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The ToneWoodAmp Blows Amplified Sound Out Of Your Guitar’s Sound Hole | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 15 | Are you ready to amp up your acoustic guitar to the MAXXXX? The has got you covered. This surprisingly cool Kickstarter project is essentially a speaker that takes the sound coming from your acoustic guitar, modifies it, and then reproduces it automatically so you can hear it out of the guitar body. It’s great for folks who might not have access to effects pedals or a PA system and for buskers or live players who are looking for an interesting way to modify a standard guitar.
The amp connects to the back of your guitar and the sound reverberates through the body. It has a number of inbuilt effects including tremolo an reverb and you can even run the sound through an iOS device to use software filters and effects. The amp costs $110 for early bird backers and will eventually retail for $199. The team has working prototypes so far and it looks like it’s going to ship in June.
While most guitarists already have a bank of pedals and effects they use, having this attached to an acoustic guitar seems like an interesting solution for gear heads. The kit connects to your guitar using magnetic rails that are mounted inside the guitar. This means it can be removed as necessary and won’t destroy the outside of your guitar. As TechCrunch’s resident SHRED MAETERXXXTOTHEMAXXX I’m actually curious how this sounds and how it works outdoors. Who knows, the next busker you meet may be able to truly SHRED a little Stairway next to the Cold Stone using electronic effects and an old Fender. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu-VHEEzuEg] |
Kindle For iOS Updated With Goodreads, Kindle Unlimited Integrations And More | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 12 | 15 | Amazon this morning has rolled out an updated version of its for iOS users which now offers readers a number of new features, including integration with Amazon acquisition , personalized book suggestions, and, for those who subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, access to over 700,000 titles in the app, among other additions. The update follows the upgrade of the Kindle software itself , which also introduced Goodreads integration and other changes affecting those who own the Amazon Kindle e-reader hardware devices. One of the more interesting features among today’s updates is the integration with Goodreads, Amazon’s social network for sharing reading progress, highlights, quotes, reviews and ratings, with a network of fellow readers on the service, as well as with friends on larger social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Now readers are able to rate and review books on Goodreads in the app from the “Before You Go” screen at the end of the book, says Amazon. The other notable item is the addition of the Book Browser for iPad users, which introduces a way for Amazon customers who subscribe to the Kindle Unlimited service to browse titles and then begin reading immediately. That’s kind of a big deal for Kindle users – historically, Amazon has avoided sharing a portion of its revenues with Apple by disallowing any option to buy books in the app. Instead, users have had to shop on Amazon directly, then sync titles to their respective mobile apps after buying a book. But because Kindle Unlimited is an all-you-can-eat subscription service – $9.99/month for its library of 700.000+ and thousands of audiobooks – there’s no need to limit those users from searching for books then instantly begin to read them. However, Amazon notes that Kindle Unlimited subscribers cannot sign up for the service in the iOS app – they have to visit the website instead. Another feature arriving today in the app is a new welcome experience where users can select their favorite genres and rate books they’ve read and want to read in order to receive personalized recommendations of books to try. Powered by Goodreads, these suggestions have proven to be a bit hit-or-miss in the past, but it’s at least a step in the right direction for how this sort of personalized recommendation data can be used. If you find a book you might like by way of this feature, you’re able to download a free sample in the app, too. Also new: book details can now be viewed by long-pressing on a book cover in the library, which Amazon says was a customer request, audiobooks can play before they finish downloading, and a “Next in Series” feature will let you learn about the next title and add it to your wish list when you finish reading the preceding book in a series. The updated app is . |
With M&A In Mind, SurveyMonkey Snaps Up $250 Million More In Funding | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 12 | 15 | , the Silicon Valley company that runs an online survey and questionnaire platform, announced today that it has raised $250 million in a new round of funding. The raise was first reported by the , and was officially by the company this morning. The new money will be used at least in part to fuel more M&A transactions, and to allow some existing investors and employees to cash out if they choose, SurveyMonkey said in a statement. This brings the total amount of venture capital invested into the 15-year-old company to more than $1.15 billion. The new round, which included participation from a group of institutional investors, reportedly values SurveyMonkey at some $2 billion, up significantly from the $1.35 billion valuation the company had just . |
Asus ZenWatch Review | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 15 | the Android Wear fray, with a smartwatch that features a bold design, even though it opts for a rectangular face, and materials and looks that might make it the closest we’ve seen yet from the Android camp to resembling an Apple Watch. The ZenWatch is by no means a clone, however, and it very much manages to stand out from the Wear flock, too. Asus has crafted one of the best Android Wear devices available, which again goes to show that there’s virtue in waiting in the wings a while, both as a smartwatch maker and a wearable consumer. The Asus ZenWatch is among the most striking and unique Android Wear devices available, with a metal sandwich-style case that combines brushed stainless steel, polished stainless and matte rose gold in a way that actually works, even if you’re not a fan of any individual component of that makeup. The curved face protects a square face with Corning Gorilla Glass 3, and the watch sports a standard 22mm band fitting, though the ones Asus ships have an easy-release pin design. [gallery ids="1094862,1094863,1094864,1094865,1094866,1094867,1094868,1094869,1094870,1094871,1094872"] From stock watchfaces to stock strap design, Asus has hit a home run with its physical product design. The ZenWatch has retro appeal that would feel at home in a set straight out of later Mad Men episodes, and the rounded edges on the bezel help soften the overall impact of the largish face, making it appear not quite so gargantuan on medium and large wrists. It still has a few flaws, however – the square face itself seems almost lost in all that black bezel, and it’s still a huge watch – but it succeeds in making a statement, and striking a very fetching balance for those who satisfy the conditions needed to pull it off. Build quality feels high overall, and Asus has included a deployment clasp for the band that will appeal to actual watch fans, and provides an easy way for anyone to get the watch on and off. Even the case back is nicely designed, with a matte finish and rounded surface that feels good against the wrist. The charging cradle for the ZenWatch is, like almost all Android Wear charging mechanisms, proprietary, but it holds the watch tightly and is easy enough to put on and remove. With some of these chunkier designs, though, it’s a shame to not see the kind of direct micro USB charging port Sony has introduced on the much sleeker Sony Smartwatch 3. Asus of course offers all the things we’ve come to know and love (and/or tolerate) about Android Wear, including notifications from your Android smartphone, as well as Google Fit integration and voice input for commands and searches. The company also has its own companion app, which offers some additional features for the ZenWatch, including customizable watchfaces. Asus has grouped its watches according to how much information they display, and lets you customize not only visual elements, but also what kind of info is shown. It’s a nice balance between free-for-all customization, which can be unwieldy for new users, and genuinely useful options that just make the basic concept of a smartwatch a bit better for everyone. The app also offers a glance at current battery life, and provides custom features including a cover to mute option, a watch finder, and a forgotten phone warning for when Bluetooth disconnects. Tools included in the app also offer a compass, a flashlight that lights up the smartwatch screen, and an SOS feature that will send a message to contacts of your choosing from the watch in case of emergency. Asus has done a good job of making smart, selective additions to the basic features of the Wear platform that users could probably accomplish by installing some third-party apps, but that are better handled under a single dashboard like this one. Android Wear is still largely the same as you’ll find on other devices, but even little differences like this can have a big effect when consumers are looking for any reason to pick one thing over another. The ZenWatch is mostly excellent in terms of performance, with good voice recognition and dimmed watchfaces that provide all the information you need while still doing the most they can to maximize battery life. The screen is highly legible, but its construction is such that you can see tiny dots in any solid feel of color. Ultimately that’s only a minor annoyance, however, and the pixel density still means everything is fairly crisp and legible. Asus has also included a heart rate sensor on this device, but unlike with others, they’ve hidden it behind the bezel just underneath the screen, instead of around back. This has the advantage of fewer failed readings in my experience, vs. devices that require you to wear your watchband tight to get an effective reading. Some might consider having to place your finger on the face an extra step, but it has a better success rate in my experience and in both cases the feature is just a nice-to-have anyway, and hardly crucial to the everyday use cases of most people. Battery life is probably my least favorite aspect of the ZenWatch performance-wise, but that’s just because it’s only adequate. LG’s G Watch R set the bar high with its two-plus days of continuous use, so the Asus, which manages around a day and a bit on average, pales by comparison. Still, it’s in line with most Android Wear devices out there, so don’t discount it as an option based on battery life alone. Asus easily has one of the top two Android Wear devices out there, alongside the G Watch R. Both make very different design choices, however, which means they will probably appeal to different buyers. The ZenWatch’s look is likely to be more appropriate for anyone looking to pair with business or business casual attire, however, and the native watch faces are much nicer than those included in LG’s offering. Basically, it breaks down like this: If looks are your top priority, Asus takes the cake, but if you’re more interested in getting an extra day’s use out of a single charge, the G Watch R is the best pick. Still, if you’re looking for the best Android Wear can currently offer, you’ll be well served by either the Asus or the LG. |
Doctors Can Now Successfully 3D Print A Knee Joint | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 15 | While this footage isn’t as exciting as I’d like it to be – I’d really prefer a big old gross close-up of a splayed knee joint – what it represents is pretty wonderful. Essentially, doctors at the Columbia University Medical Center have been able to print a knee meniscus using a degradable plastic scaffold and a protein growth system. The body then subsumes the printed object and turns the protein into a knee joint. “At present, there’s little that orthopedists can do to regenerate a torn knee meniscus,” said study leader Jeremy Mao in a . “Some small tears can be sewn back in place, but larger tears have to be surgically removed. While removal helps reduce pain and swelling, it leaves the knee without the natural shock absorber between the femur and tibia, which greatly increases the risk of arthritis.” [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTDK88G2ed0#t=13] The scaffold isn’t just a plastic shell, however. It contains two human proteins, connective growth factor (CTGF) and transforming growth factor β3 (TGFβ3). The scaffold releases these factors at different times and “attracts existing stem cells from the body and induces them to form meniscal tissue.” In sheep, the first test subjects, the meniscus regenerated in four to six weeks. The body degenerates the scaffold and whisks it away. “We envision that personalized meniscus scaffolds, from initial MRI to 3D printing, could be completed within days,” said Dr. Mao. They will begin clinical trials once the team has raised enough cash to start printing and shipping the scaffolds to patients and their doctors. |
Lindsay Lohan’s The Price Of Fame Mobile Game Hurt My Thumb | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | Lindsay Lohan’s The Price of Fame launched on both Android and iOS this week, adding LiLo to the short list of celebrities with their own, branded mobile game. It was a featured game at launch, jumping to No. 10 in games in the App Store. , it’s currently now at No. 400 in U.S. game app ranks. Wild first day fluctuations aside, the game is less about rising up in Hollywood and more of a commentary on “Hollyweird.” And it’ll hurt your thumb if you don’t know how to play the fame game right. Here we trot you through the subversive climb to celebrity and hopefully save your hands in the process. |
This Guy Took 4 Leafblowers And A Skateboard Deck And Turned Them Into A Wonderfully Goofy Hoverboard | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | Want the experience of a kinda-sorta-hover-board, but don’t have ? Fret not! As Texan Ryan Craven proves, you can pull off something of a similar vein with four gutted leafblowers, a sheet of plywood, and some gorilla tape. The disclaimers here are the same as the rest of the “hoverboards” of 2014: it’s neat, but it’s not going to turn you into Marty McFly. Without any sort of friction between you and the ground, you’re not so much steering the board as you are standing atop it as it glides wherever the hell it wants. With that said, I’d totally ride this thing until the batteries were dead and/or I fell off and broke both my wrists. Whereas the Arx Pax Hendo uses a damned clever magnetic propulsion system to keep itself afloat, this one uses a pocket of air trapped inside a shower liner. Whereas the Hendo as it battles gravity, this one makes an endless series of fart noises. We’ll call it a draw. Ready to make your own plywood hoverboard? Grab your safety goggles and for the instructions. [via ] |
13 TechCrunch Stories You Don’t Want To Miss This Week | Anna Escher | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | This week’s tech news saw President Obama coding, the launch of the Samsung Gear VR, and Instagram surpassing Twitter in users. We give you our best articles from the week (12/6-12/12). , writing a few lines of Javascript as part of the Hour Of Code, an event that encourages students to try just one hour of programming. after a driver was arrested for raping his passenger. Uber is now facing legal action in India. Columnist Jon Evans wrote an analysis about the Bitcoin community, and the . Instagram now says 300 million people use its app every month. That makes , which had 284 million active users as of six weeks ago. The app also announced plans to strengthen its authenticity with verified badges for celebrities and brands. , and while the free Internet for all Comcast subscribers everywhere model is the goal – the reality clashes with the Internet user’s sense of freedom and control. and trade them for free, finally hit the iOS App Store. Matthew Panzarino wrote a piece about the Apple iPad and how the company is . We saw the , a mobile headset that uses its software and VR hardware expertise to give Galaxy Note 4 owners a taste of immersive virtual reality. Ford launched the Sync 3, its next-generation, in-car technology package. The biggest change? . Co-founder of Uncommon Union Paul Johnson wrote about , arguing that when it comes to tech, we should be striving for a collaborative golden age, not just a 10-month flip. , and its quite easy to use. that lets you wake up (and be woken up by) strangers, finally arrived on iOS. A new app called Workflow, that lets you create shortcuts for the things you do all the time on your phone or tablet, became the #1 paid app in the App Store. . |
Alienware Alpha Review: A Gaming PC In A Tiny Package | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | For a long time, if you wanted to get into PC gaming and experience the highest quality models, textures, and shaders that developers could come up with, you had to buy an overpriced gaming rig from someone like Alienware, a more affordable PC from a shady OEM, or build a machine yourself. It was easier and cheaper to just buy a console. That’s no longer the case. Pushed by several manufacturers have come out with affordable laptops and desktops that can play games at really high settings as long as you’re willing to play at reasonable resolutions — generally, 1080p HD. Curious to see what life was like with an affordable Windows gaming PC in the form factor of a console, I bought the $799 early last week. As it turns out, it’s pretty awesome. I don’t have a high resolution monitor to play on, so I hooked it up to the 39-inch TV my roommates and I have in our living room. At 1080p, it’s been able to play any game I’ve thrown at it at High/Very High/Ultra settings, meaning those games all look way better than they would on the latest Xbox or PlayStation. That’s because it’s got great hardware for the money. The Alpha I bought has a quad-core Core i5 processor (more than enough for most games), 8 GB of RAM, and a custom version of the Nvidia 860m graphics chip found in many mid-range gaming laptops that Alienware says they boosted for better performance (it’s also got 2 GB of RAM all for itself). Most games I’ve played have no issues with the Alpha’s hardware or detecting the bundled Xbox 360 controller for playing from the comfort of your couch. In some cases, games would default to sub-optimal graphics settings. For instance, defaulted to Normal settings even though I found out that that you could bump them all they way up and still get great performance, but those kinds of issues seem to be the exception, not the norm. Below, I’ve embedded a playlist of short videos I put together showing what games look like at their best on the Alienware Alpha. I’ll be adding more over the next few days, so if you’re curious you can to see more as soon as I get them up. Feel free to request games you’d like to see in the comments. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries?list=PLIwTsM_lzZfv_tkpH1_m60WekpR_mNMnz&w=560&h=315] If you’re flinching at the prospect of running Windows 8 on your TV, Alienware put in effort to minimize the time you have to spend in the full PC interface. Most of the time, you’ll be able to boot into the “Alpha UI,” a thin layer on top of Windows that puts you straight into Here, Steam’s “Big Picture” mode hides the complex desktop interface you’d normally see and presents a slimmed down experience that you can quickly navigate with a controller. If you get the urge to play but friends or family occupy the TV, Steam also has a feature that lets you run a game on one machine but play on another, streaming video one way and controller input the other. I tried this mode with a few games on my MacBook Air, and whether the game was one I got from Steam or simply added to my library from another service (like World of Warcraft), I was able to play at the same high settings with a negligible dip in frame rates. What’s most impressive about the Alienware Alpha isn’t its speed or price, but that fact that it manages to squeeze so much power into such a tiny package. The Alpha is a more powerful machine than either of the latest and greatest consoles, but its all contained in a device with a smaller footprint and far less volume. If you’d like to have a gaming rig that can also serve double duty as a media center than can handle all kinds of content, are space constrained, and are willing to pay the premium over traditional consoles, the Alpha is a tough machine to beat. [gallery ids="1091295,1091296,1091297"] |
Ginger.io Launches A Plan To Engage Low-Income Utahns Suffering From Depression | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | Behavior health analytics startup has announced the launch of , a care management platform designed to help low-income Utah residents suffering from mental health issues. Utah in depression and . Doctors prescribe antidepressants in the Beehive state at in the U.S. Speculation as to whether that’s because of Mormon cultural pressure to be perfect, right-wing conservatism or simply aside, one Silicon Valley startup has decided to do something about it. Utah SmartCare is a grant-funded project in association with . It aims to use technology to improve the quality and cost of healthcare for underserved populations in the state. The program will initially target 500 patients with co-morbid conditions; meaning they have both a mental and a physical health issue. Nearly 80 percent of these participants live at or below the poverty line. Ginger.io is a spin-off from and was nurtured within back in 2011. It uses predictive analytics from in behavior. The software then alerts a healthcare provider that something is off. Utah SmartCare partners with three local mental health authorities and 2 community health clinics in Utah. The program is a patch between office visits to help patients stay connected to their healthcare provider. “We’re already receiving great feedback from clients enrolled in the program,” said Brandon Hatch, executive director of Davis Behavioral Health, one of the local mental health authorities participating in the Utah SmartCare initiative. “This data will allow us to better assess how our clients are doing between appointments and catch any potential problems earlier, leading to better clinical outcomes.” Ginger.io is working separately on projects with UC San Francisco, Partners HealthCare (Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and McLean Hospital), Duke University, UC Davis and University of Nebraska Medical Center. |
CrunchWeek: IPOs Heat Up, Celebrities In Gaming, And VR Goes Mobile | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | Besides knowing the weekend is only about ten hours away, the best part of waking up on a Friday is knowing there will be another episode of CrunchWeek to watch. This week, , and chatted about , game developers , and the big news from and in the VR space. If you just can’t get enough enough of TechCrunchers on video, here’s a Vine of me dancing to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” to sustain you through the weekend: https://vine.co/v/O667YvAbIeq |
The Founder’s Guide To Email Security | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | of the breach unfolding in slow motion before us, we are reminded that operational security – OpSec – is absolutely key at any company. Whether or not you traffic in high-value data, the expectation that your servers are secure enough and that your data is worthless is foolhardy. You will be compromised and it will hurt. The primary vector for the vast majority of attacks is email. If your IT department and firewalls are working correctly, the chances that you will be hacked in your back end are low. It will happen, but the juiciest stuff is in your email archive. It is in email where your employees converse, where you trade credit card numbers and passwords, and where all the damaging one-off notes end up. In short, we’re all idiots for trusting email at all, but there are ways to reduce that idiocy. Here are two major steps you can take to make your company more secure. While there may be some pressing legal reason to keep gigabytes of email in your mailbox, most of us can safely dump messages after a preset amount of time. “But that’s important customer information,” you cry. No it isn’t. And if it were you’d want to keep it in a CRM. “But I have a great system of folders and action items!” you scream. No, you don’t. You have a shitload of email. If you must keep your email, dump it all into a searchable database like DevonThink and keep it off your mail server. Are all your color-coded action folders important to you? Buy a notebook and write stuff down. I delete 98 percent of my email. If it keeps, it’s an accident or I think I may need to act on it in the next hour or so. An email archive is a garbage pile that is chock full of exciting information for hackers. Get rid of it. I’m going to recommend as an encryption solution for OS X. You can download for cross-platform Gmail encryption but GPGTools is a full-featured system that can encrypt documents on the fly, something Mailvelope can’t. If you’re running Windows then there are other options, including . Linux users are smart enough to install their own PGP solutions. For brevity’s sake, we will focus on OS X. 1. Install GPGTools. . Install them. 2. Generate a public/private key pair. You will install something called GPG Keychain. This will contain all of your public and private keys. Your public key is just that – public. This is the key you share with the world. Your private key should be guarded with your life. Do not give it up to anyone and be very careful when you export it. When you generate a key, use a complex passphrase. “I love the song 99 Luftballoons!!” would work as would “d4D99AX!0^xpork is my password.” “I like mom” or “porkninja” are too simple. This is a password you will use often so make sure it is something that you can easily remember and quickly type. The enemy of good password protection is frustration. Select “Upload public key” before you generate the keys and they will be sent to a popular key server like or . These repositories allow people to look up your key and use it to sign emails to you. 3. Fire up Apple Mail. Now you should be automatically signing emails as they go out. This means you are taking part in a system. Not only are emails “signed” with your public key useful to confirm you are who you say you are, they also allow folks you’re conversing with to encrypt their messages to you. At its core, use public-key and symmetric cryptography. In short, if Bob and Alice are conversing, Bob’s private key and Alice’s public key combine and Alice’s private key and Bob’s public key combine and these two keys are used to create a unique key. This ensures only Bob and Alice can decrypt the messages. You can also encrypt messages to and from . Your mileage may vary. There you have it: those two blue icons mean the email will be signed and secure. My emails with Natasha will now be forever secure! Huzzah! 4. Use PGP for all internal mail. Please. Do it. The garbage pile that is your email cache will become useless to a hacker and private information will stay private. I know you can’t use PGP with everyone, but never send emails that you would consider confidential without it. Encourage those you do business with to join you in PGP and encourage other founders to read this and stay safe. While I understand that the Sony breach probably consisted of a number of compromised email accounts without protection, it also points to the possibility of a mail server dump. Most of that mail was probably plain text. The goal is to have none of it plain text. Ready to join our super-secret spy network? These are our public keys:
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Months After Taking On A New Name And Biz Model, The Mobile Majority Reports A $50M Revenue Run Rate | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | Six months ago, mobile advertising startup PaeDae to , adjusted its business model, and raised some extra money. Now founder and CEO Rob Emrich is saying that the move has paid off, with the company hitting a $50 million revenue run rate in November. When last year, it had built a mobile rewards network and was looking to expand into other forms of mobile advertising. However, Emrich said that as PaeDae expanded, “We experienced many of the problems with mobile advertising at scale.” “Most things started to break over time,” he added. “What we realized was that along the supply chain, there’s no trust between companies; nobody knows what they’re buying or selling.” To solve that problem, the company built AdSynergy, which Emrich calls “the first vertically integrated mobile advertising platform.” What does that actually mean? Well, he said the platform should offer everything that the mobile advertiser needs, including ad targeting, optimization, tracking, fraud protection and more. Emrich added that normally, managing these campaigns would require an advertiser to work with 5 to 15 vendors. By bringing it all under one roof, AdSynergy can reduce costs. It can also help with viewability — namely, ensuring that when an advertiser pays for an ad impression, the ad actually gets seen. Emrich said that while fraud is certainly part of the issue, there’s a broader problem with “no silver bullet.” “Viewability is more of a problem of data and technology,” he said. “It’s almost like playing a game of telephone, and it gets worse the more vendors you need to use. In order to really diagnose what’s going on, you really need to be able to look at the entire system.” In addition, the company says it recently had its highest single day of revenue, with $360,000 in revenue and 517 million interactive ads served. (Those are gross revenue numbers, i.e. revenue before the publishers get paid.) Headquartered in Santa Monica, The Mobile Majority says it now has five offices across the country and 50 employees. |
Yahoo Starts Prompting Chrome Users To “Upgrade” To Firefox | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | If you’re visiting today, chances are you’ll see an “Upgrade to the new Firefox” in the top-right corner of your browser window. The prompt also appears if you’re using Internet Explorer, Opera and even the new Yandex browser. However, the prompt is missing from Safari, which will surely prompt a new round of speculation about Apple’s switch to Yahoo as its default search engine. Given that Firefox now uses Yahoo , this move doesn’t come as a huge surprise. Yahoo clearly wants as many people as possible to use Firefox — and with it its search engine (which is powered by Microsoft ). Firefox’s user share has dropped quite a bit over the last few years, so Mozilla has no objections to putting the Firefox logo in front of as many Yahoo users as possible. Changing the default search engine in Firefox is trivial (and Firefox recently made it even easier), but most users never bother to make the switch. The new Yahoo Search design for Firefox users also looks pretty much exactly like Google’s, so some users may not even notice the difference. It’s still too early to know whether the Yahoo/Mozilla deal made any difference in terms of market share for either of the two organizations, but chances are we’ll see at least a small uptick in Yahoo’s numbers come January. |
Chasm.io (Formerly Wahooly) Merges With Social Marketing App Loot | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | Remember Wahooly? We wrote about the startup a couple of years ago, describing it as ” because it allowed users to gain startup equity in exchange for promoting the company on social media. Since then, Wahooly joined the AngelPad accelerator, , and shifted focus to reciprocal sharing (“I’ll tweet your link if you tweet mine”). Now it’s announcing a merger with , an Orlando, Fla.-based startup. Chasm.io co-founder and CEO Dana Severson told me that the merger basically means two things — he’s joining Loot as vice president of sales and marketing, and he’ll be working to bring Wahooly/Chasm.io’s customers onto Loot. So, what is ? It’s a mobile app where marketers can offer cash and other rewards to users who perform tasks, like taking photos or sharing content on social media. Severson noted that those tasks don’t have to involve social sharing at all — marketers could just ask you to download an app and play for a certain period of time. He also said Loot can be a valuable source of data, for example gauging app popularity by asking users to take a photo of their home screens. Loot says it currently has 50,000 users, and its clients include Macy’s and Save-a-Lot. Apparently that’s what Severson had wanted to do with Wahooly, particularly after a recent survey of the current user base, which also pointed in the direction of brand rewards. In a follow-up email, Severson said, “We could have pivoted and built it from scratch, or join forces with someone that was already doing it very well.” “One of the biggest issues for Wahooly was that equity never offered instant gratification,” Severson said, adding that it was hard to keep people on the service when “the payout can be five, six, seven years down the road.” Also making things difficult: The company struggled to raise additional funding after AngelPad. The financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, though Severson did say, “Our investors will be taken care of.” (In addition to AngelPad, those investors include Kalfa Equity Group Founder Joe Kalfa, Middleman Founder Jamie Dewar, and Shawn Bruins.) “It’s a continuation of the business,” he said. “It’s not something where in a year I’ll be exiting.” |
This Week On The TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast: Cheap New 3D Printers And Pizzas | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | I’m just going to admit it. We were kind of a mess on the podcast this morning. But the show must go on. The is not only the most annoyingly letter-cased name of any product ever (let alone a 3D printer), but it also costs just $799. Biggs is . Meanwhile, still continues to fascinate us (ish) and the IoT movement has finally made its way to . We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the featuring , , and . Have a good Friday, everybody!
