New Technology News

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Nearly 700 websites pushing counterfeit products were seized by American and European authorities, according to Europol, the Europe-wide law agency. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement teamed with European law enforcement agencies to execute the holiday cybersting. It is surely no coincidence that the seizures coincided with Cyber Monday, the online shopping orgy. ICE has a history of dramatic timing, like when it seized scores of sports-streaming sites in 2011 and 2012 just before the Super Bowl.

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Hundreds of Counterfeit Sites Seized in Cybersting

10:09 AM

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Nearly 700 websites pushing counterfeit products were seized by American and European authorities, according to Europol, the Europe-wide l...

“Philanthropist” is a daunting word that conjures up images of Bruce Wayne and other people with so much excess money and time that they have to give it away. Most of us, on the other hand, need to budget carefully and the relatively modest sums we can afford to donate seem too insignificant. After all, how much difference can $20 make? Since 2007, a San Francisco-based non-profit called the One Percent Foundation has focused on convincing people–especially young adults–that every dollar they give matters. Now the group is seeking to help companies and organizations become more charitable with its new Pro Giving Circles, the customized, white-label version of its Giving Circles platform. The launch was timed to coincide with Giving Tuesday, an initiative that serves as a counterpoint to the consumerism of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

The One Perfect Foundation's name refers not to the growing wealth gap, but the organization's goal of motivating people to donate at least that amount of their income to worthy causes. People in their 20s to 30s are less likely to give money individually than their parents or grandparents, but they do contribute when asked by friends or colleagues to support a charity event or race, says Lara Volftsun, the One Percent Foundation's executive director.

“For many millennials, affordability, knowledge and impact are very real barriers to a more sustained, deliberate approach to giving,” she says. “Many do not think they can afford to give, do not know where to give or how to evaluate the effectiveness of organizations, and do not believe their modest donations can make a difference.”

The One Percent Foundation tackles those obstacles with its Giving Circle platform, where groups of people pool their financial resources to make a larger impact. While other fundraising platform, like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and CrowdTilt, raise funds for a project or individual cause, Volftsun says that One Percent Foundation wants to turn philantrophy into a habit with its “subscription crowdfunding” model. Members of each Giving Circle can use the site to set up monthly recurring donations, nominate charitable organizations and vote to determine who receives the money.

“Instead of giving a couple hundred dollars on your own, our members are able to make a substantial impact when they combine their funds, often donating thousands as a group,” Volftsun says.

All of the money raised through One Percent Foundation's Giving Circles are distributed in grants. The organization supports itself through two revenue streams: tipping, where members are promoted to add a couple of dollars to their monthly contributions to cover One Percent Foundation's operating costs, and its new Pro Giving Circles.

The Pro Giving Circles platform is targeted at companies, schools and other organizations that want to create a sense of community among potential donors, instead of hitting them up every so often with fundraising drives (discounted rates are available for qualifying non-profits). In addition to the features of regular Giving Circles, Pro Giving Circles also include one-on-one guidance from the One Percent Foundation's staff and custom URL and branding. Potential use cases include startups that want to create a Pro Giving Circle with its employees to support charities that “reflect the values of the startup's culture,” says Volftsun. Non-profit groups and universities, meanwhile, can use the platform to engage alumni and other potential donors.

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The One Percent Foundation, A Non-Profit, Wants To Help Millennials Turn Philanthropy Into A Habit

9:38 AM

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“Philanthropist” is a daunting word that conjures up images of Bruce Wayne and other people with so much excess money and time that they hav...

Microsoft's operating system updates planned for 2015 reportedly have been code-named "Threshold." They involve the addition of a set of common elements -- high-value activities such as Microsoft Office, possibly the coming "Remix" digital storytelling app, Bing, Intune and Workplace -- to Xbox One, Windows and Windows Phone. The commonality of the updates "makes a lot of sense," said Directions on Microsoft analyst Wes Miller, as the company no doubt wants to create an ecosystem that bridges Xbox, Windows and Windows Phone.

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Microsoft Sets a New Threshold for Windows Development

9:08 AM

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Microsoft's operating system updates planned for 2015 reportedly have been code-named "Threshold." They involve the addition...

If you need a better night's sleep you can either kick the chickens out of your bed (true story) or try something like the NeuroOn. Designed to work as a sleep mask and neural sensor, the system knows when you are in deep REM sleep and slowly wakes you when you will be most alert and refreshed. It also allows DIY sleep experimenters to take cat naps during the day, opening up whole new vistas of unexplored work time between 2am and the crack of dawn.

