The confluence of better location data and audio-recognition could mean big changes to seemingly static industries such as retail and radio as they learn more about what customers really want. Read more »
SunPower is signing up residential solar leases at a nice pace in the U.S. while seeing a good demand for its highly efficient solar panels in Japan’s residential market. The company is still posting losses, though it’s doing better than in previous quarters. Read more »
Through its mobile app development Technovation Challenge, nonprofit Iridescent Learning has reached thousands of girls across the country. Now it wants to reach around the world. Read more »
LinkedIn reported its first quarter earnings for 2013 on Thursday. The company has been rapidly releasing products and updates over the past quarter, and focusing on its corporate recruiting platform that brings in a good deal of the company’s revenue. Read more »
Whenever a breaking news event leads to errors on Twitter, critics suggest that the service needs some kind of built in correction or editing mechanism — but adding one would not only be complicated, it would also be unwise. Read more »
Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt is watching the Aereo legal battle with interest. If the upstart prevails, Britt may try a similar tactic himself. Read more »
Spark Devices is using Kickstarter and DIYers as the gateway into building a hardware and cloud-based platform for the internet of things. Today it’s DIY, but tomorrow it hopes to have corporate clients. Read more »
Should Apple roll out a version of iOS with a new and fresher design language this fall, third-party iOS app makers will very likely follow suit. Read more »
Inequality in engineering isn’t just a product of how few women are in the profession: the tasks women perform within engineering are relevant, too. Deep-rooted ideologies also contribute to a gender wage gap, says a Rice University sociologist. Read more »
The LTE radio in the Chromebook Pixel is great, provided you’re in an LTE coverage area on Verizon’s network: There’s no 3G fall back. Turns out the modem actually supports various 3G technologies that perhaps could be enabled in the future. Read more »
Bitcoin is a hot topic for the tech and finance industries. GigaOM is hosting an exclusive get-together in San Jose on May 16th where people from Facebook, Google and Expensify will share their thoughts on the crypto-currency. Read more »
We’ve all heard that following weak returns, venture capital cleantech investing has retrenched. So what’s next? A style of investing that is a whole lot more rational, return-driven, shorter timelines and capital lite. Read more »
Roku boxes and Apple TV streaming devices may be on everyone’s mind, but smart TVs with internet apps are actually a lot more popular. Read more »
Professors at San Jose State University argue that massive open online courses (MOOCs) could seriously compromise the quality of education at public universities. Read more »
Want to see the photos you’ve been tagged in on Instagram? The company plans to announce a “Photos of You” feature on Thursday that will let you do just that. Read more »
Before you spend upwards of $100, $200 or more on a web-connected intelligent scale, you might want to dig around the house for a Nintendo Wii Fit Balance Board. With the FitScales Android app, you already have what you need. Read more »
Moving 300 million users from one popular (and often free) email system to another is bound to ruffle feathers. And feathers were ruffled. Read more »
As the issue of password security and online identity becomes more important than ever, Facebook has re-vamped its password security measures, allowing you to contact friends in case of trouble. Read more »
It may seem like a sideshow, or a service that can only bring noise and chaos to the news, but RapGenius and its approach towards annotation shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand just yet. Read more at paidContent »
When you hear the word Targus, does “understated sexiness” come to mind? Probably not, but the company hopes to change your mind with its new Midnight Collection of cases, first for the Galaxy S 4 and Galaxy Note 8.0. Read more »
Traditional media brands are cranking out video content in the hopes of persuading marketers to shift ad budgets from TV to online offerings. But can companies like Conde Nast and the Wall Street journal deliver the necessary quality and audience size? Read more at paidContent »
Once the brightest rising stars in this new smartphone era, HTC has been falling from grace for nearly two years. The company’s latest quarterly results reflect the situation. Can the HTC One help a turnaround or is there more HTC needs to do? Read more »
Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth has really big, plans to put Ubuntu on your smartphone, on your tablet and (via OpenStack). What he doesn’t offer is details on revenue. Read more »
Intel on Thursday named a new CEO and a new president. While both are internal candidates, the new president has experience that should help her face the challenges Intel has in the mobile and data center market. Read more »
RICON East is a developers’ conference happening in NYC on May 13-14. Come learn about distributed systems best practices from over 30 industry leaders, including speakers from State Farm Insurance, the Weather Channel, Comcast, MIT, Harvard University and more. Read more »
E-singles startup Byliner has a new president: Deanna Brown, who was previously the CEO of Federated Media and before that held executive roles at Scripps, Yahoo and AOL. She also founded Inside.com and Gaming Industry News and cofounded CondéNet. Read more at paidContent »
Want to know what your power company thinks about the internet of things? If you live in Austin, you’ll know exactly what it thinks, but for everyone else my podcast with Austin Energy may still provide some valuable insights. Read more »
Intel Capital and others have put $9 million into Irish outfit FeedHenry, which provides a mobile app development and deployment platform, along with backend-as-a-service, for mostly enterprise customers. Read more »
The OpenStreetMap-based app, already out there for Android users, can now be downloaded for iPhone and iPad. It’s a consumer play, but also a B2B showcase for Skobbler’s mapping technology. Read more »
The UK-sited data center, which should help settle the compliance worries of many of Salesforce’s European customers, will be completed in 2014. The firm is also running a €5 million Innovation Challenge for EU startups. Read more »
Company tells users of its cloud-based MySQL database service to move their instances by May 8 or else. (May 15 for paying customers.) Read more »
Zynga is partnering with NewSchools Venture Fund to launch an accelerator program for educational gaming startups. Read more »
Boy, people really do like watching YouTube videos: The service now streams more than 6 billion hours of video every month. Read more »
MapR on Wednesday released its commercial version of HBase called M7, the first such product on the market, that the company claims is bigger, faster and better than the open source version. Read more »
Attack of the flying robot bird: it can dive and roll and looks so realistic that other birds have attacked it in flight. Read more »
Here’s the details of the class action lawsuit filed against Coda Automotive that I referenced yesterday: it’s a complaint that Coda Automotive allegedly violated the WARN Act, that requires large employers to give employees 60 days written notice of mass layoffs. Read more »
Smart grid company Silver Spring Networks held its first earnings call as a public company on Wednesday, and delivered a flat quarter. It’s a hard knock life in the hardware biz. Read more »
Want to legally download Blu-ray quality copies of Harry Potter movies? Owners of Kaleidescape systems can do so today – but should watch their data caps. Read more »
Tablet sellers had a really good first quarter. As a result, Apple’s overall share of tablet sales is slipping. Read more »
Facebook announced its first quarter earnings on Wednesday, with investors looking to see growth in the company’s mobile ad revenues. Read more »
