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Qualcomm Revamps Its Snapdragon Line, Unveils The High-End Snapdragon 800 And 600 Chipsets | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | Qualcomm’s isn’t really a brand that figures prominently into the average person’s understanding of the mobile space, and that’s exactly the issue that the San Diego-based semiconductor company is trying to tackle in its newest and most prominent CES keynote to date. Cringeworthy introduction aside (facepalm material as far as the eye could see), Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs took the stage to announce some big changes to its Snapdragon line of mobile chipsets. The S-series moniker slapped onto the chipsets of yore is now officially dead — Qualcomm has just announced a slew of new mobile chipsets complete with some new naming conventions to go with them. Sitting atop the heap is the newly announced Snapdragon 800, which Qualcomm claims will run a full 75 percent faster than the existing Snapdragon S4 Pro (you know, the crazy-fast chipset used in devices like LG’s Optimus G and Nexus 4). It’ll be quite some time before we can test those claims for ourselves (the first Snapdragon 800s won’t see the light of day until around the middle of the year), but its components paint a pretty powerful picture. The Snapdragon 800 will feature Krait 400 CPU cores that can run as fast as 2.3GHz, an Adreno 330 GPU, and some significant upgrades in terms of connectivity. Think support for LTE-Advanced (which allows for data speeds up to 150Mbps), as well as 802.11ac Wi-Fi. Of course, Jacobs did more than just talk about the 800 series — Guillermo del Toro made a guest appearance to plug , prompting Jacobs to kick off an impressive clip of the film running off of an 800 series chipset. Also on deck today was the Snapdragon 600, a considerable leap from its predecessor, the Snapdragon S4 Pro. It sports a few significant differences in architecture when compared to the S4 Pro — it can hit clock speeds of 1.9GHz, and features a slightly snappier version of the Adreno 320 GPU. When all is said and done, the 600 is said to be roughly 40 percent more powerful than the S4 Pro. Naturally, not every mobile device is going to get a super-fast processor. Qualcomm is prepping chipsets for those entry-level and budget-conscious smartphones, as well, though there wasn’t much detail given today. Take the Snapdragon 200 series, for instance — it’s a more basic chipset that’s geared to provide solid (if not necessarily remarkable) battery life and performance for entry-level smartphones. A 400 series Snapdragon chipset is in the works, too, but Jacobs didn’t spend too much time digging into these little guys; they’ll be fleshed out in greater detail later this year. As it happens, some of you may have stumbled upon the news a little early — a few prominent sites seem to have pushed news of the Snapdragon overhaul out a little prematurely before hastily taking them offline. Thankfully for Qualcomm though, the accidental release of these articles doesn’t seem to have stolen much thunder (which is really the last thing Qualcomm needs at this point). For what it’s worth, anyone who doubted that Qualcomm was capable of putting on a good show was soundly proven wrong tonight — surprise appearances from Big Bird, NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski, and a video address from Archbishop Desmond Tutu were just a few of the treats the company had in store for the audience. If its forthcoming Snapdragon chips (and its push for greater consumer recognition) goes pans out as well as its keynote has, we could be in store for some very impressive days to come from Qualcomm. |
obCESsion | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | CES attendee, I’m glad you’re here. You’re going to see the latest and greatest gadgets. Just like you did last year. You have clearly noticed that you’ll always find the latest gadgets at CES. It’s here because it matters. Such gadgets do get released. They are not always figments of some marketing wizard’s imagination. You have seen the press releases. Most note prices and release dates. There are demands for new, even niche products. Look at the fucking brochures and and the fucking beautiful product renders. Watch the videos. You’ll see the future. You might even cry. Grab some Netgear swag and wipe away the tears. They’ll even give you two. Let’s not talk about the food. It’s always undercooked. Sometimes not cooked at all. It’s not healthy. Grab a Clif Bar. You also need some electrolytes. Get a Red Bull. Crush a couple in one keynote. Go to that thing at night. Come to see Vegas. You’ll see the city’s moral grime clogged up with an extra 200,000 of your least favorite types of people. You’ll love all the bullshit talk. Don’t avoid eye-contact with people. It’s not a cesspool. You won’t get SARS. Come see the latest Ultrabooks. You know what the hell it is. It’s not like a netbook but it does have a totally mono tubular word affixed to the front. I don’t know what Megabook is. You can probably get some hands-on time with the Vizio 5-inch, 1080p phone. You’re not a NBA player. You don’t want to live in China. Everyone has a 6-inch phone. Yeah, someone will probably one-up them with a 7-inch phone and it will be done. Yes, I like looking like an asshole. I would rock a 27-inch phone. I’ve never heard of LiveViewGPS but I hear it could transform your cell phone into a location device with the world’s first prepaid mobile phone locate card. Yep, that gives me a tech boner. Here’s the Alcatel One Touch Idol Ultra. Who cares if it’s the slimmest phone. There will be a slimmer one tomorrow from a company that you’ve never heard of (and that’s awesome). I suck at Letterpress. It can run Plume, a great twitter app. *Pinch* Wake up! CES can be pretty tiring. The Acer Iconia B1 is the best tablet that $130 can buy. It’s really $129.99. But really, save your money and buy something you’ll actually use. Come to our party tonight! We have ice luges. But I hear CNET has two ice luges. Ballistic just unveiled the new Aspire Series for the iPhone 5. I hear it’s stunning and pocket-able. It offers repeated drop protection by combining a soft rubber interior and corner bumpers with a hard plastic exterior. There isn’t an Apple booth: CES is about innovation, after all. No, you’re headline probably isn’t going to make Techmeme but The Verge’s will. Don’t worry about that one either. Don’t spec dump. No one clicks on those anyway. No liveblogs — unless you’re Engadget. . You can’t afford the 4K TVs. Don’t sell your kidneys for one either. I’ve tried to sell my kids. Yes, there will be content available for 4K TVs this year. Real content, too. Not a beautiful fucking picture of New York City in the springtime. We saw that last year. It smells like urine here. It’s smell-o-vision. I haven’t seen the new golden shower-scented mechanical cigarette but it’s probably in North Hall. You won’t be pissed if you didn’t see the latest thing from Huawei. No, you hadn’t mentioned Huawei yet, MG. And yes, you know what Huawei makes. They make thingys. They don’t make sunshine. Yes, you should care. LG executives probably weren’t hundled in a corner prior to their 8:00am press conference praying that Apple no longer exists since because while their company might not be as popular as Apple, it still saw 48 billion in revenue in 2011 from selling hundreds of millions of gadgets, HDTVs, and appliances. Intel announced the follow-up to its current mobile chipsets. It will make for thinner Windows 8 tablets. You know what they say about guys that punch other guys in the face, right? We haven’t stopped drinking yet. 7. And yeah, your followers don’t give a shit about whatever NEC just birthed on stage. Everyone cares about battery indicators. Wash your hands. A lot. I’ve never seen a doctor here. Vizio’s new smart TV with super HD has apps, but no doctor app. I need Visine right now; it’s dry here. Not everyone here has an iPhone. Or a MacBook Air. Or an iPad. (I do, though.) Everyone here is a tech blogger and everyone reads everyone else. It’s a incestuous industry. I still have a soul. Apple bought yours. Wish you were here. [Just in case it’s not clear, this post is a rip-off of done which itself was a homage. The format seemed perfect to remind MG he has never been to CES.] |
CES Is So Uncool It Might Finally Be Cool | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | Even though I once built a slideshow called “ ” I have never been to CES. Because the fact is that, as every cool blogger has very creatively , CES is tragically unhip. First of all, none of the actually important tech companies are there: Specifically, the “ ” – Amazon, Google, Apple, and Facebook. Even Microsoft officially ducked out last year, to much tech media chagrin. At CES 2013, the closest you’ll get to a cool tech company is Samsung. , Samsung. Second of all, when you look at the list of “official CES parties” to “network” at, it sure looks like a lot of crap. Any time there’s a Mashable party at a conference, BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID. But the cool part about CES is actually what’s not happening at CES. Come on, guys, it’s Vegas: Go find the clubs that ASUS won’t be having some top-secret launch at and boogie. Or pick a random celebrity you’d like to meet and then google their name + CES, because every tech product launch has some random celebrity thrown in nowadays. Now’s your chance to meet Tiffani Amber Thiessen! Don’t believe me? See: Ke$ha performing on Wednesday at the iHeartRadio party Seriously, instead of going to the “Invite-Only” GENIVI Showcase Reception on Wednesday night, I’m going to find two to three founder/investor friends who are randomly there and go dance at . After tracking down and buying this fork that , of course. This is my first time at CES, and despite everyone telling me it’s going to suck, I resolutely think it will not. Because, as Buzzfeed in its CES hate screed, “the value in going is increasingly on the sidelines.” It is right. In addition to all of Aol upper management, I’ve already confirmed that VCs like , , , , and will have men (sigh, why is it always men?) on the ground at the conference, and that impromptu meetings with random founders at XS are what these VCs are looking at in terms of deriving value from the sprawling event. Just like with enterprise, VCs are . And despite all of the cool big companies being “officially” gone, there will be quite a few of their biz dev guys roaming the premises — “cool” or not, VCs want to make those connections, because they eventually lead to partnerships and exits for portfolio companies. Microsoft is apparently still having some sort of secret party there, so there’s that. “I haven’t been in about five years so maybe there’s something to it,” said Lightbank’s Paul Lee when I told him about my “So uncool it’s cool” hypothesis. “I’m there to network and meet several entrepreneurs, [and yes it] seems like an unusual uptick in [VC] activity…” New Lowercase Capital Partner Matt Mazzeo agreed with Lee, despite his . “CES is a great excuse to get together with a handful of really smart people you haven’t seen in a while and one of the year’s few events with enough pull, relevance, and boondoggle fun that it brings together a rare combination of people from LA, NY and SF.” I’ll be one of those people, there tomorrow until Friday. And if my time is split between meeting VCs and dancing at nightclubs and doing whatever cool things you guys , why not? Could be worse. |
Digital Health Funding In ’12: $1.4B Raised, Up 45% Y/Y; Qualcomm Most Prolific Of 179 Investors, Castlight Takes Largest Round | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | As CES 2013 gets underway, it finds the Quantified Self movement to be a far more crowded market than a year ago, but , the market is still hungry for smarter devices and “plenty of room” remains for startups for startups to push the envelope with innovation and press beyond movement and weight. With digital health data proliferating, wearable health-tracking devices (and the sensors that makes them tick) maturing, the improvements in remote diagnosis and with the mobile health app economy beginning to boom, there were a lot of exciting developments at the crossroads of health and technology in 2012. Digital health accelerator had its own in 2012, during which it’s been collecting data on all the activity in the world of healthtech startups. This morning, the accelerator , designed to give us a glimpse into the year’s investment activity, while highlighting some emerging trends, both good and bad. [Slideshow below.] Rather than an end-all-be-all report, Rock Health’s year-end research is meant to provide a highlight reel and offer some food for thought as a new year sets in motion. In terms of methodology, Rock Health Co-founder and CEO Halle Tecco tells us that the accelerator captures everything related to digital health filed through the SEC and anything that was announced publicly, before cross-checking that information with Capital IQ, CrunchBase, VentureSource, among other resources to create a baseline. The report shows that 2012 was an active and exciting year for digital health, and the space grew exponentially over the last twelve months. However, as we’ve reported previously, it hasn’t been all sunshine and roses for the health space of late. Reports like the present a bleak outlook, with analysts saying that “young [medtech] companies are really struggling to get financial deals.” The reasons for this include — among others — a lackluster IPO market, pricing and regulatory pressures, which led to constriction in venture capital and more cautious investment strategies in the health market. This means early-stage companies have been struggling to raise funding, there’s less access to capital in general, which adds further inertia to R&D, device testing and more. Rock Health’s year-end report paints a different picture; if not drastically different, at the very least a contrast. According to its research, in 2012, digital health startups saw 45 percent more investment and 56 percent more deals compared to the year prior, with total capital invested growing from $968 million to $1.4 billion. The report shows that, while investment in traditional healthcare is drying up, funding for digital health has grown. Across all sectors, investment fell 2 percent, thanks largely to biotechnology (which fell 4 percent) and medical devices (which fell 16 percent). Meanwhile, funding for software rose 19 percent and digital health grew 45 percent. All in all, 134 digital health companies raised $2 million or more in 2012, with four areas representing over one-third of the total investment. Personal health tools and health tracking saw $143 million, while consumer engagement saw $237 million, EMRs (all those that capture clinical information and its corresponding app ecosystem) saw $108 million and hospital administration found $78 million. In addition, the report finds that over half of deals done in 2012 were rounds greater than $5 million, and the largest five deals represented more than half of the year’s total funding. The largest digital health investment of the year went to Castlight, , led by T. Rowe Price, and Redmile Group, with contributions from its previous investors, including names like Morgan Stanley, Wellcome Trust, U.S. Venture Partners, Maverick Capital, Oak Investment Partners and Venrock — to name a few. Following Castlight was GoHealth, in June for healthcare comparison shopping, , in December for genome analysis and August’s . Rock Health also found that some of the larger deals from 2012 could lead to a stronger IPO market for digital health companies, with Practice Fusion, Castlight and ZocDoc all fitting the bill of potential IPOs in 2013. As for investors, 179 organizations invested in digital health companies in 2012, however, the vast majority only made one investment. This shows that, while the market may be heating up and investment is starting to make its way to digital health, investors are still wary — and still testing the waters. According to the report, Qualcomm Ventures made the most digital health investments of any investor (keep in mind this is for publicly available data) with six investments, followed by Aberdare with five, Merck Global Innovation Fund with five and NEA with four. Rock Health also notes that the Bay Area and Boston have established themselves as the two geographies leading the way in digital health activity (and investments). The problems? The report shows that, while funding is hardly scarce, digital health startups are still struggling to find talent (as is every sector) and that, across the board, more than 600 positions are currently available within these businesses — a silver lining for job creation, however. Women also remain underrepresented as CEOs of healthtech startups, as only 7 percent of CEOs in the space are female. In sum, I’m sticking to . While investment might be drying up in certain areas of the health industry, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just as we’ve seen happen to the music and publishing industries, there won’t be many investing in building more printing presses and better CD distribution. Healthtech investing is going to shift away from administrative, claims processing and Life Sciences as a whole to digital health and businesses focused on affecting outcomes, those that improve decision support, care coordination and patient engagement. For investors focused on those areas, arguably there’s been no better time to be looking at the health landscape, especially for those interested in having a hand in rebuilding a broken health system. Now, digital health needs more talent and more talented women. If all these elements fall into place (admittedly, a tall order), 2013 is going to be a banner year for the industry. Alert! Shameless self-linking ahead: For a round-up of 2012’s best digital health and fitness apps, gadgets and startups, . Rock Health’s full slideshow below: [slideshare id=15847595&doc=2012yearendfundingreport-130103205936-phpapp01&w=640&h=380] |
EA Popcap’s Bejeweled Crosses Over Into Real-World, Physical Games Through Hasbro Agreement | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | Angry Birds-maker Rovio has said that it eventually expects that at least half or more of its revenues will come from physical goods in the future. It’s not the only developer that has popularized a brand on mobile and social platforms only to later introduce real-world merchandising. EA’s Popcap is parlaying its Bejeweled franchise into a line of real-world games through an agreement with Hasbro. Hasbro and Popcap’s parent EA, , have worked together for years. More than five years ago, This time, the partnership is taking games in the opposite direction — from the virtual world into the real one. As iOS and Android have become major platforms in their own right with about 1 billion devices either cumulatively sold or activated, smartphones have become a fast route to creating globally recognized entertainment brands like Angry Birds. Many developers like Cut The Rope-maker Zeptolab and Outfit7, which is behind animal character apps like Talking Tom, have signed licensing deals to create toys, T-shirts and more. The playbook for these developers, which are often bootstrapped or non-venture funded, has been to build higher-quality games that attract millions of users and enough loyalty that consumers will buy plush toys or T-shirts in the real world. Hasbro says it will launch two games this spring based on Bejeweled. These physical games will tie into the online versions, with virtual rewards for consumers who buy the product like a free download of Bejeweled 3. Bejeweled, a classic Match-3 game, is one of Popcap’s longest-standing brands. It was first developed for browsers more than 10 years ago. It later came to Facebook and was one of the first titles available for the iPod more than five years ago. After the EA acquisition, PopCap appears to have stayed fairly independent compared to other game developers that get absorbed into their buyers. Still, it hasn’t been all that smooth. |
GM Announces New App Framework, SDK, And Store For In-Vehicle Apps | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | Ford today introduced its that allows mobile apps to talk to its cars. Not to be outdone, General Motors just its own API and SDK for its new in-vehicle app platform. the big difference here is that while Ford uses a driver’s smartphone, General Motors’s framework for its MyLink platform is meant to let developers run apps hosted in the car’s infotainment system. GM announced four potential launch partners for this new system: iHeart Radio, TuneIn, Slacker, and The Weather Channel. At least some parts of the SDK will allow developers to use HTML5 and JavaScript to write their apps, though details about this still remain sparse. The company’s 2014 model year, which will launch in late 2013, will feature the first cars to have this new capability, but the company hasn’t announced which vehicles will get this feature first. The cars that will feature this system will allow drivers to download apps directly to the car through an app catalog. In the announcement, GM Chief Infotainment Officer Phil Abram took a thinly veiled swipe at his competitors: There will be a category of apps that will be unique to our cars and very different from what people use today on their smartphones or tablets. It’s not just taking phone apps and making them functional in a car, which most car companies do in some form now. Instead, GM may approve applications that stem from vehicle ownership. For example, customers can choose to download applications that assist them in driving more safely or in a more fuel efficient manner, possibly decreasing the costs of vehicle ownership. Just like other manufacturers, GM previously only worked with a small number of developers. The new SDK, the company says, will “expand the environment so that developers can work with the actual vehicle through the infotainment system.” “We have designed our SDK so that developers only have to write the software code once to address the entire population of vehicles and end users,” said Abram. “Developers can repurpose existing tools and code from existing projects as long as they’re consistent with applicable licenses. Our app policies will also provide flexibility in how developers can design commercial aspects of their apps as well.” TuneIn’s CEO John Donham told us that his company is not just ” impressed with GM’s innovation, but also the magnitude of how broadly they will roll out this service over the next couple of years. This collaboration is a great example of how Motor City and Silicon Valley can revolutionize everyday activities to enhance the driving experience of tomorrow.” Just like the system Ford announced today, GM will also obviously have a certification process before apps can be deployed to the car. The company also says that it will define a business model for these apps, but didn’t specify any details yet. It’s a safe bet, though, that GM will follow some of the standard app store policies and take a cut from sales (assuming the store will feature paid apps). |
Prez Inauguration Ticketmaster Fiasco Reminds Us The Private Sector Screws Up, Too | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | Those waiting patiently to buy a ticket for President Obama’s final inaugural ball will be disappointed to know that they last Sunday. “A technical error” from Ticketmaster’s system sent an email a day early and led to a flood of premature sales that sold out the entire stock of public tickets. For all the grumbles about government incompetence, the fumble is noteworthy since this was a private company taking over the responsibilities of a state function. It’s a helpful reminder: the private sector screws up, too. “We understand the disappointment people feel if they were unable to obtain tickets, but like all other popular events, demand was much greater than supply,” read a statement from Ticketmaster. During an epic fail of the 2009 inauguration that left crowds stranded in tunnels, some detractors were quick to blame the government, ” I think the blame must lie with the [Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies] deficiency in planning and organization,” a blogger for the Examiner. There was even on the inter-agency communication problems that caused the blunder. I doubt I will see a similar critique of the private sector’s failings, even though it has a habit of manufacturing cars or that kill people. This isn’t to say that the government is any better; former Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra called the federal procurement process an “IT cartel,” and the White House employment roles are a graveyard of optimistic young innovators that later leave in frustration. The TicketMaster screwup is just an example that we should be mindful that the private sector is no panacea. |
Meet The 5-Inch, Quad-Core Xperia Z: Sony’s Stunning Answer To The iPhone 5 And Galaxy S3 | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | Sony announced its first quad-core smartphone at its CES press conference today: the Xperia Z. The company will be hoping this new Android flagship can deliver the scalps of high-end rival devices such as Samsung’s Galaxy S3 and Apple’s iPhone 5. The 4G handset has a symmetrical, rectangular slab design with clean lines and flat glass panes to front and back, coupled with blunted edges and minimally rounded corners. Sony smartphones haven’t exactly fared well against the competition in recent years, something in the fall. But the Japanese electronics maker appears determined to get its mobile house in order, starting with the — followed by its (the Xperia S). This year Sony has upped its game — as well it must — with its first quad-core flagship, and its first 5-inch screen phone. The Xperia Z is the . Sony is also launching a variant — called the Xperia ZL (aka “Odin”) — which has a slightly different industrial design/shape with a curved, plastic back to “fit easier in the hand,” which isn’t waterproof but is otherwise the same hardware. Don’t get distracted, though: Sony is going to be shouting loudest about the Xperia Z, calling it its “primary” and “lead” device for 2013 in most markets, including Western Europe and Japan. Here are the key specs for the Xperia Z: Sony is still trash-talking its output last year, and clearly wants to start afresh — with a clean (glass) slate. “The Ericsson acquisition had gone through so quickly, in reality we weren’t really fully prepared to be part of the wider Sony family/fully integrated in the Sony family [last year],” Calum MacDougall, Director of Xperia Marketing Programme at Sony, told TechCrunch. “But we think this device is a real step forward in a real Sony smartphone. It combines the best of what Sony has to offer.” With a 5-inch display, the enormo-phone trend that Samsung has been driving with devices like its Galaxy Note series and its flagship Galaxy S3 has not passed Sony by. But despite packing a massive screen, the handset feels relatively lightweight (146g) and manageable, being just 7.9 mm thick. It’s a fraction thicker than the iPhone 5 but thinner than the Galaxy S3. It also has a premium feel, thanks to those tempered glass panels on the front and back (no, you can’t remove the battery). Sony has focused its full attention on the full HD (1920 x 1080) screen which includes its Reality Display TV tech and Mobile Bravia Engine 2 — the former giving the screen a more realistic colour-cast than some of the hyper-saturated AMOLED smartphone screens out there, and the latter designed to improve viewing of non-HD footage (by sharpening and increasing the saturation of content — to make it more vivid and improve clarity). Pixel density is exceptionally sharp, at 443 ppi, so if you want a device for watching movies and TV shows on the go, the Xperia Z shouldn’t disappoint. Turning to the 13-megapixel camera, the Sony Exmor RS mobile imaging sensor offers improved low-light performance, and also supports HDR for video — a first for smartphones, according to the company. The front-facing lens utilizes Sony’s Exmor R sensor. Elsewhere, Sony has added contactless transfer/payment technology NFC, which continues to struggle to gain serious traction with consumers but is at least a nice to have for pairing with NFC peripherals like speakers. (Sony is also launching NFC- and -enabled TVs at CES which locate the NFC chip in the TV remote so you can share content from a smartphone to the TV by tapping the handset on the remote.) Being now an entirely Japanese company, Sony has also made the Xperia Z waterproof (and dustproof) — a very common feature for Japanese smartphones. On the software side, the Xperia Z runs Android 4.1 Jellybean, which is a slight disappointment since Android 4.2 is out in the wild. But Sony assures me it intends for the Xperia Z to get upgrades to 4.2 and the next iteration of Android (codenamed Key Lime Pie). On top of Android, the Xperia Z has a lightweight Sony UI, but thankfully the company appears to be learning that less is more when it comes to skinning Android. The UI has shed some of the uglier widget animations that were a blight on past Xperia devices, and felt fast and slick during my brief hands on. Sony said the UI is not something it intends to emphasise — it’s not even giving it a brand name. Instead, Sony is fully focused on talking up its multimedia services, which sit inside the primary media applications on the Xperia Z: Walkman for music downloads, and to access Sony’s Music Unlimited streaming service (which offers 80 million tracks, but only if you pay a monthly subscription); Movies for video content, including access to Sony’s Video Unlimited store for renting or buying films; and PlayStation Mobile for accessing Sony’s games app store. There’s also an Album application where photos live, which also pulls in images from your Facebook and Picasa accounts and includes a geotagging feature to map where pictures were taken. “The great strength of Apple is the consistency of the user interface across products so we know we have to match that if we’re going to deliver a wider ecosystem,” said MacDougall. “We intend to offer a unified experience across multiple Sony products. This is about providing a consistent Sony entertainment experience across multiple devices.” The Xperia Z also includes a battery maximising mode — called Battery Stamina Mode — that can be switched on to extend standby time by 4x (or more). It works by turning off all background apps when the phone’s screen is off, with the exception of standard telephony and SMS. Users can also whitelist certain apps to ensure they still run in the background if required. Sony is offering the Xperia Z in three colour options: black, white, and purple (see below). Exact launch date, markets and pricing are to be confirmed, but Sony said it is planning a “global launch” in “Q1 2013,” adding that the initial focus will be Western Europe. |
null | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 1 | 21 | null |
