Why Yammer Is Worth $1 Billion to Microsoft | Facebook Scoops Up Face.com For $55-60M To Bolster Its Facial Recognition Tech (Updated) | Global government censorship on the rise, says latest Google report | Open-source geiger counter about to score over $100K on Kickstarter | Canon to Launch Augmented-Reality Platform Based on Head-Mounted Displays

Why Yammer Is Worth $1 Billion to Microsoft

Posted by PCWorld
Microsoft seems to be at the center of all the rumors right now in a way normally reserved for Apple. Aside form the mystery media event in Los Angeles later today, where Microsoft is expected to make a tablet-related announcement of some sort; it?s also the focus of speculation that it is finalizing talks to acquire Yammer for around $1 billion.
Yammer is a social network with a twist. It?s a private social network intended for business use. Yammer is like Facebook, but a Facebook that?s segregated from the rest of the Internet, and that provides monitoring and controls for IT admins to be able to enforce policies and protect information.
SharePoint is a great platform, but it needs capabil[...]
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Facebook Scoops Up Face.com For $55-60M To Bolster Its Facial Recognition Tech (Updated)

Posted by TechCrunch
After about a month of speculation, Facebook has finally announced its acquisition of Israeli facial recognition technology Face.com.
We’ve heard from multiple sources that the acquisition price was around $100m, with others reporting that the price was between $80m-$100m. (Update: We’re now hearing from a source familiar with the matter that the price was between $55 and $60 million, and that it was a mix of cash and stock. The exact value of the deal will be changing depending on the price of Facebook’s stock.) This is absolutely not an acqui-hire, as Facebook will be taking full advantage of the company’s technology and the advancements it’s made on mobile[...]
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Global government censorship on the rise, says latest Google report

Posted by VentureBeat
According to the latest Google Transparency Report, content removal requests from American government agencies have more than doubled since the first half of 2011.
A total of 187 requests affecting 6,200 items were sent from U.S government�agencies from July to December of 2011. Google says it complied with a little more than forty percent of them.
Similarly extreme numbers were reported with user data requests. Topping the list, U.S. agencies made over six thousand requests for Google user data, of which Google complied with 93 percent.
“It?s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect — Weste[...]
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Open-source geiger counter about to score over $100K on Kickstarter

Posted by Gigaom
A limited edition run of the open-source geiger counter designed by Xbox hacker and Chumby co-founder, Andrew ?Bunnie? Huang, is about to score over $100,000 on Kickstarter in less than an hour. Huang designed the geiger counter as a way to help citizens in Japan detect radiation in the wake of the nuclear disaster in the face of a lack of reliable, official data.
The funding will go to the Safecast group, which has been creating an open source data base of radiation contamination for the people impacted by Fukushima (they’ve got 3 million data points). Geiger manufacturer International Medcom has agreed to start producing the design. You need to pledge at least $400 to get one of the[...]
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Canon to Launch Augmented-Reality Platform Based on Head-Mounted Displays

Posted by PCWorld
Canon said Monday it will launch a new augmented-reality platform that uses head-mounted displays to realistically project virtual images onto real backgrounds[...]
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