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The Father Of Net Neutrality Is Crowdfunding His Political Campaign | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 4 | , an academic known for his work on net neutrality, is campaigning to become the Democratic nominee for the lieutenant governor of New York. He’s an unlikely politician. Cerebral, soft spoken, and willing to speak freely, conversation with Wu is a far cry from the stilted, shrill dialogue that makes up most of our modern political discourse. As next month’s primary election approaches, Wu faces a lawsuit aimed at unseating his candidacy, along with the candidacy of his running mate Zephyr Teachout. Robert Duffy, the current lieutenant governor of the state, is not seeking another term, pitting Wu against a fellow non-incumbent for the nomination. Teachout hopes to become the Democratic nominee for governor. TechCrunch caught up with Wu in the offices of to discuss his bid for the nomination and his views on net neutrality. Through his campaign, Wu isn’t only working to get himself elected. Instead he wants to broaden the discussion of technology in politics. Or as Wu put it, he is “obsessed with trying to build a platform that touches on a lot of stuff that matters to tech people but never gets any attention in the real world.” That means a set of views on subjects like and the upcoming . The spectrum auction is interesting, given its great importance and minute public profile. The auction will see new airwave space sold to mobile carriers, allowing them more bandwidth to deliver on-the-go Internet and other services. Billions could change hands in the event that the FCC is calling a “once in a lifetime” sale. Haven’t heard of it? You aren’t alone. The rules that the FCC will use would preserve some spectrum for smaller carriers, helping to prevent market consolidation among the largest players. Interestingly, Wu doesn’t think that his digital platform will cause a turn in the polls. “I don’t think that it will attract a lot of voters,” he told TechCrunch. Instead he intends it to be a model for what a pro-technology candidate would support, perhaps guiding politicians who are less tech-savvy on a more friendly arc. It could, perhaps, help build a more technology-friendly Congressional bloc, better informed than many in the various branches of our government. Wu is in the news today for to combat a lawsuit aimed at taking his campaign down. Wu isn’t worried about the outcome of the suit; he told TechCrunch that he and Teachout are “going to win it,” before going on to note that even an assured victory would not be cheap. How is Wu doing in the polls? You can’t tell, because so far there have been none. Still, in Wu’s estimation, the current state of the horserace is “probably about neck and neck.” If Wu wins the nomination, and Teachout doesn’t, Wu would run with current governor Cuomo. Given Wu’s criticism of the current incumbent — his Tilt page calls the sitting governor corrupt — that would be a delicate situation. TechCrunch also spoke to Wu about net neutrality, an issue that he is generally credited with naming in his seminal 2003 paper, “Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination.” Net neutrality is the concept that all data on the Internet should be treated equally, regardless of what sort of content it is, or who requested or sent it. The FCC is after its prior regulatory framework went up in flames earlier this year due to a courtroom loss. Asked how FCC Chairman Wheeler is faring thus far, Wu said that the former lobbyist is having a “rough roll out” of his proposed rules. That’s fair — the current climate among non-ISP technology companies is decidedly single-voice in opposition to Wheeler’s plan to allow for some form of paid prioritization, which would upend the soul of net neutrality in the eyes of many. In Wu’s view, support for Title II reclassification of ISPs as utilities is growing. Use Title II is considered to be the stronger of available net neutrality regulatory options, relagating Internet access to the same category as electricity and other general utilities. In Wu’s estimation, regulation might end up split, employing a combination of legal support that includes at least partial use of Title II reclassification According to Wu, the “golden goose of the American economy is the Internet sector.” Net neutrality matters, in other words. In Wu’s view, going full-Title II is the preferable way to enforce net neutrality. Broadly Wu appears optimistic that the rules that the FCC will pass in the end will protect net neutrality. We’re a long way from that eventuality. |
Why Standalone Apps Are Supposed To Fail | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 8 | 4 | It’s scary to move a billion people’s furniture. That’s why Product Manager Michael Reckhow tells me Facebook built . This fear has spawned the standalone app boom of 2014. Tech giants are experimenting with new user experiences outside the hallowed halls of their main apps that are too important to meddle with. But while the press and public scrutinize the success of these different apps like Facebook , Instagram , and Dropbox , they may be missing the point. Standalone apps are supposed to fail, at least most of the time. They’re like a free play in football. The referee has thrown the flag but will let the action continue. The team will get a do-over if they want it. In the meantime, they can try something risky without the consequences, but reap the benefits if things go right. A common adage is that 1 in 10 startups succeed, but even fewer are true home runs. In consumer social apps, the odds can be even worse. Not only do you need a fun, compelling, immediately accessible product, but you have to foster a loyal community around it. Constructing that inside another app without screwing up the original experience or burying the new one is nearly impossible. The big guys stopped trying a long time ago. At first glance, Facebook and Twitter haven’t changed in years. Navigation schemes have gotten quicker and images have gotten bigger, but they both fundamentally look and feel the same as they did in 2010. Redesigning core features can be precarious. One false move can drive away millions of users, along with the dollars they generate. Burying powerful features in a main app relegates them , as Mark Zuckerberg told me in an on-stage interview last year. And few features are important enough to unbundle into companion apps. Facebook Messenger has turned our propensity to chat on mobile into a 200-million-user phenomenon that’s now going from optional to the only way to send Facebook Messages on mobile. But Facebook users have mostly yawned at the high-design of Paper and are sticking with the traditional News Feed. When giants do overhaul features or add new ones, they’re stuck so far off the beaten feed that they’re forgotten or overlooked by many. Twitter’s tinkering with Discover, or Facebook’s Nearby Friends and Nearby Places get a fraction of the following as their fellow features with the spotlight. If they do gain traction, it’s among isolated clusters or a special demographic. Instagram Direct has 45 million monthly “active” users out of the app’s 200-million-plus total, but that’s just people who at least open a Direct message. The number who actually send them is surely much smaller. While building these new apps within ones that are already exist is tough, not building them can be extremely costly. Facebook was the biggest photo-sharing app in the world, but it wasn’t built for mobile. Instagram combined filters with a Facebook-style feed that ditched everything but photos, and it took off. Facebook would have to spend $1 billion to buy the upstart before it caused serious problems. Since, Instagram has grown from around 30 million users to over 200 million. Had Facebook hesitated, it would have had to pay much more for it later, or worse, see the app fall into the hands of a competitor. It wasn’t Facebook or Twitter or Google that discovered the power of ephemeral messaging. It was Snapchat, which had no previous product to shoehorn its self-destructing photos into. It took Facebook a year to wise up, and the it devised in flopped. Sure it allowed texting, which Snapchat would eventually add. But otherwise Poke was nothing special, and Snapchat was already ordained as cool among kids. Facebook would reportedly go on to try to buy the app for $3 billion, but get rejected. Now Snapchat is said to be raising money at $10 billion valuation. Facebook was so busy building Timeline to permanently record our lives, it wasn’t experimenting with the idea that not every photo has to live forever. Once it’s clear that it’s hard to hatch new behavior patterns in existing apps but can be expensive to buy new apps that prove users want these experiences, the strategy of building standalone apps comes into focus: So, why not? Best-case scenario, the app’s a hit, and a tech giant adds another popular product to its quiver. The app can serve as an extension of the parent company’s main brand that drives lock-in for its family of apps. For example, Dropbox’s standalone photo backup app Carousel was in part designed to get people to buy more Dropbox storage space. Or the standalone can be operated and monetized independently like Instagram with help on behind the scenes Even if the app is only a middling success, it can collect data and understanding about users to be applied to a company’s main product. For example, Facebook’s first standalone photo app Facebook Camera served as a . Here Facebook discovered that its little guinea pigs like multi-shot uploads and filters, so even though Facebook Camera would eventually be shut down, it developed and refined critical features through the standalone app model. Worst-case scenario, the app is a total flop. But how bad is that really? Some good talent was diverted from important projects, but these companies have money to hire plenty of great designers, engineers and product managers. The parent company may have delayed work on including the standalone app’s use cases into its main product, but these tech giants are big enough to have plenty of teams, and they should be working in parallel to hedge their bets. This is why Facebook started its to foster small teams building new apps outside its core experience. The few people who had a crummy experience with the standalone app may lose some confidence in the parent company. If the app gets shut down, those still using it might be a bit miffed. But mostly forgetting about using or neglecting hasn’t made me any less likely to use Facebook or Twitter’s main apps. That’s the whole point of it being “standalone.” Like a captured secret agent, the parent company can disavow the failed standalone app and move forward with its main app. In the end, one of the more daunting aspects of building standalones may be the bashing a company gets from the press if an app fails. I, for one, take responsibility. There’s something snarkily joyful about watching successful companies worth tens or hundreds of billions of dollars fail at something. Facebook’s share price has nearly tripled since December 2012 when Poke launched, but the blue Snapchat clone is still the butt of countless jokes in the tech blogs and Silicon Valley scene. Yet maybe we journalists and pundits are missing the point. Standalone apps are designed to fail, at least most of the time. When there’s massive upside, and little downside, standalone apps can be a smart investment even if they have a low success rate. Here’s a look at the recent crop of standalones through this lens: Twitter #Music is dead, Carousel has been declining steadily, many are betting against Slingshot, and Bolt may not be special enough. But that’s okay. Like I said, they’re free plays — hail mary passes after the flag. You don’t see NFL teams take flack if they go for the touchdown when there are no repercussions. So instead of harping about the low download numbers of standalone apps, maybe we should be encouraging more companies to throw for the end zone. What have they got to lose? |
Google News Gives Publishers More Control Over How It Indexes Their Sites | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 8 | 4 | While European publishers have a rather with , U.S. publishers have no such qualms and are more than happy to be indexed by the search giant’s crawlers. And with the launch of the , those publishers will get a bit more control over how Google’s robots see their sites. Until now, publishers pretty much had to hope that would pick up on how they structure their sites, for example (though with , they already get some control over what Google indexes). Starting today, they can specifically label different sections of their site (Politics, Technology, Travel, etc.) from the Publisher Center’s web interface, which will make it easier for Google to classify their articles for Google News. They can also use this new tool to alert Google of new sections they add to their site for special occasions like elections or major sporting events. “Think of the Publisher Center as our record of your news source information,” Google writes in its . “Keeping your site’s information current helps both Google News users and publishers.” Content owners can also use the Publisher Center to update some basic facts about their sites. This includes changing the site’s name or making sure it’s labeled correctly (Blog, Satire, Opinion, etc.). All of this may seem like pretty straightforward stuff to update, but the reality today is that when Google doesn’t get something right, there are very few ways for a publisher to correct anything. It’s not like you can pick up the phone and call Google’s friendly reps to have them fix things for you. With this update, publishers get at least a bit of control over how their content appears in Google News. For now, the Publisher Center is only available for publishers based in the U.S., but Google says it plans to expand it to other countries soon. The company also notes that it will add more features over time. |
After Turning Down A Million In Funding, Over Brings Its Photo-Editing App To Android | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 8 | 4 | , a popular image editing application for iOS users that has grown to over 9 million installs since its launch, is now available on – a move that founder claims has been a top request for some time. In the new version, Android users will be the first to receive a few features, including full resolution photo saving, the ability to rotate text, and an improved store experience – all additions that will make their way to the iOS version soon. Amid a number of well-funded photo-sharing startups, is notable for having : it’s not “go big or go home” for them, says Marshall, “it’s go big go home.” What that means is that bootstrapping a startup like he’s doing doesn’t have to see the company remaining a “small business,” or a “lifestyle” business, he says. Over, for instance, has generated more than a million dollars in revenue since it launched, and has grown from a team of two last year to a team of six. But Marshall admits that at one point he did consider, and actively court, outside investors. He sees a future for Over which would see it expand to become more of a product for creative types performing professional tasks via their mobile phones. At one point, he even received an offer from international investors that would have infused his company with a million in seed funding, but he decided to turn the money down. “I won’t lie – I woke up many nights wondering if I made a terrible decision,” Marshall says. But at the end of the day, he felt like the investors and his company just weren’t a good match. “Product and process and profit all flow from getting the right people,” he adds. “I just focus on getting the right people together, and that always works for me…when I look at an investor, I look at them as ‘would I want to hire this person? Do they have skills I would happily employ on the team?’ And I couldn’t say that about these people who wanted to offer me the money.” Of course, by turning down the outside funding, Marshall also understands the decision could impact the larger vision he had involving making Over a more professional product. But he also didn’t want to put himself in a situation where he felt pressured by the money to find an “exit” if things didn’t progress the way investors wanted. (If only more companies could say this!) Now on Android, the app offers a “thumb-friendly” navigation style designed to work better on larger-screened phones, while also introducing the handful of features noted above, which are now being developed for iOS. The new store experience will be especially helpful, too, as it’s something of a pain point for the company today. When Over was featured by Apple during the App Store’s recent birthday, the app, normally $1.99, went free and saw 4.6 million downloads during the week. But issues with the store prevented conversions from being as high as they should have been. “Our store was breaking…we still made some money, but we didn’t make anywhere close to what we should have made,” Marshall admits. “We’re talking abysmal failures rates,” he says. Those conversion rates were not even close to 1%, but the hope is the fixes now on Android, and soon iOS, will address those problems. That can’t happen fast enough, because I just tried to buy an artwork pack on iOS today, and was given an error message instead of a download. Over is now the core product for the company, formerly known as Potluck, though it still has some spin-offs like Obaby (a baby-focused version of Over) live in the App Store. While those generate some income, Over is the app being actively developed, and for Android, it will be the only application – at least for now. Longer-term, Marshall says the plan is to roll out a suite of related apps that help people be creative on mobile devices. Over is 99 cents on for a limited time during its launch. |
It’s Official: Square Acquires Food Delivery Service Caviar | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 8 | 4 | curated food delivery service today, confirming earlier reports that the companies had been in serious talks. We on a deal worth about $100 million. Both and reported the deal would take place this week, but the reported price now is for $90 million in stock. We’ve reached out to both Square and Caviar, but both companies say they are not disclosing the terms of the agreement. We’ll update if we learn more. is one of many new startups that seeks to enable customers to order meals online and have them delivered in a short period of time. The difference is most other food-delivery services tap into an already built-in delivery infrastructure. Caviar provides delivery to restaurants that don’t already offer such a service. Caviar would be able to provide Square, which launched food ordering service earlier this year, with a way to deliver food from restaurants that don’t already offer the service to surrounding locals. The food ordering app from Square has only been able to allow users to order food for pickup. The payments company has been on the lookout for something that could bridge the gap between orders and delivery. Caviar has the infrastructure to do that for the app. The acquisition also fits neatly into Square’s other restaurant offerings. Square recently released inventory tracking, an invoicing service and point-of-sale software to its 50,000 restaurants that already use its register service. However, this is a quick turnabout for Caviar. It only this April. It should be noted that food delivery has seen a lot of funding from investors of late. In recent months, we’ve seen , , and and each raise about $10 million. Food delivery is also a crowded space. It may have made more sense for Caviar to sell rather than handle a competitive environment on its own. |
With $1.3 Million In Funding, Pantry’s Smart Fridge Lets Businesses Sell Fresh Food Anytime | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 8 | 4 | Food vending machines are nothing new, but in most cases the stuff that’s available in them consists of chips, candy bars, and the occasional pre-packaged, indestructible burrito. But what if there were a way to ensure that there were healthier options available with fresh ingredients? That’s what ‘s smart refrigerators were built for. Backed by hardware incubator and seed investor , provides a refrigerator that organizations like universities, hospitals, and gyms can stock with fresh foods to be purchased at any time. The fridge has a modified Android tablet with credit card reader attached to it, enabling customers to instantly swipe and pay for any items taken out of the fridge. They don’t even have to enter in what they took — using RFID technology, Pantry’s fridge detects what was taken out and automatically charges the card that was swiped. In places like hospitals, which are open 24 hours but only have a cafeteria open for about a third of that time, Pantry offers up a fresh alternative to pre-packaged and less healthy foods currently available in most vending machines. Since it knows when different food items were placed into the fridge, it can ensure the freshness of the goods sold. It also tracks inventory to let people know when items need to be restocked or replaced. Pantry has raised $1.3 million in funding from , , , Loic Le Meur, Nir Eyal, Georges Harik, Entry Capital, and Lemnos Labs. It also has had a couple of successful pilots in locations at Stanford Hospital and UCSF. Those organizations are looking to expand availability with additional Pantry units in their hospitals. It’s also looking to trial the offering at local universities, including Stanford Business School and Academy of Art University, where students are frequently on the go and might not have access to healthy food options all the time. There’s also an opportunity for Pantry to sell into fast-casual restaurant locations. Any number of places — salad and sandwich shops mostly — are faced with teeming lines of hungry customers during the lunch rush. But implementing something like Pantry could enable them to offload some of that traffic by having recently made salads or sandwiches available through its fridge. That could mean faster checkout for customers and shorter lines. In general, though, adoption of Pantry’s refrigerators should mean better, faster food items wherever they’re deployed. |
iDrive Launches OOLOO, A Voice Search App Powered By People, Not Algorithms | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 8 | 4 | , a company better known for , is now branching out in a new direction with the launch of a mobile application called . (Seriously, we’re running out of names, aren’t we?). The idea for the app can best be explained as something of a “staffed” version of Siri – meaning that instead of algorithms and engines answering your queries, real live people are. It’s not a new idea. , launched a human-powered search engine called Mahalo where employees answered search result queries, alongside user-generated content. That company is still around, but no longer functions as a search service – its saw Mahalo reborn as a mobile news application instead. Meanwhile, Twitter co-founder ‘s new startup Jelly introduced a similar user-generated search engine for mobile that’s sort of like a step up from Yahoo Answers in terms of quality (well, sometimes!), but which has also to find traction. The problem that most of these human-powered search services face is that they’re simply no match for Google. It’s not only now ingrained in user behavior to search Google for an answer, but also asking a person for an answer is almost never faster than a Google query in returning the information you need. Even when the services focus on a specific niche, like Quora does with curating quality, longer-form content, they can’t seem to find enough content creators and/or visitors to really blow up and take hold with a mainstream audience. So (which must be hoping to capitalize on typos?), which comes from a company whose background is in data backup and not user-gen content creation or search, seems poised to struggle, too. “We just felt with all the other apps out, like Siri for instance, it could be done in a much more efficient way,” explains Matthew Harvey, who handles biz dev at iDrive, of OOLOO’s creation. The app is simple enough to use. You speak your query into your smartphone’s microphone, then receive a push notification when someone responds. The company suggests asking about local restaurants, products, short translations, directions and more. But, really, you can ask just about anything, they say. In testing, the app warns that queries might take longer, as they’re overwhelmed with interest. That being said, my queries were answered in about a minute or two, and fairly accurately. In addition to the data, they tend to point to a link on the web where you can read more. Since its launch late Friday, OOLOO has seen over 10,000 queries and downloads in over 50 countries. Because of demand, they’ve made OOLOO U.S.-only for now. As to whether there is longer term user demand for this kind of thing? Time will tell. OOLOO is a and . |
Europe’s Bauer Media Sets Up Fund To Invest $134M In Startups Over 10 Years | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 8 | 4 | It’s only a few weeks since Google Ventures announced it’s setting up shop in London as a hub for . Now another big fund has been unboxed by local German media firm, . The new fund — €100 million or circa $134 million — will be invested in European digital businesses over the next ten years via a new VC arm, called (BVP). is not limiting itself to particular sizes or stages of investments but says only that its focus will be “highly scalable business models in Europe”. So startups then. “We have a stage-agnostic approach without focusing on any specific phase like seed, early-stage or growth investments,” said Thomas Preuss, founder and Managing Partner of BVP, in a statement. Asked which areas the fund will focus on he told TechCrunch it would be “mainly software”, adding: “We are open and fully return oriented… e.g. ad Tech, fintech, media, Health, SaaS, etc.” The motivation for a media firm to be looking at startups is of course the omnipresent need to establish new revenue streams and maybe even figure out fixes for its own digitally disrupted media business models. Basically, if you can’t beat them, invest in them and get a chance to share in the winnings/cherry pick the startups worth acquiring to build out and better your own business. (Or as Andreas Schoo, Member of the Executive Board of the Bauer Media Group, puts it in a statement: “We will also get access to new technologies, teams and innovations in the digital field.”) Bauer Media has already been dipping its toe into startup investing, including co-leading a $6.7 million Series A round in Swedish health and fitness app . In the fund size stakes, BVP’s fund is a little larger than Google Ventures’ initial pot — although it’s not clear over what period Mountain View plans to invest its $100 million. Google may well also step up the size of its European investment coffer in time. Zooming out, longer-in-the-tooth European VC giants include for investments in Europe and Israel; also mainly for Europe; and , exclusively earmarked for Europe. [ by ] |
Microsoft Updates Visual Studio With Deeper Git And Azure Integrations, Performance And Diagnostic Tools | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 8 | 4 | There used to be a time when would release new versions of its development environment every two years or so, with maybe a service pack in the middle. Since the release of Visual Studio 2013, however, the company has switched to a much faster update cadence. Today, it is the for Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2013. While the previous updates focused strongly on bringing more cross-platform development features to Visual Studio, today’s centers more on some of the core IDE features. One feature many developers will likely love in this release is CodeLens support for Git repositories (assuming you use Visual Studio Ultimate). Microsoft started integrating more Git features into Visual Studio over the last few months and this is yet another example of this. CodeLens shows you more information about a piece of code (where else was this function used? who last edited it?) right in your IDE. Until now, this only worked in conjunction with Microsoft’s own Team Foundation Server, but now you can also get this kind of information when you use a Git-based system. The other area the Visual Studio team focused on with Update 3 is its diagnostics tooling. This includes an updated tool for keeping track of your apps’ CPU and memory usage, for example. , Microsoft’s new tool for monitoring deployed applications, is also now built right into Visual Studio to make it easier for developers to see what their users are doing and diagnose code issues. There are also new tools for working with Azure features like Push Notifications and . With the push notifications updates, developers can now manage device registrations right from Visual Studio now, for example, which may not be all that useful in production, but makes life easier during the development phase. It’s also now easier to create an Azure Mobile Service to go with a project. Other Azure-related updates include the ability to remotely debug 32-bit virtual machines and to check storage activity logs and provision read-only storage on Azure from Visual Studio through the updated Azure SDK. As usual, there are plenty more features in this update, including new devops tools, updates to ASP.NET and new features for developers who write hybrid apps. You can find a full list . OH — AND IF YOU REALLY DIDN’T LIKE THAT VISUAL STUDIO 2013 USES ALL CAPS FOR ITS MENU BARS, your days of agony are finally over. Microsoft tells us that in Update 3, you can now also show the menu in . That alone may be worth the update for some. |
Docker Sells dotCloud to cloudControl To Focus On Core Container Business | Ron Miller | 2,014 | 8 | 4 | ., the commercial company behind the open source Docker project, announced today it had sold its Platform as a Service business to Berlin-based . The deal allows Docker to focus on its core software containerization business. Docker CEO Ben Golub told TechCrunch the company wanted to concentrate on the Docker part of the business. “At a high level, what we have seen is a tremendous uptake in Docker over the last 18 months. It’s gotten to the point, where we need to focus all our energy and resources on it, and we wanted to find a home for the dotCloud product that would be worthy of the customers,” he explained. Golub said they went looking for a buyer who would meet some very strict criteria. First of all, they wanted it to be another PaaS vendor who was highly regarded in the market, and they wanted someone who would continue to maintain the platform, not just make a grab for the platform’s 500 customers. In a blog post on the website, Developer Support Manager Andrew Rothfus confirmed the purchase writing, “Today I am happy to announce that the has been acquired by the US subsidiary of GmbH, a German PaaS provider who is expanding into the United States.” The blog post goes onto say that the company will keep its name and as you would expect in these cases, they worked to reassure customers that there would be business continuity and they would make every attempt to integrate smoothly with their new corporate parent. Golub added, “They are big in Europe and they wanted to expand into US and this is how they can do it.” Docker has been hot lately as containerization technology and has captured the imagination of developers. A J described Docker as follows: “Docker 1.0 is another product that takes advantage of containerization techniques developed by Google, in this case, providing a safe way to distribute applications without breaking them every time you make a change or move to a different stage of the development cycle.” As for dotCloud, it wasn’t part of the mission and they saw an opportunity to sell it and took it. For the Berlin startup cloudControl, the deal looks like it makes a lot of sense. Both companies focus on Platform as a Service. Both boast about being able to deploy, manage and scale apps in the cloud. The two companies seem to be a good match and dotCloud gives instant growth in the form of dotCloud’s customers, and an instant foothold in the US market. As the blog post stated, there was a lot of uncertainty around dotCloud anyway when the company was rebranded as , Inc. This move gives the dotCloud customers a more committed company that is focused completely on Platform as a Service and they should benefit from that in the long run. Golub said that Docker is up to 50 people now, of which four have been dedicated to the dotCloud product. They will continue to be Docker employees and help dotCloud for 90 days during the ownership transition and will slowly taper off and move into Docker positions full time. Golub wouldn’t disclose how much the deal was for, but overall he said, it was less about the money and more about finding a good home for their dotCloud customers. “It’s an interesting transaction, but the primary value was finding a the good home for customers so we could concentrate on Docker. |
Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1 Goes Live For Developers | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 4 | As promised, has released to developers. If you are part of the company’s Windows Phone Developer Preview program, you can snag the update now. If you have troubles finding the new code, Paul Thurrott into the process of securing the update. The update brings new features and user interface tweaks to Microsoft’s smartphone platform. Chief among the new features is a broader rollout of Cortana, the voice-activated digital tool that Microsoft had previously only released in the United States. The update also brings , a feature that will allow Windows Phone users to better organize their main screens. Windows Phone is known for its ‘Live Tile’ interface that contains active squares which update to present new information. Update 1 improves the layout’s visual design. The update is only available to Windows Phone 8.1 users for now. Expect Update 1 to become more generally available in time, and quickly. I’d hazard a guess that most Windows Phones will run the update by the end of the year. As an aside, , there are two updates going out, the first as preparation for Update 1 itself. As such, making the jump might take a moment longer than you would expect. Enjoy! |
Merchant Loyalty Platform Startup Spoqa Raises $3.9M To Expand In Japan | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | , the Seoul-based mobile loyalty platform that won the at TechCrunch Disrupt Tokyo 2011, has raised a total of $3.9 million in funding to date led by Daesung Private Equity group and Bokwang Investments to fuel its expansion in Korea and Japan. operates , a tablet-based loyalty platform for local merchants, and claims 2.5 million customers in Korea. Since launching in April 2012, Spoqa says that 1,500 merchants in Korea have signed up to use Dodo. Customers use Dodo by entering their phone number into a tablet when they check out with a purchase and can redeem their points for reward programs at each store. Dodo seeks to differentiate from other loyalty programs by not requiring customers to sign up or download a new app. Dodo also offers a targeted SMS text coupon service for merchants. It monetizes by charging merchants monthly license fees. , founder of Spoqa, says the company decided to expand into Japan first instead of larger Asian markets in part because “there’s higher local merchants to franchised stores ratio in Japan. That means less systemized loyalty solutions for individual mom and pop stores. That means a bigger market for us.” “While other markets might be larger than Japan, we have internal metrics screaming great opportunities in Japan,” he adds. “We have partner merchants in Japan who are already paying us for our services even before we had a properly translated version of our services. From what we saw in our pilot testing period, we are certain of market opportunities and product-market fit in Japan.” While companies like and are taking a mobile-first or online-first approach to online-to-offline (O2O) transactions, Choi says that Spoqa is taking the opposite tactic. “Our goal is to dominate ‘offline traffic’ collected via our tablets at point-of-purchase in stores, so we can connect this offline-traffic to relevant online/mobile content and services linked by phone numbers,” Choi says. “We are here to pioneer the O2O scene in Asia. It took us two years to get to where we are, but we are finally getting the J-curve growth of users and merchants.” While Spoqa also has to compete with plastic magnetic loyalty cards and paper punch cards, Choi says Dodo points offer a better alternative because customers don’t have to remember to bring cards with them when they go shopping. |
Join TechCrunch In Beijing Next Week | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | Shortly after the launch of last year, we brought TechCrunch’s , organized by our official partner , to Shanghai, China. This year the . It will take place on August 11 and 12 at . The theme is “The Red Hardware” to highlight China’s smart hardware makers. We have a great from China and overseas, who will present on the Main Stage and the Parallel Forum. Speakers on the Main Stage include (but are not limited to): Wang Xiaochuan, CEO of , the company that received a $448 million investment from last year and makes China’s most used input software; Zhang Yiming, founder & CEO of , a popular news app from China known for its data-driven personalized content which just secured $100 million in funding; Zhang Xiangdong, President of , the company behind the Android app maker GO Launcher, one of the most internationally recognized Chinese mobile apps; Kevin Wen, founder and president of , one of China’s top e-commerce companies; Bertrand Schmitt, CEO & Chairman of , a mobile app analytics service that went global after debuting in Beijing; David Byttow, co-Founder & CEO of the San Francisco-based , which has inspired a flock of anonymous apps in China; Scott Beaumont, CEO; Patrick Gallagher, General Partner of ; David McClure, founder of ; and Rob Chandhok, SVP at . At the Parallel Forum, CEO Song Lin will launch a new product on Aug. 11. On the second day, will host the forum on gaming, joined by its APAC CEO Paul Chen, VP Sherry Wei, (publisher of Cut the Rope) CEO Henry Fong and (creators of Fruit Ninja) CMO Phil Larsen. Fifteen finalists out of more than 200 applicants will have the chance to pitch at Startup Competition in front of VCs, tech media, and the audience. The Startup Alley will gather more 100 startups to showcase their products. Half are hardware makers who will be at the Smart Hardware Pavilion. Last but not least, we will have an after party on the evening of August 12, sponsored by Sequoia Capital China. , founding and managing partner of Sequoia China, , co-founder of , with more than 500 startup founders, entrepreneurs, and VCs will join us at the party. Check here for the and book your tickets . |
Apple and Samsung Agree To End All Non-U.S. Patent Disputes | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | Apple and Samsung have agreed to drop all non-U.S. litigation. The announcement came late Tuesday in a release first reported by the . In the joint statement, the two tech giants said they “…have agreed to drop all litigation between the two companies outside the United States.” This brings to an end a crucial part of the ongoing intellectual property battle between Apple and Samsung, which have been slugging it out for years in courts across the world, with noteworthy decisions rendered in Germany, Japan and in other markets. The Apple and Samsung dispute, which mostly sees Apple accusing Samsung of copying its device designs and Samsung retaliating with countersuits asserting infringement of its mobile phone tech patents, has been among Apple’s longest standing legal battles, after it settled suits with HTC, Motorola Mobility and Google earlier. Samsung has also been seen as a way for Apple to target Android indirectly, since the Korean company owns such a hefty share of that market. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. But, as noted in the statement, this agreement does not involve any licensing arrangements or existing court cases within the U.S. Apple and Samsung will now focus their efforts in ongoing trials in two California courts, both of which are in the appeals phase. Apple filed for a cross-appeal of final judgement in March. The most recent action happened last week when Apple of a landmark 2012 ruling. Keeping open the lawsuits in the U.S. likely doesn’t indicate a desire to continue the legal battle in that market, however, as both cases currently ongoing in the U.S. are in various stages of appeal, meaning that their ultimate resolution could finally bury the hatchet between the two device makers (though the lack of any licensing agreements mean tensions could flare up again in the future). Both have likely realized they have bigger fish to fry when it comes to the future of the mobile market, and challenges they face from emerging competitors including Xiaomi and other Chinese phone makers. This could also be a sign that Apple CEO Tim Cook isn’t quite as committed to a patent battle with Samsung as former CEO and founder Steve Jobs was reported to have been. Regardless of the reason behind the detente, it could be good news for the supplier relationship between Apple and Samsung, which ultimately should be good for both companies’ bottom lines. |
Timex And Qualcomm Team Up To Make A Smartwatch For Fitness Freaks | John Biggs | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | There are a few things everyone knows about smartwatches right now. First, you must have an e-ink screen. Second you have to use them with a phone nearby. Third, they’re not very rugged. and , however, have decided to blow those myths out of the water. Their new product, the Timex Ironman One GPS+, is a self-contained sports watch that allows for GPS location tracking, email-based wireless messaging, and systems to track your speed, distance, and position at all times as well as notify your friends and family of where you are. It connects to cellular networks via AT&T, has a large color touchscreen and includes one year of mobile data service. The watch itself is about as big as the or the . However, unlike similar models that offer no wireless capabilities and smart watches like and the that require smartphone connectivity, the One GPS+ looks to be a standalone solution with full processing and wireless power built-in. The watch can “track speed, distance and pace in real-time and instantaneously share performance metrics through your favorite social media and online fitness platforms” as well as send a “Find Me Mode” alert to friends and family when you’re lost or hurt. It can also send heart rate to family in case of an emergency. Finally, it is water-resistant to 50 meters and doubles as a Bluetooth MP3 player. Timex hasn’t described battery life just yet but it I suspect, given Qualcomm’s mobile chip chops, we should see at least a few days per charge. The question, then, is whether Timex can pull off this ambitious watch. It seems that the timepiece is a bit more of a proof-of-concept, at least right now, but given the Ironman’s long history as rugged-watch-of-choice for runners and other athletic types I could see at least a few people moving from more sports-oriented pieces like and . Battery life is obviously the biggest question as is durability, but we’ll have to wait and see until the end of summer when the watch is officially released. It is available for |
Inside The FCC’s 1.1 Million Net Neutrality Comments | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | If you ever wanted to make your Chrome browser freeze 10 times in one afternoon, you could take a look at the 1.4 GB of XML files of net neutrality comments that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) posted on Tuesday. More regarding net neutrality have been submitted to the FCC, and we expect that number to surge as the second comment period comes to a close on September 10. The only time the commission has seen more data was in response to Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction in the 2004 Super Bowl. The FCC five that contained the comments. TechCrunch went through two — batches one and four — to sort the content of the missives by keyword to see if anything interesting cropped up. Our sample size — thousands and thousands and thousands of comments — shed light on the general bent of commenters’ main topics of interest: free speech, ISPs and anger. After summing our search results from the two files, the term ‘free speech’ racked up 2,322 mentions, beating out Netflix, which picked up 1,903. Comcast beat both with 4,613. Notes containing New York, Chicago, and San Francisco — each mostly sourced from the location of the comment submitter — came in at 1,447, 1,109, and 979 apiece. TechCrunch itself picked up 22 mentions, all from the first file. We beat out ‘Greenwald’ who picked up a slimmer nine mentions. Drunk, with five mentions, beat both Kanye and Oprah, who got a mere two apiece. Metallica was not mentioned, nor was Katy Perry. Here’s a chart of some of our favorite entries: |
UberPool Lets You Split Uber Fares With Other Passengers Along The Same Route | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | In the ongoing war between , Lyft, and all of the other me-too ride-sharing services, competitors are looking for any way they can better utilize their supply of drivers and reduce costs for their riders. Today, , a new feature that will let you pick up other riders on the way to your destination and split the bill. While the feature should do a lot to cut costs for passengers, not everyone will want to ride with a stranger in addition to the driver picking them up; Uber notes that the new feature also serves as a kind of “social experiment.” Since there’s not much data about how people will react to the new service, Uber isn’t going to release UberPool across every market it serves. The company has begun rolling out a private beta, and starting August 15 a public beta will launch in the San Francisco Bay Area. Uber also notes that the company’s “friends at Google” will be joining the beta as early adopters, as they “share [Uber’s] vision of a more energy-efficient world with less traffic congestion and pollution in our cities and are excited to be early adopters of UberPool.” This signals continued cooperation between the companies following Getting more riders into a single car to make rides cheaper isn’t exactly a novel idea. , a ride-sharing service whose biggest differentiator from Uber and Lyft was the fact that it tries to use software to maximize the number of passengers in a single car to increase driver utilization and reduce prices for riders. |
StubHub Music Takes On Music Concert Discovery Apps WillCall And Live Nation | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | is now live in the App Store and available to all major U.S. cities. The app, created by , was first tested on a much smaller set of music fans in San Francisco earlier this summer. It’s now available throughout the U.S., the UK and Canada. , which is currently seen as a competitor to ticket-buying marketplaces like Ticketmaster, created the app in hopes of engaging a wider audience on the hunt for local concerts. It’s recently been expanding its music offerings and looking at ways to engage fans in a way that could take them from initial discovery to actually purchasing tickets. And, as StubHub spokesperson Smita Saran pointed out, people are increasingly discovering things around them on their mobile devices. The app is particularly convenient for discovering what sort of entertainment is around you while traveling. StubHub Music comes with an “adjust radius” feature that allows you to find out what’s going on within a certain area. StubHub Music makes event recommendations for you based on a scan through your iTunes music library. It then shows you upcoming concerts happening near you and allows you to click through and purchase tickets, whether those tickets are available on StubHub or elsewhere. Like or , the app also sends push notifications to alert you when a determined favorite artist is headed to your city. “This isn’t about driving traffic back to StubHub, necessarily,” said Saran. “It’s about finding ways to engage with people.” The infrastructure is already there to make this app into a one-stop shop from discovery to purchase. The eBay-owned platform is close with subsidiary PayPal. Saran says the app takes users through to the StubHub website for purchase at the moment but says the app will continue to expand features. It plans to integrate StubHub’s “GoTogether” feature down the road so people can not only discover but also bring their friends along and even split the purchase of tickets as they became available nearby. The “GoTogether” feature is currently part of the StubHub core services. “Our goal is to integrate with different music services to better understand a user’s music tastes and build a more customized experience,” said Saran. This could be Spotify, Pandora or a number of others yet to be determined for the company. Saran didn’t name anything specific but did mention that StubHub will be adding new features and functionality over time. The app currently allows users to share, email or message friends to invite them to an event and share the experience after the event. “This is an app that creates a way to take local music discovery to a national scale,” said Saran. “That’s the big picture here.” |
Sprint To Replace CEO, Drop Bid For T-Mobile Amid Tough Regulatory Climate | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | will announce tomorrow its plans to drop its bid to buy amid a hostile regulatory climate and financing difficulties, according to a in the Wall Street Journal. In addition to walking away from its merger efforts, Sprint , according to Bloomberg. The two events are presumably linked. The prospect of lowering the number of major mobile carriers in the United States from four to three proved unpopular among U.S. regulatory bodies. According to the Journal, Sprint believes it has made sufficient network improvements to pursue an independent course without T-Mobile’s customers and infrastructure. The Sprint decision comes amid a number of other proposed mergers, including a proposed Comcast Time Warner Cable combination that has some fretting about consolidation leading to lessened competition. Sprint’s decision to pull its efforts could be a bellwether of sorts for the other proposed mega mergers. In its , Sprint lost 181,000 net subscribers; it’s the nation’s third-largest mobile carrier. TechCrunch has reached out to both companies for comment, and will update this post if and when we hear back. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 8 | 4 | null |
Felicis Raises New $96M Fund, Pledges To Always Vote Shares With Founders | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | Five to ten years ago, the notion of a super-angel, or an angel backed with a notable but still small-sized fund, was relatively new concept. There were players like , and . There were versus more established venture capital firms. But today, the line between the two has become a lot more blurred. Plus, there is a whole new field of competition from AngelList syndicates, crowdfunding and other emerging early-stage funds like or . Senkut, who started in 2006, is and he’s committing to always voting his shares with the founder’s wishes. It’s something the firm did informally, but now Felicis is setting the practice in stone. “We want to make a deeper commitment with our founders,” said Senkut, at Google before setting out as an angel. “We’re essentially committing to voting our investor shares alongside them in every deal. We think that this is a first.” Senkut brainstormed the idea with early founders he had backed like Jack Abraham, who sold Milo to eBay. “Good entrepreneurs have choices when it comes to capital, so it’s important to differentiate,” said Abraham, who is working on his next startup and is an advisor to . “One great way to do that at an earlier stage is to really align yourself with the founder. Felicis has always been very founder-friendly.” Abraham pointed out that many of Silicon Valley’s most storied firms started off with a single partner or two breaking away and gradually accumulating more capital and talent over time. “A lot of them started with $30 to 50 million in capital to invest. They did exactly what Felicis is doing,” he said. “They proved the track record, the model and then they earn the right to raise bigger funds from LPs [or limited partners] over time.” With this fund, Felicis will stay focused on so-called re-invention of core markets and frontier areas. The firm has always made futuristic bets in companies like Counsyl, which is handling big data applications for gene testing and sequencing. That means more investments in areas like personalized medicine and machine learning. But they’re also not shying away from bets in more well-known markets like security and mobile infrastructure. The fund will enable Felicis to take the lead in more rounds, as opposed to being a participating investor behind other bigger funds. This fund is entirely backed by institutional investors including three university endowments as limited partners. The fund has backed more than 120 technology companies, with 50 of them exiting or going public. The aggregate enterprise exit value of the portfolio is worth more than $5.6 billion with companies including Counsyl (worth more than $1 billion) and more household names like Bonobos, Angry Birds-maker Rovio (which is also probably in the billion-plus range) and Fitbit. The team is up to six full-time people, with two part-time employees and two advisors. |
TC Cribs: Yelp’s Five Star San Francisco HQ | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | Welcome back to , the show that lets you snoop around the offices of the tech industry’s hottest companies. This is an especially fun episode, since we headed over to , the popular online review site. These are some exciting times for Yelp: The company just celebrated , and late last summer moved into a gorgeous new 12-story office space in San Francisco’s historic . It was fun to see how many things have changed since Cribs first way back in February 2011. But one important thing has stayed the same, and that’s CEO , who served as our very fun tour guide. Watch the video embedded above to see all the nifty things that Yelp has in its pad, from a full studio and green screen for making “Stoppelblog” staff update videos, to the very awesome portrait wall of Yelp’s top sales people, to all the spicy Fireball candies you can eat (for yours truly, that means less than one.) [gallery ids="1040530,1040526,1040529,1040531,1040527,1040528,1040532"] |
Kickstarter Serves Up Potato Salad By The Numbers | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | The now famous closed this weekend with a total of $55,492 from 6,911 backers. in a blog post today and found the majority of those backers came from California or Columbus, Ohio (both at just over 17 percent).
Most of the money, according to , also came from backers who gave several times throughout the campaign and were veterans. Many pledges came from people who had already backed an average of 15 other Kickstarters on the site. broke the numbers down even further, showing that a hard-core set of just 555 potato salad enthusiasts had the biggest financial impact on the campaign. It further shows 18 people pledged over 61 percent of the campaign on the first day, possibly giving the campaign the boost it needed for all the media attention that was to come. A , just three days after the campaign started, received 4,250 upvotes, thus sparking the potato. You can see the spike in unique views right around July 7, which suggest this may have sparked the potato salad frenzy. Requests for interviews started to flood in for project creator Zack “Danger” Brown, who by all the fuss on local ABC 6 station in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
“I didn’t think it was ever going to blow up this big,” he told reporters. reports that the campaign only had 200 backers at this time. Pledges came in from as far as Australia and the Netherlands. People have started making of the project to try to mirror its success and Brown was even offered a job in marketing at plant-based mayo company . Spokesperson for Hampton Creek, Morgan Oliviera, also confirmed she has a call with Brown today about a possible potato salad event in both SF and Ohio. Though Oliviera was also quick to add the two still need to “hash it out.” Brown had a pretty good sense of humor over the whole thing. He promises anyone who has pledged $1 or more that he will read their name out loud while making the potato salad. He also promised backers a pizza party as well as a giant potato salad event over Labor Day in Columbus that he’s dubbed “ .” The Columbus Clippers, Columbus’s AAA baseball team has even reached out to ask if Brown wanted to use their stadium for the party. “I can’t wait to see what people have in mind,” . “All these wonderful people are making my dream of spreading joy and humor in the world come true.” His video updates about all the success are just the best. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCPbIW7JCTE]
“Together, we’re building a movement,” he says, as a guy shoves a giant wad of potato salad in his mouth. Someone in the background then asks, “Will it change the world?” Brown replies, “Probably,” as he looks up and stares wistfully into space. Brown assumed he’d earn $60 max for the project, but now pledges to donate “a good portion” of the $55,492 proceeds to charity. “After the campaign is over (it ended Saturday), I will be contributing a significant portion of my project’s profits to a fund that I have set up at the Columbus Foundation. This will create a permanent fund to help Central Ohio’s nonprofits end hunger and homelessness,” . This is technically against . The rules explicitly prohibit raising money for charity. Potato Salad ended as the fourth most-viewed project in Kickstarter history with over 4 million views. Only the , the and a campaign to make “ ” into a movie beat out Brown’s simple quest to make his first potato salad. Despite all the traffic, Kickstarter said the project received fewer pledges than anything else on a top-10 most-viewed campaigns list. Oculus Rift, for example, raised over $2.4 million, and Reading Rainbow topped out at just over $5.4 million, though both had fewer visitors than the potato salad campaign. “It’s funny to think that more people have seen the potato salad project than Oculus Rift, but hey, the Internet is a crazy place,” writes Kickstarter. |
Zillow’s Q2 Earnings Mixed With Record $78.7M Revenue, $0.05 Loss Per Share | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | Real estate marketplace reported its Q2 2014 financial results today. The company reported revenue of $78.7 million — up 68% over the second quarter of 2013 — but a non-GAAP net loss per share of $0.05. GAPP net loss was about $10.5 million compared to $10.2 million in Q2 2013. was that it would post revenue of about $76.52 million and a loss per share of around $0.04. In the , the company reported revenue of $66.2 million, which was well over the Wall Street consensus. Basic and diluted GAAP loss per share for the first quarter was $0.16 and $0.26 in Q2 2014. At the time, the company also raised its full-year sales outlook to $304 to $308 million. Today, it raised its expectations again, to $321 million to $323 million. Traffic to grew from the 79 million it reported for April to 89 million in July, a 45% year-over-year increase. The company also announced that its mobile traffic doubled year-over year. In total, more than 586 million homes were viewed on the company’s mobile sites and apps in July — that’s 212 homes per second. “We had our strongest quarter yet with record consumer traffic and record revenue and bookings by Premier Agent advertisers,” said Spencer Rascoff, Zillow CEO. “Our deliberate focus on high- performing agents and their teams drove the significant increase in orders, and has prompted us to increase our full-year outlook. Advertisers are clearly following audience, and we’re continuing to reinvest in the business to get the flywheel to spin even faster.” The majority of Zillow’s revenue comes from its Marketplace, which accounted for $62.6 million or 72% of its total revenue. Over time, the company’s tools for real estate agents have also become a more important part of its services. In the last quarter, the company reported that its Premier Agent service had 52,969 subscribers. This number has now grown to 56,818 and the average revenue per agent is now $320, up from $266 in the year-ago quarter. While the company announced a number of product updates over the last quarter, its most spectacular move has obviously been the , which is expected to close in 2015. It also recently , a service that helps developers access real estate listing and it has worked out deals with to get direct access to their real estate listings. |
How Rise Connects Users With Diet Coaches To Help Them Eat Healthier | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | Over the past year, I’ve been taking a photo of more or less every meal that I’ve eaten. But I’m not sending those photos to Instagram or Facebook — instead, I’m uploading them to a diet app called , which has helped me to eat better and lose weight. works by who take a look at their client’s meals and offer feedback. That feedback ranges from telling you “Good job!” to making suggestions about what you can do better. In my case, a lot of what my diet coach wrote back fell under that latter category — i.e., telling me I need to eat more greens, less starchy vegetables, and to scratch fried foods and desserts from my diet. It’s one part education and one part accountability, as coaches first help users understand what they’re doing wrong, and how they can make meaningful changes over time. Rise founder created the app in part based on his own family’s experience dealing with diet and weight loss when he was a kid. (Disclosure: Suneel is the husband of my former colleague Leena Rao, who first introduced me to the app.) His parents were struggling with eating healthy, and ended up finally finding a dietitian that would work with building a plan around their South Asian diet. With the app, Rise is seeking to bring the same amount of personalized instruction to users at a fraction of what it would cost for them to hire a diet coach on their own. Not only that, but they’re connecting with their coaches every day, as opposed to following up once a week. For diet coaches, the platform enables them to serve multiple clients at a time in their spare time, as opposed to just a few each day. My coach, Jo, was working in a hospital providing diet advice before joining Rise. Now she’s able to help dozens of clients improve their daily eating habits. Of course, it’s still up to the user to actually implement the changes. After gaining back some weight, I’m back on track… Although Jo still isn’t thrilled with my Sunday dinner of a cheeseburger and fries. Check out the video above to learn more. |
Google Maps Now Lets You Explore Mars And The Moon, If You Know Where To Click | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | Hey, you! Want to explore the surface of Mars? No problem! All we need is a few billion dollars, a couple hundred of the world’s brightest minds, and for someone to get around to solving that pesky “ ” problem. On second thought, that might take a while. Until then, will have to do. Just in time for the 2nd anniversary of the Curiosity rover touching down on Martian soil, Google has tucked 3D, explorable versions of Mars and the Moon right into Maps. Shootin’ across the galaxy in Google Maps is pretty easy, as long as you know where to click. And for those looking to explore both space time, here’s how to use Google Maps to [ via ] |
Thousands Can Fact-Check The News With Grasswire | Cat Zakrzewski | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | We all know you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. But with , you can at least “refute” it. ’s new venture allows news junkies to confirm and refute posts about breaking news. The “real-time newsroom controlled by everyone” divides posts into popular news topics, such as the and the . Once you select a topic, you then can upvote posts like Reddit to make them appear at the top of the page. If you see something that is incorrect, you can refute it by posting a source URL to information that disproves it. You can do the same to confirm a report. When you share the post on social media, all of these links are shared with it. “It started really with just a few news junkies, people who are really sick of being lied to with information being spread around on YouTube and Twitter and all of these platforms that are completely unregulated,” Allred tells me. “There’s nothing to rope them in as far as accuracy goes. The tool was originally built for those people.” So far, users have refuted posts through reverse Google image searches, Allred said. The website officially launched about a month ago. As a news junkie myself who has retweeted information that later turned out to be false as more details developed, this product seems to fill an existing hole in the social media landscape. Although Twitter seems to be the place to go to get bursts of information out when a story breaks, you can’t edit Tweets. to the Malaysia airlines crash in Ukraine, we’ve seen false information surface on the social network. Once it’s there and has been retweeted, it’s hard to make it go away. Deleting the tweet doesn’t affect manual retweets, and totally removing it does not allow for transparent correction and clarification. “Obviously there are some journalists who think turning journalism over to people who aren’t professional journalists is dangerous, but we disagree with those people,” Allred said. “I feel like the ability to refute something is not that incredibly difficult. The real power of journalism is when we have massive amounts of people trying to scrutinize whether or not that is accurate enough.” As a journalism major, I’m skeptical of a “real-time newsroom controlled by everyone.” , my professors reassure me that there will still be a place for journalists in the new world of increasingly crowdsourced news. Although these accounts can bring new details to a story, I bought into the idea that there would still be a need for professionals to go out, report and bring accurate information to readers. Rather than replace that role, I’m hopeful that a platform like could one day be a tool to supplement it. Right now the platform has its bugs. Its design feels a bit cumbersome, and currently the team does not have an iOS developer. But despite these flaws, other attempts to fact check breaking news online have faltered. We still see false reports tweeted by verified accounts all the time, for instance. Something like Grasswire could serve the same role as a correction or a revision posted on an article. By linking to source material that continues to appear every time the post is shared, it is much like an article with an editor’s note that explains why something has been altered or changed. For journalists trying to balance old-school ethics with new media tools, this option could be crucial. If executed correctly, it could lead to far fewer false reports because thousands of people could be fact checking information, not just a handful in a newsroom. Grasswire’s success is dependent on its ability to grow an active user base, so that when news does break, readers are there to confirm or refute it. Currently Grasswire has about 1,000 to 2,000 active daily users and has built a Twitter following of over 30,000. Still in its seed-funding round, Grasswire has raised $50,000. |
