#Baidu Maker Of China s Largest Search engine Confirms Its Strategic Investment In Uber It s official:
Chinese Internet giant Baidu has confirmed that it is Uber s latest investor as Techcrunch reported last week.
Bloomberg previously reported that Baidu had taken the entire $600 million surplus that Uber built into its most recent funding round
however a source at Baidu told Techcrunch that this is untrue. If there is further capacity in the round
and Baidu is more significant than the investment because Baidu Maps will be able to integrate Uber This is similar to Google maps Uber integration after Google Ventures invested in the car-calling app.
Furthermore Baidu s mobile search app will be configured so that Uber is displayed prominently when users make travel-or venue-related queries.
This is a major boon for Uber because Baidu operates China s largest search engine and will help it compete against its rivals##Didi Dache and rival##Kuaidi Dache
which are backed by Baidu-competitors Tencent and Alibaba respectively. The Baidu investment comes just a few weeks after Uber announced that it had raised $1. 2 billion in funding at a $40 billion valuation with##a portion of the capital earmarked for expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.
The deal was struck at a#signing ceremony#at Baidu HQ in Beijing which Baidu chairman and CEO Robin Li and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick both attended.
The deal will also allow Uber to take advantage of Baidu s app distribution channels which include 91 Wireless
which it purchased for $1. 9 billion last year. This is important because Google Play isn t available in China
and 91 Wireless runs some of the largest alternative app stores in the country. Baidu claims it is currently China s largest mobile app distribution platform
and distributed an average of 160 million apps per day. The company s mobile search products currently have over 500 million monthly active users
while Baidu Map has over 240 million monthly active users which has allowed it to create heat maps of travel patterns by users similar to Uber s God View.
Baidu is also currently tackling an expansion into Latin america via Brazil which overlaps with Uber s global aspirations.
In a prepared statement Kalanick said#This collaboration marks a milestone for Uber. We re currently in 250 cities around the world and the Asia-Pacific region has been a key area of growth for us.
Our partnership with Baidu#a premier global brand#reflects our commitment to the region and the growing community of Uber riders and driver-partners here.#
#Uber is currently available in nine Chinese cities including Beijing Shanghai Tianjin Chongqing Shenzhen Guangzhou Wuhan Chengdu and Hangzhou.
For more information about how Baidu and Uber can work##together see our previous article t
#A Wave Crests: Silicon valley Postsecondary education And A Half-Trillion Dollars It easy to forget that these are early days for the Internet.
We still have different ideas on what it is or how it should work. The web is governed by an iterative improvement process that moves faster than any other invention in human history.
Ed tech is no exception. I like to direct your attention to an interesting phenomenon: since 2012, most ed-tech companies have rewritten quietly their product promise from unbridled learning for learning sake to a path to a job
or career goal website copy now essentially says obs, jobs, careers, jobs. That transition may be related to another 2012 development:
the rise of accelerated learning programs (ALPS), including General assembly and Dev Bootcamp. ALPS explicitly measure student employment outcomes,
including placement rate and average salary, and they work. The ALP phenomenon has helped influence this product pivot in the ed-tech sector.
When one of my students gets a job, I get a giant bear hug and the credit for getting them there,
MOOCS literally offered college classes on the internet. This seemed promising, and The New york times declared 2012 he year of the MOOC.
but how would they make money from the millions of users that they taught? Pushed by the same forces as the rest of us,
tart programming now, get hired in months alongside ALPS and other career education programs. Trend:
Hybrid Online/Offline Institutions Codecademy and Coursera are based two web ed-tech entrants that have created subsequently physical learning environments.
Earlier this year, Hack Reactor launched the online version of its immersive curriculum, Remote Beta, a web-based ALP.
and mix online and offline approaches. If you thought it was dramatic when taxis became tech companies,
As mobile devices become magic wands for marketplaces, matching supply and demand and making goods and services more accessible than ever before,
which allows the end user to quickly find somebody to ship their package anywhere in the world.
Shopify and ebay can use space to both warehouse their goods and then deliver them in urban areas.
most of which have been designed to help users create budgets, better understand their finances, and make positive decisions with their money.
