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The indoor location market is heating up nicely, as various players in the mobile industry start to contemplate the marketing potential of mapping the places where GPS doesn’t help. But it’s still a young market, with room for new entrants with bright ideas.

The Austrian startup indoo.rs, which has just picked up an undisclosed high six-figure seed round, may be one such company. Very much a technology rather than marketing firm, indoo.rs is developing a platform that it hopes will be picked up by silicon vendors and handset manufacturers. Apart from locating the user based on nearby Wi-Fi and cellular signals – as Google does, for instance — the indoo.rs platform also draws on other data sources such as the handset’s accelerometer, gyroscope, barometer and compass to improve accuracy.

If that reminds you of what Qualcomm is trying to do with its IZat platform, you’re right to pick up on the similarity, only Qualcomm is hardwiring its technology into its mobile processors. Indoo.rs is taking the software angle.

Indoo.rs business development chief Marcel van der Heijden — who joined the team from investors SpeedInvest (the other backers are tecnet equity and Techinvest) — freely admitted to me that the IZat hardware approach has its advantages, particularly in terms of speed and power efficiency. However, he suggested that the software angle provided hardware independence and greater release flexibility.

What’s more, he pointed out, IZat is supported by around 12 percent of today’s Android devices, while indoo.rs’s software development kit (SDK) can target 95 percent.

So what are we looking at here, anyway? Indoo.rs’s platform has three elements. The first is a client SDK for Android devices, allowing developers to build indoor navigation capabilities into their apps – a conference organizer might use this in their show-floor app, for example.

The second is a measurement tool, for Windows and Linux, that makes it possible to import maps of a venue, annotate the map with physical features such as walls and staircases, define zones and then measure Wi-Fi “fingerprints” throughout the location. The final piece is the cloud-based back-end, which matches the user’s surroundings with a predefined map.

The hard work here is in balancing all the variables that go into accurate positioning: not only the quality of the Wi-Fi and cellular networks that are involved, but also the quality of the sensors in the handset. If indoo.rs is to succeed, it will need to produce superior algorithms.

Whether that happens remains to be seen. Qualcomm may have a lot of heft behind it, but indoo.rs isn’t going up against Qualcomm as such – indeed, it would probably quite like to gain it as a customer for its IP. In the meantime, the Austrian startup is busy joining the ARM Connected Community and, soon, the In-Location Alliance, so it’s connecting with the right people.

This story was updated at 1:30pm to correct the spelling of indoo.rs’s name.

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The team behind CyanogenMod 10.1 announced a new camera feature for “(almost) everyone” running the popular custom Android distribution on their smartphone or tablet — support for HDR mode.

The CyanogenMod 10.1 implementation for HDR mode “captures multiple pictures, and then renders them together to form one HDR image”, similar to the functionality currently available on the LG-made Google Nexus 4. The software snaps three photos, at minimal, neutral and maximum exposure, and displays a single image at the end of the process, through “some fancy algorithms”.

The developers behind CyanogenMod 10.1 warn that results using HDR mode may vary depending on the physical camera module and may deliver “some oddities” due to the software rendering. As a result it is recommended to hold the device steady, by using a tripod or stand, for the best possible results.

Likewise, snapping pics of moving targets will not be of the highest possible quality, more so on devices with slow camera shutters. Same goes for long capture times, which also result in photos of inadequate quality. That said, this should not effect Android smartphones and tablets with zero shutter lag cameras and “decent sensor and optics”.

Even though the software snaps three pictures the user will only see the final result, with the in-between shots being deleted. On older devices, such as Samsung Galaxy S, using HDR mode will result in an out-of memory type of error, which the team behind CyanogenMod 10.1 says will be fixed in an upcoming release.

CyanogenMod 10.1 nightly builds are available to download from CyanogenMod Downloads page.

Photo Credit: Imageman/Shutterstock

Comcast opened Upware, an app store featuring nine services for its small and mid-sized business customers on Wednesday. The app store isn’t a new idea, but it’s one that will bring in a new line of revenue for the ISP and serve one of its fastest growing customer bases.

Comcast’s business services brought in $2.4 billion in 2012, up 34 percent from the previous year. That’s only 6 percent of the company’s cable sales, but it’s growing at almost 6 times the pace of total sales. And those customers were asking Comcast for choices on document storage, security and other resources, which led to the ISP building Upware.

While spokesman Charlie Douglas declined to give specific financial details associated with the app store, he did say it would be a revenue-generating service for Comcast. It will also be great for the partners who will have their services listed for Comcast’s business customers. Those companies so far include:

• Data Backup – Carbonite, DigitalSafe and Mozy.
• Data Security – Norton and Websense.
• Collaboration – Box, Microsoft, Soonr and YouSendIt (see disclosure.)