Backed By YC And Rock Health, Aptible Handles The Hard Parts Of HIPAA Compliance | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,” entrepreneur and technologist , paraphrasing Beat poet in a sadly truthful characterization of the modern day tech industry. The thing is, a lot of people who work in advertising-fueled tech products have said that they’re intrigued by the possibility of working on more meaningful applications of technology, particularly in the health space. But the complicated regulatory environment surrounding such products serves as a big deterrent. “Generally, health is just so heavily regulated, it’s just a painful business to be in. It’s not necessarily how I want to spend my time,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin said . “I think the regulatory burden in the U.S. is so high, I think it would dissuade a lot of entrepreneurs.” A new startup called just might help make healthcare a bit more palatable for ambitious entrepreneurs. Aptible, which is in the current classes of both the and startup accelerators, says it helps handle all of the things a technology company needs to become HIPAA compliant at a fraction of the cost and effort of traditional HIPAA compliance consultancies. The way that works can be described as a blend of products such as and TurboTax, co-founder and CEO said in an interview last week. The TurboTax comparison refers to the way that Aptible’s “compliance engine” asks users a list of questions related to HIPAA compliance in plain English, and translates the answers into the appropriate format that would satisfy an auditor and other regulatory authorities. The Heroku comparison is because Aptible works as a deployment platform and manages all of the necessary secure backend infrastructure needed to run HIPAA-compliant technology apps. Aptible is “framework and language agnostic,” which means that companies can use the programming languages and database infrastructures of their choice. “A lot of times when technology companies want to be HIPAA compliant, they’re forced to use certain kinds of tools,” Ballew said. “We let you use the languages open source databases that everybody in tech uses, like PHP and MongoDB. If you want to migrate on or off Aptible, you don’t have to learn the language or API that was invented just for HIPAA compliance. We do it all for you.” Aptible costs $3,499 per month for an annual contract. That may seem like a steep price, but according to Ballew, the status quo cost for HIPAA compliance is much higher. Becoming HIPAA compliant often costs a company between $50,000 to $100,000 in consulting fees, and up to 200 hours of manual work, with annual updates needed, Ballew says. In contrast, Aptible claims that it can have a company well on the road to HIPAA compliance in an afternoon. Ballew says that Aptible’s able to do this because it’s solely focused on HIPAA compliance for cloud-based software as a service companies. Most HIPAA compliance consultancies work with all types of organizations, from hospitals to insurance companies to healthcare payment providers, making them inefficient for many modern tech firms. “We’re totally laser focused on this one type of company: Cloud-based, software-as-a-service technology companies. We’re here to help developers,” Ballew says. “We want to help the smart people who are technically good and motivated to work in healthcare to not just say, ‘Wow, I’m going to go work on something else, because it’s too much of a nightmare to do this kind of regulatory stuff.’ We can solve that problem.” Aptible, which has been running customers in production since late March, was founded by Ballew, a lawyer with a background in government regulatory compliance, and CTO , a software engineer with a specialty in backend infrastructure. Aptible, which is currently seed funded by Y Combinator and Rock Health, currently has three full-time staff. It’s still the early days for Aptible, but it seems to be a smart idea that could make a big difference in the kinds of companies that we see built in the coming years. |
The US Market Will Benefit From China’s Tech Growth | Si Shen | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | This has been a whirlwind year for Chinese tech companies. is in the spotlight as it’s for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in an IPO that’s expected to raise up to $20 billion (at a valuation of up to $200 billion). But a couple of years ago, “Alibaba” and even “ ” were names few would have recognized. In fact it wasn’t until 2014 that suddenly these companies were the new darlings transplanted from China at the center of the newest tech wave. Some taken aback by China’s sudden presence in the U.S. aren’t quite sure how to handle the newcomer. Is China a threat or a boon? The way I see it, China is an asset. A string of other Chinese firms including , , and are just some of those that have taken up residence in New York. China’s tech firms have contributed as much as 63 percent of the total IPO money raised in the U.S., according to . A secondary Bloomberg report adds that Chinese IPOs in the 12 months leading up to June 2014 returned an average of 44 percent. “If you look at the technology and Internet sector, investors were getting hit hard in the U.S. during the first half of the year and needed to search for returns elsewhere. China is the logical next stop,” Kurt Ayling, a Susquehanna Financial Group LLP tech analyst, . As Chinese companies display their competitive luster, and Americans feel the squeeze, IPOs on U.S. soil are a boon to U.S. investors, thereby adding stimulus to the U.S. economy. Regardless of motives, a secondary benefit the U.S. stands to gain from China is the sudden capital injections from China’s major technology firms, including . U.S. startups are suddenly Chinese M&A targets. In fact, Chinese firms have invested in U.S. tech companies to the tune of $6 billion in 2014 (so far), according to the Rhodium Group. For instance, Snapchat, Fab, Plain Vanilla (famed for QuizUp), and Whisper are just a few of Tencent’s 15 deals in U.S. tech firms in the last three years. Alibaba in parallel has been on a spending spree of late in preparation for its IPO with seven acquisitions and investments in U.S. startups (one of which includes messaging app Tango) since 2013. And don’t forget that IBM recently sold off its x86 server manufacturing arm to Chinese hardware manufacturer Lenovo, which, in the past, has purchased and turned around IBM’s ailing PC business into the largest PC company in the world. Lenovo also recently purchased Motorola. In the wake of these investments and acquisitions, there’s an additional added benefit. Chinese acquisitions are spurring job growth. “In most of these cases where Chinese companies come in and acquire a U.S. company, they’ve actually increased local staff post-acquisition,” Thilo Hanemann, research director at Rhodium Group, . “That’s exactly why they come here, because there’s a lack of talented staff back in China and they’re trying to actively tap the talent here in the U.S.” Despite being flush with capital, an M&A isn’t the only strategy in the pocket of China’s tech elite. They’ve made standalone initiatives in their global expansion with products that reach hundreds of millions of users or offer unique value propositions. Alibaba has been the biggest story to date, one of these stories of which you might have noticed circled around the company’s U.S. foray with – an English language competitor to Amazon and eBay.com that promises “one-of-a-kind items, not available to mass merchants and other large e-commerce sites,” . should be a breath of fresh air for online shoppers in the West for those of us used to the competitive big-box e-tailers out there. In the same vein, Chinese mobile companies including Dolphin Browser, Sungy Mobile, Cheetah Mobile, Baidu, and Qihoo are building value-driven mobile products (many in the productivity category) – many of which boast hundreds of millions of users (per app) in international markets. Among the top 10 global companies by iOS and Android downloads according to , you’ll find four Chinese companies, of which two are in the top four. These include Cheetah Mobile, Sungy Mobile, Baidu, and Tencent. In fact, as Chinese mobile tech companies continue to expand into international markets, U.S. developers are benefitting in turn. China’s mobile advertising spend allocated for acquiring U.S. users grew 401 percent between Q1 2014 and Q2 2014. Since app developers with U.S. users (and many of these apps with U.S. users were developed by U.S. studios) are paid on a per-download basis by these Chinese advertisers, U.S. developers are benefitting by generating in-app revenue by showing ads from Chinese advertisers. Not surprisingly, as Chinese advertisers’ ad spend grows 123 percent quarter-over-quarter since Q2 2013, Chinese mobile advertisers are now among one of the most sought after. In retrospect, with more attention paid to China, the doors to the China market are in turn opening up, giving Western developers access to China’s 700 million mobile users. Best of all, the Chinese mobile market is maturing and Chinese mobile users are known to be voracious consumers of apps, giving U.S. developers an opportune moment to make a splash in the market. If you’re interested, you’ll be pleased to know that U.S.-made apps including Temple Run 2, Subway Surfers, Fruit Ninja, and Minion Rush were among the top 20 played mobile games (by MAU) in China during Q2 2014, according to . As they say, it’s better to embrace change than to ignore it. Amid China’s globalization efforts, it’s a great time for those of you in the U.S. to ride the wave and cash in on new opportunities. |
Zip Phone Lets You Make Free Calls Over The Internet…Without Launching Its App | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | A company known as is making it easier to place secure, Wi-Fi enabled phone calls, in order to save consumers from using up the limited number of cellular minutes that come with their smartphone’s voice plan. That’s a more common problem outside of North America where unlimited calling plans are prevalent, though these consumers can still benefit from Zip Phone while traveling to save on roaming charges. However, what’s interesting about this startup is how the technology itself is deeply integrated with the Android operating system. Zip Phone’s founder, Anuj Jain, describes the app as something you just install once, then never look at again. Yes, it’s another one of – that is, apps that operate in the background, only kicking off when needed. Jain, a serial entrepreneur from India who has worked on everything from mobile games for J2ME phones to automated trading platforms and more, came up with the idea for Zip Phone in order to solve a problem he faced when working from a basement office with poor cellular reception. He wanted more than just a Wi-Fi-powered mobile calling app – there are, of course, many of those – but one that worked seamlessly with the Android OS. “There are dozens of voice-over-IP applications available, Skype, Viber, and LINE being the big ones,” explains Jain. “What makes Zip Phone different is that it’s just ridiculously easy to use,” he says. With other applications, if you need to place a call to someone, you have to launch the app, sign in, see who’s online, then dial from the app. “With Zip Phone, you just need to have it installed on your phone once, and that’s it. My philosophy is that you should never have to look at my app again,” says Jain. Well, technically, you need to open it once to get it set up, but what Jain means is that Zip Phone integrates with the Android operating system and then becomes a part of your default calling experience. The app detects when you’re on Wi-Fi and takes over the standard Android dialer when it sees the other person also has the app installed. (The calls can be routed over Wi-Fi or cellular, as need be, so it doesn’t require that both users are connected to Wi-Fi for calls to go through.) In addition, also offers more secure calling. The app encrypts the calls using a combination of encryption methods (RSA and 256-bit AES encryption) so that no one, including the company itself, can listen in. For each phone call, Zip Phone generates new encryption keys that are never stored on the server or your phone, making it impossible for phone calls to be eavesdropped on, Jain says. Privacy is a top priority for the company, too, he notes, adding that Zip Phone doesn’t store call logs or ask for any other information besides your phone number in order to work. Though Zip Phone makes the most sense where it can burrow its way into the operating system, to be a more complete solution, the company has , which operates in a more traditional manner – an app you have to launch in order to place your calls. Jain declined to say how many users Zip Phone has, but is showing between 10,000 and 50,000 installs. But the founder would say that installs have doubled since joining Y Combinator in June, where they’ve since rebuilt, redesigned and rebranded the app. (It used to be called .) Jain is the sole founder at the small, two-person company, and hasn’t raised outside funding beyond the YC investment. |
Smart Building Technologies Could Expose Companies To A New Breed Of Cyber Attack | Peter Dickinson | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | Last month major corporations and household names such as , and were held ransom by Internet hackers. Many found this concerning, but even more serious is that some businesses may not realize how highly vulnerable they are to such an attack. What if it were your building that was held ransom? Are there things that could have been done to prevent a cyber attack? When we think of the Internet of Things, it’s common to think of phones, cars, tablets and countless other consumer devices, but don’t forget buildings. Businesses are racing toward integration through web-enabled technologies that can control everything from heating and lighting to elevators and door locks. But imagine a cyber attack shutting down your building’s lights and elevators. In addition to the security breach, employees would need to be sent home, and depending on the size of the company, this could result in losses of thousands or even millions of dollars. Building control is moving away from the human hand and it is time to view a building as IT and not just the traditional brick and mortar. While connected buildings that use the cloud and IP networks to more efficiently control building operations are not new, there are new security precautions that need to be implemented to prevent intruders. More emphasis on and education around this topic is necessary. Google’s Australian office hack should have served as the wakeup call for smart buildings. Two security researchers exposed Google’s vulnerable building management system for its Wharf 7 office. By going through the , the researchers had access to multiple panels. They were able to view blueprints of the building and the water pipes within the system. If they wanted to, they could have even clicked buttons labeled “active overrides,” “active alarms,” “schedule,” and more. This was not a malicious attack so no damage was done, but the possibility for a damaging security breach was there. Once in a system, it could be relatively easy to access multiple building controls, as was the case for Google. Many of the communications protocols for building automation devices are built to integrate with each other for product compatibility and interoperability. In addition, automation systems that are set up on the same network as corporate and administrative systems put companies at increased risk. In the Google hack, the building management system was on a dedicated line and not on the same network as its corporate and administrative systems, which poses an additional hurdle for hackers. The answer to preventing cyber attacks is not disconnecting your building from the cloud, it’s for the industry and end users to be more educated about the security risks and to be prepared for them. At times, it can actually be human error and mistrust in a system that can lead to more harm than good. Take , for instance. The breach that made headlines around the globe started with someone gaining access to the building via the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system. Without digging a little deeper, it is easy to point to the technology installed as the major issue and the only reason this breach happened. In reality, without manual intervention, the hack could have been contained within moments of occurring. In the Target breach, the automated, intelligent, self-healing IT security system was overridden to perform just as a passive alert system. In turn, this alert was – by all accounts – ignored by the monitoring personnel. The virus/worm detection system, which actually did end up detecting the eventual intrusion into the point-of-sale system, could have automatically stopped the whole thing in its tracks, if it weren’t being limited. Unfortunately due to the apparent insistence on manual (human) oversight and interference with the system, the hack took hold and an alert was raised but nothing was done for what appears to be a number of days. Like any industry involving tech, growing pains are to be expected, but the reality is that buildings are now IT. The hacks mentioned above are not reflective of the industry as a whole, but do provide a good lesson. When selecting automated system for a building, security must be a factor. Utilizing the cloud is not something to be afraid of and its uses will only increase. A lack of education creates fear, which is why as the intelligence of our buildings increases, there is also a need for us to increase our intelligence of how systems within our buildings operate. For 30 years, our building stock has represented some of the biggest robotics systems on the planet. The benefits of this explosion in automation have been deep and numerous. Further benefits are now becoming a reality, but without a serious focus on security, we risk losing those 30 years of progress and missing out on the next wave of advances. |
Microsoft Announces August Update To Windows 8.1, But Don’t Call It Update 2 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | has a number of upgrades coming for Windows 8.1 on August 12, but the company today announced in a that the new features and tweaks don’t constitute an “Update 2” to the operating system. So what is coming in the non-Update 2 August release? Trackpad improvements, better SharePoint Online integration, and Wi-Fi API updates for external developers. Good stuff, but not on the same size-scale as Update 1. The new code will land via Windows Update, so you won’t have to do much to snag it. Just be around. , improving the boot preferences of the operating system, expanding device support, and also adding new user interface elements that made the platform far easier to use. It was big enough to warrant an “$Update_X” tag. What Microsoft has planned for August does not. The company explains that by saying that it is committed to shipping updates more rapidly, and not saving up new code to release as a group, as with Update 1: ” “[R]ather than waiting for months and bundling together a bunch of improvements into a larger update […] customers can expect that we’ll use our already existing monthly update process to deliver more frequent improvements[.]” This release is somewhat notable as it underscores Microsoft’s faster release strategy for non-numbered releases, which is to say smaller, incremental updates rather than platform-wide releases. If you use a Windows machine, in other words, you can expect your machine to improve month-by-month. |
Apple Leads in Accessibility, But Can Third-Party Developers Follow? | Steven Aquino | 2,014 | 8 | 2 | Third-party apps on the App Store need to be much better at being . The tendency — albeit naturally — is for and other developers to make iOS, and apps designed for iOS, for the majority of users. While users with disabilities, such as myself, are not a majority, we are an important niche. We use iOS devices, too, and we surely appreciate Apple and developers making us a . Figuring out how to best address the issue of improving third-party app accessibility is not a trivial matter; rather, it’s a complex problem with some potential pitfalls. It makes sense to first consider Apple’s responsibility here. From a developer perspective, the company encourages accessibility by providing for best practices for coding accessibility, as well as devoting much time during talking about accessibility on iOS and the Mac. Of course accessibility isn’t a challenge for only Apple; indeed, others such as Google and Amazon must think about these issues and in serving disabled users the best they can. The most reasonable and practical solution comes from Marco Arment. He proposes that . Arment writes: My proposed fix: The specifics of Arment’s ideas notwithstanding, his proposal underscores the big picture: third-party apps have a basic level of support for accessibility. While I don’t pretend to fully understand iOS development, it seems to me that accessibility is to Apple that the company could (and should) adopt such a policy. Their enforcement of such hypothetical rules needn’t be so iron-fisted, but just knowing that they checking for accessibility compliance would, in theory, be a great show of goodwill to those in the accessibility community. (Another example of Apple’s acknowledgment of this: their nods in widely aired .) Moreover, the incentives that Apple could provide developers — badges, even an “Editors’ Choice for Accessibility” — would go a long way in terms of developer relations and promotion. Arment’s proposed solution is rooted in the concept that iOS apps be accessible, so that people with disabilities aren’t left out. Yet for as noble an idea as “all apps, all accessible” is, the reality is that it isn’t tenable beyond the bare minimum. For one thing, the notion of “accessibility” and “inclusiveness” is abstract and far-reaching. How are developers to choose which accessibility tools to use? Do they have experience with accessibility, if only brief? More to the point, who are developers targeting? Cognitive and/or physical impairments run the gamut in terms of severity and corresponding needs; how are developers supposed to know which to focus on understand how, say, will benefit someone? All of this is to say that expectations need to be tempered when touting universal accessibility because it’s like opening up a can of worms; it’s not as simple as . Or consider the reverse: Just because Apple or a developer may label an app as “accessible” doesn’t mean necessarily that the app will work well. What if the implementation is poorly done, or if the app tries to be all things to all people, cramming every possible accessibility tool in the software development kit just to meet the “accessible” quota? Accessibility in and of itself is like the users who rely on it insofar that it’s a abstract concept. Developers have to know exactly what they want to achieve and who they want to serve, because users’ needs vary. Because of this, it’s also important that developers be proactive in educating themselves about Apple’s Accessibility tools, and about their target audience. So how does a developer know what he or she is doing right (or wrong)? I’ve been fortunate to have numerous opportunities to help beta-test apps from some . This type of information is invaluable for the obvious reason that accessibility may be out of the realm of knowledge of many developers. To be clear, this isn’t about ignorance — it’s about outsourcing experts to QA an aspect of their app which they deem important to get right. A problem, however, in QAing accessibility is actually people who are willing and able to provide guidance and feedback regarding accessibility. Tech companies such as are becoming increasingly aggressive in . Of course, these are full-time, salaried positions — most, if not all, indie developers can’t do this — but the basic principle is the same: recruiting people to lend a voice to accessibility. It’s imperative that developers find people who are well versed in this area in order to give disabled users the best experience possible, but it isn’t easy. The fact is that, again, accessibility is a relatively small segment of the total user base, and there aren’t many of us experts out there. Put another way, we’re a special breed attuned to special use cases. Another stumbling block towards achieving accessibility for all is the fact that there are many categories of apps that unfortunately aren’t conducive to accessibility enhancements. Examples include medical apps and audio/video editors — apps like these fit a very specific group of people doing very specific tasks, and it’s unreasonable to assume that such apps can or should be accessed by all. Even games are a no-man’s land of accessibility, although that’s a problem that’s slowly being . I don’t mean to imply that developers be exclusionary in their vision and design; I’m simply pointing out that, realistically, there certain types of apps for which accessibility is unfeasible. Apple is leaps and bounds better than here. It makes sense that, at the very least, or Large Dynamic Type be supported. It’s the right thing to do, and as I stated before, will do much to make disabled users happy. The moral of this story is that accessibility is hard. The blanket statement that all apps be accessible is well-meaning and not without merit, but isn’t as easy as it sounds. Verification by the app review team is a great start — assuming Apple ever implements it — but there’s a long way to go. The more talk, the better consideration and advocation for the issues and the community. In the end, it means a lot that so many people care to stand up for users with disabilities, myself included. |
Technology’s Role In Direct Democracy | Michael Papay | 2,014 | 8 | 2 | An influx of communication and collaboration technologies since the beginning of the 21st century has helped to make this the most connected time in human history — and seemingly easier than ever for society to work together. Yet, where is the political yield? Midterm elections are coming up. Stakes are high and there are big problems in need of solutions; it’s time that politicians stop talking and start listening. We’ve created a 24-hour news cycle, an Autobahn for political-party sound bites and a bully-pulpit for elected officials across state, local and federal levels. There’s not much constructive debate, and political gridlock has become the norm. Labor productivity – mostly in the service sector – has exceeded 3 percent growth per year since 2000 ( ). The enterprise has been quick to adopt technologies such as , , and to communicate and collaborate, creating arguably the most valuable companies and innovative products ever produced. Transparency is also on the rise with companies like and leading the way. Employers and employees increasingly know more about each other and are landing on important business decisions faster, leading to better employment matches, productivity and profitability. The stock market is at an all-time high and . On the consumer side, companies like can deliver what we need the next day at the lowest price. Want it sooner? and their Shopping Express does it within a few hours in the San Francisco Bay Area. Don’t live in San Francisco? See who does it best on and hire to go get it for you. Now, if only politicians could be as nimble and effective. Self-interest and preservation are baked into our political system. There’s not much incentive for elected officials to go out on a limb and propose novel solutions to the most pressing problems. The status quo keeps them employed and simple majorities ensure we don’t stray too far from center. The key to solving problems though is this: seek a diversity of options, encourage a free exchange and competition of ideas and use an efficient mechanism/technology platform to narrow the choices until one – the best – remains – then rally around the decision and act cohesively. All too often, after a vigorous debate and an agreement is reached, half of elected officials and their electorate continue to advocate for their point of view. Perhaps we just need a better mechanism/technology platform for people to engage and participate in the direction of our country. A system that not only helps leaders source the best ideas but also taps into the true sentiment of their constituents … a technology-driven direct democracy. Forms of do exist today. Voters can approve or reject laws passed by elected officials, remove representatives from office and even propose and/or pass laws. California adopted a modern direct democracy in 1911. South Dakota did it in 1898. Utah, Oregon, Montana and Oklahoma are other examples. Are they direct enough, though? Even the “directest” of democracies – – still needs formal elections to capture the voice of the people. Perhaps that’s why voter engagement is so low? People’s energy around important issues is not timed with their opportunity to participate in doing something about them. Imagine a real-time technology driven democratic process – similar to town hall meetings – where everyone is invited to participate when the issues are most poignant. Leaders facilitate decisions instead of exerting their influence and the solutions are as diverse as the population that serves them up. Debate is transparent and contributes to knowledge growth. There are no headstrong people who stubbornly lobby for their point of view despite diminishing favor. And once a quorum is reached, everyone aligns around the decision and moves with speed as a cohesive group. Some of our elected leaders have already started using 21st century technologies to create consistent and engaging conversation and involve their constituents on a daily basis. Gavin Newsom, lieutenant governor of California, has over and outlines in his book how Americans can transform their government by taking matters into their own hands to dissolve political gridlock. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a big proponent of , has hosted an “ ” on to stay on the pulse and better align with the people on key issues. practically won the presidency in 2008 by using social media to connect his campaign to the emotional pulse of the electorate. Never before, in the history of time, has our ability to collaborate and communicate on a massive scale been so achievable. The time seems ripe for broader adoption of technology to make this type of direct democracy a more formal part of the process. |
