Mobile Gaming Live-Streaming Service Mobcrush Has Raised Around $10M

GNN - We’ve heard from sources that Mobcrush, a live-streaming service centered around mobile games much in the same way Twitch is known for streaming popular eSports desktop games, has raised around $10 million in new financing, though the number could have gone beyond that.

Mobcrush’s bet is that mobile game streaming will be as big if not bigger than some of the competitive game-streaming services that already exist. The gorilla in the room, of course, is Twitch  which Amazon bought for nearly $1 billion last year and has tens of millions (if not hundreds) of monthly viewers. Mobcrush raised $4.9 million in a round that round was formally announced in May, and in July Mobcrush came out of beta.

To be sure, mobile games are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Some of the most popular games on the App Store are strategy games like Clash of Clans. And while these games are lightweight, phones are becoming more and more powerful and gaining more touch points — meaning it’s ever more likely that someone will figure out a way to replicate the complex nature of mobile games (with one new example of a new touch point being Force Touch, which is expected to end up in the next iPhone).

We heard Kleiner Perkins participated in the most recent funding round, with two sources telling us the firm led the round. We were told the round was incredibly competitive, as you might expect for a company making a bet on a mobile Twitch.

“Mobcrush does not comment on rumors or speculations about our financing,” CEO Royce Disini said. “We’re focused on our execution, excited about our growth and the big opportunity for mobile game live streaming, and have added [three] key hires from Apple, Google and Microsoft to help accelerate our growth.”

So, what does this funding round mean? It could be that investors are salivating over the potential of a next-generation Twitch that’s geared entirely toward mobile. On Twitch, games like Starcraft, League of Legends and Hearthstone are insanely popular. It’s not clear if mobile games are going to hit that sort of trajectory, but already there are lots of competitive games on mobile devices (including Hearthstone). Given the success of Twitch, there’s a good chance that investors believe there’s a huge market for streaming mobile games alongside more complex online games.

The counter argument to all this is that there isn’t a set of games like Starcraft that will eventually end up on mobile. Given the lightweight nature of mobile games, it’s possible that there just won’t be a market for hardcore games like League of Legends, even though several well-funded companies like Super Evil Megacorp are going after the space with games like Vainglory.

And, to be fair, Twitch could build something similar and crush Mobcrush (no pun intended). It already has a huge presence on mobile devices and has broadcasts of Vainglory. Twitch is not unfamiliar with finding its way to new markets, pivoting originally from a live-streaming site to focus on video games and creating a $1 billion company in the process.

Mobile’s Starcraft moment hasn’t happened just yet. However, all roads do lead to mobile — and it seems more and more likely, especially with the arrival of Hearthstone (which is of course on PC) on smartphones, that it’s possible companies will find a way to build a hit game that will be popular among the esports crowd.

FEATURED IMAGE: MOBCRUSH WEBSITE

Privacy app maker files EU antitrust complaint against Google

U.S. tech firm Disconnect has filed a complaint to EU antitrust regulators against Google's ban on its privacy app, accusing the Silicon Valley giant of abusing its dominant market position.

Disconnect, set up four years ago by former Google engineers, says its app protects users of the Android operating system from invisible tracking and malware distributed through advertisements.

It said Google had abused its position by blocking the app from the Google Play store last year, and had gained an unfair advantage over competitors by integrating its own privacy and security services into its own products.

"They said we interfered with the ability of third parties to serve ads. Google was not willing to engage in a dialogue," Disconnect Chief Executive Casey Oppenheim told Reuters on Tuesday.

Google said Disconnect's complaint was groundless.

"Our Google Play policies have long prohibited apps that interfere with other apps - such as altering their functionality, or removing their way of making money. We apply this policy uniformly and Android developers strongly support it," spokesman Al Verney said.

The European Commission, which opened a probe into Google's agreements with smartphone and tablet makers using its Android operating system in April, confirmed it had received the complaint on Tuesday and said it would assess it.

The EU competition authority's Android investigation is one of two into Google's business practices. The other, more advanced, inquiry focuses on whether the company distorts web search results to favor its own shopping service.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Pravin Char)

HP CEO says split effective from November 1

Hewlett-Packard Co Chief Executive Meg Whitman said the separation of HP Inc and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise would be effective on Nov. 1.

Whitman made the announcement during the company's technology event, HP Discover 2015, in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

The world's No. 2 personal computer maker said in October it would split into two listed companies, separating its computer and printer businesses from its faster-growing corporate hardware and services operations.

(Reporting By Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

U.S. plan to cede Internet domain control on track: ICANN head

A controversial Obama administration plan to cede oversight of the non-profit that manages the Internet's infrastructure is on track to gain government approval by next year's presidential elections, the organization's chief said in an interview.

Some Republican lawmakers have raised concerns about the plan to hand over the stewardship of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to a global multi-stakeholder body, worried that it may allow other countries to capture control.

But ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé said such opposition was fading and that some opponents would come around once they see the accountability mechanisms and other assurances put in place.

"I think they see now that this is actually a good thing for the Internet. The fragmentation of the Internet is bad for everyone," he said.

"I'm never comfortable, but I am optimistic and I believe that all interests are now aligned... Everybody sees that this makes sense."

Since 1998, the United States, which gave birth to the Internet, has contracted out, through the Commerce Department, the management of the master database for top-level domain names like .com and .net and their corresponding numeric addresses to ICANN.

The Commerce Department has long expected to phase out its oversight and planned to do it at the end of the current ICANN contract in September, though the timing may slip slightly and may require an extension.

