Kiran Upadhyay

LOS ANGELES—While Microsoft's pre-E3 press conference focused largely on newer video games, the event also filled in a pretty major gap for hardware-upgrading holdouts: backward compatibility. Starting later this year, the company's newest console, the Xbox One, will support a limited number of older Xbox 360 games—and Xbox One preview program users will get a shot even sooner than that. Gamers will have two ways of playing old games that are part of the backward-compatible initiative. If users already purchased the games digitally through Xbox Live, they can simply log in and re-download the game on Xbox One without paying any additional cost. If they own the game as a disc, they'll have to download the game to their Xbox One hard drive, and the system will then check for the disc before launching the game. Technical details on how this works are still unknown. The hardware of the Xbox 360 is very different from the hardware of the Xbox One, and pure emulation of th

As many as 600 million Samsung phones may be vulnerable to attacks that allow hackers to surreptitiously monitor the camera and microphone, read incoming and outgoing text messages, and install malicious apps, a security researcher said. The vulnerability is in the update mechanism for a Samsung-customized version of SwiftKey, available on the Samsung Galaxy S6, S5, and several other Galaxy models. When downloading updates, the Samsung devices don't encrypt the executable file, making it possible for attackers in a position to modify upstream traffic—such as those on the same Wi-Fi network—to replace the legitimate file with a malicious payload. The exploit was demonstrated Tuesday at the Blackhat security conference in London by Ryan Welton, a researcher with security firm NowSecure. A video of his exploit is here. Phones that come pre-installed with the Samsung IME keyboard, as the Samsung markets its customized version of SwiftKey, periodically query an authorized ser

Lavu, an Albuquerque-based startup that provides iPad-centric point of sale systems for restaurants, has raised $15 million in new funding led by Aldrich Capital Partners. Previously bootstrapped, Lavu has been profitable since its second month in operation, according to founder Andy Lim. The company charges a licensing fee (around $1k per POS terminal) and a recurring monthly fee determined by the size of the restaurant. Lim says that Lavu is currently being used by over 4,000 restaurants in 86 countries. Australia, Thailand, and Singapore are a few regions with especially high adoption. The $15 million will be used to ramp up sales and marketing efforts. “That’s what we lack; we don’t really do quite well in terms of sales and marketing… the investment is really to get those resources and connections to reach out to more of the big chains,” Lim says. By partnering with an international fast food chain, for example, Lavu would be able to scale its platform globally at a r

During testimony today in a grueling two-hour hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Katherine Archuleta claimed that she had recognized huge problems with the agency's computer security when she assumed her post 18 months ago. But when pressed on why systems had not been protected with encryption prior to the recent discovery of an intrusion that gave attackers access to sensitive data on millions of government employees and government contractors, she said, "It is not feasible to implement on networks that are too old." She added that the agency is now working to encrypt data within its networks. But even if the systems had been encrypted, it likely wouldn't have mattered. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity Dr. Andy Ozment testified that encryption would "not have helped in this case" because the attackers had gained valid user credentials to

During periods of chronic stress, we often up our caffeine consumption. This works better than you might expect—the increase can reduce some of the negative effects of long-term stress, including depression and memory deterioration. In a new study published in PNAS, researchers dug further into this finding, examining the signaling networks that caffeine influences within the brain. One of the proteins they identify is a potential treatment target for the symptoms of long-term stress. Chronic unpredictable stress alters neural circuits in the hippocampus. It dampens mood, reduces memory performance, and increases an individual’s susceptibility to depression. The researchers studied this phenomenon in mice by exposing them to chronic, unpredictable, long-term stress in a variety of forms: cage-tilting, damp sawdust, predator sounds, placement in an empty cage, switching cages, and inversion of day/night light cycles. Just like humans experiencing chronic stress, the mice showed weigh

The Federal Communications Commission today said it plans to fine AT&T $100 million for throttling the wireless Internet connections of customers with unlimited data plans without adequately notifying the customers about the reduced speeds. "The Commission charges AT&T with violating the 2010 Open Internet Transparency Rule by falsely labeling these plans as 'unlimited' and by failing to sufficiently inform customers of the maximum speed they would receive under the Maximum Bit Rate policy," the announcement said. The action isn't yet final. The FCC issued a Notice of Apparent Liability against AT&T that includes the proposed fine and provisions designed to bring AT&T into compliance with the commission's rules about making proper disclosures to customers. AT&T can ask the commission to reduce or eliminate the fine, which would be deposited into the US Treasury. But even if AT&T opposes the fine, the commission says the company

