Computers

The formation of a new units is part of Intel's re-organization.

At this rate, Yahoo is gonna be clean out of cash as it has made yet another acquisition. As first spotted by TechCrunch, the target this time is gaming platform PlayerScale, which provides backend services for game developers via its Player.IO product. Unlike other recent acquisitions, the good news for gamers here is that PlayerScale is staying put – it’s not being shuttered by Yahoo. In the announcement message today, Chief Executive Jesper Jensen calls the acquisition the “the next big step toward our goal of building the best possible gaming infrastructure platform.” He says: “Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. Our platform will continue to support the same great games that you love playing today … and in fact, it will only get better from here! Our goal has alwayhttp://thenextweb.com/wp-admin/post-new.phps been to help developers build the best possible games, without having to worry about building and scaling the infrastructure required to operate today’s biggest successes. In working with the folks at Yahoo!, it has become clear that we share this passion.” Acquisition spree This news comes just a few days after Yahoo snapped up Tumblr for $1.1 billion but, although Tumblr will continue to exist for its millions of users, the same can’t be said for it myriad of other recent acquisitions. Yahoo recently snapped up to-do list app Astrid, which was preceded by personalized recommendation startup Jybe, as well as news summary app Summly. Then, earlier this month, GoPollGo was bought and closed, as was MileWise on the same day. PlayerScale was founded in 2011, and today it claims to power games played by more than 150 million people, with 400,000 new users jumping on board each day. “In the last four months alone, we have increased our daily user growth rate by almost sixty percent,” says Jespen. “With Yahoo’s backing, we can crank out awesome products and improvements to our platform faster than ever before. We will continue to support our existing product and deliver new services to help you grow and manage your success in cross-platform gaming — whether it’s casual, social or mobile.” Online and mobile gaming is big businesses, and Yahoo is continuing its push to reinvent itself as a digital powerhouse by putting its proverbial fingers in many pies.

It's back to the smaller acquisitions after Yahoo's buzzy buyout of Tumblr Monday for $1.1 billion. Today, Yahoo has announced its latest acquisition, PlayerScale. The price has not been disclosed, but it probably wasn't as cheap as some of the talent acquisitions Yahoo has made previously. PlayerScale reaches 150 million users worldwide, and Yahoo says it wants to continue building on the platform's technology, not shut it down. Here's the note PlayerScale's CEO, Jesper Jensen, wrote on the website (via TechCrunch) Today is a great day — both in our journey with PlayerScale and for users of our Player.IO product. We are happy to announce the next big step toward our goal of building the best possible gaming infrastructure platform: we have been acquired by Yahoo!. And don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. Our platform will continue to support the same great games that you love playing today … and in fact, it will only get better from here! Our goal has always been to help developers build the best possible games, without having to worry about building and scaling the infrastructure required to operate today’s biggest successes. In working with the folks at Yahoo!, it has become clear that we share this passion. We have spent the past four years growing a three-person startup into a product that powers games played by over 150 million people worldwide and we are adding over 400,000 new users every day. In the last four months alone, we have increased our daily user growth rate by almost sixty percent. With Yahoo!’s backing, we can crank out awesome products and improvements to our platform faster than ever before. We will continue to support our existing product and deliver new services to help you grow and manage your success in cross-platform gaming — whether it’s casual, social or mobile. Today marks a milestone for PlayerScale and I want to sincerely thank the team, our developers and millions of users for the adventure so far and can promise there will be more to come. - Jesper Jensen Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and his team are launching a new video content promotion tool called Twitter Amplify. The launch partners include A&E, Bloomberg TV, Clear Channel, Discovery, MLB, New York magazine, NCM, PGA Tour, The Audience, Time Inc., Vevo, Vice, Variety, and Warner Music Group. The new product allows media companies to push small video clips on Twitter — such as sports highlights or tornado footage — out to followers, accompanied by a brief video ad as a pre-roll or post-roll. Ford has already been doing work with ESPN's college sports properties on Twitter, with a Ford ad lasting just a few seconds rolling in front of spectacular dunk footage from college basketball games. Glenn Brown, Twitter's director of promoted content and partnerships, said he hoped it would do for media content what Nigel Tufnell's amplifier does in the movie "Spinal Tap": "We want Twitter to take it to 11." Costolo described a dramatic example of the combined power of TV and Twitter: He described how, during NASCAR races, viewership declines when there is a fire on the track because the race is paused under "yellow flag" conditions. But in one race in February last year, driver Brad Keselowski tweeted a picture of a fire on the track from inside his car, Costolo said. It's been retweeted 5,200 times so far. "Why he had his phone in the car during the race is a whole other story," Costolo said, but "the ratings for the show started — people started to tune in." Please follow Advertising on Twitter and Facebook.Join the conversation about this story »

