Sunday, December 22

Tag: silicon valley

Eric Schmidt, of Alphabet, To Head Pentagon's Innovation Board
6Mar By PriyankaNo Comments
News

Eric Schmidt, of Alphabet, To Head Pentagon's Innovation Board

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has been picked by Pentagon to head a new advisory board on defense innovation. About the same time, Pentagon Press secretary Peter Cook announced on Wednesday in Washington DC that Defense Secretary Ash Carter met Schmidt during the annual RSA Security Conference in San Francisco. Schmidt will be the chairman of the first Department of Defense Innovation Advisory Board and will work with Carter to select up to 12 members of the board. In a statement, Cook said the initiative is an effort to tap innovators from the private sector in Silicon Valley and beyond, and board members will "represent a cross-section of America's most innovative industries, drawing on technical and management expertise from Silicon...
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Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak Bringing Comic Con To Silicon Valley
12Feb By AnkitaNo Comments
Story

Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak Bringing Comic Con To Silicon Valley

AP, SAN FRANCISCO: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak had a front row seat as the personal computer began to reshape society. So it made perfect sense to him to bring a convention meshing technology with pop culture to Silicon Valley. The convergence will occur March 18-20 in San Jose, California, with the debut of Silicon Valley Comic Con. It's a new twist on an idea that has brought together fans of science fiction, fantasy and superheroes at packed shows held around the world for years. "I don't like doing the same thing as everyone else," Wozniak told The Associated Press Wednesday. So he teamed with four other partners to try something slightly different. Throwing technology into the mix should ratchet up the nerd vibe that ripples through all Comic Cons. A sold-out crowd of abou...
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Twitter suspends over 125,000 accounts for ‘promoting terrorist acts’
6Feb By reutersNo Comments
News

Twitter suspends over 125,000 accounts for ‘promoting terrorist acts’

Twitter Inc has shut down more than 125,000 terrorism-related accounts since the middle of 2015, most of them linked to the Islamic State group, the company said in a blog post on Friday. Twitter has said it only takes down accounts when they are reported by other users, but said that it has increased the size of teams monitoring and responding to reports and has decreased its response time "significantly." Twitter's announcement comes as many tech companies – led by Facebook – have taken stronger steps to police controversial content online in the face of threats from legislators to force the companies to report "terrorist activity" on their sites to law enforcement. Silicon Valley has been wary of engaging with government officials, concerned about endless demands for similar ac...
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White House, Silicon Valley to hold summit on militants’ social media use: Report
8Jan By reutersNo Comments
USA

White House, Silicon Valley to hold summit on militants’ social media use: Report

Senior White House officials and U.S. intelligence and law enforcement figures will meet with Silicon Valley executives on Friday to discuss how to counter the use of social media by militant groups, sources familiar with the meeting said on Thursday. In an escalation of pressure on technology firms to do more to combat online propaganda from groups such as Islamic State, the meeting follows attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, that underscored the role played by social media companies such as Twitter Inc, Alphabet Inc's YouTube and Facebook Inc. Invited participants include White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, presidential counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey, National Intelligence Director James Clapper an...
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Tata Trusts, Khan Academy enter five-year pact to develop free, high quality learning experience in India
8Dec By NitishNo Comments
News

Tata Trusts, Khan Academy enter five-year pact to develop free, high quality learning experience in India

Tata Trusts, and Khan Academy, a Silicon Valley-based not-for-profit education initiative founded by educationist Salman Khan, announced that they were entering into a five-year partnership to leverage the power of technology to provide free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere in the country. The partnership will focus on developing tech-enabled, high quality and localised education resources across India by providing a personalised, mastery-based learning experience. A former hedge fund analyst, Khan, who began the initiative as a teaching platform for his cousins back in the mid-2000s, is now has 30 million registered students and has delivered over 580 million lessons and over four million exercise problems. Speaking to the media, Tata Trusts, Chairman Ratan Tata said: ...
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Paytm buys home services marketplace Near.in
7Dec By No Comments
ACQUISITION

Paytm buys home services marketplace Near.in

Mobile wallet and e-commerce venture Paytm has acquired Near.in, a marketplace app that connects users with local businesses for home services. The Economic Times, which first reported the development, said the deal is valued between $1.5 million and $2 million. A formal press release on the announcement is expected shortly. he Paytm-Near.in deal is the latest instance of consolidation in the online home services segment. Last month, Mumbai-based Crenovative Ideas Pvt Ltd, which operates home services startup Taskbob, acquired Zepper Services Pvt Ltd. The acquisition allows Paytm, run by One 97 Communication Ltd, to strengthen its tentacles in the online-to-offline (O2O) commerce space. "O2O is a focus area for Paytm. Local commerce has massive potential in India, and this acqu...
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This One Video Convinced Google to Buy YouTube in $1.65 billion
4Dec By No Comments
Story

This One Video Convinced Google to Buy YouTube in $1.65 billion

What is YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki's favorite video? The one that convinced her Google needed to buy YouTube. In 2006, Wojcicki was overseeing Google video and in charge of its acquisitions. The search giant was looking at YouTube, then a tiny unprofitable Silicon Valley startup, when Wojcicki stumbled upon a video of two boys in China lipsynching to the Backstreet Boys "As Long As You Love Me." The video of the two boys outrageously lip-synching while their roommate did homework in the background was hilarious to the Google exec, she said onstage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit. "That was the video that made me realize that 'Wow, people all over the world can create content, and they don’t need to be in a studio,'" Wojcicki said. A light bulb went off in ...
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Solar batteries – The Surprising Reason on Why Indian PM Modi Visited Tesla
12Oct By No Comments
Story

Solar batteries – The Surprising Reason on Why Indian PM Modi Visited Tesla

Written by Prashin Chaturvedi, Business Transformation Leader -  India's Prime Minister Mr. Modi visited the Silicon Valley last month, and on the itinerary were the obvious inclusions - Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft. Also on the list was a curious entry - Tesla.  Why Tesla? Modi surely did not make the high-profile visit to get an early sneak peak into the new Model X. Modi, it turns out, wasn't there to bring Tesla's relatively expensive electric car technology to India, he was there to learn more about one of Tesla's lesser known products - their lithium-ion home battery system - Powerwall. Great discussion about solar/batteries empowering rural communities — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Sep 27, 2015 Powerwall is a wall-mounted lithium-ion home battery system designed to store energy f...
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Key takeaways from Indian PM Modi’s visit to silicon valley
30Sep By No Comments
News

Key takeaways from Indian PM Modi’s visit to silicon valley

The Indo-US Startup Connect was a unique exhibition of Start-Ups that showcased products from 40 different companies. Forty startups from India are participating in the programme at San Jose, which was planned following PM Modi's "Startup India, Stand up India" call from the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day. (more…)
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