Saving a destination in Google Maps makes it easier to navigate to and also lessens the chance for error when entering or trying to remember an address. Destinations can be starred from a mobile device running Google Maps or from the Web. After searching for an address or location, click on the pin for the destination and switch on the star icon. Starred destinations will be synched across all Google accounts and devices. Starred destinations are easier to find and will type ahead on both mobile and desktop versions of Google Maps. Starring locations is a good idea for local errands and for vacations and business trips to other states and countries. When traveling to a place with unreliable mobile data reception or expensive data rates, it’s also a good idea to save an offline version of Google Maps. Once in the application on a mobile device, press the options button and select “make available offline.” Pan and zoom the map until the area to be downloaded is highlighted. Click “done” and the map will be downloaded to the mobile device and be able to be used when mobile data isn’t available.
Google is launching a new fund through which it will make later-stage investments in technology companies, a Google executive said Wednesday. The fund, to be called Google Capital, will be announced this summer but has already made three investments to date, said Mike Pearson, a general partner at Google Capital, at the conference in Monterey, California. Google already operates a fund, called , through which it invests in startups working in areas like mobile computing, gaming, big data and life sciences. Google Ventures has funded more than 150 companies to date, including Nest and DocuSign. While Google Ventures tends to make early-stage investments in companies, the new investment arm, Google Capital, will be aimed at the “growth equity side of the market,” Pearson said during a panel at the conference.
Apple, that darling of the tech world, has been in the news this week, not because of any new hardware it's releasing, but because of the way it's been handling its foreign earnings. , "We pay all the taxes we owe—every single dollar." And Cook is right. In simplified terms, Apple is a huge, multinational corporation, and it earns plenty of its money overseas. When you sell a product in Europe and leave the money you received for it in Europe, different rules apply, and the country in which the sales took place essentially gets first crack at the cash. As a U.S. company, you often don't have to pay tax until you repatriate the earnings by bringing them back to the homeland. The Senate would greatly prefer this not to be the case, though: Apple has $102 billion sitting in foreign accounts that would amount to over $35 billion in taxes if the earnings were repatriated. In comparison the company has only about $43 billion in its U.S. coffers. Apple isn't playing ball, and it doesn't have to. The law provides for offshore earnings to be treated this way, and Cook explained that it's his duty to Apple shareholders to keep the tax bill down as much as is (legally) possible. Meanwhile, he noted that Apple is America's largest taxpayer. (Cook's endgame is ultimately to work a deal so that Apple gets a break on those taxes should the earnings eventually be repatriated.)
Last year the U.S. was the least riskiest place in the world to open a data center, according to . The rankings, which were released by Cushman & Wakefield, Hurleypalmerflatt and Source8, were made after measuring risks related to physical, economic and social issues in the countries. The U.S. was followed by the U.K., Sweden and Germany, while Indonesia, India and Brazil were at the bottom of the list. The study ranked 30 countries. The issues considered for the study are usually taken into account by companies when establishing data centers. The risk index included weighted ranking of energy, bandwidth, ease of doing business, tax, labor, political stability, sustainability, natural disasters, education, energy security, GDP per capita, inflation and water resources. The U.S. remained at the top despite natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, which knocked out power supplies and left many data centers offline on the East Coast for weeks in October. The U.S. rated 29th out of 30 countries on natural disasters and ranked last on corporate taxes, but the establishment of data centers continued to grow as mobile device shipments increased and companies increasingly deployed public and private clouds.
Improvements to Nvidia’s virtualization technology are aimed at turning graphics processors into a more important resource in data centers and could speed deployment of virtual desktops and delivery of data over the cloud. The graphics company Tuesday announced improvements to its VGX technology, which virtualizes the GPU and makes it a resource that can be shared with CPUs and memory in servers. Hardware and software improvements to VGX will allow a graphics board to deliver multiple virtual desktops. Previously, VGX could deliver only one virtual machine per graphics board. Virtualization enables efficient use of server resources in a distributed computing environment and GPUs could help cut electric bills through fast delivery of virtual desktops. GPUs are considered faster than CPUs in some cases and are used in some of the world’s fastest computers for complex calculations, as well as by Web browsers for faster graphics rendering. Virtualizing graphics processors could enable servers to deliver games over the cloud and make high-performance resources available to remote users.
