#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.#
For more information about how Baidu and Uber can work##together see our previous article t
Silicon valley Postsecondary education And A Half-Trillion Dollars It easy to forget that these are early days for the Internet.
The web is governed by an iterative improvement process that moves faster than any other invention in human history.
or career goal website copy now essentially says obs, jobs, careers, jobs. That transition may be related to another 2012 development:
MOOCS literally offered college classes on the internet. This seemed promising, and The New york times declared 2012 he year of the MOOC.
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.
Shopify and ebay can use space to both warehouse their goods and then deliver them in urban areas.
In fact, its website is pretty bare bones, only showing a few details about a user Digit account:
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.
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
500 different merchants for its platform, including well-known tech companies like Facebook, Airbnb, Spotify, Evernote, and Groupon.
including those of e-commerce site Coupang; Yello Mobile; 4: 33 Creative Lab Game Studio; and food delivery app Baedal Minjok.
and the Internet of things in order to encourage innovation. Yoo hopes the hackathon will get more students and recent graduates interested in startups,
and large corporations. eoul already has an incredible infrastructure (fastest Internet/mobile speed), highest smartphone penetration,
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.
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.
its employees (and their families) in unencrypted Excel and Word files and carelessly shared emails.
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,
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.
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.
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,
#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.
Nokia mapping and navigation business Here says that it will now power maps for Baidu outside of China,
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.
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.
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.
so that defines the scope of our work with Baidu, the spokesperson says. As we pointed out last week, in the last quarter,
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.
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.
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.
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),
The commercial real estate industry lost sight of one important fact the Internet has made kings of us All in a Google world,
and Red oaks (2015) some of which are aimed at kids. orange is the new black Transparent nom is not the first time that an Internet TV provider has earned a nod from a TV/movie industry awards show Netflix recently received dozens of Emmy
And Netflix House of cards earned 9 Emmy nominations last year becoming the first online-only web series to receive such a nomination.
television hasn been as quick to have been disrupted by the Internet as other industries, like music or books.
albeit small, study here in the U s. indicates that roughly a quarter of U s. customers are now asking for Internet-only service from their cable providers.
There are enough people watching these programs Internet TV now reaches 40 percent of U s. homes for Nielsen to begin to measure these services, too.
#Google translate Adds 10 More Languages Including Burmese Google s translation tool is constantly adding new languages
because it ties into Google s efforts to get more Indian users onto its services.
Earlier this month for example Google launched the Indian Language Internet Alliance which seeks to increase offerings for Hindi speakers as well as Hindi voice search.
At that time Google India MD Rajan Anandan said at a press conference that#to reach our goal of 500 million Internet users by 2017 in India we need to make the Internet accessible to those who don t speak English.#
#The Internet giant plans to add other Indian languages to its services and the addition of Malayalam to Google translate is a small but noteworthy step toward that goal.
According to Google India currently has about 200 million Internet users with five million new users added every month
which means that India will have more Internet users than the U s. within the next year. But only 198 million Indian people are estimated to be proficient in English
so it s important for Google to increase its roster of offerings in different Indian languages
Meanwhile Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has stressed the importance of free speech in Myanmar. Last year in a speech he called for the Myanmar government to stay away from regulating the Internet saying#The answer to bad speech is more speech.
More communication. More voices. If you are a political leader you get a much better idea of
#Schmidt also added that Google s first priority in Myanmar is to improve access to information with its search engine and tools such as Google translate and Maps.
According to Google its latest additions brings Google translate s total number of supported languages to 90 and mean that 200 million more people will be able to use it to translate texts to and from their native languages.
In its blog post the company reiterated that the accuracy of Google translate depends on members of its Translate Community who supplement the tool s algorithms by correcting translations
including those Echo has looked up on Wikipedia on your behalf, which is one of the hardware device more interesting functions.
Instead, interested users can visit the Echo website an request an invitation to purchase the device.
Amazon Echo for ios is a free download here
#Update Lending Club IPO Shows The Profit Potential For Financial Technology Investments Lending Club $5. 4 billion initial public offering on the New york stock exchange is more than just the largest IPO
Here how chief executive officer Renaud Laplanche described the situation on his own Linkedin page, alil invested in Lending Club as a Series A in 2008.
#If you want to check out Kinsa you can learn more on the website here
#Page365 Grabs $420k To Professionalize Social Commerce In Southeast asia Starting In Thailand Facebook and Twitter both have introduced uybuttons this summer,
but social commerce has been around far longer than that. Southeast asia is one hotspot, and it there that Softbaked, the company behind Thailand Page365, has raised a $420, 000 seed round.
