is. Since last year, the young star has been in heaps of legal trouble, including alleged hit-and-runs and drug accusations.

Bynes is currently on probation for driving without a license, and Burbank DA Danny Wei says he may file a motion that Bynes is in violation of that. If she’s found guilty, she could face jail time and multiple fines. She was taken to a hospital this morning for a psychiatric evaluation, and rumor has it her parents may apply for a conservatorship to take control of her finances and major decisions.

“We get info from the prosecuting agency, in this case the NYPD, and we will review the report and make the determination whether to file a probation violation with the court,” he said.

Image: SplashNews

If you’re excited about this weekend’s big Arrested Development season 4 premiere and you want to watch it on your TV, Microsoft is giving you another option.

The Xbox Netflix app will be unlocked this weekend – meaning that those with just an Xbox LIVE Silver membership will be able to utilize the app (as long as you have a Netflix subscription). Usually, you must have an Xbox LIVE Gold subscription to access Netflix.

“If you’ve been yearning for more of the Bluth family, look no further. The new season of Arrested Development finally premieres this Sunday, May 26. And it gets even better. Starting today, Xbox Live Gold will be unlocked* for the weekend for Netflix members in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Brazil, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Chile, Colombia and Argentina. Basically, we’ve made it ridiculously really easy for you to catch up on the first three seasons of Arrested Development. If you’re not a Netflix member, fear not,” says the Xbox Wire.

The new season of Arrested Development drops (all 15 episodes) at 12:01 am PT on Sunday. Netflix offers a free 1-month trial right now, so it looks like the perfect storm for Xbox LIVE Silver members who want to watch via their Xbox. If you want to get caught up, you have until then to stream the first 3 seasons, which are all available on Netflix.

This sort of deal promotes binge watching – but be careful. According to Arrested Development’s creator, that could make it less fun. Marathonning is hard to resist, however. So, do what you want.

A couple in York, Pennsylvania have been arrested for stabbing each other during an argument over Fox network TV karaoke contest American Idol.

According to a report from the York Dispatch, 48-year-old Karen Harrelson and 57-year-old Gregory Stambaugh were drinking and watching American Idol on May 15 at Stambaugh’s home. They then began arguing over which contestant should win the competition – Candice Glover or Kree Harrison. York police believe one of them then grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed the other, prompting the person stabbed to grab the knife and stab back.

It is not clear which of the two stabbed the other first. Also not clear is which of the two was arguing for Candice Glover, who ended up winning American Idol the following day.

Stambaugh stated to police that Harrelson had retrieved the knife first, stabbed him and then ran off. He recalled that he then followed her and wrestled the knife away. Harrelson maintains that she retrieved the knife to cut a slice of cake, when Stambaugh attacked her and cut her with a different knife. She alleges that she then stabbed him with her knife before dialing 911.

Both Harrelson and Stambaugh were arrested and charged with aggravated assault.

The Obama Administration has made improving the quality and efficiency of the health care system a priority. Already we have put in place new payment and care models that reward doctors and hospitals for providing high quality and efficient care to their patients. We are working with hospitals to identify gaps in patient safety and ways to reduce preventable readmissions that are harmful and expensive. Health information technology (IT) is critical to making these new models work.

Until the President made investments in health information technology by signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, our health care system ran largely on paper. In 2008, only 17 percent of physicians were using advanced electronic health records and just 9 percent of hospitals had adopted electronic health records. Information is the lifeblood of modern medicine, but information can’t get where it needs to go when it’s on paper. That means doctors didn’t have the best information at their fingertips when making diagnosis and treatment decisions; that patients didn’t have easy access to their medical records; and that information is dropped when patients leaving a hospital transition to a nursing home or home care.

