In today’s Bulldog wrapup of technology and life science news:

  • Pinterest will start offering “buyable pins”
  • GSK is selling some over-the-counter brands
  • A female venture capitalist is appealing her discrimination case
  • The Supreme Court tosses a verdict in a Facebook threats case
  • The startup involved in the Lenovo adware fiasco is shutting down

The details:

  • Pinterest to unveil ‘buyable pins’ in next few weeks

Users of Pinterest will soon be able to buy items directly through the company’s app using a new type of pin.

Pinterest and Canadian e-commerce company Shopify said Tuesday that the “buyable pins” will debut in the next few weeks.

Pinterest says buyable items will have a blue pin displaying their price. Users will be able to search for similar items based on color and price. The company says items from brands including Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Cole Haan, Michaels and thousands of Shopify stores will have the pins. Fabric and craft retailer Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores Inc. says it will also participate in the program.

Users can pay for the items they buy with Apple Pay or a credit card. Shopify says their credit card information will be stored by payment processors and not by Shopify itself.

Pinterest said iPhone and iPad users will see the pins in the next few weeks, and they’ll be available on future releases of the Android OS or desktop computers.

  • GSK is selling some OTC brands

GlaxoSmithKline is selling some over-the-counter brands to Perrigo as part of regulatory requirements for its mega-asset swap with Novartis.

Financial details weren’t disclosed.

Read more at: http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/irishheadquartered-perrigo-buys-top-brands-from-glaxosmithkline-31273887.html

  • Woman behind Silicon Valley sex bias suit appealing verdict

A woman at the center of a high-profile gender bias lawsuit against an elite Silicon Valley venture capital firm is appealing a jury verdict against her.

Alan Exelrod, an attorney for plaintiff Ellen Pao, filed a 2-page notice of appeal on Monday in San Francisco Superior Court.

A jury in March found that defendant Kleiner Perkins did not discriminate or retaliate against Pao.

Pao’s attorneys claimed she was subjected to a number of indignities, including being given a book of erotic poetry by a partner at the company and being cut out of emails and meetings by a male colleague with whom she broke off an affair.
The case became a flashpoint in an ongoing discussion about gender inequity at elite technology and venture capital firms.

  • High court throws out conviction for Facebook threats

The Supreme Court on Monday threw out the conviction of a Pennsylvania man prosecuted for making threats on Facebook, but dodged the free-speech issues that had made the case intriguing to First Amendment advocates.

Chief Justice John Roberts said it was not enough for prosecutors to show that the comments of Anthony Elonis about killing his ex-wife and harming others would make a reasonable person feel threatened. But the high court sent the case back to the lowercourt without clarifying exactly what the standard of proof should be.

The ruling was a narrow victory for civil liberties groups that had urged the court to make it tougher to convict people who make crude comments on social media that might be viewed as threatening.

Yet the high court declined to lay out broad constitutional protections for such comments. “It is not necessary to consider any First Amendment issues,” Roberts wrote.

  • Superfish is shutting down after Lenovo fiasco

A Silicon Valley startup says it’s shutting down operations and shifting to a new business model after it was blamed earlier this year for turning unwitting computer users into targets for annoying web ads — and hackers.

Facing lawsuits and an industry crackdown, Superfish co-founder Adi Pinhas said he wants to find new uses for the company’s powerful “visual search” software, which can recognize a picture and search for similar images without relying on text labels.

Pinhas said he’s closing Superfish and is promoting the technology through a new company, JustVisual, that’s building smartphone apps consumers can use to identify plants or shop for clothes and furniture.

“This was a change that was already in the works,” Pinhas told The Associated Press Thursday. But he said it was accelerated by a firestorm that erupted three months ago when researchers found a worrisome security flaw in Superfish software that came pre-installed on some laptop computers sold by Lenovo.

The program used Superfish’s visual algorithms to identify objects people viewed online and show them ads for similar products. Lenovo said it thought consumers would find that useful, but critics called it intrusive and annoying. What’s worse, experts said it used code that severely compromised the encryption used by websites to protect passwords or account numbers that shoppers provide when making an online purchase.

The discovery prompted consumer lawsuits against Superfish and Lenovo, which scrambled to remove the software. Pinhas wouldn’t comment on the still-pending lawsuits.

Superfish was also rocked by a recent crackdown on so-called “ad-injection” companies that insert or replace ads on popular websites, sometimes without the site owner’s knowledge. A report from Google this month identified Superfish as a participant in that industry, although Pinhas said Superfish software was used by other companies in ways that were difficult to control. “It just got way too complicated,” he said. “We don’t believe any more that this is the best way to bring visual search to users.”

The new JustVisual company promises to be upfront about showing ads. Chief Product Officer Kevin Lee said shoppers interested in a particular item can take a picture with their smartphone and then use an app to find ads for similar items on sale. It has four apps and is developing others.

The company, which is based in Palo Alto, California, also hopes to make money from licensing its software, which experts have praised for its tech prowess. As an example, Lee said companies might use it to protect commercial trademarks by searching for counterfeit “knock-offs” on e-commerce sites.

JustVisual will follow industry standards for security and privacy, Lee said.

Read more at http://www.wral.com/after-security-scandal-a-tech-firm-says-it-s-changing-focus/14675626/#BS3UJ4VtV20d8gVG.99