Monday, October 1, 2012

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NYT Election Oracle, Nate Silver, On Why Blogging Is Great For Science Top
Nate_Silver_2009-edited"I think a lot of journal articles should really be blogs," says The New York Times' election prediction expert, Nate Silver. "You kind of throw different information at people that way and entrust the reader to come to their own conclusions." Now that Silver has managed to puncture the once pundit-dominated news cycle with statistical prudence, he's on a mission to rekindle our collective faith in statistics by making nuance and uncertainty sexy with his new book, The Signal and the Noise. Silver tells TechCrunch that intelligent prediction is messy, biased, and iterative -- all the characteristics that don't lend themselves to grand pronouncements in 30-second soundbites. Blogs, instead, lend themselves to an honest back-and-forth about the sausage of statistical conclusions, which can, hopefully, create a more respected class of experts and a more informed public.
 
Report: iPad Mini Press Event Invitations Going Out October 10 Top
iPad Retina GUI PSDFortune's Phillip Elmer-Dewitt is reporting that a source has told him invites for the iPad mini press event will go out October 10. The information comes from a "major Apple investor" who says he's heard it from "multiple sources." Apple has been said to be prepping for the debut of a smaller iPad with a 7.85-inch screen for a while now, and earlier reports suggested October could be when it became official.
 
Firefox Will Soon Support Apple's MacBook Pro Retina Display Top
Mozilla_Nightly_icon_2011The latest cutting-edge nightly build of Firefox 18 finally features support for Apple's high-resolution Retina screen on the MacBook Pro. Firefox 18 is scheduled to arrive in Mozilla's Aurora release channel in about a week. After that, it will make its way through the beta channel and finally become the stable version around the second week of January 2013.
 
WiO Takes On Shazam With Second Screen TV Ad Campaign & New iOS App Top
wio-appWiOffer, a new mobile app platform which aims to connect TV viewers directly with advertisers, is now available in the iOS App Store and will begin running its first WiO TV commercials starting today. The app is something of a competitor to Shazam, which also offers a "listening" technology that can identify the TV commercial that's currently airing, allowing the viewer to then interact with the brand in creative ways, like entering a contest or unlocking a special video, for example. With WiO, however, the technology is more focused on making a connection between viewer and brand which impacts the advertiser's bottom line.
 
Payments Company Square Makes Its Second Acquisition; Buys Design Firm 80/20, Opens New York Office Top
80_20After raising $200 million in new funding, payments company Square is spending some of this cash on an acquisition. Square has purchased New York-based design firm 80/20. The acquisition was first reported in the New York Times. As the company writes on its website, "At 80/20, we've been fortunate to work on amazing products and platforms. In every project, we've started with the belief that the best design gets out of the user's way and that you can craft unforgettable user experiences by keeping things simple and obsessing over the details. That's why we're thrilled to announce that we're joining Square...Together, we will reimagine and redesign how people communicate through commerce everyday, all around the world."
 
Google Wants To Make Your Site a Little Bit Faster With Its New Tag Manager Top
google-tag-managerOne counterpoint to all of Google's spring cleaning: it's also moving ahead with launching new features. Tag Manager, out today, is aimed at help websites speed up their load times and make modifying them a little more efficient to boot, with the introduction of all-in-one coding that links up with analytics and other advertising and marketing services. The challenge that Google is trying to fix is this: there are a lot of analytics, marketing and advertising services that websites can use today to monitor how their content is used, and to better monetize that content. But with each service comes a bit of code that needs to be incorporated into the site. Each piece of code means speaking with different third-party services, and that can slow a site down to no end. (Just look at the bottom of your screen on a slow-loading site and you can often see the passage of these different services.)
 
Microsoft Previews New Touch-Friendly MSN And Bing For Windows 8 Top
msnMicrosoft just gave a quick sneak peek of the redesigned version of MSN at the IAB MIXX digital ad conference. It's optimized for Windows 8 (in fact, it will be the default homepage for Internet Explorer 10 on many Windows 8 devices), and it will be launched on the same day as the new Windows, October 26. The MSN homepage's new layout is reminiscent of the Metro design that we've already seen on Windows and Windows Phone 7. It's a clean, tile-based design, with big type and images, with a new News section.
 
Surprise! Pressure Sensitive iPad Stylus Pogo Connect Offers Interchangeable Tips, Locating Feature Top
connect_magnetic_tipThe Pogo Connect from Ten One Design is maybe one of my most-anticipated gadgets of 2012, a pressure sensitive iPad stylus that uses Bluetooth 4.0 and ships very soon. In the meantime, the company has detailed a couple very interesting features today as it announces that pre-orders are now officially open to all. The Connect will offer interchangeable magnetic tips, and also a homing feature that lets you track down a misplaced stylus via iPad or iPhone.
 
Microsoft Won't Make Own-Brand Windows Phone Any Time Soon — That's A "Last Resort Strategy" Top
windows_phone_logoIt's Surfaced again: the rumour that Microsoft is developing its own smartphone hardware in a bid to drive wider adoption of its Windows Phone OS. Ever since Microsoft distressed its desktop Windows OEMs by unveiling its own-brand tablet PC, called Surface, the logical leap required to imagine an own-brand Windows Phone has apparently been shrinking. But just because you can imagine a Surface Windows Phone, doesn't mean it's about to be unboxed.
 
Microsoft Previews New JavaScript-Like Programming Language TypeScript Top
javascriptToday Microsoft released a developer preview of TypeScript, a new JavaScript-like programming language that is translated into JavaScript so that its apps can be run in any browser. The language and compiler are open source under an Apache 2.0 license.
 
