Twitter for Mac Update Improves Photo Sharing, Adds Retina Support

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New Chrome Beta extension from Google lets you view Office files directly in the browser

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The Engadget Podcast is live at 3:30PM ET!

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NYC subway wireless goes live in 30 stations, Sprint and Verizon sign on soon

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SecondMarket Confirms Layoffs To Have Leaner Cost Structure, Become “Break-Even”

SecondMarket’s CEO Barry Silbert just confirmed that the company had layoffs this morning. From a tipster, we had heard it was as much as one-third of the company’s headcount but SecondMarket says it was less than that.

The rationale? Basically, Silbert said that the company had grown a “bloated cost structure,” from when it had a model that was based on transaction fees. SecondMarket offers liquidity to privately-held companies by letting shareholders sell equity in a manner that’s largely controlled by the companies and compliant with SEC rules.

He called the decision “gut wrenching” and “stressful,” but said that the move would enable the company to have $25 million in cash in the bank and function on a break-even basis.

SecondMarket Org Changes

I admit it, I screwed up. While the transition of SecondMarket from a telephone broker of illiquid assets in 2005 to the technology-driven reinvented stock market that we are today has been quite successful, I have done a poor job managing our cost structure during this transition. As a result, there are a number of high quality, hard-working SecondMarket family members who are now looking for their next challenge.

So what went wrong? Reflecting on the past few years, the biggest mistake that I made was treating our cash in the bank and top line revenue as the ultimate gauge of the health of the company. The problem with that approach is that it helped obfuscate the bloated cost structure that we had in place from the period in our history when our model involved collecting a transaction fee by connecting buyers and sellers. Great business, but not predictable, not very scalable and requires substantial infrastructure costs – regardless of transactional volume.

Today, SecondMarket is solely focused on delivering a robust suite of capital, liquidity and communication tools to issuers (private companies, community banks, funds and student loan issuers). With this more scalable, predictable business model, we have decided to double down on what is working, eliminate any unnecessary costs and get our company back to the lean, mean, high performing organization that we once were before hubris took over. Basically, we need to act more like a startup and less like the large, bloated, slow moving organizations that we’re trying to disrupt.

This cost rationalization process has been gut wrenching for me, stressful on my leadership team and, quite frankly, the worst experience of my professional career. Yet I know it is the right thing to do and it is the right time to do it. Emerging from this process will be a company with over $25 million of cash in the bank, an expected break-even bottom line and a rapidly growing list of companies, banks, funds and student loan issuers that are joining SecondMarket. I remain extremely optimistic about SecondMarket’s future and the important role we plan to play in reinventing the stock market and redefining the modern company.

Finally, as I mentioned, there are a number of fine individuals who are now searching for an opportunity. Smart, capable people who would be an asset to any organization. I encourage those of you looking to add talent to consider welcoming them onto your teams.

Thank you for your continued support and encouragement.

Barry Silbert, Founder & CEO

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FitBark Is a FitBit for Your Dog

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Google Drive now lets collaborators add friends, start chats with fewer clicks

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Stuck In A Rut? SpotOn.it Looks At Your Calendar And Makes Smart Activity Recommendations

There are definitely times where I feel like my social life has gotten a bit … not monotonous, but tied to a familiar pattern of bookstores, movie theaters, bars, and karaoke bars. That’s why I’m checking out a new site called SpotOn.it, which tries to break people out of their own personal ruts by recommending different types of events.

There are lots of other activity recommendation apps out there (the most interesting to me has probably been Weotta). SpotOn.it is different because it integrates with your Google Calendar, from which it can learn two important things — what you like to do, and what your schedule looks like.

“Our tech is based off building statistical models off of how people spend their time,” said co-founder and CEO Smita Saxena – she noted that she and her co-founder and CTO Charles Feng both have a background in machine learning.

SpotOn.it is also crawling the web to gather information about different events and activities, and identifying the basic characteristics of each activity. (The service has a pretty broad range of sources, Saxena said, though it’s still working on getting local events information from print magazines — she described it as “the last frontier”.) Put that together with your event information and it can recommend nearby activities that take place when you’re free and that are tailored to your interests.

You can also “like” activities and add them to your wish list (which is shared with other users) or your calendar. That, in turn, gives SpotOn.it more data for making personalized recommendations.