ICANN members are working to draft a proposal for how the group would operate as an independent body run by stakeholders from across the world, including academics and business and government representatives.

Chehadé, who plans to leave ICANN in March, said the community should produce the proposal by the end of the year for the U.S. government, including the administration and Congress, to review. He said the review process, according to government estimates, would take 60 to 90 days.

Chehadé said he remained optimistic that those steps could be concluded before the U.S presidential election in November 2016, which may result in a Republican hostile to an ICANN power shift controlling the White House.

Once the review process was completed, ICANN members would work to implement the plan. It remains unclear how long that process would take.

The White House on Tuesday issued a veto threat to a bill proposed in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives that would restrict the Commerce Department's ability to use its funding to relinquish ICANN oversight.

(Reporting by Alina Selyukh; Editing by Christian Plumb)

Deutsche Bank to launch three tech startup labs in 2015: source

Deutsche Bank aims to launch three technology innovation labs in Berlin, London and Silicon Valley this year designed to accelerate development of so-called "fintech" companies which could aid the banking sector and its clients.

Germany’s largest lender, grappling with an overhaul of its own technology infrastructure, aims to get the three operations up and running by the end of the year, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The bank, which unveiled broad plans in April to overhaul its strategy and modernize its tech infrastructure, hopes to screen some 500 fintech start-ups per year, with some seeking to develop security, payments, efficiency, organization or process applications.

A spokesman for Deutsche Bank declined comment.

The move follows similar initiatives by rivals including Swiss bank UBS and Commerzbank to turbocharge tech developments that will help banks work more efficiently and stay close to clients.

American Express also recently opened a tech lab in Palo Alto, California, to focus on cloud computing and mobile infrastructure.

Deutsche Bank has not set aside a specific sum of money to invest in the firms, the source said, rather it aims to partner with chosen start-ups by either using the technology itself, fostering development, or perhaps channeling it into clients or other portions of the financial sector, the source said.

Deutsche wants to partner and work with start-ups, give them feedback on their ideas and find ways to employ their technology, not try to benefit solely from a financial perspective, said the source. “This is primarily about innovation, not investments.”

The launch, which comes weeks after board member Henry Ritchotte was named chief digital officer, marks a bigger commitment to developing a field where the banking sector fell behind similar tech advances in manufacturing following the financial crisis.

(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard; Editing by Andreas Framke and Kirsti Knolle)

Instagram takes steps to open platform to advertisers

Instagram said on Tuesday that it is taking steps to make its ads available to all types of businesses, not just hand-selected brands.

Starting in June, Instagram this year is rolling out to advertisers the ability to more closely direct campaigns by zip code and other data sets like interests in the same ways that brands can target consumers on its parent company Facebook Inc.

In addition it will let advertisers link to external websites or app stores with buttons such as "shop now," "sign up," "learn more," and "install now."

Currently, it works closely with only a handful of brands like Levi's, Banana Republic and Ben & Jerry's. Ads can only be targeted by gender, age and country.

"The quality of the ad experience remains a very important point of differentiation for us," Instagram's global head of business and brand development James Quarles said in an interview.

The move to widen and sharpen the ad platform is a significant one for the popular mobile photo app that has more than 200 million daily active users across the world. It has carefully allowed advertising on its platform starting a year and a half ago. Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012.

Quarles added that making ads more relevant and delivering them to the right target is the next stage of development.

Still, by opening up to all advertisers, including hundreds of thousands of small businesses, Instagram risks losing quality control of campaigns and potentially irking users.

"People are used to seeing beautiful brand imagery in their feeds," said Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at eMarketer. "Now they will see some direct response ads and we all know the baggage that comes with that."

Still, Williamson expects a "strong ramp-up" from advertisers long eager to do more with the platform.

Facebook does not break out Instagram revenue but Pivotal Research estimates it is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Kfir Gavrieli, co-founder and CEO of Tieks, an online-only retailer known for its ballet flats, said it's currently "clumsy and awkward" for an Instagram user to get from a post to a landing page.

"The shop now button," he said, "will be much more seamless."

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Christian Plumb)

Tim Kendall, Pinterest’s GM Of Monetization, Talks Buyable Pins

Following Pinterest’s unveiling of Buyable Pins — a way for merchants to sell things that users can buy directly within Pinterest — I had an opportunity to sit down with the company’s general manager of monetization Tim Kendall to talk a little bit more about it.

The first thing he made clear was that, for now, brands will not be able to promote Buyable Pins. To be sure, around two-thirds of the content on Pinterest is made by businesses, but those businesses are going to have to rely on organic traffic to drive sales for their products for the time being. Around 87 percent of Pinterest users have bought a product after discovering it on Pinterest, Kendall said.

“This isn’t an ad offering, it’s an experience for pinners,” he said. “Pinners tell us, ‘I discover great things from Pinterest every day, I stumble across it, I wish I could buy it on Pinterest without leaving — it’s about addressing that pain point. Basically we’ve been told for five years, it’s the No. 1 request from pinners. For partners it’s a way to reach customers already on Pinterest, sell products but continue to own the customer relationship.”

Still, Kendall left the door open for it as a possibility in the future: “It’s not an advertising offering — we hope to offer that at some point but we did not announce that.”

Like any feature, users are going to have to slowly be introduced to how it works. Kendall said during the development process, not much about the design changed, but as things often work in design, “If you look up there and it seems simple and elegant it was really hard to get there.”

“It was pretty similar to what you saw today,” he said. “Blue?” he said after a pause — which I’m guessing is referring to what the color of the button should be.

