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Tuesday 11 February 2014

Chairman Of The Bitcoin Foundation Talks The Future Of Cryptocash

bitcoin

After Bitcoin’s fine showing last night at the Crunchies, we took a moment to talk to Peter Vessenes, Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation. Vessenes accepted the award and assured me multiple times that he was not, in fact, secretive BTC creator Satoshi Nakamoto in disguise.


My biggest question to him is when my mom would start using Bitcoin and why she would be interested.


“It’s a great way to buy stuff on the Internet,” said Vessenes, who went on to describe how he paid a Romanian VPN almost instantly using bitcoin.


Cryptocurrencies are big right now and multiple VCs at the Crunchies expected Bitcoin to be the next big thing. Whether or not Vessenes is really Satoshi is still in doubt, but we’re pretty sure the service is here to stay.







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WatchESPN finally comes to Windows 8



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Comcast's Xfinity On Demand now sells Warner Bros. movies and TV shows



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Radiohead's PolyFauna app will make you feel like a subterranean homesick alien



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MightyText Android app goes Pro, adds extra features for monthly cost



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Watch Valve's vision of our virtual reality future (and other Steam Dev Days talks) right here



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Make 'business connections' with Virgin America's new in-flight social network ;)



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What Are "Smart" Credit Cards, and Why Are They Coming to America?

Windows Phone 8.1 leak reveals new messaging and storage settings, and more



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Researchers' non-flammable battery could make laptop fires a thing of the past



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Lithium Technologies Reportedly Reaches Deal To Acquire Klout

Lithium Technologies, which helps companies engage with their customers online, has “signed but not closed” a deal to acquire Klout, according to a report in Recode. The deal is supposedly a mix of cash and stock “in the low nine figures” (namely, a little more than $100 million).


Neither Lithium nor Klout responded immediately to requests for comment — I’ll update this post if they do.


Klout has raised more than $40 million in funding from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mayfield Fund, ff Venture Capital, Microsoft, and CrunchFund (which, like TechCrunch, was founded by Michael Arrington). The site, which claims to measure social influence, was relaunched last week with new content sharing recommendations, and the company said it saw more than $10 million in revenue in 2013.


Lithium, meanwhile, raised a $50 million round last fall in what it said was preparation for an IPO.






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Yahoo Acquires Social Diary Company Wander For A Price Over $10M

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Yahoo has acquired New York-based startup Wander.


The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but based on rumors I heard last night at the Crunchies, it appears that the price was north of $10 million. Led by founder Jeremy Fisher, Wander has raised a total of $1.2 million in funding.


Wander, which has been around since graduating TechStars in 2012, is aimed around changing our content creation habits. Originally, Wander was focused on sharing travel experiences in a diary, but soon pivoted focus onto an app called Days.


The app lets users create a series of photographs and gifs in a package called a “Day,” which can be shared the next day. The idea is this: rather than sharing bite-sized moments in real time, Days is about sharing an entire story of how your day went.


By tying everyday experiences together, Days lets you share mundane things like your morning coffee or your cat and, thanks to the context created within the story, those mundane things become more “share-worthy.”


According to the blog post, Days will continue on as a standalone app, supported by all members of the Wander team. Plus, the five-person team will start working on “some exciting new projects” as a part of Yahoo’s Mobile and Emerging Products team, based in NYC.


Here’s the blog post in full:



We’ve spent the past few years figuring out how to make content creation as habitual as content consumption. That’s the idea behind Days, the daily visual diary we launched in May 2013. Nine months later, we’re excited to announce that we’ve accepted an offer to bring our work on daily habits to Yahoo. We started our company with the vision of transforming daily habits, and we’re proud to be joining a new one that shares that mission.

Our entire team will be joining Yahoo’s NYC-based Mobile and Emerging Products group, where we’ll continue on as a startup team within a larger organization. The Days app will live on as a standalone entity, and we’ll also be working on some exciting new projects that we can’t talk about just yet.

Sincerest appreciation to our investors, our advisors, our friends and families, the good folks at Apple, and, most importantly, our users! Your days have inspired us and it’s been beyond rewarding watching the product and community we’ve built together evolve and grow. We are so grateful, thank you!

If you have any questions, please tweet @wander or email us via founders@onwander.com.

Happy Days,

-Jeremy, Keenan, Lara, Sean, and Whitney



Obviously, this isn’t the first acquisition for Yahoo under Marissa Mayer‘s leadership. The fashion-forward CEO has acquired more than 15 companies in the past 18 months, during which time she’s totally turned around the perception of stagnancy in the internet juggernaut.






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Square and Uniqlo partner to sell on-demand gifts, save your relationship



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Qualcomm Toq smartwatch update brings activity tracking beta, keeps progress in plain view



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25% of Couples Say Smartphones Distract Their Partners



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HP will make some server operators pay extra to get firmware updates



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Cómo se estornuda en otros idiomas

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Ver mas


How To Sneeze In Ten Languages , por James Chapman: «el sonido que emitimos al estornudar es puramente cultural y de hecho es innecesario; tanto que los sordos estornudan silenciosamente ». Vía Geeks are Sexy.