The NeuroOn is primarily designed to enable polyphasic sleep. By cutting sleep into chunks – Da Vinci tended to sleep 20 minutes every four hours, it is said – you can reduce the amount of bed time you need. The founder, Kamil Adamczyk, created the device when he was studying and trying to start a company.

“It was terrible experience switching,” he said. “But the results were amazing.” He had more time to study and work. Using the skills he learned he built a prototype NeuroOn mask. The system currently measures a number of things including EEG, EOG and EMG as well as eye tracking. Using low-energy Bluetooth it connects to your phone and will vibrate and light when it's time to wake up. It fits snugly on the head like a sleep mask and keeps light out completely.

I've used a number of prototypes of this device and was quite impressed with the verve with which Adamczyk expressed his love of the product and his mission. While I was never able to actually sleep with this thing on, he does promise that it will start you on the road to Tesla-like productivity – provided you're willing to wear it with other people in the room. I first met the team in Warsaw and they subsequently showed up at Disrupt in SF and Berlin, presumably doing all this while sleeping a few hours a day.

You can get the mask for a <a target="_blank" href="“>pledge of $165 and they expect to deliver by May of next year. While I can't see all of us hitting the polyphasic trail, the mask is also a good sleep aid and will wake you gently and without much fuss when you need to be woken.

“People should buy it if they're working really hard and sleeping irregularly,” said Adamczyk. Sounds like all of us.

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IntelClinic's NeuroOn Launches On Kickstarter, Promises To Let You Sleep Like Da Vinci

9:08 AM

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If you need a better night's sleep you can either kick the chickens out of your bed (true story) or try something like the NeuroOn . Des...

DataSift, a social data platform that provides brands and enterprises with access to content from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and dozens of other social networks, is today announcing a $42 million, Series C round of funding. Rob Bailey, DataSift's CEO, tells me that the company plans to use the new financing for a number of different purposes.

First up is international expansion, starting initially with Japan, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa, and Indonesia. DataSift also plans to add more data partners; and to expand into what Bailey calls “non-social” data sources - which can include messaging and gaming services, enterprise collaboration platforms and more. DataSift has seen a “huge amount of inbound interest” for data from these sources, he says.

Insight Venture Partners - the VC firm that has backed Twitter, Snapchat, Buddy Media, HootSuit and a number of other leading social startups - led the round with existing investors Scale Venture Partners, Upfront Ventures, IA Ventures, Northgate Capital and Daher Capital also participating. As part of the round, IVP's co-founder and MD Jeff Horing is joining DataSift's board of directors.

DataSift has now raised just under $72 million.

Bailey and DataSift are not providing a post-funding valuation, but considering that another player in the data firehose game, Topsy, has just sold to Apple for reportedly over $200 million, and DataSift is "considerably" bigger in size, it may well be a number well north of that.

Since being founded in 2010 in the UK, DataSift has been riding a veritable social media tsunami. A swathe of popular (and free) services like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr attract billions of users, who use the sites daily to post messages to each other and read what others have to say. That rush of consumers and their opinions are of huge interest to advertisers and others for obvious reasons, yet most of that data is unstructured and therefore hard to “read”. DataSift therefore provides a way for those enterprises to make better use of that data from these social media platforms: each piece of data gets tagged with metadata, which can then be used in different applications to chart what people are talking about, gain insight on different trends, and so on.

DataSift says that its 1,000 corporate customers today cover 40 countries and include Bloomberg, Dow Jones, CBS Interactive and Dell and social technology application innovators Marketwired, Dachis Group, Conversocial, SecondSync, HootSuite and Simply Measured.

The move to looking for new business in international markets makes sense for DataSift, Baily says, because they are the markets “where we see the biggest amount of social activity, yet are the most underserved.”

Unsurprisingly, DataSift ate a little of its own dogfood when selecting what countries it would target first. “We did a lot of sophisticated analysis internally,” he says. “We looked at aggregated social and local networks and the size of the advertising and business intelligence markets in these countries.” And in a sense the infrastructure for growth is already in place: the company already provides detection on its platform for 150 different languages, and is built for scaling. “Right out of the gate, it will be an incredibly easy path for us to enter Brazil, for example,” he says.