Once Buyable Pins launch later this month on the iPhone and iPad, Pinterest will walk users through how it works, much like other new features it rolls out. Users will either have to enter a credit card number or use Apple Pay, and they’ll still have to enter their address once.

But the company was trying to figure out a way to make it have as little friction as possible, because the drop-off in conversion to a sale between desktop and mobile devices is around 75  percent, Kendall said. Around 80 percent of Pinterest’s users access it through mobile devices.

Right now, new merchants will have to go through Shopify or Demandware in order to get their products for sale on Pinterest. Kendall said tens of thousands of merchants are already working through those platforms. While it’s partnered with big retailers like Macy’s, that’s still likely the fastest way to get products on Pinterest that users can buy right away.

If a Shopify merchant opts in to placing Buyable Pins on Pinterest, those existing products that have been pinned on Pinterest will become available for purchase. And for those products not on Pinterest, the company adds them to its corpus of pins, Kendall said. Otherwise, that retailer will have to do some kind of a direct integration, and right now Pinterest isn’t creating a sort of platform that any merchant or retailer can use to add Buyable Pins to Pinterest.

“We’re gonna continue to build those solutions that make this as easy as possible for as many partners as possible,” he said. “But we have nothing specific to talk about yet.”

Still, this is another step that could convince more merchants to put content on Pinterest. The more content there is on Pinterest — and users are surprisingly tolerant and accepting of business content, unlike many platforms — the more pins there are for pinners to search out and discover. And if they’re able to buy things on Pinterest, they’re more likely to come back to buy things, giving advertisers more of an opportunity to get other ads in front of those users.

FEATURED IMAGE: PINTEREST

Here’s What A Web Browser Running On The Apple Watch Looks Like (Spoiler: Not Great)

“Wouldn’t it be neat to have a web browser on my Apple Watch?”

No, no it wouldn’t. It’s a thought most smartwatch owners have had at one time or another — but in the end, we probably don’t want that.

Comex, a well-known jailbreak developer who went off to spend some time as an Apple intern before moving on to other projects, has whipped up a fleeting but seemingly functional example of what a browser might look like running on the Apple Watch — and… well, again: you probably don’t want this.

The web just wasn’t built for screens this small. It took years for smartphone browsers to become more usable than frustrating, and a lot of the usability gains there came from massive screen spec jumps. A 1.5″ smartwatch screen never becomes particularly web-friendly, no matter how many pixels you cram in that screen.

Alas, Comex makes no mention of how he got this up and running. Out of the box, running arbitrary code like this shouldn’t be possible — while a native SDK is inbound, only stuff built with Apple’s somewhat limited WatchKit framework is supposed to run on the device for now. Is this a subtle demonstration of the world’s first jailbroken Apple Watch?

Here’s the vid, as tweeted by Comex and spotted by 9to5mac (Speaking of usability: pardon the wonky tallness of the video; it was shot vertically, so there’s no easy way to embed it in a pretty way. For best viewing, consider fullscreening it):

IBM forges mobile app partnership with China Telecom

(GNN) - International Business Machines (IBM) (IBM.N) has struck a deal with China Telecom Corp Ltd (0728.HK) to offer and manage corporate-grade mobile apps, the latest in a string of tie-ups with Chinese firms.

Under the agreement, state-owned China Telecom will host on its servers IBM's MobileFirst service, which helps corporations manage apps for Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) iPhone and iPad devices.

The two companies have not yet disclosed any customers but will seek out everything from large, state-owned enterprises in sectors like banking and insurance to private startups, Nancy Thomas, a Beijing-based managing partner of global business services, said in a telephone interview.

IBM's strategy has been to deepen its presence and win favor in China through partnerships with local firms despite political headwinds.

Citing cybersecurity concerns, the Chinese government recently announced regulations that encourage state-affiliated companies to procure more tech products from domestic suppliers and shun international vendors. Western business lobbies say this is an unfair tactic to protect Chinese companies or spur technology transfer.

IBM Chief Executive Virginia Rometty said in a speech before business and political elite in Beijing last week that the company would share its technology and help Chinese companies to continue doing business in the country.

Thomas, the Beijing-based executive, said IBM intended to collaborate closely with China Telecom, the largest cloud provider in China and the largest fixed-line carrier.

"When we think about technology sharing, that is the first foundation we'll be working on when we're bringing MobileFirst to China Telecom's cloud," Thomas said.

MobileFirst is the result of a collaboration between IBM and Apple. IBM has released dozens of iPhone and iPad apps that for instance help shipping companies manage freight or provide records on-the-go for medical doctors.

Although sources have told Reuters Beijing has unofficially forbidden the use of iPhones in sensitive departments, Thomas spoke of the broad market opportunity for a Chinese economy that is moving rapidly into the mobile age.

Thomas said the deal with Telecom was set in motion before the Chinese government announced the regulations and could not comment on the policies' effect on the MobileFirst business.

"We're looking to China Telecom to be the foundation to give clients confidence" in the service's security, she added.

Twenty-four apps have been translated into Chinese, and additional ones will be tailored for retail, travel, transportation, government and healthcare, among other sectors, Thomas said.

(Reuters)(Additional reporting by Matthew Miller; editing by Susan Thomas)

UPDATE 2-US fixing software glitch with Boeing GPS satellites

(Adds company responsible for ground segment)

By Andrea Shalal

(GNN) - The U.S. Air Force said on Sunday it is working to resolve a technical error that affected some Boeing Co Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, although it did not hurt the accuracy of GPS signals received by users around the world.

Air Force Space Command said the glitch appeared to involve the ground-based software used to index, or sort, some messages transmitted by GPS IIF satellites built by Boeing, but officials were still investigating other possible causes.

