Apple amends Siri’s response to suicide with more direct approach
Apple’s made some changes to Siri’s programming if the mention of suicide comes up — she’s now much more proactive in getting the user help. Read more »
Stories for Jun. 18, 2013
When your mother-in-law is endorsing you on LinkedIn, it’s time to question endorsements
In September, LinkedIn launched a new feature called endorsements, that allows people to validate certain skills you have on your profile. But LinkedIn needs to figure out how to make these lightweight features more relevant. Read more »
SpaceCurve raises $10M to make sense of our streams of location data
photo: Shutterstock / twobee
SpaceCurve has raised another $10 million for its database technology designed to make sense of massive amounts of data from sensors, social media, mobile devices and other streaming sources. Read more »
Google files free speech challenge to FISA gag orders, renews criticism of Guardian
photo: Google
Google has sued to shine more light on the secret court that approves controversial national security letters — the petition also represents part of the ongoing PR strategy of tech companies caught up in a surveillance scandal. Read more »
Researchers mimic bone to 3D print fracture-resistant material
photo: Form 1
Eventually, their technique could be applied to print bones for medical use, plane components and even buildings. Read more »
NASA vows to track every asteroid near Earth as soon as it figures out how
An ambitious new plan calls for the deflection of the most dangerous near-Earth objects and research into how to move an asteroid into the moon’s orbit. Read more »
Netflix and Amazon step up battle for kids’ eyeballs over summer vacation
photo: Shutterstock / James Blinn
Netflix and Amazon both want to be the company that captures your kid’s screen time this summer. Read more at paidContent »
It’s official: Everyone loves the CMO. But should they?
photo: Shutterstock / Inq
With IT giants including IBM now actively targeting CMOs as primary buyers of IT solutions, you have to wonder if this is really a great idea. Read more »
Cloudera names new CEO; Mike Olson now chairman and chief strategy officer
Cloudera CEO Mike Olson is now chief strategy officer and chairman of the board, while former Arcsight CEO Tom Reilly will take over the Hadoop pioneer’s leadership role. Read more »
Why designers make awesome entrepreneurs [video]
The Designer Fund is looking for the next wave of talented designers to work with design-forward web companies, and we sat down with the directors and learned why they’re not looking for the next skinny jeans. Read more »
Dish to Sprint: Stop whining and get out of the way of our Clearwire deal
photo: Everett Collection
Dish maintains that it’s offer for Clearwire is fair and legal, and Sprint’s attempt to block it in the courts is just an attempt to divert attention away from its own failed bid. Read more »
Introducing the next 6 digital media startups from the BBC’s accelerator in London
The BBC’s young accelerator program, called BBC Labs, has launched its latest batch of London digital media startups. Read more »
GE’s industrial internet focus means it’s a big data company now
photo: Stacey Higginbotham
As it tries to make inroads into the internet of things GE has decided it will become a big data company, building Hadoop-based software to help its customers automate their industrial assets. Read more »
Netflix dives into AWS usage monitoring with Ice
Very few Amazon Web Services customers know that infrastructure better than Netflix. Now it’s open sourcing its tool for tracking AWS use and spending. Read more »
Investors lack quantum-computing startups to fund, so they’re turning to these guys
photo: Jordan Novet
Quantum computing is still far off, but investors at the QWave Fund aren’t waiting. They’re funding startups with innovations in materials science and physics. Read more »
Dead battery relief: New York gets solar phone charging stations
photo: Pensa
New Yorkers soon will start seeing strange kiosks popping up in parks and other public places. They should be welcome sights, though, since anyone can plug their phones into them for a quick battery refresh. Read more »
Vitals raises $22M in increasingly crowded market for services that help you find a doctor
As competition mounts among online doctor review services, Vitals raises $22 million in a Series C round of funding. Read more »
Taking the pulse of the planet: How Twitter erases geography
photo: Flickr / Dunechaser
A study that looked at more than a billion tweets and the geographic connections between 71 million users across the globe shows how Twitter has changed the way we communicate and helped erase geographical barriers. Read more »
The reviews are in: Everybody loves the new MacBook Air’s battery
Apple said the new MacBook has the longest battery life of any of its notebooks. Well, according to the first users, that claim is true. Here’s a roundup of the best Air reviews. Read more »
Airbnb is 20% to 50% cheaper than a hotel (unless you’re in Vegas or Houston)
photo: Airbnb
A study by Priceonomics compared hotel prices to Airbnb in major metro areas across the country — and found that the startup is significantly cheaper than traditional hotels. Read more »
Researchers jump aboard Pica8′s OpenFlow switches as centralized management beckons
photo: Kyle Jao