Lessons Learned On App Design For Fast-Growth Markets | Alan Mamedi | 2,014 | 8 | 2 | One of the typical mistakes developers make is thinking that because they’ve had success in one corner of the globe, they should be able to employ the same strategy to drive adoption elsewhere. The truth of the matter is apps that are wildly successful in the U.S., Europe and Japan often fail to gain substantial traction in areas like India, South America and the Middle East; these problems go well beyond simple translation issues and lack of cultural understanding. Something I faced when speaking with our early investors was that they sometimes could get too obsessive with the Western world and overlook the high-growth markets – often referred to as the “next billion markets.” That was a challenge for us, as our growth and data were pointing to the developing markets, and the VCs were pointing to the developed markets. It was a difficult choice for us to make, but we followed where the data pointed. Today it has shown that it was the right path for us to take in order to grow fast. If your business is facing similar questions and app success relies on international expansion, here are a few things to keep in mind if you want to compete and win over the next billion consumers: Mobile app developers usually have a top-of-the-line phone or tablet like an iPhone 5S or a Galaxy S5. This is the device they use their app on day-to-day, but it’s not representative of how most of their users are experiencing their product or service. Lower-end phones are much more commonplace in fast-growth markets than they are in the U.S. or Europe. For example, smartphone penetration in , according to Google’s Our Mobile Planet study. The takeaway here is that you should not create an app that just works well for a small percentage of potential customers. This is the equivalent of automotive designers only focusing on their company’s top-of-the-line cars, rather than what most of their customers are driving. It’s important to pay close attention to the types of devices that reside in the hands of a majority of our users. Truecaller’s app, for instance, often runs smoother on low-end Android phones in India and the Middle East than the operating system itself. Simply maintaining a quality experience – rather than one that chugs along and takes forever to start on most phones – can do wonders for audience retention and repeat usage. Bigger doesn’t always mean better. It’s true that phone screens are getting larger in the U.S. and Europe, though in many countries, smaller screens still have a powerful hold. , 85 percent of U.S. smartphone owners have a phone with a large display (iPhone size or larger) – compare that to Brazil, where just 61 percent of smartphones have a large screen, or Indonesia, where only half of smartphones do. Although it may be tempting for designers to utilize all the extra screen real estate, this shouldn’t be done at the cost of the user experience. Designers can be too eager to cram their UI with fancy bells and whistles, leading to an ugly, awkward layout for those looking at it through smaller screens. Much like programming for low-spec phones, accounting for a small screen size is key to improving the overall customer experience. Americans and Europeans love to complain about their cellular data caps of a few gigabytes a month, but the situation is far worse for those living in countries where prepaid plans dominate. Prepaid customers have to be extra conscious of their mobile data when every extra megabyte means a higher phone bill. In India, as an example, users often turn off cellular data on their phones to prevent apps from using it in the background. This is very much in contrast to the average Western developers who typically build their apps with the assumption that their users will have a constant Internet connection, even if the core functionality of the app doesn’t require one. This is a recipe for poor adoption. In fact, shows that only 43 percent of Indian smartphone owners use a Wi-Fi connection for their smartphone at home, while nearly three quarters of Americans do. This may sound limiting, but there are ways to use this to your advantage. For example, Bollywood music streaming service gives paid subscribers a feature allowing them to save songs on their phone to play when they don’t have access to data. It’s an effective way to reach the widest possible group of users while still giving them the most value from the service. Only a few years ago, original equipment manufacturers paid license fees to app developers to develop for their smartphones. But today, partnering with carriers and OEMs in foreign markets can be a major boon to all involved. For app developers that don’t have a great deal of brand recognition outside of their home country, joining up with a well-known local brand can be an inroad to reaching millions of new customers. App placement has become real estate developers need to fight for. With a robust partnership, carriers and OEMs can differentiate their increasingly commoditized phones and cellular services and your app gets exposure to users you otherwise might miss out on. Developers across the spectrum have successfully increased their worldwide user numbers by working with big local firms. For over a year in India, Nokia’s low-cost Asha line has featured a dedicated button and a free lifetime WhatsApp subscription. accelerated its international expansion by offering a year of premium service to cellular subscribers in Brazil. has long partnered with Asian carriers to bring its service to feature phones, which represent a large majority of its audience. Coordinating with device makers and operators is essential for maximizing audience reach in fast-growth markets abroad. Examples abound of apps becoming more successful by being more accommodating. WhatsApp didn’t get its colossal user base just by targeting those with the latest phones. , a translation app recently purchased by Google, owes much of its popularity to the fact that it does not require an Internet connection, making it perfect for international travelers. Similarly, VoIP service was able to create an entirely new revenue stream by launching a mobile top up service , which gained widespread appeal in India by addressing the mobile minute transfer needs of customers in a country where prepaid mobile plans dominate. To fast track your app for success, do not simply pay attention to making it the most sophisticated app in the category. Rethink your app’s design for approachability and maximum reach. Most importantly, make sure you have conducted extensive user testing to identify and work around major consumer annoyances that can inhibit your app’s growth, virality, and reach. |
Mexico’s Resources Fuel The Texas Startup Economy | Sara Inés Calderón | 2,014 | 8 | 2 | Everything is bigger in Texas, and thanks to Mexico, that may be also soon be true of the state’s growing tech sector. with cash, Texas’ proximity to Mexico gives the state’s tech companies distinct advantages over other regions, according to entrepreneurs and others involved in the state’s tech industry. Mexico is Texas’ , a fact leaders from both regions often proudly tout in speeches. Historically much of this trade has revolved around maquiladoras, which in the 1990s were geared largely toward textile manufacturing, or auto parts. With Texas’ rising tech scene, startups are looking south to meet their manufacturing needs, or otherwise benefiting from the close proximity to Mexico. “They say that San Antonio is the northernmost city in Mexico,” says Lorenzo Gomez, director of San Antonio startup incubator . “We in Texas get the benefit when immigrants come into our country — it’s an injection, an infusion of entrepreneurs that most other places don’t get.” Brownsville — at the tip of Texas, on the border and the Gulf Coast — is a great example of how companies may leverage Mexico’s manufacturers. is set to a rocket launch , and the maquiladoras that thrived in this region of Texas may be easily adapted to the type of high-tech needs a company like SpaceX would have, according to one local official. “ would be hiring and developing 600 rocket scientists. We’ve already been contacted by a string of space-related and hi-tech companies wanting to expand their operations here,” said Gilberto Salinas, Executive Vice President of the Brownsville Economic Development Corporation (BEDC). Plans for Brownsville include luring into town some of the 250 suppliers working with SpaceX in Texas, working with the local university to create a pipeline of talent to high-tech jobs, commercializing university innovations and more, Salinas tells me. El Paso’s biomedical sector is growing by leaps and bounds, and the manufacturing facilities in Ciudad Juárez, on the other side of the border, are a part of that equation, said Emma Schwartz, President of the . The foundation is working on creating a cutting-edge medical center facility, biomedical infrastructure and talent pipeline in El Paso. Large companies are already manufacturing high-tech equipment in the area, she said, such as Johnson & Johnson employing about 8,000 people making pacemakers and heart stints. “We have a strong manufacturing industry here; it was mainly textiles back in the 1980s, but there’s definitely a high-tech component that can be adapted as well,” Schwartz tells me. A startup incubator in El Paso, the , has even created a special manufacturing partners program to help startups meet their manufacturing needs by finding facilities in Mexico, said Cathy Swain, the president and CEO. The region, she said, has one of the largest collections of advanced manufacturing in the country. “For the first time in modern history the lines have crossed where China is no longer the obvious option — you have to look at Mexico,” said Alan Russell, president and CEO of , located in El Paso. Tecma has 20 manufacturing facilities in Mexico ranging from aerospace to medical devices to electronics. China is no longer always the best manufacturing solution for a variety of reasons, Russell told TechCrunch, and this is great news for Texas’ biggest trading partner. Labor and shipping costs in China are rising at the same time that shipping times are longer, whereas in Mexico products can be shipped in the afternoon and delivered by morning. So Mexico is seeing more refurbishing of electronics that used to be done in China, he said, as well as manufacturing of fiber optics, coils, and transformers. Proximity to Mexico has been a boon to Austin-based entrepreneur Anurag Kumar, for different reasons. The CEO of , an IT solutions company with most employees based in Guadalajara, is an ardent advocate of Mexico as a source for tech talent, and was recently awarded the 2014 National Entrepreneurship Award (Premio Nacional del Emprendedor) by the president of Mexico for making a positive impact on the economy. Texas businesses have some very tangible benefits by working with Mexican talent and companies, according to Kumar, including: geographic proximity, cultural affinity, strong infrastructure and governmental support, low attrition, bilingual expertise in a growing market (Latin America) and a trained workforce. In a he co-authored on the subject, Kumar noted that there are about half a million IT professionals in Mexico, making the country the fourth largest provider in the world. But not all startups have found a benefit in Mexico’s resources. Laura Bosworth is the CEO of , a company that uses 3D printing technology and a person’s cells to print new nipples for breast cancer survivors. technology was created in El Paso, and after completing its first round of tests there, Bosworth said the region just doesn’t have the biotech facilities the company needs to continue to grow. “I was hoping that the Medical Center of the Americas would have their facility ready to go,” Bosworth said. “I think maybe a year from now they might be ready.” As far as Mexico goes for TeVido’s needs, she said maquiladoras aren’t well suited to startups that don’t need large scale production from the get go. So, TeVido is set to move to Austin, where there’s more biotech infrastructure available. Texas has awarded about $205 million to early stage companies to pursue their ideas via the , and many other entities throughout the state are doing their part to foment tech companies —from startup accelerators to university programs for student entrepreneurs. As Texas’ tech scene grows, Mexico is bound to play a part somehow, said Geekdom’s Gomez. Whether it’s Mexican startups and entrepreneurs, outsourced labor or maquiladoras, Mexico may just be Texas’ secret weapon in its race to out-innovate everyone else. |
LG Updates G Watch Software To Fix Charging Pin Issues | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 8 | 2 | The G Watch, , has been receiving negative feedback from users who found that their charging pins had become discolored, had issues getting a charge, or were even causing minor skin irritation and burning. earlier today that the most recent software update for the LG G Watch has addressed the issue, turning off the charging pins when the watch is not connected to its charging cradle. Apparently the issue was caused by sweat creating an electrical current at the charging pins. While the software update should eliminate problems on the wrist, salt could still build up on the pins and causes issues when connected to the cradle. |
Sony And EA Experiment With New Business Models For Older Games | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 8 | 2 | This week, both and revealed or began to roll out new services that have been described to various degrees as “Netflix for gaming.” That description, while catchy and useful for getting the gist of what each does across, doesn’t really capture the impact that either service could have based on how they will actually be used by customers or their underlying business models. EA announced a subscription for the Xbox One called , which would let gamers pay $4.99 per month (or $30 per year) to play a limited selection of the publisher’s titles for an unlimited amount of time — and you even get to play some titles early, though you still have to buy them after a trial period. Sony, on the other hand, , a service that lets you play PlayStation 3 games on the ( ) by streaming them from Sony’s servers like interactive videos instead of downloading them onto your device. PlayStation Now isn’t a subscription service. While it lets you jump into a game instantly, you have to pay for access to each of its 100+ titles individually. Prices start at $2.99 for four hours of gameplay, with 7, 30, and 90 days available as longer-term options. Pricing also varies by game, so some might cost $3.99 per week while others cost as much as $14.99 for the same length of time. Several gaming blogs have , noting that it seems kind of ridiculous to pay up to $29.99 to have access to a game for 90 days when you could buy the game used for $20 and keep it forever. For its part, Sony has managed to brush away most criticism by noting that PlayStation Now is only in beta and that it is working to bring a subscription option to the service at While EA’s subscription service won’t offer as many games to start as PlayStation Now, it makes up for it by letting subscribers play newer titles and even get access to some games early. To start, it’s offering the current Madden, FIFA, Battlefield, and Peggle games; the trial versions of the next Dragon Age and EA’s upcoming sports titles are slated to come next. If you didn’t already buy all four games currently available, EA Access’s $30 yearly price seems like a decent enough deal considering the stubbornly high prices of Xbox One games. If you were hoping EA’s subscription would include unlimited access to their newest games, the current “blockbuster” video game business model just doesn’t allow for it. Just as Marvel cranks out superhero films like clockwork, EA has to release a new Madden on schedule every year. Across its sports titles and flashy shooters in the Battlefield series, EA has numerous reliable hits. It simply can’t afford to give several of them to gamers every year for less than the price of just one. It’s not easy for EA to offer much of a backlog as part of its subscription either. Both Sony and Microsoft shifted to a PC architecture for their latest consoles, so it isn’t easy to get their games from the PS3 or Xbox 360 onto their successors. You either have to rebuild the game for the newer consoles, which would be a significant effort because games are generally heavily modified to get better performance on a console’s specific hardware, or “emulate” the older console in software, which significantly hurts performance. To give you an idea of how hard that is, the only reason PlayStation Now is able to offer PS3 games on the PS4 is by running those games on what are essentially racks of PS3s in a data center, and they need to have one console in a rack per person playing at any given time. If Sony can’t get decent performance through emulation (which would be much less expensive than their current implementation) on its own hardware, it’s unreasonable to expect EA to have much luck with that route. It seems pretty likely that Sony can eventually offer a subscription plan for PlayStation Now that includes instant access to a decent portion on the PlayStation backlog. The economics and technology don’t seem to be there for EA to do the same for its older games for at least the next few years. Going over the factors involved in Sony and EA’s efforts, I couldn’t help but think of another company that really introduce a similar service: . The company has as individual downloads since the original Wii was released in 2006, and its backlog of beloved games goes back three decades. A subscription service for the Wii U with a big marketing push behind it could bring a lot of attention to the floundering console, and in the long term Nintendo could transition into an actual “Netflix for gaming” if the console market collapses under pressure from smartphones that we all upgrade annually. |
11 TechCrunch Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week (8/1) | Travis Bernard | 2,014 | 8 | 2 | There were a ton of amazing stories on TechCrunch from 7/26 to 8/1, but here are the 11 best. There were a number of other features that didn’t quite make the list. We reviewed , , and . Some of our readers were impressed by this , while others . This received a lot of attention, possibly because it’s going to be nightmare for the TSA. We also fell in love with this . To wrap things up, it will be interesting to see what happens with before coming to other developing countries (it features free access to Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, and local information). This could be an important stepping stone towards widespread adoption of the app in developing nations, and it might eventually lead to new business via data plans. What stories didn’t make the list that you enjoyed? Do we need to start making the weekly list longer? |
Hukkster, The Winklevoss-Backed Online Shopping Tool, Has Shut Down | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 8 | 2 | , the New York City-based startup that created a price-monitoring app for online shopping, has shut down for good. , which was founded in 2012 and raised a total from a group of prominent tech and business investors including , allowed users to tag items online they were interested in buying and receive alerts when they went on sale. Hukkster’s latest raise, a $1.5 million round, was in March. There are 25 people who list Hukkster as their current employer . The final closure was announced Friday in an email sent to Hukkster users, which was signed by Hukkster’s co-founders and . The message read: “We are writing with the unfortunate news that Hukkster is now closed. Thank you so very much for shopping with Hukkster over the years and supporting us in our mission to save you time and money on the brands you love. It gave us great joy creating a tool to help you access your favorite products, must-haves, little somethings, special gifts, pick-me-ups, finishing touches and perfect accents. Please click here if you would like us to recover the product links from your Hukkster wish list and we will do our best to get you this in a timely manner. We started Hukkster with nothing more than an idea and had the opportunity to build our dream team and make our vision a reality. While we’re sad to say goodbye, we hope our story inspires all of you to challenge the status quo.” Hukkster’s webpage is now showing only a short message with numbers from the company’s history, saying: “27 Months
822 Days
1,010,889 Hours Worked (Seriously)
315 Retail Partners
300,000 Happy Shoppers
887,207 Sale Alert Emails Sent
$39,037,108.00 Total Dollars Saved
Thank you for the opportunity to innovate, learn and grow!
Challenge yourself to change the status quo.
Now it’s time for a nap. Love,
The Hukkster Family” It’s a bit of an abrupt end for Hukkster, and users are convening on and to express their sadness about the closure. As recently as six weeks ago, Hukkster’s founders were talking to the press about their success and growth plans. In an with at a startup event there last month, Finnegan said the Hukkster team was planning to expand to 25 or 20 people in the next year, with a five-year plan of reaching 60 employees. “We’re a very capital efficient company,” Finnegan reportedly said. I’ve emailed Hukkster for more details on the closure and if any prior warning was provided to users, and will update here with any response I receive. Below is a video of our own Jordan Crook interviewing Hukkster’s co-founders at an event in New York last summer:
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Augmented Reality’s First Step Forward Might Be More Blue Collar Than You Think | Daniel Faggella | 2,014 | 8 | 2 | Augmented reality remains limited in its day-to-day applications for most consumers. If you mention “augmented reality” on the street, people think about scanning their favorite magazine with their smartphone, and having a coupon or 3D image pop up. This hasn’t exactly been a “game-changer” for brands or marketers in most industries, but some AR company leaders believe that the first area of real penetration of the functional use of AR will be more “blue collar” than most people expect. is an NYC-based augmented reality platform, founded by Pete Wassell. For Wassell, current AR technology isn’t capable enough to provide all consumers with a customized and uniquely tailored visual version of their own world – yet. He believes that more stationary or limited functions of field of view are well suited to the industry-agnostic use-cases on which Augmate focuses, including warehouse picking and manual worker training. “What we’re working with is more reasonable set of checklists and overlays than can help a worker do their job,” says Wassell. “There’s upwards of a 30 percent efficiency increase in time on task when information is in your field of view.” In warehouse picking, this might involve automatically showing a worker where to find an item, or automatically notify him or her of inventory levels on the fly. In a training environment, a company might have access to the field of view of dozens of workers, quickly assessing their progress and ensuring that they’re working through designated steps efficiently. In other environments, he says, workers might see an overlay of “manual-like” instructions of a particular piece of equipment. In a car, this might be a specific piece of an engine, highlighting specific directions about how to access the part, even if it is beneath other car components. You can see these features live in “InstructAR” sample video here: Across the pond in Germany, another company is taking a more industrial focus: . “What most people are familiar with in augmented reality are what I call ‘rabbits in newspapers,’ little funny eye-catchers that ultimately don’t add much value,” said Trak Lord, formerly the head of U.S. marketing for . The company’s role is to serve as a platform for augmented reality development, in addition to specific augmented reality applications in mostly business to business settings. Lord refers to much of the B2B technology as being “visualization technology.” Lord uses an example of selling large robotic arms for industrial settings. “You can’t exactly rent one of these things, or bring it in with a suitcase. We’re talking about many tons and bolting this big machine into the ground.” In these circumstances, salespeople can use augmented reality to not only demonstrate how the robotic arm will fit into a given industrial space, as well as the reach of its arm, and how its rotational radius might intersect and interfere with other equipment or other industrial robotic arms. “You don’t exactly want two of these things giving each other a ‘high five,’” jokes Lord. AR innovator recently grabbed its new president from a paramount industrial company: . Despite being involved heavily in entertainment, leadership now sees its biggest opportunity for growth in the industrial sector. The new president, Andy Lowery, describes AR-applicable situations as follows: “Common processes that rely on the sophistication of human decision, and their ability for complex, agile behaviors, coupled with precise, information-driven, and often .” From control-panel management, training and instruction (much like Augmate is aiming for), and batch operations, Daqri also sees desk-less jobs as the first big playing field for AR. These industrial applications share the aim of replacing of manuals, guides, rulers and calculations with done-for-you, field-of-view feedback. This takes some of the lengthy and mentally taxing aspects of a job out of a worker’s hands and into his sights, essentially “augmenting” the output of the workers themselves (which, of course, is the only way to maintain a value proposition to businesses and industries). believes that this kind of technology might help keep more manual jobs in the hands of humans instead of robots, a proposition that seems somewhat noble. Whether you believe that AR can save desk-less workers from losing their jobs to robots is one thing, but it’s hard to argue against the practical application of AR to overlay and visualize information in jobs that require measurement, following specific task lists, finding items, and the like. Might these blue collar applications be what finally puts AR on the map, integrating these tools into daily working life? There seems to be no bigger clue than the fact that some of the finest industry innovators are betting on it. |
Dear America, Would You Please Give Edward Snowden His Medal Of Freedom Already? | Jon Evans | 2,014 | 8 | 2 | : “A government task force is preparing legislation that would pressure companies such as Facebook and Google to enable law enforcement officials to intercept online communications as they occur.” : “Politically, it’s plutonium now for a member of Congress in this environment to be supporting something that would enhance the government’s ability to conduct electronic surveillance.” What happened? You guessed it: everyone’s favorite hero/villain/demon/saint, Edward Snowden, who was granted asylum in Russia exactly one year ago. This week, the tech industry threw its weight behind a bill that proposes “ ” and “would represent the most significant reform of government surveillance authorities since Congress passed the USA Patriot Act 13 years ago.” And it could actually pass — again, thanks to Snowden. So when does the man get his medal? A lot of people, including and (and ), still think of Snowden as a traitor. Mind you, in theory, treason “helping or supporting an enemy.” I’m not sure which enemy they have in mind: Russia? China? Edward Epstein that the Snowden affair was a foreign espionage operation all along, but the man himself he took no secret files to Russia and was able to protect them from Chinese spies as well. Do the people of Earth count as an enemy? The anti-Snowden brigade generally claim that he should have worked within the system to blow the whistle on it, and/or should have returned to the USA to face the subsequent music — although it has since become apparent that the NSA has about Snowden’s attempts to express his concerns without going public. Quite aside from self-preservation, it’s pretty obvious that Snowden would have been enormously less effective over the last year if he’d returned and been clapped into solitary a la Chelsea Manning. (“ ,” according to the EFF’s Trevor Timm, accepting a Crunchie on Snowden’s behalf.) Instead he’s been able to , , etc., and get his message out via telepresence. But you know what? It’s a moot point. Even if Snowden was an outright foreign spy all along, on a results-based analysis, he would deserve a medal — because, despite our vestigial Cold-War anti-commie knee-jerk reactions, the truth is that we live in a time when the greatest threat to the American way of life is America itself. So the CIA is caught spying on the Senate team investigating the CIA for crimes. If nothing else, the CIA appreciates irony. — Aaron Levie (@levie) (No, not Al-Qaeda and their ilk. Sure, they are a problem, but they pale before America’s irrational, paranoid, xenophobic, massive overreaction to them and similar threats. You have to wonder exactly how long American authoritarians believe they should have carte blanche to do whatever they want in the sacred name of national security because a bunch of crazed madmen got lucky thirteen years ago. Another decade? Another century? Forever?) There was a about Singapore’s attempts to use mass surveillance and good old Big Data to “engineer a more harmonious society.” That’s essentially what the pro-NSA people are supporting, even if they don’t realize it: Many American spooks have traveled to Singapore to study the program firsthand. They are drawn not just to Singapore’s embrace of mass surveillance but also to the country’s curious mix of democracy and authoritarianism … In Singapore, electronic surveillance of residents and visitors is pervasive and widely accepted … [the government] has the legal authority to monitor all manner of electronic communications, including phone calls, under several domestic security laws aimed at preventing terrorism, prosecuting drug dealing, and blocking the printing of “undesirable” material I’m sure Singapore’s seems very desirable to those spooks who went to learn from it. The police rarely demur when they are handed the tools of a police state, and the people who dictate or benefit from a system rarely object to any expansion of its power. But pervasive surveillance preemptively suppresses and subdues dissent, whether that is its intent or not; and regardless of his intent, Edward Snowden’s revelations helped America, and the West as a whole, back away from that slippery slope, for now. I look forward to the medal ceremony. I’ll be in Las Vegas this week to cover the Black Hat / DefCon / B-Sides security conferences, in my . (My personal biases on the subject should now be extremely apparent.) Wave hi if you see me, and/or if you have something interesting to discuss while I’m there. , “ “ |
Financial Management Platform 8 Securities Closes $9M Series B | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 8 | 2 | Stock trading and financial management platform has closed a $9 million Series B to support its expansion in Japan and China. Returning investors include Velocity Capital and Leitmotiv Private Equity. CEO Mikaal Abdulla says that the funds will be used to advertise 8 Capital’s new products, including its new Auto Portfolio and Social Trading products. In addition, 8 Securities, which is based in Tokyo and Hong Kong, also plans to enter mainland China this year. Auto Portfolio, 8 Securities’ latest launch, is is meant to give investors access to a professionally managed global portfolio by providing a low-cost alternative to traditional financial investors, asset management firms, or private banks. The product will be mobile-based to appeal to younger customers, who take a short survey to assess their investment needs, and then are presented with an automatically-generated portfolio of up to 16 global exchange traded funds. 8 Securities’ users can then pick the amount the want to invest and check how its performing on their smartphones or tablets. 8 Securities’ charges 0.5% of the portfolio’s average annual value, without additional fees or commissions. In a statement, Nobofumi Iimori, the president of 8 Securities in Japan, said There are over $15 trillion in investible assets held by individuals in Japan today which is second only to the United States. There is growing demand by individuals in Japan to hold investments in foreign markets. Investors want to move beyond holding only Japanese assets and are beginning to make global diversification a priority.” 8 Securities was a TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing 2011 finalist and currently manages over $750 million in customer assets. |
Uber API Terms Bar Developers From Working With Competing Services | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | So a quick side note that wasn’t really mentioned in today’s earlier coverage around this morning: The on-demand transportation company will bar developers who are interested in using its API from integrating with competing services. Uber apparently declined to go into detail about the exclusive terms of its API when it spoke with the press before the announcement. The that “different financial arrangements are being made with different partners,” but makes it no mention of exclusivity. At Re/code, meanwhile, , “It is also not clear if the deals with its initial partners are exclusive — meaning Uber demanded that rivals like Lyft not be offered to a partner’s users and integrated into its app.” If you check out the , however, they expressly forbid developers from adding competitive services to their applications. The relevant section is as follows: You may not use the Uber API in any manner that is competitive to Uber or the Uber Services, including in connection with any application, website or other product or service that also includes, features, endorses, or otherwise supports in any way a third party that provides services competitive to Uber’s products and services, as determined in our sole discretion. The demand for exclusivity probably isn’t terribly surprising considering how competitive the current market is. It’s clear that being the first company in the space to release an API could be a huge advantage for the service, as doing so quite literally gets it in the hands of millions of new users. The terms of its API also means that for many developers, Uber will be the only service of its kind that makes it into their apps. After all, any developers who embed Uber into their apps now are tacitly agreeing not to work with competitive services in the future, whether or not they provide a comparable feature set. We knew that the release of the API would be bad news for other transportation companies like Lyft, which doesn’t currently have a public API. However, the news looks even worse when you consider that when and if it does make one available, the company could be blocked out of any apps that had previously done an Uber integration. An Uber spokesperson issued the following statement: “The terms and conditions speak for themselves. All relevant guidelines are available on our website.” |
MonkeyFab Remembers The Warsaw Uprising With A Surreptitious 3D Scan | John Biggs | 2,014 | 8 | 2 | Polish 3D printer maker has created a 3D scan of the or Little Resistance Fighter, a statue in Warsaw’s Old Town that commemorates the . Designed in 1946 by Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz and unveiled in 1983 by Professor Jerzy Świderski, the monument depicts a little rebel, Antek, in stylized German military garb. This is the 70th anniversary of the Uprising, which began on August 1, 1944 and ended in October of that year. The team at MonkeyFab, Piotr and Paweł Twardo, scanned the statue one afternoon by connecting their DLP-based 3D scanner to a portable generator and quickly grabbing images from all sides before anyone noticed. Their goal was to commemorate the Uprising by offering the a model of the little soldier to everyone around the world. They printed the statue on their Prime3D, a 3D printer that ships in kit form. The brothers make almost all of the parts, except the motors and PCBs, in and around Warsaw and they CNC a number of the parts in their basement. They write that they will . “For many of us this statue reminds us of all the times when children visited their grandparents and listened in silence listening to the stories of the uprising. It’s a symbol of what every Pole has in his heart,” wrote Piotr.