Lockheed Martin Corp runs the GPS "ground control" segment, which enables Air Force officials to operate all GPS satellites, including the IIF satellites built by Boeing.


The Air Force said the issue came to light in recent days, but a close examination of archived data showed the problem had gone unnoticed since 2013. It gave no details of the extent of the problem, its impact on the overall system or how it had come to light.

It said the glitch appeared related to the ground software that builds and uploads messages transmitted by GPS satellites, resulting in an occasional message failing to meet U.S. technical specifications.

The Air Force said it had put in place a temporary solution and officials were working on a permanent fix.

Boeing, prime contractor for the GPS IIF satellites, had no immediate comment on the news, which comes days before the Air Force is due to launch the ninth GPS IIF satellite into space.

Lockheed officials also had no immediate comment.

Air Force Space Command spokesman Andy Roake said it was unclear which contractor was responsible for the problem.

GPS is a space-based worldwide navigation system that provides users with highly accurate data on position, timing and velocity 24 hours a day, in all weather conditions.

The system is used by the military for targeting precision munitions and steering drones. It also has a wide range of commercial applications, including verification of automated bank transactions, farming and tracking shipments of packages. Car navigation systems and mobile phones use GPS to determine their location.

Boeing is under contract to build 12 GPS IIF satellites. The first of the GPS IIF satellites was launched in May 2010. (Reuters)(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by Susan Thomas)

Chinese military denies role in reported U.S. hacking

(GNN) - China's Defense Ministry on Friday denied that it had anything to do with a cyber attack on Register.com, a unit of Web.com, following a report in the Financial Times that the FBI was looking into the Chinese military's involvement.

"The relevant criticism that China's military participated in Internet hacking is to play the same old tune, and is totally baseless," the ministry said in a fax to Reuters in response to a question about the story.

According to the Financial Times, hackers apparently have had access to Register.com's network for about a year, but the attack did not disrupt or result in theft of client data.

It is not clear what the Chinese military would be looking for or what it would gain from Register.com's data.

Register.com says on its website it manages more than 2.5 million domain names, and also provides web management and design services.

China and the United States regularly accuse each other of hacking attacks.

State news agency Xinhua, citing a report from the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China, said that last year, 4,761 IP addresses in the United States controlled 5,580 Chinese websites through backdoor programs, allowing remote access to a computer.

It did not provide an on-year comparison.

The ministry repeated the government's standard line that China is one of the world's biggest victims of hacking.

"The Chinese government has all along resolutely opposed and dealt with in accordance with the law Internet hacking and other relevant criminal activities, and the Chinese military has never been involved in or participated in any activities to steal commercial secrets online," it added.

The United States needs to "give a clear explanation" to the world of its theft of secrets and online surveillance "and not make thoughtless remarks about other people", the ministry said.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Jeremy Laurence and Himani Sarkar)

Big ancient land-dwelling croc inspired 'abject terror'

(GNN) - The "Carolina butcher" has been found and is just as scary as the name suggests.

Scientists on Thursday said they had unearthed fossils in North Carolina of a big land-dwelling croc that lived about 231 million years ago, walked on its hind legs and was a top land predator right before the first dinosaurs appeared.

Transported back to the Triassic Period, what would a person experience upon encountering this agile, roughly 9-foot-long (about 3 meter-long), 5-foot-tall (about 1.5 meter-tall) beast with a long skull and blade-like teeth?

"Abject terror," said North Carolina State University paleontologist Lindsay Zanno, who led the research published in the journal Scientific Reports.

"Climb up the nearest tree," advised North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences paleontologist Vince Schneider.

The creature is named Carnufex carolinensis, meaning "Carolina butcher," for its menacing features. It was a very early member of the croc lineage and was unlike today's crocs. It was not aquatic and not a quadruped, instead prowling on two legs in the warm equatorial region that North Carolina was at the time.

It lived alongside armored plant-eating reptiles known as aetosaurs, early mammal relatives and other fierce predators such as the large, long-snouted, water-dwelling, four-legged phytosaurs.

Carnufex is one of the most primitive members of the broad category of reptiles called crocodylomorphs, encompassing the various forms of crocs that have appeared on Earth.

"As one of the earliest and oldest crocodylomorphs, Carnufex was a far cry from living crocodiles. It was an agile, terrestrial predator that hunted on land," Zanno said. "Carnufex predates the group that living crocodiles belong to."

The scientists unearthed portions of Carnufex's skull, spine and forelimb parts from a Chatham County quarry. Then also created a three-dimensional model of the skull, filling in the missing parts with the more complete skulls of close relatives.

Carnufex lived just before the appearance of the first dinosaurs, which started as modest creatures in the Triassic before becoming Earth's dominant land animals. Zanno said Carnufex's discovery underscores the notion that before dinosaurs became well established in North America, such crocs and their cousins filled the large predator roles.

While the dinosaur lineage eventually produced the world's largest terrestrial predators, it was the crocs and their cousins that typically were the Triassic tough guys. A group related to crocs called rauisuchians included large four-legged land predators up to 25 feet (about 8 meters) in length or more.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Dude, why is my mushroom glowing? Scientists have the answer

(GNN) - If you think you see a glowing mushroom, you might not be having a psychedelic hallucination. Some mushrooms indeed are bioluminescent, including one that sprouts among decaying leaves at the base of young palm trees in Brazilian coconut forests.

Scientists have long wondered what possible reason there could be for a fungus to glow. They now have an answer.

