ProgrammableWeb, a well-known repository for Web APIs, has been acquired by Alcatel-Lucent in a surprise move. Terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed, but according to the press release, ProgrammableWeb will continue to operate as a separate entity and the site’s founder John Musser will be making the move to Alcatel-Lucent.
The repository, which was launched back in 2005 and now contains some 2,042 APIs (we covered when it hit 1,000 back in November 2008), will be maintained by its new owner. → Read More
One thing home solar startup SunRun doesn’t seem to have a problem with is getting access to lots of capital. The three year old company has now raised $85 million in venture capital – including a new $55 million round led by Sequoia Capital. Previous investors Accel Partners and Foundation Capital also participated in the round.
But that’s not all. The company also has $90 million from US Bancorp and $100 million from PG&E to finance home solar installations.
At its core SunRun is a finance company. They offer attractive solutions to home owners to add solar panels to their roof, or in their yard. Customers can choose to pay up a single up front fee for the systems – which average around $25,000 – or pay nothing up front and make monthly payments over the decades-long useful life of the system. Either way customers are likely to save money versus their normal grid electricity largely thanks to federal tax credits and state and local incentives to go solar. → Read More
Tetris creator has been working on true multiplayer Tetris for “more than 10 years” High school science teacher tricks his students into actual NASA assignment Target-tracking autonomous guard-bot-tank is the precursor to the Hunter-Killer Meet DARwIn-LC, Virginia Tech’s new mini humanoid (video) Concept: Solar strap charges your camera while you’re out → Read More
Good news, MOG fans. The online music streaming service, which allows users to listen to as many songs as they want for a flat monthly fee, has had its iPhone application approved by Apple after spending well over a month in App Store purgatory. The application isn’t available for the iPhone quite yet (MOG says it will launch in the next few weeks), but it’s been given the green light by Apple, which is important considering that the company was worried it might be blocked. In addition to that news, MOG has also announced a new partnership to put MOG on Roku media players.
Roku makes an inexpensive set-top box for streaming media to your TV; this marks the first hardware integration for MOG. The service is included as part of MOG’s existing premium plan, which runs $4.99 a month and lets you stream as much music as you’d like from the site (and now, your Roku box). → Read More
Cloudera, which is backed by an impressive list of investors and advisors and run by a team of experienced technology veterans, commercially distributes and services Hadoop. The startup is announcing its first paid software today: Cloudera Enterprise. Cloudera Enterprise is next generation data management software to help companies leverage the Apache Hadoop platform.
Hadoop is a Java software framework born out of an open-source implementation of Google’s published computing infrastructure which is fostered within the Apache Software Foundation. Hadoop supports distributed applications running on large clusters of commodity computers processing enormous amounts of data. Cloudera helps distribute Hadoop, and provides services around the technology. → Read More
A day after Amazon made it abundantly clear it’s gunning for world domination in the e-reading space by lowering the price of the Kindle from $259 to $189 – following competitor Barnes & Noble’s decision to slash the price of its Nook e-reader down to $199 – chief executive Jeff Bezos sat down with Fortune’s JP Mangalindan for a fairly interesting interview.
One of the things Bezos talked about was the iPad, Apple’s tablet computer that is selling like hotcakes and unequivocally poses a genuine threat to Amazon’s burgeoning ebooks and ereader business (and, as some claim, to reading in general).
According to Apple, it’s already taken about 22% of the U.S. ebooks market, with iPad owners having downloaded some 5 million books in the first 65 days of the iBooks store alone.
But Bezos does not seem terribly impressed. → Read More
In a recent updated to the Playstation blog, Sony released some news about the latest firmware update coming to the PS3 and PSP system. Luckily, Sony was kind enough to include some information about exactly what changes will be coming out in the next update. → Read More
Back in January, with big balls, Google wrote the following:
We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
In March, Google backed that talk up by redirecting google.cn to google.com.hk, writing the following: → Read More
Yesterday, Digg CEO Kevin Rose tweeted that he’d heard a “huge rumor” that Google was planning to launch a Facebook competitor called “Google Me”, sparking off a wave of speculative reports (Rose has since removed the tweet). Now Adam D’Angelo, who was Facebook’s CTO for years and is now founder of hot Q&A service Quora, is weighing in with more details. And from what he’s hearing, Google Me is indeed very real, and it’s gunning for Facebook.
