SAN FRANCISCO | Fri Oct 19, 2012 9:58pm EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and Facebook Inc's first outside investor, is close to investing roughly $150 million in Airbnb in a deal that would value the lodging rental start-up at about $2.5 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Details of the investment round...

By David Alexander WASHINGTON | Fri Oct 19, 2012 8:33pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cyberspace is the battlefield of the future, with attackers already going after banks and other financial institutions and developing the ability to strike U.S. power grids and government systems, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Friday. "We confront a whole ...

Fri Oct 19, 2012 8:31pm EDT (Reuters) - Google Inc is considering a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over potential claims it broke antitrust law in its handling of patents for mobile devices, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The dispute has to do with whether Google's Motorola Mobility unit lived up to licensing commitments made after its ...

By Malathi Nayak SAN FRANCISCO | Fri Oct 19, 2012 8:01pm EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Activision Blizzard is betting big on children's fantasy adventure game "Skylanders" this holiday, with the launch of a new title on Sunday and plans for more mobile versions of the console game. The franchise's second offering, "Skylanders: Giants", will hit s...

SAN FRANCISCO | Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:54pm EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard plans to end its agreement selling solid-state storage devices made by Violin Memory, potentially complicating Violin Memory's plan for an initial public offering, Bloomberg reported. HP will wrap up its deal with Violin Memory, one of a growing number of companies sell...

BOSTON | Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:34pm EDT BOSTON (Reuters) - Apple Inc is removing old versions of Oracle Corp's Java software from Internet browsers on the computers of its customers when they install the latest update to its Mac operating system. Apple, which has previously included Java with installations of Mac OS X, announced the move on its support site...

Fri Oct 19, 2012 2:42pm EDT (Reuters) - AT&T said on Friday it will contribute a stake in its wireless business to the company's pension plan worth $9.5 billion in an effort to secure the fund, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. AT&T filed for approval for the proposal with the U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday. It said the ...

SEOUL | Fri Oct 19, 2012 12:46pm EDT SEOUL (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc's South Korean operation said on Friday it will quit the country, underscoring its struggle against Google Inc and local competitors expanding aggressively into mobile advertising and online services. South Korea is the first Asian country Yahoo is leaving, the firm said. An industry pionee...

Fri Oct 19, 2012 8:28am EDT (Reuters) - At least seven brokerages cut their price targets on Google Inc's shares after the company missed Wall Street earnings expectations, but analysts said growing mobile advertising revenue points to better times ahead. The earnings report, released hours ahead of schedule due to an error on Thursday, revealed slowing sales in ...

TOKYO | Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:02am EDT TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp said it will cut staff in its headquarters by a fifth and shutter a factory making camera lenses and mobile phones in Japan, providing new details of a previously announced plan to trim its global headcount by 10,000 by end-March. In addition to 1,800 at a chemical business it sold to a stat...

The country’s National Police has turned to technology to make the streets safer, as it recently implemented a global positioning system (GPS) to coordinate officers’ responses, Minister of Public Safety Mario Zamora said. The system, which was first installed in 20 patrol cars in late April, allows officers to see exactly how far they are away from a potential crime scene. “If a citizen...

The opening up of the telecommunications sector in Costa Rica promotes modernization and increased supply of cable TV services. Nación.com reports that "the entry of the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) with television services, and other new entrants such as Claro and Repretel with satellite television, predicts a sharp rise in subscription services, as radical as those of m...

Costa Rica state-owned operator Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), via its Kolbi mobile unit, has launched a voice call service dubbed 'Kolbi Favoritos'. Service users can select a favorite on-net mobile number and make unlimited anytime calls to that number. The Kolbi Favoritos service is available for both prepay and postpaid customers and costs CRC 3,500 per month. Customers can...

In the past The Costa Rica Star has reported on the Canadian Government helping with ballistic identification in Costa Rica. Swamped by a rising tide of crime Belize is reaching out for assistance to foreign donors and the government of Canada has come forward with the donation of a Ballistic Identification System to help the local police improve crime fighting capabilities. An official ...

