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Monday 22 April 2013

Netflix Says Less Than 8,000 People ‘Gamed' its Free Trials To Watch House Of Cards

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Netflix released its first quarter earnings report today, and the company saw another period of strong growth, adding over three million streaming members, bringing its total to 36 million. Domestically, Netflix saw two million new streaming members, which was relatively equal compared to last quarter and up from 1.74 million in Q1 last year.


Helping Netflix along in its rebound after the split of its business that caused a big customer backlash was the company’s launch of its own original TV series, beginning with House of Cards. Netflix just recently launched its second original series, Hemlock Grove, and on May 25th will feature the much-anticipated debut of Arrested Development. However, the question has been whether or not Netflix’s new shows would significantly add to its member total — or whether people would sign up for a month to get the shows for free and then cancel.


In its letter to shareholders today, Netflix said that in spite of the fact that “some investors were worried that the House of Cards fans would take advantage of its free trial, watch the show and then cancel,” there was, in fact, very little “free-trial gaming” as the company calls it — less than 8,000 people signed up to watch it for free and then cancelled — out of what the company says were “millions of free trials in the quarter.”


Herein, Netflix is just talking about the free trial portion of its service, whereas the other question has been whether or not the new members the company has been able to attract through House of Cards would actually stick around. And it seems that, from its two million new members, it was actually able to retain those new customers.


“The launch of House of Cards provided a halo effect on our entire service and spoke to the quality of experience members can expect from Netflix,” the executives said in their letter to shareholders this afternoon. In fact, the good news for Netflix is that, so far, Hemlock Grove seems to be attracting the same amount of attention, if not more than House of Cards.


“Hemlock Grove was viewed by more members globally in its first weekend than was House of Cards and has been a particular hit among young adults,” the company said in its letter.








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Netflix added 3 million subscribers worldwide in Q1, will offer a 4-stream $11.99 plan



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iTunes Store update lets you buy media today, download it tomorrow



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Wearable Computing Pioneer: How Google Glass Makes Life Better



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Netgear 802.11ac update adds beamforming, delivers up to 60 percent faster WiFi



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Leap + Google Maps FTW




Desde el departamento de «cualquier cosa con… X es mejor» (ya sea la musiquilla de los Angry Birds, una reinterpretación con violines, unos buenos sables láser, o un coro a lo We are the World) llega ahora cualquier demostración con Google Maps es mejor.


Y es que esta nueva demo del impresionante Leap –una especie de Kinect que detecta el movimiento de las manos– lo deja claro.


<Banda sonora de Superman> ¡Ziuuuu, ziuuuu!


# Enlace Permanente







via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/gadgets/leap-google-maps-win.html

Cómo se capturan y transfieren cientos de miles de gigabytes cada día en el Gran Colisionador de Hadrones




Un equipo del CERN ha preparado esta pieza divulgativa sobre cómo se procesan los datos generados por el Gran Colisionador de Hadrones (LHC) cada día. Los datos hablan por si solo: se trata de capturar información sobre 600 millones de colisiones por segundo de partículas subatómicas que viajan al 99,9999991 por ciento de la velocidad de la luz, y de las cuales tan solo 1 de cada 600 son «interesantes», según definen los científicos.


Una vez se han filtrado los datos más interesantes, lo cual requiere ejecutar más de 1,5 millones de tareas cada día, se transfieren por todo el planeta a los centros colaboradores a 100 gigabits por segundo. En total se capturan y almacenan más de 25 petabytes de datos al año.


Más información y datos: Worldwide LHC Computing Grid.


# Enlace Permanente







via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/ciencia/lhc-captura-datos-gigabytes.html

Slickdeals' best in tech for April 22nd: GoPro Hero3 Silver Edition and more



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Barcelona a medianoche


Un impresionante time-lapse de la Ciudad Condal creado por Pau García Laita titulado Midnight Barcelona . Time-lapses de este tipo hemos visto muchos, pero pocos capaces de captar la belleza de la ciudad por la noche con todos sus escenarios iluminados de forma majestuosa.


La música es Starscapes de The American Dollar.


# Enlace Permanente







via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/fotografia/barcelona-medianoche.html

Report: 8 Million iPhones Returned Due to Problems



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Facebook building $1.5 billion data center in Altoona, Iowa



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WhereverTV streaming service still exists, is now available on iOS



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IRL: Bluelounge Messenger and the Blackmagic Cinema Camera



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Netflix updates iOS app with episode selector, new audio menu



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Google Earth Now Lets You Fly Around the World With Your Hands



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Acer Iconia W3 reportedly leaks, mates an 8-inch tablet with Windows 8



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Xbox SmartGlass now available on Amazon's Kindle Fire tablets



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Engadget's tablet buyer's guide: spring 2013 edition



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Nokia granted preliminary injunction against HTC in the Netherlands over high-amplitude mics



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LG's NYC press event aims to 'share the genius' of the Optimus G Pro



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Acer teases May 3rd reveal of a tilt-screen laptop deemed worthy of Star Trek (video)



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Photojojo's telephoto lens brings up to 12x of optical zoom to your iPad



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Google Earth gets Leap Motion support, lets you explore the planet with touch-free control



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NYC rolls out six Nissan Leafs in EV taxi pilot, good luck catching one



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Upstart, A Site For Crowdfunding People, Raises $5.9M From First Round, Eric Schmidt, And Others

upstart logo

A year ago, Dave Girouard left his position as the president of Google Enterprise to start a new company, Upstart, that allows users (mostly recent college graduates) to raise money for the pursuit of entrepreneurial goals — they pay their lenders back with a percentage of their income.


