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It wasn’t too long ago that AT&T attempted to buy out T-Mobile, before backing out after a 9 month pursuit. Alas, business is business, and AT&T isn’t letting would could have been affect their marketing strategies. Their latest, full-page ad ran in three popular newspapers, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, and went after T-Mobile without pulling any punches. The ad claims T-Mobile’s network suffers from twice as many dropped calls as AT&T and only offers half the download speeds. That’s some pretty harsh marketing.

T-Mobile’s CMO, Mike Sievert, shrugged it off and commented that he was just “glad they’re spending their money to print our name.” AT&T, intent on having the last word, released a statement saying ”T-Mobile’s advertising is a combination of misguided and just plain wrong,” and the ad was “just a friendly reminder of the fact that independent third-party testing says AT&T’s network delivers faster speeds and fewer dropped calls than them.”

While AT&T’s claims are probably statistically accurate, they’re the second largest cellular network in the US, and T-Mobile is still a relatively small-time competitor next to that. Compare apples to oranges, AT&T.

source: The Verge

Come comment on this article: AT&T slams T-Mobile over network speeds in full page newspaper ad

Gamers around the world are excited for the holidays following Sony’s (SNE) recent PlayStation 4 unveiling, but not everyone will want to shell out an estimated $500-$600 on the company’s new console. As such, budget-minded gamers who aren’t afraid to adopt a current-generation system on the eve of a new launch will be happy to know that PlayStation 3 pricing is likely about to plummet.

Continue reading…

Great news for Nexus users, AOSP is pushing Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 binaries for several devices in the Nexus product lineup.  The build, JDQ39 (tag: android-4.2.2_r1), is the same as the one currently being rolled out to Nexus devices.

As listed on the Google Developers site, binaries are available for the following devices:

• Nexus 4
• Nexus 7 (both WiFi and 3G versions)
• Nexus 10
• GSM Galaxy Nexus (both takju and yakju versions)

Google continues to show its unwavering support to Nexus followers, and there’s no question that purchasing Nexus devices is the smart way to go for any Android fan.

If you need the latest files, hit the source link for downloads and instructions.

Source:  Google Developers

Come comment on this article: Roll Your Own Android: Android 4.2.2 Code and Binaries pushing to Android Open Source Project (AOSP)

No-name server makers posted stronger year-to-year revenue growth than traditional powers such as Hewlett-Packard and IBM in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to new Gartner data. The news, which falls in line with a trend going back to the third quarter of 2011, makes sense as webscale companies — Google, Facebook, etc. — demand inexpensive but custom-tailored servers for their data centers.

According to Gartner, the “other vendors” increased revenue almost 22 percent year over year for the quarter, beating out Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM and Oracle. HP, a perennial leader in servers, saw its worldwide server revenue decline 3.3 percent during the same period, while Oracle’s dropped 18 percent.

“Application-as-a-business data centers such as Baidu, Facebook and Google were the real drivers of significant volume growth for the year,” Gartner Research Vice President Jeffrey Hewitt said in a statement.

HP and Dell lost some business from cloud and hosting provider Rackspace, which turned to Quanta and Wistron for custom servers based on Open Compute Project designs. Quanta also captured business from Amazon and Facebook.

The Chinese search giant Baidu, which might be planning the world’s largest data center, with 100,000 servers, is reportedly giving its server business to Marvell Technologies.

If the trend continues, and smaller server makers such as Quanta keep gaining ground, Gartner might want to start breaking out the “other vendors” in its reports.

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• How tomorrow’s mobile-centric data centers will look
• The role of converged infrastructure in the data center
• A near-term outlook for big data

iFixit on Thursday published a list of the best and worst tablets based on their respective repairability scores. While no slate scored a perfect 10, the company found that the Dell (DELL) XPS 10 was the easiest tablet to repair thanks to its accessible case, color-coded screws and labeled cables. At the bottom of the list was Microsoft’s (MSFT) Surface Pro and Apple’s (AAPL) iPad and iPad mini. The Surface Pro scored a 1 out of 10 and was said to be difficult to open without shearing the display cables, while the iPad scored a 2 out of 10 for its excessive amounts of adhesive. The Surface RT didn’t fare much better and scored a mere 4 out of 10, compared to Android tablets such as the Nexus 7, which scored a 7 out of 10, and the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, which garnered at score of 8 out of 10.

