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Oculus Execs Believe Controllers Are The Missing Link In Virtual Reality | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 9 | 20 | When you put a child in virtual reality, they instinctively raise their hands hoping to see them, says Oculus CTO John Carmack. Yet Oculus doesn’t have its own gloves or handheld controllers, amongst the VR community that Oculus would reveal a controller today at its . Carmack concluded “The missing link in VR is controllers”. But considering ‘The Future Of VR’ panel with the Oculus execs started with the question of “where is the VR controller?”, it seems clear the company will move to build or support handheld input devices. In fact, early today during their demo of the new as source told an Oculus employee they wished there was a controller, and the employee responded “it’s coming.” Yet currently, Carmack says that people want to see their hands in virtual reality, “and we’ve got nothing there right now”. What that will look like is still coming together, though. Carmack, the famed technologist from Quake-marker id Software, said that “Controllers is such a factious and contentious issue that it’s not going to be clear when someone wins.” Oculus’ 22-year old founder Palmer Luckey said that “There’s no clear path towards what is best [for controllers]. People haven’t identified the problems.” Eye tracking was another form of input the Oculus big wigs discussed as part of the future of VR. The idea is that rather than turning your head to move your vision, you could one day just glance around. Oculus Chief Scientist Michael Abrash discussed that VR headsets would probably have to support “ “. This means that the resolution of an image fluctuates so the most important parts are higher-res. What’s important can be determined through eye tracking. However, Abrash said foveated rendering is probably still too computationally intense for current VR rigs to handle. In the end, though, the top priority is to not make people sick. As for where Oculus goes with input devices, Luckey did confirm that it has been doing testing in the handheld input space, but it’s been a challenge. “It’s surprising how accurate you have to be [with detecting head movements as a controller] to make it good, and you have to do the same with your hands. Having any latency makes you feel like your hand is dead.” Today’s Oculus Crescent Bay announcement was all about creating a headset which offers true “Presence”, where you feel like you’re actually transported into the virtual world. With a motion tracking headset where you can tilt, lean, duck, and even walk around a little, it’s coming close to accomplishing the first stage Presence, where it’s immersive as long as you don’t try to run around or lift your arms. But as Oculus Chief Architect Atman Binstock said, the next frontier is “Hand Presence”. During the Q&A I asked what the execs thought were the advantages and disadvantages of different input devices like dual-wielding nunchuks, motion tracking, and gloves, and which is each of their favorites. Luckey responded that a great device for guns is not the same as a great device for swords is not a great device for productivity apps. He said there will need to be a device that’s good for generally interacting with virtual worlds, though. With so many different use cases for VR and different corresponding input devices, it leads me to believe that Oculus will build a platform for connecting third-party input devices to its headsets. This would leave controller fragmentation to the developer community so Oculus can focus on generalizable problems and opportunities that exist across VR apps. |
Return Of The M&A | Andreas Penna | 2,014 | 9 | 20 | 2014 has seen an unprecedented number of M&A transactions globally, especially within the tech sector. Global tech M&A was up 55 percent over last year, soaring to its highest level since 2000. Technology-related transactions this year alone have generated over $100 billion. Now, we’ve all heard of the large-scale, headline-grabbing mega acquisitions of , , , , and . They are fodder for startup founders, and beacons of hope for bleary-eyed entrepreneurs striving for fortunes. But while these large-scale M&A transactions have been basking in the media glow, a number of smaller deals have been forged in the tech hot spot largely in Silicon Valley. Recently, the tech world is pumping with M&A activity, from small aqui-hires to large super deals. The M&A spell is being driven by the move to mobile. During the past 12 months, mobile Internet M&A has seen $47 billion in total deal value. Mobile focused M&A alone is up 5X from the previous year. When excluding the WhatsApp deal, 50 percent of the largest remaining M&A segments in mobile are games, messaging, music and food and drink, according to Digi Capital. Mary Meeker’s latest Internet trends evaluated the big buyers globally and show major competition for top acquirers. From 2012 to May 2014, M&A transactions from Facebook were $24 billion, with Google and Alibaba in hot pursuit at $6 billion and $5 billion, respectively. The following chart breaks down the number of deals that have transacted among major U.S. tech players in the last 12 months: So what’s driving the recent M&A frenzy by large tech buyers? There are several key catalysts: high stock prices, large cash piles, spend versus investor dividends and talent acquisition. These potent factors have helped brew a highly competitive environment that has thrust M&A into overdrive. Big tech companies are in an all-out sprint to snap up relevant companies, especially when it comes to IP and user base acquisitions. Despite this M&A frenzy, many companies seem to be painfully unaware of the critical variables in the valuation equation. When approached by a potential acquirer, most CEOs are in the dark. While they understand the ins and outs of venture capital raises, more often than not they have little understanding of multiples and valuation approaches in the M&A world. For those of you out there who want a quick breakdown of the basics, here is my abridged version of how to calculate an acquisition valuation: At current Silicon Valley prices, valuation per engineering employee is $1 million to $2 million USD over a four-to-five-year period. The exact number of engineers absorbed depends on the individual interviews. In this scenario, non-engineering assets are typically not absorbed, except where there are local marketing needs, exceptional talent and key executive management members. If this becomes an M&A transaction around acquiring a subsidiary, then the entire HR assets are likely to stay intact. In either scenario, companies will provide a term sheet that takes into account a total compensation package per employee over four to five years (of which stocks and options will vest over this time period). This is typically paid out at around at least 100 percent, and investors get the capital back first. There are a few premiums that must be considered in order to calculate this figure: When opportunity comes knocking on your door, you want to be ready. It will officially be game day, and you better hope that you’ve warmed up, stretched, laced up your shoes and strapped on your helmet. Want to be the pinnacle of preparedness? Follow these rules. |
The “Oculus Platform” Marketplace For Virtual Reality App Launches This Fall | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 9 | 20 | Oculus announced the “Oculus Platform” store for developers to distribute their virtual reality apps and experiences today at the Oculus Connect conference. Starting this fall on the made by Oculus, this revamp of the Oculus Share marketplace will let users browse the Oculus Platform within virtual reality and download apps, games, and entertainment experiences. Eventually, there will be versions of the Oculus Platform for the Rift, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. Oculus Platform could become one of the first ways for developers to sell the VR experiences they build, and by creating this marketplace, Oculus could rally the ecosystem to its mobile and PC-based VR headsets. VP of Product Nate Mitchell debuted Oculus Platform at the Connect conference just after CEO Brendan Iribe — the successor to the DK2. . The Oculus Platform sits you in a blue holodeck-style space with floating tiles of different games you can play. You can look around and use your gaze to select an app or experience, then tap on the Gear VR’s touchpad to enter it. By turning your head around, you can see different sets of tiles for games, art apps, social, and other types of VR experiences. Oculus will release some of its own apps in the Platform, including the Oculus Cinema and Oculus 360 Photos and Videos where users can watch films, and check out images and video clips shot for VR. Oculus will also open source these apps to help developers learn how to build for the marketplace. Platform will act as sort of a launcher for Oculus headsets, allowing people to quickly jump around and try different experiences. [ : After sitting down with Oculus co-founder and VP of Product Nate Mitchell, we’ve got new details on the future of the Oculus Platform. First, the goal is to eventually give VR developers a way to make money. Mitchell tells me the top question Oculus gets from VR app developers is when they’ll be able to sell their experiences. He believes this will create “a cycle that improves the ecosystem. If they if they can be super successful (making money), they can reinvest in development, and that’s the best thing.” Creating a great marketplace for developers is largely why Oculus hired Jason Holtman, who turned Valve’s Steam online game store into a favorite in the gaming community, as its Head Of Platform. However, when Oculus Platform debuts as the Oculus homescreen of the Samsung Gear VR this fall, it will not allow for payments. Instead, developers will only be allowed to “give things away for free”, says Mitchell. “We want to offer developers a way to get feedback on their content as soon as possible.” This way, by the time Oculus is ready to have them sell their games for money, they’ll be worthy of the consumer’s dollar. One open question, though, is how that will happen on iOS. While Mitchell announced that a native Oculus Platform app would be coming to iOS, he said that news is a bit premature as Oculus doesn’t know quite what Apple will allow. Tim Cook’s company has historically restricted app stores within apps, which is exactly how Oculus Platform will work on Android for the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Ideally, Oculus Platform would be able to sell apps that users can download to their iPhones and then play by slipping their phone into a VR headset as the screen, like it will on Samsung Gear VR. But Apple might not allow that. Instead, the iOS Oculus Platform app might be more of a social portal, where you could ping friends to play VR games with you or discover new VR apps to download another way.] As we saw with Apple’s early smartphone App Store, congregating a critical mass of developers for a new type of devices can pay off big time in the long-run. By building both the top headset with Crescent Bay and the running the Platform marketplace for apps, today Oculus made a strong bid to become the iPhone, iOS, and App Store of VR. |
The Investments In A Wearables Future | Matt Witheiler | 2,014 | 9 | 20 | People may debate when the wearable first came into being or what industries will be most impacted by the technology, but there is no debating that startup activity in the wearable space has accelerated. If is one sure sign of anything, it’s that. Between consumer interest and investor attention, the wearable category is exploding. In fact, it is exploding so much so that a deep dive look can help determine exactly what is driving growth in the space. Probably the best proxies for gauging consumer interest in startup wearable devices are crowdfunding sites. Of the 443 crowdfunded projects , 64 of them were what one would call a wearable device. The category as a whole was among the most dominant when it came to consumer appetite: Although wearables only accounted for 14 percent of all projects, with $41 million they accounted for 22 percent of all dollars raised by consumers in hardware projects. Of these 64 wearables, 53 percent were worn on the wrist/hand, 25 percent were worn on the head and 14 percent were worn on the body. It seems that consumer interest is highest in the wrist/hand wearable category, specifically with connected watch projects like , and each pre-selling north of $1 million of product. Clearly the idea of a watch as a third screen is resonating with the crowd. Viewing wearables through the eyes of where investors are putting money paints a different picture. While the crowd spent $41 million on wearable devices between 2008 and today, investors put an impressive $463 million to work in the category across 82 companies, according to data from and . That means that for every dollar of product consumers spent on a crowdfunding site, investors plowed in another $11. Surprisingly the majority of dollars, 58 percent, went into companies that did not take the crowdfunding route prior to raising money. Equally surprising is that only 19 projects in the wearable category that crowdfunded their way to $100,000 or more went on to raise venture money. On a percentage basis, this means that only 23 percent of wearable projects that raised venture capital since 2008 had their start on a crowdfunding site, suggesting investors are using crowdfunding success as one indicator of potential but not the only one. From a category view, if investors speak with where they put their dollars, they are most bullish about wearable plays involving wrist/hand devices: These took 32 percent of dollars invested and appears to mirror consumer excitement in the category. In contrast to consumer interest, however, was the body wearable category in which consumers only spent 9 percent of their dollars yet the category accumulated 26 percent of investor dollars. Also different is the addition of a “software” category to capture software intended to augment or enhance wearable devices – something that the crowdfunding world has not contributed to. If the data shows anything it shows that both consumer and investor interest in the wearable space is high and continues to grow. Six years ago the number of wearable companies of any significance could have been counted on two hands; now you’d need 15. The area of overlapping interest between the crowd and investors is strongest in devices either worn on the hand or on the wrist, demonstrating a shared vision of the future. This overlap suggests something unique. While consumers back products on crowdfunding sites, investors back visions. The convergence of consumer and investor interest in connected watches specifically suggests that there are compelling individual products available today and that there is an inspiring vision for these products in the future; something Apple has keyed into. No matter whether you’re a consumer or an investor, that’s something everyone can get excited about. For access to all the data used to generate this report, check out the full document . |
Oculus Reveals Its New “Crescent Bay” Prototype With 360-Degree Head Tracking And Headphones | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 9 | 20 | Oculus gave the world the first look at its today at the ( ), and I got the very first hands-on demo. Crescent Bay has a faster frame rate, 360-degree head tracking, and integrated headphones, plus it’s lighter. Oculus also announced coming to the Samsung VR, which brings VR to a large audience through mobile apps, web browsers, and a VR content discovery channel. You can . CEO Brendan Iribe called Crescent Bay as big of a step up from the DK2 as the DK2 was from the DK1. This still isn’t a consumer version, but it’s getting closer. The Crescent Bay is not an official developer kit, but instead a “feature prototype” designed to show off the future of what Oculus is doing, similar to the pre-DK2 prototype. The Crescent Bay likely won’t ship out to developers but will prepare them for what Oculus puts into the “DK3” or whatever it calls its next developer kit, which VR makers will be able to buy and tinker with. Thanks to the 360-degree head tracking powered by a camera on the back of the Crescent Bay, users will be be able spin around all the way so they don’t feel constricted, while previous Oculus headsets could tell if you facing all the way backwards. The expanded positional tracking volume and integrated high-quality headphones will make the sound of Oculus as immersive as the visuals. Oculus licensed RealSpace3D’s audio technology built at the University of Maryland. RealSpace3D allows for high-fidelity VR audio by combining “HRTF spatialization and integrated reverberation algorithms.” Oculus also announced that it’s done a deal with game engine Unity to make Oculus support official for everyone on both the free and pro versions of Unity. By camping out, I just got the very first public demo of the Crescent Bay. Oculus wouldn’t allow any official photos or videos, but someone else still snapped a few and sent them to me. You can watch a , and here’s a description of how it felt. During the 10 minute demo, I hung out with a tyrannosaurus rex, perched on top of a skyscraper, stood by a fire with some woodland creatures in a polygonal field, floated over a SimCity, shrunk down to microscopic size to look at giant dust mite, and watched a SWAT team fight a giant battle mech. The headset is remarkably light, causing no neck strain. The goggle portion feels like mid-quality hollow plastic, though overall it feels pretty durable for its weight. The field of vision is significantly wider than the Samsung Gear VR, which is a bit like looking through binoculars because you can see the frame around the screen. Still, the Crescent Bay has a little bit of a window around its screen, and I could see down through the nose-piece to the outside world, which made it all a little less immersive. The best part was how quick and accurate the motion tracking was. At one point in the demo, I was in a dressing room in front of a mirror with a floating mask mimicking my movements. No matter how fast I turned or spun around, I couldn’t detect any real latency in the mask. The motion tracking always kept up. By using a wall-mounted camera for motion tracking rather than one strapped to a computer resting on a desk, Crescent Bay allows you to walk around about 3 feet in any direction. I tried bending over and putting my head upside down and the experience still worked seamlessly. You can’t go running down a virtual hallway to escape the T-Rex, but you can at least try to side step him a little, or crouch so he passes over you. The way it does the motion tracking is with an array of tiny LEDs layered over the outside of the Crescent Bay headset. Unlike the DK2 which just used LEDs on the front, there’s a back panel to the strap that goes around you head which holds LEDs that can also be tracked with a camera so Oculus knows when you turn all the way around. What felt most noticeably missing was a gamepad or controller for being able to move walk around or enter commands. This is what was at Oculus Connect, but didn’t. But a source tells me that when they told an Oculus employee they wished the demo had a controller, they were told “it’s coming”. And later in the day, the , and someone will have to surmount the challenges of building ones that feel natural. Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe announced that over 100,000 Rift developer kits have shipped to over 130 countries. He said “If you love sci-fi, this is your holy grail. Today it is happening. Virtual reality is here. Just let that sink in. We thought about flying cars, maybe hover boards, and virtual reality. Now it’s here. Our mission is to transform gaming, entertainment, and how we interact…We’re really sprinting towards the consumer version.” To do that, Oculus needed to nail “Presence” or feeling like you’re actually in the virtual world. That means nailing every component of a VR rig so that no step causes motion sickness. These components are tracking the motion of your head, CPU, GPU, display, photons, optics. Iribe went on to explain that Oculus sees VR as dividing into two categories, and that it needs to win at both: “With positional tracking, high frame rates, low persistence, and strong GPUs, you can create unbelievable worlds, you can create believable worlds.” Last night, Oculus also all the technology around its DK1 developer kit on . This could help developers level up their own development, build components using Oculus’ designs, and even sell these products without having had to come up with them. By creating official new hardware and software platforms, Oculus could help unify the fragmented VR industry which has been using unofficial hacks to make third-party peripherals works with the Rift. The announcements could convince developers that Oculus is a more stable platform to build on so they increase their investment and help it build VR experiences that mainstream customers will find interesting. Coming off raising $2.5 million through Kickstarter and another , 2014 has been an epic year for Oculus. It took huge numbers of pre-orders for its DK2 developer kit before being acquired by Facebook in March for $2 billion. Despite a quick backlash from some developers and Kickstarter supporters for selling out, Oculus has largely reassured the VR community that having Facebook as a parent company makes it more of a reliable platform, not less. Bigger developers began signing on, creating an ecosystem of peripherals and content experiences around the Rift. Most recently, the DK2 began shipping to developers and Oculus built a mobile VR rig for Samsung which lets you slip a Galaxy Note in to act as the headset’s screen. Now we’ll get to see what developers will do with the new Oculus Crescent Bay headset and . |
Gillmor Gang: Slight of Hand | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 9 | 20 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, John Taschek, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. The new big iPhone and its younger less bigger brother hit the streets, along with the iOS refresh that will link the shipping devices to a late October iPad update and next year’s iWatch. From the redwood forests to the upper West Side, to the early morning lines snaking through the streets, this phone was made for you and me and international export to China. From my spot on the line, i can almost see the outline of Apple TV shimmering like some legendary invisible rabbit in the mist. @stevegillmor, @jtaschek, @dbfarber, @kteare, @scobleizer Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
Air Food One Delivers Airline Food Right To Your Door | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 9 | 20 | Have we reached peak delivery service? Just in case you had a craving for airline food for some reason, there’s now a company in Germany that will bring it to you. is a subscription food delivery service that has teamed up with grocery company and to bring leftover airline food right to the door of anyone living in Germany – the service is only available there for now. LSG Chefs provides meals for many international air carriers, including German airline Lufthansa. Food is delivered once a week (every Wednesday night, to be exact). LSG Chefs says it’s a good second market for food that would normally just be thrown out. The cost is 9-10 Euros or about $12 U.S. dollars. Those who’ve signed up for delivery can choose classic or vegetarian options, just like on a real airline. |
London’s Tech Boom Is More Than Just Hype, The Hard Numbers Say So | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 9 | 20 | While may not yet rival last week’s London Fashion Week for glamour, there is real substance to the capital’s tech boom. This is why, for the first time, TechCrunch is bringing its Silicon Valley conference, . A number of things are driving it. London has long acted as a “bridge” both to US tech companies entering Europe, and for European companies scaling their proposition before expanding into the US. At the same time, its proximity between the US and Asia makes it a natural home for international expansion for Continental European startups US Investors looking to pick up cheaper bargains than in ‘bubblish’ Silicon Valley much prefer to invest in UK businesses which have all their documentation in English. One Delaware company later, and a US expansion can beckon at any time in a company’s lifecycle. But geography is only one aspect. Another is London’s potential for tech company M&A and flotation. There have been 92 European tech “exits” in the second quarter of 2014, of which 10 were IPOs. This is up from 54 deals tracked in Q1 2014, an increase of about 70 percent, according to . And London is leading the pack for exits. Already this year, two London companies have been sold for some £1bn – Artificial Intelligence startup DeepMind was bought by Google while Zynga bought games company Natural Motion. In 2013, 22 technology companies, the largest number since 2006 according to Dealogic, raised $795 million in equity funding on the London Stock Exchange’s main market and on Aim, its junior listings venue. This year the IPO on the London Stock Market of property portal Zoopla to its £900m / $1.53m flotation, and the share price has gained since then. At a result, the London investors that took the plunge on investing in Zoopla won out, including Atlas Ventures, Octopus Investments and Silicon Valley Bank. Meanwhile, Israeli digital advertising group Matomy Media floated on the LSE’s High Growth Segment after raising £41m in an initial public offering. The recently introduced High Growth Segment is gradually attracting tech flotations. The first to use the market, Just Eat, saw its shares soar on the first day of trading – pushing its valuation above £1.5bn. It joined Markit and Zoopla as marking the tech biggest IPOs in Europe for Q2. With other IPOs arriving over the next couple of years, London will attain its own set of founder ‘mafias’ just as the ‘Paypal Mafia’ gave rise to many other serial entrepreneurs. London could of course work harder to attract more tech IPOs. Rocket Internet’s Amazon clone Zalando is reportedly looking as a €5bn IPO in Frankfurt, largely because the brand is better recognised in Germany. And it doesn’t work for everyone. The most highly valued British company to emerge from the technology boom has been King Digital Entertainment, makers of smash hit smartphone and tablet game Candy Crush Saga. But after a great ride towards a Nasdaq IPO it endured a torrid stock market debut in New York, a performance which has only worsened. Fickle casual gamers are exactly that, and there remains a question mark of gaming company flotation built on single breakout hits. However, the wider market for tech stocks appears healthy, in large part because tech companies these days are built on actual revenues, as opposed to the hot air of the late 1990s dot com boom which turned into bust. Meanwhile, the underlying strength of the market in London is continuing. The proximity of the Square Mile to the Eastern Tech City Cluster is obvious, but there are real numbers behind this. According to Bloomberg, London now has more jobs in FinTech than New York (44,000 versus 43,000), and FinTech startups are blooming in London’s shadow. Bloomberg also reported this year that in the South East of England there were now 744,000 working in tech companies, versus 692,000 in California, with tech jobs growth up 11%, outstripping both California and New York in growth. This growth has not been lost on FinTech accelerators, like that run by Level 39, part of the Canary Wharf Group, which recently released research revealing that London has more Fintech startups than anywhere else in Europe. While proximity to the City has made the capital a hub for financial technology, its creative spark is at least as valuable. Lyst, an online retailer in London’s Hoxton makes most of its sales in America. Editd is a VC-backed startup selling big data to the fashion industry. Indeed, ‘vertical industry’ startups are booming in the capital because of their closeness to these large, incumbent industries like fashion, media, advertising and music. Geography also comes into play when dealing with VCs. London’s Tech City startups are a 20 minute Tube ride away from London’s equivalent of the Valley’s “Sand Hill Road” an area populated by VCs. Mayfair, St James and Victoria play host to Index Ventures, Accel Partners, DFJ Esprit and Balderton capital, all major investors in UK and European tech startups, just to name a few. At the same time, smaller funds such as Passion Capital, Octopus Ventures and Techstars London, have created a ‘bridge’ cluster in Farringdon between the East And West of London. And the main ‘venture accelerator’ Seedcamp, is based in the heart of Tech City at Google Campus. The new partners of Google Ventures Europe, a $100m evergreen fund form the search giant will also be ordering their Flat Whites in offices close by to the Tech City cluster. Those VCs are opening their wallets like never before. According to data from Dow Jones VentureSource European startups have (€2.1 billion) from VCs in the second quarter of 2014, the highest quarterly total since that iconic dot com bust year of 2001. Out of the whole of Europe, the UK remains the gang-buster country, where companies have raised 28% of the total amount in the second quarter, followed by France with 19% and Germany with 15%. And amid this activity it’s London VCs that have been the most active, such as Index Ventures, Accel Partners and Balderton Capital, according to CB Insights. London-based in Europe over the last 5 years, with 16 deals completed, according to VentureSource. On the back of that activity, Index Ventures raised a new fund of $550 million this year, while Balderton Capital raised $305M earlier this year. London has done a great job of wooing foreign investors, who have made noteworthy incursions into UK companies include US-based Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and Spain-based Nauta Capital. For the first half of the year, . In all $911 million has been invested in the UK, up from $362 million in the year-ago period, according to data from TechCrunch’s data arm, CrunchBase. The data comes at a time when US investors are taking an increasing interest in European companies. The UK’s Kobalt raised €84.4 million in June, with the help from its London VCs, Balderton Capital and Spark Ventures, but also with Michael Dell, of Dell fame, who’s New York based fund also invested. More broadly the UK government has given a big boost to tech entrepreneurship. It introduced entrepreneur-friendly Startup Visas, created new tax breaks for angel investment (EIS / SEIS), added Entrepreneur Relief, a 10% CGT rate for employees who joined start-ups; abolished stamp duty on the AIM market; opened up Government ICT contracts to SMEs; created the UK’s open data agenda; reformed the UK IP regime; and created several other initiatives like the UK’s Life Science Strategy. And London itself has become a great test-bed for apps. You can’t move for advertising hoardings promoting startup apps at Old St station, at the heart of the Tech City cluster. It helps that the Mayor has committed to creating 46,000 new jobs in the city over the next decade, but the desire for skills is aided by EU membership as startups can hire genius developers from across the whole continent. While the rising cost of office space risks is affecting young startups, many are avoiding the long-term contracts demanded by London landlords, in favour of subletting from one of London’s 70+ co-working and office sharing spaces such as TechHub, Central Working and Innovation Warehouse. And new legislation allowing the creation of businesses from private rented homes is likely to see the rise of the kinds of “Hacker Houses” that Mark Zuckerburg worked out of in the early days of Facebook. It is this kind of activity that is making the Tech City hipsters smile, and perhaps what will make the supermodels of London Fashion Week flock to London Technology Week next year instead. |
Apple Cauterizing HealthKit At Launch Shows How High The Stakes Are | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 9 | 20 | Last week, in the fevered cauldron of / , and it was easy to miss the glitch in Apple’s oh-so-choreographed release matrix: a bug in its new develop tool. Apple to developers at its WWDC event in June, along with a Health app which acts as a repository for viewing all the health and fitness data collated via HealthKit. The idea behind HealthKit is to make it easier for health and fitness data to flow between apps, with fine-grained user permissions built in, allowing the user to control and build up a more holistic — and therefore useful — overview of their personal wellness, using whatever combination of health and fitness iOS apps and devices they choose. But such was the serious nature of the last minute HealthKit bug that Apple locked the tool down entirely — so it’s effectively not in the current version of iOS 8. Cupertino also pulled apps with HealthKit integration off the App Store. This caused considerable headaches for developers who had lined up HealthKit integration to be there from the start of iOS 8. Any health and fitness apps with HealthKit integration that were live on the store prior to the release of iOS 8 were pulled down by Apple, with minimal notice. Apps that use HealthKit and are still waiting approval won’t be approved until after the next iOS 8 update at the earliest (unless they temporarily remove HealthKit integration). In just one example last week, Big Health, a startup which delivers cognitive behavioral therapy via digital channels, ( , for sleep disorder sufferers). And promptly found itself having to scramble to compile a version that would be allowed back on the store, after Apple yanked the app prior to iOS 8 launching. Evidently Cupertino didn’t want lots of broken health and fitness apps ruining its shiny new OS party. “What we did at speed was we tore out HealthKit. We created a version of the app without HealthKit, which for us is ok — because the core still works, ‘Help Me Now’ still works, all the core functionality of Sleepio still works — it just limits where you can get the data from,” CEO and co-founder Peter Hames tells TechCrunch. “In time we think HealthKit’s going to be a really rich source of data for us. But the first integration is just pulling in sleep data so you can either input that manually or get Jawbone UP and pull it in from Jawbone. So we were able to quickly resubmit a version that didn’t have HealthKit.” As Hames notes, Sleepio is now back on the App Store — but sans HealthKit integration. The same thing happened to the . Other examples in the health and fitness space aren’t hard to find. Apple disabling a flagship feature in the new version of its mobile OS just prior to launch is a notable occurrence: the aforementioned glitch in an otherwise slickly orchestrated launch. The company — which is famously reticent when not speaking from its own podium — issued a statement about the HealthKit bug earlier this week, when asked for comment by the ‘s Tim Bradshaw. “We discovered a bug that prevents us from making HealthKit apps available on iOS 8 today. We’re working quickly to have the bug fixed in a software update and have HealthKit apps available by the end of the month,” Apple said on Wednesday. It provided the same statement to TechCrunch when asked about the issue, and declined to answer any specific questions — including on the nature of the bug itself. One thing is crystal clear here: Apple’s health play — with HealthKit — raises the stakes considerably when it comes to sensitive user data. are bad enough, but personal medical data is arguably even more sensitive than intimate photographs. So The level of detail in Apple’s Health system is extensive for a consumer product, with sixty different types of data recognized — from blood glucose, to oxygen saturation, to dietary cholesterol, to respiration rate. It certainly does not have a tokenistic feel. Apple has also sought out and partnered with big name healthcare providers and health data repositories, starting with The Mayo Clinic and Epic Systems. Discussing this , Apple said the aim is to let patients choose to share records and data with their health providers. It’s not hard to see the vision here: iOS apps and compatible devices acting as health data-gatherers, iOS’s HealthKit as the conduit, and Apple as the data sharing platform provider. It’s a big, potentially revolutionary gambit on Apple’s part to consumerize, and therefore own, healthcare data flows — casting itself in that central platform role; the hub from which myriad spokes extend, linking devices, people, patients and healthcare providers. Apple is gunning to be the mobile company that puts people in charge of their own health data, to arm them with standardized means to appraise their personal wellness. But medical data is not just any data. It carries a special responsibility — and, indeed, such data can carry specific regulatory and compliance responsibilities, as my colleague Darrell Etherington noted back in . All of which means the stakes — for HealthKit — are very high indeed. And ensuring a bug-free product right from launch is hugely, hugely important for Apple. This is not some ‘nice to have’ consumer flourish. Apple is shooting for iOS to become a health data standard. This pipeline really does just have to work. So the cauterized launch is notable in two ways: firstly that a flagship iOS 8 feature didn’t launch as intended. But more importantly that Apple made the decision to hold it back — creating an unsightly blip in its launch festival and torching devs’ efforts (however temporarily) in the process. “I still believe the same thing about HealthKit,” says Hames, who remains positive about the transformative potential of Apple’s health data play. “I still believe in the potential of it — that it’s going to be the thing that has the power to catalyze digital medicine becoming a reality. [This bug] highlights the stakes involved — although obviously we don’t know what the bug is.” “I really think that they have a long view on the impact that this is going to have,” he adds. “To make sure that they’re building something that’s going to have a meaningful impact. “When it comes to healthcare, trust is so easily lost.” |
Watch The Oculus Connect Keynotes Here | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 9 | 20 |
Oculus, the virtual reality headset company that Facebook acquired , is holding its very first conference today. With conferences come keynotes — and with keynotes comes the potential for big announcements. No one’s quite certain what Oculus will announce, though . Whatever they say up on stage, you can catch it in the livestream up above. The stream should fire up at about 9:30 AM. The most-likely-to-be-newsy panels are as follows (all times Pacific): |
The Demons Of On-Demand | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 9 | 20 | Are today’s on-demand and local services really about catering to the lazy rich, as , or are they about a new way to book services from local providers by satisfying demand more efficiently through the use of geolocation and advanced software that can map out where customers are, what they need and when? I’d argue it’s likely the latter, but I also understand the criticism here. When one’s life is easy, even the little things seem more difficult. And that’s frankly pretty offensive to those of us who know what true struggle looks like. But when your time is more valuable than your money, it’s worthwhile to pay for the help: someone to fold your laundry, clean your house, drive you around and buy your groceries. And, of course, there are those who vilify the new suite of apps claiming they’re built by and for a sort of vapid elite — for the Silicon Valley kids who are trying to put “mom” in app form because they never learned to separate the colors and whites when doing laundry, or because they’d rather be on their iPhones than talk to people or drive, or because they can’t figure out how often to restock the toilet paper. To some extent, the criticism is accurate. The majority of people today aren’t using so many on-demand services that they can’t function without to manage all their button-pushing for them. They don’t need a service to help them smooth out an already frictionless life. Really, who like to have that problem? Oh, this button-pushing is just exhausting! It certainly comes across out of touch with how so many people in this country are currently living. A documentary I recently saw on HBO called “ ” follows around a divorced mother, and lets you watch as she works herself to death all day caring for the elderly in a nursing home and yet barely surviving herself. In the U.S., the film states, 42 million women — one in three — are living in poverty or teetering on its brink. More than 13 million are mothers of young children. (Before Silicon Valley builds another , seeing the film should be required.) And overall, in 2013, 100 million individuals — nearly one in three Americans — received benefits from at least one of over 80 means-tested welfare programs that provided cash, food, housing, medical care and targeted social services to poor and low-income Americans. — or so argues a conservative think tank whose goal is to prove government programs don’t work. The good news, I suppose, is that the to 14.5 percent in 2013, down from 15 percent a year earlier, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. “This is the first statistically significant drop in poverty since 2006, when it was 12.3%,” writes CNN. Unfortunately, , the report quickly adds. The population expanded; the jobs did not. I can relate: I know what it’s like to struggle thanks to a similar situation to the woman depicted in that HBO documentary, including the newfound challenges of single parenting. How I would love to have the luxury of worrying about all the different buttons I have to push to make sure my household chores were completed! If only! But alas, I am too poor to outsource the tasks associated with being an adult, and living by oneself without excess income or savings. Not only that, but I live outside the Valley – and outside the city – so the things that are built and hyped as the “future of local services” don’t really touch me at this time. At least, not unless I move. Or until they scale to suburbia and beyond – aka . Still, despite this sort of separateness from a large part of the on-demand, sharing-economy movement, I understand that much of what first gets offered to the better-off city dweller may eventually trickle down to the everyman or everywoman. (Or at least, this is the argument.) Therefore, I’m looking forward to the Uber for babysitting. (A Care.com on demand!) Or pet sitting. (A -on-demand where no one can reject your dog for not being well-behaved at the meet-and-greet.) For every or , I’m waiting for the dozens of that will surely follow to make meal planning easier, more efficient and more health-focused For every that helps you find the nearby Macy’s shoe sales, surely a million will blossom to show you how to walk out of a grocery store with free food and household items? For every advance in crowdfunding pointless gadgets, I’ll appreciate the crowdfunded (and vetted) campaigns or . Technology, I still want to believe, hasn’t completely sold out the middle class just yet. Maybe it has been overpaid for a minute. Maybe it forgot to have a higher purpose. Or maybe it will always be built for the fortunate first, then find its way into the hands of everyone else eventually. But technology will still augment and improve our everyday lives, I continue to hope. This is what drew me to writing about it in the first place — the Web 2.0 era where I saw services like Myspace and Facebook connect friends over great distances; where Gmail suddenly made email work; where boxed software was no longer boxed, but available and simplified in bubbly-lettered interfaces letting anyone run programs in the cloud (before we were even calling it that). Build your own website, the tech-bearers said. Post your photos, write your own blog. Impact others. Share, join, participate. Of course, believing is harder these days. Technology has made some mistakes. Well, a lot of them. It gave us social media then where we increasingly share shocking clickbait or completely inaccurate information, then surround ourselves with fellow believers who think the same things. It took our jobs, then gave us the opportunities to be “ .” It literally sold us out, exchanging free services for our profile data and user privacy. It sold our data and gave us ads that follow web surfers around the Internet pushing us to buy things we do not need. ; we were added to mailing lists. It sold us out to the government, an entity that should have had far more just cause to like a giant vacuum, sneaking it into its own hidden warehouses. And now technology continues its quest to infiltrate every aspect of our lives. It changed how we communicate, how we network and how we work, and today, it’s changing how we hire others who do work for us. On-demand mobile apps are more efficient than clicking through Google or Yelp, making phone calls, sending emails or using a desktop or web app. They are consumer demand in the palm of one’s hand. And so what if they’re a bit ridiculous and elitist at the start? It makes sense that companies would tap into that demand, then rebuild traditional services to be offered new ways. The challenge for these emerging startups is to make sure that while they’re so busy “creating jobs” they’re not the way. (For what it’s worth, maligned Disrupt winner offers its errand-runners regular employment and benefits once they work 20 hours a week or more. Hate the concept of personal services, if you must, but that’s at least an improvement over how competitors choose to manage their payrolls.) Really, it comes down to how you want to look at the world technology is building. Is it turning highly paid workers into lowly paid, on-demand, faceless servants? Okay, maybe right now it is. Will those businesses last and scale when the funding runs out? Well, who knows? The “lazy,” on-demand, instant gratification startups aren’t the only services that enslave the hopeless and downtrodden, though it’s easy enough to envision this as their dastardly goal — especially given their determination to dehumanize the workers who give their software something (someone) to automate. It right to question their ethics and attitudes, but the technology itself is blameless. Don’t like push-button butlers? Don’t build one; don’t use it. Build the opposite. If you can push a button to summon a car or a courier, can’t you push a button to send aid, too? Can you push a button to help rebuild a life? (I think so, having helped to raise over $1,000 for friends whose house burned down via a mobile app from Tilt.) Can’t you push a button to fund someone’s medical care? Small business idea? Fulfill a classroom’s needs? Figure out how to make push-button commerce work. A farmer’s market-as-a-service. A parenting/babysitting co-op where friends pay each other as they log on or off an availability roster. Crowdfund a , or the school supplies for students whose parents are going through tough times. . Create neighborhood lending and rental services. Book exchanges. Swap meets. Push-button tutors or trainers. Insta-sitters. . Subscription-based, push-button birth control, Plan B and condoms. Location-based, that ping you when you’re nearby a hiring business (and ping the HR manager, too). Push-notification-based fundraising. . Subscription-based (and affordable) . Just because it failed before, or even repeatedly, doesn’t mean it always will. Try again. Aim higher than butlers-on-demand. Instead of finding ways to turn the technology into the thing that destroys, make it an enabler of good. Ignore the noise. They may say Silicon Valley is out of ideas, but you’re not. |
Going Digital: A New Frontier For Finance | Pierre Brais | 2,014 | 9 | 20 | Financial services are no longer the enigma they once were. Gaining ever-increasing accessibility, these services are on the brink of exploding. While obtaining greater access to financial services comes in part because our world is becoming more digital, it is also a result of new, innovative and disruptive influences chipping into what has long been a cozy oligopoly among established financial institutions. Now, the stage is set for an Internet-style disruption of financial services that will radically change the landscape of how the public buys and consumes financial products over the next few years. These changes will only serve to move business forward, leading to increased innovation. This gives us all better products and services — at a fraction of the cost.
