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Google Makes Quickoffice For iOS And Android Free For Everyone
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Frederic Lardinois
| 2,013
| 9
| 19
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It’s been more than a year since , a mobile app for editing Microsoft Office files on tablets. Over the last few months, it has slowly expanded the tool’s availability by making free for Google Apps for Business customers. Everybody else still had to pay for the apps. Today, however, it is changing this policy and is making Quickoffice for and . As Google bemoans in its announcement, while converting documents to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides is easy, “sometimes the people you work with haven’t yet.” Using to work on Office files is a reasonable compromise, the company seems to imply, especially given that the documents are saved on Google Drive. Current Quickoffice for Google Apps for Business users can update their app to the new version and get a number of new features in the process. The app can now, for example, create .ZIP folders and allows you to view charts in Excel and PowerPoint. It also, Google stressed, works across devices, “so you don’t have to worry about installing separate versions anymore when you go from using your phone to editing on your tablet.” To sweeten the deal, Google is giving anybody who signs in to the new Quickoffice app for Android or iOS before September 26 10GB of extra Google Drive storage for the next two years. Earlier this year, Google also said it was bringing , using its Native Client technology. So far, however, we haven’t heard much about the web version. With the mobile app freely available to all now, however, chances are the launch of the web app isn’t that far off either.
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Kamcord Brings In-Game Screen Recording Tools To Android
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Chris Velazco
| 2,013
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Just about every time I’ve spoken to founder Matt Zitzmann in the year since the company launched, I’ve asked one question toward the end of our conversations to gauge the team’s progress: “Have you guys figured out Android support yet?” Every time the answer has been “no.” The ability to record gameplay videos on a mobile device without causing performance to nosedive has been a tricky proposition for Kamcord, and getting it to work as well as it does on iOS took months of polish. However, when I spoke to Zitzmann this time, the answer was “yes”; the team just opened up its beta SDK for Android developers to start tinkering around with. The path to Android has been a long and bumpy one (Zitzmann says it was about six months of non-stop work) due mostly to the lack of resources. Kamcord’s founding team consisted only of three people, though the ranks were eventually fleshed out with (among others) an ex-Googler who helped the team “get on the map” as it worked to bring Android support to fruition. As it happens, the task Kamcord needed to complete even required a bit of cooperation from Google itself. “We’ve had conversations with Google,” Zitzmann said, adding that the team shared what they were able to do on iOS and received access to APIs that helped them capture the on-screen action without affecting performance. Kamcord is riding a wave of early interest from Android developers, but Zitzmann is even more bullish on the company’s future now that they’ve finally broached the Android frontier. As far as he’s concerned, Android support will be a crucial cornerstone of the company’s push into Asia considering the prevalence of Android hardware and the in China, Japan and Korea. What’s more, support for Android means that Kamcord has access to devices that could theoretically help it achieve its goal of becoming a destination for gaming video content rather than just a facilitator for it.
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Branding Brand Rides M-Commerce Wave To $9.5 Million Series B
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013
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You may not be familiar with the m-commerce vendor known as , but you’ve likely encountered its work. The company, which is today announcing a $9.5 million Series B, powers the mobile e-commerce and for more than 200 of the top retailers worldwide, including American Eagle Outfitters, Costco, Ralph Lauren, Sephora, Calvin Klein, Crate & Barrel, Nasty Gal, Kate Spade, Bath & BodyWorks, Brookstone, The Children’s Place, Steve Madden, Timberland, Tommy Hilfiger, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and dozens of others. The new funding round was led by existing investor , and includes repeat investment from and . It also includes participation from new investor . This brings Branding Brand’s total funding to date to $17 million. The Pittsburgh-based company was founded in 2008 by three friends from Carnegie Mellon University, Joey Rahimi, Christopher Mason, and Christina Koshzow. In 2009, they launched their first product with the debut of a mobile platform that allowed brands to reach consumers on mobile devices and in-store. Since then, Branding Brand has seen 100 percent year-over-year growth, has been named to the Inc. 500 for its three-year growth of 1,302 percent, and is now the top mobile platform provider to the Internet Retailer , with four times as many clients as the No. 2 vendor. Today, the company sees nearly $1 billion in transactions running through its platform, up from $60 million in 2011. To bring retailers into the mobile age, Branding Brand uses proprietary technology to transform a business’s existing desktop site into a mobile-optimized experience designed for smartphones, tablets or other in-store platforms, like kiosks. Some transcoding takes place within 80 percent of the sites Branding Brand creates, though it uses retailer APIs, when available. But, says CEO Chris Mason, the process isn’t just about turning a desktop site into a mobile one. “We’re often also including things that have nothing to do with their existing desktop site,” he says. For instance, one app they created lets users invite Facebook friends to a registry list. Mobile apps may have different shopping flows to consider, or they take advantage of technology that desktop sites don’t use, like smartphone sensors, NFC or low energy Bluetooth, he says. The company touts that its mobile websites are faster than others, and they have patented the process that translates the site’s data into Branding Brand’s own APIs, which in turn lets them output the site into native experiences that can be managed in one dashboard. “If you’re a large retailer and you want to run a promotion, you want it to be seamlessly on your desktop, in your apps, and on your [mobile] site,” explains Mason. “Believe it or not, there’s no provider out there that makes that simple. So we make that simple for the retailer.” Branding Brand has benefitted greatly from the rapid rise of mobile, which has so quickly been adopted by consumers that retailers are still failing to keep pace. By mid-2011, only 48 of online retailers had launched a mobile-optimized website, . There was a decided out there, and even well over a year after the iPad’s release, the majority of retailers had . And Mason notes that even today, 40 percent of the top 500 retailers don’t have a mobile website. Things are changing, though. Over half of retailers now that mobile and online shopping are one of the biggest trends affecting their businesses, and according to a study this month by SAP, 68 percent are looking to mobile, online and social interactions to drive sales, 58 percent are building mobile-ready sites, and 49 percent are developing apps. This leaves room for Branding Brand to grow. Branding Brand helps on the conversion side of things, too, using in-house analytics that monitor deployments across its platform. It’s able to determine what works to increase conversions that come with having such a wide footprint across online retail. The company is now working with 10 of the leading mobile shopping aggregators on the market, as consumers turn to new ways to shop on mobile. It also licenses its APIs for retailers that want to build apps themselves in-house. Since the time of its last fall, Branding Brand has again seen 100 percent year-over-year growth, co-founder Koshzow also tells us, as well as a more than 100 percent increase in valuation. Now she says that Branding Brand is working to expand beyond online retail, having recently entered into the transportation and hospitality spaces with new clients like Hilton Honors and San Francisco BART. Mason adds that developments with San Diego, Chicago, and D.C. area transit operations are in the works. The additional funding will help with these expansions, as well as allow Branding Brand to better work with existing clients on mobile and in-store products, too. With eBay on board in the new round, the two companies are partnering for knowledge-sharing purposes and to further cement their already close ties. “This round represents a way to tap into their resources, and their knowledge of innovation in this space better. And on their side, they have all these major retailers…for the last few years, they’ve been focusing on servicing enterprise [via ] and working with major retailers. And all we know is major retailers,” says Mason. So does the eBay deal hint at a possible acquisition further down the road? Mason says not yet. Today, it’s about proving Branding Brand can grow to the next level, and that will remain the focus for the next year or two.
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Josh Constine
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Why Zuckerberg Thinks Government Should Not “Move Fast And Break Things”
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Gregory Ferenstein
| 2,013
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Silicon Valley has dramatically altered many aspects of our lives, but Congress still operates in the same way its horse-riding forefathers did. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is not only optimistic about Congress, but thinks its general operating principles are A-OK. “The cynical view is that everything is broken and sucks,” he told The Atlantic’s James Bennet at the magazine’s Newseum event yesterday in Washington, D.C. “My view is that the system is set up to avoid making catastrophic mistakes, and right now the country is really divided, and therefore few things should get done, except for the things that people really agree on.” Like many in Silicon Valley, Zuckerberg is famous for running his multi-billion-dollar company at the edge of chaos with the philosophy “move fast and break things.” Employees are encouraged to ask forgiveness, not permission. Prototypes are quickly launched, piloted, improved, and then launched again. The lumbering giant of the U.S. bureaucracy is the exact opposite in almost every imaginable way: exceptions require painstaking approvals, contract bids are legally required to be inclusive of all parties, and Congress members get one shot every few years to fix a problem. Seen from Zuckerberg’s glass-half-full perspective, if the United States hasn’t deteriorated into a Mad Max hellscape, the government is doing its job. Despite his cautious optimism, Silicon Valley folks have been trying to bring the principles of Silicon Valley innovation to D.C., but the realities of representative democracy have blunted their success. Last year, Facebook held a “ ” with engineers and members of Congress to think about novel ways of keeping citizens informed. Unlike most hackathons, however, it was illegal for Congress to adopt any of the ideas, since the law views free products to government as indentured servitude. President Obama attempted to apply a prize model to education reform with “Race to the Top,” which doles out federal money to states that find the most innovative ways to improve academic outcomes. Unlike a competition for launching an inexpensive rocket into space, there is to the education goals, like teacher evaluations or funding for union-less charter experiments. Frustrated by internal opposition to change, the president’s former Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel told me that was to hire people from Silicon Valley to replace the old guard. VanRoekel and his enthusiastic compatriot Chief Technology Officer Todd Park have been successful in data on health, education and safety. However, some of their aspirations, such as developing a secure foreign-aid transfer system, are yet to be completed. The principles of representative democracy and Silicon Valley are not always a happy couple. Facebook can risk more, because even if the entire company fails, its users won’t end up resorting to cannibalism in a post-nuclear apocalyptic dystopia. Neither does Facebook have to be overly inclusive in every product contract, for fear of perpetuating the cabal of established powers. At TechCrunch, we’re experimenting with and helping the city of San Francisco think through . It is our hope that we can bring a little bit of innovation to the democratic process.
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California Regulator Passes First Ridesharing Rules, A Big Win For Lyft, SideCar, And Uber
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Anthony Ha
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The California Public Utilities Commission has unanimously approved new regulations around ridesharing services such as Lyft, SideCar and UberX (as initially noted in a number of on ). The CPUC proposed the rules back in July, offering a legal framework for ridesharing services to operate throughout the state. As we reported then, , as well as ensuring that drivers have had background checks and are covered by insurance in the case of an accident. According to , the new regulations establish a new category of business called a Transportation Network Company, and it requires those companies to obtain a license from CPUC, conduct criminal background checks, establish a driver training program, and hold a commercial insurance policy with a minimum of $1 million per-incident coverage. Lyft co-founder and President John Zimmer told me that California is the first state to establish such rules. While the company already operates in San Francisco (where it’s headquartered), Los Angeles, and San Diego, Zimmer said the decision “provides clarity to our communities here in markets that already exist” while also setting the stage for launching in more cities. He also said that, when he talks to regulators in other cities and states, they’re usually looking to see how things shake out in California, and now the state has shown there’s “a way to do this that doesn’t compromise on safety, innovation, or choice for consumers.” As for how the regulations that were passed today compare to what was initially proposed, Zimmer said some of the language has changed, but the substance is similar. A CPUC spokesperson said the main revision since July is strengthening some of the provisions around insurance. “Our decision emphasizes safety as a primary objective, while fostering the development of this nascent industry,” said Commissioner Mark J. Ferron in the press release. “We have specified our expectations for the attributes of insurance. Now the insurance market will determine the best approach to ensure that there is coverage for passengers, drivers, and third parties at all times while these vehicles are operating on a commercial basis.” The full decision is embedded below. A spokesperson from the San Francisco Cab Drivers Association sent me the following statement: The San Francisco Cab Drivers Association finds it disturbing that the CPUC is seeking to create a new class of for-hire transportation service which would not have the oversight of local regulatory bodies while unfairly competing with existing locally regulated taxi services. This measure essentially deregulates California’s taxi industry for numerous reasons. The CPUC has only five safety enforcement investigators for the third largest and most populous state in the U.S., clearly not enough to enforce the new rules they are proposing. In California, taxicabs are an on-call and on-demand service as defined by California government codes. Any additional class of transportation provider, which offers the same on-call/on-demand passenger transportation service without the same regulatory standards, renders existing regulations meaningless. Without proper local regulatory oversight this can only lead to abuse by TNC drivers, companies and the opportunistic element leading to the decreased quality of passenger service for the disabled, elderly and disenfranchised who rely on taxis for transportation. This decision does not consider the wider environmental, economic and road safety impacts for all Californians. The addition of thousands of for-hire vehicles to the city of San Francisco alone has already increased congestion and pollution, contrary to the claims of TNCs and their supporters. We vow to continue fighting for the rights of all Californians regarding equal access to safe, clean, efficient and fairly priced on-demand transportation. by
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Fly Or Die: LEGO Mindstorms EV3
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Jordan Crook
| 2,013
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| 19
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. Even the name is formidable, but just wait until you connect the dots and fire up these dragon-esque robots. The EV3 set of robotic, programmable LEGOs is the very best version of this 14-year-old product line we’ve ever seen. The most notable edition is that users can program directly from the smart brick, the computational component included in each robot that gives the simple “If/Then” commands. In the past, users had to program from their computers and then sync with the brick. The Mindstorms EV3, the aptly named third generation model, also offers awesome build-guide apps for iOS and Android that give 3D models for each of the LEGO configuration, helping you get the robot built so you can get down to programming. For the first time, the EV3 kit also includes an infrared sensor, which lets your robots see and detect various objects and colors. And as per usual, the system runs on Linux-based firmware and is equipped with USB and SD ports. The price point is slightly high for kids, at $349.99. However, unlike video games that rot the mind, the EV3 is teaching basic skills that could turn your little guy into the next Steve Wozniak. On the other hand, hobbyists and adults looking to learn a little bit about programming might find the EV3 kit to be a solid investment. If you want to see the Mindstorms EV3 in action, check out this video below .
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Apple Adjusts ‘App Resurrection’ Policy, Will Allow Developers To Restrict Versions Offered
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Matthew Panzarino
| 2,013
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Earlier this week, we of apps to users was good for the downloader, but not so great for the developer. Today, Apple has adjusted its policy and will allow developers to choose not to offer old versions. Apple made the announcement on its (emphasis ours): Previous versions of your apps are now available for re‑download by users who have already purchased them, allowing customers to use your apps with older devices which may no longer be supported by the current version of your app. The “app resurrection” feature is a seamless option that Apple enabled on its App Store this week that allowed users to automatically download editions of apps that work on older iOS versions. This way, if a developer began only supporting iOS 7, a user on iOS 6 could grab the “last known good” version of the app that ran on their device. This was a nice addition that should serve users of old iPhones and iPods well. However, in , we described the issues that could pop up because the feature was opaque to developers: To give you a brief example, any old version of Your Favorite Twitter Client that hasn’t been updated to work with the new v1.1 API will be very buggy or broken completely if you try to download it on an old version of iOS. Sources in the developer community have confirmed to us that there is no option available in Apple’s iTunes Connect dashboard that allows a developer to see which version of their apps are being served to which iOS versions. That opacity alone has the potential to confuse customer support issues, as old versions of the app may very well contain bugs or issues that have gone un-addressed as developers move on to the latest versions of iOS. But there is also no way for developers to re-upload old versions of the apps with those issues fixed. Simply put, a user on an old version of iOS could download an app with issues that are impossible for a developer to ever fix. You can see the nightmare scenario that is cropping up in many developer’s minds here. Now, it seems that Apple has either listened to the developers that have been worried about the feature, or revealed more support options around it. At the time of our original report, we had heard that there were no provisions in place or planned to allow developers any control. So this is welcome news. There could also have been some legal ramifications here if developers had made changes to old versions due to litigation. If those old versions went back out, they or Apple could be held liable. The ability to restrict the versions of the apps that are available to download automatically via this feature is definitely a great addition. The one other possibility we had mentioned would be to allow developers to “fix” the bugs and issues that could make those old versions work well again and re-upload them. That does not appear to be a part of this adjustment from Apple. This should go a long way toward alleviating fears from developers that old, broken versions of their apps would get downloaded, opening the door for unhappy users to leave bad reviews based on those old apps. H/t . Image Credit: /Flickr CC
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Pin-Digital, The NSFW Startup Behind (Ahem) PinSex And PinGay, Raises $800K
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Anthony Ha
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Pin-Digital, a Barcelona-based startup that created and , says that it has raised $800,000 in funding. The names are pretty self-explanatory — they’re both Pinterest-style sites where users can save, share, and browse adult content. It turns out that there are several Pinterest-inspired for porn sites, including and . Pin-Digital founder and CEO Christian Thorn suggested that until now, there hasn’t been “real social media for adult content”. The Pinterest model is one that makes sense for this kind of content, he added, because it’s “very visual” while also having an aspect of social following. As for what will set Thorn’s sites apart, he said he’s hoping to turn them into the place where porn stars can connect with their fans, and he has already signed one model, Vanilla DeVille. He added that the funding includes his own money, along with undisclosed angel investors. He admitted that he has faced “resistance” from traditional investors, but he said the company is exploring other models, such as trading media (i.e., promotional ad space) for equity. “I see it as any other business, but I definitely think there are many taboos to break,” Thorn said. By the way, I checked out both the PinSex and PinGay sites, and I did it from the office. (Why? Something something research.) So if this turns out to be the last thing I write for TechCrunch, .
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Facebook Starts Up Its Mobile Ad Network Again, Focuses On Improved Targeting
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Catherine Shu
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After a nine-month pause, is taking its mobile ad network out for another spin. “We’re running a second test to show Facebook ads off Facebook in mobile ads and on mobile sites. Our goal is to improve the relevancy of the ads people see. Since this is a test, we don’t have additional details to share,” a Facebook representative told TechCrunch. Facebook first launched its mobile ad network , but . The company told us at the time that the initial run was a test to see how the network would perform and whether or not people would find the ads relevant. Josh Constine, our Facebook expert, explains that one reason for the pause may have been low margins. Facebook needed to channel its energy into clear money makers like its and . Now that those two programs are up and running, the company can once again focus on fine-tuning its offsite ad network. One way to grow margins and increase the cut Facebook gets from providing the data needed to target ads may be to buy an existing medium-sized mobile ad network. In the first itiration of Facebook’s mobile ad network, the company acted as an ad-exchange layer on top of traditional ad exchanges like or that bid for placement on mobile advertising publishers such as or . The program allowed advertisers to pay to target you with ads that are based on your Facebook data and appear when you browse other apps or mobile sites. Facebook first experimented with by running Sponsored Stories on Zynga.com in a revenue split partnership. Facebook has moved very cautiously with the deployment of its offsite ad network despite its massive network of like buttons and widgets. A mobile ad network is one way for Facebook to leverage the vast amount of personal data it has access to without altering the user experience of its Web site and native apps. Though its non-social, in-feed ad unit, which lets mobile developers pay to show download links to their apps on Facebook for iOS or Android, has proven profitable, .
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Singapore App Maker MyHero Raises $10M Series A For Its Stock Market Trading Gamification App, TradeHero
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Natasha Lomas
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An app that lets people play the stock market without the risk of losing any real money has turned its virtual cash game into a pile of actual Benjamins, by closing out a $10 million funding round — one of the largest Series A rounds for a consumer startup in the region, it claims. The app in question, , is made by a Singapore-based developer MyHero. Investors in the round are (KPCB China) and . TradeHero users start out with $100,000 in virtual cash to spend, choosing which and how much stock to ‘buy’ — there are no live trades going on here, it’s a simulation — and getting to see whether their trading decisions would have panned out IRL because the app follows actual market movements. Dinesh Bhatia, CEO and Founder of MyHero Ltd, the holding company for the , describes it a “financial literacy tool” that uses gamification to engage users and help them learn how to improve their trading. It’s part ‘fantasy football’ style game, part trading learning tool, part stock market tip resource — the latter aspect because TradeHero’s most successful traders become part of a leaderboard that other users can pay to follow so they get the inside track on their (successful) trading decisions (leaderboard members also share in these winnings — giving them an incentive to keep virtually trading on TradeHero’s platform). Has TradeHero made Bhatia a better trader? I ask because he got the idea for the app after losing “a lot of money on the stock market” by betting on Palm’s webOS rebirth. … “It has,” he says. “If you followed me [on TradeHero] I’m up 50% from January this year when the app launched. The market has been good this year, but still that’s pretty good. But I’m nowhere near the top [of the TradeHero leaderboard].” Ergo, there’s still lots to learn. Other aspects of TradeHero’s business model include in-app purchase options, to monetise engaged users — by offering them things like the ability to buy more virtual cash so they can increase their liquidity, or the ability to reset their portfolio entirely so they start again afresh. TradeHero also has a b2bc revenue stream via tie-ins with financial companies wanting to reach an engaged community of users — provided whatever they’re trying to get access is relevant to its audience, says Bhatia. “Most of our [learn how to play the stock market] rivals do live trading [such as the eToro social network]. We are more about monetising off the information brokerage. In a way we’re focusing on the research — we can call it micro-research — which is user-generated… rather than focusing on the trading. These are tips that you can then use, once you subscribe to TradeHero to actually bridge the gap to live trading, and hopefully make better decisions,” he adds. So now it’s landed a $10 million Series A, what does MyHero intend to do with the money? Bhatia says it plans to spend the funding on a big marketing push for TradeHero over the next 18 to 24 months. The app launched seven months ago, and has since built up a user base of around 280,000 — three-quarters of whom he says are active on a bi-monthly basis, emphasising that those figures have been achieved working with relatively limited resources. TradeHero was actually incubated out of , taking in a seed round of around $500,000-$600,000 about a year ago, with backing from Singapore’s National Research Foundation. Landing such large follow-on funding will allow it to ramp up its marketing efforts on several fronts, he says, including targeting user-acquisition effects at markets such as the U.S. and Europe which it hasn’t really had the “firepower” to focus on to-date. It’s also planning to translate the app into more languages to help grow its reach further. Markets where TradeHero has been getting traction to-date include Asia and South America, with Bhatia specifically singling out Thailand, Singapore, India, Mexico, Vietnam and also the U.S. as places where it’s garnered a following. “TradeHero is available in more than 200 countries. We’ve been number one in the finance category on the iOS App Store in 75 countries. And top 10 in about 100 countries right now,” he adds. Part of the new funding will go on ramping up the startup’s headcount, to support its marketing efforts and market growth push. In the latter area, China will be a key focus over the next three to six months. “We’ve got our sights on China. China has a lot of online accounts, brokerage accounts. The interest is potentially very, very high in something like this,” he says. “We have tried and tested in markets like Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan where the mindset is very similar. China is a very, very big market for us.” The Series A round is actually double the amount TradeHero has previously it was aiming to raise this year. Expect the extra money to go towards a new, presumably complementary app — although Bhatia won’t comment specify on what it’s working on yet. But fuelled by at least some of that $10 million — and the addition of an Android app to expand TradeHero’s mobile platform reach — this time year he says he’s hoping the app will have amassed a user-base that’s “in the couple of millions”. “We’ve done close to 300,000 users now with seven staff, with a very limited budget, with just iOS. I’m very confident that we can hopefully be in the two to four million user range,” he adds.
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After Kickstarter Success, Ministry of Supply Lands $1.1M To Expand Its Tech-Savvy Men’s Line
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Rip Empson
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Founded by a couple of MIT grads in 2010, set out on a mission to breathe a little fresh air into the starchy world of business attire. Using some of the same technology found in NASA’s space suits, the Boston-based startup developed a line of more “technologically-savvy,” adaptive dress shirts that help control perspiration, reduce odor and wrinkling but don’t make you look like a goon. Knowing they’d need capital to scale, Ministry of Supply went to venture capitalists, but were rebuffed by investors that wanted to see more proof of concept. So they went to Kickstarter instead, . The team has since gone back to Kickstarter, raising another $200K for their new, hi-tech sock line. But today, having proven the concept and demand, Ministry of Supply is coming full circle on the financing front, announcing that it has raised an additional $1.1 million in seed financing from a handful of venture capitalists and angels. The round was led by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s Vegas Tech Fund, with participation from SK Ventures and angels like Boston Red Sox pitcher Craig Breslow and Kevin Henrikson. Of course, few campaigns are lucky enough to raise a collective $600K and have two of the most successful campaigns in a particular category, so why is Ministry of Supply raising the additional money? As one might expect, it’s because the team of eight want to turn this into a real business, a viable men’s eCommerce and fashion brand and secure those retail partnerships that can help take the company to the next level. Ministry of Supply co-founder Gihan Amarasiriwardena tells us that the company wants to build a new category of men’s clothing — products that, like workout gear, are actually functional and comfortable but can be worn in the boardroom. In other words, combine Under Armour with a tech-savvier Brooks Brothers. To get the ball moving in that direction, the startup hired eCommerce and UX design veteran, Brian Kalma, an early Zappos employee and former UX Director at both Zappos, Gilt Groupe and Gemvara. Kalma is helping the startup to define Ministry of Supply’s brand as one that has a foot in eCommerce as well as the brick-and-mortar world. The startups has a showroom in Boston and has done a few pop-up shops on the East Coast, with others in the works. In turn, it’s also started to develop partnerships with eCommerce brands to increase its distribution in reach, including an upcoming deal with Birchbox that will put its “Atmos” baselayer shirts in the company’s subscription boxes for men. The company now has four main lines, including its original , a line of performance , and core performance t-shirts, but is in the process of expanding with new products, like its Atlas sock brand, which isn’t available yet but is coming soon. As to what makes its socks, for example, different than your run-of-the-mill, average dress sock? Amarasiriwardena tells us that the socks’ fabrics are “infused with coffee beans” to help control odor and features “robotically knit, pressure-mapped” design to ensure fit. A lot of it sounds more like branding and PR than reality, and the company has to be careful to be transparent about how it’s measuring results. It’s one thing to promise a space-aged dress shirt that works the same on the field as it does in the boardroom, performance-wise, and another to deliver that. Though I can say from my test-driving the company’s Atlas socks for a few months, they work as advertised so far, but how much further can it go in delivering performance than your average Walmart socks? That remains to be seen. But as long as they don’t retail for $50, I can see there being a big market for these, take it from me, Stink Foot. Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to Tony Hsieh as the former CEO of Zappos.