This is a good example of how a service provider can add value for its end users — value that it can monetize beyond a monthly broadband fee. Comcast has been pretty aggressive about adding connected home products on the residential side as well as beefing up it’s pay TV service to compete more with web-based on-demand services.

Disclosure: YouSendIt is backed by Alloy Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media.

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Third in a series. For Valentine’s Day, Wayne Williams and I explained why we love Kindle and Surface Pro, respectively. We’ve decided to extend the concept into an ongoing series, which I continue about Chromebook and in many more ways Chrome OS.

My Chromebook journey began in December 2010 when Google dispatched 60,000 Cr-48 test units. I used the computer as my primary PC for a week, but no more, being a concept. But, then, my 11.6-inch MacBook Air failed in March 2011, and I reverted back to the Cr-48 during the emergency. In June 2011, Samsung released the Series 5 Chromebook, which I used as my only PC for two solid months. But performance couldn’t meet my needs — that is until the successor, the 550, launched in May 2011. I abandoned MacBook Air and didn’t look back. Performance and features met my needs. I traded performance for better ergonomics when switching to the ARM-based Series 3 Chromebook in October.

Life Changing

Five months ago, I explained how “Chromebook changed my life“. For example, I went from relying on software running locally to that consumed in a browser connected to some service’s data center. I’ve used desktop software my entire computing life. Letting go concepts that cloud services couldn’t be enough proved challenging at first. My preconceptions limited how rapidly I received cloud benefits. But I found most of the web apps I needed, even for tasks like photo-editing, which surprised me.

Often these apps performed better than those run locally, which is contrary thinking — or to me. But it makes sense really. Distant datacenter does the heavy-lifting rather than the local computer, which is a major reason Chromebooks are so underpowered compared to Windows PCs or Macs. Consider the specs of the ARM Chromebook to the MacBook Air I sold last year.

Series 3 Chromebook: 1.7GHz Samsung Exynos 5250 dual-core processor (ARM); 11.6-inch matte display, 1366 x 768 resolution, 200-nit brightness; 2GB RAM; 16GB SSD; SD-card slot; Webcam; USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports (one each); WiFi A/N; Bluetooth 3.0 compatible; HDMI port; Chrome OS.

MacBook Air: 1.8GHz Intel Core i7 processor; 11.6-inch glossy display (1366 x 768 resolution); 256GB flash memory; Intel HD graphics; 4GB SDRAM; webcam; two USB ports; Thuderbolt port; WiFi N; Bluetooth 4.0; iLife ’11; and OS X.

Performance is not comparable, although size and ergonomics are. I initially moved from the Mac to the 550 Chromebook and found them to feel similarly speedy and responsive — that with 1.3GHz Intel Celeron 867 dual-core processor and 4GB of RAM. I recently switched back to the 550, because the Series 3 isn’t speedy enough for my needs.

My Chromebook Life

Chromebook is really about Chrome OS. The major benefits are about software and supporting services. For me what matters:

1. Sync changes everything. In March 2008 I asserted: “Synchronization is today’s killer application.” I warned: “Should Google get synchronization right before Microsoft, it would be game over. Google would be able to extend the relevancy of the Web platform back to the desktop on its terms — think invading army — and across many devices or services”. Google sync is that good now, and automatic, Chrome to Chrome OS and also from Android. Chrome OS syncs tabs, web apps and other stuff from Google’s cloud. That’s it. Because of Chrome sync, the experience follows me to other computers or should I switch Chomebooks.

2. Setup is so-o-o easy. Log into Google account. That’s it. When switching Chromebooks, settings immediately sync and migrate. Apps and desktop used on one follow to another — or from Mac or Windows PC if using Chrome. Setup is that simple and maintenance about equally.

3. Computer gets better with age. Google dispatches new Chrome OS versions, with new features, about every two months and most content automatically saves to the cloud. My Chromebook is better today than it was last week. I can’t complain about that. By comparison, Apple or Microsoft make me wait years to get new features.

4. Lifestyle is amazing. Since Larry Page took Google’s CEO reigns 22 months ago, the company has dramatically increased cross-integration of products and services around the browser as hub, and that means Chrome OS, too. Right now I live a fulfilling digital lifestyle because content, services and social click so well. Integration is tight and satisfying.

