Miami in spotlight at AVCC, other entrepreneurship events

Entrepreneurs from around the world took the stage during this packed week of entrepreneurship events in Miami: Florida International University’s Americas Venture Capital Conference (known as AVCC), HackDay, Wayra’s Global DemoDay and Endeavor’s International Selection Panel.

The events, all part of the first Innovate MIA week, also put the spotlight on Miami as it continues to try to develop into a technology hub for the Americas.

“While I like art, I absolutely love what is happening today... The time has come to become a tech hub in Miami,” said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez, who kicked off the venture capital conference on Thursday. He told the audience of 450 investors and entrepreneurs about the county’s $1 million investment in the Launch Pad Tech Accelerator in downtown Miami.

“I have no doubt that this gathering today will produce new ideas and new business ventures that will put our community on a fast track to becoming a center for innovative, tech-driven entrepreneurship,” Gimenez said.

Brad Feld, an early-stage investor and a founder of TechStars, cautioned that won’t happen overnight. Building a startup community can take five, 10, even 15 years, and those leading the effort, who should be entrepreneurs themselves, need to take the long-term view, he told the audience via video. “You can create very powerful entrepreneurial ecosystems in any city... I’ve spent some time in Miami, I think you are off to a great start.”

Throughout the two-day AVCC at the JW Brickell Marriott, as well as the Endeavor and Wayra events, entrepreneurs from around the world pitched their companies, hoping to persuade investors to part with some of their green.

And in some cases, the entrepreneurs could win money, too. During the venture capital conference, 29 companies —including eight from South Florida such as itMD, which connects doctors, patients and imaging facilities to facilitate easy access of records — competed for more than $50,000 in cash and prizes through short “elevator’’ pitches. Each took questions from the judges, then demoed their products or services in the conference “Hot Zone,” a room adjoining the ballroom. Some companies like oLyfe, a platform to organize what people share online, are hoping to raise funds for expansion into Latin America. Others like Ideame, a trilingual crowdfunding platform, were laser focused on pan-Latin American opportunities.

Winning the grand prize of $15,000 in cash and art was Trapezoid Digital Security of Miami, which provides hardware-based security solutions for enterprise and cloud environments. Fotopigeon of Tampa, a photo-sharing and printing service targeting the military and prison niches, scored two prizes.

The conference offered opportunities to hear formal presentations on current trends — among them the surge of start-ups in Brazil; the importance of mobile apps and overheated company valuations — and informal opportunities to connect with fellow entrepreneurs.

Speakers included Gaston Legorburu of SapientNitro, Albert Santalo of CareCloud and Juan Diego Calle of .Co Internet, all South Florida entrepreneurs. Jerry Haar, executive director of FIU’s Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center, which produced the conference with a host of sponsors, said the organizers worked hard to make the conference relevant to both the local and Latin American audience, with panels on funding and recruiting for startups, for instance.

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EPA lawsuit against Miami-Dade says county ignoring Clean Water Act

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has filed an anticipated lawsuit against Miami-Dade, saying the county is not abiding by the federal Clean Water Act.

The 30-page complaint demands the county take measures to prevent overflows of pollutants, prevent blockages, and to repair deteriorating and broken sewer lines, pumps and force mains. It also seeks damages of $32,500 for each day the county violated the Clean Water Act prior to Jan. 12, 2009, and $37,500 for each day after that date.

The lawsuit was expected, as a procedural matter. The county, EPA, state Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Department of Justice have been negotiating a new consent decree over the failings of the county’s water and sewer department since May. A consent decree is a negotiated settlement of a lawsuit, yet no lawsuit had been filed until Thursday.

Two weeks ago Miami-Dade forwarded a $1.5 billion, 15-year plan to the federal government, proposing to rebuild rusty pipes, brittle pumps and sewage treatment plants throughout the county that in some cases are almost 100 years old. One of the largest fixes would be spending $555 million to reconstruct the controversial Virginia Key Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The county would spend another $394 million fixing two other plants, in Goulds and North Miami. The plan also calls for spending $408 million replacing miles of brittle transmission lines and to replace or rehab most of the 1,035 pump stations throughout Miami-Dade.

The $1.5 billion bill would be covered with new revenue bonds, and an increase in county water fees, which are among the lowest in the nation, administrators say.