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Startup Marketing And How Emotion Drives Customer Action | Kobie Fuller | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | Put down the calculator and ignore the data for a second. Contrary to popular belief, startup marketing is not all about quantitative metrics and growth hacking. It’s time to start mapping out what creates a connection between you and your customer. Specifically, I am talking about driving customer actions by leveraging human emotion through the art of storytelling. Humans are intrinsically wired to connect with stories. They connect us to people, ideas, places, products and brands; they help us justify how we spend our money and which brands we champion by substituting promotion with engagement. Digital media has leveled the marketing playing field – savvy startup marketers can tell compelling stories with equal impact as their larger competitors. Creative, emotion-driven marketing enables any size company to drive product awareness with millions of consumers in real-time. These digital and social direct-to-consumer channels have replaced traditional advertising that once favored larger companies with big budgets. Many companies know exactly they do and communicate it well (“we make X app”), but few companies advocate the (“we believe that people should have an easier way to communicate with the people they love”). Eric Holmen, president of marketing automation company Invoca, says, “soliciting an emotional response is an intentional process that leads to buyers who see value and act with urgency (disclosure: Invoca is an Accel-backed company . Too often, startups focus on the tactics rather than the intentional emotions they need to create.” It is easier to build marketing around the former (what), but storytelling originates in the latter (why). The enables startups to tap into its product/brand’s intrinsic emotional advantages – like excitement, happiness, or contentment. In short, startup marketers must tap into the “Story Button” part of the brain; an idea coined by advertising agency Innocean, a partner with Accel portfolio company YuMe on advertising initiatives, and neuroscientist Paul Zak. Through a story, startups connect through emotion-driven marketing, which creates more authentic moments of customer engagement. Emotional marketing, however, is the ying to data-driven marketing’s yang. Despite the buzz around growth hacking, today’s most savvy marketers understand that consumers are more experience-driven than ever. “Because of the abundance of data, there is a lot of focus on data-driven marketing, which is very powerful,” said Craig Elbert, VP of marketing at Bonobos, an e-commerce apparel pioneer. “But numbers will usually only tell you what is happening. To get at the why and create actions, marketers need to ensure they are spending enough time thinking about customer motivations and emotions.” Elbert hits on an important trend: The most admired brands structure their businesses around meaningful, emotion-driven marketing material that doesn’t feel a whole lot like marketing. In short, great marketers make consumers feel something – fear, gratification, guilt, trust, value, belonging, envy, etc. These feelings, once elicited, drive action. Companies like Apple, Nike and Virgin America have mastered the art of making customers feel connected to their brands. These companies, along with startups (disclosure: Accel invests in the following) like Atlassian (enterprise), VSCO (photography) and Etsy (marketplace) elicit emotional triggers that build trust, which drives loyalty, which drives brand advocacy, which leads to word-of-mouth growth, which utilize to guide their buying behaviors. Psychologist Robert Plutchik discovered eight basic, primary emotions that guide all behaviors: joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, anticipation, anger and disgust. These emotions are product-agnostic, and over time, establish brand-to-consumer relationships that transcend traditional boundaries of engagement. The question is, which emotions should marketers target, and how do they solicit these emotions? Elbert outlines the following correlations in emotion with user behavior: “Emotions change the decisions we make by making us more impulsive,” said Kristen Berman, co-founder of Irrational Labs. “Given a person’s impulsive nature, brands can amplify efficiency by not only looking at the metrics and drop-off, but also in thinking about the human emotions at play during each corner of the decision-making process.” A startup’s brand strategy and messaging should tailor to the core psychological needs, desires and behaviors of any given audience. If you remember nothing else, remember this: Marketing organizations must incorporate human emotion in all marketing practices, across all marketing channels. For startups, this is even more important as they aim to build early adopter loyalty and a tribal-minded community. Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary theory of emotion explains that emotions are not only adaptive, but also play an important role both in cognition and behavior. His “wheel of emotions diagram (above) illustrates various relationships among emotions. In the world of marketing, this equates to purchasing a product , but out of . For startups, emotion-driven marketing means thinking about how a product or vision supports a broader cause that your community cares about. |
12 Questions With The CEO Of Thumbtack, Google Capital’s New $100 Million Bet | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | In terms of Silicon Valley hype, has flown a bit under the radar since it was founded five years ago in 2009. But with the announcement today that it’s landed a whopping led by Google Capital, Thumbtack’s days of relative tech press anonymity are almost certainly over. For the uninitiated, Thumbtack is an online marketplace that helps connect all types of local service providers — think painters, wedding photographers, plumbers, tutors, therapists, and more — with potential clients. It works like this: People in need of a service provider provide Thumbtack with a summary of the work they need done or the type of service they’re looking for. Thumbtack then analyzes that request, and sources relevant local service providers who can then provide bids on the project. Thumbtack makes money by charging service providers a small fee for each bid. I met with Thumbtack’s co-founder and CEO today at the company’s San Francisco headquarters to talk to him more about this new funding round and his plans for the months ahead. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. A: The local marketplace space in general has gotten much hotter over the last 6 to 12 months. I think Uber is probably the reason for that. I think that traditionally, “local” was seen as a minefield for Internet companies — a place where you could lose a bunch of money. No one had made any serious money in local at all. I think what has changed is smartphones, and the distribution of connectivity, and a change in cultural disposition on the part of customers. You’re not super satisfied anymore with an experience that ends with 10 blue links on Google, or ten links on Yelp. You want to be able to go a step further and hire the person, or book the restaurant, or have the car come pick you up. Uber has showed that is possible. I think our investors saw the opportunity here for a local services marketplace that really worked, and saw that there’s really nobody else at our scale and momentum. We could be the category killer. A: The announcement of the last round precipitated this in a lot of ways. The news there generated a bunch of inbound interest [from potential investors.] In these conversations, we met Google Capital’s David Lawee. The thing that’s awesome is that he has extremely relevant domain experience. He’s thought hard about how to communicate to these local businesses. We certainly didn’t need any more money yet. But after our conversations with Google Capital, we thought it was worth it to take a look into this investment. …They’re not taking a board seat. They just want to be a part of our growth. And they have a great network that we are able to tap into. A: You know, I haven’t spoken much with the people at Google Ventures. But we’re certainly a growth stage investment at this point. We have more than 600 full-time staff across our offices in San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and the Philippines. We’re not a traditional early stage venture investment. A: Overall we divide things into four different types of categories: Home improvement and repair, event services, instruction like tutoring or music lessons, and wellness. Right now we see a lot of activity in intra-city moving services, interior painting, personal training, photography, catering services, chiropractors.
Over time it will expand. But today, honestly, we’re supply constrained, so we’re not trying to make our lives harder by trying to add more categories just yet. But we think our model is highly scalable. Part of our ultimate value proposition is breadth. We are trying to build the Amazon for services: the one place to go to solve all the services needs you have. That’s the dream. A: I think Yelp is a great product, but I think it’s great for a different subset of questions and problems that we solve. It’s awesome when you’re trying to say, ‘Where should I go to get my hair cut, or eat Chinese food, or get cupcakes?’ The thing is, in all of those cases, pretty much any store is willing to have you. You can walk into the front door and get what you want. Thumbtack solves a different problem. It’s about who can come to me. Say you need to hire a plumber. There are a lot of them in the San Francisco Bay Area, but only some are able to do the job, and available to come to your apartment and to the job this week. You have to match with someone who is interested. That matching problem is very different from what directories do. We have surprisingly little overlap with Yelp. Only 8 percent of our providers are on Yelp. Yelp, by and large, is deep in restaurants and beauty services. They’re not super deep in the world of the local services. The folks we’re seeing just haven’t been online before. There’s no TripAdvisor for this space yet. A: Well, they may have realized they needed to move in this direction. But it’s also a very different experience. They’re trying to make hiring a service provider like a product buying experience, something you buy off the shelf. We don’t think that works. The needs that we help solve are different for every customer. Say you’re looking for someone to paint your apartment. Maybe your apartment has crowd moldings, maybe you’ve got 16 foot ceilings, maybe it has some funny angles. It’s unfair to the professional to ask them to sort of package “interior house painting” into one flat hourly rate per job. Our model presupposes that sort of uniqueness of demand, and solves specifically for that. I think that there are scenarios where TaskRabbit’s new model works, but by and large, I don’t think that it holds true. A: Our belief is that if we deliver you great options quickly and reliably, you’re going to keep using us, and one day hire from us. Hey, if someone you learned about through your next door neighbor ended up being available when you thought they wouldn’t be, that’s great. [ ] We’re not going to bat 1000. We don’t expect our providers to win every job, and they don’t expect to win every job either. It’s about making sure that they get their money’s worth and their time’s worth, that they’re getting more leads and making good bids. A: What matters is origination, not collection. Google doesn’t process the payments from the business that their ads drive. That said, payment processing is a problem we’re going to solve, it’s just not the most important thing to solve. If i interviewed you about your apartment painting process, you’d probably say the hardest parts were finding the right person, and being confident you paid the right price. Payment is not the biggest pain point. Often when companies introduce payments and other in-app services, it’s usually to solve their own problem, not the problem of the customer. It’s not in our best interest to force an interaction and make people stay within the confines of our platform. A: I think it’s by design. We have known what it takes to make our customers happy, we’ve just been hesitant to shout about it before we could ensure everyone has a great experience. We’ve been building this a long time. It’s hard. We’ve been growing so fast on the demand side: We’ve got more than a $1 billion worth of jobs going through our system to professionals each year. We have tens of thousands of professionals who are using our platform to help make their livelihood. We’re focusing on that. Also, San Francisco is our 14th biggest city. Our biggest markets are New York, LA, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta. I actually think that’s part of what investors love. We haven’t had to put boots on the ground to make it work in, say, Boise. It can just work everywhere. A: What we find is that the professionals who invest in it upfront — build a great profile, encourage clients to give reviews, communicate and use messaging well — stick around, because they make money. Our challenge is helping everyone be successful, and educating them, saying, ‘This is what it takes to build a good profile. Clipart as a profile picture is probably not going to cut it.’ The main reason anyone churns out is because we haven’t educated them. They’re professionals at their trades — they work hard, they know how to be great plumbers, great tutors. They don’t need to know how to be great online marketers. It’s on us to help them with that part, to teach them how to be successful in this platform. Any churn we have is a product failure, and a support failure, and something we’re definitely focusing a lot on. A: [ ] I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in five years that you’re going to have an app for house cleaners, an app for electricians, an app for tutors, and on and on. No. You’re going to have one app to stay in touch with the professionals that you know and love. Growing up, my parents had a drawer in our kitchen that had the Yellow Pages, and next to it was a stack of business cards for the local companies and guys and gals they would go to for all the stuff they needed done. That’s a “bundle.” That’s what Thumbtack wants to be. |
Sony Doesn’t Know Why The PS4 Is Doing Well | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | Earlier this month, Sony announced that it has already sold since its launch last November, a record-setting figure for the company’s hardware. In an published yesterday, Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios President admitted that the company in today’s gaming market. That sounds like a good problem to have. When sales are high, something is working, so why rock the boat, right? But as Yoshida points out in the interview, not knowing why people are buying its console could have serious implications on Sony’s strategy going forward. If it turns out that all of the “core” gamers – those who consistently buy the latest releases in series like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto — coincidentally decided to all buy their preferred next-gen console at once, then it’s hard to predict where sales will go from here. When the core market is satisfied, Sony (and Microsoft) have to focus marketing towards everybody else. Generally speaking, casual gamers: That audience, in Sony’s nightmare scenario, doesn’t need a new game console in their home this generation. As : As soon as we see a great sales number, our instinct tells us we should be concerned about future sales, right? Are we exhausting all the core gamers? If we sell this number of units, there are no more consumers we can sell to. That’s a really terrifying prospect. If that really is the case, it could have all kinds of implications for the path Sony should take over the next few years: how aggressive it has to be with pricing; which games it tries to negotiate exclusivity deals for; and the kinds of games Sony makes for its own consoles, among other factors. Of course, Sony’s success over the last year simply reflect that the company made a console that a whole lot of people, core and non-core gamers alike, think is worth their money. After all, Nintendo’s original Wii launched with similar sales during its first year and went on to sell over the following seven years; maybe Sony has a similar hit on its hands. But until Sony knows whether the PlayStation 4 really has legs under it, it can’t be sure about its strategy. It’s important to note that I’m not talking about why the PlayStation 4 is doing well compared to the Xbox One and Wii U. It had some pretty significant advantages over those consoles in its first year: the Xbox One cost $100 more at launch and came with the kind-of-creepy Kinect camera, and Microsoft had trouble explaining some of its decisions regarding DRM to gamers following its announcement at E3 2013; the Wii U is underpowered and doesn’t get many of the third-party games that come out on the PlayStation and Xbox. Now, those advantages might have stolen some sales from Nintendo and Microsoft. That still doesn’t give Sony much information to base its forward-looking strategy off of, as again, those people buying consoles within the first year of their release are most likely “core” gamers. Their purchases, while making for flashy numbers now, don’t necessarily show us what the next few years are going to look like. |
A Second Act For The Internet Of Things | David Hirsch | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | There has been a lot of talk in the venture capital industry about automating the home and leveraging Internet-enabled devices for various functions. The first wave of this was the use of the smartphone as a remote control to manage, for instance, a thermostat. The thermostat then begins to recognize user habits and adapt to them, helping consumers save money. A lot of people took notice of this first-generation automation capability when for a whopping $3.2 billion. But this purchase was never about Nest; rather, it was Google’s foray into the next phase of the . The ability to control the temperature using Nest or to open your garage door using your smartphone falls under first-order IoT applications. The next phase will be two-fold. It will be about connecting Internet-enabled devices in the home, as well as leveraging data to improve people’s lives and the efficiency of their businesses. Google is already headed in this direction through . Dropcam provides Wi-Fi-connected web cameras, trackers, and cloud-based storage. Having both Nest and allows Google to own a whole host of data about your daily habits and adds another piece of hardware in the home that can communicate with Android devices. Using Nest and , consumers can begin to track movements and know who is in the home at all times. Google has this data, as well. If you think about it, Google has so much data already about people, but what they didn’t have was the human data of where they are at any given moment, their habits, etc. This is the missing piece to Google’s puzzle, especially around Google Now where context is everything. We’re actively investing in the IoT space at Metamorphic. An investment we’re just closing, , provides services, APIs and infrastructure to build on the Internet of Things. Samsung , which provides kits to add sensors to existing items in the home and control them via your smartphone. SmartThings is an open platform, but the ecosystem needs better infrastructure to allow developers to build connectivity on devices that speak to each other. The company we invested in helps to provide this by offering services to IoT device makers that allow them to better speak to each other and leverage the different strengths. To date, most of the Internet of Things has been built on disparate wireless protocols and companies. They live inside of their own ecosystem, but there isn’t a unifying language that allows them to speak to each other and work seamlessly together. This is a large hurdle that this category faces moving forward. We also recently invested in a company that we haven’t announced yet that is building smart devices for restaurants and bars. In this scenario, it’s the data that is most important: not being alerted when a restaurant or bar is running low on inventory but rather allowing owners to easily reorder, make predictions around demand and improve the overall margins of the business. This type of machine-to-machine technology is extremely powerful for the industry at large due to the ability to bring down long-term costs by reducing equipment and wasted inventory. If a bar owner knows that a certain liquor has a trend of being consumed less during certain times of the year or is losing popularity, they can be alerted in real time rather than suffering loss on the balance sheet. This begins to influence wearables, as well. Companies like are leveraging Internet-enabled devices to compile and use actionable data, which allows the company to do all sorts of things current baby monitors can’t: measure heart rate, temperature of the room and ambient heart rate, as well as tell you if the baby is awake or asleep or if it’s facing up or down, etc. Eventually, though, they compile data about the baby that can predict how long the baby will be asleep for, when the baby will sleep more soundly (temperature, timing, etc.) and more. This type of data is valuable not only for the industry but for the actual parents who can start to plan their own sleep schedules around how long and when the baby will sleep. Another good example of this is , which provides seamless home security, detecting when an intruder is in your house. Canary has several sensors, including a video camera, a humidity monitor, a siren and an air-quality sensor. Over time Canary learns your habits and knows when you’re typically coming home, which visitors should be in your house, when you’re not there, etc. This allows for far fewer mistakes in tripping up the alarm and having the police department come to your house in non-emergency situations. As more Internet-enabled devices come online, communicate with each other, and compile more and more comprehensive data sets, our world will become more efficient, safe, and personalized. I’ve about the Human API before. It is a thesis about where the world is going — where your preferences, needs and interests will all be delivered to you in all forms of nutrition, media, content and health. The next wave in the Internet of Things is a huge step in that direction, as devices begin to communicate and play off one another and more and more data is leveraged to make actionable insights, predictions and decisions. Search and discovery has been about text, but the Human API encompasses other information like human data. Examples of this would be, “Is my produce low or are we managing energy effectively?” The Internet of Things offers a new way to index information beyond text, where text is less effective (voice will be important here, as well). There will also be an explosion of apps that will emerge and eventually define the growth of the Internet of Things. Just like Snapchat and Instagram redefined the camera on the smartphone, as all devices get smart and connected, they will become a platform onto themselves that will spawn new apps and services in which there will be “vertical solutions” built on “horizontal platforms” — just as it did with the PC (wintel) and with mobile (iOS/Android/ARM). , formerly the executive director of global innovation and new models at GE, predicts there will be 50 billion industrial devices online in the next 10 years. I think this is coming sooner than that. We went from desktop to mobile, which is so much more than the phone in your pocket and tablet by your nightstand. Mobile is everything and includes all of the devices we interact with on a daily basis. These devices will become connected both to the Internet and to each other. The Internet of Things is finally here and I for one couldn’t be more excited. |
HP Slips After Reporting Better-Than-Expected Fiscal Q3 Revenue | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | HP shares are in after-hours trading despite better-than-expected fiscal third-quarter revenue and in-line earnings per share. In its fiscal third quarter, HP had revenue of $27.585 billion, ahead of an expected tally of $27.01 billion. The company earned $0.89 per share on a non-GAAP basis, matching expectations precisely. On a GAAP basis, not excluding certain costs, HP’s profit was a more modest $0.52 per share. The company’s revenue grew by 1 percent compared to its year-ago quarter. As following the release, it’s the company’s first period of yearly revenue growth in three years. HP’s PC business had a very strong quarter, with its revenue rising 12 percent compared to the year-ago quarter. Unit volume was up 13 percent, while laptop sales up 18 percent in terms of unit volume. Printing, Enterprise Services, Software, and HP Financial Services groups all saw their revenue decline. Aside from the PC business, HP’s other division to post positive year-over-year revenue growth was its Enterprise Group, which expanded 2 percent. For recent historical perspective, the company of 2014, but . Why is HP down after hours? The company’s per-share profit, using generally accepted accounting principles, fell from $0.71 in the year-ago quarter. Restructuring charges, however, were material. In the company’s earnings report, HP CEO Meg Whitman said that she is confident in the firm’s continued growth. |
Suits Optional As New Digital Team Moves Into The West Wing | Cat Zakrzewski | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | , the engineer credited with saving the , moved into the White House earlier this month to lead the new . But just because he’s working a few steps from the Oval Office, Dickerson said he won’t be changing his style. “People are putting up with me walking around [Executive Office Building] and the West Wing just wearing whatever,” . “I mean not just wearing whatever but I’m not wearing a T-shirt, I’m wearing some actual shirts with buttons and collars but that’s about where we’re at right now.” And although you might be wondering who really cares what the newest government bureaucrat is wearing, Dickerson said he’s been inundated with Facebook posts and tweets asking him about it. He said the online commentators want to know: “Is this the same old business as usual, or are they actually going to listen?” And maybe Dickerson’s casual wardrobe could signal an important shift at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It’s about as corny as a promotional video comes, but it’s important that the White House is finally finding talent outside of Washington to address the repeated issues with government-operated websites. The bugs with the original healthcare website were front-page news when the service first rolled out. More recently the forced the agency to extend its commenting period for net neutrality. If all goes according to plan, Dickerson will bring his Google experience to every government agency website, just as he did to the healthcare site in October. He says if he’s successful, no one will even know the USDS exists because websites will just be running correctly. |
Move Over, Uber, SF Residents Can “Yo” A Smart Car To Take Them Anywhere They Want Tomorrow | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | A very gimmicky Mercedes-Benz campaign hopes to tap into the SF tech millennial market tomorrow by offering free rides in its to anyone who sends them a “Yo.” Starting at noon on August 21, smart will place pop-up signs at two outdoor locations in San Francisco – one in the Mission and one in SoMa. Anyone who reads the sign and then sends out a “Yo” to “smartUSA” will get picked up on the spot and taken to wherever they tell the driver to go. “The main priority is to get people to drive the vehicle, and tapping into that Yo audience is a great way to do that,” says Mercedes-Benz spokesman Eric Angeloro. “We’re giving ‘Electricurious’ San Franciscans the world’s first-ever Yo-powered test ride.” The campaign is niche for sure. As Angeloro puts it, “Our cars are simple and so is Yo” — though Yo is sorta . It has links, hashtags and a bunch of other built-in features that now give users a more robust experience within the app. One might even say it’s a bit more complicated than now. The idea for this event is reminiscent of the sort of stuff Chevy does at SXSW every year. The “ ” campaign has been picking up attendees and motoring them through downtown Austin during the Interactive portion every year for the last four years. Both these types of campaigns attempt to grab the attention of a tech-savvy, pro-enviro audience. Angeloro says this one is perfect for the San Francisco crowd because of parking. If you’ve ever tried to park in our fair city, you know we have a serious dearth of spots. Oh sure, once in a while you get tricked into thinking your car might just fit in an open spot, only to realize it’s a good four inches too small. The smart cars are perfect for this. And in addition to being easier to park, they don’t require gas while you putter around town. These pint-sized coupes were subject to in the city earlier this summer. Sort of . This trend has been going on nationwide since smart cars hit in 2011, according to NBC. There were six reported SF incidents in all. With a 17.6kWh battery that provides a range of 68 miles, the compact, plug-in smart car is able to take commuters anywhere within SF city limits. Angeloro says there will be 8 vehicles out and about tomorrow, three of which will be electric and five gas-powered just in case. We’ll see if the campaign makes any millennials more “Electricurious” though. |
Despite FAA Setbacks, Amazon Prime Air Makes Notable Engineering, NASA And Aerospace Hires | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | Something big is going on with Amazon Prime Air, the e-commerce giant’s research project focused on delivering packages in 30 minutes or less using unmanned drones. And it’s not , which frankly, doesn’t pass the sniff test in terms of accuracy. Prime Air is shaping up to be more than a marketing stunt, it seems. The company recently scored a few notable hires for this project, including former aerospace engineers, , a number of Microsoft researchers and Bing engineers, and even the co-founder of Keyhole, the original developer of Google Earth (prior to the Google acquisition.) Prime Air’s more notable hires may not be household names, but are indicative of a project Amazon is taking seriously, after all. Why “after all?” Well, because many people didn’t buy into the Prime Air hype at first. In case you missed it back then, , , just before the Christmas holiday in the U.S. On the biggest online shopping day of the year, Cyber Monday, aired an interview with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, which uncritically, we might add, saw veteran reporter Charlie Rose, smiling, exclaim “oh my God!” as he viewed the Prime Air drones for the first time. Pundits soon were , while some in developer community scoffed that Prime Air was “vaporware,” – meaning a nice idea, sure, but one that’s a long time from ever being a reality. That still may be true, of course, despite all the recent hires. CBS was simply playing a part in Amazon’s agenda to garner public support for Prime Air, some had said, hoping to force the Federal Aviation Administration’s hand. Also possibly true. , using language aimed at Amazon’s Prime Air program directly. But with the hires Prime Air has been making, the project seems at least somewhat less vaporous today than in the past, despite the FAA’s decision. In July, Amazon hired Prime Air VP of Science , an MIT Ph.D. and former Microsoft researcher who led an engineering group at Bing which used machine learning to make dramatic improvements to Bing’s accuracy and precision. As one source told TechCrunch, under Viola’s supervision from 2010-2011, Bing made several jumps in precision both by its own metrics and Google’s. In fact, the source added, Google even started “war rooms” and ran several emergency sessions devoted to the sudden rise of Bing’s precision at this time. According to his own LinkedIn page, Viola also led a turnaround of the Bing Ads team, which led to increased revenue. Another interesting new hire: , now a senior manager at Prime Air. Bar-Zeev co-founded Keyhole, Inc., which Google bought and turned into Google Earth. He also previously worked at Microsoft on a variety of VR/AR, 3D and other hardware and software projects, including what became the Bing iPhone app, Kinect and Xbox, and more. He also did a brief stint at Amazon, helping the company prototype and sell a new tablet computer in late 2012 to spring 2013, before returning to the company in April of this year to join Prime Air. Prime Air has also been staffing up with hires from the aerospace industry, with recent additions starting this spring and summer who have and aerospace backgrounds from , , and . Twenty or so interns hail from MIT with backgrounds in engineering or robotics. And NASA astronaut joined as a Technical Program Manager, responsible for Flight Test, Safety, Risk Management and Certification efforts in April. This is in addition to those we already knew about, like Prime Air VP who also served on Waze’s board before the Google acquisition, and , . And Prime Air director of software development, hired back in February 2013, who was also previously an architect at Bing, and describes himself as a Prime Air “co-founder.” His bio says he’s managing a team of 76 engineers, research scientists, and technical product and program managers. Not too shabby for vaporware. While it will likely be many years before drone delivery is legalized in the U.S., if at all, that hasn’t stopped Amazon from investing in the project for when and if that day arrives. Amazon, of course, wants to speed things up as best it can. Next month, previously general counsel for the , a non-profit technology advocacy group. The Prime Air team this month also added its own communications lead, previously of Microsoft PR firm Waggener Edstrom, and . And as of today, Prime Air is hiring in Seattle, Cambridge, and London, with for research scientists, program managers, flight operations engineers, and more. If Prime Air is vaporware like many claimed following CBS’s original report, it certainly will have been expensive. |