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Shutting Down The US Government Likely Won’t Slow The NSA’s Surveillance Activities
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Alex Wilhelm
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According to an unnamed government official , shutting down the U.S. government wouldn’t lead to the National Security Agency (NSA) halting its controversial, and broad surveillance efforts. The United States may shut down in short order, due to political intransigence between the two chambers of Congress. Republicans want to defund the Affordable Care Act, while Senate Democrats and the president do not. It isn’t clear if there is a path forward that avoids a shutdown. Following that deadline, the United States must raise its debt ceiling to continue operations without defaulting. If you aren’t watching the politics, it’s time to catch up. However, even if we shutter huge tracts of the federal enterprise, the NSA’s wheels will continue to churn along. Various federal agencies are openly discussing how they will operate if the government does shut down. The NSA, an infamously reticent organization, likely won’t make public comments. However, well-placed tips lead to public understanding without the need to release specifics. Leaked documents by Edward Snowden the financial cost of the NSA and other intelligence efforts. The CIA is the most expensive chunk of the U.S. “black budget,” costing $14.7 billion. The NSA costs $10.8 billion, by contrast. Prices decline from there, for a total of $52.6 billion each year. It is not likely that the programs listed above will be subject to budget cuts. In fact, their budgets have grown quickly in the last decade. Let’s be frank: If a full government shutdown won’t slow the NSA, not much else can. Something to think about.
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House Republicans Want To Kill Net Neutrality As Part Of Their Debt Ceiling Bill
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Alex Wilhelm
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Not sure what to make of this episode, but it matters and so here we are: A draft of provisions that Republican leaders in the House are attempting to demand in return for allowing the debt ceiling to be raised includes the elimination of net neutrality. The language of the legislative outline that the calls for the “blocking” of net neutrality. Net neutrality, if you didn’t know, is the set of rules forcing ISPs treat traffic on their networks equally, not speeding or slowing any one piece of content more than any other. This matters as many companies that provide Internet access are also part of larger conglomerates that produce media. Those companies have an inherent incentive to speed their content and slow that of their rivals. Also, net neutrality protects companies that provide content, such as Netflix, from being unfairly charged by ISPs for the dissemination of their wares. There is much , mostly centered around a long-running lawsuit between Verizon and the government. I’ll be plain: You want net neutrality if you want the Internet to run much as it has these past few decades. Tying net neutrality to the debt ceiling, however, is bonkers. The two have no relation. Instead, it appears that House Republicans are tacking porkish requests to their coming compromise to raise the debt ceiling to appease their own members, and thus not abrogate the Hastert Rule while also not causing a Federal default. The most asinine part of this episode is that we are discussing fiscal politics in relation to a technology regulatory issue. Josh Barro of Business Insider of the inclusion, stating that Republicans have “finally admitted that the fight over the debt ceiling as nothing to do with debt.” In some bizarro scenario we could, at least in some wild-eyed House member’s visions of Things That We Shouldn’t Do, ax one of the most important pieces of technology regulation in place, simply to buy off part of one party in the lower chamber of Congress so that we can pay our national bills. This is precisely why you like technology more than politics.
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Microsoft’s Mobile Platforms Suffer From Flagging Developer Interest
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Alex Wilhelm
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Appcelerator, a company that supports multi-platform development, released its quarterly developer report today. The survey helps track market interest in the various platforms, tacking changing winds. The third-quarter details Microsoft’s difficult market position: The percentage of respondents (developers, CIOs, etc.) that are “very interested” in building apps for Microsoft’s smartphones and tablets is low. Twenty-five percent said that they were very interested in building for Microsoft’s tablets, while 26 percent expressed strong interest in building for Microsoft’s smartphone platform. As , those numbers are down several percentage points from the start of the year. Even as its new platforms have matured, Microsoft has lost developer interest in Windows Phone and its tablet efforts. The percentage of respondents “very interested” that Microsoft lost in the past few quarters (3 percent for smartphones, 5 percent for tablets) isn’t lethal, but it’s not moving in the right direction. Microsoft has a long history of building developer platforms. And it is utterly dedicated to making the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store bear out as bets and investments. In a way, it doesn’t have a choice: It cannot cede the mobile market, and to play in that space it needs developer support. Microsoft has a trick up its sleeve, however. As Tom Warren of The Verge , the company is working to unite its Windows and Windows Phone app stores. This is not a surprise – merely more unification of the larger Windows platform as expected – but it could be helpful. Developers want to build for big platforms. Windows 8 and Windows Phone are smaller in pieces than they are in aggregate, and so their fusion could lead to a more interesting developer pitch. Current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer that his company has “almost no share” in mobile devices. That must change for Microsoft to retain any sort of relevance in the consumer world. And I think that some underestimate the importance of that slice of Microsoft’s DNA in its continued relevance in other market sectors. A few other data points: 6 percent of developers claimed to be “very interested” in developing for BlackBerry tablets. 80 percent stated that they were as into building for the iPhone. Microsoft is stuck in the middle.
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Sudan’s Internet Back Up After A Day In The Dark
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Gregory Ferenstein
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The Republic of Sudan was digitally from the world today, amid government protests. The government likely cut the cord to stem outrage over the termination of fuel subsidies, though they have yet to issue an official statement on the matter. “There are 4 physical routes from Sudan to the rest of the world. So, it is unlikely that all four cables were cut. Instead it is likely that the state telecom (Sudatel) stopped announcing routes to the rest of the Internet – which effectively stopped web communications for the Sudanese to the rest of the world and vice versa,” writes Co-founder of Internet User experience firm , Michelle Zatlyn, to me in an email. Rioters have taken to the streets in the capitol city of Khartoum, after the International Monetary Fund demanded the city cut subsidies for fuel. to The Guardian, the subsidies consumed more than 75% of the government’s revenue. Sudan lost much of its oil producing territory after South Sudan split into its own independent nation in 2011. Sudan is not the only nation to curtail the internet as a means of muzzling protestors. Last spring, , presumably to cripple protesters who coordinated with and galvanized support from the rest of the world. However if history is any indication, it will not stop the Sudanese people.
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Two iPhones Diverged…
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MG Siegler
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What I’m about to say may be considered blasphemy amongst a certain group of my peers: I think I like the iPhone 5c more than the iPhone 5s. This unexpected revelation came about as I’ve been testing both devices this past week. , I figured I wouldn’t pay much mind to the iPhone 5c since it’s largely the same device as the iPhone 5 just in a new shell (with a few other minor differences as well). But I kept finding myself being drawn back to using it. It’s just so well done. To be clear, I still expect that I’ll be purchasing an iPhone 5s when these review units go back to Apple and once the hoopla dies down around the and they’re actually available. But that’s only because the iPhone is the device I use the most in my life — by far. And I want to make sure that I’m completely optimized for speed and efficiency going forward. And that’s what the iPhone 5s is all about. Still, the iPhone 5c is a thing of beauty. And I didn’t expect to feel that way. Apple gave me both a “Space Gray” iPhone 5s and a blue iPhone 5c to try out. This isn’t meant to be a full review — for that, check out Darrell’s , , and reviews. Instead, I thought I’d just share my general thoughts on using both devices. Following Apple’s unveiling of the two new iPhones a couple weeks ago, the iPhone 5c seemed like the phone Jony Ive wanted to create for his first stab at software, iOS 7. After having used the device extensively, I now feel even more strongly that this is the case. The iPhone 5c and iOS 7 are perfect together. The obvious connection is the colorful coating on both the software and the hardware. But it feels beyond superficial. The fact that the color wraps around the hardware to surface itself around the edges of the familiar front plate is a seemingly little touch that matters. This is something you will stare at day-in and day-out — much more so than the back of the device. While the back color you select may be about outward expression, this front-facing outer ring of color gives the device personality. Previous iterations of the iPhone have been all about letting everything front-facing take a backseat to the screen. That’s not the case here for the first time. And that’s even more true when you turn the device on. Apple has pre-loaded a colored wallpaper that matches the color of the iPhone 5c you’ve chosen. Again, a little thing, but important in giving this device more personality than any iPhone to come before it. (You can, of course, change this wallpaper later to whatever you choose.) After a brief period of hands-on time with the iPhone 5c after the launch event, I that I thought the side buttons seemed a little “janky”. I was wrong about that. They are plastic, and as such, undoubtedly cheaper than the buttons found on the iPhone 5s, but in no way are they chintzy-feeling. They’re strong and firm. And there is no discernible gaps around them. They seem one with the body of the device. And unlike the buttons on the 5s, these buttons match the elongated shape of the mute slider. They also mirror the shape of the SIM tray on the other side of the device. And the shape of the speaker on the front of the device. They perfectly match the power button at the top of the device. And they even more closely resemble the shape of the Lightning port at the bottom of the device. The same cannot be said of the circular volume buttons on the iPhone 5s. Even after the iPhone 5c was revealed to not actually be all that cheap, there was that the use of plastic would make the device cheap. If you hold this device for a few seconds, you won’t feel that way. It is plastic, but it doesn’t feel plastic-y. To get a better sense of that, try holding the container that the iPhone 5c comes in — which is very plastic-y — and compare it to the plastic of the phone. One feels cheap, the other feels solid. The 5c feels more like an extremely well-polished stone — one you might skip on a river. (Accentuated by the fact that the smoothness of the front of the device now feels similar to the smoothness of the back of the device.) To that end, in my opinion, the 5c feels better in your hand than the 5s (or iPhone 5, 4S, 4, etc). It’s more similar to holding an old iPhone 3GS or 3G, which also had a plastic back, but it feels better than those devices. The 5c has a flatter back versus the more curved back of the 3G and 3GS. So that aspect is more similar to the design of the last few generations of the iPhone, but with smooth, curved edges. By comparison, the iPhone 5s feels downright industrial. Or almost like a weapon. Certainly, some people will like the feel of the iPhone 5s more, it’s just a matter of taste. It’s cold aluminum and straight lines versus extremely polished plastic and curves. Interestingly enough, the iPod touch now seems to fit as an exact combination of the two: the cold aluminum of the 5s with the curves (and chiclet buttons) of the 5c. Side-by-side-by-side, it remains incredible just how thin the iPod touch is. Prior to the announcement, that we may be getting a cheaper iPhone now because the iPhone 5 hardware was finally “good enough”. Cheapness debate aside, I believe he was right about the hardware aspect — the iPhone 5 hardware, now inside the iPhone 5c does still feel fast enough. Having owned and used every iteration of the device, I distinctly recall the great performance gains of iPhones past. Some speed upgrades were more pronounced than others (I still think iPhone 3G-to-iPhone 3GS may have been the biggest jump), but this feels like the smallest leap yet. I know that on paper, the gains are supposed to be fairly substantial ( ). And perhaps it’s just a matter of apps not yet being tailored to take advantage of the new A7 chip and/or the 64-bit architecture. But using the 5s and the 5c side-by-side, there simply doesn’t seem to be a huge speed difference. Apps open slightly faster on the 5s and content loads a bit faster. But it’s not as noticeable of an upgrade as it once was. That’s one reason why I find myself happy with the iPhone 5c. With previous upgrades, once I started using the faster iPhone, it was beyond annoying to switch back to the slower, elder version. This past week I’ve been switching between the 5s and the 5c regularly without noticing much difference in normal usage. The killer feature of the 5s is, of course, Touch ID. it immediately after a bit of hands-on time, and it remains true using it regularly: the feature works really, really, really well. It’s one of those things that works so well that it seems obvious now that many devices will have it in the future. And I often find myself using another iPhone device (like the 5c) and trying to trigger Touch ID by holding my finger on the home button, only to realize I’m not using the 5s. (It’s similar to the phenomenon where I now regularly go to touch the screen on my MacBook after using the iPad for extended periods of time.) In the least surprising news of the year, hackers have already been attacking the security of the feature and have found some ways to get around it. Newsflash: the only way to have a truly, 100 percent secure smartphone is to not have one at all. Touch ID still seems like a significant security upgrade over the most-used alternative: nothing. More importantly to me, Touch ID makes unlocking your iPhone and buying content on iTunes and the App Store so much faster. And so much less annoying. It’s brilliant. I’m still in disbelief of how well it works given how many other companies have tried and failed in this arena in the past. But that’s the M.O. of Apple: taking others’ mediocrity and turning it into something spectacular. I hope that once the faux controversy over the Touch ID hacking blows over, that Apple can come up with a secure way to allow third parties to use the feature for passwords within other apps as well. And maybe down the road there will be something interesting to do here with payments. Though that would be just asking to take the current “controversy” and multiply it by about a trillion. But certainly some of what Apple has in store with seems to align well… The other key upgrade (because again, I don’t view the speed as a major upgrade — at least not yet) of the 5s is the camera. Honestly, it’s hard to tell on the small screen how much improvement the larger pixels in the new camera offer. It’s easier to see when you move these images over to something like iPhoto. But the real key difference seems to be in low-light situations. The new two-tone flash is clearly a big upgrade over the LED flash found on the iPhone 5 (and now 5c). But I rarely use a flash in any picture I take except if it’s by accident, which happens all the time when I download a new app with picture-taking capabilities (thanks developers). The best part of the new camera is the “Slo-Mo” feature. Again, slow motion capture isn’t anything new, but Apple does it so well here. The result are videos that look professionally edited. Or, at the very least, videos that are significantly more interesting than your usual playing-fetch-with-the-dog captures. Burst mode is cool too. Having gotten the Space Gray model, I will say that it seems like an improvement over the previous black iPhone 5. I never really liked how it wasn’t fully black — presumably because it’s hard to color aluminum to be fully black. Space Gray is much lighter than the faux black of old and it looks better as a result. It also like Apple was able to fix the issue where the chamfered sides of the black iPhone 5 would get chipped relatively easily, causing them to turn silver. This looked awful. I haven’t had this device long enough to know for sure if that’s been resolved, but it appears that at the very least it will be less of an issue. One more point goes to the iPhone 5c versus the iPhone 5s when it comes to the cases available for each. The 5c cases simply seem better in every way, in my opinion. I was given a brown leather case for the 5s and a pink silicone case for the 5c. Not only are the 5c cases more visually appealing when paired with their colorful counterparts, they’re significantly easier to slip on and off. Getting the 5s case off of the device is a lesson in frustration. It reminds me of the one-size-too-small cases Amazon likes to sell alongside the Kindles. The right way to make a case is the way Apple has done it with the 5c. It’s easy to get on and off and it adds something beyond protection thanks to the fun color schemes. My only quibble is that the dots on the back of the case extend too far down, revealing not only the “iPhone” wording on the device, but the FCC markings. It’s sort of a sloppy oversight. I would much prefer that the bottom three rows of dots be removed (with perhaps one additional row added above the current top row — though that may show the bottom of the Apple logo). I also love the way the color of the 5c peeks out from beneath the case around the front of the device, leaving the smallest hint of the color of the device mixed with the color of the case. A classic Apple design touch. I will say that the leather case for the 5s, while not exactly my cup of tea, did manage to save my device from a nasty fall. It tore up the upper right corner of the leather, but largely protected the device itself (there are a couple minor scuffs along the bottom chamfered edge). So yes, these things do serve a purpose beyond cosmetics and giving Apple yet another product with insanely high margins. Following the unveiling of the new iPhones, one interesting thought that surfaced quickly was the notion that perhaps the iPhone 5c is the new baseline product for regular consumers and the iPhone 5s is the new “Pro” model for users with more advanced needs. Certainly, Apple’s own marketing for the devices suggest this as well — “ ” While using the 5c and the 5s at the same time, I kept coming back to this thought. To me, the 5s now seems like an aluminum MacBook Pro while the 5c seems like one of the old white plastic MacBooks. (Or, if you want to go back even further, a PowerBook versus an iBook.) The 5c feels more approachable — we’ll see if the sales pan out that way. While Apple isn’t (and likely won’t be) giving any detailed breakdowns of sales, the 5s is still outselling the 5c by a healthy margin. But that data could also be skewed by a launch weekend full of power users. I was surprised by my affection for the iPhone 5c. Far from a “cheap” iPhone, it feels like the perfect compliment to iOS 7. And if you don’t mind having just a mere excellent camera as opposed to an excellent camera, I wouldn’t hesitate recommending the 5c. Again, I view the speed of the 5c as more than adequate for basically anything you’re going to want to do with it — at least for now, and I imagine at least for the next year. Now I’m left with a strange dilemma: the phone I want is basically the iPhone 5c body with the iPhone 5s internals. Luckily, something tells me that Apple will be selling such a device next year. Unfortunately, there will undoubtedly be a new state of the art iPhone by then as well. And I’m a sucker for the high end. Especially when it comes in gold. And this predicament is the essence of why Apple sees lots and lots of green.
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3D Robotics Raises $30 Million To Legitimize Aerial Drones For Business
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Chris Velazco
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The very mention of the word “drone” often conjures up images of autonomous machines cruising over battlefields, but that’s far from the future has in store for its own aerial machines. And thanks a recent infusion of capital, that future may be closer than you think. 3D Robotics announced earlier today that it locked up a $30 million Series B round, with a list of participants that includes Foundry Group, True Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and SK Ventures. The company previously closed a $5 million round last December that featured many of those same names, and at the time CEO (and former Wired EiC) Chris Anderson said the infusion of funds would be used to open and staff a then-new San Francisco office. Another crucial component of the 3DR growth story was to launch a new website, flesh out the community experience, and developer and a new slew of products meant to make “drones and other aerial robotics technology easier, more powerful and cheaper”. There’s been plenty of progress made on that final front too as the 3D Robotics portfolio is now comprised of a single plane-style drone and four copter drones. The newest of addition to the lineup? The Iris, a $720 drone that can be controlled with ease from a PC or an Android device (as long as you have the corresponding app) that can also follow paths “drawn” on an on-screen map thanks its built-in GPS. While Anderson and the rest of the team have spent the past year trying to more effectively court hobbyists and DIY drone buffs, the company’s ambitions hinge on proving that drone’s have plenty of commercial value as well. Anderson gave the Financial Times a clearer view of the wildly varying fields that he thinks 3D Robotics’ drones can disrupt, and all of the usual suspects are accounted for. Remotely controlled drones can make for cheaper, more effective search and rescue operations, as well as hyperlocal deliveries (I personally can’t wait for someone to put together a fleet of Perhaps the most curious application is in agriculture, in which farmers and ranchers could remotely keep tabs on the all their land and livestock without having to trudge into the fields themselves.
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Google Improves Knowledge Graph With Comparisons And Filters, Brings Cards & Cross-Platform Notifications To Mobile
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Frederic Lardinois
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Google is turning 15 tomorrow and, fittingly, it’s by announcing a couple of new features for Google Search. The mobile search interface, for example, is about to get a bit of a redesign with results that are clustered on cards “so you can focus on the answers you’re looking for.” Those answers, Google today announced, are also getting better. Thanks to its Knowledge Graph, the company continues to push to give users answers instead of just links, and with today’s update, it’s now featuring the ability to use the Knowledge Graph to compare things. If you want to compare the nutritional value of olive oil to butter, for example, Google Search will now give you a comparison chart with lots of details. The same holds true for other things, including dog breed and celestial objects. Google says it plans to expand this feature to more things over time. Also new in this update is the ability to use Knowledge Graph to filter results. Say you ask Google: “Tell me about Impressionist artists.” Now, you’ll see who these artists are, and a new bar on top of the results will allow you dive in to learn more about them and to switch to learn more about abstract art, for example. On mobile, Google is now making it easier to use your voice to set reminders and have those synced between devices. So you can say “Ok Google, Remind me to buy butter at Safeway” on your Nexus tablet and when you walk into the store with your iPhone, you’ll get that reminder. To enable this, Google will roll out a new version of its Search app for iPhone and iPad in the next few weeks. With regard to notifications, it’s also worth noting that Google is now adding to its iPhone app, which will finally make Google Now useful on Apple’s platform.
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Facebook Hires Data Privacy Litigator Ashlie Beringer As New Deputy Counsel
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Josh Constine
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Between its struggles with the NSA and negotiations with privacy regulators, Facebook needs a lawyer that can fight to protect its data, and its ability to use yours. So today it announced that its new Deputy Counsel is Ashlie Beringer, a litigation partner at Palo Alto’s Gibson Dunn and co-chair of the law firm’s Information Technology and Data Privacy practice group. Beringer will report to Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch, who was from deputy to take the social network’s top legal job in June after long-running GC Ted Ullyot left the company. Ashlie will run Facebook’s 80-person legal department’s litigation, regulatory, and product groups, which contain about 20 employees. Beringer might assist with cases like the $3 million against Power and Vachani. In this situation Facebook sued the defendants for tricking users into giving them their Facebook log-ins, scraping Facebook content for use on their website, lying to users saying they could win money by inviting their Facebook friends to Power’s site, and sending fraudulent emails that said they were from the Facebook team. You can see the court document embedded below. “We are pleased with today’s ruling awarding over $3 million in damages and injunctive relief. We will continue to enforce our rights against bad actors who seek to harm Facebook and the people who use it” wrote Facebook’s Associate General Counsel Craig Clark. Beringer didn’t work on this case, though, as her first day on the job will be November 18th. On Beringer’s past accomplishments in the field, Facebook tells us: “Ms. Beringer has extensive experience defending companies in high stakes technology and intellectual property disputes, with particular expertise representing clients in the technology, media, Internet, and entertainment industries. She has successfully represented clients in numerous consumer and regulatory actions relating to online and mobile technologies and data privacy and security issues. In addition, Ms. Beringer has successfully defended clients throughout the country in complex patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secrets disputes, including several disputes involving digital technologies, gaming and application platforms, and online and mobile advertising and e- commerce networks.” Before getting into tech, Beringer was an entertainment litigator, defending reality TV stars including Ozzy Osbourne. His wife Sharon wrote in her memoir that “Ashlie Beringer has got balls of steel.” Facebook mirrored that sentiment, saying “We have always been impressed with her toughness and commitment to innovation.” She’ll need that strength as Facebook pushes the boundaries of people’s comfort around privacy as part of its mission “to make the world more open and connected.” Facebook has wrestled with audits and settlements with the and the who oversees Facebook’s European operations. The social network has also squared off against privacy activists such as , which has fought terms of service changes and the abolishment of voting in Facebook’s site governance system. Beringer’s patent litigation background could also protect it from more infringement suits like . Facebook ended up buying and licensing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of patents from IBM, AOL (TechCrunch’s parent company), and Microsoft to defend against the claims which ended up being settled with a . Beringer could wield those patents to fight off future attacks. Most recently, Facebook has been for more transparency. The company wants to be able to reveal around how many requests for private user data it gets from security agencies to show users it’s not selling them out to spies. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said onstage at our TechCrunch Disrupt conference that “I think the government blew it” in reference to how the NSA has handled surveillance and the Edward Snowden leaks. That might make Beringer’s job extra challenging. [scribd id=171248381 key=key-1i6wv1ati5gtnlr7h60d mode=scroll]
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DataSift Now Offering Historical Social Data Analysis Across Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Bitly & More Combined
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Sarah Perez
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Fresh on the heels of its for access to the Tumblr “firehose,” social data platform DataSift is putting that data, and more, to good use with the launch of a new API that performs historical analysis across Twitter, Tumblr, and Bit.ly “firehoses,” as well as data pulled from forums, blogs and public Facebook data. With “Historic Preview,” as DataSift is calling it, developers have the ability to perform historical analysis across all sources combined, using four different analysis types. These include: frequency distribution, numeric statistical analysis, target volume, and word count (a list of up to 100 of the most often used words). The analysis functions can be applied to all 400+ metadata fields, the company says. (More details on that ). Also shipping today as a part of this new addition to DataSift’s platform are five standard Preview reports, with let developers dig into the data to find out more about the quality and quantity of the data before running a full search. A Basic report gives you an overview, with things like word clouds and pie charts. The Natural Language Processing Preview offers up sentiment analysis and entities (people, places and things mentioned). A Twitter Preview lets you hone in on Twitter word counts, hourly data volume, mentions, hashtags and more, while the Twitter Demographics Preview report lets you scope out anonymized data detailing things like gender, age, location, profession, likes and interests. And finally, a Links Preview lets you track the hourly volume of links, Twitter card data, Facebook OpenGraph data, and other items. The company, which competes with other social data API providers like Topsy and Gnip, explains that today conversations are happening across networks, and businesses need tools that let them track more than simple keywords, but rather the social conversations in general. That’s always been DataSift’s strength – that it can not only sort through the billions of social actions out there on the web, but it can then allow its customers to filter those for demographic information, online influence, sentiment and more. A company describes how these new Preview APIs can be used, explaining how an advertiser could track a social media campaign by watching how many times a YouTube link was shared – even though people may be sharing that link without also including any particular hashtag, for example. That allows the company to better understand who the influencers are on the subject, and what sort of hashtags might work to better promote the message in the future, among other things. The post also highlighted how complex it can be to track social conversations on today’s web, using another example detailing how a movie release is monitored. It found that Facebook and Twitter mentions peak ahead of the release, but then Instagram peaks after as people start snapping photos of themselves at the event. Meanwhile, historic insights into Bitly link data and Tumblr posts gives an even fuller picture of the kinds of things being said and who’s doing the talking. More information on the APIs have been posted for developers.
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Google Recently Made A Silent Shift To A New Search Algorithm, “Hummingbird”
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Greg Kumparak
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Have you noticed recently that Google has gotten a bit better at offering up direct answers to questions? If so, there’s a reason for it: they recently flipped the switch on a new search algorithm they call “Hummingbird”, which focuses on parsing searches as complex questions. Google mentioned the new algorithm for the first time today, at an event that was (in a confusing surprise to everyone who arrived at Google HQ and was put on a bus) that Larry and Sergey rented as Google started to prove successful. Other things announced include a tweak to Google’s to allow it to handle comparison questions (“Which is better for me — olive oil or butter?”), and for Google Now on iOS. Despite a good amount of questioning from the audience on just how Hummingbird worked, Google avoiding getting too technical. While they did say that this was the biggest overhaul to their engine since the 2009 “Caffeine” overhaul (which focused on speed and integrating social network results into search) and that it affects “around 90% of searches”, there wasn’t much offered in terms of technical details. The main focus, and something that went repeated many a time, was that the new algorithm allows Google to more quickly parse full questions (as opposed to parsing searches word-by-word), and to identify and rank answers to those questions from the content they’ve indexed. As for how it’ll affect results, moving forward (the ears of a zillion SEO dudes/dudettes just perked): the engine overhaul was silently put in place weeks ago, right under all of our noses. If you haven’t noticed any huge jumps or drops in your search engine placement, you probably won’t any time soon — at least, not as a result of the new algorithm.
