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India’s Answer To Uber, Ola Takes $210M Led By Softbank At $1B Valuation | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | is doubling down on India, quite literally. The Japanese tech powerhouse, flush with billions from its extremely lucrative Alibaba investment, is today confirming that it has led a $210 million investment in , an Uber-style service in India that aims to use technology to shake up and dominate the car-for-hire and wider transportation market in the country. The news comes at the same time that another Indian e-commerce business, Snapdeal, is announcing an investment of its own from SoftBank, a , and is apparently part of a much bigger plan by SoftBank to invest in the next several years. Other investments in India include mobile ad startup InMobi and Bharti. “Since SoftBank’s foundation, our mission has been to contribute to people’s lives through the Information Revolution,” Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Corp., said in a statement. “We believe India is at a turning point in its development and have confidence that India will grow strongly over the next decade. As part of this belief, we intend to deploy significant capital in India over the next few years to support development of the market.” This Series D round is by far the biggest round Ola has raised and takes its . Other investors in this latest round include previous backers Tiger Global, Matrix Partners and Steadview Capital. Just as Uber has stormed the transportation market across the U.S. and a number of countries outside it, Ola has been steadily building a business at home. It is now live in 19 cities, launching 9 in the last two months. It currently has 33,000 cabs in its fleet and the main focus now is to bring in more drivers into its fold. “We are making a big investment in getting drivers to become entrepreneurs,” Anand Subramanian, Ola’s marketing head, said in an interview. As with Snapdeal focus on building its business in its home market, this is also the main aim for Ola for now: “The focus will be predominantly in India,” he says. If you’ve ever been to India, you will know that this is no small feat and one that has been . Take a sometimes-chaotic road system, and add a variety of road users that range from cows and elephants through to rickshaws, auto-rickshaws and cars and busses, and you start to get a picture of where an organised car service might come in handy for those who can afford it. Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder & CEO, Ola, in a statement. “Ola is at the forefront of the mobile internet revolution in India and Softbank as an investor and a strategic partner with its global network, Ola currently has up to four different classes of cars for hire — based around size options — and like any disruptive car network with big ambitions, it has been dabbling in extending the network of drivers to transport more than just people, recently delivering sweets during the Diwali holiday. “The core of what we are trying to build is a great nerve center, something extremely reliable and safe that can extend to a lot of different things, even if right now we’re mainly trying to solve transportation,” Subramanian says. Ola has also been clever in coming up with ways to meet the specific needs of users in India. For example, it was the first to offer a prepaid wallet for passengers, helpful for those who do not use payment cards. “India is a very different market, with a lot of local dynamics compared to western countries,” Subramanian says, “and that makes it challenging and exciting.” We see a lot of Uber-toos in different markets today, but Ola was the first mobile app to enable cab booking online in the country. Now of course it has a lot of competition from all sides, including from Uber itself. No comment, only a nervous laugh, from Subramanian on whether Uber has made any overtures to Ola. Image: |
T-Mobile CEO John Legere Says Without The iPhone, A Carrier “Is Shit” | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | It probably goes without saying, but: carriers love them some iPhones. For anyone who comes into the store with an iPhone in mind, the two-year contracts pretty much write themselves. Carrier execs would rarely speak too bluntly about that fact, though; Apple is already chipping away at their stronghold (see: Apple taking app distribution out of the carrier’s hands, things like Apple SIM) the carriers openly admitting just how important Apple is to their bottom line. T-Mobile CEO John Legere, however, generally isn’t one to mince words. In an interview at Re/Code’s Code/Mobile conference tonight, Legere was asked why the company was so quick to adopt the iPhone after he became the CEO two years ago. Legere became T-Mobile’s CEO in September of 2012; by April of 2013, they were offering the iPhone for the first time. “Get on your knees, crawl over,” Legere said. “Do whatever you have to do to get the iPhone. Because your store, without the iPhone in it, is shit.” He also added that the iPhone currently makes up roughly 20% of the company’s smartphone base. |
Apple CEO Tim Cook: Apple Pay Activated 1M Cards In 72 Hours | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | This evening at a Wall Street Journal technology conference, said that in its first 72 hours, activated 1 million cards. That figure indicates that Apple Pay is picking up traction outside of the technology, early-adopter set. Apple Pay competes with rival offerings from Google, among others, alongside traditional payment methods. Paying for goods with your smartphone, still nascent in the Western market, could grow quickly: Given smartphone penetration in the United States and other developed nations where this sort of transaction system remains new, Apple has the potential to quickly scale its new product. The possible revenue for Apple is not trivial. The company , or 15 cents per $100 dollars in payments. That isn’t much on a per-transaction basis, but it could quickly add up for the company worth more than $600 billion. If its smartphone userbase adopts its Pay technology, the product could bring in fresh top line for Apple, a company looking for a new hit. Of course, 1 million cards is a fraction of the total number of saved credit cards that Apple has via its iTunes and long-standing app businesses, implying that it could enjoy continued quick growth. How large its payment volume will grow in the meatspace remains to be seen. |
India’s Snapdeal Snaps Up $627M Led By SoftBank To Supercharge Its Marketplace | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | A big day for e-commerce startups in India, and a double boom for Japan’s . , founded four years ago as a marketplace for third party retailers in India to sell goods online, has raised an additional $627 million from SoftBank Internet and Media to continue building out its business in the country, both organically and through acquisitions. It’s thought to be the biggest check ever written by a single investor for an Indian tech startup, and it brings the total raised by Snapdeal in 2014 alone to nearly . The investment comes on the same day that SoftBank is also confirming a in another Indian startup, . For SoftBank, it’s a strategic investment, made to capitalise on the rapid growth for e-commerce in India, but also to link up and “leverage synergies” between Snapdeal and Softbank’s bigger portfolio of companies. That porfolio includes (announced just last week), as well as more high-profile, legacy holdings like Alibaba (SB’s share has been described as one of the “ ” investments made, with its $20 million stake now valued at around $75 billion). It also includes companies in India such as mobile ad startup InMobi and the carrier Softbank Bharti. meeting of the minds and a deep philosophical investment.” Speaking of Alibaba, we had heard rumors from a couple of different sources that now-public Chinese e-commerce leviathan was itself taking a stake in Snapdeal. Bahl would not comment on that, but he did note that there are other investors that are not being disclosed, on top of the $627 million from SoftBank. While Bahl was mum on Alibaba as a possible investor, he was not shy to sing the Chinese company’s praises: “Snapdeal’s business model and traction and philosophy are similar to what Alibaba has been able to achieve in China,” he says. “Small biusinesses need to be aggregated on a platform and selling nationally to consumers. We’ve been focused on democratising retail in India both for small businesses and consumers. Bahl is not commenting on Snapdeal’s valuation except to note that it is significantly higher than the $1 billion that it reached in its previous round. From what people were reporting when SoftBank’s investment was still only , the valuation is now closer to , although a report in The Times of India puts it to over — as it notes that SoftBank’s investment is for a 20-25% stake. In any case, it’s a huge investment, and makes SoftBank into Snapdeal’s largest shareholder, with SIMI CEO Nikesh Arora taking a seat on the board. Snapdeal, like its national rival Flipkart, has been building out its e-commerce business at a time of huge growth in India’s internet market. Today, Snapdeal counts some 50,000 sellers on its marketplace, with 25 million registered users, and it’s been expanding fast. Bahl says that over the last 12 months its gross merchandise value (the amount processed on its platform) has have grown over 600%, with annual GMV currently at over $2 billion. Mobile has been blowing up even faster. y sense is that over the next two years, over 80% of orders will be on mobile phones.” And this seems to be just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak: currently 0.5% of all retail is e-commerce based in India, while in China the figure is closer to 10% of all retail. Bahl believes that with 70% of GDP in India coming from consumer spending, India will better China’s 10% by some way. “India is the last frontier,” he says of the e-commerce opportunity. That will inevitably keep Snapdeal somewhat conservative in how it grows. Bahl says it will stay focused on it is doing now — marketplaces for others rather than selling its own inventory. (Categories today include electronics, fashion, home goods, cars, and real estate.) And it will keep Snapdeal it is right now: in India. “I believe that the Indian e-commerce market will be worth $100 billion in the next 10 years and we want to have an 80% share of that,” he says. “That’s not going to be easy and will take a lot of work. It means that we have to be superfocused on this market only.” While U.S. giants Amazon and eBay (which is ) have both eyed up the Indian market for their own growth, Bahl notes that there are a lot of differences in India that really benefit those who understand the market well. For example, one of the key gating factors for e-commerce business to thrive has been not the lack of Internet penetration among consumers per se, but the fact that many retailers lack the infrastructure to sell online. Early on, that led Snapdeal to build physical centers where businesses can come, list, and even store on consignment goods that they will sell on Snapdeal. “They can have their Snapdeal stores up and running in four hours,” Bahl says. There are now 40 of these centers nationwide. It’s also given an opening to a lot of small businesses that would have been challenged to scale nationally, he says, noting that 30% of all the Snapdeal sellers are sole-trader female entrepreneurs who work from home. That’s not to say that Snapdeal is pushing itself and its community to keep up with the wider change of tech tides: the company plans to hire 500 engineers with some of the funding, to add to the 500 that work for Snapdeal already. There is a mobile app that about 50% of all sellers now using to run their Snapdeal sites. And in terms of consumers, Bahl says that today one of every 10 smartphones sold in India is sold by his company — and each of those has the Snapdeal shopping app preloaded. |
Kim Kardashian West On Oversharing, Adopting New Platforms, And BlackBerry | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | If you told a random member of the tech media a year ago that one of the biggest names interviewed by Kara Swisher at her own conference in 2014 would be Kim Kardashian West, you’d probably receive a dumb look and a quick dismissal. Yet that’s exactly what happened at today’s , where the reality TV and social media star reflected on the growing role of mobile tech in celebrity life. Swisher began her interview by asking why people don’t seem to take Kardashian West seriously despite the fact that she’s managed to turn a reality TV show and millions of followers on and into an influential brand and millions of dollars in app revenue from . Kardashian West noted that social media is just one of the jobs that make up her busy work days, which also include raising her daughter and filming her show (five months out of the year), though it is perhaps the most public aspect of her life, so people tend to focus on it despite not seeming like work. While she spends a lot of time handling her social feeds, Kardashian West says that she puts boundaries on herself and her mobile usage. “I took a while to share things with my daughter, and still don’t share everything they do on a daily basis,” she said, and also pointed out that she’s “protective” about oversharing about her relationship, saying that in the past she’s perhaps crossed that line. When it comes to post frequency, Kardashian West said she tries to avoid spamming her followers by limiting her posts to 3 images per setting or event. In terms of actual mobile apps and how she uses them, Kardashian West focuses on the networks where she’s built her biggest audiences, but she does experiment with new ones now and then (and has been for some time — she mentioned that she started building online identities with Friendster and MySpace). For instance, she says she likes Snapchat and that her sisters are regular users, though she doesn’t use it because “honestly, I don’t have the time.” When Swisher touched upon which platforms Kardashian West spends her time on, she professed her undying love for the declining BlackBerry: “People are horrified that I use a BlackBerry, but I’ll never get rid of it — if you have to handle an email and you have to type fast, I need that board.” To the chagrin of the BlackBerry PR team thinking they finally had some good news, she also said that she uses an iPhone for all of her photos and social media. As with Snapchat, she doesn’t use an Android device because one more device would be too much, though she tried to avoid offending any power users in the audience by stating that those with more than two phones must be doing real work. |
Twitter’s Next Targets For Monetization Are Logged-Out And Casual Visitors | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | Twitter reported 284 million average monthly active users in its , but with growth down over the last month, the company diverted attention away from MAUs during its call by focusing on another, much bigger number: that of Twitter visitors who are either “logged out” or not registered at all. “Are they monetiseable?” CTO Anthony Noto rhetorically asked. “Yes.” “Logged out” users — those who visit the site but are either not logged in or have never registered on Twitter — are anywhere from one to two times as big as the number of monthly active users, Noto said today during a call where he did . In the most optimistic terms, that would turn a flagging 284 million into nearly 600 million, and Twitter made it clear that it will be a big target for ad serving in the future. As for what that consumer experience is today, the company is still trying to “understand the behavior” of logged-off users before meddling with their experience, but it provided a quick sketch of where they are appearing today. There are today four use cases for how logged-out users are visiting Twitter. The first use case, he said, is when you do a search for a person on a site like Google and you land on a profile page. The second is when someone does a general search and they land just on a detailed Tweet page — “just literally that one tweet.” The third is when those users visit Twitter as unregistered users and try to do a search where “they get nothing.” They have to log in, he noted, and many people don’t and so they bounce off that page. The fourth are those who visit from a site like CNN and see a tweet and again gets just a very minimal experience. Up to now, profile pages have had the most development work and are seeing a big bump in traffic so far, Noto said: an 83 percent increase in profile impressions; a 77 percent increase in profile scrolls; and a 15 percent in favorites on profiles. These profile pages will be just a starting point, though. One idea will be to use information like the search terms that brought users to specific pages and use those to shape what ads to serve to those visitors. “Each one of these is a use case that gives us an opportunity for us to create an experience that is immersive,” he said. “That brings them into Twitter in a way that they want and not how we have traditionally provided that experience.” Indeed, while Twitter may start to play around with things like profiles and what people see when they visit Twitter as casual users, it’s interesting to see just how far Twitter’s bigger strategy pulls away from Twitter altogether. On top of logged-out users, Twitter’s plan to target more users will have an even thinner tie to use of the Twitter platform. As CEO Dick Costolo pointed out in the call, its new Fabric SDK — “the only SDK that app developers need” with services like analytics, advertising and new telephone-number-based sign in services — has the potential to reach 1 billion iOS and Android phone users, no tweeting required. |
Twitter Has No Short-Term Plans To Monetize Vine | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | Twitter has no short-term plans to monetize Vine, a social product that it purchased in its infancy. The information was shared during the company’s earnings call, following a quarterly financial report that included stronger-than-expected third-quarter performance but soft guidance and user growth that investors found troubling. Twitter is down more than 10 percent in after-hours trading. Twitter purchased Vine before the app launched. When it did make it into the hands of the public, Vine became a sensation, . Interest in the product — interest remains near historical highs, but doesn’t appear to indicate that Vine’s virality is increasing in time. Vine is an important property for Twitter as it could help prop up the larger company’s user growth rates in the future. Facebook has made similar bets on Instagram and WhatsApp. |
Wealthfront Closes A Big New Round As Competitors Crowd The Wealth Management Market | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | The automated wealth management firms ( ) that are bringing algorithmically enhanced services to the stodgy world of retirement planning are gearing up to go Terminator as competition intensifies. In what’s sure to be the first shot in a salvo of big new rounds for these (no-longer) startups, Palo Alto, Calif.-based has raised roughly $70 million in a new round of financing, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. The new financing comes just six months after the company closed a $35 million round in April. There was no word on whether the new financing morphs Wealthfront into the mythical, billion-dollar “unicorn” status, but it should put the company in the “uni” range at least. The timing of the round is auspicious. The boomer behemoth of wealth management and financial services, ., just announced that it was going to offer its own version of the robo-advisor called . While some of the early startup entrants into the market are skeptical of the quality of Schwab’s product (namely the algorithms), it’s a big move that both validates the market for a broader consumer audience and announces that Schwab isn’t going to go gently into its good night of irrelevance or cede its pole position as one of the top consumer wealth management firms. Venture investors can sense that the wealth management industry has been slow to adopt new technologies and have been throwing money at the sector accordingly. Investments in personal finance and wealth management companies have already raised over half a billion dollars this year and the pace of investment seems to be holding steady, according to .
With the new financing, the pressure is on other companies in the space like , and to raise significant rounds of their own. Most of these startups have also raised significant investment rounds this year, but as with the , the large rounds will probably continue to come.
Since 2011, Wealthfront has had phenomenal growth, reaching $1 billion in assets under management in less than two-and-a-half years. when Wealthfront surpassed the billion-dollar threshold, chief executive Adam Nash attributed the company’s success to the millennial investor. Nash writes: There are over 90 million Millennials in the US with an aggregate net worth of more than $2 trillion; by 2018 that is expected to grow to $7 trillion. This generation has a very different set of expectations about what they want from an investment service. Millennials grew up with software and expect services to be delivered online. They don’t have the patience to have to talk to someone to complete their transactions. They lived through two market crashes and are highly cynical about the claim that you (or anyone) can outperform the market. They have been nickel-and-dimed through a wide variety of services, and they value simple, transparent, low-cost services. Nash then related a story that Charles Schwab, the eponymous founder of Charles Schwab & Co., told Wealthfront co-founder Andy Rachleff about the parallels between the two businesses. Schwab started with a client base in their 20s and 30s and that the brokerage grew as investors’ aged. Today, “Schwab has grown with the baby boomer generation to $2.3 trillion in client assets,” Nash writes. It took Schwab six years to reach $1 billion in assets. Nash wrote that he thinks Wealthfront is riding a bullet train instead of the baby boomers’ “Peace Train”. A Wealthfront spokesperson declined to comment. |
Nextbit Unveils A Dead-Simple Way To Sync, Store Data Across Multiple Mobile Apps, Devices | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK8QmTsDi74&w=560&h=315] The last time I talked to Nextbit, from Accel Partners and Google Ventures and had put together a veteran team made out of early Android folk who helped build Google’s mobile OS into what it is today. But they refused to share anything about what they were working on. Now after building up a team of 22 people from Android, HTC and Dropbox, they’re willing to talk. Today, they unveiled a series of three products that will make it dead simple to seamlessly save the state of your mobile apps or data and switch between devices. “It’s an accident of history that mobile platforms and the cloud evolved separately,” said Nextbit CEO Tom Moss, who led business development for Android when it was in its infancy and then went on to start and sell an enterprise mobile company called 3LM to Motorola. “If mobile had happened three years later, this is what it would have looked like.” The first product is called Baton. It backs up and syncs the sum total of a person’s apps and data. That makes it easy to switch between, say, playing a game on a phone then tablet without having to re-start. It also helps people avoid losing their data if their phone is lost or stolen. Underneath the hood at Baton, is a syncing technology that stores the state of an app and its data so that you can easily switch from one device to another. They’ve created a UI flourish called “Pass” that lets you send the state of an app to another device, so that you don’t have to pick up another device, open it, find, download and then open that app on another device. “It creates a unified experience of your app state across any device,” said CTO Mike Chan, who developed a lot of the core power management technology for the earliest versions of Android. “From our standpoint, you also don’t have to change people’s behavior, and this product doesn’t require any developer support because it integrates so deeply into the operating system.” The third product in the suite is something called ‘Backup and restore,’ which you could think of like a Dropbox-type of functionality, except if it were designed as a mobile-first experience. Backup and restore, which won’t come out until late next year, will automatically store all of your data and photos. Unlike the other two, you can presume it would probably be more of a freemium product, with paid tiers of extra storage. “It’s what we’d like to call limitless storage,” Moss said. “You can just have your data.” He added, “It’s an imperfect metaphor to compare it Dropbox. In that system, you have to have your folders and files. But who uses files and folders on mobile devices? With our design, you’ll just never see an insufficient storage error. Your data will will just sit where it needs to sit.” Baton and its syncing technology are available for beta on Cyanogen, the Android mod that is Notably, Moss is on the board of the company. |
This Is What The Apple Watch Interface Looks Like On An iPhone | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | Ever since Apple announced the , it’s been easy to let the imagination wander a bit. It’s the first product out of Apple in a long time, perhaps since the iPhone, that feels truly exciting and new. Much of that is thanks to the user interface, which has a very distinct look from the UIs of the iPhone, iPad or even Macs. YouTuber has also been inspired to exercise his imagination, building a of the Apple Watch UI as it would appear on an iPhone. Rather than having horizontal pages of static, equally spaced icons, the prototype shows an infinite, multidimensional scroll throughout apps, with automatic centering and the ability to zoom in and out. Whether or not it’s more practical than static drawers and pages is yet to be determined. However, Lucas Menge says that an article on , written by , arguing why the Apple Watch interface actually makes more sense for the multi-sized displays of the iPhone and iPad, was the inspiration for the prototype. As we move to a predominantly touch world, it’s not hard to imagine more and more interfaces looking like this. In fact, has been working on technology for this for quite some time. You can check out the full video below or click . (Skip to the to get to the actual prototype.) [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UggYGThmFEo&w=640&h=360] |
Twitter Beats In Q3 With Revenue Of $361M, But Slowing User Growth Drags Its Shares Down 8% | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | Following the bell, Twitter its third-quarter financial performance, including revenue of $361 million and earnings per share, on a non-GAAP basis, of $0.01. The street had expected Twitter to report adjusted profit of $0.01 per share on revenue on $351.35 million. Twitter, which broke from the market by falling nearly 3 percent in regular trading, is down sharply following its earnings beat. The company’s revenue figure is up 114 percent from a year ago, and it had a GAAP net income of $175 million and non-GAAP profit of $7 million in the quarter. The company ended the period with $3.6 billion in cash. On a GAAP basis, Twitter lost $0.29 per share.
In its most recent quarter, Twitter generated 85 percent of its revenue from mobile advertising. For comparison, in its , Twitter had revenue of $312 million and profit of two pennies per share. Twitter’s advertising revenue rose 109 percent compared to the year-ago period, while its “data licensing and other revenue” category was up an even more impressive 171 percent. Twitter reported that it had 284 million average monthly active users during the quarter, up 23 year-over-year. That figure, up from 271 million, is likely being viewed by some investors as soft. Given that Twitter beat on revenue and met on profit, this is likely the chief catalyst for its current share-price declines. The company picked up 13 million new monthly users in the quarter, down from the 16 million it gained in the preceding quarter. Slowing user growth is anathema to the company’s investors. That fact has dogged its earnings in now three of its four public reports since its IPO. Twitter valuation, ending the day just north of $30 billion, is now substantially under that mark. For the current quarter, Twitter expects revenue of $440 million to $450 million, and adjusted EBITDA of around $100 million. The company has a history of beating on its financial goals, and missing, or disappointing on user growth. Twitter has done an excellent job at monetizing its user base, in other words, but has had a harder time growing the base itself. If Twitter cannot expand its user base, no amount of short-term growth will make up for slower long-term potential revenue growth. Twitter needs to pick up more users to convince investors that has more hyper growth ahead. |
So-Called “Twitter Tax Break” Netted City More In Mid-Market Tax Revenue | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | In hindsight, it was one of the more controversial decisions the city has made in years. Back in 2011, on a quiet threat that Twitter for nearby Brisbane or South San Francisco, the city decided to offer a temporary exemption on it 1.5 percent payroll tax to entice companies to move into a set of very specific buildings in Mid-Market. For decades, that area had a much higher commercial vacancy rate than nearby SOMA or the Financial District after the city ripped up the streets to create BART. It was also bordered by the Tenderloin, which houses and serves much of the city’s low-income population in single-room occupancy hotels and a net of non-profit services. The bet was that if you could secure one major tenant, you could trigger a cluster of tech companies to move into the area. You have to keep in mind that the regional and national economy was in a very different state then, so the city government was focused on job creation as opposed to housing. A handful of companies took it — notably Twitter — and the program has since become a punching bag for the far left, who say the city shouldn’t have offered tax breaks to multi-billion dollar companies. In any case, the payroll tax was totally scrapped not long after and the city is shifting towards taxing gross revenues by the end of this decade. Today, the city controller . It found that 15 companies used the exclusion last year, cutting their payroll tax costs by $4.2 million. However, businesses that moved to the area paid $7.6 million more in payroll tax last year, than they did in 2010. Some of this, of course, is due to an overall economic recovery. But the controller’s office found that the area generated $7.1 million more in payroll tax revenue than it would have if it had grown at the same rate as the rest of the city. This number counts companies that didn’t take the tax exclusion like Uber and Square, which moved into an adjacent building on Market Street. That $7.1 million figure represents 3,000 new jobs. As you can see below, that’s a sevenfold change from three years before, compared to a roughly 50 percent increase for the rest of the city. It also increased the number of businesses in the area, with 61 more last year than in 2010. This was nearly double the rate that the entire city added businesses. Taxable sales are still growing slowly, however. There was a 10 percent increase in the area, compared to a 25 percent increase in the rest of the city. I think this would reflect the concern that several of these companies like Twitter are essentially closed urban campuses with so much food and amenities that they aren’t sending foot traffic out onto the street to support local, small businesses. Increases in both commercial and residential rents were pretty much the same as the rest of the city. The gentrification and displacement risks in the Tenderloin are fundamentally different than they are in other neighborhoods like the Mission District. In the Mission and other outlying neighborhoods, many middle and lower-income residents are under rent control, and so they maybe at risk of eviction. However, in the Tenderloin, single room occupancy hotels are under an entirely different set of political protections. So was it a success? If Twitter and other tech companies had decided to leave San Francisco, then yes. The city would have lost all the tax revenue and it probably still would have had the same housing and transit capacity issues because Twitter employees would have still lived in the city. (No, they wouldn’t have lived in Brisbane. That city is a municipal oddity in the Bay Area, with just 4,000 people and some of the highest city tax revenues per capita because it has all this industrial and office space and hardly any housing.) However, if it merely incentivized Twitter and other tech companies to move into a specific part of San Francisco over other areas, then the results are more complicated. On the one hand, the tax break would have just subsidized a move inside the city. On the other hand, it might have led to more efficient use of commercial office space across the city without requiring more construction.
