Demian Sellfors, Media Temple Co-founder:
I am proud to share some momentous news with you today. GoDaddy, the Internet’s largest platform for small businesses, has acquired (mt) Media Temple. We will continue operating as an independent and autonomous company and our mission will remain unchanged. However, new investments from GoDaddy will provide us the necessary resources to strengthen our focus on web professionals and will help accelerate our plans to expand internationally.
Nancy Benac and Jennifer Agiesta for the AP:
The debut of the government’s health insurance marketplaces drew a huge audience — and underwhelming reviews.
Here’s Adrianne Jeffries at The Verge:
Government contracts are usually awarded to the lowest bidder, and the disincentives for not delivering aren’t very strong. There are also a number of extra requirements for government contracts that made state-of-the-art, Silicon Valley-style development impossible for this scale of government project. For example, contractors that worked on the Healthcare.gov backend were probably required to have Federal Information Security Management Act certification, which rules out the smaller, more agile firms that could have brought a more innovative sensibility to the project.
I have the Fitbit Flex now, and I’ve often said that if it had a watch face, it’d be just about perfect. Looks like I’ll be upgrading.
T.C. Sottek at The Verge:
Fox News has just unveiled a breathtakingly ridiculous newsroom, complete with novelty-sized Windows-based touchscreens, a Twitter wall, and a wannabe Minority Report style display, which it hopes will connect it with generations of viewers who use smartphones and apps.
You can Shepard Smith give a tour of the Fox News Deck here, if you’re so inclined. Spoiler alert: 55-inch touchscreen monitors are crazy town.
Brad Arkin the Chief Security Officer at Adobe is having a bad day:
Very recently, Adobe’s security team discovered sophisticated attacks on our network, involving the illegal access of customer information as well as source code for numerous Adobe products. We believe these attacks may be related.
Our investigation currently indicates that the attackers accessed Adobe customer IDs and encrypted passwords on our systems. We also believe the attackers removed from our systems certain information relating to 2.9 million Adobe customers, including customer names, encrypted credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates, and other information relating to customer orders. At this time, we do not believe the attackers removed decrypted credit or debit card numbers from our systems. We deeply regret that this incident occurred. We’re working diligently internally, as well as with external partners and law enforcement, to address the incident.
Forbes’ Allen St. John has published an interview with Michael Slovis, the cinematographer behind Breaking Bad. If you’re a fan of the show, it’s well worth the time to read.
A friend of mine sent me this link last night and I stayed up way too late reading more on the topic.
The company cut 4,500 jobs as a result. Terrible, but not surprising.
John Siracusa:
A lot of things have to go right for Nintendo to get its mojo back. It’s worth reiterating: if the market for dedicated gaming hardware disappears, I fear it’s game over for Nintendo as we know it.
But if the time of the game console is not yet at an end (handheld or otherwise), then Nintendo has a lot of work to do. It needs to get better at all of the game-related things that iOS is good at. It needs to produce software that clearly demonstrates the value of its hardware—or, if that’s not possible, then it needs to make new hardware.
I wish computers today had awesome buttons like these things did.
The Verge’s always-overly-happy David Pierce takes at the future of biking. In this video, he covers some very cool stuff.