By Cynthia Herbert :: 12:48 PM
Pebble, the hugely successful Kickstarter project that funded a new type of smart watch has planed an announcement at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
An invitation was sent to Pebble’s Kickstarter backers and directs them to watch a livestream of the event on Pebble’s website at Noon eastern time on Wednesday, January 9th.
At this point, no specific details seem to be out about what will be said at the announcement. Backers are only told it will be “big news.”
The invitation brings hopes for a product launch — something that’s is long overdue for Pebble as its watches were originally slated to ship in September of last year.
The company has faced challenges in producing enough watches to cover the 85,000 pre-orders that it received from its Kickstarter funding campaign. It had originally only planned an initial run of around 1,000 watches.
Pebble has been mum in recent months on any kind of shipment timetable, only suggesting that it has an aggressive production schedule.
If Pebble wants to come out with a bang, CES is certainly the place to do it. All eyes in the tech and crowdfunding world will be on Pebble on Wednesday.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 12:23 PM
Pinterest announced its first acquisition on Thursday – it will buy the recipe discovery and sharing website Punchfork. This appears to be a talent acquisition, as Punchfork will be shut down so its one-person team can focus and make improvements to Pinterest.
Punchfork was founded in May of 2010 by Jeff Miller, a former angel investor, developer, and hedge fund trader. The price Pinterest paid for the startup has not yet been made public.
It is not clear at this time whether users who have Punchfork accounts will have their user information and data pulled into Pinterest, or if it will be abandoned altogether.
In the announcement posted to Punchfork’s website, Miller says, “initially, support for Punchfork will continue, but we will soon be retiring the Punchfork site, API and mobile apps. We believe that a unified destination benefits our users in the long run, and the Punchfork team will focus on contributing to Pinterest as the premier platform for discovering and sharing new recipes and other interests on the web.”
By Gilbert Falso :: 11:58 AM
Facebook has begun sending out legal notices to users about the settlement for its Sponsored Stories class-action lawsuit.
Messages from Facebook with the subject line “LEGAL NOTICE OF SETTLEMENT OF CLASS ACTION” started showing up in users email accounts last week. The message detailed the reason behind the lawsuit and the terms of the settlement. It was sent to all Facebook members who were believed to be in the settlement class for the lawsuit.
The suit was filed on behalf of Facebook users who objected to the use of their names and pictures in Facebook’s Sponsored Stories promotions. These promotions were ads that turned a user’s Likes into advertisements in the news feeds of their friends. The lawsuit claims that the ads were a violation of privacy, as it made users into shills and advertisers for other companies without their direct approval.
The terms of the settlement show that users who filed a claim will receive up to $10 from Facebook. Class members have until May 2, 2013, to submit their claim, or exclude themselves from the settlement. A Fairness hearing is scheduled for June 28, 2013.
By Paul Thomson :: 11:18 AM
Jason Kilar, CEO of the online streaming video service Hulu has announced that he plans to step down at the end of March.
He made the announcement to his staff in an email yesterday, and also posted a notice on Hulu’s blog.
No reason was cited, but the video site, owned by the parent companies of ABC, NBC, and Fox, has been losing money in the face of posting close to $700 million in revenue last year.
In addition to Kilar, Rich Tom, the company’s CTO, will also depart at the same time.
Kilar’s departure comes as no big surprise to industry experts. Speculation about when Kilar would step down has been swirling around the company for several years, after a disagreement came to light between Kilar and the media companies that own Hulu. Kilar added flames to the fire when he penned a blog post showing he disagreed with their web-distribution plans. In that post, Kilar went on to suggest that Hulu’s troubles were the fault of its owners. He criticized the advertising practices, and noted that TV companies were licensing content to web-based services for too little money, and this was letting rivals undercut Hulu’s services.
“My decision to depart has been one of the toughest I’ve ever made,” he wrote in yesterday’s blog post.
In the rest of the post, Kilar talked about Hulu’s growth over the five years of its existence. He noted that the company raked in $695 million in revenue for last year, and boasts 3 million paid subscribers to the premium Hulu Plus streaming service.
However, as business for Hulu has grown, the overall streaming video industry has grown as well. Competition for Hulu now includes Netflix, Amazon streaming video
By Gilbert Falso :: 11:02 AM
Pictures for components for an upcoming BlackBerry 10 device may have leaked onto the Internet recently, and have helped to confirm many industry rumors about what the new smartphones
The parts are an LCD screen, components for a touchscreen digitizer, and front and back housing assemblies for the BlackBerry Z10 model.
The new LCD screen appears to be a 4.3-inch display. The two housing components seen online have different sensor and camera location placements.
The front of the casing for the purported Z10 model has slots for an HDMI port, as well as a micro USB port and shows clues  suggesting it will have a SIM card under the battery. The rear housing has signs for an SD card slot and covers the majority of the Z10’s rear, with a gap for the battery and battery cover.
The entire size of the casing is 5.2-inches tall by 2.9-inches wide.
BlackBerry’s Z10 models will be touchscreen versions of RIM’s new handset lineup that should launch alongside the standard keyboard-equipped Blackberry 10 N-Series.