title stringlengths 2 283 ⌀ | author stringlengths 4 41 ⌀ | year int64 2.01k 2.02k | month int64 1 12 | day int64 1 31 | content stringlengths 1 111k ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Aereo Apologizes To Customers Affected By Service Outage During Golden Globes | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | Aereo, the streaming TV startup backed by media mogul Barry Diller, has apologized for a brief service outage tonight. The outage only lasted about an hour, but was especially unfortunate because it coincided with the Golden Globes. “Aereo experienced a partial outage in New York City tonight, which impacted a small group of users who were unable to access their accounts. Our engineers have worked to resolve the issue. We are truly sorry for the inconvenience and encourage any Aereo members impacted by the outage to reach out to support@aereo.com,” Virginia Lam, Aereo’s VP of communications and government relations, told us. The outage struck Aereo’s largest market, New York City, where it launched in 2012. Though brief, the outage was another challenge in a busy week for the startup. Two days ago . At the center of the dispute is the fact that Aereo takes OTA signals out of the air through miniature antennas and streams content over the Internet to any device for a low monthly fee. If successful, Aereo could potentially upend the current TV/cable subscription model even more than on-demand streaming video platforms like Netflix. So far, Aereo has won appellate cases in Boston and New York, but networks have refused to give up. The Supreme Court’s ruling will not only decide once and for all if Aereo’s operations are legal, but have potentially far-reaching ramifications for the future of the online media industry. |
Rumored Windows ‘Threshold’ Update Could Recast Microsoft’s Key Platform | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | Microsoft mostly kept its head down during CES, but with its Build developer conference on the horizon and several platforms to unify, the company has a busy few months ahead of it. Recently, both and wrote on Microsoft’s future ‘Threshold’ Windows update. Threshold is not what Microsoft will release in 2014. That code, an update to Windows 8.1, will likely land in the first half of this year, along with an . Simply put, we should see Windows Phone 8.1 and an . But what is further ahead matters more. Threshold, the 2015 update to Windows, will likely be named Windows 9 . Thurrott , but goes further, indicating that it will include a rethinking of the Metro-facing elements of the operating system, a change that could include “a windowed mode that works on the desktop.” Thurrott also mentions that Microsoft is aiming for an April 2015 release date for Threshold. That’s almost an interesting timing. If Microsoft completes and ships Windows Phone 8.1 and the Windows 8.1 update in April, they will be the code that ships on computers for the rest of the year. If Windows 9 ships in April of 2015, Microsoft will be releasing its new code in the first half of the year in an industry that can see hardware sales cycles titled towards the second half of the year. This would also lead to a very decoulpled Windows and Surface release schedules. It seems likely that we will be given a taste of the Windows to come at Build. The Windows 8.1 update could help Microsoft staunch yet continuing losses in the size of the greater PC market, but it’s clear that PCs themselves could use a shot in the arm. Thurrott is pessimistic on the current Windows-machine market: Windows 8 has set back Microsoft, and Windows, by years, and possibly for good. […] Threshold will target this new world. It could very well be a make or break release. That almost feels too extreme, but only slightly: If alternative operating systems can prove themselves as PC possibilities, the total size of the PC market won’t be indicative of Microsoft’s own market scale. That’s a reality Microsoft can’t afford. Foley has a final thought that is worth repeating: “Threshold will include updates to all three Windows OS platforms (Xbox One, Windows and Windows Phone) that will advance them in a way to share even more common elements.” That squares with all the above: Microsoft will continue its process of uniting its larger operating system varietals while at once trying to unwind at least some of the bind that Windows 8.x has caused its users. We’ll have more in short order, but keep it safe to say that the first half of this year and the next are going to be critical for Microsoft’s most sacred platform. |
Dustcloud Transforms You Into a Virtual Assassin | John Biggs | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | As a kid who grew up on Lazer Tag and the , the idea of a compact, always-on live action RPG is very compelling. fits that bill. Created by a designer named Howard Hunt, the game uses small, gun-shaped “Dusters” that have LEDs that register hits and damage taken. You can use your Duster in street to secretly hit other players and because it uses RF signals there you simply need to be in line of sight rather than aim directly at a small target. The guns use Bluetooth LE to communicate with your phone and notify you of hit statistics and the whereabouts of other players. You can play offline with friends or join in on a massive, world-wide networked game. We tried the game at and found it to be quite fun. While it takes some set-up – Hunt himself initialized the guns up for us – he expects things to get easier with time. The team, which includes and Hunt, is looking for $100,000. They’ve raised and offer a number of packages including a single gun kit for $55 or a dual gun kit for $90. The “aftermarket” proposition is actually kind of interesting: if you want to play online with players around the world (a prospect that would assume massive market saturation), you can buy bullets (called speks) for 5 cents each. You store your speks on your smartphone and when someone shoots you they gather up your speks. This would presumably encourage you not to die so much. When we played the game in a dark parking lot at CES we had an absolute blast. Once you understand how the guns operate and how to hit other players it becomes easier to have a bit of fun. It also makes you a bit winded, which is always a good thing. Dustcloud sits firmly in the tradition of laser games of yore and that, I think, is a good thing. [kickstarter url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/enter-the-dustcloud/dustcloud-turn-your-street-into-a-battlefield width=640] |
DuckDuckGo’s Popularity Exploded In 2013 Following The NSA/PRISM Leaks | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | See that graph up there? Thats a chart of how many queries the privacy-minded search engine has seen each day since early 2010. See that growth near the end? That’s when details of the NSA’s PRISM program first leaked. Pretty much overnight, DuckDuckGo more than doubled its traffic. I don’t think there’s a better way to portray the sudden and massive surge in the public’s desire for Internet privacy than that graph and the . The month before Snowden’s revelations, DuckDuckGo saw 54.4 million requests. The month after, it saw 105.6 million. Incredible. Wondering what the heck DuckDuckGo is? That’s okay. But once you know, be sure to tell your friends. DuckDuckGo is sometimes portrayed as the “anti-Google”, but that’s not quite right. It’s more like bizarro-world Google. It looks similar, it acts similar — but in the end, it has totally different motives. DuckDuckGo aims to offer up the simplicity and functionality of the big search engines, minus all the creepy tracking stuff. The company outlines everything they do/don’t store , but most importantly: it doesn’t use tracking cookies, and it doesn’t save a record of your IP.
All in all, DuckDuckGo’s total search count for 2013 came in at just over 1 billion – more than double what it saw in 2012. There’s still room to grow, though — lots, and lots of room. Even after their monstrous mid-year spike, DuckDuckGo’s numbers are a tiny drop in the worlds biggest bucket when put up against the likes of giants. Google pulled in over 1.2 searches in 2012, for example. That’s 3.2 billion searches, or roughly 3X all of DuckDuckGo’s annual traffic, each . DuckDuckGo last raised money ($3M) at the end of 2011, long before Edward Snowden was a household name. With these numbers and the ever-growing demand for privacy online, raising another round would probably be like a walk in the park. |
Mophie Team Explains Why It’s Expanding From Power To Storage | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | Mophie earlier this week that it’s expanding beyond its popular with the upcoming launch of the Mophie Space Pack. Shortly after the announcement, I stopped by the Mophie booth at the Consumer Electronics Show to get a demo of the new product. The company’s PR manager Kevin Malinowski told that from Mophie’s perspective, the company has “almost perfected” its battery products, so the team was looking for “the next pain point,” and it settled on storage. People often feel like they don’t have enough storage space on their phone, he said, so they have to start deleting things to make room. Malinowski added that solutions like cloud storage may have their place, but they fall short in some respects — for example, you could store files in the cloud and want to access them while on a flight, but then find that you can’t get to them because the plane doesn’t have reliable WiFi (or any WiFi at all). Mophie’s approach to the problem, he said, wasn’t to create “something brand new,” but instead something that’s “very familiar feeling.” On the hardware side, that means creating a device looks almost identical to Mophie’s existing products. In fact, while it’s storing your files, it’s also providing battery power to your phone. Charlie Quong, the company’s senior director of product management, laid the Mophie Space Pack down next to the and they were virtually identical, aside from a silver button on the back of the Space Pack that’s used for turning it on and off. On the software side, the interface should feel fairly intuitive to iOS users. You access the files through an app on your phone, which allows you to browse them based on type, i.e., videos, music, documents, and so on. Quong was also able to play a movie file ( , if I’m not mistaken) from the Space Pack without any significant lag time. Mophie has taken advantage of the various APIs that Apple provides, so the Space Pack should work with any file type that’s “natively supported by the iPhone,” Quong said, though its capabilities will be limited if a file is protected by DRM. As for getting those files onto the Space Pack, the storage unit can be connected to your computer via USB. Or if someone sends a file via email, when you select it, saving the file to Mophie will show up as an option. Quong also showed me several settings for automatically saving your camera roll — there’s even a special camera feature within the app that allows you to take photos that are saved directly into the Space Pack. Mophie plans to start shipping the Space Pack (which is ) on March 14 — it offers a 16 gigabyte model for $149.95 and a 32 gigabyte model for $179.95. And although the current version only works with the iPhone 5 and 5s, Quong said the company is interested in supporting other devices as well, particularly other iOS devices. The new product, he said, “actually opens the door up to a whole new base of users.” |
Web-Based Access To Dropbox Files Is Back For 99% Of Users, But Service Interruption Nears 48 Hours | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | it has restored its core services for all users as of 4:40 PT, and it currently only has to work out a few kinks with the Dropbox photos tab. Plus, for those interested, there’s an extensive post-mortem of what exactly happened over at the . Many Dropbox users are still facing a partial outage that has been going on for nearly 48 hours at this point, and Dropbox is still scrambling to restore all services to everyone. The Dropbox site and service went down shortly after 6 PM PT on Friday, January 10, and continues to affect what Dropbox calls “a small number of users.” Specifically, around 5 percent of users still can’t sync files from the desktop client, and 20 percent are having issues on mobile. A fix is rolling out soon to improve both those numbers, Dropbox says. Early claims suggested the , but Dropbox categorically denied the involvement of any external organizations or individuals in the current problems, and the hackers who originally claimed responsibility . According to updates posted to its official tech blog, Dropbox technicians have been making gradual progress on restoring service to affected users, but it’s noting via its that “not everything is working for everybody.” It seems to be reintroducing features gradually, prioritizing basic access to all documents and adding the rest as time permits. It’s not clear how far-reaching the current outage is, but Dropbox is still very actively responding to user requests for information and updates via its support Twitter. |
CrunchWeek: CES, CES, And CES | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | Talk about a long week. Along with a Polar Vortex infiltration, which left much of the northeast straight up frozen, the southwest had its own invasion: . Vendors, exhibitors, buyers and members of the media ventured to sunny Las Vegas from all over the world to check out the latest gadgets and gizmos from thousands of electronics companies. That said, we couldn’t resist discussing the magic and splendor of CES in this week’s episode of , the show that brings a few TechCrunch writers together to chat about the most fascinating stories of the past seven days in tech. In this episode, Greg Kumparak, Darrell Etherington and I discuss a few of our favorite things, including the new Oculus Rift virtual gaming headset, Qualcomm’s incredible new mobile processor, and the shining stars of our inaugural Hardware Battlefield. |
What Games Are: Local Stream Gaming | Tadhg Kelly | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | Along with all of the furore over and their lack of oomph at CES, there were three big gaming announcements. One was the announcement of Huawaei’s hot on the heels of (albeit possibly only temporarily) about the sale of foreign consoles within its borders. I should let others talk about the whys and wherefores of the Tron (conflicts of interest etc) but I find it significant that larger manufacturers are showing an interesting in the micro-space. The other two pieces of stand-out news were also about TV gaming. First: Valve showed off some Steam Machines from OEM manufacturers that almost immediately confirmed months of speculation about . The overall reaction from the gaming media has , essentially asking whether in a world where gamers can own super-lush PS4s running next generation games for $400, the prospect of shelling out three times as much just because it’s Steam is realistic. Second: , a subscription service that will allow users to play back catalog PlayStation 1,2 and 3 games via an updated version of its Gaikai technology. You will be able to play on your phone, goes the promise, via the cloud. Yet the physical problems of remote gaming via the cloud that undid are still real. Then there’s also the support issues of working with back catalog games and jimmying them into working with new devices. Furthermore although gamers often hoard back catalogs of games, they never really jive with the idea of paying $10 a month a la Netflix or Spotify to do so. So I don’t think either the Steam Machine or PlayStation Now are going to prove game changers. However I do think both are dancing around the core of an idea that could prove moderately disruptive: local streaming. When Valve announced SteamOS etc a few months ago, one of the features that it pushed was the idea of streaming games in the home. It goes something like this: You have your gaming PC with its vast hard drive and whatnot in one room, and your fancy Steam Controller interfacing with your Steam Machine in your TV room. SteamOS can then stream your games from one to the other across your local WiFi network, et voila. You can play from your couch. Nintendo has essentially the same idea (in reverse) with the Wii U. Its big controller can act as a screen, allowing you to play in your lap while someone else watches TV. Sony likewise with Remote Play. You can currently use a PS Vita and a few PS3 games in a manner similar to Wii U. But you can do it much more easily with a PS4 and apparently it . Like the appeal of Apple’s AirPlay or other technologies, there’s an argument to be made that local game streaming is a neat problem that some people would like solved. That rather than big cloud adventures whose appeal is uncertain or over-specced TV-PCs whose attraction gets lost in questions of price, companies like Valve and Sony should be thinking in simpler, thinner terms. Here’s what I mean: If local streaming works well then why does the Steam Machine need to be a warhorse computer under your TV? And for Sony and the other console makers, I have a similar question. If a PS4 can be used as a hub machine that can stream out games locally, why is a big cloud necessary? Console gamers don’t generally care about back catalog games as much the Internet thinks they should, so while I can see On the other hand f It’s a little of me but I have several TVs and monitors around my house to which I would like to be able to stream games. Sometimes I want to play a console game while my wife wants to watch a TV show, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I want my game to be reduced down to a Vita’s less-than-impressive 5 inch screen. Moving a console is a pain, so often I just don’t bother. But I would buy a sized product to solve that problem if my PS4 games could stream to it. Maybe I’d buy a couple and hook them up to the various screens in my house, so I could game in bed, game on the couch, game in my office and so on at the flick of a switch. Much as I have with my Apple TV and iTunes, I could see myself buying into that kind of local streaming for my gaming because it would solve a convenience problem. But do I really need a subscription to play laggy versions of games I played years ago? That I just don’t see. |
French Custom Travel Startup Evaneos Raises $6M To Continue Competing With European Tour Operators | Steve O'Hear | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | , a French startup that competes with traditional tour operators by providing a marketplace for tailored travel experiences, has raised $6 million in Series B funding. The round is being led by XAnge Private Equity, with participation from previous investor ISAI. This brings total funding for the four year old company to around $7 million, having raised a little over $1 million in two previous rounds from various angels and ISAI. Meanwhile, Paris-headquartered Evaneos says the new capital will be used for European growth, specifically to launch in new countries beyond France, Spain, Italy and Germany where it currently operates. It says the investment will also enable it to triple its workforce in the coming years. In 2012 it grew staff to 20 employees, up from 12 employees the previous year. Furthermore, additional features are being planned to enable its community of active travelers to exchange and share information, such as opinions or photos, taking the company’s proposition beyond discovery and booking. Founded by Eric La Bonnardière (CEO) and Yvan Wibaux (CTO), Evaneos provides an online platform to help travellers design, estimate the cost, and book a personalised trip by connecting them with local agents in each destination country, who then offer advice and assistance. These local agents are tourism professionals, also known as Destination Management Companies, who traditionally provide services to major tour operators. In that sense, it’s a classic online play that serves to remove the intermediary. “Our competitors are the tour-operators that offer discovery and adventure tours. We revolutionize their business model by cutting out the middle-men,” Evaneos CEO Eric La Bonnardière tells TechCrunch. “We are a marketplace that connects travelers with selected local agencies all around the world. Travelers customize trips directly with local experts who give the best of their countries and save money.” Local agencies therefore work directly for travellers, offering a fully customized service, specialized expertise and assistance on site (pick-up at the airport, assistance number 24/7, etc.) with a price that Evaneos claims is 20% to 30% cheaper due to the absence of an intermediary. To that end, sales appear to have been growing at a decent clip, at least doubling year-on-year: €2 million in 2010, €7 million in 2011, and €14 million in 2012. Evaneos makes money by charging a fee for each transaction on its website. It says the fee is much less than the margin typical of a tour operator and is transparent for customers — it’s paid by local agencies without increasing the end-customer price. |
null | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 1 | 15 | null |
SolarCooler Keeps Your Brews Icy With The Power Of The Sun, But It’ll Cost You $1K | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | Every year at CES, the Eureka Park outpost where they stick the scrappy startups is the best damn part of the whole shindig. This is where all the people with a screw loose or a decided lack of good common sense come to peddle their spaghetti-cooking robot or aroma-powered computer – or, as happened this year, their . SolarCooler is a “world first,” which is a common epithet at Eureka Park, and it’s currently undergoing crowdfunding on Indiegogo. The startup is looking for $150,000 to make their portable refrigerator (it even makes ice!) a reality, but it’s currently looking like it’ll need a real groundswell of support to get there. Here’s the big issue: the entry-level model costs just under $1,000, and that’s a special backer-only price. Retail for the SolarCooler is $1,200, which is bound to be a bitter pill to swallow even for the most ardent of tailgaters. Still, this is essentially a solar-powered 12V battery backup for everything combined with a cooler that offers true, continuous refrigeration, so that price tag starts to look at lot more reasonable when you consider its other potential uses. It also has a lot of potential to help out in commercial and medical settings as a transport for goods that need to be kept cool when direct power is in scarce supply and loading up a device with a significant number of batteries would make it cumbersome to use. SolarCooler is pursuing a flex funding goal, meaning it walks away with whatever it raises, and the founder seems keen on building it whatever the outcome, but there are still over 40 days left in the campaign, so it could still turn into a Cinderella story. All I know is I like beer, and I like it cold (that ‘best served at room temperature stuff’ is BS) so SolarCooler makes sense to me. |
Brilliant: Someone’s Apparently Using Tinder To Collect Uber Referral Credits | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | Yesterday, a somewhat sheepish TechCrunch employee forwarded the above screenshots to our team, showing what looks like an advertisement for on dating app . The promotion offers first-time users $20 off if they sign up to Uber using a promo code. There’s only one problem: The ad wasn’t placed by Uber. Using the screen name “Uberly,” the advertisement promises new users a $20 discount on their first ride: Tinder Freebies!
January: Free $20 when you download Uber
Just enter promo code 8177y New accounts only, limited time offer. Tinder on ;) We reached out to both Uber and Tinder about the account after we saw it, thinking maybe it was some sort of marketing campaign. As Tinder recently began running its first so-called native ads for not long ago, and that Uber has done co-marketing partnerships with any number of different startups over the years, it didn’t seem unusual that the two would intersect. Yet, there was something weird about the promotion. For one thing, the user name is “Uberly,” not Uber. Also, the childish photoshop doesn’t really match Uber’s ultra-sleek design aesthetic. And from the Tinder side, it’s one thing to run ads of . It’s a whole other thing to promote a brand with a fake profile. Anyway, an Uber representative tells us that the ad was not placed by the on-demand ride service after all. When asked where it came from, she suggested it was probably an Uber user trying to stock up on $20 referral credits using a personalized promo code, but couldn’t confirm it. Tinder didn’t get back to us, but it’s a pretty safe bet that the account violates its , specifically the part about not “engag[ing] in commercial activities and/or sales without our prior written consent such as contests, sweepstakes, barter, advertising, and pyramid schemes” and the part about not “infring[ing] any third party’s copyrights or other rights (e.g., trademark, privacy rights, etc.).” So why would a person do such a thing? Besides the fact that it’s ingenious, one theory floated by the TechCrunch team is that sending an Uber to pick up your date is apparently becoming a “thing.” One TechCrunch staffer wrote: I heard that its a new thing that girls are expecting to be picked up in an Uber. It’s the next version of having the guy pay for the check. On an unrelated note, I’m going to have to sell my organs for money. This stirred up some debate within the team, with the more levelheaded among us urging our co-worker not to sell his organs. Another staffer said ladies expecting this type of thing would fall under his personal “Rule of People Not To Date.” But then, we’re just a bunch of middle-income journalists trying to get by in a city of social media millionaires. And we’re maybe just a little bit jealous we didn’t think of this first. Tinder confirms to TechCrunch that this is indeed against their Terms of Service, and says it will continue to take steps to keep bots and fakes off of the service. |
Apple Gets Serious About The iPad’s Creative Power In New Ad | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiyIcz7wUH0&w=640&h=390] Apple aired a new iPad advertisement during the NFL playoff game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Carolina Panthers today, and it’s all about creativity. It’s no secret that Apple wants to push the creative aspect of its mobile devices, which are still seen largely as consumption gadgets, and this new ad embraces a grand vision of iOS as fertile ground for inspiration and creation. “What will your verse be?” is the tagline for the ad, and the idea is that each person gets to contribute one verse to the overall poem of human experience (which is a terrible poem by the way). The iPad in the commercial is used in a number of different creative capacities, including as a filming accessory, as a prototyping tool, as a means for writing, and as a way to 3D prototype and work in the depths of the ocean. It’s telling that many early iPad commercials depicted users in familiar settings using the gadget on their laps, on their couches or in other similarly mundane situations, while this one takes the tablet to the far corners of the earth. Apple also lists the uses depicted in the commercial in greater detail on its to give more context. The message is not only that the iPad is capable of true creativity, but also that it’s an aspirational device: This is a lifestyle ad akin to the kind of thing you see from Lexus and other high-end car manufacturers, and that’s a good marketing strategy for the iPad in terms of capitalizing on Apple’s brand cachet. The perceived superiority of Apple tablets in terms of quality is a key weapon the company retains in its ongoing battle with Android slates, after all. |
The Automobile As A Consumer Mobile Frontier | Semil Shah | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | TechCrunch I’ve never been to CES before, but it’s hard to escape the flurry of noisy tweets and headlines. One morsel that managed catch my attention centered around major automobile manufacturers announcing deals with the leading mobile operating system players, Android (Google) and iOS (Apple) and Microsoft. Now, it’s hard to know if these are true statements of intent or just the beginning legs of a PR campaign piggybacking on the worldwide given to CES annually, but given how many folks I see on their mobile phones while simultaneously driving leads me to have confidence that the automobile is indeed a consumer mobile frontier. For this week’s column on mobile, I want to take a slightly different approach. There’s no use in rehashing what all the PR releases and tech blogs have written about “the connected car,” so instead, I’ll start from first-principles, assuming most of this space remains mostly greenfield and likely to be more complex than these larger multinational automakers would like us to believe. Here’s the framework I use to think about the challenge, but also the opportunity, and would love to read your thoughts or reactions below: I missed the memo on this but realized when I was pulled over for adjusting the volume on my phone while I was in the car that new laws (at least in California) prohibit the use of a phone under any circumstance. The driver must be pulled over to the side and car placed in “Park” in order to operate the phone, adjust Maps, and so forth. I wonder if state governments will get stricter here. If so, it presents an opportunity for car manufacturers to build better dashboards for consumers. Not surprisingly, Google and Apple are interested in expanding their platforms into our cars, but Apple’s iOS is more of closed system, whereas one can imagine the malleability of Android would be more attractive to automakers. I did notice Audi announced a partnership with Google to bring Android into the car. My suspicion here is this gives Audi more control over how the OS is deployed. For instance, in 2013 announced it would allow developers to write apps directly onto their platform. Is that what consumers want, or do they want to use the same apps and brands they’re already accustomed to? (Incidentally, an auto OS could be a point of marketing contention. What if customers start basing their car purchases over what OS the car offers? More specifically, since BMW is aligned with Apple, will loyal Audi owners make the switch? I realize this scenario presents a grotesque first-world problem, but that said, these purchases represent real profits in a huge industry.) I’m sure to the Verizons and AT&Ts of the world, the day of truly “connected car” couldn’t be more exciting. These days, carriers are making their money by charging for tiered data plans (and international gouging). Right now, it’s a bit clunky to connect our own mobile devices to the car, the best option being Bluetooth, though it’s not perfect. More and more cars have audio-in jacks for auxiliary lines, but those connections offer distort the signal. There’s the trusty cassette-tape adapter (which I use!), but that is not the future. A more fully-integrated system will likely encourage drivers to use more services beyond just radio/music and maps (such as radar systems), and in the process, more data — especially as future generations grow more accustomed to streaming data versus keeping it on the client-side. The focus of what auto manufacturers will do for “connected cars” seems to be on the driver’s control dashboard. The tall, vertical dashboard inside Tesla’s Model S embodies this, almost the side of two iPads side-by-side. For the driver, apps need to be easy to see and use, and will present new UI challenges (and calls for safety regulation). For instance, will it all be touch and glass, or are physical buttons more useful while conducting another task which requires motor skills. (Pun intended.) They’ll also need to be more and “ ” experiences, like . Will front passengers be able to use the dashboard apps, but more immersed than their drivers? But, why stop there — shouldn’t all passengers have their own screens, the same we do on modern aircraft? Some cars already provide screens for the rear passengers, but consider one for every seat. Or, would these folks just use their own devices and simply need convenient access to A/C power? Today, the apps I use while driving are Google Maps, Spotify and Pandora (for music), (for talk radio, where I work), and (for driving stats). How will this change over time? Consumers tend to change their mobile phones and tablets about every two years, give or take, but not their cars. That presents issues for embedded dashboard systems which could be running on outdated hardware, even though the software is easier to update. Ideally, drivers could just buy their own tablet (of a pre-selected bunch) and then drop the tablet (and data provider) of their choice into their car. This would allow them to upgrade to newer hardware and keep their car. I don’t know the specifics, but I worry that the automakers will first try to own this glass and likely end up reliving the old navigation system problem where handheld technologies continue to improve. It could feel like sitting on an airplane in 2014 and having the screen in the seatback facing you be from 2007. We all know what that feels like, and it doesn’t feel like the future. I have faith with cars, it will different than the airlines, and better — I just don’t know how yet, but I’m excited to see it all unfold. / |
