Latest news

Yelp has just announced their Q4 2014 earnings and full-year results, showing strong growth year-over-year.

The business review site brought in $377.5 million in revenue for the year, up 62 percent year-over-year. Most importantly, Yelp was profitable for the first time ever, totaling $36.5 million for the year.

Overall, the total reviews on the site grew to 71 million, up 35 percent YoY, from 72 million unique mobile users and a total of 135 million monthly unique users. Desktop usership has peaked, and remained flat.

Yelp also announced nearly 100,000 active local business accounts and 84,000 local advertisers. Nearly one-third of the advertisers are paying between $300-$500 per month.

The company says its goal is monetize the international markets now, as only 3 percent of revenue has come from outside the U.S.

Source:
Forbes

Popular watch maker Swatch is preparing a smartwatch for release in the coming 2-3 months, looking to take a piece of the burgeoning industry.

Notably, the device will not have to be charged, will be able to make mobile payments via NFC, and will work with both Windows and Android.

Chief Executive Officer Nick Hayek, who previously said the company would not race to be first in the race to develop a smartwatch due to ongoing consumer resistance, says the time is right (or possibly necessary) now.

Hayek noted that in the future, a few of their latest patented tech will be used the smartwatch, such as a battery that has double the life of previous models: "We'll implement all of those into new products. Some of them, such as the battery, will take a few years though, and are also destined for other industries, like the automotive industry."

Swatch would not be the first Swiss watchmaker to try a smartwatch. Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) and their TAG Heuer brand have announced a smartwatch with GPS and fitness tracking for later this year.

Health insurance company Anthem (better known by their Blue Cross Blue Shield brand) is the victim of one of the largest breaches in history, with intimate personal data on 80 million former and current user being stolen.

"Anthem was the target of a very sophisticated external cyber attack," Anthem president and CEO Joseph Swedish said this morning. Among the data stolen were names, birthdays, medical IDs, Social Security numbers, full addresses, emails and employment info including work addresses.

The stolen database had 80 million customer's data in it, but Anthem does not believe everyone has been affected. Regardless, the company confirmed the number is certainly in the tens of millions. Anthem says no medical records were stolen in the breach.

"Anthem's own associates' personal information -- including my own -- was accessed during this security breach. We join in your concern and frustration and I assure you that we are working around the clock to do everything we can to further secure your data," Swedish added.

If you are a current or former customer of Anthem please check www.anthemfacts.com or call 877-263-7995. It is also important to start monitoring your credit if you are not already doing so.

Under Armour has announced this week the acquisition of MyFitnessPal and Endomondo in an effort to create the world's 'largest digital health community.'

With the two companies combined, UA's new digital health community will have 120 million users. MyFitnessPal was purchased for $475 million and Endomondo was acquired for $85 million. Both apps allow iOS and Android users to set goals, track their fitness activity and chat with others in the community for support and advice. MFP became popular due to its database of recipes that can be used for meals based on your available ingredients and calorie count.

"By combining a community of 120 million unique registered users, we are developing a digital ecosystem that provides us with unparalleled data and insight into making every athlete better," said Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank. "Understanding the evolving needs of our athletes -- how they interact, how they consume, and ultimately how they strive to live healthier lifestyles -- will be key inputs to forging deeper relationships and becoming more relevant to how the consumer shops."

As has been rumored for months, telecom giant BT has agreed to acquire EE, the UK's largest wireless carrier.

The deal values EE at $19 billion (12.5 billion euro), and will give BT the biggest 4G LTE customer base in all of Europe. Altogether, EE has 31 million subscribers.

BT has been looking to get back in the mobile market for the last two years, and became an MVNO last year using EE's network.

EE has 7.7 million 4G LTE users, far and away the largest in Europe, where the speedy mobile networks are still being adopted.

"This is a major milestone for BT as it will allow us to accelerate our mobility plans and increase our investment in them. The UK's leading 4G network will now dovetail with the UK's biggest fibre network, helping to create the leading converged communications provider in the UK. Consumers and businesses will benefit from new products and services as well as from increased investment and innovation," said BT Chief Executive Gavin Patterson. "The deal provides an attractive opportunity for BT to generate considerable value for shareholders, with significant operating and capital investment efficiencies supported by our tried and tested cost transformation activities. The enlarged BT will offer significant opportunities for employees as we lead the creation of a world-class digital infrastructure for Britain."