Largely due to the financial crisis of 2008, regulators who were previously a major barrier to new entrants are now less likely to trust banks — especially when it comes to the need to protect consumers from new smaller players. Changes in regulations, such as the in the U.S. and the in the U.K., also make it significantly easier to start and grow new businesses — which means they can often innovate faster than large, slow-moving corporations. These developments, combined with the widely held disenchantment the public feels toward large financial institutions, make consumers far more likely to experiment with new service providers. Interestingly, the entrepreneurs and developers who are leading this charge are former employees of these large financial institutions, armed with the knowledge they gained of how these products work and how easily they can be replicated and simplified in a digital world. Early efforts to digitize finance have focused on mobile payments such as Square or Braintree. However, interest is now moving into a second wave of disruption, honing in on areas such as money transfer (Dwolla, TransferWise), foreign exchange (CurrencyCloud), savings accounts (Simple) — even car insurance (MetroMile) is getting some attention. This groundswell of change is already reaching into core areas of banking, including fundraising (AngelList), peer-to-peer lending (Prosper, Lending Club), crowdfunding (Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Fundly), and everything from funds management (Personal Capital) to automated and impartial investment advice services (Wealthfront, Betterment) are now being targeted as areas of interest by innovative parties. Digital currency in particular has been gaining a tiny bit of traction. Take bitcoin, which has been around for years but recently saw a surge in popularity. Regardless of whether or not bitcoin will always be the big cryptocurrency on campus, with more than 80 services available, it’s clear digital currency is here to stay. Still, it’s not all rainbows for these new ventures. We can all recall the debacle that was the demise of , which hemorrhaged $460 million in bitcoin due to malicious hacks, revealing that bitcoin’s first test attempt to survive a scandal was a bit of a failure. Not all is lost, though. Such events merely illustrate the need (that plenty of players have jumped on already) to push further development in this area. With digital currency as a major unifying element for the industry, its disruption is enabling a third wave of change wherein the financial institution is removed from the equation. While many banks recognize that digital services are crucial to their future, they have largely been slow to establish this presence, especially on mobile. Beyond this, however, banks traditionally operate as a trusted intermediary between savers and lenders, and it is this role that represents and defines the key role they provide for consumers. If digital currencies are able to eliminate this role (as they say they can do), everything changes. Successful digital currencies will be those that enable the transfer of money between parties anywhere in the world, without the need for intermediaries like banks or payment processors (and their associated fees). These services are also conveniently based on the new technology of , a public ledger of all transactions in the network. This capability is the new key to a wide range of possible new businesses. The disruption of the financial services market means major changes are on the horizon, both for consumers and companies alike. As we continue to pay close attention to these changes, it’s important to monitor necessary details such as evolving legal constraints. However, it’s also important to experiment early on with new and existing services to discover whether they are a good solution for a financial need. Business leaders in particular need to embrace this disruption no matter how fragmented it may appear at the outset. Banking institutions have made billions in profits over the past by maintaining control over relatively simple financial services that today can easily be replicated by new entrants at a fraction of the cost. Increasing the accessibility of these services will yield a more effective financial system for everyone, not just free of needless fees and bureaucracy, but more importantly, chock-full of capabilities we never even knew we needed. |
Let’s Fix The Internet | Jon Evans | 2,014 | 9 | 20 | I hate to be the one to tell you this, but: we, the people of the Internet, have collectively run up a colossal amount of . Much of our online infrastructure consists of band-aid and/or legacy Rube Goldberg solutions hacked together with ; and the only way to pay back technical debt is to fix it. The good news is, we’re finally doing just that. I come here not to bury the tech industry, but to praise it. A lot of really interesting progress has been made this year. Much of it probably seems subtle or experimental, to the average user, to date…but the potential repercussions could conceivably extend into every corner of our lives. Let’s start with Bitcoin. Don’t look at me like that. The blockchain technology that underlies Bitcoin is a that could, in time, revolutionize both the Internet and the financial industry as we know them–and the first steps of that potential revolution are now under way. I give you , “a platform and a programming language that makes it possible for any developer to build and publish next-generation distributed applications,” which is , and has , not from venture capitalists, but by selling “ether,” the Bitcoin-like instrument that serves as Ethereum’s “cryptofuel.” just raised $15 m without going to Wall Street. The fork is zooming. — John Robb (@johnrobb) To some people that sounds like snake oil; to the more technically grounded it sounds like a , version of Bitcoin’s blockchain that can be used to build whole new of applications. Will it work? Hard to say. Is it worth a collective $15 million bet? Indeed it is. In another corner, fighting much the same fight: MaidSafe, powered by . As Natasha Lomas : What that means in practice is a network that does away with an intermediary layer of servers and datacenters — replacing that with peer-to-peer infrastructure […] the users of the network are also acting as the network infrastructure by donating a portion of their spare hard drive capacity — with built in incentives for them to do so in the form of a network specific cryptocurrency Do these little startups not convince you? OK then: from industry rhino IBM comes Adept, which combines a blockchain, the BitTorrent protocol, and a simple end-to-end encrypted-JSON library into a . How big a deal is all this? Well, Bitcoin , ie “programmable money,” could, at least conceivably, be an existential threat to the entire financial industry as we know it. I realize that sounds hyperbolic. I’m not (yet) even saying it’s likely. But it’s not out of the question. https://twitter.com/balajis/status/510951687486316544 Similarly, distributed systems like Ethereum and MaidSafe raise at least the of a decentralized Internet where, instead of relying on central servers and like Facebook or Google, applications become distributed, peer-to-peer, and reliant on no central authority. And the Internet of Things? …I’m told that’s supposed to be big. Secure peer-to-peer applications are appearing all around. Consider, for example, , an end-to-end-encrypted sharing app (for files, messages, VoIP, etc.) that supports both peer-to-peer and hub-and-spoke connections. To quote its co-founder Vigile Houreau: “It’s not only an app. It’s a server that runs on your client side.” Similarly, BitTorrent has just added a called Bleep to its panoply of peer-to-peer services. In the interim, we should at least make a point of securing our connections to our servers (and other devices) — and there’s some good recent news on that front, too. I hereby loudly applaud CloudFlare for their new Keyless SSL, which lets their customers support secure connections–and –without having to ever turn their private keys over to CloudFlare. (Introduction ; far more detailed and technical writeup .) Good stuff. This notion of securing your customer’s data without holding the keys used to encrypt it, so that you can’t decrypt it and turn it over even if you want to, appears to be gaining steam: Apple: We can no longer decrypt iPhones for law enforcement, starting w/ iOS 8. Suck it NSA — Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) Like Apple, CloudFlare is deploying tech that binds their own hands, preventing disclosure of private keys to feds. — Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) Now, granted, not everyone is fully convinced: https://twitter.com/makehacklearn/status/512744777628925952 …but in general, it’s fair to say that over the last year or two, in part thanks to Edward Snowden, major companies have realized that the security infrastructure of the Internet has accumulated a whole crufty mass of cancerous technical debt, and are now working to pay it off. Meanwhile, blockchain-based startups are working to restructure the Net on a far more fundamental level. We live in very interesting–and very promising–times. |
null | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 9 | 2 | null |
Klarna Announces U.S. Team As It Plans For 2015 Launch In The U.S. | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | The payments market in the U.S. couldn’t be be more competitive, and now yet another player is entering the mix. Stockholm-based is set to announce its U.S. team ahead of expansion plans into North America, which will begin in earnest at the beginning of 2015. Klarna, a European giant, which has raised $282.1 million over six rounds of financing, , has set the groundwork for its move into the U.S. by lining up a who’s who of U.S. firepower to guide its expansion on North American shores. Investors in the company include Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, DST and Atomico. The company recruited Brian Billingsley from as chief executive of North America; former director Carol Hargrave as chief marketing officer; and former counsel, Jin Han, as chief legal counsel for North America. Earlier U.S. recruits included chief credit officer Matthew Risley from and chief financial officer John Keatley from . “Can you imagine if 70 to 90 people walked away from the checkout because it’s too cumbersome? That’s exactly what happens online today,” says Billingsley. “Companies spend hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, per year to get people onto their site, and then they’re losing them.” Klarna, like U.S. incumbent or PayPal, is looking to change that. Already a powerhouse in Europe through organic growth in the Nordic region ( ), Klarna has long been rumored to be eyeing the U.S. market — and now the company is making its move. Akin to its strategy for growth in the Europe, the company does has its eye on acquisitions here in the U.S., according to Billingsley. “It’s definitely not off the table,” he says. “We have very supportive investors in all of our markets.” Using Klarna online shoppers enter only have to enter information like an email address and zip code to buy an item. After that, Klarna assumes all the risk from the purchase transaction, pays the retailer, and collects the amount due from the customer within 14 days. In Europe, Klarna has 25 million users and 45,000 retailers. The company is estimating revenues of more than $300 million in 2013 and is used for 200,000 transactions per day globally. Behind Klarna’s network is a complicated set of anti-fraud technologies that can help the company assume the credit and financial risks that an individual merchant might have to otherwise carry. This means that when a customer buys a product online, Klarna assumes the risks even before a customer has potentially paid for the product. They have a one-click purchase option that they say allows merchants to see on average a 10-30 percent uptick in sales. The company says that its technology works particularly well online. The average checkout conversion is between 1 percent and 10 percent for typical checkouts on mobile devices, but using Klarna, the company claims conversion rates of roughly 50 percent. Billingsley says the service slots into a different segment of the shopping experience than payment solutions like the new Apple Pay feature. “We’re focused on buying. And the customer can pay however they want to pay later,” says Billingsley. “Apple Pay will be a way to pay our settlement invoice.” |
Facebook Won’t Budge On Letting Drag Queens Keep Their Names | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | Facebook will not be changing its for the drag queen community. San Francisco drag queens met with representatives from the company yesterday afternoon to talk through a recent mass deletion of their personal profile pages. Facebook started deleting accounts of hundreds of members of the drag community last week after deciding these profiles were in violation of the policy. Facebook warned account holders that they must change their drag names to their birth names or get shut down. Members of the drag community believes their stage names are their real names and that they should not be forced to go by their birth names on Facebook. The queens were hopeful that meeting with Facebook yesterday afternoon would possibly mean the company would create an exception to the policy and allow them to keep the names they go by. However, that meeting did not go as they had hoped. The drag queen community had scheduled a protest for Wednesday at Facebook headquarters meant to show their frustration over having to change their names. However, protest organizer LilMiss HotMess (Harris David) postponed the protest after Facebook agreed to meet with the drag community and other city officials yesterday. Facebook did decide to temporarily reactivate the profiles of several hundred members of the drag queen community whose profiles were recently deactivated; however, it stood by its real-names policy. “This will give [the drag queens] a chance to decide how they’d like to represent themselves on Facebook,” said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement to TechCrunch. “Over the next two weeks, we hope that they will decide to confirm their real name, change their name to their real name, or convert their profile to a Page.” Heklina, a drag queen whose profile had been previously deleted, tells me she still has some hope. “Well, it wasn’t really just lip service but we’re going to try to meet with them one more time before we decide to mobilize for a protest,” she says. The drag community has now on Change.org to get support behind changing Facebook policy to allow them to keep their names. They are pretty near their goal of 25,000 signatures in support of them keeping their drag names, too. Here is an excerpt from the petition: We cannot emphasize enough that Facebook is a poor arbiter of what is or isn’t a real name. Performers with legitimate-appearing names get locked out of their accounts while people with account names like “Jane ICanBeBadAllByMyself Doe” go without scrutiny. And, unfortunately, for those who choose not to use their legal names for reasons of privacy, safety, or preference, there is no way to access their account to download and preserve all their photos and information that they have built up on Facebook over the years without bypassing the name change requirement. Facebook has provided a statement from Chris Wolf, national chair of the Anti-Defamation League’s Civil Rights Committee regarding the real-name policy. Wolf sides with Facebook’s intent to provide real names as a safety measure. “As someone who has studied online hate for 20 years, I know that a real-name policy works to prevent hate speech and harassment. Simply put, anonymity allows people to engage in harassment and bullying,” he says. The irony in all of this is that it may have been an anonymous person who targeted the drag queens in the first place by turning in their profile pages to Facebook. The social media site relies on human beings to alert them to a violation of policy. Whether real or not, that they were the person who turned the drag queens in. “There’s a difference between anonymous profiles and those with a different name. We have an identity. Theres no way these people are going to go out and bully people. We have to stand by our names,” points out Sister Roma, a drag performer and 20-year member of the . It should be noted that Facebook does make certain exceptions to its real-names policy for celebrities. The New York Times reported back in 2012 that . We weren’t sure exactly which page the New York Times may be referring to. However, a quick profile page search revealed (aka Lady Gaga). It’s doubtful these profiles are operating under their own real names. I myself created a fake Justin Bieber account as a gag a few years back. That account appears to be gone now. However, what’s to stop people from creating any number of fake accounts with real-sounding names versus drag queens who have real accounts, with real people behind them but choose to use their stage names? What’s also unclear is how Facebook plans to enforce the policy beyond U.S. borders. It has been pointed out that there are Burmese Facebook accounts with names of feudal-era Burmese kings, princesses and poets who are, well, no longer alive. For now, it seems, Facebook is sticking to the policy as-is and encouraging the now-reactivated account holders to change their names within the next two weeks. “We look forward to continuing the conversation with the LGBT community, so that we can work to ensure they can continue to connect and engage on Facebook,” says a Facebook spokesperson. Sister Roma, Heklina and others hope to get a date to meet with Facebook again soon. “We hope to meet with real decision makers and make progress on this issue,” says Sister Roma. |
One Lap With Circa’s Matt Galligan | Rob Coneybeer | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | In the first installment of , Matt Galligan joined me at Thunderhill Raceway to talk about his mobile news application, . I first met Matt in Boulder, Colo., in early 2010 shortly after he started , an infrastructure provider for location-aware applications. A few years later, he sold SimpleGeo and founded Circa. Along the way, he’s learned a lot of lessons about starting companies, building teams and developing products. I meet a lot of entrepreneurs every day. Matt falls into the category of relentless founders who have a distinct design sense and work hard to continuously learn – both from their mistakes and successes. Given that Circa entered a crowded market of mobile news aggregation applications, there were plenty of skeptics. Matt and his team have defied the odds and built a differentiated product that’s rated highly in the iOS App Store. Nearly 80 percent of Circa’s 7,000-plus reviews are five stars. Apps don’t earn these types of reviews unless consumers love them. During our interview, Matt describes why consumers love his app, why Circa uses human editors, the upcoming Circa News 3 release, and how he recruited Tumblr’s former president, John Maloney, to join Circa: “At one point in time I sent him a text message. Just a text message that was like, hey why don’t you come be our COO? And he was like I’m flattered let’s talk.” |
Patient Capital Drives Change In Education | Matthew Pittinsky | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | In 2001, Arthur Levine, then president of Columbia University Teacher’s College, predicted that one day faculty members would become free agents, increasingly independent of their colleges and universities. “It is only a matter of time before we see the equivalent of an academic William Morris Agency,” Levine, now president of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, wrote in . Fast forward to 2012. Hundreds of professors signed up to teach free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), each of them reaching tens of thousands of students from around the world, more than they ever would in a lifetime of teaching students face-to-face in classrooms on their campuses. And this “overnight change” only took 11 years to begin to manifest. In today’s tech-driven world, where the speed of product development is measured in quarters of a year, 11 years is an eternity—often longer than the lifespan of entire companies. As a result, the common complaint from education-technology startups and venture capitalists trying to help transform higher education is that the pace of change on campuses is way too slow. In academia, the rapid disruption mentality of the high-tech world tends not to work very well. While there are big, systematic changes that technology is bringing to education, the way that change manifests itself is typically incremental: A leads to B, B to C and C to D. Rarely does A lead directly to D. This “radical incrementalist” model can be a more palatable alternative in the academic world, with its shared governance and traditional values. In education, incrementalism takes at least 10 to15 years for radical potential to become scaling reality, even though the idea may have existed from the beginning. A second dimension of incrementalism is that entrepreneurs need to approach the market and their vision in a way that strips down the big idea to solve an immediate, concrete problem that is often a fraction of the desired end result: the A starting point. As someone who was part of the first education technology boom in the late 1990s as a co-founder of , I have watched over the last decade as radical predictions about change similar to Levine’s have turned to reality — importantly, slower than anticipated. In my current work at Parchment, the first white paper on electronic transcripts was written in 1997, and we’re now just seeing movement to digital transcripts and credentials. While Levine predicted what he did, it took years of faculty using web course tools to support campus-based students, developing literacy in how to instruct online. It took years of experience with basic uses of e-learning for institutions to become comfortable with the medium. Their initial drivers were not global reach but classroom augmentation. As tools, practice and literacy evolved, some faculty began to flip the classroom and use classroom time differently. Others saw the potential of reach and began to rethink the centrality of physical classrooms altogether. While not literally a linear story, it’s also not an immaculate conception of an overnight phenomenon without foundation or context. Change comes slowly to higher education for a reason. This part of the academic culture is backed by a certain logic. Our colleges and universities have outlasted a Civil War, a depression, and two World Wars much as they are today, more focused on educating students than making money. Meanwhile, companies have come and gone on the S&P 500, some in the blink of an eye. There are good reasons why developments in education transpire over years, not months. Despite the constant comparison of how higher education should operate more like a business, for me, our colleges and universities are more like a church. They occupy a special role in society to prepare the individual both as a citizen and a worker and to improve our democracy and economy. It’s no coincidence that education and religion are equally slow to change, which for both is a highly complex, highly political and heavily nuanced process tied to the issue of value and organizational charter. For this reason, education entrepreneurs should think differently about how they build companies that serve education. In 2012, education entrepreneur John Katzman argued the need for lean education startups (“one guy with a vision and a bunch of hard-working twenty-somethings”) to fatten up with a mix of people with backgrounds in business and education. His argument is a nice example of how not all best practices from consumer tech will carry over into ed tech. Entities like the and the are investing unprecedented amounts in education technology. Likewise, there’s an increasing availability of venture capital from top-tier West Coast funds, along with funds in traditional edtech hubs such as Washington, D.C., New York and Boston. In 2013, venture capitalists invested $1.25 billion in education technology companies. Like in other industries, they invested with a time horizon for their return. Will that return materialize? The answer will be driven by how patient the capital is and how willing entrepreneurs are to work over an extended timescale. Does the entrepreneur blame the education market for not jumping to the end vision, or did she break down the big idea into an on-ramp that bridges vision with where education is today? Colleges and universities most likely will never adopt innovative solutions to higher-education’s knotty problems on the timetable of Wall Street or Silicon Valley. Nor, necessarily, should they. And while I don’t advocate that we must always take baby steps, recent history shows there is virtue in that strategy, or at least planning for it. There’s a lesson to learn from radical incrementalism, or perhaps a challenge to lay down. While many edtech entrepreneurs and investors, particularly those on the West Coast, are comfortable with the radical part, “incremental” is not their calling card. It’s not just about having a big idea or vision and expecting immediate results. It’s also about distilling down that big idea to first solve a pragmatic core problem that logically lays the foundation for success. Big change does happen in education, it just takes longer. If the last tech boom in education taught us anything, it’s that patient capital, investing in companies that focus on small wins over time on their way to their ultimate vision, pays off in the end. |
Hours For iOS 8 Lets You Track Your Time With A Widget | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | Those who have to keep track of how they spend their time working during the day can’t do much better on iOS than , Apple Design Award winner ‘s latest app. We when it launched back in July, and now the Tapity team has released an update for iOS 8 that helps you keep on top of your tasks with even less hassle. For those just hearing about it, Tapity’s (temporarily) $4.99 app lets you make timers for each task, project or activity that you’d like to track. Once you’ve started one, it starts a TV guide-like timeline for the current hour. Switch tasks, and the color of the bar changes to that of the new task, making it really easy to go back and remember what you were working on at any given time of any day. You can even tell the app when you should start doing work each day, and it will send you a notification reminding you to start a timer. That line of functionality gets even better with today’s release, as iOS 8 gave Tapity the ability to put your timers directly in the iOS Notification Center under the Today tab. That means you don’t even have to open the app to keep track of your work — just swipe down and tap to begin: |
Winter Is (Probably) Coming (Soon) | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | a bubble. Or something close to one. And the good times are going to slow down. Probably soon. That’s the gist of a that venture capitalist Bill Gurley gave. His words matter because they cut to the simple fact that too many companies are burning too much money. Making money is better than losing money, but losing money — burn — can be the prudent and responsible thing to do. Under certain circumstances, it’s great to burn: If you are quickly growing and seeing a huge return over time on invested dollars, setting fire to cash can be great. If your unit economics rock, venture dollars will rain from the ceiling. Use them. But not all burns are equal: Your burn isn’t my burn or their burn. Sometimes it can look like you’re burning and growing when, in reality, the flicker from your burn that’s dancing in your eyes is actually your business melting the fuck down. The difference is in the details. Let’s run a cohort analysis! Gurley isn’t the only venture capitalist who is irked that some startups are spending like Croesus while generating newspaper-like revenues. Fred Wilson also recently : We have multiple portfolio companies burning multiple millions of dollars a month. Thankfully its not our entire portfolio. But it is more than I’d like and more than I’m personally comfortable with. I’ve been grumpy for months, possibly for longer than that, about this. I’ve pushed back on long term leases that I thought were outrageous, I’ve pushed back on spending plans that I thought were too aggressive and too risky, I’ve made myself a pain in the ass to more than a few CEOs. I’m really happy that I’m not alone in thinking this way. At some point you have to build a real business, generate real profits, sustain the company without the largess of investor’s capital, and start producing value the old fashioned way. Yes. Gurley points out that losing millions per month is the new normal. People who would have been afraid to join a firm that heats its floors by burning hundred dollar bills now do so with abandon. Why? Because the market cares about top — and not bottom — lines. At least for now. It’s Groupon’s early days all over again. Gurley hits on the idea of risk repeatedly. The more you boost your burn, the more risk you take on. And if you’re a venture capitalist, the more risk you take on, the more potential loss you face. Profits are great. Losses less so. The underlying point of Gurley’s and Wilson’s respective riffs is that many companies will have to reduce their burn in the future. And it won’t be easy. And the pair likely won’t be willing to give larger sums to companies that just torched their prior round in ways that they didn’t precisely approve of. Cash is the oxygen of business. When it runs out, the company dies. Gurley’s thesis isn’t hard to follow: Companies are being rewarded by the market for spending — and losing — huge sums of private capital that they can cheaply and quickly raise given the current investment and equities climate. Or, put another way, investors are giving companies huge sums to burn, because the market is willing to value revenue growth above all else, and thus everyone downstream wins even as losses mount. This works precisely until it doesn’t. As long as interest rates remain low, and the public markets remain near record highs, an appetite for larger returns will manifest itself in large amounts of capital accessible to. So the game, for now, is still afoot. The flip of that, if you want to stare at the market from the top, is simply that piles of public money are helping to keep private money stupid. Amplifying the above is the fact that large tech companies are cash-rich at the moment, boosting sale prices for companies both strong and weak. That money often ends up back in the cycle, and then it’s once more around the sun. All this leads to a heady condition where startups are burning like mad to generate as much heat as they can, because when you do burn the candle at both ends, , it gives a lovely light. Again, this works until it doesn’t. When money gets more expensive, burn becomes more painful, because the dollars that you are torching have a higher value. If you’re not worried about your next $100 million, how safely are you going to spend your current $100 million? But when you might only be able to raise another $25 million, that $100 million is far more dear. The end of quantitative easing is rapidly approaching, and as interest rates are broadly expected to rise in the next few quarters, money getting more expensive is not an if, but a . Public markets are still pretty damn frothy, but not frothy enough for some companies to go public. Burn remains something that public investors fear. There is a pretty big delta between Box’s delayed IPO and the success of Arista Networks’. Money becoming more expensive for startups will come hand-in-hand with a decrease in the amount of capital that private startups can raise. Some of that money that they had access to will be off chasing alternative asset classes that suddenly became more attractive. Less money means lower valuations and lower burn. If you can’t raise as much, you can’t burn as much. Well, you can, but then your company dies. According to Gurley, some big players are about to hit the skids. In the interview, he was explicit: “I do think there is a high likelihood that we’ll see some high-profile failures in the next year or two.” That means billion-dollar flameouts. And if some of the larger startups are going to go up in flames, dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller, less-well-capitalized startups are going to wind up in the deadpool. That will, perversely, loosen the labor market for companies that don’t lose money. Hell, maybe you be able to afford that one bedroom in SOMA before you turn 30. We’re not there yet, however. The IPO window is still open; interest rates are still comically low; and money is therefore comically cheap. But when things begin to shift, the market momentum that so many have ridden to 10-figure valuations will begin to induce drag. The companies that burn the most will be the most hosed. Something to think about. |
The Best Of Times … | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | Or so Dickens might have written if he had lived in San Francisco. The bubble is back in the news again , the well-known Benchmark venture capitalist, who warned that some startups have increased their burn rates so much, that they are reaching perilous levels of risk. So quick is capital flowing through startups that, according to Gurley, “the average burn rate at the average venture-backed company in Silicon Valley is at an all time high since [19]99 and maybe in many industries higher than in [19]99.” He’s been backed up by other luminaries like Union Square Ventures VC Fred Wilson, who in their quest for growth. “Valuations can be fixed. You can do a down round, or three or four flat ones, until you get the price right. But burn rates are exactly that. Burning cash. Losing money. Emphasis on the losing.” The two have a point. Unlike other metrics, burn rate is the ultimate measure of the health of a startup. It’s literally life itself, the sustenance that fuels a founder’s vision from zero to one. Most startups need at least a little cash to get off the ground, money that is invested into the business in order to potentially secure a future profit. Without burn, startups are forced to bootstrap and slowly build their startup over a period of years, potentially against far more aggressive competitors. But burn rates are like water in a glass: reasonable people can hold diametrically opposed views on the subject without contradicting each other. It’s sort of the Silicon Valley equivalent of the old saw about economists. If you put five of them in a room, you get six answers. For Gurley, burn rates have become out-of-control. Discussing the periods following the 2000 and 2008 contractions, he says that “you just wouldn’t go take a job at a company that’s burning $4 million a month.” That’s normal enough now, according to the investor, that “[t]oday everyone does it without thinking.” The cash argument has been percolating more loudly in startup circles than it has in the past. Limited partners, the investors into venture capital firms, have been forced out of many traditional types of investments over the past few years. Bonds, a mainstay of many balanced portfolios, , and hedge fund management has become so complicated, and its performance so low, that the largest pension fund, CalPERS, . For investment managers, that available capital has to be invested somewhere, and one attractive location is venture capital. NVCA data shows that . Already, VCs have raised more dollars in the first-half of the year than in all of 2013, and if the current rate of new funds continues, 2014 could be the largest year for venture capital since 2005. All that new money causes VCs to feel pressure to spend capital faster, leading to larger valuations for startups and larger round sizes. Since that money doesn’t do anything sitting in a bank account, founders increase their burn rate to compensate for their oversized round, leading to the current debate about high burn rates. Other economic issues are also fueling this trend. Interest rates are near record lows, a consequence of policies like quantitative easing that essentially put more money in the economy to be used by investors. That easy money has caused equities to soar in value, giving more power to companies like Microsoft and Google to acquire startups. But this monetary chain of events belies a much more fundamental change in the culture of Silicon Valley. Discipline, once the core asset of startups in their fight against much wealthier incumbents, has now been replaced by profligacy. Startups are willing to spend on almost anything, from lavish meals prepared by world-class chefs, to offices that rival those of the whitest-shoe law firms on Wall Street. That’s the negative view. Spoiled children, flush with cash, are spending like their credit cards are going to expire. Everyone in the startup ecosystem is running around in madness looking for any opportunity for growth without a real understanding of the potential for different companies to succeed. There is a very different take on the data that I think better represents reality. More and more people are using smartphones, not just in the United States, but throughout the world. As more of our economy happens online, there is huge potential for new entrants (i.e. startups) to compete with the largest companies in the world for business. How often can we completely reinvent spaces like book publishing, movie production, finance, communications, and all in just a couple of years? And while massive valuations for companies have certainly garnered their fair share of headlines, they are hardly the norm in the industry. Dropbox, Uber, Airbnb and other high-valuation companies are real businesses with significant revenues based in important markets with great growth characteristics. Even Snapchat, which is the poster child of the overhyped valuation crowd, is competing in a space with many case studies of business success like Facebook and Twitter. Indeed, if there is any trend to be worried, it is that the data revolution in venture investing is causing more investors to compete over a very narrow set of deals that are perceived as winners, and neglecting a number of companies with smaller potential who could easily make great products and have handsome exits as well. Let’s not also forget also that the people who benefit the most from high valuations are not the capitalists, but the entrepreneurs themselves, who have to give up less equity for the same venture dollars. If capital is becoming cheaper, then the profits of these businesses are going to be directed much more to the creative founders who are building the businesses. On the surface, that doesn’t seem all that bad. In short, I do believe there is a logic to this madness, as . Ultimately, the future is contingent on any number of factors, only some of which we control. As the Federal Reserve cuts back on quantitative easing over the next few months, investors will carefully downgrade their views on equity prices in line with the changes in the interest rates. Money is likely going to become more expensive. In discussions with limited partners, there has already been increasing hesitation among some toward new investment firms and larger fund sizes. But a little bit of water on the fire is not necessarily a bad thing. There is a lack of discipline among startups, and Silicon Valley should not lose its thrifty and technical-oriented culture. But the growth of the internet and its power is secular and increasing. We would be foolish not to buy into that future, even if the burn rates are higher than they should be. |
