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Instagram Wanted To Be “Instagram For Video” Before It Was Cool | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | Calling Facebook isn’t particularly creative; not only did Myspace, Friendster and have the whole social network thing down first, but Questions, Places, Poke, Messenger, Stickers and so on were all ideas inspired by other startups. And there are so many more, countless. But while Zuckerberg is indeed the greatest artist, in the case of Instagram video, he didn’t steal. Though funny, posts like are incredibly myopic. The history of innovation is filled with such cribbing: See , and, hell, . Since when did having the original idea count for much in technology’s evolution? If you recall, Instagram itself was Hipstamatic with carefully souped-up social features. But on a basic level, calling Instagram’s foray into video “someone else’s idea” is absurd, mainly because Instagram wanted to be 14 months before Vine launched on Twitter, and at least four months before the Viddys and Socialcams of the world raised their series A funding. It wanted to be the Instagram for everything. “We really want to go after something bigger than filtered photos,” Instagram founder told me as far back as November 2011, demonstrating that he had the video element of the Instagram product in his crosshairs. He went on the record about this, stating at that Instagram Video was (somewhere) on the horizon. Systrom worried about “introducing a new medium too late” as pop-up competitors tried to make the video element of their product a key differentiator. “Video makes sense to do,” he emphasized. “Our job and our vision is to allow you to tell the story of your life, and whatever tools that may be for video, we’ll end up making them. I’m not sure if that includes filters for video or not, but we’ll definitely consider it.” If we really want to get nitpicky, and came up with the brilliant idea of short video sharing before Instagram even existed. As much of the success in the consumer social space is having the right product at the right time, you can’t get all about it. Often, getting all the details (like ) and zeitgeist right matters much more than being first. If social startups have seen far, it’s because they’ve stood on the shoulders of . I Facebook shares, but think plenty of the things the company does are . Not , though. |
What Games Are: Reinventing The Games Console Half Way Won’t Work | Tadhg Kelly | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | In some ways you’ve got to . The company has spent years trying to find ways to expand its Xbox idea. It put together a very interesting camera peripheral that many people bought into, but not too many games. It’s tried, on several occasions, to use the games console as a way to win access into the living room. Yet now it’s at the point of many of its big ideas because the market reacted so negatively. The company has run into a hard truth: In the minds of the market “console” means something specific, and is not inclined to expand its thinking. In essence what Microsoft wanted to do was similar to what Apple did for phones. Long before iPhones there were many years of terrible feature phones. They had Java games, shambolic web interfaces and data plans that charged per megabyte. They stuck resolutely to sticky keys and small screens, and at best some of them had styluses that pretended to be able to recognize handwriting. Apple managed to leapfrog that mess by reinventing how it controlled, how it looked and what it felt like. Mobile phones went from being cellular devices to something else, something with sexy touch-screen effects and whatnot, and that in turn opened the door to many other innovations. That, in essence, was Microsoft’s big idea with Kinect. If the company could redefine control to be much broader than stuffy old joypads, then that opened the door to lots of other avenues. In a sense it was trying to take “console” into the realm of “smartconsole” but it had an unwillingness to really go for that. Like Sony and Sega before it, Microsoft has attempted to achieve its vision by expanding the metaphor of what “console” is supposed to mean rather than defining a new type of product from the ground up. And the market has yet again said no. Unlike in the computing space where one machine acts as arbiter and translator of all content toward multiple screens, the living room has never really been able to unify. We have several smaller devices that all plug into one big screen. And often they have duplicate functions. The games console seems like it should solve that. It should be a point of access for content and functionality, roles already filled by computers but in the living room. So much more could be brought to the living room if only the audience would get behind that idea. Throw out all your confusing boxes, it seems to say. Bring back some sanity to your life. One box to rule them all and make your life elegant. Yet no company can really get there. No one company can strike deals with all cable-box makers to essentially cut them out of a key part of their value chain. Nobody is yet able to convince television manufacturers to get behind one standard control method. And since that means there will always be fragmentation, players really just want consoles to play games. They view consoles as essentially gaming CD players, and preferably cheap ones at that, and steadfastly refuse to buy into the bigger picture. Their resistance is with good reason: Transitioning from cheaper many-box to expensive one-box means giving up a lot. It means forfeiting the chance to play games on other systems. It means disconnecting from a pre-existing media service and converting or dumping a lot of material in the process. (Could you ever see iTunes on your Xbox?) The argument has not yet been made strongly enough to the market that the trade-off is worth doing. While smartphones show that dramatic evolution is possible, a platform holder like Microsoft needs to go much further than it already has if it’s going to change how gamers think. that Microsoft’s recent reversal on DRM is caused by players being short-sighted, putting immediate value (used games) ahead of long-term potential gains (digital connectedness). To me this reflects a key dissonance. It’s rare that the market gets educated, and instead much more common that it gets fixated on an idea of what a product category is. It hears “PC” and it thinks “powerful desktop computer.” It hears “console” and it thinks “shiny games deck.” It sees one sort of trying to act like the other and resists. No no, it says. The device is supposed to be like this. Even though every PC, smartphone and tablet in the world has a front-facing camera, for example, the market finds something weird about consoles doing likewise because that doesn’t seem to add much to what it believes “shiny games deck” is supposed to be. Even though Nintendo has a great idea for how second screen gaming could work, the market fundamentally regards it askance. A shiny games deck is supposed to be about joypads and such. The tribe only understands “console” as one thing and is only really interested in features that bolster that vision. All else is viewed with suspicion. There’s some kind of smart-TV idea trying to be born at Microsoft, an interesting technology which seems just out of reach. There’s to its Minority-Report-esque idea of swiping, swishing and talking to your television. There’s some notion in the middle of that with tablets and interactions and second screens. But to get there needs a deep reinvention, and the road toward it does not lead through changing everyone’s minds about the meaning of “console.” Instead it needs to be a new product, even a whole new category, and its adoption has to go slow. Rather than adapting a product into something that is complicated, confusing and suspicious, the right approach would be to create something new. One example would be a Kinect standard that could be licensed to television makers and integrated into sets. A standalone camera, irrespective of gaming, that perhaps makes all sorts of remote control tasks easier. And not called “Xbox” at all. Not called “console” either. Or, if the vision mandates that gaming still be involved, a gaming deck that gets beyond the joypad. Much as the iPhone managed to sell itself by walking away from keypads, arguably the gaming machine that moves beyond “console” as a product category needs to move beyond the joypad. This is very hard to do. Nintendo almost managed it with Wii before running out of steam and then trying to create a joypad/tablet combo that few people really like. Kinect tried too, but gestural games are somewhat limited in their scope. Perhaps through SmartGlass or some haptic variant of that in combination with Kinect, Microsoft could get us all into the idea of a new product category like “smartconsole.” Or maybe the reason that this product struggles to come to life is simply that there is no place for it. There isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with the games console as a device. If you like to shoot stuff, jump on platforms, race, and play sports or roleplaying games, the console form factor that we have right now does that. All of the sector’s problems are about how it runs as a business rather than a form factor (which is , as they primarily innovate on the business). Much like the computer or the car, the form factor for doing all those things has not significantly changed in 30 years – and there’s precious little need for them to. Blaming the market is all well and good, but there’s no reason for it to change its idea about what a games console is. And that’s a hard truth. That’s the sort of truth that makes games executives depressed. That’s the kind of truth that, after years of working on grand visions game makers often realize (and become bitter about) that they have to lower themselves back down into the muck. Rather than change the fundamentals the market consistently tells game makers to lean in. Make it bigger. Make it better. Make it play well. Make it feel right. Make it cool. Make it, you know, a great game. That’s all the gaming market cares about, and as yet no one’s made a compelling case for it to think differently. |
Video Killed The Instagram Star | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | Instagram, an app best known for photo-sharing, last week, as it (and parent Facebook) sought to defend against the advance of Twitter’s fast-growing video-sharing app, Vine. The hope was to give its users a whole new way to share what is happening around them with friends. But while it was an ambitious new feature for the company to add, the end result has been that Instagram has sacrificed the user experience for those consuming content. More than a year ago, Hunter Walk broke down the comparison between photos and videos and exactly why it was so difficult for someone to become the “ “: “Think about the photos you look at in either your social feeds or specific photos sites: 99% of them interest you because the subject(s) and/or camera holder is someone you know (or you yourself). Because pictures are static, you can also grok and scan them very quickly, meaning the “cost” of a bad picture is low, hence you are interested in pictures from a wider variety of friends.” That’s not necessarily true for video, where there’s “a much higher cost to watching a video,” he argued. Viewers are much less willing to invest the time needed in a video to find the part that’s interesting. Especially not if they came to it not expecting video. And here is the trouble that Instagram finds itself in: It didn’t fundamentally make video creation more artistic, nor did it make video consumption any more enjoyable. In fact, the few “features” it added to differentiate itself from Vine — the availability of 15 seconds versus 6, and video filters — have both been done before. It’s not just that Instagram failed to make video easier to create or more enjoyable to watch. It’s that, in shoehorning video into an app that users had previously used exclusively for photos, it ruined the core user experience for everyone. Think about all of the best, most popular apps out there today. Almost every single one of them does one thing, and it does it well. There’s Twitter for broadcasting short messages of text with the world. There’s Snapchat for sending ephemeral messages to your friends. And there’s Vine for shooting and sharing short videos. Instagram used to be one of those types of apps. It used to be the app for sharing and viewing beautiful photos from friends. But now, with the addition of video, that singularity of purpose is gone. Users who had spent the last few years creating highly curated lists of their favorite mobile photographers have spent the last few days wading through a sea of . By introducing one little feature to its toolset, Instagram is pushing those hardcore users out the door. Damn it — the epidemic of terrible filtered videos on Instagram has started. On the upside I will take Instagram time and watch Netflix — OM (@om) As can be the case whenever a company with a large user base announces a major change to its app or website (see , ), the reaction to Instagram’s addition of video has been somewhat negative among pundits, reviewers, and users. The app had lost half a star in its ratings after the video feature had been released. More telling is that, most negative reviews are due to videos clogging up users’ feeds, not posting, or slowing down their ability to view photos. John Gruber perhaps : “They did this to spite Vine (and Twitter, which owns Vine), not because it makes Instagram better, because it doesn’t make Instagram better, it makes it worse.” There are some who believe the problem will be self-correcting. Everyone is rushing to shoot videos on Instagram now, but over time people will stop experimenting and uploading crappy videos to the service. On the other hand, we’ll likely see more thoughtful, more artistic videos begin to emerge on the platform. When that happens, those people argue, users will begin to find a lot more value in having videos in their Instagram feeds. Testing new social apps and features without looking ridiculous can be tricky. — Alexia Bonatsos (@alexia) Others suggest that Instagram allows user to filter out videos or simply separate its feeds into photos and videos. That would have the effect of letting those who show up just for the videos to still have access to them, while restoring the photo-only Instagram feed for everyone else. That might improve things, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Instagram we have now is not the Instagram we all came to love over the last few years. It’s unlikely that its will leave en masse and find another photo-sharing app to idolize in its place. But maybe they find themselves opening Instagram just a little bit less. And then sharing just a little bit less. And so on and so on. |
BuzzFeed Says New ‘Flight Mode’ Campaign Shows ‘The Consumerization Of B2B Marketing’ | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | always seems to be the first online publication that comes up when people want to talk about smart, creative approaches to “native” advertising, so here’s a cool example of what the site is doing with advertisers — it’s partnering with GE to allow readers to navigate the site in “Flight Mode.” The campaign was designed to promote GE Aviation’s presence at , a weeklong industry event that ends today. In Flight Mode, BuzzFeed becomes a grid of articles, and readers fly over that grid in a little plane. When they alight on a headline that interests them, they just hit the space bar and they can read the article in the normal view. I don’t know if I’d always want to navigate BuzzFeed (or any other site) this way, but for a few minutes, at least, it’s novel and fun. President and COO Jon Steinberg told me that BuzzFeed promoted the navigation with a banner on top of its front page for part of last week, and the banner will be reappearing this week, too. In the meantime, anyone can access Flight Mode at any time by . The campaign has included additional pieces of flight-themed content, like the video embedded below. BuzzFeed might not seem like the most obvious choice for an ad campaign tied to a trade show, but Steinberg argued that this is part of a broader trend towards “the consumerization of B2B marketing.” He compared it to the “consumerization of enterprise,” where businesses are starting to use consumer products like Dropbox and Google Apps — in this case, advertisers are realizing that they can reach a business audience through a more consumer-focused site like BuzzFeed. “People in positions to make purchases in the aviation field, they like engaging content and the same fun stuff as everyone else,” he said. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfCRTeUzhSI&w=560&h=315] In some ways, the measurements of success for this campaign are similar to those of other BuzzFeed efforts, as well as for regular BuzzFeed content — Steinberg wants it to drive social media sharing and conversation. He doesn’t expect it to be quite as viral as BuzzFeed’s more consumer-focused efforts, but he’s hoping it sees a little more traction on LinkedIn in addition to BuzzFeed’s “bread-and-butter” sharing on Facebook and Twitter. I also brought up one of the other big discussion topics around BuzzFeed — whether it can balance hard news reporting with the fluffier content like “ .” (Just to be clear — I the corgi beach party. I should also mention that my roommate is the editor of .) “Every generation has leisure content next to their serious news,” Steinberg said. The only difference, he said, is that BuzzFeed serves a younger, Internet-savvy audience, so it’s not interested in “an architecture section about $8 million homes,” but instead, “animals and Internet culture next to politics and technology.” As for how advertising, particularly branded, custom content, fits into that equation, Steinberg said: I think banners have been a terrible ad product for 18 years. … You can be good or bad in your separation between editorial and advertising, regardless of your ad product. We have a total wall here between the people that work on the brands and editorial, and it’s clearly labeled, so I don’t see any tension in it. |
If The Government Can Access Our Facebook Data, What Happens When We Have Computers On Our Faces? | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | Wearables will follow a similar path as the smartphone market, analysts predicted in April 2012. “Wearables will move mainstream,” they said. But will they? Do you believe this? Do I? Maybe? From fitness trackers to smartwatches to computers you wear on your face, this emerging market, enabled by the increasing miniaturization of hardware components and lightweight materials, has increasingly been piquing the interest of investors and early adopters alike. Futurist, artificial intelligence expert and inventor predicted that access to the Internet will eventually become completely wireless and provided by wearable or implanted computers. He’s now at Google, whose Google Glass team includes who have already built . Are you ready for Google Eyeballs? Am I? I don’t know. Maybe? Wearable technology, in and of itself, is nothing new. The idea that humans want to augment their own capabilities with gizmos and gadgets has been around for ages. From pocket watches to that once provided 24/7 video to live blogging startups like Justin.tv, we’re enamored of our little add-ons. We believe, combined with machine, we are more. We are smarter. We are , right? In this latest take on the market, tech press (yes, sometimes ourselves) presumes that wearables becoming the next major area for technological progress is a forgone conclusion. The question we’re asking is not , but ? And will dominate? Which wearable device will become the first real mainstream consumer hit? A smartwatch from Apple? Google Glass? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Etc. So far, the market for wearable devices seems limited to the health and fitness sector, and to some extent, gaming. Track your steps and runs, your heart rate… . And even though these devices haven’t yet succeeded in placing a band or wearable gadget on every man, woman and child, nor have they established themselves with a presence in every home the way that computers and cell phones have (at least in the developed world), other startups have already been jumping ahead to build what they think will come next after wearable computing is the norm for all people. . An , which takes on the higher cost of wearables with lower pricing, and doesn’t require anything but an iPhone. I don’t mean to downplay wearables’ potential in the markets they now serve. If, in fact, the trend continues to heat up, 15 million smart wearable device sales in 2013 growing to almost 70 million in 2017, and a global market for smart wearables worth more than $1.5 billion by 2014, up from $800 million this year. But these predictions (the above from Juniper in January) assume a lot. That Google Glass will be available to consumers sometime later this year, for starters. That other big companies like Apple and Microsoft will also buy into this trend. That there will be “significant adoption” among consumers. Even with the data that analysts pour over to come to their conclusions, it’s difficult to accurately predict the future. While wearables seem reasonable, worthy and likely soon-to-be-widespread additions to the personal-computing lineup for athletes, those engaged in health or fitness activities, in a variety of medical health monitoring scenarios, and maybe for some portion of gamers given the right applications, it’s harder to predict to what extent the remainder of the population will adopt wearable technology. Few, outside of the extreme optimists and pessimists, are willing to predict the potential for Google Glass, for example. Will we love our devices so much that we wear them ? Or is Glass the first step toward the creation of ? Who knows? Even augmented contact lens maker, now Googler, once , “I’d rather not hazard a guess here,” when a journalist asked what wearable technology should be developed next. And he and are literally building the future. So go ahead and say that you know for sure and you’ll be a liar. VCs don’t know for sure. Startup founders don’t know for sure. Scientists don’t know for sure. But if you believe funding equates to potential, then look to the wrist: Jawbone ($202 million raised), Fitbit ($53 million), or Pebble ($26 million) are ahead of clip-ons like ($6 million) or ($8 million), as well as non-Google smart glasses ($800K) or ($11 million), for example. Bodymedia raised $12 million and . It’s not like there’s not money to be made here. Still, wearables are not (yet?) the iPhone. When the iPhone launched, people got it. It was obvious that it was the next step. Today, Glass, arm and wristbands, smartwatches and clip-ons and stick-on sensors are here in their newly imagined glory, and people are still scratching their heads and placing their bets. Our society stands at a crossroads. On the one hand we have what appears to be almost an instinctual notion to record and document everything, maybe as some way to feel that our small selves are connected to a greater human experience. By recording and sharing bits of ourselves and our lives, from the days of cave paintings to Instagram photos and now to the very number of steps we’ve taken and beats of our heart, we are somehow not as alone as we feel. On the other hand, we’ve thrown caution to the wind with sometimes over-zealous collecting and sharing; behavior made so easy — almost too easy — that our thoughts pour out of our heads and onto servers in the cloud before we’ve had time to stop and consider the repercussions. This fact we’re now forced to face as we gawk at the , that has been quietly scanning our digital exhaust in ways we once naively believed to be only found in works of fiction. is 2013, and somehow it’s taken a reveal of this size to wake us up to that fact. Will this impact our comfort level with wearables? In this moment of pause, another movement is also gaining steam. The rebirth of anonymity. The ability to inject ephemeral into digital. The distributed. People like to point to , but that’s giving one service too much credit. You can see it also in the , a rebellion against one network to rule them all. You can see it in the one-name or unnamed bloggers filling Tumblr with content, or in the anonymous confessions through secret-sharing app Whisper, which saw 2 billion pageviews in June (so far). You can see it in the rise of the (almost) anonymous and untraceable currency Bitcoin. In apps for . In new projects for . In . Will we proceed into the technological future guided by our hearts, which want to collect and share ever more, or our minds, which now know better? Will we brazenly adopt wearable computing anyway for its promise and potential to augment humanity in ways that seem almost inevitable in their arrival? Or will we back away slowly — at least for now — until our society is able to respect the line between what’s public and private? I don’t know. |
New York Assembly Shelves Bill That Would ‘Shut Down’ Tesla Sales In The State | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | The New York State Assembly has tabled a set of two that would render business model for selling cars illegal in the state. Tesla’s sales model takes a page out of playbook, selling its electric cars through its , rather than through third-party dealerships. The bills, which were proposed last week and supported by auto dealers in New York state, would “require that cars can only be sold and registered when sold by a third party, which would be a dealer or a private seller” and ban car companies from seling their wares direct to consumer, . The measures would be a direct hit to take down Tesla, as it is the only car maker operating in New York with a direct sales business model. Tesla founder and CEO rallied against the proposed bills on Twitter late last week:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/348112948230774784
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/348115440440066049 Musk can rest easy for the time being, however, since the bills have been shelved. The state assembly’s lower chamber “adjourned its legislative session late Friday without acting on the measure,” . This means that Tesla is clear to function as is at least through the duration of 2013, as the New York State Assembly is not scheduled to reconvene until January. Musk credited the bill’s stalling in the Senate to public protest:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/348843230365876225 It’s good news that the bills have been set aside, but it just goes to show the lengths that entrenched industries will go to fight back against disruption from the new generation of technology-first companies. Tesla’s fight against auto dealers is probably not over yet. |
The Series A Crunch Is No Match For Man’s Best Friend | Semil Shah | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | TechCrunch With all the barking in startup-land these days, it can be tempting to dismiss certain categories as “another sign of the bubble.” For example, how about an for dog-owners to find other people to pet-sit their four-legged friends? Recently, I was a bit surprised to learn of a that seems to every decade for the past few decades: The U.S. pet industry. To give some perspective, Americans spend about $600B+ per year at supermarkets and grocery stores (some of which includes pet items, I’m sure). As it turns out, a few pet-related startups not only leaped off the ground and began to make money, and at least three of them were able to fetch attractive term sheets and take a bite out of “The Series A Crunch” to advance their businesses. While it may have been easy to target such startups as “small ideas,” the size of the market doesn’t lie, and consumers are voting with their paws. I’ll apologize in advance for the pet-related puns in this article. The way I see the world, Dogs > Humans. I’d venture many would agree with me. In the world of B2C startups where the “C” stands for “canine,” young pups like , , and have secured at least a Series A-level of institutional funding to help drive commerce via subscription product delivery and marketplaces to connect pet-owners with pet-sitters. While the peanut gallery and technorati may have laughed at these kinds of businesses a few years ago or used them as a symbol of “bubble” activity, the reality is that they were entirely valid — they focused on a real-life opportunity and simply used technology and the web to bring a huge market online. There are many fascinating lessons founders and investors can draw from these companies’ success to date. First, the power of markets. It may be easy to initially howl that pet-related startups are not real businesses, but the power and durability of this market demonstrates this may be narrow thinking. Second, e-commerce subscription is strong even in niche plays. For a while, there were so many monthly subscription “box” startups I thought another startup could provide the actual boxes for these startups to ship, but when founders hit the right target — a good example is — the category delivers. Third, market inefficiencies offline can be addressed through online marketplace dynamics, especially in niche categories. Yes, eBay and Amazon dominate the category, but there are new opportunities all around us, and founders who can correctly identify them and do the hard work of bridging the offline to online and getting to a liquid marketplace can gain real business advantages and economic defensibility. Perhaps this is why more and more pet-related startups are coming out of the dog house. For instance, helps take care of businessmen and women who are transferred in their work and helps relocate their pets; helps create a social network around pets, complete with an iPhone app; has created a Fitbit for your four-legged friends; is trying to build a Sosh-style community offline for dog-owners; and there’s for those who want to rent a cute pooch for a few hours, which isn’t real (remember ?), of course, but wouldn’t you like to sign up? :-) It’s true, Dogs > Humans! As many startups have their own dogs roaming around (and my friend Spencer’s dog, , even has his own Twitter account), it’s no surprise the startup pack are herding around the big pet industry. While Pets.com may have been a for the first Internet bubble (and, perhaps ahead of its time, as now exists), the structure of the economy and these businsesses may be different. . Plenty could go wrong. Are these businesses going to be able to deliver enough cash returns to justify venture capital? Are there enough acquirers (such as ) in the pet market or related industries (such as collaborative consumption or travel startups) that could provide an exit through an acquisition? Will the growth in consumer spending on pets flatten or even slide? I don’t know what the answer is, but so far, in a tough funding environment, a few great companies have made it through to Series A. The market is big enough, yes, but let’s see how big the fight in this dog really is. / |
Ecuador, Where Edward Snowden Seeks Asylum, Is No Utopia For Journalists | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is , on this whirlwind tour of countries semi-hostile to the United States. While Ecuador has been a safe haven for world-class leakers in the past, including Wikileaks editor Julian Assange, the country . Given a “Partly Free” rating by Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press scale, notes: “Attacks on journalists and media houses continue to rise. In 2011, Fundamedios, the national press freedom watchdog organization, cited nearly 150 incidents of aggression (physical, verbal, and legal) against the media by authorities as well as by ordinary citizens.” President Rafael Correa reportedly called the media “assassins with ink.” At least one journalist who criticized Correa’s handling of a police uprising had to flee to Miami after being charged with three years imprisonment under the country’s not-so-friendly defamation laws. Correa has hit back at critics, saying “We won’t tolerate abuses and crimes made every day in the name of freedom of speech. That is freedom of extortion and blackmail.” (Journalists Without Borders Ecuador’s media issues with a pleasant-sounding “satisfactory” rating). Indeed, Correa could point out that while the rest of the free world is looking to imprison Assange, . The whole Wikileaks ordeal has lead to a frosty relationship between the U.S. and Ecuador. In leaked diplomatic cables, the U.S. ambassador alleged Correa had promoted a corrupt officer, which prompted Ecuador to expel the diplomat, and . So, not everyone is convinced that Ecuador is protecting Assange for purely principled reasons. “There is a huge gap between what Correa says about press freedom and reality,” César Ricaurte, head of press watchdog group, Fundamedios. “If Assange were Ecuadorean, I dare say he would already be in jail.” Whether Ecuador is doing this as a public relations stunt, or it has a convoluted stance on press freedom, it appears that leakers have a new safe haven. |
NSA Whistleblower Snowden Requests Asylum In Ecuador After Leaving Hong Kong And Travelling To Russia | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who exposed the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program and a number of similar government initiatives over the course of , has left Hong Kong and is currently in transit in Moscow. , which has been providing legal assistance to Snowden, he “is bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum, and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisors from WikiLeaks.” That democratic nation, the earliest reports suggested, was Venezuela, with Moscow just being the first stop on his journey. Now, however, it , which also offered asylum to Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange, , too. Earlier this week, it seemed Snowden was going to . : : The Government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J. — Ricardo Patiño (@RicardoPatinoEC) The Ecuadorean Ambassador is still here at Moscow airport. It looks like Ecuador is Edward Snowden's destination — Daniel Sandford (@BBCDanielS) As far as we can see, there are no direct flights that connect Moscow to Ecuador’s capital of Quito, so if Snowden travels commercially (and the distance is of most standard business jets), he will likely have to make another stop. Cuba would be a likely candidate, and that option was discussed earlier today when it still looked as if Snowden was heading to Venezuela. The U.S. has , though, which shouldn’t be a problem for entering Ecuador, but it could through another country. Snowden was allowed to leave Hong Kong legally, Hong Kong’s government , because the U.S.’s request for the issue of a warrant of arrest “did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law.” Hong Kong asked the U.S. for more information, but because it didn’t receive this yet, it had “no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong.” Hong Kong, it’s worth noting, is also asking the U.S. for clarifications about earlier reports that its computer systems were hacked by U.S. agencies. Snowden left Hong Kong on an Aeroflot jet , which landed a few hours ago, but most current reports suggest he will continue from there to Cuba and finally Venezuela. If he remains in transit in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, it’s unlikely Russia could detain him, even if the U.S. issued a request. ABC’s Kirit Radia, who talked to passengers on Snowden’s flight, that his plane was met by “diplomatic cars,” but it’s unclear from which country these cars were. We will update this story as we hear more. 's Interfax news agency reports Venezuelan diplomat picked Snowden up in a car on tarmac at Moscow airport. Whisked him away — Jon Williams (@WilliamsJon) |
Up Close With Casio’s Latest Edifice Surf Watch | John Biggs | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | With summer coming and surf season in full swing, I thought I’d take a closer look at the watch with tide graph and moon-phase data. Casio is best known for its G-Shock line of beefy (and some would say ugly) plastic sports watches, so this steel-cased model is a departure for the brand. Casio announced the watch in April and it is on sale now for $250. So what’s special about the EMA100? First, it is surprisingly staid and classic for a “water watch.” The face is quite dark and the two LED registers — one at 6 o’clock and one at 2 o’clock — are reflective and nearly invisible in low light. Even the blue LED backlight is better at lighting up the luminous hands than the actual registers. The Edifice line uses polished metals to great effect, giving what would be a normal, albeit rugged, quartz piece a bit of class. The watch has a number of basic features, including stopwatch, timer and alarm. It also has a built-in thermometer that can usually take an acceptable ambient temperature reading (although it will be thrown off if it’s worn on the wrist.) It also has support for 29 time zones and 48 cities, which makes it a nice travel companion. Most important for the water-bourne among us are the tide indicators that show the time to next high tide as well as a high/low tide indicator at 11 o’clock. There is also a moon-phase graph at four o’clock. The built-in calendar is accurate to the year 2099 and the battery lasts three years. I rarely write about unless I think the timepiece is particularly noteworthy or unusual. I think this piece is both. The Edifice line is Casio’s reaction to Seiko’s classier Sportura line of metal and rubber sports watches and so it is aimed at a different, more refined market. The Edifice is made of steel and is water-resistant to 200 meters, making it acceptable wear for both the office and the beach. The heavy rubber band is quite long, so it will fit a bigger wrist, and the 46mm case, while a bit small for my taste, is boldly styled with a unidirectional bezel and heavy-looking “bolts” in place of the 12, 3, 6, and 9 pips. Even the lack of LED visibility is an asset because it makes the watch look far sleeker than it is. Rather than looking like you’re wearing a helicopter cockpit on your wrist, this Casio leaves a bit to the imagination. I’ve seen plenty of multi-sensor watches that can tell you your altitude, geographical position, and blood sugar readings (not really). However, it’s refreshing to see a classically styled sports watch focus specifically on a niche — in this case the surfing crowd — with a watch that is both water-resistant and doesn’t look like a plastic hockey puck. At $250 I’m more than willing to recommend this watch to folks who need to know the tide charts and, more important, want to get a little ocean time in between meetings.
