title stringlengths 2 283 ⌀ | author stringlengths 4 41 ⌀ | year int64 2.01k 2.02k | month int64 1 12 | day int64 1 31 | content stringlengths 1 111k ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bloomberg Launches Bloomberg Beta, A $75 Million Early-Stage Investment Fund Led By Former IGN Exec Roy Bahat | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | Media company Bloomberg is launching its own venture capital fund, called Bloomberg Beta today. With the fund, the company is putting aside $75 million to invest in early-stage startups. The fund has already put money into nine companies and is being led by Roy Bahat, chairman of video game hardware startup OUYA and former head of IGN Entertainment. Bloomberg Beta shouldn’t be confused with Bloomberg Ventures, an internal incubator that the media company founded back in 2008. But that was . Instead, Bloomberg Beta is an independent venture firm for investing in outside startups and technologies. The launch of Bloomberg Beta follows a trend of media and entertainment companies creating venture capital funds for investment in young, innovative companies. There are a number of examples out there already, such as Conde Nast, Hearst Interactive Media, and Time Warner Investments. But unlike those companies, Bloomberg Beta is less interested in strategic investments and more interested in generating venture-type returns. Bloomberg Beta was formed as an independent entity with Bloomberg as its sole LP, sort of along the lines of the Google Ventures model. Bahat says the fund will be financially independent from Bloomberg, with no strategic imperative to work with the mothership. However, while its investments won’t be considered strategic, the new fund will make bets on companies in Bloomberg’s areas of interest. According to Bahat, that includes things like big-data technology platforms, content discovery, media distribution, new organizational models, and human-computer interaction technologies. Bloomberg Beta will be focused on early-stage opportunities, but is flexible about the terms of those investments. “We’re happy to go as early as the womb to find investable opportunities,” Bahat told me. “We’re happy to lead, or be the only check in. But we’re also happy to syndicate. We’re optimizing for the best companies.” While flying under the radar, the fund has invested in nine startups already, including Newsle, MkII, Nodejitsu, Codecademy, Errplane, and ProsperWorks. Bahat tells me that there are a few more which the firm isn’t quite ready to announce. In addition to investing in startups that are already formed, Bahat sees an opportunity to incubate startups within the fund itself. “We look at this as the natural progression of venture funds becoming progressively more operational,” Bahat said. That means funds that “both make companies and invest in them,” something which Bloomberg Beta plans to do. Betaworks might be the most famous example of this, but there are also that are following this same track. Bloomberg Beta is based in San Francisco at the same offices as Bloomberg West, and will have three partners at launch. Prior to founding Bloomberg Beta, Bahat was head of IGN Entertainment for five years while the media property was owned by News Corp. He is also chairman of hot new gaming hardware startup OUYA and has also served on the boards of Revision3 and Flixster. In addition to Bahat, the firm will have Karin Klein based in New York City to lead investments on the East Coast. Formerly the head of new initiatives at Bloomberg, she also served as vice president of Softbank’s venture fund, where she made investments in companies like Buddy Media. Helping Bahat on the west coast will be James Cham, who recently served as a principal at Trinity Ventures with a focus on consumer services, enterprise software, and digital media investments. Before that, he was a VP at Bessemer Venture Partners. |
Zynga Co-founder’s Junyo Is Using Big Data To Help EdTech Companies Better Understand What Schools Really Need | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | In 2011, Steve Schoettler left Zynga, the company he had co-founded four years earlier, to devote himself to a new project, called . With interest in education technology beginning to take hold, Shoettler and his co-founders at Junyo set out to leverage the growing capabilities of Big Data tools and analytics to tackle some of the deep-seated problems in K-12 education. Chief among those was using data to help schools get a more complete picture of student performance, along with helping schools to answer an important question: What should we teach students next — and how? While the startup’s blended learning software attracted nearly a dozen schools, Junyo soon found itself trying to solve too many problems at once. The archaic infrastructure and lack of data standards meant that, to build the most effective solution for its partners, it would be biting off more than it could chew. , even though a few of Schoettler’s co-founders would take flight in the process. This week, Junyo launched its new, flagship product and its first release since its pivot last summer, which sees the company moving in a decidedly more “business-to-business” direction. The new product, called , is a marketing intelligence platform that aims to help publishers and the litany of school supplies companies better identify and reach the right customer and audience. Essentially, EdLights aggregates and parses the enormous amount of publicly available data on K-12 schools (it’s now using over 100 data sets) to deliver those diverse datapoints in a simple user interface that schools and marketers can understand. By building collections of data points on nearly every public school in the U.S. and making those collections easily searchable, Junyo wants to help both schools and the vendors that serve them (which have increased nearly one hundred-fold over the last five years, Schoettler says) get a more comprehensive picture of the education market. To do that, EdLights allows vendors and marketers to search for information at both the district and school level, along with providing them with the ability to drill down into state and school funding, budgets, census and demographic data. All in all, this means EdTech companies and school suppliers have access to 650 district and school data points, which aim to help them identify market opportunities across 55 funding categories and 57 expenditure categories that break down where money is budgeted and spent. The new service also comes with mobile access in a web app customized for tablets and mobile devices. To further up the incentives for vendors over competitive tools, EdLights gives users the ability to save searches, filter by location, student population, revenue, funding, view prospects on a dynamic map and create target lists. The other potentially big draw for its target audience: The ability to be more effective in outreach to prospective customers, as its database contains contact information for over 1.7 million people in K-12 education, from administrators to teachers, including name, title, address, phone and email, when available. With its new tool, Junyo is going after a wide range of education service providers and vendors, from big publishers like Pearson and McGraw Hill to the bevy of young EdTech companies that have emerged over the last year. Many of these startups naturally don’t have the kind of well-developed relationships with administrators and districts, putting them at a disadvantage when compared to the big, more senior players. These companies spend a lot of money building sales teams and pounding the pavement trying to get their products into the hands of teachers and schools that would benefit from their products and services. Schoettler gives the example of a startup selling a Math product, which by using EdLights, would be able to search for schools that have Title One funding and low Math scores. By searching through the database, they would be able to identify schools that are analogous or similar to other schools or customers with which they’ve already had success. Junyo also offers a handful of other products, like a sales marketing tool, which sales reps at the Math startup could then access for a monthly subscription to launch targeted marketing campaigns and compile relevant contact data. While Junyo isn’t actively targeting schools with EdLights, Schoettler sees the product as potentially having relevance to educational organizations or institutions as a way of comparing performance to other schools and districts with similar demographic profiles. For example, administrators could use the platform as an analytics tool to measure the effectiveness of certain software or the benefit of introducing particular student response systems or learning management products into the classroom. While there are information vendors like that sell this kind of market data to schools and education companies, Junyo hopes that it can compete head-to-head by offering a product at a significantly lower price. Companies like MDR typically charge lofty fees for access to its service, so Junyo plans to undercut them by offering its data in three subscription packages. The first, “Prospector,” will run $79/month, followed by a $4,000 enterprise version and lastly a version that comes at an undisclosed price and offers full access to names, addresses and more for school employees. As of launch, EdLights has 30 customers on board, and as a result, Schoettler says the company is “already on track to profitability” and expects Junyo to be cash-flow positive at the beginning of 2014. Down the road, the founder sees the potential to build on its new foundation to offer more complete and detailed insight into demographic information and the like, and even begin tailoring its product to a higher education audience. The most frustrating thing for education companies is that there are fewer publishers every year, but more and more EdTech companies, Schoettler tells us. The biggest problem these companies face is getting their products into the classroom, where students and teachers can benefit from this amazing technology they’ve built. In turn, schools are hungry to find the latest and greatest education products to help personalize instruction and achieve better learning outcomes. We want to help organize all this information so that both sides can benefit. |
Google Glass Updated With HDR Photography And Voice-Powered Photo Captions | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | Are you part of the lucky bunch that got offered a pair of Google Glass had $1,500 bucks to kick down? Good news! The camera on your set just got a whole lot better. Following up on their promise to update Google Glass every month, Google has just released a patch that brings two important photo-centric features to their robo-eyewear: HDR photography and on-the-fly photo captions. HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography is something you might have seen on your smartphone’s camera, even if you didn’t know exactly what it was. Built into a fair number of today’s handsets, “HDR” mode essentially takes multiple photos in very, rapid succession at multiple exposure levels, then automatically combines those photos to give you one with the best brightness levels. The benefit is two-fold: If you’re shooting in a room with crummy lighting, Glass recognizes that and will try to crank up the exposure in your photo accordingly. If you’re instead shooting outdoors while staring pretty much directly at the sun (how else are you going to get that sweet, sweet lens flare?), your photos won’t be nearly as washed out. The update also brings voice-powered photo captions — which, while not quite as exciting, is still pretty important. Previously, photos shared through Google Glass’ voice system would go up without much context; now, Google Glass gives you a chance to caption the photo before it goes live. You just tap to select the caption option, speak your caption, confirm your words, and share away. Curious as to how well Google Glass’ HDR functionality works? Here are a few before and afters: |
DC Says Readers Are Downloading 1M Digital Comics Each Month, Announces New Interactive Features | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | is announcing two new technologies today that should give readers more opportunity to interact with their digital comics. The company is also sharing some numbers about the growth that it’s seeing on the digital side. Co-Publisher Jim Lee told me that the new features are “the next evolutionary step in our digital publishing program.” There’s DC², which adds dynamic layers to a panel. Readers can swipe through multiple elements (like word balloons) and images within a single panel, giving the writer and artist an opportunity to pack more story and content into a given space and, in Lee’s words, “explore and bend the rules of traditional storytelling.” Then there’s DC² Multiverse, which allows readers to shape the story of the comic. When the concept was first described to me, my mind immediately went to the Choose Your Own Adventure books that I read as a kid, but that’s not quite right — it sounds like it’s more about exploring the characters and subplots that you’re interested in. For example, Lee said that at one point in the comic, Batman and Catwoman are standing back-to-back in a fight, and the reader can choose which character that they want to follow for the next section of the story. At another point, you can choose which weapons you want the heroes to equip themselves with. (You can see what it looks like when a reader chooses between two different plotlines in the screenshots below.) DC says that with DC² Multiverse, “one chapter of a digital comic has dozens of possible story outcomes.” Lee acknowledged that “there’s certainly a lot more work that goes in to create a Multiverse comic than a regular one,” which could be particularly challenging on the schedule of a monthly comic book, but he said, “the trick is all in the advance planning” — making sure the comic has enough lead time and that the writer and artist are smart about how they shape their storylines and utilize different pieces of art. The company will start by showcasing each technology in a single digital-first title — (based on the 1960s TV show) for DC², and the aforementioned (based on the game franchise) for DC² Multiverse. Lee said the company is trying to be careful in how it uses these new features. “We don’t want to innovate purely for the sake of innovation,” Lee said. “We waited to have the right [intellectual property] to pair with the right technology.” Lee said these particular titles have a chance to reach more mass-market readers since they’re tied to a TV show and a video game. Plus, DC has more leeway to be experimental, since these aren’t the core, in-continuity Batman comics. DC is hoping to study how readers interact with the additional content and use the data to figure out “what readers want,” and then presumably start integrating it into other titles. DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson said that DC’s digital business is currently “this interesting combination of a rapidly established, meaningful business, while still being experimental.” How rapidly has the business grown? Nelson said, “For all intents and purposes, we were not in the business three years ago.” Then it started releasing its backlist digitally, and in 2011, at the same time as it revamped its publishing line with the New 52 initiative. Now the company says 1 million digital comics are being downloaded across all of DC’s distribution platforms each month. It saw its biggest one-day digital sales with (which got a lot of coverage for its major character death) by Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham, which sold more than 10,000 digital copies on its first day of release. DC also says the digital business grew 125 percent in 2012 versus 2011 — and it isn’t cannibalizing print sales, which were up by double digits. |
With $12M Burning A Hole In Its Pocket, London’s YPlan Wants New York To Be More Socially Spontaneous | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | , the London-based startup that’s building a platform for selling last-minute event-booking on mobile, has closed a $12 million (£7.9 million) Series A, led by . Existing investors and also participated in the round, along with a swathe of co-investors, including A-Grade, Kevin Colleran and David Morin’s Slow Ventures, and Shakil Khan, investor and advisor to Spotify and Summly. YPlan has (£1.06 million) in seed funding, bringing its total funding to date to $13.7 million. The startup plans to use its new funding to fuel international expansion — with the second city (after London, where it launched in November last year) in its sights being New York. It plans to launch there during the second half of this year, and will then use New York as its North American base, as it looks to expand to other U.S. cities. London will remain as its European base as it looks to expand to other cities in the region, and also for a future push into Asia. There’s no firm roadmap on which U.S. cities it’ll be tapping after New York but co-founder and CEO, Rytis Vitkauskas, tells TechCrunch that likely candidates include San Francisco, L.A., Boston, Chicago and Austin. “We’ll decide as we go along but the cities that we have in mind are the more densely populated cities with a lot of smartphones,” he says. “And also with a good density of events… That’s the priority list.” As for why New York specifically, it’s not hard to imagine why a social events app would settle on the Big Apple. Basically it’s got the right blend of time-strapped young smartphone owners who want to go out, coupled with a steady supply of events to go to, says Vitkauskas. “New York is a large city, a lot of people but also a lot of our target audience — our core demographic is people between 20 and late 30s, that are typically starved for time, so they’re very busy. For them time is everything, and you also don’t always have time to plan for the last minute or their plans have changed at the last minute,” he says. “On the other hand there’s a high density of events happening in New York every single day. Plus surrounding both of those is the fact that New York has a great going out culture. People are out four or five days in a week, just actively engaging with social activities and so YPlan essentially just plugs into all the existing trends.” YPlan is mobile only, which plays to the serendipitous/spontaneous going out niche it’s targeting. It’s definitely not competing with the big web-based ticketing platforms, says Vitkauskas. The focus is firmly on personalised last-minute recommendations for time-strapped folk — so it’s putting money into what he calls its “secret sauce,” aka its personalisation and recommendation engines. YPlan users aren’t presented with huge lists of stuff to browse through — a model that doesn’t make sense on mobile — rather they are pushed “a carefully curated list of up to 15 events to go to every night.” YPlan is even writing the snippet-sized descriptions itself, telling its users why such and such an event is a must attend for them. So really YPlan is acting as a personalised filter to flag up cool stuff so its users don’t have to go looking for it. Frankly it’s the sort of feature you could imagine Google adding to Google Now, or Apple to Siri. Currently YPlan has some 200,000 active users in London, and claims that more than 10 percent of iPhone owners in the city carry the app (I must be one of the 90 percent that don’t then). Since launching in November last year it says it has featured more than 2,500 events on its platform. The startup works directly with events organisers to get their events on its platform, meaning its headcount is already up to around 30 staff — which it says will probably expand to around 100 over the next year and a half. Its business model is based solely on taking a cut of any events booked through its platform — so it’s already booking revenue — with the aim being to keep the monetisation process simple and free of detracting clutter like ads, says Vitkauskas. Asked what attracted its VC backers to the YPlan model, he says it’s not so much the idea but the execution, with the company having managed to achieve decent traction in the half year or so its app has been in the market. “The idea of YPlan is not new necessarily. Brent Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox started Lastminute.com with exactly this vision in mind, and what Brent saw — he’s also an adviser to YPlan — and when he saw our prototypes first he said this is what Lastminute.com was meant to be but we were there 14 years too early. And now the time has come. Now the mobile Internet’s fast enough, smartphones are smart enough and GPS technology is up to speed enough and consumers are ready to transact through the phone and they weren’t ready to transact just a couple of years ago,” says Vitkauskas. “Likewise the event organisers are now ready to embrace the developments in technology.” YPlan is currently on iPhone only, with plans to launch an Android app “later in the summer.” It’s also going to make a dedicated iPad app, tailoring the experience to fit the different use-case of the tablet device. Vitkauskas adds that it will also look at whether to launch apps in other mobile platforms down the line. |
U.S. ITC Finds Apple Violates Samsung Patent, Issues Limited Import Ban On AT&T iPhone 4, 3GS And Some iPads | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | Apple has been , which has resulted in a limited import ban on certain products, including the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, original iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G, all only for AT&T-specific models. More details are emerging about the ruling, but it’s likely this affects only older devices on AT&T because it relates to a specific component used before wider release of the iPhone with multi-band support. The import ban could theoretically result in Apple being unable to sell the devices in question in the U.S., should all appeals fail and the decision be upheld, since Apple wouldn’t be able to bring the devices into the country from its overseas suppliers and manufacturing facilities. As this is an ITC ruling, it would have to be appealed to the White House or Federal Circuit to be overturned, notes Nilay Patel of The Verge on Twitter. Not a preliminary ruling, like other ITC rulings. This is final, appealable only to WH (won't touch it) and Fed Circuit. — nilay patel (@reckless) Even if it does result in an effective ban, these devices are likely nearing the end of their sales cycle, with updates looming in the fall or perhaps as soon as next week at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Still, it would be a considerable blow given that there are still a number of months between now and then, depending on when it takes effect. In the interim, small carriers and education still rely heavily on older models. Apple announced today that it was, of course, disappointed with the outcome and will appeal today’s ruling , “Today’s decision has no impact on the availability of Apple products in the United States. Samsung is using a strategy which has been rejected by courts and regulators around the world. They’ve admitted that it’s against the interests of consumers in Europe and elsewhere, yet here in the United States Samsung continues to try to block the sale of Apple products by using patents they agreed to license to anyone for a reasonable fee.” The full decision is embedded below, and the patent at issue in this particular decision is . It’s related to cellular transmission of signals, to dramatically simplify things. [scribd id=145740726 key=key-1kdxtnej1lmrv3uksx41 mode=scroll] |
TC Cribs: Asana, Where Zen Yoga And Knife-Wielding Drones Are All In A Day’s Work | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | Summer is just about here and the time is right for another episode of , the TechCrunch TV series that takes you inside the tech industry’s most buzz-worthy companies to see what it’s really like for the smarty pants people who work there. This time we headed over to the San Francisco headquarters of , the company that makes cloud-based task management and collaboration software. You might not think that building and selling enterprise technology products is a relaxed business, but Asana’s office really lived up to its . The whole space had a very peaceful vibe: Yoga, nap/meditation rooms, and calming classical piano are all part of the daily scene to help Asana staffers stay centered (and keep shipping code.) But amidst all the peace and love, we also came across a couple of elements of danger, mostly in the form of sharp objects — namely, knife-wielding quadcopter flying drones and oyster shucking blades. Deadly stuff, I tell you. It’s all something that’s better seen than read about, so check it all out in the video embedded above. |
Facebook To Webcast Its First-Ever Stockholders Meeting June 11th | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | Facebook’s board of directors and stockholders will convene on June 11, and anyone will be able to virtually sit in as Facebook today its first . The move will likely set a precedent for webcasting future Facebook stockholders meetings, similar to how Google does, but in contrast to Apple’s un-streamed assemblies. Core to the will be the election of Facebook’s board of directors. In a letter to its shareholders, Facebook asked them to elect all existing board members, excluding Jim Breyer who announced in April that from the board after eight years of service. The members seeking election are Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Donald Graham, Marc Andreessen, Erskine Bowles, Reed Hastings, Peter Thiel, and . The meeting will also hear non-binding advisory votes on the compensation for Facebook executive officers and whether stockholders should vote on this compensation program every one, two or three years. Stockholders will ratify the appointment of independent registered public accounting firm Ernst & Young LLP, and take care of any other necessary business. Held at the The Westin San Francisco Airport at 11 a.m. PST on June 11, the meeting will signify the end of Facebook’s first year as a public company. So far, $FB shares have slid from their May 18, 2012, $38 IPO price to , capped by a hard month of steady sinking from $28.31 since May 3, 2013. Thanks to the webcast, we’ll see if stockholders voice frustration with the price or take their disappointment out on CEO Mark Zuckerberg or the board. |
Google’s New Content Experiments API Turns Google Analytics Into A Full-Blown A/B Testing Platform | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | Google today its new , a tool that allows developers to easily test their sites’ content with programmatic optimization. The new API is deeply integrated with , so developers can use all of Analytics’ power to measure their different optimizations. Indeed, as Google describes it, “this API makes Google Analytics a full-blown A/B testing platform where developers of all types can leverage the power of Google Analytics to run their experiments.” Content Experiments, of course, isn’t new. The company this A/B service almost exactly a year ago and has continued to add new features ever since. The service uses a to A/B testing, which automatically adjusts how often users see a given experiment based on how well every variation performs. The API obviously allows developers to use this approach as well, but it also allows developers to create their own variation selection logic and to use data from Google Analytics as the basis for their decisions. As Google notes, the API also has a number of other advantages over just using the basic Content Experiments JavaScript snippet the company has offered so far. Developers will, for example, be able to test changes without the need to use redirects. While redirects work to present different variations of a given site to users, they do have the potential to take away from the user experience. They will also be able to test items server-side. That’s a relatively unusual feature for an A/B testing service, but as Google notes, it will allow developers to more easily “try things like implementing different recommendation or search algorithms to determine what works best for your site.” Google also argues that this new API will allow developers to more easily test different layouts, content and features for applications in non-web environments like kiosks in retail stores. A/B testing tools have become a hot market over the last year or so, with , for example, earlier this year, Amazon launching a testing service and numerous other , including TC Disrupt Battlefield finalist , that are also vying for developers’ attention. |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 3 | null |
3 Silly Abuses Obama’s Patent Troll Executive Order Could Stop | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | Allowing for the legal ownership of ideas has some silly unintended consequences. “Dumbass patents are crushing small businesses,” Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told me. Roughly a third of startups have been threatened with patent violations, often by entities built solely to scare small businesses into settling (so-called “patent troll”). President Obama has to go after the universally loathed business entity with a few very specific executive orders this morning. After a bit of background, we list three ways it’ll help stop silly legal abuses. Trolls, or their more diplomatic legal title, Patent Assertion Entities (PAE), are typically shell organizations with no other interests but to hoard intellectual property and frighten fragile small businesses into legal settlements. “They don’t actually produce anything themselves. They’re just trying to essentially leverage and hijack someone else’s idea to see if they can extort some money out of them,” President Obama in a Google+ hangout earlier this year. A Santa Clara University estimates that patent trolls clog courts logs with an estimated 61 percent of all patent litigations. Seventy-six percent of those who brought a suit had sued at least 15 other organizations. In other words, these are lawsuit machines. Intellectual property hoarding is a time-honored tradition claimed by many of America’s great innovators. The Wright brothers threatened to sue anyone who commercialized a plane with an aileron (the little flaps on wings that extend up during landing). “It was not until the government stepped in in 1917 and required the Wrights to license their patents that airplane innovation really took off,” Stanford Law Professor Mark Lemley. So, government interventions in aggressive patent hoarding is as American as apple pie. – The most brazen organization claim ownership over some crazy-broad innovation. Amazon famously the “one-click-to-buy” button. One patent troll, Acacia Research, ownership of sending medical images over the Internet. Obama’s executive order attempts “to limit inventions to a way of accomplishing a task, as opposed to ways of accomplishing a task,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a blog post about the executive order. “I’m very pleased to see the White House focus on functional claiming of software, which I think is responsible for many of the overbroad assertions by patent trolls,” Lemley told me in an email. – Sometimes it’s easier for a patent troll to blind-side a business for simply using a product that they claim ownership of. For instance, Lodsys went on a lawsuit rampage app developers who allowed users to “click to upgrade” — a feature that Apple and Google provide. Apple rightly intervened to protect its users, and the case is still in court. – Patent trolls like to duck scrutiny with a legal bob and weave technique that hides who actually owns the intellectual property. Intellectual Ventures, for instance, has 1,000 shell companies asserting patent rights, and the tactic is to avoid judicial review. Obama’s executive order requires “patent owners to update records at the Patent Office with the patent’s real owner.” Obama can’t declare the United States out of the patent mess and needs legislation to help. Specifically, he’s supporting “loser pays,” which would force patent trolls to pay up if they lose in court. , the Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act proposed this very solution. For free information hawks, the order doesn’t go nearly far enough. Many, like Mark Cuban, want to see software patents . There will always be legal loopholes that clever trolls exploit. MIT’s Eric von Hippel patents provide very little value to inventions that don’t require a lot of money to design (like a new drug or iPhone). Whatever your believe, the executive order seems like a step in the right direction. [ ] |
Bose Reveals SoundLink Mini Bluetooth Speaker And QuietComfort 20 In-Ear Headphones With “Aware Mode” | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | Today Bose is announcing two new products to its lineup, with the introduction of the SoundLink Mini Bluetooth speaker and the QuietComfort 20 In-Ear headphones. Both offer the same high-quality audio Bose prides itself on, and the company claims that the in-ear headphones in particular required more patents than any headphone in history. Let’s just get down to brass tacks, then, yes? The idea here is that Bose is finally ready to compete in the ultra-portable Bluetooth speaker space. The company already offers larger Bluetooth-connected speaker systems, but the Mini is looking to compete with the Jambox and other counterparts to meet consumers’ increasingly on-the-go lifestyles. The SoundLink Mini is small enough to fit across the palm of your hand at just over seven inches wide, and about two inches long and thick. It weighs 1.5 lbs and is slightly smaller than the Jawbone Jambox. The SoundLink Mini has been engineered specifically to offer all-around sound. Bose added new passive radiators that are spaced apart, letting them move more air and create better low notes. They also built custom transducers to cover the mids and highs, with speaker grills for both the front and back of the device. It runs Bluetooth A2DP and can remember up to six devices once they’ve been paired. Plus, the SoundLink Mini offers wireless charging via the included charging pad, and Bose expects it to last seven hours on a single charge. Bose is selling a handful of accessories with this speaker, including blue, orange and green covers and a travel bag. It’s available for pre-order now for $199, with availability starting on July 11.
The Bose QuietComfort 20 headphones are meant to offer the same security, comfort, and noise-canceling awesomeness as their over-ear counterparts, but they go so much further than that. The dual-microphone system detects volume levels inside the headphone, as well as approaching noises, to ensure that you can ignore the outside world and dive into the music. We tested this out in the presentation, as Bose pumped 85 decibels of New York City streets and subways into the room where we were using the QuietComfort 20 headphones. It worked, to say the least, as none of us could hear a thing, even when we could feel the noise inside the room under our feet. The headphones also do a little extra noise-canceling thanks to a new ear insert, what Bose is calling StayHear+ technology. It uses an extra seal in the ear to keep outside noises where they belong, and adds extra stability with a little fin that hooks under the ridge of your ear. But this is the best part: The new QuietComfort in-ears from Bose offer a new listening mode called “Aware Mode.” A small white button on the Y-remote of the headphones will switch the listening experience to a totally noise-canceled environment to one where Bose pushes only the lower frequencies of your music so you’re still able to have a conversation, listen to a subway announcement or any of your other surroundings. The QuietComfort 20 headphones come with a lithium ion battery station and are said to offer 16 hours of continuous use before the owner will no longer be able to enjoy noise-canceling technology. The new headphones aren’t available until “later this summer” and will retail for $299.