SAP To Acquire Expense Software-Maker Concur For $129 Per Share | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | Enterprise software company SAP just that it has agreed to acquire Concur Technologies, maker of expense and travel management tools that are used by 23,000 businesses (including TechCrunch and its parent company AOL). The deal is for $129 per share, which is 20 percent higher than Concur’s closing price on Sept. 17 (yesterday). That gives Concur an enterprise value of $8.3 billion. SAP says it will fund the acquisition through a €7 billion credit facility. “The acquisition of Concur is consistent with our relentless focus on the business network,” said SAP CEO Bill McDermott in the acquisition release. “We are making a bold move to innovate the future of business within and between companies. With Ariba [ ], Fieldglass [ ] and Concur, SAP is the undisputed business network company.” that Concur was discussing a possible acquisition with companies including, yep, SAP. The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2015. Following the deal, SAP says the combined company will have 50 million users “in the cloud.” To illustrate some of the opportunity on both sides, it notes that the majority of SAP customers do not use Concur, while only 30 percent of Concur customers use SAP. Founded in 1993, back in 2011. The release also says that the company currently has a revenue run rate of $700 million. |
Snapchat Scores Nike’s Director Of Digital To Win Sports Partnerships | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | Snapchat could be the new way to experience sporting events from afar. At the very least, sports and athletics brands are jumping up and down trying to reach the young, active demographic Snapchat has captured. That’s why the ephemeral app’s latest hire has so much potential. Snapchat just poached Eric Toda, Nike’s global director of digital, to help run its business and partnerships team, a source familiar with the move confirmed to me. Snapchat is still getting back to me with more details on the hire. Toda could get more sports venues and teams using Snapchat’s Our Story feature to create collaborative, decentralized live streams of their events. He might also assist with setting up for stadiums, and teaching brands how to make Snapchat content that feels fun and authentic, rather than like stodgy ads. The timing makes sense for Toda. Nike’s seen talent on its technological side slip away since it announced amid rumors it planned to shut down the wearable unit. Nike’s CEO went on to reveal the company would . Its social media chief Musa Tariq recently , which along with Nest, Intel, Oculus and Microsoft has . But Nike’s loss is Snapchat’s gain. included work on “social media, content, licensed apparel, e-commerce, mobile applications, entertainment (video games), media, digital/retail, and content syndication.” All that should come in handy at Snapchat. Before that, he spent four-and-a-half years working on media and marketing solutions for Facebook. Snapchat has already dipped its toes , running an , and . It’s even made special geofilters users can overlay on their photos taken at sports stadiums or gyms like Soul Cycle. Snapchat might be the perfect social app for sports, because both are inherently ephemeral. When you talk about a game in progress on Facebook or Twitter, your post lives on forever even though the match is soon over and your content becomes irrelevant. But nothing on Snapchat sticks around longer than 24 hours. That means you can cheer when your team scores without worrying about looking dumb if they end up losing. If Toda can sell sports brands on the ability to deliver the same urgency and heat of the moment through Snapchat that people get on the field, fans might start checking the app as often as ESPN. |
Home Depot Hack Exposed Up To 56 Million Credit Cards | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | Almost immediately after word broke that Home Depot had been hacked, were noting that the breach was likely even worse than that had preceded it. Sure enough, Home Depot has just confirmed the scale of the breach. All in all, as many as 56 million payment cards were potentially exposed. For comparison (though comparison seems a bit ludicrous when you’re dealing with numbers in the ), the Target hack exposed an . If there’s a bright side, it’s that Home Depot says it “confirmed that the malware used in [the breach] has been eliminated.” Curiously, they don’t give an exact date as to it was eliminated — just that it was nixed sometime in September. So if you used your card at a Home Depot word of the breach got out, it’s hard to say whether or not your card data was exposed. Also curious: Home Depot claims its investigators have determined that the malware used for this breach was something previously unseen, contrary to rumors that it was the same hack used to infiltrate Target’s machines. |
Sharethrough Acquires UK’s VAN As A Springboard For International Growth | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | Advertising company announced today that it’s moving into Europe with the acquisition of a London-based company called . The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. Sharethrough’s head of communications Thomas Channick told me via email that the VAN team will form “our core” in Europe, although the company plans to double the team’s size by the end of the year. I hadn’t heard of VAN before this acquisition, but it sounds like the companies do similar things. Sharethrough has embraced the idea of native advertising (i.e. ads that resemble the content of the site that they’re running on), and it says its exchange for in-feed, native ads has a reach of 230 million uniques each month — but it’s been largely US-focused until now. VAN, meanwhile, had a mission “to help brands create and distribute great branded content campaigns that people want to share,” according to a note by Chris Quigley . VAN clients, including UKTV, BBC, Car Throttle and Phillips, will be moved to Sharethrough’s publisher and advertising platforms, while Quigley is now the managing director of Sharethrough Europe. (The all caps company name, by the way, ) “VAN’s publisher and advertiser relationships have provided a great launchpad into the European market – however the size of the opportunity is much bigger than what VAN and its technology could achieve on its own,” Channick said. “Through the acquisition of the VAN’s advertiser sales team and publisher relationships, along with the addition of Sharethrough leading-edge technology, it gives Sharethrough a real opportunity to quickly become a force in the European market.” At the beginning of the year, in new funding (a combination of debt and equity). |
Twitter Overhauls Its UI On iPhone, Stops Hiding Your Bio | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | If you’ve ever thought that Twitter’s interface for displaying profiles on phones was a bit wonky, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Even Twitter agrees. Twitter has just rolled out a new profile interface for iOS users that they’ve been quietly testing for the past few months. The biggest change? They no longer inexplicably hide everyone’s bio line behind a swipe. Because, seriously… why the hell were they doing that? Why would you want to see someone’s bio line when you click into their profile? Your profile will now lead with your background image, your avatar photo, and your bio. Beneath that are three buttons: one that shows your tweets; one that shows just the photos you’ve shared; and one that shows everything you’ve fav’d. Beyond the profile tweaks, the primary changes are all about embracing the new stuff Apple opened up in iOS 8. You can now retweet/fav/follow/etc. in response to any tweets that pop up on your screen via push notification, for example. Alas, bios are still wonky and hidden in the latest version of Twitter for Android. |
Join Us In Hardware Alley At Disrupt London, Won’t You? | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | Disrupt London is fast approaching and I’d love to see you in our amazing Hardware Alley. This even, which runs during the last day of Disrupt, features all of my favorite startups – the hardware ones – in glorious technicolor. What is ? It’s a celebration of hardware startups (and other cool gear makers) that features everything from robotic drones to 3D printers. We try to bring in an eclectic mix of amazing exhibitors and I think you’ll agree that our previous We’d like you to register as a Hardware Alley exhibitor. You’ll get to exhibit on the last day of Disrupt Londo, October 21, to show off your goods and get access to some of the most interesting people (and most interesting VCs) in the world. All you need to demo is a laptop. TechCrunch provides you with: 30″ round cocktail table, linens, table-top sign, inclusion in program agenda and website, exhibitor WiFi, and press list. You can reserve your spot by purchasing a . If you are Kickstarting your project now or bootstrapping, please contact me at john@beta.techcrunch.com with the subject line “HARDWARE ALLEY.” I will do my best to accommodate you. Hope to see you in London! |
Oracle Stock Drops 2.5% On News That Larry Ellison Has Relinquished His CEO Title | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | Today after the bell, Oracle that its long-time premier Larry Ellison is no longer its CEO. Former HP CEO Mark Hurd will take over the job in partnership with Safra Catz. Catz will manage finance and manufacturing, while Hurd will handle sales. Ellison will take on the titles of Executive Chairman of the Board and CTO. Hurd left HP under negative circumstances, including allegations of sexual harassment. In after-hours trading, Oracle’s stock is off 2.5 percent, taking an immediate hit following the news. Ellison was known for his leadership and management style. He a keynote that he was scheduled to speak at to watch a yacht race. The co-CEO structure isn’t particularly normal. I’ve asked the company to comment on its new leadership hierarchy. Regardless, to have Ellison step down as the CEO of the company that he ran for so long is noteworthy. Long an industry stalwart, Ellison is known both up and down the Valley. Oracle closed the day worth north of $180 billion. The company had more than $11 billion in revenue in its most recent quarter. It isn’t clear whether investors are skittish about the new co-CEO appointments, or the departure of Ellison itself is the catalyst. It’s time to start a new era for Oracle. |
Incubated: MuckerLab’s Hands-On Approach To Accelerating Startup Growth | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | was founded three years ago as one of the first incubators to launch in Los Angeles. With a shared workspace for a relatively small cohort of startups that participate, the accelerator takes a hands-on approach to helping companies that go through its program find product-market fit. At the time he first started working on it, founding partner Erik Rannala says there wasn’t a whole lot of seed stage infrastructure available in Los Angeles. So he created MuckerLab in part to support what has been a budding ecosystem of new young entrepreneurs in that region. MuckerLab doesn’t operate on the usual three-month schedule of some other accelerators. Instead, it takes a longer-range approach, with just one cohort a year of about ten companies participating. As a result, those startups tend to spend a much longer time working hand-in-hand with partners and mentors to refine their products. Since MuckerLab has a very small number of spots for each cohort, it’s very selective about who comes on board. It generally looks for early-stage startups that either have a prototype or early version of their product already in the market. Its partners and mentors then work to help with prototyping, setting up Adwords campaigns, basically anything to help company founders to improve those products. |
PayPal Here Arrives On Android Tablets | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | PayPal Here, the company’s dongle-based mobile payments solution, is now available for Android tablets, the company announced this afternoon — a move that will address a large and growing swath of the tablet market. According to , PayPal , 62 percent of tablets sold last year run Android. The PayPal Here application allows users to accept credit card and debit card payments, as well as mobile payments via PayPal. This is done by having customers “check in” via the consumer-facing PayPal app. The PayPal Here application itself was already available for Android smartphones, and nothing much has changed with this release, beyond the support for a larger screen. Users are also able to manage their inventory, monitor sales and set discounts, taxes, tips, and more from their Android tablets. And the app includes the reporting feature that was previously offered to iOS and Android smartphone users. According to the Google Play app description, there are certain tablets that have been verified to work with the PayPal Here card reader. That doesn’t mean that others won’t, of course, but it could limit your support options if you’re using it on a non-verified device. The tablets that work at launch include: the ASUS Nexus 7″ 2013, ASUS Nexus 10″, ASUS Transformer Pad TF300T, the Samsung Galaxy Tab (2 – 7″ and 10″; 3 – 10″; 4 – 7″ and 10″; and the Tab Pro); Samsung Galaxy Note 10″ and the Sony Experia Z Tablet. PayPal Here has been seen as something of a Square competitor, and now, perhaps, an Apple Pay competitor, too. (PayPal even took out a big and somewhat defensive ad into the mobile payments market recently. The ad reminded users that Apple’s security measures may not be up to snuff when it comes to something as serious as managing your money.) |
iOS 8 Adoption Off To A Slower Start Than iOS 7, Say Multiple Usage Trackers | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | The iOS 8 installation spike is high, but lower than it was for iOS 7 last year, according to numbers from a variety of mobile OS usage monitoring platforms. , , and all show adoption numbers that, while high, fall short of the rocketing pick-up rate we saw when Apple launched its major visual overhaul of iOS just ahead of the iPhone 5s launch in 2013. Mixpanel and Appsee’s live iOS 8 update tracker both show an adoption rate of between 16 and 17 percent, which represents the total percentage of users on iOS 8 that are running the apps which use their mobile analytics products. That’s about half the rate of adoption we saw after the first day last year, according to Mixpanel CEO Suhail Doshi, who said it was at around 38 percent after the first 24 hours for iOS 7. Doshi suggests a couple of reasons for iOS 8 falling off pace compared to iOS 7, telling me that first, iOS 8 is “too big to [download] over the air — people have too many pictures,” and that second, “lots of companies are telling their employees not to update for a couple of days because of security holes found in previous years.” Many users took to Twitter to voice their disappointment that iOS 8 required so much space free on their devices prior to an update, and while a tethered update via the computer and iTunes eliminates this problem, it’s still an additional step that makes things more difficult than they were last year. Still, Doshi points out that , so Apple’s rate of adoption is still incredibly fast by comparison. It’s likely the adoption will also grow as more people upgrade to iPhone 6 hardware, and we could be looking at a larger upgrade pool than usual this year, which means a lot of users potentially not bothering to update their older iPhone hardware before their new ones arrive. Mixpanel’s real-time iOS 8 adoptions stats. Tapjoy’s numbers show iOS 8 being adopted at a slower pace than both iOS 7 and iOS 6, based on its initial numbers, and Chitika has the percent of iOS-powered mobile devices on the new system at 7.3 precent, which is also under both previous generation devices. Another reason for the slower uptake that they suggest in their blog post is the fact that iOS 7 was a major visual overhaul with lots of new things for the end user, which probably drove a lot more early-adopter interest. |
I Drove Toyota’s Car Of The Future And It Was Boring | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | While Tesla is getting everyone excited about the idea of sexy electric cars in every driveway, Toyota has been working on a different technological roadmap: The carmaker that made the hybrid category with the Prius thinks that the next generation of cars will be fueled by hydrogen, and it’s going to beat everyone to market with a model coming next year. Earlier this week I got a chance to drive a couple of Toyota’s test models. One was an older Highlander, a small “SUV” that was based on the Camry platform. It was running on Toyota’s older hydrogen tech, but looked and felt like a real car — the interior was set up like a car you could have found on a lot five years ago. The other model was a “mule,” built to test the latest hardware without giving away what the production model looks like, inside or out. This car was much lighter than the fuel-cell-powered Highlander, resulting in better performance than the Highlander-based model. Of course, it was also wrapped in a swirl-patterned skin that drew some odd gazes, and the interior was basically a duct-taped mess. Testing oddities aside, my drives in Toyota’s fuel-cell cars were uneventful. Starting in the parking lots behind AT&T Park in San Francisco, I drove both cars down the Embarcadero and then through SOMA. Despite the cramped awfulness of dealing with San Francisco’s streets and drivers, I didn’t have any issues. Both cars were totally capable of picking up speed to make it through short lights and of stopping immediately when drivers in front of me spaced out entirely. While the Highlander’s infotainment screen had a mode that showed where power was coming from (the car has a fuel cell and a Prius-sized battery), for the most part it just felt like driving a car that runs on gasoline or diesel. That seems to be what Toyota is going for with its hydrogen-powered cars. In addition to announcing that it would have a fuel cell car for sale in the United States next year, the company has also been investing in the in California that should be ready in time for the vehicle’s 2015 launch. That means that if you live in Southern California or the Bay Area, you could buy a hydrogen-powered car next year and have an experience that isn’t far from what you’d get with a gas guzzler: You’d still have about 300 miles of driving per tank, and you’d still have to go to a filling station when that tank runs out. The only differences would be that you’ll be driving a car with no engine sounds or harmful emissions (fuel cells simply create water as exhaust). While I didn’t get to drive the actual car Toyota plans to release next year (expect them to release details, including what the interior looks like and the power train’s specs over the coming months so that this thing stays in the news — I did get to see what the final car will look like. Surprisingly, the car, which Toyota tells me will cost “more than a Prius but less than a Tesla,” still looks a lot like the . [gallery ids="1059998,1060003,1060005"] |
Airbnb CFO Andrew Swain Has Left The Company | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | Airbnb CFO has left the company — or so his email auto-responder states, sources told TechCrunch. We quickly tested the claim for ourselves and, sure enough, it’s true. According to tech industry sources, Swain was asked to leave the company. Though he clearly accomplished a lot during his time with Airbnb, there was a recognition that he wasn’t the right fit for the startup moving forward, we hear. We’re also hearing there’s no official replacement for Swain at this time. Swain was brought into Airbnb in mid-2012, at a time when the company was looking to shore up its executive ranks with experienced talent. Prior to Airbnb, Swain served for three years as a VP of Finance at Intuit’s consumer group, which includes products like Mint, Quicken and TurboTax. Before that, he was VP of Corporate Strategy at Intuit. During his time at Airbnb, the company has seen massive growth, raising hundreds of millions in subsequent funding rounds, including the $200 million Series C in October 2013, and the this April, led by TPG. The most recent round valued the company at $10 billion. Today, the company reports over 800,000 listings worldwide, and having served over 17 million guests across 600 cities and 190 countries. A CFO change like this can often signal that the company is working toward going public. However, though about Airbnb taking this next step, CTO and co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk said in April following its large funding round that was not on the table for 2014. “Going public is a means, not an end goal,” he told Yahoo Finance’s at the time. “It’s a way of raising capital, and our company is currently very well capitalized, so there’s no need to think about an IPO right now.” Airbnb also is still facing a number of battles with regulators — risks the public market may not be willing to accept. In addition, TechCrunch is hearing that nothing has changed in regard to an IPO due to this CFO change. |
How To Survive And Thrive In A Funding Round | Tomer Tagrin | 2,014 | 9 | 27 | When my co-founder Omri Cohen and I started Yotpo, a reviews and marketing solution for e-commerce, raising funding was new to me, like it is for most first-time founders. Three rounds and $13 million in funding later, I’ve learned a lot about the process. First of all, funding can be really painful. When someone tells me they had a “fun” or “easy” time raising money, I’m like “Let’s be real, it was awful.” Some people have compared it to dating, I think it’s more like IDF boot camp — you’re overwhelmed, you’re scared, you’re constantly at the whim of other people, and you don’t know when you’re going home. One thing that helps is to remember is that investors don’t just invest in metrics, they invest in the people and the dream. A company can be great, but if the founder is a dick and investors can’t relate to him or her and their vision, they won’t invest. I’m an engineer and I apply that mindset to everything I do, but when you’re raising money it’s all about connecting with people on a deeper level. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the tactics, buzz words and numbers, but in the end it’s about people–you need to create an emotional experience for the investors, so they feel connected to your company, they are excited about it, and they want to be attached. I started my presentation for our seed round with a clip from an episode of (Late Show: Part 1), where he laments Louie-style about having to be a consumer and spending time on Amazon reading reviews about something you want to buy. First of all, the clip was relatable. Everyone’s been through the experience of reading tons of review on Amazon and coming across a long, detailed one and thinking “Who the fuck even wrote this?” Second, it was relevant. It was an easy segue into talking about how crucial reviews have become and how every online store needs them to compete. (At that point, we were still focused on social graphs and showing reviews from within your social circles, we’ve since pivoted into focusing on generating tons of trustworthy reviews and leveraging them for marketing.) And third, it was funny — right off the bat, Yotpo stood out; people had an emotional reaction and became connected with what I was presenting. I did my research on every investor, to make the pitch personal to them. I knew one guy was really into bikes. So, in the presentation all of the examples were about buying a bike or bike accessories online — this immediately made Yotpo relevant to him. Showing investors how a product is useful for them is also a great way to make an impression. Funding can seem so impersonal and cold but there’s no reason it has to be that way. Keeping the process human is good for your sanity, your potential investors and for your company. Image credit: Shutterstock/ |
Enterprise App Marketplaces Respond To Pain Points In Corporate IT | Jim Franklin | 2,014 | 9 | 27 | Enterprise application marketplaces have grown significantly in number and stature in recent years. This trend has emerged as a response to developers in corporate IT departments who are stifled by lengthy procurement processes, locked into long contracts and highly restricted when it comes to deploying exciting products offered by startup vendors. Developers’ use of emerging technologies has too regularly been at odds with the adoption of such technologies at a CIO-level. This tension point is one of the hallmarks of the developerization of IT, an emerging trend affecting all IT departments, where the developer’s potential as a bedrock for innovation can sometimes be at odds with legacy infrastructure and outdated working practices. In corporate IT, procurement processes have not traditionally been aligned with rapid development cycles and cloud-based services, which are easy to source and deploy. Developers that are accustomed to working in fast-moving environments with scalable, easy-to-implement products have long since been impeded by outdated procurement processes for new vendors, which slow down prototyping and time-to-market. Frustrated by procurement, developers in corporate IT build and use solutions inside organizations without explicit organizational approval. This is known as shadow IT; they use the services they need when they need them, but this leads to the danger of teams and management losing control of deployed services. To help developers in corporate IT departments reach their full potential and avoid the risks associated with shadow IT, the tech industry has invested heavily in enterprise app marketplaces. Microsoft, Red Hat, IBM and Samsung, among others, have responded to the calls of corporate IT departments, who long for enterprise versions of the AppStore and Google Play store. In April, IBM its for customers to buy IBM cloud services and, in addition, services from certified third-party partners such as MongoDB and New Relic. In the same month, Red Hat also its , designed to host a breadth of productivity add-ons for managing databases, email delivery services, messaging queues and application performance monitoring. For customers using these marketplaces, for example, using the SendGrid platform for transactional email just becomes another line item on the marketplace bill and there is no lengthy procurement process to go through. Third-party providers, which include many startups, are often certified and convenient to deploy. There is even an industry emerging for building and maintaining such marketplaces. Many, including the Samsung KNOX marketplace, are assembled and operated by the five-year old startup AppDirect. Twenty million businesses via AppDirect’s overall network and users are growing by 30% per month. The growth of these enterprise app marketplaces represents the tech industry’s response to developers’ intent on riding the wave of the developerization of IT, deploying SaaS and cloud tools with the convenience they have come expect from consumer app stores. However, corporate IT departments are also under increasing pressure to build mobile-first services and some legacy platforms simply do not cut it for these purposes. Consequently, we’ve also seen a slew of mobile toolkits and Mobile Backend-as-a-Service products aimed at the enterprise IT teams to help them transition to mobile quickly. This includes, for example, AWS Mobile Services, Google’s Mobile Back-end Starter and Microsoft Azure Mobile Services. The core benefits for corporate IT departments include reduced friction in the procurement process (services just become another line item on the Microsoft Azure bill, for example), better transparency on what is being deployed (no shadow IT), and the streamlining of developer work, so that developers get what they need in a timely manner. Additionally, this spells big opportunity for startups who join marketplaces as certified third-party providers. Before joining, startups should always evaluate whether they have sufficient field team resource to manage enterprise sales cycles at scale. Additionally, it’s important to consider carefully which particular marketplaces are right for them. , an estimated 80% of organisations will use the cloud by the end of 2014. Enterprise app marketplaces will be fundamental in supporting the shift and helping developers in corporate IT to reach their full potential through easy-to-implement cloud-based services, often from startups. What’s more, the market opportunity for cloud services is to exceed $250 billion by 2017 and the proliferation of enterprise app marketplaces is putting startups in a better position to get a bigger slice of this pie. |
Apple’s iPhone 6 Has Finally Convinced Me To Ditch My Compact Camera | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | It was bound to happen sooner or later: A smartphone would convince me that I no longer needed to carry around a powerful compact camera, despite a general interest in taking photos that straddles both my professional and personal lives. The and the even more photo-friendly are that tipping point. While on paper the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus cameras don’t appear to have changed much from the version introduced last year with the iPhone 5s, as is usually the case with Apple hardware, there’s a lot more going on than is apparent from a cursory glance at a spec sheet. The 6 Plus gets optical image stabilization, of course, but both cameras represent big improvements over last year’s 5s in terms of shooting experience and final result (less haze, better color rendering). The faster AF is instantly noticeable, and the low-light image quality is by far superior. [gallery ids="1060017,1060018,1060019,1060021,1060022,1058402,1058663,1058401"] It’s the low-light picture quality (without triggering the flash, this isn’t amateur night) that really seals the deal on this phone becoming my primary personal camera. For bar outings and nighttime gatherings, I’ve been a slave to carrying at least a large-sensor compact, first Canon’s S100 and then later the Sony RX-100 (first generation). These produced good results, without triggering the fun-time-ruining, in-camera flash — even in bars where it’s hard to make out the features of the person sitting next to you. But for all their size advantages over DSLRs and interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras, they’re still cumbersome, and they’re still an added gadget in addition to your phone. The fact is that the performance of both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in low-light conditions is more than acceptable. At full res on a desktop, it’s true that you can see noise, and they aren’t as crisp around the edges as pictures taken in well-lit environments, but they look terrific when viewed on the iPhones themselves in your library, or when shared via Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. I’ve given up on the idea that I’ll ever actually print any of my photographs, which was a fantasy that persisted for at least a decade from the time I got my first DSLR. Even when I cut my teeth on a basic Rebel film SLR, I hardly printed any of the results, so I’m not sure why the delusion survived 10 years and mountains of evidence to the contrary. [gallery ids="1058668,1058669,1058670,1058400,1058666,1058399,1058397,1058394,1058396,1058398"] That’s not to say Apple’s mobile cameras couldn’t handle printing: in most cases, especially in good, daylight conditions, they most definitely could. But the truth is that for around 98 percent of the use cases that most people will need over the course of their adult lives, the resolution and quality that Apple’s iPhones now offer more than fits the bill. That goes for image-quality snobs like myself, too – holdouts from a bygone era who clung to the notion that compact cameras still have a role to play in a world that has mostly moved on. I’m still a camera geek, and I will forever enjoy a good physical control dial, but the iPhone 6 has finally undone my ability to justify carrying a separate camera that isn’t a DSLR, and then I’ll only bring out the big guns for professional use situations. It even manages decent bokeh for close-up shots, as you can see from some of my samples above, and it’s a more innocuous street shooter than just about any dedicated camera, though the gold iPhone 6 Plus can be an eye-catching combo. From this point on, the question isn’t whether smartphone cameras can catch up to their standalone counterparts, it’s how much better they can get in their own right. |
The Open VC | Bo Peabody | 2,014 | 9 | 27 | After spending 20 years building companies, first as an entrepreneur and then as a venture capitalist, there’s one thing I’ve learned about the industry: venture capital firms understand much more about the startups they invest in than startups understand about the venture capital firms they partner with. That information gap is bad for both sides. I began talking with my partners at Greycroft about this dynamic and we quickly agreed that Greycroft should be an “Open VC” — that we should strive to give entrepreneurs access to more information about how our firm works. In fact, we should be proactive in suggesting questions entrepreneurs should ask us (or any venture firm they interact with) so that what they know about Greycroft matches what we know about them. We think it will improve returns across the board. It’s commonly accepted that a venture capital firm’s job is to get to know a startup inside and out. That’s important before an investment is made, but becomes even more important after the deal is done. We need to understand its product, team, and market almost as well as the entrepreneur does. But it’s less accepted that a startup should get to know the venture capital firm they’re considering as a partner. Entrepreneurs feel it’s important to get to know the individual that’s sponsoring their deal, but that’s only half the story. By agreeing to sell equity to a venture capital firm an entrepreneur is no more partnering with one individual than that individual is partnering only with the entrepreneur. We meet with every member of a company’s executive team, call three to five references on each and also vet every employment agreement, stock option agreement, corporate formation document, and contract that the company has ever signed. Nothing is left un-reviewed. It’s not just the sponsor of the deal. At Greycroft, and at most well-run firms, every single person on the investment team is expected to have a high level of knowledge and exposure to every deal. Here is Greycroft’s standard due diligence data request: By contrast, entrepreneurs and their teams know precious little about the venture capital firms they partner with. They might ask some general questions about investment philosophy and decision-making structure, but no documents are passed from the venture firm to the startup, almost ever. What entrepreneurs need to understand is that they’re making an investment in the venture capital firm as much as the venture capital firm is making an investment in the entrepreneur. The stakes are the same on both sides (you could argue higher for the entrepreneur) and the informational playing field should not be so uneven. I understand that there are very good reasons it is, and why this uneven playing field has persisted for so long. Venture capital firms have leverage because they have the capital that entrepreneurs need and almost always have multiple entrepreneurs in any given industry vying for that capital. There are relatively few cases where the entrepreneur has similar leverage; where multiple venture firms are fighting to get into one deal, and the startup can make the same demands of venture capital firms that the firms make of startup (though we’ve seen it happen and it’s very cool). There’s also a simple issue of time: entrepreneurs and their teams don’t have enough, and certainly not enough to study all of the firms they’re likely talking to. So the playing field is uneven because venture capitalists have the leverage. That’s good for venture capital, right? What incentive do we have to change it? Actually, the incentive is simple, and the same for both sides: higher returns on invested time and capital. In the public markets, there’s a much higher degree of transparency. When a private company is preparing to go public it can select, with extraordinary accuracy, the firms (mutual funds, hedge funds, etc.) that will most likely be the best owners of its stock, and therefore its best partners for the next stage of its growth. The company can see exactly what stocks the firm has bought, how much of each stock, how long they’ve held each position, and other more technical details important at that stage of a company’s growth. There isn’t much that isn’t fully disclosed and this level information playing field allows better matches to be made between the companies selling their stock to the public for the first time and the firms looking to buy it. There’s no question that entrepreneurs need capital, but there is undeniable data that suggests that the price of that capital beyond the equity sold – namely, (1) sharing influence over the direction of your company and (2) granting investors real governance and legal control over decision-making – is very high. Companies fail for a lot of reasons, but too many fail due to a miscorrelation between entrepreneurial teams and the venture capital firms they partner with. At Greycroft we take a very open approach and believe we should do everything we can to level the informational playing field between our firm and the startups we support. We want entrepreneurs and their teams to get to know us well. The more they understand about us and our business the better the relationship will be, and the more returns we’ll all make. With that in mind, here are some questions that every entrepreneur should ask and get answered before accepting an investment from a venture firm. We urge entrepreneurs to ask these questions of us, and we’ll do our best to provide clear and straightforward answers. Use the list to inform your conversations with other venture capital firms, too. Strong firms should not react negatively to these questions (and if they do it’s a bad sign). Note: If you are getting a $1mm investment from a $1b fund, you should know why. If you are the last investment in a fund, or the first, you should understand how that dynamic could affect you. Note: As an entrepreneur you should look for patterns and ask questions if things don’t make sense to you. If you are taking $5mm from a firm that generally writes $2mm checks it might be a good sign or an odd one. Does the firm own 5% or 25% of most of its deals? Why? Some firms reserve a lot for deals and some reserve less. There are good and bad reasons to do both but you should understand the firm’s perspective on this issue. Note: Funds have a variety of decision-making structures. No structure is necessarily bad but you should know what the structure is and where your sponsor fits into it. Note: Typically, a fund with a lot of university endowments and foundations is stronger and one with a lot of individuals is weaker. However, if the individuals are people who can help you and the fund can provide real access to them, it might be the right fit for you. Note: Strong funds have a more equal distribution of economics and weak funds tend to have skewed economics to a bunch of people at the top who don’t add much value. Note: There are good and bad reasons that venture capital firms seek seats on the boards of the companies they invest in. The best way to really get to the bottom of this one is to call entrepreneurs in the firm’s existing portfolio. Note: Every firm does a liquidation analysis showing who will make what money under different exit scenarios. It flows through all the structure in any deal to get to what the real returns will be. At Greycroft, we happily show it to entrepreneurs so they can see how we all make money together. Note: You’ll probably have a good sense of the answer to this one given the firm’s reputation but don’t be afraid to ask for some numbers. Fundraising can be a major distraction for a venture firm and strong past performance yields quick fundraises and less distraction. Note: Winning and losing is easy. It’s the middle that’s hard. If a firm does the middle well it’s a good sign. 10. How many repeat entrepreneurs does the firm have? Note: A lot will depend on the age of the firm and its investing strategy but if any firm that has invested over $200M has even three repeat entrepreneurs it is a good sign. These are the items every entrepreneur should know about a venture capital firm before they decide to accept an investment. We hope all entrepreneurs will ask these questions and get the transparency they deserve when making this important decision. |
