New Box Security Features Give Companies Far Greater Control Over Documents

Box made its name being a user-focused company. Ease of use took priority over everything else, and while they’ve achieved a huge user base in this fashion, a big criticism of the company has been on the security side. It was never secure enough for some IT pros. A series of announcements today at the BoxWorks customer conferenceshould go a long way towards alleviating those concerns.

First of all, they announced a new Information Rights Management feature that allows users to control what recipients can do with a file. You can mix and match controls allowing editing or view only and restricting or allowing printing, sharing or copy/paste. If you get a document that’s View Only with all restrictions on, the only thing you can do is read it -and all assigned rights travel with the document.

Users can also simply send a secure link to the document and any rights you have attached to the file travel with the link. The link can be password protected or not. What’s more, Box also lets you set an expiration date on the document level, so any document or link you share can expire at a certain time.

This is a huge leap for Box, although it’s worth noting Huddle introduced a similar set of security features last week and this is something Syncplicity could do for some time. The IRM product is available immediately for customers on the business and enterprise plans.

A panel of CIOs speaking today after the announcement made it clear they were thrilled with having this level of control over documents. They crave greater security, even while they clearly liked using Box inside their organizations.

But that wasn’t all. Box also announced a partnership with AT&T that uses AT&T’s NetBond service to connect to the Box cloud via a virtual private network, increasing the level of security associated with using Box. Abhi Ingle, svp for advanced solutions at AT&T Business Solutions says this effectively makes Box just a node on your private network giving you all the security of the AT&T network without having a significant impact on end user experience. He added, “Nobody is going to take you down with a Denial of Service attack.”

What’s more, Box now works with third-party security partners, Splunk and HP Arcsite. As Box senior vice president of global marketing at Box Whitney Bouk put it, many companies are using these products to monitor security across enterprise and they will now include support to monitor Box. within that existing security frameworks

Other new features include the ability to set retention policies on documents and expire them if need be, new reports that let administrators see what happens when internal users share internal documents with third party partners and customers who are also using Box and new eDiscovery partners, Exterro and Guidance that let companies that use those services treat Box as another document source in the eDiscovery process.

In a week when cloud security was top of mind after the release of the celebrity nude photos through a cloud service, there had to be tons of questions given the timing of Box’s event even if it wasn’t warranted. These tools help answer the concerns of those companies who are still worried about putting their content in the cloud by giving them a range of capabilities to control access, track documents, protect the network and tie into the existing security and eDiscovery tools inside the organization.

Facebook Slingshots Itself In The Face By Making Reply-To-Unlock Optional

Many thought Facebook’s ephemeral app Slingshot was pointless, but now it’s not even special. It’s just another pokey Snapchat clone. As of today’s update, Slingshot’s core mechanic, the requirement that friends first reply with a photo or video to unlock what you sent them, can now be turned off by the sender. That means people can just blast you their photos without forcing you to do any work, which surely reduces the friction of the app and could open it to a more mainstream audience. But the curiosity that friction created was part of what made Slingshot fun (I actually used it for a few weeks, and *gasp*, enjoyed it).

“Sling a shot to see a shot? Not necessarily! After shooting a photo or video, now you can choose whether to sling it as a locked or unlocked shot” the update trumpets with little apparent awareness of the gravity of the move. Perhaps this will open up Slingshot to a more mainstream

Now it’s just a Snapchat clone with a nicer drawing interface, reactions, and your Facebook friends. Considering Snapchat’s cool factor and strong community, competing directly with it seems like a fool’s game. Perhaps Facebook thinks its polished ephemeral sharing app can succeed in parts of the world where it already has a strong presence and Snapchat is still small. But the change just feels cowardly.

Facebook’s Creative Labs standalone apps are supposed to be allowed to fail. They’re experiments to investigate what users want. That’s good, because ditching reply-to-unlock is akin to an admission of failure of the app’s premise. I would have rather seen Facebook ride out its risky mechanic, and let users decide if it belonged in the deadpool. Instead it’s betting a watered-down version will be more popular, but it’s still years too late.

Apple’s NFC Payments Play Could Make Its Wearable A Computing Friction Killer

Apple could be gearing up to make its so-called ‘iWatch’ a payment device powered by NFC, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. But including near-field communications tech in the iWatch (and the iPhone 6, too, if the report is correct) will open the door for much more than just payments, and could make the wearable an authentication device that finally convinces the consumer market wrist-based computing is something to get excited about.