In conjunction with Mobile Payments Latin America (Dec 5-6, Miami), M for Mobile have released the latest most comprehensive White paper on Mobile Payments in Latin America. The White paper offers you expert insight into the most lucrative areas on mobile payments in Latin America in order to make sure your business plan is on trend and ahead of the game. Due to the rapid uptake and develop...

We know how frustrating it can be to consume all of the news and information you need about Costa Rica, going between the Tico Times, Inside Costa Rica, La Nacion, Costa Rica Hoy, and others. We have decided to launch and will continually develop our newest feature at The Costa Rica Star. We hope this saves your time and energy when finding the news that you need most. The Costa Rica Star n...

CNFL, Compañía Nacional de Fuerza y Luz, has been the primary distributor of electricity in Costa Rica since 1941. CNFL has 480,000 customers, provides 46% of Costa Rica’s electricity and is the national institution that distributes most of the power throughout the Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM). During the dry season, when CNFL’s nine hydroelectric plants cannot keep up with the demand, they...

Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leading cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere, today announced the opening of its Costa Rica services and support center. The new center is slated to create over 50 jobs through the end of 2014. Akamai's success across the globe has triggered significant demand for its cloud infrastructure ...

M for Mobile is pleased to announce the 2nd annual Mobile Payments Latin America event is back, December 5-6, Miami. Latin America’s most exciting names and companies will gather to discuss and overcome the key issues the industry faces, case studies throughout the different regions, a special focus on Brazil and the latest most exciting initiatives in mobile payments industry in Latin Americ...

Scaling is hard. Really hard. As we have seen with the recent speed bumps at highfliers like Groupon and Zynga, taking "lean startups" from foundation to creating sustainable, scalable, profitable business models is a very rare and special task. So I'm highlighting a few companies outside of the Google/Amazon/Facebook pantheon that have built large, sustainable, profitable business models at s...

The IASC Humanitarian Early Warning Service (HEWSweb) is an inter-agency partnership project aimed at establishing a common platform for humanitarian early warnings and forecasts for natural hazards. The main objective of HEWSweb is to bring together and make accessible in a simple manner the most credible early warning information available at the global level from multiple specialized instit...

Global payment services processor The Western Union Company has expanded the availability of its cross-border mobile money transfer service in El Salvador, Central and South America. The payment service can be available in the region by subscribing to a mobile money service provided by Tigo, a subsidiary of the telecommunication group Millicom International Cellular. Western Union and Ti...

Last week, the Worldwatch Institute’s Central America team – together with our partners from the INCAE Business School – convened a working group of nearly 40 renewable energy experts and decision-makers in Managua, Nicaragua. The emphasis: access to energy for marginalized communities through sustainable energy options. With presentations and participation from the government’s renewable ener...

Intro: Mike Poynton is the founder and CEO of Paradise Social here in Costa Rica. He has been a long time friend of The Costa Rica Star since day one, and recently he wrote an article on SocialMediaToday.com about 5 apps you should consider when traveling. Mike not only works full time as a media consultant, but he finds time to raise money for charity and help to keep the beaches of Costa Ric...

Every day, I immerse myself in stories. And not just any stories. In my day job at Twitter, Inc., and in my work as an author (Twitter for Good: Change the World One Tweet at a Time) and speaker, I have the good fortune to sink into the best of stories. Stories of individuals taking the power of technology into their own hands to make the world a better place. Stories of folks using digi...

Indications are that the Chinese consortium Xinwei's offer has the best fit for the requirements of the Nicaraguan Government to win award for the 1785-1805 megahertz band. So stated the director of the Nicaraguan Institute for Telecommunications and Postal Services (Telcor), Orlando Castillo, referring to the proposal to provide mobile phone services and Internet access which was opened to...

NOTE: If you are reading this article on email subscription, you will have to click the title and view it on the website to see the video embedded on the article below. Is Instagram the new CNN? As cable networks and traditional news media lose audience share, Instagram seems to be joining Twitter as an invaluable tool in breaking news situations. The latest example: a massive volca...