Citrix Systems is making its cloud-based storage service ShareFile more Microsoft-friendly with SharePoint integration and the ability to store data on Azure. Services for storing and sharing content in the cloud started in the consumer sector, but more enterprises are now adopting rather than blocking them. Citrix saw this trend coming and acquired ShareFile back in October 2011; it announced the latest round of updates Wednesday at the Synergy user conference. Two of the updates are related to where and how ShareFile stores data. The service lets enterprises choose between storing user data in their own data centers; in data centers managed by Citrix; or using existing file storage systems, according to Bill Carovano, senior director of product management for Citrix's ShareFile products. Using existing systems is made possible via what Citrix calls StorageZone Connectors. The company has supported traditional network shares, but is now adding integration with SharePoint, according to Carovano. With the ShareFile app users can, for example, find a file on their iPad in the SharePoint document library, open it up, make changes and then check it back in again.
Western Digital's HGST subsidiary today announced what it is calling the industry's densest mobile hard-disk drive, with capacities of up to 1.5TB in a 9.5mm (.37-in.) high form factor. The 2.5-inch-wide disk drive contains three platters—a first for the company in that form factor and an achievement in shock resistance. Currently, the highest capacity for slimmer 7.5mm and 5mm height mobile drives are 500GB. The new Travelstar 5K1500 is being targeted at a variety of market segments, including notebooks, external hard drives, gaming consoles and all-in-one desktop PCs.
Personal branding isn’t a new topic. In fact, it’s been around since roughly 1997 when Tom Peters coined the phrase, but as we slowly recover from the economic downturn and with the rise of new technology, personal branding is becoming more prevalent and more important. Developing and maintaining your personal brand should be a part of your long-term career strategy. A personal brand is more than just maintaining your LinkedIn profile, according to the experts. “Good people put their head down and get caught up in their job and forget they have a whole career to manage,” says Pamela Rucker, chairwoman of the CIO executive Council’s Executive Women in IT. So where should you start? CIO.com spoke with career strategists, authors, and industry experts to lay out a nine-step plan to help you build your personal brand from the ground up.
. The MSI GX70 3BE is the first notebook to offer either of those, and that combination gives it the most potent possible AMD GPU/APU combination for the immediate future. Of course, you pay for that power, though not as much as you would for Intel-based gaming laptops. The MSI GX70 starts at a competitively priced $1,400. It has a 17.3-inch screen at full 1920-by-1080 resolution, and it’s also a bit chunky 2.17-inch thick and 8.6 pounds. That heft, however, hides a lot of power under the GX70's hood. .
If you were going to sum up Windows 8 in a single sentence, “It’s all about the apps” would do the trick. And that’s why a new study from Soluto, a company that offers a remote troubleshooting tool for Windows PCs, suggests a somewhat stark reality for Microsoft's new-look operating system. Windows 8 was rebuilt from the ground up to revolve around finger-friendly Windows apps. The modern UI Start screen is chock-full of Live Tiles generated from those apps, virtually all of Microsoft’s default programs sport that oh-so-modern (a.k.a. the interface formerly known as Metro) luster, and users don’t even get the option of booting straight to the desktop. You to stare the Start screen’s shiny, shifty app collection in the face every time you boot up your PC. With that heavy a focus, Windows 8’s very future hinges on the success of its apps. Soluto’s report digs into how often people really use those apps on a daily basis. The news isn’t wonderful. Of the 10,848 Windows 8 devices studied by Soluto, the majority of traditional desktop and laptop users—even ones using a device with a touchscreen—fail to open a modern-style app daily. (Note that this study refers only to modern apps, to traditional desktop programs.) Even on tablets, the devices best suited for Windows 8’s modern UI, just 56 percent of all users launch a Windows 8 app day in and day out.