Tinder And Evolutionary Psychology | Liraz Margalit | 2,014 | 9 | 27 | Mobile dating application Tinder has been due to its , which many consider so that it could only be used to facilitate . However, the app’s popularity continues to grow at an extraordinary rate: it is currently available in 24 languages and boasts more than 10 million active daily users. It was also awarded ’s Crunchie Award for “Best New Startup of 2013.” The app’s runaway success cannot be attributed solely to singles looking for quick hook-ups. The counter-intuitive truth is that Tinder actually provides users with all the information they need to make an informed first impression about a potential long-term mate. And it does so by matching our human evolutionary mechanism. Tinder connects with users’ Facebook profiles to make a limited amount of personal data available to other users within a pre-set geographic radius. A Tinder profile includes only the user’s first name, age and photos, along with the Facebook friends (if any) they have in common with the person viewing the profile. Upon signing up, a user is provided with potential matches and the option to “like” or “dislike” each one based on his/her profile. If two users mutually “like” each other, they can begin a chat. Tinder’s success stems from its simplicity and minimalism, which relates to how our cognitive system works. The only way that human beings could’ve survived as a species for as long as we have is by developing a decision-making apparatus that’s capable of making quick judgments based on very little information. Although we always ascribe our decisions to a rational, conscious-brain motivation, this supposed motivation is never the entire reason for our decisions; in fact, it often has nothing to do with it! We like to think of ourselves as rational human beings that base our decisions on logical processes, but most of our decisions occur unconsciously and based on minimal information. Finding a date on Tinder involves a three-stage decision making process: Tinder exposes its users to two types of factors: rational ( and ) and emotional ( and ). Each of these factors makes a unique contribution to the decision making process. – Research shows that the best single predictor of whether two people will develop a relationship is how far apart they live. People are more likely to develop friendships with people who are nearby (ex. live in the same dorm or sit near each other in class). An examination of 5000 marriage license applications in Philadelphia found that one third of the couples lived within five blocks of each other. Thus, geographical distance is a powerful predictor of the likelihood that two people will end up together. – People with little or no age difference have significantly more in common than those with a larger age difference. When two people are the same age, they are generally at a similar stage in life, both psychologically and physically. They also likely share similar backgrounds, concerns, life challenges, and cultural/historical references. These similarities make it easier to find common conversational ground, and add an element of cohesiveness to a relationship that cannot be attained in relationships with a more notable age difference. After the rational stage comes the emotional stage: – Although it may seem shallow to admit it, we are strongly influenced by the physical attractiveness of others, and in many cases appearance is the determinant of whether or not we initially like a person. Infants who are only a year old prefer to look at faces that adults consider attractive, and we often subconsciously attribute positive characteristics such as intelligence and honesty to physically attractive people. Evolutionary psychologists have argued that this may be because physical attractiveness is an indicator of underlying genetic fitness. In other words, a person’s physical characteristics may be suggestive of fertility and health – two key factors in the probability of our genetic line’s survival and reproduction. Furthermore, evidence has shown that most couples are closely matched in terms of physical attractiveness. This appears to be because we weigh a potential partner’s attractiveness against the probability that he/she would be willing to pair up with us. Thus, after the emotional process of categorizing a person as attractive, most of us have the self-awareness to determine whether society would perceive us as more, less or equally attractive as the potential partner. This determination affects our decision whether or not to approach the other person. Looking beyond physical appearance, each image presented on Tinder also has a subtext. People use their photos to make – symbolic statements to convey how they would like to be seen. Examples include choice of clothing, presence or absence of jewelry and sunglasses, and the way they interact with other people in the photos. All of these signals shed additional light on the person in the image. Similarly, refers to clues inadvertently included in the chosen photos. For example, smiling without a head tilt signals high self-esteem, selecting a close-up photo shows confidence and willingness to share minor flaws, and choosing a long-distance shot may indicate low self-esteem and a desire to hide flaws. – Equipped with all this valuable information, the user waits for the final piece of the puzzle: will the other person “like” him back? If so, this approval gives a positive kick to the interaction. People are naturally attracted to individuals who make them feel good about themselves, and a mutual “like” lets each party know that the other considers them attractive and approachable. Finally, the Tinder chat is an extremely valuable asset for filtering a potential partner. Does he make a lot of spelling mistakes? Does she dominate the conversation with self-aggrandizing comments? Does he seem macho and disrespectful? Here is a sample interaction documented by a female Tinder user: He: “so, when can I see you?” She: “What did you have in mind?” He: “how about now?” She: “Just so you know, I’m looking for a serious relationship. I’m not looking to play around.” He: “To see you now is not playing around it called being spontaneous” It is obvious from this brief exchange that these users are interested in completely different things. At this point, it should be easy for her to make a decision based on past experience and the understanding of the hidden meaning in his words. When all the data collected during the Tinder matchmaking process is compiled, the emerging picture reveals a substantive amount of relevant information. Each of the provided clues helps the user to create a valuable mental picture of the person on the other side. Interestingly, this picture is often more accurate than what we can develop with a larger amount of information. Consider such online dating websites as Match.com and OKCupid. Unlike the minimalism of Tinder’s profile, these sites provide users the opportunity to build structured and detailed profiles, many of which contain inaccurate information. Users intentionally exaggerate their descriptions to portray themselves in the best possible light – something that just isn’t possible in the bare-bones format of Tinder. Tinder’s popularity stems from its ability to match the human evolutionary mechanism. In a word, it is “distilled.” It cuts through the B.S., giving users only the data they need to develop a meaningful first impression. Though we like to think we base our decisions on a calculated cost-benefit evaluation, the truth is that most of the time we rely on automatic unconscious processes that have nothing to do with rationality. Thus, exposure to a detailed profile containing a person’s hobbies, education and personal information may lead us to conclude that our choice was influenced by these factors, but honestly once we know a potential mate’s geography, age, appearance and feelings about us, we have all the information we need. And it is usually quite accurate. |
Gillmor Gang: Five Card Stud | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 9 | 27 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Doc Searls, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. The Gang handicaps some new startups from Ray Ozzie and the Anybody But Facebook crowd. Talko may be an enterprise play in consumers’ clothing, but Ello gets plenty of press and no clear reason for investing in a Web app in the Age of Mobile. There’s some buyer remorse on the iPhone Plus beat. Bendables will disappear almost as fast as AntennaGate, we predict. Notifications take another big step toward unifying the Apple/Google duopoly, and still no sign the VCs are ready to string base hits together in lieu of the long ball. Don’t worry; we’re usually right about this. @stevegillmor, @dsearls, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks, @kteare, @scobleizer Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
Shoutout Aims To Be The Simplest Way To Share Photos With Friends | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 9 | 27 | is a new iOS app offering what co-founder and CEO Philip Golbraikh calls “visual texting.” The idea, basically, is to create an environment where people don’t worry about the quality of their photos and instead treat them as “a visual representation of your message” — this is what I’m doing, here’s something cool I saw on the street, and so on. Not that there’s anything stopping people from , and there are other apps in this vein, most notably . But Shoutout not only emphasizes the idea of photos-as-communciation, it also makes that communication as simple as possible. When you open the app, it immediately shows you the view from your iPhone camera. On the bottom third of the screen, you also see icons showing all your connections in the app, as ranked by you. If you want to take a photo, just tap a friend’s icon, and the photo is simultaneously taken and shared. (You can also save a copy in your camera roll.) “It’s even fewer steps than sending a text message,” said designer Garrett Peek (who was previously the designer of Draw Something). I’ve been playing with Shoutout over the past day or so, and it really was that simple, though I think I need a bit more time, and need more friends to use the app, to fully get into the spirit of sending randoms photos at any moment. You can also add filters before you take the picture, and sort your contacts into groups, so you can send a photo to a bunch of friends at once. When you’re on the receiving end, the pictures show up in the app as a stack of photos that you can swipe through — there’s no time limit, but once you’ve looked at a photo, it’s gone. The app also resembles text messaging in the sense that you only need someone’s username to start sending them pictures; they don’t have to agree to connect with you. On the other hand, if you get really annoying (or worse), they can always block you. Earlier this year, the team of Golbraikh, Peek, and co-founder/CTO David Alson released . While Sneeky is still available in the App Store, Golbraikh said the company (which is backed by ENIAC Ventures) is now focused on Shoutout. The app is free, and you can . |
The Internet’s Missing Link | Stefan Thomas | 2,014 | 9 | 27 | When the web was originally designed, its creators aspired to include a way to transfer value. According to the , error code 402 was “reserved for future use” and was labeled “Payment Required.” Just as we needed a way to freely share information, we needed a way to freely exchange value. Implementing a standardized payment protocol was a natural fit. But while data can live in a world where it’s easily reproduced, value inherently exists as the result of scarcity — in other words, the antithesis of the copy-and-paste nature of the information web. It quickly became evident that overcoming this challenge was no easy feat, and the idea was shelved indefinitely. While information could be exchanged in a decentralized fashion, there was no way to transfer value online without a central operator. That all changed in 2009 with the arrival of , a medley of cryptography and peer-to-peer technology that elegantly solved this problem. From that vantage point, payment protocols like Bitcoin and — which allow us to transfer value online with each other directly — represent the continuation of the unfinished business of the web’s original founders. Consequently, there are numerous parallels between the birth of the information web and the developments we’re seeing now. It’s easy to take the Internet as it currently exists for granted. Its evolution from an esoteric network for researchers and hobbyists to today’s all-encompassing mainstream phenomenon was a long and arduous journey. It started with a classic chicken-and-egg problem: The Internet needed developers to build utility on it to attract users, but developers first needed users for whom to build. The early Internet was bootstrapped by academia and the military. Though the network was already open, global in scope, and quite powerful, there was little consumer utility. Instead, mainstream consumers used proprietary network solutions that were in vogue at the time. The likes of (owner of TechCrunch) and provided value-added services, from news to messaging to games. The only problem was that these pre-Internet networks didn’t interoperate. If you were on , there wasn’t a straightforward way to interact with your friends on AOL in the ‘80s. That’s not so different from how our payment networks currently operate, where systems like , and aren’t yet federated. Two key developments unfolded in 1989: conceived the idea of the World Wide Web, and CompuServe became one of the first major online services to provide an email gateway, allowing its users to communicate via the Internet. These events marked the beginning of the federation phase of the Internet’s evolution. In both cases, standardized protocols allowed users to share information or communicate with each other directly, no matter what service, software, or hardware they used. The development and evolution of networks — whether it’s information or value — is no coincidence. As our technology, connections and needs mature, each new phase builds on the last. But even as the dream of universal interconnectedness became technologically feasible, we needed a social incentive. With people hanging out in their own exclusive cliques, what was required was a killer app that would unite everyone at the same party. As it turned out, the answer was , an online bulletin board system that was the precursor to today’s Internet forums or sites like and . Around that time, Usenet was already gaining popularity, but mostly on university campuses. Every September, the service was flooded with the latest throng of students, an annual source of fresh users that would transform Usenet into the Internet’s quintessential destination, a digital bastion of conversation and culture—and perhaps the original birthplace of not only the but also the Internet meme ( , for instance). It wasn’t long before this digital repository of knowledge and tomfoolery attracted the attention of online service providers eager to quench growing user demand. AOL joined in September 1993, providing Usenet an endless stream of new users — a moment in Internet history known among Usenet veterans as the “ .” This turning point cracked the chicken-and-the-egg problem. Pioneering developer efforts in the early ‘90s fell flat with no market to adopt their creations. Now with millions of users all connected on the same network, developers suddenly had a massive, built-in audience, allowing them to build viable companies, reimagining brick-and-mortar businesses, and forging entirely new industries. What’s most exciting is that this process is about to blossom all over again. Just as the Internet of information required groundwork before the likes of and could change the world with PayPal and Facebook, the Internet of value requires a preliminary framework. On the one hand, we need the web browser, the smartphone and ubiquitous Internet access. On the other hand — in the case of moving money — we need liquidity, compliance and scalability. In place of universities and government institutions, we have financial institutions, which have custody assets and already move trillions of dollars daily to solidify the foundation of the value web. And similar to the federation and rise of the information web, the technology is there. We just need to give people a reason to come together. If history is any indication, the results will exceed even our wildest expectations. |
Don’t Dismiss Developers | Ethan Kurzweil | 2,014 | 9 | 27 | Danny Crichton recently asked TechCrunch readers if . It’s a debate that surfaces frequently in technology circles, with camps emerging on each side. On one hand, we find the “middleware analogists” — those who equate “selling to developers” to “peddling middleware,” which is code for “uninteresting.” On the other side are those who value the transformative power and increasingly ubiquitous role of software. In that world, developers hold the power. I’m firmly in that second camp. In fact, I have no doubt that one day we will recognize the beginning of this decade as an inflection point: the time when selling to developers became a winning go-to-market strategy. At BVP, we’ve been investing actively in developer platforms since 2009, avidly following the sector and leading early investments in many of the category leaders. I’ve , and don’t believe Crichton’s assertion that ” is the right way to look at these companies. Companies today realize that proprietary software is a competitive advantage. So, whether it’s Google or , individual developers within an organization have more power than ever before; they are the drivers of technology adoption. The cloud makes the process even easier, allowing them to test new technologies at small scale cheaply by calling an API. And in order to move quickly, companies have reduced IT bottlenecks, empowering developers to make technology and purchasing decisions with minimal — if any — oversight. In fact, developers have become such an appealing audience that even consumer application companies as diverse as Facebook, Twitch, Uber and Dropbox run big platform efforts, knowing that the path to ubiquitous adoption accelerates greatly when other companies embed some aspect of their product or service (via APIs, SDKs, etc.) into another offering. But the other point of confusion here is a seemingly small nuance critical to advancing the debate. Crichton alternately refers to this new type of developer-oriented company as selling developer tools building developer platforms, but the two aren’t really so interchangeable. It’s true that developer tools — single-purpose pieces of technology that help a developer build something once — can be hard to build a substantial business around. The middleware moniker, and all the connotations that come with it, does apply here, and I suspect these startups will indeed have difficulty finding investors. But the most exciting startups in the developer arena offer much more than one-time solutions. They’re building products that allow their customers to embed functionality into their applications and become an integral part of their customers’ products, too. For example, when you add your credit card to Uber by taking a picture of it, you’re actually using a cool piece of technology developed by (now part of PayPal) to OCR the credit card number and expiration date and then after every ride, Uber makes an API call to to process your transaction. This is the software company of the future; I call them “developer platforms.” In his article, Crichton calls out as part of this trend, and it’s a great example; companies of all sizes use Xamarin’s service to build and maintain their mobile applications with the most up-to-date functionality available. And so whether it’s enabling technology for communications, Xamarin for mobile app development, Auth0 for identity, for email, or Stripe for payments, the addressable market for each of these platforms is a lot bigger than meets the eye. Each of these companies taps into a category of spending that is already huge. Dismissing them as “developer companies” and implying a small market size misses the point entirely: Developers are the users, not the market, for this new type of platform company. With $1.6 trillion (yes, with a “t”!) spent on communications apps annually, there’s certainly plenty of opportunity for Twilio. Anyone who dismisses them as a developer company with a small market simply doesn’t understand how to evaluate the addressable market size. And you can give a similar rebuttal for every other type of developer platform addressing a large category like this. Crichton also points to the openness of the developer ecosystem as a key enabler of this shift and calls out the mobile app development world as an example. There’s no doubt that the move toward more openness and interoperability — and specifically the increasing adoption of open source frameworks in the enterprise (e.g. Hadoop, Drupal, Mongo, etc.) — has been helpful in expanding the breadth of services that can be offered “as-a-service.” But I’d argue that the fundamental enabler of this paradigm shift isn’t openness. It’s the rise of the developer’s prominence in the enterprise and the increasing expectations of a programmable world. After all, as Crichton points out, Apple has one of the most closed ecosystems on the planet (inexplicably so, in my view, but that’s a subject for another post), and that has done nothing to hold back the tide of companies offering mobile app platforms like Xamarin. At BVP, our mantra around developer investing is pretty simple: Does it solve a real problem? Is the underlying technology addressing a big market like communications, payments or data? And does the product solve the problem in an elegant way, such that developer adoption is seamless? If yes, come talk to me, as I agree wholeheartedly with Crichton’s last point: There is a world of opportunity ahead, and it’s still early days. |
We Have Entered The Golden Age Of Hardware Hacking | Jon Evans | 2,014 | 9 | 27 | Hardware is the new hotness. This has been true for some years now: but today, the acorns planted by Arduino, TechShop, Kickstarter, , etc., are finally beginning to sprout into oaks. The best thing about this year’s Disrupt SF conference was that its Startup Alley boasted far fewer sugar-water apps…and many more nifty hardware start-ups. On stage, PCH’s Liam Casey described ‘ .’ The results were readily apparent: Wow, the micro drones get more micro every year. A quadcopter the size of a credit card is buzzing around above me as I tweet. — Jon Evans (@rezendi) Whoa, nifty: Oscult, iPad-connected ultrasound. Potentially a big deal for eg developing-world maternal health. — Jon Evans (@rezendi) Also liked: Nod, the gesture-control ring. Still a bit 1st generation, but real potential. Like wearing a mouse with extra gesture commands. — Jon Evans (@rezendi) …along with the pictured , a one-man project built around a Kinect at its heart. There’s hardware hacking happening everywhere I look these days. A couple weeks ago I sampled the work of eight competing at San Francisco’s DNA Lounge. (Here’s of the event, shot by John Adams.) Meanwhile, over in Kenya: "The barriers to entry are no longer in the software, but in hardware." — — John Maeda (@johnmaeda) This isn’t just happening in the Valley. We’re actually far from the heart of hardware prototyping and manufacturing. That honor belongs to Shenzhen, as Joi Ito, director of MIT’s Media Lab, describes in this : Even if US has the manufacturing capacity, key parts of the knowledge ecosystem currently exist only in Shenzhen […] Just like it is impossible to make another Silicon Valley somewhere else, although everyone tries – after spending four days in Shenzhen, I’m convinced that it’s impossible to reproduce this ecosystem anywhere else. Tales from a couple of friends of mine who work for the semi-stealth startup (they assure me they’re building “Instagram for fax machines”) attest to this. Rapid hardware prototyping can be done anywhere, but if you want to actually manufacture products at scale, Shenzhen is the current, and foreseeable, king of the world. You can worry about that later, though. If you have a nifty idea and hardware chops, you can now hack together a better, cheaper prototype faster than ever before, and you can probably do it in your garage or around the corner. Lo these years gone by, I acquired an electrical engineering degree, and promptly abandoned hardware in favor of software, because software was far more lucrative, interesting and powerful. That’s been true ever since — until now. For the first time ever, if I were graduating with the same degree today, I think I’d probably dive deeper into hardware instead. (Not that the line between the two is hard and fast, these days.) It’s never been easier to make cool stuff, some of which will inevitably turn into terrific new startups. I know, everyone’s worried about , with reason, and hardware isn’t cheap; but it is more cost-effective than ever before, and it seems that the Shenzhen ecosystem is, bit by bit, almost beginning to become an for hardware. I predict that hardware startups are about to go nonlinear on us — and I look forward to the results with great anticipation. |
Kano Ships Its First 18,000 Learn-To-Code Computer Kits, Fueled By $1.5M Kickstarter | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 9 | 27 | , a startup that plays in the learn to code space by adding a step-by-step hand-holding layer atop the single-board microcomputer to make hacking around with code and learning about computational thinking child’s play, has shipped all the hardware kits in its first batch of crowdfunded orders and pre-orders. That’s around 18,000 kits in all, co-founder Alex Klein confirmed to TechCrunch. “They are all in the wild, they are out of our hands. About 1,000 have arrived already — the early bird kits. And the rest, the general release, will be arriving [shortly],” he said late last week. The company revealed it has also taken on a new senior hire, bringing in Thomas Enraght-Moony, former CEO of Match.com, as COO. Enraght-Moony will be managing sales and marketing as Kano seeks to scale globally. “He has a deep understanding of how, not only to make physical products but also to finance it — which it quick tricky for any new business, especially a business that is making a product with so many different components and so much complexity driving towards an end goal of simplicity,” said Alex. “Because we’re a physical product and people pre-ordered it, that was enough working capital to fulfill the first pre-order of 18,000. What Tom is going to help us put in place is, hopefully, a mixed equity debt model for the future, for Christmas season.” Kano counts Index Ventures’ Saul Klein as a co-founder, and an investor in a personal capacity. The Kleins are also first cousins, and Saul’s young son, Micah, provided the original inspiration for building a learn to code kit so this is something of a family business. So is Micah impressed with the kits Kano is now shipping? “He’s our harshest critic,” jokes Alex. “Because he’s been there since the beginning… He still wants to build a robot as well, that is why a lot of physical stuff is interesting to us.” The lion’s share of the first batch of Kano kits — almost 13,000 kits — were ordered via its campaign last year, with a further 5,000 pre-orders taken via its website. The kits cost $99 (plus shipping) to crowdfunder backers, or around $160 (plus shipping) if pre-ordered on the Kano website. The company plans to focus on selling mainly via its own web channel from here on in, according to Alex. “The example of , for instance, in China, a very new consumer electronics brand, sells almost exclusively online based on buzz and word of mouth, shows that you can do hardware yourself, selling exclusively through your own channel,” he told TechCrunch. “In some ways that almost builds the anticipation in the product and around the brand because you know it’s real, you know you’re supported, you know you’re getting something fully integrated — not just in the product itself but in the buying experience as well.” Kano Kits in this first batch are shipping to 86 countries, with around half the kits destined for the U.S., and the other half going to the rest of the world. Kano has had some interest from educational institutions wanting to purchase kits, according to Alex — such as Pearson, which bought 500 kits to use to deliver the — although the majority of sales have gone to individuals, most of whom are buying them for kids at this point. Each Kano kit (see gallery below for photos) consists of a box containing computing hardware — a Raspberry Pi, Bluetooth keyboard, connector cables, speaker, Wi-Fi and so on — in a plug-and-play kit form with kid-friendly paper instructions on how to connect it all together. The hardware then boots up Kano’s own software which is designed to make Linux user-friendly but also to transform it into a gamified environment focused on hacking around with code. Kano’s big idea is to get kids excited about building stuff with software by first letting them play around with — and ultimately have ownership of — fun, colorful-looking hardware. Both hardware and software elements in the kit use a step-by-step approach to breaking down complexity — including a drag-and-drop Scratch-style programming interface, called Kano Blocks, which steps the user into the world of programming via the medium of classic games like Snake and Pong, and also kid craze Minecraft. Users drag and drop graphical blocks to build code but can also switch to view the actual lines of code that these blocks are generating. We first covered Kano , as it was beginning its crowdfunding journey. The company went on to raise more than $1.5 million via Kickstarter to fund production of its first batch of kits. The original estimated shipping schedule for sending the kits was July 2014 so Alex concedes there has been a slight delay in fulfilling orders. But this of course is by no means unusual for crowdfunding projects — and especially for hardware projects. Hardware is always hard, given the need to establish component supply chains. Indeed, far longer delays are all too common for crowdfunded hardware projects so it’s to Kano’s credit that it’s only shipped less than two months late. “Over the past 20 months we’ve put together, pretty much from scratch, a responsive supply chain in Southern China to source 36 different components from four countries. To combine them together on two different assembly lines, with four testing stations into 18,000 kits,” said Alex. There are certainly many moving pieces involved in the Kano kits — given they encompass hardware, software and printed media, including some lovingly designed packaging and stickers, all of which has to be super simple to use. “It’s a very complicated physical product… It relies on cutting edge hardware, pieces of technology that have only come into existence in the past six to nine months. The core of it is a development board and what came out of all this is that all the components that we’re building, the complexity, the makery feel, is all designed to serve an end goal of simplicity for the users to give them this simple-as-Lego experience. So yeah hardware is hard. “You really have to go the extra distance, you have to break open the prototypes you receive. You have to make sure that you’ll be obsessive about the materials. And you also have to scale up your thinking in terms of working capital as well. We’re fortunate in that we’ve managed to secure working capital facility but as a hardware startup you can often be punished for success. So the more you sell and the better you do, and the faster your brand grows, the more cash constrained you find yourself.” [gallery ids="1062675,1062676,1062677,1062679,1062682,1062683,1062685,1062684,1062681,1062687,1062688,1062689,1062690,1062691"] The minor shipping delay for Kano — which saw it bump Kickstarter order fulfillment from July to September — was down to two hardware supplier-related issues. “There was an HDMI cable that we were using in the kit and it was working fine but we cracked it open to see what was inside and we found that the number of cables inside the HDMI cable was like half what it should of been. So we switched that,” said Alex. “The other one was to do with the Kano keyboard, which has an integrated touchpad and click and the Bluetooth connectivity and USB RS as well. Pretty complicated product. And we have one main supplier for it, who was relying on a couple of sub suppliers for a few components inside. And we did a full factory audit, just before shipping — to gauge social and environmental standards, working conditions. And everyone passed with flying colors… But there was one component in the keyboard, the battery, when we went to the factory of the sub supplier it wasn’t up to our ethical standards of how we’d like to manufacture. “This supplier was very much like China five years ago, so we ditched that supplier.” So what is Kano like to use? I unboxed a kit sent to me by Kano and got to work plugging it in. The hardware side is very simple, with clear instructions on how to connect up all the various components, including adding a speaker to the Pi, and ensuring it has a power source, plus adding Wi-Fi to get the computer online. The keyboard and integrated keypad is very small, so certainly best suited to child-sized hands. Everything feels sturdy enough for kids to handle and worked as it should out of the box — with the only slight snag being getting the Pi out of the packaging as it’s snugly lodged within a plastic tray padded with foam. But after lifting the entire tray out of the box it came away without trouble. After the hardware assembly you power on the Pi and Kano’s OS layer loads, asking the user to enter a name and then running through a cute intro with an ASCII art rabbit and some other Matrix inspired graphics. Then you land in Kano OS: the software environment which sits as a layer atop Debian Linux and the Pi’s Raspbian OS to make it more user friendly. This has a simplified Windows or Chrome OS feel, with a selection of apps you can run at the bottom of the screen and a task bar offering some settings and help menus. The apps provide access to Kano Blocks, via games such as Snake, Pong and Minecraft, as well as a music maker app. The system also supports open access to the Internet (via Chromium browser) and foregrounds a selection of web apps within the browser, such as Wikipedia and even a Try Git intro to Github. The platform is generally open so Debian stack open source apps — and other Kano users’ creations — can be freely installed by the user, via a dedicated , and via its a community area, called Kano World. “What this allows the OS to become now is not just a little learning with coding projects, journey structured by us, but a fully featured, customizable, high powered OS that can operate on the Raspberry Pi and other [hardware] to give normal people, beginners, a way into the magic of Linux — which has been quite hard to come by,” said Alex. “We can use the OS in some ways as a translator, as a way of getting things that were once very difficult for the normal person to participate in and making them touchable, tangible.” Loading one of the pre-installed Kano Block game-maker apps lands the user in what is initially a linear learning environment where they are stepped through the process of — for instance — loading up and playing Java snake, and then tweaking its look and feel by typing in Javascript commands. Or messing around with Pong, being helped to change parameters such as the ball size and speed, or the colors or paddle size, and then getting to play with the changes they have made in the actual game. The same step by step coding principles are also applied to a Minecraft learning environment — which will surely be the equivalent of catnip for kids — allowing users to manipulate Minecraft elements like blocks and player positions by making changes to the code, switching between a split screen view of Kano Blocks and the Minecraft world they are manipulating. User progress on the coding front is tracked within Kano OS via a gamification layer, composed of badges, leveling up and avatar development. The number of lines of code the user has written is tracked to give a quantification metric of their progress (along with ‘xp’ that displays usage hierarchy within Kano World). Users can save any creations they make for returning to late, and share them with the Kano World community, giving the product a fully fledged social component. “Kano OS, our software stack, is really the jewel in the crown of Kano,” said Alex. “I’m really, really proud of what our team has been able to do. I would describe it as perhaps the most simple and intuitive Linux based operating system ever designed. And the fact that it’s been designed for a new and challenging platform like the Raspberry Pi I hope will get people excited. I hope people will try it out because it’s free and open source. Even if they don’t buy a Kano they can just use it on any Raspberry Pi.” “It’s the fastest OS on the Raspberry Pi. It’s got the best graphical rendering, highest scores on Linpack [benchmarking] and Gtk… We focused on speed, performance, efficiency. We have beautiful 3D games, we have the ability to load up a media center, stream Al Jazeera, get YouTube channels, Google Play Music and Spotify. And importantly — what’s lovely about the OS is it in some ways strips away the traditional divisions that have existed for open source single board computing, between the hardware and the cloud. What you do on Kano OS — if you sign up for the online component — is fully integrated with Kano World, which is our online platform. “As you build software and earn points, you’re leveling up, you’re accessing new projects made by different types of people around the world. It creates an open source experience on the Pi that feels very collaborative. It’s very alive. You never feel alone. When I first started out hacking around as a kid, I remember I always felt very alone. But I probably shouldn’t have — I was living in Seattle which was filled with nerds. But you’d be doing a little hardware project, you’d be messing around with some batch scripting, and it would all be taking place alone. You and the command line face to face.
