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Gmail Now Protects Your Inbox From Malevolent Extensions | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 12 | 16 | A popular service like Gmail inevitably becomes a target for hackers. Over the years, Google has made quite a few security improvements, such as requiring HTTPS connections to prevent others from getting access to your email. Today the company that it has implemented support for (CSP) to prevent cross-site scripting attacks and malevolent browser plug-ins from messing with your inbox and (potentially) stealing your data. in the way Google is a blacklist/whitelist system for stopping sites from loading unsafe code from third-party sites and preventing cross-site scripting attacks. It uses the HTTP header to instruct the browser to only execute and render code from trusted sites. So if an attacker tries to trick the site into loading any other code, the site will simply throw an error. Google notes that most popular extensions for Gmail have already been updated and should continue to work as usual. In case one of your favorite extensions in Chrome or Firefox stops working, though, Google recommends updating to the latest version. Chrome, Firefox and Safari currently support CSP. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer only has limited support for an older version of it. |
Facebook Starts Auto-Enhancing Photos Because Algorithms Are Better At Filters Than You | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 12 | 16 | We’re not ace photographers, but we all take photos. Most could use a little help with light and shadow. So rather than making you manually filter them, Facebook tells me it will now auto-enhance newly uploaded photos starting today on and soon on Android. You’ll be able to adjust a slider to control just how enhanced you want the light, shadow, and clarity, or revert back to your original shot. The tool could make it much quicker to post well-lit photos so you can share on the go and get back to what you were doing. Facebook and the other social apps are locked in a battle for photo sharing. To the winner goes tons of engagement. That’s why , Snapchat started letting you with color filters and its geo-filter titles, and Instagram today . Google+ added a similar a year ago. Previously when you uploaded a photo to Facebook from mobile, you were shown your unedited image, and could hit a button to add a one-size-fits-all light enhancement, or try adding one of Facebook’s filters. That was slow, could cause filter decision paralysis, and if you didn’t like how the enhancement looked, you had to take it or leave it. Now photos are automatically enhanced, but you can quickly tone the effect up or down. I found the auto-enhancements to be a touch overzealous in some of my experiments, but it’s typically in the ballpark of how I’d want to edit a photo, plus it requires no work on my part. That’s especially helpful if you’re more concerned with experiencing the moment with your eyes than staring at your phone. If Facebook can be the way to share photos without interrupting your life, it might be the app we choose most often when we see something special. |
Ebay Expands Local Pilot Program Offering Same-Day Delivery, In-store Pickup In Brooklyn | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 12 | 16 | Ebay’s testing of “last-mile” delivery hasn’t been totally shelved, it seems. The company, distancing itself from its earlier eBay Now initiative, announced today that it’s expanding its eBay Local pilot program in Brooklyn with the addition of 80 small businesses that will offer scheduled and same-day delivery, as well as in-store pickup to area customers. On November 19 eBay migrated its eBay Now delivery service to its main website and mobile app as the company began to rethink how it wants to handle same-day deliveries. Instead of continuing to expand to dozens of markets across the U.S., it was folding eBay Now into “core,” and it . The is still up-and-running, and still sporting the “eBay Now” branding, though, because Now is still powering local deliveries occurring through eBay Local. However, eBay’s newer focus is more about working with smaller sellers whose customers may prefer picking up items bought online in their local stores. To that end, eBay last year bought a same-day delivery startup Shutl, which uses a “click and collect” model in the U.K. that allows shoppers to pickup their eBay purchases from retailer Argos. Meanwhile, for same-day deliveries, Shutl uses local couriers. (eBay previously used valets to deliver packages in the U.S., but switched over to the Shutl platform here this spring, .) Today, eBay is touting its “eBay Local” service, which is basically the rebranded eBay Now offering with the added pickup options. Like eBay Now, eBay Local is offered in limited markets. In the U.S., it runs in New York (including Brooklyn and Queens), San Francisco and parts of the Peninsula, San Jose, Dallas and Chicago. In addition, eBay runs Local programs in the U.K., Germany and Australia, it says. In these markets, customers can choose to have items delivered through traditional means, opt for same-day delivery or pick up items for themselves at nearby stores. “We find that our customers like having choice, based on when they need the item and how much they want to pay to get it,” explains Tom Allason, senior director of eBay’s Local initiatives, in a brief announcing the Brooklyn expansion. Actually, what eBay really found is that customers weren’t really clamoring for same-day delivery in large numbers, which is why a standalone, same-day delivery service didn’t really make sense. For consumers, including those shopping eBay or its retailer competitors also experimenting with same-day (including and ), free delivery and lower prices are generally more important than the instant gratification of same-day delivery, which still has obstacles like having to order by certain cutoff times. Customers seem to be , making it hard for retailers to generate significant revenues from the option. |
NowThis Media Raises Another $6M To Deliver Video News Stories In Less Than A Minute | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 12 | 16 | , which covers the news with videos that are usually around 15 or 30 seconds long, is announcing that it has raised $6 million in Series C funding. NowThis was founded by Kenneth Lerer (chairman at BuzzFeed and co-founder of the Huffington Post) and Eric Hippeau (former CEO of the Huffington Post), with backing from their firm Lerer Hippeau Ventures. The startup , and it took on . NowThis President Sean Mills told me that for this round, the startup didn’t really pitch new investors: “We got support internally, with one more key strategic partner,” namely media company Axel Springer. The round was led by previous backer Oak Investment Partners, with participation from other existing investors, including NBC Universal, SoftBank Capital, and Lerer Hippeau. Mills himself at around the same time as the NBC funding (he was previously president at The Onion). Since then, he said the startup has become focused on “being a distributed media company and finding audiences where they live.” In other words, it’s less focused on drawing audiences to the NowThis mobile app and website, and more on finding viewers on social media. Apparently the strategy is paying off — Mills said the company was seeing 1 million monthly video views as recently as early summer of this year, but it was up to 40 million monthly views in November. NowThis has also launched NowThis Studio, a division focused on branded content, and it . That acquisition provided the foundation for a new platform called Switchboard, which is scheduled to launch early in 2015. Mills said Switchboard will help the NowThis deal with the “friction” in the current production process — it’ll give the team tools to find trending videos, edit those videos and create new ones, and distribute the resulting segments. While Switchboard was built as an internal tool, NowThis plans to use it with partners as well, and Mills said the startup could also explore whether “it makes sense to build new relationships” where NowThis is just a technology provider. Mills described the NowThis audience as mostly 18- to 34-year-olds who are tech savvy and politically progressive. What kind of news are they interested in? Well, the biggest story on the NowThis front page as I write this is , and how their mother called in to chastise them on C-SPAN — a great story that you may have seen elsewhere, but one that’s pretty well-suited to the short-form video format. As for whether NowThis might expand into longer videos eventually, Mills told me in a follow-up email: We’re really just committed to what works best for the mobile experience on each social platform, and that has proven to be short-form, meaning under a minute. When video is watched in a fast-moving social feed we really believe you can’t waste someone’s time. You’ve got to make every second count if you want to make their thumb stop next time they see one of your videos. That said we do think very specifically about each place we distribute. On Facebook, where video has been exploding, between :30 and a minute has been a sweet spot for us, but I think we’ve gotten equally good at the 15 second limit of Instagram and the six second limit of Vine. |
American Re-Urbanization Drives More On-Demand Innovation | David Hirsch | 2,014 | 12 | 16 | As mobile devices become magic wands for marketplaces, matching supply and demand and making goods and services more accessible than ever before, we’re experiencing an “uberfication” of the economy. Alongside this movement to an “on-demand” economy ( by the team at Sherpa Ventures), is the equally as transformative re-urbanization of America. In 2013, 2.3 million more people moved into metro areas than in 2012, driven by the demands of America’s two most powerful demographics. Baby boomers are retiring and moving back to the cities they left when they started families and millennials want to live closer to each other and where the action is. Traditional industries will need to figure out logistics to reach customers with the same speed and service that they’ve come to expect. and have raised the bar and the whole delivery ecosystem is undergoing dramatic changes. Customers are going to expect an omni-channel, same-day delivery experience for all products and services. The problem that arises is in warehousing. Smaller companies that sell on , individuals who sell on and larger big box retailers will need a logistics solution for warehousing and delivery if they want to compete with Amazon’s leasing of 470,000 square feet in New York City. Another result of the growth in urban living is the lack of space. While it’s true that millennials are owning less and valuing experiences more, just ask a few of the 20-somethings in your office about how much space they have in their apartments. Traditional storage isn’t practical for this demographic as it’s expensive and difficult to access on a weekly or even daily basis. These companies can also act as a warehousing solution for independent sellers and small businesses. Boxbee already works with Instacart to store their grocery bags and deliver them on-demand in a “storage-as-a-service” offering. This solution from Boxbee or others provides a B2B commerce layer where all digital storefronts on Etsy, Shopify and eBay can use space to both warehouse their goods and then deliver them in urban areas. Another consequence of this shift is the rise of the sharing economy, or “collaborative consumption” as many call it. With Airbnb flourishing, the whole market is on the verge of being opened up from sharing what’s in your closet (Threadflip, Rent the Runway) to your car (Flightcar, Lyft). |
null | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 12 | 11 | null |
After A Difficult 2014, Bitcoin Hopes For A Brighter New Year | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 12 | 16 | Bitcoin spiked to north of $1,000 in late 2013, before starting a long decline in the current year. After some optimistic fluctuation, it has landed in a mid-$300 trading range that the virtual currency can’t seem to shake. Gone, for now it seems, are the go-go days of bitcoin heading straight north. We were but babes in the bitcoin woods at the turn of the last decade. Not much was known, and wild speculation in the cyrptocurrency helped develop its very own folklore. Stories abounded of overnight bitcoin millionaires. Prices shot up, and many bemoaned that they did not invest when bitcoin was a mere $13 back at the end of 2012. The , owners of an exchange-traded fund in bitcoin, predicted that , a price that would represent a towering $400 billion USD market cap. WordPress began accepting the currency in late 2012. Dell, Overstock.com and others joined in support, albeit through partner services. Startups and accelerators began to focus solely on the bitcoin ecosystem. One man and his new wife for the first three months of their marriage. It felt like all bitcoin, all the time. Pony up, or lose big. It didn’t quite last. Investors now seem unsure of what to do with bitcoin. There is general consensus that individual bitcoins have value, but also that there isn’t much short-term potential for a large influx of new users. That directly implies that there won’t be massive, near-term, buy-side pressure on the currency. Overall creation of bitcoin wallets is up, which is an indication of continued interest from potential buyers. Wallets are files that contain private keys used to unlock the bitcoins within the tool so that you can spend them. It’s akin to a physical wallet that holds credit cards. The number of wallets in existence at the end of the third quarter grew to 6.5 million from 1.3 million a year earlier. But , most of those wallets are empty. It’s estimated that only 250,000 to 500,000 wallets actually contain bitcoins. That implies that many people are opening a wallet, but failing to actually buy any of the stuff; the process is losing its complexity as consumer-friendly tools spring up, but remains harder than picking up normal cash. In addition, investors and the media that bitcoin was among the absolute worst investments this year, measured on a percentage-loss basis. That fact won’t deter true bitcoin believers. However, it’s worth noting the increasing chatter among the bitcoin classes that the underlying technology of the currency — the blockchain — is what matters, and not the price. Of course, to be the value-transfer instrument that many hope bitcoin will become, some pricing mechanism will be required, keeping the price itself relevant. “I think as an asset it is still the best performing over two years,” says Adam Draper, founder of bitcoin accelerator . “We are in repair mode, where there is less speculative investment going into bitcoin, and people are finding real use cases,” he added. Draper is the son of venture capitalist Tim Draper. Draper the elder, like his son, is one of bitcoin’s . For bitcoin, a rising price lifts all boats. Regardless of what part of the bitcoin ecosystem you think most important, having more general interest cannot be viewed as a negative. And thus if we do not see growth in bitcoin’s price in 2015, we could see more constrained growth in its use. Microsoft recently made waves by starting to accept the stuff, leaning on a partnership with Bitpay. The fact that the second-largest company by market cap in the world has decided to allow bitcoin into its world failed to have an impact on the price of the cryptocurrency. As such, the addition of more firms accepting bitcoin should not, it seems, have material impact on its price. If you want to imagine a higher price in 2015, you have to ask yourself what event, or series of events, will have your desired impact. Adam Draper believes that impact will be in the launch of products, particularly to do with the blockchain, that will make the cryptocurrency more accessible. “I am still crazy bullish on bitcoin and the next six months is going to be exciting,” he told TechCrunch. Draper’s accelerator invests in 20-30 companies twice a year. Boost recently switched to 100 percent pure bitcoin startups. The plan is to accelerate 100 bitcoin-centric founders by 2017. “The talented entrepreneurs entering the space are all going to be launching great products that will truly add value to the world,” Draper said. Bitcoin is trading near year lows, erasing most of the value it previously created. Draper and other bitcoin believers are still hanging tough, but as far as bubbles go, this year’s implosion has been spectacular. We are still left with much confusion, speculation and lore around this virtual currency. To the moon, indeed. |
Aiming To Be A ‘B2B Google’ For Business Intel, Mattermark Raises $6.5M Led By Foundry Group | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 12 | 16 | , the business intelligence site that , is today announcing that it has raised a round of $6.5 million, funding that the startup will use to build out its ambition to be a “B2B Google.” By that, it means creating structured data for people on the hunt for company information across the messy and disorganised Internet and its many available sources of primary and secondary data. Or, as new investor Brad Feld of the Foundry Group puts it, uncovering a “valuable secret hidden in plain sight.” As part of this Series A, Feld is joining Mattermark’s board of directors. It brings the total raised by the startup to . When San Francisco-based Mattermark first opened for business in 2013, the company’s first moves were aimed squarely in its backyard: it provided deal information to VCs and others in the world of startups, tapping into the concept of big data to create a signalling platform to monitor deal flow and better anticipate what will be the next big thing without investing hours in the process of doing so. “We don’t believe we can replace investors’ ability to build relationships with entrepreneurs, but we do think we can help them source opportunities more efficiently and reduce the chances of missing a whale,” co-founder Danielle Morrill said at the time. Fast forward to today, and that is still a big part of its business, but the funding will also be used to try to expand that vision to touch a wider ring of potential customers and business situations. Morrill says the funding will be used “to invest even more heavily in organizing the world’s business information through software automation and machine learning.” Mattermark is not disclosing revenues but says that it now has 500 businesses as customers — with typical end users being “dealmaking professionals in venture capital,” sales, marketing, merchant and investment banking, commercial real estate, corporate development, private equity, hedge funds, and consulting firms. The service itself tracks data on some 1 million businesses. It’s the bigger vision and potential of where that 1 million might go in the future that interests Feld and other investors. “Mattermark is bringing science to the art of dealmaking by organizing content into structured data, and we are thrilled to join them in indexing the growth signals of more than 250 million companies worldwide,” Feld said in a statement. In addition to Foundry Group as lead investor, the Series A includes participation from existing backers, although Mattermark doesn’t specify which. The full list is pretty massive. It includes 500 Startups, Andreessen Horowitz, Carter Rabasa, Damien Tanner, Daniel Clark, Data Collective, Eileen Burbidge, Elliot Loh, Enrico Pandian, Eric Ries, Felicis Ventures, FG Angels Syndicate, Flybridge Capital Partners, Gramercy Fund, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Height Securities, Ignition Venture Partners, Inflection Ventures, Jay Wiley, Jeff Lawson, Jesse Engle, Lily Limusanno & David Lee, Manyam Mallela, Matt Monahan, Michael Liou, Naveen Selvadurai, New Enterprise Associates, Paige Craig, PejmanMar Ventures, Raju Indukuri, Sherpa Ventures, Sierra Maya Ventures, Steve Loughlin, Streamlined Ventures, Structure Capital, Trent Gegax, Ullas Naik, Version One Ventures, William Mougayar and Y Combinator. The startup is also now , on the lookout specifically for people who can help build out its big-data promise, and those who can sell the idea to would-be customers. |
Apple Stops Online Store Sales In Russia Amid Ruble Value Drop | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 16 | Apple has stopped selling its hardware online in Russia, owing to the currently volatile state of the Ruble, the country’s official currency. In a statement provided to , the company said that it’s taking things offline while it goes through the process of evaluating its pricing, and apologized to customers put out by the site being taken down. Apple’s decision to close down shop for the time being comes after it recently raised iPhone prices to try to compensate for the falling value of local currency, but the interest rate in Russia rose by 7.5 percentage points overnight, in an attempt to turn the Ruble’s nosedive around. That hasn’t succeeded, and Russia is in the midst of what’s being called “an economic crisis” by observing economists, so it’s unsurprising that Apple lacks confidence in its ability to continue selling products under those market conditions. We’ll keep an eye on the store and provide updates if it returns, or if Apple makes any additional statements regarding the situation. |
Instagram Adds Five New Filters | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 12 | 16 | Today Instagram has five new filters for still images, which is the first time they’ve done such a thing in two years. The most recent filters before this, which seems odd considering they’ve been there longer than most of Instagrams users have actually been on the app, were Willow and Mayfair. Just like you’d expect, each of the new filters has a slightly odd-sounding name (unless you live in SF) which we will inevitably begin using as a verb. (And with a bit of a drumroll…) They are Slumber, Crema, Ludwig, Aden and Perpetua. “They soften and subtly shift colors to achieve the look and feel you want for your each photo,” says the Instagram blog. You can take a look at them for yourself below: Perhaps more importantly than five new opportunities to look totally YOLO (or whatever the kids are saying these days), Instagram is also introducing a way to “Manage” your filters by allowing you to rearrange the ones you use the most at the front of the line and push back the ones almost no one uses like Toaster and Kelvin. Like so: The app will also use a preview of your actual photo within the filter icons as opposed to the ultra-familiar hot air balloon preview. Instagram recently announced that it had hit , which beats out Twitter’s most recent numbers. You can check out the blog post from . [Update: Instagram’s parent company Facebook is getting a filter update to just weeks after Twitter and Snapchat made improvements to their photo sharing. you upload so you can post quicker and get back to real life.] |
Online Consignment Shop For Kids’ Items Swap.com Raises $4 Million Series A | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 12 | 16 | A newer competitor in the online consignment space, , has raised $4 million in Series A funding for its e-commerce shop where parents can buy secondhand kids’ clothing, gear, books, toys, games and more. Though similar in some respects to competitors like thredUP.com, which also began by focusing on the kids’ clothing resale market, Swap.com differentiates itself by not only by the nature of the items it accepts and sells – most competitors don’t stray too far from clothing and accessories – but also in its business model. Co-founder and CEO Dr. Juha Koponen explains that Swap.com operates as a true consignment store, whereas most of its competitors do not. Today, thredUP and many of its competitors seem to go one of two routes: either they offer a peer-to-peer marketplace like Poshmark or Threadflip, or they pay users upfront for items sent in to the company to sell on their behalf, as thredUP and Twice do. Meanwhile, Swap.com does things differently – it only pays sellers after their items are purchased by other shoppers, but it also supports “swapping.” And Dr. Koponen adds, sellers can sometimes receive more for their items on Swap.com than on competitors’ sites as his company takes 20% plus $1 of every item it sells. In addition, the company accepts all brands instead of limiting itself to more high-end apparel, and allows customers to sell non-clothing items like baby gear, books, toys, games, decor, movies and music, sport equipment, and also maternity clothes. Another differentiator is that Swap.com customers can as currency, which is where the company’s name “Swap” comes into play. For what it’s worth, before pivoting into its online resale shop it runs today, having failed to make such a model work. Swaps on Swap.com are free, but the company does for sorting, photographing, storing and listing items on sellers’ behalf. That’s why it makes more sense for customers to send in larger lots rather than items one at a time – the fees could eat away at any additional profits you could make here versus on a competitors’ site. Dr. Koponen believes Swap.com will be successful, versus its competitors, because of increased efficiencies on the fulfillment side of its business, which is Swap’s “secret sauce.” To that end, he notes that one of Swap.com’s new investors is Marc Onetto, former VP of Worldwide Operations and Customer Service at Amazon.com, and a board member at global electronics retailer Flextronics. Applying his expertise to the consignment model will be a competitive advantage, the startup’s founders (which includes co-founder Jussi Koskinen) believe. Swap.com currently reports a revenue run rate of $2.5 million, and has been growing at 20% month-over-month since 2013, . The site today lists over 150,000 items and adds more than 50,000 new ones monthly. The now roughly 50-person team (not all full-time) has also recently moved into a new 66,000 sq. ft. fulfillment center in its homebase of Bolingbrook, Illinois – a market the startup chose because of the ease of shipping to both coasts. That location outside the Valley has made it a bit more difficult in terms of raising funding, however, though Swap.com has picked up some notable angels in its A round. The round included investment from a lesser known firm Cleantech Invest Plc., which, as its name implies, often funds a different sort of startup; and angels including Ari Hypponen (first employee at F-Secure), Ahti Heinla (Skype founding engineer), and Jaan Tallinn (Skype and Kazaa founding engineer), in addition to Onetto. |
