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The Kingmaker Strategy: Pioneered By The Chinese Internet Giants, Coming To America? | Jeff Richards | 2,014 | 11 | 15 | A few weeks ago, Chinese e-commerce giant made a number of announcements at its annual developer conference. Several announcements surrounding its mobile strategy related to a Silicon Valley startup called . What is a $200 billion+ e-commerce giant doing with a startup based in Mountain View, Calif.? It’s the latest example of the kingmaker model we’re seeing the Chinese Internet companies execute very well: 1) Pick a fast-growing leader in an important emerging category 2) Make a sizeable (more than passive or minority) investment in the company, often taking a board seat 3) Go “all in” to help drive the smaller upstart to new heights and outright leadership in its category It’s a pattern we haven’t yet seen take hold in the U.S. but believe we might. Quixey is an emerging player in mobile search. Alibaba led the company’s $50 million Series D round of financing in October of 2013, taking a seat on the company’s board of directors. Since that time, the two companies have been working closely together, with Quixey CEO Tomer Kagan and COO Guru Gowrappan spending a significant amount of time in China. At the recent Alibaba developer conference, Alibaba announced that Quixey would power mobile search on YunOS, Alibaba’s mobile operating system. The two companies are also focused on building out a strong mobile developer network in China. Quixey remains an independent, private and VC-backed company but has Alibaba as an anchor partner for China in addition to the many advantages of Alibaba’s global resources. This deep collaboration between a Goliath and its smaller, upstart investment target is a model we haven’t seen historically in Silicon Valley. For the most part, and almost without exception, large technology companies prefer to pursue one of two paths: 1) Keep an “open” playing field, letting many smaller companies compete equally in its ecosystem, or 2) outright acquire an innovative upstart thereby accruing all of the benefits of the strategic alignment to the mother ship. The key difference in the kingmaker model is component No. 3 above: the Chinese Internet giant’s willingness to pick a winner and go “all in.” We’ve now seen this model take hold and work well several times in the past few years. Beyond the Alibaba/Quixey example, here are a few others: Didi and its competitor Kuaidi are the top taxi-hailing apps in China. In late 2013, Didi raised a round of over $100 million led by Tencent. In Q1 2014, Tencent promoted and subsidized rides on Didi via WeChat and its WeChat Pay feature. Talk about strategic value: In fewer than 90 days, daily bookings went from 350,000 per day to more than 5 million per day and passenger accounts went from 22 million to more than 100 million (source: ). Kuaidi has seen similar growth via its investment from, and partnership with, Alibaba. Why are the Internet giants so focused on taxi hailing? Beyond the attractiveness of the (very large) market, think mobile payments – taxis represent a daily use case for Chinese consumers. Not surprisingly, China is the world’s fastest-growing travel market, with a double-digit growth rate. Back in 2011, the total online travel market in China was approximately $20 billion in annual bookings, but analysts expected this number to reach $55 billion in 2015 and $75 billion in 2017. With this in mind, in June of 2011, Baidu purchased a majority stake in , a VC-backed, private company with a lead position in the online travel space. The two companies also structured a deep, multi-year partnership focused on search traffic and revenue sharing. Qunar remained an independent company, completed a successful NASDAQ IPO in 2013, and today sports a $3 billion market capitalization. In addition to these three examples, Alibaba recently made a $1.2 billion investment in Chinese Internet video leader , Qihoo took a significant position in adtech leader , and Tencent owns a significant stake in vertical commerce leader . This is not to say the Chinese Internet giants are afraid of outright acquisitions. Alibaba invested in mobile browser leader in 2009 and 2013, and acquired the company outright in 2014. UCWeb is a core element of Alibaba’s mobile strategy, and has gone on to extend its leadership in China and India. invested in Internet gaming leader in 2009 and acquired the company outright in 2011. With Tencent’s distribution and user base, Riot Game’s League of Legends has gone on to experience enormous success in China. Will we see U.S. companies begin to pursue the kingmaker strategy any time soon? Microsoft famously made a $240 million investment in Facebook in 2007, several years prior to the company’s IPO. But it would be a stretch to argue that either side went “all in” with the other, and Microsoft’s investment was for a passive, minority stake (though one that turned out to be quite valuable). On the other hand, Intel’s recent $700 million+ investment in (in return for an ownership stake estimated to be in the high teens, percentage-wise) is more in line with the Chinese model. The Chinese Internet giants may beat their U.S. counterparts to the punch, with Tencent and Alibaba leading the charge. In addition to Riot, Tencent has made investments in and several other American online gaming companies as well as a few players outside the sector like . Over the past 24 months, Alibaba has invested in mobile video app , e-commerce site , online gaming company and next-gen television remote player Peel (in addition to Quixey). These have all been minority investments to date, but given the success in China, we may see a more active approach over time. Given the rising activity from their Chinese competitors, it would not be surprising to see U.S. companies step up their investment activity and potentially even attempt to pick a category winner and “kingmake” an emerging player or two. It’s working pretty well for Alibaba (market cap: $230 billion), Tencent ($150 billion) and Baidu ($80 billion). |
Most People Prefer The iPhone 6, But The 6 Plus Is Selling OK, Says Analyst | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 11 | 15 | Turns out you weren’t the only one that thought the new iPhone 6 Plus is just too big to carry around as a normal phone. A new study suggests [ ] that the sales of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are largely driven by the 4.7-inch model. However, while forming less of the sales figures, the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus has still captured a sizeable market share in Apple’s sales. On the flip side, these larger phones from Apple may also be less popular with Android users planning to switch to Apple than analysts had predicted. (CIRP) found that the iPhone 6 accounted for 68 percent of all iPhone sales, while the iPhone 6 Plus took between 23 and 24 percent. It also found that fewer iPhone buyers came from the Google Android platform in 2014 (12 percent) compared to those who switched from Android to an iPhone in 2013 (23 percent). Previously, the iPhone 5s had attracted customers away from BlackBerry and Windows devices. Now? Not so much – almost certainly down to the wide availability of robust, large Android phones now. The research applies to the first 30 days of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus availability in the US. Apple itself doesn’t break down sales figures for specific iPhone models. CIRP says the new iPhone 6 models represent about 91 percent of total iPhone sales over their first four weeks of sales, with the rest made up of older other iPhone models, compared to 84 percent last time a new model was released. CIRP also found the average storage capacity for buyers was 48 gigabytes (doubled from a year ago). The iPhone 6 Plus come in sizes of 16, 64, and 128 gigabytes. |
As Developers Depart, Google Glass Is Ready To Become This Era’s Segway | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 11 | 15 | Just over 18 months ago Google Chairman Eric Schmidt he found having to talk to Google Glass out loud “the weirdest thing” and admitted that there would be “places where Google Glass are inappropriate.” Well, hello! I think the average person could have told Google this long before they spent millions developing the thing, and , the product was simply incapable of becoming a mass-market device. I predicted it would become this era’s Segway: hyped as a game changer but ultimately used by warehouse workers and mall cops. Indeed, Glass might well be our surveillance era’s perfect pairing. Now clear evidence that app developers are dropping the device. Nine of the 16 app Glass app makers that Reuters contacted admitted they’d abandoned their efforts. Meanwhile, “The Glass Collective,” has gone and now , while three of Google’s key employees on the Glass team have departed. Admittedly, Facebook and OpenTable are among the larger developers persevering with Glass and remain two of the 100 apps on the — though the official Twitter app has been withdrawn. Meanwhile, Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently went to a red-carpet event without his normally ever-present Glass. Signs the product is ready for the chop? Reuter’s sources say a full consumer launch may now be “delayed” to 2015. Google’s people say a consumer launch is still on. But I think we can safely say that, even if Google did launch it to consumers, the simplest thing for Google to do now would be to release the underlying technology for startups to hack around with. Industrial applications – building and manufacturing, security, training – could be the future for Glass. Indeed, Taco Bell and KFC are considering Glass as a potential training method for employees. And that joined the programme are all in the enterprise space. Goodbye red carpet, hello Mall Cops and McDonald’s. |
Google Is Driving A Bus Across Bangladesh To Help 500,000 Students Learn About The Internet | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | Google is literally hitting the road to promote the potential of the internet in Bangladesh. , an educational program aimed at teaching key digital skills to more than half a million students in the South Asian country. There are some outlandish programs to help connect the world’s population — including , , and — but Google is going back to basics with this roadshow across the world’s eighth most populated country. It plans to visit some 500 educational campuses across 35 locations over the next 12 months, bringing with it instructors who can teach students about important tools to help them make the most of the internet. In addition to tutors, students involved in the project will be able to get hands-on with a number of internet-connected Android devices. Google tells us that the hardware will be entry-level devices from Symphony, like . There’s also for the project, where students can exchange ideas, and access more information. Living in Southeast Asia, I’ve witnessed first-hand how the internet can make big and also small-yet-impactful changes to people’s daily lives. Whether that’s helping connect them with friends, family or experts, giving them better access to information and news, or just providing a medium for entertainment — many people in emerging markets are simply just unaware of what’s possible. Throwing a smartphone or computer at them isn’t always the best approach, since the internet can be daunting, so a tutor-led approach is a great start. With two-thirds of the world estimated to be offline, local initiatives like Google Bus Bangladesh offer inexperienced or first-time internet users an important opportunity to familiarize themselves with the basics and the possible benefits. It’s doubtless true that the more people who use the internet or carry mobile phones is good for Google’s business — but, even still, initiatives like this are resource and time-intensive, and Google deserves credit for getting out there and trying to make a difference. |
Sony Is Launching Its Own Internet TV Service, PlayStation Vue, In Early 2015 | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | Sony is the latest contender to throw its hat into the content streaming ring after it plans for PlayStation Vue, a cloud-based service that includes programming from 75 channels. PlayStation Vue will be able available for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. The TV service, which Sony said will initially be available in an invite-only beta starting in New York this month, will include content from the likes of CBS, Fox, NBCUniversal and others. It revealed that a full commercial launch will take place in the first quarter of 2015, but it isn’t revealing how much it will cost as yet. The company did explain, though, that it will be available via a monthly subscription plan at a “fair and competitive price.” It isn’t clear yet whether (or indeed when) it will be available outside of the U.S.. Image via PlayStation Vue will offer customers live, on-demand, and catch-up shows and movies. Sony said the last three days of content from each channel will be available without the need to pre-record, but viewers can plan ahead and save their favorite programs before they air, after which they’ll have 28 days to watch them. Sony proclaimed triumphantly that its new service will “reinvent the traditional viewing experience,” and, while the line-up it has lured is particularly impressive, the Japanese entertainment giant isn’t the only big gun jumping into the U.S. streaming market next year. its intention to offer a standalone online subscription service in 2015, rivaling the likes of Netflix, Hulu and others. Sony’s offering will be limited to those who own its PlayStation consoles, but gamers tend to be a loyal bunch and while it isn’t likely to steal a large chunk of Netflix’s customer base, it is another service that locks customers into the Sony ecosystem. That’s certainly not good news for U.S. cable operators. |
Korean Internet Giant Daum Kakao Launches Its Own Mobile Payment Platform | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | , one of the largest Internet companies in South Korea, has launched a mobile payment platform called BankWalletKakao as it addresses concerns about its ability to grow in international markets. Daum Kakao was by the merger of Daum, one of South Korea’s largest Internet portals and search engines, with Kakao, the maker of KakaoTalk, South Korea’s most popular messaging app. Daum Kakao’s chief rivals include Naver, South Korea’s top Internet portal and the maker of KakaoTalk competitor Line, which is reportedly . BankWalletKakao is currently available on Android and iOS in Korea, where Daum Kakao has partnered with the Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute (KFTC), a non-profit that oversees interbank payment systems, and 16 Korean banks to allow consumers to connect the service with their ATM cards, facilitate bank transfers, and make online payments. To take advantage of BankWalletKakao, users link their account to an online bank account or Bank Money account (a chargeable virtual account operated by the KFTC and 13 domestic banks). BankWalletKakao is the second mobile payment service launched by Daum Kakao in the past few months. In September, it , which allows KakaoTalk users to pay for e-commerce products and services through the messaging app. Since launching two months ago, KakaoPay has scored 1.2 million user sign-ups. Like Line and WeChat, KakaoTalk aspires to be more than just a messaging app—it also allows users to play games (mobile gaming is one of Daum Kakao’s core businesses), shop, listen to streaming music, and read news. The launch of BankWalletKakao is significant because it is the latest step in Daum Kakao’s attempt to move beyond its core businesses, including mobile gaming, KakaoTalk, and Daums Internet portal. The combined company has decided to describe itself as a “global mobile lifestyle platform,” and its mobile payments platform (which Daum Kakao claims is easier to use than similar products like Apple Pay, Alipay, and PayPal) can potentially rope more users into its ecosystem. Though it is currently available only in South Korea, expanding BankWalletKakao into other markets may help Daum Kakao’s international growth potential, especially since KakaoTalk faces stiff competition overseas from alternatives like Line, WeChat, WhatsApp, Viber, and Facebook Messenger. BankWalletKakao gives Daum Kakao a product that doesn’t revolve around the growth of the messaging app for its success. BankWalletKakao is also an online-to-offline play: it can be used at several offline retailers in Korea. These stores currently include CU. E-mart, 7-Eleven, and department stores Shinsegae and AK department stores. |
Steve Ballmer’s Harvard Donation Will Allow It To Add 12 New Computer Science PROFESSORS PROFESSORS PROFESSORS | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has made a massive gift to his alma mater, Harvard, that will enable its computer science faculty to grow 50 percent by adding 12 new professors. Ballmer that his goal is to see the university’s computer science department rival its peers at MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and maybe U.C. Berkeley. Ballmer declined to specify the amount of the donation, but the Harvard Crimson notes that professorships at the university cost about $5 million to endow, which means that it was probably around $60 million. Computer science is currently the fifth largest undergraduate concentration at the school, where the number of computer science majors has tripled over the last five years. The department currently has 24 professors. Ballmer told the Crimson that he started discussing the donation with Harvard president Drew Faust the same day he retired from Microsoft in February. Despite the significant size of Ballmer’s gift, the department’s rapid growth at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) may delay the new hires. A new building is under construction to house the SEAS, which plans to move in 2018 to give Harvard’s next generation of more room to breathe. This isn’t the first time Ballmer has donated to Harvard. In 1996, he gave $10 million to the school , who contributed $15 million toward costs for the building of the , which currently houses Harvard’s electrical engineering, computing, and communications programs. |
Uber Launches Wallet-Based Payment System In India To Comply With New Regulations | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | a wallet-style payment system in India in response to that require all online transactions to pass through domestic payment systems. The new payment method now allows customers to essentially pay with their debit card or net banking account, in addition to a credit card as before. Cash payments are still not supported. Customers charge a pre-paid wallet, which is then used to pay for Uber rides. Payments are thus deducted from the wallet, rather than directly from a debit or credit card. An Uber spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that in the event that a customer has insufficient funds to pay their tab, the account goes into a negative balance and subsequently prompts them to top up and return their wallet to credit after the ride. The new system — which is powered by India-based payment platform — is effective immediately in the country, although international credit cards can still be used. On it is now wallet or International Card. Big for — Jatin Sapra (@jatinsapra) Uber’s blog post announcing the wallet system doesn’t make mention of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regulations that forced this change, instead the company said the pay-as-you-go system will be easier for its customers: Convenient payment options are important to people everywhere. We hope these new choices will enable the lone woman traveler to get around safely, or the college student on a budget to get around cheaper with the fare split option. Either way, the change should now allow Uber to operate in India in accordance with local legislation and rules. Those familiar with the company will know that it often rallies against , but in this case it had little choice but to adhere to the rules required in India. That said, when it comes to payments, that they are willing to be flexible, including — potentially — introducing cash payments in some markets. Uber recently , in what was the first rollout in Asia, as it looks to compete on a more equal footing with local services like Ola, which , for the attention of drivers. Uber is currently serving 10 cities in India, that’s its second largest market behind only the U.S.. |
DJI Introduces The $2,800 Inspire 1 Transforming Drone | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | DJI is the leader in drones and the company just introduced a radical new model. The Inspire 1 builds upon the success of the Phantom and integrates some of the magic found in the firm’s professional-level drones, including the ability to stream 1080p video up to a mile away. At $2,800, the Inspire 1 isn’t cheap, but it packs an unparalleled suite of technology in its arsenal. DJI brags that the Inspire 1 combines the professional features with ease of use. It has a transforming design that provides an unobstructed 360-degree view. The legs raise up, allowing the 12MP, 4k camera to swivel 360 degrees. [gallery ids="1082607,1082615,1082614,1082612,1082609,1082608"] The drone of course sports GPS capabilities, which helps it stay level in flight. That’s a standard feature in drones now. But the Inspire 1 takes it one step farther and has a downward facing optical flow sensor so it can be completely stable without GPS signal; think indoors. At its price point, the Inspire 1 sits firmly in the middle of DJI’s range. The Inspire 1 is clearly more advance than the $1,000 Phantom models, but lacks the sheer customization options found on DJI’s Spreading Wings modular platform. DJI packed its Lightbridge system into the drone that can stream 1080p video one mile away. DJI usually sells this option alone for $1,400. Also, like the higher-end models, two controllers can connect to the Inspire 1 allowing for one person to fly the drone while the other operates the movable camera ( ). The 12MP CMOS camera is mounted to an auto-leveling gimbal, which will allow for silky smooth videos. A 94-degree wide-angle lens provides a wide view, and since the Inspire 1’s leg raises up after take-off allowing for a 360-degree movement, this drone redefines a bird’s-eye view. |
A Quick Look At Google Inbox | Brian Clay | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | A few weeks ago I managed to get my hands on Google’s new app, . So far I love it, but it’s not quite ready to be my go-to email app for a few reasons. First, let’s start off with the good. The UI is faster and smoother than the standard Gmail app. It is also more one-hand friendly, which is a necessity if you’re rocking the monstrosity. For example, when you’re in an email, all you need to do is swipe up to get back to your inbox. The quick email toggle in the bottom right is also fantastic. I also love that Inbox remembers who I last emailed and gives me a quick option to email them again. One feature I’m on the fence about is bundling. When you get an email, Inbox will automatically determine what category the email should go in. For example, if you get a flight confirmation it will automatically put it in your travel bundle. There are seven pre-set bundles: travel, purchases, finance, social, updates, forums and promos. You do have the option to create additional bundles with customizable rules. So the daily email update from your mom can go straight to a bundle instead of your inbox. The reason I don’t like bundles is because I like to be able to see all my emails in the inbox, not in separate groups that I have to open. So right now I have the bundling turned off. The fact that Inbox is smart enough to know the difference between the types of emails I get is pretty awesome/stalkerish. The snooze feature is great. I have been using a third-party plug-in to handle snoozing, but now that it is a built-in feature, snoozing is much faster and more intuitive. Even the location-based snoozing and reminders work really well. The desktop version of Inbox is a big step up from Gmail in that it is well-organized and intuitive. Not being taken to a new page when you open an email is a great feature. Instead, the message expands and shrinks right in the fee. Hangouts is also better organized in Inbox; you can have it static on the right side of the screen or you can toggle a drop down. Either way you choose, it looks a thousand times better than Hangouts in Gmail. [gallery ids="1082374,1082375,1082376,1082377"] Now for all of its great features, there are a few things that don’t work so well. The biggest potential problem is that, as the app is right now, you can’t use email addresses that end in something other than @gmail.com. That means that I can’t use my work email on Inbox, which forces me to go to Gmail for any work-related emails. This also means that I get notifications from two different apps for the emails. There also isn’t any word on whether Inbox will support POP3 or IMAP, which is a feature just got. Another potentially problematic feature is that there isn’t any way to “select all” emails. Sure, you can’t select all in the Gmail app either, but on the desktop version you can. On both the app and the desktop version of Inbox there is no “select all” tool. One other problem is that you can’t drag and drop emails on the desktop version of Inbox like you can in Gmail, but that is a minor problem for me. I’ve done a little testing to see how Inbox does in comparison to Gmail 5.0. I tested send and receive time, as well as load time and number of crashes per week. I conducted all the tests on a stock Moto X on the same Wi-Fi network to the same email address. Check out the charts* below to see how they compare. [gallery ids="1082380,1082381,1082382"] While Inbox is slightly slower and crashes a little more often, I still think it’s a worthy effort. It’s also still early on for Inbox, and I am looking forward to retesting after the full release to see how it goes. I can see myself using Inbox as my primary email app as soon as they support my work email. Until then I am going to have to stick to Gmail. What do you guys think? I’ve got one invite left for a lucky commenter. |
Viddsee Launches An iOS App To Bring Short Films From Asia To Your Phone | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | If you’re ever caught with a little free time to fill, perhaps during your commute or while lazing around on the sofa at home, wants to help you fill it with the best short films from Asia. The Singapore-based startup just launched an that showcases more than 700 films from independent filmmakers across the continent. Aside from its main website, Viddsee launched a mobile web app last year, but now it’s time to get native on mobile. The iOS app is neatly presented and laid out using a clean, minimalist design that works just as well for folks who are still on iOS 7 as those who made the step up to iOS 8. The app is highly curated, serving up seven recommended short Asian films for your viewing pleasure each week on the home screen, while the search tab surfaces trending content and allows you to check out the newest additions. One thing I particularly like is that the app will let you download content to watch offline — that feature, like the app itself, is entirely free unlike other services. Offline viewing is great if you are often out and about and don’t fancy eating into your data allocation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DA0WIaIM38 Viddsee co-founder , who was formerly with Bay Area startup Cooliris and last year, told TechCrunch that the app has been specifically designed “to address our users’ needs.” “The weekly curation is designed so that users can easily discover films they enjoy and jump immediately into watching them without having the hassle of finding the right films to watch. The queue and watch offline features give users the accessibility to bring their watching experience on the move seamlessly and without having to worry about mobile charges that comes with video streaming,” Tan explained. Tan revealed that Viddsee has plans to optimize the iOS app for the iPad soon, while an Android version should arrive “in the coming months.” Those new additions aside, this iOS app will soon include discovery features that let you find content based on your interests and the amount of time you have available for viewing. Tan said Viddsee will also take advantage of the Today extension in iOS 8 soon, making it easier for users to get recommended content from the app each day. The app is free for all and Tan said that it will remain that way. At some point Viddsee will look at making money on mobile via a hybrid model that introduces video advertising and a subscription model for access to premium content. This year Viddsee has spent time ramping its business up. It , and , a new content platform aimed at helping filmmakers’ work go viral. Viddsee revealed that it had reached five million unique viewers in April, but the startup is not providing an update on that number for now. and for full disclosure, — and it’s not bad as startup tees go (Uniqlo). |
Gogobot Gets $20 Million In Strategic Investment Led By HomeAway | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | Travel discovery startup has spent the last several years helping users to find places to go and things to do, but to date it’s mostly done that by word of mouth. Today the company is announcing that it’s received some strategic backing from HomeAway, which should help it expand its marketing and distribution efforts. Gogobot has a website and mobile apps focused on helping users discover things to do based on their interests and travel style. By letting the service know what they like to do — that is, — Gogobot hopes to provide personalized recommendations for interesting things nearby. To expand its business, Gogobot has raised $20 million in Series C financing led by HomeAway, and the vacation rental company’s CEO Brian Sharples will be joining Gogobot’s board of directors. Existing investors Redpoint Ventures and Battery Ventures also participated in the round. The new funding comes nearly three years since Gogobot last raised financing, and the amount of users and content available on the site has grown dramatically since then. According to founder Travis Katz, there are now more than 780,000 reviews on the site and 4 million photos of places that have been contributed by users. It’s been able to achieve that with a surprisingly small staff. The company is about 20 people right now and most of those employees are in engineering, Katz tells me, but with the new funding it will be recruiting aggressively. It’ll be looking to ramp up its sales and marketing team as it looks to grow its user base and increase monetization of its site and mobile apps. On the monetization side, it makes money acting as lead-generation for a number of third-party travel services, including hotels and vacation rentals. It also gets advertising mostly through its website. Through those channels, revenue has doubled over the past year and the year before that, Katz says. Even so there’s still a lot the company can do to grow its user base, and that’s where the strategic part of the investment comes in. “We structured the deal where not only are they investing, but we’ve also done a partnership where we’ll be doing smart integrations that can springboard Gogobot for growth,” Katz told me. Gogobot and HomeAway have already been partners for a while, with Gogobot providing a way for HomeAway home owners to create virtual guides of things to do near their rental properties. There will be further integrations to help Gogobot benefit from HomeAway’s user base, according to Katz. In the meantime, the funding gives Gogobot plenty of runway as it looks to grow. |
Oculus Mobile SDK Goes Live For VR Developers | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | Oculus VR has been working with Samsung to make mobile virtual reality a reality, and just today Samsung detailed launch information for the for its Galaxy Note 4 handset. The Gear VR set is power by Oculus Mobile software, and so Oculus is launching the official today to help prepare some apps for the new platform. Gear VR in its ‘Innovator Edition’ form is still very much a development and early adopter devices, and this initial release of the mobile SDK is designed specifically to meet its needs. The SDK has been in development for over a year with Samsung, Oculus says, and supports a number of fancy-sounding features which no-doubt mean something to the fine developers who are actually able to understand this stuff: Yes, those things are all there for you to enjoy. The SDK also contains the full source code for Oculus Cinema, Oculus 360 Photos and Oculus 360 Videos under an open software license, which represents the full suite of first-party apps available on the new mobile VR platform. It also bundles in a Unity 4.5 integration that makes it easy to get your existing Unity VR program up and running on the new mobile headset. Oculus Home is the distribution channel for Gear VR Innovator Edition hardware, and will house apps submitted by developers building with the mobile SDK. Mobile VR has a long road to travel before it’s friendly for the average consumer, but the faster developers get cracking on building and iterating on software experiences designed to be used with smartphones and non-desktop hardware, the better. |
Samsung’s Gear VR Headset Will Cost $200, Ship In Early December | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | Remember the Gear VR, Samsung’s Oculus-inspired virtual reality headset? Rather than plugging the headset into a computer or console, you’d slip a phone (just the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, for now) into the headset and it’d act as the display, power source, and brains of the operation. Take the idea of Google Cardboard and make it an actual product, and bam — Gear VR. This morning, Samsung finally announced a of sometime in “early December”. Now one more detail has trickled out: the price. The Gear VR “Innovator Edition” will come in two forms: one for $250 that comes with a mystery (as in, not yet pictured) Bluetooth controller, and one for $200 that is just the headset alone. Either offering seems pretty damned expensive, considering that you need to bring your own Galaxy Note 4 to the table. That’s a pretty specific device to require, and one that costs $750 off-contract. At the end of the day, a Galaxy Note 4, Gear VR headset, and a Bluetooth controller could easily set you back a solid grand. I love the idea of a VR headset that uses a phone for its brains. If VR is to succeed this time around, it’ll need to be considerably less complicated than the Rift currently is, and without the heavy wires all over the place. Something like the Gear VR addresses much of that — Here’s a quick hands-on we got with the device when it was : |