Researchers have uncovered huge holes in the application sandboxes protecting Apple's OS X and iOS operating systems, a discovery that allows them to create apps that pilfer iCloud, Gmail, and banking passwords and can also siphon data from 1Password, Evernote, and other apps. The malicious proof-of-concept apps were approved by the Apple Store, which requires all qualifying submissions to treat every other app as untrusted. Despite the supposed vetting by Apple engineers, the researchers' apps were able to bypass sandboxing protections that are supposed to prevent one app from accessing the credentials, contacts, and other resources belonging to another app. Like Linux, Android, Windows, and most other mainstream OSes, OS X and iOS strictly limit app access for the purpose of protecting them against malware. The success of the researchers' cross-app resource access—or XARA—attacks, raises troubling doubts about those assurances on the widely used Apple platforms. &q

You probably don’t always like/share/comment on the stuff that pops up in your Facebook feed, even if it’s something you care to see. Take, for example, a breaking news items about an earthquake on the other side of the world — you’d probably feel weird hitting a button labeled “Like” on that one, and you might not have anything to say… but that doesn’t mean you don’t care. Realizing this, Facebook is tweaking its algorithms to account for a new metric: the amount of time you spend looking at things in your feed, regardless of whether or not you actively interact with it. Scroll past something without stopping for long, and Facebook’s algorithms will slowly learn that you don’t particularly care for that sort of content. Camp out on a post for a bit, though, and Facebook starts the timer behind the scenes. If you spend more time on this story than you spend on most things in your feed — studying a picture, perusing the comment thread — they’ll take that as a signal that it’s

Your phone is about to get a lot more Fallout; Bethesda Softworks held its own E3 press event last night, wherein they revealed a lot about upcoming title Fallout 4, and launched a new Fallout dedicated mobile game called Fallout Shelter. True fans of the series will probably be most excited by in-game support in Fallout 4 for a real-world Pip-Boy, powered by your very own smartphone. A version of Fallout 4 called the “Fallout 4 Pip-Boy Edition” will ship on November 10, the same day the game is generally released, with a retail price of $120 and a package that includes a Pip-Boy replica, designed to actually be worn on your wrist. The replica has a slot suitable to accommodate a number of different kinds of smartphones thanks to included foam inserts to adjust sizing, and works with the Pip-Boy companion app that lets players actually manipulate their in-game inventory, character perks, holotapes and beyond. As far as second screen experiences go, this one sounds pretty damn am

Forget about your supermarket and buy directly from your local farmers and foodmakers. French startup La Ruche qui dit oui (also known as The Food Assembly in the U.K.) has been making waves in its home country for a while now. But it seems like international investors also got the word as Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures and Frédéric Court from Felix Capital are leading a $9 million Series B round (€8 million) in the food startup, with XAnge and Quadia also participating. This startup is fascinating for many reasons — La Ruche may have found the most efficient business model when it comes to building a food startup. “Last year, we launched in the U.K., Germany, Spain and Italy. This round means that we need to solidify our existing markets,” co-founder and CEO Marc-David Choukroun told me. “We need to go faster when it comes to our innovation power.” Here’s how La Ruche works. There are hundreds of ruches in many different places in France. You first need to find your loc

Fitbit went public this morning, soaring more than 50 percent at one moment. The wearables firm priced its equity at $20 per share. Early trading saw the shares crest the $30 mark. At the time of writing, Fitibit is currently trading for $29.60, a 48 percent gain. Regardless, the company is having the sort of debut that most startups dream of. It’s worth keeping in mind that Fitbit originally proposed a $14 to $16 share price for its flotation. As such, it’s even further ahead than some perhaps expected. This chart is the porn you were looking for: Originally, Fitbit filed for a $100 million public offering. That figure — often a placeholder — rose to $358 million, using its original share pricing. The company raised even more today. In short, whatever Fitbit had planned for that money it can do, and more.

