GOGII raises $18 milllion from Raine Group, rebrands as textPlus, and moves beyond group messaging
The telecommunications industry has been evolving over the past couple of years and today, one of the major players in the industry is announcing a major milestone. textPlus, a leading provider of free mobile communications around the world has announced it has raised $18 million from the Raine Group for its Series D round of funding.
GOGII, the parent company of textPlus, has also announced that it will be rebranding itself to textPlus. Originally named as GOGII, the company wanted to play off of their SMS code 60611, but never really played up the concept of its shortcode. Its main product, textPlus, has been doing phenomenally well over the past few years — surpassing over 40 million downloads here in the US and Canada offering much more than just group text messaging. With the rebranding of the company from GOGII to textPlus, it is attempting to place more of an emphasis on the “plus” aspect beyond texting.
http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/10/16/textplus-rebrands-raises-18-million-series-d/
Kaspersky Lab Developing Its Own Operating System? We Confirm the Rumors, and End the Speculation!
Today I’d like to talk about the future. About a not-so-glamorous future of mass cyber-attacks on things like nuclear power stations, energy supply and transportation control facilities, financial and telecommunications systems, and all the other installations deemed “critically important”. Or you could think back to Die Hard 4 – where an attack on infrastructure plunged pretty much the whole country into chaos.
http://eugene.kaspersky.com/2012/10/16/kl-developing-its-own-operating-system-we-confirm-the-rumors-and-end-the-speculation/
LinkedIn Announces Massive Update To Its “Pillar Product”, The Profile
Today, LinkedIn is reinventing itself with a new profile design.
We got a small sneak peek at the new design a couple months ago, but the full story — including the man-behind-the-curtain mechanics of how it works — are available today.
The roll-out to end users will also start today.
Not only is the profile much better-looking than in past iterations; it’s also packed with new kinds of data and visualizations of that data. The company has also worked to make editing your profile a simpler process.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/16/linkedin-announces-massive-update-to-its-pilar-product-the-profile/
Investors seek billion-dollar payday as Vringo v. Google trial begins
A company with little business beyond a handful of recently purchased patents sued Google last year. That’s not at all unusual; what is unusual is that the company, Vringo, is actually going to trial—starting this morning in Norfolk, Virginia. Vringo will be asking for a nine-figure verdict, and its investors have a nontrivial chance of getting rich from this trial.
The hype around the Vringo trial is almost as remarkable as the trial itself, full of surprising investments and wild claims.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/investors-seek-billion-dollar-payday-as-vringo-v-google-trial-begins/
UberTAXI in NYC Shutting Down for Now – NO CHANGES to UberNYC Black Car Service
We want to thank all of New York’s UberFaithful for giving our NYC TAXI beta a shot over the last month. It was pretty exciting – for the first time in 30 years, New Yorkers could get a cab without going to the street and putting your arm out. This meant finding a driver happy to take you to Brooklyn knowing he could get a return fare through Uber, or getting a cab from the Bronx at 7pm on a Friday night.
Some quick stats:
- 160 cabbies participated in Uber TAXI beta
- Biggest payday – one top UberTAXI driver made $168 additional fares in a single day!
- Biggest week – Joe E. made $586 additional fares with UberTAXI in a week!
Unfortunately, as many of you have noticed, there haven’t been enough available TAXIs. Demand far out-stripped supply, making you feel pretty lucky when you got a yellow from your iPhone. We did the best we could to get more yellows on the road but New York’s TLC (Taxi and Limousine Commission) put up obstacles and roadblocks in order to squash the effort around e-hail, which they privately have said is legal under the rules. We’ll bite our tongues and keep our frustration here to ourselves.
http://blog.uber.com/2012/10/16/ubertaxi-in-nyc-shutting-down-for-now-no-changes-to-ubernyc-black-car-service/
Verizon draws fire for monitoring app usage, browsing habits
Verizon Wireless has begun selling information about its customers’ geographical locations, app usage, and Web browsing activities, a move that raises privacy questions and could brush up against federal wiretapping law.
The company this month began offering reports to marketers showing what Verizon subscribers are doing on their phones and other mobile devices, including what iOS and Android apps are in use in which locations. Verizon says it may link the data to third-party databases with information about customers’ gender, age, and even details such as “sports enthusiast, frequent diner or pet owner.”
“We’re able to view just everything that they do,” Bill Diggins, U.S. chief for the Verizon Wireless marketing initiative, told an industry conference earlier this year. “And that’s really where data is going today. Data is the new oil.”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57533001-38/verizon-draws-fire-for-monitoring-app-usage-browsing-habits/
Microsoft acquires cloud-storage appliance vendor StorSimple
It looks like Microsoft isn’t limiting its “devices and services company” mission to the consumer side of the house only.
Microsoft announced plans on October 16 to acquire StorSimple Inc. for an undisclosed amount.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based StorSimple is a player in the “cloud-integrated storage (CiS) space.
StorSimple provides cloud-integrated enterprise storage for Windows and VMware by integrating the cloud with on-premises enterprise storage “through a single appliance that delivers high-performance tiered storage, live archiving, cloud-based data protection and disaster recovery,” according to StorSimple’s Web site.
http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-acquires-cloud-storage-appliance-vendor-storsimple-7000005870/
Microsoft’s Surface available for pre-order in eight countries, shipping October 26th
We’ve been hearing about the Surface for the better part of six months, but in all that time Microsoft has kept secret what might be the tablet’s most important feature: its price. After revealing the price earlier today, the device goes up for pre-order (starting at 12PM ET), so the secret’s out: you can buy a Windows RT-powered Surface starting at $499. Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky referred to the desire to match “our competitor” when asked about the price at an event in Redmond this week, so it’s no accident that the 10.6-inch Surface equals the price of the iPad.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/16/3509982/microsoft-surface-price-499-pre-order
iMac Reportedly Set to Receive Updates Next Week [Updated]
While there have been rumblings of an iMac update for some time, and earlier this week we shared a report claiming that the new models will be thinner than current ones, today’s report appears to be the first to specifically claim that they will launch next week.
For those keeping track, Apple’s plans for next week now appear to include the iPad mini, updated iMacs, a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, and updated Mac mini models.
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/10/16/imac-reportedly-set-to-receive-updates-next-week/
Facebook expands Anti-Virus Marketplace, URL blacklist system with seven new partners
Facebook expanded its Anti-Virus Marketplace today with the addition of seven new partners — Avast, AVG, Avira, Kaspersky, Panda, Total Defense, and Webroot. Today’s expansion allows users to download anti-virus software from these seven companies, in addition to security apps from existing partners like McAfee and Symantec. The new partners will also add to the database behind Facebook’s URL blacklist system, which pre-emptively scans trillions of links for malicious content.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/16/3510178/facebook-av-marketplace-url-blacklist-expansion-avast-kaspersky