5. Value is huge. Consider the Series 3 Chromebook, which sells for $249. Size and ergonomics are similar to $999 MacBook Air. I can outfit the whole family (four of us, including mom) for the cost of the Apple laptop. Google and its partners provide a good-enough experience that satisfies for the money spent. MacBook Air offers more options, for sure, but for four times the price.

Easy is the best way to describe any Chromebook, from setup to ongoing management to daily use. If you can navigate a browser, you can use Chrome OS and content and settings follow you from device to device. The computer is by no means perfect, just more than good enough for my particular computing needs, which is why I love Chromebook.

I can only hope that rumors about Google-designed Pixel Chromebook are true. There’s love, and then there’s true love.

Photo Credit: Joe Wilcox

I have never seen anybody become good at strategy without practice. It may happen, but I have never seen it. I doubt that I will see it, because strategy is a discipline. Like any discipline, you have to believe in it and work at it to become skilled; both mindset and effort are required to make progress and become adept at the strategy.

The key to the strategy mindset is to view business life as not entirely random; stochastic but not random. While it may be absolutely necessary to revisit and revise choices more often than convenient, the assumption holds that effortful, determined, revisable strategy is better than simply letting happen whatever will happen.

By far the easiest thing to do is to see the future as so unpredictable and uncertain that you should keep all your options open and avoid choice-making entirely. The irony, of course, is that not choosing is every bit as much a choice, and every bit as impactful, as choosing to choose.

There is a bit of F. Scott Fitzgerald here: He wrote that “one should… be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.” Businesses will evolve and change in ways that make last month’s or last year’s investment decisions look stupid. It will happen, no matter who you are and how smart you are. It happened to Warren Buffett with Salomon Brothers, Dexter Shoes, U.S. Airways and Conoco. But those are anomalies among the countless other bets that worked out largely as he thought they would. The mindset of a strategist is to hold that just because some bets turn out to be wrong doesn’t mean that the future is entirely unpredictable.

If the first necessary element to being an accomplished strategist is belief, the second is work, work, and work some more. This means making strategy choices, seeing how they work out, and then learning from them. Strategy is part art and part science; a heuristic, not an algorithm. As with most heuristics, you can learn the categories to think about: pay attention to customers, to competitors, to capabilities, to elements of industry evolution. But there isn’t a learnable formula about how to put them together in any given choice context.

That is what requires practice — and the form of that practice is really important. In golf, you might feel that going to the driving range and hitting a thousand balls is inherently good practice. It isn’t, though, if all you do is go up to the tee, pound the ball as hard as you can, and see whether it went straight and far. If some shots were great and others not so much, what did you learn? Just about nothing, unless you thought in advance about what you were trying to do and what you would pay attention to (e.g. head stillness, hip turn, hands leading, etc.). And still, in golf, you probably need a swing coach to watch what you actually do, versus what you hope you are doing, in order to learn something useful.

In strategy, helpful practice means setting out your logic about a choice in advance — e.g., I think consumers will react in this way, competitors will react that way, we will be able to deliver this and we achieve this outcome — and then watching what actually happens against this predicted logic. This is the only way you will learn; the only way you will figure out whether your logic was entirely sound or flawed in some way.

And when I say setting out your logic, I mean actually writing it down in advance, not just thinking it through. That is important because of our human capacity for ex-post rationalizing absolutely anything and everything. If you don’t write down in advance what your logic was, you will find that you will convince yourself that everything worked out the way you thought it would — and you will learn nothing. In golf, your swing coach can keep you honest — no, you didn’t lead with your hands through impact. But in strategy, you need to keep yourself honest.

Of course, you can’t ever eliminate chance. You may have made a bet that was a sound one, but didn’t pay off this time because you were unlucky. Perhaps the bet had an 80% chance of paying off, and you fell prey to the 20%. That is why lots of practice and experience is required — it builds up your repertoire of bet analysis and observation. And so the more you practice, the less exposed to chance you’ll be — though it never quite goes away.

Bottom line: If you believe that you can succeed more often than not in dealing with the inherent uncertainty of the future and you practice at laying out your logic, making strategic choices and assessing the outcomes, you will become an accomplished strategist.

There are lies, damned lies, and the arguments the cable industry makes about broadband caps. As more ISPs cap their broadband service, more questions are raised about the practice, which has put cable providers on the defensive.

In the last month, cable companies have switched from justifying their caps as a means to handle congestion — or bandwidth hogs — and are now saying it’s about recovering the billions invested in their network. In January the NCTA president (and former FCC Chairman Michael Powell) said when asked about caps as a means of controlling congestion: “That’s wrong. Our principal purpose is how to fairly monetize a high fixed cost.”

