Curated

News

These are news items I've curated in my Google Reader, Twitter and bookmarking using Pinboard. Sometimes I add a little commentary to each post.

I use many of these curated links in my research and writing. If you are interested in receivig data feeds of all my curated, please let me know.

With Cloud Drive Photos, Amazon makes a play to be the cloud app for iOS photos

gigaom.com on 05/10/2013

Excerpt: Summary: Something Amazon is really good at and something Apple is not: the cloud. Amazon hones in on its competitors’ cloud-based photo territory on Apple’s own platform with a new app. Not happy with PhotoStream on your iOS device? Amazon now has its own cloud-based offering for iOS: Amazon Cloud Drive Photos. It was released on the iOS App Store on Thursday. Apple’s issues with mobile photos and cloud storage were brought to light this week with a great post from an app developer, Peter Nixey. In a widely circulated personal blog post, he expressed his frustration with Apple’s current approach to managing photos on the desktop and on mobile.... read the full post.

Tags: , Amazon, API-Evangelist, API-Stack, Images, IOS, Photos

Work Out Hero Makes Your Crossfit “Easy”

blog.parse.com on 05/10/2013

Excerpt: Crossfit, and its now-ubiquitous companion, the Paleo Diet, have spread across the world like wildfire over the past several years. With so many devotees to the two, and with each having certain needs and guidelines, it’s no surprise that despite their low-tech appearance, apps would spring up to support people following the regimens. Parse customer StoreBoughtMilk Apps leads the charge with these tools, producing apps that have seen thousands of downloads as well as being embraced not just by the Crossfit community, but also by official Crossfit events. We spoke with Andrew Bucchin, CEO of the company, about their Parse-backed app, Workout Hero. Tell us a little bit about your company, Andrew.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, BaaS, Showcase

Obama Administration Releases Historic Open Data Rules to Enhance Government Efficiency and Fuel Economic Growth | The White House

www.whitehouse.gov on 05/09/2013

Excerpt: The Obama Administration today took groundbreaking new steps to make information generated and stored by the Federal Government more open and accessible to innovators and the public, to fuel entrepreneurship and economic growth while increasing government transparency and efficiency. Today’s actions—including an Executive Order signed by the President and an Open Data Policy released by the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy—declare that information is a valuable national asset whose value is multiplied when it is made easily accessible to the public.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, Data, Federal Government, opendata

Executive Order -- Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information | The White House

www.whitehouse.gov on 05/09/2013

Excerpt: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. General Principles. Openness in government strengthens our democracy, promotes the delivery of efficient and effective services to the public, and contributes to economic growth. As one vital benefit of open government, making information resources easy to find, accessible, and usable can fuel entrepreneurship, innovation, and scientific discovery that improves Americans' lives and contributes significantly to job creation. Decades ago, the U. S. Government made both weather data and the Global Positioning System freely available.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, API-Voice, Data, Federal Government, opendata

The Box Blog » Box is Acquiring Crocodoc to Reimagine Documents in the Cloud

blog.box.com on 05/09/2013

Excerpt:... read the full post.

Tags: , , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, Cloud Storage, Documents, HTML5

Drawing The Line: Why Startups Are 'Sexy' And Small Businesses 'Meh' - Forbes

www.forbes.com on 05/09/2013

Excerpt: A new report by the Kauffman Foundation underscores a simmering snobbery in the startup community: no matter which way you spin it, not all new companies are created equal. “People who use entrepreneurship as a ‘catch-all’ phase to capture a single economic activity make an important mistake,” says Bill Aulet, the managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and a co-author of the new report, titled “A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs: Understanding Differences in the Types of Entrepreneurship in the Economy. ” From where he stands, there are, in fact, two distinct sets of entrepreneurs doing work in the U. S.... read the full post.

Tags: , , API-Evangelist, API-Voice, startup

Achievement unlocked! Android gaming console Ouya raises $15M

feedproxy.google.com on 05/09/2013

Excerpt: Summary: The $99 Ouya gaming console built on Android got a boost today with an additional $15 million in funding, plus a new board member that formerly worked at EA. Ouya, the company behind a small $99 Android gaming console, has picked up $15 million in funding. The investment, announced on Thursday, follows the $8. 6 million raised by Ouya on the crowd-sourced Kickstarter platform in August of 2012. Long-time executive at EA, Bing Gordon, will be joining the Ouya board as part of the deal, which was funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), along with participation from the Mayfield Fund, NVIDIA, Shasta Ventures, and Occam Partners.... read the full post.

Tags: , Android, API-Evangelist, API-Stack, Console, Gaming

Amazon Reportedly Working On A 3D Smartphone

readwrite.com on 05/09/2013

Excerpt: The Amazon smartphone is a rumor that just will not die. Citing unnamed sources, the Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon is working on building two smartphones — one of which would be a high-end device with 3D visual capabilities where images would appear to float above the screen without the need of 3D glasses. Users could reportedly control the smartphone via eye movements, perhaps similar to the facial-tracking features of the Samsung Galaxy S4. [See Also: Where Does Amazon Fit in the Game of Phones? ] An Amazon lab in Cupertino, Calif. (where Apple is also headquartered), is reportedly working on a variety of devices for the e-commerce giant.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, AWS, Mobile, prediction

BeeBole now available in Polish

beebole.com on 05/09/2013

Excerpt: We are delighted to announce to our Polish fans that BeeBole Timesheet is now available in Polish.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, International

Book review: Interactive Data Visualization for the web by Scott Murray

blog.scraperwiki.com on 05/09/2013

Excerpt: Next in my book reading, I turn to Interactive Data Visualisation for the web by Scott Murray (@alignedleft on twitter). This book covers the d3 JavaScript library for data visualisation, written by Mike Bostock who was also responsible for the Protovis library. If you’d like a taster of the book’s content, a number of the examples can also be found on the author’s website. The book is largely aimed at web designers who are looking to include interactive data visualisations in their work. It includes some introductory material on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, so has some value for programmers moving into web visualisation.... read the full post.

Tags: , API-Evangelist, API-Stack, Data, Data Visualization, Scraping, visualization