AHHHHHHHH. I feel like I’ve been waiting years for this. The first real footage of Star Wars Battlefront — an EA-made sequel to the wonderful first person shooter of the same name that LucasArts (RIP) made back in 2004 — just dropped at E3. Unlike previously released footage (which was made with the game’s engine but all pre-rendered) this clip is said to be ripped straight from actual gameplay running on a PS4. I’m perhaps more excited about this than I am about The Force Awakens. Okay, probably not — but it’s close. For anyone who never played it, Battlefront is what happens when you take the Star Wars universe and smash it into a first person shooter with epic, 40-person multiplayer battles. Hoth! Flyable TIE fighters versus flyable X-Wings! AT-ATs versus snowspeeders! Lasers! THE LAAASEEEERS. Fans have been begging for a new Battlefront game for over a decade now — but, despite a number of attempts, LucasArts just couldn’t get one out the door. After LucasArts got

Amazon is apparently enlisting everyday humans in its network of endless online shopping delivery. The WSJ reports that the ecommerce giant is working on an app internally that would allow the average consumer to make a little cash by picking up Amazon packages at various retail locations and dropping them off at their final destination. WSJ’s sources did not have a timeline for the release of this product, internally called ‘On My Way,’ and were unsure whether it would launch at all. Amazon has spent years not only iterating the way it tailors your online shopping experience — the mega retailer has one of the best suggestion engines in the business — but also the way that it gets you your products with speed and convenience. Besides the standard shipping (or two-day for Prime members), Amazon has fiddled with the idea of letting Uber drivers and yellow cabs deliver products same-day, as well as using bike messengers and third-party delivery services for Prime Now and AmazonFr

Microsoft just announced that Xbox One will soon be able to play Xbox 360 games, which gives it backwards compatibility with the previous generation hardware for the first time. Microsoft’s Phil Spencer announced the news on stage at the E3 2015 Xbox keynote today, and the crowd went wild. This will work with over 100 titles beginning this holiday season, with 100 more to follow later. “Our goal is to deliver the largest games library on Xbox One,” Spencer said. Microsoft is developing patches for individual games, and this will work both for online titles and retail discs (with a download). Backwards compatibility has been a top ask from Xbox One owners in the past, so it’s obviously great news to see this happening. It’ll also mean people won’t have to re-buy their old favorites, something which has been spurring many HD remakes. Today, there’s already an initial set of backwards compatible titles available for Xbox preview program members.

It would appear that the California Labor Commission has ruled that at least one Uber driver is an employee. As it stands now, Uber employs its drivers as third-party contractors, operating as a logistics company that provides access to customer demand and directions, transactions, etc. for the drivers. Uber has argued repeatedly in various courts that it is not a transportation or taxi company, but rather a software platform that matches customer demand with supply. This ruling changes all that, turning Uber into a transportation startup instead of a logistics software company. That puts the company in a position to face a number of legal obstacles, as well as rising costs of employing those drivers directly and offering them benefits, etc. As BI points out, one of Uber’s main costs is its full-time employees that work out of Uber corporate offices. If Uber drivers are deemed employees, the business model shifts drastically. Uber is said to have more than a million drivers

Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and the engineers on the WebKit project today announced that they have teamed up to launch WebAssembly, a new binary format for compiling applications for the web. The web thrives on standards and, for better or worse, JavaScript is its programming language. Over the years, however, we’ve seen more and more efforts that allow developers to work around some of the limitations of JavaScript by building compilers that transpile code in other languages to JavaScript. Some of these projects focus on adding new features to the language (like Microsoft’s TypeScript) or speeding up JavaScript (like Mozilla’s asm.js project). Now, many of these projects are starting to come together in the form of WebAssmbly. The new format is meant to allow programmers to compile their code for the browser (currently the focus is on C/C++, with other languages to follow), where it is then executed inside the JavaScript engine. Instead of having to parse the full code, though,

Contract work is becoming the new normal. Consider Uber: The ride-sharing startup has 160,000 contractors, but just 2,000 employees. That’s an astonishing ratio of 80 to 1. And when it comes to a focus on contract labor, Uber isn’t alone. Handy, Eaze and Luxe are just a few of the latest entrants into the “1099 Economy.” Though they get the most attention, it’s not just on-demand companies that employ significant contract workforces. Microsoft has nearly two-thirds as many contractors as full-time employees. Even the simplest business structures, sole proprietorships, have increased their use of contract workers nearly two-fold since 2003. Four trends are converging to make contracting more attractive for both employers and workers, and reshaping how businesses and employees look at the traditional full-time model. Pick A Platform, Find Customers Historically, contractors have needed serious hustle to get referrals, early customers, and a stream of repeat business. For local

