Trending on Gigaom
Happy open-source family

Moscow-based Runa Capital has invested €3 million ($3.4 million) in MariaDB, the open-source database company that offers what began as a MySQL fork (Google and Wikipedia are big-name users). Runa, which is headed up by founders of Acronis and Parallels, is already a backer of the Nginx web server and platform-as-a-service outfit Jelastic. In a statement, MariaDB CEO Patrik Sallner said his firm was looking forward to collaborating with Runa and its other open-source portfolio companies in its enterprise push.

New Google Docs alternative

Apple moved its web-based versions of its iWork office suite, including Pages, Numbers, and Keynote out of iCloud’s beta site and onto iCloud.com on Thursday. The web versions are free, and they come with 1GB of iCloud storage. You don’t need an Apple device to use the web-based iWork suite: Recently, Apple started supporting Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer, meaning Chromebook, Windows and Linux users can use the software in their browsers. Previously, they had to go to beta.icloud.com to access the web apps. If you don’t already have one, you’ll need to create an Apple ID. Apple’s FAQ has more information.

1 Comment
go west

Amazon has a new head of corporate affairs. Politico is reporting that President Barack Obama’s former White House press secretary Jay Carney will be a senior vice president at Amazon, reporting directly to CEO Jeff Bezos. Amazon’s current PR chief, Craig Berman, will report to Carney, who will also be overseeing Amazon’s lobbying efforts. Previously, Carney had been rumored to be looking for a position in the technology industry, and reports last fall said he was considered for positions at both Apple and Uber. (Uber eventually hired Obama’s former campaign manager, David Plouffe.)

123…4,299page 1 of 4,299