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Wednesday, 12 February 2014
Mt. Gox’s Original Creator Is At Work On A Secret New Bitcoin Project
In what should be one of the greatest and weirdest pivots of all time, Jed McCaleb transformed Mt. Gox (short for Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange) from a card-trading platform into what became the world’s one-time leading Bitcoin exchange.
Not wanting the legal hassle of operating a crypto-currency exchange, McCaleb sold Mt. Gox to a few Tokyo-based French entrepreneurs he had never met before in 2011. They presided over Mt. Gox as it went on to dominate Bitcoin trading for more than a year by volume. However, over the past six months, the platform has seen a fall from grace as users have had trouble withdrawing their funds. New troubles emerged in the last couple days again, as Mt. Gox said it was halting withdrawals. The company said it was having problems finalizing transactions because of a perceived flaw in the Bitcoin protocol around “transaction malleability.” Other exchanges also halted withdrawals as the Bitcoin Foundation said it working on a solution to the problem.
In any case, McCaleb has been free of Mt. Gox’s troubles for years.
Now he’s back at work on a new project. And here it is at the mysterious address of secretbitcoinproject.com.
It has just this short message:
When I sold Mt. Gox a few years ago, Bitcoin was trading at less than a dollar. Today Bitcoin exists in a new environment. Mt. Gox is struggling to keep up. Now, I am building something that will be better for Bitcoin and better for you.
I’m looking for alpha testers.
-Jed
We also hear from a source that he’s raised some funding solely through some instant messages and Skype. (McCaleb is a bit reclusive.)
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IBM’s Watson Group Makes First Startup Investment In “Social Health Management” Pioneer, Welltok
Remember Watson? Yes, the artificially intelligent, question-answering computer system developed by IBM that trounced two former champions on Jeopardy like they were a couple of kindergartners. That Watson. (He blends right in.)
While IBM has since looked expectantly to Watson to become its next cash cow, it appears the brainy computer is still looking for regular work. So, in January, IBM created the Watson Group, a new business unit “dedicated to the development and commercialization of cloud-delivered cognitive innovations” — or the “Put Watson To Work Fund.” The company said at the time that it would invest $1 billion in the Watson Group, $100 million of which would be made available for venture investments.
With bring-Watson-to-market projects flush with capital, IBM’s big plans for its Jeopardy-winning computer have begun to take shape in the form of a new character: Dr. Watson. Today, further evidence of Watson’s future in healthcare arrived in the form of the Watson Group’s first venture investment, which saw it take the lead in the $22.1 million Series C financing of social health management startup, Welltok.
Since emerging in 2009, Denver-based WellTok has been on a mission to provide businesses with better ways to incentivize their employees to actually participate (and engage with) in company wellness plans. The startup offers a suite of Web and mobile social media-based solutions, as well as a social health management platform, to help health plans “consumerize” their services. In other words, by leveraging the ease-of-use, accessibility and cross-platform functionality now available in so many consumer-facing products, Welltok wants to help providers, and companies themselves, improve the user experience of their health plans and the health of their employees.
The investment is also meant to support the Watson Group’s existing partnership with Welltok, through which the two companies are building a new Watson-enabled application called “CaféWell Concierge.” The application will expand on Welltok’s health optimization platform and flagship product, CafeWell, both allows company health manager to more easily organize the ecosystem of available health and wellness solutions and provide access to a consumer-facing social health platform. The consumer platform side of CafeWell, for example, enables health plans to offer premium reductions to employees that exercise and take actions that lower their “Body Mass Index.”
With its new capital, Welltok plans to finish the development of its new, Watson-powered “Concierge” product line, which will allow users to ask questions about their health conditions and activities and receive personalized answers, along with guidance in the form of “intelligent health itineraries.” Welltok will then leverage Watson’s technology to learn which itineraries and rewards prove most effective in helping users reach their health goals, enabling it to refine Concierge’s recommendations and answers as it goes.