Blue Coat Systems, a provider of Web traffic filtering and business assurance products and services, plans to buy security analytics specialist Solera Networks, which uses data mining techniques to classify network traffic and detect potential security threats. The acquisition is expected to be finalized within the next 30 days, the two companies said Wednesday. BlueCoat declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal. The company, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has over 15,000 customers worldwide, plans to use Solera's technology to add security analytics and forensic capabilities to its future offerings. Blue Coat hopes that the combination of its own Web-based threat intelligence with Solera's "DeepSee" analytics platform will help customers more rapidly identify and respond to security incidents and data breaches.
Salesforce.com is hoping to set the standard for how government bodies deliver online services to citizens using mobile devices. The cloud-based software vendor on Wednesday announced Rapid Response 311, a mobile application that citizens can use to log and track requests for service; Mobile Communities for Government; Government Social Command Center and Mobile Platform Services for Government. The offerings are based on existing Salesforce.com products, such as the Service Cloud customer-service application and Radian6 social media monitoring technology. Government bodies would work with Salesforce.com partners to customize the products to fit their particular audience, said Daniel Burton, senior vice president for government transformation, in an interview. Salesforce.com has been pushing the idea that companies can and should build closer relationships with their customers using its technology. And government entities have plenty of customers in the form of the citizens they serve.
China's Baidu has long dominated China's search market. But a local rival to the company--Qihoo 360--is bolstering its own search services with the help of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. in partnership with Alibaba's advertising platform. The service is listed as a tab on Qihoo 360's search engine, now China's second largest behind Baidu. Qihoo 360's newest product was built from the infrastructure of Alibaba's own shopping search engine called eTao, said Alibaba Group spokeswoman Dora Chai. eTao works by helping users compare products for the best price. said in an email that it launched the new shopping service to address the growing number of Internet users buying products online. "A shopping search is a major demand Internet users want when they use a search engine. So 360 search will not ignore this need," the company added.
Since it launched in late 2012, Microsoft has positioned its Surface tablet as a fun, hip alternative tablet, emphasizing its construction and form factor. That failed. So with its latest commercial, Microsoft has returned to its corporate roots: productivity. ." But what have they signified? Little. Microsoft has seemed inordinately proud of the rhythmic noises the Surfaces', er, surfaces make, as well as how easily the hardware opens, shuts, and snaps together. Every so often there's been a shot of the Start screen—look, Netflix! And is that a chart?—but, by and large, Microsoft’s Surface strategy appears to be predicated on dancing its way into our hearts and briefcases.
. ” virtual desktop. -based zero-client operating system, known as ZeTOS, to let users access their virtual desktops. At the heart of the Ceptor is a dual-core ARM processor with ZeTOS preloaded. The device features integrated Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capability as well as USB on the go via a USB-B micro host port and 1080p HD video output. Users need only enter their user name and password to get up and running in a remote session.
Gmail offers powerful customization options even if you don’t install a single browser extension. You can switch keyboard shortcuts on and off, modify individual shortcuts, enable experimental features, and more. But there are some things even Gmail’s extensive customization settings can’t do, and that’s where these free Chrome extensions shine. They range from gentle tweaks to a full-blown Gmail makeover. You decide how drastically you want to change Gmail.
New network software from Ericsson is designed to make sure mobile users get the best possible connection when there is both a Wi-Fi and a cellular network available. The software, which Ericsson introduced Tuesday at the CTIA Wireless trade show, is an enhancement to its platform for mobile operators that use Wi-Fi to supplement their cellular networks. It continuously measures which network will work best for a given subscriber and automatically shifts that user’s connection between the two, the company said. According to Ericsson, this capability can prevent subscribers from being shifted from cellular to Wi-Fi and then kept on the Wi-Fi network even though it’s slower than cellular in their current location. Many carriers are deploying or partnering for Wi-Fi networks in order to offload data traffic from their cellular systems, embracing so-called heterogeneous networks. In addition to conserving cellular spectrum and capacity, this can give subscribers better connections when near the Wi-Fi networks, which most often are deployed in crowded areas.