The service started two years ago latching on to a trend that saw Facebook used to market
Page365 aims to make things more professional with its platform that plugs into Facebook and Line, the chat app with 20 million registered users in Thailand,
Page365 estimates that social media commerce niche is worth $510 million per year in Thailand alone. The round is provided by Inspire Ventures and existing investor Galaxy Ventures.
#Instagram Hits 300 Million Monthly Users To Surpass Twitter Keeps It Real With Verified Badges It no fad.
That makes Instagram officially bigger than Twitter, which had 284 million active users as of six weeks ago.
and despite fears that the acquisition by Facebook would screw it up, there now 70 million photos shared each day,
Between Facebook 1. 35 billion, Messenger 500 million, and Whatsapp 600 million users, Facebook has developed a jaw dropping mobile footprint.
Instagram Of THE Week With growth steady, Instagram is now looking to strengthen its authenticity.
The tactic helped Twitter boost confidence, and Facebook started verifying profiles in May 2013. The badges will surely be coveted by the types of users desperately trying to grow their following
and make Instagram new Explore tab more trustworthy. In the same vein of keeping it real, Instagram says it now gone from deactivating spammer
Instagram hits 5 million Android users, is acquired by Facebook April 30th, 2012: 50 million users February 2013: 100 million users September 2013: 150 million users March 2014: 200 million users Considering Twitter
has added only around 38 million users since March while Instagram has added 100 million, you can expect the gap to expand
Twitter is facing this problem already. Eventually, Instagram might need to help people unfollow accounts they never Like
web users are asked often to quickly change their account passwords to protect themselves against further attacks.
Unfortunately, doing so is said easier than done users tend to reuse their passwords across websites,
Dashlane and Lastpass, have stepped now in to help with new features that allow users to automatically change their passwords on affected websites.
which sites shared that same password and then jumped through the hoops to make the change,
Dashlane Password Changer works with over 50 top U s. sites including Amazon, ebay, Facebook, Google, Linkedin,
Twitter and Yahoo and is continuing to grow as the feature expands. The first version is available for PC and Mac with mobile support arriving oon,
That means its ability to change around 50 passwords automatically will cover a lot of the sites visited today.
The company supports a few more sites at launch, with 75 sites as of today, including big ones like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Pinterest, Dropbox and others.
Similar to Dashlane, Lastpass will automatically change a password for you when need be. To enable the feature
you click ditin the Lastpass dashboard for a supported site, and a hange Password Automaticallybutton appears.
and Lastpass logs you into the website, creates a new password and submits the changes to the site and to Lastpass.
The next time you log in, Lastpass will use the new password. One difference between the two implementations is that Dashlane feature lets you select all the supported sites
and change the passwords at once it even displays little progress bars at the bottom to show you how the work is progressing.
While the automated password changing technology is a huge leap in terms of efficiency and security protections for today web users,
The problem is that many of the most commonly used web services are accessed also regularly as mobile apps.
web users have shown consistently they prefer the latter. If a site lets you make your password 23456,
it will become one of the most popular password choices. On Android, we should note,
and Lastpass is available for download here s
#Youku Tudou One Of China s Leading Streaming Video Sites Launches Its First Hardware Line Youku Tudou, already one of China largest streaming video
sites, is moving into hardware as well. The company said that its first three devices Wifi router, smart TV box,
and 15.6-inch Android tabletill be available next January. To provide content for those devices,
the company is also launching a cloud entertainment business unit, which will create services that make it easier to stream videos and games from Youku Tudou main sites.
The Wifi router will be part of a P2p-based network that is supposed to make video stream faster while reducing Youku Tudou bandwidth usage.
The smart TV SET which supports 4k/Ultra HD video, will eventually start using Alibaba Aliyun operating system,
which includes online shopping connected to the e-commerce giant sites, as well as its Xiami streaming music service.
and services reach all Internet enabled screens in the forms that our users want, and offer a seamless experience across devices.
Several of China largest Internet companies have struck content partnerships over the past couple of months in a bid to win over as many viewers as possible.
has made already strategic investments in Youku Tudou as well as Baidu IQIYI, one of its main rivals.
Alibaba and Baidu also have smart TV SETS of their own. Other top smart TV makers that Youku Tudou has signed deals with include Huawei technologies, ZTE 9 Network Technology, Goldweb Technologies;
and Baidu purchased PPS to fold into iqiyi. Banding together can also help companies that have a stake in China streaming-video industry deal with regulators.
But that will most likely change as more people rely on the Internet to watch television shows and movies.