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After Teasing Us At CES, Withings Enters The Fitness Tracking War With The $99 Pulse | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 6 | 23 | And the battle to build quantified self gadgets rages on. The newest entrant is one that isn’t exactly new to the space — Withings has been churning out smart scales and since 2009, but it recently decided to set it sights on Fitbit and Jawbone with a new, $99 wearable fitness tracker called . The particulars should sound familiar: the Pulse is a tiny (it weighs in at 8 grams) thing with a touch-sensitive OLED display that’s worn on your person and measures the steps you’ve taken, calories you’ve burned, and how long you’ve slept. Oh, and to top it off, you can press your finger to the Pulse’s rear end to figure out your heart rate. Neat trick. Familiar though that formula may be, Withings brings something rather neat to the table though: a hardware ecosystem (if a small one). The company’s background in smart scales means it’s capable of adding some crucial context to the activity data the Pulse is able to collect — a more accurate picture of a person’s fitness level and the effect it actually has on the body. Media darling Fitbit has so far struck to a similar strategy, albeit one that ran in reverse — the company spent years honing its Fitbit wearables before releasing the Aria scale in 2012. That said, Withings is no stranger to cooperation with other quantified self players either. Companies like Fitbit and Jawbone have made it a point to partner with Withings so they can incorporate weight data into users’ accounts. It’s a natural fit considering that a person’s weight represents a crucial bit of information that those company’s respective gadgets can’t really figure out on their own. Honestly though, for a company that’s been nothing if not eager to add value to other wearable gadgets, it’s a little strange to see Withings take a shot at the market themselves. These days it seems like nearly every fitness-focused company is trying reinvent to the pedometer, but it takes some serious expertise to turn a pint-sized selection of sensors and components into a product worth using. The development process may have been a bumpy one too — Withings first showed off that activity tracker (encased in Plexiglass no less) back in , and here we are about five months later with only the option to pre-order the thing. For all the question marks that come with the Pulse, Withings may actually be onto something here. If the company can nail the experience of aggregating data across its hardware lineup and feeding it all into its accompanying app (not to mention the 100 or so partner apps floating around out there), Withings may just be able to pull ahead of a sizable pack. |
The Curse Of The Network Effect | Nir Eyal | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | Ethan Stock lived the Silicon Valley dream. He had recently and emanated the tanned skin and relaxed composure you’d expect of someone who just cashed a big corporate check. But as we sat across from one another in a Palo Alto coffee shop, I was surprised by what he said next. “Mediocrity is worse than failure, you know?” For seven years before the acquisition, Stock served as the founding CEO of Zvents, an online guide for local events. Though he was successful by anyone’s standards, I could tell he was a guy who, like me, had learned some hard lessons. “Zvents grew incredibly well,” Stock told me. “We were the largest events site of its kind, providing local listing in hundreds of markets and attracting over 14 million monthly unique visitors.” Zvents had done what so many tech companies dream of doing, they cracked the network effect and built a business that increased in value with each new user. The more event organizers posted to the site, the more useful the site became to people looking for things to do. Both parties loved the site and Stock’s company was in the middle, connecting visitors to events they otherwise wouldn’t find. “But I learned the network effect isn’t everything. In fact, it became a liability.” Stock’s words confused me. How could being in such an enviable position of creating a valuable marketplace be a bad thing? “Getting paid was a bitch,” Stock said, and he began to unravel how certain marketplace businesses like Zvents can succeed themselves to death. Marketplace businesses exist to connect two or more parties, typically the buyers and the sellers. Investors love these businesses because they tend to grow quickly and spawn winner-take-all companies. A long line of successful Silicon Valley startups have found success providing a place for people to connect and transact. Examples of these kinds of companies include industry titans like eBay and LinkedIn but also include some of today’s web darlings like Uber and Airbnb. “Marketplace businesses are great,” Stock told me. “But there is a fatal flaw in some businesses that can hogtie their ability to make money — the expectation of completeness.” Stock explained how Zvents had planned to charge event organizers to list on their site. “Once we reached critical mass and it was clear we were becoming the market leader, we expected event organisers would start paying.” Unfortunately, reality fell short of expectations. Like many marketplace businesses, Zvents was catering to users who expected to find a comprehensive listing of all local happenings. To keep users coming back, Zvents had to ensure it was displaying everyone’s events — an incomplete list would send visitors looking elsewhere. “When we asked event organisers to pay up, they said ‘what for?’,” Stock said. But threatening to remove a listing was not possible, Zvents needed them all to keep site visitors happy. So Stock’s team offered event organizers better ways to reach users like sponsored placements, which displayed the listing more prominently on the site. But the attempt to finally get paid largely fell flat. “We certainly created value for them.” Stock said. “We were sending people to their events. We just couldn’t capture very much of that value. I guess it’s the old saying, ‘why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free?'” “Google is similar if you think about it.” Stock told me. The comment surprised me given the tremendous success of the search giant juxtaposed with the Zvents story. “They also create much more value than they capture.” He was right. When searching on Google, users also have an expectation of completeness. They come to the site to find all relevant results, every time. If Google decided to only display listings from paying advertisers, we’d all switch to Bing. When considering the collective value of all the clicks on un-sponsored links, the company does give away the vast majority of the value it creates. Indeed, Google appears to be “giving away the milk for free.” The difference is that Google’s market is not limited to local happenings as was the case for Zvents. Google’s market is much, much bigger. In fact, it’s everything. By organizing “ ,” Google skims a proportionally tiny amount of value from a tremendously huge marketplace. The absolute number of people who buy a sponsored placement is large enough to keep the company humming, even though it only monetizes a tiny proportion of the value created. The Zvents story should give pause to marketplace businesses going after niches. The expectation of completeness, and the resulting inability to monetize, may help explain the challenges faced by companies like Foursquare, RedBeacon, and many industry-specific job listing sites. One way around the problem of completeness is to facilitate the transaction itself. Companies like oDesk, Etsy and Uber, ensure they are in the middle of the money by processing the flow of cash. It’s much easier to justify taking a cut when you hold the gold, particularly when doing so adds convenience and security to the transaction. Without the ability to collect a share of each transaction, marketplaces serving users who expect completeness face a difficult challenge. Two options remain: either cater to a very large market, a la Google, or monetize a large share of the value created. The network effect alone just isn’t good enough. |
For Some Reason, Square’s Hiring Page Listed Chirply And SeatMe As ‘Potential Acquisitions’ | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | So, this is weird. Earlier today, if you visited on Jobvite, there were two unusual job listings, one for “Chirply — Potential Acquisition” and another for “SeatMe — Potential Acquisition.” If those were accurate statements, well, that’s a pretty strange way to announce a pair of pending deals. But before you start sending out those congratulatory tweets and emails, I should note that a source with knowledge of the matter told me that Square is pursuing an acquisition of those companies at this time. (A company spokesperson declined to comment.) So how did their names end up as “potential acquisitions” on a Jobvite page? Well, probably the same way they would have shown up if there really were talks — someone, somewhere in the company, screwed up. Regardless of the reason, that screwup has been corrected — after I reached out to Square, the listings disappeared. (You can see them in the screenshot below.) As for what those startups do, Chirply is a crowdsourced card design site (at least, that’s what it did when — is one of those cryptic beta pages.) And is a reservation startup trying to . (I emailed both companies for comment and will update if I hear back.) It doesn’t seem totally out there to believe Square might be vaguely interested in these companies, particularly as talent acquisitions. But that’s a long way from having serious talks. |
Hampton Creek Foods Shows Off Its Egg-Less Scrambled Eggs | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | , a food tech startup , is getting ready to expand beyond its initial product Beyond Eggs — though it’s not leaving eggs behind entirely. The company recently released the YouTube video embedded below, which gives a brief glimpse of its upcoming scrambled egg replacer. And founder/CEO Josh Tetrick told me that he just got off-stage at , where he gave the full demo. Hampton Creek’s larger mission is to move the world away from animal-based foods by developing replacements that are cheaper, healthier, and tastier. Its first product, Beyond Eggs, is supposed to replace eggs in baked goods and other food products ( ). Tetrick told me that the response to Beyond Eggs’ launch in February has been better than expected, with “more of an interest in the mission/purpose of our work than we anticipated.” [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqz51eIyJAQ&w=560&h=315] But Beyond Eggs doesn’t replace eggs as a standalone food. That’s what the scrambled egg product is supposed to accomplish. In Tetrick’s words, it’s “the whole damn thing – not an element in other food products.” And he’s hoping to start selling it in the next six months. “We’re just using one plant to make it happen… and this one plant has awesome coagulation, texture, and springiness properties,” he added. In for his TEDxEdmonton demo, Tetrick also offered some thoughts on the broader vision: We think the food industry will change quite a bit. It will become a lot more humane, a lot healthier, and a lot more sustainable. And right now I think the big problem is that our food system is incredibly broken. And it’s broken because of its devasting impacts to our environment (greenhouse gas emissions), its devastating impacts to our health (rising rates of diabetes and heart disease), and its awful, almost bizarre brutality to animals. Hampton Creek has raised a total of $4.5 million from Khosla, Founders Fund, Kat Taylor, and the Collaborative Fund. And here’s a video of the presentation. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbNw00V26pw?list=UU4DUZAtqyn1XnGacB8vERpA&w=560&h=315] |
Tristan O’Tierney, Square’s Co-Founder And Early iOS Engineer, Leaves For Destinations Unknown | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | Tristan O’Tierney, a co-founder at payment company , that yesterday was his last day at the company. O’Tierney is less well-known than his co-founders, particularly the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey, but (where he describes himself as an iOS engineer), his accomplishments include building the original iPhone app, as well as being a “large contributor” to its first iPad app, the first Pay with Square product, and the Register app. In (answering the question, “Why does Square have so many co-founders?”) O’Tierney writes that he joined with Dorsey and co-founder Jim McKelvey in January 2009. (His prior experience includes working as an iPhone programmer at Tapulous.) Apparently, in those early days the trio , and Dorsey had to flip up his every morning to make room for his co-founders. In his tweet, O’Tierney says he’s not sure what’s next, “except for a bit of traveling!” In directed at The Next Web’s Jon Russell, he added, “I left on good terms. I just want to do something different. Square’s still in a lot of brilliant hands!” I’ve emailed O’Tierney and Square for comment, and I’ll update this post if I hear back. Square declined to comment. |
null | Mike Butcher | 2,013 | 6 | 24 | null |
CrunchWeek: Path’s $1B Valuation, Google’s Waze Buy And The WWDC Recap | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | It’s that time of the week for a new episode of CrunchWeek, the weekly show where three of us writers plop ourselves down in the TechCrunch TV studio for some real talk about the most interesting stories from the past seven days. and I chatted this week about private social network Path’s rumored and the company’s growth to 12 million users, which has been over the past few months. Next up with Google’s the reported price tage of $1.1 billion, and on the social mapping startup. And we talked briefly about the big news from Apple’s developer conference WWDC, including , and |
Doing Mobile Monetization The Right Way | blog | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | This year alone, there is an $11.4 billion mobile advertising , which means there is tremendous upside for nimble and innovative startups with disruptive mobile-first models. As we saw from Facebook last year, the company was able to turn around and actually make something of its – a business that didn’t exist at the time of IPO. However, despite the potential of the market, and Facebook’s early success, we’re still a long way from realizing the promise of the mobile medium. When looking at the opportunity, it’s clear there are a few core challenges that need to be addressed quickly in this nascent market. The startups that address these challenges first will be the companies to watch. In many ways, we’re at the same juncture with mobile advertising as we were with the desktop web circa 1996-97. At that time we were limited by basic ad-serving capabilities, browser cookies to track visits and boring, static display ads. Search keyword advertising, the most compelling ad format and targeting method the web has seen, was only in its infancy (at Goto.com, which eventually became Overture) at the time. Right now, the two most obvious hurdles to overcome are what smart companies are focusing on: developing a reliable and privacy-safe method for user targeting across apps, and developing smartphone native ad formats. On the traditional desktop web, browser cookies became a reasonably reliable and standardized method for recognizing and storing attributes of any given user in between visits to a site. Today roughly 80 percent of online ads leverage cookies or some other form of a user-targeting mechanism. In the mobile app world, an analogous, reliable and standardized mechanism has not yet emerged across either iOS or Android, and until it does, relevance-based targeting will be less effective in the mobile environment and remain a giant missed opportunity for advertisers. Currently there isn’t a robust way to track users across applications after Apple deprecated UDID as a targeting mechanism. In order for cross-app user targeting to be fully realized, the tracking of users in a privacy-focused environment must be solved. The first ad formats utilized on smartphones were borrowed from the web. As a result, users are inadvertently clicking on too-small-to-read banner ads, thus ensuring annoyed users. Instead of a fluid and seamless experience, users are pulled out of their task at hand and brought to un-optimized web landing pages in the mobile browser. The only way mobile ad monetization will flourish is when smartphone native ad formats that enhance the immediate app experience are developed. The good news is that we’re starting to see a few promising native smartphone format candidates with notifications and Facebook’s Sponsored Stories. There is still plenty of room for innovation, as these formats aren’t 100 percent where they need to be. Users and marketers alike can’t wait for some savvy startup to develop innovative and reliable ad formats that fit within the app experience and engage the user without disrupting the task at hand. Once the dilemmas of cross app user targeting and smartphone native ad formats are solved, there are some very promising areas within the mobile environment that are poised for the taking: The ad-tech player who can get the ambient context digital wallet and in-app context right for the Walmarts and Coca-Colas of the world will be a . There will be several winners in this area, each focused on a particular vertical of offline-to-online. Yes, cost-per-lead advertising. The web performance stepchild to cost-per-click could emerge as a first-call citizen in the smartphone medium. Why? Well, the medium happens to be attached to a phone, and guess what leads perform the best: phone calls. The smartphone promises to connect this intent to buy to a live person more seamlessly than any other medium to date. This will lead to higher conversion rates and thus higher monetization rates. , a Redpoint portfolio company that started in the web CPL space, is one startup helping these advertisers take advantage of the mobile phone. The fundamental problem of user targeting and analytics within the mobile world must be solved. This solution will come from a clever startup, not the underlying platform players Apple and Google. Just as Omniture emerged to be an important platform company in web analytics, there will also be similar companies built within the smartphone medium. Native mobile app analytics companies like are promising, as are the emerging players in audience targeting like (a Redpoint portfolio company). While we are a far way from identifying the smartphone equivalent of paid search, it will absolutely exist (it has to) and it will leverage ambient targeting, the digital wallet and smartphone native formats that interrupt but don’t disrupt the user from the task at hand. The market is big and the current players are just starting to crop up, which means the challenge is for the taking. The next two years will undoubtedly be exciting years to see it all unfold – not only to see who the winners will be, but also to see the innovations that make it happen. |
Blue Apps Are All Around But Blue Tones Get Less Of A Role In iOS 7’s Psychedelic Redesign | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | Why are so many app icons blue? The obvious answer is that so many tech brands contain blue in their logo or elsewhere in their tradedress. But why? What’s with the love of the blue tones people? I ask because the number of blue icons on my phone has reached a kind of tipping point where I’m often firing up the wrong app because I reach for the (wrong) blue one. And then I’m heading to Glide rather than Rdio, or the App Store not Dropbox, or Skype not Shazam. I don’t normally arrange this blue collection on a single page but curious about how much of the stuff is hanging around on my homescreen I created a colour-co-ordinated arrangement (left) which serves to emphasise that it’s both big name apps, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and newer-comers like Glide and Rdio going for blue. Many of Apple’s native apps (in iOS 6) also rock similar blues, be it Safari, the weather app, stocks, the mail app and so on. Initially this ‘blue period’ homescreen made finding apps even more confusing but I found that amalgamating all the blue tones actually tends to normalise them, making it easier for their distinct symbols and signs to stand out. So I’m tempted to stick with it. In the mean time, I’m still intrigued as to why tech companies are so hot on blue? It’s possible there’s some deliberate mimicry going on, on the part of some startups. In seeking to establish their services, they want the user to think about other established tech services they know and love so they feel more confident about using a (similarly blue-coloured) alternative. Thinking of the likes of Skype for messaging and Facebook for social, say. In other words startups are hoping a resonating shade of blue will help them build a strong brand too. Or they might be hoping to accidentally pass their app off as another the user is used to using; a sort of social engineering of where the user sticks their fingertip to steal taps meant for other apps. That’s risky, since the user didn’t meant to click on your app so may just get annoyed and delete it. Still, a swathe of startups clearly think it can’t harm if they project a similar visual aura to other established apps and services. It’s like the old adage ‘no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft’. Apparently no app icons ever offended by being painted blue. There are other colour factors to consider too. Various colour preference surveys put blue on top, as the most popular shade for men and women globally. It’s certainly not a Marmite shade that polarises opinion — with so many natural instances of blue (sky, sea, flora) keeping things tranquil. Blue also apparently travels well, being more culturally neutral than certain other colours. Or so the theory goes. also says that dark blue shades generate a feeling of reliability and stability (Facebook does have trust issues, after all), while lighter blues are apparently relaxing and calming (Apple’s native iOS 6 apps seem to fall into this category), or uplifting and energising depending on how bright the shade is (the bright blues of Skype and Shazam, say, or Twitter’s bird logo). It’s notable that even when some tech brands’ logos don’t actually have that much blue in them, their app icon can often make blue tones far more prominent (like Glide’s icon for instance, right). Meanwhile Twitter, which has its trademark bright blue bird online, switches to a white bird silhouette on a more muted and steady looking blue background for its current iOS app icon. Perhaps the relationship between a mobile device and its user necessitates an extra injection of trust, being as these gadgets are so personal. Therefore developers reach for more muted blue tones when designing their app’s phone icon. Apple’s iOS 7 redesign ushers in a new, more neon-colour palette which deliberately ramps up the energy level of the native apps’ colour tones. (You could say they’ve been .) Apps that were a relatively relaxing shade of blue before now positively pop out — with undertones of teal green/turquoise creeping in. The result is definitely uplifting in the sense that the apps appear to float against the background (a parallax effect Apple is encouraging via other features in its redesign, such as translucent layers and subtle shading effects as you move the phone). The new look iOS also replaces the blue undercoat on toggle switches with green, and paints some native apps a new shade (like the stocks app now a fittingly bleak shade of black rather than a calming mid-blue), to further highlight how Apple is creeping away from its old mid-blue comfort zone. At a glance, there’s definitely a greater colour range to how Apple is painting the iOS 7 icons, and a lot less blue jackets than there are in iOS 6. Cupertino has been under pressure to refresh the iOS interface, thanks in part to the accelerated speed with which Google has been driving Android’s look and feel forward. iOS is also now a six-year+ old OS, with more new-look competition crowding in than ever before, whether it’s Windows Phone or BlackBerry 10. One way for Apple to create an impression of change — without having to do radical restructuring which might upset its existing user-base — is a new lick of paint. The iOS 7 palette, including its blues, is certainly far more energetic than the old one — and that’s likely aimed at generating a feeling of renewal, without having to shift too much core furniture and functionality. The other issue is that perhaps Apple has realised its old favourite blues are becoming a bit stale/invisible because they’ve been so widely adopted. The new iOS 7 palette repaints the goal-posts in more rainbow tones in the short term but, ultimately, app makers will likely fall in step by tweaking their own app shades to harmonise with Apple’s neon brights. So their mid-blues will probably also get dialled up and/or tinged turquoise and green. And before you know it the colour spectrum of apps on the homescreen could be falling in step again. Whether Apple stepping away from blue will help other developers to kick the coat off their own apps remains to be seen. Apple’s influence will count for something but there’s no reason to think the human eye’s long-term love affair with blue tones is about to be overthrown, no matter how idealistically psychedelic Jony Ive’s redesign. |
Silicon Valley Real Estate Update: The Craziest Market In The U.S. Just Got A Little Less Crazy | Glenn Kelman | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | Well what do you know! After writing for the past year about how Silicon Valley’s Gatsbyesque wealth couldn’t find much real estate to buy, Bay Area inventory is . Bidding wars are . And rising rates are squeezing buyers who have to borrow money. Below is Redfin’s quarterly rundown of what’s happening in Silicon Valley real estate. Bidding wars are still common, with Redfin agents facing competition on 95 percent of all homes in May 2013, the highest of any of the 21 markets Redfin serves. For example, reports that this nice-enough got 12 offers, and likely went under contract in June for well above $2.4 million. But fewer bidders are competing. Since Redfin , we measure the average number of competitors in a bidding war, which has declined from a peak of 16.3 in January to 7.8 in May. As agents, we know that demand is waning not because buyers no longer want a home but because they’ve despaired of ever being able to get one. About one in four of our Bay Area homebuyers have told us at some point in the last three months that they’re taking a break from their search out of sheer frustration. The decrease in competition hasn’t changed the pricing of the most sought-after properties. But occasionally, close also-rans languish. noticed that two nearly identical Mountain View homes, one slightly better looking, sold at the same time last week: The beauty queen sold for $200,000 over asking, drawing all the attention away from its neighbor, which got only one offer and sold for $150,000 less than comparable properties in the area. The fact that homes are still selling very quickly may reflect a fundamental change in consumer behavior rather than simply a hot market; the median days on market for Bay Area homes that sold in May was 12 days; last year at this time it was 18. Mobile instant alerts triggered by the debut of new listings have been behind this trend, with 302 listings in May going under contract in less than 24 hours. Some of our buyers don’t even like to go into a Costco for too long if it will block the cell signal they need to get instant alerts. This has also put pressure on real estate websites to get inventory quickly. On average, brokerage sites like APR.com, ZephyrSF.com, and Redfin.com get ; the reason is that the brokerage sites employ real estate agents with complete, direct access to the Bay Area’s four local Multiple Listing Services. Higher prices, and perhaps the fear that higher interest rates could dampen demand later, have at last drawn would-be sellers into the market. Bay Area inventory began the year down 59 percent from 2012, but has now improved to the point that it’s only 28 percent down from this time last year; by year-end we expect 2013 inventory to be up year-over-year for the first time since 2011. Redfin’s own Bay Area listing business has increased more than 100 percent over last year. In 2013, real estate’s spring may come in summer, and summer may come in fall. Sales volume will increase, and price increases may lose steam. Builders are often slow to respond to inventory crunches, in part because it takes time to finish projects, in part to drive profits from a run-up in demand. This is why we’ve seen line-ups, lotteries and among buyers competing to get units as they’re released by builders. But four new projects are releasing units this summer in San Francisco, where the total number of homes has barely budged since World War II: in Hayes Valley, near the Bay Bridge, in the Mission, and . We hear more reports of pocket listings, where the listing agent sells the home to one of his own clients or to one of his partner’s clients, without offering the property to the broader market. The actual data suggests that this is common only for homes priced above $5 million. Few sellers at lower prices would ever bypass the larger market, which can draw in enough buyers to spark a bidding war. But there are other types of inside jobs. “Some Redfin clients are trying to get creative,” , Redfin San Francisco agent. “I just closed one deal with a client who asked his landlord to sell, and I have another two — which may or may not close — in the works.” With interest rates increasing since May 1, and sharply since May 22, Bay Area homebuyers have felt more pressure to buy a home soon. On June 4, interest rates exceeded 4 percent for the first time in a year. “You know how analytical we can be in the Bay Area,” said Redfin agent Brad Le. “Some of my clients know down to the dollar how much more their mortgage is per month with the current rates, and others already stretching to afford a home have been priced out by the rate increase. The buyers who remain are even more motivated to find something.” in bidding wars. In the past week, three different Bay Area buyers did this, despite the penalties associated with withdrawals from 401(k) accounts. Bay Area sellers continue to have a strong preference for cash buyers, to avoid a second price negotiation if an appraisal comes in low from the buyer’s lender. Buyers are also getting help from their parents. Just last month, Redfin clients living in a one-bedroom San Francisco apartment with two small children needed extra dough to avoid being priced out of the Oakland Hills market, so the parents — who were already tired of staying in hotels during visits from the East Coast — just became a party to the purchase. Virtually every Redfin agent in the Bay Area has a story about this. Of the Bay Area sales closed in May, 89 percent had been listed by an agent. By comparison, 85 percent of May 2012 sales were agent-listed. Usually, when the market makes it easier to sell a home, more sellers try to do it themselves. But the Bay Area is in such a frenzy that people here are hiring an agent in even greater numbers to play the game to perfection, and to get top dollar. Of course, as real estate agents ourselves, Redfin benefits from a decline in for-sale-by-owner sales. Nonetheless, Redfin’s website is the only one I know of that shows both all the agent-listed homes for sale as well as for-sale-by-owner listings. , from 2.65 percent for Bay Area listings that debuted in May 2012, to 2.56 percent in May 2013. Sellers have been emboldened by the market to offer the buyer’s agent less, with no fear of steering. Booms usually bring an increase in the number of agents. Not in the Bay Area. In May 2012, 6,008 Bay Area agents represented homebuyers on 9,456 transactions. By May 2013, 5,540 Bay Area agents represented buyers on 8,295 transactions. Because the market here has been inventory-gated, 2013 sales actually declined 12.3 percent, whereas the number of active agents declined 7.8 percent. What does it all mean? The Bay Area real estate market is getting back to its own version of normal, which still isn’t that normal at all. |
Security Psychology And Why Even Messy Numbers Of Government Data Demands Are Valuable | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | People assume the worst. So when it comes to counting government “requests” for private data, disclosing a number, even a high number, is far better than the fear of infinity. That’s why tech giants are fighting to show they aren’t open books surrendered to the NSA. They want to prove only the suspicious are being spied upon. were the words that drummed up the fear. reported that the National Security Agency had attained direct access to the data of nine of the world’s largest tech companies. Many of those companies aggressively denied this, saying they only provide specifically requested data when legally obligated to. Unfortunately they were heavily muzzled regarding the specifics of what they could say. The vagueness combined with their initial inaccurate reports of direct access left the public shaken. Many innocent citizens got the sinking feeling they were being spied on. Over the last week, the companies have been fighting for more exactly how many government requests for data they’ve been receiving from the NSA. The hope was that that would quell the speculation. Yesterday Facebook and Microsoft both . Not hard numbers, but at least a narrow range of numbers of requests they’ve recieved from the government for private user data on criminal as well as potential terrorist threats over the last six months. , that range was nine to ten thousand requests on between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts. , it was six to seven thousand requests affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 users. Previously, all companies were completely gagged when it came to requests from the National Security Agency, legally required to keep the number of requests for data on potential terrorist threats a secret. The deals let them disclose numbers…but only in aggregate with local, state, and federal criminal data requests, and only in bands of one thousand to obscure the specifics. Why Facebook and Microsoft wanted this was that these numbers establish a worst case scenario. Rather than allow conspiracy theorists and panicked journalists (which I was guilty of being) to speculate that hundreds of thousands, millions, or everyone was under the watchful eye of the NSA big brother, it capped the number of people possibly monitored at 19,000 for Facebook and 32,000 for Microsoft. That is a lot more reassuring than people being scared the surveillance extended to all users. Facebook needed a number to point to more than anyone. It’s business model lives and dies by private data. When users feel comfortable, they volunteer the fuel for Facebook’s content relevance and ad targeting engines. If they feel paranoid, they’re not going to deactivate their accounts, as Facebook has become too crucial a utility for most. But they will be subtly weary of sharing their more personal information and content. That hurts Facebook. But Google and Twitter immediately the social network. Why? Because they cut a bargain rather than hold out for exact numbers of NSA requests and the volume of people affected. Facebook settled for giving the public something rather than nothing, even if the data on the NSA is obscured by being combined with non-NSA requests for more traditional criminal cases. That could make it harder for other companies to get the NSA to loosen up even further. Facebook didn’t want to keep the public in the pitch dark, and couldn’t risk not getting to disclose anything. If the government does what’s right, this disclosure will just be a stepping stone to the data Google and Twitter want to provide. True transparency. That’s what the public deserves. But regardless of the criticism, what Facebook and Microsoft won for the public yesterday will go a long way to reassuring us that these companies aren’t knowingly spilling the beans on everyone, and the government might not be as powerful as we suspected. |