|
Google Updates Gmail For iPhone With Support For New Auto-Categorized Inbox And Improved Notifications | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | As promised, Google today launched the latest version of . Just like the new Android version, which , the iOS version now offers support for Google’s new for updates, promotions, newsletters and messages from your social networks. If this new feature has already been enabled for your Gmail account, you will now be able to see a summary of these updates in your inbox and you can access the different categories from the app’s slide-out sidebar menu. The app adheres to the categorization settings you set on your desktop, so if you activate or deactivate a category there, it’ll also disappear on Gmail’s mobile apps. As Alex Gawley, Google’s product manager for Gmail, told me when the company first this feature, Google is using slightly different approach to how it displays these notifications on Android and iOS. The implementation, he told me, should feel native on both operating systems. On Android, the notifications show up in the stream with their respective labels, but on iOS, the message in the inbox just says “New categorized email” with a brief summary underneath it. With this update, Google is also introducing an improved notification system. You can now choose if you just want to get notified of messages that go into your primary inbox. This means you won’t get notifications for all of the social notifications, updates, promotions, etc. that Gmail now automatically moves to the other categories. If you get a lot of those kinds of messages, that’ll definitely cut down on the noise. Of course, if you want to see those notifications for all messages, you can do that, too – or you can just turn off all notifications. This feature, it seems, will only work for users who have also enabled the new inbox. Also new in this version is the ability to set Gmail to open links with its own Chrome, Maps and YouTube apps if available, as well as the ability to swipe left and right to move from one message to the next. |
Twitter Redesigns #Music To Further Highlight Charts, Offering A Hint Of What’s To Come Site-Wide | Drew Olanoff | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | As we noted a few weeks ago, for its #Music product. The company’s intentions for the service aren’t known, and it seems like they’re taking somewhat of a public beta approach with it. Having said that, before the service launched, I noted that it . To compile meaningful charts, a huge chunk of data is needed to make them meaningful. It goes without saying that Twitter has more data than it knows what to do with, and #Music is a public showcase of what it’s capable of doing. I don’t think of Twitter as a , but rather a meaningful social data company. If you think about the impact that charts make on every vertical that has data to create one, it’s a huge business opportunity for Twitter. Charts drive usage, conversation, publication mentions, sales and, most importantly, trends. Yes, Twitter has had a trending topics section of the website for as long as I can remember, but the results aren’t focused and don’t give the proper context to make the phrases that appear actionable…or all that interesting. Take a look: Without context or proper relevance, trending topics are nothing more than a snapshot for people who spend fewer than 10 minutes on Twitter a day. The brand-new layout for #Music is a sign of what’s to come for all trending information on the platform. Not only is this a more attractive design, but it gives you all of the context you need to engage with the content. If you apply this approach to video games, movies, television shows or anything else you can think of, then Twitter’s massive pool of data finally starts to make sense for users. Not only does it make sense, but it’s the formation of a solid platform for advertising. While buying your way to the top of a chart probably won’t happen, snapping ads to portions of pages like this will convert better than banner ads. You can imagine a world where Twitter could serve up charts on apps, video games, publications, TV shows, movies, sports teams, or anything that’s currently tweeted about, but unstructured on the site. The advertising opportunities for brands will be there, the usability improvements for users will be there and the marriage of the two will make for a better public offering come 2014. is just the logical testing ground. |
Amazon Reportedly Looking To Expand Grocery Business, Roll Out AmazonFresh Beyond Seattle | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | Amazon has had an ongoing experiment for the past , which offers grocery service and delivery of fresh produce to customers in its home base of Seattle. That program is on the verge of a significant expansion, according to a today. Amazon is looking to offer -type services in markets outside of Seattle later this year, including L.A. and San Francisco, with 20 other new markets on the roadmap for 2014, including some beyond U.S. shores. The continued expansion will depend on how well things go in the first two non-Seattle markets, Reuters reports, according to two sources familiar with Amazon’s plans. Grocery represents a massive potential untapped market, as grocery retail sales totaled $568 billion just last year alone, according to the report. That’s a big chunk of change, and one that Amazon might be more interested in as it moves into a more dominant position in terms of the sale of non-grocery goods and electronics. For Amazon, continued growth is a key metric. It experienced growth last quarter that would have been impressive for any company, for instance, but it was off its previous feverish pace, which as a stock to watch cautiously. Grocery would indeed be a massive market that Amazon still has the power to disrupt, as existing providers like Wal-Mart, Whole Foods and others still generally use the tried-and-true brick-and-mortar means of selling to customers. There’s a reason for that: as the Reuters report notes, grocery has proven relatively impervious to attempts to turn it into an online business thus far, mostly because of immense costs of keeping inventory on hand, factors like spoilage that don’t affect other goods, and delivery complications (refrigerated trucks, for instance). Amazon has a lot more resources to throw at the problem than your average startup, including well-funded ones like , however, and it also has five years experience providing these services on a limited scale in the Seattle market. Bezos has had good things to say about AmazonFresh as recently as 2011, though he did say that there was still room to “tinker” when it came to establishing economics that were “acceptable” for the company. “We like the idea of it, but we have a high bar on what we expect in terms of the business economics for something like Amazon Fresh in terms of profitability and return on investment capital,” he said during a shareholder meeting in June, 2011 (via ). “We continue to think about that.” It looks like Bezos and company may have done a lot of thinking over the past two years and are ready to apply the fruits of that labor to a broader service area. Don’t expect too speedy a rollout even if this report is correct, however, as there’s still a lot of moving parts, and this, more than other endeavors, is likely highly subject to differences in each local market. |
Scripted Gets $4.5M Series A To Build Out Its Online Marketplace For Freelance Writers | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | Freelance writing doesn’t always have the reputation for being a hugely lucrative endeavor. But it looks like investors are seeing some bright spots there — at least when it comes to technology platforms in the space. , the San Francisco startup that runs an online marketplace to connect freelance writers with companies who need written content, has raised $4.5 million in a new round of Series A funding led by and . This brings the total amount invested in Scripted since its from focusing on its to its current incarnation as freelance marketplace to about $5.5 million. In an interview this week, Scripted’s CEO said the new funding will help the company scale its reach to bring more writers onto its platform. Another focus is to hone Scripted’s software for surfacing relevant content that companies may be interested in purchasing, and its technology for helping writers pitch new topic ideas. The company will also add to its staff, which is now at a very startup-sized 10 full-timers. Scripted currently has 80,000 vetted, United States-based writers on its platform writing content for some 1,000 paying customers. Scripted sells content at , and takes varying percentages in terms of commission based on the piece; the company has also to let companies source content through the platform on their own sites. Despite the much-publicized travails of the journalism industry, Rajamaran maintains that written content is as important and valuable as ever.”Our market is any company with a website,” he said, adding:
“What’s happening today is that every business needs to become a publisher. In order to sell customers these days, it’s not about sending a quick spamming link ad; customers have gotten so good at filtering out what’s good and what’s not. You have to tell a story, not necessarily about your own product, but also about things that are helpful to your customer.” Many of the writers on Scripted’s platform aren’t actually professional journalists, Rajamaran said. Often, they’re people with day jobs in other fields who are passionate about sharing their expertise on either their professional vocations or their hobbies. “We had an audio hardware company looking for content, and the guy we matched him to has a day job of working as an engineer at Pixar,” he said. “We’re not a journalism company; we don’t pay professional journalist rates. We’re selling to businesses, and what businesses need are subject matter experts.” In terms of competition, Rajamaran acknowledged that there are a number of other freelance marketplaces on the web. But he said the challenge that Scripted encounters most often is from companies who already have a writer on staff, or go to general job boards such as Craigslist to find writers. As with many startups, awareness is a very big part of success — so the fresh funds could come in handy as Scripted works to get the word out even more. |
AT&T May Join The Chernin Group To Bid On Hulu | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | AT&T may link up with the Chernin Group to make a joint bid for Hulu, citing unnamed sources close to the telecommunications company. If the discussions go through, the partnership would give the Chernin Group a financial boost as it competes with six other bidders for the streaming video site. The other potential buyers are pay TV operators DirecTV and Time Warner Cable; private equity firms KKR, Guggenheim Digital and Silverlake Partners (along with talent agency William Morris Endeavor); and Yahoo. Purchasing Hulu would add to AT&T’s roster of telecommunication services, which include . The Chernin Group, founded by former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, made a $500 million bid for Hulu in April. As , however, that offer seems relatively low, especially when compared to bids put forth for Hulu two years ago, when Google . The recent sale of Providence Equity Partners stake valued the company at around $2 billion. Hulu is currently deciding which bids it wants to take seriously, but may decide not to sell if the bids do not come in at about $1 billion, AllThingsD reports. Hulu is currently owned by News Corp., Disney and Comcast. |
GREE Ventures Builds Its Southeast Asia Portfolio With Investment In UrbanIndo | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | , the investment arm of the mobile gaming giant, has expanded its Southeast Asia portfolio as the lead in Indonesia real-estate startup ‘s preferred Series A funding. Other participants include Japanese-US investment firm . The amount of funding was undisclosed, but UrbanIndo co-founder and Arip Tirta told me that it’s in the seven figure range. The company is the latest investment GREE Ventures has made in Indonesia. While the investment firm’s portfolio is currently made up mostly of Japanese companies, it has ramped up its forays into Southeast Asia over the past six months. Back in January, GREE Ventures participated in top Indonesian e-commerce fashion platform and in April it led . The since the firm was established as a wholly-owned subsidiary of GREE in 2011. In addition to Southeast Asia and its home country of Japan, GREE Ventures also looks for potential investments in East Asia. Launched in 2011, UrbanIndo bills itself as “the most innovative real estate search in Indonesia.” The startup seeks to simplify the process of searching real-estate llistings by allowing users to query directly on a map. Features include neighborhood reports, similar properties and price distribution analysis of a neighborhood within a specific listing. “The online real estate marketplace in Indonesia is shifting as users rely more and more on market data and tools to make the right decision in buying, renting or selling properties. UrbanIndo is the only online real estate marketplace in Indonesia to combine thousands of property listings with up-to-date market data and local information at the users’ fingertips,” said Tirta. UrbanIndo will use funds from its Series A to scale up, add to its management team and pursue strategic partnerships. Its earlier investors included Japan and Southeast Asia-based . |
Fired Reuters Employee Previews No-Nonsense Premium Breaking News Site MatthewKeysLive | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | Matthew Keys is getting back into the news game. He previewed the beta of his new, paid-subscription worldwide breaking beta news site tonight, but has since taken it down. The site focuses on delivering facts fast, and features Keys pulling in news from Twitter, App.net, local news affiliates, and video feeds while adding his commentary. Keys famously was fired from his social media editor job at Reuters after allegedly assisting hackers to attack the Los Angeles’ Time website. He was indicted on federal criminal charges on March 14. Keys apparently plans to fully launch the site at a later date, but opened it temporarily to handle news on the collapse of a building in Philadelphia that killed six people. is currently open to all for the duration of Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter's press briefing (expected 10pm ET). — Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) The site was up for about an hour, but now requires admin login credentials for access. [Update 8:20pm PST 6/7/2013: the site to the public again to cover a press conference regarding a Santa Monica shooting spree.] The site is built on WordPress hosting site , which powers Reuters, too. The beta version of the site’s interface uses a reverse chronological, real-time stream of updates written and curated by Keys. He began posting on the site on June 3, and has covered the extensively, embedding primary documents and offering them for download. For an example of the content you’ll see on MatthewKeysLive, he broke down this in a quick summary: Incident happened around 10:45 a.m. local time (ET)
Address: 2140 Market Street (corner of 22nd and Market)
Four-story building collapsed on top of two-story Salvation Army thrift store
Four dead, 13 people rescued from rubble [TC Note: Death toll has since risen to 6]
One deceased identified as 35-year-old woman
Over 130 fire personnel responded to the scene
Crews expect to work over the next 12 to 24 hours The site seems tailored to the Twitter era, where people want real-time, first-hand accounts and summaries of news rather than long-winded articles. Some ask why they should consider Keys worthy of their attention, or call him a hacker or a troll. After all, he’s been accused of through a Larry Page parody account and tweeting erroneous details about the Boston bombings suspects. But Keys has built up considerable curation skills. His site takes a somewhat novel and modern approach to journalism, wherein Keys doesn’t need to do original reporting, but can still offer significant value by combining disparate sources in an easily digested format. When I asked Keys what his intentions for the site were, he told me in an appropriately , “Still building out features, but core will be connecting journalists and news consumers with real-time updates & raw content.” In a series of direct messages, he explains the site’s business model, which will allow it to stay uncluttered with ads. “When (if) the site comes out of beta, a subscription fee will be charged. It will be significantly less than subscribing to a wire. The goal isn’t to get rich. The goal is to get this in front of as many news professionals and news consumers as possible.” |
TripAdvisor Ditches Popups, Now Displays Kayak-Style Price Comparisons On Its 100M Hotel Reviews | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | Since it was founded way back in 2000, has established itself as one of the web’s top go-to places for travel reviews — but its booking capabilities for hotels have notably lagged behind. The site has historically adhered to showing hotel prices in a series of early aughts-style pop-up windows from partner sites, rather than on one page alone hotel search. That’s finally all changed. TripAdvisor announced today the worldwide launch of its all-in-one hotel price comparison search, putting an end to those pop-ups for good. The new one-page display is currently live for hotels all around the world, and active across all of TripAdvisor’s mobile apps and websites. TripAdvisor is still not a hotel booking provider itself, but it has now put price results from all of its booking partners on one page — you still click through to another site to ultimately purchase a room. The company acknowledged how late to the game it’s been with a cheeky press release entitled “ .” It’s a pretty refreshing way to handle the launch, and frankly a bit unexpected coming from a 13-year-old worth some . Here’s one bit:
“‘Our bad,’ said Steve Kaufer, co-founder and CEO of TripAdvisor. ‘We want to help travelers plan and have the perfect trip, not drive them crazy with endless annoying pop-ups before they’ve booked it. We are excited to offer real-time hotel prices and availability in one convenient display.'” Amid the jokes, though, TripAdvisor is also keen to point out that even though the launch is late, it is still powerful. That’s because the one-page price comparison is tied in automatically with the 100 million user reviews that are currently on the site. TripAdvisor’s size and scope may be part of why it’s been so slow to roll out this feature, but it could also work to its advantage going forward. Ultimately, this launch could have a nice impact on TripAdvisor’s sales — helping the company capture more of a cut from the hotel stays that it has been guiding people towards for years now. Time will tell as the continue to roll in. |
Snapchat Launches v5.0 With Revamped UI, Swipe Navigation, And In-App Profiles | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | Snapchat, the app that lets you send pics and videos that self-destruct, has just to version 5.0 “Banquo” (I’ll get to that in a minute), which includes a dramatic revamp of the app’s UI. The update also brings with it a few new features, like the ability to double-tap to reply, in-app profiles, and better tools for adding friends. The UI is finally worthy of its growing user base, with swipe navigation leading you from the camera, your inbox, your friends, and a way to add new friends or search for users. The inbox is oddly unchanged, though the camera panel is much more beautiful, doing away with all the blue bubblies and going for something a bit more transparent. In terms of navigating around the app, the swipe panels make perfect sense and take far fewer clicks. Double-tap to reply lets you simply double-tap on a message in your inbox to head back to the camera — once you take your selfie, the picture will automatically be sent to the original sender (right after Snapchat gives you a little pop-up so you’re , positively sure that you are of sound mind and body). In-app profiles are more subtle than you’d expect, but just as barebones as their . Simply tap on a name in your Friends panel, and a drop-down menu will display that user’s best friends and their score. The app has also undergone a huge revamp in the Find Friends panel, with cute animations leading you into the contacts section. Now, about “Banquo”. is a character from Shakespeare’s Macbeth who begins as an ally to Macbeth, and is with him when the three witches give their prophecy: that Macbeth will be king, but that Banquo’s son would also be king, presumably after Macbeth. When Macbeth ascends to the throne, Banquo wonders if Macbeth was involved in the murder of his predecessor, King Duncan. Macbeth becomes paranoid and suspicious of Banquo, and ultimately orders that he and his son Fleance be murdered. The climactic scene of the whole play comes when Banquo’s ghost haunts Macbeth during the feast. Get it? Ghost? Snapchat? Ghost? You get it. In the end, Banquo has a long line of descendants that take the throne in a final apparition. But it could go much further than that. Banquo is often seen as the good to Macbeth’s evil. He wins where Macbeth loses (in longevity). So who can we consider Snapchat’s foils? Facebook? Instagram? Your guess is as good as mine. The update is available now in the App Store. [gallery columns="4" ids="828300,828301,828302,828303"] |
The Team Behind Ngmoco Raises $12M For N3twork, A Re-Imagined Way Of Browsing Mobile Content | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | The for up to $400 million is back at the grind again. They’ve raised $12 million to re-imagine how people consume mobile content around their personal interests. Again, not only are we seeing the same cast of founders , Bob Stevenson and Alan Yu, we’re also seeing the same investors. Kleiner Perkins, which backed Ngmoco out of its original iPhone-focused iFund, Google Ventures and Mike Maples’ Floodgate are all back in for this new company. The big difference is that Young and his team doing gaming. Like many other teams that came out of the social gaming era, they’re moving onto other types of consumer products. “I’m not sure it’s smart of anyone to start a gaming company right now,” Young said. “It’s a particularly challenging environment. Incumbents have reached enough scale or a good enough understanding of how to monetize that it becomes really difficult to be competitive.” Indeed, even the biggest companies like EA and Zynga have shed roughly 1,500 jobs this year as they grapple with a massive platform shift toward Android and iOS. That said, Young said he picked up a lot of know-how that could be put to use in other consumer-facing mobile apps. “You can look at the gaming business. People ask us if it’s a technical business or a creative business,” Young said. “We’ve always thought of it as a human psychology business. There are a lot of things that you learn while designing games and what motivates people.” He said he and his team were attracted to try something totally new — outside of their traditional realm of gaming experience. “For our next adventure, we wanted to build on the power of interests,” Young said. “We’re going to try to re-imagine the presentation layer of the Internet.” He added, “The way the web has been structured — it’s an Internet of pages and places and it’s borne out of technical documentation project. The problem though is that you end up with 20 browser windows, and explore those interests as open apps or web pages. There’s all these really disparate pieces of information and data.” In the process, they picked up another co-founder Erik Lammerding, who has been a senior manager for worldwide developer relations with Apple. That vision sounds like a tall order. Without offering too many specifics, the team said they would be building a consumer-facing app for launch sometime later this year. They say it’s not like a Flipboard or other media browser app. “With Flipboard, it aggregates feeds from different places. At N3twork, we’re creating a new index of the Internet around interests,” Young said. They’ve amassed a 12-person team with a 13th and 14th joining soon. Advertising may be part of the ultimate revenue model but it won’t be the only strategy, the team said. |
Report: NSA Secretly Collecting Phone Records Of All U.S. Verizon Calls | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | The National Security Administration is secretly collecting phone record information for all U.S. calls on the Verizon network. “Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls,” , which broke the story of the top-secret project after it obtained record of a court order mandating Verizon hand over the information. The contents of the call are not recorded and it is also not known whether Verizon is the only cell-phone carrier complying with the massive spying project. The court order concerns all calls to, from, and within the United States. With this so-called “metadata,” the government knows “the identity of every person with whom an individual communicates electronically, how long they spoke, and their location at the time of the communication,” explains the Guardian. The Senate’s tech-savviest member, Ron Wyden ( : A), has been discretely warning citizens of these kinds of secretive government projects. “There is now a significant gap between what most Americans the law allows and what the government secretly the law allows,” wrote Wyden and Senator Mark Udall to embattled Attorney Eric Holder. The order apparently draws from a 2001 Bush-era provision in the Patriot Act (50 USC section 1861). The revelation dovetails similar exposes on , including one project to combine federal datasets and look for patterns on anything which could be related to terrorism. Late last year, I wrote about a from these types of big-data spying programs. Blackmailing citizens critical of the government seemed like a distant hypothetical, until we learned that the IRS was auditing Tea Party groups and journalists were being wiretapped. Nefarious actors inside the government like to abuse national security programs for political ends, and that should make us all (even more) suspect of government spying. Some government secrecy is necessary for national security purposes. But it’s justified based on our trust that the information will be used with care. With every passing scandal, the justification for these types of programs becomes more and more questionable. Either way, this is a massive PR disaster for Verizon. While it’s true that AT&T had it’s own , misery still loves company. It’s in Verizon’s interest to somehow implicate other carriers in the spying program. If Verizon is, indeed, not the only carrier, I suspect we’ll be finding out in the near future. [Image via ] |
On A Mission To Build The Next Big Pet Brand, Whistle Launches A $99 Fitbit (And Health Monitor) For Pooches | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | “The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.” — Andy Rooney Yes, it’s become exceedingly clear that the Internet has entered into a prodigious, lascivious (and hilarious) relationship with cats. But, at the end of the day, when it comes to the title of “Man/Woman/Child’s Best Friend,” it’s the friendly neighborhood pooch that takes the cake. In my own experience, even when The World thinks you’re an idiot, life gets you down and you’ve forgotten to feed Barkles Barkley, their tails are still going to wag — just at the sight of you. Sure, they may have questionable taste, but there’s probably no better representation of unconditional love than your local canine. If what Rooney says is true, then it probably helps explain why some dogs have it better than some actual humans. ( ) Lately, humans, at least humans in Silicon Valley, have become enthralled with wearable health tracking devices. So, considering there’s , it was only a matter of time before dogs got their own Fitbit. Enter: , a new startup launching today that wants to be the go-to activity tracker for dogs (and dog lovers). Now, diligent readers of TechCrunch may say, “but, Rip, there’s already a Fitbit for dogs!” I’d advise them to go outside once and a while, but they’d also be correct. Last month, Jay Donovan (!) that is embarking (!) down a similar path. If nothing else, entrepreneurs take note: The emergence of a , a , an ( ), a and proves we have an active dog startup market on our hands. Next: DogCrunch? BarkMeme? (Yes, we’re hiring.) Now, let’s just get this out of the way, since it’s one of the obstacles that a startup like Whistle is going to face: The idea of a Fitbit or a Nike+ FuelBand for dogs is kind of ridiculous. Crying “Bubble!” or rolling your eyes for 10 minutes over the idea of a dog startup market almost goes without saying. No doubt there are plenty of people who will see this as a perfect example of Silicon Valley going too far. (Here’s Will Ferrell putting .) And, yes, when one looks at Whistle, it’s easy to imagine a bunch of former VCs and private equity types sitting around a table, doing some market analysis and applying every successful tech company formula to the dog market in the hopes of finding something that works and raising a few million bucks. However, no offense to FitBark, but the founders want to go beyond just being a to build the next big tech-savvy pet brand around a killer line of devices and products — starting with an activity tracker. As evidence of just how serious the company is (or, for naysayers, the growing ), alongside its launch, the company announced today that it has raised $6 million in Series A financing led by DCM Ventures, with contributions from a long list of investors, including Red Swan Ventures, Humane Society Silicon Valley President and former VP and GM of Intuit Carol Novello and Pinnacle Foods CEO and former Mars President Bob Gamgort, among others. Guitar Hero co-founder and Throttle Games CEO Charles Huang, Rapleaf co-founder Dayo Esho, former VP of Operations at Nest Labs, Sling Media and Virgin, John Gilmore, have both joined the company as advisors, along with several other prominent local dogs, and DCM partner and Sling Media co-founder Jason Krikorian joined Whistle’s board of directors as a result of the round. Again, the real interest in Whistle (and in this space) can be and in one of Saturday Night Live’s best re-occurring sketches: , which parodies the overzealous and obsessive dog owner. Jokes aside, today, not only does everyone have a dog, but people are willing to go to great lengths to spoil their dogs, especially if they don’t have kids. To that point, there are now more dogs , Krikorian explains, and Americans spend over $50 billion on their pets every year ( ). Not only that, but a study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics ( ) recently found that people spend an average of “1 percent of their annual budget on their pets,” which is more than they spend on booze and clothing. Whistle is going after this audience by branding itself as a company that’s dedicated to helping pets live longer and healthier lives — a mission that’s easy to get behind. It’s also brilliant that Whistle is starting to build a that is dog-dedicated, particularly this page of The page is hilarious and is a great example of how Whistle is already making smart branding decisions, being “real” and acting like another dog owner you’d be happy to stand and talk to in the park. (Not often the case.) It makes the company more relatable, to dog fanatics or not. This starts with its first (flagship) product, a wearable activity tracker that connects to your dog’s collar. Similar to other Quantified Self devices, Whistle’s circular, metallic gadget contains a three-axis accelerometer designed to measure a wide range of motion, and rest, which the startup believes can act as key indicators of canine health. The gadget also includes both WiFi and Bluetooth capability, allowing it not only to record location-based activity data, but transmit that information to Whistle’s dashboard, which owners can access via the startup’s smartphone apps or via the Web. The device’s location sensing capability is fairly broad, but Whistle co-founder Steve Eidelman (Disclosure at the end of the post) tells us that it can pick up on whether your dog is at home, or, say, riding in the car with you, based on which network it’s accessing (Bluetooth or WiFi). And, by the way, health and activity tracking entrepreneurs, if a pet company can do auto, remote Bluetooth-powered data sync, so can you. Don’t launch without it, you’re insulting your users. Like the better examples among the Fitbits, Basis(es), FuelBands and Ups of the world, the real key to Whistle’s concept is not its device or apps, but its cloud platform and the data crunching it’s doing behind the scenes. Eidelman tells me that the company has been working with a lot of the biggest pet companies, veterinary clinics and so on to aggregate dog health data and break it down into categories. The more data it collects, the more the startup can build an accurate picture of health patterns and where your dog should ideally fall on that map based on its age, breed, weight and activity. As it pulls in activity data in realtime, Whistle then weighs those indicators against its dataset (and “doggie demographic information,” as I’m calling it) to see just how well Fido is, or isn’t doing. And, really, dogs could care less about how many miles they log each day chasing cars, it’s really about the owner. If we assume the average dog owner wants to treat their pet well, then Whistle provides them with the benchmarks from which they can glean their success rate. Activity levels looking pretty low? That’s on , pal, not your dog. Plus, dogs generally have to be in a lot of pain if they’re going to outwardly show it. Generally, they’re going to suffer silently. (See? You just unconsciously bought into Whistle at the thought of a sad, whimpering dog, didn’t you?) With the ability to track your dog’s general activity and health levels in realtime, there’s a better chance that you will be able to identify problems before they get out of hand — or so the thinking goes. And, if you’re willing to go with it, the real genius here is that, because Whistle is really playing into the motivations of the dog owner (not Fido himself), if they can convince you to buy their health tracker, they can then up-sell you on a string of other dog-focused products and services. Since Whistle is just launching today, they haven’t gotten there yet, but plans are in the works. Eidelman wouldn’t say what they’re working on next, but it is clear that the startup intends to become a brand (with a line of products), rather than simply holding fast to the “Fitbit for pooches” space. Unlike, say, Amazon which sells hardware at a loss to get you using its other services, at the outset, Whistle is giving its apps, analytics and cloud service for free to get you to buy its hardware. The gadget will run you $99, which although it may seem like a lot, really isn’t for avid pet owners who will spend ten times that in a couple of weeks. Whistle is taking the same approach as RunKeeper (or Runtastic) in that it wants to build a platform and eventually stake a claim to the “pet graph.” Though my eyes just involuntarily rolled, this means that as more of these devices pop up, if Whistle can be the data platform which they all connect to, it would potentially be holding the keys to the kingdom. But that’s getting a little ahead of the tail. While companies can always generate a little revenue from selling to really passionate, committed audience on their own site, the key for companies like Whistle is retail. More specifically, retail partnerships. Considering people spend $50+ billion on pets every year, somewhat surprisingly, a small group of pet franchises own most of the marketshare in the industry. Recent market reports from IBIS show that “more than half (63.8 percent) of the pet store industry’s revenue comes from two specialty supply retailers: PetSmart and PETCO,” with the long-tail consisting of small franchises and family owned stores, for example. PetSmart and PETCO both have about 1,200 stores in the U.S. The other opportunity going forward, co-founders Steve Eidelman and Ben Jacobs tell us, is in ramping up its relationships with vets. Companion animal ownerships in the U.S. jumped from 62 percent to 68 percent, as pet ownership has been shown to reduce stress and tends to increase in tough economic times. Hey, people need something to cheer them up. The American Veterinary Medical Association found that dogs than cats. Just as M.D.s are for their human owners, veterinarians are increasingly enrolling their patients in wellness plans and programs, as total patient enrollment rose to 22 percent (from 14 percent the prior quarter). There’s not a huge amount of competition in the “Fitbit for dogs” space, so the more Whistle can get its products in front of vets, the more likely they are to become lead-generators for the startup’s products. For Whistle to become a viable company, getting its products into PetSmart, Petco or the equivalent (and building these relationships with vets) will be critical. If they can do that, and even perhaps capture an entire aisle, they’ll be rolling in dog treats. For more, [ I like. DOGs.] |
Google Wants To Make Your Android Device More Like A Nexus With Its New Keyboard App | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | Heads up Android keyboard aficionados — if your handset runs Android 4.0 or later and you’re just not thrilled with the keyboard you already have, you can now download from the Google Play store. According to a post on the official , the app has launched in certain English-speaking markets with a wider rollout to follow shortly. But that’s not to say that people in those launch markets are restricted to pecking out missives in English. The app comes with libraries for 26 languages, as well as the ability to select next word suggestions and swipe across the keyboard to form words. In the event you haven’t played around with it yet, it’s really quite good — far better than what I’ve experienced in Samsung and HTC’s custom skins, anyway. Yeah, fine, I know — who gets hot and bothered about keyboards? Well, quite a few people if the number of replacement keyboard apps in the Google Play store is any indication. Nearly every Android OEM under the sun feels the bizarre compulsion to fiddle with the keyboard as they make their (arguably unnecessary) changes to the Android experience, and the end results aren’t always what the end-user had in mind. It’s no surprise then that some people have been clamoring for a cleaner way to type, and developers have been . So what does this mean for the countless replacement keyboards that have already carved out their niches in the Google Play Store? Well, it depends on who you’re concerned about — prominent developers like Swype and SwiftKey already have deals in place with device OEMs like Samsung (and last year the latter started to focus on the health-care market of all things) so they’ll almost certainly continue chugging along just fine. The picture gets hazier when you consider the smaller players in the space — at least a few developers (like , or , or ) have been selling replacement keyboard apps that aim to replicate the stock typing experience on non-Nexus devices, and Google has basically just made them all obsolete. Those guys weren’t exactly raking in the downloads to start with, and it’s obviously in Google’s best interest not to alienate developers that have pledged allegiance to their mobile platform, but I suspect some of those smaller keyboard app creators may soon feel the pinch. |
Meet SpinMe, The iOS Alarm For People Who Suck At Waking Up | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | I’m not sure I can aptly explain just how absolutely terrible I am at getting up in the morning. I know, I know. “BOO HOO, GARFIELD, EVERYONE HATES MORNINGS”. . I don’t just getting out of bed. It’s more like I was genetically engineered to be part of a superhuman army of soldiers that are REALLY GOOD at waking up, but they screwed up and got my shit all backwards. I’ve got high hopes that this app can help. SpinMe is an alarm clock for people like me. People who know they to get up, who to get up, but whose semi-conscious brains have other plans. Plans that involve saying “Nah, just ten more minutes of sleep” at least 50 times. As the app’s name implies, SpinMe makes you spin. As in, it makes you get out of bed (the hardest part of waking up), hold your phone flat, and spin in place. If you don’t get up and spin, it doesn’t stop going off. It’s better to start your day slightly dizzy than it is to start it 45 minutes late, right?
