As reported on TechCrunch. by Danny Crichton icy All But Bans The Intelligence Community From Speaking To The Press Let’s get outside of the San Francisco bubble for a little while (trust me, there is oxygen here). I realize in a world saturated with protesters who have all the sophistication and menace of a shipful of Pakleds, it may seem like a protest in front of Kevin Rose’s home is the Biggest News in the Universe. It may seem…
As reported on Engadget. BY MAT SMITH Confirming what a lot of us thought already, Google is more than a little interested in Apple and Samsung’s continuing court battle. New evidence revealed by Apple’s lawyers outlines emails from Google that offered to foot some of the damages (if Samsung lost), as well as cover part of the legal costs in the current trial. This would cover two of the five patents that Apple is fighting over. Google…
As reported on Engadget. BY MARIELLA MOON In 2016, Hitachi will take over Toshiba’s title as the maker of the fastest elevator in the world. The Japanese company’s slated to install two lifts that move at a swift 45mph inside China’s Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre, currently under construction. Apparently, you can reach the 95th floor (the building will have 111 floors in all) straight from the ground in just 43 seconds on one of these zippy elevators —…
As reported on The Verge. By Trent Wolbe Here’s a fact: humans love to get wasted. Long before there were laws, long before there was beer, there was marijuana — a drug that had fallen out of legal favor in America completely by the 1930s. Alcohol had a similar falling-out with the Federal Government in 1920, but by 1933 legislators realized that the benefits of legalization and taxation would far outweigh the consequences of continued prohibition. It’s taking…
As reported on The Verge. By Russell Brandom Google wants to make it easier for Gmail users to encrypt their emails, according to a report in VentureBeat. PGP has been an open-source encryption standard for nearly 20 years, but the protocol has been dogged with usability issues that many claim have kept it from broader use. As a result, engineers at Google are working on ways to make PGP easier for users, as part of a larger push…
As reported on TechCrunch. by Ingrid Lunden Mapbox, the OpenStreetMap-based mapping platform that lets app developers incorporate maps into any app, is adding another feature to better compete against the likes of Google Maps, ESRI and Nokia Maps: Smart Directions, a navigation service that developers can customise with extra details such type of terrain, specific places of interest, and current traffic conditions. Its first partner, getting announced today alongside Smart Directions, is Scoot, the electric vehicle-sharing startup live in San…
As reported on Engadget. BY MAT SMITH Reiterating what the Apple CEO said at last month’s shareholder meeting, Tim Cook still wants to “leave the world better than we found it”, and nows he’s trying harder to deliver on that. Starting today, all of the company’s stores will accept any Apple product for recycling at no charge. Better still, if it looks resalable, the company will offer some store credit (read Apple gift card) to sweeten…
As reported on Engadget. BY TIMOTHY J. SEPPALA When it comes to internet speeds, “you get what you pay for” is pretty far from the truth a majority of the time. The Wall Street Journal used Ookla’s speed-testing data to survey some 800 US cities and 27 ISPs in terms of advertised transfer rates and what customers are actually getting, and the results are pretty surprising. A vast majority of providers give their customers the short shrift on speed (Verizon Internet Services and…
As reported on The Verge. By Lessley Anderson They’re cost-effective, eco-friendly, and produce mass quantities of chronic RiverRock is a marijuana company in Denver, CO, that was founded in 2009 by an enterprising medical malpractice attorney some four years before recreational weed become legal in the state. Today, RiverRock operates two dispensaries, grows its own, and makes edibles, extracts, and concentrates. It used to cultivate all its cannabis indoors — a quantity John Kocer, RiverRock’s CEO, wouldn’t…
As reported on TechCrunch. by Peter Relan Editor’s note: Peter Relan is serial entrepreneur-turned-founder of two incubators: YouWeb(focused on gaming), and Studio 9+ (focused on big data, IoT, wearables, and P2P marketplaces). His incubations include OpenFeint, Crowdstar, Hammer and Chisel, Spaceport, and Agawi. Prior to founding his incubators, Peter held founding roles at Webvan and Business Signatures, as well as executive roles at Oracle and HP. Google recently announced up to 85 percent reduction in pricing for its PaaS and BigQuery services. Soon…