Diary Of A 5,000-Hours-Per-Year Internet Troll | James Altucher | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | I know you do it. We all act like we don’t do it, like we’re all pristine human beings who WOULD NEVER do perverse things like that. But I know you do it. And you do it a lot. You respond to trolls. It starts like this: You post something intelligent on the “World Wide Web.” Triple-dub to those in the biz. You expect that the entire world is going to praise you for coming up with the one thing that’s never been said before in the history of mankind. Then HE shows up. Someone who says something to provoke you. Most of the time you say “troll” to yourself, and you get back to living your larger-than-life existence. But every now and then, the troll takes the place of your father. Or your mother. Or your ex-spouse. Or your ex-something. Some button is pressed. Right there in the center of your head. And you have to respond. Because…because…because…if you don’t respond then EVERYONE will think maybe this guy is right and you HAVE to set the record straight. One weekend I had an article right here on TechCrunch. A little over a year ago. The article came out at 8 a.m. on a Saturday. Around 9 p.m. the next day, 37 hours later, my wife came up to me and said, “you know you’ve been glued to that message board all weekend. You NEED TO SHOWER NOW!” I published a book last week. It was No. 1 for all non-fiction for a couple of days, even beating out Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In.” I was very happy. The book is about how we can choose ourselves for success instead of rely on the masters who would love to keep us on a leash. It’s about breaking the shackles so we could have financial freedom. It’s what every TechCrunch reader wants to do. In the book, among other things, I threw out a challenge. I asked any Internet troll, someone who prides himself on driving people crazy, someone who spends 10 hours a day or more responding to message board comments, to please contact me and describe the mentality. We all get advice on trolls all the time. I get 100 hate comments a week across various message boards. I’ve even gotten . But sometimes…sometimes….there’s just those buttons. It’s daddy or mommy and they know how to press them. Then, in response to the challenge in my book, You may know GVOK. You may know him if you spend thousands of hours on www.startrek.com arguing about politics. Or, after he was banned from startrek.com, if you spent another several thousand hours on sistertrek.com. Or if you spend thousands of hours on YouTube arguing whether or not Jesus is real. GVOK is no teenage, pimply idiot typing out screeds from his high school computer lab. He wrote: “After graduating law school I worked for a law firm, bored out of my mind and miserable for eight years and was laid off in 2009. I had also bought a large, beautiful house that I am now renting out because I could no longer afford the mortgage. “Your message that these types of middle jobs will eventually become temp jobs definitely speaks to me. I never enjoyed working these kinds of jobs anyway. They’re boring, coworkers are gossipy and I always felt underutilized and looked down upon. Your daily practice you mention inspires me and I can definitely see breaking out on my own.” So GVOK, while he was at his former job as a high-priced lawyer, started spending hours every day on message boards. His only goal: to drive other people completely insane. All of the bold lettering below is mine. He wrote: “I’ve had three experiences trolling. Two message boards on Star Trek and one comment section of a Youtube video on whether Jesus was real. Trolls rarely admit they are wrong and I’m no exception. I was from being an upstanding board member into a troll by a board bully named Admiralbill. Now Admiralbill was a staunch Republican, a real ditto head, ex-navy guy from Texas. He vehemently attacked anyone who remotely espoused a liberal viewpoint. After it was determined that there were no WMDs in Iraq and the whole basis on the invasion was based upon a false premise I began to have my doubts about conservativism. This brought me into the cross hairs of Admiralbill. After a few times being attacked by him and observing him attack others I decided to attack back. The following is a list of methods I employed: 1. I would post a news article that tended to put the Republican / Conservatives in a bad light. This was obviously intended to push Admiralbill’s buttons but I could always argue that I thought the article was interesting and might stimulate discussion. It had the effect of putting him on the defense because he felt compelled to respond to it. 2. I would then keep him tired and on the defensive. I did this by responding quickly and concisely. When I did post commentary I would keep it short and only address one particular point. I always found it when another poster would get so worked up over something and take the time to write a long drawn out post responding to every single point in the previous post. I would just choose one point to refute or agree with. . I conserved my energy with small posts that took me ten minutes to craft they exhausted themselves with long ones that took an hour. The longer they take to respond, the more rest I have and the more agitation they feel to get a response out. 3. I usually asked questions in my responses. This also put him on the defensive because he felt compelled to respond to a direct question. . Questions (for some reason) also had the effect of pissing him off. I naturally asked questions to begin with not thinking this was strategy but once I realized he didn’t like it I did it more. 4. I specifically stated at times that I did not want Admiralbill to respond in specific threads to avoid conflict. I spent quite a bit of time baiting Admiralbill. I think it was more than before I was banned from the website. By the time that happened I wanted to be banned. I needed to end the endless cycle. It drained my energy. I was constantly thinking of new ways to piss Admiralbill off. To this day part of me still hates how mean and self righteous . James, I know you don’t vote but it’s enough motivation for me to vote Democrat knowing that in some small way it gets back at him. There’s definitely an addictive cycle when it comes to trolling. The exhilaration is the drug that for a moment takes away the pain I feel during the 90% of the rest of the cycle. They probably work jobs or live lives that are in someway unsatisfying. They want to feel special and crave attention and respect. They are highly dependent on the opinions of other people. And this is really at the heart of the matter, a message board troll feels intense shame. It is shame that motivates him to shame others. Where this shame comes from is a whole other discussion but part of it definitely had to do with working a job I hated for so long. As you mention it is basically pointless to try to change another person’s mind but I suppose at some level I was also operating under the delusion that if I said the right thing he would admit he was wrong.” I asked GVOK three questions in response: His response. “Oh wow. You responding just made my day – You feel intense shame, you are bored, you have access to the internet – of course you will end up trolling!” And he ended his discourse with: “Thanks”. GVOK, you’re welcome. |
Disrupt Europe Startup Battlefield Deadline Is Approaching — $50,000 Is At Stake | Mike Butcher | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | Calling all startups from Europe, the Middle East and Africa. . For the very first time, the full TechCrunch Disrupt conference (complete with the main TechCrunch Editors and Writers) is coming to Europe and we’re looking for the very best startups to launch on our Disrupt stage as part of the world-famous Startup Battlefield. The winner gets a shiny Disrupt Cup, $50,000 cash, and a huge amount of attention from the world of tech. The Startup Battlefield is the heart and soul of our conferences. Companies like Yammer, Dropbox, FitBit, Swype and hundreds more have launched from the Disrupt stage. We’ve always had an international contingent, but , it will be Europe’s time to shine. Last month, at Disrupt NY 2013, a very impressive batch of startups including , , and . The very best startups show up at Disrupt. Are you ready to launch your company on the biggest startup launch stage and get the highest profile possible? Tell us about it. For the first two days, 30 companies will present their product to a panel of judges — a group of experts that include partners from major VC firms and CEOs and other execs from major tech companies who take you through your paces. Then comes a shortlist and if you make it to that you pitch again. But first you have to apply. for the application and full list of rules. More details about Disrupt Europe:Berlin 2013 will be announced in the coming weeks. at a significant discount. We are preparing a stellar line up of speakers and panels, the cream of Silicon Valley and Europe combined. Disrupt Europe: Berlin will also play host to some awesome parties and receptions. We hope you’ll join us. But we need your help. for Startup Battlefield and help us make the first Disrupt in Europe one they’ll talk about for years to come. Applications are reviewed by TechCrunch writers and on a rolling basis — and the last two Disrupts had record numbers of applicants — so it’s to your advantage to submit as soon as you are ready. Due to strong demand, we are unable to review applications more than once, so please do not submit a draft application you are ready for final consideration. Just submit the one good one. PowerPoint slides and video demos are optional but highly encouraged. We reserve the right not to review applications without video demos based on application volume. We look forward to reviewing your application. |
Can BuzzFeed Be Stopped? | Jon Evans | 2,013 | 6 | 15 | It’s been a good week for old media. , , , and have all done a superb job of reporting on the NSA/PRISM revelations. Unfortunately it has also been a terrible for them. Newspaper advertising revenue has fallen by since 2007, and paywalls aren’t even coming close to covering that loss. Worse yet, nimbler competitors are doing their breakneck best to steal the audience…and they seem to be doing it well. I recently got curious about how frequently various news sources are shared on social media, and since I couldn’t find any tool that measured quite what I wanted, I built one myself. (And I’ve spent like a hundred dollars on App Engine server costs amassing all of its data, so I hope you appreciate this.) The results were eye-opening. My handy-dandy tool, called , tracks stories from a of online sources, how often they’re shared, and compares and ranks them all. Guess what its says as of this writing? None of the above are ranked in the top three. Nor the NYT, or the WSJ, or the . Instead, third place goes to , with an average of 2000 shares per story; number two is , with 2700; and number one, at over 3000…is much-loathed BuzzFeed. But wait, it gets worse. The numbers for most of the sources Scanvine tracks have been pretty consistent since the start of the year, which is how far back its data collection goes. a handy-dandy chart of the since then: and the BBC World News: and TechCrunch. (Which, incidentally, does among tech sources.) ( .) All three are basically still where they were in the second week of January. But BuzzFeed — and , I’m sorry to say, is the Mail Online. (As a former UK resident I have good reason to despise the Daily Mail, and while the Mail Online is not the same thing–basically it’s the UK’s TMZ–it’s guilty by association.) Can you see the difference? Now, it’s possible that some tweak has somehow caused Scanvine to overstate the recent rapid increase in the share counts for BuzzFeed and Mail Online — and indeed I kind of hope so — but you’d be hard-pressed to deny that quick-hit low-journalism sites, as personified by those two, have had a much, better half-decade than the gray old-media titans of yore, and there’s no sign of this trend turning around anytime soon. Please note: I said journalism, not journalism. There’s a huge difference. High journalism, eg the investigative Snowden/NSA reporting, is like protein; low journalism is more like chocolate. And there’s definitely a place in this world for good chocolate, à la and , whose stories usually manage to be something while still being hilarious. But BuzzFeed? Not so much. Historically, high journalism has largely been subsidized by low journalism. Nowadays, though, the two are increasingly decoupled, largely because we can get the latter online in unlimited quantities. BuzzFeed is the of this movement, partly because of its , partly because it is to low journalism what high-fructose corn syrup is to chocolate, as by, er, . BuzzFeed is little more than a superbly engineered machine for turning animals, animated GIFs, and into pageviews. It’s almost pure . To be clear, I’ve been amused by many a BuzzFeed post myself; and to their credit, they’re trying to do more. They’re not just , they’re looking to broaden their remit into high journalism as well. Under , they’ve expanded into political reporting, and they’ve just ‘s Moscow correspondent as their first foreign and national security editor: The idea for the expansion, says BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti, took shape after the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings… “It was a real eye-opening moment,” Peretti says. “They don’t have a legacy news brand, and they were turning to BuzzFeed, a site they visit every day, to figure out what was happening. … Our top five stories were all hard news content.” Well, maybe. But I built Scanvine to tabulate the available data myself, and according to it, . You do find “29 Reasons To Love Boston,” “Comfort Dogs Come To Boston”, “Boston Marathon Met With Unbelievable Acts Of Kindness,” “Dunkin’ Donuts In Boston Stayed Open During Lockdown,” and “16 Eerie Images Of Boston On Lockdown,” but only three stories there could remotely be considered hard news — and they’re way, way down the list from “27 Signs You Were Raised By Asian Immigrant Parents,” “20 Reasons Why Going To The Gym Is A Huge Waste Of Time,” and “27 Dogs That Will Do Anything For Kids.” I challenge you to find political or hard news high on the BuzzFeed Top 40 list for , either. If their audience really is into hard news and politics, then they sure seem to be going out of their way to keep it hidden from one another. Who knows? BuzzFeed may yet become, well, the BuzzFeed of hard news. And I genuinely admire their attempt to do so. But if they do succeed, it will be one of the great media pivots of our time. I doubt it will happen. I think that instead the world of news will continue to bifurcate into the high/hard and the low/soft, and that BuzzFeed will remain the lowest and softest of the latter category. All of which means that for pretty much the first time in the history of newspapers (unless you count , which continues to defy all trends) we’ll all have to find out whether or not hard news and investigative journalism can survive and thrive all on their own. Let’s hope so. Because as this week shows, we still need those grizzled old-media watchdogs to keep their eyes and teeth sharp. Maybe now more than ever. |
Yahoo’s Shopping Spree Continues With Conference Calling Startup Rondee | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | Thought Yahoo’s acquisition spree would culminate with a ? Nope, not so much. In fact, the buy-happy company just quietly made its second acquisition in 24 hours — in two different markets, no less. Yes, Yahoo followed this morning’s , by making a play into the enterprise conference calling space. Wait, what? Yep, users of six-year-old free conference calling service, , were tonight informed via email that the startup has been acquired by Yahoo for an undisclosed sum. It will also suffer the same fate met by other recent Yahoo acquisitions — like to name just four — in that it will soon be going the way of the dinosaur. After June 30th, the company’s website now reads, users will no longer be allowed to access their data or create new conference calls. The startup will continue its progressive shut down from there, officially closing operations on July 12th, before ultimately cutting off user access to their calling data on July 30th, the startup said in an email to its customers today (copied below). However, to avoid stranding its users completely on such short notice, the company said that it’s arranging for “user Login ID and on-demand pins to work with ,” a company (and, previously, a competitor) it describes as a “highly reputable conference calling service.” Not sure that’s much consolation. “Hey, we may be forcing you to leave … but at least the place we’re sending you has electricity, right?” Rondee, for those who haven’t been following the crowded and congested conference calling market, The startup set out to lower the barriers to entry in the conference calling arena and make it accessible to the masses. Today, that means it offers basic conference calling capabilities around the clock (for free) to anyone with an email address. Granted, for those looking to get “fancy” with call recording, like having access to audio, custom tones, call directories and call scheduling, some account setup is required. But that’s about it. Users can choose between free, on-demand conference calling, or free, “Scheduled Rondees,” in which users can pick a future date and time to schedule a conference call and let Rondee send out email invitations to which invitees can respond to and use via the company’s website. Straightforward, easy to use and free. Of course, while those are traits every company should shoot for, the VoIP market looks a little bit different than it did six years ago, becoming nearly ubiquitous thanks to companies like Skype and Google, meanwhile, startups like UberConference have moved onto free visual conference calling to compete with Hangouts et al. Today, Rondee’s basic VoIP model sounds very familiar. While Yahoo nor Rondee has shared any real details on the terms of the deal or the motivation, we do know from a quick Google search (and a look at its press page) that the startup has been pretty quiet of late. Sure, it’s likely this wasn’t an exorbitantly expensive buy for Yahoo, but this also hasn’t been an area of strength (or focus) for Yahoo for a long time, which starts to make it seem like there isn’t really a good explanation for this one. Maybe Yahoo wants to integrate Rondee into its internal conference solution, for internal IT use, seeing as it’s cheaper than buying an enterprise solution? Probably not. What may be more likely (and hopefully is the case) is that Yahoo liked the team and was eager to make use of its talent, so Marissa Mayer pushed Yahoo’s Acme Acqui-hire Button so that Rondee can join it in re-building . Maybe? After all, on its website, Rondee says that it will be joining Yahoo’s Small Business Team, so while it may be a stretch, motivation could lie in the company’s has-been messaging client. Marissa Mayer has made talent acquisition one of her top priorities since becoming CEO, and mostly her shopping spree has targeted mobile — in other words, showing the company understands that its mobile strategy and products to evolve if Yahoo ever hopes to be truly relevant again. (And, really, it’s probably a little late, but…) Right now, it’s easy to take a look at Yahoo’s product portfolio and sigh. Case in point: People used to Yahoo Messenger as their go-to chat app. (Well, some people did, somewhere. We’re still trying to find out who they are exactly.) But the point is that Yahoo’s messaging client used to be enormous, and now it’s about as cool as . Meanwhile, sadly for Yahoo, gamified and chat-ified messaging apps are all the rage and continue to proliferate, especially in emerging markets. In some Upside Down World, this could mean that there’s still opportunity here for Yahoo. Though with Google’s assets like gChat, Google Voice, Gmail and Hangouts, just to name a few, Yahoo has a long way to go. A pretty long way. Sure, if anyone knows how to get Yahoo up to speed using Google’s playbook, it’s Marissa Mayer. But then there’s WhatsApp, iMessage, Viber and too many more to name. Google launched free voice calling from Gmail nearly three years ago, and adding similar capabilities and enhancements to Yahoo Mail would make sense — and wouldn’t hurt. Of course, even if it were somehow able to pull it off, weakly copying Googles Roadmap doesn’t do Yahoo any favors. It’s dangerous and, well, just sad. Or maybe not. Maybe Yahoo will use Rondee as part of a foundation on which it will build a Hangouts competitor. Why the world needs that, of course, is another question entirely — sorry to say, Yahoo Mail diehards. These are a few possible explanations for Yahoo acquiring Rondee, though I’m not sure they’re particularly satisfying. To this point, . Marissa Mayer seems to be making an effort to address some of the internal idiocy Smith cites as contributing not only to the downfall of Messenger itself but to the downfall of products subsequently created (internally!) that might have saved it or at least prolonged its life. Mostly, Smith attributes Yahoo’s struggles to crappy leadership, a management focused on preservation rather than trimming-to-grow or innovation, the ole “it’s hard to get stuff done at a big company” line and a lack of a unifying product vision. The latter of which, at least, fittingly smacks of the very in Google Land. to be a familiar tune at Yahoo, though it is heartening that some of that stuff is fixable. However, watching Marissa Mayer acquire all these startups that are on their last lifeline or just keeping their head above water is suspect. Now, it could be questionable in a good way, provoking media attention, buzz and providing a (relatively) cheap way to bring in quality talent. And maybe we’re watching a grand vision unfold, with Marissa acting as the Great Unifier . Sure, this could be akin to watching Tony Stark miraculously build an Iron Man suit from spare parts and scrap metal … or this turnaround strategy very well prove to be suspect in the same way that a bunch of bricks painted yellow does not gold bullion make. For more, find Rondee’s email to users below: Dear Rondee User: We thank you for being with us over the last six years as we grew Rondee’s free conference calling service. It has been a privilege to work with you. Yahoo! has just acquired Rondee, and we will be joining Yahoo! Small Business to continue innovating with technologies that help small businesses and groups. Starting July 12, 2013, RONDEE WILL NO LONGER BE OPERATIVE. To minimize inconvenience to you, we have arranged for your Login ID and Rondee On Demand PINs to work with InstantConference, a highly reputable conference calling service. InstantConference has created a special free plan for Rondee users with unlimited minutes, unlimited conferences and up to 150 callers per conference. You’ll do On Demand calls with InstantConference the same way you did with Rondee: REDACTED
If you want to use advanced features such as audio recording, call scheduling using the Outlook add-on or real-time monitoring, you’ll need to log in to the account created for you at InstantConference. REDACTED
There are three main differences between advanced features on Rondee vs. InstantConference: Call recording works differently on InstantConference. Instead of activating audio recording in advance online, the organizer does it on the call by pressing *9 and entering the 4 digit code shown above, or by turning on audio recording through a moderator control panel. Learn More InstantConference has a fully featured moderator control panel. You can monitor call attendance, mute, disconnect, or lock the conference in real-time. Learn More InstantConference has a different way of handling scheduled conferences. Rather than the web-based format used by Rondee, InstantConference offers an Outlook Add-On which is convenient and easy to use. Learn More
BY USING YOUR RONDEE LOGIN AND PIN(S) WITH INSTANTCONFERENCE, YOU CONSENT TO THE INSTANTCONFERENCE TERMS OF SERVICE AND PRIVACY POLICY. CLICK HERE for Terms and Conditions. CLICK HERE for Privacy Policy. For Premium users with balances in their PayPal account, we will be refunding those balances right after July 12, 2013. InstantConference also offers toll-free conferencing with plans as low as 2.9 cents a minute. PLEASE NOTE: The Rondee service will soon no longer be operative and will no longer accept new sign-ups. Current users will be able to continue using Rondee for conference calls through July 12, 2013 and log in to access account information through August 12, 2013. For questions about the Rondee service or your Rondee account, click here. For questions about InstantConference, click here. Thank you again for your support, The Rondee Team |
RelateIQ Launches With $29M From Formation 8, Dustin Moskovitz And More To Be Your Next-Gen Relationship Manager | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | Last summer, word started to trickle out about a young, stealth startup called that was rumored to be one of the more ambitious players among the new (and expanding) class of Big Data startups. Adam Evans and Steve Loughlin had founded RelateIQ the summer before to tackle some enduring problems in the way we manage our professional relationships — the same ones that led to the birth of a decade ago, and many more since. Though we live in the Digital Age of smartphones and cloud computing, Evans and Louglin were frustrated by the fact that people still manually entering important professional data into aging and stuffy relationship management tools. On a mission to change that by using Big Data to automate relationship tracking and by taking mobile seriously, RelateIQ was able to attract $9 million from Accel, Morgenthaler and SV Angel in Series A financing, while recruiting key advisors like LinkedIn’s former chief data scientist DJ Patil, (of Octel, Lucent and Sequoia fame) and current Apple board member and former Intuit CEO, Bill Campbell. Fast forward to today and, after two years of extensive and stealthy testing and fueled by a hefty new round of funding from a roster of familiar names, the startup is finally throwing open its doors to the public. The new Series B round, of the WSJ, brings RelateIQ’s total funding to $29 million and values the company at $100 million. The company has since confirmed these numbers, telling us that its new, $20 million Series B round was co-led by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale’s new, “smart enterprise”-focused venture capital firm, (which just raised ) and Accel Partners. The lead investors were also accompanied by an impressive supporting cast, including Battery Ventures, AMC Cloud Ventures (via Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang), Thrive Capital, Allen & Co. and Facebook and Asana co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz — among others. Not bad for a startup that works out of the basement of a home decor business in Palo Alto, right? (Never you mind that Facebook used to house its servers in the same basement before “The Social Network” Era.) In fact, considering that CRM and relationship intelligence software isn’t exactly The New Kid On The Block, it makes one wonder what it is about RelateIQ that attracted this gaggle of tech industry veterans. Traditionally, the Customer Relationship Management space (and to a lesser degree social CRM) has been dominated by veteran enterprise software companies like Salesforce.com, Oracle and SAP. Today, however, the Bigs find themselves being chased by a bevy of startups that are trying to beat them at their own game by using advances in cloud computing and data tech (among others) to offer smarter, more consumer-friendly experiences or by moving downstream to bring enterprise-grade tech to startups and small businesses. , this has forced CRM incumbents to modernize, get more mobile and social either by building out their platforms themselves and acquiring (like Jive’s buying Producteev), or by turning to Big Data startups to help them make sense of enormous data sets. RelateIQ, which has 100 clients already in tow at launch including companies like T3 Advisors and WellnessFX, wants to go after the incumbents by not only offering social integration and data enrichment out of the box, but by significantly reducing the amount of manual data entry required to get more insight into their professional relationships. Features like the ability to quickly deploy new workflows, the founders explain, are attractive to teams that manage their business’ external relationships, whether in business development, sales or product, allowing them to get started immediately. Of course, using algorithms and machines to try to better understand and glean insight from the chaos of human relationships is an uphill battle. RelateIQ wants to close that gap by sucking in and analyzing faster, on a bigger scale, and by offering more nuanced analysis of the details in your professional relationships, than the next guy. It does that by automatically capturing data from email, voice, social networks and calendars and analyzing language in those communications to identify words and phrases in an email that might indicate a lead is getting ready to take the next step, or just the opposite. In other words, the idea is to reduce the amount of work you have to do and only surface the critical stuff you can’t ignore. The startup’s SaaS service also eliminates the headache that results from the fact that your contact information is scattered across multiple platforms or hiding in someone’s spreadsheet or address book. RelateIQ cleans your contact info and merges it from across address books to give companies one reliable source of contact info, along with offering features of a digital personal assistant, like email tracking and prompts when you forget to reply to important contacts. The other key to RelateIQ’s value proposition is mobile, allowing teams to track and manage their professional relationships in realtime, collaborate with colleagues and access dynamic reporting and updates contact info from native Android and iPhone apps. By adding an automated intelligence layer to relationship management, it becomes easier for overworked teams to prioritize legit leads and save those that are falling through the cracks by automatically bubbling up forgotten leads in your contact list. The ability to do that on-the-go while you’re on a business trip — without having to manually log calls from your iPhone — is huge. But what is this all going to cost, your ask? While its mobile apps are free, its SaaS product runs $49/user/month or $99/user/month for its premium version. For more, |
Google’s Glass Explorers Are Getting A Mystery Package From Google X This Week | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | It looks like Google is shipping something to its community this week. Sadly, it’s not clear what exactly it is the roughly 2,000 first Glass users are getting. As Jesse Stay, the author of and , , a number of Glass Explorers are reporting that they have received notifications about this package through their My UPS accounts today. These packages, which weigh about 1 lbs, are coming from Google X, the secretive Google unit responsible for exploratory project like Glass and Google’s self-driving cars. For all we know, Google is just sending everybody a t-shirt, though some folks are that they’ll get a white . That may be wishful thinking, but it is possible that Google has a few extra perks in store this first group of Glass users who, after all, paid around $1,500 (plus tax) for the privilege of being among the first to use Glass. My bet is on a t-shirt, though, and not on an Android phone. Some of the Glass users were actually supposed to get their packages today, but nobody seems to have received anything yet. We’ll obviously track this story and let you know what is in these once we figure it out for ourselves. Until then, feel free to speculate about the contents of this package in the comments. |
The Twitter #Music Website Fills Out Its Artist Profiles With Tweeted Tracks And Similar Artists | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | It looks like has gotten a couple of improvements on the web — specifically to its individual artist profiles. Previously, the artist page just pointed to the other artists that they were following. So , for example, pointed to the other musicians followed by Fun. on Twitter. (Clearly I’m writing this post to include as much #random punctuation. as possible.) Now it also includes a list of Fun.’s most tweeted tracks and links to artists who are similar. These aren’t huge changes, but they do make the profile page more useful, both for discovering music by a given artist (if you click on a “most tweeted” track in a profile, an iTunes preview of the song will start playing) and for finding other artists you might like. I’m guessing that are still going to be the site’s main discovery mechanism, but now, at least, when you go from a chart to an artist page, it’s a little more interesting. It looks like the changes are only live on the website currently, not on the mobile app. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that the new features are live on the web for everyone, but she declined to say if and when they would be added to the app. (This suggests that we may want to keep an eye on the website for new Twitter #Music features before they hit mobile.) By the way, Twitter #Music was in the news earlier this week because . |
Facebook’s Parse Grows 25% Month-Over-Month To 100K Apps Since Acquisition | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | Parse, , has grown about 25 percent month-over-month and now services 100,000 apps. Around when the deal closed for roughly $85 million excluding retention and bonuses at the end of April, Parse had about 80,000 apps. (In fact, on the day the deal was announced, the company said it had 60,000 apps.) The company says three factors have helped with the growth: market demand for app infrastructure is rising, developers are passing the service along by word-of-mouth and the Facebook deal actually helped with exposure. Up until last year, Facebook had mostly done small deals for talent usually in the seven-digit to low eight-digit range. But Instagram and Parse are two big deals that were not only higher-priced strategic acquisitions, they were deals where Facebook allowed the teams to continue to grow their businesses relatively independently. Like Instagram, Parse is keeping its own branding. The Parse deal was also special for another reason: it gave Facebook a whole new revenue category in paid tools and services for developers. To date, the company has earned the vast majority of its revenue from advertising and then it’s also taken in roughly $200 million a quarter on payments revenue from the platform. Now it has an additional leg of revenue, although the company hasn’t commented on how much it’s earning from its newfound acquisition. Through Parse, Facebook has been able to offer a mobile-backend-as-a-service product with data storage, hosting, notifications and user management. That gives it a trifecta of tools to make the company indispensable to mobile developers. Not only does it give identity and social features through the platform, and then user acquisition and marketing resources through new mobile ad products, it provides infrastructure as well. There are plenty of other competitors though out in the market like Stackmob, Kinvey and Kii Cloud. |
MySpace Punishes Its Few Remaining Friends By Vanishing Their Blogs | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | Obviously has very few friends left to alienate — — but that hasn’t stopped it out of its few remaining fans by forcing through an update to its shiny new music discovery platform that’s swallowed their old blog content, with no guarantee it’s ever going to be retrievable. Oh but users are being vote on the of getting their deleted stuff back. I mean WTF? We’ve asked MySpace exactly WTF is going on and will update this post when/if they reply. The has been dangling the ‘ ‘ since last September, opening it up as a beta but offering a parallel sign-in option where users could still click through to ‘classic MySpace’ if they preferred. And let’s face it most of MySpace’s few remaining hangers on were very likely to have preferred the old world order, since that’s where they could peruse the personal content they had posted on the site. Well MySpace has now shut the door on the past and accelerated ahead into its shiny — or rather space-y — social music discovery future. But in its rush to fulfil JT’s vision of tech brand rebirth it’s managed to miss the fact that all the old clutter lying around the place was the only thing giving it any character. You know, those blog entries that angsty teens wrote back in anger in 2005. Where are they now? Gone is where. Vanished. Disappeared*. Replaced by Pinterest-esque notice board spaces urging users to DISCOVER MORE and CONNECT TO MORE… (Subtext: Srsly, won’t SOMEONE please just start CLICKING. Someone? Anyone?) In case you’re wondering whether anyone cares that MySpace ‘classic’ has been erased from existence. Or rather whether MySpace still has any users left to notice/care about this departure, well . More because people care about their own pasts, than about a past-it social network of course. But regardless of the reason, MySpace has committed the cardinal sin of burning the folk who cared the most. Not classy, not clever. And entirely avoidable: just warn existing users about what you plan to demolish in advance, and give them the time and tools to transfer their stuff. It’s not exactly tough to get right, yet MySpace has got it . Instead of warning the users now crying a river over their lost blog entries of its frankly dastardly plan to despatch blogs to the social scrap heap, MySpace appears to have assumed no one would care and just steamed ahead and flicked the switch. Assuming no one gives a damn about your old services doesn’t augur well for the future of your new services. What goes around… comes around, JT. Not giving old users a grace period to retrieve their data before it was replaced with empty spaces containing Pinterest-esque urgings to start building multimedia collections is the sort of crime I can last recall Microsoft committing way back in 2007. When it took over Hotmail and decided to delete a decade’s worth of my emails just because I hadn’t logged into the account for a few months. Not cool doesn’t even begin to describe it. As with the MySpace classic blog holocaust these type of situations are entirely avoidable. And should be avoided — if you ever want users to trust you again. At least in MySpace’s case it sounds as if they might not have actually deleted any blog data yet but rather just cut off access to it — perhaps so they can gauge how much people care and therefore whether it’s worth their while helping them migrate their stuff. Well, JT, on PR grounds alone, it’s worth it. And if you want any new MySpace users to consider trusting any stuff to your servers in future, it’s also worth it. Assuming you think new MySpace has a future. Rather than being, y’know, dead and gone. MySpace’s notes that old MySpace friends (now rebranded as anodyne ‘Connections’ to fit with its new sanitised style) have been transferred over to new MySpace. Users can also transfer their photos and playlists manually using an . (Shucks, you’re really spoiling them there!) But the list of what’s not been transferred is far longer — and includes the most sentimental stuff. The stuff clearly jangling up JT’s vibe… We’re focused on building the best Myspace possible. And to us, that means helping you discover connect and share with others using the best tools available. Going forward we’re concentrating on building and maintaining the features that make those experience better. That means you won’t see a few products on the new site… It’s a sign of the social times that text-based blogs, messages, posts and comments are being carted out and dumped on the scrap heap. If it’s not shiny, visual and multimedia it’s worthless, is what new MySpace says. Thing is, that characterful textual clutter it’s so keen to paper over may be the last remaining thing of value in the place. Add to that, this is not the only time new MySpace has been trigger happy with the delete key. Its new groove was so keen to erase the past it also . So really this is a reboot of a reboot of a reboot. So, yeah. Good luck with that. MySpace users who had a public profile may be able to recover some data from the old site via Google’s cache — searching using: site: |
