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NYU “Deep Learning” Professor LeCun Will Head Facebook’s New Artificial Intelligence Lab | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 9 | By teaching a computer to think, Facebook hopes to better understand how its users do too. So today the that one of the world’s leading deep learning and machine learning scientists, NYU’s Professor Yann LeCun, will lead its new artificial intelligence laboratory. first reported that Facebook would launch an Artificial Intelligence lab back in September, but now it has something of a celebrity scientist at its helm. Facebook’s AI research will be split across its Menlo Park headquarters, London office, and a new AI lab built just a block from NYU’s campus in Manhattan. has been pioneering artificial intelligence breakthroughs since the 1980s when he developed an early version of the “back-propagation algorithm” that became the top way to train artificial neural networks. He went on to work for AT&T Bell Laboratories where he created the “convolutional network model” that mimics the visual cortex of living beings to create a pattern recognition system for machines. This model was used for optical character recognition and handwriting recognition that powered how many banks read checks in the late 1990s and early 2000s. LeCun’s expertise is in “deep learning” speech and image recognition systems has driven his research in building visual navigation systems for self-driving cars, autonomous ground robots, drones, and more. Now, LeCun’s knowledge could help Facebook determine exactly what people want to see in their News Feeds, how they want to organize their photos, and possibly more exotic projects. |
iPhone 5s Passes 10% Adoption; 5c Seeing Strong Uptake, Too, Compared To Past Launches | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 9 | The iPhone 5s is doing pretty well in terms of sales numbers, and has just passed 10 percent usage rate among iPhone models according to mobile analytics firm . That’s a significant milestone, because it means that users are adopting the iPhone 5s at between two and three times the rate they got on board with the iPhone 5. And the iPhone 5c, while trailing the iPhone 5s, is actually doing better than many might expect, too. Growth for the iPhone 5 progressed at about 0.25 to 0.5 percent per week, according to Mixpanel, and the growth for the iPhone 5s is currently trending at around 0.75 and 1 percent per week. That’s about 3x the rate of adoption of the iPhone 5c, according to the data gathered through Mixpanel’s network – which means the iPhone 5c’s growth is roughly equivalent to the general rate of adoption for the iPhone 5. Mixpanel CEO Suhail Doshi says that means the 5c is quite possibly “doing a reasonable job of taking over the mid-end part of the smartphone market.” The 5s is still far and away the hotter device, according to Mixpanel and other sources, which is good news for Apple in terms of average selling price since it sees relatively high margins on the manufacture and sale of those devices according to industry estimates. And the 5c’s adoption rate is in keeping with predictions that it’ll be more of a slow-burn device, getting picked up by less tech-savvy consumers who are happy to wait until their contract expires to upgrade. Between the rapid adoption of iOS 7 and the relatively quick uptake of the new iPhone models, Apple’s doing a great job of getting everyone on board with the same platform, and on the most recent version of both software and hardware. That’s a huge boon for developers working on software for the devices, and of course it should also provide a very convincing counter argument to critics who say that Apple may have reached a ceiling in terms of how much further it can push its smartphone business growth. The really interesting numbers will come when Apple reveals its next quarterly results at the end of January. |
Give A Hoot, Add Smart Sensors To Your Home With The Owl Platform | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 9 | Building a smart home is hard. First you have to install all the hardware then you have to figure out a platform for controlling lights, sensors, and the like. Thankfully the has got your back. The platform is aimed at hackers who want to experiment with various sensor arrays around their premises. It includes a base station and a number of sensors – door open/close, water level, temperature, etc. – that last for about 10 years and connect wirelessly to the base station and Owl Platform service. They are looking for $50,000 to help build a real base station, (they’ve been using Raspberry Pis so far) and to finalize their open source server software. The system will send email and text alerts when various sensors hit their maximums or minimums or when the open/close sensors are activated. For a pledge of $150 you can get a basic sensor package including a water sensor and open/close sensor. The sensors, called Pips, are ready to ship and they will build the final Owl hardware by July 2014. I’ve played with an early edition and was impressed with the size of the Pips and the ease of setup. While this probably isn’t for the casual user, I could see this as being valuable to a homeowner with a more DIY bent. Just as the body is getting all sorts of quantified self hardware, perhaps this is the start of the quantified home? [kickstarter url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/940226757/owl-platform-online width=640] |
Confirmed: Flipboard Raises Another $50 Million To Close Out Its Series C Round | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 12 | 9 | Flipboard has confirmed that it raised an additional $50 million, which will close out the Series C round of financing that it . In addition to the new funding, Flipboard is also announcing that it has also surpassed the 100-million-user milestone. The additional funding, which was , will also be led Rizvi Traverse Management, the investment fund run by under-the-radar Suhail Rizvi. The funding closed last week, according to a company spokesperson, and brings the total amount raised to more than $160 million. Valuation was pegged at $800 million, which was only slightly below the $1 billion that had previously been rumored. Existing investors, which include Goldman Sachs, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Index Ventures, and Insight Venture Partners, also participated. Flipboard’s raise comes as the company continues to add new users. The company now has more than 100 million users, which is up from 85 million, at the time that it confirmed the first half of the Series C funding. It has also been working to give users more tools to build magazine-like feeds of their favorite pieces of content. In March, it , which unveiled the magazine feature. Soon after, it enabled users to . All of that was meant to , which the company hopes will treat its content more like magazines, in terms of how much they’re willing to pay to reach Flipboard readers. By placing their ads in a clean, well-lit, and attractive space, the hope is that Flipboard can command higher premiums than one would find in a typical mobile app. It took that one step further in November, when it launched tools to enable brands to . Those catalogs are meant to evoke a better shopping (or at least browsing experience) than one would find on most e-commerce sites. The strategy appears to be working so far. While Flipboard has declined to give out revenue numbers in the past, in November CEO Mike McCue told TechCrunch: At a high level, the economics for ad deals on Flipboard near print, as opposed to digital CPMs – which has always been a goal of ours,” he says. “This kind of brand advertising sells for about the same as what it sells for in print pages in Vanity Fair. To continue getting more advertisers on board, and to keep moving its product forward, Flipboard expects to hire pretty aggressively over the next year. The company has about 100 employees today, according to CTO Eric Feng, and expects that to double to 200 by the end of next year. Hires will be focused on engineering and adding to its sales team. |
Counsyl Co-Founder Balaji Srinivasan Steps Up As Andreessen Horowitz’ Newest General Partner | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 12 | 9 | , a Stanford academic who co-founded genetic-testing company Counsyl, is stepping up as Andreessen Horowitz’ eighth general partner. The firm, which is just four years old, tends to pick general partners who have built or operated large companies before. So this is in keeping with that philosophy. While teaching at Stanford, , a South San Francisco-based company that helps prospective parents test their risks of passing on genetic conditions to their future children. While Counsyl doesn’t get as much hype as other consumer Internet or mobile startups in Silicon Valley, they are at the forefront of “big data” meeting the rapidly dropping costs of full genome sequencing. The company is testing somewhere around 3 to 4 percent of all births in the U.S. So with 4 million births per year, that would put them at around 120,000 to 160,000 tests per year. At around $500 to $600 per test (depending on whether there are insurance discounts), they’re on an annualized revenue run-rate of about $60 million to $80 million a year and we hear that the company was last valued at $1 billion in the most recent round. What Srinivasan brings to Andreessen Horowitz is the kind of expertise that will help the firm sort out health-related deals. But he has a pretty broad range of interests. He also runs the and that has reached about 125,000 students. “I’m interested in businesses that take digital bits and turn them into interfaces for physical atoms,” said Srinivasan, who will be the firm’s youngest partner at 33. “I’m also interested in drones, Bitcoin and 3D printing.” It took Andreessen Horowitz about six months to recruit Srinivasan. “Marc was very persuasive with the idea that I could have leverage across a bunch of industries,” Srinivasan said. “Being a VC will definitely be different in certain ways. The biggest change is that I can’t be as hands-on in a company as I normally would be.” The firm’s co-founder Marc Andreessen added, “We met Balaji back in the spring. He’s spent a lot of time at the firm. We’ve gotten to know him, built a great relationship so we decided to pull the trigger.” Andreessen said that he has no plans to open any kind of health or biotech-specific funds. Instead, he’s looking for businesses that follow the firm’s “Software eats the world” theory, where more and more industries are being dramatically disrupted by software solutions. So they won’t be looking for traditional therapeutics companies, but rather quantified self, genome sequencing and health IT companies. He also said that he feels comfortable with a natural size of six to 10 general partners for the firm, and a single fund and a single Silicon Valley-based office. The firm also has 65 other professionals or regular “partners” who help portfolio companies with recruiting, marketing and business development. As a side note, Srinivasan is unafraid to voice sometimes controversial political views. In a recent speech at Y Combinator’s Startup School, he outlined the U.S.’s more traditional commercial and political centers in New York and Washington D.C. The speech triggered criticism from others who said that that Silicon Valley secede from the U.S. He wrote a recent piece in Wired that was more specific, talking about how software is enabling groups of like-minded individuals to form long-lasting communities and perhaps even one day will . |
Confirmed: Snapchat Hack Not A Hoax, 4.6M Usernames And Numbers Published | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | A site called has saved usernames and phone numbers for 4.6 million accounts and made the information available for download. In a statement to us, SnapchatDB says that it got the information through a recently identified and patched Snapchat exploit and that it is making the data available in an effort to convince the messaging app to beef up its security. We’ve also reached out to Snapchat. SnapchatDB said: Our motivation behind the release was to raise the public awareness around the issue, and also put public pressure on Snapchat to get this exploit fixed. It is understandable that tech startups have limited resources but security and privacy should not be a secondary goal. Security matters as much as user experience does. We used a modified version of gibsonsec’s exploit/method. Snapchat
could have easily avoided that disclosure by replying to Gibsonsec’s private communications, yet they didn’t. Even long after that disclosure, Snapchat was reluctant to taking the necessary steps to secure user data. Once we started scraping on a large scale, they decided to implement very minor obstacles, which were still far from enough. Even now the exploit persists. It is still possible to scrape this data on a large scale. Their latest changes are still not too hard to circumvent. We wanted to minimize spam and abuse that may arise from this release. Our main goal is to raise public awareness on how reckless many internet companies are with user information. It is a secondary goal for them, and that should not be the case. You wouldn’t want to eat at a restaurant that spends millions on decoration, but barely anything on cleanliness. Earlier we speculated that SnapchatDB might be a hoax meant to call attention to the app’s security issues but, as it turns out, it’s real–at least one member of our editorial team has been affected. A reader also told us he found his own number, that of several friends and Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel in the list. On , several people have had trouble downloading the data files (I just got an error message for both of them, but that may be because of high traffic), but a user who saw the list said that only numbers in some parts of the U.S. have been published so far. If you have not been able to download the list, you can created by developer to see if your username was included. SnapchatDB said it “censored the last two digits of the phone numbers” in order to “minimize spam and abuse,” but it might still release the unfiltered data, including millions of phone numbers. The Next Web did a WHOIS lookup on SnapchatDB’s domain and found it was created just yesterday on December 31. The registrant’s name is protected, but its mailing address and contact number are both listed in Panama. The site appears to have been created in response to recently identified flaws in Snapchat’s security. Last week, on how white-hat Gibson Security researchers had tried to alert Snapchat to ways that hackers would connect usernames to phone numbers for user in stalking, but were ignored. Gibson Security then . The firm said that hackers could use two exploits to gain access to users’ personal data, including their real names, usernames and phone numbers, through Snapchat’s Android and iOS API. Snapchat did offer a public statement, but as , it wasn’t very satisfactory because it did not offer details on how its countermeasures would work, such as rate limiting, bad IP blocking, or automated systems that scan suspicious activity. Snapchat said: “Theoretically, if someone were able to upload a huge set of phone numbers, like every number in an area code, or every possible number in the U.S., they could create a database of the results and match usernames to phone numbers that way. Over the past year we’ve implemented various safeguards to make it more difficult to do.” The Gibson Security report and SnapchatDB are both reminders that even in an ephemeral messaging service, it would be a mistake to be lulled into a sense of security about the information that you do have stored with the app. “People tend to use the same username around the web so you can use this information to find phone number information associated with Facebook and Twitter accounts, or simply to figure out the phone numbers of people you wish to get in touch with,” SnapchatDB stated on the site. |
Google To Close Bump And Flock, Its Recently Acquired File Sharing Apps | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | Bump and Flock, the file sharing apps Google acquired last fall, will be shut down by the end of this month. Both apps will stop working and be removed from Google Play and the App Store on January 31, . Google bought Bump Technologies, which make both apps, back in September, and that work on the app appeared to stop shortly after the acquisition. Bump, which let users tap phones together to share contacts and other files, raised nearly $20 million and enjoyed high download rates, but failed to monetize successfully as other easy, mobile-friendly ways to share information were developed, most notably Apple’s AirDrop for iOS 7. Flock is Bump Technologies released in 2012. As , the sale wasn’t an acquihire, but Google might plan to turn Flock into part of Google+ in order to compete with Facebook’s photo sharing and Dropbox’s photo saving services, especially since Google+’s Party Mode, a photo sharing service based around events, failed to gain real traction. The acquisition of Bump Technologies also gave Google access to several mobile communication patents that could help it improve Android and create better alternatives to near-field communication (NFC). When the startup , co-founder David Lieb said in a statement that “We strive to create experiences that feel like magic, enabled behind the scene with innovations in math, data processing, and algorithms. So we couldn’t be more thrilled to join Google.” The acquisition price was undisclosed but sources told TechCrunch it was around $35 million, a relatively low amount considering how much funding Bump had raised. Y Combinator, Sequoia Captial, Felicis Ventures, SV Angel, Andreessen Horowitz, and many angels. |
The Best iOS And Android Apps Of 2013 | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | Congratulations, Planet Earth! We made it another 365 days without crashing into the sun. Go team! It’s the end of the year, and that means three things: booze, ridiculous sunglasses with numbers on them, and lists. Lots and lots of lists. You’ve seen our list of . Up next? The Best Mobile Apps Of 2013. Now, to be clear: there’s not a lot of science here. If we were going by the raw numbers, some Angry Birds spin-off would be the top app every year for the rest of eternity. Instead, these are the favorites picked by a bunch of geeks who write about this stuff all day, . We’ve seen the good, the bad, and the terrible — and after some heated debate, these apps emerged as the year’s champs. We tried to stick with apps that launched in 2013, or, in some cases, the tail end of 2012. While many of the apps are cross-platform and we considered that a massively positive bulletpoint, we didn’t eliminate any of our top picks just because they were only on one platform or the other. Some are iOS only. Some are Android only. That’s just the way it goes. Think we missed something? Got a favorite? Let us know down in the comments. In no particular order: Cover is the lockscreen we always wanted without even knowing it. It figures out what apps you use most and when, and automatically pushes shortcuts for those apps straight to your phone’s lockscreen at the right time. Use Gmail and LinkedIn a lot at work? It’ll catch on and have those apps at-the-ready as soon as you walk in the office. Driving? It’ll queue up Waze, or Pandora, or whatever it thinks you’ll need most.
Poor Lytro! The oddly-shaped camera got its fair share of buzz when it launched back in 2011, with its special sensor that allowed for all sorts of neat tricks (like being able to “shift” the perspective of a photo a bit after you’ve already snapped it.) Alas, like the landfill’s worth of standalone pocket cameras that fell before it, the Lytro’s functionality has largely been replicated by mobile apps. One of our favorite apps in that group is Seene. Seene lets you take super trippy “3D” photos with just your iPhone. It actually takes a bunch of photos as you move your phone around an object, then intelligently stitches them together using all sorts of computer vision voodoo.
When Google Reader died on July 1st of 2013, a million hopeful replacements sprung up around its grave. While there’s no one-size-fits-all alternative, NewsBlur is a very, solid option. It’s fast, cross-platform, and super pretty.
Right around the middle of the year, Icelandic games studio Plain Vanilla shifted their focus from one-off, licensed quiz titles to an all-in-one quiz game with topics for everyone — and man, did it pay off. With an ever-growing library of 200,000+ questions, a super-clever multiplayer mode that makes games feel realtime when they’re not, and a gorgeous interface, QuizUp is one of the all-around best mobile games of the year. : [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brfr7–6ESc&w=640&h=360] Sit your phone down. Push a button. A few seconds later, you’ve got a full 360° panoramic of the room. How? . And by magic, I mean an clever hack that uses the iPhone 5S’ vibration motor to propel the phone around on a smooth surface. Does it work every time? Nope. But when it does, everyone’s head explodes.
BillGuard’s CEO says they’re building “ “, and they’re already doing a damned good job of it (aided, of course, by Mint having gone pretty stale in the years since its 2009 Intuit acquisition). BillGuard tracks your spending, provides a beautiful analytics interface, and quickly highlights any charges that seem fraudulent or that might be hidden fees in disguise. Oh, and it learns where you shop most and automatically finds coupons for you to use next time you go.
