#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.
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.
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.
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,
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 commercial real estate industry lost sight of one important fact the Internet has made kings of us All in a Google world,
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
It uses predictive analytics from the way a patient interacts on their smartphone to detect warning signals in behavior.
The software then alerts a healthcare provider that something is off. Utah Smartcare partners with three local mental health authorities and 2 community health clinics in Utah.
#TV s Disruption On Display As Netflix And Amazon Go Head-To-Head At Golden Globes More proof that good television doesn have to be developed by traditional industry players:
This is Amazon third scripted show after its entry into original programming last year, and the show itself has been nominated for Best Comedy,
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.
and Netflix are up for the Best TV Series (Musical or Comedy) Golden Globe. Transparent is facing off against Netflix original show
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.
TV viewing was down 7 percent year-over-year as of October among the 18-49-year-old demographic.
my final tie to cable TV has been severed as well. I moved to a new house this week
Hulu and Netflix now taking the place of the cable TV subscription c
#Google translate Adds 10 More Languages Including Burmese Google s translation tool is constantly adding new languages
but its latest update is notable because it includes Burmese the official language of Myanmar as well as Malayalam one of India s six classical languages with 38 million speakers.
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
#Amazon s Connected Speaker Echo Now Has An ios App When Amazon launched its $199 connected speaker Amazon Echo last month,
it also came with a dedicated mobile app for configurations and other settings. The app was initially available only for Amazon Fire OS and Android,
but not ios. Instead, iphone and ipad users had to use Safari or a desktop browser instead.
Today, that changes as Amazon has released now Amazon Echo for ios. Like its Android counterpart
the new ios app allows you to use your ios device as a remote control of sorts for interacting with Echo.
To get started, the app guides you through a simple set up process, after which you can use the app to control the output to Echo as an alternative to using voice commands.
Additionally, the main screen of the application shows you weather and other recent queries, including those Echo has looked up on Wikipedia on your behalf,
which is one of the hardware device more interesting functions. Amazon Echo, as a reminder, is not yet broadly available.
Instead, interested users can visit the Echo website an request an invitation to purchase the device.
The issue here is not likely whether or not Amazon can manage to produce enough hardware to fulfill demand
but rather whether there will actually be demand. After all, Amazon entry into the smartphone market with Fire Phone flopped,
and Echo is at best a shopping assistant not, you know, a Samantha. Or Alexa, as Amazon has named its virtual helper.)
As with its other hardware-based shopping assistant Amazon Dash, the company is basically running its hardware consumer trials in the open to see how people respond.
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.
and sends the data back to your home office via Wi-fi. It is powered self and can be removed in minutes.
#Workflow Lets You Automate The Stuff You Do All the time On Your iphone Built for the tastes of power users with an interface that anyone can understand,
Workflow is a new app for ios that lets you create shortcuts for the things you do all the time on your phone or tablet.
You can create action extensions (a new feature in ios 8 that you can bring up by tapping the share button) that save the URL of the page youe on to Evernote
and also saves a PDF copy of the page to Dropbox in case youe worried it might go away.
You can access your shortcuts within Workflow or turn them into semi-apps in themselves via bookmarks on the home screen (with a customizable icon.
The app is able to throw first time users into the task because the shortcut-building tool is deceptively simple.
I sure that there are Apple power users who would pay as much as $10 for this
Once you plug the thermometer into the headphone jack of the smartphone and open the app it ll show calming animations that are helpful with kids
#What s really special about Kinsa and the thermometer in general is that it is the first device the first piece of hardware that actually verifies that you re sick#said founder and CEO Inder Singh.#
And when you add in social functionality parents can start to differentiate between a common cold (that may not require an immediate doctor visit) and strep throat.
The Kinsa costs $29. 99 and alongside hardware sales the company is considering how they can be a communications layer for other companies working on telemedicine prescription delivery and other startups in the health ecosystem.
#We need marketers engineers operations people who can handle the hardware and supply chain side of our business.
#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.
#Microsoft Begins Accepting Bitcoin For Windows Windows phone And Xbox Purchases If you want further proof that Microsoft is going through a transformative phase,
you may be interested to hear that the company has jumped on the bitcoin wagon. The Redmond-based tech giant is now accepting bitcoins for buying games
and other digital content on its Windows, Windows phone and Xbox platforms, as the folks at Coindesk noticed today.
Members of Reddit bitcoin subred noted that Microsoft appears to be working with payments firm Bitpay to make this happen.
Neither Microsoft nor Bitpay have announced formally the partnership or details but the former does have a series of instructions related to bitcoin payments within its illing helppages.
