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Digg Reader Is Now Open | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | Exactly one week before Google Reader shuts down entirely, Digg has opened up access to the Digg Reader beta. To celebrate this momentous occasion, we sat down with General Manager Jake Levine and President Andrew McLaughlin to discuss the details of the product, as well as the long-term roadmap. Digg now has two main products, which reach entirely different content consumers. Digg is a passive-consumption experience — you head over to Digg.com and check out 50-80 of the biggest stories of the day with no work required on your part. With Digg Reader, the company is going after power consumers who don’t mind putting in a little effort to build their feeds. But Digg and Digg Reader are only pieces of a larger puzzle, McLaughlin explained to me. Eventually, the data sourced from Digg Reader will allow for a consumption experience with all the personalization and customization of a reader, but without all the work. But before the middle ground can be found, the team is focused on perfecting the Digg Reader experience, and that involves speed. According to Levine, speed and reliability — “the invisible things that you don’t see” — were the biggest challenges in developing the product. After all, Google had a massive, powerful infrastructure to power their Reader, and Digg wants users who are transitioning to have a similarly snappy experience. But they don’t want to just be as good as Google. They want to be better. For now, that means tweaking and iterating the Popular Sort, which scores the last thousand or so items across a number of factors to determine what is the most popular content at that given time. Eventually, that will extend into what’s popular within your social circles, or over a given period of time, or in a particular location. However, Digg Reader is missing one thing that Google Reader has: Search. According to McLaughlin and Levine, it’s still undecided whether or not Search (which will be added to the service eventually) will be part of the premium product or the free version. “Search isn’t something that the majority of people use, but those who use it find it to be very important,” said Levine. “We haven’t decided if we’ll make it part of the premium product, but it’s entirely possible since it’s one of the more expensive features we’ll be adding. We’re toying with the idea of having pricing line up with costs.” Luckily, Digg Reader has the power of betaworks behind it, which includes a number of resources from other content-focused companies like bit.ly, Instapaper, and Tapestry. However, when integrating with other services, Digg Reader plans to stay neutral. “We want to be neutral,” said McLaughlin. “We’ll treat Pocket and Readability and Flipboard all the same as we do Instapaper. We won’t play favorites with our API.” With the death of Google Reader, Digg isn’t the only player stepping up to bat. According to the team, the biggest competitors to watch are Feedly, Reeder, and Flipboard. “Even though it’s different, it’s still trying to serve active consumption,” said McLaughlin. One note taken out of the Flipboard playbook is the ability to sign in to your subscriptions (like with the NYT and WSJ) and see that content in full within the stream. That’s something the Digg Reader team is highly interested in, as well as keeping ad-based publishers happy. But in the end, they believe that the premium product will pay for itself. Digg Reader beta is open now, but will roll out slowly to ensure a great experience for users. The team is also launching an iOS app alongside today’s desktop launch, and an Android app will be available in the next three to four weeks. You can sign up now . |
A Professional Viner’s Take On Instagram Video | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | I’ve already when it comes to the , but what do other users have to say about it? Instagram and Vine user posted the same stop-animation video on Vine and Instagram, and asked her followers which was better. She’s a power user on both platforms, with nearly 10,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 200,000 followers on Vine. And the overwhelming consensus? Vine FTW! Only one person, of the hundreds who responded, chose Instagram. Here is the Vine:
Here is a link to the . As you can see, the Instagram video looks slightly grainy and has a zoomed in aspect ratio compared to the Vine. Cignoli explained that, for the type of stop-animation that she does, she must use the Cinema feature to shoot in Instagram video. When shooting in Instagram, the app’s stabilization software is automatically running, which means that your preview is slightly zoomed in. You can turn this feature off after you’ve shot the video, which should yield a higher quality video, but that means that it’s impossible to frame a stop animation without showing what’s outside the frame, or “the reality of the set,” as Cignoli put it. Other than the Cinema difference, the videos are exactly alike. Cignoli said that she used the same iPhone 5 for both videos, in the same exact tripod, and even pushed the record button the exact same number of times. And when all was said and done, the vast majority of responses seemed in favor of Vine. Of course, this isn’t… like, science or anything. Meagan’s mini poll doesn’t solve the riddle for good. She’s a professional photographer who now makes a full-time living on Vine, shooting “Vads” for brands like Loews. She says that she started posting her photography on Facebook and Twitter in order to gain new clients, but held out on joining Instagram for a long time. “I didn’t want to take pictures with my phone,” she said. “I’m a photographer!” But eventually she caved. “I joined late for Instagram, so it was hard for me to get on the Popular page and really get any traction,” Cignoli said. “I joined Vine early enough to get on the Popular page early on and pick up followers.” Ever since, she focuses on Vine full time, working with around 12 to 15 brands. That said, Meagan’s following on Instagram is more like a cult than her army of Viners, so we can’t necessarily trust their accuracy (even if all but one chose Vine). You can determine for yourself which of these stop-animation videos are better. For Meagan, it’s Vine all the way. That’s not to say that she doesn’t enjoy Instagram video. “I like that Instagram video looks like Instagram pictures,” she said. “That’s why I used a filter, because that’s the draw in Instagram. It’s why you use it. And I wanted to show both services at their very best.” Viewing of Meagan’s Vine stream will likely steal hours from your day. Be prepared to get engrossed. |
Reminder: The Seattle TC Meetup + Pitch-Off Is Going Down On July 18 | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | It feels like just yesterday we were congratulating the winners of our TC Meetup + Pitch-Off in Austin, and yet we’re less than a month away from the very next epic evening of startuptacular pitchemonium. Seattle, are you ready? The is going down on July 18 at , from 6pm to 10pm. Alongside beer, good people, and great conversation, there will also be several talks with local tech luminaries and a 60-second pitch-off where entrepreneurs have a minute flat to dazzle and excite a panel of judges. It’ll be a night to remember, so go ahead and mark it on your calendar after you head over here and . They’re $5/pp and include a drink ticket, so we ask that your ID say that you’re 21+ please. But if competition is the spice of your life, consider . If chosen, you’ll have one minute to pitch the pants off to a panel of judges, including TechCrunch staffers and local VCs. We ask that your products be in stealth or beta. Those who are chosen will also get private Office Hours sessions with TechCrunchers John Biggs, Matt Burns, and Frederic Lardinois before the event to get feedback on their pitch and their product. First place will receive a table in Startup Alley at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. Second place will receive 2 tickets to the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. Third place will receive 1 ticket to the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt. |
Keen On… Ninja Innovation: What A Guy From Detroit Can Teach Silicon Valley About Innovation | Andrew Keen | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | Does Silicon Valley still lead the world in innovation? Yes, says , the long-time CEO and President of the (CEA) and author of the best-selling selling new book, . But, Shapiro – who lives in Detroit and works in Washington DC – reminds us, that dominance is fragile. Firstly, Silicon Valley has the typical arrogance of the incumbent, he argues. Secondly, there are many new centers of innovation around America – from Nashville to Charlotte to Austin to even New York City – which are successfully competing with Silicon Valley. And thirdly, Shapiro believes that California’s high taxes are less and less attractive to startup entrepreneurs. So we are still the top Ninja, Shapiro believes. But it probably won’t last forever. So what, I wonder, could Gary Shapiro and the CEA, which organizes the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES), learn from Silicon Valley? And why, I asked the author of , should a startup entrepreneur go to CES next January? |
Microsoft Partners With Deem To Expand Its Ad Inventory With More Local Offers And Deals | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | Microsoft and e-commerce platform , which is still better known under its previous name of Rearden Commerce, have inked a partnership that will allow Microsoft to distribute Deem’s large inventory of on its properties. While you probably haven’t heard of Deem or Rearden, the company is currently valued at $1 billion and has received over $340 million in VC capital and investments since it was founded 13 years ago. Microsoft will feature Deem deals and offers from its network of more than 1.2 million merchants on properties like Bing, Outlook.com and MSN, as well as in Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps. As Deem’s founder and CEO Patrick Grady told me, his company takes a very different approach to offers and deals than Groupon, Livingsocial and similar companies in this space. Deem sees itself more as being in the business of “syndicated commerce” and puts an emphasis on hyper-local deals, though it’s also working with airlines, car-rental companies and other national brands to offer campaigns for them, too. While similar services have huge sales forces, Grady sees Deem as a company that’s driven by tech (and the merchant side is almost completely self-serve). Deem, he says, enables its publishing partners to provide a more relevant experience to their users and provides merchants with an outlet for their offers. It’s targeting engine allows it to find the right offers for the right users, which is clearly also what attracted Microsoft to this deal. Erik Jorgensen, Microsoft’s general manager of Local Advertising, told me that Microsoft was looking to find better-performing ads for its properties and wanted to bring in local offers to augment its standard text and display ads. Microsoft, he said, wants to “take advantage of the great quality content that [Deem] is able to generate from its merchant pool.” This partnership, Jorgensen said, allows Microsoft to “bring in a type of ad that’s more appealing to consumers” and that’s “seen as more personalized and valuable.” Microsoft will also index these deals in — its recently version of Bing Deals. The company will feature these deals across its brands, with the exception of the Xbox console. For users, these deals will largely look like regular ads in, for example, the Outlook.com sidebar. Clicking on an offer takes you to a details page and then on to Deem to make the final purchase. Here is what Deem’s offers will look like in Outlook.com: |
Google Launches Google+ Photos App For Chromebook Pixel, Coming Soon To Other Chrome OS Devices | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | Google has launched a Google+ photos app for the Chromebook Pixel, something it actually previewed way back at the Pixel launch, and screens showed up in February, but it has taken until now to get the Google+ to wide release. The app plugs into your Google+ account, and will automatically upload photos on any SD card plugged into the device back to your Drive account, in either full resolution (with a limited cap) or Google’s standard 2048px wide format (unlimited) depending on what the user chooses. The app offers a very nice browsing experience, augmented by the Pixel’s super high resolution display, and touchscreen interface for paging through images. The image viewer shows you a preview, with rotation controls, easy access to sharing and album creation features, and metadata along the right including maps, tags, dimensions and camera data. Offline mode allows for viewing recently uploaded photos, which are automatically cached, and you can add photos from Google Drive, your local downloads folder or attached media storage, and it’ll get the new automagical Google+ photo enhancement treatment if you have that enabled. [gallery ids="838214,838213,838212,838211,838210,838208"] The Chromebook Pixel app is available via the , and for now you definitely need to own that fanciest of Chrome OS notebooks to play. But Google’s AJ Asver said in a that the app will definitely be rolling out to other Chromebooks as well, though he doesn’t specify a timeline for that happening. Google+ may not be my social network of choice (I’m not exactly a model citizen of any of them) but the photos experience is pretty great, especially given Google’s recent updates to the same. The G+ Photos app for Chromebook is a good way to help satisfy would-be Chromebook owners who are also photography enthusiasts, too, in the absence of more advanced tools like Lightroom, though it still won’t please any pro photographers. It’ll be much more useful once it hits other Chromebooks, which need something just like this to satisfy users who have grown used to tools like iPhoto. |
Send In Your Questions For Ask A VC With NEA’s Jon Sakoda | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 6 | 25 | On this week’s Ask A VC, we have NEA’s Jon Sakoda. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or and we’ll ask them during the show. Sakoda joined NEA in 2006 and focuses on investments in SaaS, infrastructure software, and big data applications. His investments include Blue Jeans Network, Desire2Learn, Hearsay Social, OPOWER, ScienceLogic, Suniva, and WibiData. Sakoda also co-manages NEA’s seed investment program. Prior to joining NEA, Jon was an entrepreneur and co-founder of IMlogic (acquired by Symantec) and served as its chief technology officer and vice president of Products. Sakoda should have insight into how NEA picks its seed investments and why the firm started the program in the first place. Please send us your or put them in the comments below! |
Steve Case’s Revolution Growth Invests $22 Million In Local, Organic Salad Chain Sweetgreen | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | Local, organic salad chain has attracted $22 million in funding from , the investment fund founded by Steve Case, Ted Leonsis, and Donn Davis. Along with the funding, Case will join the board and advise Sweetgreen founders Nicolas Jammet, Jonathan Neman, and Nathaniel Ru. Sweetgreen is a farm-to-table salad chain that was founded in Washington, D.C. by three Georgetown students in 2007. The trio were hoping to solve a problem that they had, which was how to find healthy and organic fast food near the university’s campus. With a dearth of great options around, they decided to create their own healthy food hangout. That extends both to its food, most of which comes from local farms and suppliers, as well as to its store design. Sweetgreen partners with local suppliers to bring fresh, local, and seasonal produce, which means a regularly changing menu of options for customers. Meanwhile, its shops have been designed to have an open, clean feel, while also having a minimal environmental impact. They incorporate reclaimed materials and use eco-conscious packaging. About half of customers take their custom-made salads to go, while the other half eat in, according to Sweetgreen co-founder Nathaniel Ru. Over the years, Sweetgreen has expanded its presence on the East Coast, with 22 locations scattered around Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, as well as shops in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City. It has another three shops opening soon, in NYC’s Tribeca, Center City Philadelphia, and the Yards in Washington, D.C. But the bigger plan is to make it a lifestyle brand synonymous with healthy eating, kind of like the Starbucks or Chipotle of salads. And that’s where Revolution and Steve Case’s involvement comes in. Ok, so it’s not really a tech company, but it’s a tech-enabled company: According to Ru, the company uses a platform called to manage its supply of local produce sent to its different regional locations. It also has a mobile app (powered by LevelUp) that enables customers to pre-order and pre-pay for salads that they can pick up at local shops. That lets customers skip the lines and speeds up order processing for its employees. Launched just 10 months ago, orders made through the app already make up about 20 percent of Sweetgreen’s total revenue, Ru told me. Not being a tech company per se doesn’t bother Case, who believes Sweetgreen’s focus on providing healthy options in the fast food or fast casual category of restaurants follows other investments Revolution has made around health and wellness. That includes health information company , fitness tracking app , and even specialist e-commerce company . Together, all of those investments follow a larger trend of offering consumers ways to improve their personal wellness, by giving them more information and healthier choices. At the end of the day, however, a lot of it comes down to what they eat. From that perspective, Case is optimistic that people will make healthier choices if they’re “convenient and fun and tasty,” and Sweetgreen is all those things. Thanks to a generational shift to people who eat out more but are more conscious of what they eat, as well as better information available about their meals due to regulations about calorie listings and the like, Case believes that consumers are overall making better decisions now. For a fast-growing company like Sweetgreen, that change in consumer behavior plays directly to its strengths. With that in mind, it’s going to use Revolution’s funding, and Case’s expertise, to help grow its brand in new markets. And hey, strategically expanding a business and building a big national brand are things that Case and Revolution know a thing about. Besides founding AOL, they had also helped to build and scale businesses like ZipCar and LivingSocial, after all. |
The Android-Powered, Dual-Screen YotaPhone Launches In Russia And Beyond For €499 | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | Remember the ? The delightfully kooky Russian smartphone that pairs a bog-standard LCD screen with an eInk display on its rump? It’s been teased for a launch for months now, but the company behind it has just spilled the beans at a press event in Moscow: the YotaPhone will complete with a confirmed €499/19,990 RUB price tag, right in line with rumors that flew around earlier this year. Smartphone aficionados in Russia, Austria, France, Spain and Germany who are itching for a device that’s a bit off the beaten path can lay claim to their YotaPhones now, and Yota Devices is pushing to sell the devices in a total of 20 markets in Europe and the Middle East by the time Q1 2014 rolls around. Bummer alert: the Americas didn’t make the cut for that first round of rollouts, and there’s no official word on when (if ever) that split-personality smartphone will ever find its way state-side. Bear in mind that Yota Devices has been plugging away on the YotaPhone concept for over a year now, so the components ticking away inside of the thing aren’t exactly the newest you’ll ever come across. There’s a 1.7GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 chip in there (though the company hasn’t specified exactly which variant), along with 2GB of RAM, a 4.3-inch 720p front display, and a surprisingly small 1800mAh battery to keep things humming away. If you were to just read those specs off a sheet of paper, it would sound like you were describing a flagship smartphone from (surprise surprise) last year, though as a whole the device still has enough oomph to keep up with users’ daily grinds. But really, I don’t know anyone who’s been eyeing up the YotaPhone based on the strength of its spec sheet; the real star of the show though is the 4.3-inch eInk display mounted on the YotaPhone’s rear end in lieu of a more traditional backplate. Getting content onto the second screen seems simple enough — a two-finger swipe down on the front screen sends a screenshot of whatever you’re looking at to the paper-like rear display — but only a handful of apps are really optimized for the task from the get-go. That early list includes an organizer, a social feed/RSS reader, and a language learning tool to name a new, and we’re getting word that Yota Devices is going to open up the necessary APIs to curious devs in short order. These days nearly every OEM is clamoring to deliver the sleekest, fastest, highest-def smartphones possible, and it’s sort of refreshing to see a company stop for a moment to ponder a smarter way to add value to the smartphone formula. Naturally, that’s not to say the YotaPhone is poised to be an overnight success. The limited scope of its launch means that the company behind the phone is missing out on traction in the crucial Asian and American markets, and it’s hard to deny the incredibly niche vibe this thing gives off. As much as I like it, the YotaPhone formula almost assuredly won’t click with a majority of potential smartphone shoppers, and there’s no way Yota Devices doesn’t realize that. If nothing else though, the path the company has chosen is an one, and in a sea of smartphone sameness you can’t completely discount the value of a wild-eyed notion. Want a little more? Check out the live stream of the event (courtesy of ) below: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqn4eyqVNEY&w=853&h=480] |
From The Infinity Ventures Summit In Kyoto/Japan: 12 Japanese Startups Set Out Their Pitches | Serkan Toto | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | Japanese VC firm is organizing the so-called (IVS) in Kyoto/Japan this week, an online industry event that’s taking place twice a year. Like at every IVS, a few hours of the program on the second day (today) were reserved for a total of 12 local startups to set out their pitches in front of about 700 attendees. Here is a rundown of all the services that were introduced at the event’s launch pad. [ENG/JP] (winner of the Grand Prix) Best of show was awarded to , a new type of CAPTCHA solution that works on PCs as well as phones and tablets. The founder of the namesake (US-based) startup behind the product, Mitsuo Okada, says that current CAPTCHA systems are not only troublesome to use but also make around 10% of visitors give up and navigate away. His solution requires users to solve a simple puzzle on the screen (see below) instead of trying to decipher a traditional CAPTCHA. According to Okada, Capy-powered CAPTCHAs produce drop-off rates of just 2%. More on Capy can be found on . [ENG] (first runner-up) is the name of a DNA amplifier that is supposed to cut down the costs associated with (PCR), the process of cloning DNA in vitro, by up to 90%. Maker Shingo Hisakawa says that the open source hardware costs around US$1,000, is currently being optimized (made smaller) and will go on sale outside Japan next year. The box connects with software available in the form of a Google Chrome app. [ENG/JP] (second runner-up) Making A/B testing easier (“just one line of JavaScript is enough”), cheaper, and multi-platform – that’s the value proposition of , provided by Tokyo-based KAIZEN platform inc. What truly sets the service apart is that website operators wanting to test UI and UX can use a pool of crowdsourced growth hackers who help improve performance by submitting optimization suggestions. The depends on the level of skill of these hackers and ranges from US$1,000 to US$5,000. More information on planBCD can be found . [JP] (third runner-up) is a book discovery and summary service for busy Japanese people. The company of the same name puts out 20 summaries of popular books per month, claiming that it takes readers just about 10 minutes to get the gist. Summaries are created by professional editors, checked by publishers and can be accessed by flier users on multiple devices and platforms. The service costs around US$250 for individuals per year, but there are also price plans for businesses. Next year, the company plans to enter the US to compete with local market leader . [JP] (fourth runner-up) is a website optimization service that tracks usage of a given site on a PC, smartphone, or tablet visually – and not only by numbers. The actions of visitors are recorded on video and can be analyzed by Userdive’s clients through a dashboard. These actions include mouse hovering, clicks, or scrolling. On a smartphone, clients can view how users change the screen orientation, for example. The obvious goal is to discover weaknesses in UI and UX on websites – native app analysis as an additional service is to follow next year. Here is a quick overview of all the services that were shown at the event’s launch pad but didn’t make the cut. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IdRD6mGUE0 |
Brazilian Antivirus Startup PSafe Raises $30M Series C From China’s Qihoo 360 And Redpoint e.ventures | Contributor | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | Brazilian antivirus startup announced a $30 million Series C investment round today. Chinese antivirus company led the round with a $25 million investment, and existing investors and returned to contribute another $5 million. PSafe is a free antivirus software for the Brazilian market, with 30 million installs to date, and heavy initial adoption among Brazil’s B and C middle classes. It runs in the background and updates on its own so users never have to worry about whether they’re running the current version. PSafe also offers unlimited free cloud storage to backup users’ hard files. Founder and CEO (pictured) calls it the “don’t talk to me” antivirus. “I think people are starting to realize, ‘why pay for something when I get mediocre service, if I can get something better for free,’” de Mello says. “It’s better and free.” PSafe has 20 million average monthly users and no revenue. But de Mello, a Spotrunner veteran and former director of Microsoft Windows Security, says he’s in the business of building trust, not revenue – for now. De Mello says the company’s focus is to reach 100 million users and is planning f PSafe has no direct Brazilian competitors, but international antivirus heavyweights AVG, Avast, McAfee and Symantec all operate in Brazil. De Mello cites a cultural advantage, saying it’s the only one with free Portuguese support, 24/7. De Mello plans on using the growth capital “on tech build-out, obviously,” and on scaling to 100 million users. But he’s planning more holistically than a cost-per-acquisition campaign, designating the lion’s share of his user acquisition budget to awareness marketing. “We need to educate users about what they’re facing every day in Brazil when they pick up their Android phone or log on to Windows.” PSafe’s database goes back almost three years and includes 7.3 billion different threat signatures. The software detects about 70,000 new threats per day, and announces some of them in Portuguese at . The top-level threats are cyber theft and financial attacks against individuals, followed by more coordinated attacks that take over a lot of machines at once to attack a bigger target without users knowing their computers are infected. “That’s part of the awareness I’m trying to drive,” de Mello says. “If you don’t secure your machine properly, you can end up being an unwilling participant to a crime you’re not aware of.” “A typical 90’s, early 2000s virus that was doing damage for damage’s sake, it won’t last a long time these days, because the detection and reaction times have gotten better,” de Mello says. “Plus, what’s the reward? You don’t get notoriety by doing damage. You get notoriety by breaking into the NSA or CIA, or the Brazilian government, or defacing a very large site, or hacking into Sony or whatever. All these things I just mentioned happened, by the way.” The third threat category PSafe sees is espionage. Not , but corporate espionage – by Brazilian entities, on Brazilian entities. “We see a lot of theft attempts of corporate data,” de Mello explains, “especially because a lot of the government contracts here are based on an open submission of bids. There is a lot of hacking to know what the competitors are going to bid before the bids are submitted, so I can bid lower and win.” This is precisely the kind of espionage that Brazil’s new proposed Internet security legislation would be useless to detect. The Internet bill, called Marco Civil, includes a data storage measure that would require foreign Internet companies like Google and Facebook . But the bill is more political than practical. It billions of dollars to build out local data infrastructure, in what The Wall Street Journal cites as in Latin America to operate a data center. But how Brazil could require the same from foreign companies with Brazilian users, but without a physical presence in Brazil. Besides, storing data locally doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safer from spying. De Mello calls the measure “a misguided attempt at solving a much broader problem than where data is warehoused.” “You’re only as secure as your weakest link, and data centers are far from the weakest link today,” de Mello says. “Security perimeters are important, and so are secure data centers. But information moves constantly. The human factor in this chain is such a critical aspect of keeping data secure, and we have such a long way to go before users have a similar basic understanding of online security as they do of needing to buckle up before driving.” And until then – there’s PSafe, on 30 million machines and counting. |