Google Starts Rolling Out Android 5.0 For Older Nexus Devices | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | Good news! After a few delays caused by last-second battery bugs, Google is now rolling out Android 5.0 (aka Lollipop) to many of its previously released Nexus devices. Starting today, users of the Nexus 4, 5, 7, and 10 should start seeing Lollipop hit their handsets. The not-so-good news: It’s rolling out in waves, and Google is being a bit vague about how long the rollout might take. They’ve been known to spread rollouts out by as much as three weeks in the past. In case you’ve missed it, Android 5.0 Lollipop brings all sorts of new tricks to the mix: a whole new look called “Material,” an on-the-fly guest user mode, a new app switcher, massive battery life enhancements, and a much improved notifications system. Check out our full review of Lollipop . Annoyingly, popping into your device settings and pounding that “check for update” button won’t necessarily help with this one. Unless Google has given your individual device the green light, it’ll just say you’re already up-to-date. On the upside, Google just released the factory images for the Nexus 5, 7 , 9 and 10 (note: no word on the Nexus 4 images yet) — so if you’re feeling a bit hacky and know your way around the Android SDK, you can skip the queue and flash to 5.0 yourself . rollout has started and will soon be available on most devices. Dessert is served. — Android (@Android) |
Microsoft Updates Windows 10’s Preview With Gesture Support, OneDrive Tweaks And Bug Fixes | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | As , Microsoft released a new build of for users who are in the “Fast” update cycle for the company’s next operating system. The build that users requested, including new animations for minimizing applications, and the ability to change what buttons appears on the Start bar. On the new feature front, three-finger gesture support has been included that is similar to what OS X currently offers. Here’s Microsoft’s Gabe Aus descriptions of what now works: 3 finger up -> Task View 3 finger down -> Show Desktop 3 finger flick to left or right -> switches to previous app (go back 1) 3 finger move left or right -> Alt-Tab (Task View) pops up and you can select the app you want (remove fingers to select) 3 finger tap -> Search My Windows 10 machine is at my house so I can’t test them out at the moment, but I can say that they are a welcome addition. An issue: What if you don’t like your touchpad, or your touchpad is small — as with the current line of Surface keyboards — how useful will the above be? That’s merely to point out that touchpads on Windows machines have traditionally been lacking. How about something like , Microsoft? I’d probably buy one. Also included in the build are improvements to Internet Explorer, native MKV support, user interface changes, and tweaks for OneDrive: Starting with this build, OneDrive will use selective sync. This means you choose what you want synced to your PC and it will be. What you see is there and you don’t need to worry about downloading it. You can choose to have all of your OneDrive files synced to your PC, or just the ones you select. Again, I’ll need more time with the code, but the changes sound reasonable on paper. The updates come from its own ideas, as well as those sourced from community feedback. User comment is being incorporated into the product, so keep it coming. |
Family Believes Missing Engineer’s Body Was Found In San Francisco Bay | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | The family of missing tech worker Dan Ha has announced that a body matching his description was found in the San Francisco Bay this Tuesday morning. No one had seen or heard from Ha, an iOS developer for Bay Area startup Metromile, since Halloween night. Metromile CEO Dan Preston about his disappearance, while friends and family set up and led a search for the 26-year-old man. “Yesterday morning, the Coast Guard recovered a body found in San Francisco Bay,” Ha’s brother Joseph revealed at a press conference held this afternoon. “In speaking with the medical examiner, while the face and body were indistinguishable, the clothes, wallet contents, and phone matched Dan’s personal belongings.” The SFPD has not confirmed the body is Ha’s. However, the family believes it to be a match. “At this time, we believe the body is Dan’s,” his brother explained. The family does not believe this was a suicide and said Ha had even scheduled a doctor’s appointment the morning of his disappearance. He was supposed to attend a work event the next day and on his desk was a note to return a shirt he had recently purchased, according to an official letter from the Ha family. The San Francisco Medical Examiners Office now has the body and will determine the identity and cause of death of the victim. The family will be holding a memorial service for Ha at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church located at 16th and Dolores in San Francisco. Our hearts and thoughts are with his family at this time. |
Investors Fav Twitter’s Instant Timeline Onboarding And Retention Fix, Shares Soar 7% | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | Wall Street wants more Twitter users, so when the company revealed a powerful way to gain and keep them on its analyst call, investors boosted its 7.53% up to $42.57. An upcoming feature called will equip new users with a feed full of high-quality content upon signup, proving Twitter’s worth until users can voluntarily follow the right accounts. Twitter will also show Instant Timeline to people who signed up, used the service a few time, but stopped before they built a solid feed. Past earnings calls saw with no plan to make the service easier to jump into or enticing to people who tried and quit. But Twitter finally laid out fix during the Analyst Day call’s non-stop parade of announcements. Those included adding video uploads, the option to DM a tweet, and a While Your Were Away feature that shows the best tweets you missed since your last visit. These Timeline Highlights will make sure Twitter’s unfiltered feed doesn’t drown out the most important tweets from your network, even if they happened hours ago. Together, Instant Timeline and While You Were Away could be the solution to Twitter’s growth problem. |
Samsung’s Gear VR Headset Goes On Sale Next Month | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | Samsung has good news for those looking to try virtual reality on-the-go. At its developer conference this morning, the company announced that an Innovator’s Edition of its will go on sale early next month. The South Korean electronics giant failed to give an exact date or price for the headset, though it reiterated that on day one there will be software from Oculus ready to load onto Galaxy Note 4 devices (the only device currently compatible with Samsung’s headset or Oculus’s mobile SDK). That’ll include a VR-specific home screen for navigating between apps, a VR movie theater experience, and the Oculus app store. Samsung pointed those following the keynote to to pre-register to buy the device. It actually seems more like signing up to get a bunch of spam emails about Samsung devices. But if you’re really worried about getting one of these things early you probably won’t mind getting a few emails full of images and videos of the device over the next few weeks. Here’s a quick hands-on we got with the device when it was : |
FCC Denies Break With President On Net Neutrality, Says “All Options On Table” | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | Today, the FCC’s Special Counsel for External Affairs tweeted that reports of a rift between the President and the agency’s views on net neutrality were overblown. Sohn made it clear, however, that the FCC is weighing options that are different from what the President proposed : WaPo took comments out of context. Didn't indicate plans 2 diverge fr on . All options on table. — Gigi Sohn (@GigiBSohnFCC) All options being on the table, it seems that the FCC’s decision will likely come in 2015. FCC Chairman Wheeler noted on Monday that his agency may need to come to its decision. Previously, a mid-December timeframe was the most often discussed date range for a vote. Sohn’s comments follow a late, and from President Obama regarding net neutrality. The President proposed strict rules, banning paid prioritization, harmonizing regulation for wireline and wireless connections, and bringing peering arrangements into the ring. The FCC , welcoming the President’s comments somewhat brusquely. A , indicating that Wheeler was looking to find some way to “split the baby,” a quote that was widely interpreted to imply that the Chairman was moving away from what the President had proposed. Attendees of that meeting, indicated that Chairman Wheeler’s tone wasn’t “defiant towards the President.” You’ll have to parse the quotes yourself. Sohn is trying to mend the rift, regardless if it is real, or imagined. I’m not sure it will work, or if words can heal what could be an intractable ideological difference. For now, we have no choice but to be patient. I’m digging into what next steps look like, but everyone I talk to mostly shrugs. We’ll see. |
Facebook Launches “Say Thanks,” A Personalized Video Creation Tool For Thanking Your Friends | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | Clearly, Facebook wants more users building and sharing videos on its service. Today, the company announced “ ,” a new tool that lets you quickly put together personalized video cards using a combination of pre-built themes and your own posts and photos. The end result is an easily shareable — if a bit cheesy — customized video you can post on yours and your friend’s Timelines. To create the video, users visit (note: the service is rolling out throughout the day, so check back if the URL is broken for you). They then select a friend, choose a theme, and pick out posts and photos that “represent your friendship,” explains Facebook in announcing the new tool. The experience is somewhat reminiscent of using something like , a mobile application that lets users put together short videos from their own photos and then share those creations to social networks. In fact, Flipagram hit the top of the Apple App Store over the 2013 holiday season thanks to its that allowed users to make videos out of their Instagram photos. (Not too much later, word was that the startup was tens of millions at a $300 million valuation.) Facebook, having the mobile data about what works thanks to its Onavo , could have seen the potential in Flipagram and decided to try something similar. Except, instead of “Year in Review” videos, it’s rolling out “Thanks” videos…just before Thanksgiving here in the U.S., of course. After users finish their video, they can click “Share” to post it to their own Timeline, and tag their friend. An option to add a personalized message will also be available. The company says the service is rolling out today on desktop and mobile in English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish. [vimeo 111578650 w=500 h=281] |
Samsung’s New Smart TV Development Platform Runs On Tizen | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | Samsung is hoping to make it easier for developers to build apps for its smart TV devices. As part of that effort, the consumer electronics giant has decided to enable developers to leverage the to do so. Today at the Samsung Developer Conference, Samsung exec Eric Anderson talked up the company’s , which will replace the company’s former smart TV developer platform. The SDK is aimed at courting web developers to build apps for smart TVs, but also to enable more cross-platform apps within its ecosystem of devices. Samsung has been trying to increase developer interest in Tizen for years, placing the Linux-based operating system in a number of its devices. That includes and its . The company touts cross-platform HTML5 and JavaScript support as the main reason for adopting Tizen, which could enable developers to bring web apps quickly onto its devices. But by putting Tizen into everything from phones to smartwatches to TVs, Samsung also stands to benefit from a bit of cross-platform, cross-device applications. Unlike the smartphone industry, which is dominated by iOS and Android, the TV world is a largely fragmented mess. While Google has tried to provide a platform for CE makers to base their devices on, most manufacturers have rolled out their own proprietary platforms for app makers. That means companies like Netflix and Hulu are largely stuck making and maintaining apps for dozens of different smart TV platforms. But moving to more of a web-based platform could speed up development time and also give app makers more flexibility in being able to update apps on the fly. When it comes to Samsung’s TV environment in particular, Anderson said Tizen will provide a scalable user interface that will automatically adjust app layouts based on the available screen size of the device. He also noted that Tizen would allow developers to build across multiple devices and screens. Anderson said that moving from Samsung’s existing smart TV developer platform to Tizen could be done in fewer than 40 hours, which would make it easy for developers who are already a part of its smart TV ecosystem to port their apps over. More importantly, however, it will facilitate the transfer of existing web apps onto the Samsung platform. In the smart TV and Tizen development booths on the show floor, for instance, the company showed off the ability to move a piece of content from a phone to a TV to a smart fridge with a digital screen. It also touted cross-device unified storage, which would allow users to “access remote files in the local storage space, even across networks.” |
MLB Runs Its Massive Statcast Tool In The AWS Cloud | Ron Miller | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | recognizes it’s a software-defined world and as such over the last several years, it’s been moving quickly to create applications to enhance the fan experience and let them watch and interact with MLB properties, wherever they are on whatever device they wish to use. But MLB is also a statistics-driven game so the league worked with Amazon Web Services to create an application called Statcast to monitor plays at a minute statistical level and collect an unbelievably granular set of data on every play. Joe Inzerillo, CTO & EVP, MLB Advanced Media told the audience at today in Las Vegas that Statcast was one of the most exciting projects he’s worked on his career. He explained we have lots of statistics about pitching and batting, but when it comes to defense, it’s much harder to measure why one play is better than another because the game is so complex and so fast and it’s hard to come up with an accurate way to calculate just how much better or worse, one play may be compared to another. Statcast allows you to break down the play and see things like running speed, the speed of the ball as it comes off the bat, the speed of the defensive player as he approaches the ball and the speed of the runner as he runs down the line. This is a tremendous amount of data, especially when you multiply it by thousands of games in a season. In fact, according to Inzerillo we are talking about 17 TB of data per season. As such, it required a cloud solution like AWS. Using an Infrastructure as a Service offering like AWS, they can scale up their compute needs during the season, and then scale back down in the offseason when they don’t need as much compute power. That said, the data they collect has to live forever because people want to be able to compare baseball statistics historically. That means that the amount of space required to store this increases every season, and Inzerillo says that they can use a cloud storage service like AWS EC2 to continually scale their storage requirements to as much as they need. So what does this all mean in practice? Let’s have a look at sample play from this year’s MLB playoffs. [mlbvideo id=”36854223″ width=”400″ height=”224″ /] Watch how the Statcast can track the speed of the defender, how fast the runner goes down the line, and the fact that the runner dove into the bag instead of running through it. It’s worth noting that every ball player is taught from the earliest age never to dive into first base because it slows them down. And as it turns out on this play, it slowed the runner down enough that it very well might have been the difference between being safe and being out. This is a staggering amount of information and it really breaks down the play in ways that just wouldn’t have ever been possible without access to cloud resources like this. And it shows that even a sports league that’s over 100 years old can find new ways to use technology to improve the fan experience. |
U.S. Authorities Are Reportedly Gathering Phone Data Using Fake Celltowers On Planes | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | more than 18 months ago, but the rate at which we learn new information about government spying programs shows little sign of slowing. Witness today, claiming that the U.S. Justice Department is “snagging [mobile data belonging to] a large number of innocent Americans'” via technology that can identify criminal suspects using planes. The WSJ cites sources who claim that the U.S. Marshals Service is using fake cell towers on airplanes — dubbed ‘dirtboxes’ — in order to access data from phones located on the ground. Essentially, the dirtboxes pose as legitimate network operators, providing signal to devices which, it is claimed, can allow them to prize registration and identification information from a ‘target’. When successful, this removes the time-consuming need to go through mobile operators to gain these details during searches for suspects, it is argued. The latest version of the technology can even interrupt signals and grab information, such as text messages or photos from a device, the WSJ says, although modifications are said to enable 911 calls and other privacy allowances. Image via Wall Street Journal The technology, which has apparently been deployed in other fields by the military and is used on planes “on a regular basis”, is — like so many other security programs that have come to light over the past 18 months — described as a “dragnet” that also pulls in information from innocent people in the vicinity without so much as a court warrant or warning. Though sources told the WSJ that data from ‘non-target’ phones is “let go”, it isn’t clear how that information is stored and the processes involved with its disposal. These are clearly important questions that need answers. As ever, responses to this news will largely fall into two categorizes: those who believe that the U.S. — and other governments — should do everything within its power to find and apprehend criminals; and those who feel that the government is again running roughshod over privacy rights. Certainly, if information from all cellphones accessed is being stored on file — and the WSJ was, importantly, not able to establish or report on that — then there’s significant cause for concern once again. The original version of this story has been updated to correct that the program collects data from devices on the ground not on planes. |
Peach Is A Flash Sales App With An Auction-Based Twist | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | There are already a gabazillion flash sale sites and apps available, but the Berkeley, California-based founders of believe that there is still room for innovation in the world of online impulse buying. Instead of just offering discounted goods, Peach lets customers name a price for its merchandise, most of which is women’s clothing and accessories from luxury brands. The catch is that users have just nine minutes to decide whether they want to bid or not. The startup already has a vote of confidence from investor IDG Partners, which invested $500,000 in seed funding last month. The venture capital firm’s portfolio also includes Chinese Internet behemoths Baidu and Tencent, as well as bitcoin wallet and open-source payment network . The app had its invitation-only beta launch last month and since then has racked up 5,000 users and is now available to all users. Co-founder Jeff Zhang says Peach App’s model was inspired by , an auction site developed by the same team. Sellegit’s auctions start at a maximum price, which drops as bidders specify the highest and lowest price that they are willing to pay. As a result, Peach App sees eBay as a rival instead of other flash sales sites and apps. “Since we are doing something that’s so new, we don’t really consider anyone to be our closer competitors. That being said, our customers do compare us with eBay’s auctions and they like Peach auctions a lot more because each auction lasts only nine minutes. It’s a huge plus for white-collar women working full-time, since they simply don’t have time to monitor an eBay auction for days or even weeks,” claims Zhang. Like other flash sales services, Peach App is available to offer discounts on luxury items by giving merchants a channel to liquidate unsold inventory quickly. The app currently monetizes by charging commissions for transactions. Peach is gearing up for Thanksgiving, during which it will have back-to-back auctions running. |
SXSW Wants More Control Over Downtown Austin And Permit Limits On Unofficial Events | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | The free alcohol may not flow so abundantly at SXSW 2015. Event organizers have asked the city of Austin to cut down on the amount of permits it hands out to unofficial meet-ups, sessions and parties that run in tandem with the main festival. It cites overcrowding and too much free booze from parallel events as safety issues. What started as a small music festival with 700 attendees back in 1987 has blown up to approximately 80,000 officially registered badge holders last year. That’s a full 10 percent increase in population for Austin. The Interactive portion accounts for the majority of those who go (32,000 participants in more than 1100 sessions). This tends to be a more mature crowd that can afford (or has their company pay for) the pricey tickets. The Film event rounds out to a little over 18,000, while Music, the smallest of the three, peaks at just over 2700 badged attendees. Keep in mind that these stats only include actual paying customers and not the insurmountable throng of visitors who flood – and pretty much take over – the town during the month of March. SXSW has spawned several separate festivals that run alongside the main portion. Artists, both big and small, will play free concerts at various venues throughout the city. Each festival overlaps at some point, adding even more to the chaos. Several brands and startups throw massive celebrity bedecked parties, host their own sessions, meet-ups and giveaways. All of this serves to encourage tens of thousands more to show up and run amok in what has been called the “ ,” sans credentials. City officials don’t know the exact economic impact of all the events that took place in 2014, but estimate it probably surpassed the $218 million mark set in 2013. That’s some great cash for the city, but the impact of the crowds obviously puts a burden on police, government and residents. The situation is so bad during the month of March that many of the folks who actually live there shut down business and flee town. Austin experimented with limiting permits this last year but continued to issue those on a first-come-first-served basis, irking SXSW executives. We’ve been hearing rumors that the SXSW organization had threatened to pull out of Austin altogether if the city didn’t curtail the unofficial events and give the festival more control over sanctioned experiences. An from the SXSW organization clarified that is has been “…careful not to imply a threat to relocate SXSW, and have also explicitly stated that is not our position numerous times.” SXSW engaged the services of Populous, a global consulting firm that specializes in planning major events, earlier this year. Populous’s own made back in August suggest the festival, “will eventually need to make decisions about whether or not they can continue to exist in their current format and location,” if changes are not made. The report was adamant that increasing negative feedback from festival-goers and sponsors was ruining the reputation of SXSW. It also concluded that the unofficial events were posing more of a risk than the official festival and that the city lacked an integrated plan that would include both SXSW events and non-SXSW events. According to the report: “Activities not affiliated with the SXSW event (or splinter events) actually are creating more of the overcrowding problems and unruliness than the event itself, due to the numbers of people attracted, imprudent control measures, the availability of free or cheap alcohol, RSVP tactics, and crowd consumption.” The Populous report then suggested the city should allow SXSW to add signage throughout town, directing folks to official events and that it should have more control over which unofficial events are able to function during the festival. “It is understood that there are issues about fairness and constitutionality in this discussion. However, in Populous’ experience, other cities have found solutions to allow prioritization of key economic development initiatives and business – like festivals and events – that directly contribute to the public benefit in return for an event environment that allows for a safe and viable operation.” SXSW to Austin’s mayor, mayor pro tem and the city council in early September asking them to give the festival priority in the permitting process and suggesting they need certain requirements needed in order to continue operations in Austin in the future “The changes Populous recommends – also the things it will take for decades to come – can be easily achieved with a modicum of political will.” The City of Austin responded to the mayoral letter by issuing a . This included several bulleted initiatives to alleviate the traffic and deal with the visitors: The city also gathered community input and has concluded that the two biggest concerns from residents are 1) alcohol consumption and 2) venues that run way over capacity. Both pose major safety issues. Four Austin residents died and 20 others were injured in a horrifying crash this last year after during one such unofficial event. *Text in bold added for emphasis. |
Mind Candy Reports Losses As Moshi Fades And It Pins Hopes On Warriors | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | As was widely predicted after ’s Moshi Monsters smash-hit game failed to make the shift from Web to mobile in any meaningful way — apart from a few cursory apps — its financial results looked dismal. The company has announced that it lurched to a net loss of £2.2 million ($3.5 million) in 2013, after making an £8 million profit in 2012. Kids have clearly left the headline Moshi game in droves – which had a web-based subscription business model which pre-dated the tablet era. But in Mind Candy’s defence, its new model of creating an ecosystem of complimentary mobile products which support each other could well lift it back up again. Chief Financial Officer Divinia Knowles admitted revenue has continued to fall this year. Revenue fell 35% to £30.5 million in 2013. Revenues from subscribers fell to £13.2 million in 2013 from £19.8 million in 2012. In the last few months staff head count has halved from around 200 to just over 100. But these are just results for 2013. Results for 2014 will not appear until this time next year. Mind Candy launched the subscription kids game in 2008, garnering 80 million users at its peak, and franchised into toys, magazines, music and a movie. But it was clearly not prepared for the sea of red in the mobile games arena. King.com’s stock has plummeted as it struggles to produced a follow-up to “Candy Crush,” Rovio has laid off 130 people this year as the Angry Birds has slowed. In July Acton Smith stepped down – rumoredly under pressure from the board, though the company said it was to allow him to concentrate on the creative side and to look for a new kind of CEO. Moshi Monsters mobile apps have been scant. Inexplicably there has never been a full-blown reproduction of the main game. This year Mondy Candy made six new apps, four related to the Moshi brand, but none were the full game. Instead the strategy is now to effectively mothball Moshi Monsters as an “evergreen” legacy game, while doubling down on new products. , which launched on iOS last week and , a sort of Instagram for kids, are now the main products going forward. PopJam has been limited to a UK release, downloaded 100,000 times, but it’s being touted to entertainment companies and other brands in the U.S., according to CFO Davinia Knowles. On the positive side, it’s an indication that Mind Candy’s flip into mobile has been better thought out than might appear externally. Acton Smith told us: “The figures are not great but on plus side we’ve started to diversify.” He said that “Popjam is growing nicely”. Furthermore, after getting a ‘Global Editors’ choice’ on the Apple Store, World of Warriors had garnered “well over a million downloads” in the first four days after release. He also said it was already pulling in a “six figure sum in revenue”. Acton Smith said this was Mind Candy shifting from a “one product company to a multi-product entertainment company.” Knowles said: “We love Moshi – we want it to be an evergreen, animated series, with shorts and ongoing content.” Acton Smith said: “We do have 8 Moshi apps and they get good download numbers, but it’s very difficult to commercialize kids products in the app store. Web subscription was better.” “Moshi had a great run for 5 years. Some kids still love it but many have moved on to others things. Shift of web to mobile was a double hit for the company. We Still want to nurture it but it won’t generate same revenues,” he said. Mind Candy now plans to have multiple brands with the first of these being World Of Warriors. Working with publishing partner Penguin, Mind Candy has created a game of historically accurate characters with a lot of depth. Warriors is also not just aimed at kids, “but at the whole family” and is a “new type of family franchise” says Acton Smith aimed at “hooking in Mum and Dad, Teens and Grandparents.” So far the game has had 4.7 out of five stars reviews and over 50,000 reviews in total on the app store. If Mind Candy get this right, PopJam will have enough ongoing popularity to spread knowledge of new Mind Candy products, and become a sort of distribution platform underneath, says Knowles. |
Say Media Is Selling Off Its Content Sites, Including ReadWrite and xoJane | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | owns sites like xoJane, ReadWrite, — but the company doesn’t plan to own them for much longer. [ Fashionista is actually owned by Breaking Media. Sorry — I was confused by the fact that it’s listed in but that list also includes sites that the company is partnered with but doesn’t own.] CEO Matt Sanchez that the company will be selling off all of its owned properties so that it can focus on selling ads for other publishers, and on its content management system Tempest. The vision, he said, was to build “the modern media company by building, partnering with and buying independent media companies,” but ultimately that turned out to be “very difficult.” Michelle Panzer, the company’s vice president of brand development and global marketing, confirmed the news to me via email: We are migrating brands onto Tempest at a very steady clip – excited about focusing on a platform that can support the kind of publishing we all respect. Looking for the right buyer(s) for our portfolio brands and dedicating ourselves thoroughly to building out our engineering and design capabilities and growing that Tempest community. Say Media started out as video ad company VideoEgg before in 2010. A year later it acquired the property that may be best known to TechCrunch readers, ReadWriteWeb (since rebranded as ReadWrite), for what . (A couple of the best used to write for ReadWriteWeb, and my old boss last year.) This seems like a bit of an about-face from what Sanchez told me in April 2013, when he said the company in order to focus on the content business. On the other hand, Say isn’t the only digital media company to make big bets on web content and then . Say already to I-5 Publishing earlier this year. |
Ex-Reddit CEO Wanted To Move The Company To Daly City Instead Of SF [Updated] | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | As we , Reddit CEO Yishan Wong has resigned from the company after what Y Combinator President Sam Altman called a “disagreement with the board” about the location of Reddit’s new office. If that reasoning sounds a bit strange to you, you’re not alone. Folks around the Internet are asking why someone would up and leave an exec role over what seems like a rather standard decision/disagreement. And yet, Altman insists this is the reason — and notes that he, too, finds the whole thing a bit strange. In a , Altman adds a bit of clarity to what happened behind the scenes: I realize that this sounds non-credible (and it’s certainly one of the craziest professional things I’ve ever been a part of), but it’s actually what happened. Yishan wanted to move the office from SF to Daly City. The board pushed back but said we’d agree to it with certain data (we wanted Yishan to figure out how many employees would stay with the company through the move, get a comparison to other market rents, etc.–all questions I think a board should ask when thinking through a major commitment). This is certainly not what I was expecting to be dealing with so quickly after investing in reddit, but we’ll make the best of it. We’ll continue to keep an ear to the ground here, because the whole thing really does seem a bit strange. As of 2:30 p.m. this afternoon, Yishan Wong remains quiet on and . You can read more on today’s Reddit Yishan has now commented on the departure and his reasoning:
All of the reasons that Sam has outlined in public are true. I know it sounds somewhat unbelieveable because it’s so weird, but if it was made up, I think any PR person would have come up with a better made-up story. If there is a deeper reason, it is this: The job as CEO of reddit is incredibly stressful and draining. After two and a half years, I’m basically completely worn out, and it was having significantly detrimental effects on my personal life. If anything, I probably pushed myself way too far – as a first-time CEO, all I knew was that such jobs are supposed to be stressful, so I never really had a good baseline, i.e. how stressful is too stressful, until multiple outside people and coaches I was working with remarked to me that I looked incredibly worn down for months on end and it wasn’t supposed to be this hard.