TEO Is A Smart Padlock That You Control Via Bluetooth From Your Smartphone | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | [kickstarter url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/804149834/teo-the-future-of-the-padlock-is-here width=640] Smart locks are all the rage these days, and it makes sense: using a device instead of a hardware key means you’re far less likely to lose the means to opening the lock, and you can do it remotely from anywhere with a connection. Project that wants to bring smart features to that most basic of everyday security devices, the padlock. The TEO uses an app to control a Bluetooth LE lock device, which has a basic hinge and a design that instantly sets it apart from other padlocks out there. It’s also a rights-management platform, whereby you can see the location of your TEO locks on a map, and share access to each individually with anyone else that has the TEO app as you choose. So if you need a friend to pick up the bike you left outside their apartment last night and bring it back to you, it’s as simple as granting them temporary access to that TEO. The padlock hardware itself is designed to be at least as theft-resistant as existing options on the market, as well as rugged and able to withstand all kinds of weather while keeping the smart features operational. It’ll be made by Heliox Tech, a manufacturer based in California that has worked on U.S. military and underwater tech for nearly a decade, though the design is from Vancouver-based Form3. Of course, using BLE means that battery is a concern; TEO says that using a sophisticated sleep mode, it will last for at least one year in its final design. Users will be able to monitor battery life via the companion smartphone application, too, to make sure they don’t run out of juice and get left with a locked locker. The company also offers support that will swap out exhausted batteries, and help with bugs that cause locks to become unresponsive. TEO creator OckCorp is looking for $165,000 to get its product off the ground, and has already raised around $34,000 as of this writing. A $79 pledge will currently get you one of the first production units, with a target ship date of December 2014. While the basic combo lock won’t be going out of style anytime soon, this definitely suit the needs of bike sharing organizations, delivery locker companies and others who have the need for a distributed, managed solution, as well as adventurous early adopters. |
Sony Adds To Its Global Mobile Lineup With The Xperia T2 Ultra And Xperia E1 Android Phones | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | Sony is adding two smartphones to its growing stable of devices. Meet the Xperia T2 Ultra and the Xperia E1 — both substantial updates to Sony’s 2013 models. Best yet, both are offered in dual-sim variants. These latest phones join the announced last week at CES. However, it seems Sony held these close to its chest, as they’re somewhat mundane and not destined for the U.S. market. And, as Sony found out from years of experience, to “win” CES requires focused and streamlined announcements and not a proverbial conveyor belt of press releases. Sony is up front about the T2 Ultra’s destination: This phone is for emerging markets like China, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific rim, touts the press release. But this phone isn’t lacking in any substantial way. It’s packed to the gills with the best Sony has to offer, including a near edgeless design with a 6-inch screen and a 13MP camera. The major downside of the phone comes in the way of a quad-core 1.4 GHz Snapdragon of an unannounced pedigree. However, the battery life is likely stellar thanks to this slower SoC and 3000 mAh battery. The E1 is the budget phone in the mix. It leans on Sony’s audio brand and sports a speaker capable of hitting 100Db in case you want to share your love of Neil Young with co-workers in a different office building. Up front is a 4-inch screen, up from 3.2-inches found in the Xperia E released in early 2013. There is no word on pricing or release dates, though. Sony is likely holding that information until Mobile World Congress in February. With these latest models, Sony is continuing down the course of offering a simplified device lineup. The company is putting a lot of emphasis on just a few devices in each market unlike in the past when it would flood the scene with countless SKUs. |
Yandex Adds Facebook Posts And Big Data To Its Search Results In Russia, Other Home Markets | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | and had a notable run-in last year when a team of developers from the Russian search giant created a social search app called , which Facebook , leading to . But in reality the two sides have been working together since 2010, and today comes the latest chapter in the collaboration. Yandex is launching a social search feature that will serve Yandex visitors related, real-time public posts from Facebook alongside other search results. Yandex, which accounts for around 60% of all searches in Russia, will also use Facebook firehose data to help provide more relevant results. From what we understand, this is a non-commercial deal, with access to the firehose free. Yandex would not comment on whether it would eventually add commercial elements — say, around search ads. The only other search engine that uses Facebook in its results is in the U.S. A provisional mock-up of how the Yandex implementation will look is pictured at the top and below of this post. The move is significant for a few reasons: — It’s a way for Yandex to provide more socially credible (and some may argue accurate) information at a time when people are turning to social networks like Twitter and Facebook, as well as Google, as their primary source for searches. Bypassing search engines like Yandex ultimately hits its bread-and-butter advertising business. — It’s a way for Facebook to continue to raise its profile among Russian consumers, and sign up new users, to compete better against local favorite Vkontakte. “Yandex indexes many blog hosting services, microblogs and social networks,” a spokesperson told me. “Now, having received full access to Facebook’s firehose of public data, this social network will be better represented in Yandex’s search results.” — On a wider level, it’s a sign of how Facebook is making moves to extend into international markets by partnering with local players. Today: Yandex. Tomorrow: Baidu? (Maybe not so soon.) Like the Bing agreement, Yandex uses a Facebook “firehose” covering all real-time data. For Yandex, it is restricted to public posts from Facebook users in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Turkey. That covers “tens of millions” of users, according to a Yandex spokesperson. The Yandex relationship is starting out gradually. First, Facebook posts will only come up in search results on Yandex’s blog search page. “The next step is to use Facebook updates on the main search page (yandex.ru or yandex.com.tr),” a spokesperson tells me. On the main search page, Facebook will be used as a kind of social radar, listing results from whatever topics are trending at the moment, as well as posts related to the latest news. The spokesperson says in the “near future” users will not only see public posts in their search results, but comments made on those posts (something Bing launched in ). Profiles and posts that Facebook users mark ‘Private’ will remain unindexed and unsearchable, he added. The other side of the deal is a big data play: Yandex will incorporate data from Facebook’s public firehose into its own search algorithm to enhance search results. That will mean more links to articles and videos that have been shared a lot on Facebook, but also a change to the overall search results. “The popularity of materials on Facebook will be taken into consideration when ranking webpages in search results,” the spokesperson says. The partnership between Yandex and Facebook goes back to 2010, when Yandex started to tap into updates on Facebook Pages to provide more detailed results on searches of public figures and organizations (similar to what Google does with data from Wikipedia in its search results). |
null | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 12 | null |
Call Marketing Company Invoca Raises $20M Round Led By Accel | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | , the call marketing company , is announcing that it has raised $20 million in Series C funding. The company has now raised more than $30 million, with the current round led by Accel Partners. Upfront Ventures and Rincon Venture Partners also participated, and Accel’s Kobie Fuller has joined the company’s board of directors. “Despite the fact that their highest-value leads arrive through phone calls, CMOs are routinely stymied by the call channel, assuming that it lacks the same measurement and optimization that other digital channels possess,” Fuller said in the funding release. “Invoca is determined to change that mindset by offering the most effective solutions available to enterprise marketers in this channel.” Invoca’s products include call tracking, call analytics, and custom treatment based on factors like location and whether they’re a new customer. It also integrates with other sales and marketing products including Salesforce.com, Adobe, Kenshoo, Marketo, iCrossing, Cake, Tealium, and HasOffers. The company supposedly saw an annual growth rate of 200 percent last year. It says that it’s used by “more than 3,000 marketers” including those at Liberty Mutual Insurance, OpenTable, Answer Financial and DirecTV. An Invoca spokesperson told me that the company plans to open a Bay Area office (it’s headquartered in Santa Barbara, Calif.) and double its workforce to more than 150 people in the next year. It will also be spending more on sales, marketing, and product development, the spokesperson said. |
For More Than War: Airware Demos Its Drone Platform By Protecting Rhinos From Poachers | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | wants to prove drones have plenty of uses beyond killing people. Today the unmanned aerial vehicle hardware/software/firmware startup detailed how it’s built and deployed special drones to thwart animal poachers in Kenya, Africa. The demo could build interest for the launch of Airware’s commercial drone platform later this year. Airware was founded in 2010 and graduated from with the goal of bringing the drone revolution to a wide variety of businesses and other areas such as precision agriculture, land management, infrastructure inspection of powerlines or oil derricks, and search and rescue. builds drone hardware, software and firmware operating systems that control them, as well as their user interfaces. Businesses and organizations can then build apps and other functionality on top of Airware’s drone platform to perform their own specific purpose without having to create an end-to-end UAV system by themselves. In May 2013, Airware raised a big led by and joined by , , , , , and — the biggest post-Demo Day round in Y Combinator history. It’s been using the money to bridge the gap between hardcore military UAV development, and the do-it-yourself drones and toy quadcopters that have recently become popular. Later this year, Airware’s commercial drone platform will expand beyond beta testser and become broadly available. But first it needs to help change the world’s perception of what drones are for. “We want to educate people on the very positive uses for drones”, Airware founder and CEO Jonathan Downey tells me. Jeff Bezos’ certainly helped, but commercial drone use in heavily populated area is a still a ways off and will require strict regulation. Airware wants to show how drones can be used for good right now. So in December, Airware sent a team to Kenya to work at Ol Pejeta, East Africa’s biggest black rhino sanctuary. There the worked the Ol Pejeta Conservancy to deploy a drone built specifically to monitor the sanctuary for intrusions by poachers using the drone’s on-board cameras. Airware writes that “The drone, equipped with Airware’s autopilot platform and control software, acts as both a deterrent and a surveillance tool, sending real-time digital video and thermal imaging feeds of animals – and poachers – to rangers on the ground using both fixed and gimbal-mounted cameras.” You can see the drones in action in the video clip below. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPsDTvoaIqc] Covering so much ground on foot or even by car would be cumbersome, while using full sized planes or helicopters would be prohibitively expensive. But with Airware’s drones, Ol Pejeta rangers can use a simple interface to fly drones around the sanctuary and spot poachers day and night. Downey says “I think the more people that see these [non-military uses for drones], the more comfortable they’ll be with someone coming to their house and doing a rooftop inspection using a small drone.” While it’s easy to imagine all the scary things that drones can do, it’s important to remember that few technologies are inherently bad. It’s about what we do with them. Sure, some inventors become . But Airware wants to democratize drones to benefit mankind, not blow it up. |
Turn’s Series E Round Further Boosts Ad-Tech Startups | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | Venture investors may have turned their attention to earlier stage ad-tech companies at the right time now that big investments and could give their valuations a boost. On Monday morning, Turn announced an , which included investments by Fidelity Investments and BlackRock, in the latest sign that investors are returning to embrace the sector. September and October 2013 saw two big public offerings for and Criteo, which were both embraced by public investors at the time. Thanks to this attention from massive investment managers, early-stage ad-tech companies may have more leverage at the bargaining table. The word that public investors are embracing the ad space is good news for venture investors who continued to invest billions in the sector in the face of initially tepid public-market response. Investors had been concerned by the lack of enthusiasm for an earlier wave of companies like , which is down 68.8 percent from its high as of market close on Monday, or , which priced well below its target when it made its initial offering in April 2013.
For public investors, these later-stage investments represent an opportunity to buy earlier and for a bigger pop than if they were to invest in those companies for the first time at their public offerings. Given the number of early-stage companies that are coming to market, investors interested in the sector will have plenty to choose from. Despite falling commitments, investors still poured $1.52 billion into 331 companies in 2013, down from $1.93 billion in 2012, but still up from the $1.02 billion invested in 2009, according to CrunchBase . “There is continual innovation going on in the ad-tech space. Every 12-to18 months you see a new wave coming in,” said Jeff Crowe, a managing partner with Norwest Venture Partners and an investor in Turn. As public investors have grown more comfortable with advertising technologies through public investments, they’re getting a better understanding of the opportunities presented by private companies, Crowe said. He declined to comment on whether Turn benefited from the phenomenon. Now, however, a host of companies stand to benefit through renewed interest in their own public offerings. “You’re going to see more IPOs coming out of the sector,” Crowe said. “There were half a dozen in the last 12 months, and you could easily see a half a dozen more in the next 12 months.” |
Esports Giant MLG Swings To An Operating Profit On Strength Of Its New Media Strategy | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | In an , MLG CEO Sundance DiGiovanni stated that since the release of its recent MLG.tv service, the company has been “EBITA positive and expects to stay EBITA positive on a quarterly basis in 2014.” TechCrunch and about its success. He made it plain that the company’s new products were themselves profitable, but it wasn’t clear that the company as a whole was at the level of generating operating profit. EBITA is distinct from net profit, the standard metric for “profit.” Instead, it represents Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, and Amortization. Still, for MLG to have achieved that specific benchmark is encouraging for the firm, and its investors. MLG was early to esports — what some prefer to refer to as competitive gaming — and cycled through a number of strategies before settling on a blend of events, original content, and partnered content delivered on its own technology, and supported by its own advertising efforts. It took and more than 10 years, but it seems like MLG has managed to build a media conglomerate on top of video game content that is sustainable in its own right at scale. For the more industry-focused, MLG is promising its hand-selected content partners — think the big name streamers — monetization at rates that are almost confusing [Note: Minor edit for grammar included]: What are the current CPM rates that content providers should be expecting to see? Here are the ranges. Typical programming is a $25 CPM. Championship stuff is $45-50. Full-length trailer stuff is $80-90, and we’ve seen things top at $100. Our rate card typically has three or four CPM levels in it, but never for video below $25. It doesn’t mean we’ll never have video below $25 because the direct sold is never going to be 100% all the time, but that’s what we’re tracking towards. If those rates can be maintained, MLG shouldn’t have much trouble picking up enough talent to continue its viewership growth. |
Izzie Lerer’s Animal-Focused News Site The Dodo Launches, Funded By Lerer Ventures | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | , a new animal-focused news site launching today, is Isabel Lerer’s initial foray into the viral news business that her father, Ken Lerer, is well-known for, having co-founded Huffington Post and serving as Chairman of BuzzFeed and Betaworks. The company is disclosing the Lerer investment today as well, with The Dodo having raised under $2 million in a seed round led by , the fund managed by father and son team Ken and Ben Lerer, the latter also co-founder at Thrillist. The Lerers, incidentally, were the focus of a timely profile over the weekend by , which referred to the family as “a little Mafia-esque,” referencing the way they had their hands in nearly every buzzy New York area startup. This also includes NowThis News, another news site , thanks to an NBCUniversal News Group investment. As for The Dodo, the site’s launch is a real family affair: It’s co-founded by daughter Izzie, invested in by Lerer Ventures, and running atop RebelMouse, a newer content management system, which is also a Lerer investment. “It’s the first site [RebelMouse has] powered from scratch, and they’ve been building it for the last four months,” says Ken Lerer, noting that future installations will be turned around more efficiently, eventually reaching the point of becoming turnkey. , for those unfamiliar, is a platform focused on customizability and deeper social integrations, including the ability to integrate “calls to action” with posts, which The Dodo plans to soon include. The service also includes (besides the Lerers), it’s worth noting. Isabel’s passion for animal rights led her to study the impact of animal and human interactions at Columbia University, where she’s wrapping up her Ph.D studies. And she convinced father Ken to give up eating meat, too. Asked how long that would last, Mr. Lerer laughed, “you haven’t met my daughter – it’s going to last forever.” Though any website touting its “animal-focused stories” would compete against, say, , the Lerer influence can be felt at The Dodo which currently features a contribution from Arianna Huffington (disclosure: AOL owns TechCrunch and Huffington Post), on its front page. The site is also being run by former Salon.com editor-in-chief Kerry Lauerman (CEO), and has attracted known names , to join its team. At launch, there are under a dozen writers working for the site, but no advertisers as of yet. While it’s easy enough to attract advertisers around fluffier animal stories (pun somewhat intended) designed to go viral (like on BuzzFeed), The Dodo will clearly take stronger positions on topics like hunting, animals used for entertainment purposes, wearing fur, keeping exotic or wild animals as pets, and more. The hope is to soften the blow of these stories with the lighter fare like “ ,” or “ .” (Yep, “pug and baby” is doing well, in case you’re curious.) |
Nest Gives Google A Head Start On The Future Of Hardware | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | CES may be finished for another year, but one of the biggest themes of the show — that anything (cars, watches, mirrors, tables, whatever) can be ‘hardware’ — is just taking off. And today’s news of underscores how Google wants to be the player at the front and center of hardware. Google’s Nest buy may the search giant access to all the data that zooms across Nest’s apps, thermostats and smoke detectors (for now at least), but it will give Google something else: top-shelf design expertise for that next frontier of hardware, by way of a team of people brought together by , one of whom is known as the . This is a significant turn of events for Google. Up to now, the search giant has cornered business — on desktop internet, mobile devices — through software, and then monetized those markets with data — specifically advertising data. It’s been a fundamentally different approach from Apple, the quintessentially vertically integrated company that controls not just a platform and the services that run on it, but the devices they run on, too. (And with that, the lucrative margins that come from successful, premium hardware sales.) Nest will give Google an opportunity to diversify its revenues by tackling a whole new market — connected home devices — with that vertical approach. “This is the new hardware movement,” as one person described it. “Devices + services, product-market fit and research done through crowdfunding platforms, mix of retail partnerships and direct online sales.” For Google, Nest is a particularly attractive example. Not only does it make an integrated piece of connected hardware for the home, but it’s designed with interoperability at its heart — in the initial case, by way of apps that you control on your iOS or Android smartphone, along with a well-developed, direct and online retail channel and loyal following. It’s an area, in any case, that Google appears to have already been eyeing up for some time. In December, for example, The Information a test Google was running called EnergySense, which appeared to be a smart thermostat program that helped people lower energy consumption. This reportedly was being trialled on third party devices from Nest competitor Ecobee, but could now potentially find their way to Nest’s thermostats instead. “Will Nest and Google products work with each other?” co-founder Matt Rogers asked in a earlier today. “Nest’s product line obviously caught the attention of Google and I’m betting that there’s a lot of cool stuff we could do together, but nothing to share today,” he answered. Yet, to say that the acquisition is a boost for Google alone is not the whole story. For months now, Nest has been facing a growing cacophony of that the software on its products was buggy. Leaning on Google’s software expertise could come in handy here (although the could pose a problem in this regard). And there is also the issue of Nest’s intellectual property and patent fights. Nest is facing patent infringement lawsuits from Honeywell and First Alert maker BRK. To help fight those and also to protect itself from copycats, it’s been on the patent front, with 100 patents granted, another 200 filed and a further 200 ready to file; and an ongoing licensing agreement with Intellectual Ventures. Bringing Google into the mix will be another major boost for safeguarding the company in these battles, too. The Nest acquisition also raises questions of how Google’s other hardware interests may come into play going forward. Motorola, which Google acquired for $12.5 billion in 2012, at one time looked like it could be a way for Google to take a new, vertical approach to smartphones and tablets. Ultimately, Motorola remained a partner among equals with other Android OEMs, and patents became one of the most crucial parts of the deal. Could the Nest acquisition, bringing a new focus on hardware creation, see Google bring in some of the IP and talent that Google picked up in that Motorola deal? |
Who Gets Rich From Google Buying Nest? Kleiner Returns 20X On $20M, Shasta Nets ~$200M | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | for cash, and that means the startup’s early investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Shasta Ventures have struck it rich. Multiple sources say Kleiner invested $20 million in Nest and got a 20X return to pull in $400 million. [Update: Meanwhile, the deal returned “almost all” of Shasta’s second $250M fund.] Nest didn’t disclose the size of its or who invested how much. That makes it’s hard to pinpoint who earned what on the sale of the home automation startup that . Shasta and KPCB funded all of Nest’s Series A round back in September 2010, just a few months after the connected device startup was founded. Then in August 2011, they both participated in Nest’s Series B, which also included Google Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Intertrust, and Generation Investment Management. Multiple sources say was Nest’s biggest investor, and was able to invest $20 million in Nest across the A and B rounds. Our sources say the $3.2 billion cash price Google paid for Nest will generate a 20X return for KPCB — which matches the 20X multiple heard from a source. The money came from 2010’s $650 million KPCB XIV fund, which means Kleiner returned over 60% of the fund with just its Nest investment. The treasure should also boost the status of , who sourced the investments and sat on Nest’s board. The win for Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers is reminiscent of its on investments in Google, Amazon, AOL, and Intuit in the 1990s. Recently, it’s gotten a piece of huge exits like Facebook and Twitter as well as rising stars like Square and Spotify, but not until later rounds when potential returns are much lower. But with Nest, KPCB got in on the ground floor and will reap the benefits when the acquisition by Google officially closes. Shasta Ventures’ Managing Director Rob Coneybeer, who led its Nest investment As for Shasta Ventures, today is a massive win for the firm and its managing director , who we hear fought relentlessly to get the $250 million Shasta II fund into Nest’s Series A and B rounds. [ : A source familiar with Google’s deal to acquire Nest tells us Shasta’s investment will bring it enough money to return “almost all” of the $250 million Shasta II fund. That means Shasta pulled in $200 million or more from the Nest acquisition.] The Nest deal almost surely trumps like which was bought by Citrix, and which was bought by Intuit. The returns could bolster confidence in limited partners and help Shasta raise its next fund. Google Ventures also pulled in big money today, as it led Nest’s Series B and C rounds. Oh, and so did Nest’s founders and . For the venture capital industry as a whole, the Nest acquisition may contribute to a frothy market for hardware entrepreneurs. If companies like Google are out there paying billions in cash for young startups that build devices instead of software, it may become easier for hardware tinkers to raise serious capital and move from their garage to a real laboratory. |
YouTube Launches New Comments Management Tool | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | YouTube today a new tool for managing comments on its site that gives video creators a for all the comments their videos receive. When YouTube made the , it also added a number of new tools for managing these comments. With this change, however, it also took away the ability to manage comments from the YouTube Inbox and moved comment notices to alerts instead. YouTube’s users weren’t about this change, so as the company announced today, it “fast-tracked the development of a new comment management page that lets you see, respond to and moderate your comments all in one place.” This change essentially brings the old YouTube Inbox back. Using this page, video owners can quickly scan their comments, remove offensive ones, flag comments for spam and give comments a thumbs up. The new comments inbox is divided into areas for published comments, pending comments and those marked as spam. None of these changes will make a big difference for those who simply hate the new YouTube commenting system, but it will make life a bit easier for those who publish their videos on the site. |
Send In Your Questions For Ask A VC With Storm Ventures’ Jason Lemkin | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | This week, we are hosting Storm Ventures’ in the TechCrunch TV studios for our Ask A VC show. You can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or and we’ll ask them during the show. Lemkin serves as managing director at Storm Ventures, a $500 million early-stage, enterprise-focused VC fund, which has led investments in Marketo, MobileIron, EchoSign, Appcelerator, Guidespark, Pipedrive, and other enterprise companies. Before Storm, he served as vice president of Web Business Services at Adobe Systems after its acquisition of EchoSign, the company he co-founded and serves as CEO, in July 2011. Previously, he also co-founded NanoGram Devices, which was acquired for $50 million. He also served as Vice President, Corporate Development at NeoPhotonics Corporation; and as Senior Director of Corporate Development at BabyCenter.com. As a serial entrepreneur himself, Lemkin should have an interesting perspective around the challenges of founding and running a company, particularly in the enterprise world. Please send us your or put them in the comments below! |
Putting Square’s $5B Valuation Into Context | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | Square’s growth has been a story of sustained momentum. Rising from a payment-processing run rate of $1 billion in the middle of 2011, Square is now expected to process some $30 billion this calendar year. As Square’s payment processing run rate has grown — bolstering its revenue in near lockstep — so too has its valuation expanded. The following set of bullet points lists Square’s reported or leaked processing annual processing run-rates, and most recently rumored full-year figures for 2013 and 2014: Now, Square’s valuation at its funding intervals: In January of 2011, Square was valued at around $240 million, and two months later reported that it was processing $1 million per day, an implied annual run rate of $365 million. Given Square’s growth rates at that time, doubling from March to April, and again from April to June, it is possible to predict that in January, the company was processing 50 percent less than it was in March, putting its processing volume run rate on par or below its valuation. In June of 2011 the company was processing at a $4 million daily rate, or an implied $1.46 billion annual rate, and was worth $1.6 billion. That works out to a ratio of processing-rate dollars to each valuation dollar. Here again we see a run rate processing figure below the company’s dollar valuation. Square’s growth then began to spank its valuation. In November of 2012, Square was processing payments at an annual rate of $10 billion. Two months earlier, it was valued at $3.25 billion. That valuation was pegged from a $200 million investment. Now investors are putting money into Square at a valuation of around $5 billion (that’s up more than 50 percent since its last valuation point, of course), in between it processing around $20 billion in 2013 (aggregate) and $30 billion this year (aggregate). Looking at the timing, it appears that Square was able to raise through its Series C on the promise of future growth. We can see this as investors valued its then-extant processing volume at a higher per-dollar figure than they later did. Then, following its $100 million Series C (June 2011), Square delivered incredible growth, and by the time it went back to the well for more capital its processing rate was a multiple of its valuation, not a fraction thereof. So, investors are now valuing Square more on the strength of its current and perhaps forward 12-month processing volume (to which its revenue is directly tied), and less — again, perhaps — against its three-year growth potential. Investors that believed Square had a period of hyper-growth ahead of it have become rich due to their bet. The ratio between processing run rate and the company’s valuation may have stabilized, however. The 50 percent growth in Square’s valuation from its Series D to today’s news is roughly commensurate to its aggregate processing bump from 2013 to the current year. The dates become slightly tricky as we move from run-rate figures to full-year sums, but you can grok the gist. So, would you buy in at a $5 billion valuation? |
Bringrr Is A Car Charger That Shouts When You Forget Your Stuff | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | I’m a pretty patient person, but there’s one thing that makes me go all ragey: driving away from home only to realize I forgot to put something important in my car. That U-turn? It feels like defeat. If I’m already running late when I notice my mistake, prepare to learn some new swear words. Bringrr is a gadget for people like me. It sits in your car’s cigarette lighter port, quietly keeping tabs on what you’ve packed. If it notices that something is missing, it’ll let you know , before you realize it 10 miles later. Bringrr actually first launched in its first form back in 2010, focusing on helping you remember one item: your phone. If you turned on your car and Bringrr detected that your phone wasn’t within Bluetooth range, it’d light up and let out a noise to give you a heads up. But remembering your phone is the easy part. Many of us pretty much on our phones, these days, so it’s either in our pocket, in our hands, or gettin’ charged back up. Remembering all that other stuff — the stuff that isn’t blooping and bleeping at you constantly — is the hard part. Things like your wallet, or your camera, or that file you were supposed to bring to work today that you’re suddenly remembering as the traffic in front of you goes all gridlock.
For all that stuff, Bringrr has introduced an object tagging system very much like that of . In addition to looking for your phone, the car charger can also be configured to be on the lookout for little stick-on Bluetooth LE tags that the company calls “BringTags”. Want to make sure you remember your phone, wallet, backpack, and laptop? Pair the charger with your phone, pop a tag in your wallet and backpack, and stick one to your laptop lid. Next time you get in your car without one of’em, the charger will let you know. Of course, there are some items you don’t need with you every day. Maybe you don’t want to drag your work laptop around with you on weekends. Thats okay — with their configuration app, you can tell the charger to only care about certain devices on certain days.