My New Years Resolution for 2014 is to remember what the hell my New Years Resolution for 2013 was. But if your resolution is to read more, Oyster is for you. Think Netflix, but for reading. $10 a month gets you all-you-can-read access to about 100,000 titles.
Everyone has that one thing that they’ve wanted to build, only to find out that someone has already made it really, really well. HeyDay is that thing for me. HeyDay is what the company calls an “effortless journal”, automatically pulling your photos, videos, and GPS locations into individual, timestamped journal entries. At the end of the day, you just go back through and add little notes to fill in the gaps.
TimeHop scans your myriad social networking accounts to remind you of all the awesome things you were doing on this same day a year (or two) ago. It’s like a personal time capsule, or a “This Day In History” list for your life. Get ready to drown in endless waves of nostalgia.
Clumsy Ninja is kind of like a Tamagotchi, if the Tamagotchi was a lil’ drunk dude in a ninja costume. You play games with your ninja to teach him new skills; where at first he can hardly walk without tripping over his own feet, you’ll quickly have him doing backflips and karate chopping dodgeballs out of the air. Sure, it’s a bit silly — and sure, it’s a classic time-killer/grinding game. But it’s also truly remarkable to see something like this running . The animation blending/ragdoll system alone is mindblowing.
Agent is one of those Android apps that could pretty much exist on iOS, unless Apple either makes some big ol’ policy changes or builds it themselves. Agent makes your smartphone smarter in lots of little ways. Battery dying? It’ll dim the screen and turn off Bluetooth. Sleeping? It’ll silence your phone, but offer up callers/texters a way to ring through in case of an emergency. Driving? It’ll reply to texts to let people know you can’t respond right now, AND remember where you parked.
Tinder is dating boiled down to an almost absurd level of simplicity: a single swipe. Like someone? Swipe right. If they’re not quite for you? Swipe left. If they’ve seen your photo and liked what they saw enough to swipe to the right, Tinder matches you up. It ain’t my kind of thing (read: my girlfriend would punch me right in the schnoz), but the single folks at TC all swear by it.
Surprise! After a rebirth under a new owner in 2012, Digg actually started sending a decent amount of traffic around the web again in 2013. Bigger surprise: they built a mobile app and it’s actually pretty damned good. The editor-curated content provides a quick glance as to what’s popular on the Internet at any given time, while the built-in news reader is another super solid alternative to the late great Google Reader.
: You’d be hardpressed to find anyone saying anything bad about Duolingo – it’s this year’s Internet golden child, and rightly so. It’s one of the best tools I’ve ever seen for learning/brushing up on a language… and it’s completely free. As part of your training, you translate bits of real world text from sites like CNN and BuzzFeed (which is how Duolingo makes any money.)
Hate what Apple did with the calendar in iOS 7? Me too! Fortunately, a couple of folks from Foursquare broke away to remind us that calendars can be pretty easy to use. Looking for another calendar, but not feelin’ Sunrise? Honorable mentions to Fantastical ( ), Tempo ( ), and Any.do Cal ( )
Acquired months before it even launched, Vine is one of the stranger tales of 2013. Focused entirely around sharing 6 second looping video clips, many a pundit predicted Vine’s death upon the launch of Instagram Video — and yet, Vine continues to be where most of the Internet’s funniest short videos end up. |
Dell Looks To Set A New Tone For Its Private Life | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | The Dell saga added a new chapter this year, when its founder and Silver Lake , borrowing $2 billion of in the process. The deal that closed on October 30th valued the company at $24.9 billion. Tucked away from the public eye, and released from the quarterly trial of investor expectations, Dell may now have the flexibility to retool its troubled PC business, and invest in new areas that could sport better margins. Now that Dell has crossed the public-private Rubicon, it appears ready to recultivate its image. The firm has released a new video that compares its history to that of other well-known technology companies, like Dropbox. The clip has a clear point: Dell was started just like the other technology companies that you respect. The implication is that it retains that DNA. A large company freed from quarterly earnings reports is a company unbound from many of its prior shackles. Dell bought its freedom, and we now get to see what it will do with it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja61fxmY77Q |
I, Spammer | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | As I approach the half-way mark of my crowdfunding project, I wanted to address the thing that makes me feel the worst about this whole process: the spam. As I intimated in , moving from passive content producer to active content salesperson is hard. As someone used to fire-and-forget posting, convincing others to buy something I’ve built is a hard thing to do. And the best way to do it, sadly, is through spam. I pride myself on trying to be a nice guy. I post crowdfunding projects on TC all the time because I think they’re cool and I tend to use social media to either make dumb jokes or talk about projects I’ve seen. Now, however, I have to use social media as a sales tool. I contact the vast majority of my Facebook friends directly, have , and even resorted to contacting my LinkedIn and Google+ contacts although I barely use those services. How did I get the most traction, however? Email. Take a look at the image above. Aside from a massive Facebook push around Christmas each of those spikes were driven by an email blast sent out on or around that date. Emails took a few days to appear as pledges but after each email I was able to push the total up by at least $1,000. Even given the horrible click rates, those are very compelling numbers. Now, to be clear, I don’t think it was just the email. These lists consist of people who have signed up for my various projects and folks I’ve met in my travels. They know me and many have the ulterior motive of staying friendly with a TC editor. Would I have the same results of I were some dude selling penis pills online? I sincerely doubt it. However, I could see this working if the email list were in the millions and not in the thousands. In short, direct contact works best. As one crowdfunder told me “When someone gets an email from you they can do one of two things: ignore it and feel bad/indifferent or act on it.” In my case I was lucky that so many acted on it. Again, I’ve been consistently amazed how little Twitter and Facebook – aside from direct messages – have contributed to the process. While these tweets and twoots are great for getting the word out – I’m not ungrateful by any means – the actual conversion is limited. Broadcasting “Buy This!” is far less effective than saying “Hey, friend, buy this.” Do I feel bad about this spam? Well, I’ve tried to keep it to a minimum and now that I’m well I feel bad for continuing to market. But, in the end, this is a project I love and feel deserves to do well. What would I change in the future? I’d create some sort of system so I don’t re-target backers who have already helped out – that’s something that really upset me and I’ve received two emails from friends about it. Essentially I haven’t found any system for truly segmenting out who I contact although I’m sure solutions exist (and feel free to let me know if you have one). Still I’m amazed at the reach and power at good old email. It sucks, but it’s true: spam works and it works well. In the end, a nice message, carefully wrought, results in far less blowback than a wonky diet pill email, but the process is the same. Like it or not, direct email is a crowdfunder’s best friend. . For future posts I’m looking for more input from online analysts and other crowdfunding platforms so please email me at john@beta.techcrunch.com. |
How the Internet’s Founders Feel About The NSA Scandal | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | As the co-fathers of the Internet, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn tend to be pretty protective of their digital masterpiece. Both were early Defense Department engineers of the communications architecture that underlies the modern Internet, and both tend be outspoken about threats to a free and open information superhighway. For instance, when a United Nations body, the Internet Telecommunications Union, , Cerf was immediately to Washington D.C. to preempt the power grab. The National Security spying scandal has, likewise, been hailed as a global threat to privacy and the Internet itself. In a wide-ranging with the New York Times, Cerf and Kahn had a more reserved concern for government surveillance. Here is Cerf on the NSA:
A. The answer is no, I don’t think so. There are some similar analogues in history. The French historically copied every telex or every telegram that you sent, and they shared it with businesses in order to remain competitive. And when that finally became apparent, it didn’t shut down the telegraph system. The Snowden revelations will increase interest in end-to-end cryptography for encrypting information both in transit and at rest. For many of us, including me, who believe that is an important capacity to have, this little crisis may be the trigger that induces people to spend time and energy learning how to use it. To give a bit of background, Cerf has suggested that privacy is a relatively new concept (and, historically, ). During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln , in a move that has been compared to the modern surveillance state. It appears that this type of mass surveillance, followed by new privacy laws, is typical in American history. Khan seemed far more reserved in opining how the NSA affects privacy:
In the 1990s when I was on the National Internet Infrastructure Advisory Committee, Al Gore showed up as vice president, and he made an impassioned pitch for Clipper chip [an early government surveillance system]. He said, “We need to be very aware of the needs of national security and law enforcement.” Even though the private sector was arguing for tight encryption, the federal government needed [to be able to conduct surveillance]. It never went, and it’s not anywhere today. I think it’s probably easier to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem than it is to solve this. A bit of background, in the 90’s, the government proposed a hardware backdoor to cell phones, known as the “Clipper Chip”. Hackers and activists its implementation. Privacy is a perennial problem on the Internet–one that may never be solved. Read the full interview . |
The Best And Worst Gadgets Of 2013 | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | year: a ; a ; a ; and a . But it was also a time for gadgets. As we wait for 2013 to come to a close and hope for brighter things for the year to come, here’s a look at the gadgets we loved, the ones we hated, and the ones that we found aesthetically offensive. Fitness trackers are many and varied, but Fitbit consistently delivers top-notch hardware. The Fitbit Force is the latest. It takes the successful formula of the wrist-borne Fitbit Flex and adds a basic screen so you can get information right from your wrist, instead of having to open an app on your phone every time you want to check your progress (in more detail than via a few lighted dots). Many tried to make a smartwatch people wanted to wear and use this year, and many failed. Pebble succeeded. Success for a smartwatch still doesn’t look like massive millions of units sold, but it looks better than when the Pebble team tried this a few years ago with the inPulse smartwatch for BlackBerry. “The what?” you say. Exactly. The iPad mini with Retina display takes the winning form factor of the original iPad mini and slaps a super high-res screen in there. It’s essentially a no-compromise machine, in that it’s cheaper than the iPad Air, and has the same processor, computing power and battery life. Plus if you have big pockets, it’s pocketable. Kids need coding skills if they want to survive in our dystopian future. The ability to hack a circuit board could be the difference between eternal servitude and mastery over a private robot army by 2050 and we all know it. This educational tool is the perfect, cheap apocalypse survival kit. It’s technically from last year, but we contend it had more impact this year when production really spooled up. Amazon knows when it’s got a good thing going. Last year’s Kindle Paperwhite was a good thing, and this year’s update keeps all the good and adds some better stuff. Like faster page refresh, greater text/page contrast and more even lighting. Pebble made a good smartwatch, and Samsung made a dumb one. They made weird ads to try to promote their dumb smartwatch, too, which helped nothing and creeped out the entire world. Plus it only works with a small pool of Galaxy devices, and it has terrible battery life and looks awful. Go home Samsung, you’re drunk. “Android-based game console” is a phrase we wrote so many times this year. So. Many. Times. And it turns out, they mostly blow. Atop the pile of those that miss is the Gamestick, a crowdfunded disaster that no one loves. The Ouya is like the Gamestick, in that it was a disappointing “Android-based game console,” but to its credit, it isn’t the Gamestick. It’s still not great by any stretch of the imagination, but huge hype didn’t help, and it has decent niche appeal for anyone who really likes emulation and would rather have something permanent instead of plugging their phone into their TV repeatedly. Speaking of startup gadgets that really blew it in 2013, the Leap Motion Controller doesn’t live up to its massive hype at all. Sure, if you’re a billionaire inventor like Tony Stark or Elon Musk it’s great for designing space ships or giant death airships, but for regular people, trying to, say, browse the web, you’re going to try this once, hate it and stick it in a drawer. Kids need to learn to use the toilet, and they should learn early that they also need to use iPads while they’re doing their business. So why not combine potty training and tablet use into a single device? The answer is that you shouldn’t do this because God will never forgive you if you do. Maybe face-based computing is going to work eventually, but as-is, Google Glass looks like garbage. It makes your face look bad. Don’t try denying it. Google has released plenty of images of models wearing it and none of them look any good, so you with your normal-person face will look plain ol’ stupid. The LG G2 is a great phone, as it is essentially a slightly improved version of the excellent Nexus 5, albeit with some LG bloatware crud. But LG went out of its mind and put the wake/sleep and volume rocker button on the back, just to infuriate me to the point where I would like to do murder. You couldn’t choose a less ergonomic place to put that button, LG. Not if you ran a thousand focus groups to figure out more inconvenient positioning. I ain’t mad at you for dropping one of the ‘D’s Nintendo – you never needed three to begin with. And this device is actually pretty great, and I’d buy this instead of a 3DS if I didn’t already have one. Still, it’s not good-looking. It is, in fact, ugly. Good looks cost money, though, so uglification for a budget device may be strategy, not a stupid mistake. |
Sony Rumored To Be Considering A Windows Phone Handset In 2014 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | According , Sony could release a Windows Phone device, diversifying its mobile device lineup, bolstering Microsoft, and perhaps demonstrating a growing wish among hardware firms to hedge against an Android-dominated future. Sony appears to be strongly interested in the project. The Verge that the company has continued the project despite Microsoft’s plan to purchase Nokia’s handset business. Its willingness to consider building a Windows Phone device despite the platform having a firm home-advantage tilt towards Microsoft’s own hardware is indicative. For Sony the move would diversify its mobile line away from Android, a platform now generally associated with Samsung hardware. The irony to that is the simple fact that Nokia is the de facto Windows Phone OEM, so Sony would be entering into a second realm where it would be a second-place player. The winner in Sony’s potential entrance is Microsoft, even if the release of a Vaio-branded Windows Phone handset could potentially slow sales growth of its — soon to be owned — Lumia phones. Microsoft would collect a per-unit fee, perhaps enjoy faster overall platform sales growth, and, of course, there has ever been an implied connection between the Windows Phone and Xbox product lines. We have yet to see hard evidence in my estimation that one leads to greater use of the other, but the shared Xbox platform experience must have some impact on consumer activity. Therefore, Sony building a Windows Phone would have some positive impact on Xbox. And that would, presumably, come at the cost of Playstation momentum. According to the , Nokia’s control of usage share in the Windows Phone hardware ecosystem is now more than 92 percent. That’s dangerous for Microsoft as betting your mobile platform on a single device stack could lead to platform risks (a poor hardware update cycle could slow growth for a year, etc.), meaning that Sony’s joining the Windows Phone cadre could better moor Windows Phone. When Windows Phone launched, it did so with OEM partners as diverse as Dell. There has been a winnowing. If Microsoft can flip that trend, it will have gone a ways to proving that the progress it made in 2013 was no fluke. |
LG May Be Taking Another Stab At The Wearable Activity Tracking Formula | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | CES 2014 is just around the corner, along with enough new gadgetry to fill several lifetimes. Last year we saw a glut of activity trackers pop up in the wake of notable hits like the Fitbit and Jawbone’s UP, and now it looks like LG is taking yet another stab at the wearable fitness formula with its newly leaked (thanks to ) Lifeband Touch. Wait, hold on, stab? Let’s not forget that LG showed off an awfully familiar looking quantified self contraption a device that never found its way to store shelves. That earlier unit was capable of connecting to certain compatible LG smart TVs in addition to just tracking your movement, which has to be one of the savvier approaches to building a wearable I’ve seen yet. After all, if you’re going to insist that people wear your wrist-worn doodad for days on end, what better way to go than to connect it to more things you’re likely to interact with often anyway. Sadly, there are precious few details to go on at this point so the Lifeband is If we’re being honest, the Lifeband’s existence doesn’t come as much of a surprise — LG has already confirmed that it’s continuing to work on wearable devices, and some recent rumors pointed to a health-conscious angle. The real question, though, is whether or not these things will ever actually see the light of day. The quantified self market is still a relatively young one, but it’s already got its fair share of big-name incumbents that seem to get the lion’s share of attention from the press and consumers alike. Then again, the Galaxy Gear seemed like one of those kooky vaporware projects for a while before Samsung (for better or worse) decided to push it out the door — maybe LG will throw caution to the wind and release this thing after all. |