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Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4 might not launch until 2014

Nintendo (NTDOY) says its kickstarted the next generation of video game consoles with the Wii U. But considering its graphics and processing power are comparable to Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 and Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 3, hardcore gamers are holding out for the next Xbox, tentatively dubbed “Xbox 720,” and next-generation PlayStation, tentatively called PS4. Rumors insist Microsoft and Sony will both launch their next consoles in the fall of 2013, but SemiAccurate, the website that first reported the next Xbox could see a delay, says there is a bit of confusion over how the consoles are progressing and when they’ll arrive.

According to SemiAccurate, the next Xbox is currently code-named “Kryptos” and not “Durango” anymore, and the next PlayStation is now code-named “Thebes” rather than “Orbis.” The PS4 will reportedly have a 28-nanometer AMD chipset and will be produced by IBM or Global Foundries.

SemiAccurate says the PS4 could be released in spring of 2014 or fall 2014 and the Xbox 720 could still see the delay from fall 2013 to 2014.

Xbox World claimed last month that the next Xbox will have a Blu-ray disc drive, Kinect 2.0, directional audio, TV output and input, an “innovative controller” and support for augmented reality glasses – all packaged in a magnesium alloy shell that will supposedly use the same patented “VaporMg” process found on the Surface tablet.

Not only that, but Microsoft is also working on an “Xbox Lite,” according to reports from earlier this year.

As for PS4 details, VG247 reported in November that Sony has already sent out various developer kits with specs including 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

Sony and Microsoft are expected to reveal their next consoles at E3 2013 this coming June.

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President Obama Fights Tears as He Addresses Nation

President Barack Obama addressed the nation moments ago to respond to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. Having trouble composing his raw emotions, the president wiped tears streaming down his face.

He said, "I offered Governor Malloy my condolences on behalf of the nation" and vowed to give the community "every resource" they need to recover.

RELATED: Celebs Tweet Reactions to CT School Shooting

Referencing other mass shootings making headlines, President Obama said, "We've endured too many of these tragedies in the last few years. Each time I hear the news, I react not as a president, but as a parent. That was especially true today. There's not a parent in America who doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief as I do. The majority of those who died today are children……they had their entire lives ahead of them- birthdays, graduations weddings, kids of their own."

Tonight, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will be extra grateful to embrace their two daughters, Sasha and Malia. "[We'll] hug our children a little tighter and tell them that we love them," he proclaimed. "For as blessed as [some victim's families] are to have their children home tonight, they know their innocence has been taken."

He calls for all of America to "extend a hand to those in need…in the hard days to come."

VIDEO: Parent of Columbine victim: 'You can't get past the pain'

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Emotional Obama on school shooting: Child victims 'had their entire lives ahead of them'

REUTERS

President Obama speaks about the shooting.

WASHINGTON – President Obama today wiped away tears and got a lump in his throat as he gave voice to America’s pain and anguish in the wake of a horrific shooting rampage in a Connecticut elementary school.

"The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of five and ten years old," said Obama, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.

The choked-up president took a long pause to regain his composure before he continued his address from the White House.

"They had their entire lives ahead of them, birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own,” said Obama.

In response to the unthinkable tragedy that left 20 children and six adults dead, Obama promised “meaningful” action to combat gun violence.

“Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well, for as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children's innocence has been torn away from them,” said the president.

He added a person note.

“This evening, Michelle and I will do what I know every parent in America will do, which is hug our children a little tighter,” he said. “And we’ll tell them that we love them and we’ll remind each other of how deeply we love we another.”

“But there are families in Connecticut that cannot do that. And they need us now,” he said.

smiller@nypost.com

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NBCUniversal bolsters Telemundo as US Latino market grows

Telemundo has long been like a remote Caribbean island, cut off from its sprawling media homeland.

NBCUniversal acquired the Spanish-language television network a decade ago for $2 billion but became discouraged by its seemingly limited prospects. But Comcast Corp.’s takeover of NBCUniversal last year may be building Telemundo a bridge to the mainland.

“Telemundo now has the full support of Comcast and NBCUniversal,” said Emilio Romano, a former Mexican airline chief executive who was hired a year ago to run Telemundo. “For them, Telemundo is clearly a diamond in the rough.”

The Miami-based network, which began in 1954 as a single Puerto Rico TV station, had long been viewed as an “East Coast” outlet infused with Caribbean flavor — not the right ingredients for the majority of U.S. Latinos, two-thirds of whom are from Mexico or are of Mexican descent.