You can find Yishan’s . |
Sintratec Is Going To Build The First Sintering Desktop 3D Printer | John Biggs | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | A is planning to release the world’s first sintering 3D printer for the desktop. Sintering, which is the process of building a 3D object by shooting lasers at a layer of nylon powder, is one of the best ways to make high resolution objects that are completely solid. The company is planning to launch the soon and will charge $4,000 for the machine. It’s a surprisingly handsome machine and looks like it will produce some nice prints. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT5Mm7K49vw&list=PLtmHeklibXL2dkwImqWcFrQ_Fx6nQRz6F#t=26]
The machine has a build volume of 130x130x130mm and can print pieces with movable parts embedded inside (you could, for example, print a clock with gears printed right inside the case.) The process is a little slower than standard printing technologies and, as you can see, the finish products are a little rough but designers will love the fact that these objects are completely usable right out of the printer and don’t require curing unlike the .
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The Prynt Case Turns Your Smartphone Into A Polaroid Camera | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | Hot off of their demo day presentation last week, hardware startup was nice enough to drop by TechCrunch HQ to show off the latest prototypes of their smartphones cases, which contain built-in printers so you can instantly get a copy of that selfie with your best friends. The small French startup has been working on turning your smartphone into a miniature Polaroid camera since January. They’ve spent much of that time visiting Shenzen to source parts and iterating on a simple design that sends a photo to the case over Bluetooth and then prints it by heating paper filled with ink. The current version takes about 50 seconds from photo to printed paper and can only hold one piece of paper at a time. But the planned consumer version will hold 10-30 sheets of paper and take fewer than 30 seconds to print thanks to better hardware integration and a direct physical connection between the phone and case. Prynt CEO Clément Perrot says that the case will only cost $99 when first made available via a Kickstarter early next year and will be able to support flagship phones with ~4.x-inch screens. They’re currently working on a mount that will also account for phablets like the Galaxy Note or iPhone 6 Plus. One neat feature that could help the Prynt case gain traction is an augmented reality feature built into the company’s camera app. When you take a photo with Prynt’s app, it actually records a video of the moments around when you clicked the button and sends it to the cloud. When you hold up the physical photo to your phone’s camera with the app open, it is overlaid with a Play button that shows that video in place of the picture itself. It’s like Snapchat but with a physical token that gives you permission to see videos. In order to make it even more secure, the company is looking into tricks like hiding pixels in images that would prevent them from being copied, so a photo of the photo wouldn’t bring up the play button in the app. It’s really nifty to see in person, and in the longer run Prynt is looking at ways they could let you print a photo of one thing — say, your cat — and show a video of something else when it’s held to the app. |
Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare Review | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | , Activision is taking the extremely successful Call of Duty mostly to places it’s already been, which is to say this is a game about war, shooting, explosions and guns. But it’s also taking a stab at some realistic futurism with the ‘Exo’ suits your character gets to wear, which augment your ability to navigate your environment and deal damage to your enemies, and weapons that boast some plausible improvements over their counterparts of today. And of course, Kevin Spacey is all over the place. Here’s a disclaimer up front: I don’t usually spend that much time playing these kinds of games. My interests favor swords, sorcery, giant rolling Katamaris and colourful characters. That said, I also cut my teeth on classics like Medal of Honor for the PC, and the early Tom Clancy Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games. Still, I’m coming to Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare with only a casual knowledge of the games in the series that precede it. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s single player campaign. It struck a good balance between exposition, basic instruction and making sure you get to the action right away at the beginning, jumping you right in at the start and only then peeling back for the traditional “oh here’s some training simulation” to refine the basics you pick up in the initial live combat opening level. What surprised me about Advanced Warfare most might’ve been how much I enjoyed its story. The plot, while both predictable and shallow, was nonetheless solidly put together, well-told and well-acted by both the animated characters (which look fantastic on the PlayStation 4, by the way) and the voice actors behind them, which include Spacey in a key role that’s probably really best described as the lead, given his screen time, Troy Baker as the player character Jack Mitchell, and Gideon Emery as the creatively-named “Gideon.” While the story isn’t going to blow anyone away, even with its big ‘twist’ (which you should be able to see coming from basically the opening cutscene) it’s sort of like any good big budget action movie, in that it’s a simple story, well-told, with a focus on action and special effects that makes up for the lack of a deep narrative. Again, I’m not the most familiar with this series, but as far as action games go, this is one of the better recent entrants from a story perspective. On the gameplay side, Call Of Duty delivers typically solid first-person shooter action. The fundamentals are all well done, as is the new arsenal of weaponry. Each gun can be found throughout the game outfitted with a number of different sights and scopes, and you’ll find pretty quickly that you’ll likely prefer one type over another. Tracking down the right weapon variant for your play style adds to the experience, and I quickly found I’d become either frustrated when I couldn’t find a weapon with a threat indicator, or feel a wave of relief wash over me when I could. As for the Exos, the exoskeleton augmentation suits that soldiers wear in Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare, they do indeed offer fun gameplay tweaks, including the ability to jump much farther than you can normally in games like this, a hover break for steep descents, grappling hooks for zipping around maps and quietly taking down bad guys, and much more. Each mission has a different loadout, and pretty rigorously guides and limits your use of these new features, but in multiplayer it’s up to you to determine what powers you carry, and how you use them. Multiplayer is a part of Call of Duty that is markedly improved in this generation, in part because the Exo’s really open up the game for the kind of fun that the series’ ultra-realistic approach just couldn’t offer, as opposed to something like what Titanfall or the Halo series provides. The Exo’s abilities make it easier for new players to run away when they need to, and the Combat Readiness Program that lets new users slowly immerse themselves in multiplayer without verbal assaults or even a stable identity to be ashamed of is a terrific touch. Of course, I still suck at Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer, and I’m easy fodder for more experienced players in standard games. The inclusion of the excellent co-op assault mode makes for terrific local cooperative multiplayer experiences, however, and I’m old school enough that this more than makes up for an online multiplayer component that’s still dominated by the most dedicated, mostly obnoxious hardcore players. In short, Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare is a reboot of sorts for the series, and one that for this player proved enough of a hook to get me into the franchise, whereas previously I had little interest. Too often, studios can rest on their laurels with a successful series, but Activision has done a lot more than that here, and the result is a great game. |
TubeMogul Soars 14% After Reporting Strong Q3 Revenue Of $27.4M, Smaller-Than-Expected Loss | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | Rising nearly 6 percent in regular trading, TubeMogul spiked 16 percent in after-hours trading after better-than-expected revenue, profit and guidance. The company had revenue of $27.4 million in the quarter, compared to of $21.77 million. The quarter’s tally was up 112 percent from the year-ago quarter. TubeMogul’s net loss was $1.7 million in the quarter, or $0.06 per share. Investors had the company to lose $0.27 per share. For the coming quarter, TubeMogul expects revenue between $30 and $32 million, and a larger loss. The company raised its fiscal 2014 guidance. Investors enjoyed both the profit and revenue beat. Here’s : Since it prices its , TubeMogul has performed admirably. The company listed for $7 per share, and is currently trading — after hours — for more than $20. It’s a massive success story. The company in its first day of trading. In fairness, TubeMogul priced very aggressively on the lower end of the scale, so its post-IPO gains should be tempered from that context. The company was worth more than $530 million at close of regular trading. We’ll have to see where it opens, but expect a nice pop. |
NSA Surveillance Faces Senate Test | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | The United States Senate could vote on the USA FREEDOM Act as soon as next week, pushing the surveillance reform bill ahead this year. That would buck that the Act was not a legislative priority, likely ending up shelved until the next Congress. There is still some fight in this Congress after all. Exiting Senate Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid , pressing the bill forward. Its passage of the required 60 vote threshold isn’t certain. There is an odd bipartisan tingle to the law, given a crossing of the lines between libertarian-minded Republicans, and hard-line Democrats that are known friends of our secret national agencies. The USA FREEDOM Act, in its Senate form, has been for proposing to end the government’s dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records, and curtailing other controversial practices. Some have argued that the bill the intelligence community’s ability to use Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to various ends, but most agree that the law is a . The House , so quickly forced through the lower chamber of Congress that it lost co-sponsors along the way. As far as reform goes, the House passed a literal strawman. The that the House might go along with the Senate bill to clear the decks for the New Year: If passed, it may be voted on by the House and signed into law by year’s end, fulfilling one of President Obama’s major asks of Congress: that it adopt such legislation. Passage would also clear the decks for incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has an ambitious legislative agenda, including trade, taxes and building the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline. I’ve heard similar arguments. I’m not sure what more reform will be musterable on the federal side once the new Congress is sworn in. Given that, passing the USA FREEDOM Act in the Senate could be something of a break-or-win moment. We’re still a long way from the president’s signature, but things are much more hopeful than previously anticipated. Some in the tech industry were quick to line up in favor of passage. The Information Technology Industry Council called the bill “urgently needed,” noting that “surveillance revelations are having a corrosive impact on the public’s trust in our government.” The Internet Infrastructure Coalition said the bill “strikes the right balance between privacy and safety.” The bill’s progenitor, Senator Patrick Leahy, has a : The American people are wondering whether Congress can get anything done. The answer is yes. Congress can and should take up and pass the bipartisan USA FREEDOM Act, without delay. We’ll see. |
Reddit CEO Resigns, Alexis Ohanian Returns As Chairman | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | If there’s one constant in life, it’s change, and the fourth quarter of 2014 has brought , the massively popular aggregation site that could. So here’s some more news: Reddit CEO Yishan Wong has resigned, COO Ellen Pao has become interim CEO and co-founder Alexis Ohanian has returned to the company he founded in 2005 to fill the full-time executive chairman role. Ohanian tells me that hopefully Pao will stay long-term. According by investor Sam Altman, Wong resigned due to a disagreement about the price and location of a new Reddit office: “To be clear, though, we didn’t ask or suggest that he resign — he decided to,” Altman wrote. Indeed, Ohanian’s announcement post reveals that the new Reddit office will be in San Francisco, and that the RedditGifts team will be moving there. The head of that team, Dan McComas, will become SVP of product. Reddit has become kind of a big deal lately, valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, with Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Jared Leto, Joshua Kushner, Jessica Livingston, Kevin and Julia Hartz and Snoop Dogg participating. Basically the “Fantasy Football” of startup investors. It’s also grown from 35 million uniques a month in 2011 to 175 million uniques (and 5 billion monthly page views) and acquired the largest mobile Reddit aggregator, But with scale comes growing pains, most notably a release of celebrity nudes that called the site’s morals and ethics policies into question, and a brief controversy around to a former employee. When I asked Ohanian about how he thought “the Fappening” was handled, and how he looked at other offensive subreddits like , he acknowledged that the latter incident had taught the team quite a bit. “The vast majority of the content is benign or good. The 175 million people who use Reddit overwhelmingly use it for good,” he said. “The important thing for us is to develop tech that allows the site to flourish, but also allows the best of the site to come through. And users need to feel safe using the platform, and that’s hard to figure out. I’m confident we’re going to figure this out. We have an opportunity to really set a standard.” When asked when we, users and readers, would know what that standard was, Ohanian told me it would be done in “months.” Ohanian also told me that Reddit draws the line on legality, which is why particularly nasty subreddits like the one linked to above still exist. “Content like that is offensive,” he said. “That goes without saying. They are the product of giving everyone a printing press. While it is legal, it is offensive. This is what we need to figure out over the next couple of months. ” When asked how they were figuring it out, new CEO Pao said it was all still very new. “It’s too early to talk about right now.” When asked how she saw the next couple of months shaping up for Reddit, Pao said, “[It will be] bringing people together, continuing to make progress, and working together a new team with Alexis and Dan to push Reddit forward.” For someone who remembers , it’s pretty amazing to see it become the force it has. But with that comes great responsibility (Reddit to its community), and it now has to grow up. |
Google To Stop Letting Developers Use Google Wallet To Sell Digital Goods | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | Back in 2012, Google launched an API that allowed developers to use the Google Wallet service to sell digital goods — things like music, or levels in a web game, or subscriptions to online magazines. If you’re using that API, it’s time to find a replacement. Google has just announced that they’re killing it off in the first quarter of next year. According to a posted on the Google Wallet developer site, devs have until March 2nd, 2015 to give their customers a heads up and implement a new solution. At that point, anyone trying to buy something through any service using the API will be met with a big ol’ 404 error. One exception: Google notes that if you’re using Google Wallet in an app sold on the Google Play store, it’ll still work. Seems Google doesn’t want to deal with a bunch of applications breaking under what users would likely consider their roof. It’s a bummer, particularly for those who might’ve built a small business around the API and will have to hire someone to supplant a new solution. Google says they have no plans to offer up an alternative, leaving developers to turn to something like Stripe or Paypal. |
Amazon Launches Its Fastest EC2 Instances Yet | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | Amazon today announced its . The new so-called c4 instances will feature a 2.9 GHz Haswell processor (with bursts up to 3.5 GHz with Turbo boost) with up to 36 virtual CPUs and up to 60 GiB of RAM. Intel exclusively developed the Haswell processor for Amazon. The company tuned the processor to exactly match Amazon’s requirements for EC2. In addition, the largest c4 instance will allow developers to fine-tune the processor performance even more by managing both the processor’s performance and power management using . Amazon specifically notes that this fast processor would be a good match for its SSD-backed Elastic Block Storage (EBS) service, which is also getting a bit of an update today. EBS now allows you to create general purpose volumes that can store up to 16 TB of data, for example, with up to 10,000 baseline IOPS. That’s up from only 1 TB and 3,000 IOPS. For applications that need even more IOPS, Amazon now allows you to get up to 20,000 provisioned IOPS, up from 4,000. All new values will now also transfer data up to twice as fast as before with a throughput of up to 160 MBps for the General Purpose volumes (and 320 MBps for Provisioned IOPS). |
Kanvas Debuts An iOS Keyboard That Lets You Send Decorated Photos, Stickers And GIFs…Or Even Just Text | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | , a photo-editing app that lets users add text, stickers, drawings and music to images as well as stitch together photos, GIFs and videos, is now bringing its set of creative tools to a new application for iOS users: As you may guess by its name, the new app is an iOS 8-compatible keyboard app that lets you quickly add text to your photos or colored backgrounds, draw on photos, send GIFs and more, all while texting via SMS or iMessage. Essentially, Kanvas Keyboard offers much of the functionality of the company’s flagship application, but now lets you build your creations more easily as they’re just a tap away from within the iOS 8 keyboard user interface. Today, there are a number of popular keyboard apps on the market from complete replacements of Apple’s stock keyboard like Swype and SwiftKey, for example, to those designed for sharing GIFs, like and . Kanvas Keyboard competes more directly with the latter, as it’s meant to offer users a different way to communicate beyond just typing out text. Its GIF section lets you perform searches for GIFs by keyword, view GIFs by category, or you can pull from recently trending GIFs. You can choose from thousands of animated GIFs available, or you can make your own creation by drawing or writing on your photos with one or more of Kanvas’s 7 different paintbrushes, a variety of fonts, and more. Non-GIF stickers are available as well, but what’s really handy is that Kanvas also offers a “normal” keyboard for typing out text. That’s actually been a problem with using these newer GIF keyboards – when you need to revert to a text-based conversation, you often have a lot of switching around to do. [gallery ids="1083042,1083043,1083044"] The keyboard app comes with a container app where users earn coins through keyboard usage that lets them unlock additional content from a number of artists. And existing Kanvas users can use their coins from Kanvas to redeem packs on the keyboard and vice versa. The Kanvas Keyboard app is . Kanvas Labs also . According to founder and CEO Vic Singh the main Kanvas app today has over 500,000 users and is growing at 100,000 users per month. The company, which grew out of a pivot from a photo-sharing app called Tracks, in the beginning of the year to move forward with its new company. |
Amazon Launches Lambda, An Event-Driven Compute Service | Ron Miller | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | announced a new service today called Lambda, a stateless event-driven compute service for dynamic applications that doesn’t require provisioning of any compute infrastructure. As AWS’s CTO Werner Vogels pointed out, this will enable programmers to reduce their overall development effort. You simply write the code and define the event triggers, and it will run for you automatically when the conditions are met. This automation should save time and money because instead of running the whole stack for something that may only run infrequently, you can now run it without any resources and it runs automatically. It’s worth noting that in , one programmer who has had early access to the service indicated it does take some time to get up to speed on this service, but once you do, he can see the potential here for transforming the way programmers use AWS. Lambda will take care of managing, scaling and monitoring for you. Milliseconds after an event is triggered, it’s processed through stateless cloud functions, and thousands of these events can run in parallel (and you aren’t limited in any way by resources). As Vogels pointed out Lamda is designed to follow basic programming principles of function (business logic), data (business states) and interactions that are driven by events that interact between the business logic and data it operates on. Lambda also operates on these basic programming principles. For now, the service only support Java Script/node, but Vogels suggested there would be additional language support down the road. Once you create your function, you need to give it context and resources associated with that. When the resource changes, it triggers your function and it automatically runs just as you would expect without any intervention. There is a free tier for you to try it out, offering 1 million free requests per month and up to 3.2 million seconds of compute time per month (although it depends on the amount of memory you are using too). Other pay tiers are somewhat complicated, charging you for compute time in units of 100 milliseconds and you pay for each request. |
BBM Meetings Turns The Messenger Into A Cross-Platform Virtual Conference Service | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | BlackBerry is rolling out a number of new enterprise-focused features and partnerships today, which is a sign that CEO John Chen is on the right track when it comes to effecting a workable turnaround for the beleaguered Canadian tech firm. Part of that is a new feature for BBM which should prove popular with enterprise users of the mobile messaging solution: . The Meetings feature in BBM is a voice and video teleconferencing solution that will be available on Android, BB10, Windows PC and Mac (and not on iOS, though BlackBerry says that’s “coming soon”) that lets you start or schedule a virtual meeting on the fly from BBM chats. Invitees can be attended via BBM or email, and the meetings are synced up to your device’s calendar automatically. Attendees will receive an inbound call when the meeting is getting underway, and they answer and then they’re already in the meeting, bypassing the usual dialing, conference code and pin entry that generally accommodates virtual conferences. You can also present from either your mobile device or desktop, sharing your entire screen, a presentation, or a specific document. The BBM Meetings can support up to 25 participants at a time, with HD video. Screen sharing features might partly explain why iOS can’t partake – Apple doesn’t allow third-party apps to share their device screen with others. BBM Meetings will be available as part of a new Enterprise Communicator services bundle in December that offers it, BBM Protected and advanced technical support for $12 per month per user, but on its own it’ll cost you $12.50 per host per month for now (attendees can participate for free), with a 30-day initial free trial available. Meetings is another sign that Chen’s priorities are in the right place – BlackBerry needs to focus on offering this kind of enterprise service, at a cost advantage compared to other providers, and using its strengths (BBM) while acknowledging the changed market (cross-platform) to succeed. |
null | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 11 | 12 | null |
BlackBerry Teams With Samsung To Beef Up Android Security With Knox And BES12 | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | BlackBerry is to make Android security more robust, using its own Knox solution for Galaxy devices, as well as BES12, BlackBerry’s enterprise device management and enterprise mobility solution. The partnership is significant on both sides, and gives Samsung and BlackBerry a way to dig in and protect market position as Apple and IBM move to own greater share of the enterprise segment. The partnership will allow enterprise customers to opt for deployments of Samsung Knox-capable devices that will let BlackBerry’s enterprise server software control and manage their corporate data buckets, and provide a total firewall between personal and private data. It would also offer up improved core security for Samsung mobile devices, and will see Samsung help sell BES12 to its stable of customers, as well as see BlackBerry add Knox to its list of product offerings. This is a smart deal for all involved, and very similar to the arrangement that Apple and IBM have struck, albeit with the possible advantage of not requiring that either side of the equation extend themselves with expensive new product or feature development efforts. The whole point of BES12 for BlackBerry is essentially adding cross-platform device support to its list of strengths, after all, but an official team-up with Samsung will extend its potential to bring on new customers. Pricing and a specific launch window are yet to come, but we’ll provide more details as they become available. |
iOS App Install Tracking Comes To Google Analytics | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | Google Analytics is getting a powerful new feature, the company today: the ability to track iOS app installs. The new reporting function, which allows customers to better measure marketing campaigns related to acquiring mobile app users, now works with those who advertise via Google AdWords as well as third-party mobile ad networks including akri, AdMob, AppLovin, Millennial Media, MdotM, Taptica and Tapjoy. Google says other networks will be added “soon.” By measuring install metrics, customers are able to see which of their marketing efforts are really paying off. Instead of just tracking the raw number of installs coming in through different sources, the new iOS app install tracking feature will also show which of those newly acquired users were actually worth bringing in. For example, one source may send in users who launch the app once then abandon it, says Google, while others stick around for months and help the company generate revenue. Using Google Analytics’ features, marketers can delve into this data and more in order to make better decisions about which acquisition channels to use in the future. To get started, customers will need to switch iOS app install tracking on in their Google Analytics settings, update to the new SDK, and add a library to their XCode project that collects Apple’s Identifier for Advertising, or IDFA. Afterwards, customers have to add their install campaigns into Google Analytics and create custom URLs for use in the ads. The Google Analytics dashboard will show how many users arrived from any given campaign, the length of their sessions and how much revenue they brought in. The added support for iOS campaign tracking follows the launch of similar tools for those with applications, making Google Analytics a more complete product offering for mobile marketers. While third-party mobile analytics suite providers may offer more detailed data about campaigns and an app’s users, by having this feature bundled into Google Analytics itself, it could be easier to see how mobile marketing efforts tie in with those for a company’s desktop property, or how different platforms compare. iOS app install tracking is launching into public beta in a few weeks’ time, says Google. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5gNZP6IqEk] |
