The Next Web |
- Dutch court rules that IP blocks are ineffective against piracy, unblocks The Pirate Bay
- Octonius for iOS is a unified file-browser for Evernote, Dropbox and Google Drive
- Akamai: Average Internet speed grew 29% year-over-year to 3.6 Mbps, mobile traffic jumped by 80%
- Somewhere is a new visual platform for showing off your work and skills
- Google Street View arrives in the Philippines, kicking off in the capital Manila
- Yahoo is reportedly in talks to buy Tomfoolery, a startup that develops apps for businesses
- Nate Silver’s soon-to-relaunch FiveThirtyEight will focus on more than sports and politics
- Uber celebrates Chinese New Year by bringing lion dances on demand to China and Singapore
- Google Glass can now be used with regular glasses after Google introduces $225 frames
- Jason Calacanis’ Inside.com news app launches using human curation to help show the best reporting
| Dutch court rules that IP blocks are ineffective against piracy, unblocks The Pirate Bay Posted: 28 Jan 2014 03:57 AM PST  The Court of Appeals in The Hague, Netherlands has today ruled that two ISPs operating in the country no longer have to block access to The Pirate Bay, as doing so was an ineffective measure against piracy. The providers (XS4All and Ziggo) have been battling it out in the appeals court to overturn an earlier decision which led to the blocking of the services in the first place, brought about by a case initiated by the anti-piracy group BREIN. However, as the companies could demostrate that the blocks had been ineffective in achieving their goal of reducing piracy, the court ruled that they no longer had to be imposed. " In applying the case law from the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the Court of Appeal held that an access provider is not under an obligation to take measures that are disproportional and/or ineffective," Bureau Brandeis, the legal firm that represented XS4All, said in a note on its website.
In the UK, ISPs have been forced to block not only The Pirate Bay, but also a plethora of other sites. It has also led to the blocking of completely legal and unrelated sites like The Promo Bay too. In August last year, UK Parliament made an apparent about-turn on blocking under Digital Economy Act rules. However, rights holders in the UK have also used Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988) to effectively achieve the same site blocks in the past. Time will tell whether UK ISPs will continue to be forced to block access to certain websites, but with IP-based exclusion clearly proving ineffective, rights holders like the MPAA and BPI will have to find a different approach to curb the piracy that they say is costing them dearly. At the time of writing, The Pirate Bay is still blocked by Ziggo, but we'd expect this to change in the near future following this decision. ➤ ISPs No Longer Have to Block The Pirate Bay, Dutch Court Rules [via TorrentFreak] Featured Image Credit – Thinkstock This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Octonius for iOS is a unified file-browser for Evernote, Dropbox and Google Drive Posted: 28 Jan 2014 03:31 AM PST  If you consider yourself a power-user of Evernote, Dropbox and Google Drive, you may wish to check out Octonius, which recently officially launched in the App Store. Optimized for iPhone and iPod touch, Octonius has previously been available as a "proof of concept", as the Romania-based team iterated on various ideas and models for the service. But with the latest public-ready version of Octonius, the company has settled on what their unified file-browser should be all about, adding new features and dropping others. In a nutshell, Octonius lets you search all your content on Evernote, Dropbox and Google Drive, and organize, track and share all your files easily. We've given the app a quick test-drive, and here's how it works. How it worksFirst up, you'll need to create an Octonius account and, once in, you'll see four options 'Flow', 'Collections', 'Browse' and 'Cloud Search'. These will be blank until you connect up at least one of your three profiles.
Now, when you visit the 'Flow' tab, you'll see a stream of files ordered chronologically – this basically keeps you posted on the latest changes to any file. A left swipe pulls up four options – 'Add a note' (e.g. 'Video of xyz') which lets you explain what a file is, 'Add to Collection' which lets you order all your cloud-based content into categories (e.g. 'Videos', 'Photos'), 'Scheduling' for creating reminders and tasks, and 'share'.