In Rovio And Supercell’s Wake, Finland’s Gaming Scene Sees A Renaissance | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | Somehow, 2013 marked the year that Helsinki became a global gaming capital in its own right. Maybe it was because Supercell, that started back in 2010, blossomed into a $3 billion company in less than a year. Or maybe it was when Rovio announced the two billionth download for Angry Birds with a dubstep dance on-stage from the Finnish National Ballet. Or maybe it was because even Japan’s most influential gaming entrepreneurs like widely respected DeNA founder Tomoko Namba and billionaire and GungHo co-founder Taizo Son showed up for last month. Even global VC firms like Accel, Atomico and Index held competing dinners all on the same night to scout for their next hit-maker. Or maybe it was just the naked Finns shamelessly running around during the conference after-party between the freezing ocean and the sauna at 2 a.m. in the morning. In any case, this Nordic critical mass is no fluke. Supercell and Rovio’s wake has left a generation of local game designers and developers invigorated and hungry to prove themselves on the world’s stage. There are 180 gaming studios across the country, up threefold from 2010, according to statistics from Neogames and IGDA Finland. “The main difference is that the companies now believe in themselves. They know they can do anything,” asserted Peter Vesterbacka, the chief marketing officer of Rovio (pictured below). In 2009, you could have said it was interesting that Angry Birds originated from Finland of all places. Last year, it raised eyebrows that there were two, not one, gaming phenoms out of the country. Now there are dozens of studios waiting in the wings like , , , , , , and others. Grand Cru, the most watched up-and-coming team out of the region, has been for well over a year and is set to launch in a few days in Finland in timing with the country’s independence day. Staffed with alums from earlier gaming predecessors like Digital Chocolate, Max Payne-developer Remedy and Redlynx, Finland’s studios aren’t novice game makers. Many of them come with more than a decade of experience in a community that traces its roots back more than 20 years into the , where thousands of developers would huddle around glowing computer screens hacking at mega-conferences like Assembly every late summer (see below). “Back in the 1990s it was really just a couple of companies like Remedy, Housemarque, Bugbear, Redlynx and a few others,” said Jussi Laakkonen, who runs mobile gaming network Applifier. “They were all founded on Demoscene talent. Being an entrepreneur back then was really odd. There were very few role models, if any, and everyone was bootstrapped as there was no VC funding.” At that time, entrepreneurs mostly took funding from , a Finnish government funding agency for technology companies, Laakkonen said. Since the late 1990s, the agency has provided the domestic gaming industry with about 50 million euros ($67.7 million) in funding and last fall, they launched a dedicated . But a few early companies were able to pioneer the way, like Max Payne-maker Remedy, Mr. Goodliving and Sumea, . While none of those deals were huge acquisitions, they did cultivate a core of gaming talent in the Finnish community. Then Rovio, which launched Angry Birds on its 52nd try, and Supercell, which is now valued at more than $3 billion through its recent Softbank and Gung-Ho investment, blew open the doors. And now that the local scene has produced two globally competitive companies in the last few years, VC firms are paying attention. Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, who went on to form , has been an early backer in the scene with investments in both Rovio and Supercell. “Many years ago, we were very much by ourselves,” he said in an interview at Slush. “The most important thing is you now have role models. The reason you see so many companies in Nordic region is because we have had successes — Skype, Spotify, Rovio and Supercell. For entrepreneurs in Helsinki and Stockholm, that’s their benchmark.” [slideshare id=26161681&style=border:1px solid #CCC;border-width:1px 1px 0;margin-bottom:5px&sc=no] The rise of Finland’s gaming scene also coincides with the way that the iOS and Android platforms have leveled the playing field for game developers globally. Before smartphones and Facebook, smaller gaming studios often had to work with publishers and give up a costly revenue share in exchange for marketing and distribution in the console era. Today, companies like Supercell keep most of their design and developer talent at home in Helsinki while maintaining a small office in the U.S. that largely handles marketing and user acquisition. Secondly, cutthroat and expensive competition on the iOS and Android platforms have also made product quality paramount. Two years ago, several American studios rose up a Zynga-like strategy of producing many titles that fast-followed on genres or concepts that were already popular. Studios could play a relatively simple game of arbitraging the cost of acquiring a user with maximizing their lifetime value or spending over the course of a game. Today, it’s quite different. Studios have to offer something different or unique, or if they explore an existing genre, they have to do it a cut above any other existing title. That’s where Supercell’s careful and deliberate approach paid off. Before Paananen greenlighted Clash of Clans and Hay Day, his company had killed more products than they had launched in 2012. At its core, Hay Day is a farming game — it’s what FarmVille should have been on tablets. But Supercell innovated on the genre by incorporating sweeping gestures that were much more natural for a touchscreen device. That game along with Clash of Clans went on to in the first quarter of this year, even though Supercell’s headcount was just 100-strong. A year and a half later, Supercell has yet to release a follow-up to mega-hit Clash of Clans. They’re Other smaller studios like Frogmind have gone on win critical acclaim through surprising and eerily beautiful design. Their title for 2013. “What I like about the local scene is that most people do not work in games because they want to make money. Instead, they want to make great games,” said Supercell’s Paananen. “Ironically, I think that is the right approach to take, and will also maximize the financial returns in the longer run.” While many American studios were busy copying Zynga’s playbook, European companies with strong benches of gaming talent or deep repositories of titles like Supercell and King pulled ahead. We’re starting to see the repercussions of this in the Silicon Valley market now. Young studios that prize quality and depth of game play are getting funding, even as many U.S.-based VCs have soured on gaming investments. Hammer & Chisel, which is aiming to bring League of Legends-like gameplay to tablets, recently raised $8.2 million led by Benchmark Capital after appearing at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. Machine Zone, polishing the engine behind its massive multiplayer title Fire Age, is now holding the fourth top-grossing spot on iOS in the U.S. One other factor that has benefited both Finland (and its neighbor Sweden) in building consumer Internet and gaming companies is that they are really small countries. By default, Finnish startups have to think globally from the beginning, unlike companies from countries with medium-sized populations. This automatically global mindset has meant that the local Helsinki community has been really savvy about racking up partnerships around the globe. Rovio was quick to set up offices early on in mainland China and . With just 5 million people, Finland’s government has also ensured that the majority of its people speak English. The country also maintains one of the world’s top primary education systems, consistently outperforming U.S. students on international tests. That’s helping local Finnish companies convince foreign talent to survive the brutal below-freezing winters and the extreme darkness during the months of December and January. “We cannot compete with weather, but there are so many other positive aspects about Finland that seems to attract more and more foreign talent to move over,” Paananen said. “For example, it is safe here, most people speak English, we have one of the best educational systems in the world, the taxes and cost of living is reasonable and the working culture is nice, open and honest.” Not only that, there’s a more collaborative environment in Helsinki where Finnish game developers are more open with their concepts and works-in-progress. The local chapter of the IGDA and Neogames regularly hold well-attended drink-ups while there’s an active Facebook group that celebrates each and every launch. “It’s a very collaborative environment for shared learnings on technology, business models and game design,” said Andrew Stalbow, “Local people and companies are genuinely supportive to each other and take a view that ‘all boats rise’ when competing for a global audience. Rovio and Supercell’s success has undoubtedly changed the local culture. Not only do Finnish game developers feel more emboldened, there’s a headiness to the gaming community these days that feels reminiscent of the Valley’s over-the-top exuberance. Rovio’s Angry Birds marketing stunts get more outrageous every time. There was the Angry Birds Space launch, where they . Then there was a takeover of Moscow’s Red Square earlier this year, where a Russian choir sang the game’s theme song along with dancing cans of Angry Birds sodas. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GJyW3Aw3R8&w=560&h=315] There are now also “mafias.” Employees of Rovio and Supercell are starting to peel away to do their own companies. Supercell’s former director of analytics, , while to co-found a new studio Helsinki- and Los Angeles-based studio called Seriously. This could be a drawback to the country’s newfound success in gaming, in that it could be much harder to retain talent in an industry that’s notoriously fickle. It could attract people that are more interested in the financial rewards of the gaming industry than the craft — something that we’re still seeing the effects of in the Silicon Valley community after the rise and fall of Zynga. Some in the community worry that it’s getting too overheated: Lasse Louhento, one of the Supercell co-founders who was the product lead on Clash of Clans, : “The games industry is a hot and fierce topic and that worries me. I love the childlike passion to develop games. I yearn and miss people with vision and the attitude of never giving up to finish a game, whether it turns out to be successful or not. I don’t need lying networkers, mannequins who take credits from the real developers…. But Paananen countered that if you run a studio with a supportive environment, you should be able to hang on to your talent. “I am pretty sure that the small number of people who may join the industry just to make the quick buck will very soon realize how immensely tough industry this is, and they will leave as quickly as they appeared,” Paananen said. “The vast majority of the local game developers do not think ‘money first,'” Paananen added. “I do not see this changing. Finns generally do not work for money anyway, so why should that change now that there is a bit more money available?” |
Amazon To Look Into Deliveries By Self-Driving Car | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | But since Jeff Bezos is going to pull his , then so will we. Because quite honestly, and all through the house, every creature was stirring, posting to Twitter about Amazon considering deliveries through Bezos could have picked any trendy technology to get his company’s name in the news and entice tech blogs with easy traffic: He could have said that Amazon was now accepting Bitcoin, or orders through Google Glass, or 3D printing your deliveries of baby wipes and socks. But instead he chose Drones have to overcome before hitting the mainstream, namely how to avoid wires and trees and how to build optimal landing sites. Bezos himself admitted that commercial drones until 2015, but in the same breath he said that the company “had no choice” but to use drones — whatever that means. Confession: I bought an Amazon Prime subscription yesterday and spent $150 on orders. Seriously, I was checking Amazon.com to see if there was any drone stuff on it, and thought, “Well, while I’m here I might as well get that coat rack I’ve been desperately needing …” Amazon PR tells me that last Cyber Monday their customers ordered a record-breaking 306 items per second. “We hope to exceed that this year,” representative Julie Law wrote, but would not reveal details as to whether they did, on further inquiry, or whether the drone thing increased traffic to the site. Based on my pure anecdotal experience and spend, and , I think that Amazon and Bezos should straight up win the award for best PR stunt ever for this drone thing, and I am . Hell, even UPS and FedEx thought the was to fast follow. At least already have a lot of the infrastructure they need to function, i.e. roads already built. Drones, not so much. But props to Bezos for being a master of the press spin. Tomorrow I’m going to announce that TechCrunch.com will only be available on |
New Card Skimmer Attaches To A Real POS Card Reader Like A Nasty Succubus | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | has found a fascinating example of a card skimmer – essentially a machine that steals your credit card number – that masquerades as a real POS terminal. The skimmer fits over the ubiquitous Verifone POS reader and even reads key-presses. It is virtually indistinguishable from the actual POS card reader and can be slipped on and off without the retailer’s knowledge – or, more chillingly, with the retailer’s consent. Should you be worried? Well sure. Your credit cards are approximately as safe in the wild as your cash. If you give your card to someone, the rules of decorum allow you to assume they won’t cheat you. That’s not always the case, and it doesn’t help that the thieves are getting so wily when it comes to card skimming. Heck, thieves don’t even need skimmers. Sometimes they can , giving them backdoor access to all transactions. Here’s hoping none of us get hit this heavy shopping season. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_3LlYgPlZc&w=640&h=360] |
Send In Your Questions For Ask A VC With DFJ’s Josh Stein | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | Ask a VC is back this week after a brief hiatus–and our guest this week is DFJ managing director . As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or and we’ll ask them during the show. Stein has backed and serves on the boards of Box, Chartbeat, LendKey, Selligy, SugarCRM, and Swell. He is also actively involved with DFJ’s investments in AngelList, Glam Media, Opscode, Path, Redfin, Tremor Video, and Twilio. His previous investments include GoodGuide (acquired by UL), iList (acquired by IGN/News Corp), Polaris Wireless (strategic recapitalization), Yammer (acquired by Microsoft), and Yardbarker (acquired by Fox Sports Interactive). Prior to joining DFJ, Stein was a Vice President at Telephia, and was a co-founder, Director and the Chief Strategy Officer for ViaFone. He also held positions in product management at Microsoft and NetObjects, and was a management consultant in the San Francisco office of The Boston Consulting Group. Stein has made some early investments in clear winners in enterprise and beyond, including leading Box’s first round of institutional investment back in 2006. We’re curious to hear what patterns he’s observed in finding and backing successful entrepreneurs and companies. Please send us your or put them in the comments below! |
After Raising $200M More, Airbnb Built A Replica Of The Dr. Strangelove War Room In Its Office | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | Airbnb’s last round of funding totaled , bringing its total funding to . The company also has a new office that includes a replica of the war room from the film Dr. Strangelove. A profile of its digs in Modern Luxury’s SanFrancisco magazine , essentially an aggrandized meeting space, along with the new office’s glut of themed rooms, including “a Milanese one-bedroom that features lavender toile wallpaper, a flat-screen TV, and a dining table seating eight.” Sure. As , the Room of War has its own ! It’s no secret that there is slopping around the San Francisco-area technology industry. One excess leads to another, and so while Airbnb is certainly a serious service (I used it this weekend to rent a cabin for a wedding I’m going to, kicking $55 to the company in fees as part of the process), it also managed to build the replica. TechCrunch’s own Matt Burns thinks that the war room is “rad.” Is Airbnb alone in its pursuit of whimsical office space? Of course not. Google’s Googleplex has been around for ages, a visit to Yahoo will likely include your sitting in a ridiculous oversized purple chair, and Snapchat’s . In this regard Microsoft stands out as a square, which probably isn’t much of a surprise. Of course nothing is new, especially this sort of risible extravagance. TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis reported in 2010 that Xobni was spending to have a large mural (with a “Seuss-ian feel”!) . Xobni before selling to Yahoo for a paltry . So the mural didn’t help it become a real business. Keeping your employees happy is a good thing. The bacon at Dropbox is great, for example. Instacart’s themed new office party the other week was a good time. I think I took my shirt off on the roof at some point while getting my friend to bring more bourbon up to the outdoor deck. But at what point are companies just throwing money around for fun and calling it Culture? Twitter’s were all right, I guess. |
Apple, PrimeSense And Perceptive Computing Or: Why Your Phone Will See In 3D | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | Last month Apple confirmed the . Initial thoughts turned towards applications in the Apple TV set-top box, but other reports that Apple was interested in its ‘mapping’ capabilities as well. After some digging and asking around, it seems like there might be more than meets the eye with this particular acquisition. Apple could very well be interested in incorporating PrimeSense technology into its TV offerings, in order to recognize gestures for interaction. But when Apple purchases companies it often has both short and long-term goals in mind for their technology. The and its touch identification technology in 2012 is an example of Apple bringing acquired technology to market after a period of acceleration and refinement. Something similar could be in the works for PrimeSense. Specifically, we’re hearing from our sources that Apple was likely interested in a new mobile chipset PrimeSense was developing that would eventually be suited for devices like iPhones and iPads. These chips and accompanying sensor and software tech could be used for a variety of purposes like identity recognition and indoor space mapping. But in order to understand where Apple is coming from and where this tech might be going in the future, we have to chat for a minute about perceptive computing. Perceptive, or is a relatively new field that’s all about capturing and analyzing data with sensors and visualization engines like cameras and infrared light. The purpose is to create a computer simulation that mimics human insight or intuition in a variety of areas — one of which is visualizing a three-dimensional space in a way that’s impossible for traditional cameras. This field of study is related to natural user interfaces, which will allow humans to interact with computers in a more human way. The field is actually quite a bit broader than this, but those are the components of it that are important to us. One of the primary proponents of this kind if perceptive computing has been Intel, who has an to make computers ‘aware’ of their surroundings. The purpose? To enable something called ‘intent-based computing’. Through a combination of voice, facial recognition, gesture recognition and awareness of signals like depth and 3D space, perceptive computing will allow us to interact with computers in a way that goes far beyond ’2D gestures’. Though touch screens have dominated the world of computer interaction over the last 6 years since the introduction of the iPhone, they’re just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to moving beyond the ‘mouse and keyboard’ model of computer control. Imagine, for instance, if your smartphone were to be able to react to not just voice commands, but also the location where they were issued, the identity of the person issuing them and other contextual signals like what apps you have installed and what activities you happen to be involved in at the time. If you issue a command like “shop for groceries” but are looking at a family member and not your computer, the command could be ignored. And there are also security benefits that come with deeper facial recognition powers. If it’s not you using your phone, the interface could be set to a guest mode or locked entirely. A recent product of Intel’s open Perceptual Computing SDK was a new kind of “visual-musical” instrument called JOY ( ). It uses hand gestures (and eventually facial recognition) to create visual and audio effects. Here’s a video of it in action: The privacy implications are enough to make one shiver, but the applications are powerful enough for companies to invest hundreds of millions just to explore the possibilities. This is going to happen, whether we like it or not, and anyone in the mobile market has to have some skin in this game. As a note, Intel acquired (another Israeli) 3D earlier this year. That’s why you’ll see companies like Amazon for facial tracking, 3D object recognition and more. There is a lot more to perceptive computing than just ‘3D motion sensor tracking’, as applicable to a product like the Apple TV, for instance. Which is where PrimeSense comes in. PrimeSense began as a company that made 3D sensing software and camera systems from off-the-shelf-ish parts. It then made a huge bet on itself by to manufacturers but to also become a silicon company. That’s an insane market to just waltz into, and it takes real conviction that you’ve got something special to do that. Silicon is expensive, difficult to manufacture and relies on a limited number of foundries to produce. But that’s just what they did, and it paid off with a big partnership deal with Mircrosoft for the . Originally dubbed Project Natal, the device was a much refined and polished version of PrimeSense’s original cobbled-together 3D sensor that garnered initial attention from investors and eventually Microsoft incubation director Alex Kipman. After the Microsoft deal, PrimeSense didn’t stand still, and made arrangements to supply sensors to other companies like Y-Combinator startup , Qualcomm’s Vuforia gaming platform and . Matterport is a hardware company that sells cameras which can capture interiors in their entirety, mapping out objects and architecture quickly and cleanly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3fd4SFOKX4 We spoke to Matterport CEO Bill Brown about why they chose PrimeSense for inclusion in their systems. He said that there were several attractive things about the Carmine 3D sensor that made sense for Matterport. First of all, it was an active system, not a passive stereo system. This meant that visible light wasn’t an issue, and Matterport could combine multiple sensors into one camera to create complex models of environments that included both 3D imagery and 2D texture info, which allowed them to create accurate representations quickly, with use of their software. Brown also notes that PrimeSense had an aggressive cost structure which made it easy to buy the needed silicon and camera systems whole, from one manufacturer, rather than parting it all out. Brown didn’t share any details about whether Matterport would need to move away from the PrimeSense platform now, but said they’re obviously keeping an eye on the situation. PrimeSense uses a structured infrared light system to map a grid of invisible dots onto a scene. Those dots are read by the included sensor and combined with images from a digital camera sensor to craft a map of the scene that includes depth. This method is sometimes referred to as ‘RGB-D’, because it produces a traditional red, green and blue image plus ‘depth’ information. Other technologies in this space include the plain old passive stereoscopic method, which involves two or more cameras collecting visible light from separate angles. The most popular at the moment, however, is based on ‘time of flight’ or TOF information. This kind of system measures the time it takes light to reach an object and bounce back to an emitting point in order to calculate depth. It’s the system that Microsoft uses in the Kinect 2.0, included with the Xbox One. You’ll notice that the technology PrimeSense uses and the kind that the new Kinect uses are different. This is because, several years ago, Microsoft began acquiring companies to build their own version of what PrimeSense was selling them. Perceptive computing generally requires a couple of components; software to detect and parse 3D information and software to detect and parse gestures. Microsoft , a 3D sensing company, in 2010 to take care of the first aspect , a gesture-detecting 3D vision company also based in Israel, for the other component. We don’t have any inside info on why PrimeSense sold to Apple, though the price has been rumored to be around $350M. Before it was acquired, PrimeSense had produced an , that was small enough to potentially be included in tablets or a set-top box. It was essentially a compact version of what its original sensors did, with a host of accuracy improvements.It was, however, not nearly small enough for phone use. PrimeSense VP of Marketing Tal Dagan that Capri was the ‘future of PrimeSense’. “Not only is it smaller, lower-power and cheaper, it also has better depth, better middleware that can actually run on a mobile processor… our end goal is to make it small enough to make it into every consumer device.” He also offered up a couple of examples of how those sensors might be used: “Instead of having to measure my daughter’s height every two weeks, I could just take a picture of her with my smartphone, and it’ll automatically know she’s grown by a few inches based on her profile and previous height.” He offered other potential ideas like a portable gaming device that utilizes motion gestures, a car-docked handset that sounds an alarm when you’re nodding off to sleep mid-drive or simply the ability to scan an object for a 3D printer. However, we’ve heard that PrimeSense has actually been hard at work developing another, even more compact and power sensitive, system that could eventually be put to work in smartphone applications. That project, we understand, is nowhere near ready to ship so we wouldn’t expect to see it in any Apple devices for a couple of years. But, when it does show up, what would Apple want to do with it? Your current smartphone has a bunch of sensors inside. Likely a couple of accelerometers, a gyroscope and a GPS system for location. Even the local radios are used for location data and whatnot. They provide a ton of contextual information about where your device, and therefore you, are and what you are doing together. But, so far, there has been little advancement in the way of sensing the world of the device. The three-dimensional space that surrounds the phone, including the user’s face and body. That’s what adding a 3D sensor to a smartphone will give you, additional contextual information that can implement the next wave of ‘intent based computing’. “I think it is safe to assume Apple is looking to experiment with the question: what does a world look like when our device can see and hear us,” says Creative Strategies Analyst and Techpinions columnist Ben Bajarin. There is simply too much information still left on the table. Apple has filed patents that , as detected by sensors that see in 3D. Recognizing the user could add an additional layer of security and personalization to your device. This kind of system could also be used to create new kinds of gestures that involve the ‘z’ or depth axis. Apple has , where a user could lift their fingers off the screen to exert varied control over the interface. Those possibilities could also extend to mapping interior spaces, something noted just after the acquisition. With a sensor on board that could detect 3D spaces, Apple could enhance its indoor mapping efforts, in the first place. Knowing where people are when inside is the next frontier for mapping, and Apple’s already working on efforts like iBeacons that will mesh nicely with a better knowledge of how interior spaces are constructed.