A TED Talk is generally an auditory experience. But Fever Picture, a collective of graphic mavens who translate the ideas expressed at conferences into graphic form, have changed that. Earlier this week, they thrilled us with their comic versions of the first half of TED2013. Here, their renderings of the second half of the conference.

Google is looking into upgrading its Google Maps Engine with the large supply of satellite images available on Google Earth Engine, according to a company engineer. The move would enable businesses to perform comparative mapping analytics and show changes over time on the fly, without having to build out new infrastructure.

After giving a talk about Google Earth Engine at the Strata conference in Santa Clara, Calif., on Thursday, Louis Perrochon, a Google engineering director, said engineers are working on the project, although there is no planned release date and it’s quite possible such capabilities are never released. A Google spokesman said he could not confirm the plans or provide a timeline for implementation.

Every day Google downloads terabytes of satellite images from the U.S. Geological Survey and maintains the files on spinning disks in data centers. With so much data, Google Earth Engine “allows you to do a lot more fancy stuff” than Google Maps Engine, Perrochon said during his talk. He demonstrated his point by using Google Earth Engine to show which San Francisco parks lie closest to BART stations, which parks are new to the city and which parts of the Sahara desert had gotten new roads.

The Google Earth Engine data sets, which span more than 25 years, have been available to researchers for a few years now. One use case is for a government to locate areas of deforestation and conduct investigations. As Perrochon demonstrated during his talk, users can quickly see where some areas have gotten new vegetation and other areas have been stripped of their trees.

It might sound obvious, but because Google has so many data sets, Google Earth Engine can also do things like offer maps devoid of clouds and lines on satellite images. To get a sense of the cloud problem, try zooming in on Northern Ireland. With Google Earth Engine data sets, users can quickly cycle through images from many days.

Plenty of enterprises could benefit from having heaps of satellite images available for fast analysis on the web, as opposed to Google Earth. (Take media outlets, for starters.) If Google does roll out the expanded data sets to Google Maps Engine, it might cost enterprises less to get and analyze the data themselves. And it could once again demonstrate that Google Maps is well ahead of competitive efforts to map the planet and give people easy ways to access that data.

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• A near-term outlook for big data
• Dissecting the data: 5 issues for our digital future
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cloud

A quick word: We are kicking off GigaOM Reads, a weekly column that look back at some of the important technology stories of the week and our take on the news. In addition, we will curate some of the more interesting stories and blog posts we find worth sharing – Om & Kristy.

Groupon’s 2-for-1 CEO deal: Groupon, decidedly the most non-tech company pretending to be a tech company fired Andrew Mason, founder & CEO, and replaced him with not one but two CEOs — Executive Chairman Eric Lefkofsky and Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis, who are taking over as co-CEOs. Not to poop on their parade, but weren’t these two gentlemen supposed to prevent the current state of chaos at the company as board members? Something stinks, and it is not kielbasa. In what seems to be a perfect exit interview, Mason had some choice things to say:

“I think in the first phase of our company, we were a glorified mailing list. We had a completely unintelligent email that we sent out once a day and we had a human sales force that was going around and procuring the deals.”

As for Mason, he is looking for a fat farm to lose what he adorably calls “Groupon 40.” I am going to miss his nonsensical utterances.

Everybody hates (or loves) Marissa Mayer & loves(or hates) Sheryl Sandberg: Well, at least everyone in media has something to say about two of the brightest and more powerful women in Silicon Valley, Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg. They were both making headlines this week for what seems to be all the wrong (or right) reasons.

Mayer wants her remote-working Yahoos to come back to the office, and while some claimed that this was the worst decision possible for the company (and its working parents), others argue that maybe we could all use more separation between work and life. Even we couldn’t decide with Mayer’s idea that the best ideas come from “hallway and cafeteria collaboration,” the fact remains — people are talking about Yahoo again.

Hoping to recreate a Betty Friedian-like social movement empowering women in the workplace, Sheryl Sandberg’s individualized take on feminism outlined in her new book, Lean In, may not strike the cord she had hoped. In fact, prominent entrepreneurial women have denounced the cause as unrealistic, while others insist that men must also become passionate change agents  in order for the business world to become more balanced.