In terms of scheduling, this turns anything from your cloud accounts into an actionable item, creating a to-do list of sorts for any file, with alerts and tasks. Creating a collection, on the other hand, helps bring a little order to the chaos, which could be very useful when you have a multitude of formats and documents that need sorting.
Octonius is only free for a month though, after which you can pay a one year subscription of $11.99, or a monthly payment of $1.99. The verdictThere are similar services out there already, including FindIt which works on both iOS and Android, though it omits Evernote and integrates with Gmail, Dropbox and Google Drive. Then there's Hojoki too, which covers just about every app you can think of, from Google Drive and Google Calendar, through to Dropbox, Evernote, Box, Basecamp, Podio, Yammer, and more, though it's more about project management for enterprise. While Octonius could be used by small teams, in its current form it feels more suited to individual consumers or freelancers, rather than enterprise. However, Octonius is a nicely designed app, with some sweet touches in there including the Flow timeline and Collections, but it doesn't cover nearly enough cloud storage services – why there isn't iCloud support is beyond me. However, we're told that iCloud will be included with the next iteration, as will OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) and Box. Also, while you can manually search for items, it would be nice to see a little more automation in terms of organizing files into categories – perhaps it could detect video, audio, photos and spreadsheets as separate entities, letting you peruse each file-type accordingly. While it's not a bad effort, Octonius probably doesn't bring enough new stuff to the table to make you want to pay for the service at the moment, but there's enough going on here to keep us interested and we'll keep one eye on this to see how it evolves. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Akamai: Average Internet speed grew 29% year-over-year to 3.6 Mbps, mobile traffic jumped by 80% Posted: 28 Jan 2014 03:30 AM PST  Global average connection speeds have hit a new high, rising 29 percent year-over-year to 3.6 Mbps. Meanwhile, the demands of the mobile world are growing very fast, with data traffic increasing by 80 percent in the last year. The latest figures come from Akamai, which today published its quarterly State of the Internet report for Q3 2013. The firm listed 122 countries/regions as experiencing an increase in average connection speeds year-over-year, ranging from 0.5 percent in Namibia (to 1.1 Mbps) to a 76 percent increase in Nepal (to 3.6 Mbps). Only 18 of those saw their average connection speeds decrease quarter-over-quarter, with losses ranging from 0.4 percent in Bahrain (to 2.2 Mbps) to a drop of 19 percent in El Salvador (to 1.9 Mbps). As you can see below, all of the top 10 countries/regions saw double-digit percentage growth year-over-year and eight saw double-digit percentage growth quarter-over-quarter:
"In the third quarter of 2013, we observed that long-term growth in average and average peak connection speeds remained strong, as did growth in global broadband and high broadband adoption rates," David Belson, the report's editor, said in a statement. "We believe these trends point to continued improvement in the quality and performance of Internet connectivity in countries around the world." Global broadband adoption, which Akamai rates as speeds of 4Mbps and up, increased 5.8 percent last quarter to reach 53 percent penetration. Global high broadband, rated as 10 Mbps and up, reached 19 percent penetration after a 19 percent increase over the previous quarter. As the world moves toward mobile, however, that's where all the action is. Akamai cited data collected by Ericsson, which has a presence in more than 180 countries and a customer base representing more than 1,000 networks, that indicated the volume of mobile data traffic jumped by 80 percent year-over-year, and grew 10 percent quarter-over-quarter:
It's worth noting mobile voice traffic shows quite a flat progression. Unfortunately, Akamai doesn't provide a further breakdown of activity such as streaming and Web browsing. In Q3 2013, average connection speeds on surveyed mobile network operators ranged from a low of 0.6 Mbps to a high of 9.5 Mbps. Only 18 operators demonstrated average connection speeds in the aforementioned broadband category. Also this quarter, Akamai released a State of the Internet app for iOS; you can download it now directly from Apple's App Store. The tool provides easy access to interactive State of the Internet data such as unique IP addresses, attack volume, connection speeds, and broadband adoption. You can check out the full 40-page report for yourself here: Top Image Credit: craitza This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Somewhere is a new visual platform for showing off your work and skills Posted: 28 Jan 2014 03:04 AM PST  With LinkedIn now a staple of the recruitment world, having a profile is pretty much essential for job-hunters and people wanting to showcase their skills. However, Berlin-based startup Somewhere thinks that the new world of work deserves a new way of showcasing your talents. As such, it has just opened up its image-oriented work skills platform to the public, although you'll still need to request an invite for now. A main profile page looks a little like a Pinterest board, with little square boxes of information (called 'Sparks') arranged on the page containing information about skills, work history etc. On the main profile page, all the Sparks are shown together – but there are also links for jumping directly to specific information about a person, with categories like: 'What I do', 'How I work', 'What I've done', 'Interest and inspiration', 'Aspirations', 'People who matter' and more.