There are also applications related to photography that could be interesting. Computer vision are already showing us what photographs could look like in the future. Seene uses small camera movements, done by hand, to zip together a depth map, but imagine a sensor that was accurate enough to create a 3D image of a scene without any camera movement at all. Apple has filed patents for a and the possibilities are intriguing. With a simple snap of the shutter you could grab the moment as it really was, rather than in flat old 2D. This doesn’t rule out the possibility that Apple will use technology acquired in the PrimeSense deal to create a gesture-recognition interface for their TV efforts, though. Remember, Apple often makes acquisitions that have both near-term applications and uses down the road. Indeed, Apple has also been around 3D gesture tracking and interfaces for that point to them at least pulling the thread on this kind of thing. The technology that Primesense developed for Capri, and whatever its new sensor is, would likely work just as well in a small set top box with a camera and sensor array as it would in a smartphone. It’s becoming clear that perceptive computing — devices that are aware of us and their surroundings — is going to be the next big thing in portables. The things we carry with us are getting more ways to gather and interpret data and being able to perceive and leverage 3D space is the hurdle that many major mobile companies have chosen to leap next. Qualcomm, a company that makes an enormous amount of radio and silicon parts for phones like the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy devices, bought GestureTek back in 2011. Besides 3DV and PrimeSense, it was one of the other big patent-holders related to gesture recognition technology. Everyone in mobile, it seems, knows that this kind of tech is table stakes for the next generation of computers. And now Apple has a nice chunk of that pie in PrimeSense. We’ll just have to wait to see exactly how they leverage it. |
Yahoo Acquires Team Behind Dreamworks Animation Incubated Mobile Video App Ptch | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | Ptch, the DreamWorks Animation-incubated mobile video startup, has been acquired by Yahoo. The app was launched just over a year ago and will shut down on January 2, 2014. Until then, you’ll be able to download your ‘ptches’ if you’re a user, or save them out to your camera roll. The announcement was . “As part of the Yahoo team,” the announcement reads, “we’ll be able to focus our efforts and leverage our technology to make Yahoo’s photo and video platforms the best in the world.” Due to the text of the announcement and the fact that the product will be shuttered, we’re calling this one an acqui-hire. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ptch was an app that started inside DreamWorks Animation, as a project of its CTO Ed Leonard, who ended up taking on the CEO role. Co-founder Hans Ku also worked at DreamWorks. When , there were around 20 of them, about one-third of which came from DreamWorks. About two-thirds of them came from outside places like Yahoo and Myspace. Now, it looks like some of them will boomerang back to the big purple. The app allowed users to remix their videos with effects and music, and to offer their original clips up to others in order to mash them up and remix them further. The concept was centered around allowing friends and people with shared experiences to use all of their combined media to craft the ‘story’ of the event. There’s no word on where this leaves DWA Investments, the separate company that was funded by DreamWorks and which created Ptch. Since it’s equity-owned by the employees, it seems like it would go along with the acquisition, likely to be dissolved. This continues Yahoo’s strategy of . Yahoo is in the process of retooling all of its offerings to be mobile-centric, and developing new properties to bolster its media empire. In order to do that, it’s been snapping up small teams and products that have strategic value of some sort, but mostly for the people. |
Instagram Blocks Competitor Mobli From Its API | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | The relationship between Instagram and competitor Mobli, a photo- and video-sharing app out of Israel, has been a rocky one. Today Instagram to the Instagram API, effectively making users choose between the two. For the last 18 months, Mobli users could upload their Instagram content to their feeds with one click. That’s no longer possible. Here’s what Instagram has to say about it: Instagram’s API guidelines make it clear that an application that replicates or attempts to replace the essential user experience violates our terms of use. We have a team dedicated to reviewing apps and enforcing our policies. The company did not express why it blocked off access , considering Mobli has been using the Instagram API for quite some time. Mobli is a much smaller app with more than 12 million users, whereas Instagram is home to more than 150 million users. But Mobli, the underdog, actually has more features, boasting video-sharing functionality long before it was available on Instagram or Vine. Still, why would Instagram cut off a competitor with such a small user base? Well, Mobli also has a list of and over $84 million in funding, at an estimated valuation of around $1 billion. It’s a familiar figure for Instagram, which Facebook bought for $1 billion. And while Mobli lags in users, it has one thing that Facebook and Instagram do not: América Móvil. América Móvil is the fourth-largest wireless provider, based out of Mexico City, and also happens to be owned by billionaire Carlos Slim. Slim led a , and plans to integrate Mobli onto América Móvil handsets as part of that investment. Mobli has also said that South America accounts for a double-figure percentage of its user base. The company confirms that the roll-out with América Móvil is underway now, but has not been carried out completely. Here’s what Mobli had to say about Instagram’s API shutdown: We respect every platform’s right to do with its platform as it sees fit. We believe in the user’s right to control his content and creation and therefore commit to continuing to enable users to do with their content as they see fit. We are working diligently to create a user experience by which users will stay at Mobli because they want to. To be fair, Mobli hasn’t always played nicely. The company ran an anti-Instagram campaign in March that paid users . And at the same time, Instagram’s history isn’t necessarily loaded with generosity of spirit. Remember when the company to push folks toward Instagram.com? It’s a for a social media startup. |
The New Just.me Wins Auction For The Old Just.me’s Assets | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | Mobile messaging startup announced a couple of weeks ago that . Now it looks like the auction is over. The winner? Just.me. Well, technically it’s “ ,” but founder Keith Teare (who also co-founded TechCrunch) said the new company’s goal is to continue the same work: “And from a user point of view, we hope not to skip a beat.” As I wrote in my initial coverage, Teare said the auction was necessary because of the $1.5 million in debt that Just.me took on from Hercules Technology Growth Capital. Combined with decent-but-not-spectacular growth numbers (Teare said it has hundreds of thousands of users), the debt meant the startup had trouble raising money, so it was selling off its assets to pay back the money it owed, or as much of that money as possible. Even then, Teare expressed his hope that he would be the top bidder — but it had to be a fair auction for him to meet his obligations to Hercules. When Teare told me today about the results, he said he’s not allowed to disclose the exact price, but he did note that the sale was funded by and therefore “within the means” of his incubator Archimedes Labs — in other words, it probably wasn’t an enormous sum. He also said that there were 23 bids total, and that nine of those bids were for the full package of assets rather than individual pieces. Teare added that Just.me’s focus has shifted . Initially, the app combined taking pictures for your private memories, sending messages to friends, and expressing yourself in public. However, it’s the public expression that has seen the most usage (something Teare attributed in part to the quality of the native photo and messaging experiences on iOS and Android), and that’s where the company has been adding new features like the ability to leave “confessions,” which can be anonymous. The app isn’t abandoning the other areas completely, but treating expression as the “starting point”: “Public expression leads to serendipitous meetings which leads to the desire to chat privately. We’re really trying to focus on that set of behaviors.” And yes, Teare acknowledged that there’s no guarantee that the new company, which is , will succeed. “I would say there’s no slam dunk,” he said. “I didn’t want to acquire the assets because I think there’s a magic formula. I acquired the assets because I think the app is doing really well and there’s no reason for us to die at this point.” |
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Google Wallet Cards Arriving Now, But Consumer Benefits Remain Unclear | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | Those who signed up for the new Google Wallet debit card are now receiving their cards in the mail, following the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S. This MasterCard-powered prepaid debit card allows you to link your online Google Wallet balance to a real, plastic card you can use at point-of-sale, at ATMs, or anywhere else a MasterCard is accepted, stateside. To clarify, we’re saying “stateside” because the Google Wallet debit card has a on the back – not the EMV technology which would allow the card to work in other countries where magstripe cards have been largely replaced by the more secure, EMV chip-based payment cards instead. Additionally, Google in black-and-white terms that the Card cannot be used outside the U.S. Perhaps the more disappointing reveal, however, is in how the card works. A year ago, that Google was working on a universal payment card that could take the place of any plastic credit or debit cards you carried in your wallet with a single card where you could control the source of funding on the fly, from directly within the Wallet mobile app. Those plans were sadly ahead of this year’s Google I/O, leaving this new Google Wallet card as a watered-down version of that earlier vision. (A vision which a startup called , we should point out.) Today, the Google Wallet Card is funded with your Google Wallet balance, meaning you have to you have to first link a traditional funding source to your Google Wallet account, like a bank account, credit card or debit card you already have, then transfer money into Google Wallet itself. If you haven’t already, you have to first request a Google Wallet Card by going through . When the card arrives in the mail, it comes in a nondescript envelope with no name along with its return address (which almost saw it discarded as junk mail, I have to admit.) The provided instruction sheet is overly simple, too, informing you to first activate your card online or within the mobile Google Wallet app. It’s not immediately obvious where in the mobile app (iPhone or Android) the Wallet card should be activated, since the app doesn’t allow the card to be entered in the same area where you add other debit or credit cards. That is, you can type in the card information there, including the number, expiration date, and security code, but the button to submit remains grayed out. Online, the activation process is more straightforward. After signing into Google Wallet, a big banner at the top of the screen informs you of your Wallet Card ship and delivery dates and lets you click a button to activate the card immediately. Here, it’s just a matter of entering in the last four digits of your Google Wallet Card, clicking “Next,” then “Done.” Though the Google Wallet Card doesn’t specify this, the resulting screen informs you that you can take out up to $300 per day at ATMs. Google itself doesn’t charge ATM fees, but some ATM providers do. Google doesn’t charge fees to order or activate the card either, nor does it charge monthly or annual fees. The only Google charges is a 2.9% fee to fund a Wallet account from a credit card. (Other are associated with Google Wallet, but not in terms of funding or using the Wallet Card itself). To fund the Google Wallet Card, you can click on your Wallet balance online or in the app, and choose “Add Money.” You can then pick from one of your other funding sources listed to add money to your Wallet account. This seems like an unnecessary additional step given that Wallet is already linked to your these sources. But if you try to pay for anything from an un-funded account, the card will be declined. For some people, adding money via bank account and card transactions may be instant. If you’re in that group, then congratulations – your Google Wallet balance could be funded while on the go through a few taps in your mobile app, allowing you to leave your wallet at home, so to speak. But other banks may take up to a week for larger transfers, and some cards may take up to a few days before the money becomes available. In other words, the promise of a “universal” card, as was originally being tested, has not really come through yet. Still, for those whose , the Card could offer a handy way for users to spend or pull out cash sent by others. Of course, this would be far more useful if the Card worked overseas, allowing U.S. users to send cash to family back at home. Sadly, the current Wallet Card isn’t there yet. As Google notes in the FAQ, you can’t use the Card outside the U.S. “right now.” (Right now?) As for the rest of it, the Google Wallet Card works the way any credit card does. You swipe it at a terminal, or you can hand it to a waiter or cashier to swipe on your behalf, no PIN required. One thing to note is that the card does not have your account number in raised numbers on the front. Instead, the numbers are printed on the back of the card. For those tough on their plastic, that means the numbers could wear off more quickly as the card gets used and abused. In addition, it means it won’t work in those old-school “knuckle-busters” which are sometimes (well, rarely…but it happens!) still used here and there when paying a vendor who’s away from a register, power, or an internet connection. This is hardly a major concern, though. At the end of the day, the Google Wallet Card is a better deal for Google than it is for consumers, at present. The company benefits by gaining additional insight into consumer spending behaviors, which helps it to build a better profile on Wallet users, which it could then use to sell more targeted ads. Sellers also benefit when users pay with Google Wallet, as it allows them to . They can associate that with other data they have on file for you, if you’ve shopped there before. Consumers using the Google Wallet platform have some conveniences, though. The Wallet app integrates various loyalty programs and merchant offers, and some Android-based phones with NFC can be used to tap and pay at point-of-sale. But these benefits are all features in Google Wallet, the app, not the Card itself, which is really meant to be just a fallback when NFC is not available. If Google ever gets to the point where a Wallet Card could be instantly funded from your connected payment sources on the fly, like online, then the Card would be more interesting. But for now, it’s still unclear why a consumer would want to or need to use their Google Wallet plastic card today. |
House Approves Plastic Gun Ban, But Fails To Update Law For 3D Weapons | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | The most unproductive Congress in history could not manage to update a ban on plastic guns for the era of 3D printed weapons. Today, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly the but didn’t amend the law to require permanent metal inserts. As the law stands, gun manufactures abide by an honors system that they will promise to keep enough metal in a weapon to set off alarms. “The House bill is better than nothing, but it’s not good enough,” New York Senator Chuck Schumer. “We absolutely must close the loophole that allows anyone to legally make a gun that could be rendered invisible by the easy removal of its metal part. Under current law, it is legal to make a plastic gun so long as it has some metal in it, even if it is easily removable. The bill we’ll try to pass in the Senate would fix that.” 3D burst onto the scene last year when a libertarian-happy gun-enthusiast produced and distributed blueprints for the first lethal homemade plastic firearm. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drPz6n6UXQY&w=560&h=315] Since that time, the Federal government and New Zealand party monster/pirated software mogul, Kim Dotcom, banned the distribution of the blueprints. It’s difficult to know how much the law can stop blueprints that require a permanent metal insert. Even after the bans, the software was still widely available on the Internet. Republicans also blame Democrats for failing to cooperate on a longer-term extension of the law. “The (Democratic) majority is playing politics with public safety,” said Republican Chuck Grassley. (For those paying attention, this bill is Chuck v. Chuck.) The bill is now off to the Senate. |
Paid Game Downloads Spike 34% On The Windows Store In November, But Microsoft Obscures Other Data Points | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | In November, paid downloads of games on the Windows Store grew 34.12 percent, while free game downloads grew a more modest 13.41 percent. In the month, the Windows Store’s assortment of games saw 1,311,209 paid downloads and 16,744,484 free downloads. Microsoft has released a for its Windows Store app platform’s performance in the month of November. The company previously reported concerning all app categories, for both free and paid applications. However, for the month of November, the company did not. This is annoying, and I’ve asked Microsoft why certain – seemingly random – app categories are now not displayed. In some cases you are provided the following response where the graph should appear: “Due to privacy issues, we are unable to show the reference curve.” In general, categories that are not displayed relate to paid download rates in less popular categories, such as “Books and Reference.” In October, that category sold a mere 31,240 units. However, applications marked as “Social” that were free are also currently unreported by the company. In October, free social apps moved over 4.3 million units. The games data is interesting, as paid game downloads in November (1.31 million) essentially matched paid downloads on the Windows Store in October (1.35 million). In October, games made up 72.12 percent of all paid downloads. If that ratio persists, we could anticipate paid downloads for November to total 1.82 million on the Windows Store. However, I don’t think the paid download curve was as strong in other app categories in aggregate than it was in games for the month, after observing the partial dataset. Still, 1.31 million paid game downloads, and almost 17 million free game downloads means that Microsoft did manage to grow its largest application category by a firm percentage in the month. That’s good. What could be driving the growth in game downloads? In November, Microsoft announced that had been brought to the Windows 8.x platform by way of its support for the Unity engine. Those titles are presumably behind at least part of the gains. That’s actually decent for Microsoft as it means that its developer outreach efforts to drive new titles is connecting with consumers. The good news, however, is incremental and should be kept in the following perspective: While Microsoft has managed to grow its download rates, its total downloads remain compared to the iOS and Android platforms. So, better is good, but better isn’t itself that great. If Microsoft gets back with an answer to why it is now obscuring certain data, I’ll update this post. Especially if they release the numbers we need for a more holistic analysis. |
Gift Guide: Walk Your Way Into 2014 | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | As a convert to the standing desk lifestyle, I wondered just what I could do to further expand my alternative loafing lifestyle. To that end I brought a desk treadmill into the home, a decision that I have yet to regret. The model I’m trying, the (a bold name, to be sure) costs $749 and maxes out at 2 miles per hour. If anything I can report that I’ve been able to do a few miles a day at a steady, slow pace while still getting work done. Although, thanks to holiday dinners and lots of beer, the waistline has moved just about a pants size down, which is good enough for fat old me. First, understand that the best desk treadmill isn’t the best running treadmill. The 2 mph maximums that most of these have are there for a reason: you’re going to fall down if you go much faster. While I could see myself hitting a three or four mile pace on an energetic day, I’d rather not risk the head strike when I’m flipped over my desk while browsing Reddit. Does it help? Take a look at the chart below. Although I was traveling some of those days, after November 11 I was able to consistently push my steps walked up past 10,000 almost every day thanks to the treadmill. Given that it’s winter and I’m a bit sick, it’s a real boon to be able to get some low-impact cardio in during the day and still get work done. And yes, I am walking as I type this and have completed three miles today. Walking treadmills should also be solid and sturdy. You can get away with a cheaper, thinner model – plenty of people have and there are – but if you plan on using it with any intensity, look into a dedicated, flat treadmill without a front bar and high control panel. Heck, there’s The Rebel, for example, is about five feet long and two feet wide. It fits under almost every desk and has a small break-out box controller with stop, start, an emergency system, and sleep control. Setup is quite simple: you just plug it in, connect the controller, and attach the emergency magnet. Then you press start. The treadmill starts very slowly at first and then speeds up to your desired pace. The hardcore will probably balk at the Rebel’s top speed – I thought I would, too – but I’m OK with going at a pace that won’t leave me winded as I work.
You can also look into the , an $855 treadmill with a much lower profile that almost looks like a rug. It’s a hair shorter than the Rebel at 54 inches and is just about 5 inches off the ground. Need something a bit more imposing? Folks I’ve spoken to have had good luck with desks, including this massive treadmill/standing desk setup that goes for $1,999. This could be a bit too rich for most holiday wallets, but considering the heft and comfort, you can’t go wrong. For example, while the Rebel is working great for me I could imagine the value of having a dedicated desk attached that I could raise and lower. Can you still sit at a treadmill desk? Sure, but you’re going to have to do a bit of finagling. When my setup is shut down I like to bring a big fitness ball over to sit on, which allows me to take a bit of a breather between miles. It’s a surprisingly seamless move and I’ve not yet fallen off the treadmill while sitting. Remember also that these things can’t just be rolled away and used as a clothes hamper. The Rebel is huge and heavy as is the Life Span model. In fact, almost any treadmill you bring into the office deserves at least more than a cursory trot or two. Whether or not you spend a few hundred on a huge, hulking, single-purpose desk treadmill or just go the DIY route, setting up a treadmill desk will do wonders for your energy level, potentially your weight, and that nagging feeling that you should be getting out more. While a nice jog around the industrial park is probably best for all involved, a stroll on a treadmill desk is the next best thing. Just ask my pants. |
Chrome Beta Gets New Tools For Mobile Development With Better Viewport Emulation, Screencast-Enabled Remote Debugging | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | With the launch of the this morning, Google introduced a number of new tools for mobile developers that should make it a bit easier for them to test their mobile web apps right from the desktop. The beta channel for desktop and Android now allows developers to debug their apps using an improved viewport emulation as well as screencast-enabled remote debugging. and use an extension or drop down to the command line to start debugging on a connected device. Now, Mac users can just plug in a device over USB, and the Chrome Beta will natively support remote debugging. Any instance of Chrome or the Chrome-powered WebView on the device will be available on the desktop and all your keyboard and mouse events are automatically sent to the device. Windows users will have to With the improved viewport emulation, Google says, developers will have “full control of the emulation parameters, such as screen resolution, touch emulation, , user agent, sensors and many more.” The page will run through the same mobile viewporting code as in mobile Chrome to help developers get accurate results on their desktop. If you really love your Chrome DevTools and have 25 minutes to spare, also take a look at Paul Irish’s , which covers these new features in more detail. |
Perpetu Lets You Decide What Happens To Your Online Accounts After You Die | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | One day each of us will pass on and be no more. We will . Most of us don’t like to think about joining the choir invisible or, for that matter, what will happen to our online profiles once we become ex-people. A startup called wants to make it easier for us to ensure that our social network accounts are unplugged once we shuffle off this mortal coil. The service, which currently lets users add Facebook or Twitter accounts for free, just launched its premium service, which costs $15 a year or a $100 one-time payment and includes support for , , , and . Founded by an intellectual property lawyer and banker, Perpetu allows you to decide what happens to your “online assets” after you die even if you don’t have a will. First, you sign up for Perpetu with your email, Facebook or Twitter account. Once you are logged in, you will see a list of services you can add to Perpetu. There are several options for each. For example, you can schedule a final wall post for your Facebook profile, or download photos, your status updates and private messages and have the files emailed to certain people. On GitHub, developers can select repositories to make public after they die. Your LinkedIn contacts can downloaded and forwarded to a colleague or someone else. Online privacy laws are still in their infancy and of dealing with the information of deceased users. Unfortunately, their methods often conflict with the wishes of family members and friends. Co-founder Ryanne Lai says two cases in particular motivated her. In the U.K., a woman named Louise Palmer because she could not log on to remove spam or read the encouraging messages friends had sent Becky after she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Several years earlier in the U.S., the family of soldier Justin Ellsworth , where he had been drafting a memoir of his service in Iraq before he was killed by a roadside bomb. “The thing about the [Ellsworth] case that was really shocking to me was that on one hand I couldn’t believe how much trouble the family had to go through to get access to the emails,” says Lai. “But even more shocking to me is that the son may not have wanted his family to see everything. He had no control and there was no way to strike a balance.” Perpetu seeks to respect the wishes of its users while making sure that their heirs don’t need to endure the lengthy process of submitting death certificates, obituaries and court orders in order to gain access to their online accounts. The company tackles the problem by letting you chose which files or folders to send to specific people, one of the main ways in which it differentiates from competitors.
Similar services include , which was , and . Other “digital afterlife” services include and which lets you prepare messages to be published to your social networks after you die. Unlike Legacy Locker or AssetLock, Perpetu doesn’t ask users for their passwords. Instead, you select what information is downloaded and sent to your friends and family so they don’t have to log into your accounts and go through the potentially traumatic process of sifting through all your private emails, documents and photos. “That’s why I started Perpetu. I have a Tumblr. I have a fan Twitter account used specifically for tweeting to Adam Lambert,” says Lai. “These are things that I want to keep and that my family wouldn’t understand.” “For companies like Yahoo, Facebook and Google, they are not putting enough effort into dealing with dead users’ accounts. It doesn’t get them any more data. There’s no incentive for them,” she adds. “I appreciate Google doing an inactive account manager, but Perpetu has no conflict of interest.” Lai first pitched Perpetu’s concept at Startup Weekend Hong Kong in 2011, where she met co-founder Andrea Livotto. The two built a prototype at the event, then applied for funding from the Hong Kong government. Perpetu, which first launched in April, is currently part of ‘s incubator and has received a total of $630,000 HKD (about $81,000 USD) in seed funding from the program. So far, none of Perpetu’s 1,000 registered users have passed away, which means its founders are still able to glean feedback about features from them. Perpetu’s early adopters asked for Dropbox and Instagram support, which is why the startup decided to launch a premium service. Getting users to sign up for the site’s free service has not been a problem, even though dying is a topic most people don’t want to confront. Perpetu’s site was designed so it doesn’t look “too dark or depressing,” Lai says. The service is also much easier than finding a lawyer and drafting a will. On the other hand, deleting online accounts is sometimes too easy, as demonstrated by a January Buzzfeed article titled To avoid accidents and pranks, Perpetu has several safeguards in place to verify a user’s death before it starts deactivating accounts. When you sign up, you provide contact information including your email, phone number and the beneficiaries listed on your will, if you have one. When Perpetu learns of your death, it will send an email to you (or your inbox, rather), then call you to make sure that reports of your death have not been greatly exaggerated. You can also set an amount of time to elapse after your death before Perpetu starts following your instructions. Lai says the company is looking at other ways of verifying deaths in different countries, such as checking with government agencies. Though Perpetu gives you a certain amount of control over your online legacy, there are also things it cannot do. For example, Perpetu can’t ensure that Facebook or other online services will permanently wipe your data from their servers. Lai also emphasizes that Perpetu is not meant to replace a final will. “We can carry out online wishes for our users through an online mechanism, but if they have a will and the will contradicts Perpetu’s instructions, then of course the will overrides it,” she says. The company wants to work with lawyers and legal firms to encourage people to mention Perpetu accounts in their wills. What Perpetu can do is give you more control over what people can or can’t see on your profiles after you die. “What we want to focus on is that you have so much you have created in your life. There’s value in those creations,” says Lai. “When people start leaving final wishes, they reflect on what they can do in life.” |
Windows 8.1 Surpasses Windows Vista Among Steam Users, Drives Windows 8.x Over The 18% Mark | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | The Windows 8.x family of operating systems had a , but among gamers the recently released Windows 8.1 is performing decently. In November, sent Windows 8.1’s market share to 6.34 percent, up 4.49 percent in the month. Windows 8 itself ended the month at 12.11 percent, giving the larger Windows 8.x host a combined market share of 18.45 percent among Steam users. That dwarfs, naturally, OS X’s market share among the gaming cohort that uses steam of 3.48 percent, and Linux’s share among the same group of 0.98 percent. Windows 8.1 grew more quickly than Windows 8 contracted, with the latter shedding 4.02 percent in the month. This mirrors what we have seen in the larger Windows market. Still, Windows 8.1’s growth feels sluggish when framed against Windows 8’s almost commensurate drop. To see more than 4 percent of Steam’s population switch in a month to a yet nascent operating system isn’t shabby, however. As The Next Web’s Emil Protalinski , Windows 8.1 managed to beat Windows Vista’s market share in November. Vista really is over for all intents and purposes. Interestingly, among gamers Windows XP retains more market share than Vista, which came after. A metric that must be watched is the aggregate market share of Windows 8.x, as Windows 8 contracts and Windows 8.1 expands. If their combined market share doesn’t quickly expand, we can infer from that information that while Windows 8.1 may be doing a fine job snagging Windows 8 users, overall unit volume of new PCs is soft. In related news, IDC that it expects a 10.1 percent decline in PC sales in 2013, a smaller decline in 2014, and market stabilization over the 300 million yearly unit volume mark for the coming few years. Given that, Steam should see Windows 8.x absorb increasing market share in the coming years. At least, Microsoft hopes as much. |
ToyTalk Isn’t Just Entertaining Our Kids, It’s Teaching Our Machines To Converse | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | Today the talking iPad app from ToyTalk gets two new scenarios based on classic movie genres. The sketch called In the Movies has a film noir segment called Winston Sly, Private Eye and a sci-fi jaunt called Squabble Amongst the Stars. We’ve , but it continues to be fascinating because of the underlying technology. Yes, it’s a kids entertainment app for the iPad, but it’s created by talent culled from the Artificial Intelligence Center at SRI international (the company that spawned Siri) and Pixar, among others. The company has raised over $16M from Greylock, Charles River Ventures, True Ventures and First Round Capital and a number of angels. It’s using artificial intelligence and voice recognition to build a framework that’s working towards full-on conversational technology that will allow our machines to talk back to us. We talked to CEO Oren Jacob — a former Pixar CTO — about the latest update to the app. The two new episodes, he says, came about because kids seemed to really love it when they the characters. The previous content in The Winston Show was focused on a ‘game show’ environment where the kid played ‘themselves’ on a show hosted by the eponymous Winston. He would converse back and forth with them using tons of dialogue written and recorded by ToyTalk, and the company’s AI engine to determine the proper responses. The new episodes in the app use the iPad’s camera to place kids right in the scenes, allowing them to ‘become’ an alien themselves. This immersion helps them to place themselves into the scenario and be more engaged in dialogue. In the film noir episode, for instance, the kids take on the role of the suspect, and Winston grills them on ‘who made the mess in their room’. The kids can say just about anything back, and Winston either answers or fills in the blanks with noncommittal language. As ToyTalk gets the feedback from the app, it can see what the most popular responses coming in that Winston is unable to reply to and it can add in dialog to fill those gaps. In September, ToyTalk launched The Winston Show with around 6 hours of content, which translated to about 8-9 hours of gameplay. By January, it hopes to have around 12 hours of content for kids to partake in. Jacob says that as they observed usage patterns, some interesting data points bubbled up. For instance, most kids used them on the weekends, with usage sloping up on Saturday Morning and tapering off Monday morning. And they used the app for around 30 minutes a week — which is pretty impressive for a single app given that the average is just a few minutes. Essentially, they’re setting aside 30 minutes of ‘Saturday morning cartoons’ for a conversation with Winston. One of the particularly interesting notes to come out of ToyTalk’s research in building the app is that the age group they’re targeting, 5-10 year olds, feels incredibly natural ‘talking’ to gadgets and services. When asked who talks to Siri, Google Now or apps like Dragon Naturally Speaking, nearly all of them try these things. “They do it for sport,” Jacob notes. For the next generation, speaking to a tablet or phone will be a matter of course. And having those devices not only hear and recognize, but also converse with us seems like an intriguing possibility. Even though kids are presented with touch interfaces young, they can’t type or spell, Jacob notes. But they can speak before they do any of those. There have been over 2 million things said to Winston, and ToyTalk is learning with each one. They use a proprietary technology called PullString to design a two-way conversation via animation, recording and the response process. The app is already popular, but the technology, the framework, is where the power of ToyTalk is, and what could eventually be the thing that it leverages for revenue. If, after all, our devices are going to talk to us, someone has to teach them. The Winston Show’s update is . |
Pinterest’s Engineering Lead Jon Jenkins Leaves To Launch His Own Startup | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | Jon Jenkins, who a year ago as its head of engineering, is leaving the company in what he as a “bittersweet” decision. Jenkins says he wants to launch his own company, a wish he had even before he joined Pinterest. A representative from Pinterest told us that the company is now looking for Jenkins’ successor. “Long before I made the decision to move to the Bay Area I had the spark of an idea brewing in the back of my mind,” Jenkins wrote. “Since being immersed in the startup rich environment of San Francisco that spark has grown into a flame and now is the time for me to see if I can turn that idea into a real business. In the coming months, I’ll be developing the concept and talking with investors about how to build an entirely new business. I’m really excited for what lies ahead for both Pinterest and myself!” Jenkins also said that during his year at Pinterest, the company’s engineering team has more than tripled in size. New features launched include place pins, a localized Japanese site, its first API for partners and new versions of its Android and iOS apps. In a statement, Pinterest said “We’d like to thank JJ for his contribution to Pinterest and wish him all the best on his next project. We feel fortunate to have leaders within engineering who are ready to step up and run the organization while we recruit for a permanent head of engineering.” Before joining Pinterest, Jenkins served as Amazon’s engineering lead for eight years and led the team responsible for the Silk browser on the Kindle Fire. He was also director of development tools, director of platform analysis and director of website platform. Jenkins’ hire was a sign that Pinterest, which has , was starting to get serious about the technical challenges of building up its site’s infrastructure. |