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Microsoft Updates Windows Phone App Studio With New Graphics, SkyDrive Integration
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Alex Wilhelm
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Microsoft’s bid to help anyone to build applications for its Windows Phone platform continued this week, with an to that improves the graphical diversity of apps and improved SkyDrive integration. TechCrunch felt that Windows Phone App Studio was an and actually , building our very own app for fun on the day it was released. It remains a beginners’ tool, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have potential, especially for students and niche small businesses. It was something of a hit for Microsoft, seeing nearly 50,000 projects started in its first two days. Microsoft, not expecting such demand, had to rate-limit the inflow of new users for a period. So, what’s new? You can now access photos that you have on SkyDrive in your application, navigation has been improved, new “icons, backgrounds, and stock images” that are available to developers, and, , bug fixes and performance bumps are part of the total package. A is cleaner code samples. Microsoft claims to have made “a ton of progress” improving generated code, with the goal for “clean and lean code.” Better code is simpler to grok by beginners, the key audience for the platform. As a platform, the Studio won’t change the short-term fortune of the Windows Phone platform, but it could help the next generation of developers become interested in Microsoft technologies. That’s no small prize.
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Google Research’s Open Project Makes It Easy To Project Android Apps Onto Touch Screens
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Frederic Lardinois
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For the last year or so, has been working on a project that aims to make it easier to migrate tasks between different devices. The premise of this work is that you are currently using a number of computers, smartphones and tablets every day. Even though much of your data is stored in the cloud, Google that “there are not many ways to easily move tasks across devices that are as intuitive as drag-and-drop in a graphical user interface.” The small form factor of a smartphone, Google’s team argues, makes it hard to collaborate on content, and handheld projectors suffer from too many hardware limitations and don’t allow for easy user input. Earlier this year, the company’s research team that focuses on solving this problem showed us , a system for “capturing” an application like Google Maps that runs on a large screen via a smartphone camera and . Today, the team is and showing a cool new way to project smartphone content onto any display. The (PDF), as Google’s researchers call it, is an end-to-end framework that can project native mobile apps onto a screen. That sounds a bit like Apple’s , but it’s actually a bit cooler than that, especially when it’s coupled with the giant touch screen Google uses in its demo. In its current form, Open Project displays a QR code on the display and all you need to do is point your app at it, scan the code and the app is displayed on the screen. From there, you can move it around on the screen and even interact with it just like on the phone. A number of companies are currently looking at how they can use large touch screens to make collaboration easier. Adobe’s , for example, uses a table with a built-in touch screen and a wall of large screens in the room to allow its users to create magazine layouts. Microsoft, too, is working on similar setups based on Windows 8 and last year to experiment with large touch displays. As always, it remains to be seen if this project ever becomes a reality. It’s definitely an easy way to share content from your phone (assuming you have a giant wall of touch-enabled screens in your house) and with a bit of added intelligence, you could even use it to just share text or images you want to collaborate on, too, with the text editor or layout engine running on the machine that powers the display. You can find the full research paper that explains the system in more detail .
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Facebook Lets You Edit Posts After Sharing On Android And Web Now, iOS Soon
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Josh Constine
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Typo ruin your social media masterpiece? Facebook is starting to let you edit a post’s text after you publish it. The feature comes to the web and in an update today, and to . Previously you had to delete your post, lose all your Likes and comments, and repost to edit something. Android users also get emotion and activity sharing, events at a glance, and photo album creation today. Soon you’ll be able to edit all posts and comments from the web, Android, or iOS. To edit posts, you’ll be able to click the down arrow in the top right of one of your posts and select ‘Edit Post’ to change the text, then click “Done Editing” as shown in this screenshot from . Your revisions and original post will still be viewable if friends check your post’s edit history, though. For comments, hovering over or tapping a post will reveal a pencil icon on the right you can click to start editing. The long-requested Facebook feature was likely held back because the company was scared users would bait and switch each other. Imagine if a friend posted “Like this post if you hate Justin Bieber,” and you liked it, but then they edited it to say “Like if you LOVE Justin Bieber.” That could defame your music tastes. But Facebook apparently found that the edit history section was enough to deter people from such trickery. It started allowing users to in June 2012, and Page owners have also had the ability to edit text on photo posts for a while. Facebook seems to have encountered few problems so now everyone is getting the option. Google+ has had post editing for a while, facilitating its more long-winded, in-depth discussion style. Don’t expect editing to come to Twitter anytime soon, though, as it wouldn’t jive with the service’s real-time permanent record style. The feature could be a big help on mobile where touchscreen keypads make it easy to screw up. It’s always a shame to have to wash away the comments you got immediately just to make an “its” an “it’s”. Facebook may have been losing posts to deletions because of typos, so the change could also add just a tiny more content flowing to the News Feed that brings in eyeballs for its ads.
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(RED) Partner Apple Has Raised Over $65M For AIDS Relief In Total
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Matthew Panzarino
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(RED) announced early today that its partner Apple had helped it raise more than $65 million to finance programs which include prevention, treatment, counseling, HIV testing and care services. The announcement was made by U2 singer Bono at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting. The $65 million means that Apple has raised around $15 million since February 2012 with the (PRODUCT)RED initiative, if numbers out of an internal Apple meeting are accurate. “Apple is an enormously valued (RED) partner,” A (RED) spokesperson told TechCrunch. “Their contributions help enable the Global Fund to finance the AIDS fight on the ground in Africa. This work is absolutely critical to ending AIDS.” (RED) partners with a bunch of corporations like Nike, Starbucks, Apple, American Express and Beats, who contribute a slice of their profits from (RED)-branded products to HIV/AIDS research. Bono and Bobby Shriver of ONE/DATA created the concept in 2006 and Apple has been a partner for some time. Bono at on partners: “Apple is certainly leading the crew” Thank you Apple for raising over $65 million to fight AIDS. — (RED) (@RED) Apple currently offers a including an iPod Shuffle, iPod nano and iPod touch, as well as some iPad and iPhone cases.The (RED) iniative has come under fire for promoting the kind of ‘middle-man’ philanthropy that wastes money on advertising and fancy events rather than donating directly. The organization so far, and has impacted 14 million people. 100% of the money raised by (RED) goes directly to the Global Fund to support work on the ground in Africa, a (RED) spokesperson tells us, no overhead is taken out. One couldn’t help but think about how much more money Apple might be able to donate if it produced a (RED) version of its most popular product: The iPhone. Apple doesn’t have a reputation for public philanthropy but has been making some moves to change that. Early last year, Tim Cook and noted several donations that Apple had made. Those included $50 million to Stanford’s hospitals, as well as the quoted $50 million (RED) contribution. Of course, Apple has around $146 billion in the bank, so charitable contributions are probably a good way to snag a tax break. Hopefully the expansion of Apple’s charitable efforts under Cook continues.
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Google Updates Their iOS Search App With Google Now Push Notifications
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Greg Kumparak
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This morning at an oddly mysterious* event in Mountain View, Google announced a minor, but not insignificant, update to their Google Search app for iOS: Push Notifications. So, what does all that mean for you? Mostly, that Google Now for iOS will be able to alert you of things it’s noticed without you having to enter the app. If the traffic is jammed on your route to work, for example, it can throw an alert directly to your lock screen. If you’re an Android user, that feature might seem a bit old-hat. As Google Now can run constantly in the background on Android, it’s been able to do such things for a while now. On iOS, however, most apps are shuffled into a state of hibernation, requiring developers to use Apple’s push notification system to send background alerts to the user. Until now, Google Now for iOS hadn’t made use of these notifications.
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BitWall Allows Publishers To Make Money Through Bitcoin Micropayments
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Anthony Ha
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Here’s another way that digital currency Bitcoin could have a big impact, according to startup : it could give online publishers a real alternative to putting up paywalls or relying solely on ads for revenue. The argument for micropayments is probably familiar to most of you: You may not want to pay a big subscription fee but might be willing to shell out a little bit of money to read an article that interests you. Yet the idea has never really taken off with online publishers. How is Bitcoin supposed to change that? BitWall that with traditional payment systems, there’s a significant transaction fee, so small payments don’t make sense. With Bitcoin, where the fees are lower, the startup says publishers “can finally unlock the untapped world of micropayments.” At the same time, co-founder and CEO Nic Meliones said the team is open to adding other payment options in the future. He also noted that readers who just want to pay in U.S. dollars can do so, since BitWall is integrated with digital wallet system Coinbase, which allows easy conversion between USD and Bitcoin. Meliones gave me a quick demo of how the system works. After a site has integrated with BitWall, users who try to read an article will be presented with a new kind of paywall, a “bitwall,” which offers a menu of options. The obvious one is making a small payment (as little as 1 cent), via Bitcoin, to access that specific piece of content. But readers can also pay a daily subscription fee, prepay for a larger sum of credits, or even get access by just tweeting or watching an ad (since publishers are usually paid per impression, “an ad is essentially a micropayment as well,” Meliones said). The point is the publisher gets something in exchange for the content. The exact mix of payment options (as well as which content is bitwalled) is up to the individual site. You can see this in action for yourself with the first BitWall integration, which went live earlier this week at Bitcoin news and data site . If you click on the headlines in the ZeroBlock News section, you’ll be asked to pay for the article, watch an ad or tweet. BitWall was part of , which had its first demo day on Thursday.
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Trainspotting: Hands On With The Mondaine Retro Automatic Watch
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John Biggs
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This weekend’s watch review is focused on the Mondaine Retro Automatic, a mechanical model that hovers right about the $600 price point — a rare departure into the bargain section for this series. The model I tested is unique for a few reasons although, in the end, this watch is less about the feature set and more about the iconic design. First, is styled on the famous Swiss railway clocks found in stations throughout the country. The bold black hands and clever red seconds hand with the bright red pip at the end are instantly recognizable and, more important, instantly readable. There is no lume on this watch because the assumption is that the contrast between the dark hands and the white face will be sufficient for the weary evening sojourner. It has a nice 40mm case and exhibition back so you can see the movement and rotor. It comes on a basic leather strap and is ostensibly Swiss-made (a term that can end up being nebulous) but is, at the very least, assembled in Switzerland. It runs a Sellita SW 220-1 automatic movement, a capable replacement for the traditional ETA movements used in this sort of piece and it has a day/date register in English and German. I’ve been a fan of Mondaine for a while and like my other favorite, , it is one of the few three-handed, non complicated watches that I actually enjoy. The design is iconic and hardly polarizing and the legibility and style are classic without being stuffy. This is a designer’s watch and expresses a certain symmetry and careful consideration for legibility in various harsh conditions. Surprisingly you can, at a glance, tell the exact time thanks to the large hands and bold chapter ring. This is unique in a wristwatch because most watches bury the minutes pips by making them too thin or too light. Is this a special watch? Yes and no. Given its price and simple movement it’s now more a fashion timepiece than anything else. However, given the design pedigree and readability, I would argue that it deserves a bit more attention than it has thus far gotten. The MSRP is $589 but I’ve seen it pop up at about $500-$550 online. This is far less than similarly outfitted “nice” watches. It’s even cheaper than the from Tissot, another contender for the inexpensive, but high-quality, timepiece crown. Again, if you like this particular design then this is a capable, solid, and attractive timepiece. The leather band and the 100-foot water resistance mean that this thing isn’t for beach play. But if you’re going to be wearing it to business meetings or while handling the Wacom tablet, you could do worse.
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High-Skill Immigration Reform Likely Dead In 2013
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Alex Wilhelm
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After much speech and pomp, it appears that general immigration reform is dead in 2013, ending with it the chance of positive change to how we handle high-skill immigration. It didn’t have to end this way, but here we are and we need to face the current reality. The Washington Post’s that in the House, the so-called Gang of Seven will likely not bring forward a bill that could be passed in the lower chamber. That, and the fact that the Senate’s comprehensive bill was deceased upon hello in the House, means that options for functional immigration reform this year are now essentially zero. High-skill immigration reform was lashed to larger immigration reform in the Senate, marking its fate in time with other pieces of what is generally referred to as “comprehensive” reform. As that effort has failed, so too has high-skill immigration reform faltered. Sargent goes on to write that House Republicans could “roll out a series of piecemeal bills.” Theoretically, one of those smaller pieces of legislation could deal with high-skill immigration. However, if there is sufficient political will in the House for a push on the single issue isn’t clear. And it is also not plain how such a single bill could wind its way through the Senate, which has already passed its own immigration law. In a somewhat depressing conclusion, Sargent states that “it remains very possible that House Republican leaders will simply let reform die.” Next year is an election year, and the threat of primary challenges on the right remain real. Immigration is an exceptionally difficult issue for Republicans, given fierce base support for draconian legislation, and changing demographics that squeeze its leadership. For now, however, it appears that the threat of ‘being primaried’ remains a larger fear for House Republicans than long-term changes to the makeup of the American populace that do not, on projection, bode well for their party. Unless something miraculous shakes loose, immigration reform looks dead for the year. And as such, we won’t see a rise in H-1B visas and the like. It didn’t have to end this way, but here we are and we need to face the current reality.
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Alex Wilhelm
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Atlantis, The Flashy Silk Road Alternative, Shuts Down
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John Biggs
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Atlantis was supposed to be a “better” alternative to the popular, but hidden, Silk Road market. In short, it allowed the average user to buy and sell drugs, contraband, and whatever else using an encrypted web session and . Now it’s sunk. The site launched in June to much fanfare, including write-ups from . Hidden behind the , the site promised quick, anonymous transactions using Bitcoin and Litecoin. Online users complained that the service was little more than a watered-down Silk Road and a honeypot for authorities to catch drug dealers. Now the site has been shut down and will stop business entirely in one week, at which time all crypto currency in the system will be taken by the site admins and donated to a drug-related charity. We have some terrible news. Regrettably it has come time for Atlantis to close its doors. Due to security reasons outside of our control we have no choice but to cease operation of the Atlantis Marketmarketplace. Believe us when we say we wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t 100% necessary. Due to the urgency we are allowing all users to withdrawal all their coins for one week before the site, and forum, are shut down permanently. Please remove all of your coins, these will not be recoverable after one week from now. Anything remaining in your accounts will be donated to a drug related charity of our choosing. We wish to thank all of you for making Atlantis a great and memorable place to trade on. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors. Best wishes,
The Atlantis team Given that the group had a and a now-missing YouTube commercial, it’s little wonder that those with the wherewithal to crack their site gave it a bit more attention. They also offer discounts to Silk Road users and made a large PR push, further pushing their concept into the limelight. We’ve reached out to the anonymous admins for comment.
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CrunchWeek: The iPhone 5s Cat Paw Test, Google’s Calico And Bump’s Exit
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Leena Rao
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It’s been a week chock-full of news in the tech world, so what better way to cap it off than by watching a brand-new episode of CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few of us TechCrunch writers together to talk about the most interesting stories from the past seven days. This week, , and I talked about the release of and our colleague test of the , Google’s new mad science project and health initiative , and the search giant’s acquisition of
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Gillmor Gang: Under My Thumb
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Steve Gillmor
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The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Danny Sullivan, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — collected iPhone 5’s from the four corners of the tech world. Danny Sullivan ordered the elusive gold one at midnight in L.A., Scoble hit the midtown Apple Store in the Big Apple, John Borthwick got his via the betaworks diplomatic pouch, and John Taschek, well, Android Boy passed. As for me, I grumbled and groaned as @scobleizer broadcast from inside the iStore, as hundreds streamed in and out with the new phone some 7 hours into the upgrade. Finally, as the Gang peeled off to enjoy the fruit of their ardor, I called around for increasingly desperate minutes and miraculously found a store with a few left in Silicon Valley no less. A sweaty hour later, I headed back to the studio to join the herd, a fanboy once again in good standing. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @borthwick, @dannysullivan, @jtaschek Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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Why You Need To Pay Attention To General Solicitation
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Contributor
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On Monday, the legal framework for startup fundraising will change. Because of the JOBS Act, you will be able to publicly announce that you’re raising. This is not crowdfunding — you still have to raise from accredited (“rich”) investors. But, by raising in public, you will have to work harder to verify that your investors are accredited. It has always been perfectly legal to publicly announce that you have money and are looking to invest. But it’s not been legal to announce that you have an investment opportunity and are looking for money. This is the ban against “general solicitation.” That’s why you don’t see ads to invest in hedge funds or startups, and why AngelList locks down sensitive parts of company profiles to accredited investors only. Now, the ban is being lifted. Demo days, pitch events, and the like are now out of a gray area, but they are entering . Companies engaging in general solicitation will be required by law to ensure their investors are accredited. Failure to do so could cost you your securities law exemption and allow any of your investors to unwind your entire financing down the road. If you generally solicit, you will be unable to take your investors’ word on accreditation. The SEC didn’t tell us exactly what’s required; they said the company should take “reasonable steps.” Most examples from the SEC include reviewing credit reports, tax filings and bank balances — hoops that angel investors may not jump through. You can consult your lawyer, but here are examples of reasonable steps that may be more feasible: 1. If public filings with regulators show the investor as accredited, you’re done. You can get Marissa Mayer’s salary data as CEO of Yahoo! or see that a VC fund raised $100 million. 2. Written confirmation of accredited status from a registered broker-dealer, registered investment adviser, attorney or CPA would work. Many broker/dealers that deal with the startup world are rolling out services to do accreditation verification (for a fee). 3. AngelList will support a free verification process for our investor base. Investors won’t need to re-verify for each deal. We will also run all of our online investing activities (Syndicates and Invest Online) on and attempt to recover those costs down the road with a 5 percent to 10 percent carry (piece of the profits, if any) on each investment. The Angel Capital Association and others have mounted a campaign against these new requirements to no avail. Investors will be surprised the first time they’re asked to provide evidence of accreditation to a startup (or to a third party). Of course, you can always opt out of general solicitation. On AngelList, you can keep your profile private to accredited investors only. Outside of AngelList, just keep your fundraising off Twitter, Facebook, and the like. Then you’re free to continue with self-verification by investors. The SEC has also proposed a new set of additional regulations for comment. The new proposed regulations allow the SEC to track generally solicited offerings to protect the public. The proposals require that startups tell the SEC 15 days before any public mention of a financing and to update the SEC with every single thing they tell investors publicly in any form. The penalty for not complying with these and other requirements is a one-year ban on fundraising. These regulations are not yet adopted and hopefully won’t be; you can before Monday. The law is evolving, so if you talk about your ongoing financing publicly, make sure you’re up to date. and are following it closely. Entrepreneurs are creative. It’s hard to predict what crazy stunts they’ll pull to get investor attention. Get ready for an even larger and noisier ecosystem.
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‘Scuse Me While I Solve This Immigration Problem
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Jon Evans
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There’s a crippling talent shortage out there, stalking the streets of Silicon Valley; just ask any Valley executive in the choir crying out for . But the , , and — an odd triumvirate if ever I saw one — disagree, singing back their own united refrain: “The STEM shortage is a myth!” And, as usual, everyone is wrong. The basically boils down to two things: “startup visas” and “more H-1Bs.” Its naysayers mostly attack the latter, and they almost sound convincing at first. “The main conclusion that we need more foreign tech workers is not true,” Fortune. “We’re Already Generating More Qualified Students Than Jobs,” NPR. “It is difficult to make a case that there has been, is, or will be soon a STEM labor shortage,” the venerable IEEE. Unfortunately, all three are making the same dumb mistakes. Most notably, they’re confusing “people with degrees” with “people who companies want to hire.” Unfortunately for them, in the STEM world, there’s very little correlation between academic achievement and actual ability. Don’t take my word for it; . Or Vivek Haldar’s, in a : The flaw is in the assumption that every STEM degree holder is a qualified candidate for a STEM job. Carried through to its logical conclusion this implies that simply presenting a STEM degree should be enough to get one placed in a STEM job, which is absurd. This becomes readily apparent if one has ever been on the evaluation side — grading students, or conducting interviews for jobs. Half of all computer-science graduates are below average. But nobody wants to hire a bad programmer, and only a minority of companies will grudgingly hire the mediocre. With good reason: a single excellent programmer can code rings around 10 (or often N) mediocre ones, and bad ones almost invariably add value. Put another way, there may not be a skill shortage…but there is most definitely an shortage. At the same time, though, it’s pretty disingenuous for the companies calling for immigration reform to pretend that immigration always brings in the best and the brightest. Chartio, Consulting companies provide the most H-1B Visas. Infosys Limited, Wipro Limited, Cognizant and PriceWaterhouseCoopers take the gold by awarding a combined 67,139 H-1B visas. Fine companies all, I’m sure, but, er, not exactly the great world-changing innovators of the century. I think it’s safe to conclude that H-1Bs are used for (at least) two distinct STEM purposes: Now, you can–and I would–argue that immigration is almost always a net good, that current American immigration “policy” is an insane debacle, and that even in case 2 above, the benefits of immigration far outweigh the costs. Of course, as a foreigner myself (I’m Canadian, on a ) I would, right? But hey, . However it’s a moot point. What matters is that most people agree that case 1 is a win for everyone. So how can we at least ensure that foreigners can always immigrate, with minimal political upheaval? One iterative win at a time, after all, is the Silicon Valley way. The answer is surprisingly simple. How can you ensure that employees are excellent? You can’t–but you ensure that their employers genuinely believe they are, by seeing how much they’re paid. The proposed “startup visa” would accept immigrants if they had received money from qualified investors; similarly, STEM H-1B immigrants should be approved–or not–depending in large part on their salary. Right now H-1B immigrants only have to be paid the alleged “ ” for their occupation and location. ( ) There’s your problem right there. Instead, employers should have to pay STEM H-1B workers than the current “prevailing wage” — say, six figures — with a “startup exception” for small companies offering some minimum of equity along with their lower salary. Now, before you cry out in outrage, that’s pretty much what the big Valley companies pay. According to myvisajobs.com, the of 2013 H-1B visas went to “Computer Systems Design and Related Services” workers (ie programmers.) Within that group, Google sponsored 1,714 H-1B employees with … while Tata Consultancy Services brought in . There seems to me to be broad agreement that we want to encourage the former, not the latter. So why not simply hike the wage requirements for H-1Bs? Voilà. That’ll help the real innovators, bring in the best talent, reduce demand for scarce visas, incentivize like Tata to broaden their local hiring practices, and maybe even goose salaries industry-wide. Best of all, it’s a straightforward tweak to the existing system, rather than a wholesale reform to get bogged down in today’s pathological Congress like all wholesale reforms. Everybody wins! There you go, America. HTH. Katy Stoddard, .
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Spanish Pirate Site Owners To Get 6 Years Of Jail Time, But Users Off The Hook
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Mike Butcher
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Spain has long had a difficult reputation as one of the heaviest users of file-sharing services, crippling music and entertainment sales in the country for years. That’s the way the cookie crumbles, some might say. But it’s affected relations with Hollywood for years and threatened to land it back on a U.S. government black list after the country dropped off last year. And facing trade sanctions from Washington is a bad place to be when your economy is in the toilet. So Friday, the Spanish government , meaning the owners of websites that link to pirated content will be jailed for up to six years. The law will only affect site owners making money from linking to copyrighted material provided illegally by third parties, whether it be “direct or indirect profit,” such as via advertising links. The measures won’t take effect until early next year. Spain last created an anti-piracy law in 2011, which helped it for a while — until the situation turned for the worse again. RojaDirecta.com, for instance, linked to unauthorized sports streams, was shut down by the U.S., but relaunched as RojaDirecta.me, based in Montenegro. Clever. Previously, Spanish authorities could only punish the actual users — the ones who copied and distributed copyrighted material. It was unable to pursue the actual Pirate Bay-like sites. Now, under the new regulation, the actual users themselves will not face any punishment. Oddly, peer-to-peer file-sharing platforms and search engines are exempt from the rules and won’t face legal action. Interesting. Alternative services to file sharing, such as Spotify, have launched in Spain, but have been most successful in Scandinavian countries. It’s clear how much U.S. government thinking has the new law. Spanish politicians backing the law citied a list of countries violating intellectual property which has matched those put together by US lobbyists on the matter.
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Monkeying Around At The TC Disrupt Hackathon
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Ryan Lawler
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It’s not often that we get to see the Crunchies Monkey. When he’s not busy or taking a , he’s usually working hard to identify all the hottest new startups that have launched every year. That takes a lot of patience and focus. And most of all, a lot of bananas. But today, hackers at the TC Disrupt Hackathon got a surprise visit from the Crunchies Monkey, who had a lot of fun shaking hands, giving high-fives, and checking out what folks are hacking on. Because who knows, , the next big startup might come out of tonight’s hackathon. Check out his journey above, and look out for an extra-special guest cameo by !! (Unfortunately not shown: The Crunchies Monkey .) https://twitter.com/matthewlebel/status/376484033112178688
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CrunchWeek: Samsung’s Galaxy Gear, Microsoft-Nokia, And Braintree Acquisition Talks
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Leena Rao
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It’s that time of the week for CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few of us TechCrunch writers together in the TCTV studio to chat about the most interesting tech news stories from the past seven days. This week, and I chatted about announcement of Samsung’s new smartwatch, ; Microsoft’s of Nokia’s devices and services business, and the rumors of between payments gateway Braintree and Square and PayPal.
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The TC Disrupt Hackathon 2013 Is Officially Underway
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Jordan Crook
| 2,013
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The not only marks the beginning of Disrupt SF 2013, but it also marks the beginning of potentially hundreds of new products, services, and gadgets. 1,200 hackers have filled the San Francisco Design Center to build whatever their heart desires. They’ll have a handful of at their disposal and hanging in the balance. They’ll eat pizza, they’ll get in the zone, and they’ll probably participate in some late night tom-foolery (the last two hackathons involved impromptu dodgeball games and Nerf wars). Eventually, they’ll run into obstacles and get frustrated, and subsequently overcome those hurdles. Finally, a day later, with dirty hair and crusty eyes, they’ll get on stage and have 60 seconds to present their work to some like Twitter’s April Underwood and Pinterest’s Kent Brewster. One will be crowned Hackathon winner, and many others will walk away with prizes, but all of them will be forever changed by the awesomeness of the experience. We’ve seen amazing things come out of the Hackathons of the past, like a smart lock, a knife-wielding robot, and even GroupMe, which was sold for millions. What will this year’s batch of young coders yield? Only time — 24 hours, to be exact — can tell. For now, sit back, relax, and take a look at the entrepreneurial hopefuls as they get crackin’.
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The NSA Can Read Some Encrypted Tor Traffic
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John Biggs
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Security expert has done a bit of research and posts that the encryption standard used by earlier versions of the “secure” Tor protocol is most probably insecure and readable by the NSA. The run version 2.2 of the software which uses 1024 bit RSA/DH encryption. This is the same encryption standard that and can be subverted in a few hours using very expensive custom chips. What does this mean for you? Not much unless you value anonymity. , a feature important to activists, reporters, freedom fighters , and other folks who need to browse out of the limelight. That said, the fact that, in its most popular incarnation, its encryption can be (fairly) easily broken is bad. Couple this with the fact that this same standard is used in many SSL “secure” Internet interactions and things get worse. In short, , if the NSA can pull this off then we can be certain that other, less savory groups, have the same technology. These tools are open source and can be salvaged. The current cipher used for Tor version 2.4 is far worse for the NSA than any 1024 bit key and it’s easier to encrypt methodically, Tor-style, than use brute force solutions to crack haphazardly, NSA style. We’re still winning, but it takes a village to keep encryption strong.
