New Technology News

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

After revealing that Sony had sold 250k PS4 units in the UK over opening weekend, the company has finally announced global sales over the past two weeks.

According to Sony's PlayStation blog, the company sold 2.1 million units of the PlayStation 4 in the past two weeks, starting on November 15th on launch day. Sony also mentioned that, in the first 24 hours of availability, the company sold one million units.

Here's what Sony had to say about it:

It's an impressive and record-setting accomplishment for our company and for our industry, and we couldn't have done it without you. I want to personally thank PlayStation fans, both old and new, for your vote of confidence. The best part: the PS4 journey has just begun. In addition to an incredible line-up of PS4 games from the best developers in the world, we will continue to introduce valuable new features and services to PS4 in the months and years ahead.

Microsoft also sold 1 million units of the Xbox One in the first 24 hours of availability, with more widespread availability but $100 higher price tag.

However, the Telegraph is reporting that the PS4 is winning the popularity contest, at least in the UK.

Still, many gamers are giving these new consoles some time in the market before making a decision, so while the battle may have been won by Sony, the war is far from over.

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Sony Sells Over 2 Million PS4 Units In Two Weeks

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After revealing that Sony had sold 250k PS4 units in the UK over opening weekend, the company has finally announced global sales over the p...

The Linux OS lacks an effective yet simple checking and banking tool. There are money-management tools for Linux users, of course, but most full-fledged offerings are overkill for monitoring spending patterns and balancing financial accounts. In general, Linux financial applications are either too complex to use without an accounting degree or simple, spreadsheet-style apps that do little more than help you keep an electronic copy of your deposits and withdrawals.

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Build Your Own Simple Linux Banking Tool

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The Linux OS lacks an effective yet simple checking and banking tool. There are money-management tools for Linux users, of course, but mos...

Gmail may not be the prettiest email program in the world. Yahoo Mail is easier on the eye. Microsoft's Outlook online has a clean and modern appeal. Nevertheless, many of us use Gmail -- warts and all -- so any app that adds utility to the Google offering can be worthwhile. Mailplane has been around for six years, but its developers have given it a makeover in this latest edition. That's not to say they've drifted away from the program's essential mission: enabling you to access your Gmail accounts without opening your Web browser.

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Mailplane Gives Gmail a Nice Lift

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Gmail may not be the prettiest email program in the world. Yahoo Mail is easier on the eye. Microsoft's Outlook online has a clean and...

Canon's first kick at the mirrorless market was without question a disappointing debut: The EOS M first launched in 2012, and was a let-down mostly because of its incredibly sluggish autofocus, as well as other quirks like a screen blackout that happened immediately after taking a picture. Canon seems to have addressed both issues with the new design, added Wi-Fi, and left most of the rest untouched.

The M2 has been officially announced via Canon China and Canon Japan so far, with English-language countries likely due for releases later today. The details of the camera are known, however, and include a body design that resembles the original, but that's actually slightly smaller and packs new Wi-Fi connectivity for sharing and image transfer.

The big selling point however remains the improved autofocus, which was by far the biggest area requiring improvement on the original. Canon promises more than double the AF speed with its new Hybrid CMOS AF II system, which double checks the window for focus information that the original did for that improvement. Canon has kept the same APS-C 18 megapixel sensor in the M2, but the sensor wasn't the issue, so this could be a very good entrant in the MILC field, so long as the AF actually does provide significant improvements over the original.

The M2 will ship in Japan in mid-December, but no word yet on when it'll come to the U.S. A pre-holiday ship date would definitely help Canon move a few of these via the under-the-tree crowd, however, so fingers crossed it arrives before the new year. I always like the look of the EOS M, but with the M2, it might have some substance behind all that style, too. Check out Canon Rumors for the full spec sheet if you're interested in the nitty-gritty.

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Canon's Long-Awaited EOS M2 Hopes To Improve On Canon's First Mirrorless With Improved AF

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Canon's first kick at the mirrorless market was without question a disappointing debut: The EOS M first launched in 2012, and was a let...

Over the past year, video ad startup LiveRail has seen its share of the ad market increase and has seen revenues grow 300 percent year-over-year. It's on pace for a $100 million run-rate in the fourth quarter, as the company gets ready for a possible IPO in the second half of 2014.

Founded in 2008, LiveRail has steadily been introducing publishers to the joys of real-time bidding, using technology and algorithms to match publisher inventory with the highest bidder for their content. On the advertiser side, it allows brands and agencies to better target audiences in real-time, driving up the value of the ads.

With the market for programmatic ad buying expanding, the mostly quiet San Francisco-based startup is hoping to get the word out about its growth. One of the reasons LiveRail is now making revenue numbers public is that it would like to differentiate itself from some other video ad companies which IPO'd this year. Both Tremor Video and YuMe became publicly traded over the summer, but neither one has had tremendous success since then.

While YuMe's shares have recovered somewhat since it announced its third-quarter results, it's still down from the $9.00 listing price of its IPO. Tremor, meanwhile, has fared much worse: Its third-quarter numbers sent the company's stock price down nearly 50 percent in November.

For LiveRail, being on pace for $100 million in revenues puts it almost on par with those who have gone before it. YuMe is expecting full year revenue to be in a range of $154.5 million and $157.5 million, while Tremor's full-year guidance is for between $125 million and $126 million.