For example, China may decide to limit the amount of foreign-produced shows that streaming sites can offer c
#With $16m In Funding Helium Wants To Provide The Connective tissue For The Internet of things Over the next few years,
wel see a torrent of new devices emerge that are connected to the Internet and each other through a wide range of different wireless networking protocols.
There he led the company strategic software initiatives in open source, Internet of things, and wearables verticals. As a result, he has experience in large-scale wireless systems,
when we notice them doing their jobs. can go on Youtube without them winding up, making a bunch of noise!
At a Facebook, Google, or Amazon data center, replacing hundreds or thousands of fans with ones using 35 percent less power could yield significant cost savings.
##The number of apps on the store will doubtless intentionally remain##far fewer than on major app stores such as Google Play.
And that it##may also include##apps that some might##consider insecure by design (such as social media apps which##focus on sharing)
or make it easier for users to download other app stores.##We re going to do things like security reviews of apps.
and we cover##the unfun things like email clients things like that which we have gone
An early mover the firm has seen increased competition from younger firms like Dropbox and older companies like Microsoft and Google.
In a blog post Box##CEO Aaron Levie described the Trust effort in the following terms:#
Taking a page from the likes of ebay and Priceline, it is introducing a new dutch auction-style feature.
The move seems to be a clear bid to compete against the likes of sites like ebay for more business for its marketplace from third-party vendors,
what ebay does today. Amazon is clear to point out that this is ot an auction formatin that you are not actively bidding against others
Singapore Temasek Holding which invested in Rocket Internet Lazada last month led the round, which included participation from existing investors DST Global and Chinese internet giant Tencent.
The company is not disclosing its valuation but this new funding round which is one of the largest ever for a Chinese tech firm is a huge jump on its $100 million Series C round from January this year.
The company believes in its mission of making transportation easier for everyone through mobile Internet
#We ve built a type of search engine that indexes every tool/service you connect with Chatgrape (so far we ve got Github Bitbucket Google Drive Google Calendar
As naturally as it is for all of us to tag a friend on Facebook only that it s no longer about the pages you ve liked
Apache Cassandra, Apache Hadoop and Google Kubernetes, or customers can add internal software packages. DCOS is compatible with several versions of Linux including Redhat, Centos, Ubuntu,
and Coreos, as well public cloud infrastructure services from companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Finally, you can use it with private cloud infrastructure services including virtual machines, bare metal and Openstack.
and the web. in November, fashion and tech entrepreneurs and experts gathered at the Decoded Fashion New york Summit to discuss integrating technology,
Nordstrom and ebay. According to ebay Inc.,the Rebecca Minkoff partnership marks the company continuing expansion into the physical marketplace and not simply a ne-offdeal.
The company has filed several patents for the new technology, and according to head of Innovation and New Ventures Steve Yankovich, his is not a pilot for us.
but ebay is hoping for a deeper integration with the retail experience. In the past, ebay has released a transaction eat mapfollowing Thanksgiving
which shows online buyer-seller activity in a real world context. The new high-tech store Minkoff launched in Manhattan Soho neighborhood aims to capitalize on that kind of big data knowhow
It an extension of work ebay has done with other retailers, like Kate Spade. Minkoff and her cofounder (and brother), company chief executive Uri Minkoff explained their thinking
#Separating The Opportunities From The Obstacles In Open-source Networking Open standards have driven the networking market since the earliest days of the Internet.
A relatively new protocol proposed to the Internet Engineering Task force (IETF), Opflex was designed to offer a highly scalable architecture that works across a broad range of hardware devices to enable multivendor innovation.
and users will see increased collaboration between web scale companies, cloud operators and vendors to ensure that open-source tools meet the needs of the user community.
#Data From Alibaba E-commerce Sites Is Now Powering A Credit-Scoring Service Alibaba Group affiliate Ant Financial services has unveiled a new credit-scoring system that uses data from the e-commerce giant sites to gauge userscreditworthiness.
Data used from shopping websites indicate how often a buyer or vendors follow through on transactions and the quality of their interactions with other users.
Ant Financial says that it will supplement data collected from Alibaba sites and Alipay with information from public agencies financial institutions and other merchants.
or shopping sites that accept Sesame Credit scores. The idea of using shopping transactions to measure creditworthiness may be off-putting to some consumers after all it like having your FICO score determined by your ebay feedback or Amazon rating.
But Ant Financial says that Sesame Credit can give more consumers in China access to financial resources like home loans
However they might be active Internet users who shop online a lot e-pay their utility bills on time have a stable residential status
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