Outside of the car, though, Bringrr still wants to help you keep track of your stuff. You can ping each tag for its proximity, allowing you to triangulate your way back to lost keys. And if you still can’t find it? A backup panic button makes the tag ring out loud. The whole thing is very much like the aforementioned Tile, with the clever twist of knowing to be on the lookout as soon as your car turns on. While I love any concept that promises to make me forget things (and thus rage) less often, there’s one flaw: the more likely I am to have tagged something, the less like it is it’s something I’ll forget. That is, the stuff that’s easiest to forget is the stuff we don’t already bring with us every day (like that important work folder) — and unless we’re constantly sticking/unsticking these things from everything around us, those one-off items probably won’t be tagged. Bringrr is trying to , and it’s just shy of halfway there with 21 days to go. $39 gets backers just a charger, while kits with BringTags included start at $49. |
Twitter Rolls Out New Web Design That Aligns With Mobile Interfaces | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | Twitter is rolling out a on the web today that eliminates the pop-up compose window and brings its look more in line with its mobile apps. We’ve been of this design for some time now, but this particular one appears to be the test bucket that got the best reaction from users. It looks, in some ways, a lot like the old version of Twitter — with a profile box and other information presented to the left of the main timeline. One of the biggest changes, of course, is that there is now an inline compose box on the left side, allowing you to pound out tweets without having to deal with the pop-up compose box. The pop up is still accessible via the ‘new tweet’ button in the upper right corner and the keyboard shortcut. Placing a compose box right in the left column should make the interface feel a bit lighter weight, inviting people to tweet out a bit more than placing it ‘under’ the compose button. I’d guess that this was aimed at converting lurkers to tweeters. If some of you are looking at this design and thinking ‘hmm, this is how mine has looked for weeks’, then congratulations, you’re in one of Twitter’s test buckets. The company experiments heavily, giving 1% of its users a tweaked or refreshed design and testing how they interact with it before rolling out changes on a wider scale. We’ve been getting reports of this particular design — or one with some of its elements — for a few weeks now. The alignment of Twitter’s web edition with its mobile versions for iOS and Android certainly makes sense. A large recent release saw major changes in both design and functionality. The web version has lagged a bit behind those releases in the interim, but now feels much more at home. Image Credit: |
Charter Offers $61.3 Billion In Cash And Stock To Acquire Time Warner Cable | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | If you were worried about the consolidation of ISPs, telcos, and media companies, this should make you uncomfortable: Charter Communications has bid a massive $61.3 billion for Time Warner Cable. According , this would be the third-largest deal since 2009. The total buyout would consist of $83 in cash for each Time Warner Cable share, and $49.50 in Charter stock for a total of around $132.50. In regular trading today, Time Warner Cable closed at $132.40, and is up over the bid price in after-hours trading, indicating that investors expect a higher total deal value by the time anything is completed. According to a letter sent to Time Warner Cable management by Charter, and , it approached its now potential purchase several times in 2013, only to be rebuffed until December. Time Warner Cable then wanted more money than what Charter offered. Charter wasn’t pleased with the expectation of a higher per-share premium, given that Time Warner Cable’s stock had risen on hopes of a deal; the sweetener was already in place, in its view. Or, as Charter phrases it: Instead, you came back with a verbal offer at an unrealistic price expectation which ignores a full 39% premium already reflected in Time Warner Cable’s stock (as of last Friday), widespread shareholder endorsement of a deal, and Time Warner Cable shareholders’ approximately 45% ownership in the upside of the proposed transaction. Both companies offer cable, Internet, and some telephony services. Time Warner Cable also operates some television properties. The combination of the two companies would mean greater constriction of the pool of companies that deliver and create content through a number of mediums. In the age of net neutrality, and lawsuits pending that could see its reversal, the Charter-Time Warner Cable deal should make the back of your neck prickly. For now, it appears that Time Warner Cable investors will at least try to get a higher price for their shares. If there can be parity between what Charter is willing to pay and what Time Warner Cable will demand is an open question. Bloomberg also notes that Comcast could be a suitor. A bidding war at these price points would be expensive indeed. |
New Food Grade Filament Heralds An Era Of 3D-Printed Sporks | John Biggs | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | Huzzah! A has created a new food-grade polypropylene filament for 3D printers that is food safe and washable. Most current 3D printing filaments, while not exactly poisonous, can react in negative ways to moisture and acids, resulting in some nasty stuff. For example, you could use this to print anything from a plate to a pitcher. The filament costs $129 for a 2 kg roll. Apparently, as we see from this picture, it also makes great candy dishes. The plastic is as washable as any standard food storage container and it is highly flexible. It is produced according “to US FDA regulations and the relevant EU standards” to maintain safety and can even be used in children’s toys. Now, finally, you can suck on your 3D printed objects! |
Nest Says Customer Data From Devices Will Only Be Used For Nest Products And Services | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | Nest says that it’s not going to just hand over its customer data to – in a blog post sent to TechCrunch penned by Nest founder Tony Fadell, a question and answer section at the end contains the following: Will Nest customer data be shared with Google? Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nest’s products and services. We’ve always taken privacy seriously and this will not change. This contrasts with some of the reactions making the rounds on Twitter, which express apprehension about the fact that Google will have access to Nest’s data, which knows, for example, where you are in your house. Oh PS with Nest’s built-in sensors now Google knows when you’re home, what rooms you’re in, and when you’re out. Just FYI. — ʞɔolᙠ nɒyЯ (@ryan) It’s interesting because the immediately apparent upside of Google acquiring Nest would be the data it stands to gain access to. Still, the quote above indicates that it won’t use data from its devices any differently than it does now, and Nest will continue to operate as a separate entity. There’s no outright “No” answer to the question before the explanation about the privacy policy, however (I’d bet anonymized data still gets shared), so we’ve reached out to Google and Nest to hopefully clarify exactly how the relationship will work. In the meantime, the startup’s early supporters stand to make on the deal. |
Google Is Buying Connected Device Company Nest For $3.2B In Cash | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | Google is acquiring connected device company Nest for $3.2 billion. Google sent out an email to employees noting the acquisition today and later issued a press . In the release, Google noted that Nest has been offering its best-selling thermostat since 2011 and recently began offering the Protect smoke alarm, which networks with its other devices. Nest Founders Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers will both join Google. Rogers was one of the first engineers on the iPhone team at Apple. “They’re already delivering amazing products you can buy right now–thermostats that save energy and smoke/CO alarms that can help keep your family safe,” said Google CEO Larry Page in a statement. “We are excited to bring great experiences to more homes in more countries and fulfill their dreams!” Fadell, who is known as the ‘father of the iPod’, said that they’re ‘thrilled to join Google.’ “ Nest will continue on as its ‘own brand identity’ and continue to be led by Fadell. The deal hasn’t closed yet as it has to meet regulatory approval. Nest founders Fadell and Rogers also sent an emailed statement to TechCrunch about why Nest chose to go ahead with the acquisition. “Google will help us fully realize our vision of the conscious home and allow us to change the world faster than we ever could if we continued to go it alone. We’ve had great momentum, but this is a rocket ship,” Fadell says. “Google has the business resources, global scale and platform reach to accelerate Nest growth across hardware, software and services for the home globally. And our company visions are well aligned – we both believe in letting technology do the hard work behind the scenes so people can get on with the things that matter in life. Google is committed to helping Nest make a difference and together, we can help save more energy and keep people safe in their homes.” Fadell says that this decision was not made hastily. He says that at the 2011 TED conference — even before Nest had launched — he and Nest VP of business Erik Charlton had ‘huddled’ together in a corner with Google’s Brin to show him a video and early model of the Nest thermostat. He instantly got what we were doing and so did the rest of the Google team when we showed them. In May 2011, Google Ventures led our Series B round of financing, and in 2012, Series C. Time and time again, Googlers have shown themselves to be incredibly like-minded, supportive and as big of dreamers as we are. I know that joining Google will be an easy transition because we’re partnering with a company that gets what we do and who we are at Nest – and wants us to stay that way. We’ve been hearing rumors about Nest getting courted with large billion-dollar acquisition offers for months now, but a Google buy is a definite statement. The company has been fairly serious about its connected-device efforts for a while but hasn’t quite been able to get anything to gel. For instance, there have been some abortive attempts at connected devices like Android at Home in the past. But Nest already has a nice start in producing well-designed and connected home devices — something that Google should be able to build off of in the future. , a partner at Nest investor , has a about his early days working with Fadell at startup General Magic and what Nest has done since. He also shared a photo of the pair from 1992: Nieh says that though he was excited to work with Fadell again when it came time to invest in Nest, “…our excitement went off the charts when we met Matt Rogers, Tony’s co-founder, who was responsible at Apple for iPod software development and one of the first engineers on the original iPhone team. We would have invested had they been looking to start a food truck.” We reached out to Nieh for more thoughts, and he told TechCrunch that “Nest is a very special company — it’s a combination of an incredible team led by Tony and Matt, world-changing vision, and world-class execution. “The acquisition by Google is just a milestone along the way as they continue their quest to change the world,” he added. “I can’t wait to see how they will continue to bring magic to all those unloved things in our homes.” Google has previously been rumored to be efforts, but this would likely supplant that — or the Nest team would take those projects over. Google also has an , which monitors power consumption over time which could have some cool applications here. The acquisition could also provide a patent boost of some sort for Google. In December, that it had 100 patents granted, with 200 more on file with the U.S. Patent Office and another 200 ready to file. Nest has been the target of some fairly high-profile patent suits and threats from legacy over its thermostat and . Google will likely offer shelter from further suits with its wide range of patents across a variety of technology arenas. As far as how much autonomy Fadell will have to execute on his vision of what Nest can be, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Google to derail a business that — by most counts — was fairly successful already and had been garnering praise from consumers over design. It could help with infrastructure problems that have caused , which recently prompted complaints. There’s also bound to be an immediate and visceral reaction to the access that Google will now have to information about when you’re home, which rooms you’re in and more. Which is why Nest also issued a Q&A about what will happen to users now that Google owns their thermostats and smoke detectors: Yes, absolutely. We’ll continue supporting iOS, Android and modern web browsers so you can check in on your home and control the temperature from wherever you are. Nest’s product line obviously caught the attention of Google and I’m betting that there’s a lot of cool stuff we could do together, but nothing to share today. No change there – we stand behind our products like we always have. You bet. We intend to continue selling through the same partners in the US, Canada and the UK. Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nest’s products and services. We’ve always taken privacy seriously and this will not change. That answer is a bit vague, but the concerns over the recent revelations of enormous data should definitely cause some to worry. Whether Google chooses to share information voluntarily, it’s still a big target for those looking to hoover up vast swaths of data about its users, and that will only be more likely as time goes on, not less. The deal is also set to make the startup’s early investors — Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Shasta Ventures — . |
YC Startups Now Have A Combined Valuation Of $14.4B, With 14 Valued At Or Sold For $100M Or More | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | It’s time to play the Y Combinator valuation game again. YC founder Paul Graham on the early-stage startup accelerator, saying that companies who have passed through the program now have a combined valuation of $14.4 billion, with the total amount raised topping $2 billion. The last time Graham announced Y Combinator stats was , when total valuation for the 511 companies that had gone through the program up to its Summer 2013 class was $13.7 billion. The new numbers include that class, bringing the total number of companies Graham counts to 564. YC stats: Total val $14.4b/564 cos to s2013 = $25.6m avg. Total raised $2.09b/564 = $3.7m avg. Days since contact with median co: 21. — Paul Graham (@paulg) With $2.09 billion raised in total, the average amount of funding each company brought on is $3.7 million. But like most venture investment portfolios, the lion’s share of that funding has gone to a small number of big players. Airbnb has all by itself, while Dropbox has — and is reportedly . The bulk of Y Combinator’s portfolio valuation is mostly tied to the top end as well. In an email, Graham wrote that of the 564 companies that have gone through the program, 14 have valuations of $100 million or more. And the accelerator has seen 45 that are valued at or that sold for $40 million or more. Y Combinator determines the value of the portfolio by adding up the valuations of all the startups that have either died, been acquired, or sold stock at a specific valuation. Therefore, not every company qualifies. Last time around, there were 306 companies with post-money valuations, and that number has increased to 333 in the last few months. The increase was due to a strong funding environment in the fourth quarter, according to Graham. “A lot of companies closed big rounds near the end of the year. That’s not unusual, because VCs tend to shut down over Christmas and New Year’s,” he wrote. YC companies that got funded in the last three months include Homejoy, which , Coinbase ( ); CrowdTilt ( ), LendUp ( ), and Clever ( ). There were also a couple of exits during that time as well. Those included Bump, which ; Easel, which got ; and Origami Labs, which . Recently, Y Combinator made changes to the way that it is financing companies. For one thing, the accelerator , its alternative to convertible notes. It also recently as part of its YC VC program, replacing Yuri Milner. Photo Credit: via |
Zuckerberg Calls Snapchat A “Privacy Phenomenon” | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | Mark Zuckerberg thinks Facebook’s innovated by creating a place where people could share what wasn’t shared before, which is also why he thinks Snapchat is important. Today in a low-profile talk at Stanford alongside discussions of the NSA and venture capital’s shortcomings, Zuckerberg said “Snapchat is a super interesting privacy phenomenon.” Zuckerberg sat down onstage at the school’s Memorial Auditorium for a wide-ranging hour-long chat in front of Stanford students, professors, trustees, and Facebook employees. Here’s a video clip of a more from Zuckerberg about Facebook’s early days that Stanford published. The CEO spoke at length about Facebook’s three new goals after reaching 1 billion users: Connecting the rest of the world to the Internet, understanding the world through an artificial intelligence-powered unified model, and fostering the knowledge economy so more of the world can thrive. Zuckerberg pointed out how Silicon Valley venture capitalists aren’t necessarily equipped to fund solutions to these problems (emphasis mine): “You know there’s a great venture capital system here for investing in problems that require maybe like one to ten million dollars to kind of get started solving. before you can really make a huge amount of progress on them. And I think some of these problems are really worth solving like Internet for everyone in the world, or trying to build this unified model and build some kind of early AI, or trying to solve some of these issues around the knowledge economy…and there are only a handful of companies and a handful of governments in the world that are really in a position to make those kind of investments so “ This means we should expect to see Facebook continuing to pursue programs like and its new . Zuckerberg explained, along the way to solving huge problems, there are often rapid advances in technology — much in the way Bell Labs invented the transistor while trying to make phone signals travel across the country. So while these goals might have no “end” in sight, they may produce intermediary benefits to Facebook’s product and armory of intellectual property. As for the impact of NSA relations on the average Facebook user’s willingness to share, Zuckerberg noted “I haven’t seen it in anything that we measure.” However, he said that the United States has been a champion of freedom of speech as the right policy, but that our insistence on surveillance could make the world lose faith in that ideal. Zuckerberg stated: “The biggest concern that I have is that the NSA revelations knock that down a peg and I think the U.S. loses the moral high ground a bit, which makes it so that other countries which may have different views on how this should work now are more kind of empowered to do things in a way that might kind of balkanize or splinter things a bit more, which I think would be quite unfortunate if the Internet ended up working very differently or there were different rules for connection.” The most fascinating part of the talk was where Zuckerberg said Facebook thinks about privacy much differently than most people expect, hinting that the world believes the company is pretty much against it. After all, the latest Grand Theft Auto video game did parody Facebook by naming its in-world social network “ .” Zuckerberg explained that before Facebook, there was instant messenger for communicating with one other person or a small group, and there were blogs for sharing publicly, but there was nothing in between. Zuckerberg said (emphasis mine): “There was no privacy infrastructure to communicate with your community or just a set of friends all at once, and because of the lack of that, basically if people wanted to communicate something they had to choose to communicate with a very small audience or communicate it publicly. or that’s not the full potential of what you want to communicate . And that potential idea that could have been shared, or thought, or human connection and kind of option to have more connection and do more on that over time is lost. Right, which is really, it’s a private space that didn’t exist before That there was no tool to be able to communicate in that space, and by opening that up and enabling people to kind of fill that space and learn about what’s going on around them.” Unfortunately, that statement is at odds with a lot of how Facebook actually handles privacy. As far back as 2009 and 2010, Facebook began share their status updates, photos, and other content publicly. It also began defaulting users to share these types of posts with everyone — something I criticized at the time for , which I still believe. A lot of people don’t change their default settings. And though Facebook shows a privacy indicator every time you’re about to post, many people ignore it and end up sharing more publicly than they’d like to. More recently, Facebook has also been giving marketers limited access to , and encouraging users to post more publicly with hashtags, trending topics, embeddable posts, and other . Getting people to share publicly gives Facebook better data to improve everything from search to artificial intelligence, which it sees as a positive. But the honorable thing to do would be defaulting people to share with friends, and giving them the choice to share publicly — not vice versa as it does now. Yet still, Zuckerberg seems to see a little bit of Facebook’s innovation in Snapchat. He continued his discussion of how Facebook created a home for previously unshared content, saying: I think a lot of the most interesting startups today are actually doing different interesting things like this. Whether they’re messenger companies that are allowing different ways to communicate very quickly with small groups. which makes it so that things that people previously would not have been able to share, you now feel like you have place to do so. And I think that’s really important and and keep trying to do more on and I think a lot of other companies will, too. So just because Facebook’s attempt at ephemeral messaging Poke failed and its bid to acquire Snapchat was turned down, don’t expect it to bow out of this fight. If there’s sharing that people aren’t doing on Facebook today, you can bet Zuckerberg will try to absorb it somehow. Maybe with a more tactful approach to its quest “to make the world more open and connected,” that sharing would already be happening within its walls. Facebook’s privacy changes and constant prodding to share more widely have generated a fair amount of ill-will. So perhaps Zuckerberg shouldn’t see Snapchat, where you get to specifically choose who to share with every time, as a “privacy phenomenon.” Maybe if people weren’t worried they were always one wrong privacy setting away from broadcasting to the entire world, they wouldn’t be so desperate for Snapchat. |
Rex Gives Your Robot A Brain | John Biggs | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | Thanks to microcontrollers and mini computers it’s become far easier to build intelligent robots. But, until recently, you’ve had to jury-rig most of your off-the-shelf components to work in unison. That’s why Rex, a new “robot brain” is so important. Like Hardware Battlefield finalist , Rex offers one important part of your robot project and streamlines the process of implementing intelligence into your robotic projects. Created by former Carnegie Mellon Master’s students Mike Lewis and Kartik Tiwarti, Rex is a cross between a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino. Not unlike before it, Rex allows hobbyists to add powerful hardware control I/O to a powerful on-board processor without connecting multiple shields together with various tools. “It’s designed specifically for robots,” said Lewis. “It’s a higher price than the RPi, but the experience of building a robot is less of a pain – no hassles for wiring, it has built-in battery inputs, and it boots up directly into a robot programming environment.” The team is also offering online support and a fully featured help site for robot builders who are using their platform. The basic model starts at $99 for a fully-featured board with OS preloaded and a power supply. It also includes a serial cable. They . “Kartik and I knew we were both interested in consumer robotics and building things that could solve problems for regular people,” said Lewis. “Robotics is such a complicated field where the requirements for a system depend so much on what the system will be used for, that none of the platforms out there were really what I wanted, so I proposed that we attack this issue directly. As we continued to think about it, Rex seemed to make more and more sense for people who had already built Arduino-based robots but were having a difficult time stepping up to a more advanced platform.” Interestingly, the team built their own OS, Alphalem OS, to run their boards and by building a developers platform right into the board they were able to offer a way to program your robot directly without uploading to a microcontroller. Most importantly these boards are about as big as an Arduino Uno, one of the smallest general-purpose micro controllers available. The board also includes a DSP and camera and microphone inputs, making it far more powerful for the robotics hobbyist and engineer. The team isn’t stopping at basic motor controls, however. “The OS will offer an easy-to-use development environment that is similar to Arduino’s ‘sketches’ and a task manager (MCP) that will allow you to launch multiple ‘sketch’-style processes in parallel for different tasks. It will have built-in drivers for devices that are useful for robots, like cameras and USB WiFi adapters. In the future, we will also be adding a layer for AI and Machine Learning applications.” There’s also a motor kill switch in case your robot becomes sentient. In short, Rex has it all. It makes it easy to build great robot projects and, at about the same price as a few really nice stepper motors, the total cost isn’t very high. Now if only there were pneumatic controls so I could finally build my robotic soup taster. [kickstarter url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alphalem/rex-the-brain-for-robots width=640] |
What Happens When Google Wants To Buy A Google Ventures Portfolio Company? | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | was unique in the respect that one of Nest’s four board members, , was a partner at the corporate VC arm of the acquirer, Google Ventures. The other investor board member, , was a partner at a KPCB, the Silicon Valley venture firm helmed by , who was on the board of the acquirer, Google. The last two board spots were filled by the Nest co-founders, and . Holy conflict of interest Batman! What a completely awkward situation for both Maris and Doerr. As an investor you want to maximize returns, but as a part of Google, wouldn’t you want to keep the price down for your parent company? Google has been the acquirer of a Google Ventures funded company four times since the VC firm launched in 2009: Makani Power, Milk and Bufferbox. Nest will be the fourth if you count Bufferbox, that Google Ventures didn’t even know it was in M&A talks because it was grandfathered in as a personal investment. Nest is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Google Ventures Google exit to date. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZYEjaJDpKM#t=15 In every case above, Google Ventures partners have recused themselves from M&A discussions, due to obvious conflicts of interest, and that was especially acute in the Nest acquisition because of the size of the deal (A whole ). With Nest, Google’s Maris took himself out of the game and left Kleiner’s Komisar to negotiate for the investor’s side when talks got serious over a month ago. KPCB , and saw an over 20x return in this deal. Back at Kleiner, John Doerr also excused himself from talking to Komisar about the talks, because of his Google board conflict (note: Kleiner owns no Google shares). So Komisar was a lonely puppy for a while. According to co-founder Fadell, Google had been interested in nabbing Nest as far back as Google Ventures’ investment in 2011, but the discussions were never serious until this winter. We at TechCrunch had heard Apple was also trying to feather its nest with Nest around a month ago, whether that intent was or not. For what it’s worth, Fadell told Fortune’s Dan Primack yesterday that he or not he had entertained an Apple buy, which likely means that he had, even if informally. I mean, . He’s not going to chat up his former colleagues? But when it came time to sign away the company, Google was simply a better fit from a data standpoint. “Excitement from Sergey and Larry delivered a little extra confidence,” said one person familiar with the matter, citing that the deal was of the eBay “Buy It Now” sort instead of an all-out bidding war. As Google Ventures is now completing two to three new investments per week and will have a brand-spanking-new $300 million fund as of this month, Google acquisitions of portfolio companies are just going to keep on happening. And the partners are trying their best to retain the mindset of a Sand Hill Road firm instead of one that resembles traditional corporate VCs like Intel Capital. “We get paid when we maximize returns,” one person said. But there’s the question of how much revenue Google sees from a large Google Ventures return. Let’s say hypothetically that this deal returned a few hundred million for Google Ventures (if Google got 12.5% that would mean a ~$400M return minus carry). One could argue that if Google gets profit from Google Ventures, then Google bought Nest for a discount because it also sees the returns on the deal, a price of ~$3 billion instead of $3.2 billion, again hypothetically. And unlike a Sand Hill VC, Google Ventures does advertise as a portfolio company perk. According to a well-informed source, a Google Ventures investment will not make or break a potential acquisition, but yeah it might help — the original intro that eventually led to the Nest buy: “Google is a part of our DNA,” they said, “I think that’s attractive.” |
ArtCorgi Streamlines The Art Commissioning Process With Its New Marketplace | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | All startups have origin stories of some sort, but for , it’s both about the beginning of the company and the engagement of its co-founders. That’s right, it’s a startup run by an engaged team of Malcolm (CEO) and Simone (COO) Collins. You can , but the gist of it is that he commissioned 21 pieces from 18 artists via , and then posted them on Reddit. Maybe not the way would propose, but still, pretty darn amazing. (And most importantly, she said yes.) Apparently Malcolm (who’s also a grad student at the Stanford Business School) and Simone (formerly director of marketing at HubPages.com) were working on another startup called at the time, but they found that people seemed much more interested in talking about the proposal story and the commissioned art. Malcolm said that as he thought about it, he realized “just how ridiculous” the process was. In fact, he said that he had to contact more than 300 artists to get the final 21 pieces, because so many of those artists were no longer active or said they were too busy. So with ArtCorgi, they’re aiming to make the process as easy as possible, and they’ve developed the system in consultation with artists. Someone looking for work can upload their portfolio, showcasing different types of art that they’re proficient in, then users can browse the submissions and choose the style that they like — so for example, you could say, “I want a picture of me done in this style.” (What you’re really purchasing on ArtCorgi is the digital art, but if you want a physical copy, it also connects you with printing services.) To deal with the disappearing or inactive artist issue, artists are removed from the system once they don’t do a commission. Simone said they talked to Justin Cannon, founder of (which appears to have ) about some of the challenges that he faced. Apparently the big difficulty was the “attrition rate” during the initial back-and-forth between the artist and potential customer. ArtCorgi tries to avoid that by making it clear what you’re asking for (hence the style-based ordering) and by offering set pricing, so there shouldn’t be any negotiation or surprises. In fact, the money is held in escrow during the commissioning process, so you know the artist isn’t just going to disappear before they finish their work, and the artist knows that they money is there for them to get paid eventually. Of course, there can be complications. You might agree on a style and a subject, and then the artist comes back with something that you hate. If that happens, the art gets sent to a five-person panel of other artists in the network. The panel is asked to evaluate whether the piece is, in Simone’s words, “the same style, the same level [of quality], the same subject the artists said they were willing to depict.” The company isn’t focusing too narrowly on one particular audience, but Simone suggested that one likely customer base is romantic — not just marriage proposals, but also Valentine’s Day cards, wedding invites, that kind of thing. Beyond the launching the site (which currently has 70 artists, they said), Malcolm and Simone said they want to build an ArtCorgi community, which will probably be important from the business side, because it turns one-time customers into repeat buyers. And in the long-term, Simone said they want to build “a series of boutique marketplaces that leverage a connected backend of freelance suppliers.” In other words, there would be a number of different brands focusing on different types of work, but behind it all would be “a huge network of expertise.” “We wanted to bring a different idea to freelannce work online,” Simone said — she compared sites like Elance to Costco and Walmart, and she suggested that the ArtCorgi approach will be higher quality (and presumably offer higher payments). |