If you compare Kano to a home computer of the late 1980s, such as the Spectrum, there is initially a far more linear feel — given how much step by step instruction is taking place with Kano Blocks — vs the free playground experience of a machine like the Spectrum which landed the user right in a command line view of Spectrum Basic. By contrast Kano Blocks pesters the user with tips and direct instruction, even telling the user where to retrieve a block from or what numbers to type where. So the hand-holding feels highly micro-managed at points. Although, at other times, the hands can feel like they fall away a bit too drastically so there will undoubtedly be plenty of times kids find themselves getting stuck and having to work through a problem solving process to progress. The Blocks environment can also feel a little rough round the edges and glitchy, but that’s not surprising, given it’s just getting going. “Kano Blocks is the way we envisage the new generation of makers will like to begin coding and hacking around with computers,” said Alex. “These blocks are really powerful and very different to some of the other block-based approaches to programming that have been adopted in the past because they generate real code… When you drag them into the workspace they are transformed into Python and Javascript and you can actually see in front of you and then compile into a game with just a couple of quick clicks. “The possibilities are really endless. You can plug almost any game into the Kano Blocks framework and allow a kid to alter it, to change it, even if they’ve never seen a line of code in their lives.” Kano’s Blocks environment does also provide opportunities for more freestyle hacking too, such as a non-guided Minecraft creation area which is unlocked, after the user has been stepped through more guided sets of learning hoops — and can be used to directly write code, without any dragging and dropping of blocks at all. And — ultimately — although Kano has linear elements, given its Raspberry Pi foundation this platform is never a closed box. There are full scale text editors on tap, such as Geany and Vim. Plus, as noted above, the platform encourages extension via additional apps, and Alex talks about Kano Blocks becoming an enabler for any app on the platform to become hackable by the users. “Kano is about the making and the playing and the learning is built in. You have to learn, in order to make and play. You couldn’t level up without it. If you weren’t able to combine a function and a variable in order to make a bridge of TNT in Minecraft you wouldn’t unlock that challenge and you wouldn’t go on to the next world,” he said. “We are not an education company. We are a computer company. We build a computer that allows you to be creative with code. And I think the quality of the creations that come out of this — I think that attests to what people are learning. What matters most to us is that kids feel a sense of power, a sense of control.” What’s next for Kano Computing, the startup? Staying in business is priority one of course, so that means keeping the momentum going, post-Kickstarter. On the product side, Alex said it’s specifically going to be aiming to improve and simplify Kano further, based on user feedback. Additional modular hardware elements is an area it wants to explore too — which is not surprising, given its business model is focused on selling hardware. But there’s no ignoring the software side either. Kano will need a thriving software ecosystem and an engaged community of users in order to generate the hardware sales that turn a profit. “There’s a lot we’d like to explore related to hardware, modular hardware. Building a screen. Building a battery. Sensors, lights, robotics. We’ve started to talk with the guys at Stanford FabLab for schools — they’ve got these wonderful wafer connectors that plug, a bit like Lego, into the top of our board… and allow you to with Kano Blocks, create nice little automation scripts for a motor, a servo, or something like that. That’s a big priority on the product side,” said Alex. “When it comes to the OS and content we’d love to continue to work with other companies, other products to bring what they do well to a single board computer which I think is emerging as a new category. And when it comes to single board computing Kano is probably the most user-friendly and interesting option out there at this price point. We want to work with people like Rovio… We’d love to work with the people at Beats Music and get a Beats Music app on there. Ultimately it is a computer and we have to have as much of an aggressive approach to the platform growth as we do to the growth of the hardware and the peripherals.” So really Kano has its work cut out — after all, it’s building the whole kit and kaboodle: hardware, software and a social ecosystem. |
Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe Donates $31M To Build VR Lab At His Alma Mater University Of Maryland | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Brendan Iribe dropped out of University Of Maryland his freshman year to launch a startup before going on to form Oculus. But now inspired by Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy and made rich by Zuck’s company buying Oculus for $2 billion, Iribe is donating $31 million to build the Iribe Center for Computer Science and Innovation at , plus set up a CS scholarship. The building will include labs for virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics, computer vision, and artificial intelligence. Iribe tells me he believes the virtual reality industry “is about to completely take off, and to put a building in place that’s largely focused on this…will help inspire a lot of students and incredibly brilliant engineers to become part of the industry and solve the next set of difficult problems.” The scholarship will be in the name of Andrew Scott Reisse, the Oculus co-founder who was tragically killed as an innocent bystander in a police chase last year. Along with Iribe’s $30 million for the building and $1 scholarship fund, his mother Elizabeth is giving $3 million to set up two endowed chairs in the school’s computer science department. And Oculus co-founder and chief software architect Michael Antonov is donating $3.5 million to the CS building and another $500,000 to fund scholarships, though unlike Iribe, he actually graduated. “I dropped out to pursue a dream” Iribe tells me. “But we dropped out and then dropped back in on the local area and set up the company right next to campus. I still established a lot of relationships with my best friends for life at college, and hired one of our professors at the time. I was born and raised in Maryland and attended the public school system. It just felt like the right thing to do to give back to a state school and public school, I’m a really big fan of public education.” Oculus’ new parent company Facebook’s CEO showed Iribe the way. $100 million to the New Jersey public school system, signed the giving pledge to give away most of his fortune, has taught a class a public school near Facebook’s headquarters, and was recognized as the most generous American in 2013 after donating $990 million worth of Facebook stock to the . Iribe explains “Mark Zuckerberg was a big inspiration for me personally on this. He’s an incredible person and incredible donator”. Iribe cites Elon Musk and Bill Gates’ philanthropic efforts as also driving him to give back to UMCP. “I’m really fortunate to finally be in a place to make these donations and make a difference. Mark was very personally excited about it and supportive.” Iribe will do some educating himself next week when Oculus puts on its , where he’ll give the keynote and reveal its latest innovations. The company recently began , and just unveiled the which uses the Galaxy Note phablet as the screen. You have to experience VR to really get it, Iribe tells me, so it’s critical to create a home for it at UMD. “When people take off the headset, they immediately have a creative idea about what they can make in virtual reality and a lot of them immediately want to get involved”, Iribe tells me. The old UMD computer science building Iribe called “depressing” The idea for the donation came while Iribe and Antonov were touring the campus via golf cart with the dean shortly after Oculus was acquired by Facebook. When they passed the old CS building, Iribe tells me he said “that building isn’t super inspirational. It’s sort of depressing.” That’s when the heads of the university joked that they needed a new building, implying he should buy one with his newfound riches. Iribe tells me “I blurted out ‘Maybe we could help with that’. They screeched to a halt and said ‘what do you mean?’ Mike looks at me and says ‘What you mean? Do you know how much these buildings go for?’ But Iribe had made up his mind that there was an enormous opportunity to aid the schoool and the whole virtual reality ecosystem. When I asked if the donation signals Iribe’s arrival amongst the top-tier of tech’s philanthropists, he sheepishly said “They are a lot more accomplished than I am, but I hope that I can play small role in this.” Along with the money, he plans to go back to speak at events and hackathons. “I’ll try to play the largest role that I can take.” He concludes “Why wait until we’re old and retired? Why not do it now?” |
TechCrunch TV’s New Series Interviews Startups in a Race Car | Felicia Shivakumar | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Meeting with VCs can be stressful and we took that to the extreme with our new show. One Lap with Rob Coneybeer takes willing entrepreneurs onto the racetrack and out of their comfort zones. “I really like going fast. When you’re going fast with other people in other cars around you, racing requires you to think about several things at once and make good decisions quickly,” says Coneybeer. “After the excitement of the first few laps, every entrepreneur relaxed and enjoyed themselves. I think that’s because entrepreneurs are highly adaptable and able to handle high-stress situations well.” Known for his investments in Nest and RelayRides at Shasta Ventures, Coneybeer has been spending his weekends racing. In an effort to combine his two passions, he thought it would be fun to drive startup founders around a live racetrack at top speed to talk about their businesses. TechCrunch TV went along for the ride by rigging five Go Pro cameras to Rob’s car to capture the road and the often dramatic reactions. Another fun element the the series, we feel, is that this isn’t some fancy race car. Rob’s $25,000 car is scrappy like many of the founders we spoke to, and it’s ready to take down competition twice it’s size. According to Rob: The Subaru BRZ is the epitome of great product to me. It handles as well as a Lotus Elise or a Porsche 911, but for a fraction of the price. The car is fun to drive, fuel efficient, and fast. The only thing I’ve upgraded are the brakes – new brake pads, rotors, lines and fluid – to handle the demands of the racetrack. Everything else – the engine, transmission, and suspension – is unmodified. “I really enjoyed working with the TCTV team to create something irreverent and new. The entrepreneurs were excited to participate, we had fun conducting the interviews, and I’m interested to see how a larger audience enjoys the show.” Well, Rob we enjoyed working with you too and hope you all watch our new show. |
null | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 18 | null |
With ArtCling, You Can Commission Art That Sticks To Your Walls | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Earlier this year, I wrote about , a startup that . Now the company is launching a new site called , which takes a different approach to actually getting that art up on your walls. ArtCorgi co-founders Malcolm (CEO) and Simone (COO) Collins (yes, they’re a couple — ) created ArtCling in partnership with , a company that prints images on adhesive, non-damaging fabric. Basically, “ArtClings” are sturdy-looking posters that you can stick straight on your walls and peel off again without any damage. If you live in Palo Alto, it sounds like you’ll get a chance to see an ArtCling up close, because over the next few weeks, Simone and Malcolm have plans for a promotional stunt — they’re going to create portraits of startup CEOs, then stick them on their office doorways. (I saw one of the portraits in-person and it was, um, quite vivid.) The ArtClings I saw definitely look classier than the ol’ thumbtack-and-poster combination, especially once they’ve been mounted on the wall. The video below shows off their toughness, which I got to see in person as well. I was able to crumple up an ArtCling, then the wrinkles disappeared as soon as I smoothed it out on a wall. At the same time, these pieces are more affordable than most print-and-frame services — pricing starts at $15, and the company estimates that a mural, which can be assembled from multiple ArtClings, won’t cost more than $1,500. Put another way, Simone said that on ArtCorgi, the artist’s fee was usually lower than the cost of printing and framing the art, something that didn’t sit well with her given the company’s aim to “democratize art.” Malcolm added that most printing processes were created for “the old world” of physical art, while this approach, with its affordability and flexibility, “really makes digital art producible in a way that’s almost native to it.” To be clear, the printing process existed before, thanks to Walls360, but you couldn’t commission personalized art on this fabric; that’s what you get by combining Walls360 with ArtCorgi/ArtCling’s marketplace. As for why they’re launching ArtCling as a separate site, rather than an additional feature in the existing ArtCorgi service, Simone said she and Malcolm realized they needed to be “specialized in the way we present ourselves,” because that places “as little burden of thinking as possible” on the customer. So rather than adding lots of options to a single site, they plan to launch a number of services, in an experimental way, that are “powered by ArtCorgi” but focus on specific use cases. Next up? Wedding art. [vimeo 104672339 w=500 h=281] from on . |
On-Demand Home Services Startup Handybook Hires Amazon Exec Jeff Pedersen To Be Its CFO | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Customers are becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea of booking services on the web and on their phones, so companies like are taking off. It’s for that reason that the on-demand home services startup has decided to hire former Amazon exec Jeff Pedersen as its new CFO. It probably seems early for a startup like Handybook to add a CFO with such extensive experience. After all, it’s just two years old and is nowhere near going public. But the company was scaling quickly and CEO Oisin Hanrahan believed it could benefit from having someone to handle its finances. “We really needed to add some talent in terms of financial operations for the business,” Hanrahan said in a phone interview. “The business has scaled pretty significantly. It’s 10 times bigger than it was on the first day of the year. We’re processing millions of dollars a month and we felt it was time to add some serious horsepower to the team.” The CFO appointment comes just a few months after Handybook led by Steve Case’s Revolution Growth. Altogether it has raised about $45 million, with other investors that include General Catalyst, Highland Capital, David Tisch, and Bullhorn CEO Art Papas, among others. With that funding and its new CFO, Handybook will be looking to expand beyond its current base of 27 markets, including increasingly moving into new overseas markets. Admittedly, Hanrahan says that Handybook is “hiring ahead of the curve,” but believes the hire will help the company pull ahead in an increasingly competitive market. Rival Homejoy recently started encroaching on Handybook’s turf by not just offering cleaning services, but also . Pedersen held a variety of roles while at Amazon, but he served most recently as the company’s head of hardline finance. In that role, he oversaw financial operations for a $30 billion chunk of Amazon’s overall sales. He also held various operational finance roles at Dell and IBM. According to Hanrahan, it was that combination of operational and financial expertise which attracted Handybook in pursuing Pedersen. And it’s his experience handling high transaction-volume businesses that ultimately led the company to hire him. “It’s one thing to have a finance background, and it’s another thing to have operational finance background,” Hanrahan told me. “You really want your CFO to be operationally excellent, and Jeff comes with a deep operational finance background at Dell, at IBM, and at Amazon.” For Pedersen, the decision to join a startup after working in major public companies will be a change. But he also sees promise in the two-year-old startup. In an email to TechCrunch, he wrote: “I am thrilled to join the Handybook team. As the leader in on-demand home services, Handybook is a great example of a company transforming a traditional industry through the use of technology… In so many ways, the ambitions of Handybook remind me of Amazon’s own beginnings and I look forward to assisting the brand that has emerged as the leader in this space as they grow and scale.” |
The MOOC Revolution That Wasn’t | Dan Friedman | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Three years ago this week, Sebastian Thrun recorded his Stanford class on Artificial Intelligence, released it online to a staggering 180,000 students, and started a “ .” Soon after, , and others promised free access to valuable content, supposedly delivering a disruptive solution that would solve massive student debt and a struggling economy. Since then, over 8 million students have enrolled in their courses. This year, that revolution fizzled. Only half of those who signed up , and only 4 percent stayed long enough to complete a course. Further, the audience for MOOCs already so the promise of disrupting higher education failed to materialize. The MOOC providers argue that , but even a controlled experiment run by San Jose State with paying students found the courses . This shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Online learning long ago solved the access problem: Between the 8 million people who have signed up for MOOCs, and the more than from Apple’s iTunesU (Apple is quietly a larger force in online education than any upstart), we already know people want to take online courses. What we don’t know is whether they can be as effective, or more effective, than sitting in a classroom. It’s time to focus on that harder problem: engagement. As an online learner myself it’s hard to stay engaged: when I get home after a full day at work, the noble goal of learning new skills often is put aside with Netflix only a click away. Online learning needs to pass that test: it needs to be not only good for you, but enjoyable in its own right. Startups, big companies, and universities are finally focused on the true promise of online education: driving substantial learning at an affordable price. There are three areas that have shown promise towards that goal: mentorship, retention marketing, and new forms of learn-by-doing. One-on-one mentorship was long ago found to be than group instruction. Having the full attention of an instructor accelerates an individual’s learning by focusing them on the right problems at the right times, and having a real relationship with one person provides students with accountability. At Thinkful, we see a spike in learning the day before students have sessions with their mentors. Students want to achieve more because of their relationship, and that motivation translates to more efficient learning. We’re now working to apply that same social pressure throughout the week to bring up overall learning time further. Sometimes you just need someone you respect telling you to eat your vegetables. Second, retention marketing needs to be brought to learning. There’s an entire discipline in marketing to existing customers through email, phone calls and push notifications to keep them engaged with your product. For example, if a Dropbox user views a page to learn about Dropbox for Teams, Dropbox sends an email saying, “Thanks for checking out Dropbox for Teams! Here’s a few features you might not have known about…” By putting a product in front of the right users at the right time, online learning companies can instill good learning habits. Sometimes all that’s needed is a simple nudge to remind a student to spend more time learning. Third, new technologies enable methods of “learn by doing” that just weren’t possible before we could deliver immersive experiences to people’s laptops and phones. In the 1960’s, Jerome Bruner expanded an educational theory known as constructivism with the idea that students should learn through inquiry under the guidance of a teacher to grasp complex ideas intuitively. That process of trial, failure, and then being shown the correct path has been proven to drive student motivation and retention of learning. What we don’t yet know is if that process of trial and failure can become when delivered through a new medium such as Minecraft or Oculus. There’s been promising early results around using , and we’re excited enough about the possibility of using that we’ve got one shipping to the Thinkful office as we speak. These new immersive worlds promise to hold the attention of students in ways textbooks never could. Finally, there’s one other trick education startups use that works but hurts everyone in the long-run: making courses easier. Companies see low completion rates and cut important material as a “quick fix” to higher graduation rates. When Udacity launched, its initial courses dove as deep into subjects as their Stanford counterparts. Now, many Udacity courses take as few as 40 hours to complete; if Stanford were giving course credit for a week of work, it wouldn’t have the reputation. Soon we’ll be hearing about the “dramatic rise” in MOOC completion rates, without a mention of how much easier it is to complete a course. Those “improvements” hurt the entire industry as the actual outcomes – jobs, promotions, improved productivity – still won’t be delivered. As we’re seeing with the , quick fixes that sound good in the press don’t work in the long-term. The of online learning isn’t about accessibility: it’s about taking what we already know works offline and combining it with what you can only do online to create the most engaging experience. We’re all still searching for the right formula, but the ingredients will be the same as they’ve always been: Learning through exploration, thoughtfully designed for the right behaviors, with great teachers providing support. |
Kevin Rose’s New App Tiiny Lets You Share Little Photos That Disappear In 24 Hours | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Digg, Milk, and Revision3 founder Kevin Rose recently left Google Ventures to start a new mobile development house called North, and now we have some details on the , which will launch soon. The basic idea is that Tiiny lets you share thumbnail-sized photos and animated GIFs to a grid of pics on your friends’ phones, and they disappear 24 hours later. Rather than making you scroll through full-width photos like Instagram, Tiiny lets you get a constantly-updated look at what lots of your friends are up to in a single glance. Rose that the app is currently going through the iOS App Store approval process and should launch very soon. Rose’s team said he’s not ready to talk more about the app just yet, but we’ll have more details on TechCrunch when it’s time. [Update: Tiiny is now available for , and you can ] I did get a quick look at the app yesterday, though, and it’s slick. As you can sort of make out from the photo below, the top of the screen features a 3-wide by 4-tall grid of photos and animated GIFS, with a button to capture and share more at the bottom. Seeing all the moving images on the same screen made the app feel vibrant and alive, which could make it addictive to check compared to more static apps like Instagram or even Vine, which only shows one video at a time. Rather than a replacement or direct competitor to other more public broadcast and direct messaging photo apps, Tiiny seems like it could fit in as a complement. There’s also supposedly some more functionality but we’ll have to wait until it’s out for that. , has a peculiar strategy. Rather than languish on building one app, North is trying to use a small team of about 3 people to launch a new mobile app every three months. This scheme lets North quickly throw apps against the wall and see what’s sticky for users. With building social apps being likened to capturing “lightning in a bottle”, this diversified approach means North won’t spend a year building something no one wants. If Tiiny is a flop, the team will just move on to the next app. |
6SensorLabs Gets $4M To Help People With Food Allergies Test Their Meals | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | There are 15 million people in the U.S. with food allergies, and until recently they haven’t had a good, reliable, and affordable way to test meals to ensure they don’t eat something they shouldn’t. That results in more than 200,000 hospital visits a year related to food allergies or food sensitivity. A startup called wants to change that, by building an affordable device that will allow them to quickly and easily check foods for allergens. The company is also hoping to build a mobile app that will help its users share the results of their tests with others and educate them about which restaurant items are safe for those with food allergies or food sensitivity. There are a number of food allergies 6SensorLabs could help detect, but it’s starting with gluten. The company hopes to bring to market its low-cost, portable sensor early next year to help users with Celiac Disease, as well as those who have decided to move to a gluten-free diet for other reasons. Along with the sensor, which will cost less than $150, users will need to buy disposable, one-time use units that they put their food in for testing. The price of the disposable units has not yet been determined. Finally, the company will have a mobile app to pair their sensor with a user’s mobile phone. That app could also be used to share the results of tests for various foods with other users so they, too, can know if food is safe to eat without doing the testing themselves. The company was co-founded by Shireen Yates and Scott Sundvor, who first started working on the product at MIT. Yates has been gluten-free for years, and found that it was always difficult to determine which foods were ok for her to eat. She explored the idea of a food-testing device at MIT with Jonathan Kiel, who had received a PhD in chemical engineering. Sundvor had studied Mechanical Engineering at MIT and had worked in early product dev at Johnson & Johnson before teaming up with Yates. Together they came to San Francisco and began prototyping the device at hardware accelerator and early-stage investment firm Lemnos Labs. Meanwhile, Kiel stepped into an advisory role with the company. Since then, they’ve raised $4 million in seed funding from a group of investors to accelerate product development and soon bring a product to market. Upfront Ventures led the round, which also included participation from SoftTech VC, Lemnos Labs, Mitch Kapor, SK Ventures, and Xandex Investments. |
Big Data Analytics Vs. The Gut Check | Contributor | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Data is more varied and fast-moving than ever, and analyzing it effectively now requires highly sophisticated software and machinery. But where does big data analytics leave the good-old-fashioned hunch? What if the data tells a business manager to “jump” but her intuition says “stay”? It might sound surprising coming from me – I’m a math and technology guy after all – but I strongly believe that intuition steeped in both data and business savvy must steer analytics in order to generate real value. There’s an attitude that says you just have to apply enough math and machine power to a dataset to achieve the best models. But it’s foolish to assume that number-crunching alone can provide answers a business needs to get ahead. In data science, intuition and analytics work together in tandem, each informing the other. First, intuition guides analytics. Analytics insights rarely appear out of thin air. They’re the result of the application of numerical methods to test hypotheses and ideas that arise from intuition and observation. And intuition also guides the methods that the researcher uses to test these hypotheses. Which data is relevant? Which variables and transformations make sense? What are the likely relationships between cause and effect? Which models are appropriate? Second, analytics informs intuition. Unsupervised modeling techniques can discern relationships and patterns in the data that wouldn’t be obvious from a superficial view or a human-sized sample of the data. In short, analytics can suggest avenues for exploration that wouldn’t be picked up by observation and might even be counter-intuitive. Without wise pilots on both the data and business sides directing the data analytics process and balancing gut instinct based on professional experience and knowledge, problems are bound to occur. Let me give a couple of examples that come to mind. A consumer banking team wanted us to create a churn model to help the bank predict which customers were likely to cancel their accounts. The data generated a dim picture. It turned out that when it came to savings, loans and credit cards, there were no clear triggers to reveal when a customer was about to jump ship. Spending and paying patterns remained largely the same until after the decision had been made and new accounts created. However, as the bankers examined the data more closely, reviewing a set of customer segments that the team had created, an analyst used her intuition to suddenly notice a valuable new insight. She realized that a certain customer cohort showing unusually high-value loans, long-term customer value, and several other unusual factors, might predominantly belong to small business owners. A review of the individual accounts confirmed her suspicion. She guessed that those business owners disguised as regular customers hadn’t realized there might be a better way of funding their business than by using a credit card or regular loan accounts. The project goal shifted to identifying these high-value customers and offering them more appropriate products. The banking team then went a step further and asked the data to identify product recommendations to other customer cohorts based on historical user behavior. The data enabled them to start to offer customers tailored products that would increase lifetime value. It’s simply very unlikely that the data alone could have provided that key insight. This sort of business insight coupled with analytics is priceless. (Well, actually our analytics did compute the price and profit of the product recommendations, but you get my gist.) Given the blood-and-bones importance of intuition in data analytics, it’s a wonder why so often the business side is left out of the process until the very end. Instead, business analysts should be invited to the process early on to collaborate. I’ve changed processes to bring the whole team into initial model reviews and, even earlier, into reviews of the raw data. In another example, a client of ours, a large beverage company, wanted to predict future sales in Japan. We built a model that looked at how sales would react to different market and pricing pressures in the coming year. The client told us they thought sales were impacted directly by the economy. If Japan’s economy was slowly coming back, they thought, spending on soft drinks would increase. They asked that we use the Nikkei as a kind of trend variable within our model. The index improved the accuracy of the model at first — or so it seemed. But then over the year the model started making wild predictions. The economy had started to bounce back but now the Nikkei was outside the range of the training data, and the original model was probably “overfit.” A more experienced modeler would probably have resisted introducing the variable at all. There are times when intuition makes sense, but here, data science expertise suggests caution and an awareness of the limitations and pitfalls of the modeling process. In this case, we introduced a transformation to damp the effect of the stock market index, and the models went on to perform very well in guiding the development of a new marketing plan and predicting its effects. There’s often tension in the air between data scientists and the business – particularly when the data seems to contradict the gut, and the effect of the splashy new campaign seems to be negligible. Often we’re left sitting across the table with the marketer asking ‘Where did that number come from?’ and the data scientist on the defensive. But I believe this battle of brains is positive. Math and science should be able to stand up to questioning. Sometimes this results in data disproving intuition. Other times, those gut feelings based on deep experience can find flaws in the process. Ideally, everyone benefits. |
Facebook Will Now Ask People Why They Hid An Ad, Banish Offensive Ones | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Facebook needs to know if you just thought an ad was annoying, or if it was actually inappropriate and no one should see it, so it’s now they see on the service. Ads marked as offensive or inappropriate will be pulled from Facebook’s site and apps, while the individual user will simply see fewer ads like those they mark as annoying. Facebook will also weight hides more heavily in its algorithm if they’re from people who don’t hide ads often. Facebook says both changes lead to people hiding fewer ads because it learns to show them more relevant ones. Facebook has become one of the world’s biggest advertising companies, but it has to be careful not to pester its users too much. It walks a fine line, monitoring whether it’s showing too many ads and hurting engagement. If it can use these hidden ad polls to ditch the worst ads and tailor the rest to people who don’t find them interruptive, it can build an even bigger business out of News Feed while still making it fun to read. |
Dropbox Calls For Support Of The Senate’s NSA Reform Bill | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | This morning, Dropbox released detailing government requests for its user data, and information about certain user accounts. The company for the passage of the Senate’s version of the USA FREEDOM Act. In the first half of 2014, Dropbox received “268 requests for user information from law enforcement agencies and 0-249 national security requests.” In a separate post, the company described that level of request as growing in keeping its user base. The amount of inquiry is expanding geometrically, in other words, and not exponentially. The data itself, in terms of its gist, is mostly in line with other technology companies that report this sort of thing, with one interesting addition. Dropbox was comfortable calling out the government for being overly demanding in its requests for secrecy: Government agencies keep asking us not to notify users of requests for their data, even when they are not legally entitled to do so. If we receive a request that comes with a gag order, we’ll inform requesting agency of our policy and let users know about the request unless the agency provides a valid court order (or an equivalent). That’s worth knowing. But perhaps most importantly it Dropbox’s notes in both its posts today, asking for support of the USA FREEDOM Act that the Senate is considering. Unlike the bill the House passed — the two share a name — the Senate’s version is noted for not being a gutted, useless pile of bilge. What the House passed was rammed through to a vote so quickly, after a long period of useless dithering, that about half of its cosponsors didn’t vote for it. That’s just standard operating procedure. Having Dropbox’s support behind what the Senate is considering is a vote in the right direction. |
Google Acquires Opinion Poll Service Polar For Google+ | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Google today announced that it has , the highly graphical opinion poll service, for an undisclosed sum. Polar’s service includes both a mobile app that allows users to create and participate in polls, as well as services for web publishers (we’ve occasionally run Polar polls here on TechCrunch, for example). The company says it has served over one billion polls over the last eight months and that it had 1.1 million active voters in September. The Polar team will join Google+ and the service will continue to operate until the end of 2014. Existing users will be able to download and save an archive of their existing polls before the service shuts down for good. Polar was co-founded by Luke Wroblewski, who previously co-founded Bagcheck, which was later , and . Wroblewski also spent time as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital and as the Chief Design Architect at Yahoo. The company had raised $1.7 million in total funding before the acquisition. It’s unclear how much of this acquisition is about Polar’s technology and how much of it is a talent acquisition (Wroblewski is a well-known expert when it comes to design, after all). Chances are Google will incorporate at least some aspects of Polar into Google+, but Google VP of Engineering — who now — today only said that the Polar team will be “working with our designers and engineers to help us make G+ as beautiful and simple to use as possible, especially on mobile devices. Stay tuned!” |
Samsung Attacks Apple’s Keynote With “It Doesn’t Take A Genius” Ads | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA8xPyBAs_o&list=PLMKk4lSYoM-yi1RcmxhgbkFxIAa577K4A] has released a series of videos lampooning this week’s announcement, a move that is at once familiar and not unexpected. There are six of them in total, including one on screen size, in a series called “It Doesn’t Take A Genius.” Collect them all. After years of , the company has finally grown a few claws and even made fun of Apple’s jittery live feed in the example above. There’s even the obligatory howl of “It’s a bigger screen!” as the two “nerds” in the ad salivate over the new offerings. Samsung has a long history of advertising and I doubt it will abate any time soon. Perhaps Apple needs to bring out the big guns again? Where have you gone, John Hodgman? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZSBWbnmGrE] |
Sued As A Young Startup? Don’t Surrender | David Soofian | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Patent trolls are on the offensive, using weak patents to go after young tech startups with the hopes of securing licensing deals. These trolls bank on the assumption that these young companies will pay without putting up a fight in order to avoid the high cost of a long drawn out litigation. However, two recent changes in patent law are turning the tables and giving the accused the opportunity to attack the validity of these weak patents—the most valuable assets a patent troll has—without having to go through the cost of a full-blown litigation: (1) the Supreme Court’s recent opinion paved the way for early challenges to patents that try and monopolize algorithms or basic ideas; and (2) the America Invents Act created a quick mini-trial in the United States Patent Office for challenges to the inventiveness of a patent ( did someone else invent it first, or was it obvious based on what others were doing at the time). These developments can fundamentally shift the narrative in a typical troll lawsuit, by giving the troll something to lose (their patent) and giving the accused a quicker path to vindication. : Patent trolling starts with investors looking to turn a (relatively) quick buck. They pool their money together and form a shell company to hide their identities. The shell company, typically with an advisor, then hits the open patent market to find a patent. There, patents are sold in packages designed for trolling—with detailed suggestions and strategies ( infringement charts) on how to target specific companies / products with patent infringement lawsuits. The essential partner of the patent troll is the law firm that will act as the public face of the company by sending threatening demand letters and filing lawsuits. This law firm is often a small shop that works on contingency, aligning the interest of the investors with the interests of the law firm—spend as little as possible and bring in as much money as possible. Being on the receiving end of a demand letter isn’t fun, and the prospect of being caught up in an expensive lawsuit can be daunting. That is why many companies take an early license at a reduced rate to make the troll go away. But for many companies—especially young technology startups whose reputation is built on innovation and disrupting entrenched interests—the idea of settling out or taking a license is unacceptable. For those companies, their only choices are to persuade the troll to go away or to vindicate themselves in court. Luckily, recent changes in patent law have given these companies two new weapons with which to fight back and attack the validity of the troll’s prized patent without incurring the costs of a full-blown litigation. : Recent cases have paved the road for early challenges to software patents as abstract ideas: in (later called ), the patent was successfully challenged in the district court shortly after the case was filed (the case is now being reviewed for a third time on appeal); and in a case called (“ ”), the patents were successfully challenged in the district court before extensive and expensive discovery took place. (Note: .) The underpinnings of this “abstract idea” exception are rooted in the patent bargain. A patent is an exchange—the governments grants a monopoly over an invention for a limited time and, in exchange, the inventor makes their invention public by disclosing all of their secrets and details in a patent. The idea of the exchange is that it is worth stifling innovation in the short term by granting a monopoly, if society can benefit in the long term by getting free rights to use the invention after the patent expires. The abstract idea exception focuses on one instance when that bargain is unfair—when the invention that is being patented is an idea that is so fundamental and basic that it does more harm to society by granting a patent than the good of making that invention public. Software patents became a favorite for patent trolls because, in effect, they allowed trolls to monopolize abstract ideas as long as they were implemented on a computer or the Internet. The trolls relied on the argument that an idea cannot be abstract if it involved a physical machine like a computer. , the Supreme Court rejected that argument by holding that an abstract idea is not patentable merely because it was implemented on a general purpose computer in a generic way (“each step does no more than require a generic computer to perform generic computer functions”). While the exact contours of this brand new decision are still being fleshed out, the important thing for companies to understand is that the case has opened up the floodgates to challenges of software patents as abstract ideas. To successfully make a case that an invention is nothing more than an abstract idea based on , you and your lawyer should follow the following steps: A second way to attack a patent is to challenge whether it is innovative. The most commonly invoked requirements for a patent are that the invention be and . An invention is not novel if it was already public knowledge at the time of invention. Similarly, an invention is not patentable if it would have been obvious to someone in the field based on what was already public knowledge at the time. The problem with this type of challenge is that it was traditionally only available late in the litigation process, after the accused had to go through most of the expense of discovery and expert reports (everything except for trial). But in 2011, President Obama signed the America Invents Act, which created a mini-trial in the Patent Office called Review (“IPR”) where almost anyone can challenge whether an issued patent is really novel and not obvious. Based on my experience helping to obtain , IPR challenges to novelty and non-obviousness at the Patent Office appear to have many benefits over making those same challenges in district court: (a) IPR challenges can brought at almost any time, making it a great option for an accused company to make an early challenge to a troll’s patent; (b) IPR trials are quick, and are typically complete within 12-months of being instituted; (c) there is very little discovery; (d) the review is focused solely on novelty and non-obviousness; (e) the judges have technical backgrounds; (f) the words of the patent are interpreted according to a better standard ( broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the specification); (g) the challenger’s burden of proof is lower ( preponderance of evidence); and (h) if the Patent Office agrees to the review, any pending district court case may be put on hold ( stayed) while the review takes place. |
Confide Updates Its App To Make Sending Text-Based Ephemeral Messages Faster | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Earlier this year, launched the first version of its app to enable enterprise users to send and receive text-based messages that disappear when you’re done reading them. Today it’s hoping to improve the experience with a big update to the app that makes it a lot faster and easier to use. Confide is like a lot of other ephemeral messaging apps, in that neither the sender or receiver of the message gets to keep a copy of it. Once those messages are read, they disappear into the ether. How Confide differentiates is two-fold: For one thing, Confide is focused specifically on text rather than photos or videos. And it’s built an interesting “wanding” feature that allows users only to see one or two words at a time to keep them from being able to screen capture messages they receive. The first version worked great for that, but due to Confide’s end-to-end encryption it was painfully slow to load new messages when received. The company has done a lot of work to re-engineer its back end and improve the speed of the app. It now pre-computes some of the encryption, and sends messages in smaller payloads. It also refreshes messages in the background to ensure that they are already available when users open the app. As a result, the new version is up to 12 times faster based on the company’s tests, according to co-founder Howard Lerman. Confide has also redesigned the user interface to make it less of an email-like listing of messages in one’s inbox. Instead, interactions are grouped around user names. In that way, you can no longer just look at a user’s inbox to see how many messages they’ve exchanged with others, or what previous subject lines were, all of which adds a new level of security through obscurity. The new Confide also enables users to add contacts to a list of favorites, so they have easy access to the people they most want to communicate with. And the final new feature is designed to ensure people view messages you might send them. Once a message has been delivered, users can now click on an airplane icon, which will send a push notification to the recipient reminding them to check out unread messages. Confide co-founder Jon Brod wouldn’t provide any absolute user numbers, but said that the app has users in more than 130 countries around the world. Its user base is about half iOS and half Android currently, even though its . The company has raised $1.9 million in funding from investors that include WGI Group, Google Ventures, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, CrunchFund*, Lakestar, Marker, David Tisch’s BoxGroup, Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman, Entourage creator Doug Ellin, and Access Hollywood host Billy Bush. *TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is a founding partner of CrunchFund |
Corporate America, Your Future Engineers Aren’t Attending Career Fairs Anymore | Vivek Ravisankar | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Like the , hieroglyphics and video stores, college career fairs may soon be a relic of the past — particularly when it comes to recruiting software engineers. Undergraduate enrollment in computer science programs , growing by double digits year-over-year. Pair that with the fact that employer demand for computer science majors is very steep — with CS majors earning some of the in the country — it’s obvious that computer science and engineering knowledge is more valuable today than ever before. So why are universities and employers alike scrambling to keep up? Why is it seemingly so difficult to find skilled developers? The truth is, many to satisfy the unprecedented demand for computer science education, nor to keep up with the rapidly changing world of technology — not only in terms of the actual technology, but also the explosion of culture and “cool factor” around the industry itself. And companies across all industries — from finance, to energy, to retail — are in search of great developer talent, because everyone needs software and skilled coders to build it. The companies that aren’t traditionally tech-savvy are playing catch-up using antiquated methods, like looking through newspapers, using unpaid (and unpopular) internships, and attending boots-on-the-ground-style career fairs. While this seems logical, these methods are wildly outdated and will get you nowhere in the race for developers. In the arms race for talent, there’s one place that has become the new career fair for developer talent: hackathons. The employment crisis of 2008-2009 left hordes of graduates without jobs. The tech industry was one of the few where companies continued to actively hire, and nationwide to learn computer science in order to revive the struggling economy. However, computer science is one of the few fields where a degree from a prestigious university is becoming less of an advantage than it used to be. A degree does not guarantee that someone is capable of writing great code. Popular coding languages and technology trends move so fast that academia cannot keep up. Thus, students, people looking to switch careers, or anyone with an interest in coding, are seeking out other opportunities to learn, and myriad code academies and online programs like , , and have emerged to satisfy this demand. So what does all this mean? Well, for one, the best developer candidates aren’t necessarily at the universities you’d expect. Two, aspiring developers (even those enrolled in CS programs) are seeking opportunities to gain engineering experience outside of formal educational settings. Three, those students are also seeking new environments to showcase their abilities, and four; employers need better ways to validate a potential hire’s coding chops than a resume. And these are just a few of the trends causing the decline of the college career fair and the growth of the hackathon. . They take many forms, but the underlying idea is for teams to take nascent ideas and turn them into reality as quickly as possible using code. In terms of size, they can range from a physical gathering of 20 developers to a digital gathering of thousands, with prizes ranging from bragging rights and free pizza all the way up to sizable cash payouts and lucrative jobs. Not all hackathons have the same goals or structure. Some are sponsored by companies looking to directly stimulate product innovation, as in the case of and . Others are dedicated to supporting developers from under-represented groups, or to come up with solutions to problems like hunger or conflict in the Middle East. And others are simply contests created to find great talent. With so many hackathons taking place online, it has become an incredibly broad pool of talent to see in action — from places that companies otherwise would not have access to or even be in contact with at all. One area that’s seeing big growth in the hackathon world is the university hackathon. HackerRank recently had 17 different company-sponsored hackathons for college students on the platform in one day alone. These on-campus hackathons are part career fair, part classroom and are centered around yielding the “real-world experience” that both students need and employers want to see. They provide a powerful way for students to show off their skills, creativity and talent, while giving companies a forum to simultaneously vet and possibly even recruit potential hires. Some of the biggest university hackathons are , , and at the University of Michigan, which are often organized by student coding communities like IEEE and ACM. These hackathons are also easy for companies to sponsor — Facebook and Venmo have sponsored in the past, and this year. State Farm and even Dominos Pizza are also sponsors, demonstrating that companies across industries are looking for developers at these prestigious events. The business world is changing, making this a smart move. Companies are realizing that a glossy booth and free T-shirts at a once-a-year career fair just doesn’t cut it anymore. On-campus hackathons help employers raise awareness of their brands, and also allow for pinpointed targeting of specific students. For example, an employer that hosts an event at MIT gets direct access to MIT students. These events are much more personal, enabling direct interaction with the coders and giving employers the chance to see them in action — usually with large amounts of pizza and Red Bull involved. The events can take place over 24 hours, or over the course of an entire weekend, and are usually promoted across campus to pull in participants. Off-campus hackathons can also be used to attract new talent or to solve internal problems — and are more lenient in terms of what can and cannot be done. is a prime example of this. The competition was aimed at finding “more unique video and Internet experiences for media subscribers,” and judges included venture capitalists, tech influencers and NBC/Comcast executives. Hackathons are drawing the attention and participation of celebrities, venture capitalists, startup execs — and their presence is a great way to boost the credibility of the event and attract more competitors. Virtual hackathons have different approaches that deliver different benefits. These events are often held as a partnership between a coding platform like ours and a company sponsor, and usually offer more “bang for your buck.” While physical hackathons can cost , online versions typically cost between $5,000-$10,000 and are well-suited for businesses looking to cast a net over a wide group of people (since coders who can’t travel to a physical event are able to participate). This exponentially expands your reach, and allows you to compete for the global talent pool — rather than compete for attention with every other company in a certain area. Virtual hackathons, while being less personal, open you up to a pool of talent that you didn’t even know was there. For example, a recent hackathon we organized attracted over 8,000 students. Even if an employer is only interested in the top 10%, that is still 800 prospective hires. Virtual coding contests also require less event planning, because there are no travel stipends, meals, or security forces to coordinate — it let’s programmers get right to the nitty gritty of the problem they’re given, and start hacking. Hackathons, whether they take place in a university gymnasium, conference center or online, enable an unprecedented degree of interaction between employers and potential hires. At HackerRank, we’ve seen some amazing things happen when students, universities, and companies come together through code. We’ve seen brilliant products built seemingly overnight. We’ve seen students find employers that weren’t even on their radar, and recruiters find developers they may never have encountered otherwise. The greater levels of interaction and engagement pay off for everyone in the end. Where do you think is the best place to find the best developer talent? Have you found rock-star developers by meeting them at hackathons? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section. |
