Thiel becomes the second PayPal co-founder to put money into the UK’s Transferwise, which lets users send money internationally at much lower rates than those offered by traditional banks. Read more »
As more sites focus on longform content, Fast Company disclosed some statistics on how its longer pieces have been doing — but the data shows that the real secret isn’t length but ongoing engagement with readers. Read more at paidContent »
Jane Austen scholars know “Sanditon” as a posthumously-published unfinished novel, but for Lizzie Bennet Diaries fans, it’s the springboard for a new bridge series that promises unprecedented audience interactivity. Read more at paidContent »
Didn’t get a ticket for Google I/O? No worries, most of the event will be streamed live online. Read more »
Google will use Arduinos to pick up on motion and sound at this week’s Google I/O conference. While it could help Google better use its conference space in the future, it could also inspire developers. Read more »
Pinterest moved into its new offices in San Francisco on Monday, and CEO Ben Silbermann talked with us about his goal for the company and where it’s headed. Read more »
The initial iPhone 5 pricing was part of what made T-Mobile’s big new “no-contract” phones push so attractive. Now the carrier is changing the rules: it requires a $149 down payment. Read more »
Google’s annual I/O developer event will be heavy on Chrome and light on Android based on the event schedule. While Google execs suggest that this year I/O is less about devices, that could be a smokescreen for what’s to come. Read more »
Reports are surfacing that AT&T plans to discontinue Facebook’s HTC First phone, which just launched last month. The carrier had already dropped the price of the phone to 99 cents, it announced last week, and could spell bad news for Facebook’s mobile plans. Read more »
Ventus, a citizen science project based at Arizona State University wants eagle-eyed environmentalists to map power plants and hopes to use the crowdsourced data to improve global carbon cycle models. Read more »
Amazon has acquired Samsung’s color screen display technology, Liquavista. The technology could be used to create low-power color screens for Kindles. Read more »
Many companies have realized mobile applications can help employees track operations on the go. No wonder DNS provider Dyn has acquired Trendslide, a company with dashboard technology, to enable monitoring for devops. Read more »
If the big data era is really going to revolutionize our world, visualizations that let more people make sense of data will be critical. Here are six startups trying to change how we interact with and look at our data. Read more »
Is the free game worth your time, or is it just a bare-bones experiment aimed to help Betaworks better its other products? Well, as it turns out, it can be both. Read more »
Whether or not Google officially rolls out its GCE public cloud to all takers this week, GCE will take on AWS and Windows Azure for market- and mind-share going forward. Read more »
Task management app Any.DO surprised many by launching first on Google’s Android platform and finding success. An iOS version followed and it’s proving popular too. Now the Any.DO team has $3.5M in seed funding to keep expanding. Read more »
Research from McKinsey seems to suggest that print-based media still commands a large proportion of time spent by consumers of news — but that is just part of the larger picture media companies have to understand. Read more at paidContent »
The Valley’s fuel cell startup Bloom Energy has now raised over $1.1 billion, according to a report. While Bloom has gotten strong traction, particularly with data center operators, fuel cell manufacturing is difficult and capital intensive business. Read more »
Nearly one year into his tenure as Chief Technology Office for the Department of Health and Human Services, Bryan Sivak chats about how open data can transform health care and why entrepreneurs should care. Read more »
iTunes’ increasingly good quarterly sales demonstrates how the long-rumored Apple video and “iRadio” subscription services the company has over the years tried to bring to fruition could become significant revenue sources. Read more »
From phones that can take pictures underwater to handsets with larger screens in a small phone body, the quality of design in current Android flagships is at an all-time high. Read more »
Samsung has become the latest company to play fast and loose with 5G. It may have produced some impressive technology but it’s doing itself a huge disservice by conflating its accomplishment with technology that doesn’t yet exist. Read more »
British privacy advocates have reacted with horror to the idea of EE and market research firm Ipsos Mori selling anonymized customer data. On balance, they shouldn’t worry so much. Read more »
Can quantum computing be the key to a much safer power grid? A California startup, GridCOM, plans to show just how quantum encryption could be a nearly fail-proof shield against cybersecurity breaches. Read more »
Learn how hybridization of the cloud and co-location can result in improved visibility and flexibility in our June 5 webcast, “Hybridization: shattering silos between cloud and co-location.” We’ll discuss the benefits of a hybrid environment and use cases in which co-location and cloud efficiently work together. Read more »
Bloomberg is at the center of a storm over its reporters’ use of the company’s terminals to track customers. The incident has been somewhat overblown — but the underlying issue of news and data platforms has not. Read more at paidContent »
The intersection between robots, makers and marketing has hit fever pitch with the creation of a robot mixologist built in partnership with Coke and Barcardi. Meet the Makr Shakr. Read more »
After working on its PureView camera technology for some time, is Nokia finally ready to bring it in full to a new Windows Phone Lumia? Based on this teaser video, the camera bump could be the biggest clue. Read more »
ItsOn started out selling mobile plan customization tools to carriers as a cloud-based service. Now it’s becoming a carrier, using its own cloud service to show what the world can do with individually tailored voice and data plans. Read more »
Amazon’s virtual currency, Amazon Coins, launched Monday. It can be used to buy apps and games and make in-app purchases on the Kindle Fire and in Amazon’s app store. Read more »
Amazon Publishing is launching a weekly romance podcast, “Kindle Love Stories.” The podcast will include a discussion group at Goodreads, the reading-focused social network that Amazon recently acquired. Read more at paidContent »
PBS’s MediaShift is launching a line of ebooks, starting with titles on self-publishing and cord-cutting. Executive Mark Glaser says he plans to release 10 to 20 books this year, depending on how well the first titles do. Read more at paidContent »
The software giant’s “project Photon” seems to be materializing in the form of Lumira, which promises self-service data visualization in the cloud. It remains to be seen how this can co-exist with SAP’s BI OnDemand, though. Read more »
If your business depends on the cloud, then you need to be at Structure 2013 on June 19 and 20 in San Francisco, where we’ll explore the best approaches for implementing the cloud today. Read more »
ABC is going to offer iOS users in New York and Philadelphia a 24-hour live stream of its programming this week. It’s the first time a broadcaster has embraced live streaming. Read more »
Plenty of haters have taken Google Glass to the woodshed, but they’re missing the bigger picture: Google solved the big technical problems, and even made wearable tech look cool. Glass’s transition to the mainstream is a when not an if. Read more »
Google picked Debian as the default OS for the Google Compute Engine; AWS builds console to enable Windows IT admins to manage on-prem and AWS workloads, Adobe feels artists’ ire. Read more »
Bitcoin is more liquid and popular than ever before — though the cyber-currency remains controversial. Here’s a round-up of a busy week of Bitcoin news. Read more »
When planning our solar panel home project in 2011, we figured on paper that it would take nearly a dozen years to break even on the investment. Turns out that adding an electric vehicle has cut that figure roughly in half. Read more »
Catch up on our recent podcasts: Chrome users can get some new tips and extension recommendations while farmers — yes farmers! — can benefit from the Internet of Things. Plus, YouTube subscription news and thoughts on Google cracking the iOS walled garden. Read more »