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All Eyes On Box As Tech IPOs Roar Back To Life | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | The success of the this week may have created a moment in the market that Box, a company that has long wanted to go public itself, could use to get its long-delayed flotation done at last. I’m totally kidding about the “could” bit there, of course. This is precisely what Box has been waiting for since it first filed in March. The key IPO, as TechCrunch has in the lead up to its execution, was Hortonworks’. Hortonworks, it appears, is being valued on the strength of its revenue growth, and not on any chance of its delivering near-term profits to its shareholders. after declining losses in Q3 n.p. — Jason M. Lemkin 🦄 (@jasonlk) In the first nine months of this year, Hortonworks managed to lose more than $86 million, on revenue of under $34 million. Its shares are more than 45 percent above its offering price, which it had raised prior to launching this morning. In short, investors let the company charge more out the gate, and then gave its shares wings. That for a company with a GAAP operating margin of something like -260 percent is impressive. Box, by comparison, appears to be in fit shape. For a more detailed take, , but Box has seen quick year-over-year revenue growth, and an only small increase in its net loss, comparing the first nine months of 2014 with the year-ago period. In its most recent fiscal quarter, Box showed revenue growth, and falling losses, again compared to the equivalent year-ago period. The company still generates very expensive revenue, but at least its lines are pointing in the proper directions. It’s worth keeping in mind that Box really isn’t going public to raise cash for its short-term operational expenses. The company has more than four to five quarters of cash at current tip and could likely raise more or tap the debt market. And Box does have a line of credit in place, for example. The Box IPO will just be a liquidity event. Hortonworks has done us a favor in terms of being able to predict that, yes, Box’s financials are good enough to pull off an IPO. But it also helps to set a potential pricing pattern. Hortonworks originally priced quite conservatively, and then raised its target range before enjoying a strong first-day performance. For what it’s worth, New Relic also priced small and boosted its share price ahead of its IPO. It would therefore — and this is merely speculation on my part — not surprise me to see Box do something similar. It could even price its range at an implied down valuation. However, that number, if it sticks, could be annoying to some its shareholders who may desire quicker reduction to their exposure to Box. I’ll just say it: I don’t know who these people are who are willing to pay so much for a company that increased its loss in raw dollar terms faster than its revenue this year. But here we are and 2014 is weird and this is Silicon Valley so as they say, fuck gravity. Box declined to comment on the potential timing of its IPO. |
Palantir Raises $50 Million Of Reported $400 Million Round | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | , the big data company that’s one of the Valley’s most valuable, having secured clients like the NSA, FBI and CIA early on before building up its private-sector customer base, has raised another $50 million, according to . The round is still ongoing, however, and may total $400 million when complete. In early November, a Palantir filing emerged that indicated it would be paying around $10 million in sales commissions, which led Dan Primack at Fortune to estimate that Palantir could , based on standard commissions and those previously paid. However, by , which were filed in late November, show Palantir authorizing $400 million of a new series of preferred stock. We asked VC Experts if the new Form D, which indicates the company has now raised $50 million, is likely part of this larger $400 million round, and they believe it is. If the round completes, that will bring Palantir’s total raise to around $1.35 billion, data from CrunchBase which says the company has raised $950 million to date. (VC Experts doesn’t have the funding that high, we should note, but says there are a lot of outliers.) Last December, Palantir was raising funding at what was , and finally closed that round in September at $444.2 million, says CrunchBase. Over the summer, Palantir spent some of its money on two acquisitions in a single week – one was for , which was soon followed by , a startup offering tools for building native mobile apps. The news was especially interesting because the data analysis company had only ever made one other acquisition (at least, publicly) when it bought in early 2013. It’s unclear what Palantir’s valuation will be if it closes on the $400 million because there are still too many outliers, VC Experts tells us. But they say the new round is priced higher than the previous one. A number of Silicon Valley companies have raised at high valuations recently. For example, transportation and ride-sharing startup Uber this month it raised $1.2 billion in new funding, in a round that sees the company valued at a record $40 billion – or four times more other Silicon Valley startups like Airbnb, , or . |
Android Wear Gets Experimental Offline Step Counting | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | Android Wear is a platform in progress, as evidenced by Google’s continual updates, bringing features like and more big changes in periodic updates. One that also arrived in a recent software change is support for offline step tracking, meaning you can still log activity with your device even when it’s not in communication with your smartphone. As , this is still an experimental feature, but it’s a good one for those hoping to use their Android Wear smartwatches as activity trackers, even when they go for runs or hit the gym and leave their phone at home or in the bag. Google already paved the way for this with a feature that brings offline music playback and Bluetooth headset connectivity to Android Wear devices, and support for GPS on the watch itself via local software, so long as the watch has an actual GPS sensor, also contributes to allowing these smartwatches to be used as fitness trackers independent of phones. I would expect to see Google continue to bolster the device-independent powers of Android Wear over time, but in a gradual release of features with experimentation first, to see what makes sense, and what strikes as more or less feature bloat. Google’s platform head start on Apple in wearables means that it has time to play with a live user base before the Apple Watch ever arrives, so expect to see many more experiments to come. |
Inkl Wants To Be ‘Spotify For News’ | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | Australian startup is hoping to fix journalism’s strained business models with a ‘Spotify for news’ model that ditches the unwelcoming and irritating single publication paywall in favor of aggregated news content from multiple publishers which users access ad-free for a small (10c) per article fee. Or gain unlimited access to all the news they fancy by paying a monthly $15 subscription. Inkl, which was founded last January, is following in the footsteps of Dutch startup , which is also applying a marketplace model to journalism, albeit it’s not just focusing on news — going after longer form magazine content too. Blendle pulled in a $3.8M Series A investment this October, backed by multiple large media businesses. Newspaper publishers may have been slow to adapt traditional print businesses for the web but the rise of mobile devices and the parallel popularity of consuming digital media on the go is providing ample impetus — and opportunity — for news publishers to shake things up. (Related: there is some serious money sloshing around for delivering news in novel ways — witness , and Vice Media selling a pair of $250M stakes this year at a , for instance, albeit the biggest bucks are focused on video content.) Inkl’s team has been bootstrapping development thus far, taking in a small seed round of $250,000 this fall, led by North Base Media whose principal, Marcus Brauchli, is the former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal and Executive Editor of the Washington Post.
The team launched the Inkl web app last month. Native apps are in the works, due to launch in late January. Inkl’s founder and CEO is Gautam Mishra, the former director of strategy for Australian media giant Fairfax Media. After signing up and logging in to the Inkl web app on their mobile device, the user lands straight into an ad-free feed of news stories, badged with publisher logos and parceled into sections such as local, politics, technology and an editor’s choice. There’s an element of content personalization — given that users can choose which publishers they want to see in certain sections. But it’s intentionally pretty light touch. “Having a product that felt perfectly ready to use without having to spend time setting up demanding personalisation preferences was really important to us, given that seemed to be something users were missing with popular free news aggregators,” says Inkl’s VP of marketing, Helen McMurdo, when I ask about how its personalization works. “We know that our audience fears missing out on the important news — that’s part of the need that I delivers on. So it’s against our interests to over personalise: what we’re trying to is provide users with a full perspective.” Inkl has signed up seven publishers to its aggregated, ad-free news pipe so far — namely: The Guardian (U.S., U.K. and Australian editions), The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, LiveMint, and South China Morning Post. It says discussions are ongoing with additional publishers to further expand its content sources. The startup’s business model is a revenue split with publishers but it’s not disclosing what proportion it takes. Nor how many paying customers it has at this nascent stage. And therein lies the rub. The question for Inkl remains whether enough mobile owning news junkies can be persuaded to pay for stories, even at 10 cents a pop, when the same content is liberally available elsewhere on the web for free. Ultimately, if they pay, they will be paying for the convenience of an ad-free news hit. And the ability to consume a pipeline of diverse and diverting news nuggets without having to expend any effort wading through digital background noise — on social feeds or elsewhere on the web — to ferret out the same content. Whether that’s compelling enough a proposition for Generation Free to cough up some bucks remains to be seen. To try to get readers hooked on its news pipe Inkl is doing what it must: offering a . |
null | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 15 | null |
Mobile Ad Firms Spotted Serving Up Malware Posing As Google Play Apps | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | Malware creators have historically found creative ways to distribute their malicious wares across PC networks, and now they’ve turned their attention to mobile. In 2013, for example, there were a few high-profile cases where security firms like and discovered how malware was being distributed through rogue mobile ad networks to Android devices. Today, another handful of ad firms distributing malware to mobile devices – but this time, the ads are pointing users to malware that are posing as “real” Google Play applications. Combined, the three ad firms’ servers have around 185,000 views daily, which may make this a smaller scale malware distribution effort compared with the “BadNews” malware Lookout had found which had been downloaded (assuming the malware-laden app downloads Lookout tracked were on the higher end of that range.) However, it may be larger than the Dplug malware Palo Alto discovered. The firm had collected of it, mostly in Asia, at the time it detailed the malware’s methodology last summer that was picked up by a number of tech press outlets. 185,000 views daily is not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, and, of course everyone who is presented with the malicious ads are not becoming victims. Still, the most visited malicious subdomain Avast tracked had around 400,000 views in the last quarter, and likely a large number of those visitors were then affected by the malware. So this could be a fairly sizable distribution – and a good payday for the malware authors, even if it’s small in comparison to the number of Android users in the world. The three firms hosting and distributing the malware are masquerading as legitimate mobile ad networks, Espabit.com (Spain), Playmob.es (London), and MobileCashOut.com (Amsterdam). Of those, Espabit seems to be the largest, accounting for 150,000 views per day. It’s also the one serving up the subdomain that attracted the 400,000 views over the past few months. App users are directed to pornographic sites via the ads displayed in their apps, Avast researcher Filip Chytry explains. Those sites then display a download for the malware-laden apps. What’s interesting here is that the apps are not actually hosted on Google Play but everything about the page users are shown makes it appear that they are. The website looks just like a Google Play app download page, using the same color scheme, navigation, layout, and more. A green “download” button can be tapped to install the rogue app on the user’s device. The only hint that the app is not actually on Google Play comes from the domain displayed in the address bar. For example, instead of “play.google.com/…”, it may read “apps.espabit.com/…” Most of the apps links lead to pornography or fake apps, but because they’re not actually hosted on Google Play, the malware authors have designed official-looking pages that explain how to configure your phone to allow for their installation. Users are told how to go into their Settings in order to make a change that permits them to install apps from “Unknown sources” – meaning anything that’s not Google Play. While you may think that protecting yourself is as simple as leaving that Setting alone, many Android users have already turned this off in order to install legitimate apps – like those from Amazon. Just yesterday, for example, it came out that as well as other integrations with its Instant Video service. Google didn’t care for the competition, and forced Amazon to submit a new app without the app store section to Google Play instead. But Amazon’s earlier app, as well as its standalone Amazon Appstore app, are still available for download outside of Google Play – users just have to go into their settings and allow apps from “Unknown sources.” Uh-oh. Given that a number of Android users will opt to disable this security setting in order to access the better version of Amazon’s app or browse the Amazon Appstore from their Android phone or tablet, that puts them at risk of stumbling across malware like this in the future and becoming victims themselves. They won’t even have to configure anything on their phone, just fall for the social engineering tricks. The apps Avast encountered generate revenue for the creators by sending premium SMS while also stealing personal information from users. Each premium SMS only costs $0.25 and is sent three times a week, Avast notes. The amount stolen is small on purpose – people aren’t likely to notice if their phone bill is $3 higher that month. Over the course of the year, though, that’s $36 per victim. Multiply that by the number of victims – think about the 400,000 potential victims in the past quarter for one app alone – and you’re looking at a payday in the multi-millions. Many mobile carriers block premium SMS, including those in the U.S., U.K. and Brazil, so this is less a concern for users here. But Android’s worldwide footprint is massive, so even if the victims represent a small drop in the bucket in terms of Android’s total install base, there could still be a considerable number of affected individuals when something like this comes about. |
Stop Being Afraid Of Negative Reviews | Tim Handorf | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | In 2008 I was working at BigMachines, a B2B software company in the sales automation space. That year we made the controversial decision to invite prospective clients to our annual user conference. Traditionally, we didn’t invite prospects. We knew some of our customers weren’t 100 percent happy with the product, and we were afraid they would scare away business. But we decided to invite a handful of prospects. Of course, our customers told them negative things about our product and asked us some very critical questions in a very public forum. But believe it or not, every single prospect that attended became a customer. We were thrilled with the results of our experiment, but also very surprised. We noticed how review sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp and Amazon were impacting B2C companies, and data backs that up. As Harvard Business School’s Michael Luca , a one-star increase on Yelp can lead to a 5 percent to 9 percent increase in revenue. Recognizing the power that reviews hold, some business owners have resorted to falsifying reviews for themselves and their competitors; as many as 16 percent of restaurant reviews are fraudulent, according to follow-up research that Luca and Boston University’s Georgios Zervas . Understandably, most B2B companies fear rather than embrace negative reviews and press. From inside their companies and from investors, there is immense pressure to keep the public image strictly positive. Though researchers haven’t explored the effects of negative reviews specifically on B2B software companies, they have uncovered evidence that negative reviews can be powerful assets under the right conditions. Like the customers who criticized BigMachines, your negative reviews may actually build the trust and awareness you need to convert prospective clients. In a study of book reviews, the Wharton School’s Jonah Berger and associates an interesting discrepancy: Positive reviews always increased sales, but the “effect of negative reviews depended on whether the authors were new or well established.” Berger and his team analyzed sales patterns of nearly 250 works of fiction and discovered that for relatively unknown authors, a negative review boosted sales by an average of 45 percent. On the other hand, negative reviews of well-known authors hurt sales by an average of 15 percent. For lesser-known authors (or brands), the increase in public awareness appears to more than offset the negative impressions. In other words, for a small, relatively unknown software company, getting a high volume of reviews is almost a guaranteed win. The good reviews and bad reviews alike have the potential to bump sales. The language of bad reviews can affect whether they increase or hurt sales. In an article titled, “ ,” researchers found that the politeness of language in a consumer review can drastically affect a reader’s perception of the reviewed product. With “dispreferred markers” such as, “I’ll be honest”, “Don’t get me wrong,” or “I don’t want to be mean, but…” preceding a negative review, people find the reviewer to be more likable and credible. The researchers also found that these positive feelings spill over to the product or service itself, leading readers to find the brands more sincere. In fact, test subjects who read reviews about a luxury watch were willing to pay an average of $135.58 when the critical review contained a dispreferred marker. When the reviews did not have one, subjects were willing to pay only $94.67. So the tone of conversation on a review site can be a huge factor. On sites where consumers tend to make nasty, unqualified remarks, negative reviews have more potential to hurt than help. On the other hand, review sites with a more professional, informed and polite tone might generate reviews that benefit you whether they are positive or negative. As a co-founder of G2 Crowd, a review site for B2B software vendors, I know visitors to our site are more interested in reading negative reviews. I know this because we see three times as many clicks on negative reviews than on positive reviews. In addition, vendors that have a significant number of reviews with a healthy distribution of negative reviews tend to get the most leads. We can’t determine the reason for this from our own data (yet), but research from Revoo, a rating and reviews service, might hold the answer. In surveys conducted in 2013, Revoo that 68 percent of consumers trusted reviews more when they saw both good and bad scores, and 95 percent of consumers suspected that the reviews are fraudulent or censored when they didn’t see bad scores. Accordingly, Revoo found that consumers seeking negative reviews spent roughly five times as long on the site (26.1 minutes versus 4.6), and they were 85 percent more likely to convert (4.35 percent versus 2.35 percent). Revoo suggests that the extra time visitors spent on the website might be the key factor in increasing conversions, but it’s hard to say. We’re just scratching the surface of this issue. What we know is just how much we know about the influence of negative reviews. So according to the scholars, your popularity and the type of language in a negative review heavily influences the impact. If you’re young and unknown, don’t fear a negative review. In fact, consider “hacking” your growth by generating lots of reviews on highly public and reputable platforms. The awareness brought to your brand is more valuable than the positivity or negativity of the review, at least in the short run. If the reviewers are polite and authentic with their feedback, the reviews can strengthen perceptions of your brand even if you’re just starting out. Therefore, finding a polite, professional review platform is crucial. At the very least, Revoo’s research suggests that negative reviews will grip consumers’ attention, and likely lead them to spend more time browsing your website or reading your other reviews. Don’t be afraid of negative reviews, and don’t try to hide them. Part of being a company, and part of engaging on the social web, is being vulnerable. The best thing you can do is take care of your customers, and if they do write a negative review, reach out. Consider it an opportunity to learn and improve rather than be embarrassed by it. And who knows – your most critical customers might help you close a few deals at this year’s user conference. |
Analysts Claim Teens Still Prefer Print Books | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | In a flawed bit of analysis, are claiming that e-book adoption is slow among teens, an interesting finding if it were actually true. “While 20% of teens [are] purchasing e-books, 25% of 30–44 year olds and 23% of 18–29 year olds buy digital copies,” said . Unfortunately the breakdown stops there. Obviously teens don’t have the cash to purchase paper books let alone the credit cards to buy ebooks. Therefore they are dependent on their parents to purchase titles or the library where they can borrow with abandon. Sadly, the Nielsen data offers no breakdown of this behavior nor does it mention sites like Wattpad where the definition of “book” has become fluid. Both of these pieces of data are integral to understanding the new digital market, as are services like Kindle Unlimited which offer books that are so far out of the mainstream as to be in another body of water entirely. If there is a single defining trait in the long fall of print, it’s that the data is consistently inconsistent. There are plenty of hold-outs in the print camp who will not read e-books in their lifetimes and there are plenty of people who have jettisoned the concept of print books entirely. Then there is a massive bell curve of users — our family included — that owns both e-books and print books in almost equal measure. These users will slowly skew towards digital over the next decade, and I would expect a full print collapse by 2020 if not sooner. As one commenter on noted, used print books are amazingly cheap – even cheaper than e-books, given the resources required – but as the stock of long tail print titles is ground into dust, it will be harder and harder to find 1 cent copies (plus shipping) of Catcher In The Rye and other teen classics. In the end, digital will win out, but not for a while. |
TV’s Disruption On Display As Netflix And Amazon Go Head-To-Head At Golden Globes | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | More proof that good television doesn’t have to be developed by traditional industry players: Amazon has now its first Golden Globe nominations for the Amazon Prime Instant Video original show , which follows the story of a family dealing with the late-in-life revelation that the family’s patriarch (Jeffrey Tambor) is transgender. This is Amazon’s third scripted show after its entry into original programming last year, and the show itself has been nominated for Best Comedy, while star Tambor has earned the Best Actor nod. The Golden Globes may bring further attention to Amazon’s Netflix rival, Prime Instant Video, which is one of the benefits that comes with the company’s $99/year membership program, Amazon Prime. In addition to free streaming movies and shows, Prime members receive free two-day shipping, access to Kindle’s Lending Library and unlimited cloud storage for photos, among other things. Unlike Netflix, Amazon tests its original series with its audience first, releasing pilots on its streaming service and then choosing what to greenlight based on audience response and viewing behavior. To date, Amazon has greenlit a good handful of original shows, including (2015), and (2015) – some of which are aimed at kids. nom is not the first time that an Internet TV provider has earned a nod from a TV/movie industry awards show – Netflix recently received for its original shows and others. And Netflix’s earned last year – becoming the first online-only web series to receive such a nomination. The show also received four Golden Globe noms, and director David Fincher and actress Robin Wright both brought home a statue for their work. This year, however, will present an interesting battle as both Amazon and Netflix are up for the Best TV Series (Musical or Comedy) Golden Globe. Transparent is facing off against Netflix’s original show, k which is now on Season 2. (The show competed last year as a drama.) The other three nominations were from more traditional networks, with HBO’s and , plus CW’s new show filling out the rest of the category. Because of the power network studios had over their content and its distribution, television hasn’t been as quick to have been disrupted by the Internet as other industries, like music or books. But now that there are large companies with large bankrolls that are capable of funding their own studios, as Netflix does and Amazon does via its Amazon Studios arm, things are starting to change. The result is that many viewers aren’t just watching the new, streaming shows – they’re cutting the cord and ditching cable, too. Though that’s been a small for years now, a indicates that roughly a quarter of U.S. customers are now asking for Internet-only service from their cable providers. There are enough people watching these programs – Internet TV now reaches 40 percent of U.S. homes – for Nielsen to begin to measure these services, too. by analyzing the audio of the shows being streamed in order to identify them. Nielsen’s data also revealed the impact of streaming video: TV viewing was down 7 percent year-over-year as of October among the 18-49-year-old demographic. On a personal note, with , my final tie to cable TV has been severed as well. I moved to a new house this week and opted for streaming video only with Prime, Hulu and Netflix now taking the place of the cable TV subscription. |
LTE Nexus 9 Available Now At T-Mobile For $600, Coming To Google Play Soon | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | T-Mobile is the first in the world to offer an HTC Nexus 9 with LTE, with the tablet up for sale today via T-Mobile’s online store. It’ll cost you $24.99 or over 24 months, with $0 up front, or $599.76 all told – Just $120 more than the 32 GB Wi-Fi only version. The LTE version has the same specs otherwise, boasting Android 5.0 Lollipop, an 8.9-inch display with 2048×1536 resolution, Gorilla Glass 3 and a 64-bit Nvidia Tegra K1 dual-core processor with a 192-core Kepler graphics processor. We’ve already – it’s a solid choice for those looking for Android slates, and a great option if you’re looking to play a lot of games or do graphics-intensive work. But it doesn’t have the most amazing design or build quality in the world. Still, with LTE, it’s going to be one of the best cellular-capable Android devices you can get; with the caveat that at $600, you could (and should) easily get an iPad with LTE capabilities and similar storage. No word yet on when exactly it’ll hit Google Play, so it might be worth waiting to see how that works out, but T-Mobile’s model likely isn’t locked if you’ve got a strong hunger. |
The Realm Of Venture Circa 2014 | Steve Vassallo | 2,014 | 12 | 13 |
Today’s venture capital landscape has never been more complex, and it will never again be this simple. It’s hard for entrepreneurs to navigate and VCs to differentiate. And while many believe increased competition has driven valuations up, that simply doesn’t tell the full story. It’s time to set aside the Battle of the Bubble talk from this past year and consider the benefits to the complexity we see. Entrepreneurs have more options for raising capital, investors have more options for where to allocate their resources, and VCs have every reason to stand out by defining who they are and what their focus is. Incumbents often find it tough to accept, but disruption is almost universally a good thing. That holds true for books and cabs, and it holds true for venture, too. As a VC, I live and breathe this reality. But in talking with our limited partners and the entrepreneurs I work with on a day-to-day basis, I gained a new appreciation for just how complicated it has become for everyone to find their way in this shifting landscape. I had to find a way to get at the big picture. (I also needed a way to cope with the five months between now and the start of Game of Thrones Season 5.) The map that follows is no ordinary map, because the Realm of Venture is no ordinary place. What used to be simple – go to Sand Hill Road and meet some VCs – has become incredibly complex. In order to capture the vast and various landmarks that defined this year in venture capital, I leaned on ideas more often found in fiction and fantasy: I can’t provide the full legend here, not because each feature this map is completely self-explanatory (some aren’t), but because in the , as in reality, there’s no such thing as a cheat sheet. |
What Artificial Intelligence Is Not | Rob Smith | 2,014 | 12 | 13 | Artificial Intelligence has been in the media a lot lately. So much so that it’s only a matter of time before it graduates to meaningless buzz word status like “big data” and “cloud.” Usually I would be a big supporter. Being in the AI space, any attention to our often overlooked industry is welcome. But there seems to be more misinformation out there than solid facts. The general public seems to view AI as the mythical purple unicorn of technology; Elusive, powerful, mysterious, dangerous and most likely made up. And while there is plenty of debate in the scientific community, I can at least tell you what AI is definitely not. First of all, AI is nothing to be frightened of. It’s not a sentient being like SkyNet or an evil red light bulb like HAL. Fundamentally, AI is nothing more than a computer program smart enough to accomplish tasks that typically require human quality analysis. That’s it, not a mechanized, omnipresent war machine. Secondly, AIs are not alive. While AIs are capable of performing tasks otherwise performed by human beings, they are not “alive” like we are. They have no genuine creativity, emotions or desires other than what we program into them or they detect from the environment. Unlike in science fiction (emphasis on the fiction) AIs would have no desire to mate, replicate or have a small AI family. Next, AIs are generally not very ambitious. It’s true that in very limited context, an AI can think similarly to us and set tasks for itself. But its general purpose and reason for existence is ultimately defined by us at inception. Like any program or technology, we define what its role in our society will be. Rest assured, they will have no intention to enslave humanity and rule us as our AI overlord. Additionally, AI is not a single entity. Computer programs, even artificially intelligent ones, work far better as specialists rather than generalists. A more likely scenario for achieving artificial intelligence within our lifetime is through a network of sub programs handling vision (computer vision), language (NLP), adaptation (machine learning), movement (robotics)…etc. AI is not a he or a she or even an it, AI is more like a “they.” Finally AI, like all computer programs, are ultimately controlled by humans. Of course AI can be designed with malicious intent and weaponized like nuclear or biological technology, but that’s not a fault of the science but of ourselves. While Elon Musk is a personal hero of mine, and a genius on so many levels, his on artificial intelligence have been a little less than brilliant. He mentions that AI is more dangerous than nuclear weapons and that we may summon an AI “demon” (his words, not mine). My only explanation is that he must have fallen asleep watching Terminator. In the meantime, companies such as IBM, Google and Apple are developing the next generation of AI-powered applications, using small bits of specialized AI code to replace the human element in many tiring, dangerous or time-consuming jobs. These are very specific, almost tunnel-vision-like programs that only improve our society and should instill fear in no one. In my opinion we are still decades from reaching the AI “singularity” Musk speaks of, and even then, its ultimate temperament will be bound by our intentions. If history has taught us anything, when that time comes, we should not fear the AI, but the people behind it. |