That’s why the President put in place a series of policies to promote adoption of electronic health records as well as their deployment in ways that improve care quality while reducing costs.  This includes:

• Medicare and Medicaid incentives for the adoption and use of electronic health records;
• Technical assistance and direct support for primary care practices and rural practitioners to help them overcome barriers to adoption;
• Creation of certification standards that give providers confidence in what they’re buying and to ensure Medicare and Medicaid dollars are well-spent.

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Fun stuff, stuff to make you cry, serious stuff, weird stuff. Here, a recap of all the coolest stuff on the interwebs this week.

• More than 60 percent of 1400 Boy Scout leaders voted to lift its longtime ban on openly gay scouts. [The New York Times]
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• A fantastic piece by Carl Zimmer on how studying rare diseases can help mainstream medicine. [The Atlantic]
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• Listen to the only known recording of Virginia Woolf’s voice. [Paris Review]
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• Some cool visualizations of the world’s tallest building, which will be 838 meters tall and in an empty field in China. [Quartz]
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• Dexter Johnson begins a column in which he explores the origins of “seven or never,” a principle in nanotech that says any new technology appears on the market in seven years or not at all. [IEEE Spectrum]
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• From last week, a heart-wrenching story about a man who, hit by a truck when he was 6 and living with brain damage since, finally found peace in running. Tissues required. [Runner’s World]
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• The origins of certain insults. [The Hairpin]
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• Neat photo. The line that divides East and West Berlin is still distinguishable at night — by different lightbulbs. [Imgur]

The New York Times ran an interesting piece about Google Glass written by University of Illinois professor of psychology Daniel J. Simons and Union College professor of psychology Christopher F. Chabris. The two authored “The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us.”

The article questions the safety of Google Glass. It doesn’t so much question the safety of the device itself, but that of the human brain and how it would deal with the the real world while wearing the device. The duo says:

According to the results of two representative national surveys we conducted, about 70 percent of Americans believe that “people will notice when something unexpected enters their field of view, even when they’re paying attention to something else.”

Yet experiments that we and others have conducted showed that people often fail to notice something as obvious as a person in a gorilla suit in situations where they are devoting attention to something else. Researchers using eye-tracking devices found that people can miss the gorilla even when they look right at it. This phenomenon of “inattentional blindness” shows that what we see depends not just on where we look but also on how we focus our attention.

While a person in a gorilla suit may seem like a funny example, this is actually a pretty important subject, particularly if the device goes mainstream.

Some states are already looking at banning the device while driving. As discussed in a recent article, however, one of the engineers behind Google Glass has spoken about “super vision” and “night vision” one day being possibilities with the technology.

There are other apparent dangers of wearing Google Glass. For one, as Google says right in its own Glass FAQ that it could be harmful to some eyes, particularly children’s.

“Glass isn’t for everyone. Like when wearing glasses, some people may feel eye strain or get a headache,” Google says. “If you’ve had Lasik surgery, ask your doctor about risks of eye impact damage before using Glass. Don’t let children under 13 use Glass as it could harm developing vision. Also, kids might break Glass or hurt themselves, and Google’s terms of service don’t permit those under 13 to register a Google account.”

Another danger would be getting punched in the face by this guy.

Image: 2001: A Space Odyssey (MGM/Warner Bros.)

Animal Crossing: New Leaf hits the 3DS next month. Nintendo is preparing for the launch with a new advertising campaign that features a child visiting the weird world of Animal Crossing. It’s a little like H.R. Pufnstuf, but far less creepy.

Besides being the mayor of your own town full of nightmarish anthropomorphic animals, players can invite their friends to join in on the fun. What fun would that be? Manual labor, giving what little money you earn chopping down trees to a loan shark, and racking up more debt by buying more stuff.

Actually, Animal Crossing is pretty depressing when it’s put that way. It’s amazing that Nintendo has somehow figured out how to make the unbearable world of being an adult into something fun and inviting.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf will be out on June 9 exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS.