Microsoft has confirmed now that it is indeed working with Bitpay. It described its adoption of Bitcoin as being bout giving people options
Customers can use bitcoin to load money into a Microsoft wallet or to create digital gift cards,
#Instagram Hits 300 Million Monthly Users To Surpass Twitter Keeps It Real With Verified Badges It no fad.
Just nine months after hitting 200 million users, Instagram now says 300 million people use its photo app every month, with 70%of them coming from outside the US.
That makes Instagram officially bigger than Twitter, which had 284 million active users as of six weeks ago.
Instagram been going strong for four years now, and despite fears that the acquisition by Facebook would screw it up,
there now 70 million photos shared each day, and over 30 billion total. Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom says ver the past four years
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
and fake accounts to full-on deleting them. This means theyl no longer appear in follower counts,
The bad actors also aren being counted in its new 300 million user stat. Instagram rise has been remarkable:
Launch on iphone December 2010: 1 million users June 2011: 5 million users September 2011: 10 million users April 3rd, 2012: 30
million registered accounts on iphone, launches on Android April 4th, 2012: Instagram sees 1 million Android signups in the first 24 hours April 9th, 2012:
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
if things hold steady. As it continues to grow, Instagram will encounter new challenges including the unfiltered feed problem.
As people follow more and more accounts over time, theyl eventually reach a point where they miss posts from their closest friends
because theye drowned out by more share-happy users. That degrades the consumption experience but also makes them less likely to follow more accounts in the future.
This is turn makes it tougher for everyone, especially new users, to grow their following. No one likes sharing photos into a black hole,
Twitter is facing this problem already. Eventually, Instagram might need to help people unfollow accounts they never Like
and make sure long-time users follow friends who signed up late. But for today, Instagram can rest easy knowing it captured lightning in a bottle.
Measuring the energy consumption of a Macbook Air compared to that of a Dell Desktop PC, for example, will prove to be difficult.
While some organizations already have the Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) in place allowing IT administrators to manage large groups of Windows-based computer systems,
SCCM lacks the capability to provide the accuracy the ESOS audits will require. Utilizing power-management solutions,
Though the U k. has been relatively slow to implement PC power-management technology, mostly due to tax incentives, perhaps by example,
taking into consideration that the U s. wastes an approximate $2. 8 billion in PC energy every year, the U k. may need to take a more effective approach to energy security.
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.
Dashlane beat Lastpass to market with the new addition by hours clearly, both companies understood that there a real need to help make the password changing process easier on end users.
A process that might have taken otherwise time as users hunted down which sites shared that same password
and then jumped through the hoops to make the change, now takes seconds instead of minutes or even hours.
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,
the company says. The company notes it also working on a recurring password change feature that will automatically change passwords at preset intervals for example
Dashlane, which now has 3 million users, says that the average users has about 60 passwords stored in its service.
That means its ability to change around 50 passwords automatically will cover a lot of the sites visited today.
Following Dashlane, competitor Lastpass also rolled out an automated password change feature. 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.
Meanwhile, Lastpass has you edit each site by individually. Lastpass notes however, that it makes the password changes locally on your machine so it never has access to your data.
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.
That means, in many cases, users will have to look up their new passwords, then copy and paste them into the apps to sign in.
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,
things are a little easier thanks to support for autofilling logins. ios and Windows phone, sadly, don allow for this.)
You can try the new features for yourself, for free. Dashlane users can sign up for early access,
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.
Youku Tudou says its monthly user base is now more than 500 million, with daily video views surpassing 800 million.
In a prepared statement, Youku Tudou CTO and president of its cloud entertainment unit Leo Yao, said,
ow that Youku Tudou has built the largest user community of online video in China, this expansion will ensure that Youku Tudou content
and services reach all Internet enabled screens in the forms that our users want, and offer a seamless experience across devices.
Youku Tudou decision to enter the hardware business comes at a time of rapid growth for China streaming video market.
According to DIGITAL TV Research, China is now the world biggest smart TV and OTT (over-the-top) content market,
with 20 million to 30 million sets sold each year. 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.
For example, Xiaomi, which early in November announced plans to sink $1 billion in building online video content,
has made already strategic investments in Youku Tudou as well as Baidu IQIYI, one of its main rivals.
Meanwhile, Tencent struck deals with HBO and Warner Music group to distribute their content in China.
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 Jiuzhou Electronic Technology. Youku Tudou agreements with different hardware and software companies (including Aliyun
and Xiaomi) is interesting because it might be an indicator of future consolidation as China smart TV industry becomes more massive and fragmented.
The last round of major mergers in the space occurred in 2012 and 2013, when Youku bought Tudou in a $1 billion stock deal
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.
Though the Chinese government closely monitors what is shown on TV channels it has so far been more flexible with online video.
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
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