Former Battery Ventures Partner Brian O’Malley Joins Accel’s Early Stage Team | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | has announced that Brian O’Malley will join the venture capital firm as a partner on its early stage team. O’Malley was formerly a general partner at , where he led its seed and early stage practices. Other recent hires include the addition of Hilary Mason as Accel’s new data scientist in residence, Kobie Fuller as a principal and several new associates. In 2013, Accel saw $5 billion in exits among its portfolio companies. Acquisitions include payments gateway Braintree, which was ; the , representing a $3 billion valuation; and the for a reported $350 million. Foreign exchange and payments provider , while enterprise data company is currently preparing its first public offering. O’Malley joined Battery Ventures in 2004. His investments in e-commerce, online marketplaces and Internet apps included companies like (which ), (acquired by Boeing in 2008), , and . Before joining Battery, O’Malley was director of West Coast technical sales at Bowstreet. |
Apple Finally Signs Long-Awaited Deal To Sell iPhones On China Mobile’s Network | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | China Mobile has finally signed a deal to offer Apple iPhones on its network, an agreement that took years to reach, the Wall Street Journal. China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile carrier, with more than 700 million subscribers, and is the last of China’s three major carriers to offer the iPhone. We have emailed Apple and China Mobile for more information. The reported deal comes after two months of signs that the rollout of iPhone’s on China Mobiles network is imminent. The launch date is expected to coincide with the Dec. 18 China Mobile conference in Guangzhou, when the carrier is supposed to reveal more information about its new 4G LTE network. In September, the WSJ reported that Apple is preparing to ship the iPhone 5S and 5C to China Mobile and earlier this week, China Mobile began on a website owned by one of its subsidiaries. China’s top three carriers recently received licenses from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to start operating 4G networks. In September, will be compatible with China Mobile’s network. The completion of its 4G network was an important sticking point for China Mobile to agree to start selling iPhones. One of the major roadblocks was that China Mobile operates on a different 3G standard that was developed in part by the Chinese government, and Apple said that the carrier’s proprietary network as too unreliable. China Mobile, on the other hand, did not want to agree to Apple’s sales volume guarantees. China is currently Apple’s third biggest market and CEO Tim Cook it will eventually become the company’s largest. But over the past year, Apple has quickly lost market share there to Android handsets from Samsung and domestic handset makers, as its revenue also slowed down in the U.S. But deal with China Mobile may give it a boost. Research firm Trefis says the deal with the carrier may result in the sale of an additional 20 million iPhones in 2014, a 17% increase from the year before. |
Twitter Is About To Officially Launch Retargeted Ads [Update: Confirmed] | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | Twitter is ready to roll out retargeted ads fueled by browser cookies, sources confirm. Twitter could make the announcement as soon as tomorrow, expanding retargeted ads beyond the “experimental” phase that started in July. The secret sauce of Twitter’s retargeting is the use of your account as a cross-device identity layer, allowing it to target ads on mobile based on where you’ve been on the web. : Confirmed, Twitter has now . [ : Twitter has our scoop with the announcement of – its name for retargeted ads. Available globally to all advertisers via a slew of adtech startup partners, advertisers will be able to target recent visitors to their websites with retargeted Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. While we nailed most of the details including the launch date and how Tailored Audiences work, rather than selling retargeted ads directly to advertisers as we expected Twitter to do in continuation of the retargeting alpha program, it will sell them through partners , , , , , , , , , and .] Cookie retargeted ads could make sure the ads you see on Twitter are for things you actually want. For example, if I visited the pricing webpage for a Financial Times subscription, it could later retarget me with this promoted tweet, which I’m likely to click as I was already considering buying a subscription. At first, Twitter will likely continue working with advertisers directly as it did in the small this summer. But eventually it may recruit help from retargeting specialists called demand-side platforms that could sell its ads and handle a real-time bidding process. Adtech startups it might tap include , , and . These are some of the partners Facebook worked with when , in June 2012. But Twitter is charging into something Facebook has been tiptoeing around. Twitter’s bringing retargeting to mobile. Twitter’s users are on mobile. Seventy percent of its ad revenue already comes from the small screens, and it likely follows that a majority of engagement is on mobile, too. That means to really move the needle and boost revenues past the $169 million it made in Q3 2013, the new advertising product has to work on mobile. And historically, retargeting hasn’t worked on mobile. That’s because phones and tablets don’t save a trail of breadcrumbs about what sites you’ve visited the way laptops and desktops do. Typically, retargeting happens like this. You visit a website, say a travel booking site, and look at a page for buying a flight to Hawaii. You chicken out at the last minute, don’t buy, and navigate away, but the site has dropped a cookie for that Hawaii flight page on your browser. Then, when you visit other sites or social networks that run retargeted ads, they detect that cookie, and the travel site can show you an ad saying “It’s cold in SF. Wouldn’t a vacation to Hawaii be nice?” to try to get you to pull the trigger and buy the flight it knows you were already interested in. But without cookies on mobile, you can’t retarget there… …unless you can tie the identity of a mobile user to what they do on the computer. And Twitter can. It’s one of the few hugely popular services that individuals access from multiple types of devices. Our sources say that creating this unified identity layer for advertising is the key to Twitter’s ability to display retargeted ads on mobile. Essentially, when you log into your account on your full-size computer, Twitter will analyze the cookies in your browser to see where you’ve been on the non-mobile web. Then, when you log in to that same account on mobile, it can still use your web cookies to hit you with retargeted ads. As Zach Coelius, CEO of retargeted ads startup tells me, “Twitter is in a unique position because people log in on both the web and phone. That’s a really big deal because mobile phones don’t have the ability to set cookies so you can’t do retargeting. [Twitter’s method] gives it a huge advantage, enabling them to provide relevant targeted ads on mobile phones.” Relevant ads lead to clicks that lead to revenue for Twitter. That “relevance” can also be perceived as “creepiness” to some privacy enthusiasts. When I talked to Gokul Rajaram last year when he was the head of Facebook ads, he said Facebook wanted to be sure it could handle the privacy of retargeting right before expanding the program to mobile or combining it with Facebook’s standard biographical targeting capabilities. Facebook only recently began allowing retargeted ads on mobile, and only through a targeting program separate from FBX. Lucky for Twitter, most of what people do on it is public, so it doesn’t spark the same privacy concerns as Facebook. Twitter also offers an opt-out of retargeting under . Plus it honors for users that enable it in their browsers. In fact, Twitter’s handling of advertising privacy has been . Retargeting is a major stepping stone in Twitter’s quest to become an advertising powerhouse and validate the $23.8 billion valuation proposed by its $43.69 share price. It for $350 million in September. It’s also recently opened up so advertisers can reach people who’ve tweeted certain words. Between keyword targeting and cookie retargeting, Twitter is breaking out of the demand generation and into the lucrative demand fulfillment part of the advertising funnel where Google’s search ad business lives. Advertisers are willing to pay top dollar if you can deliver them someone ready to buy their product. And there’s no better sign of someone’s intent to buy than having recently visited a site and almost made the purchase already. Cookies could be very tasty for Twitter. |
Second Screen TV Startup Wywy Raises $7M For International Growth | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | , a German company promising to help monetize TV activity on mobile devices, is announcing that it has raised $7 million in Series B funding. , the company’s history goes back to 2001, with video and audio detection technology, but it only launched its second screen products last year. Those products include multi-screen ad synchronization, so that mobile and tablet users see online advertising that corresponds to the commercial they’re seeing on TV; real-time TV campaign tracking; and content sync technology for second screen apps. The company also offers an app of its own, but it sounds like that’s just meant to showcase wywy’s technology for potential customers. The new funding follows a $3.1 million Series A last year and comes from existing investors Cipio Partners. Wywy says it currently supports 200 channels in five countries, and one of the big goals is to expand in Europe and the United States. “Today, using a Second Screen device in parallel to watching TV has become the norm,” said Cipio managing partner Werner Dreesbach in the funding release. “It is clear that TV advertisers require new approaches to ensure the effectiveness of their campaigns. wywy’s huge success with media agencies and TV advertisers in Germany made the decision to internationalize easy.” |
Ahead of Christmas, ZowPow Launches Plush Toy Controllers That Interact With Mobile Games | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | Like moths to a flame, kids gravitate toward iPad and iPhone games. But for parents that want their children to still be exposed to real-world toys, a new startup called ZowPow is offering a way that they can do both. The company makes plush toys that can control gameplay. One of their very first toys is a tiny plane that can control up-and-down movement for a paired game called which is published by EA’s Chillingo. The game controller they built has built-in sensors and accelerometers that can tell which direction the plane is facing, so that the plane in the game mimics its movement through Bluetooth LE (see the video below). The two-person startup, which was just accepted for Y Combinator’s upcoming batch, is launching with two partner companies. The other is Get Set Games, a fairly well-known smaller studio that’s behind Mega Jump and Mega Run. The franchise’s protagonist Redford is getting his very own plush toy controller that costs $29.99. The startup is selling both of their toys through . This is just an initial start. Co-founder Jennifer Lu, who came from a business development background at Andreessen Horowitz-backed game developer TinyCo, says the startup plans to sign up many . They don’t plan to focus on building their own intellectual property in-house, and instead would rather partner with developers that already have their own unique characters and audiences. There’s a revenue share with the original developer for each toy they sell. ZowPow’s platform supports iOS devices that are the iPhone 4S or later, the iPad 3 or later, then the iPad Mini and the iPod Touch 5. They can also connect to TVs if the iOS device owner has an HDMI adapter or AirPlay. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lwoIi1WE4g&w=560&h=315] |
null | gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 3 | null |
Microsoft Closes At $38.94, Its Highest Point In 13.38 Years | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | Microsoft’s stock closed at this afternoon, a level that the company hasn’t seen since 2000. As Dow Jones , the last day that Microsoft managed to close above $38.49 was July 18, 2000, when it wrapped up the day’s trading at $39.25. Since then, Microsoft essentially mucked about in the $20s and low $30s, kicking out an endless stream of dividends. It’s worth remembering that the company did split its stock 2:1 in February of 2003. We’re using post-split numbers to allow for an apples:apples comparison. Irony abounds in today’s essentially record high for Microsoft. CEO Steve Ballmer took the reins at Microsoft in January of 2000. He had been president of the company since 1998, helping to oversee Microsoft’s massive run through the end of the millennium. When Ballmer did put on the CEO mantle, he did so essentially at the moment that the technology bubble burst, something that knocked Microsoft down several pegs in quick order. In the final moments of 1999, Microsoft spiked as high as $58 per share. By the end of 2000, Microsoft would trade under the $22 mark. Ballmer’s fault? No. That correction was coming to whomever was sitting atop the Microsoft org chart. The irony begins now: As Ballmer is preparing to step down as CEO, the stock price of the company he has led for so long has returned to the level that it was just seven months into his long tenure. Microsoft is currently worth $325 billion. Google, by way of comparison, is worth $353 billion, and Apple is worth $508 billion. Microsoft has had a , with its stock rising now a total of 45.79 percent in the period. Yahoo also celebrated a , closing above $38 per share for the first time since 2006. This year has been something of a comeback year for a number of classic technology companies. You’ll note that Microsoft and Yahoo had to dramatically reform their businesses to be rewarded by investors for their progress. There’s a lesson there. |
AmEx Now Allows You To Apply Your Reward Points To Everyday Purchases Via Your Mobile Phone | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | AmEx has made a fairly significant improvement to its points redemption system, via the financial institution’s mobile app. So all those points that AmEx users rack up when swiping their card or making online purchases, can now actually be automatically used right after the transaction for a designated purchase. Here’s how it works. AmEx Card members accumulate membership rewards points with transactions. The program allows card members to earn one point for every dollar charged on enrolled American Express cards. These points, which have no expiration date, are redeemable in a number of categories. In the past, members were able to redeem points for purchases from brands online via AmEx’s redemption hub or for travel (airfare, hotels and more). But the general consumer behavior was to redeem big purchases, not everyday expenses like food or other transactions. Previously, members could check their account balances, make payments, browse rewards options, and load special offers to their cards from their phones. With this recent addition, card holders can redeem points for any purchase, from gas and groceries to clothing and manicures, on their phones. Card members have to download or upgrade their existing iOS or Android AmEx app, and sign in with their online username. Whenever they make a purchase with their card, they can open the mobile app and select Use Points for that particular charge once it hits their AmEx statement. A credit in the amount of the charge is applied to the card holder’s account so the merchant is left out of the equation completely. As David Yoo, AmEx’s SVP Mobile Products and Services, explains, the company is seeing that more and more card holders are making purchases through mobile devices, and are reliant on these devices. So it made sense for AmEx to develop a way where consumers could redeem points in the offline and online worlds. There are a few caveats to the new feature. You can’t use the points towards any card membership fees. AmEx is currently testing out push notifications, so that when you spend at a restaurant, you would see an alert on your phone to remind you that you could redeem points for the charge. Yoo says the company is only implementing push notifications for restaurants at the moment but this feature could be extended more broadly in the next few months (and users could turn this feature off as well, he adds). For me personally, I rarely use my AmEx points unless I am booking travel. But it’s a lot easier to be reminded to use your points when your phone is on hand, and you can simply click from wherever you are to redeem points. This isn’t the first new technology iteration added to the membership rewards points system — the company also to allow card members to use points to pay for cabs. This new update is simply another way that AmEx is attempting to encourage and incentivize users to use their payments system and credit card over others. And the key to accomplishing that goal is to use the mobile phone as a touch point, and to extend rewards into the offline world. |
Here Are 2013′s Most Popular Tunes, According To Our Informal Survey Of Music Startups | Eliza Brooke | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJMapA8WgYw&w=560&h=315] As we head into the last leg of 2013, you may find yourself misty-eyed, staring out the window and listening a mashup of this year’s biggest musical hits. It was a good year, and not just because One Direction decided to make a fragrance. So t 100 most-played songs In the song category, “Thrift Shop” yielded the most station creates this year; although Katy Perry’s “Roar” was the highest ranked for station creates in September through November. “When I Was Your Man” by Bruno Mars was 2013’s most “thumbed-up” song overall, but again “Roar” is creeping up there as the most thumbed-up in the last three months. As far as artists go, Drake inspired the most station creates this year, while Bruno Mars was the most thumbed-up artist of 2013. Year to date, the most popular stations on iHeartRadio were 102.7 KIIS-FM Los Angeles and Drake (live and custom, respectively). Because I’d feel weirdly remiss not to mention her, Miley Cyrus jumped from 59th most popular artist to fourth place. We all fantasize about our exes (portrayed by a heartbroken, baby-faced Bruno Mars) playing a piano under a spotlight and belting out, “I was wrooo-ooo-oooong.” The biggest playlists on Songza were (in order): Today’s Biggest Hits, Today’s Happy Pop, The Rap Report, Today’s Country Hits, Drop-a-Beat Workout, and Blogged 50. According to the Songza team, some of the more niche breakouts of the year were (“perfect for driving with your top down and your middle fingers up”), , , , , and . Note that Twerk Tape has been their most popular playlist on Twitter and Facebook for the last year and a half, so don’t chalk that up to the Miley effect. Human nature is exactly as you always suspected. If iHeartRadio and Songza fall more on the pop/rage end of the music spectrum, 8tracks’ top songs for 2013 skewed indie-folkster. Which makes sense, since “The last indie playlist you’ll ever need” was their #1 most played mix and #3 most liked. The service’s top ten songs of the year were: 1. Passenger, “Let Her Go”
2. The Neighborhood, “Sweater Weather”
3. Birdy, “Skinny Love”
4. Ed Sheeran, “Kiss Me”
5. Ed Sheeran, “Give Me Love”
6. Icona Pop, “I Love It”
7. Imagine Dragons, “Radioactive”
8. Imagine Dragons, “On Top Of The World”
9. Avicii, “Wake Me Up”
10. The 1975, “Chocolate” “I’ll Follow You Into The Dark” by Death Cab For Cutie was #21. It was released in . [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfNVfiqKBeM&w=420&h=315] |
Yahoo Closes Above $38 For The First Time Since Early 2006 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | Yahoo shares closed above the $38 mark today, cresting that barrier for the first time since early 2006 on the strength of a nearly . Yahoo has since endured a long winter of CEO changes and lackluster direction. But the company’s shares have rallied strongly under the leadership of CEO Marissa Mayer, who took on the role in July 2012. While Yahoo still suffers from declining revenue from both search and advertising, Mayer’s time atop the company has seen it execute well on a mobile-first strategy. Mayer has also brought back to Yahoo prestige that it long lacked, helping it better hire and retain employees. Investors have cheered its rapid-fire pace of acquisitions, but it’s important to keep in mind that Yahoo is set to cash in mightily when Alibaba goes public. The company did recently announce that when Alibaba does in fact float, it will . As Alibaba’s value has increased, so too has the monetary value of Yahoo’s massive stake in the firm, and thus the value of Yahoo itself. The combination of Mayer’s popularity, Yahoo’s growing mobile userbase (now more than ), and the Alibaba story have pushed the company’s value north. Here’s the chart: Yahoo has yet to solve the problem of its . Recent – including the vaunted Couric and Pogue – directly indicate that Yahoo expects a renewed focus on content will help it drive its top line. However, a rising tide of mobile usage has yet to translate into new revenue. Yahoo hasn’t proven synergy between the two gambits. Yahoo has enjoyed a torrid rise, but if it wants to continue its ride, showing year-over-year revenue growth will be mandatory. |
Leaked Uber Numbers, Which We’ve Confirmed, Point To Over $1B Gross, $213M Revenue | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | Today, Valleywag got its , along with a series of numbers from two weeks ago that show raw revenue, signups, active clients and ride request/completion ratios. TechCrunch has verified with a source that this is Uber’s official dashboard. TechCrunch also contacted Uber, who said that they would ‘take action’ against the leaker. They did not deny the authenticity of the screenshots and numbers. The numbers span a period of between mid-October and mid-November of 2013 and allow us to form a picture, though incomplete, of Uber’s income and user statistics over the period. According to our calculations based on the information laid out in the dashboard screenshots — and assuming some similarity in numbers for the rest of the year — the car service should be pulling in over $1B a year in gross bookings. At a rough 20% cut, a figure Valleywag notes , that would place Uber’s slice of the revenue around $213M a year. The five week period also showed over 11% in revenue growth, with over 398,000 new signups in aggregate at just under 80k each week. Uber is also clocking around 1M requests every week and completing around 800k each week. The data points to a healthy business which maintains a strong ratio of continuing users to new signups and big ‘conversion’ rates between people who look at the app and people who actually use it. A recent filing put Uber’s valuation at $3.5B, and sources had pegged revenue for 2013 at around $125M. Going by that, Uber is doing significantly better than estimated. We contacted Uber CEO Travis Kalanick about the leak, and he did not deny that the numbers were accurate. He also had a few things to say about how the story was reported by Valleywag. “The surprising part is that Valleywag knowingly outed their own source. Valleywag actually knew the screenshot had identifying information of the individual leaker prior to them publishing this story,” Kalanick told TechCrunch in a statement. “We told Nitasha Tiku from Valleywag that we would protect her source from legal ramifications if they did not publish the document. Nitasha and Valleywag decided to publish anyways. We obviously take the dissemination of our proprietary information seriously and we will be looking to take action against the individual leaker and Valleywag source in short order.” TechCrunch then reached out to Gawker about the details of how the piece was reported. Editor John Cook told us that the screenshots did not, in fact, have any identifying information. “We didn’t publish any identifying information about the source of the screengrab,” Cook says. “We don’t know who sent us that shot, and neither does Uber. As you know from reading the piece, the person who sent us the information got it after an unidentified Uber employee logged into an Uber administrative console from a computer that our source had access to,” Cook wrote. “When we reached out to Uber last night, CEO Travis Kalanick helpfully confirmed the veracity of the information by threatening to claim we “outed” our source by failing to redact the timestamp information displayed in the screengrab. What he fails to understand–or is lying about in an effort to smear a critical reporter–is the fact that the person who provided us that screengrab is not the person who logged into Uber’s administrative console. If Kalanick retaliates against that employee, he will be not be punishing our source.” Regardless of the details of how they were leaked, it seems clear that these are indeed screenshots of Uber’s internal dashboard. And the vehemence of the response by Uber also appears to indicate that the information on the dashboard is revealing. Note, of course, that the of the data is not confirmed, and we’re only working off of leaked information here. The math is rough, to say the least and whatever this is, it’s likely not a complete snapshot of Uber as a company. If the readings by Valleywag, and our own crunching, are correct though, Uber is in fantastic shape. |
Publishing Platform Medium Keeps Iterating With New Photo, Layout Tools And Collection Controls | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | Medium, the blog publishing platform from Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, has today released new features and a few design changes. Medium has sprouted from a seedling to a full-fledged media tool in , recently opening sign-ups to the public. Today, however, the tool gets a bit of a revamp, with more placement and layout options for photos, giving the writer extra control over the layout of the story. Williams is calling it Medium 1.0. Here’s what he said about it in the : We’re calling this release Medium 1.0 because we feel it represents a major milestone for the product. It has all the core components to be the simple-but-powerful idea distribution system we set out to build. But, by definition, 1.0 means this is the beginning. We’re just getting started. Medium is also adding the ability to add a cover photo (including a “wash” on that cover photo) as well as the ability to place full bleed photos throughout the story. Captions can also be added. Though the refresh brings about a few additional choices, like updated fonts, the company assures us that the process “remains incredibly streamlined and simple.” Medium has also made some big changes to collections, including more robust stats and data around the curation feature. Williams admits in the blog post that collections were a bit confusing before, but says that’s about to change. From now on, collections are closed by default, keeping the creator as the sole editor of the collection unless otherwise specified. The creator, called an Editor, can then decide what other pieces to include in their collection by searching or taking submissions. Making and accepting submissions to one another’s collections is intended to create a more engaging blogging audience, with true curators floating to the top. You can take a look at the new tools . Medium continues to iterate and grow at a quick pace, but is remaining tight-lipped when it comes to any real user numbers or traction figures. But then again, this is “just the beginning” for the next-gen blogging platform.
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RISD President John Maeda Departing To Become First Design Partner At Kleiner Perkins | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | John Maeda is leaving his role as president of the Rhode Island School of Design to become a design partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Maeda made the announcement in a YouTube video (embedded at the end of this post), and it was confirmed in a news release from Kleiner. In his video, Maeda (who has been RISD president since 2008, and who previously served as associate director of research at the MIT Media Lab) said that he’ll be taking on the new role in January, and that he plans “to continue my life work at the intersection of design, technology and business.” It sounds like Maeda won’t be investing directly in startups. Instead, the firm says he’ll be working with portfolio companies “to help them build design DNA into their company cultures”, leading Kleiner’s Design Council, and also supporting . “John is a genius, a pioneer at the intersection of design, computing, art and education,” said Kleiner partner John Doerr in the release. “Today John is again breaking new ground as KPCB’s first Design Partner.” The firm also says that Maeda will be serving as chairman of eBay’s Design Advisory Board, and that he also serves on the boards of speaker company Sonos, ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, and Kleiner-backed startup Quirky. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSG3J01nILc&w=560&h=315] |
Carl Icahn Files $50B Apple Share Buyback Proposal | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | Today that activist investor Carl Icahn filed a shareholder proposal that could press Apple to increase its share buyback program. The proposal, even if it is accepted by a majority of shareholders, would not force the company’s management to take any specific action. Still, if it passed, pressure would be strong on Apple’s leaders to increase its shareholder reward programs. In response to Time’s piece, Apple confirmed that the proposal was filed and mentioned its recently increased its “capital return program.” Icahn that he is indeed looking for an “increase” in the size of the buyback program. He did note that it will not be the that was discussed earlier this year. According to , Icahn wants what appears to be an additional $50 billion in repurchases. Apple is returning mountains of cash to its investors, though those sums must be kept in proportion to its profits, and total cash position. As I : In April Apple announced that it would boost its share repurchase program from $10 billion to $60 billion, as part of a $100 billion effort, executed with cash, set to conclude by the end of calendar 2015. That represented a $55 billion increase on its formerly announced shareholder return efforts. In Apple’s estimation, it would return about $30 billion yearly to shareholders over the course of the expanded program, calculating that rate with a starting point of August 2012. Apple has issued a dividend for just over a year, at current date. The company now returns over $10 billion to investors yearly in the form of dividends. |
NSA Reportedly Tracking Cell Phone Location Data | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | According to leaked documents from whistleblower and Russian residency enthusiast, Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency is tracking people’s whereabouts en masse. By collecting the location data from billions of cell phone records, the National Security Agency can map the relationships of suspects, . The Post even has a delightfully artistic explainer video to ease our transition to an Orwellian state with a pleasant voice-over and soothing graphics (below)
As per usual, the NSA claims that the location-tracking program is completely legal. Even when users opt-out of location tracking apps, cell phones still need to connect to towers to transmit calls, which can be used to triangulate a location throughout the day. “Sophisticated mathematical techniques enable NSA analysts to map cellphone owners’ relationships by correlating their patterns of movement over time with thousands or millions of other phone users who cross their paths. Cellphones broadcast their locations even when they are not being used to place a call or send a text,” explains . The NSA also claims that only foreigners are targeted, but it does incidentally pick up data on potentially millions of Americans. Millions of people are connected to a target through . If you’re #outraged, you may be in the minority: . Still, Congress is moving forward with . Any reform will likely have to wait until the president’s NSA task force group issues its recommendations. Until then, any guesses on what else the NSA is tracking? [ ] |
No, Google Isn’t The Far Right’s Sugar Daddy | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | A report in PRWatch made it that Google has to a number of conservative groups, including Americans for Tax Reform, the CATO Institute, and Heritage Action. Americans for Tax Reform is known for its founder Grover Norquist and his , which many conservative politicians sign, promising to not raise taxes. The CATO Institute was founded with , and Heritage Action . Is Google a quiet firehose of cash to conservative causes and groups, foundations and think tanks? Not really. The company voluntarily reports a large number of groups that it supports through its U.S. Public Policy and Government Affairs team. It’s a massive list, sporting 93 “third party” names, not including trade groups and the like that Google is part of. It’s a diverse grouping, ranging from the mundane (AARP), to the unsurprising (TechNet, US Chamber of Commerce), the lefty (Center for American Progress Action Fund), and yes, the conservative, as with the groups mentioned above. The list of recipients of Mountain View’s monies include Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, a number of groups looking to help keep kids from seeing smut online (the horror!), a few university groups like the Institute for IP and Social Justice at Howard Law School, the National Association of the Deaf and the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Google therefore donates not only across political boundaries, but across issues, topics, and the like. An ideologically narrow company it is not, as it plays with both sides of the aisle. The company’s donations support its goal of fostering an open Internet. As Google depends on the Internet remaining as unfettered as possible, spending to support that cause is reasonable, and hardly something worthy of our opprobrium. Let’s take a look at how much money Google recently gave to the two political parties through its political action committee [Via ]: Google appears to be partisan. NetPAC’s full list of donations to political candidates can be found . It’s also worth considering that much of Google’s political activity can be viewed as defensive. The company has huge surface area to regulation, antitrust concerns, privacy issues, and so forth. That it donates around the D.C. area is likely an effective use of monetary capital to engender goodwill. Google doesn’t ignore the political machine, because the political machine won’t leave it alone. Also, Google, along with its cohort of Internet companies, has huge interest in the outcome of things such as net neutrality, curtailing the NSA and so forth. As such, the company has greatly . It now ranks 8th in terms of dollars spent on lobbying. Given my personal political leanings, I feel one way or the other about some of its donations, as I don’t like to see funds flowing to my foes, opponents and other scum that I dislike. But Google’s payouts appear bipartisan and intellectually diverse enough that they aren’t really anyone’s best friend. |
How Facebook Went Mobile, In Before And After Org Charts | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 4 | Facebook used to be a website translated to mobile by a tiny team, but over the last two years it’s reorganized to make every department in the company mobile-first, as revealed in two new org charts it shared today at a small press conference “Whiteboard Session” at its Menlo Park HQ. It also said its 90 open source projects have over 2,500 contributors. Below you can see the old structure of the company, followed by the new one. — Note that these charts aren’t complete, as they don’t show all the products Facebook operates, or some internal teams like infrastructure and measurement. Still, they’re illustrative of the way the company has changed. Here you can see that now, a core team handles each of Facebook’s major products, such as Messages, Events, or Photos across all interfaces. Not only does this allow a team to live and breathe their product, but since they maintain all the code for their product, they can reuse it on different interfaces. Facebook’s head of mobile release engineering Christian Legnitto explains that with the old model, the Facebook mobile team was “constantly playing catch up,” but now he says Facebook’s iOS and Android apps are “mobile first and mobile best.” Of course that sounds good in theory, though many of Facebook’s features still come to the web first. Most obviously, Facebook launched Graph Search in January 2013 and it’s still not even being publicly tested on mobile. That means it could be many more months before it rolls out to everyone — which is Facebook’s goal. Facebook is driving a lot harder and faster on mobile than it used to be, though. The new company structure also gives Facebook the resources to build critical mobile development infrastructure. For example, Legnitto showed off , a replacement for Apple’s xcodebuild that makes it easier to develop iOS and Mac products. Legnitto said “Apple’s tools are good but they’re designed for the individual developer. Their tools started to fall over at our scale” referring to its 874 million monthly mobile users and 507 million daily mobile users. Another recent project called iOS Snapshot Test Case can analyze two screenshots from before and after a code and detect broken UI elements. An engineer might not notice that the tiny divider between two buttons disappeared when they updated something else, but iOS Snapshot Test Case will catch it. Facebook has been big on open source since the company started. James Pearce, Facebook’s head of open source projects, explained that Mark Zuckerberg relied on PHP, MySQL, MemCache, and other open source technologies to build Facebook way back in the early days. Now, between Facebook’s web, data, infrastructure, and mobile open source projects, Facebook has 90 public open source products that have a combined 65,000 watchers. Its open source projects have been forked 15,000 times, have received 45,000 commits, and have 2,600 contributors who’ve signed Facebook’s contributor license agreement. Some of the projects that are most popular right now include JavaScript library React, big data engine Presto, and PHP executor HipHop Virtual Machine While Pearce says some of Facebook’s motives for its heavy involvement in open source are “benevolence” as well as an alignment with its mission to make the world more open and connected. But it’s also strategically smart. By enlisting the Open Source community, Pearce says Facebook “creates a virtual engineering capacity that goes beyond these four walls.” As for user facing products, Facebook recently rolled out a big navigation redesign alongside iOS 7, and did a major overhaul of its Messenger app. The latter would have been a much messier process in the old organization, because Messenger is designed to bridge communication across the web and mobile. This improved efficiency isn’t just some nerdy fetish for Facebook. It’s crucial to staying nimble as it competes with agile startups with low head counts and little baggage. With quick teams at Snapchat, WhatsApp, KakaoTalk pushing out rapid improvements to their messaging apps, Facebook needs this new organization if it wants to move fast on mobile without breaking too many things. |