Why 2014 Is The Year You Change | James Altucher | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | I stopped going to classes. I had a scholarship that paid all my living expenses ($1,200/month) so I didn’t want to quit (ugh, and get a job?). So I stayed a student but I failed every class I took for three semesters in a row. Finally, the dean wrote me a note that said, “We have to ask you to leave. You can come back when you are more mature.” I haven’t gone back yet. — Many years later I was at a job, and in the middle of a meeting I walked out, walked out of the building and never came back and never returned the phone calls. I quit. Another time I stopped coming to work until the CEO asked me, “What’s going on?” and eventually they got rid of me. I’m not saying this is good advice. I’m not “Dear Abby.” I knew for sure in each situation that change was needed, but I didn’t know why, and I didn’t know how. I just knew who (me) and what (quit). Why is this important for entrepreneurs? Because every moment you are a lifepreneur. And the change inside yourself is what allows you to create the abundance and change outside. I say this not like some bullshit self-help book, but because this is what has worked for me. I started a business and raised a little over $500,000. I built the product and had users. Everyone was excited. The day I raised the money I woke up shaking. I knew that the idea was bad. It was called “140Love,” a dating service I built on top of Twitter. So instead of people seeing your profile they can see your tweets and know who you “really” are. But here’s the problem: On dating services, people want to be anonymous. There was no way this idea was going to work. I wired back all the money that had come in. I shut down the site, and ate all the costs for building it. I moved onto the next idea and never looked back. And, by the way, the next idea and the next idea failed also. And then one worked. And then another one worked. When you waste time on a bad idea you don’t have any room or energy leftover for the good ideas. Sometimes your mind doesn’t know what’s happening. Your mind is really just a tool. About 10 times so far I’ve made complete changes in my life. Some horribly painful where I had to puke up all the garbage that had been shoved down my throat. And those were the fun changes. The changes that weren’t fun were the changes I didn’t make. I wish I could apologize here for the changes I didn’t make. I wish I could CC the right people right here. But it’s too late and always will be. I suspect I have another 10-20 changes left in me. — Saying “no” to a change that’s begging for you will kill you. Benjamin Franklin said, “most people die at 25 but are buried at 75.” You can’t ask the world to change to suit your needs…you have to change first. That’s the first step towards being an entrepreneur. When you make a change, here is what happens: Well, I have no clue what happens to you. Here is what happens to me in a very no bullshit way. What will happen to me? I’ll go broke! Or be lonely! Or get sick! Practicing dealing with uncertainty is the only way (CC: ) to get comfortable with this fear. You can let your fears keep you from growing, or you can let your fears inspire you to grow. The good thing is, you get to choose. Bosses won’t want you to quit. Colleagues will get scared because it means change is forced on them. And depending on your change, maybe family is unhappy (when I was thrown out of school, my family was certainly unhappy). Whoever wrote your script will be unhappy. You’re changing the movie. There’s to say to the people who argue with you. Because they are right also. In their life situations, it’s very right for for you not to quit. Why argue with them? Conserve your energy for your change. Let’s say you’re leaving a relationship or a job or an agreement. I can tell you, someone is ready to make you feel guilty about this. It’s hard not to feel guilt, particularly if someone is sad because of “what you are doing to them.” But much worse is the guilt you will feel if you don’t make the change your body and the universe is telling you to make. The universe is much bigger than the person on the other side. To go against that flow will make you sink and drown. I don’t think I’ve ever once made a change in my life that didn’t involve me crying either on the day of the big change or sometime that week. Why cry? Isn’t that a bit wimpy? It’s because you have no idea what you are doing. It’s a change! You’re not supposed to know what happens next. The faster you can say, the faster you can stop crying. How do you know if it’s the right thing? I can tell you, but the reality is with practice you know. Change is very lonely, but you will never be lonely if you enjoy being with the person you are alone with. None of the above sounds that great actually. So why change at all? When a car doesn’t start all winter, the engine will get ruined. When you don’t walk for two weeks, your leg muscles atrophy and you need physical therapy to walk. Change is a muscle. When you change you go from a flat learning curve (your old situation) to a steep learning curve (the new situation). Steep learning curves feel good. Like the feeling of new love. So do flattening learning curves because you learn deeper subtleties. But upside down learning curves feel…like fuckness. At every stage of our lives, the people around us try to write our scripts. When we are young the script your family writes you might be: school, cubicle, promotions, management, CEO, retirement, death. But you might realize that the right script for you didn’t include “cubicle.” You have to rewrite your script. If you stay in the old script it’s like acting in a role that is not written for you. The final production will be a disaster. People will throw food at you and spit on you in the street. You want to be in a work of art, not a forgery or a plagiarism. For 400,000 years, humans were good at hunter-gathering. Which meant we had to know all of the terrain around us. We had to know all the foods, poisons, animals and enemies. And then we would move to a new terrain. Change was part of our DNA. But for the past 10,000 years (a blip in evolutionary time), we had to specialize and be good at one thing and in one place. Nobody told evolution this. So our bodies break down, our minds get sick, we need all sorts of medications, we die. Evolution wants us to constantly change. When we were kids we played different games all the time. We would never play the same game for 300 days in a row, for 20 years in a row. But then we got handed our “scripts” by our parents, schools, political parties, jobs, institutions, etc. We were told to stick to the script. But we never stopped being the boy or girl who wanted to play. When you stop playing, you enter the vast world of excuses. If you are good at making cars, and then you get good at design (a totally different area), then suddenly you might be the best in the world at car design. When you change and learn from new fields you get to have idea sex (and idea orgasms). Your ideas have children. Your ideas evolve many generations very quickly. Suddenly now you are the exponential result of your changes. Your cheeks are rosy with the fresh air that constant idea sex bestows on you. Being uniquely the best in the world at something is fun and valuable. And it’s never too late. If you want examples, I will give you them. But you are never too old, no matter who tries to tell you you are. Getting good at change (big, small, tiny – every day) means getting good at life. Do it without expectation. Wish for nothing. Care for everything. Happiness will be in between. Do I feel badly about that scholarship from 22 years ago? Yes. Sometimes I feel bad about a lot of things. Sometimes people will judge you and it will hurt. But that’s just life. Trust me, you will have plenty of time for death later. |
Apple Says It Has Never Worked With NSA To Create iPhone Backdoors, Is Unaware Of Alleged DROPOUTJEEP Snooping Program | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | Apple has contacted TechCrunch with a statement about the DROPOUTJEEP NSA program that detailed a system by which the organization claimed it could snoop on iPhone users. Apple says that it has never worked with the NSA to create any ‘backdoors’ that would allow that kind of monitoring, and that it was unaware of any programs to do so. Here is the full statement from Apple: Apple has never worked with the NSA to create a backdoor in any of our products, including iPhone. Additionally, we have been unaware of this alleged NSA program targeting our products. We care deeply about our customers’ privacy and security. Our team is continuously working to make our products even more secure, and we make it easy for customers to keep their software up to date with the latest advancements. Whenever we hear about attempts to undermine Apple’s industry-leading security, we thoroughly investigate and take appropriate steps to protect our customers. We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of malicious hackers and defend our customers from security attacks, regardless of who’s behind them. The statement is a response to a report in Sunday that detailed a Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit within the NSA that is tasked with gaining access to foreign computer systems in order to retrieve data to protect national security. The report also pointed out a division called ANT that was set up to compile information about hacking consumer electronics, networking systems and more. The story detailed dozens of devices and methods, including prices for deployment, in a catalogue that could be used by the NSA to pick and choose the tools it needed for snooping. The 50-page catalog included a variety of hacking tools that targeted laptops and mobile phones and other consumer devices. Der Spiegel said that these programs were evidence that the NSA had ‘ that many consumers use. Among these options was a program called DROPOUTJEEP — a program by which the NSA could theoretically snoop on ‘any’ Apple iPhone with ‘100% success’. The documents were dated 2008, implying that these methods were for older devices. Still, the program’s detailed capabilities are worrisome. Researcher and hacker Jacob Applebaum — the co-author of the articles, coinciding with a speech he gave at a conference about the programs — pointed out that the ‘100% success rate’ claimed by the NSA was worrisome as it implied cooperation by Apple. The statement from the company appears to preclude that cooperation. The program detail indicated that the NSA needed physical access to the devices at the time that the documents were published. It does note that they were working on ‘remote installation capability’ but there’s no indication whether that was actually successful. The program’s other options included physical interdiction of devices like laptops to install snooping devices — but there have been security advances like hardware encryption in recent iPhone models that would make modification of devices much more difficult. Early reports of the DROPOUTJEEP program made it appear as if iPhone user was vulnerable to this — which simply can’t be the case. Physical access to a device was required which would preclude the NSA from simply ‘flipping a switch’ to snoop on any user. And Apple patches security holes with every version of iOS. The high adoption rate of new versions of iOS also means that those patches are delivered to users very quickly and on a large scale. The jailbreak community, for instance, knows that once a vulnerability has been used to open up the iPhone’s file system for modification, it’s been ‘burned’ and will likely be patched by Apple quickly. And the process of jailbreaking fits the profile of the capabilities the NSA was detailing in its slide. Applebaum’s walked listeners through a variety of the programs including DROPOUTJEEP. He noted that the claims detailed in the slide indicated that Apple was working with the NSA to give them a backdoor, or the NSA was just leveraging software vulnerabilities to create its own access. The Apple statement appears to clear that up — pointing to vulnerabilities in older versions of iOS that have likely since been corrected. I do also find it interesting that Apple’s statement uses extremely strong wording in response to the NSA program. “We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of malicious hackers and defend our customers from security attacks,” the statement reads, “regardless of who’s behind them.” Lumping the program in with ‘malicious hackers’ certainly makes a clear point. This year has been an eventful one for NSA spying program revelations. Apple that denied that they had been willing participants in the PRISM data collection system — but later revelations of the indicated that the NSA could get its hands on data by monitoring internal company server communications anyway. This spurred targets like Google and Yahoo to implement internal encryption. Last month, Apple released its first ever report on government information requests, detailing the number of times domestic and foreign governments had asked it for user information. At the time, it also to allow it to be more transparent about the number and frequency of those requests. It also began employing a ‘warrant canary’ to warn users of . Most recently, Apple joined AOL, Yahoo, Twitter, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Google and Facebook in with an open letter. Though the NSA is located in the United States and these programs were largely designed to target ‘foreign threats’, these companies have a global customer base — making protecting user privacy as well as at home just as important. Image Credit: |
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings’ Salary To Get 50% Bump To $3M In 2014 | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | Remember ? Wall Street doesn’t. The this morning that the Netflix CEO will get a healthy pay raise in 2014. According to a regulatory filing, Reed Hastings’ annual salary will jump to $3 million, up from the $2 million he earned this year. His annual stock option allowance also improves to $3 million from the current level of $1 million. It’s hard to argue against the pay increase. Netflix had a great 2013. The stock price is up 296% on the year. It’s trading around an all time high of $365. The stock was the top performer in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 this year. The company isn’t raking in the profits, though. In its most recent quarterly report, Netflix only made $32 million. But Wall Street doesn’t seem to mind and so the company should stay the course raking in the subscribers and producing award-winning original content. Netflix just to listen to their subscribers. |
Makers Of Oscar-Shortlisted Documentary “The Act Of Killing” Turn To BitTorrent For Promotion | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | has been pitching itself as a legitimate way for content creators to promote their works, and now the company is what may be its most noteworthy partnership yet — and the co-directors of the documentary are using a BitTorrent Bundle to promote . Noteworthiness is relative, and there’s a decent chance that you haven’t seen or even heard of . But even though aren’t all that impressive, . And the film, in which Indonesian death squad leaders are asked to reenact their killings, made it onto . (The short list is the last step before the actual nominees are announced in January.) As for the BitTorrent Bundles, they’re basically packages of free content, usually meant to promote something that people will actually pay for, like a movie or an album or a book. ( , requiring users to provide something — say, an email address — before they get access.) Other movies that have been promoted include , called . According to BitTorrent, the bundle will include: “The Act of Killing has an important message,” said Drafthouse Films Creative Director Evan Husney in an email. “Our goal is to reach as many people as possible — to preserve this film as a documentary, and as a testament to what happened in Indonesia. BitTorrent Bundle allows us to address a global audience of more than 170 million: to ensure that awareness of the film’s message reaches beyond the Internet’s censors and firewalls.” Christian Averill, BitTorrent’s director of communications, confirmed that this is the first time the company has worked with Drafthouse, and the first time a BitTorrent Bundle has been used to promote an Oscar shortlisted film. The company has been trying to , and Averill added that there are 2 million pieces of licensed and legal content on BitTorrent. He said the promotion shows that “the industry is recognizing the potential of BitTorrent Bundle as a transmedia format to reach massive audiences without limits on size, access or file type.” |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 12 | 9 | null |
Samsung Got A Bigger Tablet Boost For Christmas Than Apple, According To Onswipe | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | Touchscreen publishing company has good news for Samsung. As Onswipe’s Chief Marketing Officer Jason Baptiste put it in an email, “Samsung clearly won Christmas when it comes to tablets.” Specifically, the company looked at visitors to Onswipe-optimized sites for the period of Dec. 26-29 in comparison to Dec. 19-22, as a way to measure the growth that different tablet platforms saw over Christmas. The results? Samsung’s Galaxy tablets grew 50.4 percent, Nexus 7 tablets grew 33.8 percent, iPads grew 20.4 percent, and Kindle Fires grew 19.5 percent. Now, the fact that Onswipe focused on percentage growth is an important caveat here. After all, Samsung was presumably starting from (much) , so it didn’t need to sell as many tablets to see significant growth. It’s also interesting to see the line about Samsung’s victory coming from Baptiste, who recently wrote a blog post telling people to “ .” I asked him if the data made him reconsider the post, and he said no: “Though they enjoyed more growth post holidays, Samsung is still very tiny compared to the iPad and the same goes for the rest of Android. What will be interesting is seeing whether people still use Android tablets 90 days out from now.” Baptiste also provided some numbers about usage. He said the average session time from Samsung users was three minutes and nine seconds after Christmas, down from 3:32 before. On iPad, the average session was 4:03, compared to 4:12 before. And the Kindle Fire had the longest session time on average, 4:51. As for how many people this data represents, Baptiste said Onswipe (which ) reaches 31 million unique visitors each month on the mobile web. |
MaternityCompare Helps Expectant Parents Find Healthcare Providers | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | Choosing an obstetrician can be extremely stressful for expectant parents. , a new startup, hopes to help patients find trustworthy providers with , its first product. The site pulls data and turns it into an easy-to-understand reference tool. MaternityCompare shows what percentage of newborns at different hospitals throughout the U.S. had deliveries that were scheduled one to three weeks early for no medical reason, which can negatively affect the baby’s health. Founder Laura Hamilton’s goal is to help mothers-to-be become smarter health care consumers while at the same time giving hospitals an incentive to improve their care. “Today you can go on the internet and compare restaurants or compare sports teams or compare colleges, and there are dozens of detailed tools available to tell you which one is the best,” she told me in an email. “But if you’re 38 weeks pregnant and you’re choosing a hospital for the delivery, you don’t have the same tools. To me that is a real problem.” According to (the same organizations Hamilton sourced MaternityCompare’s data from), elective early deliveries currently make up 10% to 15% of all births in the U.S., even though groups like the (ACOG) and the encourage full-term pregnancies, or those that reach 39 weeks gestation, whenever possible. MaternityCompare’s stats count elective early births that were scheduled one to three weeks ahead of the baby’s due date (it excludes early births that were medically necessary or occurred because of natural reasons). Her site’s . For each hospital listed, the sample size ranges from 11 to 1,073 deliveries and the dataset covers 51,314 births across 1,597 hospitals in total. Hamilton did not include hospitals with fewer than 11 deliveries in that period. “My hope is that by providing transparency into different hospitals’ early elective delivery rates, I can give expectant mothers the data they need to find the best hospital for them. In addition, I hope that drawing attention to this metric will encourage hospitals with excessive early deliveries to take steps to improve,” Hamilton explains. There are already several sites that help patients compare the performance of doctors in their area. Hamilton says , as a potential competitor, but notes that her startup is different because ZocDoc focuses on patient reviews and Additive Analytics uses quantitative metrics. Hamilton encourages patients to use both tools when looking for a provider. Other competitors include the , which provides hospital comparison tools based on data from the voluntary Leapfrog Hospital Survey, and . There is still a dearth of sites with metrics aimed at expectant parents, however, which is why Hamilton decided to launch MaternityCompare as Additive Analytics’ first product. “If a hospital has a very high rate of early elective deliveries, it means they are not following guidelines set out by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists,” says Hamilton. “To me that’s a bit of a red flag.” She adds that she hopes MaternityCompare will help pregnant women become better advocates for their health. “If her obstetrician suggests scheduling an early elective delivery, she can point to this tool (and to recommendations by the March of Dimes) and insist on a delivery date after 39 weeks,” she says. “I do want to stress, however, that if there is a medical reason for an early delivery, you should absolutely follow your doctor’s recommendations.” Hospitals can also benefit from tools like MaternityCompare by using them to set performance benchmarks or identify areas where they need to improve policies or procedures. Doing so can help them increase their reimbursements, which are tied to quality measures under the Affordable Care Act, Hamilton points out. Additive Analytics is currently being bootstrapped by Hamilton, who has a mathematics degree from the University of Chicago. She launched Canadian and Australian operations for while working as a product manager and was head of analytics at U.S.-Russia e-commerce company , where she developed a proprietary analytics engine to compare the performance of different benchmarks. Eventually, Hamilton plans to add more “online hospital comparison tools to include dozens of quality metrics.” Like MaternityCompare, Hamilton hopes that patients will be able to use Additive Analytics’ products to find the best provider for their medical needs, while at the same time helping doctors and hospital administrators do a better job. Additive Analytics’ hospital comparison tools will remain free, but it will earn revenue by offering for hospitals. The startup is working on software that will take data from hospital electronic medical records (EMR) and help them identify areas where they can improve their performance. “Today, companies spend a huge amount of time and money running advanced machine learning algorithms on their data to optimize their marketing spend, improve website conversions, and recommend similar products to their customers,” Hamilton says. “Which is fine—that’s what they should be doing. We think that the same cutting-edge machine learning, the same analytical horsepower, should be applied to the healthcare sector. Here lives are at stake. And lives are more important than dollars.” |