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Apple’s ConnectED Program Participation Brings Macs, iPads And More To Underserved Schools | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | Apple’s $100 million commitment to President Obama’s ConnectED program has resulted in Macs, Apple TV, and iPads being introduced to 114 schools, the bulk of which cater to students who qualify for free or discount lunch programs, meaning the investment is overwhelmingly going to school boards that wouldn’t necessarily be able to supply their own Macs or iPads for teachers or students. Apple’s participation covers 114 schools as mentioned, which range across 29 states and 96 percent of the students of which are currently qualified for free or reduced-price lunches. 92 percent of the students at these schools are from “Hispanic, Black, Native America, Alaskan Native or Asian heritage,” according to detailing its contributions to the programs, and each school that Apple is sponsoring also gets a dedicated team of Apple Education support professionals to help make sure the tech they offer is used to its fullest effect. The bulk of the schools Apple is contributing to are elementary institutions, with middle schools and high schools drawing a much smaller portion of the program’s resources. 50 percent of the schools are located in urban centres, while a quarter are located in rural regions, and a full 70 percent of the schools have enrollment of between 250 and 1,000 students. Apple’s program will put an iPad in the hand of each student at these schools, give both an iPad and a Mac to every teacher and admin staff, and put an Apple TV in each classroom. It’s truly a full-coverage approach, and it should mean that these schools, at least from a technological perspective, get to stand on more equal footing with some of their better-funded peers. The tech gap isn’t the only thing causing an education divide in the U.S., but it’s definitely a contributing factor, so this program looks like a promising step in the other direction. Here’s hoping it expands its reach even further in the future. |
Automatic Launches License+, A Coaching Program For Teen Drivers And Their Parents | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | The first few months — or years, really – of being a new driver can be a nerve-wracking experience for teens and, of course, their parents. Young drivers are still developing their skills, and likely to make mistakes not only related to how few road hours they’ve logged, but because – meaning – like gunning it to 70 in a 45. (Sorry, dad.) Connected car technology platform hopes to help these young drivers develop better habits, and is launching a new program today called that offers parents a toolset for encouraging and coaching their teens as they improve their driving skills. The program basically repurposes Automatic’s technology and its accompanying mobile app for a new use case. The company, like competitors , , and others, involves an OBD device that is plugged into a port on your car that communicates with your smartphone to log your trips, monitor engine health, detect crashes, and track your driving in real-time by offering audio alerts for things like speeding, rough braking and more. The idea with this latter feature is that this sort of real-time feedback can make people drive better — similar to the way that the signs displaying your speed as you approach (flashing when you’re going too fast), can get drivers to become aware of their speed and slow down. For adult users of Automatic’s product, the concept is a little bit about transitioning the “quantitative self” movement to the car. That is, helping users monitor their miles driven to complement their own self-analysis in other areas of their life — like using apps that count steps, sleep patterns, diet and more. But for teen drivers, Automatic’s product and its real-time alerts could have a larger impact. While there are already to help parents monitor teen driving today, Automatic’s system — like some of the newer competitors on the market — is less about parents playing “Big Brother” to their kids, and more about helping parents and teens work together to establish a system of trust with regard to driving. License+ is a 100-hour driving program that includes trip logging, plus feedback and recording of driving events like speeding (over 70 mph), hard braking and hard accelerations, all while calculating an overall “driving score” along the way. Parents can monitor these events via a web dashboard. Meanwhile, teens can earn badges as they complete certain tasks and master skills, like driving 10 miles safely at night with your coach (a parent, typically), or going 50 miles with no hard brakes. At the end of the program, teens receive a bronze, silver or gold medal in the app. Obviously the virtual rewards, like badges, can only go so far. But good parents know that such a tool could be used as the basis of a positive reinforcement system. For example, parents could tie the child’s allowance to their driving score, have some special reward tied to each badge, or could reward the child with something larger – like money toward a car of their own – for a successful completion of the program. Teen drivers can also use Automatic’s other features, like those that help you remember where you parked, those that decode the “check engine” messages, and the OnStar-like “crash detection” feature that alerts authorities and family on your behalf in the event of an emergency. And on Android, Automatic can be configured to silence your phone’s alerts while you’re behind the wheel. License+ is launching today on iPhone and Android. Automatic its OBD devices for $99.95, but doesn’t require a subscription. For what it’s worth, the day my kid pulls out of the driveway in my car, I will not look as happy as the mom pictured in the photo above. But hopefully, by then, the car will drive itself. |
Buffer Wants To Raise $3.5M At A $60M Valuation — Here’s The Term Sheet | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | , a social media management company, is raising a $3.5 million Series A round of capital. Most of the money will go to its founders and some early employees. $1 million of the total will be afforded to operations. To date, . Buffer, which has monthly revenue of just under $400,000, is profitable. The company wants to have enough cash in the bank to survive any sort of downward spike it said in its announcement of the funding event. Given , the idea isn’t a bad one. Buffer is a damn weird company. The , along . Its revenue chart can be . It’s a company with all glass walls. I found it confusing enough that I to talk about what the hell they are up to. The company is raising at a $60 million post, or a $56.5 million pre-money valuation. At time of writing, — the other 90 percent is committed, but not wired. The company is soliciting — viva la JOBS Act, in other words — the rest. Presumably the firm could have raised the full amount without the public point, but it instead wanted to do it in this manner. Recall Google’s reverse Dutch for something close to a historical precedent. I spoke to a number of venture capitalists about the deal, and answers varied from saying that it was overpriced, to roughly in line with normal market valuations. There was something close to harmony in saying that the founders taking money off the table was strange. Money sources want to see founders keep as much of their personal net worth tied up in their projects as possible, increasing buy-in. On the other side, being able to right your personal financial ship as an entrepreneur isn’t to be diminished. One venture capitalist that TechCrunch spoke to indicated that Buffer’s annual recurring revenue growth wasn’t up to their expectations for its proposed valuation. Another stated that the valuation was in keeping with current expectations, after a number of caveats were taken into account. The size of the round, and the percentage of it that is secondary were other points of concern — too low and too high, respectively. Presumably, the round will close without delay. The amount of capital that has already been committed implies that — at the same time, the $60 million valuation puts the firm at a nine-figures-or-bust exit point. Who will buy them is a decent question to ask. Buffer: Doing things its own way. We’ll see what happens next.
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Credorax Raises $40 Million To Become A Payment Acquirer For The Internet Age | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | Managing the arcane arts of processing transactions for online purchases is a complicated job. Once a shopper enters the numbers on their card, the expiration date on their credit card, and their zip code, a complicated machinery of transaction processors springs into action representing both buyer, seller, and processing network in a matter of seconds. Until now, most of the infrastructure to support those sales existed in silos, but Credorax, a small startup based outside of Boston in Southborough, Mass. is looking to change that. The company has spent the past six years laying the groundwork to build an integrated, international architecture for online retailers to receive payments, no matter their location. The idea, according to company chief executive Benny Nachman is to give online retailers one service provider for any geography around the world. And has raised nearly $130 million to support that vision. The last round, a $40 million investment including the new backer and previous investor , followed a previous $40 million round raised last August from . Companies like Credorax need so much capital, because they’re trying to compete in massive industries where a number of existing players have already plying their wares. Whenever a credit card purchase is made, there’s an agreement between two financial institutions that sit between a buyer and a seller. The issuing institution that gives the card to the buyer and vouches for them, and the acquiring institution that handles the transaction for the seller. Initially, when credit card networks get rolled out, these acquiring institutions, which basically function as banks, dealt with one country. But with the explosion of online retail, a shopper could be based in the U.S. and making purchases in the UK, or Spain, or China or India. For sellers, managing the process could be a hassle. Since the company’s launch in 2008, Credorax has been working with national governments to comply with all relevant financial regulations, so that retailers can use the company as its acquiring bank no matter where in the world they are. So far, Credorax is in 28 countries including Japan, where the company received its license just this quarter. The next step for Credorax will be to receive its US license, which should be happening before the end of the year, according to Nachman. “The exchange of money, ideas, and services is becoming increasingly international, so countries and geographies become less important,” Nachman says. “I’m a pure play acquirer that deals with e-commerce and mobile commerce.” By contrast, giant competitors like have eight or nine platforms aimed for physical points of sale, and a hodge-podge of legacy systems in different countries around the world. Traditional brick and mortar vendors, or stores that only sell items in one country are not Credorax’s target, according to Nachman. Credorax has 200 employees and offices in Malta, London, Tokyo, Tel Aviv in addition to its offices in Southborough. “The e-commerce market is $1.2 trillion and 30% of this is cross-border,” says Nachman. . |
Facebook Keeps Top Spot For Social Referrals, Twitter Drops Further Behind Pinterest | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | Twitter confounded expectations when it reported healthy revenue and good user growth numbers; now all eyes will be on to see if they repeat the beat. But as the social network continues to build out its business as a platform — as a medium not just for people to Tweet about their annoying commute to work, but as a place for people to discover and click through to other content, things to buy, and share links with other people — sheds light on how it may face another challenge in doing this. Twitter’s share of traffic referrals compared to other social media sites is declining. According to figures from the Boston-based firm, Facebook is currently pulling in just over 22%, or just over one-fifth, of all social-based traffic referrals and has seen its traffic grow by almost 116% in the last year, making it the undisputed traffic referral king. In a firm, but distant, second position is Pinterest, which accounted for 5.5% of all referral traffic last month, rising about 50% in the last year. Twitter, meanwhile, is at an even more distant number three. It is currently at less than one percent (0.88% to be exact) of all social referral traffic, with its share down 25% compared to a year ago. Shareaholic says it bases its numbers on analysis of over 200,000 websites covering 250 million unique monthly visitors. Beyond Twitter, the social referral numbers get even more minor for StumbleUpon, Reddit, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn — the networking site for professionals that has gone to lengths position itself as a place for people to publish and share news. “For most publishers, marketers and site owners, the five remaining social networks are forgettable sources of traffic,” Shareaholic writes. “Collectively, they contributed 0.74% of overall traffic sites received last month, which is less than the number of visits Twitter alone sent.” Turning that predicament around, there is also still a lot of room for movement and growth. Collectively, traffic from the top eight sites drove only 29.49% of overall traffic across the sites that Shareaholic analysed — effectively spreading the remaining 70% across a very long tail of other properties. Last year the top eight generated 16.44% of referral traffic, so some rapid consolidation is clearly underway. Looking at Shareaholic’s data, Twitter’s performance on the one hand is a product of a wider trend. The big get bigger, and the rest will fall as a result. In this case, Facebook is the biggie: Shareaholic’s Danny Wong tells me that in the entire time that the company has been measuring social referral traffic, Facebook has never been in first position, and over time, as Facebook has picked up more users, and has played with its algorithms for surfacing news and introduced video and other formats, it has only grown its percentage. In fact, besides Facebook and Pinterest, the only other social network in the top eight that saw growth over the last year was Google+, up 57%, albeit from a tiny base, 0.07% of all social media referrals. Some that Google has been pushing Google+ in search results ahead of other sites; if that is actually the case, this could be part of the reason why Google+ has grown. On the other hand, Twitter’s decline is a comment on the efforts Twitter has made to highlight its position as a media platform. Despite instances like claiming that Twitter drives more breaking news traffic to the Guardian than other social networks, Shareaholic’s numbers seem to imply that this may be the exception, or the case for a small number of users, rather than the norm. It’s also interesting in the context of Twitter’s latest expansions to more mobile services by way of its Fabric SDK unveiled last week. One other thing worth pointing out in Shareaholic’s figures is how that Pinterest’s impact appears to be similar to Facebook’s and proportionate to its size. Pinterest has not disclosed its most recent user numbers so we cannot compare these with Facebook’s, but figures from comScore note Pinterest had nearly 30 million monthly visitors in September 2014, compared to over 132 million to Facebook. Just as Pinterest has around a quarter of the traffic of the bigger social network, so too does it have around one-quarter of social shares. As a point of comparison, comScore put Twitter’s monthly users at around 36 million for the same month. Taking the progress of just the most recent quarter, where Shareaholic analysed traffic from over 300,000 sites, Google+ was only one of two risers, the other being LinkedIn. Wong notes that almost ubiquitous sequential declines are almost certainly seasonal more than anything else with traffic in general being slower in summer months. Image: |
Twitter Becomes Its Own Second Screen With Dockable Videos That Play While You Browse | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | You could call it Picture-In-Twitter. Last week Twitter launched its , and similar functionality is appearing for video so you can keep watching clips as you browse Twitter on iOS and Android. As demonstrated by a I spotted, the Twitter Player card lets you view a video full-screen or tap to dock it to the bottom of the screen so it continues playing as you surf around the Twitter app. By making video less interruptive, Twitter could encourage views of both user-generated clips and video ads. And one day, dockable video could let you watch and second-screen tweet about the content all from within the Twitter app. launched last week in partnership with SoundCloud and iTunes to let you . This effectively lets you create a soundtrack for your Twitter session, or discover new music while reading other tweets. The docked video functionality is reminiscent of YouTube’s picture-in-picture option for browsing while you watch. I’ve reached out to Twitter for details on the dockable videos. [Update: wrote about an early version of this design in August, but it’s been updated with rounder edges, and a smaller, less obtrusive docked player size.] As a video plays in the dock, a white progress bar denotes how long is left in the clip, and audio keeps playing if you go to compose a tweet. The video card isn’t quite as graceful as the audio card, as you’re certainly not getting the full experience from a tiny, thumbnail-sized video player in the corner of the screen. The dockable video player is still useful, though. The bigger opportunity might be in long-form video. Imagine following along with a docked video of a sports match or awards show as you read and post tweets about the event. Twitter’s long been seen as a companion to TV. But by ditching the television set and subsuming its video content, Twitter could be the only screen you need to step up to the global watercooler. |
If We Build IoT, They Will Come. Right? | Jim Hunter | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | It looks like this IoT trend is starting to catch on with the developer community. At least, that’s a conclusion one could draw from the reported results of a new . Of the 1,400 developers who participated in this survey, 40 percent said they were either working on applications for connected devices for the (IoT) now or expect to begin work on applications within the next six months. Google’s of Nest for $3.2 billion was a seminal moment for IoT. This event both validated the market and placed significant attention on IoT. Subsequent acquisitions of Dropcam ( ), Axeda (by PTC), and SmartThings ( ) continue to showcase the growing appeal of IoT. While we should be elated because Greenwave Systems fits squarely in the IoT space, we worry about the premature over-hyping of the promise of IoT. We’re still in the early stages, and our industry has not had remotely enough collaboration to create a common open ecosystem that can integrate: 1) disparate devices and carrier networks; 2) communication protocols (including RFID, ZigBee, IEEE 802.15, 6LoWPAN, to name a few) and; 3) the pending volume of IoT applications developers tell us we will be on the market in the relatively near term. All of this means that a flood of IoT applications will be coming online soon. While developers clearly have a rapidly accelerating interest in IoT, this does not guarantee the same enthusiasm from prospective consumers. There are some key challenges developers must consider with respect to gaining consumer confidence in a soon-to-be saturated market. We’ve identified what we think are three key considerations to achieve consumer confidence in the IoT industry. While “there’s an app for that” seems like a great operating principle, imagine what it means when “there’s an app for that” each specific IoT “thing” is made by different companies. You can also look at it this way: What if to dial each person in your phone’s contact list you had to download and launch a different app? To call John, you had to find and launch the “John” app, and to call Mary, you had to find and launch the “Mary” app. Both apps have similar processes and outcomes, but require extra effort because you are forced to think “John” and “Mary” instead of “contact list.” Thankfully, most phone software comes with an integrated contact list, so that users get the best experience whether they’re dialing John or Mary — or anybody else in the book. Developers can avoid this by considering the user experience. In a connected home, if consumers want to control lights, they most likely do not care about who made the light or how it communicates. They just want a simple and quick way to control their lights. The app maker can accomplish this through collaboration with cooperative vendors, some of whom have APIs to make the task less cumbersome. By implementing an API, IoT vendors can make their own products available to other developers. The result is better apps that do more for the consumer — without getting in the way of the consumer experience. For example, what if a home security camera were exposed to other smart home applications, such as lighting, motion sensors and thermostats? You could very easily create a personalized “coming home” experience that turns on your porch lights, adjusts your thermostats, and disarms your security systems upon verified approach. Samsung and Apple are already onto the utility of such a connected user experience, addressing it via their respective Device Control and Apple HomeKit announcements. One way to make sure your app and thing are interoperable is to use an industry standard language. While not all associations are proposing standards, many seek to improve the experience through collaboration: There are several more organizations in various stages of launch, growth, etc. The sheer number of consortia, standards bodies and meetups, as well as the support behind them is another indicator of a receptive market — although it’s very likely that over time, the number of IoT-related consortia will merge and shrink. Alternatively, there are more resources than ever before to help developers with creating their own APIs if that is their chosen path. Services such as Intel’s Mashery and Layer 7 help developers document, publish, and manage their own APIs, and make it easier for other developers to implement those APIs. Regardless of how powerful an IoT app is with regard to its depth and breadth, it is dangerous for app developers to harbor the misconception that controlling or programming things is fun — at least not for the majority of prospective consumers. Very few of us enjoy these tasks of scheduling lights to come on when someone enters a room or programming electrical devices to use less energy when no one is home. When we are in front of a screen, most of us would rather be watching sports, binging on our favorite TV series, or communicating with our friends through social media. Interacting with an IoT task should have as little friction for a consumer as possible. Standard interactions reduce that friction. In the same way that standards are used to streamline communications, standard interactions can streamline the customer experience. Any time a task can be accomplished without requiring the consumer to learn something entirely new, we remove another barrier to adoption. Through all of this it’s essential to center development on the user experience. Consider how you interact today with the people in your life, how you track the tasks in your life, and how other people interact with you. Now apply that thinking to devices. There are existing technologies most people use to schedule time and date-based tasks. Your prospective IoT consumers already understand how to manipulate a calendar app. Why not leverage the iCal calendar API to do the same with your things? If a standard were in place so that users could schedule their “things” in iCal, you could remove the barrier of teaching users a new language for scheduling. Logically, we can expand that thinking to remove other obstacles by looking at the apps and standards used for communicating with others using chat, images, email and voice. Why not leverage those common interaction methods in our IoT “conversations”? Whether it’s real-time medical monitoring of the elderly living at home or creating greater energy efficiency across entire “Smart Cities,” it’s pretty clear that IoT represents a huge market opportunity to provide amazing benefits to consumers and enterprises alike. While predictions on the timing of market uptake vary, the numbers are staggering across the board. Gartner by 2020, there will be 26 billion connected devices with IoT revenue of over $300 billion and $1.9 trillion in total economic impact from cost savings, improved productivity and other factors. IDC estimates there will be 15 billion smart connected devices by the end of next year. Cisco a $14.4 trillion impact on “Internet of Everything”-related products and services. It’s no wonder the developer community is jumping into the fray. What we now must do is harness all that energy and enthusiasm and focus it on reducing overall user friction and leveraging standards. To achieve IoT’s massive potential and gain the consumer market adoption required to meet the projected revenue targets, we all need to walk thoughtfully toward the right goals. Rather than tripping over each other’s feet in a crowded and directionless race to get the most short-term business, we must work together to create a connected ecosystem where devices and carriers interoperate, presenting one voice of IoT to consumers around the globe. So, you now know what think. What do you see as the “must haves” to ensure the IoT market delivers on its promise? |
How Tech Can Foster Financial Capability For The Underbanked | Mattias Kraemer | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | In 2014, the financial services industry is looking to technology as a vital link between financial capability and under-resourced communities. Investments in these technologies are imperative to alleviate economic disparity and create better, safer options for the underbanked. Bridging the fiscal divide is a challenge we all share. The truth is that the fundamentals of family economic success are simply not taught as core components of our public or private education systems at any level. Until the recent creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2011, there was no single mandated federal government agency responsible for protecting, much less nurturing, family and consumer livelihoods. Innovation means asking the question of how we use technology and available resources to bring to scale and make accessible the impact of financial health and coaching into our everyday lives. The good news is that tech companies and social justice movers alike are recognizing that the keys to financial empowerment are already in people’s hands, via their smartphones. Smartphones often serve as the sole computing device for low- and moderate-income individuals and families. A recent neighborhood survey conducted by the nonprofit Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) in San Francisco’s Mission District showed that, while 74 percent of homes had access to the Internet — in the heart of tech savvy SF — 95 percent of homes did have access to smartphones. So, how can technology take advantage of this opportunity to replicate the intimacy and immediacy of a one-on-one financial coaching session, complete with next steps, goal-oriented encouragement, cultural competency and real-time technical support and proficiency? MEDAPulse, a multilingual communication app and winner of the recent ’s national hackathon competition, is a step in the right direction, along with the runners up in the competition. There was much interest in developing financial apps for the underbanked: regional hackathons took place in Chicago, New York and San Francisco throughout the summer, drawing in over 110 participants. Regional winners then presented their ideas virtually to a panel of judges at a site hosted by Bloomberg LP in New York. Here is the breakdown of the apps developed by the final three nonprofits and tech teams at the hackathon: Developed MEDAPulse, a web application that is built in Rails, AJAX and hosted on Ninefold. The application creates visual action plans and enables coaches to send texts to clients to remind them to complete steps (to further their goals). Clients can now receive high-impact, low-touch financial feedback and next steps no matter where they are in the palm of their hands, demystifying the financial system through real-life goals and daily practice. Metas.org is an online platform that uses a badging system to help clients stay engaged with financial counseling services and achieve long-term financial goals. Through the completion of modules, based on the Financial Empowerment Center counseling model, participants complete quests and earn badges to compete for recognition and prizes. Developed an app that facilitates credit building and improves communication between clients and their counselors. These apps are powerful communication tools for financial coaches to track the progress of their clients’ fiscal action plans by incorporating such features as sending automated, personalized, reminders to help keep clients on financial track. The two-way functionality allows both coaches and clients to ask questions and provide feedback immediately, driving individual client goals towards completion without sacrificing quality and situational complexity. Frequency and content of apps are amendable and defined by coaches and clients during standard, in-person sessions, expanding the versatility and sustainability of the live coaching experience through interactive, mobile engagement. Tech is poised to help the underbanked. There is no better time than the present. |
SoundCloud Posted A $29M Loss In 2013 On Revenues Of $14M | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | , the popular online music and audio sharing platform, is now exceeding 175 million listeners each month and is on track to reach 200 million. But its rapid growth has seen the company’s costs run away from its revenues. According to recent annual filings for 2013, Soundcloud posted turnover of €11.2 million ($14.1 million) in 2013, up 40% from 2012’s revenues of €8 million. But its operating loss in the period more than doubled, to €23.1 million ($29.2 million) in 2013 from €12.4 million in 2012. “We are in a phase of growing SoundCloud into the market-leading platform for listening to, creating and sharing sound,” the company notes in the filing. “This has necessitated investment in technology, headcount and marketing. Our overhead base has increased faster than our revenues.” The company ended 2013 with 224 employees across Berlin, London, San Francisco and Sofia in Bulgaria — the Bulgaria part of the company coming by way of an acquisition of a startup called back in 2012 for . (The acquisition, little reported at the time, is also noted in this annual report. SoundCloud points out that it made no acquisitions in 2013.) The annual report was disclosed in recent filings with Companies House in the UK, where SoundCloud is registered. They were first spotted by Swedish publication (in Swedish and behind a paywall). Sweden has been a very important center for the digital music industry. It’s home to Spotify, and while SoundCloud based itself in Berlin from 2007, it was originally started in Stockholm, Sweden by Alex Ljung and Eric Wahlforss. To date, SoundCloud has disclosed a total of $123.3 million in funding. That includes a Series D round from earlier this year of from Institutional Venture Partners and the Chernin Group. In July 2014, it also picked up an undisclosed amount in from the (we’ve contacted them to try to get more details). The Series D round of funding valued SoundCloud at $700 million. SoundCloud also notes in the report that at the end of 2013 it had €46 million in cash at bank and in hand, before deducting €9.4 million in amounts falling due within the next near. As DI points out, if SoundCloud continues growing at its current rate or faster, this will mean that it will have to raise more funding very soon. That math also underscores the push the company is making to monetise by way of advertising, premium services and deals with labels. In of this year, the company launched an ad platform and began to sharpen its strategy for premium, paid subscriptions. The idea there, it seems was twofold. First, to team up with big brands, and so far some of these have included the likes of Red Bull, Jaguar and Comedy Central. Second, to tie up with record labels, for ads to run alongside music from artists signed to those labels. However, the FT earlier this week that SoundCloud’s negotiations with major record labels have stalled. Universal, Sony and Warner are all holding out for better terms, the report said, without going into details of what the unsatisfying terms offer each party. Deals with labels have been complex because they are about more than about advertising alongside content hosted and consumed on SoundCloud. There is also the issue of paying out royalties for licensed music that gets listened to on SoundCloud. Music is uploaded to the platform not just by artists but by consumers. The FT notes that SoundCloud users today are uploading about 12 hours of audio every minute — a true realisation of the original “YouTube for audio” ambition that Ljung and Wahlforss had when first conceiving of SoundCloud. The annual report makes note of SoundCloud’s priority to be a legit platform as it grows: “We go to great lengths to protect against the use of our platform for the distribution of unauthorised or unlawful material,” the directors write. Nevertheless, as with so many other digital music services, the issue of copyright has been swirling around SoundCloud for a while. We had heard that it was one of the reasons that M&A talks with Twitter earlier this year. Meanwhile, some artists have been about how SoundCloud’s cooperation with labels around copyright and royalties has not necessarily been to the benefit of artists or fans. The company also points out the pitfalls of the highly competitive environment for digital music services today — another hurdle “Typical internet users use about four to five different music and audio services during a month. The market is heavily contested by strong incumbents such as YouTube, Apple and Amazon as well as new more focused players. While the group does not expect the market to be a winner takes all opportunity, there are economies of scale and technology developments that need to be monitored closely.” |
8 Things About Hardware Crowdfunding We Learned From 20 Campaigns | Cyril Ebersweiler | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | So far HAX startups have run , making us the . As active participants and keen observers, we identified a few ideas that could help creators, backers, media and investors. Will the world beat a path to your door with a new smartwatch, 3D printer or drone? Unless you have something much better or very different, it will likely be at the cost of your margins. Out of the , the jury is still out there for how many will ship, how many will turn a profit and how many will become full-fledged small or large companies. Some products like “ ” can be successful servicing a small customer segment but are hardly startup material. Bad planning leads to bad surprises. Among the most successful projects, a good number , often thanks to high-profile founders or strong technology. While it helps polish a campaign, this is no guarantee products will ship on time or at all. Creators experienced with manufacturing, or finding qualified support are essential to avoid . As of September 2014, only 37 projects worldwide in the Technology and Design categories have reached the elusive $1 million mark on Kickstarter (less than 1 percent). Even $100k is not a walk in the park with a mere 13 percent. Everyone should know by now, but it seems many still don’t realize that media and backers rarely stumble on your project the day you click “publish.” For many successful projects, the campaign started weeks before launch. Once the campaign is live, there is much work to do to gather more backers. Quality updates can lead them to increase their pledges and attract more backers. ), an MIT PhD and “ ” who crowdfunded two projects worth hundreds of thousands of dollars ( and , an open source laptop) warns us: “Stretch goals are important but pitch a complete product. Core features in stretch goals might turn off backers. Plan your pledges and find the right service providers to avoid spending time on interactions for small pledges. I had “Buy me a Beer” for $5.” Only if creators figure out manufacturing! Many have zero experience. Spending just a few days in China for “parachute manufacturing” often fails. Yet, China is the and there is effectively a “cost of not being in China”: better plan for scale than shift plans later on. Shenzhen is also a great base for fast iterative prototyping. Beyond manufacturing, some projects might simply be unrealistic, ship products that are late or compromised, or be downright scams. We call those NAIVEware, LATEware, LAMEware, SCAMware. Yes, even smartwatches as who lost the to a shady OEM partner and shipped, late, sub-standard products. A rare case combining NAIVEware, LATEware and LAMEware. Evgeny Lazarenko, doctor of engineering and hardware startup guy, warns us: “Backers should research the backgrounds of creators and their teams. Do creators fully comprehend what they signed up for? There’s a stark difference between industry veterans and fresh grads, the latter being almost genetically incapable of due diligence.” While the economics of probably work out, it stays . The intention of crowdfunding platforms is to bring ideas to life, but some “creators” found that doing just the marketing on a product already developed by a third party could work too, such as those . When taking a walk in trade shows in China, we often either recognize products, or end up thinking “this could totally be crowdfunded.” Will you recognize from the former-crowdfunding-turned-pre-order Chinese site Demohour? We bought it for $15 in Shenzhen a month ago. Backers are mostly “Innovators” and “early adopters” (some have misplaced expectations since and the make it clear). Can your product cross the chasm and achieve mass-market appeal? Do you have bigger plans? Are there barriers of entry? Otherwise success can mean being copied faster than you can spell “EASYware.” The smartphone button Pressy, which , is now a famous case – the latest development is the to drive people to its mobile services. This is effectively a new business model on top of a copycat product. Pure hardware is hard to protect: take it apart and it can often be reverse-engineered. These days, beyond designs and patents there is “defensible IP” in software, algorithms, or a community that a crowdfunding campaign can help you build! general partner at who wrote of on crowdfunding data, says: “Backers are buying a product. Investors are buying a vision. Some products may generate tons of demand (like the Coolest Cooler) but may not be great venture investments.” , founder of the IoT “Wi-Fi for everything” company , which raised over and , adds: “Most companies that launch a crowdfunding campaign don’t have a plan to go from a single product to a huge empire, and that keeps them from being VC investable startups.” Just like a successful campaign can be a “false positive” for startup potential, failing a campaign can be a “false negative” and does not mean there is no hope there. Some companies rise again in spectacular “Phoenix Campaigns”. The . It became the largest project on Kickstarter in August 2014 by . According to its creator, its successful rebound might come from an (summer is better than winter for coolers) and overall better preparation. Spark, mentioned above, repositioned both the problem it was working on and the solution: after joining HAX . Failing a first campaign has some advantages as it builds a list of backers and media you can reactivate for your second attempt. Yet, there are often multiple reasons why a campaign fails and figuring those out can be difficult. As it evolves, much is yet to be discovered about crowdfunding. Setting the right expectations and anticipating common problems can help all stakeholders (creators, backers, media and investors) reach their respective goals, and bring more ideas to life!