Reflections On Microconsoles | Tadhg Kelly | 2,014 | 12 | 28 | Tis the season for reflection and I’d like to reflect on what happened to microconsoles. ( ) At the start of 2013 I wrote that it could be the , a term that gained traction for a while. Tech folks were interested in what OUYA, GamePop, GameStick, MOJO and a variety of other Android-powered open game machines at cheap prices meant. Maybe they represented something fundamentally new, with their promise of app store economics in the TV space and liberation of game developers. Unfortunately a mere two years later the microconsole is largely forgotten. What happened? One reason was that the machines leading the charge were severely underpowered. Often headed by folks with a software rather than a hardware mentality, microconsole companies pushed to get to market fast and iterate. In the software world this is typical: you get your minimum viable product out the door in order to see what will work, and then follow-up with versions that quickly improve. The technology press accepts this in areas such as laptop PCs and mobile phones. There are some beautiful swans (Apple stuff mostly) but also many products that are understood to be intended as placeholders while they improve. But the gaming press is less forgiving. It thinks of hardware as the seed of generational sagas and tends to damn failures for all time. The right way to handle that is to tease. The Oculus Rift folks, for example, came from similar Kickstarter routes as microconsoles, but the big difference is how they’ve kept the product in a “coming soon” state rather than releasing it. This has built a constant sense of anticipation, for the future that might be, even after the big sale to Facebook. Though I personally am a VR skeptic, the way that Oculus has held attention is admirable, and it stands in stark contrast to microconsoles. Microconsole providers rushed to get to market and find out whether their business was real rather than creating it. In hindsight this was a crucial mistake which soured much of what followed. Nobody expected $99 machines to compete chip-for-chip with $399 rivals. That was never the problem. The problem was that microconsoles were always perceived as shoddy knockoffs rather than neat devices with a vision. They were made cheap, felt cheap and behaved cheap. They had woeful basic technical issues with WiFi or joypad responsiveness. And so for many commentators “microconsole” quickly equated with “piece of crap”. The business press message may have been “interesting device category to watch” but in the consumer press the microconsole quickly became a big LOL to be stacked alongside such misadventures as 3DO, CDi, the Phantom and Gizmondo. It’s almost impossible to come back from that place. Moreover the key attraction on the developer side quickly faded. At the start the microconsoles’ Android operating system and engine compatibility were seen as a major boon. It meant that microconsoles could sell a story of easy porting and open access, which the Xbox 360 certainly couldn’t manage. These were perceived as important values to the indie community. But there were issues. Many microconsoles used a Tegra 3 processor for example, which turned out not to work with shader technology. More significantly many indies valued something more than openness: funding. When and ran their Kickstarters they did so against a backdrop of indie game developers feeling squeezed out of TV. Indies were doing well on Steam and the evolving mobile space, but formerly welcoming platforms like Xbox 360 slowly de-prioritized them in favor of platform projects like Kinect or TV integration. Sony’s PS3 was seen as a dead zone for all but the chosen few, and Nintendo was perceived to be a closed shop. All three had business practices that dis-incentivized indies (expensive dev kits, custom hardware, high cost of implementing TRCs, unfriendly revenue share etc) and felt out of step in an App Store world. Microconsoles tapped into that story – but then the story changed. Where it had previously only selectively funded titles like as show-ponies, Sony became much more active in the indie space. It got out its checkbook and started signing indies by the brace in advance of the PlayStation 4 while simultaneously revising many uncool policies and technology constraints. Engines like Unity worked so well that porting ceased to be a major concern, and Sony successfully courted the press’s favor. Microsoft initially misread the importance of this but eventually responded, as has Nintendo. The result was a bonanza for indies, one that will likely last to at least the end of 2015. But it also blew one of the primary selling points of microconsoles away. They’d hoped to appeal to indies on the basis of providing them a home, but when they suddenly did have a home the conversation became much more “What can you (microconsole) do for me (indie)? I already have a deal on the table.” So most content on microconsoles was B- or C-grade while the A-graders were dismissive, even disdainful. Then there was the hope that smart TV or media streamers would provide , but they haven’t. Apple doesn’t seem interested in turning Apple TV into anything more than it already is. Roku is focused on providing the best video box. Amazon’s Fire TV dipped its toe into the waters of gaming with a controller and such, but it was sold separately. Overall the media streamer market seems to be going a different way, into $39 HDMI sticks that do Netflix and YouTube rather than $150 miniature game systems. Smart TV might be coming, but if so it seems shallow. All things considered the microconsole was squeezed out by heavyweight competitors stealing key talent, a poor reputation for hardware and an apparently uninterested casual market. Many early entrants have long since washed out after selling minuscule numbers. It’s tough out there in the gaming hardware world. But given all that, I don’t think the microconsole is completely dead. Bruised, sure. Battered, even. In need of a rethink, certainly. But OUYA survives. It recently , for example, and launched a game streaming pack from Playcast featuring games such as and . Older games to be sure but not so old or tatty. They’re still trying. I still think there’s something to the little game box that could. I’d say it has the enduring appeal of the hacker box. There may not be a casual console market in any meaningful sense and the media-streamer Smart TV stuff might be far off. But is there a market for noodly devices that do cool stuff? I think so. It may seem an odd analogy, but we forget that many of the folks who Kickstarted microconsoles did so for reasons akin to supporting Raspberry Pi. They didn’t necessarily want a professional platform, just somewhere to be able to make games, to futz about and mod. In roughly the same timeframe as the life of the microconsole the on this promise and has been put to all sorts of quirky uses by people who were just to see what they could do with them. I think there’s still a potential market for microconsoles there, as a kind of “my first dev kit” combined with a venue for fringe and artsy content that family-friendly platforms would shy away from. I see it having a role in education, in teaching the skills of making games and providing a social network of developers. Does that mean I think microconsoles are going to roar back and overtake premium consoles? No, alas. I did for a time, perhaps more as an expression of my own frustrations with the idiocies of the console business. But it is what it is. Though I was one of their biggest supporters the reality is that the conditions that could have potentially given microconsoles life have since evaporated. Maybe they will shift again. Then again, maybe not. We can only wait and see. Happy New Year all! |
The Enormous Implications Of Facebook Indexing 1 Trillion Of Our Posts | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 12 | 28 | A whole wing of the Internet just got added to our collective conscience, like websites by Google or knowledge by Wikipedia before it. The ramifications for advertising, developers, and Facebook itself are tough to fathom. Our most vivid doppelgänger, our digital echoes can now be tracked. They don’t just say who we were, but where we’re headed, and what we’ll want next. First, the trillion post index gives us group memory. Each person can only search stories from their friends and surrounding network, but those all add up to over 1 trillion posts. If your friends put their lives on Facebook, you can now remember them too. You could say these are just faded snapshots, nowhere near the real thing, but how much of our own lives do we forget completely? Search yourself and almost any word, and you’ll likely discover scenes from your own past that you didn’t find worth saving locally. If we know existence is too rich for us to record everything in our minds, and accept that Facebook posts are merely hints or triggers of long-gone moments, we can augment our memories without the guilt that we’re replacing them. But this is not the Facebook Timeline. Since 2011, we’ve been able to dive into one friend’s grand narrative. But minus the creepiest of us, few aimlessly dig so deep. Post search weaves different lives together by the virtue of the words chosen to describe them. What does “fun” or “love” or “worried” conjure from different perspectives within our network? This is a question we can suddenly answer. Second, you could say Facebook knew a lot about us before, but didn’t understand it until now, like a student with the facts memorized who finally learned how they piece together into history. Facebook’s product depends on guessing what we want based on who we were. Before, that meant who we said we were, which friends we communicated with, what we liked, and where we browsed. Now, to Facebook, we’re also what we said, and that says a lot. Indexing our posts could improve Facebook’s event suggestions Most obviously, the News Feed could learn to mimic our external dialogue, showing us posts with similar content to what we spread. Never talk about sports or babies? Facebook could eventually filter those out of your feed. Just shared your thoughts on Syria, celebrity gossip, or the police state? The algorithm could pull an audible and show you more about related news. Suggested Friends. Suggested Events. Suggested Pages to Like. Facebook was previously going on some taps and a top-level view of your identity. Now it has a much more intimate impression of who we are. Developers could eventually get a better understanding of us too. Imagine a Facebook post search API. One that could bring the ability to at least recall your own posts to other apps. It doesn’t exist now, but with personalization tools in hopes they’ll buy or host its ads. With reams of what we’ve written, everything stands to get a lot more relevant. Especially ads. I have to imagine somewhere in a glossy agency boardroom, two ad bros are giddily fist-bumping at the prospect of so much targeting data. Facebook says there’s no new advertising options coming out of post search, but the key omission is the word “yet”. Facebook’s great weakness in advertising has been that it doesn’t know what you’re thinking right now the way Google Search does. All that profile and interest data make Facebook ace at big brand advertising. But it lacks the urgent purchase intent that lets search engines charge lucrative ad rates to put ads for cameras atop searches for “best camera”. Facebook keyword advertising could change that. Instead of the related ads showing up on search results, they’d appear on your feed right after you post. All those “What movie should I see?”, “Can’t wait to visit Portland tomorrow!”, “My car just died” posts are ripe with purchase intent advertisers would love to leverage. Facebook experimented with keyword search ads in 2012 on the old search bar’s drop-down suggestions, but ditched the idea before Graph Search launched Not just on Facebook, either. The company’s now reach across the web and mobile through its and the . Marketing messages powered by Facebook on third-party sites and apps stand to grow smarter too. 20 months ago I suggested if Facebook figured out keyword advertising. Soon the two, and Twitter too, could in fact be battling for “search ad” dollars. At some point while reading this, your skin should have started to crawl just a little bit thinking about the privacy implications of Facebook indexing 1 trillion posts. Privacy by obscurity is basically dead. Previously, if you posted something dumb once upon a time, you were safe unless someone painstakingly browsed back through your Timeline post by post, month by month and dredged it up. Now anyone armed with the right, or wrong keywords can pull up your worst moments, and either quietly judge or publicly shame you. Don’t believe it? Just search some slurs and see which of your friends come up. Job seekers and public figures beware. Now is probably a good time to run some searches on yourself and make amends for anything stupid you said. Technically, your privacy settings haven’t changed, but how privacy functions on Facebook has. Beyond interpersonal relations, some might be uncomfortable with the concept of Facebook knowing so much about them. The trillion post index sure won’t lessen people’s Big Brother paranoia. More than ever, we’re coerced by the value of its service to trust Facebook to be a benevolent steward of our info. Not everyone’s comfortable implicitly signing that contract. Facebook even records what you search for, though the Activity Log is private and can be edited. And if you think ads are already creepy, just wait. Those retargeted ads that follow you around web selling things you checked out earlier are just the beginning. What you said 5 minutes or 5 years ago could soon inform the ads you see, whispering hints at how they can talk like you to seem more attractive. Ads are inevitable. I’d rather they be for things I might actually want. Their revenue pays for free services for everyone, not just those who could afford to pay. Still, it’s a little unnerving how quickly they’re getting smarter. Intelligent, even. Now Facebook has more reason than ever to pour money into its . AI will let Facebook decipher meaning at scale, mining the trillion posts to improve everything’s relevancy without needing human employees to pry into anyone’s content. Zuckerberg hasn’t been shy about this. He’s repeatedly said that alongside Oculus for virtual reality and Internet.org for information accessibility, . Facebook’s AI Research Lab is searching for ways to mine meaning from our posts On the after the Oculus acquisition, he said that to pursue Facebook’s goal of “understanding the world, we have our ambitious , which is trying to build a unified model of how every person [inside] the world is connected to each other. In the near term, our efforts here are in search and News Feed, and will help your network surface more useful information to you.” Zuck said similar things on July’s earnings call, , and he explained that AI would help Facebook with “understanding what the posts that people write mean.” Facebook has spent that last 8 years collecting the posts we wrote. First came displaying them in the News Feed, then making them browsable through Timeline, and now finally there’s search. What comes next will be harder to see, but it’ll make it clear that Facebook’s been sitting on a gold mine. Because it’s not about how big your data is. It’s what you do with it. |
Finding The Elusive Big Wisdom In Big Data | Ron Miller | 2,014 | 12 | 28 | You probably already know ‘Big Data’ is top of mind heading into 2015. How could you not? You are hearing about it constantly from vendors and journalists alike (guilty as charged). And you know what that hype says, right? Big data is going to provide all the answers, make your companies run more efficiently and help you make brilliant, data-driven decisions that give your organization a sharp competitive edge. To some extent that’s true, but like like any over-hyped technology, many companies find implementation is hard and the reality is very different from the hype. They may have figured out effective ways to collect and process the data, but putting it to work it to make better decisions is another matter. These companies are finding a key missing link between big data and big understanding, and if they don’t find a way to resolve this, they will be left with a big pile of confusing data with few insights. As one Silicon Valley insider told me recently, while big data collection and processing has gotten a lot of attention lately in terms of startup activity and funding, there is still a huge gap between expectations and results. As this person put it, “Big data hasn’t yet translated into big knowledge, big insights and big wisdom.” In their estimation we still have a ways to go before that happens. SEPARATING HYPE FROM REALITY We want to believe getting value from big data is as simple as pouring in the data, running a program and getting insights, but in fact, it’s much more complicated than that. Pam Baker, who is is author of the book says while there are actually clear cut instances where data points to a direct answer, this isn’t always the case. “Data can give us definitive answers in many, many cases. For example, predictive analytics can accurately forecast when an airplane or water system part will break and also dictate to us when exactly we should replace it to get maximum use out of old part but before old part actually breaks,” Baker explained. But she added, “There are also many cases when you can’t get a definitive answer, but you can choose from several possible actions or even choose to take no action. Just depends on what you’re working on,” she said. Baker is right that some data-driven decisions are much more subtle and require, as Bruce Springsteen once sang, . People can help by developing sound metrics and powerful algorithms. They also have to figure out how to make the best use of what the data is telling them. Sometimes it’s straightforward, but often it’s not. THE EXPERT GAP Further, we would love to believe that big data will give business users direct and instant access to that data so they can make the best decisions magically on the fly. Unfortunately, the tools we have today don’t offer that level of sophistication just yet. To help resolve this issue, we need more data experts to help us process data and find answers in the vast amounts of information. , an investment partner with who has invested in big data companies such as says companies need data scientists whose role is conducting sophisticated analysis, something your average line-of-business user is just not capable of doing. Rabois says you want these data scientists creating applications and algorithms and doing the heavy data-science lifting, but in companies that actually have data scientists they don’t always have time to do it all, partly because they are spending time doing less sophisticated analysis that doesn’t take full advantage of their skill sets. Rabois says in a best-case scenario, the data scientist has developed tools to help distribute analysis across the organization among the different parties who require answers. What we don’t want to do in a day and age where we need answers quickly is to create a guru bottleneck where we go to an expert to get the answers, then wait for the results. The problem is that even when smart people develop highly sophisticated algorithms, they don’t always give definitive answers to complex problems. It’s simply not possible to factor in every option or to take into account certain factors that are more difficult to measure. FIND ME A GOOD CENTER FIELDER If you want a good example of this, look at baseball where you can have two similar players on paper that produce very different results. Stat geeks will tell you that the algorithms they created over the years called will provide all the information you need to identify a good baseball player to fill a particular role. They have created a whole range of them like (WAR), a statistical measurement, which according to is defined as: “If this player got injured and their team had to replace them with a freely available minor leaguer or a [less talented] player from their bench, how much value would the team be losing?” They measure this difference in wins using a complex set of criteria. There is little doubt that these sophisticated kinds of metrics can help compute the value of a players more accurately, but it can’t measure everything like how well he plays under pressure, how hard he practices, what kind of leader he is or how well he gets along with teammates. All of these things matter too and are much harder to quantify. People who believe in pure statistical measurement will tell you everything can be measured, and that’s mostly true, but I’ve seen many cases of players that look similar on paper, yet don’t fill a particular role nearly as well as another player who was there before them in spite of their statistical similarities. Applying this to business, human resources professionals could encounter an analogous situation with candidates for an open programmer position. You can have two similarly skilled professionals vying for the same job, but one may have people skills and work well with their co-workers and the other might be surly and difficult with poor communications skills, intangibles that aren’t going to show up on a resume. Even with a lot of data, it’s difficult to take into account every possible outcome, especially when it comes to people. CONSIDER THE NUANCE OF MEDICAL DIAGNOSES Any good doctor would tell you that even two patients with identical symptoms would likely require different treatments based on the individual variables of each person such as age, weight, other health issues and additional unique factors. Consider the use of IBM Watson, the intelligent analytics platform, in medicine. When I explained to a friend recently that some doctors are using , he bristled. He didn’t want a machine deciding his medical treatment. It’s a valid concern, but in this case, Watson doesn’t give an answer like a trained seal that the physician blindly follows. It offers some options based on the evidence, what it knows about the patient, the symptoms and the current research on the matter (not unlike how a physician actually works). As I pointed out, busy doctors can’t possibly do their job and keep up with every bit of research in their fields. There’s simply too much out there (and that’s a good thing). That’s where Watson comes in. It can filter through the most current research for the doctors much faster than people possibly could, but at some level it still requires the nuance and understanding of the physician to decide on the exact treatment direction. It’s what I like to call the art in the science. The knowledge takes you so far, but the final arbiter is the physician, not the machine. Businesses are very likely going to face similarly unclear outcomes where people have to step in, use their training and make a choice with help from the data. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Machines can sometimes find answers and can give us insights it would have taken people years to figure out on our own. Baker points out, for instance, that big data has helped us find answers about diseases, such as cancer, that human researchers never even thought to look for. “We may never have found appropriate treatment (or at least not for many years) if big data hadn’t found that information for us. My point is that big data [can be] pretty darn accurate,” she told me. What’s more, she believes machine learning will reach a level of sufficient sophistication in the not-too distant future where machines may be making more decisions for us simply because our brains can’t possibly keep up with all of the available information. She is probably right, but for now, it seems, the ability to collect and process that data has gotten ahead of understanding what it all means. As Baker noted, predictive analytics are improving all the time, and sometimes the data points straight at an answer, but it still remains a complicated mix of human and machine and how this all comes together is very much a work in progress, even as the technology marches forward. Until we find that balance or it tips sharply in the favor of machines, we face a big wisdom gap and that will take some time and technological advances to fill. |
Pinterest Will Open Promoted Pins To All Advertisers Following Success Of Beta Program | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 12 | 28 | After years of questions about how it will make revenue, Pinterest’s roadmap to monetization is becoming more clear. The company , which it made to certain brands eight months ago, has performed “just as good and sometimes better than organic Pins,” and it will make the program available to all advertisers on January 1. Pinterest claims that brands who participated in the Promoted Pins beta program saw a 30 percent increase in “earned media” — or the amount of people who save a Promoted Pin to one of the boards. Promoted Pins are repinned an average of 11 times, the same as a normal pin made by one of the site’s users. Furthermore, Promoted Pins continued to get more pins in the month after a campaign, or a 5 percent increase in earned media. Once the Promoted Pins program rolls out, Pinterest says advertisers will have access to more ad formats and advanced targeting. In addition, it’s also launched the Pinstitute, a twee name for a program that will show advertisers how to leverage Promoted Pins through workshops and webinars. The Pinstitute in August, which lets advertisers track how their pins performed and how much content is being pinned from their sites through Pinterest’s Pin It buttons. Pinterest has been focused on monetizing its site since , which valued the company at $3.8 billion. At that time, Pinterest said one of the key uses of the capital would be to continue development of monetization, which it first began testing around the same time it closed its Series E, into a global program. |
Twitter’s Engineers Currently Fixing Widespread Sign-In Issue [Update: Fixed] | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 12 | 28 | Update: Twitter says the . If you have had trouble using Twitter or third-party apps over the past couple of hours, fear not—the microblogging service is . The company that its engineers are working to fix an issue that has affected the ability of somer users to sign into the service online and through its mobile site, as well as apps like Twitter for Android, Echofon, and Twitterific. The sign-in issue also caused tweets posted using Tweetdeck to be backdated by 365 days. Not all Twitter apps have been affected, however. Twitter’s iOS app still works for me, as does Tweetbot for iPad, and plenty of Twitter users can still tweet out their lighthearted speculations about the cause of the outage. Exclusive photo shows possible culprit behind latest Twitter issue – — Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) |
How Keeping Quiet Saved Our Startup $225K | Steli Efti | 2,014 | 12 | 28 | Most startup founders don’t think of themselves as master negotiators and struggle to come up with the right things to say in crucial moments. These moments are the perfect time to exercise one of sales’ most valuable tricks: silence. It’s hard to embrace silence during negotiations due to the level of fearlessness and discipline required. However, it’s an incredible tool and saved our company $225,000. So why does silence work in negotiations? Being silent in a negotiation creates social awkwardness for the other person, resulting in the urge for them to continue talking. In those moments, the other party will slip up and give away their negotiation high ground to their unstructured thoughts. Bingo. All you have to do once someone keeps talking is remain silent and let them negotiate with themselves until the right moment appears. That’s exactly how I saved $225,000 in a 10 minute phone call. Here’s what happened: The founding team of Close.io was doing something completely different when we first started out. We offered a simple service that allowed consumers to sign up with their credit or debit card in order to have us round up all their transactions and give the change to charity. To do that we had to license somebody else’s technology. We signed a three-year contract with that company for a shitload of money. We thought we were super smart so we negotiated a special deal with them: The first year of the contract we’d pay almost nothing. The second year a bit more, and the third year we’d pay them a crazy amount of money (around 90 percent of the entire contract value). We assumed that after three years we’d either be so successful that we could afford to pay, or our startup would already be dead so it wouldn’t matter anyway. The account executive from the company didn’t care since his commission was paid on contract value not payment terms. Win-win. However, one year later we completely changed our business. We didn’t use their super expensive technology anymore and couldn’t afford to keep paying them. So we tried everything we could to get out of it. We called them, used our network to reach out to them, visited their offices, wrote letters. We tried everything because we were in a desperate, hopeless situation. Our account executive kept telling us that he would love to help but “The evil guys from finance aren’t allowing me to do anything so you’ll have to pay the entire contract amount to get out.” He wasn’t interested in helping us out and I don’t blame him. We were worth more to him as a bankrupt customer than a customer he let out of a valuable contract. Eventually we got connected to one of their board members and convinced him to send our account executive an email and tell him to help us out. That got his attention. The next day my phone rings: “Hey, , this is John [not his real name]. Is this a good time to chat for you?” Me: “Yes, sure, let’s chat.” John: “I really want to help you. You guys are a struggling startup and I have a huge soft spot for entrepreneurs. I put up a huge fight with the finance department and got you an amazing deal. I think you’ll love it. You’ll be super thrilled to hear that instead of $250,000 you just need to pay us $100,000 to get out of the contract.” I just had $150,000 taken off my shoulders. I felt like doing a happy dance. This was the moment to use the simplest and most powerful negotiation tactic ever. Silence. After a couple of moments of awkward silence, he continues to say, “Well, , you know, it’s really important to us that our relationship stays healthy and I want you to know that [insert a huge pile of bullshit here]. This is really the best I can do for you, I already took a lot of heat from finance for this. I hope you’ll understand.” 23…22…21…20…19… He continues: “You know, one thing we might be able to do, if you postpone canceling the contract till January next year is probably give you a much better deal, maybe something between $25,000 and $50,000 instead of $100,000.” This was November. Waiting for two more months was no problem. “January. 25 thousand. Sounds good to me.” John: “Ehhm…great, I’m really glad that we can part on good terms. I will send you all the information later today.” And that was it. The result was much better than I could have ever expected. That phone call saved us $225,000. I couldn’t have negotiated that kind of deal if I had said something. All I did was shut the fuck up and let it play out in front of me. Admittedly, this was the most spectacular negotiation situation I’ve experienced, but I can tell you this: nine out of ten times, keeping your mouth shut at the right moment will work better than anything “clever” you could ever say. |
Russian Startup Livemap Lands $300K Grant For Its Motorcycle Helmet With Built-In Navigation | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 12 | 28 | As we’re coming up on the next Consumer Electronics Show, I got from one of the companies that — Russian startup . The Livemap team is working to create motorcycle helmets with voice control and GPS navigation directly in your field of vision — so while you’re riding, you can see directions in your helmet display without having to fiddle with another device or look away from the road. (Back in January, the Livemap team , which was transparent enough to show a map without obscuring the road ahead.) CEO Andrew Artishchev told me via email that most of the past year has been spent building the pre-production prototype of Livemap’s optics. Those optics will be built entirely of , allowing the helmet to, in his words, be “smaller and lighter and sometimes cheaper than the multi-lens design.” He added that the other big focus has been creating a design that will keep the optics costs down. Now Livemap plans to unveil its prototype in the spring, and to start sales this summer in its first market, the United States. To help create the prototype, Livemap has also received a grant of 14.7 million rubles from the Russian Ministry of Science. (That’s a little under $300,000 in U.S. dollars.). If you’re fluent in Russian or don’t mind using Google Translate, you can . Artishchev also commented on , which he dismissed as “only part of Google Glass.” “The product called Skully P1 is, in short words, like Google Glass put into a helmet — with all its disadvantages like tiny screen, low saturation and contrast, low resolution,” he added. You can . |
