The company managed to increase online marketing revenue by 40 percent to 40 percent to $958.5 million (5.95 billion RMB), and increased active online customers by 28 percent to 410,000 compared to the previous year. Revenue per online customer, however, slipped 6.5 percent from the previous quarter.

Meanwhile, the company’s selling, administrative and general costs rose 77 percent, while R&D jumped 83 percent, stymieing its profit despite the recent growth.

The company’s efforts to buy a stake in online video site iQiyi last November also cut into its profit rate.

“For the quarter, we also recognized a whole quarter consolidation of iQiyi,” said Baidu CFO Jennifer Li.

The company predicted second quarter revenue to be between $1.19 billion and $1.22 billion, which analysts are also expecting.

Though Baidu’s CEO Robin Li admitted the company was rapidly “burning through cash,” he described the overall results for the quarter as “healthy” during an earnings call.

“Continually developing the most advanced search technology remains central to Baidu’s overall strategy, and we’re very excited by the possibilities opened up by innovation in image and voice recognition,” Li said. “Our focus will remain on tightly integrating our leading search core with valuable vertical products in areas such as travel, e-commerce and location-based service to bring users the information they want as quickly as possible on both desktop and mobile devices.”

The video streaming company is defying analyst critiques of unsustainability as it accelerates its user base through original programming. It gained 2 million subscribers this last quarter, beating analysts expectations of 1.7 million. Globally, it gained 3 million streaming subscribers. The company released the original series “House of Clouds” in February to critical acclaim. Its second original release, a horror series from Eli Roth titled “Hemlock Grove,” had more viewers its first weekend than “House of Cards” and is particularly popular with young adults. Netflix plans to release a third series, a revival of the Fox sitcom, “Arrested Development,” this Memorial Day weekend.

“The global viewing and high level of engagement with the show increased our confidence in our ability to pick shows Netflix members will embrace and to pick partners skilled at delivering a great series,” the company explained in a letter to shareholders explaining the quarterly results. “The high level of viewer satisfaction implies we are able to target the right audience without the benefit of existing broadcast or cable viewing data and the strong viewing across all our markets gives us faith in our ability to create global content brands in a cost effective, efficient way.”

Netflix stocked jump 6.73 percent to $174.37 on Monday’s release of the quarterly report, and then surged another 20 percent in afterhours trading.

Netflix’s practice of posting all episodes in an original series online had drawn concerns that consumers would sign up only temporarily to watch their preferred content and then unsubscribe. This does not appear to be the case. Only 8,000 customers accepted Netflix’s free trial to watch “House of Cards” and then canceled their subscriptions.

Netflix also announced a new subscriber option designed for large households and families. Whereas the existing service costs $7.99 per month and allows two devices to stream, the company will soon launch an option to allow four streaming devices for $11.99.

Netflix’s profit for this quarter was actually diluted due to a $16 million loss on “extinguishing of debt” related to a February refinancing. Earnings had expected to be 20 cents per a share, but were actually 5 cents. That’s still much better than the company did a year earlier, when it posted a loss of $5 million, or 8 cents a share, for the same quarter last year.

And with 242 million Chinese Internet users purchasing goods last year in a country of more than 1.3 billion people, there is still plenty of room to grow. Despite the high numbers, ecommerce purchases still made up only 6.1 percent of the total retail sales for all consumer goods in China.

The growth was the result of widespread adoption of mobile, which has introduced the Internet to a growing segment of the Chinese population. In the last half of 2012, 40.7 percent of online shoppers used a mobile device to browse ecommerce sites, with 53.6 accessing ecommerce channels via mobile instead of a traditional desktop.

The most common purchases were clothing, at 81.8 percent, daily necessities, at 31.6 percent, and computers and digital electronics, at 29.6 percent.

About 53.3 percent of respondents used their mobile devices to shop while still at home, as many are turning to mobile instead of desktops to research ecommerce options. About 26.2 percent reported browsing on smartphones at work or school, while 10.6 percent research ecommerce options while in commute or using public transport.