It sounds like there’s a pretty broad range of activities. For example, Saxena said that SpotOn.it has been in private beta, and that one of the big user groups is moms in the San Francisco Bay Area. So if a mom had an hour or two free with one of their children, SpotOn.it could recommend play groups nearby. I also signed up myself and got a pretty interesting range of activities that I could do this weekend — like tandem skydiving and visiting the GLBT museum. I hadn’t heard of most of them, but they all sounded like things I might enjoy. (Though no, I’m not going skydiving.)

The service is free, and Saxena said that she plans to make money eventually by integrating local deals that are tailored to users’ interests. She also said SpotOn.it could integrate with other services through an SDK allowing those services to offer activity recommendations to their own users.

The company is a graduate of StartX, the incubator for Stanford students and alums.

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WWDC Sells Out in Less Than 2 Minutes

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Nutrino is a virtual nutritionist for iOS, we go hands-on

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Twitter for Mac update brings photo sharing improvements, Retina display support

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Boxee Cloud DVR reaches the San Francisco Bay Area in beta

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Un exótico púlsar da la razón, una vez más, a Einstein y su teoría de la relatividad general

Impresión artística del púlsar PSR J0348+0432 y su compañera enana blanca

Aún para tratarse ser un púlsar PSR J0348+0432 es un objeto peculiar. Se trata de una estrella de neutrones que gira 25 veces por segundo sobre si misma y que con un diámetro de 20 kilómetros acumula el doble de masa que el Sol, lo que lo convierte en el púlsar más pesado descubierto hasta la fecha.

Esto quiere decir, en términos cotidianos, que si pudiéramos separar una porción de masa del centro de PSR J0348+0432 del tamaño de un terrón de azúcar este pesaría algo más de mil millones de toneladas.

Con esta masa el campo gravitatorio de PSR J0348+0432 es unos 300.000 millones de veces más fuerte que el de la Tierra.

Estrella de neutrones y Manhattan - NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Además, por si fuera poco, PSR J0348+0432 tiene como compañera a una enana blanca que lo orbita cada dos horas y media.

Estas condiciones de gravedad extremas y el disponer de esta compañera lo hacen ideal para someter a prueba algunas teorías que hacen predicciones distintas a las de la teoría de la relatividad general de Einstein, pues estas otras teorías sólo presentan diferencias con la de Einstein en campos gravitatorios extremadamente fuertes.

Según las predicciones de la teoría de la relatividad general el que estas dos estrellas estén tan juntas provoca que pierdan energía en forma de ondas gravitacionales, lo que a su vez provoca una ralentización del periodo orbital de la enana blanca.

Tal y como se puede leer en Einstein tenía razón — por ahora las predicciones de Einstein dicen que esta ralentización tendría que ser de 8 millonésimas de segundo por año, y este es precisamente el valor obtenido mediante observaciones hechas con el VLT del Observatorio Europeo Austral, el telescopio William Herschel del Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, y los radiotelescopios de Effelsberg, Arecibo y de Green Bank.

Así que un punto más para Einstein cuya teoría de la relatividad general ha visto una y otra vez como se confirman sus predicciones, y un punto en contra de esas otras teorías que preveían otros valores para la ralentización orbital de la enana blanca.

Y otro punto, por lo menos, para los científicos y los instrumentos que han utilizado, que han sido capaces de realizar estas mediciones tan precisas sobre un objeto que está a unos 6.860 años luz de la Tierra.

Claro que el que Einstein haya resultado reivindicado de nuevo no quita para que la teoría de la relatividad y la mecánica cuántica sigan sin ser compatibles, por lo que los físicos tendrán que seguir buscando una teoría unificada que explique nuestro universo.

O al menos más cosas de las que somos capaces de explicar ahora.

• De las minúsculas estrellas de neutrones a las más grandes estrellas que conocemos, un sorprendente viaje.


• El VLT del ESO obtiene la que creen que es la primera imagen directa de un protoplaneta, casi nada.

# Enlace Permanente

via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/ciencia/exotico-pulsar-da-razon-teoria-relatividad-general-einstein.html

Bill Maris, the Man Behind Google Ventures, on the Present Challenges and Future Potential of Glass

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The Engadget Mobile Podcast, live at 2PM ET!