With 3D Printing, Medical Devices Are Cool Again | Dr. Michael Patton | 2,014 | 12 | 13 | The recent and human implantation of a 3D-printed vertebra at Peking University in China captured the public’s imagination. I read the news (and its quick spread) as evidence that medical devices are, dare I say, cool again. I’ve never seen a flood of interest as we have enjoyed recently. This is a great thing; I love the idea that innovators the world over, from almost every discipline and industry, are carefully researching and ultimately choosing to pursue opportunities in the device field. We need all the help we can get. 3D printing technology has been used to create everything from to new . A is expected in a few years. Or as the New Yorker put it recently: It is now possible to “ ” Perfecting the process of bioprinting human organs and bones, and engineering DNA scaffolding from which to develop precise medicinal compounds is a focus for universities, private labs, and venture-funded startups alike, and for good reason. We can even print metal as of today; we’re no longer limited strictly to polymers. Colleagues have repeatedly inquired: what are the overarching implications of Peking’s result, and others’, for the future of device innovation? After so much fanfare, has 3D printing for healthcare finally arrived? What is the state of the union of these technologies in the U.S.? How close are we to widespread clinical use? Where should I place my chips? These are the right questions to be asking, especially given that the United States is still the leader in medical device manufacturing. The domestic market is . This is one area in which jobs are not just secure, but multiplying. We have a natural advantage in devices, right here in our backyard. Below is a summary of the medical device market, the context of which I think will be helpful whether you’re a clinician-turned-entrepreneur, a hardware or software engineer, an investor, or a healthcare provider or administrator. Then we’ll discuss 3D printing’s specific promise in greater detail. Despite its overall size, the medical device field has a disproportionately long tail, making it unique compared to other healthcare segments, which are characteristically dominated by large, heady incumbents. Of the 6,500+ medical device companies in existence in the U.S. today, more than 80 percent are small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. These companies are leaner and meaner than most any venture-backed software play, especially considering the overhead involved. Think of device companies as risky, capital-intensive hardware plays. But instead of beaming Netflix to your TV, or tracking how many miles your car has driven in a given week, they’re healing wounds faster with liquid-free, thermo-regulating circuits that anyone can administer, dramatically reducing sepsis with smart catheters that guard against infection in ways never before thought possible and treating acne painlessly with the press of a single miraculous button. It’s an exciting time to be working in devices, for sure. But any market overview should in fairness also detail the challenges facing the device community in equal measure. The in January enumerated the top three challenges currently faced by medical device companies. Regulatory issues, access to funding, and the new product development are the biggest pain points for medical device innovators. The study confirmed what any entrepreneurs in our sector knows firsthand, but it was nice to see it validated empirically. Product development, despite being No. 3 on the list, is where we need to focus if we’re to dramatically increase the odds of success for device companies and get more devices into the hands of patients who need them most. The rate of new product development within the healthcare industry overall is too slow at a time when we need change more than ever. Devices are just the tip of the iceberg, but they’re a wonderful place to start. Devices are where speedups are most welcome and least political. As innovators, however, we’re quick to gravitate towards sexy use cases. In so doing we often glaze over the first, and in many ways most important, phase of device innovation: prototyping. And that conveniently brings me back to 3D printing. If you take away nothing else from this article, take away this: 3D printing’s greatest utility for medical device entrepreneurship lies in prototyping, not manufacturing. Although clinical-grade implants like Peking’s are exciting — as are new inventive areas like genomic bio-printing — the biggest pain points medical device entrepreneurs face sit considerably earlier in the product lifecycle and are rather basic. That is, until now it has been impossible to iterate on medical device concepts at a speed anywhere near what our software-developing brethren can accomplish. The faster we can develop prototypes and the better each iteration can be, the sooner we can place effective new devices in hospitals and clinics and make a meaningful impact on patient care. Speeding time-to-market is the top motivation. Capital requirements accordingly plummet. And best of all, our greatest talents can follow their nose; gone are the days of quixotically laboring on ultimately doomed projects, blind to their efficacy (or lack thereof) for years. 3D printing makes it easier to try new approaches, but it also makes it easier to kill a fruitless line of thought and move on, without existentially threatening an entire venture. Rapid prototyping helps in the two other “problem areas,” as well. Working with regulators becomes more of a conversation instead of a months-long call-and-response if you can prototype quickly. Similarly, investors love the idea of further de-risking design and development by iterating on product in ways that again, until now, only software developers could. 3D printing is here to stay. Here are three things that will take all of the energy and all of the interest in medical devices we’re seeing, and harness it for optimal technological progress. When one collaborating lab passes a schematic or calibration along to another, a common operating vocabulary is essential. Right now there are too many formats, and few technical standards. 3D prototyping looks a lot like the Wild West. This isn’t as acute a problem when research and development occurs exclusively within a single lab or team. Still, from what I have seen, the most interesting stuff in terms of device innovation is the product of multi-site work comprising several expert teams, each of whom brings to the table a unique skill set. Device innovation is an interdisciplinary effort. Standards in turn make possible another level of abstraction in. Each team’s intellectual property lies in what we prototype, not the mechanics of prototyping itself. What software entrepreneurs today consider de rigeur, device entrepreneurs have lusted after longer than we are likely to admit. We should not have to reinvent the wheel every time out. Too many groups are focused on developing their own printers, substrates and everything in between. Out-of-the-box prototyping systems are seldom customized for the task at hand; that fact, however, doesn’t mandate a proprietary-first mentality. Right now, most prototyping happens in a dirty, dust-flecked corner of existing labs, and facilities, such as they are, are spread all over the place. There are few convening points for innovators in the midst of prototyping and right now it’s a lonely path. , a Charlotte-based organization, helps healthcare workers bring their medical device ideas to life by designing and prototyping ideas with high potential for commercialization, and they’re one great, outlying example to follow. Similarly, the and the have created collaborative environments for entrepreneurs to work in close proximity to peers and experts who provide advice for startups that need help along the way. What we’re doing at Medical Innovation Labs with Prof. Joe Beaman at the University of Texas is another great example. I’m really happy that medical devices are cool again. But I want to make sure we take full advantage of our moment in the sun. The real opportunity of 3D printing in the medical field lies in prototyping — in the “how” of making devices even more so than the “what.” In order to manifest this sea change, we ought to recognize, standardize and maturely support 3D prototyping as more than a fad or a speaking point. We have to become more than a loose network of moonshots and side projects, which is where we are today. Your big takeaway is that with 3D prototyping, medical device innovators can iterate more rapidly and more often, which creates the same hyper-productive, hyper-creative mindset that led to so much software innovation over the past two decades. The means and methods of production have forever changed for the better. The goal should be no less than a renaissance in device innovation, bringing to market myriad new solutions that patients all over the world have eagerly awaited for too long already. |
This Art Project Turns The World’s Tweets Into A Clock | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 12 | 13 | Don’t look at the clock. Do you know what time it is? Twitter sure as heck does. Turns out, people to tweet about the time. So why not turn the Twitter firehose into a massive, crowdsourced clock? That’s the thinking behind . Built by Dutch tech-meets-art studio for an ongoing exhibit at the , the clock pulls a different tweet directly related to the current time (based on your system clock, for international compatibility) every few seconds. I’ve been watching the tweets flash by for a few hours, and here’s what I’ve learned: I want something like this running on a little screen on my desk all day. BRB, finding an old Chumby to hack up. |
Facebook Dumps Bing, Will Introduce Its Own Search Tool | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 12 | 13 | It seems that Facebook quietly removed Bing as its primary search provider over the weekend, announcing plans to debut its own search tool on Monday, according to . The report says that Facebook’s new search tool will give users the ability to filter through old comments and other information from friends. Facebook has been building out its search products for a long time, to provide results beyond the Interest Graph in an effort to avoid letting rival Google into the system. A Facebook spokesperson told Reuters: “We’re not currently showing web search results in Facebook Search because we’re focused on helping people find what’s been shared with them on Facebook. We continue to have a great partnership with Microsoft of lots of different areas.” Microsoft said almost the same thing to : “Facebook recently changed its search experience to focus on helping people tap into information that’s been shared with them on Facebook versus a broader set of web results. We continue to partner with Facebook in many different areas.” Search is an incredibly difficult space to delve into, and Facebook’s search products will face their own unique challenges in that the closed network, with over 1 billion active users, is home to more than a trillion posts. Zuck said on an analyst conference call in July that his search engineers often remind him that Facebook represents the biggest web search corpus out there. It’s a difficult but important obstacle to tackle as Facebook continues to dominate our social imprint on the Internet. The social giant has been around for more than a decade, and thus entire lives have been lived and recorded on Facebook. That content is growing exponentially, and search that is tailored to this specific network will likely be crucial. |
Gillmor Gang: Enterprise Edition | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 12 | 13 | The Gillmor Gang — John Taschek, Bruce Richardson, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, December 12, 2014 in Menlo Park, California at the Salesforce Analyst Summit 2014. Analysts and Salesforce executives discussed the Summit’s theme of Continuous Transformation for 2020. @stevegillmor, @jtaschek, @kteare, @firstthingbruce Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
Blinq Tells You If Your Dating Matches Are In The Bar | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 12 | 13 | Shove over . Swiss startup has come up with a new twist on the dating app. The startup is incorporating beacon proximity technology into the mix so singles can do more meeting IRL and less swiping — thanks to select venues being kitted out with Blinq’s Estimote iBeacons. These work with an in app feature called InstaConnect which lets users opt in to be notified if any of their dating matches or singles that fit their criteria happen to be hanging out at the same location. Thus far Blinq has mostly rolled out the Bluetooth iBeacons in Zurich, as part of its pilot, and is still very much in a learning phase with the proximity technology. The beacon feature launched in September in Blinq’s (it does have an too) and around 50 beacons have been installed so far, including at the Swiss ski resort of Arosa. The team says it’s in discussions with brands and venues about expanding this footprint. There are obvious synergies between dating apps and nightlife venues. Indeed, Blinq sees part of its business model as a b2b service selling the ability for venues to encourage Blinq users who are nearby to come inside and have a drink or two on the house by pushing out relevant offers, sweetened with the knowledge that one (or more) of their prior matches happens to be inside. “We are in active talks with major beverage brands to scale our beacon network to other cities outside of Switzerland. By using the brands existing sales channels we can equip venues very efficient with our beacons. For these brands our case is interesting: we are able to engage consumers with a brand in a relevant context. Furthermore, we are able to drive traffic to their accounts,” says co-founder Jan Berchtold. Leveraging nightlife brand synergies is absolutely on Blinq’s expansion roadmap. But it’s early days for the beacon side of the business — given how new the Bluetooth proximity tech still is, and how limited its own venue rollouts are so far. Still, Berchtold is confident beacon tech, augmented with other smartphone sensor signals such as GPS and motion data, offers huge potential to improve dating apps. He argues sensor tech will enable mobile dating to get much smarter and more contextual while also simultaneously being more passive, since users aren’t having to constantly scan their phones to be informed about potential matches in the vicinity. “We see great potential in increasing the chances of a meet-up by passively connecting people in the right context on behalf of our InstaConnect feature. At the moment, we make use of the highly accurate beacon technology to notify matches if they are at the same bar or club. But this is only the first step into the future of contextual mobile dating. In a next step, a combination of motion, GPS and beacon location data is used to bring people together at festivals, colleges, malls, gyms and many more places,” he tells TechCrunch. “As an example, we equipped chairlifts and après-ski bars in the ski area Arosa in Switzerland with beacons. If you and one of your matches are detected to be skiing in Arosa on the same day, both get notified and suggested a place to meet up. Since skiing is a one-day activity, the important scope in this case is the ski area and the fact that both users are there on the same day.” He contrasts this more contextual approach with the random serendipity of dating app Happn — which, incidentally, just stocked up its coffers with an to fund a global rollout — which matches singles who just happen to pass each other on the street. That’s not very smart, argues Berchtold. “The information provided by Happn, that you crossed paths, does not increase the chances of meeting someone,” he says. “This may be used as a conversation starter but the context is not relevant. Therefore Blinq is the first mobile application to connect users passively at the right time and right place.” “We don’t see a future where everyone spends that much time on the cell phone. It’s not possible. There will be some kind of counter movement. So the apps and the dating apps have to become smarter — and actually find out when you’re in the mood or in the right time to meet someone,” he adds. It’s not strictly necessary to use iBeacons to power the Blinq InstaConnect proximity feature — a smartphone’s own Bluetooth radio could be used for that (and indeed that is a feature the team is also exploring to enable Blinq users to stumble upon each other without needing to be at a specific venue). However installing and controlling static beacons in real world locations has clear advantages — giving Blinq more structured data and more control over that data. Allowing it to, for instance, know when someone is inside a venue or just passing by outside. This sort of granular, location-based intel can then be fed back into making its app experience smarter and more contextual — or even sold as customer insight back to the venues it’s hoping to sign up as its own customers. The beacon-plus-social-singles-community side of the business opens up multiple potential revenue streams, although Berchtold says Blinq’s initial focus is firmly on dating at this point. Beyond the Bluetooth-powered InstaConnect feature, the rest of the Blinq app takes a Tinder-style approach to sorting through singles — with users speccing out their gender, age and distance requirements and then being asked to tap ‘hi or bye’ on photo profiles of potential matches. The app has had some 40,000 downloads since launching its Zurich beta last December, and has amassed around 25,000 active users. Berchtold says the team is intentionally building a more curated community of singles than Tinder, manually approving each new user by checking factors such as their location and the number of Facebook friends they have (like Tinder Blinq uses Facebook as an identity layer) before approving a newbie to join in order to weed out scammy behaviour. “The users that we have say that we have a better community [than Tinder] and say they feel safer and also that they swipe more to the right than they do on Tinder,” he adds. The Blinq team has raised around $500,000 in early funding from Swiss angel investors and also by investing some of its own money, ploughing in proceeds from other projects such as a Bang With Friends style app called which Berchtold also worked on. It’s also done a media for equity deal with Switzerland’s 3 Plus TV station to help promote Blinq via relevant singles-focused TV shows (such as The Bachelor). As well as its planned b2b monetization model, Blinq is working on b2c revenue streams via premium in-app features — such as a singles heatmap which will be able to tell users which venues have the highest concentrations of singles in real-time, again powered by its beacon tech. Premium features are yet to come; for now the app is entirely free to use. On the market expansion front, Blinq’s initial focus is German-speaking countries — with a plan to launch in Munich in Germany in January, followed by major cities in Germany and Austria. After that, in the second half of 2015, it will be expanding to other major cities in Europe, with the likes of London on its radar. Funding wise Berchtold confirms it’s in the process of closing another round — also of $500,000 — and likely to close by the end of January, which it plans to use to finance this market expansion. |
The Strength Of A Transparent Startup | Joshua McClure | 2,014 | 12 | 13 | If you ask a member of the business-tech community about the benefits of closed systems versus their open counterparts, one word that will almost certainly come up is “security.” There’s been a long-held belief in the tech industry that closed systems are more difficult to corrupt and, therefore, more secure than systems built on a philosophy of . But in recent months we’ve seen this idea of “closed is more secure” flipped on its head. Once concerned primarily with keeping hackers and other “outsiders” from accessing sensitive data, consumers are now more aware of the importance of maintaining personal security and privacy from corporations, governments and other powerful “insiders.” We’ve seen this trend gain momentum in America , and even more vocally in Hong Kong recently with the against the Chinese government’s famously closed election system. Meanwhile, we’ve also begun to see cracks appearing in one of the world’s most popular and fanatically trusted closed systems — Apple’s. While the reminded us of the value of multi-factor authentication, that spread phishing malware in Hong Kong poked a few more holes in the perceived security of iOS’s closed system. So in a world where being “closed” can not only prove ineffective but also raise red flags, it makes more sense than ever for tech startups to adopt a policy of radical openness: transparency leads to trust; collaboration leads to innovation; and decentralization leads to empowerment. Each year, GMI Ratings releases a list of the , inspired by the abuses that led to the financial collapse. GMI’s stance is that trustworthiness comes from transparency — even when the news is bad, the companies on this list are keeping shareholders informed, leading to less investor uncertainty and, in most cases, solid stock prices. What might surprise you (or might not) is that technology is cited as one of today’s most fraudulent industries along with pharmaceuticals. This means that the opportunity is ripe to distinguish your tech startup from closed-up competitors by employing a model of radical openness with investors and clients. That may mean providing more performance and financial data, being up front about long-term goals (or your more agile, wait-and-see approach, if that’s the case) and even coming forward to report your mistakes and near misses. It might be painful, but it can actually strengthen your relationships over time. Some of the most talked-about startups in recent years would not exist if not for open data. Wikipedia is an obvious example, but also consider , which was . Waze uses user-submitted traffic data to recommend the fastest driving route, which adjusts in real time as the user drives. Imagine the efficiencies that would be lost if Waze tried to generate this data by itself instead of tapping into the free, unlimited power of collaboration. Investors in companies like IFTTT (which stands for If-This-Then-That) are also placing huge bets that the future lies in interconnection and open interaction among a multitude of platforms and devices. While many tech startups were thinking about how to carve a niche, own it and charge for it, IFTTT was strategically positioning itself as the go-to platform for the impending Internet of Things. This brilliant, long-game strategy landed the company a in August of this year. Imagine if the company had instead built a platform that only functioned with IFTTT-approved devices, following a closed, vertical integration model. It might have enjoyed some early success, but it would have inevitably been unseated by a more open provider. Even a closed behemoth like Microsoft is now recognizing the value of open-sourced collaboration, recently announcing its decision to and also take it to Mac and Linux. Launching a startup with “artificial walls” in place, such as exclusive partnerships or extensive restrictions, in all likelihood means signing your own death sentence. Hold up Apple as a shining exception if you want, but history shows that tech that doesn’t play well with others gets left behind as collaborative innovation happens outside its walls. For example, if Apple decides to throw its hat in the virtual reality ring, it will have to do on its own what the united front of are collaborating to create. Companies that rely on the idea that they’re “completely irreplaceable” need only look at the long list of alternatives that have arisen to even some of our most institutionalized services in recent years: bitcoin for traditional currency; at-home 3D printing for manufacturing; and right now in Hong Kong, , which is enabling protesters to circumvent Internet service providers. No closed system is safe from the disruption of a more open alternative. Back to Waze for a moment. Let’s imagine the blowback the company would receive for trying to charge for its user-submitted information. The commercial real estate industry has done precisely that for many years. The largest data providers have served as arbitrary gatekeepers for the world’s commercial real estate listings by asking brokers and agencies for info on their available spaces, then packaging that information and charging for access to it. It’s unsurprising that free and open alternatives are now arising, threatening the existence of these long-established gatekeepers. (Disclosure, I run RealMassive, one such company.) The commercial real estate industry lost sight of one important fact — the Internet has made kings of us all. In a Google world, the encyclopedia salesman is a relic, and businesses built around proprietary data have an expiration date. If your startup is basing its business model on data that another company could feasibly gather and give away for free, you can expect that very thing to happen in the near future. Would you be able to survive? Do you really want to find out? When it comes to making a choice between radical openness and “closedness” as a business philosophy, the best time to choose is in the early months of your company. A company that starts out with a closed paradigm and later chooses to open up will have a tough time rerouting company culture and also runs the risk of losing ground to more open competitors early on. Even worse, a company that starts out open and later chooses to become closed will almost certainly make enemies, as after it suddenly clamped down on its open-source 3D printing hardware after a community of early supporters spent years contributing to Makerbot’s design (it’s worth watching “ ,” a new documentary that chronicles the whole ordeal, available on Netflix). Since you must choose one — and you must — openness is simply a better option for tech startups who stand little chance of deploying a successful vertical domination strategy like Apple or Sony built in decades past. When it comes to relationship-building, innovation, and eliminating competition, the best thing you can do to guarantee your company a spot in the future is to employ a philosophy of radical openness. Schoolyard politics still apply: Secrets don’t make friends and neither do bullies. |
null | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 12 | 12 | null |
FoundationDB And The New NoSQL | Jon Evans | 2,014 | 12 | 13 | Databases are the spine of the tech industry: unsung, invisible, but critical–and beyond disastrous when they break or are deformed. This makes database people cautious. For years, only the Big Three–Oracle, IBM’s DB2, and (maybe) SQL Server–were serious options. Then the open-source alternatives–MySQL, PostgreSQL–became viable. …And then, over the last five years, things got interesting. Some history: around the turn of this millennium, more and more people begin to recognize that formal, structured, relational databases, interrogated by variants of , often hindered rather than helped development. Over the following decade, a plethora of new databases bloomed, especially within Google, which had a particular need for web-scale datastore solutions: hence , . Meanwhile, Apache brought us , , and ; Clustrix offered a ; Redis became a fundamental component of many Rails (and other) apps; and, especially, became extremely popular among startups, despite vociferous — in particular, of its write lock which prevented concurrent write operations across entire databases. This will apparently soon be , after which there will presumably be much rejoicing. (For context: I’m a developer, and have done some work with MongoDB, and I’m not a fan.) As interesting as these new developments–called “NoSQL databases”–were, though, only bleeding-edge startups and a tiny handful of other dreamers were really taking them . Databases are beyond mission-critical, after all. If your database is deformed, you’re in trouble. If your database doesn’t guarantee the integrity of its data and your transactions–i.e. if it doesn’t substantially support what are known as “ “–then real database engineers don’t take it seriously: You may not need ACID guarantees but if a storage engine can't provide AD it's basically not a storage engine worthy of your time or data. — Kelly Sommers (@kellabyte) Yet we keep benchmarking storage engines that shit themselves and corrupt their own data with ones who don't. Why even benchmark brokenness. — Kelly Sommers (@kellabyte) MongoDB is . Neither is Cassandra. Neither is Riak. Neither is Redis. Etc etc etc. In fact, it was sometimes claimed that NoSQL databases were fundamentally incompatible with ACID compliance. This isn’t true — Google’s Megastore is , and their Spanner is — but you can’t use Megastore outside of Google unless you’re willing to build your entire application on their idiosyncratic App Engine platform. Which is why I was so intrigued a couple of years ago when I stumbled across a booth at TechCrunch Disrupt whose slogan was “NoSQL, YesACID.” It was hosted by a company named , who have performed the remarkable achievement of building an key-value datastore while also providing a standard SQL access on top of that. Earlier this week they of FoundationDB 3.0, a remarkable twenty-five times faster than their previous version, thanks to what co-founder and COO compares to a “heart and lungs transplant” for their engine. This new engine scales up to a whopping writes per second. That is a . To quote their blog post, this isn’t just 14 million writes per second, it’s 14 million “in a fully-ordered, fully-transactional database with 100% multi-key cross-node transactions […] in the public cloud […] Said another way, FoundationDB can do 3.6 million database writes per penny.” Impressive stuff. Impressive enough to capture the attention of enterprise database engineers, maybe. And obviously a great fit with the forthcoming Internet of Things, and the enormous amount of data that billions of connected devices will soon be constantly capturing. But most importantly, this will push their competitors to do even better — which, in turn, will hopefully nudge the enormous numbers of enterprises still in the database Bronze Ages, running off Oracle and DB2, to consider maybe, just maybe, beginning to slowly, cautiously, carefully move into the bold new present day, in which developers are spoiled with simple key-value semantics, the full power of classic SQL queries, and distributed ACID transactions, all at the same time. In the long run that will make life better. In the interim, hats off to all the unsung database engineers out there . You may not realize it, but they’re doing us all a huge service. If you click through you’ll note they elide discussion of the “C” in ACID, “consistency.” Suffice to say that the discussion of consistency is abstruse enough to make medieval debates about angels on the head of a pin sound like knock-knock jokes; but for the technically inclined, they are strongly rather than merely eventually consistent. |
Girls Who Code Expands To Get More Young Women In Computer Science Majors | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | The computer science gender gap struggle in Silicon Valley is real. A mere 17 percent of tech workers are women. It’s 15 percent at . Similar stats can be found at most of the larger tech companies. is trying to reverse those digits with an announcement of a major expansion in partnerships today. The non-profit organization that aims to close the gender gap in technology will grow its from 19 sessions reaching 375 girls to 60 sessions reaching 1,200 girls this year. The 7-week program pairs girls interested in computer science education with field trips to top tech companies such as Twitter and Square. The program recruits and trains teachers and assistants, provides the curriculum, recruits the girls, curates guest speakers, manages field trips and offers mentorship to the girls during the course of each summer session. The program needs to expand in order to reach more young women. This means partnering with more companies willing to host the girls and provide the facilities for them. Girls Who Code is adding sponsorship from Accenture, Adobe, AIG, Akamai, AOL, AppNexus, AT&T, BSA, eBay, Electronic Arts, Expedia, Facebook, GE, Goldman Sachs, Google, Groupon, IAC, IBM, Lockheed Martin, MassMutual, Microsoft, Moody’s, Pixar Animation Studios, Square, The Honest Company, Twitter, Viacom, Intel, Intuit and Verizon in order to reach its goal. Each company will host and provide mentorship to 20 young women at each of those locations during the 7 week sessions. Sandra Vivian-Calderon heads the Girls Who Code club at Castlemont High School in Oakland, CA. She says she didn’t think she was capable of programming before participating in the program. “I would say ‘oh I don’t know what I’m doing. There are more boys so that means they are smarter or better than me’.” Vivian-Calderon was able to go through the summer program at Square headquarters this last year. “Jack [Dorsey] came in one time and told us to stay in school and that he hoped to see more girls coding in the future,” she recalled. However, her main encouragement came from sharing a common interest with the other girls in the program. “It helped to spend time with other girls doing the same thing as me,” said Vivian-Calderon. She told TechCrunch that there are actually more girls than boys in her computer science class now, thanks to her involvement with Girls Who Code. This large expansion for the non-profit includes the addition of Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC to its list of locations where the program is offered. Girls Who Code adds COVERGIRL, MasterCard, and Samsung to its list of foundation partners as well. This is in addition to The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen Foundation (LAAF), Saban Family Foundation, CUNY, and Georgetown University. The application for the 2015 Summer Immersion Program will be available on January 15, 2015. |
Nokia’s Here Will Power Maps For Baidu Outside China To Cater To China’s ‘Globetrotters’ | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | Search giant Baidu has made no secret of its by way of mobile services. Now it’s struck a deal with Nokia that could help it with that by serving domestic users abroad. Nokia’s mapping and navigation business Here says that it will now , specifically aiming the service at the large number of Chinese “globetrotters” — the world’s largest outbound tourism market. Here will power both desktop as well as Android and iOS apps, starting with Taiwan first and then adding other territories at a later stage. The companies are not disclosing the financial terms of the deal. “It’s a licensing deal in the conventional sense so Baidu is licensing our map data, but we can’t give any further info unfortunately,” says a spokesperson. Baidu offers extensive mapping services in China (a screenshot of its existing maps service is pictured above), and that was one of the key components in a . But it’s less good on that data outside of its domestic market. Mapping and navigation have long been hot areas for platform companies looking for strong positions in mobile. The reason for that is pretty clear: as our smartphones have turned from basic voice and text communication devices into intelligent assistants, location services — which underpin so much of what we do and how we do it when on the move — are central to that. Here is a natural partner for Baidu, in that it’s not a direct competitor as Google might be and works cross-platform in a way that Apple does not. Here has that will make its mapping apps available across all Google Play markets and Android devices, and is finally re-publishing a new iOS app in early 2015, after pulling it in 2013. Here’s parent company Nokia, meanwhile, has also been focussing on the China market for years now and so will have some existing Chinese language expertise and IP that it can use to develop custom maps in the language covering other territories. “People are already using HERE in Chinese language in different parts of the world,” the spokesperson tells me. Here offers maps for nearly 200 countries, with turn-by-turn navigation for 118 of them. According to the China National Tourism Association (via ) the number of Chinese travellers visiting foreign countries have grown drastically over the last several years as China’s economy has expanded its number of moneyed citizens has grown. In 2013, 98.19 million Chinese people travelled abroad, up 18% on 2012 and totalling $128.7b in expenditures (up 27% on the year before). It estimates that in 2014 that number will have risen to 114 million with total expenditure of $140 billion. “Every day, millions of people count on Here to explore the world and discover new places whether at home or on the go,” Bruno Bourguet, SVP and head of sales for Here, said in a statement. “Together with Baidu, a new customer for us, we want to help the growing number of Chinese tourists get the most from their travels.” Elsewhere, Baidu has been flexing its international muscle by building services for users outside its core Chinese-language market. In 2013, Baidu to load its mobile browser on to Android devices that were getting sold in Africa. Nokia is not commenting on whether it is going to power any services in these, but it is not ruling it out. “Our expertise is in the mapping/location services domain so that defines the scope of our work with Baidu,” the spokesperson says. As we pointed out last week, , Here posted net sales of €236 million on an operating profit of zero out of total net sales at Nokia of €3.3 billion. Updated throughout with Nokia comments. |
Uber Offers Free Rides During Sydney Hostage Crisis After Surge Pricing Backlash | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | After prices (with prices starting at about $100 AUD) during the , Uber has backed away from its surge pricing policy and is now offering free rides out of Sydney’s central business district (CBD). Uber’s surge pricing feature kicks in during times of high demand and is designed to encourage more drivers to get on the road. This , but unfortunately can make the company, which has suffered from recently, seem tone-deaf when shortages are due to emergencies. According to , rides away from the central business district will be free for customers, while higher rates are still in place for riders who want to get into the area, in other to encourage more drivers to make the trip. Uber Sydney trips from CBD will be free for riders. Higher rates are still in place to encourage drivers to get into the CBD. — Uber Sydney (@Uber_Sydney) Uber generally covers the cost of free rides for drivers, but TechCrunch has contacted the company to confirm that. This is not the first time Uber has placed a halt on surge pricing during emergencies. For example, the company has a policy in the U.S. to put caps on pricing in the U.S. during crises and national disasters, a . |
Taiwan Startup iFit Raises $3M Series A To Expand Into China And Southeast Asia | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | , an online fitness and weight loss community based in Taiwan, has raised a $3 million Series A led by Cherubic Ventures, with investors including Yuan-jin Capital, Sino Strategy Group, Alan Chien, and Ming-zhe Ou, the former general manager of Lenovo Taiwan. The company says it will use its Series A to expand its online-to-offline business model, introduce new products like diet meals, and hire more employees. Its Series A comes nine months after iFit announced that it . In addition to Taiwan, iFit’s target markets also include Southeast Asia and China. Since launching as a in 2012, iFit has grown rapidly. In 2013, it claimed $2 million in revenue, which grew this year to $6.6 million. The company monetizes with a range of products that include diet food, exercise equipment, and supplements. It also co-produces a TV show in Taiwan. iFit currently has about 670,000 members on its Facebook page, as well as 3.2 million users on its public Line account. TechCrunch has asked the company for its website’s user metrics. |