Voice Marketing Company Ifbyphone Raises $30M More, Acquires Competitor Mongoose Metrics | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | , a maker of voice marketing software, is announcing that it has raised $30 million in additional funding. It’s also revealing one of the main uses for that money — the acquisition of competitor . This doubles Ifbyphone’s funding from $30 million to $60 million. The round comes from new investor NewSpring Capital, as well as previous backers Apex Venture Partners, SSM Partners, Origin Ventures, River Cities Capital Funds, i2A Illinois Accelerator Fund, and Spring Mill Venture Partners. In addition to the acquisition, Ifbyphone says the new funding will be used to further develop its Voice360 platform. The company sells tools for marketers and salespeople to track incoming calls that come from search results and advertising campaign, with the software scoring the calls and routing them to the right people. When Ifbyphone , CEO Irv Shapiro compared the company to Salesforce, because “we give marketing and sales managers control over voice conversations and the data associated with those conversations.” The company now says it has almost 5,000 customers. Mongoose Metrics also offers call tracking products. Ifbyphone isn’t providing the financial terms of the deal, but it says Mongoose’s Cleveland office will remain open, with CEO Brad Reynolds joining Ifbyphone. (He’s been tasked with integrating the two companies.) In the acquisition release, Shapiro praised Mongoose Metrics’ “impressive technology and third-party integrations,” while Reynolds said the deal will create “a joint organization that is the clear market leader in call tracking.” |
Mozilla Launches Experimental Tool For Cross-Browser Debugging | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | When you are building Web apps — and especially when you are debugging them — all the subtle differences between the different browsers start coming into play. Testing on every single browser is a hassle and there are no good tools available that help you easily automate these tests, partly because the different browsers’ developer tools can’t talk to each other. Mozilla, however, has now built an that allows it to with Chrome and iOS to help developers test their web apps there right from Firefox. For the time being, this new tool is only available in Firefox’s Nightly builds with the Firefox Developer Tools Add-on installed. It also only works with the latest beta of Chrome (37) and Safari on iOS (but not the desktop). All of these limitations clearly show that this is still a very experimental preview release, but it’s something the Firefox team has been working on for a while. Mozilla says it expects that it’ll be a few more months before the tool is ready for a wider release. “Nothing can replace on-device testing. But developer tools on devices have been cumbersome and vendor-specific,” the Firefox team writes today. “Cross-platform development involved learning and switching between all the different browsers developer tools.” The team originally built this feature to connect Firefox, Firefox on Android and Firefox OS. The tools include an inspector, debugger and console. |
Code.org Launches Code Studio, A Toolset And Curriculum For Teaching Kids Programming | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | Since its creation, ‘s mission has been to get coding into curriculums for students as schools nationwide. Today, the nonprofit group is launching , a combined set of tools and curriculum to get students in kindergarten through high school interested in the underlying concepts behind coding through guided lesson plans. Rather than having kids pick up a language like Python or Java (as you would in a college or AP Computer Science class), Code Studio teaches the underlying concepts in programming through the manipulation of blocks of logic that, when stacked together in a particular order, move a character around a scene or draw a shape. The interface works a lot like , though Code.org director of product Mona Akmal told me over a Google Hangout that there are a few key difference’s between MIT’s offering and Code Studio, chief among them the use of HTML5 (so it can run in most browsers) and the puzzle-based lesson plans for K-12 students. Outside of the actual user interface, Code.org was able to take advantage of awareness around its cause (bolstered by its ) to bring in big names like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates to film video segments introducing concepts as well as use assets from popular brands like Angry Birds in their lessons: The other big differentiator in Code Studio is an interface for teachers to monitor where their students are in the lesson progression. It’a a natural addition (seeing as how Code.org wants to see this kind of curriculum show up in schools) that allows for teachers to manage their own classes or librarians/computer lab staff to coordinate lessons for students across grade levels: While Code.org hopes that schools will introduce Code Studio to their students, they also feel they’ve provided an environment that will encourage kids to start making their own games and apps and share them after they’ve completed the lessons considered appropriate for their grade level. To encourage such sharing, Code Studio allows users to create a link to their projects that will let friends and family play with their efforts via sharing over SMS and social networks. |
Navigating The Reality Of Cloud, Mobile And SaaS | Guy Turner | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | The websites of most VCs have a stated investment thesis in SaaS, cloud, mobile, social or some combination of each. Are these really investment theses? Still? No, they’re realities, and this is worrisome. While SaaS, cloud, mobile and social have been drivers of big success for many funds and entrepreneurs over the past five years, theses-turned-realities cannot continue to drive outsized returns. I started thinking about this when reading ’s Tren summarizes Marc’s view on venture investing into four quadrants along axes of consensus/non-consensus and success/failure. It’s simple but powerful stuff: Source: A VC that continually makes consensus bets is not likely to have long-term success, especially if there are too many execution failures mixed in. The same can be said for entrepreneurs. Another way to think about this is with mock returns distributions: Consensus bets have a tighter returns distribution, driven mostly by execution. Since execution is all about people, consensus bet returns are about “who.” Non-consensus bets have a longer tail distribution, driven by “who” but also “what,” “when” and “how.” By definition for non-consensus bets, the value proposition (what), adoption rate (when) and business model (how) are very uncertain. Both distributions are heavily right-skewed — most startups fail! But non-consensus bets can lead to huge wins when you get the who, what, when and how right. Think Facebook or Dropbox. Neither were consensus at the time, and they pretty much nailed it. If no longer SaaS, cloud, mobile or social, then what? I came up with the market thesis map below ( ), which is sectioned vertically for B2B, consumer, healthcare and infrastructure because we work, we consume and we try to live longer, and infrastructure enables all three. Left to right maps recent startup and VC investment foci along the continuum of Thesis –> Transition –> Reality. A true thesis yields bets that are non-consensus – visions of certain combinations of who, what, when and how that not everyone agrees on. Reality investment focus bets are consensus – just a question of who. As it turns out, many popular “theses” really aren’t theses at all. They’re realities. Click to enlarge. Connections proliferate among investment foci because very few technologies and business models are islands in the connected world. For example, 3D printing, an enabling infrastructure technology, has ties through distributed manufacturing into the maker and on-demand economy theses. There are also influential nodes like mobile commerce, social networking and IoT. Social networking is clearly a reality, not a thesis. The who, what, when and how of social networking are well defined. IoT, on the other hand, is still a real thesis because the winners, winning strategy and timing are still uncertain. Mobile commerce is somewhere in the middle. Outsized returns will be hard in social networking, likely (for someone) in IoT and possible in mobile commerce. Theses themselves evolve. When technology paradigms transition, there is always opportunity to rejuvenate a thesis. This is how SaaS (now a reality) spawned the mobile SaaS thesis (now in transition). The great paradigm changes we’ve seen in the last four decades are: Offline –> Mainframe –> Desktop –> Cloud –> Mobile. (Mobile may now evolve to Wearables –> Embedded. We’ll see.) The SaaS thesis developed 12-plus years ago when the desktop paradigm began transitioning to cloud, enabling the SaaS business model and creating monsters like Salesforce.com. Now with the mobile paradigm shift, there are big mobile disruptors in SaaS (like ) giving Salesforce a run for its money. So is SaaS as an investment thesis dead? Maybe not. Just as new technology paradigms can renew a thesis, one thesis can be merged with another to create a new one in a kind of combinatorial evolution. SaaS + Social Networking + Geofencing spawned our own investment in . Most theses also start out as horizontal plays; investors fund horizontal plays first because they can be really BIG. As examples, Salesforce, Hubspot and Dropbox are big horizontal industry-agnostic ventures. Once the horizontal bets have played out, however, there remain myriad opportunities to verticalize theses. This is especially true in lagging industries like construction, logistics and agriculture – hence our investment in . Nevertheless, the greatest returns will likely come from true non-consensus bets in new theses – when a brilliant team and lucky VC find the quadfecta of who, what, when and how. |
iPhone 6 And 6 Plus Arrive In China On October 17 | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | the official launch date for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in China. On October 10, customers will be able to pre-order the devices from Apple’s site. On October 14, they’ll be able to put earlier orders in at Apple’s retail locations, and devices will become available for pickup on October 17. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus will be launching on China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom. The 6 will be available at a suggested retail price of 5,288 RMB (~$860) for the 16GB model, 6,088 RMB (~$990) for the 64GB model and 6,888 RMB (~$1120) for the 128 GB model. The iPhone 6 Plus comes with a suggested retail price of 6,088 RMB (~$990) for the 16GB model, 6,888 RMB (~$1120) for the 64GB model and 7,788 RMB (~$1267) for the new 128GB model. |
Festival Travel Site Festicket Raises $2.7M Series A | Steve O'Hear | 2,014 | 9 | 11 | , the UK startup that offers a travel booking and discovery site for festival goers, has closed a $2.7 million Series A round. The new funding, which adds to a $680,000 seed round in March 2013, is being led by European VCs, Wellington Partners and PROfounders Capital. Previous investors, Windcrest Partners, Playfair Capital, and Jacques-Antoine Granjon (founder of vente-privee.com), also participated. Founded in early 2012 by Zacharie Sabban (CEO) and Jonathan Younes (CTO), Festicket wants to make attending festivals as easy as booking a package holiday. Users browse the curated directory of music festivals and, in a single purchase, can book a festival package — tickets, transport and accommodation — therefore eliminating much of the pain associated with attending festivals, which often involves dealing with multiple providers and a disparate itinerary. By consolidating this process, the is to open up the festival market to an even wider audience. To that end, Festicket says the additional capital will be used to accelerate international expansion, grow the team and further develop its product, which combines festival event curation, social features, and a festival and related travel booking engine. Specifically, on the product side, it plans on building “inspirational features” and recommendation tools, helping to capitalise on what is says is a trend towards more people attending festivals. Regards traction, Festicket now works with more than 200 music festivals globally, including the large festivals such as Tomorrowland, Ultra Europe, Leeds & Reading, and claims over 300,000 festival-goer members. |
Hem, Fab’s Pivot Into Home Furnishings, Goes Live In 40 Markets | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | Three months after , the New York-based design/fashion marketplace, and its intention to pivot its European business to focus solely on original home furnishings, the company is putting its eggs into a new basket — or basket , as the case may be. Today it is launching , selling Scandinavian-style tables, shelves and other furniture that have been designed, built and shipped in-house. “A European design company that is distributing all over the world,” in the words of CEO and co-founder Jason Goldberg. To kick things off, Goldberg — who has relocated to build and run the operation in Berlin — says the new brand is going live in 40 markets. The online portal will ship to 30 countries, including the U.S., and a further 10 countries will have Hem furniture by way of resale partnerships with physical stores. The brand Hem (Swedish for “Home”) was first made public earlier this year, and while Fab.com has been raising awareness through roadshows and , today is the first day that Hem is open for business. Goldberg describes Hem — which follows in the tradition of other vertically-integrated e-commerce sites like Warby Parker and Bonobos — not as a pivot away from something that wasn’t working, but the realisation of his original ambition. “Hem is the brand and company I have been dying to launch for a couple of years now,” he says. “I became fascinated with the opportunities and potential in online furniture from the beginning of Fab.” That was why, Goldberg explains, the company in Berlin in 2013, invested in building out a private label furniture business, and eventually bought One Nordic to fill out in-house design and market development. “One of my biggest regrets with Fab was that because we were curating everyone else’s products it was so challenging to develop our own tight taste and style,” he says. “We have that now with Hem.” And yet, Hem’s rise comes amid some significant stumbles for Fab.com. It has seen a sweep of layoffs (at its peak, Fab.com employed around 700 people; now the remaining Fab.com business in the U.S. has 25; there is also a 100-person tech team in India, and a manufacturing team in Poland); a ; and rumors of a in the U.S. (not true, says the company). We have also heard that some parties have been approaching Fab.com for a possible sale. Goldberg would not comment on this but said that Fab.com “is a steady business, employing 25 people and operating very consistently and very close to break-even.” It’s not clear what kind of audience Fab.com has at the moment, but Goldberg says that all told Hem will be directly promoted to 8 million people today. Goldberg is a founder who when things are not working out, but he also takes lessons from the previous efforts. With Fab.com, Goldberg realised that the growth needed to succeed as a thin-margin e-commerce marketplace was just not going to happen. “E-commerce is very much a scale business, where the winner takes all,” Goldberg says. As companies like Amazon and Alibaba have proven, the secret lies in infrastructure. “It’s not that hard to build a $100 million revenue e-commerce business, but how do you scale after initial customer enthusiasm to consistently shipping fast, holding inventory, and so on. When you have scale it is much easier,” he says. “When you are selling third-party products and the margins are very low and customer expectations are very high, it was not a model you could execute successfully, not a model where we liked to operate. We’ve seen a lot of others that stalled as well. There are very few really successful very large commerce players who are selling other people’s products at this point. So we decided we wanted to invest in making our own products and being full stack.” Goldberg says that Hem will be leaning on the logistics and distribution networks that were built for Fab. The decision to launch a whole new brand was because Fab had developed a reputation as a “value play,” with “quirky third party sellers,” in Goldberg’s words. “We wanted the new brand to be clean. At launch, we have only 150 products. Fab.com has 20,000 products. If we put the furniture there it would get lost.” For aesthetic comparison, think “ .” Fab to date has raised with backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Tencent, Atomico, Menlo Ventures, and many more. At its last raise — a Series D that eventually totalled $165 million — Fab was valued at $1 billion. That valuation is holding firm for now, he says, and the company is not looking for more funding. Goldberg says that Fab’s shareholders and board support the company’s pivot to vertically integrated furniture maker and its wider shift to a European center of gravity. “When I went to the board and recommended this direction, I did so with a large war chest,” he says. “We are building a high margin business. I’m committed to building a profitable business on the money we’ve raised up to now. We have no plans to raise additional funds.” The company’s cash will also help it stave off competition from other would-be vertically integrated furniture startups, he says. “If someone went to the Valley with a pitch to start an online furniture company, we’ve got a big advantage,” he says, “and the sweet spot for designing furniture online as well.” |
Native Ad Company Sharethrough Raises $10M From British Sky Broadcasting And Others | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | Earlier this month, announced its European expansion, and it jumpstarted those efforts by . Now it looks like Sharethrough will also be getting help from one of the region’s big media companies — British Sky Broadcasting. Specifically, Sharethrough is announcing a $5 million strategic investment from BSkyB. Existing investors FLOODGATE, Elevation Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, and Silver Creek Ventures, also invested in the new round, bringing the total to $10 million. Dan Greenberg, Sharethrough’s founder and CEO, told me that the native ad company didn’t need the money. After all, it earlier this year ($7 million in equity and $10 million in debt), and he said that Sharethrough has been profitable for the past 12 months. At the same time, Greenberg said BSkyB’s digital team has been working with Sharethrough and “essentially betting that the future of monetization strongly includes native,” so the investment made sense as a way to “cement our partnership.” As part of the deal, Jamie West, Deputy Managing Director of Sky Media (the company’s ad sales division), will become a board observer at Sharethrough. In addition to funding European growth, Greenberg said the new round will go towards expanding Sharethrough’s engineering and marketing teams. Asked if partnering this closely with one big media company might make it difficult to work with BSkyB’s competitors, he responded, “I thought about it, but I think that they have such a strong presence in London and such a well-respected brand out there — it’s not a question of competitiveness.” Greenberg also pointed to the range of publishers that Sharethrough already works with — it powers in-stream advertising for Men’s Health, Gannett, Forbes, Time Inc., Business Insider, and others. As native advertising (where the ads resemble the content of the site where they’re running) has become the dominant monetization strategy among “all the closed platforms” like Facebook and Twitter, he argued that Sharethrough has become the native platform “for the rest of the web.” Meanwhile, BSkyB’s other investments include and . |
Microsoft Will Start To Explain The Future Of Windows Tomorrow Morning | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | Gird thyself, a new Windows approaches. Tomorrow morning in San Francisco, Microsoft will show off some part of its next operating system in a long-awaited event whose . The market is expectant, and the technology and business media will have its eyes trained on what Redmond has on offer. In the past few days, odd rumors have cropped up: Will the , or released several weeks after the event? Does the code even have a formal name? We’ll find out soon enough. Given that the market is only expecting a preview, whatever Microsoft shows off will be feature incomplete by definition. I missed it, but apparently there was some sort of recent rumor saying that Windows 9 — provided that that actually is its name — was set to touch down, of preview in October. No. That’s not happening. The Windows community is, unsurprisingly, that the operating system is likely to contain. Tomorrow isn’t about that. Microsoft didn’t brand the shindig an enterprise event for no reason. So, if you don’t get to see your favorite, expected goodies, don’t lose it. They are probably still coming. Though, of course, for Microsoft, the more good stuff it can quickly release, the better. Why do the technical, and not consumer bit first? Windows 7 has a shelf life. Windows XP is dead, and Windows 8 is not something that business customers have welcomed. Microsoft has a massive interest in catering to its enterprise clients as they provide it with mammoth revenues and profits. And since Windows 8 didn’t do the trick, Windows 9 will have to land with a touch more poise. Also larger companies need more time to make choices, so showing off what is being built for them first is a reasonable exercise. This of course sets aside the technical Also on a technical note, there is no livestream of the event, I’ve confirmed with the company. This is irksome, but here we are. It’s annoying when Apple does it, and it’s annoying Microsoft does. So, I’ll be on the ground, blogging as fast as I can. If we get a build tomorrow, and I’ve heard two different build numbers floating around that could either be the correct code lockup, TechCrunch will have notes up as fast as possible, along with video and the rest. Hold tight, we’re almost there. |
PotatoStock Actually Happened | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g-lrjDbY1g&feature=youtu.be] It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Zack “Danger” Brown, he of the potato salad Kickstarter, held the first annual PotatoStock in Columbus, Ohio where he and thousands of potato lovers enjoyed beer, music, companionship, and salad. I met , just before PotatoStock, and he told me of an amazing festival of love, happiness, and mayonnaise. Brown is reporting that the event went off without a hitch. “PotatoStock was great!” he said. “There were roughly 2000 people there. We made and ran out of 450 lbs of potato salad. Homage brought 300 t-shirts and sold out in one hour.” You can see more photos from and at the local and you can also check out @potatostock on Twitter where you’ll see stuff like this:
Finally, you can see the festival from the air thanks to . Brown even raised $20,000 for the a group that helps the disadvantaged in Brown’s (and my) favorite city. “It was great!!!” said Brown. His emphasis added. |
Jeremy Allaire Opens His Long-Awaited Bitcoin Product Circle Up To The Public | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | When you have one of the most experienced CEOs in the industry, who led Macromedia and oversaw the development of Adobe Flash in the 2000s and then changed online video again by taking Brightcove public, people pay attention. So when Jeremy Allaire said he was entering the Bitcoin space, top-tier venture firms took notice. Jim Breyer, who was one of Facebook’s very first investors, Accel Partners and General Catalyst in a year ago even though the company had yet to launch a product. Now it’s finally emerged from an invite-only phase and is fully open to the public. Don’t call it a Bitcoin wallet though. Allaire and his company wanted to build something that was deeply accessible to everyone, not just crypto-currency enthusiasts. Even though Allaire and his team don’t like to use the word “wallet,” pretty much is one. You can quickly sign up for with an e-mail address, phone number and some credit card or bank data, so you can store or send Bitcoin. The whole process only takes a few minutes, unlike some of the early Bitcoin storage services, especially ones that are based offline. There are password retrieval questions, unlike other wallet services where you might have to remember a mnemonic or risk losing your account permanently. (Of course, web-based solutions have faced some criticism that they’re less secure than desktop wallets. ) While Circle feels like its coming a bit late to the party because rivals like Blockchain and Coinbase have roughly 2 million wallets each, it does have a few interesting features. “We created this frictionless ability to on-board and link a bank card for spending,” Allaire said. It’s really easy and fast to add credit cards to Circle. Coinbase, one of Circle’s biggest rivals with backing from Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures, has the ability to connect banking and checking accounts. But its credit card function has a one to two day lag because you have to verify a couple small test charges from the platform. Allaire also insists that there’s still plenty of room for the Bitcoin market to grow. “The actual number of mainstream consumers using Bitcoin for payments versus buying to hold it is in the low hundreds of thousands,” he said. “This is by far the most vibrant and passionate ecosystem that I’ve seen since the mid-1990s, and there’s so much activity.” Circle is also stressing its international profile. It’s available in seven languages. But this is more of an interface element, as the ability to link a bank account exists only in the U.S. Coinbase, in contrast, recently expanded to more than a dozen European countries. They’ve also built an insurance program that will cover 100 percent of a user’s full deposit value through a relationship with Marsh. Another Bitcoin wallet that targets high-net worth crypto-currency investors called Xapo, that’s backed by Benchmark, offers insurance, but it’s for a higher-tier of storage called the vault. Coinbase also offers insurance that covers the average amount of Bitcoin it holds at any time and protects against security breaches or employee theft. Circle is also bringing native and iOS apps soon, which will bring it line with other competitors. |
No, People Are Not Leaving Facebook In Droves For Ello | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | is not the second-coming of Facebook and Facebook users are not leaving the social network giant in droves. How do I know this? Those with a shiny new Ello profile are posting about it on Facebook. Despite the promise of an ad free network and the chance to name yourself whatever you want, people don’t up and leave a network that works for them without some big incentive. Bragging that you got an invite isn’t enough. The drag community may have some incentive to leave at this point. Facebook and has given them a grace period to change their profile pages to their birth names or face profile deletion. But despite that say the LGBT community is somehow leading the charge behind the sudden rise in Ello’s popularity, this simply isn’t true. None of the drag queens I spoke to mentioned they’d be jumping ship. “I think people are using both. As awful as Facebook is, it’s still really hard to quit it,” says popular SF drag queen, Heklina. Another Facebook user posted about his hesitation to leave Facebook as well, saying he was considering it, but that Facebook is where all his friends and family are. Ello is definitely having a moment. It’s now reportedly receiving 40,000 invite requests an hour. Despite this moment, and even with the growth, the site doesn’t currently have the built-in stickiness that other sites have to keep a community coming back. Sure, it’s in beta and as such people shouldn’t expect the site to be perfect, but with that much growth and an endless amount of invites, the site is pretty open for saying it’s in beta. It’s tragic that it’s growing so fast, actually. The actually looks pretty cool. However, most of it isn’t built or doesn’t work well. The search feature should be Ello’s highest priority, especially with this kind of growth. Ello’s UI is pretty janky and makes this feature hard to find. The search option doesn’t work and the site just offers you a bunch of people to follow without any context on why you should follow them. You can’t find your friends, even with their Ello name. Head on over to the Noise section and you’ll get all manner of pictures – including porn. A few dick pics mixed in with some selfies and a cute koala last I looked. There’s currently no way to filter this section or block unwanted pictures. There’s also a glaring privacy problem that could leave the drag community and others vulnerable to internet bullies as well. Drag queen Creatrix Tiara points out that the site, “..does not have any sort of features to block or report individuals, nor any way to consent to being followed.” She says this actually leaves her more vulnerable to abuse, not less. There’s also the possibility of impersonation. A nabbed the Facebook CEO’s profile name and started posting as if it were him. Ello specifically lists “impersonating others” as abusive behavior yet failed to catch this profile and take it down. There’s currently no other way to report this kind of abuse without sending a message to a generic email address listed on the site. Ello’s own warns users that anything they post can be found via search: There’s also the question of how Ello actually plans to make any money without selling ads. Investors will want to know how the site plans to monetize. Ello claims that it plans to . Will it sell ads later on down the road? Perhaps. Or perhaps it will sell your data instead. Ello tells us we are the product being bought and sold on other social networks. However, the site’s privacy policy couches the hint of a future sales feature within a warning that it will sell individual information to third parties. We may share your personal information with third parties under several circumstances, including (1) if you tell us it is OK to do so (2) if we believe that we need to do so by law (3) if we contract with a third party service provider to offer services for you — for example, with a credit card processing company if you decide to buy something through Ello. Security and stability are questionable in this nascent stage as well. Ello has already suffered this weekend. That seems to have stopped after site creators were able to block the IP addresses responsible. Perhaps the creators didn’t mean for the growth to happen this fast and everything will be fixed before it’s “public” launch, but it looks like just another social network that doesn’t have everything Facebook has to offer plus some serious holes for now. Companies have one moment to get things right. Growing this fast with only maybe one-tenth of the all the features actually working could turn people off. Who wants to go back for more when the thing doesn’t work? |
iCloud Is Down For Some | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | It seems Apple’s iCloud woes are not over. The service is down for some users including myself. It’s unreachable from iCloud.com and files and emails are failing to sync. Apple’s reports iCloud and the rest of Apple’s online service as operating normally when iCloud is very clearly not accessible for some. This comes weeks after hackers accessed celebrity iCloud accounts, pilfering personal files and photos. Earlier today on Apple. Some users discovered that when the “Reset all settings” option was selected in iOS 8, all the iWork documents stored in iCloud vanished despite the option explicitly stating that “no data or media will be deleted.” When MacRumors confirmed this claim, they discovered that using the bug also removed files on all Apple devices connected to the iCloud account. As for now, while iCloud is down for some, hopefully no one loses their iPhone or needs to access their documents. Developing… |
Apple Just Patched The Shellshock Bug In OS X | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | Last week, a big, nasty, freakishly widespread bug now dubbed “ ” was discovered hiding in many UNIX-based systems, including OS X. While Apple was quick to proclaim that weren’t susceptible to the bug and that only users who’d tinkered with “advanced settings” needed to act, that doesn’t mean they want to leave the door open even a bit. They’ve just pushed a security patch for the bug, and you probably want to nab it sooner than later. The patch seemingly hasn’t made it into OS X’s built-in software update tool just yet, which just means you have to download it manually for now. Here’s the patch for , for , and for . (The download link is different depending on which version of OS X you’re running, so make sure you’re grabbing the right one.) Alas, it doesn’t look like there’s a patch for those still-in-beta, semi-private builds of OS X Yosemite just yet — the perils of running early release software, I suppose. |
HP Plunges Downmarket With A $99 Windows Tablet, $199 Windows Notebook | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | The race to the bottom is back. Reminiscent of the netbook war of yesteryear, HP just with a $99 tablet along with introducing a $199 Windows notebook. Expect to see these colorful devices at a department superstore near you. HP hasn’t revealed the specs powering these Windows 8 machines. That’s by design and as we’ve said for years, . HP is clearly hoping to sell these devices on price alone although both include one year of Office 365 and 60 minutes of Skype calls each month. The 7-inch costs $99 while the 8-inch is $149 and comes with 200MB of LTE data each month. The 11-inch notebook is $199, and likewise, the 13-inch is $229. These machines are squarely aimed at Chromebooks. Using the familiar Windows brand, Microsoft and its hardware partners such as HP and Toshiba, hope to stem the tide of consumers looking and finding something new in Google’s enticing Chromebook hardware. [gallery ids="1063560,1063561,1063562,1063563,1063559"] |
Fly Or Die: Apple iPhone 6 | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | We’re back with a new episode of and armed with the latest iPhone. Will John and I, longtime Apple users, give the iPhone 6 the green light? Before we get to that, let’s take a look at the new features: The new has a noticeably larger 4.7-inch, 1334 x 750 ppi with 1400:1 contrast, making it one of Apple’s most beautiful mobile displays ever, perhaps rivaled only by big brother the iPhone 6 Plus. Under the hood, you’ll find an A8 64-bit processor, dual-band wifi, 20-band LTE support, and options for 16, 64, or 128 GB of onboard storage. Darrell Etherington, our resident Apple guy, calls the new 8-megapixel iSight camera with 1.5 micron pixels But after a week of actually using the phone, it’s easy to forget about the specs. Sure, the camera is noticeably better, and John is impressed with the extra real estate on the display. But I still haven’t found a way to get used to the size and the slippery edges, a transition that was much easier for the 5s. And John feels as though the true upgrade is to the iPhone 6 Plus. Speaking of, we’ll be hitting you with the iPhone 6 Plus Fly or Die shortly, so stay tuned. |
Burn! | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | We’ve reached Peak Talk About The Bubble. (I in .) And that’s a damn fine thing, since much of the current discussion about burn rates, losses, growth, venture, and the business cycle would have been quite useful a year ago, before a number of companies got even more out to sea. It seems that he Gospel of Growth has had its fever broken, and admitting to losing money and being worried about it is something that CEOs can now do publicly. Adding to the discussion is a by , the CEO of , who disclosed her company’s burn rate — $150,000 to $200,000 per month at a 17 month runway after its last funding event. Morrill’s missive collected commentary from other founders who were willing to share their numbers. Some were higher, some lower, and some not applicable: Good job not losing money, Buffer. At issue with comparative examples is that burns are not equal. Box, for example, burned through several hundred thousand dollars . That’s its cash burn, mind you, not its GAAP loss rate. That makes Mattermark’s burn appear to be little more than a pinprick. But Mattermark has far, less capital, and access to capital than Box, making the situation precisely bananas and kumquats. What that means is that we can’t simply take the data we have, shout “burn!” and then call our work complete. Venture capitalist followed Morrill by publishing an about burn rates, and the question of what is a reasonable level of recurring loss is for a startup. Spoiler: It depends. But he did have two comments that I want to highlight in our current context: “Your value creation must be at least 3x the amount of cash your burning or you’re wasting investor value.” And: * If you have a large amount of cash in the bank + an untapped credit line + a rapidly growing revenue line + large, supportive VCs + a reasonable valuation then you may consider keeping burn rate slightly higher than you might normally as a way of expanding your business while your competitors can’t due to cash limitations. I call this “using your balance sheet as a strategic weapon.” Just know the game you’re playing. Know that if market conditions change you may have to scale back quickly, too. If your costs are mostly variable (ie can be lowered quickly) then you can assume more risks. If your costs are largely fixed (equipment, offices, inventory) then be extra careful. High fixed costs + high debt rates killed many great companies in Dot Com 1.0. What that means is that if you are a Dropbox or a Box or an Uber — a company that is going to eventually have more than $1 billion in revenue — the rules of the game are different than for mortals. Dropbox, for example, , and has a . You couldn’t kill Dropbox inside of a few years if you tried, whatever its burn rate. Your startup is probably pretty killable. In fact, you’re probably actively trying to keep it alive, which is worse. Younger startups are different, which is why Mattermark’s numbers are interesting: We the public get very few looks into startup financials, and when we do, there is a huge bias towards only seeing positive data. (Nexmo, for example, , because their graphs are looking solid and they have cash. I am fully aware that they would go silent if their math suddenly went wonky.) This sums to the following: If you try and mimic the big kids when you are not of the same ilk, you take your burn up too fast, and instead of ‘investing in growth’ you ‘piss away investor capital.’ Saying that out loud, it seems, is now acceptable in the valley. Which is a change. A few years ago I got bored with people building apps telling me that if it didn’t work out, they’d just exit to Facebook or Yahoo or some other giant looking to buy more talent at inflated prices. It was something like startup camp: Everyone gets a medal! Lost in the mix was a lot of foolish venture money that funded small dreamers who lost the farm. A few million here, a few million there. I got bored earlier this year of SaaS people sending me primers on SaaS accounting whenever I fretted about the losses of this company, or that company. It was almost a religious response. I have long taken it to mean that if I pointed out that SaaS Company X was probably losing too much money, other companies with similar, or even worse numbers had to reassure themselves that all was in fact well. Hence the reaction: Tell him he is wrong! CAC/LTV! Payback period! ARR! More like Arr-gh. We’ve reached something of a new era. We’ve gone from, in my short time caring about the technology industry, people saying that revenue doesn’t matter, to people saying that revenue matters, to now, people saying that a balance of revenue growth and more moderate losses is probably the way to go. Who would have thought? |
Scientists “Train” Water To Move On Its Own | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5uKRqJIeSs] In what could be a useful trick for moving chemicals from one point to another, scientists at the University of Southern Denmark and Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague, Czech Republic have created a method to “move” liquids through an alcohol base. While that alone isn’t very cool, just look at the video above: in it you see a small droplet of colored water move towards two droplets of salt, navigating a paper maze on the way. This system could have been the progenitor of biological life, said the researchers. From the : Martin Hanczyc has previously reported that oil droplets display a life-like moving behavior and may be a simple chemical predecessor to biological life. The team believes that the method could help move lubricants from place to place in a complex machine or help deliver medicine, flavors, or coolant to small parts of a machine via circuitous routes. While this is definitely not “smart water,” you can think of it as an easier and more precise way to deliver these droplets to their appointed positions. One thing, however, is certain: I, for one, welcome my wet, alcohol-soaked robotic overlords. |
Snapchat Spam Might Make You Feel Fat, But At Least It’s Not Snapchat’s Fault | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | If you’re receiving messages from your friends on Snapchat that tell you how to lose weight, don’t freak out. It appears that many accounts have been hijacked, though Snapchat denies the spammers accessed accounts through its own system. According , users’ accounts have been hijacked and used to send to other accounts. There’s no word yet on how many accounts have been affected, but people have been complaining about it on Twitter for the past few days. Here’s the official statement from Snapchat, given to : We have seen evidence that hackers who have access to a trove of credentials leaked from other websites, have started using them to gain access to Snapchat accounts. In many instances, our defences have notified the user that their account has been compromised. We recommend using a unique and complex password to access your Snapchat account. In other words, it seems hackers are using the account info that has been leaked from separate hacks (including that affected more than 5 million accounts) to gain access for this spam attack. On New Year’s Eve last year, user names, names and phone numbers of more than were leaked online after a hack by a website called SnapchatDB, which said it released the information because Snapchat had ignored disclosures from the hackers that security on the ephemeral messaging service was lacking. We wanted to minimize spam and abuse that may arise from this release. Our main goal is to raise public awareness on how reckless many internet companies are with user information. It is a secondary goal for them, and that should not be the case. You wouldn’t want to eat at a restaurant that spends millions on decoration, but barely anything on cleanliness. Snapchat’s cavalier attitude towards security is nothing new. The app was not created, to the confusion of many, as a way of beefing up security on your messaging. Ephemerality, from the viewpoint of the Snapchat team, is about living in the moment, not about hiding your secrets. When the company grew to the point that security started to become a question, found a way to lift unopened snaps from a users’ phone. Co-founder Evan Spiegel’s was that there are much easier and less expensive ways to capture those photos, like a screenshot or a photo taken with a separate camera. Now, those kinds of hacks aren’t so cute. Snapchat has grown into a company that has joined the unicorn club, with a valuation that is rumored to be . The stakes are . In this instance, Snapchat isn’t directly responsible for hackers gaining access to user accounts, but Snapchat has been to security issues in the past (namely on New Years Eve). The perception that the company may not be protecting its users may be damaging, especially when you consider that these users generally skew young and might not realize that, in this case, Snapchat actually isn’t directly to blame. Many users have been sent emails informing them that they may have been breached, with instructions on how to set a new password. |
Free Consumer Credit Monitoring Company Credit Karma Raises $75M, Now Valued At Over $1 Billion | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | A consumer-facing credit monitoring startup, , is now worth more than a billion dollars following a new round of funding. The company this morning it has raised an additional $75 million in growth funding from Google Capital, Tiger Global Management, and Susquehanna Growth Equity. The new round comes 8 months after its Series C – a time when Credit Karma’s user base increased by over 50%. the $1 billion+ valuation this morning, and the company confirms it’s accurate. Credit Karma now has 32 million users, which is up from the 20 million it had in February, when it closed its $85 million C round. To date, Credit Karma has raised more than $193.5 million in outside funding, from investors who also include Ribbit Capital, Felicis Ventures, QED Investors, Founders Fund and SV Angel. Based in San Francisco, Credit Karma stands out from a number of consumer-facing startups coming out of the Valley for delivering something of practical value to a majority of Americans. Instead of Snapchat and Whatsapp clones or , the company’s goal is to help users make sense of their financial standing, including their credit scores and how they’re being perceived by credit bureaus for the actions they’re making whether that’s applying for a loan or simply carrying a too-high balance on a card and more. Credit Karma’s website and mobile apps explain the sometimes complicated credit scoring system in layman’s terms, letting consumers know when things are going wrong and what they can do to improve their standing. This summer, the company to their users. Though anyone can retrieve their own credit report for free , or pay a company to pull it for you, many consumers have been sucked in by less-than-scrupulous companies who would offer you a “free” report, but then start charging you monthly for their subscription-based service – terms you apparently agreed to by not reading the fine print. Credit Karma’s reports, and their insights, alerts and recommendations are actually free, however, as the company’s business model is to sell consumers credit products, which are recommended to you based on your financial history, current standing and needs. It doesn’t sell your data or mysteriously sign you up for things you weren’t aware of, but instead makes transparent suggestions for services, loan vehicles, credit cards and more, and you can choose to purchase or not. (I know this to be true as a long-time user who is not randomly charged for things, but who once opted to research one of their suggestions, agreed it made sense for me, and then signed up.) The company says the new funding is being used to “further advance its growth initiatives and ongoing product innovation.” |
Adobe Brings Photoshop For Chromebooks To Its Education Customers | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | For the longest time, pundits said that Google’s initiative wouldn’t amount to much because Chrome OS couldn’t run complex applications like . Those pundits will have to find another example now, because , Photoshop will run on Chrome OS and on Chrome for Windows (if you are an Adobe education customer). This new streaming version of Photoshop will be available first for Adobe with paid Creative Cloud subscriptions. Clearly, the company is using this group as its beta testers for this project and it’s unclear when Adobe plans to launch this to a wider audience. The company is hosting its next week, which would be the ideal staging ground for a wider launch, but that would be an awfully brief beta period. Adobe says the project will be available to its education customers for at least the next six months. , this is the complete version of Photoshop, but it will run in a virtualized environment, so you don’t need to install anything on your local machine. Opening, saving and exporting files is handled by Google Drive. The only thing this version can’t do for now, however, is use any in Photoshop and it also can’t print. Any moderately powerful PC and recent Chromebook from the last two years should be able to run this streaming version of Photoshop, but Adobe recommends a 5 mbps Internet connection, so your AOL dial-up isn’t going to cut it. If you ever lose your connection while you are using the service, your work in progress will be available in a recovery folder on Google Drive. Earlier this year, Adobe launched its , which makes quite a few cloud-based Photoshop features available to mobile developers. This full version of Photoshop for Chrome is based on some very different technologies, but it does show that Adobe is taking the cloud very seriously (and is not just looking at it as a distribution mechanism for its applications). I’ll be interesting to see if Adobe also plans to bring any of over to Photoshop in the browser. Photoshop is a logical first application for Adobe to test this new delivery mechanism. Running a full video editing suite in the browser is a bit harder, but some of Adobe’s other tools like Dreamweaver of even Illustrator could work quite well in the browser, too, but the market for them is likely smaller. |