By the way, those two news items sparked a lively thread on our internal messaging system.

Technology’s worst dressed guy is emasculated by phones: Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who is not exactly Bernard Arnault (CEO of LVMH, if you must ask), feels that smartphones are “emasculating.” He was speaking at the TED conference and his comments resulted in a flurry of commentary around gender issues.

The general body language of your average smartphone user aside, his comments indicate that Glass could evolve to include cellular phone service, but the truth is that health concerns might hinder adoption by the masses. One thing that might help make Google Glass cool? Its rumored partnership with hipster darling Warby Parker. But those are minor issues, as author Mark Hurst rightfully argues. The real issue is how we as human beings will interact with people with Google glasses and how that will change our daily experiences, he said.

“Google Glass is like one camera car for each of the thousands, possibly millions, of people who will wear the device – every single day, everywhere they go – on sidewalks, into restaurants, up elevators, around your office, into your home. From now on, starting today, anywhere you go within range of a Google Glass device, everything you do could be recorded and uploaded to Google’s cloud, and stored there for the rest of your life. You won’t know if you’re being recorded or not; and even if you do, you’ll have no way to stop it. And that, my friends, is the experience that Google Glass creates. That is the experience we should be thinking about. The most important Google Glass experience is not the user experience – it’s the experience of everyone else. The experience of being a citizen, in public, is about to change.” [Mark Hurst]

Does that future scare you? Then you should read Joel Hladeck’s amusing letter from the future that talks about why Google glasses kinda went the way of AltaVista.

Oscars & Hard times at CGI Corral: Darlings of the big screen and red carpet took home their golden statues at the Oscars last Sunday, but not all is well for the behind-the-scenes crew. The visual effects industry is facing hard times due to foreign outsourcing and subsidies, with large and small studios alike facing layoffs and closures. You may have caught Bill Westenhofer attempting to broach the subject after winning the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Life of Pi before being ushered off the stage to the theme of Jaws, which now seems oddly appropriate given that thousands of jobs are dead in the water.

Talking about Oscars, congrats to PopSugar for launching PopSugar Live. Their live red carpet show from the Oscars got about a million views, putting them in the cable television territory. Who needs cable (TV) when you have broadband?

Fashion and tech in one place! What could go wrong: Conde Nast rolled out the red carpet for geeks during this years’ New York Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week by hosting a first-of-its-kind fashion and tech hackathon to create new ideas around how to use technology in the industry. We do admit that does sound kinda crazy and, well, Conde Nast isn’t who we turn to for innovation tips. But then again, the fashion industry is so far behind that they need to start somewhere. We would also recommend watching out for a whole new breed of fashion media upstarts that are frankly more fun and engaging than perusing dowdy Conde Nast.

Beyond Fashion Week, a handful of forward-thinking companies are already capitalizing on the use of technology in fashion, and creating a brand new way to shop, and find the perfect fit online

It is now the Internet of things:

“We are beginning to learn what it is like to use the Internet to communicate with things that are not humans.” — Vint Cerf at TED2013 (via Twitter)

We at GigaOM have been on it for a while, writing about the topic for a few years now. But now we are taking the show on the road and are hosting a series of meetups like the most recent one in San Francisco and the next one in Boulder, Colorado. Our belief: Ideally, the internet of things should fade into the background; what matters is what it allows people to do.

And what here are some stories from this week you might have missed.

1. Battle of the campuses: Google told Vanity Fair that it would soon be breaking ground on a new 1.1-million square foot campus, and it’s quite the contrast from Apple’s upcoming futuristic spaceship-like HQ coming in 2016. Richie King at Quartz explored what these vastly opposing architectural footprints say about the personality of each company.
2. Jimmy Iovine needs to make up his mind: He can’t undermine music curation without undermining Music by Beats, the company he owns and will disown soon.
3. Microsoft wants to be cool: And it will never be cool, according to a former Apple guy and a former Microsoft guy.
4. Tim Cook & Apple versus Wall Street: The New Yorker’s John Cassidy rightfully argued that we shouldn’t pity the hedgies.
5. The problem with Facebook data: Well, there is a lot to dislike about Facebook’s “Like” argued Alan Wolk.

