London Innovation Lab seeks second round of FinTech startups

The second annual FinTech Innovation Lab has opened its applications to attract early-stage entrepreneurs to the capital.

The 12-week programme, run by Accenture, aims to accelerate product development in the financial services sector by providing mentoring, workshops and networking for early-stage companies.

Accenture Lab with Alistair Grant.jpg
Accenture is keen for the programme to incorporate companies which are creating innovative products in the areas of mobile payments, big data and analytics, security, and social media.

The programme involves executives from financial institutions including Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley, RBS and UBS.

It also has support from the Mayor of London, City of London Corporation and UK Trade & Investment, along with independent advisors Euclid Opportunities, the Technology Strategy Board and UK Business Angels Association.

Technology officers and executives will select six startups to participate in the 12-week programme, through which they will be partnered with bank executives and successful technology entrepreneurs to develop their products and business strategies.

The programme will end with an Investor Day presentation in March 2014, where the six companies will pitch to venture capitalists and financial industry executives.

“[Being involved with a hub] plants both feet firmly inside the door, when previously you struggled to get a toenail in,” said Rich Newton from startup Calltrunk, which took part in the Accenture Innovation Lab 2012. “You then leverage that to build commercial relationships.”

This guide from Computer Weekly provides you with everything you need to know about startups in the UK, with news, business profiles and advice starting relationships with UK startups.

Alistair Grant, CIO for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Citi, was a mentor in last year's Innovation Lab. He told Computer Weekly that he’d happily repeat working with companies which were appropriate to Citi’s technology portfolio.

The bank is also still in conversations with a number of the startups about their offerings. “We met a number of startups through that initiative. From our perspective, it enables us to bring the outside in, and choose what to bring into Citi from a whole branch of different startups. Big data, cloud, agile computing – we’re really keen on all of those areas, and it was great to work with startups thinking in the same vein – just a little bit quicker than we are,” he said.

But Grant did not go into the mentorship with the specific aim of securing commercial contracts. “I put aside thoughts of commercial activity until the programme finished, as I felt the important thing was to do genuine end-to-end sponsoring – mentoring on how companies could be successful in a corporate environment, anywhere across the financial sector,” he said.

“I didn’t want them getting bogged down in how it worked specifically for Citi. Once the programme finished, if we wanted to talk to them further, there was a different way to approach it.”

Of the many technologies and threats emerging in financial services IT, Grant believes that Citi must keep working on intrusion detection. As a result, he mentored startup Digital Shadows, which develops technology for the “darker side” of the internet.

“There are a lot of very sophisticated groups who look to disrupt services for major banks, and it’s not limited just to banks these days,” he said. “As these attacks get more sophisticated, we have to be really on our game to make sure we have the best possible detection capability implemented in our systems, and at the very least be able to react very quickly if there is a new attack.”

Another successful startup from last year’s Innovation Lab is Growth Intelligence. The company tracks the performance activity of every registered company in the UK by analysing their online activity. This web behaviour information is collated in real time by searching and analysing vast amounts of publicly available data from the internet.

In recent research it found that there are nearly 270,000 active digital companies in the UK, compared with the government’s previous estimation of 167,000.

The closing date for applications to this year’s Innovation Lab is 8 September 2013.

Rapidly growing DigitalOcean opens second NYC data center

Continuing its rapid expansion, cloud service provider DigitalOcean has opened a second facility in the greater New York metropolitan area -- a data center located in Google's gargantuan Manhattan facility.

The additional location is another sign of the fast-growing success the company has had in offering a low-cost, easy-to-use IaaS (infrastructure as a service).

"There's a huge market for developers out there who just want a server online as fast as possible, and that is what DigitalOcean provides," said Mitch Wainer, a co-founder and the chief marketing officer of DigitalOcean.

Although Wainer disputed that DigitalOcean's first New York City-area data facility, actually located in northern New Jersey, ran out of space, new users who have signed up in the past month or so were instructed that they could not host their accounts there, and were instructed to choose DigitalOcean's outlets in Amsterdam or San Francisco.

