Alaska News

Photo via Redfin Redfin first quarter results : The Seattle real estate company saw a 40% surge in revenue in the first quarter, reporting $268 million in sales. Its gross profit soared 229% to $42 million, and its net loss was cut nearly in half to $36 million compared to the first quarter of 2020. Its net loss came out to 37 cents per share. The consensus analyst revenue estimate for the quarter was $253 million, while the earnings per share estimate was -34 cents per share. Full results here . What the execs are saying : “After scrambling in the second half of 2020 to hire enough agents and lenders to handle a pandemic-driven surge in demand, Redfin is just about hitting on all cylinders,” said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman. Key numbers : RedfinNow, the company’s direct home buying and selling service, sold 171 homes in the first quarter. That was the same number as the first quarter of 2020, and was up from 83 in the fourth quarter of 2020. Redfin’s market share in the U.S. residential m

The Beats X is one of the newest (as of posting) wireless earbuds from the Beats lineup. Since Apple has taken over Beats, the company has only been going up. It took a pretty long for me to get my hands on this but I finally managed to. (YAY me!) I got the Beats X in blue as it’s a pretty unique colour. This is my 2nd Beats product and really, the unboxing experience was awesome!!! Straight away you are greeted by the earpiece itself and underneath it was the manuals, the extra eartips of various size, as well as earhooks of various sizes if you require a more secure fit. Behind all the eartips and earhooks was the case and a charging cable. Unlike the previous wireless products made by Beats, this charger has a lightning adapter, so all those Apple users should be glad. My only slight complain is that the case is a dust magnet and it gets dirty super easily. Now moving on to the earpiece… Syncing the Beats X to my iPhone was a breeze. The moment I turned on the Bluetooth on my phone

Many of us watched the Apple event yesterday and we all noticed Apple make the announcement about Apple Podcast Subscriptions. Many people have talked about how this might be a big game-changer for the podcast world but really it’s about Apple playing catchup or at least taking podcast subscriptions mainstream. I would like to point out that Spotify is in a different market. Spotify offers exclusives that are only available on their platform. The difference is Spotify exclusives are free to all who download the app you do not need to pay for Spotify Premium to listen to podcasts. For example, Joe Rogan’s show is still free you just have to go to Spotify to get it and have to use their app to listen to his show. The same goes for many others that Spotify owns. Many companies have premium podcasts Relay.fm, Twit.TV and PodcastOne just to name a few. They offer a way to pay on their websites then offering a premium feed. Many podcast companies already offer the tools to make this happen

We recently invested in Nest Protect alarms for our home. The Nest Protect is a fire and carbon dioxide detector all in one. My wife and I have a vintage home and we have always been a fan of the smoke alarm systems that are wired together so if one alarm goes off, they all go off to help alert the entire household. If you have just one or two detectors in a home and they are not wired together you may not hear the one downstairs the Nest Protect solves this issue. Just like Sono’s speakers the Nest Protect creates its own little network so if one goes off, they all go off and if for some reason your internet goes down, they can still trigger all the devices. Since they are wireless there is no need to run wiring. Nest Protect does have a wired version and if we were remodeling or building a new home from scratch, I would do those so this way I do not have to worry about replacing the batteries on the Nest Protect every few years. The hardwire ones still do have a battery backup in th

T-Mobile beat expectations for its fourth quarter earnings report,  posting revenue of $19.8 billion and earnings per share of $0.74. Analysts expected revenue of $18.9 billion and EPS of $0.57. The Bellevue, Wash.-based wireless company added a net total of 1.4 million customers in the quarter, topping Verizon and AT&T. It now has a record-high 103.4 million total customers. Shares were up more than 2% in after-hours trading. T-Mobile stock is up more than 40% over the past year. T-Mobile’s continued growth follows the company’s $26.5 billion merger with Sprint, which was completed last year after a  lengthy legal battle and extended regulatory review . The acquisition is helping T-Mobile build out its 5G network, which it claims is the largest and fastest in the U.S. Last month T-Mobile launched its new home internet service as part of the latest “Un-carrier” move and in March unveiled 5G wireless routers. . @TMobile  is off to a terrific start in 2021 & here’s a snapshot

CRN published one of those slideshow articles revealing “The Most In-Demand Cloud Computing Jobs For 2021.” Spoiler alert: Cloud engineers are in the most demand, earning an average annual salary of $118,000. Of course, “cloud engineer” could mean many different things in many different organizations. Let’s just say it’s someone who knows a lot about cloud computing and is also a hands-on problem solver. [ Also on InfoWorld: Cloud tech certifications count more than degrees now ] The great thing about cloud computing is it has been in demand for the last 8 to 10 years, depending on what aspect of cloud computing you wanted to specialize in. As the demand rose, so did the number of those in and outside of IT who sought a cloud computing career path. I’ve seen teachers, cops, social workers, stay-at-home-parents, and those on very different career paths pivot to cloud computing, and most have done well. To read this article in full, please click here

Era Software CEO Todd Persen. (Era Software Photo) New funding : Seattle-area database architecture startup Era Software , formerly known as EraDB, raised $15.2 million in a Series A round led by Playground Global. The tech:  Era helps companies manage their cloud-native workloads. Its first product, EraSearch, is built for log management and offers an alternative to Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. The idea is to reduce cloud hardware and operational costs. EraSearch is in private beta. Leadership: Era was founded by CEO Todd Persen , co-founder and former CTO of InfluxData, and CTO Robert Winslow , co-maintainer of Google’s FlatBuffers low-latency storage framework in Rust and co-creator of the Time Series Benchmarking Suite. Investors: Other backers in the 20-person company include Foundation Capital, Array Ventures, Global Founders Capital, and angel investors. Total funding to date is more than $22 million.

Microsoft’s bid to buy Discord is over — for now, at least. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the popular chat startup has ended acquisition talks with the Redmond, Wash. tech giant and others after reports surfaced last month that Discord was in final negotiations about a sale for at least $10 billion. A potential deal “could be rekindled in the future,” WSJ reported. Microsoft last week announced its $19.7 billion deal to buy Nuance Communications and completed a $7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax Media this year. It has reportedly shown interest in Pinterest and made a bid for TikTok last fall. Previously: Why Microsoft would want to acquire Discord, which is reportedly exploring a $10B-plus sale

José Delbo, an 87-year-old comic artist, sold more than $1 million worth of Wonder Woman NFTs. Sales like his got the attention of DC Comics and Marvel. The debate over NFT winners and losers.

U.S. charges three North Koreans in conspiracy to steal more than $1 billion, distribute malware around the world and attack Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Hip-hop stars, executives and creatives flocked to the invite-only audio chat app Clubhouse, giving it instant cache and, ultimately, a $1-billion valuation.