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Time Spent In Apps Up 21% Over Last Year | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | While there may be as to how many apps people interact with over the course of a month, from mobile marketing platform Localytics out this morning shows that the time spent actually using apps is increasing. In fact, the average time people spend in their apps is up by 21% year-over-year, with music, health and fitness, and social apps showing the largest increases. The new study was based on data from Localytics’ customer base, which includes 28,000 applications installed across 1.5 billion devices. For these findings, which cover August 2013 to August 2014, the company says it multiplied the average sessions per user in app by the average session length across all apps, and then broke it down by category. The data also backs up what we’ve already heard from other sources. For instance, Nielsen recently consumers were now spending an average of 30+ hours per month, and had an average of 26.8 apps installed on their mobile devices, as of Q4 2013. And comScore in August that the majority of our digital media consumption is now taking place in apps, accounting for 52% of the time U.S. consumers now spend with digital media. Localytics reports today that users are opening up an app on average 11.5 times per month, up from 9.4 a year ago, while app session lengths remain constant at 5.7 minutes. Music apps have seen the greatest time spent in app increases, up 79% over a year ago, while health and fitness apps (51% increase) and social networking apps (49% increase) followed. The study says these shifts have a number of contributing factors. For example, the move away from iTunes to music apps like SoundCloud and iHeartRadio has changed consumer behavior, while mobile device hardware improvements have made them better health devices, prompting the increase in that category. Meanwhile, social networking apps continue to see what the firm dubs “snacking” behavior, meaning it exhibits the highest number of app launches but the lowest session length. Localytics’ goal in releasing this data is to remind app publishers and marketers that time spent in apps – the session length and number of app launches, that is – are metrics that also matter. After all, there was a bit of a hubbub earlier this year after comScore found that users simply weren’t downloading that many apps – the average smartphone user downloads 3 apps per month, it had said. The bigger picture here is that while most users may not feel the need to constantly download and try new applications, they do spent a lot of time in those they already have installed. |
Citrix Acquires Virtual, An Android And iOS Virtualization Company | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | We’re hearing from a reliable source that Citrix has acquired a little company we called . The firm, manned by an impressive set of software hackers, claimed to be able to virtualize both Android and iOS completely enough to act as an environment for bug testing and hardware emulation. : Citrix of Virtual on Wednesday. The buy makes sense for Citrix, which could use Virtual to emulate Android or iOS environments via its remote desktop. A company that could ‘cast’ iOS environments would also have a big leg up on the competition like VMware or LogMeIn. The company’s founder, , was one of the first iPhone jailbreakers and built Virtual off of an . We spoke to Wade back in July about Virtual’s capabilities: The idea was to move away from emulation and go to full-blown virtualization,” Wade says. Virtual allows a user to purchase a license to run a certain amount of iOS or Android devices with as close to real hardware capabilities as possible. Wade claims that Virtual has managed to virtualize the ARM core and emulate peripherals that allow it to double as almost any Apple TV, iPad or iPhone.
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Virtual could also act as a replacement for services that offer real, physical devices for rent like Appurify, the company that was just acquired by Google in its ongoing battle with Apple over who can offer the most complete set of developer tools.
Another feature of Virtual is that it can be used to run iOS devices on OS X. This would mirror the announcement Google made at I/O about allowing Android apps to run on Chromebooks — but for both iOS and Android. Wade also hired Nicholas Allegra, an iPhone hacker known as who . As of the last time we spoke with Wade, Virtual had not taken any funding. No word on the price of the buy yet, though it was a young company and hadn’t yet launched a product, so that probably factored in. We’ve asked Citrix about the acquisition and it declined to comment. Wade also declined to comment on the sale of the company. This is an interesting get for Citrix, and one that appears to indicate the claims of the company are solid. While I was shown Virtual’s technology in July, I noted that the demo was impressive enough, but that it was hard for me to vet the performance claims without a launched product. Whatever they’d come up with it seems it was solid enough for a leading virtualization firm to want it. It will be interesting to see what they cook up. |
Microsoft Brings OneNote To Android Wearables | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | I suppose that wearables are the new place where cross-platform tools and services must reside. Today Microsoft . You can now OneNote from your watch. If you want to. It looks like this when in use: So now, if you want to shout at your watch in public, you can. You will look so cool. With your smartwatch. That can sometimes understand your voice. Unless it is loud outside. Then you will probably not make that much progress. |
LittleBits Announces BitLab, An App Store For Hardware | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | Have you ever wanted to build a banana piano? Or make a robotic cockroach brain out of LEGO? With LittleBits now you (potentially) can. The company has just announced something called the BitLab, a contest merged with a crowd sourced technology system that allows inventors to create new LittleBits blocks, upload them, and have them made and sold by the company. The system also includes a hardware development kit that allows anyone access to LittleBits’ custom magnetic snap-together leads. The entire system is aimed at allowing creators to build useful little modules for the LittleBits world. While early versions of the system were aimed at the educational market, the founder, Ayah Bdeir, is now envisioning a fast prototyping system like Arduino or Raspberry Pi. In fact, with the module and the you can make some pretty impressive electronics projects without having to understand the vagaries of bread boards and electronic components. “When Apple launched the App Store, many apps were games, many were frivolous. I remember a lot of fart apps,” said Bdeir. “But now 6 years later there are more than 1.3 million apps that have distributed nearly $15 billion to the software developer community. We believe the same thing will happen with hardware developers just need one common platform to develop on, a supply chain that powers it, and a marketplace for community and distribution.” How does it work? You create a module using the HDK and your own smarts. It can be complex – a full PCB – or just an idea. Then the crowd votes for their favorite module. If the module wins in voting during each period then LittleBits will manufacture it. This allows you and your friends to support cool modules you might want to use and it lets LittleBits expand its selection of modules. LittleBits is already working with the people behind to make a fruit piano module (really) and to build modules for the lab and we can expect to see modules hitting the online store in the next few months. You can check out the BitLab but even if you’re in the Bit Laboratory, don’t ever, ever touch Dale’s drum set. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4L5BggqW14] [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jc188iS5Tg] |
DataFox Pushes Its Business Intelligence Service Into Beta | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | Last week at Disrupt SF, pitched what it called a “predictive intelligence” service, aimed at bringing a wealth of data concerning corporations — their landmarks, hiring trends, funding and valuation — to everyone. For a deep dive into how the product works, who is on the founding team, and what it costs, . Today the company dropped its alpha tag, and . DataFox was in alpha for around a year, the company told TechCrunch. What’s new in the beta release that wasn’t in the alpha build? A feed of events for corporations that DataFox claims can “replace” the standard role of an analyst. It’s a large claim, with the company arguing that its “matrix of algorithms that mine millions of pieces of open-ended content,” such as news articles, can surface the important pieces that a user would want to see. DataFox gave an example that it might bring up a funding update from a rival company if I were tracking Square: Also featured in the beta is a suggestion tool that helps users find concerns that are similar to companies that they are interested in, including related keywords that might also turn up other corporations. Using an earlier build of DataFox, I did have some trouble filling in new lists of companies to track, so this tool would have been useful. Core to the DataFox product are lists of firms that you can track. Think of them like Spotify playlists, but for corporations. The stronger a user’s lists are, the more useful the product will be for them. In keeping with that fact, DataFox also added the ability for users to collaboratively build lists in its beta release. The move from alpha to beta for DataFox seems to be a feature upgrade, as opposed to a more general shift in its overall structure or availability. DataFox competes with , another startup that is looking to provide deep information and insight into hundreds of thousands of private companies. Mattermark has , most recently raising a $2 million round in June. Both companies claim that they absorb information from myriad sources and boil it down using automated systems to provide their users with the data they need. Competition is always a good thing. I’ve used both, and I like both. Let’s see who wins. |
Envoy Brings In $1.5 Million To Kill The Lobby Sign-In Book | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 9 | 16 | When you think about things that need to be disrupted, the entryway sign-in book is probably the last thing on your mind. And yet. Having spent four years at Google and three years at Twitter as a backend engineer, started building , an iPad-based, visitor-registration system, this past November. At Twitter, Gadea was part of the team that built “Murder,” a BitTorrent for the data center that decreased their deploys from hours to seconds. Basically, Murder killed the Fail Whale. After he left Twitter, Gadea spent a lot of time visiting his friends at other tech companies. “I’d have to sign in on a clipboard at companies like Airbnb, whereas Google and Apple had built their own solution. ‘Google and Apple really have their sh*t together,'” Gadea thought. “Why isn’t there an Airbnb sign-in software? These companies [Apple, Google] whose core competencies are something different, have assigned someone to this. It must be really important.” So Gadea gathered a team of four ( , , and ) and attempted to build a design-savvy, white-label, visitor-management system that initially launched in the App Store last year as a one-time, $19.99 purchase. The company now monetizes through a SaaS model, and there are two tiers of Envoy, at a $99 and $249 a month price point per building. Today it is opening up sign-ups to all. The lower Envoy tier includes unlimited sign-in, NDA signing, photos, badge printing and SMS and email notification. The higher tier includes pre-registration, a security desk and custom badges. A sleek, streamlined offering that aims to compete by being well-designed and cloud-based, as well as by integrating with products like Slack and Hipchat, Envoy stands on the shoulders of Consumerprise startups like Box and Zendesk. “Enterprise pays for it so we get the big bucks, but the users are consumers; that’s why we need to have a really good interface,” Gadea says. There are a profusion , including “Sign In for iPad,” “Reception for iPad” and various skeuomorphic sign-in booklets. “There’s some other stuff out there, but nobody is taking it seriously doing only this,” says Gadea, who can be pretty blunt in person. Off of the iPad, Envoy aims to unseat the incumbent HID Global’s software through usability and its elegant, mobile focused UI — a “Square Wallet” for the office. There is a ton of growth opportunity for the product, and extrapolated to its fullest potential, Envoy could function as a sort of “TSA Pre” for your life. With the increasing prevalence of phone sensors, NFC, and the Apple Watch, it’s plausible that users could one day have their own Envoy ID, which automatically logs them in as visitors wherever they visit, keeping track of those visits. Gadea has his sights set on such a use case, and is as excited about Envoy as a big data and CRM play competitive with existing card-management systems. Perhaps it is telling that Marc Benioff is a seed investor? In addition to Benioff’s investment, the company has raised $1.5 million from , , , , , , , , , Tobi Lutke, , , , , and Ali Rosenthal. Gadea holds that companies that don’t have a receptionist or are fewer than 10 people aren’t the ideal customer for Envoy. In addition, doctors’ offices most likely need to wait until the product is HIPAA-compliant to fully leverage it. “Close to profitable,” the company now has 250 paying customers, including the incredible “ ,” which at 200 employees was initially the largest business using Envoy. About 30 percent of their customers are non-tech. “We’re in use at oil refineries, churches, finance companies, advertising agencies, schools, factories, warehouses and, yes, tech companies,” Gadea says. “Rather than spending time updating a home-brewed visitor registration app as a side project, we’d rather work with a company that’s laser focused on building the very best technology in this category,” raved John Allen, an IT systems engineer at Box. Box loves the product. Other tech customers include Lyft, Pixar, Jawbone, Yelp, Palantir and, yes, Airbnb. Finally. [vimeo 106204873 w=500 h=281] |
Ello Users Experience Further Downtime After DDoS Attack | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 9 | 28 | The experienced its first major outage today, suffering a Distributed Denial of Service attack that brought it down for approximately 45 minutes. The company says that it was able to fix the issue by blocking the IP addresses responsible for the attack. However, it seems that the site is still going through some instability, as users are still occasionally taking to Twitter to say that it has gone down or that posts refuse to upload. Anecdotally, I occasionally get the above image on attempting to load the site. We’ll update this post if Ello confirms whether these are aftershocks from the attack or simply growing pains from the site’s rapid user acquisition in recent days. |
Why And How To Hire A Game Designer | Tadhg Kelly | 2,014 | 9 | 28 | Over the years I’ve worked for lots of studios. Some were hardcore game houses, some indies. Some worked in niche markets like casinos and some in more peripheral fields like gamification. Some were jobs, others consulting or contracting gigs. Having had such a broad range, one thing I’ve experienced a fair bit is “misalignment”. It’s common for a guy like me to be hired by a client, only for them not to really know why they did. I think the reason is that the client doesn’t really know what a game designer does. We come across a little bit like high-end astrophysicists, talking a lot in terms of this magical space that we alone seem to really understand, and the client thinks “I need some of that. I don’t really know what it is, but I need it.” So the client hires someone, and misalignment comes after that initial romance. My design brothers and sisters love a good challenge, so if you come to us with a wild idea we’ll want to believe you. Come to us and say you want to do something bold we’ll be eager. When you come to us and we start spitballing ideas and you nod appreciatively it makes us feel validated. You might not be listening closely, but you should. A lot of the time when misalignment occurs it’s because too much is glossed over too quickly on both sides. So if, for example, we advise that the kinds of deliverables we produce reflect a certain style, and you’re enthusiastic, we actually think you get our meaning. We think you understand how those deliverables will function in your production process if you don’t ask. But often you don’t. You think it sounds great, but the devil’s in the details. We designers practice a craft that most people don’t understand, and our approaches are all different. If you don’t really take that in, it will later lead to trouble. As often as not misalignment is caused by about the designer not fully appreciating the challenge as it is about the client not hearing the designer. Mostly it’s just a split resulting from different thought processes at work, different priorities, different senses of what works or doesn’t. However I do feel that if there was a better understanding of the designer half of this equation out in the world, some misalignments could be avoided. A game designer acts as a kind of creative translator between code, art, production and others by producing clear specs to drive the design forward. At a lead level she leads a team of other designers who do the same (such as in a big place like Riot). At a creative director (or game director, or CCO, it varies) level she does likewise but with a strong degree of management over the whole team. The exact balance of responsibilities varies from studio to studio, and those variations pose many questions. One question is creative ownership. Does the designer tell the team what to make, what the strategy is, what the next product is going to be? Or is team ownership more important, more of a collaborative-environment sort of scenario wherein those decisions are made by the group. There is no one right answer, but it’s important to have yours clear. Another question is methodology. Some studios prefer a consensus-driven approach to decisions while others are more deliverable- or momentum-focused. Some studios are large and departmental, necessitating sequenced chains of work. Some like snap decisions and fail-fast approaches. Some prefer to measure thrice and cut once. The third question is what to expect as a deliverable. What a designer should actually produce. Documents? Spreadsheets? Maintain a bible of specs or a live wiki of data? Some designers (like me) are into short specs, wireframes and flow diagrams but the result of that can be pretty raw. Others swear by longer and more elaborate documentation. Some studios do not care for docs at all and want the designer to work direct in software tools. Some expect the designer to have a high degree of technical understanding. Others prefer if the designer avoids being a fauxgrammer and just tell them what they want. It is very difficult to find the right designer. It’s such a linchpin position that feeds into so much else that it can feel paralyzing to even try. What if, after all, you choose wrongly? I think the best route is to approach it like dating. Rather than hire a game designer with a traditional interview approach, hire her on a consulting basis first. Start slow. Ask her to conduct a review of where the project is to sanity check it, but also get a sense of whether the fit seems right. Then ask to see some work on specific problems as identified, maybe working for an iteration or two. Through consulting that kind of relationship can be grown and the team can grow comfortable with this outsider rather than risking tension or an allergic reaction. The downside is that the designer will likely have other clients doing the same. Good luck! |
Free Windows 9 For Some Isn’t Too Crazy | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 28 | At some point, speculating about what will become quickly obvious is difficult. Still, on the cusp as we are of the release of the first preview of what may be called Windows 9, it’s reasonable to take a few notes of the latest rumor cycle: ? Current that for Windows 8 and Windows XP users, the new code could be in the case of the former, free, and in the case of the latter, cheap. Both are reasonable ideas: Windows 8 users have already paid for a recent copy of Windows — either through their OEM, or directly — and thus to provide them with a cheap or free copy of the operating system that greatly improve their computing experience is sensible, and not forward-revenue expensive; those users are not really in the market for a new, full-priced operating system. In the case of Windows XP, Microsoft remains hellbent to get users of that OS, now vulnerable due the end of formal support for the software, onto something more stable. And since it won’t be Windows 8, as we have learned over these past few years, then, well, what comes next will have to do. Microsoft has made recent efforts to make Windows free for some. If you buy a small device, with a screen size of 9 inches or less, either phone or tablet, . That’s a change. And so to see Microsoft potentially make part of its soul zero-cost to a certain subset of its current userbase that are not, as it were, near-term sources of new Windows incomes, is not, as potential goes, too surprising. Microsoft cannot afford to make Windows free to all, at once. Incomes from OneDrive, the Windows Store, and the like must mature first, granting the company revenue flexibility to be more drastic in a business model sense when it comes to its operating system. Whatever the case, we’ll have a good first look at Windows in short order. And if Microsoft fails to show enough, it will be to its own detriment. Steps are good, but when you need a leap, no iterative hop will make it across the chasm. |
As The Arab Spring Turns To Fall, A Lingering Hope For Peace Through Tech | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 9 | 28 | Two decades after he served as the chief negotiator for peace talks between the then and Israel under , remains ever optimistic. Although the laid tentative groundwork for an eventual two-state solution, it was never realized. Once again, the region is only just recovering from another conflict between the Hamas-led Gaza Strip and Israel. But Savir is still at work on Israeli-Palestinian peace decades later, this time through a digital diplomacy-style effort called , which leverages Facebook and other platforms to promote online discussions between Arabs and Israelis. It has roughly a half-million followers on Facebook spread throughout many Arab countries and Israel. It bolsters that by following through with more in-depth online modules on citizen journalism and online conferences in economic cooperation and peace-making. He said a mistake he made two decades ago was in assuming that elite-led peace talks would be broadly accepted by both Palestinians and Israelis. “For the first time, we have an opportunity to create what could be known in international relations as ‘participatory peace,'” he said. “In other words, this would be a peace in which the societies would be involved. Peace imposed by leaders is not sustainable. Social networks allow people to ask themselves if they want peace, and how they want it. We could have dialogues between thousands of people, rather than a few elites.” His movement, which picked up momentum around the beginning of the Arab Spring three years ago, comes at a critical and fascinating time for online diplomacy in the Middle East. Right now, there is this ongoing, very complex propaganda battle that is taking place through YouTube and Twitter between groups that have a more militant interpretation of Islam and others that are tolerant and staunchly against the use of terrorism. There are some pretty fascinating stories on how , which has captured large swaths of territory in Northern Syria and Iraq, to recruit foreign fighters. At the same time, there are online Muslim-led movements from the U.K. and Western Europe that are actively denouncing ISIS’ interpretation of Islam through and through . Even the State Department is , under the hashtag . YALA is part of the Peres Center for Peace and is also partially financially supported by the U.S. State Department. “The Palestinian-Israeli peace process started 20 years ago, and it may take another 20 years. But in the meantime, we have to get peace assets just like terrorists are accruing conflictual assets,” Savir said. “This is a struggle between two parts of society. By and large, it is between secularists who have an inclination for freedom and technology and religious fundamentalists, who have an inclination for oppression and backwardness. That is the struggle that’s going on.” All in all, it shows that even as tech industry leaders like Mark Zuckerberg tout the benefits of making the world more “open and connected,” social networking platforms are just tools that can be used for both peace and war. There was an initial wave of hope and euphoria that ushered in the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt and other countries, but it has since given way to , ISIS in Syria and Iraq and a new military strongman in Egypt The problems of building inclusive and responsive governments and civil society is just a lot more difficult than any Twitter or Facebook-facilitated youth demonstrations can solve in a matter of mere years. ISIS, in particular, has proven incredibly adept at using Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to show what life is like in its capital of Raqqa, Syria even in spite of quick takedowns. Their relationship with the Western press has been totally altered by the existence of direct channels through social media. Journalist friends of mine who were based out of Gaza during the height of the conflict this summer said that Hamas, which looks moderate when compared to extreme ISIS, was generally tolerant of Western reporters. It needed third-party journalists to tell visceral stories about the poor living and economic conditions in the Gaza Strip amid an Israeli blockade, and humanize the loss of 2,000 lives even as it also fired rockets into Israeli towns and cities. But ISIS doesn’t even really need reporters in a classic sense, because it can speak to its audience directly. It has instead beheaded them and even perversely used Because of the sheer security risks, the only Western outlet to get any kind of meaningful look into life in Raqqa has been Vice News with . “Technology is neutral,” Savir said. “It can be used for either positive or negative values. But we are the positive answer to ISIS.” Savir is trying to make YALA more than a Facebook like or online . On top of the Facebook following, they started building online academic courses through Coursera to build up leaders in other parts of North Africa and the Middle East and train members in citizen journalism. In the latter, they were able to instruct nearly 1,000 students on how to write blog posts and articles around peace-making. He still , with a shared capital in Jerusalem, no right of return and security arrangements with international participation that don’t infringe on Palestinian sovereignty. (All of these ideas are, of course, still vociferously debated in both Palestinian and Israeli politics.) He has been of Israel’s settlement policies, and has said he in the West Bank over Hamas. “We live amid a shaky co-existence and it will still take a lot of suffering,” Savir said. “Oslo began the track that will make a two-state solution inevitable. But we need to develop leaders in a younger generation and I’m totally optimistic.” |
This Is TechCrunch Radio On Sirius XM 102 Indie | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 9 | 28 | Each week, John Biggs and I head over to the Sirius XM studios for a live radio show on Sirius XM 102 Indie: . Last week, we discussed our first weeks with the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. While I’m more partial to the iPhone 6 (or even the 5s, in terms of size), John is truly excited about the new screen real estate on the iPhone 6 Plus, entirely comfortable with the much larger, thinner smartphone. We also talked through some misconceptions with iPhone . [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/169167075″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] In the second half of the show, we were joined by special guest judge from Brooklyn Bridge Ventures and five startups looking to spread the word on the radio. In the end, motorhead-focused discovery platform dominated the pitch-off and was declared the final winner. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/169165985″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] We’ll be hitting you again next Tuesday at 6pm ET/3pm PT, with a replay at 6pm PT, on Sirius XM Channel 102 Indie. There’s a free 30-day trial available online at if you don’t already have a subscription. In each episode, we hold a pitch-off where five companies can give their quick pitch to John, myself, and a guest judge. We will ask a few questions, get to know the companies, and then deliberate live on the air over who should be our winner. It’s a great chance to get the word out about your company and a fun way to get some feedback. If you’re interested in applying, check out the page or follow the instructions below.
