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CloudFlare acquires anti-malware firm StopTheHacker to proactively beef up enterprise network security

Feb24
by on February 24, 2014 at 6:30 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

CloudFlare today announced it has acquired anti-malware firm StopTheHacker for an undisclosed sum. While CloudFlare is already capable of stopping new infections, the company says it needs StopTheHacker to further improve those capabilities as well as ensure sites that sign up aren’t already infected. “When networks get to a certain scale they inevitably need to focus on proactively dealing with this challenge,” the company explains.

StopTheHacker has been a CloudFlare partner for two years: its malware scanning service has been available through the CloudFlare Apps Marketplace and “a large percentage” of CloudFlare’s customers were already using it. StopTheHacker will continue to support its customers and partners, while CloudFlare will invest in what it claims is “the most affordable, enterprise-class malware scanning available today.” In the long term, CloudFlare will integrate StopTheHacker’s services more tightly to provide immediate remediation of malware and vulnerabilities via instant patching services that don’t require a code change.

Image Credit: pbkwee/Flickr

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Win a Wacom tablet and Premium plan for Webydo’s website creation cloud software, made by designers – for designers

Feb24
by on February 24, 2014 at 6:00 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Offers

unnamed1 520x245 Win a Wacom tablet and Premium plan for Webydo’s website creation cloud software, made by designers – for designers

In the dark old days, designers had to depend on developers to manually convert their visual design into HTML code or spend their valuable time coding instead of focusing on the creative side of websites creation.

This rusty old process of manual coding wasted up to 70 percent of designers’ budgets. Well, not any more. Webydo’s cloud platform led by a community of 50,000 designers was created in the spirit of open-source developers communities such as WordPress in order to provide a full solution for designers worldwide.

Using Webydo’s powerful cloud software, designers can create responsive, pixel-perfect websites powered by top-notch technology without writing even one line of code and with the same creative freedom and independence they enjoy when designing for print with softwares such as Adobe Photoshop or InDesign.

Webydo’s free cloud solution allows designers to control the whole process of designing, managing and hosting responsive websites with a friendly built-in CMS and SEO management tools. Behind the scenes Webydo’s sophisticated code-generator turns your designs into functioning websites automatically to a high standard, with W3C validated code. According to W3Tech’s recent survey Webydo’s websites are ranked in the top three highest qualitative traffic.

If you’re a professional designer and looking for a better way to create your clients’ websites, read on! The Next Web has teamed up with the Webydo Community to give five lucky readers 10 professional Premium Plans worth $948 per year and a Wacom A5 tablet each. What’s more, everyone who enters will receive 52% off the price of their first year with Webydo.

Each plan comes with:

  • 10 premium websites with advanced cloud hosting.
  • Friendly built-in CMS (Content Management System): for direct communication with your clients. Webydo’s CMS allows your clients to update and change the content of their websites, while preserving your full artistic control.
  • Professional Web design software: Design in-browser with professional web design software that provides full control over all design elements, with advanced features such as a grid generator, media library, anchor links, and all the dynamic graphic design tools needed to create stunning websites for your clients.
  • Drag-and-drop functionality: Webydo’s drag and drop control allows you to easily upload any design element, such as shapes, images, texts, videos, flash, galleries, forms, widgets and menus, and even your own HTML code. Webydo will automatically optimize all your assets for best performance.
  • Code-free web design– Bring any web design to life with pixel perfect accuracy and total creative freedom without writing even one line of code.
  • Responsive and cross-platform: While you design your responsive, pixel-perfect websites, Webydo automatically generates a W3C valid cross-platform HTML5 code that is updated to the latest web standards.
  • E-Commerce: Easily design an online store for your clients with a dynamic and mobile friendly widget.
  • Hundreds of fonts: Choose from hundreds of free fonts, optimized for the web.
  • Unlimited bandwidth.
  • Unlimited pages
  • 2 GB storage per site
  • Powerful dashboard: allows you to manage thousands of your clients’ websites from one centralized control panel.
  • Full white label option: rebrand the system and present it to your clients under your own branding.
  • Direct client billing: allows you to bill your clients directly from the Webydo Dashboard.
  • 24/7 Chat and Email Support
  • Free one-on-one training session

We hope you’ll join Webydo’s pro-designers movement!

To enter our sweepstake, simply follow the instructions below. Good luck!


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Uber rolling out new push notification feature to tell you when surge pricing goes down

Feb24
by on February 24, 2014 at 5:45 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider, launch, launch festival, launch festival uber, uber surge pricing, uber travis kalanick surge pricing

51154998 1 520x245 Uber rolling out new push notification feature to tell you when surge pricing goes down

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick took the stage with Jason Calacanis at the 2014 LAUNCH Festival today to introduce a new feature for his company’s app. Rolling out soon is the ability to receive push notifications that will tell you when surge pricing goes down so you don’t have to constantly check the app.