Appealing to viewers with Central American heritage has become central to NBCUniversal’s campaign to grow Telemundo. But there’s a hitch: Telemundo’s rival, Univision Communications, has a lock on Mexico’s top-rated prime-time soap operas, plus contracts with top Mexican actors and the rights to some of the most popular Mexican soccer teams — making Univision the network of choice for most Mexican immigrants.

So Telemundo has had to shell out tens of millions of dollars to produce original programming to compete in the increasingly crowded field of Spanish-language television.

“They are a hungry No. 2,” said Carmen Baez, president of Latin America operations for advertising behemoth Omnicom Group. “It’s like that old Avis rental-car slogan: ‘We try harder.’ ”

Since Comcast took majority control of NBCUniversal in January 2011, it has installed new management at Telemundo and increased the operating budget. Last year Comcast agreed to spend about $600 million for the rights to broadcast the FIFA World Cup soccer tournaments in 2015 through 2022 — nearly double the amount that Univision currently pays.

The company increased Telemundo’s annual programming budget nearly 20 percent and steered more resources to local Telemundo stations.

“It’s a 360-degree programming strategy built around cultural relevance,” said Lauren Zalaznick, who oversees Telemundo as NBCUniversal’s chairman of entertainment and digital networks.

For example, because many Latino families watch television together, Telemundo licensed films from Walt Disney Co.’s Pixar Animation Studios, creator of such blockbusters as Toy Story and Cars, to build a Sunday night movie block. Telemundo has slowly bolstered its daytime schedule, sending its TV judge, Ana Maria Polo — who has been dubbed the “Latino Judge Judy” — on a road trip to Los Angeles and broadcasting more news from Mexico.

The company also has paid more attention to Mun2, its bilingual youth-oriented cable channel. This week the channel was dealt a devastating blow with the unexpected death of its reality show superstar, Jenni Rivera, in a plane crash in northern Mexico.

Telemundo draws an average of 1.2 million viewers in prime time, an increase of 5 percent over 2011 and 18 percent more than in 2010, according to ratings firm Nielsen. Univision’s ratings have held steady but its second broadcast network, TeleFutura, is down 5 percent this year.

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Jackson Health System chairman says UM relationship has caused ‘irreparable harm’

Planning for a closed-door meeting next week to discussion strategic planning, board chairman Marcos Lapciuc said Thursday that the Jackson Health System needs to reconsider its future because it is currently “misaligned with our academic partner,” the University of Miami.

Lapciuc said that the UM relationship in recent years has “created irreparable harm” to Jackson and has “hurt the poor” that Jackson serves.

He said that Jackson needs to continue working with UM’s medical school in areas where UM wants to partner, such as the transplant program, but needs to find other opportunities now that UM is emphasizing the needs of its own 560-bed University of Miami Hospital, which is across the street from Jackson Memorial.

Lapciuc noted that many hospital chains are aggressively buying physician practices, preparing to form accountable care organizations that are emphasized in the Affordable Care Act, but “these are expensive acquisitions” that will be hard for Jackson to afford at present.

Lapciuc’s remarks came during the board’s monthly committee day. On Wednesday, the board will hold a strategic planning session with an open meeting followed by an hour-and-half closed session to discuss plans that the board doesn’t want competitors to know about.

Such closed sessions of public hospitals are permitted under a special exception to the state’s Sunshine Laws.

In other business Thursday, Chief Financial Officer Mark Knight reported that the system showed a surplus of $2 million in November, but cash on hand was an ultra-low 8.78 days, because anticipated payments from the state had yet to arrive. The benchmark for financially stable public hospitals is 174.8 days of cash, according to Jackson’s financial report.

Net patient revenue was $81.7 million for the month, up from $69 million in November 2011 — primarily because many more patients were qualifying for Medicaid, meaning lower numbers of uninsured, nonpaying patients, Knight said.

Jackson’s efforts on collecting from insurers continues to improve. Insurers are now paying the system on an average of 45.36 days after being billed – better than the national benchmark of 45.9 days.

Duane Fitch, a hospital consultant for Jackson’s unions, noted that with such success it made no sense for Jackson to pursue out-sourcing of its business office operations. “If it’s not broke, why fix it?”

Chief Executive Carlos Migoya said Jackson was just exploring the possibility of out-sourcing and had made no decision.

Migoya told the board that federal regulators were demanding 12 actions to fix problems in the Medicare portion of the Jackson Health Plan. One action required: Stop immediately requiring authorization of emergency room visits. Jackson executives said they’re working to comply.

