Although IBM is being tight lipped about about how many jobs it will slash in a round of layoffs that are reportedly happening now, IBM's worker union says that 2,833 workers have been let go so far in the U.S. and Canada.

So we listened with interest to IBMer Brenda Dietrich talk about a big data project that IBM uses internally to size its workforce.

Dietrich is an IBM Fellow and VP, CTO and Strategist for the Business Analytics unit at IBM. She was speaking on a panel about big data tech at Bloomberg's Next Big Thing Summit.

The project began when IBM data scientists took two separate sources of data within IBM, smashed them together and analyzed them, she said. The data came from the global services billing database and the human resources database. The billing database contains records of every project and its status. The HR database contains details on every employee's skill set.

By mashing them together IBM's big data consultants determined dozens of patterns, Dietrich said. Ultimately it helped IBM "look into sales pipeline" and determine "six months from now, do we have enough java programmers in Bangalore, enough [technicians] in Utah, enough database administrators in Zurich? We can start hiring and training in advance," she said. 

IBM sells a whole bunch of big data analytics products to help others hire, recruit, retain, and rightsize their workforces. By applying its big data to its own workforce it is doing what the tech industry calls "eating its own dogfood," sometimes also referred to as dogfooding.

Although the company is trimming thousands of employees, it also has over 950 job openings, according to Glassdoor.

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(Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it now has 1 million active advertisers globally who used the platform in the last 28 days, a milestone for the company that is seeking to revive its revenue growth.

A vast majority of those advertisers are small business owners who have flocked to the world's No. 1 social network.

Facebook executives are hoping to net even more small advertisers since 16 million local businesses, ranging from jewelry sellers to clothing stores, set up free pages on the network.

While pinpointing how much money small advertisers spend only online is difficult, in total they spent approximately $32 billion during 2012 in the United States, according to market research firm eMarketer.

"Most small business owners start off as Facebook users, then migrate to become page owners, and from there migrate to become advertisers," said Dan Levy, Facebook director of small business.

He said that Facebook does not plan to start charging businesses to set up pages.

Advertising accounts for 85 percent of Facebook's revenue - which also includes dollars from the world's largest brands and advertising agencies. But the company is trying to spark its ad growth following a sharp slowdown last year.

Last quarter, Facebook reported first-quarter revenue of $1.46 billion. Advertising revenue rose 43 percent, the fastest growth rate since the end of 2011.

Facebook declined to break out how much ad revenue comes from small businesses and did not indicate how long it took to reach the 1 million milestone.

It has introduced several initiatives to help boost growth, including an overhaul of its newsfeed and changes to how advertisers buy ads on the network in order to simplify the process.

Small business owners are "critical" to Facebook's success, said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research Group.

"Once they launched new ad products targeted to small businesses in the middle of last year, they were able to significantly accelerate their revenue growth," he said.

Kim Caulfield, a small business owner in Orange County, California who sells custom jewelry made from horse tail hair, started using Facebook advertising to reach more customers for her company Tail Spin.

"You only can invite so many of your friends over and most of them don't own horses," she said.

She now spends approximately $25 a day with Facebook on advertisements directed to horse enthusiasts with the potential of reaching over 5 million people.

Facebook also reaches out to local businesses order to help them through the process. Dallas-area clothing boutique owner Lucy Huang said she was part of a Facebook incubator program to mentor businesses and walk them through the ad buying process.

Huang said she spends roughly $50 a month advertising Accents retail stores with Facebook, saying it is cheaper and more effective than print or online rivals like Yelp.

More than 50 percent of small business owners use Facebook pages to promote their products, but only 16 percent use Facebook ads, according to BIA Kelsey, a research firm specializing in local advertising.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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(Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it now has 1 million active advertisers globally who used the platform in the last 28 days, a milestone for the company that is seeking to revive its revenue growth.

A vast majority of those advertisers are small business owners who have flocked to the world's No. 1 social network.

Facebook executives are hoping to net even more small advertisers since 16 million local businesses, ranging from jewelry sellers to clothing stores, set up free pages on the network.

While pinpointing how much money small advertisers spend only online is difficult, in total they spent approximately $32 billion during 2012 in the United States, according to market research firm eMarketer.

"Most small business owners start off as Facebook users, then migrate to become page owners, and from there migrate to become advertisers," said Dan Levy, Facebook director of small business.