Those are some serious numbers, but it’s only the beginning. China’s ecommerce market is set to soon overtake the US. Last November, China’s “Double Eleven,” a Chinese holiday for singles on November 11 similar to Valentine’s Day, helped Chinese ecommerce site Taobao to earn $3 billion in a single day, more than twice the $1.25 billion Cyber Monday earned in the US just before. Continue to expect startling growth rates from China as its sizable population enters the middle class and can afford next generation technologies.

Apple paid about $20 million for the company.

The Wall St. Journal was the first to report the story. Apple confirmed the acquisition in a statement to Macrumors, stating: “The two-year-old startup has developed ways for mobile apps to detect a phone user’s location in a building using Wi-Fi signals. It has been offering the technology to application developers for indoor mapping and new types of retail and social networking apps.”

The startup has only a handful of employees, and one of its founders, Joseph Huang,  is a former Google intern. The company had been producing its technology for indoor developers of indoor mapping, retail and social networking apps.

WiFiSlam establishes location using a variety of methods. As WiFi and cell tower trilateration cannot be done inside, the company measures WiFi signals to get a general location, and then uses WiFi fingerprinting to get an idea of the layout of the room. Slam is an acronym for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping, as the technology uses sensors to record trajectories and blend with location data to get a more specific location indoors. It uses a combination pattern recognition and machine learning to more specifically detail a location indoors.

“When a gadget using WiFiSLAM wants to know its location, it analyzes the signal strengths and unique IDs of all the Wi-Fi networks around it,” MIT Tech Review explained in a review of the company’s technology when it first came out. “That is matched against a reference data set for the area either accessed over the Internet, or stored on the device. The estimate of location can be sharpened if a gadget moves slightly, because WiFiSLAM’s algorithms can gather multiple fingerprints. Compass data and accelerometer signals capturing a person’s footsteps are also used to refine the accuracy of subsequent location fixes as a person moves around.”

The sale is not expected to give Apple a significant lead over Google and Google Maps, though it does serve to play catch up as Apple tries to put its mapping fiasco behind it. It complements Apple’s previous acquisitions of C3 Technologies and Poly9. How much of a boost it gives Apple will depend on the accuracy of its indoor GPS pinpoints, though from the looks of it, WiFiSlam is better than most.

The company’s IPO last May was troubled to say the least. Nasdaq’s systems halted for an hour and half the morning of the trading due to a glitch, and investors were left wondering for hours if the deals on their shares went through, trailing leaked dollars in the wake.

The exchange admitted its failure a couple of days following the sale, and submitted plans for reimbursement to the SEC, while still maintaining it was not responsible for trading floor losses.

Those looking to get on the claim must submit requests in writing, which will be reviewed by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Nasdaq is not required to pay any claims exceeding the $62 million. The approval of the payout plan does not shield the exchange from further lawsuits.

Nasdaq will pay all claims in cash. The exchange had originally offered to pay $40 million and another $27 million in discounted trading fees, but investors balked with claims the settlement was insufficient.

Many investors are still disgruntled, understandably as the award covers only a little more than 20 percent of the IPO losses. UBS  was quick to condemn the settlement, the Wall St. Journal reported.

Of course, anyone who now owns Facebook stock that wasn’t part of their employee compensation package has been burned by the IPO as well. Shares are currently priced at $25.20, a modest gain over its low of $18, but still far short of the opening IPO price of $40.

Published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple’s U.S. Patent No. 8,400,548 for “Synchronized, interactive augmented reality displays for multifunction devices” could add better interactive functions for mapping, enable users to share tours of favorite tourist attractions customized with personal information, or enable art galleries and museums to offer interactive videos about their collections. Mapping features could provide more detailed information about various points of interest.  It would enable users to point an iPhone or iPad at an object or city location and receive information about the object.

“A device can receive live video of a real-world, physical environment on a touch sensitive surface. One or more objects can be identified in the live video,” the patent describes. “An information layer can be generated related to the objects. In some implementations, the information layer can include annotations made by a user through the touch sensitive surface. The information layer and live video can be combined in a display of the device.”

One example the patent lists is a user pointing a camera at a circuit board. The live video feed would display the images of the board overlaid with information about its various parts, provided via a website, database, or online library. The display would also allow users to add their own annotations through writing or drawing them on a portable device, and share them with other users.