1. You must have a product that is available to general users. No sign-up pages or pre-orders with a TBD ship date. There must be a link we can give to listeners/readers where they can access your product, service, what have you.
2. You must be an early stage company. If you have raised a Series A or later, you are disqualified. Bootstrapped or seed stage startups are welcome.
3. You must be able to pitch your product with your words only.
4. You must be able to operate a telephone.
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Facebook Relaunches Atlas Ad Platform With Cross-Device Targeting And Offline Sales Tracking | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 9 | 28 | As Advertising Week kicks off in New York City, Facebook is announcing a new version of its Atlas ad platform, which it says represents the next step in tracking ad effectiveness across devices. The company first last year, but in recent weeks both and reported that an ambitious relaunch was in the works, with the aim of helping Facebook challenge Google. In , Facebook says that Atlas not only offers a new user interface, but has actually been completely rewritten. ( Boring inside baseball, but this story had to be published ahead of schedule due to a broken embargo, and I guess that means Facebook’s blog post isn’t live yet. The link above is where the post should be found whenever it goes up.) Perhaps most importantly, the company says it has improved the platform’s cross-device capabilities. The post points out the limitations in relying on cookies to track users and determine whether an ad is effective: “Cookies don’t work on mobile, are becoming less accurate in demographic targeting and can’t easily or accurately measure the customer purchase funnel across browsers and devices or into the offline world.” Facebook describes its approach as “people-based marketing,” where advertisers can follow users across devices. Presumably that means Atlas can tell advertisers if someone saw their ad on, say, their smartphone and then made a purchase from their laptop, or vice versa. The blog post doesn’t go into much detail about how Facebook is doing this, but the Journal reported that the platform will be “linking users’ ad interactions to their Facebook accounts,” not just on Facebook itself, but on other websites and apps. The company also says that it will be able to connect online ad impressions with offline sales — an area where and . And Facebook says it will be working with “a key group of partners that cross search, social, creative management and publishers.” Those partners include Instagram — which is, yes, owned by Facebook, but the post says that as a publisher, Instagram will be using Atlas “to both measure and verify ad impressions,” with presumably other, non-Facebook-owned publishers to follow. In terms of getting advertisers on board, Facebook says it’s already partnered with ad holding company Omnicom — the first Omnicom clients to move to the new platform are Pepsi and Intel. |
A Wearable Drone That Launches Off Your Wrist To Take Your Selfie | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 9 | 28 | [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VFsdPAoI1g&w=640&h=390] “Oh man, this would make a great picture. I wish there was someone else here to take our picture for us so we didn’t have to take a selfie!” Has this ever happened to you? Of course it has. You’re a human being in the 21st century who reads tech blogs. The Nixie aims to solve that. It’s, as crazy as it feels to type this, a wearable selfie drone. A flying wristband, with a camera built in. When you’re ready for your close-up, it launches off your wrist, reorients to frame you in the shot, and then hovers back over for you to catch it. The bad news? It’s… still pretty conceptual. It looks like they’ve got a prototype that can launch off your wrist and float away — but it’s still early days. They have a way to go (this thing looks about as fragile as can be right now) — but even as a concept, it’s damned cool. The good news? It’s a finalist in Intel’s Make It Wearable competition — meaning they’ve just scored themselves $50,000 and all of the mentorship, design help, and technical support a company like Intel can throw at them in order to make it real. The project is the brainchild of Christoph Kohstall (a physics researcher at Stanford), and is built in collaboration with team members Jelena Jovanovic and Michael Niedermayr. [Via ] |
Solve Your BendGate Woes With This 3D Printed iPhone Case | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 28 | Did your surprisingly tight pants bend your iPhone 6 Plus? Did your bony butt ruin your iPhone 6? Did you place your iPhone into a vice and bend it with pliers? 3D printing can help! This is available on and costs $19.99. The creator, Fernando Sosa, is offering the case in multiple colors including Bent Blue, Pressure Purple, and OMG Orange. Sosa is famous for creating a “plug” . You can also and print it at home. I’d recommend editing your copy to match the bend in your own iPhone (provided you’re one of the nine people who have been actually affected by the problem.) Enjoy! |
Amid Crackdowns, Protestors In Hong Kong Take To Tech To Publicize #OccupyCentral and #OccupyHK | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 9 | 28 | Amid reports in mainland China to suppress distribution of images of student protests in Hong Kong, the hashtag #OccupyCentral has become one of the top trends on Twitter. Images like this: Mongkok, shopping area of Hong Kong. Occupy by protesters. No riot police here. — Lam Yik Fei (@LamYikFei) and this: : Volunteers handing out supplies to protesters with strings — Fiona Law (@law_fiona) and this: RT : 2 am, Causeway Bay — Wendy Tang (@wwtang) … give a sense of the scale of the protests that have swept Hong Kong since China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee ruled that only candidates approved by Beijing would be able to run in the elections for Hong Kong’s chief executive — despite earlier reforms opening voting to all Hong Kong citizens. The Independent has of the background behind today’s protests, which have seen 34 people injured . The protest movement, officially called Occupy Central With Love & Peace, has an , and earlier this month a White House petition sympathetic to the students’ goals was posted . News outlets sympathetic to Beijing’s position have responded to the student protest movement , which Joshua Wong, the founder of the student protest movement called “Scholarism” denied. by Hong Kong police two days ago as protests got underway. |
Hubble HQ Secures £500,000 Seed Round To Match London Startups To Office Space | Steve O'Hear | 2,014 | 9 | 28 | , the London property tech startup founded by Entrepreneur First alumni Tushar Agarwal and Tom Watson, together with ex-advisor to the British Prime Minister Rohan Silva, has closed £500,000 in seed funding. The round was led by Spire Ventures, the VC fund set up by Faisal Butt and ex-Dragon James Caan, while HubbleHQ says the additional capital — its first external fundraise, not including involvement in the Entrepreneur First programme — will be used to boost engineering talent and further build out its platform. Attempting to help solve the shortage and sometimes of office space for young companies in London, Hubble HQ connects startups and other small businesses with those who have space to rent out, such as professional landlords offering co-working spaces and serviced offices, as well as other burgeoning companies with spare space to share. In some regards, it can be considered simply as a classic online marketplace play, matching high demand with untapped capacity, with the least friction possible. However, it’s the company’s emphasis on that makes it stand out from other property marketplaces. Specifically, Hubble HQ’s platform lets startups browse available space by criteria that matters most to them, including things like nearby coffee shops and lunch spots, WiFi, meeting rooms, and — crucially — what other startups are housed in the same space. Equally important is that most contracts will be offered on a rolling monthly basis, requiring one month’s notice. In addition, as well as doing the matching, the startup offers online contracts and payment, as well as making it free to list space. It only makes money if a successful match and lease is made, taking 10 percent of the monthly rent for up to 12 months. Interestingly, despite today’s funding round, the startup has been revenue positive more or less from the get-go, so the fresh capital is really about stepping on the gas now that its model has been proven. A host of other investors also participated in Hubble HQ’s seed round, including Seedcamp, Brett Akker (Co-founder of Streetcar and Lovespace), Ivan Mazour (Founder of ecommerce intelligence platform Ometria), Guy Westlake (Founder of Lavanda and ex-Head of Marketing at Shutl), Jackson Hull (CTO of OneFineStay), Sheraz Dar (former Marketing Director of Prime Location and FindaProperty), Jonathan Galore (co-founder of Wealthfront.com and CTO at Wonga.com), Andreas Pouros (Co-founder of digital marketing firm Greenlight), and Roualeyn Cumming-Bruce (a former Chairman of Capital Markets at Jones Lang LaSalle London). |
The World’s First Genetically Modified Babies Will Graduate High School This Year | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 9 | 28 | Remember the sci-fi thriller ? For those who never saw the film and/or eschewed all pop culture in the late 90’s for some reason, it was a popular movie that came out in 1997 about genetically modified human beings. Now some literally genetically modified human babies born that same year are entering their senior year of high school. The first successful transfer of genetic material for this purpose was published in a U.S. medical journal in 1997 and then later cited in a publication in 2001. Scientists injected 30 embryos in all with a third person’s genetic material. The children who have been produced by this method actually have extra snippets of mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, from two mothers – meaning these babies technically have three parents. It’s still unclear whether all 30 babies turned out healthy. The ) at St Barnabas, participants of the experiment, finally began following up with at least 17 of the now teenagers earlier this year, . We’ve reached out to IRMS to get those follow up results but have not heard back yet. While we don’t know the identity of these genetically modified teens, or even how they are doing health wise at this point, the ethics of creating designer humans is still very much a hot button issue. Modifying humans genetically to create some superior race of people or simply to chose one preferred visual trait over another has been debated among scientists, politicians and others ad nauseam. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration no longer even allows such genetic modification to embryos, citing them as a “biological product” and thus under its jurisdiction. They put the kibosh on this practice . However, these original embryonic modifications were for parents who would potentially pass on severe genetic diseases to their children if it weren’t for scientific intervention. These teens could potentially pass on their genetically modified material to the next generation. So even if no other humans are legally able to be created this way in the future, we’ve already introduced biologically modified genetic material into the population with the potential to affect large swaths of future generations to come via reproduction. We’ll be sure to update you, should IRMS release any information on the health of these teens. |
Apple’s Tim Cook Does Some Security Straight Talking | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | Today, Apple’s Tim Cook announcing a new security page on the company’s website, publishing some fairly plain-language security talk. There’s some solid language here that is clearly designed to allay fears about the way that Apple protects user data in the wake of the . Cook’s words: We believe in telling you up front exactly what’s going to happen to your personal information and asking for your permission before you share it with us. And if you change your mind later, we make it easy to stop sharing with us. Every Apple product is designed around those principles. When we do ask to use your data, it’s to provide you with a better user experience. We’re publishing this website to explain how we handle your personal information, what we do and don’t collect, and why. We’re going to make sure you get updates here about privacy at Apple at least once a year and whenever there are significant changes to our policies. It’s a welcome statement, exactly the kind of thing I was talking about when I said is needed when it comes to security. It’s known for its clear communication of product benefits, so why not security? The addition of a security page that will be continuously updated with current information about the way that Apple handles user data is a great forward step here. Cook also takes the opportunity to plainly state (again) that Apple has never worked ‘with governments’ to create service backdoors. Finally, I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will. Apple also provided a in the US that says it can no longer decrypt user devices. Previously, law enforcement could request decryption in order to retrieve evidence. Apple says it in iOS 8 so this is no longer technically possible. For all devices running iOS 8.0 and later versions, Apple will no longer be performing iOS data extractions as the data sought will be encrypted and Apple will not possess the encryption key. I’m optimistic about its ability to follow on from this with more action on the security front. I’d love to see a bug bounty program, either public or selective, that allowed third-party researchers a strong conduit for communication and vulnerability reporting, for instance. Until Apple embraces external researchers it will remain vulnerable as its products swell to include millions of lines of code and multiple surfaces for malicious entities to attack. More eyeballs on the problem is a good thing. But the letter is a good signal, and it’s more forthcoming than many of Apple’s competitors. Cook doesn’t hesitate to point out, of course, that Apple’s business model allows it to take this ‘we don’t want your information’ stance. Still, Apple is an enormous corporation, looking to protect its interests just like any other. So I don’t doubt that many will view this as a sort of damage control (and it is) to protect Apple’s reputation. But I also personally know many Apple employees at many levels of the company from engineers to managers — and I can tell you, for what it’s worth — that this is what they really believe. They work at Apple because they make products that will affect the lives of millions and they believe (in general) in its ethos and ethics. Many certainly don’t (just) do it for the paycheck. I don’t know whether these sentiments are shared among Apple’s executive staff — I don’t have brunch with Tim Cook or anything — but I would hope that it is. Apple is a corporation, let’s not forget, so it pays to be watchful and to hold it to a high standard when it comes to security and privacy. There’s no need to make it concessions or ‘forgive’ it for mistakes. And the Snowden revelations have shown us that sometimes the best intentions of any company or set of executives isn’t enough to protect users — inside the US or not. Still, better to have it out in the open, so kudos. |
Amazon Announces New Fire Tablets, E-Ink Kindles And A Special Fire For Kids | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | new devices today with an eye on shipping them before the holiday season. The collection, which ranges from a new e-ink tablet called the Voyage to an 8.9-inch tablet that is lighter than the iPad Air and features Fire OS 4.0, an OS based on KitKat, is designed for reading, work and play. There’s also a new Kindle for kids that includes a $25 case and free parental control software and apps. The new Kindle Fire HDs come in 6- and 7-inch configurations and are considerably thinner than the previous Fire versions. They have the same design – an angular rear panel – but they are thinner and more powerful. They have a quad-core processor and front- and rear-facing camera, and come in black, white, blue, red and yellow. The new Kindles Fires cost $99 for the 6-inch and $139 for the 7-inch model. The new HDX model is a $379 powerhouse with a 2.5GHz processor and a 339 ppi pixel density. It is Amazon’s flagship device and can be used with a new accessory called the Fire Keyboard, a $59 wireless keyboard that connects to the Fire and allows you to edit documents and scroll on screen. Finally on the tablet front there’s the Fire for Kids, a special package that includes a rubber case and a year-long subscription to FreeTime, a service that locks down the Kindle for kids and allows them to view video, games, apps and books. It costs $149 for the 6-inch model and $189 for the 7-inch. The best thing? It comes with a two-year warranty that any parent would love: You can return it for any reason during that time and get a new one. Junior can drop it, smash it, and run over it with a Big Wheel and they’ll still take it back. Fans of e-ink will enjoy the Voyage, a surprisingly thin and light e-ink device with a $199 price tag and improved screen resolution. The new device feels like a slab of metal with a black and white screen on the front. Two buttons on either side vibrate when pressed to simulate a physical button tap. The device also has a touchscreen and can last up to six weeks on one charge. The older Kindle has been updated, as well, adding touch to the $79 device. All of the new devices have improved integration with the recently acquired GoodReads service that allows you to share your reading status with friends. A new Word Wise feature adds definitions of difficult words to books, a boon for students and English learners. All of the new devices are available for pre-order and will ship in October just in time for Olde Father Bezos to climb down the chimney and into your bed. |
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Taking A Ride With The Luminox P-38 Valjoux Automatic 9461 Chronograph | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 28 | Luminox is best known for their no-nonsense three-handed quartz models with unique Tritium tubes on the hands. These amazingly bright and compact watches are popular with military and police. But what about WWII era fighter pilots? Who will build a watch for them? has their back. The Luminox P-38 Valjoux Automatic 9461 (let’s just call it the P-38 Chrono) is a brand new model that commemorates the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. It’s a traditional chronograph in black and white with a tachymeter around the edge and a standard running seconds, minutes, hours layout with central seconds. It also has a day/date window and is controlled by two hidden buttons over and under the crown. It’s quite thick and comes on a thick leather strap. The watch costs $3,000 which is actually a steal for a Valjoux chronograph. Valjoux is a Swiss maker of watch movements and their 7750, which Luminox uses in this piece, is a . It’s a departure for Luminox to add such a storied and expensive movement and it signals that the company is moving into a more rarified territory. The real draw here, however, is Luminox’s tritium tube placement. In the dark this watch glows like a flashlight. While the small chronograph hands aren’t given the lume treatment, each hour pip and the hands glow green. This luminescence in these tubes lasts 25 years and remains bright without exposure to light. I’ve always liked Luminox although I’ve avoided their pieces simply because they’ve focused, thus far, on quartz movements. The decision to go automatic is an exciting one and mirrors the same moves by Swiss Army and other formerly quartz-centered brands. Higher-end watches are popular and given the future looming presence of the Apple Watch over Switzerland, watchmakers need to offer slightly more than just a quartz movement in a cheap case. This watch isn’t particularly unique – 7750s are all over the place these days – but it does offer something new from Luminox and the lume is excellent. While the design is derivative of the Omega Speedmaster and I’d love to see some luminescent tubes on the smaller hands, the price, size, and build quality are excellent. If you’re looking for a watch you can easily read in the dark, looks great, and won’t break the bank (much) then this P-38 is a mighty fine ship. [gallery ids="1063277,1063278,1063279,1063280,1063281"] |
Hampton Creek In A Management Pickle As It Seeks To Raise $50 Million In Funding | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | It hasn’t even been a full two weeks since switched from an adviser role to chief strategy officer at . However, the plant-based mayo startup has confirmed that Partovi is out. This leaves the company in a bit of a management pickle. In an odd move, Partovi switched from simply adviser to second in command to CEO and co-founder Josh Tetrick at the beginning of September. The company has also been seeking new funding over the last few months. Hampton Creek is in the middle of raising a $50 million round with a $300 million valuation at the moment. This is right on the heels of a $23 million series B in February, bringing the total amount to $30 million thus far. Partovi, who was also an early investor in Facebook and Dropbox, to the latest round. Tetrick says no deal has been inked just yet but it is coming soon. We’ll keep you posted on that bit of news. He also says Partovi will still stay on as an adviser to the company but that the role as chief strategy officer just wasn’t a fit. “He is an incredible person and we wish him the best,” Tetrick said on the phone, “We have lots of people who come through our doors and sometimes for whatever reason they just don’t work out, but we still think highly of him and hope he thinks the same of us.” Both Hampton Creek and Partovi have declined to talk about the inner details of what happened. However, the WSJ reports that Partovi in which he says, “This will surely come as a surprise to you, and I’m sorry for waiting so many days to share the news… We parted ways with mutual respect. The people at Hampton Creek are incredible, and we’ll continue to wish each other well.” Hampton Creek has been on somewhat of a hiring spree over the summer, bringing on a former Google data engineer to build out the , as well as several food scientists. Just Mayo products have made distribution inroads in Whole Foods, Walmart, Dollar Tree and various other places throughout the country this year and the company is close to releasing it’s eggless cookie dough product commercially within the month. It’s been busy working on a new office space in in downtown San Francisco as well. Partovi’s sudden departure seems odd at a time of such momentum for the company. |
ManServant Will Let You Order Around Hot Men For $125 Per Hour | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | A 6’2″, sandy blond gentleman wearing a tailored suit and tie gently bows to greet me and seat me. “Hello, I am Fabio and I will be your man servant this afternoon,” he says. His gentle, hypnotic voice wraps around me. I suddenly realize I’ve been seated and proceed to accidentally knock my sunglasses off the table. Fabio quickly picks them up and then takes out a hand fan to cool me off in the hot afternoon sun. “Fetch me some water?” I ask, getting my bearings. “As you wish,” Fabio replies with a slight smirk. I’m out on the patio at The Grove in San Francisco’s SoMa with the two young women who started , a newly launched startup that lets you hire good-looking young men to do your bidding. Fabio is now holding an umbrella above our heads to shade us as we chat. The scene seems to have made an impression on a man sitting a few tables down. “Excuse me, what is this?” he asks, pointing to Fabio. “Is he for real?” The ladies giggle and say he is. The man then asks if Fabio is for hire. They tell him that he will do whatever you want, within reason, for $125 per hour. The man grins, writes down the name of their startup and trots off. The idea started back when co-founders Josephine Wai Lin and Dalal Khajah were working at advertising agency . “We hired men to act as body guards for our bosses as a joke,” Khajah tells me. “One guy was actually a male stripper but we wanted him to just pretend he was fending them off from the paparazzi. We told him we didn’t want him to take his clothes off. He was so confused,” she laughs. They did this a couple of times with male body guards and then started hiring men for their friends’ parties. Their friends loved it so much, and founders realized they were onto something. ManServants was born. Each guy they hire must be extremely handsome and at least six feet tall. Oh, and you get to name them. They asked me what I wanted to name my man before our meeting. I chose Fabio for silliness but now think I maybe should have named him Ryan Gosling. That’s a favorite among ManServants customers. The men do things like serenade you with Disney songs, paint your toenails, take Instagrams of you and your friends, throw doves out when you arrive, fill up your glass of champagne, or act as a general bodyguard against pretend paparazzi. “Some women even want to be proposed to over and over in public,” says Wai Lin. Women have fantasies about the opposite gender just like men do. Though she also adds that men hire the men servants, too. A couple hired a whole flock of them to stand there and look pretty during a gay wedding a couple of weeks back. ManServants released a pretty hilarious video that went viral in July to gear up for the launch. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArxSNlfsgXQ&w=560&h=315] “In the beginning,” the video’s voiceover says in a British accent, “there were strippers. Men’s idea of a pleasurable pastime… but ladies, who’s idea of sexy is this?” A male stripper thrusts himself on top of a very uncomfortable-looking birthday girl. The video was so over-the-top when it first came out that I thought it was a joke. It wasn’t until my friend’s little brother actually told me he’d answered a Craigslist ad to try out to be a ManServant that I realized the startup was an actual thing. “Isn’t this kind of objectifying men?” I ask the founders. It seemed ironic that I was asking this right in front of Fabio, as if he weren’t there. Fabio fanned on. “Ugh, there are all sorts of services that objectify women like strippers and that topless maid service. It’s time women had something, too. There’s too much for men and no one really thinks about what women want,” Wai Lin points out. She adds that male strippers are not really the same for women as female strippers. She says male strippers are more of a joke and, according to her, a lot of other women don’t want a guy shoving his junk in their faces. They want to be catered to and pampered. The founders are both quick to add that, lest anyone gets the wrong idea on what this is, no sex is involved here, either. “It’s not about domination of the guy but adoration of the girl,” Khajah points out. “The man is not a slave but a subject to the queen,” she says. But surely someone might get the wrong idea? I press them to tell me if the men are ever hired to perform sexual acts. “Absolutely not,” says Khajah, waving her hands. She says the men are trained to deal with aggressive customers who have the wrong idea, too. “Like if someone says ‘I wanna bang you’ the guy pulls out a toy gun with a flag that says ‘bang,'” she tells me. You are also not allowed to know the real identity of the man servant. I try to ask Fabio what he does outside of holding umbrellas up in the sun. He looks ready to say something but is quickly shut down by Khajah. “No, no, he can’t tell you,” she says, shaking her head. She tells me this is the equivalent of emotional stripping for the guy. “Women can sometimes get hung up on one of our guys so we have to protect the men,” Wai Lin chimes in. Khajah rolls her eyes, “We all know that girl, we’ll call her Karen, that just doesn’t get it. This is about catering to you and it’s a fantasy so it blows the fantasy if you know the real them.” None of the guys are allowed to be alone with a customer and all sessions must end before six hours to help customers avoid getting attached. The men get dressing lessons and tips on how to cater to the women as well. The founders are busy expanding their business beyond the borders of San Francisco. They’re also in the middle of raising a seed round of funding and building an iOS app akin to Tinder. Soon you’ll be able to go through and order a man servant to your liking with just the touch of a button on your phone. There are currently 12 men on staff and the co-founders are looking for more to join. Mai Lin, Khajah and their office manager Annie Pariseau will be at The Annex Studios in SF this Saturday afternoon from noon to 3 p.m. to hold tryouts for any men interested in signing up. Men who look like Ryan Gosling or Wesley from “The Princess Bride” and know Disney songs are in particularly high demand. “No dick pics, please,” says Khajah. “We don’t want to have to walk you through the hall of shame,” she laughs. Apparently this has been a problem with some men trying out from a Craigslist ad in the past. Fabio helps me up as I leave our meeting. He then comments on my good taste in gold toenail polish. It’s a fresh pedicure. Did he really just notice my pedicure? I’m still not sure if that was a real compliment or all part of the service. |
