Author: Stephanie Longpre

CNN is offering you a front-row ticket to look around the studio during its upcoming Democratic presidential debate, and you won’t even have to leave your couch.

All you need is a Samsung phone and a slightly goofy-looking virtual reality headset

If you can bear to look like you’re living in the Matrix, CNN is going to be offering a virtual reality livestream of “>its upcoming debate on October 13 in Las Vegas

It will be the first major live media event to receive the VR treatment.

“You can, through this helmet, get an absolutely first-row-seat experience of being at this debate,” said Jason Farkas, the executive producer at CNN Money who is spearheading the project. Read more…

More about Cnn, Virtual Reality, Business, Media, and 2016 Election

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My graphic design students love to design posters using the classic eye chart composition, and they frequently ask “What typeface should I use for this?” Not having a definitive answer has always been frustrating, so I decided to investigate to find out what typeface is used on eye charts.

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This article is part of SWOT Team, a series on Mashable that features insights from leaders in marketing, brand-building and public relations.

The rise of social media has given consumers more power than ever before, arming them with a platform where they can engage brands in real time. This has created a shift in marketing. While traditional tactics involved pushing out brand content with little focus on creating conversations, new campaigns tap influencers to engage with consumers and create brand loyalty among them.

In spite of the positives, the rise of influencer marketing has also led to many questions, like how to select the right influencer agency or measure ROI. Here are the five most important things to know before you begin your first influencer campaign Read more…

More about Influencers, Branded Content, Business, Marketing, and How To

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Samsung officially opened the doors to its new 1.1-million-square-foot Silicon Valley offices Thursday, more than 30 years after its arrival in the San Jose tech corridor in 1983.

The building will house various research labs dedicated to semiconductors, LEDs and displays, staff in sales and marketing, and other support areas, the company said.

“[We are] laying the groundwork for a more aggressive pace of growth over the next several decades,” said Samsung’s chief executive, Dr. Oh-Hyun Kwon, at the grand opening ceremony.

Meanwhile, the company’s president of its U.S.-based device solutions operations, Jaesoo Han, said that the move “represents a major milestone as we open our most strategically important Samsung facility in the U.S., and also our biggest investment in Silicon Valley.”

Samsung also said that it has established a $ 1 million STEM College Education Scholarship Fund. In its own words:

Deserving university students who are currently enrolled in STEM-focused programs at a California State or University of California school will benefit from this program, beginning with a $ 50,000 gift to San Jose State University this year. Each scholarship will cover tuition and living expenses for one year.

But the announcement of the new office has been largely overshadowed by news in virtual reality today: we reported that the Samsung Gear VR will launch as a consumer product this November for $ 99. (You can also read our roundup from that event here.)

Earlier this week, Samsung unveiled its new fonts-inspired Serif TVs, and shared more about how it relies on startups to stay ahead on technological innovation.

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If you’ve clicked on nearly any major website lately from your iPhone, you may have found yourself suddenly swept without consent to the Apple app store, where the fantasy football app Draft Kings is waiting for you

Good luck getting back to your article, or doing anything but closing the browser window

Draft Kings, along with Fan Duel, is fast-growing startup that has upended the traditional fantasy football formula and they are now spending a fortune to make sure football fans never forget it. Their mission: to take fantasy football from season-long rosters fitfully watched among groups of friends — to create single-day teams and high-stakes winnings. Read more…

More about Business, Advertising, Draftkings, and Fanduel

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Fresh from announcing a $ 15 million raise, U.K. restaurant payment app Velocity is acquiring Cover.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Cover, an app that lets customers pay for meals from their phone, has amassed roughly 350 restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco and raised $ 7 million in investor funding. The company was in the midst of raising another round of funding to integrate into restaurant point of sale (POS) systems when Velocity approached them.

Velocity’s software already integrates with 400 restaurants in Europe, giving it access to line item data and receipts. With the Cover acquisition, it will now be able to tackle the U.S. market.

“All of the exciting startups are in the United States right now,” says Cover CEO Mark Egerman. In the coming months, Velocity will be moving its headquarters over to New York.

