Beyonce's Latest Blue Ivy Pic Is Genius (PHOTOS)

+

Queen of All Things Awesome, Beyonce Knowles, posted yet another positively adorable photo of her daughter, Blue Ivy. In the pic, Blue looks content. In the pic, Blue looks happy. In the pic, Blue looks ... like any other kid in the world because you can't see her face.

Not sure how many of you follow Beyonce's every move as closely as I do, but I've noticed that the majority of Blue Ivy pics Mama Bey has posted to her Tumblr and Instagram accounts are really creative in the sense that we rarely get an actual glimpse of her child.

For moms who feel slightly uneasy about posting photos of their kid online (hi), this is genius.

I love looking at photos of other people's kids online. I'm no longer on Facebook, but seeing pics of my friends', family members', and colleagues' kids is truly the thing I miss most. However, that's not how I roll. It isn't that I think something dire is going to happen from havingcute pics of my toddler on the Internet, I'm just more private than others, I suppose. (I do have an Instagram account, but it's private.)

That said, sometimes I take what I think is a super cute pic of my daughter and I want to share it with the world! Sometimes I have the perfect pic of my child to go with a post, but, I don't know, I just feel sort of weird using it. (I have posted photos of her to this site before, but sparingly.) What's a proud mama to do? Go Beyonce on everyone's ass, I guess.

No, Beyonce didn't invent the "creative kid photo," but A) it's fun to give her credit for everything in this world (she invented Penicillin, you know), and B) she really has perfected the art. Take this other sweet pic of Blue Ivy, for instance. You totally get the overall feeling of the moment (playful, silly, light-hearted), but no toddler face:

Well done, Bey. Also, while it's hard to tire of adorable photos of kids, let's be honest here: How many photos of your kid sitting there smiling can you have? It's nice to have a collection that's varied and creative.

So, for any parent out there who isn't a gigantic fan of posting pics of their kids on the Internet, I encourage you to peruse Beyonce's Tumblr and Instagram accounts. And, finally, here's a pic of my daughter. Because why not?

How do you feel about posting photos of your kids online?

Retargeting Giant AdRoll Poaches Google Ads Veteran To Head New EMEA Office

More

Next Story

As retargeting startup Criteo is poised to IPO, one company flying under the radar but, by the looks of it, that is also doing well in the retargeting space is AdRoll. It’s now launched in Europe, or perhaps more accurately EMEA. At the same time it’s poached Marius Smyth, eight-year Google veteran, and former head of UK & Ireland SMB Sales and part of Google’s UK and Ireland executive team.

AdRoll says it has had some 600 percent+ growth in the region – an indication of why it might be doing so well. It’s been pulling in 1,300+ advertisers here (but 10,000+ advertisers in 100 countries). They say they recently passed a $100 million run-rate milestone (up from $50 million last year).

Backed by Peter Thiel and Accel Partners with $25 million in funding, AdRoll’s success shows retargeting is pretty hot right now. Google launched a “Dynamic Remarketing” product in June 2013 and in June Twitter said it would be offering a retargeting product. Facebook launched retargeting on FBX in late fall 2012.

Then of course, there’s Criteo’s NASDAQ IPO. Criteo has already hiked its IPO price range to $27-$29. The company is expected to officially price its IPO this week, after which it’ll begin trading. This comes after Rocket Fuel delivered a very hot IPO.

Obviously, this is a European tech success story, even if there are plenty of annoyed people that they decamped to NASDAQ.

Cloud Management Platform ServiceMesh Acquired By CSC, A Consulting And IT Services Company

Cloud management companyServiceMesh has been acquired byCSC, which has in recent years emerged as an IT management outfit that focuses on helping companies move their apps to service providers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

ServiceMesh describes itself as an enterprise cloud management company that offers Global 2000 companies what it calls “IT as Service,” that charges on a pay as you go basis. It helps companies extend their data centers to public cloud services with all of the governance requirements that comes with managing an enterprise operation.

