Google teams up with DC to offer single issues comics via Play Books

Although Google Play Books has carried digital DC comic book collections for a while now, the only way to get single issues has been to go through other DC partners like Comixology. Thankfully for DC fans, this changes today.

In addition to continuing to selling comic book collections and ‘novels’, DC will now offer comics separately, without the need to buy issues in volume. Initially this partnership means you’ll be able to pick up monthly releases, but what about DC’s traditional Wednesday weekly releases? While DC may add weekly releases eventually, DC’s vice president of Vertigo and Integrated Publishing Hank Kanalz notes that adding the weekly storefront schedule to Play Books requires “additional resources”.

The addition of single issue comics is a very welcome change for Google fans that also are avid DC followers, but it is important to note that this partnership is currently limited to the United States. On the bright side, DC pledges to bring it to additional markets but doesn’t give any timeframe for this expansion just yet.

DC fans: What do you think, glad to see single issues make their way over to Play Books or will you likely continue to buy them from other sources?

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TechStars London Unveils Its 2014 Teams — Five Of The 11 Have Already Raised $4M In Total

It’s the second year of operation for TechStars London and the accelerator has just named the 11 companies in its 2014 cohort — which this year come from eight different countries including the U.S., Estonia, Germany, Spain, Israel, Ireland, South Korea and the UK.

Last year’s debut TechStars London cohort included several fintech companies but our favourite, OP3Nvoice, played in the search sphere — offering APIs that make voice and video data searchable by translating its audio to text.

TechStars London’s Jon Bradford said applications to this year’s program numbered around 1,500 — pushing up on the ~1,300 received last year, continuing to demonstrate the global pull of the TechStars brand.

Companies gaining a place on the 2014 program include several that have attracted funding already. Five of the 11 have already raised $4 million in total. The cohort also includes two previously successful entrepreneurs. And the entire cohort already comprises more than 50 staff in total. Not all of whom are coming to London for the three-month bootcamp, obviously. TechStars said it had to get 13 prospective entrepreneur visas ahead of the program’s kick off.

Bradford said the 2014 line-up “really challenges” people’s perceptions of the kind of companies that participate in an accelerator. ”Experienced entrepreneurs are much more pragmatic and recognise what they know and what they don’t,” he told TechCrunch when asked what more established startups are seeking to get out of the accelerator process.

“Teams with funding and product benefit hugely from TechStars,” he added. “It allows them to concentrate on building their business without the need for raising funding. They can use the program to accelerate customer traction and engagement through the network we expose them to.”

What of last year’s TechStars cohort? IPTVbeat, which does real-time analytics for TV viewing habits, has since raised $2m in seed funding, according to Bradford.

He adds that there are a number of others “who are looking at chunky term sheets at the moment”.

The full list of TechStars’ 2014 London teams follows below. Demo Day for the teams will take place in London on June 20.

• Avuba (Germany) is fixing banking by building a mobile first bank service.
• Eat In My Seat (U.K./U.S.) allows you to skip the queue at venues by ordering directly to your seat.
• eRated (Israel) lets you use one reputation score in a world of marketplaces.
• Good Audience (U.S.) increases your reach and gets your brand, product or service in front of over 400 million active social media users.
• Lingvist (Estonia) is an adaptive language learning tool that significantly reduces the time needed to learn a new language.
• Magnific (U.K.) connects readers, writers and curators for a more personalised reading experience.
• Proximus (Spain) is an analytics engine that examines the behaviour of consumers using innovative indoor geolocation technology.
• Pubble (Ireland) uses everywhere your customers live online to build an active community on your website.
• Smile Family (Korea) is a mobile community for mums.
• Spatch (U.S.) is a new decentralized communication protocol built on top of email.
• Zzish (U.K.) helps developers make education apps more engaging and effective.

Microsoft Will Now Deploy Two Legal Teams, Outside Former Federal Judge To Approve User-Data Searches

Following a court document revealing that Microsoft read the email of a third-party blogger to uncover an internal leak, the company this evening announced a policy change, effective immediately, regarding how it searches user data that is part of its own network of services. Noting that it couldn’t, in its view, get a court order to search itself as none is needed, it will instead add layers of protection between it and its own users’ data.

First, the company will deploy a second legal team apart from the “internal investigating team” to vet the need for the data search. Following, a “former federal judge” will review the case, such as it is, and grant a decision. Microsoft will only execute a search into, say, an Outlook.com account if the retired judge consents that there is “evidence sufficient for a court order.”

And the number of this type of searches will be revealed in the company’s regular transparency reports. Microsoft exempts its own employees from the above. If you are an employee and have data on any Microsoft service, consider it public to your employer.

The change in tack is interesting given its speed – Microsoft came under fire in the last day or so. The online reaction to Microsoft’s admittedly legal search of the blogger’s personal emails and IMs has been swift and negative. We need better legal guidelines to protect user data from the service-providing company. That said, the boundaries that the company erected, provided they are extended and strengthened in the coming months, are at least a decent start. I say that at the risk of being too optimistic.

Here’s Microsoft’s statement:

We believe that Outlook and Hotmail email are and should be private.  Today there has been coverage about a particular case.  While we took extraordinary actions in this case based on the specific circumstances and our concerns about product integrity that would impact our customers, we want to provide additional context regarding how we approach these issues generally and how we are evolving our policies.

Courts do not issue orders authorizing someone to search themselves, since obviously no such order is needed.  So even when we believe we have probable cause, it’s not feasible to ask a court to order us to search ourselves. However, even we should not conduct a search of our own email and other customer services unless the circumstances would justify a court order, if one were available.  In order to build on our current practices and provide assurances for the future, we will follow the following policies going forward:

• To ensure we comply with the standards applicable to obtaining a court order, we will rely in the first instance on a legal team separate from the internal investigating team to assess the evidence. We will move forward only if that team concludes there is evidence of a crime that would be sufficient to justify a court order, if one were applicable. As an additional step, as we go forward, we will then submit this evidence to an outside attorney who is a former federal judge.  We will conduct such a search only if this former judge similarly concludes that there is evidence sufficient for a court order.
• Even when such a search takes place, it is important that it be confined to the matter under investigation and not search for other information.  We therefore will continue to ensure that the search itself is conducted in a proper manner, with supervision by counsel for this purpose.
• Finally, we believe it is appropriate to ensure transparency of these types of searches, just as it is for searches that are conducted in response to governmental or court orders.  We therefore will publish as part of our bi-annual transparency report the data on the number of these searches that have been conducted and the number of customer accounts that have been affected.

The only exception to these steps will be for internal investigations of Microsoft employees who we find in the course of a company investigation are using their personal accounts for Microsoft business.   And in these cases, the review will be confined to the subject matter of the investigation.

The privacy of our customers is incredibly important to us, and while we believe our actions in this particular case were appropriate given the specific circumstances, we want to be clear about how we will handle similar situations going forward. That is why we are building on our current practices and adding to them to further strengthen our processes and increase transparency.  

IMAGE BY FLICKR USER Robert Scoble UNDER CC BY 2.0 LICENSE (IMAGE HAS BEEN CROPPED)