WSJ says that the watch using NFC is a signal that it will factor significantly into its mobile payments play, which is rumored to be introduced at next week’s event. Watchers have long pegged Apple as readying a mobile payments program, that would let them pay for goods and other things using their existing iTunes Store accounts, and now that functionality is also apparently going to come to their wearable alongside its introduction with the new iPhone next week.

Other details revealed in the new report reflect earlier suggestions that the watch will have two different screen-sizes, and a curved LED display, along with a bevy of sensors to track a user’s health and activity. In a separate report, the New York Times claims that the new iWatch will be able to track footsteps and heartrate, with much higher accuracy than the current crop of devices. It will have a flexible display panel, they say, and use wireless charging. It’ll work with HealthKit and use Handoff to let it resume activities begun on iOS and OS X devices, and vice versa, and both phones and iWatch will use NFC.

With multiple sources agreeing on these basic facts, the potential for Apple’s wearable starts to take shape. Earlier, I’d struggled with finding a good reason to justify their entrance to this market. A payments component goes some way to help it make sense, and Apple has reportedly worked with credit card companies to ensure low fees for its use, but just the inclusion of NFC and the potential for a wearable as a convenience device that offers true cross-platform communication is a bigger selling point.

Imagine an iWatch that is a true companion, speaking to Mac and iOS devices as an assurance that a user is who they say it is – without the need for arduous processes like manual entry of passwords. That’s a big step up in terms of providing genuine convenience. Other gadgets like the Bionym Nymi authenticator band look to provide this kind of persistent identification, but Apple could achieve much of the same thing with its own wearable, removing steps and reducing friction from processes ranging from payments, to controlling a smart home (via its new HomeKit features for iOS 8), to surfacing loyalty cards and tickets via PassBook.

An iWatch with the same basic feature set as Android Wear isn’t exciting, even if it does share ties with iOS devices like the iPhone. What is exciting, in terms of the potential of a wearable to finally achieve mass market adoption, is companion hardware that makes the experience of using all other computing devices, including emerging categories like connected home gadgets, easier. As it stands, most wearables introduce a degree of complication; if Apple can simplify, as it has a habit of doing, instead of asking users to learn and make a habit out of something new, it should have a winner on its hands.

DataStax Lands $106M In Series E Funding

DataStax, the commercial face of the open source Apache Cassandra database, announced $106M in Series E Funding, bringing their total to date to over $190M in funding. Today’s round was led by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers with additional investors including ClearBridge, Cross Creek and Wasatch, PremjiInvest and Comcast Ventures.

Existing investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Scale Venture Partners also participated in the funding round.

The company was started in Austin, TX in 2010 by Matt Pfiel, the chief customer officer and Jonathan Ellis, the company CTO when the founders recognized a market need for an enterprise-grade company on top of the Cassandra project. While early need involved the old “throat to throttle” technical support, over time they have added to the Cassandra product to help companies build applications on top of Cassandra. They also have a commercial customer support product.

Ellis says we are in the age of data and Cassandra can help process it. “We are in data age. Data is good for end user, because the more data they have, the richer the experience .”

One customer, Comcast wanted to change set top boxes, so they designed new ones with few moving parts, making it less prone to breaking and combined it with software to enhance the end user experience using Cassandra and DataStax to provide information you care about, such as sports scores from your favorite teams scrolling across the top of the screen, regardless of what you’re watching.

Ellis says the company remains a big contributor to the open source project, but they are offering a better experience for a fee. While there is a free version available, they have customers willing to pay. Ellis says DataStax enterprise delivers security, search, repair expert, best practices tools, applications and monitoring tools, all of which aren’t available in the free project.

One thing venture capitalists look for aside from founders with a good idea is a customer base waiting for a product and Ellis says they were fortunate enough to have customers lined up for the product the week they opened.  There was pent-up demand for a commercial product and Ellis and Pfiel took advantage by building a product that people needed.

KnCMiner Raises $14 Million To Take Bitcoin Mining To The Moon

Swedish maker of bitcoin miners, KnCMiner, has announced a $14 million Series A to help build out new mining chips along with hosted mining services. Founded by Sam Cole and Andreas Kenner, the company raised with GP Bullhound advising. Creandumled the round.

“The funding will enable KnCMiner to expand its mining operations and ability to offer services to consumers in relation to the Bitcoin environment,” said the company in a release.

KnCMiner has been making heavy-duty ASIC systems that literally move the bitcoin markets a few seconds after they are deployed. The company is working on new chips now.