Verizon Wireless, looking to keep up with the insane customer growth rival T-Mobile is seeing, has slashed data plan pricing across the board for new and existing customers.

As part of their More Everything service, nearly every data plan has been reduced by $10 a month, and new GB tiers have been added to give users more options. The new tiers go as high as 20GB and only the 500MB and 10GB tiers have not seen any change.

"Just about a year ago, Verizon Wireless expanded what customers experience with a shared data plan when we introduced MORE Everything on the best 4G LTE network," said Verizon Wireless chief marketing officer Nancy Clark. "As the market leader, we are committed to delivering customers the solutions and value that make sense for their lifestyles."

In addition, Verizon will allow some qualifying customers to add smartphones to the "Verizon Edge" plan for $15 per month and a $15 or $25 discount off your total monthly bill. Edge allows for shared data, and allows customers to pay no upfront cost for a new phone and then finance it for 24 months.

Twitter has signed a deal with search giant Google to have tweets be visible in search results immediately after they are posted.

The new deal gives Google access to Twitter's "firehose," the stream of data from all of the company's users. Until now, Google had to crawl Twitter's site, but no longer.

Twitter had already signed similar deals with Microsoft and Yahoo, but the combined search share of Bing and Yahoo is much smaller than Google.

For both parties, the deal should have great synergies. Google will add tons of great, relevant information for their searches, and Twitter will be able to monetize their users' data when they are logged out.

Unlike Android, that remains wildly fragmented, Apple's latest operating system has seen mass adoption from iPhone and iPad users.

According to the Cupertino giant, iOS 8 is installed on 72 percent of iOS devices, up from 68 percent last month.

The number is particularly notable because of how many issues iOS 8 has had since launch. The original launch of iOS 8 was met with a few bugs, especially Wi-Fi issues. iOS 8.0.1 was a disaster and even led to some devices being bricked before Apple pulled the update. Subsequent updates have added stability and it appears that adoption has followed.

Google's latest Android, version 5.0, was released in November and is installed on just 1.6 percent of devices.

Ross Ulbricht, who went by the name 'Dread Pirate Roberts' online, has been convicted on all counts for running the illegal, anonymous bazaar, the Silk Road.

The Silk Road underground marketplace allowed users to purchase drugs, buy counterfeit products, and trade child pornography while paying with Bitcoin digital currency.

In just 3 hours of deliberations, the jury found Ulbricht guilty on all seven charges which included 'trafficking drugs on the Internet, narcotics-trafficking conspiracy, running a continuing criminal enterprise, computer-hacking conspiracy and money-laundering conspiracy.'

Prosecutors had alleged that Dread Pirate ran Silk Road from 2011 until its raid in 2013, and that over $200 million in Bitcoins were used to purchase illegal merchandise on the site in that time. Ulbricht was also accused of arranging to murder five people who threatened to expose sellers on the Silk Road.

In his defense, Ulbricht claimed that he was set up to take the blame by former Mt. Gox founder Mark Karpeles. The jury didn't buy it. On Ulbricht's computers they found Silk Road maintenance logs, weekly reports, online chat transcripts and over $13 million worth of bitcoins, which were then traced back to Silk Road.

Universal Pictures has confirmed the release date for the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic, just two days after we saw our first leaked scene pics from outside of Cupertino.

The film will debut in theaters on October 9th and will reportedly cover Apple founder Steve Jobs through three major launches; the original Mac, the NeXT, and the iPod. The script is based on Walter Isaacson's hit authorized biography on Jobs.

Directed by Danny Boyle, the movie features Michael Fassbender as Jobs and Seth Rogen as co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Universal acquired the film from Sony Pictures in November after the producers had a falling out with Sony's studio co-chairman. The arguments were infamously leaked when Sony Pictures' emails were released to the web following December's cyber attack on the studio.

Source:
AVC

In an effort to get into the brick-and-mortar business, it appears that Amazon is in talks with bankrupt retailer RadioShack to buy some of their over 4000 locations.

The stores would be used to showcase Amazon's hardware, which is now an entire lineup including a phone, tablet, e-reader, set-top box, and HDMI streaming stick. They could also be used as drop off and pickup centers for online buyers.