FCC Chairman Wheeler: Title II Is On The Table | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | In the final moments of the FCC’s public comment period on its notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) concerning , there was a spike in input regarding precisely how bad regulating ISPs under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 would be. To summarize the corporate response: Oh god, please no. Please. Contrary to that narrative has been sustained and broad support by digital advocates for use of strong net neutrality regulations under Title II. ISPs, not looking for more regulation than they can avoid, disagree with the principle. What’s been interesting to note is that among corporate interests, there has been less argument in complete opposition to net neutrality than you might have expected. I’ve seen louder complaints from think-tank types and members of Congress about net neutrality as a concept. But that’s not too surprising: You know where their money comes from. Today, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler something : Title II is still on the table. Following a visceral reaction to his NPRM, it seems that Wheeler has had less interest in trying to thread a needle that has no eye, aiming to pick up a constituency in the middle that doesn’t precisely exist. His are another example of the un-moderating of our Chairman. On a purely tactical note, it’s obvious that if Wheeler is threatening Title II, ISPs and their corporate dollars may be more amenable to stern net neutrality under Section 706. Perhaps. The profit motive, as they say, is strong with this one. So long as Title II is, as Wheeler said, on the table, the incentive for ISPs to try to land a less distasteful option — using their own calculus, of course — is quite high. As I wrote earlier this week, there is decent direction among the tech nerds toward Title II. I’ll add that from what I hear, that pressure is not lost on the White House. By not wanting to hose the Internet — by which we mean that the current administration is keen on getting this right — it appears that there is some Executive Branch openness on the matter. We’ll see. |
BuySellAds Acquires Ad Startup LaunchBit | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | , an ad startup focused on helping software-as-a-service businesses find new customers, is announcing that it has been acquired by ad platform . The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed. LaunchBit co-founder and CEO Elizabeth Yin told me via email that the LaunchBit ad network will continue to operate, “business as usual,” while it’s “too early” to say what will happen to the LaunchBit team. The startup first in 2012, from 500 Startups (where LaunchBit was incubated), Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s VegasTech Fund, TriplePoint Capital, and others later that year. More recently, it (though it included email ads as part of that mission) — a shift that involved partnering with BuySellAds. Asked how she feels about the deal, Yin said, “Honestly, we would’ve liked to have gone all the way to become the next Google, and I wish we could’ve gone IPO! But, as a small ad network (with just a couple hundred customers and a few thousand publishers), teaming up with a larger company with a lot more resources made a lot of sense, and it’s a solid outcome.” BuySellAds has acquired a number of other ad networks in the past, including Carbon Ads, and Beacon Ads. “We really like how LaunchBit is performance driven for advertisers, while also helping publishers monetize a medium that’s pretty tricky to monetize (email),” BuySellAds founder Todd Garland said in an email. “To high-quality content creators, BSA is the monetization solution that drives independence and sustainability through scalable, innovate ad products. To marketers, BSA is the on-demand solution for reaching relevant audiences at scale via creative ad products. So, for us, adding LaunchBit into the mix makes perfect sense.” |
Airbnb Will Begin Collecting Transient Occupancy Taxes For San Francisco Bookings Next Month | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | announced today that it will soon begin collecting and remitting a 14 percent hotel occupancy fee for guest stays occurring in San Francisco. In a , Airbnb’s regional head of public policy David Owen wrote that the policy will go into effect for all bookings that take place on or after October 1 in its home city. The introduction of the tax is just the latest step in Airbnb’s efforts to legitimize its peer-to-peer lodgings marketplace in the face of regulators and local government agencies in cities around the world. It’s been working with a number of agencies in cities like San Francisco, Portland, Paris, Berlin, and New York City to ease concerns revolving around public safety, as well as those about Airbnb hosts running illegal hotel operations. That debate came to a head in New York, where Airbnb ended up capitulating in a legal battle with the state Attorney General over user data related to hosts who were operating multiple listings. Airbnb ended up clearing its listings of so-called “bad actors” in that market when hit with a subpoena, and eventually turned over user data so the AG there could go after those hosts. The debate in San Francisco hasn’t been quite as acrimonious, and in fact, Supervisor David Chiu is pushing legislation that would make short-term stays through Airbnb legal in the city. That legislation comes with some , but it would at least settle the issue in Airbnb’s home market. Key to that legislation will be its institution of the Transient Occupancy Tax, and Airbnb will likely play ball not just in San Francisco, but in other markets that require it in the future. Airbnb said it would collect the tax and remit it to the city on behalf of guests and hosts, rather than requiring them to do any additional paperwork or tax filing on their own. At the same time, that tax could fundamentally change the price structure and attraction of booking an Airbnb — after all, in many cities Airbnbs cost less than comparable hotel rooms, especially during peak demand. |
BeautyCon Raises Seed Funding So Brands Can Say Goodbye To Hollywood… And Hello To YouTube | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | Moj Mahdara has seen the future of branding and entertainment, and it’s on YouTube. The chief executive of the burgeoning media business has raised under $2 million in seed financing from entertainment and publishing heavyweights like the publisher Hearst Corp., talent lawyers Ken Hertz and Eric Greenspan, along with Rachel Zoe Ventures, and Nasir Jones and Anthony Saleh’s Queensbridge Venture Partners, to help convince brands to say goodbye to Hollywood and its celebrity endorsement machine and embrace the online Mahdara’s Los Angeles-based BeautyCon began as a business that booked and coordinated conferences linking YouTube stars, their audience, and the brands that want to shill to them IRL. Targeting young women between the ages of 18 and 25, BeautyCon estimates that the demographic represents $4 billion a year in spending on cosmetics, another $5.7 billion on apparel and accessories, and $8.2 billion on computers and electronics. Mahdara envisions a property that links fans with products sponsored by YouTube talent, products sold under BeautyCon’s own brand or under its contributors’ brands, events, and content all under the BeautyCon umbrella. The company’s backbone conference business has already While Mahdara’s company is new, the trajectory isn’t. Visions of media empires have danced in the heads of many a YouTube celebrity — including , who boasts a worldwide audience for her lifestyle and beauty tips and her own YouTube channel — the . Like Phan, Mahdara is the child of immigrant parents, in Mahdara’s case the first of three girls in a Persian household in Erie, Pa. An early addiction to “the moonman” and MTV led to an obsession with branding and marketing, which led to starting her own agency, and eventually her recruitment to take the reins at BeautyCon. “What Vice Magazine is to Gen-X, we are to millennial girls who love fashion,” says Mahdara. “The company was launched in 2012 and I have been involved for about 15 months now. I made a significant investment to the company and became the company’s chief executive.” The cultural wheel does seem to have turned. A from earlier this summer indicated that the five most influential figures among Americans ages 13-18 were all YouTube favorites. Among the most recognizable were , ., , and . (I have no idea who the hell any of these people are. Do you?) “This is generation connected and curated,” Mahdara says. “YouTube coins it as all things content, curation, and community. This is all about an 18- to 24-year-old millennial who consumes all their content via YouTube and Instagram… This is the massive millennial movement and this is where all brands are coming to.” BeautyCon has already entered into content partnership agreements “We are doing media builds with brands and we have fans that are paying to come to the summit portion where they meet 100 different brands,” Mahdara says. “We’re essentially building a big content business around experiences.” |
If You Want An Android Smartwatch, Get The Moto 360 | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | on the anarcho-syndicalist commune in , fans of Android Wear and the have been moaning under the oppressive noise regarding the yet-to-be-released Apple Watch. “You’re biased,” they scream as they swipe desperately at their Google Now cards. “You never cover the real winners.” Well here I am, covering the real winner (for now). I’ve had an opportunity to wear their pet product for a few weeks now and, with all of our Disrupt frippery out of the way, I wanted to address the good and the bad of Motorola’s latest addition to the smartwatch parade. The Moto 360 is a very simple thing. The device is the first round of Android Wear watch, and it looks, when not active, like a big black disk. It has a 1.56-inch display and leather straps and features a powder-coated steel case and Gorilla Glass screen. At its core the watch does very little any other smartwatch on the market can’t do. It is focused on notifications. You can see new calls, messages and a brief selection of email subjects. It brings in weather and stock quotes through Google Now as well as directions. It has a small haptic motor inside for silent feedback, and it can listen to your voice and return directions, information or even send messages and texts. Does it work? Yes. When it works well it’s a quiet partner in crime, notifying you of messages and important information and, most importantly, offering walking and biking directions like a trusty AAA Road Atlas. While there is some jitter thanks to an older processor, the watch responds quite quickly to spoken requests in a quiet room but has to churn a bit to figure things out at a party or in a noisy area. However, when it works it works as expected: like a little bit of magic. And when it fails? That’s a different story. The watch is only as smart as the phone it’s paired with and many times the watch would disconnect from the Moto X I was using it with and go into “No Cloud” mode. This essentially turned the watch into a glorified Basis Band, measuring heart rate using a small LED sensor and steps using an internal accelerometer. You access the speech-recognition features by tapping on the screen or the button on the side and, when the watch disconnected, this resulted in a bit of spinning and then a half-hearted recommendation to try a few things that didn’t require Internet connectivity. Sadly I saw the “No Cloud” icon more than I’d have liked and was often stuck while demoing the watch to people because it just wouldn’t work. This didn’t happen all the time nor was it normal behavior, but it was just annoying enough to be maddening. To be fair, my complaint is a bit Louis CK-esque: “Why isn’t this tiny thing on my wrist constantly helping me navigate both the Internet and the real world?” But this is the world in which we live. It’s a place where a tiny disk of metal can be considered a boon companion or sworn enemy, depending on the vagaries of Bluetooth. The Moto 360 lasted for a full day on one charge even with my hectic notification schedule. Whether this is because my watch had a tendency to shut down in the middle of tasks fairly regularly or is a testament to the power handling inherent in the four-year-old TI OMAP 3 processor inside, I’m not certain. But I definitely did not see the eight-to-twelve hour battery life many others saw. You can easily charge this watch overnight and have it work until the wee hours but, as always, your results may vary. I’ve had a love-hate relationship with this piece for most of my time with it. I loved using it as a bike navigator while riding through New York and San Francisco, and it’s been helpful when I received emails. The Google Now weather cards are fun and it’s also a hoot to see the faces of close friends appear on my watch. It’s a fun experience in general and it’s great to see it in the comforting and familiar round watch experience. My biggest peeve was the watch face. When you tapped the watch the face would appear with the time it was tapped. This means you see the time from a few minutes ago for a brief second and then the face snicks into the current time. It’s a difficult thing to explain, but this showcased the 360’s slowness more than anything else. A smartwatch that can’t tell the time immediately isn’t a watch nor is it smart. But aside from that issue, I experience no deal breakers. It is a balanced device from a company that knows materials and hardware, and it is far more wearable than any of the Samsung devices and far more attractive than the Pebble. Fans of the Apple Watch will probably gloat that their horse will run far faster than this little metal disk (even though it’s not officially available). And they will be right. [gallery ids="1059251,1059250,1059249,1059248,1059247,1059246,1059245,1059244,1059243,1059242,1059241,1059240"] The primary problem with smartwatches thus far has been a lack of ambition. The watches have improved immensely over the years, to be sure, with Pebble being a sort of Platonic ideal of last generation’s smartwatch systems and the Moto 360 being the current generation’s prime avatar. The Apple Watch, if all is to believed, will kick both of those to the curb. Does that mean this isn’t worth buying? Absolutely not. If you’re Android through-and-through and want a watch that works with your phone, this is the one. If you’re someone who needs a helpful navigation assistant while walking through the city, this is the one for you (for now). And if you’re looking to experience one of the best smartwatches I’ve used thus far, this is the one to try. [gallery ids="1053220,1053219,1053218,1053217,1053216,1053215,1053214,1053213,1053212,1053211,1053210"] |
Memoir Debuts A “Predictive” Photo-Sharing App For iOS 8 | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | Photo-sharing application , through a combination of advanced search features and a time-capsule-like function, similar to competitor . But one of the app’s more interesting features was a way to request photos from other users. Today, thanks to iOS 8, that option has now been improved. The company calls this new feature “Predictive Photo Sharing,” and, simply put, it’s a way to better automate sharing photos with friends who were with you at the time the photos were first snapped. “Context is a major focus of iOS 8,” explains co-founder and CEO Lee Hoffman. “Many of the new APIs — core location, today extensions — allow developers to figure out (in a very permission-centric way) where you are and who you are with, and then give you amazingly relevant content,” he says. The new Predictive Photo Sharing specifically takes advantage of an iOS 8 feature called “Visit Monitoring,” which is part of the iOS 8 Core Location Framework. What happens is that, once a user gives permission, iOS will send background updates to the Memoir app to let it know when you arrive and leave a given location. The app then uses that data to figure out which of your friends you were with, where and when, then makes it really easy to share your photos with them. To do so, Memoir will visually suggest which of your photos to share and with who, and you can respond to that suggestion with just a tap. On the flip side, it also gives you the opportunity to request photos from friends who were at that location or event, too. (Memoir doesn’t let you see these photos in advance, but it will let you know if a friend has photos to share and you can push a button to make this request). For example, in my Notifications feed, Memoir tells me that a friend has a few photos from a group outing a while back, and Yes, yes I do. So I tap to request them. In your Memoir photo feed, meanwhile, the app shows you which friends to share with by displaying their profile photo in small, rounded icon beneath the photos themselves. To initiate the sharing, you just tap that icon. The icon then lights up, going from gray to full color, and is highlighted with a green outline so it’s obvious with just a glance whether photos have been shared. Of course, all this magic does require that you have friends on the app, which is always a challenge for newcomers in the photo-sharing space. (You can type in a name or email address to share with those Memoir didn’t identify already, or who have yet to join the app, but it’s not quite the same.) In addition to Predictive Photo Sharing, Memoir’s version 2.0 also includes an updated, simplified user interface, and support for an iOS 8 extension that will show you if you have memories from that day without you having to open the app. The company declines to say how many users it has currently but notes that those it does have are “very” active every day. As for the TimeHop comparison, Hoffman admits there is some crossover, but Memoir’s overall goal is different. “While there are similarities in a lot of memory products, we’ve found both in our data and qualitatively that the real value of memories is being able to relive them with other people (just the right people),” he says. “It’s an inherently social experience. And we are 100 percent focused on making that an amazing and frictionless experience.” Memoir is a free download . [vimeo 106386954 w=500 h=281] |
Storehouse Arrives On The iPhone | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | , the -winning long-form photo-sharing service from former Apple designer Mark Kawano, has . This comes almost four months after the startup raised from SherpaVentures and seed investors True Ventures, Lerer Ventures and Designer Fund in order to expand their reach beyond the iPad. Thankfully, the jump from the iPad to the smaller form factor of the iPhone doesn’t lead to a cramped experience. The main screen is like a stripped-down, clean version of the news streams in most social apps today: an infinitely scrolling list of stories presented with a large photo (or video) with overlaid text. People tend to use Storehouse as a storytelling platform, so you’re not going to see short gag videos or long, self-contained videos as you would on other social platforms. Instead, stories tend to use a mix of photos, text and 30-second videos to tell the story of an event or trip to a particular location. With Storehouse’s focus on creating layouts with simple gestures and smart automatic layouts, it’s totally possible to create a story that looks great on a phone, tablet or web browser: Launching Storehouse on the iPhone at the same time as iOS 8 comes with some small but appreciable benefits. Often, the kinds of stories that would be fun to build in the app don’t happen in situations where you can plan out how you want to capture it — for instance, a day at Disney with the family. In those situations, if you’re taking photos it’s probably happening with quick shots taken by accessing the camera from the lock screen when it’s most convenient. Instead of moving those photos over to the cloud to create a story on your iPad, you can now simply go to the iPhone camera roll, select the pics that best captured the moments you want in your story, and send them directly to a new draft in Storehouse via an extension accessible from the Photos share sheet. This shows the power that comes with the platform’s simplicity. The post looks far better than most coverage from actual tech blogs that attended, yet required very little effort in terms of photo- or video-editing, and uses so little text that it wouldn’t be difficult to compose the entire thing right from a mobile device. It’s clearly not perfect for short, newsy text posts, but for stories where the interesting bits can be delivered through visuals, the only service I can think of that comes close for packaging context in a unique way is the which could be a bigger competitor if Google decides to separate it from the unpopular service. |
Google’s Skybox Satellites Shoot GIFs Of Burning Man Being Built | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | Google bought for , and the micro-satellite company’s most recent mission was…to . Skybox repeatedly flew its satellites over Burning Man to create GIFs of how the 70,000 person make-shift hippie city was assembled and then deconstructed over three weeks. For example, above you’ll see the whole city rise and fall, and below you can see the being erected through August, and then the ashy debris on September 1st after it was burnt. Jokes aside, the GIFs actually prove over other satellite companies. Since its micro-satellites are much smaller and therefore cheaper, so it can more of them up in space than companies building big, expensive, traditional satellites that power the infrequent updates to products like Google Maps. One of those might have missed the ephemeral Burning Man event entirely. But since Skybox had both its SkySat-1 and SkySat-2 photographing the festival of expression, self-reliance, and gifting, it could get images every few days that really reveal how the whole city appears and disappears in under a month . Here’s how Burning Man Center Camp emerged from and returned to the dust. has a more GIFs and an interactive tools that lets you see what Burning Man looked like on a given day. At first glance it might seem frivolous or a bit worrisome in terms of its surveillance potential. But when applied to farming, disaster relief, or monitoring ecological issues, Skybox could use photos from space to make life better here on earth. — |
Instapaper Goes Freemium With Big iOS Redesign | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | , bringing bookmarks into the future, has just launched a big redesign of the iOS version of the app with loads of new features and a brand new business model. has always been a paid product, going for between $3 and $4 dollars on mobile and costing approximately $1/month as a subscription. Today, the company is pivoting to entirely free apps and services, with an option to get unlimited access to a host of new features. With the launch of Instapaper 6, iOS users will now be able to save any article with a single tap thanks to the open System Share Sheet in iOS 8. Before, users had to copy and paste the link and save it in the Instapaper app, or email the link to their personal Instapaper email to cue it up in the app. The one-click save also hooks into notifications to keep a list of your latest saved articles in the iOS Notifications center. iOS was the last of Instapaper’s products (such as the and the web version) to not include a single save button, so this marks a big step forward for the app. Instapaper is also introducing text-to-speech with the help of Apple’s text-to-speech synthesizer, letting users listen to their saved articles at times when reading isn’t an option. All of the above features are free, but premium users will have access to text-to-speech playlists as well as unlimited highlighting (free users are limited to five highlights per month). This will let users listen to their own curated podcast of articles while they drive or go for a job without switching manually. Instapaper 6 also introduces profiles so that users can follow their friends’ reads, as well as a unified search for any text within the app. Instapaper was , and General Manager Brian Donohue has since been trying to get Instapaper to a place where it can go freemium. When it was first launched as a consumer product, Instapaper had little to no competition. “When Pocket launched with a great, free product, it became harder to justify a paid product when we had a solid free competitor,” said Donohue. “With Premium, we want to let free users have most of the same features while giving premium users special or unlimited access to them.” [gallery columns="5" ids="1059339,1059338,1059337,1059336,1059335"] New pricing takes the apps to a free download and asks for $2.99/month or $29.99/year. To learn more, head over to the . |
Easel To Shut Down Nine Months After Being Acquired By GitHub | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | Back when GitHub acquired Easel, a collaborative, What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get HTML web design tool, Easel’s blog post on the matter implied that it would be sticking around. “Easel continues to run as it has,” . Alas, things change. Nine months later, Easel is closing up shop. So what Easel? If you’re familiar with other WYSIWYG web design tools — things like Dreamweaver, or iWeb — imagine a somewhat trimmed-down version running inside of the browser built with team collaboration in mind. Easel was part of YC’s Summer 2012 class and was acquired by GitHub in January of this year on undisclosed terms. We and . The news of the shutdown comes from the Easel team itself in its since the acquisition. The service is now immediately closed to new users, and existing users have until October 31 to export the HTML/CSS for any projects they’ve built so far. |