The Cover app is not shutting down. Rather, users will now be able to use the app at 50 restaurant locations in London.

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On Friday, Google reported on its online security blog the faulty issuance of a certificate for google.com and www.google.com by Symantec, a prominent Certificate Authority.

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iOS 9’s arrival was far from smooth, but there were many exciting features to unpack.

We break down everything you need to know about iOS 9 on the latest episode of MashTalk. Plus, we discuss the possible implications of a Facebook Dislike button and marvel in the wonder of Snapchat’s new features

Listen to the episode on Libsyn, above, or on iTunes. You can also subscribe to MashTalk on iTunes by clicking the button below to get our latest episodes instantly.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments. Read more…

More about Facebook, Tech, Apps Software, Gadgets, and Mobile

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VB WEBINAR:

Join us for this live webinar on Wednesday, September 30 at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. Register here for free.

Let’s say you’ve navigated early stage growth, the company’s looking bullet-proof inside and out, and your sites are set on going public. Well, you better start thinking like a public company now in terms of tax-planning or risk a mess of trouble when you’re ready to pull the trigger.

The same applies if you’re hoping for a valuable exit. The last thing you need is potential buyers stumbling across something some not disclosed previously, or compliance not adhered to. It may result in a reduced offer, or the acquisition going south altogether.

The complexity of tax issues — particularly on the international stage — is hardly anything a tech CEO wants to think about when their main objective is getting product fit right and building a substantial user-base. But the devil’s in the details. Tax implication issues may affect the corporation, its shareholders, and investors — and during IPO planning, it all takes place in the context of an open market valuation of the stock.

With an exit, the amount of jurisdictions involved and the rules applying to each can makes things far more complex.

It’s why up-front tax planning for your company is so critical: it will identify all options, those that will open up opportunities and those that may take you down a rabbit hole, with a significant impact on after-tax proceeds in the end.

Our five-star panel of Silicon Valley tax experts will help you understand the kinds of important considerations your team needs to be on right now in order to navigate the next phase of growth. There are likely things you haven’t even thought of yet, so this is the perfect opportunity to take a few minutes out of your day and have an open consult — where you can freely ask questions and figure out next steps.

Don’t miss out!

Register here for free.

In this webinar, you’ll:

• Gain greater visibility to common sales tax loopholes that often snag hot tech startups and entrepreneurs
• Determine whether sales tax is even an issue for your organization — you might be surprised.
• Learn ways that international tax in growth stage companies can be the make or break point for that next IPO
• Get a high level overview of other tax considerations like net operating losses, impact of stock compensation, and the states that are currently taxing cloud computing services.

Speakers:

Malcolm Ellerbe, Tax Partner, Armanino
David Sordello, CPA, Corporate Tax, Armanino
Jon Davis, Tax Partner, International Tax, Armanino

This webinar is sponsored by Avalara.

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Apple today launched Move to iOS, the company’s first Android app built in-house. As we noted earlier, “it should surprise no one that the first app Apple built for Android helps you ditch the platform.” The fact the app is getting flooded with one-star reviews is equally as shocking.

At the time of publication, the app has an average rating of 1.8. The larger majority (almost 79 percent) are one-star reviews, followed by five-star reviews (almost 19 percent).

If this isn’t a prime example of just how dumb the five-star rating system is, we don’t know what is. Less than 24 hours after release, here’s what any Android user who fires up Move to iOS on Google Play will see:

This is also a stark reminder of just how much Android users hate iOS. I read through a bunch of these reviews and I have to say these three summarize the whole lot the best:

Some are unhappy that Apple didn’t even bother to use Google’s Material Design, others dislike Apple’s closed platform, and the rest just hate the app because it was developed by Apple. As many point out, Google wouldn’t be able to launch an equivalent app on Apple’s App Store because of this rule in the review guidelines:

3.1 Apps or metadata that mentions the name of any other mobile platform will be rejected

But that’s not really the issue I want to discuss here. Fanboys will be fanboys, haters love to hate, and trolls will troll. The problem is that Google is giving these “reviewers” a platform to do write whatever they want.