Sprint Wants To Revive Nextel As A Business Brand, Merge Boost + Virgin Mobile Into ‘Sprint Freedom’ | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 12 | 31 | It was only that Sprint decommissioned and shut down the Nextel iDEN push-to-talk network, and while the carrier has no plans to bring that legacy service back, the brand is another story. According to a source close to the company, Sprint wants to introduce Nextel again — as a brand for business services. The source tells TechCrunch that this is part of a larger branding overhaul coming in Q1 in which Sprint plans to launch a new prepaid brand called “Sprint Freedom” — merging and . Sprint declined to comment for this story, but if the information from the source is accurate, the moves point to Sprint raising its game targeting businesses (particularly smaller and medium businesses) as well as streamlining its patchwork of services. It also fits with the idea of Sprint — now — marching on in consolidation mode, shoring up to present a more competitive face against the likes of AT&T and Verizon. Most recently, Sprint has been for T-Mobile USA, its latest move after Clear and of U.S. Cellular earlier this year. The Nextel service, our source says, will be part of a bigger push to court business customers. That makes some sense: Nextel’s existing business subscriber base, and brand recognition with that segment, were seen as behind Sprint’s $35 billion acquisition of the company in the first place. The new Nextel business, says the source, will be underpinned by more service streamlining: it will be a “premium” offering consisting of the 4G fixed and mobile broadband services that were originally the Clear business. The Nextel name, our source says, will go “on top of everything that was Clear and then target businesses.” Along with previously-Clear services, there will also be more devices introduced, specifically around Sprint Spark — the tri-band LTE service debuted that gives users faster speeds and more reliable connectivity. Introduced with smartphones from HTC (the One max), LG (G2) and Samsung (Galaxy Mega and Samsung Galaxy S4 mini), Sprint Spark will be extended with two hotspots and three tablets as part of the offering. And with that, some changes also around pricing, apparently. “Unlimited data options will come back for the hotspots at a premium, but pricing will be tiered by speed,” the source claims. Sprint will also introduce group plans that will apply to the new Nextel devices. Another part of plan, says that source, concerns Sprint’s prepaid businesses Virgin Mobile and Boost. Collectively, users on these two networks may generate less revenue than Sprint’s postpaid operations, but they serve as a useful counterbalance to the other service, as the number of ARPU-rich postpaid users declined. Like Nextel and Clear, Virgin Mobile and Boost came to Sprint via acquisitions, and it looks like the carrier is now putting that in order, too. Boost and Virgin Mobile will get wrapped into a new, single service called “Sprint Freedom.” It’s not entirely clear but it sounds as if this could mean the eventual scrapping of the two existing brands. , the free mobile phone service provided by Virgin Mobile under the Universal Service Fund, will not be affected, our source says. While a lot of these plans sound like logical consolidation moves for the company, the question mark will be whether Sprint will manage to juggle all the changes without dropping anything (or anyone) in the process. A new Nextel business service would effectively mean a double-leap with a set of legacy products: first turning the Clear service into one focused less on consumers and more on businesses; and second rebranding it as a Nextel offering, but different from what Sprint was selling as a Nextel service not too long ago. In the meantime, it is also not clear how a service called Sprint Freedom would sit alongside other services also called “Freedom” — such as Sprint’s international calling plans, not to mention the Freedom Pop “free” wireless service that is a . And just as the closure of the Nextel brand earlier this year may have left some wondering whether Sprint would really let Nextel disappear into thin air, now the same might be said for Boost, Virgin Mobile and Clear. “It’s been a contentious issue for many,” our source said of the internal response to the changes. Perhaps one reason why these details got leaked to us. |
These Apps Will Help You Make 2014 Less Filthy | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | This year, several notable apps that connect users with house cleaners have launched or gained traction. These include , and . There are a lot of benefits to hiring a professional cleaning service but, unfortunately, I live outside the area covered by these apps. Letting people I don’t know into my apartment also makes me feel exposed. I just don’t like having strangers judge my lovingly curated collections of masking tape, dolls, and whiskers shed by my cats over the years. But I do enjoy living in an (occasionally) neat apartment and my New Years resolution is to develop chore routines that will make housekeeping easy and stress-free by using these iOS apps. My favorite chore app is called Unfuck Your Habitat, though it is listed as to get around Apple’s ban on profanities in app names (there is also an ). I think Unfuck Your Habitat is totally worth its $1.99 price because curse words make me giggle. Also, many housekeeping apps and blogs seemed tailored for people who are already pretty organized. Unfuck Your Habitat is aimed at the rest of us. Its nifty features include a “To-Unfuck List,” or your personal list of chores, unfucking challenges for different rooms, a built-it in timer that balances 20-minute unfucking sprees with 10 minute breaks, and Facebook integration so you can share your unfucking achievements with your friends. My favorite part of the app, however, is the Random Unfucking Motivation button, which is like a verbally abusive fortune cookie that says things like “NICE ASS. NOW GET OFF IT.” and “MY NANA WOULD BE SO ASHAMED OF YOU.” The app is an offshoot of , with inspirational before-and-after photos of real homes, not domiciles that look like they were ripped out of magazine.
If you are looking for an app with less swearing, try , which is relatively pricey at $4.99 but provides a very thorough list of cleaning tasks for every part of your residence. Another helpful feature is My.HomeRoutines, which gives you the option of creating an account to back up your data and edit it on HomeRoutine’s site. HomeRoutines also syncs across different devices, which means you can share your account with family members and roommates. The app lets you create to-do lists and then rotate tasks by day or week, so you develop a routine that makes keeping your house neat relatively mindless. HomeRoutines splits your home into five zones and gives you a list of tasks for each area. This is handy as a reminder for small tasks that often get overlooked, like dusting baseboards.
If you already have a chore routine in place, but want to figure out better and more efficient ways to organize your home, then try . The free app builds a customized list of projects for you based on whether or not you have pets or kids, the appliances or spaces you have to take care of (I appreciate this because I rent an apartment and don’t have to deal with stuff like basements, swimming pools or water boilers), and what your goals are. For example, do you want to make environmentally-friendly alternatives to commercial cleaning solutions, find craft projects or learn some money-saving tips? BrightNest can also give you home maintenance advice based on your region’s climates, but only if you enter a zip code, so this feature doesn’t work if you don’t live in the U.S. or prefer not to divulge the area where you live. Unlike Unfuck Your Habitat and HomeRoutines, BrightNest also requires that you sign up for an account using your email or Facebook login. If you are comfortable creating an account, BrightNest is the most attractive of all the housekeeping/chore apps I’ve tried so far. Weekly projects are illustrated with photographs and an estimate of how much time they will take. Some of them are pretty obvious (I really don’t need yet another closet organizing guide), but there are many fun and surprising tips, like using leftover tea or tea leaves as a cleaning agent. BrightNest doesn’t give you a list of routines, but you can create your own schedule with its projects and opt for reminder emails. Do you live with sloppy roommates that you are planning to strangle? Instead of killing them, try . It’s an easy app that lets you create lists of repeating chores and then assign them to your “housemembers,” who can check-in with their progress. To keep people from slacking off, you can create individual or group rewards that are redeemable once all tasks are created, but this feature is only available if you subscribe to Chroma Pro for $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year per household. |
Silicon Valley Hustle: Former Motionloft CEO Accused Of Defrauding Investors | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | of high-profile exits and a generally frothy financing environment, it’s not unusual to see startup founders spending money lavishly these days. But the story of and its founder could serve as a cautionary tale, especially for unsavvy investors drawn to a big payout. On the surface, Mills seemed like a successful entrepreneur. His company, Motionloft, for store and property owners who needed to analyze pedestrian and vehicle traffic that passed by their respective establishments. Mills was a first-time entrepreneur, but he had received backing from high-profile investors like Mark Cuban, and according to the Motionloft website, the company had secured clients like CVS, Saks Fifth Avenue, and . Several former friends say Mills was also fun to be around and generous about inviting them to party with him at various music festivals and in places like Las Vegas. All of which is why, when Mills started asking friends if they wanted to invest in his company, a few of them jumped at the opportunity. They say Mills cashed checks that altogether were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, promising them a small percentage of the company. Later, when he told them an acquisition was imminent, they felt confident they had made the right decision. Mills is no longer part of Motionloft (Joyce Rietman is the CEO, ), and the validity of the investments his friends made while he was there is being called into question by earlier investors. As a result, after months of waiting, those friends now believe that not only was there no acquisition, but that it is possible they won’t get any of their money back. We’ve spoken with Mills, and the former CEO admits to leaving the company in November. But he also says that all money he took as investment from friends was legitimate and used for company expenses, and he denies telling friends the company was going to be acquired. It all started in early 2013. Around the time of the Super Bowl, sources say Mills told some friends he had a couple of Motionloft “advisor points” he could use at will, enabling them to buy a small percentage of the company. For some, he also dangled the possibility of an acquisition that would make the investment pay off. “He told me, ‘Mark Cuban said to pick two good friends who could afford [the advisor points],’” said one former friend, who we’ll call “Stephanie.” (Several of our sources have asked us not to use their real names.) “He said, ‘Give it to Motionloft, and come June you’ll get a percentage of the sale.'” Stephanie (again, not her real name), was a friend of Mills’ girlfriend and had spent a lot of time with him over the previous two years. She trusted him enough to empty out her savings account and write a check for $20,000. Mills then promised her documents showing she was a shareholder in the company soon after, but she says that paperwork never came. To celebrate, she was asked to join Mills and his then-girlfriend, along with some others, on a trip to Coachella that included a ride in a private jet and stay in a rented villa outside the music festival. Mills claims that Stephanie was given a convertible promissory note in February, and his attorney has sent us a copy of the contract. It is dated February 21, 2013, the date that she made her investment. Jon Mills and entourage loading up two private jets for a trip to Palm Springs. Stephanie wasn’t alone in being asked to invest, nor was she the only friend and investor that Mills took on expensive trips. Throughout the spring and summer of 2013, Mills courted other investors to the company from his group of friends. Another former friend, who we’ll call “Jason,” tells a similar story. In April he was asked if he wanted to invest, and was told that the money would be used as a bridge loan to cover Motionloft expenses. Jason ended up writing a couple of checks for a total of $200,000, but unlike the earlier investor we spoke with, he received paperwork to confirm his investment. No one seems to know exactly how much Mills collected during the period in which he was soliciting money from them. Jason and Stephanie know of a few others within their group of friends and that they were invited to events with. But so far, most have declined to share even with each other how much they invested for the same reason everyone we talked to didn’t want their names to be used for this article — that is, they are all embarrassed that they fell for what they now believe was a series of lies by Mills. “As far as how much money was raised, Jon is the only one who really knows,” one of them told me. Unlike Stephanie, not everyone invested because they were told an acquisition was imminent. A couple of people we talked to believed in the Motionloft business. But in the fall, Mills began telling people who had invested that the company had been sold and they should expect a payout soon. Jason shared with us copies of text messages that Mills had sent him, some as early as mid-October, in which Mills boasted that the company had been sold. Mills showed Jason an incoming pending transfer of $37.7 million for his share of the company, and said the friend’s stake was worth $2.9 million. Mills denies ever telling people that the company had been acquired and claims the texts as they appear below were written by someone else. But Jason isn’t the only person claiming Mills told them Motionloft had been acquired. Stephanie and another source, who we’ll call Matthew, confirmed that they were also told the startup had been sold. “He told us, ‘The company has been sold, you guys are all millionaires,’” Matthew said. For those who had invested in the previous months, the deal seemed too good to be true. It wasn’t until later that they found out it was indeed too good to be true, and that Mills had been lying about the acquisition all along. There was no big payout coming. Mills had a habit of inviting friends to join him for opulent parties, dinners and trips. Sources say that in a strange way, his profligate spending was part of the reason they felt confident investing in his company. After all, he wouldn’t be spending tens of thousands of dollars a night at clubs if Motionloft weren’t doing well. But the same spendthrift behavior that once assured them when writing checks to invest in Motionloft also eventually led them to believe that something was amiss. It all came to a head in late November 2013 when Mills invited about a dozen friends to join him and his then-girlfriend in Las Vegas for a weekend to celebrate her birthday and the acquisition, which Mills said had finally closed. It was the third such trip that Mills had taken people on over the course of several weeks, and it was the most excessive of the bunch. Over the course of a few days, Mills racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses that included private jets, a penthouse suite at the Palms, and extravagant dinners. Stephanie tells us that she had reservations about going on the trip at first. She had little money in her bank account and was waiting for the long-promised sale of Motionloft to finally close. The reason she went — besides the fact that it was to celebrate her friend’s birthday — was that she was hoping to find time to confront Mills and ask for some of her money back. But there never came a good time to approach him. Sources we spoke with who were on the Vegas trip say that Mills seemed agitated the whole time. His behavior, especially when it came to money, also raised red flags among some of his friends. For instance, Mills had booked private charters for his friends to fly into and out of Vegas and was staying in the penthouse suite at the Palms, but guests were asked to book their own rooms. There was also the occasion of a large, expensive dinner at Hakkasan in the MGM Grand. With two tables and plenty of drinks and dinner, the tab came out to nearly $20,000. But Mills arrived late to his own party and left early, meaning that it ended up on Jason’s credit card instead. Jon Mills booked R&B singer Miguel for a private performance, which sources say cost $100,000. The reason Mills left early was so that he could prepare the suite for the coup de grâce of his expensive weekend retreat. When his guests finally arrived back at the suite, they were treated to a private performance by . After spending the entire trip seeming preoccupied, it wasn’t until the private concert that Mills finally cracked a smile, Stephanie told me. “It was like he was thinking, ‘I did this. I made this happen,’” she said. After realizing how much the previous few days had cost, the friends who had once written checks to invest in Mills’ company began to wonder when they would get their share of the proceeds. Mills, in an effort to alleviate their fears, showed them what appeared to be the dashboard of his online bank account. It had $38 million in it. Their portion of the payout, he said, would be coming soon. Below is a photo of the checking account balance Mills showed to others we spoke with. He denies that the phone is his, saying he never owned one with a crack in it. That much is true: The photo is actually of a screenshot he shared with Stephanie. The reason she took a photo of her phone, she tells us, is that Mills wanted to share his good fortune with her, but told her she needed to delete the screen shot immediately after seeing it. She deleted it, but not before taking a photo of it on her screen. Nevertheless, some on the trip began to wonder why they kept having to foot the bill if Mills was so flush with cash. After the Miguel performance, according to people who were invited, some guests began to confront Mills about money he owed them for personal expenses. For instance, Jason, who got stuck with the previous night’s tab, confronted Mills. He said to Jon, “You just got all of this money, why did you stick me with the club bill?” Mills promised they would get their share of the sale soon, but the wires never appeared in their bank accounts. Moreover, the group soon began to suspect that Mills wasn’t paying other bills. Sources say the private performance by Miguel, which cost $100,000, was never paid for. That was also true of the private jet charters, which included three separate flights into Vegas and four flights out, and cost nearly $100,000 altogether. Justin Sullivan is the CEO of Private FLITE, the private jet service Mills used to charter the flights in November. He told me that Mills promised several days in a row he would pay for those flights by wire and later told Sullivan he would FedEx a check. Neither came. After multiple attempts to reach Mills on the phone, Sullivan confronted Mills at his house to demand payment. Mills then wrote two checks for a total of nearly $294,000, but both bounced, Sullivan told me. Sullivan then created a website called in which he has uploaded copies of the receipts for Mills’ trips, as well as with Mills. He also began reaching out to other people who had been on the charters and found many of them were also owed money by Mills. Seemingly all at once, everyone began to feel like they had been duped. One investor had this T-shirt made after things went bad. With little other recourse, some of those who gave checks to Mills turned to Motionloft’s original investors who confirmed their fears: There was no acquisition pending. There was not even a conversation with an acquirer, they had been told. In retrospect, some wonder why Mills told them the company was about to be acquired, especially those who invested, because they believed Motionloft was a solid, viable business. Jason and Matthew both told me that they wouldn’t have realized anything was amiss if Mills hadn’t boasted that a deal had been done or took the group on the trip to Vegas. After they figured out something was up, Mills’ friends seeking to be repaid the money they invested in the company went to Mark Cuban. According to our sources, they were told the company had no record of their investments. Apparently Mills and co-founder Chris Garrison had created a separate checking account from the company’s main account when they began soliciting funds from outside investors. Mills has confirmed this is true, but claims this second account was only ever used for company expenses. Not everyone who gave Mills money has documentation to prove it, except for cancelled checks written out to Motionloft. Those who do have paperwork have been told by the board that its validity is questionable. We took a look at the paperwork that was given to one investor, and passed it by an attorney to review. We were told that the document, which is structured as a convertible promissory note, appears to be legitimate, although it was not exactly a “well-written contract.” Our sources have been told, however, that Mills had no authority to sell any shares without the board’s approval, unless they were his own. We’ve obtained a copy of the original investment agreement between Motionloft and investor Mark Cuban, dated June 30, 