Maxthon Reaffirms Commitment To PC With New Windows Desktop Browser | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | Cloud-based browser maker latest announcements have been for mobile products (including to be pre-loaded onto 100 million mobile devices next year). Despite keeping pace with the rapidly growing mobile market, however, Maxthon is still focusing on its desktop products. Today the company announced the release of (download link), with features like proprietary multi-threaded downloads and a third-party cookie policy meant to protect users’ privacy. Maxthon’s 120 million monthly users are divided between 60% who access its browsers mainly on desktop and 40% on mobile products. Although its mobile business is growing three times as quickly as PC, Karl Mattson, vice president of Maxthon’s International Division, says the company believes that releasing new or upgraded PC products is still a crucial part of its overall business strategy. Maxthon users are located in 150 countries. Over the last two years, its main base has shifted from the Asia region and users are now divided equally among the U.S., Russia, China and India. One of its fastest growing markets is Russia, where close to a quarter of Maxthon users are now based. According to , PC shipments there decreased 30.7% in volume year-over-year to 2.7 million units in the third quarter of 2013, a decline that reflects the desktop market’s slowdown throughout the world. But sales in the business sector, as well as new purchases after the expiration of the Windows XP operating system in April 2014, could still propel quarter-on-quarter growth, says the research firm. “We still have a number of users around the world on the PC side and we’ve found that this is not a small market. For a company like us it would be foolish to disregard it for a couple of reasons,” says Mattson. Most people still prefer using a PC to work. Making desktop browsers is also an important part of Maxthon’s cross-platform philosophy. “You still can’t beat PC or Mac browsers for monetization at a higher RPU. Mobile still has some catchup to do in terms of lifetime value per user,” says Mattson. “So any little bit that we can grow on our PC side is good for not only our cross-platform strategy and markets, but also for our bottom line financially.” Maxthon’s new Windows PC browser includes these features: So how does this translate into user experience? Maxthon claims that its new Windows PC browser is 10% faster than Chrome 30. The third-party cookie support enables “do not track” without users needing to download a plug-in first. Maxthon’s browser separates cookies from subframe pages, which means its cookie is saved in a different place. That means users can still take advantage of personalization features, including instant login, without worrying about the subframe page’s third-party cookie sharing information with other domains. The new features also reduce bandwidth consumption, which is important for users paying for flat rate data packages or per gigabyte. The multithreaded downloads, which are supposed to boost download speeds up to five times, means that your browser downloads files through five different connections at the same time. “We’re really proud of the multi-threaded piece because we’ve taken something that’s been relegated to a plug-in used by power users and made it a default experience that actually makes it a lot faster,” says Mattson. “What that translates into for users is that that movie, that video clip, that enormously large PowerPoint file that someone emailed you is going to arrive five times faster in a lot of cases.” |
Big Data Company Palantir Is Raising $58M At A Hefty $9B Valuation | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | Palantir, the big data company that secured clients like the NSA, the FBI and the CIA early on, is topping up its recent September funding round with a 50 percent bump in valuation. The company is now valued at $9 billion, according to sources familiar with the deal. An SEC filing released today showed that they are . That round valued the company at $6 billion. The company hasn’t shared the identities of the investors in both rounds. We’re hearing that the company’s revenues are set to top half a billion this year, and will do at least $1 billion in contracts next year. Founded back in 2004, the company was the brainchild of Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, who believed that the payments company’s anti-fraud technologies could be used to fight terrorism. Current CEO Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale (who went on to found Asia and Silicon Valley-focused investment firm Formation 8), Stephen Cohen and chief technology officer Nathan Gettings put together an initial product. In its early years, Palantir grew into an analysis platform that government agencies use to manage the war against terrorism and drug trafficking. Palantir’s platform pulls disparate reams of data and puts them together in a way that makes otherwise hard-to-detect patterns and connections much more visible to users. Since then, they’ve grown beyond their government clientele and have expanded into the private sector, cybersecurity and the pharmaceutical industry. The company’s earlier investors include Founders Fund, Yelp’s Jeremy Stoppelman and Ben Ling among others and they’ve raised at least $650 million. |
SurveyMonkey CEO David Goldberg On Swinging Into London To Build Out A Global Enterprise Business | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | At 14 years old, , the online feedback and survey company, is “not quite a startup anymore,” says its CEO David Goldberg. But the last year has marked what you might call a second childhood of sorts for the Silicon Valley company: a large raise of funds (some , all secondary); a launch of a whole new product branch ( ); and, now, for its hattrick, a new international push. It’s the third of these that has brought Goldberg — a seasoned enterpreneur, investor and husband to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg — to London, to meet with me in a bar high above the city in the Shard, a new skyscraper near London Bridge. We’re meeting here because although SurveyMonkey is announcing a new office in London, along with a hiring push for 50 new staff in sales, marketing and business development, it hasn’t yet found a place to call its own. Where will the company look? The answer is still (ahem) up in the air. Not in the glitzy Shard, where the rents are too high; and not necessarily in Shoreditch, where many other startups have laid down roots. As it turns out, the Shard — with London spread out beneath us — is a fitting place to meet. SurveyMonkey is arriving here with opportunity in its eyes. London will represent its biggest investment yet outside of the U.S., and it comes directly as a result of its bigger enterprise push. It comes also as part of a concerted effort by the UK government to bring more tech business to London, including encouraging a , and to commit to investing here. Today the UK is SurveyMonkey’s biggest market after the U.S., with 1.5 million users, a position that is built on enterprise and customers across organisations like the National Health Service, the oil company BP, local councils and universities, and “100% of the FTSE 100” says Goldberg. Many of these have started out as individual accounts, and so these are connections that SurveyMonkey hopes to reinforce and expand under its new enterprise licensing scheme; and, down the line, with more analytics services to make the most of the data that the surveys snag. While I had Goldberg’s attention, I got an update on what else might be happening at SurveyMonkey: — . It’s an obvious way for companies from the U.S. to scale business abroad, not to mention a way to bolt on new technologies, so will the be a route for SurveyMonkey? Goldberg says that for the moment there are no acquisitions on the cards for customer scaling purposes. “There’s not a lot of anything of any scale out there,” he told me. “That’s not to say we wouldn’t buy something. We have been looking internationally but haven’t found anything.” As for technology acquisitions, that’s a different story. The key with SurveyMonkey is that it’s launching a new business area with enterprise, and that could lead it into offering new products and services, some of which may get built internally; and some of which will not. One of those areas could be data, and specifically big data analytics. “How do we collect data and how can we help people make decisions?” Goldberg asked me rhetorically. “To call what we do a survey is very narrow. It’s data, and that’s a very, very big space.” Data intelligence could also be one way that SurveyMonkey could stay competitive against the likes of Google Surveys and (to a lesser extent) Formstack. Although SurveyMonkey counts the public sector as a strong vertical for its services, one company Goldberg rules out as a target of any kind is YouGov, the UK-based polling company. “That’s not a space we want to be in,” he said, noting that SurveyMonkey in fact already has its own panel business. And there remains a plan as well to continue to expand partnerships and integrations via SurveyMonkey’s API. Integrations like these are an important customer retention tool: “Those who use us and also use MailChimp and Eventbrite churn from us at a lower rate,” Goldberg notes. — . The money that SurveyMonkey raised earlier this year — which significant contributions from Tiger Global, Social + Capital, and others — was “100% secondary,” he said, with the funds going to employees and investors. “None of it went into the company,” he added, meaning that any acquisitions that it would make will come from its own cash reserves, as well as debt if needed. In 2012, SurveyMonkey made $62m in EBITDA, and $113 million in revenue, he tells me. It has not disclosed 2013 revenues. That funding round, he pointed out, which valued the company at some , will put off questions of an IPO for some time to come. Image: |
Job Site Dice Acquires Recruiting Startup getTalent | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | founder and CEO Abraham Shafi told me that his SuccessFactors-backed startup was just acquired by job site . With getTalent, customers (who supposedly include Walmart, MTV, and Box) can add a plug-in to their job listings and career pages, allowing visitors to sign up for a “talent community,” where they’ll receive targeted content and listings. Recruiters can also scan résumés and sign people up at job fairs. Either way, the goal is to keep job candidates engaged with the company even if they’re not the right fit for the current openings, in case something might work out down the line. Those features seems like a pretty natural fit for a job site. In fact, Shafi said getTalent will continue to operate as a standalone product. IT will also be offered as an additional service to Dice customers who want to more “source leads from all over the Internet” and incorporate “personalized messaging and engagement” into their recruiting efforts. Shafi, meanwhile, will become head of product at Dice, and the entire five-person getTalent team is moving over. When , Shafi told me that getTalent had raised $2.6 million in funding from HR software maker SuccessFactors (which itself is owned by SAP) and angel investors including Krutal Desai and Ray Wallin. He said today that it reached a point where he was considering raising more money or getting acquired. When I asked if other companies (like, oh, say, SuccessFactors) had also made acquisition offers, Shafi replied, “I can make a larger impact at Dice, getTalent can make a larger impact at Dice. I can’t publicly say what was offered, but I can say that in my decision-making process that’s what inspired me. … I wouldn’t have done it if this was just another product that was going to be put on the backburner.” The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. I’ve also emailed Dice for confirmation and comment and will update if I hear back. Dice just sent me the following statement from President Shravan Goli: “We acquired the getTalent product in October. We are pleased to have the team behind getTalent join our Dice.com development team.” |
If Instagram Isn’t Building Private Messaging, It Should Be | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | Once upon a time, Instagram was a little app for sharing photos with friends and photography buffs. Its mostly public sharing model worked at that size. But now with over 150 million users, widespread awareness, and years of people following each other, users may be holding back from posting as much because they don’t want the whole world to see what they see. That’s why it may be the right time for Instagram to launch private messaging. [ : on December 12th, TechCrunch confirms from multiple sources.] That time could come as soon as December 12th when Instagram holds a press event in New York, for which it sent out invitations today with the tagline “You are invited to share a moment with Kevin Systrom and the Instagram team.” The snail-mail invite came with a woodblock printed with an Instagram on it, leading writers, including our own , to speculate Instagram might launch some sort of physical printing option. While that might be cute, and a nice holiday gift option, I suspect (with no inside knowledge) that Instagram is actually gearing up for the launch of private messaging, a feature that last month “well-placed sources” told him Instagram is preparing to release. There are a ton of reasons this makes sense. Let’s start with why physical printing isn’t worthy of its own launch event. Last year, Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, for sending paper prints of your photos to friends. It never took off and was shut down. Facebook also launched a but eventually switched to only selling virtual gift cards. It seems Facebook hasn’t physical goods to be a big enough business to support. Meanwhile there are a slew of small startups like and that print Instagrams on everything from postcards to canvas paintings. There doesn’t seem to be a ton of additional value for Instagram to add by launching its own printing service. A simpler native integration for sending photos to or buying prints from third-party services beyond its existing APIs doesn’t seem important enough to warrant its own press blitz (though it could be a small part of the show). So why messaging? Because Instagram has outgrown public sharing. Yes, you can set your entire profile to private so only people you approve can see everything you share, but that’s privacy with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel. Most people are excited to share some photos publicly and have them shown right in the feeds of whoever follows them. In fact, they tag their photos with reams of hashtags just so they show up in more places and win them the sweet sweet validation of another Instagram heart or follower. Setting their account to private would mean their more benign pics of sunsets and lattes wouldn’t get as many eyeballs. While Instagram’s privacy model hasn’t changed much over the years from a functionality standpoint, a lot more people see the photos you post today. There’s better native discovery of photos, a web version of your profile, and an ecosystem of third-party apps for power users. That means someone who is curious about where you are and what you are doing has a lot easier time finding your photos now. But most importantly, Instagram just has way more users now than when some of its earliest, most loyal, and most engaged users joined. It’s gone from early tech adopters and artists to teens to mainstream young adults to even hosting a good number of parents. Does that growth progression ring any bells? It should because Facebook similarly went from young to mainstream to your mom. And what did that cause? A chilling effect on sharing. Posting party pics, silly jokes, or snarky perspectives on the world is a lot less appealing when you know your dad, boss, little sister, or stalker are watching. That is a dangerous trend for Instagram. It needs people constantly sharing photos to fill its feed so other people check it, are delighted…and see its new ads. Less sharing = less happiness/revenue. Meanwhile, there are plenty of apps happy to help you share photos privately. Snapchat is building a powerhouse social network on the concept of private sharing. It doesn’t matter who joins Snapchat, as the only people who see your photos and videos are the ones you send them to. Then there’s a ton of international messaging apps like WeChat, WhatsApp, KakaoTalk, and Line where people can share their precious moments privately. Perhaps if Facebook’s bid to acquire Snapchat was successful, it could use that as its private photo-sharing play. But it got , and so the burden falls on Instagram. I’d imagine Instagram messaging could fit in the top left of the app, or be worked into the existing Activity tab alongside tags and likes. Anyone you follow would be eligible to send you messages, and group messaging would be allowed. Threads would typically start with a photo and caption, and permit both photo and text replies to let people have a conversation around the moments they’re sharing. Messages could also be a private back channel for discussing photos shared publicly. Done right, private photo sharing could be a huge win for Instagram. Most people who have Snapchat probably have Instagram, too, and more of their friends are probably also on Instagram. Its size suddenly goes from a liability to an asset with private messaging. Today if your best friend shares a photo on Instagram, you might not even know. There’s no notification sent. And since Instagram is an , it has the same issue where your favorite people can get drowned out by some shutter-happy person you followed but don’t even know. You might be missing some of Instagram’s most relevant content. Without the constant stream of notifications like on Facebook, it’s easy to forget to even visit Instagram. I sometimes go weeks without checking as there’s nothing there addressed specifically to me to demand my attention. But with Instagram messaging private sharing, you can be damn sure I’d open any photo sent to me. And after that, I’d probably browse my feed, get a few more smiles, and maybe see some ads. Instagram Messages could re-engage tuned-out users. Messages could drive sign-ups for Instagram. You can already share a photo via email but then the engagement happens outside of Instagram in a decidedly crusty old medium. If I could privately message people by phone number (the identity basis for most modern messaging apps), I might lure my friends into signing up for Instagram. Private messaging could get people sharing a whole new category of photos and videos on Instagram. Intimate ones. I’m not just talking about sexy ones (though who couldn’t benefit from some blur and filters to touch up their birthday suit or flirtatious smile). I mean the other stuff people currently share on Snapchat. Funny faces. Inside jokes. Lighthearted insults. Controversial or illegal activities. Flawed portraits. Random glimpses into their current scene. These are all things you probably wouldn’t want to share with everyone, and wouldn’t want permanently associated with your profile. They don’t necessarily need to be able to disappear like Snapchats (though maybe that’d be useful), but having them buried in conversation threads would probably be enough privacy by obscurity. In a world where you get made fun of for sharing selfies, but people do it anyway, it seems clear that the world’s most beloved photo app gives a way to share on the down low. It’d certainly keep some of the photos that appear in this post from ending up on a blog somewhere. Instagram messaging could also turn the app into a true visual communication medium — one where people use it as a sort of replacement for text. Getting people constantly sending photos and captions back and forth over Instagram could rack up more engagement in a single conversation than the social network side of that app sees in a week. Right now, conversation on Instagram is restricted to its messy, unthreaded comment system. And like the chilling effect on the photos in the first place, I’m often apprehensive to share a comment publicly, especially if I only really care if the person who shot the photo saw it. I’d often be inclined to message them directly, but currently have to resort to text or Facebook message. Messaging would fix that. Maybe I’m drinking my own Kool-Aid but this seems like a wise move to make, and sooner rather than later. Sure, it would bloat Instagram a bit, making it less clear what the purpose of the once-lean app is. It might cannibalize some photos from the feed, though they might inspire more return visits and engagement as private messages. It could be seen, like Poke, as another desperate attempt by Facebook to compete with Snapchat. And it could flop, becoming a rarely used extra communication channel we’re loathe to check. But I don’t think those are big enough concerns to dissuade Instagram. The company’s mission is “to capture and share the world’s moments.” But right now it’s only broadcasting them. |
Spotify Will Launch Limited Free Mobile Access At Dec 11th Event, Source Confirms | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | Spotify plans to make mobile access to its music service free, reports. Now a source confirms with TechCrunch that the free mobile tier will launch December 11th at a press event in New York. We’ve also learned users won’t get unlimited on-demand access, but will be less restricted if they listen to playlists or collections they’ve previously created. Spotify sent out invites for the December 11th event on December 3rd, but didn’t say what would be launched. It simply noted “We’re having a media event. Like to come? There will be donuts.” But now we’ve confirmed that unveiling limited free mobile access is a big part of the show. Until now, has only allowed premium subscribers paying $10 a month to stream music from mobile devices. Free, ad-supported access was available on desktop and laptop computers, and for $5 a month users could remove the ads from those devices but not listen on mobile. But those rules were put in place years ago when smartphone penetration was lower, high-speed wireless networks were less common, and there were fewer competitors. Now the world is going mobile, and shutting users out of listening on the go unless they pay over $100 a year seems restrictive. It could also endanger Spotify’s ability to grow its paying subscriber base beyond the six million customers it has today (out of 20 million total users). Presumably, the idea before was that you’d get a taste of Spotify for free on the web, and that would tempt you to buy mobile access. However, now many people hardly use traditional computers, especially in developing markets where people never owned them and skipped straight to mobile. With no way to try out Spotify on mobile, the company had no way to upsell them to paid plans. Meanwhile, Spotify’s advertising infrastructure has matured over the year. It may be able to more efficiently sell its audio ads, making them a more viable way of earning money or at least breaking even from ad-supported listeners. That means it may be more cost-effective to support free mobile users now than before. Finally, the last year has seen Google launch a streaming music service while Apple launched iTunes Radio. It still faces competition from startups like Rdio, Slacker, and Deezer. And new music streaming services from Beats and YouTube are slated for next year, making music a crowded market. Spotify can’t risk going into the new year without a free mobile option. As for how that option will work, The Wall Street Journal’s Hannah Karp reports Spotify has spent a year quibbling with major record labels Sony, Universal, and Warner about how much control free users would get over what they listen to on mobile. The WSJ says Spotify has successfully struck a deal with the labels but users will only be able to play a limited number of songs on demand. After that, it says they’ll be restricted to listening to Spotify’s Pandora-like radio service that’s based on their tastes and input. A source gave TechCrunch more details on the restrictions, saying that users may have more freedom to listen to their previously compiled playlists or starred collection of songs. The reasoning may be that Spotify sees these subsequent plays of songs users have already shown interest in as less valuable than on-demand access to what they’ve never listened to before. Reserving infinite search-and-listen capabilities for premium customers ensures people don’t get the milk if they don’t buy the cow. When the free tier launches, these limits may not be especially easy to understand, our source says. That could confuse users, leading to poor user experiences where people think they should be able to listen to something but they can’t. They’ll blame Spotify, but sadly, they should really be blaming the labels, as they’re the ones too stingy to realize a simple user experience creates the delight that keeps users coming back, and maybe even opening their wallets. We’ll be at the December 11th event covering exactly how things shake out. |
Box Confirms It Raised $100M To Help Accelerate Global Expansion | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | The mega rounds continue to drop, with enterprise-facing cloud storage company Box confirming that it has raised in fresh outside funds. TechCrunch , meaning that Box took its time in disclosing the size of its new cash influx. The round values Box in the neighborhood of $2 billion, meaning that the company sold around 5 percent of its equity in the deal. Box, like Uber and Pinterest (and perhaps Snapchat shortly), have each raised huge sums in recent months, at valuations in the billions. Dropbox, a key competitor to Box, is said to be hunting for nine-figure funds with a valuation in the billions, as well. As a company, Box has been almost magically well capitalized. As TechCrunch previously reported: Box just raised in new funding last year, and another $25 million A new round would put Box’s funding at over $400 million total. Box famously turned down a . According to Box, the United States accounts for 60 percent of its total activity, meaning that the company’s user and customer base is largely domestic. But that could soon change, as Box stated in its announcement today that it has signed “commercial agreements” with Japanese companies to “catalyze” its introduction into that market. It hired Katsunori Furuichi there to head up its efforts. Furuichi was formerly the CEO of Verisign Japan. In addition, Box is partnering with firms in Latin America and Australia. Those firms, in conjunction with DST Global, which invested into Facebook, and Coatue, a hedge fund with a newly minted , provided the new capital. There is a huge value stack to be built on top of file storage, and Box is well aware of it. |
Google Pushes White House Petition Demanding The Government Secure A Warrant To Read Your Email | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | Google is promoting a calling for reform to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), amending it to require a warrant for the government to read the email of its citizens. In a – natch – Google asked its followers if they felt their online missives deserve the same protection as their physical mail. Sign the petition, the company continued, to “tell the government to get a warrant” before reading your email. That the petition exists is not surprising. To see Google publicly promoting it is refreshing. Since Google’s post went live, around 6,000 more people have signed the petition, which is now over halfway to the needed 100,000 signatures. What the hell is Google banging on about? Well, the ECPA is old, broken legislation that leaves us, the regular folk, unprotected from government intrusion into our affairs. As I : Written in a different era, it dictates that any email can be ordered by a mere subpoena provided that it is over 180 days old, or has been opened. Back in the last eighties, the amount of email you could store was constrained by ludicrously small hard disk space. With modern webmail systems today, you can store an unlimited amount of mail. Thus, given that the bulk of your email is either a half year old or more, or read, the government can under current law access it with little to no oversight. It’s like the NSA, but legal, and in the open. In the larger discussion concerning privacy, the United States government has lied repeatedly, something that is incredibly frustrating. However, this specific law is something that we could change, that would in fact make a positive change to our society, and the relationship between our government and ourselves. Bills have been written (including the Online Communications and Geolocation Protection Act) that would amend the ECPA, bringing it in line with our broader privacy rules, regulations and mores. Good on Google for furthering the petition. It likely won’t do much but demonstrate that there exists market appetite for reform among the more active in the electorate. Perhaps that will job Congress. One can hope. [Image: ] |
Online Code School Bloc Raises $2 Million For Its Web Development “Apprenticeship” Program | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | A company focused on teaching anyone the fundamentals of web development, , has raised $2 million in seed funding in a round led by Harrison Metal, with First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, and Learn Capital also participating. What’s interesting about Bloc is that, while it’s offering an online program that can be accessed anywhere a student has a computer and Internet access, it also retains the human element of teaching through a one-on-one connection between a learner and their mentor. Bloc was founded by fellow University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign grads (CEO) and (CTO) who had found themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area after college. The two shared a mutual interest in the education space, and began working together around two years ago on various projects. One of these, an early version of what has become today’s Bloc, debuted in early 2012 at the Launch conference, helping seed the company’s user base with the first few thousand signups. With today’s version of Bloc, the idea is to connect students directly with an experienced mentor who serves as part teacher, part code reviewer, and sometimes even pair programmer, as need be. “We believe an online apprenticeship is superior to the classroom model,” says Choxi of Bloc’s apprenticeship angle. “It’s the better way to do advanced skill training, so it’s natural that it could apply to other verticals and other topics,” he adds, hinting at the company’s broader vision as Bloc grows. Today, the company offers an intense, 12-week course that trains students in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, Rails, and more. The base price for the program is $4,250, but payment plans are available. After acceptance, students select a based on their experience, language, location and availability, then schedule three meetings per week following their initial introduction. In the subsequent weeks, students plow through a project-based curriculum built in-house, communicating with mentors during office hour sessions and chats along the way. There’s also a chat room staffed by mentors throughout the day and night, in case students are in need of help when their assigned mentor isn’t around. Throughout the course, students also have to pass through “checkpoints” where mentors review their work, then help them get it right even if it takes a few times before they succeed. The co-founders tell us that the program tends to attract those who are involved with the tech industry in some way, but don’t necessarily have technical backgrounds. Around half of the students — and Bloc has seen hundreds so far — come from some major metro area, like San Francisco. But the rest come from suburban or rural areas, which is something that speaks to the accessible nature of the online program. The other thing many students have in common is a desire to build something for themselves. “In our heads, a bootcamp is for getting a job, and Bloc is for becoming an entrepreneur,” says Paola. The program teaches students skills that would help them in this pursuit, having them build clones of sites like Reddit or Wikipedia, for example. Then mid-way through, the students pick a capstone project to work on for themselves. The idea is that they’ll have something to actually show for their work by the end of the 12 weeks, rather than just a set of skills. One graduate, Seth Seigler, was a real estate agent who completed Bloc then built an “Uber for real estate,” which he where he’s now CTO. Seigler today describes Bloc as the “perfect hybrid between the self-paced tutorials and the full-time bootcamps.” “At the end of Bloc, I knew how to learn and how to complete any project,” he says. That being said, not all students complete their training. Over the past 18 months, Bloc has had a 90 percent graduation rate. But Choxi says that the students who drop out tend to do so because they don’t have the time for a 25-hour per week commitment, and later re-enroll a couple of months later. (Bloc offers them pro-rated refunds.) “We work very hard to ensure they have a great experience and have a very good refund policy – we believe we don’t get paid unless they get results,” he says. For a class that has you diving right into Ruby, those are not bad numbers. But Bloc’s platform makes it appealing to students who probably have some inclination for tech in the first place, and are motivated by what they want to do with their resulting skills. In addition to the distributed mentors, Bloc has 13 people based in San Francisco and will use the new funding in part to hire software engineers as well as a so-called “guidance counselor,” who will help students and alumni make progress and choose their career paths. The team is also looking into expanding into new courses, such as iOS development. But for the students coming to Bloc, there’s another benefit beyond the skills they learn while attending – their one-on-one relationship with a mentor gives them an in into the tech industry – something those beyond the Bay area and other tech “hotspots” don’t always have access to. “We think that’s one of the nice things about our community of mentors…we have some who are actually Y Combinator alumni and they also know how to code,” says Choxi. “Students ask them questions that are a little bit tangential to web development, but are still relevant starting a company. That’s something you can only develop when you have a personal relationship with your mentor,” he notes. |
Apple Puts iOS 7 Adoption At 74% Based On App Store Usage Numbers | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | Apple has just updated its to show the distribution of devices on different versions of iOS, and iOS 7 now commands a significant league, with 74 percent of devices using the major overhaul released alongside the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c in September. iOS 7 usage has increased 10 percent since October according to Apple’s numbers, which is remarkable growth especially given the drastic nature of the changes in this update, which includes a complete visual overhaul of all OS elements. Even more impressive is the fact that another 22 percent of active App Store users are running iOS 6, which means that together, a full 96 percent of iOS customers are running just the two most recent versions of the mobile OS, while Android still has a much more scattered distribution. That kind of traction is great news for developers, since they can target the vast majority of active iOS users with less effort than if that distribution reflected earlier versions of the OS. In the case of iOS 7 specifically, however, since it’s so different from older versions of iOS, getting just about everyone into that big bucket of current version users becomes even more important. Outside firms are seeing similar adoption rates, with that over 70 percent of traffic on iPhone and iPad in North America is coming from iOS 7 on its network. That means uptake is happening at a much quicker pace than it did with iOS 6, which took half a year to reach 83 percent, so apps targeting iOS 7 only likely have little to fear in terms of limiting their user pool. |
Facebook: Brands Will Have To Work Harder (Or Buy Ads) For Your Attention — But Fans Still Matter | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | It’s going to get harder and harder for many businesses to reach fans on Facebook without paying for ads — that’s the message of sales material that the company sent to partners, as A year ago, there were rumors that Facebook was holding back the organic (non-paid) reach of Pages in order to drive businesses to its ad products, but the company said it was just cracking down on spam, and Now, Facebook admits that organic reach is declining, something it blames on the fact that there’s just so much content (not to mention the fact that ). In the sales deck, Facebook first says it expects “organic distribution of an individual Page’s posts to gradually decline over time,” then it suggests, “to maximize delivery of your message in News Feed, your brand should consider using paid distribution.” To address the issue, the company that included a link to the aforementioned sales deck (embedded at the end of this post) and outlined the situation thusly: People are connecting and sharing more than ever. On a given day, when someone visits News Feed, there are an average of 1,500 possible stories we can show. As a result, competition for each News Feed story is increasing. Because the content in News Feed is always changing, and we’re seeing more people sharing more content, Pages will likely see changes in distribution. For many Pages, this includes a decline in organic reach. We expect this trend to continue as the competition for each story remains strong and we focus on quality. But even if, as Facebook says, this is just an inevitable consequence of more sharing, the situation could still seem unfair to some business, particularly if they’ve put effort and money into acquiring a fan base on the social network. What’s the point if their messages are going to reach an ever-decreasing percentage of those fans? Well, Facebook says “The fans you have matter.” In fact, the sales deck lists a number of benefits to acquiring fans, including improving organic distribution and getting more insight about your audience. The number one reason? “Improving ad effectiveness.”