The Scout Alarm Is Always Prepared To Keep Your Home Safe | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | floor walkup in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The building is old — I have to hide from hot water in the shower whenever a neighbor flushes their toilet and my floor is legitimately slanted toward one side of the house. My across-the-hall neighbor has come home to a broken-in, robbed apartment three times. In short, I am the prime candidate for a home security system, but traditional big players offer pricing that I simply can’t afford. So I decided to take a look at the . The Scout Alarm is a customizable array of sensors and a ethernet-equipped smart hub. The sensors work together to monitor movement in and around the house, and then communicate that movement to your smartphone. There are various “modes” you can put the home in, like Sleep, Away, and Vacation, and each can trigger various responses. The hub also houses a 106dB siren that goes off when an intruder has gained access, and Scout offers an option for professional monitoring on a monthly basis. Installation of the system requires no holes in walls, no drills, and no hammers. Sensors are attached with adhesive on the back, and some are designed to be functional sitting on a shelf, as well. It’s an easy set-up process, with clear instructions on how to set up the hardware and pair the software. And once you’re done, the system just works. Scout Alarm offers a number of sensors and lets you configure your perfect system. You start with the Smart Hub, a discreet device that can go on a book shelf or rest on the media console. The only requirement is that it’s close to a power source and can hardwire into your router’s ethernet. The Hub comes with 72-hours of wireless data so that you can get set up with the system, even if you can’t get directly connected to Ethernet. From there, you likely need a door panel or two. The door panel adheres, with two separate parts, to the door and the frame and monitors each time the door is opened. The door panel comes with two key fobs, which let you arm and disarm the system via RFID as you come and go without having to open the app. This comes in handy if your smartphone is dead and you can’t manually disarm the system. The door panel is about the size of a passport, though maybe twice as thick, and has its own speaker, which emits a beep each time you leave and goes off with the hub when the siren is triggered. Scout also offers motion sensors, which have a front surface area the size of a credit card, with a little, motion sensing bulb protruding from the front. They are flat on the bottom, so you can plop them down on a shelf (as long as it’s about five to six feet off the ground) or adhere them to a corner of the room. The motion sensors can detect movement during the day and the night, with a reach of 25 feet and a 90 degree field of view. You can add another layer of protection through access sensors, which are pretty small and continuously monitor anything that opens or closes. I have them on my windows, but you could theoretically put them on a safe, an outside gate, a liquor cabinet, etc. Access sensors are very similar to the door panel, using two pieces to decipher when an access point has been breached, though they don’t come with the RFID or the speaker. And finally, Scout offers an HD video camera that streams 1080p video to your smartphone or computer continuously. You can watch live, with audio and night vision, or access backups so you can keep an eye on what’s going on in your home. In fact, the Scout camera comes with two-way audio so you could theoretically yell at (and scare the shit out of) any intruder. (Full Disclosure: The Scout camera is on back order so I didn’t get a chance to test it, so I’m just going on the description for this particular piece of hardware.) The hardware all comes in three different colors: black, white, and walnut. You can control the Scout Alarm through a web dashboard or a smartphone app. The hub speaks to the other sensors and the software via 802.15.4 lightweight mesh. Both the app and the web dashboard offer a way to add new sensors at any time by simply pairing, finding a good spot in the home, and giving the sensor a name. From within both, you can edit all of your “modes” to offer the right reactions to various triggers. For example, when I put my Scout on Sleep Mode, it is set to fire the alarm if the door panel or the window access sensor is triggered, but the motion sensors are turned off in case I get up to get water or go to the bathroom. In Away Mode, all the sensors are armed to set off the alarm and send me a text message telling me what’s happened. On Vacation Mode, the same holds true except that I can also send a text message or email to a friend who lives nearby to come check things out and probably call the police. The app is the easiest way to be 100 percent sure that your system is armed or disarmed or in a certain mode. You can use the RFID tag to quickly and easily disarm the system when you enter on Away Mode, which in my place triggers the alarm, but I feel more comfortable arming the system with the app, where I can be sure. In other words, the door panel beeps to signal arming or disarming, but there is no differentiation between arming and disarming. I worry I might accidentally disarm the system as I leave, and I wish that Scout would use a different color for the LED signal to say armed (red) and disarmed (green). Scout offers a special home monitoring plan called Always On and Always On+. Always On offers battery back up and a 3G connection if your power or wifi ever goes out, to ensure you can still keep an eye on things. Always On+ offers the same perks along with 24/7 professional monitoring so that the police are called as swiftly as possible. I only ever had one small issue getting started with Scout. If you activate multiple sensors too early, the Hub has trouble pairing with them. In Scout’s defense, the instruction manual says explicitly to not activate (by pulling one of those little plastic tabs) more than one sensor at a time, you could run into this issue. Luckily, the front panels of the sensors are easy to remove, and the problem is quickly solved by removing batteries and ‘re-activating’ the sensors. Beyond that, I’ve had a truly seamless experience with Scout. It took about an hour to install the Hub, a door panel, two motion sensors, and an access panel on my bedroom window. The other windows in my home would require spidey senses to break into, and I live alone, so that array is more than enough for me to feel safe and secure. And while I didn’t get a chance to see the live video monitoring, I don’t think I’d want a live stream of my home going through the cloud. In all, a few sensors and a hub is all I really need, and my whole set up cost just $325. When you compare this to the Canary, which is the closest competitor in price and function, you have to weigh out what’s important to you. The Canary only costs $200, and monitors things like temperature, air quality, and also offers 1080p live monitoring. However, the Canary is a single piece of hardware that is meant to watch your place without actually monitoring entry points. Scout won’t monitor the air quality in your home or hook into the smoke alarm (for now), but does offer an added layer of security with the access sensors. The company has raised more than $474k in its own pre-order campaign and is now shipping. They are also partnering with Lockitron and IFTTT to start automating home security. [gallery ids="1082817,1082816,1082815,1082814,1082813,1082812,1082807,1082806,1082808,1082809,1082810,1082811,1082805,1082804"] |
Uber Integrates With Spotify To Let Passengers Become Backseat DJs | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | is adding a new feature to its mobile app that could allow passengers to play DJ while they take a ride with one of its drivers. Thanks to an integration with , Uber will soon make music a central part of its ride-hailing service. Some screenshots obtained by TechCrunch show how the service will likely work. In the first screenshot, which began showing up on its driver app over the last few days, Uber has begun asking drivers to update their car information and select whether or not it has an AUX audio input. By connecting their Uber-provided mobile phone to the car stereo, the service could soon allow users to control the music during the ride and possibly play from their own playlists. Meanwhile the second screenshot, which a source tells us is hidden within the current version of Uber’s consumer app, shows a mockup of what it will look like for passengers as they select and listen to music while in transit. The user interface shows the song title and artist of the music being played, and enables users to pause, skip, rewind, and choose to shuffle tracks in a playlist. What’s missing from those screens is the company that will provide the music being pumped into Uber stereos, but we’ve confirmed Spotify will be Uber’s partner for the service. Today Uber invited press to participate in a global conference call with CEO Travis Kalanick and a “Special Partner Guest” to announce a “first-of-its-kind partnership.” The top of the invite is adorned with a music clef, suggesting that Uber will be announcing the music service Monday morning. We’ve heard someone from Spotify, which has both the global footprint and user base to make such an integration successful, will be the special guest in question. Uber will be announcing the new service next week, but it seems the companies could have been experimenting with the idea for some time now. Looking around online, we uncovered a that appears to describe this service. Beginning with the logos for both companies, it takes us through a sequence featuring a young guy walking down the road and listening to Spotify on his headphones. He then gets alerted on his phone to meet a friend in a different part of town and orders an Uber (after failing to hail a taxi). Once in the car, he takes off his headphones. The then music seamlessly continues to play inside the car. Both passenger and driver rock out. “Votre chauffeur Uber. Rythme votre vie au son de Spotify,” the video ends. “Your driver is Uber. Pace your life to the sound of Spotify.” More generally, a service integration with Uber would fit with a wider strategic push at Spotify. The company now has of its streaming service, but to make its service more ubiquitous (and ) Spotify has been making an effort in the last several months to extend its app to more places outside of its own walled garden. At the same time, it has been curtailing its activity with music apps on its own platform, recently in its desktop app. In-car services have very much been a part of that roadmap: Spotify has made deals to embed its service in connected cars made by and . Neither Uber nor Spotify has returned a request for comment. |
Bitcoin Startup Coinbase Is Raising Another $50 Million | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | Bitcoin startup is seeking to raise another round of funding, which could add $50 million in new capital before it’s finished. According to sources, however, the company has faced headwinds in the fundraising process that may limit the total amount raised. Sources tell us Coinbase is raising $50 million of new capital less than a year after its last financing, a $25 million Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz. That’s a pretty big jump in a short period of time, and would once again make Coinbase the best-capitalized Bitcoin startup after recent for BlockChain and BitPay. (FWIW Re/code, which was apparently chasing this story at the same time we were, reports . Coinbase, btw, declined to comment.) That said, one source tells us Coinbase started out with an even more ambitious goal during the fundraising process, initially seeking to raise up to $150 million. So what happened? Our sources say Coinbase has faced headwinds due to regulatory overhang in the U.S., as well as questions about the volatility of Bitcoin as the price of the cryptocurrency has fallen dramatically in recent months. On the regulatory side, there’s the usual uncertainty about how over time. Frankly that hasn’t stopped many investors from pouring money into Coinbase or other Bitcoin-based startups to date. However, we are hearing rumblings from within the Bitcoin community that Coinbase is being looked at closely by certain state and federal regulators in the U.S. That might help explain Coinbase’s . While each new country presents new regulatory challenges, being available in more places will help mitigate some of the risk associated with being dependent on customers within any one market. Meanwhile, Bitcoin volatility could also have been a factor Coinbase’s ability to close its massive funding round, our sources say. The cryptocurrency was trading in the mid-$600s earlier in the summer, and the price has fallen precipitously since then. It had been cut by as much as 50 percent and has traded below $400 for much of the last six weeks. While most investors who would put money in are still bullish on Bitcoin over the long term, it’s obviously easier to make the case for investment in a startup in the space when the price is rising as opposed to falling. There is a correlation between the . That is, the higher Bitcoin’s price rises, the more attention the average person affords it. Presumably, that interest leads to higher engagement. A lower price could imply a slower influx of new Bitcoiners, and perhaps a slimmer funnel for the startups battling for domination of this particular market niche. Regardless of whether Coinbase is able to raise more, with $50 million in fresh capital the company would be well-poised to continue its geographic expansion. Whether it is racing ahead of its market, however, is a separate question. |
Senator Ted Cruz Dishes Once Again On That ‘Net Neutrality’ Thing | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | The good from Texas tackled net neutrality again today, with a bit more tact than earlier this week when he called it “ .” It wasn’t immediately clear at that point what the connection between the Affordable Care Act and the preservation of the open Internet was, precisely, but the comment . Today, at a Texas incubator in Austin, Sen. Cruz continued on the topic in his typical style of folksy phrases and dramatic pauses. I’ve embedded the full net neutrality segment below ( ). Watch the full thing. Sen. Cruz makes a number of decent points: Top-down government regulation can lead to the freezing of markets — Uber and Lyft are great! A few things, however, I think were a bit less correct. His worry about having to ask the government what we may and may not do online isn’t what is at stake with net neutrality, unless you are an ISP that wants to abrogate the principles of an open Internet. Instead, what net neutrality preserves is the anti-right of an ISP to tell No You Can’t. Sen. Cruz also riffs on the idea that net neutrality is a scrap between large companies, and their lobbying armies. That’s actually somewhat true, but to only paint the issue in those terms is to miss the larger point, which deals with smaller companies. Net neutrality matters because it creates the market conditions that allow new companies to come into existence that may challenge the very sniping giants that Sen. Cruz wants to dismiss as, roughly, commensurate. The segment is not all negative, in fact. Senator Cruz points out that he is a cosponsor of the USA FREEDOM Act in the Senate. Here’s the clip:
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13 TechCrunch Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week | Anna Escher | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | This week’s tech highlights included a few big moves from Microsoft, President Obama’s stance on net neutrality, the MBA Bubble, and more. Here are the stories you don’t want to miss this week (11/8-11/14). Google announced that the company has agreed to a for the next 60 years. Regarding the deal, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, “As NASA expands its presence in space, we are making strides to reduce our footprint here on Earth.” , saying that “an open Internet is essential to the American economy.” He presented a net neutrality plan advocating for the FCC to reclassify broadband under Title II of the Telecommunications Act – a stance that has been the favorite of net neutrality advocates. , and co-founder Alexis Ohanian has returned to the company to fill the full-time executive chairman role. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spoke to the press at an event, during which he emphasized the three main components of his company: . Danny Crichton wrote a , and how it has come to a close. Less MBA graduates are seeking employment Silicon Valley startups, and are returning back to Wall Street for jobs. But should San Francisco be worried? After 12 years of using the .NET framework programming model for developers who want to build Windows apps, Microsoft soon. The company will also be open-sourcing most of the full server-side .NET core stack. since the pre-mobile, pre-web late 1970s/early 1980s through today, and why developers are more needed than ever in this brave new world. Samsung announced the , designed to capture 3D footage for use with Samsung’s Gear VR headset. Kyle Russell introduced you to a hot that turns your smartphone photos into Polaroid shots with a built-in printer – and it has an augmented reality feature too. , which indicates an effort to turn the streamer into a console alternative for Wii or other multi-player console users. A Chinese programmer , showing that once again, its still cool to see resurrected software run readily on new hardware. YouTube’s long-awaited music subscription service has finally arrived, and its called . It offers access to Google Play Music’s entire library, ads-free music videos, background playback capabilities, and offline caching for viewing without a connection. DJI introduced a new transforming drone model called the Inspire 1. Built off of the success of the Phantom, the Inspire 1 has the ability to stream 1080p video up to a mile away. Its transforming design provides an unobstructed 360-degree view. . |
Yik Yak Is Close To Closing On Roughly $75 Million | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | Thank the for turning into the newest technology craze and an . Only a year after its launch, the app is now close to closing on roughly $75 million in new financing, according to several sources with knowledge of the company. With a focus on local and anonymous messaging for college students, Yik Yak has overtaken earlier entrants like and to become one of the in the country, according to the analytics and tracking service . In fact, we’d originally heard that the round was going to be in the region of $25 million but that it crept up on the back of the app’s current popularity. Our sources are close-lipped on who’s leading the new investment, but previous investors include , which led the seed and Series A round, and individual investors including Tim Draper and Kevin Colleran. Other institutions backing Yik Yak are , , the Chinese social networking site , and . One source says there may also be strategic investors involved in this round. Unlike its more confessional counterparts, Yik Yak feels like an anonymous shout into the campus quad; with everything from random thoughts on teachers, students and student life, to requests to hook up or get hooked up. It’s now on roughly 1300 campuses and counting. It’s even . Ultimately, founders Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington want the company to be more than just the campus town crier. One of their ambitions is to turn the service into a . The company even launched new tools last month that in that direction. Even as it launches new services to try to expand its reach, Yik Yak has kept its attention on its core audience: college students. Most recently, the company promoting the app on the West Coast. as part of the reason for its stickiness, but Yik Yak has also relied on a lot of guerrilla marketing techniques to grow its user base. The company selects student reps that are already avid users of the app to spread the word. “The way we chose them are the people who have the biggest Yak Karma score,” said Buffington in an October interview. Yak Karma ratings are a point system that is based on how many posts and other activity users have in the app. Neither Buffington nor Droll responded to a request for comment about the financing. Yik Yak was launched by Buffington and Droll last November at the ripe old age of 23, after they’d graduated from . The app began taking off in the Spring as colleges swung into full gear. The explosion of the app has drawn comparisons to , which saw similar success among the college crowd before going mainstream. And , Yik Yak has been hit with . For what it’s worth, the criticism Yik Yak faces is no different from what other social networks faced when they were getting off the ground. On apps, as on the internet, dumb people will say dumb things. The Atlanta-based company has actually made to curb the darker side of the teen- and post-teenage wasteland. It instituted geo-fencing options for districts in March to block middle schoolers and high schoolers from accessing the app on campus, and both Buffington and Droll point to the site’s strict moderating rules as a way of limiting bullying on the site. Indeed, while Yik Yak today is putting most of its marketing efforts into building up users at colleges, the aim is to make the service used by more than just this group. “We designed it so that it will work anywhere,” said Droll. “Whether you’re a post grad in a new city, or you’re traveling. It’ll tell you what’s happening.” |
With theBomb, The Makers Of theChive Aim To Create A Viral Video Hub | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | , the startup behind the popular photo site , is moving into the viral video business with the launch of a new property, . Even if you’re not a regular Chive visitor (or, to use the parlance of the site, a Chiver or a Chivette) you may be familiar with one of the site’s publicity stunts from wayyyyy back in 2010, with a memorable series of dry erase board messages. ( — in other words, the whole thing was a clever hoax.) Leo and John Resig, the brothers who founded and run the company, told me that the site has grown to 40 million monthly visits across desktop and mobile. The smartphone app has been downloaded 12 million times, with 40 percent of those downloads turning into daily active users. And the average user spends 209 minutes per month in the app. Thanks to a combination of funny photo galleries, scantily clad women, and random other stuff from the Internet, theChive has developed a pretty distinctive style — TheBomb seems to be a similar grab bag of content, just with videos (curated from YouTube and elsewhere) instead of photos — for example, the most recent video when I loaded up the front page just now was , while the most popular one from the “laugh” section was, um, a “ .” The goal, Leo Resig told me, is to create a “one-stop destination for viral videos.” He admitted that it’s “not an original idea,” but he argued that theChive has the advantage of knowing “what’s good.” Plus, it’s developing an algorithmic system for identifying the videos that visitors will like. It might seem like the Resigs are well on their way to establishing a whole network of sites in this vein — theChive, theBomb, theThis, theThat. And indeed, there’s also (a viral photo site aimed at women) and (an e-commerce site). Plus, the company is experimenting video production — in Leo’s words, “We’re dabbling in a comedy series.” However, Leo told me that he isn’t eager to expand further, at least not right away: “We don’t want to pull focus from theChive — that’s our bread and butter.” “There’s no reason to get too cute with it right now,” John added. “We’re not trying to be the next Gawker. We’ve got a grand slam already.” When I interviewed the Resig brothers, we spent a lot more time talking about the business side of theChive than the content. I will say, however, that they both seem cheerfully self-aware and unapologetic about what they do. For example, in my very first conversation Leo two years ago, he seemed perfectly to describe theChive’s “Pinterest for men” site Tapiture as “ .” (Since then, , and it seems to be aiming for a less bro-y audience.) That attitude is evident on the sites themselves — theChive’s tagline is “probably the best site in the world,” and while theBomb’s is “probably the best videos in the world.” At the same time, the Resigs sound sincere and passionate about the community they’ve built, especially since they’ve been able to . And while they’re open about the fact that they relocated from Los Angeles to Austin last year in order to avoid taxes, they’re proud that most of their 50 employees were willing follow them. (The headcount is now 88.) Another point of pride — the fact that they’ve built the business without outside funding (aside from a $150,000 loan in 2009 that has been paid back). Through a combination of ads and e-commerce, the company grew revenue from $5 million in 2011 to more than $60 million last year, and the brothers say it’s on-track to make more than $80 million this year. And they say it’s been cash-flow positive that whole time, with margins of around 40 percent. In a follow-up email, John told me: I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished given that we don’t have the Fort Knox of cash reserves at our disposal. We value every dollar that comes into theCHIVE and we reallocate it back into the company with precision. We are the anti-burn internet company. The silly attitude behind ‘the burn’ you hear about these days is equal to throwing spaghetti at the wall without getting it wet first. |
CrunchWeek: Obama On Net Neutrality, Microsoft Open Sources .NET, And Twitter Meets Wall Street | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | On this week’s episode of CrunchWeek, I was joined by TechCrunch writer and editor to talk about the biggest surprises in the tech scene. We discussed President Obama finally , rather than as an “information service.” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler , which must be frustrating for the President who appointed him. Next up, we ruminated about the crazy changes happening at Microsoft, inspired by the company . Microsoft is making its most reliable income streams free and embracing other platforms — how can they do that without killing their revenues? To round out our chat, we discussed , where the social networking company made the case to Wall Street that it knows how to address user and revenue growth. Investors seemed to like what they saw, though there was a bit of drama due to a rather awkwardly-worded strategy statement that gave the impression that Twitter’s motivations are muddled. |
Facebook Cracks Down On Non-Ad Promotional Feed Posts, Bait-And Switching Pages That Bought Likes | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | “BUY THIS!” “INSTALL NOW!’ “CONTEST!” Facebook is about to that with these kind of words to the News Feed. Facebook will show them to a lot fewer of their fans, even if the Page paid for ads to get those fans. After a study of 500,000 users found they wanted to see less promotional content, and that the majority of the posts that annoyed them weren’t ads, but organically displayed posts from Pages they Liked, Facebook decided to change the rules. The sanctions will go into effect in January 2015, so some businesses will be forced to change their Page publishing strategies soon or see their organic reach drop, which can be devastating to referral traffic. Though done in the name of improving the quality of the News Feed for its users, the whole situation is . For years, Facebook has pushed businesses to buy ads that score them Likes for their Pages so they can reach them for free via News Feed. Facebook didn’t say there would be any restrictions on what businesses could put in those feed posts. Suddenly, Likes will become a lot less valuable, especially for direct response businesses that use the feed to sell things. For example, “When more people like your Facebook Page, it helps you build your reputation, stay connected with the people who support you and find new customers.” It then suggests one great way to do that is to “Create an ad to promote your Page.” Nowhere does Facebook mention that despite buying fans so it can stay connected with them, it will punish Pages for publishing posts like this: The is why this has become an issue. As people add more friends and Like more Pages who are all sharing more content to the feed, but the amount of time people spend reading the feed stays roughly the same, it creates added competition that leads to a decrease in reach for everyone’s posts. Facebook’s trying to make the most of the finite attention by , crappy memes, and other low quality content. But now Facebook is going nuclear on spammy marketing posts from Pages. Facebook says that: “According to people we surveyed, there are some consistent traits that make organic posts feel too promotional: Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads” Here are some posts that Facebook would deem unacceptable, and slap sanctions on a Page for posting: Facebook says that “While Pages that post a lot of the content we mention above will see a significant decrease in distribution, the majority of Pages will not be impacted by this change.” It also tells me that if a Page’s fans consistently Like or click on the “spammy” posts, Facebook will keep showing them the hard-sell marketing messages. It won’t show more or fewer ads in the feed, but businesses will be forgiven for assuming the change also greedily pushes them to buy more ads boosting the reach of individual posts they publish. The whole fiasco is likely to make businesses more skeptical about buying Facebook ads. The question is how long Facebook knew this decrease in Page reach was going to happen and that it might have to crack down on Page spam. If it knew Likes were becoming less valuable, but didn’t communicate that to people buying Like ads, that’s pretty scammy. The company claims that Pages are still important to businesses, but the fact is that the News Feed is the primary way they reach fans and why Likes are important. Facebook’s song and dance is that Pages can be a destination property for businesses that works across devices, and that 1 billion people visited Pages themselves during October, including 750 million from mobile. Still, quick visits to Pages aren’t the same as seeing them in the feed every day. In the end, what Facebook’s doing for users is the right move. It will make the feed more interesting, and teach brands to create compelling content. |
Jukely Offers Unlimited Concerts For $25 A Month | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | A music startup out of New York could give StubHub and other ticketing sites a run for their (proverbial) money. It’s called Jukely and in their city for just $25 a month. “We asked how much people would pay — $100? No. $50? Still too high. Then we asked if they’d pay $25 and that seemed to spark their interest,” Jukely co-founder Bora Celik explained about how his team came up with the subscription concerts price to a crowded room at the SF Music Tech Conference. Celik is a mix of an engineer and promoter. He has a background in putting together concerts including top acts such as Kaskade and DJ Tiesto. His co-founder, Andrew Cornett, designed the app and helped build Kickstarter. Jukely came out of the Techstars NYC 2013 accelerator program as a sort of music matchmaker. It uses an algorithm to determine your tastes, matches you up to people with the same music sense, and then suggests concerts you may want to check out together. The app now claims 30 million people and their connected friends on the platform. The startup raised a healthy seed round of $2.5 million from AngelList’s fund Maiden Lane, Amol Sarva, Northzone, Par Jorgen Parson and several other angels, including investors in Spotify and former Warner Music executive Alex Zubillaga, in early October. The cash gives Jukely the means to build the subscription service and start to spread out to other cities. A mere $25 for a la carte music concerts doesn’t seem like a good money-making model. But Celik sees the service as a win-win. He pointed out that both Jukely and concert promoters make money by filling otherwise empty ticket orders. It’s sort of like an unlimited version of , but for music. You won’t find bigger names like Taylor Swift or Gaga on the subscription list. The idea is to fill the room and expose folks to bands that are just starting to blow up, but have enough of a presence to sell a few of their own tickets, too. Celik says his team vets the artists and adds them to a list of scheduled concerts that members can choose from. Subscription wannabes are also vetted. The service is pretty beta, which means you’ll have to sign up on the wait list and hope to get picked as an early adopter for now. Jukely is currently in 17 venues in just the New York City area for now, but we’re told there are plans to launch in LA and SF soon. TechCrunch readers in NYC can bypass the wait list and get in by clicking on . |
Atlas Wearables Raises Another Million For Its Smarter Fitness Tracker, Starts Shipping This Winter | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | Wearables are a crowded market, but in the fitness-tracking niche, many of the top devices today are still just glorified step trackers with fancier software and a few more bells and whistles. A company called wants to push the fitness-band market forward with a device that’s able to track which exercise or activity you’re currently doing, the reps you’ve completed, and even how your form compares to a library of form reference exercises. The company has now raised just over a million to help bring its product to market, and is planning to ship its first device this winter, according to co-founder and CEO Peter Li. He says the startup plans to reach full manufacturing capabilities by Q2-Q3 2015, selling devices at $249 MSRP. The lead investor in the new round is Houston-based JRG Capital Partners. Local press had previously reported the raise, but the newly dropped reveals it’s in the form of a convertible note and comes from 13 investors. The company had previously raised $629,000 from and another $625,000 from other crowdfunding sites and angel investors, Austin’s reports. TechCrunch first came across Austin-based Atlas Wearables when it demoed an early version onstage at our CES 2014 There, the team showed off the device in action, where it was able to differentiate between two different styles of pushups. The technology that makes this all possible is the combination of a built-in accelerometer and software that crunches data about the device’s spatial movement. The algorithm is adaptive and learning, which means over time, the device will be trained to identify an increasing number of exercises. Atlas is now keeping track of its progress on that front , where you can see which exercises it’s able to support now, which are close to being ready, and which are still under development. Those with the green light now include various bicep curls, burpees, different dumbbell curls and extensions, pull-ups, jumping jacks, jump rope, and more. The company sold out of its initial pre-orders of 5,000 devices, and is now planing to ship this first batch before the end of the year. To clarify shipment times, Atlas last month that those who order before August 31 would get their watches by December. Those who ordered afterward, will see their orders fulfilled by spring 2015. |