“We are improving our 20nm ASIC capability, and for R&D on the next generation ASIC chip which will come on-stream next year and will represent a step-change in processing capacity,” said Cole.

The company hasn’t been actively looking for funding. Most of their miners sell out immediately during pre-order periods and they’ve been able to fund the entire venture on their own. Now, however, they’re looking to expand operations in hosted mining as well as create new chips faster.

The company is definitely still bullish on bitcoin and will be looking for about $70 million in Series B funding in the next year.

“KnC believe that Bitcoin’s price will appreciate steadily and significantly over time due to the interaction of a fixed rate of ‘money supply’ growth and significantly faster growth in transaction volumes and therefore rising ‘money demand.’ Excess demand for Bitcoins will lead to currency appreciation, i.e. a rising U.S. dollar-value of Bitcoins, over time,” said Cole.

“We believe bitcoin will have a tremendous impact on a global scale,” he said.

Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis Will Move To Create Innovation Lab Using Stratasys Tools

Bre Pettis, CEO of Makerbot, is stepping down to create a co-brandedStratasys/Makerbot “innovation lab” where he will use 3D printers to work with artists, designers, and makers. Makerbot President Jenny Lawton will move into the CEO position and Pettis will be on the Makerbot board of directors.

Wrote Stratasys CEO David Reis:

Stratasys and MakerBot are excited to announce some management changes at MakerBot that will take effect in the 3rd and 4th quarter of 2014 and into January 2015. Most notably, Bre Pettis will be transitioning from the day-to-day activities of management to a position with Stratasys where he will be able to influence and direct the vision of MakerBot and Stratasys; he will also be a member of the MakerBot Board of Directors. Jenny Lawton, president of MakerBot, will be promoted to the role of CEO of MakerBot; Frank Alfano is being moved from chief revenue officer to president. Aric Jennings, chief operations officer for MakerBot, will also transition into the international role of vice president of global manufacturing for Stratasys. We are excited about these promotions and pleased to continue the positive momentum that Sratasys and MakerBot have experienced and achieved.

The news, originally broken after 3DPrint.com received a leaked internal email, comes as a bit of a surprise. Pettis has long been the visible face of Makerbot worldwide and was instrumental in its move from little startup to 3D printing behemoth. Now, however, he is returning to his roots.

The planned workshop will allow him to control a small skunkworks where future Stratasys and Makerbot products will be built. The team will also work with designers to build and give away or sell 3D printed models. The most recent example of this, theirZee action figure, is just the first of their upcoming projects.

Firefox Beta Gets Built-In WebRTC Video Calls On Desktop, Chromecast And Roku Video Casting On Android

Mozilla is launching the latest batch of updates to the Firefox beta channels for desktop and Android today. While there weren’t all that many exciting changes in the last few releases, today’s updates include a couple of interesting new user-facing tools.

Update: looks like we jumped the gun here. The updates are live yet but should be available very soon.

On Android, you can now test the browser’s new “send to device” video casting feature that supports both Roku and Google’s Chromecast, for example. And on the desktop, you can test drive Firefox’s built-in WebRTC-based video chat — a feature the organization started testing in its more experimental channels earlier this year.

Getting started with WebRTC — a standard for making plugin-free audio and video calls — on Firefox is now as easy as it is going to get, but it’s not exposed by default. You have to go into the “customize” window first and look for the speech bubble. Drag that into your main toolbar and you are good to go. Clicking on the bubble gives you a link that you can share with somebody else and once they click on it, the call (which is always free) starts.

In the backend, Mozilla is partnering with the WebRTC specialists at TokBox. The video chat should work just fine between Chrome and Firefox users, too, though in my own experiments with it, calls sometimes dropped randomly. Mozilla acknowledges that the features aren’t quite ready for prime time just yet and the organization still calls it an “experiment” for the time being. Still, it’s definitely worth a try.

On Android, the main addition is Chromecast and Roku video casting support. When you play a video on a site like CNN that serves up (mobile) videos through an HTML5 player and doesn’t use Flash (and your Roku or Chromecast are up and running), you can now stream your mobile video right to your TV in the living room. For Chromecast users, that should work without any major setup. Roku users will have to install the Firefox channel on their device, though.

Mozilla notes that some sites customize their HTML5 video player so the “Send to” icon that would usually appear in the player to make this work won’t show. To get those working, you have to start playing the video and the “Send to Device” icon will then appear in the URL bar.

All of this, as usual, is still very much in beta and prone to bugs. But that’s what the beta channel is all about, after all, and if you find any issues, you can file your bugs here.