Rocket Internet-Backed Fashion Site Zalora To Launch Marketplace In Asia | Pankaj Mishra | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | , a fashion e-commerce site that has raised $238 million from investors such as Rocket Internet and Access Industries, plans to in South East Asia early this year. The new model will help Zalora build a leaner e-commerce model without having to own any inventory. For Rocket Internet, the with other companies in the portfolio, including Zappos clone and . “We have over 15 million visits to our Zalora sites per month; for an independent fashion seller to have instant access to this kind of audience is a previously unheard of opportunity,” said Magnus Grimeland, MD of Zalora. Unlike more mature e-commerce markets of U.S. and Europe, where both Amazon and eBay are dominant, markets in South East Asia are still waiting for clear winners. And the marketplace model allows these growing e-commerce firms to address a much bigger opportunity without having to spend much on their own. This is what Zalora said in the statement announcing its move: ZALORA Marketplace will allow vendors from all over Southeast Asia and Hong Kong to create their own branded storefront within the ZALORA site, which will be run and maintained by the seller with support from a dedicated ZALORA account manager. For now, Zalora will only focus on its current South East Asian markets apart from Australia and New Zealand (through , Grimeland said. “With our latest investment round and long-term value driven investors, we are very well positioned in the region going forward. Growth is strong and margins are improving rapidly. “ |
With $1.2M From Greylock, Yuri Milner And 500 Startups, First Opinion Lets You Text A Doctor Anytime | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | As mobile networks and digital communication tools improve, there’s a huge opportunity to re-imagine the calcified old world of healthcare. Some services the house call back to the healthcare market, by way of mobile devices and video chat, for example. While the opportunities in mobile health are exploding thanks to new , wants to address the nagging deficiencies of the system — like long lines at doctor’s offices and impersonal care — with a familiar, SMS-based model. Rather than offer video conferencing or a database of health information, the startup (and app of the same name) boil it down to what founder McKay Thomas thinks is most important: The ability to text message a doctor any time, night or day — especially for moms. Thomas tells us that he believes one of the biggest problems of the current healthcare system is that people don’t feel true connections with their doctors and hate the impersonal nature of meeting with a doctor once every year. Thomas, who is also the co-founder of Baby.com.br, the “Diapers.com” of Brazil, has run a mom-focused business before and came up with the idea while living abroad with his newly-pregnant wife. Unable to find a good way to get in touch with a doctor to ask health questions and about the many subjects related to raising children for the first time, he decided to leave Brazil and head back to the U.S. Recruiting his CTO and co-founder, Jay Marcyes from Path, the two built First Opinion and launched the app in early December. It quickly took off, hitting the fourth spot in the App Store’s health category within two days and saw 10,000 doctor “consultations” in its first month, with the average chat length today now over 10 messages. To help take advantage of the early interest, the co-founders raised $1.2 million from Greylock, Yuri Milner, Felicis Ventures, 500 Startups and more to help recruit more doctors and grow its team. Today, the app works like this: Once a user downloads First Opinion, they are matched to one of the startup’s handful of vetted stable of doctors, connecting the user to the “right” doctor based on gender, what they’d like help with, how many kids they have and whether or not they’re expecting. Once matched with a doctor, which Thomas says usually takes less than an hour, the user can begin their first chat with a doctor for free, asking any questions of their doctors they would like. To avoid having to secure HIPAA approval, the user remains anonymous, though they can view some basic information about the doctor they’re chatting with and share as much of their own info as they’d like as they chat. After the first chat, the user will hit a paywall, where they’ll be asked to pay First Opinion’s subscription fee of $9/month. By paying the subscription fee, they’ll be able to have unlimited access to their First Opinion doc. From there on out, every conversation is with the same doctor — and every question is answered by the same doctor — so that the user feels like they have their very own SMS M.D. What Thomas believes can lead First Opinion to succeed where others have stumbled is that the app is designed to feel more than a health-based Quora or Q&A platform and more like a personal conversation between you and your physician. This is important, but the app will need to do more to ensure users of their doctor’s backgrounds and identities, and seeing as there isn’t exactly an enormous barrier to entry here, the product will likely have to evolve quickly to prevent easy replication. For now, it’s a great workaround and a quick, simple fix to the impersonal nature of our healthcare system. Like its name, it’s an easy way to get a first opinion or response from a doctor on those nagging health issues, especially for moms and for children’s health questions and link up with a doctor permanently — if you like them. It’s realtime or asynchronous chat with your friendly, family physician, who’s also a parent and who couldn’t use more of that? For more, find |
Senator Al Franken Condemns Today’s Net Neutrality Ruling | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | On the heels of today’s ruling , aggressively condemned the decision, arguing that it would lead to an unleveling of the economic playing field, tilting the marketplace against small businesses that he represents. Advocates for an open Internet have expressed open discontent with the ruling. TechCrunch’s own Greg Ferenstein of both the decision, and Verizon’s pursuance of an end to the regulatory structure. Some view the end of net neutrality as a sort of financial shakeup that could lead to great economic benefit. The American Enterprise Institute’s in the following way: “But at its core ‘net neutrality’ really is nothing more than an attempt at rent seeking by content providers who want the ISPs to pay the tab for future network upgrades.” Senator Franken disagrees, making a different economic argument. His statement follows [bolding TechCrunch]: Anyone who goes online to shop, promote their business, or simply to connect with the world should be worried about today’s opinion. I have been fighting to make sure the Internet is a level playing field for everyone— . Getting rid of net neutrality is bad for consumers and the economy, plain and simple. And it’s a real risk to the Internet as we know it. . The FCC needs to respond immediately in a way that keeps the internet open to all of us, not just big corporate interests. There isn’t excessive middle ground between the two perspectives. If you are unsure which side of the debate you’re on, ask yourself which of the following two statements is more accurate: As Ferenstein argues, there is significant nuance required in crafting the legal parameters for net neutrality, and we shouldn’t presume that any sort of regulatory outline we can draw is the correct idea. That difficulty, naturally, doesn’t mean that the project isn’t worth the time required to get it right. But I would argue that granting companies that both deliver and create content the right to decide what is worthy of viewing, and what is not worthy of viewing for their customers, is far more troubling than option No. 1 above. |
Tesla Surges On Strength Of Fourth-Quarter Car Deliveries | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | On news that the company delivered 6,900 Model S cars in the fourth quarter, Tesla’s shares spiked 15.74 percent in regular trading, and another 3.56 percent in after-hours trading. The 6,900 delivery figure was around 20 percent more than the company had expected, according , indicating that Tesla’s luxury brand has continued to resonate with the wealthy. The company’s vice president of sales, Jerome Guillen, today that Tesla would continue to grow in 2014. While Tesla has enjoyed ramping orders and a surging stock price, the company has significant headwinds ahead of it. Tesla faces continued legal battles to sell its cars directly to consumers as it currently does in several states. Losing those disputes, or facing an increased number, could slow its momentum. And as TechCrunch , the company has run into difficulty with its car-charging hardware, spawning a software fix and a remodeled future iteration of the technology. Tesla runs the risk of suffering from a freak accident that could materially harm its brand. So far, however, the company has largely steered free of such controversy. Tesla stated in a that its roughly 20 percent beat in deliveries will result in a 20 percent beat in revenue, compared to prior forecasts. The parity between deliveries and revenue indicates that Tesla did not discount its cars in order to beat its prior volume guidance. Prior to today’s news, analysts Tesla to earn $0.16 per share on revenue of $586 million. At least one of those numbers is likely too small. |
The Pegasus Touch Laser SLA Is A Sexy Printer That Can Build Your Hi-Res Dreams | John Biggs | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | If you know me you know I like two things: sausage and . While I primarily use FDM printers like at home, I do love the quality and coherence of SLA – stereolithographic – machines. This new one, the , is similar to the in that it uses an inexpensive UV-cured resin to build surprisingly detailed models using laser light and a little elbow grease. This model improves upon the average 3D printer in a few ways. First, it has a nice 7x7x9 inch build envelope and supports multiple colors of resin. It also has a built-in minicomputer and LCD that you can use to control the print as it comes out. Writes the Las Vegas-based team: You can see the Pegasus in action and pledge $2,000 to get your own printer. It’s a slightly faster print as well thanks to the group’s efforts to build a 3000mm/sec laser path. And, unlike the Form One, the Pegasus uses more logical and less obtrusive supports as it rises out of the resin bath. It will sell for $3,499 after the initial Kickstarter run. The company calls this a sub-$2,000 SLA printer which isn’t quite true. However, given that the the price is just about right for a powerful SLA machine. While I still think FDM is great for beginners and hobbyists, a nice resin-based laser printer makes me all warm and resiny inside. [kickstarter url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fsl/pegasus-touch-laser-sla-3d-printer-low-cost-high-q width=640] |
ff Venture Capital Raises $52M Across Two Funds, With One Focused On New York State | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | ff Venture Capital announced in this morning that it has closed its third fund — or rather, two funds, ff Rose and its “sister fund” ff Rose Innovate. The firm had been open about the fact that it was raising a fund, . Together, the funds total $52 million, a little bit more than the $50 million that ffvc said it was planning. Investors in the funds include New York State’s Empire State Development, Goldman Sachs, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, and limited partners who had backed the firm previously. Why two funds? Founding partner John Frankel told me via email that ff Rose Innovate will invest with ff Rose, but only in companies based in New York State. That’s because of funding from Empire State Development, which Frankel said is aiming “to stimulate job growth and economic development in New York.” “We are one of a handful of funds to receive Innovate NY money, and we consider it good use of public funds and hope to prove so over the life of the fund,” he said. ffvc (the ff supposedly stands for “ ) is headquartered in New York, and it in 2012. Rounds that it has led in the past year include funding for , , and . Frankel also said the firm won’t be changing its strategy, which he described as “finding entrepreneurs and teams we believe are building companies that are changing human behavior, and supporting them with financial and intellectual capital.” He emphasized the support staff that the firm offers (it has a team or more than 20 people), and he said, “We recognized that our predecessor fund was actually too small for our strategy and the capital was deployed faster than planned, in part due to the high growth our portfolio companies have generated and their continuing need for capital.” |
Here’s What Steam’s New Virtual Reality Interface Looks Like | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | , Valve announced that they were working on a new interface for Steam, custom-tailored for virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift. Unless you’re a super-ultra-mega early adopter and have a Rift nearby , it can be kind of hard to picture what such an interface might look like. Here’s how it looks: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgP7dei0hzc&w=640&h=390] If you were hoping for some crazy, entirely brand new interface with all sorts of interactive bits whizzing around your head, you might be a bit… underwhelmed. For now, Valve has taken the Big Picture interface they built for TVs and adapted it, projecting the interface onto a simulated plane just a few feet in front of the user’s virtual view. It’s essentially simulating a large, widescreen display of the Rift, preventing you from having to take off the headset (which is terrible at handling traditional 2D interfaces) just to navigate around Steam. For those who haven’t used a Rift before, a bit of explanation: the reason you’re seeing two of what appears to be the same image is that the Rift headset pushes one slightly-offset image to each eye. Your brain then takes each of these images and combines them into one (theoretically) seamless view, allowing you to feel like you’re peering into a virtual world rather than just staring at a screen that’s way too close to your face. [If you a super-ultra-mega early adopter with a Rift, you can find directions for enabling a Beta version of the VR interface ] |
Rethinking Windows And Apple Device Volume | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | Horace Dediu of does good work. Yesterday he published a entitled “When Apple reached parity with Windows,” which immediately caused readers to lose their minds. Dediu set up a very specific analytical perspective: Windows-based PCs compared to Apple’s more diverse lineup of tablets, phones, mobile computing devices (the iPod Touch), and Macintosh PCs. When comparing the two, declines in the larger Windows PC market lead to a unit volume chart for Microsoft that rises inexorably and then falls. That decline is compared to the aggregate unit volume of Apple’s computing products, making a graph that depicts an ascendant Apple and a troubled Microsoft: As far as charts go, that’s a doozy. It says that Windows-based PCs dominated computing for decades until Apple founded several new device classes, thereby exploding its volume and, perhaps, putting it in a position to possibly overtake Windows this year. Dediu looks at changes in the computing market through the lens of new buying patterns. Now that every individual can make computing device purchase decisions, the advantage that Windows-based machines had selling to large customers and governments is in decline: We have to understand that the Windows advantage itself came from the way computing was purchased in the period of its ascent. In the 1980s and 1990s computing platform decisions were made first by companies then by developers and later by individuals who took their cues from what standards were already established. As these decisions created network effects, the cycle repeated and the majority platform strengthened. […] Ultimately, it was the removal of the intermediary between buyer and beneficiary which dissolved Microsoft’s power over the purchase decision. It’s not just unlikely that this situation will be reversed, it’s impossible. That analysis is worth considering because it underscores the rising trend of Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD, that is changing the face of computing inside large companies. While Dediu has made interesting points, and I think highlighted trends worth considering, I would augment his analysis slightly. He compares “platforms” but does so in a way that I find too narrow. If we want to compare devices built by two companies and how they reflect changes in purchasing trends and the like, I think that we should broaden his definition of Windows. As Microsoft moves to unify its various platforms, we need to expand what counts as a Windows machine. Windows Phone and the Xbox One, for example, depend on Windows code to run. And, as Microsoft’s hinted-at plan to unify Windows RT and Windows Phone continues, the difference between a Windows Phone handset and a Windows tablet becomes incredibly blurry. Before we get to that, I don’t dispute that Apple has shown incredible growth, nor am I trying to denigrate it as a company. Instead, I want a clearer picture of Microsoft and Apple’s current aggregate platform device volumes to better understand their market position. Here’s Dediu on the PC market in recent years: In 2013 there were 18.8 times more Windows PCs sold than Macs. This is a reduction in the from about 19.8x in 2012. This decline is mostly due to the more rapid decline in Windows PC shipments relative to the more modest decline in Mac unit shipments. Gartner estimates that about 309 million Windows PCs were shipped, down from 337 million in 2012 (which was down from 344 million in 2011, the year PCs peaked.) So, discounting non-traditional Windows-based devices, Windows saw its unit volume in the PC market decline by about 28 million from 2012 to 2013. That’s no small number, and it illustrates just how rough the PC market has been for Microsoft and its OEM partners. The Xbox One sold in 2013, a small figure, but given its limited sales window, it is a workable sum. Windows Phone is . Nokia sold 5.6 million Lumia handsets in the first quarter of 2013, 7.4 million in the second quarter, 8.8 million in the third quarter, and a yet to be determined number for the final quarter. Let’s be conservative and say 10 million, giving Nokia less growth in the holiday season than it managed between the second and third quarters of the year. That yields a 31.8 million device figure. Nokia is around 90 percent of the Windows Phone market, so given that sales figure for the one company, we can presume total global Windows Phone sales of 35.3 million. Add the 3 million Xbox One consoles sold and we have a tally of 38.3 million devices. Keep in mind that this number is slightly conservative, given that Microsoft said that it sold “over” 3 million Xbox Ones, and we presumed very moderate growth for Nokia in the final quarter of the year. The 38.3 million non-traditional, Windows-based device unit volume figure is larger than Dediu’s calculated decline in the PC market of 28 million. So, instead of his graph going down, if we take a more holistic look at what constitutes a Windows machine, we see Microsoft’s total unit volume growing by around 10 million or so in the year. Of course, that does nothing to diminish Apple’s tear in the device space, but it does increase the delta between their aggregate volumes, and could forestall Apple’s overtaking of Microsoft’s diverse Windows platform for a short spell. The PC market is expected to post a moderate decline of 3.8 percent or so this year if I recall correctly. Presuming a decent year of Xbox One sales (10 million units?), and continued growth of the Windows Phone platform, it seems reasonable to forecast another year of rising device volume for Windows. Apple, especially if it launches a new device class, could pass Microsoft this year in the platform wars, but we’ll have to keep an eye on its growth rates. And finally, all the above is almost moot, given the , something that is spanking both Cupertino and Redmond alike. |
Youmiam Is A Soundcloud For Recipes Coming Out Of France | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | French startup released a new version of its recipe sharing website and just announced that it has raised $410,000 (€300,000) from angel investors Patrick Robin ( ), Thierry Petit ( ) and Denis Chavanis (former managing director of Nestlé Waters). Youmiam makes it easy to browse, create and share recipes online. It’s a full-fledged social network that is very reminiscent of YouTube or Soundcloud, because recipes are very shareable — you can embed your recipes on your blog or website. On the website itself, you get a profile with your recipes, recipes from others that you have shared (remiams). And of course, you can follow your favorite cooks and build a cooking social graph. When you first load the site after signing up, you are presented with a beautiful grid of appetizers, entrées and desserts. It looks a lot like Pinterest, but with food and only food. If you click on a dish, you get the list of ingredients as well as the time required. A recipe is basically a slideshow — each slide represents a different step in the recipe. If you want to create a recipe, you just have to fill out forms describing your recipe step by step. You can’t write long paragraphs of text, just short sentences. It makes recipes very readable. Finally, one of the most important feature is certainly the search feature. If you have an idea but don’t know how to cook something, you can just search for it. Yet, you can also search by time, ingredients, types or keywords (#easy, #summer, #chocolate…) to try something new. Youmiam’s take on the recipe website is quite different as many recipe websites bet everything on SEO and content farm strategies. With a good reward system, Youmiam could make creative cooks stand out and get better recipes than your average recipe website. In 2013, the team of five participated in the 3-month Microsoft Ventures program in Paris (formerly Microsoft Spark). Part of the first batch, Youmiam is actually the first company to raise that much money. It also received $34,000 (€25,000) from , a project to foster youth entrepreneurship led by Xavier Niel (Free), Jacques-Antoine Granjon (Vente-privee.com) and Marc Simoncini (Meetic). With today’s funding, the company plans to release an English version (coming in February), mobile apps, as well as a new recommendation engine. Now that the product is starting to look good and will target an international audience, the team will have to tackle a difficult problem: creating a flourishing community around recipes. |
Horizon Shoots All Of Your Videos In Landscape, No Matter How You Hold Your Phone | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | You just shot what might be the world’s funniest video ever. You’re going to be a friggin’ YouTube . You’re totally going to hang out with Ellen. you shot the video in portrait mode. Whoops! Now the entire Internet thinks you’re dumb. Horizon is an iOS app that auto-magically ensures that your videos are shot in landscape (read: widescreen) mode, no matter how you’re actually holding the phone. Even if you rotate the phone while shooting, the video’s orientation stays the same. Wondering why the whole portrait/landscape thing matters? more aptly than I probably can, but in a nutshell: pretty much every damn screen we watch video on these days is meant for widescreen/landscape content. When you shoot videos in portrait mode, you end up with big ol’ ugly black bars on the sides that take up an overwhelming majority of the screen. With Horizon, when you start shooting a video in portrait mode, it ends up looking like it was shot in landscape. When you start it in landscape, it still looks like it was shot in landscape. And if you start shooting in landscape, but turn the phone to portrait mode mid-way through? It keeps its landscape orientation throughout, but zooms in a bit. “But wait! Can’t people just learn to hold their phone the right way?” You’d think so. But given that mountains of crappy vertical videos that get uploaded to YouTube every day, it doesn’t seem like people are getting the idea. Alas, the people who need this app the most are probably the least likely to buy it — if they haven’t worked it out by now, they probably just don’t care. Apple ought to swoop these guys up and tuck the functionality right into the built-in app, doing away with vertical video (unless manually selected by the user) once and for all. I shot a quick demo video using Horizon earlier today. Whenever it appears that I’m just moving toward or away from the keyboard, that’s Horizon adjusting the frame by zooming in or out. Check it out below: So, how does it work? The video geeks in the audience have probably figured it out already. The answer: clever, on-the-fly adjustment of your video’s framing. Whenever you’re shooting a video in portrait, Horizon automatically crops off the top and bottom of your video and zooms the image a bit to fill the full frame. You lose a bit of image quality by expanding the image like this, but it’s better than having big ol’ black bars taking up the entire screen. (Alternatively, you can set the frame to always stay zoomed in, without any rescaling as you change orientation. The downside of this, of course, is that you’re always zoomed in pretty far— so in landscape mode, quite a bit is being cropped out that doesn’t need to be.) Oh, and just for good measure: it has filters, because the world loves it some filters. It’ll do the standards like sepia and greyscale, but it has a few trippier, cartoony offerings as well. I’ve been using the app for a good chunk of the morning, and it’s pretty solid. It seem like videos shot with Horizon come out a bit shakier than those I shoot with the built-in iOS camera, though, presumably because of the constant, real-time frame adjustment. Horizon is available for iOS only, and currently goes |
As App Store Optimization Heats Up, MobileDevHQ Goes Free, Launches API | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | A company helping mobile developers optimize their app store listings for better discoverability, , is this week making its basic set of tools free for app marketers while branching out further into the enterprise, with the debut of an API. The API will provide the service’s high-end customers with programmatic access to Top Charts and Search Ranking data, which can then be pulled into internal dashboards or used for custom analysis. MobileDevHQ, for background, first its ASO (App Store Optimization) toolset for developers in the beginning of 2013, after spinning out from earlier efforts which saw the service branded as AppStoreHQ, reflecting its then focus on its app store search and discovery platform. But the real business which emerged over the months that followed involved helping developers better understand the current ASO landscape – like what keywords to use, what competitors are doing in terms of keywords, app titles and descriptions, and other choices that impact rankings. This is an increasingly important area of focus for app store marketers, as search position and rankings play a bigger role in getting an app found by an app store’s end users. And no company, no matter how notable or buzzy, is immune from having to pay attention to this area. For example, when Jelly, the new app from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, launched this month, it was so low ranked for the keyword “jelly” that it was via an app store search. (This has since improved, thanks to downloads, reviews and getting an App Store featured listing). Today, MobileDevHQ CEO Ian Sefferman says his platform has seen over 30,000 sign-ups to date, and while the company won’t disclose the number of enterprise customers, he would say that the number has increased by 100% over the last couple of months. Going forward, MobileDevHQ is making both its “indie” plan a free plan, as well as the “Professional” plan, which was previously $125/month. (Indies are automatically upgraded to the Professional tier.) This allows app marketers to access the tools need to track multiple apps across regions on both iOS and Android, as well as access the Keyword Research tool, with the ability to view up to three months of historical data. Plus, MobileDevHQ has removed the earlier restrictions around how many keywords and number of competitors which can be tracked, making the service more useful overall. Most importantly, the company is launching an API for app store marketers, which offers access to ASO reports, Top Charts, and search rankings. The REST-based API is included with all enterprise plans, and can return results in either JSON or XML. This was one of the most requested features by enterprise customers, says Sefferman. “They are often using a dozen or more different services and this allows them to bring back that data into a single dashboard to get a holistic view of their performance: Top Charts rank, Search Ranking, competitive intelligence, downloads, revenue, paid vs organic performance, and so on,” he explains. The company also claims that its average user increases downloads by 20% after using its toolset, which highlights the importance of proper ASO. The decision to make most services free was touted as being due to the growing enterprise customer base, but MobileDevHQ is also operating in a very competitive space – the company is one of many services targeting app marketers today, where competitors also include , , , , , and . More details on the product and on the MobileDevHQ website. |
Chrome 32 Launches With Tab Indicators For Sound And Video, Improved Malware Blocking & New Win8 Metro Design | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | Google today the latest stable version of its . Version 32 many of the features that recently arrived in the beta channel, including improved malware blocking and tab indicators for when a site is playing sound, accessing the webcam and sending video to your . Google uses a speaker icon, blue rectangle and red dot to indicate these different functions. Those indicators are a godsend for anybody who has ever tried to figure out which tab suddenly started playing music or a video. Google first started playing with this idea in , but the beta only got this feature in November. This new version also includes Google’s new malware blocker, which arrived in the experimental Canary build of Chrome . With this, Google will automatically block any downloads its systems have flagged as malware. For Windows 8 users, the new version now sports a new look in “Metro” mode (Google still uses that term, even though Microsoft itself has moved away from it and left it rather unclear what the new terminology should be). In Metro mode, Chrome now looks like ChromeOS with its integrated app launched on Windows. In previous versions, the Metro mode simply presented users with the regular Chrome interface. This never looked quite right, but with this new interface, Google is actually using the Metro mode to its advantage and is basically bringing ChromeOS to Windows. Also new in this version is support for Chrome’s “ ” feature, which is officially still in beta. With this, family members can check on a kid’s browsing history, for example, and set up site restrictions through . As always, this release also includes a good number of security fixes (21 in total), as well as stability and performance updates. |
Motorola’s Moto G Gets A Google Play Edition, Still $179 And $199 Unlocked | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | Google essentially makes the Moto G as it is – they own Motorola’s handset business, and both the Moto X and Moto G were designed and built under Google’s parental supervision. But that hasn’t stopped Google from creating a Play Edition Moto G. The Play Edition strips out the few non-stock elements of Android that were still present on the Moto G to begin with, but and . Like other Play Edition devices, it’s U.S.-only (at least at launch) and will work on both AT&T and T-Mobile networks. Remember that the Moto G is 3G-only, too, if you’re considering picking one up. The main advantage of a Play Edition Moto G would appear to be its ability to get timely updates. The first Android 4.4 KitKat update rolled out to Moto G devices just last week, which means that it trailed the original 4.4 launch by a couple of months. The Play Edition will likely get updates much faster, so users who want to stay on the cutting edge would do well to opt for this variant. Motorola has introduced some slick software additions to the standard Moto G, however, so it really comes down to preference in this case. I suspect Google is also motivated by a long-term desire to make Play Editions a consumer option for just about every major Android phone. If consumers start gravitating towards them, they get greater control over the pace and consistency of software updates. If they don’t, at least some developers will be pleased with the option. |