‘The Interview’ Is Now Available On iTunes For $14.99 | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 28 | If you didn’t catch ‘The Interview’ when earlier this week, and aren’t , then you may be interested to hear that the controversial flick has landed on iTunes today. Apple customers in the US and Canada can now via Apple’s digital media store, a move that at least extends the devices that you can watch it on to iOS, Apple TV and OSX. Other places it can be viewed or bought include , YouTube, Xbox and Google Play. The addition of iTunes, , is days later than the original release, but it may just open ‘The Interview’ up to new audiences and give the film some legs beyond its early days — which have , which the FBI blamed on North Korea (despite evidence to the contrary), and . Sony originally planned to cancel public screenings of ‘The Interview’ following pressure from the hackers, but it later opted to make the film available online . There’s no word on when (or indeed whether) the movie might land on Netflix, but we expect Sony to wait a while until it is done squeezing money via online purchases and rentals. The film itself has received a number of less than favorable reviews, one of which led to one of the most amusing Twitter moments of the year. This is unquestionably my favorite interaction on Twitter this year — Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) |
‘The Interview’ Nets $15 Million In Online Sales During Opening Four Days | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 28 | Sony has revealed that The Interview has earned $15 million in consumer spending via rentals and purchases across online platforms in its first four days of online availability. A source with knowledge of the matter confirms that the overwhelming majority of these sales occurred through Google Play and YouTube Movies, meaning Google’s ability to rally and offer up its media stores as sales platforms helped considerably with Sony’s ability to get eyeballs on the gross-out buddy comedy that sparked international incidents and terrorism fears. The Interview’s opening performance online has already helped it become the number one online film of all time for Sony Pictures Entertainment. Sony released the film beginning at 1 PM ET on Christmas Eve day, via Google Play, YouTube Movies, Microsoft’s Xbox Movies and SeeTheInterview.com. It has been streamed more than 2 million times already since being made available, according to Sony. While The Interview was cited as the reason behind the massive hack that sent Sony Pictures essentially back to the stone age, thus far it doesn’t appear that there has been any retaliation from the original hacker group for its eventual release. Sony’s PlayStation Network, and Xbox Live, were both taken down over the past few days beginning on Christmas, but that seems an unrelated move, instead performed by hacker group per the group’s official social media presence. |
Cybersecurity Hindsight And A Look Ahead At 2015 | Yoav Leitersdorf | 2,014 | 12 | 28 | This year we witnessed a series of high-profile security breaches, from the aftermath of the and fiascos, to a number of attacks on other national retailers, including , and . Then there was the massive breach at , which compromised personal information of more than 83 million households and businesses, and finally over 100 terabytes of internal files and films recently stolen from . Nobody was safe in 2014. In addition to large retailers, media companies and financial institutions, technology companies like and were hacked, too, and so were and . Also this year, massive Internet infrastructure vulnerabilities were discovered, including , and . Of course, these publicized events are only a fraction of the overall exposure to losses emanating from cyber incidents, which in 2014 we estimate to be well into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Hence, many firms have dramatically increased their cybersecurity budgets for 2015, and we project that these budget allocations will continue to rise. Here are five of the most prominent cybersecurity market trends that we believe will define the sector next year: Today, enterprises must not only detect and prevent potential threats; they must also be prepared to react quickly when breaches occur. Enterprises like Target are successfully being sued by banks for failing to act on security alerts. Incident Response solutions counter the aftermath of a breach, allowing businesses to limit damages and reduce recovery time. Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems (“IDS/IPS”) strengthen the organization’s security posture, however highly targeted attacks do penetrate eventually. Determined hackers find their way into the network, despite the various IDS/IPS systems that generate an increasing number of alerts for the security operations team to handle. It is now only a matter of time – how long before a breach is reacted upon and remediated? One of the clear lessons from Target’s attack is that the traditional Incident Response process, which is mostly based on manual processes, is broken. Reducing the time from detection to remediation could dramatically minimize an attack’s damage. That’s where Automated Incident Response solutions come in – they don’t leave alerts unhandled, and can react instantly (much faster than humans) when bad scenarios unfold. Enterprises, with their limited human resources, face escalating liabilities for failing to adequately respond to detected threats. Expect chief information security officers (“CISOs”) to turn to Automated Incident Response solutions in 2015. Enterprise IT departments are generally behind in keeping the cloud secure, heavily relying on security features provided by cloud vendors. Most of the SaaS vendors in particular don’t have security as first priority, and so they fail to provide sufficient data governance, control and compliance. In 2014, many CIOs and CISOs have realized that maintaining enterprise-grade security in cloud application usage is a shared responsibility, and we expect that in 2015 they will act on that. A new crop of startups provides deeper visibility into cloud usage, unique threat analysis and proactive enforcement of cloud application security policies. These startups enable employees to enjoy all of the cloud’s advantages securely. There are so many great cloud applications out there, and CIOs desire to be business enablers rather than blockers. That’s what makes this sector so exciting. Expect CIOs and CISOs to allocate meaningful budgets to it in 2015. In 2015, cybersecurity departments should be particularly careful about advanced persistent threats (APTs). These attacks are stealthy as they target a specific entity and secretly penetrate the network over weeks or months, waiting for the right moment to make their move and exfiltrate valuable data from the enterprise. Credit card numbers will still be valuable to hackers throughout 2015 because the deadline for retailers to upgrade to point-of-sale systems capable of processing chip-and-PIN credit cards is not until October 2015, and we foresee this deadline being extended. To carry out APTs, custom malicious code gets installed on one or multiple hosts to perform specific tasks while remaining undetected for the longest possible time. Sometimes these attacks are financially driven; in other cases, government or corporate-sponsored hackers are after intellectual property. In the long run, APTs can sever national security and economic stability of nations. According to the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a data breach in 2014 was $3.5 million, while Target optimistically projected more than $148 million in damages. Accurate detection is the necessary first step toward threat remediation. There are various methods to detect an ongoing cyber attack, and we feel that the ones that are focused on the late stages of the cyber kill chain, post-infection, will be the most interesting in the near future. “Cloud-first” detection solutions that leverage multiple sources of threat intelligence (for example: botnet interception + log analysis + sandboxing) and are easy for enterprises to deploy will be the most successful in 2015. The constant formation of new cyber-threat categories results in the nonstop introduction of startups that are working on new solutions. Managing multiple point solutions is nontrivial for CISOs. For example, there are various vendors that detect malware in the enterprise network, in the data center, on employees’ PCs and mobile devices. Some of these are signature-based, others use machine-learning algorithms, and some use big-data analytics. Buyers find themselves perplexed with the plethora of offerings. Rather than manage all of these processes separately, CISOs prefer to deploy comprehensive solutions that integrate well with one other, and create a synergetic security posture. This past year we noticed increasing security vendor collaboration. For example, Fortinet, McAfee, Palo Alto Networks, and Symantec founded the . Check Point created an alliance with several threat intelligence vendors to merge their feeds. Increased collaboration among cybersecurity vendors is key to helping CISOs fight cybercrime more effectively, and this trend will accelerate in 2015. Now more than ever, most cybersecurity innovation is carried out by small teams working within startups. The large vendors are always on the lookout to acquire new products to complement their existing portfolios, fully realizing that customers seek comprehensive (rather than point) solutions. Two of the most notable acquisitions in 2014 were FireEye’s purchase of Mandiant and . Generally this past year, large security vendors acquired companies with capabilities outside of their core business, with intention to expand their offerings and gain competitive advantage. Thus, now FireEye offers professional services powered by Mandiant, complementing its core detection products, and Palo Alto Networks released TRAPS, an endpoint protection product powered by Cyvera, complementing its Next-Generation Firewall. We project an active M&A scene in cybersecurity in 2015. Expect to see large vendors acquiring more high-tech startups to strengthen their core competencies and rapidly expand their offering. In 2014, most mid-to-large enterprises experienced a sharp increase in cyber-attacks, both in breadth and sophistication. Awareness for potential damages is high at boards of directors and management teams of the Fortune 1000. Gartner estimates that the global cybersecurity market will grow from $67 billion in 2013 to $93 billion in 2017. According to CB Insights, in 2013 venture capital firms invested an all-time record of $1.4 billion in 239 cybersecurity companies. During just the first six months of 2014, cybersecurity investments already totaled $894 million. We expect this upward trend to continue in 2015, as demand for innovation in this category stays high. We are ever more enthusiastic about the cybersecurity sector. Enterprises require advanced solutions to combat ever-more-sophisticated adversaries. Incumbent security vendors need new bleeding-edge technology. The venture capital industry is eager to back the entrepreneurs that can deliver outstanding solutions in 2015 and beyond. |
How Many Millions Should I Take From My Startup? | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 12 | 28 | * Company Builder, I congratulate you on developing your startup to the level where venture capitalists are willing to offer you obscene valuations with no hope of access to your board of directors. I understand getting to 100,000 users these days can be challenging, and I congratulate you on your tenacity to reach this special threshold. As you heard from your friends, but far more likely from the media since it is unlikely you have many friends, to get money into your startup, and that of your very own pocket. Through a device known as a secondary sale, you can put up some of your very own hard-earned equity in a fundraise process, and sell your shares at the round price. Contrary to the beliefs of many (most notably anti-tech protestors in San Francisco), such secondary sales are actually in the best interests of the founder and the investor when done properly. It’s all about incentives. When your startup is just starting out, your equity is worth less than the paper it is printed on. So there is very little threat of you giving up the business for an acquisition offer. Any offer is probably going to be too small to change your mind about building a company, and in fact, any offer will likely validate your beliefs that what you are doing is right (even though your cocky confidence probably doesn’t require any further validation). But as your startup matures and finds success, turning down valuation offers becomes more and more difficult for even the most cocksure founder. It can be easy to ignore Google’s entreaties when they offer you $100,000 for your company (i.e. the starting salary for engineers at Google), but it is significantly more difficult to refuse when that number has another four zeros behind it. That is where the conflict can brew between you and your investors. Your investors, particularly your later-stage investors, need you to push all the way to a massive exit in order to return any capital off of their previously ridiculous valuation. You, on the other hand, would probably be willing to accept a handsome payday of hundreds of millions of dollars. To discourage you from selling early, venture capitalists will offer you secondary to align your interests together. By giving you some money up front, you don’t feel the same pressure to sell early to make a buck, and can instead concentrate on building a massive and sustainable business. At its best, the secondary offered is commensurate with the remaining gains of a company. If you own, say, 25% of a company valued at a billion dollars, a couple of million or even $50 million in secondary is really not going to change the fact that a huge amount of money is still held up in paper equity. The kind of ambitious founders who can build such a valuable company rarely just quit when they get their first taste of cash. Contrary to some of the analysis floating around, such secondary sales are hardly uncommon, and are in fact a typical consideration in later growth rounds where there is real concern that a young founder will be willing to charge through attractive acquisition offers in search of the big payday. In fact, unless a founder has had previously success in building a company (and getting wealthy from it), most later-stage VCs would be concerned if a founder never took secondary. As you might have noticed, I have talked mostly about later-stage investors, while you, Company Builder, are running an early-stage company. Secondary in early-stage rounds is seemingly becoming more common for the most competitive deals, as we have seen with founders at Whisper and Secret. Here we have a bit more incentive conflict than we otherwise should. If secondary is being offered earlier, there would certainly be an increasing incentive for a founder to quickly build notoriety and attention instead of a product, run around Sand Hill Road with open hands to receive term sheets, and quickly secure a multimillion dollar payday before anyone is the wiser. To my knowledge, such activities have so far been rare, but there is a serious risk for the ecosystem if millions are being offered before a product has even shown sustainability. Ultimately, only you can decide what is right for your company and your own personal finances. Remember, this secondary isn’t free – it’s equity in your company that you are sacrificing for today dollars. If you are massively successful and grow the next Facebook, today dollars are going to look like a pittance compared to tomorrow dollars when your equity value has shot up. As long as you can pay the mortgage, I say, move forward. *This email is fictional. I hope. |
Good Riddance To Social Search | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 12 | 28 | Remember how not too long ago the future of search — at least according to the big search engines — was social search? Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find any mention of social search on Google or Bing (let alone Yahoo Search). Let’s be thankful for that because social search was an ill-begotten idea to begin with. The basic idea behind social search was that with all of the links and reviews we share on social media, search results could be made more relevant by including (and highlighting) that data right on the search results page. Because somebody you knew also shared (or liked, or +1’ed) a story, the theory was it was likely more interesting to you, too. Sounds good in theory, but in reality, it just cluttered up your search results. MG liked the idea of social search back in 2011. Back in 2009, around the time Twitter started getting some mainstream traction, Google rolled out , a dedicated search engine for finding content from the likes of Twitter, Blogger, Google Reader and FriendFeed (yes, was once a thing). It then started rolling more of those features into the main search results page and by 2012, Google went all in with its “ ” initiative that brought together Google+ (back when it was still a social network and wasn’t yet being sold as being something else Google can’t quite define itself) and search. Back then, when you searched for say [music], a little box on the right side of the screen would highlight Google+ users related to that query. That was great for pumping up those users’ Google+ follower counts, but not really interesting otherwise. Ever since, Google has been deemphasizing social search to the point where today you barely notice it anywhere in Google’s search products. It’s probably still taking some of these social signals into account in its rankings, but I’ve got a feeling that it’s a very, very small factor. For a long time, it looked like was hoping to differentiate itself from Google by adding ever more social features to its search engine — including a that would highlight social accounts from people it deemed “experts” and activity from your friends around a search query. Except for a few edge cases, it was mostly useless, too. Today you may find the occasional Twitter account , but that’s about it (and the same goes for Google, which still surfaces G+ accounts in the sidebar, too). As a writer, I always liked how Google would highlight a story’s author in search results. That’s not really social search, of course, but it did put a face to a story just like the early version of social search did. Even this, however, the company canned this year in an admission that even that information didn’t turn out to be (and didn’t influence what people clicked on). I think one of the reasons social search failed is because our social media “friendships” don’t actually represent our real-life tastes all that well. Just because we follow people on Twitter or are friends with old high school classmates on Facebook doesn’t mean we like the same restaurants they do or share the politics they do. At the end of the day, I’m more likely to trust an overall score on Yelp, for example, than a single person’s recommendation. There’s only so much room on a single search results page, so whatever works best will get that space. Social search clearly did not. Instead, projects like Google’s Knowledge Graph and Bing’s equivalent have now taken over the sidebars of our search engines with information that’s actually useful. |
AnandTech Sells To Publisher Purch To Grow Its Tech And Hardware Reviews Site | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | AnandTech, the brilliantly super techie blog founded by , has left the independent media club* after its sale to Purch, the publishing company behind fellow tech sites . AnandTech made its name as an authority for in-depth hardware reviews, but branched out into mobile, software and general tech news over the years. Started over 17 years ago by a then teenaged Shimpi, it has been profitable from birth. The companies have not revealed the price of its acquisition, but the strategy behind the move. Smith said Shimpi met with a range of publishers over the past year before because they realized the site was in need of a larger organization’s resources in order to fulfill its potential. While we had no issues competing with larger corporate owned sites on the content front, when it came to advertising we were at a disadvantage. Our advantage in quality allowed us to make progress, but ultimately it became a numbers game. The larger corporate owned sites could show up with a network of traffic, substantially larger than what AnandTech could deliver, and land more lucrative advertising deals than we were able to. They could then in turn fund a larger editorial operation and the cycle continues. It sounds like AnandTech had no shortage of suitors, and Smith stressed that the deal will see it retain its editorial independence while enjoying the benefits of a “family whose combined traffic is eight times larger” than its own audience. “AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware remain editorially independent, and though no longer competitors, the goal is to learn from one another,” Smith added. It’s certainly been a transitional year for the site, what with Shimpi departing and passing the baton on to Smith and his team, but then 2014 itself has been a particularly notable one for online media. with financial backing from NBCUniversal, VICE blew up and next year, , , , showed the potential of a subscription-based business model… and that’s just some of the year’s most significant developments. Unlike most of those media mentioned above, however, AnandTech’s rise is a bit of a fairytale… a blog started by a tech-crazed kid has (long) grown into a legitimate media company. That’s quite something these days. |
Khosla Ventures Is Raising A Fresh $400 Million Fund For Seed Investments | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | Mega VC firm is raising a new $400 million seed fund as it looks to enter the new year with gusto. showing that the organization, founded by Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla in 2004, is offering but yet to sell the allocation for its new ‘Seed C’ fund. Aside from its high-profile founder, the U.S. organization is known for being one of the most prominent investors in clean tech. that he doesn’t like eggs (hence an invest in a company pioneering plant-based egg substitutes), but he is a big fan of machine learning and robotics. Khosla Ventures has made over 300 investments in a range of companies that includes , , , and others. The firm’s exits have included Storify ( ), Rockmelt ( ), Yammer ( ) and GroupMe ( ). Earlier this month, for investments, much of which is likely to filter through to India’s fast-growing startup ecosystem. We contacted Khosla Ventures to ask for more details of this fund (don’t hold your breath… “SEC regulations”) — it isn’t clear at this point how (and where) the firm intends to spend its loot once the round is filled. Khosla Ventures tells TechCrunch that it isn’t commenting on the filing. |
TeachPitch Helps Educators Around The World Share Learning Resources | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | Creating lesson plans, learning about teaching methods, and finding new educational material are all part of a normal workday for teachers, but it can be difficult because most educators have extremely tight schedules. wants to help by bringing teachers around the world closer together so they can find and share the best resources on the web. The site, which launched officially in October, now has around 2,000 teachers from 55 countries on its platform, most from the U.S. and Asia. TeachPitch hopes to build traction in South American countries—including Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, and Peru—by partnering with local educational organizations like and launching a Spanish version of the site. The startup was founded by Aldo de Pape, who spent two years teaching high school-level economics, English, and Dutch in the Netherlands. He says the site was created to cut the amount of time educators need to spend looking for lesson plans, teaching material, and other resources. “If you are a mathematics teacher in second grade and you look for a lesson plan on Google, you will get 1.5 million results, all separate links from different sources all over the web. It’s basically not doable for a teacher to identify the best resources out there,” says de Pape. “As a former teacher, I wanted to make life easier for teachers to dive in deeper with the time and budget constraints that they have.” TeachPitch lets users share content and start discussions in four categories, including individual subjects; classroom or school management; pedagogy; and technology. Subcategories include training, online tutoring, lesson plans, and videos. Teachers can share and comment on materials they find online, as well as their own lesson plans. Links to each teacher’s favorite online material can be stored and sorted in their personal “library” and shared through their profiles. In the future, de Pape says TeachPitch will add features that will allow teachers to collaborate on different projects, including teaching materials and agenda management for classes. De Pape identifies , another platform for educators, as a competitor, but says TeachPitch is different because it focuses on teaching resources instead of professional development and performance assessments. is another potential rival, but it focuses on helping parents and teachers collaborate, while TeachPitch is targeted solely to educators. TeachPitch plans to monetize by making paid online tools targeted toward schools, while keeping resources for individual teachers free. The startup is also exploring content partnerships with publishers and sites. The startup currently has angel funding and is in discussions with venture capital firms for its seed round, says De Pape. |
Santa’s Robotic Elf Sings A Merry Tune | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2naQbWa-Sv8] This holiday season it’s important to remember the true meaning of Christmas: the slow encroachment of robots upon human existence and the expectation of the enslavement of Homo sapiens by 2050. To that end we present a pair of jolly robotic hands that pick up candy and place it into a stocking – a feat that was all but impossible a few years ago. These dextrous hands come from the Neuroinformatics Group at Bielefeld University where the Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) decided to spread a little robotic Christmas cheer. The demo shows off the hands grabbing a deformable object – a stocking – and some tiny objects – candy – and then placing candy after candy into the hollow. The resulting video, often sped up, is accompanied by a robotic voice singing the praises of opposable robotic thumbs. It warms the heart to see robots making such strides as we settle down for a long Winter’s nap. |
null | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 16 | null |
US Officials Believe North Korea Was Involved In Sony Hacks | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | U.S. officials say they believe that North Korea’s government was involved in the large-scale hack of Sony servers, which led to the leak of troves of Sony data from emails to unreleased projects, according to the . Federal cyber-security sources say that there is evidence indicating that the hack was routed through computers in Singapore, Thailand, Italy, Bolivia and Cyprus, . While the hack resulted in a dump of Sony data, including email, confidential materials, and unreleased projects, it also specifically targeted , a movie featuring Seth Rogen and James Franco. The theory that North Korea was behind the attack was initially dismissed when North Korea publicly denied involvement, but official sources believe that the North Korean government was “centrally involved” in the attacks. The that officials aren’t going on the record, and are unsure whether or not the White House will publicly accuse Kim Jong Un and North Korea of the attack. The hackers’ methodology is highly reminiscent of tactics used by Anonymous — timed dumps of sensitive data, DDOS attacks, etc. — which have thus far clouded the investigation. , which depicts the assassination attempt of Kim Jong Un, was slotted to be released on Christmas Day until Sony was forced to pull the movie. Amid from the hacker organization, which called itself the Guardians of Peace, five of the major theater chains said they would not show the film, leading Sony to . |
Sony Pictures Employees Now Working In An Office “From Ten Years Ago” | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | for everyone,” she said. She was upbeat, optimistic, even after finding out her bank account information had been traded on a black market website. She was worried her identity had also leaked. She imagined her private information on some forum somewhere and shuddered. She had a right to be concerned. She works for Sony Pictures. She said she’s now working in an office on lock-down, a throwback to an earlier time when the Internet wasn’t around. “We are stuck in 1992 over here,” she said. She requested anonymity but agreed to talk a bit about her day-to-day experience as a Sony Pictures Employee post-hack. She said things were getting back to normal and were, in some ways, more pleasant. But the thing that bothers her most is the need to depend on old technology to do new work, now. “We had barely working email and no voicemail so people talked to each other. Some people had to send faxes. They were dragging old printers out of storage to cut checks,” she said. “It was crazy.” That is what a major corporate security breach sounds like: the squeal of a fax machine and the low murmur of co-workers now required to talk to each other instead of depending on email or instant messages. Since the Sony Pictures hackers started releasing chunks of private email on November 24, the venerable entertainment company has been in a panic. SPE was formed in a merger between the Sony Corporation and Columbia Pictures that turned heads in 1989 during Japan’s economic boom. It is now an $8 billion business that owns both movie studios and television stations. Favorites from Marvel jostle for attention from Columbia stars and all of these are overseen by a that is reluctant to “fan the flames with public action,” according to the New York Times. The company has posted protection information for current and former employees .
