Saturday, April 19, 2014

drag2share: AllCast's screen-mirroring magic arrives on Amazon's Fire TV App Store

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/19/allcast-android-app-amazon-fire-tv/

Been putting off sideloading AllCast's SDK to your brand new Amazon Fire TV? Well, friend, your procrastination has paid off. Now, all you have to do to install the casting and screen-mirroring app is download it straight from the Amazon App Store. So long as you also have AllCast installed on an Android device, you can beam photos, videos and music from your phone or tablet to Amazon's set-top box. Plus, you can use the app to view images and videos saved on Google+ and Dropbox. If you don't plan to pick up a Fire TV (waiting for the second one, eh?), you can still use AllCast with a number of other devices, including Chromecast, Xbox One, Roku, Apple TV and a smattering of smart TVs.

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Source: Koushik Dutta (Google+), Amazon

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drag2share: Nike Has Fired Most Of Its FuelBand Team And Will Stop Making Wearable Devices

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/nike-fires-fuelband-team-2014-4

nike fuelband

There have been rumors that Nike will stop making its FuelBand wearable device, and now it looks like the rumors have come true.

A person familiar with Nike's plans confirmed to CNET that the company will get out of the fitness band business and will stick with software, such as the Nike+ app for the iPhone.  

"As a fast-paced, global business we continually align resources with business priorities," Nike spokesman Brian Strong tells CNET. "As our Digital Sport priorities evolve, we expect to make changes within the team, and there will be a small number of layoffs. We do not comment on individual employment matters."

As many as 55 people of the 70-person hardware team, part of the larger Digital Sport division, were let go on Thursday, according to CNET's source. 

It seems obvious that Nike would jump out of the hardware game right now, with the upcoming iWatch on its way, as well as wearable Android devices, such as Samsung's Gear Fit, flooding the market.

But as CNET reports:

As Apple enters the fray, Nike has a potential partner. Apple CEO Tim Cook, who was seen wearing a FuelBand at the company's launch of the in October of 2012, sits on Nike's board, and has for the last nine years. That relationship has been fruitful over the years, helping Nike enter the wearable market as early as 2006, with the Nike+iPod shoe sensor package, with a strong brand partner.

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Friday, April 18, 2014

drag2share: Satellite photo shows giant, monster-like biological shape at Loch Ness

Source: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/satellite-photo-show-giant-monster-like-biological-sha-1564884841/+caseychan

Satellite photo shows giant, monster-like biological shape at Loch Ness

Is that the Loch Ness monster in this satellite photo used by Apple Maps? Or at least something that looks like a giant biological form underwater? It's strangely similar to the shape spotted in Google's satellite imagery. Could it really be an underwater creature, a long-forgotten aquatic dinosaur?

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drag2share: 7 Charming and Wacky Treehouses You Can Rent For a Night in the Forest

Source: http://gizmodo.com/7-charming-and-wacky-treehouses-you-can-rent-for-a-nigh-1563869303

7 Charming and Wacky Treehouses You Can Rent For a Night in the Forest

At Treehotel in the north of Sweden, the rooms rise up like trees in an enchanted forest: a UFO, a mirrorcube, a giant bird's nest. It's some of your wildest childhood fantasies—brought to life by Swedish architects. So how did it all begin?

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Thursday, April 17, 2014

drag2share: Hadoop analytics startup Karmasphere sells itself to FICO

Source: http://gigaom.com/2014/04/17/hadoop-analytics-startup-karmasphere-sells-itself-to-fico/

The Fair Isaac Corporation, better known as FICO, has acquired the intellectual property of Hadoop startup Karmasphere. Karmasphere launched in 2010, and was one of the first companies to push the idea of an easy, visual interface for analyzing Hadoop data, and even analyzing it using traditional SQL queries.

According to a press release announcing the acquisition, Karmasphere’s technology will be folded into FICO Analytic Cloud service, which lets users analyze consumer credit data. Martin Hall, Karmasphere’s founder, will join FICO. I have reached out to Karmasphere for further details about the acquisition.

A screenshot of the Karmasphere product.

A screenshot of the Karmasphere product.

From the outside, though, the deal looks like a fire sale. I began hearing questions about the company’s future in early 2013 after some key executive departures, although the company did still release a new version of its analytics software in June. Karmasphere had raised $14.5 million in venture capital from Hummer Winblad, US Venture Partners and Presidio Ventures, but the last round was only a partial close ($3.5 million out of the $5 million it was looking for) in December 2012.

When I asked Hummer Winblad Managing Director Mitchell Kertzman (whose firm was one of Karmasphere’s main investors) about the fate of Karmasphere on the Structure Show podcast in November, he had this to say:

“To some extent, I think what happened in that space was real Hadoop adoption happened slowly … In other words, if Hadoop had really taken off … then the bet [on Karmapshere] would have gotten to market faster. Since Hadoop wasn’t being adopted as fast, then tools for Hadoop weren’t being required as fast.”

That’s a fair point. By the time the idea of real interactive analytics on Hadoop data really took off, there were newer, shinier options such as Datameer and Platfora available. Popular tools such as Tableau began connecting nicely with Hadoop, too, and the Hadoop community helped improve that story with SQL query engines that sped up backend processing.

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