RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – In the latest Bulldog roundup of life science and technology news: Cisco Intercloud partner ecosystem expanded with $1 billion in new financing; Microsoft offers first look at new Windows this week; Anti-Facebook social network Ello goes viral; Yahoo! Directory is shutting down this year; and what can doctors can learn from our Selfies?

Cisco Intercloud partner ecosystem expanded; $1B in financing added

Cisco’s Intercloud initiative for an open, hybrid cloud, announced at the vendor’s Partner Summit conference in March, continues to gain momentum with the announcement today of new technology bundles, an expansion of the Cisco Intercloud partner ecosystem, and $1 billion in financing so that partners can build cloud infrastructure. Intercloud is intended to link together Cisco’s own data centers with private and public cloud resources.

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Microsoft offers first look at new Windows – and gives it a name

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) will unveil a new name for its best-known product on Tuesday when it offers the first official glimpse of its latest Windows operating system. The project, known for the past few years as “Threshold” inside the software company and “Windows 9” outside it, will likely get an entirely new brand, or just be called Windows, analysts said, ahead of its full release early next year.

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Anti-Facebook social network Ello goes viral

A new social network called Ello, which is being described as anti-Facebook due to its strong position on privacy and advertising is fast gaining and audience online.

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Yahoo! Directory is shutting down this year

The growth of Google basically killed off Yahoo’s Directory in spirit. Who needs a human-curated list of websites, after all, when an automated crawler can scan through the raw text of all of these sites to ensure that people are matched up with the most relevant results for their query? As for the Yahoo Directory, which was such a core part of Yahoo’s early efforts – indeed, the source of the very name “Yahoo” itself, an acronym short for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle – received a rather unceremonious death notice, published Saturday.

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What can doctors can learn from our Selfies?

Smartphone cameras may be used for selfies more than any other purpose, but those selfies can now reveal a lot more than our levels of vanity. By taking photos of our own bodies – including body parts (and bodily fluids) – patients and physicians are now getting a far more detailed view of our well-being, tracking our health, making diagnoses, and so much more.

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