As incumbent vendors take steps along big-picture strategies to support a new networking age, OpenFlow-enabled switches are gaining adoption and enabling innovative applications. Read more »
Meet the heavyweight team behind Heavybit, a community for developer-focused startups
Heroku co-founder James Lindenbaum is launching a new effort focused on giving developer-focused startups the tools they need to scale. He has recruited some significant peers and investors as advisers to teach member companies the ropes. Read more »
iZettle breaks out of Europe, bringing its mobile payments service to Mexico
photo: iZettle
Sweden’s iZettle is now at Square’s doorstep thanks to help from Banco Santander. The company has updated its credit card reader for the North American market. Could a push into the U.S. be far behind? Read more »
Now that’s a chathead: Rounds adds co-browsing to its mobile video chat apps
What would get your average teenager to ditch their favorite video chat app and switch to a competitor? Co-browsing may just be one of those features. Read more »
Yet another YouTube funding: Bedrocket invests in Shira Lazar’s What’s Trending
Thought there was no money in producing original content for YouTube’s audience? The folks at Bedrocket Entertainment beg to differ — and just invested in What’s Trending. Read more at paidContent »
SendGrid picks fight with heavyweight MailChimp in email marketing
SendGrid grew a business enabling apps with automated sales confirmation, invoice and opt-in/opt-out email. Now it wants a piece of the email marketing business as well. Read more »
Punchey puts up its dukes to challenge Square in the mobile payments ring
Punchey hopes to carve off a piece of mobile credit card payments market by charging lower fees for high-dollar transactions. Read more »
Paper iPad app gets $15M for more productivity software, services — and hardware
The company behind one of the best and highest-grossing apps on the App Store landed its first round of funding from Andreessen Horowitz and others to grow its team and expand into new and somewhat unexpected realms. Read more »
As Apple ebook trial enters last week, it’s all about Steve Jobs
photo: GigaOM
As the Apple ebook pricing trial enters its final week, much of SVP Eddy Cue’s testimony Monday focused on Steve Jobs’ involvement with the launch of the iBookstore. Read more at paidContent »
Exclusive: Meet the first startups in Kaplan’s TechStars-powered ed tech accelerator
Kaplan’s TechStars-powered startup accelerator — the latest to launch for education entrepreneurs — is announcing the startups in its inaugural class. Read more »
Smart window startup View raises another $60M led by Corning
Smart window startup View (formerly Soladigm) gets a new big backer in glass giant Corning. Read more »
Elon Musk: Tesla to demo battery swap technology on Thursday
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says Tesla will demo battery swap technology at its design studio near LA on Thursday night. Read more »
Stories for Jun. 17, 2013
Subscriber Content
Private PaaS: the next generation platform for enterprises
How do you make PaaS work for your enterprise? The answer lies in understanding new models of delivery, such as private PaaS. An enterprise needs a good understanding of its requirements, and this paper aims to help business managers find the best path to understanding and deploying this technology. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Gaming for grades: News Corp.’s Amplify launches digital games for schools
New Corp.’s education division Amplify is getting into the gaming business with the roll out of more than 30 tablet-based games meant to help middle school students improve language arts, science and math skills. Read more »
Accel Partners putting another $100M toward big data apps
photo: Shutterstock / Dirk Ercken.
Accel has launched its Big Data Fund 2, a followup on the equally large fund the venture capital firm started in November 2011. Rather than seeking products that target data scientists, it wants those targeting business users. Read more »
AMD details 3 new server chips, including its first ARM design
AMD has released its new server roadmap, which includes its first ARM-based chip aimed at the data center. This is big for AMD and an evolution of the data center. Read more »
Having problems with your Netflix? You can blame Verizon
photo: Orla via shutterstock
Verizon is locked in a head-butting battle with Cogent Communications, a large bandwidth provider. The cause for these issues: Netflix, one of Internet’s killer applications that has been growing its share of the network. Bad news for Verizon customers: Netflix may not work as well. Read more »
A jilted Sprint sues Dish, claiming its offer for Clearwire is illegal
photo: Shutterstock / zimmytws
Sprint has filed a lawsuit in Delaware against Clearwire and Dish, claiming their pending nuptials violate state laws and the company’s shareholder agreements. Read more »
GE wants to use artificial intelligence to predict the future of hospitals
photo: Shutterstock / discpicture
GE Healthcare is pushing a system called Corvix for doing agent-based simulations on complex problems. In India, the technology simulated a population of 80 million people in order to determine the best places to build medical facilities. Read more »
Want to 3D print your next home? It’ll take you 220 years to finish
Have you ever wondered how long it would take to print a house? Brick by brick it would take more than two centuries, according to one equation. Read more »