In any case, the company's user base is growing quickly. The company has accrued more than 35,000 customers since its launch in 2011, and its revenue is increasing by about 30 percent to 50 percent per month, Wainer said.

Internet service market analysis firm Netcraft noted that in June 2013 DigitalOcean had more than 7,000 Web-facing servers, a dramatic increase from the prior December when Netcraft counted only 100 DigitalOcean Web-facing servers.

This newest set of servers is being colocated with the Telx data center company, which leases space in Google's 3 million-square-foot building. The building takes up an entire block on 8th Avenue, in the Chelsea district of Manhattan.

DigitalOcean was founded with the idea of offering cloud hosting that would be easier to set up than what was offered by the market leader, Amazon Web Services (AWS).

"There was a huge void in the market," Wainer said. Amazon and Rackspace are focused on enterprise-scaled businesses, but businesses in the lower-tier to midlevel market, which don't require advanced feature sets and don't have full engineering teams to manage infrastructure, are completely ignored, he said.

With its wide range of services, Amazon Web Services recently launched a series of tutorials that can guide users into setting up virtual machines.

In contrast, DigitalOcean keeps its deployment options relatively simple -- and inexpensive. Accounts are billed either on a monthly or an hourly basis. The least expensive "droplet," which is what DigitalOcean calls a virtual machine, costs US$5 a month, or about $0.007 cents per minute, and features a single CPU core between 2GHz and 3GHz, 512MB of working memory, 20GB of storage and 1 terabyte of data transfers.

In contrast, the least expensive month-to-month option on AWS, a T1.micro image running Linux, would run about $14.96 per month, and does not come with any storage.

The company claims that users can set up a droplet, or resize it to another pricing tier, in less than a minute. It offers virtual machine images running basic versions of either the Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Arch or Fedora Linux distributions.

The company is using a number of new technologies for competitive performance, including SSDs (solid state drives), which can boost I/O performance. For virtualization, DigitalOcean uses Red Hat's KVM hypervisor.

Just as Microsoft is doing with its Windows Azure service, DigitalOcean is initially pursuing the market of developers who need modestly priced machines to develop and test code.

Wainer points to the rapidly growing user base of GitHub, an online source-code repository, as proof of the potential size of the developer market. Founded in 2008, GitHub now hosts 7.7 million repositories from 3.3 million users.

"You can see from that market size alone, that this is a billion-dollar market opportunity," Wainer said.

While DigitalOcean has been courting the developer market, it is also suited for startup businesses as well, Wainer said. For instance, one startup using DigitalOcean is the RSS reader service NewsBlur, which has accrued a significant user base after Google shut down its own RSS reader.

Not that the company hasn't had a few bumps. Last month, one user found that the service was using identical SSH fingerprints for multiple Ubuntu droplets generated within a single account, which was a significant security vulnerability. The company has since fixed the problem.

"That's one of the things about being a startup -- you can't be perfect from the get-go," Wainer said, though adding, "Whenever there is an issue, we've been responsive."

DigitalOcean, which is based in New York City, now has 30 employees, though it is looking to hire network engineers and Linux system administrators. It is also expecting to get a significant investment from an outside party shortly, which will be used "to drive new features and acquire capacity in additional regions," Wainer said.

The company is planning to offer virtual private networking and object storage, similar to Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3). It will also broaden its array of off-the-shelf virtual machines, including those with WordPress or other popular applications installed and ready for use.

IE10 captures second place among Microsoft's browsers

Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) jumped into second place among Microsoft's browsers last month, pushing past IE9 through an enforced upgrade.

IE10's user share climbed from 16.5 percent to a record 24 percent of all copies of Internet Explorer in June, according to Web measurement firm Net Applications.

Among Microsoft's five supported browsers, IE10 was the second-most-used, leapfrogging the two-year-old IE9, which shed user share to end June with 20.9 percent of all copies of Internet Explorer. The 12-year-old IE6 was fourth with 10.9 percent, while 2009's IE8 remained in first with 40.4 percent.