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Keen On…Jessica Rosenworcel: Why Silicon Valley And Washington DC Can’t Live Without Each Other | Andrew Keen | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | There are, of course, many libertarians in Silicon Valley who see Washington DC as the mortal enemy of innovation. But according to Commissioner , who was appointed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by Barack Obama in 2012, Silicon Valley needs to “participate more” in DC. Entrepreneurs “need a referee”, she told me, especially in critical areas like spectrum policy – what Rosenworcel describes as the “consummate scarce resource” that, she insists, is critical for “generating innovation” in our increasingly mobile future. But just as Silicon Valley needs Washington DC, Rosenworcel acknowledges, the Beltway needs to do a better job working with Silicon Valley which, she says, is “justifiably revered”. And Rosenworcel herself might be a model for a more switched-on legislator who not only is wired into the start-up tech community but is even on . So rather than spectrum, perhaps, it’s Rosenworcel who is the – the cool FCC Commissioner as much at home in Silicon Valley as she is in Washington DC. |
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Filing Indicates Snapchat Is Looking To Raise $54.5M At Around A $2B Valuation | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | According to a filing uncovered by , Snapchat has authorized a new share class called Series C Preferred. The class of 1.6 million shares is set to be valued at $34.0893 each, according to a comment the group , or $54.54 million in total. The funding pegs the value of Snapchat at around $2 billion. Snapchat’s last round, earlier this year, had a valuation of around half that. Before the Series C Preferred stock class was created, Snapchat had . It is not clear that Snapchat has sold out the Series C Preferred shares that it authorized. So, the round could itself be open and looking for cash. However, the valuation that it implies for Snapchat is lower than many anticipated. Rumors were standard fare in recent weeks, as were reports that Facebook or other social players were looking at the company. Snapchat, a quickly growing ephemeral messaging network, is the belle of the tech ball, despite its innocence when it comes to revenue. The company recently to be its COO, perhaps hinting at monetization in the coming year. Snapchat is merely one of several companies raising huge sums. Pinterest recently took down at a valuation of $3.8 billion, and Uber nailed from Google Ventures at a valuation of $3.76 billion, post-money. Snapchat’s second tranche of cash this year could indicate that the company suffers from a high burn rate, or that it’s simply looking for fresh capital to help it mature as a business. $2 billion, though lower than some expected, is still a rich valuation for the young company. |
eBay Pushes Into Curating And Selling Digital Goods, Launches Dedicated Marketplace For Digital Comics | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | eBay has long been known as the de facto marketplace for buying and selling physical goods. But today the marketplace giant is making an interesting move into digital goods, launching a dedicated marketplace for Via a limited beta test in the U.S., the marketplace allows you to purchase and read digital comics, in the same way you would via the App Store or through Amazon. Previously, eBay to be sold by merchants but it’s limited. Now eBay is actually taking part in the curation and selling of content. We’re told eBay is partnering with , an online marketplace for digital comics, to power the purchasing and reading experience. Via the new eBay Digital Comics marketplace you can browse and view collections by character. When you click on a comic book of interest, you are taken to the comic book’s page on the comiXology site. Purchasers will need to create a comiXology account or log in with an existing account to complete the purchase. You need to buy on the desktop experience but you can access and read comics on a phone or tablet, we’re told. By next year, we hear that eBay will be launching a similar test in Europe. Obviously extending eBay’s presence in digital goods could even expand to other verticals like movies and books; more verticals are likely, we hear. The company seems to be testing a number of out-of-the-box ideas over the past few months. This latest initiative is part of the eBay Innovations Group, which is also responsible for the and its |
Google’s Voice Search On Android And iOS Can Now Answer Questions In German, French And Japanese | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | Google has long had a thing for voice search, but until now, the only language it fully supported was English. Even though voice search itself is available for a , the only language Google could respond in with spoken answers was always English. That’s changing today. Google just that its Search app for and can now speak out answers in French, German and Japanese. If you speak German, French or Japanese, you can now easily try this new feature on your mobile phone. Just ask it “Wo bekomme ich Kaffee in München?” and it will happily show you coffee shops in Munich. For now, this is only available on mobile, but given that Google has started to build voice support into virtually all of its services, chances are that it will also bring it very soon. |
We Need Your Help To Design The Hardware Battlefield Trophy | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | We are about to embark on amazing adventure and we need your help. In January we are holding our first in Las Vegas, Nevada to coincide with CES. We will bring 15 great hardware startups, a gaggle of amazing judges, and a 3D-printed trophy of your design. We need 3D designers to build us an amazing, open source trophy that Shapeways will print for us. If your model is chosen you will receive a and our unending appreciation as well as a link to your work. How do you enter? Create a 3D model taller than six inches and submit it to with the tag “Techcrunch.” Email me, , when you’ve uploaded your model and we will pick a winner at the middle of December. You will receive a print and we will use another copy as our Hardware Battlefield trophy. What are we looking for? Anything as long as it looks great as a trophy, is sufficiently regal-looking, and is amazing. We want robots, planetoids, and 3D printer nozzles blown up to maximum resolution. We want something that epitomizes the spirit of adventure, fun, and hard work that it takes to make a cool hardware startup. So enter today. We need you and we want our Hardware Battlefield winner to go home with an amazing trophy of your design. |
Airfy Is A Wi-Fi Hotspot That You Wouldn’t Be Ashamed To Take Home To Mother | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | Wi-Fi routers are usually boring. Designed to look as innocuous as possible, designers basically go for the “black box with lights on it” approach and head home. Not . Originally introduced at Berlin, Airfy is one of the sexiest Wi-Fi routers I’ve ever seen. It looks like a cross between an Art Deco lamp and a Legend of Zelda Rupee. While the device is a fully-compliant 802.11ac/n router, it also acts as a Bluetooth iBeacon and allows you to set up a sort of local, wireless point-of-sale system in your office or shop. Using a mobile app, the service supports mobile payments via a proprietary POS gateway. Finally, the device can also act as a shopping aid. Not running a corner shop? The Airfy also has 50 built-in LEDs that light up when various things happen on your system. For example, you can have it change color for Facebook updates, commerce sales, or phone calls and you can use to program interactive features. You can also add features like “paid” surfing, commercial-based free wi-fi (users can watch a quick commercial to log into your router) and the data is WPA2 encrypted. As a stretch goal the team will add a camera to the mix, allowing you to use the router as a home security device and a built-in audio out for wireless streaming. In short, they stuck everything in here but the kitchen sink. The and their standalone beacons will cost $49. They are looking for $100,000 and have raised $2,000 so far. The site is a bit nebulous as to how they’re going to pull off their most exciting features – especially the virtual POS system – but that’s what Indiegogo is for. Considering we’ve seen these routers in the flesh and came away impressed, however, I’m sure the team will figure out all the vagaries before they hit the stores. |
Who Is The Real Satoshi Nakamoto? One Researcher May Have Found The Answer | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | The Internet did something strange last week. When a researcher named Skye Grey , the interest was muted but optimistic. Did Grey, who declined to go into much personal detail, crack the code? Or was it, as always, just a matter of lucky conjecture. Whether or not Satoshi is a real person, group of people, or some sort of government entity is important. It gives closure to the currency’s origin story and it can confirm or deny a whole host of rumors and innuendo bandied about in the fringier corners of the Bitcoin market. If BTC were a way to get us out from under the government, why is Satoshi so secretive? While Grey’s analysis is still being proved or disproved, the process, in the end, is fascinating. Given that Grey’s analysis was, on the surface, solid, I reached out for a short interview. SG: Originally it was simple curiosity that drew me to the question. I like mysteries. Then I decided to publish what I found for two reasons:
– so that other people could attack my method and findings, or validate them. I want certitudes, and keeping for me what I had found would not get me anywhere.
– so as to address people’s concerns that a “bad guy” might have created Bitcoin. I think this question is what could harm the mainstream adoption of Bitcoin in the near future. SG: I am not certain it’s Nick Szabo, but I have quite a few independent pieces of evidence pointing in his direction, each one interesting in itself:
– text analysis (only 0.1% of cryptography researchers could have produced this writing style –again, please, attack my methods on this)
– fact that Nick was searching for technical collaborators on the bit gold project (a very similar cryptocurrency) a few months before the announcement of Bitcoin (and then the bit gold project became perfectly silent)
– lack of citation of Nick’s work by Satoshi, whereas he cited other, less related cryptocurrencies
– lack of reaction on Nick’s part about Bitcoin, whereas a decentralized currency like Bitcoin had been a major project of his for 10 years
– fact that Nick deliberately post-dated his bit gold articles to look posterior to Bitcoin, shortly after the announcement of Bitcoin Currently I am in contact with two different persons who will be running their own independent textual analysis to confirm my own. SG: I think it’s very important to identify Satoshi at this point in Bitcoin’s history. The “agenda” behind Bitcoin, if there is any, cannot stay in the shadow if Bitcoin is to become a mainstream alternative currency, a challenge to the world’s monetary status quo. There has been speculation that Bitcoin may have been created by a government agency (the main employers of cryptographers of mathematicians) in an attempt to make financial transactions easier to mine for interesting data patterns: we need to clear that up before we start relying heavily on Bitcoin in our lives. I think it would be great news for Bitcoin if Nick Szabo turned out to be the mastermind behind it. Nick appears to be a remarkably brilliant, disinterested polymath academic. Who would you rather have at the origins of Bitcoin, a visionary professor and collaborators, or spooks? SG: It has not been received well, many people are telling me to “leave Satoshi alone”. But when one starts having a huge impact on the world, one loses his right to anonymity. Satoshi currently holds about BTC 1M, valued at USD $1B, and has the power to potentially crash the Bitcoin markets. We need to know who the people who have power over us are, and what their intentions are. This is why we require background checks on our elected leaders. In the same way we need a “background check” on the Bitcoin system before we start handing it our monetary exchanges. Next would be to know what has become of Satoshi’s BTC stash. The anonymous figure of Satoshi probably played a role in the early adoption of Bitcoin (“we are all Satoshi”), because the mystery created a powerful story drawing in early enthusiasts. Now this anonymity has become an obstacle to mainstream adoption, because there is legitimate concern over the origins and purpose of Bitcoin. SG: It’s rather easy. We all use language in our own particular way: the probability distribution over rare expressions, sentence structures, and stop words in our writing constitute a “signature” of sorts. It is not nearly as uniquely discriminative as a fingerprint, or DNA, but it is discriminative enough to distinguish one person out of a few hundreds or even thousands. For some people who tend to have more particular tics, like authors or academics, it constitutes a solid identification process. In the case of Satoshi, I identified a number of unusual content-neutral expressions used both in Satoshi’s whitepaper and in Nick’s papers. For 4 of these expressions, I was able to estimate (using Google Scholar) the proportion of researchers in the cryptography community susceptible of using these expressions in a paper. These proportions are respectively 15%, 10%, 15%, and 50%. Assuming the use of each one is independent of the use of the others, the joint probability of finding a researcher using all of them in their writing is on the order of 0.1%. So this particular combination of writing tics could identify one cryptographer out of 1000. Even if these approximations are off by a large factor, the joint probability will stay quite small. SG: Nick is by far the number one candidate. I have nothing else significant enough to be worth mentioning. SG: Let’s say I have between 1 and 10 BTC. I am not heavily invested in Bitcoin, but I am definitely bullish on its adoption prospects. |
Index Ventures Leads €10M Series C In Online Plus-Size Fashion Retailer, Navabi | Natasha Lomas | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | has led a €10 million Series C round in , an online retailer for plus-size fashion. Existing investors, which include and , also participated in the round. The German startup was founded back in 2007, and has raised some €13.5 million to date. Navabi sells clothes from a range of designer fashion brands — including Anna Scholz, Manon Baptiste and Roberto Cavalli White — as well as its own label clothing, in sizes 12 to 28. This portion of the fashion market is apparently an expanding one as, presumably, more waistlines expand. Plus-size fashion has also been underserved by traditional retailers and brands, fuelling demand for navabi’s premium plus-size apparel approach. The startup cites Mintel market research that suggests the addressable market is already a huge one, with an estimated 50%+ of the female population in Europe wearing plus-sized clothing. But more growth is forecast, with the segment predicted to grow faster than traditional apparel sales. Mintel is forecasting the U.K. market alone will grow to nearly £6 billion by 2015, up from £3.81 billion in 2008. Navabi said the new funding will be used to maintain its “rapid growth rate” in Germany and to accelerate growth in the international markets it operates in — with particular focus (outside of its home market) planned for the U.K., U.S. and France. Currently around a third (30%) of its €30 million revenue comes from the U.K. and the U.S. It added that its turnover is “more than doubling” year on year. It is also planning to use the funding to push into a number of additional international markets in the next few years, and to “explore” other fashion categories, i.e. in addition to premium apparel, that might be of interest to its plus size customers. |
Gift Guide: Tools And Toys For The Amateur Or Master Photographer | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | Taking pictures is fun, frustrating and rewarding. But the right gear helps minimize the frustration and bump up the other two. This guide covers a range of photographers, from amateur mobile shooters to those with the best gear operating at or near the professional level, so there should be something for everyone. And remember: When in doubt, batteries. This is a , with an extremely pleasing outer design and functionality that will make the biggest rangefinder nerd sing with secret joy inside their heart. The X100s debuted at CES last year, but it’s not showing its age yet – and it improves autofocus greatly over the original X100, which was itself a strong performer save for that one failing. If it’s low light and candid you’re after, in a relatively portable package with extensive manual controls, the X100s is it. The Fujifilm camera listed above is great for advanced users, but the is an affordable mirrorless interchangeable lens camera that fits the needs of much more novice and general photographers. The 5T offers Wi-Fi sharing over the lower cost 3N, which is why it gets my vote, since that’s becoming a much more important convenience factor with the increased mobile editing power built-in to many of today’s best smartphones and tablets. Speaking of those devices, takes the cake as the photographer’s best friend while on the road. That big, beautiful Retina display combined with the thin and light design of Apple’s latest 9.7-inch tablet make it the perfect blend of form and function for use in the field. And that A7 processor promises big improvements for image editing performance on the tablet, especially as software makers like Adobe capitalize on its newfound abilities. Also for the mobile photographer, the has just undergone a redesign that makes it compatible with virtually any smartphone device. The original was a single piece of ABS plastic, but this one introduces a single moving part to accommodate devices of different thicknesses. You might not think that tripod-mounting your iPhone or Galaxy S4 is going to make a huge difference to your pictures, but with apps that cater to long exposures and for surprisingly sharper results, traditional tools like a tripod can’t be beat. I am constantly rethinking my ideal camera bag, but the has remained on top of the heap for the longest time now, and I don’t foresee ditching it anytime soon. It lugs everything I need with ease, including laptop, chargers and cables in addition to one or two bodies and a number of lenses. It’ll weigh a ton fully loaded, but the straps distribute the weight evenly to save your back, and it’s so sturdily constructed it’ll last for years even under the heaviest of loads. |
Google’s Compute Engine Hits General Availability, Drops Instance Prices 10%, Adds 16-Core Instances & Docker Support | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | Google today the general availability of the , the cloud computing platform it launched . As part of the GA launch, Google also announced expanded support for new operating systems, a 10 percent drop in pricing for standard instances, new 16-core instances for applications that need a lot of computation power and a new logo to update its branding. Compute Engine is the cloud platform Google has developed on top of the vast infrastructure it manages to run its own search engine and its other properties. The company offers 24/7 support and promises a 99.95 percent update in its . Besides lowering the price of all standard instances by 10 percent, Google is also dropping the price of persistent disk storage by 60 percent, as well as I/O charges for it “so that you get a predictable, low price for your block storage device.” The company also says that its largest persistent disk volumes now have up to 700 percent higher I/O capability. Until now, Compute Engine supported and , customized with a Google-built kernel. Starting today, developers will also be able to use any out-of-the-box Linux distribution, including and , the Y Combinator alum with the OS designed to mimic Google’s cloud infrastructure. The company is also announcing official support for SUSE, FreeBSD and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (currently ). As part of this update, Google is also announcing support for , the increasingly popular tool for creating virtual containers from any application. With Docker, developers can build and test an application on their laptops and then move this container to a production server for deployment. The company submitted Docker as an open-source project last month. Docker fits with CoreOS, a project that was started by Alex Polvi, the founder of Cloudkick, which he later sold to Rackspace. Docker actually comes packaged with CoreOS so applications can be moved between different services. That’s important as it offers ways for developers to easily use multiple cloud services without locking themselves into a single vendor. For developers who need a more computational power than Google can offer so far, the company today launched three new 16-core instance types (until now, the maximum number of virtual cores on Compute Engine was 8). Google expects developers will use these to perform tasks that “range from silicon simulation to running high-scale NoSQL databases.” Overall, Google’s range of instance types can’t quite compete , but today’s launch allows it to offer a service for developers with very high demands, which may just keep some of them from moving to Amazon’s EC2 platform. One instance type Google doesn’t offer yet, however, is GPU instances. Amazon has offered GPU instances since 2010. Last month, the company a new instance, which are optimized for graphics and GPU compute applications. |
Eleven James Is A New Startup That Lets You Rent Your Wrist Wear | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 2 |
Why should the ladies have all the fun? Like and , a new start-up, , is offering something men may find alluring: the opportunity to wear a cool new watch every few months for a monthly fee. Founded by Randy Brandoff, former CMO of NetJets and Marquis Jet, the company isn’t positioning itself as a rental service per se. The concierge service costs $249 a month to wear three “cheaper” watches worth around $10,000 per year ($449 for six) and $459 a month for a Connoisseur Collection selection of higher end brands. The “Virtuoso” tier gets you three crazy expensive pieces for $899 or six for $1,599 a month. You wear them around, flashing your bling hither and yon, and then return the watches for cleaning and they’re sent to another member. To be clear, if $10,000 for a “low-end” watch sounds ludicrous, you’re probably not the target audience. Instead the company is aiming at folks who may not want want to dump a few months’ salary on a watch and instead want something fancy to wear to work and about town. Because, for some watch snobs, being strapped to one watch can be as terrible as being strapped to none at all, Eleven James offers a bit of choice and a personal concierge will walk you through potential selections and styles. Their collection includes items from IWC, Panerai, Patek Phillipe, and the like. They have just completed a beta group of testers and now have 100 or so members who will receive a new watch every few months, depending on demand, and get invites to parties and other watch-centric events in their home cities.