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Selling flak jackets in the cyberwars

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When the Israeli army and Hamas trade virtual blows in cyberspace, or when hacker groups like Anonymous rise from the digital ether, or when WikiLeaks dumps a trove of classified documents, some see a lawless Internet.

But Matthew Prince, chief executive at CloudFlare, a little-known Internet start-up that serves some of the Web’s most controversial characters, sees a business opportunity.

Founded in 2010, CloudFlare markets itself as an Internet intermediary that shields websites from distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks, the crude but effective weapon that hackers use to bludgeon websites until they go dark. The 40-person company claims to route up to 5 percent of all Internet traffic through its global network.

Prince calls his company the “Switzerland” of cyberspace – assiduously neutral and open to all comers. But just as companies like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have faced profound questions about the balance between free speech and openness on the Internet and national security and law enforcement concerns, CloudFlare‘s business has posed another thorny question: what kinds of services, if any, should an American company be allowed to offer designated terrorists and cyber criminals?

CloudFlare’s unusual position at the heart of this debate came to the fore last month, when the Israel Defense Forces sought help from CloudFlare after its website was struck by attackers based in Gaza. The IDF was turning to the same company that provides those services to Hamas and the al-Quds Brigades, according to publicly searchable domain information. Both Hamas and al-Quds, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are designated by the United States as terrorist groups.

Under the USA Patriot Act, U.S. firms are forbidden from providing “material support” to groups deemed foreign terrorist organizations. But what constitutes material support – like many other facets of the law itself – has been subject to intense debate.

CloudFlare’s dealings have attracted heated criticism in the blogosphere from both Israelis and Palestinians, but Prince defended his company as a champion of free speech.

“Both sides have an absolute right to tell their story,” said Prince, a 38-year old former lawyer. “We’re not providing material support for anybody. We’re not sending money, or helping people arm themselves.”

Prince noted that his company only provides defensive capabilities that enable websites to stay online.

“We can’t be sitting in a role where we decide what is good or what is bad based on our own personal biases,” he said. “That’s a huge slippery slope.”

Many U.S. agencies are customers, but so is WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing organization. CloudFlare has consulted for many Wall Street institutions, yet also protects Anonymous, the “hacktivist” group associated with the Occupy movement.

Prince‘s stance could be tested at a time when some lawmakers in the United States and Europe, armed with evidence that militant groups rely on the Web for critical operations and recruitment purposes, have pressured Internet companies to censor content or cut off customers.

Last month, conservative political lobbies, as well as seven lawmakers led by Ted Poe, a Republican from Texas, urged the FBI to shut down the Hamas Twitter account. The account remains active; Twitter declined to comment.

MATERIAL SUPPORT

Although it has never prosecuted an Internet company under the Patriot Act, the government’s use of the material support argument has steadily risen since 2006. Since September 11, 2001, more than 260 cases have been charged under the provision, according to Fordham Law School’s Terrorism Trends database.

Catherine Lotrionte, the director of Georgetown University’s Institute for Law, Science and Global Security and a former Central Intelligence Agency lawyer, argued that Internet companies should be more closely regulated.

“Material support includes web services,” Lotrionte said. “Denying them services makes it more costly for the terrorists. You’re cornering them.”

But others have warned that an aggressive government approach would have a chilling effect on free speech.

“We’re resurrecting the kind of broad-brush approaches we used in the McCarthy era,” said David Cole, who represented the Humanitarian Law Project, a non-profit organization that was charged by the Justice Department for teaching law to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is designated by the United States as a terrorist group. The group took its case to the Supreme Court but lost in 2010.

The material support law is vague and ill-crafted, to the point where basic telecom providers, for instance, could be found guilty by association if a terrorist logs onto the Web to plot an attack, Cole said.

In that case, he asked, “Do we really think that AT&T or Google should be held accountable?”

CloudFlare said it has not been contacted about its services by the U.S. government. Spokespeople for Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, told Reuters they contracted a cyber-security company in Gaza that out-sources work to foreign companies, but declined to comment further. The IDF confirmed it had hired CloudFlare, but declined to discuss “internal security” matters.

CloudFlare offers many of its services for free, but the company says websites seeking advanced protection and features can see their bill rise to more than $ 3,000 a month. Prince declined to discuss the business arrangements with specific customers.

While not yet profitable, CloudFlare has more than doubled its revenue in the past four months, according to Prince, and is picking up 3,000 new customers a month. The company has raked in more than $ 22 million from venture capital firms including New Enterprise Associates, Venrock and Pelion Venture Partners.