The round, which included participation from the startup’s existing investors like Emergence Capital, InterWest Partners, Miramar Venture Partners and Okapi Venture Capital, brings the company’s total capital to just under $50 million. About $40 million of its total capital has come in the last nine months, with Welltok having secured $18.7 million from Emergence, InterWest and NEA in April.
Combined, the company said that the new investments will enable it to expand its addressable market to encompass a greater share of the whole healthcare ecosystem, from accountable care organizations and population managers to health plans and systems and insurance brokers and exchanges.
For IBM, the investment in Welltok represents another step forward in its efforts to push Watson’s technology deeper into healthcare — and the search for commercial applications. A handful of healthcare companies and organizations were among the short list of Watson’s early customers, including players like WellPoint, a health insurer which was using IBM’s tech to determine whether or not the treatments being requested by doctors met with patients’ insurance policies and company guidelines, for example.
Ultimately, through these kinds of applications, Watson’s increasing presence in the space could have big long-term implications for healthcare. So, while Welltok is the Watson Group’s first investment in digital health (and first investment overall), it very likely won’t be the last.
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Nest is now officially a Google-owned company, ready to produce all sorts of who-knows-what
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Mozilla Will Sell Ads In Firefox To Create A New Revenue Stream
Open-source browser Firefox announced in a blog post that it is considering selling ads for its new tab page. Publishers will be able to purchase sponsored tiles that will appear alongside normal tiles, with a clear promoted label.
At first, Mozilla just wants to pre-populate the new tab page. When you are using Firefox for the first time, the current new tab page, is mostly empty, with just a link to the Firefox website. Similarly to other speed dial features in other browsers, Firefox uses your browsing history to put your most visited websites on the new tab page. But if your history is empty, the new tab page is empty as well.
That’s why the non-profit foundation plans to put the most popular websites in your area by default. In addition to that, some spots will be used for promoted tiles.
It might just a first try to see how users react before pushing promoted tiles to all users in their new tab page.
For now, the foundation most of its revenue from ads in Google. Google and Firefox signed an agreement so that Google is the default search engine. The two entities also share advertising revenue on Google AdWords ads.
And that’s about it — 90 percent of Mozilla’s yearly revenue comes from Google. As Firefox’s market share is shrinking, the foundation needs to find a new revenue stream. While Mozilla used be one of Google’s major partner, the company may renegotiate a much less favorable deal now that it has its own browser — Chrome is now much more popular than Firefox as well.
For the last couple of years, Mozilla and the advertising industry have been at odds. The foundation created the do-not-track feature to prevent targeted advertising. When users opt in, the browser won’t accept third party cookies anymore, making it much harder to display targeted ads around the web. Last year, Mozilla even chose to automatically block third party cookies from websites that you hadn’t visited.
Now, Mozilla wants to play ball with advertisers. It’s unclear when Mozilla is going to show promoted tiles to its new users. The foundation probably wants to talk with potential advertisers first.
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Prepara las palomitas: hombre vs robot en un partido de tenis de mesa
El jugador de pimp... esto... de tenis de mesa profesional Timo Boll se enfrentará a un robot industrial Kuka Agilus el próximo 11 de marzo. Es una campaña publicitaria en toda regla, pero viendo el alarde de habilidades que hace el robot en este teaser parece que al menos en esta ocasión veremos más movimiento que en los soporíferos enfrentamientos entre Kasparov y Deep Blue. Intedezante.
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First-time Firefox users will soon see ads in their tabs
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Oppo's next smartphone due in March with 2K and 1080p display options
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Contraoferta, un corto sobre lo kafkiano que es dar de baja una línea de teléfono
Realizado por la productora La Cuarta Fila. Llámalo dramatización, pero no ficción. ¡Gracias Pablo!
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The FCC is working on a plan to fix net neutrality, save the internet
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Sumas a alta velocidad
Speedsums : 20 preguntas. 30 segundos. Y operaciones básicas (+ - × ÷) que todo el mundo debería saber hacer sin lápiz ni papel.
Un juego para practicar un rato y hacer ejercicio mental a lo Brain Training, si más complicaciones aunque de todos modos la suerte influye un poquito según sean de complicados los cálculos que aparecen aleatoriamente.