Twitter Can Now Target Ads Based On Email Addresses And User IDs | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | Twitter just announced some new capabilities in its , and it sounds like the company is enabling some pretty specific targeting. In a blog post, Revenue Product Manager Kelton Lynn describes the additions as new ways to create Tailored Audiences, either using a customer relationship management database (something that — in both cases the emails are sent as hashes) or lists of Twitter usernames or user IDs (the user ID being the unique number that identifies your account). Lynn said advertisers will be able to exclude certain audiences from their advertising in the same way. The post includes two infographics outlining use cases for advertiser Style For Us — advertising an exclusive offer to loyalty card members, or targeting users who use fashion terms in their bios and have “many” followers. Those examples suggest that the new features could be particularly useful for targeting existing sales leads or customers, or for targeting people who are influential in a specific category. Lynn writes: The combination of these tools enables a highly relevant and useful message for the user and creates the opportunity for you to reach these known audiences on Twitter with more efficient campaigns. [Advertisers] will continue to receive the same reports that include how many users saw, clicked on or converted from an ad, without identifying specific users. Also on the privacy front, the post notes that users can opt out of the program in their settings, and it says there’s a “minimum audience size” to avoid “overly specific targeting.” |
Dear Verizon, You Don’t Own The Internet—No One Does | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | If Ford built a private toll highway that only allowed Mustangs, Americans would be outraged. Infrastructure is the bloodstream of an economy; if powerful established players controlled roads, telephone lines, and Internet cables, they could favor the highest bidder at the expense of the savvy entrepreneur, choking off the meritocracy that makes market economies so innovative. This is precisely why many in the Internet community are up in arms that a U.S. circuit court the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality law, which prevented internet service providers from choosing which websites to favor with faster connection speeds. “Most of the great innovators in the history of the Internet started out in their garages with great ideas and little capital. This is no accident. Network neutrality protections minimized control by the network owners, maximized competition and invited outsiders in to innovate,” wrote Harvard Law Professor, Lawrence Lessig. Verizon and litigants of the the FCC’s 2010 argue that the First Amendment protects their right to decide how to treat content over the Internet lines they paid to distribute. , The Open Internet order violates the “First Amendment by stripping them of control over the transmission of speech on their networks. And it takes network owners’ property without compensation.” Verizon has a tempting argument that appeals to America’s love of Individualism: your property, your business. And, I would be standing at Verizon’s side waving an American flag disdainfully at consumer advocates if the telecommunications company had also paid for the billions in government research that discovered the principles of peer-to-peer computer networking. Verizon stands on the shoulders of public engineering giants, such as Google’s Vint Cerf, who toiled in Defense Department laboratories to birth the rent-free free code that Internet providers happily borrow to run their networks. , it is a libertarian fantasy that government employees and taxpayer dollars were not the genesis of the Internet. Democracies have always granted special legal responsibilities to infrastructure. Indeed, Adam Smith, the philosophical godfather of capitalism said it best, that the government has, “a duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain because the profit would never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society. In other words, meritocracy must be a timeless principle, allowing the scrappy new entrepreneur every bit as much opportunity as the established players once had. Net Neutrality, like all laws, is a complicated issue. Some providers on networks with limited bandwidth. Airplane WiFi may need to limit Skype for the sanity of its passengers. The nuance of neutrality is a healthy debate to have. But, Verizon should not fool anyone into thinking that the decision is theirs to make because they dug holes in the ground for Internet fiber. They did not build the Internet alone. They do not own it. We all do and it is our decision to democratically make. [ ] |
null | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 1 | 13 | null |
Jelly Sees 100K Questions In First Week Says RJMetrics, Of Which 25% Received Answers | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | Jelly, the that’s designed to help people crowdsource answers to any question they may have, has been on the market for around a week now and we’re seeing the first numbers about its usage so far. , which analyzes engagement data and traffic for a number of startups including Fab, Frank & Oak, Threadless and others, using information that’s publicly available through API endpoints that aren’t necessarily publicized very widely yet. Using his own Jelly account, RJMetrics CEO Robert J. Moore found out the following about usage among Jelly’s network of early adopters: Total questions asked on the network are around 100,000, which is a big number for one week of active public use. Of those, around 25,000 or one quarter were answered. It’s not optimal, but it’s also not bad; there’s also a stickiness factor through which each interaction made by a user increases the likelihood they’ll come back and use it again. Still, daily active user (DAU) count is trending downward according to Moore’s findings. That’s also to be expected after a high-profile launch, but Moore has found that people answering questions is dropping at a quicker pace than is the number of those doing the asking. He ascribes this to increasing specificity and difficulty in the type of questions being asked as people get used to the service, leading to harder answers. If Jelly can’t provide answers for the questions that members are asking, that doesn’t bode well for long-term viability. To make sure that people are happy with both the question and answer part of their Jelly experience, it may be useful for the startup to look at what kind of questions are being asked most frequently, and somehow encourage more answers for the more popular types of queries. Once people do answer, they keep coming back to answer more, after all. Moore found that “What is this?” accompanied by a photo was the most common type of query by far: Of the top 10 most popular questions on the platform, each contained an image identification aspect. “Who,” “Where,” and “What” were also among the top results according to Moore’s data. It’s early days yet for Jelly, and this data may not be providing a complete picture, coming as it does from these unexposed API endpoints. But it’s probably fair to infer that the trends Moore identifies are at least on the right track. Jelly has an interesting model, and one that requires a different kind of engagement from other popular social tools like Twitter and Facebook, but it’s still working out its place in the market, so we’ll be watching to see how community interaction develops in the coming weeks. |
OpenSesame Lands $8M To Become The iTunes Of Corporate Training Content | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | With new technologies making it easier than ever before to share and distribute quality learning content, businesses are rushing to take advantage. Plus, with the pace that technology changes these days, companies want to help keep their employees up to speed and familiar with the latest version of Salesforce, Excel or whatever the case may be. Online training resources have been around for years, but is on a mission to make buying and selling eLearning courses and content as simple as buying a song or movie on iTunes. As the online training market takes off, OpenSesame wants to be the App Store or go-to marketplace for the best content, where any company can buy courses without paying for a subscription or expensive licensing fees. Through OpenSesame’s marketplace, businesses can search through over 20,000 courses from over 300 sellers. They can preview the content, read reviews from other buyers and learn more about the company selling the content. OpenSesame allows the seller to set the price of the content, offering the owner a 60/40 share of the profits for distributing through its marketplace. But the real value, says OpenSesame Joshua Blank, is what the company has done technologically to ensure that the content available through its marketplace is compatible with the Learning Management System (LMS) or whatever platform the buying company is using to display the content and offer to its employees. Companies use a wide range of LMS platforms to organize and manage their corporate training content, and Blank says that OpenSesame’s content is now compatible with about 75 percent of the options out there. With content from publishers and resources like FranklinCovey, Pearson and John Wiley, Blank says that OpenSesame has been able to land customers like DISH networks, Five Guys and Dun & Bradstreet and is now working with several hundred enterprise customers in total. As part of its effort to become the largest single source for business-centric eLearning courses, OpenSesame announced today that it has raised $8 million of Series A financing, in a round led by Partech Ventures. The round sees Partech General Partner Nicolas El Baze join the startup’s board of directors, and brings OpenSesame’s total financing to just over $10 million. With MOOCs changing the way that education content is delivered, OpenSesame is working to change the purchasing mechanism, drawing on the tried and true marketplace model of iTunes and many others. Offering training courses for employees and businesses, the idea is for OpenSesame to act as an online store where customers can buy a la carte, paying for what they need, when they need it, at a cost that ends up being much more affordable than in-person training — or at least that’s the idea. Blank says that the model has led to 100 percent month-over-month growth in revenue for OpenSesame, something that the company hopes will continue with its new funding under its belt and a bunch of new products and additions (particularly mobile) heading down the pipeline early this year. |
Singapore Online Grocer RedMart Raises $5.4M From Investors Including Facebook Co-founder | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | , an online grocery service based in Singapore, announced today that it has closed a $5.4 million bridge round led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin; founders Steve Melhuish and Jani Rautiainen; Meng Weng Wong, the co-founder of incubator ; Wee Teng Wen, founder of ; and . The round was oversubscribed and brings RedMart’s total raised so far to $10 million. Co-founder and CEO Roger Egan told me that RedMart’s new funding will be used to build its logistics infrastructure and technology to support the company’s growth. Since RedMart , Egan says its revenue has grown 20% to 30% per month. He declined to disclose current financial or user metrics, but when we last wrote about the company six months ago, it had just made $5 million in annual sales. The company has also grown to 115 employees, up from 75. RedMart is currently in the process of raising a Series B round, which is expected to close by the middle of the year, and will be used in part to fund the company’s expansion into other cities. “We were going to do a smaller bridge round, but we were growing so fast we were running out of warehouse space and didn’t have enough delivery trucks,” says Egan. “We needed to expand faster than we thought.” He describes RedMart as a “tech and logistics company that does grocery retail.” It is important for the startup to get order fulfillment right because as a grocery retailer, a typical RedMart order might include 22 to 26 items. The company currently has 16 delivery trucks and has developed software for Android-based devices that let drivers manage their routes, contact customers, and record delivery times. Before raising its Series B round, RedMart plans to stay put in Singapore, which Egan says has grocery store industry that is worth a total of $5.9 billion. In a city where opening an e-commerce company is preferable to brick-and-mortar locations because of high real-estate costs, RedMart competes with other online grocers like , , and several smaller organic food companies. Egan says RedMart differentiates with lower prices, a wider selection of products, and same-day delivery. He wants to make sure its logistics infrastructure and technology is solid before expanding into other markets. “Webvan’s biggest mistake was expanding too quickly before they had the business model right and all systems technologies in place,” says Egan, referring to the online grocery business that went bankrupt in 2001. “It’s just much more time and effort to fix two things at once rather than get one right and replicate it really quickly,” he adds. “We want to build a whole operation and get the systems in place. We’re almost done with doing that and then we can copy and paste our internal operation into another city and adjust for cultural and last-mile delivery differences.” In a statement, Saverin said, “I believe that time-starved consumers will increasingly value convenience in purchasing their daily essentials. The logistics and technology platform the RedMart team is building extends far beyond selling groceries in Singapore. The founders’ ambition is boundless, their execution near flawless and I am excited to help them to realize their vision.” |
Renew OnDemand Provider ServiceSource Acquires Scout Analytics For $32M | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | , which provides recurring revenue management software for businesses like Renew OnDemand, announced today that it has acquired , a Seattle-based provider of predictive analytics for subscription businesses. The terms of the deal were $32 million in cash. In a statement, ServiceSource says that these verticals “roughly doubles its addressable market to now over $600 billion in recurring revenue opportunities.” Scout Analytics’ current customers include the and , as well as information services company , which is also an existing client of ServiceSource. Not everyone is happy with the deal, however. reports that a group of series A preferred stockholders filed a suit last week alleging that Scout Analytics’ board failed to explore a counter financing offer by Catalyst Investors III that would have valued the company at $40 million. Both ServiceSource and Scout Analytics declined to comment on the lawsuit. Scout Analytics manages more than $3.5 billion in recurring revenue, and ServiceSource says the acquisition will allow it to expand its business to $14 billion across more than 200 customers, tap into new markets, and offer recurring revenue management services to both subscription and traditional businesses. Scout, one of Scout Analytics’ products, tracks customers’ subscription usage, spending, and other activity, and provides information that companies can use to improve account management, retain customers, and develop marketing strategies that to sell more services to users. ServiceSource said that recurring revenue will play a “pivotal role” into the Internet of Things as more people start using smart devices and cloud-based services. Now that it has acquired Scout Analytics, ServiceSource has a new potential base of customers including consumer tech companies that operate on a recurring payment model. Scout Analytics currently analyzes usage from about 25 million subscribers on more than 400 million devices each day for customers in the software-as-a-service, information services, and digital media industries. “Scout Analytics significantly expands our reach into the fast-growing SaaS market, while creating new opportunities in B2B subscriptions for information services and digital media. And, with the addition of sophisticated predictive analytics, we can give companies the required top-to-bottom view of their customers’ data to grow through recurring revenue,” said ServiceSource chairman and CEO Mike Smerklo in a statement. |
Eyeing International Growth, Stripe Raises $80M From Founders Fund, Khosla And Sequoia At A $1.75B Valuation | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | The payments industry has a new billion dollar company. Online payments company is announcing more than $80 million in Series C funding, at a $1.75 billion valuation. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund led the round with new investor Khosla (Keith Rabois) and existing investor Sequoia joining, with Allen & Co. also contributing. This brings Stripe’s total funding up to over $130 million. To understand why Stripe is and had been disruptive, it’s best to go back to the mission behind the company from a few years back. In 2011, the company, which is the brainchild of brothers Patrick and John Collison, stated that its mission clearly: “We believe that enabling transactions on the web is a problem rooted in code, not finance, and we want to help put more websites in business.” While PayPal and others existed at the time to allow websites to set up e-commerce and payments, these offerings were clunky and not developer-friendly. Moreover, they had not adapted to new technologies and user interactions. In 2010, the Collison brothers set out to change this. They had come to the U.S. from Ireland and became affiliated with Y Combinator very early on when their company was sold in 2008 (they were only teenagers at the time). In terms of the competition, Stripe goes head to head with PayPal, which also boosted its processing with the recent acquisition of Braintree. But the signal of investment from three out of five PayPal co-founders and now early PayPal employee Rabois shows that there is an opportunity for multiple players in the space, and that Stripe has huge potential for growth, especially globally. Patrick explained us that he sees some overlap with PayPal but fundamentally the two companies have different approaches to how they are tackling problems in the space. PayPal has moved into the offline world, and for now, Stripe isn’t heading in that direction. One of the main differences Collison explains, is in Stripe’s approach to create a real platform around the company. The Collison brothers see Stripe as having the same opportunity that AWS has when building a hosting platform. They want to create the infrastructure that surrounds payments on the web and mobile, the way AWS has changed the way people build websites, says John Collison. The opportunity here is to further expand the payments API into mobile, checkout, fraud and more. A huge infusion of new money will only help this vision become a reality. Stripe was originally a side project at college for John and Patrick, but they quickly realized there was inherent value in making online payments easier. And their ambitions were greater than just facilitating payments online–if payments were easier, they though, more businesses would be created online. Armed with from PayPal founders Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, Sequoia Capital (Michael Moritz is personally involved), Andreessen Horowitz and SV Angel, the Collison brothers set out to build out a payments platform for developers that “didn’t suck.” In 2011, Stripe launched its developer-friendly online payments system that allowed site owners to avoid setting up merchant accounts and dealings with banks, while still ensuring transaction safety. With an eye for design and simplicity, the platform was an instant hit with developers. On the backend, Stripe supports multiple programming languages and can be deployed in minutes/ On the front end, the experience for the consumer is easy as well. The company’s API makes it easy for a merchant to store cards, enable subscriptions, and direct payouts to a bank account on a large-scale. Stripe also allows developers build their own payment forms, brand the experience and allows sites owners to stay on the site for the checkout experience, This last point is huge, because many merchants don’t want users to have to visit an outside site to checkout and perhaps drop the transaction in the process. Having control over the payment’s UI and experience is a win for any merchant, as is the ability to cut out any redirection. Unlike others in the payments space, the startup hasn’t been floating around numbers around how much it processes. But we’re told it’s billions per year, with thousands of customers, including Lyft, Rackspace and . In 2012, the company raised another , which has helped it expand into new offices in San Francisco, hire more aggressively and begin international expansion. C In the past two years, the company has seen an explosion of growth internationally. Currently Stripe supports payments in 12 countries, but the opportunity is to eventually support 200 countries. In 2013 alone, Stripe added support for ten countries, and today, announced the open beta for Australia, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Spain. In fact, Stripe is growing faster internationally than it is in the US. The new funding will be used towards expanding operations in international markets and hiring country heads to manage each market. Additionally, Stripe will be looking to build out its engineering staff here in the U.S. as well. Currently, Stripe is about 85 people today and of these, 22% are former founders and nearly 40% hail from outside the U.S. “Creating this layer and modernizing payments infrastructure for the web us a big task,” John Collison tells us. “This means we have to expand to more countries, and potentially beyond credit card payments. We want to make payments work well for all merchants, all over the world.” Part of this, the Collisons explain, will be working with local banks on incorporating payments options for each market. From an operational standpoint, Stripe will be hiring country managers in each market and expanding from there. In terns of revenue, we’re told 2013 was a big year, and the company says it saw fast growth but didn’t reveal numbers. Patrick Collison tells us that around six months ago, Stripe started getting more attention from larger companies, especially those in the Fortune 500. The company is reportedly in talks with Twitter to power the network’s . Collison alludes to more partnerships with larger companies to be revealed in 2014. As for today’s announcement of funding, when the Collison’s wanted to raise new funding, they thought of who their dream team would be that would contribute both operational and payments expertise. Thiel, Rabois, and Michael Moritz is an impressive group for any company to scale, and potentially create a multi-billion company. Rabois as a new investor is a particularly interesting fit, considering his experience growing Square, Slide, working at then fledgling startup PayPal and more. Rabois had met with the Collisons when they had started Stripe and while he did not invest, he helped arrange a partnership with Wells Fargo for the startup. he kept int touch with the brothers and when he left Square and joined Khosla, he started talking more seriously with Patrick and John. In fact, he recalled in his first meeting with Patrick, the two spent over 3 hours just talking about the payments industry and Stripe’s opportunity. “Stripe’s opportunity is massive particularly because of explosion of mobile,” Rabois says. “We’re just in the first and second innings of the mobile revolution, and it’s hard to quantify this but it looks like it’s going to be incredible for Stripe.” Of course, opportunity and growth come with challenges. Rabois says that Stripe’s will be choosing which products and ideas to execute, and scaling headcount to hundreds. Patrick recognizes that 2014 will be about execution, and furthering his and John’s goal of making Stripe the AWS for online payments infrastructure. “Stripe’s goal is to increase the GDP of the Internet.” Photo credit/ |
Ominous Text Message Sent To Government Protestors In Ukraine | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | [tweet https://twitter.com/obk/status/425399304438554625] Someone is broadcasting creepy messages to defuse violent protests against the Ukrainian government. “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance,” is a text being sent to protesters, near the Parliament building. Protesters are, in part, angry over anti-demonstration laws passed by the heavy-handed president, Viktor Yanukovych. We’ve reached out to experts to see what company may have enabled the Ukrainian government to send the mass message — or whichever actor was trying to intimidate them. The protests, which have been raging since last year, to the Russian-friendly policies of the current administration and the dubious circumstances of its election to power. Governments around the world, including the U.S. government, are increasingly brazen about their use of location tracking of dissidents and protestors. , Miami-Dade police told the city council they had purchased a location-tracking system specifically to monitor protesters. , the Saudi government had kept a on women trying to leave the country, notifying their male guardians when they left. In 2012, digital rights watchdog the Electronic Frontier Foundation selling technology to authoritarian regimes, including from a Nokia subsidiary, Trovicor. We will update readers as we learn more about this incident. |
iPhone 5s Owners Gobbling “Unprecedented” Levels Of Data, Study Finds | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | Users of flagship smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone 5s and Samsung’s Galaxy S4 are continuing to suck down more data than their tablet-wielding counterparts, according to a large-scale survey of mobile data consumption in 2013 conducted by JDSU (which last year , the company that previously ran the annual survey). , which looked at 2012 data, also found flagship smartphone device users outpacing the data consumption rates of tablet users. But the most data thirsty phone users of all have an iPhone 5s burning a hole in their pocket. As with the 2012 study, the 2013 survey examined the data demands of more than one million subscribers using more than 150 different devices over a single, 24-hour weekday in a Tier-1 European market, which had a mixture of urban and suburban morphologies. But for the first time the survey also studied a developing market for comparative purposes — with a further To ensure statistical validity the study only looked at the data demands of popular devices — i.e. those represented by at least 1,000 subscribers (conversely, the most popular devices had subscriber rates of well over 10,000 apiece). The results are pretty telling about the habits of flagship smartphone owners, if not entirely surprising. You guys are a data-demanding bunch. Especially if you happen to own the latest iPhone. Continuing the trend of the past three years’ findings, the 2013 study found that mobile subscribers using Apple’s flagship smartphone are the most data-hungry smartphone users of all. And they’re getting hungrier still: users of the new iPhone 5s are data-hungry than previous top-of-the-line iPhone owners — with the study describing them as the most voracious smartphone users it’s yet seen, with “unprecedented increases in uplink and downlink data demands”. According to the findings, iPhone 5s users demand 7x as much data as iPhone 3G users in developed markets (the study uses the iPhone 3G as its mid-range benchmark device), and 20x as much data in developing markets. The most data-demanding device in 2013 was the iPhone 5 — but iPhone 5s users are demanding a fifth (20%) more data than iPhone 5 users in developed markets, and 50% more data in developing markets. Owners of Apple’s current flagship phone also have a greater data consumption than the Android-based Samsung Galaxy S4, which had a 5x data generation rate vs the iPhone 3G in developed markets and 11x in developing markets. The SGS4 did rank a lot higher for uplink data generation — coming third in developed markets (vs sixth place for the iPhone 5s). The study goes on to note that the average user of the SGS4 generates almost as much uplink data as eleven iPhone 3G users in the developing market it analysed. T Both Apple and Samsung are amply represented in the top data gobbling devices across developed and developing markets, as the below tables from the report show: The report also flags up the relatively reduced amount of data consumption by users of the lower cost iPhone 5c compared to previously released iPhones. “This is consistent with the marketing of the device relative to the new flagship iPhone 5s,” the report notes. Bottom line: even though the iPhone 5c is a shiny new iPhone, it’s not a iPhone so the owners of this device have more modest data consumption habits (on average). On the tablet front, Apple’s fourth-gen iPad has replaced the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 in the top tablet spot in the studied developed market (relative to 2012’s study). No sign of the iPad Air as yet, but it’s a little too early for that device to crop up on the analysed networks (being as it went on sale in November, when the data was being gathered). The study also points out that — as with the don’t-call-it-cheap-but-it’s-not-a-flagship iPhone 5c — Apple’s lower priced tablet, the iPad mini, yields lower data consumption rates than its flagship tablet models. The report notes that iPad mini users consume only 80% of the downlink data consumed by 2nd and 3rd generations of iPads. “Similar to the iPhone 5c, the iPad mini was not intended to be a flagship device and instead has sought to occupy a niche position in the market,” it adds. Another characteristic of mobile data consumption detailed by the study applies to the hungriest 1% of all subscribers. The report notes that these users consume more than However the device-types these hungriest of data-hungry mobile users are conducting their bandwidth hogging activities on has seen a bit of a shift. The report notes that in the developed market being analysed, smartphones now constitute the majority of “extreme devices”, taking a 63% fraction vs 40% in 2012’s study. While tablet device usage among this group has It’s possible this is a consequence of smartphones getting bigger and thus more tablet-esque — aka the rise of the — allowing extreme users to choose a compromise device that’s quasi-pocketable (compared to a full-fat tablet), and thus able to appeal to their desire to remain tethered at all times to the Internets, while still being large enough to eyeball most of the stuff they want to on the go. There’s no doubt phablet usage is on the up — e nd with some , it seems logical to connect the swelling waistlines of the average smartphone as a contributory factor in swelling rates of data consumption among phone users. Bigger smartphones, after all, often more screen real-estate for performing data-consuming activities. And, unlike tablets, these gizmos are merely a handy pocket away from users’ fingertips. The report also touches on the role being played by LTE/4G in encouraging data-gobbling — noting that the higher speeds supporting by this next-gen cellular tech are doing the equivalent of pouring lighter fuel on the data consumption bonfire. “The most extreme 0.1% of all users consume nearly half of all downlink LTE data,” the report notes. “Extreme behavior in UMTS required ten times as large a fraction (0.1% -> 1%) to get to half of all downlink data. As such, we can declare that LTE users are ten times more extreme than UMTS users.” In other words, throw LTE into the mix along with powerful, fatty phablets and increasing levels of mobile data gluttony is a given. It’s almost enough to make you pity the poor carriers whose networks have to shoulder the burden of “extreme users” and data-diva flagship owners. *Almost* “The faster the speeds that mobile operators provide, the more consumers swallow it up and demand more,” concludes report author Dr Michael Flanagan. “One would expect a honeymoon period in which early adopters test their toys. But for 4G users to consistently exhibit behaviour 10 times more extreme than 3G users well after launch constitutes a seismic shift in the data landscape.” |
VMWare’s $1.5B AirWatch Buy All About The Mobile Workplace | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | In the latest salvo in the battle to reshape the architecture by which business works “AirWatch provides real, important value now. They’re right there when an enterprise says we need to get this stuff [i.e. data and applications] under our control,” said Richard Wells, a managing director with the technology focused growth capital and private equity firm Insight Venture Partners, which led a $225 million financing for AirWatch back in 2013. That Series A round was one of the single biggest first round financings for a technology company in years, and netted AirWatch a valuation of roughly $1 billion, according to several sources familiar with the deal. That’s pretty big money, and the AirWatch deal is all part of a wholesale re-evaluation that companies are doing of the basic technology infrastructure that employees use to conduct business every day. Venture investors and companies like VMWare have spent steadily increasing amounts on mobile security hardware, software and services so that people can do more work from more places – and do it securely, according to data from .