Nicaragua has launched a tender for two new mobile operator licenses, EFE reports, citing Orlando Castillo, head of telecoms regulator Telcor (Instituto Nicaraguense de Telecomunicaciones y Correos). License winners will be able to provide mobile voice, broadband, and 4G services across the country. Nicaragua currently has two mobile voice operators, namely America Movil’s Claro unit and T...

A feasibility study has been submitted by the mayor of the capital of Costa Rica which sets the required investment at $220 million. The French government provided the $700,000 in funds, the cost of the feasibility analysis for the proposed operation of tram transportation along a 10 kilometer stretch from the capital of Costa Rica. There is still no government decision on how to finan...

Auxis is pleased to announce the expansion of its service delivery capabilities in Costa Rica. In less than eighteen months, Auxis outgrew the capacity at its previous location in the Ultrapark Free Trade Zone, and has relocated to a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility in the America Free Trade Zone ("AFZ"). AFZ is a modern business park which has also attracted large global corporations such...

This was demonstrated in the latest survey by Red 506, made by the Unimer Company, for the newspaper El Financiero, which was recently released. 127,000 Costa Rican's have joined Facebook in the last year and use it as their main website, followed by Twitter with 104,000 people. Mauricio Fallas, Unimer´s creative director and expert in the social networks, assured that the social netw...

The state run company RACSA has signed a contract with the Swedish company Vía Europa in order to provide optical fiber multiservices, including very high-speed Internet. Under the agreement, the company Vía Europa will construct, operate and maintain the infrastructure for a fiber optic network and manage the services market. The end customer contact will be made by the state run Radi...

Panama’s President Ricardo Martinelli stated on Wednesday that Panama’s first solar PV installation will hopefully lead to a reduction in the cost of energy across the nation, by means of renewable technologies. The project, located in the province of Herrera in the Sarigua National Park, is being developed through a US$9 million contribution from Italy’s Enel Green Power. Operation of the...

Juan Manuel Arguello, the head of Telefonica Nicaragua, has revealed that the subscriber base of its cellular unit Movistar has reached 2.8 million, of which around 80% are on pre-paid contracts. In an interview with Confidencial.com.ni, Arguello noted that the cellco’s network currently covers 85% of Nicaragua’s territory, a figure which Movistar hopes to increase to 95% by year-end. ...

An Android app designed to calculate the exact amount of fertilizer needed to be applied to crops has been invented by a Taiwanese national who is performing his alternative military service with a technical mission in Belize. Lai Chun-fa, who graduated from the Department of Information Management at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, said Tuesday that the idea was inspi...

The governments of El Salvador and India signed a technological, scientific and innovation cooperation agreement as part of the First Political and Bilateral Cooperation Talk held in the capital of San Salvador. Officials from both countries agreed to further develop existing programmes and to open new cooperation paths with the aim of increasing investment, tourism and support for small an...

Of the over 400,000 Android apps, only a few rise to the top of the list. Of those, not every Android app is suitable for use in Costa Rica. Since they were among the firsts apps installed on my Samsung Galaxy S III, the list does not include Dropbox or SugarSync. I covered the installation of Dropbox as part of the initial configuration of the phone. With the Samsung Galaxy S III 50 GB promot...

The Policia Nacional del Salvador has gone live with Tiburon's DispatchNow computer-aided dispatch and mobile communications solution. The El Salvador system is an enterprise solution with 109 call-taking & dispatch positions distributed across 1 main center and 13 remote dispatch sites, all using the DispatchNow application. The solution also includes over 350 mobile applications running o...

With my phone configured and secured for daily use, I started to explore app stores, firmware upgrades, local file transfer. There is more to Google Play Store than meets the eye, and Google Play Store is not the only source of Android apps. Besides the upcoming release of Jelly Bean for the Samsung Galaxy S III, there are other firmware updates. How do I know that I have the latest release of...

Mobile transaction platform tPago is expanding across Latin America to cater for the unbanked, its parent company GCS International has announced. As you may know, it has been operating in the Dominican Republic since 2010, and will now be available to users in Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Puerto Rico. Mobile payments are an attractive and fast-growing segment; according to Pyramid ...