Eleven James also hopes to become a watch trade-in service, allowing its customers to drop their old watches off on consignment or even to enter them into rotation. There is some talk internally with brands who are interested in using this as a marketing exercise and the company has created a special algorithm to match members with watches depending on their preferences. Brandoff didn’t want to make this just another rental service. “The luxury market has evolved to a world prioritizing access and experiences,” he said. “Private jets, vacation homes, classic cars, and many other historically prized possessions have all become accessible via various club and shared ownership models that have multiplied in offerings and popularity.” He’s simply following that trend, he said. The company received $1.4 million in seed funding backed by numerous strategic investors, including Box Group, WGI Group, Kenny Dichter, Ken Austin, Brian Distelberger, Ed Moran, and Jason Saltzman. While it may not make sense for many non-watch nerds, it seems like a great way to get new brands into the hands of fans and, more important, bring back the age-old, timeless habit of strapping on a bit of Swiss frippery and strolling down the boulevard, a jaunty tune on your lips and a merry “Good day” offered to all and sundry. A guy can dream. |
Drop ‘Til You Shop Harnesses Our Burning Desire To Nab A Deal To Turn Over Unsold Goods | Eliza Brooke | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | Compulsive shoppers, meet your worst enemy. It’s not Cyber Monday. A new e-commerce site called launches tomorrow. The aim, as the name might suggest, is to gamify bargain shopping. Focusing on fashion, jewelry, ticketing, electronics, and hotels/cruise deals to begin with, Drop ‘Til You Shop helps retailers turn over discounted or end-of-season inventory. A price ticker below each item runs down, and users hit it when they see a number they like; they’re then transferred to a checkout page, and the first person to check out wins the item. It’s something like the last 30 seconds of an eBay bidding war, as well as a nifty way to get people to buy unsold products in an adrenaline-fueled tizzy of competitiveness. , the Australian startup behind Drop ‘Til You Shop, raised $1.25 million in venture round funding from Robin Hood Ventures and DreamIt Ventures last month, having graduated from DreamIt’s Philadelphia accelerator program in 2012. While Drop ‘Til You Shop fits in with the landscape of flash sales, daily deals, and the aforementioned eBay bidding wars, the behavior it’s promoting is somewhat more obsessive than those sites, which someone might visit once a day. CEO Nick Rosenthal said that since the site has been in beta, user sessions are clocking in at 30+ minutes, and they’re coming back in the same day to check back. After launch, retailers will be able to embed Drop ‘Til You Shop on their own sites. Drop ‘Til You Shop can generate margins of up to 40 percent with certain products, and the startup takes a percentage cut of each sale depending on whether it took place on the retailer’s site (around 8-10 percent) or on its own site (about 18-20 percent). The return on discounted items can be particularly meaningful in some industries, Rosenthal said, as with cruise tickets. The price range on any given ticker is determined by user activity in real time, and it might run faster or slower — or last longer — according to the same. The algorithm takes into account the total average margin targeted by the retail partner, and it’s looking to meet that against user behavior. “It becomes like a multiplayer game. What I do has an immediate impact on you,” Rosenthal said. Just like Black Friday, but without the scratch marks. |
The Chernin Group Nabs A Majority Stake In Anime Video Distributor Crunchyroll | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | The Chernin Group confirmed today that it has acquired a majority stake in anime video distribution company . The deal was in October and gives Peter Chernin’s investment company one of the largest streaming sites out there, with viewers in more than 160 countries worldwide. Like Hulu, which earlier this year, Crunchyroll has both a free, ad-supported video offering, as well as a subscription video-on-demand offering for anime fans. It’s available online and on a wide range of devices, including phones, tablets, game consoles, and streaming video boxes like Apple TV and Roku. In addition to video, Crunchyroll also provides e-commerce, news, and community features for viewers. With the investment by Chernin, the company is expected to dabble into new channels outside of its core anime vertical. |
PC Market Will Contract 10.1% In 2013, 3.8% In 2014, And Bottom Out North Of 300M Yearly Units | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | Today IDC for the global PC market, estimating that 2013 sales will fall 10.1 percent, which is a slightly higher than the 9.7 percent the firm had previously anticipated. The PC market has had a year of historically bad proportions. That in mind, IDC does expect PCs to fare better in 2014, with a contraction of 3.8 estimated. That’s the bottom of the curve, however, as IDC expects sales rates to become “slightly positive in the longer term.” Following its predictions, PC sales should not fall below the 300-million mark on a yearly basis. That’s good news for Microsoft, as it works to drive its Windows 8.x operating system into the homes of consumers and corporate clients – the more PCs it sells running its new operating system, the more downloads that the Windows Store will see, helping the software company pitch its platform to yet reticent developers. PC usage remains strong, with IDC noting that, in terms of hours spent, phones can’t match the workplace utility of a personal computer. However, there is low market appetite to replace aging systems, something that has likely annoyed Microsoft as it seeks to reform the Windows operating system. With sales predicted to hover around 300 million, PCs will continue to sell around 25 million units per month, or 75 million per quarter around the world. In 2012, for reference, almost 350 million PCs were sold. Still, the 300 million minimum threshold – which IDC predicts at least into 2017 – will provide a floor for the larger players in the PC market: Microsoft, Intel, Dell, and so forth. So in many ways, we are post-PC, but as emerging markets continue to purchase PCs at quick paces, the market appears almost stable. It is sometimes assumed, incorrectly (I was guilty of this, I must admit), that the PC market is on a decline without end, that it will continue to contract until it all but dries up and blows away. Apparently not. 300 million is a lower floor than many wanted, but it is more than enough units to support the larger PC ecosystem. The corporate PC market is making up for, at least partially, larger losses in consumer PC demand. For 2013, IDC expects the commercial market for PCs to fall 5 percent. Consumer sales are to slip 15 percent. So we’re seeing upgrade cycles to Windows 7, likely from companies moving from Windows XP, provide ecosystem stability. Microsoft’s Windows 8.x operating system is aimed at changing consumer and, yes, enterprise demands. If it can find market resonance, perhaps the PC market will recover more quickly than expected. This year will remain a black mark on the world of PCs, however, no matter how well December fares. PCs: Not dead, but just not as popular as before. |
Rentals Delivered By Drone Could Make Ownership Obsolete | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | Why buy something when you could rent it, have it instantly delivered when you need it, and taken away when you’re done? While Amazon’s unveiling of its drone-powered delivery service could make buying easier, it’s drone pick-up that could make it so we don’t need to buy things at all. The sharing economy holds the promise of a more efficient, collaborative way of living. Startups like Airbnb and GetAround are thriving by making use of our empty apartments and parked cars. It’s proving feasible for humans to share housing and transportation, but we haven’t quite figured out the sharing of most objects. Perhaps the biggest hurdle is delivery and pickup. A few startups like have tried and failed to let you rent things from other normal people. Need a stud finder or hot glue gun? Don’t buy one and rarely use it. Instead, search in your town for someone who has what you need and rent it. Problem is, who wants to drive across town and back twice to scoop up a rental and drop it off when they’re done? Factor in the travel time plus gas and it might be easier/cheaper to just buy the object. But drones. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98BIu9dpwHU&w=853&h=480] Amazon t showed off its experimental unmanned aerial vehicles that could one day deliver what you buy from its e-commerce site. The hope is that within five years, Amazon Prime Air’s autonomous drones could deliver items weighing up to 5 pounds (84 percent of what Amazon ships) within 30 minutes to the right locations. Caveats abound. As notes, it could be a long-time, perhaps 2020, until the FAA determines drone delivery is safe enough and the red tape is navigated to permit it. reports that lawmakers want better drone privacy rules. Even then, the Washington Post explains that drones might need human pilots that could kill their cost-effectiveness for deliveries/pick-ups. Sure, there’s plenty to poo-poo. But it’s hard not to imagine that robots will eventually alter the landscape of how goods move about. While he’s normally focused on filesharing and identity, Facebook Director Of Product Management has been thinking for a while (and even did a Tedx talk) about how robots will enable the “ .” He believes Uber, Google’s self-driving cars, and Amazon Prime Air are all pushing us in the same direction — a world where we buy less and share or rent more. This morning that Amazon Prime Air “is actually all about the backhaul. It will be cool when drones can deliver something to you in 30 min… it will be much much cooler when the drone can pick it back up when you are done with it. Drones (and self driving cars) are the key to the ‘sharing’ economy.” He’s right. Today, the most convenient way to have access to something you want is to own it and keep it where you live. That’s because the process of having something delivered is too costly, cumbersome, and slow to do every time you need it. Luckily we’re seeing delivery times get shorter at a dizzying pace. Until recently, a few days to a few weeks was the quickest you could get something brought to your door. Then Amazon’s shipping empire enabled affordable and reliable two-day and next-day delivery. Now there’s a slew of companies, including , and , vying to offer same-day delivery where you order something in the morning and get it by night. Still, people don’t want things soon. They want them NOW. A 30-minute Amazon Prime Air is the closest approximation of “now” we’ve seen yet. It’s one reason Amazon’s little drone video is a viral hit today (a savvy way to show Amazon is to love or work for, as well as keep the e-commerce service top of mind on Cyber Monday). Yet the greatest impact of robotic delivery might not be owning things quicker, but rather not having to own them in the first place. That’s because once you can have something approximately now, the functional difference between ownership and rental disappears. What if rather than buying with Amazon Prime Air, you rented? Jeff Bezos’ drones could pick up your item when you’re done with it and bring it back to the warehouse, or even directly to another customer. Imagine if this means that, rather than buying something for $100, you might only use once or twice, you could rent it for $25 each time you needed it. You could save money with minimal additional inconvenience. You’d already have to wait for the initial delivery if you bought it, so the only price you pay for your discount is the 30-minute wait times on subsequent deliveries. Perhaps drones aren’t the answer. There are . Maybe we’ll 3D print what we currently buy. And there will always be things too big to be conveniently shlepped around. But eventually, I’d bet it won’t be humans delivering the pizzas, tools, electronics, clothes, and many other things we buy or borrow today. If the shift is heralded by centralized companies like Amazon, we might see trucks full of drones deployed to more remote areas. The drones could fan out to do their deliveries and pickups, and return to the truck to be brought back to the warehouse. The end of ownership could also be fueled by a decentralized peer-to-peer model. Maybe you buy things you use relatively frequently, but keep them in a storage unit just outside of town and rent them out via drones when you don’t need them. That means your house or apartment could be smaller because you’d have fewer unused things to store. Either way, as Lessin wrote on earlier this year, storage/shipping/drone launch pad real estate near big cities could become more valuable to Amazon and everyone. And while there are plenty of issues with airborne drones, similar value could be offered by road-based self-driving cars. could one day team up to start carry objects instead of just people. Though it could take decades, the repercussions of this shift away from ownership are numerous. We might buy less stuff and all objects would spend more of their existence being used rather than in a closet, so we wouldn’t have to manufacture as many copies of things. That could put lots of people out of work. No, there aren’t enough drone repairman jobs to make up for all those lost on the assembly line and delivery chain. On the brighter side, what happens to the savings we score from rental over ownership? Sure, we might pocket it. But we could also rent higher-quality versions of the cheap things we would have bought, or rent things we never would have gotten to use at all. Perhaps most exciting of all is what the transition from owning to sharing could mean for our psyches. Maybe a rental economy wasn’t what the Buddha intended when he said we must cast off material possessions to achieve nirvana. But the sharing economy could make status less about the things we own, and more about what we do with them. |
E La Carte Scores Deal With Applebee’s, Bringing 100,000 Tableside Tablets To All U.S. Locations By Year-End 2014 | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | Applebee’s, the largest casual dining chain in the U.S., has signed a deal with restaurant tablet hardware and software provider , which will see it introducing 100,000 tableside tablets to its locations starting in 2014, with the rollout completed by year-end. This represents one of the largest tableside tablet rollouts to date in any private enterprise, as Applebee’s serves around a million guests per day. “Tablets are going to be in front of a lot more consumers at restaurants than they were before,” says E la Carte CEO Rajat Suri of the agreement with DineEquity, which operates the Applebee’s chain as well as IHOP. There are 1,860 domestic Applebee’s restaurants, 99+% of which are franchise owned, the company tells us. While owners have freedom with vendor choice in some areas, in this case, the introduction of E la Carte tablets is not optional – though it’s one where the owners participated in making the initial decision. E la Carte has that its Presto tablets help restaurants achieve 10 percent sales boosts, seven-minute faster table turns, and 9X increases in loyalty program sign-ups. Applebee’s doesn’t currently have a loyalty program, but this is something that tablets would now make easier to implement. In fact, the company is already testing a version of this program in some stores. Further down the road, that program could also be tied into personalized offers and suggestions, as the E la Carte system could remember customers’ past orders, likes and interests. You may think putting tablets tableside puts wait staff at a disadvantage, as there could be a perception that staff is not working as hard as before now that customers enter their own orders and handle paying their own bill. But the reality is that wait staff generally accepts and likes having the devices around. That’s because the tablet checkout process suggests different tip options, based on percentages – similar to the NYC taxi cabs. This has been shown to increase the size of the tip, reports indicate, as leaving a decently sized tip is now easier than having to change the options on the screen to leave a smaller one. According Applebee’s communications manager Dan Smith, the company is first using the tablets to showcase its appetizers, drinks and desserts menus – not the full restaurant menu. But the latter option will come in time. This will also allow the restaurants to reduce their print collateral, which today includes several extra menus, inserts and table caddy menus, which it will now cut down on. Customers can use the Android-based E la Carte tablets to browse and add items to a cart, as if they were online shopping, and then pay their bill when the meal is over. In addition, the tablets include a dozen or so games to keep guests occupied until the food comes. There are a couple of free games and several 99-cent games including word games, a memory game, connect the dots and paint for kids, and more. Diners are also able to sign up for the company newsletter, and later on, may be able to control the restaurant jukebox (if available), too. The deal is notable not only as a big win for E la Carte specifically, but could set the stage for more restaurant tablet rollouts nationwide, given Applebee’s sizable footprint. “Everyone looks up to them,” says Suri. “When a group like this decides to [put tablets on every table, it’s a big statement to the entire restaurant industry that they believe tablets on tables are going to be the way people are going to dine in the future.” E la Carte has been working on making tableside tablets a standard since 2008, Suri says, “so it’s a big moment for us.” The company, now a 55-person team, , reporting at the time that its tablets were processing over $6 million in orders and payments for its partners, including Genghis Grill and Evergreen Restaurant Group, a franchisee of Outback Steakhouse. E la Carte competes with other restaurant apps like , , , , and others. Other large chain pilots are in the works, too, one of which may soon be IHOP. Though that chain has not started trials at this time, Smith said that’s now a possibility. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcwtPALlmP8&w=854&h=510] |
Apple Buys Topsy For Price Reportedly North Of $200M, Could Use Social Signals To Bolster Siri, App Store Relevance | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | Apple has purchased social analytics firm Topsy, which focuses on parsing data from Twitter, reports . The deal was apparently worth ‘more than $200M’ according to the publication. Topsy is one of several firms that have been focused on gathering and parsing data from Twitter’s platform. It allows customers to tap into a store of over 425 billion tweets from 2006 onwards to sniff out trends. Topsy competitors in the Twitter data reselling game include DataSift and Gnip, but its user-facing tools, including a topic and trends search engine, have made it one of the more popular options for those looking to make sense of the stuff people are tweeting about. Given that Apple is a Twitter partner already, and hosts login and posting features for the social network on its iOS and OS X platforms, this seems like a confusing deal if all that it’s after is the Twitter data firehose. It seems more likely that Topsy has technology or engineers (read: acqui-hire) that can parse trends in a way that Apple wants to incorporate into one of its products. If I had to hazard a guess, this might be related to Apple building out the relevancy engine of its App and iTunes Stores. Adding social signals to the search algorithms of its stores could help to improve the relevance of search results and help Apple surface apps that are hotter and more interesting to users. Tracking app trends across social networks would allow them to fine tune categories and collections of apps, and surface apps that are gaining steam more quickly. Pulling the thread out a bit further, it’s possible that Apple could even use the data from your Twitter feeds to recommend apps on a more personal basis, rather than ‘generically’ to everyone. Apple has done little of this kind of personalized recommendation work to this point, but there’s always a first time for everything. The WSJ article points to iTunes Radio ads and the iAd platform as possible beneficiaries of the Topsy engine, too. Apple could theoretically use social data to help advertisers display ads to more relevant viewers. This would boost revenue and relevance across Apple’s ad platforms, which haven’t been incredibly robust so far. Apple purchased the app search company Chomp last year, but ended up using mostly its ‘card-like’ interface, not . Unfortunately, the acquisition did not lead to a massive improvement in app store search results. Apple has to better correct for misspellings and mis-typing when searching the store. There is also a slim possibility that Apple may want to use Topsy’s stored trends data and firehose access to improve Siri search. It could provide Siri with a reliable way to present people with trending topics and search results according to Twitter when queried. Topsy has also related to social networks. These include and . As one of only a handful of companies with Twitter firehose access, and one of , Topsy’s purchase will change the market for those left behind. Whatever use Topsy’s team or product is put to, its strengths came in real-time parsing of enormous data sets, so it would be something that was time-sensitive or able to be continuously affected by a feed of information. It shows that Apple has a growing interest in the data flowing through networks like Twitter, which is a refreshing notion. The company has not typically been bullish in this arena previously. Apple confirmed the purchase with the WSJ. |
Facebook’s Feed Adds More Links And “Related Articles” To Battle News Discovery Apps | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | Facebook is determined to be your top content discovery destination, so it’s making several including showing more links to articles, displaying a “related articles” box when you click those links, and bumping old links back to the top of the feed when friends comment on them. The goal is to make Facebook the hub for both news sharing and discussion. Facebook says referral traffic to news sites increased 170% this year, outpacing its user growth. Still it’s up against serious competition in the news discovery space from specialty services like Flipboard, Prismatic, Circa, and others, as well as social networks like Twitter and Google+. Today’s move could be designed to box them out. It also ties in with Facebook’s overarching initiative to become the . Facebook doesn’t just want to host random commentary, but link sharing related to big moments as well. Specifically, in an effort to help people find more interesting news stories, it will show more news article links in the feed, “particularly on mobile”. It will also show a Related Articles box below links you click. This can show other articles by the same news outlet or that a related to the same topic. Facebook will also resurface links you might have already seen in the feed, but that have received new comments from your friends. Facebook believes the highest potential for engagement is not just in helping people broadcast news but giving them a place to talk about it. Finally, Facebook also says it’s going to work on distinguishing between and true news articles so there’s less click-bait in the News Feed. Facebook warns “This means that high quality articles you or others read may show up a bit more prominently in your News Feed, and meme photos may show up a bit less prominently.” That’s a big deal to content publishers who rely on Facebook for traffic. Facebook Pages may not be able to score as much easy visibility for their brands by just spewing Lolcats and other image macros. While Facebook’s relevancy-sorted feed works fine for discovering evergreen articles and the big ideas of the day, it lacks the immediacy of chronologically-sorted real-time feeds that excel at breaking news. To win the news discovery battle, Facebook may need to devise a way to recognize and surface not just what content is the best, but what’s important . |
null | gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 5 | null |
Salesforce Says Hackathon Winner Didn’t Cheat But Declares Tie, Gives Two Finalists $1M Each | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | Salesforce has to cries of in its $1 million hackathon by that while winning team Upshot didn’t cheat, judges weren’t given sufficient information to select a winner so it’s giving $1 million to each of the top two finalists, Upshot and Healthcare.love. That means Salesforce had to cough up $1 million extra to fix this PR problem. That’s very expensive damage control. And in the end, awarding a second winner doesn’t really address the main criticisms of the whole fiasco: that the winner built its app before the hackathon, and that not all entrants were fairly considered. Below is the email that Salesforce’s Adam Seligman just sent to all participants of the controversial Salesforce1 Hackathon at last month’s Dreamforce conference, followed by more analysis.
— Nothing is more of an unlikely lightning rod for controversy than a hackathon, and in Salesforce’s case the winner caused a tech media firestorm by both having an ex-Salesforce employee as a founder, and code. Salesforce tells us that they are not sure how old Upshot’s code was, but after an internal review, the mobile app the Upshot team submitted was found to be law-abiding. While one of was “have been developed solely as part of this Hackathon,” Salesforce’s Chief Legal officer Burke Norton tells us that that stipulation actually meant that “use of preexisting code was okay as long as it didn’t violate any third party rights and comprise the majority of the app.” According to Salesforce, the original judges (which included ) were not actually briefed on the more granular pre-existing code policy. If they had been, Norton postulates, the 2nd place winner Healthcare.love may have actually won. “We should have better prepared the final round judges around the “Innovation” category,” Norton said, “And made it clear that credit should be given to only the code built for the hackathon.” Norton would not give us much detail on what happened during the second post-controversy review, but did say both internal and external advisors audited the fairness of the process. Only the five finalists were re-evaluated, and not the rest of the submissions. Lift’s Alicia Liu took the company to task for not and making the decision to eliminate her app based on the video alone. Salesforce’s Adam Seligman confirmed that the judges rebuilt some, but not all of the entries from their source code in order to evaluate them, but did not touch the Testflights. Despite , Salesforce CEO was not a part of of the internal audit. Salesforce declined to make a formal apology, and offered little to hackathoners who worked all-nighters but didn’t even have their apps opened. But it seems the company had no qualms throwing money at the problem in hopes of making people forget this Dreamforce nightmare. |
Microsoft Rolls Out Student Advantage, Giving Students Free Access To Its Office Suite | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | Today Microsoft on Student Advantage, a program, , that extends the availability of Office to students of educational institutions that pay for Office 365 for their staff and faculty. According to Microsoft, 35,000 educational institutions are eligible for Student Advantage, which provides access to the of Office 365, again provided that its paid staff are current users of Office 365 ProPlus or Office Professional Plus. Office 365 ProPlus includes Access and Lync, making it a robust set of tools. Microsoft took a dig at Google in its announcement, stating that “[e]ven require competency with Microsoft Office tools.” What this means in practice is that Microsoft is lowering the marginal cost of Office for students to zero, while guaranteeing itself revenue through contracts with universities and the like. Microsoft cannot afford to cede mind and market share to Google, which provides a free Office competitor, and it must preserve its revenue from the product, which is a key profit source. Office 365 ProPlus generally costs around $12 per month, per user, so the amount of ‘free’ software that Microsoft will provide is non-trivial. To protect Office from low, or zero-cost competitors, it’s probably sensible for it to sacrifice some revenue opportunity to keep up its primacy in the productivity market. |
Healthcare.gov: Mission Accomplished | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | Apparently, no President is above the temptation of propaganda. Yesterday, the White House released a much-anticipated on the beleaguered insurance e-commerce website, heatlhcare.gov, proudly declaring that “we believe we have met the goal of having a system that will work smoothly for the vast majority of users.” Compared to its opening launch of October 1st, the website has gone from a 40% uptime to 95% and can manage 50,000 concurrent users (vs. ). “The site is now stable and operating at its intended capacity with greatly improved performance,” according to new project lead, Jeffrey Zientz. Operating-as-intended is a curious sleight-of-hand. There’s a few on-going issues. 1. We still don’t know how many users can actually enroll without any problems. Health insurance companies that healthcare.gov may still be transmitting false user information. So-called “834” data is critical to verifying a consumer’s identity and if they’re eligible for discounts. In other words, we still don’t know whether the “vast majority” of users can actually get covered by January 1st. 2. The progress report has graphs that brazenly obscure the truth, like this one below of “bug fixes”: The graph makes it look like the team has solved all the bugs, but how many more bugs are left to fix? If it’s 10,000 bugs, then it’ll look a lot different. Here’s the one thing that this graph tell us: the communications team is still in charge at the White House. A technical team, concerned with giving the full picture, would never design a graph so obviously deceptive. The most serious problem isn’t a malfunctioning website–which will get fixed soon enough–but that we don’t know if the administration has learned any lessons. excluded from health insurance e-commerce, the federal procurement process let a mediocre beltway-based developer design the failed site, and the entire project has been . Other than , President Obama has not given any specifics about how his administration will do things differently. I don’t think a buggy website is comparable to a botched war. But, Obama could have ushered in a new standard of honesty for the office of the presidency. This failure has far reaching consequences. I am losing hope that there is change we can believe in. [ ] |
AppHero Acquired By Mobile App Publishing Firm Fuse Powered, Will Turn Its Attention To Ads | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | App discovery startup has been acquired by fellow Toronto-based company Fuse Powered, the company announced today, in a deal that will see the entire AppHero team including 19-year old founder Jordan Satok join and develop its products for app publishing, marketing and distribution. AppHero, founded in 2011, was a pure play discovery network that developed sophisticated algorithms for suggesting mobile software to users, but now it’s crossing the line into territory it stayed specifically out of when it was operating under that guise: paid placement. The was designed to survey what kinds of apps a user already has and then make intelligent predictions about what else they might be inclined to download – taking into account that if you already have an excellent grocery list app, for instance, you’re not likely to want to get another one. But Satok says that some months ago they started to realize that more and more users are downloading new apps based on what they find through advertisements, rather than through suggestion networks like the one he and his team had built. “[Fuse Powered] has a monetization product that they offer to their monetization partners, so what we’re looking at doing, and this is something we’ve been working on the last few months, is we recognized that people are discovering a lot of apps via ads,” Satok explained in an interview. “So Facebook ads, etc. The difficulty is that most mobile app ads today are really impersonal and not at all relevant to what people are really interested in. So we started using the same processes we’d developed to find apps that people would really like, and then show them ads for those apps.” Satok says it’s a much more straightforward business model than any they’d created for AppHero, and also really well-aligned with their goals and technological development. He says that they were always worried about doing the same thing in AppHero itself, for fear of compromising the user experience, but notes that now there’s nothing stopping them from using that tech in that way, as it’ll be clear to any and all that this is an advertising product. The terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but AppHero has raised some , and Satok says that all investors and stakeholders are more than happy with the deal. App discovery is a dangerous market to operate in, as Apple has proven time and time again with its ability to shut out companies who do similar things from the App Store entirely. An exit here for AppHero actually manages to help Satok and the company he built mitigate that risk entirely, while giving both them and new parent Fuse Powered a way to quickly chart a relatively uncomplicated path to monetization. I asked Satok, who started AppHero when he was just 17, if he’s feeling entrepreneurial again, but he said he sees this as the chance to build something more long-term with his new partners at Fuse Powered. |
Supreme Court Refuses Consideration Of Amazon Sales Tax Case | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | The Supreme Court Amazon’s calls to consider their case against New York State’s sales tax on goods sold outside of its borders. By effectively upholding a New York Court’s ruling, the Justices tacitly imply that they are fine paying sales tax on black body robes purchased online and shipped from outside the DC area. , savvy Internet retailers could avoid sales tax if they didn’t have a “substantial nexus” in the state where a customer lived. States lose an estimated $23 billion from online sales, according to the National Conference of State Legislators (hardly an unbiased group). New York State gets around that law by taxing an online company if they leverage local businesses, such as Amazon’s affiliate program, to sell goods. The federal government isn’t sitting out this game, either. Dueling bills in Congress seek to . But, considering we have the most unproductive congress in history, Amazon may not have to worry about that law any time soon. Amazon officially supports a federal sales tax law if it creates a standardized set of rules across the entire country. [ ] |
FTC Signs Off On The Nokia-Microsoft Deal | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | The Federal Trade Commission has on the Nokia-Microsoft deal, meaning that there is little if anything left that could derail the potential marriage of Microsoft’s money and Nokia’s hardware business. The deal, worth around $7.2 billion, will see Microsoft absorb the largest OEM for its Windows Phone line of smartphones. Nokia controls , meaning that Microsoft is purchasing hegemony over its own platform. The sticker price, something that can be presumably paid using offshore cash, is a sum that Nokia will revel in and Microsoft won’t miss. The company is intensely cash rich at the moment and is trying to . Microsoft indicating that it is “[looking] forward to the date when our partners at Nokia will become members of the Microsoft family, and are pleased that the Department of Justice has cleared the deal unconditionally.” The deal has already achieved approval from Nokia shareholders. Microsoft’s hard turn into the device business is about to greatly expand. Its Surface line of tablets is a new move for the company, as it has long depended on third-party OEMs to vend computers running its software. However, with the addition of the Lumia line of handsets to Redmond’s portfolio, Microsoft will manufacture its own computers, smartphones and consoles. Those three device classes are, of course, the three screens on which the company is building out and unifying its Windows platform. |
Facebook Is Replacing Its “Hide All” Button With “Unfollow” | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | Here’s a new tweak to how Facebook users can filter their News Feeds: The company says it’s rolling out a button that allows you to “unfollow” other users. To be clear, it sounds like the functionality is pretty much identical to what users could already accomplish by hitting the “Hide All” button. For those of you who haven’t tried it, Hide All is a way to remain Facebook friends with someone while hiding their updates from your News Feed — say if they usually post content that you find annoying or boring, but you don’t want to offend them by completely severing your Facebook connection. What is changing is the specific wording. Thanks to services like Twitter and Instagram, users have presumably become more familiar with the concept of unfollowing, and it seems that the language of following and unfollowing is becoming a bigger part of Facebook. Next to the “Like” button in profiles, Facebook will also show users whether they’re following someone (this will show up on on individual user profiles and on company Pages). The mechanics of following, which allows you to follower a user’s public updates (assuming they’ve opted in) without becoming their friend, will remain the same, but this may encourage more users to take advantage of this option to influence the kind of updates that show up in their feed. “The goal of this change is to help people curate their News Feed and see more of the content that they care about,” a Facebook spokesperson said. |
Three Problems Stopping Bezos’ Army Of Amazon Delivery Drones | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos isn’t the only one who wants to take to the skies. Most of Hollywood drones for making films, police want them to patrol the skies, the National Guard needs rescue bots, journalists , farmers , and every college stoner glued to their couch would trade a vital organ for the . In short, everybody wants drones! But there are forces at work that could prevent all that sweet, sweet taco-dropping. Back when Congress used to actually pass laws, they directed the Federal Aviation Administration to figure out how America could safely deal , through the . There are a few technical, social, and straight-up bat-sh*t crazy problems stopping the FAA from legalizing commercial drones [ ]. As cities become increasingly dense, the probability increases of a delivery drone crashing into another and dropping a birthday bowling ball on the windshield of a commuter. Researchers, , are putting their considerable talents into crash-avoidance software (video below). But we still don’t fully understand the mathematical foundations of how groups of flying objects (like birds) avoid an air pile-up of cascading doom. MIT researchers suspect limit that all flying objects might need to abide by, no matter how good their senses are. These theoretical limits may seriously narrow the radius at which Krispy Kream could deliver a doughnut that is truly “hot and now.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUj7Ryom03c The ever-vigilant privacy hawks (pun intended) at the Electronic Frontier Foundation that drones could turn America into a surveillance wonderland. Virginia has already proposed a two-year moratorium on drones. Drones necessarily record their surroundings to navigate jagged city terrain. Even beyond the necessities, the incidental footage they scrape of retail foot traffic and consumer behavior would be advertising gold to a commercial analytics team. Moreover, in the case of something like the Boston bombing, it’s easy to see why law enforcement would want to sequester the video footage of every drone in the area. “Before countless commercial drones begin to fly overhead, we must ground their operation in strong rules to protect privacy and promote transparency,” Senator Edward Markey, in a statement related to his prescient bill on commercial drone privacy. Watch this video of a camera man ruining a precious moment between a wife and her groom and you’ll understand why humans could be the biggest barrier to a functional drone system. Because people are crazy, spiteful, and clumsy, the FAA plans some type of pilot certification of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which could become the . In addition to bad piloting, the FAA is worried about both violence to and from drones. Drones have already been perfected for war, so Mexican drug lords are probably already dreaming about little domestic assassinators that can cross the border. On the nuttier side of things, Stephen Colbert profiled a liberty-loving patriot who hunts down law enforcement drones (and tried to pass local legislation to legalize it).