Other big enterprise companies are buying into mobile security too. , which bought the venture-backed in late 2012, and , which paid an undisclosed amount for Fiberlink Communications, a mobile device management are two examples. Venture capitalists have also backed independent private companies like with $124 million in financing to pursue the same market in securing mobile business. For its part, AirWatch sees the VMWare acquisition allowing it to take on a new set of competitors, like venture-backed companies and , which have raised a combined $350 million from investors in the past two months. “We see the enterprise content space as an extension of our platform,” said AirWatch chief executive officer John Marshall. “[We have] all the things that make make enterprise content collaboration possible… We have access to partners that own the infrastructure and the virtualization that hits the data center.” Venture investors view all of this activity as the first wave in moving businesses into the cloud. “Just like our consumer world shifted from 100% PC and 0% mobile to 80% mobile and 20% PC, we’re at the front end of seeing that with the enterprise,” said Matt Murphy, a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. |
Microsoft Earnings Preview: The Surface Question | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | Tomorrow afternoon Microsoft will report its fiscal second-quarter financial performance, detailing how it fared during the critical holiday season. The company is working to revamp its key operating system, become an OEM, and grow its mobile presence. That confluence of efforts makes tomorrow’s report quite important. On the mobile front, . That will set the tone early for Microsoft. A low number could indicate flagging consumer interest in Microsoft products, something that could drag down its earnings and thus its share price. Windows OEM revenue and Surface revenue will be the main drivers of investor sentiment, provided that the rest of Microsoft continues “at pace” with past performance. By that I mean I don’t expect Azure to perform so well, or so poorly, that it causes waves. We expect growth. The same goes for Office and so forth. We already have a good handle on Xbox: More than 3 million sold units in the quarter, so whatever Microsoft discloses will be in keeping with current thinking. Windows OEM revenue will toss light — or shade, depending — into the state of the larger PC market. Estimates have its , so OEM incomes of that sort for Microsoft could mimic that decline. And then there’s Surface. Microsoft hardware projects have three thrusts (supposing the Nokia purchase goes through as expected): smartphones, consoles and tablets. The tablet element is the one most directly tied to Windows itself making it the most important, arguably. Microsoft will break out a Surface revenue number in its report, and if past is any indication, will provide some general guidance on sales. Inventory for Surface is just now creeping back into online channels. That crunch lasted for at least a month, and can be viewed in two different ways: Undersupply, or over demand. Of both, but you get the gist. Provided that supply was so tight, whatever Microsoft thought it could sell in terms of Surface the company did in fact sell, so the revenue number we’ll see will in fact help us understand its mind. To refresh, after the company’s fiscal first quarter (that’s calendar Q3, if you are not keeping score), the company did not provide Surface revenue guidance for the fourth quarter. I made up a that we could use instead of official projections to get our mind around Surface revenue in the quarter: I think that those numbers should be bumped up by $100 million apiece, given what we know about inventory shortages. The report could also shed light on the CEO hunt, something that is more than likely to come up during the post-report call. Strap in, this report card is an important indicator of Microsoft’s performance as the new company it wants to become. |
Microsoft Gives Its Office Web Apps A New, Flatter Look | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | Microsoft is giving its a new look today, it seems. While the company hasn’t done all that much to promote its Office Web Apps lately, they are pretty capable online versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote that are free for anyone to use. Today, the company is giving all of these apps a user interface overhaul that brings an even flatter design, some new features and easier navigation. While Microsoft hasn’t officially announced these changes, the company has confirmed to us that it did indeed launch these updates earlier today ( : and it has now , too). “We did introduce some Office Web App updates earlier today,” a Microsoft said. “As we’ve said in the past, we’ll continue to bring the Office features that you value most to the Web and this is just one example of that.” The most notable change – or at least the first one I spotted – is a new navigation for the OneNote note-taking app. It now uses two columns on the left to help you navigate between the different sections of your notebooks. Previously, that was a bit of a hassle. Microsoft has also changed the design of the top menu across all the apps and cleaned up the design of the Ribbon menu across the board. The occasional semi-skeuomorphic icon remains in the Ribbon, but for the most part, the Office Web Apps have now gone completely flat. As part of the update, Microsoft has also changed the header UI to include a switcher that offers access to other online Microsoft experiences. One other change I noticed was that the Word and Excel apps now features a “Tell me what you want to do” search bar that lets you search across all of the app’s tools and invoke actions, such as bolding text or find and replace right from the search results. It uses type-ahead, so it generally just takes a few keystrokes to find the function you need. Microsoft says this tool will soon arrive in the PowerPoint web app, too. Microsoft tells me that it also now allows users to add “polish to reports and papers with new footnotes & endnotes.” Overall, the new design makes the Office Web Apps feel a bit more like the recently updated Outlook.com, which also features a similarly flat menu bar. For comparison, here is what the old user interface looked like: |
Google’s Knowledge Graph Now Being Used To Enhance Individual Search Results | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | Google’s is getting baked into actual search results, the company is announcing today. In a on its official Search Blog, Google explains how you’re now able to learn more about the topics you’re searching for by clicking names that appear next to a given link in your search results. These additional, informational widgets are only appearing in desktop searches at present. In the provided example, a search for “Civil War battles” may be tagged with another small link, which, when clicked reveals a drop-down box summarizing that page’s topic. In the picture shown (see above), an extra link titled “Civil War Trust” pops up a box that offers a one-sentence explanation about the nonprofit being referenced, including the date of its founding. These new links are small and gray, so as not to impact the search experience. They appear beneath the larger blue link, and next to the actual site URL (green link). The extra information will only be provided for sites that are “widely recognized as notable online,” says Google, which means that it’s not likely that you’ll see some random person’s blog on page 10 of Google’s search results getting the same treatment. The additional information is powered by Google’s Knowledge Graph, a semantic search effort the company first back in 2012 as a way to make Google Search smarter by infusing it with an understanding of the people, places, and things in its search index. Since that time, the Knowledge Graph has gone on to touch nearly every aspect of Google’s search, including , its , , and much more, in addition to also providing at-a-glance information to the right and sometimes top of Google’s Search results. Like some of the Knowledge Graph enhancements that have come before it, the new informational pop-ups could impact click-throughs on the pages returned in the search results. For instance, if the searcher was only looking for a brief explanation or fact-check, the pop-up could suffice. But Google purports this extra info is instead designed as a way to help you choose the right result from its list of blue links, not avoid them. |
Mixpanel Aims To Help Developers Deliver Targeted Messages Through New In-App Notifications | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | Mobile analytics company is unveiling a feature today that co-founder Suhail Doshi said will give developers a new way to communicate with their users. Mixpanel customers will now be able to deliver “ ” to their users — Doshi compared them to push notifications (an area where ), except delivered when a user is actually looking at the app, not just browsing their homescreen. For example, a game developer could use the notifications to promote new levels or offer hints, or an e-commerce app could promote specific deals or products. Basically, it’s the same kinds of things you might use push notifications for, but hopefully less annoying and in a context where a user is more likely to be amenable to your message. Why can’t developers just build that kind of functionality into their apps? Doshi suggested that a well-funded company with a large mobile team can do it, but it’s tougher for a smaller organization or an independent developer. He also said that building it on top of Mixpanel’s analytics tools allows for very targeted messages, say if you wanted to reach users with a specific app version or based in a specific city. In fact, Doshi said developers can go “infinitely deep” with their targeting thanks to has built of individual users — it has 160 million profiles so far and is adding 20 million more each month. Mixpanel’s analytics will also allow developers to see whether their notifications are effective, and in the future, Doshi suggested they’ll also be able to A/B test different notifications and then switch out the variations that aren’t working. I keep saying that this will be used by developers, but Doshi noted that this could be used by “non-technical” people, too. He gave a demo of the notification editor, which allows customers to adjust the visual design and wording of the notifications without any programming — indeed, the smaller changes that Doshi demonstrated took only a few clicks. This isn’t the first time Mixpanel has launched a non-analytics products. Last fall, it . The broader goal, Doshi said, is to build on top of the company’s data and existing technology and to create a broader suite of developer tools like the ones offered by “Marketo and Eloqua and Salesforce” on the web: “These things don’t exist in the ecosystem in mobile.” [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFBvAyJN3Sg&w=560&h=315] |
Marissa Mayer Won CES | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | What’s that old saying? Software will eat the world? That was never more evident than at . Now that the dust has settled, the Gorkana Group has released a social insight report for the event, and one thing is instantly clear: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer won the show. Based on Twitter mentions alone, Mayer dominated other CES keynote speakers. Gorkana clocked 5,200 Twitter mentions about her keynote. Intel’s Brian Krzanich and Sony’s Kazuo Hirai received 2,100 and 1,400 mentions, respectively. As Gorkana notes, though, it wasn’t just about Twitter. Many media outlets live-blogged her talk. We even sent three writers to cover her keynote where other keynotes only got one. We used to blow off Microsoft’s because we knew it would be a snooze every year. And every year it was. This attention was partly because this is the first time Mayer talked at CES. The CEA has always brought tech titans in to speak. CES attendees, who are often dry and burnt-out like myself, have for years heard from Microsoft, Samsung, Ericsson, Verizon and the like. They heard from the establishment — the old dogs of hardware. And with the notable exception of , they’re all snooze fests: self-promoting rubbish from a stuffy hardware executive. But maybe with Mayer, we, the tech press, collectively hoped it would be different. It wasn’t. It was still the same dry talk but with fresh faces. Yahoo rolled out its new stars in Katie Couric and David Pogue, and Tumblr CEO David Karp shared the stage with her . Mayer announced that the company , an Android launcher. But it was mostly self-promoting rubbish about the future of Yahoo. And why not? Yahoo is on a tear. If by perception alone, Yahoo is making a fantastic recovery and is quickly reinventing itself. As Yahoo’s captain, Mayer had, and will continue to have, a lot to brag about. Being the most popular kid at school doesn’t mean you’re the best, though. For my money, Intel’s Krzanich gave the most interesting talk. Sure, he also highlighted Intel’s recent advancements, but he talked about the recent trends of the Internet of Things and wearables — spaces that are set to explode in the coming years. The report notes that wearable technology was the most prominent trend mentioned on Twitter during CES with 61,000 hits. Will Mayer return for a repeat performance next year? I’m sure the CEA hopes she will. The reaction to her talk proved that companies do not have to debut hardware to make waves at CES. Interestingly enough, Micheal Bay garnered over 15,000 tweets for . Apparently, if you don’t talk on stage, you’ll get even more attention. |
Glyph “Personal Theater” Goggles Beat $250K Kickstarter Goal In Four Hours | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | four hours for the , a head-mounted “personal theater” from , to reach its $250,000 funding goal on Kickstarter. Unlike the Oculus Rift’s focus on virtual reality, or Google Glass which forces a heads-up display into every facet of life, the Glyph is a media-centric device. For now, it offers a nice pair of high-end headphones with a headband that can transform into an immersive display. The $499 wearable headset, complete with over-the-ear headphones, uses a new display technology the company called “Virtual Retina Display”. The Virtual Retina Display involves no screen at all, instead projecting images directly onto the retina with a complex array of LEDs and mirrors. According to co-founder Ed Tang, this is meant to mimic the way our eyes work in real life, when they aren’t focused in on a computer or TV or smartphone screen, providing a much sharper, more realistic viewing experience. The Glyph isn’t supposed to be a virtual reality device that cuts you off. Instead, it’s meant to be a headphone replacement with an optional display. The Glyph can work natively with any audio or video source (including Xbox, smartphones, Netflix, etc.) through an HDMI/HML cord, and Avegant ensures that users can get to whatever content they want from anywhere in the world through a single cable. But what about head-tracking? The Glyph is packed with a 3-axis Gyro, accelerometer, and a digital magnetometer to allow for head-tracking when content is compatible. Tang claims that the team is working on mapping the headtracker to a mouse, with the goal of making most PC-based first person games will work right out of the box. Later on, they’ll release some developer tools to give coders the option to build out mobile-based content. [gallery columns="5" ids="944994,944993,944992,944991,944990"] We caught up with co-founder Ed Tang to discuss the instant success on Kickstarter and future plans for the Glyph. Can you give me a little background on Avegant as a company? My co-founder, Allan Evans, was getting his PhD at U of Michigan and doing advanced research on various medical devices and microsystems. He was working on projects for the U.S. government’s national research lab while he was out there, and was encouraged by people in the military to look into building new display technology. For things like night vision and other military uses, the performance has always been really bad on these displays, which causes a lot of eye strain after more than an hour, and users become actively tired. So he approached things from an engineering standpoint as well as a physiological standpoint, thinking about how we, as humans, see. Our eyes get tired if we stare at displays, but when I look out the window or around the room, things are comfortable and realistic. So we chose to replicate the kind of light we see in real life, which is reflective light. Emissive light doesn’t have the same properties that make it less exhausting and more realistic. The system he built is a virtual retina display, and it’s a display with no screen. Instead the image is being projected onto the retina, the way we see things in normal life, with a very low-power LED. Kind of like the flashlight on the end of a keychain. The cool thing is that anything you put into this technology, from a movie to a game or whatever, looks so much more crisp and vivid and comfortable, than any other display we have ever seen. So once we realized what it could do, we had to make it smaller. At the beginning of last year, the prototypes were the size of a coffee table, and it felt like going to an eye doctor exam. You sat down in this huge machine, and adjusted various objects around you, with tons of cords. Still, we proved the concept, which let us raise a little funding from friends and family, which let us repackage it into the size of a big pair of glasses. We had some great reviews on that product, and after talking to consumers and looking at test cases, seeing how people wanted to use this, we realized that people are engaging more and more with mobile devices, and less and less with TVs at home. Most of what people do with their smartphones and tablets is watching videos, playing games and listening to music. The device that really wins is the one that fits what people want to do today, which meant building a very premium set of headphones into this revolutionary display tech. That way, when you want video content, you can flip down the headband and turn headphones into a display. When we looked at other head-mounted display tech out there, there was never a good audio solution paired with it. We knew we had to change that. But one of the challenges is that if we’re going to replace someone’s high-end headphones, our product has to be really good. People are picky about headphones. So how did you go about doing that? Do you have people on your team focused solely on the audio experience? We have a couple of audio engineers on our team. One worked on projects for TI, Amazon, and Google, and they were both trained by the top audio engineers in the world. They helped us a lot on our current design. We benchmarked our headphones against all of the competing high-end headphones out there, from Sennheiser to Audio Technica to Bose or anything else we could find over $300, and we feel we match up against the best of them. We want the user to start out with a really accurate, super precise sound and then slightly tune it to be more pleasing. I’d gladly put our headphones up against any audio product over $300. In your Kickstarter video, you had some great endorsements from and founder Philip Rosedale and Netflix VP of IT Operations Mike Kail. Why are other people so excited about the Glyph? These endorsements are well deserved. When it comes to the Glyph and partners, it’s more about helping the entire industry, not about us. Many people we talk to believe that video won’t stay the same as it is today, where it’s a passive experience around your TV. We’re going to see a massive change in how consumers consume media and what we’re doing here with Glyph is something that excites people in the industry. For Philip, a realistic looking head-mounted display is the key to virtual reality. It’s what’s always been missing, to let you look around and hear audio change as you turn your head. So that the experience is truly immersive and convincing. Netflix, on the other hand, is an interesting company that has changed its business model a number of times, from DVD rental to streaming to content creation. This company has seen a huge decline in traditional media delivery first hand, and is being proactive about the future of the mobile market. As bandwidth has gotten cheaper and faster, people can use Netflix on their phone, but the device that delivers the best experience hasn’t reached market yet. Aside from similar devices we’ve seen from Sony and other large players, the Oculus Rift seems to be one of your competitors in the head-mounted, virtual reality display space. How do you differentiate? We actually don’t consider ourselves direct competitors with Oculus. They’re solely focused on virtual reality, and growing interest and excitement in the virtual reality space again. This is fantastic for us, because the more familiar people get with head-mounted displays, the better it is for all of us. That includes Oculus and Google Glass and anything else. But while Oculus is focused on virtual reality, we’re focused on more general audience use. We want the business professional, or even my mother to use the Glyph. These are people that really want to engage in media and play games and watch movies and listen to music. The Glyph is a multimedia device for every day use, and people listen to more music than they watch video. So we built something that let them switch from one to the other easily, when they want it. Another big differentiator between what we do and straight virtual reality is how cut off from the rest of the world you are. You can’t hear or see anything around you. We don’t want to do that. If you’re going to use our product in the airport or on the train, you need to feel comfortable, so we tried to maximize peripheral vision around the user. That way, when the drink cart comes by on a plane or the passenger next to you wants to go to the bathroom, you know what’s going on. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqpiiajav14&w=640&h=360] One of the biggest issues with wearable tech has been that mainstream audiences have trouble wearing their technology. Google Glass and Oculus Rift target geekier, more tech-savvy audiences who are more willing to adopt. How do you plan to tackle the mainstream audience who seems to be resistant to wearables? When you look at wearable technology, everybody is focused on the technology and not the wearable part. If people aren’t willing to wear it, it doesn’t matter how cool the technology is. I have Google Glass but I feel really uncomfortable wearing it. People stare at you and look at you funny. When I’m just hanging out and talking to my buddy, there’s this thing in between us all the time. That’s why we went after the headphone form factor. You can wear the Glyph just as you do any other headphones. Since people engage in audio way more than video most of the time, they can replace the headphones they already own and feel totally normal wearing the product. No one around you will think you’re doing something weird by wearing them. But when you want to tune out the rest of the world and watch a movie, you can flip down the visor and watch movies. We look at it as one small step toward wearable technology, because we’ve given the user something they’re already comfortable with wearing and added an extra feature to it. That’s why I think the smartwatch will be so successful. Because people already wear watches, so it doesn’t look weird or out of place. You’ve raised your $250k goal in less than four hours, and it doesn’t look like demand is slowing down. We’ve seen many Kickstarter projects blow past their goal and later run into manufacturing or shipping issues. Are you prepared to supply this sort of demand? We’ve prepped all of our manufacturing for low quantity and high quantity demand. For the foreseeable future, we’ll be just fine with this demand. On our Kickstarter pages, we’re claiming a December delivery date, but we expect to have units ready to ship a few months before that. We’ve manufactured a lot of these components already in lower quantities as a test run, to explore and answer all of these questions. And we feel very confident. Now, it’s just about taking current prototypes we have and improving fit and finish. The prototypes look great and image quality is fantastic, but we want a premium quality product that isn’t even a little bit bulky or heavy. We’re not worried about manufacturing because having more units actually makes it easier for us to scale our model. Building 1,000 units is easier than building 100. Companies have been trying this sort of technology for years. What has changed over time that makes this a viable product with lots of demand? People have been trying to do this for ten or twenty years, but there are a number of reasons why it hasn’t picked up at all. First, the visual experience has to be there. There hasn’t been a head-mounted display that has a good enough visual experience. The Glyph experience isn’t just decent, it’s better than a TV or a movie theater. In fact, it’s ruined going to the movies for me. The second thing is form factor. It has to fit in your life. It can’t be something extra you have to carry or something cumbersome that isn’t comfortable to wear. By replacing headphones, the Glyph takes up the same spot in your bag, and even if you don’t watch a lot of video you still have fantastic headphones. The third factor is that it has to work with people’s existing content. People want to watch their own stuff, portably, and they want to be able to watch it on all the devices they have today. It has to be battery-powered with a single cable. The Glyph runs all the content you already own. I never wanted to build something that required developers to create content for it. I would hate selling something to someone on Kickstarter and having to tell them that they won’t see good content for it for another six months. The last part is audio. If you don’t combine audio with it than you only offer part of the experience. It’s the key to letting the general consumer adopt this technology. |
Netflix Downplays Court’s Net Neutrality Decision, Says Internet Providers Unlikely To Act | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | In the that accompanied , Netflix addresses that was seen as a threat to net neutrality. That decision could potentially be a problem for Netflix, because it could provide legal justification for Internet providers to reduce the speed at which Netflix video content is delivered unless the company pays the providers. As the letter (which specifically calls out Verizon for challenging net neutrality in court) puts it: “In principle, a domestic ISP now can legally impede the video streams that members request from Netflix, degrading the experience we jointly provide. The motivation could be to get Netflix to pay fees to stop this degradation.” If that happens, Netflix says it would “vigorously protest,” but the company suggests that things probably won’t go that far. The letter, which is signed by CEO Reed Hastings (pictured) and CFO David Wells, argues it’s more likely that “ISPs will avoid this consumer-unfriendly path of discrimination”: ISPs are generally aware of the broad public support for net neutrality and don’t want to galvanize government action. Moreover, ISPs have very profitable broadband businesses they want to expand. Consumers purchase higher bandwidth packages mostly for one reason: high-quality streaming video. ISPs appear to recognize this and many of them are working closely with us and other streaming video services to enable the ISPs subscribers to more consistently get the high-quality streaming video consumers desire. Again, this is a letter to shareholders, and in that context, it’s not surprising that Netflix wants to downplay worries that might lower the stock price. But there’s been other coverage suggesting that this isn’t as big a threat to Netflix as we might think. The Atlantic, for example, ran an article titled “ “. As for whether more laws are required to protect net neutrality, the letter argues that “less regulation is warranted” if Internet providers “adhere to a meaningful voluntary code of conduct,” while more regulation would be needed if they actually start “impeding specific data flows.” [image via ] |
SeaMicro’s Andrew Feldman On Pulling The Thread In Entrepreneurship | Contributor | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | I’ve been lucky to host many great founders here on “ ” to date, but this particular video discussion with , a cofounder and CEO of (which was eventually acquired by ) struck a different tone than those past. Feldman, who attended university here in the Valley, has quietly developed a remarkable career working on complex businesses. As he began to noodle on the initial idea for SeaMicro, he noticed that many large companies were growing concerned about power management in their data centers, how to keep those systems both efficient and cool. This is the “thread” he references, and he kept “pulling” the thread to unravel more and more of what struck him as a business opportunity. One connection led to another, and despite raising financing before and after the 2008 financial crisis, Feldman guided his team to an acquisition by AMD. In this short discussion, Felman sits down with me to discuss the entrepreneurial arc in his career, the loneliness of being a CEO, how much time it takes to build enterprise-grade products from scratch, and how it’s not just founders and CEOs who take risk, but all early-stage employees who believe in creating something new which does not exist. Feldman’s steely resolve is subtly infectious, and showcases the quiet intensity he brings to his work and companies, where he helps everyone pull on the thread of entrepreneurship. |
Polish 3D Printer Zortrax Sells 5,000 Units To Dell | John Biggs | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | It may seem like small potatoes, but Polish 3D printer manufacturer has chalked a 5,000 unit order from Dell. This is the first I’ve heard of a mass order of home 3D-printing equipment and it means a real boon for the budding Olsztyn-based company. “Dell kept in touch with us when we were still in the middle of our Kickstarter campaign. We weren’t in a position to make them a reasonable business offer at that time, since our production volume was very limited,” said Rafał Tomasiak, . “At that point in time the production was very tedious, every single printer was quality checked and tested by us. Business negotiations with Dell were stalled at some point and we focused on shipping the printers to our Kickstarter backers. Now the situation is much different, we are prepared for large quantity orders.” last May and is now shipping to happy Kickstarter backers. I’ve used the printer multiple times and was very impressed by the print quality and build. The company is poised to be a major player in the European market and, with this investment by Dell, potentially globally. The company said the the printers are headed toward Dell’s central and east Asia offices. “Frankly speaking, we were surprised that any company, even a company like Dell, wants to place such an order! But after a while we realized how many printers we use in our own office… For a designer who prints a large number of prototypes it is much more useful to use 10 smaller printers on one desk, which operate simultaneously, rather than one with a larger build volume,” said Tomasiak. |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 1 | 14 | null |
Pinterest Is Testing A Personalized Home Page Based On Your Interests | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | Pinterest is introducing a new way to browse its site with the addition of a category called “Personalized for You.” This new section is essentially a version of Pinterest based entirely on your interests. For example, a fashion-focused Pinterest user might see categories like boots, jackets, dresses, or jewelry on this page, which they could then click into and further explore. The feature is not yet available to all users, indicating that it could be the first step within a larger rollout, or a public-facing personalization experiment. We asked Pinterest to clarify this, but the company declined to offer further details. From our understanding, some selection of the Pinterest user base is seeing a notification asking them if they would like to try this new feature when they log in. This option started appearing in select users’ accounts this week, where it becomes available in Pinterest’s top navigation. That’s where you find your “Home Feed,” the “Popular” feed, the “Everything” feed, and other categories like “Art,” “Food & Drink,” “Home Decor,” “Travel,” “Weddings,” and many more. For those users who are able to access the new personalized section, it is now the first option in this category list. Your “personalized” page itself is a collection of words and topics that seem to be based on your pinning activity. What’s different about this section is not only the content, but also the look-and-feel, which is somewhat Flipboard-esque. Instead of uniformly sized pins, some sections here are larger than others, likely indicating you’re doing more pinning around that particular topic. Also interesting is that each individual category page within your personalized section shows which pins inspired its suggestions. has been positive, with many excitement about the addition, surprise, or even shock at well Pinterest seems to know their interests. The only somewhat negative review we’ve come across so far is one posted on a blog called “ ,” where the user complained that she had no interest in one of the categories presented on her page, saying she was only doing research on the topic. Of course, this “research” took place before she apparently wrote about the subject and then pinned her own article to Pinterest – so I’d argue Pinterest understands her pretty well, in fact. As you may recall, Pinterest has been slowly working to better personalize its service since the middle of last year, when it . The company’s decision to implement this “Do Not Track” toggle switch was meant to head off any future complaints before the company scaled up its personalization efforts in full force. At the time, Pinterest noted that it would introduce a new “Edit Your Home Feed” button on web and mobile which would make it easier for you to follow and unfollow boards. When users entered into this editing mode, they would then be met with personalized pin and board suggestions based on things they had already been pinning on the service. Later, when Pinterest ” (in beta testing with advertisers now), the idea was to not inflict an awful advertising experience on the Pinterest user base with things like flashy banners or pop-ups, but instead showcase native ads in the form of subtly marked sponsored pin placements that blend into the overall look-and-feel of the site. And most importantly, which Promoted Pins a user sees is, again, dependent on their interests. Brands testing the Promoted Pins beta today include big names like , , , and (Unilever), to name a few. A fully personalized version of Pinterest would offer brands like these and others a great place to showcase their Promoted Pins, where their placement would make even more sense to the end user. The personalized page has another benefit as well – it allows you to explore Pinterest in a way that’s not dependent on who you follow on the service. That’s something which Pinterest has struggled with, as advertisers and brands looked to the “following” metric as if it was meaningful. In fact, Pinterest has even considered discarding this metric entirely, from what we’ve heard. It’s easy enough to envision a different sort of Pinterest where what you see and explore is less about which friends or accounts you follow on the service, but rather what sort of things you like to pin and share. |
eBay Squeaks Out A Win In Q4, With Revenue Of $4.5B And $0.81 EPS | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | eBay reported , including revenue of $4.5 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.81. The company’s revenue was up 13 percent from the same quarter last year, while its earnings per share rose 16 percent. It’s a fairly temperate showing from eBay, as analysts have been eBay to report a 16 percent profit increase on revenue of $4.5 billion and $0.80 EPS (non-GAAP). The main drivers of eBay’s fourth quarter results have expected to be a decline in its marketplaces and auctions segment, with a boost from PayPal. , eBay reported revenue of $3.9 billion, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.64. While the consensus estimates for the fourth quarter were around $0.80, many expected the reality to be slightly lower thanks to a relatively tepid following eBay’s somewhat tepid sales during the holiday season. eBay’s global payments unit, PayPal, saw revenue increase 19 percent again this quarter, as well as the full year, resulting in what the company says is a $6.6 billion in revenue in 2013. In turn, PayPal gained 5.2 million active registered accounts in the quarter and ended the year with 143 million — a 16 percent increase. “We feel good about our performance and strong finish in the fourth quarter, with the holiday shopping season clearly showing how online, mobile and other omni-channel commerce capabilities are changing how consumers shop and pay,” said eBay CEO and President John Donahoe in today’s statement. “Mobile exceeded expectations for the year. Our total mobile commerce volume grew 88 percent, with eBay reaching $22 billion and PayPal hitting $27 billion in 2013. And mobile added more than 14 million customers. PayPal and eBay together create an incredibly strong global commerce ecosystem for consumers and merchants, and we continue to see tremendous growth opportunities ahead,” he continued. Going a little bit deeper, eBay’s operating margin jumped to 29.2 percent in the fourth quarter, with the company generating $1.4 billion of free cash flow during the fourth quarter. For the full year, eBay generated $3.7 billion in free cash flow and repurchased approximately $254 million of its common stock in the fourth quarter. Furthermore, eBay’s Marketplace saw revenue of $2.3 billion and both it and PayPal saw record mobile results for the year in 2013, both surpassing $20 billion in mobile volume. Marketplaces’ gross merchandise value (GMV) grew 13 percent in both the fourth quarter and the full year to $76.5 billion in 2013, which eBay attributes to “strong growth in its domestic business.” In turn, revenue grew 12 percent in Q4 and for the year, reaching $8.3 billion in 2013, while gaining 4.6 million active users in the quarter and ending the year at 128 million active users. eBay also reported a net income of $850 million and non-GAAP net income of $1.1 billion for the forth quarter. Meanwhile, beyond the $254 million of stock it repurchased in Q4, the company is reportedly considering a $5 billion stock buyback, which has received “proposals” from billionaire investor Carl Icahn, . This, as with many Icahn-related stories, comes with a number of addenda and propositions for eBay, some more realistic than others. According to Bloomberg, the investor-activist has also reportedly nominated two of his employees to its Board of Directors, along with proposing a potential spinout of PayPal. One are many analysts were paying close attention to in eBay’s Q4 results were PayPal’s numbers — particularly as a function or indicator of the health (or lack thereof) of Bay’s mobile business. Something that, as seen above, was reflected in Donahoe’s statement today. To quickly break this out for those following along at home, generally speaking, compared to both tech giants and startups alike, the company (i.e. PayPal) has lagged behind a bit in mobile payments race. It’s for this reason that eBay shelled out a hefty $800 million to acquire Braintree, a deal which closed in Q4 (as well as StackMob) — to help PayPal compete and boost its mobile presence. In a positive sign for eBay, according to its earnings report, mobile was a “key catalyst” for PayPal’s growth this quarter, with payments volume off eBay “growing 128 percent for the year,” and total payment volume for the year hitting $27 billion. As for its 2014 outlook, the company said that it expects net revenues to be between $4.1 and $4.2 billion with EPS in the range of $0.51 to $0.53 and non-GAAP EPS in the range of $0.65 to $0.67. For the full year, eBay estimates that it will see $18 billion to $18.5 billion with non-GAAP EPS in the range of $2.95 to $3.00. |
Netflix Beats Analyst Expectations With 2.3M New Domestic Subscribers, Earnings Of 79 Cents A Share | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | Netflix just announced its , with the company beating analyst expectations. For the last three months, Netflix reported earnings of 79 cents per share on revenues of $1.175 billion. Earnings were well above analyst expectations of 65 cents a share, while revenues were slightly above the $1.16 billion Wall Street forecast for the quarter. During the year-ago quarter, Netflix earned 13 cents a share on $945 million in revenue. But the most-watched number every quarter is Netflix’s domestic subscriber growth. On that front, the company added 2.3 million domestic subscribers in the quarter, bringing the total to 33.4 million. Netflix’s own forecast had between 1.6 million and 2.4 million domestic subscribers, or between 32.7 million and 33.5 million for the year.