2010, which states that the company cannot issue any securities or guarantee any debt without Cuban’s prior written consent. In an email exchange obtained by TechCrunch between Jason and Motionloft investor Mark Cuban in late November, Cuban wrote: “Motionloft can only be responsible for what Motionloft has paperwork for… Anything that Jon has done that is reckless or illegal is Jon’s responsibility. Not Motionloft’s.” Those who received documentation had been issued convertible notes that mature a year after they were issued. Those notes come due beginning early next year and throughout the summer, but Motionloft might not be able to pay them off at that time. Later in the email exchange we obtained, Cuban said that the company had no money to repay those who Mills received investment from. In fact, he wrote that he would likely have to recapitalize the company to keep it going. Jon Mills with investor Mark Cuban at SXSWi 2013. “The company is bankrupt,” Cuban wrote. “I had to put up a credit card yesterday so they would not get kicked out of their offices for 30 days. They have no cash. I’m trying to figure out how to keep them in business.” In that exchange about six weeks ago, Cuban also urged the person who contacted him not to go to the police until he had a chance to “figure out what is going on” and “see where i can take this.” He wrote: “If we go right to the authorities and it becomes an issue that drains resources than it hurts our chance to do anything… I can’t handicap the odds of any of us, but my guess, and its only a guess is that if it becomes a police matter in the short term, it gets much harder.” That’s one reason why those affected have held off on getting the authorities involved. Those I’ve spoken with recognize that contacting the police or going public with the story would reduce the likelihood of either Mills or Motionloft paying them back. In the weeks that have passed since they first contacted Cuban, we’ve been told that communications have hit a stand-still. Whatever hope investors had a month ago that Motionloft and its earlier investors would honor Mills’ agreements have since been quashed. At the time of publication, Mark Cuban had declined to comment, except to confirm that Mills is no longer associated with Motionloft. Indeed, Mills’ name and bio disappeared from the company’s management team page shortly after his trip to Vegas. But for those who invested, it was already too late. Cuban later sent TechCrunch a detailed response, which is republished below. As for Mills, he categorically denies all the claims against him. When we first reached out to him on December 23, he pleaded for more time to collect documents which he claimed would prove his innocence. In the next few days, Mills only sent a limited screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet — presumably meant to show that the investments people made went into the same bank account that Mills used for expenses — and a canceled check from that account that Mills claims was to pay for Motionloft’s rent. On December 26, Mills began working with Los Angeles-based attorney , who I’ve been speaking with ever since. Singer, in case you haven’t heard of him, is the . He’s the guy Charlie Sheen called , for instance, and he represented Scarlett Johansson when . Mills’ attorney sent me a copy of Stephanie’s promissory note to show that Mills had a record of her investment, although she still claims she hasn’t received it, and her signature is not on the document. Singer also sent me a prepared statement from the following statement from Mills: The investors’ money was all deposited into company accounts and it was used for company expenses. I never told them that the company was being acquired. I did not send the text messages as they appear in the screen shots. The text messages shown to me by you were created by another person. Also, I never had a phone with a cracked screen. I last worked for Motionloft during the last week of November.” However, Mills’ statement came after Jason sent me a series of texts asking for more time before we published this story. He said the extra time was necessary so that his attorney could speak with Mills’ attorney. When I told him that we couldn’t guarantee that, he sent a text retracting his previous statements. “Until the attorneys speak, I retract everything. I made it all up,” Jason wrote. Text conversation between Jason and Jon Mills. The email containing Mills’ statement, which was sent after Jason’s retraction, also contained the following note: Also attached (below) is a text message from [Jason] sent to my client today, confirming that he made up the text that you sent to our firm earlier today. Therefore, to the extent that you are relying on any information from [him], he is an unreliable source, since he has confirmed that he created a phony text to justify your story against our client Mr. Mills. I trust that you will not defame our client. When I sent Jason a screenshot of the statement I received from Singer, along with the word “Thanks,” he responded: “Are you being sarcastic? His lawyer is up my ass.” In the several weeks that I’ve been speaking with Jason, he didn’t strike me as the type to make up a story this elaborate, let alone create and backdate a series of phony text messages. It’s also not clear how Mills could have known who sent me the texts in question, if they had been written by someone else. More importantly, however, Jason’s statements, and the documents and texts he provided, correspond with evidence we received from other sources, which is why we’ve decided to include them. At the end of the day, Jason is just a guy who gave money to Jon Mills and wants it back. In that respect, he’s not alone. TechCrunch reached out to investor Mark Cuban for a statement and he gave us this response about his involvement and the state of Motionloft. 1. I was a passive investor in MotionLoft until this past late November, early December when it became clear something was wrong. I was caught off guard and shocked. That lead to a team being sent in to do forensic accounting and determine what the financial state of the company was. At that point we realized that the company was out of cash and seriously in debt. 2. To prevent the company from closing I stepped in and took control of the company by re-capitalizing it. It is now fully operational. All sensors are up and operational and being used by our clients. To the credit of the ongoing employees, our customers continue to actively use and expand installations. Bottom line here is that the technology works and is the industry leader. That hasn’t changed. 3. We have brought in a new, full-time ceo to run the company. 4. To the best of our knowledge all company vendors and business expenses have been paid as have current and former employees, including back taxes. Fortunately, many of our employees believed so strongly in the technology and opportunity, they stayed through the problems. This has allowed MotionLoft to get back on track quickly and aggressively. 5. The re-capitalized company is back and running full speed ahead. Motionloft is the leader in real world machine vision traffic analytics for real estate, municipalities and many other applications and we intend to stay ahead of our competition for years to come. |
Nokia Closes Out 2013 With 92% Of The Windows Phone Market | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | The fine folks at have provided with an early look at their , giving us in the public a final look at the key statistics of Microsoft’s smartphone platform’s OEM and device makeup. The figures are much as they have been all year, only more so. Nokia continues to control the lion’s share of Windows Phone hardware, ending the month up a few points at 92.1 percent (this is a calculation of usage share, tracked through AdDuplex’s network). And the Lumia 520 handset continues to dominate its brethren, with a new high of 39.3 percent share. And that Windows Phone 8 grew against the now-fading Windows 7.x system, with record relative market share of 78.3 percent. Windows Phone’s 2013, if you had to put it into basic trends, would be that Nokia cleaned up, and its Lumia 520 was the weapon of choice. Thurrott well describes the current low-ending of Windows Phone (bolding original): . Worldwide, only the Lumia 920 makes the top 10 list for usage among all Windows Phone handsets, and if you look just at Windows Phone 8 handsets, only two high-end devices make the list: The Lumia 920 and the 925. In the US, there are three: The Lumia 920, 928, and 1020. All the rest are new low-end devices or old devices. The Lumia 1520 phablet doesn’t appear anywhere in this report. What this means is that the sales momentum that Windows Phone has comes at the cost of per-unit revenue. Margin pressure increases at lower price points. The list of sacrifices that had to be made to produce the Lumia 520 is . So, as we tally what could be the final month in which Nokia rules Windows Phone, it’s important to note that rising unit volume has come at a cost. The Lumia 1020 is a hit among a subset of the technology elite, but perhaps few else. Can you build a mobile empire on predominantly low-end phones? Apple managed the opposite, so perhaps this, too, is possible. |
Revenue-Sharing “Knowledge Community” Teckler Launches Its First Mobile App | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | is a site where users get a share of the revenue for the articles, photos, and other media that they post. And with the recent launch of , users will be able to post from their phone too. When I discussed the platform with founder and CEO Claudio Gandelman ( the Latin American president for Match.com), he pitched it as a way for people who don’t have a website or blog of their own to share interesting content, particularly in areas where they have expertise. The site (and the quality of the content) seems pretty broad, covering topics like medicine, love/romance, and technology. Probably the most attention-grabbing thing about Teckler, however, is the fact that anyone can post and start getting a share of ad revenue — users are supposed to get 70 percent of the money from the ads that running alongside their content (they can after an audit period and once there’s more than 50 cents in their account). How much money can they make? Well, this is actually on Teckler itself. The company says that since its launch in June, it has paid out $20,000 total — so, not a tiny amount of money, but it probably hasn’t changed anyone’s life either … The company also says that contributors aren’t the only ones reading the site — they only account for 2 percent of Teckler’s 9 million monthly uniques. Gandelman also told me that even though the company itself is based in Brazil, its biggest audience is in the United States. As for the new iOS app, he said it’s really optimized around two of the big things people like to do on their phones — browsing content and taking photos. So naturally, the app allows you to read Teckler content and post photos. The company plans to add the ability to write posts from your phone as well. “I believe that in six months mobile will be bigger than the web for us,” Gandelman added. |
Medallia’s Amy Pressman And Sequoia’s Doug Leone On Bootstrapping And Vetting Investors | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | In this three-part series, we hosted Medallia, an enterprise company that offers customer experience management software, and Sequoia partner and board members Doug Leone in the studio. Co-founder and President Amy Pressman talked about why she founded the company after being a consultant for a number of years. Medallia essentially helps companies track how they are doing with customers on a day-to-day and even minute-by-minute basis. Further, Medallia allows companies to act on that feedback continuously (and track the outcomes). The company measures customer feedback through all channels (web-based, social phone, call center, SMS, social, mobile). After staying bootstrapped for a number of years, Medallia raised $35 million last year from Sequoia Capital. Pressman talked about why she decided to raise money from institutional investors, and Leone revealed how he found out about Medallia and his persistence in pursuing Pressman and Medallia. Check out the video above for more, and stay tuned for our next part in this series, which addresses how Pressman and Leone work together. |
Microsoft Was Right To Worry That Government Snooping Constituted An ‘Advanced Persistent Threat’ | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | Early this month, “government snooping potentially now constitutes an ‘advanced persistent threat,'” a statement that became ironic this weekend, given that, early this month, Microsoft likened government surveillance to “sophisticated malware and cyber attacks.” New NSA revelations out this weekend detailed precisely how the NSA’s methods lean on malware and employ cyber attacks in their “snooping,” to use Microsoft’s term. Thus, the NSA’s surveillance efforts are not a advanced persistent threat, as Microsoft first published. The term “advanced persistent threat,” by the way, isn’t a casual colloquialism that Redmond invented. According to , the phrase “carries special weight in cybersecurity circles and is often used to describe hacker teams backed by the Chinese government.” That comparison is striking. As TechCrunch , Der Spiegel has , much of which were presented in a , with price points and implementation times for the various tools listed along with diagrams indicating how the tool in question works. Need to get into an iPhone? Doable. Get past Juniper and Cisco security? The NSA claims that it can do that, no sweat. It has become interesting to learn how holistic the NSA’s spying capabilities have become. The phone metadata program in the United States is perhaps (and perhaps wrongly) the most public piece of the NSA’s efforts. Through PRISM it can force user data out of American technology companies. Through MUSCULAR it can tap data cables between foreign data centers of American companies. And through the freshly disclosed ANT team and its book of secrets, it can break the security of American technology hardware companies. What this means is that the NSA has not only shot the privacy of individual Americans full of holes, but has also broken the spine of security claims of American companies. Microsoft’s comments were included in a post stating that it was working to bolster its encryption to prevent government incursion. But with the NSA working to harm encryption and backdoor hardware, it’s far from clear that even a concerted effort by large American technology companies can provide peace of mind to their customers. Now, much of what Der Spiegel unveiled would be incredibly useful for foreign surveillance that would raise no eyebrows. But the fact that the NSA has managed to so pervasively penetrate security raises a follow-up question: Who else? That’s not an indictment of the NSA but more comment on the current technology environment. The NSA can hack and track your phone. XKeyscore allows it to read your email. And programs as broad as tapping the core fiber cables of the Internet or a toolset to crack a single server of American provenance also allow ways in. What sort of threat to security could be more persistent than that? |
Twitter’s Recent Market Correction Doesn’t Mean Its Sky Is Falling | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | Twitter has had a rough few days in the markets, slipping from north of $74 to just over $60 at the end of trading today. That’s not even half the story, however: Twitter’s December is one for the record books. If dropping in a few days of trading is dramatic, so too is Twitter’s epic run from December’s opening price of $40.76 to its high in the month of $74.31, a rise of in just 18 trading sessions. The massive rise in Twitter’s value far outstrips the ensuing minor correction. Put another way, Twitter is still up around 50 percent in the month, a huge rise in its value that no one seems to understand. Twitter has yet to report earnings as a public company, so we have essentially no new information that we can use to vet the firm. The rise in its stock price is therefore hard to attribute to any specific thing other than exuberance. As TechCrunch today when Twitter’s slide was underway, investors currently do not expect the company to report positive earnings per share . Therefore, the public will likely value Twitter on its ability to grow its revenue, a financial metric that is slowing for the company. However, Twitter itself remains, presumably, as strong as it was when it went public at $26 per share. Therefore, the saga of its stock price can be essentially discounted until we have more data on the firm. And that investors are willing to take profits after a huge bull run is about as surprising as the sun deciding to rise tomorrow. So keep in mind that Twitter’s rise is likely mere speculative earnest. The real report comes with earnings. But let’s have some fun. The : Max Ganik has no doubts that Twitter’s stock — up 145 percent since it first began trading on Nov. 7 — is firmly in bubble territory. “But that doesn’t mean it’s going to stop going up,” said Mr. Ganik, 16, a junior at a high school in Scarsdale, N.Y., who doubled his money by lunchtime on Thursday trading Twitter stock options, and planned to dive back in on Monday. “Traders are going to drive up the price. The valuation doesn’t actually matter at this point.” It’s all different this time! Top Image Credit: |
Netflix Says It’s Testing New $6.99 Single Screen Streaming Plan, But It May Never Roll Out To Everyone | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | Netflix has informed TechCrunch that it is indeed testing a $6.99 single-stream plan to new users as part of a test. The option appears to some new users after selecting the streaming option as a free trial. Unfortunately for those of you excited for a dollar-off discount on a standard definition stream, a Netflix spokesperson also told us that not all users may see the option and that it may never offer it generally. The plan was first and we confirmed it as an option when we began signing up for the $7.99 streaming-only plan with a 30-day trial. Offering a standard-def stream to one device might as well be called ‘the smartphone plan’, as that’s what it seems most suited to. Though many smartphone screens are above HD resolution, the smaller real-estate means that it can be difficult to discern a standard-def stream from a high-definition one. Netflix analyzes a junk ton of data about user viewing habits including locations, devices and times of day that people view stuff. If that information was telling them that people view Netflix a lot on smartphones while traveling, then a single stream in SD rather than HD might actually make a lot of sense for a certain subset of users. Of course, a buck off is a nice ‘sale price,’ and if people get utility out of it they might feel inclined to expand the plan further down the road. Image Credit: |
Paul Graham Responds To Critics, Says Y Combinator Is Planning An Event For Female Founders | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham just published about what he did and didn’t say during with The Information (if you don’t have a subscription, you can ). He also makes an announcement, of sorts, that the incubator is planning an event for female founders later this year. As many of you have probably read, Graham attracted lots of controversy for his remarks about getting women interested in programming and hacking. ( .) However, , and reiterated in the post, that his meaning had been distorted. Specifically, while he was quoted as saying, “We can’t make women look at the world through hacker eyes and start Facebook because they haven’t been hacking for the past 10 years,” Graham said there was a crucial word that had been edited out, and it should have read: “We can’t make women look at the world through hacker eyes …” In other words, he said he wasn’t talking about all women, but rather the ones who “who aren’t programmers.” To be honest, the language in the new post can still be a bit confusing to parse (for example: “I didn’t say women haven’t been programming for 10 years. I said women who aren’t programmers haven’t been programming for 10 years.”), but Graham’s position, whether or not you agree with it, becomes a little clearer once you see the question he was answering. It was about whether YC should be more “proactive” about recruiting women by “lowering standards or something like that” (I’m not sure that’s the most helpful way to frame the issue, but moving on …). If I’m reading Graham correctly, his basic argument is that Y Combinator is happy to admit female “hackers,” but he’s resistant to the idea that it should accept women who aren’t hackers and “then somehow make up the difference ourselves during YC.” At the end of the post, he also says that YC has reached “a quorum of female founders who are doing well,” so it’s been planning to hold a Startup School-style event focused on female founders. (Startup School is a popular event with big-name speakers talking about their experiences and offering advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.) It sounds like this new event is in the very early stages of planning, but Graham said he felt obligated to announce it now because otherwise it might seem “that we’re only doing it for PR reasons.” I asked YC co-founder Jessica Livingston for more details about the event, and she said she doesn’t have a firm date yet, nor has she invited any speakers: The rough plan is to have female YC founders give quick talks (a la Startup School) sharing their stories, giving advice and talking about what they’d wish they’d known when they were getting started. I imagine it will be focused mostly on practical startup advice (and inspirational stories) for women who are interested in starting a startup or have already started one. By the way, if you’re wondering about which female founders are part of the aforementioned “quorum,” Graham’s post cites Adora Cheung of Homejoy, Elizabeth Iorns of Science Exchange, Kathryn Minshew of the Muse, Elli Sharef of HireArt, and Vanessa Torrivilla of Goldbely. (He also mentions an “Ann”, but when I asked who that was, Livingston said she’s from a startup that has yet to be announced as part of YC.) Anyway, you should probably just . In , The Information founder Jessica Lessin confirmed that the word “these” had been removed from the transcript during the editing process, because it “didn’t refer to anything”: “Mr. Graham has since said the ‘these’ referred to women who aren’t programmers. In our opinion, he didn’t say that to us. We’re happy for him to have clarified to the public.” |