Read this and other in-depth articles on GigaOM’s Flipboard channel

The entrepreneurs who are still willing to attempt large scale manufacturing of next-gen energy technologies — whether it’s solar materials, LEDs, futuristic batteries or advanced biofuels — are increasingly looking to using existing machines from other industries to make their products. Many of the executives, and investors at the ARPA-E Summit this week told me they are building this requirement into their original business models.

While the move might seem obvious, the trend is in contrast to high-profile companies from yesteryear like Solyndra, which built expensive custom machines to produce their solar panels and had to raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars on manufacturing. The added expense and complexity of developing new machines and new products just added to Solyndra’s struggles and contributed to its bankruptcy.

The CEO of Alphabet Energy, Matthew Scullin, told me at the Summit this week that his goal from day one was to require all of Alphabet’s products to be made on existing toolsets. Alphabet Energy develops thermoelectric materials and devices, which convert heat into electricity, and the technology can be built on standard chip industry machines. “A startup needs to focus on developing one product in order to be successful, and developing a tool is like developing a second product in parallel. The risk is high,” said Scullin.

Scullin also pointed out that by using traditional semiconductor tools Alphabet can more easily find skilled operators and can also outsource manufacturing to chip foundries, if they choose to do so. For custom machines, “the lack of existing know-how, secondhand equipment, service people, and competition means the cost of doing business is high, adding to risk.”

Battery startup Seeo is using standard machines used to make traditional lithium ion batteries to make its batteries, including its secret sauce: its unique electrolyte. The company employs basic mixers, coaters, and assembly and testing machines at its pilot line factory in Hayward, Calif. and is also using battery cell, module and pack materials that are commonly used to make lithium ion batteries. Later this year the Seeo team hopes to build a larger fab with the same equipment somewhere in the U.S.

Startup Imprint Energy, which is making a zinc battery, uses off-the-shelf  printing equipment from prototyping to scaled production, says Imprint Energy CEO Devin MacKenzie. They haven’t done any customization of the equipment and MacKenzie tells me they do not anticipate requiring any large scale special equipment or significant modifications of commercially-available systems.

Many of the companies in its sustainability portfolio are embracing the practice of using standard plug and play manufacturing machines, Khosla Ventures’s partner Andrew Chung said at the Summit this week. Seeo has raised funds from Khosla Ventures.

Not all energy innovations, by their nature, can use existing machines. Tesla has invested significantly in its factory in Fremont, Calif. that is now churning out the Model S and using programmed robots to assemble the cars in an entirely new way. But Tesla has also long been smart about taking advantage of the cost savings and innovation of the traditional battery sector, as it uses basic Panasonic laptop batteries linked together to power its Model S.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantech
• Cleantech and investment in 2013
• The next generation of battery technology

Bitdefender has released the first public beta of Bitdefender Total Security 2014, its high-end security suite. And while the new edition doesn’t offer any revolutionary changes, there are enough additions and enhancements to make it interesting.

Bitdefender themselves are highlighting the suite’s “adaptive scanning technology”, which apparently “visibly improves speed and performance in a matter of hours by gradually molding to your PC”. The new Wallet fills a gap in the previous editions by storing your user names and passwords, then automatically filling them in for you.

A weekly Security Report sums up what’s happened in the past seven days, highlights anything you need to do, tells you about unused modules, and more.

The spam filter is now fully cloud-based, cutting system impact and improving detection rates. Or so Bitdefender claim; the filter didn’t appear to be working at all on our system, although whether that’s a genuine bug, a local issue for us, or we’re just missing something, isn’t yet clear.

Parental controls are significantly enhanced (you get full HTTPS as well as HTTP coverage, for instance), while the Safepay online banking environment stores your logons even more securely via the new wallet.

And of course you also get all the features from previous editions: the antivirus engine, smart firewall, browsing protection, privacy tools, online backup system, anti-theft service, and more.

The beta comes in the form of a very small download, which insists that you remove any other antivirus packages you might have installed, and then scans your PC, while simultaneously downloading and scanning the rest of the package. This took a very long time for us, but be patient, it does complete eventually.

Once the program fires up you’re prompted to register. Just select “I don’t have a key, I want to try the product for free” and Click Next.

The “Configure Behaviour” dialog gives you a chance to turn the program’s “Auto Pilot” and “Automatic Game mode” off. Essentially this just means you’ll get more prompts, though, so for now we’d accept the defaults and click Next.