Clover Lets You Order A Date Like You Would A Burrito | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | New dating app is a sort of but with the “algorithmic matching” included in other online dating sites like eHarmony. The twist? It aims to make it as easy to order a Friday night date as it is to summon your next burrito. “Our new on-demand service will find people that actually want to meet you and you’ll be able to find a date as easy as it is to order a pizza or a cab,” says Clover CEO Isaac Raichyk. Clover launched back in April as yet another ho-hum dating app. Same profile pics, demographic filters, swiping capabilities and messaging. Basically no reason to choose it over Tinder, Zoosk or Plenty of Fish. That is until now. Clover just launched a new service that gives it that “on-demand dating” edge. Part of the problem with Tinder and apps like it is that a lot of people seem to use it to simply flick through the profile pics with no intent to meet up. Clover aims to solve that by letting you schedule a real life date. You simply add in the calendar where and when you’d like to meet up with someone. The app then suggests a potential prospect to join you and you decide if you’d like to spend your time with them. This is in a way quite similar to what Techstars Chicago startup is attempting to do. But in that case the founders employ human matchmakers to determine your ideal mate/date for the night. Clover, by contrast, employs a robot. Clover intends to put an end to other problems it sees with online dating sites and apps, including: Part of the solve for lack of innovation, of course, is the on-demand part. Take note that this feature will cost you. Clover, like most dating sites, is initially free. Users get a no-cost seven day initial trial and then it’s $9.99/month for premium service on the App Store after that. The on-demand version isn’t available to the masses until December, but will be part of the free version. There are also certain pay-to-play features in the app. It’s 99 cents if you simply want to change your name from, say, “hotbunny101” to “Sarah”…for instance. I’m taken already, but did use the app for testing purposes. I admit to setting up a fake profile and using this as my profile pic: Who wouldn’t want to go out with me? The funny thing is, a lot of guys still gave me a heart and one dude even reached out within 24 hours. The main question I’d be asking if I were single and looking is if a “proprietary algorithm” based on machines is better at determining who will be the love of my life or if this is better left to humans. You’ll have to try the app and decide for yourself on that. |
The FCC Responds To AT&T’s Net Neutrality Saber Rattling | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | AT&T that it would “ ” the rollout of fiber Internet connections to dozens of cities, due to uncertainty in the market caused by potentially stiff net neutrality rules that may be put into place. The president recently by calling for reclassification of broadband under Title II. The news from AT&T that it would halt the rollout of new fiber connections over the current open Internet scrap is a bright example of self-facing prophesies coming true. , a corporate narrative pushed by a corporation came true after the same corporation . You can almost believe it. Enter the FCC, which can’t quite. In a , the Federal Communications Commission probed the telecom firm about just what had changed — what in the economics had gone awry? Here’s the key excerpt: The gist of that isn’t hard to parse: The FCC wants to know how much rollout is being constrained, what new economics are changing business decisions, and how that impacts AT&T’s proposed DirecTV deal. AT&T has . If AT&T can muster decent arguments that its investments into new fiber in fact threatened by net neutrality regulations that could veer toward the strict, then we have a new landscape. Instead, the company’s comments to date have pressed caution — ! I’m not sure how compelling the FCC will find that sort of argument. At the same time, the FCC isn’t leaving much room for . AT&T would love to present a case that its friends can trumpet: We said that net neutrality would chill investment, and, blow me over, ! If AT&T fails to argue well, that entire premise could evaporate, curtailing the Open Internet Is Bad For Business novel. |
BlackBerry To Ship A Classic BlackBerry With Modern Software In Mid-December For $450 | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | Did you used to carry a BlackBerry, but have since moved on to an iPhone, Android, or well… pretty much anything else? Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night, pawing at the air for the glorious click of that wideset physical keyboard? Good news! As we , BlackBerry has been working on a “Classic” handset that mixes the best of many worlds: the keyboard that once helped them rule the mobile world, a form factor that once proved wildly successful for them, modern (if mid-range) specs, and the most recent version of the BlackBerry operating system. It’s called, aptly, the BlackBerry Classic. Early this morning, Blackberry started taking pre-orders for the device with a launch window of “mid-December”. According to , the company is aiming for an official launch day of December 17th. ( ) Will they sell millions of these things? Nah. Will it bring BlackBerry back to the throne they once held? No way. But if you’re still stubbornly clinging onto a BlackBerry Bold and just wish it was a bit more up-to-date, this might fit the bill. While the pre-order page is pretty much no where to be seen on their US home page, you can find it hidden away right here |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 11 | 13 | null |
Scaled Inference Lands $8M From Khosla To Build A Cloud-Based AI Platform For All | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | — a startup founded by two ex-Googlers that is building a cloud-based platform for third parties that want to use artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to run their apps and services — has raised another round of funding to continue its development and hiring, a Series A round of $8 million from Khosla Ventures. This brings the total amount of funding up to $13.6 million, after the startup earlier this year from a number of angels and prominent investors like Tencent and Felicis. While Scaled Inference has yet to launch a public product, it expects to have a working prototype together soon and is now bringing together companies for a closed trial of the platform. In the months between raising its seed and Series A rounds, Scaled Inference has been putting together some of the first products (or services) that will run on top of that platform: pattern recognition, anomaly detection, prediction, and predictive ranking, which will be accessible by developers by way of a set of APIs. The challenge for Scaled Inference is that it is not only building a cloud platform for machine learning intelligence, but also trying to figure out how to distil what have up to now been very specific applications into general-purpose services. This first set, says co-founder Olcan Sercinoglu (who started the business with Dmitry Lepikhin), will “serve as a foundation for various special-purpose services that we also plan to offer in the future.” “These core services all depend on a user-supplied data set or stream that largely defines the potential applications,” he explains. For now, a lot of the services are focused around e-commerce and related financial services. As an example of where pattern recognition might be applied, he says, take a bank or credit card company like Visa. Visa would feed transaction data like time, location, merchant, customer, item, and amount for each transaction. “The pattern recognition APIs can then be used to detect correlations such as increased spending during certain time periods, at certain locations, by certain customers, on certain items, for certain combinations of these attributes,” he says. In turn, this type of insight can help guide important business decisions such as branch locations/hours, regional marketing strategies, pricing for transaction fees, and so on. Anomaly detection APIs, meanwhile, could be used to detect unexpected events like a large transaction at a coffee shop, or to single out transactions made in a geographic area where a customer is not usually based. Of course, these are the types of services that large banks (or Visa) would already have in place, but now the idea is to create these services in such a way so that small financial startups, for example, might be able to execute similar anti-fraud data inquiries. The prediction APIs focus on predicting attributes based on other attributes. One example is the amount that will be spent in a particular region during a certain time period. “This type of precise predictive analysis can be used to optimize important future-looking business decisions, or to enable intelligent products or services that can save users time by predicting what users will want or need before they ask for it explicitly,” he says. The predictive ranking API is related to this, and will let users rank large numbers of objects based on predicted attributes. “For example, it could be used to get a ranking of items that a customer is most likely to purchase at a certain time/location, or alternatively a ranking of potential customers for a given item or merchant,” Sercinoglu says. In addition to shopping apps, these could also be used for advertising systems sorting through inventory. There is a potential roadblock for Scaled Inference applying these services to e-commerce companies purely in the public cloud: these types of applications are based on sensitive personal data, such as financial or health data, and as such may require private or on-premise deployment of its technology due to government regulations. In that regard, this is a long-term vision, but this is one of the reasons that Scaled Inference went with the investors that it has done, Sercinoglu says. “Vinod Khosla is a long term investor, one of the longest-term thinkers in the business, and ours is a long term vision for AI and machine learning. That really resonated with him.” Longer term, he says, “We seek to offer the same powerful technology as a public cloud API to everyone and for virtually any application; anything from personalized magazines to intelligent context-sensitive address books, app launchers, e-commerce sites, disruptive data-driven startups (Uber, Airbnb, Rent a Runway, etc), advertising systems, search engines, and so on. Ultimately, our goal is to power the most intelligent and popular products and services in the world.” |
Judge Puts Pressure On Apple By Consolidating Lawsuits Over Undelivered Texts | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | Yesterday, Judge Lucy Koh made a ruling that affects two separate lawsuits filed against Apple involving the company’s alleged failure to deliver text messages to the intended recipient after users switched from iPhones with iMessage to Android. The first case was filed in May by plaintiffs Adam Backhaut, Joy Backhaut, and Kenneth Morris, arguing that Apple was violating the and the (commonly referred to as the Wiretap Act) by intercepting messages from their intended recipient. The second case was filed a day later by plaintiff , who made a number of claims against Apple, many of which were denied by the judge. However, Moore’s case was passed earlier this week on one claim having to do with Apple’s alleged interference with her current wireless contract with her Android provider. Judge Koh (who has her own history with Apple) consolidated the Backhaut case and the Moore case into a single lawsuit yesterday, requesting that a complete, amended complaint be filed with the courts no later than December 4. All three parties, counsel for Backhaut, Moore, and Apple, asked not to be consolidated into a single case, as the theories waged by each of the plaintiffs is very different. Judge Koh also yesterday confirmed that at least part of the Backhaut claim would be pushed through, but didn’t specify which claims would survive to go to court. This means that Apple will be facing arguments from multiple angles as it tries to knock down these claims before Class Action certification takes place. Though both plaintiffs seek to get Class certification for this case, that decision won’t be made until the summer of 2015. If you want to check out the Moore complaint, . The original Backhaut complaint is embedded below:
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This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Nexus 6, Scout Alarm, And Other Fun Toys | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | The fall weather and the swift approach of the holiday season has us aspiring for some of our favorite things and settling in for a cold winter. Darrell is unimpressed with the , but I’m loving my new, configurable . Matt is , and John’s excited about some special . We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the featuring , , , and . Have a good Friday, everybody!
We invite you to enjoy our every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right .
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A Gift Guide For The Young At Heart | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | Some people never grow up. They might age, go into debt and get mortgages, but they don’t get older in spirit. And that’s great! What follows is a gift guide for a person still holding onto their inner child. They’re gifts for the young at heart and the person not afraid to let loose. Or you know, for kids. The 8BITDO is a modern Nintendo controller. It’s Bluetooth, friends. But it’s Nintendo. The controller is compatible with Android, iOS, Windows and the Wii. However, when used with iOS, two controllers can connect to a single device, allowing classic head to head battles. Touchscreen-only game? The company says it’s trivial to map the proper keys. At $30, it’s an easy buy for the gamer young or old. Okay, hear me out. This game mixes Minecraft with Marvel superheroes. It’s pretty damn awesome and fun for all ages. The latest incarnation of Disney’s video game brings new functionalities and a host of new characters. But as is the growing trend, you have to buy new characters to play as them. If that’s kosher with you, we can wholeheartedly recommend Disney Infinity 2.0. If you found the LEGO video games fun, you’ll love this one. Drones are awesome, but they can be expensive, too. Parrot has been in the drone game for years now and just released the Rolling Spider drone, which can fly and roll. At $100 it’s a great way to introduce someone to the future without clearing out the piggy bank. Plus, it works great and is easy to fly. Expect the drone to be buzzing around the house minutes after the gift is opened. A Sumo chair is what happens when the lowly beanbag chair grows up, gets a degree and settles down. It’s comfy, large, but at its core, still a beanbag chair. So it’s awesome. At $139 its a bit more than your average department store model, but the Sumo probably won’t pop when your buddies plop down in it. Anki Drive is what happens when incredibly smart people take classic slot cars and mix in a healthy dose of robotic learning. The cars are controlled by a connected smartphone and as players earn points, the cars can be upgraded with new abilities. Play against a friend, or if you want to lose, play against the computer (which is also controlled by your smartphone). But be warned, the track is huge and the game is very addicting. A starter kit that ships with two cars and an oval track is $149. There are several tracks and cars available. Everyone loves Lego kits. This Red Five X-wing Starfighter is one of the best. But set aside a weekend for assembly. There are 1,559 pieces and it includes a display stand that will look fantastic sitting in a cubicle. It even ships with a tiny R2-D2! LEGO.com warns that this model is hard to find, but the site currently has it in stock for $200. Maybe a Porsche is out of the budget for this holiday. So how about just a Porsche wheel? The $249 Fanatec Porsche 911 GT2 Wheel is a way to get the Porsche feel without draining the bank. The wheel is wrapped in automotive-grade Alcantara material and utilizes a belt-driven motor for a real-world feel. The controller works with Windows, Xbox 360 and the PS3. Maybe open the box and spray it with a new car smell air freshener for added effect. Have a bigger budget? Fanatec offers even more expensive wheels along with pedals, shifters and even handbrakes for drifting around corners while sitting on a couch. Everyone loves Scrabble. Even me, but I need a copy editor to play. Still, this $1,500 version hangs on a wall and has everything you need to play Scrabble with a giant: classic wooden letters, a bag to hold everything and a chalkboard to keep track of the score. Magnets keep the tiles in place. And rage quitting hits a new level when you tear this off the wall. Maybe the NES is too modern for the gamer in your life. That’s where the R-Kaid-R by Love Hulten comes in. It’s a finely crafted portable arcade system. The battery lasts eight hours and ships with its own leather bag to keep the unit well protected. Best yet, each unit is individually crafted to ensure the highest quality. But that also means it’s expensive — €2,499.00, expensive. |
SysCloud Raises $2.5M To Help Businesses Keep Their Google Apps Accounts Safe | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | , a service that offers a comprehensive suite of services aimed to keep companies’ Google Apps accounts safe and backed up, today announced that it has raised a $2.5 million Series A round led by new investor Inventus Capital Partners and previous investor KAE Capital. While SysCloud currently specializes in Google Apps, the new funding is meant to allow the company to expand to other online tools like Office 365, Salesforce, Dropbox and Box. The company, which was founded in 2010, says it currently protects the accounts of half a million users from 32 countries. Besides its backup features, SysCloud also offers tools for granularly managing security policies to ensure that certain sensitive data can’t be shared with users outside the company, for example. To make this easier, SysCloud offers users a set of templates that correspond to standard compliance policies like PCI, FERPA and SOC 2. The service also features a number of auditing and reporting tools, as well as services for helping new customers . The one risk SysCloud — and any other service like it — obviously faces is that the vendors it supports will launch very similar services themselves over time. Google, after all, already offers a couple of new security and auditing features for its enterprise Google Apps customers. SysCloud is also up against companies like , and others that offer similar services. In response to my concernces, SysCloud CEO Vijay Krishna told me that he belives “customers want an application which acts as a single pane of glass to secure their data across all the clouds with uniform policies and controls applied across all. Otherwise, It becomes cumbersome to have to program policies into each vendor’s management panel. Also, every vendor may not support same and required features.” |
The Point Will Watch Your House While You’re Away | John Biggs | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | When you leave home, who makes sure all of your newspapers, back issues of TV Guide, and take-out containers are safe? If all goes according to plan, has got your back. The point is essentially a simple sensor that listens for loud noises – glass breaking, doors opening – and senses motion. If anything happens you’ll receive a notification, allowing you to deploy security drones or alert the authorities. Created by Nils Mattisson, Fredrik Ahlberg, Marcus Ljungblad and Martin Lööf, the company has its roots in Sweden but is now based in San Francisco. Mattisson worked at Apple’s Exploratory Design before quitting to build this device.
“We wanted something like this for ourselves—peace of mind to know that all is fine while away from home. Our only options were cameras and complex security systems and thought there had to be a better way,” said Mattisson. The team notes that the device processes all sound right on the device, ensuring that no audio is uploaded to the cloud. Instead, the device simply listens for unusual things and sends out a notification, not the actual data. It connects via WiFi and batteries last a year. “We designed Point to be invisible, non-invasive and simple. We think it’s where the future is heading—technology that’s more ambient and unobtrusive. We also think it’s smarter, although that’s an overused word. Most smart things are actually quite dumb, a sensor that just feeds data to the cloud,” said Mattisson. The Point also senses the indoor temperature and allows you to talk back to your thieves through the phone. There are plenty of home security startups now – and are two that come to mind right now – but this device costs just $69 and has surpassed its funding goal. The device doesn’t have any annoying sensors to plug in or install and looks pretty cool and, presumably, it will ensure your collection of Tang jars will remain intact and unmolested. |
The Application Deadline For Hardware Battlefield Is Saturday | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | Procrastination is a bitch. But fame and fortune is on the line here. Get your application in for Hardware Battlefield by Saturday night for your chance to win $50,000, exhibition space at the International CES in Vegas and our amazing Metal Man trophy. For the first time, TechCrunch has partnered with the CEA to be an official media partner of the tradeshow. This means companies selected to participate in Hardware Battlefield will get even more attention from the press, investors and hardware distributors. The complete list of rules can be found , but essentially, if you’re a hardware company looking to launch your first product around CES, we want you to launch on our stage. But first you have to . And you only have a day left. The application deadline is Saturday, Nov. 15th. Email , or TechCrunch’s Battlefield editor, with any questions. |
Marketplaces Are Eating Firms | Josh Breinlinger | 2,014 | 11 | 22 | If , then marketplaces are one of the agents of destruction. Marketplaces are eating every type of firm on the planet. Let’s look at where the feasting is happening. With the majority of the work going to individual freelancers rather than small agencies around the world, is killing the traditional outsourcing firm. is trying to consume the law firm, especially for small businesses that find the cost of lawyers to be offensive. , which is innovating on the delivery model and providing hourly-based recruiters, is trying to displace the recruiting firm. is gobbling translation and transcription firms with fast, affordable, and high-quality service that is beating traditional providers. , which is providing high-quality original content, is biting off pieces of PR and marketing firms. And yes, syndicates are trying to . Many startups are trying to disrupt the traditional “firm” structure. The biggest driver of adoption is the massive cost savings that these marketplaces provide. For example, a marketplace with low fees is a very efficient delivery mechanism. Typical markups in law firms or consulting firms might be 4x, e.g. a worker making $50 per hour would get billed out at $200. The same person on a marketplace might raise their rate to $75 to compensate for utilization, but the end price to the customer might end up at $85 – $95 per hour. The simple reason for this cost savings is the reduction in overhead. Freelance labor marketplaces don’t have middle layers of managers and other support staff, they have independent contractors rather than employees, and they don’t have the cost of office space. The cost savings are dramatic. Turnaround time and quality are also key service attributes that marketplaces are providing. Uber is the greatest example of a marketplace delivering a step change improvement in turnaround time. With scale, marketplaces have the ability to understand supply and demand and ensure that the right resources are available at the right time. All of this can be done automatically in marketplaces versus manually in firms. Quality is always difficult to define and measure, but customers know it when they see it. Many firms have had decades to refine their internal tools and processes to produce consistently high-quality results, whereas, marketplaces are much earlier in their evolution and are in a building phase. Firms today are generally perceived to have higher quality than individuals through marketplaces, but times are changing. The constant focus on net promoter score (NPS) by the top marketplaces will yield marketplace brands that really stand for high quality. Let’s now rewind and look at why firms exist in the first place and consider where marketplaces stand in relation to the benefits offered to buyers. The reputation of McKinsey is excellent. There’s a saying, “Nobody has been fired for hiring McKinsey.” That saying is a result of a very good reputation of the firm built up over many decades. It is brand building. Until recently, individual reputation was hard to know. With LinkedIn plus the five-star feedback system of nearly every marketplace, individual reputation is now well understood and well-curated marketplaces can build a similar reputation for quality. Many times buyers are looking for full teams of people to do work. Firms offer an easy way to on-board a large team of people who may know each other, have a preset process for completing tasks, and work well together. Marketplaces need to do a better job of handling this issue. If you just need a single person, marketplaces do a wonderful job. However, most marketplaces don’t work as well as you try to scale up to a team. Marketplaces face two new challenges: 1) everyone is working independently and 2) availability is frequently unknown. It will take some new thinking to address how to ramp up teams of workers in different locations that can work cohesively. The guaranteed quality is a big benefit of turning to well-established firms. Buyers know that firms will stand by their work. In completely open marketplaces, quality is at the control of the buyer who makes the hiring decision. However, in many new marketplaces, there is a much higher degree of vetting and curating of the suppliers. Therefore, the marketplace is guaranteeing the quality, much in the same manner that a firm would. It’s becoming a key part of the marketplace brand. And given the ever-increasing importance of and ease of tracking of an individual’s reputation, marketplace participants also aim to guarantee quality in order to further their good reputation. Whether individual marketplaces are successful or not, the writing is on the wall that agencies and firms of any kind are in a precarious position. I believe the top firms in any industry will continue to thrive for decades to come, but there will be an overall shrinking of the bottom and middle tiers of firms as they yield to well-run marketplaces. These marketplaces will largely consist of individual freelancers and this will power the rise of freelance nation and a wave of infrastructure to support more individual professional work. |
Is It The Beginning Of The End For Cable Or Just A New Beginning? | Braxton Jarratt | 2,014 | 11 | 22 | In mid-October, HBO dropped a bombshell — albeit a long-rumored one — with the news that it would some time in 2015. The media and Game of Thrones fans everywhere immediately went into overdrive, analyzing every last one of the scarce details to death (What content will be included? How much will it cost? Should I cancel my Netflix subscription?!!). CBS’s of its own streaming service just a day later, followed by similar news from its flagship entertainment channel, Showtime, only fueled the frenzy and the general feeling that major changes are underway for pay TV. Naturally, there were plenty of pundits and industry watchers who were quick to declare this latest development the beginning of the end of cable TV as we know it. And while only time will tell exactly how disruptive these services will be, I think it’s premature to sound the death knell. In fact, I see this as far from a catastrophe for cable; it’s a natural next step. Over the last several years, we’ve seen companies like Netflix and Aereo start to chip away at the traditional cable model, leading to incremental change across the industry. These latest developments are a clear indicator that the pace of change is about to drastically speed up, and what was once a slow-moving evolution is getting a shot in the arm. Here’s a look what some of the ripple effects will be Contrary to prevailing wisdom, there’s some compelling evidence to suggest that HBO and CBS’s streaming services might actually be a boon for pay TV. As Will Richmond of VideoNuze , the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of traditional cable bundles could very well become more attractive to consumers in the face of proliferating streaming services whose fees will start to add up. What’s more, this could help pave the way for the virtual pay TV services from the likes of Verizon and DISH by helping to raise awareness of other over-the-top (OTT) offerings. Rather than a binary future with cord-cutters on one end and cable subscribers on the other, we can start to see a continuum of behavior take shape, with a middle ground populated by individuals who subscribe to one or two streaming services, along with a lightweight cable package There have already been plenty of deals and rumored deals in the cable industry over the last year or so, and this move is likely to add further fuel to the fire as various players look to consolidate their power. Cable operators will be keen to strengthen their position going into carriage agreements with HBO, while smaller networks that are unlikely to survive outside of a traditional cable package may look to merge in order to stay viable as the industry moves toward more OTT offerings. Until now, content providers like HBO and CBS haven’t had to give much thought to because the Internet wasn’t their primary mode of distribution. Now, however, they have a vested interest in ensuring that their streaming content reaches consumers quickly and smoothly and will likely pressure companies like Comcast and Time Warner to treat all network traffic equally. By now most of us are familiar with Reed Hastings assertion that Netflix’s goal “is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” Now, finally, HBO has taken a huge step down the path that leads in Netflix’s direction, raising the question of what they’ll do to remain competitive, particularly when most would agree that HBO has the far superior content library. One potential scenario is for Netflix to seek out partnerships with cable providers. Their content is already distributed via traditional cable packages overseas and to , so now may be the time for them to start forging deals with the bigger players in order to straddle both worlds. (And indeed, they with Verizon FiOS late last month.) There’s also reason to think that this may accelerate partnerships between cable operators and other popular streaming services like Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime. Only time will tell how exactly these new streaming services will affect the TV landscape, but there can be little doubt that there are indeed major changes on the way. Even if HBO’s offering isn’t a success, which I highly doubt, the mere announcement has caught the attention and imagination of every other content provider, each of whom undoubtedly has an OTT blueprint in some stage of development tucked in their back pocket. The floodgates have been officially opened, and it’s just a waiting game to see what happens next. |