Hands-On With The 3DRobotics Iris+ Drone | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | The is the one that got away. Literally. I’ve flown my fair share of drones lately — everywhere from over empty football fields and beaches to small rivers. They all came back unharmed. But not the . It’s the first drone I tested that simply flew away from me. To be fair, chances are I got something wrong when that happened. I had taken the drone to an empty field to test its autonomous flying modes (that’s why I feel okay calling it a drone instead of a quadcopter). With a circuit around the field programmed into the Android app, uploaded to the drone and everything else set of takeoff, I pressed the “arm” button in the Android app and the drone took off — and flew in the wrong direction. Before I knew it, it had crashed into the trees behind me. I remember frantically trying to get it under control, trying the “land-me” knob on the remote control and eventually just running after it. The drone survived the incident just fine, with only one of the rotors broken. Because I’m not sure what exactly happened, I’ll chalk it up to operator error, but it goes to show that there is still plenty of room to mess up when flying a modern drone. Except for that mishap, the Iris+ is a pretty cool drone to fly. It does have its fair share of advantages of other popular quadcopters like the earlier DJI Phantoms in that it comes with a very good gimbal (as an option) that keeps you videos very stable. It also allows you to program flights with its easy to use Android app and you can use the same app to have the drone based on your GPS data. Except for the obvious “ ,” you can also use this mode to have the drone track you while you’re riding on your dirt bike or surfing. You can program the drone to circle around you or just follow you. I wasn’t quite able to think of too many situations where I would need this feature, but I guess it’s worth putting into the “nice to have” column. The pre-programmed autonomous flights worked really well for me (except for that one time) and make the Iris+ an option for farmers who want to regularly monitor their crops from the sky, for example. That said, other drone vendors now offer similar features. Except for those features, the Iris+ compares well to similar drones in the sub-$1,000 category. It’s flight time is about 15 minutes with the gimbal on (and a few minutes more without that extra weight, but then you also lose all the utility of the drone). That’s less than a DJI Phantom would give you, but enough for most of the missions you are likely to fly. In terms of actual flight performance, I have no complaints. The drone was fast, flew stable and quick to react to inputs from the controller. Prices start at $750 for the basic version. Adding the Tarot gimbal will set you ban an additional $210 and because it doesn’t have a built-in camera, you’ll have to buy a GoPro, too. What made the Iris+ stand out for me more was its ability to take really good video thanks to its optional gimbal. That made for far better video than I’ve ever gotten from my Phantom Vision 2, but then that’s no surprise given the very basic gimbal that sits underneath it. Newer DJI drones and maybe even the feature similar capabilities, though, and they come with the added benefit of having a live video downstream from the drone that you can watch on your smartphone. That’s a feature I felt was sorely missing while flying the Iris+. With the 3DRobotics drone, you have to simply guess that your camera is lined up with what you want to capture. You should never really fly your drone outside of your line of sight, but it’s easy to do with a Phantom. With the Iris+, that’s not even an option, unless you also invest in a — and then you’re looking at an extra $350. Overall, the Iris+ is a solid drone. Another options worth looking at in this segment is the Phantom 2 Vision+ with its built-in video downlink (you can get one of those for around $1,100 now). The Parrot Bebop also looks pretty nice and, at around $500, is more affordable, but I haven’t had a chance to fly one of those myself just yet. |
An Open Letter To Tim Cook About Game Censorship | Tadhg Kelly | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | Tim, I’m a huge fan of Apple’s products including my new iPhone 6 Plus. It’s gorgeous. I’m even more of a fan of what Apple has done for games in the last half decade. Prior to the App Store, selling games to the mass market was an expensive and difficult mess of approvals by powers-that-be, often at massive disadvantage to the game maker. Apple opened that closed shop, which in turn spawned multiple revolutions. It led to many new kinds of game, new powers, new economics for games and a whole raft of other innovations. I bring these examples up to frame my appreciation and disappointment appropriately. I think you’re doing an incredible job but there is one area in which you’re letting me down badly: Censorship. Movies might get age certificates and music might get stickers warning of offensive lyrics, but they don’t get banned. They used to. From the early days of pulping books through to the and “ ”, every medium has had to face allegations of offense or indecency. Every one has had to make the case that their material is worthy of being treated as free expression. And – thankfully – they’ve all won. Except games. Game developers are regularly treated as second class media citizens. It was only in 2011, 40 years after their creation, that video games were finally by the Supreme Court. Throughout the history of the industry we have had self-policing, legal suppression, publisher, platform and retailer demands for creative changes to games based on censorship. Some are ridiculous (bans against showing blood) and some are allegations of prurience (nudity in games) and some are baseless fears of corruption (video game violence). Whether it’s a console or a big retail chain, we game makers have long had to put up with a level of interference that no other medium faces. We’re consistently told what our medium should be like, often by people with a poor understanding of it. We frequently get accused of leading the world astray in ways that are not supportable. All this at a time when the first generation of game makers is passing the torch ( ). The second generation often wants to make fun games, but some of them want to use games for other means. Games like and , for example. Games like . Games like . Games like . But even though Apple has done many amazing things for our industry in liberalizing its economics (with great thanks) the company nevertheless buys into the urge to suppress games. And it’s just morally wrong. Tim I don’t believe that this is a position that you’re actively taking. I think it’s happened as a result of a couple of related issues that have bred an awkward censorship. First there was the issue of trying to keep iOS relatively consumer friendly by keeping porn away. Apple’s position has been that people are welcome to go out onto the Web and do as they wish. If they really want their adult material, Safari is their gateway. Second was the fact that because games are made in software there is frequently confusion in many minds over whether they are a medium or a product. Approval of software is essentially a checklist of what’s permitted or not, much as a technical requirements, violations, bugs and so on. It’s (mostly) entirely binary. The problem for us game makers is that the Safari answer usually doesn’t work for us. Software is not permitted to get to iOS devices via the Web because to do so invites malware, and that would be a major problem for such a high-profile platform. And secondly evaluating games in the manner of software checklists strips them of context. It is literally “this game contains boobs” as in Lucas Pope’s . Ban or change. It doesn’t feature whether those boobs are appropriate or not, as they might in other media. Via Apple today I can purchase episodes or even though both have invited questions of appropriate content in their time. Why? Because Apple understands context. Media gets protected even though some would find it offensive because it matters. Except for games. If a game is philosophically seen as like an app then it falls under a certain remit. If a game is philosophically seen as like a book or album, it goes another way. Shifting from one to the other view is what needs to change. I imagine that the experience of the team vetting was a little like the . He reads a script and marks “no, no, no” then sees a joke which makes him laugh out loud before marking it “no”. I imagine that in playing or many of the other banned or censored games on iOS that the team knew it was good but had no option to approve it. It didn’t fit the checklist. I don’t mean to make light of your own situation, but Tim you know what it is to . You know that being free is important, supremely important. Yet through a series of circumstances the company founded by one of finds itself in this position of saying no, of insisting that games fit in a box and be culturally relegated. Great revenues maybe, but creatively they’re not being allowed to be all they can be on your platform. Would taking the view that games are media and thus not censoring them alter the bottom line of the App Store? I doubt it. Would it need some thought as regards age categories and appropriate handling? I would think so, yes. So it’s likely a net drag to actually do it. But you should do it anyway. It’s been a hard fought battle for some of us within the games industry to get to the point where we’re not thought of as drug dealers or child-corrupting monsters. We’re trying to overcome that Comics-Code perception, and slowly succeeding even despite resistance within and without. The big platforms often still stand in our way, still act like games should only exist in certain boxes, but they’re slowly shifting. Tim you control the biggest gaming platform in the world. Mobile games will surpass PC and console soon enough, and when they do they will become . The games won’t all be just and forever though, any more than TV stayed as its 1960s incarnation forever. Communities and cultures form around games in a way that’s important to the overall culture, and will only increasingly do so. Given your position of power do you really feel it’s your place to stand in the way of the development of a medium? To say “game developers you get to live in this box only”. I don’t think you mean to, but that’s kind of where you are. Tim I need Apple to lead on this, as it has so often before. |
Xiaomi Furthers Its Smart Home Ambition With $200M Investment In Appliance Maker Midea | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | last week, and now the Chinese company is putting hard cash behind its smart home push after investing over $200 million in home appliance firm . Xiaomi Inc., one of the Chinese firm’s group of technology companies, bought a 1.29 percent share of — Midea’s Shenzhen-listed parent company — for RMB1.266 billion, that’s around $205 million. Guangdong-based Midea produces a range of home appliances, including air conditioners, refrigerators, kitchen appliances and more. It was established in 1968, but is moving with the times after . The project is funded by nearly $2.5 billion in capital — that’s a small chunk of the $18.7 billion turnover it recorded in 2013. “The deal between Xiaomi Technology and Midea will see strategic cooperation between the two companies in smart home initiatives and electronic products,” a statement from Xiaomi read. Best known for its affordable smartphones, Xiaomi has diversified its product line with a range of new launches over the year or two. Beyond the $150 Mi Air Purifier, it offers , , , , , and among other gizmos. Hardware and the smart home have been particular focuses for Xiaomi, and its announcement of the Midea investment was accompanied by a reiteration of “to groom 100 startups so they become more than just manufacturing companies.” Xiaomi says 25 companies have joined its “ecosystem” so far, and they include and , which manufactured Xiaomi’s blood pressure measurement product. In the case of iHealth Labs, Xiaomi didn’t seem to do much to the company’s original product beyond wrapping it in its brand and adding support for its smartphones — it will be interesting to see what fruits are borne of its union with Midea. |
Real-Time Disaster Relief | Sharla Stone | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | The Philippines last week topped international headlines as a typhoon ripped through the island nation, claiming dozens of lives and leaving a swath of destruction. The story has a ring of familiarity. Typhoon Hagupit (locally referred to as Ruby) followed a path dangerously similar to that taken last year by the infamous Super Typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Yolanda, which struck the Philippines with record 195 mph winds. Haiyan was unlike anything residents, or anyone else, had ever experienced. The storm was classified as Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale, which is the strongest rating the system allows, but still not sufficient to describe the ensuing destruction. Far more powerful than the average Category 5, Haiyan was possibly the strongest tropical storm ever to make landfall. “It was off the charts anyway, so we called it Category 6 there,” says Jan Husar, who was working with OCHA as a Crisis Project Manager in the first days of recovery. The fallout was nothing short of devastating: millions of people were displaced; thousands were killed; over a million homes destroyed; roads obliterated; electricity lost; communications cut; and entire communities isolated. It was an unprecedented disaster calling for an unprecedented rescue and relief effort. Social media might seem irrelevant in the midst of a disaster, but the exact opposite is true. “We were able to locate and deliver food, shelter, and clothing, and make evacuations, because of hashtags.” Husar said. “Thousands of volunteers work from home, online, locating people in need.” Many technology based groups responded to Haiyan instantly, helping to save an untold number of lives, he explained. Geeklist, a global collaborative of developers that Husar frequently works with, organized a Hack4Good hackathon within hours of the storm making landfall. Hundreds of developers worked to design and deploy to answer needs presented by the Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office of the Government of the Philippines in Manila as well as several humanitarian organizations. When the marathon ten-day hackathon was over, they had dozens of potential applications, with 13 of them already in use or in the final stages of development. They developed tools for real-time tracking rescue requests, matching available resources with pleas for help, and efficient data aggregation and syndication across multiple applications for seamless information sharing. Just over a year later, many of these applications were once again deployed for life-saving efforts in the Philippines, as remote and on-the-ground teams came together in answer of a new call for help. Restoring, or in some cases creating, the communications infrastructure is essential for the success of relief workers and digital humanitarians. With large organizations such as the UN, resources for infrastructure restoration are often limited in scope. For example, the majority of available satellite services in the wake of Haiyan were allocated to Tacloban, one of the hardest hit regions. This left few resources for the rural island of Cebu, which suffered Category 4 winds and water swells near 20 feet. , a nonprofit organization specializing in IP-based services and Wi-Fi access in crisis areas, launched a mission that would last over five months in the first phase alone. The team installed Wi-Fi access points at a base camp, which became the regional communications and networking hub. As more volunteers arrived, they provided supplies and equipment to the local ambulance service and established medical clinics. Over the next few months, they installed a satellite dish, added internet access points at local businesses and government offices, and provided internet access to over 2,000 residents. They also provided EMT training to 155 local volunteers, and began training local IT technicians, empowering the community with the knowledge to maximize the resources provided. In a twist of fate, the same group had teams already in place on this island when the latest typhoon struck, as Hagupit seemed to be on the same schedule as the long-planned follow-up mission. The Philippines sees an average of nearly 20 typhoons annually, and it is located in the Rim of Fire, where earthquakes and volcanic activity are common. In fact, the World Bank has deemed it to be one of the most hazard-prone nations on earth. “They have few resources,” Husar says. “Without the help of the global community, their prospects would be grim.” He was scheduled to arrive in the Philippines last week to join Disaster Tech Lab in the second phase of their aid mission. When his flight was delayed, he kicked into digital humanitarian mode, implementing data analysis systems and coordinating teams of remote first responders. “Our work is not only essential to create a better emergency network infrastructure, but also because it provides a lot of medical and EMT training to the local people.” He explained that locals are being trained in emergency medical aid as well as the maintenance and repair of communications equipment. No one can be on the ground and at the scene as quickly as the people who live there, making this training vital. Disaster Tech Lab’s efforts are centered around Arapal Camp, a deeply impoverished, yet very progressive community. Locals have built a school, implemented sustainable farming techniques, and begun vocational training programs. The residents are eager to connect their community and utilize the plethora of resources that open up with access to the internet. They are equally eager to learn life-saving EMT skills and internet-saving IT skills. In addition to training, the follow-up mission’s goals include establishing a full-scale permanent medical clinic, extending Wi-Fi coverage, adding several public Internet hotspots, implementing a VoIP telephone system, and installing a 3G backhaul, enabling high-speed Internet access. At the last minute, the focus shifted to include emergency aid, though they still intend to continue with all other plans, to whatever extent it is possible. For Husar, who is a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker in addition to being a self-described “hard-core techie” the mission has another goal. He is now working with team Rubicon and other groups responding to the hardest-hit regions. “I’m volunteering to help these people,” he says, “and I will be documenting the teams and their work. People need to understand how bad it is there, and how important the work of creating a strong technology infrastructure really is.” Will this be the last mission to the Philippines? Husar doesn’t think so. “Some areas will need help and support for decades to come.” He and the team at Disaster Tech Lab plan to do as much as they can with whatever funding is available. And the benefits of their hard work don’t stop there. Development of disaster relief technology truly is the gift that keeps on giving. Applications developed for one crisis are often picked up by NGOs and international aid agencies, making them that much better prepared for the next crisis. Husar explained, “We developed technology after the typhoon that was later used by medics in Ukraine. Emergency aid systems that were developed and tested during the crisis in Kiev are being used in other disaster relief efforts.” Off-grid independent networks, drones for damage surveillance and victim location, and more advanced mobile platforms, and social media based data aggregation are among the most promising technologies currently under development. As meteorology experts predict that natural disasters could become more frequent and severe with the changing climate, technology experts predict that the tech community will rise to the occasion. Every crisis brings new challenges, but it also inspires new ways to prevent and respond to future disasters. , a crowdsourced project for analyzing and mapping damages, was developed in partnership with OCHA in response to the lesser-known Typhoon Pablo, which hit earlier in 2013. It was expanded and refined during the relief efforts for Haiyan. And, it was ready to go, launching into full-scale operation at the first signs of Hagupit. “Hackers will never stop looking for a better way, a better solution,” Husar said. He added, “At the beginning of civilization, the first hackers were the people making tools and then using those tools to make something else, building shelters and creating a better way of life out of nothing.” And it seems that they still are. For information on the current situation and relief efforts, click . |
Car Buying Platform Carwow Secures £4.6M Series A To Step On The Gas | Steve O'Hear | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | Just ten months after a £1.3 million seed round, UK car buying platform has made another fundraising pitstop. The London-based company has raised a £4.6 million Series A round, led by Balderton Capital, with participation from Episode 1 Ventures, and Samos Investments. All three VCs are previous backers of Carwow, so we can flag this up as a follow-on round for the young startup, which now claims to have moved into pole-position as the leading site for buying a new car in the UK after launching in May last year. Aiming to reduce the friction involved in buying a new car, Carwow’s website allows consumers to compare offers online and buy directly from “trusted” dealers that are registered with the platform, specifically avoiding the arduous but otherwise necessary requirement to haggle over price, and in a way that potentially introduces a lot more transparency. It does this via what is essentially a reverse marketplace: users “build” the car they would like to buy — specifying make and model/features etc. — and then receive offers direct from dealers. They can then quickly compare offers by price, location of the dealer, reviews of the dealer and what’s actually in stock. It’s then up to the buyer to decide whether to contact a dealer based on their offer, either by anonymous messaging through the Carwow platform or by giving the dealer a call. To back up its claim to be the number one new car buying site in the UK, Carwow says it has driven “more than” £150 million in car sales for dealerships (saving users a claimed combined total of £15 million). That’s up from £30 million in sales, as reported in February. Meanwhile, today’s Series A round is all about stepping on the gas. The injection of fuel will be used to “expand the team further, roll out above-the-line advertising campaigns and start exploring new markets,” says Carwow’s 27-year old CEO James Hind in a statement. That will likely see Carwow’s brand attempt to reach additional mainstream audiences via traditional newspaper and television advertising as it attempts to race further in front of local competitors. |
Iowa Launches An App For Your Drivers License | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | We take our phones with us pretty much everywhere these days. This gave the Iowa Department of Transportation an idea – put the state drivers license on an app. The app will hold all the same information found on a plastic license. State government authorities such as police and airport security will accept these digital licenses as valid ID. A PIN is used to verify authenticity of the information. Department of Transportation spokesperson Andrea Henry alluded that Iowa could possibly use fingerprint or facial recognition software to verify authenticity at a future date. There could be a few issues with going digital, however. Adding your license to multiple devices is one. The potential for your phone to be dead right when you get pulled over is another. This would obviously make it impossible to prove you are who you say you are unless you can get some juice. The DOT had set a release for the app on both iOS and Android in early 2015. However, it may not hit that mark due to several concerns, including privacy. The DOT told the that it is no longer sure on the timing. Photo credit: William Petroski/Des Moines Register There’s no way to lock the screen, should you get pulled over. A police officer could potentially feel they have free reign to search through your phone activity if you hand it over and let them check your license. The DOT says it is working on a solution that will lock the screen once your license is up. The other potential hazard is in storing critical data on your smartphone. The original idea, according to the DOT was to make your information more secure. But this could make it easy for someone to take not just your cellphone, but your identification information right along with it. The benefits are, of course, that it’s easy to pull up your license electronically. This means you can’t lose it as easily as a physical card. Also, there would be no more rifling through your stuff to find your license, or forgetting it at home. Iowans will still have the option of sticking with a plastic drivers license. Residents will even be able to have both a physical and a digital copy, should they choose. “Really, it’s about giving customers a choice,” said Henry. “We’re in an increasingly mobile world, and there are so many things that are connected to your mobile phone.” This story was first reported in the . |
Update: Unicorns Vs. Dragons | John Backus | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | VC firms shared specific information about their percentage ownership at exit, which was higher than we assumed. As a result we added dragon exits for Greylock, Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins. Everywhere I look I see a unicorn. Cowboy Ventures founder Aileen Lee wrote a brilliant, here on TechCrunch one year ago called “Welcome to the Unicorn Club.” She introduced us all to the venture-backed unicorn – “U.S.-based software companies valued at over $1 billion by public or private market investors.” So provocative was her analysis that today, all we seem to discuss or analyze in the venture world is the unicorn. Apparently it takes a village to raise a unicorn, since more than 15 venture firms and investment groups claim credit for nurturing and raising Facebook, Twitter, the Active Network and Cameron Health. Meanwhile, , , , , , and all have a gaggle of investors who proudly showcase these unicorns in their portfolios, suggesting their unique investing aptitude. On average, each unicorn company was “claimed” by seven different investors. The trouble is, I’m starting to see the dark side of the unicorn: Venture capitalists and the limited partners who back them are simply on a quest to acquire unicorn logos. And it could kill their returns. As an entrepreneur raising venture capital, it’s critical to understand why your VC is interested in investing in your company, so you can find investors with your best interest in mind. A few weeks ago, I spoke to a long-time friend who is an LP at a top fund of funds. He was proud to report that their fund was in 40 percent of the unicorn exits of the past three years. I congratulated him and asked him how those funds performed. The silence was telling. And herein lies the problem: All unicorn investments do not create unicorn outcomes for LPs. It isn’t even close. We should spend more energy celebrating the success of the entrepreneurs who create unicorns. After all, they’re the rock stars creating the billion-dollar companies. We VCs are in many ways just along for the wild ride. We should also examine the motive and financial results of investors who claim to be among the best unicorn hunters. Which venture capital funds back unicorns but fall short on returns? We could all venture to guess, but here’s a wrong way to do the math: If a VC invests $10M – $25M from a huge VC fund into an already successful company at a multi-billion dollar valuation to acquire less than .5% of the company, what’s the point – besides the right to display a unicorn logo for its website? In golf they have a great saying – “Drive for show, putt for dough.” I would like to suggest that for many if not most VCs and LPs, investing in unicorns, especially at the late stage, is like “driving for show” in golf. But if that is the case, how do you “putt for dough” in the VC world? Very simple. Look beyond the unicorn and find the dragon. Unicorns are for show. Dragons are for dough. A dragon is a company that returns an entire fund — a “fund maker.” VCs can have dragons in their portfolios just as LPs can have dragons in their portfolios. But if you do the math (and we did) you will find that dragons are four times as rare as a unicorn. And while dragons are much more valuable than unicorns, they are increasingly hard to find as the size of your venture fund grows. Simple math. You cannot “buy your way” into a dragon late in its life because at that point the remaining upside is unlikely to return your entire fund. You have to find dragons when they are young, but you can buy into a unicorn at any time. And it is not an easy task to determine which unicorns are dragons for their VCs and LPs. Investors do not want to share this with you. The investors want you to just stop and see the pretty unicorn logo. In an effort to quantify our reasoning, we assembled a dataset of the $1 billion+ exits (excluding companies still private) from January 1, 2004, to June 30, 2014, to determine how many dragons there were within that pool. During this 10-year period, there have been approximately 62 venture-backed unicorns that exited via IPO or M&A for $1 billion+. There were 451 investors who backed these 62 unicorns, including 339 investments by traditional venture capital funds. Seventy-four different venture capital funds made these 339 unicorn investments. Out of 62 unicorns, only 17 of them were also dragons for their VCs. Roughly just one-fourth returned an entire fund for any of their VC investors. All unicorns are not dragons. In fact most unicorns are not dragons. And out of these 74 different VC unicorn hunters, which invested in unicorns, only 21 of their 339 unicorn investments delivered a dragon to their investors. So to put a fine point on it: One out of four unicorns include an investor for which their investment returned their fund – a dragon. And out of 339 VC investments in unicorns over the last 10 years, only 21, around 7 percent, returned an entire fund. The 21 firms that can rightly claim that their unicorns were also dragons for their LPs include Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Spark Capital, Floodgate, Matrix Partners, Charles River, Union Square Ventures, Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital and a dozen others. Three particular VC firms take the multiple dragon trophy: All things being equal, I would rather back a dragon than a unicorn. |
‘The Love Of Sports’ Wants To Connect Mobile Sportsball Lovers | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | TechCrunch recently sat down with to pick over his mobile app, ‘ .’ The application, recently launched, wants to connect sports fans on the go. Its premise is that if you are the social sort of sports-adjacent human, you most likely want to hang out with your friends at the game, or at the bar watching game. Another higher-level social network, The Love of Sports has much to prove. Either it can capture enough of a userbase to become a decent part of a sport’s franchise’s fanbase, or it cannot. If it does, D’Alessandro could have a hit on his hands — the sporting industry is notoriously lucrative. TechCrunch will track the success, or lack thereof, of the app over the coming sports season to see if it catches on. In a crowded app market, standing out is tough, though not impossible. |
TC GameCast Episode 2: Storytelling In Game Of Thrones And Dragon Age | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | Last week on the TechCrunch GameCast, , , and discussed storytelling in gaming, using recent releases as lenses to look at different approaches in vogue today. We mainly focused on Telltale Games’s and Bioware’s What about the first episode of the former made Ed quit less than 30 minutes in? What could compel Darrell to put more than 100 hours into the latter? [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/64028528″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /] |
Spanish Newspapers Want Google News Back | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | The Internet is like a delicate rainforest ecosystem. You remove one player and the rest suffer and die. That happened in Spain this week when The Spanish government is requiring the company to pay Spanish news providers every time their content appears on the site. The search giant will shut down Google News there in response and no content will be available from the country’s major newspapers including El Pais and La Vanguardia. As you can imagine, this is bad news. While newspapers have long claimed they can survive in the Internet Age without outside support, this is dead wrong. Given that the vast majority of news traffic comes from search – everything from “new laser printer” to “is betty white married” returns information from news sources – I can only imagine how much Spanish newspapers depend on Google for their reach and visitor count. According to the , the Spanish Newspaper Publishers’ Association is now pleading for mercy. Google, for its part, explained the move this way: In short, the Spanish media lobby bit off more than it could chew, something that will happen until media companies realize that there are far more efficient ways of separating visitors from their pocket change via micropayments and bitcoin. Until then, it will be amusing to watch well-meaning lawyers throw levers and switches in the media locomotive until the whole thing runs off the tracks. |
The Invasion Of Wearables In The Workforce | Chris Bruce | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | Wearables have hit the market like a hailstorm. From watches to glasses, headgear to belts, to all assortments of chips and sensors built into clothes and accessories, this market doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. In fact, wearables are estimated to be more than a $70 billion market by 2024, according to . With the pending debut of the Apple Watch, predicted to come to market in early 2015, wearables in the workplace are about to become ubiquitous, particularly at large tech companies that are known for innovation and change. For some, wearables will up the ante significantly in a company’s ability to measure workflow and productivity, and with data collected from these devices, a new level of employee insight will be reached. For others, the inevitable invasion of wearables means that we will be forced to relieve the BYOD nightmares of security risks, unclear policies and new procedures. Wearables present the opportunity to gather tremendous amounts of information surrounding an employee’s daily routine, making its benefits for today’s workforce largely centered on data and predictive analytics. Even employees see wearables as a real opportunity. According to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on 1,000 U.S. adults, 77 percent of respondents think that one of the most important benefits of wearable technology is its potential to make employees more efficient and more productive at work. Forty-six percent said they think companies should invest in wearable technology for their employees. The information organizations will be able to gather with wearables can improve productivity, increase employee engagement and even potentially lower the number of sick days employees take. The use of this data presents the opportunity to largely disrupt existing benefits and rewards schemes. While wearables allow employees to go hands-free and participate in meetings while on the go, the real value for organizations will be real-time insights and the information these devices can collect. For instance, wearables can allow employers to easily track an employee’s time throughout the day and gain a clear picture on where time is being spent, and quickly identify inefficiencies. This information can have an enormous impact on a company’s ROI and show new ways to improve employee engagement based on individuals’ preferences and habits. Real-time insights and analytics delivered by wearables can even trickle down to the on-boarding process, allowing organizations to easily help employees better integrate into the company with orientation and training manuals preloaded onto a wearable device. Given the competition that many tech giants face in attracting and retaining top talent, ensuring that the employer/employee relationship starts off on the right foot can go a long way toward ensuring employee retention. A more common theme with wearables is the greater emphasis placed on new health programs using these technologies. Health functionalities of wearable devices, from the Fitbit to the Samsung Gear, will allow employers to tap into an employee’s personal habits like never before. We’ve already witnessed the emergence of health initiatives that place an increased focus on metrics like weight loss and management, and some can even go as far as tracking an employee’s posture while sitting at his or her desk. Imagine having a wearable piece of technology that suggests an employee take the stairs instead of the elevator or eat a healthy meal instead of junk food, and then gets rewarded based on the choices they have made. Like any new technology adopted by organizations, there are always security and privacy concerns that accompany it; wearables are likely to make this problem more complex. According to the previously cited PwC survey, 82 percent of respondents are worried that wearables would invade their privacy while 86 percent think wearables would make them more vulnerable to data security breaches. If you lose your smartphone or tablet, information can be easily wiped. Will wearables offer the same capability? Wearables tap into some of the most personal, sensitive information of an individual, which can also make them an easy and desirable target for hackers. Connecting to an unsecured Wi-Fi network outside of work or simply utilizing poor online security practices can leave an employee’s wearable device susceptible. And of course with easy data-sharing capabilities, there is also the chance that sensitive business information can end up in the wrong hands. With more and more employees using their own personal wearable devices at work, keeping information secure can become a daunting task with many potential threats. Despite the headaches surrounding the introduction of new technologies, wearables inevitably will play an increasingly important role in daily business practices. Implementing innovative, modern and engaging technology to enhance an employee’s experience is too big of an opportunity for tech companies to pass up. But before employers look to incorporate wearables, they need to put in place new privacy and security guidelines addressing how this technology can and will be used. Wearables will give us a more accurate glimpse into the workforce by offering new data on an employee’s workday and his or her overall well-being. When used correctly – and with the appropriate security measures taken – wearables can empower the entire workforce, improve engagement and make employees more efficient and productive at work. |