There are remote control cars and then there are Remote Control Cars. This is the latter of the two. Range Rover UK developed a prototype system that allows a Range Rover Sport to be controlled remotely through a smartphone app. And not just the door locks. The vehicle can be driven from the app. As the video here shows, this functionality allows drivers to safely traverse treacherous terrain or tight parking spots. It seemingly works as expected. The app control’s the vehicle’s speed and direction. Speed is limited to 4 mph and the smartphone needs to be within 10 feet of the vehicle. The company says that it could eventually build voice commands into the system. Right now this is just an engineering prototype so don’t expect to go down to your local Range Rover dealer and try this out. Range Rover didn’t specify if or when this technology will hit production models. Security would of course be a top priority. The last thing Range Rover would want is to give car thieves the

How much does a terabyte of photo storage cost? On iCloud, $240 a year. Dropbox, $100. Microsoft OneDrive, $84. Google, $0. It’s free on desktop, Android, and iOS. Today, Google announced its new Google Photos product, which offers unlimited free storage of photos and videos. The only limits are that photos must be under 16 megapixels, and video resolution is capped at 1080P. If the photos and videos are bigger, Google will compress them, but says the visual quality is virtually untouched. With auto-backup from its iOS and Android apps, you can forget worrying about saving your photos, and you can forget paying to store them. Photos Are A Computer Vision Goldmine Other services are still trying to make money more directly from photos. Flickr offers 1 terabyte free, but you and your viewers have to endure frequent full-page ads from its parent company Yahoo. Amazon offers free unlimited storage, but you have to buy a $99 a year Prime subscription. But Google is willing t

Google was showing off its Project Jacquard at I/O 2015, a connected fabric tech that lets you build connected surfaces right into your clothes, in a way that makes it easy to connect to devices and power, while letting clothes makers make stuff that actually looks good. It seems promising, especially because they’ve already signed on Levi’s as a first partner. Levi’s, the SF-based maker of jeans and various other clothing, came on stage at the I/O ATAP special presentation today, and discussed why it decided to jump into this new tech. Basically, they were looking to make it easier to integrate our device use into our daily lives, making it easier to access and less generally obtrusive. The company is looking to build its own apps, but is also seeking contributions from the developer community, which it called “fashion designers” now with the advent of this new tech. Right now the partnership seems to be in very early stages, with no product announcements just yet. But the te

Facebook this afternoon confirmed that it will now support animated GIFs in the Facebook News Feed. Not everyone will see the added functionality immediately, we understand, as the update is still rolling out. The move represents a significant change in direction for Facebook, which has historically made a conscious decision to avoid supporting GIFs, claiming that doing so would make its News Feed “too chaotic.” Instead of allowing GIFs, Facebook’s focus to date has been on video. The company introduced support for auto-playing videos in late 2013, but despite bringing a more lively, animated feel to the News Feed, the move did not lead Facebook to rolling out support for GIFs. Neither did the introduction of support for GIFs on Twitter last summer — a change that some felt might force Facebook’s hand in the matter. Though Facebook had built in support for GIFs for quite some time, the company has long felt that GIFs could lead to the site being cluttered with low-quality memes,

If you’re looking to turn your WordPress site into an online shop, one option reigns supreme: WooCommerce. With roughly 7.5 million downloads, it’s easily the most popular e-commerce WordPress plugin — hell, it’s one of the top 10 most popular WordPress plugins overall. And now it’s officially a part of the WordPress family. Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, has just acquired WooCommerce. Automattic isn’t disclosing the price of the acquisition, but tells me that it’s by far “the biggest acquisition by Automattic to date.” We’ll keep digging for details beyond that, of course. So why might Automattic snatch up an e-commerce plugin? Because it’s what the people want. “I remember a few years ago I was at [a WordPress conference],” says WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg in a video announcing the acquisition. “Someone stood up in the Q&A and asked me ‘When are you going to make it as easy to publish stores online as you’ve made it to publish websites?’… and there