Yiftee Raises $850K For Local Business-Focused Gifting Service | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | a gifting service that aims to drive business to local merchants, has raised $850,000 in seed funding from Scott Cook, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and other angel investors. Similar to other gifting apps, Yiftee allows you to give gifts to friends via a mobile app. However, all gifts on the platform are from local businesses. For example, you could gift your friend a glass of wine, manicure, or lunch at a local merchant. To send a gift, the consumer fires up the Yiftee iPhone app or website, chooses a friend and their location, and Yiftee will present gifts from featured merchants in that area first with pictures, descriptions, and pricing. Once the consumer chooses a gift, she writes a note, pays Yiftee for it, and sends the gift notification via Facebook, email, or text. The gift recipient can then pay for the gift via a prepaid MasterCard credit card that he or she shows the merchant on a smart phone. Yiftee makes money by charging a convenience fee that is paid by the gift giver. Yiftee currently has 2 million local restaurants and shops listed. The startup is the brainchild of Lori Laub and Donna Novitsky, who was previously the CEO of Big Tent, which was in 2010. She was also a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures for nine years. As Novitsky explains to us, Yiftee provides an interesting alternative to local commerce by helping drive traffic into stores. The startup, of course, will face the challenge of providing customers who will become repeat visitors. |
HackerRank Will Host Back To School Hackathon, Bringing College Students To Hot Startups | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | has before, but on February 2, it plans to connect some of the top coding talent in universities with some of the best-known companies in Silicon Valley. Developed by the same company behind , a site where companies find programmers by hosting “CodeSprints,” the HackerRank service . Co-founder Vivek Ravisankar said the goal is to create a community where hackers can complete programming challenges and see how they stack up against others. Unlike Coursera and Udacity, HackerRank is less focused on teaching you the basics of programming and more on letting coders practice their skills, he said. For now, Ravisankar said that InterviewStreet is the company’s moneymaker, while at HackerRank he’s just trying to “build the user base and a very sticky platform.” Ultimately, he plans to make money by connecting programmers with companies they want to work for, but he said that will be a purely opt-in system. As for , Ravisankar said he has realized that college students, especially those who don’t go to a school in the San Francisco Bay Area, don’t really know much about Silicon Valley. The contest’s main prize is supposed to address that. The top 10 competitors will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Silicon Valley, where HackerRank has organized tours at a number of companies, including Quora, Counsyl, PocketGems, OpenTable, RocketFuel, Weebly, Scribd, Pinterest, and Twitter. There are other prizes — the top prize includes $2,000, a meeting with a partner at Y Combinator, and office hours with the HackerRank founders. The contest will take place over 24 hours and consist of five challenges, with the first one focused on artificial intelligence. Ravisankar said he’ll be doing outreach at more than 30 schools, including Stanford, Berkeley, and Purdue, but any college student can participate — you just need to have a .edu email address. Ravisankar said he’s hoping to host these types of Back to School challenges three or four times every year. You can . |
Ford Launches Open Developer Program To Let Mobile Apps Interface With Its Cars | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | Our cars have become increasingly connected, but building apps for them has generally involved small private betas and a lot of hand-holding from car manufacturers. The first manufacturer to open up their cars to developers is Ford, which is announcing its for iOS and Android apps at CES today. Developers will be able to use Ford’s new SDK to tap into a car’s entertainment systems to enable two-way communication between the apps and the car. As Julius Marchwicki, Ford’s program manager for SYNC AppLink, told me earlier today, this includes the ability to use Ford’s SYNC system to send voice commands to the app, give feedback through the car’s text-to-speech engine, use the car’s button controls and menuing system, and provide API access to the display. Until now, access to the AppLink API, which is available in and which will launch globally this year, was only available for a small number of companies. While Ford held a number of developer events (including one at our own TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon), access to the API remained limited. In a way, this obviously wasn’t a surprise, given the liability considerations that govern a lot of what the car industry can and can’t do (just imagine an app that dials your volume up to 11 and causes you to crash). Because of this, a developer will have to submit an app to Ford for review by its engineers to “ensure it works properly and is suitable for use in the vehicle.” Once it’s been approved, developers get a distribution license so the app can be submitted to the relevant app stores and talk to the car. As Marchwicki told me, most of the safety concerns are mitigated by the fact that AppLink runs in a sandbox on SYNC, which itself is a sandbox, too. He did note, however, that Ford will refuse apps that, for example, focus on video or are otherwise visually intensive (long text, photos, etc.). Games, too, he said, will not be allowed to connect to AppLink. Before submitting their apps, developers can also get support from Ford and through online discussion forums on . Throughout the private beta phase, Marchwicki said his team updated its documentation, especially the Guide, to decrease the time it took new developers to bootstrap their apps. Ford is also working with Michigan-based development shop to provide development and technical support for developers who need some help building their AppLink apps. “Since launching AppLink, we’ve worked with developers ranging from a two-man startup at Roximity to large organizations like National Public Radio and Major League Baseball,” said Marchwicki in a statement today. “The experience we gained from these projects as well as supporting hackathons at TechCrunch Disrupt and Facebook has helped us refine the development and testing process.” Over the last few months, Ford also worked with a number of developers to bring their apps to AppLink ahead of the full launch of the developer program. Among the apps launching with AppLink support today are news apps like the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and , as well as music apps from Amazon for access to its Cloud Player, Aha Radio, Greater Media and Rhapsody. Navigation apps and , the of the last Ford AppLink Developer Challenge at our Disrupt Hackathon, also enabled their AppLink support today. |
Following Fitbit’s New Wristband, Basis Unveils First Android App, To Go Live In March; iOS To Follow | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | Quantified Self enthusiasts are getting their fair share of excitement at CES this week. first unveiled its intriguing health-tracking watch at the event last year, but after hiccups and , the company finally launched its product . At launch, however, the band looked great and the entire package was very promising. Unfortunately, the company hasn’t yet launched the mobile apps that will accompany its tracking band and web dashboard, yet today the company gave a glimpse into its first app — for Android — which will be made available in March. For those unfamiliar, Basis’ band and dashboard allows users to continuously monitor skin temperature, heart rate, motion, calories burned and sleep patterns, among other things. The watchband comes with an LCD display that shows the date and time, BlueTooth support (to be activated once the apps launch) and, most impressively, is laden with sensors. The watch has a 3-axis accelerometer that measures sleep patterns, an optical scanner to track blood flow and heart rate, skin and ambient temperature trackers that measure heat dissipation and workout intensity, etc. The startup then uploads all this information into the cloud, applies its algorithms and allows users to view heat maps and activity patterns, and then allows them to accumulate points, unlock habits (meant to gamify the experience), and so on. The idea behind the accompanying mobile apps is, as one would expect, to be able to view all that health data on the go. But, beyond that, it’s been unclear how the company’s mobile apps will supplement its web experience. Thanks to Basis’ demo at CES today, we’ve got a little bit more of an idea. As the startup made clear , its new Android app will include automatic syncing, allowing users to sync data from their bands wirelessly to their dashboard. Users will be able to sync the app with the dashboard “automatically in the background and on-demand” so that the dashboard is always up to date. On top of that, users can view their habits and insights from their phones and receive notifications, which will alert them when they hit targets and achieve goals, or offer reminders when in need of a push in the right direction. The app will be available for beta users “by the end of March,” and Basis says that an iOS version is “also in the works” but would give no timeframe for its release. It will likely hit sometime this summer. Again, it’s an active week in the activity space at CES, as Basis’ announcement follows Fitbit’s launch of its new $99 Flex wristband, which gives the popular health tracking device a new form factor, taking it from clip to wrist. The new product isn’t available yet, but it’s clear the space is heating up, and some of these companies are already launching multiple product lines. Meanwhile, Basis is taking its time to roll everything out. It remains to be seen whether this approach will work to its advantage. So far, we think it looks great. Check out our big year-end . Full . |
Verizon And Motorola Announce FiOS TV Media Server That Can Record Six Shows At Once | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | Remember that FiOS home Media Server Verizon was talking about ? Well, the company is finally starting to make things official, with an and product details revealed today at CES. Launch date and pricing info still remain elusive, however. Verizon and Motorola have jointly developed the new Media Server platform, which doesn’t have a snazzy name like “Apple TV” or “Google TV,” but is rather called the Motorola Medios+ VMS1100 Media Server and the Motorola Mediaos+ IPC1100 IP-based set-top. (Oh, you guys and your clever names!) But the naming isn’t as important here, since the idea is that this would one day just replace your Verizon set-top box. In any event, the solution will address several pain points for current Verizon FiOS subscribers. The server will support up to five separate TVs, meaning each TV can be tuned into different programming without any conflicts. To be clear, that’s one TV connected to the Media Server itself, then up to four other set-top boxes. Even if you don’t have a house filled with nearly half a dozen TVs, you’ll be able to take advantage of the Media Server because it will allow you to record up to six TV shows at the same time, which can then be viewed on all the connected TVs. Seriously, this would solve a huge issue in our house where we’re constantly interrupted with “ ” messages as multiple programs kick off recording at the same time. And if you’re not around to respond, Verizon’s DVRs currently default to your Series Manager lineup rankings, which is often a poor reflection of the TV you actually care about seeing since most people don’t take the time to re-order their programming by priority. For all those extra recordings you’ll now end up with, the Media Server offers one terabyte of internal storage, which equates to 100 hours of HD content or weeks of SD programming. The IPC1100 client set-top box accesses that content over a coax cable, similar to how Verizon FiOS’s multi-room DVRs operate today. The client, however, has a lower profile than the current DVRs, as it’s described as being “as thin as paperback novel.” The Media Server also includes performance improvements, says Verizon, which should hopefully make browsing the on-demand library and content guide a bit speedier. And it offers a feature that will let you shop from over 15 home shopping channels and purchase items using your remote. If only this functionality worked with TV commercials. Maybe one day? Other widgets are available, too, as always, including the YouTube widget which lets you search for and view video on the TV. Previously, this widget required users run desktop software on their PC, but the Media Server will not. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHMCa9RvgSI?feature=player_embedded] The Media Server and client devices will run Motorola’s software, which supports smart searches and personalization via favorites, customizable menus and recommendations. (The DreamGallery link points to a video showing software than looks different than what Verizon shows in its own video above, thankfully). More importantly, well, perhaps to TechCrunch readers, is that the Media Server platform works with iPads, Xboxes, and Connected TVs. Verizon FiOS, in fact, while connected to the home’s Wi-Fi network. It’s not a bad experience, either, except for the fact that DVR recordings aren’t available – although that has to do with licensing issues, as opposed to Verizon’s choice. While the iPad app was a great addition for FiOS users, Verizon notes that 80% of its customer base prefers watching TV content on TVs. That seems to be par for the course, . The delay to launch in the previously announced 2012 time frame may have had to do with issues surrounding for working with open home-networking standards. Verizon commented on TiVo’s request for a waiver of those rules, saying that the FiOS Media Server worked with standards from the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) and the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA), but those standards were a “work in progress.” Verizon also noted that DLNA’s next standard would probably not be approved until 2013. , which paved the way for the FiOS Media Server’s launch in 2013. |
Dish Introduces Next-Gen Hopper With Sling Technology Built-In | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 1 | 7 | Dish has been trying to dramatically reshape its value proposition to consumers with new technologies and feature sets to set it apart from other pay TV providers. One of its big new features last year was PrimeTime AnyTime, which automatically records and allows users to watch any primetime broadcast show aired over the past week. Another was the controversial AutoHop feature, which allows users to automatically skip commercials that they didn’t want to watch. This year, it’s making big improvements in speed and reliability to its Hopper, and announcing a new feature powered by Sling that will allow consumers to stream live and pre-recorded video to their mobile devices both in and outside of the home. The new devices have double the memory and double the speed of the Hopper introduced last year. But the big innovation is the addition of Sling technology. With that introduction, Dish is adding new features that tap into consumer demand for their content wherever they are, whenever they want to watch it. The new DVR will stream Dish programming to PCs, as well as smartphones and tablets with the Dish Anywhere app installed. In addition to being able to stream live TV at home and on the go, Dish subscribers will be able to stream previously recorded TV content as well. Even better, the new DVR with Sling also will allow users to download content to their mobile devices for watching while offline through a feature called Hopper Transfers. “Sling gives the American consumer the ability to access on mobile phone, Apple iPad, or PC,” Clayton said. The new features are likely to continue to antagonize broadcasters and content providers who might argue that Dish hasn’t secured the rights for out-of-home mobile streaming or downloads of their content. On that front, Dish is no stranger to controversy: Broadcasters bristled at the idea of AutoHop, which automatically fast forwarded through commercials — the lifeblood of those content owners. But Clayton defended the new technologies as pro-consumer, particularly the AutoHop feature. Broadcasters claim that “American consumers are breaking the law if they skip commercials,” he said. In which case, well, “we’re a nation of outlaws,” according to Clayton. |
Three Major U.S. Carriers Will Support BlackBerry 10 Devices, Which Will Be Made Available At Multiple Price Points | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | Research In Motion has said that it plans to that will hit low, middle and high price points in order to capture more of the smartphone market. In addition, three major U.S. mobile carriers — Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile — say they products. RIM CMO Frank Boulben at CES that RIM will release at least six BlackBerry 10 devices this year, beginning with an all-touch device and phone with a Qwerty keyboard that will be officially announced on Jan. 30. The company has previously said that it plans to start selling the BB10 smartphones in February, and that 150 carriers around the world are currently testing devices using BB10, which will launch with at least 70,000 apps. RIM has been hyping the BlackBerry 10 operating system as a major alternative to Android and iOS and hopes that BB10 devices will help its smartphones regain market share from Apple and Samsung. In October it BB10’s BlackBerry Hub real-time notification and other features in London, before CEO Thorsten Heins and Vice President Andrew Bocking were photographed at a Los Angeles Lakers Game . The existing base of BlackBerry subscribers numbers 79 million, according to Boulben, but the company’s market share has slipped dramatically over the past year. In the third quarter of 2012, RIM had 5.3% of the global smartphone market, down from 11% in the year-ago period, according to . |
Foxconn Confirms Bribery Investigation After Chinese Authorities Detain Employee | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | Foxconn, the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturing giant that works with companies like Apple, Samsung and Sony, has confirmed that it is being investigated on charges of bribery by Chinese authorities. At least one of Foxconn’s employees has been detained after being accused of accepting bribes from suppliers. The bribery case was first reported by , a Taiwan-based news magazine. The investigation involves a Foxconn unit responsible for purchasing surface-mount technology equipment and components. A Shenzhen, China-based executive at the unit was detained in September after he allegedly took bribes. According to (link via Google Translate), Foxconn’s own internal investigation is taking a look at more than 10 employees who may be involved in the case. In the meantime, the company has also stopped working with suppliers who may be involved. Foxconn announced that it has already began adjusting its purchasing procedures and taking steps to ensure a similar scandal does not reoccur. In an emailed statement, a Foxconn Technology Group spokesperson said: “We can confirm that we are working with law enforcement officials who we brought in to work with our own internal audit team as part of an investigation into allegations against a number of Foxconn employees related to illegal payments from supply chain partners. Since the matter is under investigation, we are not able to comment further. However, we can say that the integrity of our employees is something we take very seriously and any employees found guilty of any illegal actions or violations of our company’s Code of Conduct will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We are also carrying out a full review of our policies and practices to identify steps we can take to strengthen such measures to further mitigate against such actions.” Other high-profile controversies Foxconn has weathered include and a string of at Foxconn factories across China (which the company responded to by ). |
Apple Locks App Screenshots To Ward Off Scammers | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | Apple has that app screenshots will be locked in iTunes Connect once an app is approved. New screenshots can only be added when developers submit a binary for an updated to an existing or new app. This move will help that tricks people into buying fake apps with screenshots stolen from more popular or non-iOS games. Past examples include fake descriptions for that were actually just a chess or racing game and a . Many scam developers managed to get past App Store monitors by using different screenshots when they first submitted their apps for approval and then later changing the store description. |
Qualcomm Totally Gets Mobile | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | It is sad that no one who reports on technology has the balls to straight up pull a at I mean peel away from the PR stunts and parties and just do mushrooms and walk around the iLounge or that crazy room with the 4K HDTV screens, or that weird fluorescent light tunnel with all the cars. A person on hallucinogens would have had a great time at the Monday night where, jealous of the attention paid to more consumer-friendly (and absent from CES) companies like, oh, Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook, the Saudi Prince of mobile processors threw a bunch of money at its marketing team in order to put a bunch of random shit onstage in order to get press . Anyways, you can’t throw a glittery iPhone case at CES without hitting a piece of absurdist Qualcomm “Born Mobile” marketing material. Which some might argue is a by the company. Well, you know, sure, I now know what Qualcomm does. Except, when Twitter user Matt Croydon tried to load that crazy attention-grabbing keynote that we’ve all been talking about for three days on his (i)phone, it didn’t work on a small screen. Note: For “journalism’s” sake, I’m also trying to watch the Paul Jacobs video via mobile and it’s still “loading.” Just give me all your marketing money, big chip processing companies. I will use it to hire developers to stop this from happening, and maybe fire whatever people were this short-sighted in the first place. Or instead of hiring me (or anyone), just, I dunno, talk to young people instead of actors hired to play them. |
It’s Official: The Final Countdown To Arrested Development’s Netflix Premiere Has Started | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | Glory be! After seven long and miserable years without a new Arrested Development episode, Netflix that the cult comedy series will be back for 14 episodes on the video-streaming platform in May. Though reports have pinned the release date as May 4, Netflix’s content chief Ted Sarandos didn’t confirm an actual date, but he did . Despite receiving plenty of critical acclaim, Arrested Development was pulled off the air in 2006 after just three seasons thanks to the Fox network’s troubling fixation with piddling matters like viewership ratings. In last year for The Guardian, show creator Mitch Hurwitz also offered further (tongue-in-cheek) insight into why the show was cancelled, including its lack of “fast cars and exciting vehicles,” omission of a laugh track and the “sprinkle of incest” that showed up in almost every episode (intriguingly enough, all these factors ). During a recent press junket, star Jason Bateman is “something completely different on purpose, per the format Netflix affords us and the larger story we can do.” Though all 14 episodes will be released at once, Hurwitz recommends that they be watched in a certain order: “It’s like an album. There is an order that we have put together to create the maximum number of surprises just in time for all the fathers for .” Some fans are already fretting that if the new season falls flat, it . But of course it won’t. This is Arrested Development, after all, and there . Further good news for Arrested Development fans: a movie might be in the works and Bateman said it’s a possibility a feature would be released on Netflix. Arrested Development’s new season comes at a good time for Netflix, as the company seeks to shore up its offerings with more original programming from Amazon Prime Instant Video. |
Median Angel Deal Size Rises As Startups Look For More Runway Amid A Series A Bottleneck | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | The median size of angel deals rose to $640,000 in the third quarter of last year — a five-quarter high — as startups looked for more runway amid a bottleneck for Series A rounds. partnered with data company CB Insights and the Angel Resource Institute to survey different angel groups about activity in the fall of last year. The report didn’t provide any data on the overall volume on angel investments, but it did have information on average round sizes and valuations. Early-stage valuations remained stable with the average at around a $2.6 million pre-money valuation (or before investors put in capital). There are a couple reasons that angel round sizes got bumped up late last year, said Carrie Merritt, who heads public relations for Silicon Valley Bank. One is that there are more health care and enterprise deals, which are more capital intensive. Another reason is that founders and angels are realizing that they need more financial runway if there is a bottleneck at the Series A level. ( .) If early-stage companies get a bit more breathing room, they can also hit certain distribution and sales milestones (on top of product ones), which could make Series A terms more favorable to the founders and early backers. At the same time, Merritt said that super angel or seed venture funds are “encroaching” on traditional angel territory. Another trend Silicon Valley Bank pointed out was that syndications declined in the third quarter. They don’t really know why this is happening, however. Unsurprisingly, investments in mobile-related startups jumped up. They also said that 10 percent of angel group deals are structured with convertible debt. One reason founders and early angels might favor convertible debt is that it puts off actually pricing a round until later when a more experienced VC firm might come in. Since Silicon Valley Bank hasn’t tracked this trend longer-term; they don’t quite know how it’s developing over the long-term. [scribd id=119714883 key=key-c7n2zossr2c6mi8w7x mode=scroll] |
Everything You Wish You Could See At Samsung’s Massive CES Booth | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | Samsung is known around these here parts as the . The company has risen from a boring mega-conglomerate to Apple’s biggest competitor, the world leader in TVs, and one of the most crucial manufacturers in the world. The proof of this is in the pudding, or, rather, in the $1 million booth the company has set up to dominate CES. This booth is rivaled only by Sony’s, and I’d venture to say that of the 1.9 million square feet that make up CES, Samsung has the largest individual share. And if that weren’t enough, the Korean company’s name is on the lips of every analyst, buyer, vendor, exhibitor, and reporter across the entire Las Vegas Convention Center. They’ve got TVs and phones, tablets and audio products. Hell, they even have LCD-equipped Smart Appliances. It’s mind-blowing, although that’s only enhanced by the panoramic booth-encompassing display that runs around the entire area. We spent quite a while with Samsung during our live roaming coverage of the show. In fact, we kicked off CES coverage with an in-depth tour of their booth. We’ve split up the videos based on the various products we checked out, so if you’re hungry for some Samsung, look no further. The Galaxy Note is a phablet if there ever were one. It sports a 5.5-inch, 720p display and an Exynos quad-core processor. The S-Pen — arguably the piece that gave this jumbo phone its name — has been updated to be significantly more precise. The was a central piece of Samsung’s keynote presentation. It has a bezel less than a quarter of an inch thick, and a new wave-inspired stand that makes the TV look like it’s floating in thin air. The LED TV is powered by a quad-core processor, comes with the new HD video codec HDVC, and will range in size from 46 to 75 inches. The UHD TV from Samsung is the F8000’s much more powerful and beautiful big brother. At 85 inches, it brings 4K straight into your living room. In terms of design, it seems inspired by either a soccer goal or an easel, but in either case it’s about as good as it gets. A 110-inch model will be headed to market over the course of the year. The Samsung Evolution Kit is a bit silly now, but you may be singing a different tune come 2015. It essentially allows you to upgrade your “old” — as in, 2012 — TV to get all the features of the 2013 models, like quad-core processing, the revamped Smart Hub, and S-Recommendation. It’ll debut in March, and at $499, it’s much cheaper than buying a brand-new TV. |
Marvell Co-Founder Weilli Dai On The Chip Tech That Powers The New Gadget Hotness | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | So it was nice to talk to , a co-founder of , the multi-billion-dollar fabless semiconductor technology . Marvell’s of the products being unveiled this week at CES, in particular in the smart TV space that seems to finally be reaching the point of mainstream interest and acceptance. Dai stopped by TechCrunch’s on-site CES stage to discuss Marvell’s latest technologies, how the CES landscape has evolved throughout the years, what female founders bring to the table in the mostly male realm of semiconductor technology, and more. You can watch it all in the video embedded above. |
Boxee Is The Poster Child Of A Lean Startup: They Just Happen To Ship Hardware | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | Boxee launched the shortly before Christmas. At 3,000 Walmart stores. And a major feature is in beta. As Boxee’s Andrew Kippen explains in the video above, the Boxee TV is slightly different than its previous product, the Boxee Box. It’s aimed at the cord cutter who wants to utilize OTA signals rather than someone looking to playback movie files. The Boxee TV has a gorgeous interface but the secret sauce is the cloud DVR. Kippen explains that the cloud DVR is an industry first. It allows consumers to record as much content as they want and view it on any Internet-connected device. Simply record the TV and watch it anywhere, anytime. But the DVR is still in beta and not available in all markets, although the Boxee TV is sold nationwide. Kippen notes that the power of the Internet allows Boxee to ship a working product and then constantly improve it over time. And it works for them. It also helps that Boxee knows how to make fantastic products. |