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The Hash-Hole, And 6 Other People That Ruin Instagram
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Jordan Crook
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Facebook may have , and Twitter may be . But if you were to ask the next young, hip person you saw which social network they love most, odds are they’ll name Instagram. But as Instagram grows, annoying behaviors sprout up like weeds. Beware, dear Instagrammers, these pitfalls that will make people hate you. (Or worse, unfollow you.) Let’s be clear: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with selfies. There is, however, something wrong with selfies. If the only thing in your life interesting enough to photograph is your own face, you need to get out more. Equally frustrating is a handful of selfies that are only minutely different. For example, the selfie of you, followed by the selfie of you wearing new lipstick, followed again by the selfie of you wearing lipstick your new sunglasses. Pick one, please. The absolute worst type of selfie is the humblebrag selfie: the one when you’ve just finished working out, or just woken up, and your caption explicitly states how un-cute you are right now. If you’re not looking your best, why are you posting pictures of your face? Again, I reiterate, there’s nothing wrong with selfies. In fact, your Instagram feed is equally flawed any selfies. I follow you, dear friend, and want to look upon your lovely countenance. Just don’t overwhelm me with it. Keep me in the loop on your new haircut. Show off them pearly whites. Just don’t put all your eggs in the selfie basket. Not all screenshots are bad, only most of them. But by far the most egregious screenshots are filtered versions of inspirational quotes you’d find on Pinterest. We’ve all seen them before: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Not only are these quotes shamefully overused, but most of them don’t even make sense. If you try to shoot yourself to the moon, and you miss, you’re essentially lost in space. It’s also worth noting that Marylin Monroe didn’t actually say most of the quotes attributed to her. If you insist on posting inspirational quotes, at least do your research. Remember, Instagram is for pictures. Images. An image of text does not an Instagram make. There are a number of suitable outlets for your inspirational quotes. Facebook and Twitter are built for your constructive locution. They yearn for it. Give them what they want. (Inspagrams taken from the Notes app are doubly awful.) This brings me to the second worst type of screenshot on Instagram: your text message conversation. Once in a blue moon, a text screencap is worthy of your Instagram feed. For example, autocorrect nightmares are hilarious to just about everyone. Still, in most cases your text message conversations can only appeal (or make sense) to a small group of people. I follow a wide range of people on Instagram, from close friends to professional acquaintances. The vast majority of those people, however, are not people I speak to on a regular basis. That’s the magic, isn’t it? Checking in on the wedding of a high school friend or seeing a fellow tech reporter’s vacation in Miami is delightful. But just because you have funny text conversations with your mom, or your best friend, it doesn’t mean that we’ll get it (or that we care). These are what we call “inside jokes” and they aren’t so funny unless you’re on the inside. Don’t leave people out, Instagrammers. It’s rude. I know what you’re going to say: why do I care if people like my photos? There isn’t a fair answer, other than it feels good. Like count is a measure of the audience’s feelings toward a certain photo. If photos of my new gadgets get an average of two dozen likes, while pictures of my food get two or three likes, I soon learn that my audience is more engaged with photos of gadgets. More gadgets, then, I post. Less food. You see where I’m going. By commenting that my picture of a kitten is cute, but not liking it, you’re throwing off my mental gauge of what to post in the future. It’s also selfish to be posting photos yourself, with the expectation of getting likes, and yet never handing them out to others. We’re all on Instagram to communicate through photography, and your likes are a major part of that communication. If you want to be in the game, play along. The stingy liker makes little sense. There’s no record of what you like on Instagram. Your likes don’t cost you anything besides a little extra effort from your thumb. Why, then, do some people comment on photos without liking them? I have a friend, who will remain nameless. This friend (let’s call her Betty) posts at least five photos from every single activity she’s involved in. She goes to a bar with friends, and boom, six new Instagrams. She goes to a concert? Expect to see at least nine photos of the band, the crowd, and herself. I love my friend Betty, and I love peering into her world in real-time to see what she’s up to. But the Instagramaholic is like that person who tends to repeat themselves. They say something once, you get it, and then they say it in a slightly different way eight more times. No dude, I got it. Those collage apps like are built explicitly for this. The opposite of the Instagramaholic is the World Traveler, that one guy that only pops up in your feed when he is doing something outrageously awesome, like driving a motorcycle in Paris or surfing in Bali. Months go by, and nary a photo from the World Traveler until suddenly, ten photos of Rome’s greatest treasures appear. Obviously, we’re all more disposed to sharing our lives and photos when we’re doing interesting things. There are a list of mundane objects that every Instagrammer has taken: their feet in the sand, the plane window, an unusually beautiful latte. This can be annoying, but it can also be quite pleasant. This is why Instagram is real-time to begin with. The next photo in your feed might be yet another plate of food, but it’s also a quick glance into what your friend is doing at that very moment, eating a delicious meal. I’d rather have a window into your real life, vacations the everyday, than just few photos from your trip to Antigua. I’m not saying to post boring things all the time, but posting pictures of the most amazing tidbits of your life makes you seem like a show-off. A healthy Instagram feed is a mix of all things you, not just the glamorous stuff. Don’t be shy. The Hash-Hole could be the worst person on Instagram. Their flagrant substitution of quality for quantity is offensive. There should never be a hashtag in front of the word #the. Still, there are 16 photos tagged with #the. Why? Seriously, an explanation for this would surely entertain. #Not #only #does #this #make #your #caption #unreadable, #but #it #makes #you #look #incredibly #desperate #for #Instagram #love. There are clever ways to implement hashtags in your captions, and they can still get you likes or new followers. And beyond popularity, hashtags have more intimate uses (which, in my opinion, are far more fun). Choosing a random, insidery hashtag for a certain event or group of friends can create a single location for all of your photos to live forever. I’d much prefer inside joke hashtags than far too many hashtags.
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Diveboard Targets Highly Active Niche Diver Community For Ecommerce Opportunity
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Darrell Etherington
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French startup was at TechCrunch Disrupt SF for day one of Startup Alley today, demoing its social network and e-commerce platform aimed at the thriving and avid niche of community of divers. According to the company, the market is worth approximately $2 billion annually in Queensland, Australia, alone, where the Great Barrier Reef draws plenty of tourists. Diveboard lets users create profiles and then upload their dive history and information for each dive, reviewing dive spots and providing videos and pictures. They also review dive shops as well, so that you get a good idea of which shops to trust and book with, something that previously wasn’t available in any organized way on the web. “We have a great community of more than 10,000 divers, and almost 80,000 dives have been logged on the website so far,” co-founder Pascal Manchon explained in an interview. “We’ve been in business for about a year, and we’ve had lots of growth and traction among both divers and among dive shops.” It’s free to sign up for Diveboard for both divers and for dive shops, but the revenue for the startup is based on offering value-add marketing services for dive shops via premium plans. Diveboard also works as a fully featured e-commerce platform for dive shops, allowing proprietors of those businesses to bring their businesses to the web. Most of these types of shops barely have an online presence at all, Manchon explained, and almost none have any kind of online booking process. Diveboard automates the process of setting up on online shop, providing a simple embeddable widget to show owners to place back on their own sites. Currently, Diveboard is in the process of building a next-generation mobile app, that adds many more social features (the current version is basically for divers to revisit their trips). The next version will also help shops better show off their content, fulfilling that side as well. The other big plan for the future of Diveboard is building relationships with other ecosystem companies like hotels and service providers that tie into the diving trip experience, which should offer even more opportunity for revenue generation.
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Gillmor Gang: Running On Empty
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Steve Gillmor
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The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, John Taschek, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — why September 10 will be a turning point for Tim Cook, why the Microsoft/Nokia acquisition/Ballmer resignation had it backwards, why iWatch stands for software not hardware. Confusion makes for interesting times, or something like that. We’re caught in a vortex of boredom, say some of us, waiting for rescue by a leader with a dream. But while we wait, the house of cards known as the technology business continues its dramatic push forward, with no end in sight. It’s a Golden Age of the Movies, a Renaissance of the Possible, a time to enjoy the show. @stevegillmor, @dbfarber, @jtaschek, @scobleizer, @kteare Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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Anthony Ha
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It’s Almost Time To Throw Out Your Books
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Jon Evans
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The near-unthinkable has happened. The are evolving. The publishing industry’s long war against technology, the future, and its customers may finally be coming to a close. This week Amazon introduced , “an innovative new program which enables you to offer your Kindle book at a discount when readers purchase your print book,” to quote its email sent to authors. , too; but we expect a certain amount of innovation from Amazon. The truly astonishing thing happened on Thursday, when Oyster, a “ ,” launched — complete with the participation of HarperCollins. You may not appreciate how epochal this is. HarperCollins is one of the “ ” publishers, all of whom until now have fought subscription model tooth and nail. Granted, they’re only making a subset of their titles available, mostly backlist as far as I can tell; but it’s the principle of the thing that matters, especially since Oyster is reportedly “ ” with all the other major publishers. Barring some kind of major reversal, this is the first step down a road that will end some years hence with the majority of all books ever written made available via subscription services. That’s a big deal for everyone. And so, just as you’ve (presumably) already discarded almost all of your DVDs and CDs, or at least moved them into some kind of musty storage, it will soon be time to jettison the vast majority of your books, since they’ll all be fully available electronically. It pains me to say this. I grew up in a home with an overstuffed bookcase in every room, and I spent six years of my life as a (published by HarperCollins, in fact.) So let me be the first to say: books aren’t like CDs or DVDs. Books are special. Books are different. …Well, of them are. But let’s face it; most books are really not special, and not different. I see both sides of that; I’ve written or novels which people genuinely seemed to love and want physical copies of, but also a which were well-received, and a lot of fun to write and (hopefully) read, but probably didn’t much change the course of many lives. In the same vein, I want to own and keep physical copies of maybe a hundred books — the ones I love, the ones that matter to me, the ones I refer to regularly — but I’ve read thousands, and I’m quite content to leave most of them resident in the electronic ether. I’ll regret the loss of their tangible editions mostly because I enjoyed leaving them on public transit for others to find and read. I confess to being somewhat disconcerted by the possibility of remote editing/erasing of books controlled by online services, as highlighted by Amazon’s sudden and arbitrary a few years ago; but, again, keep physical copies of those books which actually matter, and that becomes less of a problem. I’m also slightly worried that Oyster might pay authors as poorly as , but since, unlike Spotify, they’re competing with Amazon royalty rates of up to 70%, this seems unlikely. The presumed growth in subscription-model book services also means it becomes increasingly advantageous for authors to make their books available for free via a license. I’ve now done that for (except the Vertigo Comics graphic novel I scripted; they still control its rights.) I don’t know of anyone else other than Cory Doctorow who has CC-released their entire oeuvre, but I expect our number to grow, as authors realize that most readers will eventually wind up using some Oyster-like service, so we’ll receive royalties even though our books are also freely downloadable. With luck we’re entering a world in which readers have access to any and every book for a flat fee; authors get paid depending on how much they’re actually read; publishers remain a vital but decreasingly visible part of the process; physical books are still available via online print-on-demand and niche physical stores; and zillions of CC-licensed books are freely available to readers in the poor world who can’t yet afford books or subscription services. Call me Pollyanna, but it seems to me that that’s a win for absolutely everyone. Vanity shelf, yours truly.
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Pplconnect Launches Its Private Beta For A Virtual Smartphone Platform You Can Use Anywhere
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Darrell Etherington
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Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt this year is underway, and is one of the companies exhibiting today. This Montreal-based startup, co-founded by Jenviev Azzolin and Densil D’Sa, is looking to make your entire smartphone a virtual device, accessible anywhere, at any time, from any device so long as you have an Internet connection. They’re launching their private beta for the first time at Disrupt. Remote access to devices like PCs is already common practice and has been for a long time. Generally with these setups, you can actually gain access to your machine itself, streamed to whatever screen you happen to have to handy. pplconnect is similar in theory, but very different in practice. As D’Sa explained to me in an interview, it’s more about providing access to all the content and basic services of your smartphone regardless of where you are, but with a native interface tailored to each environment. On Android and via a web-based interface for now, you’ll gain access to the ability to call with your own number, send and receive text messages, view stored media and even temporarily transform a friend’s device into your own if you’re in a pinch. “Our system is actually a complete phone on its own, so you can use it as a standalone smartphone,” D’Sa said. “So you could use it independently, but the idea is we link this with your hardware smartphone, and your contacts and information are accessible and usable in every web-enabled device. If you receive a text on one, you can receive it on all devices at once.” The texting aspect is a bit like an iMessage, but platform agnostic. D’Sa and Azzolin demoed pplconnect in action for me at their booth, and despite spotty conference Wi-Fi, it worked as advertised: a text I sent D’Sa’s phone showed up on three separate screens, including on an Android tablet, a PC and an Android smartphone. Plans to support iOS are in the works, and an app should arrive next year. The permissions difference between iOS and Android for third-party developers mean it’s trickier to make pplconnect work with Apple’s mobile OS. Pplconnect has been in development for two years, when D’Sa and Azzolin quit their jobs at Bombardier to devote themselves to the startup full-time. They both shared a vision of total smartphone portability, unbundled from specific devices. Hotel your Phone is a feature that’s exemplary of that vision. “Hotel your Phone is the idea that you can even borrow someone else’s phone and login with yours,” Azzolin explained. “So you can login and make a call with your number, so the receiving person doesn’t even realize that it’s coming from a different device.” Eventually the vision is to make everything, including apps, calendars and anything else accessible from any web-based. But at the same time, they advocate the fact that users don’t have to change their habits to get on board. They don’t have to have to learn any drastically new behaviours. Pplconnect has been funded through an innovation grant so far, which is fairly standard for a Canadian startup, and raised $800,000 from that, plus they’ve also just raised $150,000 from private equity firms. They’re in the process of raising a follow-on to their initial seed investment to help kick development into full gear.
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Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom On New Online Education Initiatives: “If This Doesn’t Wake Them Up, I Don’t Know What Will”
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Rip Empson
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This morning, former San Francisco Mayor and current Lieutenant Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, and Udacity co-founder and CEO Sebastian Thrun took the stage to talk to TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis about technology and the fissures it’s creating in higher education. Lately, the colleges and universities have been put on notice, as average tuition rates continue to rise (along with student debt), students are looking for alternatives. Not only is higher education is expensive, but funding for public education is falling. As a regent of the University of California schools, Newsom said that the system’s budget was cut by over $2 billion this year: Yet another example of why digital education is becoming so important. In response, Thrun, Udacity and a host of online education providers and Silicon Valley tech companies are coming together to . Like Udacity’s new online-only Computer Science degree program at Georgia Tech and its efforts to create online options for 101-level and remedial classes at San Jose State University, this Open Ed. Alliance is a work in progress. It’s an experiment. Experimentation is extremely important at this stage of the game. Sure, Udacity can’t explain away some of its struggles with outcomes during the early-going of its SJSU partnership. But the more Thrun and the company learn in terms of how to communicate its goals (both to students and faculty), the clearer it makes deadlines for coursework and the more transparency it can bring to its process — and its partner schools — the more the end user (i.e. the student) stands to benefit. During the talk, Thrun stressed the importance for he and Udacity to stay focused on product, something that we haven’t much of in education. It’s a mentality that’s endemic among startups and the engineer-heavy culture at startups, but not necessarily in education. In the end, of course, improving educational courseware, content and apps should be all about improving outcomes, personalizing the learning path and adaptive (or responsive) software. These, however, tend to be buzz words in education, and entrepreneurs have largely had a tough time balancing the two. be an extremely disruptive model because it addresses what Thrun and Newsom acknowledged repeatedly as one of the biggest problems that the higher education system faces: The skills gap. Today, education is geared towards assessment — towards preparing students for some illusory, state-driven, assessment-driven goals, which may have no relevance in the end to giving them the skills and preparation they need to thrive outside of higher education. In reference to the Open Education Alliance, Newsom told the crowd: “If this doesn’t wake up the U.C., CSU and the community college systems, I don’t know what will.” As someone operating within the boundaries of the higher educational system, “I say bring it on,” Newsom intoned. This was also a response to the fact that Newsom’s staff had encouraged him not to accept the invitation to appear on today’s panel because of the perception that Thrun is trying to kill higher education. During my talk with him off-stage, Thrun tells me that is decidedly the point of Udacity or this Open Education Alliance. Instead, it is the critics (some of them within the higher education system) that have taken up the torch. Arguing that MOOCs and online education will kill higher education systems or are somehow bad for the end user, for students and for teachers is kind of ridiculous at this point, both Thrun and Newsom replied. “We need to get serious about this,” Newsom responded, and certainly the motivation has been growing. And, really, it comes down to skills. If institutions of higher ed won’t respond to the changing norms and standards, it’s almost as if Udacity, Coursera and EdX (all said to be part of the new alliance) are saying, “well then let’s give students a way to prepare for the kind of technical jobs at Google, Twitter, Facebook and so on that higher ed doesn’t seem to be preparing them for.” In the end, it’s still extremely early for the Open Education Alliance, but the principles behind it could have a huge effect on education down the road. Udacity and companies like Lynda.com have already dabbled as corporate education and training platforms, or like Skillshare, learning platforms focused on giving students the skills they need or want in order to get better at their job — or something they enjoy. But partnering with companies like Google — where leagues of aspiring engineers want to go to work — to help them train these students in a way that actually ensures they could be hired (not just the false promise) has huge implications.
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Joyent Co-Founder Jason Hoffman Steps Down As CTO Of The Cloud Computing Pioneer
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Catherine Shu
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co-founder Jason Hoffman is leaving his position as CTO of the pioneering cloud computing company. Hoffman that he will remain connected to Joyent as an advisor. We’ve reached out to Joyent to ask who their next CTO will be. Hoffman told us this about his post-Joyent plans: “I haven’t quite figured it out yet, I may go back to being an end user, might do a bit more ‘cloud.’ I’m largely interested in the intersection of mobile, m2m and ‘big data’ and how it can impact human health so might do something in that space either at a large company or a startup. I’m leaving myself open to suggestions and seeing what happens.” In his blog post, Hoffman wrote: Building innovative technology has always been a core value of ours, and it permeates all that we do, whether it’s sponsoring and nurturing game changing open source technologies like Node.js or innovating a new, cloud-native way to do virtualization, liberating our customers to create, invent and scale. In short, that “think differently” spirit of innovation is built into our DNA and we’ve accomplished many amazing things living by it. It’s also something I value, and for that reason, I’ve made the decision to embody it in a new way by moving on to pursue new ideas and projects. I’ve loved the process of building Joyent into what it is today, as any respectable founder wishes, you look for people better than yourself who can go execute and you let them do that. The company is in great shape, with a brilliant management team and a change-the-world technology vision in very capable hands with Bryan Cantrill. With Hoffman as its CTO, Joyent cultivated a reputation for breaking barriers in cloud computing and by building open-source technologies that don’t require investments in locked-up converged systems. Under Hoffman’s stewardship, Joyent’s tech innovations have included the system, which launched in June and allows stored data to be queried immediately without the time-consuming and costly task of managing its underlying infrastructure. Manta took four years of research and development and, as our enterprise writer Alex Williams and make Joyent more relevant as an infrastructure and services provider. In an interview just before Manta’s launch, Hoffman said Joyent will continue to make several announcements about new data services, all steps to position the company as a strong competitor against AWS, Microsoft, IBM and other big names in cloud computing. Hoffman briefly served as Joyent’s interim CEO after co-founder David Young left that post in May 2012. Former Force10 Networks CEO and President Henry Wasik joined Joyent as CEO in November 2012.
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Medtech Startup Embrace Her Health Helps Women Track Their Pregnancies
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Eliza Brooke
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Among the crowd showing at TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Alley was , a two-year-old company at work on a suite of maternity apps that aim to enable women to manage their pre- and post-natal health better and cut the risk and costs of preventable complications. Embrace Her Health’s first mobile app for iOS and Android, , serves as both a personal pregnancy tracker and a source of information for expecting mothers. Women plug in their due date, and from there the app uses an algorithm written by the team’s OB/GYNs to power a range of tools related to weight gain, hydration, kicks, and contractions. The app also gives users access to a network of MDs who answer specific questions. Most women only see a doctor once a month during pregnancy, and these appointments are often short, said co-founder Aron Schuftan, MD. This is partly due to the introduction of Obamacare, which resulted in more patients for the same number of doctors. Enabling women to track their own pregnancies fills in those gaps and educates them about risks of which that they might not otherwise be aware. “It’s day-to-day tracking. It’s a more ongoing, proactive identification of risk versus that one-time visit,” CEO and co-founder Denise Terry said. “If your blood pressure doesn’t spike when you’re there [in the office], you’ll never know that it spiked two weeks ago. We’re moving to a daily and weekly self-monitoring state of health. This allows that to happen. You only see a doctor 8 to ten times during your pregnancy. Doctors miss things.” The app assumes a normal pregnancy track, but when certain flags are tripped, they interact with the algorithm to deliver personalized content modules. If a woman learns she is having twins or has gestational diabetes, for instance, the app will provide tips specific to those scenarios. Embrace Her Health was founded two years ago by Terry, Shufton, and Chief Medical Officer Jan Rydfors, MD, who co-authored the widely used clinical handbook “Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Infertility.” Thus far the app has been used by 250,000 women and is distributed by 500 doctors. The company has been bootstrapped so far and is now looking to raise a seed round of $1 million to expand the team and develop similar apps for post-partum health, infant pediatrics, breast feeding, and fertility. That suite will likely launch in Q4. In the next six months, Embrace Her Health will integrate wearable fitness trackers for weight, pulse, and blood pressure into its Pregnancy Companion app, from Withings, Fitbit, and Jawbone Up. Currently, the app serves as a way for mothers to manage their own pregnancies, so that they can bring a potential issue to their physician. The plan is to eventually integrate with doctor’s offices so that based on the mother’s tracking, the doctor will know as soon as the mother does that there is a problem. As with many medical tech devices, the preventative nature of the app is meant to reduce pressure on the medical system overall. Schuftan pointed out that the cost of providing for preterm labor amounts to $60 billion annually. In the interest of giving expecting parents even more of a handle on their pregnancy, Embrace Her Health is looking to incorporate genetic testing from , currently a sponsor for the start-up, into their offerings. “You can know 150 inherent genetic disorders before the baby is born, based on that spit test. It’s amazing, and we think that every expectant couple should use that,” Terry said. “We’ll be incorporating that into your health profile.”
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Forget Quantifying Yourself, Driblet Wants To Help You Quantify Your Water Use
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Chris Velazco
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So our Hackathon technically ended yesterday, but that doesn’t mean we’re through shining the light on some of the great projects that presented on our stage. Take Mexico-based startup Driblet, for instance. The three-person team (who just recently took home the top prize at AngelHack Monterrey) makes a smart water meter that connects to the water pipes in your house. It sits between the pipe and your shower head for instance or between the pipe and your faucet. Nestled inside the device is a slew of sensors that measures (among other things) water flow and the levels of foreign substances in that water, just to make sure you’re working with the really good stuff. It sounds neat and all, but that data is essentially useless if you can’t get it off the device and interpret it. That’s why the Driblet team added a Wi-Fi module into the mix — it uploads all of that information into the Driblet backend, where users can access it by way of a mobile and web app. From there people can dig into how much water they use whenever they bathe or wash the dishes, and even set limits on how much water they (or other, more wasteful members of the household) should be using. Once people start getting close to that limit, a small LED on the front of the sensor will turn yellow and eventually red to signal that a shutdown is necessary. Now Driblet’s big goal here is to try and help its users both save money and conserve water whenever possible. Still, that didn’t stop the team from baking in a curious social angle here, too — users can add friends through the apps and compete to see who’s being the most conservative with their water. Eventually the team hopes to ink retail deals to get their sensor into big-box stores across the country, but for now they’re looking to start things off slowly with a Kickstarter campaign that will launch on October 1. Just be warned: you shouldn’t expect a final, fully polished product when that campaign kicks off. The Driblet team confirmed that they only plan to offer a limited number of its water sensors as a sort of beta test to figure out if everything works the way it’s supposed to and to gauge the demand for yet another interesting connected home gadget. A mild bummer, sure, but considering the sort of good this thing could do, a little fine-tuning period would be nice.
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Outline Raises $850K To Make Public Policy Tools Accessible To All State Residents
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Alex Wilhelm
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Born at Berkeley as , a fun app to compare the personal impacts of tax plans of then rival candidates for president, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, is building a tool to demystify the process of governance. If you have played a real-time strategy game that involves resource management, you understand Outline: Voters can adjust tax rates and the like, and see the impact those changes would have their own budgets, and their state a whole. That it goes both ways matters, as everyone wants more but doesn’t want to pay for it. Outline’s first customer will be the State of Massachusetts, though that deal remains in contractual discussion. The company informed TechCrunch it will likely become cashflow positive following that first agreement. Currently composed of a team of five, Outline is looking to hire three to five more, mostly designers and economists. Outline applies its model to a states’ makeup using datasets from various sources to track tax policy, household income, and other variables. It then allows users to tweak the big dials – statewide tax policy, education spending – and see if their state lands in the red, or the black. It’s an effective tool for showing voters what is, and is not possible. Every voter wants more money for the government programs that they enjoy and personally benefit from, and lower taxes. A state using Outline can cut through that and give everyday citizens a tool that they can understand and use. According to the firm, tools such as theirs do exist inside state governments, but they are complex bits of code, often featuring non-graphical output. Outline flips that by making the process simple, and digestible; if those tools are DOS, Outline wants to be Windows 95. Today at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, Outline announced that it has raised a $850,000 seed round, with the largest chunk of that sum provided by the Knight Foundation. Presuming that the company’s deal with the State of Massachusetts goes as planned, Outline intends to add one state per quarter to kick things off, and double that rate in the following year. Working with the government means long procurement cycles – half a year is within normal bounds – and the company could run into friction. That said, states already expend large sums on similar tools, so its stated sales goals are within reasonable bounds of expectation. The company claims that 10 states are currently “interested” in its service. Akin to Instacart’s slow geographical growth, Outline remains more focused on nailing its first market at the moment than landing five more. Outline will charge on a yearly subscription payment model. Is there appetite from the public for the sort of tooling that Outline provides? When the company was in its nascent form as Politify – before it joined TechStars Boston, and around the time that Massachusetts provided the group with $25,000 to get started – 4 million people used its tool to see under which president they would fare better when it came to taxes. Sure, that’s election year demand, but in my view it does show that folks of different stripes can and do find simple, actionable tools interesting. And in the end, that’s what Outline wants to provide: A desire and action conduit between citizens and their government. Once a citizen has crafted a budget for their state, they can submit it to that government. On the state side, the results are collected, and can be then analyzed to gauge citizen sentiment directly. The future of government? Perhaps a small, but quite interesting piece of it. Q: Will people think that the model is rigged if it doesn’t match their views? A: The model used here are simply legibility formulas. Dynamic scoring isn’t used. This makes it non-partisan. Q: Does this only matter during an election year? A: Government takes up a third of our income. They will therefore be plugged in if they are given a notification that your income is about to go down. Q: What is the line item that governments are buying today that you are the substitute for? A: Most governments buy SaaS ERP systems, and we cover about 40% of that. [Q: Do you want to build an entire government ERP system?] We actually displace about 40% of the features of those tools, and could expand into those other tools. But we haven’t been working on building those features. Q: What if I am a government and I don’t want to be transparent? A: Of course we go after early adopters first. Bureaucrats love the tool as it constrains what is possible [voters can’t pick things that are impossible]. Q: How long to build out, say California wants you for next year? A: About two months, as we have to parse certain policies that are local.