Home security and automation starts and ends with the front door. It needs to keep the bad guys out yet let the good guys in without hassle. Either a system gets it right or it doesn’t, and, until now, I had yet to see a system that’s truly impressive. Meet the Vivint Sky Smart Home — a home security and automation system that offers a tantalizing glimpse into the future but is available today. When a person approaches the door, the Vivint Sky Smart Home’s inconspicuous doorbell cam starts recording. Ring the doorbell, and the homeowner gets a live video feed (with 2-way audio) through a smartphone app or on the system’s wall panel installed in the home. If the person inputs the correct code on the deadbolt, the system disarms and performs any number of set actions from turning on lights to adjusting the climate control. Like good technology, the experience is magical. The Vivint Sky Smart Home is pricey but it’s more complete than anything offered by Google, Samsung or ADT.

Real-time search-as-a-service provider Algolia just raised $18.3 million with Accel Partners leading the round — Philippe Botteri will join the board. This represents some serious funding following Algolia’s $1.2 million second seed round. As a reminder, Algolia makes your website’s search box suck less. It feels like using OS X’s Spotlight feature on the web. Moreover, Algolia is very easy to implement on your website as the company opted for a SaaS strategy. It means that you can implement the company’s search engine for database objects in just a few lines of code thanks to its hosted API, feed the service with JSON-formatted data, and customize it to your needs. After that, your users can start searching right away. They will interact with Algolia’s servers without ever leaving your site. With 12 different data centers across the world, Algolia tries to make the experience as responsive as possible for its users. On most websites, search is a painful process. You don’t know

Spotify’s press event today wasn’t just about adding video and other content types. The company also revealed that it’s adding new features to improve the experience for anyone who listens to the app during their runs. To do that, Chief Product Officer Gustav Söderström said Spotify will now use the sensors on your phone to detect the pace at which you’re running. Then, when you hit the running man button in Spotify, the app uses your tempo to select the right tracks. And if you want to change the tempo, Söderström said, “We’ll find the right music for that, again and again and again.” Even more impressive, he said Spotify is working with musicians (including Tiesto, who made a brief appearance at the event) to create specific tracks for running. After all, he noted that when his team talked to runners, they said that when the right song comes on, it makes them “feel like a hero.” But that effect only lasts for about a minute and a half, and then wears off — at least until the n

Immediately, a startup building mobile tools for salespeople, is announcing that it has raised $2 million in funding. Here’s the pitch, from the funding release: “We believe the future of sales is not CRM, but a beautiful data­-driven, highly automated, and platform­-agnostic integrated sales experience.” More specifically, the company says it helps salespeople manage their workflow — they can connect Immediately with their existing email and sales database accounts (including Google Apps and Salesforce.com), then track their leads, detect when their emails are opened, log their phone calls and more. The team started out working on email organization app SquareOne before deciding to focus specifically on sales with Immediately. ReTargeter founder Arjun Dev Arora recently joined the team as co-founder and chief revenue officer. Co-founder and CEO Branko Cerny said Immediately is now on-boarding its first pilot customers, including Tapsense, UserVoice, NatureBox, Spark Centra

Although seriously long in the tooth and being disrupted by a plethora of startups, for many years Skype has existed as an almost ubiquitous app in any remote team’s toolkit. So it seems apt that a new startup founded by a team of ex-Skype employees is set to tackle another aspect of online collaboration. Deekit, which exits private beta today, is a virtual and collaborative whiteboard to help remote teams work smarter. The Tallinn, Estonia-based startup is headed up by founder and CEO, Kaili Kleemeier, who was previously a Head of Operations at Skype. She and three colleagues quit the Internet calling giant in 2012 and spent a year researching ideas in the remote team space. They ended up focusing on creating a new virtual whiteboard, born out of Kleemeier’s experience collaborating with technical teams remotely, specifically helping Skype deal with incident management. “Working with remote teams has been a challenge in many ways – cultural differences, language differences, a