The app’s developer, , went out of his way to make the app tough to fool — which is great, because Sleepy Greg is a clever, clever bastard. If Sleepy Greg just throws the phone up in the air to make it spin around a few times? Won’t work. You’ve gotta keep two thumbs on the screen at all times. If one of your fingers slips off, the spinning countdown starts all over. And if Sleepy Greg just waves his arms in circles above his head? Nope. You’ve got to keep the phone flat, or the counter resets again. Unless you’re Mister Fantastic or have taken too many yoga classes, your arms just won’t bend like that. And if Sleepy Greg brings up the iOS task switcher and kills the app? Push notifications backed by a guitar melody that’s aggravating enough to get you out of bed will be fired off in rapid succession until you reopen it.While there are a few tricks that SpinMe work around because of restrictions in iOS, they’ve got most of the obvious bases covered. One bummer: the current build of SpinMe doesn’t come with any default alarm tones (beyond the one used solely for push notifications when the app is closed) and instead relies on your iPhone’s music library, so you’ll need to bring at least one tune of your own. SpinMe is
|
Mourn The Loss Of Odwalla, Mourn The Loss Of Your Job | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | When the , when the , when you have to — these are the leading indicators that your company is in trouble. That’s one of the key takeaways — for me, at least — of a with a user calling himself . At TechCrunch, we are in the comfortable position of being a small- to medium-sized news organization and events business that lives in the comfy confines of a big-ass, multi-business conglomerate that a number of people still pay every month for dial-up Internet access. This affords us certain perks — like free lunches, snacks, drinks and the like — that our humble division probably wouldn’t pay for on its own. You know, if we had to. But as part of AOL? Sure, why not! Put it on ‘s tab. It wasn’t always this way. When I first showed up, a little more than a year ago, the TechCrunch office was still populated by Ikea desks that, lore has it, new employees built themselves. Then at some point things got all corporate. We got real desks, a bike rack. A fridge filled regularly with Odwalla, coconut water, Red Bull, etc. Tons of things to snack on, like gluten-free granola snacks, industrial-size barrels of mixed nuts, bags of Kettle chips, M&Ms and gummy bears, and — I shit you not — packages of Kale chips. TechCrunch had provided lunch a couple times a week even before the AOL acquisition, but now there’s, like, crazy snacks everywhere. Like a Whole Foods exploded. I’m getting fat, so I guess we’re doing okay. For now. But I’ll be on the lookout for, literally, leaner times, for sure. This answer, which is not from former_zyngite, but , explains why: “I’ve been part of 7 or so layoffs/buyouts over the years and the one constant indicator as to how the companies financials were doing was the snacks, and if you went from getting those kick ass gel glide pens, and the next week, it’s a simple stick bic. Yup, time to update the CV.” For what it’s worth, that yep, “once the Redbull and Odwalla went away everything went downhill.” But that wasn’t the only sign that things were amiss at Zynga. Another ex_zyngite pointed to the moment when , and employees had to *gasp* peel ’em themselves. And then there was the long-running decline in the quality of the happy hours. Those events never ended up being just a couple of guys sharing a , but what used to be ended up being scaled back to once-monthly meetings with . So anyway, I’m just waiting for the disappearance of the Clif Bars in our office. Or Vitamin Water being replaced with… just plain bottled water. Or maybe the keg won’t get refilled one week. And then I’ll know it’s time for me to update my CV and send my clips along to . Photo Credit: via |
App Infrastructure Startup Buddy.com Gets Into The Analytics Business | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | today announced a mobile analytics service that’s supposed to give publishers and brands a better sense of who’s actually using their apps and how they’re using them. There’s plenty of competition on this front — , for example, has increasingly become a mobile analytics company, and it makes a big deal out of not focusing on “ ” like downloads. Buddy CEO and co-founder David McLauchlan was similarly dismissive of using downloads as a meaningful way to measure app engagement. “That’s analogous to figuring out TV ratings by looking at how many TVs they sell in Best Buy,” he said. McLauchlan argued that Buddy is in a unique position because it sits in the intersection between companies that offer backend tools for building apps and those that offer mobile analytics. Most analytics companies have to “hook” into an already-built app, and then they count whenever the app performs a certain function, which he said is a very limited approach. Buddy, on the other hand, is capable of “prewiring” the app so it provides a fuller picture of user behavior and tracks the information that’s important to the publisher. So what can Buddy actually measure? Well, you can get a sense of it in the main analytics dashboard shown above. McLauchlan said it covers things like user demographics and location, as well as data on in-app commerce and conversions. It can also connect those data points in interesting ways, for example showing average time in the app based on age. McLauchlan argued that this is particularly important for the brands and agencies that have used Buddy to build their apps — he called this a step towards creating an industry-wide “good set of metrics or standardized analytics that you can use to buy and sell” advertising and marketing. Buddy says that there are 16,500 applications on its platform, and its customers include Nokia, A&E Television Networks, and Microsoft (which also ). |
Founder Stories: Climate Corp’s David Friedberg On Why Leading A Company Is Like Playing Poker | Contributor | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | For this week’s Founder Stories, I sat down with of The Climate Corporation to talk about building a business around big data and machine learning. collects data and tracks weather patterns on a field by field level to aid farmers in better planning agricultural operations. The company uses this data to offer insurance policies to individual farmers and agricultural businesses whose income is almost entirely dependent on weather. According to Friedberg, “45 percent of the world’s labor force are farmers. So there is a massive opportunity.” He continues explaining how agriculture is a massive market with over $500 billion in U.S. revenue each year. “Farmers are just now coming online with mobile phones proliferating through third-world markets, as well as the United States.” Building a company in an emerging industry is often rocky and requires strong leadership. Expanding on this idea, David and I discussed homing in on an unknown market, the process of iterative success (and failure), and how to make decisions with indefinite answers. “We made lots of mistakes,” said Friedberg. “The business nearly died multiple times trying to fix all the problems with the product and the customer.” One of the things I learned playing a lot of poker was you can’t count the chips that you’ve already put in the pot. You just have to look at the hand that you have in front of you and make a determination about what the right bet is to make at that very moment. Friedberg advises that “in building a business, you can’t let the fact that you spent a lot of time doing something drive the decision of what’s best” for your company. A new card could flip over that could completely change your betting strategy, and you’ve got to be constantly willing to let go of the past and be willing to embrace what makes sense going forward. |
Social Media Is “Worst Menace To Society” Says Turkey PM, 25 Twitter Users Arrested | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | Turkish authorities have 25 protesters for the high crime of using Twitter. Amid widespread violent clashes, police rounded up netizens on Tuesday night for “spreading untrue information.” Embattled Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has labeled social media “the worst menace to society,” saying of Twitter, “The best example of lies can be found there.” Social media has been an essential tool for Turkish protesters to skirt the tight-lipped government-run media. “The Turkish media should be ashamed. For the past 48 hours, the people have been waging a struggle and you have not reported anything about it. Shame on you,” Fatih Akin, a prominent Turkish film director. Indeed, over the weekend, government-run newspaper, Sabah, splashed the front page with a story of the Prime Minister receiving an award for combating smoking and made no mention of the country-wide protests that have been front-page headlines around the world. Below are that protesters have shared of the harsh government crackdowns and large student uprisings. [tweet https://twitter.com/aminmusa/status/341330445511843840] [tweet https://twitter.com/agizmatematigi/status/341418780657872896]
[ ] by NYU Politics Ph.D. candidates Pablo Barberá and Megan Metzger have found that, unlike past protests such as Egypt, nearly all of the geo-located tweets are coming from within Turkey (90 percent). In other words, social media is a tool for the protestors themselves, not just a medium to show solidarity from citizens abroad. And the protesters seem to be making friends in the hacking community. show that the hacktivist collective Anonymous and the Syrian Electronic Army, infamous for its hacks of several mainstream newspaper Twitter feeds, have joined the fight and have attacked Turkish government websites. This is an ongoing story, and we’ll update as more information comes in. |
Microsoft: Internet Explorer 10 Is The Most Energy-Efficient Browser, Uses Up To 18% Less Power Than Chrome And Firefox | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | If everybody switched from Chrome and Firefox to Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8, we could save enough energy , a new study ( ) commissioned by Microsoft says. The reason for this, Microsoft says, is its focus on making IE fast and the fact that IE taps into modern PC hardware like native graphics cards to speed up its rendering performance. Let’s face it, when you think about browsers, the last thing you think about is how much power they consume. Indeed, this sounds like a pretty unusual question to ask, but given that we probably spend more time browsing the web than doing anything else on our laptops, using about 18 percent less energy, as the study claims IE does, could make a difference. Overall, Microsoft says, switching to IE would save 120 million kWh in electricity and remove as much carbon dioxide as growing 2.2 million tree seedlings for 10 years. This isn’t the first time Microsoft has commissioned this kind of study. , IE9 also bested Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera in a similar study. In today’s test, the researchers focused on a set of and benchmarks. They also played a number of Flash and HTML5 videos. Overall, the study’s results look legit, but I doubt it will make many Chrome and Firefox users switch browsers just for this reason. Still, as Microsoft tries to change the public’s perception of IE and maybe win some market share back from Chrome and Firefox, this will give it a little bit more ammunition in its .
|
TechCrunch Returns To China, For Keeps | Ned Desmond | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | Gang Lu (center) and the TechNode team at their annual China Bang event in Beijing TechCrunch has a large international readership — there are no geographical boundaries to the startup revolution. No country demonstrates that vastness better than China, where huge markets, a red-hot economy, a (controversial) governmental hand and plenty of entrepreneurs have rocked the startup world. And giants , and fuel the fire. That’s why TechCrunch went to China to , and that’s why today we’re psyched to announce a partnership with one of the top tech blogs and event groups in China. We’ll be joining up with , and its founder , to bring TechCrunch much closer to China’s startup ecosystem. Later this year we will launch the official Chinese-language version of TechCrunch (.CN, in case you’re wondering) which will carry translations of posts from the U.S. site. This fall, we will do a small event in Beijing, and next year we will bring a full-on Disrupt back to China. And there’s more to come. TechCrunch and TechNode share a commitment to link the Western and Eastern startup ecosystems. That includes introducing influential Chinese entrepreneurs and startups on TechCrunch’s global stage and bringing the best of Silicon Valley to China. The TechCrunch team is really pleased to be working with Gang Lu, whom we got to know when we partnered on the first Disrupt Beijing. He is a serious technologist (that’s Dr. Gang Lu to you — a Ph.D. in wireless networks), a media pioneer and a respected voice in the China startup scene. Gang Lu and our readers in China have been waiting patiently for us to get on track in China. Now we finally are. |
null | Steve O'Hear | 2,013 | 6 | 4 | null |
Amazon Resurrects The Kindle DX, That Most Awkward Cousin Of A Device Family On The Way Out | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | Amazon has made official the return of a device many thought was bound for the e-reader graveyard, the . The DX is Amazon’s big-screen reader, with a 9.7-inch e-ink display and a full keyboard at the bottom. It’s almost comically oversized compared to the more popular and current e-reader models, which include the Kobo Aura HD and Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, and the technology within is now almost three years old. Dedicated e-readers as a category seem to be suffering at the hands of ever-cheaper tablets. So why did Amazon bring back the odd duck out in a family of weird waterfowl? Amazon isn’t saying, at least not in any great detail. The company says that it’s “excited to offer customers this option” in an official statement we received when we contacted them about bringing the mammoth reader back (and said the same to ), but that’s about as deep as they go in discussing both the absence and the return. We’ve reached out to see if they can provide more context. Kindle VP Jay Marine did say back in October that Amazon was likely through with the DX, though he did specify that it wouldn’t abandon it. The DX was originally positioned as an education-market-oriented device and essentially offered a way to better present textbook content. I actually bought one, but not for education purposes; I hoped that the larger screen would provide a better reading experience for long-form articles from publications like The Atlantic. Amazon has never broken out sales numbers for specific models of Kindle, or even for the Kindle itself. But the lumbering DX, with its $379 price tag (which has since been reduced to $299, the same price as the 32 GB Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch tablet), it likely never had more than a small cult following. The DX returning to the store might be tied to , which offers easy provisioning for educational institutions and organizations, because at this price, who else but those types of groups would buy it? |
Science Is Raising A New $30 Million Fund To Back Its Startups And Others | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | L.A.-based incubator and studio is in the process of raising a $30 million new investment fund, according to sources familiar with the matter. Science was founded in 2011 by former Myspace CEO and serial entrepreneur Mike Jones as part of the new wave of company builders. The studio is currently led by Jones and Peter Pham, the former founder of BillShrink. Startups who have been incubated within Science include Dog Vacay and Dollar Shave Club. At launch, Science raised $10 million in funding from Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures, Rustic Canyon, White Star Capital, The Social+Capital Partnership, Jean-Marie Messier, Philippe Camus, Jonathan Miller and Dennis Phelps. Earlier this year, the organization took a $30 million investment from Heart Media Corp, as . That money was put operational costs and to expanding Science as a business. The company recently as a managing director. This new fund, we’ve heard, is being put towards giving Science startups a guaranteed amount of money, the specific amount of which is still being determined. It’s similar in theory to (and its predecessor ), which offers $80,000 in funding to each Y Combinator graduate. The fund will also be used to make outside investments in non-Science incubated startups. Science has made similar investments in the past, BlackJet, OUYA and Wealthfront, according to the company’s site. As we had earlier this year, Science is part of the new wave of who are forgoing traditional venture capital in favor of developing studio-like holding operations. |
Google Backtracks On Its CalDAV API “Spring Cleaning” And Launches CardDAV API | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | All Google wants to talk about this week , it seems, but today’s announcement that it is not making the CalDAV API partner-only, as it announced during one of its latest earlier this year, definitely comes as a bit of a surprise. The , which allows developers to access calendar data, was scheduled to become unavailable later this year for developers who weren’t part of a select list of whitelisted companies ( , which needs it to power its Windows Phone calendar syncing with Google, was one of these companies, by the way). Google now, however, says that since making the announcement, it has “received many requests for access to CalDAV, giving us a better understanding of developers’ use cases and causing us to revisit that decision.” Why Google wasn’t aware of developer interest in the API before is unclear, but the result is the same: The CalDAV API will remain public for the time being. If you use the CalDAV API, though, Google is implementing one change. The API endpoint has now changed and both the old endpoint and basic HTTP authentication will no longer be supported after September 16, 2013. In addition to keeping a CalDAV API available, Google also today announced that it is making its available to the public. Just like CalDAV, is an open standard and its focus is on exchanging contact information. |
The Sisyphean Problem Of Email | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | “Before you marry, consider this, ‘Is this the person I’d like to watch stare at their phone for the rest of my and their life?” In the Greek myth of , Sisyphus, as punishment for aspiring to immortality, is given the task to roll a boulder up a hill every morning only to have it roll back down every night. A grisly situation that, every morning, he must remedy by rolling the boulder back up the hill. There are plenty of aphorisms about the digital human condition, many of them quite astute: “Email is a to-do list given to you by other people” is one of my favorites. So is the one at the beginning of this post. If you’d really like to drill down, is up there, as long as you realize that email is just today’s go-to stand-in for all of human communication. If you’re like most people in information technology, you could spend 16 hours of your day replying to email without even touching anything else. You could achieve the ludicrous construction of , and still, the next morning, wake up to Inbox 276. It’s overwhelming, and absurd, but for those of us who rely on that number to feel confident or useful, we start leak emailing. Answering an email in a taxi, or right before a meal or, the worst, after sex. You become the person whose phone is more alluring than other people, the person who’d rather have a digital conversation than a regular one. Because your phone is the closest form of drug, your job becomes what you do in your spare time and even in your most intimate moments. You are a textbook case of . In layman’s terms, you suck. “Does the realization of the absurd require suicide?” Albert Camus asked in on the Sisyphean myth. “No. It requires revolt,” he answers. And no, setting up a douchey highlighting how important you are, another textbook case of Existentialism, is not the answer. Every blogger who complains about email is just complaining about how popular they are. I’m at Inbox 46,761 — a success problem. The revolt required in this case, before you spend six hours or more of your day in email, is to train people to not expect an answer. And to be okay with calling or finding some other method to get what you need if you don’t get a response. Otherwise you’re the guy sending an email from the toilet. Step away from the rock. |
Nimbuzz Offers Free Service To Hutch In Sri Lanka, Continues To Push Telco Strategy in Asia | Victoria Ho | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | is continuing its push for South Asian dominance with its latest telco partnership. The Indian messaging startup just announced a tie-up with Hutch in Sri Lanka, offering six months of free Nimbuzz usage to Hutch subscribers. Today’s announcement is just another in a steady string of telco partnerships that the company has been striking up. In May, it linked up with , to give the telco’s 35 million subscribers access to Nimbuzz at a flat cost. The deal was similar to one that Nimbuzz made with India’s Aircel in February. The company has a total of eight telco tie-ups in India, covering nearly 75 per cent of the country, except for Vodafone’s users, said Vikas Saxena, Nimbuzz’s CEO. The point of all these deals is to ease friction in getting Nimbuzz on phones in the country. Saxena explained that billing continues to be an issue in Asia, where credit cards are not as common as they are in the West. Here, telco billing is one of the easier ways to reach users, offering the option of prepaid credit or through monthly phone bills. “Ringtones and ringback tones sell (over phones) like hotcakes here, even though you can download these over the Internet,” he said. Telco billing is a strategy that even music providers in Asia have turned to. , for example, have used carrier tie-ups in the region to reach users more effectively. A second reason for the telco tie-ups is that bundled offerings are especially necessary in price-sensitive markets like India and the neighboring countries. In the Aircel deal, for example, signing up for Nimbuzz granted users 40Mb of data per month to use. It doesn’t sound like much, but it helps in a country where people hold multiple SIM cards to use different offers from rival telcos, such as more voice minutes from one and free texts from another.
Nimbuzz has a total of 150 million users, and counts more than 210,000 new registrations per day. 25 million of its users are in India.
Its plans to stake a claim to South Asia is not unchallenged. Other Asian messengers are eyeing new markets too, and have large existing user bases to pull new users toward them. Tencent’s WeChat app has a base of subscribers, and Japan’s Line just passed . US-based WhatsApp has active monthly users. Korean Kakao Talk has a smaller but growing base of 90 million, according to recent reports. Vikas Saxena, Nimbuzz CEO The fight for Asia’s new markets is evident. WeChat has started to air in countries in Asia. And in the emerging markets—clashing head-to-head with Nimbuzz, especially—WeChat with the low-end Nokia Series 40 Asha smartphones. WhatsApp is also compatible with the Asha line. India, as a relatively less penetrated market, appears to hold great potential for getting a large volume of users onboard. But several barriers persist in the immediate timeframe. For one, the smartphone base is growing but still minuscule because of the relative price of smartphones to average income. Data plans are generally priced a little outside of mainstream access, too, resulting in a small mobile data subscriber base. According to only 2 percent of Indian cellphone users had 3G subscriptions in 2012. Besides price, part of this can be blamed on the country coming late to 3G. The spectrum licenses were only auctioned in 2010. For now, Saxena is eagerly waiting for smartphones to become mainstream in India. “When smartphones get below $100 in the next two to three years, the 60-70 million mobile Internet users will become 200-300 million,” he said. Nimbuzz gets a cut of data revenues or has flat fee deals with the telcos, but this isn’t the main plan for revenue—mobile advertising is. In March, it launched a commercial tie-up with Mentos-maker, Perfetti Van Melle (India). Nimbuzz has a Chat Buddy module allows Mentos to directly chat with Nimbuzz’s users. It seems opt in: Nimbuzz users can install the Mentos Chat Buddy and solve a murder mystery, with a prize awarded by a lucky draw. Line has a similar strategy. with Bubble Motion’s CEO, Thomas Clayton, the Japanese company charges brands about $200,000 for on the app, which allow brands and celebrities to broadcast messages to users. Nimbuzz is backed by Mangrove Capital Partners. Saxena would not say if the startup was profitable yet. It employs less than 100 people, most of whom are located in India. It also has a regional office in Dubai. |
EduClipper Launches Its “Pinterest For Education” To Bring Better Crowdsourced Curation And Sharing To The Classroom | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | Back in 2007, Adam Bellow launched a site called to aggregate and surface the best educational resources and content on the web. A high school teacher, Bellow set out to highlight new technologies and educational tools that could be used in the classroom to improve the learning experience. When a new generation of community curation tools began to take hold on the web, like Pinterest, Bellow decided to leverage the increasing popularity of crowdsourced curation to take eduTecher to the next level. This week the teacher-turned-entrepreneur officially launched , a platform that allows teachers and students to explore, share and contribute to a library of educational content. In both function and design, it’s essentially a Pinterest for education, with one notable difference: Because eduClipper is built exclusively for teachers and students, unlike Pinterest, you probably won’t find it blocked by your local school. (Which should be welcome to news to teachers, who have become eager adopters of Pinterest over the last few years.) The idea behind eduClipper, Bellow says, is to give students the same power of social curation they would have with Pinterest, allowing them to locate and publicly broadcast the best learning resources. In other words, educators and students can explore thousands of pieces of educational content, find lesson plans, resources and videos and search for the most popular content by subject or interest. With eduClipper, users can share individual eduClips (or pieces of content) or eduClipboards (collections of content) with colleagues or students while cross-posting or embedding that content on other social platforms or sending them through email. EduClips are created through the site’s bookmarklet (which work with all “modern browsers”), so once it’s installed in their browsers, teachers and students can grab any content they find on the web, Google Drive, Google Apps and more, and add them to their collection, i.e. their eduClipboards. Once grabbed, the site automatically grabs the source link, too, so that it’s easy to get back to the original content and easy to give proper citation. Teachers and students can share these clipboards so that their classmates and colleagues can collaborate on assignments or in-class activities, create groups to share these resources with and align the content that’s clipped and shared to Common Core Standards. That’s the big advantage of eduClipper over Pinterest, that content can easily be organized and annotated for each class or subject by way of these learning collections. It also has the benefit of being created by a teacher who has spent the last five years searching for and curating the web’s best educational content. “There’s a ton of great content on the web that we want to share with colleagues and students,” the eduClipper founder says. “But it becomes difficult to share because our students and teachers are not all connected in the same place.” So, beyond showcasing specific contributors, the platform also enables this real-time collaborative clipboarding for group work — something that’s increasingly becoming the norm in today’s classrooms. Bellow also tells us that he wants the platform to go beyond group boards to enable the sharing and co-curating of community-generated content, both public and private, which he hopes will pave the way for better K-12 learning portfolios. A use case that could be of interest to EdTech startups , which could help extend the functionality of the eduClipper platform and give teachers and students a way to create a multimedia (and more three-dimensional) record of their projects, experiments and credentials. “In addition to finding and sharing content, eduClipper will allow teachers and students to post and share their best work, lesson ideas, and more to the global community,” Bellow continues. “In essence, we are going to be building a digital resource hub that empowers students to create and curate their own learning portfolios.” Since the founder began development on eduClipper a little over a year ago, over 35K teachers have created accounts on the platform during alpha testing, with 300 classrooms having used the site over the past two weeks. To help build the product and early traction, the startup raised $600K from Learn Capital and Western Technologies (an early investor in Facebook). As the platform is now open to all teachers and students, Bellow is setting out to begin raising a series A round. While the platform has appealing design and ease-of-use to recommend it, eduClipper is not without competition. EduCanvas, and the , Clipboard, which was acquired by Salesforce.com have been attacking this space — not to mention the well-funded Grockit, which just raised to the masses — just to name a few. There’s enough interest in education and among schools for this kind of search, curation and clipboarding service that there should be plenty of greenfield, at least for awhile. But if this really catches fire, it’s hard to imagine the network effect not taking hold and giving most of the mindshare to one or two winners. As it moves forward, look for eduClipper to differentiate itself from the competition by developing for mobile and by extending its platform to enable teachers to be more creative with the tools they use every day, whether it be YouTube, Slideshare, Prezi and more. If it hopes to win in this space, key concerns going forward will also be reliability, data portability and the ability to connect and integrate with other services and apps. The more open the better, or so the thinking goes. For more, |
Transportation App Corral Rides Loses Access To Lyft’s Driver Data | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | Looks like not everyone is embracing the vision behind , which aims to bring all of your transportation options together in one place — cabs, ridesharing, mass transit, and more. A reader tipped us off that , which was one of the main services in the app, has been removed at the company’s request. (Apparently this actually happened several weeks ago, but I thought it was interesting enough to report, even if a bit late.) A Lyft spokesperson offered this explanation: “To maintain the integrity of the Lyft community and experience, it is our policy not to work with third-party aggregators.” When , we noted that the app got access to the driver data from Uber, Lyft, and SideCar without the companies’ permission. Corral Rides co-founder Noam Szpiro told us, “The way we see it though, we’re just sending them free traffic and customers. If they want to be the option listed, that’s up to them.” (Also, apparently the current app is only part of the company’s larger vision.) When I emailed Szpiro’s co-founder, Snir Kodesh, to ask about the situation with Lyft, he said, “Their main concern was that we don’t provide the culture value-prop (they want to be identified as a ‘friend with a car’ service, rather than just an A-to-B transporter), which is clearly difficult to quantify with words/images.” He said he’s “trying to work with them to brainstorm solutions on how to bring them back to the app.” Corral no longer has access to Uber driver data, either, but Kodesh argued that there’s plenty of information in the app. If you’re looking for a car service, there’s still InstantCab and SideCar. And Uber hasn’t been removed entirely. The app no longer shows driver availability, but it does provide Uber pricing estimates. And it still shows information on mass transit, driving, biking and walking. |
Divvy Is Photo Consumption And Sharing Done Right | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | There are dozens upon dozens of apps interested in your photo creation and sharing habits, but very few focus on the consumption of photos. Meet , an iOS app that lets you combine all of your social feeds (for now Facebook and Instagram) into one collective photo stream. You can filter between the two social networks, of course, but that’s just the start. Divvy also lets you share photos from those feeds (or your own) with individuals, groups of friends, or based on proximity like at a party or concert. See, Divvy is one of the only apps that lets you save Instagram photos in full resolution to your phone, and the same is true for Facebook photos. And even if you don’t want to save the photos, you can click in and zoom, which is something that’s always been a slight bother with Instagram. The Divvy team is based out of Austin, and , but that’s not where their journey begins. Co-founders Jeremy Greenfield and Kayvon Olomi started pitching their idea from Tulsa to the NY Tri-state area, and then to Denver. It was a road show, if you will, but it’s also an entirely new way of thinking about sharing. “Photos are worth 1000 words,” said Jeremy Greenfield. “I found myself only checking Facebook for the photos and not caring about status updates. Obviously Instagram is huge because everyone loves photos and it’s super easy to scan through and check up on your friends – without needing to devote all of your attention to it.” Photo-sharing apps like Days are taking the idea of bite-sized snackable photos in real-time and turning it into more of a long-form story, and even negotiating that asynchronous sharing is more rewarding. And the idea of privacy and ephemeral messaging is obviously on everyone’s mind, with apps like Snapchat blowing up, and other private photo-sharing apps popping up like PhotoSocial. But Divvy’s ability to both share and consume in a friendly fun environment could throw an interesting wrench in the photo-sharing space. And the founders expect to eventually add the ability to share from multiple feeds, too, to create a one-stop shop. It’s also worth noting how well this lines up with in his fireside chat. The entrepreneurial evangelist explained that Austin doesn’t necessarily build technological tools, but that it uses those tools to build out businesses based on passion. I don’t know about you, but I get real passionate when I’m screen-capping, cropping, and fiddling with an Instagram picture I want to save, and my mom feels the same way every time I show her an Instagram pic and she tries to zoom in. Divvy is available now on the . [gallery ids="826308,826309,826310,826311,826312,826313"] |
Townsquare Media Acquires Some Doomed AOL Music Sites And Comics Alliance | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | AOL began to and comic books site in April, but tomorrow it will announce it’s sold music sites , and , plus to , the Connecticut-based radio station owner that network of blogs last year. The deal, whose terms were undisclosed, puts the properties back under the stewardship of Townsquare’s executive vice president Bill Wilson, who was formerly the president of AOL Media during the time the sites launched in 2008-2009 and helped develop them. Some of the staffs of these sites are joining Townsquare. [ : Specifically, the full staff of Comics Alliance has signed on with Townsquare. However, some former employees of the AOL Music blogs were not even aware of the acquisitions deals at press time. Some may join, but others are interviewing elsewhere and are unlikely to go to Townsquare.] Other AOL Music properties including its flagship AOL Music site, Winamp developer Nullsoft, the Spinner blog were not acquired and there’s no word from Townsquare as to what will happen to them. We’ve contacted AOL and are awaiting word regarding the sale and what will happen to the remaining AOL Music properties. AOL bought Nullsoft and Spinner in a heft $400 million acquisition in 1999. AOL has been trying to focus over the years, and sell non-essential assets so it can invest in those that are humming and building new products. It in 2010, which AOL CEO Tim Armstrong “a major distraction”. In a much bigger financial deal, to Microsoft last year for $1.1 billion. Comscore estimates the aggregate audience of the acquired properties at 3.5 million monthly unique visitors. Country site The Boot had 1.4 million, heavy metal blog Noisecreep had roughly $1 million, hip-hop property The BoomBox had 828,000, and comic books fan site Comics Alliance had 419,000 unique monthly visitors as of April. Townsquare Media Group Chairman and CEO Steven Price says “Adding these premium brands to Townsquare Media’s comprehensive offering propels our scale beyond today’s 52 million US monthly unique visitors, allowing advertisers and agencies even greater access to this highly engaged and demographically desirable audience.” Townsquare’s other holdings include 244 radio stations and their sites across 51 markets, 300 music and non-music events, websites including Taste Of Country and PopCrush, coupon business Seize The Deal, and a non-profit organization. It’s a happy conclusion to what started as a sad story, when staffers of the sites were suddenly told on April 26th that they’d soon be fired. I went and met with the AOL Music team while in New York and they seemed shocked but resilient, determined to keep working in the blogging profession they loved. Now they’ll get the chance at the sites they’ve nurtured despite the rise of amateur music and comics blogging since they launched. In a cheeky move, ComicsAlliance hinted it would be reborn in several blog posts over the last week. One titled “What Does It Mean?” The Lazerus Pit, a fictional location from the DC Comics universe with the power to bring the dead back to life. Another showed a superhero coming back to life. |
Online Publisher Lulu Angles For The Next Wave Of Self-Publishing With Picture.com | John Biggs | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | Founded in 2002 by Red Hat’s Bob Young, on the Internet. Initially the company offered printing services and editing tools for self-published authors and, arguably, in 2002 they would have still been called a vanity press. Now, however, they’re another solid link in the chain between authors and readers. This month the company launched a new photo book printing division, a move that runs parallel to the way the market is going. While most fiction and non-fiction is ending up on reading devices, folks still love a good album. The service, allows for instant photobook generation and the printed end products are handsomely bound books, calendars, and even business class brochures and marketing collateral. According to Lyra research, half of all American households with kids under 5 have ordered picture books and the market is set to double from 42 million units to 78 million by 2014. I spoke with founder Bob Young about the move into the pictures space and how it felt to be one of the first to market in the ebook era. Bob Young: Lulu practically invented the self-publishing category. Uniquely, we remain the only publishing service dedicated to the needs of the author over any other agenda. We are not trying to be the world’s dominant bookstore, or the worlds largest electronic device vendor, so we’ll help you publish your book wherever your readers may be. We’ll help you publish to your website, or your organization’s website, or any content marketplace you deem worthwhile, not just on our tablet or on our website. Our vision was and remains simple: To cut out the middleman and open a direct relationship between creator/seller (an author) and consumer/buyer (a reader). That idea has not only taken root, but flourished into a growing industry. While a decade ago self-publishing might generate a snicker as a ‘vanity project,’ now it’s known and respected as a powerful industry with the potential to make careers and influence the broader culture. “50 Shades of Grey” has its roots at Lulu, and we see traditional publishers increasingly interested in this market. We understand what authors expect in terms of quality and customer service. As we’ve delivered, we’ve attracted a growing base of customers. So much so that we’re preparing to launch Picture.com, a new destination for people and companies eager to celebrate memories, share information, and convey knowledge, in pictures. Collaboration, simplicity and high quality photo books and calendars are the hallmarks of Picture.com. It’s designed to solve the issues we know people have with making photo books and calendars: slow photo uploads, confusing interfaces and an all-around clunky experience. Even the web address is easy. BY: Lulu’s mission remains to help people tell, and sell, their stories, on their terms, in words and pictures. Still, a lot has changed in the 11 years since Lulu pioneered self-publishing. Technology and distribution channels, for example, have transformed. Today, Lulu offers more options than ever before for creators to do what they want and reach who they want. A prime example is our online presence. The Lulu.com home page is now highly tailored to the self-publishing author, offering a wide array of ways to cut out the middle man and forge a direct buyer-to-seller relationship. Listening to our customers and to the wider market, we’ve learned much about the wants and needs of the millions of people interested in sharing and celebrating their memories through photos and photo books. And so, Lulu is launching Picture.com, an online experience tailored to the wants and needs of all sorts of people and groups that value lasting memories — from families to businesses. That’s all a way of illustrating the point that since 2002, Lulu has become a more diversified company dedicated to bringing new ideas to the market. BY: No. Lulu is more committed than ever to the revolution that is independent publishing. Lulu has long provided photo book and calendar making capabilities through a tool we call Lulu Studio. Designing around the wants and needs we’ve heard our customers voice, Picture.com ups the ante for Lulu and industry with:
Increased collaboration. Depending on the product a person wants, friends, family, teammates and even business associates can share pictures and create their own high quality photo books.