Researchers said on Thursday that experiments in Brazil involving the big, yellow mushroom called "flor de coco," meaning coconut flower, showed its nighttime bioluminescence attracted insects and other creatures that could later spread its spores around the forest.

"Our research provides an answer to the question, 'Why do fungi make light?' that was first asked, at least first asked in print, by Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago," said biochemist Cassius Stevani of Brazil's Instituto de Química-Universidade de São Paulo.

"The answer appears to be that fungi make light so they are noticed by insects who can help the fungus colonize new habitats."

Geneticist and molecular biologist Jay Dunlap of Dartmouth College's Geisel School of Medicine said bioluminescence had independently evolved many times in such diverse life forms as bacteria, fungi, insects and fish.

"Most of these make light in their own way, that is, with biochemistry that is unique to each organism," Dunlap said.

Of the 100,000 known fungus species, 71 are bioluminescent. The species in the study, published in the journal Current Biology, is one of the biggest and brightest of them.

The researchers found a circadian clock regulates its bioluminescence, glowing only at nighttime.

They created two sets of plastic mushroom replicas, one with LED lights replicating bioluminescence and a second set with no light. Suspecting the glow might be used to entice insects, they put glue on both sets of phony mushrooms in forest locations where real ones grow, then tracked the beasties that got stuck.

The glowing replicas lured an array of ants, cockroaches, flies, beetles, spiders, harvestmen, slugs, snails and centipedes.

Such creatures, after crawling on a real bioluminescent mushroom, disperse fungal spores around the forest.

Dunlap speculated that many of Earth's bioluminescent mushrooms likely developed their glow for that purpose.

"Because it has evolved so many times in so many different organisms, each with their own biology, studying bioluminescence gives one a window on living things in all their wonderful diversity, and it sends you off to questions that you did not know existed," Dunlap said.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Related articles

• Far Out! Scientists Figure Out Why Mushrooms Glow (nbcnews.com)
• You: Mushroom glows in the dark like a fungal firefly (latimes.com)

REFILE-U.S. trade groups seen leading lawsuits against new Internet rules

(Fixes typo sixth paragraph)

By Alina Selyukh and Malathi Nayak

(GNN) - Trade associations representing large U.S. Internet service providers are expected to take the lead in suing the Federal Communications Commission over its new web traffic regulations, according to several people familiar with the plan.

U.S. telecom and cable firms have said they would challenge the FCC's latest "net neutrality" rules in court. But at least some companies, including Verizon Communications Inc, are currently not planning to bring individual lawsuits and instead aim to participate through trade groups, the sources said.

Such an approach would allow companies to streamline their litigation efforts and could help firms avoid drawing any fire individually, as Verizon did after it challenged the previous version of net neutrality rules on its own in 2010.

At least three trade groups are expected to file legal challenges: CTIA-The Wireless Association, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and the broadband association USTelecom, the sources said. The three trade groups declined comment.

Other trade groups such as the American Cable Association and the National Association of Manufacturers are weighing whether to participate in litigation, representatives said.

"We believe there will be a lot of litigation, which will probably be led by industry associations," Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo told Reuters this week.

The company is likely to hold back from filing an individual lawsuit, said an industry source familiar with Verizon's plan, citing the company's shared concerns with other members of trade associations.

T-Mobile, too, said on Wednesday it was not planning to get involved in lawsuits at this point. "We have not at all been vocal on the negative side of the camp and the folks that are talking about litigation," Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray said in an interview.

Internet service providers such as Verizon, AT&T and Comcast have decried the FCC's vote last month to regulate broadband as a "telecommunications service" similar to traditional telephone service, instead of a more lightly regulated "information service."

Representatives of AT&T and Comcast declined comment on Wednesday.

CHALLENGE TO MERITS, PROCESS

The industry lawsuits are likely to challenge both the merits of broadband reclassification as well as the administrative process used to adopt it, according to two telecom lobbyists familiar with the discussions.

The first angle would likely involve an argument that the FCC overstepped its statutory authority and dramatically changed the way it regulates Internet service providers without adequate legal basis, the sources said.

The companies have argued that the FCC has unduly decided to treat Internet providers as "common carriers" bound by stricter oversight, after deciding against it years ago. The wireless carriers in particular say that the law has long exempted them from common carrier treatment.

The second argument would be that the FCC did not properly inform stakeholders and the public that it was seriously thinking about switching the classification and ignored some of the arguments the companies had presented during the rulemaking, the sources said.

FCC officials have said they fully expected court challenges and believe their rules are on much firmer legal ground than previous iterations that were rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The FCC wrote the latest Internet rules after Verizon won its court case against prior rules in January 2014.

(Reuters)(Reporting by Alina Selyukh in Washington and Malathi Nayak in New York; Editing by Soyoung Kim, Peter Henderson and Cynthia Osterman)

Developers wrestle with making 'killer app' for Apple Watch

(GNN) - Software developers say it will not be easy to come up with a "killer app" for Apple Inc's Watch - few have seen the product and the software is still in test mode.

While app makers are passionate about developing for the Apple Watch, some are skeptical about the prospects of coming up with a big idea for the little computer on a wrist that hits stores on April 24, said Markiyan Matsekh, product manager at software engineering firm Eleks.

A killer app that grabs consumers' attention will be key to the success of the Apple Watch and could spawn new companies, as the iPhone did. The photo-sharing app Instagram grew into a $1 billion business bought by Facebook Inc, and Snapchat has gone from a mobile messaging app to a company valued at $19 billion.

Apple has blocked some features, such as the gyroscope and accelerometer, on the development kit, and the watch simulator cannot test all functions, developers said. Apple declined to comment on why developers cannot access certain features.