Green Building Technology You’ll Never See But Can Experience Now | Parker White | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | Picture an office that cleans up after itself, improves indoor air quality with nanotech-formulated paint, and responds to sunlight by magically adjusting window tint, all while fighting climate change. Then imagine entering your workspace to find your desk light on and the temperature just as you like it. These innovations are already at work in some modern buildings, in the shape of the networked ecosystem of “intelligent” building equipment and devices. Beyond the “Wow!” factor and the large-scale benefits to our planet, green and smart building technologies are changing the way we live and work, and creating business opportunities for technology innovators, commercial building owners and tenants. Buildings designed with sustainability-supporting materials, big-data-crunching automated systems and onsite clean energy are expected to represent 55 percent of all U.S. commercial and institutional construction by 2015, according to McGraw-Hill Construction’s 2013 . , demonstrate that these kinds of advancements in how people consume energy have contributed twice as much to the recent drop in U.S. GHG emissions as the reduced use of coal in favor of natural gas. It’s no coincidence; sustained public interest in sustainability has triggered a surge of green building innovation. Spiraling water concerns and energy costs have sparked resource-efficient building operations among commercial property owners and occupiers. New regulations in many U.S. states and municipalities provide further motivation in the form of energy disclosure ordinances or tax incentives for sustainable construction and building operations. Also important is the growing body of research showing that green buildings are good for employee health and well-being. Corporate tenants are willing to pay higher rents for the resulting workplace productivity gains, while employees and consumers alike prefer companies that are socially and environmentally responsible. Here are a few of the building technologies that are changing the game of greening the planet –and transforming our culture in the process. Does the paint in your office clear the air? Now it can. A Philippines-based company, , has created the world’s first air-cleaning paint. It’s based on nanoscale titanium dioxide, which is used to reduce harmful emissions in power plants and motor vehicles. It interacts with light to break down nitrous oxide and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into harmless substances. Nanotechnology is also behind smart electrochromic glass windows that can respond to environmental conditions. These windows can be integrated with building automation systems and programmed, along with other building equipment, to utilize natural sunshine and heat to offset the need for artificial lighting and artificial heating from HVAC. Nanotechnology can even improve hygiene: Adding silver nanoparticles to paint can add lasting antimicrobial properties, an infection-prevention technique borrowed from the medical world. The biocidal effect of the released silver ions prevents the growth of mold, algae and bacteria. Innovation in materials science and production technologies has made green building materials a thriving industry sector, with the global market projected to reach $529 billion by 2020, according to research firm . For example, one category of new creative sustainably produced products is fire-retardant insulation produced from would-be waste materials such as shredded denim, plastic milk bottles, newspapers, agricultural straw, hemp and flax. You arrive at your office building. The elevator is waiting for you as soon as you enter the lobby. It takes you straight to your floor without you pressing a button. You find your workspace ready for you, with lighting and temperature as you prefer, and your computer turned on for use. All this triggered when you parked your electric car in a wireless charging spot in the parking garage. Intelligent building automation systems are bringing this scenario to life today. While it’s common to describe smart buildings as being driven by a brain, the future doesn’t really resemble HAL 9000—the sentient computer of Arthur C. Clarke’s Instead, the intelligence is becoming increasingly distributed in an ecosystem of connected devices and equipment engaged in machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. Like natural habitats such as trees or coral reefs, the parts of the ecosystem of a building are specialized to serve distinct functions with minimal intervention from the users. Smart lighting, in particular, has become has become a fast-growing Internet of Things category according to global technology research firm . The firm predicts that, by 2020, 100 million Internet-connected wireless light bulbs and lamps will be installed. As one of best sources from which save energy and improve workplace functionality, whole lighting systems can respond to the availability of natural light or presence of occupants spread across a building and automatically adjust in real time down to the level of a single bulb. While traditional building equipment in older buildings still lacks embedded intelligence, companies like Pacific Controls can leverage existing building management systems to introduce operation optimization algorithms to otherwise dumb equipment. The Dubai-based global provider of end-to-end managed application services also uses cloud technology to connect the disparate building systems within a single building or across whole global portfolios. Combined with skilled facilities management staff, this level of integration opens new frontiers in how humans, machines and buildings can interact. First the bad news: The United States generates more CO2 emissions than any country in the world except China; and commercial and residential properties generate approximately 40 percent of these emissions in the United States, according to the U.S. Green Building Council. Energy consumption is the driver of all this. With nearly 30 percent of the $202 billion spent annually on U.S. commercial and industrial energy wasted, it’s not surprising that energy efficiency is a priority for commercial property owners. In fact, investing $279 billion in U.S. building efficiency could save more than $1 trillion in energy costs over 10 years, with every dollar invested producing three dollars of operational savings, according to . Now the good news: An energy efficiency call to action is being heeded. U.S. GhG emissions have declined by 10 percent since 2005 primarily thanks to energy efficiency. To further accelerate these reductions, we can compound the efficiency gains on the demand side with improvements on the supply side. The transformation of energy markets from coal to natural gas — enabled in part by fracking — is already showing how quickly a low carbon energy supply impacts national greenhouse gas emissions. Building-integrated energy generation has the potential to be even more disruptive. Adoption of onsite renewable energy technologies is rapidly increasing. Tax incentives and technological advances have made wind, geothermal and solar power installation, smaller, more powerful and more affordable today than in the past. They can even be incorporated into traditional building materials, substantially reducing installation and material costs. Solar-power-generating paint, windows and road-surfacing materials are just a few of the applications for building component materials happening today. Waste conversion technologies are also on the rise. New alternative options include that can turn methane from food waste into electricity. On a smaller scale, it is becoming common place for a building can to use refrigerator exhaust to heat water, heat exchangers to heat the building with the heat generated by office machines and computers, or drivers to convert the motion of vertical transportation systems into electricity. For buildings that are expensive to retrofit with these new advanced technologies, building owners can partner with renewable energy companies that will install and maintain energy equipment at no cost in exchange for an energy-purchase agreement and the right to sell excess energy to the municipal grid. In fact, commercial property owners can use an that recommends the most cost-effective options, also at no cost to the property owner — a timely service, given the growing universe of highly technical solutions. New renewable energy technologies, and falling prices for older technologies, have led to the emergence of “net-zero” and “Living Building” standards for environmentally friendly buildings. While exact definitions vary, the concept is that the total energy a building consumes annually is equal to or less than the amount of energy it creates. Most zero-energy buildings tap the public electrical grids for energy storage and backup power, but some are entirely independent. All rely on some form of renewable energy, combined with energy-efficient building design, systems and operation. For all the advancements in building-integrated renewable energies, you might be wondering why you haven’t heard of it having a bigger impact already. The truth is that the building-integrated energy-generation sector hasn’t had its “fracking moment,” but that may be just around the corner. The biggest barrier to more widespread adoption is efficient energy storage, and solutions are coming. Startups are emerging around the world with innovative products. Even automakers like BMW are getting involved. Solving this issue will do as much for building-integrated and distributed energy as the development of Nikola Telsa’s AC current generators did for centralized district power nearly a century ago. Combined, the use of smart building technologies and renewable energy is displacing the traditional centralized power model with the technology-driven distributed energy concept. Today, a group of connected buildings can become its own energy self-sufficient microgrid, exchanging power among its members from diverse power sources. With the emergence of interactive smart grids in some communities, a smart building can even sell excess energy to the utility company. The U.S. may even see the kind of market disruption that , where renewable energy powers half of the country’s electricity-generating capacity and the system of centralized power generation is up-ended in favor of locally generated power. These innovations in futuristic building technologies represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to greening the built environment. As demand for sustainably created and operated buildings continues to grow, we expect more exciting developments will move from the lab into actual practice. |
Homejoy Says It Will “Pause” Operations In Canada | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | Home cleaning startup plans to halt operations in Canada within a couple of weeks, though the company says this is only temporary. We were recently tipped off about the move, and a spokesperson confirmed it, saying that Homejoy will be focusing on growth in other markets for now. It throughout this year. At the same time, the spokesperson described this as “just a pause, not a shutdown” — they said the company intends to return to Canada and will be maintaining relationships with cleaners there in the meantime. , specifically Toronto and then Vancouver, in July 2013. (Co-founder and CEO Adora Cheung, pictured above, during an on-stage interview at our Disrupt London conference.) Homejoy competitor Handy also offers service in Canada, and Rocket Internet’s as well. |
Eye-Fi Mobi Delivers Photos From Your Camera To The Cloud | One Lap | Rob Coneybeer | 2,014 | 12 | 14 | The rise of smartphone cameras decimated the entry-level digital camera market. In contrast, sales of DSLR and other high-end cameras have thrived. High-end cameras provide interchangeable lenses and have the raw performance demanded by serious photographers but, unlike the quality cameras being built in to nearly every smartphone, still don’t have good solutions for transferring photos directly to your phone or tablet. Most DSLRs on the market today still require a traditional memory card to be removed and inserted into an external or built-in computer card reader. In 2008, Eye-Fi launched its first product: a Wi-Fi-enabled SD card that turned any digital camera into a wireless Internet-connected device. In its latest version, the Eye-Fi Mobi allows users to transfer photos from a digital camera directly into a tablet or smartphone without the need for a Wi-Fi network or a PC. Eye-Fi serves a solid, growing niche and according to founder, Matt DiMaria, its shipments are the highest they’ve ever been. During our interview, Matt talks about the company’s new cloud product and explains how they worked with all of the major camera manufacturers to incorporate Eye-Fi’s technology. |
South Korea’s Daum Kakao To Launch $90M Investment Fund | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | , one of South Korea’s largest Internet companies and the owner of messaging app Kakao Talk, announced today that it plans to launch an 100 billion won (about $90.8 million) investment fund. Called K Venture Group, the fund will focus on startups in and out of Korea. The company that the fund’s goal is to help lessen Daum Kakao’s dependence on Kakao Talk for growth. Kakao Talk is the top messaging app in South Korea, with 37 million users, but overseas it faces tough competition from Tencent’s WeChat, Line, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. Several of its rivals have also begun investing in startups in order to diversify their revenue streams. For example, Line and Tencent , a Seoul-based game developer. The two companies have also been busy making moves to enter the streaming music business. Tencent has , while Line . Daum Kakao’s own attempts to seek growth opportunities beyond its messaging app include the recent launch of , a mobile payment service app. In addition, it is also expected to launch a taxi-calling app next year. |
Samsung Releases Look At Me, An App For Kids With Autism | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | Over the past few years, technology has given educators and the parents of autistic children tools they could never have imagined before. Mobile apps and games , while can potentially teach them how to cope in different social situations. Many of these tools are created by independent developers, but as , large companies have also begun focusing on the neurodevelopmental disorder. The latest tech company to come out with an autism tool is Samsung, which just released Look At Me, an that it claims can help kids learn how to better maintain eye contact, . The app’s launch comes a few weeks after , a project seeking to develop the world’s largest database of sequenced genomic information from people with autism spectrum disorder and their families, which will be stored on Google Cloud Platform and made accessible to scientists for use in their research. (MSSING was previously known as The Autism Speaks Ten Thousand Genomes Program). Meanwhile, Microsoft has . While these initiatives certainly help bring tech companies good PR, they are also important because autism spectrum disorders and many treatments and services . Look At Me, which is now , was developed by doctors and professors from Seoul National University Bundag Hospital and Yonsei University Department of Psychology. The app uses photos, facial recognition tech, and a series of games to help kids read emotions and communicate with other people. The team behind Look At Me conducted a clinical trial with 20 children for eight weeks, and claim that 60 percent of kids tested showed improvement in making eye contact. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99TL3hGPw5I] |
Smart Calendar Tempo Adds iOS 8 Widget And End Of Day Notifications, Plans Android App In 2015 | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | , the smart calendar for iOS borne from the same organization as Siri, has become the latest app to take advantage of features in iOS 8 as it aims to become your phone-based personal assistant. now includes a smart widget that brings an overview of key notifications and information to the homescreen. The idea here is to make that overview easily available to at all times, so no opening apps or digging into menus is required. Tempo has also now gotten ‘evening notifications’ which serve up important information to “prepare for the next day with ease.” These new notifications cover what is on the horizon for tomorrow, and provide a sort of debrief of the current business day and its most salient points. The company also shared with TechCrunch that it plans to finally introduce an Android app in the first half of 2015. There’s good news if you can’t wait that long, however, since it is testing a beta among ‘100s’ of users which you can apply to join . One other item in progress is “a new, powerful way to display anticipatory alerts and actions” to users balance and manage their lives. The company isn’t saying much more than that for now, but it looks like it has big plans for 2015. Tempo AI, which last year, wants its app to be a personal assistant, rather than just a calendar. In that respect, evening notifications are an important and indicative new addition. That focus could set its apart from others like Cue, Sunrise, Timeful, Accompli, Lowdown that compete in the crowded calendar app space. Going global is another key objective for Tempo, and this update adds nine new languages to the app interface, they are Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Swedish. It has also gone live in an additional 27 countries in Asia, having . While , the Google-owned platform has greater global reach. It is clearly is an important vehicle for reaching large audiences outside of the U.S. market, even when the primary audience is business users, as is the case with Tempo. |
After Google Files Suit, Mississippi’s AG Calls For “Cooler Heads” | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | The between Google and the state of Mississippi has reached what could be its conclusion. It seems that Google will win its battle against a wide-ranging subpoena filed by a state employee, which it thinks exceeds the jurisdiction of the filing party. The MPAA did not get the Stop Online Piracy Act through Congress. Public outcry scuppered the bill. , the MPAA turned to the States in the hopes they would press Google to do more to combat piracy. The MPAA pooled resources with a number of studios and hired a legal firm to help move things along. That firm, , “pitched” Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to take the search giant on. The MPAA provided the necessary ammunition in the form of research. Hood later fired off a letter that was to him by the legal counsel financed at least in part by the MPAA, and then tried to subpoena Google with a 79-page document. Google , and then filed legal action against Hood. . I am not a lawyer, but it seems that Google took the equivalent of a . Hood then attempted to . In a , Hood tried to sound aggrieved, painting Google as the injurious party, and himself merely the spurned Truth Seeker that he most certainly is. Here’s the key passage: Billions of dollars! Salacious Hollywood tale! Political power! Excitable people! Media prowess! Daring! We expect more from one of the wealthiest corporations in the world! Satire is dead. Anyway, Hood goes on to call for “cooler heads,” which is something akin to a one-sided détente, or, you know, surrender. Google declined to comment further than its legal brief. Hood’s office has yet to reply to a request for context for one of his comments and whether he has been in touch with Google since the suit was filed. |
LG’s New Wi-Fi Speakers Automatically Play Music When Your Phone Is Near | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | It’s CES time already. Yes, the Consumer Electronics Show isn’t here , but the first product launch . , including three speakers and three sound bars with some twists. The new products have many of the usual features, including Bluetooth connectivity and a Sonos-like option to connect to devices using your home Wi-Fi network. LG is also introducing its first battery-powered speaker, and the new range includes an interesting feature that can automatically play music from your smartphone when it is near. That requires the device to be running LG’s Music Flow app, which integrates Spotify and a range of other music services. But here’s how it could work: So you could be listening to music on your headphones on the subway ride home but the music will begin playing automatically from your living room Wi-Fi Sound Bar when you enter your living room. That’s not quite all. Music Flow can also be controlled using messaging app . Once added as a contact, you can tell it to “play songs for party”, “turn off music after an hour” and more. The Music Flow-Line integration is part of . We’ll be at CES in Las Vegas next month, so watch out for more details about Home Flow and the many other weird and wonderful gadgets from the event that we’ll be writing about. |
Built In Brooklyn: Farmigo Brings Local Produce To Schools, Offices, And Homes | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | Food startup is a San Francisco transplant — like me. The company was initially based on the West Coast, and it still has team members there (as well as in Tel Aviv, Israel). But two years ago, Farmigo’s headquarters, as well as its founder and CEO Benzi Ronen, moved across the country to Brooklyn, giving us an unusual perspective for the latest episode of . “Brooklyn was the hub for all this amazing local, artisanal food, as well as local farm food,” Ronen said. He particularly praised the area’s “marriage of offline and online companies,” as well as the mix of food and media startups. Farmigo actually in 2011, offering software for community supported agriculture (CSA) programs. It’s tweaked that a model a bit — now you you can join a local “food community,” allowing you to order food online from local farmers, then pick it up from the community distribution point, which might be a school, office, or home. Ronen said the company is “collapsing the food chain” by connecting and food producers, but acknowledged that it faced the classic challenges of building a marketplace: “One is, can you get enough farmers that want to participate in that, and the other is, are there enough consumers that want to buy their food that way?” “At this point, we’re getting farms that are coming to us, because we’re giving them 60 percent of the dollar you spend, as opposed to the 20 percent that they get from a traditional food chain,” he said. |
Devialet’s Hi-Tech “Phantom” Implosion Stereo Sounds Better Than Speakers 20X Its Size | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | You need a big sub-woofer for big bass, right? Wrong. After 10 years of research, French acoustic engineers as Devialet just unveiled a giant step forward in audio that’s just one foot long. is a petite, spherical, all-in-one amplifier and speaker that delivers what audiophiles think may be the best sound in the world for around $2,000. Of course, $2,000 is pretty steep, and that’s just for one of these things. But it’s about the same as a 5.1 stereo system from Sonos or a traditional set of hi-fi speakers, sub and amp. When Sting from The Police heard the Phantom, he said “I want people to listen to my music on this.” Hip-hop producer Rick Rubin was amazed by the depth of its bass. And former Beats Music CEO David Hyman said: “This small beautiful object will create a sound in your house that is just staggering. I’ve heard it. Nothing comes close. It can knock your walls down too.” Devialet has been awarded 77 patents, and has racked up 37 awards for sound and design since its first line of amplifiers launched in 2010. It tells me it sold 3,500 units in 2014 to rake in $15 million. But now it finally built a self-contained speaker and amp. It’s a mesh of art, science and sensation. The Phantom sounds so sweet because of a technology called ADH. This combines the rich, pristine sound of analog amplification with the raw power and compactness of digital. It excludes the impractical size of most analog amplifiers and the signal pollution of digital. The result is a tiny machine with crystal clear sound you can pump up to extraordinary volumes. Another advanced Devialet calls “Heart Bass Implosion” gives Phantom speakers the thump of much bigger subwoofers. The Phantom sphere’s dome drivers protrude from the side, wobbling in and out to generate enormous sound from the vacuum inside its closed box architecture. Devialet says this makes the Phantom “four times more powerful than the best
woofers on the market of an equivalent diaphragm size, yet 6 times more compact and 6 times
lighter.” Plus since the drivers are symmetrical, their vibrations cancel each other out so the device stays still and won’t rattle around. You can see how a Phantom looks in motion with its components teased apart. Normally they’re all interlocked like in the other images here. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N24vaTER10k] I have not heard the Phantom with my own two ears. But between reviews from the , praise of Devialet’s previous products, and the seal of approval from highly critical audiophiles I know, it seems like the Phantom is the real deal. It will be available in some of Devialet’s 50 stateside retailers starting in late January, and is . You’ll be able to pick up the standard version for $1,990 and a more powerful 3000 watt Silver Phantom for $2,390. With the confidence I’d expect from French audio scientists, Devialet concludes “The laws of physics cannot be changed, but sometimes there is a lot to gain by pushing them to their very limits.” |
What Basketball Would Be Like If We All Had Portal Guns | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | You know those basketball trick shot videos that were all the rage not long ago? The ones where a flock o’ fauxhawks make 47,000 attempts at some ridiculously complex basketball shot, then upload the one where it actually works and everyone goes nuts? This is like that, but with science. And by science, I mean 100% fictional Portal guns. On a side note: does this make me want a movie to exist. Bonus points to them for using a , because Savant is outstanding. |
Everplans Raises New Cash To Expand Its End-Of-Life Planning Services | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | , the online service that helps people plan for the only certainty in life besides taxes, has raised new cash to bring to market a product for financial advisers and service providers in the new year. “We launched the product to consumers and we started to get calls from financial advisers, and insurers,” says Everplans co-founder and chief executive Abby Schneiderman. “We have been developing a version of our platform that allows the advisers to create co-branded information.” The initial consumer-facing service, which now has roughly 10,000 users building end-of-life plans, provided links to multiple service providers who could help. Now, with the new tool, advisers can just white-label the Everplans service and have it link back to their own products. To date, Everplans has raised $6.2 million in financing, including the latest, undisclosed commitment from , the venture arm affiliated with . Backed by the private equity firm , which invests in healthcare services for America’s rapidly aging population, the company is also getting a boost to its board with the addition of Yodlee chief executive, Anil Arora, who’s coming on to help the company reach out to enterprise customers. Discussions are already afoot with a few potential partners to bring the service to a larger institutional market, according to Schneiderman. “It’s this convergence of demographics and technology,” says Generator Ventures co-founder Katy Fike of the new emphasis on services and technologies catering to older Americans. “Finally, entrepreneurs, because of the size of the market now and the fact that people are personally bumping up against the system, are seeing opportunities to bring technologies to markets that had previously been untouched for the last 30 years.” As increasing numbers of Americans move further away from home and face the prospect of thinning retirement accounts, there’s a realization of a need to have market solutions to problems that had previously been handled by communities and nonprofits, says Fike. “There’s less on the supply side and there’s less money to pay for these services,” Fike says. “And consumer preferences are changing. People are more used to have technology tools managing other aspects of their lives.” While the number of healthcare startups have increased dramatically, Fike says that the focus hasn’t been proportional to the demands from different populations. “The reason we created Aging 2.0 is that there are a lot of people focusing on healthcare generally, but the needs of the elder population are a bit different.” |
The Blackberry Classic Is A Noble Throwback To The QWERTY Era | John Biggs | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | “Hey Ya” is playing on your Archos Jukebox as you take the train into work in the near dark. At your hip is strapped a Blackberry 7200, one of the first color smartphones in the world. Your belt buzzes – it’s an email from your boss. You tap out a response without thinking, your fingers sliding along the angled keys like a jackdaw nipping at spilled grain, and go back to nodding along with the music. A new day is dawning and it’s a Blackberry world and we’re just living in it. “You think you’ve got it/ Oh, you think you’ve got it/ But got it just don’t get it when there’s nothin’ at all.” Fast forward. It’s a week until 2015. Blackberry is on the ropes. The effort to bring Waterloo’s pride into this decade has largely fallen flat. New devices, slabs of glass with touchscreen keyboards, rule the day. And the Blackberry Classic is launched, a throwback to an era when keyboards had travel and cellphones were bold. If you give the new Blackberry Classic a few days you’ll learn to love it as much as you loved its ancestors, way back when. But is infatuation enough to win the day? The Blackberry Classic has the bold lines and large keyboard familiar to every BB user. Looking very much like its predecessor the Bold 9900, the Classic is a dense phone edged in metal and featuring a four-row keyboard, optical track pad, and touchscreen. It has a rubberized, non-removable back and a 22-hour battery that lasts about 20 hours in practice and about 16 hours of heavy use. It’s a Blackberry so everything you expect this phone to be good at – email, texting, and office functions – are there and work extremely well. This isn’t a multimedia giant or a big-screened phablet. It’s a QWERTY phone, just like Dad used to use. The Classic looks like a touchscreen device – something like a Nexus 5 or iPhone 5 – that sprouted a keyboard. The small buttons take up the bottom portion of the face, leaving little room for the actual touchscreen and it’s trivial to type with one or two hands on this device. In fact, I found my single-thumb typing skills were coming back to me as I worked with the Classic, a feat of dexterity that I have all but lost thanks to devices like the iPhone 6 Plus. The buttons are a bit odd. A central top button controls the power while two larger buttons on the right side control volume. A central button, between the volume buttons, brings up the voice control system called Blackberry Assistant which lets you send texts and emails and access various BB features. It’s as usable as any other voice control system and allows for as seamless an experience as Siri or the Android voice control system. Folks who have spent years away from BlackBerry OS will be amazed how well the system has matured and improved. BB10 is offers a number of interesting features including BB Blend, a system that allows you to control your phone from your desktop. It also runs most Android apps and supports the Amazon App Store, a marketplace that features some but not nearly all major popular applications. Anyone conversant in iOS or Android will have little trouble moving through the Classic and fans of precise control will love the little optical touchpad button below the screen for picking out browser items and scrolling through emails. This thing is a productivity machine. All of the security enhancements and tools that Blackberry put in place to support the enterprise over the years are here and setting up email is a two-step process. Everything important to your day appears in the Blackberry Hub, a combined social media and email listing, and most of the apps work just fine including the maps and clever video editing and photo apps. The front and back cameras are serviceable but not amazing – detail gets washed out in some scenes and the flash is too bright – but you’re not buying this for the camera. In fact, the Classic doesn’t come in a non-camera version, an issue that could curtail its use in secure enterprises installations. The 1.3GHz Qualcomm 8960 processor runs all of the basic features very well but bogs down in Android apps, something to be expected of this older chip. Two GB of RAM keep things running smoothly although you might feel a little cramped with the 16GB of on-board storage. There isn’t much overtly unacceptable about this device except for the tiny screen. While most web pages will render just fine, text heavy pages are abysmal. There are ways to zoom in and out and scroll around but you will find yourself squinting and suffering when accessing blog posts like this one. In an age when even the smallest text is readable on Android and iOS devices, small text on the Classic is just awful. It’s frustrating. The Blackberry World and Amazon App Store are also problematic. While most major apps are available, most notably Facebook and Twitter as well as Vine, you’ll miss some of your favorites. Instagram, for example, isn’t available in the Amazon App store although you can sideload the as well as other apps by downloading the apk file. [gallery ids="1097707,1097706,1097703,1097697,1097705,1097702,1097701,1097704,1097700,1097698,1097699,1097696,1097693"] These limitations won’t bother the die-hard Blackberry fan. After all, they’re used to a smaller screen and, if they’re in finance or IT, they usually have a work Blackberry and a separate touchscreen phone. While I would have loved to have my proverbial cake and eat it, too, that just can’t happen with this device. The Blackberry Classic is an important phone. It is one of the few true QWERTY phones on the market – there are a few minor players but nothing with the BB cachet – and it’s a true Blackberry in every sense. It’s usable, fun, and efficient. It has excellent battery life and an acceptable screen. It doesn’t have a high-powered processor because it doesn’t need one. This isn’t a phone for Angry Birds and video editing. It’s a phone for Sudoku and email.