Increased quality. Photo books are meant to preserve memories while being handled a lot by lots of people, which means wear and tear. Picture.com books are built to last and maintain their integrity.
Increased ease. Our smooth, drag-and-drop system is just one improvement. The Picture.com UI is clean and uncluttered. Another example of how we continue to support the self-publishing author is Helix. The one-of-a-kind offering allows authors to compare their writing against a database of well-known books using the powerful analytics engine developed by the Book Genome Project — a massive digital humanities effort to analyze the universe of the written word. BY: With Lulu, you are the master of your destiny. Trying to publish with a traditional press can be heartbreakingly hit or miss. Even if you get past the gatekeepers and go to market with a traditional press, your odds of success are not all that great. Strike that if you’re Stephen King; otherwise, the odds are against you. At Lulu, the net profit from the sale of a print book is split 80/20 between the creator and Lulu, respectively. And authors own the rights to their own content, always and forever. For eBooks sold on Lulu.com the net profit is split 90/10. Yes, absolutely, publishing remains important. Let’s just look at one specific area — books published by thought leaders. Lulu’s own Arik Abel just published a piece in which several sources confirm that a book opens people’s minds to new ideas — and opens doors to high profile speaking engagements. Publishing with Lulu is the right way to go because in addition to the full-service platform we’ve already built, we’re always listening to our customers, looking at the market and improving the Lulu experience. We also offer tailored solutions for other discrete groups, from knowledge experts, to memoirists to poets to romance writers. We do what’s best for our customers. BY: Hey – Lulu is “the big guy” in our space! We continue to do all the innovating, and campaigning on behalf of our authors for the benefit of their readers. We can’t deny there are some imitators out there in our space, aspiring to serve our audience — but what’s that old saying about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery? We’re listening to our customers and, guided by what they’re saying, we’re innovating and diversifying. Picture.com is an example of Lulu listening to customers and offering an innovation in allowing friends and families to collaborate more in creating a photo book. Helix is an example of Lulu harnessing a brave new world — big data — to help authors better understand who their audience is and how to market their works. As we continue listening and innovating, look for more new tools from Lulu. For example, with Picture.com, we understand that mobile platforms and photo-centric apps are increasingly important. BY: I read slowly, but I read a lot. So I typically have several books open at the same time. Right now I’m helping out with my wife’s Needlepoint.com business and have found a great Lulu published title, “Wonderful Stitches, 320 Decorative Stitches for Needlepoint” by Diane Schultz. I continue to be fascinated by and very supportive of everything to do with making our world more free and transparent, and have the book Richard Stallman published on Lulu: “Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays.” And I still read some traditionally published works such as John Coates’ “The Hour between Dog and Wolf”, about the latest research in neuroscience. |
As Mobile Devices Morph Into Wearables, Keyboard Maker MessagEase Wants Your Fingers To Settle On Its Qwerty Killer | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | The touchscreen text input space could be heading for some serious disruption. If Apple drops its API guard a little more to allow developers to create system global keyboards that could open the floodgates to real keyboard innovation on iOS. ( .) That’s not to say novel keyboards aren’t already out there — they are — but uptake is limited on Apple’s mobile platform by how siloed these apps currently have to remain. There are now signs on that score, which could give alternative keyboards some serious uplift. That limitation does not exist on Android, of course, where developers are free to replace the system keyboard with their own software. But the barrier to entry here — and generally — remains how accustomed people are to Qwerty layouts. Better the devil you know, especially if the newcomer is a new-fangled layout that looks confusing and initially makes texting much slower. (See, for instance, the .) Little wonder that the likes of Swype have done well by disrupting the input method but leaving Qwerty order as it is. Cutting the link with the Qwerty past requires other, bigger stuff to happen with devices themselves. Yet there are signs those changes could be coming. Wearable technology is waiting in the wings to put new demands on text input technology. Sure you can talk to Google Glass but what if you want to send a message without dictating it to the room? And what about an Apple iWatch? A wrist-mounted screen is going to be highly space constrained — and no one wants to go back to the days of alphanumeric repeat-tap keypads. So it’s pretty clear there’s going to be pressure for keyboards to evolve, for layouts to get a lot more flexible to keep pace and fit the new places we want to put devices. The most striking change is already evident: gesture-based text input is helping to breakdown our old tappety-tap keyboard habits — with software like Swype and, more recently, a . But both still lean on the Qwerty layout, even if Minuum has squished the space it takes up. There are others that don’t though. Meet : an alternative keyboard that uses a mixture of taps and gestures combined with a radically different keyboard layout designed to speed up text input by minimising the movements typists have to make to reach the keys. MessagEase’s method compacts the keyboard space required into a small square — which could easily fit on a wrist watch, say, or even enable a Glass wearer to type in the air with minimal finger movements, once they have the muscle memory to do so. The MessagEase keyboard software has been more than 10 years in the making — the earliest version was created for the now defunct Palm back in 2002 — but its creator, Saied Nesbat, reckons the technology landscape is finally starting to catch up with his idea. “MessagEase’s invention was inspired by a vision of the time when QWERTY would have to be abandoned. But 2001 was not that time, nor was 2005. I believe we are nearing that time as touch and gesture input become more pervasive,” he tells TechCrunch. Nesbat, who has a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford where he specialised in Design For Test, says the keyboard’s design grew out of his frustration with texting on “old style cell phones” — so long before the rise of smartphones — but he also says he foresaw that small touchscreens were going to create a real pain-point for Qwerty. “So I set out to redesign the keyboard going to the basics,” he says. “I used my expertise in exhaustive testing, exhaustive simulation, and letter frequency statistical analysis (used in coding and encryption) to create a new, efficient letter assignment such that the finger movement is minimized and the speed is maximized (this is the same principle used for Dvorak keyboard). The other principle that I used was to reduce the number of keys to 9, arranging them in a 3×3 matrix, use drags in addition to taps, and make each key bigger. The analysis of this design using Fitts’ Law (the fundamental UI “law” that quantifies UI speed based on key sizes and distances) shows that this design achieves superior speeds. Plus, it enables entering up to 162 characters using only 9 keys!” he explains. The basic mechanism of the MessageEase keyboard involves taps for the most commonly used letters (ANIHORTES), which get pride of place on the grid to comply with Fitts’ Law, and then directional drags to reach the rest of the keys — either up, down, left, right, up left, up right, down left, down right and so on. “With these nine keys, you can enter ALL letters and about 80 special/punctuation characters,” notes Nesbat. Capitalisation is done by circling a letter or swiping up on the R key once or twice to lock caps lock on and reversing the gesture to return to lower case. Additional keyboard layouts that add in punctuation and numerals can be accessed by swiping up over the space bar or via a toggle key. The flexibility of the MessagEase keyboard extends to customising its language, shape and layout, plus the ability to create macros for particular word combinations — for example you could preset “td” to expand out to write “Today’s date is Sunday 2 June”. MessagEase’s keyboard software is available on Android, iOS, Windows, Pocket PC and Palm OS. The Android version of the app includes word prediction and the keyboard can be resized, reshaped, recoloured or made blank — Nesbat says the latter option is “for our advanced users who don’t need to see where the letters are; they find it distracting!”. Despite this software being a decade+ out in the wild, MessagEase clearly hasn’t stolen Qwerty’s crown yet. Nesbat says it’s had more than 500,000 downloads and has “tens of thousands of dedicated users now” — which just goes to show how hard it is to get people to change ingrained habits. Albeit, says Nesbat, that’s with “almost no money spent on marketing” — he therefore argues that MessagEase’s adoption rate is much stronger than other non-Qwerty input technologies such as Snapkeys and 8Pen. Of those MessageEasers that have put in the time to learn — getting fast (40-60 WPM) takes several days of practising 10-20mins per day, concedes Nesbat — a few are very fast indeed, with the current champion setting a world record typing speed equivalent to 84 WPM. Of course most users aren’t going to achieve anywhere near those speeds but with around 50 WPM being around the average speed of 10 finger typists using regular keyboards MessagEase’s method looks reasonably impressive — assuming you’re willing to put in the hours to reprogram your fingers. And there’s the rub really: reeducation of typing muscle memory remains the biggest barrier to any Qwerty killer. Setting aside its radical new layout, MessagEase’ most salient feature is how compact it is — allowing one or two fingered typing on very small screens — which, more so even than potential fast speeds, may be the USP that allows it to gain a foothold as screens shrink and morph to fit new physical locations. On the training side, to help new users get to grips with its grid, the company behind MessagEase, Exides, has created tutorials and built practice games into its keyboard apps to help users make the switch. That’s a start — but it’s still a steep learning curve to expect people to climb on their own. The imperative created by new types of devices may prove a more compelling climbing aid. Exideas is not currently profitable but it does have licensing deals in the works. “We have several licensing deals in the process, but none we can disclose now,” says Nesbat. “(One, more advanced one is re: Internet TV/ Set top box/ remote.)” He won’t disclose Exideas’ funding or backers but says it’s not currently looking for external capital. Since its apps are free to download to mobile platforms, licensing is clearly where it sees a profitable future for its patent-protected technology. “We will make money by licensing our technology,” he tells TechCrunch. “MessagEase is applicable to a range of classes of applications/devices, from smart watches, to smartphones, tablets, Glass, gesture-in-the-air, Internet TV, to car nav systems. As these devices are commoditized — everyone having a shiny surface, running more or less the same apps, doing more or less the same things — we provide a distinct, unique, efficient, and WYTIWYG (i.e., no disambiguation or autocorrection needed!) full text input technology edge to differentiate one company’s device from all others.” [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26ayS-Ita6g] |
Facebook Tries Letting You Message From Homepage Status Box To Battle Google Hangouts | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | Sources confirm Facebook will test the option to send private messages from its website’s homepage status composer to increase messaging rates. It will also help Facebook compete with Google, whose web chat presence is strong, and just combined its Gmail, Google+, and mobile chat systems into Hangouts. It’s a risky move, as users could accidentally post private messages as status updates. Multiple sources say that starting with a small percentage of users, Facebook plans to integrate messaging into the prominent status update and photo uploading box that sits atop the homepage. Users will be able to switch between posting to the news feed and privately communicating with select friends. I’ve reached out to Facebook for an official confirmation and statement regarding the test of status composer messaging. Currently, users have to click a relatively tiny, untitled messaging icon in the top right of the screen to start or continue a private message thread. That means users might forget or be less likely to send messages than if the feature was better highlighted. The intention for status composer messaging is similar to that of the recently launched Chat Heads mobile feature, which overlays message conversation on top of all pages of the Facebook app for iOS and all apps on Android. Facebook hopes to increase the pace of conversations that generate notifications and speedy return visits from their participants on the web and mobile. Getting people to return to its site and apps more frequently forwards Facebook’s mission and business model. Conversations create more intimate connections between friends, and the return visits for messaging can lead to browsing of the news feed where Facebook shows ads. The plan follows Facebook recently adding a “Post” button to the the persistently visible navigation bar at the top of its website. It encourages users to share more by letting them compose a post from any screen on the site. Status composer messaging creates a critical user experience design challenge. If it’s not clear whether users are posting to the feed or messaging privately, they might mistakenly expose a message to all of their friends when then meant it to be seen by just one person. Expect Facebook to use some kind of highly noticeable design flags to signify the difference. Facebook already adds a striped border to the status box when you set the privacy on a post to “Only Me”. Making sure it gets this right is likely one of the reasons the feature will start as a small test. If it gets negative feedback or sees people quickly deleting posts and then resending them privately, it might scrap the the plan for status composer messaging. Cross-platform messaging has become a hotly contested space. While independent, mobile-first messaging apps are nipping at their heels, Apple, Google, and Facebook are focusing on systems that sync web and mobile communication. Apple’s iMessage is a popular SMS replacement for iPhone to iPhone messaging, but its desktop app has less traction. Google excels on the web, with the long-running Google Talk aka GChat in Gmail linking users as they spend hours emailing. Now it’s trying to drive Google+ adoption and mobile with the it unveiled at Google I/O last month. That app has the advantage of free group video chat. Facebook launched its cross-platform messaging system , and its become quite popular. It turned its acquisition Beluga into Facebook Messenger, a mobile app that’s evolved to offer location sharing, VoIP, and recorded audio messages. It works seamlessly with Facebook’s desktop Chat system, which benefits from the large amounts of time users spend on the social network’s site. Facebook’s weakness is that it doesn’t own a mobile operating system or prevalent hardware line. That puts it in danger as Apple and Google could box it out by more deeply integrating cross-platform messaging into the default SMS apps on iOS and Android. Facebook hopes that its device-agnostic approach, high engagement, and global ubiquity can make up for it being a layer rather than a OS / device platform on mobile. If status composer messaging succeeds and it rolls out the feature to all users, it could ensure private communication is top of mind every time someone visits its site, whether their plan was to check notifications, upload photos, or browse the feed. It that slays SMS and assumes the throne will rule a critical part of the web. |
Maybe It’s Time For Apple To Go Back Behind The Curtain | MG Siegler | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | Like most people, I was following with great interest. And while it generated , it became apparent quickly that not much was actually being said. Just to make sure, I went back and watched the entire interview. One thing stuck out above all others: It was boring. It’s not just that Cook wouldn’t answer any of the questions about new products and/or services — he’s not going to do that — it was that nearly everything that was said had been said before. And that made me wonder, what was the point of Apple even agreeing to do this interview? My guess is that Apple and/or Cook himself wanted to take on some of the questions surrounding Apple lately head-on. This seems like the M.O. of Cook’s Apple. Whereas the company under Steve Jobs was almost defined by the secrecy and silence on issues, Apple under Cook seems ready to answer any and all critics. All too ready. A couple months ago, that Apple SVP Phil Schiller would (or, in the correct Cook parlance, Sam-SUNG) right before the unveiling of the Galaxy S 4. It seemed defensive. And it made Apple look like they were in a position of weakness, when they really weren’t, as the made clear that week. Obviously, Steve Jobs would answer to his critics from time to time — see: , for maybe his most famous example — but he seemed to choose his (public) battles wisely. Certainly, there’s something compelling about Apple opening up a bit more under Cook. But frankly, I don’t need to hear answers or non-answers to every little critique thrown at Apple. Why is Apple not winning the battle for market share? Because they make and sell their phones at a premium. It’s not rocket science. And it’s not something Apple should have to apologize for. This is a very conscious choice they make. Maybe in the long run it’s a mistake, maybe it’s not. But they’re the ones in charge of that fate! Why is Apple being singled out by Congress as potential tax evaders? Because they make more money than every other company in the history of the world that is not an oil company (and more than even many of those now). Nearly all of Apple’s peers use the same don’t-call-them-loopholes loopholes in our tax code, Apple just does it with more money because they make more money. One question during the D interview was about if Apple had stopped innovating. After all, it’s been since the last truly innovative product, the iPad, came out. Um, the iPad came out three years ago. Guess how much time there was between that product and the last “truly innovative” product, the iPhone? Three years. Guess how much time there was between that product and the last “truly innovative” product, the iPod? Five and a half years. Newsflash: true innovation takes time. Apple has by far the best track-record in recent history when it comes to such products. But how quickly we forget how long each one took to come to market. There needs to be . But screw that. We want more, better, faster. Cue . Etc. Etc. Etc. These are all obvious things that anyone with half a brain should understand instinctively. But blog posts need to be written about (all the better if they’re now against a company that subsequent posts have built up over the years) and Congressmen need to make (or keep) names for themselves somehow — , okay?! And so we have this sideshow around Apple that only serves to distract from what Apple is actually good at: making great products. And a funny thing happens when Apple tries to answer all these questions over and over again: they validate them. Oh, he’s being asked about Android again! Oh, watch him dodge this Samsung question again. Man, he’s really on the hot seat. Apple is so screwed. Sometimes Cook gives honest, straightforward answers — but they’re boring. Sometimes he’s purposefully vague — and we’re annoyed that he’s hiding something. The truth is that we don’t really want most of these answers. If Cook answered every inbound product question, we’d be happy for five minutes and then disappointed by next week. And by the time the product came out, we’d be downright bored and irritated that there was nothing new. The good news is that Cook and Apple are still well aware of all this. “We believe very much in the element of surprise,” Cook said during the D interview when pressed to answer questions about upcoming-yet-unannounced products. And so I ask again: why does Apple agree to these interviews? And why do they now seem dead set on pleasing everybody all the time? Congress is one thing — sending Cook to answer the questions himself seemed to have the intended effect of making Senators go gaga. But an interview when they have absolutely nothing to talk about — just two weeks before they will have quite a bit to talk about, at WWDC, no less — strikes me as very odd. I think it’s time for Apple to revert more to their old ways. To go back behind the curtain. I know Cook is not supposed to ask himself what Jobs would have done, but most of the non-answers he gives seem to be straight out of the Jobs playbook anyway — “unprecedented” may be the new “ ”. Keep the magic alive by keeping things mysterious. By not talking until there is something to say. By not talking until there is something to ship. “What we have to do is focus on products,” Cook said at one point during the D interview. Agreed. |
What Games Are: Who Will Create The No-Bullshit Games Console? | Tadhg Kelly | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | In any line of technology there’s always a bit of spin as part of an attempt to build . A successful platform is often as much about the sexiness of an idea as it is about its engineering, particularly in the early days. As it fills out then some of the promise of the idea is met, some maybe not so much. Yet the next version will have more. There may be a little bit of bullshit involved in that process, but ambition is good even if it doesn’t turn out quite as planned. Aspiration is good even if reality looks little pale by comparison Whether it’s Elon Musk talking about how awesome it might be , or Peter Molyneux awarding a prize for a player to , big ideas are to be welcomed. Almost everybody wants a little razzmatazz, even if it is half-baked. But sometimes all there is is bullshit. All there is is prevarication, contradiction and the banging of square pegs into round holes. Often times this occurs because of oligopolies. When there’s only a few big players in the market and each is focused on overcoming the others, the quest becomes less about inspiring the customer and more about beating the opponent. Usually that means assembling giant lists of feature upon feature upon feature upon feature. When this happens, the simple idea is lost and replaced by Frankenstein-product that no longer makes any sense. I don’t necessarily mean a product with broad uses (such as a computer), rather one with 10 small use cases stuck together with staples and stitches. It ends up like the product Tom Waits describes in the song Step Right Up: “ ” If you’ve read any of my posts of the last few months on TechCrunch, you’ll know that that’s pretty much . With complicated propositions that are all about frilly features and less about a core purpose, modern consoles are . They consist of bits-and-pieces features glued together. They’re less about selling one great idea and more about selling you on one of ten half-ideas, hoping you’ll acquiesce to having the other nine ideas come along for the ride. And that you won’t mind paying extra for the privilege. When originally conceived as the Magnavox Odyssey and Atari 2600, the video game console was as simple an idea as you can get. You could hook up to your TV and play arcade games in the home. That was it. The games were also super-simple, such as Pong and its famous one-line instructions: “Avoid missing ball for high score”. We may have left the joystick for the joypad and the touch-sensitive controller, gone HD as opposed to the old black-and-white cathode ray tubes, but playing games is still as basic. It may look much nicer, yet Angry Birds is simply “Aim birds to destroy pigs for high score” while Hay Day is “Grow crops to make money and build your farm”. Simplicity has the virtue of mass appeal, immediacy and not scaring players off with the perception of being difficult. Not unlike how the personal stereo went from the Walkman to the iPods Touch, Nano and Shuffle, the core idea remains the same because the core expectation of customers remains the same. Or rather, it should but there’s a mismatch. All three major manufacturers seem to have forgotten it. Consider the iPod Touch. It is capable of doing a lot more than a Walkman ever was. It has a camera and can run apps. It’s essentially an iPhone for people who don’t have iPhones. And yet Apple doesn’t call it the “iTouch” or the “iNote”. The company does not pitch the product as a many-featured wee machine because that’s just a hard sell (“What’s it for?”) and so keeps the conversation about music-plus-extras. It’s an iPod. It plays music. Oh and some other stuff too. And if you look at many of its commercials for the device, the iPod Touch is primarily still about the music, musicians, artists, earphones and so on, with the apps in a support role. It’s great to be able to play movies and connect to Netflix, but they are nice-to-haves. The original PlayStation was a passable CD player at a time when CD players were expensive. The PlayStation 2 was likewise for DVD players. It was great that the Xbox 360 could play ripped Xvid files, and it’s neat that it has access to a variety of video apps like Hulu. But those features always feel like passing conveniences that will soon be solved by an easier product such as the Apple TV, Roku or Fan TV. Something much simpler. To think that those nice-to-haves somehow fundamentally change the nature of the device? That’s a stretch. Those 8.45m viewers who watched Microsoft on Tuesday last week and laughed in derision or howled in anguish had a point. My overall point is that the major console manufacturers seem to have the idea that what they sell is the home TV version of a tablet, a device with many thousands of possible uses, some of which involve games. But what they actually sell is more like the iPod Touch, devices with a lot of useful features but whose message still has to be about the core use case. That disconnect explains their promotional efforts but doesn’t change the reality: Nintendo is a gaming brand, Xbox is a gaming brand, PlayStation is a gaming brand. Nintendo took the Wii, with a simple control method and a clear focus on fun casual gaming, and turned it into the most complex console controller in the history of history and a gaming social network. Microsoft is lost in dreams of winning a living room that few recognize with an only-mass-market solution that considers allowing a Minecraft to grace its platform as an example of . Sony may want to convey the message that it’s all about gaming but this feels more like a reactive move to Microsoft. The PlayStation 4 is actually a behemoth of social networking, sharing, streaming and who knows what else. All three companies used to know that they were in the gameplay business, but each has been bewitched by its own narrative. They need a disruptive dose of simplicity. What does that dose look like? Well there’s OUYA, GamePop, GameStick and Valve’s much-talked-about Steam box, a group that I call . None of them are ready for mass success yet but arguably . Each is in the phase of early adoption and figuring out price, business model, convenience and marketing story. Each recognizes that there is a gap, not just in the technology but in the console idea itself, and thinks that they could be the disruption that the sector needs. Personally I think the right mix for one or more of them to hit will look something like this: Like your phone and tablet, the no-bullshit games console doesn’t use disks or stores. You connect to its app store, buy your games, job done. A consistent argument that hardcore games fans level against phones, tablets and microconsoles is the perception that they’re graphically weak. Casual a mid-core players don’t care about that, but since hardcore gamers are the most vocal of early adopters the no-bullshit console will probably need some oomph. Just not necessarily a whole dedicated custom architecture. The modern living room is less about how many devices you can stack under your TV and more about how easily they get out of the way. Technology is miniaturizing and personalizing and few people want a machine the size of an aircraft carrier to take over their space. Similarly, the no-bullshit console should be silent. When the original PlayStation debuted it was considered a masterpiece of design. Apple spends a lot of time making the iPod Touch looking super sexy. Both are simple machines, but also lovely objects (for their time). This matters. One of the reasons why Xbox has become over time is that Microsoft keeps pushing the idea that it knows what you want. That means lots of screens showing only three or four useful panels with lots of advertising, which nobody wants so they just choose the most apparent default option. Similarly, the PlayStation’s cruciform-style system makes finding content or options an oft-byzantine experience. For the no-bullshit console it’s important (both for customers and developers) to show enough options that allow long tail effects to happen. It may be boring, but a menu system that shows the user straightforward icons tends to be better at driving exploration over an attention-guiding or semantically organized system. If mobile has taught us anything, it’s that platforms are at their best when they maintain some standards, but stay out of content decisions. While Google, Amazon and Apple all operate this way to a greater or lesser degree, big console makers are finding that they have to put into making the games for their platform. They have created a setup where few others can afford to, and they get in the way of making it happen. This is why all the most interesting game development happens everywhere console these days, and will continue to do so until the console makers get out of the gatekeeper business. Apple manages to upgrade the iPad every year, Samsung even more frequently than that with the Galaxy, and yet neither experiences much complaint from users. Yet in the console industry the conventional wisdom is that specs have to be locked for long cycles, because if they aren’t then some games may not work on older systems, or vice versa. This then fuels the urge to completely change architectures every few years and destroys backwards compatibility. With a digitally native approach the user is protected from buying games that won’t work on his system, and this allows consoles to adopt an annual upgrade cycle just like every other technology, which they need. Seven year cycles guarantee that the Xbox One and PS4 will look slightly ahead of the curve for about 18 months, but after that they will already look obsolete. The modern joypad now has three movement controls (one digital and two analog), four triggers, two option buttons, four face buttons, tilt, rumble, motion tracking and – in some cases – touch sensitive parts. And yet the single biggest barrier that non-hardcore players find when thinking about buying a games machine? The perceived complexity. So why not two triggers rather than four? Why not ditch the D-pad entirely? Why not three face buttons? Why not step back from the perception that a game controller has to be like the Onion joke about razors with 6 blades and three strips, and consider that maybe it’s ok to ask some of the specialist customers (like fighting game fans) to buy specialist controllers? Tablet games are taking the world by storm and have almost no controls at all. The no-bullshit console needs to think about why, and then adopt a similar stance. The new gaming warhorses are looking like they’ll be at least $499, or heavily subsidized with cellphone-style subscription plans. Even Nintendo, who tend to launch hardware cheaply, is asking for $349 for the Wii U. Those kinds of prices are just too much in a world where the console is considered as for-games-with-nice-extras. The no-bullshit games console needs to be $199 or $249. Certainly no more than $299, the same price as a 32 GB iPod Touch. I know that my no-bullshit console idea is a little pie-in-the-sky, but it illustrates where the games industry (and especially its console sector) could be if it stopped getting high off its own supply. While I have no doubt that the next generation platforms will sell 20 or 30 million units, they will do so largely to the hardcore. The idea that Franken-consoles are going to get seems like just a sad joke, however. Users don’t want nightmarish mish mashes of complexity from a device category whose core appeal is supposed to be simplicity, yet none of the manufacturers seems to know that any more. However if the microconsoles could crack that iPod Touch code of price, access, affordability, simplicity and power then the next generation could easily belong to them. ( ) |
What To Watch For At WWDC 2013: More Freedom For Developers | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is a little over a week away, and that means we’re already seeing a lot of buzz surrounding what will and won’t appear at the conference. Apple itself has dropped hints, and indicate developers should be especially excited about what’s on tap for the annual conference – which, after all, is designed specifically to cater to that crowd. Cook suggested that Apple would be going a lot further than it has before in terms of opening up API access to make iOS more flexible and customizable for developers. That’s a pretty general statement, but he also suggested they wouldn’t go so far as to allow something like Facebook’s Chat Heads to become a system-wide feature. He also seemed to indicate that there would be a much greater ability to offer things that just weren’t possible before. There are a few key things that Apple could unlock and provide access to for developers which have seemed like low-hanging fruit for a few iterations of iOS now. The list will likely be familiar to developers who’ve dreamed of accessing these features since they were first introduced.
Developers have been looking longingly at Siri since Apple bought the tech — integrating apps within the virtual personal assistant would be massively beneficial to devs, since it could theoretically funnel users to their services and generate a lot of additional revenue, particularly for things like event, travel, restaurant and sightseeing bookings. Apple has done some loosening of the Siri ecosystem, by allowing select partners to gain entry, like OpenTable, Yelp and more. But it hasn’t flung the gates wide; there’s still no API available to developers to plug into its services and voice recognition powers, beyond the straightforward dictation abilities built into general text entry fields. Which is unfortunate, because Siri would likely be much more powerful with the many more information sources that would come from wider developer availability. Siri could use developers as much or more as developers could use Siri, but there’s a potential problem with allowing devs to use it freely and become a potential end point for users. Namely, how do you filter and make sure not to overload users with results, and how do you choose between two competing apps that can answer the same query? That’s why Apple has been reluctant to offer Siri to devs, and why we probably won’t see it open things up entirely. But in-app specific use of Siri could still be immensely beneficial to user experience.
Apple introduced widgets with real-time updating information for the Notification Center when it released that feature. These exist for weather and for stocks, two built-in iOS services, but they make a lot of sense for any developer who wants to show a user constantly updating information. Android developers already have access to this kind of thing via homescreen widgets. I don’t think we’ll see Apple bring live updating information to the home screen, but it does make sense for them to offer that to devs in the Notification Center. It could potentially reduce the total number of steps a user has to go through to receive crucial information, and might even be a way to save battery life. Plus, given unfettered access, developers might be able to take Notification Center widgets in a direction that Apple hadn’t even envisioned for the feature.