Call it TEDx from the mountaintop: This photo is brought to you by TEDxEverest, which was organized by Nate Mook and Eiso Vaandrager on the 60^th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s first hike up the mountain. These ambitious organizers brought bold ideas to an audience of sherpas and climbers at an Advanced Basecamp, elevation 21,000 feet — for the second time. This is the devotion of TEDx organizers — literally climbing Everest to spread ideas.

This week, from events held across the world, we’ve handpicked four TEDx Talks that encapsulate this diverse venture. Ranging from bringing the mammoth back to a game that helps neuroscientists map the human brain — all of these talks are brought to you by our vast TEDx community. Below, find this week’s talks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TRvjFt7Ut8o

What are wild animals up to?: Nick Whitney at TEDxSarasota
If you want to study true animal behavior, you ultimately have to watch them where they live, which can be difficult underwater. By strapping accelerometers to wild sharks, sturgeon, snakes — and even his own children — zoologist Nick Whitney found a clever and inexpensive way to monitor the activities of these animals in the wild. At TEDxSarasota, he shows how we can discover amazing things about the animal kingdom using ubiquitous technologies. (Filmed at TEDxSarasota.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7gKt8iT08Zc

A game to map the brain: Amy Robinson at TEDxNijmegen 2013
The next great leap in neuroscience may require a full, detailed map of the human brain. But it can take a researcher up to 50 hours to map just one neuron — and there are around 80 billion neurons in every brain. The solution? The crowd. In this exciting talk, Amy Robinson demos EyeWire, a game that gives ordinary people the chance to participate in this new kind of cartography. (Filmed at TEDxNijmegen.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DajRM7VyeZ4

How to bring a mammoth back to life: Beth Shapiro at TEDxDeExtinction
Complete mammoth genetic sequences are deteriorating over time, complicating any efforts at cloning the species. But Beth Shapiro and her team may have found a solution. She reveals the novel approaches that she and her colleagues are taking to revive ancient mammoths. (Filmed at TEDxDeExtinction.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NUxaNYO_mFY

Do others feel the same as you do?: Makio Kashino at TEDxKeioSFC
What makes our minds different? Makio Kashino has spent a lifetime trying to quantify the distinct mental worlds that we experience. At TEDxKeioSFC, he explains that the best strategy for progress is communication — “minding the gap” between our different perceptions to find common ground. (Filmed at TEDxKeioSFC.)

And highlights from the TEDx blog this past week:

• See what happens when you give a child anchovies… in slow motion
• The first playlist in French: 5 talks from around the world
• A beautiful event trailer from TEDxRiyadh
• TEDxCasablanca organizer helps TEDxTarfaya organizer put on a memorable first TEDx event

A week after VMware announced its top-priority Infrastructure-as-a-Service play, two more executives associated with de-emphasized technologies have left the company.

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger

Both execs, Javier Soltero and Kevin Henrickson  joined VC company Redpoint Ventures as entrepreneurs in residence.

Soltero joined VMware by virtue of its acquisition of SpringSource  in  2009 — after having joined SpringSource by virtue of that company’s acquisition of Hyperic. At VMware he was the CTO of SaaS and application services.

Henrickson was senior director of R&D for Zimbra, the open-source email product VMware acquired from Yahoo also in 2009. The dual departures were first reported by TechCrunch.

It was clear last year that VMware was scaling back on applications  – which had been a key part of former CEO Paul Maritz’s strategy. It subsequently spun off the Java-based Spring framework along with Cloud Foundy and other assets to Pivotal where they will be part of that company’s universal PaaS push.

Selling off the non-essentials

It’s fairly clear that VMware would like to divest itself of Zimbra, which doesn’t fit into its new IaaS worldview, just as it sold off SlideRocket to Clearslide and Wavemaker Java technology to Pramati, both in March. (Pramati just announced Cloudjee a new company pushing a cloud development platform incorporating Wavemaker technology.)

Early this month, Patrick Chanezon, who led developer relationships for both Spring and Cloud Foundry efforts at VMware, joined Microsoft as director of enterprise evangelism.