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The Engadget Show 43: Music with John Vanderslice, Black Milk, Dan Deacon, Pandora, Sub Pop and more!

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Insert Coin: Snapzoom gives Kickstarters a crack at its smartphone scope adapter (video)

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PSA: WWDC 2013 tickets go on sale in one hour!

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Nokia Lumia event set for May 14th, invites us to 'see what's next'

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Intel's Haswell-powered 'North Cape' reappears, promises 10 hours of battery life in tablet-mode (hands-on)

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Earbits Brings Its Indie Music Discovery Service To Android

Earbits, a free music service where independent musicians and labels can pay to promote their work to fans, is launching its first mobile product today — an Android app.

It’s been more than two years since the Y Combinator-backed startup first launched. That seems like a long time for a music service to go without a mobile app.

However, CEO Joey Flores told me that Earbits isn’t just a regular music app — again, one of the main selling goals is to help musicians promote themselves, and for fans to promote those musicians. So the default mode for other music apps, where you just turn on the app and then let the music play without interacting, isn’t really what Earbits is going for.

“We really need you to engage with the artist for this to be a success for us,” Flores said.

So while building a mobile app at some point was a “no brainer,” Earbits had to do it in the right way, and in the meantime the team has been focusing its attention on the web version. In fact, the new Android app was created through a partnership with SproutBox, a firm that invests man-hours and support in a startup, rather than money, in exchange for equity.

I don’t own an Android phone, so I wasn’t able to try out the app myself. Flores said it supports most of the website’s functionality and adds some cool new features. For one thing, it can analyze the music on your phone, recommend Earbits channels that you might enjoy, and then mix your music in with the channel. There’s also a Boom Button allowing users to easily join the mailing list of a musician whose work they discover in the app, and to recommend that musician to a Facebook friend.

Flores said the company wants to build an iOS app as well, and he’s open to doing that through its work with SproutBox — but it sounds like there haven’t been any definite decisions made.

Earbits is also sharing some details about the progress of Groovies, the social currency that it launched in February. Users receive Groovies in exchange for “artist-friendly” actions, and the currency can be used to pay for on-demand music play. Since launching Groovies at the end of February, the company says user activity has increased significantly — Facebook fan acquisition increased 101 percent, email list signups went up by 261 percent, song recommendations on Twitter rose by 85.8 percent, overall Facebook sharing increased 29 percent, and the percentage of users who share songs on Facebook and twitter rose by 20.6 percent and 36.5 percent, respectively.

Earbits also says that since the Groovies launch, musicians and labels that have paid to have their songs played more frequently are seeing an average of eight new Facebook fans and 16 mailing list signups for every 1,000 tracks streamed.

When I asked about general usage numbers, Flores said that most of the company’s effort in the past couple of years has gone more into building out the site and acquiring content, so that there’s a reason for the users who do find Earbits to continue using it. The catalog now includes more than 100,000 songs from 9,300 artists and 550 record labels.

“The site’s definitely been growing, but we’ve mostly been focused on laying a foundation before we start firing away on user acquisition,” he said.

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MacBook Pro Is 'Best Performing' Windows Laptop, Report Claims

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Marshall Monitor headphones available now for $200, we go ears-on

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Android Tablet Market Share Nearly Matches the iPad

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The Pirate Bay Finds New Home in Iceland

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H.Bloom Online Flower Delivery Service Launches An iPhone App For Every Flavor Of Gift Giving

H.Bloom, the same service that makes you look like a superhero by delivering floral arrangements to your work which you can then deliver to your lady friend like a boss, is today launching an iPhone app.

The app ties in with Hbloom’s existing online service, but gives users an easy native way to place gift orders on the go. Along with Hbloom’s standard floral arrangements, users will also be able to choose from chocolates, cupcakes, candles, and macaroons.

HBloom will only be personally responsible for the flowers, as the company has partnered with other vendors like Sprinkles Cupcakes, Astro Doughnuts, and Niven Morgan to provide the other wares.

Here’s what Emily Dubner, director of consumer at H.Bloom, had to say:

Gifting has become stressful and time-consuming in recent years with an overabundance of options available. Our new app solves this problem by providing a one-stop shop where people can find high-quality, thoughtful gifts very quickly. We feel confident that the app will see great traction in each of our local markets.