BlackBerry Is Gonna Get Weird With Smartphone Design At Least Once A Year | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | BlackBerry could be about to become the most interesting company in the smartphone business: The Canadian telecommunications firm will deliver a minimum of one “unconventional device” per year, according to a new , following the launch of the square-screened Passport last week. The Passport is definitely an outlier gadget, with its wide-bodied construction (BlackBerry has come up with the amazing tagline to highlight its significant span) and hardware keyboard, but it’s also the only hardware success BlackBerry has been able to crow about in recent memory. The firm celebrated selling 200,000 of the devices during its launch week, and said the device resulted in a gross profit for its hardware business. 200,000 units in one week is not what one would call a runaway success by the standards of industry leaders like Samsung and Apple, but for BlackBerry, it’s done enough to convince the firm that being the wacky smartphone company might be its best option to stay relevant in an increasingly competitive market. One exec tipped that the next thing we might see is a Passport variant redesigned for better one-handed use, but hopefully it adds something else crazy into the mix. There just might be something to BlackBerry’s new devices strategy: Being the company backed into a corner means it also has the liberty of taking risks. The Passport was clearly a small run device (200,000 resulting in a sell-out means they invested very little in an initial production order) and that means there was likely less riding on it than on the Z10 and Q10, which by all accounts resulted in huge inventory write-downs thanks to excess stock from overzealous production. Reviews for the Passport don’t paint the device as a very good choice for most smartphone users, but BlackBerry doesn’t appear to be concerned with that, at least for this phone. If it continues that tradition with even more eccentric hardware as part and parcel of its yearly update cycle, we could be in for a fun ride, at least until investors push for the shutdown of that part of its business. |
For Those About To Rock The Jamstik, We Salute You | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | MIDI instruments. After messing with the I’ve been looking for the perfect portable MIDI device that allows me to meld my inability to play keyboards with my sub-par guitar skills. Perhaps I’ve finally found my perfect match. We first met the and I’ve been waiting to get my hands on a unit since. The team is finally shipping and they sent me a very early model. While I find that the Jamstik suffers from many of the same problems any MIDI guitar would have – namely a tendency to drop notes and reward good form over sloppy fretting – for an experienced player on the road it could be a real and useful tool. [gallery ids="1063382,1063380,1063379,1063378"] I preface all of my guitar posts with the caveat that I am not a very good player and that I exhibit far more gusto than skill. Therefore my tests are limited in scope and I suspect a real guitarist would have a far better time with this ukulele-sized instrument. With that said, let’s move on. The Jamstik is essentially a stringed instrument that picks up the image of your fingertips on the fretboard. A special cam system allows you to bend notes (with difficulty) and there is even a method to add vibrato. The device connects via Wi-Fi to compatible iOS apps and can plug directly into your computer via USB to recharge the internal battery and connect to MIDI apps. It costs $299 and is shipping now. Who is it for? First it’s a great practice guitar. Although you only get a fraction of the neck, a D-pad on the side allows you to move up and down the octaves and, more importantly, most of the major stuff is going to be situated around a three to four fret range. While you’re not going to be shadowing Santana note for note with this thing, you can at least practice your rhythm guitar. The kit even comes with iOS apps that interact seamlessly with the Jamstick including JamMix, a sequencer/recorder, and JamTutor, a teaching app. It’s also for guitar players who prefer to compose on the fretboard rather than the keyboard. I could see this as an all-purpose way for a dedicated to guitarist to connect, quietly, to her laptop and create songs on the go. If you get good enough at this – and there are people who can get good at this thing – then you have a true multi-instrument in a box that is about as big as a baguette. It’s 16 inches long, supremely portable, and a lot of fun to play. So how does it sound? As I said before, don’t base your decision on my playing. I tried a standard blues lick as well as a G-C-D strum fest and got the following two recordings.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/169873587″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /] [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/169870801″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /] This is what a real player can do: [vimeo http://vimeo.com/106632223] I am still excited about the Jamstik. It’s a compact, usable, and fun musical instrument that works well for beginners and experts. Sadly, folks like me might be frustrated by some of the features and, although latency is a non-issue, the fret sensing for sloppy guitarists might be a deal-breaker. However, once you realize what this truly is – a keyboard you can play like a guitar – then you come to understand how to play the device and get the most out of its sound. It took a while for the Jamstik to hit the market and I’m glad it did. It’s a great little instrument and truly points to an interesting future for the acoustic and electronic musician. It takes a while to get good but, like any instrument, practice makes perfect. |
Mophie’s Samsung Galaxy S5 Juice Pack Gives You Ample Smartphone Life | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | Mophie has a new Juice Pack out, . The case packs a huge 3,000 mAh battery within its glossy shell, which is slightly larger than the 2,850 mAh unit within the Galaxy S5 itself. True, you could carry around a spare battery for the GS5 and pop the back whenever you want more power, but the Mophie’s extra juice is just a switch away, and it includes passthrough charging, which is a lot simpler than changing out internal components. The Mophie comes in a variety of colors, but the review unit I was sent is a glossy white. It’s like the Mophie battery packs you’ve come to know and love, with a curved back ensconcing the ‘baby bump’ of the spare powerhouse. Of note, however, is that this will significantly increase the pocket presence of your GS5, since at its thickest point it more than doubles the depth of the device. It also adds length to the top and bottom of the 4.7-inch smartphone, giving it a physical footprint more akin to that of the new iPhone 6 Plus, but with a much chunkier profile. As you might expect, it also adds weight. But the trade-offs have immediately apparent value: You’ll likely get a full charge from empty from the battery pack, plus or minus a little bit depending. Given Samsung’s already impressive battery life on the GS5, you’ll find that can mean up to three or more full days of battery on a single charge of both the case and phone, which is game-changing when you’re using it on excursions. I’m reluctant to carry around the behemoth that the GS5 plus the Mophie becomes when combined Voltron-style too often, but for special cases like conferences it would be a veritable life-saver. Mophie’s typical commitment to quality shows here, too, with a battery that should last you more cycles than lower cost options from Amazon. Mophie’s accessory will run you $99.95, so it’s worth considering whether you need this kind of gear in your life before laying down some cash, but if you find yourself seeing that red battery icon more often than you’d like, it’s still likely your best, most convenient choice for spare top-ups. |
iOS App Store’s “Trending Searches” Section Shows Evidence Of Gaming | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | A new feature in Apple’s App Store for iOS 8 is a search section which displays – an area meant to highlight the popular apps of the moment. However, from an analysis of the apps which have been appearing on this page since its public debut, it seems some app publishers have already figured out how to game the system for their own ends. To be clear, we can only put forward speculation at this point, based on some odd behavior and sightings which seem to point towards evidence of publishers abusing this feature. But at this point, there’s nothing conclusive we can demonstrate in order to prove anything beyond a shadow of the doubt. (That may be difficult to ever do, though. For example, “proof” of app developers gaming the App Store’s charts is typically seen in odd spikes of download activity – in other words, the proof is in the pudding, as they say.) For starters, and something which you may have also noticed as you hopped into this section since , is that the trending searches are often one-to-one matches with apps in the App Store. In other words, there tend to be more proper app names featured here than generic search terms – things like “free game” or “keyboard app,” for instance. Of course, you might assume that Apple is simply curating this section to remove generic search terms. But is it? At times, generic terms make the list, as “gif keyboard” did recently (see below). Our understanding is that “Trending Searches” is not editorially driven at all. [gallery ids="1063386,1063387,1063385,1063384"] Another oddity, and one that’s more damning, is that, on any given day, at least one or two of the apps on the “trending searches” page are not in the top-ranked list of popular apps. If the list of trending apps is meant to better reflect what people are searching for (i.e., because certain apps are going viral), you would expect to see those popular apps’ names appear in the trending list and the top charts at the same time or soon after. But instead, many of the apps that get featured here are actually quite small and kind of random – something that makes you wonder how they would have ever seen enough users performing searches to get them into this highly visible spot. They would have needed either Apple’s editorial input or they’ve gamed the system. Even if “Trending” is meant to surface the next big app trend before it hits the charts, it’s curious that some of those apps it surfaces would have ever made the cut through organic traffic alone. To illustrate some of the questionable finds, Jai Jaisimha, CEO at , shared with us screenshots of App Store trends over the course of many days. One weird and somewhat obvious example of what appears to be an attempt at gaming the system stands out: a search for the keywords “turbo dismout.” That’s a misspelling of the app’s name, “Turbo Dismount,” which indicates this is not coming from organic search behavior, but rather a targeted campaign of some sort (an ad campaign targeting search results pages instead of the App Store app, perhaps, or bots). We suppose they could have targeted the keywords “turbo dismount” but wanted to be sure no competing app with similar keywords could steal their thunder. That’s probably why they went with the misspelled variation. Appnique’s App Store data and keyword database shows that both apps that use the hidden keyword “dismout” are made by the same publisher, and only one app uses the same combination of keywords in its hidden keyword list, explains Jaisimha. This particular example was easier to catch because of the misspelling, but it could still be an artifact of how the algorithm works. Still, if you’ve been looking through the “trends” list from time since iOS 8’s debut, you’ve probably noticed dozens of questionable titles – apps you’ve never heard of, with no media coverage, that have low rankings and few reviews. Almost every time you go to look at this section, there’s at least one app that seems questionable. For instance, at the time of writing today, I found the trending section currently features a number of what seem to be legitimate searches, including those for NFL apps (Sunday Night football!) and an app called FireChat which is . But how did MyTopFans get in there – an app with only 12 reviews (paid) and 19 (free)? , while another is titled “Crap” and calls it out as “trying to sell other apps.” What’s worse is that this technique seems to work. MyTopFans couldn’t even break into the top 500 in U.S. Entertainment category before being featured here. Today, it’s top 23 in Social Networking. (Note that apps may not be gaming the Trending section directly, but could be buying downloads for the purposes of moving up the charts and landing on the Trending page was a byproduct of those actions.) But the good news is that the jump from “trending” still appears to be small in other cases. For instance, Quizlet, a flashcards and study tools app, has been doing well on its own now that school has started back, and showed no noticeable “bump” in downloads on App Annie’s due to being featured in the App Store trends section on September 23rd. (Jaisimha did find it got a boost in reviews, though. It received 6 reviews the day it was trending, while its top two competitors saw none.) It’s likely that publishers who are attempting to game the system are still just in an experimentation phase today. They’re testing the waters to see what works, and determining whether’s its worth the effort. If the impacts on the App Store charts continue to be inconsequential, there’s hope they will eventually just move on from these gaming attempts, allowing trends to remain organic. |
Cozy Makes Its Rental Management Service Free | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | , a service that makes the rental process easier for landlords and tenants, has made its current feature set available to all clients for free. In , Cozy CEO Gino Zahnd says that making these features free will bring in a wider audience for products set for launch in Q4 2014. Cozy lets landlords and renters handle payments online without dealing with complex scheduling interfaces. It also smooths the rental application and approval processes with profiles that carry from rental to rental and make credit reports readily available when it’s time to handle the background check. Rental management services aren’t usually my thing, but earlier this month a few experiences piqued my interest in the subject. I spent Labor Day weekend in New York, where one friend (followed by several more) explained to me that she still pays for her rent with a physical check she sends to her landlord. When I got back, a letter in the mail from my apartment complex said I’d have to pay with a check because their decade-old software package died and they were figuring out what to do. Having managed to thus far avoid writing a check in the relatively brief period of my life where that means anything, I was kind of shocked at the prevalence of dependency on this outdated method of payment. Checks don’t make life easier for either side of a transaction nowadays! How is this not something that is just automatically set up when a person decides to become a landlord? Willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (or a lot more than that) to be responsible for the place people live, including upkeep and even maybe services, and at no point a person involved though to Google for “free rental software?” |
Microsoft Shakes Up Its Board, Boosts Its Dividend 11% | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | Microsoft has two coming board departures, two board additions, and a boost to its dividend. Leaving the board are Dave Marquardt and Dina Dublon. Marquardt is best known for his work in venture capital, and Dublon for her work at JPMorgan Chase. Taking their places are the appointed Teri List-Stoll from Kraft and Charles Scharf of Visa. I doubt there will be serious opposition to the board changes. If you’re a Microsoft shareholder, it’s time to start doing your homework on what the new blood might bring the software company. Microsoft also announced that its dividend will be increased by 11 percent, or $0.03 to a total of $0.31 per share, per quarter. Before the increase, Microsoft’s stock had a . Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer from Microsoft’s board. |
SwiftKey’s Predictive Keyboard App Is A Free Download On iOS | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | Rejoice, long-time iOS users, for you can finally throw off the — cursing its erratic autocorrect habits for (hopefully) the last time — as you download a third party keyboard adventure of your choice. Yes, at long, last, Apple is opening the floodgates to , with its upgrade — due to start rolling out sometime tomorrow. So, so long ; s’been nice knowing ya! Once you’ve successfully managed to acquire iOS 8, you’ll be spoilt for alternatives to the native iOS keyboard. Because, with Apple firing the developer starting gun back in June at its WWDC event, a tsunami of alternative keyboards are launching iOS apps in tandem — including Android veteran , which is releasing its first system-wide keyboard software app on iOS as a free download. The app will materialize whenever iOS 8 does. Although SwiftKey’s Android app was a paid download for multiple years, the company back in June, backed by a store where users can buy additional themes as in-app purchses. Presumably it’s looking to replicate this monetization model on iOS, although the initial release doesn’t have the store — so for the moment it’s purely a free app. The opportunity to build a new user base on iOS by offering the goods for gratis is clearly too good to miss. “Getting the technology as widely distributed as possible remains the main focus for us,” SwiftKey co-founder and CTO Ben Medlock told TechCrunch. “So looking down the line we may well explore similar business models on iOS to Android, but for now it’s all about making sure we can get as many people using the keyboard as possible.” “We were already pushing into iOS [with and an ] and that’s why when I heard the announcement the first thing I thought of what not ‘oh this allows us to change our strategy’ but this allows us to realize the strategy that we had in a much more compelling way… This now creates a much more unified way of approaching both platforms.” How many iOS users does SwiftKey want to acquire? “All of them,” he jokes, adding: “I’m joking by saying all of them but we’re so focused on how we increase the reach of the product and the technology. This is such a key transition. It opens up a huge and very interesting new market. We’re obviously talking about hundreds of millions of potential new customers.” So why do you, a long time iOS user need to use different keyboard software? Well that depends on how much typing you do. I often find myself typing stories on . On . Like right now in fact. I’m train headed to a briefing, and too busy for a seat so I’m standing up, which means getting out the laptop isn’t an option. But thumbing the touchscreen is. The only is the typing experience isn’t great. It’s a rare iOS user who hasn’t noticed its autocorrect feature seems to have a mind of its own. Hence all the above typos. SwiftKey’s software claims it can do a lot better, because it’s personalized to your writing style . Which means that just because you once typed ‘funeral’ doesn’t mean it will try to turn the word ‘intelligently’ into the world funeral. It looks at your syntax, slang and the context of your message — who you’re talking to, in which digital medium — and uses that to predict the next few words you’re likely to type. SwiftKey’s next word predictions appear above the Qwerty keyboard, much like Apple’s iOS 8 QuickType predictions, in fact. The user can then tap once to input an entire word, rather than having to type the whole word out. SwiftKey’s iOS app also lets you “Flow” rather than tap if you prefer — which means sliding your finger over the keys to form words, instead of henpecking every letter. This input method arguably saves time. It can certainly feel faster, although relying on SwiftKey’s word prediction — so just tapping each correct prediction as they appear — is likely the fastest way to type with this software, assuming the predictions are as mind-reading as SwiftKey claims. (Like any machine learning tech, the algorithm should improve over time, although you can associate your email and social media accounts with your SwiftKey Cloud account so it can parse your personal language archive to get up to speed more quickly). SwiftKey’s iOS app has been in the works since Apple’s surprise keyboard announcement at WWDC, back in June. A UK based dev team (pictured below) built the app in around three months — working out of an appropriated conference room in SwiftKey’s London office as they raced to meet Apple’s iOS 8 release deadline. “We kicked development off that evening [of Apple’s WWDC announcement] — the guys started downloading the developer kit,” said Medlock. “The team’s been in there for the last three months… It’s not a bad way to run a project actually. Having a really tight timeframe. One of the thing’s I learnt in running different engineering teams over the last few years is that the best way to get the most productivity is to have a small team working on a really clear project that they all believe it and can get excited about. Then it’s amazing what people can achieve.” The biggest barrier to SwiftKey ending up on every iOS user’s device is inertia, reckons Medlock. It is actually a multi-step process to change from the default Apple keyboard to third party software, so Cupertino is not making it as easy as it could for users to switch. Add to that, it has given its own keyboard a spit and polish in iOS 8, adding a predictive algorithm of its own (the aforementioned QuickType). “I think we’re very aware that the thing that we’re competing against mostly is the awareness among the average user that you can change the keyboard, and there are other options. How to do it. That’s what we’re really focused on, primarily,” said Medlock. “I think it’s great that there are lots of keyboards. That actually raises awareness. We expect that the same competitors that we have on Android will be doing the same thing as us and that helps to keep us focused.” “The fact that what Apple [with QuickType] has built has echoes of the SwiftKey experience we feel quite flattered by. And you start to see a bit of a convergence of some of these principle across various different platforms. We feel like we’ve been privileged to be able to drive a lot of the thinking behind the way the market’s gone. That’s a nice feeling… The core attributes of our technology, that we really believe in, that we’ve been building for the last five, six years, we think are going to stand out.” He added that SwiftKey’s hope is that momentum will be created for users to download alternative keyboard software exactly because Apple is suddenly taking down a barrier that prevented them doing so before. “What I’m hoping is that on iOS because there’s that clean break it will create some significant momentum around visibility of the changing the keyboard feature,” he noted. However much momentum there is in the short term, there’s no doubt it’s a huge opportunity for SwiftKey — and one it’s aiming to maximize by having no price on its iOS app. As noted above, there’s currently no store in the app, which it recently launched to monetize its Android app after switching to freemium, by selling custom themes. That may come in time. In the meanwhile users get a choice of two (free) themes at launch: Nickle Light and Nickle Dark. “It’s been quite interesting to try and chart the right path, so it feels like SwiftKey on Android but at the same time… we don’t trample over what people know from using the iOS keyboard. So a lot of the positioning of the keys, we’ve worked to make sure that it’s as frictionless as possible if you’re coming from the iOS keyboard,” said Medlock, discussing the design of the iOS app. One neat feature — beyond the keyboard’s predictive smarts — is the punctuation slider (positioned to the right of the space bar) to quickly access certain often used characters, such as the exclamation point and hashtag, by holding down on the key and sliding your finger up to the required character. Much like the accent key feature on the native iOS keyboard. Another feature which Medlock believes will help SwiftKey’s keyboard stand out from what Apple is offering — and indeed the third party keyboard competition — is a multilingual typing feature which supports dual language spelling without having to switch between different keyboards. Two languages can be supported at once, including English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. Medlock added that between a quarter and a third of SwiftKey’s current user-base is multilingual, arguing it’s a strong point of differentiation for such users. “As Brits it’s hard to empathize, because obviously we’re so bad at languages, but if you come from most of the rest of Europe chances are you speak two languages,” he said, adding: “We don’t know what our competitors will launch with but certainly the native iPhone keyboard it’s language by language, and you switch keyboards.” And then of course there is Flow — the finger dragging interface that SwiftKey rival Swype also offers. In the initial iOS app release Flow is not supported for the iPad but does work on iPhone and iPod Touch, which is — in any case — arguably the more useful place for this input method, given the handhelds’ smaller screen sizes. What about the ? Given that was Apple’s big September reveal, I ask Medlock for his thoughts. Does SwiftKey see scope to build an input interface that could work there? It’s not an immediately obviously welcoming environment, given that the wrist-mounted device has no keyboard. And such as dictation, text analysis that generates auto-suggested replies, animated emoji and even doodling as input and comms offerings for watch wearers. “How you do input on wearables is still an open question,” said Medlock. “I think in wearables in general there’s a real temptation — or the danger for the industry is that everybody jumps into doing something that is like the way we do it on smartphones. And I think on the one hand it’s to Apple’s credit that they’ve waited until they felt like they had something that was really worth releasing. “There’s a bit of a similar situation with us, in that we’re looking at wearables and trying to think well what really makes sense here from an input perspective? How are people going to use this in their lives? Does it really add to what they’re doing or is it just another copy of what they already do with their smartphone? The Apple Watch is another chapter in that evolving story. But I think we want to make sure that we’re improving the experience for users, not just creating stuff because it can be created.” |
Apple’s iPhone 6 And 6 Plus Cases Offer Comfort And Light Protection With Few Concessions | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | Apple launched both its new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus today, and along with the new smartphones it also debuted for each. The follow the simple precedent Apple set out when it created the iPhone 5s leather cases: simple, solid color designs that are thin and have no moving parts, yet offer a degree of additional protection to the fit and finish of your devices. The new cases for both iPhone models come in either leather or silicone, with multiple color options for either material. The silicone cases are $35 and $39 respectively for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, while the leather variety will set you back either $45 or $49 depending on if you have the smaller or larger device. I tested out both varieties, on both devices, and found that they do the job of protecting the devices against bumps and scratches, while adding relatively little weight or added thickness. The accessories also serve another purpose: providing a more grippy surface to hold onto when you’re using the phones, which is appreciated given how smooth and rounded the new hardware designs are. [gallery ids="1058940,1058939,1058938,1058937,1058936,1058935,1058934,1058933"] Apple’s choices in terms of colors are also nice, and should provide an option for most tastes. The Mac maker hasn’t always had the best luck in creating accessories and add-on kit for its own gadgets, but in the case of these cases and those for the iPhone 5s that preceded it, they’re now just about the only option I’ll look at in this category (though I generally prefer to go caseless). Judging by the example of my iPhone 5s cases in red and leather, they’ll also age well with continued use. As I mention in my hardware reviews, the industrial design work on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is excellent, so shielding that away even in the interest of preserving it seems like a wrong turn to me, but if you insist, Apple’s options are solid, though the $5 price hike for the 6 Plus options does seem a bit steep of an ask. |
Amazon Has Turned On Carrier Billing For Apps, In Germany With Bango And O2 | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | , the e-commerce giant that recently added to its growing mobile empire, is now turning on another element to bring more users and usage into its mobile business. It will now enable carrier billing, so that when people buy paid apps and make in-app purchases through Amazon’s appstore, they can charge that directly to their phone bills. Working with UK carrier billing company — a relationship that was first announced way back in — the first market to go live is Germany, with Telefonica’s O2, where it will work over the next year to deploy the service on “certain Amazon mobile applications running on Telefonica devices in Germany.” In fact, as of this moment, there is only one device where you can see Amazon’s carrier billing services in action: if you use Amazon services on a Samsung Galaxy Mini that is running on the O2 network in Germany, you can charge app purchases directly to your bill, where the charge is deducted in euros or the euro equivalent of Coins, Amazon’s virtual currency. A screenshot of how it looks is on the right, with a more detailed look of how it appears and is activated in the gallery below. Although it’s taken nearly three years to get Amazon’s first carrier billing service out the door, other expansions may not take as long. For one, right now in Germany, to sell its Fire Phone, Amazon has partnered not with O2, but with rival Deutsche Telekom, owner of T-Mobile. “The Amazon Fire Phone is connected to a contract with Telekom,” on its German Fire Phone page (via Google translation). “ .” In other words, if you are one of Amazon’s newest phone customers in the country — with a phone and its ties to a carrier being the most optimal environment to use carrier billing — at this moment you won’t be able to use carrier billing. If you are an Android user on the O2 network that has turned on Amazon’s appstore, you will. Coincidentally, Bango a carrier billing interconnection deal with Deutsche Telekom in Germany just last month. It had worked with the carrier in other markets already. A number of app store operators have already turned on carrier billing services, and Bango is one of a handful of companies (others include Fortumo and Boku) that enables this. For its part, Bango already works with , , , the , and , as well as directly with content owners to provide carrier billing, integrating with 120 different mobile operators to link up their back-end billing systems to those app stores and apps. Among those, is one of Bango’s biggest customers, so it’s no surprise to see O2 being the first to work with Amazon. (O2 is also the reseller of the Fire Phone in other countries like .) Notably absent in the above list: Apple. The company has made a killing with its own iTunes billing system, with more than , most with credit card data; and is now gearing up for , its new mobile payments system that will include its own payment button widget that can run in apps. But neither of these addresses how Apple might better serve users in emerging markets — which today represent the biggest growth opportunity for smartphone makers after more mature markets like the U.S. have been saturated. In emerging markets around the world, payment card penetration, and often bank account ownership, is a lot lower, so to grow more app business there — and by default your bigger ecosystem as a hardware maker, and of course phone sales — we often see carrier billing get used as a more significant component in the mix. Unlike an Amazon, iTunes or PayPal account, carrier billing can linked up for customers who take phones on contract, but it can also work with a pre-pay subscription, deducting the charge from your topped-up phone credits. This has been part of the opportunity that Bango and Telefonica have been trying to . The logic behind enabling carrier billing is twofold: convenience and security. On the convenience side, the idea is that by offering users the ability to make one-step, small charges to their bills, they are more likely to buy goods when they don’t have to worry about inputting any charging information or thinking about how to pay for what they’re buying. Their phone bill, in effect, becomes like a frictionless new credit line. On the security side, given the many breaches we have seen around user data and credit card information, the idea is that a billing agreement already exists between a carrier and a user, so none of that kind of information needs to get shared again. [gallery columns="2" ids="1059119,1059114,1059120,1059121,1059116,1059117,1059115"] |
iOS 8 Review: Refinements And Relaxed Limitations Add Up For A Better Experience | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | tomorrow, and while it isn’t as overtly dramatic a change as iOS 7 was last year, it’s still a big update with lots of new features and tweaks. Using it on the new iPhone 6 hardware revealed lots to love in the new mobile OS from Apple, some easing of restrictions that could lead to big advantages for third-party apps, and a lot of potential to change the basic mechanics of the iOS ecosystem. Apple’s new Messages app in iOS 8 more closely resembles the various messaging networks that have sprung up, and that’s a very good thing, because it means you get access to some fun features, and as long as you’re chatting with someone who already has an iPhone or iPad capable of running iOS 8, they’re also already on board without any kind of download or sign-up. The new features in Messages include the ability to tap and swipe to send audio and video messages, as well as images. It means fewer steps and less friction than were required in the past, which should mean more use of multimedia in conversations. Best for me has been the ability to mute and leave group conversations, which is something I’ve been sorely missing since the introduction of group iMessage conversations. My family can tend to get pretty chatty on these threads, and while that’s generally fun, it can also be a huge distraction during work events, and during other times when I’d appreciate not getting a whole lot of noise mixed in with my signal. New sharing features mean you can also quickly beam your location to users on specific threads, or to individuals, for time-based sessions, or permanently. This is a better, more useful relocation of the Find My Friends feature that previously lived in a dedicated app, and it really comes in handy when you need to get to where a friend is quickly, in an unfamiliar setting, without having to worry about copy/pasting or typing in specific addresses. Apple’s Photos app improves in iOS 8, with comprehensive searching that lets you find photos and videos by searching for date, time, location, album name and by providing contextual smart search suggestions, like offering to find all the photos you took in a certain place. There’s deeper editing at-hand, too, with manual controls over exposure, brightness, shadows/highlights and more, all with the sliders you might expect to see in something more advanced like Aperture. This isn’t to say that the new Photos overwhelms novice users with too many options – by default, you’ll still only see the automatic enhance button and the app will now automatically correct horizon lines to make even the most rank amateur a better shooter, and advanced editing features are comfortably hidden another level deep. Photos seems more intuitive overall, with one exception that might affect those like myself with multiple devices more than others: it effectively merges all libraries using your account for iCloud photo sharing, making it impossible to drill down and see what was local and what wasn’t. This arguably keeps things simple for people who have an iPad and an iPhone and don’t care about maintaining distinct libraries, but it could be trouble for married couples who share one account strictly for iCloud syncing, for instance. Apple has taken the keyboard that has remained functionally the same since the introduction of the iPhone and done real work on improving the experience. It finally introduced typing predictions in iOS 8, and once you start using them, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without. It also pays attention to how you type when you’re communicating with different contacts and will alter its predictions accordingly. In my experience, this makes for a much improved iOS typing experience, and one that we probably should’ve seen introduced on the platform before now, to be frank. It’ll take a lot more testing to see just how sophisticated Apple’s prediction algorithms really are, but for now, they seem to learn the basics quickly as evidenced by decreased incidence of error over time. The other side of the keyboard coin is that Apple has allowed third-party devs to build their own system-wide keyboard software in addition to improving the stock option. It still isn’t exactly easy to add and enable third-party keyboards; Apple has buried the feature deep in Settings, but that’s by design – it wants to make sure you’re savvy enough to find the feature before you go changing away from the stock option. Even if it’s currently a bit obfuscated, the feature is a very nice addition. It allows you to use software that provides ergonomic benefits over Apple’s own for faster typing, and predictive engines that count on you being very casual about how you enter text, for instance. It can also really help those with visual impairments by giving them additional accessibility options for input beyond what Apple provides as system standard features. Apple’s Health app provides a central place to find fitness data tracked by a variety of sources, including your phone itself, which logs activity recorded by the motion coprocessor, including the M7 from the 5s and the M8 from the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. So far, I’m not getting data from many sources, or sharing it out to any third-party apps (which you can do on a case-by-case basis). But even in its limited current form, the value of Health is apparent. It basically eliminates the need for a standalone health tracking app if you’re interested in basic stats, and once the Apple Watch arrives, it’ll provide much more than a baseline at a glance. Apple could do more to expose the data it does gather in a way that’s digestible for end users, but the intent so far seems to have been to give developers new tools to use to build great apps, so the focus probably isn’t on how much Health can do as a destination at the moment, but rather on what it can provide other software. Apple has made it easier for a user to manage their entire household from a single iTunes account with iOS 8. The Family Sharing feature enables purchase sharing, meaning anyone authorized by the user (via Apple IDs) can download each other’s iTunes music, iBooks and App Store content. You can even create Apple IDs for kids linked to the primary account, and then let them use your stored card for purchases, with an “Ask to Buy” prompt that ensures you approve every choice personally. The Family Sharing feature also keeps a Photo Stream and Calendar synced across member gadgets, and lets you optionally track the location of individual members. Apple’s not doing any DNA testing here, too, so you can easily use this to set up a shared account among your close friends or other grouping, too, if that strikes you as useful. iCloud is no longer just the invisible thread that binds in iOS 8: iCloud Drive is more like Dropbox or Google Drive, giving you a place to store and recall documents and files. It includes cross-platform syncing, so that edits made in one place will populate in another, and makes it possible to load up Drive and click directly on a document to open the most relevant app. Apple has also done its best to make this truly cross-platform, giving users access on iOS, Mac, Windows and the web at iCloud.com. There’s no Android app as of yet, but pigs remain sadly bound to the earth, so that isn’t all that surprising. New Continuity features are designed to make performing even the simplest tasks in iOS 8 not feel locked to a single device – Apple is rewarding those who stay in its ecosystem with a way of seamlessly shifting things like browsing the web, writing email and answering messages and calls between iOS and Mac devices. To get the full effect of this feature, users will have to wait until Yosemite ships (likely next month), but Handoff already lets you do things between iOS 8 devices, so you can start something on your new iPhone 6 and pick it up on your iPad Air. Instant Hotspot is another Continuity feature, and sure enough, it lets me see my iPhone hotspot directly from the Wi-Fi menu list of my iPad, and automatically start the hotspot and connect to it from the tablet, without it having to be enabled on the phone first. Phones running iOS 8 can also now push SMS and voice calls from non-iOS devices to other Macs and iPhones logged in to your iCloud account. This is another one that’s waiting for Yosemite, and since Apple is also launching Apple Pay at that time, it’s probably coming then, possibly with an iOS 8.1 release. New Spotlight search features mean that when you look for something using your phone’s universal search, you’ll get results from additional sources. Most useful, perhaps, are the quick links to Wikipedia results, but you’ll also get website suggestions, App Store options for mobile software, breaking news and local results. This is already one of the better features of iOS 8, even if it’s a small service addition, and it makes your iPhone almost a portable search portal for everything. Just being able to pull down from the Home screen to find what you’re looking for, instead of even having to go through the additional step of opening a browser or the App Store, is a big advantage. Notifications on the lock screen and the notification center were both important evolutions of how Apple lets your iOS device make you aware of new information, but new quick reply features let you interact directly with text, email, calendar, messages and third-party apps without unlocking. It’s a terrific time saver, and in practice it has helped me avoid falling into the trap of unlocking my phone and getting trapped in the Bermuda triangle of Instagram/Twitter/Facebook checking. Extensions should also add to the action, by giving third-party devs a chance to get in on the ‘Today’ view in the Notification tray. These can offer shortcuts to app functionality, like giving you control over your Philips Hue lights with a simple swipe down from top, for instance. These apps will be populating the store tomorrow, to stay tuned for more on how they change the iOS experience. Apple has improved some of its own apps and features, but the improvements to Voice Dictation might be among the most impressive. In iOS 8, it seems to almost read your thoughts in terms of getting your spoken words transcribed correctly, and that’s bound to be useful for those seeking this as an accessibility enhancement, or for those who find themselves driving and messaging a lot. Apple has a lot more coming in the iOS 8 launch, which is set to arrive tomorrow (no specific time specified yet). It’s a particularly exciting release in terms of what it can offer developers, so its real impact will be felt later on – and next month should also change things up considerably with the debut on Continuity on the Mac, and with the introduction of its contactless mobile payments system, Apple Pay, in the U.S. It’ll be a free update for iPhone 4S and up, and the download should announce itself on your device. Expect delays, as the server demand when it does arrive is generally enough to bring down even the most robust data center, but we’ll be sure to let you know when it’s available if you want to be one of the first through the door. |
iPhone 6 Plus Review: The First Truly Well-Designed Big Smartphone | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | not one, but two premium smartphones today, and the iPhone 6 Plus is the one many probably were skeptical even existed just a few short months ago. With a screen size measuring 5.5-inches across the diagonal, it’s well into the territory labeled “phablet” on the ancient sea charts of mariners who’ve braved the Android waters. However, Apple’s version of a smartphone that strains the inclusion of “phone” in any word describing it might surprise even those dead set against the trend toward ever-bigger mobile screens. The iPhone 6 Plus is literally an exaggerated version of the iPhone 6 in terms of its physical design, with dimensions stretched to accommodate its much larger 5.5-inch display. It’s 0.01-inches thicker, just under half-an inch wider, and just under an inch taller than the iPhone 6, and you’ll notice each of those increases in the hand, including the additional thickness, even if it is just a shade of difference. In terms of carrying and holding the device, the additional size makes for a less ‘perfect’ ergonomic quality, something the iPhone 6 definitely achieves, but there’s still lots to love about the industrial design of the 6 Plus. [gallery ids="1058751,1058756,1058755,1058754,1058753,1058752,1058750,1058749,1058748,1058747,1058746,1058744,1058410,1058409,1058411,1058407"] Like the iPhone 6, it benefits from rounded edges and smooth surfaces that recall the iPad mini and iPad Air. The curved sides make it easier to page back and forth through content with swipes, and it’s easy to imagine how a design with right angles would’ve resulted in an uncomfortable grip with a device this size. The screen is also the star here, and that 5.5-inch high res beauty is set off by thin side bezels, and top and bottom bezels that appear much smaller since they take up a far smaller percentage of the overall front surface of the device. Attention to detail is Apple’s forte, and that’s apparent in the way the volume keys, relocated power button (it’s on the right side now) and lock switch are all machined. Perforations including the speaker holes on the bottom right are similarly well-executed, and overall the sense you get of the iPhone 6 Plus is one of extreme high quality, which is not something that can be said for the rest of the ‘phablet’ field. Apple has managed to make the very first well-designed smartphone of epic scale, regardless of your thoughts on the merit of the category as a whole. The iPhone 6 Plus may be powering a much larger display, and it may need to output content at a higher resolution, but it’s not showing any additional strain vs. the iPhone 6 despite the extra legwork required. The 64-bit A8 process that Apple has designed, which uses a new, smaller and more power-efficient 20nm process, is more than up to the task of serving up animations, swipes, switches and multitasking for the 6 Plus. If you’re new to the world of iOS and iPhone, you’ll probably just note that the performance is excellent and move on. But if you’re upgrading from an older device, like perhaps the iPhone 4 or 4S, you’re going to instantly take note of just how speedy everything is with this new processor architecture. The screen sizes are stealing headlines, but the performance of the A8, in graphics-intensive applications and in rendering interface flourishes, means that you’ll be feeling the effects of Apple’s next-generation processor improvements long after people are used to the bigger displays. The iPhone 6 Plus, like the iPhone 6, also features faster wireless performance, on both cellular and Wi-Fi connections. The 802.11ac Wi-Fi felt blazingly fast when used on my home network, which is run from a current-generation Airport Extreme that supports the latest Wi-Fi speeds. LTE is now able to handle up to 150 mbps connections, where supported (and with 20 bands supported on a single model number, you’re more likely to find it works with carriers around the world). Apple has also worked with carriers to get LTE roaming working with more international carrier arrangements, and I found that my AT&T testing sim provided a strong Rogers LTE connection here in Canada. Apple has brought a number of great new features to both the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, including Apple Pay, which works as advertised in demos but will launch publicly in October in the U.S., and ‘Focus Pixels’ phase detection autofocus for faster, better picture taking. But there are a few featues that are specific to the iPhone 6 Plus that make it a device destined to appeal to both power users and everyday customers looking to simplify their life with a single gadget, instead of requiring both a tablet and phone (and even a computer). Reachability is the feature Apple created to help users deal with much larger devices, regardless of the size of their hands and digits. The iPhone 6 Plus leans on this especially, as it’s impossible for anyone not in the NBA to reach their thumb across to the top opposite corner. I find it difficult to even reach across the other side of the screen, let alone the corner, when one-handing the device. Reachability helps reach the stuff that’s in the top row, but it doesn’t bring down the status bar on the Home screen (it does in app), which would be helpful, and it’s still a stretch to reach the relocated opposite corner. For most tasks, I find the iPhone 6 Plus to be a two-handed device – but I also find that I’m absolutely fine with that. The 6 Plus is closer in usage style to an iPad mini, in my experience, albeit one that’s pocketable and capable of full cellular voice communications. Part of the reason that it works so well as a tablet-style gadget is that Apple has introduced special landscape support for both the homescreen and some its first-party apps, which really add to my ability to be productive using them. The apps in question include Mail, Messages and Calendar, and these now offer up overviews in a column on the left, and detail views on the right, much like they do on tablet or desktop devices. In Mail, it lets you quickly scroll through and triage your email without having to constantly swipe back and forth, and in Messages, it lets you keep abreast of the latest goings on in multiple conversations at once. Using these landscape views effectively almost requires two-handed use, but it ends up feeling well worth the trade-off. Apple has also introduced new optical image stabilization for still pictures to the iPhone 6 Plus, and the effects are very impressive. That’s something I’ll address in greater detail in the ‘Camera’ section below. The new Slow-Mo function captures action slowed down even further than before, and as you can see in the demo video above, that makes for some fun results. In particular, if you pay attention to the moments when Chelsea licks her lips in the video above, you can see just how good the new video feature is at capturing even blink-of-an-eye action in painstaking detail.