How To Raise Venture Capital In A Frothy Market | Brian Brown | 2,014 | 11 | 22 | Raising venture funding may have just gotten a little tougher. A major investor recently announced that venture capitalists are “taking on an excessive amount of risk right now – unprecedented since ’99.” Marc Andreessen recently that valuations seemed to be getting “warm.” Add to this the public market jitters, with stocks hitting a two year low last month before bouncing back, and there’s a touch of nervousness in the air. Given this, it is surprising how startup executives often make a tough task more difficult by ignoring some rules of fundraising. Whatever the market, startups should remember the basics, from the earliest contact to the close. Venture capitalists like to say that the initial contact is best set up through referrals. That’s a great rule for those lunching on yachts, but for everyone else, a little hustle can make a difference. Referral or not, when you do reach out, do the obvious and make sure that both the investor and her firm are interested in your product area. You wouldn’t send a biology textbook to a literary agent, so don’t send a mobile app to a cleantech firm – if there are any left. In your note, be clear and brief. It never ceases to amaze me how fantastically bright people craft verbose and convoluted outreach emails. Their long notes to investors who receive hundreds, if not thousands, of pitches are really simple pleas: Reject me. The first sentence or two should inform why this deal can’t be ignored. That’s followed by machine-gunned facts, not opinions, which should make it impossible to not want more information. Now comes the hard part. You need a really good story. By story, I mean a narrative that crisply explains in a way that makes your product real, showing (not telling) why it’s needed and why it’s going to be big. As the entrepreneur Santosh Jayaram told writer Michael Malone: You need to tell stories “about your product and how it will be used that are so vivid that your potential stakeholders imagine it already exists…” And few people, he added, have this “real talent.” Malone also noted that Steve Jobs knew this when he that Apple’s uniqueness derived from this fact: “It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.” Injecting that art into the technology is a tall order. It is made a little trickier when trying to accomplish it through one of man’s most atrocious inventions: the slide deck. Most investor pitches, like initial emails, lack clarity and brevity. A marketing executive once told me that none of the 72 slides in his investor deck could be cut. If you’re going beyond 15 slides, then it better be about cold fusion – on second thought, you could probably get funding for cold fusion with one slide. Beyond length, decks often suffer from little organizational structure even as titling and transition slides attempt to camouflage this fact. At the very least, make sure you’ve covered the basics. What is your thing? What problem is it solving? Explain how it is solving that problem. Is it a nice-to-have or a need-to-have? Is the market big enough? Venture capitalists can only sit on so many boards to get the returns they need for their limited investors. If your market is too small, or if you can’t get enough of it, you’re toast. Think in b’s not m’s. And don’t give the clichéd comment of “if we could just get 1 percent of this market!” Give a clean and crisp outline of the competition without withholding data and explaining why you are different in the ways that will make your product the obvious choice. You must have a good explanation of the business model and how the executive team is well-suited to execute on the entire vision. Finally, be careful about running your mouth. There are only two types of pitch statements: Those that move the deal forward and those that create objections. Talking is not selling. With that in mind, be careful whom you invite to the meeting. I’ve seen plenty of self-important types bloviating on their importance, i.e. chewing up valuable time, irritating investors and creating objections. Leave a little time at the end – your designated timer can kick your foot to shut up — and ask for concerns or objections. Even if the VC is running for the door, nail him down. And follow-up, whether they do or not. If you really do all that, you may have a shot at raising, even in the unlikely event that another nuclear winter is looming. And if there is tighter money ahead, it’s probably better to raise earlier, rather than later, if it’s an option. |
Google’s Nexus 6 Might Be Too Big For Right Now, But Right-Sized For The Future | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 11 | 22 | As Greg Kumparak noted in the , the phone is very large. Too large, in fact, for most humans. Back when it was just a rumor that Google would be picking Motorola to provide the Nexus 6 hardware, and that it would indeed be a monster with a 6-inch display, I lamented the phabletization of the Nexus line before it was even a real thing. Now, I’ve had some time with the device, and while part of me still feels the same, another part has to acknowledge that Google may have gotten it right with a “go big or go home” strategy for this generation of hardware. For me, and for just about any other everyday user of the Nexus 6, there’s no question that something more akin to the Nexus 5, albeit with just better battery life, a better camera, improved specs and an updated display would’ve been the preferable option. Not least because such an unexciting iteration would probably have been able to keep the cost down, meaning you’d have another great pure Android option at a fraction of the cost of most locked, contract-only devices. Which is great, insofar as you consider the purpose of the Nexus program to build affordable, easy-to-access devices with ergonomics aimed at suiting the needs of the greatest number of people. Nexus is not a populist program, however – it’s a reference hardware initiative that Google undertook because it wanted to help show OEMs how to get the most out of Android, and because it wanted developers to be able to build for a specific set of criteria that would mostly serve them well when their apps appeared on other Android devices, too. [gallery ids="1086776,1086771,1086772,1086773,1086774,1086775"] Some speculate that the Nexus 6 was actually just one of many devices that were supposed to take part in the Android Silver program, which would’ve replaced Nexus devices with hardware from various OEMs that contained a pure version of Android with guaranteed timely updates. That theory suggests that the Nexus 6 is but one of a variety of different kinds of smartphones, some of which would’ve resembled the Nexus 5 more closely, and theoretically been more broadly-aimed devices. Even leaving that aside, however, the Nexus 6 seems like it fits the Nexus mould – it’s a device that lets Google show off Android 5.0 on hardware that exemplifies some of its best aspects. It also potentially anticipates a future where, rather than a mobile market divided among tablets and smartphones, most consumers prefer a single device with a large display but with all the functions they’ve come to expect in a phone. In my time testing the Nexus 6, it went from something that I found awkward to use and that would mostly stay home, to a device I’d carry in lieu of a tablet, stowed in a pocket or bag, and that I automatically used two-handed, without thinking about how inconvenient it was to use single-handed. And while it still isn’t for everyone, it might be the Nexus Android needs, in terms of lighting the path forward for what’s coming next in the mobile device market. |
Colombia Is One Of Latin America’s Most Promising New Tech Hubs | Conrad Egusa | 2,014 | 11 | 22 | , the idea that Colombia would become a burgeoning hub for any dynamic industry beyond its notorious drug trade would have struck most observers as far-fetched. As recently as the turn of the century, conventional wisdom had it that the tropical, Andean nation was on the verge of becoming a failed state. Fast forward to the present day and Colombia already boasts one of the region’s stronger startup ecosystems, with huge potential upside still waiting to be explored. By 2018, the government hopes to have of the country connected to broadband. And according to , there are already 43.9 million mobile connections and 24 million mobile users in a country whose 47 million people give it the third largest population in Latin America and third largest Spanish-speaking population in the world. These and other figures are highly encouraging for people looking to tap a rapidly growing market, and it follows that a stronger internal tech culture will also form the groundwork for Colombia’s own aspirations in the field of innovation. The first stage of the government’s concerted campaign to rebrand Colombia as a technology center involved drawing in IT services with tax incentives and professional training programs. A industry has taken strong root as a result, with 1,800 software development and IT service companies registered in the country. Looking forward, the hope is that IT, and the investments that went into promoting it, can diversify into a broader innovation ecosystem. With that in mind, the government has spurred a number of public initiatives to address the lack of venture capital in Colombia, currently the biggest ceiling on startup growth. Founded to support and promote tech innovation and new ventures, awarded three grants of up to $800,000 in 2013 to investor groups establishing operations in Colombia. is another, more tech-specific, government initiative. By the end of 2014, it’s expected to have awarded $33 million in funding to accelerators and university partnership programs, according to . Where once there was nothing of the sort, there are now private equity, venture capital or seed funds in the country. These and other efforts have succeeded in convincing big names like Facebook and Google that a favorable labor market and budding consumer base are worth investing in, with both companies opening permanent Colombian offices in recent years. Where the government’s strategy has so far fallen short, however, is in replicating that sort of international success for homegrown Colombian companies. Examples of Colombian startups making a similar leap, or achieving sizable exits at all, are few and far between. is easily Colombia’s biggest startup success story, having been acquired by for . But after that, the field gets noticeably thin. , an online payment platform, and , an online delivery service, have probably come closer than anyone else to following in .CO’s footsteps, and even so, the acquisitions went for a rumored $10 million and $15 million, respectively. The problem is that, while the startup scene is maturing, the investment economy backing it is still in its beginning stages. “It’s good to see that the government is willing to stand behind innovation and recognizes that entrepreneurship is the motor of a successful economy,” , a successful venture capitalist, explains. “But everyone, including the government, recognizes that public funding can’t replace private initiatives in the long run, and especially not in a fast-paced business climate like the kind startups live in.” Michael Puscar donating computers to a local Colombian school (Image: Puscar) Although there is debate on which Colombian city will eventually emerge as the country’s startup center, Bogota retains the title up until this point. That’s hardly a surprise, of course. The capital is home to the national government, most of the country’s corporate and financial institutions, and the largest and most diverse ex-pat and immigrant community in the country. Colombia’s most experienced startup founders are from Bogota, including Alex Torrenegra, a serial entrepreneur often talked about as the godfather of Colombia’s startup scene. Torrenegra is the founder of VoiceBunny, a digital voice over marketplace, and one of the few Colombian startup entrepreneurs who has been able to transition to a distinguished international career. Most importantly, his commitment to sharing insights and leadership with the Colombian startup community have set an encouraging precedent. For years and across all industries, Colombia has been on the losing end of an epic “brain drain” that has sent many of its best and brightest abroad for good. Keeping that talent in the country is a key to unlocking the country’s innovation potential, and Torrenegra had done more than his fair share to set an example in that regard. Already, we’ve seen a lot of knowledge brought back and put to effective work in Bogota. Looking at notable institutions like HubBOG, a co-working space and incubator led by Rene Rojas which hosts weekly events and activities, Wayra, an accelerator built loosely according to the Y Combinator model, and Endeavor, a non-profit that supports high-impact Colombian entrepreneurs, it’s easy to see the influence that global perspective is having. Other local leaders include Juan Diego Calle, founder of .CO; Alan Colmenares, considered the heart of Colombia’s startup ecosystem; Catalina Ortiz, CEO of iNNpulsa, Andres Gutierrez and Juan Salcedo, founders of Tappsi; Freddy Vega and Christian Van Der Henst, founders of , an educational platform that surpassed $1 million in revenue in 2013; Diego Serebrisky, a partner at the Alta Ventures venture firm; and Andres Barreto, who operates government accelerators across the country. Colombians will tell you it’s no coincidence that Medellin won the most innovative city of the year in 2012. Paisas, as its residents are known, are famously business savvy and entrepreneurial–traits that carry as much promise for the future as they have darkness in the past. The local startup scene still lags behind Bogota, but not by degrees, and the weather and business-friendly atmosphere have given it its own unique dynamic. Medellin today does not have the success stories that Bogota can refer to, but many believe that in the next decade it will become the nation’s tech center. In fact, in 2013 the city government committed over 10 years to technology and innovation. The center of Medellin’s innovation scene is Ruta N, which is a government organization along the lines of Apps.co and iNNPulsa. Last year, it committed $3 million to the Velum Ventures venture capital firm. Ruta N, a tech and innovation center in Medellin (Image: Alcaldia de Medellin) Other organizations spearheading entrepreneurship include , responsible for international investment in Medellin, and , a government-supported incubator. Local leaders include Hernan Jaramillo and Roberto Cuartas, founders of , which raised $1.8 million in venture funding in 2012; Eduardo Quiroz of Ruta N; Esteban Velasco and Esteban Mancusco, founders of the venture capital firm Velum Ventures; Juan Sebastian Franco, head of entrepreneurship at ANDI, the locally founded business association, now the largest in the country; and Eddie Arrieta, co-founder of Espacio. Medellin is caught in a paradox. Because it doesn’t have success stories, the investor confidence needed to create new ones is low. Public initiatives have done what they can, but the current system is a weak substitute for badly needed private capital. Although the startup scene is still very much concentrated in Bogota and Medellin, activity is beginning to sprout up in other regions in Colombia. In Barranquilla, on the Caribbean coast, the startup ecosystem revolves around and its charismatic founder, Jonathan Tarud. Many of the city startups are helped by the company and its has taken a leadership role in the startup ecosystem, becoming active supporters of events such as Startup Weekend, among others. In Cali, the country’s third largest city, large development companies comprise much of the tech ecosystem. The government is working to promote activities in other cities, but the high-end spectrum of the Colombian economy in general is limited to a few cities. Expanding the tech scene, in that sense, may be as much a question of broader development as anything else. In 2013, the city of Medellin committed $389M to innovation & technology. (Image: ) Colombia has plenty of work ahead if it wants to assert itself as a legitimate global player. Looking at the bigger picture, though, Colombia does have a number of advantages on that front. This year, Colombia’s GDP has faster than any in Latin America — it’s currently the fourth fastest growing in the world — and inflation, though up from 2013, remains low. , extreme poverty, and are all down thanks in part to t programs designed to address inequality, and labor formalization is up. So, in comparison to the other emerging Latin American tech hubs — Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo, Santiago — Colombia not only has competitive public incentives, but also the general structural growth that attracts immigration. Brazil, once the darling of global experts, has become mired in economic stagnation. Argentina and Venezuela are approaching crisis conditions, and immigration to the United States is prohibitively difficult. The third-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, Colombia is essentially fighting for prevalence with Mexico. Unlike Chile, another well-developed country, Mexico has even better relative location to the States than Colombia, but it has an image problem relating to escalating drug violence. By contrast, Colombia is moving toward an end to its 50-year armed conflict. “At the end of the day, people just want to be here,” says Puscar. “That might sound trivial, but when you’re talking about doing business, it really matters. It’s a great place to live, a great place to visit. The question then is building on what’s already here and letting people know how much opportunity there is.” |
Debunking The 7 Myths of Marketing In The Enterprise | Mamoon Hamid | 2,014 | 11 | 22 | Over the last few months enterprise giants and have put on shows featuring the likes of Hillary Clinton and Bruno Mars reminding all of us in the enterprise world that marketing matters. While most enterprise startups will never reach these levels of budget and glamour, this time of the year does serve as a reminder that enterprise marketing matters. More than 10 years ago, prior to becoming a venture capitalist, I was a marketing guy at , a semiconductor company. I recall creating spreadsheets with tens, if not hundreds, of rows, outlining our marketing plans. It was a grind, but I didn’t know any better as a former customer-facing engineer who had a pretty good sense of all the things that would appeal to different types of customers. While it was certainly laborious and manual, three years later we had a $100 million business that we built by effectively extolling the virtues of our products to a new set of customers. That experience informed my view on marketing, specifically in the enterprise. The tools, channels and tactics available to marketers has changed a lot since the early 2000s – we didn’t have or , nor did we have or ads – but many of the same strategies we employed then still have value today. Talking to analysts, writing white papers, hosting events and doing road shows have been and always will be a critical part of a successful marketing plan. As an investor who tends to look at companies at an early stage when they are rarely classified as “sexy” or popular where it’s more about the technology and product, it may come off as a surprise that I believe that marketing and branding are some of the most important early-stage indicators of a company’s potential success. Perhaps the biggest misconception in marketing today, is that there are a few foolproof “silver bullet” strategies that marketers can rely on in order to succeed. Marketing is a decathlon – winning requires you to be very good at multiple disciplines. Drawing from my experience working with various companies, here are the seven most common myths about marketing in the enterprise: In the consumer world it is well understood that wasn’t the first search engine and wasn’t initially the leader in social networking. Both came from behind and became universally loved by their users because of their products and the timing of their products, not because they were first or because they called themselves the “leader” in their respective space. It’s not too different in the enterprise. Being first can actually be a weight as you’re tasked with evangelizing and creating market awareness which manifests itself into more time needed to convince buyers and longer periods of time burning cash. That can trickle down into more dilution and fatigue for the team because of the extra cash and length of time required to be successful. Market timing and achieving product-market fit is so much more important than being first. So don’t lead with “first to…” or “leader in…” Both are overrated. As the saying goes, you can’t judge a book by its cover. Well your company’s name and branding is its cover, and it better be tight from the get go. As someone who looks at early-stage startups, I consider a company name and one-liner a direct line into a founder’s mind as to how crisply they are thinking about their business. It’s an easy way to judge the book, and your eventual customers will judge you the same way. So keep it simple and make it mean something. Branding matters. Messaging matters. If it’s too complicated or buzzword-filled, I see it as a red flag, because you may not even know what you’re in the business of. Simplicity is key because when working with complex technologies, marketing and branding is how you make a company and its products more relatable. This is certainly true of consumer products, but the best product doesn’t necessarily win in the enterprise. A great product is obviously important, but great product marketing is even more important. You have to constantly extoll the virtues of it, but even more importantly, you have to be able to convey a simple value proposition that creates a reaction. It starts by having a website that shows that you are “open for business.” Customers need to instinctively and immediately be able to say “I get what this does for me, I know how much it costs, I understand how to adopt and deploy it, and it helps me do what I need to get done faster and better.” Even if you’re a two-person company, you can make yourself look open for business and make it seem much bigger than you actually are. It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, as success begets success. This is what people say when they don’t want to dig into the numbers. Funnels and conversion metrics don’t lie, so more than ever marketers need to be analytical and multi-prong in their approach to drive cost-effective leads into the top of the funnel. Whether it’s free trials, social, SEO, search engine marketing, webinars, syndicated articles or some other demand generation activity – everything needs to be instrumented and measured. Marketers need to constantly evaluate what’s working and what’s not, so that their spend is as efficient as it can be while still growing their new leads. It’s a lot of trial and error, and over time the effectiveness of marketing channels degrades. So always be experimenting to find the next best channel. And there are literally on the market to choose from to help you do your job more analytically. It was not long ago that events and conferences were deemed old school. While macro tradeshows that cover multiple vendors and various far-flung topics may have become obsolete, we’ve definitely seen a surge in the number of companies hosting their own conferences and industry events. Now anyone who wants to be someone is hosting large user conferences. Established companies like , , and even more recently, , put on big events every year. Even larger startups like *, and , have built quality events that customers look forward to every year. Smaller companies are starting to get in on the act even earlier with large-scale user conferences to demonstrate thought leadership and create broader awareness. Just like myth No. 3 about products selling themselves, if you present yourself like the “it” company in your category, maybe potential customers will think you are “it,” too. Putting on your own event is not cheap and requires insane levels of coordination and creativity. Smart startups will budget for it and spend their year planning it with high production value, interesting speakers from outside the company and key influencers. And it’s okay to start small. Box had dreams of being a big company way before it was one. In 2011, the company decided that in order to be taken seriously by large enterprise customers, it had to host a high-caliber user event – the first ever , which was preceded by many smaller customer events. Boxworks has become one of the signature conferences every year, thanks to its great blend of content. Today Box is 10 times bigger in terms of revenue than it was in 2011, in no small part thanks to efforts like Boxworks. Believe it or not analysts still hold the keys to the kingdom for many categories in the enterprise. CIOs of the largest companies are influenced by these analysts, to the point where analysts have the ability to anoint the winners in any particular category of enterprise software. It is critical for companies to engage analysts early and develop a relationship over time with regular check-ins. Analysts set the tone for the market and if they aren’t on a business’ radar, a business isn’t on theirs. Every company needs to have an actionable plan for meeting with analysts and educating them on new product development to ensure they’re not mis- or underrepresented in the marketplace. You won’t be in the top right quadrant from the get go, but investing in these relationships will allow you to tell and refine your story especially for large enterprises, who analysts often cater to. You have to keep in mind that someone is paying for their research and these analysts are trying to appease that someone with their work. Well, this one is actually true. But you can’t just rely on your customers to tweet about how great your company or your product is. It takes more than that. Videos and case studies are a great way to make your company and its products approachable by connecting them with a human face. Put them on your website and organize them by vertical so that prospective customers can quickly find someone relatable. I love the depth and breadth of the customer examples that provides on its website. It is important to debunk these common myths of marketing as it is one of the most important things a business can do to impact their bottom line. I believe that if enterprise companies can avoid these marketing myths they will be even more successful. What other marketing misconceptions do you think are still prevalent in the enterprise? Do you agree or disagree with the myth I have laid out? |
Elon Musk Testing ‘X-Wing’ Fins For Reusable Rockets, Seafaring Spaceport Drones For Landing | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 11 | 22 | Let’s face it: Elon Musk is probably a time traveller sent back to help us leave earth behind and achieve the next phase of human evolution. The inventor and entrepreneur issued a minor tweet storm today, in which he detailed a new SpaceX program to test the function of “X-Wing” style grid fins that could help spacecraft navigate upon re-entry after delivering personnel or cargo to an orbiting space station. Here, in chronological order, are Musk’s own tweets describing the tech, which, also includes an autonomous seafaring drone spaceport platform, to give them a landing pad that can hold its position within three meters’ distance even in the heart of a raging storm. Testing operation of hypersonic grid fins (x-wing config) going on next flight — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/536262624653365248 Base is 300 ft by 100 ft, with wings that extend width to 170 ft. Will allow refuel & rocket flyback in future. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Grid fins are stowed on ascent and then deploy on reentry for "x-wing" style control. Each fin moves independently for pitch/yaw/roll. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) The SpaceX reusable rocket program has been progressing with varying results, including an explosion over Texas back in August. While the incident didn’t result in any injury or even “near injuries,” Musk conceded in a tweet that this was evidence that “[r]ockets are tricky.” An earlier test flight from this summer involving an ocean splashdown was considered more successful, proving that the Space X Falcon 9 booster could re-enter earth’s atmosphere, restart its engines, deploy its landing legs and make a touch down at “near zero velocity.” These new modifications to the rocket should make atmospheric navigation easier, with each fin operating independently to help control the craft’s angle, speed and vector. They also fold up and stow during takeoff, so they don’t add any additional drag. The autonomous spaceports are essentially seafaring landing pads, which can help make sure that re-entering craft are far from any populated areas in the event of any incident, while still providing a stable target for landing spaceships. All of which is to say, once again, that Elon Musk and everything he does is pretty much amazing. Case in point: This is his last tweet before discussing these new Space X tests: Cuteness overload MT “ : A baby baboon snuggled with a teddy bear ” — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) |
Gillmor Gang: Cash or Charge | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 11 | 22 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Hard not to talk about Uber, given the clash between hubris and transformational momentum. The Gang swims in a sea of messaging apps, Facebook passport control, Google InBox immigration. Newspaper taxis appear on the shore, waiting to take you away. Climb in the back,with your head in the Cloud, and you’re gone. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @dbfarber, @kteare, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
Patrons Aims To Hook Your Office Up With Live Performances | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 11 | 22 | is an app makes it easy to hook your place of business up with a band that has a little bit of free time before a performance. The idea is that the artist can pick up an extra gig while in town for another performance. It’s an offshoot from live music booking marketplace . According to founder , you can also book yoga instructors and all sorts of other performers on the app, too. We used Patrons to get “Act as If” to come play at TechCrunch headquarters here in San Francisco. It was a sort of NPR style “Tiny Desk Concert.” I sat down with Gaan before the band went on to learn a bit more about how the app works. You may not be familiar with “Act as If,” but you’ve probably heard a few of their songs. The band is starting to blow up on the music scene. They’ve already been featured in the CW’s Pretty Little Liars, an Apple commercial for the OS X Lion and MTV’s Jersey Shore. Act as If just dropped their new album, “Steady.” Several outlets have started to feature music from the album, including KROQ, Fuse, Buzz Bands LA, Pure Volume and Buzznet. Check them out in the TechCrunch studios music video below. |