Internationally, Netflix added 1.74 million subscribers, ending the year at 10.93 million members. International growth was slightly down from 1.84 million a year prior, but that quarter was when Netflix launched in four Nordic markets. While growth was slower internationally, the loss contribution overseas declined significantly, from $105 million a year ago to $57 million this quarter. Netflix also announced plans to significantly expand its footprint in Europe later this year, but didn’t say where that expansion would happen. The fourth quarter is frequently one of Netflix’s strongest every year, with growth driven in part by new subscribers coming on board thanks to new devices that they receive during the holidays. The holidays are also a pretty good time for streaming video, as people have a lot of spare time and a dearth of great programming on traditional TV. While much of Netflix’s user growth over the past year has been attributed to quality original programming — including the addition of new shows House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black, as well as the revival of cult favorite Arrested Development — the company has been working to improve the customer experience as well. In November, the company across a large number of connected devices, including the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Roku 3, as well as newer Smart TVs and recent Blu-ray players. That experience was designed to improve the way users browsed, discovered, and searched for content by providing large, visual guide to movies and TV series available on the service. Earlier in the year, it launched to provide a more personalized, differentiated experience for households with shared accounts. Netflix hopes to continue its momentum into the new year, as the first quarter will bring along more original programming. The , as well as new seasons of Derek, Hemlock Grove, Orange is the New Black, Lilyhammer, and The Killing. |
How T-Mobile’s New Mobile Banking Service Compares With Simple And Amex Serve | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | T-Mobile today its intentions to get into the business of providing banking services to its wireless customers, and any others who want an alternative to traditional banking accounts. The will compete with, and also potentially boost, other, less-known mobile banking services, like those provided by a banking startup called , for example, or . It’s not a new idea for a mobile carrier to get into the bank-by-phone business like T-Mobile is now doing – Kenya’s M-PESA, launched in 2007, is probably one of the best known examples of how successful such a tie-up can become. Today, there are nearly 20 million people around the world using M-PESA, which has since expanded from a basic mobile money transfer scheme, to include other loans and savings products, bill pay, salary disbursements, and more. M-PESA, however, owes its leading position in the worldwide mobile banking business to a variety of factors, including not only its country of origin – a place where city workers regularly sent money back home to family in rural villages – but also because of fewer regulations, the backing of the country’s largest operator, Safaricom, and, as is often the case with new technologies, good timing. (Post-election violence in 2008 had Kenyans turning to M-PESA, which was regarded as safer than banks, explains). In other words, what works in some parts of the world may not necessarily thrive in the U.S., and here, a carrier-backed mobile banking service is still something of a novelty. (Sprint prepaid subsidiary something similar to T-Mobile’s last year, but has a smaller footprint). Besides being a good fit for its image as the un-carrier, T-Mobile is clever to now become an “un-bank,” too. In the wake of consumer distrust of big banks following the crash and government bail-out, job losses, and an overall tough economic climate, moving funds out of traditional banks into prepaid Visa accounts like T-Mobile offers, is the modern-day equivalent of cash in the sock drawer. It’s for the large swath of Americans who admit that traditional banking holds little value for them, because their lives are lived paycheck to paycheck, with things like savings or money market accounts, IRAs, and other investment plans and services as additional, unnecessary options that can only be aspired to. T-Mobile’s timing comes also at a time when there’s pent-up consumer demand for more seamless ways to transact, without having to constantly carry around a billfold stuffed with cash and cards. Other startup companies, like for example, have benefitted from banks’ and others’ failure to move quickly here. Even longtime payment tech companies, like PayPal, know they fell asleep at the wheel, so to speak. As PayPal President David Marcus this week, his company “sucked so badly” at certain things in the payments space, it left room for startups like Square, Stripe and Dwolla to emerge. Now T-Mobile is joining this fray as well, and its visibility could help boost the presence of other alternative mobile banking services already in existence. While there are several prepaid payment card options on the market, what makes T-Mobile’s service appealing is not just the reduced fees (versus traditional banks), but also the combination of a payment card and mobile application, where the app is not an afterthought, but rather a core part of the experience. This puts T-Mobile’s service in competition with similar efforts, like that from Amex’s Serve or Simple (formerly BankSimple), as a couple of the more high-profile efforts in this space which we’ll analyze. Here’s how they compare. (Note that because T-Mobile’s Mobile Money app has only just launched, it’s too soon to have a review of the mobile software itself.) Though TechCrunch readers may be familiar with , by nature of being early adopters themselves, this online and mobile “un-bank” is still a small drop in the bucket when compared with the traditional banks it’s trying to disrupt. Founded in 2009, the startup offers a modern front-end to bank accounts held in the FDIC-backed Bancorp Bank (which also issues T-Mobile’s card), but to date, Simple only has some 55,000+ customers. To some extent, this is because Simple remains invite-only, but scoring an invite is not that difficult – if you were serious about switching your accounts over and made the plea, you’d probably luck out. If not, you could always ask another Simple customer, who each get 10 invites to share. Simple doesn’t charge the same kind of fees a traditional bank does, including the dreaded overdraft fee, but instead off interest margin, which it shares with Bancorp, and merchant service fees. What makes Simple stand apart is its easy-to-use interface, better customer service, and an appeal to a higher-end customer base less dependent on cash, and more interested in well-designed money management tools. Meanwhile, Amex is American Express’ “un-banking” alternative which also offers a prepaid account, which can be reloaded with cash from CVS and 7-Eleven stores across the U.S. Of course, Simple and Serve accounts can also be linked to your “real” bank account, if you’re too nervous to give it up for good. Serve is actually more like T-Mobile’s option than Simple, which fails to address the needs of those who still deal in cash – think service industry professionals, those doing odd jobs or under-the-table work, anyone who takes in tips, etc. (Simple customers in need of depositing cash have to first convert it to a money order, then deposit that with the Simple mobile app. That’s a major hassle.) The use cases for a Serve account are similar to that of T-Mobile Money – meaning, it’s for those needing a prepaid account with mobile access, bill pay, and an easy way to transfer money to other family members. Serve also offers a few value-add features, like a roadside assistance hotline, purchase protection, and for Amex cardholders. Meanwhile, both Serve and T-Mobile have partnerships with reload networks for handing cash deposits. Serve works with MoneyPak and Vanilla Reload, while T-Mobile works with Reloadit, MoneyGram and Visa ReadyLink. For some users, these selections will matter in the sense that they may want to choose something that’s available at the local retailers they frequent, but for those just switching to a prepaid account for the convenience of easier, mobile banking, they are less of a concern. All three, T-Mobile, Simple and Serve, offer standard banking services: you can pay at point-of-sale or online, pay bills, use ATMs, get cash back, and add and transfer money. All also have way to transfer funds from person to person, too. Simple’s money transfer service is actually , when recipients are also Simple users, but this is rarely the case. Serve lets you transfer money into sub-accounts (great for older kids, or not-so-thrifty spouses), or to non-Serve members. But then they have to register for Serve to accept the funds. Meanwhile, T-Mobile’s service lets you send money to other T-Mobile card holders – but you’ll need to know their phone number and last four digits of their card number, so it’s clearly designed with families in mind. ATM access is something T-Mobile is touting as a huge benefit, claiming 42,000 in-network ATMs in the U.S. That means no ATM fees at a lot of places. However, Simple actually has more locations, with 55,000 Allpoint ATMs, the country’s largest surcharge-free network. Meanwhile, Serve offers only 22,000 MoneyPass ATMs in its network. The fee structures between the three services are fairly competitive. For those with concerns in a specific area, it’s worth noting who charges what for which options. But at the end of the day, the decision to move to one of these services or other un-banks options is a personal one, and one that may be less about the pennies saved and more so about the convenience each provides. For those still heavily involved with cash, Simple is a poor choice for now. For T-Mobile customers, it makes more sense to choose the carrier’s option over Serve, given the benefits. (Same goes for Boost Mobile customers, perhaps.) But those ready for the next step up from struggling between paychecks may find Simple more useful – it lets you . It’s mainly going after the higher-end customer who wants to “replace their bank,” with more human and caring customer service.
T-Mobile will get the headlines today for its “revolutionary” new service, but what it’s offering is neither a first in terms of carriers getting into mobile money management, nor is it remarkably different from competitors. But in an era when everything is shifting to mobile at such a rapid pace that entire markets – like PCs, Windows, BlackBerry, etc. – are in decline, it makes sense for T-Mobile to try its hand with Mobile Money. |
Nokia Earnings Preview: The Lumia Question | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | Nokia will report its fourth-quarter 2013 earnings tomorrow, a seminal moment for the company as the figures will represent the last full period in which it will own the hardware assets that it is selling to Microsoft. It also matters as Nokia’s Lumia Windows Phone sales in the quarter will provide a report card of sorts for Microsoft. Given that Nokia makes and sells the vast majority of Windows Phone devices, its sales are proxy for the larger market for the phones. So if Nokia had a good quarter selling Lumias, Microsoft had a good quarter selling Windows Phones. Microsoft will report its earnings later in the day. Nokia sold 8.8 million Lumia devices in . Given extant growth trends, we would expect Nokia to sell more phones in the fourth quarter. Add the simple fact that the period includes the holiday sales cycle, and we expect another bump. This means that Nokia should sell — easily — more than 10 million Lumia handsets in the quarter. The stakes here are high for Nokia, given that it’s hard to win in this context, but very easy to lose. If it sells 11.5 million handsets instead of 11 I doubt people will laud it. But a weak number could cast a pall. The irony is that the asset in question is what the company is selling, so a negative result may not have as sharp an impact on its share price as it otherwise might. Investors Nokia to earn around €0.08 ($0.11) in the quarter on revenue of €6.4 billion ($8.671 billion). It will be interesting to parse the company’s earnings as it intends to mark the assets it is selling as discontinued businesses. Nokia will dramatically change once it and Microsoft clear the final regulatory hurdles that sit between their consummation. For the full-year period, Nokia is expected to earn €0.07 ($0.09) (on aggregate revenue of €23.7 billion ($32.11 billion) in revenue. That latter figure is a firm decline from its 2012 tally of €30.2 billion ($40.92 billion). And Nokia, selling off another chunk of revenue, is about to slim again. So that’s that. Keep your eye on the Lumia number, as it matters for both firms. |
Data As A Company’s Secret Weapon | Contributor | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | This year, we’re going to see data go from an opaque, untapped, and mystifying asset to a hyper competitive, I-can’t-believe-you-don’t-use-it weapon for businesses. I don’t mean big data; I mean data of any size: big, medium, and small. In fact, it’s not about the amount of data, it’s about the kind of data you have (and, of course, being smart enough to use it). This is all starting to happen because software is being built specifically to analyze lots of data – and it’s no longer cost-prohibitive to use this software, and the insights can fundamentally change the trajectory of your business. Think of it this way: If you’re chasing after a $10-billion market and your competitor has a way to leverage the data generated by their customers – and you don’t – the odds aren’t in your favor. Chances are, you’re going to fall behind. The taxi industry is being upended internationally due to the emergence of high-tech companies such as Uber and Lyft. These companies are rapidly taking over the market, and not just because they’re mobile-first. Uber and Lyft are successful because they approach a classic problem – getting from point A to point B – as a mathematical equation with hundreds of potential variables. All of these variables can be tested and improved upon to create the best possible user experience. And the only way they improve that result is by having better data and smarter software. Smarter software begets more customers which begets better data which begets smarter software. If , then data is acting as the essential nutrients. Data is a byproduct of the Internet that enables these businesses to be so much more compelling, competitive, and defensible. All businesses have a never-ending list of questions about their customers that are crucial to answer. Smart businesses have a massive amount of data to help them find the answers. Not everyone has a Steve Jobs-like intuition when it comes to building incredible products, which means the rest of us have to come with data to make our arguments more persuasive. This is such a valuable need to address that IBM predicts it will do and has already spent more than $14 billion on acquisitions. IDC claims that the business analytics market is to $50 billion. In fact, many data companies have just recently started to go public in the last 2 years. Splunk’s shares popped 90 percent on the day it went public and now they’ve since . Tableau went public this past year and has a market capitalization over $4 billion. It’s not just enterprise companies that are doing amazing things with data. The biggest consumer companies in the world are working hard to keep their competitive advantage – Google and Facebook have been paving the way for years. Google Search uses the data it crawls, as well as its users’ search behavior, to automatically improve its search engine. (Google’s big data could crunch through everyone else’s big data for lunch.) Google has even to deal with all the data the company generates and needs to analyze. Facebook also has been innovating by to understand how Facebook users behave, and to analyze the impact of product development and user-base evolution. Still, there’s a lot of work to do, because Facebook and Google represent some of the most serious technology companies in the world. That means many companies without this core competency have their work cut out for them. They have to catch up, and they have to figure out how to turn data into a competitive weapon that can keep them dominant in the market. Data is the driving force behind the latest crop of companies looking to eat the Fortune 1000’s lunch. These innovators are utilizing data in ways their incumbents aren’t; they’re using it to learn more about what customers want and need. Not only that, but they’re building a culture that is data driven: where decisions are made with as much empirical data to support a position, instead of intuition and politics. Data has become resource that has helped efficiently democratize decision making within companies. In short, data is helping companies learn a lot faster which means better products for customers. Nest is reinventing and disrupting the thermostat and smoke alarm industries by building better hardware and smarter software than what exists today. As you adjust the temperature in your home, Nest learns what your preference is so you ultimately don’t have to. Data is central to Nest, as the software becomes more intelligent the more it’s used. Data is the backbone for Palantir’s software – a company rumored to have around $1 billion in contracts this year. You know in a movie when the director of the CIA is asking an analyst to understand the connection between the villain and a location, phone number, or license plate? They’re pretty much using Palantir’s software. The company builds software used to combat terrorism, fight fraud, analyze drugs, and conduct complex equity analysis. Without data, however, it’s entirely useless. Homejoy is doing for home cleaning what Uber and Lyft did to the taxi industry. They even raised a $38 million round from investors shortly after they launch. So how are they growing so fast? They’re using data. Homejoy built a tool called Demand Map that enables them to predict where their future demand will come from. Demand Map works by collecting data about where, when, and how frequently Homejoy’s customers are booking cleanings with the service. This tells Homejoy which locations to focus on as they grow their business. One reason why Netflix has successfully disrupted the movie-rental industry is that it knows more about its customers than any other company. Netflix is also a great example of a company that uses data to make its product smarter and better for customers. The Atlantic one of Netflix’s data-driven ideas: “Using large teams of people specially trained to watch movies, Netflix deconstructed Hollywood. They paid people to watch films and tag them with all kinds of metadata. […] They capture dozens of different movie attributes. They even rate the moral status of characters. When these tags are combined with millions of users viewing habits, they become Netflix’s competitive advantage. The company’s main goal as a business is to gain and retain subscribers.” When you compare this to Blockbuster’s “New Releases” shelf, it’s clear that the company never had a chance. Data is Netflix’s super-weapon, and will be a driving force behind its domination of the commercial video industry. At Mixpanel, we work with thousands of companies every month, helping them become data-driven. These companies are building products for mobile and web, and their customers span the globe and belong to every cross-section of our society. We’re one company in a growing industry that’s helping companies build even smarter software. Here are our key takeaways: As markets begin to rapidly evolve, it becomes more pressing for businesses to keep up with the pace of innovation. To stay ahead, they’ll need to tap into their data and turn it into a super-weapon capable of building the smarter products that customers already expect. |
The Secrets To Snapchat’s Success: Connectivity, Easy Media Creation, And Ephemerality | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | CEO Evan Spiegel has been known to be pretty surreptitious when it comes to sharing secrets about how the company works, but today he provided a little more transparency around its mission and how it thinks about the communications that users send through the app. At the , he gave a fascinating keynote speech ( ), breaking down the things that make Snapchat work, most notably how the concepts of Internet everywhere, fast and easy media creation, and ephemerality combine to power the app. The speech was presented to media execs perhaps as a way to help them understand Snapchat’s appeal, and the new ways that people are using it to communicate with each other. To start, Spiegel noted that he thought it was strange that people refer to this period as the “post-PC era.” If anything, he argues, the proliferation of smartphones that began with the launch of the iPhone means that we’ve entered an age in which our computing devices are more personal than ever before. And so he believes we’re in the age of the “More-Personal Computer.” So what can we do with that? Pervasive connectivity, the ability to quickly create media, and an increased interest in ephemerality, combined together is, in a sense, what makes Snapchat Snapchat. But the combination of those elements also means that today’s users are sharing and communicating in different ways than they ever have before. Take the concept of “Internet Everywhere,” for instance. Once upon a time, people who shared photos or videos of themselves or places that they’ve visited ended up taking a whole lot of media, sorting through it to determine what they’d want others to see, and then having to upload it later to the social networks, blogs, and other places that they’d share. “Internet Everywhere means that our old conception of the world separated into an online and an offline space is no longer relevant. Traditional social media required that we live experiences in the offline world, record those experiences, and then post them online to recreate the experience and talk about it,” Spiegel said. But constant connectivity means there’s no longer a disconnect between when media is taken and when it could be shared. Or, as Spiegel said, “We no longer have to capture the ‘real world’ and recreate it online – we simply live and communicate at the same time.” That also enables its users to more immediately share self portraits, which Spiegel calls “arguably the most popular form of self-expression.” Centuries ago, those self-portraits required untold hours and brush strokes, but in today’s day and age of fast and easy media creation, people can communicate through media instead of around it. “The selfie makes sense as the fundamental unit of communication on Snapchat because it marks the transition between digital media as self-expression and digital media as communication,” he said. With that in place, the final piece — ephemerality — works to focus on the feeling that content brings to the user, not what it looks like. For Snapchat, that more closely resembles the way that conversations happen in real life, the way that people actually communicate with each other. “That’s what Snapchat is all about. Talking through content not around it. With friends, not strangers. Identity tied to now, today. Room for growth, emotional risk, expression, mistakes, room for you,” he said. The comes in stark contrast to the previous generation of social networks, in which what people shared was forever tied to their online identities. Those communications are happening anonymously, or they happen in real time and disappear. For now, Snapchat is the most successful app in this new environment of pervasive connectivity and real-time communication. But we’ll no doubt continue to see more social networking and messaging apps use the same concepts. You can check out the full text of the speech below: http://www.scribd.com/doc/202195145/2014-AXS-Partner-Summit-Keynote |
CrunchWeek: Netflix Earnings, Stripe’s Big Raise, And Snowden’s Live Q&A | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | It’s that time of week for an episode of CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few TechCrunch writers together to chat about the most fascinating stories of the past seven days in tech. In this week’s episode, Ryan Lawler, Alex Wilhelm and I talked about Netflix’s and the company’s on net neutrality, payments company Stripe’s and NSA whistleblower (and the recent news around the RNC the NSA’s surveillance tactics). Check out the video above for more! |
App.net Launches Backer, A Bitcoin-Friendly Crowdfunding Engine For Individual Software Features | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | As the popularity of crowdfunding grows ever larger, an interesting new trend has started popping up: developers, curious if a new feature is worth adding to their products, are asking interested customers to chip in to cover the costs of development. In other words: if you want a feature, put your money where your mouth is. Balanced, a payment service, crowdfunding to support adding a new money sending feature. App.net, a subscription-based/ad-free Twitter alternative which as a whole was born out of a $803,000 crowdfunding campaign, is currently using it to determine if they’ll accept Bitcoin payments on their site. This morning, App.net announced that they’re opening up the engine they built for their Bitcoin campaign, allowing other companies to use the platform to raise money for individual features. They’re calling the new platform . s Amongst other things, Backer has two big standout features: developers can choose to accept payment via credit cards or Bitcoin (or both), and open source projects aren’t charged any fees. (If you keep your source locked down, however, there’s a 5% fee taken only if/when your campaign proves successful.) Why build a whole new platform? Why wouldn’t developers just use one of the other, less-specific crowdfunding tools? I asked App.net founder Dalton Caldwell, and here’s what he said: If you recall, App.net wrote our own crowdfunding tool because the Kickstarter TOS specifically didn’t allow software/service businesses. That is still the case. The impetus for us building and launching this now was that we were trying to figure out whether or not to accept bitcoin for App.net subscriptions, and every single other startup founder I asked said they were wondering the same thing. If you survey the current tools available, there are none that would work for this. When I asked other founders if they would use something like Backer to decide whether or not they should accept Bitcoin they said “yes”. (To clarify, Kickstarter’s TOS explicitly blocks campaigns for “websites or apps focused on e-commerce, business, and social networking.” and “software projects not run by the developers themselves”. Games are usually okay, but other software-only campaigns often aren’t.) Each new crowdfunding platform to pop into existence has to make one rather important decision right off the bat: whether or not to curate. Do you hold the reins tight and go for quality over quantity, approving only the projects that you think will succeed… or do you let everyone in and let the money speak for itself? With Backer, App.net has gone with something closer to the first option: according to their FAQ, “projects will be vetted to ensure your Backer project runs alongside other high-quality, legitimate projects.” Interested in being on of the first projects on the site? You can find the submission form and all the other details |
Overseeding Will Be Key To Strong Venture Returns | Contributor | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | The story is one we’ve heard before: plucky startup sails through seed fundraising, unfurls its wings, then and shatters into pieces. The numbers speak for themselves. There were 65 percent more seed-stage deals in 2013 than in 2012 flat – 7.5 percent fewer dollars, 7 percent more deals. But the forgotten winners behind this equation – the ones we’re not really talking about because we’re busy lamenting the hardships of fledging entrepreneurs – are venture capitalists. That is not a surprise given its lackluster performance following the bubble years of the late nineties. But all that is about to change. There are several structural factors that have increased the supply of seed funding in the short-term and contributed to the perception of a supply-demand imbalance. One is that the Silicon Valley has become a victim of its own success: every successful IPO yields newly liquid and wealthy early-stage employees/investors. Facebook’s IPO alone was expected to create over 1,000 new millionaires by . Perhaps most importantly, these individuals/firms are more likely to invest in highly speculative assets/seed stage companies due to the “ .” They are already winners, so why not roll the dice again? Secondly, the number of crowd-sourcing platforms and startup incubators has exploded, giving early-stage startups access to more money and increasingly . Finally, one can even take a stab at making a quantitative easing argument (when in doubt, blame the Fed!). The Federal Reserve purchases $75 billion in treasuries and mortgage-backed securities every month. As the risk-free rate is forced down, investors rotate out of treasuries and into high-yield and equity markets, causing risk premia across the board to fall. Active/non-indexed investors are then increasingly forced to look at non-traditional asset classes for market-beating returns. Hence the increase in hedge funds, asset managers, and investing in pre-IPO companies like LinkedIn and Twitter. As traditional VC returns come under pressure from the influx of capital (it’s hard to compete on valuation with a Saudi prince), they too are forced to swim upstream, increasing the amount of capital deployed in early-stage/seed rounds. In a world awash with liquidity, “next best alternative” style investing eventually becomes…well, . However, while important as catalysts, in the long-run none of these drivers should persist. More seed funding without a corresponding increase in Series A should lead to higher failure rates and lower returns for seed investors, and an ensuing drop in capital allocation to seed rounds. Of course, the flipside to this narrative is that more, better, companies are being created today compared to five years ago, and the problem lies with Series A VCs who have failed to adjust accordingly. For example, , leading to efficiency gains and increased competition among early-stage companies. VCs can also be overly myopic and short-sighted. , VCs might be missing out on great businesses that, while not the next Facebook, could have niche markets or longer development timelines. In any case, if Series A investors have access to a surplus of high-quality deals and are currently only cherry-picking the very best, returns for VC funds should be increasing. Following our previous logic, this should lead to a market correction and an increase in capital allocation to Series A rounds. , VC LP returns have drastically underperformed the public market since the tech bubble. In fact, the average VC fund has failed to even return 100% of their invested capital back to LPs (a negative IRR!). When analyzing their own portfolio of investments in 99 VC funds from 1989-2011, the Kauffman Foundation reported a slightly higher, but still modest average net return multiple of 1.31x. In contrast, backed by the Kauffman Foundation reported that earlier stage angel investors achieve on average a 27 percent IRR, with an average net return multiple of 2.6x. Seed/angel investing is a bit riskier than VC investing, and as a result, should achieve somewhat higher returns. However, this does not explain the unexpectedly large gap between basically similar asset classes, nor does it explain the underperformance of VCs relative to public equity markets. This disconnect implies that historically, there has been a glut of VC funding and a dearth of earlier-stage seed/angel investors. Therefore, what we perceive as a “Series A Crunch” actually represents a long-overdue market correction. A portion of the correction is manifested by a shift in VC capital allocation, away from later-stage companies and towards earlier stage seed rounds. However, there is also simply more seed capital available due to lower startup capital requirements, lower transaction costs, and innovative financing platforms. These structural developments should deliver more and better companies to Series A investors, helping boost returns in what has historically been an under-performing asset class. Analyzing it from this perspective, the Series A Crunch becomes not so much an imbalance of supply/demand as it is a long-awaited . If the past is any indication, the process of correction will be slow, but will produce years of outsized returns for recently struggling venture capital funds. |
Achievement Unlocked: The SF Class War Reaches Godwin’s Law | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | Yes, . In a letter to the Wall Street Journal published this morning, with the surprising title “Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?,” the compared Nazi Germany’s war on the Jews to “the progressive war on the American one percent.” Before going too much further, let’s get this one little thing out of the way: Nothing should EVER be compared to the Holocaust, a tragedy in which 6 million Jews and another 5 million Germans lost their lives, , or at the very least, other massive state-run genocides. notwithstanding, there are serious issues with Perkins’ letter, both in his perception of the problem and tone deaf reaction to it. “From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent,” Perkins writes. This, at least, most people agree on. The problem is that Perkins only reinforces that hatred with his parallel between the distraught working class citizens of San Francisco and a national movement to eradicate an entire ethnic group. There is no centralized movement to remove the 1 percent from their and send them to work camps. There’s no planned nationalization of the region’s thriving tech sector. There’s no threat of assets being seized and redistributed by a fascist government body. Protest is nothing new to San Francisco: Its citizens were some of the leading voices in the Vietnam War in the 60s and 70s, and during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. That many in the city would rally around the Occupy Movement and call attention to the rapidly growing income disparity that is taking place in their own back yard should not come as a surprise. Blaming the victim is hardly the way toward progress or compromise. But Perkins’ letter does just that. Perhaps what is most alarming is that Perkins doesn’t seem to understand why people are upset about the growing income disparity, why there is resentment against the one percent. It’s this lack of self awareness which is most distressing, because it reinforces some of the very same stereotypes many in the industry are trying so hard to debunk. And for those who want to effect real change in the Bay Area, for those who are trying to bridge the divide between the rich techies and their less fortunate neighbors, for those who truly believe that “ “… Perkins’ letter makes things just that much harder. The Twitter account of Kleiner Perkins just issued the following statement: Tom Perkins has not been involved in KPCB in years. We were shocked by his views expressed today in the WSJ and do not agree. — Kleiner Perkins (@kpcb) |
TechCrunch Giveaway: 20 Anki DRIVE Starter Kits And Free Ticket to The Crunchies | Elin Blesener | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | The team over at Anki is so thrilled about being a Crunchie Award finalist for that they’ve decided to show their appreciation to our readers by spreading the Anki love and giving away (each valued at $199.95) to 20 lucky people. One lucky person will also receive a free ticket to the (valued at $120). This is your chance to take home an Anki Drive and then share your racing experience with the tech industry’s best and brightest at the Crunchies on February 10th. Drive has been described as “Mario Kart” that comes to life on your living room floor. Did you hear that? Mario Kart! For a hands-on look at Anki Drive, check out below. To enter the giveaway, all you have to do is follow the steps below. We will be choosing 10 from each step, and you may do both to double your chances: The giveaway will start now and end Wednesday, January 29th, at 7:30pm. Please note the Crunchies ticket is for one ticket only, and does not include airfare or hotel. Also, voting closes tomorrow at 11:59pm PT. Don’t forget to vote for your favorite . Good luck! @themayorpete
@professorjosh
@LinearPeter
@ImTiffanyYu
@davidparker9
@Nivo0o0
@Ed
@MarkMiscavage
@acameronma
@DJkillpixxie Taylor Holt
Sandy Hodge
Nyima Threatt
Eric Hecht
Amit Pradhan
Anjali Menon
Chris Searies
David Wisor
Christopher Chiou
Brandon Overmyer |
Gillmor Gang Live 01.25.14 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | – Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. “Like” us on Facebook at Facebook.com/GillmorGang |
Most Americans Are Unaware Of [Insert Issue Here] | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | Let’s face it: a disturbingly large portion of the American electorate are not-so- about their world. As of 2008, 30% still maintain that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and 18% think the sun revolves around the earth. So, when our friends in the press about how most Americans had heard “nothing at all” about President Obama’s recent surveillance reforms, I would have been surprised by exactly the opposite. Let’s take a trip down the rabbit hole of America’s civic knowledge and whether it matters to a functioning democratic state. Pew surveys released fresh stats about the number of Americans who approve of the National Security Agency’s dragnet program, along with a pie chart showing that 50% had heard “nothing at all” about . To political pollsters, results like this would be a regular Tuesday. Indeed, it was almost embarrassingly easy to find the exact same results for any given issue. –Fewer than 25% of Californians about the massive healthcare overhaul, the Affordable Care Act, that impacts every single American. — knew anything about the Common Core Standards, arguably one of the most radical overhauls of education in at least 50 years. — of Republicans who think the 2012 attacks on an embassy in Benghazi was the “biggest political scandal in American history” could identify that event took place in a country called Libya. –For kicks, their folksy deputy commander-in-chief, Vice President Joe Biden In truth, polls may be radically overestimating Americans’ knowledge. Respondents are known to offer strong feelings for . To test the extremes of this fact in the most disturbing/hilarious possible fashion, I conducted a national poll to see how Americans thought about . This was around the time when the president was debating forceful humanitarian intervention in Syria. A whopping 63% of Americans polled had an opinion, either for or against, helping out the good people of “Guavastan”. Guavastan, not yet an actual place, is a luxury island I hope to inhabit after striking it rich in the field of journalism. Some folks got our little joke. One respondent quipped, “guavastan…is that near papaya ville”. Others just had a knee-jerk reaction, “who can prove if they used biological weapons some news sources say pictures are a hoax?” The results were dispiriting to say the least. Here’s the point: mathematically speaking, Americans are bigger fans of believing things than knowing things. It’s nice rhetorical fodder to call for greater American civil involvement, but it’s not entirely clear that an informed America is a different America. In 1998, two Political Scientists, Arthur Lupia and Mathew McCubbins the beliefs of politically ignorant Americans correlate nicely with their more informed counterparts. Indeed, this is exactly how a representative democracy is supposed to function. They write: Experimental evidence seems to (partly) corroborate this finding. One of my favorite Political Scientists, Alan Gerber, randomly assigned a group of citizens to receive a free subscription to the Washington Post. In the depressingly titled paper “Does The Media Matter”, no effect of either paper on political knowledge, stated opinions, or turnout in post-election survey and voter data.” Gerber and others [ ] have found that informed people tend to shift their favor towards the Democratic Party, which may lead to increased to support for laws focusing on lower socioeconomic status individuals. To be sure, other democracies around the world , but it’s largely because they either have a multi-party system or a robust informal civil society. No country on earth is an informed Utopia–or anything close. That said, I’m more optimistic that information does matter. So, TechCrunch is also , partnering with Reframe.it and the Knight Foundation on a so-called “deliberative poll.” Deliberative polls are a snapshot of what Americans would think about an issue if they were educated. A random, representative sample of the population is intensively educated about an issue and then we record how opinions shift. In previous deliberative polls conducted by Stanford, there have been some shifts in opinion which suggest that yes, information does matter. When it comes to tech issues, TechCrunch will find out, hopefully soon. |
Billion-Dollar M&A Club Admission Guidelines | Contributor | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | Average valuations for venture-backed M&A deals typically come in a pretty tight range. According to the (NVCA), in 2013 there were 377 total M&A exits of venture-backed companies with mean pricing of $161 million. This compares with total deal count of 499 and 488 and mean pricing of $143 million and $173 million in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Every once in a while, however, a $1 billion or even multi-billion M&A deal for a venture-backed, relatively young company pops up, such as the recent . These deals defy conventional valuation logic since the acquired companies are early in their revenue curve or sometimes even pre-revenue. Where do these billion-dollar deals come from and what factors are involved in their creation? Below I’ve identified three primary drivers that motivate acquirers. Sometimes a target achieves such incredibly fast early growth that acquirers become enamored with the for the future. Particularly in the consumer Internet context, these companies are often pre-revenue, with growth coming in other key metrics. Facebook’s is a good example. Facebook clearly saw Instagram’s growth as both a threat to its own popularity and an opportunity to continue to expand engagement among its core constituents. Price didn’t matter as much as this future potential. Google’s near was similarly driven by the traffic app’s growing popularity and Google’s recognition that it could integrate Waze functionality into Google Maps, further enhancing its own product line.