He said that Facebook does not plan to start charging businesses to set up pages.

Advertising accounts for 85 percent of Facebook's revenue - which also includes dollars from the world's largest brands and advertising agencies. But the company is trying to spark its ad growth following a sharp slowdown last year.

Last quarter, Facebook reported first-quarter revenue of $1.46 billion. Advertising revenue rose 43 percent, the fastest growth rate since the end of 2011.

Facebook declined to break out how much ad revenue comes from small businesses and did not indicate how long it took to reach the 1 million milestone.

It has introduced several initiatives to help boost growth, including an overhaul of its newsfeed and changes to how advertisers buy ads on the network in order to simplify the process.

Small business owners are "critical" to Facebook's success, said Brian Wieser, an analyst with Pivotal Research Group.

"Once they launched new ad products targeted to small businesses in the middle of last year, they were able to significantly accelerate their revenue growth," he said.

Kim Caulfield, a small business owner in Orange County, California who sells custom jewelry made from horse tail hair, started using Facebook advertising to reach more customers for her company Tail Spin.

"You only can invite so many of your friends over and most of them don't own horses," she said.

She now spends approximately $25 a day with Facebook on advertisements directed to horse enthusiasts with the potential of reaching over 5 million people.

Facebook also reaches out to local businesses order to help them through the process. Dallas-area clothing boutique owner Lucy Huang said she was part of a Facebook incubator program to mentor businesses and walk them through the ad buying process.

Huang said she spends roughly $50 a month advertising Accents retail stores with Facebook, saying it is cheaper and more effective than print or online rivals like Yelp.

More than 50 percent of small business owners use Facebook pages to promote their products, but only 16 percent use Facebook ads, according to BIA Kelsey, a research firm specializing in local advertising.

(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Multiple outlets are reporting that Facebook is holding an event this Thursday to announce new video features for its Instagram app. The features are said to compete directly with Twitter's Vine video app.

Instead of standing aside and doing nothing, Twitter's Vine just published a blog post teasing new features. 

The app says that, over the next few weeks, it will be introducing "exciting new parts of Vine. As always, we'll share details on updates as we release them."

The rest of the post reads: 

Since launching Vine less than five months ago, we’ve watched the most incredible community sprout up, and we’ve been inspired every moment along the way. The posts we share — new memories, silly selfies and works of art we never considered — let us give the world a glimpse into our lives and passions. They bring us closer together in an entirely new way.

AllThingsD's Kara Swisher points out that Twitter has a few tricks up its sleeve to keep users with its popular Vine video app. Swisher says Instagram will have a long way to go if it wants to catch up to Vine. Vine now has 13 million users and is available on both iPhone and Android. "The new features are presumably to keep clear of Instagram’s splash in the pool."

If Facebook's track record proves true, then Vine has nothing to worry about. But keep in mind, this is the first time that Facebook has held an event touting new things coming to Instagram. We're sure the social network is planning something big.

Here's a video Vine posted to thank its users:

SEE ALSO: Instagram CEO Cancels Appearance At Cannes Ahead Of Mysterious Press Event At Facebook

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One of Huawei's top execs thinks acquiring Nokia could help the Chinese company raise its profile in smartphones. 

"We are considering these sorts of acquisitions; maybe the combination has some synergies but depends on the willingness of Nokia. We are open-minded," Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's consumer unit, told the Financial Times’s Daniel Thomas.  

A Huawei spokesperson declined further comment, saying only that "Huawei has no plans to acquire Nokia."

We've reached out to Nokia and will update if the company responds. 

But to be clear, it sounds like Yu was just speculating and wasn't talking about a specific deal that's in the works.

Huawei is the world's biggest selling of telecom equipment but has a much smaller mobile business. It was the world's fourth-largest smartphone vendor in Q1 with 4.6% market share, according to IDC. 

But Huawei's mobile business is on the rise: Its smartphone shipments grew 94% compared to last year's quarter, compared to 60.7% for number one Samsung, IDC said.

Only LG, whose shipments grew 110% during the quarter, is growing faster. 

Huawei has been selling inexpensive phones in China for years. The company launched its Ascend P6 smartphone at a glitzy launch event Tuesday in London, billing it as "the world's slimmest." 

Here's a promo video for the Ascend P6: 

SEE ALSO: Adobe May Be Rethinking Cloud Apps Pricing Options After Customer Backlash

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At the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), India's state-owned telecom company, a message emerges from a dot matrix printer addressing a soldier's Army unit in Delhi.