What do I think of the Classic? I really like it. I wouldn’t give up an iPhone or Galaxy device for it, though, and that’s a problem. If you prefer the keyboard, it’s a no brainer: this is the phone for you. At $450 it’s a steal and because it is unlocked I have no doubt it will pick up fans around the world, especially in countries where Windows Phone and Blackberry are still considered de facto solutions for the office. But for the rest of us? For the folks who have moved on, who have traded in their Archos Jukeboxes for iPhones? It’s a hard sell, and I don’t envy Blackberry for having to make it. The Classic is great for Blackberry fans looking to upgrade or travelers looking for an alternate phone. But, for half the price, you can get a and remain in the galaxy of apps that is the full Google Play store. That said, check out the Classic, if only to get a sense of what the mobile market would have looked like if touchscreens hadn’t won over buttons and what the future would look like if Blackberry rode, unhindered and always popular, into the future. |
Who Do You Want To Give A Crunchies Award To Next Year? | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | It’s the holiday season, and in the spirit of giving, the Crunchies Monkey made a visit to the TechCrunch office during our annual holiday party. He celebrated the year by exchanging gifts with a few of our TechCrunch staffers, handing out invitations to the in the process. Nominations for the awards are , but soon enough we’ll open voting to determine who we give Crunchies Awards to next year. In early January, the top choices for each category will be announced and you’ll be able to cast support for all your favorites. In the meantime, it’s probably a good time to . Every year we celebrate all the best and brightest in the world of tech, and this year won’t be any different. The awards ceremony, which will be held at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco on February 5, will be hosted by ‘s T.J. Miller this year, so it’s bound to be a good time. There will also be a happy hour afterward during which you can drink, make merry and complain that your startup didn’t win or complain about those that did. The event sold out last year, so you’ll want to get in early. And hey, Crunchies tickets make great stocking stuffers for the tech-obsessed in your household. |
Twitter Users Can Now Track Tweet Impressions, Engagement Numbers Right In The iOS App | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | Twitter has once again expanded access to its analytics data, today introducing the ability to view your “tweet activity” on mobile. In the latest version of Twitter’s iOS application, a new feature allows users to tap on a “View Analytics Details” option from any tweet’s detail page in order to see data related to that post, including total impressions, engagements and more. The change is yet another example of Twitter making its analytics data more broadly accessible to its user base, having previously earlier this year. The addition of the new iOS feature was initially spotted by , which caught a about it from Twitter front end engineer Ian Chan. The company, however, did not bother to announce the feature officially via its company blog or main Twitter account (at least, not at the time of publication). The Twitter Analytics dashboard is a handy resource that tells you how well each of your updates on Twitter’s social network have performed. When , it was initially targeted at Twitter advertisers and publishers – that is, those who are more likely to be tracking things like impressions, replies and clicks on a regular basis in order to analyze their own social media strategies. The company had already offered advertisers data about tweets they’d paid to promote, but until the analytics dashboard, the same hadn’t been available for “organic” tweets. The following month, Ian Chan announced on Twitter that to anyone who wanted access. That meant regular users like you or me could log in and see which of our tweets were resonating with Twitter’s audience. On the web, the dashboard shows organic impressions and engagements, charts detailing performance, tweet previews and detailed engagement metrics for each post, and the ability to export your data and permalinks for further analysis. On mobile, by way of the iOS app, the engagement data is provided in a more simplified format. You’ll be shown how many total impressions and engagements a given tweet has received, as well as other relevant stats, such as how many people clicked the link in your tweet, how many people clicked to expand your tweet, how many favorites your tweet received, or how many people clicked on your profile picture or name, for example. While the metrics detailing your total impressions and engagements are shown on each tweet, the highlights shown will vary from tweet to tweet. That is, Twitter will selectively show you the metrics that are relevant to that particular tweet (e.g. clicks, if you’ve included a link in your tweet), but also those that are notable enough for sharing. You cannot see these metrics for retweets from other accounts, which is understandable. The new feature itself is iOS-only for now. Chan said in a subsequent tweet that Android support was in the works, but the company did not have a launch date at this time. |
Twitter Rallies On CEO Rumors, Positive Analyst Attention | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | Twitter had a strong day in the market, spiking more than 4 percent in midday trading before ending the day up a slightly more modest 3.67 percent. The company’s shares benefited from a that included a $44 per-share price target. The company’s shares closed the day at $38.44 per share. More dramatically, SunTrust’s , whose firm maintains a buy rating on Twitter’s shares, indicated on CNBC that its current CEO, Dick Costolo, . Under Costolo’s tenure atop the social company, it has reported . Twitter’s shares have a dramatic 52 week range of $29.51 to $74.73. Here’s the CNBC clip:
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Datanyze Acquires LeadLedger, A Sales Tool That Tracks Tech Product Market Share | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | Sales startup is announcing its first acquisition — it’s buying a similar service, . On a broad level, Datanyze and LeadLedger basically promise customers the same thing — they’re trying to help salespeople find new leads, particularly by tracking which websites are using competitors’ products, as well as overall market share. “I think that more and more, we’re seeing technology data as a great trigger for lead generation,” said Datanyze’s director of marketing Sam Laber. “If you’re a sales rep, you want to know which websites have added a specific technology that day, or conversely, have dropped a specific technology that day, to give you an idea of a prospect to go after.” Laber argued that the acquisition moves Datanyze closer to the goal that founder Ilya Semin laid out earlier this year, — namely, to become “the de facto lead generation solution for every technology provider.” Semin described the acquisition as “a strategic move” that solidifies his company’s dominance, adding, “We also wanted to prevent our competitors from entering this space of technology tracking.” In , LeadLedger says this will allow Datanyze to expand “its overall technology coverage, and in particular, its coverage of the advertising space.” The financial terms were not disclosed, but Semin said Datanyze will be working to bring LeadLedger customers onboard. He also said that he’d wanted to hire the LeadLedger team, but they declined: “They explained to us that they wanted to move into a totally different direction.” |
A Gift Guide For Those Impossible To Shop For People | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | Everyone has someone on their list that is impossible to shop for. They have everything. In those times, it’s probably safe to give a nice bottle of whiskey. Or any of the items on the following list. There is no way they have everything listed below, but in case they do, default to the whiskey. That’s truly a gift that keeps on giving anyway. The DJI Phantom 2 Vision + is currently the drone to buy. It’s simple to fly and sports a camera on a rig that’s immune to the movement of the drone. The Phantom can capture impressive video and pictures from its GoPro-like camera and even stream video back to a connected mobile device. The pilot will be soaring to impressive heights minutes after opening the gift. There are a lot of different juicing options currently on the market. But the Hurom Juicer stands alone in several areas, making it a great gift for the health nut (or wannabe health nut) on your list. First, it’s a slower juicer, which is said to produce a better juice by pulverizing, rather than cutting, the fruits or vegetables. It also has a handy spout that tends to keep the juicing area a bit cleaner and serves as a nice utility for sharing juice with others. There are Bluetooth speakers and then there is the Marshall Stanmore. It’s perhaps the only Bluetooth speaker worthy of working at a Van Halen concert. The speaker is covered in vinyl and features a cloth grill. The damn thing weighs 11 pounds. Not only does it look the part, it sounds the part, too, thanks to dual amps driving twin tweeters and a dedicated 5.25-inch woofer. But seriously, this speaker pounds. Everyone needs a GoPro and the company’s new $129 Hero is a great starter camera. The camera lacks the high-end features found in the firm’s more expensive models, but the Hero is perfect for YouTube antics. Best of all the camera works with the multitude of GoPro mounts and accessories currently on the market. Skip the no-name action cameras found on Amazon and in department stores; opt for the Hero. Listen, you might not know this, but your laptop’s audio output is lacking. It’s not nearly as good as it can be. That’s where the DacMagic comes in. This tiny accessory plugs into your computer’s USB port and dramatically upgrades the audio output. Best of all this guy won’t be noticed at all in your laptop bag. |
Google Updates Gov Data Request Stats, Notes Decline In Takedown Demands | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | Google provides the world with bi-annual, year-ago looks into which countries’ governments requested data on its users, in what quantity, and how many content takedown demands it received from the same entities. Because the search company , their value is slightly muted. It would be more fun, of course, to have real-time information on this sort of thing, but the numbers are interesting all the same. In the second half of 2013, Google saw total requests decline for the takedown of content decline. The minor fall in requests isn’t too notable in itself, but the reason behind it is: You may notice that this total decreased slightly from the first half of 2013; this is due to a spike in requests from Turkey during that period, which has since returned to lower levels. Meanwhile, the number of requests from Russia increased by 25 percent compared to the last reporting period. Requests from Thailand and Italy are on the rise as well. I wonder if you could chart internal unrest in countries and compare that information to requests for data on or from citizens of those same countries. I would wager a small sum that there is a nearly direct correlation. What would be even more interesting to see is if data requests are a leading or lagging indicator of unrest. Do government’s demands for user data precede or follow protests and the like? Anyone want to wager that Russia’s numbers rise through 2014, as Google releases them next year? |
Influencer Marketing Is Killing Santa | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | It’s the final week of the Christmas season, and the holiday shopping advertisements are flowing through my inbox faster than startup pitches. While endorsements from celebrities occasionally show up, there is one uber-influencer that seems to appear more than any other. Jolly St. Nick, the rotund and red-clothed Santa character , has traditionally been the endorsement of choice for marketing executives in the month of December. But if Mavrck, Pixlee, and other startups have their way, that omnipresent santa will be replaced by your colleague or your next door neighbor – and maybe even by you. I have written a lot about and , but one activity that has ironically resisted this movement has been marketing. There has always been a tension in advertising between showing the ideal and the ordinary. Just think of celebrities in make-up commercials versus everyday people advocating for medical treatments. We simultaneously want what others like us have, but we also have dreams and look up to the stars in our lives for inspiration. All that is changing, and with it, the rules for how to succeed in marketing. , a TechStars Boston graduate, is hoping to democratize influence by building a community platform for brands to engage with what the company calls long-tail influencers. At the heart of this platform is reciprocity, what Robert Cialdini, author of , called one of the most fundamental laws of social relations. The idea is to find those visible, yet hidden micro-celebrities – your aunt who is an expert at shoes or your desk mate who loves chocolate – and provide them with a premium experience from a brand through its platform. Last week, the startup picked up $2.5 million in Series A financing from GrandBanks Capital. The company has already seen some key results from early trials. Unilever used the platform for their Clear Shampoo and Conditioner product through its . Using Mavrck, the consumer goods company provided 1000 influencers with a unique link that they could share with friends and family. The company got 15,000 email signups, and most importantly, more than 3,500 purchases from these links within thirty days according to the platform’s data. For Lyle Stevens, the co-founder and CEO, the emphasis on democratized influence isn’t just about opening marketing to everyone, but rather just good business. “Celebrity and YouTube stars are much better on the impression side of the equation, rather than conversions. We are not as cost-effective on impressions, but we are much more effective on conversions. The challenge [for us] is that agencies are still mostly focused on impressions.” He calls that focus on dollars spent by consumers “revenue per impression,” in contrast with traditional metrics like CPMs. That emphasis certainly arises in the data that the company shared with me. While the cost per engagement was higher than competing services like Facebook’s News Feed ads and Promoted Tweets from Twitter, Mavrck’s Click-Through Rate (CTR) and Cost Per Lead (CPL) were much more favorable. On CPL, Mavrck averaged $1.52 across the campaigns it has led so far, compared to the low teens on competing services. Of course, a platform that works with a thousand influencers may have trouble scaling to a million, a point that Lyle notes is their next big challenge. “As we move into 2015, we are engaging on community to add some zeros to these numbers.” But connecting brands to consumers doesn’t just have to be through text and recommendations. Kyle Wong, who co-founded , is building a startup to provide what he terms “authentic visual marketing.” Consumers take millions of photos of brand products every year, broadcasting them on sites like Instagram to their followers. Now, Pixlee wants to take those raw photos and use them in a brand’s own advertising campaign, leaving behind the professional shoots that currently splash across advertising campaigns. Wong, , noted that influencer marketing is not just about looking at follower counts, but has to expand beyond reach to brand affinity and strength of relationship with followers. To that end, Pixlee just released a beta version of an influencer marketing tracking feature that will allow brands on its platform to identify the most impactful influencers and connect with them. The challenge for Pixlee, Mavrck and other companies working in this nascent influencer marketing space is to balance building organic connections with monitoring performance. These influencers work because of their authenticity, so how can brands leverage that credibility without destroying it? For Mavrck, its platform actively monitors influencers to ensure that people invited to the platform don’t suddenly start spamming their friends. Another challenge is to get brand managers to loosen their stranglehold and perfectionism on their marketing campaigns. The perfect images and glossy spreads that are the hallmark of much of consumer goods marketing may look objectively better than a picture shot from an iPhone, but they lack a human touch that a single authentic image from a mom in Iowa can provide. That is the argument that Laura Busche makes to marketers in her recently published book . “The branding process looks more like an orchestra. Consumers today want to sing with you. They’re happy to buy something they’ve coproduced. They look forward to participating, and every day we get better tools to facilitate it. Despite being homework for everyone in your company, brands are conversations, not monologues.” The ultimate challenge for any new marketing strategy is to just start getting brand managers and agencies talking about it. Stevens from Mavrck notes that “Influencer marketing doesn’t have the scale yet, but if we are able to grow it, we can show that it is much more effective than traditional ads. Long-term, we can use mixed marketing to drive engagement and conversions.” There may still be hope for Santa in this new world, but now he will have quite a few friends to help him out (and not just elves). |
Facebook’s Money-Making Solution To App Discovery? A Whole Feed Of Install Ads | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | Finding a good app can be like looking for a needle in a truck stop bathroom. Apple and Google aren’t doing much to help you sift through their messy app stores. Facebook has tried to step up, but sometimes you don’t care about your friends and just want a new mobile toy to play with. So Facebook is taking haters’ worst nightmares and turning them into an app discovery tool. Today I noticed a new bookmark in Facebook’s mobile navigation menu called “Find Apps” that leads to a special feed of nothing but app install ads and engagement ads. I asked Facebook about it, and the company confirms the new feature, saying “We’re always looking for ways to help people discover apps that are relevant for them, as well as opportunities for advertisers to reach these people, so we’re exploring a few new places to surface apps we think people will be interested in.” The App Ad Feed, as I’m calling it, looks a bit like the News Feed, but there are no stories from friends or Pages. Instead, it shows 25 ads for apps and games, each with a glossy cover photo, app icon, description, rating, and install button. You can refresh to get a different set. Beyond the navigation menu bookmark, Facebook also added a “Find Apps” link to the drop-down menu if you go to hide an app ad in the News Feed. The ads are targeted based on who advertisers said they wanted to reach, combined with a News Feed style ranking algorithm, according to Facebook. So are advertisers getting charged the same way they do when their ads show up in the standard News Feed? Yes. Facebook says it charges the same cost per click (CPC), cost per install (CPI), or optimized cost per one thousand impressions (oCPM) as normal. That means you’ll see personalized app ads based on your habits and what people similar to you care about — something you can’t get on the app stores. If a company is willing to pay to get its app in front of you, it’s probably because it thinks you’ll enjoy it enough to download and eventually let the advertiser recoup the ad cost. You might see the occasional app ad or story about friends interacting with apps in your News Feed. But for those seeking the next Flappy Bird or Yik Yak to occupy their time, the App Ad Feed could prove useful. And if you’re a disciple of the church of AdBlock, and already hate the ads you see on Facebook, you never have to visit the App Ad Feed. Will anyone look at the damn thing? We watch infomercials, scan for billboards, and rally around Super Bowl commercials. While our minds tell us ads are there to waste our time, at times we’re mysteriously drawn to them. Perhaps in the News Feed they’re annoying, but when there’s nothing to interrupt and we volunteered, a feed of ads could be oddly enticing for some of us. And if you realize that a quick scroll through the App Ad Feed racks up the same number of impressions as 5X to 10X as much News Feed reading, it’s clear why Facebook’s willing to give it a shot. As I wrote about extensively in my feature piece “ ,” app discovery in the stores is broken. There are literally millions of apps, most of them crap or clones. There’s little in the way of personalized suggestions, leaving users to comb through Editor’s Picks and Top Lists that are influenced by industry connections and ad spend, respectively. The problem stems from the fact that the two major mobile operating system makers don’t really care about app discovery at scale. Apple makes money on hardware sales and Google on ads. Meanwhile, the 30 percent taxes both iOS and Android lay on app downloads and in-app purchases mean they’re already earning revenue from the space. Facebook’s not so fortunate. Without a mobile operating system, it needed a way to get into the app economy and it discovered the route in late 2012 with app install ads. With its immense time-on-site/app, Facebook has become a core gateway to paid app discovery with app ads in the News Feed. There’s a limit to how many ads Facebook can show in the News Feed before people get sick of them, though. Sometimes you do just want to see what your friends are up to, and ads are a distraction. Still, the fact that , with a big chunk coming from app ads, implies that people who are in the mood for apps are finding them convincing and useful. Now they have a dedicated place to browse. It all comes back to the same reason the social network , and launched its : Facebook has some of the , but it does not have infinite space to show ads in the News Feed. By creating more surfaces to display the ads it powers, whether on the App Ad Feed, other video sites, or third-party mobile apps, . So whether you tolerate ads or hate them, you should benefit from the App Ad Feed. |
Withings Activité Fitness Tracking Watch Review | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | seemed on a fairly straightforward path throughout the course of its initial development – from the step counter, to the fitness band, to the smartwatch. But the wrist has long been a home for a more refined and storied piece of tech: The wristwatch. And while smartwatches attempt to reimagine that gadget for a modern age, only the new Withings Activité tracker nails the execution in a way that will actually appeal to watch lovers, and to everyday people who still think even the best looking Android Wear gadget is a fugly mess. The Withings Activité is possibly the perfect activity tracking wristband. That’s mostly because it barely even is one, preferring instead to masquerade as a finely crafted Swiss watch, with a minimalist face, clean lines and subtle detailing that will appeal to connoisseur while also keeping those with more broad tastes satisfied. It also serves just as well as any other activity tracker on the market, but it doesn’t make a big deal about it, which is exactly what most consumers are looking for. [gallery ids="1097759,1097760,1097763,1097764,1097765,1097766"] I mostly say the Activité is perfect because it’s managed to attract more compliments than any other activity tracker I’ve ever worn or tested. It’s the first one that anyone with any serious sense of style (and I say that knowing I have none) has expressed interest in owning, and it’s the only one watch-type device that has appealed to those I know with smaller wrists. Building a wearable smart device that anyone besides early adopters and the tech curious actually want to own is no small feat. The calfskin band that comes in the box is comfortable, if a little narrow for larger wrists, and the silicone band that also comes with the watch is great for all-day (or all-night, for sleep tracking) comfort, and since it doesn’t taper, it makes the Activité itself look better on larger wrists. The silicone strap is also great for running, which the Withings can handle well even though it doesn’t have the outward appearance of a sport watch. Withings has put the activity tracker display on the Activité in a sub-dial on the watch face, and this has very fine internal circular texture detailing that’s great when you go in for a very close look. The blued hand on the activity meter is another nice touch, and a nod to the craft of watchmaking. The silver time indicator hands are easy to read and thin for more accurate time keeping. Speaking of accurate time-keeping, the Activité actually uses your iPhone’s time to set, which is why there’s no crown on the wearable at all. Watching the Activité set itself after you’ve paired the device with the Withings Health Mate app is almost magical, and a side-benefit is that when you travel, you can simply open the app to initiate a sync and your watch will automatically update to the time of your iPhone, which itself automatically changes once you connect to new networks in new time zones. It’s a small thing, but a very cool one, too, that turns the Activité into a great travel watch in its own right, leaving aside the smart fitness features it offers. Other watches with single-button time zone adjust features can cost just as much, even with a quartz movement, so it’s something to keep in mind when weighing the value of the Acitvité vs. the price. The Activité doesn’t include a heart rate monitor, but it does automatically switch to tracking running when you begin that activity, and it also will auto track swimming with a future update. Withings isn’t clear when exactly this will arrive yet, but it’s a value-add feature, and the Activité is plenty impressive enough even without it. The group of users who need what it offers, and swim activity tracking is also likely small. While the watch doesn’t do much besides track your steps and tell the time, that’s all it really needs to do, and it does work as a sleep tracker if you’re willing to wear it on your wrist all night and set it to monitor your Z’s in the companion app. The Withings offers solid activity tracking, in line with the kind of data provided by the Withings Pulse, which is to say that while it isn’t accurate in the way that might be required for Olympic training, it’s fine for the needs of any average user. The device is clearly marketed at casual fitness fans anyway, those who are looking for a general indicator of their fitness level, in a device they’d likely wear even if it didn’t offer that benefit. The meter design of the Activité’s activity indicator is a good way to convey that kind of information, and it provides a rough percentage-style look at progress towards your goal, which again is better for this specific type of activity tracking than a precise count (especially given that this category of fitness device makes no solid claims on precision accuracy). It’s plenty enough to motivate you to fill up that meter, but Withings has locked in the goal so that it’s 10,000 steps, regardless of what a user would like to shoot for. It’d be nice to have more options, but again a 10K goal should be enough to encourage healthier lifestyles for most. The Activité’s most impressive performance features centre around the automatic time zone updates, and the fact that the battery will last for eight months or more. The company provides a second battery, two, so you’ll be well into a year before you need to even think about tracking down batteries of your own. That’s a huge advantage when it comes to the general wearable market, and combined with the design, makes this easily the activity tracker best-suited for general consumer interest. That said, the Activité isn’t priced for the mass market: At $450, it’s comparable to very nice quartz wristwatches, rather than other fitness bands on the market. Most people won’t spend that much on a watch, however, and I expect they won’t be convinced to essentially quadruple the price of a Jawbone UP just to get a nice timepiece in the mix, either. Ultimately, though, the Withings Activité is the only fitness tracker out there likely to grace the majority of owner wrists for more than a couple months at max. It’s the first wearable device that will actually appeal to watch fans, regardless of any previous claims to that effect, and that will help it find a niche audience willing to spend the price Withings is asking. Another way to think about is to consider that most wearables fans would probably accrue four or five different fitness devices in the next year anyway: The Activité is a single, but smarter buy for tech that’s genuinely useful, and yet genuinely fashionable at the same time. |
Hollywood’s Streaming Nemesis Popcorn Time Gets A VPN, But You’ll Have To Pay For It | Jon Russell | 2,014 | 12 | 25 | Christmas is a time for family, which by extension makes it a period for sitting back and watching a lot of movies and TV. Maybe that’s why . That controversial flick will set you back $6 to rent or $12 to buy ( ), but the folks at Popcorn Time believe you should be able to watch what you like for free — and now they’ve added a VPN to . Popcorn Time, for those who aren’t aware, is a service that lets you stream a tonne of top films and TV shows to your computer for free. It uses unlicensed torrents on the internet for content, which naturally raises a gamut of legal issues. , but a number of anonymous groups resurrected the project, the most notable of which is probably Popcorntime.io, which . VPNs, which essentially route a device’s internet through a different country, are seen as an important addition to Popcorn Time. for using Popcorn Time earlier this year, so a VPN could help movie fans avoid repercussions for their borderline-legal viewing activity — which we at TechCrunch do not condone, by the way. We’ve seen VPNs in Popcorn Time before — another group — but Popcorntime.io’s promises to be more robust since it is . Mega caveat though, users will have to pay for it. VPN.ht is priced at $4.99 per month, but Popcorntime.io users can get it for $1 for the first month after which they can cancel. Alternatively they can pay $3.99 per month on a yearly deal. Currently in ‘Alpha’, the addition is all well and good, but we can’t help thinking that there are some issues. The cost of free is a primary appeal of Popcorn Time, thus it is unclear whether many users will pony up $30-plus for a VPN service, even though it may be beneficial to them. Those likely to use VPNs have probably already bought them. Anecdotally, folks shopping for a VPN tend to take their time and weigh up their options from the crowded field. Integrating with Popcorn Time may well give VPN.ht an initial sales boost, but I’m not sure it will make a sizable difference to the service or Popcorn Time’s userbase in the long-term. A freemium option — offering a free first month of use or a limited monthly service — would have been a more impacting addition for both sides. VPN.ht does support Bitcoin and a range of payment options, but the fact remains that asking people to get their credit cards out — even just for a few dollars — is enough of barrier to deter many. Beyond the VPN, Popcorntime.io is also promising to revamp its existing Android app with “all kinds of amazing features” soon. You’ll want to keep an eye on the project if that sets your Christmas bells aringing. |
Viewers Worldwide Are Torrenting ‘The Interview’ Despite U.S.-Only Release | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 12 | 25 | Yesterday, Sony through Google Play, YouTube Movies, and Xbox Video. Unfortunately, the film was restricted to the U.S. only, so viewers in other countries either had to celebrate Christmas with a or run off to a torrent site. Not surprisingly, many decided to illegally download the film. , “The Interview” has been downloaded an estimated 750,000 times after 20 hours. It’s unclear why Sony decided to make The Interview’s online release U.S. only, considering how much attention the movie has gained worldwide. Then again, the company has already faced unprecedented obstacles, including (though ) and so a slow and cautious roll-out probably makes sense. We’ve emailed Sony to ask about The Interview’s international release schedule. |
Meeting The Challenges In Mobile Health Innovation | Sumit Mehra | 2,014 | 12 | 25 | S Preventing disease is the Holy Grail of modern medicine. Many diseases plaguing society today are chronic and brought on by lifestyle choices; others have their roots in genetic or environmental factors. Either way, the ability of the healthcare community to prevent disease is heavily influenced by information. Gather the right data with enough warning time to impact the outcome, and most diseases can be minimized — or even eliminated. Mobile health technology has the potential to fill this void. Applications, devices and technologies behind the “quantified-self” movement are exploding in number, precisely because of their power to collect, interpret and communicate the personal health data professionals so desperately need. The future becomes even brighter as the walls of big data come down. Medical data has languished in silos for a long time, but that’s no longer the case. Driven by mandates of the Affordable Care Act, as well as other societal and economic trends, providers are sharing data not only to reduce costs, but also to explore and validate medical research. By expanding studies to include data points gleaned from millions of people, researchers can uncover valuable knowledge that will greatly advance the cause of preventive medicine. Much of the innovation in mobile health involves wearable products such as wristbands, smartwatches and biosensors. Since prevention is all about getting data early, wearables help patients collect health information before serious issues develop. What’s more, wearables decrease the burden of collecting data in the doctor’s office, making analysis that much quicker and more effective. With wearables, doctors don’t have to rely on information gathered in a one-time lab or clinic visit. This has huge advantages; for instance, a patient’s heart rate at the doctor’s office might be different from his or her average rate over the past three months. Most smartwatches and activity trackers now monitor pulse and heart rates, while biosensors like the Medtronic SEEQ adhesive sensor records heartbeats continuously for up to 30 days. Such longitudinal information provides a much clearer, more accurate view of the patient’s health with minimal hassle. Many in the healthcare industry are just beginning to learn that the FDA is encouraging the development of mobile health technology. A number of companies are working on software that automatically feeds personal data from Fitbit wristbands and other mobile monitoring devices into a patient’s ACA-mandated electronic medical record. , a mobile diabetes innovator, received FDA approval as far back as 2010 for its app that helps people stay on track with their Type 2 diabetes care. The next logical step in data collection, many believe, will be ingestible sensors. , a Silicon Valley digital medicine company, is the pioneer in this evolving field. It recently raised $172 million in venture funding to continue development of a wide array of products including pill-like ingestible sensors that measure how well medications are metabolized. Wearables may even be superseded in the future by “invisibles” — devices that are implanted below the skin to collect biointelligence. Regardless of their approach, nearly all mobile health data solutions today require pairing with a smartphone. Smart watches like the Apple Watch and activity trackers from Fitbit and Jawbone are elegant and effective, to be sure; but they can’t connect to the Internet. To do that — and to process and interpret the volume of data generated by collection devices — users need the power and connectivity of a smartphone. This brings us to the key to virtually any mobile health technology breakthrough: user acceptance. Developers and healthcare companies must make users a seamless part of the process, and this is where high-quality, easy-to-use mobile apps become essential. Mobile health apps must minimize user friction. Operation must be intuitive and natural, even passive. This requires a strong understanding of the user’s context and motivation. The place to start is with a detailed assessment of the target audience. It’s important to get as specific as possible, since the more an app designer knows, the easier it is to effectively cater to the user’s needs. Reducing the number of navigation steps, for example, is critical; if navigation is too difficult, usage will likely drop off or the user may abandon the task altogether. , a mobile engagement company, found that while 70 percent of people use mobile apps on a daily basis to track and monitor calorie intake and physical activities, only 40 percent share that valuable data with their physician. To raise the bar on data sharing, apps need to have a “set it and forget it” strategy. (Even better, in fact, would be to not have to “set it” at all.) Well-designed apps have this trait nailed down. Compliance can also be encouraged through the use of emotion. , an app developed through partnerships between pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies, gives patients intriguing and heartfelt stories about prescription drug use. Each story is followed by pop-up questions about the person’s own care; by encouraging appropriate action, the app helps patients adhere to treatment regimens. Mobile technology is perhaps one of the greatest developments in preventive care ever. It allows people to receive and understand information about their daily health with amazing accuracy and impact, enabling them to make better judgments and improve their long-term quality of life. Use of such technologies, however, will likely involve a mix of carrots and sticks. In addition to improving the user experience, app compliance may require gamification techniques or external influences such as discounts on insurance premiums. One thing is certain: helping physicians and their patients move from a reactive approach to one that prevents disease from occurring in the first place is a good thing. This is the promise, and the future, of mobile health technology. |