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Edward Snowden’s Privacy Tips: “Get Rid Of Dropbox,” Avoid Facebook And Google | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | According to Edward Snowden, people who care about their privacy should stay away from popular consumer Internet services like Dropbox, Facebook, and Google. Snowden conducted a remote interview today , where he was asked a couple of variants on the question of what we can do to protect our privacy. His first answer called for a reform of government policies. Some people take the position that they “don’t have anything to hide,” but he argued that when you say that, “You’re inverting the model of responsibility for how rights work”: When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights. He added that on an individual level, people should seek out encrypted tools and stop using services that are “hostile to privacy.” For one thing, he said you should “get rid of Dropbox,” because it doesn’t support encryption, and you should consider alternatives like . ( over the summer, with Dropbox responding that protecting users’ information is “a top priority.”) [ : In related to Snowden, Dropbox actually says, “All files sent and retrieved from Dropbox are encrypted while traveling between you and our servers,” as well as when they’re “at rest on our servers,” and it points to other security measures that the company is taking. The difference between Dropbox and SpiderOak, , is that SpiderOak encrypts the data while it’s on your computer, as opposed to only encrypting it “in transit” and on the company’s servers.] [And here’s a more complete Snowden quote, from around 1:04:55 in the video: “We’re talking about encryption. We’re talking about dropping programs that are hostile to privacy. For example, Dropbox? Get rid of Dropbox, it doesn’t support encryption, it doesn’t protect your private files. And use competitors like SpiderOak, that do the same exact service but they protect the content of what you’re sharing.”] He also suggested that while Facebook and Google have improved their security, they remain “dangerous services” that people should avoid. (Somewhat amusingly, anyone watching the interview via Google Hangout or YouTube saw a Google logo above Snowden’s face as he said this.) His final piece of advice on this front: Don’t send unencrypted text messages, but instead use services like and . Earlier in the interview, Snowden dismissed claims that . Even with that encryption, he said law enforcement officials can still ask for warrants that will give them complete access to a suspect’s phone, which will include the key to the encrypted data. Plus, companies like Apple, AT&T, and Verizon can be subpoenaed for their data. Beyond the privacy discussion, Snowden talked about how and why he decided to leak documents bringing the government’s electronic surveillance programs to light. He repeatedly claimed that he wasn’t pursuing a specific policy outcome, but just trying to have an open conversation about these issues: We can have secret programs. You know, the American people don’t have to know the name of every individual that’s under investigation. We don’t need to know the technical details of absolutely every program in the intelligence community. But we do have to know the bare and broad outlines of the powers our government is claiming … and how they affect us and how they affect our relationships overseas. Because if we don’t, we are no longer citizens, we no longer have leaders. We’re subjects, and we have rulers. As for why Snowden hasn’t come back to the United States to stand trial, he said that when he looked at how the U.S. government treated whistleblowers like and , he became convinced that he wouldn’t be able to present his case to a jury in an open trial. “I’ve told the government again and again in negotiations, you know, that if they’re prepared to offer an open trial, a fair trial in the same way that got, and I’m allowed to make my case to the jury, I would love to do so,” he said. “But to this point they’ve declined.” Snowden acknowledged that there’s some irony in his taking shelter in China and Russia, countries that don’t exactly have spotless human rights or privacy records themselves. He said Russia was supposed to be a transit point on his way to Latin America — but his passport was canceled while he was at the Moscow airport. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer ended the interview on a light note, suggesting that Snowden was now free to enjoy some vodka. He replied, “I actually don’t drink alcohol. Little-known fact: I’ve never been drunk.” Here’s a full video of the interview. The discussion of privacy and consumer Internet services (which, again, consisted of two questions in a row) begins at around 58:30. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fidq3jow8bc&w=560&h=315] |
Netflix Raises The Price For Those Who Want Ultra HD Video | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | Are you thinking about buying a TV that can handle the absurdly high-def resolution that is 4K? The good news: Netflix is slowly but surely getting more 4K videos! They’ve got Breaking Bad in 4K! House of Cards in 4K! And…er… The Smurfs! The not-so-good news: if you want 4K content, you’re going to have to cough up some more cash for your subscription. Here’s how it works, according to who first noticed the price hike: “But wait!” you say. “I have a 4K tv and I’ve never even seen the for 4K content on Netflix!” Even if you have a 4K tv, it . Ultra-early adopters got a bit screwed, there. To oversimplify the whole thing: getting 4K tv content, even through Netflix, is still a bit limited/wonky right now. If you’re not already in the market for a TV upgrade, there’s to rush out and get a 4K tv right now — you’d just be paying a premium (on both the TV and the subscription cost) for something you’ll hardly use right now. Wait a while. |
Navigating The Entrepreneur’s Path | Tim Chen | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | The mystique around starting your own business is thick. The romanticized view of founders slaving away in garages ready to unleash their “great idea” upon an adoring public and fawning investors is the stuff of American dreams. The reality is businesses are often born in desperation, fueled by loneliness and doubt. The distance between starting your own firm in your bedroom and hiring your first employees is a long stretch filled with empty Dominoes boxes, dwindling bank accounts and unreturned calls. But the myth is right when it comes to job satisfaction – once you earn your first dollar under your own steam, you can’t imagine working for anyone else again. I doubt I would have started my own business had I not been let go as a hedge fund manager at the height of the financial crisis in December 2008. I will be forever grateful I was fired. But I sure didn’t feel that way at the time. A confluence of three things germinated the idea that would become NerdWallet: My sister asked for help to find a credit card; my experience doing public market investing research for hedge funds; and the time on my hands while I was looking for another job. Dissatisfied with the online credit card comparison sites out there, I thought maybe I could do it better. A side project while looking for a job is now a profitable, bootstrapped startup with 100-plus employees. But our success was far from assured the first few years. There are many rough patches on the long march toward profitability. Fair-weather friends flee. Some of my finance friends started to become harder to reach as my career looked like it had permanently nose-dived. Whereas failure is celebrated in Silicon Valley, on Wall Street it makes you a pariah. Friends on the Street I used to dine and drink with stopped returning phone calls and emails, as if my career setback was contagious. Fire and brimstone was falling from the skies in those days, crashing through markets and sinking margins. I suppose connection with me carried too strong a whiff of sulfur for those still clinging to their jobs. It sucked. And it’s telling that the first person to join me in my new venture was Jake Gibson, my best friend from my boyhood days in Atlanta, who came on board 18 months after I started the company. In short, you find out fast who your real friends are. Money falls fast, too. My first year running my business, I earned $75. I was able to pick up some consulting work for hedge funds to help make ends meet. I ended up going on my girlfriend’s health insurance policy to save cash. For bootstrapped entrepreneurs, this period of austerity is like growing up during a World War, where rations are strict and you count every dollar. Even though I had quite a bit of savings, it’s very psychologically difficult watching your bank account go down every month with no prospects of a paycheck. Your diet degrades. Spending so much time alone with laser-like focus on your company is hard on your stomach and waistline. I ate Subway or Domino’s extensively, or forgot to eat, as I optimized for cost and convenience. Eating became a distraction, a growling stomach an annoyance. I ate the same thing — a half-foot Black Forest Ham on Italian bread with provolone cheese – and became so automated I could order without losing my train of thought. You lose verbal skills. Working 16 to 20 hours a day alone from home kills your ability to communicate – or relate – to another human being. When I forced myself to get out of my head and go to a party, I found I couldn’t hear – or often care about – what others were saying. If I opened my mouth, a stream of consciousness about what I was working on that day would burst out. You’re like a mountain hermit coming down from the hills. It’s hard to relate to city folk. I’m glad I didn’t know then what I know now; the learning curve is so steep when starting a business. But being naïve can pay off; you explore opportunities others ignore because you don’t know any better. And I doubt I would have done this if I had a wife, kids and a mortgage to pay. It pays to be single and clueless. Work is so all-consuming, I would have had to have an extraordinarily understanding partner or a good divorce attorney. The financial responsibility of people who depend upon you would inevitably lead to seeking a quick payoff rather than digging in for long-term rewards. Luck is as important as smarts. Hard work goes without saying, but luck is elemental – and something you can’t control. About two years after starting NerdWallet, I was given an opportunity to end my exile from the hedge fund world. I was offered a fund manager position with $75 million in seed capital. As luck would have it, the offer came at the same time that NerdWallet turned a financial corner — our profits quadrupled in a single month. Had that job offer come a month earlier, I might have taken it. But after two years foraging through the entrepreneurial wilderness to finally find a clear path toward profitability, there was no looking back. |
Ron Conway’s Advice For Young Founders At YC’s Startup School | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | The first panel of today’s event at the Flint Center for the Performance Arts had Paul Graham interviewing SV Angel’s Ron Conway. Given the audience — which based on some chatting before the event, consisted of many Stanford students and high schoolers in the South Bay Area — Graham’s line of question primarily had to do with the traits and skills needed to be a successful founder. Conway began by stating that a good entrepreneur has to “have a huge work ethic, be ambitious, aggressive, tough.” He also said that being an entrepreneur is a vocation: “You can’t learn to be ambitious and driven.” But then he took a turn for the serious, warning the enthusiastic crowd that “you have to be willing to work 24/7.” He then went a step further, solemnly claiming, “Dating someone or married: warn them that they’re not first in line, that you have this vocation, that your duty is to your company. It has to be that fanatical.” Before completely scaring everyone in the room off from their dreams, he pulled back to a more jovial tone: “Once you’re willing to make that commitment, you have that work ethic checked off.” The audience half-laughed. Breaking from the subject, Graham asked what advice Conway had for young founders. “The first thing you’ve got to do, your idea has to be infectious enough to find a co-founder,” Conway began. He then spent some time talking about SV Angel’s philosophy that people matter more than ideas. “If one founder is always stopping or interrupting their partner, that sounds a warning bell. They’re probably not going to get along forever. They’re probably already bickering about who should be CEO, and it doesn’t even matter at that point.” When Graham asked what kind of people SV Angel is looking to invest in, Conway said that background isn’t the motivating factor: it’s the circumstances that led to the startup’s creation. “The question I always ask is: What inspired you to start this company? Whether or not they’re in college doesn’t really matter for me because there are founders that didn’t go to college, there are some who had some college, and there are people like Larry and Sergey who went all the way through. When that compelling idea comes into your head, that “aha” moment, that if you’re not in school, in school, you stop what you’re doing and start on that idea.And usually that idea is based on some personal experience. All the biggest companies are based on a founder who had a need, hacked it together, and said, “hey, other people might want this.” Rounding out the interview, Graham asked what mistakes Conway frequently sees from young founders. The biggest issue he pointed out was not recognizing and adapting to a product not finding a market. “It would be lying to yourself after you’ve prototyped the product, it’s hit the marketplace, it’s not getting traction, is not admitting that it’s not working, to not take a step back and ask what isn’t working. Your product is getting traction or it’s not.” He also said that younger founders are gun-shy on laying off workers when it’s time to pivot: “It’s counter-intuitive, but when you lay off dead wood, morale explodes.” |
11 TechCrunch Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week | Anna Escher | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | Here are the top TechCrunch articles from the past week (10/4-10/10). 1. Tesla unveiled its latest in a series of 3 models based on the company’s Model S: the 60D, 85D, and highest-end P85D. The stunning all-wheel drive car . We also gave you rundown of how the company got to where it is now, with 2. After 6 years of operation, in its home turf of San Francisco. The city’s board of supervisors voted to legalize and regulate short-term stays with a legislation process headed by David Chiu. The ruling comes in the midst of one of the city’s most dire housing crises and in one of the startup’s hottest markets. Ron Miller pointed out some of the , and why they remain important in the industry landscape. . She just wishes the conversation were more interesting. 3. Hacked screenshots show that . All Facebook has to do is turn on the feature. A payments feature would compete with apps like Venmo, PayPal, and Square Cash. Facebook hiring the former president of PayPal is now starting to make a ton of sense. In other Facebook news, is now available to businesses on Facebook, and the social networking giant finally . There was also some chatter about a . Josh Constine clarified that . We’ll find out what it is soon. 4. At the Grace Hopper Celebration for women in tech, after a poorly-worded response to the question of how women should ask for a raise. The Microsoft CEO stated that not asking for a raise can be a good thing, chalking fairness in salary compensation up to “good karma.” Nadella has since tried to clarify his response via Twitter and company-wide memo. 5. Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur and VC at Upfront Ventures, . He explains that LA is the third largest tech ecosystem in the US, and the tech world should prepare itself to see big things from the emerging markets down in SoCal. On the other side of the country, . 6. Christian Cantrell and how it is similar to dark matter. Despite all we think we know about the nature of the universe, the overwhelming majority of the cosmos lies outside our current powers of observation, yet it profoundly affects everything. The same goes with the forces that influence innovation. 7. . Are the ? 8. There was some interesting data released about Europe’s “right to be forgotten” court ruling. Although the RTBF ruling has drawn the loudest and angriest criticism from search engines, free speech advocates, and the press, . 9. Guest columnist Sam Stubblefield . Because architects are designing buildings with their eyes not with their ears, there is a huge missed opportunity. Sound is amazingly powerful, and we should harness it in building design. 10. Kyle Russell attended the Vanity Fair Summit, and he had the chance to see Jony Ive give his much-anticipated panel, “Genius by Design.” . “When you’re doing something for the first time, you don’t know it’s gonna work, you spend 7 or 8 years working on something, and then it’s copied. I think it is really straightforward. It is theft and it is lazy. I don’t think it is ok at all.” 11. A database of some 200,000 Snapchat photos were leaked after a third-party app used to save people’s otherwise-disappearing pictures got hacked. . Dubbed the “Snappening,” this is and trying to distance themselves from fault. On the Kickstarter front, we introduced you to Nope. At a time when privacy tech is all the rage, it seems like everything that is connected can be hacked. . Charles Moldow argued that . This will happen across lending (consumer, real estate, SMB, purchase finance), payments, insurance, equity and beyond. In other news, there was a , (although ), and . What other stories did enjoy this past week? |
Gillmor Gang: Back to Mono | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — go forward into the past with the Firesign Theatre’s David Ossman. The occasion: Doc Searls’ exploration of the state of on our cars’ digital dashboard. The transformed the world of comedy records and, along the way, predicted/invented a vision of the future we’re now experiencing as fact. @stevegillmor, @dsearls, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
The Answer Engine: How Humans Can Provide Better Knowledge Than Algorithms | Michał Borkowski | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | When you have a question you need answered, do you ask a friend or a robot? The answer to that question used to be easy. But the rise of Siri, Yahoo and Google has ushered in an era in which we turn not to experts but to search engines for answers. By failing to solicit human responses in the pursuit of information, I believe we are making a big mistake – in relying excessively on this single source, we open ourselves up to a data blind spot. When the first hand-curated directories of the early web’s few sites added query forms, becoming search engines, they expected users to enter boolean search strings, just like their computer scientist inventors. But the fact that many of us write , not fact-focused strings, into search boxes is a dead giveaway. Humans want to use natural language when they solicit help. “How tall is President Obama?” Through algorithm updates like “ ,” Google has evolved to recognize such questions and, increasingly, to answer them itself. However, for an algorithm to answer questions like these it must first have access to plentiful underlying data, structured in a way that it can be queried. This is not the case for the vast majority of search engines and won’t be for some time if ever. Ultimately, meaning most humanized question queries will lead users to static web pages. Now is the time to bring humans back into the web. At a time when the new Internet of Things trend stands to bring many more machines on to the network, we should realize the valuable role we, as operators, can play in our own creation, asking each other for information and supplying it in the spirit of cooperation. The problem with robotic search engines is twofold. First, search result signposts have inaccurate understanding of timeliness. The algorithms’ trainers have worked hard to focus their attention on fresher web pages. This can down-weight “stale” information, but it can also falsely present very recent results simply on the basis of freshness, overlooking a five-year-old web page that was more relevant. Second is the depth issue. When I first started using the Internet in the 1990s, I participated in many special-interest forums. It was great to find like-minded users with deep knowledge in niche areas, seeking help and offering support by supplying detailed responses. Sadly, this seems to be a lost era. Today, search engines and networks operate on a web-wide basis, with little understanding of niche knowledge to match the expertise of specialist practitioners. When you aggregate people, not just web pages, you unleash something wonderful. You allow them to be each other’s search engines and open up deep specialist knowledge and community spirit. Creating these conditions on today’s web can be tricky. I think many people ask questions of Google, privately, because they are embarrassed to display their lack of knowledge by posing a question on a web they know is all too public. Fortunately, several services are overcoming this factor. Yahoo Answers may have earned a poor reputation for the quality of some of its community’s responses. But creating an environment in which no questioner or answerer is discouraged is vital to creating a web in which human peers take on the task of information delivery. Allowing even the simplest question to be posted in a positive environment is what Yahoo has cracked, creating a mechanism that makes users comfortable with their own contributions. The stats don’t lie – Yahoo Answers’ traffic keeps growing, currently at more than Quora, a question-and-answer site, has cracked the nut even harder with resident experts and clearly defined guidelines for contributors. Its growth reflects its popularity. In April 2014 it and is valued at nearly $900 million. Traffic to the site in February 2014 neared solely from the U.S. Quora’s global success can be attributed to several factors, but much of its focus is on our culture’s insatiable desire for the truth. What’s crucial for creating people-powered human answer engines is the community of users. In Brainly’s user base for example, we know that everybody, no matter what their age, has skill and knowledge that can be shared. This is the substance of crowd learning. The need for truth and being part of a learning community is growing, as we’re reconnecting with people, albeit through technology to reach this goal. It’s refreshing to know that in this seemingly open-ended world of search engines, algorithms and unregulated forums, Q&A platforms with reliable and knowledgeable contributors still have a very large part to play. |
Apple Pay And Digital Currency Mean Time Is Running Out For Physical Cash | Ilya Subkhankulov | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | Since the advent of electronic payments, there has been a clear shift away from cash and checks. Credit and debit cards, and more recently prepaid debit cards, have been a staple of many consumers’ daily lives. With the announcement of Apple Pay, Apple is betting that consumers want an even more convenient way to pay in person. Many in the payment space have attempted to make this evolutionary leap, but it seems that with Apple’s dominance of the easy-to-use mobile device market, it is uniquely positioned to become successful. There are existing examples of similar, successful implementations, with consumers in South Korea and Japan having long used mobile phones at the point of sale. Glenbrook Partners, a payments strategy and consulting firm, believes that consumer adoption of new payment mechanisms comes down to two things: significant increases in convenience and/or perceived financial gains. Apple Pay has internalized these two main drivers of consumer adoption and will likely be successful given its relationships with major card networks and banks. Similarly , once past the learning curve, has significant conveniences over other payment methods and as the software evolves, will become more so. However, the financial benefits have not yet materialized. Another parallel between Apple Pay and bitcoin is security. Apple Pay employs tokenization of information across the network and so is one of the most secure ways to pay in person, along with cash. Apple Pay is well-positioned to make mobile payments pervasive with 220,000 merchants already signed up, an estimated 5 to 10 percent of the millions of merchant locations in the U.S. It’s important to note, though, that Apple Pay has a dozen partner banks representing 83 percent of credit card spending in the U.S. but makes no mention of debit cards, which are issued by 14,000 merchants. As Generation Y is considered the debit card generation, hopefully Apple can cover that market, as well. How does bitcoin benefit? Bitcoin depends on only one network — the Internet. Consumers are required to use mobile devices to initiate payment. Apple will shift consumer behavior to their devices and will make security a major consideration when consumers choose payment methods, especially after the recent parade of cyber intrusions of banks and merchants. Bitcoin, as a payment network, is unmatched in its global design, affordability and security. Apple Pay is helping to lead the charge, and as bitcoin matures it will benefit from it. Rather than being a threat to bitcoin, as some commentators have rhetorically , Apple Pay should provide digital currency with a boost — it could be the killer app that digital currency has been waiting for. With digital currency, there’s nothing to jangle in your pockets and weigh you down as you walk. You can’t lose digital currency down the back of the couch. There’s no paperwork required and it supports online payments. Other advantages that digital currency has over physical, which may not be so obvious to the casual observer, are the lower transaction fees and the lack of a central issuer – so the user doesn’t have to put their faith in a banking system that may have let them down in the past. According to a by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, cash is still king when it comes to retail payments under $25 in the United States. The report states that the fact that debit cards tend to be used frequently for person-to-person transfers and several other categories of expenditure such as gifts, food, transportation and entertainment indicates that cash usage likely is not the result of a lack of access to alternative payment options. The average transaction size for many of these expenditure categories is relatively low, suggesting that the reason cash is the most or second-most frequently used payment instrument is because small value transactions tend to dominate these categories. The conclusion I draw from this is that cash is encouraged by merchants and retailers for small transaction sizes either through minimum transaction sizes or with higher prices by including taxes. Who can blame them? The transaction fees for credit and debit cards erode profits for smaller transactions, 30 cents + 3 percent for each transaction. As bitcoin grows and Apple Pay extends its reach over the next few years, cash will shrink. The governments are incentivized to promote digital currencies because of the visibility they can glean from their public ledgers. Bitcoin analytics startups such as and are receiving funding to help the world understand what’s going on in the payment network, much the same way the traditional banking system has been monitored. Apple Pay and digital currency will play a massive part in changing how consumers perceive — and make — low-value payments. The businesses that are quickest to realize this will be the ones that benefit – but believe me, the days of physical cash are numbered. |
The Internet Of Someone Else’s Things | Jon Evans | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | . Rejoice! …Mostly. It will open our collective eyes to petabytes of real-time data, which we will turn into new insights and efficiencies. It will doubtless save lives. Oh, yes: and it will subtly redefine ownership as we know it. You will no longer own many of the most expensive and sophisticated items you possess. You may you own them. But you’ll be wrong. They say “possession is nine-tenths of the law,” but even if you physically and legally own a Smart Thing, you won’t actually control it. Ownership will become a three-legged stool: who owns a thing; who owns it; …and who has the ultimate power to command it. Who, in short, has . This is not a hypothetical situation. Your phone probably has three separate computers in it (processor, baseband processor, and SIM card) and you almost certainly don’t have root on of them, which is why some people phones as “tracking devices which make phone calls.” The recently about cars being prevented from starting because payments were days late. (And as CityLab : “Losing transportation could mean losing everything.”) Consider also the recent that Belkin routers apparently had to connect to Belkin’s servers before they would connect to the rest of the Internet. As : the smarter one’s things, the greater the possibility that they’ll be conscripted into schemes you never would have imagined and might not like. The fundamental issue here is that the Internet of Things will not have a standard set of open APIs for consumers. (Well, there’s , but it’s not exactly widely supported.) You can’t get your Tesla to dump all of its data to a server you specify. While Nest , they maintain gatekeeper control over it. (You may think: “Of course!” — but imagine being told that you can’t use Safari to access any Google services without Apple’s explicit consent and approval.) When you buy a Smart Thing, you get locked into its software ecosystem, which is controlled by its manufacturer, whether you like it or not. Techno-utopians like to argue that open systems always win, but that , as the mobile era has shown. Android is more open than iOS, but , both are walled gardens. The term Internet-of-things lulls us into complacency. What if we called it what corporations actually want eg the Apple-Store-of-things™? — Scott Jenson (@scottjenson) So are we doomed to a future of Smart Things that we don’t really own, talking behind our backs to an array of siloed ? …Maybe. But not necessarily. For one thing, I suspect that at some point, after the first wave of the Internet of Things, open APIs and root access will become a selling point. Either enough customers (especially business customers) will want them badly enough, or smart hardware will become enough of a commodity that startups will start selling “repluggable” Smart Things, which buyers can root and configure to speak to the server(s) of their choice. More interesting to me, though, is the possibility of a Internet of Things; smart things which don’t communicate with any central server, but rather with a peer-to-peer, perhaps blockchain-based network. Consider the way FireChat in Hong Kong, so that protestors can communicate despite the authorities’ control of the mobile networks. You don’t always actually a central server, especially if you have a distributed-consensus system — like a blockchain — for longer-term data storage and algorithmic coordination. I concede this is a handwavey vaporware notion, but, well, I believe it’s an handwavey vaporware notion. Similarly, a la or : Every product is becoming smart. So, why not tie every product to a corporate that confers ownership to the customers? — John Robb (@johnrobb) As someone who often argues that , I’m not necessarily opposed to a subtle redefinition of “ownership.” But I don’t want it to come to mean “transferring de facto control over every interesting thing in my possession to distant corporations.” Bring on an open, decentralized Internet Of Things, eventually. control quite enough already. Edal Anton Lefterov via |
Kim Kardashian: Hollywood Now Recognizes Same Sex Marriage | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | The debate wages on at the U.S. Supreme Court over gay marriage, but not in Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Players can pick a dress, a ring and whichever sort of partner they prefer to tie the knot with. Just like in Kim’s real life, those in the game can now experience the wedding of their dreams in Florence, Italy, too. The update, which went out last week, launched the popular app from Glu onto Facebook and added Florence, Italy as a new celebrity wedding destination for top-level players. But it was that announced the game updates with a display of two grooms that really put a ring on it. Facebook has an audience of approximately 1 billion right now – a sixth of the world. Another 230 million play games on the social networking site every month, according to figures reported on the a year ago. This should open up the game to new audiences and even more revenue. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood was expected to make $200 million by the end of this year. However, the once mobile hit is slipping in both gross sales and popularity. Glu extended its agreement with Kim shortly after the game with her name hit #1 in the App Store. It’s no longer in even the top 20 free apps now. It is hovering at #8 in the top grossing apps in the App Store at the moment, just under The Simpsons: Tapped Out and above the Spotify app. The game $625,296 for iOS devices per day in July of this year. ThinkGaming now puts daily gross sales at not even a third of that July figure at . Rankings have taken a hit as well, according to stats from App Annie over the last three months: GLUU stock has fallen since news of the drop in sales. But the company , one of the historically most popularly downloaded video games of all time, for mobile. This, along with the release of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood for Facebook, along with the option to get hitched whichever way you choose may just give the company the boost needed to recover from the slump. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 10 | 27 | null |