The site also has its own social elements too – like allowing users to follow each other and specific company profiles – but its co-founder Justin McMurray said that it's the visual display of information and dynamic access to relevant associated information that will set Somewhere apart from the crowd. "Work is a crucially important part of your life and yet the static nature of CVs and LinkedIn profiles act like a straight-jacket. Nowadays the real story of your work is much richer than a record of jobs," McMurray said. "We want to make sharing and exploring work feel more personal, like you're right there behind the scenes." Clearly, Somewhere isn't alone in thinking that potential recruiters might want to dig a little deeper than LinkedIn allows, or see that information presented in a less tedious way – Sumry, an interactive timeline of your work history, launched just last week and aims to bring a more visually-led approach to recruitment and showcasing skills. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Google Street View arrives in the Philippines, kicking off in the capital Manila Posted: 28 Jan 2014 02:56 AM PST Google is extending its Street View imagery service into the Philippines today. The Internet giant announced that it will begin capturing images of capital city Manila, but will expand coverage to the rest of the country, which is composed of a prolific 7,107 islands, in due course.
Like its Street View projects in other Asian countries, Google has partnered with the Department of Tourism in the Philippines. Governments in the West have often fretted over the privacy implications of Street View, but Asia has been more progressive in that respect — many countries see the service as having the potential to boost tourism. Google has kicked things off in the Philippines' by publishing images of Intramuros, an historic old section of Manila that was given the Street View treatment recently. You can check out The San Agustin Church, Baluarte de San Diego, Plaza San Luis Complex and Fort Santiago on Google Maps, the video below gives an overview. ➤ Mabuhay, Street View Philippines! [Google Asia Blog] Let's hope it fares better than in Indonesia: Google Street View car crashes into TWO minivans and a parked vehicle – driver runs off Thumbnail image via esfera / Shutterstock This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Yahoo is reportedly in talks to buy Tomfoolery, a startup that develops apps for businesses Posted: 28 Jan 2014 12:45 AM PST
The Wall Street Journal reports that the two sides are "at an advanced stage" of discussions to complete a $16 million deal. Its completion would be mark another 'boomerang' acquisition — a term Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer coined to describe ex-Yahooers returning to the company. Tomfoolery CEO Kakul Srivastava previously spent seven years at the Internet giant, where she working on Flickr, Yahoo Messenger, and Yahoo Mail before leaving in 2011. Tomfoolery's most notable product is Anchor, a mobile social network for organizing and communicating in teams. The Journal said its sources were unable to determine whether the service would remain open if Yahoo completes the acquisition. ➤ Yahoo in Talks to Buy App Developer Tomfoolery for $16 Million [Wall Street Journal] Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Nate Silver’s soon-to-relaunch FiveThirtyEight will focus on more than sports and politics Posted: 27 Jan 2014 10:25 PM PST
"By design, almost any topic in the news can potentially fit into one or more of these categories. Our idea is that the site's mission will be defined by how we cover the news rather than what we cover," Silver says in a blog post. Thus far, Silver has recruited 15 reporters and is hiring more. Going into more detail, he explains that the site "will seek to apply the concept of data journalism on a wider scale," by both analyzing big data related to stories, as well as shining light or critiquing "irresponsible uses of data and statistics" in reports and among key topics. ➤ Status Update: Building FiveThirtyEight [FiveThirtyEight.com] Image via Randy Stewart / Flickr This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Uber celebrates Chinese New Year by bringing lion dances on demand to China and Singapore Posted: 27 Jan 2014 09:48 PM PST  Chinese New Year is just around the corner, and to celebrate it with a dash of extravagance, private car hire service Uber is letting you hire a lion dance troupe on demand throughout Wednesday. Uber is branching out from its usual black cabs to send you a lion dance in three Chinese cities — Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou — as well as Singapore. All you have to do is download the Uber app and request the 'Lion Dance' option — if a troupe is available, it will arrive at your home or workplace within minutes.
