As Uber works to remake its tarnished image, the company is still dealing with the fallout from its past misdeeds.
from iFeeltech IT News Mix4 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/technology/uber-sexual-harassment-lawsuit.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
I had a great time last year with Sony’s catchily-named DPT-RP1, an e-paper tablet that’s perfect for reading PDFs and other big documents, but one of my main issues was simply how big the thing is. Light and thin but 13 inches across, the tablet was just unwieldy. Heeding (I assume) my advice, Sony is putting out a smaller version and I can’t wait to try it out.
At the time, I was comparing the RP1 with the reMarkable, a crowdfunded rival that offers fantastic writing ability but isn’t without its flaws. Watch this great video I made:
The 10-inch DPT-CP1 has a couple small differences from its larger sibling. The screen has a slightly lower resolution but should be the same PPI — it’s more of a cutout of the original screen than a miniaturization. And it’s considerably lighter: 240 grams to the 13-inch version’s 350. Considering the latter already felt almost alarmingly light, this one probably feels like it’ll float out of your hands and enter orbit.
More important are the software changes. There’s a new mobile app for iOS and Android that should make loading and sharing documents easier. A new screen sharing mode sounds handy but a little cumbrous — you have to plug it into a PC and then plug the PC into a display. And PDF handling has been improved so that you can jump to pages, zoom and pan, and scan through thumbnails more easily. Limited interaction (think checkboxes) is also possible.
There’s nothing that addresses my main issue with both the RP1 and the reMarkable: that it’s a pain to do anything substantial on the devices, such as edit or highlight in a document, and if you do, it’s a pain to bring that work into other environments.
So for now it looks like the Digital Paper series will remain mostly focused on consuming content rather than creating or modifying it. That’s fine — I loved reading stuff on the device, and mainly just wished it were a bit smaller. Now that Sony has granted that wish, it can get to work on the rest.
from iFeeltech IT News Mix4 https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/21/sony-shrinks-its-digital-paper-tablet-down-to-a-more-manageable-10-inches/
Another (very) big deal for Netflix: Former U.S. President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama have reached an agreement to produce films and series for the streaming service.
The New York Times first reported in March that the Obamas were in “advanced negotiations” with Netflix. The goal, supposedly, was less about criticizing the Trump Administration or promoting any specific political message, and more about highlighting inspirational stories.
Netflix’s official announcement makes it sound like that continues to be what the Obamas have in mind, with Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos describing them as “uniquely positioned to discover and highlight stories of people who make a difference in their communities and strive to change the world for the better.”
The Obamas have formed a company called Higher Ground Productions to create this content.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Netflix has deep pockets and has shown a willingness to write very large checks. It says the Obamas might produce “scripted series, unscripted series, docu-series, documentaries and features” — so basically any kind of audiovisual content.
In a statement, Mr. Obama said:
One of the simple joys of our time in public service was getting to meet so many fascinating people from all walks of life, and to help them share their experiences with a wider audience. That’s why Michelle and I are so excited to partner with Netflix – we hope to cultivate and curate the talented, inspiring, creative voices who are able to promote greater empathy and understanding between peoples, and help them share their stories with the entire world.
Michelle Obama’s memoir Becoming is scheduled for publication in November, while Barack Obama is expected to release a new memoir as well under the same deal. He’s kept a relatively low profile since leaving office, but he did make a recent appearance as the first guest David Letterman’s Netflix interview show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.
from iFeeltech IT News Mix4 https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/21/obama-netflix-deal/
In March, the female-led media company and newsletter provider TheSkimm reported it was raising a $12 million Series C from Google Ventures and Spanx founder Sara Blakely, along with several existing investors. Today, the company is confirming its Series C round has closed with a number of new, mostly female investors joining – including big names like Shonda Rhimes and Tyra Banks.
Variety was the first to report the news of the new investors.