Facebook Obscures User Counts Of Apps On Its Platform But Starts Reporting App Rankings | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | To prevent people from thinking Facebook apps are losing users when there are bugs in the user count data it reports to services like AppData, Facebook will only report user counts in much broader tiered thresholds instead of to the nearest 100,000. However, it will start reporting App Center rankings. The change follows a of Instagram data over the holidays. Facebook explains that an app with 1,100,000 monthly active users (MAU) will now be shown as the #300 largest app by MAU and as having more than 1,000,000 MAU.” Until now, Facebook app-growth tracking services, such as , could pull from Facebook the monthly, weekly, and daily active user counts to the nearest 100,000 of any app on its platform (except for Facebook’s own apps). The public and a developer’s competitors could use these services to monitor an app’s rise and fall. It provided great transparency to the Facebook app industry, but it also caused some problems. Sometimes the transparency made it tough for apps to make changes, because if their experiment failed and user counts dropped, the world would immediately know. This may have discouraged innovation. The other big issue was that if Facebook had an error when reporting user count data, or a tracking service had trouble recording the data, apps could end up showing zero users or the same user count as the previous day instead of their real stats. This could cause an app’s monthly active user count to plummet. Journalists unfamiliar with app-tracking services would sometimes jump to the conclusion that people were abandoning an app when really it was just a data-reporting error. This came to a head over the holidays when a dubious Facebook’s acquisition Instagram was hemorrhaging users after scaring them with a privacy and ads policy change that it later went back on. Facebook denied the usage dip, and we and other outlets made strong arguments for and a clear misinterpretation of AppData, which only reports logged-in Facebook users, not all users. The scare temporarily sunk Facebook’s share price by a few points. Following that fiasco, . That was a predictable change considering Facebook doesn’t publicly report user counts for any of the other mobile apps it’s built, such as Facebook for Android, Facebook Messenger, or the new Poke app. Now Facebook has announced it will roll out a change to what it reports in the API in a move it believes will protect app developers and give them more freedom to iterate with their products. Instead of data to the nearest 100,000 users – such as saying an app has 1,200,000 users – Facebook will only report that an app has more than 1,000,000 users. This should obscure the user count impact of temporary glitches in data and changes to app designs. In consolation, Facebook will now report the App Center ranking of apps. Unfortunately, the lack of granular data could hurt businesses like Inside Network (where I worked before TechCrunch), which operates AppData. Less precise data might not be able to command as high of a subscription costs from developers who pay for historical data on all apps, beyond the most recent 30 days of data that is publicly available for free. On the other hand, while Facebook’s own apps are immune to the changes as their stats aren’t reported, the changes could still assist the social network and its biggest partners. If a popular Zynga game suddenly loses users or a data-reporting error would have made it look that way, it will be harder for the public to tell. Since Facebook’s success is in some ways tied to the top apps on its platform, user-count obscurity could help Facebook by hiding failures. |
The iTwin Connect Plugs Into Your Laptop To Create A Personal VPN That Nobody Can Crack | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | If you’re smart, you probably think twice before using a WiFi network anywhere outside of your own home to log into things like your bank account and even your email. Being on a shared network notoriously leaves you more vulnerable to having someone else monitor all the details of your web browsing activity and access your personal data. But if you’re a remote worker, as more and more people are, lots of your time online is spent using relatively untrusted networks in places like cafes, airports, and hotels. A new product from called the Connect is aimed at taking away those worries. The , which launched today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, is a tiny 3.5 inch device that plugs into your laptop through the USB port, encrypts all your data, and routes it through the host server of your choice — either iTwin’s own secure servers, or your own computer that you’ve linked to the device. Essentially, this lets you freely browse the web through a secure VPN while utilizing an untrusted public or shared Wi-Fi network. This means that you can use it to access sensitive things such as online banking, and also get around certain site geo-restrictions. The benefits here are pretty big and the use-cases are many, so it was great to have iTwin’s co-founder and COO stop by the TechCrunch on-site CES stage to show us the Connect and give us the product’s pitch first-hand. Check that out in the video embedded above. |
Hands-On With Sifteo Cubes: High-Tech Games Built Into Classic Building Block Shapes | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | Reinforcing that last example is , a San Francisco startup that has built an especially unique interactive gaming platform aimed at age 7 and up. Sifteo a product called ‘Cubes’ that incorporates digital games into the classic cube format of building blocks that interact with each other. It’s a very nifty product that is much easier to understand when you see it, so it was great to have Sifteo’s president and co-founder stop by the TechCrunch stage at CES today to give us the scoop on Cubes and show off the stuff in person. Watch the video embedded above to see Sifteo’s newest devices and hear about the company’s vision for the future. |
FCC Announces Plan To Help Conference Wi-Fi Actually Work | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | The government wants to help ensure that conference Internet Wi-Fi actually works. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced a new plan to open up a portion of the wireless spectrum for faster and more reliable Wi-Fi devices. Specifically, the FCC will work to open up the to make way for gigabit Internet devices, “to relieve Wi-Fi congestion at conferences, at airports, and in people’s homes,” said Genachowski on stage at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). This solution could not come quickly enough. At one of the premier tech gatherings on the planet, CES, the Internet is barely usable. All three ways I connect to the Internet – iPhone tethering, a Wi-Fi hotspot, and hotel Wi-Fi – have slowed to a crawl. A spokesman for the FCC did not give a timeline for the implementation of the new rule, but says that it must coordinate with other federal and military agencies that use overlapping portions of the spectrum. “We are convinced that the spectrum can be shared,” concluded Genachowski. Wi-Fi has also been hailed as an important solution to general smartphone Internet speed problems since it allows users to offload data downloads to their home Wi-Fi, rather than congested cellphone networks. I’m about to pull my hair out waiting for webpages to load here at CES, so let’s all pray we can find a solution soon. Otherwise, my posts may contain a lot more expletives. |
Google Makes $200M Equity Investment In Texas Wind Farm, Says Its Investments Now Generate 2 Gigawatts | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | Google just yet major investment in renewable energy. The company says that it has made a $200 million equity investment in an existing wind farm in Oldham County Texas. The Spinning Spur Wind Farm currently produces about 161 MW and uses 70 Siemens turbines to generate enough power for about 60,000 U.S. homes. , the current owner of the project, will manage the project and will remain the owner alongside Google. This is one of Google’s largest investments in renewable energy yet, though it’s trumped by the the company put into the SolarCity fund in 2011. EDF itself the wind farm last January from Austin-based Cielo Wind Power for $322 million and finished the project by the end of 2012 in order to qualify for a number of federal incentives that were set to expire on December 31. As for the company’s reason for today’s investment, Kojo Ako-Asare, Senior Manager, Corporate Finance at Google writes that the company looks “for projects like Spinning Spur because, in addition to creating more renewable energy and strengthening the local economy, they also make for smart investments: they offer attractive returns relative to the risks and allow us to invest in a broad range of assets.” “EDF Renewable Energy is pleased to engage with an innovative company like Google on this equity financing,” said Jim Peters, Vice President of Project Finance . “The partnership between our companies reflects a departure from sourcing investment capital from traditional financial institutions for our renewable energy projects. This transaction provides an opportunity for a leading renewable energy developer to join forces with a leading technology company to create value for both our companies and our respective customers.” In total, the eleven renewable energy projects Google has invested in are now capable of generating over 2 gigawatts of power, the company says, enough to power about half a million U.S. homes. Google also stressed that four of its projects hit a number of important milestones in the last year. Here is the company’s summary of those: |
TechCrunch Gadgets Live Is Happening Today At 1PM PST/4PM EST | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | CES is in full force and TechCrunch is in the middle of it all. Literally. Our massive broadcast booth — it looks like a greenhouse — is in front of the Las Vegas Convention Center. And coming up at 1:00PM PST is the second episode of TechCrunch’s Gadget Live webcast. After a quick recap of the morning’s live streaming video coverage, Lytro is going to take the stage to discuss the latest developments regarding its breakthrough camera. Oh and they’re giving one away live on air. Folllowing Lytro is an interview with Indiegogo, the crowdfunding marketplace that is fueling much of the innovation we are seeing here at CES 2013. The event kicks off at 1:00PST/4PM EST live. Tune in and maybe win a Lytro.
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Salesforce’s Marc Benioff Doesn’t Know Why He’s At CES, But He Sure Loves Disruption | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | Making what he said was his first trip to the Consumer Electronics Show since he was a teenager, Salesforce.com co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff took the stage today to talk about the big shifts in the technology industry. Benioff, who was interviewed by MediaLink’s Michael Kassan, noted that CES is traditionally a show for things like health tech, automotive tech, and other consumer tech — and on that front, you can find “awesome” products by walking its halls. It’s not, however, a show for information technology, so he asked, jokingly, “What am I even doing here? I don’t even know.” Michael Lazerow, founder of Salesforce-acquired Buddy Media, , and Benioff suggested one possibility today: It’s because all of these industries are converging. To illustrate that point, Benioff recalled meeting with Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, who asked about the future of his company. In response, Benioff rattled off a long list of questions that Toyota should be asking itself, all involving the idea of connection: How are Toyota vehicles connecting with other devices? How is the company connecting with its customers? With its employees? With its dealers? The way that brands are marketing themselves has to change, Benioff added. True, most brands now have a few employees “stalking” their customers on social media, looking for instances where they’re mentioned and replying, “Oh yeah, we love you, too.” But companies need to be more proactive. For example, he said that all the Internet-connected dishwashers and other smart devices at CES give brands the opportunity to send emails like, “We know that such-and-such is clogged” and offering to fix it. That’s the kind of outreach that prompts customers to rave on Facebook and Twitter about how much they love a brand. Benioff closed off his speech with a paean to the virtues of disruption. Asked by Kassan how he looked at innovation versus disruption, Benioff declared, “We’re all in this industry because we love disruption.” In other jobs, people may need to do things like jump out of a plane in order to get excited, but in tech, we’re excited about “the constant and never-ending change”: “It’s what we live on, it’s what we thirst for.” And you can see that at CES, he said — last year Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was a keynote speaker, whereas this year he was just “running on-stage and running off” at Qualcomm’s keynote. Benioff described the technology industry as a “continuum” where the old is continually replaced by the new. After all, in 10 years, all of the hot new gadgets at this year’s CES will be “in a landfill somewhere.” “Who knows what’s coming next year at CES?” he said. “You can’t predict it.” |
Tweetdeck For Mac Catches Up With Chrome, New Version Offers 90 Fixes & Updates | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | Twitter today has upgraded its , which now offers the same features that Chrome users received in mid-December. This includes “typeahead” and PeopleSearch additions, as well as the “embed this tweet” function, and more. The company says there are over 90 fixes and tweaks with this version, making it the largest update Tweetdeck for Mac has seen since . For Chrome users, today’s upgrades will be familiar. “Embed this tweet,” for example, to the browser, offering users easy access to copy the embed code directly from a tweet in Tweetdeck in order to paste on a website or blog. This option is available in a drop-down from the “More actions” menu on the tweet, next to the reply, retweet and favoriting buttons. The search improvements – typeahead and PeopleSearch – , the former being a smart, autocomplete option that helpfully provides suggestions of possible search terms, with user suggestions below. You can also click over to the Users button to see all the user account matches (aka “PeopleSearch”) from here, too. Now these features are available for Mac users, as is a new option that allows you to reduce the multi-column window to just two columns. This is nice compromise for of the standard Twitter for Mac user interface, but who may occasionally want access to the larger dashboard Tweetdeck offers, or its other advanced options like filters and notifications. Thanks to last fall’s update to the user interface, too, Tweetdeck no longer has to be viewed in the harsh, darker color scheme it had previously offered – it can now look more like Twitter’s main Mac app with a white background instead. The updated Tweetdeck is a free download from . |
Pandora CTO Tom Conrad On Bringing Personalized Radio To Automobiles Everywhere | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | In the dozen years since it first launched, personalized Internet radio pioneer has become a staple on people’s computers and mobile phones. But the company’s mission definitely does not end there. Recently, Pandora has become more and more prevalent as a built-in feature in automobiles. It’s a big market — tons of radio is listened to while people are commuting in their cars — but it also comes with a unique set of challenges that are certainly separate from the world of traditional consumer electronics in which Pandora got its start. Pandora CTO is on the ground at the show in Las Vegas this week, and he swung by TechCrunch’s on-site studio to chat with about Pandora’s latest growth and upcoming goals — generally and in the auto space specifically. Watch the video embedded above to hear Conrad talk about Pandora hitting 1,000 implementations in consumer electronics and automotives, how Pandora tackles its massive target market with a tight-running ship of 40 software engineers, how its consumer electronics strategy differs from its approach to the auto world, and what’s on the road ahead (see what I did there?) |
Proving The Value Of Crowdfunding, Soldsie Raises $425K And Hires One Of 72 Investors Via FundersClub | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | Online venture capital firm is pioneering equity crowdfunding and today demonstrated the value of bringing on dozens of investors rather than a handful. E-commerce startup just raised $425,000 from 72 investors through FundersClub, and ended up hiring one. New Chief Scientist , a founding engineer of Facebook’s ads team, discovered Soldsie thanks to FundersClub. The JOBS Act that eases restrictions on equity crowdfunding hasn’t been finalized yet, but enough of it is in place to legalize FundersClub. The to pick promising startups and helps them raise venture capital from the crowd through its online platform. Accredited investors (people who earn $200,000 a year or have a net worth over $1 million) can browse startups on FundersClub, research their businesses, and then invest as little as $1,000 in exchange for equity in the startup. All the legal paperwork and money transfer happens online. to become a core piece of venture capital infrastructure helped it from big names like First Round Capital, Felicis Ventures, Chris Dixon, and Aaron Levie. FundersClub’s goal of offering up the highest potential startups is aligned with investors, because both only get paid if the companies succeed. Bear with me for a moment, as this gets a bit thick but it’s really important to understanding crowdfunding. The SEC has undoubtedly been watching FundersClub as it last month. Had it objected, FundersClub would have been slapped with a lawsuit by now. I raised questions about as an unregistered broker-dealer, but after speaking with its legal team, I’m convinced it’s in the clear. FundersClub acts not as a broker-dealer that handles money from crowds of investors, but as a venture capital advisor. This is possible thanks to the JOBS Act, which passed in March 2012. Parts of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act won’t go into effect until the SEC finishes the rule-writing phase. These include Title 3 which allows unaccredited investors to put in money, and Title 2 Section 201 A, which allows for general solicitation — the ability for startups to openly promote that they’re raising money. However, Title 2 Section 201 C of the JOBS Act went into effect as soon as it was passed, and creates an exception to the broker-dealer rule and permits what FundersClub is doing. Startups typically choose to take money from a VC or angel for one of two reasons. Either they get a high valuation and don’t have to give up much equity for the money, or the investor can offer some additional value beyond their cash. This includes strategy advice, business development or funding connections, assistance with hiring, or access to additional funding down the road. Top-tier VCs and angels are the ones that can help the most. So why take on crowdfunding? Because bringing on a small army of investors can provide startups with evangelists, beta testers, and access to a huge network of people they’d want to meet. Case in point: that lets people buy things through Facebook comment reels, just closed its $425,000 seed round through FundersClub and hired a world-class engineer in the process. Soldsie co-founder Arrel Gray tells me “We knew we were going to raise a round but we were kind of dreading it. We wanted to focus on the product and not waste time.” Instead of traipsing around the Valley, Soldsie met with FundersClub who dug into their numbers, interviewed them on camera, and created an executive summary-style profile for them on the FundersClub site. Gray says “they did everything way better than we could have done. It was like having a wedding planner versus trying to run your own wedding.” Soldsie ended up taking on 72 investors who put up an average of $2,500 each through FundersClub to compose the $425,000 seed round. Gray says FundersClub put Soldsie “in touch with investors we wouldn’t have met, including high-profile people from Facebook, Pinterest, and Yammer. They know our space and will honestly be a value-add.” For example, they nabbed , a core mobile product manager of Google and Facebook, and Jason Culbertson of Yammer as investors, as well as folks from Google, Goldman Sachs, Logitech, Samsung, VMWare, Twilio, and Canonical. Another of Soldsie’s crowd investors wanted to meet the team before she wired them money. That was , an early engineer for Facebook ads and its relationship affinity modeling team who was then working for Khan Academy. She stumbled upon FundersClub through a co-worker at Facebook after doing some investing though SecondMarket, and then discovered Soldsie. Juan tells me “They had a tech challenge that I felt like I could help them with.” So along with investing, she joined full-time as Soldsie’s Chief Scientist, bringing the team up to five members. Soldsie’s CEO and co-founder Chris Bennett says their crowdfunding hire is already solving problems, “Yun-Fang has come in and done a lot of hard technical backend engineering work that we couldn’t have done ourselves. lets ecommerce companies share purchase links to Facebook. Once registered with Soldsie, all a buyer has to do is comment on the post and they get emailed a purchase link. It’s a smart way to facilitate mobile ecommerce by letting people discover products on their phone and get a reminder to complete the transaction later. Bennett tells me Soldsie wants to become the “eBay of social commerce.” With its sixth fund closed, FundersClub has now transferred over $1.75 million to a half dozen startups. Its next battle will be trying to box out equity crowdfunding competition from a partnership between , who together have raised $331,000 for two startups according to . If FundersClub can make it easy for a wider range of people to invest in the hottest startups, and attract these companies by proving the value of the crowd, it could become a name brand in crowdfunding. That could position it as a sort of E*Trade for private companies if the rest of the JOBS Act is finalized and non-accredited investors can open their wallets to startups. |
Microsoft Open Tech Launches VM Depot To Make Deploying Linux-Based Virtual Machines To Azure Easier | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | Microsoft Open Technologies, a wholly owned , just the launch of VM Depot, “a community-driven catalog of open source virtual machine images for Windows Azure.” , of course, already has a store that allows developers to deploy premium applications to its Azure cloud computing service. With , Microsoft now also offers a service that’s similar to what Amazon Web Services is doing with its service. As Gianugo Rabellino, the senior director for Open Source Communities at Microsoft Open Technologies, in today’s announcement, VM Depot itself was built on top of Azure and “relies exclusively on published Azure APIs.” VM Depot allows developers to choose from a catalog of preconfigured operating systems, applications and deployment stacks. Some of the images available in the library currently include a Ruby on Rails stack, WordPress images, and an image to quickly deploy . Developers, of course, can also build their own images and share them with others. Microsoft Open Tech partnered with , , and to get these first images up and running in the library. to Azure is pretty straightforward, though not quite self-explanatory, so anybody interested in giving this a spin should probably first. As far as I can tell, Azure is still struggling to gain acceptance among developers, and today’s announcement may change that a bit, as it relies strongly on building a community around the service. VM Depot may also help Azure stress the point that it is essentially an open platform. As Rabellino writes: I had a big smile on my face back in June when Microsoft announced it was making preconfigured Linux images available in Windows Azure gallery and today I have another reason to be happy as I see how Microsoft Open Technologies is helping open source communities work even more collaboratively with the Windows Azure platform. |
John Oliver Talks T-Shirt Cannons And Slashfics As He Hosts The 2012 Crunchies | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | John Oliver played host at the Crunchies tonight. He’s a funny guy who’s either British or an expert at pretending to be, and he’s on the Daily Show, Community and other things, so you might recognize him. Also even though he’s not a journalist, he pretends to be one, so how fitting is it that he hosted an awards show put on by a bunch of bloggers? Oliver was hilarious as usual, and I think the best way to intro these clips from his time on stage is in his own words, so here are a couple comments Oliver made before the show in discussion with our own Colleen Taylor, who pressured him for a sneak peek at the material you’re about to see. “The beauty is all you need to do is wait 15 minutes,” he said. “So there’s no need to ask for any tasters, we’re not doing this in two weeks, I’m literally about to do this right now […] Technology moves too fast; just wait. Technology has destroyed human patience. I’m about to do it!” With that, check out some highlights of Oliver’s performance: Finally, here’s a nice summary of why Oliver was such a good fit for hosting a tech awards show, in the words of the man himself: I have almost no apps. I have so few apps that my wife’s niece laughed at me the other day. She laughed at me and then she was sad. |
FTC Chair Announces Resignation One Month After Settling Google Antitrust Case | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz on Thursday that he will resign, one month after the agency with Google after a 20-month investigation into the tech giant’s alleged anticompetitive behavior. The resignation had been expected by antitrust lawyers since last summer and will take effect in mid-February. Leibowitz said that he plans to move to the private sector and will likely focus on competition policy and privacy. “I felt like this was a good time to leave because we got through a number of things that I wanted the commission to address,” Leibowitz told the New York Times. The FTC decided not to take any action in connection with the allegation that Google had used its algorithms to unfairly favored its own products over potential competitors, a move many companies and observers saw as letting the company Under Leibowitz, who served as a commissioner before commencing his two terms as chairman, the FTC also worked to expand the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and brought action against Intel for unfair business practices in the microprocessor market. The New York Times says that Leibowitz’s successor will likely come from within the ranks of the FTC, with Democratic commissioners Julie Brill and Edith Ramirez seen as likely contenders. |
Congratulations Crunchies Winners! GitHub Wins Best Overall Startup | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | And like that, The 6th Crunchies Annual Award Show is in the bag. John Oliver provided a night of laughs while TechCrunch, GigaOm and Venture Beat jointly handed out 20 awards to the best and brightest startups, founders and venture capitalists. The night started off with a bit of science as the Mars Curiosity netted the Crunchie for Best Technology Achievement. Then, Snapchat, the little app that’s a staple on every teenager’s smartphone, won Fastest Rising Startup. Tim Armstrong and Michael Arrington were all smiles as they handed Mark Zuckerberg the Crunchie for CEO of the Year. And as the startup world can attest, Chris Dixon rightly won the Crunchie for Angel Of The Year while Peter Thiel was awarded the Crunchie for VC Of the Year. Congratulations to all the — on to 2013! (2011 winner: )
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Airbnb’s Brian Chesky: ‘We Used To Create Content Online. Now We Create Industries’ | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | was one of the trailblazers of the sharing economy, and so, when CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky today accepted the award for best collaborative consumption service — the first time the category has been a in the Crunchies — he dedicated the award to everyone: “I want to share this award with all of you,” he said. Backstage, Chesky talked about how Airbnb was borne out of a particularly tight month when he and the other co-founders couldn’t make rent. “We started Airbnb before there was a shared economy, before the idea of collaborative consumption,” he recalled. People thought they were crazy. “Their response was, ‘Are you kidding me? Why are you even doing this?’… But I think people will look back on this time: before, people were able to create content. Now they can create industries.” He notes that one of the company’s biggest challenges is to stay consistent as they continue to scale. “We now have thousands of travellers expecting a great experience every time,” he said. Watch the full video below. |
GitHub Wins The 2012 Crunchie For “Best Overall Startup”, May The Fork Be With You | Eric Eldon | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | In case you weren’t sure that Silicon Valley had moved beyond from consumer web companies, take a look at the top five finalists for the best overall startup of 2012. Only one is even a purely consumer service — and Instagram’s photo-sharing app is mobile-oriented at that. Fab and Square respectively provide a marketplace for well-designed goods, and a real-world payment system for small businesses. Our second-place startup of the year is Palantir, a company that started in 2004, that analyzes massive data sets for the government and large organizations. And take a look at our winner, . The company provides an version-controlled code repository for based on the “git” system . A key advantage over existing versioning systems like CVS and Subversion is that sharing happens online, around unified code bases, rather than patches that get emailed around between community members and code administrators. Any developer can quickly take existing open-source code and “fork” it over for their own uses. If they improve the code, Github lets them submit it back for the community. Social features encourage collaboration by letting users follow each other and see their work over time. The site doesn’t just make coding vastly more efficient, it lets individuals rise from obscurity to fame, and discover new jobs and new technical challenges to pursue. (Check out for more.) Now the company is going after the enterprise. It raised its first round of funding last year — a huge at a reported $750 million valuation — to build services for companies looking to use and share back to its increasingly vast repositories. It has already helped enable a new era of web and mobile development, now it wants to bring the same productivity gains to businesses large, medium and small. We’re delighted that such a centrally important company has taken home the biggest award this year, and we’re excited to see what it does from here on out. |