Google Says It’s Seeing A Significant Jump In Phishing Attempts In Iran Ahead Of Elections | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | Google says it’s seeing a that originate within Iran and target Iranian users. These attacks, Google says, started about three weeks ago and the company believes that they are politically motivated. Iran’s next election is and this “significant jump” in phishing activity in the region started about three weeks ago. Google says the campaign targets the accounts of “tens of thousands” of Iranian users and the group behind it appears to be the same that also targeted Iranian users . Back in 2011, the company told all of its users in Iran to ensure that their accounts weren’t compromised after hackers the Dutch SSL certificate authority DigiNotar. As Google notes, though, this time the attack is far simpler and just sends users to a fake Google sign-in page in order to steal usernames and passwords. What exactly the attackers planned to do with this information remains unclear. There have been that access to Gmail is currently disrupted from Iran, though it’s that this is indeed the case. Iran does, however, have a of blocking Google services like Gmail and YouTube, so it wouldn’t come as a major surprise if the country shut down access to Google’s services ahead of this election. |
Airbnb’s Parisian Guests Want To Live Like Locals, With 70% Staying Outside Typical Hotel Districts | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | Airbnb has released the results of a . After a similar study , Airbnb this time is profiling the effect that its peer-to-peer marketplace for housing accommodations has had on hosts and nearby businesses in Paris. The study was put together through a combination of proprietary host and guest data, as well as survey results that it collected from users. It also takes into account economic impact data from French economic consulting firm . As the company’s second-largest market, the study in Paris shows similar guest activity to San Francisco. In both cases, guests tended to stay in and spend money in neighborhoods that aren’t in the central hotel districts. Also, Airbnb guests tended to stay longer and spend more than hotel visitors. Airbnb found that 93 percent of its users said they wanted to “live like a local” while visiting Paris, and 70 percent stayed in Airbnbs that were outside the main hotel districts of Paris. A significant number of Airbnb guests surveyed were visiting Paris for the first time — 34 percent. And nearly three-quarters of them said Airbnb made it more likely that they would return. Just as in San Francisco, Airbnb’s visitors to Paris tend to stay longer and spend more over the course of their trip than hotel guests. Guests who stayed with Airbnb averaged more than five days per visit, compared to about 2.3 days spent by hotel guests. While they save money on accommodations, however, those visitors end up spending significantly more during the day. The end result, according to the economic study, is that visitors spend about €865 per visit, compared to €439 for hotel guests. Visitors generally spent more at local businesses that aren’t in the typical tourist locations within the city. The Airbnb study estimates that 38 percent of guest dollars were spent in the neighborhood they were staying in. In addition to data about guest behavior, Airbnb also released information about the economic impact the marketplace provides to hosts. It has more than 10,500 hosts in the city currently, with more than 80 percent renting out space in their primary residence. The average host there rents out his or her place for 3.8 nights and makes €297 per month, according to Airbnb. While the company has seen tremendous growth in Paris over the last two years, the incumbent hotel industry has continued to go strong, with a nearly 80 percent occupancy and an average nightly rate of €164. That compares to the average €125 that Airbnb guests pay. Photo Credit: via |
Congressman King Wants To Punish Journalists Who Published NSA Leaks | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | First Amendment pioneer and current Republican U.S. Congressman Peter King thinks that journalists for publishing the leaked documents about the . Unfazed by Anderson Coopers perfect jaw-line, Representative King said in a CNN interview: “Actually, if they–if they knew that this was classified information–I think action should be taken, especially on something of this magnitude. I know that the whole issue of leaks has been gone into over the last month. I think something on this magnitude, there is an obligation, both moral but also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something which would so severely compromise national security. As a practical matter, I–I guess it happened in the past several years, a number of reporters who have been prosecuted under us, so the answer is yes to your question.” It should be noted that since the landmark 1971 case, , the Supreme Court has held that newspapers could not be punished for publishing leaks like the Pentagon Papers. In fairness to King, with his outrage. In 2010, he thought prosecutors should go after both WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange and The Times for publishing the leaked cables. The only person to likely be prosecuted is the whistleblower Edward Snowden, who was last seen in Hong Kong . |
Hublished Gets Funding From NYU Prof. (AKA FirstMark Capital’s Lawrence Lenihan) During Spring Class | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | is still in private beta, so details are sparse on what the new content distribution platform (which reportedly helps content producers market their work through a webinar, e-book, podcast marketplace/network) is up to. However, we do know that the company has received over $150k in funding before its forthcoming beta launch next month. So where did this cash come from? Well, interestingly enough, a solid chunk of the funding came from none other than . Many of you know him as a partner at , but to the Hublished founders, he was the NYU Professor in their entrepreneurial class entitled Ready, FIRE!, Aim. We sat down with Lenihan, and Hublished co-founders Ben Borodach and Ryan Kuhel to discuss the effect this class, and Lenihan, had on the trajectory of their as-yet-unlaunched startup. The story goes like this: Part of the promise of Lenihan’s course was that the team who finished the Spring 2012 semester with an investible idea would walk away with the entirety of Lenihan’s NYU Professor’s salary, a cool $12,500. The rest of the $150k came along the way from undisclosed angels and family and friends. Ryan Kahul, one of the Hublished co-founders, was in the class and participated in the competition with his co-founders from Rutgers. Months passed, and it turns out that Hublished came in second. But Lenihan explains in that the first place team decided that they did not want to be irresponsible with the funding, and that they’re product wasn’t viable in the long term. That said, Lenihan still made good on his promise and handed over the funding to Hublished, who has been raising since the idea’s inception in the summer of 2011. Now, the company is revving up to a launch next month. Luckily, the co-founders sent us a little sneak peak screengrab of the platform in action. Meanwhile, Lenihan has revealed that he won’t be teaching the same course next year, but that he does have some ideas floating around that still involve teaching and fostering entrepreneurial spirits, but that are more suited toward 2013 instead of 2008. |
Yahoo Acquires Advanced iOS Photography App Maker GhostBird Software | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | Yahoo has just that they’ve acquired GhostBird Software, the creators of advanced iOS photography apps, KitCam and PhotoForge2. Though details of the deal are still under wraps, Yahoo is explicitly saying that they acquired GhostBird for the sake of improving Flickr. Could this suggest that a more advanced Flickr app is on the way? Prior to today’s acquisition, GhostBird had released three iOS photo apps: KitCam, PhotoForge, and PhotoForge 2. KitCam allowed for mobile photographers to shoot with a bunch of different “lenses” and “films” (read: filters), and to manually adjust settings like white balance and exposure. The PhotoForge series, meanwhile, focused on modifying photos the fact, with image resizing, cropping, metadata editing, and the adjustment of advanced settings like curves and levels. In an announcement , GhostBird has disclosed that no further development will be done on either app, and they don’t intend to support new versions of iOS. Furthermore, according to GhostBird, once either app is gone from your phone, it’s gone for good: Users who have previously purchased the app but don’t have them on their devices today will not be able to re-download past purchases. As of today, KitCam and PhotoForge2 are no longer available for download from the App Store. This is a bit strange, as most apps that have been removed (or even banned) from the App Store can continue to be re-downloaded through iCloud by anyone who purchased it prior to its removal. Curiously, the studio had gone a bit quiet in the past few months, going almost totally silent as of mid-March. After tweeting at least a few times a week for months before, the team’s last tweet before today’s announcement was on March 17. Meanwhile, both PhotoForge2 and KitCam stopped seeing updates at the end of March. (Fun Fact: Before turning their focus to photography apps, GhostBird dabbled in games. Their one published game, a zombie infection simulator called , became something of a zombie itself when its final update shipped in February 2010.) |
Orbeus Launches Visual Recognition (But Not Creepy Facial Recognition) APIs For Google Glass | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | Google took swift action to recently, following which would have allowed developers to build apps that could identify the faces of people who a Glass wearer encountered. Today, however, another company called is launching its own and detection API platform , which sidesteps the privacy issues at hand, as it’s unable to detect someone’s identity. Instead, ReKognition can tell if something a face or not, or if it’s male or female, it can detect emotion, and to some extent, it can even tell how beautiful someone is. (On that latter point, the API has been trained somewhat subjectively by feeding it a series of celebrity photos to define the universal standard of beauty. Those who prefer a specific look may disagree.) Though the company can’t reveal its customers by name due to privacy agreements, one is an Asia dating site which checks to verify that users’ profile photos are of men and women, as opposed to other things like a dog or flower, for example. The site also uses the beauty and gender identification capabilities to help it with its own matchmaking algorithms. Another use case for��ReKognition comes from the advertising industry, where a small handful of customers have been building prototype digital, interactive signage which adapts the ad displayed to the customer looking at it. Yes, it’s very “Minority Report” – by knowing the viewer’s gender and age range, these real-world ads can be more narrowly and granularly targeted, as they are online. Now, with (or ReKoGlass, as it’s being called), the company is making its computer vision capabilities available to those building apps for Google’s new wearable technology. “Our API actually offers different face detection, face reading and scene understanding, so we’re not just a facial recognition company,” says Orbeus CEO Ning Xu, explaining that ReKognition doesn’t violate . “But even without facial recognition, we can do a lot of things with your face, without revealing your identity.” The company’s offers some ideas, like taking attendance in the classroom or determining how many in an audience are male or female, for example. Of course, for many of these use cases, it would be more practical if images could be processed and analyzed in real-time. This is not something that’s possible today with Glass, which doesn’t yet permit direct developer access to the camera, however. But Xu thinks that will change in time. “I believe – and our team believes – this is a temporary issue, and they’re definitely going to improve that part on Google’s side,” he says. “That’s what we’re offering this API now.” The Mountain View-based startup was founded by former Bostonians Meng Wang and Tianqiang Liu, and Xu later joined as CEO. The team (now ) before relocating to Google’s backyard. Orbeus launched its API to the public last August, and has grown its customer base to over 1,000, a small percentage of which are now paying. Today, Orbeus sees over 3 million API calls for its freemium product, which is in order to encourage sign-ups, with 40,000 free API calls (500 per day) available for free. Xu explains that in addition to its tiered service, the company also sells to enterprise customers, and is now in the process of closing a deal with a photo album provider who will use ReKognition to group photos by faces to make the process of building a photo book easier for end users. As for how many will sign up to try , he’s less sure. The startup is currently in the process of closing on $1.1 million in seed funding in a round led by ZhenFund (a super angel fund from China), and CRCM Opportunity Fund. The round should be closed by Friday. Interested Glass developers can now download the new for free. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqwvlXrXpQc?feature=player_detailpage] |
With iOS 7, Apple Shows It Will Tolerate QR Codes – But Not Further Their Cause | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | Apple had a this year, but it also quietly adopted a tech that has received an equal amount of general scorn (if not more): the QR code. – yes, right into the OS – but in a way that makes clear its presence is more of a mildly unpleasant but useful tool in promoting its own tech, rather than anything to be truly upheld and encouraged. The QR code reader in iOS 7 is built into Passbook: there’s now a new Scan Code feature built into the Passbook card that’s used to explain the overall service. Accessible with a single tap from the launch screen of Passbook, it loads right into a QR code scanner that takes advantage of the iPhone’s rear camera to spot the cubic barcodes in print, on the web or wherever they may be, and recognizes them immediately. But it’s what happens next that tells you Apple isn’t a thorough QR code convert. Building a reader that treats all QR codes equally and executes whatever information they’re meant to convey would have been simple enough, but Apple didn’t want a general-purpose tool. That’s why the QR code reader in the Passbook app provides a very clear message about its purpose when you try to scan a code that doesn’t link to a Passbook pass, as you can see in the screenshot below sent along by a helpful tipster. The purpose of the integration is obvious – Apple thinks this is a way to make it possible for users to quickly and easily add Passbook content to their library, and clearly wants to put as few barriers as possible in the way of getting users to do so. But the QR codes themselves are just a means to an end; the ultimate goal is to make sure that users start adopting and using Passbook more, and QR codes are just a conduit. In fact, if anything, locking down the QR codes to apply strictly to Passbook passes does more to harm the case of using them as a generally applicable tech than anything, since a huge number of iOS users are likely going to associate QR strictly with Passbook and possibly even get frustrated at ones that don’t provide access to that specific kind of content. Some might take this as a sign that Apple could build QR code support into the main iOS camera app, or let it stand alone, but don’t count on that. Apple is cherry-picking a tech that suits its purposes, and when there’s a better way or it’s no longer needed to help Passbook build momentum, expect it to be discarded. At best, this won’t make QR codes happen – it’ll render them permanently subservient to Passbook, as a kind of sub-brand tech. |
Apple Showcases The Transformative Power Of iOS Apps In New Video | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGtP6ZQ6Lt8?feature=player_detailpage] Apple has just posted a lengthy, nearly 10 minute video (via ) about how apps built for its platform are used around the world to make changes that significantly impact people’s lives. It’s a very different approach from the typical Apple commercial, which is generally a short affair focusing on what apps are doing to add a little bit of levity or convenience to the average consumer’s life. This is much more about big-picture issues, and profound impacts on a select few people that are truly life-changing. It’s actually thematically pretty similar to the company’s new , but with a strong focus on actual case studies, instead of just on Apple’s guiding principles in building its products. And of course, it also highlights third-party developers specifically, offering some much-deserved attention to those who are keeping pockets of human culture alive, or building dramatic advances in medical tech, not just the ones who are making it easier for people to create and share grocery lists. |
Apple’s Golden State: Just Doing What’s Right | MG Siegler | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | Among his last advice he had for me, and for all of you, was to never ask what he would do. “Just do what’s right.” That’s what Tim Cook told the audience of Apple employees at the memorial for Steve Jobs, following his passing in 2011. Now, nearly two years later, we’re starting to see that plan . This year’s WWDC keynote was fascinating. To me, it felt like the first true post-Jobs keynote. Sure, Jobs hasn’t been with us for the past few Apple events, including last year’s WWDC. But his legacy loomed large over each of those events. This week was different. Tim Cook seemed different. Phil Schiller seemed different. Craig Federighi seemed different. Eddy Cue seemed different. They all seemed… Comfortable. Relaxed. Confident. And that was probably the most surprising thing. Everyone seemed cool and collected even though you’d think they’d be scared shitless. After all, they were unveiling not just an updated iOS, but a completely revamped iOS. They were effectively performing a brain transplant on the company’s most important products, the iPhone and the iPad. And they were doing it live, on stage. The reaction could have been anything. Apple had done such a good job of keeping the changes under wraps, that basically no one outside the company knew what was coming. There could have been a developer revolt. There could have been boos! Instead, the reaction of the audience was overwhelmingly positive. And despite some design quibbles, the reaction on the social streams seemed to be a collective “finally”. But I’m underselling how risky this was (and perhaps still is). Six months ago, Tim Cook made his biggest “just do what’s right” call when he relieved iOS chief Scott Forstall of his duties. He then handed the reins of arguably the most important element of the company — remember that iOS is also likely the key to the company’s future with the presumed iWatch and future Apple Television products — to Federighi and Jony Ive. They had six months to ship. Somehow, they did it. That’s why you saw Cook beaming after the iOS 7 unveiling yesterday as he motioned towards and applauded Ive, while also praising Federighi and the entire iOS team. Cook did not do what Jobs would have done. He did what was right. It was a huge gamble. Ive, arguably the most famous designer in the world, had no experience with software design. Federighi, who was elevated to the head of OS X after Bertrand Serlet’s retirement in 2011, had no experience with mobile software. Both were doubling their workloads. And Cook, knowing the roadmap, knew in December that Apple was about to head into their longest drought of major product launches in recent memory. iOS 7 would be one of the first butterflies out of the cocoon. But what if it turned out to be a moth? It sure looks like iOS 7 will be a beautiful butterfly when it officially launches to the public in the fall alongside the next iPhone. You have to laugh at some of the design quibbles. Again, ! That’s remarkable. The next three months will be . . What we saw yesterday was Apple saying goodbye to Steve Jobs in the way that he wanted — by not doing what he would have done, but by doing what they collectively thought was right. Cook is not Jobs. He is not going to rule over Apple with the same iron fist. He’s going to delegate. He’s going to allow his team to flourish. Federighi got to inject his love of surfing. Cue got to inject his love of cars. Schiller got to get in there. Ive got to get rid of that green felt and . At the same time, Cook managed to find the single theme to unify them all: home. OS X will now be named after California landmarks. The Mac Pro will now be assembled in the USA. “Design in California” is the heir apparent to “Think Different”. “ ” In October 2011, shortly after Jobs’ passing, Apple would not face their first true post-Jobs test until the first truly new product was released. In a way, Apple tricked me. I didn’t expect iOS to be so overhauled before that new product line came. And I think this risky maneuver will allow the company to go into the next new product launch with far more confidence. Mavericks, indeed. |
Google Launches Cube Slam, An Open Source Pong Clone, To Show Off The Power Of WebRTC And WebGL | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | Google today , an pong clone that you can play against the computer or a friend in the browser. That by itself wouldn’t be all that exciting, but Google created this game to show off the . For most people (or at least for developers), is now synonymous with plugin-free video conferences in the browser and Cube Slam uses this to show you a live video and audio stream of your friend on a virtual screen while you’re playing. Maybe more importantly, though, the game also uses WebRTC’s and – two features most developers are probably not aware of – to send audio, video and all the “bits and pieces that keep the game in sync” back and forth between the two machines. Google claims that Cube Slam is the ” first large-scale application to use RTCDataChannel, which provides an API similar to , but sends the data over the RTCPeerConnection peer-to-peer link.” For Google, the emphasis here is clearly on showing off the power of WebRTC, just like it focused on WebSockets with its , but it also wants to highlight what developers can do with WebGL and Web Audio. The infrastructure for the game is hosted on Google’s Compute Engine and the code is available . Cube Slam is now available on Chrome for the desktop and Chrome OS. It’ll be available on Chrome for Android later this year, but you can already try it now by enabling the “WebRTC Android” setting in the menu. |
Online Banking Startup Simple Finally Makes It Easier To Move Money Into Your Account | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | has made some serious strides since it opened up to the public last year, but there’s one thing the service has just never been that great at: transferring money from one bank account to another. According to a post on the , those days are finally over — users can link their Simple accounts to existing bank accounts to move their money around. Frankly, it’s about time. Let’s back up a minute here first: why is this such a big deal? To answer that, we have to look at how the Simple onboarding process works. When you first set up a Simple account, you’re given the chance to make one initial funds transfer from your old bank account — that’s it. Before the external accounts feature was added, users who wanted to subsequently transfer funds from their existing bank account to a Simple account had to come up with some clever workarounds to get the job done. My personal favorite: if you linked a Square account to a Simple bank account, you could swipe a transaction to the tune of however much money you wanted to move using your own debit card (and in case you were wondering, yes, I’ve done this a few times). Last November, Simple made that process just a little easier by adding a to its apps — then you could just write yourself a check and deposit it directly into your Simple account. Better, yes, but it still wasn’t as seamless as it should have been. Now, at long last, the process is finally as simple as the company’s name implies. You’re prompted to punch in your account and routing number (you can do this for up to three accounts), after which you’ll have to keeps your eyes peeled for two small transactions to confirm that everything was copacetic. Once all that’s squared away, it’s all the fee-free fund transfers you can handle. Implementing the feature isn’t just a savvy move, it’s a downright necessary one. Simple has spent the few years trying to convince people that it’s a friendlier, more direct way for them to manage their money, and the company has so far managed to win over more than 35,000 users. That’s not too shabby considering how carefully the team has been handling the invitation process, but if Simple really wants to win over the masses, it has to more effectively blur the line between what it can do and what more traditional banks can do. After all, Simple is still a startup — a smart, well-funded one with the support of a major bank, but a startup nonetheless. With this external accounts feature, Simple isn’t just giving a users a way an easier way to get started, it’s giving them an easier way to bail out if the service just isn’t right for them. Consider it a safety net for those wary of diving into the strange new world of app-centric banking. For what it’s worth, this whole thing just about has me ready to take the plunge. Since launch I’ve been shunting a few bucks out of each paycheck into my Simple account for random geeky purchases, but now I’m seriously thinking of ditching my old bank entirely. Of course, this is exactly what Simple wants since it makes money in the form of interest margin — if more people get comfortable transferring all their money into their Simple accounts because the process is now so much easier, Simple may soon be laughing all the way to the bank. |
Makerbot Updates Their Design Software And Firmware To Make 3D Printing Easier | John Biggs | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | Makerbot, besides making a darn nice printer, offers some amazing software for laying out and printing objects. Their product, , is free to download and use and supports some other 3D printers including the . The new software adds some interesting features to the package including improved support structures and rafts. For example, some objects require support material to maintain stability while printing. Before, Makerware would dump lots and lots of plastic over the face of an object to maintain support. Now, however, it only adds supports where they are needed, reducing the amount of plastic needed. The software has also added improved “rafts” that help keep the objects steady on the platform during printing. While this update is only useful for folks who use Makerbot it does point to one of the company’s great strengths: excellent software that works amazingly well with the hardware they sell. Form Labs, the creators of Form One, offer a similar software that also helps prints come out of the machine with a little more efficiency. These hardware plus software marriages ensure that the experience is far more streamlined and professional than it was in the past. Plus, you can print little kittens on the inside of your objects with this new software. The firmware update to Makerbot printers adds a percentage left/time left readout to the printer and adds the ability to change filament colors during printing. |
Google To Shut Down Mobile Ad Aggregator AdWhirl Sept 30, Points Developers To AdMob Mediation | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | , the in mobile advertising, today made another move that could help consolidate its position a little bit further. The company today announced to developers that it would be shutting down , a platform that let app developers switch between different ad networks on the fly. AdWhirl was a part of AdMob, after a , just months before for $750 million. In a letter to developers sent out today (embedded below), Google said that they will until September 30 to decide where they would like to move their ads. It’s encouraging them to migrate to AdMob Mediation, a competing tool that it launched after the acquisition while continuing to support AdWhirl. They can also continue to use AdWhirl, if they care to use the open source code “to run their own AdWhirl service.” But Google won’t be involved with hosting or supporting it. Predictably, some developers are not happy with the decision because they believe the timeline is too short. “We developers understand that it might be discontinued in the future, but terminating this in three months is just too fast for us to migrate,” writes Vinh Nguyen, a developer at , who forwarded us the letter. “A lot of developers depended on most of their revenue through this product.” Others are on Google’s forums. “Some of us have used AdWhirl for 4 years and have tons of apps to update for this change,” one wrote. “When you killed off Google Ads and forced us to use AdMob at least you gave us till the end of the year. What about the users that don’t upgrade, will you continue serving them ads?” Eric Leichtenschlag, an engineer with AdMob, that AdWhirl.com will also be shut down, so users will not be able to log into their accounts after September 30. For those apps that don’t migrate from the service, mediation will stop working. “This means we will return a 404 to the SDK and there will be a blank space where the ad used to be.” Those 404s will be a thorny issue for some developers. Nguyen says AdWhirl is not just used to aggregate ad networks for apps, but distribution of those apps across different app stores. “We now have a lot of users who have downloaded our apps through these third party sites, and they are right now generating a lot of ad request (revenue) for us,” he says. “On third party sites it’s a lot harder to reach the users again for an update of our apps. This is because most these sites do not have update notification build in like with the Play Store. We are mostly depended on users to go back to the site and check for an update themselves.” It’s a whimper of an ending for a service that was once a thorn in the side of AdMob, since it was initially used as a way for competing networks like Quattro (now part of Apple) and Jumptap (still independent) to have more leverage against the most dominant player. Until that player took AdWhirl, and its revenues, for itself, users of the mediation platform could swap in ads on their apps on the fly from a number of networks (an unlimited number, AdWhirl says on its site), a model that forces more competition in pricing. But in the greater scheme of things, this shouldn’t really come as a surprise. As Google continues to earn more than half of all worldwide revenues in mobile ads (in 2013, predicts Google will make nearly $9 billion out of global sales of nearly $16 billion), it has been making a number of efforts to streamline its mobile ad operations. That includes a in May, and integrating AdMob and AdWords. And it that the newer system is actually better, because it covers more ad formats, better reporting (for AdMob, at least), and has better Google support built in (of course), among other things. A Google service is still a Google service, by any other name. The letter: Dear AdWhirl by AdMob Developer, AdWhirl has been supported by Google since 2010, when it became part of the Google family through the acquisition of AdMob. Since then, we’ve invested in helping AdMob developers serve ads in their apps from any number of ad networks through AdMob Mediation, which many developers use today. As we continue to improve AdMob Mediation, we’ve decided to retire AdWhirl, and will be discontinuing the service on 30 September 2013. The open source code for AdWhirl will still be available if anyone wants to run their own AdWhirl service. AdMob Mediation is at no cost and more robust, with features like network-level reporting, country-level allocation and support for more ad formats. You can learn more about the specific features of AdMob Mediation here. We encourage you to start using AdMob Mediation prior to 30 September. You’ll need an AdMob account to begin using AdMob Mediation. If you have one already you can find instructions for switching from AdWhirl here. If not, you can sign up for an AdMob account here. Sincerely, The Google AdMob Team
[story updated with additional quote from developer] |
Inside The Storenvy Pop-Up Shop, Where E-Commerce Meets Brick And Mortar [TCTV] | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | Storenvy opened its pop-up shop in San Francisco with the intention that it would be a temporary 30-day thing. Four months later, it’s become a pretty popular destination, and the company’s CEO now says that he is looking at opening more brick and mortar locations elsewhere in the U.S. in the months ahead. In a way, the pop-up store is an extension of the online experience — transactions are still done through the web, not with a traditional register, and each vendor is completely in control of his or her own spot. It’s a cool thing to see in person, so we brought along the TechCrunch TV cameras to get a look at how Storenvy has translated its online vibe into the real world and talk to Crawford a bit about the company’s strategy. Check it all out in the video above. |
Lucas And Spielberg Predict “Massive Implosion” Of Hollywood Caused By Tech Industry | Greg Barto | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | and aren’t so bullish on the future of the film industry. At a talk at USC, the pair agreed that it’s on track to have a “massive implosion”. At the core of their argument: there just isn’t enough time in the day for consumers to support all the films released in theaters. Films are competing with all the content and options that the Internet provides. Studios in Hollywood are the equivalent of venture capital firms of Silicon Valley. They live and die on the homeruns. Each movie could be thought of as a startup. It all starts with an idea and grows into a team that creates and releases some piece of content out into the world where it’s loved or hated. When loved, you get Christopher Nolan’s , and when it’s hated, you get . The summer is filled with the biggest bets. The cost to produce and market a single film these days can balloon to . The studios need a film to pull in nearly a billion in box office revenue, the same on DVD and have a good, multi-year sale to television for it to be considered a success. Sprinkle in some airplane viewing rights and that’s a win for them. Lucas and Spielberg don’t think that’s a sustainable model. Soon, a couple of those megabudget films are going to nosedive, and everything will change. They suggest the marketplace will contract because there isn’t enough time in the week for us to go to the movies anymore. With Netflix producing top quality content, and video games cutting into weekends, it leaves little room for date night out at the cineplex. It’s getting so bad that Lucas complains about how hard it is even for to get a in a theater. This should probably make producers of films nervous. The duo says that the studios will be forced to reevaluate how to distribute films. Perhaps a film like will cost less to see than, say ? Or perhaps, we don’t even get movies like in theaters anymore. They will come straight to our homes. And actually going to the theater? It’s going to change to a model where a movie will cost $50+, but it’ll become a more high end experience with movies staying in the theater for a year or more. Or, just don’t make shitty films. For over a decade, the films that can’t find an audience in the theater have found their niche on the internet where they can be marketed and sold on iTunes to those who will love them. Companies like Netflix and Hulu are able to focus on these niches and program specifically for them, for much cheaper than the $300 million it cost to release a summer film. That translates to these Internet companies being able to take bigger risks on content, similar to HBO’s model. And technology winning.