The Series C’s additional investors include former TV journalist Willow Bay, now dean at the USC Anneberg School for Communication and Journalism; Jesse Draper of Halogen Ventures; Shonda Rhimes; CEO of GingerBread Capital, Linnea Roberts; CEO of GingerBread Capital, Hope Taitz; as well as the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.; and Michael Karsch of Juice Press.
Earlier Series C investors included GV (formerly Google Ventures); Spanx founder Sara Blakely; plus former lead investors 21st Century Fox, RRE Ventures and Homebrew Ventures.
TheSkimm began its life as an email newsletter, founded by former TV news producers Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg. The newsletter targets millennial women who want an easy way to keep up with the key news of the today. What makes the product so appealing is how it’s written in a conversational tone, making it accessible to a wide audience who often finds reading the news a dreary but necessary chore. Mixed in with its highlights from key U.S., political, and international news, are samplings of stories from pop culture and the entertainment industry, which gives the newsletter a bit of a palate cleanser – something that’s much appreciated these days.
That newsletter has now grown to around 7 million subscribers, the company says. (This is the same number it reported in March.)
The company has also expanded to other products since its launch, including a $2.99 per month subscription-based app for keeping up with upcoming news and televised events, a podcast, as well as original videos for YouTube and Facebook Watch via its production arm, Skimm Studios.
Its video offerings include Skimm’d with…” and “Get Off the Couch” for Facebook, and digital series “Sip n’ Skimm” which landed an interview with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, followed by a discussion with Speak Paul Ryan assessing the proposed GOP tax plan.
Meanwhile, TheSkimm’s podcast, “Skimm’d from The Couch,” reached #1 on Apple Podcasts hours after its launch.
The company generates revenue from a variety of sources, including its app subscriptions, native ads, affiliate, content licensing and distribution, TheSkimm notes in an announcement. The company is not offering revenue details, however.
“As a female led and founded company, we are excited to have the opportunity to bring such an impressive and dynamic group of female investors into theSkimm fold,” co-founders and co-CEOs Carly Zakin and Danielle Weisberg, said in a statement. “With a majority of our audience being female, it’s vital to the success of our business to involve women at every single level, and that includes our investors. With their added perspective and resources, we look forward to this next chapter in our company’s history.”
Banks added she had a personal appreciate for the product, in addition to her desire to support female entrepreneurs.
Going from one business meeting, to the next studio set, and as a new Mama, it’s more difficult than ever to stay up to date on the day’s headlines,” the media mogul said. “theSkimm created a media platform that works seamlessly with on-the-go lifestyles. As a fervent supporter of trailblazing female-led businesses, I am thrilled to be a part of the next phase of theSkimm’s development,” Banks said.
The company didn’t offer many specifics in terms how it planned utilize the additional capital, but told us that it plans to “continue evolving the brand” and grow its product offerings–both premium and free. One of its plans involves expanding its No Excuses political-engagement campaign, reports Variety, which registered 110,000 U.S. voters.
New York-based TheSkimm has 72 full-time employees and has raised $29 million to date.
from iFeeltech IT News Mix4 https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/21/theskimm-closes-its-12m-series-c-with-big-names-shonda-rhimes-and-tyra-banks-on-board/
Because there aren’t enough electric scooters on the roads, Lyft is looking into launching its own fleet of electric scooters in San Francisco, The Information reports. Lyft would join the likes of Spin, Bird and Lime — the three startups that deployed their scooters in San Francisco, without permission, back in March.
Lyft has reportedly been in talks with San Francisco city officials to discuss applying for a permit, and has drafted some prototypes of scooter designs. A Lyft spokesperson declined to comment.
Earlier this month, the city of San Francisco has laid out its requirements for companies seeking to obtain electric scooter permits. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority has yet to actually finalize the application and terms, but a spokesperson told me on Friday the permit applications should be ready as early as this week. The city will issue permits for no more than five companies during the 24-month pilot program. The program would grant up to 500 scooters per company.