Incubated: How Amplify.LA Helps LA-Based Startups Grow | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | was founded to help grow the number of seed-stage startups in Los Angeles, by launching an accelerator and coworking space. Since then, it’s been home to a host of companies that rotate in and out of its offices in the heart of Venice, Calif. One of the other key differentiators is Amplify’s office, which is two blocks from the beach and is in the center of Venice’s tech scene. It is close to the offices of other companies like Snapchat and Facebook, providing founders easy access to others around them. The Amplify.LA space is also available for co-working and hosts a series of events for local entrepreneurs and tech workers. The program offers flexible terms and timing for entrepreneurs, enabling them to join and leave when they’re ready, rather than trying to fit into someone else’s 12-week schedule. Having a rigid structure wasn’t in the interests of entrepreneurs who were joining the programs, according to Amplify.LA managing director Paul Bricault. “We felt entrepreneurs just want to start when they want to start, so we adopted a rolling start program so that startups can join whenever they’re admitted,” Bricault says. The accelerator has a dedicated team which takes a hands-on approach to helping startups reach monthly milestones and improve their products. It also connects founders with potential partners from its network in the L.A. tech community. Instead of a demo day, Amplify hosts an “investor showcase,” where it hosts startups that have gone through the program, as well as others in L.A. to meet with potential investors on a more intimate, one-on-one basis. To learn more, check out the video above. Also tune in each week for a new episode of Incubated. Check out all the episodes of Incubated here: |
The Pac-12 Networks Are Going Live On YouTube Internationally | Billy Gallagher | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | is launching a live YouTube channel for international fans, featuring 24×7 coverage of the conference’s sports teams. Fans in 27 countries will be able to watch live games, studio shows, and re-broadcasts of games on the on YouTube starting on August 26. Marquee games between Pac-12 teams, like Oregon-Stanford, that are broadcast on networks like ESPN and Fox will not be live on the YouTube channel, but re-broadcasts of those games will be shown on the network in the future. International fans can subscribe to the channel for $100 per year or $15 per month. Pac-12 Digital VP says the international channel is targeted at alumni and fans living abroad, as well as helping the conference’s schools recruit more student athletes from abroad. Pac-12 Networks is also releasing a today, which has been redesigned with a focus on live video. Aufhauser says the conference has seen usage of , its TV everywhere service that lets fans watch live games on a variety of devices, more than double in the last year. Pac-12 Now is now available across iOS, Android, and Amazon Fire devices, and, of course, on the web. Immediately, these new products show that the Pac-12 is committed to connecting fans to content wherever they are. But it could also be a part of a much more significant shift. Cord-cutting has been a major trend for some time now, as consumers abandon bundled cable packages for Netflix and the like. Live sports are one of the most attractive aspects of a cable subscription for many consumers. A number of events, most recently the , have been eroding the power of the NCAA as an organization, and giving more autonomy to the so-called , one of which is the Pac-12. Thus, if the Pac-12 Networks has success with its unbundled international offering, it could experiment with an unbundled domestic offering, as could other college power conferences and professional sports leagues. Now, there are still multi-year, billion-dollar TV contracts in place for most of the best sports leagues. So this would be years into the future. But I can still hope for a day when I can pay to watch high-quality live sports without also paying for the Disney channel. Pac-12 Networks will be available on YouTube in the following 27 countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Senegal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. |
null | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 8 | 5 | null |
The Eyeball Selfie For Secure Banking, EyeVerify Gets $6 Million In Series A Part 2 | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | Banking is now in the eye of the beholder. That’s literally for . This new kind of ID verification tech lets you simply hold your smartphone about 8 inches from your face and take a picture of your eyeball. EyeVerify then pattern-matches the blood vessels within the sclera, the white part of your eye, to unlock your bank account. This eliminates any possibility of a hacker getting into your account and using your PIN or password to steal from you. EyeVerify is also now flush with what they are calling a second Series A. and others, including and Chinese internet security company announced today that they have poured $6 million into the eyeball selfie for banking company. The participation of Qihoo 360, Sprint and other mobile partners was unveiled in the last month but now Wells Fargo has put some skin in the game and helped close the round. EyeVerify is also a part of . The accelerator is intended to be used as a semiannual boot camp for technology ideas that could shape the future of financial services. “[EyeVerify] represents precisely the technology innovation in mobile security for financial services and E-commerce that is important to us,” Steve Ellis, head of Wells Fargo’s wholesale services said of the company. Voice recognition software isn’t always accurate and according to EyeVerify, face recognition hasn’t come far enough yet. Eye biometrics have historically been used in places such as the military or in fictional Hollywood movies. However, several intersecting trends seem to be accelerating market adoption for EyeVerify’s Eyeprint ID tech. While it may seem weird to take a selfie for security, between the Heartbleed bug and password hacking, widespread Internet privacy concerns and rapid improvement in front-facing smart device camera quality certainly make this unique tech quite attractive to the banking and security world. EyeVerify co-founder Toby Rush confirms that the cash will enable the company to drive adoption of its Eyeprint ID biometric technology within the financial services, enterprise mobility management, mobile security, telecoms, healthcare and government sectors. “We are fortunate to have a breakthrough technology that delivers a simple, secure, and private solution that eliminates password pain and password security risk, addressing a massive and escalating market need,” Rush added. The company’s current investors, including Mid-America Angels, Think Big Partners and Nebraska Angel Network also joined the Series A. Samsung has also been an investor in the tech. This round of financing brings total funds raised by the company to approximately $10 million. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1xD9S-5kg&w=560&h=315] |
Airbnb For Storage Startup Roost Opens Up To Help You Store Your Stuff In Your Neighbor’s Garage | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | Over the years we’ve seen peer-to-peer marketplaces pop up for pretty much every vertical. There’s , which lets you rent out your home to other people, Getaround and Relayrides for car rentals, and even a couple for . And now there’s , a peer-to-peer marketplace for self-storage. The idea behind Roost is not that different from any of those other marketplaces: I’ve got something you can use, you pay me to use it. In this case, we’re talking about storage space, specifically storage space that can be found in your neighbor’s basement, or garage, or attic, or what have you. The self-storage industry is a $24 billion opportunity! or so the slide deck says.* But until now, that industry has been defined by ominous storage lockers like the one where or in . They’re private, sure, but they’re also expensive. And in most cases, they’re not exactly centrally located. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for instance, most of the more affordable units are either on Treasure Island or in the East Bay. And hey, that requires a rental car or truck to get your stuff to and from those places. Anyway, Roost thinks it can provide a better, more affordable, and more convenient way to store your goods closer to your home by, um, putting them in someone else’s home. And if you live in a house or an apartment in the bay area that has a garage or some extra space, it’ll let you make money by keeping other people’s stuff there. When you show up to the Roost website you can search for storage options by geographic location, as well as what kind of access you want — that is, whether you want your own key and full access to your stuff, or whether you’re ok with partial access, or letting the owner of the space know 48 hours ahead of time that you need the stuff in your storage area. You can also search by the size of the available space so that you can know if your old couch will fit or whatever. Hosts have profiles with information about them, as well as public ratings and reviews so that renters can feel a level of trust and safety leaving their stuff in a stranger’s house. Those hosts are also background checked to ensure that they’re not going to steal your goods or sort through them or whatever. And there’s an insurance policy to cover anything that is broken, gets stolen, or goes missing. Of course, Roost has a clear policy against storing anything illegal, stolen, flammable, or perishable — no embalmed heads for you, Dr. Lecter! — although co-founder and CEO Jon Gillon admits that criminals generally don’t read the terms and conditions before doing something nefarious. The good news is that the platform has each user’s credit card and identity in case something does go wrong. Like Airbnb, the platform handles all payments, including recurring payments for long-term rentals, and makes sure they are automatically deposited into hosts’ bank accounts. To start, Roost is launching in the San Francisco Bay Area, and admittedly there aren’t a ton of listings there right now. However, the company hopes to use its hometown as a testbed before opening up into other major urban markets like Boston, Chicago, Seattle, New York City, and Washington, D.C. ==
* I didn’t actually see a slide deck, just assuming there is one with that slide. |
TC Cribs: Storm8, The Land Of Very Colorful Desks And Lots Of Fancy Beer | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | In this episode of Cribs we headed to , the company that makes lots of popular mobile social games. Storm8 is housed in a, well, pretty bland looking corporate building in suburban Redwood City, so we weren’t sure what to expect. But the inside of the office tells a very different story, with lots of very colorful things to catch the eye. That’s largely because Storm8 encourages all of its employees to participate in a “Pimp My Desk” decorating competition (in a nod to the long running MTV show , of course.) Storm8 has a lot of artists on staff, so things get pretty creative. Watch the video embedded above to see Storm8’s blinged-out desks, homemade putt-putt golf course, and seriously extensive fancy beer collection. And here are some photos from our tour: [gallery ids="1046508,1046510,1046511,1046512,1046513,1046514,1046515,1046516"] |
Kuddle, An Instagram With Training Wheels, Introduces Social Media To Kids | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | A new mobile application called is introducing a safer way for kids to get introduced to social media, while still under a parent’s watchful eye. The photo-sharing app, which is like a more restricted version of Instagram, allows children to post and share photos with friends in a protected environment, safe from cyberbullying or unwanted connections from strangers. Founded in March by a team of Norway-based developers and designers, all with kids of their own, the idea was prompted by co-founder and CEO Ole Vidar Hestaas’s experience raising his children. His 7-year old son wanted to be on Instagram, like his older sister was, but of course that’s not allowed…or, frankly, a good idea at that age. After looking for an app designed with the safety and security needs of children and parents in mind, and not finding anything at all, he decided to build one. Co-founder and executive chairman, Kathryn Moore Baker, was in private equity when she first met the team, and says she fell in love with the idea. “I loved the idea of doing something that was good for kids. I’m the mother of two girls, 18 and 14, and the whole time [the team was] telling me about the idea, I was thinking, I wished I had this when [my children] were getting their first introduction to social media,” she says. Baker, along with other angels, including Wibecke Nagell-Erichsen and international golfer Suzann ‘Tutta’ Pettersen, also invested in the company, which has now raised just under $1 million. The app is designed from the ground-up to offer a safer environment than something like Instagram. Children have to input their parent’s email at sign-up, but can begin to use the app right away. However, their photos can’t be viewed or seen by others until the parent approves the account via the email they receive. Afterwards, parents are notified every time a child posts a photo and every time they add a friend. (Because children don’t have their own Facebook account and friend list, they search for friends by name.) In addition, photos will appear only in approved friends’ feeds, and are not geo-tagged so as not to reveal a child’s location. Importantly, there are no comments allowed on photos. While kids can caption and even draw on their own photos with provided tools, friends can only view and like those images, not respond with text. Though based in Norway, the app is -compliant, a U.S. regulation related to software and services designed for children. Children aren’t marketed to, and their info isn’t shared, says Baker. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db2xLRdy4Jc] Some may argue that children shouldn’t be using social media at all at a younger age, but that’s not entirely realistic. With Kuddle, they can at least have the experience of sharing on mobile with friends, while opening the door to productive conversations with parents about what’s appropriate. Kuddle, I feel, comes just in time for today’s youngest generation, as the kids of Millennials and Gen X’ers are now receiving their first smartphones at (often now in the single-digits and pre-teens!). Even PBS is to “wait until preschool” at least. Though there’s a plethora of educational apps and games, younger children are naturally drawn to what the “big kids” use. Today, that’s social media services like Facebook and Instagram, where you’re supposed to be 13 or older to register. Many kids just lie, in order to sign up. Kuddle, which will always be free for children and will never sell things via in-app purchases, sees this app as the first step in a larger vision for the company which will focus on helping parents make better choices when it comes to their kids’ mobile usage, possibly through subscription services. “Our revenue streams will come from areas where we can help parents make good choices such as safer devices, child-friendly mobile subscriptions, and safer search engines,” hints Baker. These products will be developed in partnership with others, and will be marketed to parents who will make the final buying decision. In the meantime, Kuddle is a free download on and . |
Everdwell Gives Real Estate Agents A More Beautiful Online Home | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | Real estate is a business where tech is only slowly starting to make a dent into the traditional way of doing things. But even the most technophobic agent now knows that an online presence besides just being listed in an MLS is a necessity. wants to give those agents — many of whom aren’t all that tech savvy — an easy way to create an online home for their listings. The service was co-founded by former Disqus engineers Mat Mullen and Joshua Sortino. As Mullen told me, the idea for Everdwell came to him based on his experiences of seeing his father and his colleagues work in the real estate industry. Even though a lot of the real estate search experience for buyers has now moved online with tools like Zillow, Estately and others, many real estate agents still post a sign next to the house they’re selling with a little box for printed flyers. Many also set up one-off websites for their properties (think: 2528NWUnderhillRd.com), but the tools for creating those are generally still clunky and complicated or aren’t geared specifically for the workflow of agents. Everdwell gives agents a really easy way to set those one-off sites up and presents them with a list of good-looking templates for their images. As Mullen noted, agents often commission photographers to take great images of a home (sometimes going as far as using drones for aerial shots despite the FAA’s ban on this), but many of the existing online tools don’t really do them justice, so Everdwell puts those images front and center. Indeed, Mullen believes that the company’s sites could also work as portfolios for real estate photographers. These one-off sites are often a lead-generation tool for agents, too. In markets where there is a lot of competition (like San Francisco), everybody wants to get access to the best listings, so sellers can be picky about which agents to work with. Being able to show a prospective client a nice responsive site for their homes can help agents put their best foot forward against the competition. Everdwell launched the pilot for its service in February with a focus on the Bay Area. So far, a number of luxury agencies have signed up and the company has created about 200 listing sites since. The total value of the homes listed is about $150 million The average listing remained online for about 12 days and 95% of the listings on the service have been marked as “sold.” Mullen admits that the problem the company is tackling is far from sexy, but it’s an area that is in dire need of innovation. “Most tech services that exist today are archaic and ridiculously expensive but haven’t been challenged to innovate,” he told me. With its dead-simple product, hopes to do its part in moving the real estate industry into the 21st century. |
Vine Finally Lets You Import Video From Your Camera Roll | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | With more than 100 million people watching Vines across the web each month, and over 1 billion loops played every day, has an update to the app that finally lets users import video from their camera. Twitter’s video sharing app has always required users to film new content directly within the app, using Vine’s once-unique hold-to-record feature. Now, Vine users can import video that they shot on their phone, or video they downloaded from friends or Dropbox, etc. This means that slow motion video from the iPhone will now be supported. When importing videos, users can choose to pull in one full clip, or choose multiple clips to comprise a video that is no longer than six seconds. Beyond the camera roll import, Vine is also revamping the way that the camera works to offer more precision editing tools, including a button to duplicate a clip and a mute button, to knock out the sound. The team also added a preview and undo button, which lets you look at the last clip you filmed and gives you the option to undo it. Both the camera import feature and the ability to delete the last clip shot are available with Instagram Video, which admittedly stole a bit of Vine’s thunder but has yet to reach the same level of creativity or engagement. Existing features like the Grid view, Ghost (which lets you see a transparent view of the last clip shot; great for the stop-motion/animation artists), and the focus lock can all be found under the Wrench icon, alongside a brand new feature. It’s called Torch view, and it helps Viners get the right shot in low-light settings. The update is only available for iOS at the moment, but an Android release is currently in the works. You can check out more from the video below: [vimeo 103853748 w=500 h=250] |
Hailo Launches API For E-Hailing On The Same Day As Uber | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 8 | 20 | Not to be left behind in the growing feud between Uber, Lyft, Sidecar and others, Hailo has launched a public API for its taxi hailing service, on the very same day . The startup, which launched in 2011 in London but has since expanded to various cities across the UK, London and Canada, originally dealt in standard taxis vs. Uber’s black car focus, but has since also moved into black car, SUV and sedan transportation. The publicly accessible API follows an initial launch integration with third-party transit planning app Citymapper last month. The Citymapper integration worked similarly to how Uber now offers an in-app link to its own services in Google Maps, but didn’t require actually leaving the app to work. Uber’s new API means that it now can and does offer this kind of instant car booking in various third-party apps, too. Hailo’s public API isn’t surprising, since the Citymapper venture was likely a test all along with an end goal of launching something public if it worked out. Uber’s debut of its own API likely hurried the launch timeline, for fear it get left behind as the two duke it out for high profile app partners: Though in theory there’s nothing preventing developers from including both options, it might confuse users more than help them. If you’re a dev interested in Hailo’s API, the company suggests you email them at for now to get started. The news from Hailo today only serves to reinforce my thesis from earlier, at any rate – , and before long, you’ll be able to get just about anything on-demand from any app where it makes sense, and probably a few where it doesn’t, too. |
7,000 People Are Watching Two Fish Play Street Fighter | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 20 |
Two fish are playing Street Fighter over on Twitch, and more than 7,000 people are watching the mayhem. Or, partial mayhem. Sometimes the fish don’t swim in a pattern that leads to much confrontation. That said, the game is afloat, with the fish “Aquarius” taking on “Robert the Bruce.” In case you were wondering, this is precisely what the Internet is for. |
Lean Hardware Strategy Lets Kickstarter Breakout Nomiku ‘In-Shore’ Manufacturing Back To The U.S. | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | In the 1980s, Silicon Valley’s hardware elite began outsourcing much of the semiconductor and hardware manufacturing work that gave the region its name to Asia. But now that have consumer interest and get feedback through platforms like Kickstarter, some startups are finding that it’s easier to build products locally because the design-and-testing cycles are much tighter. One example is , an immersion circulator that lets amateur chefs use the high-brow technique of sous vide in their home kitchens. When Nomiku built its original prototypes, the trio of founders behind the company had to decamp for Shenzhen for several months to learn how to maneuver through suppliers there with hardware accelerator HXLR8R. Now with the second version, they’re bent on manufacturing Nomikus locally with current partner out of Oakland. Nomiku wanted to add that they’re in-shoring just the prototyping process Studio Fathom in Oakland out of China. Then they’re sourcing tools from other factories in the U.S. and then doing final assembly hopefully in a place in San Francisco’s Mission District with help from . “We can iterate much faster here,” said co-founder Lisa Fetterman. “China is great if you have your design down pat. But if you’re creating something new that nobody’s ever seen before, you need to rapidly prototype.” She added, “It’s surprising that it’s cheaper to do prototyping in San Francisco rather than China, and the turnaround is faster.” The manufacturing cost gap between China and the U.S. has narrowed . The shrinking cost differential has compelled other hardware companies like former Wired editor Chris Anderson’s . That, in turn, has fueled a thriving cross-border where low-cost engineering talent can quickly turnaround prototypes. Fetterman explains that While the Chinese market is great for mass producing thousands or hundreds of thousands of units of a product, it’s less great for customization and small runs. The newest version of the Nomiku is smaller, clips to the front of a bin instead of the back, and is Wifi-connected. It also comes with a paired app for planning and sharing recipes. Sous vide is a cooking technique where you vacuum seal food in a pack and then immerse it in a water bath at a very precise temperature. The benefit is that you’ll get food that is completely evenly cooked, instead of, say, a steak that gets overcooked just to brown the outside. It has particularly cool effects on eggs, which get done with solid whites and a runny yolk. “When I first tasted sous vide, how could I ever go back? It’s like someone who has died, gone to heaven and come back,” Fetterman said. The technique was re-popularized by chefs like French Laundry’s Thomas Keller a decade ago, and since then, a number of competing manufacturers like Polyscience and Anova have tried to mass-market sous vide appliances to the home cook. Nomiku is . It was created by a husband-and-wife team named Lisa and Abe Fetterman along with an industrial designer named Wipop Suppipat. Both foodies, Lisa had worked in hospitality at high-end restaurants under chefs like Jean-Georges and Mario Batali, while Abe was a plasma physicist earning his doctorate at Princeton University. Their , which they’ve backed with a bit of seed funding and nearly $600,000 from an initial Kickstarter campaign that was the most successful one in food at that time. The has raised north of $400,000 in about a week. The new Nomiku will end up retailing in outlets for $249. But a over the next three weeks.
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Roku TVs From TCL And Hisense Start Shipping Soon | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | For the last several years, has sold a series of devices that you connect to your TV to stream a wide range of content from thousands of different apps. Roku is getting embedded directly into TVs that will go on sale in the coming months from consumer electronics manufacturers Hisense and TCL. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Roku announced , both of which committed to building Roku-powered connected TVs. Those partnerships are now bearing fruit, with both CE makers announcing their lines of Roku TV products today. TCL will offer four Roku TV models, starting with a very competitively priced $229 32″ model. It’ll also have a 40″ Roku TV priced at $329, a 48″ model for $499, and a 55″ model for $649. Those models are available for pre-order from Amazon.com now, and will be shipped to major retailers in the coming weeks. Hisense, meanwhile, will also soon be shipping its line of Roku-powered smart TVs. It will also have four models, starting with a 40″ model, as well as a 48″, 50″, and 55″ TVs. Those models will become available starting in late September, although pricing has not yet been announced. In both cases, Hisense and TCL will take advantage of the large quantity of content that is available through Roku’s platform. According to Roku director of product management Lloyd Klarke, there are more than 1,700 apps available on the Roku channel store. That’s up from 1,200 at the beginning of the year, with two or three channels being added each day. The platform has more than 200,000 movies and TV episodes available through different services like Netflix, Hulu, and others. The Roku TVs also sport a universal search functionality to find all the content users want, across various different channels. In bringing its user interface directly to the television, Roku has attempted to streamline all the settings screens that are usually difficult to navigate. And both Hisense and TCL will offer a simplified remote control that strips away all the superfluous function buttons that come standard on many smart TV remotes. Users will also be able to control the TVs through Roku mobile apps for iOS, Android, or Windows devices. And on a growing number of third-party apps that support the , users will be able to select content and then beam it to their Roku TVs, kind of like Chromecast or Airplay. The Roku operating system also provides an easy method for accessing other devices connected to the TV. Rather than identify game consoles, Blu-Ray players, or other devices by the input they’re connected to, users can set up icons for all their favorite devices and choose from between them straight from the home screen. For Roku, the availability of its operating system on a new group of devices could help it get wider adoption and shift it from a hardware company to a software company. The company will make money from licensing its software to be used by Hisense and TCL, and will also make money from content purchased on Roku TVs as well as advertising on those devices. Roku has sold 8 million streaming devices in the U.S. but millions and millions of TVs are purchased each year, so there’s a huge opportunity there. With Roku-powered TVs appearing in the next month or so, it’s perfect timing for the company to cash in on sales during the holiday season. |
The Bitcoin-Litecoin Decoupling, Redux | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | The price of litecoin and bitcoin, two of the most prominent cryptocurrencies, once saw their prices go up and down in something approaching a consistent ratio. That’s to say that bitcoin was always worth far more than litecoin, but the two coins saw their value rise and fall roughly in step with each other. In June, that started to fall apart. Noting the decoupling, , which superimposed their prices and market caps — in USD, — over time: The trend isn’t hard to spot, is it? Let’s talk about the last few weeks. It’s been tough for the “alts,” or the cryptocurrencies that are not bitcoin. Prices are down nearly across the board. Litecoin, which traded north of $48 inside of the past year, now sells for less than $4. Bitcoin itself has seen a new negative trend emerge in its price as well, as . Our prior data source changed how it charts data, so , here’s a somewhat similar chart showing the decoupling trend continuing: Bitcoin, being the larger, better known of the two, has seen its price endure the downswing perhaps a bit better than its smaller cousin. What I think is evident is that whatever short-term luster that litecoin might have once had, is gone. |
Watch A Robotic Copter Land On A Moving Platform | John Biggs | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRjJV_WLluA] Like Voltron, robots will soon need to coordinate landings and docking with absolutely precision in difficult conditions. That’s what a group of researchers have solved by allowing a robot and a movable landing platform to communicate in order to coordinate a perfect landing. As you can see, the quadcopter and a tank-like platform both converge on a pre-set location and both robots move themselves into position as the quadcopter slowly descends. The rotors right the quadcopter properly and finally cut out just as the landing gear touches the ground. It’s a satisfying sight. The robot, described in a paper , would allow military drones to come in for a landing on other autonomous land drones to recharge or move off the battlefield. It could also allow for commercial drones to land without risking getting tangled up in unseen grass or shrubbery. It’s also really scary. It may not look like much, but this process is difficult and time-consuming and it’s fascinating to see how a pair of robots can work together to get things done. |
YC-Backed UPower Is Building Nuclear Batteries | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | Despite the promise of bountiful, cheap, and clean energy nuclear energy didn’t overtake fossil fuels like everyone expected them to in the middle of the 20th century. Among other things, fear of radiation leaks and waste products that have to be buried for hundreds of years turned the United States away from adopting it for more than a fraction of our energy usage. Y Combinator batch company is hoping to change that by offering reactors that cut out those factors at a scale where regulatory issues and billion-dollar construction costs aren’t a problem. UPower founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte describes the company’s first reactor design as a plug-and-play nuclear thermal battery. The idea is that customers will order a reactor that will be shipped in a container with everything needed on the reaction side and then connected to a power conversion method that makes the most sense for the particular application. Some projects might hook it up to a steam turbine, while others might use it in concert with something much closer to a jet engine. The reactor generates 7 MW worth of heat, which comes out to about 2 MW worth of electricity once converted. That’s enough to power 2,000 homes in places like Alaska and others with lower demand for electricity. It’s also enough to power entire mining operations or military bases in places where constantly having fuel for large diesel generators shipped is too difficult or expensive. Radioactive waste, while still an issue due to the nature of nuclear fission, is less of a pain than with traditional power plant designs in use today. The reactor, in addition to being fuel agnostic (it can use thorium, uranium, or recycled fuel) can actually reduce the half life of existing waste, and spent fuel from it can be reused in another reactor with some processing. UPower is running on an aggressive timetable for a startup whose main product splits atoms. DeWitte aims to get regulatory approval in about four years, with production and sales happening over the year following that approval. He says the company’s biggest advantage in the process is that right now, they don’t need to actually operate their reactors to get to the next phase with regulators: Since the fission process is fairly well understood at this point, the company is simulating those parts of the reactor while testing focuses on the heat transfer process that makes the system so adaptable for different uses. |