In addition to perceived potential, is also a very powerful motivator. Acquisition prices can be driven up to billion dollar levels when an acquirer develops the fear, real or not, that they might lose an opportunity, either to a competitor or to the target itself gaining enough traction that it will remain independent and become a threat to the acquirer over time. When , Microsoft was widely rumored to be aggressively pursuing the deal, as well. No matter that DoubleClick had been acquired by private equity firms Hellman & Friedman and JMI Equity for approximately a third of that price just a few years earlier. The perception that the inventory DoubleClick controlled was extremely strategic gained footing in Google’s board room, similar to Microsoft, which led to the outsized outcome. When , VMWare execs saw this as a move to protect their core server virtualization franchise and extend into network virtualization, as well. When looked at from this vantage point, the price makes more sense. Innovation is rarely a core competency at large tech companies. In fact, executional excellence, at which large tech companies usually excel, often runs counter to the culture of risk taking required to spawn new, disruptive initiatives. Although entrepreneurs who end up selling for $1 billion or more rarely begin their journeys thinking they sell their companies, there are several issues that should be considered carefully if this becomes an option. With growing piles of cash on the balance sheets of many large tech companies, the ability to pay cash for some or all of the purchase price in a billion-dollar M&A is more common these days. Cash obviously removes any uncertainty with respect to the ultimate price. Stock prices can plummet, adding possible risk to a stock deal for entrepreneurs, their employees and investors. Especially if you’re being acquired as a lottery pick, expect acquirers to want you and your key team to stay for many years. The purchase price will highly incentivize you to stay, including stock vesting. Each entrepreneur has a very unique and personal situation and needs to weigh the pros and cons carefully. When an acquirer floats a very large acquisition price, the risk of the deal not going through to completion increases. Recognize that someone at your potential acquirer is probably staking her or his career on the decision to pay up to acquire your company. Its human nature to get cold feet. Pay close attention to who the acquirer is – what’s their reputation is for going through with acquisitions? what’s the status of the company right now? how powerful is the board and/or CEO and are they behind the deal? It’s not atypical for a target to go with a lower price from an acquirer who has a higher perceived certainty of closure versus other higher offers from riskier would-be acquirers. For entrepreneurs, there’s no rule that you must accept an acquisition price once it hits a certain level. Many potential acquisitions don’t consummate because the perceived cultural fit and/or alignment on the future vision doesn’t completely align. Most entrepreneurs with whom I’ve spoken who have sold their companies (whether at billion dollar levels or lower) regret the decision later due to poor fit with the acquirer. It’s critical to get this right. For many entrepreneurs, their own indomitable will doesn’t waver, even in the face of a billion-dollar M&A offer, and it’s go long and go big or bust. For example, Snapchat appears to be on this path, at least for now. For some others, the appeal of taking a billion dollar offer is high enough to veer off the independent path. Instagram went this route. There isn’t a right answer. But, recognizing the motivation of would-be suitors – be it rocket ship, fear of losing out, all-star draft picks, or some combination of the above – can help navigate the waters. |
Dash’s Smart Driving App – A “Fitbit For Cars” – Arrives On Android | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | , a Techstars New York-backed startup that wants to be like a Fitbit for your car, has . The product includes a combination of a hardware device and smartphone application which offers real-time feedback on your driving, trip logs, access to vehicle diagnostics (that pesky “check engine” light, and who can fix it!), a map showing where the cheapest gas is nearby, and even social features. Like several of the “connected car” products on the market, Dash’s hardware involves an OBD device you can purchase from either within the Dash mobile application or the Dash homepage. The Dash software will also work with any Bluetooth-enabled OBD device, if you happen to already have one, or you can choose from two types of devices Dash’s homepage points to: , or a premium OBD LINK LX which is a steeper $69. The Dash software works with either type of device, the company says. But the premium hardware offers a better build quality, power management capabilities, and connection reliability, among other things. Once installed, the device connects via Bluetooth with your Android smartphone to communicate with the Dash app. The app offers you a variety of helpful tools, both when you’re on the road and when you’re off. The app’s design is well done, too – very modern and clean, which is still somewhat of a surprise on Android, though that’s increasingly less of a case these days as developers begin to treat the platform with the respect its larger marketshare has earned. As noted above, offers a variety of “connected car” features, including the ability to track your trips, watch your gas consumption, find nearby gas prices, detect crashes and alert emergency services, understand the warning messages your car’s computer throws and even locate a reliable mechanic who can resolve the problem. Mechanics are ranked by proximity and star ratings, explains Dash co-founder and CEO Jamyn Edis. Edis and Brian Langel both previously worked at HBO before starting Dash, where Edis was VP of R&D, which included tech strategy for HBO GO, and other skunkworks projects using augmented reality, video search, smart TV apps, Nike Fuel-like hardware for HBO Sports and more. Before that, he spent a decade at Accenture, working on large-scale technology projects and strategy for a variety of clients, including Sprint, British Telecom, Fox Interactive, MySpace, Warner Music, PlayStation and many more. Meanwhile, Langel, now Dash CTO, had previously built the backend architecture for HBO GO, and worked on HBO Sports. He has also worked for Union Pacific Railroads and McGraw Hill. Today, that’s not necessarily the case. “What’s different and fresh about our approach here is that we’re tackling cars as a platform – one that we think is really under-leveraged as a consumer technology,” explains Edis. Plus, he adds, “we’re technologists. We love data and we think we can improve our lives by using data, whether that’s physical fitness with Jawbone, or whether that’s home and HVAC using Nest.” With Dash, the improvement also includes a focus around safety and overall smarter driving. In the case of the former, while the app is in “in transit” mode, it will actively warn you through auditory alerts when something goes wrong (e.g warning you that you were breaking too hard, or other bad behaviors). But instead of just being an annoying robot “backseat driver,” Dash gamifies the experience, pitting you against friends or other nearby in a competition to earn the better “drive score.” Meanwhile, similar to Prius, the app will inform you while driving of your fuel economy, allowing you to make adjustments in response. Edis says that all this is just the beginning, too. The company is working on a bevy of other features, including targeted promotions that are based on your driving, location and other non-personally identifiable features, an iOS application, and partnerships around its developer API which would see Dash able to communicate with other smart devices, like those which Edis calls “trigger services” or other smart home platforms. The seven-person New York-based company has raised an undisclosed seven-figure round of seed funding from Techstars, VCs (with car manufacturers as LPs), and angels including Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, Makerbot co-founder and CEO Bre Pettis, Dave Morin, and others. Dash now competes with a number of and similar services in an ever-crowded market, including YC-backed (whose “Link” dongle is a bit pricier at $99.95), , , , , and many others. The Dash app is . [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPAl9qdz9XA?feature=player_embedded] |
Cute Alert! Can Fuzmo Crowdfund The Build Of Its Pet Pictures Platform? | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | Talk about a minimum viable product. The co-founders of , a site that just lets you share pictures of cute pets with other enthusiasts, originally started out as a simple Instagram account, . But they clearly hit on a winner. In the last year they grew the account to 1.5 million followers, and from this have spun out seven other ‘cute pet’ accounts with a combined following of 2.5 million. From this marketing base they created Fuzmo as a platform where people can share their own pet pictures. They are now crowdfunding the development of a mobile app ( ) to build on that traction and spin out more products and features around a pets photo sharing app. Oh yes. So far they’ve raised over 16 per cent of their total. If it works, it’ll make an interesting case study in how to build out from ‘boostrapped-from-nothing’ into an actual product. |
Failure Modes | Jon Evans | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | This was a rich month for the . shut down. So did . And much-hyped . And even moot’s , which had 1.4 million app downloads and 400,000 monthly users. All part of , right? The , or something. It’s a truism that most startups fail. But in fact startups don’t even to fail, in the way the word is most commonly used in Silicon Valley. The “failures” listed above were, by any reasonable standard, astonishing successes; like athletes who almost-but-not-quite qualified for the Olympics. Most startups never get anywhere near as far as that. Most startups disappear without a trace. I saw last week, and it has haunted me since, mostly, I think, because it’s a brilliantly told tale of abject, anonymous failure, and you don’t encounter that much nowadays, especially in the Valley. Not that we ignore failure. No, the relationship is much more awkward than that. Instead we make a point of it…as long as it’s part of narrative of struggle which ultimately ends in success. But the cold hard truth is that most people who fail don’t succeed in the end. Every creative field — music, movies, books, art — follows a , and startups are no exception. (Of course startups are a creative field. They bring into the world richly valued things which did not exist before. That’s why they’ve become so culturally compelling; they’re perceived as combining the coolness of the arts with the filthy lucre of business.) And like every creative field, the startup ecosystem is hit-driven; a few massive successes balance out the vast teeming majority that nobody but a handful of people, or maybe, a few thousand, ever heard of. For almost every artist/entrepreneur who succeeds — within or beyond their wildest dreams — there are 10 more who were just as smart and talented and worked just as hard but who got hit by bad luck, or were the victims of bad timing, or simply dug where there was no gold. What’s more, the successes almost invariably got very lucky several times over. (Page and Brin would have back in the day. Drew Houston had higher ambitions; he would have taken for Dropbox. They were lucky nobody took them up on that.) The Valley says, “It’s OK to fail, you learn from it.” But what they really mean is, “it’s OK to fail once or twice, maybe thrice, after you’ve had your big break. But don’t push your luck much further than that.” (There are exceptions, of course, but by definition, they’re exceptional.) Again, just like any other hit-driven industry. Your big break is your first movie, your first book deal, your notice that you’ve been accepted to Y Combinator. After that you’re an insider, you’re part of the industry, looking out from within the walled garden, and you’re afforded two or three more kicks at the can before people start forgetting to return your emails. The thing is, this is all totally fair. Because the walled garden is too small for everyone; and if you fail repeatedly, while you learn from those failures, others are learning from their success. How to handle growth, how to cut deals, how to use media attention, how to hire good employees, how to acquire and be acquired, how to ride the fabled , how to use each success as a springboard for the next. All lessons that you are not learning while doing your best to overcome the collapse of your latest dream. Failure teaches you a whole lot of important stuff , yes — never trust someone who’s never failed at anything, you don’t know if they’ll collapse or explode — but the second time? The third? You just keep falling further behind, while those who were lucky enough (and smart enough, and dogged enough) to succeed are avidly learning how to run faster. Personally, I’ve always been horribly fascinated by failure; at the same time, I’ve had a weird knack of avoiding it. In the midst of the dot-com boom I quit a software consultancy heading for an IPO to go write novels, and it was universally understood that I was choosing failure over success — until that consultancy went from 110 employees on three continents to four evicted co-founders in the space of eight months, while I sold the book I wrote and spent six years as a full-time novelist. Now I write software for , effectively selling picks and shovels to would-be miners of this new gold rush. Some of them have been quite successful. Some have not. Sometimes our clients drive me crazy, but I understand why. I always wanted to be a writer, to the extent that it used to be almost physically painful to walk into a bookstore. In the same way, today’s founders hunger for success. They’re for it. And they’re terrified of the prospect of failure. But just like all other creative fields, most of the hungry hangers-on on the fringes of the tech-entrepreneur industry will never, ever have a real hit. The difference is that industry is so big, so lucrative, and so fast-growing that they can stay semi-gainfully employed in it indefinitely. Is it better to always be hungry, and always be frustrated, or accept that failure was your lot, and move on? I’d say the former, but then I would, wouldn’t I? I do believe, though, that those who have tried and failed to build their own dream make for the finest startup employees, the best sergeants and lieutenants, as long as you can make them feel that the enterprise they are joining can in some small way become their own. I would always choose someone who has failed repeatedly over someone who has never really tried to achieve anything. If nothing else, failing again and again teaches you how to keep fighting; and while helping to build someone else’s dream isn’t anywhere near as rewarding as bringing life to your own, it’s miles better than not dreaming at all. |
SoundCloud Raises $60 Million At A $700 Million Valuation | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 1 | 25 | recently closed a Series D round of funding led by with . The first reported the news. It has since been confirmed by and SoundCloud. Previous investors also participated in the round, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, GGV Capital, Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures. SoundCloud’s ultimate goal is to become the , or the YouTube of audio. Just like YouTube, user-generated content remains the startup’s fuel. Every minute, 12 hours of sound and music are uploaded to the platform. For comparison’s sake, YouTube 100 hours of content uploaded every minute. Many up-and-coming electronic music artists use SoundCloud to release mixtapes and share them around the web. Well-known musicians also release singles or live recordings on the platform to share them with their fans on Twitter or Facebook. In other words, SoundCloud is the perfect place to transform a music file into a URL and embeddable music player. Back in October at Disrupt Europe, SoundCloud co-founder and CEO Alexander Ljung that the company was focused on growth and engagement. That’s why it simplified its premium offering. “The big thing when we made that change is that we went from four different account levels with a fairly wide range of pricing to two different levels with a smaller range,” Ljung said. With a free account, you can upload up to 2 hours of music, while the most expensive plan allows you to upload an unlimited amount of music for $12 a month (€9). Subscriptions used to be much more expensive, and an unlimited plan was out of reach for many amateur artists. Today’s funding news is probably the consequence of this focus on growth. At Disrupt, Ljung said that subscription numbers were “pretty much exactly on our forecast.” Seeing American VC firms putting a lot of faith in a European startup is a big win for the Berlin startup scene. But SoundCloud still has to find the major hidden, yet reachable, treasure. Most of SoundCloud’s 250 million users turn to SoundCloud to consume music, listen to artist-curated playlists and comment. They aren’t content creators; they carefully curate a music feed by following artists on the platform. For now, they don’t generate a lot of money for the company — the website has never been inundated with ads. According to , the company is now trying to sign content deals with major music labels. It would put SoundCloud in the same league as other big music companies. It’s still unclear whether the company wants to create yet another subscription service like Spotify or Rdio, a music store like the iTunes Store or the Amazon MP3 Store, a radio-like experience like Pandora or iTunes Radio, or something completely different. It’s a crowded market, but signing these deals is an important step for the company. With music labels on board, the company could get more users, more monetization options and better content to convince advertisers. |
Game Studio Booster Pack, Founded By Former LucasArts Employees, Raises $1.475M | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 6 | 3 | When Disney just 154 days after acquiring it as part of their $4 billion purchase of Lucasfilm last year, four members of the studio’s Singapore team were determined to stay together. So they created , a new game company that has received $1,475,000 in funding lead investor , Ariel Star Group, and . Booster Pack’s founding members include former LucasArts Singapore games producer Kent Byers; lead designer Shane Gavin; senior engineer Chris Chu; and lead artist Benjamin Chevalier. The startup is currently working on its first game, which is set to debut late this year. Their first round of funding will be used to develop that game, as well as fuel post-launch marketing and player support costs. Byers tells TechCrunch that Booster Pack will focus on creating games using premium intellectual property, as well as competitive mobile games. While at LucasArts, they created games with Star Wars and Disney IP and are still interested working with “really high quality IP,” says Byers. Though Booster Pack’s first release won’t come until the fourth-quarter of this year, Byers says his team is excited about contributing to Singapore’s fledging gaming industry. “In Southeast Asia, it’s really hard to bring together experienced teams, especially in Singapore, it’s just that there are not many gaming companies here yet but it is growing,” says Byers. “We have worked together for four to five years, so we’re the kind of team that knows what we are good at and what our strengths are. It’s a rare chance to have that in Singapore. We’ve worked on Star Wars and other big IPs. Our team members have worked at Activision, Gameloft, Disney, so we have a long background of experience and I think that sets us apart from other companies here, especially in Southeast Asia.” |
Valve Shows Off Its Polka Dot VR Headset | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 6 | 3 | Watch out, Oculus. Here comes Valve. The gaming giant recently demonstrated a prototype VR headset with impressive results. The odd-looking headset is speckled with dots that allow a table-top camera to track the device’s location. Wearers report that there are two screens on the inside, although in this prototype, not all of the screen is visible. Clearly the device is a proof-of-concept more than a product nearing launch. The race to embrace VR is heating up. Earlier this year, Valve demonstrated its VR headset to developers. Sony is also embracing devs for its PS4 VR headset. And, of course, on Oculus VR. Still, VR’s future is not guaranteed. VR is a non-starter without content, as Valve and Sony clearly understand. Technology is only as good as its content: 3D TV died because of lack of content; and 4K TV isn’t doing so well, either. Still, while devs are courted, Oculus, Sony and Valve will likely keep tinkering with its hardware until the software is available. A post shared by (@maryannerodis) on |
Gillmor Gang Live 06.03.14 | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 6 | 3 | – Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session has concluded for today. |
Apple Wants The Link Between Your Devices To Be You, Not A Shared Wi-Fi Network | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 6 | 3 | Apple has made some changes to its core inter-device sharing protocols in iOS 8, including AirPlay and AirDrop. AirDrop, the simple file sharing mechanism introduced in OS X Lion and iOS 7, now works between Macs and iOS devices; and AirPlay, the video and audio streaming protocol that plays back music and movies from iPhone, Macs, etc. on Apple TV and approved accessories, will apparently once the update hits. This is part of a larger effort to make devices work together without making end users have to worry about what transit technologies are involved. The new Continuity features in both iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 Yosemite serve a similar purpose and operate on similar principles. Apple uses a combination of shared network, proximity signals and iCloud account identification to make those work, but the point is that in use, these underlying elements are mostly invisible to users; to borrow the old Apple maxim, “it just works.” We’ve become used to the necessity of a shared network as the backdrop for tasks across devices: The local network as an analogy for ‘home’ is almost taken for granted at this point, as is its role as the interstitial material tying together our growing web of connected devices. The problem is, it’s increasingly an outdated metaphor – users want sharing that extends beyond their network. The nexus point of a web of personal gadgets sensibly should be the person who owns them, too, and not the crutch of a single access point to bring them together. Apple’s multiple approaches to greater gadget interoperability still use the local network where it makes sense, but it doesn’t use it exclusively. This is about the right transit tech for the right moment, and it prefaces a future where we don’t care how our devices are connected, and instead just take for granted that they are when and where we need them to be. |
Digital Ad Company MediaMath Raises Another $73.5M, Plus $105M In Debt | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 6 | 3 | , which offers tools for ad-buying, data management, and other aspects of digital marketing, announced today that it has raised more than $175 million in additional funding, including a $73.5 million Series C and a $105 million debt facility. That’s a pretty big step up from that MediaMath raised in 2011. The new equity funding was led by Spring Lake Equity Partners, with participation from Akamai Technologies, Safeguard Scientifics, Catalyst Investors, and Observatory Capital. “We have been looking to back a leader in the digital marketing space for quite some time,” said Spring Lake partner Dan MacKeigan in the funding release. “MediaMath’s leading industry position, buoyed by their remarkable triple-digit year-over-year growth and best-in-class marketing platform, presented us with an opportunity that we could not pass up.” |
Apple Delivers Location-Based App Suggestions On Your Lock Screen In iOS 8 | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 6 | 3 | Apple has a new feature in iOS 8 that will surface app suggestions on the bottom left screen of your locked iPhone depending on your location, according to developers posting to the forums. These include apps already installed on a user’s device, but also suggestions from the App Store that haven’t yet been purchased or downloaded, too. The suggestions show up in the same location as the prompts for Apple’s Continuity features for using apps between iOS devices and Macs without breaking a sweat. These bring up contextually relevant software however, like allowing you to easily open the Starbucks mobile app when you’re in a Starbucks, or suggesting an app designed for a specific train station when you’re actually in that train station. These features appear to work with existing software, so they don’t necessarily require any modification on the part of developers, but they do appear to work with apps that interact with real-world cash points, ticket machines and registers. We’ve heard from one user that they saw a suggestion for the UCSC app when they were on the UCSC campus earlier today, giving them a direct link to the app in the App Store since it wasn’t already installed on their device. A similar story from a MacRumors reader details how visiting a Costco prompted a link to the Costco app in the App Store, too. Using the lock screen icon and swiping up accessed that app’s listing in the App Store, but the user wasn’t able to navigate to any other part of the store. Apple introduced the ‘Popular Near Me’ feature to the App Store in iOS 7 last year, which brings up a list of apps commonly downloaded in your area by other App Store users. This adds a whole new level of contextual relevance to App Store discovery, however, and it also paves the way for higher engagement and rediscovery on apps that a user has already downloaded but may not always remember to use. It could really help drive more return visits to things like loyalty and other Passbook apps, too, making it much more worth their time for developers to build those integrations into their software. Contextual smarts are increasingly important to smartphone platforms, and in many ways this functionality competes with Google Now, but goes a step further by giving users prompts that can lead to immediate action in any particular location. It’s also unobtrusive enough that users shouldn’t feel intruded upon by the suggestions. Not everything from the early betas make it into the final release versions of iOS, however, so we’ll have to wait and see how this develops, and what applications it ends up being available to in the end. |
null | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 1 | 22 | null |
The Metal Framework Gives iOS A Lead In Gaming For The Foreseeable Future | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 6 | 3 | Among the , three were targeted specifically at game developers: SceneKit, new functions in SpriteKit, and Metal, a new framework that opens the door for vastly better performance in higher-end games on iOS, and does it in a way that Google simply can’t respond to because of the way Android works. For those without a technical background, Metal offers developers a set of functions that are “closer to the metal” than OpenGL, the application programming interface traditionally used on iOS (and Mac, Android, and game consoles not made by Microsoft). That means that they have more direct control over the graphics hardware, enabling faster performance because there’s less overhead for the system to deal with. In practical terms, this won’t mean much for most developers — only those who really need to get into the guts of their code to boost graphics performance need be concerned. But there’s an entire industry built up around creating “game engines” for developers so that they don’t have to rebuild the wheel every time they start a new project. Getting those developers interested is how Apple gets Metal into most iOS games. As it turns out, some of those teams have already started building Metal into their engines. Yesterday, Unity3D rendering guru tweeted that building Metal into the company’s engine was the “fastest port to brand new 3D API ever”: Playing around with Apple was super fun btw. Fastest port to brand new 3D API ever. — Aras Pranckevičius (@aras_p) On his blog, that this won’t mean that games aren’t going to be built for Android just because developers can get better performance on iOS through Metal. Most won’t even touch it, because it’ll be baked into the tools they use to make their games. But gamers might start to notice when games built for the platform start to offer significantly better graphics: That said, of the class of very advanced programmers who will jump on Metal are… the teams that maintain the game engines, frameworks, and toolchains used by 95% (perhaps 99%) of the games for mobile. , , and a few others simply dominate mobile gaming on both iOS and Android and have traditionally targeted a relatively common core of OpenGL ES for both platforms. Due to this I find it unlikely that the API itself will act to lock anybody into iOS from a classic API perspective – everybody is using an engine or framework and indeed tools much higher up the value chain. But… Metal could very well offer an iOS performance lock-in on mobile. While there are equivalents of the Metal framework available on other platforms — on AMD-made graphics chips, and DirectX 12 from Microsoft for Windows and the Xbox platform — neither company has complete control of the ecosystem for which they are building, which complicates things and limits the extent to which they can optimize for specific hardware. After all, AMD makes a wide variety of graphics cores that can be used in a nearly infinite range of PC hardware configurations, while DirectX has to work with the same range of CPU, RAM, etc., while also accounting for graphics chips from AMD, nVidia and Intel. That means these frameworks simply can’t optimize for specific hardware in the same way that Apple can, as Of the other low-level APIs we’ve seen so far – AMD’s Mantle and Microsoft’s DirectX 12 – the former is an API established by a hardware vendor who has to ride on top of other companies CPUs and OSes, and the latter is an OS vendor who has to ride on top of third party CPUs and GPUs. Apple on the other hand is in the enviable position of being as close as anyone can be to offering a fully vertical ecosystem. Apple designs their own CPUs, configures their own SoCs, and writes their own OS. The only portion of the chain that Apple doesn’t control is the GPU, and even then the company has exclusively used Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR GPUs for the last 7 years with no signs of this changing. With the iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and iPad mini all running on the same A7 system-on-a-chip — and this year’s models presumably sharing the A8 — Metal can be optimized specifically for one set of hardware and get the same gains across its range of mobile devices. While the diversity of Android handsets comes with its own advantages, Google simply can’t create a Metal equivalent that optimizes for every device manufacturer’s hardware. As gamers’ expectations for what their phones are capable of evolve, it’ll be interesting to see how the introduction of Metal shapes the mobile gaming landscape. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.