The last week has been a troubling one for observers of Internet censorship in China, and things just got worse, as several bloggers and activists had their Sina Weibo accounts shut down over the past few days, the Washington Post reports.
The account closures come one week after the Chinese government passed a law requiring people to use their real names when signing up for Internet and phone services, a sign that the Communist Party intends to tighten its grip even further on China’s net...
Congress Crowdsourcing New High-Skilled Immigration Bill, Contribute HereComments Off
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Google App Engine Drops Some High Replication Datastore Prices By Up To 25%Comments Off
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Lyft Lifts $60 Million From Andreessen Horowitz, Gives 30,000 Rides A Week A Year After LaunchComments Off
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Evernote Adds Reminders To Help Users With To-Do’s, Tasks & ProjectsComments Off
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TaskRabbit Debuts Tools For Hiring Ongoing Temp Work As It Hones Focus On Business UsersComments Off
Today TaskRabbit is launching a new set of tools in its three-month-old TaskRabbit for Business portal that are designed to help companies hire ongoing temporary workers for jobs that will span over multiple days, weeks, or months. |
The U.S. House of Representatives just released its own version of a high-skilled immigration reform bill and is actively seeking input through the collective IQ of the Internet. House Oversight Chairman and one of our Most Innovative People in Democracy, Darrell Issa, has placed the Supplying Knowledge-Based Immigrants And Lifting Levels of STEM (SKILLS) Visas Act on his very own public markup utility, Project Madison (we partnered with Issa’s nonprofit, the Open Government Foundation and have integrated it into our CrunchGov site). Details Of The New Bill A few important details about the bill that took an admirable bit of linguistic gymnastics to come up with a title to fit that obviously pre-determined acronym. 1). SKILLS is a net neutral green card allotment system; the 120,000 high-skilled visas are reached by cutting out the diversity visa program and the 65,000 green cards for siblings (unlike the Senate version). It also increases 25,000 green card visas for spouses and children. 2). Expands the the foreign worker visa (H1-B) cap from 65,000 to 155,000 (about 30K more than the Senate). 3. Allots up to 10,000 startup-visa cards. Right now, immigrants are tethered to a sponsoring employee, which has prevented brilliant workers from striking out on their own. Immigrants are eligible so long as they can create 5 American jobs and have at least $500,000 in investment. 4. Attempts to get rid of abuse in the H1-B system by allowing the federal government to audit businesses and requires that they give immigrants a prevailing market wage. How to Contribute Issa is seeking your brilliant ideas! His staff helped create the historic crowdsourcing platform and will be actively looking at your recommendations. Head over to our version of the public markup utility here. There are (very simple) instructions about how to get started. On Project Madison, you can amend the SKILLS act line-by-line and vote up the best suggestions. We at CrunchGov love direct democracy and look forward to your contributions
At Google I/O last week, Google announced that its Google App Engine High Replication Datastore (HRD) – its schemaless object data storage service – currently processes over 4.5 trillion transactions per month, has an uptime of 99.95% and stores over a petabyte of data. Today, the company announced that it is dramatically reducing the pricing for some Datastore features. Storing a gigabyte of data previously cost $0.24 per month, but the company has now reduced this price to just $0.18 per month.
It was almost one year ago (to the day!) that we first wrote about Lyft and how the company was going to offer some lower-priced competition to on-demand ride leader Uber in San Francisco. Now, 366 days later, Lyft is celebrating the anniversary of that launch with some huge news: It’s raised a $60 million round of financing led by Andreessen Horowitz.
For those who use Evernote as a to-do list application, the service just became more useful today with the launch of a much-requested feature: reminders. Available to both Evernote and Evernote Business users on Mac, iOS and web (to start), the option now appears as an alarm clock icon at the top-right of the note on Mac and web, and the bottom of the note on mobile (iPhone and iPad). Though a seemingly minor addition, the feature actually addresses the top three user requests, Evenote’s VP of Marketing, Andrew Sinkov, explains in the official announcement about the release. Besides the reminders themselves, users wanted a way to more quickly created note-based to-do lists as well as pin notes to the top of their Note list. Now, all of these items are supported. Reminders are simple to use – you just click the button, add a time and time, and then you’ll get both an in-app alarm as well as an optional email when a reminder is due. The note title will also appear in a new section at the top of your Note list, and you can reorganize Reminders by dragging them around. When the task is complete, you tap the check or, on iOS, swipe to remove the Reminder from your list. Though everyday organizers will appreciate the addition, of course, the feature is also useful for Business users, and it’s supported in Evernote’s shared notebooks. The end result turns a shared notebook into a something that’s sort of like a very basic project management utility. Evernote itself uses Reminders for the company’s Video Projects, Sinkov says. Reminders could also appeal as an alternative to the common hack of using Calendar appointments when all you really needed was a simple reminder, not a scheduled meeting. Evernote makes a few other suggestions for Reminders which also see in encroaching more into the calendaring space, including birthday reminders and doctor’s appointments (with notes and questions attached), as well as packing checklists. The company has been busy expanding its feature set designed for business users in recent months, having not only taken the app to new markets, including a localized version for China, but also enabling enterprise-ready options like a Business Library, Related Notes, and improved search. This new Reminders option is something personal and business users would both want, however. Evernote is now working to bring the Reminders feature to other platforms, and