Next, you’re prompted to activate the installation via your Bitdefender account. If you have one, enter your details as usual and click “Login to MyBitdefender”. If you don’t, either click “Create a new account” and follow the instructions, or sign in via your Facebook, Google or Microsoft accounts.

With that done, click Explore on the beta dialog box and you’ll be able to set up the new Bitdefender Wallet feature. Which isn’t exactly difficult: all you have to do is set up a new database, and enter a password.

And, finally, that’s it. If you tried Bitdefender 2013 then you’ll recognise the interface, which hasn’t really changed, so just click the various icons on Bitdefender’s gadget and give the system a try.

Please note, though, this is a beta and there are some significant bugs. As we write, for instance, the Auto Update button gets turned off when the system performs an update. Check the beta home pagefor more, but just keep in mind that you shouldn’t use the suite as your main security for long – it’s just not reliable enough yet (which is also why the build will expire after 60 days).

Still, if you do stick with Total Security 2014 then Bitdefender are offering a few prizes for the most active beta testers, including an HP Envy dv6 laptop, Samsung Galaxy S3 and Google Nexus 10 tablet. Again, the beta page has more.

Photo Credit: almagami/Shutterstock

Kim Dotcom could be packing his bags and heading to a U.S. courtroom in the near future. The accused Internet piracy king has been fighting an extradition motion seeking to move him from New Zealand to the United States to face trial. New Zealand’s Court of Appeal on Friday overturned an earlier decision that required U.S. authorities to hand over evidence it planned to use in the high-profile extradition trial set to take place in August, The Wall Street Journal reported. Authorities will now only be required to provide the defense with a summary of the evidence it intends to use. Dotcom has vowed to fight the ruling, stating that he will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of New Zealand.

Apple’s patent case against Samsung took an unexpected turn today. Judge Lucy Koh cut the damages, citing jury errors, removing some devices previously found to infringe the fruit-logo company’s patents. Jurors had awarded about $1.05 billion in damages, which now are just $600 million (rounded up slightly). The South Korean electronics giant isn’t off the hook by any means. More than a dozen devices remain infringers.

Judge Koh’s order is a blow to Apple, but not one that invalidates any real part of its patent victory. The judge found that the jury had inappropriately calculated damages for some products, based in part on their acceptance of arguments made by Apple expert witness Terry Musika.

Samsung had disputed the date that Apple gave for when infringement started — Aug. 4, 2010, based on a meeting between the companies. But the judge chose different dates, based on more official notifications. She writes:

The correct notice date for the ’915 and D’677 Patents is April 15, 2011. the correct notice date for the ’163, D’305, D’889, and D’087 Patents is June 16, 2011. In sum, Samsung is entitled to judgment as a matter of law that the earliest notice dates supported by the evidence are: August 4, 2010 for the ’381 patent; April 15, 2011 for the ’915 and D’677 Patents; and June 16, 2011 for the’163, D’305, D’889, and D’087 Patents. The damages numbers Mr. Musika presented to the jury were based on the August 4, 2010 notice date for all patents.

Different dates shorten the infringement and so lesser damages for most of the devices.

“It is improper to award damages for sales made before the defendant had notice of the patent, and an award that includes damages for sales made before notice of any of the intellectual property (IP) infringed is excessive as a matter of law”, Judge Koh explains.

Her 27-page ruling is a shocker for what she says must happen in the future:

Because the Court has identified an impermissible legal theory on which the jury based its award, and cannot reasonably calculate the amount of excess while effectuating the intent of the jury, the Court hereby ORDERS a new trial on damages for the following products: Galaxy Prevail, Gem, Indulge, Infuse 4G, Galaxy SII AT&T, Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G, Exhibit 4G, Galaxy Tab, Nexus S 4G, Replenish, and Transform. This amounts to $450,514,650 being stricken from the jury’s award. The parties are encouraged to seek appellate review of this Order before any new trial.

Groklaw’s Pamela Jones gives straightforward reason for the new trial: The jury calaculated the judgment “based on wrong theories. In some cases, she can’t even figure out what they did”. She adds: “This jury goofed big time, more than Judge Koh has so far acknowledged, in my view, but this order absolutely states as clearly as words can achieve that their award was based on mistakes”.

