Megan Graham / Wall Street Journal: Real-time TV ad measurement service iSpot.tv raises $325M from Goldman Sachs and says it had $75M in revenue in 2021, up from $51M in 2020 — The firm helps marketers track whether their ads spurred a visit to their website or a purchase. The new funding is the latest
Read MoreIngrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Mavrck, which helps brands and media companies connect with influencers, raises $135M, after raising $120M in December 2021, and acquires Linkin.bio maker Later — Some believe that online marketing and advertising, as we largely think of them today, are dying a slow death and is getting replaced …
Read MoreBloomberg: Sources: SoftBank and Arm are close to an agreement to regain control of Arm China and oust its rogue CEO Allen Wu; Wu was fired in 2020 but refused to leave — SoftBank Group Corp. and its subsidiary Arm Ltd. are closing in on an agreement to regain control of the chipmaker’s China operations
Read MoreGoogle’s cloud and search divisions propped up a generally weak first quarter for 2022 from Alphabet, due in large part to increased investment, falling advertising revenue for its YouTube division, and the impact of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Alphabet revenue for the first period of 2022 was $68 billion, which is up 23% from
Read MoreMicrosoft’s commitment to a cross-platform world is perhaps one of the biggest changes to its development platform during the past few years. Its purchase of Xamarin kickstarted a sea change that’s brought us to today’s Visual Studio–powered development environment that brings in GitHub at one end and the cross-platform .NET 6 at the other, with
Read MoreLike machine learning engineers, machine learning scientists are in high demand in today’s job market. That’s because organizations are eager to adopt machine learning-powered tools to enhance the value of their data and analytics and add automation to processes. IDG Amy Steier, principal machine learning scientist at the developer tools provider, Gretel.ai. To read this
Read MoreData lakes and data warehouses used to be completely different animals, but now they seem to be merging. A data lake was a single data repository that held all your data for analysis. The data was stored in its native form, at least initially. A data warehouse was an analytic database, usually relational, created from two
Read More(Photo: James Yarema/Unsplash)Apple is beginning a spring clean of its App Store, but its strategy isn’t for everyone. In an email to app developers sent last week, Apple announced it would be de-listing apps that haven’t been “updated in a significant amount of time.” Developers have a limited amount of time to prevent their apps
Read MoreCredit: OnLeaks/GizNext Sony has announced an Xperia event for May 11. The company’s teaser video suggests that a new Xperia 1 flagship is coming. Sony’s high-end phones have a small but vocal group of fans, and it’s easy to see why. The company’s flagships offer features like a 3.5mm port, enthusiast-grade camera tech, and 4K
Read MoreIllustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Spotify’s latest earnings release suggests that the audio streaming service’s subscriber numbers haven’t seen much, if any, impact from the controversies that surrounded its Joe Rogan podcast just a few short months ago. In the quarter ending March 31st, Spotify says its premium subscribers rose 15 percent on
Read MoreSony’s console customers have been waiting patiently since the Playstation 5’s launch for the company to add support for variable refresh rate (VRR) gaming. Now, after a year and a half of waiting, the company has announced it will finally deliver on its promise. This week Sony wrote on its blog that it will be
Read MoreAshley Carman / Bloomberg: Spotify reports Q1 revenue rose 24% YoY to €2.66B, including €282M from ads, up 31% YoY; paid subscribers rose 15% YoY to 182M, despite losing 1.5M in Russia — Spotify Technology SA’s paid subscriber forecast for the current quarter fell just short of analyst estimates …
Read MoreThe Motorola Edge 30 brings 5G to the company’s international model. The new smartphone also includes camera and display improvements. It has a starting price of €449.99 (~$479). Motorola has launched the Edge 30, the latest addition to its Edge family of smartphones, and it promises to be the thinnest 5G smartphone on the market.
Read MoreGood morning! Just as I’m finishing this newsletter, a Sony event was announced for a likely new Xperia phone. I wonder how long it’ll take from announcement to shipping, though… Android 13
Read MoreCredit: Front Page Tech A known tipster may have come upon information about the price of the Pixel Watch. The leak also talks about a Google-Samsung partnership and the limited availability of the wearable. The Google Pixel Watch is coming in hot. Expected to launch at Google I/O 2022, the wearable has leaked multiple times
Read MoreWant to add more devices (or people) to your Apple Music subscription? Here’s the deal. Apple Music offers three different plans for its users—a $4.99 per month plan for students who sign up with a university email address, a $9.99 individual plan, and a $14.99 family plan that supports up to six Family Sharing accounts
Read MoreThe Russian utility Gazprom has announced it will suspend natural gas shipments to Poland and Bulgaria beginning on April 27. On March 31, Putin signed a decree that required “unfriendly” EU nations to pay for natural gas in rubles rather than in euros or dollars. The response from the EU initially has been that member
Read MoreMark Bergen / Bloomberg: YouTube says it will begin testing ads on Shorts, including app-install ads and other promotions, as its ad revenue growth slows — YouTube is testing advertisements on Shorts, its short-form video feature that competes with TikTok and Instagram, Google’s chief business officer told investors on Tuesday.
Read MoreMax Read / Read Max: Elon Musk is unlikely to fix or change Twitter to any great extent because his experience of the service — tweeting and getting richer — is already ideal — You’re reading Read Max, a newsletter about the future. This edition is free for all. Read Max is an independent newsletter
Read More(Image: Google)The vastness of Google’s Chrome Web Store presents a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Chrome users have an almost ridiculous number of opportunities to find exactly the software they’re seeking; on the other, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of extensions and themes when you don’t know what’s safe to download.
Read MoreJohn D. McKinnon / Wall Street Journal: Sources: negotiations between Congressional lawmakers on online privacy policies include limits on tech giants’ collection, storage, and use of personal info — Disclosures of social-media harms to young people put pressure on Congress, tech companies to safeguard personal information
Read MoreReaction wheels are useful things, typically used by satellites to keep themselves oriented the right way up in space. Turning the reaction wheel creates an equal and opposite torque in the spacecraft, allowing it to point and rotate itself accurately. The same technique also works here on Earth, and [Brick Experiment Channel] decided to build
Read MoreMajor tech companies were duped into turning over the personal data of their users. The companies involved include Google, Apple, Twitter, Discord, and others. The data was handed over to cybercriminals in response to fake legal requests. Major tech companies, including Google, Apple, Snap, Twitter, Meta Platforms, and Discord, have been duped into giving up
Read MoreElizabeth Dwoskin / Washington Post: Replying to tweets from right-wing users, Elon Musk boosts criticism of two Twitter executives, including Vijaya Gadde, prompting attacks from other users — The targeting of employees by Musk’s massive Twitter megaphone is a major concern for workers — Elon Musk on Tuesday used …
Read MoreWilliam Turton / Bloomberg: Sources: data obtained through fake legal requests has been used to harass women and sexually extort minors; Meta, Apple, Google, and others handed over data — Major technology companies have been duped into providing sensitive personal information about their customers in response …
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