IE10's climb has accelerated: June's user share increase was the largest since the browser's introduction on Windows 7 in February. As in previous months, June's jump was fueled by the automatic update from IE9 to IE10 on Windows 7 that kicked in last winter.

Windows 8's gradual if not dramatic rise in user share also contributed to IE10's increase, since that and Windows RT come with IE10: Windows 8's share grew in June by the largest amount since its October 2012 launch.

IE10's climb was mirrored by a large fall in IE9's user share; the browser that once threatened IE8's dominance plunged from 27.5 percent of all copies of IE to 20.9 percent. IE9 peaked in February 2013 at 38.8 percent, but unless Microsoft soon runs out of Windows 7 PCs to upgrade, the browser could be eclipsed by the still-surviving IE6 within a couple of months.

Overall, IE remained flat with approximately 56 percent of the user share of all browsers, implying that few if any of IE10's gains came from people switching browser brands. About 39 percent of all Windows users ran a non-Microsoft browser in June, slightly less than in May.

IE8 lost about seven-tenths of a percentage point in June—the largest decrease since December 2012—to end with a 40.4 percent share of all copies of Internet Explorer. IE8 will remain the most popular of Microsoft's browsers for some time, experts have said, because as the most modern version available for Windows XP it's been made the standard in enterprises supporting heterogeneous environments with both Windows XP and Windows 7 systems.

The rapid rise in IE10's user share has been unprecedented in Microsoft's experience. It has been much more akin to the quick turnover by rivals like Chrome and Firefox, which also automatically upgrade users, than any previous edition of Internet Explorer, showing that the Redmond, Washington developer can, if it wants, migrate large numbers of users to a newer browser.

But IE10's time as a climber will probably be short lived: Microsoft has promised to deliver IE11 for Windows 7, which will trigger a downturn in IE10's user share and corresponding rise in IE11.

Other browsers stayed in their long-inhabited positions grew and shrank in Net Applications' measurements, with Chrome exiting June with 17.2 percent, an increase of 1.4 percentage points, and Firefox dropping by 1.5 points to 19.2 percent. Apple's Safari and Opera Software's Opera remained flat at 5.6 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively.

Golf’s Open Championship prepares website for 10,000 page requests a second

The organisers of golf’s Open Championship pre-tested and configured its website in anticipation of 10,000 webpage requests a second from five million site users during the four day golf tournament at Muirfield.

Organisers, The R&A outsources the support and development of the website, TheOpen.com, to Moldova-based IT services supplier Endava. The two organisations have been testing for weeks in preparation the event beginning on 18 July.

Every year for four days the .net-based TheOpen.com becomes one of the 1,000 most visited websites in the world and it needs 100% availability. During the event the website is being hosted in Endava’s private cloud with 99% of the pages delivered via Akamai’s Content Delivery Network.

The website features real-time scoring on a leaderboard with three views, tournament player performance stats centre, mobile feeds for site scoring apps, course live view - GPS player mapping systems to show player grouping and scores - all overlaid on a course map, interactive course guide and social media functionality.

A four-day rehearsal at Endava’s delivery centre in Cluj, Romania, has already been completed. It used the data from last year’s tournament to run the test. During the tournament, Endava will provide a fully managed hosting platform, which is monitored and staffed 24 hours a day.

An independent study commissioned by The R&A, carried out by the Sport Industry Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, forecast this year’s event will deliver an overall economic benefit of £70m to the East Lothian and Edinburgh economy.

Michael Tate, executive director of business affairs at The R&A, said Endava's experience with sports websites was a key factor in its decision to choose Endava. "Its innovative use of web technology, thorough testing and management regimes, make them an excellent IT provider for TheOpen.com,” said Tate.

Other IT developments at this year’s Open Championship

A wireless mesh is being introduced at this year’s Open Championship for spectators to access the digital content available. Spectators will be able to use mobile devices to access this digital content in areas away from play in the grandstands and tented villages. The R&A will be monitoring the effectiveness of the mesh with a view to implementing it at future venues.