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Coursera Wins “Best New Startup Of 2012,” Get Schooled | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | It seems as if, in our particular slice of time, many spheres of industry are coming to a breaking point; Will we be focused on marginal costs and continue doing things the old way, or chuck existing systems and focus on the new? Government is one of these spheres, healthcare is another, so is transportation, and also education. TechCrunch is committed to accurately covering this tumultuous time, and providing a record of this zeitgeist for our readers and history. That is why we picked as the “Best Overall Startup,” because more than anything else our country is heading into a period where higher education and with the pace of innovation, where the creative part of has not yet overwhelmingly kicked in. And Coursera, which has opened up access to proprietary content, over 200 courses from over 33 top international and domestic schools like Stanford and Princeton, is one of the bright points of light pointing towards value and job creation in the creative space. Over two million students have at some point taken a Coursera course. It remains to be seen whether the universities will continue to let Coursera proliferate with their intellectual property. And its main criticism is that the company currently has no clear way to monetize. “That’s starting to change as Coursera beefs up its career services and adds the ability to earn certificates from taking its classes,” argues our education technology expert Rip Empson. “Next, it’s on the way to getting accreditation for courses so that taking classes online through its platform will count towards a degree — and there’s no reason they can’t charge for it, even if it means giving up ‘free’. Imagine being able to take a class at Harvard, get credit for it and not have to pay thousands to get it. That has serious disruptive potential.” In the same space as The runner-up in this category is quirky ride-sharing startup |
Mark Zuckerberg Wins “CEO Of The Year” At The 6th Annual Crunchies | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | He navigated the company that he founded in his college dorm room to a , the biggest in the history of tech companies; then led it past ; and now he’s been named the CEO of the year at the 6th annual : a big congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. The award was presented earlier this evening at the Davies Symphony Hall by Mike Arrington of CrunchFund and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, before a sellout audience of 2,500, and an of thousands more. Larry Page of Google was named the runner-up and the other nominees on the shortlist were Dick Costolo of Twitter, Phil Libin on Evernote and Marissa Mayer of Yahoo. A pretty strong list of tough competition. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Zuckerberg is nothing short of a tech icon. Facebook, as conceived of and led by him, has transformed how we as a culture share information about ourselves and the world. As the site has grown, it has also taken that central premise into new dimensions — namely through the social graph and the Graph API that interlinks with so many of the services we like to use online and on mobile devices today. The growth of the company has come with a firm commitment to hacking and trying out new things all the time, which keeps things interesting. But it has not always been plain sailing for Zuckerberg: with the IPO and subsequent life as a public company, has come increased focus on how Facebook makes money. That’s a two-fold question: are its business models sustainable, and are its users always going to be cool with how their data gets used? (Some people, especially in , are . .) But even in this regard, you cannot deny that the Facebook juggernaut, as led by Zuck, has opened the door to a new kind of discourse about what it means to be a connected society. Once again, a massive congratulations to Mark Zuckerberg. |
Chris Dixon Wins Crunchies 2012 “Angel Of The Year;” Peter Thiel Is Named “VC Of The Year” | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | As you may know, TechCrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat host the award ceremony each year to celebrate the most compelling startups, Internet and technology innovations of the year. But we also recognize the angel investors and venture capitalists who write the checks that fund these innovations. For Angel of the Year, which was presented by Google Ventures Partner Kevin Rose and VentureBeat’s Rebecca Grant, the nominees were Michael Arrington, Chris Dixon, Paul Graham, David Lee and Chris Sacca. Paul Graham took the second spot, and the winner is Dixon, who at the end of 2012, has made angel investments in more than 50 startups including Hipmunk, Foursquare, Kickstarter, Stripe, Pinterest, Dropbox, Codecademy, Stack Overflow, Bloomreach, Optimizely, Trialpay, OMGPOP, and Skype. He also co-founded an East Coast seed venture fund called Founder Collective and via that fund, made investments in MakerBot, Ifttt, Milo (acquired by eBay), Betaworks, Groupme (acquired by Skype), and Buzzfeed. For VC of the year, which was presented by Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom and VentureBeat’s Dylan Tweney, the nominees were Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Benchmark’s Matt Cohler, Sequoia Capital’s Jim Goetz, Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz and Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel. Jim Goetz, whose enterprise investments include Jive, Nimble Storage and Palo Alto Networks, took the second spot. And the winner is ! Thiel, who launched VC firm Founders Fund, was the first outside investor in Facebook, which went public in 2012. During the year, Founders Fund also led investments in Stripe, Asana and Quora, among others. And Thiel funded Palantir Technologies, a company which he also helped launch. Congratulations to our winners! |
Affordable 3D Printer Maker Pirate3DP Hooks In $482K From Red Dot Ventures | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | Venture capital firm Red Dot Ventures has invested $482,000 USD in , a Singapore-based startup that is developing an affordable, user-friendly 3D printer for the mass market. Pirate3DP was founded by childhood friends Roger Chang, Brendan Goh and Tsang You Jun, as well as serial tech entrepreneur Neo Kok Beng, a professor at the National University of Singapore. The startup’s flagship product is the Buccaneer, which is currently in the prototyping phase and will be launched in the middle of this year. The team envisions the low-cost 3D printer as a “playground for artists to create, monetize and share ideas with others.” “In a near future, everyone will have a 3D printer in their home sitting next to their paper printer and making plastic jewelry, kitchen utensils, toys, models, homework projects, and non-critical replacement parts. Nonetheless, current consumer models are either too expensive or too difficult to use. We intend to change that. Pirate3D will bring this technology to everyone’s homes by making it low-cost, efficient and user-friendly,” said Roger Chang, CEO of Pirate3DP. |
Instagram’s Kevin Systrom Takes “Founder Of The Year” At The 2012 Crunchies | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | This year’s saw Instagram founder Kevin Systrom take top honors for the “Founder of the Year” category, which is likely a safe pick considering what his company accomplished in 2013. He managed to grow his service’s user base and engagement to stunning levels, crossing 50 million users in May thanks to the addition of an Android client. That growth likely led to the huge price tag paid for Instagram by Facebook when it came calling to purchase the mobile photo sharing service later on in the year. Facebook paid , which is a crazy amount of money, but likely worth it for Facebook which is seeking to build up its mobile reputation. Systrom won out over runner-up Elon Musk, a very different type of entrepreneur and the founder of Tesla Motors, but his 2012 wasn’t just a series of unending highs. He took some heat for selling out from lovers of the service immediately following the Facebook sale, and came under fire when the network announced changes to its terms of service. Systrom made the right move, however, repealing the changes and addressing user concerns directly in a blog post with his name attached to the admission of Instagram’s wrong turn. Another major accomplishment for Systrom and the company he created was perhaps best summed up by Crunchies host John Oliver on stage: We should feel very grateful for having Instagram in our lives, because without Instagram we would not have ‘Rich Kids of Instagram’ in our lives, which is just a fantastic example of why the rest of the world still hates America. Other nominees in this category included Nathan Blecharczyk, Brian Chesky, and Joe Gebbia from Airbnb; Kevin and Julia Hartz and Renaud Visage from Eventbrite; and Nir Zuk from Palo Alto Networks. |
Snapchat Wins “Fastest Rising Startup” At The 2012 Crunchies | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | Mobile photo messaging app just won “Fastest Rising Startup” at this year’s edition of the . If startups are really all , then our voters couldn’t have picked a better winner than Snapchat, which didn’t just grow into a massively popular service this year, but also spawned a whole ecosystem of sites that teach its users how to get images out of the service before they are automatically deleted. Fastest Rising Startup was presented on stage by , the British Consul-General in New York and Head of the U.S. operations of UK Trade & Investment, and Venture Beat’s Jolie O’Dell. The runner up in this category was payment service . Other nominees included Lyft, Pinterest and Exec, the company that was maybe to be nominated for a Crunchie this year. Fastest Rising Startup was a new category at the Crunchies this year. Pinterest won “Best New Startup of 2011” last time around. The Snapchat co-founders and , who started the service as a class project at Stanford University in 2011, obviously had a massive year as their service quickly went mainstream over the last few months and grew to over by the end of 2012. At the same time, though, Snapchat also got somewhat of a bad rep and is often equated with “sexting,” something that’s apparently pretty popular these days. Still, Snapchat’s success spawned a good number of clones, including . Snapchat expanded to Android in November 2012 and is to be in the process of raising an $8 million funding round to expand and scale its service. |
After A Triumphant App Store Return, Google Maps Wins The Crunchie For “Best Mobile Application” | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | After getting the boot as the default mapping application on iOS devices with the introduction of iOS 6, Google Maps with a new look, new features, and it quickly won back user mindshare and massive adoption. And today, it won something else, too: the Crunchie for the Best Mobile Application. The runner-up was Evernote, which also had an year. But don’t feel too bad for them – Evernote won last year. The Google Maps Crunchie was presented on stage by Sequoia Capital’s Roelof Botha and GigaOm’s Tom Krazit. You can watch in the live stream here. It was a tough year to pick just one great app – after all, there are now over 800,000 iOS applications and over 700,000 on Android, to give you an idea of scale. But Google got a lot of things right with the re-introduction of Maps on iOS this year, moving the ball forward in terms of design and feature set. The app is beautiful, fast, and smooth, turn-by-turn navigation, business listings and reviews from Google+ Local, walking and transit directions, traffic information and more. It also makes smart use of gestures. ,” and the app saw download numbers startups can only dream about: . Of course, Google Maps also really shines on Android, where it, too, received in advance of Apple’s news. That release brought a tons of new and improved features as well, including better 3D views for Google Earth and offline maps. It also introduced Street View Trekker, which puts StreetView cameras into a backpack, allowing Google to capture incredible images of places where Street View cars can’t go. For example, Google just announced it has in Maps now. Expect to see more of this on mobile in the future. Other apps nominated for the Best Mobile App this year were Grindr, Instagram, and Square. |
null | Drew Olanoff | 2,013 | 1 | 9 | null |
Mars Curiosity Wins The 2012 Crunchie For “Best Technology Achievement” | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | Tonight, at the 6th Annual Crunchies Awards, the won for Best Technology Achievement. Because, you know, science is awesome. Presented by former Square COO Keith Rabois and VentureBeat’s Meghan Kelly, NASA “Mohawk Guy” Bobak Ferdowsi accepted the award on behalf of the whole Mars Curiosity team. “It’s been a real pleasure to work on this project, and we’re glad you think so too,” Ferdowsi said. The Curiosity rover landed on Mars on August 6th, 2012, and in true robotic diva fashion, . It on Foursquare. Faced with massive budget cuts, NASA wisely turned to social media to bring attention to its important cause. And in many ways it’s seemingly worked. The Curiosity has 1.2M followers on and 483k Likes on . The massive Mars rover bested other notable achievements from 2012 including Felix Baumgartner’s jump from 39 km up, SpaceX’s successful docking with the International Space Station, Tesla’s Supercharger EV charging network, and Google’s forward-thinking Google Glass. |
Microsoft Launches Bing Apps For Office 365 Home Premium | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | In an effort to create more synergy between its products, Microsoft’s search platform Bing has that Office 365 Premium is now available to users. The five apps included in the add-on for the newly launched Office 365 and Office 2013 make it easier for users to insert information and images directly from Bing searches into their documents. They are: Bing Finance for Excel, Bing Maps for Excel, Bing Image Search for Word, Bing News Search for Word, and Bing Dictionary for Excel and Word. The company says its “goal is to make Bing available in convenient and intuitive ways that take advantage of knowledge Bing has assembled for search.” Features include voice search on Bing for Mobile, implicit search such as Local Scout on Windows Phone, the ability to search using smartphone cameras with Bing Vision, and touch/contextual search with Bing on Window 8. Earlier this week, Microsoft , a subscription-based service that includes support for up to five devices, Office apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, One Note, additional online storage in Sky Drive and 60 free minutes to use on Skype each month. Features designed to keep users within Office 365 and Bing include Bings Maps for Office, a data visualization tool for Excel that uses Bing maps to plot data from Excel spreadsheets. Bing Finance (Beta) for Office allows users to build a financial portfolio table in Excel that integrates data from Bing Finance. Bing News Search for Office allows users to search for news and related videos from within a Word document. Bing search results than can be inserted into the document by clicking on an insert plus icon. Frequent searches can also be added to a favorites list. Bing Dictionary (English) for Office is integrated with Microsoft Word and provides definitions and spellings for words by Bing Dictionary. Users can enter a word based on how it sounds and Bing will suggest letters, words or phrases. Bing Image Search for Office allows users to search from images on the Web using Bing Image Search from Word and insert pics into their document. |
Intel Will Showcase Dual Core Android Smartphones At The Mobile World Congress | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | Intel has that it will showcase Android devices running a new dual core, dual graphics platform at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from February 25 to 28. “Specifically, Intel will showcase its latest smartphone technologies and devices running the Android* platform, including a new dual core, dual graphics platform, as well as OEM- and service provider-supported devices based on the company’s new Intel® AtomTM Z2420 platform targeted at emerging markets,” the company said in a release. Intel will also highlight technologies and mobile devices targeted at “a range of developed and emerging market segments,” including smartphones, tablets and Ultrabooks. Intel was late to the mobile processor market, but is now focusing on mobile products in order to counter stagnant revenues from its Wintel PCs and compete with rival Qualcomm. A key part of Intel’s mobile strategy is gaining traction in emerging markets in 2013. At the beginning of this year, Intel the upcoming launch of a new Atom processor named Lexington that is aimed at smartphones sold in emerging markets. Mike Bell, vice president for Intel’s Mobile and Communications Group, said Africa, China, India, Latin America and Southeast Asia are the initial target markets for devices based on the new processor. Last week, Intel made its push into Africa when Kenyan wireless operator and Intel partner Safaricom revealed the continent’s first Intel smartphone, the Android-powered Yolo. In addition, its newly-minted partnership with Acer will help it step into emerging Asian Pacific markets, including Thailand. During CES, Intel the Bay Trail-T microprocessor, which is a smaller and faster enhancement of the Atom Medfield chip that is currently in production. At the Mobile World Congress, Intel is expected to update its investors and partners on the Merrifield processor, due to be launched later this year. The Merrifield processor is targeted to smartphones. Intel has also begun production of its LTE/4G baseband chip. |
ITC Will Investigate Complaint By InterDigital Against Mobile Devices By Samsung, Nokia, Huawei & ZTE | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | The U.S. International Trade Commission that it is launching a investigation into wireless devices with 3G and 4G capabilities and components by Samsung, Nokia, Huawei and ZTE. These include the Samsung ATIV S, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note II, Galaxy Note 10.1, Galaxy S III, Galaxy Stellar, Galaxy Tab II (10.1), SCH-LC11, and 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot; the Nokia Lumia 820, Lumia 822, and Lumia 920; the ZTE 4G Hotspot, Avail, Flash, and JetPack 890L; and the Huawei Activa 4G, E368 USB Connect Force 4G, MediaPad (S7 Pro), Unite, and HUA U8680 MYTOUCH. The investigation was prompted by a filed by InterDigital Communications on January 2 (link via the ). The Pennsylvania company alleges that the devices in question infringe on seven of its patents. According to InterDigital’s law firm , these include: “…the ‘966 and ‘847 patents relate to improvements to the way a mobile device gains access to a cellular CDMA system. The ‘970 patent relates to a technique for communication between user equipment and one or more wireless networks. The ‘151 patent relates to an improvement in the provision of control information to devices operated in a wireless communications environment, such as on an LTE-based wireless communications network. The ‘830 and ‘636 patents relate to improvements to the way a subscriber unit gains access to a cellular CDMA system. Lastly, the ‘406 patent relates to improved automatic power control for a CDMA system.” InterDigital Communications is seeking an exclusion order preventing the devices involved from being imported into the U.S. and a cease-and-desist order. The ITC says it will set a target date for completing the investigation within 45 days. Here is the full statement from the USITC: The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) has voted to institute an investigation of certain wireless devices with 3G and/or 4G capabilities and components thereof. The products at issue in this investigation are cellular mobile telephones including smartphones, cellular PC cards, cellular USB dongles or sticks, personal computers such as laptops, notebooks, netbooks, tablets and other mobile internet devices with cellular capabilities, cellular access points or “hotspots” and cellular modems. The investigation is based on a complaint filed by InterDigital Communications, Inc., of King of Prussia, PA; InterDigital Technology Corporation of Wilmington, DE; IPR Licensing, Inc., of Wilmington, DE; and InterDigital Holdings, Inc., of Wilmington, DE; January 2, 2013. The complaint alleges violations of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 in the importation into the United States and sale of certain wireless devices with 3G and/or 4G capabilities and components thereof that infringe patents asserted by the complainants. The complainants request that the USITC issue an exclusion order and cease and desist orders. The USITC has identified the following as respondents in this investigation: By instituting this investigation (337-TA-868), the USITC has not yet made any decision on the merits of the case. The USITC’s Chief Administrative Law Judge will assign the case to one of the USITC’s six administrative law judges (ALJ), who will schedule and hold an evidentiary hearing. The ALJ will make an initial determination as to whether there is a violation of section 337; that initial determination is subject to review by the Commission. The USITC will make a final determination in the investigation at the earliest practicable time. Within 45 days after institution of the investigation, the USITC will set a target date for completing the investigation. USITC remedial orders in section 337 cases are effective when issued and become final 60 days after issuance unless disapproved for policy reasons by the U.S. Trade Representative within that 60-day period. |
Watch The Crunchies 2012 Live! | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | It’s that time again, folks. The 6th Annual Crunchies Awards show is upon us, and it’s set to be the best event yet. We’re at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, again partnering with GigaOm and VentureBeat, to recognize the best technological achievements, companies, and leaders of 2012. With startups like Box, Facebook, Google, Tesla, Square, NASA and countless others up for awards tonight, it’s bound to be an interesting show. And if that weren’t enough, we’ve rounded up the most important A-list tech celebs as our presenters, including Instagram founder Kevin Systrom, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and former TechCrunch EIC and CrunchFund investor Mike Arrington. It’s set to be a night to remember, which is why we’re bringing the show straight to you, dear readers. We go live at 7:00pm PST. Enjoy! |
Time Inc. To Lay Off About 500 | John Biggs | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | Another publisher, Time Inc., is laying off 6% or about 500 employees in an effort to streamline operations at the 21-title publishing house. The lay-offs came after a thorough examination by and, according to a memo by CEO Laura Lang. “With the significant and ongoing changes in our industry, we must continue to transform our company into one that is leaner, more nimble and more innately multi-platform,” she wrote. “To make this change, we need to operate as smartly and efficiently as possible to create room for critical investments and new initiatives. These reductions are part of this important transformation process.” The transformation is the first major round of lay-offs in five years. The company revenue for most of last year hit $2.5 billion, down 6.2% from 2011. It will be interesting – and jarring – to watch as old media sheds staff once dedicated to producing a smooth-running print enterprise. While it’s clear Time Inc. won’t be going anywhere soon, it’s sad to see the value of its valuable print franchises slowly drying up. |
Wishpond Launches Eight Twitter Marketing Apps That Borrow Their Look From Twitter | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | is launching a set of eight new apps that bring the startup’s social marketing campaigns to Twitter. The apps allow businesses to promote different contests and offers from their Twitter accounts, such as Photo and Caption contests. I talked to CEO Ali Tajsekandar about the new tools, and it sounds like one of the biggest selling points is the way the contests seem like a natural extension of a business’ Twitter account. Normally, if you’re promoting a contest or offer on Twitter, your followers would have to follow a link to an outside website, which Tajsekandar said can be a jarring experience. The company can’t entirely get around the fact that the contests are hosted on the Wishpond site, not Twitter itself. However, the contest page looks quite a bit like Twitter, and even copies the background from the relevant Twitter account. So Tajsekandar argued that the visitor is less likely to think, “Whoa, what’s going on here?” and more likely to actually sign up. But isn’t that kinda deceptive? “We are by no means trying to deceive anyone,” Tajsekandar said. He pointed out that there’s a disclaimer on the contest page saying that the company isn’t associated with Twitter. And in order to sign up for a contest, you have to go through the same authorization process that you do when you give any third-party Twitter app access to your account. It sounds like Wishpond is trying to thread a needle here, offering something that like Twitter while not outright tricking users. Other features include mobile optimization, Wishpond analytics, and the ability to take your Wishpond Facebook campaigns and immediately run them on Twitter, too. The company says it now serves more than 17,000 customers. The new Twitter apps are included in the Wishpond Marketing Suite, which costs $29 per month (more for agencies and additional services). You can . |
IDC: Worldwide Tablet Shipments Hit A Record Total Of 52.5M Units In Q4 , Including 22.9M iPads | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | Apple’s iPad led the charge as total worldwide tablet shipments hit a record 52.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to from its Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, but its market share continued to slide due to competition from Samsung. Meanwhile, PC shipments declined during the quarter for the first time in more than five years. The tablet market grew 75.3 percent year-over-year, and increased 74.3 percent from the previous quarter’s total of 30.1 million units, helped along by holiday purchases, lower average selling prices and a wider range of products. “We expected a very strong fourth quarter, and the market didn’t disappoint. New product launches from the category’s top vendors, as well as new entrant Microsoft, led to a surge in consumer interest and very robust shipments totals during the holiday season,” said Tom Mainelli, tablet research director at IDC. Apple shipped a total of 22.9 million units, boosted by the launch of the iPad mini, as well as the fourth-generation full-sized iPad. But while Apple’s iPad shipments grew 48.1 percent over the same quarter last year, Apple’s market share slipped for the second quarter in a row (down to 43.6 percent from 46.4 percent last quarter) as No. 2 vendor Samsung continued to nip at the Cupertino company’s heels. Samsung enjoyed 263 percent, shipping nearly 8 million combined Android and Windows 8 tablets durings the quarter. It still holds 15.1 percent of the market, the same as from the previous quarter. Competing vendors like Amazon and Barnes and Noble both saw an uptick in their market share thanks to the holiday season. Amazon shipped more than 6 million tablets during the quarter, increasing its share to 11.5 percent from 8.3 percent the previous quarter, with year-over-year growth of 26.8 percent. Barnes and Noble shipped almost a million units, increasing its share up to 1.9 percent from 0.7 percent, but its total dropped by 27.7 percent year-over-year. Microsoft’s new Surface with Windows RT tablet failed to reach the top five with just short of 900,000 units shipped. IDC said that Microsoft and its partners may need to create smaller devices and lower prices in order to compete because consumers are shying away from more expensive tablets with desktop operating systems. “There is no question that Microsoft is in this tablet race to compete for the long haul. However, devices based upon its new Windows 8 and Windows RT operating systems failed to gain much ground during their launch quarter, and reaction to the company’s Surface with Windows RT tablet was muted at best,” said Ryan Reith, program manager, Mobile Device Trackers at IDC. |
The World’s Most Depressing Tech Infographic Says You’re Dead In 9 Years | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 31 | Thanks Exec, for reminding us that we spend most of our days in a hamster wheel. The point of its new was to show that life is too short to waste time doing errands, so you should hire an Exec on-demand assistant to do them for you. But it also might make you feel like giving up. Subtract all the eating, sleeping, working, and chores, and you’re practically dead already. “9 years to spend with your family and friends. To play, laugh, and cry. To fall in love, to see the world, to pursue your passions.” I guess that does make laundry seem like something worth outsourcing. I’ve actually had some incredible experiences with . The best was having them repark my car when I left it in a metered spot but had to go on an unexpected business trip. The one thing the infographic leaves out, though, is that Exec only lets you have more than 9 years if you’re willing and able to pay. Along with TaskRabbit, Uber, Zaarly, and other “convenience tech” startups, they let you trade money for time. In that way, they might make income disparity for obvious. It’s one thing to not be able to afford a fancy car. It’s another thing for Exec to imply you only get to live if you can afford it. |