However, demand for such special services tends to be high and Uber warns that availability may be limited — so it could take a couple of tries to find an available lion dance troupe. The lion dance offering will run through 9am to 6pm and will cost CNY188 ($31) in the three Chinese cities, and SG$50 ($39) in Singapore. Uber has previously experimented with other products for its on-demand taxi-hailing service. In the past, customers have been given the chance to request Christmas trees, ice cream trucks, roses and even kittens for a limited period. The lion dance is the company's way of localizing its service in Asia — adding on to its increased efforts to expand in the region. Read: Uber targets Asia, confirming plans to expand to Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong and beyond Headline image via Shutterstock This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Google Glass can now be used with regular glasses after Google introduces $225 frames Posted: 27 Jan 2014 09:29 PM PST  Google has been promising to make its Google Glass wearable technology compatible with prescription glasses, and that day has now come after the company released four 'frames,' priced at $225 each. The frames are separate to Glass itself — which costs a hefty $1,500 and is limited to the Explorer's club, based on invites from Google. That said, the introduction of frames has always been a key requirement for Glass before the product goes on general sale to consumers.             The Verge road-tested the new 'Titanium collection' — which was designed by in-house at Google — and found them to be "surprisingly good," however the the battery pack weighs down the right side of the glasses which can be uncomfortable. The four frames new frames are available in a choice of eight colors — that includes the original palette of Charcoal, Cotton, Shale, Sky, and Tangerine, and new arrivals Classic and Edge. Google says that the new frames and colors now provide more than 40 different style combinations for would-be Glass owners. ➤ New Frames & Shades for Glass [Google+] Images via Google This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Jason Calacanis’ Inside.com news app launches using human curation to help show the best reporting Posted: 27 Jan 2014 09:01 PM PST  In the world of news consumption, there's certainly no shortage of ways consumers can find out what's going on. Some popular services have emerged, including Flipboard, Circa, Feedly, Zite, and others. However, with multiple publications reporting on the same thing, readers could run into duplication and grow tired of trying to find unique and relevant content. Inside.com is a company that aims to give readers what they want — content that's uniquely suited just for them — and today it opened up to the public. Founded by serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, Inside.com today equates itself to being the "Pandora for news" and says it will deliver "over 1,000 of the world's most important and fascinating stories each day." But unlike the major news distribution platforms out there, Calacanis says that all content on Inside.com will be human-curated and only the best.
Creating a new atomic unit for contentAt the core of Inside.com's app is the notion of a new atomic unit that Calacanis remarked mirrors what Twitter did with 140 characters. Each news listing contains a main image and a maximum of 300 character description. Each one will contain up to 8 facts that are in the story, designed to provide valuable insights to the reader without having to tap or click to read more. The company designed the interface so that each listing will fit snugly onto the screen of a smartphone — but this may not be the case in some listings.