It’s Not About Creating Another Silicon Valley But Preventing Another Motor City | Mike Ducker | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | Quick. What do the iconic founders Thomas Edison (hundreds of companies), William Hewlett (HP), William Boeing (Boeing Airlines), Robert Jarvik, (Jarvik Heart), Scott McNealy and Bill Joy (Sun Microsystems), Tony Fadell (Father of the iPod and founder of Nest) and Larry Page (Google) have in common? Give up? They grew up in Michigan. When you have a state with the , there is a high probability that you’ll have a lot of babies who will want to build products. But why are these job creators moving away to set up their companies somewhere else? Is it the snow? The Detroit Lions, maybe? I believe you can look at the early 1900’s, the start of the automotive industry, to get some answers. At the dawn of the 20th century, the “crazy ones” were not heading to Northern California but to Southeast Michigan. The techies sitting behind their computers today were the hardware tinkers of the 1900s: people working in their machine shops trying to build products and make it rich in Michigan. These entrepreneurs would eventually create one of the biggest industries (and the biggest ) in the world and drive an economic boom that at one point led to Southeast Michigan having the highest GDP in the nation. I was interested in how these companies drove unprecedented economic growth and the development of an industry that changed society and why today almost all the new automotive companies are born outside of the Motor City. Ford Model T Tourabout, c. 1910 There were an estimated 500 automotive startups during the early 1900s, and since there was no venture capital, startup training programs, competitions or incubators, the only way to map out the ecosystem was to look at the people who participated. I decided to look at the founders and the backers of the major automotive companies, referring to their previous industries before they invested in or began an automotive company. What the map shows is that a dynamic ecosystem leveraged the past knowledge and capital to draw in people from around the world to pursue a unique opportunity. More specifically I identified two factors that drove the automotive ecosystem. Louis Chevrolet Smart, talented and passionate people were engaging with each other, learning from each other and supporting, challenging, connecting, and motivating each other. Take Louis Chevrolet, born half a world away in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, an engineering town that was the center of the watch-making world. He learned how to become a mechanic in Paris at a bicycle shop, became a race car driver for Fiat, and then Buick, which is where he learned how to design cars and became friends with GM founder Billy Durant. They founded Chevrolet together, and he later went back to his passion of designing racing cars (one of his cars won the Indianapolis 500). The Dodge Brothers first started a bicycle shop, then a machine shop, and then made transmissions for Olds. They signed a risky but very lucrative contract to produce parts for Ford and later designed their own brand of automobiles. Of course the stories of their drinking, fighting and gunplay are legendary in Detroit saloons. Henry Leland One of the best stories is of Henry Leland. He started in the firearms industry, becoming an expert on interchangeable parts, tool-making and manufacturing. Later, he founded a company that supplied engines to the first successful commercial automotive enterprise: the Olds Motor Vehicle Company. He was asked to assess the Henry Ford Company (Henry’s first company) assets, which the investors wanted to get rid of, but instead convinced them to start a new company called Cadillac. GM bought Cadillac and Leland went to work for Walter Chrysler there. But like many of the original entrepreneurs of GM, he left and started Lincoln, which he later sold to Ford. The interconnections of these great minds through employment, business or investment allowed people to share a deep and unique knowledge that helped these companies drive through all the engineering and manufacturing challenges and led to the fastest development of an industry in any geographic region of the world. I found it interesting that many of the investors, suppliers and founders came from some of the earliest original industries in Michigan. The state had a massive mining and timber sector, and many of those entrepreneurs invested in early automotive startups. Edward Sparrow and Samuel L. Smith made money in mining and were the first investors in Olds. Alexander Malcomson, Detroit’s largest coal dealer, was the largest original investor in the Ford Motor Company. In many ways the timber industry leads to the large carriage industry which leads to the automotive industry. In fact many of the early automotive founders and investors came from the carriage industry. Billy Durant created the largest carriage company in the U.S. before he started the largest automotive company, General Motors. James H. Whiting first started Flint Wagon Works and then became one of the early investors and executives in Buick. GMC and Pontiac were started from carriage companies started by Edward Murphy, Albert North and Harry Hamilton. But much of the real technical genius of the automotive industry came from machine shops that were started all over South East Michigan. People like Benjamin Briscoe, who started his first sheet metal stamping company at the age of 18, became one of the main investors in Buick before trying to start his own automotive company. Both the Dodge and Grabowsky Brothers (founders of GMC) were involved in metalworking before getting into parts and developing an automotive brand themselves. The new entrepreneurs leveraged the knowledge and financing of the previous generation of business people to develop a gas-powered engine that was reliable to drive on rural dirt roads at prices the new Middle America could afford. But then it stopped. There has been a lot of coverage about the fall of the automotive sector in the Midwest and the unparalleled economic destruction that followed. But here is the real question: Why didn’t this incredible ecosystem create a new generation of entrepreneurs who would find the next innovation for the market? Alfred Sloan (Source: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) It needs to be said that many of the original automotive founders and investors who made contributions to society are much greater than just the companies they produced. You’ll find their names on universities, hospitals, museums, and foundations all across the Midwest. Philanthropists though they were, they did not “give back” to the next generation of entrepreneurs. The two greatest icons of the automotive sector, Henry Ford and Alfred Sloan, led part of the destruction of the ecosystem. Sloan, in many ways the father of “corporate management,” purposely buried the entrepreneurial history of GM, and his organizational leadership led to one of the most arrogant, risk-adverse bureaucratic organizations in the world. Ford’s obsession with creating one of the most efficient companies in the world and not evolving with market forces took the brain power out of the company and, with it, the passion out of his employees. There have been movies made on how the automotive companies killed future entrepreneurs and the ecosystem that created them. One of the most damaging tools was the non-compete contracts for employees, which have proven to . These interactions are the heart of any ecosystem. If Shockley had similar contracts for his engineers, Silicon Valley might never have happened; Fairchild Semiconductor . There have been hundreds of thousands of talented engineers that have come to live and work in Southeast Michigan over the last century, and the old-guard automotive leaders never helped them to build the next great companies. The story and lessons of the rise and fall of the Michigan automotive ecosystem redirects the focus from institutions and activities to the people in the ecosystem. I currently advise governments and donors on how to develop ecosystems that help to develop job-creating entrepreneurs in developing countries. They want to focus on venture funds, accelerators, competitions and training. Trying to find ways to leverage the skills, knowledge, and wealth of the current private sector is the best way to developing an ecosystem that will support the job-creating entrepreneurs of the future. |
TC Cribs: Evernote’s Expertly Caffeinated California HQ | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | In today’s episode of TechCrunch Cribs, we headed over to , the company behind the beloved notetaking software. Evernote has often said that it intends to be around for at least a century, which may well be why they’ve situated themselves in a very large building that gives them tons of room to grow in the years ahead. In the video embedded above you can see the difference between the floors that they’re currently occupying, and the ones that have not yet been given the Evernote touch — it’s safe to say the building is a much more fun place to be now than it was when other companies called it home. [gallery ids="1059534,1059523,1059524,1059530,1059528,1059527,1059532,1059531"] Like a lot of tech companies, Evernote has lots of fancy coffee on hand to keep its staffers perked up throughout the day. But what sets Evernote apart is that it actually gives every one of its employees a full lesson on how to be a barista — and each staffer gets away from their day jobs to take regular shifts working behind the counter in Evernote’s main entrance, whipping up espresso drinks for their coworkers and guests. Hey, even though this tech thing is going pretty well now, it’s always good to have a fall-back career option. Check it all out in the video above. |
500 Startups Launches Its First Two 500 Women Syndicate Companies | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | has launched FameBit and Wanderable, the first two companies out of its female founders . 500 Startups created the program to support more women founders and encourage angel investors to invest in women-led companies. The first 500 Women company, , is a platform to find, hire and work with YouTube Influencers. It has achieved a $5 million run rate in just under seven months, according to the company. It has also produced over 1,000 videos since July and now works with top brands, such as L’Oreal, JustFab, ShoeDazzle, eSalon, and Dollar Shave Club to sponsor YouTube content creators. “I attribute a great deal of FameBit’s quick success to 500,” says FameBit co-founder Agnes Kozera. “This type of support is necessary for driving innovation and inspiring women to build awesome companies.” The second company, , helps couples create and fund their honeymoon registries both online and through a mobile app. Wanderable says it has helped 21,000 couples create their dream registries so far. The company is now focused on building strategic partnerships and creating premium experiences, such as private yacht cruises with a personal chef or viewings of the Crown Jewels in London. The founders say Wanderables is on a $14 million run rate of orders processed so far. |
Twitter’s CEO Will Respond To Whether He’s High Once He Finishes These Doritos | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | Peter Thiel thinks Twitter is than 140-characters. In a today, the famous Facebook investor bashed its competitor saying “Twitter is hard to evaluate. They have a lot of potential. It’s a horribly mismanaged company—probably a lot of pot-smoking going on there.”
And when Twitter employee Jason Goldman ribbed Twitter CEO and former improv comedian Dick Costolo about it, the chief had the perfect response. After Goldman joked that maybe it was Thiel who was blazed when he said he wanted to live on a seasteading platform with its own laws, Dick replied “working my way through a giant bag of Doritos. I’ll catch up with you later.” Yo but how high were you when you decided to go live on an ocean platform. "No not like. It *is* Waterworld man." — Jason Goldman (@goldman) working my way through a giant bag of Doritos. I'll catch up with you later. — dick costolo (@dickc) The whole thing is even sillier considering Thiel donated in 2010. But now he’s Zero To One, and a little controversy can’t hurt sales. This isn’t Twitter’s first run in with that sticky icky. Snoop Dogg notoriously smoked up Twitter’s whole office during a visit while the executives were out of town. Costolo was apparently pissed. But at least Thiel’s investment vehicle Founders Fund isn’t letting today’s kerfuffle harsh its vibe. This morning it tweeted: ¯_(ツ)_/¯ — Founders Fund (@foundersfund) |
Xpire’s App Makes All Your Social Media “Ephemeral” | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | Dallas-based computer science college student wants to make social media more private. With help from his brother and financial backing from Mark Cuban, he recently released an iOS application called that lets users share “self-destructing” posts on Facebook, Twitter and, now Tumblr, as well as use a variety of tools to better manage and shrink their digital footprints. The app, which first launched earlier this summer, has now been updated to include a feature that , as well as new tools to help you manage and remove unwanted followers. It has also expanded support beyond Facebook and Twitter to also include and more. It’s effectively a way for a user to regain some privacy on the more popular social media platforms around today. And it’s a pretty decent Twitter management tool, as well, allowing you to view and delete up to 3,200 of your most recent tweets, erasing them with a tap of a button, or even surface old tweets by keyword(s). However, its larger selling point is the ability to share social networking posts that will disappear in the time frame you specify in the app, whether that’s minutes or days. Stauffer said he was originally inspired to create the service after seeing his peers post questionable content on social media, and realizing how that could impact them in the future when it came to applying for jobs and more. Plus, he explains, sometimes users would post long rants or “small and meaningless” content that they may not want to have stick around forever. Time-sensitive content, too, like also doesn’t require a lengthy shelf life, he says. Initially, he and his brother were working on a similar private sharing app called which, much like Snapchat, let users share self-destructing photos and text. He then via email to tell him about the idea, and Mark actually responded. After some discussion, Cuban suggested that instead of growing his own social network, he integrate with pre-existing ones. Of course, Cuban has his own investment to protect in this area. His latest company — which — is a private messaging app, too. And Cuban’s advice to Stauffer could be risky; there’s danger in building your own company on top of others’ platforms, as we’ve seen time and time again, including, most recently, with , a “LinkedIn on Facebook.” But while the big social networks and their APIs play nice with Xpire, Stauffer could generate a decent bit of revenue by selling premium features via in-app purchases, as he intends to do. Stauffer has given Cuban the co-founder title, but from the sounds of things, he’s more an investor/advisor than involved in day-to-day operations. (Stauffer in fact.) Stauffer himself coded 100 percent of the Xpire app, he says, and his brother aided with the design. Cuban’s Radical Ventures is the sole investor in the three-month old application. Currently, Xpire is a . |
Minuum’s iOS 8 Keyboard Lets You See A Lot More Screen As You Type | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | Apple’s new relaxation of the ban on third-party keyboards means there’s now a plethora in the store, but a couple stand out. I wrote about Fleksy earlier, but Toronto startup , and their approach is unique. The team’s goal was to engineer a usable, one-line keyboard, and that’s what they’ve delivered on iOS, albeit with shape-shifting options so you can also set it to something more familiar to start off. It took me very little time to acclimatize to Minuum’s ultra-minimal keyboard, however, and I was surprised by how well I was able to type despite the visual simplicity of the interface. Adjusting to Minuum’s approach to input means, to some degree, giving up any perfectionist impulses and trusting your instincts, which is easier said than done for those used to the default iOS keyboard, where hitting the correct touch targets is much more important. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIbLdJW5Z4I&w=640&h=390] Minuum’s prediction engine means it generally guesses the correct word, and you can teach it new ones if it doesn’t. I hit a bit of a hurdle trying to send the word “GIF” to a colleague, but eventually I was able to add it as a custom entry, but only using the full-sized version of the keyboard. [gallery ids="1059490,1059491"] What’s nice about Minuum, besides encouraging a healthy laziness around typing accuracy, is that it gives users options, and lets them choose a keyboard that mostly gets out of the way – this means more space dedicated to showing you your Message conversation history, for instance, or an unencumbered view of your Note, to name just a couple of benefits. The app is $1.99, which is a sale price down from the usual $3.99. It only supports English at launch, but Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian and more are on the way, as well as an iPad optimized version and new customization themes. |
And The Winner Of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014 Is…Alfred! | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | After three days and incredible pitches from our 26 Battlefield companies (plus two Audience Choice winners), it’s now time to name the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014 Battlefield champion. This year’s finalists included Alfred, Partpic, PatternEQ, Shipstr, Stack And Vinli – all amazing startups. But there can only be one winner who walks away with the – and $50,000 in prize money. Today at Pier 48 in San Francisco, the Battlefield finalists again took the stage to present their startup to this year’s panel of Finals judges who made the ultimate decision as to which of these promising companies would be the overall winner. Our panel of esteemed judges included (Sequoia Capital), (SV Angel), (Greylock Partners), (Yahoo), (Khosla Ventures) and (North, Google Ventures). After a considerable time debating backstage – actually, they went outside and locked the door behind them – the judges have made their choice. The judges report it was a tough decision, but it ultimately came down to the following two companies. The hard part, said one judge in passing, was not picking the top two, but picking which of the two should win. So without any further ado, meet your TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014 Battlefield winner. Boston-based , founded by and , is the first service layer on the shared economy that manages your routine across multiple on-demand and local services (like Handybook, Instacart, and the local dry cleaner). Members build a subscription to make their routine automatic, letting Alfred coordinate services in their home. Alfred will especially be useful to regular users of the growing number of on-demand services, which make your everyday tasks easier – by getting them done for you. When you first sign up for the service, you’ll be assigned an “Alfred.” The app shows you this person’s picture and some general information, as well as the verification for the person’s background checks. You’ll then choose a specific day for this person to deliver your goods each week, and you’ll compile a grocery list to get them started. After that, the app works on its own in the background. You don’t really have to open the app again after you’ve signed up unless you need to make adjustments to your weekly grocery list. Afterward, your “Alfred” will head over weekly to drop off your clean laundry, put it in the closet, drop off your household supplies, and replace supplies as needed – like putting new paper towels on a towel holder, for example. He or she will also put your groceries away and make sure the house is spotless. The idea is not only to cut into the 30 average hours per week that people spend on household chores and related tasks, but also to make using the variety of apps and services in the shared economy even easier. You can read more about Alfred . Shipstr streamlines the complex, opaque, unreliable, time-consuming and expensive international shipping industry through a cloud-based aggregation platform. Shipstr works by aggregating information from different service providers onto one platform. The startup goes directly to third-party services, including trucking companies, customs brokers, warehouses and ocean carriers, and gets information on their pricing and fees. This allows businesses to make their own shipping arrangements without the aid of a freight broker, get instant price quotes, and track their shipments more quickly. For companies in the U.S., Shipstr is able to rely on APIs for information. In China, many companies don’t have standardized APIs, but they do store pricing information in the form of Excel spreadsheets. Shipstr allows those companies to upload their spreadsheets directly to its platform. You can read more about Shipstr . |
Apple Just Uploaded A U2 Album To Your iPhone And iPad — And Seriously, WTF | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | Seriously. Go look. Depending on your iCloud setting, U2’s latest album might be sitting in the Music app, ready to play. Otherwise, the album is most likely still shown, available to download from iCloud from your iPhone, iPad, or iTunes app. Worse yet, it’s rather difficult to rid your phone and iTunes account of the album. Yesterday at the iPhone 6 launch event, Bono and Tim Cook jointly unleashed this scourge on the iTunes world by daintily touching the tips of their fingers. Seriously, it was awkward. Cook called the album release the largest in history — something that’s easily obtainable when you push it to millions and millions of devices. Now, is everywhere, seemingly on nearly every iPhone and iPod and iTunes account. I, for one, do not want this on my iPhone, but there is little that can be done. Sadly you cannot totally purge the songs from your iTunes account. You can only hide the songs from the local iTunes account, but they will continue to live for all of eternity on your iCloud. Thanks, Apple. |
AngelList Talks Late-Stage Funding Syndicates, Global Expansion And A New Fund Ecosystem As The Angels Take Disrupt | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | is expanding globally and launching new vehicles for accredited investors to back what amounts to for the top deals on the platform. That’s the latest from AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant and angel investor Gil Penchina from the stage of Disrupt SF 2014 as the angels who, along with CrunchFund investor (and TechCrunch founder) Michael Arrington, held the audience rapt. The AngelList platform has grown increasingly robust, and through the can now invest in — and lead — Series A rounds, according to Navikant. “Once my first fund got to $4 million there were people who weren’t able to get into every deal,” says Penchina. “So we launched the SAAS Syndicate… the Bitcoin syndicate, which is doing two deals; the IoT syndicate and a late stage syndicate, which is going to compete with late stage investors.” Both Penchina and Ravikant see AngelList as a way to democratize the venture model from top to bottom, with the late-stage fund the latest shot from AngelList across the bow of traditional investors. At issue is the dilution that early-stage investors suffer in the high-priced later-stage rounds that have become the norm in Silicon Valley (and beyond) in recent years (thanks Andreessen Horowitz). As the AngelList syndicates grow larger, they’re also professionalizing. Penchina has eight full-time staff working on his syndicate fund along with another 30 “volunteers.” So far, Penchina has deployed $3 million across his syndicates, but expects that number to soar to $10 million over the next 12 months.” Ravikant envisions a system that allows an investor’s fund to grow as his experience and track record evolves. “It’s a smooth path up to a fund,” from angel investment, says Ravikant. “You can add backers as you go.” AngelList is a way to add leverage to an investor’s checkbook. It’s additional firepower to compete against the more established and well-heeled investors in the venture community, and he argues it’s a better deal for the limited partners that invest in funds. “Institutional LPs go into individual funds now,” he says. Now that AngelList has managed to embed itself in the U.S. ecosystem, it’s casting its eye on markets around the world. The investment platform is in the process of obtaining regulatory clearance in the UK with plans to move into Canadian and Australian markets shortly thereafter. The only problem with the AngelList model is the problem of overtaxing resources, both men said. “I’m in too many deals now,” Ravikant said. |
A Run Through The Chinese Pavilion At TechCrunch Disrupt SF | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | At the Chinese pavilion we ran through those on show: Ogora helps developers add VOIP voice calls to their apps with one line of code. Sensoro is an iBeacon startup which senses the surrounding environment. An image recognition startup that can also recognise objects exhibited, allowing you to search on keywords on the web and in app. ClearClouds is a cloud service company providing data collection for large data centers. A drone company also showed off more affordable drones, which are smartphone-controlled. |
Looop, An Online Learning Platform For Employees, Raises $2M To Enter The UK | Steve O'Hear | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | Online learning startups are aplenty right now — from heavily-funded U.S-based MOOCS, such as and , to more thrifty European players like and — there’s no doubt the edtech space is heating up. Now another startup is throwing its learning wares into the virtual classroom. Australia’s provides a mobile-friendly platform to enable small-to-medium sized business to deliver training online. Today, the company is disclosing a $2 million seed round from an undisclosed education investor, specifically raised to fuel expansion into the UK, as well as add a native iOS app to its newly-launched app for devices running Android. Looop also plans to make its first forage into the U.S. market, perhaps as soon as next month. Pitching itself as an easy way to get new or existing company training/learning materials online, in addition to offering tools for tracking and assessment, all in a mobile-friendly format, Looop’s ultimate aim is to disrupt a stale corporate online learning market that relies on outdated desktop software that doesn’t always play well with mobile devices and/or the cloud. In addition, similar to consumer-focused , the company is tapping into the notion of ‘lean’ or ‘micro-learning’; the idea being to offer learning in bite-sized chunks, with easily tested learning outcomes. The kind of learning content that is perfectly suited to on-the-go consumption. On that note, when asked about existing competitors, Looop co-founder, Ben Muzzell, says: “I genuinely don’t feel there are any other businesses directly competing with us in the same respect and this is because they haven’t been able to convert their training programs to mobile devices effectively, as of yet.” He lists two mains reasons why that hasn’t tended to have happened as the need to wait for technology to catch up and a reluctance by the online learning industry to adopt “cloud technology, thereby slowing down progression in this space.” In contrast, Muzzell doesn’t see MOOCs as a direct competitor (though I’d point to enterprise MOOCs being a next logical step, such as the white-labeling work being done by Eliademy). “MOOCs don’t fit into specific business objectives. They are also often directed towards students’ learning requirements rather than business learning needs, so we don’t view them as a direct competitor in that sense,” he says. |
Cloudike Provides White Label Cloud Storage For Carriers Like LG | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | Services like , , and are so ubiquitous in the U.S. that it’s easy to forget there are many markets around the world where personal cloud storage is still relatively novel. , which is part of ASD Technologies and based in Korea, Russia, and San Jose, California, wants to grab those users by offering white-label cloud storage for mobile service providers and other companies in emerging markets. Cloudike, which exhibited at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, has already in seed funding and is using that capital to grow its sales team. So far, its clients include major carriers such as LG (it has launched LG Cloud in 41 countries); Megafon, Russia’s second-largest mobile phone operator; and Turkey’s Vestel, an electronics manufacturing group that recently started making smartphones. Cloudike provides a customized frontend and all backend services, including for iOS, Android, and Windows apps, to companies that want to offer their users cloud storage options. It is targeting expansion in Eastern European countries like Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, as well as markets in East Asia such as Korea, Japan, and China, where services like Dropbox (an Amazon Web Services customer) and Google Drive are not as well-known or easy to access as they are in the U.S. and Western Europe. “If you live in a country where AWS doesn’t exist, then the speed is very slow,” says chairman and co-founder Sunung Lee. “For example in Korea, a 5MB music file can take 50 seconds to download, but with our server in Korea it is just three seconds. That’s a huge difference. If you don’t have Amazon in your country, it’s very difficult to use Dropbox.” Cloudike wants to gain market penetration by offering telcos a cost-efficient way to launch personal cloud storage for their users. “If they start from scratch, it may take two years and maybe $5 million. But people use our solution and it will take maybe three to six months and cost $300,000 to $400,000,” says Lee. Targeting telcos also lets Cloudike enter a market quickly. For example, in Korea, one of its main markets, mobile operators have a 34 percent share of the cloud storage market.” There are currently slightly more than one million people who use cloud storage powered by Cloudike, but Cloudike CEO Maxim Azarov says that its potential market is 2 billion smartphone users. The company claims a high user retention rate, with 75 percent of Cloudike users utilizing the service every day. “There’s a myth that most people are already using cloud storage and that most of those people use Google Drive or Dropbox, but if you look at the facts, that is not true. We ran a survey in the U.S. and found that 65 percent of mobile phone subscribers don’t use any cloud storage at all, so there are still a lot of people who are new to the concept. And 35 percent of people who use some kind of cloud storage are using a carrier-provided cloud. You get the phone and it’s already in there, so you just naturally start using it,” says Azarov. “We would like to be a major player in this space. We would like to make sure that not just geeks use the cloud, but also every single user with a smartphone has a good cloud experience.” |