A freelance Java developer claims it took him only 30 days to build and launch a basic open source office suite that runs on multiple OSes.Called Joeffice, it works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux as well as in browsers, according to the developer, Anthony Goubard. It includes a very basic word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation program and database software, Goubard said.The office suite was built with NetBeans and uses many popular open source Java libraries, Goubard said. That allowed him to built the program in 30 days, he said, a process that he documented daily on YouTube.The suite was released as an alpha version, which means that not everything works yet, Goubard said. His Amsterdam company, Japplis, launched the suite, which is available under an Apache 2.0 license. This license allows companies to change and redistribute the code internally without having to share the new code publicly, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Los Angeles-based fashion commerce company JustFab (formerly known as JustFabulous) is expanding its operations in Europe by acquiring membership-based shoe shopping site The Fab Shoes. Launched in early 2012, The Fab Shoes is essentially a members-only fashion sales club that targets women interested in buying affordable but trendy shoes and accessories by personalizing style recommendations. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but the deal gives JustFab an extra 500,000 members (actually more than 573,000 according to The Fab Shoes’ website) in Spain and France, bringing the total tally to 15 million subscribers worldwide. JustFab will make its official debut in France and Spain in July 2013, the company said, after which The Fab Shoes will cease to exist. JustFab already boasts operations in Germany and the UK, where it has 1.5 million members, and is looking to explore more markets across Europe and likely Asia down the line. Almost a year ago, JustFab raised no less than $76 million to push its business into new areas and develop its catalogue. Earlier this year, it used part of the proceeds of the financing round to acquire children’s fashion and personalized e-commerce service FabKids, and now it has followed up with the purchase of The Fab Shoes. The freshly acquired company’s team will stay on in a variety of roles at JustFab. The Fab Shoes had raised some seed funding according to CrunchBase data, but never disclosed how much. JustFab has raised well over $100 million in funding but generated almost as much revenue in 2012, with 2013 looking to be “another high-growth year” according to co-founder and co-CEO Adam Goldenberg. “We continue to surpass our goals, month after month,” Goldenberg said. “With more than 13 million members in the US and Europe growing at such a fast pace, we are on track to reach $250 million in revenue by the end of this year.” Part of the plan to pull this off is to expand into new fashion categories later this year – JustFab says its priority is to “dress its members from head to toe”. I will not be telling my wife. Also read: Online fashion retailer Spartoo bags $32.6m Series C round to boost its European expansion Rocket Internet-backed online fashion store ZALORA goes full throttle, raises $100 million round Image credit: Thinkstock

Twitter is partnering with more than a dozen new broadcasters and publications to launch Twitter Amplify, a new program that offers real-time, dual-screen sponsorships and in-tweet video clips to users. Twitter plans to use this new program to leverage the bewildering amount of tweets sent by users while they’re watching their favorite TV show or high-profile events such as the Super Bowl. The company has already partnered with ESPN and Ford Fusion to bring American football fans instant replays, accessible from within a tweet, during every college football game. A few months later, during March Madness, Twitter teamed up with Turner Sports, the NCAA , AT&T and Coke Zero to offer the same in-tweet video clips – but this time for professional basketball highlights. Roy Hibbert’s BIG block. One of the nicest you’ll see #NBARapidReplay – on.nba.com/Z4vJmb — NBA (@NBA) May 19, 2013 Right now, Twitter is offering the same service for ‘Rapid Replays’ through various accounts owned by Sony Pictures, Sprint and Taco Bell. It’s become incredibly popular, both for sports fans and brands looking to engage with their followers. Twitter, however, is expanding beyond simple sports highlights and will start offering the service through a much larger array of partners, spanning all sorts of different channels and subject matter. “We think these types of two-screen sponsorships are a win-win-win,” Glenn Brown, Director or Promoted Content and Sponsorships at Twitter said. ”Users receive spectacular, timely content that rounds out their TV experience or reminds them to tune in. Powered by Promoted Tweets, broadcasters reach new audiences and open up new business lines. Brand advertisers get, for the first time, an integrated cross-platform tool for reaching the social conversation wherever it happens.” The new companies involved in the scheme include: A&E (@AETV) theAudience Bloomberg TV (@BloombergTV) Clear Channel (@ClearChannel) Conde Nast (@CondeNastCorp) Discovery (@Discovery) Major League Baseball (@mlbdotcom) National Cinemedia (@NCMonline) New York Magazine (@NYMag) PGA Tour (@PGATOUR) PMC (@Variety) Time Inc. (@Time_Inc) VEVO (@VEVO) Warner Music (@warnermusic) WWE (@WWE) VICE (@VICE) (This is a breaking story, please refresh for further updates.)

