Apple makes iWork for iCloud beta free on Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, and more for Friday, February 13, 2015

Apple makes iWork for iCloud beta free on Windows, Linux, Chrome OS Kevin C. Tofel Feb 13 2015, 6:42am PDT Add another option to the freely available online productivity software suites: Anyone can sign up for and use Apple’s iWork for iCloud, even if they don’t have a Mac or iOS device. The open access is actually in beta, so to use it, you’ll have to head […] Read More » Smart home management firm AlertMe bought out by British Gas David Meyer Feb 13 2015, 6:33am PDT The British smart home outfit AlertMe has a long history with British Gas – back in 2009 it scored its first trial with the country’s biggest energy supplier, and in 2012 it was chosen to provide the software for British Gas’s smart meters across the country. […] Read More » Here’s a new “drop-in” EC2 API for OpenStackers who want it Barb Darrow Feb 13 2015, 6:04am PDT Many news cycles have been burned on the debate over whether OpenStack-based cloud providers should or need to support the major Amazon Web Services APIs. Cloudscaling and its co-founder Randy Bias have long advocated that such support is critical to the success of OpenStack and promised Cloudscaling support for elastic compute […] Read More » Tesla charges ahead at the grid storage market Katie Fehrenbacher Feb 13 2015, 6:00am PDT For years Tesla, in partnership with solar partner SolarCity, has been experimenting with selling batteries that can store energy locally at a building, or combined with a solar panel. I was one of the first to report on this, and an early stage of the companies’ […] Read More » How do you manage or grant identity in a decentralized network? Stacey Higginbotham Feb 13 2015, 5:00am PDT There are several efforts to build a more decentralized internet — from attempts to build peer-to-peer wireless networks like Commotion or Open Garden to similar efforts with P2P browsers, such as BitTorrent’s Project Maelstrom. And thanks to blockchain, the decentralized data transaction processing technology behind Bitcoin, […] Read More » Researcher discovers security flaw in Netatmo weather station Stacey Higginbotham Feb 12 2015, 6:50pm PDT The Netatmo weather station, a popular and beautiful connected weather station, apparently sends your Wi-Fi password as well as other device and network information over the internet in an unencrypted format. Johannes Ullrich, CTO at the SANS Internet Storm Center in Jacksonville, Florida, posted a blog […] Read More » New Relic boosts revenue growth in first post-IPO earnings Jonathan Vanian Feb 12 2015, 4:03pm PDT New Relic’s first earnings report since going public last December seemed to please investors as the application-performance and analytics company took in $29 million in revenue in what it considers its third quarter 2015 earnings. That’s a 14 percent quarter-over-quarter increase from the second quarter of […] Read More » New Facebook tool masks tech industry’s digital death fight Jeff John Roberts Feb 12 2015, 2:26pm PDT Facebook wants to cheat death. Or at least the laws governing death. That’s how a cynic might see a new feature that lets users hand over part of their profile when they pass away. The feature is called “Legacy Contact” and for the first time allows users to designate someone who can do […] Read More » iMessage just got secure: Apple expands iCloud two-factor authentication Kif Leswing Feb 12 2015, 1:13pm PDT Since the embarrassing revelation that iCloud’s two-factor authentication didn’t actually cover many of Apple’s online services, partially responsible for a rash of leaked celebrity photos last year, Apple has been gradually adding the security setting to many of its other services. On Thursday, users with iCloud’s two-factor authentication enabled will need […] Read More » Why Elon Musk thinks Tesla will be worth as much as Apple in a decade Katie Fehrenbacher Feb 12 2015, 12:44pm PDT Thanks to a killer 2014, this week Apple became the first U.S. company to be worth over $700 billion. Could a company that makes electric cars ever be worth that much? Well, yes, according to comments made by Tesla CEO Elon Musk during the company’s earnings […] Read More » Xiaomi is looking to bring everything but its phones to the U.S. Janko Roettgers Feb 12 2015, 11:49am PDT Chinese smart phone maker Xiaomi isn’t ready just yet to sell its phones in the U.S., but the company wants to start selling some of its other products to Americans soon. Xiaomi’s Hugo Barra, vice president of international for the copmany, announced at a press event in San Francisco […] Read More » Here’s more evidence that sports is a goldmine for machine learning Derrick Harris Feb 12 2015, 11:09am PDT If you really like sports and you’re really skilled at data analysis or machine learning, you might want to make that your profession. On Thursday, private equity firm Vista announced it has acquired a natural-language processing startup called Automated Insights and will make it a subsidiary […] Read More » Why we need social media: Press freedom is still declining rapidly Mathew Ingram Feb 12 2015, 10:11am PDT The latest global index from Reporters Without Borders shows that freedom of the press is in decline in a majority of the countries surveyed -- including the United States -- which makes alternative forms of media such as Twitter more important than ever Read More » Why Android Wear shipments aren’t surprising (or disappointing) Kevin C. Tofel Feb 12 2015, 8:28am PDT Wow. There are quite a few people talking about yesterday’s Canalys estimate of 720,000 Android Wear shipments in the last six months of 2014. And most of that talk is ridiculous, with little to no perspective on the market itself. All of the doom and gloom I’m reading about […] Read More » The poor private cloud gets no respect Barb Darrow Feb 12 2015, 7:20am PDT Pity your private cloud, if you have one. If cloud analysts are to be believed, private cloud is losing ground as public cloud providers — chiefly Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft — keep adding features and functions, many of which target enterprise IT buyers. Last […] Read More » White space broadband gets green light in UK David Meyer Feb 12 2015, 3:08am PDT The British telecoms regulator Ofcom has formally approved the deployment of white-space broadband technology in the U.K., following trials. White space broadband uses the empty buffer zones that are placed between TV channels to stop them bleeding into one another. The broadband technology glues together these […] Read More » SiriusXM can fight windfall for ’60s singers, judge rules Jeff John Roberts Feb 11 2015, 2:35pm PDT Music lovers finally caught a break this week as a federal judge ruled SiriusXM can appeal a jaw-dropping ruling that created a new type of copyright royalty, and that could oblige digital media companies to pay the likes of the Turtles additional money for songs they sang fifty years […] Read More » Grocery shopping might be less painful with this smart cart Stacey Higginbotham Feb 11 2015, 1:32pm PDT Cambridge Consultants, a product development group based in the U.K., is showing off a connected shopping cart that can tell a retailer where you are in a store within three feet. The smart carts are equipped with Bluetooth radios and sensors to track the cart’s location […] Read More » Another startup steps up to build the hyperloop Signe Brewster Feb 11 2015, 12:14pm PDT Hyperloop Technologies, a startup formed by SpaceX alumni and well-known Silicon Valley executives, came out of stealth with $8.5 million on Wednesday to make the hyperloop reality, according to a report in Forbes. The hyperloop, a transportation system that would send capsules large enough to contain people or […] Read More » The viral content problem: Many people don’t care whether it’s true Mathew Ingram Feb 11 2015, 11:33am PDT Author and journalist Craig Silverman looks at the explosion of online hoaxes, rumors and misinformation all around us -- but one of the most powerful factors behind this trend is that many people don't care whether what they share is true or not Read More »