73% Of U.S. Adults Use Social Networks, Pinterest Passes Twitter In Popularity, Facebook Stays On Top | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | Facebook may be currently over how well it’s faring with younger users, but among those over 18 in the U.S. it remains the social network king. According to out today from the researchers at the Pew Research Center, the percentage of adults using the social networks of Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter or Instagram to communicate with each other is now at 73%, and Facebook — the world’s largest social network with — remains the most popular in the U.S., with 71% of U.S. adults using it. In other words, nearly all adults that responded that they are on a social network are using Facebook. That’s four percentage points up from last year’s 67%, Pew notes. It comes at a time of heightened competition: partly thanks to the rise of mobile apps — the number of people on multiple networks is now at 42%. Among the top five networks (as charted by Pew), there is a lot more wiggle room for who comes in second after Facebook. LinkedIn — site that bills itself as the “professional” social network focused on networking, job hunting and professional information and news — is hanging on at number-two, with 22% of U.S. adults using it — up 2% on last year. Close behind it is Pinterest — which has vaulted over Twitter to number-three position with 21% usage. Twitter — despite the different services that it has launched to increase engagement like Twitter Music other discovery services; and despite the increased attention around its IPO — has only grown by two percentage points to 18%. Hot on its heels is Instagram at 17%. Google+ does not make it into the top-five mix — not because of its lack of popularity; but because Pew says it did not include it in its survey questions. Indeed, Pew’s numbers reveal a bit, confirm a bit of what we might have already guessed, but also leave a few blind spots. While there is a 42% overlap of usage across multiple sites, some 36% of respondents said that they only used one social network, and Pew notes that “22% did not use any of the five specific sites we asked about.” That could mean they used services like Google+, Snapchat, something else entirely, or nothing at all. For these sites, which are constructed in large part around advertising-based business models, critical mass is crucial: you won’t visit a site if no one else is using it. Similarly, on the commercial side of the equation, one of the key metrics that the sites, and their advertisers, like to focus on is engagement. It’s interesting, therefore, that when it comes to frequency of use, the rankings change. Facebook continues to remain at the top in the daily rankings, with 63% of people accessing it on a daily basis. Instagram — last in the general rankings — is not far off and in second place, with a 57% daily use. Similarly, its weekly and “less often” rates are also close, respectively at 22%/20% and 14%/22%. (This goes some way towards explaining why Facebook was keen to acquire it: their usage patterns are very close.) Twitter may overall be seeing less usage in general than Pinterest but those who are on it appear more engaged: some 46% of Twitter users are on it daily for their quick fix of quips made and received. Pinterest, in contrast, has a fairly low rate of daily usage, with 23% of its users visiting on a daily basis. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter also are generating a significant amount of mulitple-times-per-day use, with 40% at Facebook, 35% at Instagram and 29% at Twitter, Pew says. LinkedIn, meanwhile, has a lot of work to do, with only 13% of its users going there daily. Are those the ones looking for work? In any case, this is another way of explaining why it is that LinkedIn has tried to overhaul its whole content operation, to create something that will attract people to visit it more frequently than just “less often.” Pew notes that for now it looks like Facebook is partly winning because of how it has managed to appeal to a wide range of users — a pretty impressive turn for widening its reach, considering that it started out as a network restricted only to university networks. The demographic data for other networks stands in contrast to this: Pinterest “holds particular appeal to female users”, with women four times more likely as men to be Pinterest users; LinkedIn is “especially” popular among college graduates and internet users in higher income households. Twitter and Instagram resonate with urbanites and younger adults, and non-whites. (Facebook has over 70% usage among whites, Hispanics and black users, Pew notes.) All of them, excepting LinkedIn, has its highest proportion of users in the 18-29 age bracket; LinkedIn is more popular with the 30-49 group. Among those who say they use only one social networking site, Facebook is a clear winner with 84% selecting it as their sole site, with the others lagging behind by a very far stretch: 8% solely use LinkedIn, 4% solely use Pinterest, and Instagram and Twitter each picked up only 2% — positioning them as firmly secondary in the U.S. market today. |
The FitBit App Now Turns The iPhone 5s Into A FitBit | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | has just released a major to its iOS app for iPhone 5s, allowing the smartphone itself to track steps, distance and burned calories. These are basic features, and just a fraction of the metrics provided by one of Fitbit’s own hardware devices, such as the Fitbit handheld or the Fitbit Flex wristband. With a Fitbit Force, for example, you can track all the basic information as well as flights of stairs climbed and sleep. Plus, it acts as a watch feeding you the information on a digital screen. Still, the accompanying app has always been an integral part of the Fitbit hardware experience, as it offers a dashboard for every metric as well as a log tracking nutritional intake. In other words, the app gives a robust outlook of overall health over time, which has made Fitbit a big contender in the space against Nike and others. With the launch of the in the iPhone 5s, Fitbit has decided to offer “basic” tracking from the phone itself, likely with the intention to entice an upgrade. The update comes just in time for New Years, as the pudgy masses resolve to lose the holiday weight. |
FAA Selects 6 Sites For Civilian Drone Testing | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | There are already quite a few drones in use in U.S. airspace, but given that commercial drone usage remains off-limits, most of them are either operated by government agencies or for research purposes. Today, however, the FAA has in its congressionally process of integrating drones into the U.S. air traffic system. The FAA today announced six test sites in six states (out of 24 that applied) where it plans to test and develop systems for the safe integration of drones into the airspace system. The focus here is clearly on testing. While the official plan is to integrate drones into the national airspace by 2015, it’s unlikely that the FAA will make this deadline and that we will see commercial drones flying alongside the usual Boeing 737s and Cessna 152s in the very near future. The idea here, after all, is to integrate them into the so-called “ ” air traffic control systems that are more famous for their false starts and than anything else. But before drones can be integrated into the current air traffic control system, the FAA wants to create standard procedures for things like lost links to the drone (which is somewhat akin to a plane losing radio contact with the air traffic control) and best practices for setting up ground-control stations, avoiding other traffic and how to certify and deal with the humans that actually operate the machines. Among the six sites is Griffiss International Airport in Rome, New York, which will handle test and evaluation processes and focus on integrations drones into the heavily congested northeast airspace. The site will be by an alliance of 40 public and private organizations from New York and Massachusetts. The alliance will also host a test site at Joint Base Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The University of Alaska will develop standards for state monitoring and navigation, using test site range locations in seven climatic zones ranging from Hawaii to Oregon (though it’s unclear which airports exactly the university plans to use for this). Nevada, which is already and the vanguard of allowing driver-less cars on its roads, will work on air traffic control procedures and the integration of drones into the regular airspace system. Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi won support for its plan to develop procedures for handling airworthiness testing and Virginia Tech will work on failure mode testing and risk evaluation. Of course we’re not quite sure how the drone delivery project fits in with the FAA’s plans just yet. |
Keen On… The 2013 Debacle: Why Gavin Newsom Says The Government Is On A Collision Course With The Future | Andrew Keen | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | It may be the holiday season, but , California’s tech savvy Lieutenant Governor, is as mad as hell. And he’s not going to take it any more. The fury of California’s second most powerful state politician is, ironically, directed at government itself. After what Newsom called “the debacle” of Obama’s roll-out, he says that we now know how fundamentally useless government is when it comes to what he calls the “procurement” of technology. That’s the really big deal about 2013, Newsom told me when I interviewed him at one my salons at the AT&T Foundry in Palo Alto. In what he identifies as a “Code Red” alert, the incredible incompetence of government has finally been exposed to everyone. It’s both a federal and state problem, Newsom insists, reeling off five outrageous screw-ups of Californian government procurement of technology which has cost the state billions of dollars. “This is serious,” the Lieutenant Governor insists. “We need to wake up to this.” So what is to be done in 2014? According to Newsom, the “good news” is that “government is on a collision course with the future.” And it’s government that going to get “run-over” by digital natives. So perhaps Newsom’s advice is to have lots of babies in 2014. After all, that may be the best way to make sure that the government does, in fact, eventually collide with the future. |
Divining The Underlying Value Of Bitcoin | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | Business Insider’s today , partially responding to Paul Krugman’s that called the cryptocurrency “evil,” and partially answering the question of why Bitcoin has value. It’s been a topic we’ve been discussing for months, making Wiesenthal’s argument worth digging into. He breaks Bitcoin into three interrelated characteristics that support one another: It’s a currency, equity, and a social network. Bitcoin acts as a currency because you can use it as a generic exchange medium in lieu of dollars and other traditional currencies in a growing number of places. Bitcoin also at least behaves as an equity, because the more people who use and accept it, the more the value of each coin — at least thus far — generally rises. Interestingly, Bitcoin’s ability to act as a currency and an equity are both predicated on its network effects. Wiesenthal puts this succinctly: “Strong, robust network effects are crucial for making the whole thing work.” He links to who makes the same argument: “If people stop using bitcoin, its intrinsic value is zero. Its value is 100% derived by the fact that it is a network.” If we view Bitcoin’s value as a currency and an equity as supremely predicated on its strength as a network, we can then state that its value rises and falls with the strength that network. This means that Bitcoin’s value is something that we can therefore better understand. The gist is that it’s been frakking hard to explain to anyone why Bitcoin makes more sense at $700 than $800 or even $300. However, if we can consistently point to an expanding network, we can presume that Bitcoin’s value should therefore be rising. This does not allow us to say that Bitcoin’s current price, and its requisite swings, match its inherent value. In fact, I think that we can presume that they do not. According , Bitcoin spiked from $208 at the start of November to $1,049 on the first of December. If we assume that Bitcoin’s network effects gave its exchange rate (currency) or asset value (equity) a proper valuation at the start of the month, we can either argue that its network became (roughly) five times as valuable in the month, or that investors overbid Bitcoin. Its ensuing price slump would point towards the latter. I’ve correlated the price of Bitcoin to its current news volume a few times, and it’s a connection that I think is quite plain. That’s not a bad thing, of course, as Bitcoin needs the public to become better informed about its existence so that it can grow its buying class and bolster the cohort of sellers willing to accept it. But if the growth of the network is the growth in Bitcoin’s value, does it not have a risk of negative reinforcement? That’s to say that a strong negative correction in Bitcoin’s price would harm both sides of the table, skewering the positive impacts of network effects by flipping them around. Does Bitcoin’s reliance on its network make it less stable than a traditional currency? I think so, but not necessarily fatally. Krugman quotes on the things you can’t do with Bitcoin: Underpinning the value of gold is that if all else fails you can use it to make pretty things. Underpinning the value of the dollar is a combination of (a) the fact that you can use them to pay your taxes to the U.S. government, and (b) that the Federal Reserve is a potential dollar sink and has promised to buy them back and extinguish them if their real value starts to sink at (much) more than 2%/year (yes, I know). You could argue that paying your taxes with dollars is a form of network effect, but that feels like a stretch. What this means is that Bitcoin’s value is less moored to things that we can jokingly call offline. What is important to take from the above is that Bitcoin’s ability to expand its network is critically important as the supply of coins continues to grow. There is a hard cap of Bitcoins that will be released, but we are not there yet. So, Bitcoin fans want expanding utility (network) to grow at a higher rate than new coins are introduced. There is another issue involved with the long-term utility of Bitcoin that is worth discussing, which is that its price volatility makes it hard to sell tangible goods (as opposed to non-tangible digital services, etc.) with the stuff. If I sell you a Tesla with Bitcoin, and the next day Bitcoin falls 25 percent before I can cash out my coins, that’s a pretty big deal. So Bitcoin needs a more stable price, which can only come to fruition after its network becomes large enough to have validated the price of Bitcoin at a certain level. And for that it needs to attract more retailers, which are kept out by its price swings. This is all simple in summary: The utility of Bitcoin as a currency and its value as an equity depend on its network, which provides the market opportunities for Bitcoin to behave as either. |
Archos To Launch A Line Of “Pebble-Like” Smartwatches For iOS And Android At CES | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | Archos just dropped a huge in advance of the huge annual tech show, which kicks off next week in Las Vegas. Among the various announcements, tucked away near the bottom, is the revelation that it will be introducing a “selection of smartwatches” for 2014, which will start at under £50 (roughtly $82 U.S.). Archos doesn’t go into much detail about its smartwatches, saying only that they’ll have a “pebble-like” design and will work with both Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. The “pebble-like” seems like a blatant shot across the bow of Pebble, the Kickstarter-backed hardware startup that began building smartwatches under that name this past year, though it’s probably meant on the surface to indicate the things will look somewhat like rocks. The Pebble is arguably the current leader in the smartwatch space, having sold somewhere around 300,000 units to date according to the latest official figures released by the company. Archos, the French company behind a line of moderately successful media players, and subsequently many Android-based tablets and gaming gadgets of questionable quality, looks to be trying to exploit the opportunity exposed by newcomer Pebble with cheaper devices in a range of options to suit the needs of various consumers. Archos is targeting “simplicity and function” with its smartwatch designs, the company says, which could actually seem to be at cross-purposes. Maybe they’ll have some feature heavy designs, more like the Samsung Galaxy Gear, and some that are essentially just streamlined data delivery devices, more like the Pebble itself. Either way, I highly doubt Archos will find a red-hot seller in any smartwatch design – but that doesn’t mean it can’t meddle with the grand plans of Pebble and other startups. Pebble is currently running a lot of sales and promotions, and . This means that either A) it’s finding interest is dropping off after initial demand has been satisfied; or B) it’s gearing up to release second-generation hardware. Regardless, I still think we’ve yet to see any proof that watch-based computing is something that’s feasible as a mainstream device, and entrants from Archos are unlikely to provide said evidence. |
U.S. Senator Issues Letter To Top 5 Wireless Carriers Urging Kill Switch Adoption | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has today taken up the battle cry of numerous legislators before her, calling for wireless carriers to enable new anti-theft technology on handsets. According to the Senator, one-third of robberies involve cell phone theft, resulting in an estimated $30 billion in lost or stolen phones. That said, Klobuchar has written a letter to the heads of the major wireless carriers, including Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular. In the letter, she requests an explanation as to why “the most advanced security features” haven’t been provided to consumers. This comes on the heels of Apple’s iOS 7 launch, which included an feature inside Find My iPhone. This essentially worked as a kill switch, requiring the owners passcode to reactive an account, wipe the device, turn off Find My iPhone, or sign out of iCloud. The NYT that Samsung was trying to bring a similar technology to handsets but that it was rejected by carriers. After all, the carriers make a pretty penny from insurance policies protecting against lost or stolen phones, which has become a huge issue in major cities. Cops have even lovingly given iPhone theft a name: Apple picking. Meanwhile, carriers have made light of phone theft with . All this while . [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejKCO28wfIE&w=640&h=360] Here’s the full text of Senator Amy Klobuchar’s letter: Dear Messrs. McAdam, Stephenson, Hesse, Legere, and Meyers: I am writing to express my concern regarding the increase in crimes involving the theft of mobile devices across the country. As a member of the Senate Commerce Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, I understand that consumers are utilizing more mobile technology and this is spurring growth in our economy. Unfortunately, more and more consumers are also at risk of being targeted by criminals looking to steal cell phones and other devices for illegal resale. I appreciate the work the industry has done in creating a database to keep stolen phones from being reactivated, but more action is needed. According to the Federal Communications Commission, almost one-in-three robberies involve phone theft and the cost to consumers of lost or stolen phones is more than $30 billion each year. I’ve heard from local law enforcement officials about the continued call for the wireless industry to engage with them further and to adopt “kill switch” technologies on devices. Additionally, state Attorneys General have suggested that wireless carriers have not taken adequate steps to fight cell phone theft. As Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, I expect wireless carriers to compete against one another to ensure consumers are offered the most advanced security features and offerings. Your five companies are the nation’s leading wireless carriers, collectively serving more than 90 percent of the nation’s wireless subscribers. With that market share comes an obligation to do all you can to utilize technologies available to protect consumers. While I understand your companies are continuing to work with law enforcement on the stolen cell phone database, it is clear that consumers want and deserve a comprehensive strategy to prevent mobile device thefts. That is why I respectfully request that each of your companies provides my Judiciary Subcommittee detailed information on the following issues by January 9, 2014: · Information explaining whether you have had offers by handset manufacturers to install “kill switch” technology, and, if so, why your company has or has not adopted such technology. · Information about whether you have considered including this solution on handsets made by manufacturers now competing with Apple’s activation lock technology that operates as a “kill switch” on iPhones. If not, please describe your reasoning behind the decision made by your company. · How your company will include such technology options at no cost to consumers in the future and how your phone security offerings differ from your competitors. Identifying ways to curb mobile device theft is a top priority of mine and I will continue to advocate for the American wireless consumer. I also believe additional action to protect wireless consumers is necessary and that’s why I am asking you for this information. The status quo is not acceptable. Sincerely, Amy Klobuchar |