Those apps were great for the small percentage of users who were interested already ultra in examining the minutiae of where their money was goingbut for those of us who don want to deal with the cognitive overhead
See, Digit wants to change the way users think about saving cash, by helping them to put money away without having to think about it at all.
Instead, Digit relies on an algorithm that determines how much it should move from one account to another,
Then, among other things, it takes into account a user regular salary or payment schedule
in that it doesn overburden the user with too much information or rely on them to change their behavior to benefit their financial interests.
In fact, its website is pretty bare bones, only showing a few details about a user Digit account:
How much money is currently in the account, how much has been saved over time, what the average transfer amount is,
the site also has a detailed list of each transfer over time that you can scroll through.
Rather than overwhelm users with information on the website, Digit primary mode of communication with users is via SMS. It sends users daily updates via text with different pieces of information each day.
Most days it provides users with the balance of their checking account, but occasionally also updates them on how much theye saved with Digit over the course of a week or a month.
Users can then request more information using a series of simple SMS commands. For example, type ecentand Digit will text back the last three transactions to be recorded by your checking account.
Type ithdrawand you can move money back from your Digit account to checking at any time.
And Now For The Haters There are a few caveats to the Digit service that potential users should know about.
Most importantly, users should know that the money that is transferred into your Digit avings accountisn really bearing any interest,
That will no doubt cause some skeptics to complain that any Digit user would be better off just putting aside the money themselves into their own savings account.
those users should be putting their money into stocks or bonds or basically anything with a better financial return than a sub-1%APY savings account.
000 for the users who have signed up, according to CEO Ethan Bloch. That comes out to about 5. 5 percent of usersmonthly income on average,
Also participating in the round are Freestyle Capital, Upside Partnership, Google Ventures, Operative Capital, Garry Tan, Alexis Ohanian, Aaron Harris, Rick Berry, Nate Bosshard, Eric
With their help, Digit hopes to make savings more seamless for a whole bunch of users a
Rather than relying on a combination of different banks and other payments processors for individual markets,
as well as local payment processors around the world. Its platform works in nearly 200 countries, allowing partners to get paid in virtually any currency and through a wide variety of payment methods.
through its platform payments can be accepted either online, via mobile devices, or even in store for businesses that have operations in multiple countries.
500 different merchants for its platform, including well-known tech companies like Facebook, Airbnb, Spotify, Evernote, and Groupon.
In addition to its payment network, Adyen has also been investing in offering a mobile point-of-sales system called Shuttle.
including those of e-commerce site Coupang; Yello Mobile; 4: 33 Creative Lab Game Studio; and food delivery app Baedal Minjok.
Now the city government hopes to get more people interested in its startup industry by sponsoring Global Hackathon Seoul,
and large corporations. eoul already has an incredible infrastructure (fastest Internet/mobile speed), highest smartphone penetration,
and you can even run the sound through an ios device to use software filters and effects.
what shaping up to be one of the largest corporate data breaches to date.?Every news outlet that did the bidding of the hacking group Guardians of Peace is morally treasonous and spectacularly dishonorable,
but there is data in the breach that worth reporting to the public but not the social security numbers, private and personal information,
or insider-y emails about films. That those things were stolen, however? Yes. Especially since former employees weren even being made aware of the situation.
and beef up its own servers and security infrastructure. Sony Tries Silencing Reporters Sony hack was made worse by its poor security infrastructure,
but that alone does not mean all the data needed to be revealed in detail by the press if that Sorkin critique,
Theye pulled nude photos off celebrity phones and from rivatemessaging app Snapchat. Large companies like Adobe and ebay have seen emails and other personal account information stolen.
And whistleblowers like Snowden have revealed the most private and devastating aspects of government spying agendas.
and o Write Love on Her Arms, alongside large data dumps from inside Sony corporate network.
its employees (and their families) in unencrypted Excel and Word files and carelessly shared emails.
but corporate IT policies are meant to protect those mistakes from becoming publicly shared data. Sony Pictures, one of the U s. largest studios, has now,
News media has reported on a number of these leaked emails, which have included private jabs, jokes and commentary, including a director referring to Hollywood star Angelina jolie as a poiled brat,
Beyond providing fodder for gossip blogs, the Sony hack has revealed also serious information that arguably more serving of the ublic interest.