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What’s Ahead For Snapchat? CEO Evan Spiegel Drops Clues In Disrupt Talk
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Billy Gallagher
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Snapchat co-founder and CEO took the stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt and dropped a number of hints about Snapchat’s future products, from wearable tech to social media feeds. What’s particularly interesting is how successful Snapchat has been as a product (Spiegel announced today that on Snapchat, a 1,750% increase in daily photos in less than a year) while Snapchat the company is really still in phase one. Spiegel noted that wearable technology is interesting to Snapchat and is “something we’ll continue to explore with a wide variety of products.” He says the company is not currently working on, or even considering building an app for Google Glass. Spiegel told our own Jordan Crook that he thinks Glass is “invasive,” and sometimes feels like “a gun pointed at you.” This is an interesting contradiction for the company. Snapchat has always been about capturing and sharing moments with your friends in real time. Presumably, there would be no better tool than Google Glass to capture and share exactly what you’re seeing. But at the same time, the app has always been about privacy and intimate moments. On stage, Spiegel suggested a recording light for Glass so that people know when they’re being recorded. The company has already , an app for the Samsung Galaxy Gear smart watch. “One of the key parts of our service is reducing that amount of time between seeing something that you really want to share and being able to share it,” Spiegel said. “We really found playing with the prototypes of the watch that it was really fun and easy to just be able to grab it on the watch…there was a lot of delight that that was two seconds instead of seven.” Speed is huge for Snapchat. The , on its technology allowing users to take a picture by tapping the camera button and a video by holding down the same camera button. This technology, and the app always opening right to the record screen, lets users grab moments very quickly. Spiegel spoke about how he thinks too much technology to date has kept the digital and analog worlds separate, and how Snapchat aims to better bridge the real world and digital world. “It turns out that video chat is kind of lame because the connection breaks up, when you really could leverage all of these great aspects of the digital world,” Spiegel said. “Like Snapchat, where you don’t have to set a time to talk to someone and you never have to say goodbye. So, we’re kind of looking at a future where people acknowledge the hybridization of digital and analog, and appreciate and understand that they both affect each other. And products will be built in that vein.” While Spiegel used video chat as an example of the gap between the real world and technology, it would certainly be an interesting space for Snapchat to enter. “The interesting thing about a feed is that the more content you consume, the more photos, videos you look at, the farther away in time you get from your friends…and that doesn’t make you feel very good,” Spiegel said, talking about the chronology of most social feeds. “We’ve really been putting a lot of time into thinking about the feed.” Snapchat doesn’t have a feed right now, relying solely on an inbox of snaps. The app has a top friends feature, which the company recently increased from three to five friends, that is very time-sensitive based on who you’ve been messaging lately. What would a Snapchat feed look like? It would have to be a way to keep things really similar to the core Snapchat mission: real time sharing of impermanent content. A really easy way to picture this is to think of your Instagram feed if all of the photos had to be uploaded as soon as they were taken, and if a picture expired after an hour (or some other small increment of time). Users could like and/or comment on photos and videos, with all of the content, including likes and comments, expiring after a set amount of time. Comments could be restricted to photo or video responses to keep with the Snapchat style of visual interaction. People already send plenty of “group” snaps, firing off the same picture to a dozen or more contacts, but the company hasn’t released any features yet to allow people to interact with content in a collective group setting. “I think in general, we’re going a totally different direction than traditional social media, so I’m not sure we view them as a direct competitor,” Spiegel said. “I think if anything we want to make sure people still have those spaces to create and save really pretty photos or things they’re really proud of. And I want to support the growth of those companies that like to do that.” If Spiegel seems overly confident, it may be because Snapchat , and caught the eye of CEO Mark Zuckerberg. While Spiegel said the company has had “no formal acquisition offers,” he did note that he’s “talked with Mark a few times.” Crook pressed Spiegel about from alleged co-founder Reggie Brown, particularly regarding a for the idea of impermanent messaging. “I feel fortunate that Reggie [Brown] shared that desire with me,” Spiegel said. The comment was brief, and Spiegel did a good job of directing the discussion back to the Snapchat product, but was a significant public admission of Brown’s early involvement. Spiegel continued to explain that when Snapchat was in its early stages, he saw a lot of competitors who were focused on sharing secrets. “We really thought there was an opportunity to do something around self expression,” Spiegel said. This combination of impermanence and self expression can be applied to anything, particularly consumer products, as the company moves forward. Obviously a social feed comes to mind because Spiegel mentioned it on stage. But the young CEO has a lot of tact and likely would hold the next product launch closer to the vest, preferring to discuss theoretical products or broader areas. That’s why the rumors we’ve heard about Snapchat Email interest me the most. When Crook asked him about “Snap Email” on stage, Spiegel directed the conversation towards the broader topic of digital dualism, using video chat as an example. Snap Email makes a lot of sense to me for personal email addresses. Mailbox did a great job of making our email inboxes less of a pain in the ass by helping us manage our inboxes themselves better. Twitter Direct Messages lower the barrier of entry to sending an email by restricting us to 140 characters. Facebook messages prod us to respond immediately by showing the recipient when you’ve read the message. We hear that Mailbox co-founder Gentry Underwood is very interested in the idea of impermanent email, but doesn’t know if the Mailbox team will have time to get around to it. What better company to tackle impermanent email than Snapchat? Snap Email could erase itself a set amount of time after you open it, essentially forcing you to respond immediately to emails. This would obviously be a disaster for most work email accounts (Hey John, did you get the quarterly financials? Aaaaand it’s gone.), but could be a great option for personal email, especially for many core Snapchat users in college and their early 20s.
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Jack The Ripper Is A DIY, 3D-Printed DVD Ripper For Fans Of Optical Media
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John Biggs
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mmHycIOtYHA] If you like DVDs but also like shelf space, have we got a project for you. Called Jack the Ripper, this -powered system takes DVDs from one pile, drops them into a DVD drive for ripping, and then tugs them out and onto another spindle. Ad infinitum. created the system when he realized that ripping his whole DVD collection would take way too much time. Like all good hackers, he designed and printed a complete solution using motors, microprocessors, and an old laptop. You can download the and build your own or you can read Ayre’s detailed and well-written description of his project on his . While I doubt any of us will need this thing anymore, it’s nice to know we can rip ourselves some DVDs using robots these days. What, I ask you, will they think of next?
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SlickLogin Aims To Kill The Password By Singing A Silent Song To Your Smartphone
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Greg Kumparak
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The password , and SlickLogin is trying to help kill it. Launching into closed beta in the Disrupt SF 2013 Battlefield today, lets you log into a website on your computer by holding your phone within a few inches of it. Here’s the idea: as a user, you’d go to whatever SlickLogin-enabled site you’d like to log in to. Tap the login button, hold your phone up close to the laptop, and you’re in. SlickLogin can be used either as a secondary verification layer to your existing credentials (think RSA keys or an SMS-based two factor system, without having to type any codes), or, if the service provider chooses, can forego username/password typing all together. So, how does it work? SlickLogin can use a bunch of protocols to start verifying your phone’s position: WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, visual markers like QR codes, and of course, GPS. Their self-dubbed “secret sauce”, though, is their use of uniquely generated sounds intentionally made inaudible to the human ear. Your computer plays the sound through its speakers, while an app on your smartphone uses the device’s built-in microphone to pick up the audio. Once it processes the sound and identifies that it’s you (or at least, someone with your phone) standing in front of your computer, it sends the green light up to the server to let you log in. SlickLogin doesn’t require your company to build a whole new mobile app; instead, you just add 5 lines of code to your existing app. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen high-frequency sound used to transfer data, of course. The as-yet unlaunched payments service Clinkle is said to use high frequency sounds to let users send money to others nearby. SonicNotify is using the concept to let TV advertisers and retail stores send content to handsets. is trying to build an entire file transfer protocol based on the idea. It is, however, the first time I’ve seen it used for logins and two-factor authentication. My immediate concern with this was one I’d imagine most users would have: how secure is it? I spoke with SlickLogin’s founders for quite a while about security, and it seems like they have their bases covered (or, at least, the various bases I could think of without a heavy security background) — which makes sense, given that all 3 of the founders are graduates of the Israeli Defense Force unit that specializes in security. Everything is very heavily encrypted, so man in the middle attacks are out. You can’t record the audio signal and just play it back later, as the audio is uniquely tied to that moment. You can’t just hold your phone up to someone else’s audio signal (or grab it from across the room with a directional mic) in hopes of getting logged in to their account before they do; your phone wouldn’t have their login credentials stored on it, and that crucial bit isn’t wrapped into the sound. If anything, you’d just log them in to your own account. And if someone steals your phone? “If they can get into your phone, they have access to your accounts already,” the founders responded. Curiously, SlickLogin let service providers choose to allow users to log in without actually unlocking their phones, which seems a bit risky. SlickLogin says they want services to be able to set their security standards as they see fit. SlickLogin says they’re working on a proof of concept implementation with a “major international bank” (though they didn’t specify which). The service is rolling into a closed beta later today; if you’re interested in experimenting with it on your site, you can find the sign-up box at the bottom of We’ll have a video of their on-stage demo/presentation up shortly. The seamlessness for the user. We’re also more cost effective, because we don’t require any new hardware. The laptop. We’ll detect that we can’t hear anything and ask you to turn your speakers up. It’s a different key. Completely different. Right now, yes. But we’ve got a patent pending for a method that works without it. We will work with large enterprises to provide security for their users and their employees.
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Shine Security Is Reinventing The Antivirus Company For The Age Of Zero-Day Attacks
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Sarah Perez
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Launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, is reinventing the idea of what it means to be an antivirus company in an age of cyber-warfare and zero-day attacks. The company’s technology was built by white hat, ethical hackers, and works in real time, performing behavioral monitoring on end users’ systems in order to stop newly emerging threats that other anti-virus firms have yet to discover or identify. It may be easier to understand what is, by first explaining what it is not. Unlike traditional anti-virus/anti-malware providers, Shine doesn’t use definition files or virus signatures (like Symantec, Kaspersky, McAfee and others); it doesn’t analyze code in search of patterns (like Lookout), nor does it use “sandboxing” techniques where files and bits initially run in a protected space for milliseconds to help determine whether or not the code is malicious. Instead, Shine Security performs real-time behavioral analysis on the device itself. It monitors every event taking place using machine learning algorithms that identify new threats moments after they occur. Of course, that means it can’t stop the very first steps that a particular piece of malware may take – the activity that helps Shine identify it in the first place. But that’s where the company’s other breakthrough comes in. Devices running Shine can “self heal” after malicious code runs, and is then stopped. This is different from doing a restore from backup, like you can do today using things like Apple’s Time Machine, for example. Where that wipes a section of the operating system itself, and re-installs things that were saved before, Shine is actually rolling back the specific damages and code changes step-by-step. If all this activity sounds very processor-intensive, Shine CEO and co-founder claims that’s not the case – they’ve figured out how to make it work using less than 1 percent of the CPU. Porat started hacking at age six, he says, but after taking a break in his teens, he ended up going to university for archaeology, not anything in the computer sciences. However, after serving in the Israeli army and later working for the Israeli antiquities department, he found his way back to his preferred hobby. He started a security company, , in 2004, which was acquired by Ernest & Young in 2011. He also founded and sold , focused on application security, acquired by Quotium Technologies last year. With Shine Security, Porat now wants to redefine what it means to be an anti-virus company. “We’re changing the laws of physics in the world of anti-virus by coping with viruses on the fly,” he says. “The most challenging thing is to run machine learning on the device – it’s supposed be very intensive on the CPU, but we managed to do that very nicely without stressing the device…Then there’s a brain that resides as a hive in the cloud that collaborates the work on each of the devices together.” This is another aspect to Shine technology that makes it different – it doesn’t focus on just protecting devices, it focuses on protecting people. The company lets users manage all their many devices from a central point, including those from others in their family. As Porat explains, often when a hacker is attempting to target a specific individual, they look for the weakest point in their network – like, for example, a device one of the kids is using. Shine Security calls this concept “Entity in Motion.” “At work, I’m a user and I have several devices. At home, I have several devices,” says Porat. “Shine looks at me as an , not as a user. It sees all my devices and can protect me at home and at work in the same way.” Based north of Tel Aviv, Shine Security was also co-founded by COO , who brings a governmental security background to the company, and , who has extensive experience in R&D, previously as the technical GM of Comverse in Japan. The team holds very high security clearances, and has done work for banks, telcos, governments, homeland security agencies, and other businesses. The startup today has 24 employees, and from Li Ka-shing’s and Roi Carthy’s . Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, Shine Security is releasing the Android version of its service, with plans to release the completed Windows version next, to be followed by versions for Mac OS X and iOS in the coming months. Users will be able to . The business model will be freemium, where advanced features – like the self-healing capabilities – will be offered for a yet to be determined price. In addition, the company is working with OEMs on pre-installations, and a service for businesses. Judges: Patrick Gallagher (Crunchfund), Julia Hartz (Eventbrite),
Rick Klau (Google Ventures), Matthew Prince (CloudFlare) PG: It looks like you’re capturing signatures? Are you finding new attacks on the fly? Do you have false positives?
A: Protection is not based on signatures, it’s based on machine learning and AI. Our protection rate is 96% and traditional antivirus is 50%.
PG: Are you tracking everything I do on my phone?
A: You’re giving us nothing, everything is happening locally on your device.
MP: Running an AI engine on the phone burns the CPU, which burns battery life. How much battery life hit are you taking?
A: We’ve changed the laws of physics. (MP incredulous). You can download it and see. We take less than 1 percent
battery life…We determine what’s bad or good back in the lab, just the brain is installed on device. It just runs when we have to inspect something.
MP: How big a problem is this really? I don’t think we can point to one person who’s had this problem. Locked down, controlled app stores have eliminated the widespread distribution of malicious apps. Is this something Google should be solving?
A: They should. 25 percent of apps have malicious activity of some kind. Many applications in our lab are coming from official app stores and have malware.
RK: A year ago, a carrier had preinstalled spyware on their devices. You’re creating a mapping for that user of all the devices they have – that worries me as a consumer. How are you mapping that?
A: As a user, you have to do that actively. Users have to install Shine.
Q: But who has access to my data?
A: No one, not even us. We can’t see what happens on your device. We’re not picking up events and when you do changes. It’s something that happens locally. We’re not trying to mess with privacy – this is what we’re protecting against.
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Facebook Will Give Marketers Access To Conversation Data With Richer Identity Details Than Twitter
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Josh Constine
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Facebook knows what you talk about, just like Twitter. But its edge is that it also knows who you are. Facebook’s let select news outlets view search and see your public posts, plus it tallies keyword mentions and collects the demographic data of everyone mentioning certain keywords. But it’s confirmed to me that “We see the potential for these tools to be really useful down the line for brands and agencies. That will definitely come in the coming weeks.” It all started with Facebook Lexicon. Built by one of Facebook’s early data scientists Roddy Lindsay, to little fanfare back in 2008 and let you see the relative frequency of how often different keywords appeared in wall posts. Similar to Google Trends, you couldn’t see the exact number of times people mentioned “Iraq,” but could see how popularity of the term waxed and waned. I used Lexicon while doing doing research during my Cybersociology Masters degree on for longer than others. The vision into our collective opinion was stunning. Less than two years later, Facebook had and Lindsay quietly left the company this June. But the essence of his work was revived today as Facebook announced the launch of the , and gave access to BuzzFeed, CNN, NBC’s Today Show, BSkyB, Slate, and analytics firm Mass Relevance. The Public Feed API lets these companies search for a word and see a firehose of public posts that mention it. The Keyword Insights API, meanwhile, shows how many people mentioned a word in both public and private posts during a set time frame, and shows a demographic breakdown of the age, gender, and location of these people. [ : To be clear, the Public Feed and Keyword Insights APIs fully respect your privacy settings. If you set a post to “public” then news outlets and eventually marketers can see it through the API just the same way as anyone else in the world could. The Keyword Insights API does tap private data, but in a totally anonymized way. It only provide tallies of the total number of mentions of a certain word there have been in public and private posts during a certain time period. No one sees the actual content of your private posts, and your name is never connected to your anonymized demographic data. The headline of this article has been changed from “Your Facebook Posts, Gift-Wrapped In Identity, Will Soon Be Given To Marketers” to clarify this.] You can call it Facebook copying Twitter again, but that last part could make it a lot more powerful than insights on tweets. Back in 2010, . It wasn’t a big new product, but a rejigging of how user profiles were displayed. It put all your About info smack dab at the top of your profile. Prompts like “Add your current city” would stare you in the face if you didn’t fill them out, and friends would remind you if you forgot to update your profile with your new job. And nearly overnight, Facebook collected possibly the most detailed and accurate structured personal data set the world has ever known. That information on your relationship status, education history, languages spoken, and more would become crucial to powering both its and its ad engine. It could show you more stories from people you went to college with, and let advertisers pimp wedding photographers to you because you say your betrothed. Now it’s that data that could give Facebook a leg up in trading the zeitgeist to news outlets in exchange for promoting the social network as a place to discuss world news, sports, television, and other real-time events. If the Today Show uses these APIs to show how many people are talking about Syria and what they’re saying, they’re simultaneously telling their viewers that Facebook is where you should discuss the war-torn country. Twitter’s been doing this for years — helping TV broadcasters fill out their shows with polls about what people are saying in 140 characters. But Twitter doesn’t require you to provide your age, gender, or any other info about yourself when you sign up. Once you’re tweeting, it hardly asks for anything past your location and who you want to follow. So while Twitter could tell news outlets how many people are talking about Miley Cyrus and what they’re saying, Facebook could show whether teenagers are actually talking about it, or just cranky adults. Or it could more accurately say which of two sports teams’ home cities are posting about them more. Combined with its user base being around five times larger than Twitter’s, structured data could make Facebook a media darling. A marketing darling, too. Facebook confirmed to me that beyond the news outlets and analytics firms that it announced today would gain Public Feed and Keyword Insights API access, brands and advertising agencies will also get to gander at your conversations. “It’s definitely something we’re exploring,” a Facebook spokesperson told me. It’s not going to be a free-for-all. “It won’t be open to anybody. It’s something we’ll need to partner with people on,” the company said. I’d bet that Facebook would initially give some of its Strategic Preferred Marketing Developers and biggest brands a first crack at these APIs to see what they come up with. As per Facebook’s trial-and-error strategy, it will probably see what developers and brands find most useful about getting to access to your conversations and then build out that functionality. At first, that might be better social media listening functionality. By giving brand marketers a peek into News Feed chatter, Facebook could help them brainstorm posts to publish from their Pages. Facebook will have to protect your privacy, but there are still huge opportunities. The biggest might be in turning the public consciousness into smarter ads. Right now, Facebook advertisers target you based on the structured identity and interest data in your profile. But in 2011 Facebook tested the option to serve that correspond to what . Meanwhile, last year’s launch of let advertisers reach you in real-time based on the other websites you’ve recently visited. If you combined ads based on what you’re saying with real-time delivery, you’d have a way to target people with ads about what they’re discussing and when they’re discussing it. That’s how today’s APIs for news outlets could lay out a path to an updated Facebook ads API for efficiently buying keyword-mention-related ads. For now, expect Facebook stats to pop up more often in your nightly news. If you post publicly, you might even end up famous. Along with other Twitter-style features like hashtags, trending topics, embedded posts, and verified profiles, these new APIs could help convince you to make Facebook your digital water cooler. But eventually, Facebook’s investment in collecting structured data could pay off big time. Because when advertisers can find out both what you’re saying and who you are, they’ll open their wallets and you might, too.
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Zula’s Mobile-First Teamwork Tool Lets You Spend More Time Outside Of The Inbox
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Darrell Etherington
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a startup from Jeff Pulver, a co-founder of VoIP success story Vonage, and serial entrepreneur Jacob Ner-David, is hoping to make your life a little less reliant on your inbox. The app combines elements of enterprise collaboration and communication tools, as well as mobile messaging giants like WhatsApp, for a tool that targets enterprise but could also find a home with personal users as well. The team’s priorities seem to have shifted slightly since the last time Zula popped up on our radar — at the time the , but these days they’re much more amenable to the notion of opening up the app to the masses. Today’s Zula isn’t a purely business play, as the team now looks as it more as tool for teams of all sizes to communicate more effectively. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the app itself is really rather handsome, too. The UI is remarkably clean and free of nearly all visual clutter, and it seems as though very design choice made here was for the sake of reducing complexity. The end result is an app that looks good and works well. But what does Zula actually do? All of this communication hinges on the concept of the eponymous Zula, a group to which you can invite friends from your phone’s contact list, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google account. And of course, there’s no upper limit to the amount of Zulas you can create (if you’re willing to pay, anyway), so users are welcome create groups that are as granular as they need. Once those comrades have been added to the fray, all the usual accoutrements are present and accounted for — they can start chatting away in the main stream, and it’s trivial enough to fire off photos into that main Zula river. Users are also able to call out individual Zula members with a Twitter-style @ mention, and effectively “shout” messages to catch the attention of the rest of the team’s participants. Missed out on one of those sweet, sweet cat images that pepper your team’s conversations? Every bit of media that gets sent to the Zula group is archived for posterity. Given co-founder Jeff Pulver’s history as co-founder of Vonage, it comes as little surprise that Zula also plays home to some dead-simple VoIP functionality too. It takes a single touch to rope every member of a Zula into a conference call, and a few quick swipes lets people call others who have been added to the Zula group.
All of Zula’s competitors are focused on corporate users, the company told us, whereas Zula is open and doesn’t discriminate. “Unlike certain apps, Zula doesn’t require you to know each other personally,” Pulver explained in an interview. “WhatsApp needs you to know each other’s phone numbers. We let you call each other without phone numbers.” Invites go out over connected social media accounts, and once invitees sign up, they’re pulled directly to the conversation they were invited to specifically. Zula is making its official debut on iOS, with the app currently in Apple’s review process and approval pending at any moment. They’ll also target Android shortly, and eventually HTML5 and web, too. Originally, Pulver said he’d hoped to build a product that was mobile-only, but after testing and gathering feedback from clients, especially those who are business users, it became apparent they’d need some kind of desktop client as well, so that’s in the works for down the road. Eventually, the goal is to make Zula into a platform that others can build applications on top of. So conceivably you could have collaborative apps that run in Zula groups, allowing participants to interact with other services and features without ever leaving the Zula app itself. It sounds like it could resemble what Kik has done with Cards, and potentially provide some revenue opportunities. Zula’s revenue model is a freemium one not unlike other enterprise startups, so that you get access to most of Zula’s features for free, but will have to pay to unlock some things, like recording conference calls, hosting a large number of Zula’s, or having more than 16 people on any one Zula. It’s a tried-and-tested approach to an enterprise offering, and one that should suit well its ability to appeal to both consumers and larger organizations. Pulver has a track record that shows he’s savvy about communication, with an early success in the now-crowded VoIP space. Ner-David has also built a successful VoIP company, called Delta Three, which managed a nearly $1 billion IPO. Zula has raised $350,000 from angel investors, founder funds and Israeli crowdfunding platform OurCrowd.
The dev team is based in israel, while the headquarters are in New York. Jacob previously founded and sold Delta 3, while Jeff started Vonage and took it public.
There’s a number of ways to create an account, but primarily you can create a separate Zula account or log in with Facebook or Google accounts.
Zula will be available for iOS and Android first, but there’s an HTML5 version in the works and should see a launch in 8-12 weeks
Zula is an over-the-top service with a couple layers of security, built on Google App Engine and their own secure messaging protocol. People who want to run Zula on their premises will be able to eventually/
No, they’re siloed and compartmentalized.
Freemium, planning low single dollar monthly subscriptions for features like call recording and increasing the number of Zulas you can create. Zula has also ready been approached about doing on-premise and white label stuff by potential partners.
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Nexon Takes A Strategic Stake In Former Zynga, EA COO’s New Gaming Startup
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Kim-Mai Cutler
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Nexon, the publicly traded free-to-play gaming giant out of Asia, is continuing its streak of strategic investments in promising Western studios by taking a stake in John Schappert’s new startup . They didn’t disclose the size of the deal, which will see Nexon take an equity stake in the company in exchange for exclusive global publishing rights to Shiver’s upcoming games. Nexon’s CFO Owen Mahoney will also get a role on Shiver’s board of directors. Schappert most recently served as Zynga’s COO after holding the . Shiver won’t be Schappert’s first startup, as he founded Tiburon Entertainment back in 1994. That company, which spawned the massively successful Madden NFL franchise, was bought by EA in 1998. Schappert said that he wanted to found another startup instead of joining an existing gaming company at a senior level. “I’ve been very lucky to work on the biggest franchises in the industry. What gets me the most excited is building immersive games and working with some of the best creators in the industry,” he said. He hasn’t revealed who is on his team, but says that news is forthcoming very soon. He started the company about nine months ago and hinted that we might see some titles out of the company shortly. He wouldn’t give too many specifics on what genres the company will focus on, except to say, “We’re going to focus on more significant, more immersive games — the high fidelity games that people play $50 to 60 for — except in a free-to-play format.” This isn’t the first company from a Zynga alum that Nexon’s done a deal with either. The Tokyo-headquartered company recently did another similar strategic investment in a , Zynga’s former chief game designer. These deals are part of an effort to help Nexon reach more Western audiences. While Nexon generated nearly $450 million in revenues in the first three months of this year, European and North American markets contributed about 8 percent of the company’s revenues during that time. In contrast, China makes up nearly half of Nexon’s revenue base. So Nexon is looking to reach North American and European audiences as the Android and iOS platforms weaken the divide between Asian and Western gamers.