H.loom has made a name for itself alongside big-name companies like 1-800-Flowers by getting creative not just with the arrangements themselves, but with the notion of sending flowers as gifts. While most services ask you to choose an arrangement, delivery date, and address, Hbloom gives the user a few different options.

You can get the hero package, which I mentioned above, letting you deliver fresh flowers yourself.

Users can also choose to plan ahead by ordering the Superhero package, which includes three separate arrangements delivered to your office on the days of your choosing. That way, you can bang ‘em out three days in a row and be the gift that keeps on giving, or split them up among major relationship holidays to always be prepared.

The app has a clean interface with easy navigation through the world of gift-giving. To develop the app, Hbloom tapped Two Toasters development firm likely with some of the cash from its recent $10 million funding round.

If you’re interested in downloading the H.Bloom Gifts app, just head over to the App Store and download the app for free.

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Insert Coin: Lightpack turns your computer display into an ambient backlight (video)

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NBC plans 'The Million Second Quiz' twelve day, 24 / 7 game show

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El proceso de formación estelar tiene efectos más poderosos de lo pensado hasta ahora

Algunas galaxias tienen un ritmo de creación de estrellas nuevas muy superior al normal, un proceso enormemente energético que desde hace tiempo sabíamos que afecta a toda la galaxia en el que se está produciendo.

En concreto lo que sucede es que el viento de partículas generado durante la creación de una estrella es expulsado hacia fuera y es capaz de ionizar el gas interestelar con el que va chocando gracias a la energía que lleva, haciendo que los átomos que lo forman pierdan uno o más de sus electrones.

Este gas interestelar es precisamente el que, al irse compactando, sobre todo por efecto de la gravedad, acaba formando nuevas estrellas, aunque no si está ionizado, por lo que el proceso de formación de estrellas sirve tanto para crear estas como para frenar en cierta medida la creación de más estrellas, ya que aparte del gas que consume y va a formar parte de una nueva estrella otra cantidad de gas queda «inutilizado» para formar parte de una nueva estrella.

Las Galaxias Antena, formadas por la colisión de las galaxias NGC 4038 y NGC 4039 son un ejemplo de una galaxia con brote estelar - NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

Pero un reciente estudio de 20 galaxias cercanas, algunas de ellas con brote estelar, ese ritmo acelerado de creación de estrellas mencionado al principio, ha permitido determinar que el efecto ionizante llega mucho más allá de lo que sospechábamos, de hecho hasta a 650.000 años luz del centro de la galaxia en el que se origina, unas veinte veces más que el tamaño de la galaxia en el que se origina, tal y como se puede leer en Entire galaxies feel the heat from newborn stars .

Así que los brotes de creación de estrellas, relativamente raros en las galaxias más cercanas aunque mucho más comunes en los primeros tiempos del universo, no sólo influyen en la evolución de la galaxia en la que se producen, sino que su influencia llega mucho más allá, a pesar de las enormes distancias que separan las galaxias.

El COSTAR - NASA

Comparación de la calidad de imagen del Hubble antes y después de la instalación del COSTAR / NASA

Para este estudio el equipo uso el Espectrógrafo de Orígenes Cósmicos del telescopio espacial Hubble para analizar la luz que llega de cuásares y ver cómo se ve afectada al pasar por el espacio que rodea a las galaxias en sumidas en un brote de creación de estrellas, comparándola con la que llega de otros cuásares y que atraviesa otras galaxias «normales» de control.

# Enlace Permanente

via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/ciencia/proceso-formacion-estelar-tiene-efectos-mas-poderosos-de-lo-pensado-hasta-ahora.html

Agua más realista para los videojuegos

Así de espectacular y de realista pueden llegar fluidos como el agua generados por ordenador, destinados a videojuegos, gracias a un nuevo algoritmo de simulación de líquidos denominado «Position Based Fluids» desarrollado por el fabricante de procesadores gráficos Nvidia. Vía Mashable.

# Enlace Permanente

via Microsiervos http://www.microsiervos.com/archivo/tecnologia/agua-mas-realista-videojuegos.html