Like just how casual internal company HR employees treat email communication, for example. Email is not private;
as a former IT worker, I could have accessed any inbox on my domain (and often did,
though not for reading emails, but for legitimate reasons like backup, archiving, or transfer to a new hire).
But more importantly, employees dealing with sensitive information seem not to understand that email is not a place where an HR employee needs to be detailing a child medical treatment,
where that treatment is taking place, the child name, how the child was doing in treatment, and more.
if youe choosing to record Social security numbers, birth dates and salaries in Excel spreadsheets, you should protect them with at least a minimum amount of security,
Another key item that was revealed by journalists reporting on the Sony leak was that of Hollywood war against Google,
which was code-named roject Goliathin email threads. As detailed by The Verge lawyers from the MPAA and half a dozen major studios refer to oliathas their biggest enemy in their battle with online piracy,
and the Sony emails discuss a variety of tactics to fight oliath, including site blocking,
legal action involving state attorneys general, political lobbying, and more. Things like this (below), make the issue surrounding the ethics of reporting on the hacked content more complicated.
, and Disney joined together to begin a new campaign against piracy on the web. A January 25th email lays out a series of legally
and technically ambitious new tools, including new measures that would block infringing sites from reaching customers of many major ISPS Documents reviewed by The Verge detail the beginning of a new plan to attack piracy after the federal
SOPA efforts failed by working with state attorneys general and major ISPS like Comcast to expand court power over the way data is served.
If successful the result would fundamentally alter the open nature of the internet. Sony Emails Could Be Your Emails Sorkin
(and Sony) are fine to criticize reporterseditorial choices. But Sorkin, in a nutshell, is wrong to say that reporting on the leaks is pectacularly dishonorableas a whole.
And neither is he correct in thinking that the right to report should be shut down.
hosting them on their own sites, copy and pasting emails in full, or revealing specific personal details like which employees had high medical bills,
or which child medical claims were being denied. The media has reported, however, that is the kind of information these documents contain.
Sony emails could be your emails. They could be your company emails. Those could be your kids.
If an organization of Sony size is susceptible to hacking, anyone is. In the aftermath, Sony has hired now Fireeye Inc. Mandiant forensics unit to clean up this massive cyber attack,
Only a small number of documents have been revealed so far the hackers reportedly captured over 100 terabytes of data.
But also, more generally, that this happened, that this level of private data can be revealed, and that it can be revealed with ease can help us all.
#Skype Translator Preview Going Live Today Skype has been talking about and demoing its new real-time translation software for Skype for a while now
but users will begin getting firsthand experience with the tool as of today. The Skype Translator preview program begins welcoming its first participants into the fold based on sign ups to the Translator preview page we told you about in early November.
The Skype Translator project offers on the fly-fly translation of both spoken and written languages for participants in Skype conversations making it possible for two people who speak completely different languages to communicate with virtually no barriers to understanding.
The preview program starts with support for English and Spanish spoken translation as well as over 40 languages for real-time text chat.
At launch tis also limited to users of Windows 8. 1 software (either desktop or mobile) so Microsoft is playing platform favorites with this early beta program.
They ve also already been testing it out with schools in the U s . and Mexico as you can see in the video above.
The tech behind the translation involves advanced machine learning which also means that it ll get smarter with time
and increased use; the more time it hears a word in conversation the better it ll become at translating it accurately.
The early tests look promising but everything we ve seen so far has been from Skype direct
and likely involved a lot of control. The classroom tests in the video above also involve mostly fairly rudimentary translation
301m Smartphones Sold In Q3 As Xiaomi Muscles Into The Top 5 At Samsung s Expense Smartphones now account for 66%of all mobile phones worldwide
But while Android appears to have onthe so-called platform war, the two-horse race between the leading smartphone vendors Samsung and Apple looks like it may finally be breaking up a bit,
powered by sales of handsets in emerging markets. Gartner today published its Q3 numbers for how mobile phones fared globally.
A total of 301 million smartphones sold up 20%on a year ago. Within that, Apple and Samsung combined smartphone share totalled 37%,down 7 percentage points from the same period a year ago.