LED scoreboards will be introduced. This will provide up-to-date information and digital content. The digital content will include scoring, player information and statistical facts, live video highlights and other Open Championship and venue information. It will enable spectators to watch televised highlights from other parts of the course or live broadcasts. It will also help spectators to find out the latest scores.

A permanent fibre optic system has been installed at Muirfield which will deliver a number of benefits to tournament and will, the organisers hope, prove a legacy investment for the venue. The fibre optic cabling runs around the course and will improve the telecommunications coverage at The Open by making it possible to have more phone lines. The R&A says this will assist the media in covering the event, as they can access the system to upload photographs from out on the course.

Teen Choice Awards: 'Glee,' 'Pitch Perfect' Top Second Wave of Nominations

The second wave of nominations for the Teen Choice Awards has been announced.

Music-centric projects are proving to be strong contenders at the Aug. 11 event, with Fox's Glee snagging five nominations and a cappella film Pitch Perfect grabbing four.

Acuvue will return for the third straight year to present the Acuvue Inspire Award, awarded to an inspirational person who has used his or her celebrity status to make a difference in teens' lives. During the broadcast, Candie's will debut a new TV commercial with Carly Rae Jepsen.

Additionally, a slew of presenters have been added to the lineup for the annual summer awards show: Erin Andrews, Skylar Astin, Abigail Breslin, Emblem3, Max Greenfield, Simon Helberg, Demi Lovato, Bridgit Mendler, Hailee Steinfeld, Bella Thorne, The Wanted, Russell Westbrook and Rebel Wilson.

Previously announced presenters include Lily Collins, Alexandra Daddario, Liam Hemsworth, Brandon T. Jackson, Logan Lerman, Chloe Moretz and Tyler Posey. One Direction and Paramore will both perform.

The Teen Choice Awards air from 8 to 10 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 11, on Fox.

See the second wave of nominees below:

MOVIES

Choice Movie Villain
Javier Bardem, “Skyfall”
Adam DeVine, “Pitch Perfect”
Tom Hardy, “The Dark Knight Rises”
Ben Kingsley, “Iron Man 3”
Melissa McCarthy, “Identity Thief”

Choice Movie Scene Stealer
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, “The Dark Knight Rises”
Hana Mae Lee, “Pitch Perfect”
Kellan Lutz, “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2”
Channing Tatum, “G.I. Joe: Retaliation”
Ben Platt, “Pitch Perfect”
Choice Movie Breakout
Adam DeVine, “Pitch Perfect”
Alice Englert, “Beautiful Creatures”
Nicholas Hoult, “Warm Bodies”
Ezra Miller, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”
Eddie Redmayne, “Les Misérables”
TELEVISION

Choice TV Villain
Carly Chaikin, “Suburgatory”
Joseph Morgan, “The Vampire Diaries”
Lana Parrilla, “Once Upon a Time”
Janel Parrish, “Pretty Little Liars”
Becca Tobin, "Glee"

Choice TV Personality - Male
Nick Cannon, “America's Got Talent”
Simon Cowell, "The X Factor"
Adam Levine, “The Voice”
Ryan Seacrest, "American Idol"
Blake Shelton, “The Voice”
Choice TV Personality – Female
Erin Andrews, Fox Sports
Cat Deeley, "So You Think You Can Dance"
Carrie Ann Inaba, “Dancing With The Stars”
Heidi Klum, “America's Got Talent”
Demi Lovato, "The X Factor"

Choice TV Female Reality Star
Honey Boo Boo, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo”
Danielle Jonas, “Married to Jonas”
The Kardashians & Jenners, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”
Abby Lee Miller, “Dance Moms”
Tia & Tamera Mowry, “Tia & Tamera”