Q4 Showed Facebook Will Survive Mobile Because It’s An Ads Scalpel, Not A Shotgun | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | On the web, there’s plenty of room to throw a scattershot of ads at people and hope one resonates. On mobile where there’s reduced real-estate, you have to make every pixel count by targeting ads with surgical precision. That’s how Facebook succeeded in , and why the social network is actually well equipped to weather the shift to mobile. There’s no room for the shotgun approach on the small screen. “Most people underestimate how fundamentally good the trend towards mobile can be for Facebook.” That’s how Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook’s Q3 earnings call. Today on the , he proved it, citing how Facebook’s ad targeting prowess attracted buyers to of Facebook’s total ad revenue. The reason Facebook is making quick progress in mobile ads is how much it knows about you. Think of it this way. What targeting information does a company need to show you a relevant display ad on mobile? Mobile advertisers like Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL can collect some info about you automatically. This includes your location, maybe your device type, and operating system, your connection type, and what you’re currently viewing. Google knows all that too, plus your search history, and any biographical data you’ve entered into Google+. But Facebook, it’s got more up its sleeve. It knows all that (except your web search history). Then it’s got biographical data you’ve volunteered on your profile, who your friends are, what apps you’ve installed, what you’ve done in those apps, your Graph Search history, and your Likes. Through embedded Like buttons, it’s know where else on the web you go. It’s learning that from its retargeted ads program Facebook Exchange too, and will likely show retargeted ads on mobile eventually, though Sandberg refused to say when FBX would expand beyond Facebook.com. Basically, Facebook has the means to let advertisers pinpoint their audience. On the web, that’s important. On mobile, it’s essential. A mobile ad often takes up the entire screen, and therefore is inherently interruptive. If it’s poorly targeted, it will piss someone off. If it promotes something they’re actually interested in, it can assume all of their attention. Without a dozen other tabs and applications perched in their desktop dock, they might even click. Some certainly are. COO Sheryl Sandberg announced today that the are using Facebook’s new mobile app install ads. These apps wouldn’t be spending on Facebook ads if they didn’t work. Sandberg also cited comScore research that reported Facebook is the top driver of awareness of new apps, and those that learn about apps on Facebook mobile click straight through to the app stores, often via ads. 65% of Facebook’s advertisers now run news feed ads, many of which are shown on mobile. That’s up from 50% at the end of Q3. To put it bluntly, Facebook was making $0 on mobile ads at the end of February 2012. Ten months later, it’s making $305 million a quarter and growing. And surprisingly, those , as Facebook says those marketing messages reduced news feed engagement just 2% in 2012. In Q4, Facebook successfully grew overall revenue fast enough to beat projections, while simultaneously transitioning its revenue source from web to mobile at a healthy rate. Zuckerberg started today’s earnings call saying “there is no argument. Facebook is a mobile company.” If it can keep up this pace, it will successfully become a mobile business too. |
The New York Times Was Attacked By Chinese Hackers Over Four Months | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | The New York Times that over the last four months, it was repeatedly attacked by Chinese hackers using methods that have been linked to the Chinese military in the past. The timing of the attacks coincided with reporting for published on October 24 that revealed Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had tried to hide a massive family fortune. Mandiant, a computer security company hired by the New York Times, expelled the hackers after surreptitiously tracking their movements, and said that the methods used have been associated with the Chinese military in the past. The hackers tried to obscure the source of the attack by first routing through computers at U.S. universities, which Mandiant experts said matched methods used in other attacks that have been traced to China. Furthermore, the malware installed on by the hackers is a specific strain associated with computer attacks originating in China, and the attacks started from the same university computers used by the Chinese military to attack U.S. military contractors in the past. Over the course of three months, hackers installed 45 pieces of custom malware–only one instance of which was identified and quarantined by Symantec antivirus products the New York Times used (a Symantec spokesman that the newspaper that, as a matter of policy, the company does not comment on its customers). Hackers broke into the email accounts of the New York Times’ Shanghai bureau chief, David Barboza, who wrote the Wen Jiabao article, and Jim Yardley, the former Beijing bureau chief and current New York Times South Asia bureau chief in India. They also stole the corporate passwords for every newspaper employee and gained access to the personal computers of 53 employees, most outside of the newsroom. The New York Times story said that the attacks on it and other organizations suggest a systematic effort to control China’s image by spying on different groups: The mounting number of attacks that have been traced back to China suggest that hackers there are behind a far-reaching spying campaign aimed at an expanding set of targets including corporations, government agencies, activist groups and media organizations inside the United States. The intelligence-gathering campaign, foreign policy experts and computer security researchers say, is as much about trying to control China’s public image, domestically and abroad, as it is about stealing trade secrets. Other U.S. news organizations that have been targeted by Chinese hackers include Bloomberg News, which was hacked last year after publishing an article about the family wealth of China’s then-vice president Xi Jinping. In a December report, Mandiant said that Chinese hackers began targeting Western journalists in 2008 as part of an effort to identify and intimidate sources and contacts for articles that might tarnish the reputation of Chinese leaders. News organizations have not been the only target of Chinese hackers. Last October, the White House that hackers linked to China’s government had broken into a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands, but downplayed the attack. Being attacked by hackers is the latest repercussion the New York Times has been dealt for its investigative piece about Wen Jiabao’s wealth. After it was published, the English- and Chinese-language Web sites of the New York Times were blocked in China. At the beginning of this month, New York Times reporter Christopher Buckley left China after he was denied a new journalist’s visa. Though China’s foreign ministry that Buckley’s visa application had been filed incorrectly, many observers speculated that the situation was related to the Wen Jiabao article. Furthermore, the newspaper’s new Beijing bureau chief, Philip Pan, has been waiting since last March for a visa. |
With Hundreds Of Thousands Of Phones Collected, Device Recycler ecoATM Adds Tablets | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | , about 1.6 billion mobile phones were shipped in 2012, with 700 million of those being smartphones. That doesn’t even take tablets into account. Compass Intelligence estimates that 18 million new tablets were sold during the fourth quarter of 2012. Naturally, as waves upon waves of new smartphones and tablets hit stores, people need a way of disposing of their old, used devices. Enter , the Coinstar for your has-been mobile devices. For those unfamiliar, the San Diego-based startup is the maker of nifty ATM-like kiosks that fully automate the buy-back of used consumer electronics, giving you cash for your old iPod. We first caught wind of this innovative concept , promising to bring its self-serve recycling kiosks to a mall near you. Since then, the startup has found plenty of eager adopters at retail outlets and has paid out “millions of dollars to hundreds of thousands of customers.” And, in the process, ecoATM Chairman and CEO Tom Tullie says it has saved landfills from hundreds of thousands of potentially toxic devices. To date, the startup has been able to “find a second life” for 60 percent of the devices it has collected, recycling the rest. However, until now, ecoATM has only addressed a portion of the used device market, as its kiosks have been limited to accepting your cell phones, smartphones and MP3 players. But, today, with the tablet market in full bloom, the startup has expanded its support in kind, announcing that its kiosks will now be accepting used tablets of all stripes. Cash for clunky tablets. [Want to find the location of the nearest ecoATM, .] Now that a year has passed since ecoATM , we decided to check in with Ryan Kuder, the company’s marketing director, to hear more about the progress the startup has made over the last 12 months. Not surprisingly, Kuder tells us that 2012 was a year of dramatic growth for ecoATM and its kiosks, and the validation of winning a Crunchie “right at the beginning of that” definitely helped. (Wink.) Since winning the award, ecoATM has gone from 50 kiosks to about 300 in 20 states. This year, he’s hoping to add another 600 or 700 kiosks, bringing the total to 1,000. And although ecoATM has focused on placing machines in malls, Kuder said, “Eventually, we’re going to run out of malls.” That’s why it’s also testing kiosks in supermarkets and other locations. (To fund that growth, in the spring.) But are people actually using the machines? Well, Kuder said people used ecoATM to recycle “hundreds of thousands of phones” last year, and with the company’s expansion plans, that number should go into the millions this year. As the tablet announcement suggests, ecoATM is also expanding beyond phones into other categories of portable electronics, but Kuder said the company will be proceeding carefully: “You know, it’s important to do the things we do well.” By the way, the Crunchies are tomorrow night at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. . |
Hold The Phone, I Want My Dick Tracy Watch | MG Siegler | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | A few days ago, I read of the Pebble smartwatch for The Verge. Like many others, I bought a , and I can’t wait to try it out myself. But one part of Patel’s review stuck out at me in particular: Any incoming notification will quietly buzz the Pebble and light up the screen. Frankly, it’s great — being able to see who’s texting, emailing, or calling you without looking at your phone changes the entire dynamic of being connected. The upside is obvious: only reaching for your phone when it’s something important means you reach for your phone much less often. (I particularly enjoy screening calls from my wrist.) This. This is what I’ve been waiting for. Well, it’s close. The entire world is enamored with smartphones right now. And rightfully so — they’re reshaping almost everything we do on a daily basis. It’s a computer, in your pocket, with internet power. But wait. Go back. Did you catch it? “In your pocket.” I don’t know how many times a day I now reach into my pocket to pull out my phone. If I had to guess, I’d guess a hundred. Maybe it’s a lot more. That’s a lot of the same motion over and over and over again. And for what? Usually, nothing important. My phone vibrates, I pull out the phone. Nothing important. I put it away. Five seconds later, I repeat the process. In aggregate, I probably waste at least 30 minutes each day doing this. But again, some days it’s probably more. That’s insane. I know that I’m going to experience the same feeling of bliss that Patel did when I use the Pebble for notifications and stop pulling out my phone every minute. But I also know that I’ll immediately want more. I’ll want what I’ve always wanted. A Dick Tracy watch. For those of you under 70 years old (and honestly, I probably only know about Dick Tracy because of the 1990 Warren Beatty/Madonna man-in-the-banana-suit oddity), Tracy was a police detective with the coolest gadget ever: a wristwatch phone. And while that was extremely forward-thinking in the 1940s, a wristwatch that’s just a phone (they’ve obviously existed in for years) seems narrow-minded now. Even on smartphones, the phone aspect itself is arguably the least interesting feature. And amongst the younger demographics, probably one of the least-used. I want a Dick Tracy watch that can do all kinds of things beyond just making calls. Call/SMS notifications are a great first step. Third-party app notifications will be even better. But the next step will be something like Siri on the device, that allows you to talk to your watch to actually things. If you think about it, a watch makes more sense for Siri-type technology than a smartphone does. With a smartphone, it’s still very easy to type commands. Many people avoid talking to their phones when they’re not on a call so they don’t look like asshats who are talking to their phones. It’s still awkward and it will be for a while. But with a watch, you have no other choice. There’s no room for a keyboard (well, unless you get ). Voice is the only thing that makes sense. It will force a paradigm shift. And Siri (or another similar technology) will be there to take advantage of our suddenly chatty society. “Siri, take this note:…” “Siri, send this message to dad:…” “Siri, what was the score of the game today?” These are all things we can do right now. But it’s usually still faster to simply take those actions by typing them into a smartphone. Again, on a watch, the voice commands will be the only option. ? We all know that’s coming. I’d be shocked if both Apple and Google working on wristwatch-type devices right now. Apple must have seen how many different iPod nano watch projects emerged over the past few years on Kickstarter. And I have to believe they wouldn’t have changed the form factor of the nano unless they knew they’d address this desire themselves one day. Now everyone is looking at the Pebble and the various and seeing dollar signs. Someone is going to nail this space. Maybe a few people will. But even a Siri wrist device is just step two towards what I really want. The ultimate wrist device would be about push and not just pull. That is, such a device should know your location and serve you up information beyond explicit message notifications or information you’re actively looking for. Think: Google Now. Or perhaps even better, Google FieldTrip. Maybe you’re walking through a city for the first time, your watch should know that and serve you up interesting tidbits about the area. Maybe its Foursquare venues your friends have been to and liked. Maybe it’s historical data you’ve searched for on Wikipedia in the past. Maybe it’s an Instagram that a friend took. Maybe it’s a place to get toothpaste that you were searching for on Google earlier. Maybe it’s a warning that it’s about to start pouring rain. This obviously doesn’t have to be audible information, the watch would still have a screen to serve this information up. And if you wanted more than a standard, quick overview, maybe you could “send it to your phone” to dive deeper with more screen real estate. But wouldn’t all that get annoying very quick? Yes. Patel brings this up as well even with the limited notifications the Pebble provides: The downside is that it’s harder to simply ignore your phone and let messages stack up while you focus on something else; having the Pebble buzz your wrist for every email and text means you’re hyper-aware of your inbox at all times. Some filters and priority settings would go a long way — having a Pebble changes the contours of distraction, but doesn’t reduce it. But once you’re used to having notifications on your wrist, it’s hard to live without them. In other words, the good outweighs the bad. And Patel is right, smart filters would go a long way here (don’t buzz me at certain times, only show important information, etc). Even more simple would be a do-not-disturb toggle. If you’re walking around and want the notifications coming your way, flip it on. If you just want to enjoy a walk the old-fashioned way and remain oblivious to the river of information flowing all around you, turn it off. At first, these Dick Tracy watches are undoubtedly going to rely heavily on your smartphone, just as the Pebble does. Eventually, though, the tech can and will reside on your wrist. Maybe then the smartphone is the thing people carry around mainly to take pictures with. Crazy to think about now, perhaps. But why are we all walking around with a computer in our pockets? Google Glass is a fascinating bit of technology. But I say there’s no way that sees any sort of mainstream adoption before my Dick Tracy watch does. Baby steps. And we’re getting very close to that particular step. I can’t wait. |
How Two Undergraduates Went From Forever Alone To Thousands In Sales | John Biggs | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | A few undergraduates at Queens College in New York, Matt Sconce and Phil Malen, had a semi-bright idea: they’d make Forever Alone statuettes. Matt Scone and sculptor Hanning Saden got together to make a 3D model of the famous Forever Alone face, a sad-eyed monstrosity familiar with those with no friends and those who like to suggest their friends have no friends. The face, to be clear, is wildly ugly yet poignant in its own special way. They decided to manufacture them. They started with a limited run of 30 and sold them for $80. “It was during our summer break and we thought it would be really cool to make and then market something of our own,” said Matt. “We are both Reddtiors and the forever alone meme at the time just seem like the perfect choice to turn into a statue/toy.” The pair made a 3D model, printed it, and then cast it. They expected to make a few of these and move on, but the gods of the Internet intervened. BoingBoing wrote about them and then sold them on its online store and then picked it up. Now the team has outsourced to Asia to build thousands of the little heads to keep up with demand. They’re selling briskly at $30 a pop. The team estimates they’ve made $2,000 in profit so far, which is about what Twitter makes in a good month. The key, said Matt, is finding a product that resonates with a specific audience – cat lovers, say, or fans of plastic figurines. I asked him why he chose Forever Alone, let alone memes. “For me, I enjoy memes because they’re either funny or they relate to me on a personal level. People like to find and be around people whom are like them, and these memes connect us,” he said. Is the team a pack of lone wolves, also forever alone? They are, said Matt. “It’s sad how well we fit the stereotype — shy video game nerds either playing WoW or browsing Reddit.”
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Backstage Acquires Music Promotion Startup Sonicbids For $15M+ To Build A LinkedIn For Creatives | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | If you’re an independent band, or actor, or clown, or really creative of any stripe, you’re probably looking for a gig. But try as you might, finding that gig is tough. But what if there were a platform that gave creatives their very own LinkedIn or CareerBuilder? In a down economy, where millions are struggling to find regular work, any site that helps musicians connect with gigs at places like SXSW, Bonnaroo or MTV, or helps actors, dancers and performers line up spots in film, TV and beyond, is a step in the right direction. That is the reason why, in a deal backed by Guggenheim Partners, decided to shell out about $15 million to acquire the Boston-based . Backstage (besides being a place that I’m not allowed) is a 50-year-old entertainment industry brand known for publishing a weekly trade rag and bimonthly industry directory/digest, among other things. Essentially, the company’s goal is to help those working in the performing arts to connect with casting directors, job opportunities and career advice. Given their shared mission, acquiring Sonicbids makes perfect sense. Like Backstage, Sonicbids fancies itself a matchmaker (of the online variety), with a particular focus on connecting bands and promoters. The site essentially makes it easier for bands to connect with gigs and those who control which bands get those gigs, without having to pay millions for those referrals. In turn, promoters can search Sonicbids’ database of thousands of bands and musicians when they’re looking for someone to fill in when and if Ozzie doesn’t show up. Musicians can use Sonicbids to manage their “Electronic Press Kits” and book gigs all over the globe, engage fans, reach fans and promote their music. It’s not easy to get musicians to pay for these kinds of services, and Sonicbids has traditionally come with application and subscription fees, so sites like these have had to hustle to prove they offer a big value-add for independent, cash-strapped performers. It also happens to be the platform that SXSW uses to accept band applications. Generally speaking, Sonicbids operates in the same space with companies like , , the publishing platform for musicians that offers direct-to-fan music and merchandise sales, destination and , but the similarities tend to be broad. For Backstage and Sonicbids, the companies share the similar goal (and history) of connecting artists with gigs and both companies have served this two-sided network for years. Also, to be fair, a goal that’s shared by become the About.me for the entertainment industry. Onesheet also happens to be founded by Brendan Mulligan, the same guy who built . Mulligan worked as VP of Strategic Development until taking off to start Onesheet. With the acquisition, the company said that it will have 600K registered users and 60K paying subscribers in what they believe is a “rapidly growing” portion of the performing arts market. Together, the companies hope to create the LinkedIn for the creative community — a destination site where performing artists can go to get gigs, educate themselves and manage their careers. With that mission, don’t be surprised if, together, they go knocking on the door of Onesheet at some point soon. As a result of the acquisition, Sonicbids will maintain its headquarters in Boston and both will basically continue to operate as separate entities, with Backstage Chairman and CEO John Amato leading the group. The startup’s founder, Panos Panay, will continue serving as Sonicbids’ CEO. For more, . |
Facebook Tries Letting You Share Emoticons Of Exactly What You’re Feeling, Reading Or Eating | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | Facebook is poised to get a lot more expressive. Today it began tests of a new status composer that lets you say “what are you doing?” by selecting from different categories to share activities such as feeling, reading, or eating. You can then choose a specific emotion or piece of media or add a custom text description and post something like “Niners in the Super Bowl — Facebook is testing this new visual activity sharing status composer with some users on the website and its mobile site. It could inspire people to share more frequently. Instead of just adding a plain text update, you can select from feeling, watching, reading, listening to, drinking, or eating. Then you can pick from pre-made options such as happy, Game Of Thrones, 50 Shades Of Grey, Radiohead, coffee, or ice cream. Alternatively, you can write your own emotion, piece of content, or cuisine. Visual status updates could help Facebook fend off emoji messaging apps like , media consumption sharing apps like , and the smiley-laden . It follows Facebook testing a bunch of new standard status update prompts like “What’s going on, Josh?” and the somewhat creepy “How are you feeling, Josh?” Along with being fun for users, it could be a big help to advertisers, though Facebook tells me it’s not piping this data into its ad engine just yet. By selecting your current activity instead of merely writing it out, you structure data for Facebook. That could eventually help it to connect you with advertisers who want to reach people who frequently watch TV and movies, or listen to music, or eat at restaurants. If you choose a particular pre-formatted emotion, piece of media, or food, Facebook could potentially use that behavior to pinpoint you with ads. If you listen to a Daft Punk song, it could target you with ads for their new album or nearby concert. Coffee shops might be able to pay to reach coffee drinkers, and Netflix would probably love to target sad users who could be primed to stay home and watch some videos. Going further, Facebook could even sell “Sponsored Activities,” where advertisers could pay to have themselves suggested as what someone was up to in the category selector. This all mirrors Facebook’s “action spec ad targeting,” which lets advertisers target you based on your activity in Open Graph-connected apps like Spotify or Foodspotting. Perhaps Facebook should just be ripping this data out of plain text updates with basic natural language processing, but this is a start. Facebook didn’t provide many details but noted: If rolled out, the visual status composer could be very popular, as it will make people’s status updates stand out in the crowded feed. It’s a subtly brilliant move for Facebook that simultaneously lets users express themselves while building its knowledge of who they really are. |
Senators Seek Permanent Extension Of Internet Tax Ban | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | Congress is looking to keep popular Internet-only services, such as email and social networks, permanently free of taxes. Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Sen. Dean Heller are a permanent extension of the original 1998 Internet Tax Free Act, which is set to expire in November 2014. “E-commerce is thriving largely because the Internet is free from burdensome tax restrictions. Unfortunately, tax collectors see it as a new revenue source, and they must be stopped,” said Ayotte, in a statement. The newly introduced bill doesn’t affect the recent taxes that Californians when they purchase on Amazon.com, since it only bars federal, state, and local agencies from taxing Internet-only services. As of last fall, California began charging between 7.25 percent to 9.75 percent on online purchases. At the other end of the spectrum, Sen. Dick Durbin and others are seeking a law that would permit states to collect taxes from another for online purchases, to . |
Card-Linked Offers Platform Edo Opens Up To Local Merchants | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | , the card-linked local offers platform which just closed its , is today introducing a new service for local merchants, which it’s calling the “ ” The company had previously announced its intention to go after the SMB market at the time of its recent raise, noting that it now plans to scale through partnerships with merchant acquirers, mobile payment providers, and media publishers. Alongside today’s marketplace launch, edo is also making good on those promises to partner by announcing a new agreement with , a Ft. Lauderdale-based company providing marketing tools for merchants and retailers. The agreement will see 2Go Media integrating edo into its iDeals Marketing Platform, which will allow its merchants to target offers to over 100 million consumers. For those unfamiliar, edo is something of in that it doesn’t target users with deeply discounted deals in order to increase foot traffic at local businesses. Nor does it require a check-in, a punch card, a mobile app, or specialized point-of-sale hardware. Instead, the white-label service is tied to consumers’ bank cards (credit or debit), in order to track their spending behavior. This allows it to understand which offers to send to which customers. The alerts can arrive via a mobile app or SMS, and to redeem them, the customer just pays at the suggested merchant using their linked bank card. This fall, the company reported having more than 140+ bank and financial institution partners on board, including Fifth Third and Ally Bank, as well as more than 200 local and national merchants, including Nordstrom, Target, Subway, Crate & Barrel, and Home Depot. Today, edo says it has grown to 150+ bank and financial partners, but didn’t report an increase in merchant adoption. With the debut of the edo Marketplace, the plan is to change that by now going after smaller, local merchants, giving them a way to target potential customers using the same tools normally reserved for big-name brands and national chains. Using the new platform, these merchants will have access to targeted analytics data, including total dollar amount spent per week at competing merchants within a geographic region, a view into spending behavior for both existing customers and new customers within a specific timeframe, the merchant’s current market share, how the merchant compares to its competitors in terms of average purchase size, the percentage of customers who made a return visit post-program, how much was spent, and more. At launch, the service will be made available in test markets of Chicago and edo home base Nashville, with a wider rollout planned for Q2 2013. Edo, which positions itself as a more affordable alternative to Groupon and other daily deals sites, monetizes by taking a cut from the overall purchase price paid at checkout when an offer is redeemed. The rate tends to be 10% on the target basket, with the advertiser/merchant paying out both edo’s cut and the discount to the consumer. Today, the company claims that it can drive 30% return rates for new customers who come back once or twice, and 40% of those customers will return 3 or more times. We also asked the company to disclose some details on growth, as it declined to talk about revenue or profitability, despite having now raised over $50 million in outside funding. Edo says its active card network is currently growing at 30 percent per month, and that within the next three months, it will extend 1 billion card-linked offers to consumers. Painting a picture of acceleration, the company says it took edo 4 years to reach that same level, previously. In another, more specific, example of growth, the company noted that in the last six months, Ally Financial saw the number of deals redeemed per day double, and the number of cardholders who have opted in to receive weekly emails with new offers increase by more than 60 percent. Edo competes with other card-linked offer providers, large and small, including , , , , and more. |
The Surprising iOS Games That Saw The Most Active Usage In The U.S. Last Month | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | Because of the rankings, the top-grossing games and the ones that get the most downloads are known. But Apple and Google are much more conservative with what they reveal about apps and their active usage. And active usage is a far more important metric than the download, because the more retention and engagement an app has, the more opportunity there is for users to transact inside of it. , a Sequoia-backed company that tracks active app usage for millions of users through its data compression products, took at a look at the most used games in the U.S. in December. What Onavo calls “market share” below is the percentage of U.S. iPhone owners that used the game that month. Some of them are surprising. The top few like Zynga’s Words With Friends and Imangi Studio’s Temple Run are not. But the next one is — Touch Hockey from Flipside5. Flow by Big Duck Games comes after that. Following that is Rovio’s Angry Birds – an obvious candidate for one of the top 10 apps. If we look at the reach of developers, you’ll see that Zynga is in the lead (again not surprising given that on mobile platforms in July). While mobile daily actives likely declined in the third quarter because of Draw Something’s decline, CEO Mark Pincus said on the last earnings call that the company definitely had the largest mobile gaming network in the West on Android and iOS. They’re followed by Temple Run-makers Imangi Studios. They’re followed by Flipside5, which is ahead of Electronic Arts, Is it weird that totally bootstrapped teams like Imangi can outrun (hah!) multibillion dollar companies like EA on iOS? Yes, but this is the nature of the iOS platform, with its comparatively low barriers to entry — at least relative to the packaged goods world. Time and time again, Last month’s breakout dirtyBit’s is from a hobbyist team of computer science students from Trondheim, Norway. Just for background on methodology, Onavo has two products: , which helps consumers save on their mobile bills by compressing data usage and , which tells you how much data you’re using. Because they have single-digit millions of users, they can peek into daily mobile traffic to different apps. On top of that, because Onavo creates consumer-facing products and doesn’t work directly with developers, the company can publish data on active usage for specific apps. This is unlike other mobile analytics companies like Flurry, which can’t really disclose performance of specific apps because developers would probably not work with them. |