This is another thing that both devs and users have been wanting for a while. It’s perhaps most obvious when it comes to browsers, as there’s no way to use anything other than Safari as the default app for opening websites on your phone. Google has released APIs that allow other apps to make its Chrome mobile browser the default, but that applies only to those apps with that feature enabled, and there’s no way for a user to set it as the preference system-wide. For power users, it would be ideal if Apple would just allow each person to set a default app for basically any action, the way you can on Android. But for the general public, that’s a degree of choice that has the potential to confuse and frustrate, as you lose any ability to ensure that an app users pick as a default for any action is actually going to provide a good user experience. I don’t think Apple will open this feature up to developers in any kind of unqualified or unlimited way. But for certain system features, I can see it beginning to lower the barriers. Don’t expect to see the Phone, Email or Browser app get opened up just yet, but we may see a way . Having different software handle calendar appointments might be another tentative step. But as with the way Siri currently works with outside devs, I’d imagine we’d see this fairly tightly controlled at first. Apple may not add more flexibility in the areas described above, but I do think we’ll see them relax restrictions and open up more and more previously private APIs. But if it does open up the ecosystem significantly, that will mean it’ll be watching extra close for interpretations of that openness that threaten the good reputation of iOS with consumers. Even so, we should see a net gain for developers, and hopefully that results in a similar net gain for users, too. |
Former Facebooker Noah Kagan Tells Us Why Austin Matters | John Biggs | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | Noah Kagan can work a room. That’s the first thing you’ll figure out about him. The second thing you’ll learn is that he doesn’t want you to move to Austin. Kagan, whose , is the founder of AppSumo and Facebook employee #30. He quit the Valley and moved to Austin to found , a daily deals site the features long, detailed discussions of the products and a lot of Kagan’s own high-energy marketing advice. During our brief interview in Austin I asked Kagan who should move to Austin. “No one,” he said. He even suggested a new motto for the city, replacing “Keep Austin Weird:” “Don’t move here.” The city, he explained, has its own magic and refugees from the Valley rarely fit in. However, if you want a great night life, food, and lots of fun it might be a spot for you. He initially moved with his then girlfriend and decided to stay, realizing a city that revolves around live music, barbecue, and being the strangest town in Texas has its charms. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 6 | 5 | null |
HitFox-Incubated Mobile Games Marketing Platform AppLift Raises $13M Series A | Steve O'Hear | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | As mobile gaming has exploded, it follows that startups helping to feed and in turn feed off the mobile gaming ecosystem are poised for growth. One such company is , the mobile games marketing platform by games distribution incubator , which today is announcing that it’s closed a $13 million Series A round from . It plans to use the new funding to invest in its platform and “accelerate” international growth. This will include AppLift staffing up in engineering, other product specialists and business development, adding a further 50 to its head-count by the end of the year. Positions will be filled in its Berlin headquarters and existing offices in San Francisco, Seoul, and Paris — with funds also pegged for further geographical expansion. “We will both hire more people in our existing offices and open new offices, especially in Asia,” HitFox co-founder and CEO Jan Beckers tells TechCrunch. AppLift’s marketing and monetization platform helps games publishers acquire more users for its games, and in turn generates revenue for affiliates who want to monetize their mobile sites and apps by sending qualified leads AppLift’s way. Its 500+ media partners include the likes of RTL and Closer, while the company is currently partnering with over 80 mobile game publishers, such as King, Wooga and Kabam, who are seeing as much as 1 million “high-quality” installs per month as a result. In addition, AppLift`s platform is able to track, measure and benchmark the quality of players delivered with regards to retention, virality and, perhaps most importantly, monetization, such as in-app purchases. “Game publishers are able to adjust their spendings for different traffic sources based on the quality of the users they get,” explains Beckers. Founded in 2012 by HitFox Group, Kaya Taner and Tim Koschella, AppLift attributes some of its speedy growth to synergies with other companies in HitFox’s portfolio, specifically its of ad2games, a company it notes was already active in “the space of user acquisition”. Finally, I’m told that from start to finish, the investment from Prime Ventures was closed in under 5 weeks, which is pretty fast for a round of this size. Perhaps as a result, when I spoke to Beckers last week, he was sounding even more bullish than usual. He’d just returned to Berlin from a trip to Singapore — mainly for business, but with a few days vacation — and told me that HitFox and AppLift co-Founder Tim Koschella is now , first to grow its Korean office and then to open new offices elsewhere in the region. China, Japan and Singapore are cited as likely candidates to be next. Meanwhile, Beckers says that two months ago HitFox co-founder Hanno Fichtner, along with his family, moved to the U.S. to strengthen the incubator’s presence across the pond, including hiring more staff stateside. Chalk this up as another European startup thinking truly global, one long haul flight at a time. |
Iterations: From Amazon Prime To Amazon Pronto, The Future Of Physical Delivery | Semil Shah | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | “Membership has its privileges.” A slogan made famous by American Express today also applies to an online membership many, many people happily keep: Amazon Prime. Ever since committing to Prime — and this is anecdotal — but our household trips to Target steadily decreased, and in 2013, outside of one trip to replace a defective item in a pinch, I haven’t shopped for household goods in any mega-store. With Prime, Amazon pulled off one of the most elegant consumer segmentations, encouraging members to fill their carts with a few clicks or taps from any device and training customers to continuously ask the following question at the time of purchase: “Do I need this item before 48 hours?” Now, what if the answer is “yes”? Amazon, of course, offers next-day shipping, so they’ve compressed the 48 hours to 24. This is where Amazon will fight one of their many future battles — delivery warfare and special ops to put Amazon goods in our hands and houses in a variety of old school and new age ways. Here’s how I suspect Amazon to carve up these first critical 24 hours of delivery — and I’d love to hear from you below what other methods you believe Amazon may use: Like many SF-based startups are offering now, Amazon will likely follow suit. Order something from them and need it in an hour, or within two hours, or within four hours, or by the end of the day? Amazon will probably segment each delivery window and append a price for that convenience, and the ease of tapping items, checking out, and setting a delivery zone and time window will probably be easier than the solutions we hack together today. (It’s a stretch, but one could make the case that Amazon has already started this segmentation with its option to “subscribe and save” for oft-purchased household goods.) This is all about . For customers that travel often, keep odd hours, don’t have a doorman or secure area for packages to rest or don’t want them delivered to work, Lockers turn into Amazon-specific post-office boxes. In turn, Lockers will likely save Amazon shipping fees and provide physical touch points with customers who may increasingly come into contact with the Amazon brand. This could be important, because…. Now that Amazon has physical locations in more states (like California) because of changes to interstate online sales taxes, it sounds a bit crazy but I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon follows through on the rumors to open Costco-like experience stores in select locations and put their own spin on what a live Amazon shopping experience could be. One can’t write a post about the future of delivery options and not touch on unmanned aerial drones. Drones are in the news today for all sorts of reasons, but I’m talking about commercial applications. I’m writing this post on a Sunday morning on my little deck outside, which is a perfect landing spot for a modest drone aircraft to periodically land and drop-off the only on Amazon that I actually “subscribe” to. Given the operational prowess of Amazon, I actually expect this to be in Amazon’s future. In September 2012, I wrote a here about Amazon that briefly touched on many aspects of their remarkably diverse business lines. The scale and pace of Amazon is staggering, and reading this epic by a16z’s on the collision course Amazon and Google are on drives home the point. Given Jordan’s experience as President of OpenTable and PayPal, and now a board member at Airbnb and Pinterest, he likely sees the future of e-commerce better than most. For startups interesting in the opportunities created by this battlefield, look at starting out in the delivery space, fixed-location storage ( was quickly acquired by Google), drone hardware and software companies, new technologies to help make sure all these types of operations run efficiently, and new technologies and designs that can help reinvent the in-store retail shopping experience. In conflict, there is great opportunity. / |
Bijoy Goswami Doesn’t Want Austin To Be The Next Silicon Valley | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | is a fascinating man. Born in India, the entrepreneurial evangelist lived in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the U.S. before attending Stanford University. Now, and for the last 15 years or so, he lives in Austin, TX, and we were fortunate to have him speak at the TC Austin Meetup + Pitch-Off. But even though he went to Stanford, author doesn’t want Austin to become the next Silicon Valley. He explained that the DNA of Silicon Valley (and all of California, actually) comes from this notion of becoming an overnight success. It all started with the Gold Rush, in 1849, he explained. “Silicon Valley is the product of the Gold Rush. In 1849, people came with nothing and if they struck gold they’d become a millionaire. The formation of California started with this, and the whole of the state began to believe in the idea of overnight success,” said Bijoy on stage with John Biggs. “It’s part of their DNA, and they use technology because that’s the biggest lever to achieve that end.” Goswami believes that Austin entrepreneurialism is quite different, and comes from a place of authenticity and passion. “In Austin we want to be ourselves, and we’re all on a journey to be ourselves,” said Goswami. “The startup culture here is derived from a personal journey, and from where they’re passion comes from. They don’t care if they’ll be big or small, but they care about being authentic and giving their passion to the world.” Goswami went on to say that Austinites don’t build the tools, but use them. Whereas new technology comes straight out of Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs in Austin use that technology to leverage their own passion projects and ideas. This explains why our , a post-production video editing collaboration tool called First Cut Pro, an Expedia for doggy day care called Embarkly, and an children’s camps and activities marketplace called Camperoo, were all focused on niche markets and solutions. |
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings On Arrested Development, Managing Content Licenses, And Coming Back From The Qwikster Debacle | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | It has only been a few days since the release of Arrested Development on Netflix, but the fourth season of the series . In an interview at the D11 conference, CEO Reed Hastings and Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos talked about the company’s plans for more original programming, as well as its relationship to other content providers and distributors. Arrested Development, of course, has been popular on Netflix for years. It’s been one of the all-time top-rented DVD programs and highly viewed streaming options, thanks to a rabid — and growing — fan base over the years. It was that existing viewership that gave Netflix confidence that a new season of the show could be a hit on the service. While it’s still early, Hastings said that the reaction to the show has been great. “We had high expectations for Arrested Development, but so far it’s exceeded them,” he said. But Arrested Development is just one part of a new programming slate that has Netflix on the road to becoming a serious player in original content. Part of Netflix’s success in recent years has come from making the transition from “rerun TV” — showing syndicated TV shows and second-run movies — to a place where users can discover new programming they can’t see anywhere else. That move started with the launch of Netflix’s first streaming original, the mob fish-out-of-water story “Lillyhammer.” But its original programming has been picking up steam, with the launch of Kevin Spacey-led political drama House of Cards, as well as the Eli Roth horror series Hemlock Grove. And, of course, Arrested Development. Next up is Weeds creator’s Jenji Kohan series “Orange Is The New Black,” which is based on Piper Kerman’s memoir of spending a year in minimum-security prison. Netflix also has licensed a sci-fi series being created by the Wachowski Brothers, the guys behind the Matrix trilogy, and a kid-focused series called Turbo in conjunction with Dreamworks. In addition to those new shows, Netflix will start to stream second seasons of Lillyhammer and House of Cards as it seeks new original programming. According to Sarandos, the company has deliberately sought out a variety of programming for streaming, seeking to appeal to a wide and varied audience. “Our subscribers have very diverse tastes, so want to touch on each of them,” Sarandos said. It’s no coincidence as well that the shows it has picked have so far done well with international audiences. Only about 35 percent of the dialogue in Lillyhammer is in English, for instance, and it has done well in Netflix’s recently launched Nordic region. House of Cards has a U.K. pedigree, as it was based on a miniseries about British politics. And Hemlock Grove, while filmed in English, has done well in Latin American markets, where the horror genre is more popular on TV, Sarandos said. On that front, Netflix has earned more power in its ability to negotiate deals with content owners. The company’s licensing fees have become an important part of studios’ P&L sheets, and as a result, Netflix has gained a little bit of leverage in its licensing talks. But Hastings said that the goal is to continue having a good partnership with content owners in which both sides benefit. “I don’t think about this as a zero-sum game,” Hastings said. “We’re growing the market so that they have incremental revenue and we have incremental subscribers.” That said, the company has become more discerning about what content it’s willing to pay for — and at what cost. At the same time that Arrested Development was coming online, Netflix was seeing some of its most popular kids content disappear. Shows from , after a few years of being available to subscribers. While it’s true that Nick content — like Dora the Explorer and Spongebob Squarepants — is gone, the company has added other children’s programming, like and . The reality is that Netflix isn’t going to have everything, Sarandos said. The ability to discern the value of content based on its popularity and the value that it provides in growing Netflix’s subscriber count has increased over time, and as a result the company is being more picky about how it spends its licensing dollars. That’s changed its relationship with some of the major content creators it works with. When it just started out licensing content for its streaming service, the studios and networks had a tremendous amount of bundling power, Sarandos said. In a hunt for titles, Netflix ended up licensing large amounts of content. But as time has gone on, the company has decided it’s better to pay a premium for individual series that it wants to have on the service, rather than spending on a bundle of shows that had lower viewership. Netflix, of course, has been on a tremendous comeback, after stumbling during its plans to . In the process, it raised the price of the combined service by about 60 percent, and it announced a new company, called Qwikster, which it . Since that initiative, Netflix has seen a gradual decline in DVD users, but that’s been more than offset by an increase in the number of domestic streaming subscribers. The company now has and another 7 million in international markets. “Streaming has grown steadily for seven years. Our membership count has grown every quarter but one,” he said. “If you look at the business, every quarter we’ve been growing, but the stock price has gone up and down, up and down.” The stock market has also responded. After Qwikster, the stock fell precipitously — from a high of nearly $300 a share to a low of $53 last summer. And yet, it’s been on a remarkable rise since then, as Netflix’s earnings and subscriber numbers have defied expectations. After hitting a 52-week high near $250, the stock has settled in at around $225 per share. Hastings attributed the volatility to a misunderstanding in business any time a company like Netflix does anything new. He said that the market was skeptical when it moved from DVD-by-mail to streaming, but the company has tremendous faith that’s where the overall market is going. “Most consumers want on-demand video, and what the Internet has to offer. We have confidence that in five to 10 years, it will all be Internet TV, and these apps will be on all kinds of devices,” Hastings said. While Netflix considers itself just another network that will operate in that all-IP ecosystem, it doesn’t have any plans to be distributed in the traditional pay TV structure. It’s committed instead to marketing directly to subscribers in the U.S. and international markets. “We’re really focused on the straight-to-consumer market,” Hastings said. That will include expanding to new countries, as well as expanding the amount of original content that is available to its subscribers. |
Yahoo Shuts Down Mail Classic, Forces Switch To New Version That Scans Your Emails To Target Ads | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 2 | Starting the week of June 3rd, tomorrow, Mail Classic. It’s requiring all Mail users to switch to the new version of Mail and accept a TOS/Privacy Policy update that lets it scan emails to “deliver product features, relevant advertising, and abuse protection”. You can opt out of the ads, but if you don’t want to be scanned, you have to ditch Yahoo Mail. Yahoo the in December, and announced the of Classic back in April. However, it didn’t mention anything about the new terms of service and privacy policy until it just began sending Classic users an email about having to switch. In an aptly named “Do I have to upgrade to the new Yahoo! Mail?”, the company explains “Beginning the week of June 3, 2013, older versions of Yahoo! Mail (including Yahoo! Mail Classic) will no longer be available. After that, you can access your Yahoo! Mail only if you upgrade to the new version. When you upgrade, you will be accepting our and . This includes the acceptance of automated content scanning and analyzing of your communications content.” Those who upgrade can opt out of contextual ads through . Yahoo bluntly tells users who refuse its that they should either download their mail to another IMAP client, or close their account. Premium Mail Plus users who want to cancel their accounts can get a . Some are labeling the switch an aggressive invasion of privacy. An user writes: “Yahoo can now openly troll through email for personal information that it can share or hold onto indefinitely. Gay and haven’t come out yet? Yahoo knows…” However, as commenters on note, Gmail has long scanned your email to show you related ads. Even if you use a system like that doesn’t scan your messages, the system your conversation partners use might not be so hands-off. And as many warn, anything you send in an email could end up public, so keep the naughty stuff off the web. |
Tesla Shows Off A 90-Second Battery Swap System, Wants It At Supercharging Stations By Year’s End | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | Tesla teased electric motorheads earlier this week by announcing an event that would show off its curious , and it wound up being even more impressive than most of us imagined. Long story short, Tesla can swap a Model S’s battery in just 90 seconds (that’s less time than it takes to fuel up a regular car), and you won’t even have to get out of your seat to do it. “We designed Model S from the beginning to be capable of swapping out the battery pack faster than you can fill a gas tank,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the company’s Hawthorne design studio earlier this evening. It’s not exactly a secret that the Model S’s battery pack can be switched out as needed, but the company saw fit to keep the details under wraps until today. For the process to run that quickly, you’d expect some technical wizardry to come into play and Tesla certainly delivers. Once a Model S owner parks the car on a designated spot, a platform raises from the ground to disconnect and grab hold of the depleted battery. The platform then descends back into the ground, dumps the battery, retrieves a fresh one, and rises once more to connect it to the car. Really, it’s one of those things you need to see: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VH4JloWFEI&w=640&h=360] Frenzied drivers will still have to do some work, though — they’ll have to drop off the battery on the return leg of their journey and pay an unspecified “transport fee,” though they can also choose to keep the battery and pony up the difference between the price of the old and new batteries. The first swap-capable locations will be at supercharger stations located along California’s I-5, though the company plans to bring them online at east coast superchargers in short order. Judging from the videos pouring out of the event, the overall tone of the presentation was exuberant, and it’s hard not to see why: The company is looking at hot-swappable batteries for its electric vehicles as a way to put them on even footing with traditional gas-powered cars. Of course, that’s not to say that bringing those changeable batteries to the masses is going to be easy. Tesla has spent more than a year constructing supercharger stations along the east and west coasts in a bid to give their electric cars the juice to complete your average languorous summer road trip. Outfitting each of those stations with the ability to quickly replace batteries and get motorists back on the road presents quite a logistics problem. There’s the cost to consider — Tesla expects each battery swap station to cost about $500,000 to build, to say nothing of the maintenance and infrastructure costs that will come now that someone presumably has to stop by each station and replace worn-down batteries. Still, Tesla already has plans to . If every one of them is slated to get battery-swapping stations, the prospect of trying to cruise the country in an electric car just got a lot less sketchy. Tesla has posted an official version of the video with a bigger focus on how darned fast the process is. Check it out. [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/68832891 w=640&h=480] |
Mud-slinging Behind The Scenes As Malaysia’s Taxi Apps Duke It Out | Victoria Ho | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | There is an ongoing land grab for taxi drivers in Malaysia, with taxi app startups aggressively targeting the handful of taxi drivers keen to jump on a digital platform. Two year-old taxi booking startup, has been busy recruiting cab drivers over to its service. When I visited its offices two weeks ago, Aaron Gill, MyTeksi’s product and marketing head, said the company ramped up its efforts over the past six months to convince drivers to get smartphones and data plans. It’s had to sell the benefits of getting hooked up to a service that allows drivers to receive jobs, rather than have to drive around looking for passengers by the side of the road. So far, MyTeksi has recruited about 2,500 drivers covering the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, as well as Putrajaya, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. The platform receives one booking every eight seconds, or 10,000 per day, which nets the company about $3,100 (10,000 MYR) daily. Several competitors have joined the fray: and launched last year. But things really started heating up in the past month, when Rocket Internet debuted its service in the country. Since Easytaxi’s launch, there have been rumors of its staff approaching cabs with MyTeksi decals and getting them to hop over to Easytaxi instead. Sources close to the companies said that Easytaxi’s staff have also helped delete the MyTeksi app from drivers’ handsets, instead replacing them with Easytaxi’s app. Joon Chan, managing director at Rocket Internet did little to deny the rumors. “Drivers are free to use any app they want on their phones. It’s only fair since they pay for their own phones and data plans,” he said. He added that only about 10 to 15 percent of the drivers in the country have smartphones, indicating that the addressable pool of drivers is even smaller. But MyTeksi may be deploying its own anti-competitive tactics. Chan produced a photo of the MyTeksi app apparently prompting the driver to remove the Easytaxi app. Chan said Easytaxi started driver acquisition on the 12th of May, and has been putting up kiosks at gas stations to recruit drivers. The startup is expanding quickly—in the past month, it’s added five new employees each week, he said. Gill of MyTeksi, commenting on Rocket’s entrance in its space, said: “They’ve made us better and sharper. We are growing our fleet at a faster pace now, enhancing our service levels and will continue to work hard to maintain our edge. “We must be doing something right if a well-funded and experienced organization such as Rocket Internet finds this space worth their time and investment.” MyTeksi is in the midst of raising its Series A, and has just expanded to Manila. Under Rocket Internet, the Easytaxi service is in 10 different countries now.
The opportunity for taxi apps in Malaysia has been created by the less-than-stellar reputation of taxi drivers there. An old 2008 survey by The Expat ranked Malaysia’s taxis the . And of errant behavior pop up in the media, suggesting this hasn’t changed since. When I was there two weeks ago, most of the taxis I flagged insisted on charging a flat (and significantly higher) fee, refusing to use the official meter for the ride. Some of the locals said being cheated or even robbed by cab drivers was still an issue in the country. Gill said taxi apps have been helping to regulate drivers by registering them to the service, and allowing them to be tracked as they travel. Another factor contributing to the opportunity is the lack of competition with any large taxi company in Malaysia. In Singapore, for example, the main cab operator, , produces an app for its fleet which covers more than 50 percent of the local market. The majority of cabs in Malaysia, however, still rely on radio transmission for job calls. The only cab operator that has produced an app appears to be , but it only has about market share. Its app was released this year. |
Cameron And Tyler Winklevoss Tell Us Why They’re So Bullish On Bitcoin [TCTV] | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | and first emerged as household names in the tech world because of their with that and its . But these days, their focus has shifted onto a new area of the tech industry that’s very different (though no less controversial): . Through their early-stage investment firm, the brothers have bought up roughly , accounting for some one percent of the nascent currency. They have also started leading dealing in Bitcoin technology , and are familiar faces on the general Bitcoin scene with speaking engagements at events such as the . The Winklevosses split most of their time between New York City and Los Angeles, but since they were in the San Francisco Bay Area this week we asked them to swing by TechCrunch TV to talk a bit more in depth about their keen interest in Bitcoin and their various investments in the space. We also talked more broadly about the structure of Winklevoss Capital, how it’s different from standard VC firms, what they bring to the table as investors, how their notoriety affects the way they do business day-to-day, and more. In person, Cameron and Tyler’s demeanor is casual and friendly, but they are clearly quite serious about their roles as investors — and they are both very knowledgable and passionate about the potential of Bitcoin in particular. It will be interesting to see how their position and reputation in the tech industry evolves going forward, as they continue to make moves outside of the social networking space. Check it all out in the video embedded above. |
App Infrastructure Startup Firebase Raises $5.6M From Union Square And Flybridge | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | , a Y Combinator-backed startup that offers infrastructure for real-time apps, is taking the stage today , where it’s announcing that it has raised a $5.6 million Series A from and . As , Firebase aims to enable developers to create web and mobile apps “really, really fast without worrying about servers or writing server code” — you just write front-end code and let Firebase handle the backend. In the past few months, the company has , released , and (a real-time text editor). In announcing the funding, Tamplin said that the new funding will be spent on three main things — improving support for the Firebase community, expanding the team, and launching Firebase’s paid product. The basic idea is to charge based on bandwidth, storage, and number of users. Flybridge previously led . The firm’s general partner, Chip Hazard, and Union Square’s Albert Wenger joined Firebase’s board of directors. Tamplin noted that “both have deep experience helping to build companies with developer-facing products” and both sit on the board of database company . He also said that Wenger was “the only investor we pitched who immediately made a Firebase app.” In an email, Hazard said, “It’s clear from the metrics that the company has a product that developers love and the team and vision to provide companies with a world-class solution for building real-time web applications.” Wenger, meanwhile, has saying that Firebase makes him think of science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke’s famous declaration that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic: I remember first looking at Twilio and thinking it can’t really be that easy to receive a phone call using a program. A couple lines of code? Really? More recently I had the same reaction looking at Firebase. Javascript objects that are local but are synchronized over the network? Set values with a single call and receive a callback when a value changes? That’s really it? In a trial a few weeks ago it took me less than an hour to turn a single player game into a two player game (and that includes signing up for Firebase and reading the documentation). Both of these are examples of a kind of magic for engineers: access to a much more powerful spell that let’s you do new and amazing things. |
Instagram, Technology’s Window To The Soul | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | Today Instagram a new mission statement that reflects its true purpose. At our best, we don’t share photos or videos to brag or get ‘Likes’. We share to let others see through our eyes. Facebook has “To make the world more open and connected”. Now, , Instagram has its own guiding words: The phrase may be new but it was always the point. I remember when Facebook launched status updates. With an audience of my close friends, it became a place for my feelings. One of my first status updates, just a few months after the feature debuted, was “Josh Constine is asleep to dream.” Those words captured my feeling of the possibilities that lay ahead for an excitable college senior. I only wanted to sleep if it let my mind splash in a sea of fancy and the impossible. Otherwise there was just too much life to live. The words would mean nothing to someone who didn’t know me. I failed to really get Twitter until years after I started. For a while I blindly posted links to sites full of “social media tips.” I rambled about my current activities. But one day it struck me. My internal monologue of wild musings didn’t have to stay internal any more. While the norm on Facebook was to post maybe once a day, I didn’t have to ration out my tweets. I could share my thoughts with the world, raw and uncut. People didn’t need to know me. We just needed to be learning, together But my most vivid “eureka” moment with social media happened while I was walking in Golden Gate Park at sunset. Before me, creamy cloudflare reflected off a pond. It was so beautiful it felt selfish to keep it to myself. I wanted all my friends to see what I saw. But I was no photographer, and held just a crummy early-generation iPhone. The shot lacked the vibrance and emotion of being there. Yet with Instagram’s filters I could return to what I captured with my camera. And with time, a community grew around the ability to be transported. This is why Instagram deserves to be mentioned alongside Facebook and Twitter. It may not be an identity provider or the backbone of the real-time web. But it’s the most vivid way to let someone, no matter how far away, feel like they’re standing right beside you. If Facebook is the heart, and Twitter is the head, then Instagram is the eyes, and the eyes are the window to the soul. |
Highland Capital Partners Commits To Invest $25 Million In Leap Motion Developers | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | It seems like every time we’ve got a new developer platform, there needs to be a fund to invest in and entice developers to create awesome new applications for it. First there was the . Then there was the . And the . And the . And now, one venture firm has decided to put aside money for a fund that invests just in developers who make applications for the gesture-based controller. Highland Capital Partners, which is , has committed another $25 million to back the young startup. To do so, it’s established the Leap Fund, which is designed to find and put money into innovative startups that are building new applications that take advantage of its 3D gesture control. So what kind of problems could applications using the Leap Motion Controller solve? According to the press release, Highland is looking for developers, entrepreneurs, and businesses “solving human scale problems” in sectors like education, security, healthcare IT, big data, and productivity, among others. While writing checks big and small — depending on the quality of the team and how big or small of a problem they are trying to tackle — Highland will also provide guidance, mentorship and other resources to help them scale. The announcement comes just about a month before Leap is planning to start and making it . The startup has also done deals with to get embedded on future hardware that they have coming out. Already, more than 65,000 developers have expressed interest in building applications for the Leap Motion’s app store, called Airspace. It gave away more than 10,000 units to developers to build the first generation of applications for general release, and says it has hundreds of thousands of pre-orders for the $79 motion gesture device. |
Video Ad Buying Platform TubeMogul Hires Google Media Platforms Head Chip Scovic As CRO | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | has come a long way since being founded in 2006. The company, which originally provided an analytics service for video distributors, a couple of years ago. With a platform that brand advertisers can use to systematically purchase online video inventory, it’s — and it keeps getting bigger. To help it boost revenue and expand into new markets, the company has hired Chip Scovic, former head of Google’s Media Platforms business for brands, as its new chief revenue officer. Scovic comes with more than a decade of experience in the digital ads world, beginning at DoubleClick in 2000. He also led ad sales for Yahoo Video before ending up at Google, where he helped build the programmatic side of the media platforms business for brands and agencies. In a phone interview, Scovic said he was drawn to TubeMogul thanks to its fast growth and focus on being a technology-first business. With TV marketers realizing that they should start investing heavily in online video, he believes TubeMogul has a huge opportunity for more growth over the coming years. With Scovic taking over the position, TubeMogul has promoted former CRO Paul Joachim to chief financial officer and chief operating officer. The company has also made a couple of other executive appointments to help round out the team. It added Eric Deeds as its general counsel, and Daniel Schotland as its new VP of operations. Deeds joins TubeMogul after more than a decade serving startups and investors as an attorney at law firm DLA Piper. Meanwhile, Schotland came from Cheetahmail, where he was VP of business development. The appointments have been announced, as TubeMogul has raised a bunch of money in an effort to accelerate its business. Last December, it led by Northgate Capital, with existing investors Trinity Ventures and Foundation Capital participating. And it on top of that in May, taking money from SingTel Innov8 to open an office in Beijing and expand its presence in Asia. International expansion will be one of TubeMogul’s key objectives, Scovic told me, along with growing its platform sales business for publishers and brand advertisers. With a platform for understanding the effectiveness of campaigns across multiple screens and devices, the company ultimately hopes that it can bring more brand video advertising online. Given its recent funding and expansion, TubeMogul has been growing fast. The startup has hired more than 75 employees since the start of the year, to bring total headcount to 180 employees. It expects to be around 250 by the end of the year. The company, based in Emeryville, Calif., has raised a total of $46 million since being founded in 2006. |
Photoful Improves On iOS 7’s Photo Gallery With A More Open, Gesture-Based App | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | , a new mobile application which is the rebranding and relaunch of , is hoping to attract iPhone users who want the Photos experience the new iOS 7 mobile operating system will offer…and then some. As with iOS 7’s re-imagined Photos app, Photoful will also sort your photo collection into smart groupings like iOS 7’s “Moments,” but it will allow users to do more, too, including photo tagging and advanced editing, printing, and sharing with several third-party services, as well as navigating through, selecting, and discarding photos using gestures. As with PhotoSocial, the original Apple Photos app, but then added capabilities on top, takes its inspiration from the redesigned version of iOS. It has the iOS 7 look-and-feel, making it one of the first to transition to the new mobile experience Apple recently debuted at WWDC. Often, it’s apps like this that eventually blaze the trail for Apple’s own native applications, which is a precarious position for a startup. For this model to work, the company has to continually stay ahead of whatever Apple is building itself. (Case in point: the new iOS 7 Photos app has taken its own “inspiration” from a number of photo app makers, including Everpix, Moment.me, flayvr, Tracks, Cluster, Story, Flock and more.) That being said, Photoful establishes itself as a fairly robust alternative to the native Photos app. And with some of the options it will add in the near future – like support for other third-party services such as Flickr and Tumblr and photo printing – it will get even better. “You need to start with beating what they have today and rounding out the corners,” explains Photoful founder Jeff Bargmann. “[Apple’s Photos app] is a closed ecosystem – that’s the big problem I see here. No other application can rope into this, and that’s a position that Apple isn’t really going to move from…That’s an opportunity for us.” Bargmann’s background is in designing utilities that augment the features and functions available on the native OS. He previously created Windows desktop utilities like Stardock’s and , 1UP Industries’ , and was project lead on Stardock’s Impulse, which . Afterwards, he wanted to expand his skill set, and learned iOS development to build PhotoSocial, now Photoful. Among the new app’s long list of extras, including Aviary-powered filtering and editing tools, a collage builder, a slideshow maker, Postagram export, and more, the best feature is simply how you interact with the app: gestures. Not only do you edit album titles with a tap (which is a fairly common behavior), you can also slide your finger across rows of photos to select or unselect them. Plus, you can pull photos off to one side of your screen to delete them or off to the other side to share them via email, SMS, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. The gestures are really natural and intuitive, unlike some apps where you struggle to learn the new interactions. Here, you immediately just get it. And as soon as you do it, you realize that Apple’s Photos app is lacking. Being able to tag photos, too, is another great addition – especially for those who find the tagging paradigm, and the streams of related content that it allows for, to make more sense that having to place photos into folders or manually create albums. In the future, Bargmann plans to extend the Photoful app to sync and share with other services like Flickr, Tumblr, and messaging clients like WhatsApp, as well as partner with other developers to offer users different photo editing options, whether that’s through in-app integrations or directing users to third-party apps that could be purchased and launched from within Photoful. Today, however, Photoful is . |