The ServiceMesh Agility Platform helps enterprise customers with self-service provisioning and management of standardized and fully governed Infrastructure as a Service, platform as a service and software as a service offerings. The company allows business to go fast, build new applications and manage multiple providers, all in a way that’s compliant.

The company had $15 million in funding from Ignition Partners. Frank Artale, a partner at Ignition, was a member of the ServiceMesh board of directors. It was ServiceMesh’s only round of institutional funding.

In a prepared release, CSC stated that the deal will enable the company to expand the reach of its BizCloud service, as well as allow it to present stronger competition against dominant cloud players like AWS

Intuit Acquires FullSlate, An Online Scheduler For Small Businesses

Intuit is acquiringFullSlate, an online scheduling company that allows clients to offer their customers the ability to make appointments directly to web sites and Facebook pages. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The service will become part of Intuit demandforce, a marketing platform for small businesses. Demandforce has tools for communications, to help clients keep in touch with their customers through email and SMS messaging. It also has online reputation tools that help clients reach out to their customer base for reviews that then get distributed to top sites. The scheduler from FullSlate will become part of this portfolio, along with its e-commerce platform that allows for payments to be made that are tied to a particular appointment.

The FullSlate service has a host of scheduling services. It allows for customers to use an embed code for the online appointment scheduler that they can place on their web site. The company also offers a Facebook app that allows for scheduling to a Facebook business page so clients and their friends can make appointments without leaving Facebook.

Customers can also create a landing page for a business with a logo, business hours, map and online scheduling. The service works on iOS and Android devices, calendar syncing, a client database and email marketing capabilities.

Intuit has made a number of acquisitions this year with a particular focus on the small business, their bread-and-butter market.

Europe's huge 'Albert Einstein' cargo ship leaves space station

NASA TV

The European Space Agency’s fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV-4) undocked from the International Space Station’s Zvezda service module on Monday.

Europe's huge robotic resupply vehicle, dubbed Albert Einstein, was cast off the International Space Station on Monday after completing its delivery mission to the orbiting lab.

The Albert Einstein space cargo ship was the fourth of five Automated Transfer Vehicles, or ATVs, developed by the Europe Space Agency (ESA). The spacecraft undocked at 4:55am EDT as the space station was orbiting about 260 miles above Kazakhstan, video from the ATV-4's departure shows. 

About the size of a double-decker bus, the ATV is the biggest vehicle in the space station's resupply fleet. In another record-breaking move, the unmanned vehicle left the space station on Monday with the biggest-ever load of trash — 4,761 pounds (2160 kg) of it — NASA and ESA officials said. ['Albert Einstein' Photos from Space: Europe's ATV-4 Cargo Ship Mission]

When ATV-4 launched from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana on June 5, it was heaviest payload ever carried by an Ariane rocket. Named after the the famed theoretical physicist, it delivered a record amount of cargo to the space station, ferrying more than 7 tons (6.3 metric tons) of food, supplies, fuel and experiments.

Luca Parmitano (via Twitter as @astro_luca

In a goofy photo, the six astronauts on board the space station pay tribute to the departure of their resupply ship named after Albert Einstein.

ATV-4 will orbit Earth for a few days and then on Saturday it will fire its engines to descend the Earth's atmosphere and burn up over an uninhabited area of the southern Pacific Ocean. 

The space freighter's departure makes room for the arrival of a manned Soyuz capsule on Nov. 7 carrying three new crew members: NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin.

For a few days, nine astronauts will live and work aboard the orbiting lab. On Nov. 10, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, and cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin will return to Earth aboard their Soyuz.

To honor Albert Einstein's departure, all six astronauts currently on board the space station posed for an Albert Einstein-esque group photo, sticking out their tongues in a tribute to one of the most famous pictures of the scientist ever taken. Parmitano posted the image on Twitter and his Facebook page.

The first ATV, named after adventure novelist Jules Verne, flew to the space station in 2008. The next and final ATV is named for Belgian priest and cosmologist Georges Lemaître and it is scheduled to launch in mid-2014 for a six-month mission at the station.