You see, just like on Apple’s App Store, Google Play lets you rate an app right after you download it. I grabbed Move to iOS myself, and indeed I was able to choose the one-star option right away.

Before you rip me apart, no I didn’t hit submit.

Google (and Apple) could solve this issue fairly easily: Require x minutes of use before you can rate an app. What x should be isn’t easy to say, and probably widely depends on the type of app in question. It’s a numbers game: How long are you willing to wait to do “harm” to an app you’ll never use?

Still, even a minimum one minute of use would significantly cut down on the number of illegitimate one-star reviews. And this goes the other way too: Many five-star reviews are also fake.

Both Google and Apple would help their users and developers by revamping how app store ratings work.

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Soviet cosmonaut Aleksey A. Leonov was the first man who walked in space. It’s a lesser-known fact that he became an accomplished aerospace artist as well, just like his US colleague Alan Bean.

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You may consider your eyes a priceless commodity, but for Mexican cavefish, they were a burdensome expense. In a first-of-a-kind study, scientists have figured out exactly how much energy an animal saves by abandoning vision — in this case, anywhere from 5 to 15%.

Read more…

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IBM has introduced new hybrid cloud capabilities for Watson to help companies to connect their data with web applications in the cloud. Watson Hybrid Cloud solution will use Watson Explorer as the default platform for application development, combining enterprise data sources in the application through a scalable environment that keep local and private data secure.

With the new hybrid cloud capabilities, users can more quickly extract business intelligence from data housed in multiple environments – traditional or cloud. In addition, IBM has announced the addition of 270 new partners to the ecosystem of Watson, as well as new specialized cognitive apps in different sectors such as entertainment, energy, health and tourism in order to save time, risk, and ensure regulatory compliance.

Cognitive application developers often face the challenge of where to locate the data and can not move them all to a public cloud for different reasons, either because of their huge amount, or by privacy requirements, regulations or security. Using the IBM hybrid cloud capabilities, users can quickly extract business intelligence data hosted securely in multiple environments.

The platform allows companies to develop applications in seconds and with minimal configuration. Watson Hybrid Cloud solution will use Watson Explorer as the default platform for application development, combining enterprise data sources in the application through a scalable environment that keep local and private data securely.

IBM Watson Analytics automates some steps of the analysis, such as data preparation, predictive analysis and visualization in an understandable way for different departments within a company, such as marketing, sales, operations, finance and human resources.

IBM has also renewed its portfolio with new products that allow companies to integrate hybrid cloud solutions in their organization, and meet new workloads generated by the rise of mobile, social and analytical technologies. The new IBM Power Systems, IBM Spectrum Storage, IBM Systems z, IBM Middleware, IBM SoftLayer and OpenStack software, promise to help customers easier navigation between these environments and more valuable for the development of business information.

Last month, IBM launched a new division called IBM Watson Health allowing patients, physicians, researchers and insurance sectors to deal effectively with health data. The unit offers a secure platform for open cloud for doctors, researchers, insurance companies and solution-oriented health and wellness, allowing anonymity to share and combine data concerning health companies.

MarketsandMarkets, the consulting and market research firm, has estimated that the growth of hybrid cloud will reach about $ 84.67 billion in 2019. The results of this study show the increasing adoption of the hybrid cloud computing model.

The main features of the hybrid cloud computing model are the standards and shared services, packaged solutions, self-service, scalable, price based on use, accessible via the Internet, standard UI technologies and publishing services and API, which result in a more efficient use of IT assets , greater agility to launch new services and greater cost efficiency.

CloudTimes

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• Microsoft streamlines hybrid cloud operations with new tools
• IBM Bluemix powers hybrid cloud apps for IoT, analytics
• Hurricane Irene Renews Focus on Hybrid Cloud Solutions for Disaster Recovery …
• The big greenfield cannabis cloud
• Google Offers Cheaper Version of Cloud Services to Run Low Priority Jobs

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