Instagram Video Vs. Vine: What’s The Difference? | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | just launched . Glorious, 15-second, editable video functionality. Complete with image stabilization. So what does this mean for Vine? In the end, the competition should give users plenty to be excited about, whether you’re a Vine loyalist or an Instagrammaholic. And both apps will likely continue to thrive, as I’ve stated a few times already. Where Instagram’s user base is mostly made up of people documenting their feet, coffees, and pets, Vine has attracted a group of users who are pleased by the challenges set forth in the app. Instagram’s filters, longer video length, stability technology and already-ingrained user behavior will keep its video offering very similar to its photo offering. People will now just post videos of their feet, coffees, and pets. At the same time, Vine’s growing community of creatives and tinkering designers will likely continue to blossom, as well. But to end , let’s go ahead and take a hard look at how these platforms are different: Let’s start with length. Vine videos are approximately 6.5 seconds long, if we’re getting specific. Twitter and Vine put a lot of science and research into this length, determining that it’s the perfect length for video consumption, and forces the creator to think outside of the box in order to tell a story succinctly. It’s very Twitter-esque. allows for 15 seconds of video, which could feel long for the Instagram video viewer, but roomy and quite comfortable for the creator. Editability? Well, both platforms let you shoot multiple, disjointed clips and string them together. However, Instagram will let users delete the last clip that they shot in a series, just in case it was a bad take. You are not allowed to delete the second clip in a series, without deleting the fourth and third first. In other words, you can only remove the most recent clip taken. Vine, on the other hand, doesn’t let you edit at all. Still, the founders this morning within the app, which would allow for a little more freedom creatively. Neither Vine nor Instagram will let you pull video from your camera roll. Both insist that you shoot your Vineable or Instagrammable video within the respective apps. Sorry, folks. However, both apps will instantly save your Vined or Instagrammed clips to the camera roll for later use. They also have front-facing camera functionality in common. Both Vine and Instagram will let you switch back and forth between front- and rear-facing cameras while shooting. This feature was originally not available on Vine, but shortly after the app launched. Both apps also let you mention other users to tag them in a Vine. In true Instagram style, the Facebook-owned app has indeed provided filters for its new video-sharing function, and they’re brand new filters from the same old photo filters we’re used to. There are 13 new filters in all, and each of them are specifically designed with video in mind. Vine does not offer filters, and I don’t imagine that the app will do so anytime soon. It appears that Vine is still interested in giving creators tools to make interesting, beautiful moving imagery, but I predict that those tools will be in line with higher quality videos as opposed to more convenient creation. In other words, I expect to see features like voiceover, or perhaps a tool that helps creators make more seamless animation-style Vines, to land on the network. One feature that got a lot of “Oohs” and “Ahhs” from the press conference crowd was , which helps stabilize video shot within the app. Though image stabilization software is said to sacrifice image quality in other ways, most of the time, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem for Instagram’s ever-growing user base. Instagram filters, brightness settings, etc. certainly mess with a photo’s quality enough to begin with, but with the reward of looking tanner, or capturing an unnaturally blue sky. Vine has no such feature, or at the very least hasn’t mentioned anything like it. Sharing options haven’t expanded for either app, but Instagram has Vine topped on this front. Where Vine only lets you share to Vine, Facebook, and Twitter, Instagram lets you share videos to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and foursquare, as well as through email. However, it’s worth remembering that Twitter’s Vine has full Twitter card support, meaning Vines display right in your Twitter stream. Systrom turned off Twitter Card support to push more traffic to Instagram.com back in December. Both apps let users geo-tag their locations, but only Instagram offers a photo map letting you surf users photos based on location. The Instagram stream remains much unchanged. Videos are still a perfect square, just like photos, but with a cute little camcorder icon adorning the top right corner. Both apps will autoplay videos, but Instagram seems to offer a little two-second buffer waiting for you to pause there in your stream before it plays. Vine is more quick-fire. Neither app has options for silencing video within the mobile apps, unless you turn sound off on your entire phone. On desktop, Vines can be muted. Instagram videos can not be muted. Vine has also offered users the ability to embed Vines via desktop, which is a feature Instagram did not include for on Instagram.com. Another, bigger difference with regards to consumption is the fact that Vine videos loop, while Instagram videos only play once. This gives Vines a more gif-like quality, especially when tethered to that shorter, six-second limit. Instagram videos are more of a story with a beginning and an end. It’s also worth mentioning that Vine’s stream may look radically different soon, though. of new UI tweaks showed a new, full screen layout for the Vine stream that removes the space normally held by likes and comments. Vine already has a solid user base of video-sharing addicts. They craved snackable video-sharing before an app like Instagram could give it to them. The limits placed upon them by Twitter’s disposition towards brevity makes Vines that much more creative, and the looping aspect throws a dash of Gif into the mix. And we all know how popular Gifs are. That said, Instagram video will surely slow Vine’s growth to an extent. Instagram built a video-sharing product for the masses. There’s plenty of time to shoot a video, you can make it pretty with a filter, and they’ll even help you with a steady hand. But Instagram video’s mass market appeal only makes Vine’s niche, creative-focused breed of video-sharing that much more niche, and creative-focused. Time will tell how the two compete in the market, but in the meantime we should all grab a bowl of popcorn to watch the story unfold. Even if it takes a while, there are plenty of Vines and Instagram videos out there to wade through. |
Agawi Uses Its Cross-Platform Gaming Tech To Launch A Mobile Ad Unit That You Can Actually Play | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | Pretty much everyone agrees that mobile advertising isn’t very good (or outright sucks). Here’s an interesting solution from — an ad unit for mobile games called AppGlimpse, which functions as a playable demo for the game. The startup, , has developed technology for virtualizing games and eventually other apps so that they can run on any platform. In this case, Agawi says that it can create a cloud version of any Android game that will run as an ad on both iOS and Android. Currently, mobile ads for games are limited to banners or, at best, videos. Co-founder Rohan Relan said that doesn’t really convey the experience of playing the game: “It’s like a movie trailer that’s just static pictures and words.” Advertisers just upload their games to the AppGlimpse dashboard, then they can run ads that access a virtualized version of the game running in Agawi’s cloud. The demo can last for up to two minutes, then it directs users to full, downloadable versions. As stated above, you can use the ad to promote both the iOS and Android versions of a game, but you need to have an Android version to build the ad unit. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcW9awR5an4&w=560&h=315] “In the long-term there is a strategy for even using iOS versions of a game to create ads. It’s a significant engineering effort, but we’ll get there,” Rohan Relan said. “In the near-term though we’re going to only be creating ads from the Android versions, but given how fast Android is growing and the popularity of cross-platform tools like Unity, we think we should still be able to cover a ton of games.” This could be beneficial for publishers too, said co-founder Peter Relan. After all, they already get paid “a huge premium” for running engaging video ads, so advertisers should pay even more for this. (Publishers can integrate with AppGlimpse by using the company’s software development kit.) When I visited the Agawi offices a few weeks ago, one of the main points the team made was its intention to go beyond cloud gaming and eventually become the enabling technology for all kinds of cross-platform applications. (And they did show me tests of some non-gaming apps.) AppGlimpse is the first step in that direction — although Peter Relan said that the initial advertisers and publishers will be gaming companies. Focusing on gaming is “an obvious go-to-market strategy,” but, he added, “we could be back in a few months and say that we’re now opening up to all apps.” Interested developers should . |
Hands-On With Instagram’s New Video Feature | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | We’ve just made our way out of Facebook’s Headquarters in Menlo Park, where Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom took the stage to debut the app’s new (and not un-Vinelike) video functionality. Kevin Systrom suggested on stage that they’ve been thinking about how to do video since day one — and if that’s the case, it shows. The new video functionality slips right into Instagram’s UI as if it were meant to be there. As you scroll through your feed, videos are highlighted with a small play icon in the upper righthand corner. You can stop scrolling and hover over an item for 2 seconds and it’ll auto play, or you can tap it to begin playing it immediately. Even on the cellular connection I’m on right now, videos seem to start playing quickly, without a noticeable amount of time for buffering. If you’re accustomed to Vine, the process of recording a video on Instagram is very, very similar: put your thumb down (in Instagram’s case, on a record button) to record, lift it to stop. Each time you do this, you create a new “segment” to your video, each of which can be deleted independently in the not-unlikely event that you mess up your video halfway through creating it. Though clearly quite similar in concept, Instagram and Vine aren’t : Instagram’s max video length is over twice as long, at 15 seconds as opposed to Vine’s 6. The videos on Instagram don’t loop, which is interesting; while looping is something that may be a bit signature to Vine, I feel like it’s a bit limiting to not at least give the user the option. Oh, and of course, you’ve access to Instagram’s signature feature: filters. Like with photos, filters must be applied you shoot a video — you can’t see how a filter would look in a certain environment before filming. Once you’ve got your video shot, though, filters are applied in realtime on top of the video as your preview plays back. One big catch: while you’ve always been able to import photos from your phone’s camera roll into Instagram, you do that with videos — at least not in this first version. If you want a video in Instagram, you have to shoot it in Instagram. Kevin tells me that this is largely an interface challenge (how do you make it just as simple to edit an imported video?), but issomething that they’re considering changing in future releases. So, what do you think: will you use this? If you’re a Vine user, would you switch away? |
Samsung’s Shape-Shifting Ativ Q Isn’t Pretty, But Running Windows 8 And Android May Make It A Worthy Workhorse | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | Samsung just pulled back the curtain on a new line of Ativ Windows notebooks, but perhaps the most interesting of the company’s new Ativs is a 13.3-inch convertible tablet it hopes will appeal those prepping to head back to school. The shape-shifting Ativ Q sports a tablet mode, a video-friendly formfactor with the screen held near vertical, and a more traditional notebook configuration that reveals its built-in QWERTY keyboard, but it’s got an even niftier trick up its sleeve. While the Ativ Q boots into Windows 8 there’s also a dual-OS mode that allows the users to switch to stock Android 4.2.2, thereby allowing for Microsoft productivity staples such as Office to live in close proximity to the Google Play Store and the usual gamut of Android apps. It’s a cake-and-eat-it-too tablet. Or a tablet for someone who just can’t decide between Windows or Android. The Ativ Q also supports the classic Windows desktop mode – and since the tablet includes Samsung’s S Pen stylus (which pulls out from a slot in its side) the tiny menus of classic Windows aren’t as fiddly as they would otherwise be to navigate on such a device. Samsung said photos and files can be shared between the Windows and Android OS modes. Switching between the different OSes seemed fast during my brief hands on, although it’s relatively easy to accidentally revert to Windows. The Ativ Q is not a native Android device, being as it’s not booting directly to Android, but Samsung made a point of demoing a handful of Android games, including Angry Birds, running on the Ativ Q to show it is capable of handling such apps without a significant dip in performance.
The touchscreen display is QHD with a resolution of 3,200 x 1,800, which works out to a pixel density of about 275 PPI. The aspect ratio of the screen means the device feels quite long and narrow (not unlike plenty of other Windows convertibles). The entire device also feels very hefty – it’s not a tablet you want to hold in your hands for long — and it’s relatively thick, at 13.9mm wide. It is a serious bit of kit to lug about, but if you consider it as a laptop replacement rather than an iPad competitor then that’s perhaps to be expected. It’s certainly not the world’s most elegant slice of portable computing but Samsung is obviously hoping its flexibility is what will make it stand out. Pulling up on the side of the screen when the device is in tablet mode lifts it out on a built-in hinged stand so it can be angled in a variety of ways, including a so-called “floating” mode suitable for presentations when a standing speaker needs to look down at the screen. The display can also be angled steeply up, with the keyboard entirely out of sight, to view videos. And it can be moved into a typing mode where the display is tucked behind the built-in keyboard.
This keyboard felt unpleasantly plasticky to my fingertips but it was relatively roomy, despite taking up less than half the width of the device. There’s no space for a trackpad but Samsung has added in an optical nav key in the centre of the keyboard if you prefer not to use the touchscreen, plus three physical selection keys at the edge of the keyboard to act as mouse keys. Samsung has sited the device’s CPU and components inside the flexible stand portion of the device, rather than inside the screen or under the keyboard. It said it wanted to keep the hot parts away from the bits the user touches. Whether that’s a huge advantage remains to be seen, but it does mean the screen is thinner than it might have been otherwise, so probably a little easier to move around. The screen has a Windows touch-key on the front which returns the user to the Windows 8 homescreen, There’s a tile on that interface for switching to the Android OS (and another for Windows Classic). When using the device in the Android scenario, there are additional nav keys along the bottom of the screen for switching back to Windows. The device being demoed during my hands on was running stock Android 4.2.2, rather than having any TouchWiz overlay. Samsung said pricing for the Ativ Q will be confirmed later, and the price tag is likely going to be the deciding factor on whether this hybrid beast flies. It’s not what you’d call stylish or elegant, and its weight puts its portability in doubt, but it has the potential to be a bit of a workhorse -– with both Windows and Android, and tablet and QWERTY functionality on tap. |
Samsung Reveals The Ativ Q, A Convertible Windows 8 Tablet That Runs Android, Too | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | Samsung has just kicked off its Premiere event at Earls Court in London, and decided to lead with one particularly curious device — in addition to the ability to transform from a 2.8-pound tablet to a notebook with QWERTY keyboard, the company’s shape-shifting Ativ Q convertible also gives users a taste of the Android ecosystem. As is usually the case though, news of the Q slipped out just a bit ahead of schedule — Italian-langauge site came through with early press images of the Q hours before the official reveal (though there was no mention of the Q’s dual-OS tendencies). That initial leak pointed to the inclusion of an incredibly high resolution 13.3-inch display and an new Intel Haswell Core i5 processor, as well as 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, details which have . Samsung’s on-stage banter further confirms that the Q’s display runs at 3200 x 1800, which makes for a pixel density of 275 PPI. That high resolution panel bodes well for the grid-based Windows 8 homescreen, but I have to wonder just how well the traditional Windows desktop works on it — the Ativ Q squeezes more pixels into a 13.3-inch display than even the , which had some serious visibility issues once you left the homescreen. Curiously, Samsung says the Q is capable of running for about 9 hours before having to recharge, though we’ll have to wait and see just how well those claims hold up in the real world. Of course, all of that sort of pales in comparison to the notion that your Windows desktop apps are just a touch away from your Angry Birds accomplishments. The Q will let users hop into an unfettered, stock version of Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean without having to reboot their device. Users can also effectively transfer data between the two OSes — Samsung Europe marketing chief Patrick Povel noted that people could pin Android apps to the Windows 8 start screen. A tacit nod to the lack of Windows 8 apps, perhaps? Natasha Lomas spent some time with the Ativ Q, you can see here impressions of the kooky convertible . |
Samsung’s Galaxy NX Is A 4G Android Interchangeable Lens Camera That Lets You Post To Instagram | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | Now that , a connected pro camera with direct access to Android apps makes a fair bit of sense. Enter the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy NX. Samsung continues to push its Galaxy brand into new devices’ types and categories, a strategy aimed at extending the success it’s had with the brand in smartphones. Today the Korean giant has added the Galaxy badge to its high end camera range, with the launch of this digital mirrorless interchangeable lens camera (MILC): its first interchangeable lens camera to run Android. Samsung’s other high end cameras have been badged NX but this is the first time it’s used the Galaxy brand on its pro range. It’s not, however, the first time it’s pushed the Galaxy brand into camera tech territory — having recently extended the Galaxy S4 range with a hybrid smartphone point-and-shoot camera with a 10x optical zoom on the back. That device, the Galaxy S4 Zoom, remains a mid-range affair. It’s certainly not targeting the professional photographer market, as the Galaxy NX presumably is. Samsung also previously launched another mid-range camera running Android, called the Galaxy Camera — making extending the brand to its pro MILC range a natural next step. The Galaxy NX runs Android 4.2.2 skinned with a version of Samsung’s TouchWiz UI tweaked to make sense for the camera format. This means the UI defaults to the camera app view. Swiping left from there brings up a familiar Samsung Android home screen where users can get at all the usual Android stuff including Google Play, the web browser, plus apps — like Instagram, say. And that’s the obvious use-case for a bit of kit like this: being able to post near-SLR quality photos direct to apps like Instagram or share on social media, without even having to pull the photos off the camera first. The Galaxy NX has both 4G/LTE and Wi-Fi built in. It is Samsung’s first interchangeable lens camera to include LTE, in fact. The version of Android on the Galaxy NX does not include a phone dialer but that’s the only other major software difference when compared to a typical Samsung smartphone. The point here is clearly for Samsung to leverage the familiarity of its TouchWiz environment to try to bolster the appeal of its high end camera kit. Who might the Galaxy NX appeal to? Perhaps someone hankering for a better camera but not necessarily yet especially well versed in how to use more pro photography equipment. The external look and feel of the Galaxy NX bears that theory out, being especially plain looking — almost devoid of markings. It’s also terribly lightweight for such a large bit of kit, adding another convenience string to its bow. The Galaxy NX has a 20.3MP APS-C CMOS Image sensor that’s 24mm in size. It’s powered by Samsung’s DRIMe IV processor, which it says is 4x faster than its previous processor. The device supports up to 25,600 ISO, and it’s the same family of interchangeable lens as Samsung’s prior MILCs. [slideshow include=”836055,836056,836057″] |
Hands-On With Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Zoom, The Smartphone With A 10x Optical Zoom Lens | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Zoom steers its Galaxy brand into slightly new territory, by creating a hybrid smartphone-cum-pocket-camera. Unlike pretty much every other cameraphone around, the Zoom has a 10x optical zoom lens protruding from its rear. In short, it’s a phone with two faces: one pure Galaxy smartphone, the second resembling a classic point-and-shoot camera. It’s a curious move that’s likely to , but there’s a bigger question here — what’s it like using it? If you only look at the Zoom’s phone half, you’d quickly discover it’s largely standard mid-range Galaxy fare — the usual TouchWiz interface runs atop Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, and there’s a dual-core 1.5GHz chipset powering the show. It felt fast and responsive during my brief hands on, and the 4.3-inch qHD AMOLED screen was bright and plenty big enough for all the typical smartphone uses, without being as huge a pane as Samsung’s flagship high-end smartphones. The Zoom has a removable battery, accessible via a side door near the camera grip that also covers the SIM slot. Your usual selection of ports is accounted for too, though the microSD card slot, headphone jack, and micro-USB charger port are joined by a tripod mount on the base. Samsung’s camera-centric chimera has a surprisingly pleasing feel, considering it’s considerably heavier than the company’s usual, plasticy smartphones. Despite the extra heft the overall feel is balanced. You won’t be putting it into the pocket of your skinny jeans as it would certainly drag you down, but the extra weight doesn’t feel unwieldy. Perhaps because it looks so camera-like that the expectation is of more weight from the get-go. The look of the device is exactly that of a hybrid. Holding it from the phone side it looks exactly like the . Indeed, ignore the camera half and it is basically that phone, says Samsung. Turn it around and it’s a point and shoot digital camera. The only odd moments come when you’re holding it like a camera, so it’s in landscape orientation, but using the phone’s Android homescreen or menus. These stay in portrait orientation. Of course the camera app interface supports both landscape and portrait orientations, as do other apps – such as the web browser – but homescreens remain portrait-only.
Construction feels solid. There’s plenty of plastic on the device but the lens enclosure is metal. The edges of the phone also have the same brushed silver bands as the rest of the S4 range – albeit that appears to be plastic, rather than metal. The camera ergonomics work reasonably well, with a nicely shaped front ridge for gripping with your right hand. This is the same shiny plastic as the rest of the casing, so there’s no rubberised covering to aid grip. The positioning of the phone power key (on the left of the top edge, when holding the phone in the camera stance) is potentially slightly awkward as it is close to where your left hand rests when you’re using the camera in landscape mode. There’s just about enough room to avoid it but a few accidental strikes are probably inevitable. Now we’re getting to the fun part. The Galaxy Zoom has a 16MP sensor with optical image stabilisation, 10x optical zoom and a 24mm lens. Photo quality was difficult to assess in the relatively dingy conditions of the press room where the device was being demoed, and with limited hands-on time, but test shots did display a fair amount of noise. Exposure could also be uneven, and lower light shots came off with some noticeable blur, despite the image stabilisation tech inside the device.
Overall photo quality looked fair, but left plenty to be desired. Shooting in brighter outdoor conditions would undoubtedly result in crisper detail but as with many cameraphones the Galaxy Zoom appears to be a middling performer in less ideal lighting conditions (not that the average consumer will immediately realise that). The Zoom’s tactile optical zoom lens and physical camera looks are likely to win over a portion of Samsung’s target user based on their familiarity with the traditional camera form factor. Samsung cited “busy mums” as one target – i.e. people who take a lot of shots, and care about the results, but aren’t as discerning about image quality as camera pros. Samsung has added an ‘expert’ mode to the Zoom’s camera interface for users who want to play around with a few more controls. This mode allows manual tweaking of setting like EV brightness, colour tone, saturation, sharpness, contrast, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance and metering. However the typical Galaxy Zoom user is likely going to be sticking with its auto mode or consumer friendly ‘smart mode’ which offers a carousel of pre-sets to pick from, such as landscape, dawn, best face (which takes a series of shots and lets you pick the best one) and kids shot. The latter plays a baby-friendly noise to attract the subject’s attention so they’re looking at the camera before it snaps the shot. File that under ‘parent friendly’. Likewise, the mechanical operation of the zoom lens is likely to take a little getting used to as it’s sited close to the edge of the device which means the lens can push against your fingers if you’re wrapping your hand around the back of the device, causing your grip to slip. It won’t take a user long to get accustomed to the moving protrusion, however. When you’re using the device as a phone, so when the lens is at its most retracted, it does stick out into your palm, feeling a bit lumpy. It’s not actually too bad though — and gives something grippy to tighten your palm around. On the top right of the device, when holding the phone in the classic camera stance, is its round physical shutter key. This looks like a traditional camera shutter button. It requires a very light touch for the initial focus depression, and more of a squeeze to take the photo as you’d expect. The button felt nice and responsive during my hands on. It can also be used to jump right into camera mode from elsewhere in the OS by holding the button down. When not in the camera application, turning the lens ring activates a camera shortcut menu where you can choose from a range of camera mode options – either by tapping the touchscreen or turning the dial to move the selection then hitting the shutter to select the mode you want. Modes are also accessible from within the camera app via a touch key at the right hand side of the interface. When using the lens ring shortcut, modes on offer are night, animated photo, macro, landscape, beauty face (a mode that automatically ‘airbrushes’ portraits), the gallery and an auto mode that pre-selects the mode to take the shot in, based on what the camera calculates is the most appropriate mode for the conditions you’re shooting in. The zoom ring can also be used to navigate inside the gallery, including to zoom into shots to look at details. The navigation doesn’t seem especially well thought through, however, as you can’t apparently move through photos in sequence. To browse shots you have to resort to using your finger on the screen. The fly-by-wire feel of the lens ring is also slightly too loose to be entirely pleasing. Plus there’s a slight lag between you turning and the camera interface responding by zooming in/out. It’s not a huge lag, but does make it feel slightly unresponsive. Overall, the Galaxy S4 Zoom feels like a well thought through concept — the combining of the traditional camera form with a smartphone works surprisingly well and doesn’t feel unbalanced. But the let down is not that it looks too ugly or feels too heavy or is just weird to operate. Rather what’s a bit disappointing is that the picture quality isn’t better. For a mid range cameraphone the Galaxy S4 Zoom’s photos are probably about as good as you’d expect. But with such a whopping zoom lens on the back it’s hard not to hope for a little more photographic oomph. Still, this device’s mainstream consumer target may well be perfectly happy with what its lens can turn out — and zoom in on. |
I/O Ventures VC Paul Bragiel Goes On Hiatus To Train For The Winter Olympics | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | Some VCs are into . Some do . Then there’s i/o Ventures managing director , who has spent the last two and a half months in the Nordics, either cross-country skiing for two to four hours per day or doing “swamp training,” where he runs through bogs for several hours. His dream? To compete in the Winter Olympics, which are just eight months away in Sochi, Russia. “I want to walk into the Olympic Stadium with people from all 192 countries. This is what’s awesome about the world. I’ve wanted to do this since I was 11 and watching the 1988 Seoul Olympics on TV,” he said in an interview from Austria, where he just relocated to train for a month. “I kind of gave up the dream when I was 14 and became a computer nerd. But that’s a whole different story.” The U.S. team only has about four slots and is one of the most competitive countries in the world, Bragiel said. So he’s in talks with various South American and Sub-Saharan African countries to get dual citizenship to compete on their behalf. Because he also co-founded the Tanzania and Kenya-focused Savannah Fund and advises other countries on how to grow startup communities, he believes citizenship won’t be that big a hurdle. “This is an honor. Someone giving you citizenship? I’m going to wear that country’s flag proudly,” he said. Picking a sport was a long process. One of the first sports he looked at was curling. He even visited a curling center in Minnesota, but then he realized that there wasn’t a team that would let him join on less than a year’s notice. Then he looked at bobsledding, and traveled to Latvia to look for a team. “The costs ended up being very prohibitive. It can cost millions of dollars and you have to ship a bobsled internationally,” he said. He also would have needed to find a driver. “If I did it, I would probably flip over and die,” he said. Then the luge terrified him, and he didn’t think he could get used to downhill skiing as a longtime snowboarder. So that left cross-country skiing. He reached out to friends like Trulia co-founder and competitive triathlete Sami Inkinen and others, who helped him find a coach. Then Bragiel bought a one-way ticket to Finland a little over two months ago and began training. His training regimen consists of skiing for several hours a day and doing sprints. Then he’s also added in swamp training. He’ll be in Austria for the next month before starting to compete in qualifying races in New Zealand and Australia in August. To qualify for the Olympics, he must be able to finish five qualifying races where he’s not more than 10 minutes behind world’s top cross-country skiier, Norway’s Petter Northug (pictured right). “My coach gives me a 20 to 30 percent chance,” he said. He says that during training downtime, he’s still active in helping existing portfolio companies. But he’s not taking on any new companies at the moment. “I’m long distance with my partners at the moment. I’m on hiatus,” he said. “But I still have a good amount of downtime. I still give my current companies attention and I’m on e-mail all the time doing introductions. The only thing I really can’t do is sit down and have a beer with them.” The more involved he gets with competing, however, he’s realizing that he may need to get sponsors to help with the process. “A lot of Olympians get nutritionists or guys to help them wax skis, which can take hours at this competitive level, or physical therapists,” he said. He says that he would donate money back to the ski associations he’s training with. “I train with 17 and 20-year-olds and I see how they sometimes forgo their college plans to compete,” he said. “I want everyone else to do well too.” |
Instagram Launches Cinema, Its Fix For The iPhone’s Shaky Camera | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | Instagram today finally unveiled and served it with a kicker, which is great for those of us with shaky hands. It launched Cinema: a way to stabilize the video captured with the iPhone. Right now this is an iPhone-only app. And for good reason. Since the launch of the iPhone 5, Android phone makers have embraced higher-quality cameras than Apple with many flagship devices already featuring superior image stabilization. Of course a lot of this is hearsay right now. Image stabilization performed by software, as is done here, historically gets the job done at the sacrifice of image quality. Either it introduces more digital noise or messes with the flow of the image. But most of the time the image does improve in some way. This feature gives Instagram a solid leg up over Vine and other camera apps. Like when taking pics with Instragram, the photos often look better with a slight adjustment. Other apps, , feature similar tools, but Instagram bakes in features that make their pics, and now videos, look as good as possible — and then adds a social layer on top. Cinema is built into Instagram’s iOS app, which is available in the now. |
Instagram Launches 15-Second Video Sharing Feature, With 13 Filters And Editing | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | , the immensely popular photo-sharing app that was acquired by Facebook in a , is not just for photos anymore. At a at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters, Instagram’s co-founder and CEO debuted a new feature called, simply, “ ” This lets people create 15-second videos to share on the service. The feature includes simple editing capabilities as well as 13 new filters, which were specially created for video. “What we did to photos, we just did to video,” Systrom said. This feature, which is rolling out to all Instagram users on and today, will impact a huge number of people due to Instagram’s current reach. Systrom said today that Instagram , who have shared 16 billion photos to date. Engagement on the app is high: Over 1 billion “likes” are added to the service every day. This confirms from earlier this week, and also puts an end to the that has spawned a number of new startups aiming to fill the gap — Instagram is now the Instagram for video, quite literally. None of the existing apps in the mobile video market from an adoption perspective, so it will be interesting to see how this takes on with the mainstream. Indeed, this is a clear move that pits Facebook more firmly against , which acquired its own short-form video-sharing . This morning Vine went on the offense, announcing . In response to a question about why Instagram chose the 15 second time frame, as opposed to the six-second videos offered by Vine, Systrom said that 15 seconds was “an artistic choice” and stressed that he doesn’t necessarily say that one is better than the other. “It’s that Goldilocks moment. It feels just right.” This is the biggest change in what Instagram fundamentally is since the service first launched nearly three years ago. Systrom has said in the past that video , but has stressed that video adds challenges that are not presented by photos. In an last fall, Systrom was asked why video-sharing apps haven’t taken off in the same way that photo-sharing apps have. He said: “I think it’s a combination of data speed limitations and the time it takes to watch a video. Videos are a very difficult medium to be good at, and also a difficult medium to consume quickly.” Presumably, being a part of a company with Facebook’s resources has enabled Instagram to finally build a feature that rises to video’s challenges. During a Q&A session following the Video On Instagram launch, Systrom said that adding video was a “significant feat” from a server and infrastructure engineering perspective. Here is a video of Video On Instagram at work:
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/68765934 w=400&h=300] |
Instagram Crosses 130 Million Users, With 16 Billion Photos And Over 1 Billion Likes Per Day | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | On stage at Facebook’s big mystery event, Instagram’s Kevin Systrom has just shared some new growth statistics for the photo-sharing platform. Instagram now boasts over 130 million active monthly users. And that’s not all — there are over 16 billion photos on the service altogether, with over 1 billion likes given to users each . , Instagram had just surpassed 100 million users. But much of that growth came with the introduction of an Android version of the application. Originally, Instagram launched on iOS only, and had around 30 million users in the seventeen months of iOS exclusivity. A , over half of Instagram’s 100 million users are coming from Android. In terms of volume as a photo-sharing network, Flickr surpassed photos in of this year. That should give you a pretty clear idea of the scale of Instagram usage thus far. |
Netflix Will Launch In The Netherlands Later This Year As Its International Expansion Slows | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | Netflix has announced that it will begin operating in The Netherlands later this year, further expanding its European footprint. The Netherlands, Netflix’s seventh European country, is a relatively small market for the streaming video service, but in keeping with Netflix’s more cautious approach to moving into new countries after its aggressive international expansion last year lost money. After breaking into several international markets, including the UK, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, in 2012, that it would dramatically decrease the rate of its overseas expansion in 2013. During the past six months, Netflix has not launched in any new countries. In its first-quarter earnings report this April, Netflix said that it expects a profit of up to $149 million from its U.S. streaming business in the second quarter, but losses of up to $81 million from its international streaming in 40 countries. The company’s U.S. business is also given a boost by its DVD-by-mail segment, which will contribute additional profits of up to $112 million. Netflix now has 7.1 million international users in Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. The streaming video company currently has 29.2 million streaming subscribers in the U.S. The company did not give any details about its catalog or pricing, but it did say that users in The Netherlands will get access to Hollywood-produced, local and global TV series and films, including Netflix Original Series “House of Cards” and “Arrested Development” on their mobile devices, PCs and game consoles. A is now open for notification sign-ups. |