Skylable Secures Investment From Sunstone For Open Source Storage | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 10 | 11 | In the rarified world of ‘private data clouds’ a handful of companies dominate. On the open source side, Red Hat for $175m and Gluster for $136m. Then there was EMC, which . Now a UK company thinks it has come up with a new kind of open source storage technology designed to build private data clouds. claims it has had 110,000+ downloads of their beta release in the last few months. It’s also announced undisclosed funding from , based out of Copenhagen. Skylable Sx lets developer and operations teams set up secure and robust private or hybrid storage clouds relatively quickly. It runs on commodity hardware, which therefore brings costs down. Luca Gibelli, CEO of Skylable says with the rise of new areas like the Internet of Things, cheaper storage is becoming ever more crucial. “When we started Skylable, we tested the existing open-source solutions and they turned out to be poor performers, fragile and complex to set up. In pure open-source spirit, we learned from their mistakes and designed our solutions,” he says. Skylable was founded in 2002 by veteran open-source developers Tomasz Kom, Luca Gibelli, Edwin Török, and Alberto Wu, the original team behind ClamAV, the world’s most popular open-source anti-virus software. |
AdPushup Raises $632,000 For Its Banner Ad A/B Testing Platform | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | New Delhi-based startup , which provides A/B testing that integrates with ad networks, has raised $632,000 in its angel round of funding. Participants include Kima Ventures, Wingify founder Paras Chopra, SlideShare co-founder Amit Ranjan, LinkedIn director of technology Jonathan Boutelle, Yahoo! principal data engineer and architect Sachin Arora, Avlesh Singh, CouponDunia founder Sameer Parwani, Zishaan Hayath, Krishna Jha, Ashim Mehra, Ravi Srivastava, Subham Gupta, Vikram Kapur, and Sunil Kalra. The company ran its syndicate and took all commits on startup funding site . AdPushup’s A/B testing platform allows web publishers and bloggers to create and test different ad placements, sizes, and types to see which ones make the most revenue. The company says it has grown to about 100 million monthly impressions currently from 500,000 in March 2014, and its average revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) improvement per website it is used by is 68 percent. Ankit Oberoi, the co-founder of AdPushup, says that the company’s closest competitor is . AdPushup wants to set itself apart, however, by allowing web publishers to integrate it with their current ad server or networks, including AdSense, on their sites. “While we have a lot of startups using A/B testing for conversion rate optimization, they don’t integrate with ad networks and are not built for web publishers. In their algorithms, they use vanilla A/B testing, which doesn’t suit this use case,” says Oberoi. “This is why we call our solution advanced A/B testing (our proprietary patent pending multi-arm bandit solution to be accurate)—a machine learning algorithm, which learn and fight banner blindness, a problem which requires continuous optimization.” |
Chat App Line’s Revenue Doubles Year-On-Year To Reach $192 Million In Q3 2014 | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | Days after Facebook revealed that WhatsApp, its , for the first half of this year, — a rival app with 500 million registered users — has that its revenue doubled year-on-year during Q3 2014. Line, which does not reveal its overall profit/loss figures, says it made $192 million (20.9 billion yen) in the most recent quarter. That figure is 104.2% higher than a year previous, and represents a 17.7% increase in its previous quarter. Line makes its money as a digital content platform — most of its revenue comes from in-app purchases within its connected games platform, which includes more than 50 titles, but it also sells stickers and operates a marketing channel which lets brands run official accounts and pay to reach consumers. The company says it has 170 million monthly active users — more than half of which (87 million) come from its top three markets Japan, Thailand and Taiwan, such is the networked nature of messaging apps. Outside of those markets, Line says that it now has over 10 million registered users in 11 markets worldwide: that includes 25 million in the US and 30 million in India. Line, which plans to go public in that could value it at $10 billion, says it is planning to push its own Manga service worldwide to help increase downloads and engagement worldwide. It is also looking to work with more brands to promote online-to-offline customer engagement, a move it hopes will help raise its profile in the West and other markets. WhatsApp is far-and-away the top dog in the messaging space, with more than 600 million active users each month, but Line and other Asian rivals like WeChat in China and Kakao Talk in Korea are interesting because they are pioneering platform-based business models that generate significant revenue. In Line’s case, however, its business is likely to be some way from actually turning in profit since it is running promotion campaigns in a number of overseas markets, which include expensive TV ad spots. As a first mover, WhatsApp was able to leverage word-of-mouth effectively, but as Facebook considers how it might make money in the future, the examples from Asia are worth studying — even though WhatsApp’s founders against including ads and games in their service. |
Fiverr Goes Global With New Languages, Local Offerings | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | After raising , , the low-cost online marketplace for services of any stripe, is . The company is spending money to roll out new international sites. Starting with Spanish, French, Dutch, and Portuguese website versions, the US-based company wants to take its network of professional and creative service providers global — without them having to leave the comfort of their Rent-A-Center couches. Now, bargain buyers can get their shop on for any of over 100 different design or service jobs in their native language. Fiverr’s billing this as the next generation of the on-demand service economy. “International growth and market expansion has become a strategic priority for Fiverr,” said chief executive Micha Kaufman in a statement. “These are the first of many languages that we’ll be adding over the next few months, with ongoing community and social media management.” |
Flipboard’s New App Gets Personal By Making Topics The Center Of Attention | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | has been working hard over the last few years to build an app that makes reading stories on mobile and tablet devices as engaging as flipping through a magazine. With the latest version of its app, users will be able to find and discover content that is relevant to their interests, through the introduction of topics they can follow. Already, Flipboard has done a good job of getting — and keeping — readers’ attention. It now has more than 100 million readers who have downloaded the app, and is adding 250,000 more each day. Those readers are flipping about 8 billion pages per month, and that number continues to grow. But the new app is aimed at keeping those users engaged through personalization. When you first open up Flipboard 3.0, the app guides you through the process of picking a series of topics you will receive updates on. It asks “What are you interested in?” and provides a wide range of suggestions that vary from high-level content based around categories like “Technology” down to more granular topics such as “iPad apps.” Once you’ve chosen several topics of interest, the app opens up to unveil a front page that features stories from multiple sources you can flip through. Stories are tagged by content provider as well as by topic, allowing users to drill down and see more content related to each. You can also choose to follow stories by source or by topic, which would provide even more content served up to users. At launch, Flipboard will have more than 30,000 different topics to choose from, so there’s something for everyone. And the ability to easily add topics over time could keep casual Flipboard users keep coming back for more as the app becomes more personalized and relevant to them. Users can click through to see which topics, people, and accounts they follow and drill down on stories shared there. Or they can search for particular topics. And even if readers are following hundreds of topics, the app will work to showcase the most relevant or interesting topics on any given day, according to Flipboard co-founder and CEO Mike McCue. But it’s not all going to be algorithmically programmed. In addition to its topics, the app is also adding a “Daily Edition” of content that has been selected by Flipboard editors. It will be released every day at 7:00 am and will feature all the biggest news from the previous day, as well as a daily photo and “parting GIF” for readers. For Flipboard, the move to a topic-following model is a departure from its previous personalization efforts. Last year, the company that enabled users to create and subscribe to virtual magazines based on their own interests. By doing so, they could curate stories from multiple different sources and present it in a unified fashion. Readers, meanwhile, benefitted by being able to subscribe to magazines created by other like-minded users to discover content they might not have seen otherwise. Magazines have been incredibly popular on Flipboard: The company says there have been more than 10 million of them created and curated by readers since launch. They can range from having just a few followers to hundreds and thousands of followers — and the top magazines have generated tens of millions of page flips from readers. That feature also added a new potential revenue stream by enabling brands and retailers to of products for sale. That’s on top of advertising CPMs that are closer to print publications than digital properties. That said, Flipboard’s magazine model wasn’t perfect. After all, it relies on readers to keep updating their magazines over time in order to keep providing fresh content to others. Furthermore, each magazine reflects the interests of the creator or creators and may not be what a reader is looking for. The update is designed to improve upon the current experience with a more personalized feed, which users create by following different topics of interest to them. That ensures readers will be kept up to date on the news that’s important to them, without having to rely on another reader to curate a magazine for them. McCue says the new version blends people-powered curation with algorithmic curation. For that, the app builds on its magazine creation tools and adds features from a couple of acquisitions Flipboard made over the last few years. The first was its Cover Stories feature, which came about as part of its several years ago. That gave Flipboard the ability to structure and display content more like a magazine. It’s the more recent acquisition of Zite which helps to power the app’s new topic-centric following model, however. Zite was , and ever since the combined engineering teams have been working on ways to . It’s Zite’s technology that is being used to identify and categorize the topics that users can subscribe to. It can do that without its readers building magazines, which opens up a whole lot of new topics and content for readers to discover. But that’s the whole point. Finding more relevant content is key to Flipboard’s business model, after all. The more readers flip and the more engaged they are in its magazine-like experience, the more ads they see. The more ads they see, the more money Flipboard makes. And considering that Flipboard has since being founded, it’ll need a lot of flips to justify that funding. The good news is, whatever it’s done so far seems to be working. |
Xiaomi Now The World’s Third Biggest Smartphone Maker, Says IDC | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | Xiaomi is now the world’s third largest smartphone maker, due in large part to the success of its high-end Mi4, says . This is also the first time that Xiaomi has broken into the research firm’s list of the top 5 smartphone makers in the world. Samsung remains at the lead despite declining shipment volume, followed by Apple, Xiaomi, and Lenovo and LG, which tied for fourth place. A also puts Xiaomi in the number three position. Its focus on China and adjacent markets like Southeast Asia helped boost Xiaomi into the top 5 by resulting in triple-digit year-over-year growth in Q3 2014. IDC said that , which is meant to compete against Samsung’s Galaxy S5 and Apple’s iPhone, in August was key to its success. But while Xiaomi is doing well in China and other Asian countries, it’s still unclear how well it will fare in other markets where it faces greater competition from Samsung and Apple. In Q3 2014, vendors shipped a total of 327.6 million units, an increase of 25.2 percent from the same period a year ago, and 8.7 percent from the Q2 2015. “Despite rumors of a slowing market, smartphone shipments continue to see record-setting volumes. We’ve finally reached a point where most developed markets are experiencing single-digit growth while emerging markets are still growing at more than 30 percent collectively,” said Ryan Reith, program director with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. While Samsung remained the world’s leading smartphone makers, IDC said it was the only company in the top five to see shipment volume decline year-over-year, thanks to competition as well as “cooling demand for its high-end devices.” Its main volume drivers for the quarter were mid-range and low-end devices, which means its average sales price also fell. The launch of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 Plus, meanwhile, pushed Apple to its largest third-quarter volume ever. While its brand new models sold 10 million units during their first launch weekend, there continued to be high demand for the iPhone 5s and 5c, which made up the bulk of Apple’s volume for the quarter. Lenovo’s sales volumes were helped by the success of models like the A369i and A316, which cost less than $100 and are targeted at emerging markets in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as the Middle East and Africa. Its non-China shipments reached 20 percent in Q3 2014, up 9 percent from a year ago. LG’s growth was also fueled by low-cost smartphones, which helped it push its total volume past the 15 million for the first time ever. |
Looks Like Microsoft Just Leaked Its Own Fitness Band [Update: It’s Now Official] | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | Whoops! Before Microsoft even got a chance to announce that they’re making a fitness tracking band (a la Jawbone Up, Fitbit Force, etc.), the device’s companion syncing app has found its way onto the . Spotted first , the app spills lots and lots of details about the unannounced wearable. About an hour after Microsoft let the apps sneak out, they’ve pushed the product live on their site. Here’s the new info: |
MPAA Bans Google Glass And Other Wearable Cameras From Movie Theaters Because Duh | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | I’m pretty neutral on the whole face-computer thing. Would I buy Google Glass? Nah. But if you want to roll around looking like a broke-ass Robocop, we can still be friends. But you should take it off your face at certain times, particularly when seeing a camera strapped to your noggin would irk people out. Bathrooms. Parties. Bars. Movie theaters. The MPAA has gone ahead and made that last one an official rule, in partnership with NATO (the National Association of Theater Owners — not ) — who, according to Plunkett’s Entertainment Almanac, represents roughly 26,000 theaters across the U.S. Under the new rules, theater owners will ask anyone with wearable recording devices to turn’em off and put them away. Fail to do that, and they’ll give you the boot. If they have any reason to think you’re recording in the theater, meanwhile, they’ll call the cops. Of course, all this shenanigans ignores something pretty crucial: if someone is the type of person who will strap a computer to their face, they’re probably also the type of person who knows of easier/better ways to pirate movies than recording a shaky, crap-resolution copy on Google Glass. Just sayin’. [via ] |
Even With The Novel Sprout, HP Just Can’t Win | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | By all accounts HP announced something truly innovative today. The is a mind-blowing mash-up of desktop computer, 3D scanner and touchscreen. It effectively pushes the desktop medium forward more so than anything produced in recent memory. But the Sprout is from HP. Imagine if Apple had announced the Sprout. The media would be going bonkers. Word about it would be on every evening news program. Fanboys would be beside themselves, crying out that Apple is finally doing Steve Jobs justice. Yet HP made the Sprout. It’s the same company that produces an obscene number of indistinguishable Windows computers and still gets a giant chunk of its revenue from printer ink. I don’t trust HP to innovate. And it all comes down to that trust when trying something new. Over the last 10 years or so, HP lost much of the goodwill it had with consumers. It simply isn’t a brand known to produce tantalizing products. HP is on the verge of being the GE of consumer electronics. Need a new laptop for the non-computer-savvy person in your life? Go down to Walmart and get an HP. It will work just fine. Buy a new one when it breaks. Apple has a track record of producing products and interfaces that are ready for general consumption. Not since the original iPhone has Apple used consumers to test something unproven. And that’s exactly what HP is doing with the Sprout. The Sprout needs vast developer support to be a viable system. It needs Adobe and Autodesk. It needs Wacom and N-Trig support. It needs startups like Paper to produce applications to match the innovative controls. Moreover, Sprout needs a company that knows how to lure developers to its platform and give them the tools needed to be successful. HP needs to think like Apple. But I fear it’s too late. |
Verizon Ventures Seeks To Double Portfolio And Investment Capital | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | , the venture capital arm of the Internet, phone, and wireless networking services company, will look to double its portfolio and the capital it invests in startup companies, TechCrunch has learned. Speaking ahead of his participation in the Made In NY Media Center Demo Day, Verizon Ventures associate director of corporate strategy and development, Tom Constabile, said that the firm would look to increase the number of investments it makes and the amount of capital it invests. Because it invests off of the corporate balance sheet, Constabile did not disclose the size of the fund or the scope of its investments. “We’re looking to expand the program,” Constabile said. “We’re looking to double the number of investments we make and the amount of capital that we make available.” Although it has been investing for nearly a decade, the investment shop is relatively quiet, and not as active when compared with the larger, better known venture shops at Google, SAP or Intel. Now Constabile said his firm was looking to be more opportunistic, and expand the scope of its investments beyond strategic technologies that could be folded in to enhance Verizon’s bread and butter business of networking and connectivity. From its offices in Basking Ridge, NJ, New York, Palo Alto, Calif., and San Francisco, Verizon Ventures invests in technologies like connected devices and hardware, media and entertainment, commerce and advertising, networking and infrastructure, and data and analytics. The firm recently posted a of its investment themes, programs and recent portfolio companies. The firm is stage-agnostic, making investments in Series A and B rounds in the past three months, with its decisions to back , an advertising management service across search and social media sites, and , an app development platform, respectively. “Where we’ve spoken loudest in this space are in the investments we’ve made with 4G and fiber, but also the acquisitions we’ve made,” Constabile said. “We acquired to put us at the forefront of video and media solutions.” The company to bulk up its video offerings. In a announcing the firm’s new website from August, Verizon’s senior vice president of investor relations, described the firm’s benefits to a new audience. More than just a source of funding, Verizon Ventures combines the power of experienced investment professionals with a focused venture development team and connections to Verizon’s core business. No other venture team can tap into the depth and breadth of the Verizon ecosystem, and we are proud to be the bridge that connects portfolio companies with strategic and financial resources that advance their businesses. We also pride ourselves on serving as a long-term partner. In addition to financial investment, companies turn to Verizon Ventures for access to our global networks, go-to-market roadmap, marketing support, business development opportunities, strategic insights, deep expertise, network tools and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and significant understanding of the myriad elements of growing a successful company. Our ideal investment is one in which we can add value to the business through financial and strategic resources. Verizon’s investment categories are directly related to our strategic direction, and range from Platform as a Service (PaaS) provider CloudBees to software-defined-networking company ConteXstream. One recent investment Flint is a mobile payment service for small businesses that makes it easier than ever to accept credit card payments – by scanning instead of swiping – or via online invoice payments. Verizon Ventures helps these companies, and many others, by providing access to our global networks, platforms, subject matter experts and distribution channels to advance their businesses. “We’re closer to what Samsung and Microsoft are,” says Constabile of his firm’s approach to venture investment. aim to ensure that the technology interfaces with the network are seamless and that the network itself is reliable and available… and as fast as possible, according to Constabile. |
Microsoft Fires Another Set Of Employees, Continuing Its Announced Layoff Strategy | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | Microsoft took an axe to another slice of its employees today, cutting around 3,000 jobs . TechCrunch heard through a separate source that the layoffs were imminent, but was not able to confirm their size. The company released a short statement indicating that it has nearly wrapped “all [of] the 18,000 reductions announced [it] in July.” Today’s cuts come from “many different business units, and many different countries,” the company indicated. Presuming that the 3,000 figure for today is accurate (Microsoft did not respond to a comment asking if the figure was in the correct range) only a few hundred layoffs remain out of that were announced. The majority of the reductions have come from Microsoft’s recently acquired Nokia hardware assets. Taking into account the first set of 12,500, the second cut of 2,100 and today’s 3,000, 400 more firings may remain. That figure could be low. I’m hearing rumblings that the organizational re-jiggering of Microsoft is still a work in progress and that more layoffs could be part of those continued changes. I spoke to a source close to Microsoft’s campus who indicated that morale among employees there hasn’t been diminished due to the staffing rollbacks, though the company’s main location hasn’t been too heavily hit in the cuts. On Business Insider, that there is some complaint that change is happening too quickly. If that is a common sentiment on campus, quite a number of employees are likely not going to have a fun next few years. |
Twitter Sees Two More Exec Departures, Including VP Of Engineering Jeremy Gordon | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | Two more executives have left Twitter: Jeremy Gordon, the vice president of engineering, and Adam Kinney, a senior manager who led the company’s analytics team. The news was . That report also cited an unnamed source who claimed that some of the company’s engineers are concerned about a lack of clarity in Twitter’s product vision. The company’s stock took a beating earlier this week after . Asked for confirmation or comment, Twitter pointed me to tweets and announcing their departures. Other executives who left Twitter recently include and , whose departures were both revealed on the same day in June. |
YouTube Can Now Play Videos At A Buttery 60 Frames Per Second | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | After years of capping video playback at 30 frames per second, it looks like YouTube is finally upping the bar. Back in June, YouTube that 60 FPS video playback was on the way in “the coming months”. Alas, the only examples of this to pop up since were a handful of EA game trailers that YouTube handpicked to showcase the new, ultra-slick framerate. Sometime in the past few hours, however, it seems the roll out started spreading far and wide. A good number of user uploaded videos shot at 60 FPS are now playing back at their proper framerate, rather than being sliced down to a relatively chunky 30 FPS. It may not work in all browsers (if all else fails, try Chrome. Safari also seems to work. And make sure you’re using the HTML5 Player, though most people will be on that by default by now) — but when it works, it’s gloriously obvious. See, for example, this video of someone playing Nintendo’s Mario Kart 8 (as ). Bump the quality up to at least 720p, and let the frames flood your eyeballs: Videos previously shot at 60 FPS but uploaded before today, however, still seem to be playing at the older framerate. We’ve reached out to YouTube to find out just how widespread this roll out is (Can users upload at 60 FPS now, or just many more than before?), and whether or not they plan to re-process any of the old stuff uploaded before they made the switch. Given the absurd amount of video that YouTube has backlogged, however, I wouldn’t bank on much of that old stuff getting the upgrade treatment. YouTube has confirmed to us that this is, in fact, rolling out to users and promised “more details soon”, but wouldn’t say more just yet. |
Baidu Posts Mixed Q3 Earnings, Sending Its Shares Sideways | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | Today Baidu its third-quarter financial performance, including revenue of $2.203 billion and GAAP earnings per share of $1.79. The market the Chinese company to earn $1.69 per share on revenue of $2.22 billion. Excluding the costs of share-based compensation, Baidu earned $1.90 per share (non-GAAP). The company, which fell nearly 2 percent in regular trading, is off another 1.7 percent in after-hours trading. The company’s operating profit in the quarter of $638.6 million was up 17.4 percent on a year-over-year basis. Its revenue figure was up a sharper 52.0 percent compared to the year-ago period. Nearly all of Baidu’s revenue comes from its online marketing income, which totaled $2.188 billion in the quarter. Baidu is best known for its online search property. Baidu spent $283.8 million in traffic acquisition costs in the quarter, or 12.9 percent of its total revenues. That percentage figure is up from its year-ago comparable statistic of 11.2 percent. Investors seem to not know what precisely to do with Baidu shares after the report. The after-hours chart shows a bit of indecision: Looking ahead, Baidu expects its revenue to expand to between $2.256 billion, and $2.322 billion. Those figures represent a roughly 45 to 50 percent improvement in its calendar fourth quarter of 2013, the comparable period. The company did not guide on profit. Trading for around $224 per share, Baidu has been increasing in value nearly steadily since the middle of 2013. The company with revenue in the single-digit millions per quarter. The company in 2010, which brought its share price down from more than $700. Since then, its shares have tripled in value. The company is worth north of $80 billion. |
Steve Ballmer’s Fergalicious Clippers Future | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | Steve Ballmer showed up in all his glory for the close of the conference today. It all started out kinda just like the GIF you see above. And then before things really got going, the newly christened owner of the Los Angeles Clippers delightfully announced that Fergie had recorded a song just for the team. Naturally, Ballmer then belted out the lyrics to the song. The former Microsoft CEO also mentioned that he’s implementing new stadium technology. “We’ve got some stuff with tech that we’re absolutely doing. We even have high tech lights in our stadium. We had LEED lights,” he shouted to the audience. Image courtesy of WSJ reporter Greg Bensinger via Twitter. A new Clippers ad — “Be Relentless” — out today on YouTube ushers in this new Ballmer chapter. “You think you know who we are? You’re wrong. This is a new game. A new era,” says the video voiceover. The Clippers, lest you need reminding, went through a last season. Ballmer’s takeover gives the team a much needed fresh start. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEmUyb5lqG4 |
Made In NY Media Center Members Demo New Tech | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | Three years after it first won the request for proposal to launch the promoting companies and projects working at the intersection of arts and technology, the Independent Filmmaker Project is celebrating its first anniversary with its second demo day. With $3 million in support from the , the , and the , and private partners like Verizon, Hearst Corp., and Illycaffe, the has put together a second cohort of companies for its latest Demo Day. “Basically the idea is to incentivize talent to stay in New York,” says Joana Vicente, executive director of the IFP and Made In NY Media Center. For over 30 years, the IFP has been working with filmmakers to get financiers and distributors for independent films; as content moved across technology platforms, the nonprofit wanted to keep up with the times and diversified into providing incubator-like services for multimedia projects (and some businesses) operating at the intersection of art and commerce, according to Vicente. The group received $1.5 million from the city government and partners to renovate a space in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn and has another $1.5 million to operate the center for the next three years. The group also has foundation grants and private sponsors providing financing and services. Since its opening, the Media Center has held more than 100 classes and 300 events serving 25,000 people in its classrooms, media gallery, theater, cafe, incubator and community member spaces, according to a statement. Today’s demonstrating companies include , an organization focusing on promoting gender equality in media through education and collaboration; , a mobile-first social video platform, akin to Vine, which also enables stacked videos to be linked into longer clips; , a news site that aims to educate users on legalization of cannabis; , an interactive digital comics company; and finally , a mobile-focused publishing app that lets users search and read articles from publishers’ archives online. “We’re interested in what’s next,” says Tom Constabile, the Associate Director of Corporate Strategy and Development at Verizon Ventures, of the partnership with the Made In NY Media Center. For Constabile and Verizon, what’s next in the context of what the Media Lab is doing consists primarily of an interest in augmented reality and other next generation technologies at the intersection of media and technology. Primarily, the lab is one window into how customers are taking advantage of Verizon’s network, according to Constabile. The firm has not made an investment in a business or project that has come out of the center, and although it might, it’s still a little bit beyond the core focus of the firm, which is making strategic investments around network and distribution technologies. Primarily, Verizon is focused on “technology interfaces, and the network behind them,” says Constabile. “Having that network be reliable and available.” |
Trulia Falls 6% After Reporting Disappointing Q3 Revenue Of $67.1M | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | s shares are down in after-hours trading following the company’s third quarter earnings report that included in-line losses, and a revenue disappointment. The company lost $0.08 per share on a non-GAAP basis in the period from revenue of $67.1 million. Investors had the $0.08 per-share loss, which works out to a deficit of $2.8 million but had expected revenue of $69.96 million. The company missed that by nearly $3 million. On a GAAP basis, Trulia had a very unprofitable quarter: A $10.8 million charge that the company notes is “related to [its] pending acquisition by Zillow” helped the company lose $24.0 million in the quarter, or a stunning $0.64 million. GAAP or not, Trulia’s third quarter of 2013 saw the firm lose a more modest $2.2 million, or $0.06. So, revenue was up 67 on a year-over-year basis, but the company isn’t able to convert that higher top-line to material profit. Here’s the chart: Zillow, which will acquire Trulia, is also down sharply after hours, falling more than 5 percent. The two companies are in the that has yet to close. |