Choice TV Male Reality Star
Kevin Jonas, “Married to Jonas”
Ryan Lochte, “What Would Ryan Lochte Do?”
Gordon Ramsay, "Hell's Kitchen" and "Masterchef"
The Robertsons, “Duck Dynasty”
The Wanted, “The Wanted Life”

Choice TV Male Scene Stealer
Max Greenfield, "New Girl"
Steven R. McQueen, “The Vampire Diaries”
Tahj Mowry, “Baby Daddy”
Chord Overstreet, "Glee"
Rico Rodriguez, “Modern Family”
Choice TV Female Scene Stealer
Candice Accola, “The Vampire Diaries”
Miley Cyrus, “Two and a Half Men”
Heather Morris, "Glee"
Eden Sher, “The Middle”
Ariel Winter, “Modern Family”

Choice TV Breakout Star
Stephen Amell, “Arrow”
Melissa Benoist, "Glee"
Blake Jenner, "Glee"
AnnaSophia Robb, “The Carrie Diaries”
Derek Theler, “Baby Daddy”

Choice TV Breakout Show
“Arrow”
“Baby Daddy”
“The Carrie Diaries”
“The Fosters”
"The Mindy Project"

MUSIC

Choice Country Song
“Boys ’Round Here,” Blake Shelton featuring Pistol Annies & Friends
“Crash My Party,” Luke Bryan
“Cruise,” Florida Georgia Line
“I Want Crazy,” Hunter Hayes
“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Taylor Swift

Choice Single: Female Artist
“Come & Get It,” Selena Gomez
“Cups (Pitch Perfect’s ‘When I'm Gone’),” Anna Kendrick
“Heart Attack,” Demi Lovato
“I Knew You Were Trouble,” Taylor Swift
“We Can't Stop,” Miley Cyrus
Choice Single: Male Artist
“Beauty And A Beat,” Justin Bieber featuring Nicki Minaj
“Blurred Lines,” Robin Thicke featuring T.I + Pharrell
“Feel This Moment,” Pitbull featuring Christina Aguilera
“Locked Out Of Heaven,” Bruno Mars
“Suit & Tie,” Justin Timberlake featuring Jay-Z
Choice Single: Group
“Get Lucky,” Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams
“I Love It,” Icona Pop featuring Charli XCX
“Live While We're Young,” One Direction
“Love Somebody,” Maroon 5
“Thrift Shop,” Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Wanz

Choice R&B/Hip-Hop Song
“#Beautiful,” Mariah Carey
“Can't Hold Us,” Macklemore & Ryan Lewis featuring Ray Dalton
“Diamonds,” Rihanna
“Next To Me,” Emeli Sandé
“Started From The Bottom,” Drake
Choice Rock Song
“Carry On,” fun.
“Gone, Gone, Gone,” Phillip Phillips
“Ho Hey,” The Lumineers
“Radioactive,” Imagine Dragons
“Sail,” AWOLNATION
Choice Love Song
“Just Give Me A Reason,” P!nk featuring Nate Ruess
“Little Things,” One Direction
“Mirrors,” Justin Timberlake
“Treasure,” Bruno Mars
“The Way,” Ariana Grande featuring Mac Miller

Choice Break-Up Song
“Come and Get It,” Selena Gomez
“DONE.,” The Band Perry
“Stay,” Rihanna featuring Mikky Ekko
“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Taylor Swift
“When I Was Your Man,” Bruno Mars
Choice Music Breakout Artist
Candice Glover
Ariana Grande
Psy
Emeli Sandé
Ed Sheeran
Choice Music Breakout Group
Emblem3
Icona Pop
Imagine Dragons
The Lumineers
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

OTHER

Choice Web Star
Ryan Beatty
Cimorelli
Dave Days
Kid President
The Screaming Sheep

Choice Social Network
Facebook
Instagram
tumblr.
Twitter
Vine
Candie's Choice Style Icon
Miley Cyrus
Ariana Grande
Demi Lovato
Lea Michele
Emma Watson
Choice Twitter Personality
Justin Bieber
Lady Gaga
President Barack Obama
Katy Perry
Rihanna

Second arrest in NFL murder case?