Is that a message from some rando, a spammer, or the nice guy you met yesterday? Facebook Messenger wants to give you some clues before you consider responding. The app will now surface publicly shared biographical info like current city and job title at the top of message threads from people you haven’t chatted with before. The update starts rolling out today on iOS Android in U.S., U.K., France, and India. For example, if you received a message from someone you’re not friends with, Messenger could show that they’re a “Food Blogger” from “Seattle.” That info could jog your memory, reminding you they’re the woman you met in the fish market on your recent trip to the Northwest. Knowing they’re someone you’ve actually met could make you a lot more likely to reply, and get the conversation going naturally rather than stumbling with “oh…hey…how did we meet again?” Messenger can also pull up this kind of info for existing Facebook friends you’ve never messaged with before. Maybe your

Microsoft today announced that it is partnering with a consortium of telecom companies to build a new transpacific undersea cable that will connect a number of points in China, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan with the U.S. West Coast (or beautiful Hillsboro, OR — the home of the Hillsboro Hops — to be precise). Microsoft says the New Cross Pacific (NCP) Cable Network will provide faster connections for its customers and help it compete on cloud cost. In addition, Microsoft also today announced deals with Hibernia to offer faster connectivity between Canada, Ireland and the U.K., and AcquaComms to use its upcoming AEConnect cable between Shirley, NY and the West Coast of Ireland (with backhaul connections to the U.K.). The Hibernia Express cable, the first new transatlantic cable in twelve years, will launch in September. It’s partly optimized for very low-latency operations (the promise is under 60 milliseconds between New York and London) and will be able to handle up to 10 Tbps

Plenty of people have compared the Apple Watch to the classic Casio calculator watch; these guys went ahead and made the inevitable app. Meet GeekWatch — the app that turns your Apple Watch into an old-school calculator watch. I mean, sure — you could buy a calculator watch on Amazon for like 15 bucks. But where’s the meta/hipster/ironic/kinda-obnoxious humor in that? They swap out the “Casio” brand for “Geekio” for obvious (read: legal) reasons, but the inspiration is clear. One catch: since Apple hasn’t enabled custom watch faces yet, it’s not able to take over the entire screen, and you’ll still have some borders/margins/text around the edges. Alas, it costs a $1. On the upside, there are myriad goodies to unlock if you poke it in the right way. Remember trying to spell words upside down to pass the time in class as a kid? That’s a good place to start. Alternatively, check out the tizi Calc app; the Casio-style homage isn’t as direct (and also costs a buck as an in-app p

The Light Phone is the opposite of every other phone in existence. It is thin, light, lasts 20 days on a charge, and literally does nothing but make and answer calls. It’s as if the makers of the Sports Illustrated Football Phone had studied the timeless teachings of William Walker Atkinson and created a telephone that was the platonic ideal of the ultimate telecommunication device. The best thing? It costs $100. What does it do? Nothing. You put in a SIM card, press a few buttons, and make a call. There’s no browser. No games. No NFC. It has quick dial, which is nice, and it doubles as a flashlight. Did I mention it lasts for 20 days on a charge? The creators, Joe Hollier and Kaiwei Tang, created the phone at Google’s 30 Weeks incubator in NYC. They both came from a design background by Kaiwei has a background in building phones. “We started building this because it became very clear that true happiness means being present. This has been written about by so many of the smartest

There’s Maker Media, MakerCon, MakerShed, Make: magazine and 131 Maker Faire events that take place throughout the world. Now the founders of all these Makers want a way to connect what they refer to as the “maker movement” online. So Maker Media created a social network called MakerSpace, a Facebook-like social network that connects participants of Maker Faire in one online community. “Communities are built around strong cores and the core for us is the Maker Faire but you see so much during the faire that you can’t remember,” Maker Media CEO Gregg Brockway told TechCrunch over the phone. “We want to move that excitement and innovation online so you can connect with the makers on there.” The new site will allow participants of the event to display their work online by making a profile page to host their projects. Interested parties are able to follow one another in the same way as a Tumblr profile and makers can also post the progress of their work that will appear in a Facebo

So this just happened. AOL, owner of TechCrunch, is getting acquired: U.S. carrier Verizon said in a statement that it is buying the company for $4.4 billion, or $50 per share. We’ve just been sent an internal memo about the deal that we are embedding below. AOL will become a subsidiary of Verizon as part of the deal, overseeing a bigger push into content and mobile video by Verizon. “Verizon’s acquisition further drives its LTE wireless video and OTT (over-the-top video) strategy,” the carrier said in a statement. In addition to original content across different platforms like video and written word, and desktop and mobile, there are other assets that could be interesting fits for Verizon. For starters, AOL has been building up a programmatic advertising business to build up how AOL monetizes alongside newer formats like video and mobile. Currently that business — which is the fastest growing operation at AOL in terms of revenues — is split between ads on AOL-owned sites and