Depending on the appeal’s outcome, Samsung still faces problems. “The jury’s award stands for the Galaxy Ace, Galaxy S (i9000), Galaxy S II i9100, Galaxy Tab 10.1 WiFi, Galaxy Tab 10.1 4G LTE, Intercept, Fascinate, Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy S II Showcase, Mesmerize, Vibrant, Galaxy S II Skyrocket, Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch, and Galaxy S II T-Mobile”, Koh writes. “The total award for these 14 products is $598,908,892”.

Apple had asked the court to increase damages to about $2.5 billion. Judge Koh’s response: “Apple’s motion for an increase in the jury’s damages award is DENIED. The Court declines to determine the amount of prejudgment interest or supplemental damages until after the appeals in this case are resolved”.

The jury awarded $1.05 billion in damages to Apple in late August. Strangely, much of the news reporting during the trial favored Apple’s storyline and ignored Samsung’s. I’ll be curious to see how today’s news fans across blogs and news sites.

Photo Credit: VIPDesignUSA/Shutterstock

Twilio and 500 Startups said the newly formed Twilio Fund Europe 2013 will be managed by 500 Startups  founding partner Dave McClure. The micro fund will provide seed funding to startups in Europe that make use of Twilio’s cloud communications APIs.

PRESS RELEASE

Twilio and 500 Startups Announce Twilio Fund Europe 2013

New micro-fund focuses on seed funding for European startups who use Twilio

LONDON, March 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – Twilio (http://www.twilio.com), the cloud communications company, and 500 Startups, today announced Twilio Fund Europe 2013, a new micro-fund for Twilio powered startups from Europe and surrounding countries. In addition, the 2012 Twilio Fund finalists have been announced, closing out last year’s fund.

(Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121016/SF94172LOGO)

The new Twilio Fund Europe, announced today on stage at London Web Summit 2013 by CEO Jeff Lawson, will provide seed funding to startups throughout Europe making use of Twilio’s cloud communication web service APIs. As with the original US-based fund, Twilio Fund Europe will be managed by 500 Startups (http://500.co/) founding partner Dave McClure, an investor with experience managing platform funds. McClure previously managed the 2009 fbFUND Rev on behalf of Facebook, Accel Partners, and Founders Fund.

“I’m being Captain Obvious to say that that there is incredible innovation happening in Europe. Entrepreneurs in those countries often have limited access to venture capital,” said Dave McClure, founder 500 Startups. “We’re already investing actively all around the world, Europe included. So we’re pumped to be continuing with Twilio Fund Europe.”

In addition to the upfront investment from 500 Startups, successful applicant companies will also receive free Twilio credits to be used as they see fit, as well as an all expenses paid trip to San Francisco to feature at Twilio’s own annual conference, TwilioCon. Supported startups will also benefit from publicity support via Twilio’s PR and Marketing.

“It is our pleasure to continue to work with 500 Startups on the Twilio Fund,” said Twilio CEO and Co-founder Jeff Lawson. “We are very enthusiastic about the level of quality we see among European entrepreneurs. We can’t wait to see what they build.”

Companies eligible for Twilio Fund Europe will be either building or about to launch a product or service powered by Twilio’s web service APIs. They must be privately held, less than five years old, and have to date received less than $1m in funding.

Twilio Fund has made over a dozen investments to date, including the 2012 finalists, announced Wednesday on the Twilio blog;Babelverse, Call Loop, Healthsouk, Sessions, and Wedgies. Previous recipients include TalkDesk, Mobonics, FastCall, Magnolia Prime, OrderMapper, Turnstar. Twilio Fund is a microfund created by 500 Startups and launched in September 2010 to provide seed capital to startups built on the Twilio cloud communications platform.

500 Startups and Twilio will be looking for applicants that display a combination of talent, innovation and creative use of the Twilio API. Submission criteria will include:
•    Founder experience and background
•    Early market traction
•    Innovative use cases targeting real issues in its respective industries
•    Creative application of the Twilio API and platform

From today, aspiring startups are invited to apply for Twilio Fund Europe 2013 through the following form. Submissions are due by 07:59 CET / 06:59 GMT 1st May, 2013: http://www.twiliofund.com/apply-to-twilio-fund/

About 500 Startups
500 Startups is a global seed fund and mentorship-driven startup accelerator program that focuses on helping startups succeed through usable design, customer-focused metrics, and scalable distribution. 500 Startups is based in Mountain View, California, but their portfolio companies, mentors, and advisors come from all around the world. Learn more at 500.co.