Yahoo Aviate Can Now Search For Apps, Contacts And The Web – Without Launching A Browser | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | , the mobile homescreen application Yahoo acquired at the beginning of the year, has today received a notable update that will allow Android smartphone owners to search for contacts or apps installed on their device, or search across the web, all from a single interface. The web search is powered by Yahoo, the company notes – which means that Aviate users will be connected to Yahoo’s results without having to open a web browser. Instead, Yahoo Aviate’s search results appear directly on the phone’s homescreen, the company explains. Yahoo is not the default search engine on Android devices. And because it can be difficult to get users to change the settings on their mobile phones, winning search deals (and ) – is still critical for the company. But by bundling “search” as a feature within the updated Aviate app, Yahoo has found a way to integrate its own services more deeply on mobile devices without being dependent on OS or browser defaults. Meanwhile, smartphone users are drawn to Aviate not because of its Yahoo integration, but because it offers what some would consider an improved interface for mobile devices. Aviate’s launcher app provides a simpler phone layout where the content that’s presented to the end user changes throughout the day – for example, information about traffic conditions appear during your morning commute; calendar appointments are prominent while you’re at work; and when you’re listening to music, your favorite music apps appear. According to data from Google Play, the Aviate application has been downloaded somewhere between 1 million and 5 million times. The ability to search across your device is not unique to Aviate, however. Android users have been able to search their phones for contacts and apps for some time, and starting , Google introduced the ability for users to search their applications, too, thanks to advances in . Yahoo’s Aviate isn’t there yet. The new feature is today more akin to Apple’s Spotlight search, which only points to apps that match a search query, in addition to matching contacts, suggested websites, and Wikipedia pages. But Aviate could expand into deep linked search results at some point – after all, Yahoo deep linking ad firm Sparq in January, and now pushes app install ads and more recently, . It has the technical capabilities, that is. Aviate’s new search widget and homescreen-based search results that let users get to websites or launch apps without using a web browser seems to be an ideal place to further integrate this sort of technology in the future. Yahoo says the new feature is currently only available for English-speaking U.S. users, but it will expand access to others “soon.” |
In Holiday Document Dump, NSA Declassifies Compliance Errors | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 12 | 25 | The National Security Agency (NSA) on Christmas Eve that detail its own admitted failures to always operate inside the orbit of the law. The reports spanned a 12 year period, from 2001 to 2013. According to the agency, Executive Order 12333 — a controversial Regan-era law — “requires” the NSA to detail and report “intelligence activities they have reason to believe may be unlawful or contrary to Executive Order or Presidential Directive.” The reports, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act suit from the American Civil Liberties Union, are heavily redacted. That said, they still contain a wealth of information about what sort of errors the NSA makes, both on purpose and not. The language is, naturally, quite dry, but there is still much to glean from the reports, including what sort of compliance issues the NSA encounters, how often, and the mix between accidental, and willful issues. You can find the whole trove . For quick reference, I’ve selected a few highlights from just the 2012 reports, which I think are illustrative of the overall tone of the other documents. Of course, nothing can beat a full reading on your own, which TechCrunch fully recommends. First up, The Analyst Who NSA’d Himself: This is not a rare occurrence, however, and appears to be something of a running prank among analysts: It seems to happen a lot! A , a lot! Oh, and the military had access to raw traffic databases under Section 702 of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That’s probably not good: The NSA accidentally emailed out unminimized “US telephone numbers.” Oops: NSA analysts also executed searches that “produced imprecise results” “potentially” “returned information about USPs,” or United States Persons (This is repeated in other reports as well): Next up, an NSA analyst executed a [redacted] number of queries on a “U.S. organization in a raw traffic database without formal authorization.” The analyst received counseling: Another occurred when an analyst “searched her spouse’s personal telephone directory without his knowledge to obtain names and telephone numbers for targeting.” The NSA continues that the analyst in question was “advised to cease her activities.” Keep in mind that the above is merely a smattering of errors from 2012. Most of the reports contain entries like the following: And: In short, most of the reported errors are more programatic in nature, dealing with people finding selectors that should have been deleted and the like. Keep in mind that the NSA employs a huge number of employees who have powerful tools, who operate under complex law, all while dealing with fluid situations. That they make the occasional accidental error is neither surprising, nor particularly worrisome. However, the cases of NSA analysts looking themselves up seems to indicate that they have broad capabilities to run queries on phone numbers inside the Section 215 system at their own whim, something that appears to invite abuse. This is amplified by the fact that even trainees are given what appears to be broad berth to query the accumulated data, as the quoted example indicates. Although opponents of surveillance reform in Congress say no illegal activities have occurred, the NSA reports appear to push back against that claim. Also, a report from 2013 detailed that the NSA managed to break privacy rules . The above, NSA-reported incidents underscore that previous report. What we can ask next is what percentage of the compliance issues that occur at the NSA are caught. That’s to say, of the reported mistakes, and illegal activities, how many are not caught? It would seem optimistic to presume that all are caught. |
The Future Of Wearable Technology Is In The Enterprise (At Least For Now) | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 12 | 25 | The first iteration of Google Glass was a flop with consumers ( ), , and even boosters bemoan the state of the current wearable market for consumers. Amid all the gloom there’s one trillion dollar bright-spot for the wearable marketplace. From the voice activated communication and logistics devices , to the software platforms developed by and , and the robotic exoskeletons and or the wearable device from , a startup just accepted to the R/GA accelerator in New York, for use in warehouses to reduce worker’s injuries. “Logistics and healthcare are coming up in the marketplace,” says APX Labs chief executive Brian Ballard. “Blue collar and lab coat jobs that got skipped in the mobile revolution are the hot space for smart glasses.” There are business cases for things like a fitbit or smartwatch in the enterprise as well, Ballard says, but the biggest market is smart glasses first. “Smart glasses on a customer facing use case probably aren’t as inconspicuous as you need to fit that role,” Ballard says, but even in stockrooms or storage facilities, smart glasses can have a role to play. For now, APX Labs is seeing the bulk of its customers come from the oil and gas and manufacturing markets. ” Indeed Google has for its “Glass At Work” program, including APX and Augmate. Healthcare applications also dominate among smart glasses startups. , and all specifically target the healthcare industry with their solutions. Not everyone has given up on head worn computing for consumers. The , which to Microsoft in September, is still targeting consumer markets. “What we deliver is the absolute state of the art in head-worn computing,” says chief executive Ralph Osterhout. “It’s intended to be a high-speed tablet on your head.” The tech will weigh 4.5 ounces, and display information at a frame rate of 60 frames per second. The Osterhout wearable will also be fully internet enabled with 4G, Glonav and GPS capabilities. “The whole world is going to go head-worn. It’s not if, it’s when,” says Osterhout. “The decision has already been made. It’s fait accompli.” Osterhout’s company made its name developing wearable imaging devices for the military. Think of night vision, target identification, and anything else you might have seen in a Schwarzenegger movie involving robots, aliens, and explosions. “We’ve built and funded and fielded thousands and thousands of handheld computers and headworn display systems for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the New Year the company may be taking a version of its product to the big International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and that would most definitely not be for a military buyer. As Osterhout looks to bring out a consumer product, he’s aware of the troubles that Google has confronted with Glass. “I”m glad they brought some awareness to the head-worn market,” says Osterhout. However, there were several problems with the Google interface, from Osterhout’s perspective. Forcing users to manipulate the Glass with their hands was one mistake. “For me hands free means I don’t need to tie up my hnds to operate my glasses. The latest iteration of Osterhout’s technology will likely come in a few varieties. Government and enterprise customers will get a $2,500 for large orders or $4,000 to $5,000 for smaller orders. Consumers who want to pick up Osterhout’s smart glasses technology will be looking at a price tag under $1,000. “What’s holding back the smart glasses market? It needs to be modular and fully integrated,” says Osterhout. “You need to be able to stream video, you’ve got to support Facebook and Snapchat. You have to deliver augmented reality too, which is going to wipe across the earth like a tidal wave.” What won’t work is a bulky device that distances people from their environment,” says Osterhout. “If you’re talking about something that makes you look like a hammer-head shark with wires? Then, no. It’s not going to work.” |
Being A Leader Sometimes Means Finding The Willingness And Courage To Be Led | Drew Austin | 2,014 | 12 | 25 | A popular post on by an early-stage startup founder triggered over 100 responses and more than 150,000 views — myself included. In the post, the founder (who remained anonymous) asked the community for the following advice: “I manage a young startup company in the valley. My only employee is great but he is also a new father. Which means leaving work between 6 and 7 pm. I understand him but it’s hard for a startup that the commitment lasts for work hours only. What would you do as a CEO?” This post actually angered a lot of people in the community (as you can tell from the responses), but as a founder, I understood his dilemma. Until a few months ago, I was asking the same question myself. It took losing our senior Android engineer, a talented and valued member of our team, for me to finally reconsider my position and begin to understand why staying true to a positive work culture mattered so much. My hope for the founder who posted this question is that he appreciates this unique opportunity for a painless, yet extremely valuable learning lesson in creating positive company culture. Here’s a recap of what I told him on : “Your mentor in this experience is sitting right in front of you, asking to go home and see his kid. Listen and learn from him. He knows the type of environment that will put him in the best position to succeed.” It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day grind and to be focused on short-term productivity. But work culture matters. Creating a positive environment for your employees will make your team happier, and your company will do better as a result. Ultimately, the extra work you might squeeze out of an employee who works a little later will pale in comparison to the productivity you lose when your best employees leave. There is a saying that I am quite fond of: “You hire an employee, and a human being walks in.” When our lead engineer told me he was planning to leave, it came as somewhat of a shock. If we had been on the same page throughout his duration of working with us, I would have learned he was performing a management role that he did not yet want to perform. The work he was expecting to do here on a daily basis was set aside to meet the needs of a startup, but at this point in his career, he wanted to continue to perfect his craft. After the conversation, I talked to Alex, our principal software engineer, and he spoke to me about the expectations he had of management, starting off with: “Would you wait for a six-month review to talk with your partner at home about the things that are bothering you or does communication happen openly and often?” I consider myself a logical thinker, so that resonated with me. One of the first changes that we made was in how we communicated with one another. In the past we had to schedule meetings or pull people out of what they’re doing to talk; now, we’re using Slack. It provides a great place for the team to discuss and share things freely on their own time, which ultimately helped open up communication. Also, it’s much less of a distraction. This was interesting for me — someone who enjoys and even thrives off physical interactions — to see how valuable Slack was for our team. So now, when a conversation would be more appropriate in person, it is easier and less of a distraction to schedule now that most of our general communication is happening through Slack. Increasing the communication within the team has been an invaluable takeaway. It isn’t easy, but as a founder, it is critical to take an honest inventory of yourself and understand that to build an amazing team, you must find team members with complementary skills — that’s the obvious part. What isn’t so obvious is how complementary skills also come with different personalities, communication techniques, interests and expectations. It is your responsibility as a founder to capture, navigate, appreciate and ultimately create an environment for the differences to not only coexist, but also to flourish. If you aren’t sure what your company’s culture should be, then take the time to talk to your employees. Nobody knows everything and you have a team so you don’t have to figure everything out on your own. I work with some of the smartest engineers, UX designers and wearables experts I know. The team not only appreciated, but respected the times when I would respond to a situation or question by being honest and saying, “I don’t know, let’s figure it out,” which happens quite often when you’re building the future of the industrial workplace. The outcome was a mutual respect and an understanding for what we could learn from each other to make this company successful. Each person’s expectations and vision of our ideal environment was not always in line with what I had assumed. From that point forward, my intention as a founder has been to strive to build a workplace that can exceed the expectations of our team. When I articulated to Alex that he was accountable and empowered to make the appropriate changes to push us forward, almost immediately, a layer of friction was removed. If you allow your team members the opportunity to shape the culture and environment of your company, you will look around and see progress being made by a group of happy people. |
Hackers Take Credit For PlayStation Network And Xbox Live Outages On Christmas | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 12 | 25 | Gamers who received new consoles for Christmas might find themselves unable to connect and play with friends, thanks to a coordinated attack by hackers who claim to have taken down the two largest gaming networks. On what might be the biggest gaming day of the year, a hacker group called Lizard Squad is claiming responsibility for taking down both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. Reports of service disruptions began popping up earlier today, with both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network with . In both cases, users have had a difficult time logging in to the networks, which generally gives them access to connect with friends and play games requiring online access. We are aware that there have been issues reported with PSN. Thanks for your patience as we investigate. — Ask PlayStation (@AskPlayStation) A hacker group called Lizard Squad , which follow weeks of threatening to take the systems offline. This is the same group that said it was behind that took down games like League of Legends and Path of Exile. https://twitter.com/FUCKCRUCIFIX/status/548168352666247168 For those who just got a shiny new PS4 or XBOne for Christmas, the attack couldn’t have come at a worse time. That’s because new users generally have to be connected to one of those networks even just to set up their Xbox or PlayStation accounts for the first time. And what are those gamers supposed to do for the rest of the day? Spend time with their families? |
Bitcoin, Burning Man And The Gifting Economy | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 12 | 25 | Bitcoin was , but that hasn’t stopped non-profits from asking for them anyway. Wikipedia, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Khan Academy and now even will take those bitcoins off your hands in the form of a tax-deductible donation. While this won’t get you a golden ticket into the actual festival, gifting something without expecting anything in return is part of the spirit and culture of the annual festival in the Nevada desert. In fact, it’s listed first in the 10 Principles of Burning Man: Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value. Though a lot of money goes into prep and supplies for the festival, no actual money is exchanged while in Black Rock City except for the buying of ice or coffee at the main tent. Folks give away everything from vegan ice cream to “special” massages while there. Even clothing can be donated away. The new bitcoin option has more to do with funding year round activities outside the festival, however. For some context, there’s and there’s . Ticket sales cover the actual cost of producing the festival. That’s the for-profit part. The cryptocurrency donations will help the non-profit arm of Burning Man to build out “organizational capacity,” support community initiatives and most likely help fund those giant art projects that get shipped out to the middle of the Playa every year. CEO Marian Goodell mentioned in a company issued statement that there was a possibility of buying tickets with the cryptocurrency at some point, “Accepting bitcoin for donations is an experimental first step. We plan to explore other possibilities in the future, including expanding bitcoin to the ticket-buying process,” she said. , a digital payment system for bitcoin, has partnered up with Burning Man to make the donation process easier. It also provides a way to give without incurring transaction fees. The startup doesn’t assess fees to non-profits. Other online sites such as Reddit and Wikimedia (the non-profit portion of Wikipedia) use Coinbase for the same thing. Burners may want to hold onto that bitcoin, but donating the virtual currency could be a good option for those in the United States. That is, if your coin value went up this year. It hovered around the $1000 mark at the beginning of 2014, but has since fallen to $318 as of today. As mentioned above, bitcoin donations are now tax-deductible. The feds finally issued a statement this last spring that allows bitcoin to be considered a property of sorts. This will allow you to give away something that would otherwise be subject to capital gains taxes. This has also fueled adoption among a growing list of charitable organizations. The , the nation’s largest charitable organization with $4.27 billion in revenue, chose to accept bitcoin in September. UNICEF accepts them (it’s also tax-deductible there), but not in the U.S. yet ( ). Other crowdfunding charity sites like Crowdrise to help raise donations in bitcoin for those organizations that are slow to adopt. Is this a further nod to global acceptance of bitcoin or just a ploy to remind people they can donate to burner projects? Probably a little of both. |
Careful With That Drone Now | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 12 | 25 | So you got a drone for Christmas (or an unmanned flying vehicle, as the FAA likes to call it, or a quadcopter, if you prefer). That’s awesome. But don’t just head into your backyard and try to fly it without any preparation (unless it’s one of those , of course). As we , the FAA would like you to follow a couple of common sense rules before you take flight. Most of those you probably know about already (like staying away from airports, people and animals, and not flying over 400 feet) and some drones now automatically deactivate if you are too close to a major airport, so that’s getting a bit less of an issue. But here is what you should really do before you take your drone out for the first time: read the manual and watch all the instructional videos. I know that’s a hassle, but you (or somebody who loves you very much) just spent a few hundred dollars on a flying lawnmower and it only takes one bad crash to ruin all the fun — and you really don’t want to crash into any people when you lose control, because those fast-spinning propellers are sharp. Most drones also have a specific start-up procedure you want to follow and you probably also want to know exactly what each of those knobs, levers and buttons on your remote control does before you take off. After that, find yourself a wide open space away from airports, power lines, people and animals to start practicing. Try to learn to take off and land first. Don’t worry about the app that runs on your smartphone at first (unless it gives you a first-person view from the drone’s camera — I’d start using that right away because it can make flying more intuitive). Flying drones isn’t hard, but that doesn’t mean it comes natural. Keeping track of what direction forward is for your drone takes practice, for example. Also remember that it takes a minute (or five) for the drone to acquire enough GPS signals to find its way back to you in case of an emergency. Don’t rush the startup because you are so eager to get going (and know how to trigger the return to home feature if your drone has one). Once you have the basics down, you can try some other maneuvers and then, when you are good with that, bring in the smartphone to control the camera and learn about all the other advanced features. So basically: don’t rush it! Most of all, though, have fun! But if you try to take this kind of video with your new toy, you deserve what’s coming to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFWUlObSgn0 |
null | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 12 | 22 | null |
YC-backed Blocknom wants to become the ‘Coinbase Earn of Southeast Asia’ | Catherine Shu | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | , a crypto-earning platform in Y Combinator’s current batch, has aspirations to become the “Coinbase Earn for Southeast Asia.” Today the company announced it has raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding from Y Combinator, Number Capital and Magic Fund. Blocknom’s co-founders, Fransiskus Raymond and Ghuniyu Fattah Rozaq say the app gives users a secure way (it partners with crypto infrastructure company Fireblocks) to get stable, high-yield interest of up to 13% per annum. It also enables users to withdraw their money at any time without fees. The two founders met while working on an open source project in 2020, around the start of the pandemic. “We noticed during COVID, the crypto market is booming in Indonesia, while we were both already crypto investors,” Raymond told TechCrunch. “We talked to users and found that not everyone can do well in trading.” They found that DeFi is a stable and high-yield way to gain through crypto, but there were no competing products in Indonesia, so they decided to build one themselves. Its DeFi partners include Compound, AAVE, Terra and Cake. After signing up for Blocknom, users with a bank account can deposit Stablecoins, which the founders chose because it is the most comparable to conventional bank deposits and therefore accessible to new crypto users. Raymond said Blocknom differentiates from investment apps by encouraging people to save and hold their Stablecoin for the long-term. |
Facebook’s ‘Year In Review’ Feature Will Chronicle Your 2014, Good Or Bad | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 12 | 25 | Facebook has again unleashed its , automatically compiling some of the most-liked photos from your feeds over 2014 and puts them into a neat little timeline. When you sign into Facebook, you’ll see an advertisement to check out your Year In Review, customize it, and share it with your friends. If you’re still having trouble finding it, you can simply sign into Facebook and go to this URL: http://facebook.com/yearinreview. For most folks, the algorithm does its job. It’s not perfect, but it’s a fine way to look back at my year and remember the big moments, even if I would have made different decisions when it comes to the actual photos used. And when you consider that Facebook is offering this customized feature to over 1 billion people, it’s almost impressive. And then you read something like , where a man is being consistently reminded that this year, his young daughter passed away. Algorithms are essentially thoughtless. They model certain decision flows, but once you run them, no more thought occurs. To call a person “thoughtless” is usually considered a slight, or an outright insult; and yet, we unleash so many literally thoughtless processes on our users, on our lives, on ourselves. Where the human aspect fell short, at least with Facebook, was in not providing a way to opt out. The Year in Review ad keeps coming up in my feed, rotating through different fun-and-fabulous backgrounds, as if celebrating a death, and there is no obvious way to stop it. Yes, there’s the drop-down that lets me hide it, but knowing that is practically insider knowledge. How many people don’t know about it? Way more than you think. While Facebook likely hasn’t a single bad intention releasing this product, not everyone wants to remember the fine details of their year. And it’s nearly impossible for Facebook to tell the difference between those people and the people who love reminiscing over 2014. So… if 2014 wasn’t nearly as good as you hope 2015 will be, maybe approach Facebook with caution and use the drop-down menu to hide your Year In Review. Otherwise, let the good times roll and share that sucker. |
4 basic elements required for running production OSS smoothly | Shaun O’Meara | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | source software (OSS) has exploded, and many companies are using it as the cornerstone of their infrastructure. When buying commercial vendor-supported software, you can expect the vendor to be in charge of the products’ upgrades, maintenance, integration and support. By going the OSS route, this is no longer the case. Instead, you will interact with components built by different entities, individuals, or communities with different standards and goals. For example, the recent security issue led multibillion-dollar companies support from the project maintainers as they had a contract with them. Companies need to put many elements in place to use OSS in production smoothly. Here’s how to get started. Before committing to using an OSS project, you first need to complete a full audit: How many contributors does the project count? Are they individuals or organizations? Most OSS maintainers are volunteers, and their level of involvement is never guaranteed. You also need to look at the project’s velocity. For example, how many open feature requests or bug tickets are there? How quickly does the community answer and get them pushed? The goal is to ensure that the project is being maintained and evolving. Finally, you need to audit the actual code. Is it well-documented? Can it handle the use cases and scale that you need? Picking the wrong project could become a costly mistake in the long run. Countless growing startups that picked what looked like shiny OSS projects were later compelled to spend tremendous effort decommissioning and replacing projects that could not keep up. |
The Enterprise In 2015 | Alison Wagonfeld | 2,014 | 12 | 25 | At Emergence Capital, we have had the opportunity to invest in visionaries such as Marc Benioff, Aaron Levie and David Sacks who have built major enterprise cloud applications that have formed the basis of the next generation of business software around the world. As we look out to 2015, we are excited to invest in what’s next for the enterprise. We spend so much time talking about the future, so I thought it would be fun to share the 2015 predictions from Emergence’s five partners — , , , , and — about the emerging themes for enterprise technology and the technology investment environment: Over the last decade, we have seen the rise of great horizontal cloud software solutions such as Salesforce, Yammer and Box. We predict that the next era of great cloud based software will solve for specific problems in industry verticals. Emergence Capital General Partner Gordon Ritter has been at the forefront of this shift to . He notes, “The breakout success of companies such as Veeva Systems, Guidewire, and Opower highlight the potential of a focused approach, and we anticipate that this landscape will explode in the coming years.” The promise of mobile computing caught fire when Apple ushered in the widespread use of smartphones, but there is still a lot of room for mobile applications to proliferate among business users. This is particularly true for the 80% of the global workforce that do not plug into enterprise IT systems. General Partner Kevin Spain said the following in a recent : “There is a huge opportunity to serve the 2.5 billion global non-desk workers. At $40 per worker per year, it could be the next $100 billion opportunity for enterprise technology. I predict we will start seeing more enterprise mobile use cases in 2015 that generate real revenue.” We love helping consumer technology solutions mutate into great applications for the enterprise (e.g. Facebook -> Yammer). General Partner Jason Green believes this will happen at a greater pace in 2015 saying: “Enterprise technology needs to keep up with consumer innovation – we’re going to continue to see successful consumer applications experiment around plays in the enterprise space such as Facebook’s latest business product . I think this is true for some wearables as well – I predict the Apple Watch will do for wearables what the iPad did for tablets.” IoT has tremendous potential for enterprise users, and General Partner Brian Jacobs thinks that interesting applications will emerge in 2015. “I expect that by this time next year we will start seeing compelling use cases, and adoption will really take off when a killer app is identified.” We are optimistic about the potential for drones or unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) to deliver value to enterprises through sensor technology. Emergence General Partner Kevin Spain: “I’m really excited to see how the new sensors and drones will revolutionize data collection in industries such as agriculture and land surveying where it has traditionally been very expensive or difficult to obtain.” Although Google Glass has not taken off for consumers, we will see compelling applications in work settings in 2015, particularly healthcare where doctors often need both hands and could benefit from real-time data to guide their work. General Partner Kevin Spain: “Doctors using solutions for Google Glass tell us they would never go back. They have recaptured two hours of their day, allowing them to focus on patients instead of filling out electronic health forms.” Emergence Partner Santi Subotovsky believes 2015 is the year that a game-changing use case for bitcoin is created, but it will not be in the U.S.: “Now that the basic infrastructure for bitcoin exists, in 2015 we will see many applications that use bitcoin as a platform. There are hundreds of international entrepreneurs building bitcoin applications, and at least one will go big in 2015 in a market that does not have the luxury of a reliable currency.” General Partner Gordon Ritter is thinking about a future where user interfaces fade to the background. He explains, “All the time we spend tapping and typing things into our phones and computers is wasted – in order to truly increase productivity we need new ways to capture the maximum amount of accurate data with a minimum amount of input time. In 2015, we will start seeing innovations that will lay the groundwork for a UI-less future.” Although there is debate on whether or not we’re currently in a bubble, we believe 2015 could be the best year ever for venture returns. General Partner Jason Green expands: “Markets are now receptive, there has been fundamental growth within the tech industry, and we are now seeing the broader risk tolerance that went away for a while. All of these factors lead to the potential for 2015 to be a big year for returns.” General Partner Brian Jacobs seconds: “Right now we have a healthy IPO market, and I anticipate more M&A from large software companies as nascent industries begin to consolidate throughout the year.” Whether you agree or disagree with the valuations startups are getting these days, there is no question that a $1 billion valuation is no longer unique. General Partner Jason Green: “it seems kind of crazy, but I think $10 billion is the new $1 billion – in order to truly be considered a ‘unicorn’ company, the new outsized standard is many billions not just one.” 2015 will mark the year that the Internet naming protocol moves beyond the world of .com, .net and .org. Hundreds of descriptive domain names were released to the public in 2014, and in 2015 we will see widespread adoption as companies such as Google and Donuts make this a reality for businesses around the world. |
Instacart’s head of talent just left to join Pear VC; here’s his take on the market | Connie Loizos | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that the former head of payments at Instacart recently the grocery delivery outfit for a new adventure. As it happens, Matthew Birnbaum, Instacart’s head of talent acquisition for the past four years, is also out the door, having quietly joined the venture firm last month. What do the moves suggest of Instacart? Birnbaum, who launched his recruiting career in 2010, insists the moves say less about Instacart and much more about the red-hot job market right now, where employees with options that may be “underwater” are particularly susceptible to being poached. We had a wide-ranging chat with Birnbaum yesterday morning about why he was himself recruitable, and what other outfits should know about what’s happening in the market. Our conversation has been edited for length. MB: I’d met with some top venture firms earlier [before joining Instacart], but some of the interviews were a little discouraging in the sense that some of the partners I was speaking with were really just looking to offload the network conversations they get dragged into, like, ‘My son is a new graduate’ or, ‘My daughter is graduating from XYZ school; can you help her find her first job?’ A lot of the thinking was just how to separate what the partners are being asked to do from a talent perspective so they could focus on more of the partner work. Candidly, too, while if you look around today, almost every venture firm has at least one talent person, their relevance within the firm is something these individuals question a lot. In many cases, [my acquaintances] feel like they were brought in to help the firm stay relevant. If a firm is competing with other venture firms that can roll out a talent function, it becomes harder for the firm that doesn’t have that to compete. Pear actually wants to make companies self-sustainable. At Pear, we want to be able to hire, say, three to five engineers over 12 to 14 months [as part of our promise] with every seed investment we make. We feel that that’s truly a differentiator, in the sense that most VCs are unable or unwilling to make that commitment as part of their core offering when a founder signs a term sheet. And Pear has the relationships and infrastructure in place to do it, at, especially at the seed stage, when engineers are the most critical people required to take that next step. Pear already has some really cool stuff in terms of dorm programs and industry programs to start building a lot of the networks that are ultimately going to feed into the hires that we need to make for our portfolio companies. There are a bunch of firms that are doing the same thing or have tried to do the same thing; Pear is alone in making this part of our core offering. But you’re right, the overall hiring market for engineers is brutal. It’s different from startup to startup and from engineer to engineer. Historically, some have optimized for pay, while some for total compensation in the form of pay and equity. Some optimized for long-term potential — the chance to strike it rich by joining a company early on with a larger equity stake — and some optimized for location or prestige or their manager or how easy or difficult the job was going to be. They still optimize for different things, but one of the big differences today versus five years ago is that it’s less of a binary decision tree. While it used to be that you might take an offer with high cash and lower equity or an offer with high equity and lower cash, in today’s market, you can shop around and get an offer with high cash high equity. You used to have to optimize for two of five decision criteria and now you’re optimizing for four. That’s what’s making hiring more difficult, because a lot of companies aren’t in a position where they can provide for those things. It was more of a personal decision for me. I’d been there for four years, scaled the company from 300 to 3,000 [employees], and hired 1,200 engineers over that period of time. I wanted to do something where I was closer to the build stage. My team was 125 [people]. I was managing through managers who manage managers who manage managers. I can’t speak for other people. But one of the trends we are seeing — for a lot of companies that grew incredibly quickly during the pandemic and have subsequently [been impacted by a] kind of market correction — is if you look at the value of your equity, you may be underwater. It’s a bad example because DoorDash is a direct competitor to Instacart, if someone were to go from an Instacart to a DoorDash, and DoorDash’s equity right now is at 50% or 40% of what it was at its peak, someone can get the best of both worlds where they take their Instacart equity, lock that in, then go get twice as much DoorDash equity as they would have gotten if they joined a year ago. I think there’s a lot of that going on in the market, where people are picking their head up and looking around and wondering, ‘Hey, what is the opportunity cost of me staying put at one company, versus looking at another?’ I don’t think that’s unique to Instacart and I don’t think this is just happening for engineers. Most companies that are late-stage or pre-IPO or have gone public in the last two years [are going] through the same journey, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a lot of movement across that cohort of companies. The candidates are in the driver’s seat today, where they can really go and ask for everything, and there’s going to be one if not multiple companies out there that are willing to give that. |