The hacks were far-ranging, hitting everyone from contractors to directors. This meant that high profile stars like Angelina Jolie were while ground-level employees like our source found their banking information looted. Internally, SPE is reacting. All employees have been given a year of identity theft protection and many have purchased Lifelock, a popular identity theft prevention system. Others are worried that they will find their credit cards and mortgage statements online. Everyone has changed their passwords on everything, from their Facebook pages to their credit card logins. “My bank account was hacked [on the day of the first attack,]” said our source who works at SPE offices in Los Angeles. “At first we just thought it was total coincidence.” Now she suspects someone found something in the email dump that allowed them to access her accounts. She said that she and her co-workers are closer now. Upper management has been preaching a gospel of face-to-face communication, a weird concept for a 21st century business. “They said that this is really a time to band together and stop staring at your phone and start talking to each other. Everyone has been able to bond in some way and get together. More people are interacting and getting to know different people in different departments,” she said. Unfortunately, some internal systems weren’t quite up to snuff in the first place, leading to more problems. Our source recalls seeing computers that hadn’t been back up in a decade. That means they are still running old, potentially insecure software on old hardware. “A lot of people aren’t tech-savvy in this business,” she said. All is not lost. “We’re mostly a fully-functioning office. We’re going about or daily business. We just got our voicemail back. Everyone is a little calmer now after the initial shock. A couple of people had their computers removed but people using Macs were fine,” she said. She said most work is done on iPads and iPhones. An emergency email system is in place but it does not allow attachments. “There are certain departments that have printers and computers and some that only have one or two computers for the entire office,” she said. “In some ways we’re living in an office from ten years ago.” She was quiet a moment. She had to go. After all, she was talking to me on her only office machine, her personal iPhone. And she had work to do. |
We Tried Zombie-Survival Game Dying Light On The Oculus Rift | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | Last week, I got an early look at first-person zombie-survival game , which arrives on PC and consoles in January. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill demo, however — , the studio behind the game, let me play on an Oculus Rift connected to a maxed out gaming rig. It’s hard to describe what the Oculus Rift does for your sense of immersion. Once you’re in, it feels like you’re there, which makes things like jumping from rooftop to rooftop far more intimidating than they traditionally would be because the part of your lizard brain that fears heights kicks in and says you’re in danger. It also makes combat more intense — your body lurches with every attack you make, as if you’re actually shifting your weight into each swing of your crowbar. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of playing on an empty stomach. Anyone who’s spent time with virtual reality knows that nausea can still be an issue with today’s headsets, so while the game ran well on the ~$600 graphics card in Techland’s gaming PC, there was still enough of a lag between some of my movements and the reaction in the game that I eventually got uncomfortable and had to take a breather. Some people might read that and be turned off from playing in VR at all. It might be the sheer novelty of the experience talking, but I don’t mind a bit. When Dying Light launches in early 2015, I plan on spending at least some of my time in the game’s tropical paradise/nightmare with an Oculus Rift dev kit strapped to my face. |
Microsoft Employee Pens The Worst/Best Corporate Blog Post Of All Time | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | Recently a Microsoft employee published a on the company’s Office blog. The missive, under the name of Tim Carroll, a “senior product manager on the Office 365 team,” is perhaps the worst and best corporate blog post of all time. A Microsoft spokesperson informed TechCrunch that “the blog post was not properly vetted,” that it has been taken down, and that it was not “a reflection of [the company’s] views.” So put on some coffee, everyone, and let’s dig into the funniest thing you will read all week. It starts with the non-sensical, quasi-baiting headline: And how can Google Apps bring a family together? That sounds like a bad TV ad spot hyping the idea that the family that clouds together stays together. And if Google Apps helps families, why is Microsoft saying it? Let’s keep going: There is a lot to learn here. First that Kids These Days think that YouTube is a viable career option. Second that Knucklehead here sounds like a lot more fun than his Dad. Third, something about sign language, and, now, back to Google: This happens to me every day — shouting at Google Apps, then discussing the ever-sexy concept of “fidelity issues,” before shifting to a subtweet of Google’s productivity tools. We have a new analogy, here, moving from the classic Plastic Hammer v. House, to the Swiss Army Knife viz Heated Volks. Let’s see how Dad brings this back to software: So you see, Office 365 is Spanish, and Google Apps is Sign Language. Or something. And students, not being pros, need something that was “built for professionals.” I don’t know. Let’s get to the dismount: “Why Enterprises Choose Office 365?” Go make me a sandwich! Google. — To be fair, I don’t think that the people behind the post were trying to be anything but funny, and sincere. Little did they know that that combination is fraught with other shipwrecked bits of writing. Also, lolololololololol. |
Sony Officially Cancels ‘The Interview’ Release Following Hacker Threats | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | Following threats from hackers responsible for , the entertainment studio has made the official decision to cancel The Interview, which was set to be released on Christmas Day. In a (below), the company said that it was “deeply saddened at this brazen effort to suppress the distribution of a movie” and “extremely disappointed by this outcome.” Earlier today, the top five theater chains in North America (Regal, AMC, Cinemark, Carmike Cinemas and Cineplex Entertainment) that they would not be showing the film. This comes on the heels of threats from the hackers, a group calling itself the Guardians Of Peace, who that people who are at or around a showing of The Interview will “be shown how bitter fate those who seek fun in terror should be doomed to,” and referencing 9/11. Given the severity of the threats and the withdrawal of major theaters from participation with the film, Sony has released a statement to cancel the film. You can read the full statement here: In light of the decision by the majority of our exhibitors not to show the film The Interview, we have decided not to move forward with the planned December 25 theatrical release. We respect and understand our partners’ decision and, of course, completely share their paramount interest in the safety of employees and theater-goers. Sony Pictures has been the victim of an unprecedented criminal assault against our employees, our customers, and our business. Those who attacked us stole our intellectual property, private emails, and sensitive and proprietary material, and sought to destroy our spirit and our morale – all apparently to thwart the release of a movie they did not like. We are deeply saddened at this brazen effort to suppress the distribution of a movie, and in the process do damage to our company, our employees, and the American public. We stand by our filmmakers and their right to free expression and are extremely disappointed by this outcome. The Interview has been a central piece of the wide-scale hacks that have exposed company data, emails, forthcoming projects and otherwise sensitive content. The hackers are dead set on stopping the movie, starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, which depicts an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. |
Waging A War For Talent | Josh Bear | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | We live and work in an age of mass competition and where the ability to land top talent can have as much of an impact on the success of the company as the product line itself. As companies of various shapes and sizes jockey for position in a constantly shifting tech market, there is a subtle, yet intense battle waging for talent. However, what was once hidden in the shadows has now come screaming to the front lines and today, more than ever, the war for talent has taken center stage. The ability to innovate has given way to the ability to execute, and now the core strength of a company is found in the depth and talent of its team. As companies like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter and Apple make a modern-day land grab for talent, it leaves the “little guy” fighting for whatever scraps fall from the talent table of the “big boys.” With name-brand recognition, a pool of hiring resources and deeper pockets, it has at times appeared to be a one-sided battle with the big companies that impose their will as they see fit. With no hiring compass to turn to, and little direction to follow, the smaller companies constantly find themselves out-worked, out-hustled and out-bid for today’s top talent. What has become clear today is that the process of recruiting talent in the tech industry demands a clear and concise plan of attack. Knowledge is power and the more you know about clients that you are trying to recruit, the better the odds will be in your favor. You will need to arm yourself with an understanding of what is important to the candidate. This knowledge will ultimately be the key piece of information in the process. Why are they on the market? What are they looking for in their next job? What motivates them? What makes them tick? What makes them tock? It’s important in recruiting to understand what tools you have at your disposal and to fully use them to your advantage. When a big company has a slow and passive process, you can act quickly and aggressively. Where they might find themselves tied up in red tape, you can swiftly slice through any delays to move forward. Yes, they will have better benefits. And yes, they will have a better vacation policy. But you can offer the ability to make a direct impact on the future success of the company. They will offer a larger base salary and a handsome bonus plan. You will offer the type of equity package that people retire off of. They will offer a fancy bus to chauffeur candidates to work. You will offer the ability to directly influence the office culture. They will offer a nice corner office. You will offer intimate work relationships that last outside of a cubicle. For every perk they offer, you must find a way to counter. For every incentive in their offer, you must find a way to make it even sweeter. As one of the smaller companies, you will rarely be able to simply outbid the bigger ones for talent, as they have more money and aren’t afraid to use it. This will require an honest internal assessment of both your strengths as well as your weakness as a company, because both will be exploited throughout the process. Despite your founders, funding and market space, at times you may not be viewed as stable. The sad and misguided truth is, that the smaller you are, the riskier you will be viewed and the greater your struggle will be to land top-tier talent. However, despite what at times will appear to be insurmountable odds against an overwhelming enemy, if you simply take time to know your target candidate and build a relationship based on the things that are important to them, you will significantly increase your chances of convincing them to join. If a candidate is driven by the allure of a big company, and if their primary reason for looking for a new job is purely financial, is this really the candidate you’re looking for? Whether you like it or not, you are in the middle of a war for talent with Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter and Apple among others. They are well aware that they are at war with you, and they are using every tool at their disposal to guarantee their victory. Isn’t it time that you do the same and level the playing field? |
StudyPool Provides A Marketplace For On-Demand Tutoring | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | , a 500 Startups batch company that connects students and tutors, is yet another company that takes the template for building a marketplace from Uber and Airbnb and applies it to another area where there’s usually a lot of friction involved in each transaction. StudyPool co-founders Richard Werbe and Jimmy Zhong have built their startup around some of the key lessons from other successful marketplace services — specifically, working to bolster both the demand and supply sides of transactions. For instance, there’s no landing page hyping the service before you get to see what it’s actually like — the home page starts with a text box for asking a question you’d like to see answered quickly, then summarizes how the site works, and concludes by showing examples of the kinds of in-depth questions people are willing to pay for answers to. Aesthetically it looks a bit rough (Werbe says it’s the same design the pair launched with back in March) but functionally, StudyPool does a great job of onboarding. Speaking of the easy questions at the top, StudyPool’s reputation system incentivizes tutors to answer those questions quickly between hunting for questions that people are willing to pay to get help on. When people have questions that are more in-depth or need help putting together a thesis outline, they give a range of prices they’d be willing to pay for assistance. By answering lots of easy questions, tutors can quickly build up their reputation, making it easier to charge the higher end of people’s price range. People can even request help from specific users, so if you have a great reputation on the site you may find that you start signing in with an inbox full of paying customers waiting for you assistance. That incentive system has brought the average response time for questions down to just 11 minutes. If a question takes much longer than that to get a response, StudyPool notifies you that the question may be too difficult to answer for free and that you should repost as a paid question. Right now, Werbe says there are essentially three popular tiers for tutoring pricing: free, $1, and $5. That’s not something StudyPool imposed on its users — rather, those seem to be the dominant market-clearing prices that have emerged naturally. With such low amounts, you’d think that StudyPool would have trouble bringing in people to actually answer questions students get in college classes. According to Werbe, nearly 18,000 people have signed up to tutor (compared to almost $32,000 who have signed up for assistance) and among that group, there are approximately 500 “super tutors” who answer 20 questions a day or more on average. Within that group, some have answered thousands of questions — making enough that some are even quitting their jobs to provide assistance full-time (the official bragging right of marketplace apps everywhere). While it’s not something many entrepreneurs brag about in the current high-investment, high-growth startup ecosystem, StudyPool has been profitable from day one thanks to the 20 percent transaction fee the company has been collecting since launch. Now that they’re in 500 Startups, the duo is looking to expand their team. They plan to bring on several engineers in January to build out the company’s tech and expand the ways users can access the service (right now, there’s only the web app). |
Uber Responds To Concerns With Promises To Invest More In Customer Safety | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | After facing scrutiny in multiple markets over questions of passenger safety, global transportation service Uber said it is reviewing some of its business practices and is working to make improvements. In a today the company detailed its road map for ensuring customer safety in the 260 markets that it operates in. The company said it began the review in November, but the release of the road map is timely, given that Uber has seen a few setbacks on the customer safety front in recent weeks. The most notable incident happened in New Delhi, India, where an Uber driver , which led the and resulted in the company . Closer to home, Uber was over what they say are misleading claims over the quality of the company’s background checks. As a result of the global review of its safety practices, the company says it will be making some changes to both product and process around the world. On the product side, Uber says it is doing research and development in biometrics and voice verification to enhance driver screening. It also claims to be working on providing passengers with more tools to communicate with its team and loved ones in the case of an emergency. Uber also says it’s committed to improving its driver-screening program — particularly in places where background checks aren’t available (or reliable), and in markets where verifying commercial licenses is a necessity. In addition, Uber has hired a new head of global support named Tim Collins, who led Amazon’s Europe Operations. Collins will be in charge of improving the company’s customer service and safety incident response teams to provide 24/7 support in the case of an incident. Finally, the company said it would be working with partners with expertise in issues like women’s safety, conflict resolution and road safety to improve its processes. For Uber, putting processes like these in place is just one part of growing up. After all, it’s no longer a tiny scrappy startup, but a , based on its most recent fundraising. |
Dating Platform Zoosk Ditches IPO Plan As Founders Exit Leadership Roles | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | , the online dating platform that has been around since 2007, has today announced changes to leadership, with CFO Kelly Steckelberg taking over as CEO. She will be replacing co-founder Shayan Zadeh, who is becoming a member of the board, and his co-founder Alex Mehr (currently president) will also be moving into a board position. The shift comes at a time when Zoosk is reassessing the idea of an IPO, a process the . The company filed an S-1 for a $100 million IPO, but has since decided to revisit that option at a later date. “Since the time we filed, the market condition around comparables that would be used to help value our company, like Angie’s List and Care.com, have not performed well,” said Steckelberg. “While the overall market might seem receptive to a public offering, subscription businesses have suffered.” Co-founder and exiting CEO Shayan Zadeh echoed her sentiment, telling TechCrunch that the way that consumer subscription businesses are fairing in the market “is a big part of when and how we are going to do the IPO.” Though the leadership changes come at the same time as the decision to refrain from a public offering, Zadeh, Mehr and Steckelberg explained that the timing is coincidental. Steckelberg makes perfect sense as a replacement for Zadeh at the helm. She has experience building internet subscription businesses serving as controller and chief accounting officer at WebEx, joining Cisco as part of an acquisition and later serving as divisional CFO in Cisco’s WebEx consumer segment. Before that, she held executive positions with Epiphany and finance positions at PeopleSoft. She’s been working at Zoosk in a financial capacity since 2011 and has served as both COO and CFO. But why change at all? “Since day one of the company, we’ve been making product decisions over long periods of time,” said Alex Mehr, co-founder and exiting president. “It created more of a top-down approach to design, where people were focused on decisions that Shayan and I were making. Kelly’s approach is more collaborative. She wants to listen to many more voices in the company when it comes to product decisions.” At a time when the online dating space is truly smoking hot, the change may be a crucial one. Zoosk launched back in 2007 and has had to evolve as services like Tinder, Hinge, etc. have taken the mobile space by storm. Features like Photo Verification have gone a long way in ensuring Zoosk keeps up with user demands, but it takes more than that to create a profitable business. Zoosk’s S-1 revealed that the company was , though still showing impressive revenue growth from 2012 to 2013. Steckelberg assured me that the company is fully self-sustainable and that going into 2015, “Zoosk will be in a situation when cash-flow and current cash balance are going to be enough to carry this company forward.” |
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel On Email Hacks: “Our Work Has Been Violated And Exposed” | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel today released a powerful statement about privacy, a day after the latest batch of emails released in the massive exposed a number of Snapchat’s company secrets. On Tuesday afternoon, the hacker group that calls itself the “Guardians of Peace” of the email inbox of Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton as part of its ongoing protest of an upcoming Sony Pictures movie called . Since Lynton serves on Snapchat’s board of directors, his inbox included a with Evan Spiegel and others about Snapchat’s corporate strategy, including financial details, hiring plans, M&A deals, possible partnerships, and upcoming products. For better or worse, many publications in the tech blogosphere (including this one) with the exposed information. In a today, Spiegel shared the letter he wrote to Snapchat staff regarding the exposé:
Though some are finding it to feel very sorry for a person whose job includes $3 billion acquisition offers, I think that Spiegel’s response is honest and well-said. A violation is a violation, no matter how prominent and successful the target, and it’s important to remember that the impact here is not only on the likes of Lynton and Spiegel. As my boss Alexia Tsotsis wrote yesterday, the executive rank gossip and business plan leaks are arguably about the Sony Pictures hack. Overall, it’s a difficult situation that a lot of people will be working to clean up for a long time. Spiegel ended his statement with a vow that going forward, his company is “going to change the world because this is not the one we want to live in.” Let’s hope that the silver lining in all of this will indeed be a different kind of world — at least, one with better security technologies. |
TC Droidcast Episode 31: Pebble, ZenWatch, And Smartwatch 3 | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | Join us as we chat about the Pebble gaining support for Android Wear interactive notifications, the and the Sony Smartwatch 3. We also get a little bit futurist with our thoughts on Chrome OS, how it will integrate with Android and what Google envisions for its desktop platform in the long term. This is a very special episode because around 20 whole minutes were lost to the ether because someone (Darrell) didn’t turn on the recording. What was said during that amazing third of an hour? You’ll never knooooowwwwwww.
and check out past episodes . Download it directly here: |
Box Will Hit $1 Billion In Revenues Before You Know It | Jason Lemkin | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | There’s probably no enterprise software company more people opine on than Box. In particular, the business model of Box. They’re spending so much, says. I like Google Drive better, says. File sharing is a commodity, says. They’re all right, on some level. But while opinions are somewhat subjective, math is math, and the physics of software as a service (SaaS) and recurring revenue are highly predictable. And there’s one thing we now know after Box’s recent on its run up to an IPO: Box will be at a billion dollars in revenue before we know it. In fact, probably right around 2019. And this has absolutely nothing to do with what you or I think of Box as a product, or even what you think about the market per se. Here’s what Box’s revenue run rate is today, and will it look like over the next 5 years, based on current and projected growth rates (Box hit a $228,000,000 run rate in Q3): From Box’s SEC filings, we can predict the future pretty reliably. Even if growth dramatically declines, Box will still hit a $1,000,000,000 revenue run rate by 2019. Box’s growth rate declined a bit in Q3 ‘14, but it’s still growing at an epic rate — 70 percent year-over-year in 2014. If this gradually declines to 30 percent growth by 2019 — a much lower growth rate than comparable companies like Salesforce experienced at this stage — Box will still cross a $1,000,000,000 run rate in 2019. This is just basic math, the way recurring revenue compounds. Box no longer has any material risk of ever running out of money. In Q3, Box’s magic number decreased from 1.38 to 0.97. In other words, Box now spends less than its first year of customer revenue acquiring and closing its customers. As long as this continues to decline, Box’s losses will decline as well. Add in, say, $250 million from an IPO, and Box should never run out of money. That might have been a risk before Box added an additional $150 million in funding earlier this year, and before sales and marketing expenses declined. But unless an IPO never comes, Box has, for all intents and purposes, infinite cash runway now. The customers are all still renewing. As they almost always do with true Enterprise products. One objection to Box’s business model is the general concern that cloud storage is commoditized to the point of free. File storage may now be free, but clearly, the customers are still renewing. And customers aren’t stupid. They clearly view the enterprise-grade functionality of Box as worth quite a lot. If churn had dramatically grown, the growth rate above could be at risk. But churn isn’t materially growing, according to the latest SEC filings. Box’s customers continue to buy more Box, and pay more for Box, in the second and third years after first buying. This isn’t just true of Box. It’s nothing special. It’s exactly what we’d expect. Because it’s true of all true enterprise SaaS companies. No matter what their products do: You can love Box, hate it, or maybe never even use it but still have an opinion. It’s fun water-cooler talk. But SaaS and recurring revenue is highly predictable once you hit scale. Box will hit a $1 billion run rate around 2019, plus or minus. You can bank on that. |
Can BlackBerry Catch A Break? | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | BlackBerry just announced the Classic, a phone that looks warped into 2014 via 2009. While by all rights it appears to be solid QWERTY solution in a non-QWERTY world, it’s hilarious that the company announced their latest and greatest on the eve of what could be the opening of the Cuban embargo and, more important, massive upheaval in one of Blackberry’s major markets, Russia and Central Europe. But BlackBerry hasn’t caught many breaks in a long while. The Passport was greeted with jeers – Joanna Stern at the WSJ was particularly – and I doubt anyone can name new devices since the ill-fated Playbook. In short, Blackberry has been on a treadmill. They’ve been getting leaner, to be sure, but they haven’t been getting anywhere. All is not lost just because they launched their new phone on during times of great geopolitical tumult. The holidays are fast approaching and there the 2015 fiscal year could open up new avenues for fleet purchases of the Classic. BlackBerry is also considered a popular business phone overseas. Both Blackberry and Apple are considered luxury devices, aimed at folks with a little more cash and a little more cachet. And let us not forget the scores of professionals with a Blackberry for work email and an iPhone for play, a sort of technological mullet. I have long said that BB is doomed but this, coupled with a bright new CEO, could bring them out of their death spiral. Not they just have to see about that .05% market share. And hope that Cuba is looking for cool new smartphones. Image via . |
Inbox Messenger Raises $3.9 Million For Its Design-Focused Private Messaging App | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | A mobile messaging application called , which combines user privacy features with a minimalist design, has raised $3.9 million in seed funding, the company announced today. The investment, though higher than the average seed round, comes from a group of unnamed angel investors and is designed to help the company grow its engineering and product teams, expand its customer service, and enhance its feature set. The NJ-founded, now NY-based, startup was founded last year by Maher Janajri, previously a growth strategy consultant at Accenture, whose background also includes mobile payments; and Hani Shabsigh, whose formal training is in chemical and biomolecular engineering, but who taught himself to code during his free time on nights and weekends. Shabsigh originally had the idea of a messaging app with a “privacy screen” which he brought to a Startup Weekend hackathon where he met Maher. The two then developed the messaging app experience together, with a heavy focus on design – something they both felt was lacking in the space at present. Inbox Messenger competes in what’s now a massively crowded mobile messaging market where giants like Apple, Google, and Facebook have staked claims – the latter with a couple of messaging apps, in fact – its own Facebook Messenger and its record-breaking acquisition Whatsapp. In addition, the category includes dozens of other big names, like Kik, Viber, Skype, Tango, LINE, WeChat, GroupMe, Telegram, KakaoTalk, and more, plus a variety of niche apps focused on dating, local networking and chat, “ephemeral” messaging, encryption, and more. [gallery ids="1095976,1095975,1095974,1095973,1095972"] Inbox Messenger’s party tricks include the ability to “un-send” messages, including texts, images, voice messages and videos, which are also deleted from the company’s servers, plus the ability to “cloak” a message and then be alerted if a screenshot is taken. While popularized by Snapchat, the screenshot-alerting feature is something that’s now common to a number of competing apps. In addition, Inbox Messenger also features a simple, clutter-free design, support for group chats, the ability to send drawings, and more. All of this is packaged into a clean and modern interface that’s easy to use. To get started, users create a username, password and provide an email address. They can then test the app by messaging the @teaminbox account to learn about the features, or search for friends on the service and begin chatting with them. The problem, however, is that by simply putting out an amalgam of the best features from its bigger competitors (albeit in a pretty package) isn’t necessarily enough to overcome the challenges that newcomers face today in this market. Namely, how do they compete when there are already so many choices out there? And how can they engage users to continually come back to the app, when they’re already spread so thinly across so many others? These are the questions the company will soon have to face as its moves into its next phase. The company declined to provide user numbers or growth metrics, but says it’s been seeing growing traction in the U.S., as well as in other countries including Brazil, Spain, and China. App Annie, however, reports the app is only moderately successful – #217 in Social Networking on iOS, and not ranked on Google Play. (Google Play reports 5,000-10,000 downloads to date.) The app is free on and , and has no plans to charge users in the near future as it’s still exploring business models. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTQvhy4mqrY] |
