Surface giveaway: Microsoft seeding schools with 10,000 free tablets for teachers

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Whenever you go to a big conference, the freebies are always a nice little add-on. Sometimes it’s a sweet keychain or tote bag, or maybe you take home something more luxurious like a t-shirt. But 10,000 teachers at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference will be getting something much more special — and… Read More…

Your old Microsoft Points will be worth ‘equal or greater value’ as real currency

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Microsoft confirmed earlier this week that it will be shifting away from its Microsoft Points virtual currency for purchasing games and other items on Xbox Live, as transactions will soon take place with your local currency. But what about the gamers who have Microsoft Points outstanding? What will happen to those points? Microsoft cleared that… Read More…

Visualant raises $5M for fraud prevention products

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Visualant, a Seattle-based company that offers authentication and diagnostic solutions, announced today that it closed equity funding in excess of $5 million led by Special Situations Technology Fund. Visualant’s light-based, spectral-pattern matching ChromaID technology is used mainly in the security realm, but can also be applied to medical, agricultural and industrial markets. The technology is allows for… Read More…

Bill Gates’ first post on LinkedIn: ’3 things I’ve learned from Warren Buffett’

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Learning the game of bridge isn’t the only thing Warren Buffet has taught Bill Gates. In Gates’ first-ever post on LinkedIn titled “Three Things I’ve Learned from Warren Buffett,” the Microsoft co-founder sheds light on the lessons he’s gleaned from his good friend. Gates writes about the first time he met Buffett over a dinner his mother… Read More…

Vizify teams up with Twitter, lets you create personal movie trailers based on your best tweets

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While there are Twitter analytics tools out there that can spit out in-depth personal usage stats, the data isn’t always aesthetically-pleasing on the eye, or “cool” for that matter. Vizify wants to change that with a new feature called #FollowMe that instantly creates mini movie trailers full of sweet infographics based on your best Twitter… Read More…

Free analytics: Twitter now lets anyone track their tweet performance

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Twitter today opened the doors to its robust tool that lets anyone from big brands to basement bloggers monitor tweet performance — all for free. The platform was previously available to only advertising partners, but now you can check out your Twitter stat sheet by going to ads.twitter.com and clicking the “Analytics” tab on the top strip…. Read More…

Fast food study: Millennials are making the least-healthy menu choices

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Last month, data from Placed told us how much America loves its fast food. Now we know a little more about what menu choices people are making at the counter. Based on Part 2 of the April rankings of Placed Insights, a platform that is essentially the Nielsen TV ratings system or Google Analytics but for the offline world,… Read More…

Buddy unveils ‘Sound-as-a-Service’ for mobile devs, nabs Lady Gaga’s manager as investor

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It’s a big day for Buddy. The Kirkland-based company, which provides back-end mobile app support, today introduced a new “Sound-as-a-Service” product that allows developers to choose from more than 20,000 royalty-free sound effects, along with the ability to measure engagement with a given app based on music choices. Buddy has also brought on a big… Read More…

Want to control a computer with your brain? Better practice

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Research has already shown the potential for brain-computer interfaces and how people can control machines such as robotic limbs simply by thinking about a certain task. Now a study out of the University of Washington goes deeper and shows how the process of improving brain-computer skills is very similar to improving simple motor skills like throwing… Read More…

A Kayak for ride sharing: Red Ride aggregates the closest, cheapest rides near you

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The ride sharing space is changing the way people zoom around town. Taxis are no longer your only option with companies like Lyft, SideCar and Car2Go now offering their services. But when you’re in need of a ride, it can be a time-consuming and irritating process shuffling through all the different apps on your phone to find the… Read More…

You can now use #hashtags on Facebook

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Hashtags are coming to Facebook, as the social media giant announced today that it has added support for phrases with “#” placed in front, a technique made popular by Twitter. Similar to how they operate on other social media hubs like Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr, hashtagged words will now be clickable in Facebook news feeds. By… Read More…

Amazon’s huge $600M cloud contract with CIA now up in the air

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Back in March, it appeared Amazon had hit a home run with a $600 million cloud computing deal with the CIA. Now, though, the Seattle online giant could be left with nothing. IBM, a company with longstanding partnerships with government agencies, protested the contract and now the CIA is reviewing a recommendation by the Government… Read More…

With Apple’s iBook coming to desktop, Amazon has new competition

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Among Apple’s bevy of upgrades to its new desktop operating system, there is one change that likely caught the attention of the folks at Amazon. The new OS, named Mavericks, will see the arrival of iBooks on the Mac desktop. Any book a user is able to get on their iOS device will also be available through the… Read More…

Bing Maps pours in 270TB of Bird’s Eye imagery, beefs up venue maps

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In its latest update to Bing Maps, Microsoft just published a very large amount (270TB) of Bird’s Eye imagery — 100,000 DVD’s worth — and beefed up its Venue Maps feature with 4,700 new additions. Contrary to top-down satellite images, the Bird’s Eye viewpoint captures imagery at a 45-degree angle. You can check out some examples the newly-added… Read More…

With $2M in Kickstarter funds, asteroid-mining company’s public telescope could find alien planets

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It ain’t Kepler, but an upgrade to Planetary Resources’ crowdfunded public telescope could hunt for alien planets. The Bellevue-based asteroid-mining company announced new Kickstarter stretch goals in its campaign to produce the world’s first crowdfunded, public use space telescope. After two weeks, funding sits about $140,000 shy of the original $1 million goal. With 19 days… Read More…

Microsoft wants government to provide more transparency for security requests

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Microsoft is now joining fellow tech giants Google and Facebook in asking the U.S. government for more transparency in regard to government requests for national security information. Microsoft issued this statement a short while ago, noting that it would like to provide more information than what showed up in the company’s 2012 Law Enforcement Request Report published last March…. Read More…

New Google Glass video shows why search is the killer app on the high-tech specs

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Google has sent out its Glass hardware to 10,000 or so developers in hopes that they’ll run wild and create awesome apps for the high-tech specs. And while apps ranging from porn to real estate have been intriguing, a new video out by Google shows why the company’s bread and butter — search — might be… Read More…

Google looking to expand data center in Oregon

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Google has plans to expand its data center footprint in The Dalles, Ore., with a new 164,000 square foot building that is a wee bit larger than the two centers already up and running there. The search giant last week submitted plans to the city to construct a data center that’s 75 to 80 feet high,… Read More…

Chirpify goes beyond PayPal, now accepts credit, debit card payments

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Making purchases from your social media feeds just got easier thanks to Chirpify. The Portland-based startup is now allowing its members to pay using their credit and debit cards, as well automated clearing house (ACH) payments. Previously, using PayPal was the only way to make purchases. Now, Chirpify users can just upload their credit/debit card… Read More…

The Most Valuable Pitches (MVPs) from Nike Accelerator Demo Day

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Well, that was inspiring — both to the brain and the body. The Nike Accelerator Demo Day wrapped up Monday afternoon on the pristine Nike campus just outside of Portland. More than 700 investors, mentors, industry leaders, Nike execs and friends packed an auditorium here as ten founders — many of them rocking sweet Nike… Read More…