Adobe’s Cloud Photoshop Suggests We May Finally Realize The Dream Of Streamed Computing | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 11 | 22 | I’ve been writing about tech for nearly a decade now, and in that time, one thing has always seemed perpetually promising, and yet also ultimately unsatisfying: remote streaming consumer computing. I’m not talking about remotely connecting to your work PC to grab a couple of files, but actually using programs interchangeably with your own local apps, despite some being hosted and run entirely on a server in some data farm nearby. Inevitably, however, this idea has been met with the harsh truths of reality, which has led to situations like the original OnLive flameout, for instance. Remotely streaming software has huge advantages – it means users don’t have to worry too much about their operating system, hardware specifications, or even necessarily device form factor when they’re choosing software, and that could be very good news for the future of low-cost, modestly specced devices like Google’s Chromebooks. In the past, any of these solutions that I’ve tried have come with serious downsides, including unreasonable requirements in terms of connection capabilities, up and downstream speeds, and more. They’ve also performed in a manner that while sometimes workable, would not fit anyone’s definition of a ‘pleasant experience.’ Local crashes are one thing, but when your app continually pixelates and refuses to acknowledge input it’s incredibly frustrating. Lately, legacy companies that have so far stayed mostly away from the fray have gotten into the streamed software game, and that’s a good sign that the market, and the tech behind it is maturing. Two recent examples are Adobe, which started showing off its that streams in its entirety to a browser, and Nvidia, which launched its GRID remote gaming service for its Shield devices this past week. In their rundown of an eyes-on preview of the software, found that Photoshop streamed worked pretty much like the native app, without the usual browser chrome you’d expect from web content, and without taxing your system resources. It’s still early in terms of a schedule for general public availability, but Adobe is making sure to get things right with at least six more months of limited testing before a broader roll out – and caution is the watchword when it comes to any kind of virtualized app deployment. underwent a similar lengthy testing program, and its debut is initially limited to North American users only before it makes its way to others. And the testing paid off; Grid’s reliability and performance are rock solid so far, besting competitors like the recently-launched PlayStation Now service and others, with performance that you’d expect from a high-end gaming PC, but running on your tablet with resolution that seems impossible given it’s a streamed signal. High-bandwidth connections are much more available than they ever were before, and devices can manage high-speed, dependable wireless transfer much more easily than before, both of which help explain why this is much more possible today than it was five years ago. The big immediate benefit here is to Google and the Chromebook, which could continue its trend of taking over the education market easily if it can move past the current restriction of local software. Ultimately, though, it’s a shift that would democratize digital production on a grand scale – Google, Facebook and others are already trying to connect the world with usable data connections, but also providing them access to powerful, modern day software on low-end or older used hardware would be offering up a full, refined toolkit, not just a lone large hammer. There are still many barriers in the way of a fully-streamed computing environment, but more of them drop day-by-day. Opposition to net neutrality, and the price of efficient, high-bandwidth connections might be the last thing standing in the way of ubiquitous, high-functioning local computing, but it’s no longer just the province of pioneering startups taking big risks on a market that’s not even real enough to be called “emerging.” |
Canva Courts Design Pros With New Social Features And A Marketplace For Their Work | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | US-Australian startup wants its easy-to-use design platform to literally be the for design professionals, and its injecting a dose of social into the mix after public user profiles, a Twitter-style following system, and a real-time content stream. The update, which rolled out to the web version of the service first but will come to soon, is all about showcasing designs and helping users find interesting and inspiring ideas, Canva co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins told TechCrunch. “Over the past 15 months, Canva’s one million users have created more than seven million designs, 460,000 designs were created last week alone. It seemed crazy to have all of these incredible designs created on Canva and no way for anyone to see them,” she explained Perkins revealed that the move came from watching Canva users on other social media platforms. “We have seen lots of groups popping up on social media encouraging people to share their Canva designs, so it seemed logical that we enable our users to share their designs with the rest of the Canva community,” she added, explaining that the changes will also help users solicit feedback to their work. Canva, which has in funding to date, supports a range of different print and web design types, including social media graphics, presentations, posters, business cards, and invitations. In addition to the social features, Canva now allows users to make money from their content — something that is sure to appeal to design pros. The Canva platform already offers over one million stock photos, graphics and fonts that can be bought for $1 to spruce up work, but its new lets “Pro” designers add their work to the collection. Anyone can apply to be part of the marketplace, but Canva vets applicants based on the quality of their work. Those who make it through earn an undisclosed “royalty” whenever a Canva user buys their work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=708eROD42Vc Logging into Canva.com now prompts you to sync your Gmail account to help find people you know who are using Canva already. (It also prompts you to invite contacts to join you, though I personally find that a bit spammy.) The use of Gmail is fine, but it’s a little frustrating that you can’t find friends via Twitter, Facebook and other social networks at this point. As someone who tends to use social networks more than email to connect with people, I found the friend discovery feature to be limited at this point. That said, you can find and follow Canva users from inside the ‘Stream’ feed (image above), which effectively showcases new designs as they are published to the service, while Canva told us it will add new options for finding friends over time. The addition of public profiles could turn Canva into an interesting platform for those who work in the design industry. Not only does it allow you to show off your best work — other designs can be kept private if preferred — but adding follower counts could help top users gain influence and authority. Canva is, of course, far from the only company out there trying to be a platform for designers — even if these new features make it more compelling. that the company is planning to introduce new premium (Pro and Team) accounts, so it seems to have a few other tricks up its sleeve. |
Every Company Needs A Chief Digital Officer | Neha Sampat | 2,014 | 11 | 22 | In an increasingly digital world, where everything from marketing to R&D and customer service is becoming digital, the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) is more important than ever in helping drive company growth and a better connection with customers. Recently Gartner for 2015 citing the impact of the digital business shift as a driving force behind these trends. With that, the number of CDO jobs has doubled since 2013 and continues to grow. The rise of the CDO comes at a time of much industry debate regarding the divide between business and IT. Amid the disconnect between , the CDO finally promises some relief and reconciliation: CDOs understand the digital opportunities – as well as the threats of cutting corners in the interest of time-to-market – and have a solid grasp on both the technology choices and corresponding trade-offs before them. Where the CMO may be preoccupied revamping the company’s brand by pursuing a viral mobile app, IT may still be struggling with bring-your-own-device (BYOD). The CDO, meanwhile, can think holistically about how a company’s strategy is executed across all digital channels – such as mobile, the Internet of Things (IoT) and an increasingly important SaaS-based web – and can provide insight and recommendations on how to reconcile the digital experience for key target audiences. Think of the last time you were at a conference or big event, for example…wouldn’t it be refreshing if there was a consistent, continuous experience as an attendee? Yet surprisingly, it is still all too common to have a registration experience that seems completely disconnected from the on-site experience. If there is a mobile app, it typically doesn’t sync up with any pre-event outreach (nor the post-event follow-up) and is barely relevant to actual on-site behavior and preferences. Despite, or perhaps because of all the different avenues through which event organizers collect and disseminate information, personalization ends up falling short, resulting in a lack of engagement. The tide is beginning to turn, however. To stick with our example, more and more event teams are replacing cookie-cutter apps and siloed systems, fundamentally rethinking the way an attendee experiences a conference. Done right, a seamless digital experience extends beyond the conference for a continued dialog with attendees on topics relevant to them, long after they have returned to their daily lives. Great CDOs are masters of facilitating this in a non-intrusive manner. It takes vision, discipline and a thorough understanding of a broad set of technologies to effect digital change. In my experience, technology is rarely the main issue. Rather, it’s about finding the organizational that allows a business to be successful defining and implementing its digital strategy. In most companies, such a will doesn’t come without formal ownership. A true CDO owns and drives digital strategy across the entire organization and helps it extract value for the business. Anecdotally, this is where startups and smaller companies have an edge, because they typically have fewer traditional (and fewer intuitive) boundaries. From a technology perspective, CDOs spend a lot of time dealing with the continued impact of the mobile revolution. However, they also realize that companies need to start thinking about aspect of their business and its digital impact, from mobile application development to managing distribution channels for content via new digital technologies. How do you engage potential customers and provide a consistent experience across a mind-boggling number of devices, each with their own unique capabilities and restrictions? How do you effectively manage content across channels, especially when they are supported by widely varying technology stacks? And with IoT expected to gain traction over the next 12 months, CDOs have to formulate a plan to embrace the next wave of digital innovation. Here, too, many startups have the advantage of being born digital and having embraced the latest digital technology to build its internal IT systems. Many startups we work with run entirely on cloud services such as Google Docs, Zoho and Expensify and inherently treat mobile and web channels as equally important. Thinking digital is in their DNA, which leads to an intuitive understanding of digital technology across every member of the team. LinkedIn already lists some 1,300 CDOs today, but many more digital operating executives lurk right beneath the SEO surface, especially in larger corporations, with titles such as “Chief Media Officer”, “Head of Digital Strategy”, “VP Digital Marketing” or simply “VP Digital”. Look for many of these to be updating and “upgrading” their profiles over the next year. Just as the CDO role is going mainstream, peer-led events such as the are testaments to a growing community of like-minded professionals. They’re also a great place to mingle with, exchange best practices and, yes, scout for CDO talent. |
Evernote Updates Its Penultimate App Following Criticism, Showing Tech Firms Do Listen | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 11 | 22 | Here’s a positive story about tech companies and their awareness of the outside world, just in case . for its Penultimate digital handwriting app for the iPad that it hopes will end more than a week of frustration for its users. , which lets you create notes and designs as if you are using paper, more than two years ago, but a major upgrade issued just over a week ago caused a series of issues for users. Changes to Penultimate 6.0’s feature set — including a new zoom mode, the merging of all notebooks, navigation difficulties and more — drew . That anger was reflected by a flurry of one star ratings for the app, while with negative feedback, and many of those affected were vocal on Twitter. So I guess people are a little bit unhappy with the latest Penultimate notes update — Crypto Dave (@daveoli) “We’re sorry. We screwed up. We’ve heard your feedback, and are going to make things better,” six days after update 6.0 landed. The company admitted that it released the new version too soon. It promised a swift update two days ago, and that landed today. Evernote said the new version of adds “the top features and enhancements that have been requested over the past week.” There still appear to be some problems — some people who registered before the acquisition seem to have lost their notes; Evernote is investigating — and it’s too early to say what users think, but Evernote has responded in the right way. The company got a lot of criticism following the initial 6.0 update, but it seems that many customers appreciate how it responded. It’s not all love — and no doubt some users have been lost from the saga — but when mistakes happen honesty is the best policy. ( .) Fair play to for admitting they made a mistake with . No PR spin, just explanation. That's what I want from a company. — Glenn Quigley (@glennquigley) Big shoutout to for admitting Penultimate isn't right & working towards a fix. Long been my favorite & can't wait for the update. — Josh Allen (@j_allen) https://twitter.com/AlexMensi/status/535620330514309121 In the wake of a hugely challenging week for Uber — following two high profile and unsavory incidents — this tale, while not earth-shatteringly significant, is a reminder that some members of the Silicon Valley tech set can be human after all. |
Samsung Electronics Sells Assets In Defense, Chemical Units, Plans To Reinvest Capital In Core Business | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | Samsung Electronics that it will sell stakes in Samsung Techwin and Samsung General Chemicals to Hanhwa Corp. in order to raise money for new investments. Like Samsung Electronics, Samsung Techwin, a defense firm, and Samsung General Chemicals are subsidiaries of South Korean mega-conglomerate Samsung Group. Samsung Group is also transferring its own stakes in the two units, as well as additional shares in Samsung Thales and Samsung Total Petrochemicals, to Hanhwa Corp. Together, the sales will raise a total of 1.9 trillion won ($1.72 billion) for Samsung Group and is expected to close next June. In a statement, Samsung Electronics said it is selling its stakes in Samsung Techwin and Samsung General Chemicals to “secure capital resources for investments in new businesses and to strengthen the company’s core competency.” The deal comes at for Samsung Electronics. As , the sale will help the children of Samsung Group and Samsung Electronics’ chairman Lee Kun-hee, who has been hospitalized since May after a heart attack, reorganize company’s business structure. The capital raised will also help them pay an inheritance tax bill that is estimated to be about 6 trillion won. Furthermore, Samsung Electronic’s profits have also been falling as it (including Xiaomi, Lenovo, and Coolpad) in key growth markets like China. Last month, Samsung fell 49 percent from a year earlier to 4.2 trillion won ($4 billion).It also warned investors that its mobile business will continue to be uneven as other competitors continue to launch smartphones. Samsung Electronics didn’t say exactly what it plans to invest in with proceeds from the sale of its Samsung Techwin and Samsung General Chemical stakes, but one of the most likely scenarios is rebuilding . Its latest efforts in that market have included attempting to woo Chinese consumers away from domestic hardware makers like Xiaomi but still offer premium features like metal cases. |
null | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 11 | 14 | null |
Den Is A New UK Home Automation Platform, Raising Crowd Financing | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | It’s strange, because until now most home automation system which involve accessing the power outlets seems to have been designed for nerds to show off their ‘touch sensitive’ switches. But it’s taken a 19-year-old from Kent, England to produce a power socket aimed at the mainstream UK market which carries a , that looks just like any other, but which incorporates home automation technology. , the Den home automation system was created by 19-year old Yasser Khattak, whilst studying. It’s looking to raise £300,000 to fund its growth plans. The company is similar in some respects to . Den subtly redesigned the normal plug socket and light switch and linked them via RF or Wifi to a smartphone app or a dedicated remote control. Like other systems of its type, it allows users to switch off appliances remotely (thus saving money, obviously). However, it aims to appeal to a mainstream UK market with a highly familiar plug and light switch design where the switch itself moves when you switch it off. It might sound simple, but this is a fundamental user interface everyone is used to and comfortable with, at least in the UK. Khattak has teamed up with DesignWorks, a consultancy, and developed Den’s suite of products. They plan to develop more remotes, sensors and the MyDen mobile app for iOS and Android users. That said, Den probably still has to prove whether its underlying technology is radically different to other types of automation over Wifi or RF. Khattak says the unnecessary consumption of light switches or mobile phone chargers amounts for up to 16% of the UK’s annual energy usage, or “enough to power almost 2.5 million homes.” According to research by the Energy Saving Trust released in October 2014, the UK could save £1.7bn a year by turning off appliances often left on standby, such as mobile phone chargers and televisions. Wireless industry group GSMA, the Home Automation market is expected to hit £27 billion globally by 2017. https://vimeo.com/112656176 |
Zuck Will Do Another Public Q&A In December | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | Do you have a question that you’re dying to ask Mark Zuckerberg? Did you miss your shot during the ? Fret not. It seems the “Q&A With Mark” concept is set to become a regular occurence. Earlier this morning, Facebook announced that a second Q&A event will occur on Dec. 11th at 2PM pacific. Meanwhile, they’re offering up tickets to those who would like “a chance to attend this event or future Q&As” — the “or future” bit implying that this won’t be the last one. Though there’s no clear guidelines for how to submit a question for this next Q&A, the last event had would-be questioners submit their questions as comments — and people seem to be following suit . For now, the comments are largely made up of people complaining about Facebook page reach, complaining about their question not getting answered last time, and a lady asking Zuck to help her daughter sell girl scout cookies. You can see some of the questions Zuck answered last time around , or catch the . |
This Is The First Thing To Be 3D Printed In Space | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | Imagine you’re an astronaut on the International Space Station. Congratulations! Childhood-you would be so proud. You’ve been sent a 3D printer. So… what do you print first? A ? ? TechCrunch editor ? Nah – this is space. If Sandra Bullock has taught me anything, it’s that . Here’s the first thing 3D printed in space: Wondering what the heck that thing is? Don’t worry, it’s not obvious to anyone else, either. It’s a backup faceplate for the 3D printer’s print head — in other words, it attaches to the box that shoots the plastic filament out onto the print surface, keeping all of the various wires and sensitive bits in place. So, no, it’s perhaps not the most exciting thing they could have printed — but Alas, this particular print probably won’t be sticking around the ISS for very long. It’s being sent back down to Earth in a few weeks, where it’ll be compared to an identical component printed down here so differences between the two can be gauged. For the curious: the 3D printer being used for this isn’t your run-of-the-mill piece of kit — they didn’t just stick a Makerbot on a rocket and send it on up. The printer in use here is called the Zero-G, and was built specifically for zero gravity operation by NASA and a company that (aptly) calls themselves MadeInSpace. The printer hitched a ride up to the International Space Station on a SpaceX resupply mission back at the end of September. Here’s what the printer itself looks like: |
Singaporean Mobile Game Developer Inzen Raises $748,000 To Tackle The Chinese Market | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | , a Singapore-based mobile game developer, has raised a Series A round of $935,000 SGD (about $748,000). The company is setting its sights on China as it prepares to launch a new portfolio of titles for international markets next year. Its latest funding round, which brings the total Inzen has raised to $1,485,000 SGD (about $1,190,000) so far, was led by Japan’s Incubate Fund, with participation from returning investors Hatcher and Hans De Back. New investments came from China’s Global Mobile Game Confederation (GMGC) and angel investor Melvin Tan. The studio’s founders got their start at , an organization co-founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Singaporean government to develop video game prototypes and conduct academic research about game design. Since its launch in 2012, Inzen has released Why Moolah and Game Show Warriors: Amazing Studly Strikes, both for iOS and Android mobile devices. While China can be a highly lucrative market for game studios, foreign developers , including an unwieldy number of distribution channels (Google Play is not available in China, so over a hundred alternative Android app stores have sprung up to take its place), piracy, and fierce competition. Inzen co-founder Gerald Tock says that having GMGC, which brings together mobile game developers, publishers, and distributors, as a new investor “is a crucial part of our strategy as it helps us to build stronger publishing channels for our games in China via their networks. We’ve spent the last eight months building up our network of partners in China and we’re just about to station some members of our core team in Beijing over the coming month, to forge partnerships with key players in the market.” He adds that one of the key differences between Inzen and other gaming studios are titles its team helped develop while at the Gambit Game Lab. “All I can say for now is that we’ve secured the rights to some of the best games that we worked on in the past and we’ve been immersing ourselves in China, to launch full versions of these games in 2015.” |
Grab Your Cameras, We Are Little Brother | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | Dystopian futures have always imagined governments oppressing us with surveillance. Under the all-seeing, all-hearing eyes and ears of Big Brother, free will is curtailed and only “approved” behavior is allowed. Edward Snowden revealed this was no conspiracy theory, and we wouldn’t have to wait for the future. We’re already being watched, our liberty sacrificed for security. But what George Orwell and Aldous Huxley didn’t foresee was the parallel rise of “Little Brother.” Cameras and recording devices have progressively gotten smaller and cheaper, so it was logical to assume we might all own them one day. It was social media and its ability to tie those devices together that came as a surprise. Suddenly, cameras in the hands of citizens became weapons of justice. They level the playing field between the populace and the powers that be, as long as we turn them on. Credit: © 1984 Virgin Films / Courtesy: . Some call it from the French words for “below” and “to watch”. Cory Doctorow about how the Little Brother ideal could play out in the future. But we need to be executing the practices to keep authorities in check today. The confusion surrounding the sorrowful death of Michael Brown could have been resolved by Little Brother. There was unfortunately no clear video recording of the interaction between Brown and the police officer Darren Wilson who shot and killed him. The Grand Jury instead saw other evidence, more than what was revealed to the public, and decided not to indict him and send the case to trial. After too many heartbreaking stories of white cops killing unarmed black man in the United States, the fact that Wilson won’t undergo a trial has caused understandable outrage. There’s no doubt police officers have a tough job where they must make split-second decisions about how to defend themselves. Deadly force is sometimes required. But it’s reasonable to assume that it’s occasionally used inappropriately, fueled by anger or racism. Yet over a seven-year period in the US ending in 2011, there were a reported 2,718 “justified homicides” by law enforcement, while with murder or manslaughter for on-duty killings. That’s just 1.5% of the time. In many of those cases, conclusions are drawn based on incomplete or conflicting witness testimonies, and the word of the officer. Any loss of life is tragic, regardless of who is to blame. But for everyone in this country to feel safe, especially minorities subject to racism and other disadvantages, justice must be served. Recordings by Little Brother could deliver the facts needed to deliver that justice. There are now apps like the designed specifically for monitoring police encounters with civilians. The app can record video and send it to the ACLU, or alert users when someone nearby has activated the app so they can come get another camera angle of the situation. Beyond sorting out the circumstances of sad cases like Brown’s after the fact, citizen surveillance of authority could deter wrong-doing. We wish each person’s moral compass could properly guide them, but cameras offer an additional safeguard. Knowing their exact actions could be held up to scrutiny, authorities are pressed to go by the book. If they’re in the right, recordings would vindicate them. A police officer dons a wearable camera. [Credit: Robert Tong/ ] With time, as portable, high-quality cameras become more affordable and portable, more contentious interactions between citizens and law enforcement will be caught on film. The cameras will never be on in all the right places and all the right times, though. That’s why many, including Brown’s family, are pushing for police officers to have recording devices affixed to their uniforms. “ Recordings from dashboard cameras in police vehicles are already used to this effect. Not only could they resolve disputes about sequences of events, they could make policing safer for everyone. A small pilot program where saw complaints against officers fall 88%, and their use of force decrease nearly 60%. Suspects and witnesses behaved more politely when they knew they were being filmed, and you’d expect assaults against officers would decrease if perpetrators feared they’d be caught on camera. This is put to good use. Still, police may resist the body cameras for fear that permanent recordings of smaller mistakes could get them fired. They’d have to change the way they work, and departments might be stubborn about working the cameras into tight budgets. That’s why we all need to play the role of Little Brother when necessary. A bystander’s cell phone video could bring justice to victims of discrimination and mistreatment, or exonerate the unfairly accused. [Credit: ] It’s important . The ACLU holds that you are permitted to film in public spaces where you’re legally present, and may film officers as long as you are not interfering with law enforcement operations. Police are not allowed to confiscate, view, or delete your photos or videos without a warrant. However, there is a prevalent trend of officers harassing, detaining, and arresting citizens who legally film them, and any interaction with police is potentially dangerous, so be careful. Fighting cameras with cameras may further obliterate our privacy. We’ve been steadily sliding in that direction for years. But if we’re losing it anyway, we can at least take control of the shutter button so we’re trading privacy for truth. |
Hollywood Comes Back To Silicon Valley With A New SyFy Reality TV Show | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | Hollywood just can’t get enough of geeks coding in hoodies. Following the successful first season of Mike Judge’s HBO brilliant farce Silicon Valley, NBC Universal techie network SyFy will try to show what being inside the tech bubble is like. SyFy has that will follow teams of startups through the accelerator process in the Valley. The show, called The Bazillion Dollar Club*, is expected to focus on 12 companies (six each) participating in the 500 Startups Accelerator and PCH International’s Highway1 program. According to 500 Startups founding partner Dave McClure, the show plans to focus on two startups in each episode — one hardware and one software — and follow them through the 12-week accelerator programs. The idea is to show them going through all the ups and downs that early stage startup go through as they try to build product, get customers, and eventually (maybe) get funded. Shooting is expected to start early next year and extend throughout each accelerator class, with the series itself running sometime next fall. The startups that will be featured haven’t been picked yet, in part because the application process is still open. (Wanna be famous? You can apply for and .) Anyway, this isn’t the first reality show to hit the Valley. Two years ago, Bravo tried its hand at showing what it was like to live in the tech world and it failed spectacularly. Then again, that was probably based on the show’s premise: Rather than show what tech worker are really like, Bravo’s gathered up a bunch of wantrepreneurs, threw them in a house together Real World-style, and invited them to throw a bunch of parties. McClure actually had a cameo in that show, when a couple of the cast members pitched him on their startup while seeking funding. It . But there’s reason to hope this time they’ll get it right. That’s because this show will be put together by Zero Point Zero (ZPZ) Production, the company behind such brilliant shows as Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown and David Chang’s The Mind of a Chef. As McClure told me, “These guys do the Anthony Bourdain show and we trust they’re not going to do all the in-the-guttter bullshit…. We’re not making The Real Housewives of Silicon Valley. We have a fair shot to tell the real story and a fair shot to give these companies national exposure.” Moreover, McClure has been working with ZPZ for about two years to get the show made and is confident the product will be more of a documentary than the kind of sensationalist drivel that has come before. “There’s a certain aesthetic and quality we use when we create things,” ZPZ’s Craig Shepherd told me. “I think as we all know over the years lots of TV producers are poking around this space… We’re thinking about, ‘How do we make something that’s not pedantic?'” “I wouldn’t have done this if it wasn’t a company like ZPZ producing,” Highway1’s Brady Forrest told me. “It won’t be 12 teams competing against one another… We’re not trying to put people in a contrived circumstance… This is a narrative, but this is a narrative that would already be happening.” So what kind of “drama” can we expect then? Forrest said there will probably be debates about which features get put into a product, entrepreneurs trying to figure out what the value of their business is, that type of thing. “Anytime you start a business, there’s going to be natural drama about what this business is, how do we tell this story… but also the interpersonal relationships between the founders themselves,” ZPZ Shepherd said. “When you consolidate a 120-day series into a 44-minute episode… I think that’s enough natural inherent drama, that the viewer will respect.” McClure said “Some people get million dollar checks, some don’t, and some break down,” he said. “It’s not going to be, ‘Oh, hey, they’re coding on a screen… How exciting.'” But for both accelerators participation is mostly about getting their companies in front of a national audience as they go to market. That’s something which they hope the show will bring, something that you know, you can’t get by just being featured in TechCrunch. “I think I’m getting a small amount of money for doing each show, but frankly I don’t give a shit,” McClure told me. “We’re doing because it’s a chance to tell our story and get some exposure for our companies.” ==
* Everyone assures me this is a working title, which is good because it’s horrible. |
TC Droidcast Episode 28: Android Wear Weary, Go For GRID Gaming | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | On this week’s Droidcast, Chris Velazco joins us from a bathroom, Kyle Russell contributes from New Hampshire, Greg Kumparak rises from his sick bed, and Darrell Etherington hosts from the permanent midnight of Canada. Up for discussion are two new Android Wear devices, the LG G Watch R and the Asus ZenWatch, as well as , and watch faces. We didn’t get a chance to talk about HTC putting Lollipop on the One M8 or M7 – because that’s been delayed on HTC’s end, do fingers crossed for next week.