Executives At Disrupt Say The Future Of Healthcare Depends On Testing, Sensing And Communication | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | From on Monday to a panel of esteemed startup chief executives on Wednesday, the discussion around healthcare at this year’s Disrupt has been about the ways in which new diagnostic and communication tools are transforming delivery and accessibility for patients. “Healthcare is something that’s been done to us,” Livongo chief executive (and former CEO) Glen Tullman told TechCrunch’s own Sarah Buhr onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014. At Livongo Health, which launched today. “What we’re seeing now is the consumerization of healthcare.” Now, thanks to the products on offer from Tullman’s Livongo, Matthew Cooper’s , and Peter Hames’ Big Health, healthcare is becoming more about a conversation between a patient and their doctors, even if the patient isn’t aware of it. The companies all tackle different ailments. With Cooper’s Carmenta Bioscience focused on diagnostic testing for pre-eclampsia; Livongo tackling diabetes; and Big Health looking initially to solve the problem of sleep disorders, but all share a belief that diagnostic monitoring and increased communication with physicians and a broader healthcare community can reshape treatment for those with chronic and acute conditions. “The standard of care is that you see your doctor once every six months,” says Tullman. It’s a practice that all three startups call into question. “Why is it the gold standard, this medieval model? It’s like going to see the blacksmith,” says Big Health chief executive Peter Hames. “What we tried to do with Sleepio [the company’s first product] is automate [treatment].” Hames’ product takes evidence-based intervention treatment, filters it through a delivery mechanism. “We start to make behavioral medicine scalable, affordable, and evidence based,” says Hames. Scalability is a key component of the modern healthcare solution, according to all three executives. The big idea is to leverage mobile technologies and the power of modern computing to create better testing and analysis that can be readily communicated to doctors. This transformation of medical diagnostics and treatment is even more important given the new standards for reimbursement created by the Affordable Care Act. The ACA flips the emphasis from reimbursement for procedures to reimbursement for results. A requirement which means physicians need to monitor their patients’ health more closely to engage in preventative medicine rather than reactive medicine. “We call it understanding your body’s vital narrative,” says Tullman. For Matthew Cooper, detection is the key to good and affordable treatment. “The answer is driven by better diagnostic testing,” Cooper says. |
Bitcoin Wallet And Platform Coinbase Opens To Europe | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | In a really big deal for San Francisco-based Coinbase, one of the world’s leading Bitcoin wallets and merchant processing platforms, the startup is opening its doors to European customers in 13 countries. This will be its long-awaited first foray outside of the U.S. The company is one of the biggest Bitcoin wallets in the world with 1.6 million customers, 36,000 merchants including large partners like Overstock and Wikipedia and has 6,000 developers. But they’ve held off on expanding internationally because it’s pretty complicated from a regulatory and legal perspective. For one, many different European countries have different emerging guidelines on how to handle crypto-currencies. Plus, you need multiple bank partners, which Coinbase has secured. (They aren’t naming names though because it’s a competitive advantage.) “A lot of the regulatory environment is still unclear. Some countries have posted guidance on it, while others have been totally silent about it,” said Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. “We went through a process with each of these countries. We interpreted their guidance, told regulators about our plans and our goals of what we wanted to do. We had a bit of a dialogue, and some countries got comfortable. I will say we certainly have taken a more proactive reaching out to regulators.” The 13 countries Coinbase is adding include Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Latvia,
Malta, Portugal, and Slovakia. “I think we’re probably covering roughly 60 percent of the European Union’s GDP at launch,” Armstrong said. Any consumer in these countries should be able to buy and sell Bitcoin through Coinbase, but only up to a maximum of 500 euro per day during the beta. This will cover transactions between Bitcoin and the euro, along with authorized European bank accounts “Cross-border payments are the real promise of Bitcoin,” Armstrong said. |
Minder Controls Your Content Location and Duration | Ron Miller | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | The long tail theory states when you put something out on the Internet, it lives forever. For some, that means it comes back to bite you long after you posted it, but for content creators like marketers, artists and writers, they may simply lose control of how and where their content gets displayed. That’s where , a company that appeared on Startup Alley at t this week, comes in. Minder lets you set who can see the content, the duration the content is accessible and a geo fence, or limited geographic area where viewers can access your content. This means you can control exactly who, how long and where the content will display. You share the content by email, SMS or on Facebook and the link takes you to the content inside Minder. As an example, suppose you wanted to create a video to promote your event at TechCrunch Disrupt. You could limit the video distribution to just the TechCrunch Disrupt location area and you could make it available from September 8-10th, just the dates of the event. If you wanted to limit it to your team, you just select their names in your address book before you share it. “Everything stems from the concept the people who create the content should own, control, manage and publish that content,” Michael Tracy, vice president of business development at StoryCloud, the company behind Minder explained. Once you’ve set this information, the content is only available within the parameters you set for the duration you defined. For certain use cases, this could be quite useful and unlike a product like like , which entrepreneur and Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban talked about in an interview on Monday at TechCrunch Disrupt, the content doesn’t just disappear after a defined period of time. The content owner can still access it and use it, but the people you’ve shared it with will no longer be able to see it. Once you send out the content, analytics let you see the number of impressions, locations, unique views and how long viewers stayed on the site. Tracy explained once you put content out there whether on email or Facebook, it becomes community property and you lose control of it. Minder lets you have complete control over the content and once it expires or you move outside the geo fence, the link simply won’t work anymore, even if it gets shared. Minder, which was started by serial entrepreneur , is in Beta right now and free for all users, but eventually Tracy says they will probably charge content owners to use the service. There are also plans to white label it and sell it as a company-branded service. It currently integrates with Box and Dropbox, so users can access content from these services when using Minder to distribute it. Minder is the first product released by StoryCloud, which bills itself as a cloud app development shop and hopes to create a suite of cloud products in the coming months in addition to Minder. Tracy told me, so far the company is funded by private investors he didn’t wish to name. |
Microsoft Makes Scaling WordPress On Azure Easier | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | Almost of all sites on the web today run (including TechCrunch), but it’s not the easiest content management system to scale up for high-traffic sites. A bit of basic caching goes a long way, but to run a very large site — or to manage a huge visitor spike from Reddit and similar services — you need a bit more than a cheap virtual private server. With , Microsoft has been offering the ability to easily set up a WordPress site for a while now, but starting today, it is offering a far more scalable solution. Azure users can now head to Azure’s and spin up a version of what Microsoft calls “Scalable WordPress.” With just a few clicks, this will set up Azure Storage for storing all media assets and give users access to a curated set of WordPress plug-ins that are optimized for performance. Unlike the standard WordPress installs on Azure, this will also use a higher-end (and pricier) MySQL database. For the most part, Microsoft is aiming this service at enterprise users. Given the popularity of WordPress, a number of services like and have sprung up around it that offer specialized hosting services for the platform. Many of those companies, too, are targeting enterprises. Unlike Azure, however, these platforms offer a completely managed service. Still, Microsoft surely hopes that it can capture business from at least a few companies that are able and willing to run their own WordPress installs by making it easier to set up a scalable version on its platform. As part of today’s update, Microsoft is also launching the ability to securely connect to virtual machines and cloud services through a VPN. Other updates include the launch of role-based access controls, as well as a couple of around live streaming, content protection and media indexing (through speech recognition). Azure’s API Management service is also now (which in Microsoft speak means it now features an SLA). |
[Update] Allscripts Ex-CEO Glen Tullman Launches Livongo Health At Disrupt, Backed By General Catalyst | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | [Editor’s Note: This post has been updated to indicate that Glenn Tullman was the former chief executive of Allscripts, not its founder as was previously indicated.] Diabetes affects 29.1 million people in the U.S. — including the son of former chief executive Glen Tullman. When Tullman was looking to launch his next startup, he wanted to create a technology that would touch millions, and from his own experience he knew how broken the system of care for diabetes patients was. So, working in tandem with investors at the venture capital firm General Catalyst, Tullman began the process of developing a new way to test and monitor insulin levels for diabetics. That six-month process culminated in the launch of Livongo Health, a Palo Alto-based company launched today onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014. Backed by $10 million from General Catalyst, Livongo is part of the deluge of healthcare focused startups applying information technology innovations to massive healthcare problems. “We started to brainstorm about what’s coming next,” says Tullman of the process he went through with partners Niko Bonatsos and Hemant Taneja. “We talked about understanding your body’s vital narrative. Each body is different and each tells a different narrative. We haven’t learned to decode those narratives and that’s what Livongo is all about.” “In Silicon Valley we’ve solved all of these problems, but what people don’t understand is how backward we are in the experience of how we understand healthcare,” Tullman says. In the diabetes industry, doctors see their patients twice a year under existing treatment regimens, Tullman says, and use a six month average to determine the health of their patients. “We’re developing a tool that allows, by monitoring your blood, to signal to you and others when you have dangerously low blood sugar,” Tullman says. Though the company expects to do evolve into a platform for treating all kinds of chronic diseases, Tullman says that they wanted to tackle the biggest problem first, which led them to diabetes. To that end, Livongo Health will sell an FDA cleared two-way, interactive glucometer, unlimited supplies for monitoring, cloud-based analytics, and real-time monitoring and support, to customers. In one test case, the company’s technology and service was able to save an elderly woman from hospitalization when the monitoring service realized that she hadn’t moved in three days and hadn’t tested her blood. An emergency contact was notified and the woman was given treatment. “This is one of the most celebrated teams in the healthcare IT space that’s going after a massive market, where 9% of all Americans are suffering from diabetes,” says General Catalyst principal Niko Bonatsos. Two days ago, Livongo received clearance to distribute their devices and the company already has thousands of orders from places like Healthcare Partners and Office Depot, and self-insured employers. “This is a $250 billion market in the U.S. that affects one out of every 10 people,” says Tullman. Initially backed by Tullman’s own 7wire Ventures, General Catalyst joined the company’s list of backers earlier this year and both General Catalyst managing director, Hemant Taneja, and Bonatsos will take seats on the company’s board. “We’re excited to partner with Glen and team to help accomplish their mission. We think that companies like Livongo can reduce healthcare costs by $100 billion in diabetes alone,” said Taneja in a statement. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDq1-jOzVyA |
null | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 9 | 17 | null |
Disrupt Alum Edyn, Maker of a Smart Garden Sensor, Scores Distribution Through Home Depot | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | Edyn, which a year ago with a slightly jankier cubical prototype of a Internet-connected garden sensor, is and a partnership to sell them in Home Depot next spring. The startup’s system, which comes with a soil sensor that can tell you pH, humidity, temperature, soil nutrition and moisture and an automated water valve, helps gardeners figure out how to precisely care for their plants. A paired app lets users see recommendations on which plants to use given their garden’s conditions. They launched on-stage at Disrupt last fall, then unveiled a full-fledged Kickstarter campaign over the summer that raised $384,000. That made it the most successful agricultural tech product on Kickstarter to date, with 5,000 units of sales. You can still pre-order product for $159 . Because of Disrupt last year, Edyn’s prototype ( ) piqued the interest of some reps from Home Depot. They sent a cold e-mail to the company and CEO Jason Aramburu. “They saw it as Disrupt and really liked it,” said Aramburu, who previously worked on sustainable agricultural techniques in East Africa before starting Edyn. “A deal like this has always been the plan, but we were never able to announce it.” |
Canviz Lets You Put Animated GIFs On Your Wall | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | Boring old pictures are, without a doubt, boring. That’s why there’s . Designed by artists to allow them to share animated photographs and graphics, Canviz is a “museum grade” screen for your wall. Writes the creator, MM Waters: The canvas connects to your phone and allows you to upload almost any animated photo (or regular photo). Images are stored right on the device and they play back at 1080 x 1920 on a 22 by 14 inch LCD. The team is making the fancy frames by hand and there is onboard storage. One frame costs $249 on Kickstarter and they’re looking for $50,000 to find the project. It looks like a cool little tool and might be fun for those who wish to recreate Harry-Potter-esque talking pictures on their way back to their small, lonely dorm rooms that they’ve decked out in the colors of Gryffindor.
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Twitter To Raise Up To $1.5B In Debt Offering | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | Twitter wants more cash. The company announced two $650 million debt offerings today, each with a potential $100 increase provided that the sales are oversubscribed. Assuming full tip, including the $100 million boosters, Twitter will raise up to $1.5 billion with the two offerings. Half the debt will be due in 2019, and the other half in 2021. The company famously raised $1.82 billion in its initial public offering. In its , Twitter stated that it had cash and equivalents of $2.1 billion, down approximately $100 million from the end of its sequentially preceding quarter. The company has demonstrated appetite for large deals. It famously almost picked up SoundCloud. Twitter also has a $1 billion credit facility open to it. A released today changed the amount of aggregate indebtedness that Twitter may have in conjunction to that facility, raising the cap to $3 billion. That’s important as if Twitter had raised the $1.5 billion in debt, it would have been in breach of its agreement pursuant to the credit facility to not have aggregate debt greater than $1 billion. Twitter, assuming no other debt, can now max out its line of credit, borrow the $1.5 billion, and not be in breach of the facility’s agreement. Why might Twitter want to borrow the massive sum? To grant it more maneuverability to purchase other companies, I’d wager. Also, money is likely to become quite a lot more expensive in the short-term. With the government’s quantitative easing program quickly coming to an end, there is a general expectation that the Fed will start to raise benchmark rates, boosting interest rates across the spectrum, and thus making deals of this sort more expensive for borrowing entities. So, if Twitter wants to lock down a bucket of cash, now is the time to do it. Twitter is not profitable on a GAAP basis, due to its large share-based compensation expenses. The company does have positive adjusted EBITDA, a very non-GAAP metric, but one that can be useful to view the cash costs of running a company. Twitter, put simply, does not need new cash to operate. At all. But if it wanted to start an acquisition binge, it could certainly want to pick up more cash to sweeten deals. Stock is great, but cash is greater. |
T-Mobile Pledges To Enable Wi-Fi Calling On Every Phone It Sells | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | Over the past year and a half or so, T-Mobile has made announcement after announcement in what they’ve dubbed the “Un-carrier” series. Each announcement brings some change that’s meant to rid T-Mobile of some common wireless industry pain point — things like early termination fees, or the absurd costs of international data usage. Today, T-Mobile made its seventh sweeping change: From now on, all handsets it sells will support Wi-Fi calling. Not familiar with Wi-Fi calling? To oversimplify some really neat technology, here’s the idea: When you’re within range of a trusted Wi-Fi network, your voice calls and texts automatically go through that router rather than going to a distant cell tower. It improves voice quality, particularly when the cell network around you isn’t up to snuff. You know that one spot in your house where your calls just drop? With Wi-Fi calling, that shouldn’t be an issue. In a thick, concrete building where the cell network could never reach you? As long as you’re on Wi-Fi, you should still be able to make and receive calls exactly as you normally would. If you walk out of range of the Wi-Fi network, the call transition over to the cell network seamlessly. T-Mobile also announced a new partnership with Gogo’s in-flight wireless services; moving forward, T-Mobile postpaid customers will be able to send/receive text messages over Wi-Fi on any Gogo-enabled flight, for free. These rapid-fire announcements are getting a bit hard to keep track of at this point, so here’s the “Uncarrier” history so far: Uncarrier 1: T-Mobile launches its 4G LTE network, ditches annual service contracts
Uncarrier 2: T-Mobile expands their upgrade program to allow customers to upgrade their phones twice a year
Uncarrier 3: T-Mobile makes international data/texting free
Uncarrier 4: T-Mobile announces they’ll cover early termination fees for anyone willing to switch to their network
Uncarrier 5: T-Mobile starts a “Test Drive” program to loan potential customers an iPhone 5S for 7 days
Uncarrier 6: T-Mobile stops counting data used in select music apps against your monthly limits |
Net Neutrality Foes And Advocates Rush To Control The Narrative As The FCC’s Comment Period Nears Its End | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | As the second comment period for the current net neutrality notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) approaches its end, the issue is heating back up. When the first comment period wrapped up, the FCC received so much input from Americans that its site crashed. The , as was the second, to account for the days is lost to the first session. Today, specifically, is , with hosts of websites showing a pop-up and faux loading spinner, indicating what might happen to the Internet if the FCC’s proposed rules are enacted. The FCC’s Chairman Tom Wheeler has been under intense vituperation following his NPRM’s inclusion of what is called ‘paid prioritization,’ a concept that is called by its foes ‘Internet fast lanes.’ Opponents of the idea are pressing web users, via the Slowdown Day effort, to make more noise as the second period for response and general comment concludes on the 15th. Powerful voices are weighing in as well. Recently, former Speaker of the House and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi . The idea is viscerally opposed by ISPs. Also out recently is a , including Cisco, Nokia, and Broadcom opposing Title II reclassification. There is some space on net neutrality to be in favor of regulation, but opposed to regulation under Title II. For the most part, with some notable exceptions, it seems that there is increasing consensus among net neutrality advocates in favor of use of Title II as the best legal standing for net neutrality. The Internet Association released , arguing in favor of net neutrality, and partially extolling the potential for the use of Title II, but not precisely endorsing it as the proper approach. Congressional noise, pressure from the technology industry, and counter-arguments from other corporate interests makes for a potent moment. Less than a week remains before the official comment box closes. Expect more voices before that date. |
How Tinder Transformed Dating, According To Its CEO | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | Do you really know yourself if you’ve never had your heart broken? Tinder is often labeled a hookup app, but its In the video, Rad also discusses why Tinder won’t monetize by letting people pay to be shown to more potential matches like other dating services. Tinder doesn’t plan to spin off apps for different demographics, even as niche clones like for Jewish people proliferate. Rad says he’s happy if people are simply entertained by judging and objectifying each other, whether or not they actually go on dates with their matches. Yet the most interesting part of the video was his thoughts on how Tinder brings us closer to a world where romance isn’t restricted to who you can meet at the bar. One where options educate us. Persistent dating can get you called promiscuous, but Rad thinks trial and error is actually the route to happiness. Not only does it distill what traits you want in a partner, it makes you reflect on what it takes to be someone’s forever. Without being forged in the fire of dating, you might shatter when the love of your life is on the line. |
Path Will Build An Apple Watch App, But Dave Morin Won’t Talk About Those Acquisition Rumors | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | Mobile social networking app was founded four years ago to help users connect and communicate with the people closest to them. But the startup is looking to branch into launching new apps and experiences, including building something for Apple’s upcoming wearable device. At Disrupt SF today, Morin admitted that he was at the annual Apple September launch event yesterday, and got a first look at the new products coming soon. One device he’s particularly excited about is the , which the company hopes to make available “early next year.” Morin noted that telling time is one of the oldest technologies out there, but Apple has found a way to create a new experience around it. He praised the consumer electronics company for “nailing the user experience” and for the software and operating system that Apple has built into the device. And he’s looking forward to creating an app for it. Morin noted that based on what he saw, the company has done a good job of making it easy for developers to build experiences for the device. It’s not clear what kind of app that will be, but Path is taking a multi-app approach to development these days, thanks the launch of a dedicated messaging app not long ago to complement its core social networking experience. The company will continue to introduce new apps and updating its existing portfolio as it seeks to design new experiences based on a common back end infrastructure. One of the core tenets of this approach is that people are looking for more apps that can be launched and do a single thing well, rather than one app which has many features but it takes multiple taps to get to each one. That was the case with messaging, which it broke out from its core app as a earlier this year. “We think of it as apps are the new features,” Morin said. “In mobile, people really love having single-use case experiences. They want low friction to getting to the application’s use case.” While Morin was keen to sing the praises of Apple, he declined to talk about . “We don’t comment on rumors or speculation,” Morin answered when asked about the report. |
Forget the Apple Watch, Think Drones In The Enterprise | Ron Miller | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | Yesterday we heard about and I wrote an article suggesting But just to show how fast the technology news cycle moves, today at Aaron Levie, CEO at Box participating on a panel about drones, made a business case for the use of drones in an enterprise context, making Watches yesterday’s news (literally). While Levie fully acknowledged that we were very early days when it came to drones in a commercial context, he indicated they would very likely be massive sources of data and Levie wants Box to process all of it, much like Marc Benioff in a TechCrunch Disrupt interview yesterday said he wanted Salesforce to be front and center in the move to wearables. Levie told me that there are only so many documents, but as these drones are collecting information, often very large audio and video files, the platform nature of Box lends itself to building access to any data source whether sensors or drone hard drives. As an example, Levie said they had been talking to an insurance company that wants to fly drones into natural disaster areas to survey damage of customer properties “That ability to massively increase data inputs is incredible to any business that runs on information and obviously we want that to be [processed and stored] in Box,” he said. He said, it may not be sexy to talk about insurance companies, search and rescue teams or oil and gas companies using drones, but these industrial examples are where we should be putting our attention. He pointed out that in the earliest days of computers, they tended to have a military usage until they moved into business and later personal usage, and he said we are starting to see a similar transition to business and personal usage with drones. He said if you think about the data generated by any business, the data created by these devices will be an order magnitude bigger, and he believes that for certain types of businesses scenarios, “these flying robots will be a massive sources of information.” Levie conceded it’s easy to make light of drones, but he sees the huge potential for enterprise use. “We are the internet in 1993 before the browser, the cell phone before the iPhone,” he said. “We are seeing initial use cases that might not be the ones that are the transformative ones.” There are of course lots of practical and regulatory issues around privacy, standards, safety, traffic, and a host of other problems that need to be resolved, but the potential for certain industries to use drones armed with sensor packs to gather information, especially in areas where it’s difficult or dangerous for humans to go, is just tremendous. While you’re pondering how to deal with the Apple Watch and other wearables in the enterprise, you may want to add drones to your list of potential technology. You can make fun if you like or look at the technology with fear or even as toys, but you could also looks for ways they could help your organization process information. |
Microsoft Held In Contempt As It Battles A Domestic Search Warrant Demanding Overseas Data | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | Microsoft has been held in contempt of court after failing to comply with a warrant, following a rejection of a request for appeal on July 31st. The case stems from a United States government search warrant for data stored on a Microsoft server in Ireland. Microsoft . The United States government disagrees. Microsoft has , over several rounds, for its position. The technology industry has . That Microsoft is willing to be held in contempt, even though the order appears to be mostly procedural, underscores how the company weighs the matter. The tone is almost humorous: Microsoft isn’t doing what it has been told to do, and it thus being held in contempt, but the government isn’t seeking an immediate penalty, and Microsoft is really acting in the current fashion to ensure that it can continue to appeal. Color me dense, but I don’t quite grok why Microsoft has to land a contempt verdict to push its case forward, but, according to the document: While Microsoft continues to believe that a contempt order is not required to perfect an appeal, it agrees that the entry of an order of contempt would eliminate any jurisdictional issues on appeal. Thus, while reserving its rights to appeal any contempt order and the underlying July 31 ruling, Microsoft concurs with the Government that entry of such an order will avoid delays and facilitate a prompt appeal in this case. I think that you can summarize that paragraph as Microsoft telegraphing a middle finger, about half raised, to the American legal process. The case matters, as it will help set the precedent for the ability of the United States Government to command access to data that stored by U.S.-based companies anywhere in the world — those companies would therefore not be able section off their user data by storing it abroad, protecting foreign nationals from the sticky fingers of the government. Users would not appreciate that. Revenue would fall. Hence the suit. It appears that Microsoft will get its appeal. |
