The Comunicano Daily

Acquisitions and investments are in the news more and more, demonstratiing that tech companies are a hot item again. Today Spotify moved closer to out Pandoraing Pandora with the purchase of MIT bred The EchoNest. The official release is below, and the story is out everywhere....ON To the News...     Spotify Acquires The Echo Nest     SOMERVILLE, MA - March 6 - Spotify today announced that it will acquire the industry's leading music intelligence company, The Echo Nest. The acquisition supports Spotify's strategy to grow global music consumption and overall revenue back to the music industry by building the best user experience and music discovery engine for millions of global fans.     [continue...]       Oh, where have you gone Harvey Pollack? Baseball and Big Data have their roots in the movie MoneyBall but back in my sports days GMs and scouts, even my hand compiled statss of teams and players were all data based. Now no pro team worth their weight isn't looking at how data is shaping their world. FYI-the reference to Harvey Pollack ties to how immaginative he was as statistician for the Philadelphia Seventy Sixers, Wings and others, where he created categories and provided hand compiled big data long before there even was a PC....In my mind, he set the bar and now others are following suit but good old "Super Stat" was doing all this first.     Learning from Analytics in Sports               [continue...]       It used to be hard getting a virtual visit from a doctor approved by the insurance company. Those times are a changing.     eVisits: The 21st Century House Call - Deloitte CIO - WSJ eVisits: The 21st Century House Call Trends in technology and business are aligning to make 2014 a breakthrough year for online health care. This year should see a spike in the use of "eVisits," in which patients interact directly or indirectly with health care providers via the Internet.     [continue...]       Emergency response is going far beyond "I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up." Now Apple has patented a detection and assistance feature for iPhone, going far beyond what is out there today.     Apple Patents Built-In Automated Emergency Detection And Assistance For iPhone A new patent application by Apple just published by the USPTO (via AppleInsider) adds a feature to an iPhone that may not be as cool as an optical heart rate sensor, but could be just as (or more) life-saving: the new tech would use data from onboard sensor to automatically detect when a user is subject to physical attack, including car crashes and violent personal altercations, as well as sudden medical emergencies.     [continue...]       That car trolling by may be more than it appears. If you remember the movie "Repo Man" this is Repo Man on steroids, all using big data.       A vast hidden surveillance network runs across America, powered by the repo industry Few notice the "spotter car" from Manny Sousa's repo company as it scours Massachusetts parking lots, looking for vehicles whose owners have defaulted on their loans. Sousa's unmarked car is part of a technological revolution that goes well beyond the repossession business, transforming any ­industry that wants to check on the whereabouts of ordinary people.     [continue...]       Facebook just gave the term "Rent A Cop" a new meaning.       Facebook Will Be First Private Company in U.S. to Pay for Full-Time Beat Cop local Facebook will become what experts say is the first private company in the country to bankroll a full-time beat cop, establishing what could become a blueprint for many more similar partnerships. "It's safe to say this is unprecedented," said Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation, the nation's oldest police research nonprofit in Washington, D.C.     [continue...]       Founders Fund raised a boatload of money and has created a new fund.     Founders Fund Hits $1 Billion Mark for New Venture-Capital Fund Founders Fund, a backer of Facebook and Space Exploration Technologies, has closed $1 billion in new financing for a fifth fund, the firm announced on Wednesday. The new vehicle is quite a step up from the $50 million the firm raised when it was founded in 2005 by Peter Thiel and Ken Howery, both former top executives at PayPal.     [continue...]

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