Investment Banking 2.0 Says “Hello World!?” | Jacob Mullins | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | David Gelles about how large tech corporations have been conducting more M&A deals with less input from traditional investment banks. Because of my company’s insight into buy and sell-side M&A interest, I wanted to provide some additional insight into how we see the M&A world changing. But first, a little history to explain this evolution: Investment banking is a 300-year-old industry; the first transaction on record was the British East Indies Trading Company merging with its largest competitor in 1708. Since that day, investment banking has been entirely conducted under human power. These people are arbiters of information, connecting people within a particular sector of expertise or geography. In an analog world, this worked, as finding the most strategically relevant business has been difficult. But we’re in the digital age. Businesses can achieve awareness and distribution far easier than in the past, enabling strategic acquirers to identify them earlier, without the need for human subject-matter experts. In the past, buying stock on a physical trading floor in New York required an insider personal network to consummate the trade. In the past, finding love required a close-knit network of friends and family to help you find that ideal match. In the past, finding the perfect home required paging through newspapers and walking through open houses. Today, structured data and intelligent matching algorithms have solved each of these problems. In the past, buying a company required people with subject-matter expertise to help identify the right M&A target and all the related data and information you needed to make the decision. Today, intelligent matching algorithms and proprietary data sets that span the globe enable buyers to identify the right target within minutes and connect within a matter of hours. The world of investment banking is a-changing. On one end of the market, billion-dollar deals are starting to move in-house at large, highly resourced companies like Google and Facebook, as detailed by Gelles. Similarly, in the long tail of tech M&A, transactions under $100 million, where 88 percent of deals are done, the majority of corporate acquirers may not be as resourced up as the tech majors to go it alone, or hire an M&A adviser. However, because of software innovation in the space, enabling efficient prospecting at a highly disruptive cost, access to highly relevant M&A deals is becoming democratized to even corporate development departments of one. There are 1,205 sell-side companies across 36 different countries in Exitround’s marketplace. On the buy side, there are over 1,450 individual companies, each looking for very specific strategic targets for M&A and corporate development expansion. This matrix of over 1,700,000 potential M&A connections is far beyond the limits of a human being’s ability to connect the relevant end-points. Structured data, machine-learning algorithms and proprietary data are revolutionizing the way buyers and sellers of companies connect, not only more intelligently, but also more quickly. Today on Exitround, the average connection time between a buyer and a seller is 17.8 hours, compared with the weeks or months needed in a traditional M&A process. And finding that correct target comes by way of mathematical relevancy between the two companies, as opposed to coffees, lunches and sit-downs to “explore opportunities.” All this isn’t to say that investment banking is dead. In fact, great bankers can be incredibly valuable to a process in negotiation, extracting as much value as possible for the client, deal structuring to minimize tax burdens and integration. But as with all other large industries, modernization and technology has finally reached the doorstep of Goldman Sachs. Are they ready to open the door and say “Hello”? |
Women.com Is A Place Where Women Can Engage In Real Talk Online — No Men Allowed | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | From middle school girls’ sleepovers to more codified groups like the ” women have known for ages that there’s something special about the conversational dynamic that happens when a group of females get together. When women are with other women that they trust, they often can be completely honest and comfortable in a way that they may not be in more mixed company. A website called aims to be the go-to place where women can speak honestly with each other online, deliberately away from the male gender — a sort of for the online world. The bootstrapped startup, which is co-founded by CEO Susan Johnson and CTO Neal Kemp, is launching this week out of the current class of Y Combinator. Although there are a lot of sites aimed at female audiences that already have strong commenting communities — Jezebel, XoJane, iVillage, the BlogHer network, just to name a few — Women.com aims to stand apart in a few key ways. For one, there is no editorial voice steering the conversation: Topics are user-submitted, making the site a pure community, more like a Reddit or a Metafilter. Secondly, Women.com is more strict than other sites about being only for females, as men are forbidden from logging in to access the site’s content. The gender exclusion is maintained at the moment by the site being invite-only, something that the site’s users take seriously (investor Jason Calacanis received a good amount of backlash when he to Women.com on Twitter). If it becomes apparent that a male has accessed the site, that account is banned. In the future when Women.com launches out of beta, the company plans to verify its users’ gender by using Facebook Connect. In an interview earlier this month, Women.com CEO and co-founder Susan Johnson told me that she first thought about the potential for creating a safe place online where women can learn from each other and share their experiences and opinions in her college years, when she worked on developing a website called “Savvy Girl.” The concept was put on the back burner, though, as she went on to build a career post-college in marketing for entertainment and digital media firms. But in her most recent corporate role as a marketing executive at Facebook, she realized that her initial dream of a female-only site could still have legs. “I started really noticing what people were doing on Facebook, and how they were sharing. Even when you know it’s just friends [with group privacy controls], the women I knew were still just posting pictures of their kids, and the vacations they were on — they were just holding back in a way,” Johnson said. But offline, or in an email thread of just girlfriends, Johnson says, “the conversations would just erupt. We’d talk about a mish-mash of topics. What we’re eating, what we’re thinking, what we’re doing. And I thought, ‘Why can’t I have these conversations on Facebook?'” Johnson says the tone of conversation on sites like Facebook and Pinterest is still affected by the fact that they are co-ed environments, even though online activity in many ways by women. “The conversation is just different when it’s only women. When a man enters the conversation, the tone and the cadence is just different,” she says. “In terms of engagement, , women rule the Internet. Why isn’t there a place that has been built just for women?” In August 2012, Johnson stepped down from her job at Facebook and used some of the money she’d earned there to purchase the Women.com domain name, which had previously been owned by NBC and was just a landing site redirecting to iVillage. (Johnson declines to say how much the URL cost her, but prior deals to purchase the domain .) From there, she brought on Kemp as a technical co-founder, and they set about building the site, which launched in private beta in early June. At the moment, Women.com has a pretty basic interface: There is one main homepage and several different categories in which topics are slotted, such as Health and Fitness, Family, Career, Relationships, and others. The site highlights one question per day to feature prominently. The site has a lot of breadth: Examples of popular topics in recent days include everything from Kegels, to whether or not to take your husband’s name, to politics, and more. Right now, the average Women.com user is between 25 to 40 years old. “We are erring on a slightly more mature audience. We’re not deliberately going after the 13 to 24 year old market, at least not yet,” Johnson says. “For now we’ve been focusing on this mystical age range of when you start really identifying as a woman, and having the post-student life experiences.” Women.com isn’t releasing user or engagement numbers just yet, and Johnson and Kemp say they are deliberately keeping the growth slow to make sure that the site scales effectively, but the small community that is there seems to be extremely engaged and thoughtful: It isn’t rare to see a seven paragraph comment on a Women.com post. In the future, Johnson and Kemp say, the site plans to add more sophisticated social features and channels for topics. Right now, the site experience is very simple — but talking to Johnson and Kemp, you can see how, if executed well, this could turn into something very popular. And while the range of topics currently being covered on Women.com may seem to err on the less serious side in the grand scheme of things, Johnson says that ultimately, conversation itself can be a powerful catalyst for important changes. “Twitter didn’t start out saying that they were going to disrupt governments. Facebook didn’t start out saying that it was going to bring distant families closer together,” she says. “The ultimate vision is that Women.com can be a safe place for women to create their own dialogue, whether it’s about fashion, or about the fact that women in Saudi Arabia can’t drive. We’re just going to see where the conversation goes.” |
From Westfield Labs Comes An App To Let Your Pre-Order Meals From The Food Court | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | has emerged as the technology and innovation arm of shopping center behemoth Westfield Group. It manages the online and mobile presence for most of the company’s shopping centers, but also builds and tests out new applications and services that can be used by partnering retailers. One of its most recent applications is , an app that lets busy shoppers skip the line at restaurants in its food court and pay for their meal via mobile app. Since many of the diners in its San Francisco location are actually workers who have offices nearby, time is of the essence, and being able to place an order without having to wait in line is huge. With the app, users can browse the menus of participating restaurants, add items to their carts and check out. Before ordering, users receive an estimate for when their food will be ready, and it sends a text message when it actually is. After that, users can either pick up their food or choose to have it delivered. Of course, this kind of app isn’t totally new, and there are companies like OrderAhead that are already trying to work with restaurants to enable that type of functionality. What’s unique about Dine On Time is that Westfield Labs has built it for retailers that are in its shopping centers, and it will be gradually making the app available in new retail locations over time. We got a chance to test out the app for ourselves and learn about Westfield Labs’ mission and some of the other innovations that the company has been working on in recent months. Check out the video above for more. |
Swing Copters Is The Latest Game From The Creator Of Flappy Bird | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | Take Flappy Bird, make the bird fly vertically and avoid swinging things, and you have Swing Copters, the next mobile game from Dong Nguyen. Because let’s burn more of our time on this earth with mindless games. The game is expected to launch later this week on the 21st and will be an ad-supported free download — or $.99 for the ad-free version. TouchArcade at the game, and while the graphics are of course underwhelming, the gameplay looks as maddening as Nguyen’s original hit. But now, instead of just avoiding stationary objects, players have to navigate around swinging objects as well. |
Booting A PDP-11 | John Biggs | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | As we move swiftly into an era of ubiquitous computing, Internets of Things, and mind-machine connections via wetware, it’s important to step back and take a look at where we’ve been. That’s why is so cool. It shows how to boot a PDP-11 so you can play on a monochrome screen and reminds us that old computer were as finicky as Model T Fords. The PDP-11 is one of the first And check out this disk drive (Note for young founders: Disks are like flash drives, only they spin!) It’s great to see people playing with old hardware. The closest I’ve gotten to this is firing up an old Apple Newton as well as my original Atari 800XL. It’s getting harder and harder, however, to find ways to connect old hardware to new televisions and accessories. Not many PCs have serial ports anymore and I can’t recall the last time I saw a TV that could accept a Want to play with a virtual PDP-11 in your browser? for a bit of old-timey emulation. It will make you look at iOS and Android in a whole different light. |
Looksee Debuts A Tinder-Meets-Instagram For Connecting Around Shared Photos | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | A new “anonymish” app called has launched, combining mobile photography with a Tinder-like matching element that lets anonymous users connect with each other over their shared photos. The idea is that when two users mutually like one another’s photos, their identities will then be revealed to each other, allowing them to make a personal connection and begin messaging within the app. Tinder without the superficiality, perhaps. Or just a different way to make Internet friends? Looksee is largely an experiment at this point, given its launch took place July 31st. The app is a product from Quebec Drive, a company which has previously released a handful of single-named photo apps and games, including Dropin, Phodeo, and Flyin. The bootstrapped startup was co-founded by L.A.-based actor-turned-app-designer (because waiter/actor is so passé) Justin Spraggins, who has been interested the iPhone since day one – when he was starring in the first Apple TV commercials, in fact. Even back then, he says, he saw the potential for the iPhone to change photography, and he later began working on apps after getting the entrepreneurial bug following his first tech industry job involving video content production for an early stage startup. Along with N.Y.-based developer Jarid Kemink, the two quietly launched Looksee a few weeks ago, seeding it with photos posted by their photographer friends, who signed up to test the app in its first days. That has given the Looksee’s initial experience to be one of browsing a more professional photo community, and not your typical user-generated content site. Of course, with traction and popularity, that could certainly change. [vimeo 100375796 w=500 h=281] The app’s main thesis is this: anonymity doesn’t just have to be about risqué photo-sharing and cowardly bullying, it also gives us the opportunity to make a different sort of connection with people. Explains Spraggins, “when you see something you like, you want to know who’s behind it. And it drives you to share, too, because if you don’t share…you’re never going to reveal anybody.” “It’s like you’re unmasking people,” he says. “It’s cool and you get addicted to it.” The app works by asking you to sign up with your Facebook or Instagram account, which is what is later revealed when you and another Looksee user are matched up. That keeps some of the more distasteful content at bay, since unlike on most anonymous apps, you associated with your real identity – it’s just hidden at first. However, a “report” feature is available if anyone should go too far. You can view content that’s popular across the service, or, more importantly, photos taken around your current location, which is what gives it a dating-app like appeal. After a match takes place, you can either chat directly in the app, or follow the user on Instagram, taking your conversation to a larger, more public network. Spraggins thinks the app will encourage deeper friendships, and possibly even relationships, to blossom. Looksee has already been featured by the App Store, giving it an initial boost with thousands of sign-ups, but the challenge for the company now is to better differentiate its community versus that of…well…Instagram itself. While not necessarily created for getting locals together around their shared photos, it can certainly play a role in helping online friends connect, and continue messaging in private if they choose. Looksee is a free download . |
Microsoft Azure’s Cloud Services And Virtual Machines Experience “Service Interruption” | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | Here’s the latest from Azure, relating to its downtime: Starting at 18 Aug 2014 17:49 UTC, a small subset of customers are experiencing connectivity issues to some Azure Services which may include Cloud Services, Virtual Machines, Websites, Automation, Service Bus, Backup, Site Recovery, HDInsight, Mobile Services, StorSimple and possible other Azure Services in multiple regions. Recovery continues underway across affected regions. Customers in many regions began to experience service restoration. — Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service is experiencing uptime issues around the world. According to the Microsoft Azure status dashboard, ‘virtual machines,’ ‘backup,’ and ‘cloud services’ are the heaviest hit. Here’s the company’s current message: I’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment and context on the issue. I’ll update this post when I hear back. Using the company’s time stamp, Azure’s issues have been live for just under two hours. Check back for a more recent count. Here’s the “Popular” section of the : Complaints regarding the downtime have cropped up on Twitter: If were a person I would politely tell it it's an a-hole. All of our sites are down. — Ryan Eastabrook (@ryaneastabrook) The following illustrates that, at least for some, ways around the issue are possible: Workaround for : deploy your Cloud Service or VM to other regional data center. Europe West works for us. — Kevin Yu (@kevincyu) Cloud computing is a current war between monied platform companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google that are keen to lock in developers on services. Price is a common incentive. Uptime is, as well. The Azure service has actually had a rough few weeks, as ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley : The Azure service outage comes just a few days after . Though Visual Studio Online runs on Azure, Microsoft officials attributed that outage to Visual Studio Online bugs, rather than Azure problems. Last week, Azure was hit by a full service interruption in the Japan East region, management portal log-in problems and performance degradation in multiple Azure regions — . Azure is, of course, not the first cloud platform to ever go down. It won’t even be the last this year, I’d wager. But by the very same token, downtime is anathema to cloud computing. |
Y Combinator’s Doblet Plans To Be Everywhere Your Phone Charger Isn’t | Cat Zakrzewski | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | We’ve all been there. You’ve been out all day and suddenly that low battery alert pops up on your phone. If you’re lucky, the bar you’re at might have the right charger for your phone behind the counter. If you’re not, you’re walking or taking the bus instead of calling a car service. But with , you might be able to get a charge even when you don’t have an outlet. The startup is putting portable batteries that charge Android and iPhone 5 phones in bars, restaurants and coffee shops. Users have the option of paying either $3 for a single charge or $30 for an annual subscription to the service and unlimited charges. To use Doblet, you download an or that shows you where the nearest charging vendors are. Then you ask for a charger, and you’ll get the portable battery device. You then pay for the Doblet service on the app, and you’re free to move around with your Doblet and bring it back at a later time. Gurson joked that Doblet was the realization of dream of ambient phone charging, a project he suggested when . “I would have a subscription service to a charging system, and that anywhere I went in the United States, there would be a charge that would follow me around,” Colbert joked. Musk said we’ll do it, but it seems and have beaten him to it. Doblet soft-launched at three locations this weekend, but by the end of September, the founders expect it to be available at about 50 San Francisco locations. The co-founders tell me when the service first launches, they’ll even come get the Doblet from you if you’re at another location in San Francisco. Chang and Gurson both took unique paths to Y Combinator. Chang skipped several years of school and graduated from New York University School of Medicine at just age 20. He previously worked as a radiologist and most recently completed graduate studies artificial intelligence. Gurson describes himself as a “serial entrepreneur,” and previously worked in web hosting startups. Gurson told me he first got the idea for Doblet when a man with a dying phone approached him in a bar and asked him if he had a charger. Gurson said only if you give me $2. The man laughed and walked away, but later that night Gurson saw him again and he said he ended up spending $15 on a new phone charger. “He came up to me later and said he definitely should have given me $2,” Gurson said. Even though I’m constantly killing my own phone battery, I was skeptical of the $30 annual subscription fee. That’s around the same cost as buying your own portable battery, and you can always just throw your phone charger in your bag for free. But Chang and Gurson of Doblet say their technology sets itself apart because often people forget those additional devices or don’t remember to charge spare batteries or charging cases. In my personal experience, they’re right. They also say it differs from existing services like the stands at airports or the lockers available at some retail stores that let you charge your phone because you can move around with a Doblet and use your phone while it’s charging, rather than being tied to a stand or leaving your phone in a locker to charge. The location-based app that shows users where to find nearby vendors offering the service when their phones are dying could also drive new customers to bars and restaurants. Businesses additionally receive a cut of the profit Doblet makes when they have it available to their customers. Hopefully the next time my battery starts to die, Doblet will be around. |
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YC’s Zenamins Mails You Personalized Vitamins | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | 40 million Americans take three or more vitamins a day, yet both the pill bottles and the way we buy them haven’t changed in decades. Well they’re about to, thanks to new Y Combinator startup Zen Health and its customized vitamin pack delivery service . Punch in what you already take and answer a few questions and Zenamins will send you a personalized pill pack. Staying fit is tough, but Zen Health wants to make the medicine go down easy. The idea for Zenamins came to founder Arad Rostampour after seeing friends with pill bottles scattered around their kitchens and bathrooms. Most didn’t dose theirs out into the little containers with a box for each day, so they’d sometimes forget if they’d taken a pill yet. But then one day while meeting a fellow entrepreneur at San Francisco’s ritzy Battery clubhouse, he saw this guy take out a folded-up napkin of pills his wife had made for him. It was so clumsy and low-tech, Rostampour knew there was an opportunity to update the vitamin business. A Stanford and Wharton graduate, Rostampour had recently . So with some cash in his pocket and time on his hands, he started Zen Health and joined this season’s Y Combinator batch that demos tomorrow. 50 types of vitamins, minerals, and supplements will be available to start on Zenamins, with a wider range coming soon. There’s Vitamins A through K, multi-vitamins, fish and flaxseed oils, calcium, magnesium, iron, and supplements like Gingko Biloba and Glucosamine. For now it will be US-only. A three-pills-a-day regimen will cost around $30 per month with shipping included, similar to the price at veterans retailers like GNC. Get more pills per month and the price comes down a bit below competitors. Once you’ve selected your uppers, downers, inners, and outers, a Zen Health machine plucks them from giant canisters and bundles them in little booklets with a spot for each day. Like birth control, the goal is to make it obvious if you’ve taken yours already or if you miss a day in order to encourage consistency. The packets are perforated so you can tear off however many days you need if you’re going on a week-long wilderness adventure or whatever. Zen Health will target the typical pill-popping demographics like young professionals and seniors. There’s plenty of money to be made if it can get in with some big nursing homes. Right now Zen Health is mulling partnerships to get quick distribution and customer bases. It may even sell pre-made packs through other retail stores in hopes that people will then go online and design their own. Rostampour confesses that while his startup has doctors as advisers, none of the full-time team has a medical background. He also admits that Zenamins is vulnerable to competition from GNC, The Vitamin Shoppe, Nature Made and other long-standing sellers. “If the large brands try to do fully customized [vitamin packs] that would have a huge impact. All these companies are set up for retail because they have established brands.” Luckily, Zen Health’s plan goes far beyond the $32 billion a year vitamin market. “The broader vision is that being healthy isn’t easy. How do you pull in products that have the same problem of being inconvenient?” From prescriptions to health insurance, nutrition to home diagnosis, there’s plenty Zen Health could tackle. Rostampour concludes, “Vitamins are just the first thing that’s obviously broken.” |
Google Makes It Easier For Advertisers To Track Which Ads Generate Phone Calls | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | Over the course of the last year, Google’s AdWords advertising platform started a number of that allow advertisers to link ads and phone calls. Those include ads, and in your AdWords stats, but today, it is taking this concept a bit further with the of . Here is how they work. You set up your regular search ads, but every time somebody clicks on them and lands on your site, they will see a dynamically generated phone number that is linked to those ads. When potential customers then click on the number or dial it directly from their phones, the call will automatically be linked to the original ad the customer saw and you can more easily track which ads drive phone calls. Until now, it was surprisingly hard to link incoming phone calls to ads. Google cites (“Looking for a great online deal on light bulbs, halogens, batteries, light fixtures or other lighting products?”), which beta tested these new dynamic phone numbers, as an early success story for this service. “After implementing website call conversions, we discovered that AdWords was not only driving over twice as many calls than previously thought, but that our customers also talk to us for over five minutes on calls originating from our site,” says the company’s director of marketing Jeremy Foster. “Insights like these are helping shape our web strategy and the way we serve our customers.” Based on the conversion data, advertisers can then optimize their ads and bids to drive calls that are more likely to generate sales leads, for example. To enable this feature, advertisers only have to add a on their desktop and mobile sites. The design of the numbers can be styled according to the advertiser’s website’s branding, and numbers stay active for 90 days. The only problem I see here is that many potential customers may want to call you back a few months later. : I just heard back from Google and the initial numbers will continue to work even after the 90-day period. The service is now available in the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain and Australia. |
This Real-Time Projected CGI Makeup Is Beautiful And Terrifying | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | CGI has come a long way – from simulating Jar Jar Binks on the silver screen to replacing green screens with King’s Landing. Today, we should add to the progression. Producer and technical director Nobumichi Asai has used a projection technology called Omote to project makeup onto a live model’s face. At first, the model goes from very basic makeup to a more dramatic, runway look. I initially thought, “OK, so this is just like every random makeup app that imposes makeup onto a selfie.” But then I noticed the movements of the model’s face, and just as the accuracy of the technology set in, I realized that the term “electronic makeup” is a crazy understatement. Watch for yourself. The facial transformations that happen, one after another before your eyes, are amazing. [vimeo 103425574 w=500 h=281] from on . Asai hasn’t revealed the technical details of the project, but as SlashGear points out, it seems to use an initial face-mapping technology to latch on during real-time movements and accurately project various designs onto the face. This isn’t Asai’s first go at CGI, but it is one of the first times the producer has done CGI work on non-stationary objects. [via ] |
Now Coming With Your Laptop: Large Helpings Of Cloud Storage | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | Out is a for the forthcoming HP Stream laptop that will run Windows 8.1, and is expected to . It’s a device that Microsoft hopes will compete with Chromebooks, Google’s laptop offering that has consumed some PC market share, mostly among less expensive devices. To make machines running its operating system more competitive, Microsoft has reduced the price of Windows and . The Stream fits under that rubric. For a blow-by-blow of what the Stream offers, especially when compared to what HP’s similar Chromebook 14 contains, . What I want to point out today is that Google and Microsoft are using inexpensive PCs as a way to pick up more cloud storage market share: The , comparable to the Stream, comes with 100 gigabytes of Google Cloud Storage for two years. Similarly, the Stream — which runs Windows 8.1 and not Google’s Chrome OS — will come with 100 gigabytes of Microsoft’s OneDrive storage. Both companies currently charge $1.99 per month for 100 gigabytes of storage, or about $50 for two years worth of the stuff. Each company is willing to swallow that cost to make computers running their platforms more tempting. The situation also underscores the fact that the price that companies can charge for cloud storage is rapidly approaching zero. If it is being given away in 100 gigabyte chunks, attached to devices that must generate small revenues to the companies providing the storage, there is strong pressure driving the situation’s economics. Finally, the Stream will contain a mere 32 gigabytes in its cheapest configuration. That sounds slim. But given that the device has 100 gigabytes of cloud storage stapled to it, the figure isn’t so bad. And, lowering on-device storage helps OEMs build cheaper machines. Consumers win in every direction. |
AppNexus Raises $60M Round Valuing The Ad-Tech Company At $1.2B | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | Ad tech company just that it has raised an additional $60 million. The company said that the round, which could eventually reach $100 million, valued AppNexus at $1.2 billion. The money came from an unnamed “large, Boston-based public equity and asset management firm.” Co-founder and CEO that the company just saw its first profitable quarter, and that the recent, underwhelming performance of ad-tech companies on the public markets didn’t factor into his decision to raise the money. O’Kelley and his team have built a platform for buying and selling ads through real-time bidding. The company says 30 billion ad impressions are transacted on the platform each day, with more than $1 billion in ad spend on the platform in 2013. AppNexus also said it has nearly 600 employees. This brings the total capital invested in the company to . A few months ago, that Alibaba was one of several potential investors. |
Ybrain Raises $3.5M To Fund Trials Of Its Wearable For Alzheimer’s Patients | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | , a Korean startup that makes wearables for Alzheimer’s patients, announced today that it has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by Stonebridge Capital, bringing its total raised so far to $4.2 million. Co-founder Seungyeon Kim told TechCrunch that the money will be used for clinical trials and the manufacturing of its wearable devices. The company was founded in 2013 by Kyongsik Yun, a neuroscientist who trained at the California Institute of Technology, and engineers from Samsung. Ybrain is currently conducting clinical trials at Samsung Medical Center in Korea. Kim says that , another wearable device maker, is Ybrain’s closest direct competitor, while global pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Novartis are indirect competitors. He adds that Ybrain is currently the only company carrying out clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease with a wearable health device. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDchzvdZPFQ] Ybrain wearable device with two sensors embedded in the front that emit electronic signals at 2-milli-amperes, which stimulate brain activity to counteract the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. The device is supposed to be used for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, and can be worn at home. The headband is also intended for use by people with “mild cognitive impairment.” The startup’s clinical trials currently show that its wearable devices are 20 percent to 30 percent more effective than existing oral medication for Alzheimer’s patients. “This was key to our funding,” says Kim. The devices will be available for purchase online and through hospitals after Ybrain finishes clinical trials and registers with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S. as well as the Korean Food and Drug Administration (KFDA). In a statement, Fortune Sohn, analyst at Stonebridge Capital, said “Most Alzheimer’s disease experts are forecasting that new Alzheimer’s oral medications may not come out until 2025. Ybrain’s global first Alzheimer patient ready wearables will be a great solution.” h/t ] |
Algorithmia Raises $2.4M To Connect Academia And App Developers | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 8 | 18 | While communities built around and have developers working together more than they ever have before, one group’s work is typically seen by too few, considering the impact it could have: researchers in academia, whose work at its most successful is typically discussed only at conferences or in journals. founder and CEO Diego Oppenheimer says that his company is building a platform and marketplace that will give algorithm developers in academia and elsewhere a way to share their work with anyone. The problem, Oppenheimer says, is that algorithms are “trapped in white papers.” While they might get passed around after getting some attention at a major conference, most are written in inaccessible technical jargon and distributed by inefficient methods. These untapped chunks of code could improve a wide variety of applications, solving problems ranging from weather monitoring to making video game characters walk around on realistic paths. Instead of just providing a place for researchers to upload or link to their work, Algorithmia provides a cloud platform that does the heavy lifting for using algorithms uploaded by members of the community. Once modified to work with Algorthmia’s inputs and outputs, uploaded algorithms become accessible for developers using any language via a REST API, and all number crunching is handled by the company’s instances, which dynamically boot up in different cloud providers and locations to provide better performance. Anyone using an algorithm hosted by Algorithmia pays a base fee for computation as well as a fee to its creator, if that person decides to charge for it. In this way, the company incentivizes algorithm developers to get their work onto the platform as well as competition to improve algorithm performance or complexity so as to justify higher fees, since someone could find an alternative solution and charge less. Oppenheimer hopes algorithm improvements will become a regular occurrence on the platform. While developers will be allowed offer their wares as “black boxes,” taking in inputs and spitting out results without disclosing how they work, Algorithmia encourages the community to offer the source of their work so that users can spot bugs and provide fixes. Today Algoritmia is announcing that it has raised $2.4 million in seed funding in a round led by Madrona Venture Group, with participation from Rakuten Ventures, Deep Fork Capital, Oren Etzioni and Charles Fitzgerald. The company plans to use that capital to hire engineers to build out its algorithm library and to add more cloud platforms to its infrastructure. The service is currently in a private, invitation-only beta, though Oppenheimer says that the Algorithmia public beta will begin sometime this fall. |