Aaron Hernandez's contract with the Patriots was renewed last year for $40m A second arrest has been made in a murder investigation involving American football player Aaron Hernandez, prosecutors say.


Carlos Ortiz, 27, was detained in Connecticut accused of being a fugitive from justice, say authorities.

Mr Hernandez, 23, was charged on Wednesday with murder in relation to last week's discovery of a fellow player's body in Massachusetts.

The NFL player has now been dropped by his team, the New England Patriots.
No 'special treatment'
Mr Ortiz, who was arrested on Wednesday in Mr Hernandez's hometown of Bristol, is in custody on bail of $1.5m (nearly £1m).
Odin Lloyd's girlfriend and Mr Hernandez's fiancee are sisters
Mr Hernandez was taken from his home south of Boston, Massachusetts, in handcuffs over the death of Odin Lloyd, 27, a semi-professional player.

He is also charged with firearms violations.

During a bail hearing on Thursday, lawyer James Sultan said Mr Hernandez was "not looking for any special treatment from this court" and said the NFL player would not be a flight risk.

But Judge Renee Dupuis disagreed and rejected Mr Hernandez's request to be released on bail.

"Given all the circumstances in this case, despite the fact that he has a fiancee and a baby and is a homeowner, he also has the means to flee," she said. "A bracelet just wouldn't keep him here - nor would $250,000."

Lloyd was found in a quiet corner of an industrial park not far from Mr Hernandez's home.

According to the victim's family, the two men had been friends.

Lloyd's girlfriend and Mr Hernandez's fiancee - who is the mother of his eight-month-old baby - are sisters.

The victim had been shot multiple times, authorities said. The two men are believed to have had an argument some days earlier.

Two days after that dispute, Mr Hernandez allegedly called two unnamed friends and asked them to come to Massachusetts from the neighbouring state of Connecticut.

The group is said to have picked up Lloyd at home in the early hours of 17 June. Surveillance footage from Mr Hernandez's home appears to show him leaving with a gun.

Prosecutors say that about an hour later, Lloyd texted his sister: "Did you see who I am with.''

When his sister asked whom, Lloyd replied "NFL", adding "Just so you know".

Minutes later, workers at the industrial park reported hearing gunshots, say prosecutors.

Mr Hernandez was drafted by the Patriots in 2010 after playing at the University of Florida.

His contract was renewed last year in a $40m deal.

Mongolian president wins second term amid focus on mining curbs

ULAN BATOR - Mongolia's incumbent president, Tsakhia Elbegdorj, who wants more controls on foreign mining investments, has emerged as the winner of Wednesday's polls with a narrow majority of votes cast, the country's election commission said on Thursday.

Elbegdorj, 50, who has served as president since 2009, was the overwhelming favorite in the contest, played out amid worries about Mongolia's faltering economy as well as the growing role of foreign mining firms.

The commission said Elbegdorj got 50.23 percent of the votes, beating a former wrestling champion, Bat-Erdene Badmaanyambuu of the Mongolian People's Party, and health minister Udval Natsag, of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party.

The lower-than-expected margin of victory could be traced to low turnout, said Julian Dierkes, an expert in Mongolian politics at the University of British Columbia, adding that participation was 10 percent lower than the last election.

"The consensus was that Elbegdorj was winning and I suspect that a lot of potential voters thought he was winning anyway, and didn't vote," said Dierkes, who is in Ulan Bator to monitor the election.

Elbegdorj's narrow victory, even if it is not contested by the opposition, is not expected to allay the concerns of foreign investors worried about growing government interference in the country's booming mining sector.

The win preserves the dominance of the Mongolian Democratic Party, which won the most seats, though not an absolute majority, in last year's parliamentary vote, and heads a coalition government keen to regulate foreign investments.

Elbegdorj is a free-market advocate, but his government has increasingly adopted a more "resource nationalist" approach, with laws to give the country a bigger stake in "strategic assets", such as mines.