Fab Grabs $150M At $1B Valuation (And Is Raising Another $100M+ More) | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | Design-focused commerce company Fab has raised that round of funding a few months ago. Fab is announcing today that it has raised $150 million in the first tranche of the company’s Series D round of financing. We’re told that $150 million is the first part of a larger Series D round that Fab expects to complete over the next few months. New to this round is Chinese Internet giant Tencent, who will also have a board seat at Fab; and Japanese conglomerate Itochu. Previous investors Atomico, Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures, RTP Capital, Pinnacle Ventures, Lars Hinrichs, and Docomo Capital also participated in this latest round of financing. This brings Fab’s total funding to $310 million. We’re hearing from multiple sources that the pre-money valuation of the company was $1 billion, as we had reported in April (a spokesperson for Fab has confirmed the valuation). And we’ve also heard from a source that Fab will be raising another $100 million or more in the later part of this round. At Fab’s last round of financing in 2012, the company was worth around . Past investors include First Round Capital, SoftTech VC, Baroda Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, Thrive Capital, Kevin Rose, SV Angel, The Washington Post, VTB Capital, Phenomen Ventures and the Times of India. Founder and CEO Jason Goldberg said the company started down the fundraising route in March to raise enough capital to have several years of runway, at least until 2015. He added that for this round there was $400 million worth of interest coming from investors. Fourteen million users strong, Fab is continuing to grow at a fast clip after its initial pivot. Last year, the company saw $120 million in revenue, and revealed in February that sales were up by nearly 300 percent in January 2013 over January 2012. In fact, January was Fab’s third-highest sales month ever. According to the company, Fab should reach $250 million in 2013 sales. Fab’s now achieving 43 percent gross margins, up from 29 percent in 2011. Interestingly, Fab says that most of its revenue is not derived from flash sales, which was the initial model Fab adopted after its pivot in 2011. As we , Fab infamously pivoted from Fabulis, which was a social network for the gay community, into a flash sales site. Fab says that two-thirds of sales are currently not from the flash-sales on the site, and the company recently rebranded to reflect this change. And 50 percent of Fab’s sales are in home categories. In May, Fab , which makes it more of an integrated e-commerce site. You can access design pages by room, type of furniture, color, designer and more. International is also a huge potential growth area for the company. Fab has 1 million members in the UK, which is generating nearly 40 percent of its sales in Europe and is its fastest-growing market outside the U.S. Asia is the next frontier, which is why Goldberg and Fab are bringing on Tencent and Itochu as partners. As Goldberg explains, there are currently only four e-commerce companies in the world that are valued at more than $10 billion: Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, and Rakuten. He believes that Fab has a legitimate chance to be the fifth by leading in what he calls Emotional Commerce. This basically means that Fab helps people discover the items they love and want. Part of Fab’s plan to take over emotional commerce involves making its own line of products and home goods. Fab is also partnering with designers to manufacture and sell home furnishings exclusively through Fab. Additionally, Fab is experimenting with brick and mortar stores, with the first store debuting in Hamburg, Germany. Mobile is also a huge growth area, with one-third of sales being placed via mobile. And international will also be a major strategic focus for Fab, which just acquired German custom furniture store Massivkonzept. Fab sells products in 27 countries and 40 percent of sales today occur outside the U.S. $150 million is a lot of cash, and Fab is raising more. Where is the money going? Goldberg says that Fab will be investing in additional enhancements to its supply chain, logistics, customer service, technology, and merchandising. At the beginning of 2012 it took 16 days — on average — from time of purchase to shipping a product. Today, 75 percent of Fab’s orders ship within 24 hours of purchase, and Fab wants to make sure this is the case for 100 percent of the products sold on the site. This year Fab will open its own new Fab-operated warehouse in The Netherlands to serve European customers. In 2014 Fab will open a warehouse in the Las Vegas area. As mentioned above, Fab will also be doubling down on manufacturing and designing more products in-house, as well as working with designers to offer items exclusively on Fab. We can also expect more development in social and mobile. And Goldberg says Fab will be putting more investment in international (likely via more acquisitions, as it has bought five companies in two years). With the Tencent investment, Goldberg says that Fab will be working together to expand the site’s presence in China. As for why Fab has raised as much as it has in only two years, Goldberg maintains that this is how retail works. “Tell me an e-commerce business that is worth more than $5 billion that hasn’t raised a lot of money,” he says. To fund things like logistics, fulfillment, inventory and manufacturing, a business needs a lot of capital, he explains. He adds that if Fab stayed as a U.S. business, the company wouldn’t need to raise as much. There is also now a somewhat clear path towards profitability, at least for the U.S. and European businesses. Goldberg says that Fab will likely become profitable in its U.S. and European operations by Q4 2014 or Q1 2015. |
Ooyala Sets Up R&D Center In Singapore To Chase Mobile Audiences In Asia | Victoria Ho | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | Video services provider is setting up an R&D operations in Singapore, and is hiring researchers and data scientists for the facility. The company provides video technology to media companies and telcos, enabling them to stream their content online such as the , or helping .It claims to have a collective viewership of about 200 million across 130 countries each month. Ooyala has had a small staff of four in Singapore since last year, but the new facility will bump up its presence here to about 20 when it’s operational in 2014, said CEO, Jay Fulcher. The center here will focus on researching localized products for Asia, as the company expands outside of the US. Ooyala will keep its core engineering team in Mountain View, where most of its 300 staff are. It also maintains offices in Sydney, Tokyo, LA, New York and London, with teams of about ten in each of them. Fulcher wouldn’t say how much the company is ploughing into the center here, but said it is making “significant” investments into its growth. Last year, the company raised a massive , led by Australian telco, Telstra. It was its fifth round to date. The company isn’t profitable, but Fulcher said Ooyala can make its books positive “at any given point”, but is choosing to spend aggressively on expansion in the meantime. 45 percent of its revenue comes from North America, with Asia, Latin America and Europe after, in descending order. When I pointed out that it’s generally unusual for companies to have Asia as their second-largest revenue contributor, Fulcher said it’s because Ooyala landed a large client in the Times Group of India. “In fact, that was our first client ever,” he said. As Ooyala expands in Asia, it’s also chasing the growing audience watching video on mobile devices here. According to its latest , Singapore viewers had the longest live viewing sessions at 52 minutes on average. 57 percent also watched online videos to completion, indicating that they were engaged with the content. And more viewers in the region are watching videos longer than ten minutes—considered “longform” for videos, said Fulcher. A third of viewers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand watch these longer videos. Other video networks focusing on mobiles are making an active play for the region, too. California-based just reported that its mobile video network has 80 million monthly viewers, with most of them in the emerging markets in Asia and Latin America. It has raised $35 million to date, and earlier this year acquired another mobile video player, . |
Startup-PR Matchmaker AirPR Opens To The Public, As Data Begins To Reveal How To Fix A Broken Model | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | For pretty much as long as anyone can remember, a relationship triangle, or a “love triangle” if you will, has taken shape between companies and the PR firms that represent them and the press that covers them — existing in some sort of recursive loop. Yet, while that triangle should have come to represent a symbiosis and a valuable communication network, somewhere along the way the triangle broke down. (Defying the laws of Geometry, even.) In reality, today this relationship is more like the . While the matter of who is responsible for the disconnect is subject to debate, the PR industry (for right or wrong) usually takes most of the blame. While the causes are numerous, in the end, most of the problems inherent to the startup-PR relationship are a matter of transparency (or lack therof) and the inability for either side to find the best (and most mutually beneficial) match on the other. with $1 million in seed funding from 500 Startups, Mohr Davidow Ventures, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and others to help solve this problem by creating a marketplace in which startups can find PR representation that’s right for them, and vice versa. Pitched as a kind of “Match.com for PR,” at launch AirPR focused primarily on matching top, pre-screened PR talent in the U.S. with technology startups looking for (and able to pay for) representation. Last week, after a year of testing the system in closed beta, iterating and tweaking, the San Francisco-based company has finally opened its marketplace to the public. With its public launch, is opening its doors to all tech startups, expanding its marketplace to include companies in the lifestyle and consumer goods verticals and adding a few tweaks to its formula. After watching 70 companies go through its PR matchmaking system and processing feedback from PR veterans, AirPR cut its onboarding process in half. Now, in order to find the best match, startups enter the date they want their PR campaign to begin and then answer a series of questions about their focus, stage of development, what kind of help they’d like, how much funding they’ve raised, and so on. AirPR then screens the startups and, if they meet its quality standards, uses the startup’s answers to match them with reps whose experience best fits that criteria. If not, they’re declined. After being alerted to the incoming business leads, reps then place bids for the client, at which point the startup can sift through the offers, compare them, select the best option and pay for a 60-day contract. Based on feedback from startups and PR pros, at launch, the platform also now includes a recommendation system, in which AirPR provides the top three matches based on the data its collected on the PR side. Initially, the company provided a list of all possible matches, but the co-founders tell us that companies were often overwhelmed by an abundance of choice and were less inclined to finish the process than if the system surfaced the three closest matches to the top. In turn, by recommending PR reps and being more proactive in pushing reps to reach out to specific companies, the conversion ended up being faster and a higher percentage of companies closed the deal. While there may be contention over the cause, most will likely agree that the PR model as it currently stands is in sore need of improvement. As someone who stands at one of the corners of the PR Bermuda Triangle, I can attest to this. PR reps have a tough job, and, as in any interest there are incredibly talented, bright firms and reps that get lumped in with the offenders who blanket journalists inbox with copy-and-pasted pablum and poorly worded pitches that aren’t even relevant to a writer’s beat. Any improvement on the overall quality of the PR-startup relationship stands to benefit everyone involved, and while it’s still early to say just how effective AirPR’s model will be, it’s worth the effort. While the startup’s matching algorithm and marketplace model are familiar, what may be even more valuable to the Bermuda Triangle (and to the industry at large) is the insight that can be pulled from the data AirPR collects on how startups are using the system, what they want help with, how effective PR is at meeting its goals, costs, publications they want to speak to, among other things. This data can help both startups and PR people be more effective and precise with their pitches and outreach. (One can also, much to the delight of everyone except PR, imagine AirPR eventually using this data to make a list of the “Top 10 Most Effective PR Firms,” for example.) AirPR allowed TechCrunch an early look into some of the data (and insights) it’s collected thus far, and the conclusions are telling. For starters, , the most popular keyword or service startups were looking for help with was “Growth,” with 84 percent of companies listing that as top priority, followed by 69 percent of companies looking for “Brand Awareness,” 36 percent for “Launch,” 25 percent for “Fundraising,” and 16 percent for “Recruiting.” Next, another one that will be of interest to PR reps: The company found that fixed bids (a bid with one amount, like $20K for a 4-month project, for example) were 29 percent more likely to close than retainers (monthly bids). In explaining just why in the sam hill we should care, AirPR CEO Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer explains that, historically, the PR industry has primarily operated on a retainer model. However, the monthly averages for both fixed bids and retainers are almost the same, he says, so the data thus far seems to show that the reliance on the retainer model is psychological, rather than what its customers want. Clients seem to appreciate the one-time fee with specific deliverables, the CEO explained — a conclusion that helps startups and PR move closer to transparency rather than clients being forced to ask “what exactly are we paying for?” each month. To date, AirPR has found that the average bid accepted on the platform breaks down to roughly $5K/month in fees (whether fixed or retainer) for an average of 5 months. In other words, companies that have between $500K and $4 million in funding want shorter-term contracts with lower rates. This, in and of itself may not be surprising, but the more data it collects, the more it will be able to reveal correlations between not only funding and how much they’re willing to pay, but size of bids and the work they want done, the industry they’re in, and so on. The CEO also tells us that several of the PR reps on the AirPR platform have doubled their business since joining and are “now looking to grow their practice with other folks on the platform, like a co-op situation,” he says. To this point, the idea from the beginning has been to not only help startups who often have no idea where to start when looking for PR, but to serve PR firms and reps that are looking to expand their practices. In the end, the AirPR co-founder tells us, this helps them weed out lower quality PR and put the best firms and people in control. If AirPR can follow through on that idea, its marketplace could end up providing a lot of value to both startups and the PR firms that love them by helping them navigate the Bermuda Triangle and get more bang for their buck. |
New Yorkers Get Free Power In The Parks | Eliza Brooke | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | Months after Hurricane Sandy left New York scrambling for power, the city is unveiling 25 solar powered charging stations in parks and public spaces throughout the five boroughs, starting today. The pilot project between AT&T and the city of New York is officially called AT&T Street Charge. (DUMBO firm Pensa handled design, and Goal Zero provided the solar technology, AT&T handled the cash.) The stations will move to new locations at the beginning of July, rotating throughout the city until September. After that, we’ll see what becomes of them. Most are a little out of the way for those who don’t go to Fort Greene Park, the Brooklyn Bridge Park, or Riverside Park on the reg, but solar powered, public, and free is a pretty great thing. Definitely better than those public charging stations that also charge you money. Since the Union Square location won’t open until tomorrow, I headed up to Riverside Park to see what the good people of New York thought of it. If I was hoping for a rare Upper West Side mob scene — and I was — I was sorely disappointed. To be fair, it was an overcast Tuesday at 2:30pm. On a sunny Saturday afternoon when the adjacent Pier 1 Cafe is busier, I’m sure the station will be getting more love. Joggers, cyclists, dog-walkers, and people who were otherwise not at work stopped by the charging station regularly and gave the attendant an “I’m just taking a look” or “I just wanted to see what it was” before moving on. It is a 12.5′ metal pole with six phone chargers at hip height and three arms at the top that resemble whimsical helicopter blades, so that is a valid reaction. The most enthusiasm came from a group of 16-year-olds, who rushed the pole going, “Ooohhh, .” When I asked them if they’d feel safe leaving their phones there, all five of them gave an immediate and decisive no. “Are you guys from New York?” “Yes.” So there you go. But two of the boys did stick around for a few minutes to plug in their phones. “It’s okay if you’re standing right next to it.” “I’d pull up a chair.” Another man checking out the pole said that while he wouldn’t feel comfortable stepping away from his phone — “I hardly like to leave the house with it” — he could see imagine huge lines in the event of another blackout. The attendant, who works for a company hired by AT&T for the launch, estimated that about 20 or 25 people had charged their phones on the pole in the four hours since she arrived at 11am. In the hour that I was there, only three did, teenage boys included. A 24-year-old cyclist named Shana reclined in a nearby cafe chairs waiting for her iPod to charge. Asked if she felt comfortable sitting 15 feet away from it, she replied, “Well, it’s about 6 years old, so…” Most people seemed to think it was a great idea, especially in light of Sandy, but no New Yorker is going to leave their stuff lying around. I think a nearby Park Enforcement official put it best: “ leave anything unattended.” And so the charging stations stood in the June drizzle waiting for the public to stand right next to them. |
Vine Will Survive! | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | Instagram is in two days. But don’t go deleting Vine just yet. Before shoving Vine’s into , let’s just a second. has been declared by many as the “Instagram for Video.” Instagram’s own video product is likely already too late to squash Vine like a bug. Heck, Facebook couldn’t even get Poke and Messenger off the ground after incumbents clobbered the space. What makes anyone think Instagram video would be any different? Vine launched in January of this year, just after the holidays, and spent a few months ramping up the user base before launching on Android a few weeks ago. At the time, Vine had . Not too shabby for approximately five months of work. It took Vine a few days to , and the same was true on Google Play following the Android launch. When Instagram launched on Android, seventeen months after launching on iOS, it had around 30 million users. Obviously, users are a different metric than downloads, but you can see how Vine’s is relatively astounding given the timeframe. Especially when you factor in the less pointed evidence: Vine shares Instagram shares on Twitter, for example, or even just hearing the term “Vine it” regularly in every day life. And having Twitter as a parent company doesn’t hurt either. Vine is already established, and better yet, making waves. Vine was used by the for a special #6SecFilm Contest. The app has been toyed with by and to build new interactive music videos. Brands because it lets products move in ways that Twitter and Facebook don’t. And Vine, of course, is still iterating quickly. We’ve seen the team respond to feature requests like the ability to use as well as rear-facing camera, and I t to see interesting additions like Voiceover or Animation pop up soon. Instagram is a powerful foe. The app has over 100 million users, and is now owned by the most powerful social network in the world. But this is far from the end of Vine. First, Vine is the end product of what Instagram was built to be. Vine skipped past still photos, and filters to make those photos (taken with bad mobile cameras) look prettier, and the slow grind of adding @mentions and photo maps and all those iterative feature tweaks. Instead, Vine as a true Instagram for video, which now has an active and seemingly happy user base. It’s not Twitter’s , even if Twitter bought up the app and launched it into existence (unlike Instagram’s organic growth that was later bought up by Facebook). But where Instagram feels like a consumption app first (a time sink, almost), Vine doesn’t. Scrolling through my Vine stream is like having a hangover during an earthquake. Most often, it’s a lot of clanging and wind noise coupled with shaky video of my friends’ latest vacation. Still, Vines are excellent content. I am utterly pleased when I see a Vine.co link pop up in my Twitter stream, or surface in someone’s Facebook Timeline. I’m even more elated by a Vine.co link sent to my desktop. I like to watch the six-second thrill ride in all its glory. There’s something special about getting a glimpse (in video no less!) into someone’s world. Instagram is a different story. There was a time when I could scroll through Instagram for days. I’m not so entranced by the photo-sharing phenom anymore. Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way, but I get a sense of Instagram fatigue, both on the creative and consumptive side. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I’m all hopped up on Vine. Maybe Instagram’s had its time? People like consuming video, sure, but it’s almost shocking how much people love videos, too. Especially when given the right tools. When I see something cool happening out in the world, Instagram is no longer enough. I pray to the social media gods that this wondrous, hilarious, or downright insane scene before me will last the six seconds I need. I sense how strongly other people feel the same as I do. Instagram for video might offer a similar creative experience, but it’ll be hard to do so without copying Vine’s ability to string together multiple clips in such an manner. Easy is the key. And we all know what happens when Facebook tries to copy a threat. Messenger launched after WhatsApp and Viber were blowing up. to (shamefully) combat Snapchat. And here comes Instagram, ready to take on Vine. But will Vine crumble where other competitors stood firm? Will it lay down and die? Oh no! Not Vine! Vine will survive. |
TC Cribs: Quirky, The NYC Startup Where Unique Inventions Are Brought To Life | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | More and more jobs deal in the virtual realm, and are done by people sitting down at desks at computers. Desk work can be made interesting in its own ways, but it’s always fun to visit a company that’s actually making physical stuff. So for this episode of TechCrunch Cribs, we jetted over to New York City to check out the headquarters of , a startup with the aim of “making invention accessible.” Quirky is a company that crowdsources ideas for unique physical products — gadgets, kitchenware, furniture, and the like — and manufactures them at large-scale production so that they can be actually sold in stores. This process entails lots of prototyping, so Quirky’s downtown Manhattan office is full of fun stuff like 3D printers that help them bring invention ideas to life. It all made for a really fun tour, led by Quirky’s co-founder and head of people and culture , and you can see it all in the video embedded above. |
Facebook iOS 6.2 Lets You Easily Change Who You Just Shared That Racy Pic With | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | It happened to me. Yes, I once uploaded a pic of my friend to Facebook from my phone, forgot to change the setting from “Public” to “Friends” and had the friend get told that day by a random person: “Hey I just saw a picture of you on Alexia from TechCrunch’s wall!” So now I’m circumspect. Apparently this social media disaster was happening to more people, because Facebook just fixed it — at . Android has apparently had Now iPhone users too are able to easily edit Facebook’s photo privacy settings — by selecting the drop-down arrow on the status update and selecting “Edit Privacy.” Though you still can’t edit the update text or any comments themselves from your iPhone, this is pretty useful. The last time I messed up on a photo privacy setting, I had to access Facebook’s Mobile Web page on a foreign connection to fix it. Not pretty. In addition to this nod to paranoid people, Facebook iOS Version 6.2 allows users to post the they’ve come to know and love on the web, including Happy, Sad, Wonderful and, my favorite, Loved. You can also now start a new conversation with a photo sent to you in messages in Version 6.2, though I don’t think this feature will be remembered enough to see that much traction, unless teenagers are exhibiting some novel group photosharing behaviors on Facebook Message that I don’t know about. And speaking of Facebook Message, let me take this post about an app update to let you know that a standalone is likely not happening, though a trial app was in the works when we reported on it. I own , they don’t particularly influence what I write. Update your apps periodically, people. |
Google Fights Spying Gag Order, But Key Details Would Be Missing Even If Successful | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | As it promised it would, Google is fighting the government’s gag order on releasing how many users are monitored by the National Security Agency. Unlike Facebook and Microsoft, a government deal to disclose the total number of spying warrants for user data, which would include (but not detail) the number of requests coming from the controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA). “Lumping national security requests together with criminal requests—as some companies have been permitted to do—would be a backward step for our users,” a public statement following the petition. Unfortunately, and the , even if Google is successful, the most pressing concerns would remain a mystery. Google’s transparency report discloses the number of court orders and users affected, but not what data was given up. Can the government read emails, monitor Gchats and Google Voice phone calls, as leaker Edward Snowden ? Additionally, if it’s true that the government can , the number of affected users could number in the millions. Releasing the total number of users affected would be tantamount to revealing vital sources and methods of surveillance. Citing their 1st Amendment rights, the petition notes that “Google’s reputation and business has been harmed by the false or misleading reports in the media…Google must respond to such claims with more than generalities.” There is reason to be optimistic that allowing Google to detail the FISA requests would help repair its reputation. Facebook that between the 9,000-10,000 government requests, only 18,000-19,000 users have been affected. This seems to cast doubt that a single government request permits wholesale monitoring of an entire population’s activity. So, while we wouldn’t know what was being given away, most users could breathe easy that they aren’t a target. I’m sympathetic to Google’s position; certainly they probably want to disclose everything, or just stop the snooping altogether. But, even under the best case scenario, the public is still in the dark. Read Google’s full petition below. [scribd id=148601051 key=key-1s0939q1h45pxvdzi8gl mode=scroll] |
GameStick Android Console Ship Date Delayed Until August To Refine UI | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | Android home gaming consoles are nearly arriving for the consumer market, but one at least needs a little more time in the oven to bake. It’s the , the super portable USB-stick style device that plugs into an open HDMI port on your TV to turn it into an Android-powered gaming machine, and its release schedule is being pushed back another month until August, with a retail launch to follow after that, because of a need to gather more feedback related to the GameStick UI so that it can be refined prior to wide release. GameStick wanted to nail the user experience strikes me as a familiar refrain; another company, Leap Motion, which also achieved lots of support from the community for a novel idea, . In both cases, the apprehension about getting things right the first time around is understandable, since these are products that have few if any antecedents with demonstrated success in the wider consumer market. The GameStick delay, though another one on top of , isn’t yet one that should really raise any eyebrows – projects typically underestimate how long it will take to go to market on Kickstarter. The Ouya was also delayed from its original planned launch by three weeks, . hasn’t been delayed as of yet, but it’s targeting a more open-ended end of year launch, and that gives it some flexibility to make sure the experience is just right before putting too fine a point on things. All of these companies are venturing into relatively uncharted territory, so delays are fine; you can’t hold them to the same standards as an Apple or a Samsung, and even those giants sometimes encounter problems shipping exactly on time. One, two, or even three small delays isn’t surprising; but once the months start to fall away and you don’t hear much, that’s when it’s time to worry. |
The Offline Glass Ensures You Talk, Not Text, At The Bar | John Biggs | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | Tired of your friends texting on their phones while they should be getting schnockered? This clever hack is called the Offline Glass and it’s designed to ensure that you and your friends don’t sit at the bar checking Wikipedia for who starred in and whether Tabitha will totally come out tonight oh my god she won’t she and Christian just broke up oh god she’s with Raul and Paula and maybe she’ll come in an hour! In fact, you can’t hold your phone because of the unique shape of the glass’ bottom. The glass has a notch cut out of it so it will only stand if it’s situated on top of a phone (an iPhone works best) and you can only use your phone if you’re also holding your beer. Knowing the average drunk person I suspect a) this will destroy hundreds of iPhones a night and b) this will result in lots of spilled beer, but by gosh if it isn’t a clever idea. The glass is being used in the Salve Jorge Bar in Sao Paolo and was created by the ad agency in Brazil. You can’t buy one but, with the right tools, you could probably make a few. I’d like to see someone 3D print a few of these for house parties. Whenever I go out with the TC team I make everyone play the phone game which consists of piling up all the phones in one place so no one can reach them. It helps encourage conversation and, unless they’re wearing Google Glass, the pained expression after the first few minutes of the game is mesmerizing. Here’s to anything that helps recreate that experience. [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/64643705 w=500&h=281] from on . |
Adobe’s Q2 Earnings Beat Street With $1.011B In Revenue, $0.36 EPS, 700K Paying Creative Cloud Subscribers | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | Adobe just earnings for its second financial quarter of 2013. The company reported revenue of $1.011 billion and non-GAAP operating income of $247.3 for an earnings per share of $0.36 (though diluted GAAP earnings were only $0.15). That’s a little bit better than most analysts expected, especially with respect to the company’s earnings per share. The Wall Street was that Adobe would report revenue of about $1.01 billion and earnings per share of $0.34. These numbers, it’s worth noting, are very much in line with Adobe’s last quarter, when the company announced revenue of $1.01 billion and earnings per share of $0.35. In the year-ago quarter, however, Adobe still reported revenue of $1.12 billion. “Our Q2 results reflect our leadership position in Digital Media and Digital Marketing,” said Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s president and chief executive officer a canned statement today. “Creative Cloud is revolutionizing the creative process, and Adobe Marketing Cloud is quickly becoming the platform of choice for the world’s leading brands, advertising agencies and media companies.” Adobe is clearly betting the company on its subscription service, which is set to almost the company’s offering of shrink-wrapped software. Just yesterday, Adobe launched its latest offering of all of its major Creative Cloud apps, and today, the company announced that Creative Cloud now has over 700,000 subscribers. That’s up from 479,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2013. The vast majority (92 percent) of its subscribers, Adobe says, are on its annual plan (vs. paying a slightly higher fee for a month-to-month subscription). Adobe itself expects to hit over 1.25 million Creative Cloud subscribers by the end of the year and a number of analysts believe this is actually a very conservative number. Besides Creative Cloud, Adobe’s second main group of services is its , which includes services for social marketing, media optimization, analytics, testing and targeting. Last quarter, Marketing Cloud achieved quarterly revenue of $215.4 million, a 20 percent year-over-year increase. This time around, Adobe reported Marketing Cloud revenue of $229.9 million. |
Kazam Is Another European Startup Hoping Against Hope To Inch In To The Smartphone Hardware Market | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | Hardware is so hot right now. So hot, in fact, that another European hardware startup is formulating an attack on the smartphone hardware space — joining the likes of and to have a go at handset making. The newest comer stepping in with a plan to shake up the “status quo” is called : a startup co-founded by a pair of former U.K. HTC execs, and . Coombes, who spent just over a year and a half as a U.K. head of sales for HTC, according to his LinkedIn, is Kazam’s CEO. Prior to HTC he apparently worked for mobile and telecoms companies including Nokia and Vodafone. While Atkins, Kazam’s CMO, spent just over a year as HTC’s head of marketing for U.K./Ireland, and has previously worked in U.K. marketing roles for freesat, LG and Panasonic. The pair’s professional network is clearly tied tightly to the local market, hence, presumably, Kazam’s focus on Europe first. “Kazam will focus on Europe at the outset,” Atkins tells TechCrunch via email, adding with some typical marketingspeak embellishment: “We are currently establishing a network of regional sales and marketing offices to ensure we deliver outstanding products and customer service.” The startup has a U.K. base in Mayfair, London. Details of how exactly Kazam plans to assault the Samsung and Apple smartphone duopoly were not forthcoming when I asked. Atkins declined to answer the bulk of my questions — including such specifics as whether Kazam’s planned smartphones will run Android and be skinned with a custom UI or keep the experience familiarly stock. Instead, he trotted out a repeated PR mantra: “Today we are just announcing that the Kazam brand is here, for the rest you will have to wait and see.” It’s notable that this startup has already engaged a PR company (Noire) — and talks about creating a mobile — even before having a great deal to talk about. Which does serve to underline how smartphones have become a game of who can shout the loudest. A game of brash tones (as I have ). What did Atkins say? Not a whole lot. He declined to reveal how much funding Kazam is backed by at this point, or whether it is currently looking to raise a round. He did at least confirm it has backers, and that those backers have links into Asian mobile manufacturing companies — which suggests it’s following . “Kazam Mobile has been set up by a group of private equity investors, who have previously launched and operated successful mobile telecommunications companies and technology businesses. Some of their current investments include NF Technology Limited, an R&D company specialising in developing and customising mobile phone devices and tablets and Nichefinder (S’pore) PTE Limited, a proven technology procurement and supply company,” he told TechCrunch. He also confirmed Kazam’s plan is to launch “a range of smartphones at different prices point/specs” later this year. Asked whether it will look at other types of mobile devices, such as tablets, he said only that its initial focus is on smartphones. He added that he and Coombes left their roles at HTC earlier this year “with the desire to build a new brand that really stands out in the mobile space”. He also declined to be drawn on the differentiation question but in Kazam’s inaugural press release today Coombes said: “We believe your smartphone is a digital reflection of who you are, and since we are all different, it’s important that we don’t adopt a one size fits all approach. Kazam’s dynamic structure and focus on local markets means we can react quickly to the ever evolving and diverging needs of today’s consumer. We aim to provide quality smartphones that are accessible to everyone.” The release also includes a statement from Atkins hinting that aftersales service might be how Kazam attempts to stand out in a crowded market: “There is a real opportunity for a new mobile brand to disrupt the status quo. We are passionate about delivering a truly positive mobile experience that doesn’t just stop once you’ve bought the phone. Kazam is about stunning design, robust hardware and intuitive technology, underpinned by outstanding customer service.” Further details about exactly what kind of customer service opportunity Kazam reckons it has identified were not forthcoming. The size of Kazam’s team at this point is just Atkins and Coombes — a few more if you count the hired help from their external PR company. But Atkins also said the startup has already “established an R&D centre”. Hopefully with some staff in it, but presumably no permanent headcount yet. Should Kazam get off the ground with its grand status quo shaking plan it will need to significantly boost its body count — if only to staff the network of regional sales and marketing offices it is currently establishing. It will also need to make decent smartphone hardware — hardware that’s worth shouting about. Whether it will be able to deliver that is clearly something to file under “wait and see”. Asked how a startup with inevitably bounded resources can succeed in such a fiercely competitive space — when veteran players such as HTC are having such a tough time standing out despite making cracking handsets like the HTC One — Atkins’ said only: “The mobile market whilst competitive, seems to have stagnated.” Stagnation is one word for it. Saturation is another. Smartphone hardware and software has achieved a very high quality bar, with Android OEMs like Samsung pushing high-end features lower and lower down the price-point range to pull up the capabilities of mid- and even budget handsets. This has resulted in a surfeit of great phones, across a very broad spectrum of price-points. Which means precious little room for anyone new to elbow in. Or stand out. So there are huge question marks over any startup entering such a fiercely competitive space, especially with so many better resourced former mobile giants continuing to struggle. Disruption often starts small but in a market so beholden to carriers, where the bulk of phones sales occur, it’s especially hard for an upstart to get traction. Carriers tend to be risk averse and have established distribution partnerships and (incentivised) relationships with the smartphone giants so have disincentives to push anything too new. Going it alone with online retail distribution is the alternative, but that route requires a sizeable marketing budget to even get noticed. Creating handsets for an underserved niche may be one way to carve out a business, as Geeksphone has been. Securing carrier distribution agreements to carry your hardware is another strategy, as Jolla has with . For now, it’s unclear whether Kazam has any similar moves up its sleeve, but it will certainly be hoping it has enough local telco connections — and financial backing — to give it a regional chance of inching in. To say it has its work cut out to make any kind of impact is an understatement. |
Please Join Us For The 8th Annual August Capital Party: July 26 In Silicon Valley | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | It’s that time of the year again for us nerds to infiltrate Sand Hill Road, let loose, and enjoy some good food and libations. We’ve been hosting the with VC firm since 2006. This year, as in years past, we’ll be partying on August Capital’s beautiful, sunny Sand Hill balcony on Friday, July 26. The party starts at 5:30 p.m. and goes til 9:00 p.m. Tickets, which you can buy , are $80 each and include drinks and food. We also have a number of sponsorship opportunities available and inquiries can be sent to If tickets are sold out now, be on the lookout for our next ticket release. TechCrunch parties have a history of being the place you want to meet your future investor, acquirer or co-founder. Case in point, back when TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington used to hold these ragers in his Atherton back yard; . In 2010, we spotted 500 Startups’ Dave McClure to then stealthy startup Tello (which was recently in December) at the August Capital party. Hope to see you all there this year!!