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Extreme Startups Demo Day Wrap Up: Canadian Startups Make A Strong Showing | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | Today was the Spring 2013 Demo Day in Toronto, and the cohort of five startups all delivered. The list this time included Brika, Instaradio, Koge, Polychart and Sciencescape. It was an incredibly diverse group, targeting verticals ranging from ecommerce to media to business intelligence, but it’s rare to see a group so focused and prepared on the day. That’s a credit to the Extreme Startups prep process, and to the general maturity of the companies involved. Here’s a brief summary of all the companies involved: -This company is essentially a hybrid of Etsy and Fab, curating maker-created goods with a focus on tastemaking. The founders both have lots of experience in both retail and fashion, and came together because of a mutual love for unique goods and tailored fashion recommendations. The startup itself is based around the idea that what Etsy provides is a good start, but what the maker community really needs is a better way to tell the story of goods and their creators. The company uses a drop shipping model to make sure that it never has to carry on-hand inventory, reducing costs. The company has been building its traction since joining Extreme Startups, and says that both members and total sales are up since joining. They’ve closed $500,000 of their $1 million round. – As the name suggests, to some extent Instaradio wants to become the Instagram of audio content. Heard that before? So have I. But this company’s focus on live broadcasts and instant sharing of otherwise closed off events sets it apart. A user, for instance a comedian can start broadcasting their set, and instead of just serving a small audience of around 50 people max, the startup says some of their early users have seen traction of upwards of 1,000 listeners for a single broadcast. So far, the company has had its app live for only 10 days, with 4,000 downloads and 8,000 broadcasts from its users. Their ultimate goal is to build a PA network of as many devices as possible, leverages all the mics we have everywhere. Sounds like it might be right up Robert Scoble’s alley. – This is a vitamin ecommerce business that’s taking the monthly subscription approach to health supplements. It’s a business that has gotten a lot of traction already since joining Extreme Startups, with a new partnership bringing it into Loblaws, a leading Canadian grocery chain, which should help immensely with introducing the idea to new customers who are unsure of buying vitamins from the Internet. – A business intelligent startup that wants to leverage visual charts and other easily interpretable forms of data delivery to let everyday users who aren’t necessarily data scientists take advantage of big data trends. It’s a startup that will face a lot of competition in this booming market, but it really does seem to have nailed the drag and drop mechanics of making a truly user-friendly solution, so long as it gets the data sources right. – The Toronto-based Sciencescape is a startup that’s operating in the hot medical research space. ResearchGate just landed a and others. And in early April, bought by publisher Elsevier. But Sciencescape is doing something different from either of these, trying to curate and make sense of the various bits of academic research that are flooding knowledge networks these days. Journal publications have skyrocketed, the startup says, and there’s nothing good to deal with it yet, hence the market need. All the companies involved had raised at least half of their initial seed funding, and each had a clear go-to-market strategy in place. The keynote address by partner was all about how Canada seemed like a tricky place to invest, but how strong companies and continued investment from a few early pioneers has helped the startup community explode, especially for SV-based VC firms. This crop of companies is a good example of why those investors are looking north, and why they will likely continue to do so. |
Smile! Hackers Can Silently Access Your Webcam Right Through The Browser (Again) | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | You know those people who put tape over their laptop’s webcam to keep digital peeping toms at bay? They’re not crazy. A new proof of concept is making the rounds today that demonstrates how a hacker can snap pics off your webcam, right through the browser, with no consent required. Well, technically, you giving consent. You just wouldn’t know it. Outlined by security consultant , the hack brings in a few old tricks to work around Flash’s requirement that a user explicitly grants a website permission before it can access their camera or microphone. Without going into to much detail, the demo uses a bunch of fancy CSS/HTML trickery to render Flash’s permission prompt in a transparent layer, placing the now invisible “Allow” button directly above something the user is likely to click — like, say, the “Play” button on a video. The basic technique, dubbed , is nothing new. I’d actually generally avoid writing about things like this, if it were new, to keep the word from spreading before the companies got a chance to fix it — but these techniques are already well known in the hacking world. In fact, a post on suggests that they fixed the bug (or a similar one) way back in 2011. “No user action or Flash Player product update are required,” it reads. And yet… it still works. We tested the proof of concept on the latest build of Chrome for Mac, and it pulled from our webcam without issue or any visible prompt. Others have found the exploit to work on IE10, but it seems to be patched on the most recent releases of Safari and Firefox. When it works, the only evidence that the camera was ever accessed is a near instant and oh-so-easy-to-miss blink of the LED indicator. [ Google has in Chrome with version 27.0.1453.116, released six days after our initial report on 6/13] You can test the ( ). If your browser doesn’t visibly render the permission box and clicking the play button snaps a picture of you, your browser fails the test. If it shows the permission box or blocks the click, you’re safe (from this specific exploit, at least). So, why is this a big deal? Imagine you’re perusing some of the Internet’s more, erm, websites. You’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, finding yourself 3 or 4 sites away from the trusted one you started at. You click “Play” on something that suits your particular fancy and.. surprise! The LED on your webcam flicks on, and two seconds later you’re looking at a freshly snapped picture of yourself on screen, hands …wherever they might be. Fortunately, getting a solid layer of protection against such exploits moving forward is pretty straightforward. For one, you can tape up that webcam — it’s a bit tinfoil hat, sure, but it’s better than having a photo of your bad bits blasted out to the Internet on some shady-ass Tumblr. Second, consider using Firefox* with something like , disabling it only for trusted sites. Oh, and yeah, insert the obligatory NSA/PRISM joke here. [* extensions exist for Chrome, but I’ve yet to find one that is as dependable or user-friendly] |
Disrupt Darling Trustev Wins Europe’s Top Startup Award | John Biggs | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | An EU Commission has named as the EU’s Top Startup, a prestigious honor that places the company head and shoulders above thousands of applicants. They announced the win at in London. Founded by Chris Kennedy and Pat Phelan, Trustev proves the identity of a shopper by creating a Social Fingerprint based on online interactions, as well as data sources that ensure the customer is, for example, in the proper geographic location. They closed a $300,000 seed round and will announce a larger round in two weeks. “Chris had been working on the code for almost 18 months; I joined him at Christmas to take it to commercial launch. We had built up many years experience of fraud in our last two companies,” said Phelan. The company launched in April. The runners-up in the contest were and . They all appeared at in Berlin, and Trustev won the day after presenting at multiple startup events. The winner gets to present with the and gets €10,000 of Amazon hosting. More important is the international recognition the company gets in the Euro startup sphere and the attention of investors. Trustev was part of the Disrupt Startup Alley in New York. |
A Look Back On Symbian On The Eve Of Its Demise | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | This summer the veteran Symbian platform, which started life back when handhelds weren’t phones but PDAs, will quietly pass into development history. Or at least its primary supporter over the years — Nokia — (or so says the FT). Unsurprisingly Nokia is keeping officially schtum this time around. Presumably it’s learnt its lesson after the original , in which it publicly declared its intention to jump ship from Symbian to Windows Phone, ended up as people stopped buying phones running a zombie OS. It’s technically possible smaller entities might look to keep the Symbian flame alive, as the former Nokians, . Symbian does still power a fair amount of phones in China, for instance. But , and it’s no longer open source, so its days as an active development platform are likely numbered. Regardless, it’s certainly true that Symbian is the platform of a bygone 2G era, when phones were phones first and foremost, not today’s data-gobbling pocket computers. All of which means that even if Symbian lingers a little longer — Nokia is apparently intending to sell off existing Symbian phone stock, so that may well take some time judging by how sales have dropped drastically (it now sells more Windows Phones than Symbian devices) — its end times are approaching. So what better point to take a look back at the platform that powered so many devices and dominated the mobile landscape for so long. Symbian’s origins are firmly routed in the PDA world. It sprang from an OS developed by Psion for its handheld organisers — pictured below is a precursor OS to the one that evolved into Symbian. [Image by via ] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH5jQii9D1A] In mid 1998 Psion Software became Symbian Ltd — a joint venture between Psion and phone makers Ericsson, Motorola, and Nokia — and EPOC was renamed the Symbian OS. As befits a joint venture, the OS was splintered into distinct platforms/UIs as each of the various mobile makers put it to work with their own devices. These included Nokia’s PDA-style Series 80 platform — shown below running on the Nokia 9300 — and the icon-based Series 60 UI platform shown running on the candybar slider Nokia 7650, bottom left, and the N80, bottom right. [Image by via ] [Image by via ] [Image by via ] [Image by via ] [Image by via ] Symbian’s clear run extended right through to the mid noughties, as of candybars, flips phones and other weird/wonderful form-factors from cylinders to spherical squares, all powered by its various flavours of the OS. This was Symbian cooking on gas. The crunch time for the OS came when Apple’s iPhone arrived in 2007 to usher in the capacitive touchscreen era, putting a new more fluid touch-centric user experience at the fore and elbowing out keypads, Qwertys and fiddly menu systems that relied on wielding a stylus to navigate. The iPhone’s arrival was of course compounded by Android’s debut in 2008. Soon a whole army of touchscreen iPhones and iClones were crowding into a mobile playground that had formerly been Nokia’s and Symbian’s to rule. Unlike Symbian, these incoming platforms were starting fresh — designed for the Internet era, not the quaint pocket PDA. They didn’t carry legacy baggage. Their only heritage was connected computing. They were built with the touchscreen at their centre, and they offered a perfect platform for delivering apps. Of course Symbian could run apps too, but all the various flavours of the OS meant its app ecosystem was far more fragmented than its rivals. And although Symbian’s PDA roots incorporated touchscreen tech this older generation of resistive screen tech — which went hand in glove with fiddly drop-down menus designed to be pecked at with a stylus — bore no relation to modern touchscreens that focused on fingers and true touch computing. All these factors gave Android and iOS a huge advantage over the decade-old Symbian platform. Symbian was stuck in its own folder-strewn rut, desperately needing to evolve to compete in the slick new mobile world order. Add to that, Android was free for mobile makers to use vs Symbian’s licensing fee model. Symbian was being outgunned and outpriced. A crushing combination for any long-in-the-tooth technology. Nokia, the main Symbian user ergo the company with the most to lose as the OS fell behind, made the decision to open source Symbian in 2008 to try to accelerate its evolution to compete with its younger and more agile rivals. A rebooted version of Symbian designed for a touchscreen era was to be created by merging various platform strands — including S60 and technology from UIQ and MOAP(S) — to be pooled into a new unified touch-focused platform. The first touch-enabled release of the new OS, Symbian^1 (or Symbian S60 v5) — is shown below running on the first device to carry it, the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, released at the end of 2008. But the usability gap between Symbian^1 and its upstart rivals remained a gulf. It wasn’t until Symbian^3 (demoed below in a Nokia promo video) that a more fully-featured touch-centric experience started to emerge. Although, at this point, development work was already pushing into 2010 meaning Symbian continued falling further behind. Symbian^3 added multiple homescreens with support for widgets, faster graphics and scrolling, pinch to zoom, visual multitasking with app previews and switching, among other new features. But this was still playing catch up with Android and iOS. Too little, too late remained Symbian’s problem, as its two rivals streaked ahead with their own platform evolutions and went on to sew up the smartphone market between them. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdGyZYrix9g] In a last ditch attempt to fix Symbian fast, Nokia took development back in house. Two more versions of the OS followed, , which brought browser speed and text input improvements and ushered in a new rounded icon-based UI. Followed by a final update: . Belle added additional modernising touches such as more customisable widgets, extra homescreens, a pull down status screen for accessing settings and viewing missed missives, notifications on the lockscreen, and support for NFC. The problem was Android already had all those things. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBCbWrvOEpw] The old folder based menu hierarchy that Symbian had carried with it from its PDA days had finally been entirely flattened. But it had taken far too long to level the playing field. Symbian’s work was almost done. At the start of this year that the Symbian-based 808 PureView — with much fanfare thanks to its 41MP camera sensor — would be the last device it makes on the Symbian platform. This summer it’s also going to stop producing even the remaining few Symbian devices in its portfolio. After some 15 years, many of them as the leader of its field, it’s the end of the line for this venerable technology stack. Lee Williams, formerly the executive director of the Symbian Foundation — the entity created to oversee the open sourced Symbian in 2008 — takes the view that while the PDA heritage of Symbian was initially off-putting, the platform’s robust underlying architecture and flexibility gave it the ability to power through its legacy past. After all, they were the key strengths that had allowed it to travel so far and find its way on to so many devices for so many years in the first place. “I remember Symbian as that upstart competitor in the GEOS/BeOS/Palm days. I was at Be at the time, and we discounted the system due to it’s role as Psion software with a stodgy approach to usability and programmability. By the time I got to Palm, and we were wrestling with how best to provide a multicore platform for smartphones, we started to realise that Symbian had some real potential. Namely, the right architecture for a broad range of devices and a robust programming model for applications,” he tells TechCrunch. Williams’ take on Symbian’s demise is therefore not that the technology itself was the problem, but rather that Symbian spread itself too thin: it was beholden to too many other partners who all wanted a piece of the pie and that meant fragmentation, development retardation and a fatal inability to innovate quickly enough when others were flying forward. “When I landed on the board at Symbian U.K. Limited, and then took the reigns as the head of the Foundation, the platform appeared to be the preeminent system for the mobile age. What was ironic, was that its strengths ended up being the soul of its demise. The broad level of Operator/OEM support and the extensive range of technology and device types couldn’t help but make the platform difficult to market and ultimately difficult for others to accept as a good solution for the marketplace,” he says. “Ultimately, politics and perception killed what is arguably still the world’s best operating system for our era of seamlessly connected and extensible products.” That’s the view from the top. But what about the view from the development trenches? , a Qt developer who dabbled with writing Symbian apps after Nokia added support for the cross-platform development framework to Symbian in 2011 — having found Symbian C++ “too arbitrary” and “complex” — argues that in the post-iPhone years, Symbian struggled simply because it remained dated vs the competition. Even though Nokia improved the development environment for Symbian by adding support for Qt — meaning developers no longer needed to struggle with Symbian C++’s random API call names and requirements for even simple things to have low level setting up of memory and stacks — the platform itself continued to show its age. And that ultimately dragged down the more modern-looking apps now being developed for it. In short, Symbian Belle was great but years too late. “Though the apps started looking nice and modern [after Nokia added Qt support], the OS itself (Symbian^3 and Symbian Anna) was still looking dated,” says Chander. “For example, though running on a touchscreen, they had two text buttons in the bottom taskbar, a legacy from the buttoned phones. When the phone orientation changed, weird things happened on the screen before the screen settled in the new orientation. If you wanted to type in portrait mode, you had to make do with a telephone keypad (that has 2 and ABC on the same button). Stuff like these made it quite bad at a time when iPhone and Android were shipping much much better touch-centric user interfaces on their phones. “Nokia fixed most of those problems with Symbian Belle, but it was too late (and Belle merely brought it to the level of the competition, didn’t elevate it to a higher level),” he adds. “The pinnacle of Symbian was obviously the Nokia 808 PureView, and I think even that can just about compete with the UX in iPhone/Android (not considering the number of apps and the ecosystem). So, I think Symbian didn’t make it because it couldn’t adapt to the touch-centric UX quick enough. If it had shipped Belle two years earlier, it could have garnered the app ecosystem that Android now enjoys.” And with an insider’s view, Martin Jakl, a former employee of Symbian Ltd and also subsequently Nokia briefly when the latter took over the running of the OS, believes it was public perception that killed Symbian — the perception that the OS was bad because of an outdated UI sitting on top, holding it back. “At the OS layer Symbian was (and most likely still is) the best mobile OS. But of course what users see is the UI and if UI sucks, general public will not like the OS. And to my mind that’s exactly what happened,” he tells TechCrunch. “Splitting the OS and UI was perhaps the greatest managerial mistakes Symbian did (but not the only one, mismanagement was in general the biggest problem of Symbian).” “The entire S60 UI – in my mind this was the single biggest problem with Symbian — the UI was getting dated and Nokia’s was too risk aware to change it. When they decided to update UI in S^3, they took a couple of wrong design decisions (work on future S^4 which was scrapped) but finally arriving with the right approach to new UI. That’s today’s Belle UI based around Qt abd QML. But by then it was late,” he adds. Jakl says Symbian’s great strengths as an OS were its kernel, which supported highly complex real-time system apps, and networking stack, which unlike the competition was written for mobile so was built for switching between radio technologies. Symbian also had platform security implemented in the kernel, making it robust in a way he argues Android is not. “It was virtually impossible to hack the system. Look at Android even today, it struggles with a load of malware, etc. This would not have happened to Symbian,” he says. But despite these native strength at the OS level, failure to unify and evolve the UI fast enough killed Symbian — by pushing mobile users into the arms of rivals who focused on usability first. As is often the case with dominant technologies, not changing fast enough got the better of Symbian. Whether the platform proving itself a laggard was down to complacency and leadership mis-management, the complexities of its legacy baggage including an outdated UI, industry politics or a combination of all those things is hard to say. Regardless of the specific combination of reasons, the cautionary outcome remains the same: innovate or die. |
Glossi Adds Monetization To Its Digital Magazine Platform By Partnering With RewardStyle | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | When digital publishing platform launched last December, it hadn’t quite addressed one of the big questions that revolves around any “future of media”-type platform — how publishers are going to make money. Now the company has made its first move towards publisher monetization through a partnership with affiliate network . Through the integration, rewardStyle members who create a Glossi (that’s the name for both the publishing platform and for magazines created on it) should be able to access RewardStyle’s directory of products, then drag-and-drop them into their content. Those products will then function as affiliate links, with the publisher paid a commission for the purchases that they drive. Non-rewardStyle members using Glossi can also access the product directory, but without the monetization angle, I’m guessing it’s not quite as appealing. Glossi founder and CEO Matt Edelman noted that, technically, publishers could already include any links they wanted in their Glossies, so there was nothing stopping them from including affiliate links before — there just wasn’t any real support or integration from the company. “If the Glossi creator had their own affiliate links, they could try to use them, but we made no assertions that the link would track correctly or display the image or metadata for the product correctly,” he told me via email. “We also did not offer a way for a Glossi creator to display in the Glossi-viewing experience that a product image was actually shoppable, which now will occur when a viewer rolls over a shoppable product image while looking at a Glossi.” Publishers who have already used rewardStyle to add shoppable content to their Glossies include OliviaPalermo.com. In fact, you check out from Olivia Palermo, where the featured items include “buy now” links courtesy of rewardStyle. Madison Dyal, rewardStyle’s vice president of sales, marketing, and corporate development, said that when the company first got to know the Glossi team and tried out the product last year, “We were pretty wowed.” She added: “Our philosophy with partnerships is we want to work with third-party apps that our publishers are going to use no matter what. Glossi is a perfect example of that. … We do see this as a very new way for publishers to publish content, and we’re excited to see how they use it.” Last week, the company , including the ability to run Glossi contests, and it said it will soon offer a premium product allowing users to offer paid subscriptions and run advertising. |
Tunebox Is An iTunes Match-Like App For Dropbox Music Files | Eric Eldon | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | When late last year, wondered if the cloud music player startup could turn into a new audio streaming product. But Audiogalaxy was promptly shut down, and the team is rumored to be working on other Dropbox projects. And so, a has emerged for apps that stream DRM-free music files for Dropbox users. has a well-regarded web player, but mobile is the main use case for most people, and has been a standout among the eight or so apps available for iOS. Available since late 2011, it already streams songs automatically instead of requiring you to download files from Dropbox to your phone like most of the others. The new 2.0 version completes developer ‘s* goal of providing an iTunes Match-type service for Dropbox users, in that you can now save files to your device and play them in offline mode. Just tap the icon next to a song or album to save it, and swipe to remove it if you want to free up storage space on your device. Tunebox had already done a relatively good job of sorting through song metadata in Dropbox to organize files in its interface. But if you had more than a couple thousand songs, it had trouble displaying everything. Now it gets around that by sorting through albums first, allowing you to see your collection even if you have tens of thousands of files you want to listen to (inspired by this fix). Of course, anyone with a large collection of DRM-free music files on Dropbox could dump them into iTunes, or Amazon or Google music products in order to press play on the go. But these giant tech companies appear to be more focused on streaming and Internet radio based on their recent product releases and what’s hottest with users these days. They or Dropbox could still decide to focus more on cloud music players for the DRM-free users out there, but for now Dropbox users are looking like a backwater… where apps like Tunebox can get away with charging $4.99 for more features and a better experience. |
Senators Say No Evidence NSA Spying Prevented Attacks | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | I just got flashbacks of seeing congressmen debate on C-SPAN whether there were, in fact, any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Only a decade ago, Members of select intelligence committees saw identical pieces of evidence and came to vastly different conclusions. Now, it’s happening again with the National Security Agency: Senator Mark Udall has , “We have not yet seen any evidence showing that the NSA’s dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records has produced any uniquely valuable intelligence.” Udall, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and his tech-savvy, privacy-happy counterpart, Senator Ron Wyden ( : A), have come out swinging against claims that the NSA’s Internet and phone snooping have actually had any of the alleged benefits. “As far as we can see, all of the useful information that it has provided appears to have also been available through other collection methods that do not violate the privacy of law-abiding Americans in the way that the Patriot Act collection does. We hope that President Obama will probe the basis for these assertions, as we have,” . The strongly-worded letter is in response to the NSA director that its sweeping programs have prevented dozens of terrorist attacks. Of course, the evidence will only be disclosed to members of congress behind closed doors. Most leading members of congress, such as Democratic California Senator Diane Feinstein, of the NSA’s projects soon after they were revealed. So, for citizens, that means you need to pick which Senator you believe–on blind faith–and start cheering them on. Let’s hope that we’re not reliving the weapons of mass destruction debate and that there’s some facts that everyone can agree on. [ ] |
VigLink’s Affiliate Links Get More Up-To-Date (And Lucrative) With A New Link Optimizer | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | is announcing an update to its product that should help affiliate links stay up-to-date. The company promises to make publishers more money through affiliate links, i.e., links to online merchants that can earn a commission if they lead to a purchase. With Convert, VigLink turns standard, existing links into affiliate links. (And it works with 30,000 online retailers.) However, CEO Oliver Roup said that over time, the links can become outdated, in the sense that they’re no longer pointing to the merchant who will earn them the most money. So VigLink’s new optimizer will dynamically change the link. At any given point in time, the links should automatically connect to the affiliate program that will make the most money for the publisher without requiring any extra work. Roup argued that this should “bring liquidity to a very illiquid market,” because it creates more pressure for merchants to offer commercially appealing terms to publishers. Over time, he said the larger vision is to optimize affiliate links the same way that display ads are optimized: “Where you see links pointing are a function of who you are and the state of the world.” VigLink says it has been testing the feature with a few customers already, including , and other customers can . I’ll be moderating with Roup and Huddler’s Dan Gill later today at ForumCon, where we’ll be talking more about the product. |
Facebook Begins Its Ad Consolidation By Eliminating ‘Sponsored Results’ In Search | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | Last week, by eliminating more than half of its 27 ad units. Today it’s taking one step towards that goal by announcing that it will be eliminating the Sponsored Results unit starting in July. The unit , allowing businesses to run ads in the “typeahead” results that show up when users enter a search query. , but the company says it noticed that most advertisers were buying those units to promote their apps and games — and its mobile app install ads and Page post link ads can achieve the same goals more effectively. Here’s the statement from Facebook: In keeping with the goal of streamlining our ad products, starting in July advertisers will no longer be able to buy sponsored results. We’ve seen that most marketers were buying sponsored results to advertise their apps and games, and we already offer mobile app install ads and Page post link ads on desktop to achieve these same goals. That doesn’t mean you won’t see any ads in Facebook Graph Search — it’s just the specific Sponsored Results unit that’s being cut for now. Unlike Sponsored Results, Facebook says its other search ad units are targeted based on the user, rather than the search or the typeahead results. Facebook previously said that its goal in eliminating ad units is to make its entire ad program more cohesive and to eliminate the “guesswork” for advertisers. |
Google To Retire Chrome Frame For Internet Explorer And End Support Next January | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | Google just that it is retiring , its open source plug-in for bringing Google Chrome’s JavaScript and rendering engine to legacy versions of Internet Explorer. The company cites the fact that legacy browsers like Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are now finally on the decline and that most people are now using modern browsers as the reason for this decision. Google launched Chrome Frame in 2009 as a way for businesses to move some of their web-based apps to a modern framework without having to switch away from Internet Explorer. Back then, Google argued that this would allow developers to target modern technologies for their users while still retaining compatibility with their legacy apps. Chrome Frame allows developers to set a tag on their pages to automatically prompt Internet Explorer to switch to Chrome Frame or — if the user doesn’t have Chrome Frame installed — direct them to the installation page. Chrome Frame will be retired in January 2014, when Google will cease support and updates for it. The company, of course, recommends that businesses that rely on Chrome Frame switch to a or to check out Chrome for Business, which now includes legacy browser support , too. Given that this is an open source project, there is always a chance that somebody else will pick it up and continue to support it. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjW0Bchdj-w?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360] |
Betting On The ‘Reinvention Of Local,’ Sequoia Leads Thumbtack’s $12.5M Series B | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | , a marketplace for local service providers, has raised a $12.5 million Series B led by . When co-founder and CEO Marco Zappacosta told me about the funding, he said he’s excited because Sequoia is “focused on building enduring, meaningful brands,” and it’s “making us their bet” in the local services market. Sequoia’s Bryan Schreier is joining Thumbtack’s board of directors, so I asked him via email why he picked Thumbtack. “Meeting the Thumbtack team opened our eyes to the fact that the elusive reinvention of local is about a software service – not a list,” Schreier said. “We are blown away by the technology, operations, and business model Marco, Jonathan [Swanson] and Dan [Birken] have developed.” Zappacosta similarly suggested that is distinctive and uniquely appealing to both consumers and service providers. Consumers describe what they’re looking for, then Thumbtack allows service providers to bid on the job. So the consumer gets multiple quotes within 24 hours without having to do a bunch of searching, browsing and calling. And Zappacosta said the service providers are only paying Thumbtack that they’re actually interested in bidding for a job — “We’re delivering them a lead and giving them total discretion over whether they want to pay for that.” There are now more than 250,000 service providers in all 50 U.S. states on Thumbtack, and 20,000 of them are paying the company each month. The site is connecting those providers with $300 million worth of annualized service requests, Zappacosta said — and that’s without a sales and marketing team. (He admitted that Thumbtack “hasn’t built our brand as well as some of the other players,” something that could start changing thanks to the funding, but he doesn’t want things to change too dramatically: “We don’t want to have a Groupon-style salesforce.”) Some of the more popular requests involve cleaning, event services, and home improvement and maintenance. Zappacosta said he doesn’t currently have any plans for international expansion. He argued that “the upside is basically unbounded” just by growing in the United States. Thumbtack has now raised a total of $18.2 million in funding. Javelin Venture Partners and MHS Capital also participated in the round. |
null | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 12 | null |