It also aims to rework a landmark 2009 investment pact to develop the massive Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine.

The vote took place amid rising concern over Mongolia's resource-dependent economy, with falling commodity prices and weakening demand from China expected to erode growth and undermine spending plans.

The economy grew 12 percent last year and 17 percent in 2011, as mining investment poured in and mineral exports to China surged.

But growth could slow to 5.5 percent in 2013, the Mongolian Investment Banking Group said this week, if the Oyu Tolgoi project is not launched on schedule.

Mongolia is in dispute with Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto over how it will repatriate profits from Oyu Tolgoi, whose launch has been delayed twice this month.

A controversial new mining bill championed by Elbegdorj will also be high on the agenda.

"The biggest implication is continuity -- his campaign was that he had done well for four years and wanted a chance to do more," said Dierkes. "But mining and resources is on the top of everyone's agenda and here he will keep going."

Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

Federer Loses In Wimbledon's Second Round As Upsets Continue

Seven-time Wimbledon champion Roger Federer leaves the court Wednesday, after losing in the second round to Ukraine's Sergiy Stakhovsky.

Roger Federer, who last year won his seventh Wimbledon title, is out of the 2013 tournament after falling to Ukrainian Sergei Stakhovsky, 6-7, 7-6, 7-5, 7-6. The upset comes two days after Rafael Nadal, who was in the same side of the bracket as Federer, was upset in the first round.

Sergiy Stakhovsky is ranked No. 116 in the world. Federer is ranked No. 3 in the world. The victory is Stakhovsky's first against an opponent ranked in the top 10.

And the women's No. 3 seed, Maria Sharapova, was also bounced Wednesday, falling to Portugal's Michelle Larcher de Brito 6-3, 6-4 in the second round. Sharapova fell at least twice on the court today, blaming her slips on the condition of the grass court's surface.

As for Federer, he said after his loss on the All England Club's Centre Court, "It was clearly not what I was hoping for."

That's according to USA Today
, which quotes Stakhovsky calling his win "magic," adding, "I couldn't play any better today."
Federer's loss marks the first time he has failed to advance to a Grand Slam quarterfinal since the 2004 Wimbledon tournament, according to a release from the All England Club.

The top seeds have suffered at this year's Wimbledon. Earlier Wednesday, women's No. 2 seed Victoria Azarenka quit the tournament, citing a knee injury.

But the two No. 1 seeds, Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams, have had little trouble. And men's No. 2 Andy Murray now finds himself atop a bracket he once shared with Federer and Nadal.

 

Jim Gaffigan to Publish Second Book of Essays

Stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan is set to publish his second book, an untitled collection of essays about food. The book is scheduled for a 2014 release from Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group at Random House.

Gaffigan’s first book, Dad Is Fat, was published May 17 and debuted at No. 5 on the New York Times bestseller’s list, where it has stayed in the top 10 for six weeks and reached as high as no. 4.

Q&A: Jim Gaffigan Reveals Why He Did the $5 Download and the Risks That Came With It

“Working with Crown was a delight. I haven’t been hungry in ten years,” Gaffigan said.

“Working with Jim Gaffigan and his team on his bestselling book, Dad Is Fat, was such a pleasure that we couldn’t wait to sign him up for another book on the topic people most love to hear him talk about: food,” said Tina Constable, senior vice president and publisher, Crown Archetype.

Gaffigan is among the most successful comedians in the United States, with DVDs and CDs reaching platinum status. He has appeared on HBO’s Flight of the Conchords and Bored to Death and on three of NBC’s Law & Order series.  His big screen roles have included Going the Distance, Away We Go, and It’s Kind of a Funny Story, and he made his Broadway debut in That Championship Season alongside Chris Noth, Brian Cox, Jason Patric, and Kiefer Sutherland.

PHOTOS: 11 Buzzy Books for a Summer Road Trip

He is currently on tour with Jim Gaffigan: The White Bread Tour.

Gaffigan is represented by Alex Murray at Brillstein Entertainment Partners.