Prince, a Midwestern native with mussed brown hair who holds a law degree from the University of Chicago, said he has a track record of working on the right side of the law.

A decade ago, Prince provided free legal aid to Spamhaus, an international group that tracked email spammers and identity thieves. He went on to create Project Honey Pot, an open source spam-tracking endeavor that turned over findings to police.

Prince’s latest company, CloudFlare, has been hailed by groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists for protecting speech. Another client, the World Economic Forum, named CloudFlare among its 2012 “technology pioneers” for its work. But it also owes its profile to its most controversial customers.

CloudFlare has hosted 4Chan, the online messaging community that spawned Anonymous. LulzSec, the hacker group best known for targeting Sony Corp, is another customer. And since last May, the company has propped up WikiLeaks after a vigilante hacker group crashed the document repository.

Last year, members of the hacker collective UgNazi, whose exploits include pilfering user account information from eBay and crashing the CIA.gov website, broke into Prince’s cell phone and email accounts.

“It was a personal affront,” Prince said. “But we never kicked them off either.”

Prince said CloudFlare would comply with a valid court order to remove a customer, but that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has never requested a takedown. The company has agreed to turn over information to authorities on “exceedingly rare” occasions, he acknowledged, declining to elaborate.

“Any company that doesn’t do that won’t be in business long,” Prince said. But in an email, he added: “We have a deep and abiding respect for our users’ privacy, disclose to our users whenever possible if we are ordered to turn over information and would fight an order that we believed was not proper.”

Juliannne Sohn, an FBI spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department lawyer who prosecuted computer crimes, said U.S. law enforcement agencies may in fact prefer that the Web’s most wanted are parked behind CloudFlare rather than a foreign service over which they have no jurisdiction.

Federal investigators “want to gather information from as many sources as they can, and they’re happy to get it,” Sussmann said.

In an era of rampant cyber warfare, Prince acknowledged he is something of a war profiteer, but with a wrinkle.

“We’re not selling bullets,” he said. “We’re selling flak jackets.”

(Reporting By Gerry Shih in San Francisco and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; editing by Jonathan Weber and Claudia Parsons)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Jon Stewart Says Hugh Grant is Least Favorite Guest Ever

Looks like Hugh Grant, 52, and Jon Stewart, 50, won't be crossing paths again soon if Stewart can help it -- The Daily Show host revealed in a recent interview that not only is the British actor his least favorite guest ever, but that we won't be seeing him on his hit Comedy Central show ever again.

Grant appeared on The Daily Show in December of 2009 to promote his romantic comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans? opposite Sarah Jessica Parker, and though there were no signs of visible tension between the two during the televised interview, according to Stewart, Grant displayed diva-like behavior when he didn't like the clip provided by the film's publicist.

Video: Jon Stewart to R Patz: Kick Her to the Curb!

"He's giving everyone s*** the whole time, and he's a big pain in the a**," Stewart told Stephen Colbert in an interview for a fundraiser for the Montclair Film Festival in New Jersey. Grant reportedly complained, 'What is that clip? It's a terrible clip,' to which Stewart replied, "Well, then make a better f***ing movie."

He concluded that he would "never let" Grant back on The Daily Show.

Related: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Throw 'Sanity' Rally in D.C.

During the candid chat before a sold-out crowd, Stewart also admitted to nearly quitting the show when he took over for Craig Killborn in 1999.

"I walk in the door, into a room with the writers and producers, and the first thing they say is, 'This isn't some MTV bull****.' ... And then I was told not to change the jokes or improvise," he recalled about initially feeling unwelcome. "[I told my agent] get me the f*** out of this. These people are insane ... I had to be talked down from a moderately high cliff ... What I did not realize is, a lot of the people who worked there were a**holes."

Related: Lessons Learned From the Biggest Celebrity Sex Scandals

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Man dies after falling onto LIRR tracks

An elderly man was killed this morning after he tumbled into the railroad tracks in Little Neck this morning, and was hit by an LIRR train, authorities said.

He fell about 10:20 a.m. at a railroad crossing near 39th Road and Little Neck Parkway, and was struck by a Port Washington train.

He went into cardiac arrest, and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to an FDNY spokesman.

Service was suspended on the Port Washington line for 90 minutes after he fell, said a MTA police spokesman.

He has not been identified yet, but is believed to be in his seventies, authorities added.

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