Mobile phone sales overall were 456 million completely flat on Q3 2013. Within the smartphone space, China Xiaomi made its way into the top five for the first time with a sharp rise over a year ago,
while the world biggest OEM, Samsung, declined. Apple saw its share increase up to 38 million,
or 12.7%of the market on strong iphone 6 sales, a trend other analysts have been tracking as well,
while Huawei also saw a small gain to move up to the number-three spot (16 million devices,
5. 3%).That not to say that Samsung is not in the lead: it is, by some margin.
The Korean handset giant sold 73 million smartphones in Q3, giving it a 24.4%share of the market,
although that down by almost eight percentage points (and 7 million devices sold) on a year ago.
Overall, the company sold 94 million handsets (smart and low-end phones combined) for a 20%share of the market (down five percentage points on a year ago.
Xiaomi sales of 16 million smartphones for a 5. 2%share of the market is up nearly four percentage points over a year ago (it only sold 3. 6 million units in Q3 2013.
In short, it because sales in mature markets (where Samsung traditionally has been strong) are saturated now with smartphones,
Emerging markets, on the other hand, are seeing very sharp sales rises some of the highest ever in smartphone history
with sales of smartphones growing almost 50%year-over-year, the analysts write. This is also another reason why Chinese vendors,
who started selling low-cost Android-based handsets to these markets early, are doing so well.
In China, one of the most important markets for Samsung, its smartphone sales declined 28.6%.
and offer top specs Chinese brands are positioned well to expand in the premium phone market too
and address the needs of upgrade users that aspire to premium phones, but cannot afford Apple or Samsung high-end products,
Gartner director Roberta Cozza notes. he smartphone market is more than ever in flux as more players step up their game in this space.
As a point of contrast, Western European smartphone sales declined 5. 2%the third consecutive decline this year.
Among mature markets, the U s. saw the highest growth, seeing an 18.9%increase ostered by the launch of the iphones 6 and 6 Plus.
But put another way, neither of these two, big mature markets are keeping up with overall sales growth of smartphones
Gartner predicts that Apple momentum will continue unabated with its iggest ever fourth-quarter salesof both models of large-screen phones,
although there will be other key moves coming from Chinese handset makers. ver the holidays we expect record sales of the iphone 6 and iphone 6 Plus,
In Europe prepaid country markets and attractive lost-cost LTE phones will also offer key opportunities for these brands.
has essentially now been won by Android. Its share is now at 83.1%on sales of 250 million units.
while Windows, Blackberry and ther OS? s all continue their declines. In real terms, Windows sales were nearly flat over a year ago on 9 million units.
It very hard to think of how Microsoft will manage to turn this around, and you do have to wonder
when Windows phone-based devices grew quarter-on-quarter thanks to the introduction of more mid-range devices,
The big picture for feature phones is not unlike that of Microsoft legacy smartphone maker Blackberry:
Interestingly, Gartner doesn peg this drop to the ineluctable charm of smartphones, but rather says it because of the narrowing price difference between them and basic devices.
Smartphones are already 66%of the world total mobile market and by 2018 Gartner predicts that proportion will be 90
#Nokia s Here Will Power Maps For Baidu Outside China To Cater To China s Globetrotters Search giant Baidu has made no secret of its ambitions to expand its business outside of China by way of mobile services.
Now it struck a deal with Nokia that could help it with that by serving domestic users abroad.
Nokia mapping and navigation business Here says that it will now power maps for Baidu outside of China,
Here will power both desktop as well as Android and ios apps starting with Taiwan first and then adding other territories at a later stage.
so Baidu is licensing our map data, but we can give any further info unfortunately,
Baidu offers extensive mapping services in China (a screenshot of its existing maps service is pictured above),
and that was one of the key components in a reported investment deal that Baidu is making in car service Uber.
But it less good on that data outside of its domestic market. Mapping and navigation have long been hot areas for platform companies looking for strong positions in mobile.
as our smartphones have turned from basic voice and text communication devices into intelligent assistants, location services
Here is a natural partner for Baidu, in that it not a direct competitor as Google might be
and works cross-platform in a way that Apple does not. Here has announced just an update that will make its mapping apps available across all Google Play markets and Android devices,
and is finally republishing a new ios app in early 2015, after pulling it in 2013.