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Ansa Is A Messaging App That Lets You Talk Off The Record
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Romain Dillet
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is a new breed of messaging app, one that allows you to be yourself. Whenever you don’t feel like sending messages that will stay on your friend’s phone, you can go off the record. Every message will be deleted 60 seconds after reading it. This is just one of many privacy features that will make messaging more personal. Launching onstage at Disrupt SF, the app is now available on iOS and Android. “The difference with other texting apps is that everything you say is permanent,” founder and CEO Natalie Bryla told me in a phone interview before Disrupt. “If you think about that, you will want to use another app that allows you to talk more freely,” she continued. The main feature is the off-the-record button. After hitting a button, your recipient is notified of the change. Both your messages and the responses will be deleted. At any point, you can go back on the record and the recipient will be notified. But it doesn’t stop there. If you think you shouldn’t have sent a message, you can delete it hours, days or even months after sending it. It not only deletes it on your phone, it deletes it on your recipient’s phone as well. This feature is called “sync deletion.” All Ansa features put you in control of your conversation. When you delete a message, it is deleted from Ansa’s servers at the same time. It’s effectively gone forever. However, for your regular on-the-record converstations, Ansa keeps everything on its servers like Facebook does. It allows you to use another phone and find your conversation history. Finally, you can send self-destructing messages. While this feature is very reminiscent of ephemeral startup , Ansa allows you to send text messages, photos and videos. And it’s just an additional feature that makes sense to the service. The app allows you to communicate in more creative ways. You can apply filters to your pictures and draw goofy things before sending them. If you want to communicate using a popular song or a cute image, you can search Google images and YouTube without ever leaving the app. To notify you when your friends join Ansa, the app allows you to sync your address book and Facebook account. But it seems like Ansa users are going to use the messaging app only with a few close friends — so they don’t have to convince their entire address book to switch to a new service. When asked if group messaging was possible, Bryla said that the startup won’t develop this feature, “because we think it’s not personal.” In fact, Ansa works a lot like good old text messages. “You can send one message to multiple people and they can respond individually,” she said. Ansa targets college students because they experience a lot of changes in their lives. For example, you can delete an entire conversation in a few taps. On your recipient’s phone, your messages will be gone and he or she will keep his or her own messages. Based in San Francisco, the team of eight has raised $250,000 so far. For now, the startup is focused on polishing the product and getting it in everyone’s hands. But Bryla hinted at potential advertising opportunities. Ansa could become an ephemeral ad platform, with ads in the native stream. For example, one could imagine a deal from Chipotle that disappears after 60 seconds. You have to act fast if you want to get the deal. But one thing is here to stay: the Ansa app, available on the App Store and Google Play. Judges: ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ) How do you compete with Snapchat?
I need more than photos. What data do you have that this is a big opportunity?
It’s been interesting talking to people. Snapchat is targeting a younger group. When I’m talking to older people, they really get Ansa. A server component that is holding my content. Where are copies of my messages? Should I trust Ansa for business communications?
Everything is encrypted. When you send a message, it goes to our servers then it gets delivered. If you do a sync delete, it’s deleted from our servers. What is the background of the founders?
Before this, I’ve been doing a subscription and delivery startup.
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Shasta Ventures’ Rob Coneybeer On Why He’s Betting Big On Hardware Startups
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Ryan Lawler
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Shasta Ventures’ managing director Rob Coneybeer likes the opportunity in hardware startups. A lot. And he’s putting his money where his mouth is — over the past year or so he’s made investments in companies like Nest and Ouya, and is actively on the hunt for more that are building physical products. So what’s he find so interesting about today’s hardware startups? “With hardware, I think there’s just a huge opportunity to build great companies there. The world has changed a lot,” Coneybeer said. He said he thinks about hardware along two dimensions — the first is the business opportunity, and the second is personal interest. Trained as a mechanical engineer, Coneybeer is interested in providing not just money but experience for companies that he’s making investments in. Moore’s Law has gotten to the point where companies can put supercomputers in almost anything, leading to immense computing power behind many of the newest hardware products. Not just that, but improvements in supply chain and lower cost of materials has made it easier than ever to design, prototype, and ultimately produce hardware. In the consumer market, Coneybeer sees opportunities with smart locks, lighting, and home automation. A growing number of web services are emerging to help manage those devices. On the enterprise side there are opportunities for surveillance and delivery. Check out the interview above and see what the future of hardware holds.
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Voxel Virtualizes Mobile Apps To Create Truly Playable, Interactive Ads
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Anthony Ha
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, a startup aiming to make mobile ads genuinely representative of the apps they’re promoting, just launched on-stage as part of the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt SF. The company’s founding team includes some experienced entrepreneurs. CEO David Zhao was co-founder and CEO at Zecter, the startup behind cloud service ZumoDrive, which was in 2010. President Russ d’Sa, meanwhile, was an engineer at Twitter (where he said he invented the ) and 23andMe, and he also co-founded startups MeetYou and DraftMix. Like Zecter, d’Sa’s startups were backed by Y Combinator, and that’s where d’Sa and Zhao met. Zhao and d’Sa told me that they’ve developed a platform for virtualizing mobile apps, so the apps can run in the cloud, without requiring any installation from the user, and with very little latency. Why would someone want to do that to their app? Well, Voxel is starting out by tackling advertising. Zhao described the existing options for mobile ads as an “awkward and poor user experience.” After all, whether advertisers are using banner ads or interstitials, requiring users to download an app before they’ve even had a chance to try it isn’t really ideal. Using Voxel’s platform, mobile developers and publishers can create a virtualized version of their app, which can then become a fully interactive ad. As d’Sa put it, “The product literally is the advertisement.” So with Voxel, the install experience is flipped — people actually use the app before they’re asked to download it. Zhao argued that this won’t just make users more willing to install the app — since people who install the app have actually tried it, and they’re more likely to actually use it too. d’Sa added that instead of building an ad network of its own, the Voxel team hopes to integrate with existing networks. He suggested that these interactive capabilities could be used in a wide range of potential ad formats. During his on-stage demo, d’Sa also suggested that Voxel could change the way mobile software is distributed — the App Store, he said, “feels like 20 years ago,” with its static images and all the clicking that’s required. d’Sa said the platform works by creating a video stream of the app, then recording the user’s actions and replaying them in the cloud. And it’s doing it all super-quickly, as I saw when Zhao and d’Sa gave me a demo of some sample games virtualized by Voxel. They initially braved the terrible cellular reception in the TechCrunch office, and the performance was good enough that d’Sa could play a fast-moving run-and-jump game with minimal latency. Then they switched to the office WiFi, and (had I not been told beforehand) I could have been convinced that the games were running natively on the phone. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elTYkSwx_z4&w=420&h=315] There are other companies offering app virtualization tools, but Zhao suggested that they’re somewhat “specialized”. is focused on creating versions of iOS apps that work in the browser, allowing companies to include app demos on their websites. And was built for advertising Android games (though executives have told me they have broader ambitions). d’Sa said that Voxel, on the other hand, is “much more of a platform than the existing players,” because even though the company is starting out with ads, the technology is built to expand into other areas. For example, Zhao said it might be used to create virtualized versions of enterprise apps, so that sensitive data isn’t stored on personal devices. Or developers could create demos to test out app ideas before they build the full product. The platform is limited to iOS apps for now, but Zhao said the company will support Android too. Initial partners include PocketGems and HotelTonight. Voxel has raised $1.6 million in seed funding from , , , Sanjay Jha, Joyo Wijaya, and David Limp. Questions from judges: Native is always going to run faster than apps over the network, but latency is “a key thing” — the game demo was a live demo, and Voxel works with all core game types. Server location is a factor, but Voxel has also optimized every point in the pipeline. Mobile web is “a big part of it,” but at the same time companies like Facebook have stepped back from HTML5. Well, “people are building apps natively today.” ? If you want to “play in mobile” you need to abide by the rules set by the two major platforms, Apple and Google, and they don’t let you distribute app stores in their app stores.
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Hands On With The Anova Automatic Sous Vide System
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John Biggs
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Sous vide cooking is probably one of the most high-tech methods of food preparation that home cooks can perform without a degree in chemistry and/or killing themselves and those around them. That’s why I was particularly excited to try the , an automatic sous vide circulator that can turn a lump of cold chicken into a succulent taste sensation in about an hour. Sous vide is a form of poaching in which meats and vegetables are vacuum-sealed in bags and then slowly cooked at low temperatures in circulated water. The Anova, for example, allows you to seal a chicken breast in a bag and cook it completely without losing any of the juices or burning the meat. You can then sear the surface of the meat by hand after it’s cooked, creating some of the best darn chicken you’ve ever tasted. The Anova is surprisingly simple. To use it you need a large pot of water and a power outlet. You must seal the meat in a plastic bag – zipper bags probably won’t work, sadly, so a vacuum heat sealer is also needed. You then set the temperature and time. For example, I cooked the chicken on the right at 60 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes. I then salted it and seared it on a hot pan. The system has a temperature range of 25°C to 99°C and a 12-liter-per-minute pump that circulates the water while cooking. Ideally you would pre-heat the system before dumping in the food because food lying comfortably in tepid water isn’t a great idea. The founder and creator, Jeff Wu, claims to have made the first affordable home sous vide system on the market. Although there are a few open source and DIY projects out there, this is one of the most “Apple-esque” fire-and-forget models we’ve seen. Wu has a background in biochemistry, computer science, and finance. He builds hardware for pharmaceutical and chemical companies. “Most if not all the products I’ve helped develop are directly related to new drug research, medical research or the development of new novel materials,” he said. “I get to meet a lot of smart people in my line of work – mostly PhD researchers, grad students, and Nobel laureates now and then – which is incidentally how I found out about sous vide.” “I was in Boston visiting a research group at MIT/ Harvard/BC (don’t remember which one) about 4 years ago and saw some grad students sous viding some chicken in a lab circulator and finishing it off on a hot plate. This got me interested enough to try it at our lab which was a huge mistake that nearly killed the project,” he said. “I basically had no idea what I was doing since there wasn’t really any clear guide for sous vide in 2009 and on top of it all, my bags got sucked into to the turbines of the scientific circulators.” So is it amazing? Yes. I’m kind of hooked. The fact that this thing is (you’ll also need to invest in a $70 vacuum sealer and a big pot) makes it quite compelling and it made some excellent food in only a few hours. I’ve always wondered how fancier restaurants made most of their succulent meats and non-soggy veg and now I know. Because it requires very little preparation you can essentially set it and forget it. You can also leave food in at low temperatures for up to 72 hours, thereby creating some amazing slow-cooked food that isn’t as sloppy as a pot of baked beans but is every bit as flavorful as one. Again, $199 is a big investment for a fairly cool cooking tool. However, if you’re a foodie and you want to try sous vide, this is probably the best device out there. There are other online but those are brushing past the $400 mark and higher. This is the first “standalone” model – you do need other equipment to make it work, but not much – and it is surprisingly easy to use and elegantly designed. Good sous vide is obviously a pretty intense cooking technique. Thankfully, food nerds like Wu are out there and making cool stuff like the Anova.
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LogEntries Secures $10M Led By Polaris Ventures To Scale Log Management For SMEs
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Mike Butcher
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Last year a $1.1M seed round led by . Similar to Splunk, which has IPO’d, LogEntries collects and analyzes huge quantities of machine-generated log data, helping companies track their application logs. But unlike Splunk, which works with big enterprise or ‘the Fortune 500’, LogEntries wants to go after SMEs, or ‘the Fortune 5 million’. To that end it’s now received $10 million in Series A financing, once again led by Polaris Partners, and participated in by Floodgate, RRE Ventures and new local Irish firm Frontline Ventures. It’s also named Andrew Burton as president and CEO. SaaS Veteran Burton previously held executive roles through two startup IPO’s. LogEntries will use the funds to accelerate product development and expand. LogEntries claims to have no complex query language and can identify and alert on significant events in a company’s data. The real-time search solution works across the entire software stack and was founded by Dr. Trevor Parsons and Dr. Viliam Holub. It also plugs into Heroku. Log management systems are notorious for requiring complex technical skills, but instead uses a “collective intelligence” model deal with the data and turn it into actionable insights. The real-time search solution works across the entire software stack was founded by Dr. Trevor Parsons and Dr. Viliam Holub. Founded in 2010, LogEntries emerged from University College Dublin’s Performance Engineering Laboratory after a decade of joint research with IBM. With support from Launchpad, UCD’s Nova Innovation Center and financial support from Enterprise Ireland, LogEntries was incubated in , Dublin. Polaris backs Dogpatch in Dublin and SF.
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Taking First Steps Into Monetization, Viber Messaging App Announces A Sticker Market
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Jordan Crook
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, the app that has promised free messaging and calls to its users since it’s inception, has today announced it’s first step into monetization. As has been the case with competing apps like WhatsApp, MessageMe, and even Facebook Messenger, plans to use stickers, large clipart-style emoticons and text, to generate revenue. The company will be creating its own paid content, as well as licensing content from other sources such as television shows, branded characters, etc. Not all of the content within the Sticker Market will be paid, but some of it will be available through in-app purchase. Viber first introduced stickers back in December of 2012, but has always maintained an entirely free, and ad-free, experience for its users. The Viber Sticker Market will launch “soon” with an update, but the company wouldn’t go into any further detail regarding timing. would not disclose the split of revenue between the company and the brand or artist licensing the paid stickers, nor would the company share which brands it is working with for launch. However, Viber did mention that both Viber and the licenser determine the cost of a sticker. Furthermore, we can “definitely” expect more paid features out of Viber in the future, according to founder Talmon Marco. Remember, shortly after unveiling stickers, Viber launched a doodle feature. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see the company monetize further functionality within that feature, like unlocking extra colors or drawing tools. For now, however, we’ll have to wait and see how the Sticker Market plays out for the messaging app, which has over 200 million users.
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In Race With Twitter, Facebook, Like, Fluffs Its Social TV Numbers
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Sarah Perez
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On the same day that Twitter and Nielsen are debuting their first TV Ratings report emerging from , Facebook is slyly designed to give its own TV efforts a boost. Facebook claims that AMC’s hot “Breaking Bad” finale was a hit across its social network, generating more than 5.5 million interactions from 3 million+ users. Twitter, meanwhile, saw 1.47 million tweets in comparison from 682,000+ uniques for the same show. What does this mean for Twitter, whose forthcoming IPO is heavily dependent on its TV partnerships and ad business? Is Facebook moving in for the kill? Well, maybe. But Facebook’s numbers feel a little fudged here. For background, Facebook that it will begin sending out weekly TV reports to the U.S.’s top four networks this week – a move that was coincidentally disclosed just ahead of the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating report’s launch. Facebook says it will send data to ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS as well as a few other select partners, in order to demonstrate to what extent social conversations around TV programs are now taking place on its own network. For example, Facebook found that ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” generated over a million interactions across 750,000 users on its network. Previously, had stated that Facebook sees times as much TV-related activity on its network than on Twitter. But as TechCrunch’s Josh Constine , that’s not a fair comparison. I can’t believe Walt was a woman the whole time. Awesome ending. — Zach Braff (@zachbraff) To state the obvious, Facebook is much bigger than Twitter: monthly actives versus . One could argue its numbers for almost anything will be bigger. But really, it’s Facebook’s looser definition of active engagement that makes comparing its figures to Twitter’s a problem. Facebook, you see, counts nearly any engagement with its content among its “interactions” – it includes not only those posting status updates themselves, but also others who then like, comment or re-share that post to their own networks of friends. Facebook counting a “like” as an “ ” is like Twitter counting a “favorite.” It’s not an ideal metric to lump in with Facebook posts or re-shares, but, rather, should be treated as a separate category of interaction. After all, there are a number of reasons why you may like someone’s Facebook status, and it’s not always directly related to the TV content they’ve shared. You might like a post because your friend also cracked a funny joke of some sort along with their note about the show they’re watching, but that doesn’t mean you’re also a viewer or a fan. Or the post might contain more information beyond the TV show identified through basic keyword matching, and it’s the part of the post that you’re actually “liking.” Many social networks like to fluff their numbers when it serves a purpose. Google reports steady increases in Google+ growth, for example, making it sound like Google+ (the destination website) is a bigger player in social than it really is. In reality, Google+ numbers are growing because Google+ as the social layer across Google products ranging from Gmail to, most recently, . At launch, Facebook’s TV reports are not on par with Twitter’s. It will not include other data like how many people saw activity where a TV show is being discussed – something Twitter and Nielsen’s TV Rating report is . And tracking this metric will be more difficult on Facebook, because its filtered News Feed doesn’t show users every post from friends. There are also hints that Facebook has had to work quickly to overcome potentially bad data here, indicating that its move to court TV networks is more reactive than proactive in this situation. In The WSJ’s of Facebook’s news, it noted that before fine-tuning its system, which relies on keywords, Facebook had problems where it reported CBS’s “NCIS” too highly because “NCIS” is a string of letters found in the more often mentioned term “San Francisco.” (To address this issue, Facebook had to create a database of characters and other keywords related to each show in order to not end up with false positives.) That said, as Facebook ramps up its efforts in this space, its data could become more valuable in the long run because there’s more of it, and it includes profile demographics. The company has already for other purposes, so there’s no reason why it couldn’t do the same for TV networks now. Meanwhile, as Facebook gets up to speed with social TV data, Twitter is building out a business based on being the preferred “second screen” app. To serve up TV ratings and analysis, Twitter partnered with Nielsen, which owns , for TV ratings. It acquired companies and to further beef up its social TV efforts. With , it’s allowing broadcasters to embed short video clips in their tweets in near real-time. And it with CBS on Amplify just this month. It’s also with a DVR-like functionality that would allow you to replay TV-related tweets as you watch a show after its original airing. In addition, Twitter , which let U.S. advertisers target those who just saw their TV commercials while watching a given show. Twitter has a of what people are talking about here, too. Most importantly, being pushed the ad twice seems to work well, according to early reports. Nielsen found that the combination of TV ad and follow-up tweet delivered 95 percent stronger message association and 58 percent higher purchase intent than TV ads alone. With all these initiatives underway, Twitter, though smaller and less diverse (the site sees a disproportionate number of young female users CBS’s chief researcher officer told The WSJ), is for now ahead of Facebook in terms of making a business out of the social TV data it has on hand.
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Social Analytics Startup Socialbakers Hires Its First CMO, Former Adobe VP Neil Morgan
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Anthony Ha
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, a social analytics startup headquartered in Prague, is announcing that it has hired its first chief marketing officer — , who recently left Adobe. The company says it has 190 employees in 10 offices worldwide. When I spoke to founder and CEO Jan Rezab last week, he described it as the largest independent player in the market ( ) and as a “hidden gem.” By hiring Morgan (who he described as “a star”), Rezab is probably hoping to remove the “hidden” part of that description. Morgan was most recently vice president of digital marketing solutions for Europe, Middle East, and Asia at Adobe, a role in which he led marketing efforts for Adobe’s Marketing Cloud products (yes, it’s kind of meta). His marketing experience also includes time at Oracle, Chordiant, Siebel, and Omniture (which was acquired by Omniture). Socialbakers allows big brands to monitor their activity, and that of their competitors, on social networks. Last week, it . Rezab suggested that the ads that will be successful on social media are the content-driven ones that show up in news feeds. So Socialbakers’ Ad Analytics is focused on ads that run in Facebook’s News Feed for now, with plans to add new platforms every eight to 12 weeks. The product also includes features for testing different ad types and managing campaigns. “Basically, we’re trying to make ads more intelligent,” Rezab said.
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SparkLabs Presents Its Second Demo Day In Seoul With Eight Startups
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Catherine Shu
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, the accelerator that brings Silicon Valley mentorship to Seoul’s young startup ecosystem, presented its second Demo Day today. It also added 12 new people to its roster of over , including Dr. Sang Cha, the creator of , one of the enterprise software’s core platforms; Pat Kinsel, Entrepreneur-In-Residence at and co-founder of Spindle ( ); and Ty Ahmad-Taylor, Head of Smart TV Services At Samsung Electronics. Each of the up to 15 startups that participates in each SparkLabs class is matched with four to six mentors during the three-month program. Past SparkLabs participants that have been covered on TechCrunch include from SoftBank in January and . The latest batch of startups “reflect major trends in Asia in terms of what you’ll see in coming years, such as growth in the e-commerce space, new targeted social networks and completely new innovations,” said Eugene Kim, Principal at SparkLabs. One company presenting today that has already launched a product for a worldwide audience is , the creator of productivity app , which has . The app announced new features including a registration-based service, a new “Timeline” and synchronization between users’ iPhones and iPads. Currently live in beta, is a global social investment platform for equities built on a learn-share-earn model. Users receive a phantom cash allocation to start investing and have access to 12,000 research reports updated daily through TrakInvest’s partnership with Reuters. The startup recently signed a deal with , one of the largest brokerage houses in India, to allow its users to execute real money trades through TrakInvest. Lateral’s search platform is also currently available for sign-ups in beta. COGO automatically retrieves, indexes and organizes your search sessions. Other startups presenting today include: iBabyBox, a social marketplace for baby items created by Yong Hyoung, the founder of Korea’s first major social network . HeyBread, an e-commerce company that delivers fresh organic bread from premium bakeries to customers. The startup plans to expand into new categories. MangoPlate, a restaurant discovery service for Seoul that launched a new UI and service. Their app . , a social wiki for fashion fans that just launched an Android app and will soon have a Web version. , which recently launched Walk Analytics to help stores glean data from offline data like foot-traffic, visit duration and engagement. Walk Analytics is currently targeted at businesses in Seoul because of its high population density and strong mobile penetration.
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With Weak Back-To-School Sales, The PC Market Is Now Microsoft’s To Save
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Alex Wilhelm
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Splat. That’s the sound the PC market just made. According , back-to-school computer sales were “virtually absent.” Put in other words: The traditional September bump that students provided to PC OEMs as they headed back to classrooms failed to generate a meaningful sales delta. It’s like missing spring for the larger PC market. The best way to view this news is that consumers are repudiating traditional PC form factors (desktops and laptops) for other devices at a quicker pace than expected – see the – and that among younger folks (students for example), the trend has accelerated. What hardware does the Windows-OEM community have in place to combat the market shift? That thundering silence you just felt is music in Cupertino and Mountain View. You probably had at least guessed at all of that. The kicker is that Microsoft is the only PC OEM that is selling a device that transcends the traditional PC OEM market. The Surface tablet lineup has never fit cleanly into any product category, period. If consumers – students, especially – are moving away from laptops and desktops at a faster pace than we expected, they still have to produce. Given that, they will need a device that meets that need and satisfies their desire for mobility and touch. The Surface 2 could be that device. At least in my view, there is no tablet quite like the Surface 2 in terms of its focus, capabilities (Office, Touch Covers, etc.) and price point. The new Touch Covers are too expensive, but the cheaper first generation Touch Covers fill that void somewhat. Don’t get too excited, though; the Surface line still has a weight around its neck by the name of Windows. Windows 8 was one cause of weak first-generation Surface sales. Windows 8.1 is a material improvement on its predecessor. Whether it can work through the now year-old legacy of Windows 8 isn’t clear. Summing briefly: Students appear to have forgotten to show up and buy new PCs for the school year. This underscores rapid transformation in their computing desires. Still, everyone has to get work done one way or another, and Microsoft’s Surface line might have backed into a market trend that can be harnessed to its advantage. The Windows 8.1 question remains open, but Microsoft could have built the device with the largest chance to bring back wayward sons and daughters to the Realm of Windows. The sales will tell the tale. Microsoft has promised to break out Surface revenue each quarter, so we’ll know by the end of the year if Microsoft’s entrance into the OEM wars will grow the pie, or merely fight for a slice as the desert shrinks around it. — There is a bit of Come To Jesus for Microsoft’s hardware hopes in the next 12 months. The Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 need to put points on the board to illustrate that project’s first financial year in the market was more growing pains than an indicator of market indifference and failed internal forecasting. The Nokia smartphone division needs to continue growing the Windows Phone market, as its unit volume is roughly 90 percent of the platform’s aggregate total. Microsoft will own that asset in early 2014. I’d say that by this time next year, we’ll have a good handle on whether the devices side of Microsoft’s business transformation can reach the volume and revenue marks needed to be meaningful to the company’s future profits. That’s in keeping with : “The ultimate measure has to be what happens with profits. It’s got to be the ultimate measure of any company.”
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Bang With Friends To Change Names After Trademark Settlement With Zynga
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Kim-Mai Cutler
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catchy name unfortunately is getting tossed after the startup reached a settlement with Zynga. The social gaming company line-up. But now both are saying they’ve reached a settlement. Neither company is talking about the terms, however. It seems like a clear win for Zynga. Bang With Friends had to acknowledge Zynga’s trademark rights and it’s now changing its name. They have a placeholder site called . It seems like there was some worry that Bang With Friends — if it ever got big enough — could color the reputation of Zynga’s more family-friendly games. Both companies said in a statement: Zynga Inc. and Bang With Friends, Inc. are pleased that they have reached an amicable resolution of their dispute. Although the terms of the settlement are confidential, Bang With Friends, Inc. acknowledges the trademark rights that Zynga has in its WITH FRIENDS marks and will be changing its corporate name and rebranding its services in the near future. Details on the next version of Bang With Friends can be found at http://www.TheNextBang.com. The settlement is yet another in a recent string: Zynga who defected to mid-core social game-maker Kixeye over theft of trade secrets. Zynga over whether an earlier game “The Ville” was a copy of EA’s classic “The Sims.”
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Not Verified? Here’s The Twitter View From Where I’m Sitting
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Alex Wilhelm
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So you aren’t verified on Twitter. Don’t worry. There is still time — unlike for Congress to fund the government. But I digress. Anyway, what you might not have known is that if you verified, you get access to a neat filter option inside the Interactions tab of Twitter’s web interface. It allows you to see only interactions with your account that come from other verified users. It’s essentially a way to hang out only in the cool kids’ club. And it’s great. Here are three screenshots of my Twitter interaction feed, taken back to back. First, the normal, noisy interaction feed that is labeled “All”: I had just asked a question, so the influx was heavy with people I know and people I don’t know. Now, let’s see what the “Filtered” option looks like: Okay so a number of @ messages have been culled, enough that we can now see favorites as far back as eight minutes. Now, to the final tier — the “Verified” filter tab: A whole new world! So that’s that: Twitter from the verified perspective.