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La pp Catchr se chiva si alguien trastea en tu móvil cuando no estás


Después de activar la app Catchr (iOS, 1,79€) ésta empezará a registrar toda la actividad del teléfono. Básicamente está planteada para cazar a los cotillas: activar la aplicación, ausentarse dejando el teléfono atrás y después ver si se ha utilizado, y para qué, durante ese rato.


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Esta cámara empieza a grabar si detecta que algo llama tu atención


De los creadores de Necomimi, orejas de gato que reaccionan a las emociones, el accesorio Neurocam «detecta las emociones» del usuario y a la vez controla la cámara del móvil, la cual empezará a grabar cuando detecta por las ondas cerebrales que lo que se está mirando resulta intedezante.


Los intereses del usuario se puntúan de 0 a 100 y la cámara de vídeo del teléfono móvil empezará a grabar durante 5 segundos cuando su nivel de interés sea superior a 60. Los clips se pueden compartir automáticamente en Facebook.

Vine para vagos; y así todos tus contactos podrán ver a esa zagala que te ha hecho tilín, incluyendo tu novia.



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LG's heart-rate tracking earbuds could arrive in the US soon



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Engadget giveaway: win an iPad Air courtesy of YesVideo!



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Insane pilot makes an insane low pass over an insane drunk person

FAA clears Surface for takeoff in US cockpits



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Cozy Launches New Feature To Give Tenants More Control Over Their Credit Reporting

cozy

Cozy is tackling another part of the rental process today with the launch of a new feature for credit checks.


The startup, which raised a Series A led by General Catalyst last year, already allows landlords to perform tasks like screening tenants and collecting rent. Now, when a landlord finds an applicant that they’re interested in, they can actually request the credit report from the Cozy website. Then, the applicant can choose whether or not to approve the request (presumably they’ll say yes if they want the apartment.)


Co-founder and CEO Gino Zahnd said this changes the process in a few key ways. First, it means that the applicant doesn’t have to give their social security number to the landlord of every apartment that they’re applying for. Obviously, that’s a security issue for the applicant, but Zahnd argued landlords don’t necessarily enjoy being stuck with a stack of sensitive personal information to dispose of either.


“We’re completely changing who controls the information during this process,” he said.


Second, Zahnd said this eliminates the need for an application fee. In fact, he claimed that his goal is to “rid the world of application fees,” which he described as “a ridiculous idea.”


Third, after the initial report, every follow-up credit request is a “soft inquiry” that just updates your information, rather than a “hard inquiry.” The important difference? A hard inquiry affects your credit score, while a soft inquiry doesn’t.


Cozy-LandlordApp


To provide this information, Cozy uses Experian Connect API. Zahnd said the fact that credit reporting company Experian is now willing to make this data available to other companies through an API is a sign of how the industry is changing: “Consumers expect to have control of their private information. … Experian very much recognizes that.”


He added that the credit reporting launching today is “very much a first version,” with new features planned that will “give renters even more power around how this works and who initiates the process.”






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Geeksphone's Firefox-and-Android phone launches February 20th for 289 euro



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Levo Raises $7M To Connect Young Female Professionals

macbook on desk, from picjumbo

Levo League, a site with career resources for young women, announced today that it has raised $7 million in angel funding from investors including Lubna Olayan, the CEO of Saudi Arabian firm Olayan Financing Co. and Véronique Morali, president of Fimalac in France, as well as CEO of Webedia/Allocine. Previous supporters have included Sheryl Sandberg, who made an angel investment in Levo in 2011 before publishing “Lean In,” and former Ning CEO Gina Bianchini.


The latest round of funding, which brings Levo League’s total raised so far to more than $8 million, will be used to create Levo 2.0, the next iteration of the startup, as well as increase its membership and launch local chapters in cities around the world. Levo already has chapters in 22 cities, including San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, London, and Vancouver.


The company also plans to expand its existing recruitment, retention, and brand engagement services for companies such as Disney, The New York Times, AOL, Bonobos, and Southwest Airlines.


Founded by CEO Caroline Ghosn and Amanda Pouchot in 2012, Levo currently has 8 million members and its target demographic is women in the first 10 years of their career. In a statement, the company said that Levo 2.0 “will personalize the users’ experience in connecting with the opportunities, knowledge and network they need to succeed professionally.”






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Sochi's Giant Pinscreen Wall Is Hypnotic in Action

Xbox One stereo headset and adapter arrive in March



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Xbox One's second big update focused on multiplayer ahead of Titanfall's March arrival



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Nokia's Rumored Android and Other News You Need to Know



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New wireless charging partnerships could mean fewer cables in your junk drawer



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Sprint posts big loss despite selling 5.6 million smartphones last quarter



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RFID Tags Track Marijuana From Seed to Sale, in Colorado



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Google lends its robot expertise to help boost Foxconn's assembly lines



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