After the FCC has decided to take a half-hearted interest in caps and users and industry participants questioned the accuracy of how such caps are measured and the implemented, the cable industry is changing its justification for their policies. The problem is that its latest justification is just as false as its previous one.

The fixed costs to deliver broadband are refuted by the high profit margins broadband delivers to cable firms, the fact that upgrades to higher speeds costs relatively little and that most of the infrastructure cable providers built is already paid for.

The Open Technology Institute, a policy group that, yes, takes money from Google, has released a report attempting to quell this line of argument form the cable industry. Data points cited in the report include the ever popular fact that cablecos get 95-97 percent profit margins on their broadband services, that the billions invested in their networks in the early 2000s were to compete with new pay TV products from the telcos and the satellite broadcasters, and that adding broadband to existing cable infrastructure costs very little.

To back up that last claim check back to Cablevision’s comments to Wall Street that upgrading to DOCSIS 3.0 which provided faster upload and download speeds, were $70 per home (Cablevision doesn’t have a cap.) Other analysts pegged that number at about $100.

From the report:

Yes, cable companies and others have invested billions in building networks, but they have received more than healthy returns on those investments for several decades. According to analyst estimates listed on the NCTA website, cable companies invested over $185 billion in capital expenditures between 1996 and 2011. But these networks generated close to $1 trillion in revenue in the same time period. Moreover, both Comcast and Time Warner Cable are now spending less on capital expenses relative to revenue than in past years.

I’m not actually against the 95 percent profit margins or even caps if the market for broadband were competitive. Unfortunately, when more than thee-quarters of American homes have the choice between only two providers it’s clear that competition for the basic broadband service is limited. And when you look at how competitive the services are based on speeds there are big differences. For example, AT&T U-Verse tops out at 24 Mbps on the download side while cable tops out at 50 Mbps or even 100 Mbps.

But as someone who has documented legitimate questions about caps; their size, their spread, their rationale and their effect on innovation, I’m hoping that more and more consumers, lawmakers and regulators wake up to the fact that these caps aren’t necessary and that they pose a tax on innovation.

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First Lady Michelle Obama is bringing her healthy-eating and fitness message to Google+.

Google has just announced that the FLOTUS will be the next member of the White House team to host a Google+ Hangout, cleverly dubbed as “Fireside Hangouts.”

In the last few weeks, both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have participated in their own Hangouts. The President’s occurred a few days after his State of the Union Address and Biden’s was all about guns.

“Three years ago, the First Lady launched the Let’s Move! initiative to unite the country around our kids’ health and create real support for families to live healthier lives. Since then communities across the United States have worked together to share, collaborate on and create ways to improve the health of our nation’s children. This year, the First Lady is using Google+ to celebrate the anniversary of Let’s Move! and to connect with communities on Google+ who are passionate about healthy eating, fitness and parenting,” says Google.

The Hangout will take place on March 4th at 11:10am ET. She’ll be joined in the Hangout by Kelly Ripa.

If you want to be one of the one’s asking the FLOTUS questions during the Hangout, you can submit your ideas to the Let’s Move YouTube Channel by February 28th.

For more info on her Let’s Move campaign, check here.

Twitter has announced the official launch of the Twitter Ads API after testing it with partners since January. The first five partners include: Adobe, HootSuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital.

“Since we launched Promoted Tweets in April 2010, marketers have come to Twitter to reach new audiences and engage with more than 200 million active Twitter users on the web, on mobile devices, and on tablets,” says Twitter revenue product manager April Underwood. “As interest in Twitter has grown, our focus has been on delivering better ads for users, not more ads. We believe our system is working well because users like the ads experience on Twitter. Our system rewards marketers for being good, not for being loud. And this approach encourages ads that are engaging, relevant and useful.”

“Towards this goal, we’re always working on ways to make it easier to manage campaigns and get more value out of advertising with us,” she adds. “One important step is to enable a diverse group of companies that can integrate seamlessly with our ads platform.”

Twitter says marketers will be able to work with Twitter’s set of partners to manage Twitter Ad campaigns and integrate them into cross-channel advertising strategies.

“Equally important, users will continue to see the most relevant Promoted Tweets from advertisers,” notes Underwood. “With the Ads API, marketers now have more tools in their arsenal to help them deliver the right message, to the right audience, on the desktop and on mobile devices — all at scale.”

You can apply to join the partner program here.

Twitter says that in the coming months it will also start certifying ads products that integrate with the API, and that this is just the start of its efforts in this realm.