Linkwell Lands $11M From WellPoint, Spark Capital To Help You Make Healthier Choices | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | today announced that it has raised $11 million in series C financing for its consumer engagement platform. Founded in 2007, Linkwell partners with health plans, consumer brands that want to be health conscious, grocery chains and drugstores to offer everyday consumers discounts, coupons and content to help them make healthier choices. The round was led by WellPoint, one of the largest health benefits and managed care plan providers in the country. Linkwell’s existing investors, Spark Capital and HLM Venture Partners, also contributed to the raise, bringing total funding raised to date to $20 million. When one considers the pervasiveness of obesity and , it’s easy to see that there’s a problem. These health issues are some of the biggest contributors to the enormous healthcare costs in the U.S. today. Diabetes alone has a price tag of about $200 billion. Improving our overall health and wellness is difficult and can be costly (it’s something that ), and people tend to let price, whether it be for food or exercise programs, dictate their healthy choices. , Linkwell wants to make it easier for Americans to make smarter purchasing decisions by giving them access to coupons and affordable health products via partnerships with big-name brands and over 22 insurance providers. In turn, the company provides its partners with marketing opportunities, connecting them with millions of consumers by way of email, their own mobile apps, direct mailings, websites and so on. With its new funding in tow, Linkwell plans to expand its partnerships with providers and consumer brands, increase the reach of its platform and develop the diversification that will allow it to offer a cross-platform experience to its users. Health plans are already well-represented among the company’s partners, with Humana, Health Net and WellPoint already on board, but it still has a long way to go. Overall, people are frustrated and annoyed by health insurance providers, who have long been the bad guys of the industry. Models are changing, however, becoming more personalized and patient-centric, and insurance providers are trying to keep up. As a result, they’re eager to find better ways to connect with their customers. Another coupon distribution service may not necessarily seem like the ticket into the heart of the consumer, but there’s no denying the growth of the digital couponing industry over the last few years. While no one likes to think of themselves as a coupon clipper, there’s no doubt discounts help reduce the friction around eating and living healthier. There are a lot of people who want to choose the “natural” or “organic” product in their grocery store but don’t because it’s that much more expensive. It also helps that Linkwell ties these healthy products and coupons into family and company health plans, taking some of the abrasiveness out of it by integrating the two. Linkwell’s raise is also indicative of a larger trend in the digital health market, which, by the way, is booming. [ .] Of the four big themes Rock Health identified in , consumer engagement was the clear leader, with startups in this space raising over $237 million. Clearly, for those health investors who are active in this climate, helping consumers with healthcare-related purchases is top of mind and represents a big market opportunity going forward. Linkwell has already succeeded in what can be the most difficult aspect of building a company in this space — creating a wide, multi-channel (and multi-player) distribution network. The other side, of course, is quality content and providing consumers with products and discounts on products that really matter to them. In the end, 20 percent off of organic chicken fingers can help chip away at the friction around making healthy decisions, but it’s just one piece of the health pie — So to speak. For more, , intro video below: http://youtu.be/TF578RKjngM |
Facebook Killed Off 37% Of Spammers Since June 2012 | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | If you’ve ever gotten a fake friend request, you know Facebook has spammers. But it’s winning the fight against them. Facebook’s estimate of the total percentage of monthly users that are “undesirable” or spammer accounts dropped to 0.9 percent from 1.5 percent in June 2012. That means there’s only around 9.5 million of these trouble-makers on the site, down 37 percent from 15.1 million in mid-2012. Facebook buried these stats in of the fine print of its , where it defines an “undesirable account” as one that “represents user profiles that we determine are intended to be used for purposes that violate our terms of service, such as spamming.” Because of the viral nature of Facebook and its multitude of communication channels, keeping out spammers is critical. When allowed to survive, they flood the site with fake friend requests, spam photos tagged with everyone they’re connected to, fraudulent events invites, and any other way they can generate notifications. Often these spammers use phishing tactics to steal Facebook login credentials from other users. Once phished, a spammer uses an innocent person’s account to attack their friends. But Facebook has an expert team dedicated to staying one step ahead. There’s plenty for them to do, considering I recently got both of the fake friend requests above. Personally, I think more stringent filters on photos that include over six friends tags but don’t show any faces would help. Spam photos promoting free airline tickets and cheap shoes tagged with dozens of people are still common. Still, I’ve heard security team members often pose as spammers to infiltrate secret hacker forums, learn the latest tricks used to surpass Facebook’s automated security systems, and then close those loopholes. That doesn’t mean the rest of Facebook’s 1.055 billion user accounts are actually people. It estimates 1.3 percent of its monthly users are “misclassified,” aka personal accounts mistakenly created for businesses, organizations, or pets. Still, the world’s getting smarter, as that figure is down from 2.4 percent of the total user base in June 2012. So the lesson here is that if you see a spammer on Facebook, report them, and don’t make a profile for your kitten. Give Mr. Whiskers an official Page. |
Prezi Hits 18M Users For Its Presentation Platform, Asia An Area For Future Growth [TCTV] | Mike Butcher | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | has come a long way since the days it was a struggling startup in Budapest building a new way for people to create presentations to blow the mind of an audience. Today they have over 100 employees and a San Francisco HQ. It’s become a popular alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint and Keynote, and the company is even now advised by Jack Dorsey. At DLD in Munich last week I ran into Peter Arvai, Prezi CEO and Co-founder, where he revealed – on the video here – that after 15 million users last October, they are now on 18 million users. He said they are also course to book 2 million more users per month over the next year. Clearly they are hitting an exponential growth curve. One of their key areas is Asia, where their simple business model has appealed to users who like the lightweight Prezi model, which doesn’t require desktop software. For instance, there are already five books out about how to use and create presentations on Prezi. If you’re not familiar with Prezi, it uses a map-like metaphor for creating presentations instead of a slideshow. So you can use it in a or linear or non-linear way. In addition, if you’re caught out on the road and don’t have access to you laptop, you presentations will sync to you iPhone and iPad. The company was co-founded by Hungarian architect/artist/designer Adam Somlai-Fischer with Peter Halacsy and Peter Arvai in 2009 and has raised a $14 million Series B led by Accel Partners. Previously it raised Series A financing from Sunstone Capital. |
Facebook’s Zuckerberg Hints At Bigger, More Media-Rich Ad Formats | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | A lot of the discussion during Facebook’s earnings conference call today revolved around all the stats that the company offered about the fourth-quarter performance of various ad units. However, Facebook executives also talked (in a very general way) about their ad plans for 2013, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying that the company will be both improving its ad targeting and launching new formats. Asked what kinds of formats we can expect, Zuckerberg pointed to what he said is one of the company’s longtime design principles: “We want the organic content to be of the same basic type of format as paid content.” Advertisers, meanwhile, usually want “really rich things like big pictures.” There’s a tension there — in fact, this is a constant theme from Facebook employees who argue that traditional advertisers need to adjust their thinking to build campaigns that work on Facebook, rather than demanding that Facebook copy existing ad formats. is Facebook’s main concessions on this front.) However, Zuckerberg said that the company has been incorporating “bigger pictures, richer media” in the news feed, so it makes sense for ads to follow suit. He also pointed to Facebook-acquired Instagram as a product that includes an immersive mobile experience, and he said he wants to “offer those abilitites for advertising as well, so you can deliver much more engaging advertising experiences.” Later in the call, COO Sheryl Sandberg answered a question about whether Facebook will be offering more analytics tools to large ad agencies. She said she’s happy with the progress Facebook has made thus far, which to a large extent involves convincing advertisers that “the click is not really the most important metric for us.” After all, she said an ad on Facebook might convince people to make a purchase in-store, but they might not click on the ad at all. That’s why Facebook is to track the effectiveness of its ads beyond the click. Sandberg said she those efforts are “really early,” so we can probably expect more announcements on that front in the coming months. |
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Ahead Of Expansion, Lyft Parent Zimride Closed $15M In New Funding From Founders Fund And Existing Investors | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | It’s been a , but let’s make it even bigger. TechCrunch has learned that , parent company behind the ride-sharing service, has closed a new, $15 million round of funding led by Founders Fund. Existing investors Mayfield Fund, K9 Ventures, and Floodgate also participated in the round. Representatives at Zimride wouldn’t talk about the funding, giving us the usual “not commenting on rumors and speculation” line. The company had previously raised about $7.5 million since being founded in 2007, including a . According to sources, the funding closed recently, as Lyft is intent on expanding into new markets beyond San Francisco. It announced earlier today a , opening for business in the Santa Monica and Venice sections of L.A. on Thursday. Over time, the company plans to add cars and drivers in other parts of the city, and we can expect that the service will launch in new regions as well. The company also announced that it had , marking its first big regulatory win. With that deal, the PUC waived fines that were previously levied against Lyft and will allow the company to continue operating while it contemplates new rules that could legitimize ride sharing in the state. Lyft isn’t the only ride-sharing service raising money and expanding to new markets: San Francisco-based competitor from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Google Ventures. Since then, it’s launched in the and is expected to soon. And, of course, there are other alternative transportation apps that Lyft competes with: There’s Uber, the granddaddy of the e-hail apps, which has over the years, and is increasingly such as UberTAXI and UberX in all of its markets. There’s also growing awareness around traditional taxi-hailing apps like Flywheel and Taxi Magic. All in all, there’s increasing competition in urban transportation. With $15 million more in cash, Lyft is set to go up against Uber, SideCar, and others in new and existing markets. |
Surprisingly, Facebook’s News Feed Ads Aren’t Scaring Away Users | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | Facebook risked driving users away by showing more ads in the news feed last year, but to Mark Zuckerberg’s surprise, a big increase in their presence during 2012 only reduced Likes and comments by 2%. Users are staying loyal, which during the 2012 call Zuckerberg called a sign of the value Facebook provides. Whether or not users are clicking or even noticing feed ads, they’re not using Facebook less because of them. While there’s plenty of people who complain about seeing the marketing messages crammed between content from their friends, they seem happy to just skim by rather than closing their app or browser window. Zuckerberg explained that his company was intently focused on whether more ads meant less engagement. It even expected it, but that hasn’t been the case. Its news feed quality improvements around showing more relevant posts helped increase Likes and comments roughly 50% during 2012. That was only offset by a 2% reduction in engagement due to ads. That means Facebook might be able to get away with showing even more ads. That could keep mobile revenues growing. This quarter it hit $305 million in mobile ad revenue, counting for , up from about $150 million and 14% in Q3. The real feat would be if Facebook could make its ads so helpful for discovering apps and products that users who see them actually use the service more. |
ShoeDazzle Is Bringing Subscriptions Back, At $9.95 A Month For Free Shipping, Discounts, And Other Perks | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | It’s been about three months since ShoeDazzle founder Brian Lee took back his CEO role at the L.A.-based e-commerce startup. Since then, the company has been undergoing massive changes: a reorganization aimed at refocusing the company on shoes and accessories; the to bolster the brand; the launch of a new “Daily Fix” email newsletter designed to increase engagement; and partnerships struck with other shoe manufacturers to bring some new brands to the site. “It’s probably been the busiest 100 days of my life,” Lee told me. But now, with Lee back in place and all that work done, the next phase of ShoeDazzle’s evolution will involve bringing back one of the founding premises of the e-commerce site: subscriptions. But the company’s new subscription plan, which will be rolled out in the coming weeks, varies significantly from its old $39.95 a month plan. When ShoeDazzle launched, it had a pretty simple message to consumers. Sign up, and once a month you’d be able to pick a new pair of shoes for $40. If you didn’t find anything you’d like, you could skip a month and not be charged the recurring subscription fee. Or, you could do nothing and have the subscription fee deducted, but have the $40 added to your account as a credit for future purchases. The new subscription plan, which will become available in mid-February, costs $9.95 a month and will provide ShoeDazzle customers with a wide range of perks. The $9.95 will automatically be added to customer accounts as credits that can be accrued and used at any time over the course of a year. In addition, those who sign up will receive discounts of 10-25 percent off of ShoeDazzle merchandise for being a part of the program, free shipping for both shipments and returns, as well as prioritized access to sale items. The new subscription plan fits in nicely with a few changes that ShoeDazzle has made over the course of the last few months. Since adding multiple new brands of shoes, the company no longer has a single price point that subscribers can rely on for making purchases. As a result, the ability to accrue credits and use them whenever could help drive purchases of higher-priced items being introduced to customers. Instead of tying a subscription to a single purchase every month that users can opt out of, the plan offers discounts and free shipping. That provides customers with value throughout the year, not just on the first day of every month. Doing so will help ShoeDazzle increase engagement — something that it’s been working on with the launch of its Daily Fix product, which keeps users coming back every day, as well as its work through social channels to connect with consumers. ShoeDazzle has been running a beta version of its subscription plan since January 14 — the same day it introduced its other new features — and invited some of its high-value users to participate. According to Lee, about 20 percent of those invited had joined. That’s got the company feeling pretty positive about rolling it out to all customers. It’s still early days in ShoeDazzle’s attempted turnaround, but the company has already seen some positive signs. While he , Lee said that move was mainly to reduce the number of verticals that ShoeDazzle had and to focus on shoes again. As for the changes it made earlier in the month, since launching the Daily Fix, the company has seen a 12 percent lift in repeat visitors. And the home of new celebrity Chief Stylist Rachel Zoe is already the third most-trafficked page on the site. The hope is that, with the new subscription plan, ShoeDazzle will not only give customers reasons to come back more often, but it will once again start getting some recurring revenue going. |
Facebook’s Revenue Per User In North America Is Now 3-4X Europe and Nearly 6X Asia (But User Growth In Its Cash Cow Is Slowing Down) | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | Facebook’s user base is growing much faster outside of the U.S. than it is in its home market, but it has a little problem: those users are continuing to generate far less revenue than U.S. consumers do for the company. Facebook that average revenues per user (ARPU) for the U.S. and Canada in the quarter were $4.08, compared to $1.71 in Europe, $0.69 in Asia and only $0.56 in the rest of the world. That makes for a disproportionate amount coming from the U.S. The same goes for advertising revenues per users: in the U.S. users are generating $639 in advertising revenues, with about half as much, $374, coming from Europe, with $168 in Asia and $156 in the rest of the world. Overall the U.S. and Canada accounted for about half of all of Facebook’s revenues, at $2.5 billion out of $5 billion, although it is only about 18 percent of the total user base. The issue for Facebook is that its newer users are in countries that are less wealthy than the U.S., and many of them are accessing the service on devices that may not be able to receive high quality ads (ie feature phones rather than smartphones or PCs), and they will tend to spend less money on services like buying credits for Facebook games. And these users almost surely won’t have the money to spend $15 on a Facebook Gift, which raises serious questions about how this will scale longer term. “We’re getting into some of the lower monetizing countries in Europe; they’re starting at a lower price point and bringing down the average,” Facebook’s CFO David Ebersman explained on the conference call. Later he noted that, in the context of games and gaming revenues, the U.S. and other mature markets are stalling in their growth. “We’re not growing the essence of this user base in the developed markets.” Taking Facebook’s total monthly active user base of 1.056 billion users, in Q4, there were 193 million monthly active users in the U.S. about 18 percent of Facebook’s total user base. That’s an increase of only 4 million on the previous quarter, and only 7.8 percent on the same quarter a year ago. The growth rates are much higher outside the U.S.: Europe had MAUs of 261 million, a rise of 8 million, and a rise of 10.5 percent on last year. Asia grew by 21 million users to 298 million over Q3. And the rest of the world grew by 40.6 percent on last year. Rest of the world was up by 16 million on Q3 to 304 million, and 35 percent on last year. As the developing world transitions to smartphones, the question is whether Facebook will be able to ride that wave and get its newest members to change their behavior and become more valuable for the company. |
Coursera Takes A Big Step Toward Monetization, Now Lets Students Earn “Verified Certificates” For A Fee | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | Stanford professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng launched last year to give anyone and everyone access to courses from top-tier universities — for free, online. At launch, the startup offered courses from a mere three institutions, but today, things have changed, over 200 courses from 33 top international and domestic schools and reaches over 2 million students around the globe. It has the makings of a transformational concept, offering content only from the most reputed departments, professors and universities, bringing that experience online and giving the key to the masses. Yet, in spite of a mission that’s easy to get behind, Coursera hasn’t been without its detractors. While massive open online courses (a.k.a. “MOOCs”) were one of the most-talked-about subjects in education in 2012, many believe they are just a flash in the pan — that the growing adoption of MOOCs among universities is the result of peer pressure, an indication that institutions will take any action that might be perceived as “going digital,” regardless of value. Furthermore, if the proposed goal of this new form of virtual education is actually to create a viable online education model (not just a poor alternative), schools want to see some sort of ROI, for free, open courses to mean something and be able to apply the same admissions process they use for on-campus programs. In turn, while MOOCs are great for distance learning and for those pursuing continuing education, most platforms aren’t credit-bearing. In other words, they don’t offer diplomas. The other issue: Beyond the fact that Coursera has raised $22 million in venture capital (the same is true of Udacity), MOOC platforms haven’t yet been able to create substantive business models. Perhaps unfair for Coursera, being less than a year from launch, but an oft-voiced concern nonetheless. Meanwhile, beyond Udacity and edX, startups like the open , and online degree program specialist, legitimate strides into the MOOC space, offering a blend of free, MOOC-style and for-credit courses. Both have partnered with top-tier universities, offer quality content and tech and have succeeded in setting the table for supplementary revenue streams. (“Supplementary” because both created their course networks as extensions of their original businesses — something Coursera doesn’t have the luxury of doing.) That’s also liberating to a degree, as Coursera can be more nimble without having to worry about supporting an LMS or online graduate programs. Nonetheless, the startup has quietly been positioning itself to take advantage of its exponential early growth and move towards revenue-generation, beginning in December . Essentially, Coursera’s new service is an opt-in to a recruiting program that allows students to find and connect with positions that “match their skills and interests.” Using “sophisticated analytics,” Coursera looks for matches between students and companies. Once it identifies a match, it sends an email to students, seeking their approval, only making an intro if the student gives them the go-ahead. Companies pay Coursera a flat fee for each introduction, with a share of that revenue going to the colleges offering the course. Moving into recruiting and career services is a natural extension, but it can be a difficult thing to do well (and create real value), especially without stirring up privacy concerns. That being said, Udacity has also begun employing a similar model and has started to make money doing it. Nonetheless, Coursera today unveiled its next phase and what will likely be its most significant source of revenue: Verified certificates. Students who take a course on its platform will now be able to earn “Verified Certificates” for a small fee. The new option, called Signature Track, is available on a course-by-course basis and is designed to provide verification for the work students complete on its platform, giving value to that work in the form of the startup’s first foray into credentialing. The certificate, however does not include credit toward a degree program, it simply aims to give them a more meaningful way to prove that they’ve completed the course. At launch, the startup is piloting its certificates with five courses and eventually plans to offer Signature Tracks for the majority of its courses. Students will have up to three weeks from the beginning of the course to sign up for a Signature Track. If they participate, they take two photos with their webcam, one of themselves, the other of a photo ID and create a “biometric profile of their unique typing patterns by typing a short phrase.” When submitting work for a course, they type the same phrase to match the record to their ID. Upon completion, students receive a certificate issued by the university and Coursera, which they’ll be able to share with anyone they choose via their “personal Course Records” page on Coursera. The price of admission into Signature track depends on the course, but will range from $30 to $100, and students who cannot afford the fee will be able to register for financial assistance. All in all, it’s not exactly a fool-proof way of ensuring the identity of the person taking the course, but it’s a great start. And, while Verified Certificates don’t count towards a degree, the startup recently entered into an agreement with the American Council on Education (ACE) to evaluate a certain subset of courses on the platform to see if they will be able to qualify for credits towards their degree. There’s no word yet on when it will be approved, but it’s not far off. And once it is, it makes Coursera courses (and Signature Track) a whole lot more valuable. Especially considering, for the immediate future, the startup plans to continue offering all of its courses for free. It’s still early to say what this can mean for Coursera, especially as Duke, UCSF, Illinois and Georgia Tech are the only schools that have agreed to participate in the certificate program thus far, but the potential seems huge. For $30, there’s not a lot of friction standing in the way of opting in, though, again, a certificate means little next to a degree. If Coursera begins offering accredited courses and if it’s able to keep prices low, expect people to come running. Those are two big “ifs” and there’s a big tug-and-pull ahead, but the implications are exciting. |
McGraw-Hill & Kno Offer A Peek Into The Future Of Textbooks: They’re Dynamic, Vocal, Adaptive & Bring Stats To Studying | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | For many startups, creating the educational platform (and learning experience) of the future began with reinventing the presentation, distribution — really, the essence — of educational content. And what is the most familiar package for that content? The good ole textbook, in all its rigid and bulky glory. As such, startups like Kno, Inkling and Boundless have been helping to make textbooks and learning content digital, interactive and personalized. Of course, generally speaking, these startups have had to fight tooth and nail against the incumbents of the space — the controllers of content — the big, bad publishers. Self-publishing platforms and open content resources have grown in popularity and startups have begun experimenting with new ways to present learning material, all of which has threatened the old guard, forcing them to make moves. Adapt or go the way of the dinosaur. Although they’ve been known to stand in the way of innovation. This morning, textbook publishing giant, , showed that it’s been taking these changes seriously and may just be ready to play ball. Not your average CES startup, the company unveiled its new suite of interactive and adaptive learning products that aim to personalize the learning process and help students improve their performance. The suite leverages adaptive learning technology — one of the hottest topics in education this past year — which, simply put, seeks to personalize the educational experience by collecting data on student comprehension (knowledge, skill and confidence), employing algorithms to create customized study plans/paths based on that data. The goal being to keep students engaged (and improving) by helping them to identify and focus on areas where they’re struggling. Traditionally, adaptive learning tech has focused on study tools, but with its new suite, McGraw-Hill is looking to go beyond that to create a fully adaptive course. The company launched its own study tool, LearnSmart, back in 2009, which gives its new products the advantage of a ready-made user base and a ton of data to work with thanks to its one million unique student users, who have answered more than one billion questions to date. While the suite will include products like a “before-the-course” adaptive resource (that lets students warm up before difficult classes begin), a “photo-realistic virtual lab” and a comprehensive adaptive learning system, the stand-out was its unveiling of SmartBook, an adaptive eTextbook for laptops, desktops and tablets that adjusts to students’ comprehension and speed as they go. It’s not quite the Textbook of the future, as the experience is comparable to reading your average textbook, but it’s a clear sign of which way things are going. Instead of having to quiz yourself, your SmartBook will assess your knowledge as you read, highlighting content and concepts that students need to master. In fact, the book will actually talk to you, offering voice instructions and coaching students on the most effective way to read the material. If they answer incorrectly, it guides them to the material they need to re-read. Pretty cool. McGraw-Hill says that it expects to launch its SmartBooks this spring on Mac, PC, iOS and Android. Collectively, the SmartBooks will cover 90 different subject areas and cost $20 and up (per book). From what we’ve seen, the product isn’t the sexiest out there, but it does make good use of innovations in digital textbooks like those we’ve seen from Kno and Inkling, offering dynamic text and, unlike the others, voice instruction. To be sure, it’s a space that’s becoming more crowded and competitive, with Pearson employing Knewton’s adaptive learning technology to upgrade its digital learning tools — and Wiley, for that matter. What’s more, it will be interesting to see what the launch of McGraw-Hill’s SmartBooks means for relationships it has with startups like Kno, which has been helping to digitize the publisher’s textbooks and make them more interactive. McGraw-Hill instead turned to its adaptive tech partner to help it develop its SmartBooks. Not to be outdone by its publishing partner, announced a new product today at CES as well, unveiling “Kno Me,” a personal study dashboard that helps students monitor their progress as they read. The dashboard allows students to check-in to view realtime stats on their study behavior, time management, interaction levels and progress. Users can then share these results with peers or follow the engagement levels of their peers. The product will complement Kno’s interactive, digital textbooks, which now span over 200K titles and contain content from 65 of the top publishers. The smart textbooks offer more than 70 interactive features designed to boost engagement and help students reduce the amount of time they spend studying by improving efficiency. With Kno Me, the startup is trying to take that efficiency one step further by giving students deeper insight into their reading habits. Kno Co-founder Osman Rashid says that the idea is really to help students answer the question, “how much am I really studying?” Generally, the only assessment in this regard is a grade, and by that point, it’s generally too late anyway. It’s not exactly adaptive learning, but it does personalize and add granularity to the learning process, allowing students to see the average time they spend interacting with textbooks, the percentage of pages annotated, glossary terms mastered, and so on. Kno Me is now available on all Kno interactive textbooks for iPad, Windows 8 and web browsers and will soon be available for Android and Windows 7. And, for good measure, — the educational portfolio startup that allows students and teachers to collect, organize and present their learning achievements, course completion and so on — also got in on the action today, announcing a new product and a new agreement with textbook behemoth Pearson. As a result of the partnership, the startup will be integrating its portfolio platform into Pearson’s personalized learning environment, now used by more than nine million students each year. It’s a big win for the young edtech startup, giving it access to a huge new audience. |
