Ford is opening up a new Silicon Valley research center in order to advance development in mobility, autonomous vehicles, customer experience and Big Data. “This new research center shows Ford’s commitment to be part of the Silicon Valley innovation ecosystem—anticipating customers’ wants and needs, especially on connectivity, mobility and autonomous vehicles,” said Mark Fields, president … continue reading
Samsung may or may not be in talks to buy BlackBerry. According to a Reuters report, Samsung recently approached BlackBerry with a buyout offer of as much as US$7.5 billion. The report stated that executives met last week to discuss the proposed deal. BlackBerry announced a security partnership with Samsung this past November, but for … continue reading
Mozilla wants to help advance virtual reality on the Web. The company recently unveiled MozVR.com, “a VR website about VR websites,” according to the company. MozVR is meant to share experimental virtual reality websites, provide resources for developers, and spotlight virtual reality Web projects. “We’ve designed MozVR to be a ‘native VR’ Web experience, made … continue reading
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has legally weighed in on the ongoing software copyright dispute between Google and Oracle, and its message is clear: APIs cannot be copyrighted. The nonprofit digital rights organization has filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, signed by 77 computer scientists and legal experts, arguing that the latest appellate court … continue reading
Even if it’s not where they end up, Hadoop can be a great starting platform for a data-driven software company. That’s what San Francisco- and Taipei-based Fliptop found in 2009 when they launched a social media identity matching engine, ultimately employed by such companies as MailChimp, Dell, Toyota, Oracle and Nordstrom. Based on Amazon Web … continue reading
Neil Sedaka insists that breakin’ up is hard to do. Will that apply to the planned split of Hewlett-Packard into two companies? Let’s be clear: This split is a wonderful idea, and it’s long overdue. Once upon a time, HP was in three businesses: Electronics test equipment (like gas spectrometers,) expensive, high-margin data center products … continue reading
Code.org’s crowdfunding campaign Code.org wants to teach 100 million students worldwide how to code. The organization’s launched a 60 day initiative yesterday to raise US$5 million. The money would go to training 100 million students and 10,000 new teachers computer science, and every dollar will be matched. Microsoft, Google, Salesforce.com, Omidyar Network, Quadrivium Foundation, Bill … continue reading
The clear focus of this year’s JavaOne, going on this week in San Francisco, is the community around Java and the state of the platform. To this end, Patrick Curran, chair of the Java Community Process, described a number of initiatives ongoing within the JCP, which he hopes will open the group to more participation … continue reading
Nixie: The wearable drone Imagine being able to take a picture while rock climbing, bike riding, hiking, snowboarding and more without having to miss a step. That’s what Nixie aims to do. Nixie is a tiny wearable drone that lives on a user’s wrist and, when launched, can fly around to take photos and videos … continue reading
Larry Ellison yesterday announced that he would be stepping down from his position as CEO of Oracle. Instead of CEO, Ellison will now be Oracle’s CTO, and Safra Catz and Mark Hurd will be sharing the CEO duties. Is this a big deal? Not really. In terms of the day-to-day running of Oracle, I cannot … continue reading
It is the end of an era for Oracle as Larry Ellison has decided to step down as the company’s CEO. He founded Oracle in 1977 and since then, he has been its only CEO ever. Taking his place as CEO will be both Safra Catz and Mark Hurd. Catz will handle all manufacturing, financial … continue reading
On March 6, 2001, a specification proposal was born within the JCP. It was called JSR 107: Java Temporary Caching API (JCache for short) and it seemed doomed to languish within the JCP longer than any other specification proposal for the language. But almost exactly 13 years later, in March of this year, the specification … continue reading