Red Hat is getting into the big data act more deeply, announcing on Wednesday that it’s open sourcing its Red Hat Storage Hadoop plugin as an alternative to the Hadoop Distributed File System. The plugin, which the company expects to release to the Apache Software Foundation some time this year, is based on the Gluster File System technology Red Hat acquired when it bought Gluster for $136 million in 2011. Red Hat has already incorporated Gluster’s technology into its Red Hat Storage Server product.

According to a press release announcing the news

“Red Hat Storage brings enterprise-class features to big data environments, such as Geo replication, High Availability, POSIX compliance, disaster recovery, and management, without compromising API compatibility and data locality. Customers now have a unified data and scale out storage software platform to accommodate files and objects deployed across physical, virtual, public and hybrid cloud resources.”

Because it’s fully distributed, Red Hat’s file system does away with the NameNode that keeps track of data in most Hadoop clusters and can be both a bottleneck and a single point of failure. (Although, the Hadoop community has mitigated some of these concerns with Apache Hadoop 2.0 (as has Facebook with its own engineering effort called AvatarNode).) Red Hat has also combined its storage and virtualization technologies so anyone using both can have virtual pool of storage and compute resources residing on the same physical infrastructure.

Red Hat isn’t the only company or organization trying eliminate problems associated with HDFS or to improve its utility to large enterprises and/or webscale companies. Companies such EMC, NetApp and others are offering their own alternatives, and Quantcast actually built and open sourced its own version of HDFS called the Quantcast File System. As we’ll be discussing at Structure: Data next month, Hadoop’s future prospects will be determined by how applicable it is to the workloads companies want to run, and some of the HDFS alternatives might represent solid options for enterprise workloads until Apache Hadoop can catch up.

Of course, Red Hat being Red Hat, Wednesday’s news isn’t all about big data. The company makes it pretty clear that it expects its Hadoop efforts to be part of a broader cloud computing push, in which companies can run their applications in big data environments that span private and public resources, including OpenStack and the Amazon Web Services clouds.

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For many, myself included, the switch from iPhone to Android was a mostly painless one. The setup process was a bit of a pain, but after that everything ran pretty smoothly. If one of my iPhone apps wasn’t available, a reasonable facsimile was.

Yet there is one thing that has continually bothered me throughout my Android experience: the keyboard. While people lament the iPhone’s autocorrect tendencies, the iOS system fit much better with my typing style than any of the available Android keyboards. Four months after switching back to Android I realize this isn’t just an iOS-ingrained typing habit. It’s just the way I type.

When I first switch people suggested SwiftKey as a solution. I’d tried an early version for Android, but didn’t like it. Perhaps the new version would provide the necessary improvements. I was elated to see one of the preferences during setup: I type fast and rely on autocorrect. Perfect.

Except it wasn’t. SwiftKey didn’t quite autocorrect the way I’d wanted. Sometimes it wouldn’t autocorrect at all. Other times it would autocorrect the dumbest things — it would routinely change “have” to “Havre,” even though I’ve never typed the latter word. Frustrated, I declined to pay for SwiftKey after the trial expired.

Today SwiftKey announced SwiftKey 4, which advertises many improvements over previous versions. Included in the improvements are autocorrect, predictions, corrections, and better adaptations. Best yet, they reduced the price from $3.99 to $1.99 for a limited time.

While I didn’t like SwiftKey 3, $2 is barely a drop in the bucket if the app makes a significant difference. I dropped the cash, and immediately set up SwiftKey. After going through the options and personalizing it, I started typing a bit. It’s been only an hour or so, but I’m happy to report that SwiftKey 4 is quite a good keyboard for Android users who switched form iPhone and like that autocorrect system better. In fact, I think that given some more time, SwiftKey 4 will prove more valuable than the iPhone keyboard by a significant margin.

There are other features, too, such as Flow, which acts in a Swype-like manner, allowing you to create words, and even sentences, without lifting your finger from the keyboard. That will take some more time, and could be a great feature if I had the desire to learn it. Bit the best part is that I don’t have to. The normal SwiftKey keyboard has grown to the point where it is bar none the best keyboard experience on Android.

At $1.99 it’s worth a shot if you’re frustrated with other Android keyboard solutions, including previous SwiftKey builds. You can get SwiftKey 4 from Google Play.

The post SwiftKey 4 Brings the Best Android Keyboard Experience appeared first on MobileMoo.

