Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, March 1st,

• Souq, Online Retailer in Middle East, Gets a $275 Million Boost:  Souq.com, an online retailer based in the United Arab Emirates, said on Monday that it had raised $275 million from international investors. It was a vote of confidence for digital commerce in the Middle East, which has made little headway compared with elsewhere. Souq, the largest e-commerce company in the Middle East, was founded in 2005 on an eBay-like online auction model, but it subsequently evolved into more of an Amazon-style set-price retailer. It has been a rare success story in a region where online businesses face logistical problems, political challenges, stifling bureaucracy and regulations that vary greatly from country to country. Souq’s latest round of funding included money from the New York-based investment firm Tiger Global Management, as well as from Standard Chartered Private Equity and the International Finance Corporation, which is an arm of the World Bank. Souq, which means market in Arabic, did not provide details on what the funding round meant for its overall valuation, and it has not released details on its annual sales or profit. The $275 million funding round was, however, the largest ever disclosed by a technology start-up in the Middle East and North Africa, according to Wamda, a research firm based in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. Even after multiple fund-raising rounds, the Jabbar Internet Group — which sold Maktoob, a news site, to Yahoo for more than $150 million in 2009 — still holds a majority stake. Souq, now the largest online retailer in the Arab world, ships hundreds of thousands of products across the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It also has operations in Egypt.

• For the first time, Google’s self-driving car takes some blame for a crash: A Google self-driving car sideswiped a bus this month, the first blemish on the otherwise spotless driving record of the company’s vehicles. Google’s 53 vehicles have driven more than 1.4 million miles autonomously and been in 17 crashes, but never been at fault before. The crash took place at 3:20 p.m. Feb. 14, about three miles from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Google’s car was attempting to make a right-hand turn on red, and moved to the right side of a wide lane on El Camino Real to pass traffic stopped at the light. But as Google’s car neared the intersection of Castro Street, its path was blocked by sandbags around a storm drain, according to a report Google filed with the California DMV. Google’s car tried to go around the sandbags by cutting into the line of vehicles on the left side of the lane. Instead, it struck a metal piece connecting the two halves of an accordion-style bus, according to a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority spokeswoman. Google said its car was going less than 2 mph and the bus was moving at 15 mph. Both parties said there were no injuries and described the crash as minor. The 15 passengers on the bus were transferred to another bus following the accident. Google characterized the crash as a misunderstanding and a learning experience, saying its cars will learn that large vehicles are less likely to yield than other types of vehicles.

• This Water Pitcher Orders New Filters From Amazon Using Wi-Fi. It Could Be the Future of Shopping. The future often seems silly in the present. Case in point: Brita’s new “smart” water pitcher. The “device” is indeed primarily a water pitcher, designed — you know — to clean and hold water. But the pitcher, which goes on sale today on Amazon, does something else that helps explain why Brita is charging $45 for it, compared to $20 to $32 for other Brita pitchers that hold the same amount of water. It connects to the Internet and senses when a given filter has purified all the water it was meant to, after about 40 gallons. It then pings Amazon.com and automatically orders a new $5.99 filter for delivery. Call it programmatic commerce, and expect it to be around for a long time. The partnership between Brita and Amazon is part of a bigger initiative at Amazon dubbed the Dash Replenishment System. The goal is to allow products like water pitchers, computer printers and pet food dispensers automatically to order related, necessary items from Amazon without a human lifting a finger (after a one-time setup). At a higher level, it fits perfectly into Amazon’s ongoing mission to shrink the time between wanting and buying. What started with one-click purchasing has escalated to Wi-Fi connected physical buttons to order mac and cheese, reordering items by talking to the Amazon Echo speaker and now filter-summoning pitchers.

• Raspberry Pi 3 Launches — 50% Faster, With Wi-Fi, Bluetooth And An Eye On IoT: A major new Raspberry Pi microprocessor has been announced today: the Pi 3 Model B board becomes the new top-of-the-line Pi, with a 64bit 1.2GHz quad-core chipset and 1GB RAM it’s being slated to offer a 50 per cent power bump over the Pi 2. But is still priced at just $35 — the original Model B Pi price-tag, four years on from its debut. Round about this time last year the Pi Foundation launched the 900Mhz quad-core Pi 2 — which was 6x faster than the then top-of-the-Pi-line Model B+ board, and dubbed an affordable “entry-level PC”. Also priced at $35. The Foundation is touting the Pi 3 as opening up “even more possibilities for IoT and embedded projects”. Speaking to the BBC, Pi founder Eben Upton said: “This is the first Pi you can stick behind your TV and completely forget about.” “The two main things that people do with their Pi are use it as a PC replacement or use it as an embedded computer,” he added. “The Pi 3 is doubling down on both those things rather than going looking for new things to do.” The really big deal here is the inclusion of built in wireless LAN and Bluetooth. The Pi 2 had Ethernet but makers wanting the board to support wireless connectivity had to add a wi-fi or Bluetooth dongle. The Pi 3 removes the need to buy wireless add-ons, so it’s being positioned for out-of-the-box IoT development and as a powerful IoT hub that can link together multiple in-home connected devices. Back in November, the Pi Foundation launched another new board: the single core 1GHz Pi Zero delivers a lot less on the processing performance front and lacks on-board connectivity options (a wi-fi dongle can be plugged into its micro-USB port) but it costs just $5 — a price-point that’s clearly targeting makers wanting to build individual IoT/connected devices. The more powerful and well connected Pi 3 doubles down on the growth in IoT devices the Pi Zero was seeking to encourage — following on from the Pi 2, which was capable of running a version of Microsoft Windows that’s designed to support IoT apps (aka Windows 10 IoT; formerly called Windows Embedded). At a launch event today the Foundation said it has worked closely with Microsoft to ensure full compatibility between the new Pi 3 board and Windows 10 IoT.