Nokia’s Here Maps Its Future On Samsung With Its First Android And Tizen Apps

Opera may have taken some of the wind out of the Nokia brand with the news that its browser will be replacing Nokia’s on the now-Microsoft-owned, winding down, feature handset business. But today the Finnish company that has remained after the Microsoft handset sale had some interesting news of its own: it’s tying up with Samsung for two new versions of its Here mapping product, a free Android version coming first to Samsung’s Galaxy line of devices, and a Tizen version for Samsung’s Tizen-powered smart devices, specifically the Gear smartwatch.
Nokia says that Here app will be available on Samsung Galaxy devices exclusively. We have asked the company when it plans to make it available to other Android handsets and will update this as we learn more. (Update: there will be availability elsewhere, but no timeline when. “HERE for Android is part of our partnership with Samsung, but we aim to make HERE available to as many people as possible,” a Here spokesperson tells me, adding that it will be sometime “later this year.” Another spokesperson tells us that Here for Samsung Galaxy smartphones will be rolled out at the same time that the Gear S starts to retail — further strengthening the link between the two pieces of news and the functionality.
The new apps are coming at a key time for Samsung, which is trying more and more to differentiate itself from the rest of the Android pack — the world’s most popular mobile platform, but also the most widely-used by a variety of OEMs alongside Samsung — and create services that are unique to its devices alone.
Samsung is currently the world’s most popular maker of Android-based smartphones and other devices, but it has a lot of competition coming after it, from established competitors like LG to those like Xiaomi from China cleaning up in its home market and very clearly looking at growing more. At the same time, it’s looking for ways of driving more interest in its new wearable device — hence tying the functionality together to incentivize consumers to stay within the Samsung ecosystem.
Mapping has been one of the “killer apps” of the new age of mobile, with location-based services helping our always-on, always-present devices becoming companions for our everyday lives and the things we like and need to do, taking things like smartphones beyond basic functions like making voice calls and sending texts to others.
For Here, the interesting thing is that the Samsung apps are the result of a licensing deal between the two companies — meaning that Here will have received some form of payment as part of it. That’s important for a company that only recently, after losing a lot of money for years, been just about breaking even — or reporting a slight loss, depending on whether you count its non-IFRS or IFRS-reported numbers. Even though maps may be a core part of our mobile usage these days, that hasn’t always translated into them being a strong revenue generator.

And the moves come as Here is undergoing a reorganization of its own: Michael Halbherr, a longtime Here exec, stepped down as CEO last week.
The Android app will work much like it does on Windows Phone and iOS devices — users will be able to access maps for some 200 countries, see turn-by-turn navigation, search for businesses and other places of interest, and access the maps using GPS when there is no network connectivity available.
The Tizen Gear app, meanwhile, will mean that users of the Galaxy smartphones will be able to sync up their maps between their devices. The idea here is that for some situations mapping will be easier to plan on one device, but to use on the other. The apps will also integrate with in-car systems and integrate with mapping apps that run across all three, such as location-sharing app Glympse.

Twitter Is Suspending Accounts For Sharing Beheading Images And Videos

Tweet a graphic image relating to a video allegedly showing the beheading of photojournalist James Wright Foley and risk having your account suspended. The word comes from Twitter CEO Dick Costolo who announced the company’s actions in a tweet on Wednesday morning, several hours after the shocking video appeared on YouTube and suddenly went viral.

Costolo also noted that Twitter has already deleted accounts which shared the images.

This action comes as Twitter users called for a solution to the graphic images suddenly appearing in feeds. Twitter and YouTube users have also called for a media blackout of the beheading video and images, attempting to not give the group behind the horrific act the attention they crave.

Even though it’s the right thing to do, Twitter’s right to remove the content and suspend accounts seems to exist in a gray area within the social network’s rules and terms of service.

Twitter notes in its Abusive Behavior Policy that it “does not screen content and does not remove potentially offensive content unless such content is in violation of theTwitter Rules and Terms of Service.” It also notes ” Users may not make direct, specific threats of violence against others, including threats against a person or group on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, age, or disability. Targeted abuse or harassment is also a violation of theTwitter Rules and Terms of Service.”

Yet in section four of its Terms of Service, titled Content on the Services, it also notes that “you may be exposed to Content that might be offensive, harmful, inaccurate or otherwise inappropriate, or in some cases, postings that have been mislabeled or are otherwise deceptive.”

Still, even if it’s not specifically mentioned in Twitter’s Rules or Terms of Service, the removal (dare I say censorship?) of the images is the right thing to do.