Meanwhile, Uber also has its eyes on electric scooters. In April, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told me the company plans to “look at any and all options” that would help move transportation options in ways that are city-friendly. That same month, Uber acquired bike-share startup JUMP for about $200 million.
As it stands right now, there are four companies that have announced electric scooter sharing. Just last week, scooter startup Skip threw its hat in the ring with $6 million in funding.
from iFeeltech IT News Mix4 https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/21/lyft-electric-scooter-san-francisco/
Facebook’s been talking Terragraph since way back during its 2016 F8 keynote. The social media giant’s ambitious plan to bring fast Wifi to cities is taking another key step toward real world trials with the addition of Qualcomm. The chipmaking giant announced today that it will add the 60Ghz tech to its future chipsets, with plans to start trials in the middle of next year.
“It is based on the pre-802.11ay standard with enhancements provided by the Qualcomm Technologies’ chipset and the integrated software between Facebook and Qualcomm Technologies to support efficient outdoor operation and avoid interference in dense environments,” Qualcomm writes in the announcement.
San Jose has already been floated as a potential testing ground for the technology. It’s not the biggest U.S. city, but the Silicon Valley hub should prove a solid testing ground with its tech savvy population. The companies say the tech will be useful in lowering the cost of high-speed wireless and helping deliver connectivity to populated areas with significant obstacles, including those densely packed with buildings.
The latter, naturally, makes Terragraph a natural for urban environments, where digging up the ground for fiber is a nuisance, to say the least. Facebook is also looking to service more rural spots with its Antenna Radio Integration for Efficiency in Spectrum (ARIES) system, a technology that was unveiled at the same F8 event.
from iFeeltech IT News Mix4 https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/21/facebook-and-qualcomm-will-bring-fast-wifi-to-cities-in-mid-2019/
There are few open source projects as complex as OpenStack, which essentially provides large companies with all the tools to run the equivalent of the core AWS services in their own data centers. To build OpenStack’s various systems the team also had to develop some of its own devops tools, and in 2012, that meant developing Zuul, an open source continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) platform. Now, with the release of Zuul v3, the team has decided to decouple Zuul from OpenStack and to run it as an independent project. It’s not quite leaving the OpenStack ecosystem, though, since it will still be hosted by the OpenStack Foundation.
Now all of that may seem a bit complicated, but at this point, the OpenStack Foundation is simply the home of OpenStack and other related infrastructure projects. The first one of those was obviously OpenStack itself, followed by the Kata Containers project late last year. Zuul is simply the third of these projects.
The general concept behind Zuul is to provide developers with a system for automatically merging, building and testing new changes to a project. It’s extensible and supports a number of different development platforms, including GitHub and the Gerrit code review and project management tool.
Current contributors include BMW, GitHub, GoDaddy, Huawei, Red Hat and SUSE. “The wide adoption of CI/CD in our software projects is the foundation to deliver high-quality software in time by automating every integral part of the development cycle from simple commit checks to full release processes,” said BMW software engineer Tobias Henkel. “Our CI/CD development team at BMW is proud to be part of the Zuul community and will continue to be active contributors of the Zuul OSS project.”
The spin-off of Zuul comes at an interesting time in the CI/CD community, which is currently spoiled for choice. With Spinnaker, Google and Netflix are betting on an open source CD platform that solves some of the same problems as Zuul, for example, while Jenkins and similar projects continue to go strong, too. The Zuul project notes that its focus is more strongly on multi-repo gating, which makes it ideal handling very large and complex projects. A number of representatives of all of these open source projects are actually meeting at the OpenDev conference in Vancouver, Canada that’s running in parallel with the semi-annual OpenStack Summit there and my guess is that we’ll hear quite a bit more about all of these projects in the coming days and weeks.
from iFeeltech IT News Mix4 https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/21/openstack-spins-out-its-zuul-open-source-ci-cd-platform/