Apple’s Behind-The-Scenes For ‘The Song’ Reveals A Mix Of Old And New Tools | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77hi9SuKfiI&w=640&h=390] Apple’s has managed to pretty universally tug heartstrings, in keeping with its usual practices for this time of year, but the product story contained therein is one of a creative workflow that involves most of Apple’s current product lineup. A new behind-the-scenes video the company has just published shows that Apple’s cutting edge tech was paired with some very early recording gadget antiquities to come up with the ad’s movie magic. The “vintage” found recording discovered by the ad’s protagonist was actually laid down by a present-day recording artist, but the pops and audio features that make it sound like it’s from the 40s are authentic: a recording booth, which let tourists wandering boardwalks press their own records on the spot from minute-and-a-half recordings of their own voice was used to create the source track the young woman in the ad later remixes for her elderly relative. Apple uses the making-of video to draw some parallels between the social impact of voice-o-graph recording booth studios, which let people hear their own voice recorded for likely the first time, and Garage Band, which lets many amateur recording artists prepare their own tracks for sharing with the world without any special technical expertise required. The recording booth at its inception was probably a little more difficult to wrap your head around, but it’s an effective comparison nonetheless. |
YouTube For Android Gets Offline Playback… But In India, Indonesia And Philippines Only | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | Here’s something neat. for YouTube mobile users. That’s an exciting feature but there’s bad news for most TechCrunch readers: it’s only available on Android devices in India, Indonesia or the Philippines at this point. The company said the update will allow “much of [the] popular YouTube content” in these places to be watched without an internet connection. Videos that support playback will include an offline icon which, once tapped, offers a choice of playback quality. Once cached, each one is available to watch without internet access for up to 48 hours. Google has specifically picked these three markets because of the importance of mobile internet, coupled with the lack of people with data packages — not to mention the sometimes frustratingly poor quality of internet too. “Asia has proven itself to be a mobile-first world in terms of smartphone adoption, but access to high-speed, affordable data remains a big challenge. In response, we’ve been working on ways to lessen the demands of speed and data for people using our products in places where there are challenges to access,” the company said in a blog post. VP of engineering, Youtube John Harding launched offline mode in the mobile version of Youtube. — Tasneem Akolawala (@MuteRiot) Google, which , said that it will continue to look into “better ways to make video content more affordable and accessible” to users based in Asia. YouTube Offline was actually first back in September in India, in conjunction with the Android One launch. Doubtless there are many other YouTube addicts the world over hoping that the feature will land on their phone soon — unfortunately Google is not giving a time for when that might happen. Earlier today, for all users to enjoy — it received a ‘material design’ makeover and got new search filters. That’s not quite as cool as offline video playback, right?! |
Microsoft Begins Accepting Bitcoin For Windows, Windows Phone And Xbox Purchases | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | If you want further proof that Microsoft is going through a transformative phase, you may be interested to hear that the company has jumped on the bitcoin wagon. The Redmond-based tech giant is now accepting bitcoins for buying games and other digital content on its Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox platforms, as . noted that Microsoft appears to be working with payments firm to make this happen. Neither Microsoft nor Bitpay have formally announced the partnership or details, but the former does have a series of instructions related to bitcoin payments . that it is indeed working with Bitpay. It described its adoption of Bitcoin as being “about giving people options and helping them do more on their devices and in the cloud.” There are some caveats to note, however. Customers can use bitcoin to load money into a Microsoft wallet or to create digital gift cards, but direct payments with the cryptocurrency are not supported at this time. Finally, bitcoin payments appear to be limited to customers in the U.S., according to feedback from Reddit members. Microsoft is moving its business towards a new focus on services across a range of platforms under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella, who . The company is traditionally considered to be a slow moving giant with one foot stuck in the past. Accepting Bitcoin doesn’t directly correlate to its recent (and somewhat surprising) moves to make its core services like Office and , but the fact that it is ready to embrace an upcoming technology before many of its rivals is a sign that Microsoft’s ethos may have modernized. |
Windows 10 Hits 1.5M Testers, With 450K Using The OS “Day To Day” | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | Microsoft’s Windows 10 has around 450,000 users on a daily basis, according to the software company. A from the Windows team highlighted the statistic, also noting that it has collected 1.5 million testers for its preview operating system. That number . So, the pace of new signups to test Windows 10 has declined — it attracted its first million in two weeks — but also hows that interest has continued at some pace. That the OS preview has a current-signup, to active-user ratio of 3:1 feels robust. Microsoft’s , who penned the company’s latest missive, claims that 1,300 bugs in the operating system that were reported by its community have been fixed. Aul continued, promising “big things” in the next build of Windows 10, which will be shown off, and hopefully released at the company’s January 21 event. TechCrunch will be covering the happenings live. Aul managed to make light of the recent build leaks that his company has endured: I know that some of you are disappointed that we didn’t release another build (though we know some of them escaped….I’m looking at you 9888 & 9901…)* but now that I can finally explain why we didn’t. We’ve been very hard at work putting together a great build for you that includes a bunch of new features and improvements. As all of those payloads came in we needed to stabilize code, fix any integration issues, and ensure all of the new UX is polished. Microsoft has been surprisingly relaxed about recent leaked builds. Its view appears to be that if things slip out a bit early, it only adds another measure of transparency to the process of building Windows 10. Of course, it would prefer full control. Here’s what I want to know from you: Is nearly 500,000 daily users a strong number for Microsoft, or a weak tally? Is the 1.5 million signups number strong? Let me know. |
Google+ Will Now Let Users Identify Their Gender Using Their Own Words | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | Today’s been a busy one for Google — with updates to , , , , and more — but the company is also making an important change to Google+ that provides more gender identity options for LGBT users. it will begin supporting “an infinite number of ways to express gender identity” on the social network with a new ‘custom’ option that will roll out to users in the coming few days, as . Unlike the , which offer more than 50 set options for users, those on Google+ will be able to choose whatever pronouns they like. That also includes ‘decline to state’, while users can already chose to not publicly disclose their gender if they so wish. Google revealed it had worked with “people and groups who gave us advice” on gender identity but it didn’t explicitly state who it referred to. The company has always been a , it was one of the many U.S. tech firms that this summer, while in the LGBT community. and today’s update shows that it is business as usual for the team . |
Apple Will Launch iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3 With LTE Support In China This Week | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | The cellular models of the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 will launch in China this week, Apple announced today. Both models support TD-LTE and FDD-LTE, which have been rolling out in China since the end of last year, and are already The launch of both iPad models in Apple’s most important market outside the U.S. comes as tablet sales in general decline. Last month, will decline for the first time ever, due in part to the popularity of cheaper Android models, but also because tablets have a longer lifecycle than smartphones, which means users are willing to hold on to them for more than three years. On the other hand, the IDC report also noted that emerging markets have overtaken their more mature counterparts this year for tablet shipments, and now account for 50.6 percent of the market, which means that countries like China are becoming increasingly important for tablet manufacturers. For example, Nokia , the first tablet it made after its split from Microsoft, in China first. It remains to be seen if the promise of speedier connections through cellular networks will be enough to convince Chinese consumers to buy the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 instead of cheaper Android models (or previous iterations of the iPad) According to Xinhua, TD-LTE user numbers are . China Mobile, the country’s largest telecom operator, has already received a FDD-LTE network approval from the government, while its two rivals, China Telecom and China Unicom, are . |
Google To Close Google News In Spain On December 16 In Response To New Law | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | Google is saying adios to Google News in Spain, after it will close the service down in the country on December 16 in response to the impact of a new law. The company said that incoming legislation in the European country will force publishers to charge Google if and when it carries snippets of their stories in the news service. That’s not , where publishers have long argued that Google should compensate them for using excerpts of their stories in the service. However, while that Google News is valuable enough to their business to excuse compensation, Spain has gone ahead and inshrined the requirement to pay in its legal system. “This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not. As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable,” Richard Gingras, who heads up Google News, wrote in a blog post. Google said it is making the move this month ahead of the introduction of the law in January 2015. Come December 16, it will shutter the Google News service in Spain and remove all Spanish publishers from its international versions. The four year old service is available in more than 70 global editions and in 35 different languages, Google said. |
Zype Helps Video Publishers Look Beyond YouTube By Building Their Own Sites And Apps | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | Video startup its online video platform today, which it says can help publishers grow and monetize their audiences. To be clear, it’s not trying to compete with YouTube or other video players like BrightCove. Yes, it has created a video player of its own, but the main focus is on helping companies build an online presence for their videos and serving those videos from whatever player makes sense, whether it’s YouTube, Hulu, or Zype itself. “At the end of the day, the consumer consumer doesn’t care what the player is — they just want to get the content in the best way possible,” said founder Ed Laczynski. Zype has created what it calls Dynamic Player Technology, which serves the video from a specific player depending on the device and location of the user. So if you’ve got a video on, say, Hulu, Zype will show the Hulu video where possible, but could show a Zype version of the video where Hulu’s licensing rights are restricted. The Zype team gave me a demo where they could upload a video and set up the rules for how it’s served in just a couple of minutes. Zype can be used to build websites, mobile web pages, and native apps for mobile and set-top boxes. On the monetization side, it can offer subscription, advertising and pay-per-video capabilities. Even though the company is only officially announcing its product today, it says it has been working with customers for the past year. Those customers include Konami’s 4K Media, which used Zype to build . |
New “Shingled” Hard Drives Hold Terabytes For Pennies A Gig | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | While the last time most of us thought of shingles was when we were itchy in eighth grade, Seagate has been thinking of them as a way to store data. Called Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) Drives, Seagate’s new drives can store 8 terabytes of data for about 3 cents a gigabyte. The catch? These are great back-up drives but they’re not very fast. At 5,900 RPM and an average read/write speed of 150MB/sec, you’re looking at something that’s far slower than an average SSD drive (1,800MB/sec) and even the average 7,200 RPM hard drive. Shingled drives cram more tracks onto a single platter and reduce the minuscule space between tracks. This means you can fit over a terabyte on one spinning HDD platter. Therefore these drives work best with a faster SSD drive on the front end and then these slower drives for less important storage. For example, you could stack a few for some serious fleet backup power or you could place seldom-used data files on the drive and work with fast-moving files on an SSD. Seagate will ship the drives in January for $260 for an 8 terabyte version. Considering the first 1TB drives cost $375 in 2007, that’s an impressive jump. I intend to fill my 8TB drive with photographs of food and home video of my navel. You? [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UFUfv9n420#t=11] |
The Estimable @LiquidSnute On The Future Of Starcraft And Being A Pro Gamer | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | At , I got the chance to catch up , a Starcraft professional gamer who has become well-known in the past year for his in-game skills. Snute plays for Team Liquid, perhaps the best-known Starcraft team that isn’t based in Korea, the country that remains the central hub of the game. The Starcraft world is currently on the cusp of revolution, with the third installment of Starcraft 2, called Legacy of the Void, on path for release in 2015. The final portion of the Starcraft 2 universe, Legacy of the Void, will be a standalone game that doesn’t require the player to have purchased its first two chunks. Snute, noting changes to how the final segment of Starcraft 2 handles pace, appears to be enthusiastic about the title. We’ll see. Starcraft isn’t the most popular — that’s a title that League of Legends commands — but it certainly has a large, dedicated audience. It will be interesting to see if it can grow its fanbase with its next release. |
Google’s YouTube App For Android Updated With Material Design, Adds Search Filters | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | Slowly but surely, Google is updating each of its own Android applications to fit in with Android’s new “Material Design” motif. The latest one to get the makeover treatment: YouTube. Wondering what the heck “Material Design” is? The short version: it’s Android’s new look, and it’s one that Google wants to be as universal as possible. Lots of solid colors, lots of shadows and other things that suggest depth, and lots of animation. (You can read Google’s entire specification .) The update has trickled out to a few Android users over the last day or two, but it’s now officially rolling out to all. Google says the update should hit all handsets within the week. Unless my memory is failing me, this is the first time the YouTube Android app has seen any major visual changes in roughly a year. While the main bullet point of the update is the app’s new look, the update also brings search filters into the mix on mobile. Want to run a search based on video length, HD quality, closed captioning, etc. like you have long been able to on YouTube’s desktop offering? Now you can. |
Box Files Third-Quarter S-1 Update Amid Improving IPO Climate | Ron Miller | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | filed its third quarter S-1 update today, almost nine months after they originally filed the document required for an initial public offering. This time the numbers look a bit better, but there were still enough negatives to continue to raise some red flags. Still, given the improving IPO climate in Silicon Valley, Box appears closer to finally pulling the IPO trigger. It’s impossible to say of course, and given the quiet period they are restricted from speculating. But we’re not. We think there could be some points in their favor here, but the picture isn’t entirely rosy, either. First of all, the IPO freeze appears to be ending and perhaps Wall Street is ready for another look. Just this week, two Silicon Valley companies, New Relic and Hortonworks, are ready go public. New Relic, being a cloud company, is the better comparison, and it is not only ready to go, it upped its estimated selling price from $18-20 to $20-22. Against this more favorable backdrop, could Box be getting ready, too? Since it filed the original S-1, and an impressive 300,000 seats in the process. That gave Box a much-needed lift after it got slammed after filing in March. The GE sale helped in a couple of ways. It showed that a really big enterprise company was interested in Box in spite of the loud criticism they were dealing with, and it gave them some good news to distract the critics with. Yet it was hard to ignore the red ink and the cash burn. In an interview with TechCrunch last month, of the company after the filing, and defended the spending calling it disciplined. “We had access to large amounts of inexpensive capital and our market is arbitrarily large and when you have those conditions, money and a big market, the rational behavior is to ramp up as fast as you can. We won’t do it forever. We don’t have to do it forever,” Levin said. Which brings us to today’s update. The company had revenue in its fiscal third quarter of $57.05 million. The period, which ended on October 31, generated losses for the company — on a GAAP basis — of $45.42 million. That figure was up sharply from its fiscal second-quarter loss of $37.56 million. The company saw its GAAP net loss decline from its fiscal third quarter of 2013 through its fiscal second quarter of 2014. The decline, from $51.39 million in its fiscal third a year ago, to $37.56 million in its fiscal second this year was encouraging. To see the company’s GAAP loss increase on a sequential quarter basis in the most recent three month period is discouraging. Still, Box posted large revenue growth on a first-three-quarter basis from 2013 to 2014, seeing its top line rise from $85.36 million to $153.80 million. Its net loss, across the same period, only grew by $4 million, from $125.44 million to $129.07 million. The company remains highly unprofitable, and its revenue is still quite expensive. Box now has a revenue run rate of more than $200 million. Presumably, its annual recurring revenue, or ARR, is a delta higher than that. The company remains well capitalized. As its new S-1 notes, Box has “cash and cash equivalents of $165.3 million.” In its first three quarters of this fiscal year, the company’s operations burned through $69.31 million. That was roughly unchanged from its year-ago period figure of $69.12 million. The company also lost nearly $30 million on “investing activities,” which appears to be a reduction in its debt load. Box has sufficient capital for a number of quarters. Its roughly $32 million cash burn in its fiscal quarter puts it at more than a year of float, provided that its losses do not increase. |
Chef’d Uses Crowdfunding To Roll Out Recipe-And-Ingredient Delivery Service For Gourmet Meals | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | is the latest startup promising to deliver the tools (and by tools I mean recipes and ingredients) you need to cook delicious meals at home. We’ve like and (which announced recently that it’s ), plus even newer competitors like (well, newer if you ). What all those companies have in common is their focus on a subscription service. After taking into account things like how many meals you want and your dietary restrictions, they basically give you the same meal kits as everyone else. On the positive side, that means you don’t have to worry about meal planning. On the downside, there’s less choice and flexibility. That’s probably the biggest thing that sets Chef’d apart. It allows customers to buy meals individually, saying it can deliver them to you one or two days after you place the order. “The idea of signing up for a subscription and all that logistical stuff, nobody likes that,” said founder and CEO Kyle Ransford. “Our idea is to go with existing consumer behavior and the things that already work best online.” Ransford added that this approach allows Chef’d to offer a range of meal types, from more high-end, gourmet dinners to more affordable family meals. Of course, he admitted that promising to have “100+ notable recipes” available for order will present “a big logistical challenge” — that’s a big part of why the company has . Chef’d has set a target of raising $50,000, but Ransford said the campaign should also connect the company with 1,000 to 2,000 people who will be early testers of the service. (The rewards start at $60, which can get you two dinners for two or a holiday gift card for same.) “They’re going to work with us for two to six weeks and help us refine things,” he said. Looking ahead, Ransford isn’t just looking to build Chef’d as a standalone consumer service. Yes, it’s selling the food itself, but it’s also working with celebrity chefs and food brands to develop recipes — the company sent me a recipe for “Szechuan Tofu with Sticky Rice” from and another for “Maple Glazed Salmon” that was “inspired by” Cooking Light & Southern Living magazines. Eventually, Chef’d could build integrations with partners that allowed you to order meal kits directly from their sites (Ransford said Chef’d has already made a number of partnership agreements, but he declined to announce of them yet.) After all, Ransford said he was inspired to create the service after reading a recipe in Bon Appétit magazine. Normally, if you wanted to follow that recipe, you’d have to go to the store and buy all the ingredients. Wouldn’t it be great if you could push a button and have everything you need delivered? That’s basically what Chef’d is trying to enable. [vimeo 114101476 w=500 h=281] |
Sidecar Follows The Competition, Starts Charging A $1 “RideSafe” Fee | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | Last year, Uber introduced a “Safe Rides” fee that added a $1 charge to uberX fares. This fee, they said, was meant to help them cover the cost of background checks, vehicle screenings, and “the development of safety features.” When Lyft introduced a similar fee, they dubbed it “the trust and safety fee.” And now Sidecar — a perhaps lesser mentioned competitor in the taxis-that-aren’t-actually–taxis arena that we’ve come to call “ridesharing” — follows suit. Starting tomorrow, Sidecar will charge $1 more per ride for what they call the “RideSafe” fee. So what does that buck cover? According to the company: Sidecar is taking on Uber et al. with an interesting tactic: Its prices will vary based on prices set by the driver, but the passenger gets to pick the driver based on the calculated trip price (or whatever other factor they care about, like type of car or estimated time of arrival) before they get in the car. The new fee will automatically be tacked on to that trip price up front. |
The Effect Of HubSpot’s CRM Launch On Salesforce | Serge Salager | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | After several years of relatively stagnant waters, what was a dull CRM landscape dominated by one player is heating up dramatically. Salesforce officially put its $3.5 billion market acquisitions building blocks together on a “Marketing Cloud” at last month’s event. It also announced its entry into and targeting a $1 billion in additional revenue from this avenue. Salesforce’s recent moves might have been triggered by significant swirls under the surface that were not perceptible by outsiders until now. Rumors of potentially entering the CRM space have recently surfaced with the allegedly leaked confidential documents and significant media attention. Salesforce is undoubtedly the CRM tool but LinkedIn’s ad-hoc database of all professionals in the planet clearly gives vertigo to everyone working in the industry. There is a new entrant into the CRM market, and, as life has some interesting twists, it comes from a company that Salesforce itself helped fund (alongside other household names like Sequoia and Google Ventures). The company is HubSpot and CEO brought the company to an almost $1 billion earlier this month. HubSpot has discretely announced its foray into CRM in its website before its IPO by reaching out to willing beta testers. So not surprisingly, HubSpot announced last month the launch of its at the company’s #inbound14 event in Boston. This is probably a poke in the eye to Salesforce by . The CRM tool is marketed as “HubSpot sales platform” or “Sales accelerator product” and comes in a package that integrates the wonderful Sidekick app, which allows users to track email openings and, as such, the level of interest, by prospective clients. The latter is a crucial benefit, as CEOs want their sales reps to focus only on customers that have “shown” interest in one’s products. While the package is already being used in a beta form, HubSpot said it will be available to existing customers in early 2015. HubSpot CRM indirectly claims to be different from Salesforce CRM primarily in its simplicity of use and the riddance of manual entries. This is very promising as the time sales reps spend on Salesforce CRM and the stacking of more and more added features are part of Salesforce customer’s moans. The promise that HubSpot’s CRM platform will be intuitive and easy to use is not a trivial feature. After all, the iPhone cosmological take-over of RIM’s Blackberry grip of the smartphone industry was arguably due to the iPhone’s phenomenally better user experience. The most striking feature, however, is that, , it is claimed to be free. Although not totally clear at press time, it will probably be free under a freemium scheme or for current HubSpot users. This development is interesting as Salesforce is clearly using its grip on the sales department to enter into the CMO office with its recent Marketing Cloud launch. HubSpot, which is a longtime favorite among marketers, is entering into CRM from exactly the other direction. Will this create a collision of biblical proportions? Likely not. By having been founded 15 years ago, Salesforce has the disadvantage of being a legacy product (the tired UI is proof of it) but has the undeniable advantage of holding (hostage?) millions of client database entries into its servers for its customers. Any large-scale migration will be a logistical nightmare for any Salesforce customer. Although HubSpot’s CRM might steal market share away from Salesforce’s less lucrative small customers, it’s addressing a different crowd. New market entrants (almost any new hot startup or technology company eager to jump into the growth hacking band-wagon) or any company previously deterred by Salesforce’s pricing will be its most obvious customers. Knowing that SME sales forces vastly outnumber Salesforce’s Fortune 500 customers, the addressable market for HubSpot CRM is clearly enticing. The CRM market is, however, becoming a very dynamic one and thus the future will be difficult to predict. Having witnessed the dwindling number of VP of sales holding to their good-old BlackBerries, HubSpot’s entry into the Salesforce backyard will not go unnoticed. |
TC Droidcast Episode 30: Cardboard VR, How Do You Wear Your Android Wear | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | This week, Google dropped so many updates today that we couldn’t help but talk about them, including new , and an that supports custom watchfaces (officially, whereas before they were everywhere but not built using any kind of proper API). Darrell Etherington, Kyle Russell and Greg Kumparak also tackle the LG G Watch R, now that we’ve had time to review it at length, and updates to HTC’s Google Play Edition One M7 and M8, which amount to a fresh coat of new paint on houses that were already pretty spectacular to begin with. If you’ve got any questions or specific topics you’d like to see addressed in next week’s episode, feel free to and ask us directly. We’ll hopefully have some time in with the Asus ZenWatch by then, and will be watching in case Google isn’t done with its end-of-year news dump quite yet.