There’s really no one way to describe what hot-rodding is to people. Some perceive it as a bunch of guys that roll around in shitty old cars trying to look cool. Others view the hobby as one that brings out the best of your automotive imagination. Whatever group you fall into though, rest assured that most true hot-rodders could give a shit what you think and simply roll to their own tune. Flake & Flames is an upcoming documentary that explores rods in general and gives us all a little insight into why the custom car culture is one of the greatest hobbies to be associated with. Click through and check it out.

As protests roll through India, calling for punishment of six men who brutally gang raped a 23-year-old woman on a public bus in December with fatal results, TED Fellow Shalini Kantayya has written a powerful op-ed for The New York Times detailing her own sexual assault in India. Kantayya shares that event was traumatizing — a fact multiplied by the shocking indifference she received from both American and Indian authorities as she sought justice.

Kantayya was in India, filming a documentary about political street theater, years ago. She awoke one night in her hotel room to find a man holding her down on her bed, his hands violently over her mouth. She recognized the man as the waiter who had served her dinner that night in the hotel restaurant.

“I was biting and kicking, using every ounce of my energy to fight for my life. My mouth was badly bleeding and in the struggle we fell to the floor,” writes Kantayya. “He picked up his lungi and said, ‘I’ll leave. Don’t tell the manager.’ Then he ran out and shut the door. Did he really think he could try and rape me in my sleep, without protest and that I wouldn’t tell? Yes. He did. He counted on the fact that he lived in a culture that blamed the victim — that the stigma associated with sexual assault would force a woman to keep quiet. And although I had escaped the worst-case scenario, and prevented a rape, the nightmare was far from over.”

As Kantayya writes, no one responded to her complaints — not the hotel, nor the police, nor American authorities. The incident haunted her for years. She suffered from deep depression and was eventually diagnosed with PTSD.

Writes Kantayya, “The recent gang rapes in India are a reminder to all of us that the rapists are not the only persons who are guilty. The onlookers, the institutions that turn a blind eye, and fail to implement comprehensive policies to address sexual assault are complicit in the violence. When these crimes are swept under the carpet, it perpetuates a culture of silence.”

At TED2013, speaker Lakshmi Pratury will also share her effort to break this culture of silence, with her project Billionaires of Moments. This website — also on Facebook — aims to “pay homage to the young rape victim from Delhi.” It is an open forum for people to post their reactions to the brutal crime, share interesting articles and resources, and have their own stories heard. Pratury’s website went live just yesterday and already has a long scroll of entries — from women and outraged men, alike.

Stay tuned to the TED Blog for coverage of Pratury’s talk on Thursday, February 28 — as well as all the talks from TED2013.

San Francisco-based startup Fenix International, which makes a battery product that can charge cell phones and run lights in off-the-grid regions, has scored its largest deal to date with Vodafone in Tanzania. The telecom giant will sell Fenix’s ReadySet charger and its accompanying charging accessories in Tanzania, market the products via billboards and television spots in the region, and also create a fund to make loans to women entrepreneurs so they can buy the product.

The deal has nothing to do with charity. Vodafone sees a major opportunity in getting more electricity — in whatever form — to its customers in areas like Tanzania that have a large percentage of the population living off the grid. More electricity means more cell phone use. There are 46 million people in Tanzania and only 14 percent of them have access to grid power — the rest of them use a combination of car batteries and diesel generators when they need access to power. Vodafone has about 10 million subscribers in Tanzania.

Fenix’s ReadySet battery can be sold with a solar panel charger as well as a bicycle charger (riding the bike in stationary mode charges the battery), and the simple design of the battery is what makes it so accessible to customers. Users can charge cell phones and plug in lights using basic connectors like USB and car lighter ports. (Check out Kevin Tofel’s review of the ReadySet).

The device costs around $200, which is a relatively high price for that area. But the people who will buy the ReadySets are mostly entrepreneurs in villages that will use the battery to sell cell phone charging services and charge their shops after it gets dark. Entrepreneurs can make $40 to $50 per month from offering cell phone charging services.

Vodafone is already working with these types of entrepreneurs on other services. Vodafone created a mobile payment system called M-Pesa, where people can exchange cell phones minutes for goods and services. There are 4.5 million people in Tanzania using the M-Pesa service, and there are 40,000 agents that operate as M-Pesa entrepreneurs (like human ATMs with cell phone minutes).

It’s these 40,000 M-Pesa entrepreneurs that Vodafone thinks will be particularly attracted to ReadySets. With reliable off-grid power, these local business people can keep their phones charged longer — and provide more mobile banking services — and also they can start selling cell phone charging as well. Vodafone said that in a pilot in Tanzania with the ReadySets, it saw 14 percent more average revenue per user across the M-Pesa system, because more people’s phones were charged to receive and give money.