MobileIron Spikes 5% After Reporting Better Than Expected FQ3 Revenue, Lower Than Expected Loss | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | MobileIron is having a strong after-hours session, after it reported its fiscal third quarter financial performance, including non-GAAP revenue of $33.7 million, GAAP losses per share of $0.20, and non-GAAP losses per share of a more modest $0.15. The market had the mobile device management company to lose $0.25 per share. The company’s results were a beat on that metric. Why cite non-GAAP revenue? An accounting quirk impacts the company’s GAAP revenue, leaving some revenue from products sold in 2013 on its docket, skewing things slightly. The company’s non-GAAP revenue — the number it wants you to look at — was up 54 percent from the year-ago quarter. GAAP revenue, which it would discount in importance due to the aforementioned top-line hangover, was up a more modest 32 percent year-over-year. In its , MobileIron lost $0.66 on a GAAP basis, and $0.52 on a non-GAAP basis, making its third fiscal quarter a material improvement. The company remains a firm leap from profits, whichever way you calculate them, but improvement is enough today, it seems, for investors. MobileIron had more than $150 million in cash following its recent IPO. At the end of its fiscal third, the company had $147 million and change in cash and equivalents. The key metric, in my view, for MobileIron is its subscription revenue. The company spends heavily to attract corporate clients to whom it can vend thousands of seats on a recurring basis. So, the pulse of the firm is its ‘Subscription’ line item. It totaled $8.031 million in the quarter, up from $7.10 million in the sequentially preceding period. That’s slower growth than I expected. Support revenue more than doubled from the year-ago quarter. The company’s net loss of $15.53 million is up around 29 percent from its 2013 fiscal third. For the fourth quarter, MobileIron expects non-GAAP revenue of $34 to $35 million, and implied losses on a non-GAAP basis of between $8 and $10 million. I hollered with MobileIron CEO Bob Tinker on the talkie, and he seemed pretty happy with the quarter. That’s not surprising, given market reaction to it. He declined to predict what will happen to his company’s fourth quarter GAAP EPS, citing the law, so that task will be up to us. All told the company remains focused on building its ARR, it seems. Tinker did note that the company’s more than 90 percent renewal rate is on a per-seat basis, and not on a dollar basis. That’s why Box has different churn figures, it seems. |
Joker Lets You Instantly Stream Perfectly Legal And Legitimate Torrent Files | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | Let’s say there’s a torrent online you would like to view. After all, torrents themselves are perfectly legal. Instead of downloading the torrent, paste the link to the torrent in Joker.org and watch the content instantly. Watch out, Popcorn Time. The Joker is here. Using Joker.org to watch a torrent is stupid easy. Grab a Torrent magnet link — the more seeds the better — and paste it into the text input box on the home page of Joker.org. From there, the service seems to cache the content, and depending on the amount of seeds, it starts playing after an ad. Streaming is not a newly discovered torrent function. Programs and services have offered the functionality for years, yet Joker.org’s implementation is clean and elegant. And that’s why it probably won’t last long. Legitimate torrents or not, Joker will clearly be used for pirated content and the site is trying to make money. Ads play prior to the video plays back. With ads, likely come a paper trail and the MPAA has successfully taken down sites with much less information to go on. that the site appears to cache the torrents, too, which requires servers and bandwidth. This is most likely to improve playback. However, the cached content could be grounds for a takedown notice since it will no doubt include pirated content. Enjoy Joker while it lasts and use it at your own risk. It’s a magical experience — that is, when used for perfectly legal and legitimate torrent files. |
Here’s What Google’s LEGO-Style Phone, Project Ara, Looks Like Right Now | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | It’s been a few weeks since we’ve heard much about Project Ara, Google’s effort to build a phone out of components that can be swapped out, piece-by-piece. Google showed off the device a bit back at I/O and, alas, things got a bit during the presentation. In a new video released today, the Phonebloks team shows the Ara prototype in its most recent form — and it’s working! It looks a bit slow right now, sure — but it boots! The best look at the device in its current state comes at around the 2:30 mark. So what’s changed? Outside of the fact that it looks like the device actually boots and can be operated to some degree, not a lot — at least not from the outside. Particularly worth noting, however, is the tidbit they drop at the tail end of the video: currently, about 50 percent of the available space on this first prototype (“Spiral 1”) is dedicated to just making the modularity possible. In the next prototype (“Spiral 2”), however, they’ve freed up a ton of space for users and developers to use as their tinkering canvas. Thanks to some custom-built Toshiba chips, “most” of the space on the device will be open for customization. Sadly, they don’t show even a glimpse of what that second prototype might look like. According to a note at the end of the video, that’ll come at Google’s just-announced Project Ara developer conference on January 14. |
MCX Says QR Payments App Will Pivot To NFC If Necessary, Won’t Fine Retailers Who Break Exclusivity | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | In a virtual press conference today, ‘s CEO Dekkers Davidson said “We’re agnostic about technology. We started with QR code-based technology that allows us to go to market broadly. If we need, we can pivot to NFC.” That means if retailers strongly prefer the NFC system used by Apple Pay to , CurrentC could switch to the more popular and graceful near field communication protocol. Davidson noted that MCX is working with retailers on “other technology that goes beyond QR codes” already. And specifically, MCX merchants are excited about Bluetooth Low-Energy solutions. In response to the that it would make retailers pay fees for breaking their exclusivity agreements and using other mobile payment methods like Apple Pay, Davidson said he was aware of the reporting around this matter, but that “it’s simply not true, there are no fines”. Davidson also detailed a that was revealed this morning, saying its email provider was hacked, though he wouldn’t disclose the name of the provider. He says the hack exposed dummy zip codes and “some tester email addresses.” “The CurrentC app itself was not affected. We own this and are taking it seriously,” he said. The investigation is ongoing, and involves security experts and partners organizations. Stolen email addresses were not stored in the cloud. The CEO went on to say that he “can’t speculate about the motivations of those who did the hack. Unfortunately in the digital age, some people think it’s cool to hack.” He continued, “the hack reminds us that there are people that are motivated to steal information. Our systems have been attacked repeatedly in the last 7 to 8 days…clearly any type of attack or incident is one you have to learn from to get stronger – and we will get stronger. We’re challenging the status quo…when you poke at a large ecosystem like that, you should expect attacks.” In fact, MCX did anticipate interest from hackers, which is why the CurrentC app was built around security. Payment credentials are not stored on device, but are stored on secure server in the cloud which was designed to anticipate regular attacks. To conclude, Davidson discussed why retailers or consumers would want to use CurrentC instead of Apple Pay. When asked about the need for exclusivity agreements, a reporter asked, “What’s the harm in competition?” Davidson responded there’s no harm. When asked if MCX and Apple Pay could ever be used side by side, he said, “In the future, that could be entirely possible…there will need to be two to three strong players in the ecosystem. One won’t simply build the market.” |
Hundreds Protest At San Francisco City Hall After Soccer Conflict With Dropbox, Airbnb Employees | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | A week after between a handful of local teenagers and Dropbox and Airbnb employees went viral, , asking for the city’s parks to be freely open to the public. The city’s parks and recreation general manager acquiesced, dropping the reservation requirement at night for that specific park in the Mission District. For background, a handful of local teenagers were playing a pick-up soccer game a few months ago, when a group of men in Dropbox shirts asked them to leave because they had paid to reserve the field for a league game. For years, when the Mission Playground used to be covered in cement, local kids would play seven-on-seven pick-up games and it was always free for drop-ins, unlike other city parks that required reservations. In 2012, the park underwent a $7.5 million renovation and the city’s parks and recreation department instituted a new set of rules. As part of that, there was a new reservation system on certain nights of the week for a $27 permit. Parks and recreation general manager Phil Ginsburg said that his department made that decision after notifying 700 community leaders and all residents within a quarter-mile of the park in English and Spanish and holding three community meetings back in 2009. He said that the new system left the park open for drop-in play 96 percent of the time. But that left the neighborhood children feeling slighted, because those evening hours were prime slots. They made this video recording after several conflicts like this had already happened over many months. “This divide has been fueled by bad choices by the parks and recreation department,” said city supervisor David Campos, who is running to represent San Francisco in the state assembly in next month’s elections. “They created different expectations with folks in the community, who thought that they could reserve this field. We collectively on both sides want a policy that works for all San Franciscans. We cannot be a city where you have to have money to access public space.” You can watch the video below: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awPVY1DcupE] What was frustrating to many viewers was not just the irony of a Latino asking a white man to see his papers, but a comment that one of the guys made in the background — “Who cares about the neighborhood?” Both Dropbox and Jean-Denis Greze, an engineer at the company, . Greze added that they were later able to work out an agreement where everyone got to play. “This is a literal interpretation of our what is happening in our community — someone coming with a paper saying you need to leave,” said Edwin Lindo, who is a vice president for the San Francisco Latino Democratic Club. “We have customs and norms in our community with seven-on-seven games. The city’s policy is pitting communities against each other.” [ An earlier version of this story attributed the previous quote to Gabriel Medina, who is a policy manager at the Mission Economic Development Agency and spoke right before Lindo.] San Francisco Latino Democratic Club also had a here about the tensions this particular conflict ignited. Juan Galvez, a senior at Abraham Lincoln High School, was one of the teenagers who was there: “We started playing soccer at the age of 5,” he said. “We would go play at Mission Playground when it was cement. I remember because of all the scrapes, cuts and bruises that I would get from falling over. Those were some of my best memories. They tried getting us off the field with intimidation, swearing, verbal abuse and threats. At one point, someone in the video asks, ‘Who cares about the neighborhood?’ And the answer is — we do.” Greg Garcia, who is a student at Mission High School, said that arguments like these had been happening for a long time since the new reservation system was in-stated. “We let it go a couple of times,” he said. “One day, we decided that we weren’t going to get off the field. We’re tired of this. You guys can’t just come. We’ve been coming here for a long time.” Garcia said he wanted to meet with the Dropbox players to work something out. “We heard that Hot Box — I mean — Dropbox, made an apology to us. They said they, ‘We’re sorry.’ But like, if we can meet with them, we’d want to have a talk about this thing.” One of the other kids, Hugo Vargas, said that Conor Welch, the Airbnb community support lead who came with the reservation papers in the video, later kicked him in the back after the cameras stopped rolling. “After the video, there was an incident between the players. One of us kicked the ball and it ricocheted off someone,” Vargas said in a public speech in front of city hall. “Then later, Conor, the guy with the contract came over and kicked me in the back. Since then I’ve been having back pain. I play soccer and it affects me so much. I was stubborn, and I didn’t tell anyone. I thought no one would listen to me. I’m just a kid.” Airbnb did not immediately respond to requests for comment and I have not been able to confirm this independently. Ginsburg said that as the city’s population has grown, it has put increasing demands on local parks and services. He said the city has renovated fields over the past several years, adding 80,000 hours of total playable time to the city’s soccer fields. “At the crux of the issue is the city’s lack of play space,” Ginsburg said. “But this has touched on larger issues of gentrification and displacement.” On the ballot this November are a pair of dueling ballot propositions about whether to add artificial turf and stadium lighting to a park near Ocean Beach in Golden Gate Park. (This whole other dispute has its own convoluted, about the intersection of the city’s planning process and direct democracy.) The policy and lack of field space has also been incredibly frustrating for tech workers who play soccer. “Honestly, it’s been a huge issue for years,” said Linda Tong, who works for a mobile start called and has played pick-up soccer three to four days a week for several years. “Deep down, I’m frustrated for both sides.” She says with the current system, there’s no way to guarantee if a field has been reserved or is open. A few weeks ago, she drove out to Crocker Amazon field in the Outer Mission to play pick-up. She put all her gear on and then was kicked off by a league game 10 minutes later. “You show up to a field that’s ‘usually’ open and pray,” she said, adding that she’s seen many fights over the years between leagues, pick-up and other people who aren’t soccer players. In the middle of another game, a drunk man went and just laid down in front of a goal. The lack of safety was echoed by a lot of other Latino soccer players and coaches at the demonstration and hearing today. They demanded bilingual park staff and someone dedicated to the Mission Playground where the incident occurred. Antonio Medina, who is the dean of students at a charter academy called Leadership High School and who runs the youth-focused , says there are constantly crowds of people doing drugs and marijuana around his eight-year-old at the park. “I am here as a concerned parent,” he said. “There is no supervision on these fields for all of these kids.” Roberto Peña, who runs the club with Medina, said that leaving the nighttime hours for open play were crucial for keeping kids out of violence and gangs. While coaching a soccer game at Garfield Park last month, he was just blocks away from by another middle school student at a corner store on 26th and Folsom. Williams, a freshman at Sacred Heart Preparatory, , played football for the school team and had his sights set on attending an Ivy League University. “These parks are keeping our kids safe,” said Peña, who is also a child welfare attendance liaison for the San Francisco Union School District. “I’ve buried 80 kids that I’ve worked with over the last 10 years.” |
Twitter’s Music Card Now Plays In Its Mobile Apps And Supports iTunes Previews | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | Twitter with its Twitter Music service, but everyone’s favorite 140-character social network is keen as ever to light up users’ timelines with the sound of music after it to its music card. The company already has a card that lets you play tracks in-tweet when you post a link to Soundcloud, but it now supports mobile play — via the official Twitter apps for iOS and Android — and it can be ‘docked’, meaning that your tracks continue to play while you use the mobile apps, or peruse your timeline on the desktop web. That’s pretty neat if you’re into SoundCloud, like me, but . That means podcasts and music tracks, like ‘Something For Nothing’ from the upcoming album from the Foo Fighters, can be previewed inside a tweet. Equally, the new card allows users to easily buy music for the Apple service with just a few clicks from the tweet. This next one’s the first song on our new album! Listen here . — Foo Fighters (@foofighters) Twitter’s new music moves are notable for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the move to make music more interactive is part of the company’s push to attract more users and increase engagement among existing users. last year and, as a public company, it needs to show investors and Wall Street that it can continue to grow into an Internet titan. A big push around the FIFA football World Cup this summer helped it pick up new users, but it has been focused on pushing experiences with media to encourage that too. Music is a huge area for social networks — particularly on mobile — so bringing its in-tweet preview to smartphones could spark greater engagement among some users. (This move towards media also explains the ‘Facebookization’ of Twitter, which has been redesigned and revamped to place emphasis on Twitter cards, video, images and audio.) Then, of course, there is the potential for advertising, which is Twitter’s primary income. Creating a user base that is keen to consume music would make Twitter a logical place where artists, publishing houses, labels and others would come to to promote their music, new albums, etc. Likewise, the ability to preview tracks in a tweet is what Twitter hopes will make its Promoted Tweet ad units attractive to the music industry. This tweet from DJ David Guetta, for example, could gain more eyeballs if it were promoted using Twitter’s advertising system. HOT !!! Here is the remix of !!! I really love it. Click below to listen to the track ;) — David Guetta (@davidguetta) The new cards are open to all partners, so we should expect others to follow SoundCloud and Apple’s lead soon enough. Headline image via Getty Images |
Why The Future Of Digital Security Is Open | Lou Shipley | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | The topic of digital security often brings to mind the image of bleak and dark future, where computers, mobile devices and other systems are riddled with malware and cyber criminals lurk, ready to steal our data and crash our systems. We have good reason to be nervous. We’ve seen plenty of cyber-security breaches in the past few years, like credit card thefts at Target and password issues at sites like LinkedIn. Digital security is a major concern. Few other issues affect everyone, from individuals to companies to entire nations. So what is the future of digital security? One discussion thread centers on email encryption, prompted by Yahoo joining forces with Google and Microsoft to develop an encrypted email system. While encryption is a step in the right direction, it’s probably not sufficient by itself. In addition to usability issues — like compatibility of platforms and the human tendency to reuse the same basic passwords — email only covers a portion of the digital world. It’s a partial “attack surface.” The broader answer to digital security demands openness and cooperation among traditional competitors. The Facebook TODO project ( ) is a good example. TODO brings together Google, Twitter, Box, Walmart Labs, Dropbox and others to facilitate and improve open-source projects. Applying open-source best practices to digital security builds on transparency and meritocracy, where the best ideas win. For example, starting almost two decades ago, Linux developers came together to create an operating system that today runs a huge swath of enterprise IT, global networking, telecommunications and a dizzying array of other intelligent device applications, and is helping to drive the build out of the Internet of Things. Another prime example is the development of the Apache web server, followed by a hit parade of other projects under the Apache Foundation umbrella, including Hadoop, Tomcat, Libcloud and scores of others. These and other open source successes prove that it’s better to develop as a community, in the open, because given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow ( ) and fewer bugs means better security. By using open source methods, the developer community is able to lock out black hats. If individuals attempt to insert malicious code into a project, that code will be seen and tested by developers across the community; it will be excised by vigilant open-source white hat developers faster and more reliably than with proprietary code. Not all organizations are ready to commit to open source methods. Open-source security best practices require companies to move past traditional models of competitiveness to collaboration among corporate peers for the greater good. It also requires some sacrifice of privacy/secrecy in favor of transparency. These are small prices to pay because digital security is a critical global issue. Just as we’re working on other major crises – the environment, global security, and emerging pathogen threats – it’s going to take more than one individual or one company (or even one nation) to meet the digital security challenge. Winning the digital security arms race can only be accomplished with openness and collaboration. |
Microsoft’s CEO Apologizes Again For Comments On Women, Promises New Diversity Efforts | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | The executive quickly followed his initial comments , and . Today Nadella went further in an internal memo that included a new apology and a set of notes explaining what he intends to implement at Microsoft regarding diversity. The full memo, (TechCrunch confirmed with Microsoft that the text is real), is worth reading. The key excerpts follow: There are three areas in which we can and will make progress — starting immediately. First, we need to continue to focus on equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity for equal work. Many employees have asked if they are paid on par with others at the company. Here’s what HR confirmed for me: Although it fluctuates by a bit each year, the overall differences in base pay among genders and races (when we consider level and job title) is consistently within 0.5% at Microsoft. For example, last year women in the US at the same title and level earned 99.7% of what men earned at the same title and level. In any given year, any particular group may be slightly above or slightly below 100 percent. But this obscures an important point: We must ensure not only that everyone receives equal pay for equal work, but that they have the opportunity to do equal work. Second, we need to recruit more diverse talent to Microsoft at all levels of the company. As you saw in the numbers we recently released, we have work to do at Microsoft and across the industry. These numbers are not good enough, especially in a world in which our customers are diverse and global. To achieve this goal — and especially in engineering — we will have to expand the diversity of our workforce at the senior ranks and re-double our efforts in college and other hiring. Each member of the SLT will be goaled to increase Diversity and Inclusion. Third, we need to expand training for all employees on how to foster an inclusive culture. Although we already offer training and development in these areas, we need to ensure the right level of accountability for modeling inclusive behaviors in all our work and actions. We all need to think about how Connects are written, performance feedback is delivered, new hires are selected, how promotion and pay decisions are made, etc. We need to focus on both the conscious and unconscious thinking that affects all these things, and mandatory training on D&I is a great place to start. The data regarding employee pay in the United States is encouraging, but hardly complete. Microsoft is a multinational outfit, with employees spread around the globe. Having near-perfect salary equity in its home market is good, but if those figures are different in other regions, the company has work ahead of it. It would be good of Microsoft to release more detailed statistics on a per-country basis. That data would help women around the world better understand the labor dynamics in their countries. And it would help the technology industry better understand where pay gaps based on gender are wider — that could help people ask for the raises that they deserve. Tasking the company’s senior leadership team with increasing diversity is a fine idea in principle, but we’ll have to see. This is also a push that will take time to bear out, meaning that it will be all but impossible to determine its effectiveness in the near-term. Training is similar in that it might only have impacts later on. However, it is still a good idea. |
The Current State Of The Apple SIM, And Its Possible Future | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | Apple unveiled new gadgets on stage today, but they didn’t discuss one of its most interesting new innovations – the Apple SIM. As detailed earlier by TechCrunch, the new , which include AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint in the U.S., and EE in the U.K. So far, those are the only carriers who have signed on, but Apple is likely hoping more follow suit once they see customers appreciate a choice in short-term data providers. It works by allowing you to choose a service plan from one of the participating providers without having to go to a store, show ID or even get off of a tarmac at an airport – so long as you have a signal. That’s a huge advantage even in the U.K., where signing up for a pre-paid data plan is as easy as using a vending machine just outside the gate of your arriving flight; it still represents more friction than waking up your iPad and choosing a plan, even if only because you have to physically remove and swap SIMs. As for the carriers not on Apple’s list of supported providers, there’s no technical barrier preventing them from participating – Apple is very clear that there’s only one model of cellular iPad this time around, with enough LTE bands to cover most networks in most markets. It’s much more likely that the reason players like Verizon are holding back is that they’re reluctant to hand over so much customer control to Apple, even if it is in the relatively contract-free world of iPad data plans. The problem is more the precedent, in a market that’s already showing signs of potentially moving to favor pre-paid, bring-your-own-device arrangements. Apple is only shipping the Apple SIM with new iPads with cellular connectivity, but the company will also be offering ‘replacement’ Apple SIM cards in store for $5 each, which conceivably means that others not already using them will be able to take advantage for older devices. If Apple does indeed offer them to anyone who comes into a retail location looking, that could quicken the pace at which new carrier partners see the light and sign up. As others have pointed out, as of right now the Apple SIM isn’t a huge threat to the existing smartphone sales model – contract subsidies are too attractive to customers. But ultimately, Apple is almost certainly hoping to replace the physical Apple SIM with a software solution built directly into devices; in fact, it was , before that was axed by opposition from a coalition of European carriers in particular. Starting with a more flexible version of the existing hardware SIM that works only with data-limited devices like the iPad is a good way for Apple to get its feet wet with similar ambitions, and the plus side for its design department is that an in-built SIM removes the need for a SIM tray, which my editor Matthew Panzarino points out should make one knighted British designer very happy. Jony Ive is gonna smoke a cigarette after he gets to eliminate the iPhone's SIM slot. — Matthew Panzarino (@panzer) |
Tagged Ditches IPO Plans, Acquires Tinode And Renames Itself If(we) | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | Social networking site Tagged is no longer going for an IPO. Instead it’s renamed itself , acquired little known messaging app startup for an undisclosed amount and has completely changed direction to become a social app incubator. If(we) is essentially a brand new company, now acting as a parent brand to Tagged and social gaming site Hi5. Tagged was on a high growth course for a number of years and the money had been rolling in. According to , revenue was up 30 percent year-over-year. We reported the in revenue back in 2011. The company founders were reportedly aiming for a $1 billion IPO. Then everything shifted away from Facebook gaming and desktop sites to mobile. This is when both users and revenue began to drop off, according to sources. Co-founders Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith tried at first to shift into going mobile first, but that didn’t seem to work either. Revenue slid from $57 million last year to a projected $51 million this year, . The numbers were no longer where they needed to be for an IPO to make sense. Tagged canned the idea of going public and instead has refocused the company to mobile only. It also decided to completely rebrand with a the new name and logo and make Tagged a product offering rather than as a standalone company. Tseng believes this shift is a chance to go back and essentially start over. “We’ve been working on social for more than a decade and experimenting is in our DNA. We’re excited to return to our startup roots on a quest to create the next billion user social product,” he wrote in a statement to TechCrunch. This might seem like an odd strategy. Tagged hasn’t had much success in mobile. Apps like Sidewalk and Swoon were a little too niche, a little too late to the party and were introduced into already crowded categories. was a dating app that only covered the SF area, for instance. There was already a plethora of dating and hookup apps in the space and Sidewalk failed to get enough interest to make it work. It shut down not long after launch. But with the new name, comes new engineering power. Former founder of Tinode, Dash Gopinath is now the new if(we) chief product officer. He has a background in running product for Yahoo! Badoo, Digg and Top Prospect for nearly a decade himself. Sources close to if(we) say Tagged had been trying to woo him and his team for a couple of years now. Gopinath is banking on the mobile market to help the company grow. “Over 1.2 billion people around the globe use mobile devices and this number is sure to double in the next five years. There is more of an opportunity than ever before to build a social product that appeals to the broader consumer base. Greg and his team have always focused on building products that are loved around the world. With this background, I’m confident that if(we) has the right expertise, passion and determination to create products that connect people like never before,” he reaffirmed. The plan is to incubate multiple social products. Some of the ideas tossed out have been to develop in the anonymous space, “ephemerality sentiment,” and to “push the limits of mobile.” Much of Tagged’s 140 employees will still work on the Tagged product, under the parent if(we) company name. If(we) also confirmed it is already working on a messaging app as its first product. The new app is pretty similar to what Tinode was working on before the acquisition. The new app will incorporate much of the same messaging technology used in Tinode. Gene Sokolov, who also joins the new if(we) from Tinode, will be working as the new SVP of engineering. |
Alpine’s Slick New Headphones Make You Feel Your Beats | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | I’ve spent the better part of today playing with the new , a $299 pair of cans that promise to make you feel your music with the company’s “Full Frequency Immersion” technology. An Alpine spokesperson told me that the product is “targeted to millennials,” which I assume means that they’re designed to give the “oh my god my entire body is shaking” feeling you get at music festivals and EDM shows. Using the headphones’ default settings, you do get some approximation of this. With that said, it’s not as if you’ll feel the bass in your chest — basically, it feels like some of the sound is intentionally diverted away from the ear pieces themselves up to the band that goes over your head. If you download , you can fiddle with the headphones’ settings and automatically create playlists based on “intensity” (read: beats per minute), but the app only works with songs in your iTunes library. That left me with some odd playlists, as I migrated from iTunes to Google Play (and subsequently Beats Music) a while back. Still, for the songs I do have in my library, I could adjust settings to reach my preferred sound profile: All of the settings that you can modify on the headphones (and the whole shaking thing) require that you have them powered on. That means that in addition to your phone, you also need to charge your headphones over USB. People who already charge their Bluetooth headphones every day might be fine with that, but they probably wouldn’t like doing it for a gadget that has to be plugged into their phone to function. It’s bizarre, but despite having Bluetooth LE to send settings from the app to the headphones, you still need an audio cord to play jams on Alpine’s Headphones. As with Beats headphones, Alpine’s headphones feel like they’re made for people who care about giving off a certain image with their tech accessories and don’t care about the technical details that audiophiles dig through when making a new purchase. If you’re all about the bass and think they look pretty cool, it’s easy to see and try them in person: Alpine says they’re in Apple Stores everywhere as of Tuesday. |
OS X Yosemite Is Now Available To Download | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | Apple’s new OS X Yosemite operating system is now available, as a free download from the Mac App Store, and you . The new version of OS X should work on any Mac that was running OS X Mavericks, and provides a host of new features, like Continuity, which lets you start activities on your iOS 8 devices and pick them up on your Mac, or vice versa. The new update was officially launched at a special event in Cupertino today, but only just became available for the general public to download and install. For an in-depth look at its new features, and how they rate, . |
TC Cribs: Eventbrite’s New Bright And Shiny HQ | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | Welcome back to a new episode of Cribs! This time around, we headed over to , the company behind the very popular ticketing and live events platform. If an Eventbrite Cribs tour sounds familiar, it may be because we have done one before. But that was almost three years ago, way back , and a lot has changed since then! Eventbrite has moved from its old ground floor office space into a new place with a lot more natural light, and of course more room for its staff to keep growing.