and check out past episodes . Download it directly here: |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 12 | 17 | null |
Happn Attracts $8 Million To Roll Out Its Tinder-Like App Globally | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | French dating app just raised an $8 million Series A round from and , as well as business angels, such as Fabrice Grinda. As a reminder, Happn uses your phone’s location to show you potential matches. Every time you cross someone’s path, this person’s profile will be added to the top of your feed. Then, you can like people and potentially start chatting with them. Contrary to other dating apps, Happn is based on real-life interaction. It greatly contributes to setting a different mood when you use the app. You know that when someone appears in your feed, it means that you were around this person at some point today. The more you scroll, the further back in time you go. And when someone catches your attention, you can like him or her. If there is a mutual interest, just like on Tinder, you can start chatting for free. But on Happn, you can also buy credits to start chatting even if there is no match. I profiled Happn , but a lot has changed since then. In July, the app was only available in Paris, London and Berlin. 40,000 people were opening the app every day. In other words, Happn was a proof of concept that needed to generate actual growth. Yet, when I talked with Happn founder and CEO Didier Rappaport, I could see the addictive potential of the app. Compared to Tinder, Happn doesn’t play like a game. It isn’t a sort of modern dating jukebox. Instead, the French startup focuses on fixing what’s broken on dating sites. In Happn, you don’t have to create a profile and list your interests. It works like Tinder: You just connect your Facebook account. This way, there are a lot fewer fake profiles, as well. On traditional dating sites, you get suggestions based on your shared interests. Instead, Happn relies on your daily path. The main challenge when you develop a free app like Happn is to make people open the app again. If you usually wander in a particular neighborhood, chances are that another person who likes this coffee shop, this park and that bar might get along with you. Because of this serendipity aspect, users are eager to check the app every day to see who they “met” today — it’s an incredibly powerful retention mechanism. Serendipity is more than a gimmicky feature, and this is key to Happn’s potential success. Happn is now available in Paris, London, Berlin, Barcelona, Madrid and New York. The team of 25 is now working on more city launches – Chicago, Los Angeles and Sydney are next on the list. Every month, Happn will become available in three new cities. While the company boasts about having a million downloads, there is an even more impressive number. Out of its user base of 1 million people, 200,000 people use Happn every day. It’s a huge improvement compared to this summer and an impressive achievement considering that the app was launched in March 2014. You don’t see a dating app with this trajectory every day. |
The Uno Noteband Doesn’t Waste Time With Notifications | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | The is a $99 wearable designed for those who want the convenience of getting notifications on their wrists but don’t want to spend a bunch of time fiddling with a two-inch screen when they’ve got a perfectly good smartphone in their pocket. Like the Pebble smartwatch, the Uno Noteband syncs up with your phone, bringing you notifications about messages, phone calls, emails and social network activity. But instead of having you tab through these messages using buttons or swipes (as you would on Android Wear or the upcoming Apple Watch), you see a notification, tap the screen, and it pumps out the text at a few hundred words per minute. The notification system on the Noteband is built on , a toolkit that lets you speed-read content at a variable rate. As a user, that means you can set the speed at which notifications play from an app on your smartphone, so if you’re really impatient you can crank the standard ~250 words per minute up into the 400s. Beyond the simple interaction described above, there’s also a control nub for maneuvering through the stripped-down interface on the Noteband. But the point isn’t to spend a lot of time on the device — in fact, you can’t actually engage with the notifications from the watch. The idea is that if any of the messages are worth dealing with, it’s less of a hassle to handle it on your paired phone. That minimal interaction design and the device’s OLED display result in a smartwatch that you don’t have to charge every day. On , the startup says its watch will last up to three days between plug-ins, striking a balance between the week you get from fitness-focused bands like those from Fitbit and the single day’s use you find on more general-purpose watches. Speaking of fitness, it’s basically expected that these bands will have health features at this point. The Noteband can track steps and the intensity of activity and syncs that data to your phone via Apple’s Health Kit APIs or Google Fit. The Noteband might be too limited for those who want something that can run a bunch of different stripped-down apps from your phone. There is support for third-party service beyond those mentioned above — gamers will be able to get notifications from Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network and Steam — but those features are being added by the Uno team, so you’re going to get things that appeal to a wider audience before more niche applications start showing up. |
Here’s What Happens When Thousands Of Gamers Pack A Sports Arena To Watch Esports | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | At an event in San Jose this weekend, TechCrunch went full esports. The confab, the Intel Extreme Master digital tournament, saw professional players from around the world duke it out in League of Legends and Starcraft 2, two of the most popular video games around. The event was more than just a tournament, however, with booths, gaming stations, and an oddly flexible laptop also hanging around. Esports is a growing entertainment category, especially in North America and Europe, where League of Legends has become a household staple. The popularity of streaming services like Twitch, , has brought competitive video gaming to a wider audience. The event in San Jose was testament to that fact. If you asked yourself five years ago if there would be an event in a hockey stadium for computer games, it would have sounded silly. Now, it seems almost pedestrian. Expect more of this sort of thing in the States. With video games themselves becoming increasingly normal, their upper end on the skill side of things will only grow. |
Google Brings Museums To Mobile Users, Armchair Travelers With New Technology Platform | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | Google today it’s making a platform available to museums that enables them to build mobile applications that take advantage of Google technology, including Street View and YouTube, to bring their exhibits to anyone with a smartphone. Through partnerships between museums worldwide and the Google Cultural Institute, there are now 11 museums and cultural institutions that have participated in this pilot project to date; their apps are live now on Google Play. The early adopters of this new software platform include museums and institutions in Italy, France, the Netherlands and Nigeria, such as the , , , , , , , , , and the , to name a few. The efforts are being headed up by the , the division of Google tasked with bringing cultural treasures from around the world online and making them accessible to all – instead of only to those who are able to make the trip to where the art is being shown, or where the landmarks or other world heritage sites exist. In the past, this group has spearheaded projects like , documenting the in Street View and 3D, and bringing art museums online via . The newer mobile tools are an extension of that latter effort, as they also take advantage of Google’s “indoor” Street View technology to offer 360 degree tours. The apps may also offer photos of the exhibits and audio tours, along with social-sharing features that let visitors post what they’re viewing in a museum to networks like Google+ and Facebook, as well as to email, Gmail and more. Offline access is also available, as those who are touring the museums may be traveling abroad and don’t have an internet connection. However, you don’t have to actually visit a museum to check out the apps; because of the virtual tours, you can virtually visit museums and read about the exhibits as you move through the tour. The museums are able to launch these apps without any in-house technical expertise because of their partnership with Google – they provide the access, and Google does the coding. Museums, institutions, and private collections interested in partnering with Google on their own applications can request more info . [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyOngqriHQI] |
Xiaomi Ready To Talk Patents With Ericsson After Sales Ban In India | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | Chinese phone company has said it is ready to open talks with Ericsson after a temporary ban was slapped on its smartphone business in India following its first patent spat. Indian authorities have mounted a credible bid to own the tech news cycle this week. Fresh from and , the city’s high court issued an injunction that prevents Xiaomi from importing and selling some of its smartphones in the country. The high court granted an ‘ex parte’ injunction against the Chinese company following a patent complaint from telecom firm Ericsson, as . Officials have been ordered to visit Xiaomi India’s office to ensure it does not sell, advertise, manufacture or import devices that infringe the patents in question. Xiaomi sells its Mi3, Redmi and Redmi Note phablet in India, but it is not clear which models are affected by this ruling. In a statement provided to TechCrunch, Ericsson described Xiaomi’s use of its Standard, Essential Patents (SEPs) as “unfair.” It said its action is “a last resort” after Xiaomi ignored more than three years of communication requests: Ericsson’s commitment to the global support of technology and innovation is undisputed. It is unfair for Xiaomi to benefit from our substantial R&D investment without paying a reasonable licensee fee for our technology. After more than 3 years of attempts to engage in a licensing conversation in good faith, for products compliant with the GSM, EDGE, and UMTS/WCDMA standards Xiaomi continues to refuse to respond in any way regarding a fair license to Ericsson’s intellectual property on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. Ericsson, as a last resort, had to take legal action. To continue investing in research and enabling the development of new ideas, new standards and new platforms to the industry, we must obtain a fair return on our R&D investments. We look forward to working with Xiaomi to reach a mutually fair and reasonable conclusion, just as we do with all of our licensees. Xiaomi — which began selling devices in India in July — claimed it had not received correspondence from the high court, but it did state its willingness to discuss the issue with Ericsson: We haven’t received an official note from the Delhi High Court. However, our legal team is currently evaluating the situation based on the information we have. India is a very important market for Xiaomi and we will respond promptly as needed and in full compliance with India laws. Moreover, we are open to working with Ericsson to resolve this matter amicably. Ericsson is said to be negotiating compensation for patents with a number of Indian smartphone makers, and it could be that its dispute with Xiaomi goes the same way. that the company assesses how its online sales model will work in new markets when deciding on expansions. Barra told the Wall Street Journal that litigation risks were not a factor, although critics have argued that possible patent infringement suits could affect it in the West. Xiaomi is on track to sell 60 million smartphones this year and it is , having moved beyond its native China more than a year ago. it is easing back on new market launches, however, in order to focus on a number of key countries, including India and Indonesia. But it is widely expected to increase its presence in Southeast Asia and enter Latin America with its next wave of expansions in 2015. It’s not clear when, or indeed if ever, it will sell its products in the U.S. market. |
CrunchWeek: Fallout From The Sony Hack | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Acquisition leaks, embarrassing emails, threats, theaters refuse to show The Interview, FBI’s confirmation that the hack came from North Korea, a response from the White House: There has been so much coming out of the Sony breach that this week we felt it necessary to devote our entire show to discussing everything that has happened. Bonus: Ingrid Lunden flew in from London to join us in her CrunchWeek debut. |
Google+ Can Now Automatically Make Your Videos Look Better | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | For almost two years now, Google has been automatically enhancing the photos you upload to Google+; starting today it will do , too. It won’t do this automatically, though. Instead, whenever Google now thinks it can improve a video you upload, a banner will appear in the Google+ web app that asks you if you want to preview the potential changes. You can also opt to apply these automatic enhancements to any other video you upload to (either directly or through Auto Backup) on a case-by-case basis. As Google engineer Tim St. Clair today, the new Google+ feature will be able to automatically enhance lighting, color and stability. Coming soon, it’ll also enhance speech in videos. Google automatically renders a low-res, side-by-side preview of your improved and unimproved videos once you opt to give it a try. At a rather blurry 240p (see above), that’s not necessarily the best way to preview these changes, but given that these enhancements take a bit of compute power, it’s likely the only way to show them to you in a reasonable time. While Google hasn’t prompted me to auto-enhance any videos yet, I’ve tried it on a few videos I’ve uploaded to Google+ over the last few months and it does indeed make a difference. Reasonable people can argue about the success of Google+ as a social network, but there can be little doubt that Google+ Photos has always been one of the most interesting and innovative aspects of the service. As more and more people now also take videos with their smartphones, it makes sense for Google to bring some of the technologies it has developed for photos (and YouTube) to these private videos, as well. Google has long offered a similar feature , so there is likely some overlap between the two systems here. While YouTube offers the option to “auto-fix” videos, though, it doesn’t automatically prompt its users to do this for them. YouTube also offers a number of manual tools for changing contrast, saturation and color temperature that Google+ doesn’t currently offer. Google’s announcement today comes only a few days after Facebook that it now also started auto-enhancing images that its users upload to its servers. That face that Google announced this new feature today is likely a coincidence, but it’s an interesting one. |
Sony’s CEO Michael Lynton: “We Have Not Given In.” | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Sony CEO Michael Lynton blamed theaters for the studio’s decision to pull out from the scheduled theatrical release of The Interview this Christmas. He told that Sony had no other choice after a slew of theaters decided not to show the film. President Obama called the entertainment company out earlier today for not coming to him before canceling the release, saying Sony “made a mistake.” Many saw Sony’s move as caving to terrorist demands. “The President, the press and the public are mistaken about what actually happened,” Sony CEO Michael Lynton told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. “We do not own movie theaters. We cannot control what is shown.” Several major theaters, including Carmike and Landmark, announced they would not show The Interview after a hacker group threatened to attack any movie theater that showed the film. Lynton had said earlier that, “We respect and understand our partners’ decision and, of course, completely share their paramount interest in the safety of employees and theater-goers.” The cyber terrorist group, the Guardians of Peace, praised Sony for making a “wise decision” to cancel the release. Many have asked Sony to mass release the film digitally. SONY must release the movie. It must be shown in mass. NORTH KOREA? R U KIDDING? And please stop confusing cyber crap w/movie — Robert Boseley (@rdbozz99) If only had some sort of media device in millions of homes that it could distribute this movie to, to make a stand for free speech… — Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) “There has not been one major VOD, video on demand distributor, or major e-commerce site that has stepped forward and said they are willing to distribute this movie for us,” Lynton told CNN. He says Sony is currently looking at alternatives to release The Interview. Some have suggested Netflix as an option. “We have always had every desire to let the American public see this movie,” Lynton said. |
Carnival’s Mobile Marketing Platform Gets More Automated | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | When someone tells me that they’re introducing “trigger messaging” to their product, well, it’s not the most thrilling start to a conversation. But hey, mention automated FaceTime calls from One Direction, and suddenly I’m onboard. (Not that I’m a huge One Direction fan or anything. It’s not weird that I think this sounds cool, right? Please tell me it’s not weird.) Those two things really are related. Mobile marketing startup is indeed unveiling a new trigger messaging feature that allows businesses to automatically send messages to their mobile app users using things like geofences. And while there are existing tools for adding automated messaging to your apps, CEO Guy Horrocks said that they’re largely focused on text, rather than the “very rich content” that Carnival’s platform supports. What kind of content? Why, automated FaceTime calls from One Direction, of course (and sure, other things like polls and coupons). Apparently Nabisco sponsored One Direction’s 2013 U.S. tour and mobile app, and it took advantage of the trigger messaging capability. Whenever the band arrived in a new city, it automatically triggered phone calls to local fans, and the calls promoted a competition to win tickets for that local concert. Those calls saw a 30 percent engagement rate, and they resulted in a 300 percent increase in daily app usage. Carnival has actually , but they elided the details about the trigger messaging, because it wasn’t available broadly yet. That feature, Horrocks said, allowed the Nabisco social media team to set it up ahead of time. And now the company is making these capabilities available to all of its customers. Horrocks also gave me a quick demo of setting up different rules for automated messaging. Creating a geofence seemed pretty straightforward and also fairly targeted — Horrocks showed me how to automatically send a message 10 minutes after he entered the AOL building. The targeting isn’t purely geographic, either. You could also create triggers based on app activity, say if someone hasn’t opened the app in a month. The broader vision behind Carnival, , is to convince marketers to stop creating boring mobile apps that are little more than promotional billboards. Carnival gives them tools to feature more interactive, engaging content, and adding trigger messaging will make that process even easier. The end result, Horrocks told me, is that brands might create fewer apps, but the ones they do launch should be better and “more strategic.” “I think they’re hopefully going to do less stupid apps and a lot more smart ones,” he said. (Carnival is backed by Bowery Capital, which itself has funding from AOL. And AOL owns TechCrunch.) |
After Sony, Every Startup Should Prepare For War | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | The battle between Sony and what may be at its end, but the war for the security of the enterprise is just getting started. Companies have been rapidly transitioning their legacy systems to modern IT technology like cloud services, hoping to save money and improve performance in an increasingly competitive world. And while security has always been one of the key demands of CIOs in making new purchases, security itself almost never sells products – features do. That’s why startups focus so much of their attention on getting their products right, and often tack on security engineers later in the development process. If it is not already clear from the events surrounding Sony the last few weeks, technology startups are increasingly the battlegrounds between all sorts of forces, from hacker gangs to pariah states. Companies rely on their information technology for their most important trade secrets. Any legitimate threat to those systems could alter the trust executives have with their IT departments, and that has serious repercussions for all of us involved with startups. , it’s the security, stupid. It’s not like we haven’t been here before. IT departments are going through a technology revolution right now with cloud services not unlike the revolution almost two decades ago from paperwork to data centers. Back then, the biggest security challenges were viruses and worms – think ILOVEYOU, Code Red, and SQL Slammer. Network infections like these regularly made the front page of newspapers and top news on cable networks, and they each caused billions of dollars worth of damage by some estimates. But we don’t hear much about viruses these days. Increased operating system security, particularly on Microsoft Windows, closed many of the gaping holes that were available for exploitation. More sophisticated antivirus software also blocked many of these viruses from spreading through email by stopping them at the mail server. As the vectors for attacks decreased in number, the ability of hackers to write self-propagating code on the internet has simply become more challenging. We need to start a similar defense revolution when it comes to our cloud services. We need to strengthen our fundamental infrastructure while developing better tools to identify attacks and stop them in their tracks. Unfortunately, the solutions are going to be far harder to implement. The first challenge is that many of these cloud services interact with each other, which greatly adds to the challenge of determining the vulnerabilities present in the system. This dense interconnection also extends to the libraries that these services are built upon – just think of the in the OpenSSL libraries or . A vulnerability in one system is likely to compromise more than just itself in an attack. Second, insiders are increasingly a threat, not only because the number of IT services has expanded, but because security concerns of IT departments directly compete with the efficiency concerns of management. There remains rampant speculation that the attack on Sony was assisted by someone on the inside of the organization. Regardless, stopping insiders like this is tough, because businesses face strong competition and need the openness of existing systems to be effective. Startups need to provide security within the demands of speed and openness, and that is no simple juggling act. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, startups are moving increasingly quickly to provide the features their customers are demanding, making it difficult if not impossible to ensure that shipped code is hardened and secure. In a world of ship fast and break things, the breaks are starting to get worse – and more expensive. Security may be a tough problem, but it is the supreme responsibility of every software developer and every startup executive. We all collectively lose if CIOs lose trust with IT departments. We don’t want to move back to a world of paperwork just because we can’t secure our data in the cloud. Therefore, we need to return to basics. First, every developer should have training in security. Security is not typically required in computer science curriculums, often offered as an elective to students looking to specialize in the field. That needs to change posthaste. Security habits are formed early, and developers shouldn’t be able to walk along at a college commencement still allowing SQL injections in their code. For developers in the workforce, take time to understand , and read up on the latest approaches to securing systems. Ensure that every product design session has at least a few minutes devoted to discussing security issues and possible vulnerabilities. In addition, think through how to offer highly granular access controls for data, even potentially before your customers ask for it. Finally, for startup executives, constantly seek out security vulnerabilities in your software and services. Offer bounties for the discovery of new holes, offer indemnification for white hat hackers investigating your software, and perhaps consider bug discovery services like Bugcrowd, which can crowdsource much of this for you. Vulnerabilities are a commonplace in all software, and you shouldn’t run with fear from these issues, but rather embrace them as challenges to be solved like any other customer request. Startups may once have been immune to the kind of large attacks that plagued Microsoft Windows back in the day, but that world is long since gone. Given the tight coupling of software systems, a startup’s service may be just the vector a hacker is looking for to break into a corporation’s systems. Don’t wait for a magical security service to solve your customer’s problems for you. Every startup has already been drafted, and now is the time to fight. |
Intuit Buys UK’s Acrede To Expand Its Global Payroll Services | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | has quietly made another acquisition today to expand its accounting and back office management business, this time focusing on payroll. , a Jersey, UK-based provider of global, cross-border and cloud-based payroll services, is joining Inuit; and its CEO and founder, Karen Paterson, is being named Intuit’s director of payroll platform. Financial terms and other details of the deal have not been disclosed in Acrede’s announcement of the deal — which was written by the CEO. Intuit tells us that it is not disclosing the price but has confirmed the acquisition and that all of Acrede’s 80 employees are joining the company. “Acrede’s cloud-based global platform processes payroll for employees in 30 countries with scalable technology and a talented team with deep global tax and compliance expertise,” Karen Peacock, GM of employee management solutions in Intuit’s Small Business Group, said in a written statement. “We’re excited to welcome them to the Intuit team.” The transaction should close in a few weeks. Before buying Acrede, Intuit already had an , with its own online component. What the new company gives Intuit is a payroll operation that’s established across Europe and Asia with infrastructure to handle more international payroll business, helping Intuit raise its game outside of its core market of U.S. and serving mainly domestic customers. As companies like ZenPayroll, Zenefits and Zoho (they don’t all begin with Z) continue to grow their businesses and try to disrupt Intuit, scaling up its payroll operations, and adding more international and cloud components, are essential for Intuit to remain competitive. Acrede was founded in 2010 and , a point that Paterson makes with not a little indignation in that magazine feature. “Being an entrepreneur is tough,” she writes. “When I say tough, this is what I mean: it can feel like no one believes in you, no one wants to fund you and everyone wants a track record that you do not have.” She had , the eponymous Patersons, before starting and running Acrede. Acrede is Intuit’s . |
Reddit Announces RedditNotes, A Way To Share Equity With Readers | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Reddit, the world’s favorite repository for funny and/or pornographic images (and wide-ranging discussions on almost any topic), has announced a RedditNotes initiative, a method to give equity to the site’s readers using a lottery method. The 950,000 notes will be given away at random to folks who have been on the site before 9/30/14 and will be given out next fall. The company wrote in a : To celebrate all of you and your contributions, we plan to give away reddit notes in a random lottery. As of this point, it looks like we’re going to have approximately 950,000 reddit notes to divide among active user accounts. There aren’t as many reddit notes as there are accounts, so if you get one, lucky you! Eligible recipients of reddit notes will be determined based on activities before 9/30/14 ( ), and we plan to give them away in the fall of 2015.We’re still working out details on both the technological and legal aspects of the project, especially regarding how reddit notes will work within existing government regulations. We look forward to sharing that information with you early next year. If you have feedback or ideas for us, feel free to visit – and keep being awesome! Again, details are slim but you’ll be able to buy and sell the notes like equities and even use portions of them as tips. Reddit is also hiring a cryptocurrency head, which suggests that top posts may soon see more than an upvote given out as thanks. |
Apple Responds To BBC Panorama’s Portrayal Of Supplier Conditions | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Apple was the subject of a , which presented as part of its findings various instances where suppliers of the Mac maker violated Apple’s own stated standards for its partners. The breaches reported by the BBC included problems at Pegatron factories outside Shanghai, as well as issues at the bottom level of the supply chain, in Indonesian tin mining operations. The BBC’s report details issues including overcrowding at Pegatron dormitories, involuntary overtime, underage workers and excessively long work weeks. The mining operations in Indonesia describe operations that essentially gather tin without any kind of organized mining operation in place, which is then sold piecemeal to smelters to make up the material they provide further up the chain to component makers. In response, Apple issued some official statements on the record, detailing its track record in improving conditions at supplier facilities, and its continued efforts to do so. Apple has never claimed perfect adherence to its supplier policies, and in fact updates its website regularly to provide a current look at compliance. It details issues that it finds at suppliers in its own reports, and outlines the steps it undertakes to resolve them. A lengthy internal email obtained by , which TechCrunch has confirmed with its own sources is legitimate, provides a much more detailed response to the BBC’s conclusions. The letter is penned by Apple SVP of Operations Jeff Williams, and says directly that both he and Apple CEO Tim Cook were “deeply offended” by the accusations made by the British network’s program. Williams’ letter notes that Apple has never denied that tin from illegal sources makes its way into its products, and that in fact the company has admitted as much on the record previously. Apple’s philosophy around this is that by continuing to allow their suppliers to buy from Indonesia, they can push to improve working conditions, whereas closing off the area entirely won’t do anything to address the ongoing problems, as component makers further up the supply chain for other companies (and perhaps for Apple, without its knowledge, for that matter) will continue to use tin that’s illegally sourced. The letter also addresses the reports regarding factory conditions at Pegatron’s facilities; Williams says that problems being identified doesn’t condemn Apple’s practices, but is rather part of their ongoing attempt to audit and improve supplier facility conditions. He highlights some of the positive change they’ve enabled, including much-improved compliance with the company’s 60-hour maximum work week policy, and the identification and disbanding of groups that purport to find people work, only to hold worker passports in exchange for a portion of their wages. The BBC’s undercover reporters have definitely shed more light on conditions in factories at Asian suppliers, and the serious problems that remain, but some of the damning visuals accompanying the piece may depict signs that actually reflect recent improvements in conditions, though they don’t appear that way when viewed through a North American lens. Sleeping workers, for instance, could actually reflect something that recently reported as a newfound benefit afforded workers, who previously worked longer hours and were punished severely for napping at their desks. Ultimately, even that kind of relative “improvement” in conditions still leaves workers at these facilities far worse off than their North American counterparts. But Apple’s recent practices with respect to transparency under Cook does seem to indicate a genuine commitment to continued improvement: Suppliers were never even officially acknowledged or named until January of 2012. Regardless, there’s clearly still a lot of work left to be done. |
Gillmor Gang LIVE 12.19.14 | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | – Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Alexia Tsotsis, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. |
Facebook Has So Much To Announce, Its f8 Conference Expands To 2 Days In SF March 25-26 2015 | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Facebook has more news to share at than can fit in a single day, so it’s adding a second for its developer conference now slated for at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center. Registration for the first two-day f8 will open in early 2015, but developers hoping to attend can of when they can vy for tickets. Facebook explains the expansion, telling me “Facebook’s developer community is bigger today than it ever has been. The scope of the company’s products has broadened, and there’s more content to share than can fit into a single day. The additional day means double the number of technical sessions, product demos, and onsite experiences for Facebook’s growing developer community.” Facebook’s previous f8 conferences includes the ones it held in 2011 and 2014 at the Concourse center in SF were all single day affairs. Last year’s was including its Audience Network mobile ad network, anonymous login, the App Links deep linking framework, the mobile Like button, and a massive reduction in what data about people’s friends apps are allowed to pull from users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg also announced the conference would now happen every year rather than every few years like before. Similar to other big developer conferences like Google I/O, the events typically start with a a keynote full of news in the morning, then continue with deep dive info sessions and hands-on demos to teach developers how to use the new tools at their fingertips. While we don’t know anything for sure, expect new developer capabilities, improvements to Facebook’s advertising system, and an expansion of the Parse mobile-backend-as-a-service development platform. Yesterday, to fund expansion of its mobile analytics service that lets developers track everything users do in their apps, and even predict what they do next. I suspect Parse’s analytics, currently much more basic than MixPanel’s, will get a big upgrade. This ties into Facebook’s Build-Grow-Monetize strategy outlined at last year’s f8. Facebook provides Parse, social login, and sharing features to help developers Build powerful apps. Through viral distribution and Facebook’s own ads and off-site ad networks assist developers seeking to Grow their userbases. Then once they’re big enough, apps can host Facebook’s auto-fill ecommerce checkout feature or host ads through the Audience Network to monetize. Expect Facebook to strengthen each part of this sequence as it tries to . |
EDI Is Trying To Kickstart The Classic Dive Watch | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Two entrepreneurs and engineers have taken to to fund a new line of dive watches, EDI. The watches, in addition to looking just a bit like sword-hand divers of the early Blancpain era, use an EDI E-353 automatic movement with self-winding features, as well as a handsome steel case. What’s truly interesting, however, is the provenance. Almost none of this watch is European, a serious departure for any watchmaker. The movement is designed to “EDI specifications” in a Liaocheng factory while the case, face and band are also milled in China. Most die-hards would sniff at this but we must remember that even venerable Panerai was once only assembled in Switzerland but mostly manufactured in Asia. The creators, Philip Allen and Richard Harrison, designed the watch at their HQ in Spain and outsourced the manufacturing. The result is a classic-looking diver with three face colors, screw-down crown, and a micro-adjusting strap for wearing with wet suits. The price, in CAD, comes out to be about $500 US and they’re looking for an ambitious $180,000 to fund the project. Chinese-made divers are, in truth, a dime a dozen. You can find hundreds of examples on eBay and Alibaba. However, if this team is working with a solid manufacturer to custom specifications, then we’re talking about an entirely different watch. As I learned from playing the , great craftsmanship is great craftsmanship, wherever it happens. I think the guys at EDI have taken this to heart. |
All Day Raises $2 Million To Be A Media Portal For The Twitter Generation | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Would-be media moguls take heart: with nothing more than a Twitter handle and a dream, you can raise capital to become the next or , or . All it takes is a knack for viral content, 2.15 million followers on , and a core team of (incredibly) . Then you too could be raising $2 million from investors including , and — but then, you’d be . If Buzzfeed is the poster child media company of the Facebook generation, then perhaps All Day (which culls its content from a slew of wildly popular Twitter feeds like and ) might be its Twitter corollary. Despite all of the whingeing, hand-wringing, and worrying about the death of media businesses, venture capitalists seem more willing than ever to put money behind new brands. Including the behemoth $500 million financing for Vice earlier this year, new media properties pitching online content have raised at least $645 million. In December alone, investors poured $70 million into Vox Media, Bustle, and Woven. News that bodes well for the three founders of All Day. Launched by the 31-year-old Eric Damier, and his co-founders Xavier Di Petta and Kyle Cameron, ages 18 and 20, and Jai Bugarin the 33-year-old former strategy officer at Maker Studios, All Day was on track to make over $1 million per month from the monetization of its clicks, . Their accounts are now feeding into as the main landing page, and the goal, according to Damier, is to expand to 60 to 70 million followers by 2015 for its Twitter, Instagram, and other social media accounts to 300 million to 400 million unique followers across all social media platforms. “[Damier’s] got one of the best sensibilities for building a social media brand since [Buzzfeed and Huffington Post’s] Jonah Peretti,” says Mark Suster, a partner with Upfront Ventures, who’s backed the media company Maker Studios, . Behind the traffic, All Day has another business cooking, which is a tool for advertisers to bid on ad placements throughout its accounts. For Damier, the new funding round is just another step in what’s been a long road to the executive seat. The serial entrepreneur, who’d spent a year-and-a-half in high school and college living out of his car, first met Di Petta and Cameron through a mutual contact who had been impressed with the work all three were doing on social engagement for YouTube channels in 2008 and 2009. Success on YouTube led to a gig with Machinima, and Damier and his co-founders moved from YouTube to Twitter and other nascent social media platforms. “Initially the idea was, ‘Hey, let’s grow our audience on Facebook and Twitter to increase the audience for our YouTube channels,'” Damier said. “But we started getting approached by brands and agencies. That was the first lightbulb that went off that we could make money off of this stuff. Websites were saying they’d be willing to pay to promote some of their articles on our feed.” Damier’s path to running a media business was a bit circuitous and by no means assured, beginning when he dropped out of Glendale Community College and took a job as a life insurance agent for Citigroup. From there he went into real estate, before starting up an unsuccessful gaming technology company. The gaming startup led to YouTube and it was through the work with YouTube that Damier connected with his young co-founders. “The way that we see it, with Buzzfeed, Vox, and Woven the whole SEO game has changed,” Damier says. “The access we have through these social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, means we’re doing big numbers. The new generation of media companies is engaging millennials in the social space, and that is different and we’ve sort of figured that out.” |
This Board Lets You Give Any Arduino Project Predator-Style Heat Vision | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Up until the last few years, heat-sensing cameras — think — were a thing that pretty much only the Army and the super rich got to play with. Then FLiR figured out how to make the required sensors tiny and (relatively) cheap, and the whole idea became considerably more accessible. Hell, you can get heat vision . Now, with this tiny board, you can bring heat vision into any of your Arduino/Raspberry Pi DIY projects. At $350, it’s one of the more expensive Arduino accessories you can buy. Relative to the prices for something similar a decade ago, though, it’s a steal — it’d be 5-10x the price, at least 5x the size, and you’d probably have to order them in bulk in a licensing deal as opposed to as a one-off sensor like this. The price might seem high, but that hasn’t kept them from selling: Hours after , the boards are already back-ordered. There are a few catches, though: at a resolution of just 80×60 (not 800×600. 80×60.), the images this thing pulls aren’t exactly beautiful. In implementations like that aforementioned iPhone case, they overlay the heat-vision image over a greyscale, higher-res image from a more traditional camera, which helps pretty things up a bit. You’ll also need to do a of manual assembly (attaching the thermal camera to the breakout board), so you probably want to be comfortable with a soldering iron before diving in here. You can find the (back-ordered) |
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: BlackBerry, Bar-Tending Robots, And Drones | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Christmas is around the corner, and thus, this podcast is especially merry. BlackBerry recently , in the BlackBerry Classic. We’re also seeing an uptick in , which leads us to wonder if there has ever really been a lot of difficulty in making yourself a drink. And . Because if you compare the market to last year, there are many options out there now. We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the featuring , , and . Have a good Friday, everybody!