Scoring a deal with Vodafone is a game changer for Fenix. Vodafone has some 400 million subscribers globally, and 100 million of those are off-grid customers. Globally 1.3 billion people live off-grid, and 600 million of those are cell phone subscribers. Fenix also is working with MTN, the largest telco in Africa with 180 million subscribers.

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Capcom this week released the first real DLC for its Devil May Cry (DmC) reboot. Titled “Bloody Palace,” the extra content includes the popular Bloody Palace Mode in which players can battle through over 100 levels against progressively harder enemies. The content is free, aside from some optional weapon packs that also went on sale this week for $1 or 80 MIcrosoft Points each. The launch preview for the add-on, which includes plenty of gameplay footage, can be seen below.

Today’s real news, though, is that Capcom has finally put a date to the first story-based DLC for DmC. The “Vergil’s Downfall” DLC will be released on March 5 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. The add-on will cost $9, but is free for players who pre-ordered DmC at GameStop.

“Vergil’s Downfall” will feature a new campaign starring Datne’s brother, Vergil. The content will include new locations, enemies, move sets, and weapons.

The Powerball jackpot is currently at $70 million, as nobody won the jackpot prize on Saturday. The last jackpot winner came from Virginia earlier this month, when the jackpot was up to $217 million. That ticket was sold in Richmond, and represented the biggest single prize won since the record $588 million prize in Novmeber, which was split between two tickets.

The winning numbers in this past Saturday’s drawing were: 15, 16, 46, 50, 58, Powerball: 29.

There was a winner in Louisiana for the $2 million Match 5 Power Play prize, and winners in Missouri and New York for the $1 million Match 5 prize.

For Saturday’s drawing, there were a total of 467,639 winners, winning non-jackpot prizes totaling $7,039,727.

Odds of winning the jackpot, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association, are 1 in 175,223,510.

The next drawing is Wednesday night.

Here’s what people are saying on Twitter:

@iambklj if we make it through today we deserve to win the powerball so we won’t have to do this again

— Svetlana Alyssa (@LaVieEstLaVie) February 20, 2013

Somebody give me 6 numbers to play for the powerball tonight…I’m sharing proceeds

— D L Fisher (@MystereeFlowTC) February 20, 2013

I spend 99% of this lab day dreaming about what id do if i hit the powerball

— Alec Pander (@panderbear5) February 20, 2013

Hmmm… I want to win the Lotto or Powerball. Worked when I said I want a new job and car… ☑ ☺ hehehe

— Charlene Human (@CharlieB246) February 20, 2013

Dear female friends, please provide Powerball #s: Sagittarius: Help is in the guise of female friend who will give solution to your problem.

— Sean O’Connor (@SeanpatOC) February 20, 2013

Buying my first #powerball ticket tonight. #feelinglucky

— Tyler Buecher (@gingersauce4u) February 20, 2013

If I win tonight’s $70 mil PowerBall jackpot I can finally buy that dream home and that full tank of gas I’ve always wanted.

— Paul Richardson (@RunningJoke) February 20, 2013

If I won powerball I wonder if I would buy all the things I say I would?

— Paul Hutchins (@DigitalGiraffe) February 20, 2013

The folks at WobbleWorks had an idea – a 3D printer reduced to the size of a pen that anybody can use. They went to Kickstarter to ask for $30,000 to fund the idea, and had already raised a little over $70,000 in a few hours. I predicted they would get about $300,000 over the course of a month, but the project has raised double that amount in just a day.

The 3Doodler has absolutely shattered its initial Kickstarter goal by raising over $500,000 in just a day. As of now, the project has 7,826 people pledging $692,878. Every single tier of 3Doodler, except for the $10,000 has sold out. The team at WobbleWorks have added another 5,000 pens available at either $75 or $99, but these are also going incredibly fast.

Here’s the latest update from the team:

The aim of this Kickstarter was to create a first run of 3Doodlers, set the foundations in place to scale from there, and create an early 3Doodler community. Well we’re about 30hours in and we’re pinching ourselves. We are honestly gobsmacked! 3Doodler has now raised over $500,000 and has more than 5,700 backers! Thank you all, each and every one of you.

We are now announcing a further run of 3Doodlers, and we have expanded the 3DOODLER backing level as well as the COLOR-TASTIC backing level. The main difference is that these new levels, while priced the same, will ship a month later than the previous levels. i.e. NOVEMBER 2013.

