| Want a Better Bank? BankSimple, New Web-Native Bank, Nears Its Launch BankSimple, the web-native bank started by former Twitter API Lead Alex Payne, has begun testing its first small batch of bank cards among staff. Payne announced one year ago this week that he was starting the company and BankSimple says it has 50,000 people waiting to test its services. "We are crafting an experience that we think you are going to love," writes Adam Erlebacher, VP of Product marketing, in a short blog post today. "The last many months have taught us greater patience. It is difficult to change an industry. But we're leaning into it and can't wait to show you what we're building."
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Google News Shuts Down Newspaper Archiving Project A project that has more to do with Google's past than with its future is being shutdown as the company has announced that its News Archive Project will no longer update features and functionality. In an email to newspaper publishers, Google said that it is closing down the project and will instead focus on its publisher subscription service Google One Pass, according to the alt-weekly Boston Phoenix. The project was similar to what Google has done with books in scanning and archiving the world's libraries. It was an altruistic goal by Google but may not be a fit for its future that includes Chromebooks and Androids and apps.
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iOS Users Downloading 5 Million Games a Day, Report Finds Mobile gaming continues to be on a tear, and no surprise, it's the biggest single app category in Apple's App Store, accounting for half the downloads of both free and paid apps. According to research data leased by Distimo and Newzoo, during the month of March, more than 5 million games were downloaded by users in the US and six European countries per day. According to the survey data, these 63 million iOS gamers downloaded an average of 2.5 games per month. The percentage of iPhone owners who play iOS game is between 50 and 75%, and based on the number of gamers playing on iOS devices, it looks as though the iPad alone has started to unseat those devices particularly aimed at gaming, such as the Playstation Portable.
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How LinkedIn is Riding a Wave of Big Data All the Way to the Bank [Updated] LinkedIn is valued at $8.79 billion after its first day as a public company. Founder and chairman Reid Hoffman and friends are drinking champagne tonight, that is for sure. It is the highest valuation after an IPO of a tech company since Google astonished the world in 2004. It is mildly amazing for a social network that has never been profitable and never made more than $250 million in a year. What are investors seeing that the rest of us cannot? In a word ... Jobs. This is what Job Board 2.0 has become -- data rich and interactive across a social graph.
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Malcolm X Online Malcolm X was an integral figure in the American civil rights movement. He remains an inspiration, a bugbear and a dorm room poster and coffee mug graphic second only to Che Guevara. The thing that throws people, especially in the vile political atmosphere of the early 21st century, is that Malcolm X appears to be a man who changed his mind when faced with new facts. That is a political blasphemy no faction seems prepared to tolerate. Today is Malcolm X's birthday. He would have been 86 had he not been murdered in 1965. Since 1971, this date also marks Malcolm X Day. So it might be the right time to make up your own mind. There are tons of online resources available to learn about the man. We have put together a sample of them. Even if you've already decided how you feel about him, maybe this is an opportunity to revisit your conclusions. You may change your mind about him. Stranger things have happened.
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7 Year Old From San Francisco Wins Doodle 4 Google Contest Google has just announced the winner of the fourth annual Doodle 4 Google competition, a contest that invited K-12 students to create and submit their own design based on the Google logo. And congratulations go to the national winner, 7 year-old Matteo Lopez of South San Francisco. His doodle "Space Life" will be featured on the Google homepage tomorrow.
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Google Advisor Wants to Help You Find a Better Bank Google has been offering users a mortgage comparison tool for a couple of years and has slowly added new financial products to that comparison tool as well, including credit cards, CDs, and banking account information. But these tools have never been showcased by Google, until now with the launch of a new site called Google Advisor. The site rolls all these different search and comparison tools into one place so you can examine providers side-by-side. Looking for a checking account with no monthly fees? Looking for a credit card that offers frequent flyer miles? Looking for a low-interest mortgage? These are the sorts of questions the new site can help users answer.
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Yahoo Messenger Brings a Strong Video Chat Option to iOS When Apple debuted the iPhone 4 with a front-facing camera it toted along a killer app that had been unavailable on mobile devices until then - FaceTime. Now users could do video chat from mobile devices and Apple was the only player in the game with that capability. Everybody else has been playing catch up. Skype quickly moved to add video chat, one of its staple products, and then added Qik Video Connect earlier this year. Now, Yahoo has gotten into the game with its new Yahoo Messenger app for iOS. The new Yahoo Messenger for iOS has been optimized for iPad and can do video and voice calls, text chat, presence, send SMS and share photos in real-time. Importantly, iPad 2 users can video chat to talk with PCs. As a communications app, it is a strong entry from forgotten source of innovation.
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Google eBooks Get Search, Translation & Definitions Pick up a book like James Joyce's Ulysses and you'll likely want a library at your side to help define, translate and help give the context needed to understand the plethora of heady content inside. Before the days of the Internet, reading some of the more scholarly literary texts involved just that - having a dictionary or other reference materials on hand. Now, Google has brought these things together by adding search, translation and word definitions directly to its Google eBooks offering.
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Plizy Aims to Be Pandora for Video on Your iPad As people begin to consume more and more video content via their mobile devices, expect to hear about more and more startups tackling the space. The latest is Plizy which releases its iPad app today, aiming to provide users with personalized video recommendations. Like ShowYou which launched last month, Plizy pulls from your social graph to be able to offer video recommendations. It also looks at other factors, including your Twitter interests and your viewing history, in its recommendation algorithm.
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