Tuesday, March 19

Tag: US

Microsoft, Facebook to Jointly Lay Giant Cable Across Atlantic
News

Microsoft, Facebook to Jointly Lay Giant Cable Across Atlantic

Microsoft and Facebook have joined hands to lay a giant state-of-the-art subsea cable across the Atlantic Ocean connecting the US with Europe and beyond so as to facilitate faster speed and access to the Internet. The new "MAREA" cable will help meet the growing customer demand for high-speed, reliable connections for cloud and online services for Microsoft, Facebook, and their customers, a media release said. Construction of the cable will commence in August 2016 with completion expected in October 2017, it said. Microsoft and Facebook are collaborating on this system to accelerate the development of the next-generation of Internet infrastructure and support the explosion of data consumption and rapid growth of their respective cloud and online services, the release said. MARE...
Decoding: Facebook’s Trending Topic Controversy
ANALYSIS

Decoding: Facebook’s Trending Topic Controversy

What's behind the accusations that Facebook is manipulating its "trending topics" feature to promote or suppress certain political perspectives? According to the technology blog Gizmodo, a former Facebook contractor with self-described conservative leanings said Facebook downplayed news that conservatives are interested in and artificially promoted liberal issues such as the "BlackLivesMatter" hashtag. Gizmodo did not name this person. Facebook denied the claims, but the GOP-led US Senate Commerce Committee has sent a letter to Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg requesting answers about the matter.   What are 'trending topics'? Facebook shows some of the most popular topics being discussed at any given moment. On browsers, the topics appear on the top right corner, separate f...
Drone Makes First Urban Package Delivery in US
USA

Drone Makes First Urban Package Delivery in US

RENO(NEVADA): A drone has successfully delivered a package to a residential location in a Nevada town in what its maker and the state's governor said Friday was the first fully autonomous urban drone delivery in the U.S. Flirtey CEO Matt Sweeney said the six-rotor drone flew about a half-mile along a pre-programmed delivery route on March 10 and lowered the package outside a vacant residence in Hawthorne. The route was established using GPS. A pilot and visual observers were on standby during the flight but weren't needed, Sweeney said. He said the package included bottled water, food and a first-aid kit. NASA is working with the drone industry and the Federal Aviation Administration on a low-altitude air traffic control system to prevent crashes involving drones and other low-...
Times Internet To Acquire Cricket Broadcaster Willow TV
ACQUISITION

Times Internet To Acquire Cricket Broadcaster Willow TV

NEW DELHI: Times Internet, the digital venture of the Times of India group, will acquire US-based cricket broadcaster Willow TV International in a USD 100 million (around Rs 673 crore) deal. "Times (Internet) has committed USD 100 million to the purchase of Willow and our primary investment into the business - for rights acquisitions, marketing, and to grow cricket in the US market," Times Internet Director Satyan Gajwani said in a statement. For Times Internet, Willow would complement its own online cricket platform Cricbuzz. "Willow is complimentary to our existing audience and presence with cricbuzz.com, in a market with high-value, affluent consumers with a propensity to pay for content," he added. Named after English willow tree from which cricket bats are made, Willow is ...
IT services firm Cambridge Tech Invests Rs 8 cr in US Based Photo Sharing Platform PhotoKarma
FUNDING

IT services firm Cambridge Tech Invests Rs 8 cr in US Based Photo Sharing Platform PhotoKarma

Hyderabad based IT services firm Cambridge Technology has invested Rs 8 crore ($1.3 million) in US-based automated photo-sharing platform PhotoKarma. Idealab, Bessemer and New York Angels are also participated in this investment round. Before this investment Cambridge Tech has also invested in MyCrowd, a crowd-testing platform for website and mobile applications. The investments is aim to create a potential market for CTE's solutions on big data analytics and cloud services. The fund typically participates in the seed stage with a commitment of close to $250,000. "Our focus is on investing in 12 US-based and Indian startups by March 2017 as a means of incubating our clients as well as helping these companies with delivery so that they can focus on marketing and financing challenge...
Twitter Sued By U.S. Widow for Helping Islamic State
USA

Twitter Sued By U.S. Widow for Helping Islamic State

(Reuters)- Twitter is being sued by the widow of an American killed in Jordan, who accuses the social media company of giving a voice to Islamic State, adding to the pressure to crack down on online propaganda linked to terrorism. Tamara Fields, a Florida woman whose husband Lloyd died in the Nov. 9 attack on the police training center in Amman, said Twitter knowingly let the militant Islamist group use its network to spread propaganda, raise money and attract recruits. Lawyers specializing in terrorism said Fields faces an uphill battle though the case could lead to more calls for social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook Inc to take down posts associated with terrorist groups. In her complaint filed on Wednesday, Fields said San Francisco-based Twitter had until recently g...
Babajob.com Joins Facebook’s SME India Council
News

Babajob.com Joins Facebook’s SME India Council

In a significant development today, babajob.com, India's largest online job marketplace for the informal sector, was identified as a member of the SME India Council set up by Facebook in Asia-Pacific today. Facebook, which has over two million Indian small and medium businesses (SMBs) on its platform, has set up a SME Council to help small ventures from various industries share feedback and discuss ideas around leveraging technology to grow their enterprise. This is the second SME Council set up by Facebook globally, the first one being in the US. Globally, over 45 million small businesses actively use Facebook pages to connect to their consumers. In a post, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg mentioned that "Babajob.com, a job site in India, which uses Internet.org's Free Basic Services app, ...
Khan Academy Launched in Hindi Version
News

Khan Academy Launched in Hindi Version

Khan Academy, a US-based non-profit organization and an e-learning website, launched a Hindi version Thursday at the India Habitat Centre. They also published a small press release on it's Khan Academy Blog - Today we’re happy to announce that learners around the world can now access Khan Academy resources in Hindi! If you speak Hindi, you can learn math through our video lessons and practice problems mapped to India’s NCERT curriculum. Wherever you are Mumbai, Jaipur, a village in Haryana, or anywhere else around the globe, we believe you deserve the opportunity to learn at your own pace and in your own language. Khan Academy in Hindi brings us one step closer to our mission of a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere, and we thank our friends at Central Square Foundation for ...
Alibaba lobbies to stay off U.S. blacklist list for fakes
News

Alibaba lobbies to stay off U.S. blacklist list for fakes

Reuters - Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is lobbying hard to stay off the U.S. Trade Representative's blacklist after coming under renewed pressure this year over suspected counterfeits sold on its shopping platforms. Re-inclusion on the USTR's annual list of the world's most "notorious markets" for sales of pirated and counterfeit goods, while not carrying direct penalties, would be a blow to the company's efforts to shed perceptions that its sites are riddled with fakes and that its anti-piracy policies are inadequate. It could also hurt Alibaba's beleaguered share price.   Two Alibaba sites - the business-to-business platform Alibaba.com and the hugely popular Taobao Marketplace - were on the USTR's "Notorious Markets" list from 2008.Alibaba.com was...