Yahoo again ranks as one of the world’s 100 most valuable brands. The Internet company nabbed the 92nd spot in the annual list of global companies from multiple industries including technology, retail and service, released Tuesday by BrandZ, a brand equity database. The ranking gave Yahoo a “brand value” of $9.83 billion, which is based on the opinions of current and potential users as well as actual financial data. Apple occupied the number-one position on the , with a brand value of $185 billion. Google was number two, with a value of roughly $114 billion. The BrandZ ranking, commissioned by the advertising and marketing services group WPP, incorporates interviews with more than 2 million consumers globally about thousands of brands along with financial performance analysis to compile the list. Yahoo last appeared on the list in 2009 at number 81.
Even great game franchises fall prey to mergers, acquisitions, and the vagaries of the game business. Such was the fate of FreeSpace 2, a space simulator originally released in 1999 to great critical acclaim, as part of the Descent and FreeSpace franchise. Due to business circumstances, it was the last in the series—but it can still be played today for the price of $10. and its source code, released in 2002, has been adopted by an . The original game remains commercially available to this day through GOG, a service specializing in old-time games. While the original FreeSpace 2 offered very impressive graphics for its time, it can't hope to match modern space-sim games in the visauls department. Fortunately, it has a lot to offer in terms of gameplay and depth. Cockpit and HUD controls are intricate and well thought out, from subsystem targeting, through automatic speed matching, to smart indicators on your HUD showing a target's distance and bearing even when it's out of your field of view. FreeSpace 2 also makes good use of the keyboard, with an interface that expects you to memorize many keys. If you enjoy FreeSpace 2's detailed gameplay and only wish for some updated graphics, you're in luck: Open-source, free mods dress FreeSpace 2 in updated graphics from franchises you probably already know, and include new storylines and game mechanics to boot. I tried Diaspora, a mod based on the Battlestar Galactica 2004 remake, and was impressed by its slick graphics. It was nice to find myself in the pilot's seat of a Viper, trying to prove myself as a nugget (and badly failing).
VMware has launched its long-anticipated public infrastructure as a service (IaaS), touting its virtual networking capabilities as a differentiator from other established hybrid cloud offerings. VMware’s vCloud Hybrid Service will be based on the company’s vCloud architecture, allowing customers to shift their VMware encoded workloads between in-house and the VMware hosted service, a practice known as running a hybrid cloud. “You can write an application and be safe in the knowledge it can be run anywhere,” said VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, in a Web conference announcing the new service, adding that much of the complexity enterprises experience in deploying their workloads in the cloud comes from preparing their in-house applications to run in a new environment.
Well, that didn’t take long. A mere five days after Brian Krzanich took the reins as the new CEO of Intel, he’s shaking things up at an organizational level. Krzanich has reorganized key business groups and created a new “New Devices” division to focus on emerging trends, including “ultra-mobile” devices, . Mike Bell, who formerly co-ran Intel’s mobile unit—most notably in the push to bring x86 to Android—will take leadership of the new division. “The group will be tasked with turning cool technology and business model innovations into products that shape and lead markets,” Intel said in a statement to AllThingsD. first reported the changes after an anonymous source came forward with the information. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy confirmed to Reuters that Krzanich had sent out an internal email outlining the changes, but didn’t elaborate further on shake-up details.
Plenty of applications help you show off your photos, and plenty help you show off your videos. But too few tools exist that allows you to show them off together. Enter Fantashow Pro, a $50-per-year (or $5-per-month) application allows you to combine still photos with videos to create a custom video slideshow.
Four entrepreneurs say the Big Apple is becoming America's next start-up hub. Are they right or is this just wishful thinking?
Americans are some of the most entrepreneurial citizens in the world. But is this a good thing?
Awe.sm founder Jonathan Strauss recalls the wrenching lead-up to his resignation.
The future of retail is at the intersection of e-commerce and bricks-and-mortars, says co-founder Neil Blumenthal.
No matter what happens, you should never stop learning, says Matthew Brimer and a panel of entrepreneurs.