|
null | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 6 | 20 | null |
Weather Could Be Next On The Auction Block For Crowdsourced Data | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | Waze’s proved one thing: if companies can harness the power of the crowd to deliver real-time, granular data, big tech corporations will be watching them closely as potential acquisition targets. There’s another category ripe for the picking, even if the problem being solved isn’t as apparent or immediately useful as traffic and navigation data: weather. A few apps are trying to harness the crowd to provide accurate, ground-level forecasts and conditions, and they’re catching on with consumers, too. Montreal-based startup is one such firm, and it recently launched its 4.0 update, which not only harnesses crowdsourced weather reports, but also allows other businesses to plug into that data using a public API, to integrate real-time reporting data from SkyMotion’s users into their own products. That provides an up-to-the-minute forecast, one that probably won’t show you weather conditions completely dissimilar from the ones you’re actually feeling outside at any given moment, as can still be the case with apps that pull weather data only from specific weather monitoring stations. SkyMotion has had considerable success harnessing the crowd to populate its real-time forecasts, with over 200,000 people currently submitting observations according to the company. Over 50 percent of those who download the app actually keep it and use it, and 65 percent of all users are active between 15 and 200 times per month. The company is now close to reaching 500,000 total downloads, and anticipates being well over 1 million by the end of the year should the pace remain near its current rate. SkyMotion isn’t alone in crowdsourcing weather data. There’s also , the “people-powered” weather service and mobile app that encourages location-based reporting with a very human element, since it asks people how conditions generally feel on the ground, instead of seeking out specifics. The Weddar team, which is based in Portugal, launched its app back in April 2011, and where once you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone using it outside of its home market, now you’ll probably see results just about anywhere you open it up. Crowsourced weather data could appeal to big tech companies for the same reason that crowdsourced data does; it greatly improves the quality of consumer-facing products. But it also offers a lot more besides, by providing services that can be combined with other local data including maps and traffic, as well as shopping and advertising information, to give a much more accurate, much more complete snapshot of any given location at any given time. Weather affects everything from the average user’s day planning, to marketing, to budgeting, and companies that are improving the quality of that data will no doubt be on the radar of anyone who makes those things its concern. |
Google Updates Local Search Results On Desktop With Carousel Design | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | At the end of last year, Google introduced for some local search results on tablets that put a carousel with the top results at the top of the page. Today, it’s bringing this design , too. This new feature can be triggered by searches for restaurants, bars and other local places, Google says, and it’s currently rolling out in English in the U.S. and should roll out for other languages in the future. A typical search to see this feature would be something like “Mexican restaurants in nyc.” Google will then put the carousel at the top of the page, including a photo, the standard Zagat ratings, price class and cuisine. A click on these places will bring up their Google+ Local sites with more information. Users can click on an arrow in the right to see more places and they can use the map in the sidebar to zoom in and the carousel will automatically restrict your searches to this specific area. Google, of course, also uses a similar design for some of its . As a number of noticed recently, these Knowledge Graph carousel results seem to be popping up more frequently now than ever before. Given today’s addition of the local search carousel, chances are that Google’s stats show that this is a very effective way of presenting search results. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company continued to expand its use of this design element for other kinds of queries in the near future. |
Amazon’s New Social Gifting Service “Amazon Birthday Gift” Leverages Facebook, Competes With Facebook’s Own Gifts | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | Stealing a page right out of playbook, Amazon today launched a new feature called “ ,” which allows a group of Facebook friends to go in on an Amazon.com Gift Card together. That gift isn’t posted to the recipients’ Facebook Timeline until their big day arrives. To get started with the service, a user buys an Amazon.com gift card, then invites other mutual friends to donate . When the birthday arrives, the recipient is tagged in a Facebook Timeline wall post, receiving the digital card and everyone’s birthday greetings. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOhGuuLplYw?feature=player_embedded] The new addition is a further expansion of Amazon’s deepening integration with Facebook, as the company feature just ahead of the holidays to generate Facebook-enabled gift suggestions, send out reminders, and enable gift list sharing via both email and social networks. Online competitor Walmart, too, had previously a similar Facebook-based gift recommendation service in 2011, which was added to the Walmart.com site ahead of the 2012 holiday season. Social gifting is still very much in the experimental phase, despite the support from e-commerce giants like Walmart, Amazon and others. For instance, Facebook has also dabbled in this area with (built on top of former social gifting startup Karma). The service is meant to tie into one of Facebook’s most regular draws — its birthday reminders. The idea is that users could visit the site, and in addition to wishing their friend “happy birthday,” they could also add a gift to accompany that message. The social network offers gifts like and physical goods, and it even its earlier this year. However, even with Facebook’s broad reach, its Gifts service has been to generate serious revenue, and certainly falling short of earlier regarding its potential. Meanwhile, some startups like Sincerely (with ) and , carry on in this space, while others head off in new directions. Giftly, for instance, , while to the B2B market instead in recent months. That being said, Amazon still has a shot at winning the social gifting space with its new Amazon Birthday Gift feature, since it can be argued that users don’t associate Facebook’s brand with spending or shopping the way they do with Amazon. (See also: ). Plus, Amazon’s cards are the go-to for the “generic” gift option, which people buy when they don’t know what to get, or when they need something last minute. However, the new service is still limited today to smaller gift amounts ($1, $5, $10 and $25), which can be a challenge for those attempting to raise funds for a larger present like an electronics purchase. Plus, being tied only to birthdays eliminates the big holiday, graduation or wedding presents users may want to go in on together. Often these larger presents are led by a close family member or friend who puts in a big chunk of change, to which others pile on. Not supporting these other types of gifting narrows the already potentially narrow market for digital, social gifting even further. for interested users. |
Torch Browser Passes 10 Million Monthly Active Users, Adds Download Accelerator, Updates Torch Music Service | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 18 | The world of alternative browsers is littered with also-rans like , but there are also companies that have managed to make a name for themselves in the shadow of Microsoft, Mozilla and Google. One example of this is , but another browser that’s quietly gaining a following is , which the company tells us just passed 10 million monthly active users on Mac and Windows after about year on the market. Torch just launched the latest version of its Chromium-based browser, which now includes a download accelerator and a large update to the Torch Music service, which uses YouTube and Vevo as the basis of its music catalog. Torch Music now offers customized recommendations based on your listening history, location and your Facebook friends’ tastes. Currently, the service has about 5 million songs in its database. While Torch previously included a version of this service, it has now integrated this service deeper into its user interface with the help of a widget that allows you to search, pause and skip songs. Torch now also features a built-in . While download accelerators were very popular in the early days of (slow) broadband, today’s fast and stable connections have mostly pushed them aside, and the vast majority of Internet users probably doesn’t even remember them. There are some advantages to using a download accelerator, however, especially if you are on a slow or unreliable connection. The browser also features a built-in BitTorrent client and a media grabber for downloading embedded video files. It also features a smart drag-and-drop-activated search and sharing tool that pops up large boxes for sharing links to services like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest and for initiating searches on Google Search, Wikipedia and other services. Torch Browser only launched on the Mac about a month ago, so most of its users are currently on Windows, the company tells us. If you’re currently a Chrome user and interested in the browser’s features, switching is about as easy as it gets, as Torch just imports all your bookmarks. As it’s based on Chromium, all of the usual Chrome extensions and apps should also work, though Torch seems to be about a generation behind Google’s own release cycle. |
Translation App Linqapp’s Developers Are Running Around Taiwan To Promote Its Startup Industry | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 6 | 27 | Though Taiwan is known for its technological prowess, startup founders there still face many obstacles, including the lack of early-stage funding. As a result, the developers of had to get creative–and their solution brings new meaning to the term “bootstrapping.” Co-founders Sebastian Ang and David Vega plan to complete several during July, joined by Linqapp (pronounced “link up”) engineer David Huang on a bike. Their routes will eventually take them around the island’s perimeter and, the team hopes, help them score publicity and downloads for their app, which will launch on Google Play in August. Though the trio won’t start off until Monday, their intention to run around the country, at the height of summer no less, has already scored them plenty of local media attention and 1 million likes on . Ang and Vega first met in 2010 while pursuing MBAs at National Chengchi University. Before arriving in Taiwan, Vega was a lawyer in his native Guatemala, while German national Ang’s prior startup experience includes founding Singapore-based rental portal in 2008. Linqapp, which launched in closed beta mode last month and connects people seeking language help with native speakers around the world, will work on a freemium model. Users can ask questions for free, but have to purchase credits if they want to upload photos or audio files.
The duo bootstrapped the development of Linqapp and hope that revenue earned from the Android app will help fund the creation of an iOS version. Ang and Vega initially planned to combine their run around Taiwan with a crowdfunding campaign, but abandoned the idea because they worried soliciting money too early would undermine their credibility. Though Taiwan is home to several major tech companies, including HTC and Foxconn Technology Group, Ang says that startups are taken much less seriously. That attitude can make it difficult not only to secure early-stage investors, but also hire talent. “I have to admit it was not easy to find an engineer,” says Ang. “Our engineer is directly out of university and usually they face a lot of pressure to join a big company.” Instead, Vega says that their goal is to promote the app, Taiwan’s culture and the country’s open attitude toward foreign entrepreneurs. “It’s not so easy for tech startups to get funding here, but we thought we can do it our own way,” says Ang. “It’s true that the network is not the same as it is in Singapore or Silicon Valley. There’s a very big difference. We hope that with our Taiwan Run we can create awareness that there is a startup scene in Taiwan and it deserves more attention.” |
Uber Launches In Taipei, Just Two Days After Debuting In Seoul | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 6 | 27 | Uber is moving forward with its Asian expansion at a quick pace with the , just two days after it launched in Seoul. The premium taxi calling app is currently in stealth mode in Taiwan’s capital, which means that there are a limited number of cars available while Uber fine tunes its service. Uber is to oversee it’s Taipei business. The San Francisco-based startup now operates in three Asian cities, six months after it first launched in the region with the beginning of service in Singapore. Like its fares in Singapore and Seoul, Uber over regular taxi cabs in Taipei for its luxury car services. Base fare starts at NT$126, compared to NT$70 for regular Taipei taxis. Each additional kilometer costs NT$30, compared to NT$20 for standard taxis. In Taipei, Uber faces competition from taxi services like Taiwan Taxi, which charges standard taxi fares and which not only has its own , but can also be hailed through phone or at a kiosk in any of the city’s ubiquitous 7-Elevens. It’s also extremely easy to hail down cabs by the side of the road, even during rush hour. On the other hand, Uber’s high-end sedans and SUVs, which seat up to four people, may offer an attractive alternative for people who want to travel in style or in larger groups. Based on Uber’s recent job postings, it will continue its Asia expansion at a quick pace. looking for personnel in Seoul and Taipei, as well as cities that Uber has yet to enter, including Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangalore and Auckland. |
Marc Andreessen: Beijing Should Be Another Silicon Valley, But…. | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 6 | 27 | Marc Andreessen, the Netscape co-founder and namesake behind venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, said that he’s skeptical that efforts globally to recreate the Silicon Valley ecosystem will succeed. Even the most promising city and rival to the U.S.’s Silicon Valley, Beijing, faces lots of potential complications because laws around contracts aren’t as straightforward as they could be, he said. Outside of the U.S., Beijing is one of the cities that is able to consistently produce tech giants like Baidu (although Alibaba’s headquarters are in Hangzhou and Tencent is based in Shenzhen). “China should be another United States from an economic standpoint. Beijing should be another Silicon Valley,” he said in an interview at 500 Startup’s in San Francisco. “I think the early indicators have been promising. There are some amazing stories like Alibaba and Tencent.” Bet he went on, expressing some doubt in the country’s ability to set up a transparent system of contracts and law that make it easy for entrepreneurs to protect their work. “I worry about the system — the ability to sustain the process and have a system. A lot of it has to do with the same frustrations we’re hearing from Chinese entrepreneurs. There are still issues with the rule of law and basic contract law. There are still issues with IP integrity,” he said. “They have the idea that there can be a free economy without free speech, which I think is not true.” It’s a common complaint I’ve heard in the Beijing-based community myself. There isn’t the same practice or habit of ‘acq-hires’ in China. Instead, the major powers like Tencent may go in and directly copy small startups instead of trying to acquire or lure them in first. As controversial as the process of ‘talent acquisitions’ may be in the West, they also form a safety net for talent product managers or engineers to try new ideas. At the same time, the Chinese government has erected a massive ‘Great Firewall’ of surveillance and censorship over online discourse in the country. While Andreessen says this might not be sustainable over the long-term, the effort has actually helped domestic companies so far, with protections enabling products like Baidu’s search engine to succeed at Google’s loss or market share or monitored social networking platforms like Tencent’s WeChat or Sina Weibo to grow while U.S. products like Facebook and Twitter are unable to enter the market. Andreessen was also tempered in his outlook for startup hubs in the rest of the world. “I am bullish on the global development. I am bullish on billions of people getting out of poverty,” he said. He added, “I would like for there to be 50 or 100 Silicon Valleys all over the world. But I think it’s harder to create another Silicon Valley. Attempts to do that have not gone well over a multi-decade ability. I think it is a pretty difficult formula to re-create.” With that tempered outlook, he also said that he’s skeptical the venture firms can scale geographically and operate successfully in multiple regions of the world. He hinted that firms should stick to the geographic regions that they know best: European firms will be able to source the European deals while Chinese firms will be able to source the best deals in China. “For what we do, our approach makes sense,” he said, adding that Andreessen Horowitz does partner with other regional firms to source deal flow. “There are many other great VC firms in other parts of the world. While other firms are scaling geographically, I hope they’re being appropriately realistic.” |
Mark Suster On Being “Upfront,” Plans For His New $200M Fund, And High Expectations For The LA Startup Ecosystem | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 6 | 27 | Mark Suster’s venture firm just wrapped up a , and it also has a brand new name: . Today at the , I got a chance to sit down with him to talk about the firm’s new branding, as well as his plans for the new fund and continued support for the L.A. startup ecosystem. According to Suster, there were a few reasons to change the firm’s name. For one thing, GRP Partners fell afoul of RAS Syndrome — i.e. Redundant Acronym Syndrome Syndrome. GRP Partners actually stood for Global Retail Partners, um, Partners. In addition, the name didn’t reflect any of the things that the firm actually stood for. The original founders of GRP had been early investors in retail operations like Costco, Starbucks, Dick’s Sporting Goods and other actual retail companies. The fund itself, though, has always been pretty tech-focused. In looking for a new brand name, the firm wanted something that would showcase its particular strengths and point of view. That includes being “upfront” about its business practices and what startups can expect from working with it. “We live in an era of transparency, and people want to know who you are and what you stand for. So we thought, we want to be transparent, we want to put out information so you know how we operate. We have strong points of view and we’re willing to debate people,” Suster said. Along with the new brand, Upfront Ventures has raised a new $200 million fund and will be opening an awesome new office in Santa Monica. And it plans to continue investing heavily in Los Angeles. According to Suster, that’s a market that’s set to continue growing, as more second- and third-time entrepreneurs begin building new businesses and putting angel money into other local startups. Check out my whole discussion with Suster in the video above. |
As Snapchat Grows Up, It Must Retain Its Youth | Billy Gallagher | 2,013 | 6 | 27 | It has been quite a week for Snapchat. The young company closed a at an $800 million pre-money valuation. Young co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy earned a cool $10 million each in a secondary offering. The company even rolled out a service for kids. Now, the founders will try to keep their heads down and out of the spotlight as they work to grow the product and company. I first saw Snapchat in the fall of 2011, in my sophomore year at Stanford; a senior, Evan Spiegel, who I vaguely knew through mutual friends (disclosure at the bottom), had made the app and a bunch of my friends were the beta testers and early user base. All fall and winter, people would send each other silly pictures of alcohol or funny faces or where they were on campus; it was a weird, goofy tool that was uniquely ours–like when kids take Stanford’s introductory CS 106A class and discover they can make something on the Internet, and are fascinated by their own brick breaker. No one thought it was real or saw anything long term for it. Later that spring, I talked with my new TechCrunch editors about two Stanford apps that were starting to make a bit of noise: Snapchat and . People had heard that Snapchat had raised a bit of money and that Spiegel and co-founder Bobby Murphy were going to try to give it a real shot. By the time school was back in session this past fall, the app was everywhere. Almost overnight it felt like everyone I knew from home had known about and used Snapchat forever. It wasn’t our little app anymore. We would see Evan around campus and knew he was up here for investor meetings seemingly constantly. In December, Facebook took aim at Snapchat by which has . Now, the company has at least five million daily active users who send 200 million photos per day. My early adopter friends, with their user names as their generic first names, get over 200 snaps per day. Snapchat is all about discovery and quickly and intimately sharing brief moments with friends. Every major feature it’s added (video, replying more easily to friends, etc.) has been another way to privately share brief windows into what you’re doing right now. Everything the company does moving forward, with the product and with monetizing the app, will have to hold true to this mission. But this private sharing could evolve from simply one-on-one sharing. “They need to move away from being just a communication tool for my closest friends,” says , the 22 year-old co-founder of and an avid Snapchat fan. Miller argues that while the personal communication is what makes Snapchat so addictive right now, it’s hard to defend from competitors in the long term. Group messaging seems like an obvious next step for the app; I frequently hear people complain that they can’t create lists to send snaps to en masse (instead of clicking through and selecting the same group of ten friends every time). This could be either just a simpler way to send mass snap friends still in solo communication, or it could lead to more dynamic group interactions. I remember Spiegel, who doesn’t use any social network regularly, once noted how static the friend lists on many social networks had become as people always added friends but rarely deleted them. Snapchat will be Path done right. More authentic social network for those closest to you. They’re gonna need to be more than messaging soon. — Josh Miller (@joshm) not sure but their newfound emphasis on “best friends” may be a clue — Josh Miller (@joshm) You’ll notice the top friends feature, a simple drop down menu below someone’s name showing the top three people they snap with, on Snapchat is very time sensitive. If Snapchat can find the right blend between ephemeral communication and small, social group interactions, it could fill a need that Path and others have identified but not really fulfilled. As we learned with Facebook Poke, simply copying the technology and features of Snapchat (actually, improving them), won’t even make a dent in the Snapchat user base, at least in the short term. Poke was technically superior with more features but ultimately it –a ghost town devoid of content. Plus, Snapchat (one tap takes a photo, holding the record button takes a video) that helps it protect one of its biggest assets: speed. So, Snapchat’s competition won’t come from a big player copying them, but will likely come from new apps and new features; the company will need to stay out ahead of new entrants as it gains new users and works to retain its core base. The startup just revamped its UI with version 5, and new filters and new drawing tools just arrived. The video feature was a very obvious second step, and has the company really well positioned; it’s riding waves of growth in photo and video capturing, and totally dominating photo and video messaging. Video snaps are 10 second windows into what someone is doing at that very moment; a Vine-like feature would allow people to share longer, more fragmented moments with their friends. If Snapchat aspires to be a core communications platform, it could explore video chatting; from FaceTime to Airtime, even back to ChatRoulette, there hasn’t yet been a great solution for video chatting. Snapchat connects people in a dynamic way–last week I was snapping back and forth in real time with a friend I haven’t talked to in a couple years. Snapchat’s character counts and video length limits promote more quick sharing, but an option to connect with friends for longer could open it up more. Or, it can do what’s probably smartest: nothing. Snapchat can take the Twitter strategy and wage war on its fail whale (there are frequent glitches like phantom notifications that disappear and reappear hours later). It can obsessively improve existing features and the user experience, while growing the user base until it makes a massive, massive dent in text communication. When you receive a Snapchat but the app won’t show you it — Snapchat Problems (@SnapchatProbbz) The company has been so successful by fitting smartphones perfectly–the speed of capturing and sharing a moment, the use of the front facing camera and drawing on the touch screens, and more. It’s perfectly private (I know several people who think that notifying a user when someone takes a screenshot should become the norm for communication) at a time when people are craving more privacy. But it needs to get in more hands. Around 80% of Snapchat’s users are in the United States, and many are aged 15-25. While the app has started to tip and gain users in other age brackets, it’s still dominated by a young crowd that’s very similar to most of the company’s employees. “We feel like this is early innings in a highly competitive marketplace,” Spiegel . Snapchat has incredibly impressive stats in terms of photos shared, passing Instagram two months ago and soaring to 200 million photos per month now. What’s interesting, though, is that it’s still significantly behind Instagram in terms of users. Snapchat’s users share far more photos per user than Instagram’s, who are often more interesting in consuming than sharing. So if Snapchat can grow its user base to be even close to Instagram’s, we could see truly mind-boggling photo sharing stats. Last weekend, Snapchat , a service for users under 13 to be able to take pictures and draw on them and save them locally to the device, but not actually make accounts and interact with other users. While certainly not a core product, Snapkidz could help the main app gain more popularity among parents, or at least shelter it a bit from a young crowd running around sharing snaps. Along with this explosive growth, the company has been raising cash nearly nonstop since the fall of 2012. Now, with $80 million in the bank, they can grow the team more, scaling the company along with the product. “We’re looking to hire more awesome people,” Spiegel told TechCrunch on Monday. “We can now afford to hire a bigger team. Before, we were nervous we weren’t able to scale and innovate as rapidly as we wanted to. This will allow us to do that…and pay our brutal server bill.” I’ve heard that several VCs see Snapchat growing into an independent, large, multi-billion dollar company. Unlike another , we likely won’t see a Snapchat acquisition soon. While we know Facebook has been interested in the product for over a year, and many others would likely be interested, Spiegel, Murphy and the rest of the team seem determined not to sell, at least not now and almost certainly not at a price that even a social giant could easily stomach. But there isn’t simply a multi-billion dollar hole in the messaging and photo space. If Snapchat continues this explosive growth, we can expect to see two major things happen: 1. other photo and video apps will suffer as more content is shared privately and ephemerally, and 2. other messaging apps will suffer as people communicate via photo instead of text. The recent influx of cash and massive valuation have raised significant questions about how Snapchat will monetize. A source told me earlier this month that the company was hiring a sizable sales force. Since then, Spiegel and others have said that this is not true. Apologies for the bad report. Now, Spiegel says the company will start “in the medium term,” but still remains very interested in native advertising. “There tends to be pressure on companies to avoid generating revenue in the early stage,” Spiegel told me in May 2012, when the company had only raised $485,000. “One, because people believe that the user growth will decline and, two, because it makes it easier for people to value your company. So, obviously working within the context of that pressure is an interesting thing. But we’ve been really focused on revenue from the beginning. We didn’t think we were ever going to raise venture capital, so we were planning very early on to implement a revenue-generating plan.” In December 2012, Snapchat . This isn’t something they will rush; there will be a significant spotlight on them when they roll out the first monetization features, and obviously want to protect their user growth. It seems that as the company has grown more and more, Spiegel and Murphy have pushed back the timeline for monetization as they prioritize user growth first. This is a smart strategy, and one that has worked for other companies. In the fall of 2010, with some filters available for in-app purchase: “With plenty of funding for the two-man team, they’re not too concerned with that right now, but Systrom said that the app will launch with 7 of their 11 filters for free, and the other 4 will be available for in-app purchase (with more coming).” Systrom didn’t have much to say about this old plan, merely commenting, “It was the plan at the time, but that was a long time ago.” Instagram, obviously, enjoyed massive user growth and a huge exit to Facebook. “One thing Ev [Williams] has really pushed on me is that there’s never been a very large internet consumer startup that has shut down because they either run out of money or cant make money,” Miller tells me. “The ones that die, [they] die because people don’t like it anymore and they leave.” |
Facebook Launches Related Hashtags And #Mobile Site Support | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 27 | Facebook’s on a quest to get you involved in real-time global conversations. Today it takes the next step towards challenging Twitter by adding hashtag support to its mobile site and launching related hashtags. Starting this evening, when you click or search for a hashtag, the results page will show other hashtags often posted at the same time. Search #equality and you’ll see #lgbt and #pride. earlier this month, turning #-preceded words into hyperlinks you can click on to see mentions by your friends, Pages, and people who post publicly. Users can also search for hashtags to bring up a stream of mentions. At the time there was no mobile support, and Facebook’s popular iOS and Android smartphone apps still don’t work with hashtags. But Facebook tells me its HTML5 mobile site m.facebook.com gets the hash hookup tonight. That’s pretty important since publishing hashtagged posts about events your attending is a core use case. Now anyone with a mobile browser can pump some ### into Facebook. Related hashtags, also present on Twitter, will make sure you don’t miss parallel conversations. Facebook tells me it analyzes which hashtags are frequently posted together to discover which are associated. After viewing the results for one, you can click down the row of related hashtags to get a wider perspective on whatever’s caught the world’s attention. You might expect Facebook to jump right into trending topics or other advanced hashtag features, but it’s still learning. By rolling out the product bit by bit, it can see how people use it, and get enough data to tell how to slice and dice the conversations in the tastiest ways. At first, I expected a lot of backlash to Facebook hashtags. “Oh, what copy-cats.” But instead I’ve actually heard a lot of “I finally get to use hashtags!” The fact is that while Twitter is a household name with exposure on TV and in ads, it’s still not quite mainstream. When non-Twitter users saw a hashtag, they might have felt left out. Sure hashtags exist on Pinterest and Instagram, but users of those services are more likely to be on Twitter too. Facebook hashtags could unlock the real-time web for a whole wave of casual Internet surfers. Between Twitter’s pioneering work and Facebook’s new support, these conversations can finally include everyone like they’re supposed to. |
Propeller Gets $1.25M From A16z, ffAngel, Everyone Good Basically | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 6 | 27 | The app that allows you to create your own native apps, , has raised $1.25 million from , , , , , , , , , , and Alfred Mandel. Like a less-complex Appsify.me or a Testflight for normal people, Propeller aims to democratize the app store. When launched, Propeller will eventually let people who don’t know how to code build their own native, not HTML5, mobile apps. Normals can design their own apps for their weddings, fraternities, businesses, whatever through Propeller’s drag-and-drop interface and templates. And then deploy those apps to others through the Propeller app on an iPhone or Android. “Ever since smartphones came out, we’ve seen so many people looking for help creating apps,” founder Brian Rowen tells me. “From things like ‘I have a great idea for an app; how do I learn to code?’ to the ubiquitous search for a ‘technical co-founder.’ There are many people who want to make apps, but they just don’t know where to start, and if you’ve never built one before, the whole process can be pretty intimidating (and expensive).” Rowen and his fellow co-founder Clay Allsopp met at Likealittle, a startup that became Circle after a pivot in the fall of 2011, and decided to do their own thing in September 2012 (fun fact: They met their first investor at Eric Eldon and I’s birthday party). “We’ve seen how tough it is for anyone to build a great app,” Rowen explained, “and we want to make that experience frictionless for everyone.” Rowen tells me that the rest of Propeller’s competitive landscape has one or two or both problems. “Either the experience of making an app is complex and unintuitive, or the apps created by the product are low-quality because they use non-native technologies like HTML5 (or both). These apps don’t look and feel like the native apps we enjoy using every day.” The company says that its attempts to build an accessible experience and solve the technical problem of dynamically building native apps has led to some “key innovations.” They plan to use the new coin, like every other seed-funded startup, to staff up and refine these innovations before launch. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.