Google+ Photos Get Pan And Zoom Functionality, Letting You Really Explore High-Res Photos | Drew Olanoff | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | Google+ came out of its holiday slumber today with an addition to its Photo section of the service. The team has added pan and zoom functionality to let you explore small areas of high-resolution photographs. This comes after a right before the . Google’s social feature set has attracted artists of all types, especially professional photographers. Uploading photos is super easy, and sharing with Circles has been a way to get feedback on those pics of the mountains that you just took on a hike before sharing them with the public. Here’s what Google’s Dave Cohen about the release: Google+ is full of amazing photos, and today we’re introducing the ability to pan and zoom when viewing photos from your desktop. To give these features a try, simply open a large photo in the lightbox, then: – use your mouse wheel to zoom in or out
– click and drag to pan right, left, up or down Higher resolution photos will offer more to explore, so we’re excited to launch pan and zoom just weeks after launching full-size backups of your Android photos (http://goo.gl/KRpjE). The experience on an Apple laptop is pretty neat, or any laptop with a touch or trackpad. Afte you click on a shared photo, simply use two fingers to zoom in and out fluidly, as you hone in on specific pixel areas. For huge panoramic photos of the outdoors, this can unlock photos in an all new way for followers. The new Nexus devices with the latest version of Android support these types of photos, . The box in the upper left-hand side of the screen allows you to see where you are on the picture itself, so that you can simply pan over to different areas to see what you’d like to see. This is an advanced feature, not something that would appeal to mainstream consumers, but one that will be enjoyed regardless. Basically, this wasn’t a must-have for Google+ Photos, but the team clearly felt like it was time to include it. This is going to be a huge year for Google’s social evolution, as you’ll start seeing this functionality trickle out to other Google products as the months go on. No, Google+ isn’t a social network, but Google is indeed now a social-focused company. Incrementally, feature by feature, piece by piece, Google is building a better platform to distribute content for all of its properties. [Photo credit: ] |
eBay Updates iPhone And iPad Apps To Simplify Mobile Browsing And Listing | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | eBay to its and apps yesterday which the company says will “play an important role in eBay Mobile’s year to come.” The e-commerce platform also said that 1.8 million new customers joined eBay through a mobile device in the first three quarters of 2012, and eBay Mobile currently adds an average of 2.4 million listings per week. The iOS app updates are geared toward taking eBay’s mobile business even higher by making it easier for customers to buy and sell merchandise using their iPhone or iPad. The updates integrate mobile cameras and editing, and streamlines the listing process by making uploading photos and item descriptions more simple. For sellers, the updated app includes new step-by-step category, pricing and shipping guidance for items listings, and the ability to save draft versions of multiple listings so sellers can start their listing on a mobile device and then finish them off on PC (helpful for vendors who want to write longer item descriptions), or vice versa. Other new features include more advanced search capabilities with auto-complete and quicker checkout. The quicker checkout allow buyers to review and confirm payments on a single screen, and gives first-time shoppers the option to pay via credit card instead of PayPal. eBay’s VP of mobile Steve Yankovich last month that mobile has dramatically changed the way eBay members conduct transactions, with one out of three shoppers using their phones or tablets to browse listings even if they complete the sale on a PC. Dec. 9 was eBay’s single-biggest mobile shopping day ever, with U.S. transacted mobile volume up 133 percent from last year’s biggest mobile shopping day, Dec. 4, 2011. |
Ford Launches Its OpenXC SDK And Hardware Specs To Let Developers Access Its Cars’ Sensors And Metrics | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | Our cars today feature a lot of sensors, but it’s not easy for developers and hardware hackers to access to all of this data, which is typically . Last year, Ford, in collaboration with , the beta of its to allow developers to access metrics from its cars’ internal network. Today it is opening up the program and launching an SDK so anybody who is interested in this project can start building hardware and software for the OpenXC platform. Until now, the platform was only available as a limited testing release. As Ford’s K. Venkatesh Prasad, the group and senior technical leader for Vehicle Design and Infotronics with Ford Research and Innovation told me earlier this week, this project is currently aimed squarely at the maker and hacker crowd. While we’ve seen both and launch their new in-car app initiatives at CES this week, these two programs are really meant for developers who want to commercialize their apps and don’t currently feature a hardware component. You can read more about the program below, but our own Matt Burns also got a chance to get Prasad on video today to explain the new platform to us: The OpenXC platform, which itself is based upon a combination of the and platforms, is all about getting data out of the car and building custom apps and hardware modules. Developers, for example, can see if the windshield wipers or the headlights are on, tap into the car’s GPS system and get speedometer readouts. This, as Prasad explained in his interview with Matt Burns, could allow a developer to mash up date from the car’s wiper blades with location data and create “some really valuable traffic information if it’s aggregated right.” Prasad likes to call this process “prototyping 2.0.” Ford is providing the software and specs for the hardware, but it won’t – at least for the time being – sell its own version of the that turns the data stream from the car’s internal network into . Instead, he told me, the company hopes that an ecosystem of makers and maybe even startup companies will start selling these devices and then, over time, the modules they develop for them. The company, Prasad argued, prefers to invite innovation from developers and give them the tools to build new products instead of building them itself. The hardware, of course, is just one aspect of this platform. Now that the OpenXC SDK is available, the project will allow a whole new group of developers to participate. As Prasad stressed, developers don’t need any industry-specific knowledge to start working with it. For the time being, he noted, the system provides developers with a minimum set of data and the company wants to see how developers use this information as it continues to expand the program. Currently, this program is obviously led by Ford, but Prasad noted that this is an open-source project and that the company is open to working with other manufacturers and OEMs. One thing neither Ford nor any of its competitors will likely allow anytime soon, though, is for developers to send data back to the car and build applications that directly interact with a car’s systems. There is little danger in letting developers access data from the car, but sending back commands opens up a whole range of security (and liability) questions that simply make this a non-starter for car manufacturers. The OpenXC team is very small, but projects like this could have far-reaching consequences in the car industry, which is increasingly under pressure to keep its infotainment systems up to par with drivers’ expectations despite the fact that most of us replace our cars at a far slower pace than our cellphones. Projects like OpenXC could, in the long run, mean that a lot of the electronics in our cars could become more modular and exchangeable. For the time being, this project remains the domain of hackers, but there’s no reason to believe that somebody won’t be able to build a business on top of this, especially now that hardware startups have become increasingly viable. |
Tech Titans In Asia: Apple’s Cook Visits China, While Google’s Schmidt Makes A Stop In North Korea | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | Two top tech executives are currently visiting Asia, but though the reasons for Apple CEO Tim Cook’s China sojourn are obvious, Eric Schmidt’s trip to North Korea is confusing observers of the authoritarian regime and Google alike. Apple CEO Tim Cook met with Miao Wei, minister of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, yesterday. According to the MIIT’s Web site, the the Chinese and global tech and telecommunication industry and Apple’s business in China. The MIIT is the regulatory body responsible for the lags in rolling out the iPhone to Chinese consumers, even though China is Apple’s fastest growing marketplace. The three month delay before the iPhone 5 arrived in the Chinese market helped , according to research by Gartner. China , making it the company’s second largest market after the US. According to reports earlier today, Apple is reportedly for emerging markets, which could launch this year. A cheaper device would help move more iPhones in China, where consumers put off by the high price of the device turn toward less expensive phones. Companies which have profited from making more affordable handsets include Samsung and Nokia, as well as domestic manufacturers Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo. A cheaper iPhone might be part of the “greater investment” in China, which Cook promised during his last visit to the country in March as part of Apple’s efforts to capture a larger slice of China’s market. China is now the world’s largest market for mobile phones, with . Since Cook’s March visit, . The new stores include , located in Beijing. Though Apple’s iPhone 5 launch last month was its best ever in China, with , Apple’s share of China’s smartphone market is ; in December, IDC reported that Apple’s ranking in China’s smartphone market had slipped two places to sixth place during the second quarter of 2012, while Samsung took the top spot. Cook may also seek the Chinese government’s help in striking a deal with China Mobile. Apple has been stuck in talks with the country’s largest carrier for four years, due in part to lack of government support, . In China, Apple sells the iPhones through its retail stores, resellers and China Unicom and China Telecom, but together they have less than half the mobile subscribers of China Mobile. Though a major hurdle is the lack of compatibility between China Mobile’s proprietary networks and iPhone’s mobile radios, the two companies have also clashed over . According to , China Mobile may begin carrying the iPhone 5 by the second half of 2013. On previous trips, Cook also visited the Foxconn plants where Apple devices are made. In 2010, he after several workers committed suicide at Foxconn factories, and “it would not be out of the question for him to visit the sites to see how conditions are changing for plant employees,” . Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas and a former Department of State official, are as part of a delegation led by former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, who is there as part of a “humanitarian private visit” to speak with North Korean officials about the release of Kenneth Bae, an American detained in North Korean last year. In North Korean, Schmidt’s itinerary has included a photo op in an “e-library” where students told Schmidt they were searching for information on Google, though the AP noted that university students in North Korea are “under strict instructions to access only educational materials” when they use the Internet. There is why Schmidt and Cohen are in North Korea right now. As UC San Diego professor and North Korea observer Stephen Haggard , “Everyone in the North Korea watchers community is scratching their heads about this,” especially since Cohen last year hosted North Korean defectors at a conference in LA where they “gave harrowing accounts of privation and coerced criminal activity including drug sales.” On the other hand, Businessweek also notes that in 2011, a North Korean delegation co-sponsored by the Asia foundation visited the Googleplex as one of several US stops, including Citigroup and Bloomberg. Some observers hope these signs mean that the North Korean government is considering opening up more Internet access in the country, though others say that idea is hopelessly naive. Either way, if Google does strike a deal with North Korea, it would likely be similar to the one it has with China, in return for access. |
Which Mobile Games Attract The Most Lucrative Players? | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | Because data is hard to come by on active usage for top mobile apps, it’s hard to understand how wide a footprint the very highest-grossing games have. Plus, with a Renaissance in mid-core games over more casual titles during the past year, it’s often not the best-known or most widely popular games that perform the best financially. A small set of very loyal players can push a game to the top of the grossing charts, because they individually spend more than less committed players. Onavo, a Sequoia-backed company that tracks active usage for millions of apps through its mobile data compression products, . They wanted to see how much market penetration these games have compared to their rank on the top grossing charts. Just for background, Onavo has two products: Because they have single-digit millions of users, they can peek into daily mobile traffic to different apps. On top of that, because Onavo creates consumer-facing products and doesn’t work directly with developers, . This is unlike other mobile analytics companies like Flurry, which can’t really disclose performance of specific apps because developers would probably not work with them. The company looked at game usage among their U.S. iPhone users in November. Then they looked at the market share, or the percentage of their U.S.-based iPhone owners that use these games on a monthly basis. So for example, in the chart, they found that Angry Birds Star Wars was being actively played by 3.9 percent of U.S. iPhone owners every month. Then they compared that to the game’s ranking on the grossing charts. From that, they tried to see roughly how strong average revenue per user (or ARPU) is for each title. The most widely played games like Angry Birds Star Wars, Subway Surfers and Bike Race Free were not among the very, very top grossing games on a per user basis. More obscure (and often Japanese-made) titles seemed to do better. Legend of the Cryptids, a MMORPG from Applibot (which is a studio wholly-owned by ) did the best on a revenue-per user basis. The trading card game on DeNA’s Mobage network, Rage of Bahamut, came in second. Even though Onavo only picked it up on 0.4 percent of U.S. iPhones, it has simultaneously been ranked #1 grossing on both Google Play and the Apple app store in the past. Following those two Japanese games was Big Fish Casino, a title that recently came out of the Seattle-based casual gaming company after it acquired Self Aware Games. Then there are several midcore games like Kabam’s Kingdoms of Camelot and Phoenix Age’s Castle Age that also have top-tier ARPU. |
The CES Show Isn’t Over Yet: Watch Team TechCrunch Live At ShowStoppers | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | Ah, ShowStoppers. It’s always a nice change of pace for us — just about two hours after the first day of CES has wrapped, companies come to us to show off their wares instead of the other way around. As per tradition, we’re gearing up to chat with a slew of new and just plain neat companies, and to top it all off, we’ll be streaming the whole thing. It’s quite a sight to see if you’ve never tuned in before. You can expect a stream of rapid-fire interviews, TechCrunch staffers diving into and leaping out of seats, and plenty of spiffy doodads to ogle. Naturally, the nature of these companies really run the gamut, but each interview will only last about five minutes, so you should really pay attention. As always, we welcome your feedback (crazy or otherwise) — just tag a tweet with #CESCrunch and we just may take your notes into consideration. Anyway, things are slowly starting to heat up here at the Wynn Hotel, and we’re shooting to go live at 7PM Pacific. Stay tuned! |
Today We Learned That Verizon Is Going To Save The World | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | With Microsoft pulling out of the Consumer Electronics Show and Apple nowhere to be seen, this year’s event has become a huge opportunity for other companies to have a major onstage moment. With more than 150,000 people in attendance and millions of people watching remotely, CES is the opportunity of the year for a company that isn’t necessarily known for its press conference prowess. You know. Like Verizon. Verizon’s Lowell McAdam had the eyes and ears of millions of people during his keynote, and to keep the attention of so many for 90 minutes, he had to tell a narrative that went beyond “We have a really sweet and super speedy network.” Last night, Qualcomm’s opening keynote focused on a new campaign called “Born Mobile.” The basic idea behind it is that kids these days use their phones more than desktops and that Qualcomm is ahead of the curve in understanding that and catering to it. This narrative ended up , since it proved just how out of touch Qualcomm is with the younger generation. Ironic. So what is the narrative tonight, with Verizon? Verizon is going to save the world. The keynote began with a video posing the world’s toughest and biggest questions: Why is video so much harder than email? Why can’t we leverage digital technology in the classroom when it clearly increases student engagement? And then it gets even more serious. Why don’t first responders and emergency teams have the very best technology available to help save lives? Why do we constantly hear about global warming and never see any action? There was even a guy in the video complaining about his 60-plus-year-old mother needing a ride to the hospital once a week – since the senior citizen community is growing rapidly. The music in the video was more dramatic than “My Heart Will Go On” at the end of , and the quick cuts and editing style of the video rivaled the suspense and peril of . The tagline read: Verizon: Powerful Answers [tweet https://twitter.com/anthonyha/status/288808520424488961] This narrative — the notion that Verizon is saving the world — is actually a pretty smart one. The questions posed above and in the video are true challenges to the future of our planet. And if anything could serve as a solution, it’s a more connected world. The only hitch in the plan is the extreme swing from peril, real-life danger, and doom to the NFL’s Mobile application and Ford’s latest connected car solution. In an attempt to answer those questions, McAdam started off by introducing a platform called Golden-I. It essentially powers the devices that help firefighters respond to emergencies, giving them access to building schematics, firefighter biometrics, and infrared sensors to detect movement within a smoky fire. Verizon supports Golden-I’s connectivity. The for Golden-I ended with the following words: “Now we can save lives.” Unfortunately, we went straight from saving lives in burning buildings to NFL’s mobile presence. Verizon helps the NFL serve up video to mobile devices. It’s super important. You might even say it’s a “powerful answer” to one of the “world’s biggest challenges.” Just like Ford’s connected car plans. McAdam invited Ford Motor Co.’s CTO on stage to discuss new tools to refine the transportation industry. The video package for that included awesome buzzwords like “Driver Dynamics: Refined by the Cloud.” This bit of the keynote spoke very briefly about EVs and decreasing carbon emissions. But it’s all good. When the world implodes from the added weight of our disgusting and unending pollution, you’ll be able to tweet about it and maybe even Instagram a picture of it directly from your car. Oohh. Ahh. Just as a pendulum swings, we went from saving lives, to watching football in an Internet-connected car, back to the healthcare industry. I honestly don’t know how to feel. McAdam explained how we now spend $3 trillion per year on healthcare, which should increase more than 5 percent a year. In fact, healthcare consumes 19 percent of the federal budget, more than any other item, and yet American health declined by 70 percent compared to the 90’s. One of the world’s biggest challenges? Verizon has a powerful answer. And I’m not saying that sarcastically. Verizon actually that will be given to the innovations that best leverage it’s platform to improve healthcare, education and sustainability. It’s a noble and important announcement to say the very least. If any sectors deserve and require a bit more attention, it would be the above three. But this isn’t about what Verizon is doing. Truth be told, Verizon has the best TV service and the best wireless network, and the list only goes on. It’s truly a great company. But if Steve Jobs is the Muhammad Ali of tech presenters, Lowell McAdam is the guy at the gym down the street. With a million eyes on him, he essentially told the world that Verizon is saving the world, both through support for first responders and healthcare innovation, as well as better football video and more Facebook in your car. Basically, McAdam was trying to have it both ways, as exemplified by his comments that Verizon can both can create ‘billions of dollars’ in social value while also growing the wireless market. And maybe it is possible to do good and to do well at the same time. But he didn’t make a convincing case today. |
GE Hires Kleiner Partner, Teams Up With Startup Health To Help Fuel Digital Health Innovation | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | built what is today a $219 billion multinational industrial behemoth by continuously investing in innovation, technology, and computing. As the maker of airplane engines, trains, power plant turbines and medical equipment, GE’s business generally falls outside the virtual walls of the consumer web. However, , GE has recently renewed its commitment to investing in innovation, particularly as it places its bet on the “industrial Internet” in an effort to bring some digital magic to industry. According to the NYT, GE has established a new, giant software center in the Bay Area and is already employing 250 engineers, developers, and computer scientists, with plans to hire 150 more and invest $1 billion in the center by 2015. Beyond embracing the “Internet of Everything” and smarter industry, GE also has its eyes on healthcare and the revolution that’s waiting in the wings. With digital health data proliferating, wearable health-tracking devices (and the sensors underneath) maturing and becoming cheaper to produce — along with improvements in remote diagnosis, healthcare transparency and a booming app economy, the intersection of health and technology is heating up. , in spite of a sluggish IPO market and wary investors, the digital health space grew exponentially in 2012, as health startups “saw 45 percent more investment and were part of 56 percent more deals compared to the year prior, with total capital invested growing from $968 million to $1.4 billion.” Meanwhile, on the back of its , GE launched in 2009 as a vehicle to invest in healthtech innovations that aim to deliver higher-quality (and more affordable healthcare), improve access to health info and more. The company committed a whopping $6 billion to the initiative to make this happen. As part of this, GE is now looking to expand its support of health innovation to early-stage companies. This morning GE partnered with — the academy, accelerator and resource for healthtech entrepreneurs — to create a three-year program designed to help accelerate the growth of consumer health startups. Part of its Healthymagination initiative, the program intends to “not just support a great idea,” StartUp Health co-founder Unity Stokes tells us, “but to scale these businesses and develop significant transformative consumer health innovations.” Focusing primarily on increasing equity value and scaling operations, the program will incubate up to 10 companies, which participate in the program for free, in exchange for 2 to 10 percent equity ownership by GE and StartUp Health’s Innovation fund. While it does not offer a guarantee of any capital investment in the companies, the program will have a “significant focus” on customer development and ensuring that its startups have access to investors, VCs, strategic partners and other investment channels. Although the companies are still solidifying the model, the plan is for each startup to be partnered with a GE executive that matches their business model and service offering. The mentor/partner, along with StartUp Health, will help them connect and partner with other experts and resources within GE, be they tech experts, healthcare experts, product gurus, and so on. The goal is to leverage the entire GE infrastructure to build and scale transformative consumer health innovations and to take a tailored and customized approach to accelerating startup growth. The program will be open to any consumer health businesses — StartUp Health companies can apply, as well — with a focus on companies concentrating on improving quality of care and more affordable healthcare for consumers. To add that Silicon Valley, startuppy stamp to the program, GE that long-time Kleiner Perkins Partner Risa Stack, PhD, has been appointed General Manager of the company’s Emerging Health Innovations. She will report to Healthymagination CEO Sue Siegel. The move makes a lot of sense considering that Stack has served on the advisory board for healthymagination for the last two years and spent her nine years at Kleiner in the firm’s life sciences group, where she focused on precision medicine, platform technologies and therapeutics. And, , this makes Stack the third Silicon Valley VC to join healthymagination in recent months. GE and StartUp Health’s new program follows on the heels of a similar partnership between Nike and TechStars. The apparel giant and the national startup accelerator in December, designed to cultivate entrepreneurial talent to help scale (and improve) Nike’s growing mobile health ecosystem, leveraging its increasingly popular mobile health and fitness products like FuelBand and Nike+ Running. When multinational giants like Nike and GE begin throwing their weight behind early-stage health companies, jumping on the Accelerator Bandwagon, it’s a clear indication of the enormous potential for the digital health space. And GE seems committed to creating an accelerator that produces real, innovative businesses and products — not just an Instagram for Patients. As to the program, applications are being accepted beginning today (January 8th), , and companies have 30 days to apply (deadline is February 8th), with selections taking place in March before the program kicks off in April. |
Meet The Clarity Ensemble, The Phone That Closed-Captions Your Conversation In Real Time | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | , a division of Plantronics dedicated to making communication devices with amplified audio for those with impaired hearing, has teamed up with a company called , which provides text transcription captioning services for phone calls to create the Ensemble. The Ensemble packs a one-two punch for people who have trouble hearing: It provides sophisticated amplified audio like a hearing aid, and real-time text captioning of the ongoing conversation on a seven-inch screen. Sure, this may not be the phone of choice for the typical young gadget-lover for whom access to the hottest new apps is the most important thing. But the Ensemble still has the potential to address a massive market. Some 36 million Americans suffer from hearing loss, and those numbers are only going up, thanks to the aging baby boomer contingent and all of today’s young people who favor their music as loud as possible. We were able to take a look at the Ensemble in person and talk a bit with Clarity’s Jamie van den Bergh and ClearCaptions’ Frank Endres today on stage at TechCrunch’s CES booth. Watch that in the video embedded above. |