[gallery ids="1071196,1071187,1071240,1071197,1071217,1071188,1071239,1071189"] Watch the video embedded above to get the full tour of Eventbrite’s new digs, from the secret 6th floor deck, to the particularly plush bathrooms. |
Video: Up Close And Personal With The New Retina iMac And New iPads | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | Apple’s new iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3 and 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina display were all unveiled today at a special event in Cupertino, and we had the chance to spend some time with them, albeit just a little for now. The new hardware impressed, and we’ve got all the details on their specs and availability. Check out the new iPads above, and the new iMac below. We’ve also shared initial impressions in separate hands on posts for both the and the , and early on, all the new hardware seems to have solid improvements over previous generations. Apple didn’t reveal anything that was outside of our expectations, but what it did do was deliver solid technical innovations that required a tremendous amount of engineering effort. |
Playlists.net Acquired By Warner Music Group | Steve O'Hear | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | In early July we reported that Spotify community and playlist sharing site was in acquisition talks, with one suitor — a prominent music industry company — in the lead. Well, today comes official confirmation that the UK startup has indeed been acquired by WEA, the artist and label services company owned by major record label . Terms of the deal remain undisclosed. According to the official announcement, Playlists.net will continue to operate as a stand-alone company based in Newcastle, England and run by founder and CEO Kieron Donoghue. In a statement, Donoghue says: “We were approached by WEA earlier in the year to discuss ways in which we could collaborate and it became apparent that there was much to be gained by us joining forces. What’s really exciting is that WEA have committed to support Playlists.net as an independent platform, invest in its future and grow the team to take advantage of new opportunities in the streaming ecosystem. There is a huge appetite in WEA to further embrace streaming, develop new concepts and really innovate in this growing sector.” Founded in 2009, Playlists.net had raised a rather modest £600,000 from various private backers, including Mark Pearson (Markco Media), and Steve Brown, Dave Brown, Malcolm Cowley and Paul Fellows (the original team behind , which in 2008 was for $125m and subsequently to Digital Window.) Originally named ShareMyPlaylists, the UK startup was one of the first companies to jump head-first into the Spotify ecosystem (and it was clear Spotify could sustain an ecosystem), providing users with a place to upload and share playlists. It subsequently added music discovery features, including launching a playlist generator powered by EchoNest, in addition to iOS, Android and Spotify apps that emphasised consuming music curated by its core users. As of July this year, Playlists.net claimed 1 million users per month, amounting to 4.5 million “listening sessions” per month, and 1 billion Spotify streams per year. As we wrote at the time, depending on which way you slice it, that’s a not-insignificant dent in the music curation space, especially for a rather moderately funded company. The answer lies in both the relative success of Playlists.net itself and a recent industry change that means streaming music now counts in the UK. Playlists.net is thought to have compiled the biggest database of independent Spotify playlists, so there’s a potential opportunity for a major record label to leverage the platform to ensure playlists featuring their acts are more prominently promoted, or that acts they’ve signed feature on the most popular playlists. In addition, thousands of curated playlists uploaded and listened to gives you all sorts of interesting , which could be leveraged by a record label’s A&R and marketing departments as a signalling tool for spotting up and coming trends related to its own artists or further afield. |
MVP (The Show): HBO To Cut The Cord, Nexus 6 & 9, Skype Qik And More | Ryan Block | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/172363031″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_artwork=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] I assume you hang out at TechCrunch because, like me, you love technology products. My old friend Peter Rojas and I have made all kinds of things online over the last 10 years, and we’ve had the pleasure of playing with a zillion products along the way. So we recently decided to start a new show called MVP, which is dedicated to sharing and discussing the most interesting things happening in technology products today. Our good pals at TechCrunch asked us to give the show a spin over here — and not just because we also happen to have day jobs at AOL. On this week’s episode of MVP: HBO finally gets set to launch an Internet-only version; Google announces Nexus 6, 9, and Player; Skype Qik; Ethan; Loopd beacons; and more. We hope you enjoy! Oh, and please do . |
Google Drops 3% After Reporting Weaker-Than-Expected Third Quarter Revenue, Disappointing Non-GAAP EPS Of $6.35 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | Today following the bell, Google its third-quarter earnings: The company had gross revenue of $16.52 billion, revenue net of traffic acquisition costs (ex-TAC) of $13.17 billion, GAAP earnings per share of $4.09, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $6.35. Analysts had expected Google to on a non-GAAP basis, on net ex-TAC revenue of $13.22 billion. In the , Google earned $6.08 in non-GAAP earnings per share, on ex-TAC revenue of $12.67 billion. Google fell more than 1 percent in regular trading. In after-hours trading, following its mixed earnings report, the company is down more than 3 percent. ( Google, off more than 5 percent at one point, is now down a more modest 2 percent.) Google is working to expand its revenue base away from advertising. It is currently locked in the intertwined productivity-storage-cloud computing wars with Amazon, Microsoft, Box, Dropbox, Egnyte, Apple HighQ and others. Declining prices in that space have lowered short-term revenue potential, but that fact has done what I estimate to be a grand total of zero to lower competitive tension in the market area. The company reported net income of $3.72 billion in the period. Breaking down Google’s revenue by segment, you have the following: The company reported that its average cost-per-click fell 2 percent in the period, a weakening in a key revenue source. However, pushing back against that decline was a 17 percent year-over-year increase in ‘aggregate paid clicks.’ So, while the amount of revenue that Google managed to extract from a click went down mildly, it sold more than one-sixth more compared to the year-ago quarter. It is becoming more expensive to run Google. The company’s earnings report details its increasing cost base: “Operating expenses, other than cost of revenues, were $6.10 billion in the third quarter of 2014, or 37% of revenues, compared to $4.58 billion in the third quarter of 2013, or 33% of revenues.” Put another way: Building out new revenue streams, and investing in future products that won’t monetize for some time isn’t cheap. Google remains incredibly rich — its cash tally now sits at $62.16 billion — and profitable. However, investors were looking for a touch more growth on both the top and bottom lines. The search giant is healthy and investing. Investors perhaps need to temper their short-term expectations a touch. For Google, it’s full steam ahead. The company now employs 55,030 full-time employees. That’s up from 52,069 from the end of its sequentially preceding quarter. As a final note, Google and Microsoft now have nearly identical market caps. Something to ruminate on. |
Apple Announces Too Many iPads | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | If you’re in the market to buy a new iPad, your choices just became dizzying. As expected, Apple this morning at its news conference in Cupertino, but it didn’t retire some of its older products to make way for the additions. How many iPad models can you choose from now? Five? And that’s not even counting the fact that each flavor comes with various storage sizes as well as Wi-Fi and cellular versions! It’s a good thing the lines are long at the Apple stores on new product launch days, because you’ll probably have to spend that time trying to figure out which iPad you’re going to buy. (Unless, of course, you’re like a lot of us here – happily using our “old” iPad 2’s which seem to still manage to do everything we need them to.) The latest iPads to join the flock are the iPad Air 2 and the iPad mini 3. The former is Apple’s new flagship tablet: now updated with a Touch ID fingerprint sensor (Apple Pay!), and as the name implies, a thinner body. It has a better camera, better CPU, better GPU, and several other specs that won’t matter to your non-technical parents and grandparents when they ask you if they should upgrade. (“Well, ,” you can say.) You can also mention it has a barometer, which may eventually matter a little in terms of upcoming applications designed to take advantage of the new functionality – like detecting your altitude, discussing the launch on Hacker News. But look at all the price points! Meanwhile, is an updated version of the purse-sized iPad, also now with support for the Touch ID fingerprint sensor, and again slightly better specs than last year’s model – well, it has the old A7 processor, but the iSight camera is better. And oh, yeah, it , too! And the iPad mini 3 has a bunch of SKUs, including: But wait, there’s more! Apple is continuing to sell its older model iPads, including the original iPad mini, last year’s Retina model (the iPad mini 2), and the iPad Air. These start at $249, $299 and $399, respectively, for the Wi-Fi versions – than before, so that’s something. That said, we don’t know what Apple has against offering a 32 GB version on the low-end instead of 16 GB. Why not throw that SKU in there as well while you’re at it, Apple? (But seriously, though, why is a 16 GB a reasonable mobile product offering these days? Have you seen the size of some of these games? Isn’t Apple letting consumers shoot in HD now?) One could argue that Apple can’t drop the 16 GB price point because that’s the model that competes at the low-end of the market. This is critical for Apple’s larger global strategy where it has to go up against a wider range of competitive products, including entry-level Android tablets. Even the nicer Android tablets are fairly affordable: Google’s 16 GB Nexus 7, for example, is $229 and gets the job done. The starts at $400. Apple’s enterprise strategy may also require a range of lower-cost iPads for companies who buy in bulk and don’t need the very latest high-end specs the very minute they’re available. For consumers, however, Apple’s iPad line-up is starting to resemble that of rival . And for a company that likes to focus on simplicity, it’s odd to see what is frankly a confusing array of choices appear, even if the price points are competitive enough to attract new buyers who may have shied away previously because of Apple’s “premium” brand and associated pricing schemes. So if you’re confused, too, and you need help deciding on which iPad to get, here’s the easiest way to figure it out: Big or Little? Good. Now, how much money do you have to spend? Yep, that amount works. Apple has one for you. |
null | John Biggs | 2,014 | 10 | 29 | null |
Apple Built A SIM Card That Lets You Switch Between AT&T, Sprint, And T-Mobile | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | Whoaaa — here’s an interesting bit that went unmentioned in today’s Apple announcement: Apple has seemingly built a SIM card that lets you jump between AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile without having to swap it out (or, more annoyingly, track down/purchase a new SIM card when you want to switch carriers). Instead of swapping the card, you just pick a new carrier through the device’s on screen settings. As it should be! Tucked into the iPad Air 2’s wireless connectivity, Apple calls the new SIM — aptly — “Apple SIM.” As they describe it: The Apple SIM gives you the flexibility to choose from a variety of short-term plans from select carriers in the U.S. and UK right on your iPad. So whenever you need it, you can choose the plan that works best for you — with no long-term commitments. And when you travel, you may also be able to choose a data plan from a local carrier for the duration of your trip. The Apple SIM doesn’t seem to be something you can buy separately for now (I’d totally buy one for my older iPad Mini), but it comes out of the box in the cell-enabled iPad Air 2. This one SIM is currently compatible with AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile in the U.S., and EE in the UK. That list will presumably expand in time, as carriers realize that being one of the available options is probably bad for business. |
Mailcloud Raises $2.8m For Real-Time Email And Messaging For Teams | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | , where users connect their email account and organise their entire history of emails, files and content into folders sorted by person, has raised seed funding, bringing its total funding to $2.8 million. The funding is from Octopus Investments, with Bessemer Venture partners completing its first seed round in Europe. The round also includes Xavier Niel’s Kima Ventures, Seedcamp, and angel backers, including Barry Smith (co-founder of Skyscanner) Irish tech entrepreneur Ray Nolan, Frederic Court (Partner at Advent Ventures) and Daniel Malhery (founder of Deezer). Mailcloud’s pitch is that it allows teams to communicate in real-time with anyone across all devices. “I started Mailcloud because I was really frustrated after receiving 145,000 emails in 2011,” says Malcolm Bell, founder and CEO. “After speaking with some engineering friends, we decided to build a Mailcloud.” This latest $2.5 million funding round follows the $1 million commitment in January from founder Malcolm Bell’s investment company Dessinka. |
Hands On With The New iMac With Retina 5K Display | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | Apple’s newest , which Apple says is the highest resolution display on the planet. The new screen is, as you might expect, gorgeous at first sight, and prolonged exposure only heightens the experience. And even as someone who’s used to using a Retina MacBook Pro as his main machine, it’s a big step up. The screen shows full resolution photos with zoomed crops that look better than most originals coming out of the camera, and the iMac still features that tapered design that narrows to 5 mm at its thinnest point. Apple’s existing industrial design on the iMac has aged well, but the screen is the real star here, and it’s honestly a little hard to pay attention to the rest as a result. [gallery ids="1071302,1071303,1071304,1071305,1071307,1071308,1071309,1071310,1071311,1071312,1071313,1071314,1071315,1071316"] As someone who works with images and video on a daily basis, I can immediately see the advantages of owning a Retina 5K Mac, even over and above the arguably more powerful Mac Pro. Apple has beefed up the internals with faster processor and graphics card options here, however, and it should have enough juice to handle 4K video editing, which it can also do at full resolution while also offering you a fully featured app window with controls and settings in Final Cut Pro. Apple’s clearly not positioning this for the average computer user – $2,499 is a lot less expensive than high-end 4K TVs at comparable sizes, and this is a full computer, so that’s definitely a good deal. But it’s still a big investment, and one that most people in the market for an all-in-one will probably balk at. Just like with the Retina MacBook Pro, Apple’s looking to start this tech out as something aimed at pros and serious enthusiasts first, but make no mistake – eventually, Retina will bleed to lower cost lines, and it’s definitely the future of desktop computing. |
Twitpic Couldn’t Find An Acquirer, Will Shut Down After All On Oct 25th | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | The reports of Twitpic’s survival were greatly exaggerated. it had found an acquirer to save it from death following a trademark complaint from Twitter, the photo sharing service today on October 25th. Users can now until the 25th, at which point they’ll vanish into the void. Twitpic founder Noah Everett wrote on its that: “ Twitpic’s export tool will let users salvage their memories, or at least their last 5000 uploaded photos. Scrolling through your earliest Twitpics will probably make you nostalgic / ashamed. My first was of MC Hammer on a tech conference panel. So both for me. The tool is running behind, presumably due to demand, so you’ll have to click to get in line and then come back to your settings page to get your export download link. Twitpic initially . But then two weeks later it tweeted that someone was buying it and it would continue to operate Here’s the erratic way it’s communicated its demise. Today’s announcement is a major backtrack that’s sure to come as a disappointment to loyal users whose hopes were raised then dashed. Twitpic started as one of the only ways to share photos on Twitter, allowing users to upload pics and get a URL they could post. It filled the permalinked photo pages with ads to But then in mid-2011, Twitter revealed it would launch its own photo-hosting service, making Twitpic largely unnecessary. Twitpic and its competitors were quickly eclipsed by Twitter’s native option. to become a social network, but Twitpic signed its own death certificate by sticking to its original product. The end began a few months ago when Twitter threatened legal action for infringing on its trademark. Everett explained “Twitter contacted our legal demanding that we abandon our trademark application or risk losing access to their API. Rather that fight a costly legal battle against a much deeper-pocketed opponent, Everett decided to throw in the towel. It looked like it would get a second wind thanks to an acquirer, but that didn’t happen. Now the bell has run, the fight’s over, and it’s just nine days until the battered Twitpic stumbles out of the ring. |
OS X Yosemite Review: Apple’s Mac OS Gets A New Look And Killer Mobile Crossover Features | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | operating system is out today, and the final version of the major software update includes lots of changes for your Mac. It’s still OS X, though – Yosemite hasn’t gone so far afield that people used to Mavericks or Mountain Lion will feel adrift, but it comes with some impressive new additions and feature tweaks that make the overall experience of using any Mac – and using a Mac together with an iPhone or iPad – more pleasant, and more productive. OS X Yosemite brings one of the biggest changes to Apple’s desktop operating system in the past decade, thanks to a redesign of app toolbars, as well as a new system-wide font, a brand new dock design and the addition of translucency across system elements to give you a subtle peek at what’s behind your active software, and what’s on your desktop. There’s also an option to switch to a new dark menu bar and dock, which seems like a very small thing, but in practice is actually quite useful if you spend a long time staring at your computer each day. The font is actually one of my favorite things about OS X Yosemite, and it’s particularly useful now that many Mac users are shifting to Retina displays. The new text renders much better when viewed at higher resolutions, like when you dial up the screen real estate setting on your 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, for instance. It’s more legible at all built-in system resolutions, however, and seems to both ease eye-strain and just generally make your desktop computing experience more comfortable. The new dock and toolbar feature a flatter look, which is more in keeping with the design language Apple began to embrace in iOS 7. The new look isn’t so dramatic that users will be confused as to the function and purpose of interface elements, however; the change to the toolbars frees up space to give more usable area to the app upon which it appears, and the new look for Apple’s system apps in the redesigned dock make for easier legibility and recognition. Translucency is an element that lets you see through select interface elements, in system apps like Messages, for instance, to get a better idea of what else you have running on your desktop. This is the surest sign in Yosemite that Apple isn’t moving towards making OS X and iOS the same, in terms of design and function – it’s an aesthetic feature, yes, but it’s also created because desktop users often have multiple application running at once, and providing even an opaque look at what’s going on beneath your current active window can help situate a person in that kind of multitasking environment. As someone who frequently has a huge number of windows open at one time, I can vouch for its effectiveness, even if the impact on the overall workflow is very subtle. Apple’s new look for OS X in Yosemite is a great blend of progress and restraint – it’s significant enough that you notice the changes, which are by and large for the better, but it’s not so dramatic that anyone updating from a recent version should have any trouble adjusting. The new Today View in Yosemite mirrors the new Today View Apple introduced in iOS 8 in September. As on mobile, it makes the Notification Center panel a lot more useful, thanks in large part to greater user control over what they see, and the introduction of third-party widget support. Being able to drop stuff from the Today View that I never use, like Stocks, entirely, and then push up more useful features like the Calculator to the top is a huge benefit. Today View replaces Dashboard for much of my standard daily workflow, but it does more than just replace Apple’s previous home for widgets, because I actually open it more than once every couple of weeks or months. Dashboard was solid in concept, as a place where lightweight, almost-apps that don’t require your full attention and that serve very specific functions could live, but it was too hidden and inconvenient to operate. Today View provides a much better home for widgets, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple drops Dashboard altogether in future iterations of OS X. The new Spotlight is much more than a system-wide file search, freed from Finder, which is what it has been mostly up until now. Apple made it more powerful when it let it search from a variety of sources, but the new look of spotlight and the Command+Space Bar shortcut key combination really make it a full-fledged utility in its own right. Spotlight will now autocomplete your queries based on what’s on your Mac, and what’s being searched for and talked about online. It offers much more information directly within Spotlight itself, too, eliminating the need to even open up a separate app to complete a lot of tasks. The rich and interactive previews Spotlight presents will give you full looks at photos and documents, and complete contact cards and events from your Calendar, and you can view and modify information just by clicking on it in these rich previews. See the address for your next appointment by clicking that info in Spotlight Preview, for instance, or call a friend from the preview of their contact card. Previews also provide summarized Wikipedia entries, Maps location previews, news from Bing and movie information including showtimes, ratings and ratings from Rotten Tomatoes. iTunes results will display albums, ratings and release dates, editors notes and track listings direct from Apple’s digital store itself. Spotlight can also now do conversions directly within the app, so you can go from metric to imperial (a daily chore for me) without even opening a browser window. Spotlight is a great app launcher, and made more so because of its new design and activation methods, but Apple has also put a lot of polish into the app itself, turning it almost into a Siri for the desktop, albeit with text entry instead of speech – yet another sign the company is paying close attention to the differences in usage habits between desktop and mobile and designing experiences accordingly. The new Messages in Yosemite is an app that recognizes people use messaging more often than email now for quick, casual communication, and even for work and longer missives. Conversations can now be named, so that when you’re communicating in groups you don’t jump in and say the wrong one to the wrong people, and this feature carries over to iOS and vice versa, so that names are the same no matter where you set them up. Other great new group messaging features let you add participants to existing conversations, remove yourself from them entirely or just mute them to ensure you won’t hear about every new update in a particularly active (and perhaps not so interesting) family chat. On the desktop, you can also now see all media attachments used in a conversation in a pop-up viewer, which is great for most situations, but also means you probably want to be more mindful about what you share. Messages has always had a memory, but increased accessibility means you might be surprised yourself to find what that memory contains. You can also now send and receive quick audio messages using the microphone button next to the message composition field. Apple has also provided Messages with screen sharing support, which is a great feature should you ever have to do any family troubleshooting, or remote workplace collaboration. Screen sharing lets both participants in a conversation see one of their desktops, allowing for activities like co-browsing the web, or viewing a representation in real-time with a co-worker. Both parties can interact with the desktop, thought the viewer can just control where the cursor points, with a spotlight showing you when and where they click, and the Messages app begins a real-time audio conversation as soon as you kick off a session, with the assumption being that you’ll want to talk over what you’re doing without having to type it out (as you’ll be interacting with the desktop at the same time). Message-based screen sharing is a great idea, and a smart placement for this feature. It’s been possible on Macs before, but this makes the process simple enough that anyone can use it, and given that it’s a handy way to collaboratively solve problems for novice users, housing it in Messages, which is increasingly the hub of multi-user communication on the Mac, makes perfect sense. Apple’s attention to the changing roles of desktop and mobile computing devices, and how users are integrating them into their lives are perhaps best expressed by Yosemite’s Handoff features. With this version of OS X, Apple now lets users start an activity on their Mac, and then pick it up on their iPhone or iPad, or vice versa. So if you’re composing an email on your MacBook, but need to run to the bus to avoid being late, you can seamlessly continue composing on your iPhone. Handoff’s rollout began with iOS 8, but since Yosemite wasn’t yet publicly available, users were limited to being able to start and carry on tasks between iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. It was useful as a mobile-only feature, but with desktop integration, it becomes much more so. Handoff works automatically, too – so long as both devices are signed into your iCloud account, it’ll appear when deemed relevant or useful. So far, I’ve had it reliably provide me with the right suggestions when I wanted it to be there, as it seems like Apple errs on the side of caution in terms of popping up the icon in the bottom left of your lock screen, or at the far left of your dock, to initiate the switch-off. So far, Handoff is supported by Mail, Safari, Maps, Messages, Reminders, Calendars, Contacts, Notes, Keynote, Numbers and Pages out of the box, but Apple is also offering an API so your favorite cross-platform third-party apps can take advantage. Any developer out there who offers apps on both iOS and Mac would do well to bake this feature in, as it’s hard to go back to more manual ways of moving from platform to platform once you’ve experienced it. Apple now lets you make and receive phone calls directly through your Mac, which is achieved by routing the call through your smartphone when both your Yosemite-powered computer and your iOS 8 iPhone are on the same network. In practice it means that if you have your iPhone in the other room and you get a call while you’re at your computer, you don’t have to run to catch it. It also means that you can field calls to your mobile using whatever headphone and mic setup you’re already working with on your desktop, which is great for remote workers like myself. It works well in practice, though I did experience a few instances where there was noticeable lag on calls. Still, it’s very useful, and a far better solution than any of the third-party apps I’ve tried that offer similar experiences with Android devices. The fact that the phone and Mac have to both be on the same Wi-Fi network means you can’t use it as a pseudo roaming solution while your mobile’s at home and you’re in another country, but if this version works out, maybe that’ll arrive at a later date. This new iOS 8.1 feature allows Macs running Yosemite to send and receive SMS messages, again routing them through the iPhone. The SMS feature means that even your contacts who don’t have an iOS device will be able to send you messages, and receive yours, no matter what device you happen to be using. It’s essentially iMessage expanded beyond just iCloud users, and it’s a great feature. The first time you get those green messages on your Mac feels like a revelation – you no longer have to campaign those contacts to switch platforms just for the sake of convenience. Replying to them works just as well as receiving, and in the end it means Messages become even more the hub of interpersonal communication on your Mac, and beyond. This feature requires iOS 8.1 to work, so it isn’t yet available to the general public, but I was able to test it out ahead of launch and based on my experience it should be solid when it hits general availability. When Apple introduced the ability to use your mobile connection on your iPhone as a hotspot to share internet access with your other devices, it changed the way many of us use our devices. Instant Hotspot takes that basic innovation and refines it, allowing you to activate and use the hotspot on your iPhone or cellular-capable iPad without having to even take them out or activate their screens. When you have an iOS 8.1 (this one also requires the upcoming update) device with a cellular connection, and you’re signed in on that device to your iCloud account, signing in to the same iCloud account on your Yosemite-powered Mac will make it appear as a connection list in your Mac’s Wi-Fi menu, even if you haven’t activated the hotspot in your iPhone’s settings. Clicking on it will automatically start the hotspot on the iOS 8 device, and log you in to the network, no password required. It really is that easy, and once you’ve been using it for a while, it’s hard to believe it was ever any other way. Using the Dropbox app for OS X essentially gives you cloud-based storage directly in Finder, but Apple’s own iCloud Drive now offers you the same thing, with even tighter integration, using your existing iCloud account. Where file syncing via iCloud used to be a mostly invisible process surfaced only in relevant apps by developers, iCloud Drive now lets users have greater control and visibility regarding exactly what’s stored in their iCloud accounts, and what they do with those files. iCloud Drive now appears in the ‘Favorites’ sidebar of Finder, just underneath the ‘All My Files’ list item. It contains files and folders just like an ordinary Finder folder, and you can add documents to it, and copy documents from it, just like you would with any folder. You can create new subfolders, tag items, and it’s indexed by Spotlight for easy searching. Plus it’s available even when you’re offline, with changes syncing back to your iCloud account once you reconnect. If there’s a conflict, it’ll let you review and choose which version to go with. The new iCloud Drive folder will show you apps created in iCloud by documents on your iOS devices, too, and you can open these with compatible apps on your Mac, with changes syncing. On iOS 8, you can open these documents in the apps that support them directly, even if they weren’t necessarily created there. It also works with Windows, given you multi-platform access to whatever your store in your iCloud account. This feature works for both power users and casual users alike, since it makes it easier for those with an itch for stringent document control to get at their content, while also keeping the hands-off syncing and usability features of iCloud intact for those who don’t care to poke around too much under the hood. Messages may be becoming more important as a communications center for your Mac, but Apple didn’t leave Mail out of the updates in Yosemite. The changes to its desktop email client include powerful new features that let you fill out and sign forms directly in replies, and provide built-in annotation tools for PDFs, which let you more easily collaborate back and forth with colleagues, or just with friends on a birthday party flyer. The annotations tools user the Mac’s trackpad to let you draw freehand shapes, and the tool cleans up the lines to make smooth callouts, arrows and more. There’s a magnification tool so you can point out a particular piece of a document or image for closer attention. Given that most email I deal with these days seems to involve signing something or providing some kind of feedback, these are very useful additions. Mail Drop might be the most useful new Mail feature, however; it automatically takes attachments up to 5GB in size, uploads them to iCloud and provides a link to the receiver (or processes them automatically if they’re also using Mail in Yosemite) so that they can receive it, no matter the attachment limits of their provider. This works across email providers, so you can use it with your Gmail or Outlook.com account, so long as you’re sending via Mail and are also signed into your iCloud account on your Mac. Given that the average file size is getting larger all the time, and that most attachment limits haven’t kept pace with that development, this is a great way to share stuff without having to upload it to a cloud storage provider and get a link first. New Safari is a big change from previous versions, with a more streamlined look that devotes less UI to chrome and more to actual web page content. There’s also a great new tab view that provides you with a visual, thumbnail-based overview of all your open tabs at once, with nested stacks of pages originating from the same domain. If you’re a tab-heavy browser like myself, this is a huge boon to your workflow. Hunting through one or two-letter tab headers is a thing of the past, when you’re trying to find that one tab you opened ages ago and promptly forgot all about. Spotlight also gets more powerful in Safari, offering you suggestions from the same web-based sources that it polls when you’re using the desktop-wide Spotlight app. You’ll see brief previews of articles from Wikipedia, for instance, or films, locations and iTunes albums. Apple has also added new Safari tools aimed at enhancing privacy and security, like the DuckDuckGo search engine built-in as an option for Smart Search. This was also added as an option for mobile Safari on iOS 8, and gives users who don’t want to trade their data for search results another choice. New cookie blocking options will allow you to specify cookies only from the current site, making it more difficult for marketers to chase you around the web, and an improved Private Browsing mode lets you open a new private window while preserving your existing session. Safari’s best improvements might be its under-the-hood changes, however. Improved performance using the new Safari engine offer up to two hours more browsing time while on battery power vs. Chrome or Firefox, and special HTML5 support for Netflix streaming means you’ll also get up to two hours more viewing time with the subscription video service. This is the first time I’ve started using Safari on a new version of OS X and stuck with it, even months later. Typically, I’m lured in by the lists of new features, but end up slipping back into old habits with Chrome before long. Apple’s latest Safari release has bucked the trend, however, thanks to the battery benefits mentioned above, as well as usability improvements like the new Tab view that offer concrete advantages if you spend a lot of time working on the web. Yosemite isn’t a hard sell – Apple offers it as a free download from the Mac App Store, and it’s compatible with essentially the same list of computers that could support Mavericks and Mountain Lion. But even if it didn’t have these advantages, it would still be worth installing; the improvements here are much more than surface deep, and make forward progress in terms of how we think about and experience desktop computing, especially in a world where mobile occupies an increasing amount of our time. There’s a lot more going on here than the things highlighted above, too, including new AirDrop functionality that works between iOS devices and Macs, and plenty of developer tools that will make Mac apps from third-parties much more powerful, and much better integrated throughout the desktop, so stay tuned for lots more to come on Yosemite from us. |