A staid MWC wraps up amid a lull in mobile excitement | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | last week about how it was going to be a weird MWC. By “weird,” I mean beyond the usual way that everything is weird all the time now. In addition to being the second time the show has been held during a global pandemic, the smartphone industry has undergone some big changes. Here’s a quick bullet list from the last article: • People are upgrading their devices less frequently/spending money elsewhere
• Supply chain issues and chip shortages aren’t helping
• LG and HTC have stopped making phones and dramatically ramped down, respectively — though the latter is, very least from one buzzword (blockchain) to another (metaverse)
• Huawei has been sidelined by sanctions
• Companies like Samsung and Apple now rely on their own events
• That, in turn, has opened the China market to Xiaomi and a ton of BBK companies
• Qualcomm has been unveiling its big Snapdragon chip, sending companies racing to have the first device with the tech Most of these things feel like headwinds for an event that had become the de facto smartphone show. I’d suggested that MWC seemed destined to return to its default state as a B2B/network/carrier show, and things seem to have largely played out that way in Barcelona this week. It’s doesn’t really bode well for the excitement level around what’s ostensibly become a smartphone show when arguably the two biggest pieces of consumers news — the and — are both laptops. Huawei also managed to make a bit of a splash with its own with a pair of #notphones, in the form of the and MateBook X Pro #notaMacbook. Immediately following the show, I asked Huawei CTO Paul Scanlan some questions about the company’s plans to right the ship following U.S. sanctions that have hobbled its consumer efforts by cutting off access to giants like Google and Qualcomm. His response: We try to differentiate by the other things we do, which are power management, batteries, and some software at the HarmonyOS layer. We’ve also tried to differentiate Harmony from things like an Apple or Google ecosystem by presenting it as something connects across industry components – connected treadmill, connected, bike, connected TV, connected speakers, connected air conditioners, connected heart rate monitors. […]In China itself, the marketshare is good still. In terms of overseas market, where maybe you need the differentiated capability of GMS (Google Mobile Services) or iOS ecosystems, obviously that’s tricky for us. That’s why we’ve extended the consumer business group to include a lot of other different devices, not just smartphones. We took over the year for the smartphones. The company declined to comment on its place in the following the recent invasion of Ukraine. A number of other key Chinese manufacturers led the way in the actual device announcements. TCL added a bunch of models to its 30 line, including the TCL 30 5G — the only model of the bunch to support the aforementioned wireless technology. The company also showed off a new foldable that’s very much still in the concept stage. Former Huawei brand Honor showed off its 6.8-inch flagship, the Magic4, while former-Xiaomi brand Poco debuted the 6.7-inch X4 Pro 5G. OnePlus, for its part, offered additional details around the 10 Pro device it unveiled back at CES. You’d be forgiven if you missed any of this earth-shattering news over the past week. For my money, the most exciting smartphone news of the week happened outside of the show. We’re about to see the entry of two brand new players in the category, both with solid pedigrees. For reasons I went into above, this current moment is both an extremely challenging and potentially rewarding time to enter the space. The category is well established, but who knows, maybe people are waiting for a new player to shake things up? First off is Nothing. The hardware startup is getting ready to follow in the footsteps of founder Carl Pei’s first company, OnePlus, with the launch of a new handset. that Nothing is planning to announce its first phone by next month. The device was shown off in the back rooms of the Barcelona show. We know it will feature transparent elements in line with the company’s first product, Ear(1), but beyond that, things get hazy. OSOM, which rose from the ashes of Essential’s spectacular implosion, meanwhile, was initially planning to use MWC as a launchpad for its first device, the OV1. Ultimately, however, Qualcomm made the company an offer it couldn’t refuse, so from Q3 to Q4. “They love that we’re local. We have a longstanding history with the team of working directly with them,” founder and CEO Jason Keats told TechCrunch. “One of our partners is big enough that Qualcomm was like, ‘holy crap, you’re working with them? We want to be more involved with what you’re doing, as well.’ They came back and said OSOM has the opportunity to do something new, exciting. To change how all of this works. And I think, part of it is we aren’t a huge company, so if their yields aren’t gigantic, they don’t need to worry about shipping me five million chips in a month.” The company also offered up some specs to tide us over, and showed off a clever USB-C connector with a switch that makes it possible to toggle between data transfer and just straight up charging. It’s one of those things I’m frankly surprised more companies haven’t tried. I’m not giving up on MWC as the premier smartphone show just yet, though things largely played out as we expected. It was another weird year full of unique challenges for the industry and the world at large. Whatever remains of people’s attention spans is understandably elsewhere right now. |
How a simple security bug became a university campus ‘master key’ | Zack Whittaker | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | couldn’t get his university’s mobile student ID app to reliably work, he sought to find a workaround. The app is fairly important, since it allows him and every other student at his university to pay for meals, get into events and even unlock doors to dorm rooms, labs and other facilities across campus. The app is called GET Mobile, and it’s developed by CBORD, a technology company that brings access control and payment systems to hospitals and universities. But Johnson — and the many who left the app one-star reviews in frustration — said the app was slow and would take too long to load. There had to be a better way. And so by analyzing the app’s network data at the same time he unlocked his dorm room door, Johnson found a way to replicate the network request and unlock the door by using a one-tap Shortcut button on his iPhone. For it to work, the Shortcut has to first send his precise location along with the door unlock request or his door won’t open. Johnson said as a security measure students have to be physically in proximity to unlock doors using the app, seen as a measure aimed at preventing accidental door openings across campus. It worked, but why stop there? If he could unlock a door without needing the app, what other tasks could he replicate? Johnson didn’t have to look far for help. CBORD publishes a of commands available through its API, which can be controlled using a student’s credentials, like his. (An API allows two things to talk to each other over the internet, in this case a mobile app and a university’s servers storing students’ data.) But he soon found a problem: The API was not checking if a student’s credentials were valid. That meant Johnson, or anyone else on the internet, could communicate with the API and take over another student’s account without having to know their password. Johnson said the API only checked the student’s unique ID, but warned that these are sometimes the same as a university-issued student username or student ID number, which some schools publicly list on their online student directories, and as such cannot be considered a secret. Johnson described the password bug as a “master key” to his university — at least to the doors that are controlled by CBORD. As for needing to be in close proximity to a door to unlock it, Johnson said the bug allowed him to trick the API into thinking he was physically present — simply by sending back the approximate coordinates of the lock itself. Since the bug was found in the API, Johnson said the bug could affect other universities, though he didn’t check to see if he was right, fearing that would exceed the bounds of his account access. Instead he looked for a way to report the bug to CBORD, but couldn’t find a dedicated security email on its website. He called the phone support line to disclose the vulnerability but a support representative said they didn’t have a security contact and was told to report the bug through his school. Assuming that the bug could be easily exploited, if not already, Johnson asked TechCrunch to share details of the vulnerability with CBORD. The vulnerability was resolved a short time after we contacted the company on February 12. In an email, CBORD chief information officer Josh Elder confirmed the vulnerability is now fixed and session keys were invalidated, effectively closing off any remaining unauthenticated access to the API. Elder said that CBORD’s customers were notified, but Elder declined to share the correspondence with TechCrunch. One security executive, whose organization is also a CBORD customer, told TechCrunch that they had not received any notice from CBORD about the vulnerability. It’s unclear if CBORD ever plans to notify users and account holders — including students like Johnson. Elder did not dispute Johnson’s findings, but declined to comment further when asked if the company stores logs or has the ability to detect malicious exploitation of its API. TechCrunch did not hear back after we requested to speak with a company spokesperson to answer our further questions. It’s not the first time that CBORD had to fix a vulnerability that could have remotely unlocked doors. Wired that it was possible to intercept a door unlock command and guess the next sequence number, defeating the need for an ID card. |
MyHeritage and D-ID partner to bring photos to life with both animations and voice | Sarah Perez | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | Last year, genealogy service MyHeritage after introducing that allowed users to animate the faces of loved ones in still photos. TikTok users posted videos reacting to the technology, called “Deep Nostalgia,” as they brought back relatives they never got to meet or those whose loss they still grieved. To date, more than 100 million photos have been animated with the feature. Now comes the next iteration. Today, MyHeritage along with technology partner is expanding upon “Deep Nostalgia,” with ,” a feature that doesn’t just bring the people in photos to life with movement, but actually has them speak. MyHeritage licensed the new technology from a Tel Aviv-based startup that works to create patented video reenactment technology powered by AI and deep learning techniques. D-ID’s technologies, available to developers through APIs, have been used by a range of licensees, across media, education, marketing and more. Warner Bros., for instance, worked with D-ID to with animated photos and for . Mondelēz International, advertising agency Publicis and Digitas Vietnam on marketing efforts for a local festival. India’s short-form video app as a creative tool. Nonprofits and governments have also used the technology in various . With the debut of LiveStory, MyHeritage is bringing the latest AI tech from D-ID directly to consumers. To use the feature, consumers can create a free MyHeritage account, which allows them to try out the tech for free several times. Beyond that, they’ll need to upgrade to a for unlimited use of LiveStory. The technology works to create an animated video narrative of an ancestor’s life, so they can tell their own story. This is powered by D-ID’s patent-pending , which generates a narrated video based on an uploaded photo, then combines it with a synthetic voice generator. The story’s narration comes from text input by the user. To make the lips match the words, D-ID trained a neural network on a database of videos of people speaking. Its technology is able to work with any language, the company says. The MyHeritage implementation, however, supports 31 languages, including dozens of dialects, with both male and female voice options. “The technology is so good that you don’t need a driver video,” notes D-ID’s co-founder and CEO Gil Perry — meaning, the tech doesn’t require a video of a real person’s movements which are then mapped to a still image. “You input only text and the photo and then you get the person to speak,” he says. The technology is not perfect, Perry admits, likening it instead to “really good lip-syncing.” After the LiveStory is created, users can watch it, share it with friends or post it to social media. They also can customize the story further by editing the text, choosing a different voice or even uploading their own audio recording. D-ID Longer-term, D-ID envisions how this technology could be used in a metaverse environment, where digital avatars of people could be animated with AI — and not just faces, but full-body movement in 3D worlds. Perry imagines how users could upload their own childhood photos, those of family members or even historical figures, then animate them in the metaverse, and have conversations. “Our children will want to converse ourselves with Albert Einstein and learn and hear him and ask him questions,” he says. “And he will answer us.” (And when universal translation is available, he could even answer in the user’s own language.) This technology, of course, is several years down the road, but it will be built on concepts being developed today — like Deep Nostalgia and LiveStory — when and if it eventually comes to pass. In the meantime, there’s MyHeritage and, soon, D-ID’s own consumer app that will help to demonstrate its technology in a different way. The app will arrive in the “coming weeks,” D-ID says. The MyHeritage LiveStory feature was announced today at the RootsTech family-history tech conference. It will work on desktop, mobile web and in the MyHeritage mobile app. “LiveStory takes storytelling to the next level,” said Gilad Japhet, founder and CEO of MyHeritage, in a statement about the launch. “With this latest viral feature, MyHeritage continues to lead the world of online family history in both vision and innovation. Our use of AI to breathe new life into historical photos is unique and is helping millions of people cultivate a renewed emotional connection with their ancestors and deceased loved ones. Genealogy is all about telling and preserving our family stories. We keep showing the world how fun and compelling genealogy can be.” D-ID, which was also co-founded by Sella Blondheim and Eliran Kuta, is a team of 32 across positions in the U.S., U.K., Singapore and Israel. |
3 views on the Epic-Bandcamp deal | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | our bingo board of potential mergers and acquisitions for 2022*, we can’t say we anticipated that Fortnite-maker and Apple antagonist Epic Games would , a music marketplace where any musician can sell their music and keep 82% of the profits. After the acquisition, Bandcamp says it will continue to operate as an independent entity. Founder and CEO Ethan Diamond will remain in charge, and according to his , Bandcamp Fridays – a day when fees are waived for artists – will continue as normal, with editorial arm Bandcamp Daily remaining intact as well. “Over the years we’ve heard from other companies who wanted us to join them, we’ve always felt that doing so would only be exciting if they strongly believed in our mission, were aligned with our values, and not only wanted to see Bandcamp continue, but also wanted to provide the resources to bring a lot more benefit to the artists, labels, and fans who use the site. Epic ticks all those boxes,” Diamond wrote. Here are three views on what this move could possibly mean for both indie musicians and the future of a rising gaming company. Amanda, Devin and Alex weighed in on the news, working to unspool what it means and who it might benefit. When artists see that a platform they use to make a living is being acquired, their usual reaction isn’t, “Oh, cool, they will have more funds to produce better features to help me monetize my creative work!” They think, “Oh shit, not again.” It happened when Google bought YouTube, and when . Artists recognize that when a platform changes ownership, even the smallest tweaks can impact their livelihoods. Why would artists trust Big Tech companies when , OnlyFans temporarily made for sex workers, and Patreon payments, a move many of its creators are strongly against? Yes, of all companies that could’ve bought the artist-first music marketplace, Epic is relatively anti-establishment – it’s been in court calling out Apple for snatching up to 30% of in-app purchase fees for months. And from Bandcamp’s announcement of the acquisition, honestly, it seemed like it could be good. There’s room for collaborations between game designers and musicians (think Japanese Breakfast’s for the game Sable), expansion of less-than-satisfactory backend tools, additional music discovery features and – this is the journalist in me – maybe a bigger budget for Bandcamp Daily. Other artists, musicians and journalists expressed concern when at least of the small-staffed Bandcamp Daily made their Twitter accounts private and deleted all of their tweets. Both editors later clarified that they did this for personal safety amid the big news of the acquisition, with editorial director J. Edward Keyes that nothing is changing about the Daily. |
TikTok’s affect on teens will be investigated by state attorneys | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | A group of state attorneys general today that they will investigate TikTok’s connection with negative mental and physical health outcomes among children and teens. This investigation will analyze how TikTok can harm young users, and whether or not TikTok knew about those harms in advance. The bipartisan group of attorneys general will look into TikTok’s methods of boosting young user engagement and how TikTok incentivizes users to spend more time on the platform. This research will help the attorneys determine if TikTok violated state consumer protection laws and put the public at risk. “As children and teens already grapple with issues of anxiety, social pressure, and depression, we cannot allow social media to further harm their physical health and mental wellbeing,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey in a press release. “State attorneys general have an imperative to protect young people and seek more information about how companies like TikTok are influencing their daily lives.” These actions aren’t uncommon, but they don’t usually yield much change in big tech. Last year, though, of 44 attorneys, also co-led by Attorney General Healey, succeeded in urging Meta to its plans to build Instagram Kids. That decision probably had to do more with Facebook whistleblower , however. The influence of social media on children’s mental health is on government officials’ minds. President Joe Biden even mentioned social media in his on Tuesday night. “We must hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit,” the president said in his nationwide address. “It’s time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children.” was as an honored guest of First Lady Dr. Jill Biden — she even earned a personal acknowledgement in Biden’s speech. The investigation into TikTok is led by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee and Vermont, as well as other attorneys from around the country. |
Volvo is testing wireless EV charging tech in Sweden | Kris Holt | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | will put a wireless EV charging system through its paces as part of a program to test alternative charging options. A small fleet of electric Volvo XC40 Recharge cars will be used as taxis in Gothenburg, Sweden in a three-year pilot. The cars are equipped with a wireless charging system from Momentum Dynamics. Charging pads will be embedded in the ground at two taxi ranks. Volvo will use 360-degree cameras to help drivers put the cars in the correct position and when they’re in the right spot, the taxis’ batteries will automatically topped up. An image shared by Momentum Dynamics showed an EV charging at a rate of 41kW. The concept of building charging tech into roads is , but it hasn’t exactly taken off yet. Still, researchers and engineers are working on other ways to charge EVs , so at some point in the future, drivers may never need to visit a typical charging station. |
Daily Crunch: Thousands of Google Play users download Android banking trojan | Alex Wilhelm | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Thursday, March 3, 2022. We have the latest from how the technology world is responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a review of the Theranos show, notes from New Zealand venture capital and more. But first, some programming notes: Our city spotlight series is back, and . There’s also a , and , which is fun as the company is worth $8.6 billion. See you at all three! – There’s a lot to talk about today as always, but let’s start with some non-financial fare. TechCrunch , and oh boy do we have thoughts about it. We also have notes today on the . Both of those are from our own Amanda Silberling, who is incredible. You can follow her on Twitter . And there was even more, of course: for a home-sharing social network, for its “sales intelligence and engagement platform,” Ingrid Lunden writes, and . You are more likely to close a sale if you have some insights into your prospective customer’s needs. But for enterprise startups, that presents a special problem. Unless you’re a former CIO who has a clear understanding of the decision-making process, you can only fall back on basic best practices that will usually result in a generic pitch. Ridge Ventures partner and five-time CIO Yousuf Khan wrote a column for TechCrunch+ that explores “what CIOs look for in solutions and how you can tailor your sales approach accordingly.” Founders who take a mindful approach can turn customers into assets, says Khan. “Good relationships with executive buyers can help shape your company as it grows, ultimately serving as an unofficial advisory board of the top leaders and experts within your customer base.” SEAN GLADWELL / Getty Images TechCrunch is recruiting recruiters for TechCrunch Experts, an ongoing project where we ask top professionals about problems and challenges that are common in early-stage startups. If that’s you or someone you know, you can let us know . |
Twitch will ban streamers who frequently share misinformation | Kris Holt | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | has updated its misinformation policies and who frequently share falsehoods. Under the new rules, the platform will block “harmful misinformation superspreaders who persistently share misinformation on or off of Twitch,” as first reported. “Every day, people come together on Twitch to build communities that celebrate a variety of interests, passions, and talents,” in a blog post. “We’re proud that Twitch can bring people together — but we do not believe that individuals who use online services to spread false, harmful information, have a place in our community. While these individuals are not prevalent on Twitch, they could cause significant harm if allowed on our service.” Fewer than 100 channels will be affected by the policy at the outset, Twitch said. It sees these primarily as precautionary measures. For the platform to take action under these rules, channels must meet several criteria. “We seek to remove users whose online presence is dedicated to persistently sharing widely disproven and broadly shared harmful misinformation topics,” the policy reads. The cover lies about COVID-19 vaccines and election fraud, as well as conspiracy theories related to dangerous medical treatments. The policy also means that those who peddle “misinformation promoted by conspiracy networks tied to violence and/or promoting violence” or share falsehoods that could put public safety at risk during emergencies risk being booted off of the platform. Twitch says it works with independent misinformation experts like the Global Disinformation Index, along with election boards and congressional certification to assess civic misinformation claims, such as election fraud and ballot tampering. The platform also noted to that the policy applies to Russian state-run media channels that are spreading lies, though it has only spotted one of those to date. Other platforms — such as , , , and — have banned, labeled or limited the spread of content from Russian state media outlets over the last week amid the country’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s notable that the policy covers actions carried out by creators outside of their Twitch streams. If you learn about a streamer who may be violating the away from Twitch, you can them . Last year, the service said it would for serious misconduct that took place offline or on other platforms. Engadget has contacted Twitch for comment. |
Netflix’s interactive ‘Trivia Quest’ will be far less creepy than ‘Bandersnatch’ | Amanda Silberling | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | Netflix is doubling down on interactive content today as it announces “Trivia Quest,” an animated quiz series that will debut on April 1. Daniel Calin and Vin Rubino of Sunday Sauce Productions developed a series of episodes that will come out every day in April, quizzing viewers with 24 questions per day. It’s no coincidence that Netflix is creating a daily trivia game in a time when we’re still every morning, or when absolute icon broke records and made “Jeopardy!” destination television. So, Netflix licensed the game “Trivia Crack” from etermax to develop “Trivia Quest.” A daily trivia show could be poised to go viral, if only people care enough to play every day. The trailer makes “Trivia Quest” look relatively juvenile, but the game will have both “standard” and “hard” questions — and we have to admit, we didn’t know the answer to the “Avatar” question in the trailer. There’s also a question about the Nintendo Wii in the trailer, and honestly, what child knows what a Wii is? “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” was a breakthrough moment for interactive content on Netflix, but it’s been almost four years since its release. As Netflix in gaming — another form of interactive content — it seems that the company’s interests are shifting back to developing another interactive success. The creators of “Black Mirror” released the cartoon “Cat Burglar” on Netflix just last week. By navigating through trivia questions, the viewer helps Rowdy Cat sneak past Peanut the Security Pup (incredible names here) to steal a painting. Despite the major success of original shows like “Squid Game” and “Inventing Anna,” Netflix isn’t doing so hot. In 2021, the company had its of subscriber growth since 2015, and after delivering modest projections to investors, its stock plummeted. This is in part because competitors like Disney (which owns Disney+, Hulu and ESPN) and HBO Max are to grow, threatening Netflix’s long-term leadership. So, gaming and interactive content are a big part of Netflix’s future strategy. “We are open to licensing, accessing large game IP that people will recognize,” said Netflix COO Greg Peters as the company unveiled its results last quarter. “I think you will see some of that happen over the year to come.” Netflix also recently acquired the gaming studio and has developed games based on its own IP. Then, just yesterday, the company Next Games, the publisher of “Stranger Things” and “Walking Dead” games, for $72 million. Depending on how “Cat Burglar” and “Trivia Quest” fare, we may see even more interactive content in the months to come. |
Russia halts rocket engine sales to US, suggests flying to space on ‘their broomsticks’ | Devin Coldewey | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | As part of the escalating tensions between Russia and the U.S. (to say nothing of the rest of the world), Roscosmos has that the country will cease all shipments of rocket engines to the States. As the agency’s head Dmitry Rogozin on a state news broadcast: “Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what.” Fortunately, we can do better than broomsticks. The two affected Russian engines are reliable and powerful, having formed the main thrust for ULA Atlas V launches for 20 years, as well as Antares rockets. But as you may have observed over the last few years, Atlas and Antares launches — especially using engines from the ’90s — are very much the minority when it comes to launch volume and capability. Being part of an industry with long timelines means being prepared for situations like this well in advance, and the U.S. has been working on reducing its reliance on Russian hardware for quite a while now. Specifically, ULA tapped Blue Origin to develop a replacement for the Russian RD-180 engines back in 2018, for the next-generation Vulcan launch vehicle. These BE-4 engines aren’t quite ready to go (the space tourism flights BO has demonstrated have a very different launch profile), but ULA head Tory Bruno that they’re getting there, and anyway they have enough RD-180s to get through the transition (I’ve asked the organization for comment and will update if I hear back). Northrop Grumman may be more affected, since they had Cygnus flights planned for the next few years that would have used RD-181s, also now embargoed. More relevant than the preparedness of the U.S. legacy launch providers, however, is the proliferation of new ones. Everyone knows SpaceX, of course, and Rocket Lab is fast becoming another household name (if your household is located adjacent to the orbital service industry), but this year will likely also see the first flight of Relativity’s Terran 1 3D-printed rocket, while upstarts like Astra are trying to cut costs to a minimum with fast, frequent and simple launches. Furthermore, the government here has fast become more comfortable with the use of these newer commercial launch providers for high-profile and sensitive missions. The time when the NRO or Pentagon wouldn’t or couldn’t put its latest spysat in orbit via a private entity is quickly coming to an end. And just broadly speaking, the world of launch has moved beyond the era in which RD-180s were a sustainable option even if we weren’t flirting with a new Cold War with Russia. It would be an overstatement to say it’s a buggy maker refusing to sell to Ford, but there’s certainly a sense that the market was already foreclosing on last-gen Russian space tech, from launch vehicles to capsules to pads and infrastructure. The enormous investment of private and government money in a new generation of U.S.-designed and U.S.-launched rocketry and vehicles was a practical decision on a lot of levels, even supposing the political climate did not worsen. The fruits of that investment are now becoming clear and it may very well be that, a decade hence, Russia may be looking for rides on American broomsticks. |
Putting the autonomous cart before the robotic horse | Brian Heater | 2,022 | 3 | 3 | fresh off hosting with Jonathan Hurst of Agility Robotics and Bruce Leak of Playground Global. I’ll be posting more about the session later this week, but in the meantime, it’s got me thinking about carts, horses and the inherent ordering system therein. Specifically, how important is it that a robotics startup have a specific notion about things like addressable market when starting out? It’s a complex question with no single answer and one that’s largely dependent on the startup and the investors. Agility showed off its Series A/seed (it’s complicated) pitch deck this week, which was more a highlight of the company’s technology than a sophisticated breakdown of market fit. If your technology is compelling enough — and you find the right firm — you might be able to get away with this. Of course, in addition to some really cool YouTube videos (which did, indeed, play a role in getting on Playground’s radar), the startup also proved that it was able to create, build and sell robots on a limited budget and headcount. All told, the company sold around a dozen Cassie robots, which largely went out to research facilities. Ford/Agility Robotics Nice work if you can get it. There’s a reason some larger corporations continue to target research facilities, even if it’s sometimes a bit of a loss leader. Imagine training a future generation of roboticists on your specific platform. Talk about ivy league grass roots growth. And hey, the ones that develop really clever applications could well find a way onto your payroll in the future. That said, the seeds of future growth were in the pitch deck as well. In addition to current applications like warehouse fulfillment, the pitch does highlight Digit’s potential as a developer platform. This is clearly the direction things have been going for a while beyond the world of single-purpose robotics. Anyway, good talk. More information on that will be hitting TC in the next couple of days. This week’s a bit of a slow one, in terms of big robotics headlines, though we’ve got some funding rounds to discuss. First up is the world of last-mile delivery robotics, which apparently is an excuse to print money these days. I’ve seen a lot of verticals make out like fundraising bandits during the pandemic, but I’m having trouble remembering the last time a week went by without a big delivery round. Lots of hungry VCs out there sitting around their deserted offices, wondering where their food is, I guess. Starship Technologies This week, . A $42 million Series B puts the company north of $100 billion all told. NordicNinja and Taavet+Sten led and TDK Ventures and Goodyear (yes, that TDK and that Goodyear) returned for the round. Fun nugget from Ingrid’s write up that I’m just going to go ahead and quote straight up for you: “There is so much more to be done. We are still in grand scheme of things just getting started,” Ahti Heinla, the CTO who co-founded Starship with Janus Friis (the Skype co-founder, where Heinla was a key early developer), said in an interview. On the form factor, he confirmed that one idea that the company is working on in its R&D labs is a robot that will travel not just on the sidewalk, as the current model does, but also the road, which will also bring it into the realm of working on “bigger robots.” “I wouldn’t be surprised if we do something like that in the future, although the sidewalk strategy is still a good choice for the majority of deliveries out there.” For now, though, a small cart with a bunch of wheels is really the path of least resistance — unless you’re Agility, I suppose. Drone delivery, on the other hand, feels so hit or miss these days. There are broader (and important) questions around how much we really want or need a sky full of drones. Amazon drones, Google drones, UPS and Fedex drones all whirring above our heads, getting our lattes to us while they’re still reasonably warm. I’ve long noted that they make sense for more rural areas (battery and range depending). Certainly getting someone in some remote and hard to reach location their medicine is the sort of application we can all rally behind. But Alphabet’s Project Wing has long had urban regions on its list, including the Australian capital. This week, the company reached That comes six months after the firm hit the 100,000 milestone, 30,000 of which happened in Australia in the first months of 2022. Wing The news finds Wing partnering with major Australian supermarket chain Coles in Canberra. It will join KFC, Vietnamese restaurant chain Roll’d and Friendly Grocer, which is providing rapid COVID tests through this service. Says Wing: Integrating drone delivery into daily life isn’t just an added convenience. It holds the promise to reduce traffic congestion, accidents, and greenhouse gas emissions while growing sales for businesses all the while giving people more time back in their busy lives. If you want a peek into that future, just look to Australia. With both drones and infrastructure top of mind, a crack-detection system for bridges and other infrastructure, created in a joint development with Tokyo-based construction firm Shimizu Corp. The pair have created a prototype drone designed to seek out problem areas before they, well, become much larger problems. CMU “The automated technology we developed for the Shimizu project is designed to prevent this type of collapse via comprehensive mapping, crack detection and structural analysis that would be too much work if it were done by hand,” says CMU associate research professor Sebastian Scherer. “Today, typically you only do spot checks on critical parts, since an exhaustive survey and analysis would be too slow. Automated defect-detection technology would enable inspectors to check bridges more frequently and perhaps identify problems before failures occur.” File this under: You knew this was going to be an issue. reported on a letter from a trio U.S. Congressional Democrats asking for a meeting with U.S. Customs and Border Protection about those Ghost Robotics dogs currently being piloted on the border. Among the notes is an issue with the phrase “robotic dogs,” which I just used in the previous sentence. Ghost Robotics “It downplays the threat the robots pose to migrants arriving at our southern border and the part they play in a long history of surveillance and privacy violations in our border communities,” the letter reads, in part. All right, more next week! In the meantime, please . Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch |
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