"The limitations are discouraging," said Matsekh, who helped develop a Watch app to control a Tesla Model S without involvement from the electric carmaker.

App designer Mark Rabo believes Apple is spurring creativity though restraint.

The challenge he believes is "not trying to take a phone app and cram it into a Watch."

Rabo is developing an app called "Revere," that ties notes to calendars. The Watch will recognize the wearer is walking into a meeting and pull up previously dictated notes about the attendees, for instance.

Apple listed about 40 apps on its website as it unveiled its smartwatch on Monday with "thousands" more in the works, it said.

Watch apps showcased by Apple so far are mostly extensions of services like Uber, American Airlines and Twitter.

"People are playing it pretty safe and right now just extending their application," Ryan Taylor, design director at Normative Design, the software firm hired by Rabo. Once the Watch is released, it will be easier to develop, he said.

Taylor points out that there has been no "killer app" so far on Android smartwatches that have been on the market for two to three years.

What Apple is "trying to do is get people to think of apps differently than an iPhone app. That cultural shift is taking a little bit more time and that's OK," he said. (Reuters)(Reporting by Malathi Nayak; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Beware The Pretty People

(GNN) - The tech industry used to be home to a disproportionate number of misfits and weirdos. Geeks. Nerds. People who needed to know how machines worked; needed to take them apart, make them better, and put them back together again. People who existed a little apart from society’s established hierarchy … and often saw that hierarchy as another machine to be deconstructed and improved.

That is no longer the case. Now that technology is the dominant cultural and economic force of our time, and startup execs have become rock stars, the establishment is flocking to the tech industry. Rap stars and movie stars want to be tech investors. “Tech firms and consultants both appeal to the growing number of students who want to gain the right experience to start their own business,” observes The Economist. “Elite Grads in Business Flock to Tech,” concurs the Wall Street Journal.

Tech is becoming the finishing school and springboard for the upper-middle-class, the way law and finance were a decade ago. Now that the tech industry is cool, the pretty people are taking over, flooding out of top-tier universities with MBAs and social graces and carefully coiffed hair, shouldering the misfits and weirdos out of the way. And often, paradoxically, despite their privileged backgrounds, they have much less appetite for risk.

Oh, many pay lip service to being weird and different. Our whole culture does these days —

The Super Bowl ads are hammering home that safe, carefully filtered, nonthreatening weird is the new cool. It's the cooption of freakdom.
— Jon Evans (@rezendi) February 2, 2015

— as long as you’re not dangerously weird; as long as you’re not a genuine rebel; as long as you don’t actually try to challenge anything important. The establishment scions pouring into tech take on the trappings of subversion, while remaining fundamentally conformist. Meanwhile, rampant success inevitably causes the former tech counterculture to morph into posturing “Prada revolutionaries,” as Klint Finley puts it.

There was a tech counterculture, and it mattered. The Internet didn’t have to be so free and open.

Governments have been trying to impose their demands on it for many years. Consider the long-ago attempts to impose bizarre, unworkable standards such as X.400 instead of the simple email addresses we still use. Consider the crypto wars of the 1990s, the attempted crippling of SSL, and the prosecution of Phil Zimmermann. But the tech industry ignored, supplanted, and/or fought back — and won — against these attempts.

To be fair, it’s still doing that today. The post-Snowden growth in end-to-end encryption is heartening. Everyone fought hard for net neutrality, and won. But these aren’t examples of an underdog fighting back; these are examples of a new giant protecting its turf. Meanwhile, as Dan Gillmor says in Why I’m Saying Goodbye to Apple, Google and Microsoft, “We are losing control over the tools that once promised equal opportunity in speech and innovation—and this has to stop.”

It seems to me that as the establishment slowly infects and merges with the tech industry, and vice versa, the people who actually do think differently–“the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers”–will be, and are being, pushed out. (In some cases simply priced out.) It’s all too easy to imagine the American tech industry in ten years as a new Wall Street, a giant machine built largely to siphon yet more power and privilege up to people who already have too much.

Yearly reminder: unless you're over 60, you weren't promised flying cars. You were promised an oppressive cyberpunk dystopia. Here you go.
— Kyle Marquis (@Moochava) July 10, 2013

This is why I like Bitcoin: say what you like about it, such as that you want it to “die in a fire” because it’s a libertarian conspiracy, it is genuinely weird, disruptive, and potentially dangerous to the status quo. This is why I have a soft spot for Travis Kalanick: for all of Uber’s flaws, someone needed to tear down the walls of the established taxi cartels.

Technology is, indisputably, the premier force for change in the world today. Every startup is an engine of change, and a potentially enormously powerful one. But we still tend to measure their success wholly in terms of millions raised, billions in valuation, revenues, profits, and timeline to IPO. That’s not genuinely subversive. That’s not truly disruptive. That’s establishment talk.

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. But then, so did the divine right of kings,” said the great Ursula Le Guin at the National Book Awards.

"…it has become glaringly obvious that capitalism does not require democracy. Or even benefit from it." http://t.co/e6JJLQfMAr by @cstross
— Jon Evans (@rezendi) February 25, 2015

I believe capitalism is excellent … up to a point. (I don’t believe anyone who has travelled in the developing world as much as I have can reasonably think otherwise.) But is that inflection point at which capitalism offers diminishing returns still ahead of us, here in the rich world? Will we live in capitalism (as we know it) forever? It seems unlikely.

While we do, though, we need the weirdos, the rebels, the counterculture, to be gathering together and founding companies. Because while we live in capitalism, no art collective, no protest, will be as effective an engine of change as a successful startup.