Microsoft’s Surface 2 Shortage Persists, Will Likely Stretch Into The New Year | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | In mid-December, Microsoft’s Surface 2 inventory became extremely tight. Now in the post-Christmas period of the month as we move into 2014, Surface 2 inventory continues to be heavily constrained: Microsoft’s own online store remains sold out, Best Buy won’t ship you one of the Windows RT 8.1 devices, on Amazon you can only snag one for around $100 greater than list price, and so forth. Every Best Buy store near me lists the Surface 2 as unavailable. Only Staples from the online portals I checked claimed to have any stock on hand. So, if you don’t live near a Microsoft Store, you could be out of luck if you want to snag a Surface 2. Naturally, your mileage will vary depending on your location and retailer mix. Microsoft is in the best bad situation you can be in as the seller of a physical good: When underestimated demand outstrips produced supply. It’s great that your device is in demand, but bad that you don’t have enough to sell. At a moment in which Chromebooks are starting to , Microsoft doesn’t want to cede a single device sale that it doesn’t have to. As I , low Surface 2 inventory could hamper Microsoft’s ability to respond to critics unsure of its strategy to become an OEM. The lower its current-quarter Surface revenue is, the less doubt it can clear. And if Microsoft lacks inventory, it can’t sell units, and its revenue number has a ceiling. According to the , the usual cadre of analysts indicated that they expected Microsoft had reduced its production of the Surface line of devices this year compared to last, and that it had simply run into higher demand. That is the most reasonable answer. Production mishaps could be at play as well, and so forth. Annoyingly, the best indicator of Surface demand is the precise number being skewed by this shortage: revenue. It would have been far more convenient if Microsoft had very slightly overbuilt Surface units, so that every person who wanted one could have bought one and we would have a full-sales figure for Surface revenue. We won’t get that. So whatever revenue number that is reported will be a percentage of that theoretical maximum. You get to guess what the percentage is. As we move into the new year, we have to ask when Microsoft can get more inventory online. I did not expect that this many days post Christmas, Microsoft’s Surface inventory would remain this low. You begin to worry that the company has a kink in its supply chain. That or they went far too conservative on their production run, period. Microsoft was not immediately available for comment. Still, compared to the , things are far better for Microsoft this time around than last. |
Yahoo Ends 2013 With No Apps In Apple’s Top 100 | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | Yahoo put a lot of effort and investment toward presenting a new Yahoo to the world in 2013, with much of it hinged on improving its mobile business. There have been to old apps; over a dozen mobile-related (out of a total of 28) to pick up talent, technology and products; and for what Yahoo should focus on next. But even as it has managed to this year, Yahoo is exiting 2013 on something of a low note: not one of its apps is in the . The dearth of a cross-category winner is a sign of how, despite all the effort, Yahoo has not (yet?) managed to tap into a ‘breakthrough’ app that has remained a perennial favorite, with the downloads to prove it. Nevermind the new-look apps, and the : Yahoo! remains Yahoo! As a point of comparison, consider how others are faring in Apple’s top 100: Google has five apps (Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube and Chrome). Facebook has three (Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram). Twitter has two (Twitter and Vine). And a number of companies like Microsoft (Skype), Netflix, Amazon, eBay, Pinterest, Snapchat, Uber — “even fucking Groupon,” as one observer noted to us — have one apiece. (Tumblr, acquired by Yahoo for and with its own , also failed to make the cut. According to , it’s currently at No. 110.) So what’s going on here? You could argue Yahoo has yet to tap into a blockbuster on the platform it has chosen as its primary one, and as a result is finishing 2013 . “It is very clear that whatever they are doing over there is not working because people have spoken and they do not want Yahoo’s apps on their mobile,” our observer notes. What is worth pointing out, though, are a couple of important caveats, which either will help Yahoo buy time, or may prove to be a winning strategy in its own right. While Yahoo may not have a single bona-fide hit on its hands, what it is doing is spreading its bets, doing alright (if not brilliantly) on Android, and continuing to get repeat usage among those who have already downloaded its apps. Comscore, according to its from earlier this month (October 2013 figures) notes that Yahoo is the third most-popular property behind Google and Facebook on smartphones, with a reach of nearly 78 percent, some 11 percentage points behind number-one Google. Yahoo has managed to hold on to that No. 3 spot for a while now, although its reach has declined compared to the previous few months (eg : 82.2 percent reach; : 83.2 percent). Although Yahoo has to streamline its presence on mobile, Yahoo currently has 15 apps in the U.S. App Store (16 if you count Tumblr). Using , you can see that within individual categories like Weather, News and Sports, Yahoo has been consistent at the top of the category rankings, even as its overall standing for each app has fluctuated with spikes around updates. I’ve included the figures on Android where they are available: Yahoo Mail: (iOS) (Android) Yahoo (News): Yahoo Weather: (iOS) (Android) Yahoo Sports (formerly Sportacular): Flickr: Less successful (and a sign of how video will need a lot more attention and improvement if Yahoo indeed makes this a core focus of its revenue and audience growth) is Yahoo Screen: Yahoo Screen: Interestingly, none of these apps make it to the most-used app rankings as detailed by comScore. Instead, the analyst firm’s most recent figures that Yahoo Stocks (a widget perhaps, since there is no standalone app by that name, unless comScore means Yahoo Finance), and Yahoo’s Weather Widget (not app) are the company’s most popular smartphone apps at the moment, respectively ranking 9th and 11th, with reaches of 29.9 percent and 23.6 percent. They are separated by Instagram, which has a reach of 25.5 percent. This should serve as a reminder that installed usage may not always correlate to downloads. But it also muddles something worth remembering: by virtue of real estate and time spent on property, monetizing something like Snapchat or Instagram is likely to be a whole lot bigger of an opportunity than monetizing a weather widget. In November 2013, Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer said the company had , compared to the the company noted a month before, and the Mayer noted during the TC Disrupt conference in September. This points to an audience that continues to increase, if slowly. Can Yahoo sustain that growth with its current mobile portfolio, and is it enough to translate to wider financial success for the company? Mayer has said in the past that getting to where Yahoo would like to be could take another three to four years. The issue, therefore, is whether its lack of blockbuster popularity so far is simply a premature red herring, or a sign of more lacklustre things to come. |
Flurry Finds Christmas App Download Spike Continues, But Lessens As People Get Used To Smartphones | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | Mobile analytics and ad platform Flurry has released its on the state of app downloads over Christmas for 2013, and as is usually the case, consumers clearly went crazy for apps this year. Unwrapping a new iPad will inevitably prompt a spike in software downloads, but Flurry is finding that spike is starting to diminish year to year. App downloads broke records yet again for 2013, with an 11 percent improvement over total Christmas Day downloads in 2012. But that’s a drop in the bucket compared to past year-over-year increases. Between 2011 and 2012, for instance, download growth on Christmas exploded by 90 percent, while it increased 97 percent during the entire month of December year-over-year. This year, as mentioned, growth was only 11 percent between 2013 and 2012 for the holiday itself, and 25 percent for the month of December. Flurry interprets this slow down in growth as a sign that the smartphone and tablet markets in developed markets might be reaching a maturation point – they avoid calling it a ‘saturation’ point, but it’s undeniable that that’s a fear many market watchers have had regarding the potential growth ceiling on device sales from leading smartphone and tablet makers in markets where those devices have been selling and selling well for nearly a decade now. Christmas Day downloads were up 91 percent vs. an average day earlier in the month, Flurry found, so there’s a sizeable bump on the day of gift-giving itself. Still, even that is down vs. previous years. In both 2012 and 2011 there was a more than twofold increase in the number of downloads of apps taking place on Christmas Day vs. other days in the first three weeks of December. This mild plateauing of downloads isn’t necessarily a sign that smartphone growth is slowing, however. It’s possible that there’s simply less discrepancy between Christmas Day and the rest of the year because people are more used to the concept of app stores, and more likely to buy mobile software throughout the year than on a single day when surrounded by more tech savvy relatives who can guide them through the process. New device activations also still spike on Christmas, however, but it’s a less dramatic increase than in previous years. It’s still likely worth the effort on the developer side to discount apps and offer sales that last through the holiday period, but the difference in volume between that period and the rest of the year might not justify such dramatic dips in software price anymore. It’ll be interesting to see if this continues, or if there’s a levelling off point where the Christmas app download spike stops decreasing year-over-year. |
The Twitter NYSE Honeymoon Is Over As Stock Price Takes Another Nosedive | Romain Dillet | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | Today at market opening, Twitter shares ( ) dropped once again. Shares were at $60.27, down 5.46 percent compared to Friday’s closing price of $63.75. This nosedive marks the end of the honeymoon between Twitter and the NYSE as many analysts stated that shares are overpriced. Until now, the stock held strong amid those reports, but that seems to be coming to an end. It is not the first drop as shares were already 13 percent on Friday, shaving $5 billion off Twitter’s market capitalization. It was a big correction of Thursday’s good performance — on Thursday, shares popped 5 percent for no apparent reason. Many analysts find that Twitter is an expensive company. With a market cap of $33.6 billion, the company has yet to turn a profit — analysts to see any profit before 2015. But this pessimistic trend on the analyst’s side seems to be increasing. On Friday, Macquarie analyst Ben Schachter downgraded Twitter. According to Bespoke Investment Group, the average price target stands at $44.27, around 37 percent below today’s trading price. But why is the stock price dropping today? The Twitter IPO was a great sign for the entire tech industry. Private companies saw that the stock market could be friendly again with tech companies — and now, everyone to IPO. When Twitter became a public company , the company priced its IPO at $26 a share. Shares popped 74 percent on that day. After this very good IPO performance, the stock price has been relatively flat. Many that the IPO was underpriced on purpose to make a big splash on the NYSE. Leaving money on the table was a way to improve the longterm prospects and overall image. Shares are still up around 135 percent compared to the IPO price. Yet, there was a recent turning point for Twitter shares. When the company introduced in early December, the advertising industry was very enthusiastic. Ads would soon be more relevant thanks to browser cookies and more user information. And shareholders voted with their wallets. Shares went from $44.95 on December 6 to $73.31 on December 26. It represents a 63.1 percent increase, or a $15.7 billion increase in market capitalization. But it wasn’t sustainable on the long run. This 3-week honeymoon was great while it lasted, but it’s time to come back to reality. Shares are now down 7.22 percent to $59.15 a share. |
Tech Companies Outline More NSA Reform Demands | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | Before Congress’s holiday recess, Silicon Valley’s major tech companies have renewed calls for surveillance reform. Executives from Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Linkedin, Twitter, and (TechCrunch parent company) Aol have put their weight behind Reform Government Surveillance, publishing an open to Congress and President Obama. Since whistleblower Edward Snowden first revealed the National Security Agency’s vast telephone and Internet dragnet, the . This is that tech companies/competitors have come together behind this cause. In the letter, the tech companies have outlined five new reforms that they would like to see: The first three of these have by a few groups in Congress and more reforms could be added as Congress reconvenes next year. The text of the letter follows below, with testimonial quotes from the companies on the site itself: Dear Mr. President and Members of Congress, We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens. But this summer’s revelations highlighted the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide. The balance in many countries has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual — rights that are enshrined in our Constitution. This undermines the freedoms we all cherish. It’s time for change. For our part, we are focused on keeping users’ data secure — deploying the latest encryption technology to prevent unauthorized surveillance on our networks, and by pushing back on government requests to ensure that they are legal and reasonable in scope. We urge the US to take the lead and make reforms that ensure that government surveillance efforts are clearly restricted by law, proportionate to the risks, transparent and subject to independ- ent oversight. To see the full set of principles we support, visit ReformGovernmentSurveillance.com Sincerely,
AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo |
Obama, Celebrities, Politicians And Tech Co’s Come Together To Launch Coding Education Push | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | Back in January, brothers Ali Partovi and Hadi Partovi launched a new non-profit organization called with a simple mission: Change the perception America has of coding and computer science and make those subjects accessible to the masses. There’s no better indication of just how far Code.org has come in less than a year — and how much America now supports the need to make STEM a greater part of our national priority — than what you will witness over the coming week. Tonight, in celebration of the arrival of Computer Science Education Week (December 9th – 15th), President Barack Obama and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor both separately issued video statements today asking every student in the U.S. to learn to code. This week also marks the official launch of a campaign that the Partovis and Code.org have been planning for the last few months, called “ ,” which is timed in conjunction with Computer Science Education Week. During the week of December 9th, Code.org is asking every teacher in the U.S. to dedicate one hour of class time to education their students on Computer Science and programming. Even if they’re English teachers or History teachers. The problem, of course, and part of the reason that the Partovis set Code.org on its mission is that 9 out of 10 schools in the U.S. don’t offer Computer Science classes. While that has begun to change, most schools only offer Computer Science and programming classes as electives — not as subjects that can be taken for credit. The Partovis and Code.org have spent months campaigning and lobbying for change at the state level, and it’s beginning to work. Their first mission, Hadi Partovi (formerly of Microsoft, MySpace and iLike, among others) told us this week, is to ask states to offer Computer Science classes for credit. And while cutting through the red tape, the bureaucracy and changing the mind of states might seem like a Herculean task, Partovi said that states are getting on board. “It’s probably the easiest lobbying job anyone’s ever had to do,” he says. The country is starting to get on board. And not just the ole U.S. of A. This week, Partovi tells us, he expects over five million students in 33,000 classrooms, across 167 countries to participate in the “Hour of Code.” Of course, five million would be nice, but he’s hoping for 10 million. To help Code.org get there, both Apple and Microsoft have signed on and will be hosting an “Hour of Code” at every single one of their retail outlets. Apple has a advertising the one hour course, which we’re told is a one-hour intro to computer science that aims to emphasize that anyone can learn the basics of code and which will be ‘very interactive’. Not only that, but at least 100 other partners have signed on as well, with a healthy showing from technology companies, of course, but the list extends beyond that. Google search tonight celebrates the kick off of Computer Science Education Week with a Google Doodle that remembers Grace Hopper, an American computer scientist and creator of the Cobol programming language. (Google is also now linking to “Hour of Code” beneath its doodle.) Not only that, but Code.org expects the campaign to be featured on the home pages of Yahoo, Youtube, Apple, MSN, Bing and Disney throughout the week, and a bevy of politicians, stars and athletes will also be pitching in to draw attention to the campaign. Among the recognizable names are actors and musicians like Shakira, Ashton Kutcher, Angela Bassett and athletes like Chris Bosh, Warren Sapp and Dwight Howard, along with tech leaders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Susan Wojcicki. It’s also refreshing to see politicians from both sides of the aisle come together to support one nation, under code. Obama, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, , and Secretary of Education are among those releasing videos tonight in support of the “Hour of Code.” Code.org has curated online tutorials from a laundry list of companies, universities and non-profits to help support the “Hour of Code” campaign, with video tutorials from Zuck, Chris Bosh and Bill Gates, among others. Colleen covered the first appearance of Code.org’s “Learn to Code” video, . It went on to attract 12 million views in just two weeks. In October, Greg Ferenstein caught up with Reid Hoffman at the Code.org event which announced the Hour of Code to talk about the potential outcomes of getting every American to learn to code. . Below you’ll find the message from President Obama as well as the “Hour of Code” launch video from Code.org, which features a number of the notables mentioned above. So, how ’bout it America? Want to learn to code? Find to learn more. |