Users could also edit the data to personalize or correct inaccuracies. The patent also allows for a split screen that could display the pure video stream in one screen and the information-overlay video in another.

Though the patent has obvious mobile implications, it also mentions such as PCs, gaming systems, and media players.

Apple’s approach to augmented reality is unique in its sharing and collaboration potential, especially as our web use only becomes more social.

The center examined 1,400 apps downloaded from a variety of app markets, and found that 66.9 percent tracked users’ data, while 34.5 percent tracked data that was completely unrelated to the task of the app.

The apps were found to download text message history, address books, call records, and location data. More than half of the apps tracked user’s location, and 13.2 percent tracked location even though location had nothing to do with the functionality of the app. In fact, study and beauty apps tended to track location the most.  About 21 percent checked user’s address books, 18 percent tracked call records, and 12 percent read text history. About 15 percent of the apps also made calls or sent texts without the user’s consent, leaving some users to pay for the unexpected cost.

Users received no notification that such data would be accessed.

Most of the apps have nothing to do with Google. Google Play does not support paid apps in China, in part because of Google’s strained relationship with the Chinese government over censorship, but also out of the concern that Android’s openness would be easy for spammers and cyber criminals to abuse. Most Chinese users turn to unofficial websites for Android apps.

Google’s hands off approach has created a fragmented climate in the Chinese market that has led to a sort of app anarchy .  Non-official Android apps have been dubbed ChinaDroids, or generic apps equipped with modified versions of Android.

Though Google has little control over the Android app market in China, the Chinese government has expressed concerns over Android’s dominance of the app market. China’s Ministry of Information Technology recently accused Google in a white paper that said the Android market gave Google too much control over China’s smartphone industry and discriminated against Chinese companies by making it difficult for Chinese companies to develop their own systems.

Clearly, Google has little control over an app market that doesn’t even take place under its own watch.

The research was first published on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Based on public wiki  data.

The Facebook data was compared to online personality tests taken by the volunteers. Compiling the Facebook data into an algorithm, researchers could predict whether someone was white or African American with 95 percent accuracy, whether he or she was gay with 88 percent accuracy, and which political party that individual leaned toward with 85 percent accuracy. Gender could be predicted 93 percent of the time, while age had 75 percent accuracy. People who used drugs could be anticipated with 65 percent accuracy, and identified as drinkers 70 percent of the time.

While some preferences were obvious, such as gay men liking the No H8 Campaign, others were a bit surprising. Gay men also tended to like “Oz the Musical,” but intelligent men tended to like curly fries and love thunderstorms. People who like Austin, Texas, tended to be drug users, as were people who related to the statement “Relationships Should Be Between Two People Not the Whole Universe.” Like sliding on the floor in your socks? You probably don’t own a bong. Straight men tend to be Wu-Tang Clan fans and wake up from naps feeling confused.

Naturally, computers are not prone to stereotypes, yet patterns tend to emerge. How each group relates to each “like” preference, remains to be seen, and could simply be a statistical coincidence.

“Although some of the Likes clearly relate to their predicted attribute, as in the case of No H8 Campaign and homosexuality, other pairs are more elusive; there is no obvious connection between Curly Fries and high intelligence,” the paper said.

Personality could also be predicted, and that could be a problem, though a fixable one. The study found that likes were connected with certain personality aspects in a similar ratio to the results of psychological tests. The study mentions one case where retailers used data to predict pregnancy, and in one instance, a pregnant teen was inundated with ads related to baby products though she had yet to tell her family, putting her in an awkward situation. Michal Kosinski, director of operations of the Psychometrics Centre at Cambridge University and lead author of the study, said that technology should provide some protections against privacy invasion.
“Our results [also] show that these predictions could be potentially very intrusive,” Kosinki stated in the study. “There are technical ways to make sure that individuals have full control over their data, and technology can be designed in such a way that data cannot be abused.”

Oracle has made some strong boasts about its cloud ambitions, but has yet to produce any real muscle. This acquisition gives Oracle new team members with real insight into what’s happening behind the scenes at OpenStack, as well as a unique tool that can plug into a data center and make any platform ubiquitous, a key advantage for an enterprise company selling a variety of technologies to a diversity of infrastructures.