We must think tactically and strategically about how to use corporations as proxies of power to effect certain kinds of change.
— Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) January 28, 2015

What’s more, there has never been a better time to try to found a genuinely subversive company than right now. Consider Y Combinator’s new openness to not-for-profit startups. Consider the remarkable recipient list of Reddit Donate. It seems to me that there is a hunger for real change out there. A huge audience. You might even call it a market.

Capitalism won’t be violently overthrown. Nor should it be. Whatever system(s) may one day supplant it will instead grow quietly in the shadows of its tallest towers, and coexist for years. But in order for that to happen, I believe we need our true iconoclasts, dangerous freethinkers, and weird subversives to flock to the tech industry — rather than recoil from it in disgust, now that the pretty people have invaded.

High Fidelity Raises $11M To Build Deployable Virtual Worlds

(GNN) - High Fidelity, the San Francisco-based startup from Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, has raised another $11 million in funding in a round led by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital. The funding was noted in a SEC filing that went through today and was confirmed to TechCrunch by Rosedale.

Founded in 2013, High Fidelity is building deployable virtual worlds, combining the ease of rolling out a VM instance on a modern cloud platform with the interactivity of Minecraft and the immersion of virtual reality.

Over the course of several hours at High Fidelity HQ yesterday, Rosedale demonstrated the state of the startup’s tech and the vision he has for turning it into a viable business.

The main idea driving High Fidelity forward is the ability to quickly generate a virtual space to meet in and interact with. While the interface is far from final, it’s already at the point where you can pick a template, choose a name, and instantly have a space accessible by others. Each space is essentially a small video game world, filled in with the same 3D models you’d build for a game built with Unity.

The startup has built enough logic that you can jump in with friends, have a quick virtual chat, and interact with the virtual space. If you want more stuff to do, you can grab or sculpt your own models and create logic in JavaScript to tell the world how interaction should work. Rosedale showed off this capability by dropping a billiards table he’s been working on in his free time into a world. Using two Razer Hydra controllers, you could pick up balls, roll them around, or throw them at one another and see them react with realistic physics.

Similarly, the studio has invested a ton of time into naturalistic facial/gesture capture and 3D audio, making it the closest thing to the ideal virtual reality chatroom.

If you can code it, you can build basically anything into High Fidelity’s worlds. Between alpha users and the team’s developers messing around in their own time, people have built procedurally generated cities and AI-powered animals that wander around realistically — and that’s just scratching the surface of what’s possible.

As with Second Life, High Fidelity doesn’t plan to sell you a one-time license in exchange for unlimited play. In fact, the base of the experience is open source, letting anyone host worlds on their own machines with less of a hassle than even the kid-friendly Minecraft.

Rosedale plans to monetize High Fidelity at the points where the community provides value to itself. While you can generate a temporary name to send to friends so they can quickly jump into a world with you, you’ll also be able to pay a fee to keep a distinct name for longer-term use — kind of like reserving a good URL for your site or username on Twitter.

Since users can make all kinds of content for their worlds, High Fidelity also wants to host the go-to repository for models and code in a digital store resembling Unity’s Asset Store. Given the product’s open source approach, generous users can give out their offerings for free if they’d like, but if they want to charge money, High Fidelity will take a small cut.

As I’ve noted before, advertising is probably going to be common in virtual reality. Some might hear that and groan, but in “contemporary” virtual settings, ads done right can actually contribute to immersion. Rosedale says the startup is looking to make ads not only feel natural in High Fidelity, but helpful: while there might be ads for “real” products on in-game televisions or billboards down the road, in the near-term you’re more likely to see ads for cool objects you can pick up from the asset store.

Virtual reality allows for an infinite range of experiences, and the studios and hobbyists working on content for headsets from market leaders Oculus and Samsung have barely touched on what’s possible. For now, the majority of development in the space happens in traditional game engines like Unity and Unreal. High Fidelity’s deployable worlds put it somewhere between those professional tools and the most customizable video games, opening up innovation in the space to those who are willing to get technical but don’t want to build something from the ground up.

Xero Raises $111M And Hires New U.S. Lead For Its Cloud-Based Accounting Business

(GNN) - New Zealand-founded accounting software firm Xero has raised a $110.8 million round of capital to grow its business in the North American market.

NZ Stock Exchange-listed Xero — which provides online accounting software for small/medium businesses and accountants — said that the new funds come from Accel Partners and Matrix Capital Management, its largest institutional investor. Accel is providing the lion’s share of capital in the deal — $100 million at a $15.052 per share value — which is expected to close by the middle of March 2015.

The money will be put to work growing the company’s business in the U.S. and, on that note, Xero is also bolstering its U.S. and global team with a new hire. Russell Fujioka, formerly of Dell and a current partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, has taken on the role of U.S. President, based out of Xero’s San Francisco office. In addition, former Salesforce CFO Graham Smith has joined the Xero board as a non-executive director.

Xero beefed up its U.S. team in February 2014 when it hired a U.S. CEO, new board director, and an additional U.S.-based director to its team. Its inaugural U.S. CEO, Peter Karpas, has since moved on to pastures new, and it looks like Fujioka has taken on his responsibilities (and more) with this new role.

There’s plenty of competition in the accounting software space in the U.S., and Xero must do battle with NASDAQ-listed Intuit, arguably the biggest player in the space, and smaller rivals like Freshbooks.