Service Marketplace Thumbtack Raises $100M Round Led By Google Capital

Thumbtack, a company that connects customers with local service providers, just announced that it has raised $100 million in new funding.

The round was led by Google Capital (the search giant’s later-stage investment fund), with additional investment from past backers Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital, and Javelin Venture Partners.

Thumbtack has now raised a total of $150 million. The new round comes just a few months after the company announced its $30 million Series C.

Apparently the funding will be used to grow the engineering team, and to launch “nationwide marketing campaigns.”

“First and foremost, Thumbtack is a great product,” said Google Capital partner David Lawee in the funding release. “As a consumer, it’s the best product I’ve ever used to hire local professionals. The bigger story, however, is the potential for small businesses: Thumbtack has a real opportunity to transform how local professionals find new customers.”

To use Thumbtack, customers fill out online forms about what they’re looking for, then the company matches them with multiple professionals who can bid for the job. The company’s branding now emphasizes the idea of using Thumbtack for bigger personal projects (as opposed to general services and menial tasks) — customers highlighted on the company website include a couple who hired a photographer to shoot their engagement pictures, an American Idol finalist who paid for singing lessons, and Whole Foods that commissioned an in-store mural.

Thumbtack says it sends $1.8 billion in annual business to more than 75,000 professional service providers. It also says that since it was founded in December 2009, it has helped customers with more than 3 million projects per year.

Uber’s API Launch Lights The Way For Sharing Economy Apps

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Convincing users to join in new collaborative consumption ventures can be a tall order, but Uber’s API launch today gives us a glimpse of how others building businesses along similar lines might be able to juice usage and find a lasting place in the virtual toolboxes of smartphone owners.

The fact is that most of the so-called sharing economy apps offer services that complement other apps and services, either in the same vein or in drastically different fields. Uber, for instance, has teamed up with OpenTable, Starbucks and United among its launch partners, as well as Hinge, which marries the hook-up app concept with the means of getting the two parties together.

It’s the proverbial match made in heaven, and there’s a lot more matchmaking to be done. Postmates, for instance, would benefit greatly from allowing businesses to build its service directly into their apps, offering delivery options where none existed before. Airbnb is gearing up to launch a developer partner platform, too, which would make it possible (for select companies at first) to build its rental platform directly into their software, which of course would be perfect for travel and tourism software.

The fact is that most of these collaborative consumption apps make much more sense as a service layer available to other app developers than as standalone businesses. In fact, you could even go so far as to say that on-demand services are the next notifications for mobile – they began as a standalone business provided by startups like Boxcar, but eventually companies cropped up that offered easy SDKs to build that functionality into any developer’s app, essentially turning the whole thing into a background service that users come to expect of any app they download.

Of course, there’s a lot more to a sharing economy app than there is to a notification layer, mobile payments gateway or in-app purchase system, which are just a few of the development components now being offered on a SaaS basis. But the natural fit between Uber and its new partners suggest there’s a lot of merit in the idea of shared real-world services providers for mobile apps – delivery, transport, accommodation, etc. are after all, just other things that it would benefit businesses to have, but that are prohibitively expensive to develop and maintain on their own.

Pivotal Expands Its Enterprise Cloud Platform To Mobile

Pivotal, the enterprise cloud platform that raised a $105 million private equity round last year, today announced a large expansion of its product portfolio today. The update introduces new services for mobile development to the company’s Pivotal CF platform-as-a-service offering that are designed to work side-by-side with the company’s previously announced data services.

The company argues that these new services will make it easier for enterprises to make the transition to becoming mobile-first, data-first organizations “that can rapidly develop and scale cloud apps, while driving continuous delivery.” The legacy platforms that many enterprises still use to power their desktop applications don’t always cut it when it comes to mobile apps, Pivotal argues — especially if they are geared toward consumers instead of just a few internal customers.

The new CF Mobile Service — which was built on top of Pivotal’s $65 million acquisition of Xtreme Labs in 2013 — will include push notifications, an API gateway and data-sync services. The service also offers IT the ability to set different policies and service level agreements to ensure that the data remain under the enterprise’s control.

As the name implies, Pivotal CF is based on the company’s open source Cloud Foundry PaaS. Given its heritage, it’s no surprise that Pivotal CF supports a wide range of open-source tools (and especially databases), including database services like MongoDB, Riak, Apache Cassandra and the Neo4j graph database.

The new mobile services will become widely available in the third quarter of 2014. The company did not release any pricing details.