The Big Picture On Digital Receipts | Mark Johnson | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | What’s happening with digital receipts? The answer to that is a lot. The last five years or so have seen an explosion of ideas surrounding the capture, management and storage of digital receipts. There has been a mad rush by startups and merchants trying to capitalise on the enthusiasm typically generated by a new and innovative concept, and it seems, in the process, they have lost sight of the main beneficiary and owner of the receipt – the consumer. Arguably, the most common strategy for digital receipts at the moment is the email, and retailers have wasted no time taking advantage of consumers wanting to reduce their carbon footprints. Obtaining a consumer’s email address provides retailers with a channel to send additional marketing and promotional material. But they need to tread carefully here as they may foster a feeling of resentment from the consumer, the opposite of what they would like to achieve. As a European credit-card processor said in an Ernst & Young , “From a payment perspective the trick is not enriching the shopping experience but making it simpler. If any new solution is not quicker or easier than the current systems it won’t work with shoppers – they’re not engaged enough.” This sentiment can be applied to the post-payment experience, as well. Any new digital receipt strategy must add value while offering greater simplicity. It should be a frictionless experience for the consumer; if it’s not more convenient than throwing a receipt in a shoebox it won’t fly. Snapping photos of receipts, perhaps managing folders and backups of receipts on a smartphone or PC sounds like a bit of work to me. Consumer privacy is certainly a factor that will influence the adoption of any proposed solution. Many consumers do not wish to hand out personal information like an email address or mobile number, because they may be exposing themselves to fraud, phishing scams and unsolicited marketing. Consumers need to have one logical place of storage for their receipts. Having to manage multiple user names and passwords depending on what a particular merchant has chosen doesn’t sound that desirable. Email, phone, cloud: Where to look first? Security matters. For individuals and for businesses, receipts have value. Quite often, loyalty-rewards coupons and offers are placed in the same category of importance as the receipt, which I think is wrong. Coupons and offers are short-term transitory marketing tools, and while they can be mutually beneficial to the consumer and the merchant, they don’t carry the same degree of importance as receipts. There is also an increasing focus on digital identity, and our purchase history contributes to defining that identity. Storing our receipt information safely and securely is a must. Authenticity of the receipt is important. For consumers to have trust in any solution, something more than just the generic receipt data must be stored, otherwise it may not be able to be used for warranty and tax purposes, and of course merchants will want to retain branding to personalize their digital versions. So what might be the future for digital receipts, given that ultimately it will be the consumer driving the adoption of any one particular solution? Well, if you think about it, the receipt is, in many ways, an extension of the payment transaction itself — a more detailed version. Why not store it against that? I’m sure there would be a huge show of hands if I asked how many times anyone has looked at their bank statement and wondered about the details of a particular transaction; whether it is an unfamiliar business name or just wanting to be reminded of what they bought at the hardware store a few weeks back. Accountants spend countless hours trying to marry the two together – why not have it done automatically? Consider a solution whereby, at the point of sale, a digital version of the receipt is transferred along with the payment transaction to your bank or financial institution. Consumers would have one place for all their receipts and could access them by simply logging in to their bank account via PC or tablet or maybe a digital wallet on their smartphone. Fraud detection would be improved along with providing a greater opportunity to automate and enhance the functionality of personal financial management tools. This solution goes hand in hand with payment-capable wearables that are becoming increasingly popular. It would also be a welcome aid to business-expense management. Now and again I read an article about digital receipts and it seems that one of the main stumbling blocks to a more innovative, consumer-oriented solution is that retailers, under no circumstances, wish to part with their POS data to a third party. While this is understandable for a number of reasons, I think that ship has sailed. There are a multitude of companies offering to scan inboxes and organize that clutter of receipts for consumers, and other companies offering to extract the data off paper receipts or photos of paper receipts (hardly a green step, by the way) using OCR technology. These companies are getting receipt data every day, albeit via a very manual process. With the solution outlined above, there is no need for anyone else to be involved other than the three entities already part of the process: the consumer, the merchant and the bank. Banks are a trusted partner for both consumers and merchants. Just as account holders’ financial information is private now, so their receipts would be, too, and from a merchant perspective this would be a comfort knowing that the information will be unavailable to their competition. Ubiquity is the key, and while this is a global solution, it allows for the distributed storage and management of receipts via each individual’s own bank, eliminating many risks associated with the idea of one central receipt storage platform for everyone. Whether you’re local or traveling abroad, if you use a credit or debit card to make a purchase, the transaction always ends up back at your bank or financial institution, and with this solution implemented, so would your receipt. You could rely on it. This digital receipt solution has no more moving parts than existing payments systems from the consumer’s perspective. All the work of capturing the digital receipt is done seamlessly behind the scenes. A vastly improved experience compared with current offerings. To implement this solution, a collaborative effort would be required by several players in the payments space, and while it may not be as simple as it sounds, collaboration within the payments industry takes place every day. Increasingly we are seeing older, well-established institutions outsourcing for innovation and development in order to stay relevant. The method and rails are already in place for the payment transaction — this is just adding some extra data to a proven process. The digital receipt market is evolving rapidly; scanning and bureau-style systems are now giving way to more innovative approaches, but we’re still not there. At the end of the day, customers and merchants are looking for a simpler, more efficient experience at the POS both for the payment process and for receipt issuance. For digital receipts, I think this solution fits the bill. |
SchoolMint Takes $2.2 Million To Make School Enrollment Easier | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | Startups have raised millions of dollars to improve every aspect of the classroom experience, but now there’s one focused on making it easier to actually enroll kids in schools. San Francisco-based , a new company backed with $2.2 million in financing from investors like New School Ventures Fund, Runa Capital, and Crosslink Capital along with education-focused seed investors including: Kapor Capital, Imagine K12, Romulus Capital, Fresco Capital, and EdMentor VC, is looking to erase the obstacles parents and kids face when applying and enrolling into schools across the country. “We manage the whole manual process around applications, lotteries and eventual enrollment so that parents can apply to any school in a city,” says SchoolMint co-founder Jinal Jhaveri. Jhaveri and fellow co-founder Forum Desai, previously worked at an application development company that had been developing one-off enrollment applications for individual schools. After hearing from multiple districts that they’d like similar services Desai and Javeri decided to launch the company. The SchoolMint app works on Android and iOS, and the company also has a web presence Roughly 60%of the company’s users access its service through mobile devices. The company charges on a per-school basis, and a single school will spend up to $3,000 to receive all of the features SchoolMint offers. That includes managing a communication platform between parents and a school, managing the enrollment process, and verifying registration. Schools that order the services on offer a la carte can spend $1,000 for individual service modules, Jhaveri says. It’s a pretty good deal for schools, considering they can spend anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 per year to hire part-time staff to deal with the enrollment process,according to Jhaveri. “Schools buy us for two reasons. We cut down on the manual work and it gives them more visibility to determine how enrollment is proceeding.” Currently, SchoolMint operates in 500 schools from 21 different cities across 10 different states, and has plans to expand even further with the new financing. The company has partnered with Pearson and is in discussion with backend providers to integrate the software into the classroom and curriculum management tools available for teachers and principals. “Our value proposition for schools is that we are actually cutting down the cost,” says Jhaveri. |
Bitcoin Slips Back Under $400 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | After a steady decline from former, mid-year highs, bitcoin is now back under the $400 mark. The cryptocurrency hit that mark in April, at which point that the stuff was off 60 percent from its record highs. The price of bitcoin recovered. And then it un-recovered. Same question as before: “What next centennial mark will bitcoin reach? $300 or $500?” Last time, the answer was $500. But past has been a poor predictor for bitcoin thus far. Here’s the chart, : There has been an almost-paradox at play with bitcoin this year: As adoption has increased, and the constant media cycle asking if the currency will die has slowed, its price has slipped. At $400 per coin, what percentage of mining operations are profitable? If the price of bitcoin continues to slip, dragging consumer interest down at the same time, does that present the chance of something akin to ‘deflation’ in adoption of bitcoin, that could relegate it to niche status? |
Super Early Data Suggests iPhone 6 Is Outselling 6 Plus By A Lot | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | What’s going to sell better — the big ol’ iPhone 6, or the iPhone 6 Plus? The data is really, REALLY early (the phone has only been on the shelves for about 18 hours at this point, after all) — but so far, the 6 seems to be outpacing the 6 Plus by quite a bit. That chart below comes from MixPanel, who is . If you’re unfamiliar, MixPanel is sort of like Google Analytics for mobile apps and sites. Their SDK is in a good chunk of the apps in the App Store, providing insight for app developers and allowing MixPanel to peek at all sorts of fun aggregate data like and which of two just launched phones is seeing greator adoption. While it’s not exactly the word of Cook, their data should be a pretty solid indicator for relative trends. As of 4 PM Pacific, the iPhone 6 accounts for about 2.45% of the devices MixPanel is seeing in use. The iPhone 6 Plus, meanwhile, makes up just 0.31%. Everything else (that is, every previous generation of iPhone MixPanel still sees in the wild) makes up the other 97.24%. It’ll be interesting to watch this graph over the next few days; on day one, at least, the margin between the two devices seems to just be getting bigger and bigger. Given that both devices are widely sold out, this could also imply that Apple made more 6s than 6 Plus. If that’s the case, will the gap close as Apple becomes able to meet demand… or will most would-be 6 Plus owners have given in and bought a 6? |
The $300 Headband That Gamifies Your Moment Of Zen | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | The brain-training headband promises to help you reduce stress and anxiety in just three minutes a day. I went with our TechCrunch TV crew to chat with Muse co-founder and CEO Ariel Garten and to try out the tech…which turned into my own, personal calmness competition. I ended up surprising Garten with a much calmer-than-average mind, as indicated by a high score of 498 points and 19 birds. Why points birds? Garten told me the more quiet you are the more birds come sit by you. It didn’t make sense to me, either, but my scores were high for both. Encouraged by this ego-boosting news, I turned into sudden overachiever mode, asking how I could get even more birds and points in order to “win” at meditating. Not sure that should be the focus for relaxation, but I felt pretty good about it. For the curious, here’s a run down of how Muse worked for me: What you don’t see on the video above is that I went through the program twice so that our videographer could work in some video magic after the shoot. The second time yielded zero birds. But in my defense, the music was off the second time and someone kept squeaking their chair over and over again in the background. Much like other brain sensor type products such as or , Muse uses electroencephalography (EEG) to read feedback from your brain. Muse uses this feedback to show you how calm or active your mind becomes over time. It then inputs that information into a program on your tablet or smartphone (available for both iPhone and Android). This is the first product from Canadian-based InteraXon. It comes in both black and white and is available for purchase on both and for $299. While I am obviously already (maybe?) on the road to enlightenment (that or hell) and don’t think I would personally spend $299 for a device promising greater serenity, it could be useful for those getting into meditation for the first time. For me there’s no one right way to meditate and really any time you can spend just sitting quietly with your mind here and there is a good thing. However, this device could perhaps help those dealing with too much stress in their daily lives and give them a way to measure progress by monitoring their brain activity. |
Rumor: Oculus Will Unveil A Handheld Virtual Reality Controller [Update: Not Yet, But Coming] | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | ‘ headset lets you look around virtual reality but requires integrations with unofficial controllers to move an avatar, fire weapons, or input other commands. But at tomorrow’s , sources say Oculus is expected to unveil an official controller or controller industry standard to make it easier for developers to build more complex games. Several developers have been placed under NDA regarding the conference’s big news, though sources could not confirm details. However, four sources told TechCrunch that a gamepad is what’s being whispered around the Los Angeles VR community. [Update 9/20/14 12:45pm PST: Oculus did not reveal a handheld controller today, instead showing off its new Crescent Bay feature prototype headset that’s the successor to the DK2, and the Oculus Platform VR app marketplace. However, when a source was getting a demo of the Crescent Bay and told an Oculus employee they wished there was a handheld controller, the employee replied “it’s coming.”] The Sixense STEM System wireless virtual reality controller One developer told us that code in the new Oculus SDK implies some official controller or API for connecting the Rift headset to a gamepad is on the way. The news makes a lot of sense considering that earlier this year, , which designed the Xbox 360 controller and the Kinect motion sensor. We’ve reached out to Oculus for comment. Right now, some developers use hacked console video game controllers or third-party VR controllers like the into Oculus. I tried the lightsaber game demoed below last night at TechCrunch’s Virtual Reality Meetup in LA, and the felt natural and easy to pick up (literally). It was clear why Oculus would want to officially support these kinds of experiences. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b1ycwQIG7c#t=21] Oculus could potentially release an input device of its own design. This could look like a traditional Xbox controller that may or may not have motion control, or like two handheld Wii Nunchucks which would allow for more realistic wielding of objects, such as pistols, swords, or a bow and arrow like in . Alternatively, Oculus may simply create a standard for controllers built by third-parties like Sixense that could connect to the Rift, along the lines of the with iOS 7 last year. It would then likely present an example of these controllers built by partner. The Sixense Razer Hydra controller Since the Rift already uses a camera facing the user to detect head movement, controllers could piggyback on the same platform to recognize how a user moves the input device or devices. An official input device or platform could unify some of the fragmented VR space, encouraging developers to invest in building games, art, and social apps that work on Oculus hardware connected to PCs and mobile offerings like . That confidence will be critical to getting flagship experiences built that lure mainstream consumers to the alternate dimensions offered by virtual reality. |
Verizon Will Be Getting iPhone 6-Friendly Wi-Fi Calling In 2015 | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 9 | 19 |
A quick update for those trying to figure out which carriers will/won’t support the iPhone 6’s Wi-Fi calling feature anytime soon: T-Mobile . AT&T . Now Verizon is pledging to support it next year, too. Word of the new feature comes from Verizon CFO Fran Shammo who mentioned it at a conference this morning — but not before taking the opportunity to take a not-so-subtle jab at T-Mobile for rushing to play up their support for it. FierceWireless : “We built our voice platform so extensively [that] there was never a need for us to tell our customers, ‘Oh, our network is not good enough so you need to go on Wi-Fi to complete your call.'” So WTF is Wi-Fi calling, and why should you care? In short: Wi-Fi calling lets you place calls/send texts as you normally would, except it all runs over any Wi-Fi network you’ve got access to rather than your cell carrier’s towers. Even if you leave Wi-Fi-range mid-call, the call will just transition right over to the cell network (implementing that bit, as it happens, is a good chunk of why most carriers can’t flip the switches and claim iOS Wi-Fi calling support right this second). And as an added bonus: Depending on your carrier’s policies, Wi-Fi calls often don’t count against your monthly minutes. If your coverage is consistently solid, it might not be a huge thing for you. If you consistently find yourself dropping calls at your home, or work, or any other place you’ve got Wi-Fi, though, it’s a damned killer feature — though not one that is at all exclusive to iPhone. With all of the carriers now moving to support it following the iPhone 6 launch (and T-Mobile requiring it in all new phones they sell), I’d expect it to be a standard feature within two years. |
A Unique Fingertip Sensor Helps Robots Touch The World Around Them | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | , too. That’s why MIT researchers have added a touch-force sensor to the robotic , allowing him to register gentle caresses, tender hand-holding, and the sense the he is loved and in love. Okay, not really. But now Baxter, a robot used in manufacturing and to perform repetitive tasks, can carry out those tasks with a certain gentleness and grace thanks to the addition of force pads on his pinchy fingers. Called the GelSight, the system adds “unprecedented” sensitivity to a robot’s pinchers. By offering feedback on how hard to squeeze, it allows the robot to plug in a USB charger or even handle eggs and the like. It works using a chamber covered in thin rubber lit from the inside with color LEDs. The rubber pad, which is painted with reflective paint, deforms and reflects the shape of the object back to the sensor, which then interpolates the force used. “I got interested in touch because I had children,” said Edward Adelson, professor of vision science at MIT. “I expected to be fascinated by watching how they used their visual systems, but I was actually more fascinated by how they used their fingers. But since I’m a vision guy, the most sensible thing, if you wanted to look at the signals coming into the finger, was to figure out a way to transform the mechanical, tactile signal into a visual signal — because if it’s an image, I know what to do with it.” In other words, instead of depending on thousands of tiny force sensors, the system “sees” the shape of the object and how close it is to the light sensors. The rubber also acts as a sticky finger pad. The coolest thing is that the sensors have millimeter accuracy. : In Platt’s experiments, a Baxter robot from MIT spinout Rethink Robotics was equipped with a two-pincer gripper, one of whose pincers had a GelSight sensor on its tip. Using conventional computer-vision algorithms, the robot identified the dangling USB plug and attempted to grasp it. It then determined the position of the USB plug relative to its gripper from an embossed USB symbol. Although there was a 3-millimeter variation, in each of two dimensions, in where the robot grasped the plug, it was still able to insert it into a USB port that tolerated only about a millimeter’s error. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1EBdbe4Nes] |
CrunchWeek: Alibaba’s IPO, Minecraft, And Sarah Gets A ManServant | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | Happy Friday, everyone, and welcome to another episode of CrunchWeek. This time around the table, TechCrunch’s , and myself discussed , Microsoft , and why Sarah had . We’ll be back next Friday for more. But perhaps with less gingham. |
NYSE Traders Weigh In On Alibaba’s IPO | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | We were on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange this morning for Alibaba’s debut. The Chinese e-commerce company had the biggest initial public offering ever for a U.S.-listed company, and its share price jumped another 36 percent when . (After approaching $100, at $93.89.) In the hours leading up to the start of trading, TechCrunch’s Jon Shieber spoke to traders, NYSE SVP David Ethridge, and major Alibaba shareholder Masayoshi Son, the founder and chief executive of Softbank. Afterwards, we discussed Alibaba’s history and the excitement around the IPO, and we’ve thrown it all together in the video above. |
Alibaba Spikes, Yahoo Sags | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | Alibaba’s IPO . The company’s shares soared more than 38 percent in regular trading, pushing the valuation of the Chinese e-commerce company north of $225 billion. The success of the offering, however, did not bolster Yahoo, whose stock fell during midday trading, dipping under the $40 mark before partially recovering. Yahoo owns a large stake in Alibaba, making today a very important day for the Sunnyvale-based Internet company. Yahoo ended the day down 2.74 percent, dragging its market cap to just under $41 billion. Why would Yahoo fall, if Alibaba rose? Yahoo’s stake in the Chinese firm is valued in the tens of billions, of course, meaning that if Alibaba does well, so does the value of the shares that Yahoo controls. The best explanation that I can muster to explain why Yahoo sagged, even as Alibaba soared, is simply that investors had expected an even larger Alibaba pop. If you had hoped that Alibaba would spike 50 percent, and not less than 40 percent, you might want to unload your Yahoo shares. It’s an odd situation. What Yahoo does have, to its credit, is a massive chunk of now liquid equity that it can sell and use the proceeds to buy all sorts of things — anything that it wants, more or less. Yahoo and Alibaba have come to an agreement to lessen the amount of Alibaba stock that Yahoo has to sell, allowing the American company to retain a higher percentage of its shares in the Chinese firm. What Yahoo has planned for its new monies isn’t immediately clear, but the company certainly has, as they say, cash for days. |
Netflix Is Finally Coming To Linux Without The Need For Hacky Tricks | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | While Google Analytics might suggest our Linux-lovin’ audience isn’t all that huge, If you’re sitting in the itty-bitty overlapping sliver on the Venn diagram of “People who use Ubuntu” and “People who can’t figure out how to use and other trickery to make Netflix work on Ubuntu” — good news! Netflix is likely (finally) coming to Ubuntu soon. Word of the change comes from Paul Adolph, a senior engineer at Netflix. , Paul says: Netflix will play with Chrome stable in 14.02 if NSS version 3.16.2 or greater is installed. If this version is generally installed across 14.02, Netflix would be able to make a change so users would no longer have to hack their User-Agent to play. So what’s all this talk of “NSS”? NSS, or Network Security Services, is an open-source library maintained by Oracle, Google, Mozilla, AOL and a bunch of other companies as a way to implement security protocols like SSL. It’s a part of everything from Mozilla’s Thunderbird to AIM to Chrome. In Netflix’s case, it needs it for making the video DRM work to appease the Hollywood overlords. Once Ubuntu’s version of NSS gets updated to the latest build — which the guys at fansite — Ubuntu users should be good to go, no hacks required. [Via ] |
TechCrunch Giveaway: LogMeIn Rescue + 1 Year Mobile License | Anna Escher | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | For all you technicians out there, the team at LogMeIn wants to give one of our readers a license to its . Rescue is a cloud-based application that empowers customer service agents to offer premium levels of remote support to people and the devices they use, no matter where you are. The winner will get a full license of Rescue + Mobile for one year. With this license they will get full access to all features of Rescue and the mobile capabilities as well. Enter to win by clicking the image below, or . The software is built on an enterprise-grade platform, so Rescue offers the power, security, scalability and reliability expected from a remote support solution. Rescue offers technicians one-click fixes, unattended access, session transfer and collaboration, along with other features. Good luck! |
Sweeten, A Match-Making Platform For Homeowners And Renovators, Launches Out Of Beta | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | We’ve seen services like Angie’s List and provide greater transparency around booking contractors and designers for home renovation and repair work, but that doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement in the space. , which just launched out of beta, has already done more than $100 million worth of renovation projects through its marketplace since June. The company allows users to post their renovation, decoration or repair jobs to the site and then posts that job to a handful of reviewed and qualified contractors, designers, etc. Sweeten’s technology chooses these professionals based on a number of details, including project start date, cost estimate, location, style and project duration. If interested, those contractors can bid for the job and the top three to five matches are sent back to the user, offering a range of high, medium, and low options with reviews and ratings to make an informed decision. The Sweeten marketplace has facilitated projects ranging from as low as a few thousand dollars up to $15 million for a single project. Sweeten takes between 1.75 percent and 3.75 percent per each transaction (from the contractor side), according to . It started when co-founder Jean Brownhill Lauer, even with experience in architecture and design, found it overly difficult to find the right contractors for her renovation project. She bootstrapped the project through a beta, and has now raised a total of $1.3 million from investors like Great Oaks Venture Capital, Joanne Wilson, Gotham Gal Ventures and Andrew Goszhardt, Jr. |
Gillmor Gang LIVE 09.19.14 | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | – Dan Farber, John Taschek, Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. |
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Apple, Moto 360, And Amazon | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | This week, you might have noticed that Apple introduced a few new products. That said, we’re getting to know the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Meanwhile, we’ve actually grown more attached to the Moto 360 than expected, and are in the process of learning about Amazon’s newest gear. We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the featuring , , and . Have a good Friday, everybody!