IMG 0012 520x390 Uber rolling out new push notification feature to tell you when surge pricing goes down

Surge pricing has been a pain for many of Uber’s users over the past few years. Kalanick says that this pricing model is needed because it’s intended to maintain driver demand — and its drivers certainly like it. He says that for the past century, consumers have been happy with fixed pricing — where you knew what the price was going to be from point A to B — but there was always an issue where you weren’t guaranteed someone was going to stop and pick you up.

The new feature will be available on just iOS for now, but there are plans to add it to Uber’s Android version in the future. Don’t worry if you’re not seeing it right away, as the company estimates that it will be rolled out “in the coming weeks.”

Kalanick says that this new feature helps make its service more “humane,” meaning that you’re “not being held hostage to surge pricing because you need a ride right now.” And while surge pricing may generate bad press headlines for the company, Uber’s CEO believes that if he doesn’t work to make the experience better for customers and drivers, people won’t think it’s reliable — and this is something he wants to avoid.

Throughout his talk, Kalanick also addressed other topics, including kicking drivers off of Uber for bad records and reviews, addressing user behavior, and the leaked company metrics — it was revealed that someone had logged into a computer with the data, but failed to log-out and another party discovered it.

➤ Uber for iOS | Android

Photo credit: Chris Hondros/Getty Images

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a couple of laughzillas on a blue diamond background

Uber rolling out new push notification feature to tell you when surge pricing goes down

Feb24
by on February 24, 2014 at 5:45 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider, launch festival, launch festival uber

51154998 1 520x245 Uber rolling out new push notification feature to tell you when surge pricing goes down

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick took the stage with Jason Calacanis at the 2014 LAUNCH Festival today to introduce a new feature for his company’s app. Rolling out soon is the ability to receive push notifications that will tell you when surge pricing goes down so you don’t have to constantly check the app.

IMG 0012 520x390 Uber rolling out new push notification feature to tell you when surge pricing goes down

Surge pricing has been a pain for many of Uber’s users over the past few years. Kalanick says that this pricing model is needed because it’s intended to maintain driver demand — and its drivers certainly like it. He says that for the past century, consumers have been happy with fixed pricing — where you knew what the price was going to be from point A to B — but there was always an issue where you weren’t guaranteed someone was going to stop and pick you up.

The new feature will be available on just iOS for now, but there are plans to add it to Uber’s Android version in the future. Don’t worry if you’re not seeing it right away, as the company estimates that it will be rolled out “in the coming weeks.”

Kalanick says that this new feature helps make its service more “humane,” meaning that you’re “not being held hostage to surge pricing because you need a ride right now.” And while surge pricing may generate bad press headlines for the company, Uber’s CEO believes that if he doesn’t work to make the experience better for customers and drivers, people won’t think it’s reliable — and this is something he wants to avoid.

Throughout his talk, Kalanick also addressed other topics, including kicking drivers off of Uber for bad records and reviews, addressing user behavior, and the leaked company metrics — it was revealed that someone had logged into a computer with the data, but failed to log-out and another party discovered it.

➤ Uber for iOS | Android

Photo credit: Chris Hondros/Getty Images

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Bing for iPhone gets a pervasive search widget, multiple search management, Safari integration, and more

Feb24
by on February 24, 2014 at 5:41 pm
Posted In: Apps, Around the Web, Mobile

bing homepage 520x245 Bing for iPhone gets a pervasive search widget, multiple search management, Safari integration, and more

Microsoft today updated its Bing app for iPhone, adding a slew of new features across multitasking, trends, and design. You can download the new version now directly from Apple’s App Store.

First up, Microsoft is looking to streamline Bing’s navigation on iOS by adding a pervasive widget that is always available within the app (that being said, you can turn it off in the app’s settings). With a simple tap, you have access to four buttons: return to the homepage, conduct a voice search, conduct a text search, or see your Recent searches.

bing iphone Bing for iPhone gets a pervasive search widget, multiple search management, Safari integration, and more

Next, Bing for iPhone now lets you run multiple searches without having to get rid of the original results. You can manage all your Recent searches on the Recent page: swipe a tile off the screen, open a new one to do a new search, or close them all.

You can also now use Bing to see what’s trending in three categories: search, images, and news. In addition, you can now expand autosuggested items to further refine a query and quickly find what you’re looking for.

Last but not least, you can now shake your phone and Bing will show you a random trending story on Bing. Shake again to see the next one.

The full Bing version 4.4 for iOS changelog is as follows:

  • Shake your phone to discover a trending story.
  • See what’s trending across News, Searches, and Images with quick access from the home button.
  • Multitask using Recent tiles.
  • Tap the search widget from anywhere in the app for one-hand access to new search, tabs, and voice search.
  • Manage your bookmarks: separate categories for News, Images, Searches, and Web Results.
  • Copy web addresses or open websites in Safari.

The last point is interesting because it shows how dedicated Microsoft is to iOS, a platform where it doesn’t offer its own browser. You can now tap to open a search result via the browser or add a bookmark to quickly access their favorite sites from within the app. Getting iPhone users to actually do so is another story entirely.

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