But it expects to grow more quickly than each of those competitors. In 2014 it's forecasting another 200 percent growth due to a couple of factors. On the one hand, it's signed a number of major new accounts over the past year, so it has a lot of momentum going into 2014. On the other hand, the company is seeing accelerating demand for programmatic video ad buying.

Broadcasters that it's signed up recently include A&E Mobile, CBS Local, Fox News, Condé Nast, Demand Media, Real Networks, Univision, BET, Advance Digital, Maker Studios, Scripps, and Terra Networks. That's on top of existing clients such as MLB.com, CBS Interactive, and PBS.

At the same time, customers are also getting more comfortable with its technology and make more inventory available for programmatic ad buying. It serves up about 5 billion ad impressions a month, and about 71 percent of its revenue today is transacted through real-time bidding, the company says.

The next step, according to LiveRail co-founder and CEO Mark Trefgarne, is to hire a CFO. The company is in the process of searching for someone to fill that role right now, and is targeting the second half of 2014 to go public.

When and if it does, its investors are probably in for a decent pay day. The company has only raised $12 million since being founded, and is already profitable. Its main investor is UK-based Pond Ventures, which invested in LiveRail pre-revenue.

Not only is it betting on continued momentum, but it's expanded its workforce to meet demand. That includes the opening of its first full-time sales office in Europe, and growing from a headcount of 60 at the beginning of the year to 120 employees worldwide today.

The short-term vision is to serve up all online ads, but in the long term, LiveRail believes there's a bigger opportunity to break into the traditional TV ad business.

“We fundamentally believe that if you fast-forward 10 years, it's difficult to imagine a world where the vast majority of viewing isn't done via IP,” Trefgarne said. “We think there's a world coming where programmatic TV represents 80 percent of TV viewing.”

Photo Credit: bfishadow via Compfight cc

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Video Ad Tech Startup LiveRail Is Targeting A Late 2014 IPO Thanks To $100 Million Revenue Run Rate

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Over the past year, video ad startup LiveRail has seen its share of the ad market increase and has seen revenues grow 300 percent year-over...

If you've ever had the opportunity to sit through a high-end audiophile retailer's comparative demonstration, you'll know that the more expensive the living room audio gear gets, the better it sounds. Amazing, but true -- they're not lying. The big problem, once you've sat through one of these comparisons, is that you're going to come to the unfortunate realization that you need to hand over many, many thousands of dollars to buy the best stuff. Anything less expensive, and you know it is second rate -- you've just heard that with your own ears.

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Geek Pulse Promises an Affordable Audio Adventure

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If you've ever had the opportunity to sit through a high-end audiophile retailer's comparative demonstration, you'll know that...

Intel's acquisition spree continues apace, with the latest being made to augment one of its other recent acquisitions. It is buying Hacker League, a popular platform for managing hackathons, which will be incorporated with the API management company Mashery (acquired April 2013). The terms of Hacker League deal are not being disclosed but we understand it is for a sum significantly smaller than the $180 million Intel reportedly paid for Mashery. Only the platform, IP and other assets are coming over to Intel; the three co-founders Mike Swift, Abe Stanway, and Ian Jennings, who are all in their early 20s, are not.

Oren Michels, Mashery's founder who still runs the business, tells me that the idea behind the acquisition is to augment the developer outreach work that it already does on a daily basis. “We acquired the assets of Hacker League to take a product that makes hackathons great so that we could do more things to support developers,” he said. “It adds something that we can support the developer community with and eventually build parts into our core product over time.”

Adding Hacker League will mean that Mashery (and Intel) will be significantly ramping up their events for developers. Mashery is involved in some 80 hackathons annually, while Hacker League has powered some 460 events worldwide since October 2011, with a database of some 6,000 hacks from those events. (The hackathons it has powered includes the one that kicks off TechCrunch Disrupt, our flagship conference.)

Mashery and Hacker League already had friendly relations before this, crossing paths in the hackathon circuit. “We have a lot of respect for Mashery,” Swift told me. “This is the best possible place for Hacker League to go. I got really excited by the idea of Mashery taking it to places where we couldn't.”

Swift - who created Hacker League with Stanway and Jennings while the three were still students at Rutgers University - says that it had from the start been a side project, created more out of what they themselves wanted out of hackathons than really a startup in its own right. It was always bootstrapped, and until this past summer (when they started to consider what would happen with Hacker League longer term) was run more or less as a side project, with the three co-founders holding down day jobs at places like SendGrid, Etsy and PubNub. They are continuing with other projects post-sale. All three had been a part of the HackNY program, which organises university student hackathons among other things, and this could be called HackNY's first exit. (Swift is continuing his interest in student hackathons; he's the “commisioner” of Major League Hacking, vying to be the official league for intercollegiate, competitive student hackathons.

While Mashery already has an existing business targeting developers - which is beneficial overall for Intel and its mindshare in that community - it will be interesting to see how and where Hacker League's platform gets used in the future. One area where Intel could use the platform would be in its own hardware-focused hackathons. And like other API-focused businesses like Appcelerator, Mashery itself is doing business with enterprises, helping them work on their own internal development, so potentially this could be used to help build out Mashery's outreach in that area as well.