D’Angelo shared his thoughts as an answer to one of the questions on Quora. Here’s his response: → Read More
Back in May, Google showcased the next version of Android, codenamed Froyo. Chuck full of new features like Flash support, the ability to turn your phone into a Wifi hotspot, and huge speed gains, Android users have been eager to try it out for themselves. Some of them already have — Google rolled out Froyo to a small number of Nexus One years in late May, but most people didn’t receive the update. Now, Froyo is finally rolling out to all Nexus One users over the air, with plans to have it deployed to most people by the end of the week.
From the Nexus One blog:
Starting today, Nexus One users will begin to receive the Android 2.2 (codenamed Froyo) over-the-air software update on their phones. This update provides some great new features including support for making your handset a portable hotspot and support for Adobe Flash within the browser. For a complete list of everything we’ve included in Android 2.2, please see the Android 2.2 Platform Highlights. → Read More
Oooh! it looks like a video of the upcoming Meego-powered Nokia N9 has surfaced.
The video shows us a large screen (or tiny hands), an 8mp camera with flash, a front-facing camera, a full-QWERTY slide-out keyboard (with an angled hinge similar to the N97), and what looks to be a mini HDMI port. → Read More
It seems like only last week that I talked about the final Froyo build rolling out to Nexus One owners across the country.
Now it seems that there is a newer build (FRF85B) rolling out over-the-air to T-Mobile and AT&T users running last week’s FRF83 release. There are also reports that some users running the (Android 2.1) build EPE54B are getting pushed the upgrade. → Read More
This is a good thing to remember, as long as your local Best Buy or electronics store doesn’t mind you plugging stuff into their sets. Just get a USB stick (or better, two or three) and fill it up with pictures that will show off the strengths and weaknesses of the displays you’re considering. It’s a bit of a rough-and-tumble way of checking, since the color settings and such might not be optimized, but put a few test patterns or familiar photos up on there and you’ll be able to spot issues easily. Bringing along a movie you know well is another option, but not so good for comparisons. Some more tips here. → Read More
We knew that Samsung had a winner on their hands with the Samsung Galaxy S, and we knew that a US version would probably be popular, but we didn’t think we’d end up with 5 versions across 5 US carriers.
If you’re stuck deciding on which variant would best suit you, we’ve compiled this handy list outlining the main differences, prices, and launch dates for the next Android super phone, as they compare to the original non-US model. → Read More
So you’ve been shopping for a new camera, but you’re not sure what one you want. Sure, you’ve looked at megapixels, sensor size, and shutter speed until your eyes bleed. But don’t you wish there was an easy way to compare two cameras? Some easy way to look at the nuts and bolts of a couple of cameras to help you make your final decision? Enter Snapsort, a new website designed to allow you to not just compare technical features, but compare them in a way that makes sense to the normal person. → Read More
Electric car manufacturer Tesla is pricing its IPO at $17 per share, according to a release issued this evening. We just wrote today that one day before its scheduled IPO, Tesla Motors increased the allotment of shares that will be sold to the public from 11.1 million to 13.3 million, according to an amendment to its S1 filing. → Read More
Tetris is among the most widely-played games in history. So why is it that relatively few (in my experience) have every truly played it with another person? Probably because the multiplayer Tetris variants have been — well, more hacks than anything else. Sure, linked Gameboy Tetris was awesome, and there are established multiplayer Tetris communities, but as far as the creator of the game is concerned, we’re “not quite there yet.”
This interview, conducted by Gamasutra at one of the many 25th anniversary Tetris events this year, reveals that Alexey Pajitnov has been wrestling with this concept for quite a while. → Read More
Let’s file this one under “potentially frivolous.” Kershaw, Cutter, and Ratinoff are a legal outfit best known for filing against Zynga regarding the notorious Farmville offers, may be filing for a class action lawsuit against Apple. Unlike the Zynga case, this one seems less than legit. That’s assuming they even deem it worthwhile; they’re just collecting data right now: KCR is currently investigating potential problems with the release of iPhone 4. If you recently purchased the new iPhone and have experienced poor reception quality, dropped calls and weak signals, we would like to hear from you. Seems to me that this whole debacle falls under the “caveat emptor” exclusion from seller responsibility — for the moment. → Read More