"GRANDMOTHER SERIOUS. 15 DAYS LEAVE EXTENSION," it reads.

It's one of about 5,000 such missives still being sent every day by telegram – a format favored for its "sense of urgency and authenticity," explains a BSNL official.

But the days of such communication are numbered: The world's last telegram message will be sent somewhere in India on July 14.

That missive will come 144 years after Samuel Morse sent the first telegram in Washington, and seven years after Western Union shuttered its services in the United States. In India, telegraph services were introduced by William O'Shaughnessy,  a British doctor and inventor who used a different code for the first time in 1850 to send a message. 

The BSNL board, after dilly-dallying for two years, decided to shut down the service as it was no longer commercially viable. 

"We were incurring losses of over $23 million a year because SMS and smartphones have rendered this service redundant," Shamim Akhtar, general manager of BSNL's telegraph services, told the Monitor. 

An important tool of British colonial administration and control in India, the telegram is connected with some key moments in Indian history, such as helping the British put down a popular revolt in 1857 and being the mode of communication with which Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru informed London of Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir.

Colloquially known as "taar" or wire in India, the telegram has been a part of Indian life, a metaphor for an urgent message, bypassing the delays of the postal system. Responsible for a twist in the plot of many a Bollywood film, telegrams were often the harbinger of the news of the death of a family member. Today, death telegrams, still priced at a fifth of the regular fee, account for less than 1 percent of telegram traffic.

At their peak in 1985, 60 million telegrams were being sent and received a year in India from 45,000 offices. Today, only 75 offices exist, though they are located in each of India's 671 districts through franchises. And an industry that once employed 12,500 people, today has only 998 workers.

One of them is R.D. Ram, who has been working in the Delhi office for 38 years. "They will now move me to another department where I will feel like a fresher [beginner]," he complains.

Mr. Ram once learned the Morse code technology for telegraphy, but today oversees staff who type out and send telegrams over a Web software. He tries to put up a spirited defense of the obsolete technology in the age of the smartphone, arguing that mobile penetration is much lower than it is hyped to be. Mobile penetration is indeed a dismal 26 percent, but even in the remotest village, at least someone has a phone.

Ram notes that the telegram has legal benefits as well. "It is still accepted by the courts as a valid form of evidence. And is taken seriously by a judge when a government official sends a telegram to say he is unwell and cannot be present in court today," he says.

Sixty-five percent of daily telegrams are sent by the government. But it is the remaining 35 percent that Ram worries about. A number of telegrams are from runaway couples who marry secretly because their parents wouldn't let them marry in the wrong caste, class, or religion.  "They inform their parents that they are married, and fearing violence from the family, inform the police and the National Human Rights Commission," he said.  

Saddened as Ram is by the impending death of his profession, his sentiment could not match that of a telegraph whose sender threatened suicide unless the decision was overturned. The telegram was from A.P. Tripathi, who runs an anticorruption nonprofit in Lucknow. Addressed to the president, prime minister, the minister for communications, and others, it said that he would engage in a Gandhian fast unto death if telegram services were shut down, and if he died, then the addressed officials would be responsible.

When contacted, Mr. Tripathi claimed he had not threatened suicide, only a Gandhian fast. "I am a regular user of the telegram and it is an important tool for activists," he explains. "For example, a telegram to a court informing them of illegal detention of a citizen by the police is taken as a writ petition." 

In Delhi, the telegraph office has not passed on his telegram yet, marking it as "objectionable."

You can find Shivam Vij on Twitter.

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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- Virginia has hired Blake Miller as its softball coach.

Athletic director Craig Littlepage made the announcement Tuesday.

Miller spent the last three seasons as an assistant at Oregon, and helped lead the Ducks to the super regionals of the NCAA tournament each season, and to the College World Series last year. As a head coach, employing a strategy that relies on speed and aggression, he led Division II Texas A&M-Kingsville to a 76-79 record from 2008-10, and posted a 64-44 record in two seasons at Darton College in New Jersey in 2006-07.

Miller worked with hitters and infielders at Oregon. The Ducks batted .329 with 80 home runs and averaged 6.13 runs this past season.