Verizon Announces $10M In ‘Powerful Answers’ Awards For Health Care, Education, And Sustainability | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam’s keynote speech this afternoon at the Consumer Electronics Show was all about the big challenges facing different industries (and indeed society as a whole), as well as the ways that Verizon technology is helping. At one point, for example, he declared, “4G LTE proves the case that innovation in networks is the foundation for innovation across the industry.” Ultimately, however, McAdam said it’s not just about Verizon: “We know that to move this industry forward, the whole ecosystem needs to be involved in the innovation process.” Which is why it’s . McAdam said Verizon is already pursuing this model in its labs in Waltham, Mass., and San Francisco, where it works with other companies to integrate Verizon technology. And his presentation was peppered with showcasing Verizon’s efforts with different partners in different industries. (Some of them, like and , matched McAdam’s idealistic rhetoric, while others, like his discussion with NFL Commissioner Roger Coodell, .) This approach can create “billions of dollars” in social benefit while also growing the industry, he said. Hence the new awards. McAdam said the company will be giving out $1 million to the top contenders, with $10 million in total prizes. The contest is open to applications in healthcare, education, and sustainability that take advantage of Verizon’s platforms. And it will be judged by a panel of independent experts, including Consumer Electronics Association Chairman Gary Shapiro. According to (which says that Verizon is in a “unique position” to launch this kind of effort), more details will be available when the contest officially launches on March 31, with the announcement of the winners at next year’s CES. . |
Facebook Removes Instagram User Counts From Developer API After Holiday Traffic Confusion | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | In the aftermath of a controversial story claiming Instagram’s traffic numbers were down, the data that was the source of the story has now disappeared altogether. was in the spotlight, and owner Facebook’s shares , when the ran a story between Christmas and New Year’s Day claiming that the popular photo app’s traffic was falling off a cliff after the controversial introduction, and then reversal, of new terms of service. and cast doubt on how the NYP read those traffic numbers, which came from , and Facebook they were inaccurate, too. Now that data is no longer there. Facebook tells us that this is to bring Instagram in line with the rest of its own apps, which stopped appearing on AppData in December 2011. “We don’t provide app usage metrics for apps owned or created by Facebook through our API,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We’ve updated our API to reflect this for Instagram, which would remove it from AppData’s rankings.” Effectively, this means that it’s not only AppData that will no longer have information on Instagram usage; anyone using the Facebook API for this data will also no longer be seeing that data. [ : Facebook has now to services like AppData. Instead of to the nearest 100,000 users, it will report counts in thresholds so an app with 1,200,000 monthly active users will be reported “as having more than 1,000,000 MAU.” This is to protect developers from immediate scrutiny due to data reporting bugs and their own product changes. In what can be seen as a consolation, Facebook will now report app rankings such as “#300 largest app by MAU”.] So, for now, this is what you see on AppData’s : On January 7, it recorded 45.8 million monthly active users, as measured by Facebook logins; today, that number is zero. Similarly, for daily active users, there were 8.7 million yesterday (again, based on Facebook logins), and none today. (And I know Facebook has already dismissed the AppData numbers as inaccurate, but it’s worth pointing out that the MAUs were steadily rising, while the DAUs since December 28 had continued to fall, again as measured by Facebook logins.) Facebook may need to consider a wider change in the relationship between itself and third-party data services that track traffic across Facebook apps. Data on app growth helps developers monitor progress of themselves and their competitors, but it can be problematic if there is a glitch in the data channel, which in turn affects how overall traffic looks. Journalists who don’t understand how services like AppData work can jump to negative conclusions (Insta-gate being one case in point). Elsewhere, there are other signs that Facebook is drawing the curtains on how third parties can track and use their traffic data to draw conclusions about the company. Last week, we , based on research from Benedict Evans, that showed how Facebook is performing on mobile: 192 million on Android, 147 million on iPhone, 48 million on iPad and 56 million using Facebook Messenger. Facebook Camera is not doing so well — only around 1 million users, according to the last numbers Evans was able to get before Facebook removed its information about user counts. “Instagram is an obvious explanation here,” Benedict writes. Those numbers were collected by Evans using the figures that Facebook used to post on its apps noting how many installs there were. But like the data in AppData, those numbers are no longer there, either. “Until late last year, Facebook disclosed monthly active users (MAUs, hereafter ‘users’ for simplicity) for its smartphone apps, on a rolling daily basis,” he wrote in his . “I was always slightly nervous of publishing it, since you had to know how to get it and I suspected it might disappear if anyone pointed it out. Now, like fairy gold, the data has disappeared, so I can share it.” There are still other ways of measuring how Instagram is being used, though: Instagram has been evolving its service over the last month with more than just changes to its privacy policy and terms of service — it also in December, meaning that users had to click into Instagram’s pages in order to see pictures that used to be viewable directly from the Twitter feed. That has also , and you don’t need a Facebook login (and therefore use of the Facebook API) to see how that is changing. |
Xzibit, Sugar Ray Leonard, Nick Cannon And More Pimp Headphones At CES | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | The CES showroom floor is full of surprises, but none were quite as exciting as the plethora of celebrities we bumped into on Day 1. Much of that is in great thanks to Monster, who is focused on new partnerships with brands and celebrities alike, including Diesel Jeans, Nick Cannon, and Xzibit. With a little luck and the help of some nice PR folks, we managed to get video interviews with male supermodel Tyson Beckford, Joseph “Run” Simmons of Run-DMC, Sugar Ray Leonard, Nick Cannon (formerly of Nickelodeon and current Mariah Carey spouse), and Xzibit. Every single one of them is pimping headphones, which makes sense considering that these artists and celebrities specialize in both music and fashion. It’s become clear recently that headphones are more than just a tool to listen to music with on the go. The celebs we spoke with obviously understand this, and they also happen to be pretty down to earth, too. Here are the video interviews for each. Enjoy! |
The Zivix Jamstik Is An Absolutely Amazing Portable MIDI Guitar For Beginners And Pros | John Biggs | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | The surprisingly small and light Jamstik is, in short, one of the coolest things I’ve seen at CES Today. It is a MIDI guitar that is actually a musical controller. By playing and plucking the strings you can play music using synthesized sounds and it recognizes chords, notes, and nuances including bends and hammers. “The end result is fast, accurate and cost effective to make,” said Chad Koehler, Zivix VP. The device connects to a PC or tablet and you can play it just like a regular guitar. To go up the neck you simply slap a button on the body to play higher notes. “Our goal is to provide a platform for making music more meaningful, accessible and fun for the masses. While the Jamstik is instantly compatible with Garage Band and hundreds of other core-midi applications, we are developing apps for teaching, interactive Tab and a fun music re-mix experience,” said Koehler. The Jamstik uses IR sensors to see your fingers as you press the strings so you never have to tune the guitar and it can notify you before you tap the wrong notes. It’s a great teaching tool and a fun portable music maker. We got the chance to sit down with the Zivix team and talk about their creation. The plan is to gain distributors here at CES and launch the product this summer. While it’s not as “guitar-like” as the similar , it’s definitely an amazing addition to the world of musical gadgets. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4v2ZzjtF0U&feature=youtu.be] |
null | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 1 | 30 | null |
Nest Founder Matt Rogers Details Future Plans For Their Digital Thermostat, International Expansion In The Works | John Biggs | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | is the Founder and VP of Engineering at and brought his latest thermostat – a steel-clad beauty with improved design and sensor placement – to our stage at CES 2013. This year at Nest has been full of changes. The company launched a new and improved the iPad/iPhone app. They also began sending emails to users describing energy usage in their area and detailing how much they’ve saved during the period. Rogers told us about their recent outage, explaining that their activation servers went down because they had sold so many units. It was, he said, the only thermostat that people wanted to leave under the tree for the holidays which, I believe, is a first in the realm of home electronics mostly associated with Home Depot. He also talked about the market for the thermostats, explaining that 10 million are sold every year in the U.S. and Canada. He expects to see updates to the device and software and, most interestingly, plans to expand out of the country. |
Livio Retools Its In-Vehicle App Platform For The Freemium Market | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | Livio is going free — at least for developers. The Michigan-based startup just launched a freemium pricing structure for , its app development platform aimed at safety bringing apps into cars. As we talked about in the video above, this move is aimed at bringing more apps to its growing library of apps. And why not? A smartphone is often the center of a person’s life, and that doesn’t change when they enter a vehicle. Apps are still used, and Livio wants to make them safer to use while driving. Livio also announced at CES 2013 several new partners for including Accuweather, Inrix, and Parkopedia. These join their existing network consisting of 977music.com, AddictedToRadio, Digitally Imported, Greater Media, Inc., Grooveshark, JazzRadio, Live365, NPR, Rdio, RockRadio, SkyFM and TuneIn. |
Triggit Bet Its Retargeting Biz On Facebook’s Ad Exchange Because It Performs 36% Better Than Google | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 1 | 8 | “Do we want to bet the company on this?”, CEO Zach Coelius asked his advertising tech startup Triggit when it got a shot to work with Facebook’s ad exchange. It took the chance, , and now FBX is performing 36% better than Google’s ad exchange, according to showing it may have hit the jackpot. Triggit’s revenue is up 300% since it jacked into FBX. For those less familiar, that launched in June 2011. It lets advertisers drop cookies on people who visit their site, say to look at a pair of shoes they might buy, then target them with ads on Facebook promoting those same shoes to get them to go through with the purchase. Retargeted ad exchanges like Google’s AdX have been around for awhile, and many advertisers have big retargeted ad budgets that Facebook wants to tap into. Some think FBX could become one of Facebook’s core revenue streams because retargeting lets it reach users who’ve shown purchase intent even better than search. Advertising technology companies called demand side platforms work with advertisers and help them buy huge retargeted ad ampaigns. They collect cookies from advertisers so when one of their site visitors goes to publisher sites like Facebook, the DSP makes a real-time bid to show them a retargeted ad. Triggit was in business for seven years working with Google, Rubicon, Admeld and other retargeting exchanges before FBX launched. It was nearing profitability thanks to scalable technology that let it buy billions of ads a month, and innovative features like the ability to scan an advertiser’s website and automatically turn into ad headlines and images. When Coelius got the offer to be one of the first DSPs with access to FBX, he knew Triggit could leverage its technology to take advantage of the opportunity, but it had to work fast to get a head start. So despite the risk that users might hate retargeted ads on Facebook, Coelius tells me Triggit put “100% of its focus” on FBX. To accelerate development for FBX, in November Triggit led by Spark Capital and Foundry Group. Triggit’s bet is panning out. By the end of November it had seen its revenue increase 300% in the five short months since it started working with FBX. And today it released a new set of stats indicating just how well Facebook Exchange is performing for advertisers. The data is even more convincing than a in September. AdRoll saw 16X return on investment; TellApart saw a 6.65% click through rate compared to 6.41% on Google’s AdX; and Triggit got 4X higher profit, 2.2X higher post-click conversion rates, and 6.5X lower cost per click-through order than on other ad exchanges. about 76 million ad viewers, Triggit found that people are 240% more likely to a return to an advertiser’s site after they’re retargeted with ads for that site on Facebook. 60% of the time, people saw a retargeted ad on Facebook for a site they’d visited less than an hour ago thanks to incredible time-on-site and return visit frequency Facebook gets. FBX ads are performing much better than standard, static Facebook sidebar ads. Retargeted ads with dynamic creative that relate to what a user browsed on an advertiser’s website got 43% high click through rates, delivered conversions for 1/3 of the price, and converted users 30% faster than static ads, according to two campaigns Triggit ran for a major online retailer. Most interesting, though, is how Facebook Exchange stacks up against Google’s ad exchange and others. Triggit ran a campaign with half the ads purchased through Facebook Exchange and half on other exchanges including Google’s AdX, Rubicon, OpenX, and Pubmatic. Users who saw Facebook Exchange ads were 36% more likely to convert (for example, make a purchase) than users seeing the campaign on the established ad exchanges. If FBX continues to perform better than competitors, it could suck up significant amounts of advertising spend, and turn into a huge money-maker for Facebook. The social network also recently stopped work on its off-app mobile ad network, and I speculated it could be reassigning resources to allowing . That could draw even more advertiser interest to FBX, as one study now shows and that percentage is growing. In the meantime, it seems Triggit anchored itself to the right boat. It earns revenue on each ad it runs for its clients. On the other hand, if Facebook allows more DSPs onto FBX, it would increase competition for Triggit. Coelius tells me the goal is to use retargeting to make ads actually relevant, and change the way the world perceives them. He says “Facebook has the power and the potential to make ads stop being bad and start being good, and make the people who are unhappy with advertising realize its not interruptive.” Instead, if FBX can show products people actually want to buy, ads can even be useful. Advertising has gotten a bad wrap, but its actually the lifeblood of the consumer Internet. It lets everything from important communication utilities like Facebook to fun games become viable businesses. Coelius concludes that “If Triggit can get to where we can bankroll the Internet and make people happy. That’d be awesome.” |
The Income Rich Take One For The Team. Thanks! | Michael Arrington | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | I love about . Our President and both houses of Congress have finally on this whole fiscal cliff mess. I’ve been holding my breath on this because I thought for sure that I’d be paying a lot more in taxes this year. But I dodged the bullet. All venture capitalists did, actually. Nothing the government agreed to in the last few days actually affects the asset wealthy in this country. If you’re a Hollywood agent barely getting by with a million dollar a year salary and two ex spouses, your life sucks right now. You’re going to have barely any money left over at the end of each month for cocaine with the tax increase. Small business owners will also take a hit because their business profits are considered income in most cases. Luckily I’m not in any of the groups who are being affected much. I have some money in the bank from selling TechCrunch a couple of years ago, which of course isn’t taxed on an ongoing basis. So I’m good there. And even better, there hasn’t been a word mentioned about the carried interest loophole. Most of the money I make now comes from investments from CrunchFund. And the vast majority of that is what’s called carried interest. Even though I’m investing other people’s money, the government calls it a capital gain. So instead of paying 39.6 percent on that money (I won’t call it income), I pay only 15 percent (or maybe 20 percent under the new rules – it isn’t clear to me). In other words, income is a sucker’s game. Carried interest rocks. Everyone wants the rich to pay more in taxes. They’re thinking about Mitt Romney and Warren Buffett when they say “rich people.” But really rich people like that are totally protected. Their accumulated wealth can only be touched by inflation. And if they’re in the hedge fund game, most of their “income” is taxed at just 15 percent. Which is why Warren Buffett can pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. And why, even after calling for tax increases for the rich, he’ll still be paying a lower tax rate than his secretary. benefiting from it have been asking for it to end for years because it is so vastly unfair. It’s not often that something is so egregious that even the people benefiting from it are asking for it to go away. Why hasn’t it been closed? There are two reasons, I think. The first: intense lobbying efforts from the super rich keep crushing any moves to end the carried interest loophole in Congress. Democrats and Republicans like the kind of money these people can donate to their campaigns. And second, it’s just so complicated to explain. Everyone understands how normal income works, and it’s super easy to say “tax the rich.” Explaining how the super rich don’t even really deal with income tax stuff is just too complicated. So we end up with something that the super rich love – new taxes on other people. The government gets to appease the masses by taxing high-income people a little more. And the people who are actually rich get to keep things the way the are. It also keeps those pesky upstarts with a lot of income but few assets from accumulating enough stuff to enter the super rich club. The only problem is that all this tax theater isn’t going to do anything at all to address the massive deficit and debt problems we have. Just . All that work and drama for just $60ish billion in annual revenue. The middle class need to get ready for big tax increases in the near future. That’ll happen before spending cuts can be stomached by this country. And God help us if interest rates rise and the cost of debt financing increases. We are so screwed. But for now, I’m totally good. Thanks, Congress! |
A Secret Is No Longer A Secret Once You Tell The Internet | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | Sure the headline of this post is just common sense, but I feel like we all need a reminder this holiday season, especially as all the salacious photo evidence from the past couple of nights is just hitting Facebook. For those of you that have been busy drunkenly accumulating that evidence and not reading tech news over the holidays, a couple of things happened this past week that make this reminder especially pressing. In an amazing confluence of events over the break, Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi of her famous family trying out the Poke app to her “Friends” on Facebook. Then she tagged her sister Arielle in it. Not knowing or perhaps forgetting that every time you tag a friend in a photo on Facebook, that person’s friends can also see said photo, Randi was shocked, on Twitter, to find out that one of Arielle’s friends had subsequently screencapped the pic and tweeted it out to her over 40k followers. The irony of this privacy “breach” obviously wasn’t lost on news-starved tech reporters, who jumped at the once in a lifetime chance to write a bunch of While clickbait headlines are clickbait headlines, the more subtle irony in the narrative lay in the fact that showed the Zuckerbergs reacting to Facebook Poke, a new Facebook App specifically created for Messages with expiration dates on their content. An app designed to do the opposite of what happened to Randi. If you take a long and somewhat anthropological view, Facebook Poke, and Snapchat, the app it’s modeled after, have arisen out of a necessity for data impermanence in a world where one slip of the thumb (not putting the on Twitter, for example) can ruin entire political careers. What happens on Facebook and , and this rule especially holds for public and even marginally public figures like Zuckerberg. Like Zuckerberg, both Snapchat and Poke suffered their own mini privacy scandals last week, as Buzzfeed that videos sent to users via Snapchat or Poke could be recovered by using an iOS file browser. The idea of this being a privacy “scandal” strikes me as somewhat ridiculous. Users sent someone a video, and then were surprised/shocked that the service actually stored that data somewhere accessible? “When the ‘app’ says that they ‘won’t have it’ after a ‘user-defined time limit’ then ‘yeah I’m surprised'” Gizmodo writer Sam Biddle responded to my ribbing. Trolling aside, the thing about walls closed by arbitrary controls like “Privacy Settings” and “Self-Destructing Messages” is that they lull you into a false sense of security. “I understood exactly how the privacy settings work,” Randi Zuckerberg posted on her Facebook wall, in response to a comment by Michael Arrington about the brouhaha. “I just (foolishly) trusted that anyone who was FB friends with my family would have the decency not to screenshot an image and post it to Twitter.” The success of more and more consumer Internet startups will hinge on this: for all intents and purposes, we have a false sense of privacy moving forward, and it might be wise to revise the old dictum, “Two people can keep a secret if one on them is dead.” Even Path, which prides itself on keeping its network under Dunbar’s Number, has its share of trust “breaches.” I can’t tell you how often I hear real life gossip about something posted on Path, even though I am not Path friends with any of the people being gossiped about. “There is a part of me that just assumes everything will go public regardless,” Randi told Arrington in the same apparently private/”Friends-only” Facebook conversation, which, to even further my point, was screenshotted and sent to me, who wouldn’t have access to it otherwise. “When you find a way to let someone view content and not make copies, sell it to the MPAA for big money,” notorious Internet persona Andrew Auernheimer quipped about the SnapChat/Facebook Poke video leak. Auernheimer is right, it’s logically impossible to grant someone access to data and prevent them from copying and transforming it. Perhaps we should focus on creating a giant delete/unsend button for the entire Internet instead? Now that the Internet is old, maybe it should start suffering from Alzheimer’s? For a society reacting to the “terrifying permanence” of technology by increasingly using products that hinge on impermanence, Auernheimer’s words are haunting. In this day and age we are all just one screenshot away from embarrassment. |
Samsung CEO Lee Kun Hee Warns Employees About Increased Competition | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | Samsung Electronics may currently be the world’s leader in sales of mobile phones and TVs, but chairman Lee Kun Hee that the Korean company must watch its back and continue to innovate in new business, as competition increases and the global economy continues to drag. Bloomberg reports that in a speech given today, Lee said: There’s an ongoing competition by global companies across all areas from products, technology development and hiring talented people to patent disputes. The market is big and opportunities are wide open, so we should find out new businesses that Samsung’s future will hinge on. Over the past year, Samsung . In the third quarter of 2012, Samsung’s Galaxy S3 overtook the Apple iPhone 4S to become the world’s best-selling smartphone model, , but that’s not enough to placate the famously competitive (and ) Lee. In 1993, irritated by Samsung’s reputation as a “second rate” manufacturer of cheap electronics, Lee company-wide reforms and told employees to “change everything except your wife and kids,” a tactic that clearly worked as Samsung became a multinational conglomerate . Though Apple and Samsung are currently comfortably ensconced as the top smartphone makers in the world, competitors that are slowly but surely include China’s Huawei and Sony. Huawei is expected to present a , tapping into consumer hunger for ‘phablets’ (devices that are combinations between phones and tablets) , while Sony just finally revealed that it is after to the smartphone market. So how does Samsung plan to stay on top in 2013? For starters, it than it did in 2012. In addition to Android handsets, the company will also offer Windows 8 devices and . Furthermore, the company is expected to be the first to ship , ahead of competitors like LG, Sony and Nokia, who are also working on their own squishy devices. |
New Year, New Tech, Same Old Problems | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 1 | 1 | There’s been a ton of innovation happening over the last several years. Yet, there are several places that haven’t been touched much by technology, or at least places where technology hasn’t gone far enough. Here are a few markets where I’d personally like to see innovators continue to push the limits. The transportation industry is finally starting to see some disruption after decades of the same old, same old. Uber came along a few years ago, and has been aggressively expanding into new markets around the world. More important than just offering a new alternative for urban transportation, Uber has fundamentally changed the way we think about getting around the city. Uber’s big innovation was providing instant, on-demand access to rides in a way that wasn’t really available before. That has led to others implementing similar services, not just from a ride-sharing point of view, but also among taxis as well. The traditional taxi companies, knowing that they have to compete, are turning to their own e-hail solutions. That’s good news for everyone, particularly as local regulators are beginning to embrace the vision of on-demand transportation. We’re getting there, but there’s still a long way to go. That said, the vehicles we use to get around haven’t changed much since mass production of automobiles began. Thankfully that’s changing. Manufacturers have found ways to make cars smarter than ever, and the software that powers them today is pretty incredible. When you have vehicles that can drive and park themselves, you’re just a few steps away from increasing road safety by an incredible amount. Netflix’s Adrian Cockcroft highlighted a few big changes in a “look back at 2012” , and one of those innovations was the rise of the electric car. I’m constantly amazed that our car manufacturers as a whole still build mostly gas-powered vehicles after more than a century. It’s like if televisions still used vacuum tubes or computers continued to store and access data on tape. TV is still a mess. The cable package, which 30 years ago seemed like a great deal, isn’t so much anymore. Sure, the number of programming choices made available for $100 a month is a huge value, especially when you compare that to the cost of other forms of entertainment — like going out to the movies, for instance — but cable doesn’t provide the flexibility that consumers are coming to expect. Users want to be able to pick and choose the content that they watch, when they want to watch it. This isn’t exactly news, and while TV Everywhere efforts are beginning to address this, we’ve yet to see the type of disruption in TV and video that has taken over radio and music. The TV industry is behind the curve on this, and never really had to deal with anything like Napster or the digital theft of its content to the same extent. I actually think that TV’s Napster moment won’t come from illegal distribution of its content, or even the ability to watch much of it for free (or cheap) through services like Hulu or Netflix, but from growing competition from non-traditional creators and distributors. That is, people aren’t going to quit cable because they can find Modern Family online. They’re going to quit because they can find TV-like content being produced solely for online distribution. There’s a ton of DIY, lifestyle, fashion, cooking, and entertainment content on YouTube that is well-produced and not that different from what you would find on traditional cable networks in those verticals. But what’s more exciting to me is the scripted original programming coming to Netflix, including House of Cards and the new episodes of Arrested Development. In my post the other day, I wrote about some of the innovation happening in travel, but it’s an industry that sorely needs something new. As much as Hipmunk has improved flight search, and as much as I love Hotel Tonight for last-minute lodging deals, and as much as Airbnb has opened up a world of possibilities for new places to stay, there’s still so much more to be done. A lot of that revolves around discovery. The tools we have today are better than the guidebooks of years past, but they still don’t compare to what they could be. The market is still extremely fragmented, and, frankly, no one has done a very good job of helping users find interesting things to do once they’re in a new place. I’m hoping someone comes along and changes that. [ ] |
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