We invite you to enjoy our every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right .
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Intro Music by . |
Tesla To Begin Model S Battery Swap Pilot Program Next Week | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Tesla showed off its upcoming battery swapping technology for the Model S electric vehicle last year, which would let users change out their battery rather than charging when on the road for a quick fill-up that’s speedier than actually refuelling a standard car’s gas tank. Starting next week, it’s launching the of that advancement in Harris Ranch, California, at a new facility directly across the street from the Supercharger in that area. The pilot project is just that – an initial demonstration of how the system will work, designed to test the technical aspects of the procedure, and to see if it’s something Tesla drivers actually want. Unlike a recharge of their car’s existing battery pack, the swap won’t be free: instead it will cost “slightly less than a full tank of gasoline for a premium sedan,” according to Tesla’s official blog post on the matter. That could change in the future, but the swap involves labor and facility costs that charging does not. Swaps also require setting an appointment in advance, and the process currently takes three minutes, although Tesla anticipates a time when it could take a minute or less. But continued development, and wider rollout, will once again depend on Model S owner interest. For some, the cost of tank of gas might be a primary reason for owning an electric vehicle, but something tells me Tesla’s more rarefied clientele could indeed get excited about trading that extra cash for a little more convenience, especially on long trips. |
Obama Says Sony Made A Mistake In Canceling “The Interview” Release | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Disagree with Sony’s decision to pull The Interview from theaters? So does President Barack Obama. In a statement during a press conference this afternoon, President Obama said: “I am sympathetic to the concerns that [Sony] faced. Having said all that, yes, they made a mistake. We cannot have a society where a dictator someplace else can start imposing censorship here in the United States. That’s not who we are. That’s not what America is.” He continues: “I’m sympathetic that Sony as a private company was worried about liability, but I wish they’d spoken to me first. I would’ve told them do not get into a pattern in which you are intimidated by those kinds of criminal attacks “We can’t start changing our behaviors, any more then we’d stop going to football games because of the possibility of a terrorist attack.” |
Canary Home Security System Has Finally Started Shipping | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | , the $250, all-in-one home security system that caught the attention of our hearts and minds back in 2013, has finally started shipping. The device launched on Indiegogo back in July of 2013, with a goal of $100,000. By the time the campaign had ended, Canary had in pre-orders. After selling around 15,000 units, Canary turned off pre-orders and went head-down on manufacturing. But not before scooping up from Khosla Ventures. For the past few months, around 500 people have been using early Canary hardware to give feedback and test the device in a very closed beta. After tweaking and getting units built, the company is now shipping the super affordable home security system. Canary works by simply plugging in and sitting on a shelf. Equipped with motion sensors, a camera, and a number of sensors for air-quality, smoke, etc. Canary keeps an eye on your house whether you’re there or not. The software is able to sense the difference between a dog, your kid, and an intruder, and send notifications directly to your phone. records a clip each time the motion sensor is activated, giving users the option to help Canary figure out the difference between you and a bad guy. Plus, it gives you a glimpse into the goings on of your home while you’re gone, including your kid playing in the kitchen or your wife having lunch. With the shipping plan in place, all US-based Indiegogo backers will get their Canary in January, along all US pre-orders that were placed before December 2014. If you want to learn more about Canary, head over to the . Or check out the video below. [vimeo 93289352 w=640 h=360] from on . |
null | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 10 | null |
Facebook Messenger Shows Its New Speed With FacePile Read Receipts | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Milliseconds make a difference when it comes to chat. The less lag, the more it feels like being in the same room. But with texting, we lost the cues like nods and “mmhmm”s that tell you someone heard what you said. Today takes a leap forward on both fronts with across all its versions, and a new animation that shows you whether your message is sending, sent, delivered, or read. And rather than some tiny gray text, Messenger uses your photos of your friends’ faces to show exactly who in the convo has seen what, the company tells me. Facebook originally came up with the FacePile design about five years ago for a that showed which of your friends Liked a website. Now it’s found to repurpose the design to let you know at a glance who has seen your messages. The new Messenger design is now rolling out on iOS and Android in Europe and the US, and will go worldwide soon. You can see how the read receipts work in this quick demo video: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byRmBN2QUxc] “What were really want is Messenger to feel like the fastest and most reliable mobile messaging product” Product Manager Lexy Franklin tells me. “We’ve done a lot of work on performance on the backend, reducing end-to-end latency…to improve efficiency on all device types.” David Marcus, Facebook’s new head of Messenger and former PayPal president, explains speed is critical, saying “while most people don’t think about it, they can feel it”. Facebook hopes doubling down on the core experience of chat will give it an edge as it fights a global war for messaging. WeChat, KakaoTalk, Kik, and more are all racing to be the quickest, slickest chat app. Simultaneously, Facebook has to fend off richer communication tools like Snapchat’s visual messaging, Line’s stickers, Google’s video chat, and Twitter’s worldwide town square. Some of its competitors may try to squeeze money out of messaging directly, but after chatting with Marcus, it seems like Facebook’s strategy for now is to focus on utility that drives lock-in to its whole social platform. Facebook makes plenty of money from ads in its News Feed, it just needs to keep people bouncing around its blue and white apps. That’s the same reason Facebook today launched , a companion app for pasting stickers on top of photos and sending them to friends. It doesn’t monetize directly, at least not yet, but if it can make people use Messenger more, they’ll probably use Facebook more, and see more ads. FacePile read receipts help with group chats, as they show who in the conversation has seen what message. Here two friends have made it as far as “delivered” while one has looked at the most recent message “and seen”. In October, we scored screenshots showing . I’ve learned from a source that that feature is still in development, with a “$” button on Messenger’s compose screen that lets you send money to friend. But while at first I imagined Facebook’s putting a tax on those payments to earn revenue, perhaps even challenging the remittance industry that charges migrant workers exorbitant fees to send money home to their families. It increasingly seems like Facebook will try to offer payments for free to boost usage and loyalty to Messenger. It’s biggest competitor is still SMS, so any value it can add beyond what texting offers will help Messenger grow. Franklin admits “There are tons of things we’re thinking about so we can create cool experience.” First thing’s first, though. Make messenger the fastest and clearest way to chat. Facebook might want you to spend as much time as possible on News Feed. But Franklin says the goal of Messenger and its new read receipts is to let you send a message and know it was delivered as quickly as possible so you can put your phone back in your pocket. That way you can go back to living. |
Canonical’s “Snappy Ubuntu” Lands On AWS | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Canonical’s stripped down “ ” edition of Ubuntu Core is now available on Amazon’s AWS cloud computing platform. If you’ve followed along over the last few weeks, that’s not a major surprise. Snappy first on Microsoft Azure at the beginning of this month and then arrived on Google’s Compute Engine platform earlier . It was pretty obvious that AWS’s EC2 would be next. If you’re a developer on AWS, you can now use Canonical’s Ubuntu Core machine image to quickly launch a new Snappy instance. Because of the way Snappy works, it only supports hardware virtual machines (HVMs) on EC2. By default, Snappy doesn’t come with any frameworks or apps installed in order to keep the image as small as possible. Installing apps on Snappy is a bit different from the usual apt-get you may be used to on Linux because Canonical has developed its own system for app installs that isolates the different packages you install . This also means that Snappy can do to ensure that a failed update can never bring your system down (because it can always roll back to the old version). While you could run a standalone Snappy-based server, it’s really meant for large containerized installs and that’s where the advantage of a minimalist and secure system like this comes into play. “Ubuntu Core builds on the world’s favourite container platform and provides transactional updates with rigorous application isolation,” Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said when Snappy launched. “This is the smallest, safest platform for Docker deployment ever, and with snappy packages, it’s completely extensible to all forms of container or service.” If you’re interested in giving it a try, for getting started with Snappy on AWS. |
Facebook Launches Separate “Stickered” For Messenger App That Lets You Paste Images On Your Photos | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | Today a new app called “Stickered” For that lets you pick a photo, resize and paste a Facebook Sticker on top, and send it to friends. “Stickers and photos are two of the most popular ways that people express themselves on Messenger. This is a fun experiment to see how people combine the two” the company tells me. Built by Facebook’s Creative Labs mobile design studio, it’s the first companion app for Messenger. and . It comes out alongside . Facebook is also dabbling with Snapchat-style frames you can overlay on your photos. On New Year’s Eve, the in Messenger will let you add a New Year’s-themed frame over your photo, similar to what you might get out of a physical photo booth machine. Snapchat released its “filters” that overlay graphics or the name of the place you’re in July, and they’ve proven popular. Facebook has and from Snapchat before, so it’s not too big of a surprise to see it planning a filter/frame experiment in Messenger. Additional updates rolling out today on Messenger include holiday sticker packs seen below and an animation that turns Chat Heads on Android into little snow globes. With Stickered for Messenger [Correction: not “Stickers”] you first tap the camera button to snap or select one of your photos. You can then choose from hundreds of Facebook Stickers, move them around, tilt and resize them, and then fix them to your photo. Hitting the Messenger icon then sends fast-switches you over to the Messenger app where you can choose which friends to send your little creation to. Drawing on photos became popular over the last few years thanks to Snapchat. Facebook jumped on trend in June with the release of ephemeral photo sharing app , and then in September added to photos in Messenger For Android. Facebook tells me the idea for the app spawned from a commercial and billboard ad campaign Facebook ran in Los Angeles promoting Messenger with people interacting with Stickers in real life. That got Facebook thinking harder about the fun people could have with overlays. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMJvw-RfTEI] Stickered isn’t trying to make money directly, at least not yet. But if it can drive lock-in for Messenger in the extremely competitive chat space, it might lead people to use Facebook more as a whole, including the News Feed where the social network shows ads. While some humans have a way with words, other prefer images to get their point across. Tools like Stickered could give Messenger an edge in the chat app wars, while making its biggest competitor, SMS, look even more ancient. |
Apparently The Bitcoin Bowl Is A Real Thing That’s Happening Right Now | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uA4KO2EEBU&w=560&h=315] When , I assumed it was a joke, or maybe a weird startup publicity stunt. It turns out that yes, the Bitcoin Bowl is promoting , a bitcoin-processing startup — but it’s also real college football game that’s underway as I write this on Friday evening. Yes, one day you’ll be able to tell your kids about the very first bitcoin-sponsored football game. And I’m guessing they’ll just roll their eyes at you, either because this kind of thing has become ubiquitous, or because they have no freaking idea what bitcoin is. Anyway, here in the present, I’ve been following some of the conversation around the game via , which presents a nice mix of sports commentary and bitcoin jokes. I also checked out for, ahem, the “Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl,” which mostly looks like your run-of-the-mill college football website, while also featuring videos explaining . The aim, presumably, is to introduce a mainstream audience to bitcoin, but I like the idea that the reverse could be true, with at least handful of bitcoin fans checking out college football for the first time. See, for example, on bitcoin news website Coin Telegraph that explains the game to people who are watching even though they “don’t know anything about the teams and players.” (Personally, I’m mystified by both bitcoin and football, so I’m sitting this one out.) This is the first bitcoin-related sponsorship of a televised U.S. sporting event, but as when the four-year deal with ESPN Events was announced in June, earlier this year. Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s something inherently giggle-inducing about the phrase Bitcoin Bowl — but no more so than the game’s previous moniker, “Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl.” Anyway, it looks like BitPay (which I hear ) succeeded in getting people talking. |
Thumb Typing Is Changing Our Brains | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | Smartphones are changing us, at least according to researchers at the Institute of Neuroinformatics of the University of Zurich. It seems that as we moved from phones with buttons – BlackBerrys and even feature phones – the parts of our brain associated with the thumbs are changing thanks to increased screen typing activity. In short, when we use smartphones our brains show more activity in the parts associated with the thumb – not a surprising thing – but this reaction only happened in users of touchscreen phones. From the : Ghosh was also able to demonstrate that the frequency of Smartphone usage influences cortical activity. The more the Smartphone had been used in the previous ten days, the greater the signal in the brain. This correlation was the strongest, i.e. proportional, in the area that represented the thumb. The scientists studied “37 right-handed people, of whom 26 were touchscreen Smartphone users and 11 users of old cellphones.” They found that cortical brain activity in the area associated with thumb control was higher in the touchscreen users. This actually points to similar findings in violinists whose brains change as they get better at the instrument. Does this mean you’ll get a super brain if you keep tapping away on your iPhone? Probably not, but it does sound like what we tap affects how we think. |
The FBI Blames North Korea For Sony Hack | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | The FBI has on the North Korean government for the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack which resulted in the theft of mass amounts of personal and commercial data, as well as the shut down of Sony Pictures work computers. A group calling itself the “Guardians of Peace” had claimed responsibility. In the FBI’s full official statement, which is now at its official website, the agency details how it arrived at these findings. Its investigation involved analysis of the technical details of the data wiping malware used by the hackers, which it compared against previous malware known to have originated in North Korea, as well as other similarities in the tactics and infrastructure between this attack and prior ones confirmed to involve North Korea. The statement doesn’t go into granular detail, but the FBI likely wants to keep a lot of the nuts and bolts of its investigation, as well as the details of its response, close to its chest. You can read the full statement below: Today, the FBI would like to provide an update on the status of our investigation into the cyber attack targeting Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE). In late November, SPE confirmed that it was the victim of a cyber attack that destroyed systems and stole large quantities of personal and commercial data. A group calling itself the “Guardians of Peace” claimed responsibility for the attack and subsequently issued threats against SPE, its employees, and theaters that distribute its movies. The FBI has determined that the intrusion into SPE’s network consisted of the deployment of destructive malware and the theft of proprietary information as well as employees’ personally identifiable information and confidential communications. The attacks also rendered thousands of SPE’s computers inoperable, forced SPE to take its entire computer network offline, and significantly disrupted the company’s business operations. After discovering the intrusion into its network, SPE requested the FBI’s assistance. Since then, the FBI has been working closely with the company throughout the investigation. Sony has been a great partner in the investigation, and continues to work closely with the FBI. Sony reported this incident within hours, which is what the FBI hopes all companies will do when facing a cyber attack. Sony’s quick reporting facilitated the investigators’ ability to do their jobs, and ultimately to identify the source of these attacks. As a result of our investigation, and in close collaboration with other U.S. government departments and agencies, the FBI now has enough information to conclude that the North Korean government is responsible for these actions. While the need to protect sensitive sources and methods precludes us from sharing all of this information, our conclusion is based, in part, on the following: We are deeply concerned about the destructive nature of this attack on a private sector entity and the ordinary citizens who worked there. Further, North Korea’s attack on SPE reaffirms that cyber threats pose one of the gravest national security dangers to the United States. Though the FBI has seen a wide variety and increasing number of cyber intrusions, the destructive nature of this attack, coupled with its coercive nature, sets it apart. North Korea’s actions were intended to inflict significant harm on a U.S. business and suppress the right of American citizens to express themselves. Such acts of intimidation fall outside the bounds of acceptable state behavior. The FBI takes seriously any attempt—whether through cyber-enabled means, threats of violence, or otherwise—to undermine the economic and social prosperity of our citizens. The FBI stands ready to assist any U.S. company that is the victim of a destructive cyber attack or breach of confidential business information. Further, the FBI will continue to work closely with multiple departments and agencies as well as with domestic, foreign, and private sector partners who have played a critical role in our ability to trace this and other cyber threats to their source. Working together, the FBI will identify, pursue, and impose costs and consequences on individuals, groups, or nation states who use cyber means to threaten the United States or U.S. interests. Today Sony reportedly received emails from the hackers that essentially congratulated them on their decision to cancel the premiere of the ‘The Interview’, the low-brow comedy in which Seth Rogen and James Franco play characters assigned to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. Said movie was cited as the reason behind the initial attack, and today’s FBI report on the source of the hack suggests the Rogen/Franco romp did indeed provoke this international incident. |
Build Your Own DIY Raspberry Pi Minecraft Server | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | As we approach the doldrums of winter what could be more cheerful than hours of incessant Minecrafting with you and your loved ones? While you can easily run a server on any computer (the program requires a server app to run in conjunction with a client “game” app), why not use your newly acquired Raspberry Pi? I don’t know! This essentially tells you how to make a Minecraft Server in a few easy steps and, with a little effort, port forward that server so you and your friends can connect to it remotely. You should note that but if you’ve picked up a RaspPi for Christmas it might make a fun afternoon project for you and the wee ones. After all, why lay around all day watching The Wire when you and your kids can smash Creepers and herd pigs? |
Market Corrections, Partnerships And The Sports Unicorn In 2015 | Benjamin Chen | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | This year we’ve seen major acquisitions in the connected home space, tons of chatter around #bendgate, AI entered center stage with Cortana and Amazon’s Echo, and Kim Kardashian is now available in app form. But that’s enough of looking back. Here is what I predict 2015 will bring. Over the past few years, we have seen Wall Street valuing gaming companies as high growth internet stocks because of their rapid consumer adoption and ability to generate revenue from its core user base. But the mobile gaming industry has reached maturation. The days of blue skies and endless funds are behind us, and 2015 will bring an execution-focused mindset to the space. As gaming companies mature, they bear a striking resemblance to traditional media companies. They focus on brand building, IP creation and licensing to scale. Because of this focus, the market will need to start valuing gaming companies for what they are: next generation media companies. The U.S. can look East to Asia’s market for directional guidance. For example, filed for IPO in Tokyo and received a $900M valuation based on the strength of its multi-faceted media business. Gaming companies will continue to control their own destinies and start revaluating their current market position in order to recreate this level of success on American soil. The so called “killer app” will remain elusive as more early- to mid-stage companies realize that they aren’t solving more than one to two core problems in their respective fields. Startups will start asking themselves if they are really just a feature or if they are a true business. To stay afloat, they will start banding together to produce a more holistic offering for a customer, knowing that they alone cannot rule every facet of a user’s life. Sure we will see some market consolidation, but the focus will be on joint ventures and partnerships that will benefit the end user. We are shifting from a “build or buy” to “build or partner” mentality. We’ve already begun to see this shake out in 2014. Look at Uber and Spotify, who teamed up to let users become backseat DJs on their rides home. There is also Snapchat and Square, who partnered together to create Snapcash. The companies who will benefit the most from these collaborations will be those who have a great feature or product without the means of penetrating the mass market. A word to the wise for all the tech founders out there: Find three other startups that are complementary to you and start talking partnerships. And finally, what would tech predictions be if not without a curveball. There’s a pun in here somewhere. The (more) bold prediction is that the sports industry will produce the next tech unicorn. It won’t be a team, but rather a supporting service provider or platform that caters to the industry. Think about it. Sporting events provide the biggest opportunity to reach a massive audience all doing the same thing at the same time. Layer on a , and the possibilities are endless for disruption – both in terms of hardware and software. Geofencing at sports venues will provide scaling opportunities, and a highly qualified – and not to mention, passionate – audience. This will be the most qualified audience for advertisers to reach — ever. You can see what they buy, what they eat, where they sit and more. If a tech company can figure out how to enhance the in-person gaming experience, it could prove very lucrative. Fantasy sports will also be heading to the next level as daily competitions like FanDuel and Draft Kings will continue to scale and online sports retailers like Fanatics will be catapulted into the billion dollar ecommerce club. These are just a few of my predictions. What do you think 2015 will bring? |
TC GameCast Episode 3: Open Worlds And Picking A Gaming PC | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | This week we’ve got a very special, very delayed episode of the TechCrunch GameCast. For the first half, , , and chatted about open-world games, noting the best of side quests, getting around, and keeping things from getting too stale. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/183270108″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /] Our chat ran the gamut from Pokémon contests in Ruby and Sapphire to swinging around New York City in 2004’s . For the third week in a row, Far Cry 4 came up as an example of how to do things right, with some disagreement over how repetitive the randomly-generated events really are. In the latter half of the podcast, Ed and I discuss my recent purchase of the Alienware Alpha gaming/media center PC-console hybrid (with a brief digression to talk about how awful the Oculus Rift can be to use). In , I said that I think it’s a great way to cheaply buy into gaming for those who don’t already have a decent desktop setup. Here, we elaborated more on what it’s like to integrate into a home media suite and to share a miniature PC with roommates. I also gave some more thoughts on the minutiae of playing various games on the Alpha (every gaming PC has its quirks) and we compared the $799 gadget to Ed’s new 1 . We capped off the conversation with our quick takes on what the Alpha means about the future of . To get an idea of the kind of performance you’d get out of the Alpha (and the similarly-specced ROG), you can check out some of my quick looks of various games on the system from : [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwRwqBK53Fs?list=PLIwTsM_lzZfv_tkpH1_m60WekpR_mNMnz&w=560&h=315] |