So, as you can see, the ban on drones isn’t a clear-cut case of government stonewalling. We don’t really know how to handle tens of thousands of potentially lethal experimental robotic pilots buzzing around dense cities. Before consumers can get an order of Xanax from an Amazon delivery drone, we might want to make sure it gets to the destination without harming anyone in the process. — |
Eventifier Raises A $500K Seed Round From Accel, KAE To Make Social Media Archives Of Your Events | Pankaj Mishra | 2,013 | 12 | 2 | , a Bangalore-based startup that aggregates and then creates archives of social media content from conferences, has raised around $500,000 in a seed round from Accel Partners and KAE Capital. The financing will be used to hire data scientists and beef up the sales and marketing efforts to carve out a position in an already-wide field of event-planning startups that include , , and . It’s a crowded market, but with nearly 1.8 million events and conferences taking place every year (according to the ), there is opportunity. And both Eventifier and its investor Accel believe its solution is unique, at least for now. While Eventbrite and Doubledutch primarily focus on event ticketing and organizing, Eventifier claims that none of them come close to the startup in terms of offering a complete view of pre and post-event data for both organizers and attendees. Eventifier archives all social media data including Facebook posts and Tweets, during and after an event. All this knowledge is then offered as analytical insights about how popular a particular event was, the most talked about sections, discussions etc. The closest rivals for Eventifier are Epilogger and Conferize that offer similar archiving services. The startup’s founding team, Jazeel Badur Ferry, Nazim Zeeshan and Mohammed Saud, studied computer science together and graduated in 2010. The trio travelled down south to the Indian city of in 2012 to attend a hackathon organized by the . The core product came out from this hackathon, and since then, Eventifier has signed close to 100 paying customers who are paying an average fee of $200 per event. At the Startup Center run by Vijay Anand, a technology entrepreneur and investor based in Chennai, Eventifier received about $50,000 to build the product, apart from other operational, mentoring help. “We were quite shy of the idea until June last year when we attended the hackathon at the Startup Center and realized this can be an idea worth pursuing,” Jazeel tells me. He adds that the startup has archived 2,000 events across the world including customers such as Pearson, , Clinton Foundation, Twitter, NASA and the WWW Conference. “This seed round is definitely a great milestone for the Eventifier team. We look forward to building Eventifier into the largest event archiving platform in the world,” says Jazeel. Accel has to date invested in 17 startups in India at the seed stage from its $150 million+ Accel III fund. Anand Daniel, a principal with Accel Partners in Bangalore, tells me that he is looking to announce more such deals backing startups incubated across several accelerators in India. “Focus areas for these seed investments include big data, Internet, mobile and healthcare startups,” Daniel says. |
Snapchat Sacrifices Ephemerality With New Replay Feature | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | My least favorite part of Snapchat is mistakenly opening a video Snap when I can’t hear it, like in a noisy public place or when my sound is off. Snapchat tried to with an experimental that lets you rewatch one old Snap per day. But by fixing that problem it created a much bigger one. It killed off some of its ephemerality. A lot of the stems from the fact that you only get one shot to look at a Snap. That means you have to pay close attention and be fully engaged. But with Replay, you can be lazy. Once a day you can re-view a Snap a second time if you don’t close the app or get another Snap first. “Oh, that looked funny. Wow, they looked sexy. I’ll watch it again.” It’s not quite the “forever” of Facebook’s Timeline, but suddenly I’m a bit more self-conscious of what I send. Did I line up the shot right? Does my stupid hair look ok? A big draw of Snapchat was that once someone had viewed your Snap, it only lived on in their imperfect memory. That made sending them carefree and lightweight — something I’d do without second guessing what could happen. That encouraged the silly and racy behavior Snapchat thrives on, and set it apart from other photo sharing services that create a permanent record you have to worry about. Now whoever I send a Snap to can verify their first impression, show it to someone else, or get a second camera or phone out and secretly screenshot it. This makes sexting with Snapchat a lot more risky. Who wants to flash their jubblies if they have to worry they’ll get replayed in front of a crowd or a camera? There are certainly times when the Replay feature could come in handy, but the whole feature is poorly designed right now. There’s no explanation of how it works, you have to enable it in the buried Manage Additional Services menu, and then it’s not at all intuitive that turning it on means you can replay Snaps, not that your recipients can. In fact, you can’t prevent your recipients from replaying your pics and vids. Snapchat deviated slightly from its self-destructing style in October with the . It lets you share a Snap publicly or with friends that can be viewed an unlimited number of times for the next 24 hours, and then it’s gone. But with Stories, it’s the sender who chooses to make a Snap viewable multiple times, whereas Replay hands that immense power to the recipient. If Snapchat wanted to help you avoid missing the sound in a video, it could tell you whether a Snap you’ve received is a photo or video before you open it. [Update: Or at least do it more clearly, as I didn’t even realize and purple Snaps are videos] If it wanted to keep you from accidentally slipping and starting the timer on a Snap you then don’t, it could make you double-tap-and-hold or swipe-and-hold to open a Snap. Instead, it broke the core mechanic that’s the foundation of its budding social empire. CEO Evan Spiegel better be dead certain this is the right move, or he should remove the Replay feature before Snapchat’s ephemerality itself vanishes. |
BTC China CEO Attempts To Calm The Bitcoin Market After RMB Deposit Shutdown | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | In a letter posted on the Chinese trading site CEO Bobby Lee attempted to calm the markets by posting a long, detailed description of the way forward for the company. “As China’s first Bitcoin and Bitcoin trading platform company, we have more than two and half years of operating experience and a good reputation,” he wrote. “I believe you love Bitcoin and will fully understand our decision.” Lee also clarified that the ban on RMB deposits is temporary and that the People’s Bank Of China saw bitcoin markets as similar to any commodity market and that “ordinary people have the freedom to participate in them at their own risk.” He also announced a number of improvements and changes to the platform aimed at retaining customers. The company announced a new product called “Currency Lock” that stores bitcoin in “cold storage” with “bank-level” security. Commentators see this as a move to prevent a bitcoin sell-off by skittish investors who could see their wallets disappear while they wait out the RMB ban. They have also added a 0.3% transaction fee to all deposits and withdrawals to discourage rampant bitcoin conversion or transfers and to prevent large accounts from buying or selling speculatively. In short, it’s business as usual at BTC China, but with a few caveats. The company recently closed a from institutional investors Lightspeed China Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. BTC China was bootstrapped prior to this round, with money put in by its three co-founders, Bobby Lee, Linke Yang, and Xiaoyu Huang. The closure of RMB deposits by the People’s Bank Of China this week which has stabilized at about $700 on Mt. Gox. |
Snapchat Adds Filters, A Replay Function And For Whatever Reason, Time, Temperature And Speed Overlays | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | Snapchat to its app today just before the holidays. The new version of the ephemeral messaging app includes several color filters, a new ‘special text’ font and a few other additions. The main update is the ‘visual filters’ that will add juiced up color effects to your images. If you’re stumped at how to activate them it is likely because you are not a teen. It took me 10 minutes to figure out that you have to swipe from right to left to trigger the filters. You’ve got 3 filters including two color and one black & white to choose from. Bizarrely, the update also adds 3 ‘smart filters’ which overlay the time your image was taken, the temperature when it was taken and — get this — how fast you were going when you shot it, in MPH. I foresee a whole new sport being made of snaps being sent at the highest possible speeds. There’s also now a larger Helvetica font to choose from. You can activate this — also obscurely — by tapping again on the text entry box when you’re typing out a message. There’s a front-facing flash option now as well, which flashes white on the screen while you shoot, lightening up those selfies. You can now also choose up to 7 best friends if you choose. All of these options are enabled under the Settings>Additional Services>Manage section and none of them add a single additional indicating UI element to the interface. There’s also a Replay option, which lets you re-view snaps once a day if you have it enabled. This seems to go against some of the major point of Snapchat, which is that messages are once-only briefs that are ‘gone forever’ once you’ve seen them. You can only replay the most recent image or video in your stream — but it’s opt-in by the not the sender. So if you get sent a snap you can now view it up to twice whether the sender wants you to or not. Still, it’s a limited use option — you can only do it once per day. And this could help if your finger was covering an important bit in the image or if you missed a video clip because you thought it was a still image. Snapchat has been experimenting with less and less ephemeral content with its ‘Stories’ feature, which lets people see your images as many times as they want for a 24 hour period. Our writer Josh Constine has more analysis on how . Snapchat continues to have some of the worst feature discoverability and user experience in any consumer app that I use regularly — but maybe that’s sort of the point? And perhaps because these functions are experimental maybe the UI will get a bit of polish once they’re ‘real’ features. The app is still a lot of fun, but I wish the design held up a bit better under use. Anyhow, snappers should have some more options over their winter break. |
The “Target Breach Flood” Is Already Appearing On The Carder Black Market; Target Reacts | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | In a deliciously detailed post, taken by credit card numbers stolen in the on their way to the carder black market. Krebs has far more information but he’s discovered that some card shops have created Target-only sections for the trove of numbers. Krebs described visiting a particularly infamous card shop where he and an anonymous bank representative found sets of cards belonging to a “base” called Tortuga. In carder slang, a base is simply a source of cards. And Tortuga cards, according to Krebs, belonged to a set of numbers stolen from target stores. Amazingly, many of the cards included zip code or state data, thereby circumventing the fraud protections, as many banks automatically treat out-of-state card purchases as suspect. How quickly did customer react on hearing about the breach? Clearly not fast enough: Should you be worried? If you shopped in a physical Target store and swiped your credit or debit card there between November 27 and December 15, then the answer is “Yes.” However, thieves cannot fully recreate your card and, say, withdraw cash from your account or make an online purchase. Target media representative Molly Snyder wrote: Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel said that customers can enjoy a brief discount on everything at the store as well as free credit monitoring for a year. The small bank Krebs assisted in the exploration of the carder site will probably re-issue all 5,300 of its customer’s cards after Christmas. That just leaves thirty-nine million nine hundred ninety-four thousand seven hundred more cards to check for fraud. |
Mobile Rewards Startup Kiip Upgrades Its User Contests With New “Challenges” Product | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | When announced last week that that , co-founder and CEO Brian Wong said it didn’t share one of the key details (because, uh, reasons) — that this is the debut of a new Kiip product called Challenges. The company is best-known for allowing advertisers to sponsor rewards in games and other apps at key moments, say when players beat a level. With Challenges, instead of just giving each user a reward, brands can run contests and sweepstakes and give prizes to the winners. For example, Wong said Cut the Rope players will have a chance to win plush toys today (and you’ll see them on tomorrow). That concept may sound familiar to readers who have been following Kiip, because it first started offering these types of user contests about two years ago, . (At the time, that Swarm would allow Kiip to enlist advertisers in new industries like automotive, where “you can’t give away a million cars.”) Since then, however, Kiip has been relatively quiet about Swarm — Wong told me this week that the product is doing fine, but it’s really meant to be integrated with games, and he’s been spending more time talking up Kiip’s efforts to bring rewards to other non-gaming apps, such as Any.Do, 8Tracks, and Recipe Search. Challenges are supposed to address several of the main limitations to Swarms. For one thing, they could only be activated at a specific point in the game, which meant that if a player wanted another chance to win the prize, they’d have to go back and play that same level again. Now, however, Wong said that contests can now be “run dynamically” on any game level. He also said they can now be triggered server-side, which means they can be updated more easily, without requiring any changes to the software development kit. Even though Wong describes Challenges as a specific product within the broader umbrella of Kiip’s Swarms, he also suggested that all Swarm campaigns would have access to the new features. This might seem like a pedantic point, but honestly, going back-and-forth with Wong about the relationship between the two products made me a little nuts. So I asked Wong why he didn’t just call it Swarm 2.0 (or, you know, something like that), and he replied, “That’s great feedback. Challenges just stuck. We might rename it.” |
Facebook Officially Joins The S&P 500, Prices Follow-On Offering At $55.05 Per Share | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | Facebook that it has priced its of 70 million shares of Class A stock at $55.05 per share. At this price, some $3.85 billion in stock will be offered in the sale. The offering is expected to close on December 26th. Facebook also said that Standard & Poor’s has officially added Facebook’s stock to the venerated ranks of the , as of market close today. Here’s the breakdown of where the 70 million shares are coming from: “A total of 27,004,761 shares are being offered by Facebook, and a total of 42,995,239 shares are being offered by certain selling stockholders, including 41,350,000 shares offered by Mark Zuckerberg.” Facebook says that the money it makes in the sale will be utilized for “working capital and other general corporate purposes.” It’s important to note that Zuckerberg’s participation in this stock sale does not mean that he’s cashing out of the company he helped found. This week Zuckerberg exercised a stock option to purchase 60 million shares of Class B stock, and Facebook says that the bulk of proceeds from his Class A sale will be used to “satisfy taxes that he incurred” with the Class B purchase. CEO problems, I guess. |
NSA Reportedly Paid A Security Firm Millions To Ship Deliberately Flawed Encryption Technology | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | Today that the NSA paid RSA, a security company and subsidiary of EMC, $10 million to use a flawed random generator technology as the “preferred” option in its BSafe software, increasing its popularity. In September of this year, that the NSA was working to, in its own words, “break widely used Internet encryption technologies.” That the NSA wanted to get past encryption was not surprising. How far along it was, however, came as a shock. An NSA memo was blunt in its assessment of its own progress: “Cryptanalytic capabilities are now coming online. Vast amounts of encrypted Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable.” After being implicated in the NSA’s efforts to get around encryption, RSA told its customers that they should stop using the flawed algorithm. As , the warning was “one of the first instances of a security company acknowledging the U.S. government may have been involved in propping open a backdoor into a product.” Reuters’ revelation that the NSA had paid RSA $10 million to use the flawed algorithm changes the discussion. Instead of the NSA being some sort of evil mastermind, bent on making popular security standards obsolete, it was instead buying its way into companies. And for small sums to boot. Who wants to wager that this is the only time the NSA paid a security company to use flawed code that it prefers so that it can better beat back encryption? And if it can get a company with as long a history as RSA to bend so far to its quarter for a mere ten million dollars, the NSA could have bought any sort of access and influence that it wanted. Depressing, but probably true. |
Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | Hello, future IKEA Swedish meatballs! How are you this Friday? Ready to be torn to bits by sharp, gnashing, robotic teeth? I bet you are. In this exciting edition of we meet some tiny flying robots, some big climbing robots, and some bigger flying robots. First, say hello to the . This teeny weenie little flying robot weighs 4 grams – as much as four sheets of paper – and flies autonomously around the room using on-board computing and vision to keep the robot from crashing into anything. All of the processing power is on board the ultralight robot and it moves by flapping its funny little wings. But don’t let it hear you calling it funny. It will cut you. You can learn more about it . [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tNPfD9l14Js] Think you can escape from the DelFly by climbing a tree? Not so fast, buster. Take a look at RiSE from Boston Dynamics, a six-legged robot that can climb walls, hump over ledges, and even jump from tree to tree. It’s a little old, but it tells you just what Google has in store for us when we get out of line in the woods. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asF1lhpYpAg] Finally we see these exciting flying robots that self-right themselves when they’re thrown in the air. The is a tool for creating instant vantage points above a scene without having to take the time to launch devices into the air. I can also imagine them self-righting after we smack at them with baseball bats. Again… and again… and again. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s8LMn7DFfo] |
Ask A VC: GGV Capital’s Glenn Solomon On How Companies Should Build And Expand In China | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, we had GGV Capital’s Glenn Solomon in the studio to talk about the developing technology market in China, and his predictions for 2014. Solomon, who has taken 32 trips to China in the past eight years, tells me in our interview that developing for the Chinese market is completely different than developing for the Western markets. And any U.S. company that wants to expand to China has to be aware of this, and take into account these differences when introducing a product in China. Solomon explains, “Several years ago, VCs thought they would create the blank of China, and a company that was successful here would work in China. But China is unique and the way you grow and start companies there has to be local.” Solomon also made his predictions for the IPO market in 2014, investing changes and more. |
Windows Phone’s 2013: A Year In Perspective | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | Windows Phone, Microsoft’s smartphone platform has ground out its place at the mobile table employing a combination of tenacity, marketing dollars, improving firmware, and, at last, a world-class device lineup. It has not been an easy road for Microsoft, who launched Windows Phone 7 Series straight from the ashes of Kin, a time in which your uncle had more credibility in the mobile market. It came to the public nearly 2 years before Windows 8 did the same, for perspective. And yet, following the release of Windows Phone 8 at the end of last year, along with new hardware from Nokia that could match, at last, rival devices, Windows Phone has outlasted BlackBerry, made market share progress, bolstered its app store depth, and has more or less become the accepted third place mobile platform. Or, as , “We’re number three. And no, that doesn’t suck.” But is that right? It is something like vindication to see Windows Phone walk on its own two feet. If you were around when user interface experiments landed on Zune helped set the groundwork for much of Windows Phone’s GUI, there is a historical element at play in this narrative. And, personally, I loved the idea behind Windows Phone the first time we got a taste, eventually calling for Microsoft to in the pre-Windows 8 days. They did, but they called it Surface. Still, we need to be careful. That Microsoft has answered the “can we beat BlackBerry and become an accepted mobile player” question aside, most of its work still remains ahead of the company. As notes, Windows Phone ended 2012 with 2.8% global market share. It is concluding 2013 with 3.6%, a mere 28.57% increase in a year that we in the media are generally heralding as pivotal in the best possible sense for the company. So, what gives? The mobile market is , and while Windows Phone is growing more quickly — hence its market share improvements — it is hardly tearing up the charts, and Android is increasingly taking on the mantle of smartphone hegemon. Thurrott details the precise issue that I think could constrain Windows Phone’s forward momentum, perhaps lowering a ceiling onto to how far it can grow in 2014 and beyond: 2013 was, alas, the year that Android became the Windows of the mobile world. Android surpassed 80 percent market share in Q3, which was a big story. I completely agree with the above. Here’s a question that you should have an answer to: If Android can show up late to Apple’s game, and utterly crush its market share around the world, what chance does the scrappy, and far smaller Windows Phone have? It depends on what we decide to call success. Surely 5% market share is not success for Microsoft. 10% could be, but Apple won’t cede that space, and still builds the best smartphone hardware, while Android has been all but unstoppable in recent years. I again agree with Thurrott here, who says “Windows Phone needs double digit market share globally before we can truly declare success.” So, where to next is my question for Windows Phone. If it manages another year of 28% market share growth, it will end 2014 with around 4.6% share of the global smartphone market. That’s soft, and won’t provide enough increased unit volume to really get developers excited. So, Microsoft needs to greatly accelerate its unit volume to at once lower the gap between it and Apple — this would greatly drive developer interest, I think — and manage to slow Android before it becomes not just the de facto mobile smartphone platform, but merely that in fact. So while we have seen a great year for Windows Phone, its new targets will be harder to mark than BlackBerry. In fact, you could very easily make the argument that Windows Phone’s ascent is almost the result of BlackBerry’s implosion, lessening its implicit internal momentum. It is without a doubt that this moment is the healthiest we have ever seen Windows Phone. But as we shift the perspective from which we view it from the bottom up to the top down, scale changes, and we must now treat the platform as the want-to-be big player that it now is. |
Gillmor Gang Live 12.20.13 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | – Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor. like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/GillmorGang |
Gift Guide: Something For A Twenty-Something | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | Twenty-somethings are some of the hardest people to shop for. They’re changing so quickly, interests waxing and waning by the day, making it pretty difficult to figure out a great gift for the holidays. But have no fear. At least one of these four suggestions should be a good fit for a young professional or college student, whether they’re your family member or a friend. The is quite possibly the best media streaming device available. Where all the tech specs are concerned, it’s got best-in-class technology under its tiny, shiny hood, which ultimately means that it works more reliably than other options like the Apple TV. For a young pupil off at University, Roku makes it dead simple to play Netflix, Hulu, ESPN, and a thousand other channels by simply hooking it up to a TV and turning it on. Plus, the Roku 3 remote comes with headphones that let you listen to the content privately, a feature which could keep roommates happy during finals time. The freshman fifteen is a real thing, trust me. Being away at school makes it easy to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, with no one telling you to do otherwise. But a good way to stay motivated and aware of your health is to use the . The biometric wristband doubles as a watch, but also offers intensive metrics on your calorie burn, steps taken, flights climbed, etc. You can even input nutritional information into the accompanying app to have a full read on your health over time. FOMO has never been stronger than it is today, with the majority of humans simply addicted to their smartphones. College kids are among the worst, which means that their smartphones are always dropping like flies. The Mophie Juice Pack Helium for iPhone ensures that the phone can stay with you through the day and doesn’t add on too much bulk, offering 80 percent extra battery. Indicator lights on the back give you a read on when the Mophie itself is charged, and how much battery it has left throughout the day. You can snag this guy for . Music is a huge part of any college experience, and a nice set of headphones can make all the difference walking to class, studying at the library, or hanging out in the dorm. The are far more expensive than ultra popular Beats headphones, but they also stand out from what everyone else is wearing. But being stylish is only a small fraction of what the P7 headphones bring to the table, with sound quality that is truly impressive. They even come with a microphone attachment so you can switch between music and phone calls. |
Why Do People Keep Giving Foursquare Money? | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 20 | Foursquare just raised a bunch of money, again. This time it’s a , back in April of this year it . The company seems to keep being able to convince people there’s something of value in its global location service. Over the past couple of years Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley has been stumping for the company’s shift in focus from a check-in service to recommendation service. On a last year, he noted the following: “We have three billion check-ins and an army of people crawling the real world like a web crawler would crawl the internet,” Crowley said. “We have ‘Big Data’ about where people go, where they go after they go there, where they went before, where they don’t go anymore—there is tremendous value in all that check-in data. It is our job to harvest that.” But once it’s mastered harvesting it — and Foursquare has become one of the best at this, collecting 40M tips at 70M venues so far— what does it do with it? TechCrunch spoke with Crowley about the funding round and some plans that it has for the future. “What we’re most passionate about building is software that understands your relationship with the world,” Crowley tells us. By that, he means software that recognizes the patterns in the locations that you visit and the things that you do there — the places that you love to eat or those events you attend that end up being fantastic. A guiding question, he says, is “how can we make more of that stuff happen to you?” I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a while and it seems that Foursquare is part of an over-arching trend towards ‘proactive personal computing’. Specifically, the that tell you places you might want to be when you arrive in an area taps into this. The smartphone is heading towards being the center of all of our computing. It seems likely that components like the connected home, wearables and even our desktops will someday simply be thin clients for our ‘most personal’ computer. If that comes to pass, a layer of push-centric data will have to act as the connective tissue between the hub in our pockets and those outlying components. That push data, of course, will depend incredibly heavily on context like location. And the locations can’t simply be physical spots, they have to be fleshed out with their own descriptive details — who else has been here, when, why and how often. Context. Part of this shift will be a move to ‘proactive’ information delivered to users without the cognitive load that it takes remember to open an app, figure out what to ask it and sift through the answers it gives back. Foursquare, says Crowley, has a team of great data scientists and ‘mountains of data’ that it’s using to work on these problems. He notes that Google has thousands more employees to Foursquare’s roughly 100 and yet, he says, “we’re doing it better than them.” The latest releases of Foursquare now understand where a phone and its user are, but also collect and parse signals like how long it’s been in that location down to the specific room if that info is available. It also includes signals like weather and regular habits to determine what kind of notifications to send out. Initially, Foursquare’s new push recommendations center on ‘arriving’ at a location, but it’s not too hard to pull the thread to figure out that it could eventually offer much, much more prescience. Using pattern recognition and contextual relevance, the service could easily figure out that you’re ’60% likely to get coffee on weekday mornings’ and note the best places nearby. Or use the overall temperature to note places that people like to go when it’s under 10 degrees or rainy, vs 82 and blue. There are a couple of ways that this could go for Foursquare. It could exist as a standalone entity that can act as a neutral internet pillar (the location layer to Google’s search and Twitter’s real-time stream) with the app as a front-end and the data being licensed out to partners. Or it becomes a service layer that supports this kind of computing across other apps and devices. The way that Crowley sees it, it should end up being both. “The misunderstanding [in days past] was that Foursquare was about “who’s really going to check into a bar”,” Crowley says. Now, with the passive notifications and the increasing complexity of the signals that Foursquare is able to sift through to provide them, people are beginning to turn the corner on how they perceive it. He points out that one of the big issues with Foursquare’s usability is that people don’t know that you can ask it — which the company continues to roll out. Things like ‘ or ‘ . The stuff that Foursquare is working on right now is about making it easier to ask those questions. And, stepping beyond that, it’s working on getting its apps to process those complex queries in the background, without having to be asked anything at all. To do that, it uses information gathered from a user’s habits — but also from passive signals gathered by your phone’s sensors. “Knowing what places you’ve been inside of no longer requires you to actually check into places in the app,” says Crowley. “Do we have something interesting to say to a user to say here, at this location, at this time?” When you have a system that can do those sorts of things, and you have an enormous database of information — along with the data scientists to parse it — the question becomes ‘why stop at just making Foursquare better?’ Crowley says that as it nails down this background recommendation system, the question becomes “what we can do with the platform when it’s put into other apps?” Is there, for instance, a benefit for Instagram to know that you’re taking pictures at a specific restaurant or at Disneyland? Maybe. Could OpenTable’s utility be increased if it had access to a background parsing system like Foursquare’s? Almost definitely. Foursquare’s current point-of-interest database is good. I speak with a lot of developers and it’s consistently mentioned as the go-to source of location data for apps that need it. Better than Google and certainly better than Apple — which actually uses Foursquare’s database to flesh out some of its place info. But what Crowley is talking about is far more than just a solid API and a big list of locations. It’s a system that uses a verified network of places with signals coming back from users to continuously refresh and improve a background recommendation system. A system that doesn’t need you to ask it anything before it gives you what you need. In tackling this issue, Foursquare joins giants like Google and Apple at trying to solve the problem of telling people what they need to know before they need to know it. “We have been carefully tracking the progress of smart geo-targeting in mobile because we believe it is the perfect value proposition for both user and advertiser,” DFJ Growth Managing Director Barry Schuler, who joins Foursquare’s board with this investment, told TechCrunch in a statement. “Foursquare has pioneered the category and has made stellar progress this year. They are at the proverbial inflection point we love to invest in.” That’s very buzzwordy and fun to read, but does it mean that Schuler buys into the advertising monetization possibilities of Foursquare? Or is he looking at its future as the location tendons to the data-based skeleton of tomorrow’s computing? In other words, are people giving Foursquare money to build an ad business, or be the defining location service of the next computing era? In a , Schuler talked a bit more about what he saw as the ’10-year’ future of technology. “There probably isn’t a single thing in your life that won’t ultimately be connected and smart,” Schuler wrote. “Yes, even your pillow will be able to get data generated by your fitness monitor to adjust its shape to keep your head and neck well-supported and at the perfect temperature to maximize REM sleep. Got an early morning appointment? Your calendar will let your coffee maker know. Prefer Starbucks? They’ll know when you’re 10 minutes away and your favorite concoction, prepaid, will be waiting for you.” That future is going to need signals based on our location, and it’s going to need a service that can parse those signals and offer them in the proper context to devices on our wrist and kitchen counter and light socket. The DFJ in Foursquare notes that the latest releases of the app ‘deliver passive geo information’ as a part of the new recommendations services. This means that you no longer need to check in to add value to Foursquare, you just have to have the app installed and logged in. That’s something Crowley echoed when we spoke to him about the changing nature of the service. Up until now, much of the experience around Foursquare has been centered on actually running the app. That’s how you get value from it, you open it up, follow people, create lists etc. That’s unlikely to go away any time soon, but Crowley says that the next stage for Foursquare is definitely in finding ways to allow people to get value from just having it installed. Crowley acknowledges that Foursquare has been getting the stuffing beat out of it in the press over the past year or so — especially when it comes to funding. He says that the passive pings that it debuted recently have definitely changed the public narrative, as people begin to see the possibilities spool out. “Everyone buys into this story — that someone’s going to get it done,” Crowley says, in reference to making passive notifications based on location signals a part of the expected behavior. But he says that the funding isn’t just based on its 5 billion check-in database and the potential to cash in on it down the road. It’s also about Foursquare’s recent expansion from 2 ad products to a total of 6, and the perceived ability to scale them out and monetize that. In the end, Schuler and the company’s other investors must see some sort of viable business in Foursquare to keep giving it money. In the near term, that means that they likely see that Foursquare’s ad products are performing well enough and have potential to justify its just over $600M valuation. Whether Foursquare becomes more than a nice recommendation service depends on its ability to capitalize on the trend towards services that know what we want before we do. And now it has the capital to do so. |
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