We invite you to enjoy our every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right .
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null | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 9 | 10 | null |
Amazon Attempts To Upend The Television Ratings System – No, Really | Jay Chandrasekhar | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | On January 26, 1979, “The Dukes of Hazzard” television show premiered on CBS on the East Coast. The show was poorly reviewed and, worse still, the TV ratings were just okay. As the legend goes, the president of CBS, who was in New York that night, saw the show for the first time and was appalled by its lack of quality. He immediately called his executives in Los Angeles, telling them to yank the show for the West Coast runs. But he was too late. It was already showing in Chicago (and the greater Midwest), and what happened next is show-business history. Unlike the East Coast, the ratings in Chicago and the Midwest were good. Really good. Then Colorado and California followed with even bigger ratings. The CBS president smartly backed down, and the “The Dukes of Hazzard” went on to run for six very lucrative seasons. Had the CBS boss successfully cancelled “Dukes” after its East Coast run, millions of dollars would have been lost, hundreds of stunt men would have been out of jobs, and billions of teenage boys (who worshiped Catherine Bach’s style of shorts) would have had a lot more bottled up energy. What’s the lesson? Maybe, just maybe, studio executives and TV reviewers shouldn’t be the only people who decide whether something should succeed. My own film, “Super Troopers,” which was voted funniest movie of the decade by 2010 Huffington Post readers (ahem), got only a 43 percent Fresh (positive) rating from the reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes. We’re talking about fewer than 200 people. To put it more bluntly, if it were up to this small group of “movie experts,” “Super Troopers” would have failed. Luckily for me, audience reaction and word of mouth trumped the experts, and the movie went on to be a hit. Entering that debate is Amazon.com. Rather than go with the old model of letting TV executives and focus groups choose which shows they’re going to program, Amazon has decided to radically change the game and let the audience decide which show it wants to make the cut. Here’s how the old model works: The key point to consider here is that the network is paying a person to watch and rate their shows. This professional rater has not expressed an interest in the particular show because of, say, the idea or the cast. For example, they’re being paid to review X cop show, and they’re going to do it even if they don’t like cop shows. The problem is we don’t watch TV this way. We only watch shows we’re interested in. For example, I am interested in cop dramas, so I’ve watched “The Wire” and “True Detective.” I’m not interested in shows about teen pop stars, so I haven’t watched “Hannah Montana.” But the paid rater doesn’t have this choice. He has to rate both “True Detective” and “Hanna Montana.” If you paid me to rate “Hannah Montana” (I have actually seen it), I wouldn’t rate it well, because it’s not my kind of show, not because it’s not good. As you can imagine, this isn’t the most efficient way to know what your target audience thinks of your show. The most famous example is “Seinfeld.” When NBC tested the show, it tested very poorly with a group of professional raters who probably didn’t get what the “show about nothing” was all about. When NBC executives saw the low ratings, they stuck it in a lousy time slot, assuming it would die quietly. Again, the rest is history. In the same way that Amazon changed retail (with a spirit of creative destruction), it has decided to use its massive user base to more honestly and accurately rate TV shows. Steps 1, 2 and 3 above are the same for how they choose which pilot scripts to buy and film. But rather than pay small numbers of jaded professional raters to test their finished pilots, Amazon released the five shows for free to anyone who shows up on its site. And these people are showing up because they’ve heard about and are interested in Amazon’s new batch of shows. These viewers are used to rating products on Amazon, so the jump to TV shows is nothing at all. For the most part, they’re choosing to watch and rate only the specific shows they’re interested in. They’re not being paid, so they’re not jaded. The that Amazon released on August 28 for public review are “Hysteria,” “The Cosmopolitans,” “Red Oaks,” “Hand of God,” and my show, “Really,” a high-brow comedy for adults that stars Sarah Chalke, Selma Blair, Hayes MacArthur, Lindsay Sloane, Luka Jones, Travis Schuldt, Rob Delaney and myself. We play four hard-charging suburban Chicago couples who are grasping onto our dwindling youth. Ideally, the tone is real, and the content is edgy, similar to what you’d see on HBO. Yes, there’s swearing and nudity. The show is meant to be a smart, honest and modern take on the half-hour comedy. Sound interesting? If so, go to Amazon.com, watch the shows and rate them. This is your chance to tell Amazon what you want to watch. |
Sf.citi Tries To Recruit Tech Companies To “Adopt” SF’s Public Schools | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | One of the issues with leaning on a high-tech economic growth strategy in a region where there is incredibly constricted space and housing stock like in San Francisco and Silicon Valley is making sure that the benefits of a boom spread to everyone. California’s public school system is of the country’s state educational systems. And San Francisco is no exception, especially given its level of income inequality with the wealthiest families either placing their children in private schools or moving to high-performing suburban school districts outside the city. (For a fascinating read on the future of the city’s school system, .) On top of that, computer science is still not in the core curriculum even though it’s obviously necessary for highly compensated work in the region. So there are a lot of programs like and Code.org that have cropped up to bridge that divide and support socioeconomic mobility between the public education system and the region’s booming tech economy. Sf.citi, a local politics-focused nonprofit backed by heavyweight investor Ron Conway, is adding to that pool. They’ve been doing a pilot where tech companies can “adopt” schools and answer to whatever their needs are. During a pilot, five tech companies each adopted a school in the San Francisco Unified School District and made at least a one-year commitment to them. , for example, partnered with Junipero Serra Elementary and donated about 500 balanced literacy books because school administrators said their students needed to perform better in English language arts. Other ideas include hosting career tours and setting up classrooms. The program, put together by . , the school district and the San Francisco Education Fund, allows administrators and teachers themselves to dictate their needs. Now, the program has grown to 20 schools under the name . While sf.citi has gotten some flack from the for being a political vehicle, I can’t really express to you how important it is for the broader tech community to engage in the local public school system. The city is now at and the region’s infrastructure — in transit, housing and education — is not keeping up with population and job growth amid enormous economic and demographic change over the last 30 years. That’s putting a squeeze on lower-income communities, who are somewhat rightfully raising criticisms that a tech-heavy economic strategy is primarily benefitting workers from outside of the Bay Area who are moving in and displacing other long-time residents. The city currently has the biggest construction pipeline it has seen in the last 30 years. But even that isn’t enough to keep up with the 10,000 residents per year that San Francisco has added during this decade. So it’s really incumbent upon tech workers to prove that they can engage with and listen to longtime San Franciscans and include them in every way possible. There are a lot of options, including programs like this. Then there are individual efforts like last week’s . Choose whatever fits you best. Last week, I at TechCrunch Disrupt SF with Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and David Chiu, who is the president of the city’s board of supervisors and is running against one of the Mission District’s supervisors David Campos to represent San Francisco in the California State Assembly. , “Tech has become a symbol of what is inaccessible,” because of the industry’s lack of diversity. Please change that. |
UK Engineers 3D Print Their Own Raspberry Pi Laptop | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | Is there anything a robotic system for the extrusion of plastic in to solid forms over time can’t do? We present to you today the , a Raspberry Pi-based laptop that is completely 3D-printed and lasts hours on a single charge. The kit, which will launch as a Kickstarter soon, offers a 13.3-inch screen and a little keyboard and trackpad combo for data entry. Viola! A little open source computer for you and yours. The project is the brainchild of a group of UK-based designers. They built the system using PLA filament, and it took over 160 hours to print. While the hope is to offer models for folks to download and print, the real goal is to create a kit for students and tinkerers who can then put it all together and run a little Rasbian on their very own laptop. The plan is to release and injection-molded version of this to Kickstarter backers and let tinkerers try their hand at building the thing themselves. The hardest part, said the creators, was getting the support structure right so it could survive the beating and pressure a normal laptop would experience under your sweaty, sweaty palms.
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Kickstarter Updates Terms Of Use Section Related To Failed Projects | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 9 | 19 | Popular crowdfunding destination updated its today to clarify what specifically needs to happen if a project runs into trouble and creators are unable to deliver. The terms changes come on the heels of which state how online retailers now have to abide by a 30-day shipping requirement, or refund customers payments if the customer doesn’t consent to further delays. Though Kickstarter itself is obviously an online retailer, it does provide a platform where products are sold. [See update below] . [ : Kickstarter denies an FTC connection, saying: “Our Terms update has been in the works for months and was driven by a longterm effort to make everything about them straightforward and clear.” The update is not in response to the new FTC rules, the company says.] In of Kickstarter’s revised Terms of Use, the company now explains that when customers are backing a project, they’re creating a legal agreement between themselves and the project creators, not with Kickstarter. That alone could help to absolve Kickstarter from any legal action from backers who want to sue when projects go south, the product never ships, and their money effectively disappears. However, Kickstarter took things a bit further in order to spell out exactly what is expected from creators when projects fail. For the most part, this involves communicating with the community of backers to explain what happened and why, documenting how the funds were used up or how they’ll be put to use to complete the project in alternate form, and offering a revised timeline. Kickstarter also reminds creators that they need to be “honest” and not make “material misrepresentations in their communication to backers.” (In other words, scammers beware.) Additionally, the terms now state that creators who are unable to stand by the promises they made in their project may be subject to legal action by backers. (The possibility of legal action has always existed, but that part was not spelled out clearly in the previous terms.) The new Terms of Use will go into effect for all projects launched on or after October 19, 2014, the company says. The company also notes that the updated terms have been simplified for easier reading and comprehension, with a lot of the earlier “legal jargon” removed. You can read the changes for yourself, in full, . |
Aileen Lee’s Cowboy Ventures Is Raising A $55 Million Second Fund | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | Cowboy Ventures, the early-stage investment firm led by Aileen Lee, is in the midst of raising its second fund. According to an , the firm is seeking to raise $55 million — which is up from the $40 million it sought the first time around. Lee along with partner Noah Lichtenstein after spending the previous 13 with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The two parted amicably, and Kleiner Perkins even served as an investor for Cowboy Ventures’ first fund, which they raised in the Spring of 2012 to focus specifically on early-stage startups. Since then, Cowboy Ventures has invested in a number of seed-stage deals in both the consumer and enterprise space. In consumer, it’s got companies like Dollar Shave Club, August, StyleSeat, Brit + Co., Rise, and Product Hunt in its portfolio. Then there are more B2B-type companies like Librato, NuOrder, and DocSend. It’s generally too early to tell how those bets will ultimately play out, although a few of those companies have already moved on to successfully raise Series A rounds. Lee declined to comment for this story, but after two-and-a-half years, she and Lichtenstein are apparently now ready to raise a new fund. While the SEC filing shows they are seeking slightly more capital to work with for Cowboy Ventures Fund II, at $55 million, the amount is consistent with the same type of early-stage investments. |
A Petite Woman’s Experience With The iPhone 6 | Leslie Hitchcock | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | Being easily excited by newfangled gadetry, I waited with glee for Apple to announce the iPhone 6. However, it was not without trepidation. In spite of my eagerness for a new device, I feared the new iPhone would be significantly larger than the previous iterations and for good reason: I’m a delicate 5’2″. Electronics are greatly exaggerated against my slight frame. Upon receiving the package, my excitement tempered when the iPhone 6 turned out to be larger than my hand. Cue the sad trombone. Immediately, basic maneuvering between applications became yoga for my thumbs as they stretched as far as possible to reach once-accessible buttons. Texting, previously effortless, became arduous, requiring more concentration and balancing skills than I care to admit. Pinky fingers turned into stabilizers with not-so-deft precision in order to mitigate the unwieldy phone body in my small hands. Panic ensues when it slips from my grasp after trying to lock it with upstretched fingers. Even though it has not even been a week since I abandoned my trusty iPhone 5 for the newer model, I miss it greatly and am considering apologetically returning to it. I use the iPhone 6 less each day than I did my previous phone, which may or may not be a problem according to my boyfriend who finds me somewhat addicted to my data plan. While this super-sized experience is not uncommon for me, it still makes me angry. Why can’t today’s technology be sized for everyone, rather than just an average male? Size often does matter, and not in the way you think. Take the Apple Watch into consideration, or any wearable for that matter. On my wrist an Apple Watch would be enormous, failing to seamlessly integrate into my life as Apple would like. Even a band is obtrusive on a small-boned person. I’m in feeling like this. Layering various technologies on one’s person combined with jewelry in a stylish way will not be possible if device size continues on this larger trajectory. I doubt even could dream up an editorial where multiple wearables could look chic on a model’s arm. What’s the solution? I’d have settled for a thinner iPhone 6 Minus (see what I did there?) which is still thin but more easily managed in a woman’s grasp. Admittedly, another option is to curtail my obsessive desire for the newest technology and take into consideration how things will affect me. But that’s not me, so here we are. Not that Apple is asking, but my dream iPhone would include the sloping frame of the 3G, weight and screen resolution of the iPhone 5S, and the compact size of the 4. Until they make that option, I’ll learn to love the iPhone 6, become quite attached to it, and vehemently complain when I purchase the 8 in two years time. |
Bring Your Robot To Hardware Alley In London Next Month | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | Your robot deserves to roam free. That’s why you should bring him/her/it to Hardware Alley at ! The alley, 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 , 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! |
With Plans of Investing $100M Next Year, Israel’s OurCrowd Forges Its Own Path in Equity Crowdfunding | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | In the fast-emerging space of equity crowdfunding, Silicon Valley insiders are pretty familiar with players like AngelList. But there’s actually a startup crowdfunding site out of Israel with a veteran team that has a good deal of momentum as well. , which is run by serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist , has put at least $70 million to work in roughly 50 companies and has plans to invest $100 million more over the next year. One of their companies, , an exoskeleton company that helps disabled people walk again, just IPO-ed a little over week ago and now has a market cap of about $360 million. This is an apples-to-oranges comparison for reasons I’ll explain in a second. But for comparison, what OurCrowd is raising and committing is more than and the . Why are volumes larger? Well, on the spectrum of having a wide-open market for companies and investors to connect with each other versus the traditional and more restricted venture route, OurCrowd leans toward the latter. It’s an entirely different model. While OurCrowd takes accredited investors on one side, they have a 50-person due diligence team on the other side that vets deals. Then they let investors pick and choose which qualified companies they want to invest in. OurCrowd puts in about 5 to 15 percent of the funding for every deal, unlike other platforms which might just take carry and not have skin in the game. Investors don’t have to commit to every single OurCrowd deal, but they can choose which ones make sense for them. OurCrowd also has more requirements akin to established venture funds. They take board seats and have rights like pre-emptive or anti-dilution rights. “We’re more like a VC,” said Medved, who previously started a venture fund called Israel Seed Partners and ran an early publicly-traded mobile company called Vringo in the ringtones and content space. “A lot of it has to do with my background as a venture capitalist. I don’t think you need to throw everything out.” He went on, “What if you could essentially have the best of both worlds — somebody who is picking the deals, taking care of legal, and giving you the protection that the venture guys get — but you still have discretion? I don’t think the Valley understands the need for this. Not everyone is an angel and most rich people have never invested in a startup.” But Medved isn’t overly critical of other platforms. He just stresses that his model is fundamentally different. While the company is not as well-known in the Valley because it’s headquartered in Jerusalem, it has global ambitions. It doesn’t want to be some kind of in-road to the Israeli market, although Medved is deeply connected there. About half of OurCrowd’s investment money comes from the U.S., with the rest from overseas and less than 10 percent from Israel. The Israeli roots have helped in one regard, however; the country moved more quickly than the U.S. and SEC in liberalizing laws around equity crowdfunding, so OurCrowd has had a bit of a head start on U.S. companies. Medved is also totally focused on the accredited investor market right now, which requires that participants have at least an income of more than $200,000 per year or a net worth of more than $1 million. This is pretty much in line with what many other equity crowdfunding companies are doing for now. “One day, maybe the great masses will come in. But right now, we’re focused on the accredited, 8 million households in the U.S.,” he said. |
New Cash May Make Wish The Next $1B Unicorn | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | , we’re hearing from multiple sources that the mobile and online shopping startup is galloping towards “unicorn” status with talks to raise roughly $100 million at a valuation of around $1 billion. Apparently, people like to shop on their mobile devices. Just to refresh your memory, the San Francisco-based Wish was launched by former Google, Yahoo and Facebook employees Peter Szulczewski and Danny Zhang. The company has a Pinterest-like interface, and uses algorithms and machine-learning technology to adapt to a user’s tastes in order to show them products they like. While Pinterest began exploring and doesn’t really emphasize commerce, Wish is all about the art of the algorithmically enhanced sale. Back in June when we wrote about their $50 million round, the company was reporting 31 million active users and a catalog from over 10,000 merchants using its platform to sell their wares. The company charges a 15% transaction fee on each sale. That hefty user base (and the revenue they must bring in) is attractive enough to warrant attention from late stage investors like the Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, according to our sources. Data from App Annie has the Wish mobile app regularly placed in the Top 200 Overall on the iTunes App Store, and often in the top 10 or 20 in the Lifestyle section. On Android, it’s a top 10 shopping app, and also in the Top 200 Overall. As in April, Wish is focused more on the value shopper and on retailers from sites like Alibaba, allowing them to connect with a Western mobile audience. At that time, Szulczewski said that around half of Wish’s market was evenly divided between Europe and North America. There are higher end mobile apps, , which are catering to the style-making elite. Wish, and its Asian counterpart are more focused on fast-fashion. Wish’s last round valued the company at $400 million, . The previous round was led by Founders Fund, with participation from existing investors Formation 8, GGV Capital, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, Jared Leto, and Legend Capital. The blistering pace at which Wish’s wealth is accruing comes as some in the industry warn of a change in the weather for startups. Both and have taken to social media (and print media) to sound the alarm over high burn rates and excessive risk-taking. |
Microsoft Brings MSN Back By Shifting Windows Phone’s Bing Apps To A New, Old Moniker | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | Microsoft, in an effort to , is . You are forgiven if you forgot that , or that a number of Windows Phone and Windows apps that have little to do with search are in fact still branded under the Bing name. MSN may be on this side of risible in the sense that it is a portal, but it does retain international cachet, with more than 400 million monthly active users. In Brazil, MSN has more than 30 million. The Orkut joke fits here, of course. According , MSN has more than 100 million monthly actives in the United States. It is easy to forget just how large Middle America truly is. If you are a Windows Phone user, expect to see the newly demarcated apps starting early next week. In other news, the full MSN switch over from old to new brand will happen early next week as well, TechCrunch has learned. MSN: Still a thing, at least in Microsoft’s eyes. The subtext of this is that the apps were always awkwardly sitting under Bing’s tree: Why content-related apps ended up under the search-related Bing brand was always a confusion. Now, Microsoft appears to be working to move those apps under a brand that it wants to highlight from a content perspective. The only thing from this kerfuffle that matters is the point that Bing isn’t being deprecated. Instead, something that it should never have had under its roof is being put under a different, separately silly home. Fine. MSN: It’s 2014, and Microsoft is branding like it’s 1994. |
11 TechCrunch Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week | Travis Bernard | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | From #BendGate and Beats Music to South Park, here are the top stories from 9/20 to 9/26: 1. . For those unfamiliar with the “saga,” several reports suggested that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus will bend when left in a pocket for a prolonged period of time. The iPhone 6 Plus in particular garnered the most attention. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are hardly the first Apple products that bend. Similar reports came out with the iPod Touch, iPhone 5, and iPhone 5s. This is nothing new, and Apple isn’t the only one that has bendy products. For more on the phone bending, check out . 2. . It’s unclear what Apple wants to do in streaming music, but it seems quite possible that the Beats Music product could be rolled into iTunes rather than being ‘shuttered.’ 3. Are today’s on-demand and local services really about catering to the lazy rich, or are they about a new way to book services from local providers by satisfying demand more efficiently? Technology will still augment and improve our everyday lives, but we need to build something different (like making push-button mom-and-pop commerce work or creating on-demand mental health help). 4. Ello is the hottest new social network. No ads and no real names. . 5. Oculus gave the world the first look at its new prototype Crescent Bay last Saturday, and . Virtual reality is here, and Oculus wants to transform gaming, entertainment, and how we interact with one another. 6. There is currently a battle for San Francisco’s soul, but . 7. . Facebook scale requires them to rethink the old rules and let engineers imagine outside industry standards. 8. We ran a few features related to the new iPhone’s camera. Darrell Etherington suggests that the camera on the new phone is so good that . Matthew Panzarino wrote a piece about . Speaking of photography, Jordan Crook offered a warning about the new iOS: . 9. Dan Kaplan wrote an intriguing piece about the evolution of human intelligence and how . 10. We continued our discussion of Benchmark venture capitalist Bill Gurley’s comments regarding the risk-driven nature of Silicon Valley and companies’ proclivities to burn up money. , followed by . , and . 11. If you watch one bit of television this week, please let it be the most recent episode of South Park. Why are we writing about South Park? . Other popular stories this week included a and a . It was also interesting to see . This could be a key turning point in the acceptance of digital currencies. That’s all for this week. What did we miss? |
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CrunchWeek: Apple Bends, Your Startup Is Doomed, And Felicia’s Big Debut | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | Hello from TechCrunch SF HQ, where we just wrapped another episode of CrunchWeek, our weekly pandemic covering the latest in technology news. The inane, the excellent, and the execrable are our usual fare. , Apple , and the burn rate of many startups was . This week and were joined by a special guest, , our resident producer and general bon vivant, which was a treat. We’ll be back next week with more. In the interval, . |
