Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday December 10

• 12 small Indian startups: Price comparison site YouTellMe, online testing platform Youth4Work and 10 startups picked for TiE Bangalore’s 2nd accelerator batch: EventsHigh: aggregates information related to events and allows users to explore them based on their interests and locality. Swarmverse: provides online pre-payment schemes on jewellery to its customers. Pristech Analytics: parking industry app, connects motorists, parking lots, merchants, shopping centres, airports, universities and large organisations via mobile devices to make parking information available for public use through an app/cloud. Let’s Drive Along: An app for car-owners to benefit from next generation car-pooling. Its features include flexible timing, flexible set of pool buddies, car-pool on demand, and a cost sharing model with no money exchange fuss. Discover Dollar Technologies detects and resolves overpayment to suppliers of large retailers in real-time using all data sources including unstructured data like emails and contracts. Skyriz: has developed Ray, a Braille-based smartphone. Chipster Technologies: a compact computing device which has a wireless display, mouse and keyboard for an uncluttered setup. Sastra Robotics: develops high-end robotics technologies for industrial, consumer and academic research purposes. Lostclikfound.com: aggregates all lost and found items on its portal, creating a virtual lost and found ecosystem. LabP53 Cancer Research: analyses patient’s DNA in order to find out the best suitable treatment for their genetic makeup. Separately, Online talent testing platform Youth4Work raises $500K: Youth4work claims to have 5 lakh users currently. Its clients include Microsoft, Adobe, Mahindra and Aon Hewitt.

• Amazon rolls out a new feature that lets you "make an offer": The feature is only available for certain items such as sports memorabilia, entertainment collectibles and its coin and fine art section. But those interested in buying those items can submit their bids to sellers to get what they want -- a part of the online commerce world normally associated with eBay. All in all, the company said in a release, around 150,000 items on the site have the flexible pricing options -- a number that should expand in 2015, Amazon said. The program isn't designed to send prices sky-high, as with eBay and other auction site listings, however. In a press release, Amazon says that the "Make an Offer" option give consumers a new option to "buy items at even lower prices." Sellers will indicate that they're willing to sell their item for less than a listed price, giving consumers the option to argue the price down, rather than try to outbid each other. Buyers and sellers negotiate over e-mail, where they can propose, accept, reject or counter each others' offers.

• Microsoft Azure launches its government cloud offering for the US: Microsoft today announced that its Azure Government cloud computing service for federal, state, local and tribal U.S. governments is now generally available after more than a year of being in preview. This means the service is now open to all U.S. government customers. There are no more preview programs and the service is also now open for all workloads. By default, Azure Government ensures that all data stays within the U.S. and within data centers and networks that are physically isolated from the rest of Microsoft’s cloud computing solution. It’s in compliance with FedRAMP, a mandatory government-wide program that prescribes a standardized way to carry out security assessments for cloud services. It also supports a wide range of other compliance standards, including HIPAA and the FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS), which is meant to keep safe fingerprint and background-check data that has to be shared with other agencies. Amazon has long been offering a similar service for government authorities with its GovCloud.

• Uber's run of bad news continues (India, Spain, Thailand, the Netherlands); India cracks down on unregistered taxis, Uber defiant: A run of bad news for Uber continued on Tuesday, when Spain and Thailand ordered the ride-sharing service to cease operations in the two countries. In Madrid, a commercial court judge sided with a taxi association complaint, saying that Uber must cease driving in Spain until a lawsuit contesting its right to operate can be heard. In Bangkok, the Thai transport authorities ordered Uber to shut down after finding that its drivers lacked the registration and insurance needed to operate commercial vehicles, Reuters reported. Just one day earlier, officials in New Delhi, the Indian capital, ordered Uber to cease its operations there after one of its drivers was accused of raping a passenger. Also on Monday, a Dutch appeals court upheld that Uber drivers who transport passengers without a taxi license are violating Dutch law. The court said the company would be subject to immediate fines if it continued to operate its UberPop service, which enables any licensed driver with a car and Uber-issued device to pick up passengers.