LG Shipped A Record 16.8 Million Smartphones In Q3 2014, Up 39% Year-On-Year | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | Samsung is under-pressure as , but things couldn’t be going much better for fellow Korean phone-maker LG, which just that it shipped a best-ever 16.8 million smartphones in Q3 2014. LG Mobile, which is just one branch of the larger LG Electronics corporate company, saw its quarterly shipments jump 39 percent year-on-year and 16 percent on the previous quarter of business. The company did $4.14 billion in sales (that’s 4.25 trillion Korean won) with an operating income of $163.16 million, or 167.4 billion won. That, LG Mobile says, is its best quarter of business for five years. The G3 is LG Mobile’s flagship phone — — but the company’s success looks to have helped by its strong mid-range and entry-level devices. Those included cheaper versions of the G3 — such as the G3 Beat — as well as , which is billed as offering a “premium” experience at pricepoints that are affordable for emerging markets and those on a limited budget. The LG 3 impressed us with its quad HD display Looking forward, LG Mobile says that it expects to” strengthen its positioning in the smartphone market with its G Series and L Series III models despite the landscape becoming more competitive.” LG Electronic’s full third quarter revenue, which is unaudited at this point, came in at $14.54 billion — that’s up 7.4 percent year-on-year. Its operating profit of $449.61 million is more than double the figure it posted one year ago. The company’s business includes home entertainment, home appliances and air conditioning, but it said that the latest earnings “reflected strong performance” from its mobile division. Samsung, on the other hand, is preparing itself for more struggles. Earlier this month, that its Q3 2014 profits are likely to be 60 percent lower than a year previous. The Korean firm’s financials are suffering from increased competition at both ends of the scale — the iPhone is putting it under pressure at the high end of the smartphone market, while Xiaomi and others are giving consumers more stylish options on a budget. |
Hands On With The iPad Air 2 | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | The feels a lot like the old iPad Air, and that’s a good thing, But it’s amazing the difference that shaving just a little more off of the thickness of the device can do, in terms of its overall presence in the hand. This iPad Air definitely feels more portable, and I’d imagine will be a lot more comfortable to hold over longer periods, thanks to the additional size and weight savings. The display is the same resolution as the one you’re used to from the last generation, which is still one of the best in the tablet industry, but now it somehow looks as if it’s even closer to the glass, and the impression is one of a printed high-resolution mock-up, rather than an actual display you can interact with and change. That’s because Apple has eliminated a gap by combining screen components to bring the display even closer to the glass. Things look a lot more touchable, some how, with this new look. [gallery ids="1071262,1071261,1071260,1071259,1071258,1071257,1071256,1071255,1071254,1071253,1071252,1071251,1071250"] While the iPad Air’s hardware mute/lock switch is gone, it isn’t forgotten. I understand the need to remove the physical button in the interest of saving space, but it’s still a very handy thing to have on the device if you’re looking to quickly silence any notifications or noises. The software workaround isn’t terrible, but it isn’t ideal, either. Touch ID on the new iPad Air is a very welcome addition. It works as you’d expect it to, if you’ve used the iPhone 5s or later, which is to say it works far better than any other fingerprint unlocking tech out there, with a much lower incidence of error. Overall, Apple has delivered a powerful update to its larger iPad, and the camera improvements actually might convince me to start using a tablet to take photos, even though I never thought I’d say those words ever in a million years. We’ll have additional thoughts on the iPad Air 2 once we get a chance to do a full review, but for now it seems like a solid upgrade, if a mostly evolutionary one. |
Discount Ticket Seller ScoreBig Scores $18M Series D | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | , the online ticketing company, has raised a total of $18 million in Series D funding. In a , the company said that Heart Ventures was the lead investor and that George Kliavkoff, the co-president of Hearst Entertainment & Syndication, is the latest addition to ScoreBig’s board of directors. The capital will be used to grow its online and mobile products, establish strategic partnerships, and on marketing. Its Series D brings ScoreBig’s . The site, which was founded in 2009, allows consumers to bid on tickets by contracting with event producers and professional resellers to obtain unsold tickets at undisclosed prices below face value. The site says the advantage for event holders is that since bidders don’t see the final discounted amount of tickets, their full-price sales channels are protected. This differentiates ScoreBig’s strategy from competitors like Ticketfly and Tickets.com. ScoreBig claims that consumers save an average of 40 percent below box office prices. The company also said that it expects to more than double its revenue this year. In a statement, Kliavkoff said, “The team at ScoreBig has developed a solution to two of the biggest challenges facing the live entertainment industry: making live events more affordable for price conscious consumers, and increasing live event attendance. ScoreBig does this in a manner that protects full price sales of entertainment brands, while also providing tremendous value for the consumer. ScoreBig’s widespread support from so many sectors of the entertainment industry and its rapid growth is validation of the company’s role in re-shaping the industry.” |
Facebook’s Slowing User Growth And Weak WhatsApp Revenue Send Shares Down 9% | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | Wall Street wants growth, or else. of 4.8 percent yesterday down from 6.3 percent last quarter and got hammered with a 9.8 percent share price drop today. And now, Facebook’s this quarter, and now in after-hours trading. Meanwhile, Facebook broke out financials of its $22 billion WhatsApp acquisition for the first time, and they were . WhatsApp brought in just $15 million in revenue in the first half of 2014 despite having 600 million users. Facebook sidestepped the one question that could have instilled confidence…or sent it into a death spiral: teen engagement. The company refused to break out any data about usage levels of teens, which are widely thought to be abandoning Facebook for apps like Snapchat. When asked about engagement for different demographics, Facebook’s CFO David Wehner said the company had nothing to report on specific cohorts of users. That was probably smart. A year ago when ex-CFO David Ebersman said Facebook “ ” the share price plummeted despite an otherwise killer quarter. The mere absence of reassuring statements about teens combined with the slowing user growth offset Facebook’s other successes. Though it beat estimates with $3.2 billion in revenue and 66 percent of ad revenue coming from mobile, its share price is still in the gutter. It seems that Wall Street is looking at social networks for their long-term growth potential over their short-term monetization ability. Twitter might be able to earn a good amount per user, but investors think it might not have enough of those users to warrant a higher share price. Similarly, while Facebook has conquered much of the developed world, slowing growth indicates it may not just be a matter of time until everyone has a Facebook profile. Some people might simply not want to be more open and connected. |
Code School Brings Its Instructional Videos For Developers To iOS | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | , the online learning destination that grew out of founder Gregg Pollack’s longtime efforts in creating and sharing technical content with a developer audience, has now made the leap to mobile. With the new iOS application, developers can watch Code School’s over 300 instructional videos covering JavaScript, HTML/CSS, Ruby, iOS and Git as well as other popular developer tools, like Chrome Dev Tools, for example. Much of the content in the new app is free, while those who subscribe to Code School’s premium product will be able to unlock all videos. The app, however, is meant to complement but not replace Code School’s online educational resource, which is where developers learn hands-on by coding in the browser while watching screencasts and other course videos. The idea for Code School came about through Pollack’s own interest in creating educational content for developers, which he began doing around eight years ago. His focus at the time was the then still relatively new framework, Ruby on Rails. “As with any new technology in its infancy, the documentation sucked,” Pollack explains. “So I would blog about it. I got into podcasting; I would go and speak at conferences about it; I would create videos about it…it was just something I would do in my spare time,” he says. For his day job, Pollack consulted, eventually rebranding his consultancy to “Envy Labs” around five years ago. All the educational material he was publishing was attracting clients, but he wasn’t trying to turn that content into a money-making business of its own at that point, he says. But in November 2010, Pollack released what soon became a popular course, “Rails for Zombies,” where he combined video content with coding in the browser for the first time. This was long before other online “learn to code” startups even existed — for instance, competitor Codecademy wasn’t founded until the following year. “Other people had done the coding in the browser thing,” Pollack admits. “But we put it together in a new way,” he says. In the Rails course, developers would watch a video then practice what they learned in the browser, and then repeat that process over and over again. Though this was still free content, there were so many users coming in, Pollack realized there was the potential to do more. By March 2011, that business idea became Code School, launching with just one free Rails course and one paid. Today, the site has grown to include over 40 courses across a variety of topics and designed for a wide range of developers, from the newcomers looking to learn coding for the first time, to more advanced developers looking to refine or expand their skills. However, most of the audience identifies as either intermediate or advanced, a recent user survey found, with 33 percent and 29 percent, respectively, claiming those skill levels, versus the 14 percent who said they were beginners, or the 24 percent who knew just enough to get by. Code School today has roughly 40,000 users actively learning on its website at any given time, and has seen 1 million sign-ups to date. Around 15 percent of customers have reported some sort of positive outcome after taking Code School courses, like a promotion at work or a new job. Now the company is working to reach an audience who is interested in learning while on the go . Though, obviously, the app doesn’t include the ability to code alongside the videos, it can serve as a way to reinforce what you previously learned while practicing on the web, familiarize yourself with new topics, or just brush up on rusty skills. The bootstrapped startup, based in Orlando, is now a team of 35, and profitable since the beginning. What makes its courses unique amid what’s now a large number of online learning competitors is the time that goes into course production, says Pollack. It may take six people three months to make just five hours of content, he notes. That may seem like a drawback in terms of scaling the product, but the founder claims it’s a feature. “What we’re creating is more like creating a video game than just a screencast,” he says. Some videos in the new app can only be unlocked by to Code School online for $29/month. Pricing discounts for teams are also available, and the company claims customers including Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Zendesk, and Fandango as using its product. Code School is a free download . |
Apple Closes At New All-Time High Of $106.74 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | Slight amendment: Apple closed today at an all-time high. The company traded for a higher per-share price before its split, but today marks Apple’s highest close . The company traded in the low 90s following the split, putting its current value up more than 10 percent since the division. Apple ended today worth $618.97 billion, according to Google Finance, and $626.15 billion, according to Yahoo Finance. Use whatever share count you’d like for your own calculation. The company’s split was widely thought to be a move calculated to allow for its inclusion into the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which, due to how it weighs different inputs, would have been distorted by Apple’s formerly high — in raw dollar terms — share price. Apple also noted that a lower per-share price would widen the number of people who could buy its shares, that it wanted its equity to be “accessible to a larger number of investors.” CEO Tim Cook recently spoke at a technology conference, noting that Apple’s new Pay product was seeing , which might have helped bolster its shares today. Apple is the most valuable company in the world, followed by Exxon Mobil, Microsoft and Google. Here’s the chart, via Google Finance: Apple recently reported , including more than $42 billion in revenue. In the period, Apple sold 39.3 million iPhones, 12.3 million iPads and 5.5 million Macs. |
WhatsApp’s First Half Of 2014 Revenue Was $15M, Net Loss Of $232.5M Was Mostly Issuing Stock | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | Facebook disclosed financials of its $22 billion acquisition of for the first time today, and it looks like the 600 million user messaging app’s revenue is still small. In the six months ending June 30, 2014, WhatsApp brought in $15.921 million in revenue, but had a net loss of $232.5 million. However, $206.5 million of that loss was for share-based compensation expenses and issuance of common stock below fair value. Its net cash used in operating expenses during the first half of 2014 was $13.5 million, which sounds much more reasonable. Essentially, due to WhatsApp’s quickly rising valuation, it used share-based compensation to attract top talent. Eventually, the $22 billion acquisition by Facebook would largely make the “expenses” of issuing that stock moot. This wasn’t cash that WhatsApp was burning, but paper money it was doling out. For the year ending December 31, 2013, WhatsApp had $10.2 million in revenue and a net loss of $138.146 million. Net cash used in operating during this period was only $9.9 million, while share-based compensation amounted to $98.8 million. This share-based compensation ballooned from $38.2 million in 2012 when it had $54.669 million in net losses, $3.5 million net cash used in operating activities, and just $3.821 million in revenue. Overall, Facebook broke down the money it spent on WhatsApp as $2.026 billion for the user base, $448 million for the brand, $288 million for technology, and $21 million for other. That left it to chalk up the $15.314 billion difference as “good will” aka the value “from future growth, from potential monetization opportunities, from strategic advantages provided in the mobile ecosystem from expansion of our mobile messaging offerings.” WhatsApp’s goal is still growth, rather than monetization. Mark Zuckerberg and WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said when the acquisition was made in February that yet the app wouldn’t be aggressively pushing the $1 a year subscription fees it sometimes charges. Instead, together the CEOs hope to make WhatsApp the top international messaging app first, box out competitors, and then earn money once it’s solidified its position. |
Seen.co Secures $1.25M From Horizons Ventures And KEC To Capture Live Social Events | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | As a graduate of The New York Times Company’s “timeSpace” accelerator, New York startup has been plying its wares since 2012, when capturing real-time events via social media was still relatively new and chaotic. They pitched it as a space in between Twitter and Google News. A number of competitors have arisen to also have a go at this area. came out the same year and has since raised $12.8M to power social publishing for brands and publishers. However, Seen has not been idle, garnering three Google Research Awards and two patents on the science around identifying trending signals on the real-time web. Seen is now announcing $1.25M in seed investment evenly split between Horizons Ventures and KEC Ventures. Li Ka-Shing and Jeff Citron (Horizons and KEC Ventures respectively) join in the investment for Seen, joining notable angels including David Tisch’s BoxGroup, Scott and Cyan Banister, Matt Rolandson and Sam Tripodi, Andrew Rasiej, Cantora Records, and Thatcher Bell, Venture Partner at Gotham Ventures. The funding will be used to cover more stories, expand the technology team and bring Seen’s product to bear on the $200 billion live events market. Here’s their feed from . Why did they invest? Well, Bart Swanson of Horizons Ventures, says he thinks “structuring real-time stories algorithmically is a tremendous business opportunity.” It’s clear that Seen is onto something, as the publishing industry is embracing social and “user generated content” as part of their businesses, hence why companies like Seen, Rebelmouse and can capitalise on this trend, whether the live event of a protest in Hong Kong or the launch of a new iPhone. Founder Tarikh Korula says “Google was built for an older web made of simple HTML sites linking to one another. Today, services like Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Tumblr, and others are creating a real-time web that requires a new paradigm for organisation, search and discovery — that’s what Seen is all about.” I agree and this is a burgeoning area, though I would personally argue that mobile platforms are the place for live events, and it’s to be hoped Seen develops in that arena. The platform is in use by customers including The Bowery Presents, a concert promotion and venue management organization that runs multiple venues in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Maine. Recently, Jumbotrons at The Governor’s Ball music festival used Seen to engage with visitors to the 3-day cultural phenomenon (headliners included Outkast, Phoenix and Jack White.) |
Facebook Beats In Q3 With $3.2B Revenue, User Growth Up A Slower 2.27% QOQ To 1.35B | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | For the ninth consecutive quarter, Facebook beat projections thanks to 1.12 billion mobile users contributing 66 percent of its ad revenue. Facebook racked up $3.203 billion in revenue with a $0.43 EPS in Q3 2014. Total user count grew 2.27 percent to 1.35 billion monthly users, but that’s slower than its 3.125 percent user growth in Q2. The social network counts 864 million daily users and 703 million mobile daily users. Facebook now has 456 million mobile-only users, up 14.2 percent from 399 million last quarter to make up one-third of Facebook’s user base. Mobile growth was 4.67 percent from 1.07 billion to 1.12 billion, which is a significant amount slower than the 5.9 percent that the figure grew last quarter. For its size, the 2.27 percent user growth looked decent compared to the 4.8 percent growth Twitter says pushed it to 284 million users. And Facebook’s mobile money dwarfs that of other ad giants like Yahoo, which saw from mobile this quarter. , as $FB is now down 9.77 percent in after-hours trading to $72.88, compared to pre-earnings level of $80.52 and its previous all-time regular hours high of $81.16. Facebook saw solid growth in its home US & Canada market, reaching 206 million users up from 204 million last quarter. However, its growth in Asia slowed from 5.12 percent last quarter to 3.96 percent, leaving it with 426 million users in the region now. Average Advertising Revenue Per User (ARPU) growth slipped a bit internationally, but grew from 13.08 percent last quarter to 15.91 percent this quarter in the US and Canada to reach $1,362. That may indicate that new ad offerings like premium video and Audience Network may be picking up steam in Facebook domestic markets, which gives a promising outlook for how they’ll fair internationally given some time. Facebook’s earnings beat Wall Street’s estimates of $3.12 billion in revenue and $0.40 EPS. Facebook now has $14.25 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, giving it ample ammo to make acquisitions. There are a few big questions for the earnings call later today. The performance of Facebook’s premium video ads is of interest, as is the early progress of Facebook Audience Network, its mobile advertising network. Analysts may want to hear how Facebook thinks its Creative Labs standalone app strategy will pay dividends, following the slow traction of Paper and Slingshot, and the new release of Rooms. Most importantly, though, is that we’ll see if Facebook is willing to give any data on the engagement of teens. Many suspect it has fallen significantly, with a teen usage is down from 72 percent in the spring to 45 percent in the fall 2014, though surveys like this are suspect, as teens may be exaggerating their exodus to sound cool. Last time Facebook mentioned teen data on Q3 2013’s earning call, citing a slight drop amongst younger US teens, its share price cratered and the company has been mum on the subject ever since. |
Google[x] Reveals Nano Pill To Seek Out Cancerous Cells | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | Detecting cancer could be as easy as popping a pill in the near future. Google’s head of life sciences, Andrew Conrad, took to the stage at the conference to reveal that the tech giant’s secretive lab has been working on a wearable device that couples with nanotechnology to detect disease within the body. “We’re passionate about switching from reactive to proactive and we’re trying to provide the tools that make that feasible,” explained Conrad. This is a third project in a series of health initiatives for Google[x]. The team has already developed a smart contact lens that detects glucose levels for diabetics and utensils that help manage hand tremors in Parkinson’s patients. The plan is to test whether tiny particles coated “magnetized” with antibodies can catch disease in its nascent stages. The tiny particles are essentially programmed to spread throughout the body via pill and then latch on to the abnormal cells. The wearable device then “calls” the nanoparticles back to ask them what’s going on with the body and to find out if the person who swallowed the pill has cancer or other diseases. “Think of it as sort of like a mini self-driving car,” Conrad simplified with a clear reference to Google[x]’s vehicular project. “We can make it park where we want it to.” Conrad went on with the car theme, saying the body is more important than a car and comparing our present healthcare system as something that basically only tries to change our oil after we’ve broken down. “We wouldn’t do that with a car,” he added. Bikanta’s tiny diamonds luminesce cells in the body. Similar to , the cells can also fluoresce with certain materials within the nanoparticles, helping cancer cells to show up on an MRI scan much earlier than has been possible before. This has all sorts of implications in medicine. According to a separately released statement from Google today, “Maybe there could be a test for the enzymes given off by arterial plaques that are about to rupture and cause a heart attack or stroke. Perhaps someone could develop a diagnostic for post-surgery or post-chemo cancer patients – that’s a lot of anxious people right there (note: we’d leave this ‘product development’ work to companies we’d license the tech to; they’d develop specific diagnostics and test them for efficacy and safety in clinical trials.” We essentially wouldn’t need to go into the doctor and give urine and blood samples anymore. According to Conrad, we’d simply swallow a pill and monitor for disease on a daily basis. We’d also be able to upload that data into the cloud and send it to our doctor. “So your doctor could say well for 312 days of this year everything looks good but these past couple of months we’re detecting disease,” Conrad said. Privacy and security, particularly in health care is essential. Google came under fire in the last couple of years for to the U.S. government. Conrad was quick to mention that a partner, not Google would be handling individual data. “It’d be like saying GE is in control of your x-ray. We are the creators of the tech and they are the disseminators,” Conrad clarified. The U.S. government has an active interest in this space, as well. It’s invested since 2013. This project is in the exploratory phases but Conrad was hopeful that we’d be seeing this technology in the hands of every doctor within the next decade. He also mentioned that his team has explored ways of not just detecting abnormal cells but also delivering medicine at the same time. “That’s certainly been discussed,” he said, but cautioned that this was something that needed to be carefully developed so that the nanoparticles had a chance to show what was happening in the body before destroying the cells. So far 100 Google employees with expertise in astrophysics, chemistry and electrical engineering have taken part in the nanoparticle project. “We’re trying to stave off death by preventing disease. Our foe is unnecessary death,” Conrad added. |
Hands On With The Motorola Droid Turbo From Verizon | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | The latest Droid device is now fully , and it’s truly a beast. The most prominent and highlighted feature of the phone, its ability to charge quickly and last for up to 48 hours, is hard to test properly in a matter of hours. However, the look, feel, and general build of the device is already making an impression on me. Motorola handed out devices at the launch event, and I walked away with a Ballistic Nylon version of the device. But that’s not to say I’m a fan of the nylon. It seems like a material that would pick up dust and dirt and food in any one of its many pockets and crevices and forever look like a piece of trash. And matters aren’t helped by the front of the device, which looks all the more cheap and plastic-ish thanks to the nylon on the back. I’m thinking the Metallic version, pictured in the gallery below, may actually be more practical and look a little more subtle. [gallery ids="1075995,1075994,1075993,1075992,1075991,1075990,1075989,1075988,1075987,1075981,1075982,1075983,1075984,1075985,1075986,1075980,1075979,1075978,1075977,1075976,1075975,1075974,1075973,1075972,1075971"] Still, it feels like a sturdy phone that could withstand more than a few hard drops (though we hardly recommend testing this out for yourself.) It’s also quite thick and feels heavy, weighing in at 176 grams, with that super dense 3900mAh battery under the hood. The pure Android experience is nice in a world of Android phones with way too many features, and the 5.2-inch display is quite nice. It also doesn’t feel big, given the size of the display and the battery. The phone comes with a handful of different discounts from Verizon, which you can check out , and starts at $199 on-contract for the 32GB model on October 30. |
Apple VP Greg Joswiak On iPhone 6 Plus Sales, iOS 8 Bugs, And Apple’s Watch | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | In a panel led by Ina Fried and Walt Mossberg at Recode’s , Greg Joswiak opened with a brief explanation of his role as VP of iPhone, iPod, and iOS Product Marketing. He said it’s about taking the technical details and helping the marketing and sales teams construct the story that will appeal to consumers at a deeper level so that old and new customers will buy into the iPhone, iPad, and iCloud ecosystem. One of the big aspects of that involves factoring how people are buying and using iPhones. Recode’s Mossberg asked how many iPhone 6es the company has sold since its launch last month and referenced the fact that last night, T-Mobile CEO John Legere claimed that the 6 Plus is selling in greater quantities than they expected. Joswiak said that for right now, sales are limited by output, so the ratio of 6 sales to its larger sibling is a function of production. After a brief discussion of Apple SIM, Mossberg switched gears and touched upon iOS 8. After a long intro to his point, he got to the meat of the matter: why does the latest release of Apple’s mobile operating system seem buggier than usual? In response to a reference to iOS 8.0.1, for ~40-50,000 people who had just purchased their new iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, Joswiak didn’t go into detail but said, “It wasn’t the software itself, but how it was distributed.” After Mossberg spent more time talking about recent issues, Joswiak said that Apple has few notable bugs that get out and that when they do, they’re quick to respond both publicly and on the engineering front, addressing the technical issues. Regarding CVS shutting down Apple Pay at its terminals and the potential threat of MCX’s , Joswiak reiterated the company’s talking point that Apple Pay is focused on the consumer side of things, revealing less personal data to retailers and minimizing the opportunities for hackers to steal user account data. In the long run, Joswiak said, the retailers who succeed will also focus on consumers. He also jabbed Apple’s competitors, mentioning the fact that 1 million credit cards were registered with Apple Pay in its first 72 hours (which ), followed by “about a million more than others doing similar things in this space.” Ouch. When Mossberg implied that the Apple Watch could cost thousands of dollars at the high-end, Joswiak didn’t press against the assertion but claimed that offering a wider price range is just another way that people can choose the device that works best for them — so if you’re rich and want a really nice watch, you aren’t forced to decide between having something made out of rose gold and the user experience that comes with Apple’s software and hardware. Asked why iPad sales are falling, Joswiak didn’t quite address the question, noting that the iPad continues to sell in larger volumes than traditional PCs and that Apple continues to make the most well-regarded tablet on the market. |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 10 | 16 | null |
Tumblr Rolls Out Auto-Playing Video Ads To Users’ Dashboards | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | Tumblr’s auto-playing video ads will begin rolling out to users’ dashboards today, in a pilot program that includes participation from ten big-name brands such as CW, Lexus, Universal, JCPenney, Hulu and others. The video ad test follows last week’s news of an updated video player offering auto-play capabilities and . The new brand ads will take advantage of the same functionality, as they will also loop infinitely on desktop and mobile (Android and iOS) — though in the latter case, they’ll only auto-play when connected to Wi-Fi. In addition, like , Tumblr’s video ads will be muted by default offering a speaker button to activate the sound, as well as a pop-out video player for the web that will allow users to keep scrolling through their Tumblr Dashboard while the video plays. Users can also change the video quality to HD if they prefer. Meanwhile, for advertisers who are exploring sponsored video ads, Tumblr’s new video player technology will also support Vine and Instagram videos — allowing the advertisers to reuse videos they’ve crafted for other platforms. Brands could already run Sponsored Posts, including video posts, on Tumblr prior to today’s launch, but now those ads with videos can auto-play thanks to the new video enhancements launched earlier. Though the company is following in Facebook’s footsteps when it comes to augmenting the user experience with auto-playing videos, it hasn’t really given the Tumblr user base time to get used to the new feature before turning it into an ad mechanism. That could lead some Tumblr users into mentally associating any auto-play videos with ads and could discourage them from clicking. Of course, that may depend on how good the video ads are — some, like the above for Lexus, one of the first advertisers to trial this feature, are pretty interesting. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said last week during Yahoo’s earnings call that Tumblr is expected to generate over $100 million in revenue for the company, mainly due to the introduction of sponsored advertising. She also noted that Tumblr before interest, tax and depreciation next year, and the platform has seen its audience grow 40 percent to 420 million visitors. The news , who had previously been writing off the $1.1 billion Tumblr acquisition as something of a dud, especially as Yahoo had been silent about Tumblr’s financial situation. (So much for all that brouhaha about the service following the Yahoo deal.) Mayer also revealed at the time that the number of blogs on Tumblr had nearly doubled to 206 million, and people were staying on the service longer – with Dashboard browsing sessions growing from 22 minutes to 28 minutes. (Apparently, , too, or so she said in a recent interview.) The news of the Tumblr video ads also comes at a time when it’s been rumored that Yahoo is aiming to as a competitor to YouTube, attracting a younger, millennial audience, and specifically the YouTube stars they follow. But instead of focusing on the same sorts of advertisements common on other video ad networks, like pre-roll ads for example, Yahoo has for a long time now been attempting to make Tumblr the home for brand advertising. Because the ads auto-play, Tumblr is only charging after the ad has been viewed for 2 seconds, and advertisers won’t pay for any looping views, sharing or reblogging of those ads, . Additionally, advertisers will be able to target the ads based on gender, interest and location information. These new auto-playing ads will remain in Tumblr for now, though other Tumblr ads have , including Yahoo’s new digital magazines. |