API Code Could Point To Facebook Building An RSS Reader | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | Move over , , , , and the rest of the RSS players who hope to pick up some new users with the of Google Reader. Facebook may also be looking to wade into the game. Asked whether Facebook is planning to launch an RSS product, a spokesperson for the company told TechCrunch, “We’re not commenting.” But there are some hints in Facebook’s Graph API code that could indicate otherwise. have recently started to appear in Facebook’s Graph API code. Linking the RSS feed to a user’s Facebook ID, the code schema also covers such aspects as title, URL and update time. Each RSS feed subsequently has and . Sleuthing developer Tom Waddington, who brought the new RSS code to our attention, that when he tried to run this new code through Facebook’s Graph API Explorer, the results come up as restricted only to whitelisted addresses. While Google has decided to shut down its Reader product because “ ,” it pointed out at the time that “the product has a loyal following.” Facebook, always on the search for users to spend more time on its site, could use an RSS service as one route to achieving that, while at the same time getting its chance to play the hero out of one of Google’s many bouts of spring cleaning. It also makes sense that Facebook would want to offer users an alternative way to consume content on its platform. It’s already become a go-to homepage of sorts for users aggregating news, information, social updates and entertainment feeds into one stream; this could be used as another. It could also be connected with a rumored to better compete with Tumblr. This too could use an RSS feed to bring in content. Indeed, what the code doesn’t seem to make clear is whether the feeds would be of Facebook content or content from the broader web. Nor is it clear that whatever RSS feeds end up powering, it would ever be positioned as a straight Google Reader replacement, since, as my colleague Sarah points out, RSS never went mainstream so most users would not know what this means. Creating a feature that could aggregate content from the wider web would make sense: if Graph Search already lets you look in the wider web for content, why not an RSS feed to help aggregate that better? Facebook has dabbled in RSS before. In 2011, it added a “ ” option to Pages, along with “Subscribe via SMS.” This is how that option looked: In December 2012, Facebook . At some point around that and the Timeline update, it appears to have quietly dropped the “Subscribe via RSS” feature. You can still apparently subscribe to a Page in RSS, but it’s not exactly one step. (Here’s of a slightly laborious how-to.). Facebook also lets users create , but again it’s not something you can do with one click of your mouse. In both cases, there are separate windows and manual copying of code involved — easy and nothing for some geeks; but not a mass-market opportunity. Still, I wondered if the code that Waddington found in the Graph API might be somehow related to that Notification feature. “The simplest way to know it’s unrelated to those Notification RSS points is that it’s also in the API,” he tells me. You can add, remove and edit multiple RSS feeds per user in the newer code. “Spitting out the data Facebook already has wouldn’t involve the API like that.” The new code that’s appeared describes connections from a user to RSS feeds, an RSS feed having multiple entries, and each RSS feed being subscribed to by multiple users. “It’s *exactly* what you’d code to start up a Google Reader clone,” he says. |
Facebook Makes The First Big Dent On FISA, Releases Data On All U.S. Government Data Requests | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | As the shows no signs of dying down in the public consciousness, has just released the fullest account to date of the requests it has received from United States law enforcement and governmental authorities for the data surrounding its users. To borrow a phrase from local news , the numbers may surprise you. In a report issued today on Facebook’s company blog, general counsel Ted Ullyot wrote: “For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) – was between 9,000 and 10,000. These requests run the gamut – from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat. The total number of Facebook user accounts for which data was requested pursuant to the entirety of those 9-10 thousand requests was between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts. With more than 1.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, this means that a tiny fraction of one percent of our user accounts were the subject of any kind of U.S. state, local, or federal U.S. government request (including criminal and national security-related requests) in the past six months. We hope this helps put into perspective the numbers involved, and lays to rest some of the hyperbolic and false assertions in some recent press accounts about the frequency and scope of the data requests that we receive.” More information can be , and we’re updating the story as it develops. Microsoft has followed suit, releasing its own figures on official U.S. data requests including FISA orders following Facebook’s disclosures, writing: “For the six months ended December 31, 2012, Microsoft received between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts from U.S. governmental entities (including local, state and federal).” But at first blush, those numbers may not seem as scary as the initial reports on governmental surveillance of web activity would imply. Though the government under FISA does have the right to request as much information as it would like in the name of national security, it seems that those requests have affected a relatively tiny fraction of Facebook users. For a bit of background: this week joined several other technology giants including and Google in publicly prohibiting them from being fully transparent about the extent of their cooperation in the U.S. government’s surveillance activities. Thus far, requests that Facebook has received from the National Security Agency (NSA) have been kept secret because they are by definition confidential orders executed under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — the secrecy is mandated in the name of keeping American citizens safe from equally secretive terrorist organizations. In short, anything under FISA is just like — the first and most important rule is that it isn’t discussed. Facebook has said recently that one reason it has refrained from issuing public statements about its involvement with governmental authorities (such as Google does with its ) is because the existence of FISA would make such statements incomplete. In many ways, these companies’ hands have been tied if they want to keep complying with the law. Now, many of us would love to see whistleblowers within these tech firms flout the law and talk about what exactly is going on, as — FISA be damned. , who I personally think has been nailing exactly how the tech industry should be viewing this issue from day one on his , has issued a some for industry folks to do just that — but up until now, we’ve only had tech companies asking for a bit more leeway and permission to talk. While staying within the confines of the law, Facebook today has made a significant stride toward really opening up the way that the government handles its information gathering and disclosures — it will be interesting to see how other companies follow suit. |
Google X Announces Project Loon: Balloon-Powered Internet For Rural, Remote And Underserved Areas | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | Google X, the secretive lab behind projects like Google Glass and Google’s self-driving cars, announced its latest project today: for those areas of the earth where regular terrestrial Internet isn’t a good option. Earlier this week, Google started testing these balloons, which are meant to provide Internet access comparable to 3G networks while sailing the stratospheric winds, in . We had previously heard about this, but just like most of Google X’s projects, this idea sounded like a long shot. Using free-flying balloons, after all, sounds like a recipe for disaster – or at least for run-away balloons. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=m96tYpEk1Ao Because the whole idea sounds a bit crazy, Google says, it’s calling this initiative “Project Loon.” Google, however, believes that it has found a way to let these balloons “sail freely on the winds” and steer them by moving them up or down to catch the right winds. This still means the team has to manage a fleet of these balloons – and the idea here is to one day have these fly these around the world. Google says it’s solving this problem “with some complex algorithms and lots of computing power.” Google uses wind data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to predict the balloons’ flight paths. Currently, Google says it is using 30 balloons in this pilot project and about 50 testers in New Zealand are using the service on the ground. These testers have special antennas that can connect to the balloons when they are within a 20km radius. Google, and its chairman Eric Schmidt in particular, have long been talking about the importance of getting those two-thirds of the earth’s population who don’t currently have Internet access online. Project Loon is meant to help solve this problem, Google notes. Not only could it bring Internet access to areas where today’s technologies don’t work well (jungles, archipelagos, mountains), but it seems Google also hopes that this balloon-powered network can help bring down the price of Internet access in many countries where it’s currently unaffordable for many people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mcw6j-QWGMo |
Ask A VC: Canaan Partners’ Maha Ibrahim On Why There Aren’t More Women VCs | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | In this week’s Ask A VC epsiode, we had Canaan Partners’ Maha Ibrahim in the studio to chat about her perspective on social gaming and more. Ibrahim, who has worked at Canaan since 2000, invests in cloud, social gaming and digital media companies for the firm. We raised an interesting question to Ibrahim: Why aren’t there more female VCs in the industry? According to a , of the 25 most active VC firms in 2011, only 8 percent of their investment professionals were women. Many of these firms don’t have female investment professionals at all. Considering Ibrahim’s investment in Kabam and the struggles Zynga has faced, we also asked her whether there is still an opportunity in social gaming. Check out her answers to these questions above! |
Google Quietly Kills Quick View For Wikipedia Results In Mobile Search | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | In April, Google a couple of new features that were meant to speed up mobile browsing. Among them was “Quick view,” an experimental feature that added a badge to Wikipedia results on Google’s mobile search results pages that, when you clicked it, loaded the Wikipedia result in around 100 milliseconds. Now, however, it looks like these Quick view badges were indeed just experimental and have quietly disappeared from Google’s mobile search results pages. We asked Google about this change, but the company did not provide us with an on-the-record statement. It’s common for Google to quietly run various experiments on its search results pages and then remove them later. Once the company officially announces a feature, however, it tends to keep it around for a while. When Google launched Quick view, it said that it was working on bringing more sites on board and even offered a sign-up page for webmasters who were interested in making their sites available through this feature. The sign-up page is . It’s surprising to see Google, which loves anything that can help speed up the web, remove this feature from mobile search. Maybe users didn’t actually use Quick view or didn’t fully understand it, but its odd to see it go. It was actually a very useful feature and worked exactly as advertised. It’s worth noting, by the way, that this version of Quick view was different from the one Google also for quickly opening up PDF files, Word documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Maybe anything called “quick view” doesn’t have a long life expectancy at Google. |
Jack Dorsey, Mayors Bloomberg And Lee Will Co-Host Digital Summit On Sept 30th | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 6 | 14 |
Bloomberg, Lee and Jack Dorsey. — Chris O'Brien (@obrien) Square CEO Jack Dorsey and the Mayors of New York City and San Francisco announced today that they will be collaborating on a digital technology summit, to be hosted on September 30th in the Big Apple. At a press conference at Square this afternoon, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee gave a few details about the upcoming summit, which will bring together industry stakeholders for a big-think meeting of how to solve social issues. NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is in town to give the Stanford commencement speech, stole the press event with a few jokes about Dorsey’s “ ” to run for his job. Talking about Dorsey’s hypothetical campaign, Bloomberg said he could have “140 character campaign speeches; six-second campaign videos, and your pledge that everyone can pay their taxes using Square.” For good measure, in response to Mayor Lee prodding New York City about snow problems, Bloomberg joked, “Climate change has taken away the snow so we really haven’t had much.” I asked Mayor Bloomberg about New York’s against sharing economy apps, such as Uber and Airbnb, and he responded that, “regulation becomes a crutch… It’s the old entrenched industries, under the shield of regulation,” that prevent meaningful competition. No word on how exactly he’ll support them, other the taxi industry. We’ll see if actions follow words. Or conferences. |
With Big-Name Backing And Some eBay Flavor, These Startups Are Looking To Shake Up The Art Market | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | Ebay is generally credited with being the first company to bring auctions — a system that, for nearly 2,500 years, had exclusively taken place live in noisy, public (and offline) forums — into the Digital Era. But, today, in spite of the fact that eCommerce has become a thriving global industry, with online marketplaces collectively last year, one market in particular has managed to resist the disruptive influence of technology and online commerce: The grand old world of fine art. Not to be deterred, a handful of startups have emerged in recent years behind a shared goal of leveraging eBay’s online auction model to bring some automation and democratization to the staunchly brick-and-mortar industry. The efforts of three young companies in particular, the New York-based , Berlin’s and have begun to find some support, both from insiders and investors. To wit: Last week, a number of well-known names in the fashion and art worlds put their through their support behind Paddle8, an online auction house founded in the summer of 2011 that aims to connect buyers and sellers of art through both monthly themed auctions and benefit auctions, which allow non-profits and foundations to hold events online. , the controversial, English pop artist, Alexander von Furstenberg, the son of prominent fashion designer , along with members of the were among those to contribute to the startup’s latest investment. The $6 million round follows on the heels of a last year, both of which were led by Founder Collective and Mousse Partners. Part of the interest in Paddle8 is its mission to become the online destination for beginners and wily veterans alike. It wants to walk the line between stuffy and accessible, allowing the public to access and buy legit, curated works and find insider opinions from the influential figures who participate as guest curators for its auctions. There’s also the fact that, , it’s not easy to build a viable online marketplace in a complex and opaque industry like the one that has grown up around fine art over the decades. Artists, gallery owners and collectors are very particular about the process by which pieces of art move between each party involved in the transaction (understandably, given the amount of money that may be exchanging hands) and what kind of re-sale options are involved. As Semil points out, a virtual auction house, if done right, can solve problems which have traditionally deterred some art holders from working with offline auction houses. For example, if an owner ends up selling art back to the gallery after buying it at an auction, they’re likely going to take a significant hit in doing so. Not to mention the fact that many auction houses (online and off) typically price out a big chunk of the market, limiting auctions to items over $100K. Paddle8 aims to deal with these industry-specific issues by catering to the “lower, higher end” of the market, offering auctions on items $100K and setting durations at a fairly lengthy two weeks. In saying “lower, higher end,” we mean that it’s not quite the affordable, accessible-to-everyone end of the market startups like Zazzle and Art.com cater to; however, it still opens it up to a larger audience than those upstream, while maintaining an air of “legitimacy” for serious buyers and sellers. For galleries and gallery owners, the startup offers a set of services which allow them to run their back-ends via its platform, including a dashboard for inventory and transactional management and the ability to ship, install and insure artworks without placing limits on time and geography, . The key to building a successful marketplace and business in a niche industry like this (and really any other, for that matter) is that you have to know, and respect, your audience. Even if they’re a little bit eccentric — or snobby. Paddle8 also gives galleries, art fairs and museums a POS transaction platform and, going forward, it wants to offer them private, virtual rooms to display artworks to potential buyers — rather than having to attach a .JPEG to an email, which is the way things usually work — along with the ability to auction works outside of their exhibition. The company also attempts to appeal to art sellers by taking a 6 percent commission from sellers, while charging buyers 12 percent. The startup also keeps all records and prices involved in auctions private, meaning that it doesn’t disclose details of whether or not a piece of art sold, didn’t sell, or sold for less than the asking price. For artists or owners, this can be a fairly attractive policy in an industry that’s all about your reputation and show — taking a hit or failing to sell might have insiders turning up their nose at you the next time around. Of course, Paddle8 isn’t the only one that sees opportunity in a digital marketplace for fine art. Founded last year, shares a somewhat similar vision in that it wants to peel back some of the frumpy layers of the art world by making the international art market more accessible to the general public. In a slightly different approach than Paddle8, however, the Berlin-based startup is going directly after the big names in the old world of auctions, like Sotheby’s and Christie’s. It’s doing this by attempting to re-define the familiar, live format by hosting auctions every Friday from its own TV studio. Basically, it’s going for the 100-percent-online, streaming media version of Sotheby’s. Auctionata also offers evaluation, appraisal, authentication and marketing services — along with some of the logistical tools in Paddle8’s arsenal. However, unlike Paddle8, where the average artwork sells for about $10K, Auctionata is going after the high-end. In April, that a had a starting price of $1.5 million, for example. Having grown to 110 employees over the last 12 months and looking to expand further to go full bore after this market, Auctionata recently raised some of its own outside capital. In April, the from Earlybird Venture Capital, Bright Capital and Kite Ventures, among others, bringing its total investment to $23 million. With its new capital, Auctionata wants to continue hiring and build a bigger, 5,000-foot studio in New York, and expects to hit $20 million in revenue this year, . Meanwhile, with Paddle8 busy attacking the fine art market in the U.S. and Auctionata moving across Europe, applying the eBay-for-fine-art model to its home market in India. In fact, the company, which has been around in various incarnations for over a decade and has raised over $12 million from Sequoia and others, “largest fine-art auction house in India, online or otherwise, and one of the largest online fine art auction platforms in the world.” For most of that time, Saffronart was almost exclusively focused on the Indian market (and Indian art) and while it’s sticking with what’s working, it, too, has been looking to expand its scope and started selling Western art for the first time last year. Whether or not this world seems too niche to get overly excited about, these startups are finding an eager audience, especially toward the lower-end of the market. The musty air of the fine art market is in sore need of some fresh tools that can make its goods and services more accessible, and whether or not we find it all a little high-falutin’, for these three companies (among others), the approach seems to be (quietly) paying off. |
Facebook Will Launch A News Reader At June 20th Press Event. Update: It Launched Instagram Video | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | [Update June 24th: Facebook is in fact working on a fresh news reading experience, but we were mistaken about the launch date. It revealed Instagram For Video on June 20th. However, a source tells TechCrunch that Facebook is working on a reading product, but its not based on RSS or a Google Reader wannabe. We’ve updated this article several times since it was published, but beyond the headline and this note it now appears in its the same way it did on June 14 when it was first run.] The upcoming death of Google Reader and the addition of hashtags signal Facebook will likely launch a new way to discover and read news at the June 20th press event it’s just sent out mysterious invites to. It could be a sort of “trending articles on Facebook” feature, or a more full-blown RSS reader-style product. Either could take advantage of Facebook’s massive treasure trove of aggregate data on what people share to surface popular and personally recommended news articles. The event invite, first spotted by , says “A small team has been working on a big idea. Join us for coffee and learn about a new product.” The conspicuously analog invite was sent out via paper snail mail instead of by email like Facebook usually does. There’s also a coffee stain on the invite. You know where else you find coffee stains? On the newspaper, while you’re reading it, over coffee. Nobody knows what Facebook knows. Since most users share semi-privately, it can’t be scraped for trending topics. But Facebook’s algorithms see all. Similar to how it offers ad targeting data in anonymous aggregate, Facebook could surface what articles are being shared most frequently across its user base without violating privacy. The product could potentially ket people follow outside sources of news through a format like RSS, but we can’t confirm that. The product is likely to take advantage of hashtags that Facebook users can now add to posts to help its algorithms understand what topics different news articles are about. When I asked Facebook about what more it could do with its data on what people share, it initially offered to put me on the phone with someone, but ended up just referring me to the from earlier this week. That blog post notes “Hashtags are just the first step to help people more easily discover what others are saying about a specific topic and participate in public conversations. We’ll continue to roll out more features in the coming weeks and months.” A better way to surface news could be that next step. In fact, I’m pretty much positive it is, though I couldn’t get anyone at Facebook to confirm on the record. Whether the new product includes formal RSS reading capabilities that take advantage of the long-running content syndication standard remains to be seen. Asking users to choose different sources and subscribe to feeds of them could be a lot of work and seem somewhat redundant for the average Facebook user. Still, that kind of functionality could find an audience amongst hardcore Internet users. As our Ingrid Lunden wrote yesterday, “ have recently started to appear in Facebook’s Graph API code (as spotted by developer and Facebook sleuth ). Linking the RSS feed to a user’s Facebook ID, the code schema also covers such aspects as title, URL and update time. Each RSS feed subsequently has and .” This code could be part of the new product, but it also may be unrelated, having to do with a user’s own posts being an RSS feed, rather than a user reading feeds produced by others. A Facebook news reader with RSS would come at a perfect time, just two weeks before Google shuts down Google Reader for good. The June 20th launch date might give Facebook just enough time to help people migrate onto its version. Alternatively, Facebook’s new product could more resemble Reddit or a list trending articles based on what’s being shared the most on the social network. That would make it instantly and easily valuable to people. Whatever it’s exact design, I hope it won’t just be a clone, but something that combines the unique social signals Facebook has access to with tried-and-true news consumption mediums. A reader of any form would certainly qualify as a “big idea”, as Facebook is all about connecting you to people, things, and information you care about, and news is by definition what people care about. A successful launch could drastically increase time spent on Facebook, fill it with useful data about what topics people are interested in, offer new advertising opportunities around current events, and most importantly, make us all better informed citizens of Earth. |
Finally, Someone Likens Parenting To Marketing | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | You know what’s worse than waiting all day for an app (an app!) to get back to you? The fact that an article called “ ” exists. someone likens parenting to marketing. Tech newsmedia brethren, have you given up? I know, I know, some of our guest posts are also atrocious, and , but weren’t Fridays supposed to be the days that you ? Did “Journalism Fridays” not work out? Were you all like “Fuck it, SEO”? I mean, check . All mistakes actually exist in the original post. And … And … Brave new world with such pieces of content in it. |
Teenage Musician Uses The Crowdfunded Loog Guitar To Crowdfund Her Album | John Biggs | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | When we last left off with the by Rafael Atijas it had blown past its funding goals on Kickstarter in early 2011 and making it one of the first successful Kickstarter projects on our radar. In the interim it’s become a mini-phenomenon and, most important, people have started using the three-stringed instruments to record albums. Case in point: Pip Blom is a 16-year-old singer-songwriter who wrote an entire record using the Loog. You can listen to the whole thing on and she is selling the albums to pay for a trip to , a band camp in in the Netherlands. In short, it’s a crowdfunded project that helped student complete another crowdfunded projects. To paraphrase an old lady: It’s crowdfunding all the way down. The music itself is quite charming and well-recorded and is ready to appear at the Glastonbury festival, if they’ll have her.
This cool connection shows the power of crowdfunding. Rafael wanted to make a fun, inexpensive guitar for kids and he was able to depend on the kindness of the Internet to help him make it. In turn, Pip can use that same guitar to follow her dream just as any student with a Loog can learn a few chords and make some really nice music. When people talk about the value of crowdsourcing, this is what they mean: the little accidents that connect people to help push the state of the art forward. It’s not just a pre-order engine, it’s an engine of creativity. |
Groove Playlist Generation App Tops 85,000 Downloads In One Day After Going Free | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | is a Canadian-made mobile app that’s tearing up the charts, reaching a top 1o spot in over 30 countries, and climbing to number 1 in the Canadian app store over other music apps including Rdio and Songza. The app is part of Montreal-based ‘s latest cohort, and in move that’s becoming a trend for Founder Fuel companies, it has just gone free, and racked up 85,000 downloads in just 24 hours. Going free is bound to generate interest, but for FounderFuel General Manager Ian Jeffrey, it’s an especially effective tool for some startups that have the potential to gain some amazing early traction but might be too focused on revenue early on. The Transit App, another FounderFuel company, recently went free and amassed an amazing 35,000 downloads over the course of just 72 hours, but Groove’s uptick in interest is even more impressive. “Free is not necessarily always the way the go, but in both cases here it made sense,” Jeffrey told me via email. Of course, that’s bound to raise the question of whether or not going free is sustainable in the long term for these kinds of apps, and others like them hoping to make a splash in their own respective categories. Whatever the case long-term, the fact is that it seems like these apps stand little to no chance getting a good head of steam going without at least trying the free route first. Groove is different from other playlist apps like Songza and 8tracks in that it uses your own library to populate content. That’s simpler from a licensing standpoint, and also lets a user rediscover content they already own and may have long forgotten about. Plus, it not only automatically organizes your music based on your own listening tastes and tags, but also can pair up with friends to combine tastes, which is perfect for setting the mood at parties in a way that hopefully pleases everyone. So far, the app has amassed over 1 million downloads in the App Store over the past two years, but now it’s growing at a much faster rate. Free is the draw, and seems to be the difference between limping along and really spiking, but long-term we’ll have to see how these companies adapt to the changing economics of the App Store to build a lasting business. |
¿Cómo Ha Crecido Path? By Buying Ads In Spanish | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | The mystery of Path’s mysterious growth deepens. The app, which has been around for nearly three years, miraculously jumped up the charts from between 500th and 600th place to the teens on the free list about two months ago. That raised questions about how the app was able to do that so spontaneously. Was it that Path finally suddenly acquired the network effects and organic growth that it had worked for years to trigger? Or was it something else? , citing a graph from app and mobile ad tracking service Onavo Insights. The chart showed that an uptick in advertising spending that coincided with Path’s gradual rise up the overall charts. In fact, a source familiar with the spending habits of various top-tier mobile developers tells me that Path was the third highest spender on iOS app install ads on Facebook in the month of April behind the usual suspects like the top-grossing gaming companies. It then tapered its marketing spend down in May, and it also suffered slightly on the charts after Path’s Facebook ad spending was also done in a clever way, with much of that spend being devoted to Spanish-language ads instead of English ones. We have an example unit at the top of the story, which appeared in the Facebook mobile feed and which Path put money behind earlier this spring. Not only that, if you dive into Onavo’s data, you’ll see that the highest correlating apps for Path usage in the U.S. are Mi Banco Mobile and El Nuevo Dia. Morin has that the company saw a spike in adoption in countries like Venezuela, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Path, for its part, is issuing its clearest statement today on its spending habits. It says it spends nowhere near what Valleywag claimed, which is more than $10 million in marketing over the last two months. “We would like to set the record straight once and for all — Path’s recent growth has been primarily organic and viral,” said the company’s vice president of marketing Nate Johnson. “While we do run Facebook ads in growing markets around the world, that spend averages in the low 10’s of thousands of dollars a month at best. Recent claims that Path has spent an order of magnitude more than that are laughable.” There are a couple ways that you can look at this. If you took a more cynical point of view, you could argue that this is a way for Path to grow without industry observers and potential investors seeing that the company is doing potentially unsustainable user acquisition. If you took a more benign point of view, you could say that the messaging market already has leading contenders in Europe, North America, China, Japan and South Korea through companies like WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, WeChat, Facebook Messenger and Line. While WhatsApp does have a lead in Latin America and other Spanish-speaking markets, perhaps this could be a savvy way for Path to lock down one of the last regional markets that’s vulnerable to a newcomer. To be fair, I also think that Valleywag’s headline about Path “cheating” its way to the top of the charts is overblown. Spending money to advertise your product is not a sin. The majority of companies at the very top of the grossing lists do this every day. It’s a form of arbitrage: spend X amount of money to bring in a user, and earn Y from them over their lifetime of playing a game, buying Groupons or stickers or whatever else. Mobile gaming companies like Supercell and Kabam have dedicated “user acquisition” teams that can spend millions of dollars per month on this type of marketing. If Path is presumably earning enough revenue from sticker sales to justify this spending, it’s not really a problem. But spending money on marketing in an ROI negative way is problematic if you intend to build a sustainable business — which could be an issue if the company moves forward with early-stage fundraising talks that could value it in the high hundreds of millions or . |
Heyzap Says Its Mobile Ad Network Has Grown To 800 Games (And Makes Up The Majority Of Its Revenue) | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | Back in March, I wrote about how to its mobile gaming platform. Now co-founder Jude Gomila says the company has become a significant player in mobile advertising. Specifically, Gomila sent along the chart showing the growth in publishers running Heyzap ads and the corresponding growth in ad impressions over the past six months. You can’t tell exactly where things stand now, because there’s no Y-axis to the chart. However, Gomila did note that Heyzap ads are now running in 800 games (it was 350 in March), and that number is also growing quickly. He also said that the publishers advertising with Heyzap include big names like Zynga and DeNA. In the six months since the program launched, ad revenue has grown to the point that it already makes up the majority of its revenue. As a result, Heyzap is looking to expand its team beyond the current 25-person workforce. “This does change our priorities,” Gomila said. “We want to offer full monetization tools for game developers. There’s also opportunity for a lot more automation.” Gomila refers to Heyzap’s ad program as its “game discovery network” — basically, when publishers pay to promote their games, Heyzap will start recommending that game through interstitial units that pop up in the games. Those recommendations are also based on the gaming data that users share on Heyzap’s social platform, so Gomila said the discovery network and the social tools “go hand-in-hand.” He argued that this is a much better approach for the mobile gaming ecosystem, because Heyzap can recommend games that users are actually likely to enjoy. “We think most mobile ads suck,” he said. |
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: E3, The Death Of Symbian, And WWDC | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | It was a big week in , and thus, a big it shall be. This week, we discuss , including Xbox One and PS4 pricing, the , and of course, . Will you buy a PS4 or an Xbox One? Does despair fill you from nose to navel when you remember the good old days of Symbian? Is the repelling, attractive, or of the two? John Biggs, Matt Burns, Jordan Crook, Darrell Etherington, and Natasha Lomas touch on all of this and more. Enjoy!