As we have mentioned in the Comments section of our campaign, we purposely chose a production partner that would allow us to start small and then scale up. That is exactly what is happening now. Can we still deliver the first run on time? Yes. Will the additional quantities slow things down or make things harder for us? No. In fact scale helps in this case, as long as we schedule production and delivery accordingly.

The success of the 3Doodler proves yet again that 3D printing is incredibly popular among consumers when the price is right. Sure, the 3Doodler isn’t technically a “3D printer,” but it’s a close approximation that has exceeded all of my, and I’m sure the inventors’, expectations.

I won’t be making another prediction for fear of looking foolish yet again, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it raised over a million before all of this is over. It’s already half-way there, and there’s still 32 days to go.

[h/t: The Verge]

Mario Lopez is all set to be a proud papa once more, announcing on “Extra” recently that he and wife Courtney are preparing to add to their family.

The couple already have a daughter, Gia, who is 2 years old and excited to become a big sister. The toddler appeared with Lopez when he made the announcement, wearing a “Big Sister” t-shirt.

“I am the happiest father in the world. We cannot wait to welcome baby Lopez number two into our lives,” Lopez said.

The announcement coincides with another big announcement released this week: Lopez has been invited back as co-host of “The X-Factor”, while Khloe Kardashian has not. The news comes after some viewers complained about the chemistry the pair had, saying Kardashian seemed uncomfortable and awkward onstage.

With 765,000+ followers, Rob Delaney is one of the most popular, retweetable, and absurd comedians on Twitter. He’s a writer and sometimes actor, but it’s Twitter where he’s made his biggest mark as a comedian. Often cited as one of the funniest people on Twitter, he’s one of the main comedians showing that Twitter can be used as a serious comedic platform.

Last night, he was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and it only made sense that Kimmel would do a segment that involved Delaney’s Twitter personality.

Presenting “Old People Read Rob Delaney’s Tweets”:

Square plans to sell a “Business in a Box” package that includes two Square Readers, an iPad stand, a cash drawer, and an optional receipt printer, it announced Wednesday. The items will all work together to allow business owners to accept credit card purchases, furthering the company’s mission of simplifying payments.

“Square Register serves as the full point-of-sale system for businesses to accept payments, track sales, and share item and location information,” the company wrote in the press release. “Historically, business owners were forced to piece together multiple hardware components from various manufacturers, manage complicated contracts and pricing structures, and pay for expensive software licensing and service plans. Now, they can be up and running with Square Register in minutes.”

The paperless package that includes just the Square Readers, iPad stand and cash drawer starts at $299, and the package that includes the receipt printer starts at $599. Full purchasing information is available on the company’s website.

Square has grown substantially as one of the companies attempting to bring credit card and mobile payments to small businesses, and in 2012 it grew its merchant base from 1 million to 3 million and its annualized processing rate — the total value of transactions processed through Square — from $2 billion to now $10 billion. It also signed a deal with Starbucks that will integrate Square payments into the coffee stores across the country.

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Apple’s most biggest and important manufacturing partner, Foxconn, is instituting a hiring freeze in its China factories until the end of March, but there are two different explanations for the move being offered. The Financial Times said it heard from unnamed Foxconn HR officials, recruiters and local government officials that it’s ceasing hiring “in response to reduced orders for the iPhone 5.” However, Foxconn told Bloomberg, in a separate interview, that the hiring freeze on new recruits has to do with the fact that more workers are returning.

The FT quotes an external recruiter for Foxconn’s factories who said hiring had stopped because of “fewer orders for the Apple products” and another who said “Foxconn’s demand for workers this year was as low as that in 2009.” A Foxconn spokesman only confirmed to the FT that the hiring freeze is on; he does not mention why.

Bloomberg got a different Foxconn spokesman to explain the reason for the freeze. He offered some more detail, saying: “Foxconn halted recruitment until the end of March after more employees returned from the Chinese New Year break than a year earlier.”

Apple’s investors either aren’t buying that explanation or are put off by the confusion surrounding the halt in hiring — Apple shares were down 1.61 percent to $452.60 on the news as of this posting.

This drop in need for more workers echoes reports published in January that demand for the iPhone 5 in the first three months of 2013 had dipped, causing Apple to cut its parts orders from suppliers in China.

It’s true that Apple has typically sold fewer iPhones in the quarter directly following the holiday season. Apple got the iPhone ready for sale in 100 markets between September and December, its fastest rollout ever, so the hiring halt could simply be a seasonal response.

Apple CEO Tim Cook last week at an investor conference said he sees plenty of growth left in the iPhone: “Frankly speaking, I see a wide open field. It may surprise you, but iPhone is only available to about 50 percent of the subscribers in the world.”

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