Sources: Yahoo Bought Aviate For $80M

Internet and Media, News
Earlier this week, Yahoo announced that it had acquired Aviate, a startup providing contextually relevant information on Android homescreens, but it didn’t say anything about the acquisition price. Now a source with knowledge of the deal tells me that the acquisition was for $80 million. My source didn’t know any of the details beyond the amount — the mix of cash and stock or how much of the total is tied to an earn out, for example. Regardless, that’s an impressive price for a young startup that raised a $1.8 million Series A (from Highland Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others) less than a year ago. (It was also incubated at StartX.) When I reached out for this story, spokespeople from both Yahoo and Aviate declined to comment on the terms…
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Instagram Invite For Mysterious December 12 Media Event May Hint Toward Printing

Internet and Media, News
[caption id="attachment_684" align="alignnone" width="585"] Instagram invite[/caption]   Instagram has invited members of the media to an event in NYC on December 12 to “share a moment” with Kevin Systrom and the Instagram team. It’s unclear what this event is in reference to, but considering that the invitation was sent in the mail, on paper, the photo-sharing app could be hinting at a future in print. Other invites were a block of wood with pictures printed on them, with a hanger on one side to hang on the wall. If that isn’t a hint toward printing, I don’t know what is. It sounds ridiculous, considering the digital revolution is in full swing and paper is on its way out, but there is an entire ecosystem of applications, services, etc. that piggy…
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Twill on Apache: A New Weave

Internet and Media, News
Twill makes it easier to write programs that can take advantage of YARN. Twill uses a simple thread-based model that Java programmers will find familiar. YARN can be viewed as a compute fabric of a cluster, which means YARN applications like Twill will run on any Hadoop 2 cluster, including Cloudera's CDH 4, explained Tom White, an engineer at Cloudera.Using Hadoop running YARN to manage large clusters for Big Data analysis may soon become easier with a renamed open source project accepted by the Apache Foundation. The Apache Foundation accepted the open source project Twill, named "Weave" while hosted on Github, after foundation members began voting for its inclusion on Nov. 8. Bringing the Twill project to Apache incubation will ensure that Twill is more accessible to application developers, according…
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Virtual Currency: Bitcoin

Internet and Media, News
Bitcoin is being used to pay for everything from pin to smartphones on the Internet. The Bitcoin is being traded without  tracking, for reducing banking-transaction fees and making it an attractive for those seeking to buy and sell via the Web-stores. The price of Bitcoin is $1,034 on the http://preev.com/ , and this virtual currency gaining wider acceptance. Bitcoins, which exist as software and aren’t regulated by any country or banking authority,surged to a record $1,073 yesterday, up more than 80-fold from a year earlier. The currency has rallied on growing interest from investors in China and the U.S., while merchants are starting to accept Bitcoins for everything from Bears to tuition fees. History Bitcoin was introduced in 2008 by a group of programmers going under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoins exist as software,…
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Voting Rights Bill For NRI (Non Resident Indian)

Blog, Internet and Media, News, Social Responsibilities
Parliament has approved voting rights for non-resident Indians in elections with the Lok Sabha adopting the Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill, 2010, However, the person will be able to exercise the franchise only if he or she is present in the constituency on the polling day. The new law will allow an Indian citizen residing abroad to enrol in voter’s list and exercise his franchise even if he or she remained away from place of residence in India for more than six months owing to employment, education or otherwise. But there are more then 20 million Indians living abroad and it is practically impossible to have 20 million people travel to India at the same time. So a combination of Internet and Postal Ballot is more practical, reasonable and…
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Google India celebrated Children’s Day with the Doodle 4 winner

Internet and Media, News
The Google India homepage on Thursday, November 14, 2013 shows Google written with characters that well and truly are Indian. The doodle is titled 'Sky's the limit for Indian women' and has been designed by Gayatri Ketharaman from Pune for the fifth edition of Doodle 4 Google competition. The theme this year was celebrating Indian women. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="652"] Google Doodle 4 India[/caption] Today's doodle has G written with a young girl character who is seen leaping in the air with a dupatta and a musical instrument behind her indicating that she is dancing. The two Os are written with a Re 1 coin that has a graduation cap on it while the other O is balance by a house on a beam balance. The other G shows a…
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Apple executive says company did not raise ebooks prices

Internet and Media, News
[caption id="attachment_342" align="alignnone" width="585"] Apple says company did not raise ebooks prices[/caption] An Apple Inc executive at the center of an antitrust lawsuit by the U.S. government said on Thursday the company "didn't care" what price publishers set for e-books. Eddy Cue said he was not surprised when publishers increased prices for new and best-selling titles after Apple entered the e-books market in 2010, but he disputed that Apple caused prices industry-wide to increase. "I didn't raise prices," he testified in federal court. Apple is the sole remaining defendant in a lawsuit in which it is accused of working with five major U.S. publishers to fix e-book prices and undo Amazon.com Inc's market control. The publishers all reached settlements with the U.S. government. Cue, a 24-year veteran of Apple, was…
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Yahoo Throws in 1 TB of Free Storage With Flickr Revamp

Internet and Media, News
Yahoo has announced the overhaul of Flickr, its photo and video sharing site, after purchasing social microblogging website Tumblr. The new Flickr has "a beautiful, completely reimagined experience that puts photos front and center," Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wrote in a blog post that is reminiscent of what Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said when announcing his company's overhaul of NewsFeed. Flickr's new user interface is "built around a new photostream that gives you a vivid and endlessly scrolling gallery," Mayer said. "It's easy to see what your friends are posting and what they're saying about your photos." Flickr has also increased the amount of free storage space for users to 1 TB and overhauled its Android app. Google recently updated Google+ along similar lines. "There are certain kinds of language and…
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Spanish police using Twitter to fight crime

Internet and Media, News
Spain's national police have built up an army of more than half a million followers on Twitter, using them to help swoop on fugitives and get tip-offs on drug dealers in an open dialogue that has helped bring the force closer to the people. Since it was set up in 2009, the Spanish feed has become one of most popular police Twitter accounts in the world, with the force regularly sending humorous tweets to attract followers. As well as warning the public of new scams, the force often enlists the help of Spaniards, tweeting requests for information about drug dealers in particular, to be sent anonymously to a police email address. "If you know of anybody, a little group of narcos, or of a drugs sales point in Spain, tell…
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Pinterest review: Cleaner, easier to manage

Internet and Media, News
[caption id="attachment_332" align="alignnone" width="585"] Pinterest[/caption] Don't worry, Pinterest fans: Your sprawling virtual pegboards of wedding dresses, handmade jewelry, craft projects and food porn haven't changed dramatically. They're just easier to manage. The popular link- and photo-sharing website has rolled out an update, one offering people simpler navigation and new ways to arrange their boards to fit their needs. Although the haphazard spirit of Pinterest remains, the site is much less overwhelming. I wasn't a Pinterest user before, so the redesign gave me a chance to take a good look at the site for the first time. Before that, I had refused to be sucked into yet another form of social media. I figured I didn't have much use for it. In the months since I started testing out Pinterest's new…
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