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iOS 7 Eliminates MAC Address As Tracking Option, Signaling Final Push Towards Apple’s Own Ad Identifier Technology | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | Apple has now taken another step to push app publishers to use its preferred ad tracking option, the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), with the debut of the iOS 7 beta. Confirming what many have suspected, Apple is eliminating an alternative option involving tracking by MAC addresses. This method had sprung up following a change to Apple’s Developer Documentation in 2011, announcing its intention to end developers’ reliance on the unique identifier known as the UDID. It’s been a long time since Apple developer access to the UDID on iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad – something which at first led to some in the industry. Over the years, developers had learned to use the identifier for advertising purposes, and as a way to store data about their users. But the method raised privacy concerns, since the number is tied to each individual device and cannot be removed, cleared, or controlled by end users. , each hoping to become the new default method. Many developers still use some these – or just as likely, a combination of some these – today. Earlier this year, Apple began signaling again that the alternative it had in mind for the post-UDID world was its own when it . Then in March, the company that it would no longer accept new applications or app updates that access UDIDs as of May 1, 2013. With that deadline now behind us, Apple is again pushing its community to the UDID’s more privacy conscious replacement, the IDFA. This Apple-approved method provides the attribution advertisers need, along with the privacy and security controls Apple wants to provide for its users. According to data collected by mobile app marketing firm , which helps app publishers with user acquisition efforts, iOS 7 devices – all beta testers, at this point – are always now returning a MAC address of 02:00:00:00:00:00. This “dummy” address is the equivalent of the phone number 555-1212, for example. It began showing up for the tens of thousands of unique iOS 7 devices in Fiksu’s logs earlier this week, says Craig Palli, Fiksu’s mobile app marketing technology platform head. There is also a mention in the pre-release notes for iOS 7 distributed to developers which states that this single, meaningless MAC address is now the new expected behavior. “The MAC address, a hardware based identifier, has long been a way for advertisers to have a permanent, unique identifier for each device, providing a stable tracking option as an alternative to the controversy-plagued UDID,” Palli explains. “However, the same privacy concerns raised about the UDID apply equally to the MAC address – it just received less publicity,” he adds. Now, for those who haven’t yet made the switch to IDFA, the window to migrate is closing. That being said, Palli says that most publishers and ad networks generally knew that the MAC method would not be supported, and the amount of traffic addressed by MAC addresses had “rapidly diminished” in recent months. Today, it exists as a very small, single-digit percentage, he tells us. Other methods, including digital fingerprinting and to a lesser extent, HTML5 cookies, are also still in use today, both with their own strengths and weaknesses. At this time, there have not yet been any reports of app rejections because of the MAC address method being used, though, as noted above, the cookie-tracking method had earlier this year. The app publisher and advertiser communities have had a long time to prepare for UDID’s demise and the shift to the IDFA. And while that , the time has now come to finalize the move. “Fortunately, as an ecosystem, we’ve transitioned to the IDFA,” says Palli, “so by the time iOS 7 rolls out it should make little to no difference from an app developer or marketer’s point of view.” |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 13 | null |
PiCloud Is A Model Cloud Made Of Raspberry Pi & LEGO For Teaching Students About Web Platforms | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | Is there aught the can’t do? Here’s another interesting implementation of the $35 microcromputer — or rather a stack of 56 Pis, linked together to form what its creators have called , using LEGO bricks as bespoke racks for the Pi stacks. (Not the first time we’ve seen either.) The project comes out of the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science, and is intended as a teaching aid so students can hack around with a model cloud platform and play with techs like virtualisation to learn about the infrastructure underpinning services like Amazon’s AWS. The 56 Raspberry Pis in PiCloud are stacked in four mini Lego racks, each topped off with a top-of-rack-switch which has 16 Ethernet connections: 14 used to network the Pis and the other two for connecting the switches. At the software stack layer of PiCloud, each Pi board is running Raspbian Linux, with three LXC containers per Pi each running a Linux instance. Hosted software on PiCloud includes running “simple workloads” within each container (such as ) and “artificial workloads” (like ) for experiments. Other experimental hacking on PiCloud has featured and . is also part of the mix, although this is only currently working on the native Linux instance, rather than an LXC instance. One of the computing schools’s students has also built an AWS-like web console interface for PiCloud (see screengrab below). PiCloud’s creators describe it as a “never-ending work-in-progress”. Aka a teaching aid. Their future plans for the platform include using standard tools such as , “if/when we get libvirt working” — but they’re also asking for suggestions for research directions and collaborations. For more on PiCloud, check out the . PiCloud is a great example of how the Pi is fulfilling the mission of its creators, as well as proving . The . PiCloud is certainly helping with that. |
Disrupt SF Is Around The Corner So Submit Your Startup Battlefield Applications By June 19th | John Biggs | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | TechCrunch Disrupt SF is back! We’re very excited to and that companies in stealth mode can apply for . After that, we’re pulling the plug on submissions. You have less than a week. This September 7-11, we’re bringing Disrupt back to San Francisco to welcome an all new slate of outstanding startups, influential speakers, guests and more to the stage. It marks the seventh time we’ve set up shop here in SF and once again all the action — starting with our 24 hour Hackathon — happens at The Concourse at San Francisco Design Center. So are you ready to launch your company on the biggest startup launch stage? Tell us about it. As in years past, we’re looking for the very best startups to compete in the Startup Battlefield and walk away with the Disrupt Cup, $50,000 cash, and loads of attention. For the first two days, 30 companies will present their product to a panel of judges. But first you have to apply. Applications are due June 19. for the application and full list of rules. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis — and the last two Disrupts had record numbers of applicants — so it’s to your advantage to submit as soon as you are ready. Due to strong demand, we are unable to review applications more than once, so please do not submit a draft application before you are ready for final consideration. PowerPoint slides and video demos are optional but highly encouraged. We reserve the right not to review applications without video demos based on application volume. We look forward to reviewing your application. All submissions are confidential unless otherwise permitted by applicants on the application form. More Disrupt SF 2013 details will be announced in the coming weeks. at a significant discount. We have a stellar line-up of speakers and panels on the docket. But we need your help. Apply for Startup Battlefield and help us make Disrupt SF 2013 the best yet. |
Optimizely Explains How It Boosted SimCity Pre-Order Revenue | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | Here’s an example of a company using ‘s A/B testing tools for a high-profile game launch. The startup, which recently , is releasing a case study today about how Electronic Arts used Optimizely to boost preorders for the new version of SimCity. Prior to the SimCity launch (and before EA division Maxis was trying to drive online pre-orders by offering a discount, and it was promoting the deal in a large banner on the pre-order page (as seen below) and in ads — but it wasn’t seeing the improvement that it expected. So it turned to Optimizely to test out different ideas about how to lay out the preorder page, each one corresponding “with a hypothesis the team had set beforehand regarding placement, color, and display of the promotional offer.” They also had a version that removed the promotional offer altogether. Since Maxis wanted to find an answer quickly, it ran these tests with 100 percent of its site traffic, and it found a surprising result — the preorder page with no offer whatsoever drove 43.4 percent more purchases than the others. That seems pretty counterintuitive. One explanation offered in the case study is that the offer was pushing the actual call-to-action (namely, the preorder button) down the page. Whatever the reason, that approach clearly seemed to work, and it’s the one that Maxis adopted for its preorders. Ultimately, SimCity launched on March 6. In May, , and about half of them were digital downloads. “Optimizely helped us learn a lot about our users – what’s working and what’s not – so we could make changes on our site to optimize our conversion percentages,” said Mike Burk, senior online product manager at Maxis, in the press release. “In the end, this translated to higher revenue for us.” You can . |
Fly Or Die: Divvy | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | As photo-sharing truly hits its stride, an entire ecosystem is born around it. But what is creation without consumption? That’s what is all about. We met the folks behind at the TC Meetup + Pitch-Off. At its core, aggregates all your photos from Facebook and Instagram (Twitter, Flickr, Dropbox all coming soon) into one filter-capable stream. You can also save photos from Instagram, zoom in on photos, and share with groups or individuals. The Divvy team drove to get the Divvy word out before hitting up the Austin Pitch-Off. But does standalone consumption have a place in the already-crowded photo space? While the idea of a centralized location for photo viewing and engagement (rather than multiple social networks to check) makes us pink* with barely controlled glee, we also maintain that a photo creation experience is integral to making any app of this kind a true “one-stop shop” experience. But that’s not to say that the team isn’t already working on that. I give Divvy a hesitant fly — I’m on board with idea and trajectory (assuming they add photo creation soon) but also don’t feel addicted to using the app. John also gives Divvy a fly, as well as his blessing. |
Snapchat Snaps Up A $80M Series B Led By IVP At An $800M Valuation | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 6 | 22 | It’s the , and has raised an $80 million Series B round at an $800 million pre-money valuation. The phat Series B round was led by , according to multiple sources, after being sought after by many other top-tier Valley VCs. After putting in its dough, IVP hooks up with and , Snapchat’s existing backers. Contrary to prior reports, , the $800 million valuation is considerably less than $1 billion and considerably more than . The company will also not be using the money to build an . I have no idea where that one came from. My guess is that Snapchat founders and will use the new money to continue to scale their foothold on , as more people beyond Snapchat’s gateway, 20-something demographic realize that capturing random moments and sending them to their friends briefly (and disposably) is the cool thing to do. Eight people Snapchatted me tonight; I am over 30, and so are all but two of them. Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel has announced this morning that the , versus the $80 million we originally reported on Saturday. Both we and Valleywag’s that the total raise was $80 million despite the , with around $20 million sold in a secondary offering. General Catalyst Partners (see my ) and SV Angel also went in on the round. |
Virtuix Omni Takes Virtual Reality In Every Direction | Ross Rubin | 2,013 | 6 | 22 | Now that there are enough wearable sensors on the market to track one activity per day each week, we’ve seen some sensor-based products turn their attention to chilling out already. There’s the that helps determine how you best focus, Phyode’s that aims to monitor a broad aspect of your physical state, and the that uses a combination of software and biofeedback to help you learn how to de-stress. At least one project owner is gearing up to add another technological tool to the active arsenal. Part videogame accessory and part exercise equipment, the was inspired by the success of Kinect a few years ago, itself a response to the “Wiimote controller” that defined Nintendo’s last gaming console. While both products get you off the couch, they don’t necessarily give you any place to go once you’re there. Just like virtual reality goggles expand the viewing area beyond what is possible with conventional displays, the Omni expands where one can walk in conventional rooms where games are played. It is an omnidirectional treadmill. Indeed, the success of the that netted over convinced inventor Jan Goetgeluk that the funding site would be a good route to market for a technology that had seen a lot of IP patents filed but few consumer products. Backers, many of whom were undoubtedly idle on their chairs as they pledged, were driven by promise (and perhaps a bit of guilt) to meet the initial funding goal in three-and-a-half hours. Two weeks and still with a month to go, the campaign has raised $860,000. As is the case for Oculus, gaming is only the first market for Omni, which can be used in simulations, training and other applications. Even better, unlike the Oculus Rift, which has elements of input and output and requires that games be modified for compatibility, the input-only Omni is compatible with PC games out of the box and is much easier to demonstrate. Nevertheless, while both products are slated to ship in consumer versions in early 2014, VR is still a niche market. Part of the reason for the reality check relates to the Omni’s size (about that of a standard treadmill although it’s designed to be disassembled quickly) and price, which will be around $500 or $600. That will make it more expensive than either of the next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft launching in the fall, with the latter including a souped-up version of Kinect. In addition, while using a Kinect can also require a wide berth, the Omni has its share of encumbrances during use, including a belt and shoes that require special soles. (The company is partnering with an existing shoe manufacturer for the uppers.) And competition is already using crowdfunding to compete with the Omni. A simpler, smaller and cheaper omnidirectional surface called the developed in London dispenses with the Omni’s frame and integrated sensor. The WizDish is expected to ship before the end of the year for less than $300, but a demonstration video on its Kickstarter page has a first-timer stepping onto it as one a wet bathtub surface with a remote voice urging the user to be “really careful.” In these early days of omnidirectional treadmills, the feature sets — as well as some of the users — will struggle for balance. |
Stripe’s Payments Payout Technology For Collaborative Consumption Startups Now Processing Up To $500K Per Day | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 6 | 22 | A few weeks ago, payments startup Stripe for collaborative consumption startups to take and process payments. The company’s new technology allowed for payments to be distributed to multiple bank accounts, which is an issue for startups like Lyft, which are attempting to pay drivers with different accounts from the accounts of users. Stripe says that the service has taken off, and the company is now paying out up to $500,000 per day in these payouts to collaborative consumption startups alone. To put that in perspective on the Stripe side of the equation, the payments company processes “millions” of dollars in transaction volume a day. But whether that number is $5 million or $10 million, half a million is a big chunk of change for collaborative consumption startups. So why has this specific payments technology grown so fast in adoption? It’s mainly because of the challenges these startups face in paying out money to workers, says Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. When a buyer of a service (i.e. a person using Lyft for transportation) pays, the money can only be transferred to one account. So Lyft has to have payments sent to their own account, and then sent to the driver (i.e. the seller). According to Stripe, using the previous system, Lyft would require 10 full-time employees to manage payments to and relationships with their drivers. With Stripe’s new technology, you can insert a few lines of code into your app, and you will enable the ability to add multiple accounts to where money can be sent. Users of Payouts include Lyft, Exec, Sidecar, Postmates, Homejoy, Kitchensurfing, HomePolish, Flightfox, Weddings.com, and Shoptiques. Collison adds, “The part of Stripe that I’ve always found most interesting is the idea of facilitating new commerce that wouldn’t otherwise happen. Payouts is turning out to be a big part of that. These new networks are efficient, intelligent replacements for offline behemoths. It’s a cliché to say stuff like ‘I can’t wait to see what gets built,’ but I think the companies created with Payouts are really going to be transformative.” Part of Stripe’s allure as a payments platform is that the company’s API, and integration is extremely simple and easy to use for developers. As many developers have commented, using Stripe allows an online site to accept payments in a matter of minutes. With Payouts, we’re seeing the company take this strategy a step further by now making transactions themselves more seamless for users in a specific vertical. You have to wonder if we’re going to see Stripe go after the specific pain points of verticals in the payments space, especially in areas of innovation (i.e. collaborative consumption) where there is fast growth. Stay tuned. |
RIP Snapjoy: The Dropbox-Acquired Photo Service Is Shutting Down | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 6 | 22 | , the online photo storage service that Dropbox , has some bad news today for its users: it is shutting down. The company noted the information in a , as well as in an email it’s currently sending out to users (I am among them: I’m copying the text below). Users have until July 24 to download their pictures and related data — at which point, they will all get deleted. Yes, it’s often the case that when a big company makes an acquisition of a smaller one, the latter business gets shut down, either because the purchase was really an acqui-hire or because the bigger company is prepping for, well, something bigger with the fruits of that product. (Yahoo has become a very regular buyer and closer of startups, with many of those questions about where all that talent and product is going still unanswered.) But this is a somewhat surprising turn of events for Snapjoy: when Dropbox bought the company, it stopped taking new sign ups but it also to keeping the service open. Given that decision to keep Snapjoy running, it looked like part of the reason for that acquisition was for Dropbox to start developing a photo service of its own, with Snapjoy as the anchor for it. (For those who are not familiar with Snapjoy, the Y-Combinator-backed company is/was a great platform that not only let users amalgamate pictures from several different photo libraries — great for people like me who have dabbled in using several, and have stored pictures in all of them — but it then had a wonderful feature that called up pictures from that bigger group in a kind of slideshow, to remind you of long-forgotten events. All of this was usable on both the web and via a mobile app.) It may still end up being the case that Snapjoy’s technology will live to see another day, and that Dropbox will indeed launch a photo service — it seems like an obvious move for the company as it moves to do more than just offer cloud storage, by providing different services on top of that infrastructure. However, today’s news means that it won’t be a continuous process for Snapjoy’s existing users, or indeed for Snapjoy the product. The news points to a couple of bigger issues: For those who sometimes feel uneasy about cloud anything, this once again highlights that your cloud-stored data is only as solid as the proprietary platform that is storing it. Once that company decides to call it a day, that’s all, folks. The other is regarding the message that this sends out to users of other Dropbox services — particularly those that Dropbox has acquired, . So far, Dropbox has shown no signs of planning to shut the virally-popular email service down, but Snapjoy should serve as a reminder that a picture can change in a snap. We have reached out to Dropbox for comment and will update this post as we learn more. Hi xxx, After two years of building Snapjoy, the time has come for us to shut down the service. It’s been a journey unlike anything we’d imagined, and we can’t thank you enough for your support and input along the way. As of today, June 22nd, no more photos can be imported into Snapjoy and the Snapjoy iPhone app will no longer be available. Your photos will be available to download until July 24th from the website. After July 24th, all photos and data will be permanently deleted. To download your 450 photos, follow the steps below:
Visit https://www.snapjoy.com/export from your computer.
Login using your Snapjoy account.
Download the zip files containing your 450 photos.
Thank you, The Snapjoy team
|
CrunchWeek: Instagram Video; 3D Printing Startup MakerBot’s Big Exit, And More Cash For Fab | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 6 | 22 | It’s that time of the week for a new episode of CrunchWeek, the weekly show where three of us writers plop ourselves down in the TechCrunch TV studio for some real talk about the most interesting stories from the past seven days. This week you’ll notice that we decided to shoot the show from the middle of the TechCrunch office in San Francisco for a change of scenery. My fellow TechCrunchers, , and , joined me in discussing the big news of the week from Facebook and Instagram: As , in the first 24 hours after the switch was flipped, Instagram saw 5 million videos uploaded. Also on the docket this week: the of Brooklyn-based 3D printing company MakerBot, and Fab more in funding at a $1 billion valuation. Check out the video above for more! |
RSS Readersplosion Shows A Lot Of Skating To Where The Puck Has Been | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 22 | Google Reader is , but people will have no shortage of alternative options when it does die, since everyone and their brother is building an RSS reader to fill the perceived gap. It’s hard to blame them; when Google announced the shutdown of Reader, it was as if millions of voices on the Internet suddenly cried out in terror, and were not silenced. If people are literally asking for a product en masse, that’s probably something a product team in search of a project is going to hang their hat on. But is that the right move? Granted, there’s an appetite, and an apparent need out there, and a huge user base primed and ready to adopt a new RSS reader product. But there’s also plenty of existing supply, from people who have been in the business longer, . And there’s also a reason Google exited the business to begin with, one that, while probably specific to Google itself, should at least have others like and giving serious thought to long-term product viability. Google is closing Reader likely because the product doesn’t align with its larger goals, and because it would rather funnel people to other content-discovery products in its roster, like Google+ specifically. Reader is hard to monetize, and probably requires a lot of engineering resources devoted to maintenance, troublehooting and tech support. And Google, while widespread in its ambitions, is also not squeamish about cutting its losses with peripheral products that don’t achieve quite the critical mass or results they’re looking for. Betaworks is likewise a company with far-ranging interests, but it does put a lot of focus on building the next generation of news and information-gathering products, so a reader is a good fit. And Aol is more and more a media company, so in many ways building a reader is a natural direction for growth for it, too. But building a product that a more successful Internet giant is killing still seems like a backwards move, even if in the short term, it’s being hailed as a clever, opportunistic way to capitalize on clearly expressed demand. Despite the Digg team’s claim that they’d been planning to build a reader-type product before the Google announcement, both products can’t help but seem intensely reactionary, and reaction is never a good look for companies that we expect to be pushing the envelope in terms of innovation. Plus, I’m still of the opinion that the outcry for Reader’s death was from a small, vocal minority centered in the tech community, not something that represents a huge open ocean of general consumer need. Not to mention that the sudden glut of options will segment a market I suspect is already small and getting broken up into even more rarefied pieces (especially if ). One of these companies could offer a twist that prompts a revival and renewed interest, but I think it’s much more likely these products will appeal to a circumscribed audience of people feeling the loss of Reader acutely, not making overtures to brand-new users. If that’s innovation these days, then innovation bores me. |
FTC To Review Google’s Waze Acquisition On Antitrust Grounds | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 22 | has drawn the attention of the Federal Trade Commission after all. The reports today that Google has been contacted by FTC lawyers intending to conduct an antitrust review of the acquisition. Google declined to comment but did confirm to the that it has been contacted by the FTC over the deal. The news was reported earlier by the which cited two sources “close to the situation”. According to the , which said it talked to lawyers familiar with government antitrust investigations, the FTC may have asked Google not to integrate with Waze, pending its review. It also notes that Waze’s revenue was too low to trigger an automatic review by the FTC — but that does not stop the agency stepping in to examine deals after they close, as it now has. Google stepped in and picked up Waze , ending months of acquisition rumours in which the service had been linked with a variety of other suitors — including Facebook, Apple and even Microsoft. In the end Mountain View walked away with Waze’s crowdsourced traffic data — saying it intends to incorporate Waze’s data into its Google Maps product, likely to enhance the traffic prediction feature. Google also said some of its own mapping technology will be incorporated into Waze. Whatever else Mountain View plans for Waze’s team and data remains to be seen, but there are . So why is the FTC getting involved now? Google’s purchase of Waze may have attracted the FTC’s attention because its own mapping service is already so dominant globally, with some billion users vs the 45 million app downloads Waze had previously reported. By buying Waze Google removes a potential competitor to its service — assuming Waze could have grown its user-base to become a head-to-head competitor with Google Maps. The reports that the FTC would have to determine whether Waze could have managed to challenge Google in that way, or whether there is any evidence showing Google wanted to acquire Waze specifically to prevent a rival buying the company. Other mapping competitors to Google include Nokia, which acquired digital mapping service NavTeq for $8.1 billion back in 2007; ; and the non-profit OpenStreetMaps crowdsourced map service, which is free to use. Despite the FTC probe, the suggests it’s unlikely the FTC will ask Google to unwind the Waze deal — being as it would have to uncover evidence the acquisition would significantly damage competition in the mapping market. |
Facebook Adds Like Button To Mobile Messages, A One-Touch “OK” | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 22 | “Alright”, “Yes”, and the much-hated “k” just got a visual redesign. Facebook’s iOS and Android apps have rolled out the option in messages to reply with a one-tap thumbs-up Like button sticker. It’s a highly-functional flourish that replaces the greyed-out Send button when you haven’t typed anything. And while it seems simple, I’m finding it quite satisfying. Facebook confirms with me that the “Like Reply” button, as I’m calling it, was “part of a recent update”. However, it doesn’t appear to have been included in any of the “What’s New” release notes. That meshes with my suspicion that Facebook sometimes adds new mobile features and either doesn’t announce them, or notes them a few updates after they appear. Cheeky. The Like Replies are now available in Facebook and Messenger for iOS and Android, plus m.facebook.com, but not on desktop. Update: Path 3 had this feature first. It was included in the Path 3 update a few months ago. Path design uses a checkmark which I find to be a lot more ambiguous than the thumbs-up. Still, considering Facebook also added stickers soon after Path did, there may be a fast-follow trend emerging. Stickers have blown up recently as people search for quick and vivid way to share emotions while mobile messaging. But usually you have to dig those out of a menu. Meanwhile, texting was built for efficient communication. One of the most common things you have to communicate is an ‘affirmative’. Yes to whatever you just said. I agree. I approve. I acquiesce. And so “k” was born. A one-letter affirmative. But it still requires several clicks. To open the messaging field, to type the letter, and to send it. But *BAM*, the Like Reply button does it in a single gesture. Facebook even has a Like button thumbs-up sticker, but this makes it instantly accessible in the right situations. The bright blue one on Android looks especially sharp. Yes, this will save you one second. But it could save you and everyone else that one second hundreds of times, multiplied by 750 million mobile users a month. Efficiency matters. I’ve always wanted this for text messaging. Actually, not just for replies but as way to signal to people that was lighter-weight than a text message. I called it the “nudge”. A little buzz, even more subtle than an SMS. If I said I’d pick you up in 10 minutes, and you get a nudge 11 minutes later, it means come outside. If it’s late and I want to see if you’re up, I might nudge you. If I’m free to meet up with friends and want to ping a bunch of them? Mass nudge. Much less annoying than “Hey guys wanna hang out with me? I’m lonely.” This is nice step towards my dream of openly interpretable binary communication. Try it out next time you need to confirm something via Facebook message. We’ll see if it catches on. |
Gillmor Gang: Mo’ Beta Blues | Steve Gillmor | 2,013 | 6 | 22 | The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — welcome the summer solstice with a dip in the gene pool. With Google Glass two months new and iOS7 in developers’ hands, the stage is set for the unification of app notifications across OS and device. Microsoft releases Office for the iPhone, and Facebook Snapchat’s Instagram. But to quote Miles, it’s kind of blue, and so what. Meanwhile most of Glass functionality is already working on iOS7, with just a few weeks (?) until an official launch. With competitors like these, we can look forward to harvesting the fruits of this incredible mobile shift. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer@kteare, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
Rapiro Kit Robot For Raspberry Pi Gets Funded On Kickstarter In Two Days | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 22 |
Meet Rapiro, the kit robot with a space inside its head to accomodate the Raspberry Pi microcomputer. The gizmo is the creation of Shota Ishiwatari, the Japanese gadgeteer who came up with a brain-wave controlled cat-ear headband and a heart-rate controlled wearable wagging tail, among other ‘ ‘ creations. Rapiro is just as cute as these prior creations but may well have wider appeal — not least because it allows Raspberry Pi owners to make their Pi mobile. Indeed, it’s just two days since Rapiro went live and it’s already exceeded its original funding goal of £20,000, with close to 140 backers making pledges — and still 57 days to run on the campaign. Clearly Pi owners have a big appetite for cute home-assembly robotics. The bot brings to mind the (now defunct) . Except, instead of trying to be a plug-and-play consumer-friendly gizmo, Rapiro is a self-assembly, hackable, programmable, mobile variant of that sort of connected companion device. Its creators say the aim is to be a “catalyst between robotics and Raspberry Pi”, noting that its price will be at around a quarter of “current aesthetic robot kits” and a tenth the price of the price of “current linux-powered humanoid robot kits”. “We want to start a revolution in cute, cool, affordable, customizable, and programmable robots,” they say on the campaign page, adding that they plan to publish Rapiro’s 3D data (.stl) on their website so owners will be able to further customise the design using a 3D printer. Rapiro’s kit includes 12 servo motors, allowing for a range of movements such as walking and gripping objects when the bot is assembled. It also has a pair of full-colour LED eyes. As well as a space (in its head) for the Pi to be installed (Pi is obviously not included in the kit), Rapiro can also incorporate the to add computer vision capabilities — so it could, for instance, be used as a in-home security robot that can wander from room to room. Other Pi-powered ideas Rapiro’s creators suggest the gizmo is good for include: Rapiro can also be used without any Pi inside too, being as it incorporates a programmable servo control board that’s compatible with Arduino. “Using the documentation on website you can program its range of motion by yourself,” the creators note. Power for Rapiro comes via four AA batteries inserted into its back-mounted battery box. The basic cost for the full Rapiro kit is £199, although all 50 pledges at that price-point have been bagged. Estimated delivery for the device is this December. As well as appealing to Pi owners who want to hack around with robotics, Rapiro could also clearly be put to use in educational settings, helping to get kids excited about technology (the plans to use one for schools and teaching workshops, for instance). |
The Technical Interview Is Dead (And No One Should Mourn) | Jon Evans | 2,013 | 6 | 22 | Allow me just a little self-congratulation. Two years ago I wrote “ ,” about my contempt for the standard industry interview procedure for software engineers, condemning Microsoft and Google in particular for their and questions. And lo and behold, this week Google’s head of HR : “Brainteasers are a complete waste of time.” But wait. Let’s just unpack that interview a little further: GPA’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless … Your ability to perform at Google is completely unrelated to how you performed when you were in school, because the skills you required in college are very different … Academic environments are artificial environments. People who succeed there are sort of finely trained, they’re conditioned to succeed in that environment You know what else is an artificial environment that doesn’t translate at all well to the real world? That’s right: , as traditionally performed. It’s not just brainteasers: it’s the fundamental concept of being brought into a room, grilled on the spot with technical questions that must be answered without any of the usual resources, and then being made to write code on a whiteboard. All this on the nonsensical pretext that it’s a decent measure of whether the candidate is a good software engineer. I’m lucky: I’ve always been quite good at this arbitrary and ridiculous skill — but at the same time, its requirement has always seemed so obviously to me. Nowadays, though, finally, more and more voices are being raised against this madness. I give you , , , , and especially on how to hire developers. Oh, and, er, me, , saying much the same thing. Many of the comments on that year-ago post were very angry. Nobody likes to be told that they’ve been screwing up the most important part of their business (and recruitment is almost certainly the most important part of your business) since Day One. But the sooner people realize that the traditional “come in, answer random quiz questions, and write code on a whiteboard” model is horribly broken, the better off they’ll be. If you click through to and read the above, you’ll find that they’re mostly minor variations of a much-improved process: This process is better for everyone. Employers learn far, more about potential employees; waste less time in interviews; and get them an excuse to pay people to do all those little beneficial things that would otherwise be back-burnered indefinitely. The only real problem is that it doesn’t scale. Google, for instance, would need to find literally of one-week audition projects every year for its candidates, which is probably not realistic. The process has to be attractive to developers, too, in this seller’s market. (I sometimes wonder how many good engineers have been put off by Google’s previous, rather insulting, hoop-jumping interview process; me and most of my techie friends, for starters, but that’s probably a self-selected group.) Fortunately, “better than the old way” is a very low bar, and most good developers casting about for a new gig would far rather work on a real paid interesting project for a week than spend a day regurgitating code on a whiteboard. My headline here is more aspirational than descriptive, I admit: the technical interview isn’t dead …but it should be, and soon enough it will be. What baffles me most is why it’s taken so long. The whole purpose of an interview was to serve as a proxy for actual performance, because we didn’t have the tools and infrastructure to easily observe and measure the latter: but now that we , it is the height of cargo-cult stupidity not to use them. Stop quizzing people, and start finding out what they can actually do. |