Major U.S. carrier Sprint and retailer Brookstone have also discussed buying thousands of locations from RadioShack in bankruptcy.
"This is a year in which we intend to grow our distribution dramatically," CEO Marcelo Claure said. "You are going to see the opening of more and more Sprint stores as this is one area that we work on."

If true, Amazon is hoping the move will put them on more even ground with Apple and Microsoft, whose brick-and-mortar locations have been popular and crucial in showing off products to consumers that do not only want to buy online.

Despite the devastating cyber attack that crippled the company for weeks, it appears that Sony Pictures Entertainment still eeked out a small profit for the fiscal Q3 ended December 31st.

Sony said today that SPE had a provisional (pending audit) profit of ￥24.3 billion, or $20 million USD. The profit was 90 percent lower than the same quarter last year, thanks mainly to the attack and also lower theatrical revenue across the board. Overall revenue is expected to be $1.63 billion, down 23 percent year-over-year.

Notably, "the quarter is expected to include approximately $15 million (1.8 billion yen) in investigation and remediation costs" related to the hack, added the company. Of course, the company faced more questions related to the cyber attack. "We don't think the leaking of unreleased films online or the damage to the IT systems will cause a significant loss. We had insurance against cyberattacks, and will be able to recover a significant portion of the costs, which will likely be be paid out in the next fiscal year [after April]," said Kazuhiko Takeda, vice president at the corporate planning and control dept.

We will have official numbers in the coming weeks, especially related to the attack.

The team behind Popcorn Time, after a brief hiatus, have returned with updates to their Windows, Mac and Android versions.

As the team says, the updates are mainly for the UI and for general performance and stability. Reads the post: "Getting this software to work flawlessly in one hell of a challenge and with these releases we're getting so much closer to this desired goal...

Also the content is of higher quality this time around, and we're doing our best to make sure you won't have movies that don't play, specific episodes in a series you're watching that get stuck.. We're doing our best to make sure the video will run smoothly without stuttering, looping, pausing... That the sound quality will be even higher than it already was, that the download will be quicker and that the overall watching experience will rock your world! Even more than before. It worked beautifully when testing it, and if it works beautifully for all of you... Well, we may be able to start fantasizing on crossing out the word BETA before the version number ;-)"


Here is the changelog for the Mac and Windows versions, which now move to beta 5.2:

New interface for Mac Os X!
Metadata errors fixed! (0/0 peers,0kb/s, 100% and then back to info page issues are under this category).
Magnet links support
Initial download progress fix
Torrent engine stability updates
Seek and download bar fixes
Brazilian Portuguese subtitles fix
Cache bug fixed.
Updater improvements – From the next version on there will be no need for you to re-install every time we offer a new version!

According to a new report, tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon have been paying to have their ads whitelisted through the popular ad-blocking extension software Adblock Plus.

The report claims that the paid deal between the makers of Adblock Plus (Eyeo) and the tech companies allows the ads to get through the filter which would otherwise block them.

Eyeo has confirmed that they do indeed have a whitelist that is part of their "acceptable ads" program which allows "less aggressive" ads to bypass the filter. Users of the plugin can choose to accept the "acceptable ads" whitelist in which "by doing this you support websites that rely on advertising but choose to do it in a non-intrusive way."

Apparently, addition to the acceptable ads program is free for small companies, big companies are paying large fees to ensure their ads make it through.

Microsoft and the Raspberry Pi Foundation have confirmed that the software giant will be offering a version of Windows 10 for free for Raspberry Pi micro PCs.

"We see the Maker community as an amazing source of innovation for smart, connected devices that represent the very foundation of the next wave of computing, and we're excited to be a part of this community," said Kevin Dallas, General Manager, Windows IoT (Internet of Things) Group.

Yesterday, the Foundation showed off the Raspberry Pi 2, which added 1GB of RAM and a quad-core processor for the same $35 price tag opening up the possibility of more advanced software like Mathematica, or Windows.

"Raspberry Pi 2 is a surprisingly powerful device that opens up the world of computing and programing to a huge range of people and skill levels. We are excited about our work with the Raspberry Pi Foundation and to share that Windows 10 will support Raspberry Pi 2. We will be sharing more details about our Windows 10 plans for IoT in the coming months," added Dallas.