About Twilio
Twilio (www.twilio.com), the cloud communications company, is reinventing telecom by merging the worlds of cloud computing, web services and telecommunications. Twilio provides a telephony infrastructure web service in the cloud, allowing web developers to integrate phone calls, text messages and IP voice communications into their web, mobile and traditional phone applications. The company is privately held and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

 

The post 500 Startups’ McClure To Manage Twilio European Fund appeared first on peHUB.

In the ongoing legal battle between Apple and Samsung, the latest blow from Judge Lucy Koh has landed squarely on Apple this time. Judge Koh released a ruling today that has at least temporarily reduced the original $1.05 billion award to almost $599 million. Judge Koh’s ruling indicates “the Court identified an impermissible legal theory on which the jury based its award.” Koh has ordered a new trial relative to determining the correct amount due in place of the amounts she disallowed.

Koh indicated in her latest ruling that there were two main errors related to the calculation of damages. First, the jury based damages for infringement of utility patents on Samsung’s sales. This method is only used when design patents are infringed, not utility patents. The second error involved the time frame for calculating the award. The jury used a date of August 24, 2010 based on a meeting held that day between Samsung and Apple when Apple informed Samsung that they thought they were infringing Apple’s ’381 “scrollback” patent. However, a full list of all intellectual property Apple believed was being infringed upon was not provided until April 15, 2011 when Apple filed their complaint. The issue was muddied just a bit more when Apple added additional devices to their list on June 16, 2011. The jury should have only awarded damages for sales that occurred after Apple had informed Samsung of the specific violations it was claiming existed.

Samsung had asked Koh to calculate new damages herself based on these errors. However, she declined to do so citing an inability to determine the jury’s intent and process in assessing damages. Koh has suggested to the two sides that they wait for the appeals process related to the rulings of infringement to complete before filing for the new trial on damages. Koh also agreed with Apple that Samsung had sold some devices after the end of the trial that should be included in the damages calculations. It is unclear whether Apple will be able to win damages anywhere close to the original $450 million wiped out by this latest ruling.

Anyone need to refill their popcorn?

source: The Verge

Come comment on this article: Samsung strikes blow in big trial with Apple, damages reduced by 43% to $599 million

Following the seemingly tepid launch of Windows 8, critics were told to wait until after the holiday shopping season was over to properly assess Microsoft’s (MSFT) newest operating system. The latest monthly numbers from analytics firm Net Applications are in and Windows 8 usage remains low. After two months into the new year, the operating system only accounts for 2.67% of web traffic, a small increase from 2.36% in January. Windows 8 continues to lag behind Windows Vista (5.17%), Windows XP (38.99%) and Windows 7 (44.55%). Last month also marked the end of Microsoft’s deep discount on Windows 8. The operating system now costs a whopping $119.99, making it even more difficult for the company to entice consumers to upgrade.

Remember earlier this week when that awesome physicist with that awesome mustache built that incredibly complicated machine to separate the Oreo cookie from the Oreo creme? Because he hated the creme?

Well, these two guys did the same thing, in a different (and cooler) way. And at least one of them is sensible enough to appreciate the creme.

[Oreo]

In an extraordinary finale for TED2013, Eric Whitacre stages a type of performance that has never been seen before, with a choir assembled to sing his composition, “Cloudburst.” It’s not just any choir. He’s joined on stage by 100 live singers formed from choirs from California State University, Long Beach Campus, California State University, Fullerton Campus, and Riverside City College. That’s been done before. He is also joined, via Skype, by 32 singers from 32 different countries connecting from their homes.

Whitacre is famous for his Virtual Choir, and the follow-up, shown first on stage at TED. But no one has ever attempted to put a live choir together with a virtual one. In part this is because of the latency issues of the connection. It’s less than a second, but in singing that is still a potentially huge problem. So, he adapted “Cloudburst,” one of his earliest pieces, to embrace that latency.

The effect is stunning. We listen to this amazing piece, aware of the vast connection enabled by the Internet.