and check out past episodes . Download it directly here: |
Grabyo Secures $2M From Celeb Sports Stars For Rights-Friendly Social Video | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | Video-focused startup , which has a second-screen offering and partners with TV broadcasters to allow TV viewers to legally share real-time clips of its content, has landed $2m in funding from a clutch of globally recognised sports stars. UK Premier League Soccer stars Cesc Fabregas and Robin Van Persie, New York Red Bulls star Thierry Henry and current NBA champion Tony Parker are all investing. The funding will be used by Grabyo to expand its presence across Europe and North America. And – as is normally the way with these celebrity investors – what’s known as “global ambassadors. Here’s a . Prior to this Grabyo had been bootstrapped. London-based Grabyo claims it’s seen momentum in social video, and thinks it can parley that into becoming a viable ad platform. It claims its traffic has gone up 500% in the last quarter partly thanks to native video on FB and Twitter. We covered it in depth here . Gareth Capon, CEO says the the company has worked with over 30 major broadcasters and rights holders this year, including UK broadcasters such as BSkyB, ITV and Channel 5, as well as the FIFA World Cup, Wimbledon, The Ryder Cup, UEFA Champions League and the BRIT Awards. Its also now building partnerships with a number of football clubs in addition to partnering with global brands. The Grabyo platform brings in real-time TV from partners on the fly. When a viewer wants to share a clip for a show during broadcast (the links to the show are displayed during broadcast) it’s a simple one-click operation for the user. Clips of 20 seconds can then be natively posted to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. The Grabyo tech can also be embedded within a broadcaster’s apps. Grabyo is trying to hit three buttons at once. Rights holders need to allow for the sharing of social content because that’s where the audience has gravitated to; brands want to be aligned with this; and both want to engage with consumers at scale. It makes sense to involve celebrities. Individual stars can have larger social followings than broadcasters (e.g Ronaldo has 102m on Facebook.) Twitter is also getting into this game, . However, Grabyo is now the only player in cross-platform real-time video. |
Against Acceleration | Malay Gandhi | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | Startups should give up equity for only one of two reasons: work or cash. Startup employees and advisors work in exchange for equity (and salary) and they can be fired if they don’t perform, shutting down their vesting. I’m an advocate of bringing on advisors with defined deliverables, earning somewhere around 100 basis points or less unless they’re working part-time at the company or insanely valuable. Investors provide the cash that help startups grow and receive equity in exchange for their risk capital. Recently, I’ve noticed a third reason for startups giving up equity: an exchange for “services.” This growing trend for “accelerators” and their ilk to take equity in companies without providing any capital is alarming. (These services are not comparable to those provided by proven service providers like law firms that defer or reduce billings in exchange for equity—that is essentially the same as cash.) I’ve been seeing more and more startups with an admission or expiring “term sheet” from these organizations, looking to us at Rock Health to simultaneously fund them. We understand the initial attraction to some of these organizations—it’s a platform to launch your company, flush with name-brand industry partners and networking events. You want to believe that eventually the capital will follow. This practice, of taking equity solely in exchange for “services” is great for the organization that ends up with the equity. When you don’t have to expend any capital, it’s easy to flood the ecosystem with features instead of products and hobbies instead of companies. But the trend on the other side of this is disturbing—the market isn’t a fan. Lisa Suennen noted it in her , quoting a healthcare industry sponsor: I question why entrepreneurs would willingly give up equity in their company—up to 10%—in exchange for ambiguous services. This is equity that should be going to employees and exceptional advisors. Any well-reputed early stage investor convince an entrepreneur to give them equity in exchange for their promised support, with no capital attached. But they don’t, because the practice is predatory and frankly, would result in selection bias. Investing nothing for equity Investing cash for equity forces organizations (like Rock Health and other funds) to make hard decisions on capital allocations. This isn’t a good thing for entrepreneurs, or our sector, and I encourage you to reject this concept before it seems like a norm. |
Pomplamoose Details The Cost Of Being An Indie Band | John Biggs | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | In a surprising display of transparency, and Nataly Dawn aka Pomplamoose . The bottom line? The band made $135,983 in income… and incurred $147,802 in expenses. Essentially, they lost a little over $11,000. But what does this mean for a modern Indie band? Conte writes that all is not lost. First, obviously, is the indebtedness phase but, if you’re doing things correctly you can make money doing what you love. He wrote: As someone with an interest in Indie creation – – Conte’s data is fascinating. As an artifact of the touring process it is amazingly valuable. You could use his post as a blueprint to musical success, following it step-by-step in order to plan, implement, and sell a tour. As an artifact of the Indie thought process, whose message is that we no longer need large actors to smooth out the risk of the creative process, the post is inspiring and impressive. And, as a feel good story, it’s great to know that even though they lost money, Conte and Dawn actually make a monthly income from the band, something any artist would love to claim. “The point of publishing all the scary stats is not to dissuade people from being professional musicians. It’s simply an attempt to shine light on a new paradigm for professional artistry,” wrote Conte. “We have not made it,” he said. “We are making it.” The best part is that bands like Pomplamoose can finally share milestones on their road to success and, more important, Indie writer, artists, and musicians can learn from their experiences. Full disclosure: I saw on tour in NYC and they were awesome. |
Dropbox’s Mobile Apps Are Now Integrated With Microsoft Office | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | Earlier this month, Dropbox and Microsoft a partnership that would see Dropbox offer better support for Microsoft’s Office Suite, including the ability to edit Office docs from the Dropbox mobile app among other things. Today, those integrations have gone live for users of both the phone and Dropbox applications. Explains Dropbox in a blog post the news, users can now edit their Office files when they’re “on the go,” editing them directly from the Dropbox app and accessing the files directly from the Office apps. To use the new feature, you’ll first need update your app to the latest version, then open any Office document, spreadsheet or presentation that’s stored in your Dropbox. From here, a new “Edit” icon (see above picture) will be available that will allow you to switch over to the to make changes to the file. When you’re finished working, those changes will be saved back to Dropbox automatically. The Dropbox/Microsoft partnership is an extensive deal aimed at increasing collaboration between the two firms, and may have surprised some given that the two companies offer competing products. Microsoft has a Dropbox-like service called OneDrive, but Dropbox’s larger service reaches hundreds of millions of users, including 80,000 businesses. The agreement announced at the beginning of November included four parts, : the ability to quickly edit docs from Dropbox on mobile, accessing Dropbox docs from Office apps, sharing Dropbox links of Office apps, and the creation of first-party Dropbox apps for Microsoft’s mobile offerings. |
Two Rallies | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | Today Apple topped the $700 billion value market cap threshold during regular trading, a remarkable achievement. The company’s shares have since slipped some, but it’s impossible to deny the technology giant’s massive rally. Apple, a company that was once small enough to be is now not only the world’s most valuable technology company, it’s the world’s most valuable public company of any industry. Small fact: Three of the four most valuable public companies, by my last check, were technology firms. Apple, Microsoft, and Google share the top four slots along with ExxonMobil. However, a recent change of the guard in the , and the growing gap between Apple and its competition highlight two rallies: Both Microsoft and Apple have seen their shares soar since their current chief executives took over the reins. (It’s worth nothing that Apple did go through a public rough patch thorough 2012 and early 2013, but those declines have since been erased, and more.) Since Tim Cook has taken charge of Apple, it’s share price has risen . And Microsoft has seen it’s shares rise since Satya Nadella took over. Keep in mind that Nadella has been CEO for less than a year, while Cook has been in charge since 2011, so the latter has had a bit more time. Both companies have managed impressive runs this year. Apple, for example, is so far this year alone. Given the rallies, it’s a fair question to ask how long the gains can be sustained. Apple is expected to see . Microsoft’s new business efforts in the SaaS space remain, compared to its other revenue lines, nascent. But certainly the two executives can be content with their performance to date, at least in the financial sense. The question now becomes what part of the rise in their companies’ shares can be attributed to the executives, and what part to pre-existing positive corporate momentum. Depending on how you answer that question, either company could be a buy or a sell. Hold onto your hats and lay your bets. |
Lyft Appeals To More Casual Drivers By Matching Them With Passengers To Share Commutes | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | For years, the founders of had imagined a world in which carpooling would become mainstream, a world in which people wouldn’t necessarily ride alone to work if they didn’t have to. Today they move another step closer to that world with the release of a new feature allowing its drivers to get matched up with passengers heading in the same direction they are going. With the launch of Driver Destination, Lyft will for the first time give its drivers some freedom in being able to accept rides based on where a particular passenger is going. It also could open up its service to a more casual group of drivers. Previously, Lyft only showed drivers a passenger’s destination after they accepted a ride. Now, however, drivers will be able to see only passengers that can be picked up while on the way to their own destination. The new feature was built using some of the same technology the company uses for Lyft Line, which the company launched to match up passengers who are traveling along similar routes. The Driver Destination feature will match drivers with passengers who entered their destination because they requested a Lyft Line. Linking this to Lyft Line could limit the number of rides those drivers see in the near-term. However, the company is aggressively trying to find ways to get more people using Lyft Line and, in general, to pack more passengers into its drivers’ cars. Last month, it began a test in which it would send an SMS message to users who had requested a standalone Lyft but had entered their destination and could be matched up with nearby Lyft Line passengers headed in the same direction. (I know because I received one of those SMS messages.) As it converts more Lyft rides to Lyft Line rides, we could see broader adoption for ride-sharing (or, if you’re old school, carpooling) on its platform. And that could mean more money for drivers who are basically just adding more passengers who are traveling along the same route. But it’s not just about money. The new Driver Destination feature is designed to create more efficiency in driver routes, by making sure they don’t have to go out of their way when picking up or dropping off a passenger. Lyft also hopes it will appeal to more casual drivers — i.e. those who merely want to supplement the cost of their commute to and from work but don’t necessarily want to be on the platform picking up rides all day. To date, much of the driver recruitment for both Lyft and Uber has been around signing up contractors who will drive more or less full-time. That’s been necessary in part due to the huge demand those services have seen over the last few years. It’s also led to drivers working for both services, or switching between them based on various recruitment promotions over time. By giving drivers the power to only pick up rides on their commute, however, Lyft is targeting a much larger subset of casual drivers who don’t plan to drive for Lyft all the time. The pitch is that they’ll be able to occasionally make some money for rides they were already taking, just as long as they’re willing to make a minor detour along the way. As a result, Lyft is hoping to recruit drivers even if they’re not looking to log 30-plus hours a week. They’ll still go through the same application and onboarding process, which includes background checks and driver record checks, as well as a car inspection. By doing so, the company hopes to get more drivers on board during the peak commute hours — when they really need the supply — without those drivers committing to long hours. As a result, Lyft could end up look more like the peer-to-peer ride-sharing platform that the founders first envisioned, as opposed to just a taxi replacement you hail with an app. |
Tumblr Overtakes Instagram As Fastest-Growing Social Platform, Snapchat Is The Fastest-Growing App | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | With , Facebook continues to be the world’s largest social network by some margin, but when it comes to picking up new users, it appears to have reached a saturation point. Research out today from the notes that Tumblr’s active user base in the last six months grew by 120%, while Facebook’s grew by only 2%. And in overall member growth, Pinterest took the lead with 57% growth while Facebook’s member base grew by 6%. Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and even Google+ all grew faster than Facebook. In mobile apps specifically, while Facebook is the largest app today, Snapchat — with an emphasis on teen and 20-something users — is the fastest growing of them all, up 56% this year. It is however followed closely by Facebook Messenger and Instagram — a sign of not just how Facebook’s mobile apps continue to represent the company’s growth drivers, but also how its push to drive more users to the standalone app by cutting out Messaging from the main app has helped it grow.
One takeaway from this is that while Facebook is ahead of the rest of the pack by a big margin, there is a lot of flux among the rest of the field of social platforms. Indeed, when GWI released numbers , Instagram topped the list for fastest-growing social network. It’s now dropped down to number three, both in terms of overall members and active users. Another is that Facebook may well be looking to pick up yet more of these smaller apps — or develop more of them in-house — to keep fuelling its growth regardless of the slowdown trend in its core app. “Facebook has some major challenges to face,” Jason Mander, head of trends and author of the report, writes. “Firstly, people are growing tired of it, with 50% of members in the UK and US saying that they’re using it less frequently than they used to (rising to 64% among teens).” He says that the stats appear to show people using Facebook much more passively today than in the past: “Since the start of 2013, we’ve seen behaviors like sharing photos and messaging friends fall by around 20 percentage points.” Still, you cannot deny the size and strength of the world’s largest social network. To put Facebook’s dominant position into some context, the ITU yesterday that there are now 3 billion people online worldwide. Facebook’s active user base of 1.36 billion means that over one-third of the world’s population is now on Facebook. GWI — which bases its data on interviews with 170,000 users across 32 markets — provides some of its own stats to demonstrate just how big it is. It notes that outside of China, 4 in 5 internet users have a Facebook account, with the proportion even higher in some markets like Latin America, where a whopping 93% of respondents reporting having an account. Among those with Facebook accounts, 1 in 2 say they are actively using Facebook each month, “giving it about twice as many active users as the three sites which compete for second position: Twitter, YouTube and Google+.” (Yes, you can argue that a Google+ “user” may possibly never actually engage on the platform but simply sign in with it on other Google properties. Indeed, GWI notes that when it comes to visitation rates, Google’s YouTube ranks at number one, with 85% of online adults visiting it each month, nearly ten points ahead of Facebook.) I’m embedding the full, 45-page report below, but here are some other interesting stats that caught my eye: . As we are seeing played out at companies like Facebook and Twitter, who both now make more from mobile ads than from desktop ads, mobile devices are really leading the charge for social networking services. But overall they are not outweighing usage on PCs and laptops just yet. Although usage on the bigger screens is “contracting”, in the words of the report, 6 out of 10 users are still accessing social networks via a PC/laptop, while 4 in 10 are using mobiles. The younger the consumer gets, the more prevalent mobile becomes. In the 16-34 age group, mobile is the social platform of choice for more than 50% of users. . While Tumblr and Pinterest appear to have seen the most growth, they are not seeing as much use when it comes to frequency, where the numbers almost appear to invert. continues to be dominated by home-grown social networks. Google+ is the top network when ranking those from outside the country with Facebook in second position.
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Inspace Aims To Rocket Us Into Virtual Reality | John Biggs | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | In the yeaaaaarrrr 2000! As I recall, we were all supposed to be flying around with jetpacks and using Minority Report-esque hardware by now, but that still hasn’t come to pass. Thankfully the folks at are on the job. The system, which is mostly software, allows you to see media and information in a three-dimensional space. Before you chortle into your beard while thinking of all the reasons this is a bad idea, think about it for a second. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZruOsZV2aXc] Essentially the team is looking at a new browsing paradigm that allows you to move through “space” to find files and run programs. Created by David Holme and Servan Keondjian, the system has been funded to the tune of £400,000 by private angels. “We are not aware of anyone who is trying to do what we are implementing other than Hollywood special effects departments,” said Holme. “We postulate that in 10 years time desktop, TV, and tablet interfaces will have evolved to be considerably richer, clearer and far more advanced than they currently are and we want our technology to power this. In addition we are close to being granted a patent covering the broad navigation paradigm of hierarchical 3D space.” You can sign up for a beta and enter the year 20000000! Will this ever, dare I say it, take off? Who knows. We still haven’t mastered touch and that paradigm has been with us for most of a decade. The old screen/mouse/keyboard works just fine for most of the computing population but a truly usable 3D experience would be amazing and, perhaps, could snap us out of some of the older ruts of user experience we’ve all fallen into. Video was changed by non-linear editing. What happens when we start using non-linear computing. |
Twitter Expands Its Commerce Lineup With Twitter Offers, Which Link To Your Credit Or Debit Card | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | Twitter just that it’s testing a new commerce product called Twitter Offers. This follows the announcement of Twitter’s first commerce product back in September, . This announcement’s aimed specifically at businesses advertising on Twitter — through Twitter Offers, those companies will be able to offer cashback rewards in their tweets, and those rewards will tie directly into consumers’ credit and debit cards. The card-based approach should offer some significant advantages. If you see an offer in your timeline (to use the example in the screenshot above, it might be $2 back on a $5 purchase at a coffee shop), you should be able to add it to your card without leaving Twitter. Then when you go into the store, you don’t need to change your behavior — instead of bringing a coupon, you just pay with that card and the cashback payment should show up on your statement shortly after. A Twitter spokesperson said the card integration was already built by . Meanwhile, this gives businesses a way to track when their Twitter ads are actually driving consumers to make purchases in the store, something that the company was also trying to show through . In , Group Product Manager Tarun Jain says: Additionally, we make it easy for merchants to get up and running because they can use their existing payment network, there’s no change to the consumer purchase process, no employee training and no new hardware or software to install. By leveraging Twitter’s robust targeting capabilities [ ], advertisers can tailor their promotions and campaigns to the right audience, while optimizing for performance. From a security standpoint, Twitter says your card information will be encrypted and can be removed from your account at any time. Twitter Offers are being tested initially on desktop and mobile in the United States. The post says Twitter will be working with “a handful of brands” to test these offers in holiday-related promotions, and it will announce those brands “in the near future.” |
Zendrive Lets Ridesharing And Delivery Companies Know If Their Drivers Are Distracted | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | , a startup that to measure drivers’ behavior, today announced , its first paid service. As the name implies, ZenFleets is meant for companies that have a large number of cars on the road at any given time. With ZenFleets, businesses can track where those cars are, but more importantly, the service also tries to figure out if the driver is focused and paying attention to the road. Unlike similar services — most of which get their data from the car’s sensors — Zendrive wants to focus on the driver and not only the car. To do this, Zendrive regularly looks at basic data like speed, acceleration and other data points most similar service also consider. While you’d think that the car’s own sensors would be more accurate than a random phone’s, Zendrive that the phone data is just as accurate. In addition, Zendrive also looks at whether the driver is distracted and using the phone, for example. The company is targeting this new service at ridesharing, carsharing and delivery companies. “The ZenFleets service helps the On Demand driving economy– including the fast growing rideshare, carshare and last-mile delivery companies– scale safely and efficiently through driver-centric analytics,” said Jonathan Matus, co-founder of , in a canned statement today. Because companies like Uber and Lyft don’t typically own the cars their drivers work with, using smartphone sensors is much easier for them than trying to integrate a hardware-based solution. Zendrive also today announced that it has closed a strategic round of funding led by BMW i Ventures, Bill Ford’s VC firm Fontinalis Partners, Expansion Capital and First Round Capital. The company previously raised a in August 2013. This time around, Zendrive didn’t want to disclose the size of this new round. |
Lumoid Launches A Peer-To-Peer Marketplace For Short-Term Gadget Rentals | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 11 | 25 | Since , gadget rental market has provided a place where camera nerds, amateur photographers, and even drone enthusiasts can try out a bunch of different devices without having to purchase them. Today it’s announcing that it’s also giving users the ability to make a little bit of money by renting out devices they aren’t using at the moment. The introduction of should enable the company to expand its potential inventory while also allowing its users to make their gear available to others. Launching in San Francisco to start, the Locals marketplace also provides a low-touch way for Lumoid to make money while connecting customers with one another. Prior to this, Lumoid offered a more traditional camera and equipment rental service. That wasn’t a new idea By itself, as camera enthusiasts have been able to rent gear from local shops and online for a while. However, most online rental shops look like they were built ten years ago and don’t provide much guidance about what the novice photographer should rent. Lumoid seeks to provide an alternative to those online rentals with easy-to-understand pricing, a bit of customer education, and packages of products built around activities renters will be interested in. The Y Combinator-backed company gravitated toward the camera market first because founder Aarthi Ramamurthy herself was a photography enthusiast, but also because it served a need in the community. The company keeps inventory of different cameras and lenses that can be rented by the day, shipping to basically anywhere in the U.S. While you might think a service like Lumoid would thrive mostly in tech-savvy pockets of cities along the coasts, Ramamurthy says its rentals have been particularly popular in smaller cities where camera shops the local community might have relied on have shut down. Lumoid also has a fairly liberal rent-to-own policy, enabling customers to pay over time to purchase the equipment if they want to keep it. All money spent that a user spends on rentals can be converted toward the credit of a purchase. That means rental customers can rent and try out multiple different cameras and use their credits toward the one they decide they want to purchase. Cameras are still Lumoid’s bread and butter, but the company has been looking to add more products to its roster for purchase or rental. That includes a wide range of drones and 3-D printers available for rental, as well as a push to make GoPro video cameras available to anyone who might want to try them out. Lumoid’s latest offering will enable users and customers to make money from their own unused gear. With the launch of Lumoid Local, the company is offering a peer-to-peer platform for equipment rentals. That means that regular users can list their own cameras, lenses and other gear to be rented by other users. For users, it offers up a way to make money off gear they’ve purchased but aren’t using at a given time. In the same way Airbnb allows them to offer up their home to others on a short-term basis, or Getaround lets a user rent out their car when not in use, Lumoid could enable users to cash in on a collection of camera equipment they rarely use. To get users comfortable with the idea, Ramamurthy says the company will take responsibility for any cameras that are lost, stolen, or damaged and will provide replacement gear to the owner. She says Lumoid already fraud checks to determine the chances that people might try to commit fraud, and so it has a good idea of potential liability from renters. For now, Lumoid Local is limited to San Francisco, where the company is testing out the model. It’s also facilitating the exchange of devices by picking them up if the owner is in the city and handing off to the renter. Otherwise, the Local marketplace is a way for Lumoid to make money without having to handle inventory of products itself. That could better margins, since the company will be taking a cut of rentals without having to purchase all new equipment to make available. But it also could mean a wider variety of goods available to its users, since Lumoid won’t need to have a particular item in stock and can rely more on the community. Finally, for Lumoid it’s just one more way to provide options to a community that’s passionate about trying out new gear, even if they don’t want to buy it outright. And that’s a good thing, right? |
Snapchat Wanted MessageMe Before Yahoo Bought It For Up To $30-$40M | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 10 | 3 | Earlier today we reported that messaging app MessageMe was — which MessageMe has now , along with the inevitable news that the app is shutting down, effective November 7. Now we’ve also learned some more details. MessageMe had also been courted by Snapchat as well as an app maker out of Europe, Truecaller. And, after retention bonuses, we hear the price that Yahoo will be paying to acqui-hire MessageMe is between $30 million and $40 million. While Snapchat would have made the deal at the same price as Yahoo, we understand that MessageMe chose purple for two reasons: Yahoo is acqui-hiring eight people, more than Snapchat would have done; and at Yahoo the team will get to stay together to work on a new messaging product. (Sidenote: Isn’t it funny that Snapchat’s involvement in a bidding game against Yahoo comes to light on the same day that reports surface of Yahoo in Snapchat?) Working on a new messaging app, in a sense, could represent closure, or perhaps a continuation, for the MessageMe team after they shut down their eponymous app. Its demise is unsurprising for a couple of reasons. It’s often a consequence of acqui-hires that the original product does not survive. Yet the writing may have been on the wall regardless of that. MessageMe had picked up over one million users, but when you consider that WhatsApp now has around 600 million users, you realise what a steep hill the startup would have had to climb to really benefit from network effects — these apps only really hit their stride when everyone you know is using them, too. Littlebits, the company behind MessageMe, actually still had a significant amount of cash in the bank from the it had raised, and its investors had been encouraging the company to try something else. However, from what we understand, the prospect of abandoning messaging, which had been the startup’s main, engrossed focus, was simply not as appealing as having another crack at getting the messaging business right. Which is what Yahoo will be letting them do. Of course, it won’t be without challenges. Apart from the massive messaging app incumbents like WhatsApp still being there just like they were yesterday and today, there could be new (and huge) other entrants on the way — namely, . And that’s before you wonder if the MessageMe team and Yahoo will manage to tap into something unique that will set their own messaging effort apart from the crowd. As a MessageMe user myself, and an advocate of competition, I kind of hope they do. MessageMe’s closure note below: |
SureMote Turns Your Android Phone Into A Remote For Any Wi-Fi Connected Device At Home | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 10 | 3 | [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–86xsJVA74&w=560&h=315] I don’t think I’ve used a remote control in a year. Perhaps several years. They’re cheap. They get lost easily and sometimes you end up with ten of them. But an Israeli company called Tekoia is trying to consolidate those devices through an app called that links to Wifi-connected home appliances. The new version of the app uses the infrared blaster on newer Android devices to pick up all kinds of Wifi-connected hardware from smart TVs to Blu-ray players. That way you can use a single phone for multiple home devices; in fact, they have thousands of devices in their library that they’ve catalogued. How? One of their senior software engineers, Vadim Lanzman, specialized in communications in the Israeli military. “He can literally figure out how to connect anything to anything else,” said CEO Viktor Ariel, who previously sold a semiconductor company to Samsung in 2007. When he started Tekoia, he started with prototype sremote controls that cost hundreds of dollars. But they whittled that down to an app as smart TVs and better Android devices proliferated. He envisions possibly using a freemium model or relying on advertising, as the phone could serve as a contextual second screen for the TV. Ariel raised about $1 million in seed funding and has been working on the product for three years. A previous version of the app attracted 10,000 users. Suremote is in a competitive space where hardware manufacturers and large players like Peel, have struck deals with Samsung, attracted investment . |
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