• Digg Rebooted, Launches Redesign and iOS App

    // Gradly // Acquisition, blog, Design, iPhone, News No Responses

    Digg Rebooted, Launches Redesign and iOS App

    Digg Rebooted, Launches Redesign and iOS App

    After being acquired by Betaworks, Digg redesign has gone live, a result of a very rapid 6-week redesign process. The new design is simpler and cleaner, it emphasizes top stories, popular stories, and upcoming stories. The new Digg score system will take advantage from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to rank stories. The front page of Digg will also features editorial stories instead of relying completely on the Digg engine.

    In the blog post, Betaworks says that it intends to continue to add new features:

    While today’s launch is a milestone for us, we’re more excited about what’s coming next. In the subsequent weeks and months we will:

    • introduce network-based personalization features (like we do in News.me) to make Digg a more relevant and social experience
    • experiment with new commenting features
    • continue to iterate Digg for mobile web
    • move the website forward with features like the Reading List, different views into the top stories on Digg, and more data to help users better understand why a particular story is trending
    • launch an API so that members of the development community can build all the products that we haven’t even thought of yet

    In addition to the website, Digg also has launched a new iOS app, which offers a similar news reading.

  • Microsoft to Acquire a Multi-touch Technology Company, Perceptive Pixel

    // Gradly // Acquisition, blog, Gadgets, Microsoft, News, Tech. No Responses

    Microsoft to Acquire a Multi-touch Technology Company, Perceptive Pixel

    Microsoft to Acquire a Multi-touch Technology Company, Perceptive Pixel

    Microsoft announced during a keynote talk at the Worldwide Partner Conference that the company acquired touchscreen technology company Perceptive Pixel known for making giant multi-touch displays capable of detecting up to 100 touch events or 10 simultaneous users simultaneously.

    The founder, Jeff Han, has amazed the world with his public demonstration of multi-touch technology back in TED 2006.

    In 2008 its technology gained widespread recognition for transforming the way CNN and other broadcasters covered the 2008 U.S. presidential election. In 2009 the Smithsonian awarded the company the National Design Award in the inaugural category of Interaction Design. PPI’s patented technologies are used across a wide variety of industries such as government, defense, broadcast, energy exploration, engineering and higher education, and its expertise in both software and hardware will contribute to success in broad scenarios such as collaboration, meetings and presentations.

    Perceptive Pixel’s 82-inch screens retail at about $80,000 The display currently sells for $80,000, but expect the steep price point to work its way down as Microsoft “will work hard to lower the price of Perceptive Pixel products”.

    Steve Ballmer said at the conference. “Our challenge is to make that technology more affordable.

    We want to make this mainstream. We will do anything possible to get the cost down and to get new forms of this out in the market places in any way possible.

  • Facebook Acquires Instagram for $1 Billion

    // Gradly // Acquisition, blog, Facebook, News, Photography, Social Networks 1 Response

    Facebook Acquires Instagram for $1 Billion

    Facebook Acquires Instagram for $1 Billion

    Mark Zuckerberg has just announced that the giant social network, Facebook, has acquired the popular photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion. Instagram’s CEO Kevin Systrom has also confirmed the deal. The 13 full-time employees who will each receive part of a $100 million will move to the social network as a result. Not to mention Instagram has 30 million active users and recently debuted a hot new Android app.

    Facebook’s official press release is here:

    I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.

    For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

    We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook.

    That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

    We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

    These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure.

    This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.

    We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.

  • Apple to Acquire Israeli Flash Memory Chip Maker Anobit

    // Gradly // Acquisition, Apple, blog, News, Rumors, Tech. No Responses

    Anobit Logo

    People have been wondering what should Apple do with its enormous pile of cash. If TechCrunch is to be believed, a new report suggests that Apple is about to spend between $400 and $500 million to acquire Anobit, an Israeli-based flash memory chip maker.

    If this is a true, it would be the 5th Hardware company acquired since the first Steve Jobs founded NeXT, Raycer Graphics, Intrinsity and P.A. Semi.

    Anobit provides flash storage solutions for enterprise and mobile markets, based on its proprietary MSP (which stands for ‘Memory Signal Processing’) technology. Its solutions are designed to improve the speed, endurance and performance of flash storage systems while driving down the cost.

    According to Calcalist report, Apple relies on the company’s solutions for the iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air product lines, among other devices. South Korean Hynix is said to use Anobit’s solution for a flash memory chip you can find inside the iPhone 4S.

    Apple is likely interested in the 200-people company to add them to its base of engineering talents.