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To Put Its Listening Rooms On More Platforms, Soundrop Picks Up $3.4M Led By Spotify Investor Northzone
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Ingrid Lunden
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Norwegian startup first made its name as an app on Spotify, tapping into the streaming platform’s catalog to create real-time group listening rooms that were popular places for Spotify users to congregate for more social listening experiences. But as Spotify has become a more social platform by default, Soundrop is expanding what it does, and where it does it. Today, it is announcing a $3.4 million round of funding led by none other than Spotify’s lead investor, Northzone. The company wants to use the funding to turn up the volume on its growth to more platforms beyond Spotify and into more areas beyond simple listening rooms. In addition to Northzone, Norwegian-government-back Investinor also participated. Northzone also led the previous last year. The news comes at the same time that another listening-room service, Turntable.fm, is also expanding its focus; in this case from . Inge Sandvik, the CEO and co-founder of Soundrop, tells me that while Spotify is currently the only music platform where Soundrop has an app, in the coming weeks this is due to grow. As for where Soundrop apps might appear in future, think about other music-streaming platforms such as Deezer that also offer app stores as one likely port of call. Another could be other kinds of streaming services that may operate more around video rather than audio; Soundrop already offers an integration with YouTube on its standalone service for its web app at , its Facebook integrations and its standalone apps for iOS and Android. While it makes sense that Soundrop will expand to be used in more places as a way of capturing more users, on the other this is quite a change for a company that started out at first working very closely with just one: not only was Spotify its first platform, but the two share an investor, and for a while Soundrop was actually working out of Spotify’s offices. As Soundrop looks to expand its scope to more platforms, so too is the focus of the app changing somewhat. “We are quite tired of talking about ‘music discovery,'” Sandvik told me. “That is a crowded space and everyone wants to solve music discovery.” So Soundrop is gravitating to where it has seen not just a lot of interest from users, but from labels on the business side, too — specifically in the creation of rooms dedicated to specific artists. Those who have created rooms on Soundrop include Imagine Dragons, Robin Thicke, Zedd, Owl City and some 130 others. The most successful of these are not trivial: Universal Music’s picked up 28 million OTS users (a traffic metric standing for “opportunities to see”) after heavy marketing from both Universal and Spotify. “Labels see us as a promotional platform,” Sandvik told me, noting that this is also where the company is generating the most revenues today. “We have seen that our artist events have been growing a lot. We are doing artist events almost every day now and several per day and we think we can scale this up quite a lot. This will again drive up their market share where music has been licensed and their revenue will grow.” That is not to say that larger user-generated listening rooms are disappearing but they will increasingly be complemented by these artist-specific or label-specific rooms. “Music discovery and engaging a crowd is living in symbioses,” he said. “We think we are very well positioned to help out in both areas, but we think we need to focus on what tools we can give artists to amplify themselves when they are aiming to create a engaging relationship with listeners.” At a time when Spotify is still looking for the magic formula to turn its popularity with consumers into a profitable enterprise, it’s interesting to see Soundrop making a sharp turn to services that, while popular, are also squarely aimed at revenue generation effectively as a music marketing platform. This is one of the reasons that Northzone re-invested. “In the year since Northzone invested in Soundrop, the company has had a focus on product development and tight integration with Spotify,” noted Torleif Ahlsand, General Partner in Northzone and Chairman of Soundrop’s Board of Directors. “Now that the product has reached a new level of maturity, the company is ready to take its next steps. It feels so very right to bring Investinor in to provide additional rocket fuel. With the product well-established, Soundrop is now in pole position to drive revenue and growth in 2014.”
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Need To Print Teeny-Weenie Things? The LumiFold Has You Covered
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John Biggs
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I never thought I’d see the day when someone would find a reason to build a wee tiny foldable 3D printer that can make things about as big as a few matchboxes. This printer, called the , is a with a build envelope of 90x90x90mm and uses UV sensitive resin to print fairly high-quality objects in a few minutes. I personally am at a loss to explain why exactly you’d want a portable, small-format 3D printer but I’m sure someone out there can set me straight. The creators are looking for a teeny-weenie $1,500 to fund the project and they’re selling the printer for $429. You can also buy parts kits for a bit less. The creator, Marin Davide of Italy, explains his reasoning thusly: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v57odoXmnE4] If television has taught us anything it’s that it takes different strokes to move the world. That said, this compact little resin printer seems to be filling a niche I never knew existed. Portable 3D printers could help designers build prototypes in the field and artists to create projects on the fly. It could also be a way to build replacement parts far from a machine shop. The possibilities, while beguiling, are endless.
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Google Analytics For Android Gets Card-Based UI, New Visualizations And Improved Real-Time Reporting
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Frederic Lardinois
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If it’s a Google product and it’s on mobile, it’s getting a . The latest product to get this treatment is . With today’s , though, the app isn’t just getting a new look. It’s also getting a slew of new features based on feedback Google received from the 700,000 users who have already downloaded it. In addition to the card-based UI, Google added a few other design-centric features, including its standard slide-out side navigation bar. This update also introduces new visualizations for your stats that automatically resize to fit your screen size and orientation. On a small screen, Google argues, users can quickly become overwhelmed with too much information, so with this update, all the relevant metrics are now spread out over multiple cards so users can get an overview of what’s happening on their sites and then drill down deeper as needed. As for features, the app now puts a stronger emphasis on real-time data, a feature Analytics first introduced but only really started to emphasize over the last few months. The app now also supports for isolating and analyzing specific types of traffic (say visitors from users who also recently purchased something from your online store) and presents an overview screen for each one of your Analytics reports that allows you to drill down deeper into your most relevant stats to get a closer look at your data. The app now also allows users to access both web and app reporting views so, as Google notes, “you can keep track of all of your important data with reports that are optimized for whatever device you’re using, ensuring a beautiful and intuitive experience.” Google developed the app using the , which allows developers to make small changes to their installed apps on the fly without having users download a new version of the app. Because of this, the Google App team says, it will be able to quickly add new reports and visualizations to the app without having to update it.
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With Launch of iOS App, 99dresses Goes Mobile-Only For Dress Swapping Goodness
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Eliza Brooke
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, the Y Combinator graduate that gives women the ability to hit “refresh” on their wardrobes as often as they like through clothing swaps, has gone mobile-only with the launch of its new iOS app. The startup has fundamentally reworked the virtual currency system on which its swaps operate, due to the fact that U.S. users didn’t take to it the same way that the startup’s original Australian user base had. 99dresses recreates clothing swap parties in a digital format — the main point is to unload pieces you don’t like any more with the possibility of picking up a cute new piece for free. When 99dresses launched, it was based on a “button” economy in which users received buttons in exchange for each piece they sold to another user, which could then be used to purchase another item. The site sold additional buttons for $1 a pop, in case someone wanted to go for a bigger buy. But while that system worked well in 99dresses’ native Australia, it didn’t work so well when operations moved to the U.S., founder Nikki Durkin explained. The startup no longer operates in Australia. “We wanted something in America that was more about instant gratification,” Durkin said. The new economics of 99dresses, which launches with the app, means that as soon as you list an item, you receive buttons with which to purchase other points. But Durkin’s team has introduced a new element to keep people in line: karma, which rises when they sell and falls when they buy, all according to how many items they have listed and how many people want them. Each listed item has a 24 hour hold on it, during which users can toss their name into the ring to claim it, and the person with the most karma receives the prize. Someone who consistently lists less desirable clothing will are lower karma, which may mean she’ll only win on less desirable pieces she bids for. If an individual claims five items and wins the first one, her karma will decrease such that her odds of winning the second decrease. Durkin said the team spent about five months tweaking this system prior to the app’s release today. Karma, which is now invisible to others, was publicly displayed in a previous iteration, and although the aim was social accountability, it only created a gridlock in transactions. “In theory it seems like a good idea, but it works too well,” Durkin said. “It would get to the point where they didn’t realize that in order for one person to receive something, one person’s karma is coming up, and it’s coming from the other’s. In order to make anything happen in the system, someone has to be in the negative.” With the new model, the person who buys pays for shipping, a change from the in which the seller paid it forward by providing shipping. 99dresses adds a 5% charge on top of that. For an item above $100, that still feels like a deal. Most of the items listed on 99dresses fall in the H&M/Zara/Forever21 price range. Those pieces don’t have great resell value in consignment shops, but paying shipping and a 5% surcharge can be justifiable so long as it’s less than the price of replacing it with a new item. The tricky thing about building a reselling app around fast fashion prices is that fast fashion is to be discarded and replaced as trends change, which is why it is priced so low. Clothing sold at stores like Zara stand a better chance of working on a platform like 99dresses because it hits in the $50-150 range. The 99dresses team has shifted since it graduated from Y Combinator, as co-founders Peter Delahunty and Dan Walker have left the company. Marcin Popielarz has joined as technology manager. Durkin said she could not provide numbers on user engagement, since the new system is only launching today. Here’s hoping American users will take to the new platform like they failed to do before.
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Dropbox Continues Its One-Click Campaign To Be Your Default Photo Library
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Matthew Panzarino
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If you’ve been watching Dropbox at all over the last couple of years, you’ll be completely unsurprised at a new feature announced today. The apps on Mac have to automatically detect, upload and ready shared links to the screenshots you shoot on your computer. That’s pretty much the main reason apps like Cloud.app even exist, and really throws a wrench into that app’s core feature set. But in reality, this move will be useful to a mere subset of Dropbox users. Automatic screenshot uploading is great for ‘Internet people’. Journalists, heavy Twitter users, app developers, designers and collaborative teams. This is not a subset and I’m certainly very grateful that this feature gives me an alternative to Cloud.app. And I’m sure that sharing snaps of a screen might actually become a more common behavior Dropbox has added support for it. If you wanted to be really cynical, you could even say that this was a bit of for journos, who take a of screenshots — and will probably write about this feature ( ). But the second slice of today’s announcement is the much bigger one in my opinion. It’s an importer that allows you to upload your entire iPhoto library to Dropbox, organized by event, in one go. Dropbox has previously announced products that automatically upload images shot on the iPhone, on Android devices and uploaded from cameras on your desktop Macs or Windows machines. This is different because it reaches into your photo past and copies over everything you’ve shot even before Dropbox. This is where you start to think about the roadmap of Dropbox’ commercial products. If the endgame of this current push is to be the default place where people store photos — and I believe that it is — what does that enable? If you can count on every photo you’ve ever shot and every one you will shoot being uploaded automatically from your smartphone, your digital camera and more, then the answer is: a lot. First of all you have incredibly powerful system lock-in. Yes, they’re your files and you can do whatever you want to them, including download them and place them in some other cloud repository. But the lock-in is more than just ‘data’. It’s ‘memories’ that Dropbox is ‘keeping safe’. Even if you moved to another platform, why would you feel the urge to move away from Dropbox as your primary repository? If you’re set up with auto-upload on all of your platforms, my gut feeling is that ‘once you’re in you’re in’. All of this chat makes you think hard about what companies like Apple and Google are doing with photos. Apple enables iCloud to snag first dibs on all of you photos shot on iPhones (which many people are using as their primary cameras). Google does the same with Google+ photos. And Dropbox, the third party, is attempting to undercut both of them with automated tools and at least the appearance of impartiality. Going with Dropbox means that you can swap between iOS and Android at will and still have full cloud access to your photos. Google allows you access to them via its G+ app on iOS, but that’s a relative one-way ticket. And it also makes one think back to that between Steve Jobs and Dropbox partners Arash Ferdowsi and Drew Houston. Jobs told Houston that he had a feature, not a product, on his hands, and that he was about to go after their ‘cloud storage’ market. Back then I’m not sure that Dropbox had it in mind to focus on photos in the consumer space — that came after a lot of user behavior examination. But in the end, it might actually be better that Dropbox exists as a standalone feature, rather than as an interchangeable cog in one of the other major ecosystems. After all, iCloud isn’t exactly reliable and Google has yet to create a relationship with its customers that doesn’t rely on leveraging their data for advertising. A neutral third-party ‘feature’ might actually be the best way to keep your photos safe. Provided it can find a way to stick around, of course. Image Credit: / Flickr CC
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Alex Williams
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Facebook Starts Rollout Of Graph Search For Posts, Comments, Check-Ins To Reveal The Past And Present
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Josh Constine
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What’s everyone saying about Breaking Bad? What about just my friends? What do my old photo comments say about me? A trillion posts full of this info start getting unlocked today as for posts to a small subset of US English users. It will allow us to see what the world thinks of anything, but could also dredge up the past, defeating ‘privacy by obscurity’. When Facebook in January, it started with indexing people, photos, places, and interests. It let you find people based on certain characteristics, browse specific sets of photos, find local businesses, and discover media and brands your friends enjoy. But there were three big things missing: International access, mobile access, and the ability to search posts. Since then Facebook has expanded Graph Search from a limited beta to a product available to all US users that browse in English. Since Graph Search is a semantic search engine based on sentences, not keywords, it’s tricky and slow to internationalize. There’s still no mobile support, which is facepalm-worthy consider Facebook is supposed to be a “mobile first” company, and much of Graph Search’s potential lies in helping people find things and friends while on the go. Today, though, Facebook starts solving the third problem by making almost anything you post accessible via Graph Search. That includes status updates, comments on anything, photo captions, Notes, and check-ins. No Events yet, though. Only a small group of US-English users are getting post search today, and Facebook tells me it plans to to monitor usage and take feedback before refining post search and rolling it out to all Graph Search users. Looking to the past, Graph Search for posts will help Facebook and its users realize the ambitions of Timeline. Suddenly everything we’ve written on Facebook isn’t just clunkily navigable from our profiles. It can be searched by anyone with permission to see it. Your bitter posts from your college library, silly comments on friends’ wedding photos, and dispatches from distant vacation check-ins can all be distilled from the rest of your content. That could make for some fun nostalgia, or some embarrassing fiascos. Before Timeline, your old posts were essentially locked away behind hundreds of clicks of the “more posts” button at the bottom of your profile. This is known as ‘privacy by obscurity’. Technically your old content was still accessible, but it was really tough to find, essentially making the past a secret. Timeline let you find content on the profiles of friends if you knew what you were looking for and when to look. Graph Search for people let you find a non-friend’s profile and comb through their public posts. But Graph Search for posts essentially eradicates ‘privacy by obscurity’. If you said it, and it’s technically visible to someone, they will be able to easily find it. That includes any time you’ve mentioned you’re “drunk”, “high”, “depressed”, “pissed”, or cursed like a sailor. I don’t mean to scare you. There’s a lot of fun, learning, and ‘connection’ that will come from Graph Search of old posts. But this is a good time to go to your Activity Log and make sure any sensitive content you have has the right privacy settings. I’d definitely recommend doing this when you get the feature yourself. That’s actually one problem with the slow rollout. Some people’s content will be searchable by others before they can search it themselves. On the plus side, at least you will eventually be able to look up what you once said. Facebook has never really had this feature. And despite Twitter being known as the public record of the Internet, its search feature was spotty until recently, sometimes failing to return old. [Update: It’s improved vastly over the last year or so, though.] Now both social networks have adequate keyword search. That means people need to be more careful about what they post, which could cause a slight . Looking at the present, Graph Search for posts could do a lot to help Facebook win the war against Twitter to become the web’s premier water cooler. Perhaps more than Facebook adding hashtags, verified profiles, trending topics, and other features from Twitter’s playbook. Now when there’s a big live television event or world news, you can browse more than your News Feed or hashtags. You can search for “Posts about Syria” to see every public post on Facebook mentioning the word. Want to only see what your friends are saying about the latest teen pop drama? Search “Posts about Miley Cyrus from my friends”. Not only will that surface more content to browse, increasing Facebook’s time-on-site. Creating a new audience for posts could encourage more people to publish. Facebook’s losing this engagement to Twitter right now, but Graph Search could even the score. Post search could also be a boon to Facebook’s role as a journalism source, since reporters could use Graph Search to find eye-witnesses who were at a news-worthy happening or pundits who’ve discussed it. Graph Searches for posts could become popular places for Facebook to advertise. Facebook briefly experimented with results pages, but doesn’t any more. It could earn a ton of money if it did, though. Much of Twitter’s ad pitch is that it can help brands reach users that are passionately reading, tweeting or searching for something related to their business. Facebook could steal some of those real-time ad dollars with units on results pages of Graph Searches for posts. If Facebook can convince users there’s more going on than what’s immediately visible in their News Feeds, it could get them spending more time on the site meeting each other, discussing the day’s events, and getting the pulse of the planet. That could let Facebook accomplish its goals of connecting the world while finding more ways to pay for all the servers that host our digital lives.
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TechCrunch Is Coming Your Way, Boston
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John Biggs
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As TechCrunch powers through the major tech hubs of the world we’ve consistently missed Boston. That’s about to change. I’m pleased to announce our second Boston meetup on . These meetups offer you guys the chance to hang out with TechCrunch writers and editors and take part in our pitch-offs, contests that allow start-ups from all over the world to compete to win a table at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York or San Francisco. The meetup will cost $5 to attend and include booze and lots of networking. You can buy and we will open submissions for the pitch-offs later this month. You can read more about the event . Participants interested in competing in the pitch-off will have 60 seconds to explain why their startup is awesome. These products must currently be in stealth or private beta. We also offer Office Hours during our visit to your city. Office Hours are for companies selected for the Pitch-off, these 15 minute 1 on 1 talks will be held on the day of the event. We’ll hear about your company, give feedback, and talk about the best pitch strategy for the 60-second rapid-fire competition. Think of us as Adam Levine on The Voice. More information on Office Hours will follow in a post on TechCrunch. We will have 3-5 judges, including TechCrunch writers and local VC’s, who will decide on the winners of the Pitch-off. First place will receive a table in Start Up Alley at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. Second Place will receive 2 tickets to the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. Third Place will receive 1 ticket to the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. If you have any questions you can email and if you’d like to sponsor the event drop the folks at a line. We’re looking forward to rolling into Boston and hope to see you there!
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Leaked YouTube Video & Tumblr Blog Reveal All About Stealthy Payments Startup Clinkle
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Sarah Perez
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, a much-hyped mobile payments startup which raised ahead of having a publicly available product, has been notoriously secretive about its user interface and the details of how it all works. TechCrunch has been able to grab some in the past that demonstrate how the app functions, and spoke with beta testers and former employees to get a sense of its differentiating elements. But nothing comes close to which appeared a few days ago giving away much of Clinkle’s secrets. The video’s creator is currently unknown, but it appears to be someone with direct knowledge of Clinkle’s plans. A lot of people who worked for Clinkle for a short time were strung along with promises of equity and then dropped, we’ve heard. That’s why it makes sense that there’s some potential for a leak of this nature to occur. However, the tipster who sent in the video claims they were able to bypass the Clinkle waitlist in the app, which is how they were able to see all this functionality. For starters, the video shows off the Clinkle user interface in action. These images include a lot of shots where photos of America’s founding fathers are used in the place of “dummy” user accounts. This correlates with the placeholder images we had previously pulled out of the app’s APK, again lending credence to the video being either a direct capture, or at least a very knowledgable recreation. The video demonstrates how Clinkle can manage cash, credit and debit cards, transfers and withdrawals, as well as other things, like peer-to-peer payments (similar to Venmo, now owned by eBay/PayPal), and transaction histories. There’s a “rewards” button shown at one point in the video, and it also looks like you can buy different wallet skins like “Kerouac” and “Duct.” (It’s the Instagram of mobile wallets!) Toward the end of the video, it also shows a screen that says “Aeorlink enabled,” which refers to an ultrasound connection between a phone and an iPad acting as a register – basically the app sends encrypted sound waves that act as the payments. A had earlier appeared in the iOS App Store before being pulled. From the details on an accompanying tell-all , a tipster explains that with Aerolink, the ultrasonic sounds encode a store, register, and transaction identifier but the process may be open to security vulnerabilities. It also may be technology sourced from a third-party, the post states. (The video and Tumblr blog were sent in by the same tipster, but we can’t be sure at this point that his or her claims to be the author of both are legitimate. This same tipster has apparently also been in contact with .) TechCrunch verified with a source familiar with the app that the images and video look exactly like the most recent version of the Clinkle user interface that they saw, and noted that the interface hasn’t changed for some time. This Tumblr blog reveals that Clinkle’s accounts are actually being held by , which is why the app asks for things like your driver’s license photo and Social Security number. That allows Clinkle to transfer money to your real bank account with the app’s “ATM” functionality. Using a real bank behind the scenes is not altogether different from how other startups, like Simple and Dwolla, operate. It’s very difficult for a startup to actually be a bank itself, so it instead innovates on the front-end. But even though Clinkle is not a bank, it will need to take fraud and security very seriously, especially if it’s asking for such personal information from its users. The phone number 1855CLI-NKLE, also featured in the Tumblr blog, when called, did respond “hello this is Clinkle,” when tested a few days ago. It appears to be an office number. To be clear, most of the leaks confirm functionality we already knew about, but now it’s a case of being able to how it works, rather than just hearing about the details from sources. The potential for more leaks around Clinkle continues, as the company is not planning to have some grand launch event, but is rather quietly expanding its tester base while launching around college campuses. If you haven’t yet heard of Clinkle and aren’t sure of what the fuss is, the most interesting thing about the startup, frankly, is how it’s managed to at this point in its development cycle. The mobile payments space is not easy – it’s a fragmented market where there are multiple experiments and no clear winners. To even compete, Clinkle has to take on giants like Google and PayPal, credit card companies, banks, and other startups like Square, Square clones, and Dwolla. And to be successful it will have to prove itself more useful than paying with cash or swiping a card – something which other technologies have yet to do. We’re reaching out to Clinkle for comment on the leaks now and will update with their response, if provided. For what it’s worth, these “leaks” themselves could be staged – that is, maybe the company wants people to talk, as anything kept under wraps makes reporters want to dig for more. On that note, a recent call with TechCrunch reporter Billy Gallagher, founder Lucas Duplan spoke to Clinkle’s need for a network effect, saying, “we need to get people excited about this, because good technology alone isn’t going to be enough.” : Clinkle has responded, saying that “as a general policy, we don’t comment on product speculation. However, I will say that the video that was posted is a) inaccurate and b) to the best of our knowledge, produced by a Venmo employee.” : Venmo has responded to this accusation, saying, “the company did not have any involvement in the video.” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2BuqpJ11lI&w=640&h=360] We should also point out that in a , TechCrunch had described some of the functionality in Clinkle in more detail, based on conversations with beta testers and former employees. Clinkle claimed the information we had was misleading and incomplete after publication. Concerned about accuracy, TechCrunch removed a few details from the original post, and disclosed that change by at the time: This post was cited by , which then related some of things we had mentioned – like how the app uses the microphone and speakers to emit a certain frequency. The YouTube video and Tumblr post now seem to confirm these things as well.
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Xbox Music To Launch Apps For iOS And Android
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Catherine Shu
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will be available for iOS and Android today, as Microsoft furthers its bid to take on streaming music services like Spotify. Xbox Music is the first entertainment service from the Microsoft to launch on iOS and Android, and follows its Web version, which now offers free streaming to all browsers. The apps’ updated design reflects Microsoft’s constant retooling of Xbox Music since it as Microsoft’s Spotify rival for Xbox, Windows 8 and Windows Phone devices. But Xbox Music’s original user interface, which was based on Windows 8, made using the service difficult. The mobile version of the service that launched today has a simpler UI that more closely resembles Spotify. The company told that Microsoft holds regular hack days to experiment with future Xbox Music features. The iOS and Android apps will be updated every four to six weeks and an offline mode will be available in the next few months. Back in June, Microsoft introduced an update to Xbox Music for Windows 8.1 that instead of the app’s streaming content. Its focus on fine-tuning user experience across different devices ties into Microsoft’s ongoing emphasis on unifying services across its platforms and can help Xbox Music compete in an increasingly crowded marketplace (in addition to Spotify, it also has to compete with similar services from the likes of , , and ).
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Adobe Makes Life Easier For Web Designers, Adds Easy Export From Photoshop To Edge Reflow
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Frederic Lardinois
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Adobe is launching the latest update for today. Besides numerous smaller feature additions, this new version adds a tool called “Adobe Generator” that is, among other things, deeply integrated with , the company’s tools for creating responsive web designs. Using Generator, which is also available as an open source tool, designers can now easily take assets from Photoshop – and even complete websites they mocked up in Adobe’s flagship tool – and turn them into responsive sites. Any changes in Photoshop are automatically synced to Reflow in real-time. Adobe product manager of digital imaging Stephen Nielson and senior product manager for Web Platform and Authoring Jacob Surber noted during a press event today that it’s still very common for designers to use Photoshop to mock up a site and then export these assets piece by piece to turn them into real websites. If anything changes, the whole process repeats itself. With Generator, all the designers have to do is give the assets they want to export a new name that ends with a common image file format like .png or .jpg and the assets are automatically generated and saved for further use. Users can even add more complex commands into these filenames to create a larger version of the graphic or multiple versions, for example (this should come especially handy for sites that want to create multiple assets for use on low- and high-res displays). Every update in Photoshop is then automatically reflected in the file, too. The Reflow integration, though, is even more useful, as it takes all of the assets in a given file and then automatically builds a Reflow project from them. The tool brings any text from Photoshop over as editable text, places all of the assets on the page and ensures that they are relatively positioned and then builds the hierarchy on the page. In the demo Adobe showed, this obviously worked flawlessly. For extremely complex designs, things may not quite go as smoothly, but it’s hard not to look at this tool and consider how it will make life quite a bit easier for designers who use this Photoshop mock-up to web design workflow. One thing Adobe stressed during its briefing was that Generator is meant to be a platform. The tool already offers a number of APIs for developers to create their own workflows with JavaScript, for example. Generator is obviously the highlight of today’s launch. Other improvements in today’s release include increased stability when saving files to network locations, color-range improvements, 32-bit image support for a number of filters and numerous other smaller improvements. This update is available now for all Adobe Creative Cloud members (both for those who subscribe to the complete suite and those who just subscribe to Photoshop). The open-source version of Generator is also now available on Adobe’s .