Users can also voice their opinion about a story by thumbing up or down on whether they found the story informative. In doing so, the feedback gets counted by Inside.com's algorithm to fine-tune the news content that a particular reader cares about. As expected, if a user thumbs down something, that topic will be removed from the user's feed. But by thumbing up, it will be added to the user's personalized feed section, aptly labeled "My Feed." Similar to Prismatic, Inside.com will display news based on interested topics — and there are a few of them, between 2,000 and 3,000 supported to date. Each feed will be different for each user. Each news item will have up to three topics assigned to it by an editor, including a main topic and then two sub-topics that are derived from content within the summary. So a story about the upcoming Super Bowl could have #SuperBowl as its main topic, but then have #NFL and #Football as its two sub-topics. Each news item that's displayed is featured in a format reminiscent of Circa, a news startup that Calacanis is an investor in. Everything in the summary is rewritten by a human being, including the title and description. And as stated earlier, the format is limited to just 300 characters. One interesting trick to the app is the ability to parse through multiple stories in your news feed with similar topics. With a deck of cards feature, users can swipe to the left to read more updates about a particular topic, giving quick access to more topical stories without having to leave your main news feed.
Eliminating bad journalismCalacanis told us that the idea for Inside.com came about through the success he had with the LAUNCH Ticker, a service he launched in 2012 to curate technology-related news. To date, that project has 700 paying subscribers and was a test to see whether using human curation could be a successful endeavor. Considered to be the minimal viable product Calacanis needed, the service eventually evolved to become Inside.com to provide readers with a detailed, but succinct summary of any news across a variety of topics and categories. One of the interesting features of Inside.com is its goal of only displaying the best article about a specific story. The app will look at publications with original reporting and commentary and select the best one. In extremely rare occasions, it might choose press releases, but most likely the best source will be listed. It intends to block out "low-quality non-journalists". Calacanis appears to be on a crusade to stop the publicity of things that he calls "bad journalism":
A news junkieFor Calacanis, Inside.com's focus on news makes the most sense as he's been infatuated with news ever since he started Weblogs, Mahalo, and his popular This Week In podcast series of shows. But, he tells us that the industry is in "turmoil" because publications and sites are looking to optimize their content and readership to their own advantage, not to the benefit of consumers. Following Mahalo's fall from grace after Google modified its search algorithm, Calacanis set out to launch Inside.com. But, would another news service be welcomed in the ecosystem? He has hired Gabriel Snyder, the former editor of The Wire, to help dive into the slew of content and extract the ones that aren't "schlocky" and display it for the world to see. As you'd expect from any entrepreneur, Calacanis boasts that Inside.com is the best in that it has summarization technology that is more advanced than the likes of Summly, a company that was acquired by Yahoo in 2013 and powers its Yahoo News Digest app. Calacanis says that readers want to find the 10 best stories that are specific to them, not what another company says should be displayed. Interestingly, it took a bit longer than expected to get Inside.com to this point. Following Mahalo, there had been talk as far back as 2012 about Calacanis' next act, but it wound up being more than a year later before that dream became a reality. He attributes it to the fact that the first version of the app was built for iOS 6 right before Apple unveiled iOS 7. That meant a two month delay while the team rebuilt the whole thing. Then, another delay happened when Calacanis found himself dissatisfied with the service's algorithm. However, he's not worried at all, saying: "If you're in it for the long-term, then take your time." Available now on Web, iPhone, and BlackBerry?Inside.com is available today as a mobile app and also on the Web. Users can log in using Twitter OAuth, Facebook Login, or through email authentication. However, in an era of social media and sharing, it doesn't have much in the way of pushing content to the major social networks. Users can download the app onto their iPhone and BlackBerry device. Yes, that's right — Inside.com is supported on the platform. Calacanis says that it's because the Canadian phone manufacturer is an investor in his company and recognizes that device owners need to have a news application. Native versions for Android, iPad, and Windows Phone will be released in a few months, although the mobile Web version is available in the meantime. So how will Inside.com make money? Right now the team isn't thinking about that and won't be for the next two years. Calacanis says that the company's focus is going to be on growth and quality. However, he hinted that native advertising may be inserted into the news feed in the future, but didn't offer specifics. See related: 20 West-Coast based startups to watch in 2014 ➤ Inside.com for iOS | BlackBerry Photo credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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