The iPhone 6 Plus has the best screen of any iPhone. It’s above that of either the iPhone 6 or 5s in terms of pixel density, and it’s capable of playing back full HD content in native resolution. The improved contrast and color rendering Apple has also worked into its screen tech is also even more obvious here than it is on the iPhone 6, and that results in a display that’s perfect for viewing photos or watching movies, as well as for showing off well-designed apps and software. By the numbers, the iPhone 6 Plus’ display offers 88 percent more viewing area that the iPhone 5s, but at a cost of just 55 percent more volume. That means that while it’s very big, it’s not nearly as gigantic as if they’d just increased the proportions of the 5s. The screen trade-offs have real benefits for certain kinds of users beyond just enabling landscape mode, too – with Display Zoom, all interface elements suddenly become easier to read even for those with age-related vision loss, and that’s going to be a big selling point. I showed my mother both phones and she was instantly drawn to the larger display of the 6 Plus. For these users, too, the 6 Plus can represent a single-device computing solution; it replicates much of the functionality of a tablet, with additional portability, and if you don’t do much beyond browsing the web, or interacting with the rich field of current apps, you’ll be better-served by this with its always-on connectivity than you would by even the combo of a smaller phone and a Chromebook, for instance. Apple’s other big selling point here, besides the advantages of a larger display, is the improved camera. Thanks to extra space inside the iPhone 6 Plus, it managed to fit in an optical image stabilization module, which can actually shift the camera lens around both vertically and horizontally to capture a clear image free of the camera shake that can afflict photos taken freehand. And the optical stabilization, in addition to the software-based stabilization Apple already uses in its iPhone camera, results in a photo-taking experience like no other.
As you can see, it works great both indoors and out, and produces some of the best looking low light photos I’ve seen out of a mobile device. The iPhone 6 Plus image stabilization results in pictures that look crisp even when captured casually, and Apple’s new autofocus tricks mean there’s almost no waiting before a scene is properly focused and exposed, with as little manual intervention as possible. You can still manually adjust the point of focus and exposure, but the camera is smart enough that in most cases, you shouldn’t have to. Apple’s video recording stabilization means you can stroll and shoot with results that aren’t debilitating to watch, and that’s a big plus. The optical image stabilization works for still images only, but software-based anti-shake is in action in the clip above, and it helps make the iPhone’s movie capture another highlight of the overall camera package. The iPhone 6 Plus has another trick up its sleeve, aside from the optical image stabilization and the landscape orientation bonuses: Better battery life. The improved powerhouse on the 6 Plus affords it a full 10 hours more talk time compared to the iPhone 6, plus an additional 6 days of standby time (16 in total), as well as 2 more hours of browsing on 3G and LTE. It’s a trick that, with mixed use, resulted in at least a full day of extra use over the iPhone 6 in my testing, which could stretch to even longer if I used it only sparingly. During one cycle, where I used my phone only a few times a day to check calls, weather and messages, I got over three days of standby time and nearly 11 hours of use. This alone might be enough reason to get people to opt for the 6 Plus over the 6, and it definitely helps increase the overall appeal of Apple’s big phone. Accustomed as I am to using my phone during the day and plugging it in when I get home in the evening, however, it’s not as great of concern – but already there have been a few times when an extended lack of readily available outlets have shown the merits of the 6 Plus and its capacious power core.
The iPhone 6 is still the best smartphone for your money in my opinion, owing mostly to the fact that the majority of people are going to feel most comfortable using a smaller device as their daily companion of choice. But the iPhone 6 Plus surprised me: I went into this review expecting to find it was a niche gadget, reserved for those seeking the absolute top-of-the-line, convenience be damned. Instead, I found myself getting strangely comfortable with a phone I still find difficult to use one-handed. In short, the 6 is my favorite current smartphone, but the 6 Plus is its closest competition. I suspect we’ll see the trade-offs Apple has made in building a phone on this scale downplayed further by the introduction of the Apple Watch next year, as it means the iPhone 6 Plus can stay in the pocket for small things like seeing a message or figuring out why it just vibrated to indicate some kind of inbound notification. Even know, it’s a device well worth your consideration, and if you’re thinking about which to purchase, you should consider how much you value: 1) The ability to more easily manage communications from your pocket; 2) Having energy reserves at the end of the day; 3) Putting the best possible mobile camera in your pocket; or 4) Replacing up to three devices with just one for casual users. If you rate any of these things as high priority, then the 6 Plus might be the better choice. |
Codenamed “Moments”, Facebook Has Built An App For Super-Private Sharing | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | Facebook has failed repeatedly to get us to use complicated lists and privacy settings to share intimate moments with just our closest friends and family. It’s clumsy and confusing doing that with the same composer for blasting News Feed updates to everyone. But now Facebook is polishing off a new app codenamed “Moments” designed to make this micro-sharing much simpler, multiple sources tell TechCrunch, including one who has seen a live internal version of the app. The product is currently being “dogfooded” by Facebook employees to test its functionality and squash bugs. The current design features a grid with a few tiles, each which represent a set of close friends or family. Users can tap one of these to quickly share with just them. The goal is to make selective sharing to different sets of people much faster than the main Facebook app, which focuses foremost on content rather than audience. It’s important to note that Facebook occasionally never launches products that it’s built. For example, a different source says Facebook recently scrapped a calendar-esque product around events. It’s possible that Moments gets held back, overhauled, or given a new name before launch. When reached for comment, Facebook replied with its standard “We do not comment on rumors or speculation.” But the app does exist. One source who’s seen Facebook Moments likened it to this app Cluster Our source who’s seen Moments likened it to the , which lets people create safe “spaces” for sharing content with small groups of people like family, best friends, high school buddies, or co-workers. Moments will similarly let people share to different subsets of their total friend list using a more visual design. This should be more comfortable for people than the tiny text-based privacy selector on their News Feed composer which relies on little-used Friend Lists. Moments could help people who’ve: Back in 2010, Mark Zuckerberg revealed that only , indicating it hadn’t found a design that made more granular privacy controls comprehensible. In an effort to rectify that, in 2011 , automatically creating lists of your family, co-workers, and local friends, plus letting you set up lists of more distant Acquaintances you want to see less of, and Close Friends whose posts you don’t want to miss. Facebook could potentially auto-populate Moments with some of these lists. It’s unclear whether Moments will integrate with Facebook Groups, but there are already , and a standalone app could make posting to them much easier. When I spoke with Zuckerberg last year about what standalone apps were on the way, he hinted Groups could get unbundled. He explained on stage during our interview that “…if you have something like Groups, it’s always going to be kind of second-class in the main Facebook app, or even messaging for that matter. In order to make these things really be able to reach their full potential, I do think over time we’re going to have to create more specific experiences.” Instead of having to open the main Facebook app, click More, and then scroll down and find the little text title for the group you want to post to, perhaps Moments could give you rapid access. Moments should remind you of Path, which also aimed to get you to share more to fewer people — your real friends and family. But Path’s model of creating an entirely new social graph from scratch hasn’t won it much traction in the U.S. Path’s stateside userbase was concentrated around early adopters and Silicon Valley types, so it was missing the people most of us would want to share intimate moments with, like when we went to sleep. As soon as you accept Path requests from acquaintances, . Moments could be easier to use because it merely needs you to carve out subsets of the connections you already have on Facebook. The social network has also reached ubiquity, which means you’ll likely be able to pick from your closest friends and family members when choosing who to share with on Moments because they’re already on Facebook. Moments holds big potential for Facebook if it can buck the trend of its last few standalone apps Paper and Slingshot, which found some loyal users but have been largely ignored by the mainstream user base. Moments will have to provide obvious, instant value far beyond the main Facebook app to get big. But even if it doesn’t reach widespread popularity, encouraging more frequent sharing of different types of content is valuable to Facebook even on a small scale. That’s why Moments could be what makes come true. Here Zuckerberg describes his theory of why sharing is growing exponentially. — something that it’s been a bit shaky on. Yet the more people who trust that they can safely share sensitive content to specific people without others seeing it, the wider the range of content they’re willing to post, the more engagement time and ad targeting data Facebook has to monetize, and the better it can fulfill its mission. two years ago, “Not only will you share a wider variety of content more frequently if you share to small sets of friends, but sensitive content and anything you explicitly pick the audience for is almost sure to be more interesting to those people than the average post. Adoption will be an uphill battle for Facebook, as many don’t think it even cares about privacy. Worst-case, it flops, and . But if Moments can make our online identities prismatic, where different audiences see different sides of us, the amount we share each year may continue to double, just as Zuckerberg foretold. |
Zero To One: How Blake Masters Went From Being Peter Thiel’s Student To Co-Author | Billy Gallagher | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | In the spring of 2012, Peter Thiel taught a class called CS 183: Startup, at Stanford. One of the students in Thiel’s class, Blake Masters, posted detailed notes on his personal blog that became an instant hit in the tech community. Now, Masters and Thiel have transformed those class notes into a book: “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.” This fall, Y Combinator is called CS 183B, and it features Thiel as a guest speaker. What follows is a lightly edited excerpt of a conversation with Masters about Peter Thiel’s startup class, and how he went from being Thiel’s student to co-author. Blake Masters: The CS 183 class that I took the notes in was actually not the first class I took with Peter…I met him first in January 2011. This class was just at the law school, but a small seminar… after like four or five classes you realize here’s a guy who’s thought a lot about different stuff. [ He was an informal mentor at that point. In January or February 2012, my last year at law school, we were emailing back and forth, and [Thiel] says, “Oh by the way, I’m teaching a class in the spring. If you can take it, it’s all about what I know about startups.” I didn’t take any notes in the first class. I didn’t want to make that same mistake. Masters: Right away there was a lot of energy in the room. Stanford is becoming such a — not a trade school for tech companies, I think that’s overblown — but you can tell it’s in Silicon valley. The room is totally full. Everyone’s excited. I felt like there was an unusual intensity in the room. And I go, “Okay, I have my raw chicken scratch notes, why don’t I just polish them up into an essay so that I can use this later?” Masters: I don’t know if the first one hit the front page of or if that was the second class, but people started emailing me about it. I was pretty surprised — not because it wasn’t good content. I guess I was surprised at how many people were interested given that it was being filtered through a random student. People clearly want to know what Peter has to say. There was never any one place where you could go and read all his thoughts. People could see this project that all of a sudden offered a coherent and complete or near complete set of Peter’s thoughts on entrepreneurship. Masters: There was definitely a multi-month period where we were looking at how many people continued to engage with the notes. It wasn’t immediately obvious that we would make a book out of it. I started seeing all these fake PDF versions. One guy even tried to charge for them. I started thinking: could we sort of edit the notes, professionally set them, add custom graphics, basically just make an e-book as an indie side project? We talked it through; it didn’t really feel right. When we revisited the idea, it felt like everybody who was going to find out about the notes already had, and yet you need a lot more people to really get these ideas where we wanted them to go. We sort of agreed to explore the book project. The notes were great for what they are, but Peter’s always been a big reader, and books really help him organize his thinking. The whole reason he taught the class is he wanted to get these ideas out; the exercise of going through and trying to crystalize everything into one curriculum made it much tighter. And the book is the next verison of that [tightening]. Masters: I think if you read the notes, to their credit, I think you can get some good ideas. But the clear prose of the book gives you direct access to the thought the author is trying to communicate. The book has to be like half the words, literally. So if you’re interested in what Peter Thiel thinks about business and want to profit from his sustained thinking, the book has more care and time and energy in it. Masters: I’ve enjoyed being able to help get these ideas out. I definitely know that the book is not going to last forever; at the same time, I don’t want it to be transactional where I do three weeks of touring and talking, and then it’s done. Because I suspect there’s a lot more to do with this stuff. I have startup ideas but they’re half baked. Broadly speaking, I’m interested obviously in startups, investing in startups, and actually running them. |
NASA Partners With Boeing And SpaceX To Send Astronauts Up In Space Taxis | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | NASA has to build space taxis to shuttle astronauts to the International Space Station. This deal will end NASA’s reliance on expensive Russian crew transport by 2017. The cost was a whopping $71 million per seat. However, the rising tensions in Ukraine may have also been a factor in the push for U.S. contracts. It’s still not clear which company is going to get to command the first mission to carry humans into low-Earth orbit on a spacecraft, but according to NASA, the vehicles chosen will either be CST-100 or Dragon. The total potential contract value is $4.2 billion for Boeing and $2.6 billion for SpaceX. NASA also considered a bid from privately owned Sierra Nevada Corp. but went with Boeing and SpaceX instead. It should be noted that Boeing and SpaceX have won most of NASA’s development funds. SpaceX already has a $1.3 billion NASA contract to fly cargo to the space station. SpaceX will now upgrade its freighter and is expected to launch on top of the company’s rocket to the orbiting outpost , according to Space.com. It will be packed with more than 5,000 lbs of materials for the crew – including the first ever 3D printer in space. NASA also has a $1.9 billion contract for resupply missions with . Here’s a video of what could potentially be the first ever space taxi, the SpaceX Dragon, for reference:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAVHtSDNtCQ&w=560&h=315] And here’s one for the Boeing CST-100:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuwPdH6UChc&w=560&h=315] |
iPhone 6 Review: Meet The New Best Smartphone | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | new iPhones debuting today, including the iPhone 6. The iPhone 6 is the heir apparent to the flagship line of Apple smartphones, as it comes in at the same price point as the iPhone 5s, but Apple has done something new this year by introducing a premium priced iPhone 6 Plus. The iPhone 6 is still plenty premium, however, and its 4.7-inch screen is likely going to be a better fit for most users, which is why it earns our vote as the best smartphone currently available. Apple has outdone itself with the iPhone 6’s design – despite gaining a significant amount of screen real estate, it doesn’t feel huge compared to its predecessor, and it’s still a very easy device to use one-handed. The new, thinner case means it weighs just over half an ounce more than the iPhone 5s, and the even weight distribution across a broader surface area means it isn’t noticeably heavier than the older phone. It manages to make the 5 and 5s feel downright chunky, in fact, which is incredible. [gallery ids="1058426,1058425,1058424,1058423,1058422,1058421,1058420,1058419,1058418,1058417,1058416,1058415,1058414,1058413,1058412,1058411,1058410,1058409,1058408,1058407"] New also to this generation is the all-metal back casing, which replaces the glass top and bottom panels with thin connecting seams instead. This makes for a more unified look when you turn the phone around, and something that gets closer to the unbroken single plane of the iPad mini and iPad Air’s rear shell. The Space Gray version I tested benefits very much from this unbroken look, and the front of the device is no less impressive. It really makes the screen the star, which is crucial because Apple has created a display like no other with this generation, beating back its would-be Android usurpers – but I’ll touch more on that in the dedicated display section below. The iPhone 6 is a much more comfortable device to hold vs. the iPhone 4, 4S, 5 and 5s, all of which preferred straight edges and right angles to the 6’s sloping curves. Its rounded edges call to mind the iPhone 3GS and earlier, in fact – and its closest design analogue might be the metal-backed original iPhone, which also had edges that rounded to a flat rear shell. Regardless of its inspirations, it fits more naturally in your grip, and will rest there more comfortably for longer periods, too. The rounded edges all along the display help contribute to the near-seamless look that Apple was going for, but they also serve an ergonomic purpose. Using Apple’s swipe-back and swipe-forward gestures, which it began to use to replace back and forward button navigations in iOS 7, is much easier and more natural with the iPhone’s new front glass design, and when the device’s screen is darkened, these catch and bend light in a way that’s sure to appeal to a design fan’s eye. If Apple has faltered anywhere with design, it might be that protruding iSight camera lens on the back, which sticks out a tiny fraction of an inch thicker than the rest. It’s something that hasn’t yet caused me any issue in daily use, but it does seem like a potential area for grit build-up, and it also means that the phone will be resting on its lens when placed face-up on a flat surface – though that’s somewhat mitigated by the use of sapphire in the lens cover. Apple’s new A8 chip is the powerhouse behind the iPhone 6, and it delivers the kind of performance you’d expect from cutting edge processor technology. The A8 strains the limits of what you’d think was possible in terms of overall device speed and responsiveness, with the entire user experience feeling perceptibly quickened. It’s one of those situations where you don’t realize how the device you were using (iPhone 5s in my case) could get any better in terms of general speed, until you pick up the new device. The iPhone 6 deals better with iOS 8’s various animations, transparency and other visual effects as a result, and can handle powering that larger, high-resolution display without breaking a sweat. It can handle more powerful games, and best of all, delivers better battery life even when tackling visually intensive tasks. Plus it enables new imaging features that really make Apple’s mobile camera far and away the best in the business, which we’ll discuss in more detail below. Apple has also improved the motion coprocessor it introduced last year, which is a dedicated activity tracking chip. The M8 in the iPhone 6 offers continuous monitoring of not only accelerometer, compass and gyroscope data, but also introduces monitoring of information fed from the new barometer for determining changes in elevation. The M8 can also detect walking, running and driving activity. In practice, using it to monitor and display my daily distance travelled, steps and flights climbed worked extremely well, and didn’t seem to have a significant negative effect on my battery. One of the big new features of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is their ability to use Touch ID, the new Secure Element for storing payment info, and NFC to perform easy, contactless payments. They’re not currently available for use anywhere in my vicinity, and Apple isn’t launching the Apple Pay functionality until October anyway. However, I got the chance to see it in action in a demo capacity at the event, and it works just as you’d expect it would with payments authorized via a thumb scan in the same way they are with the current method of authorizing digital purchases from iTunes via Touch ID. You don’t even need to unlock your device for it to work, making it potentially the most convenient mobile payment solution I’ve ever seen. Speaking of Touch ID, it seems improved over the version found in the iPhone 5s. By that I mean that it seems to recognize and unlock much faster (which could be related to improved processing power) and it also seems to have a lower failure rate than the older generation. If Apple has stepped up the tech behind Touch ID, it isn’t saying so, but the smoother experience should definitely help now that it’s being used for both Apple Pay and opening up to third-party developer integration. Health is new to iOS 8, and in the iPhone 6 it’s already become a staple of my daily app check routine. It seems to do a decent job of accurately tracking my activity throughout the day (or lack thereof), and is at least on par with the kind of information you’ll get from wearables like the Fitbit line or the Nike+ Fuelband. So far, there aren’t many sources to choose from in terms of filling out a full profile, and I think Apple could do some work in terms of making it easier for users to drill down to individual day totals from their activity history, but this is a nice, passive feature that Apple has managed to make power efficient and accurate with the new M8. Apple’s new iPhone line is capable of improved slow motion video, which technically means it can shoot at 240fps instead of 120fps. This slows down time when played back at the speed we’re used to viewing, and makes it possible to capture even fast action in incredible detail. The short clip below shows you this in action, albeit with resolution decreased as it was formatted and shared via Apple Mail, which automatically optimizes for a lower file size. Reachability is a feature unique to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus which is designed to help compensate for their large screen sizes, and make it possible to still use the big phones one-handed, regardless of how large your mitts are. On the iPhone 6, it simply makes things more convenient, as I’ve found no difficulty in using the device one-handed even with the screen in its regular position. Reachability is an extremely pragmatic solution to the screen size issues, but luckily in the case of the iPhone 6, it’s generally just a tool you know is there should you need it, rather than something you’ll find yourself actually using all that often. The iPhone 6 packs a higher resolution display than the iPhone 5s, with 1334 x 750 resolution. It also allows for deeper blacks, and uses something called “dual-domain” pixels to make it so that colors still show true regardless of the angle at which you view the phone. It makes for 38 percent more viewing area than the iPhone 5s, but it’s only 13 percent larger overall, and it matches the iPhone 5s’ pixel density at 326, which means you’re still not going to be able to make out any individual pixels. Display Zoom will let you use this extra space to simply expand the size of individual interface elements and text, which is great for users who have vision issues or who simply find themselves squinting at their phone too often. If you’re not using Display Zoom, you get more breathing room for on-screen elements, and you get an extra row of icons per home screen, which is very useful if you’re having trouble deciding what makes the cut for page number one. This is truly one of Apple’s most amazing technical achievements overall – it looks like a placeholder high-res print image placed expertly just behind the glass, until it springs to life. Leave it to other manufacturers to debate the relative merits of this or that kind of display tech; Apple’s is simply the best-looking and most pleasant to use, and the iPhone 6 reaffirms that with some of the best color rendering I’ve seen on mobile. Apple has consistently delivered the best mobile camera experience in a smartphone – which isn’t to say it delivers the most megapixels, or the most trick features. Instead, the company looks at what’s most important in a mobile camera to most users, and delivers exactly that, again and again. The iPhone 6 adheres to this tradition. It still shoots 8 megapixel resolution images, which is paltry compared to some of the other cameras built into phones these days. But these are large pixel images, which makes a big difference, and the 6 also boasts the power of Focus Pixels, which is the name Apple is giving to its new phase detection autofocus. The end effect, whatever the name, is much faster autofocus, which Apple has made more invisible by hiding the focus box unless you call it up yourself.
The camera also has better and more accurate face detection, which can pick up smaller faces and is also better able to pick up closed eyes and smiles when you’re using burst mode and it’s trying to suss out the best capture from a large series. The camera can also now create high-resolution panorama shots, which adjust exposure automatically as you go depending on variances in light, producing stunning results with total resolution of up to 43 megapixels. Video capture on Apple’s iPhone 6 is also fantastic, and the stabilization techniques they use to make video shot in even the shakiest scenarios appear more stable are truly impressive, as you can see in the video sample below, which was shot while I walked my dog (with no effort to achieve a smooth gait). The iPhone 6 uses improved battery tech, and it shows – in practice, I’d get about a day and a half, normal use. Overall, though, it’s rated by Apple pretty closely on most scores when compared to the 5s, offering similar hour ratings when it comes to media playback, browsing and standby, but claiming an additional four hours of talk time. In actual real-world use, it fared better than my iPhone 5s in terms of operating time on a single charge, but the iPhone 5s I was testing against is also a year old at this point. Still, it doesn’t feel like you need to be miserly with respect to power when you’re using the iPhone 6, and even if you’re using all the background activity tracking bells and whistles, it should more than get you through the average day with juice intact. The iPhone 6 is the best smartphone available. It offers improvements in almost every way that matters, and it delivers those in a striking new design that balances consumer demand for larger screens with a thin, light and durable case. It’s Apple’s most attractive phone, visually, and the 4.7-inch size is going to be more generally appealing than the iPhone 6 Plus’ larger proportions. More than anything, the selling point here is that Apple has managed to recapture the energy and excitement that came with the original iPhone with the new iPhone 6. It feels like a return to form in all the right ways, in addition to packing a ton of new features like Apple Pay that light the path for what Apple as a company is to become. For users, though, it’s all about delivering the best computer you can keep in your pocket, and that’s exactly what the iPhone 6 is. |
Our Four Favorite Startups From The StartX Summer 2014 Demo Day | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | , the Stanford-funded and affiliated incubator, just held the first demo day at its new Palo Alto-based office space. In an hour, 12 startups pitched their wares to investors and the press, showing products and services that range from a dating service for Chinese ex-pats to zoom lenses for next-gen smartphones. In no particular order, these are the four startups that made our ears perk up during their presentations: – A mobile platform for teachers to use in the classroom. Rather than require teachers to mash a bunch of tools together to work with their school’s IT setup, Nearpod makes it easy to distribute presentations to whatever platforms students happen to have available. The startup notes that more than 2,000+ presentations are available on the platform, and teachers are already using it to show them to more than 5,000,000 students. – Captures business voice communication, transcribes with high fidelity, and pulls out important facts. For anyone who has seen Google Voice try to transcribe voicemail, this will be extremely impressive to pull off at the scale where large enterprises can trust it for keeping records. – Fixing medical records for cancer patients: Give them your doctors’ names, they collect records, organize and clean it up into a timeline, and handle keeping that day up to date for each physician. Starting with cancer patients, of which there are 14 million in the United States, the company is hoping to push medical records from simply being digitized on each doctor’s computer to actually being accessible for those who need to see them when it matters. – Captures stethoscope readings as audio data that can be stored and sent between physicians. They’ve even created an add-on for traditional stethoscopes that allows doctors to make their analog devices capable of sending data. |
null | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 9 | 29 | null |
The FCC Received 3.7 Million Net Neutrality Comments | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | And lo, the final tally: As of Monday night, the FCC had received a total of “approximately” 3.7 million comments on its notice of proposed rule-making concerning and the open Internet. That’s quite a haul. When the tally crossed the 1 million mark, it . After breaking the 1.1 million mark in its first comment period, the public beat my expectations and managed a massive, cresting explosion of discourse, and more than tripled the total comments submitted. (Shout-out to TechCrunch’s now former intern who downplayed my fretting at the , and who correctly surmised that a second surge might occur near the end of the second comment period.) Today also marked the start of the FCC’s set of roundtables concerning net neutrality. I tuned in throughout the day, and while I enjoyed the arguments, a lack of technical people in the general discourse was disappointing. Also, I am not sure that a single mind was changed. That said, the FCC’s Chairman and its Special Counsel for External Affairs were . It’s a long slog, frankly, to spend a day listening to people pontificate in the flesh about the proper definition of “reasonable network management.” A number of other round tables are planned. Discourse on the issue has therefore not ceased, even if the public comment period is now behind us. |
Researchers Create A Kindle eBook That Can Hack Your Amazon Account | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | A fairly nasty flaw – the ability to run a script in the title text of an eBook – could compromise the security of your Amazon account. The flaw, which reappeared recently after being patched in October, allows hackers to embed programs right into an eBook file that run when the book is examined via Amazon’s Kindle tools. It seems to be closed as of this writing but it can still affect apps and other websites. The hack compromised the “Manage Your Content and Devices” and “Manage your Kindle” pages in the Kindle store. You can read about the exploit but, in short, it involves injecting a line like “” into a book title. When the book is examined on these pages, the script is run and the attendant cookies can be read and maliciously modified. While most legitimate ebooks are safe, hackers could use this to target pirates. Writes researcher Benjamin Daniel Mussler: The Kindle reads .mobi files, a popular format for pirated (and legitimate) ebooks. It does not affect Amazon’s own specially formatted .azw files. Mussler includes a proof-of-concept file that made your Kindle account page throw a number of pop-up windows. It appears the hack no longer works with the demo document – I sent it to myself twice – but there are a number of screenshots suggesting that the exploit is active. While this vulnerability is most probably innocuous at this point, the hack could trick other services and other apps down the line. Be wary, then, downloading pirated or home-brew ebooks. |
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