Accel partner Andrew Braccia believes that Xero — which claims to have more than 400,000 small businesses on its books — has what it takes to compete though:

Accel always looks for enduring technologies with global reach and we see the need and opportunity for millions of small businesses to grow on Xero’s platform. We’ve worked with several other leading companies in the region to broaden their global reach and we hope this experience will be valuable as Xero’s strong leadership team looks to expand in the United States.

Prior to today, Xero had raised over $240 million from investors, according to Crunchbase. Its most recent round was $150 million in October 2013, led by Peter Thiel-backed Valar Ventures and Matrix Partners.

Pebble Time Smashes Through $6.5M On Kickstarter In Half A Day

(GNN) - Early this morning, we noted that the Pebble Time — Pebble’s new color e-ink smartwatch — had smashed through its $500,000 goal in an absolutely preposterous seventeen minutes.

We don’t generally do play-by-play updates on Kickstarter campaigns, but this one is a bit too crazy not to note. The Pebble train just won’t stop.

Nine hours after the launch of the campaign, Kickstarter is still vacuuming up cash at an absurd rate. It now sits at $6.5 million, earning it a spot in the Top 5 most funded projects to ever hit the site.

The only projects that have pulled in more? The Ouya console ($8.5M), The Oatmeal’s Exploding Kittens card game ($8.7M), the original Pebble ($10.2M), and the Coolest cooler ($13.2M). All of those had a month-plus to earn their totals; the Pebble Time has joined their ranks in half a day.

Pebble’s repeated success on the platform has started something of a debate, with some arguing that they’re too successful to turn to a crowdfunding site. “It’d be like watching Bill Gates, Mark Cuban and Warren Buffett panhandling on the streets of Seattle”, writes Daniel Cooper on Engadget.

But is that really Kickstarter’s problem to solve? Where does one draw the line? What makes a company too successful for Kickstarter? Public perception? Should having a successful Kickstarter and going on to find retail success prevent you from returning to the well? Or should we let people vote with their wallets and stop romanticizing Kickstarter as something that it’s not?

You can find the Pebble Time Kickstarter campaign here.

The NSA Reportedly Stole Millions Of SIM Encryption Keys To Gather Private Data

(GNN) - The American National Security Agency (NSA), and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), similar clandestine intelligence agencies, stole SIM card encryption keys from a manufacturer, allowing the groups to decrypt global cellular communications data.

The effort, according to The Intercept, took place in 2010, with the agencies breaking into a Dutch firm, Gemalto. The hack provides the government agencies the capability to monitor “a large portion of the world’s cellular communications,” according to the report. We are of course supposing that the government’s descriptions of its own capabilities are accurate.

(Gemalto most recently turned up in the technology media as a partner in a new product of Box, a cloud storage and enterprise collaboration provider, designed to bring added encryption to its customers. Box declined to comment on the new matter.)

The Intercept’s reporting is, once again, based on documents released by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The firestorm initially ignited by Snowden has dimmed in the past year, waning as the pace of revelations sourced from the information he released has slowed.

The NSA and the GCHQ formed the Mobile Handset Exploitation Team (MHET), according to the report, which was built to do precisely what it’s name suggests.

“This disclosure is incredibly significant,” The Electronic Frontier Foundations’ Mark Rumold told TechCrunch. “NSA and GCHQ basically have the keys to decyrpting mobile communications anywhere in the world, even without the participation of local communication carriers (which, even if not much, acts as some check on intelligence agency behavior). It’s the equivalent of these agencies having printed doorkeys for the front doors to millions or even billions of homes around the world, just in case they one day decided they needed to get in. Frankly, people should have no faith in the security of global mobile communications.”

Today’s revelations harken back to the earlier days of the Snowden saga, when the XKeyscore program was still a cause célèbre among the tech industry: The NSA and the GCHQ managed to infiltrate Gemalto by tracking the communications of its employees, using XKeyscore as their data collection tool of choice, according to The Intercept.

So what was unveiled today is built on the tools that privacy advocates worried would be abused when they were first detailed. The use of presumably innocent peoples’ private communications data to lift the encryption keys of other individuals is precisely the sort of overreach that agencies operating in the dark are suspected of abusing.

We have reached out to the NSA and GCHQ for comment but have not heard back. However, the ACLU’s Christopher Soghoian tweeted about the irony of the matter earlier:

Steal millions of crypto keys and then complain publicly that encryption is a problem. The UK and US govs are shameless.
— Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) February 19, 2015

The Dutch Members of Parliament has demanded a response from both organizations over the alleged attacks:

Parliamentary questions by Dutch MEP @SophieintVeld (ALDE/D66) on the hack of Gemalto by NSA and GCHQ: http://t.co/eb7ZdlCLbC #NSA
— Koen Rouwhorst (@koenrh) February 19, 2015

When asked if there were other groups targeted besides Gemalto, Glenn Greenwald responded in an email to TechCrunch that, “In general, we can’t really comment on things that haven’t yet been reported.”

Standing by itself, that the NSA would break into a private corporation to steal individual encryption key might seem shocking. However, recall that the NSA was more than content to tap the cables that linked private data centers of American technology companies located abroad. That particular program led to firms like Yahoo and Google greatly increasing their use of encryption in its various forms.

Today the NSA and its British cohort have again been shown to have less than minor respect for private property, or privacy.

Also, today’s release indicates that there might be more revelations of NSA activity coming. That fact is worth keeping in mind, as we are racing towards a showdown in Congress over renewing several parts of the Patriot Act — which provides key legal underpinning for parts of NSA surveillance — that are set to automatically sunset. So, there will soon be another national debate about surveillance and privacy. Stories such as today’s report concerning SIM cards, and the integrity of the encryption and data privacy of global citizens will certainly help set that discussion’s tone.