I also asked him about Japan. There, a lot of the buzz has been around messaging platform Line, which is more of a private, direct service than the one-to-many nature of networks like Twitter and Tumblr. In these sorts of scenarios, it's likely that messaging companies might tap DataSift for competitive intelligence of their own platform for their own commercial development, CTO Nick Halstead tells me. Still, the two would not comment on Line directly. “We have not announced a deal with Line yet,” Bailey said. “We cannot comment on deals that have not been announced but I think Line is one the most important data sources in Japan, along with some other ones.” (My interpretation: watch this space.)

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Firehose Specialist DataSift Raises Another $42M Led By IVP To Fulfill Global and Non-Social Ambitions

8:09 AM

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DataSift , a social data platform that provides brands and enterprises with access to content from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr an...

Microsoft has recognized that people appreciate the chance to make their own stuff, possibly due to the success of PlayStation exclusive LittleBigPlanet, and that's why it created Project Spark, previewed back in June at E3. Spark is an even more free-form game creation engine with a focus on simultaneous game playing and building, which also encourages sharing among friends and family.

The beta for Project Spark kicks off today on Windows 8.1, which means if you're one of the still quite small crowd on that latest desktop OS, you can take part – so long as you've also signed up for the beta over at the Project Spark website. The closed beta will extend to Xbox One users beginning in the new year, however, and that's where I expect the software to really start to shine, given Microsoft's sizeable user pool based on early sales numbers of the next-gen console. Microsoft also says cross-platform support is coming eventually, too.

Microsoft is touting Spark as a way to create collaborative, effectively unending games with your friends and connections, which is an interesting take on gaming as a social medium. Games have always had social aspects, to be sure: alternating turns or watching your friend who was lucky enough to own a PS1 play through Final Fantasy is no doubt an experience common to many of my particular vintage. Then of course came split-screen gaming, culminating the pure joy that was Goldeneye 007 for the N64, and the modern era of shooting and tea-bagging that is the Call of Duty series.

Now, Microsoft wants you to do something even more participatory, creating worlds as you explore them. At its most basic, Spark does most of the heavy lifting for you, with you specifying simply a scenario, setting and character before being thrown into a randomly generated game provided by the engine. But you can get much more granular, building different genres of games, using various different inputs including Kinect and the Xbox One controller, and even incorporating motion capture and voiceover using the Kinect for custom animations and dialogue. The Spark engine seems insanely flexible, so it'll very interesting to see what a legion of brand new amateur game devs can do with this in their hands.

Grab the Spark beta app from the Windows Store, but you might have to wait a little while to use it if you haven't yet got a beta key, and it's not going to be available in all regions immediately. This is potentially the most interesting thing Microsoft has done for a long time, so it'll be great to watch how this progresses, even if you're not that interested in becoming an auteur yourself.

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Microsoft's Project Spark DIY Game Creation Software Beta Begins Today

8:09 AM

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Microsoft has recognized that people appreciate the chance to make their own stuff, possibly due to the success of PlayStation exclusive Lit...

Business analytics company SumAllis announcing that it has raised $4 million in new funding from existing investors Battery Ventures and Wellington Partners, as well as an additional $1 million in debt from Silicon Valley Bank.

The company allows customers to connect a wide range of services, including social networks like Facebook and Twitter, email marketing tools like MailChimp and Constant Contact, payment providers like Amazon Payments and PayPal, and ad platforms like Bing Ads and Google AdWords. Businesses can then view and analyze all of that data from a single interface.

CEO Dane Atkinson said SumAll's appeal is boils down to allowing customers to “see your damn data.” He added that his team works hard to understand the key performance indicators that customers care about. (And some of those customers can be pretty big - SumAll says one agency is using the service to track more than 120 Google Analytics pages and 50 Facebook pages.)

The new funding was actually revealed last month in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but SumAll hasn't talked about the deal until now.

Atkinson told me the company actually had enough money in the bank to last until “well into next year,” when it planned to raise a larger round. However, the service has been growing quickly, supposedly tracking $4 billion in sales activity for 100,000 businesses, with the total amount of data doubling every 45 days. As a result, SumAll's infrastructure costs are increasingly rapidly, and Atkinson said he wanted to raise the money so that he wasn't tempted to cut expenses by “shaving down” the amount of data that SumAll tracks.

He added that SumAll talked to other potential investors, but ultimately decided to “stick to a smaller round for now” from existing backers and “barrel through until we get to bigger scale” (and can presumably raise money at a higher valuation).