He replaces Eileen Schmidt, who resigned after six seasons last month.

iOS Shoppers Are 30 Percent More Likely to Make A Purchase On Their Device (TechCrunch)
That's according to a new Forrester survey of 58,000 U.S. shoppers. iOS users are also 15% more likely to do product research on their mobile devices than Android users. Despite this, it's not like commerce-focused companies can afford to give up on Android. Read > 

Video Could Be Coming To Instagram (TechCrunch)
Facebook's mysterious press conference this week could announce the arrival of video to Instagram. The idea of "Instagram for video" has been floating around for a while, but none of the services have really taken off. However, it may end up being more of a direct response to the growing popularity of Twitter-owned Vine. Read >

Flurry Is Launching A Mobile Real-Time Bidding Platform (Ad Exchanger)
The company expects to have 20 demand-side platform partners at launch. Elsewhere in the interview, CEO  Simon Khalaf reveals that 80% of the time spent on the mobile Internet is through apps. Read >

• For more info on real-time bidding, please read our report from earlier this year. 

Enabling The Mobile-First Enterprise (ReadWrite)
A guide to creating a mobile-focused environment in your enterprise. Read >

Skype Launches Its Video Messaging Service (Engadget)
Users can now send unlimited video messages on Windows 8, Windows desktop, iOS, Android, and Blackberry, but Windows Phone is curiously not supported. Read > 

A Peek At iOS 7 On iPads (9to5Mac)
While Apple only showcased the iPhone interface at WWDC, 9to5Mac got their hands on screenshots of the iPad interface from a hacked iPad iOS 7 simulator. Read >

Responses to WWDC From Across The Internet (Mutual Mobile)
An infographic of the responses to the mobile initiatives Apple introduced at WWDC last week. (See below.)

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Today Chris Dixon, a partner at venture capitalist firm

FiftyThree's most famous app is called Paper.

Paper lets people draw out ideas and sketches on their iPads with incredible detail. FiftyThree is aiming to become the Adobe of the tablet and smartphone generation.

Dixon wrote on his blog why he chose to invest in FiftyThree and why he believes in the company:

Steve Jobs predicted that tablet computers would become so dominant that “PCs would become like trucks” – special-purpose industrial devices. Skeptics replied that tablets were only useful for consumption and not creation and therefore couldn’t replace PCs, to which Jobs said:

We are just scratching the surface on the kinds of apps for the iPad…I think there are lots of kinds of content that can be created on the iPad. When I am going to write that 35-page analyst report, I am going to want my Bluetooth keyboard. That’s 1 percent of the time. The software will get more powerful. I think your vision would have to be pretty short to think these can’t grow into machines that can do more things, like editing video, graphic arts, productivity. You can imagine all of these content creation possibilities on these kind of things. Time takes care of lots of these things.

History supports Jobs’ argument. In the past, new user interfaces led to new categories of creation applications. Back in the 70s and 80s, when computers had text-based interfaces, word processors and spreadsheets were invented. In the 80s and 90s, when computers had graphical interfaces, presentation and image editors proliferated. Jobs was simply predicting that historical patterns would repeat.

Today we are announcing that Andreessen Horowitz is leading a $15M Series A investment in FiftyThree, a company whose goal is to build the essential suite of mobile tools for creativity. You might know FiftyThree as the company behind the iPad app Paper. Paper has been embraced by millions of everyday creators, and has won dozens of awards (including Apple’s App of the Year). It is also one of the top grossing iPad productivity apps ever. But this is only the beginning of FiftyThree’s ambitious plans.

The FiftyThree team spent their careers working on breakthrough computing projects, including lead roles on Office, Kinect, Sonos, and the Xbox. Particularly relevant was a project they led at Microsoft called Courier that has been widely praised as a visionary take on tablet computing (unfortunately, Courier was never brought to market).

FiftyThree didn’t need to raise money, but decided that the opportunity was so large that it made sense to accelerate their efforts with additional capital and resources. They’ll be expanding their engineering teams in New York and Seattle, and will broaden their offerings across software, services, and hardware.

I first met the founders in New York in 2011, and have since spent a lot of time with them. I’m convinced that they are one of the most innovative design and engineering teams in the world. In the past, they reimagined how we play games, view images, listen to music, create documents, and more. With FiftyThree, they are rethinking the very way we create and collaborate on ideas. I couldn’t be more excited to be involved.

SEE ALSO: Paper, A Drawing App, Raises $15 Million From Star-Studded Investors

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