Mouthguards, Magnets And Smart Helmets Are Putting The Brakes On Traumatic Brain Injuries | Tishin Donkersley | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | On beautiful green fields around the U.S., college and professional football players are facing up to 100Gs of rapid deceleration from helmet-to-helmet collisions each week. The result? Concussions and, sometimes, permanent brain injury. Players who stay in the game post-concussion have sparked a national conversation about player safety and the lack of diagnosis on the sidelines. The NFL has been the biggest target. Former professional players filed a accusing the organization of concealing knowledge of long-term health effects from concussions and failing to protect players’ health; and as of this post, they are awaiting the judge’s ruling on a $765 million settlement. Colleges are also in the spotlight for their questionable judgment. In September, University of Michigan football coach Brady Hoke left his quarterback in the game after a concussion. One tragic event surrounds Ohio State University football player , a defensive lineman with a history of sports-related concussions, who was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound last month. Prior to his death, Karageorge texted his mom citing his concussions and said “I am sorry if I am an embarrassment.” This tragedy is still under investigation and an ordered an examination of his brain to discover indications of traumatic brain injury. Research shows that 60 percent of football collisions are head-to-head, with 37 percent of helmet-to-helmet impacts occurring in the front, 36 percent in the back, and the remainder on the sides from a rotational force. Professional players will take an average of 900 to 1,500 blows to the head during a season. A concussion occurs when the head is whiplashed or receives a blow that causes our three-pound brains, which normally float around in a cushion of fluid, to slam violently against the skull. On the field, many concussions occur at 100Gs of force when two players running at an average of 20 MPH collide, and all motion stops within a short amount of time (10-15 milliseconds), except the brain, which keeps moving and absorbing that force. According to medical experts, helmets are designed to reduce the risk of severe, traumatic brain and skull injuries. While helmets may reduce the risk of some concussions, they cannot and do not prevent concussions altogether. In fact, even with a helmet, a player is still at risk for brain injuries even with lower-impact collisions. Fortunately, technology such as sensors and magnets are being weaved into the designs of new personal equipment with the intent to detect, disperse, displace and absorb force and further reduce the risk of brain injury in impact sports. The exact origin of mouthguards is unknown but early designs from the 1890s spawned from the sport of boxing, and were strictly for protection of an athlete’s teeth. Cotton, tape or small pieces of wood were used to protect boxers’ pearly whites. Fast forward, and the athletic dental chew toy has evolved into a rubberized Boil and Bite for use in over 29 sports as a mouth protector and a concussion preventative. Modern day mouthguards may reduce the risk of concussion but are becoming even more technologically advanced. Recent designs include accelerometers, gyroscopes and built-in sensors that can gather real-time data about the force of an on-field collision, and instantly alert coaches and doctors about a potential injury. Force Impact Technologies was co-founded by Anthony Gonzales, a former rugby player who incurred a concussion from a multiplayer collision. With co-founder Bob Merriman, they designed the FITGuard, a head-injury awareness mouthguard for youth athletes. On impact, the measures and visually displays the amount of force incurred through the illumination of LED on the front of the mouthguard. Based on pre-established thresholds, the lights change color depending on the force, signaling the possibility of a concussion. Real-time data and alerts about the impact – linear and angular accelerations as well as the duration of the hit – are sent wirelessly to the sideline staff through the app. The company also sends players’ impact data to a centralized database which can be downloaded by a user or coach. Force Impact Technologies recently showcased FITGuard at TechCrunch Disrupt, and is projected to be available spring 2015. is working on its Vector MouthGuard, which measures intracranial impact data and sends information in real-time to mobile devices. While this mouthguard doesn’t have a grill that lights up, the protruding piece is part of a circuit board that measures sudden changes in linear and rotational acceleration of the head that may result in brain injury, and is currently being beta-tested through a football research and engineering partnership with Louisiana State University. The most important and obvious protective device in football is the helmet, and here we’ve seen an evolution from traditional soft leather to polycarbonate with a face mask to models that talk to mobile devices. Earlier this year, Riddell released , a helmet loaded with a five-zone sensor pad that measures linear and rotational acceleration and location and duration of an impact. Upon impact, the helmet automatically sends notifications wirelessly to sideline staff about a player’s collision. While some high-tech solutions are helping coaches identify players who may have incurred an injury, others are working to reduce the magnitude of those injuries. If you’ve ever pressed two negative sides of magnets together, you’ve felt a repelling force. a professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, has developed an alternative retrofit solution for existing helmets to protect the noggin using the natural power of magnets to disperse energy upon impact. Colello spawned this idea while watching the Denver Broncos game in which wide receiver Wes Welker received his second, game-ending concussion. After the game, Colello made his way to the kitchen to grab a beer, saw the magnets on the refrigerator door and had an epiphany: “What if the repulsive force of magnets could put a brake on an impact before it even occurs?” Charging $1,000 to his credit card, Colello bought one of the strongest magnets commercially available. The magnet, made of the rare-earth element neodymium, can lift up to 600 lbs and repulse up to 130 lbs of force starting at 1.5 inches away – Colello found those properties perfect for short-range applications like head protection during helmet collisions. The magnets could potentially reduce the amount of G-forces by almost half, and ultimately mitigate the amount of Gs on the field, Colello explained. Colello has designed thin, curved magnets that can be retrofitted and placed inside the polycarbonate shell of the helmet in the highest impact areas, the front and side. “We are designing the magnets so that it will not be obtrusive – we can retrofit and have maximum effect,” he explained. Colello says the magnets weigh about one-third to a half pound each so, with the expectation of using one to three magnets per helmet, the retrofit would be within regulation for regular and smart helmets, with a little wiggle room if needed. But it’s an all or nothing deal. All players on the field need to use helmet magnets in order to benefit from the repulsion effect. While the trend for personal equipment in sports continues to involve technology and real-time data, Colello said that preventing or reducing concussions is an ongoing challenge and that establishing a baseline is even harder. “The players are getting bigger and stronger, and the hits are getting harder. Regardless of all the equipment and design changes, preventing concussions on the field is a moving target; and there continues to be an increase in concussions,” he said. Physicians tend to agree. Steven M. Erickson, M.D., FACP, Medical Director, in Phoenix, Ariz., explains, “There is never going to be an end all be all technology where every hit that meets a certain criteria equates to a concussion. Everyone has a different threshold to what their brain can sustain. The problem is that it’s not the quantity of the force, it’s the quality of the force that can lead to a concussion.” Colello’s helmet magnets are making their way to the Virginia Tech University laboratory with the “…ultimate goal to use the smart helmet system with our magnets and get real-time data [from players] as the game proceeds.” While player data is useful for measuring force impact, the embedded technology could inadvertently provide a false sense of security, creating more problems than good, explains Erickson. “Helmets don’t prevent concussions, only more serious injuries to the brain,” he said. For youth sports, Erickson encourages players to obtain a baseline test and most importantly to educate players about concussion symptoms, engage in strength training, and work with coaches who teach proper “heads up” tackling techniques. “Neck strength is important for preventing concussions, as well as being coached by someone who knows proper tackling techniques, thus using your body instead of your head as a weapon and ultimately reducing the number of impacts to the head,” Erickson states. With each concussion, players are twice as likely to suffer another concussion and six times as likely to suffer a third, explains Colello. These high-tech advances can’t prevent concussions from happening, but they are part of the overall solution to reduce the number of concussed players at all levels and getting them off the field before they cause further, even permanent damage, to themselves. |
The Drone That Could Save You From Drowning | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | Drones. They’ve earned something of a reputation for being buzzy little floating boxes of annoyance and privacy invasion, and the hordes of people unwrapping them this week into the nearest tree/power line/neighbor’s house probably won’t help. Slowly but surely, though, people are finding truly good, novel uses for them. Stopping Finding skiers And now… saving you from drowning? Called Project Ryptide, this is a self-inflating life preserver ring that snaps onto just about any drone capable of carrying a GoPro. Snap it in, fly your drone out to the person in peril, tap a button, and presto — as soon as the preserver hits the water, a CO2 cartridge dumps its contents and inflates the ring. Ryptide was built by with a group of students from the private school in Connecticut. They’re hoping to have this thing up on Kickstarter in the new year, with a model compatible with the super popular DJI Phantom drone going for $99. |
What 2014 Tech Products Made The Mom Cut? | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | Anthropology is the study of humans, and little fascinates me more than watching humans interact with technology. We express such a broad range of emotions when we use our gadgets and devices, from delight at a beautiful user experience to deep anger at error screens and lost data. , except far closer to home. For the five of you still reading, something far more fascinating is coming: how do parents interact with technology? , the holidays are a time for families to come together and for sons and daughters to offer their parents free technical support. This year was no different as I headed back to Michigan to setup all of the tech gifts that have accumulated over the past few months. The digital divide is not nearly as prominent in my home as it once was, but there is certainly a wide range of outcomes with different products. Clearly, the user experience revolution hasn’t touched every product equally, particularly when it comes to setting up a device or transitioning a new product from an old one. Here is a post-Christmas report from the Midwest, where the tech users live. is theoretically a revolution in the television viewing experience encapsulated in a tiny and inexpensive widget that attaches right to an HDMI port. Installation was not only ridiculously simple, but the device was also so intuitive that neither of my parents had to read the mostly non-existent documentation to figure out how to do it. While installation was easy, actual use of the device was anything but. Google has provided a Chromecast app for the iPad, but the app doesn’t really do anything other than handle basic configuration. Instead, users open other apps like YouTube and Netflix and then use a streaming button to choose the Chromecast as a destination. It’s nice to be able to start streaming right from the apps we already use, but this model was not intuitive. One issue that concerned my mother is that there is no way to “disconnect” the tablet from the Chromecast. When a movie finishes on Netflix, for instance, the app remains on the Chromecast screen. My mother was worried that the battery on her tablet would drain, and spent close to 30 minutes playing with Netflix until we realized that if you did nothing, it would go away after some time. It’s nice for this to happen automatically, but providing more explanation to the user would have been helpful. The cloud started to materialize in my parent’s house this year with the arrival of Dropbox. As the number of devices has proliferated with each holiday and birthday, so has the need to keep files in a centralized location which can be shared. Installation was tricky here. My parents, unsurprisingly, were very worried about their files being moved around, given that they have had data loss in the past. There are deep issues with trust at work here, and Dropbox only met them part way during the installation and setup to make them feel comfortable with its technology. With some help from me, they were able to understand how the system worked, and now they have at least some files stored there. One issue that came up early, and one I have struggled with as well, is that apps that use Dropbox as their storage engine often ask for permissions to your entire Dropbox repository. While I understand that applications on a laptop have full access to a hard disk, and thus Dropbox is not a regression in security, it seems like there has to be a better model that would allow my parents and I to move our financial documents to the cloud without allowing every application access. My parents are 12 year customers of TiVo, although that might change following the purchase of TiVo’s new . My mother has setup dozens of shows and recordings on her previous TiVo, and wanted to transition these settings to the new Roamio. First, we discovered that when we setup the last box on the phone with TiVo’s customer support, the support agent had created multiple TiVo billing accounts. TiVo strangely only allows you to move settings between TiVos on the same billing account, so we had to merge the two accounts together. So far so good, but in order to move our data to a new TiVo, it must be activated and have service. TiVo’s support agent transferred the service between our two TiVos. However, we discovered that this service merging prevents us from moving settings from the previous box, which the support agent never mentioned to us. Worse, when we inquired to a new agent, we were told to simply retype in all of our settings. My mother was nearly in tears, since she has dozens of “Season Passes” for her TV shows and it would take hours of typing in show names with the remote to get it back to work. We called TiVo again, and another support agent said they are going to find a way to re-split the service so that we can transfer the settings. That was two days ago, and we still don’t have the accounts split. This should go without saying, but transitioning customers from previous products to new products should be absolutely seamless. On that count, TiVo flunked. My present to my parents was a drone, specifically the starter UDI U818A Quadcopter. This model is definitely not the most user-friendly unit in existence, but we managed to get it flying around the house before crashing it into the wall and chipping off some paint. The manual provided in the box is definitely a raw translation job (“Please do not play the UFO when you are tired or off color, which will add the posibility [sic] of danger like improper control”). While we haven’t been able to get the camera working, my father seems deeply committed to getting this working and trying it out. To me, that is the most important lesson of my little respite in the Midwest. When people are really excited about what a device can do, they can really push through the frustration and instruction models to eventually get that device to work. Transitioning between products will never have that same excitement, and therefore are far more vulnerable to the accumulation of little frustrations. Onboarding is a critical skill set for startups looking to grow, and those skills need to be developed by hardware manufacturers if they want their products to be easily adopted by all consumers. |
Amazon’s 2014 Holiday Sees Mobile Shopping Approach 60% Of Total Volume | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | Amazon stuck with its mystery theme for this year’s , saying things like “record-breaking” and “record growth” without really talking about actual solid numbers or dollars. The company did reveal some stats that, even surrounded by an obscuring fog of relative terms, are worth paying attention to. The company signed up over 10 million new Amazon Prime members (and 10+ million is an actual, quantifiable number) and the ecommerce giant saw almost 60 percent of shopper activity come from mobile platforms, including its native apps and mobile websites. Last year, Amazon reported that more than half of its customers were using mobile devices to shop, so there’s relatively little change with this year’s total only ‘approaching’ 60 percent. Still, both represent a huge change from prior holiday shopping seasons, indicating that transactions on mobile devices is becoming the default option, and that this isn’t just a fleeting fad or freak occurrence. Amazon’s Prime membership increase is likely the Christmas gift Jeff Bezos is most excited about, as their premium service tier is arguably the key to the company’s long-term strategy, as well as its revenue and profitability goals. Amazon was pegged to have an estimated 50 million Prime members across its global websites as of September, up from an estimated 20 million plus back in January. If it added another 10 million to its ranks in this holiday season alone, that’s sizeable growth in a remarkably short period of time. The company did a lot to improve the value proposition of Prime in 2014, even if it also raised the annual price for membership in the same year. Amazon’s mobile shopping saw the most growth on Black Friday specifically, while Cyber Monday continued to rule as the top shopping day on the ecommerce site. The Amazon native smartphone app for iOS, Android and other platforms saw shopping volume double compared to 2014, which either indicates that Amazon has done a better job with improvements to the app, or suggests mobile users are gravitating more towards apps for online buying, as opposed to mobile and other websites. The site also shared its top-sellers in various categories, which both unsurprising (Hunger Games was popular) and surprising (Chromebooks led computer sales) success stories. Check out the full list below if you’re curious just what people were buying this holiday: |
Tesla Announces The Roadster 3.0 With A 400 Mile Range | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | Tesla isn’t done with its iconic Roadster. The company the next generation of the sport car. Chief among the updates is a new 400 mile range, which will allow drives from San Francisco to Los Angeles on a single charge. Tesla notes that it expects a 40-50% improvement on driving range between the original Roadster and Roadster 3.0. Tesla plans on demonstrating the Roadster 3.0 in the early weeks of 2015, but pricing and expected release date has yet to be released. The range increase is thanks to a new cell technology that resulted in a battery that provides 70kWh in the same package as the original Roadster’s 53kWh pack. That’s an additional 31% of energy. In addition to the more power-packed battery, Tesla also shaved 15% off the Roadster’s drag coefficient and installed new tires that result in a 20% improvement on the car’s rolling resistance. that the Model S will eventually see a similar battery update, but not anytime soon. Strangely, the Tesla press release detailing the upgrades does not indicate if the Roadster 3.0 can recharge using the Supercharger network even though it’s highly likely. We’ve reached out to Tesla for clarification. Clearly, Tesla is still operating as a lean startup by constantly improving existing products. The Roadster was the car that got Tesla off the line, yet it was hardly perfect; the Roadster was Tesla’s minimum viable product. Tesla kept at it and constantly rolled out updates to the vehicle through its production life. Now the company is ready to roll the sports car back out to the market with even more improvements likely discovered throughout the development of its new vehicles. |
Bitcoin 2.0 And Tokenizing The User Experience | Lisa Cheng | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | Bitcoin is still in its early stages of market development. We are going through a slow process of realizing how data is where we will make our next evolutionary leaps in advancement. For this reason I have been working in bitcoin and on bitcoin blockchain technologies, to help realize a future where applications, networks and users will live homogeneously in a self-sustaining universe. This future environment of sustainable technology will be decentralized in the sense that resources will be cyclical and spread across distances and dependencies, and will be based on users driving their own technology needs through direct interaction with the platforms and applications. This next evolutionary phase is what I have termed “tokenizing the user experience.” The tokens driving this evolution are part of the bitcoin 2.0 ecosystem and are created using the bitcoin blockchain. They can also be referred to as “metacoins,” because they reside on a metalayer of the blockchain protocol. Some members of the bitcoin community also refer to them as “app coins,” because they are application specific. , and are among the first projects to demonstrate how cryptographic tokens can be used in support of decentralized applications and infrastructure. In addition to leveraging the blockchain’s open and transparent ledger, projects that create these metacoins using cryptocurrency are able to easily record, track usage and distribute tokens on a global scale. This means that at any point in time, a project can confirm how many tokens are being used, which address is holding them, and where it originated from. It’s a new form of user interaction where the tokens represent market interest in the project and user activity itself. To ensure security, bitcoin was developed using a series of algorithms that give all cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and tokens, their ability to validate information secured by the laws of mathematics. For online commerce, where the use of traditional payment methods are easily faked, proving authenticity is valuable to many, including those who need to verify things quickly and easily. The use of cryptocurrency itself results in a new form of commercial interaction where the issue of counterfeit money is nonexistent. This model has value when building a decentralized network of different systems that is not restricted by borders, territory, or language. And because this approach to network tokens is still new, we will likely see the emergence of more projects leveraging a token model for bringing forth new and innovative ideas. As such, the community has seen the rise of initiatives that pursue a political model of the blockchain where an ideology is tied to a coin. Storj’s token is used to purchase storage space on its cloud network. Conversely, users are also able to earn these tokens by renting out their extra computer hard drive space for use by DriveShare, an application part of the Storj network. All tokens are transferable to other users, and every transaction is traceable. Based on the transaction flows of the token itself, the Storj team could determine how people are using the network and analyze how better to direct network resources based on user activity. The concept of network-access tokens has been around for a long time; it’s still used every day for security access in the form of RSA, given to users who purchase software in the form of license keys, and distributed to gamers who pre-purchase gaming codes. They represent a standard method of authentication to grant user access, provide network clearance and prove identity. The use of cryptocurrency in this form combines what software companies have traditionally used for proof of purchase with immutable tokens. This results in applications that encourage fluid user interactions. It’s important to note here that projects launching via tokens on the blockchain encourage decentralization, open-source development and transparency. Tokens in effect are used throughout a decentralized network, as users are able to earn and spend the coin across systems and applications, where its advantage is that it is a verifiable and an “un-fakeable” piece of data. This type of provable and transferable token is valuable as a form of network asset that can be traded among users and earned as a commodity. As open-source projects decide to issue their own tokens using the blockchain, we approach a new era of decentralized application development where entire systems are fueled by their own assets, which can protect and incentivize the entire network. Development projects that leverage tokens in this manner benefit from owning the process of user acquisition and licensing. Third-party issues, such as failed credit card processing, delayed bank transfers and fraudulent transactions, are no longer impediments to growing the user base. Bitcoin has been characterized as a distributed system with fault-tolerant logging and globally consistent sequencing as written by the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. The author(s) of the original bitcoin paper may not have anticipated this turn of events, which presents the blockchain as a model for scalability and decentralization capable of supporting grassroots application development. By this system we are witnessing how user trust is delivered with the token, which takes our understanding of bitcoin as a currency, to bitcoin and the blockchain as a platform — extending the use of cryptocurrency beyond simple peer-to-peer transactions toward a decentralized model for incentivizing verifiable data. |
LG And Mercedes-Benz Team Up To Develop A System To Power Self-Driving Cars | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | to make the future of driving smarter and less about the drivers themselves. that the duo are jointly working on “next-generation camera systems” which they said will allow computers and algorithms to handle “some aspects” of the driving experience. that it will provide the “core components” of self-driving cars from Mercedes-Benz in the future. That joint system will be based on LG’s existing ‘ — which include cameras that produce alerts when a vehicle changes lane, read road signs, check the driver’s health status and issue proximity-based warnings for obstacles — by licensing Mercedes-Benz’s to advance LG’s tech. We could be looking at a range of things, from cars that automatically slow based on what is ahead of them — per the video below — right up to fully self-driving vehicles. LG also confirmed that it will begin to use its own home entertainment and mobile technology within automobile, so that might seen increased integration with its mobile devices and new options for in-car entertainment. The integration between smartphones, our in-the-pocket-computers, and automotive is increasingly irresistible. Google has been since early this year via its Open Automotive Alliance, and it last month. Beyond that, the company is being into cars directly. Apple has , which for music, maps, calling and more. CarPlay is built into newer vehicles from the likes of Audio, Ford and Honda, but it is also supported by in-car entertainment systems — like . Away from mere integrations, plenty of companies are working on fully autonomous driving solutions for the future. Google is perhaps the most notable, of its self-driving car earlier this week. |
Whose Hack Is It Anyway? | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 26 | It’s pretty clear that the Sony Pictures hack was neither an act of war or particularly belligerent. As notes, finding out who performed a hack, even one as ham-handed as this one, is difficult. Hackers with any sense use proxies and attack soft targets. But once they’ve attacked and dumped their goods, it becomes nearly impossible to follow them back to their dens, whether that is in Atlanta or Pyongyang. Rogers writes: b00m…this just happened. Fuck you kids pretending to be DPRK… — David “Cyber Baba Yaga” Maynor (@Dave_Maynor) In short, no one, not even the FBI, can know who did this. What do I think happened? I think some lulzsec-style hackers found a way into Sony Pictures. They stole gigabytes of data over a long period of time and decided to embarrass Sony Pictures, presumably because they could. As the chunks came out, Snowden-style, they realized they had a lulz goldmine. The news media was eating this garbage up, ourselves included. What exciting news! Angelina Jolie! Some crappy Candy Land movie remake! Hollywood petulance writ large! Variety probably had it’s biggest traffic month in its history simply based on “reporting” culled from email. Despite the Snowden-style leaks, these documents aren’t particularly exciting or important. In fact, as we learned from a Sony employee, Sony was all but . Their infrastructure was apparently years out of date and any IT department that actively allows all of its email to be sucked out of various servers is an IT department that’s out to lunch. The FBI blaming this on a nefarious enemy far away is excellent Christmas gift for Sony Pictures C-level staff. After the leaks grew in popularity the ancillary issues suddenly popped up – “911 style” bomb threats, attacks on PSN, and general panic – the need to pin this on a culprit grew greater. The hackers, for lulz, claimed to be North Korean. . In short, this is a game of “hey guyz, lets hack Sony” gone horribly right. Everything the hackers wanted – fun, attention, and effervescent trolling – came true. It’s like an pyromaniac lighting a pile of leaves on fire and burning down a neighborhood. The glee – and damage – is complete and terrible. Hacks are rarely as exciting as they appear in Sony Pictures films. There are no multiple-monitored workstations where Hugh Jackman breaks cryptographic codes . In fact, most hacks are nameless, faceless, and seemingly victimless. They happen in the shadows, performed by folks who want to experiment or steal. That these quiet hackers struck a cultural nerve was sheer dumb luck and they are milking our gullibility all the way to the proverbial bank. If we discover, however, that North Korea does have a hacking arm so culturally savvy as to understand the import of emails between spoiled movie producers then perhaps we’ve considerably underestimated the hermit kingdom. I doubt it. What if Kim Jong Un is just collecting experiences for a new rock opera he's been working on? — Russ Rogers (@v3rtig0) |
null | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 12 | 19 | null |
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