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Topping 150M Users, Instagram Promises Ads Within The Next Year
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Jordan Crook
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Instagram told the that Instagram will begin selling ads within the next year. Are users ready? White comes to Instagram from Facebook, and has been tasked with turning the revenue-free Instagram into a moneymaker for Facebook, which purchased the photo-sharing app in April 2012. She said that Instagram’s future ads could potentially include the Discover tab, where the Popular page and the Search page reside. Presumably, brands would be able to promote their own content, or maybe even advertise using keywords in search. According to the WSJ interview, Instagram is hesitant to give brands the opportunity to link to their own websites from within the app. Brands are already quite active on Instagram, champing at the bit to engage with its 150 million monthly active users. According to , 13 of the top brand accounts on Instagram have over a million users each. Many campaigns ask for user submissions under a certain hashtag, with some sort of award or special use of the image. , RedBull sent participants a can of their new color editions for submitting creative photos under the hashtag. Those photos were then used in collage ads around the UK. Other campaigns are more about a broadcast that deepens the relationship with the customer, as seemed to be the case with Starbucks’ “Behind the Scenes” campaign. However, there are still a few obstacles to native advertising products on Instagram. The most crucial issue will be potentially upsetting users who have enjoyed a free, ad-free environment for years now. Instagram as not the first, but the best and most simple photo-sharing app. For the first time, the app gave users the ability to use their camera phones in a meaningful way. Photos that were once too blurry or too dark or too grainy soon became beautiful with Instagram’s filters and a little help from the iPhone. The ability to share directly to Facebook and Twitter was a delightful cherry on top. On the other side, users learned to love Instagram for being a wonderful time sink. It’s a visually stimulating feed of your friends’ real-time experiences in snackable, beautified form. Ads that interrupt any part of that will likely be overwhelmingly unwelcome. Instagram users have already shown an aversion to certain forms of advertising, as proven by the Instagram’s changed terms of service, allowing users’ photos to be used in advertisements. And remember when Twitter and Facebook introduced promoted content? White claims that the move toward advertising is being handled with caution and clear guidance from Facebook, who has weathered the storm from ad-free to ad-filled already.
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Use Google Glass And New App Glashion To Buy Fashion Items You Spot On The Go
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Leena Rao
| 2,013
| 9
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These days, there is more taking place at the than there ever has been. Of late, some of these involve . At the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013 hackathon today, made its debut, providing a way for Google Glass wearers and users to buy fashion items that they spot on the go. Here’s how it works. Via the app (which can be downloaded to Glass now), Glashion allows you to snap a photo of a fashion item you see on a bypasser or in a store, and then the app queries the for similar matches. You simply tell Glass when you see a product, “Ok glass, I want this!” and you’ll be matched. The app will show you similar products (or the same one if it can find it), and you either tap to buy or swipe to see more products. If you tap, Glashion will send you an email with the link to the product on the retail site for purchase. You can also use the app to find a store nearby your location that has the product or similar items. The app is the brainchild of AngelHack NYC organizer and startup founder Billy Mauro and Mexican entrepreneur Felipe Servin. Mauro runs another fashion startup (side note — the startup may be changing its name to Shopsy soon, I am told), which is a marketplace for products discovered on Instagram. Servin is the founder of , an e-commerce marketplace for shoes. Ana Ramirez and Alex Santamaria (Shoelovers co-founders) and Alfred Juarez, CEO of Cloudadmin, also helped to build the app. Both startups are from the 500 Startups program in Mexico. Mauro explains that the broader goal with Glashion is to use Google Glass to demonstrate how it can bridge online and offline shopping behaviors. As a shopaholic myself, I often find myself snapping photos of items when I am on the go. Of course taking a photo of a stranger’s bag on the street via my phone can seem intrusive. But using a wearable device like Glass could avoid that awkwardness. It’s just for me to buy Google Glass in the name of fashion.
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Spruce Crowned The Disrupt SF 2013 Hackathon Grand Prize Winner, Cloudiverse And AdFree Take Second And Third
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Darrell Etherington
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TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013’s Hackathon wrapped up today, with a demo session that spanned around five hours, after a marathon 24 hour session of actually building hacks. We had a record 264 registered entrants this time around, crushing the previous record of 164 set at Disrupt NY. As a result the 60 second presentation time limit was pretty strictly enforced, but teams still had plenty of chance to wow the judges and the audience. Here are the teams that took away the top prizes, starting with our grand prize winner. A dictation service for online reading, which tells people how long it takes to read content via its online platform. The purpose of the service is to improve reading comprehension and make students better readers. Cloudiverse does much more secure filesharing by breaking files into components and reassembling them after the fact via encryption. It’s the cloud-sharing service of the post-Snowden era. AdFree allows people to use MapReduce as an alternative to advertising to make revenue from their websites. It uses visitors to power advanced problem-solving processing in order to make revenue. The winners all get to present their hacks at Disrupt SF 2013 during the main conference, and the grand prize winner gets $5,000 to divide amongst themselves. Everyone wins out, however, with free tickets to Disrupt SF for all presenters and various prized provided by sponsors including Chevrolet, Clover, CrunchBase, Elance, Mashery, NewAer, Person, Pioneer Electronics, RadiumOne, SAP, ShopStyle by POPSUGAR, Twilio, WeatherUnderground, and Yammer. Our judges this time around were PopVox CEO Marci Harris; Twitter Director of Product April Underwood; Pinterest Engineer and Evangelist Kent Brewster; StartupHouse and Startup Bus founder Elias Bizannes; and NEA partner Jon Sakoda.
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300ft Drone-Powered Hack Foresees A Future Stuffed With Eye-In-The-Sky All-Seeing Apps
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Natasha Lomas
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Hackathon hacks can lead to fully fledged apps and companies. Other times they are intended to be nothing more than a great hack. 300ft is certainly that: a neat hack, built overnight at the TechCrunch Disrupt SF hackathon, which pulls in “close to live” aerial imaging from UAVs (aka drones) so the user can check how busy a prospective outdoor leisure location is before heading out. The hack team behind 300ft deployed a fleet of drones over “the most popular places in San Francisco” — such as the marina and the piers — to pull in up-to-date imagery (hours old, rather than a real-time stream) to flesh out their app. “You can dig into any one of these [several San Francisco locations] and view the latest data we’ve collected, oftentimes just a few hours old,” said 300ft hack team member Mark McSpaddan, also director of technology at travel technology company , presenting the hack on stage (see video below). “Each image has time, geolocation and thanks to Weather Underground’s API weather data as well.” The 300ft app is a neat hack in another sense, neatly combining aspects of the work done by the respective companies of the duo behind it, McSpaddan and Bret Kugelmass, co-founder of UAV imaging service startup — with the former providing the travel tech, and the latter company delivering the eye in the sky capability. 300ft isn’t intended to become a business in its own right. But its creators are confident that services relying on real-time aerial imaging are very much coming down the pipe. Just don’t expect or tacos or burritos any time soon. “The pizza drone story is a completely unreasonable use of the applications of drones,” Kugelmass told TechCrunch in a backstage interview. “Same with the tacos, same with the burritos. That’s not happening.” “It might happen at point, but that’s in the distant, distant future,” he added when pressed. So sorry guys, no pizza-on-your-head deliveries just yet. “This was just a great hack,” Kugelmass continued, discussing what the team had done with 300ft. “Airphrame’s business is separate. Sabre’s business is separate, this was just a great chance to come together and explore what’s possible in the future… UAV technology will be used for things other than the transport of heavy goods at first.” Airphrame, which was founded more than a year ago, already has commercial customers for its UAV-powered aerial imaging capabilities although Kugelmass said it’s not currently disclosing customer names on confidentiality grounds. He did confirm that Airphrame’s customers are “commercial sector” entities though, not government agencies. So, even though the 300ft hack itself isn’t going anywhere after today it likely anticipates a future wave of apps and services that will make commercial use of UAV technology. Military tech does have a habit of trickling down into commercial products, so expect to see more apps leveraging drone-powered near real-time aerial imaging capabilities in the not too distant (but potentially slightly dystopic) future — especially as the cost of the necessary hardware continues to come down. Returning to the 300ft hack, it started as “some sketches and some things we had experimented with”, said McSpadden. “And then yesterday Bret sent his Airphrame crew out and they gathered a tonne of data [including the Americas’ Cup boat race].” McSpadden added that one possible use-case for a drone-powered app in the travel sector could be to provide hotels with an information service they offer their customers, telling them which beaches are the least crowded, for instance. “A concierge with that kind of knowledge would be much more valuable,” he added.
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Introducing Disrupt Daily, TC’s Daily Flipboard Magazine Covering The Best Of Disrupt SF 2013
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Matt Burns
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| 8
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There’s at Disrupt SF. So much so that it cannot be consumed on just one site. Produced daily at 6:00pm PDT (right after the last panel of the day) a new Flipboard magazine will be released to showcase the best of the day’s panels, interviews, and videos. Between all the stories and videos from Disrupt, ( ) it can be a little overwhelming to keep tabs on all the important news coming out of the conference. But Disrupt Daily is something special — it’s just an easy way to peruse the day’s highlights.
Opening Remarks by TechCrunch
Fireside chat with , and (SV Angel)
Founders Stories with and (Lyft)
The Future of Higher Education: Lt. Governor (State of California) and (Udacity)
Keynote: (Sequoia Capital)
BREAK
Special Product Announcement
In Conversation with (Snapchat)
These Aren’t The Droids You’re Looking For: (Shasta Ventures), (Nest), (Skycatch), (Anki)
Fireside Chat with (LinkedIn)
How To Lead: (Twitter)
LUNCH Special Product Announcement
Fireside Chat with (Dropbox)
How the Startup Battlefield Works
Session One – Disrupting Efficiency (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), (Polyvore), (angel investor), (Mailbox)
BREAK
Session Two – Disrupting Experience (Zillow, Barton Ventures), (Pinterest), (Silicon Valley Connect), (Homebrew Ventures)
BREAK
Session Three – Disrupting Transparency (CrunchFund), (Eventbrite), (Google Ventures), (CloudFlare)
After Party hosted by at
Opening Remarks by TechCrunch
Fireside Chat with (Sequoia Capital) and (Meraki)
In Conversation with (Houzz)
Fireside Chat with and (Greylock Partners)
The Bitcoin Revolution: (AngelList), (Counsyl), (Winklevoss Capital), (Winklevoss Capital)
Fireside Chat with (Salesforce.com)
BREAK
Spies Like Us: (Google), (author), (Mandiant), (Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers)
Special Product Announcement
The Investor Perspective: (Cowboy Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), (Greylock Partners), (Sequoia Capital), (Index Ventures)
LUNCH Special Announcement
In Conversation with (HVF)
How the Startup Battlefield Works
Session Four – Disrupting Collaboration (General Catalyst Partners), (Y Combinator), (Parse/Facebook), (Charles River Ventures)
BREAK
Session Five – Disrupting Discovery (Greylock Partners), (Freestyle Capital), (Pitchstarter), (Google)
BREAK
Session Six – Disrupting Measurement (SoftTech VC), (Sherpa Global), (Dropbox), (Airbnb)
Cocktail Party
After Party hosted by at with DJ Trevor Simpson
Opening Remarks by TechCrunch
Fireside Chat with (GoPro)
Founders Stories with (Pebble)
Fireside Chat with (Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers)
Special Product Announcement
Fireside Chat with (Khosla Ventures)
BREAK
The 30 New Franchises: (Nebula), (Box), (Zendesk), (Andreessen Horowitz)
Founders Stories with (GitHub)
The New Diagnosis: (Cellscope), Elli Kaplan (Neurotrack), (Gladstone Institutes), (Rock Health)
LUNCH
Hackathon Highlights
Fireside Chat with (Yahoo!)
Something Ventured: (Sequoia Capital) and (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers)
Startup Battlefield Alumni
Fireside Chat with (Facebook)
Passing the Disrupt Cup with Enigma
BREAK
Startup Battlefield Finals (CrunchFund, TechCrunch), (Sequoia Capital), (Andreessen Horowitz), (SV Angel), (Yahoo!), (Khosla Ventures)
Closing Cocktail Reception Hosted by
Closing Awards Ceremony
After Party hosted by at with DJ’s Talib Kweli and Kevvy Kev
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Trance Wants To Make It Easy For Great Dancers To Show Off Their Moves
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Colleen Taylor
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Dance is a creative art that has always had real mainstream appeal. But while big general platforms like YouTube and Twitter are decent for showcasing dancers, they’re not ideal. Dance could certainly benefit from having a service that’s made especially for it. That’s the idea behind , a mobile app developed this weekend at the . Trance is built to let dancers create and share minute-long video clips of their work with a dance-focused audience. The Trance platform is aimed at letting dancers show off their unique styles, and enabling dance fans to see the latest work from their favorite artists — and discover new artists to love. Trance had a really minute-long onstage presentation at the Hackathon (that is embedded below), so we asked and , two of the four developers behind the app, to come backstage and discuss it more at length. Check that out in the video embedded at the top of this post.
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For The Rhythmically Challenged, Strumbot Will Strum Your Guitar For You
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Stephanie Yang
| 2,013
| 9
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Yu Jiang Tham may not have rhythm, but that didn’t stop him from getting up on the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon stage and singing “ ,” thanks to his self-strumming guitar, Strumbot. For the first three hours of the hackathon on Saturday, Tham had no idea what he wanted to do and didn’t want to use any of the available APIs. At about 4 p.m., he made a trip to the hardware store and borrowed his dad’s guitar to create Strumbot. “I’m actually really bad at guitar. Rhythm mostly,” Tham tells me. “So I wanted to create a robot that would help me strum in rhythm.” Covered in velcro and black tape (since he couldn’t use a drill), the Strumbot enables you, with one hand, to play the chords while a metal lever moves a guitar pick across the strings. Still, it alleviates the problem of having to manage both, and makes it easier to concentrate on chords and lyrics. Tham uses a node.js application to enter strumming patterns using JavaScript, which then sends signals through an Arduino board to a motor attached to the guitar. The motor then controls when the guitar pick moves, following each pattern. From the computer, you can press the button for each pattern and the Strumbot will take care of the rest. The Strumbot application is going online, but Tham wants to improve the strumming ability with a better motor for quicker movements. The pick also currently has to go both up and down, which makes a chord echo and isn’t ideal for sound quality. Tham has participated in other hackathons. He was part of a winning team that developed a lost-and-found app at the Outside Lands Hackathon. However, he says he’s looking to get into more hardware projects, with Strumbot as his second undertaking in hardware. Watch his performance below:
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An App For Social Change, Hot Mess Anonymously Tells Your Friends That They Have Gunk In Their Teeth
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Eliza Brooke
| 2,013
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Neil Mansilla and Rob Zazueta got a lot of laughs this afternoon for their Disrupt Hackathon submission, Hot Mess. The app aims to solve the universal nightmare of unwittingly walking around with a piece of crud in your teeth by allowing people to send anonymous texts alerting you to the situation. Users can choose from a variety of common scenarios, like “eye boogers”, “nose nuggets”, “teeth gunk”, and “dragon breath”. (Their phrasing.) Hot Mess sends a discreet text message letting a person know that “An angel has sent you a hint” and that they should read it in a private place. The text includes a link to a description of the problem accompanied by a very flattering photo of Zazueta demonstrating the issue. Zazueta clarified that he created the images using gum for nose goop, Red Vines for tooth gunk, and cake as an eye booger. Importantly, all messages and images are pre-programmed so that users can’t use it to bully others and keep Hot Mess helpful and positive. The presentation got the audience laughing — who hasn’t walked around with their fly unzipped at some point? — but as the team explained, the hack is meant to serve a broader social purpose. “This is intended to break a social taboo,” Mansilla said backstage. “If someone is a close talker and has halitosis, or is too loud, it’s hard to share that without offending them. Why? You’re doing them a disservice by not telling them.” The goal is that apps like Hot Mess will make themselves obsolete by creating a social climate in which people are happy to tell each other to go blow their nose. The app would be particularly useful in professional situations, Zazueta and Mansilla said, where looking like a slob seriously affects people’s perception of you and co-workers might not feel comfortable making a comment. “The giver gets good karma and the recipient won’t feel bad because they think the intent is genuine. I think everyone can completely relate to this, which is why it was funny.” Mansilla and Zazueta said that they were interested in building other verticals for Hot Mess, like sending a message to someone in a bar when they’re hitting on someone too hard or need to talk less. Another potential feature is time delay between sending and receiving the message, which would help protect the sender’s anonymity and could be especially helpful for chronic problems that don’t require a quick fix. It’s like on the subway. If you see something, say something.
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SARAH Lets You Request Information From 21 Government Agencies At The Same Time
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Chris Velazco
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The federal government collects gobs and gobs of data on people, and thanks to a little something called the Freedom of Information Act, people can make requests to liberate some of it. It sounds simple enough, but navigating the labyrinthine process and drafting the request is no easy thing. That’s where comes in. Created by co-founder (and Disrupt NY 2013 winner) Hicham Oudghiri, SARAH is a dead-simple tool that lets users submit Freedom of Information Act requests to 21 different government agencies with single click of a button. Using SARAH is simple enough: all you have to do is fill out a form with some personal information like your name, address an phone number. At the very bottom of the page you’re prompted to detail the specifics of your request, and with one final keystroke you’ve fired off your inquiry to those agencies. The whole process takes about two minutes tops, but what happens behind the scenes? Oudghiri told me that he built a crawler (using Google’s GO, no less) and deployed it to scour government agency websites for the right contact information. Once the form gets filled out, all of that information is slotted into a form letter and sent to the address provided by each agency. Now granted, the organizations on that list aren’t necessarily going have anything on you — if you filled out a request asking for whatever personal information the agencies have collected on you, it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll be getting a treasure trove from NASA (and if you do, I want to know about it). Still, I guess you can never really tell who is keeping tabs on who, and Oudghiri didn’t see much need to split things up in such a way (especially considering it was a 24 hour project). Despite being created by an Enigma co-founder, it’s worth noting that SARAH isn’t really an Enigma product. That said, Oudghiri concedes there’s a sort of thematic similarity here — both are geared toward bringing data out from behind a wall of obscurity and hassles, and that’s a mission I can get behind.
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An Apology From TechCrunch
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Alexia Tsotsis
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Normally our hackathons are a showcase for developers of to create and share something cool. But earlier today, the spirit of our event was marred by two misogynistic presentations. Sexism is a in the tech industry, and we’ve worked hard to counteract it in our coverage and in our own hiring. Today’s issues resulted from a failure to properly screen our hackathons for inappropriate content ahead of time and establish clear guidelines for these submissions. Trust us, that changed as soon as we saw what happened at our show. Every presentation is getting a thorough screening from this hackathon onward. Any type of sexism or other discriminatory and/or derogatory speech will not be allowed. You expect more from us, and we expect more from ourselves. We are sorry.
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Context Lets You Search Across Dropbox, Evernote, Spotify & More, All From Google.com
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Sarah Perez
| 2,013
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For some time, Google has been experimenting with augmenting search results using personal data through its , but that’s been limited to data stored only in Google’s own services. Most users have their data stored elsewhere, too. At the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013 hackathon today, a browser add-on, called simply “Context,” aims to add more options for personalized search using the APIs from Evernote, Dropbox, Spotify, and Trakt – the latter for searching for info about your favorite movies and TV shows. The Chrome browser extension was created by Salesforce intern Kartik Talwar, who’s now heading back to the University of Waterloo after eight months in the Bay Area, and Seungho Yang, a designer at the Y Combinator-backed startup . The team has a thing for practical tools, it seems, having recently won the Angelhack Silicon Valley hackathon for a Gmail inbox organizer called . With Context, the extension intercepts Google search results, looking for specific triggers. In addition to the services listed above, Context can access Google Contacts, too. For example, you can enter a friend’s name then the word “email,” or “number,” or “address,” to have this information immediately appear at the top of Google.com’s search results. But digging into your address book is something Google can already do, which is why the integration with Dropbox, Evernote and other services is perhaps more interesting, and more practical. To trigger searches for Evernote notes, you enter in a keyword in the note’s title along with the word “notes.” And for Dropbox, it’s a matter of combining a keyword with a file extension (e.g. “resume pdf”). Context can also pull up Spotify previews, and can tell you if your favorite shows are on TV tonight, and more. The team only had 10 hours to work on Context, so it’s not published to the Google Chrome Store yet. But they plan to release the extension in the next couple of weeks – Kartik ( ) says he’ll tweet when Context is ready to launch. There are a few services for searching across your personal data, including CloudMagic, FindIt and Younity, for example, indicating there is some interest in this personalized search space. Google Now is another high-profile example, of course. But assuming Context makes it to launch, the benefit here would be that it’s a set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing. After it’s installed, you can basically return to your usual search behaviors, but get better results in return.
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Missing Disrupt? Follow The Action On These Social Channels
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Matt Burns
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Disrupt SF is bigger than one site can handle. Our Instagram, Flickr, Flipboard and Facebook accounts are packed with the happenings from Disrupt. If that’s not enough, we have accounts just for Disrupt that have even more content. Because Disrupt is that big.
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An App For Kids, By A Kid: Meet The 9-Year-Old Co-Creator Of ‘Super Fun Kid Time’
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Colleen Taylor
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Super Fun Kid Time quickly emerged as an audience favorite during Jordan’s spirited minute long on-stage presentation, which you can view in the video embedded above. And while Alexandra’s father (and ) Richard was along at the Hackathon this weekend to lend a helping hand, he’s made it very clear that she is the one who led the app’s vision and development: In case anyone's wondering: The idea for the app, all Alex. Leading the design with a pro designer, Alex. Pitch script, Alex. She's awesome. — Richard David Jordan (@richarddjordan) Alexandra, who is currently learning to program in Ruby and HTML with the help of her dad and Codecademy, joined me backstage to talk a bit more about Super Fun Kid Time and her Hackathon experience. Check that out in the video embedded below.
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The Hackathon Hackers Code Straight On ‘Til Morning
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Jordan Crook
| 2,013
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The is just as much about the journey as it is the destination. More than 1,200 coders showed up to the SF Design Center to build something awesome, make some new friends, and present their wares to a panel of amazing judges. They coded through the night, fighting sleepy eyes, tricky Wi-Fi and hacker-style roadblocks, but still they prevail. For a look at their journeys, check out the video above. And if you want to watch the hacks presented live, check out our .
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Anthony Ha
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Kovert Is A GPS That Lets You Keep Your Phone In Your Pocket To Foil Would-Be Muggers
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Eliza Brooke
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When walking through a sketchy neighborhood that you don’t know well, it doesn’t always feel like a good idea to have your phone out. Disrupt Hackathon entrant Kovert is an app that allows you to keep your phone tucked away out of sight while giving you walking directions through buzz signals. As makers Scott Jones and Andrew Askedall pointed out onstage, following a GPS app with your phone in hand says a few things: I have no idea where I am, and I have money and expensive electronics. “We were at the bar down the street trying to think of ideas,” Jones said. “This is literally because the hostel we’re staying at for Disrupt is in the .” Kovert is super simple. Plug in your end address, and your phone will guide you by buzzing when you reach intersections: once for a left, twice to go straight, three times to turn right, and ten times when you’ve reached your destination. All you have to do is remember which buzzes mean what (but let’s be real, it’s way easier than Morse code.) If you miss the mark, Kovert will loop you back around. Jones and Askedall, who are currently raising a seed round for another app called Kronicle, said they would like to build out Kovert to include a compass calculation feature in which it vibrates when you are pointing in the right direction. Not only of use to hipsters trying to find their way to a warehouse party, the app also has the potential to be used as a tool for visually impaired people. Either way, this would definitely be a useful app to have on hand. But not hand.
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SmartDrive Hack Creates A Real HUD For Your Car Via Google Glass
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Romain Dillet
| 2,013
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Today at the , Brent Bovenzi presented SmartDrive, a neat Google Glass app. Thanks to this hack, you get a true heads-up display to see how your car is doing — a kid’s dream come true. Moreover, you can unlock the car with your voice. “You’ll see fuel mileage, how much gas you have left and tire pressure before even getting in the car” Bovenzi said. It works with recent GM cars that support the GM remote API. This was Bovenzi’s first large-scale hackathon and he enjoyed the experience a lot. While the project started off as a team, they all moved on to do other hacks, except Bovenzi. He carried the project until the end and presented it on stage. As Bovenzi only recently became a startup engineer at , he enjoys attending coding events to learn more. “It’s a great opportunity to force us to do and to learn something,” he said. “You’re not part of a big team, you’re not taking months to do it, and because of that, you have to force yourself,” he continued. In fact, it was Bovenzi’s first time that he coded in Python. He came from Washington DC specifically to attend the Disrupt Hackathon. Now he can leave town by saying “OK Glass, unlock my car.”
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Kiwi Wearables Shows Off A Way To Use Its Personal Tracker Device To Make Music
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Darrell Etherington
| 2,013
| 9
| 8
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Single-function wearable devices are old-school and a massive waste of potential, according to a new Toronto-based startup that’s building a hardware device as well as a cloud-based platform for leveraging data gathered from their wearables to build a wide variety of different experiences. The Kiwi team was at the Disrupt Hackathon this year, and built a demo app to show the power of its platform, which translates motion captured by its device into music using cloud-stored MIDI files. Kiwi co-founders Zaki Hasnain Patel and Ashley Beattie say that the hack can use any kind of instrument that can be made into a MIDI-based output, and that since it works via the cloud, it’s possible for a number of “players” to use Kiwi-based instruments simultaneously for collaborative music creation. The purpose of Kiwi is to turn its Move platform into something that developers can use to build a wide range of apps – you could have a fitness-tracking app like RunKeeper use it to track your activity, for instance, then use it for monitoring motions during a baseball swing in order to try to derive the optimal body movement for big hits, and then have the same device turn on your connected home lighting system and activate your home theatre when you get home using a series of gestures (in addition to measuring movement, the Kiwi Move can detect things like double taps on this surface and sides, too). That’s only the beginning, however. Patel and Beattie say that they’re working on ways in which the Kiwi could help with early alerts for health problems – detecting heart attacks in advance, for instance, by keying into early warning sings. Beattie says that current methods make it possible to detect a heart attack up to 13 hours in advance, and that working with developers in the medical community, Kiwi could be able to provide a warning at least roughly 3 hours ahead of time, based on their current research. It’s another example where they’d be relying on the community to take advantage of their platform to advance the possibilities, but it’s an interesting example of what could be accomplished by not limiting wearable tracking to just a single purpose. Kiwi has yet to ship any hardware, but it has a working prototype, is currently taking pre-orders via its website and plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign on September 24. Kickstarter is their target crowdfunding platform, since its launch in Canada and high-profile makes it a good option for a Toronto-based startup, but says it could consider other options, as well.
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