Earlier this month Twitter made a deal with Bharti Airtel. Airtel is one of the biggest telecommunications companies in India with about 100 million subscribers. The company launched an SMS service where users in India can update their tweets from mobile phones. The SMS tweets are a free additional service which inevitably will increase the popularity of Twitter in the Asian subcontinent. In order to promote the new service, Airtel is airing three new commercials that lets their customers know about the service. After the jump are the three commercials:
It seems that whenever a company gets featured by Apple, they will immediately get funding after. Bump Technologies is no exception. The company behind the Bump application has received funding from Sequoia Capital according to TechCrunch. Jason Kincaid discovered that Bump’s logo was on Sequoia’s PowerPoint presentation slides at the StartupSchool event.
The funding is rumored to be about $3 million based on a $10 million valuation. The Bump app is free on iTunes making the valuation sound pretty interesting. Bump allows people to transfer contact information simply by bumping two iPhones together. Bump launched out of Y-Combinator. Bump Technologies was founded by David Lieb, Andy Huibers, and Jake Mintz in October 2008.
In the frequently asked questions portion of Bump’s website, the founders revealed how the app works which I found pretty interesting. Below is that excerpt:
There are two parts to BumpTM: the app running on your device and a smart matching algorithm running on our servers in the cloud. The app on your phone uses the phone’s sensors to literally “feel” the bump, and it sends that info up to the cloud. The matching algorithm listens to the bumps from phones around the world and pairs up phones that felt the same bump. Then we just route the contact information between the two phones in each pair.
Last night I was sitting at the Good Time Charley’s bar watching the Michigan State vs. Iowa University football game in Ann Arbor, Michigan. All of a sudden I notice that a large crowd started gathering outside of the bar. When I walked out I saw smoke and fire spewing from the top of a building about one block down from where everyone was standing. The roof, the roof, the roof was on fire of a building that used to be known as Pinball Pete’s.
While the firefighters were battling the heat, students were busy taking pictures and updating their Twitter accounts. A couple of people next to me sent out some TwitPics immediately. Shortly after the pictures were taken, a video was uploaded on YouTube [embedded above] and Flickr user moto1986 uploaded a stream of pictures from the event.
When I was standing there watching all of the students sending out tweets and updating Facebook statuses while the firefighters were battling the fire, I couldn’t help but think about how far technology has brought us. Just imagine if this event took place about 10 years ago. Our friends would rely on how well we could describe the fire rather than having the ability to see our pictures on Twitter and our videos on YouTube.
Some of the tweets that were sent out are displayed below [click the image to enlarge]:
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) co-founder Sergey Brin is giving back to an organization that gave to him about 30 years ago. Sergey Brin and his family arrived in the United States with the help of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). Brin is now giving the Society $1 million for helping his family back then. THe Society helped families escape anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.
“I would have never had the kinds of opportunities I’ve had here in the Soviet Union, or even in Russia today,” stated Brin in an interview with The New York Times. “I would like to see anyone be able to achieve their dreams, and that’s what this organization does.”
Even though the $1 million is not much compared to Brin’s personal wealth, it is an indication that the Google co-founder and his wife are engaged in philanthropic initiatives. Brin pointed out that Bill Gates was highly criticized for not engaging in philanthropy until much later of his career. “While everyone was criticizing him, he was generating a whole lot more money for his foundation, and ultimately, when he got serious about philanthropy, he did it really well,” said Brin about Gates. “I’d like to learn from that example.”
Brin and his wife have given away $30 million in charities with a majority of that going towards the Michael J. Fox Foundation and other organizations that focus on Parkinson’s disease.
When Brin’s family was immigrating to the U.S., HIAS paid for their tickets, gave them money, and helped the family apply for visas. Sergey’s mother Eugenia is on the board of HIAS and helped the organization digitize their archives and launch a social network.
In this picture Linus Torvalds is giving Windows 7 a thumbs up in Japan. Torvalds is the man behind open source Linux operating system. Why is he doing this? Perhaps Torvalds wants to keep it classy unlike the Apple CEO when he flipped off the IBM building. Sometimes these pictures come back to haunt you many years later. Another theory is that Linus is pointing out that only one copy has been sold off the shelf.
Carl Icahn joined the Board of Directors at Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) in July 2008. This was shortly after Icahn highly criticized the Yahoo! Board of Directors for their negligence in making an acquisition agreement with Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). Icahn bought and sold many Yahoo! shares ever since.
The reason why Icahn is leaving the Yahoo! Board of Directors is because he wanted to spend more time on other investments he made. “I don’t believe that it is necessary at this time to have an activist on the board of Yahoo and currently my attention is focused on other matters,” stated Icahn. Carol Bartz is “doing a great job” added Icahn.
Yahoo! and Microsoft recently struck a deal too. Microsoft Corporation’s Bing.com search engine will power Yahoo!’s various online properties including the homepage Yahoo.com. The deal is still under the regulatory approval process. Icahn owns 4.5% in Yahoo! financially based on stock.
Above is a video of a drunk guy named Larry who wanted more beer at the market, but he ran into some trouble on his quest. The dramatic music makes the video even more entertaining. However a lot of people commenting on the video don’t see it as being very funny because it is unknown what Larry might have done shortly after. Some people are worried that he got in a car or if he was taken to a hospital. What are your thoughts on the video?
Apple’s advertising attack on Microsoft is back and this time it is aiming at Windows 7. Today was the release date of Windows 7 and Apple wasted no time to release the commercial. In this ad, Apple reminds consumers how Microsoft said that this Windows operating system will be different from previous operating system flops.
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