Here’s The Security Breach Email Facebook Is Sending To 6M Users | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 6 | 22 | Facebook has started sending out warning emails to users whose personal information has been compromised by , confirming which pieces of data were exposed. The bug exposed some six million Facebook users’ email addresses and telephone numbers to other site users because Facebook had “inadvertently stored [it] in association with people’s contact information as part of their account on Facebook”. Facebook says it uses this data so it can generate friend request recommendations. The notification email — we’re embedding a copy of an email sent to one Facebook user below — echoes what Facebook’s security team said in a about the data breach yesterday. It explains the scope of the bug and goes into the same level of technical detail as to how it happened. It also confirms which specific piece (or pieces) of personal data were exposed for that particular user. In the below email, two pieces of data have been compromised (a phone number and an email address). In another sample letter sent to TechCrunch by a tipster the user has had six pieces of data compromised (one phone number and five email addresses). That user, Jeisson Neira, who works for IT company , said the breach is unlikely to make him change his behaviour towards Facebook — but only because he already takes care with the data he posts to the site. “Given I tell my clients to trust and rely on the cloud, I don’t think I’ll change my behavior towards Facebook. My general stance on online security is that if I don’t want information of mine ever getting out, well then don’t post it in the first place. None of the things that could have possibly been exposed are that secret,” he told TechCrunch. “Having said that, I do have many high profile clients who would not be at all happy having their numbers and personal emails leaked and so it would be a completely different story if it was their account.” Another tipster told TechCrunch she had one email address compromised but noted she cannot figure out how the email was even obtained by Facebook as it appears to be for a former work place, is no longer valid and was never directly associated by her with her account — suggesting Facebook is automatically harvesting contact data from other Facebook users and associating it with other accounts. That sort of action, while creepy, would certainly help Facebook expand its network of contact information so it can generate new friend recommendations. We’re reaching out to Facebook to confirm how it gathers this data and will update this story with any response. If Facebook is harvesting data on its users from other site users then not personally posting a piece of your contact information does not guarantee it won’t end up in Facebook’s databanks — and therefore be at risk of being exposed via this type of security breach — because Facebook might simply be harvesting your contact data from someone else you have corresponded with. All three emails seen by TechCrunch state that the data was “inadvertently accessible by at most 1 Facebook user”. The bug had apparently been live since last year, before being brought to Facebook’s attention last week. Its security team then fixed it within 24 hours of it being flagged, according to the social network. |
CE Manufacturing Specialist PCH International Launches Its Hardware Incubator, Highway1 | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | Electronics manufacturing specialist is looking to find new clients just as they start. To do so, it’s creating an incubator called that will help young hardware startups build new products. PCH International is run by Irishman Liam Casey who has been dubbed “ ” by some. The company is best known for sourcing, manufacturing and distributing goods for some of the biggest consumer electronics companies out there. With Highway1, PCH International will have early access to some of the most promising hardware startups as they’re building their businesses. When it comes time for them to start mass-producing and shipping products, the company will be right there to help them. Heading up the incubator will be , advisor to startups and former member of Khosla Ventures. Forrest joined earlier this year to start the program, which will run for four months and is expected to have two classes a year. PCH will choose about 10 startups per class to participate in the program. According to Forrest, they’re looking for participants who want to build a company, not just a single product. With that in mind, the selection process will run through its engineering team to determine technical capability, as well as retail partners to asses the viability of products the startups are looking to build. The incubator will be focused on educating startups about supply chain, inventory management, and actual manufacturing. That will help those startups go from the prototype stage to a company that can build and deliver products on a global scale. Participating startups will get $20,000 in seed capital in exchange for 3-6 percent of equity, as well as access to one-on-one engineering and design expertise and access to mentors. They will reside in where participating startups will have space next to the folks at Lime Lab, the design firm that PCH acquired last year. In addition to the curriculum in San Francisco, the incubator will also spend two weeks in Shenzhen to check out the local supply chain there. There’s an emerging class of hardware-based startup accelerators emerging, which include , , and . Highway1 is trying to differentiate itself in part with its location: Being in San Francisco puts participating startups close to where tech talent is. Meanwhile, PCH still has strong ties to the supply chain and hardware ecosystem in China. For startups that might be interested, Highway1 is for its inaugural class now. The program will begin in October and go about four months, with a demo day early next year. |
Planet Labs Raises $13M From DFJ, OATV, Founders Fund To Build The World’s Largest Fleet Of Earth-Imaging Satellites | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | a space and analytics company formerly known as , is announcing $13 million in funding from DFJ, Capricorn, OATV, Founders Fund Angel, Innovation Endeavors, Data Collective and First Round Capital. Planet Labs, which was founded by former NASA scientists, plans to launch the world’s largest fleet of imaging satellites that will map the entire Earth to better understand the changing planet and ecosystems. The company successfully launched two imaging satellites in April 2013 for testing purposes. The startup was founded in 2010 by Robbie Schingler, William Marshall and Chris Boshuizen, who are all physicists who previously worked at NASA. They first met at an international conference that gathered young professionals to make policy recommendations on how space can benefit humanity, and since then all worked on small scientific satellites at NASA Ames. Schingler also worked at NASA HQ where he helped to incubate NASA’s Space Technology program. As the founders explained to TechCrunch, there are a number of government and other private satellites already imaging the Earth. Some of these public-sector-funded satellites only take imaging pictures every month and at lower resolutions. Most of the private satellites use higher resolutions but are focused on smaller areas for military intelligence. Planet Labs wants to image the Earth on a regular and expansive basis so that people, including farmers, weather professionals and more, can use this data to take actions. To do so, the company plans to deploy the world’s largest fleet of Earth-imaging satellites to image the changing planet and provide open access to that information. Planet Labs says these imaging satellites, called “Doves,” can provide a new image of the planet at an unprecedented combination of resolution and frequency. To best enable this, the satellites operate at a low orbit for its constellation and an optical resolution of three to five meters — a scale that allows measurement of a tree canopy, but does not compromise individual privacy. This will enable monitoring of deforestation, help improve agricultural yields, track natural disasters and many other applications. While the startup certainly has major ambitions, investors believe the company’s talent and technology are game-changing. “Planet Labs will create an entirely new data set, with both humanitarian and commercial value,” said Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, in a release. “We’ve become used to having imagery of the entire Earth. What we haven’t yet understood is how transformative it will be when that imagery is regularly and frequently updated.” “We’re seeing unprecedented innovation in the space industry, starting with SpaceX lowering the cost of access, and now with Planet Labs revolutionizing the satellite segment,” said Steve Jurvetson, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson and member of the company’s board of directors. In April, Planet Labs deployed two demonstration satellites, Dove 1 and Dove 2, and the company says these have been successful in validating the resolution and expansiveness of the imagery (embedded below) and data provided by these satellites. Data from the upcoming fleet of satellites are scheduled to be available early next year. We’re told this data will be used for both humanitarian and commercial purposes. For example, one of the satellites has been able to track deforestation, and Marshall explains that farmers could use this imagery to improve agricultural yield. “We want to convert these images from satellites into data people can use to protect our planet,” he says. |
Brit + Co. Nabs $6.3M Series A Led By Oak Investment Partners To Go Big On Its Tech Media Hub For Makers | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | It’s become crystal clear over the past couple of years that , the former Googler who has been dubbed , is not just another 20-something woman operating a pretty lifestyle blog. Since its late 2011 launch, has emerged as a full-fledged technology and media company, complete with a staff of 16, more than 100 editorial contributors, its own , big name , and . Now Brit + Co. is primed to take all of this to the next level, with the close of a $6.3 million round of funding led by The new round, which serves as Brit + Co.’s Series A (the company closed on a ), also included the participation of , , Aileen Lee’s , Yahoo CEO , entrepreneur , and longtime Facebooker . The Series A also marks the formation of Brit + Co.’s board of directors, which now includes Oak’s , who steered Oak’s among other big media deals, and iVillage co-founder along with Ms. Morin. Also coming on board as advisors are One Kings Lane exec and Apple vet Allison Johnson. Brit Morin, founder Brit + Co Since 60 percent of all Brit + Co. visitors access the site through mobile devices, either on one of Brit + Co.’s mobile apps (the company has built native apps for , , and ) or the mobile website, a big focus for the company going forward will be on more fully building out its mobile platform. Also in the works will be expanding Brit + Co.’s features. It’s that Silicon Valley perspective — building solid technology to underlie the content — that Morin says really sets Brit + Co. apart from other players in the lifestyle-driven new media space, from and beyond. She put it this way:
“I don’t really know of any other company that’s at the intersection of tech and DIY. I like to say that we see importance in helping people manage their homes just as in helping them manage their homescreens. Today’s millenial digital consumer wants to see order and creativity both online and offline. It’s important to us that we’re building everything in house. A lot of media companies will outsource [the building of] all their apps, but we take design really seriously. We spend a lot of time thinking about simplified user interfaces, new user experiences, and things like that.” Not surprisingly, another big focus going forward will be on letting people purchase more DIY- maker-meets-techie-meets-fashion stuff . “A big portion of the new funds will go into creating a bigger strategy around commerce,” Morin said. But there is no rush to that front, as Morin points out that Brit + Co. has already been making money through day one. “We make money through partnerships, advertising, events, subscription commerce, premium services like the custom domains on Weduary,” she said. “That diversified revenue model we have is appealing to a lot of investors.” That appeal is certainly evident with today’s news. It’ll be exciting to see where Brit goes in the months ahead. |
null | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 14 | null |
Surre.al Launches A Kickstarter Campaign To Fund A Cross-Device, 3D Virtual World | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | , an independent game studio created by the co-founders of mobile gaming company Cellufun, is looking to Kickstarter to fund what it says will be a 3D virtual world (also called Surre.al) that will work across devices and provide access to a wide variety of game environments. The target for the campaign (which ) is $100,000. If that doesn’t seem like much money for a big, ambitious gaming project, well, the team already raised $300,000 in angel funding, and it has been developing the technology for the past 18 months. You can see a demo of Surre.al in the video below, and as CEO Arthur Goikhman (he’s also one of the Cellufun co-founders) says, “It’s not just a gleam in our eye.” So why raise money on Kickstarter? Goikhman said he was definitely inspired by other successful Kickstarter campaigns — he specifically mentioned virtual reality products like and . (In fact, he said that Surre.al will work on the Omni and Oculus Rift platforms, as well as PC, web, iOS, and Android. Meanwhile, Jan Goetgeluk, CEO of Omni-maker Virtuix, described Surre.al as “exactly how I envision virtual reality.”) [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv14ivmnGco&w=420&h=315] Goikhman also said that maintaining creative control of the project was important, but in this case, “It goes both ways,” because project backers will be able to influence the game itself. The game’s core environment will be a cruise ship (presumably more vast and more exciting than a real ship), but the point of a cruise ship is to go to other places. So Surre.al isn’t just looking to backers for financing, but also for feedback on what they actually want to see in the world. The hope, Goikhman added, is to build a virtual world that isn’t just of interest to hardcore gamers but to “mid-core” and casual players and backers, too. The campaign starts now. A lot of the prizes in the campaign seem to revolve around benefits within the virtual world itself, but people who pledge at least $5,500 will get a detailed physical model of the cruise ship. The goal is to launch the game in December, though that could change if users want the team to pursue some particularly ambitious additions. By the way, you may be thinking that when it comes to virtual worlds, we haven’t seen any big, lasting successes — the closest is probably Linden Lab and its virtual world Second Life, and that’s certainly . Nonetheless, even Second Life creator Philip Rosedale seems to think there’s still a big opportunity here, . |
Intel Spinoff GainSpan Closes On $19M In Series D Funding For Its WiFi Chip Technology | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | , the semiconductor company that deals in ultra low-power Wi-Fi technology, will announced tomorrow that it has closed on $19 million in a new funding round. The round, which first started and appears to have finalized at about $1 million less than the company had initially sought, serves as GainSpan’s Series D and brings its total outside funding to . This investment included the participation of two new investors — Zebra Technologies Corporation and Oplink Communications — and a slate of previous investors including Opus Capital, Intel Capital, New Venture Partners, Sigma Partners, Camp Ventures and Hatteras Funds. GainSpan’s last funding round was an $18 million Series C that closed in December 2011. I’m told that this new round comes as GainSpan’s growth continues as a nice clip. The company, which has around 90 full-time staff, has been more than doubling revenues and its customer base year-over-year, a spokesperson said today. GainSpan was founded as a standalone company in 2006 semiconductor superpower Intel. GainSpan’s products are situated at the intersection of several hot areas in the larger tech industry. GainSpan makes ultra-low power embedded wireless chips and related software that enable various devices and objects to be connected to the Internet. This all is part of the much-buzzed-about era where nearly every physical object, from smartphones to kitchen gadgets to implanted medical devices, has some kind of web connectivity and a discrete identity in the virtual world. In a quote provided by GainSpan, CEO Greg Winner said the new cash will be used for general growth purposes — hiring and product development:
“This funding will be used to help [our] products proliferate into a broad range of end products and to expand our sales, marketing and technical resources as we grow our customer base.” |
Heads Up, Haters, 70% Of The U.S. Has A Gay Friend On Facebook | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | Americans are growing more open about their sexual orientation, and that could help defeat prejudice. In honor of Gay Pride Week, Facebook ran the numbers and found 70 percent of U.S. users are friends with someone who lists themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. That fact could remind people they’re hurting someone they know when they’re intolerant or use homophobic slurs. In a past age, sexual orientation was more frequently kept private. That meant people might have had gay friends but didn’t know it. Without the ability to put a human face on this demographic of people, it may have been easier to view being queer as something abstract, foreign and less deserving of compassion. But the world is . Facebook allows people to list their sexual preference, and even lets you search for which of your friends are gay or lesbian. Just type “Friends who are gay” into Graph Search and it will bring up and . That makes it harder to hide from the fact that we’re all human Seventy percent is likely a conservative estimate of Americans with gay friends, as not everyone lists their orientation on Facebook. The actual percentage could be far closer to 100 percent. Don’t be afraid to spread the word. If more people knew that, they might think twice about their own prejudice. Hate is the minority. |
Watchup’s Video News App Becomes More Automated And Context-Rich In Its Latest Update | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | , the startup aiming to create the tablet version of the daily news broadcast, has released , adding features for both casual and power users. The Watchup app pulls news videos from a range of sources, such as the Associated Press, PBS NewsHour, and the Wall Street Journal, and it stitches them together into a continuous playlist. Initially, users had to manually choose from Watchup’s videos, but in the company based on your preferences, and to schedule a daily newscast. With version 2.0, Watchup says it has made the process completely frictionless. Instead of opening up the app and being confronted with different menus and options, if you start it now, the videos just automatically play. At the same time, you can take control of the experience if you want. If you drag the upper panel of the app down, you’ll be able to browse all of Watchup’s channels and videos. You can also read more about the topic in a given video by dragging the right panel, which should bring up related news articles. (To show those articles, co-founder Adriano Farano said the app is pulling “the most relevant metadata” from the video, then conducting a Bing search for those terms.) [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvoXvcaOXFg&w=560&h=315] So if you just want to turn Watchup on and let it play (while you’re getting ready for work, perhaps, or cooking dinner), you can do that. If you want to really control the news you watch and dig into specific stories, you can do that, too. Farano described the company’s approach as creating “a video-centric news experience” — the idea is that Watchup can continue to build things around the video, but video should be the core of the app. Among its various video sources, Watchup has a number of cross-promotion deals, and Farano said the company recently signed its first monetization deal, with Univision paying to promote its presence in the app. He said the business model is still very experimental, and that the company is “open to other revenue streams.” |
BitTorrent Would Really Like Everyone To Stop Suggesting It’s Being Used For Piracy | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | At this point, you’ve probably read about — and there’s at least one article calling the show “ .” Well, it sounds like , the company developing the open source file-sharing protocol of the same name, is getting a bit tired of the coverage. In , the company’s vice president of marketing, Matt Mason (pictured), argues that it’s inaccurate to talk about a BitTorrent piracy record, because “piracy happens outside the BitTorrent ecosystem”: We don’t host infringing content. We don’t point to it. It’s literally impossible to “illegally download something on BitTorrent.” To pirate stuff, you need more than a protocol. You need search, a pirate content site, and a content manager. We offer none of those things. If you’re using BitTorrent for piracy, you’re doing it wrong. These so-called “records” are presumably based on numbers from pirate websites that have no affiliation with BitTorrent, Inc. If they’re corroborated using data from pirate websites, they’re “Internet Piracy Records”. They’re not “BitTorrent Piracy Records”. I asked company spokesperson Christian Averill if the company is just trying to distinguish between BitTorrent the technology and BitTorrent the company. He said it’s more than that: The piracy itself is happening outside of the protocol. The technology is exploited as part of [the] technology stack used for piracy. As such, it is only the pipes that content moves through. You can not rip a DVD with BitTorrent technology and there is no infringing content hosted on BitTorrent and pirated content is not promoted on BitTorrent. Why is the company getting worked up about this? Probably because it’s , labels, and other content companies on legal ways to promote and, eventually, monetize their work. (Last month we wrote about how the company is trying to “productize” these efforts through .) Having its name constantly associated with piracy probably isn’t the most helpful thing for those discussions. On that front, Mason notes that the show that’s supposed to have set the piracy record is the season premiere, which was downloaded by 5.2 million people worldwide. (Actually, Mason refers to the finale, but I’m pretty sure he actually means the premiere.) However, he said that the show , which was shared legally on BitTorrent as a bundle, has been downloaded 8,626,987 times, making it “the real king of BitTorrent.” Still, I’m guessing that changing the way people frame the discussion around piracy and BitTorrent is going to be a pretty steep uphill climb. |
Havok’s Completely Free 3D Engine For Mobile Game Developers Is Now Available | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | Hey, aspiring game developers! Listen up. Way back in March, we outlined , a new 3D engine from Havok (the same people that built the engine behind some of the world’s biggest games, from Assassin’s Creed to Halo 4) that would be completely free to mobile game developers. At the time, the only target they’d give for when it’d be available was “sometime this spring”. Well, Project Anarchy has just gone live. It’s a few days outside of Spring in the northern hemisphere — but hey, I’ll forgive’m. Free game engine! Interested developers can . Heads up, though, Mac Devs: Project Anarchy primarily supports Windows developers for now, with the vast majority of its tools (the WYSIWYG game editor, the animation tool, etc.) all being Windows only. The only Mac-friendly tool seems to be the one meant to let you prepare your project for iOS. Games built with Project Anarchy can be published without any sort of licensing fees on iOS, Android, or Samsung’s in-the-works mobile OS, Tizen. That last option might seem a bit strange, given that Tizen hasn’t… you know, shipped on anything yet, but there are logical dots that one can connect: Intel bought Havok in 2007. In 2011, Intel dropped support for the flailing MeeGo operating system they’d spent a year working on with Nokia and joined the governing group behind… you guessed it, Tizen. They’ve pretty much to show love, right? So, what’s in it for Havok? Why release an engine that doesn’t make them money? Because it does — just not directly. Three of the more obvious draws: Of course, the mobile development playing field has changed a bit in the last few months. When Project Anarchy was first announced, its biggest draw was that it was totally free for mobile game developers, regardless of whether or not they intended to charge for their app. The closest thing anyone else offered was Unity3D — which, while very, cheap compared to most pro-grade engines, still charged hundreds of dollars per developer seat for anyone even just looking to dabble with iOS or Android. Just last month, however, Unity that basic iOS and Android publishing support would be free for all small-to-medium sized development houses (perhaps in response to others, like Havok, tiptoeing near their indie game dev turf), with free support for BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone 8 on the way. They’d continue to offer a Pro package with more advanced functionality, only requiring that developers purchase Pro licenses once they were pulling in $100,000 or more in a fiscal year. So now, developers have to make a choice: do they develop on Project Anarchy, which is pretty new to this whole indie-game-support thing but free on the two biggest mobile platforms regardless of how much you’re making, or on Unity, which has a rather big community and is on its 4th major iteration, but charges a few grand per developer once you’re big enough to show up on their radar? Regardless of the pros and cons, everyone wins here. Developers get more options. Players get more games. The world gets more developers learning the ins and outs of pro-grade tools. Hurray! |
Digg Reader Is A Promising, But Still Incomplete, Google Reader Alternative (Hands On) | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | For a subset of the Internet’s population, of its intention to shutter its dated, rusting RSS feed-reading service Google Reader was met with . Though never having grown to a size that made the service worth sustaining in Google’s eyes, its niche user base was devoted and heavily engaged. They were the Internet’s most active readers, the power users capable of handling more advanced tools for digging up all the interesting things you can find on the web. And now, they were homeless. Immediately following Google’s announcement, the team at Digg.com grieved, too, : “Like many of you, we were dismayed to learn that Google will be shutting down its much-loved, if under-appreciated, Google Reader on July 1st. Through its many incarnations, Google Reader has remained a solid and reliable tool for those who want to ensure they are getting the best from their favorite sections of the Internet. But even better, they decided to do something about it. Digg announced it would build a Google Reader replacement, one that would not only replicate what Google Reader once offered, including its API platform, but that would also better reflect the way we find content in 2013, where networks like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit and others also serve as sources for discovery. Digg, which was , is no longer the Internet powerhouse of years past, where landing on the site’s front page regularly crashed everything from small blogs to larger publishers’ websites, as its massive influx of traffic quickly overwhelmed the sites’ servers. Under betaworks, the team has been rebuilding Digg from the ground-up, keeping the brand, domain name, the ubiquitous “thumbs up” symbol, and not much more. In the months since, the new Digg.com has begun to see some success. BuzzFeed, a news site dependent on making its largely list-based content go viral in order to support a smaller handful of more serious news stories (including, incidentally, ), that referral traffic from Digg to online publishers has grown by 93 percent over the past 12 months. To feed Digg.com’s ever-present need for the best of the web, a Digg-branded RSS reader fits right in. The reader product, says Digg GM Jake Levine, is for the “hyper power users who want to do a lot of work to customize their reading experience.” He says the Digg team is a part of that group, too. (Levine subscribes to over 100 RSS feeds himself, he tells us.) These are the kinds of people who continually scour a massive amount of web content on a regular basis, and seed networks — like Digg, Reddit or Twitter — with content. They’re often the first to spot interesting stories poised to go viral, and they’re also often the first to share them. For those behind the new Digg.com and now Digg Reader, content discovery is an area which they’ve been inspired to work on for years. News.me, an earlier betaworks project built in conjunction with The New York Times R&D lab, was trying to solve a similar problem as Digg, explains Levine, who had started News.me with Digg CTO Michael Young. “There’s a problem with reading on the Internet,” he says. “As more and more people shift their reading time over to digital, there is such an enormous supply of amazing content, and so few tools that help you get through that, and identify what’s most important to you, and the networks and people that you care about.” Digg.com today is helping to solve that problem, by surfacing the content a large number of people agree is the best, but it doesn’t offer any sort of personalization features, nor does it understand your own interests. Digg Reader, however, does. When users first visit the new , they’re able to sign up using Twitter, Facebook or Google. Since many of these new arrivals will be Google Reader refugees, the option to import your Google Reader subscription list is available, and if you have a lot of feeds, Digg offers to email you when the import is complete. After signing in, you’ll notice that your folders may not be in the same order they were in Google Reader, but that’s a function of how Google’s Takeout service exports them to its archive and not an error on Digg Reader’s part. At this point, you’ll probably need to do a little work to get the folders back the way you had them, so it’s best if you complete the reader setup before Google Reader shuts down. At first glance, Digg Reader looks a lot like . Folders and feeds on the left, unread item counts, a “favorites” section (here, called “Saved”) and then scannable headlines and timestamps on the right. You can navigate with Google Reader keyboard shortcuts (j/k to move through feeds, Shift + j/Shift + k to move through folders), click a bookmark button to save items or an arrow to share with Twitter and Facebook, or click the “Add” (+) button at the bottom to subscribe to a new feed. From the Settings, you can also configure a button for your preferred “read later” service – Pocket, Readability, or now betaworks-operated Instapaper. You can mark all items as read and switch a list and expanded view, the former, however, not being quite as tight as Google’s “compact” view. You can edit folder titles, drag and drop feeds to organize them, and unsubscribe to get rid of those you no longer want to track. A “Browse” section available from the “Add” button enables content discovery, too, letting users find new feeds by categories like Politics, Books, Science, Internet, Music, Sports, Design and more. Those are the basics of any RSS reader, of course. What Digg Reader will offer to set itself apart is what’s planned for the backend, only some of which is functioning at the time of launch. The company is refining the algorithms that will connect the Reader to your network of social connections in order to discover and rank those items that are most popular with your friends. These will appear in the “Popular” section, explains Levine, which is based largely on sharing data. Individual items are ranked here and throughout your “All” feed with one, two or three dots (which remind us in terms of looks of , as it happens). The idea to rate and rank RSS feeds by popularity is not a new one. Google Reader has always offered a “Sort by Magic” option, for example. And back in Google Reader’s heyday – if you’ll imagine that it ever had one – that added color to that option, showing the hottest (most discussed) items in your feed collection. In Digg Reader, that concept returns with these dots, which Levine says offers a hint of a larger vision for the Reader product, which is to first “do all the utility things” one expects from an RSS reader, then experiment with new ways “to let the networks of people you care about inform the priority with which you identify and consume content.” The sharing data that Digg Reader uses is not entirely based on volume, but is more personalized to you. In time, the plan is to introduce other signals as well, like anonymized data on views and feed click-throughs, for example. Most importantly, perhaps, is that Digg Reader is not a standalone product like many of the alternative RSS readers are today. It’s a piece of the greater whole that is Digg.com. In Reader, users can tap “d” on their keyboard to “digg” the feed they’re reading — something that will help signal trending content. Another section in Digg Reader keeps track of the items you digg — a feed that you can choose to make public or private. It’s impressive that Digg was able to produce a functional Google Reader alternative in such a short amount of time, but the service, as it stands today, . In order to get feed reader to the point of launch, other features had to be sacrificed. Search, for starters, is not available yet. But Levine says the team knows of its importance and plans on adding it in time. The company is also working to integrate other services like Evernote, Buffer and IFTTT, for example, and it plans to address the infrastructure challenge of tagging, too. (In our tests, only some of our saved tags in Google Reader made it into Digg, but even then some tag folders were empty. If you rely on an archived collection of tagged items, you’ll want to sync your data into another feed readers like Feedly before Google Reader shuts down.) Notifications are another area which Digg Reader plans to focus in the weeks ahead. “I think Google Alerts is being systematically ignored as a product within Google and has gotten meaningfully worse in the last couple of years,” says Levine. At launch, Digg Reader is being introduced into the company’s iOS (iPhone and iPad) apps, which will also sync with Digg Reader on the web, as well as offer a way to just view podcast RSS feeds and play them automatically. Another experimental feature will allow users to just view videos. However, the Digg Android app is still a month or two away from completion. To be clear, Digg Reader will not be offered as a separate app, but will be bundled into the company’s main Digg.com mobile application on both platforms. Though , what it does and what it still lacks, the company has a bigger vision for Digg.com. For starters, it will eventually charge for some of the service’s more advanced features as a way to generate revenue. The basics, including both what’s launching today, as well as many features in the weeks ahead, will , Digg has already said. Digg doesn’t even know what those premium features may be yet, but Levine says Search is under consideration. The idea will be to target the power users among the power users for these paid additions, though, which means it’s a relatively small audience. More broadly, Digg sees Reader and Digg.com’s collection of popular links as two ends of a spectrum that could ultimately include a wide range of products. “Using a combination of editors, algorithms and networks, there should be products that use the tools at our disposal to narrow — in the positive sense of the word — the articles that you read and talk about,” says Levine. “Depending on how you find and consume information on the Internet, [Digg’s suite of products] are going to build experiences in different ways to accommodate all those use cases.” , but it’s a staged rollout. Digg CEO Andrew McLaughlin says users who had already signed up on the waitlist are being added in batches starting today, as Digg scales up. Rollout to will complete by tomorrow, June 26. The company will make a more formal announcement on its blog later today, and will also post a link to allow users to add themselves to the end of the queue at that time. |
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