Here parent company Nokia, meanwhile, has also been focussing on the China market for years now
and so will have some existing Chinese language expertise and IP that it can use to develop custom maps in the language covering other territories. eople are already using HERE in Chinese language in different parts of the world,
SVP and head of sales for Here, said in a statement. ogether with Baidu, a new customer for us,
Elsewhere, Baidu has been flexing its international muscle by building services for users outside its core Chinese-language market.
Baidu inked a deal with France telecom to load its mobile browser on to Android devices that were getting sold in Africa.
Nokia is not commenting on whether it is going to power any services in these, but it is not ruling it out. ur expertise is in the mapping/location services domain
so that defines the scope of our work with Baidu, the spokesperson says. As we pointed out last week, in the last quarter,
Here posted net sales of#236 million on an operating profit of zero out of total net sales at Nokia of#3. 3 billion
#Girls Who Code Expands To Get More Young Women In Computer science Majors The computer science gender gap struggle in Silicon valley is real.
A mere 17 percent of Google tech workers are women. It 15 percent at Facebook.
Similar stats can be found at most of the larger tech companies. Girls Who Code is trying to reverse those digits with an announcement of a major expansion in partnerships today.
The 7-week program pairs girls interested in computer science education with field trips to top tech companies such as Twitter and Square.
Adobe, AIG, Akamai, AOL, Appnexus, AT&T, BSA, ebay, Electronic arts, Expedia, Facebook, GE, Goldman sachs, Google, Groupon, IAC, IBM, Lockheed martin, Massmutual, Microsoft
, Moody, Pixar Animation Studios, Square, The Honest Company, Twitter, Viacom, Intel, Intuit and Verizon in order to reach its goal.
Each company will host and provide mentorship to 20 young women at each of those locations during the 7 week sessions.
CA. She says she didn think she was capable of programming before participating in the program. would say h I don know what I doing.
She told Techcrunch that there are actually more girls than boys in her computer science class now, thanks to her involvement with Girls Who Code.
the first data provider to deliver open access to the commercial real estate marketplace. If you ask a member of the business-tech community about the benefits of closed systems versus their open counterparts,
Once concerned primarily with keeping hackers and other utsidersfrom accessing sensitive data consumers are now more aware of the importance of maintaining personal security and privacy from corporations, governments and other powerful nsiders.
a fake Occupy Central app that spread phishing malware in Hong kong poked a few more holes in the perceived security of ios closed system.
and financial data being up front about long-term goals (or your more agile, wait -and-see approach,
Wikipedia is an obvious example, but also consider Waze, which was acquired by Google in 2013. Waze uses user-submitted traffic data to recommend the fastest driving route,
which adjusts in real time as the user drives. Imagine the efficiencies that would be lost if Waze tried to generate this data by itself instead of tapping into the free, unlimited power of collaboration.
Investors in companies like IFTTT (which stands for If-This-Then-That) are also placing huge bets that the future lies in interconnection and open interaction among a multitude of platforms and devices.
While many tech startups were thinking about how to carve a niche, own it and charge for it,
IFTTT was strategically positioning itself as the go-to platform for the impending Internet of things. This brilliant, long-game strategy landed the company a $30 million investment in August of this year.
Even a closed behemoth like Microsoft is now recognizing the value of open-sourced collaboration,
recently announcing its decision to open source its server-side. NET Framework and also take it to Mac and Linux.
Launching a startup with rtificial wallsin place, such as exclusive partnerships or extensive restrictions, in all likelihood means signing your own death sentence.
it will have to do on its own what the united front of Samsung (in other words, Google android OS), Oculus Rift (in other words, Facebook),
Let imagine the blowback the company would receive for trying to charge for its user-submitted information.
The largest data providers have served as arbitrary gatekeepers for the world commercial real estate listings by asking brokers and agencies for info on their available spaces,
The commercial real estate industry lost sight of one important fact the Internet has made kings of us All in a Google world,
and businesses built around proprietary data have an expiration date. If your startup is basing its business model on data that another company could feasibly gather
and give away for free, you can expect that very thing to happen in the near future.
as Makerbot learned after it suddenly clamped down on its open-source 3d printing hardware after a community of early supporters spent years contributing to Makerbot design (it worth watching rint the Legend, a new documentary that chronicles the whole ordeal, available
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