Samsung’s New Gear S Smartwatch Features A Curved Screen And 3G Connectivity | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | Samsung officially takes the cake when it comes to launching smartwatches: It just announced the , its billionth smartwatch device launching this year. The Gear S has a few hallmarks that set it apart from the crowd, however, including a curved Super AMOLED display, which has a 2-inch diagonal measurement and 360×480 resolution, and a built-in 3G modem, which can let the wearable receive notification and messages, and even make and receive calls without any smartphone involved. The Gear S is essentially a wrist-mounted smartphone, which is not something new to the industry. Samsung’s latest effort is Tizen-powered, like its Samsung Gear 2 and Gear Neo devices, and also has built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, in addition to its cellular radio. The Gear S’s hardware design might be its more impressive feature, as we’re finally starting to see displays that wrap around the contours of the wrist, rather than sticking out as a traditional flat surface. On the software side, the Gear S has HERE navigation provided by Nokia, as well as Spritz speed-reading. It also includes GPS sensors, an accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, UV detection, barometer and a heart rate monitor. IN terms of specs, it’s packing 4GB of internal storage and 512MB of RAM, plus a dual-core 1.0 GHz processor. It has IP67 dust and water resistance, and a relatively small 300mAh battery, which Samsung says will still manage to get it 2 days of usage under normal conditions. Samsung is also launching the Gear Circle headset alongside the new wearable, which offers Bluetooth connectivity, as well as a vibration motor to provide silent notifications, and a mic for chatting as well as receiving voice commands. The Gear S will be available starting in October, though pricing hasn’t been announced. Regardless of what Samsung asks consumers to pay for this device, it begs the question: How many smartwatches from one company can consumers stand? Especially one based on Tizen, now that Google has thrown its weight behind Android Wear? |
Taiwan-Based Streaming Music Service KKBOX Raises $104M To Expand Overseas | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | , a Taiwan-based company that has provided streaming music services in Asia since before Spotify was founded, (link in Chinese) that it has raised $104 million from Singapore GIC (formerly known as the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation). KKBOX co-founder and CEO Chris Lin said that the funds will be used to develop the company’s tech platform and services, as well as continue expanding into overseas markets. The compnay currently has 10 million users and offers streaming music services in six Asian markets: Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. Other investors include KDDI, Japan’s second-largest telecommunications company, HTC, and Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom. KKBOX was founded in 2004 and currently has deals with 500 international and local music labels that allow it to stream over 10 million tracks. In addition to its streaming music services, KKBOX also publishes a montly print magazine about music and holds an annual music awards show in Taiwan. KKBOX first started expanding overseas in 2009, starting with Hong Kong. Since 2013, however, it has had to compete with Spotify, which launched in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia that year. It is now also available in the Philippines and Taiwan. In 2013, KKBOX also began aggressively expanding, KKBOX previously that its competitive advantage against Western competitors like Spotify is its ability to strike deals with local music labels, which take a 70 percent to 85 percent market share over Western labels, as well as localized features like rolling karaoke-style lyrics and in-app chats and events with artists. |
LG G Watch R Will Offer A Circular Smartwatch With Android Wear In Q4 2014 | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | LG is doubling up on Android Wear smartwatch devices in 2014, with a circular smartwatch destined for release later this year, by the end of the fourth quarter. The (presumably the R is for round) will get a proper introduction at IFA 2014 this year, and will feature the world’s first Plastic OLED display, with a circular face that uses 100 percent of its screen, unlike the Moto 360, which has a chunk at the bottom cut out of its screen for a brightness sensor. LG’s new smartwatch looks remarkably similar to a traditional analogue watch, with a bezel surrounding the face, and LG is claiming easy readability even in sunlight thanks to the P-OLED display. It’ll pack a 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 400 processor from Qualcomm, 4GB of local storage, 512MB of RAM and a battery rated at 410mAh, which is roughly on par with the 400mAH power source in the current, rectangular G Watch launched at Google I/O this year. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1STW7LQXONo] The G Watch R also includes an optical heart rate sensor, which is present on the Samsung Gear Live but absent on the original G Watch, and supports 22mm watch bands (it ships with a calfskin leather black strap, too). It’ll run Android Wear, of course, and has a gyroscope, accelerometer, compass and barometer built-in. IP67 rating means that it has the same dust and water resistance as the Galaxy S5, which includes the ability to be submerged for up to 30 minutes in water up to a meter deep. LG still isn’t telling us exactly when this will launch, or its pricing and availability, but they’ll be doing more press around the launch during IFA Berlin next week, so stay tuned for further details. |
Kobe Bryant Reads TechCrunch | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | This month’s issue of is notable because it includes a long form feature by Chris Ballard on Kobe Bryant’s return to the game this fall. The story is worth reading for its support of the and its underlying theme of “hard work is all that matters,” whether you are a basketball fan or not. Another reason you should read it is that it is proof that Mr. himself, Kobe Bryant, reads TC. Some of Kobe’s favorite topics of conversation include: what Bryant read on Techcrunch the night before, the latest news on Buzzfeed and whether Katy Perry is a genius businesswoman or just a plain genius. !!! Since we’ve read this, we’ve been a) extremely proud and b) noodling on what on earth Kobe could have been reading the night before. From what I can tell, the meeting referred to in the article was on Bryant’s second day in China, which seems , 2014, per evidence on social media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hENt11h3dzg So I went back into WordPress and looked at which TechCrunch posts were published between July 30-31 (Beijing is 15 hours ahead). Then I picked the stories I would click on if I were Kobe. Very scientific, I know. Here they are in no particular order: “ ” by Matt Burns. “ ” by Catherine Shu. “ ” by Sarah Buhr. “ ” by Darrell Etherington. “ ” by Sarah Perez. “ ” by Ryan Lawler. “ ” by Sarah Perez. “ ” by Catherine Shu. “ ” by Josh Constine. Of these posts, I think Kobe was most likely to have been reading (and talking about) Matt Burns’ article. He was in Shanghai at the time and probably interested in how the local phone hardware market stacked up against the U.S.’s. But, as Kobe is an entrepreneur himself, it’s likely that any ole startup’s launch post might have piqued his interest; after all, entrepreneurs of any stripe are the music makers, of Bryant recently cold-called Apple exec Jonathan Ive and Oprah Winfrey, among others, asking for business advice. He is curious in a manner most athletes aren’t. He wants to know how and why things work. Last year he formed Kobe Inc., hiring away creative talents he admired from companies he’d worked with. Among those Bryant idolizes—Steve Jobs and Bruce Lee, for instance—there is often a common theme. They are outsiders. They buck the system. Succeed against the odds. In their lives Bryant sees not just roadmaps but validation. This is why I started reading TechCrunch, years ago, to learn — for free — about people who did not ask permission to build something, whether it was a company or an incredible career in tech, basketball or, even, blogging. Succeeding against the odds is the TechCrunch way. So I hope you enjoyed Matt’s piece, Kobe. And if you ever want to , as we Greeks like to say, the good people always fit — just . A post shared by (@kb24fans) on |
SWAT Team Detains Popular Gamer Who Was Live-Streaming ‘Counter-Strike’ | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | An incredible video showing the apparent swatting of a video game player who operates under the moniker ‘ ‘ was published today. Swatting is a prank that involves falsely telling the police of a dangerous situation so that a SWAT — special weapons and tactics (SWAT) — team is deployed in response, erroneously. The police are led to believe that they need to roll out the guns and armor, leaving the intended victim of the prank literally staring down the barrel of the gun. In this case, a Denver-area building was selected for the prank. Nearby schools, , were temporarily placed on lockdown due to the phantom threat. Making the entire situation nearly surreal is the fact that Kootra, whose common name is , was streaming a video game to the Internet when the heavily armed police force entered his location, and detained him. It isn’t clear who instigated the prank that Kootra was caught up in. The stream continues for some time until a police officer realizes that he is being recorded, at which point he appears to either shut, or otherwise turn off the computer in question. Until that point, the raid was taped, the footage of which was uploaded to YouTube. Kootra, a member of a gaming group , is a with more than 200,000 Twitter followers. Here’s the video: Kootra later indicated that he’s safe: Dag nabbit that was dern sure an experience. I am all Ok though. Thanks for all the supportive tweets everyone — Jordan (@Kootra) While Kootra got through the ordeal, the danger to his person was material. Whomever instigated the swatting should be ashamed of themselves. |
Microsoft Promises To Remove Scammy Apps From The Windows Store, Kills Off 1,500 Apps To Start | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | The Windows app store has a problem: it’s full of garbage. For every popular app, there’s a dozen-plus apps trying their damnedest to trick the user into buying it. No app store is without its shady apps — even Apple, with their infamously/painfully stringent restrictions (which, notably, seem to have been relaxed a bit over time), has its fair share of iffy clones and trademark violations. But many of the apps on the Windows Store went far beyond being tacky conceptual clones; many of them didn’t even bother to create new icons, or come up with new names beyond changing a few characters. Meanwhile, blatant trademark violations were rife. You want iTunes? How about “Itunes PC”, for $4? Or “Itunes Play App” for $9? The icons were the same; the names were intentionally confusing. The only difference was that behind that download button was a hot pile of garbage that no one was likely to download intentionally. And until now, it didn’t seem like Microsoft really wanted to do anything about it. tore into Microsoft over the issue last week, and now Microsoft is promising to fix it. In a , Microsoft announced three changes to their certification process: They all seem like fairly obvious rules that probably should’ve been in place to begin with — but at least they’re in there now. Microsoft says that the new rules will impact all future app submissions and updates, but that they’re also going back through and re-reviewing their catalog as quickly as they can. To date, they’ve killed off about 1,500 apps. If you’re unlucky enough to have bought one of the ones that got nixed, they’ll refund your money. [Photo modified; original photo by . Used under Creative Commons] |
Hardware Crowdfunding: Where The Venture Dollars Flow | Matt Witheiler | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | $211,290. That was the magic number that in hardware crowdfunding. The analysis also showed that people love 3D printers and that almost half the crowdfunded dollars went to 37 companies. That deep dive into 443 projects provided some insight into where consumers are spending their money (and time) in the hardware ecosystem but it felt like something was missing. Crowdfunding dollars are only one source of capital for hardware startups. The other source, the one that gets even more attention, is venture capital. In the years since Kickstarter launched, venture investing in hardware has gone from non-existent to mainstream. data shows 115 companies tagged as Hardware + Software got funding in 2007 compared to 383 in 2013 – an increase of 233 percent. While there has been some recent writing on how many crowdfunded hardware startups go on to raise venture money, the analysis of what categories of hardware companies raise money has yet to be done. In other words, it was impossible to answer the question “What parts of the hardware ecosystem do investors think are hot?” Using the same data set as before (hardware projects raising $100,000 or more on crowdfunding sites as of late June 2014) and combining it with data from CrunchBase and , I’m here with that answer. Of the 443 hardware projects analyzed, 94 have gone on to raise a total of $503.8 million from investors. Much like the crowdfunding data, the vast majority of these 94 companies ran their campaigns on Kickstarter: Just 17 companies, or 18 percent, of the total that raised money started on Indiegogo. The category perspective provides a glimpse into where VCs are putting their money. The $503.8 million raised is broken out as follows: Comparing this to the , there are a few things to note. Most obvious is the domination of the Entertainment category, which received $188 million in venture funding, or 37 percent of all venture dollars that went to crowdfunded companies. Across the board, many of these venture dollars went into a few “winners.” Specifically, of the $503.7 million venture dollars that crowdfunded hardware projects brought in, nearly 40 percent went to four companies: , , and . Fourteen companies raised more than $10 million in funding post campaign, bringing in $335.8 million. In addition to the “big four,” these were: , , , , , , , , and . The set of 94 raised venture dollars from a number of investors. Almost everyone you would suspect is represented, but the most prolific may surprise you. That would be , which invested in 10 of the companies, although only invested $25,000 each time. The dollar investment measure is one way to understand how VCs think of hardware. An alternative way of looking at just how excited VCs are about various categories is exploring the relationship between crowd dollars committed and venture dollars raised. I call this leverage. I calculate leverage as: Venture Dollars Raised / Crowd Dollars Raised. Leverage of 1.0x means that for every dollar the crowd put in, VCs put in another dollar. The higher the number, the more dollars (i.e. interest) VCs had in the category. The lower the number, the more skeptical VCs were compared to the crowd. Now things get interesting. Remember, this measures investor interest relative to the crowd. As you can see, the wearable space, specifically wearables that are worn on clothing or attached to the body somehow, garnered way more love from investors than from the crowd: In the body wearable category, the crowd pre-ordered $3.5 million worth of product and investors later put in $37.6 million. From a leverage perspective, this even outpaced Gaming despite the fact that that category holds the largest venture bet from the crowdfunding cohort: the $91 million Oculus. In the 3D printing category, which consumers feverishly poured $25.6 million into across 50 projects, investors were much more tepid, choosing to deploy $26.5 million of capital across just five companies. At a macro level, each crowdfunded dollar resulted in $2.71 of venture dollars invested and the Medical category faired best with $7.11 of venuture dollars per crowd dollar – although across a very small sample set of three companies. Next best is the wearable category mentioned above, where the sector had 4.76x leverage and 18 venture-funded projects. While investors are absolutely using crowdfunding success to vet hardware startups (the rate of investment across these $100k+ campaigns is orders of magnitude higher than the general startup investment rate) not all project categories are created equal. Your camera campaign is unlikely to be a home run with investors even if you hit it out of the park with the crowd. Conversely, even a mediocre outcome in an automation campaign may earn the attention of investors’ wallets. It just goes to show, investors want to back companies that not only deliver what people want today, but also represent a compelling vision for the future. I’ve shared the source data in . Feel free to dig in with your own analysis. |
Microsoft Rolls Out Surface Pro 3 To 25 New Markets | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | In keeping with prior expectations, Microsoft is of rolling out its Surface Pro 3 tablet-hybrid to 25 new markets over the next 24 hours. With the 25 new markets all live, Surface Pro 3 will be available in a total of 28 markets. The rollout of the device has therefore been quite constrained to date. Microsoft also detailed in a post today that the new Surface dock will sell in the new markets, ahead of its general availability in mid-September. The new markets give Surface a chance to put more revenue-points on the board. Surface revenue is a figure that Microsoft breaks out in its earnings, making it simple to track. Top line from the hardware project fell by more than half from the fourth calendar quarter of 2013, . Given that Microsoft may be in process of , it’s up to the Intel-based Surface Pro 3 to carry the torch. The device has received the strongest reviews of any Surface device. Microsoft positions it as a computer that can replace a traditional laptop. The Surface project has been for its parent company. If the Surface Pro 3 fails to ignite revenue in Microsoft’s hardware group, it isn’t immediately apparent what a next step would be — moments before its planned announcement, so other new SKUs could be somewhat far from making it to market. Regardless, New Zealand is up first, along with 24 other markets. We’ll see if the bets that Microsoft has made were worth their time, and expense soon enough. |
Broad Range Of Public Tech Firms Trade For Record Prices | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | All the talk of a bubble isn’t slowing down public interest in technology shares. Today, Apple, TubeMogul and Arista Networks set new record highs. TubeMogul and Arista both recently went public. Other firms, like Microsoft are trading near local maximums. MobileIron set an all-time high yesterday, managed a new intra-day high today, and is up strongly in the past few trading sessions. Facebook is toying with the $75 price per-share range, a record performance. That we’re seeing companies head public is therefore not surprising. Companies that are losing monday on a GAAP, and non-GAAP basis are looking to raise hundreds of millions from investors — LendingClub , Box . The buoyancy, of course, extends outside of the technology industry. The S&P 500 closed at another record today, implying that a broader set of industries’ stocks are doing quite well. There are notable exceptions. Twitter remains far under its 52-week high. King Digital has taken a beating in recent days. But the larger market for tech stocks appears healthy. At least for now, the IPO window looks open, and Silicon Valley is sunny. |
Incubated: Y Combinator’s Approach To Finding And Helping Startups Become Big Winners | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | is the most famous of all startup accelerators out there, thanks to success of companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe, all of which have gone through its program. YC co-founder Paul Graham once referred to the process of finding and nurturing those big hits as “ .” But how does YC do it? What sets it apart from some of the other accelerators out there, and why does it seem like its alumni companies are disproportionately successful? With the latest episode of , we set out to find out. At first glance, Y Combinator doesn’t look that different from most accelerators in part because it defined the category. Founded in 2005, its success has inspired multiple other programs to copy its 12-week format of weekly meetings, partner office hours, and access to alumni and mentors from the tech world. But one of the things that sets it apart from other accelerators is just the depth and breadth of knowledge that exists within its network. In part, that stems from running for so long — there are about 1,500 YC alums available to learn from. And many of those alumni end up becoming the first partners or customers for startups in a current class. While startups are expected to have their own space, Y Combinator companies meet weekly on Tuesdays to catch up, discuss their progress, and learn from famous entrepreneurs who are invited to talk about their own challenges in scaling up their businesses. It also hosts a series of other events, like , that are open to entrepreneurs who wish to attend. One other thing that sets it apart is the selection process: YC takes online applications to help screen applicants, but bases its decision mostly on one 10-minute interview with the accelerator’s partners. It looks for founders who have deep domain expertise, and companies that can be big outliers in different technology. Y Combinator just for its winter class this week. If you’re interested in learning more, check out he video above before applying! Check out all the episodes of Incubated here: |
3D-Printed ‘Bump Key’ Can Open Almost Any Lock | John Biggs | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | Bump keys are primitive tools used by locksmiths (and HAXoRZ) to knock open simple locks. Until now, many locks were secure simply because they were too complex to be bumped and, as a result, you had a bit of security by obscurity. That’s all changing. Created by Jos Weyers and Christian Holler, these keys are designed to knock or bump the pins in a standard lock into place after a few sharp raps with a hammer. The pair discovered how to 3D print a piece of plastic that will fit into the keyhole based on a photo of the hole itself. A few carefully cut notches in the plastic and you’ve got a usable bump key. The video below shows how it works – and how simple it is to use. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MCUXF84WuY] The pair don’t want us to break into secure military installations with their tool. Instead, they want to show how primitive most locks really are and how it’s becoming easier and easier to foil physical security systems. If anyone with a 3D printer and a camera can make a key, why have locks? |
How Many People See Your Tweets? Twitter Opens Its Nifty Analytics Dashboard To Everyone | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | Back in July, Twitter launched a . A bit like Google Analytics for tweets, it allows you to gauge the performance of each and every tweet you sent. How many people saw it? How many of those actually clicked your links? There was one catch, though: it was only open to advertisers and verified users. No longer! Now you too can obsess way too hard over the performance of every tweet you send! News of the change comes from Twitter front end engineer Ian Chan: Absolutely thrilled to open up access to to EVERYONE. Check it out, and let us know what you think! — Ian Chan (@chanian) and lurking in Twitter’s support base confirms it: the dashboard should now be open to every account that has been open for at least 14 days, isn’t restricted/protected/suspended, and (curiously) that primarily tweets in English, French, Japanese, or Spanish. You can . |
Why More Companies Should Submit To Peer Review | Michael Housman | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | Academia is governed by a process called “peer review,” which ensures research is validated and reasoning is sound. More simply, it weeds out the real insights from the fluff. Meanwhile, most corporate data (think surveys, white papers), is made public after only an internal, inherently biased review. With recent backlash toward Facebook’s , being cognizant and transparent with data is more important than ever. As an academic, my expectation when I joined the private sector was that the white papers and collateral released by companies in this space would be based on large sample sizes, best-in-class empirical methods and rigorous interpretation. Suffice to say, that was not the case. There are relatively few tech companies that support analytics-minded academics and are willing to put in the time to hold the company’s work accountable to a much higher standard. Peer review is an incredibly time-intensive process, but worth it for stronger, more accurate content. And though recent news of a “ ” does show the system isn’t without its faults, with technology’s help, the methods can scale. Here are my top three reasons why companies should invest in academic peer review. In the peer-review process, once a team of researchers has completed a paper, they submit it to a journal that then circulates it to two to three peer experts for critique. Academic journals use a double-blind process so the authors don’t know the identity of the reviewers and vice versa, with the intention being to ensure that the process is as rigorous and objective as possible. Although the finished product is inevitably better than the initial submission, the process requires a tremendous amount of work, and can last as long as two years from start to finish. Utilizing a process even near this intensive ensures that research is really . Outside, educated analysis makes sure that the facts and framing are sound and not biased. This adds much more credibility to content than, say, a survey revealing the importance of secure storage, vetted by a security software vendor. Clearly most companies will choose to conduct research and develop content in areas relevant to their business – it makes sense to grow voice and market share in your space. But there is a fine line between self-serving and authentically helpful content that benefits current and potential customers. A company isn’t just saying it knows about a space; it is offering concrete evidence validated by others. In my role as a chief analytics officer, I often play internal referee – I refuse to release any research from our big dataset that wouldn’t be submitted to a top-tier academic journal. That means I’m responsible for both suppressing good content that isn’t sufficiently backed up by the science, as well as releasing unpopular results when that’s what the data says. This process substantiates our data. Even if readers of our researchers do not perceive the difference between including fixed effects or clustering standard errors, they appreciate the value of the quality of analytical methods used and knowing what they are reading is truly fact-based. The spurious conclusions companies share in the public domain can sometimes be appalling. Since individuals and companies often base actual purchase decisions on this research, the improper actions and decisions that may result from fluffed up facts are of concern. The level of rigor that goes into academic papers versus industry papers represents two extremes. One is a highly regimented process that can require many months or years of painstaking work in order to button up the analysis to an incredibly exacting level of detail. And in the other there is no quality-control process at all; analysts can literally release whatever they want into the world without being forced to explain their methods, present raw results or release their data if an outside party wishes to replicate their results. My hope is that the tech industry can find a middle ground. We should educate the public about how to be more scrutinizing consumers of research – teach people to ask the right questions and look for the answers that have substance. It’s not only the higher-integrity path but also the logical one, as it plays to our strengths as technologists and innovators. We’ve already seen results in the technology industry that have similar ethos, such as open source projects, which have given us a better infrastructure on the web, in databases and more. We can take that system, implement academic rigor and detail and keep those peer-review circles open, transparent and diverse. Close and careful scrutiny on the back-end will only benefit the industry. |
Ruben Bolling Talks About Cartooning As A Career In The Internet Age | John Biggs | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | It’s time and we decided to share some insight and advice from some amazing people. The first participant in our BTS school series of interviews is (pictured here), a lawyer-turned-cartoonist who moved from print to a primarily online presence thanks to his poignant, pithy, and hilarious art. RB: I had a bizarre route to cartooning: I was a brand-new lawyer and decided to be a cartoonist. I’ve almost always continued this dual path, doing cartooning while also maintaining a job in the legal/business fields. I guess the lesson that’s applicable to anyone is that I simply decided I was a cartoonist and pursued it relentlessly. My specific business has been newspaper comic strip cartoonist, and the hardest thing about that business is that it is absolutely disappearing. The solution for me has been to expand into other fields like web cartooning and writing books. RB: I think the best thing a student can do to help succeed in any field is to simply begin. Even as a student, and even if nobody is paying you or paying attention. In the case of cartooning, that means start drawing comics, even if they just go in a drawer. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll learn and improve. So, don’t say, “I’m going to be a cartoonist” — just BE one! RB: I don’t know! Many of the new web cartoonists I admire are people I know nothing about, and have no idea if they’re 21 or 60. There’s something very democratizing about the web.
Here’s the worst cartooning advice I ever gave. I was once on a panel about alternative newspaper comic strip cartooning, and someone asked about getting into the field. The whole panel, myself included, described how the field was contracting at an absolutely alarming rate, and there were fewer and fewer opportunities. We said it was almost impossible to break in. A few days later I saw a post online by someone in attendance who complained that we were self-serving jerks for saying there was no room for anyone else in our field. And that person was right. Everything the panel said was correct, but I should have added that anyone in the audience who could be discouraged by what we said probably wouldn’t make it in the field anyway. Those who will succeed will listen to us and then figure out a way to plug away anyway because they simply must. The truth is, I was told a similar thing when I started, and against all good advice I kept trying because I knew I had no choice. The two most important attributes anyone can have in any endeavor are persistence and passion. |
LendingClub Files For $500M IPO | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 8 | 27 | , a company that provides an online loan marketplace, has filed to raise up to $500 million in its initial public offering. The San Francisco-based LendingClub, as with many technology companies currently seeking the public markets, has quickly growing revenues but isn’t profitable. The company had net revenue of $86.94 million in the first half of 2014, up from $37.09 million in the year-ago period. The cost of that revenue growth swung LendingClub from profit to loss. In The first half of 2013, LendingClub had net income of $1.74 million. In the same period this year, the company lost $16.49 million. The company’s sales and marketing costs jumped from $16.12 million to $39.81 million when comparing the first half of 2013 and the first half of 2014. LendingClub doesn’t loan out its own capital and collects fees of loans that are originated on its platform from both individuals and more sophisticated investors alike. The more loans that pass through its network, the more money that LendingClub nets without putting more immediate risk onto its books — a neat mechanism. According to the S-1, LendingClub receives between 1 percent and 6 percent of the principal amount of loaned monies. Also, LendingClub charges investors a small percent — around 1, but variable — management fee, and takes a roughly 1 percent servicing fee on transacted payments. According , LendingClub has previously raised $392.9 million in venture capital over the course of 12 rounds — the company’s most recent capital infusion, $65 million, touched down in April of this year. LendingClub reported cash of just under $67 million in its S-1 document. LendingClub’s loan volume has quickly grown. The company indicates that it has “facilitated” over $5 billion in loans since its birth in 2007. $1 billion of that tally occurred in the second quarter of 2014, implying rapid expansion of demand for its services. According to the filing, loan volume increased by 125 percent from the first half of 2013 to the first half of 2014. The company’s preliminary S-1 doesn’t indicate what its ticker symbol will be, or what exchange it will list on. The document does indicate that the company intends to execute its offering this year. LendingClub’s IPO could set a benchmark for other companies that have growing revenues and cost structures that lead to GAAP losses. |
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