French Telco SFR Cuts Up To 2,000 Jobs Following Free Mobile Entry Into The Market Top
sfrAs the telecom company Free disrupted the mobile landscape in France, employment and investment are at risk in that industry. Vivendi-owned SFR is one of the first to suffer from the ever increasing competition and the union Force Ouvrière announced that SFR is planning 1,500 to 2,000 job cuts.
 
Hubbl, The App Discovery Service From Disrupt Finalist Hmmm, Goes Live On iOS And Android Top
hubbl-1In August, the founders of TechCrunch Disrupt finalist Hmmm announced their plans to shift their attention (dare you to say pivot!) to a new app discovery service called Hubbl. Today, Hubbl is available for download on both the iOS and Android app stores. Although the new app is participating in a crowded space, Hubbl has a unique and engaging design, and makes clever use of the now-familiar hashtag for organizing and sharing your opinion around mobile apps.
 
Facebook-Centric Anime Startup Tokyo Otaku Mode Enlists Former Apple VP Andy Miller As Advisor Top
tokyo otaku modeTokyo Otaku Mode is trying to disrupt a very specific market — coverage of and fan activity around Japanese anime, manga, and other pop culture. The company's main product is currently its popular Facebook Page, but it plans to launch a website and mobile apps as well. And to help make that happen, it has enlisted Andy Miller, a former Apple mobile executive, as an advisor. Miller is currently president and COO of Leap Motion. Before that, he was a partner at Highland Capital Partners. He also co-founded and served as CEO at mobile ad network Quattro Wireless. After Quattro was acquired by Apple, Miller became the vice president of mobile advertising for Apple's iAd program.
 
How A New Apple Developer Guideline Could Be Curtains For Apps That Promote Other Apps Top
App-Store-IconApple has changed its iOS developer guidelines, adding a clause (on September 12, a source tells me) that reads: "Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected." That's a change that could have wide-reaching effects, especially on promotion models that offer developers a paid top slot on app recommendation offerings like FreeAppADay, Daily App Dream and more.
 
Dennis Crowley To Advertisers: Foursquare Is 'Pretty Much Open For Business' Top
foursquare logoFoursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley just finished speaking at the IAB MIXX digital advertising conference in New York. Marketers may have had a hard time getting a hold of the company in the past, he said, but now it's "pretty much open for business."
 
AT&T Confirms It Will Carry Sony's Xperia TL, Keeps Mum On Pricing And Release Date Top
xperia-tlSony only outed its newest trio of Xperia smartphones just over a month ago in Berlin, and AT&T has just announced that it's already grooming the device for a U.S. launch. Oh, and in case you care, the phone will also appear on-screen as James Bond's phone of choice in Skyfall. Then again, what else is new -- Daniel Craig's version of the iconic secret agent has been using Sony phones for his two previous forays on-screen.
 
The Bike Singularity Is Nigh: The Velo Bike Has An Open Source Brain Top
664b5b69-7f4d-4350-8c75-242a9cee4a75The Velo is still a bit of a pie-in-the-sky project but I'd totally be down with it if they made a few in real life. Designed to reduce the "problems" associated with biking - namely collisions and mapping - the bike/microprocessor system is fully electric and connects with your smartphone to perform some very interesting tricks. First, there's collision avoidance that offers haptic feedback when you're about to slam into something. The bike also works with your smartphone for built-in mapping and "drive by wire" control of your brakes and transmission. The creators hope to offer ubiquitous computing built-in for "data sensing, real-time intelligent tracking systems, dynamic routing, and social integration."
 
Windows Phone Is Taking Share From RIM, But It's Still Nowhere Near Breaking Through The Android/iOS Stronghold: Research Top
windows-phone-7Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the WPP-owned market research group, today released its latest 12-week smartphone sales figures across the key markets in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere, and the figures show that Microsoft's Windows Phone platform is definitely making some progress, and in at least one case, in Italy, overtaking RIM as the fourth-largest smartphone OS in terms of actual sales. But it has a long way to go before getting enough critical mass to challenge the combined dominance of Google's Android and Apple's iOS in the smartphone race. Combined, the latter two are currently accounting for 93% of sales in markets like the U.S. Kantar Worldpanel analyst Dominic Sunnebo tells TechCrunch that smartphone penetration in the UK is now at 57.6%, while the U.S. penetration is 42% (that includes both prepaid and postpaid).
 
London Cab Comparison Startup Kabbee Raises $3.25M, Ahead Of Series A Next Year Top
KBEE_GoldBlack-TypoBeeTag_Yellow-BG_HorizLondon-based cab price comparison and booking startup Kabbee has raised $3.25 million in an intermediate funding round, led by Samos Investments, with "significant contributions" from Pentland Group and Redbus Group. Betfair Founder Ed Wray also invested, along with two angel investors who work at Smedvig Capital. Wray will now play an active role in advising Kabbee, along with Tim Levene from Augmentum Capital.
 
State Of Mobile Ads: Rich Media Rules, Mobile Web Still In Play & Even RIM Makes A Showing Top
MOJ-MAP_US-parts-04New data from mobile ad network Mojiva out this morning paints a picture of the state of mobile advertising, highlighting trends across its network from February to June of this year. Some high-level conclusions: rich media ads dominate, the mobile web shouldn't be discounted, the majority of mobile ad requests came from Wi-Fi connections, and RIM is still a major player. (Well, in Europe, that is).
 

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