And today, lining up with the anniversary of his departure, Girouard is announcing that he has raised $5.9 million in Series A funding.


Upstart previously raised $1.75 million in seed funding. Given his background and the ambition of his idea, it makes sense that Girouard has gotten funding from some big-name investors — the new round was led by previous investor First Round Capital, and it included a bunch of new backers, including Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, and IronPort co-founder Scott Banister.


The company is also announcing that Kiva co-founder Jessica Jackley (currently a venture partner at the Collaborative FUnd) and former Nebraska governor and senator Bob Kerrey have signed on as advisors.


When Upstart was announced in August, Girouard told me that he wanted to address a “misallocation of capital in our economy” — the fact that big companies will spend lots of money to recruit college graduates, but those graduates can’t get any money themselves to pursue their dreams (which, to be clear, don’t have to involve launching a tech startup).


So Upstart aims to give those graduates access to both funding and mentorship. And since the repayment amount is pegged as a percentage of income (and there are other repayment waivers and caps), it’s structured to accommodate both lean years and windfalls.


Since the launch, Upstart says 83 “upstart” and 135 backer profiles have been published on the site, with 555 unique funding offers (totaling $1.03 million) made. Girouard said he’s particularly pleased that the people being backed are a “fairly diverse group” and not purely “tech-centric.” For example, when I visited the site on Friday, the already-funded “upstarts” featured on the homepage included someone who co-founded a medical apparel company and someone else who wanted to start a self-serve smoothie business.


Beyond just getting more people into the system, Girouard said the next big challenge is building more ways for backers to interact with the people they’ve funded, providing mentorship and help when appropriate.


Girouard said the funding gives him the opportunity to validate the idea, adding, “One by one, we’re dispelling the questions people have about the model.” Not only are people getting funded on the site, but they’ve even started paying that money back — he noted that there’s been “100 percent compliance on repayment thus far” (though he also acknowledged that it’s still very early in the process).








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Biz Stone Introduces His Jelly Co-Founder And CTO, Fluther's Ben Finkel

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As we reported a few weeks ago, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is up to something new, and it’s called Jelly. Not much is known about it other than it’s a mobile-focused project. Stone shared a little bit more about the project today, introducing Ben Finkel as his co-founder.


The two have something in common, time spent at Twitter, as Finkel was a co-founder of Fluther, a social Q&A site that the company acquired in 2010.


Finkel will also serve as CTO of Jelly, according to the post by Stone:



Fluther was aquired by Twitter after I stepped away from my day-to-day role at the company so we didn’t get a chance to work together on the tweets, so to speak. Ben managed New User Experience on the Growth Team at Twitter, helping grow an active user base from fifty million to more than two hundred million people.


Ben will serve as Jelly’s CTO, focusing on shipping fantastic products, attracting world class engineers, and in general, running a tight technical ship. We’re putting together a core “dream team” at the moment. Next, we’ll be heads-down on developing Jelly—the idea that we couldn’t get out of our heads.




Whatever Jelly is, Stone is definitely stacking up the talent over there. It sounds like a service for doing some good in the world, as suggested in early April. Since Stone calls Jelly an idea that the two “couldn’t get out of our heads,” it definitely sounds like it has promise.


Many have been waiting to see what Stone would do next, with his Twitter co-founders having settled into their “next big things” quite nicely. Of course, Jack Dorsey is the CEO of payment processing service Square and Ev Williams is leading efforts in the same role at next-gen publishing platform Medium. Stone’s project has the spotlight on it, if only to see if it reaches the levels that the others have.








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New Acer Laptop Looks Like the Enterprise From 'Star Trek'



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Alleged next-gen iPad rear casing suggests mini-esque design and finish



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Yahoo iPhone app gets customized story summaries, improved search



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'Eye gestures' spotted in Google Glass app code, hints at wink-based photography



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Nokia Sets Stage for QWERTY Phone Launch



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Volkswagen Teams Up With Apple on iBeetle



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Pink Nintendo 3DS XL misses Easter, arrives in the UK later this Spring



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Huawei A199 outed with 5-inch 720p display, 1.5GHz CPU, 2GB RAM



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Cricket intros $40 per line family plan with unlimited talk, text and data, updates iPhone plans



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