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Nuevo vídeo de seguridad a bordo de Air New Zealand, esta vez con modelos de Sports Illustrated
Bear Grylls. Una chica de oro. Hobbits. Tripulantes desnudos con el cuerpo pintado. Una discoteca a bordo…
Air New Zealand no deja de producir originales vídeos de seguridad a bordo para intentar que los pasajeros les hagan un poquito de caso.
El más reciente es Safety in paradise , producido en colaboración con Sports Illustrated, que está celebrando su 50 aniversario.
- El nuevo vídeo de seguridad de Delta: ¿are you from the past? También tiene su gracia, en especial para los que tenemos una edad.
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HTC's leaked 'Desire 8' mid-ranger looks big and beautiful
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AppScotch Exits Stealth To Make Mobile Ads Playable
Founded 6 months ago but running in stealth mode until now, ad tech startup AppScotch is pulling back the curtain today. Based in California, with an R&D office in Russia, the company has developed technology to enable advertisers to offer a new kind of interactive ad unit that turns the humble banner ad into something that is actually playable.
In fact, a more accurate description might be that AppScotch turns games into ads. That’s because, similar to technology used by Steam, the ad is a fully virtualised, streamed sample of the game itself, delivered to the browser or natively via the startup’s SDK. Thus, AppScotch’s ad unit lets users try out a game before committing to an app store download.
The end result, says the company, is that those users who do go on to download the advertised game are much more likely to engage with it, having already played it (albeit for a minute or so), therefore increasing ROI for advertisers. Additionally, the new ad unit can be created by the advertiser simply by providing AppScotch’s tech with an app store link to the game.
While in stealth, it’s been serving customers for the last 2 months, including GameInsight and MiniClip. Competitors include Agawi, and Voxel, though, in comparison, AppScotch is talking up its instant ad network integration.
AppScotch’s also announcing that it’s raised seed funding from Almaz Capital, and imi.vc. The amount remains undisclosed, though my understanding is that it’s “less than a million” dollars.
More noteworthy, perhaps, is that two of AppScotch’s three co-founders are ex-VCs. Chairman Alex Marquez was previously director at Intel Capital, and CEO Andrey Kazako is co-founder of Foresight Ventures.
While at Intel Capital, Marquez is said to have invested in over a dozen digital media-related companies, including video game technology company Gaikai (acquired by Sony), in-game commerce company Playspan (acquired by Visa), and game developer and publisher Kabam.
Meanwhile, at Foresight Ventures, Kazako’s investments include mobile ad startup AppStack, and Jelastic while also seeing 3 exits, including hotel comparison site DealAngel being acquired by Russian travel startup OneTwoTrip. AppScotch’s other co-founder is Max Gannutin.
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Microsoft: Bing's altered Chinese search results are a glitch, not censorship
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Experiment: a la búsqueda de financiación colectiva para «hacer ciencia»
No conocía Experiment.com (anteriormente: Microryza), que se lanzó hace casi un año. Es básicamente un Kickstarter para proyectos científicos. Grupos de científicos plantean allí abiertamente experimentos e investigaciones que quieren llevar a cabo y la gente puede realizar donaciones para sacarlos adelante.
Financieramente se emplean las mismas fórmulas de la financiación colectiva tradicional, normalmente la denominada «todo o nada» que quiere decir que si se alcanza el objetivo el proyecto se lleva a cabo y, si no, no se cobra a nadie. (Ojo: Experiment.com no es una ONG, y el asunto no está exento de riesgos).
La idea me parece bien planteada y la plataforma está perfectamente construida; lo que no se ven es demasiados proyectos, aunque los que hay son de lo más variado: hay algunos de biología, otro sobre investigación genética y otro relativo al fracking, por ejemplo. Tienen un blog así que se puede seguir allí su evolución.
(Vía TICbeat.)
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Researchers develop smartglasses that help surgeons see cancerous cells
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Sony's VAIO Flip 11A convertible is now available for $799
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EOS Rebel T5 is Canon's cheapest DSLR, priced at $550 with 18-55mm lens
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