The story, which was first-reported by VentureBeat and then by sites including Huffington Post, Yahoo! and AOL, was unique. Here was Hanson, a 19-year-old college student from Seattle, ditching the traditional college route and utilizing a silent auction site to help achieve her entrepreneurial dreams.
Now it looks like the story may have been too good to be true.
via Does ‘Sarah Hanson’ exist? The story of this 19-year-old entrepreneur may be a hoax – GeekWire.
They’re also launching a new distributed database called Plazma, which offers significant improvements over HDFS (Hadoop Distributed Files System). Plazma is significantly better than HDFS precisely because it’s more efficient and is able to compile and parse data at a much faster rate.
Compass-EOS claims it can eliminate that step and just keep throwing routers at the problem, so to speak. Each router treats neighboring Compass-EOS routers as if they were its own line cards.
There’s a distance limitation, of course: about 200 meters. That’s still long enough that two routers, working in conjunction, can be on different floors of a building.
via Light Reading – Photonics Fire Up Radical Core Router Startup.
Since launching in beta last March, Gild has profiled four million software developers and has 70 customers, from high-profile Silicon Valley startups such as Palantir Technologies and Box to large IT providers such as Salesforce and EMC.
via Startup Creates Software to Give Companies an Edge Recruiting Tech Talent | MIT Technology Review.
One of Gild’s biggest data sources is Github, a software developer collaboration site that hosts the most open-source code in the world. Github profiles are already replacing programmers’ résumés in many cases.
But the most influential new product may be the least flashy: a $100 million database built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school.
via K-12 student database jazzes tech startups, spooks parents | Reuters.
The YourKarma device creates a WiFi hotspot that moves around with you, and connects your WiFi connected devices to the Internet. This is just like the tethering option available on your pocket computer; but YourKarma sends data through Clearwire’s cellular network.
via A Look At YourKarma, A Tiny Wi-Fi Hotspot On A Mission | TechCrunch.
Created by a startup called ProtoGeo, Moves is free and currently available only for the iPhone (the company plans to release an Android version but hasn’t said when). The app’s precision and power consumption need work, but I’m convinced its simplicity represents the future of self-tracking.
To get an early release of WindowsAndroid, you first have to fill out the download form (make sure to provide a valid email address) and grab the hefty 64.8MB installer via the download link you receive in your inbox. WindowsAndroid takes up about 300MB and comes with a cute Android robot icon. Firing it up presents you with a command prompt that loads all the components and then this familiar screen:
Aereo began a year ago in New York City and is now expanding into 22 markets. It is going after the growing contingent of TV “cord-cutters” who would rather watch on-demand content online than pay for cable or satellite packages. Aereo charges a minimum of $8 a month for a subscription.
via Internet TV Startup Aereo Could Help Cord-Cutting Catch On | MIT Technology Review.
The interesting thing about this idea is that they somehow figured out how to associate a single antenna to each subscriber. Content delivery networks, which this seems to be, are difficult to implement on a large scale.
The Obama campaign tended to hire senior developers, which meant nearly everyone on the team had an extensive skillset. They worked in weeklong sprints, with the goal of releasing new software every week. They were determined to remain technology agnostic, building apps in a variety of languages—Ruby on Rails, Java, PHP backed by Kohana. The management and engineering teams worked in close physical proximity, helping close the feedback loop: if something was going drastically wrong, the path to fixing it started with a ten-yard walk to another cubicle and smacking the responsible party in the back of the head.
via The Billion-Dollar Startup: Inside Obama’s Campaign Tech.
In a perfect world, the Romney campaign would have led its volunteers through several dry runs on Orca before Election Day; but someone had decided to keep the major parts of the software a secret for as long as possible. As a result, Orca proved toothless against Narwhal and the other Obama apps.