We can’t say that VMware didn’t warn us. In January, CEO Pat Gelsinger  clearly stated the company’s need to focus and eliminate distractions. At about that same time CTO Stephen Herrod left the company for General Catalyst.

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Today, the First Lady and actress Kerry Washington visited the Savoy School in Anacostia, one of eight schools selected last year for the Turnaround Arts Initiative at the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Through the initiative, these high-poverty, traditionally underperforming schools are using the arts to dramatically improve the culture and climate and to bolster academic success for their students. 

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Watch the West Wing Week here.

Responding to the Tornadoes in Oklahoma: On Monday, the President spoke with Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin to express his concern for those who have been affected by the tornadoes in Oklahoma. The President told Governor Fallin that the administration is committed to providing all the assistance it can to Oklahoma as the response effort unfolds, including approving a Major Disaster Declaration, making federal funding available to support affected individuals, and providing additional federal assistance to support immediate response and recovery efforts.

On Tuesday, President Obama delivered a statement on the devastating tornadoes and severe weather that impacted Oklahoma. He outlined the response efforts underway, and assured the people of Moore and all the affected areas that they would have all the resources that they need at their disposal.

"Americans from every corner of this country will be right there with them, opening our homes, our hearts to those in need.  Because we're a nation that stands with our fellow citizens as long as it takes. We've seen that spirit in Joplin, in Tuscaloosa; we saw that spirit in Boston and Breezy Point.  And that’s what the people of Oklahoma are going to need from us right now. "

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Today Nokia has decided to file yet another patent suit against HTC claiming infringement with the HTC One its main target. According to Nokia, HTC hasn’t taken any action to prevent infringement and said the company “tried to shift responsibility to its suppliers.”

Nokia’s obvious main goal here is to somehow stop HTC’s sales of the One. This is still a developing story, as soon as we know more we’ll be sure to let you all know.

source: zdnet

Come comment on this article: Nokia brings up new patent suit against HTC in hopes to ban HTC One sales

In lieu of a formal review, Matt Burns and I sat down to take a look at the Samsung 700T AKA ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T, a convertible tablet that has a small button on the keyboard that pops out the Windows 8 tablet that forms the brains of the machine. The device is a bit chintzy – more pressed metal and injected plastic than I like to see on a laptop – but at about $1,000 retail it’s an acceptable compromise for Win8 users who are looking for a nicer tablet.

I gave this device a Fly simply because I like the idea – a laptop that turns into a tablet with much fuss – but Matt was unimpressed. A little treat for you: this thing was so hard to describe that I had to read the name off of my phone and I still mispronounced it.

The laptop hit about 6 hours of battery life and a Geekbench score of about 4,000, on par with the i5 tablets we tested. The lower price – especially at this late in the game for this laptop, make it an interesting choice for a fleet laptop but I think the fit, finish, and power could detract from its overall appeal. It’s an interesting laptop, to be sure, but not the best of the bunch.

It took long enough, but it seems like the Sony Xperia S is finally going to be able to enjoy Jelly Bean. Numerous deadlines have come and gone without a Jelly Bean release, but Sony France has now confirmed on Twitter that the 4.1.2 update is being slowly rolled-out to users. Sony says that “many more builds will arrive next week,” so don’t worry too much if you haven’t already received the update. When it’s time, 4.1.2 will be available via both the Sony PC companion and over-the-air.

Have any of you Xperia S users already received the update?

Source: Xperia Blog

Come comment on this article: Sony Xperia S finally receiving Jelly Bean update

Socialbakers, a four-year-old, Prague-based analytics platform company that helps brands measure and compare the success of their social media campaigns, has hired James Bodha as CFO. Bodha joins Socialbakers from Myriad Group AG, a leading provider of global social messaging services listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange.

PRESS RELEASE:

Socialbakers, the global provider of analytics platforms that allows brands to measure, compare, and contrast the success of their social media campaigns, today announces the appointment of James Bodha as Chief Financial Officer.

