PC Tech World: startup

Showing posts with label startup. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Google reportedly acquires natural language processing startup Wavii

Word that Google has snapped up natural language processing startup Wavii first came from TechCrunch, and now the Wall Street Journal is chiming in with its own sources claiming the deal has in fact been struck, and that an announcement is imminent. In its current form, Wavii parses a personalized news feed and distills text into a summary for the top stories, similar to Yahoo's recently-purchased Summly. TechCrunch reports that Apple and Google were locked in a bidding war for the outfit, but the web titan ultimately won with a bid in the neighborhood of $30 million. According to the WSJ, the fledgling firm's talent will join Page and Co.'s web search team, which means the language detection technology may bolster its Knowledge Graph, giving users better results (and direct answers) for their queries. As language recognition permeates Page and Co.'s projects, Google Now and Google Glass could potentially benefit from the acquisition as well. Mountain View has yet to acknowledge the reported purchase, but if the tea leaves are being read correctly, expect that to happen soon.

Source: TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Social prediction startup Behavio joins Google (update)

Google has added yet another talented group to its team ~~ever growing list of acquisitions~~. Startup Behavio announced it is joining the Mountain View crew and shutting down its closed alpha. The company built its short-lived product on top of Funf, a framework for collecting data from mobile phone sensors. Its goal was to analyze things like physical location, contacts and other data about your activities and environment to monitor trends, then make predictions about behavior. The targets weren't just individuals though, but entire communities, and it was even suggested that Behavio could predict the eruption of mass protests. Big G has acknowledged that the folks from Behavio are joining Google, but isn't revealing any plans for the company just yet. The internet giant's forays into preemptive and curated search offer an obvious application, however. We imagine applying some of the IP to Google Now is just one of many potential uses, and its ad-serving algorithm could also clearly benefit from an injection of this technology.

Update: We've been informed that Behavio was not acquired, instead its team is joining the company.

Via: The Verge

Source: Behavio

More Coverage: Funf, TechCrunch

Sunday, March 24, 2013

WSJ: Apple takes WiFiSlam indoor-GPS mapping startup under its wing for $20M

Watch out, Google Maps for Android, it looks like Apple's iOS Maps may soon be entering the building -- when it comes to indoor GPS tracking anyway. The Wall Street Journal's Digits blog is reporting that Apple has confirmed it purchased WiFiSlam, a startup that specializes in WiFi-assisted indoor-GPS functionality for phone apps. Interestingly, Digits notes that the company was founded by a few ex-Googlers a couple of years back and that one of its investors has included a Google employee. Further, a quick Google search confirms that any WiFiSlam-related apps that may have been on Google Play are all but dead links now.

The word on the street is that Apple handed over $20 million to claim the company, although it wouldn't confirm any numbers -- or a specific reason for the purchase -- with the blog. While there's no actual telling whether this means we'll see indoor mapping on iOS maps at any point, it's hard not to imagine it now that Apple's made the purchase. We're seeking comment from Apple on our end, and will be sure to let you know what we hear back. For now, check out an old demo of WiFiSlam in action after the break.

Source: Wall Street Journal (Digits blog)

More Coverage: TUAW

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Google acquires neural network startup that may help it hone speech recognition and more

U of T neural networks start-up acquired by Google

TORONTO, ON – Google has picked up a ground-breaking start-up out of the Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto.

University Professor Geoffrey Hinton and two of his graduate students, Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever, incorporated DNNresearch Inc. in 2012, and the company has been acquired by Google for its research on deep neural networks.

Hinton is world-renowned for his work with neural nets, and this research has profound implications for areas such as speech recognition, computer vision and language understanding.

"Geoffrey Hinton's research is a magnificent example of disruptive innovation with roots in basic research," said U of T's president, Professor David Naylor. "The discoveries of brilliant researchers, guided freely by their expertise, curiosity, and intuition, lead eventually to practical applications no one could have imagined, much less requisitioned.

"I extend my congratulations to Professor Hinton for this latest achievement."

Recently, Krizhevsky and Sutskever, who will both be moving to Google, developed a system that dramatically improved the state of the art in object recognition.

"This is a wonderful opportunity for Geoff, and a great opportunity for the department," said Computer Science Chair Sven Dickinson. "In recent years, we have been expanding our industrial relations, and this acquisition represents a wonderful opportunity to strengthen our existing ties with Google, one of the world's most innovative IT companies."

The Google deal will support Prof. Hinton's graduate students housed in the department's machine learning group, while protecting their research autonomy under academic freedom. It will also allow Prof. Hinton himself to divide his time between his university research and his work at Google.

"I am extremely excited about this fantastic opportunity to keep my research here in Toronto and, at the same time, help Google apply new developments in deep learning to make systems that help people," said Professor Hinton.

Professor Hinton will spend time at Google's Toronto office and several months of the year at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

This announcement comes on the heels of a $600,000 gift Google awarded Professor Hinton's research group to support further work in the area of neural nets.

Source

By: Unknown On 7:16 PM

Thursday, January 31, 2013

CE-Oh no he didn't!: Steve Ballmer calls Dropbox 'a fine little startup'

Microsoft is no stranger to industry flak, but it's always better to give than to receive, right? Steve Ballmer thinks so, and in a recent Bloomberg interview, he took a second away from talking up the new Office 2013 to smite Dropbox, saying that the 100 million users it boasts "sounds like a pretty small number to me." He recovered slightly by adding "I'm not beating on Dropbox," only to follow it with the finishing blow: "They're a fine little startup and that's great." We doubt anyone else would call Dropbox a startup at this point, but Microsoft's chief can't be seen complimenting a SkyDrive rival now, can he? After having to defend the user stats for Redmond's Yammer, he was also quizzed on the undying native Office for iPad rumor, to which he had "nothing to say," apart from "we'll see what we see in the future." If these snippets aren't quite enough, then head to the source link for the full interview. Ballmer may be a little less shouty these days, but it's good to know he's still capable of delivering the odd high-caliber burn.

when.eng("eng.perm.init")