By Cynthia Herbert :: 11:21 PM
Taylor Swift had a less than lady-like reaction to the announcement of boy band One Direction’s win at tonight’s Video Music Awards.
The country singer starlet was captured on camera as she mouthed the words, “shut the fu&$ up” as the band’s victory was announced on stage in front of her.
Comments on Facebook and Twitter quickly erupted, excoriating Swift for her reaction, and fans of the band quickly jumped in to their defense.
Below is Swift’s swearing moment on camera:
By Gilbert Falso :: 5:07 PM
Instagram yesterday announced that it has made its first acquisition, the video sharing application Luma.
The deal included both the team at Luma as well as the technology, with the standalone Luma app being pulled from the marketplace shortly.
Some sources claim that technology in Luma, that assisted with image stabilization, has already been worked into the Instagram app.
In a statement released on the situation, Luma’s management team said, “Eighteen months ago, we embarked on a mission to make capturing and sharing beautiful videos easy without expensive software or heavy equipment. By joining the exceptionally talented team at Instagram, we’re taking another big step towards realizing that mission.â€
Neither Instagram nor Luma would disclose the terms of the deal.
Luma had been named one of the top 10 startups from Y Combinator’s Demo Day in 2012.
By Paul Thomson :: 5:32 PM
Apple confirmed yesterday its purchase of Embark, a Silicon Valley-based company that creates mobile applications for public transit systems.
This is the second transit-related app purchase that Apple has made this summer. Last month, the company purchased the very popular HopStop app.
However, unlike HopStop, which is a single app that provides transit directions for many cities, Embark provides several individual apps for various transit systems, across the country, including BART in the Silicon Valley, the MBTA in Boston, and the New York City subway system.
Embark’s apps remain in Apple’s App Store, for now, but their Android offerings were immediately pulled from the Google Play store.
Combined with the purchase of HopStop, it appears as if Apple is setting its sights on transit directions included in a future version of iOS. Not to mention that the company’s purchase of business-data-location service Locationary earlier in the year, it’s clear that mapping systems are a priority. Not a huge secret after the public outcry that Apple endured with the dreadful release of iOS6 Maps last year.
By Gilbert Falso :: 1:37 PM
Trading has been temporarily halted on the NASDAQ stock exchange this afternoon due to technical issues at the exchange.
The exchange, home to many popular technology stocks, is the trading platform for Apple, Microsoft, Ebay, Yahoo and Facebook stock.
A spokesperson from the Securities and Exchange Commission said that the agency is monitoring the situation.
No estimated time of resolution has been announced by the exchange or regulators yet.
As of 1 p.m. ET, the NASDAQ was frozen at 3631, showing a gain of 31 points.
This is the second issue the exchange has suffered this week. Earlier, another technological glitch prevented all trading in stock options.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 1:45 PM
Update: As of 2:12 PM, it appears Reddit has been restored.
No, fellow slacker, it’s not just you. Social news and link sharing website Reddit is down for many users this afternoon, giving the image above, with the error message, “we took too long to make this page for you.”
Although Reddit is no stranger to downtime issues in its 6-year history, the site has been relatively stable as of late, so this widespread extended outage is interesting, to say the least.
The site began having problems around 1:20 PM Eastern Time, with users reporting slow page load times or occasional error messages. As of 1:40 PM, the entire site, including the front page seems to be offline.
No one from the company has made an official statement about the downtime yet, or an estimated fix.
Without Reddit, there’s always … well, Fark? Good luck!