Google has been testing self-driving cars for years. Six years in fact, with a fleet of 20+ self-driving cars, which have self-driven almost a million miles over that period — and are now averaging around 10,000 self-driven miles per week. So how many accidents have Google’s autonomous rides got into over that period? Eleven “minor accidents”, according to Google’s Chris Urmson, writing in a blog post on Medium yesterday. However Urmson lays the blame for all 11 fender-benders at the feet of the other human drivers — rather than the self-driving machines. Over the 6 years since we started the project, we’ve been involved in 11 minor accidents (light damage, no injuries) during those 1.7 million miles of autonomous and manual driving with our safety drivers behind the wheel, and not once was the self-driving car the cause of the accident. Going into a little more detail, Urmson says Google’s driverless cars have been hit from behind seven times — “mainly at traffic lights but a

Duet Display has added a feature that I frankly never thought it would get: Windows support! That means with the app and a Lightning cable you can use your iPad as a secondary display for your Windows PC or tablet. The app supports devices running either Windows 7 or Windows 8, letting you relish the extravagant advantage of multiple screens on the go even if you’re not cool enough to own a Mac. I kid, I kid; Windows owners can be perfectly cool, but Duet Display’s features can make them even cooler. In case you missed the news when it launched for Mac, it allows you to use your iPad as a wired secondary display, without the traditional lag and other glitches that have accompanied wireless secondary display solutions for iOS devices. It’s built by former Apple display engineers, and it uses an actual display driver to recognize your iPad hardware.

It’s tough to find a good tutor, and it’s even tougher to find a good tutor on short notice. MathCrunch is trying to change that, with a mobile app that provides on-demand tutoring for students at a low price. To pursue that goal, the company has raised $3.5 million in seed funding to expand and reach new users. MathCrunch* hopes to provide a mobile marketplace that will enable students seeking help with their math problems to be matched with tutors who can guide them through the process and teach users how to solve them. The platform leverages two big trends taking place today: The first is the move to mobile messaging, and the second is the ability to enable on-demand connections with folks who have specialized knowledge and spare time on their hands. In the case of MathCrunch, that means finding university students and teachers with knowledge of various different math subjects — like algebra, calculus, geometry, and the like — and pairing them with people who need help with s

SoundCloud has been beta testing its podcasting features with a private group since 2011, but today it’s finally letting everyone in. The SoundCloud podcasting features come in multiple tiers, including one free and two paid options. They challenge existing industry leaders, including Libsyn, as well as provide the RSS hooks necessary to also publish to iTunes and get picked up by podcast apps like Overcast. SoundCloud is aggressively competitive with its primary competitors out of the gate – it charges $55 per year for six hours of audio uploads per month and provides unlimited-length hosting for $135 per year. Lisbon charges $5 per month to start, but you only get 50MB of storage per month, which runs out pretty quickly. $15 per month gets you a more reasonable and generally useful 250MB, but SoundCloud’s unlimited tier seems like it will be a popular option. There’s also a free tier for more casual users, providing three hours of audio uploads. Previously, anyone could technic

The final frontier of the digital technology is integrating into your own brain. DARPA wants to go there. Scientists want to go there. Entrepreneurs want to go there. And increasingly, it looks like it’s possible. You’ve probably read bits and pieces about brain implants and prosthesis. Let me give you the big picture. Arkady flicked the virtual layer back on. Lightning sparkled around the dancers on stage again, electricity flashed from the DJ booth, silver waves crashed onto the beach. A wind that wasn’t real blew against his neck. [Adapted from Crux, book 2 of the Nexus Trilogy.] Neural implants could accomplish things no external interface could: Virtual and augmented reality with all five senses; augmentation of human memory, attention, and learning speed; even multi-sense telepathy – sharing what we see, hear, touch, and even perhaps what we think and feel with others. Sound crazy? It is… and it’s not. Via