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 »
As competition mounts among online doctor review services, Vitals raises $22 million in a Series C round of funding. Read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 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 hopes to carve off a piece of mobile credit card payments market by charging lower fees for high-dollar transactions. Read more »
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 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 »
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 (formerly Soladigm) gets a new big backer in glass giant Corning. Read more »
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says Tesla will demo battery swap technology at its design studio near LA on Thursday night. Read more »
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 »
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 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 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 »
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 »
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 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 »
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 »
A French startup plans to debut the thin, transparent screens in consumer phones next year. Cars, buildings and billboards could be next. Read more »
Disconnect, a site that claims to block ad tracking tools while also improving browsing speed, received a major investment and “B Corporation” certification. Read more »
If you live and work on the Internet like I do, and happen to travel all the time, then you need a good connection to the Internet. Unfortunately, hotels – both big and small fail to deliver, doesn’t matter at what price. Read more »
Former CIA staffer Edward Snowden talked about a lot of things during a live Q&A on Monday hosted by the Guardian newspaper — but there were also some important questions that he neglected to answer. Read more »
New research shows that it’s possible to train Google-style neural networks with GPUs and Infiniband at low cost. The work could help drive further GPU adoption. Read more »
Startup Human API wants to help developers turn all the different datasets related to your health into valuable consumer-first applications. Read more »
Some cloud executives believe PRISM threatens the growth of the public cloud, and proposed legislation could tamper with the privacy of private clouds. Read more »
No, your ISP isn’t intentionally slowing down your YouTube or Netflix video streams. But it may also not exactly be helping to get them sped up. Read more »
Once more Samsung seems to be engaging in technical hyperbole. It told Reuters an LTE-Advanced Galaxy S 4 will soon go on sale in Korea. Here are the many reasons why that’s not true. Read more »
Lawyers have raised a ruckus as the government’s secret surveillance programs come to light. But for years, laws have largely failed to stop the spread of surveillance — is it time to turn to technology instead? Read more »
Samsung is turning to Jay-Z to spice up its rep in the U.S., where Apple still holds dominance and that “cool” reputation among consumers. Read more »
Want to see what Digg’s RSS reader will look like when it comes in beta form next week? The company released a few more details and photos of the news reader for desktop and mobile. Read more at paidContent »
Siemens is planning a big layoff after it couldn’t find a buyer for its solar thermal technology, for which it paid $418 million in 2009. Read more »
What will iPhone gaming controllers look like? A first clue comes courtesy of Kotaku’s blurry shot of an alleged Logitech iPhone controller, said to be one of the first official Made for iPhone controllers. Read more »
Connecting the ends of the Earth with internet access will require tapping into various types of clean power. Google’s Project Loon is just the latest wacky way to use renewable energy to connect the world. Read more »