What $1 Million Won’t Buy You | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | What’s the value of talent today in Silicon Valley? This year, a startup with revenues of $10 million wanted to find a new chief executive following its Series B raise and offered $450,000 in compensation (5% of revenues). Another startup, quickly growing and approaching an IPO, did a search for a CEO to lead it onto the public markets. In addition to a hefty compensation package, the board of the company is willing to put up a signing bonus of $1 million, to be delivered in two tranches over a year, for a vetted candidate willing to step up and sign the paperwork. Their offer is turned down. These are just some of the battle stories relayed to me from Brad Stadler, founder and managing director of True, a data-driven executive search firm. “We haven’t seen anything like this since 1999,” he told me, noting that signing bonuses for execs like the one at the pre-IPO startup have traditionally been rare, but are starting to make a fast comeback. Stadler should know, since he began recruiting in 1999 just as the dot-com bubble was approaching its peak. Last week, sparked a voluminous output of stories discussing the high valuations of startups, and the risk these startups face if the investment market changes tune. Over the past few months, venture capital dollars have flowed into the system, increasing valuations and fundraises, giving startups more resources than ever before to spend in their pursuit of growth. As money has been pumped into the ecosystem, salaries for senior executives have been rising dramatically. True, which shared some of its aggregated compensation data with TechCrunch, found that in the time period between 2013 and July 2014, salaries for CEOs increased by 11%, with chief financial officers and VP of Sales receiving a 14% and 13% increase in compensation respectively. Notably, the salaries of VPs of Engineering have been flat over the same period. These changes are fundamental, and are upending our notions of how to define a startup and what risk to associate with starting a new venture. No longer are founders and executives toiling away in a garage or a bland office park with minimal pay, hoping to one day build that product that turns them into a legend. Now, they are at the center of one of the most competitive labor markets the world has ever seen – and they are demanding their share of the pie. Ultimately, these salaries are a function of labor markets, where an increasing number of well-funded startups fight for a relatively static group of experienced executives. As demand increases for their talents, these executives are increasingly demanding compensation that matches the levels of public companies. These higher salaries are changing the types of executives interested in startups. As venture capitalists have been willing to entertain higher salaries in the pursuit of growth, startups are able to target new markets to attract talent. Today, startups can poach talent from large technology firms that may have been out of reach in the past, since the gap between compensation at startups and large technology companies like Microsoft and Google has become small to non-existent. The bifurcated labor market that used to exist in technology has now been blurred, as workers comfortably switch from large to small companies throughout their careers. That has positive effects for both, with startups benefiting from the experience of large corporations, and large companies gaining the spontaneity and creativity of entrepreneurial workers. Even more notably, startups can now draw talent from across the country to startups, even among risk-averse executives outside of the technology industry who would never otherwise consider startups as a viable career path. Take Harvard Business School graduates, who are among the most talented future managers out on the market today. Since 2006, the rate of graduates heading to technology companies has hovered near 7%. , and it doesn’t look like the rate will decrease any time soon. Even those who have already made other career plans are being drawn by the lucrative contracts available from top startups. Wall Street, once a haven for avaricious bankers, and other technology hubs. That same exodus has also been seen from Washington DC, where senior politicos have been heading to Silicon Valley, such as Obama presidential campaign head David Plouffe, who recently joined Uber to lead its policy and strategy team. The increasing competition for talent also has a trickle-down effect for the next generation of executives moving up the ranks. Stadler from True notes that “It used to be very consistent that CEOs and Boards wanted people who had done it before. But because the market is so competitive with those sorts of people, and the likelihood of landing that person is so small, now we are really hearing that people want to go after the up-and-comer types that have tremendous potential.” Given technology’s central role in public and private life today, the ability to attract the best has arguably never been more important. Given Silicon Valley’s penchant for meritocracy, we should be applauding the fact that the region has been able to attract such high-caliber individuals. But risk is a sword that cuts two ways. While it can deter many great candidates from working at startups, it can also filter candidates passionate about a product from those merely moving to where the money is today. And risk also acts as a disciplining function, ensuring that capital and labor are being deployed in the absolutely most efficient way possible. The question on the minds of many I talk to remains whether the new values that are being imported into the region are going to be sustainable. It appears that glamour and greed are increasingly supplanting the product and technology-focused work that engineers in the region have been doing for decades. In short, does Silicon Valley have a culture that needs to be protected, or is this evolution completely positive? Take Silicon Valley’s traditional missionary view of the role of the founder. We have traditionally mythologized founders, and for good reason – starting a company used to be extremely difficult, and the daily fight for growth was something that only a rare individual could sustain all the way to an exit. Today, though, starting a company couldn’t be easier, and it is getting cheaper all the time as well. , cutting one of the few remaining costs for new startups. And as venture capital investments have spiked, the risk of not receiving funding at all has gone down as well. As the early risks have faded, over issues like equity and recognition. Startup employees have greater opportunity costs today, and it can be harder and harder to find great candidates willing to grow a startup rather than to strike it out on their own. As one engineering friend of mine told me this week, their startup has been fighting hard for every single hire – and still repeatedly losing despite a great product and excellent funding. The other major change is around inequality. One of the major historical influences on the region has been the counterculture movement, which among many aspects, emphasized equality as a bedrock principle of society. But the heightened salaries of executives at companies shines a glaring spotlight at the growing inequality of employment in the region. At a time when executive compensation is rapidly growing, the engineers and product managers on the ground from some of the region’s most iconic technology companies. And in San Francisco and the Bay Area more generally, the inequality levels have risen so high, that Silicon Valley , at least by some measures. It has been fashionable to talk about the battle for the soul of San Francisco, between the artists and creatives on one side and the techies at startups on another. But there is a similar battle looming here as well, between a Silicon Valley of fame, fortune, and $1 million signing bonuses, and a region that loves technology, products, and hacking in and of themselves (with perhaps fame and fortune occasionally showing up). Call it bankers versus artisans, but ultimately, it is our love of creation that has driven our success – not venture capital dollars. We should make sure it stays that way. |
Gillmor Gang LIVE 09.26.14 | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | – Robert Scoble, Doc Searls, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. |
Microsoft Discloses New Data On Government Requests For User Information | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | Microsoft today data concerning , and information about their accounts in the first half of 2014. The total number of requests, and the number of accounts impacted were similar to the six month period that concluded 2013. In total, between January and June of this year, 34,494 requests were sent to Microsoft, impacting 58,562 accounts. In the preceding six months, 35,083 requests dealt with 58,676 accounts. The United States, Germany, France, and Turkey were the leading request sources. Microsoft is granting data less often: Of law enforcement requests received, less than 3 percent resulted in disclosure of customer content data, while approximately 75 percent of requests resulted in disclosure of “non-content” data. Meanwhile, 22 percent were either rejected on legal grounds or no data was found, compared to 18 percent for the preceding six-month period. The company also reported that the number of FISA orders that it received in the period landed between zero and 999. Between 18,000 and 18,999 accounts were potentially impacted. The above data, of course, is only part of what governments around the world manage to extract about us without having to ask permission. Over the past year and a half, we, the global public, have learned extensively about governmental overreach into our data. Those disclosures, led by the leaks sourced to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, have caused calls reform to sound out not only from the public, but also from some organs of government. That technology companies can report the above has been struggle enough. It is not enough. I highlight the data due to Microsoft’s current battle with the government to protect its overseas users from domestic search warrants. So far the company has been unsuccessful in convincing a judge of its case. Though it continues to fight. When it comes to bi-yearly disclosures of this sort, just keep in mind that you are seeing what is requested through what could be called normal channels. It doesn’t include information collected by NSA programs like MUSCULAR, and so forth. In other words, there is much more going on. |
Moving Beyond Same-Day Bookings, HotelTonight Launches Its 7-Day Reservation System | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | is moving beyond the same-day hotel bookings that it’s known for. that this move was in the works, but HotelTonight is confirming the news, and the updated apps offering hotel booking up to seven days in advance are scheduled to go live … now. Co-founder and CEO Sam Shank told me that HotelTonight is expanding its model “from a position of strength,” with the existing business on-track to be profitable and growing 100 percent year-over-year. At the same time, he said this is a natural way “to bring the HotelTonight approach to hotel booking to more people and more times.” For what it’s worth, I do think HotelTonight is one of the best (and most mobile-friendly) ways to book hotels, and I’d probably use it more often if I wasn’t worried about waiting until the day-of to make the reservation. (The company already took one step to alleviate this concern .) But why seven days, and not, say, two weeks? Or a month? Shank described one week as “the Goldlilocks of bookings windows.” After all, he suggested that “last minute” can mean different things to different people, and booking a weekend getaway on Tuesday or Wednesday can still feel pretty spontaneous. At the same time, when you’re a week out, you start to have more information, like the weather forecast, that can help with trip-planning. Similarly, from a hotel’s perspective, when it’s a week ahead of time they usually have a decent sense of whether they’re going to fill up, or if it makes sense to offer discounted rooms through a service like HotelTonight. (As the week goes on, they might add or take rooms off the service.) Other new features include the aforementioned weather forecast, and hotel “playlists” built around certain themes, like hotels that offer great beach getaways for an upcoming weekend or places to stay if you want to watch the big football game. Shank added that as the company’s vision is “moving from this niche of a very compressed period of time to a broader period of time,” it should “shift more of the bookings from the legacy [online travel agencies].” Nonetheless, he said seven days covers the vast majority of mobile hotel booking, and there’s “so much more to do during that booking window,” so there are no plans to expand to an even longer window. |
Led By Pixar Alums, ToyTalk Launches Its First Paid Kids App, Begins To License Tech | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | , the makers of kids entertainment applications for iPad, has just released its first paid application with the launch of a character-driven touch and play app called . But the team may have even bigger news on the way in the form of licensing deals for its speech recognition tech with some of the best-known children’s brands, we hear. This startup is a fascinating one to watch because of the technology they’re building under the hood of their digital toys, as well as the talent at the helm. Founded by former Pixar CTO Oren Jacob, who worked on films like Toy Story (1 & 2), A Bug’s Life, and Finding Nemo, and Martin Reddy, previously of SRI, aka the birthplace of Siri, ToyTalk has been developing a new form of media who actually hear and respond to what kids are saying. That’s no small feat, as it turns out, since children’s voices are more difficult to analyze and understand than adults, not to mention that they might not be asking the most questions of their digital friends. Unlike with a speech-based app like Siri, ToyTalk’s digital apps aren’t simply responding to basic instructions like “create an appointment” or questions like “how’s the weather?,” but are engaging children in conversational stories. To make this work, the company has developed a special toolset for writing character dialog – including the many possible responses to things kids might say or questions they may ask. Combined with speech recognition technology, natural language processing and a little A.I., the company is putting the tools for creative app development in the hands of children’s story writers, not computer scientists. “Speech recognition for kids has really not been built by anybody,” explains CEO Oren Jacob, “so part of what we’re doing – what are partners are developing – is developing the language and acoustic models for children to open up that space.” He says that the interest in licensing ToyTalk’s technology came from inbound calls, and now the startup is in discussions with more than half a dozen companies, the vast majority being those you would “know and recognize by name.” “I think a sea change occurred with a lot of the companies that own the beloved characters and brands that you know and love,” Jacob continues. “A few of them observed their own children talking to Siri…and thought, ‘hey, can our characters talk back, too?'” ToyTalk’s phones began ringing, and quickly, one call become many. It seems that soon, ToyTalk will start to license its technology which is why the company may be worth the (and possibly more on the way.) Becoming a platform could potentially mean not only smarter kids’ apps in the future, but smarter toys, too. Forget , or talking toys which can be personalized via a USB link with your computer with tidbits like the child’s name or favorite foods, colors and more (like ): we’re talking about the potential for huggable animals that can actually carry on “real” conversations with the child by listening to, understanding and responding to what they say in new ways. This will not be ToyTalk’s focus, however, Jacob clarifies. His company is working on the technology itself – including its proprietary PullString software which powers the character conversations – along with the ToyTalk app line-up. The team is interested in moving into the physical manufacturing business. To date, ToyTalk has launched a small handful of applications, including , and now, . Until this latest release, however, the apps were just speak-and-respond creations. SpeakaLegend is the first to really integrate touch, allowing kids to play with the characters more openly, while also chatting them up, exploring new worlds and ultimately unlocking the final prize – a “majestic unicorn.” Though the company doesn’t discuss in detail about user numbers, and until yesterday didn’t sell its applications so couldn’t speak to app revenue, Jacob did tell us that ToyTalk’s users are well-engaged. On average, kids spent 45 minutes per week playing with ToyTalk apps over the last holiday season, but usually the apps are played on weekends. Over the course of the week, kids play with ToyTalk in one or two sessions. If you’ve ever watched kids playing with apps, you know that these are more than decent numbers given the attention spans involved. In fact, Jacob notes that there was even one record-breaking session where a child played with the app for 4.2 hours straight. That may be much fun, parents. SpeakaLegend is a . |
If You Watch One Video Featuring An Arduino-Powered Stepper Motor Music Box Today, Make It This One | John Biggs | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b_o0P0isSo] Today in devices that use stepper motors to make beautiful music we present to you this that uses simple stepper motors to grind out merry tunes and a pair of servos to supply a percussion backup. The box, created by , is surprisingly simple. The Raspberry Pi contains the music and activates the stepper motors at the right time. The motors vibrate at different frequencies and for different durations, making music. It’s a bit of ridiculous overkill but it’s fun. Writes Weatherford: The box is definitely a cute hack and, best of all, it’s playing “Sweet Child Of Mine.” Ohhhhh, sweet love o mine-uh. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkgJaI09ENw&feature=youtu.be] |
Post-it Notes Get Digitized In A Clever New App From 3M | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | Post-it Notes may be a product of the analog era, but they continue to stick around – literally, that is – covering walls, windows, monitor screens and more, remaining an office worker’s go-to-tool for small scribbles, quick thoughts, and ideas. Now the company behind Post-it, 3M, is hoping to port Post-it notes to the small screen, with that lets you capture, organize and share your notes from your iPhone or iPad. The new app will be especially helpful for documenting collaboration sessions at work – the kind that leave the walls covered in colorful little stickies. 3M should be applauded for doing more than throwing out some lame alternative to using your phone’s camera to snap photos of Post-it’s, slapping the brand name on it and calling it a day. Instead, the Post-it Plus app, as it’s called, is surprisingly clever. You can use the app to capture a photo of up to 50 square Post-it Notes at one time. These are then identified with little checkmarks on top of each note. Before creating your digital board, you can uncheck the notes you don’t want to save. After the image is captured, you have a viral Post-it board where you can arrange, refine and re-organize the notes just by tapping and dragging them around with your finger. The app lets you tap on the board for more options, like renaming the group of notes or choosing different arrangements for your notes, including a couple of grid-like patterns that stretch either horizontally or vertically. Or, if you want to return to the way the notes were positioned when you first snapped the photo, that’s also an option. Meanwhile, individual notes can be rotated, brightened up, favorited and deleted after tapping on them to see them larger. But you can’t re-write the notes themselves. Multiple boards can also be combined, allowing teams to work together on ideas. When you’re finished with an arrangement, you tap to either share the board via text, email, social media or other apps you use like Dropbox or Evernote, or you can export the board to PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, .zip or the Post-it Plus app’s own file type. The free app is currently featured as one of the Best New Apps on the iTunes App Store today, and it doesn’t include any in-app purchases. (Hooray!) For those whose workflows still live and die by these little notes, is worth the download. |
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Bendgate, iOS 8.0.1 Bugs, And BlackBerry Passport | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the iPhone’s launch has brought with it a series of backlashes. It was discovered that Apple’s larger iPhone, the 6 Plus, may bend under direct, persistent pressure over a prolonged period of time. Turns out, it wasn’t a huge deal. However, a bug in iOS 8.0.1 that killed wireless connectivity and TouchID kind of a big deal. Meanwhile, BlackBerry launched a new phone, too. We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the featuring , , , and . Have a good Friday, everybody!
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Apple’s Expanded iPhone 6 Availability Draws Big Crowds | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | Apple’s iPhone 6 launch maybe be its queueiest yet, according to droves of fans lining up around the world for round two of the new device’s global debut. Today, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus went on sale in over 20 new countries, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and United Arab Emirates. Lines still exist at , but they’re also forming in the new launch spots, and drawing crowds just about as big as we saw in some places during last week’s debut. [gallery ids="1062911,1062914,1062913,1062912,1062920,1062924,1062926,1062929"] Moscow saw a big wait, with crowded conditions in reseller stores, and Istanbul had a queue that wove around a public park and looks to have included hundreds. Taiwan had predictably long lines, given its proximity to China, where the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus still don’t have a firm launch date, and in Amsterdam people lined up for blocks in conditions that look far from favorable.
Apple’s ability to continue to draw lines to both new markets and ones where the phone has already launched bodes well for the iPhone 6’s performance. Already, Apple has said it sold 10 million devices during launch weekend, a figure which was constrained by the amount of available stock. Online, Apple’s own store shows lead time for all iPhone 6 models at 7 to 10 business days, while the iPhone 6 Plus, if ordered today, won’t ship for between 3 and 4 weeks. |
[Update] Sorry, But Could You Think Of A Worse Combination Than These Two Brands? | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 9 | 26 | It looks like (and, by extension, us.*) As you’ve , activist investor , has sent an open letter to Marissa Mayer (Hi, potential new boss… ), imploring her to just pull the trigger already and make the corporate marriage with Tim Armstrong official (seriously, this will they, won’t they stuff is getting ridiculous.) In its letter, Starboard called out Mayer for Yahoo’s “aggressive acquisition strategy which has resulted in $1.3 billion of capital spent since Q2 2012 while consolidated revenues have remained stagnant and EBITDA has materially decreased.” Ouch. I guess this means the Yahoo Acquihire river is about to dry up? The savaging continues in the investor’s discussion of the Alibaba sale. “Even after the previous ill-timed and tax-inefficient sales of Alibaba stock, Yahoo’s remaining stake in Alibaba is currently worth more than the entire enterprise value of Yahoo. When adding Yahoo Japan, these two minority equity interests are worth approximately $11 billion, or $11 per share more than the current enterprise value of the Company.” So that’s problematic, but the letter continues: … investors currently expect Yahoo to continue its past practices of (a) monetizing its non-core minority equity stakes in a tax inefficient manner and (b) using the cash proceeds from such sales to acquire businesses at massive valuations with seemingly little to no regard for profitability and return on capital. If these two issues are addressed such that the non-core minority equity stakes are monetized in a tax efficient manner and Yahoo’s aggressive acquisition strategy is halted, Yahoo’s current stock price would imply negative $11 billion of value for Yahoo’s core business. No one would argue that Yahoo is undervalued when you consider all of the various parts of the business — and Starboard itself calls Wall Street’s nickel and diming of Yahoo “nonsensical” — but it’s a clear indicator that faith in Mayer’s vision for Yahoo has waned. So how do investors get at that value? Starboard believes the answer lies in a tie up with AOL. Because, as Starboard’s investor writes, the acquisitions haven’t been working. “These acquisitions, on a combined basis, have failed to deliver material revenue growth. In fact, we believe that a number of the acquired start-ups have actually been shut down after being acquired by Yahoo,” Starboard writes. The ad display business is leaking money at both businesses, actually, but through the amazing power of corporate “synergies” the two combined companies could realize $1 billion in value from cost overlaps in display business as well as “synergies” in corporate overhead. Beyond the cost-cutting, a combined AOL-Yahoo entity would beyond Portland and could revivify two moribund holdovers from the dot-com days. Consider a Yahoo-AOL tie-up the culmination of Web 2.0. It could even herald the . As Starboard notes: we believe a combination could also lead to revenue growth opportunities given the broader user base, higher quality content, better technology assets, and enhanced relationships with advertising agencies. Interestingly for me, for Starboard, and for all other TC staffers, the activist investor thinks that if AOL and Yahoo were to merge, AOL would be the surviving entity… although for Starboard it’s more about tax efficiencies than about the shining prose we offer here. Not everyone thinks that a merger is a silver bullet for either company. As one of our other reporters asked in a discussion thread on this: “Sorry, can you think of a worse combination than these two brands?” I actually can, but it’s hard to pin one down right now. There are valid reasons for the tie-up, especially the amount of advertising real estate that the two would command as a single entity. It’s important to point out that this is not really a new idea. Analysts, investors, and executives have been mulling this combination for years, but the two companies have never been able to get a deal to the finish line. In part, that’s because it doesn’t necessarily solve any of the long-term problems at either business. Ben Schachter at Macquarie Capital told me that he’s more worried about what happens to Yahoo with search than with advertising. “Our main longterm concern is actually the search business,” he said. “Given the changes through how people access search… does the whole notion of Yahoo search make any sense?” Also, both companies are also pretty terrible at mobile, which Mayer admitted to on our stage in New York. If Mayer wants to, she can still find solace in the fact that . And it didn’t go so well. Ultimately, no one knows whether this is just more idle speculation or if a more robust activist investment community will goad Mayer and Armstrong into action. Although… either one is more than welcome to share their thoughts. I’m @jshieber on twitter. Or jonathan.shieber@aol.com (the mail app is still really buggy on mobile, guys.) |
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