After coming out swinging a few days back with a Surface ad that focused on Office, Microsoft has a new ad that confronts the iPad head-on. And here’s the crazy part: it’s surprisingly amusing. The commercial is a takeoff of Apple’s iPad Mini piano commercial. In the Microsoft version—entitled “Windows 8: Less talking, more doing”—the company pokes fun at Apple’s personal digital assistant Siri, all the while showing off the advantages of a Windows 8 tablet over the iPad. “Sorry, I don’t update like that,” Siri says when the disembodied hand often seen in Apple commercials tries to get Live Tile updates from the iPad’s grid of icons. “Sorry, I can only do one thing at a time,” Siri chimes in again while a Windows 8 tablet shows off the Snap feature that lets you view two apps at once. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Learn about the innovated devices that Lenovo designed to take full advantage of the new touch interface of Microsoft's Windows 8 Pro.

You can't really be online these days without encountering social media. Whether it's the ubiquitous Facebook, the crowd wisdom of Twitter or sites such as LinkedIn, you're nobody if you don't have some sort of social media presence.Businesses are increasingly aware of this and are turning to social networks to help market their products and services. But whether you're an individual or a company, how do you go about measuring social media success? Counting how many followers you have only tells part of the story. Fortunately, there are some tools available that can help you work out if you're winning or losing in the social media game. And here are eight of the best.1. KloutKlout measures your influence across a range of websites based on how many people interact with your posts. It then works out an individual Klout score of between 1 and 100, which will go up and down depending on your activity. Other users can recommend your influence with a +K, which helps boost your ranking. Graphical displays show you how your score has changed over the last 90 days, plus there's also a pie chart indicating which sites your influence comes from.2. Sprout SocialThe Sprout Social site is aimed mainly at business users. It enables you to analyse your followers by various demographic measures and helps you schedule posts on your social media profiles at times when they'll be most effective. It can manage multiple accounts and monitor keywords across all social media so that you know when your brand is being discussed. It also helps companies respond to customers by routing messages to the people within the organisation who need to action them. After the 30 day free trial, it costs from US$39 (around £25) per month.3. Viralheat Viralheat aggregates all of your social media traffic into a single stream for easy access, and you can sort this using filters. It also enables you to schedule posts, and there's an analytics dashboard. You can use the Explorer tool to search for user names or hashtags. The free personal service supports up to seven social media accounts, and there are paid options for business users. Some features such as keyword searches are only available in the paid versions of the tool, which costs from US$9.99 (around £6.50) per month.4. HootsuiteHootsuite enables you to manage your accounts across the most popular social networks. There's a free version that supports up to five profiles and has limited analytic information. If you want to get more detailed reports you'll need to upgrade to the paid program, which costs £7.19 (around US$11) per month, after a 30-day free trial. This too has an in-built scheduling function so that you can post updates to your accounts when you're not around. You can access Hootsuite functions from the website or there are plug-ins available for the popular browsers.5. TweriodTweriod is a tool for Twitter that helps you work out the best time to send out tweets. It will analyse your account and produce a graph showing when your followers are online. It can then tell you the times of day to tweet in order to get maximum exposure. The free version is pretty basic and only enables you to run one analysis each month. You can upgrade to a premium account for which pricing is based on how many followers you have.6. WolframAlpha WolframAlpha is a "knowledge engine" that generates reports and data on a wide range of topics. It has now acquired a Facebook analytics tool that looks at your account and gives you a raft of information showing where your friends are located, how popular they are and what they talk about. You can also see when you most use Facebook and who are the most important people in your network. The report is free and you can, of course, share the results on Facebook.7. SimplyMeasured The SimplyMeasured site offers a selection of free reports on sites including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Google+. Tumblr, Pinterest and LinkedIn are due to be added soon. The reports