The FTC Sues AT&T Over ‘Unlimited’ Data Claims | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is for having “misled” millions of customers who purchase “unlimited” data plans for their phones, only to have the carrier later drastically reduce the amount of information they could access. According to the FTC’s complaint, AT&T throttled millions of customers tens of millions of times, sometimes after the consumer had used a mere 2 gigabytes of data in a payment period. The throttling could reach as high as 80 or 90 percent, in terms of speed reduction. In short, AT&T sold unlimited plans, and then whacked the living crap out of them. AT&T no longer sells unlimited data plans. Users were grandfathered in from the time when the mobile carrier did in fact sell such plans. Even though the plans are no longer generally available, the company is responsible for its contractual promises. The FTC’s Chairwoman Edith Ramirez was blunt: “AT&T promised its customers ‘unlimited’ data, and in many instances, it has failed to deliver on that promise. The issue here is simple: ‘unlimited’ means unlimited.” The FTC noted in its release that it worked with the FCC on the matter. The FCC released a statement on the FTC’s action, stating that it has been “actively investigating throttling practices since this summer,” noting that its Chairman, Tom Wheeler, has reached out to carriers concerning throttling. Chairman Wheeler . Unlimited plans and how they are managed matter, given that in time, as the cost of mobile data falls, they could come back into vogue. If that happens, precedent will matter: What is actually unlimited and what merely earns the moniker? This is not a new issue. In 2012, TechCrunch , in the wake of new rules from AT&T: Welcome to the brave new world, everyone. AT&T announced today in regards to older so-called unlimited data plans. Subscribers will still be able to keep these plans but they’re essentially limited to AT&T’s new 3GB/5GB data plans. Let’s be clear: AT&T’s unlimited plans are now officially limited. Today’s FTC action is welcome, if a bit tardy. AT&T calls the suit “ .” |
China’s Chukong Partners With Facebook, Mobile Startups To Offer Developers A Full Suite of Support | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | While giants like Facebook and Twitter try to package their acquisitions like crash-testing service Crashlytics or mobile-backend-as-a-service Parse into a suite of services that will entice app makers into their fold, gaming companies are doing the exact same thing for their communities. China’s Chukong has added Facebook support for its Cocos2d-x game engine and partnered with a slew of mobile middleware companies from Scientific Revenue to Vungle to offer mobile developers support on everything from dynamic pricing on in-app purchases to attribution. The three other startups Chukong paired with also include Chartboost, Kochava and Playfab. The company, which is one of the bigger mobile game developers in mainland China, is trying to be a sort of Swiss army knife with tentacles into first-party game development, publishing and developer support through the Cocos2d-x gaming engine. As of the summer, games based on the engine have seen 2.5 billion downloads globally. The company and then scrapped plans to raise $150 million through an IPO this year on will grow into a more solid revenue workhorse later. That would give the company a better valuation and revenue multiple than a conventional gaming studio. Originally developed six years ago by an Argentinian developer named Ricardo Quesada, the open source framework Cocos2d was later branched by a Chinese developer named Zhe Wang. Chukong started supporting and promoting this particular branch as a way for developers to easily build cross platform games across Android and iOS. Developers like Seattle’s Big Fish games use it to create titles like Big Fish casino. The Facebook partnership will make it easier for mobile developers to port their existing titles to the Facebook platform and add features like log-in and the social networks’ identity layer. Meanwhile, a set of partnership with five middleware companies will help developers out with pricing, advertising and user acquisition. Kochava, a competitor to HasOffers, provides attribution so that developers know exactly where they’re getting their users from. Scientific Revenue offers an API that will do dynamic pricing so that studios can price their virtual currencies correctly and tailor them to different user groups. For instance, customers in developed countries probably have different price sensitivities than customers in emerging markets, where they likely earn less income per year. Scientific Revenue’s business model earns an undisclosed share of the revenue lift it provides compared to a control group of players who see the developer’s original pricing. ( Scientific Revenue only takes that revenue share if the developer sees at least a 10 percent lift in revenues over the control group.) Playfab is a new company from Popcap veteran James Gwertzman. It’s in mind. Vungle, which we’ve already covered before, initially started out as a video mobile advertising network and is . Chartboost also initially started out with a narrower focus on cross-promotion between games, and has been What Chukong is doing mirrors what’s happening across the industry. Unity Technologies recently acquired Applifier and Playnomics to offer developers more of a one-stop shop for video advertising and analytics on top of the Unity gaming engine. Meanwhile, Twitter . It’s a mobile developer platform that pairs solutions from some of its previous acquisitions like Crashlytics and MoPub into a suite of services supporting monetization and crash testing. Facebook has a three-pronged approach with Parse, mobile app install ads and its identity layer to offer mobile developers. The tacit goal for many of these companies is to bring as many mobile developers into a network or family, so that these platforms can maximize mobile advertising or virtual currency revenue later. |
Matomy Media Acquires Austrian Mobile Ad Platform MobFox For $17.6M | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | In a move to increase its mobile capabilities, Israel’s is to acquire Austrian mobile-advertising specialist for $17.6 million in cash and shares ($10.1 million in cash and $7.5 million respectively). The move boosts Matomy’s 2014 revenue from mobile-related activity to 20 percent from 7 percent, the company said. It expects MobFox’s technology to enable it to set a goal of 50 percent of revenue coming from mobile activity in fewer than five years. MobFox’s London office will become Matomy’s UK branch office. Earlier this month French advertising company Publicis Groupe acquired a 20 percent stake in Matomy. |
YouTube Introduces WatchMe For Android To Bring Live Broadcasting Capabilities To Apps | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | YouTube is bringing its live broadcasting capabilities to the world of third-party app developers starting today with the launch of the new open source project called “ .” The project, available on , offers a reference app designed for the Android operating system that creates a YouTube Live Streaming Event. The app also introduces a simple interface allowing an end user to press a button to start broadcasting from their phone to YouTube, and another button to end the event. Obviously, the app included on GitHub is just reference material — the real goal is to offer a toolkit for developers who want to add a similar capability to their own apps. This could be for apps that already focus on sharing video, and now want to offer a “Live” component, or it could be a function within a broader news or event-focused application, perhaps. In addition to offering the ability to start and stop a live streaming session with buttons, the app’s interface allows users to tap a thumbnail to kick off a live broadcast session, from the looks of things, as well as “+1” the event – meaning recommend the broadcast on Google’s social network, Google+. The new app takes advantage of several APIs, including the , , and , says the company in a blog announcing the new project on the YouTube API Blog. To get started, developers have to sync with the Github repo, then utilize the to enable the YouTube Data API and the Google+ API, and create a client ID for Android. The company says the app being offered today is still in the experimental phase. YouTube, of course, already offers , which allows event creators to capture and share live video using either custom encoders and controls, or, for something simpler, users can opt to live stream a Google Hangout using their webcam. However, the YouTube “WatchMe” project is designed for mobile app developer use — starting, stopping, viewing and sharing live events from an Android app interface. The technology being offered here to third-party developers is the same live broadcasting functionality that has previously been available to OEMs, including Xperia with its “ and “ ” by HTC, says YouTube. The latter involves that’s used to view and share the videos the camera records — videos that can be instantly streamed when you push the button. That means this new project would also work for others in the market who want to build or augment their own mobile apps associated with hardware devices like cameras and video recorders. |
EMC Frantically Pivots To The Cloud | Ron Miller | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | announced some big changes today including the purchase of three cloud companies, a new hybrid cloud product and a reorganization designed to emphasize the cloud. For those of you who don’t speak technology-buzzword English, the Hybrid Cloud is an approach where some of your computing is done in an on-premises data center and some is delivered by a public cloud provider such as Amazon Web Services. EMC hopes to support applications that have been “born in the cloud.” Truth be told, to this point, their strategy has been mostly born in the data center, and that’s been fine, but as the market has evolved around them and moved to the cloud, the company has been slow to change. Laurence Hart, lead analyst at consulting firm , says EMC is definitely looking for a way to weave the public cloud into its product set. “EMC has realized that the on-premises private cloud market is not going to work for everyone. Their customers are increasingly looking to the public cloud. EMC’s hybrid cloud announcements allows them to offer existing customers a reason to stay in the EMC architecture by giving them a path to the public cloud at their pace,” Hart told me. EMC is late to the cloud game in a crowded market, but is taking a huge swing for the hybrid cloud business. We have seen other big computer companies take a similar approach as of late including HP, which announced a major cloud initiative earlier this year. Just last week, to deliver Azure in a Box as a means of delivering Azure on-premises with a bridge to the public cloud as companies get more comfortable with the cloud idea. So how does this all fit together? First of all we have the acquisitions, which include , and the . Spanning, which provides data protection, will fit in nicely in the EMC backup and data protection business, which has been recently merged into a single department called the Core Technologies Division. Spanning will remain a branded product (much like , which ) and provide native cloud backup. Maginatics technology, which provides data protection across clouds wherever the data happens to live will be folded into the Core Technologies division, and senior director marketing for EMC Core Technologies Division, David Robinson says the company will start delivering products based on this technology some time in 2015. The final piece, CloudScaling gives EMC an OpenStack hybrid cloud Infrastructure as a Service offering that again can span the data center or the public cloud. CloudScaling is part of the newly formed Emerging Technologies division. You can see the pattern emerging here. It’s all about bridging the gap between the data center and the public cloud. That’s why the other announcement today that EMC was offering a major hybrid cloud product makes so much sense. The new product called EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Solution claims it can deliver a solution quickly, in 28 days or less (using EMC Professional Services, naturally) and it works with EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Federation Software-Defined Data Center Edition with VMware now. Microsoft Cloud Platform and OpenStack versions will be available some time next year. As for the public cloud connection, for now it works with VMware vCloud Air, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. (Keep in mind EMC owns 80 percent of VMware.) As previously mentioned, EMC has reorganized around this cloud strategy forming two new groups: Core Technologies and Emerging Technologies. That is a huge change in what seems like a day, but which has very likely been in the planning stages for quite some time. EMC sees the changes happening all around it and it is trying desperately to react to the shifts it sees in the market. They deserve credit for going all-in here, but what’s not clear is how this all fits together, especially where the acquisitions are concerned. It’s trying to make major organizational changes while folding in three new companies and it won’t be easy to pull off. As Hart told me, “This could very well be a case of too little, too late. Time will tell.” Indeed. |
Wranx Applies Spaced Repetition To B2B Learning | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | U.K. startup is applying a learning technique called spaced repetition to the b2b space to help businesses train their staff more effectively. This technique will be familiar to users of language learning apps such as or indeed . It basically refers to spacing out learning in order to help the brain remember better. And while this technique is increasingly common in the consumer apps space, Wranx reckons its spotted an opportunity to apply it to an underserved b2b space. Businesses have been slow to catch on to mobile learning generally, it argues, let alone to adopt more sophisticated learning techniques that make the most of mobile devices. “Most of the competition are extensions of existing learning management systems — the mobile bit is just bolted on,” says CEO and co-founder Jon Davies. “Everyone — Cornerstone on demand, Moodle, Litmos — they all have mobile functionality. It’s no big deal.” It’s the spaced repetition that Davies believes will separate Wranx from the crowd here. The startup, which was founded only last month, will be launching its mobile apps shortly, having beta tested its software with a small group of users thus far. It’s competing with the likes of , another b2b learning startup that’s also targeting the U.K. market and which last month raised a $2 million seed round. takes that existing content, converts it and then delivers it on a daily basis via the app,” says Davies, “By intelligently adapting the duration between questions, helps your brain to move knowledge from your short-term memory into your long-term memory more efficiently.” That’s the theory. In practice the app asks users questions, then gets them to a hit a button to reveal the answer. They are then asked to rate how well (or otherwise) they knew the answer. That self-assessment feeds the learning algorithm, which in turn tweaks the spacing of the learning repetition so it’s personalised to each learner. It also allows Wranx to continually assess learners’ progress and provide analytics back to the business — provided, of course, that the learners are self-reporting truthfully. The learning content is provided by each business customer, with Wranx converting it into a format that can be delivered to the business’ staff, across multiple devices. It’s also using a sprinkling of gamification to drive learner engagement, including a total score (and a workplace leaderboard), and the ability to unlock various ‘achievements’. The main use-cases Davies envisages for the software are product knowledge training for sales teams and customer service departments; compliance related topics such as financial services compliance and health and safety; and continual professional development in fields such as law and architecture. Wranx has been bootstrapping development thus far. Comfortably so, says Davies, thanks to the exit of a prior SaaS startup, Qivox (Davies was Qivox’s CTO; his fellow co-founder Phil Simmonds was founder). Like Qivox, Wranx has a SaaS business model, with per user monthly billing and volume discounts for large enterprise users. “Wranx makes employee advancement a daily, cultural process,” adds Davies. “Employers get to measure employee advancement on a daily basis, not just every six months when employees are scheduled to do some e-learning. |
Why Is Kim Kardashian At A Tech Conference?! | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | Because she is co-creator of one of the most popular apps of 2014. Because she is poised in cold hard cash from a mobile app this year. Because at $700K a day in earnings , she is still more successful than most startup founders, at least from a revenue standpoint. Yesterday, Kim Kardashian at the Re/Code conference, and aside from professing her love for BlackBerry, she did not reveal much about her game “Kim Kardashian Hollywood,” which is why we want to hear from her. We covered her talk, because we’ve . And the portal to hell opened up in our comments section. Like most commenting systems, Facebook comments suck: Either you get zero comments on a story because no startup employee wants to put their real name on articles about competitors, etc., or if a post does blow up you get this poetry from Jack Carmody, “Correctional Officer at California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation” and “Top Commenter”… “When all her lady charms are gone”! Kardashian is not at Re/Code because of her lady charms — whatever those are. She is there because Kara Swisher thought she was inspiring enough as a mobile growth story to put onstage. No one is inviting Mariah Carey or the to their tech conferences. In a world where Path and Foursquare struggle to get traction in the US, Kim Kardashian and GLU mobile have truly pulled off a feat getting eyeballs and users and money. To be honest, we wanted her at conference (and that invite is still open). The world is cruel and unforgiving. If you can succeed in it with whatever you’ve got, well then more power to you. The same people who don’t want Kim Kardashian onstage at a tech conference are the same people who don’t want me onstage at a tech conference. (And, terrifyingly enough, work in California’s prison system.) So, Kim, we can either a) go back to school to get our CS degrees or b) hold fast now that we’re already here, hoping that, just maybe, our love and deep curiosity for tech will one day be enough to justify our seat. *Portal to hell opens* |
W3C Declares HTML5 Standard Complete | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 10 | 28 | More than four years ago, Steve Jobs and heralded HTML5 as the way to go. You could be forgiven if you thought the — the follow-up to 1997’s HTML 4 — has long been set in stone, given that developers, browser vendors and the press have been talking about it for years now. In reality, however, HTML5 was still in flux — . The W3C today published its Recommendation of HTML5 — the final version of the standard after years of adding features and making changes to it. As a user, you won’t notice any changes. Chances are your browser already supports most HTML5 features like the <video> element and vector graphics (unless your employer forces you to use a really old version of Internet Explorer, that is). Other important new features that HTML5 has brought to the web over the last few years are things like the <canvas> element for rendering 2D shapes and bitmap images, support for MathML for displaying mathematical notations in the browser, and APIs for everything from offline caching to drag-and-drop support. “Today we think nothing of watching video and audio natively in the browser, and nothing of running a browser on a phone,” said Tim Berners-Lee, the W3C director, in a statement today. “We expect to be able to share photos, shop, read the news, and look up information anywhere on any device. Though they remain invisible to most users, HTML5 and the Open Web Platform are driving these growing user expectations.” As Paul Cotton, the W3C HTML working group co-chair and Partner Group Manager at Microsoft Open Technologies told me earlier this week, he believes that the main achievements of HTML5 are that it “defines the set of interoperable features that web developers can depend on in building their web sites.” Any non-interoperable features the group discussed were moved to HTML 5.1 (including the controversial idea of adding support for some kinds of digital rights management right into the standard). HTML 5.1 may be released as early as next year, and the Working Group will continue to work on those features that were excluded from HTML5. Of all the many new features in HTML5, Cotton believes that “the single most important feature of is probably the <video> tag since today’s web is rapidly moving to being more about video.” At some point in the standardization process, it looked like it would take as long as 2020 to get to a final recommendation. Thanks to the W3C’s “Plan 2014,” we have a final version today. As Cotton told me, though, he also believes that this was the biggest compromise the different stakeholders agreed to. “As part of ‘plan 2014’ we also encouraged the Working Group to permit work on some controversial items to proceed on their own path in parallel to as ‘extension specs,'” he told me. “In fact some of these extension specs were separately developed (i.e. Ruby and elements) and were folded back into before its completion, and others like ‘long description’ are on their way to completion as separate W3C Recommendations.” Cotton notes that the challenge for organizations like the W3C and HTML Working Group will be to keep up with the evolving environment of doing open standards and to respond to these changes. “For example, the tools that developers use to do their day jobs today i.e. GitHub, social media, etc. are much different than five years ago, and if we want future work of the HTML Working Group to engage web developers then we need to evolve as that environment changes,” Cotton says. Similarly, the W3C today notes in its press release that the next version of the standard needs to focus on a number of core “ ” like tools for security and privacy, device interactions, application lifecycle, media and real-time communications and services around the social web, payments and annotations. All of these are meant to make it easier for developers to support the web platform. With the final recommendation for HTML5 done, the W3C will now immediately start fixing bugs, but most importantly, it’ll work on . |
Bag Week: Herschel Little America Mid-Volume Select Backpack | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 10 | 17 | The new Herschel fall lineup includes the Heritage we reviewed earlier in bag week, but there are also new looks for the Little America. The smaller mid-volume version of this bag, in a , might be more the speed of those with smaller backs, or who just don’t need a massive amount of storage space, and the signature Little America strap-and-flap look is sure to attract more than a few appreciative glances. Our features a cotton canvas made custom for Herschel’s bags, and a patterned poly fabric lining in blue stripes. There’s a laptop sleeve here, too, just as on the Heritage and on the full-size Little America, but in keeping with its smaller stature, it has a 13-inch notebook compartment instead of one with room for a 15-inch laptop. The straps are brown leather, and the flap top closes with both a drawstring and a flap to cover it entirely, with magnetic snaps in place to tie the straps down. [gallery ids="1071723,1071722,1071720,1071719,1071718,1071721"] The bag has a front pocket with a zipper closure, and back padding with mesh material for breathability, plus thick, contoured shoulder straps that really work well for distributing the weight you’re carrying in your pack in a way that doesn’t leave your back or your spirit broken. Herschel’s Select line means it’s a more expensive backpack than it would be otherwise ($149.99 for this model in this style), but the materials feel top-notch and are soft to the touch, but also aren’t easily marked up or damaged; the slightly different caramel tones that give contrast coloring to the top flap and pocket also help add a subtle extra level of style. The capacity on the Herschel Little America mid-volume isn’t anywhere near as high as it is for the full version, which can easily pack enough for a three day trip, but it’ll cover you for any day excursions, and it offers a profile when worn that’s much more svelte, which is probably better for women, wearers with smaller frames and anyone who doesn’t necessarily want their backpack to scream “backpack.” |
Bitcoin 2.0 Crowdfunding Is Real Crowdfunding | Sandrine Ayral | 2,014 | 10 | 17 | In the past few months we’ve been hearing a lot about how bitcoin’s underlying technology is going to revolutionize not only our monetary system, but also notary services, DNS, authentication, intellectual property ownership and data storage. While most of the products and services that were supposed to emerge on top of the bitcoin protocol have yet to see light, there’s actually one application of the bitcoin protocol that has been developed by several bitcoin 2.0 startups: decentralized crowdfunding. Kickstarter, Indiegogo and all the other traditional platforms act as the trusted third party that enables a crowdfunding campaign. Thanks to them, a backer can feel confident that the money he sends to the platform for a specific project will be effectively sent to the selected project if the target amount of the campaign is reached – or that the money will actually be sent back if the campaign fails. In exchange for his money, the Kickstarter investor gets access to a pre-order or T-shirts and other various “goodies.” Crowdfunding platforms powered by blockchain technology remove the need for this trusted third party. They allow startups to raise funds by creating their own digital currencies and selling “cryptographic shares” to early backers. In more intelligible words, this means that investors in a crowdfunding campaign get tokens that represent shares of the startup they support and can actually benefit from the token value appreciation. You would never see an with such crowdfunding platforms. This is why the bitcoin community refers to bitcoin-powered crowdfunding as real crowdfunding. Enthusiasm around these projects is also tied to the fact that these platforms would be a real source of investment for of blockchain-powered applications and would help with the funding of bitcoin infrastructure. , and are three decentralized crowdfunding platforms that have generated quite a buzz in the bitcoin community and actually received funding for their development in various forms. Swarm used its own crowdfunding platform to raise funds in July and received $1 million from backers. The platform focuses on projects based on blockchain technology for now. It provides crowdsourced due diligence on each entrepreneur and team its platform backs to eliminate potential scammers. Swarm just opened applications for the first five projects its platform will support, which will be presented at a demo day on November 5 in Silicon Valley. The company also “soft-launched” an incubator in Palo Alto to host bitcoin 2.0 projects: just like startup accelerators or incubators are a source for quality deal flow for a VC fund, building a bitcoin 2.0 incubator for Swarm seems like a smart strategy for the platform to spot interesting projects and encourage them to use its blockchain technology. Another decentralized crowdfunding platform, Koinify, has just from IDG Partners, Brock Pierce’s AngelList syndicate and zPark Ventures to fund its development and build an easy-to-use interface. Koinify is focused on funding very specific projects related to blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies: decentralized applications, smart corporations, crypto infrastructure to make access to cryptocurrency easier. Mike Hearn, a developer, developed Lighthouse, a of the bitcoin blockchain that was more specifically built to fund bitcoin core development, lobbying and community involvement and — like Swarm and Koinify — next-generation bitcoin projects. Hearn won a $40,000 bounty offered by self-proclaimed bitcoin millionaire and entrepreneur Olivier Janssens. True enough, for now most bitcoin-powered crowdfunding platforms don’t focus on consumer projects and are only going to appeal to bitcoin technology-savvy investors. Even if not mainstream, targeted projects by these platforms still deserve attention. They’re all based on one core principle and change of paradigm: switching from centralized to decentralized models and removing usually costly intermediaries and trusted third parties. A few examples of these projects are collaboratively owned IP and autonomous agents. With collaboratively owned IP, instead of patents owned by huge corporations, patent pools can be owned by whomever holds a particular coin. With autonomous agents, picture self-owned hardware and/or software that is able to survive by selling products and services for bitcoin or another cryptocurrency and using the proceeds to pay for their own costs. Based on this principle, you can imagine a delivery service via self-owned quadcopters – yep, just like in a sci-fi movie. The benefit of such a model is that resulting services are cheap because they don’t have many operating costs. Mike Hearn, who designed Lighthouse, presented this futuristic idea quite extensively in his speech about the at the Turing Festival in 2013. Crowdfunding powered by blockchain technology holds two promises: short term it’s an appropriate way for the decentralized bitcoin ecosystem — whether it being bitcoin as a currency or all the different applications based on its protocol – to fund its core development, and actually address a few . In the long run, it will give the opportunity to individuals to take part in actual rounds of early-stage investment and to actually benefit from valuation appreciation. A few issues need to be addressed around blockchain-powered crowdfunding, though: How will the different decentralized crowdfunding platforms deal with the SEC? There’s a real question around the legality of offering tokens of equity to individuals. Nevertheless, we’ll be hearing a lot more about equity tokens distributed via blockchain method. The above-mentioned regulatory questions don’t seem to scare at least one huge retail player: Overstock, the , just announced it is working on building a whole new kind of stock market. The e-commerce giant and other companies will be able to use the platform to offer ‘ ’ to the investing public. And just a few weeks ago, investors in the last $50 million investment pledged to share 10 percent of the new equity with the website’s community. Using a blockchain method to distribute tokens of equity to Reddit users is an option that investors are clearly envisioning. In that sense, Reddit would be the first large-scale company to enter a new corporate governance model. |
One Year In, Keepy Reaches 500K Users And Introduces Video To Its Family Timelines | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 10 | 17 | One year since , is announcing that more than 500,000 users are sharing content with their families on its service. In a phone call with TechCrunch, Keepy CEO Offir Gutelzon said that the company hit the 500,000 figure within the last few weeks. He also gave numbers on how the company is doing at bringing in international users and getting its families to convert to its premium plans: 75 percent of users are in the United States, and among families “hitting the paywall” at 31 posts per month (including photos, videos of any length, and unlimited voiceover recordings on top of said content), approximately 25 percent convert to a premium plan at $1.99-2.99 per family per month. Gutelzon says the key to Keepy’s conversion rate is that the app feels more like a shared box full of family mementos than another social network you have to sign up for. There’s no easy way for a family member to accidentally share something that was meant to be private with the wider world from within the app, The power users in the family can now quickly upload from their Dropbox and Facebook accounts, while at the opposite end of the spectrum, those who aren’t savvy enough to use social apps on their phone can upload their archived photos to their family’s timeline the old-fashioned way: by emailing them as attachments. Because I’m always curious to see if a startup is doing well on Android, I also asked where Keepy is strongest. Gutelzon told me that 60 percent of the startup’s users are on the iPhone, with the rest split between Android, Amazon’s Fire OS, and the web. That’s probably a motivating factor behind Keepy’s release schedule, as the ability to upload videos of any length came to iOS a few weeks before the latest Android update. Keepy is looking to expand, and it’s starting up operations in Palo Alto to do it. Gutelzon recenty moved to the Bay Area from New York City to open an office, while the other four team members will continue their work from home base in NYC. |
Watch TechCrunch Play Bayonetta 2 | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 10 | 17 | : Well that was fun! You can watch a replay of our hour-and-a-half long session in the embed below. In about an hour, TechCrunch is officially launching by streaming , the somewhat controversial action game that’s coming exclusively to Nintendo’s Wii U a week from today. As with its prequel, Bayonetta 2 puts players into the stilettos of its namesake female star, Bayonetta. She’s a witch who (and I’m simplifying things a lot here) draws her powers from her magical hair, which also happens to be what her skin-tight outfit is made of — so as you rack up combos and use more powerful attacks, some of her outfit disappears temporarily in proportion to the power of her moves. Some game critics . Others see Bayonetta as a . She’s like the Beyoncé of video game characters. I’m willing to give the game the benefit of the doubt, but feel free to leave your thoughts in the chat box as I play — I’ll do my best to respond as I play.
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