Bodha joins Socialbakers from Myriad Group AG, a leading provider of global social messaging services listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange. He will report to Jan Rezab, Socialbakers’ CEO, assuming responsibility for all financial, commercial and legal operations.

Bodha brings to Socialbakers over twelve years of experience in senior financial leadership roles within global, growth technology businesses held in public, venture capital and private equity ownership. During his time at Myriad Group, he oversaw the consolidation of three substantial businesses to create a market leader in social messaging, including the acquisition of Synchronica Plc., an AIM/ TSX dual listed mobile social platform provider.

Prior to joining Myriad Group, he was Chief Financial Officer at Aircom International, a mobile network software provider and Magic4, a mobile phone messaging software provider.

“James brings to Socialbakers an outstanding track record and deep expertise as a serially successful CFO of dynamic technology businesses,” said Rezab. “In particular, his knowledge of establishing and growing profitable and sustainable global, multi-site operations will be invaluable in helping Socialbakers accelerate its growth worldwide.”

“Socialbakers is a truly international company with a market leading social media analytics platform and an outstanding client base of the world’s biggest brands,” adds Bodha. “I am excited to be joining such an ambitious, highly talented team and look forward to helping the company scale operations to achieve its aggressive growth strategy.”

About Socialbakers:
Socialbakers.com is a user-friendly social media analytics platform, providing the only global solution that allows brands to measure, compare, and contrast the success of their social media campaigns with competitive intelligence.

Since 2009 Socialbakers has continuously developed innovative tools for companies to measure and maximize the effectiveness of their social marketing campaigns across all major social networks. With more than 160 employees located in 10 offices worldwide, Socialbakers is one of the world’s fastest growing social media and digital analytics company.

The post Socialbakers Appoints James Bodha as CFO appeared first on peHUB.

Researchers in Australia are making progress in their quest to construct a scalable quantum computer, having developed a method for extracting information from an electron racing around a phosphorus atom in silicon, the MIT Technology Review reported Wednesday. The achievement suggests that commercial use — and, therefore, wider implementation of a probabilistic computing model much faster than current systems — could be just a wee bit closer.

The idea of a operating a quantum computer with a quantum bit — or qubit — based on a phosphorous atom harks back to a vision articulated by Australian Bruce Kane in research published in Nature in 1998. “The realization of such a computer is dependent on future refinements of conventional silicon electronics,” Kane explained in the abstract to his paper. Researchers in Australia have been striving to put Kane’s concept into practice for more than 10 years, the MIT Technology Review article notes, and their latest step is to get information from an agitated electron:

These guys implanted a single phosphorous atom in a silicon nanostructure and placed it in a powerful magnetic field at a temperature close to absolute zero. They were then able to flip the state of an electron orbiting the phosphorous atom by zapping it with microwaves.

The final step, a significant challenge in itself, was to read out the state of the electron using a process known as spin-to-change conversion.

The end result is a device that can store and manipulate a qubit and has the potential to perform two-qubit logic operations with atoms nearby; in other words the fundamental building block of a scalable quantum computer.

Still, the Australians have work to do, according to their paper, which they submitted on Monday:

Future experiments will focus on the coupling of two donor electron spin qubits through the exchange interaction, a key requirement in proposals for scalable quantum computing architectures in this system. Taken together with the single-atom doping technologies now demonstrated in silicon, the advances reported here open the way for a spin-based quantum computer utilising single atoms, as first envisaged by Kane more than a decade ago.

Meanwhile, researchers in England have done work of their own on quantum entanglement involving phosphorus atoms.

Quantum computers from Canada have seen some commercial adoption, with Lockheed Martin and a Google-initiated lab signing up for D-Wave Systems quantum computers. If competitors from England and Australia come onto the scene, further innovation could follow and cause prices to fall.

Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user isoga.

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