Google, Inc. is building a new messaging app to take on Facebook, Inc.’s Messenger and WhatsApp, according to a report Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal quotes “people familiar with the matter” as saying that the tech giant had been working on the new app for over one year and is aiming to offer a multi-faceted ...

Confirming that there’s a sucker born every minute, Bitcoin mining outfit BTCS, Inc. has raised $1.4 million in a post-IPO equity round led by Cavalry Fund LP. The funding comes after news via way of a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing in November that detailed that the company was in serious financial strife and was ...

Artificial intelligence (AI) powered video search firm Valossa Labs Oy has raised a $650,000 seed round that included Butterfly Ventures and several Finnish angel investors. Founded in September this year by a development team of Ph.D.’s, graduate students and M.Sc.’s from the University of Oulu in Finland, Valossa is developing what it describes as groundbreaking ...

The database for the site sanriotown.com, the official online community for Hello Kitty and other characters from Japanese kawaii character maker Sanrio Co. Ltd. has been hacked with the account details of 3.3 million users making its way online. The database was discovered by Chris Vickery, the same researcher who exposed the MacKeeper and Hzone ...

Cloud connected communications startup Talko, Inc. has been acquired by Microsoft Corp. for an undisclosed price. Founded in 2012 by former Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, Talko offered an app that combined messaging, calling, and conferencing through the cloud with the aim to deliver a better way for mobile teams to communicate and be ...

Data blending, the process that delivers a quick and straightforward method to extract value from multiple data sources, has continued to grow this year but what lies for the year ahead? Pentaho Corporation Chief Executive Officer Quentin Gallivan predicts that data blending will be bigger than ever next year, along with the Internet of Things ...

In one of the more bizarre examples of tech illiteracy among America’s Presidential wannabees running for a spot in the 2016 Election, Democrat candidate and former first lady Hillary Clinton has called for a “Manhattan Project” between Government (see: spying agencies) and tech firms over encryption. The Manhattan Project, if you’re not familiar with it, ...

Not-for-profit open-source group The Linux Foundation has announced a new collaborative effort that aims to advance the blockchain, the technology that powers bitcoin. The project is aiming to develop a new enterprise-grade, open-source distributed ledger framework based on the existing blockchain with a goal of allowing developers to focus on building robust, industry-specific applications, platforms ...

Media firm Mashable, Inc. may be on the market with a report Friday that the company is actively shopping itself to potential buyers. According to sources quoted by Ken Doctor at Politico Mashable has employed Deutsche Bank to find a potential suitor and is chasing an acquisition sum around the $300 to $350 million mark. ...

Geopolitical security issues have come to the fore in 2015 as Government’s worldwide have rallied against encryption as the rise of The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and similar Islamic terrorist groups have caused ever growing concern. Terror-driven attacks lead security firm Zscaler, Inc.’s Chief Information Security Officer Michael Sutton predictions for the ...