Twitter Is Taking A “Log-Out” Approach To Raise Usage, Awareness In Emerging Markets With USSD On Mobiles | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | is working hard to build up its profile and usage among people in developing markets, and today another piece of that strategy has come into focus. It has signed a with Switzerland-based mobile software company to provide access to Twitter via mobile devices without using a mobile Internet connection, instead relying on a text-only transmission technology called USSD. The service will let users experience Twitter purely as “consumers” who do not need to log in, or even have an account at all to use it. Myriad’s deal with Twitter is similar to a partnership that was made public last week, when reported that a company called U2opia Mobile was linking up with the social network on a USSD service. While that article hinted at how the service might work (U2opia has not made a direct statement about it), Myriad has provided us with screenshots and confirmed further details. Twitter access via USSD is not new: Myriad had been offering it for years already in markets like Argentina to let users post messages and read those sent by their contacts. This, however, is an interesting progression. Twitter is now, for the first time, officially certifying USSD partners, and it is moving more proactively with a different concept of its service: USSD users will, initially at least, be given a “log-out” experience of the service, without the need to log in or even sign up, and it will be read-only, without the ability to post your own status updates. USSD, by way of background, is short for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, and it is technology that is built into even the most basic GSM phones. USSD operates on a channel separate from SMS, meaning a user doesn’t even need a messaging plan to access Twitter. Other social networks like Facebook have also been deployed over the USSD channel as a way of reaching out to users in emerging markets, where PC penetration is low and mobile handsets are the primary communication device. Myriad is also behind many of the Facebook deployments we’ve seen on USSD, such as covering Africa. To date, Myriad has had some 17 million unique users of its services across Africa, Latin America (where it’s the exclusive partner of Telefonica), Asia (where it works with Vodafone in India and with others across different markets) — some 20 countries in all. The Facebook service has seen some strong takeup, with one deployment in Egypt picked up 50,000 new users a week when it first launched. (It was helped with a clever marketing tactic — a user had to enter *125# to activate the service, a specific reference to the start date of their Spring revolution.) Twitter is a natural partner for a USSD service. Like text messaging, USSD texts have a 160 character limit. “For Twitter it is even better than Facebook because it’s a text driven network,” says Olivier Bartholot, Myriad’s San Francisco-based VP of corporate development and GM of device solutions. “It’s 140 characters so it fits perfectly in what you can provide in terms of the user experience.” For social networks you can see the obvious interest in the technology: it’s a way of giving access to their services for those who either don’t have smartphones, or who do but are loathe to spend money on 3G, or simply do not have connectivity where they are. Twitter already more users outside the U.S. than it does in its home market — — but revenues are far smaller. Twitter made $2.58 per user in the U.S., versus just $0.36 per user abroad. For an ad-based business model, it needs to scale out its international businesses as part of the way to make up the shortfall in the near term. For carriers, USSD-based social networking services are attractive because they can sell the option to their users as a value-added service. While Facebook’s service includes two-way communication — users can search for friends, invite friends, accept or deny friend requests, post status updates and comment/like/unlike friends’ status updates — Bartholot tells us that Twitter decided to take a different approach. “This is a ‘logged out experience’ in the words of Twitter,” he says. “You view but you don’t log in as an end user.” Instead, the service is conceived as “lean-back”, more like a broadcasting medium. “What happens is that we get a suggested list of high-profile users in each country. From that we create a list of categories. We get tweets from these users, and when a user chooses to follow a TV presenter or movie star, or a topic like sports, that user will receive tweets from those selected people or categories.” The proposition will be very localized to different markets. A particular operator in Africa, for example, may want to create a category about weather to update farmers, fishermen and others who work outdoors. An operator in India may want to create one tracking Bollywood celebs. The mixture, it seems, will be very much of practical/useful and pure entertainment, much like the wider Twitter experience. He says that the new version, which is planned for launch in Q1 next year, was prompted by Twitter’s new API that was introduced earlier this year. One consequence of it was that it made the old, two-way service no longer usable. “We started the conversation with Twitter in March and it took us six months to work out,” he said. “We now have the certification from Twitter to now deploy this service. What it means is that we now have the brand license and we can call the experience a Twitter experience.” One important detail that Twitter’s USSD service highlights is that it plays into the general concept of how social networking services go ’round: over 90% of users are simply “lurkers” who read what others post, while most of the rest do both (and yes there are some starlets and bot-like news accounts who only post and do very little reading). “It’s a way to give a first taste to users of what Twitter is about, especially outside the U.S.,” he says. “In the U.S., Twitter is famous. In other places, not so much.” The idea is to familiarize and grow with the user. As she or he upgrades to more and more sophisticated phones and networks, so will Twitter functionality. There are some compelling stats to back up the USSD approach taken by Twitter and Facebook. In Brazil, for example, there are 265 million mobile users, but 210 million of those are not using data on a regular basis. “They have smartphones but they just don’t have the means to pay for a subscription or they live in places where the coverage is poor,” Bartholot notes. Even among smartphones, there aren’t very many: there are 220 million feature phones compared to 45 million smartphones. Pointedly, those statistics came from Twitter itself, he tells me. Right now Myriad has deployments with some 45 carriers for USSD services and is aiming for 40 more. Already its addressable market has a reach of nearly 1 billion users, all told. “That’s what convinced Twitter to go with us for this,” he says. But on the other hand, there are a number of questions that are still unanswered: For example, what about a service for those who had already been using Twitter using USSD and were able to post messages but now cannot? Or new users who feel like they are getting short-changed by only getting “feeds” but no input capabilities of their own? Bartholot says that there may be more two-way communications added in over time, as Twitter continues to monitor how take up of this initial service proceeds. Another area is advertising. Bartholot says that the company is still weighing up how to serve ads through this service, and whether it will count it towards its “per 1,000 views” metric (or if something like that can even be tracked when a user is not logged in). In any case even if there are ads, they will lack a crucial engagement/conversion element: right now, if any link comes through on the service — say through a news service — it will be “dead” as such. And that’s still not addressing the idea of how and if this will help Twitter build up active users in these markets, how Twitter will count them if they’re by default “inactive” on the self-publishing front, and whether it will ever manage to convert this still-large base of people who have remained on the less-accessible side of the digital divide. |
What Games Are: The Multiplayer Singularity | Tadhg Kelly | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | My whole industry rests on the invention of the single player video game. From the early days of pinball through to on the NES to , the single player game dynamic defines most modern gaming. You could say that single play is the most important invention of the video game age, and even go one step further: Single play was a singularity moment. Why so? Because if you look at what games were prior to them, nobody could have predicted that a whole medium would arise around players playing against machines. Someone from 1913 transported to today would look at a player alone with a joypad whizzing around a game uncomprehendingly. It would be unfathomable to them, and unfathomability is the key trait of singularities (such as the wildly popular idea of the ). Single player is very successful for a couple of reasons. It tends to be the most convenient form of game that you can play. It tries to accommodate your expertise, such as through difficulty levels. It tends to be the best mode for games to absorb the player in the fiction of a game world, such as in . It allows the player to play without social judgment or pressures. And finally, crucially, in single player mode every player gets to win. There are no losers really, just those who win, those who walk away and those who will win one day. While we think of that as a little thing because we’re so used to it, it’s actually an enormous thing. Prior to mass single player gaming most games did not let everyone win. I don’t just mean the sort of multiplayer games that exist today like massive multiplayer, social or competitive first person shooters. They would certainly be considered as indicators of things to come, but in their own way are also considered limited. The big vision calls for something grander. The best way to describe the multiplayer future is that it’s like the experience that players have with , but magnified by the power of millions of players. “Imagine”, an enthusiastic designer might say, “a future in which we all play the game together for the long term and have meaningful experiences.” Or some variation of that. There are essentially , that is to say four schools of looking at and interpreting games. Depending on how they value emergence over experience, and fictional roles over abstract rules, all four tend to see the future of games and what they should be differently. In the neat quadrant graph that emerges you get narrativists like David Cage, simulationists like Will Wright, behaviorists like Jane McGonigal and tetrists like Shigeru Miyamoto. At their most extreme each lens advocates a future of video gaming that moves them from where they are today toward becoming something else. Game makers often talk about games as being immature, in their infancy compared to other media, and they they have a lot of growing to do. That idea of growth is usually tied to a singularity moment. Narrativists believe, for example, that technology will one day bridge the gap that prevents games from being good storytelling vehicles. Somebody will overcome the uncanny valley problem. Someone will figure out an engine that ascribes emotional as well as literal value to game objects. Simulationists foresee the invention of infinitely algorithmic games that lead to eternally interesting realities. Meanwhile behaviorists see a few where games and life intersect for real (not just in a points-means-prizes way) and players ascribing value to activities. All these visions sound cool on paper, but I’m often critical of them because they’re hazy. The technology singularity is a tangible goal but the multiplayer singularity is more a hazy one-day-when kind of thing. It’s a whole set of technical feats all coming together in one vast confluence and therefore arguably a solution in search of a problem rather than a thing the world is crying out for. And they tend to forget the players. It’s easy to frame the problems of the future as having much a-do with technology. It becomes a discussion all about network concurrence and access, geography and time zones and what we imagine sophisticated AI might do to help bridge those gaps. Mostly the problem we obsess on is copresence. How do I acquire and keep a large-enough player population such that the game is exponentially better for all of them? Copresence is one of those problems that’s slowly going away. We have better devices with faster connections and notification layers. We have clouds that can connect games together in ways that we’ve already seen happen in apps. We’ve come around to the idea that a game might not have to be built solely for one platform (via tools like Unity 3D). We’re even starting to think of building games purposefully across multiple devices on the assumption that players will own them as a matter of course. Granted, pervasive games are still pretty early, and in all likelihood the successful ones will not look like classic video games. They’re not on your phone or on your iPad, but more like playing across Facebook and your phone. They probably need to grow from simpler beginnings. But while solving for copresence maybe demands a different kind of game, at least that kind of game is one of which we could now conceive. In a sense copresence is the easy problem. The harder problem is codependence. It is virtually impossible to get large groups of players to play in the spirit of a game for any length of time without human moderation. Multiplayers usually render a game down to its most mechanical form and have a lot of fun doing so, but their activity detracts from loftier design goals. A multiplayer version of , for example, would likely be far inferior to the single player version because of the distractions of other players. They would spend all their time chatting and talking about where to find clues and locks and miss the theme. Players are also pretty unreliable. It’s very common for your buddies to forget to take their turn, for example, leading to a sense of futility. Players also tend to quit games when they sense loss points (the moment when they realize they can’t win). Both winning and losing players tend to feel dissatisfied. Finally there’s the issue of culture. The overarching character of most successful online multiplayer game environments is competitive but competition is a double-edged sword. More players tend to Of course these descriptors of player behavior are simplified, yet still. There are few truly multiplayer games that don’t eventually become competitive and don’t turn into niche subcultures that are hard for outsiders to understand. There are very few large consensual story games (ARGs and such) that don’t devolve into puzzle-hunts that ignore the rich detail in the quest for clues. There are few (if indeed any) multiplayer games that resist becoming games for a passionate minority while failing to engage with the majority, and those that do tend to pull back from multiplay as much as possible. Asynchronous social games, for example, are mostly single player games that support tangental communication at best. When games become codependent then a whole slew of negative, social, literal and other factors surface, and those are people-problems rather than gadget-problems. However forward-thinking tetrists tend to see a multiplayer future for games too, just not one that requires a lot of kit and kaboodle. And in many ways I think their idea of the multiplayer future is much more likely to actually turn into reality because it’s based on tangible things we already know. Video game designers often forget about sports. The stereotypical reason is that they don’t tend to be sporty kids when they grow up and view the culture surrounding sports negatively. Yet sports and video games have much in common given that they are both mostly real time and constrained types of games that test a balance of player skills and smarts. Video games like for example, are basically sports. Sports are huge drivers of modern culture. They encourage tribal participation. They generate their own heroes and legends, their own legacies and sense of meaning. But rather than being vastly complicated they tend to be based around simpler interactions: Run around a ring faster than any one else. Kick a ball. Rush a ball over a goal line. That kind of thing. Sports also have a huge sense of theatre. They are played in amphitheaters where the crowd can look on and cheer. They encourage vicariousness by the many watching the few. And they can be broadcast around the world, which is why they are so influential in modern culture. Far more so than video games. The tetrist idea of the multiplayer future is essentially a digital version of the sports experience. What if that whole Twitch-powered stream-casting let’s-play phenomenon could be pushed that little bit further? What if it didn’t matter that everyone took their turn, just the ones who wouldn’t quit? In a sense I’m asking what if the Multiplayer Singularity is actually about social co-ordination around sport-like activities rather than far-off dreams about everyone creating their own group online culture dream world? If it is then we’ve already seen strong indicators for that future. We have the example of how South Koreans play mixed with streaming and let’s-play videos. We have apparently very large numbers of people tuning in to watch others play games. We have some famous players like and the emerging world of e-sports. All it takes for that kind of future to emerge is for someone to figure out the broadcast aspect and the economics, and how to market it. It’s much more expressible, a real singularity moment whose impact may be unfathomable, but which anyone can grok. Is it next? I think so. While the multiplayer dream that some designers love to theorize is romantic and aspirational, it assumes that people will change, overcome their social and think different. Experience has consistently shown that this is never true. All the best games tend to figure out how to work with people as they are, for all their flaws, and find a way for them to experience the joy of achievement without incurring the negatives. A future of multiplayer e-sports watched by millions is not some far off dream that requires a re-ordering of humanity to achieve. It’s tangible, something that we can actually aim for and which will one day change how we think of video games. We already see the signs of it happening today and don’t have to extrapolate too far or assume too much about people for it to occur. And when it does we have no idea how far it will go, but it’s very exciting no? |
Playing Next-Microsoft-CEO Bingo | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | The small, insular and inbred world of Microsoft watchers is on something of a hold at the moment, as we wait with breath partially bated to see who will run the company next. Each of us in this small cabal of journalists and writers – guess which I am – has a vested interest in who gets picked: If it’s someone we know, we might get more and better access, and will at least have personal experience to lean on. Naturally, given the competitive nature of writing, the better off Tom is, the worse off myself and and Ed might be. However, that’s all piffle of a sort because none of us own meaningful amounts of Microsoft stock (I have none to my knowledge, if you were curious). Still, our job as commentators and critics of the company means that we spend far too much time over morning coffees, showers, and late-night drinks discussing its various functions and assets and foibles, mistakes, and strategic mishaps. It’s not all Scroogled, just as it is not all Azure, and so forth. Here’s the question we should answer: Do we know who the next Microsoft CEO should be? Like hell we do. The excellent and unswerving Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet : I’ve stayed away from speculating on who might or should become Microsoft’s next CEO for a variety of reasons. The issue with that sentiment is that if we don’t comment, we’ll only hear from analysts with as much wits as they have billable hours, which doesn’t help in the slightest. So, we must forge ahead with context-setting in anticipation of who might be the next Microsoft CEO, even if we have to do so firmly in the mindset that we’re dealing with black magic. No one knows what might happen in the technology market in one, let alone 10, years so any choice as to who should run one of technology’s leaders is incredibly touch and feel. Not scientific. Microsoft’s board is contending with such issues at the moment. There are signals that we can lean on. Any candidate for the role should be incredibly intelligent, personable at least to an extent, steeped in experience running large enterprises, and have a vision – fully formed or not – of where the company should be in a decade. Here is Bill Gates on the requirements list: (I)t’s a complex role to fill, a lot of different skills, experience, and capabilities that we need. It’s a complex global business that the new CEO will have to lead. And they will have to drive across fundamental transitions to create new growth and to attract and manage top talent. “We will have to build on our strengths while addressing areas that we have got weaknesses or challenges. The person has to have a lot of comfort in leading a highly technical organization and have an ability to work with our top technical talent to seize the opportunities. And here’s Mary Jo Foley, again, on the same question: Whoever the next CEO is, that person needs to know how to talk to Wall Street, customers, partners, employees, government bodies, shareholders, the press and plenty of other constituencies. Charisma, schmooze, and smarts need to be part of the make-up of the individual who ends up steering the 130,000-or-so (post-Nokia acquisition) company in its next phase. So, while I think it’s important to keep in mind the larger issue that we in the public lack the same access that Microsoft’s board does to candidates, it remains in our orbit and ability to vet the potential list such as it is, and make value judgements. We can grok the difference between Harriet Miers and Terry Myerson, essentially. Since Mulally is now all but off the table (provided that Ford’s heir isn’t off his rocker), Satya Nadella could be called the real frontrunner. Or Elop. Or Bates. But not Maritz, it seems. It has been said that Microsoft’s board wants to have a new leader in place by the end of the year. If that is true, we’ll know in darn short order. And when we do, investors, the public and, yes, the media, will judge the decision as best we can. I’m hardly the world’s most intelligent filter, but I’ll do my best. I encourage you to have a strong opinion in the matter. Simply kvetching after Microsoft makes a choice isn’t enough. You should be loud now. The next Microsoft CEO will probably, potential incompetence aside, sit in the chair for a decade. In its most recent quarter, Microsoft had $18.5 billion in revenue, and net income of $6.3 billion (GAAP). Ten years of that top and bottom line means that the next Microsoft CEO will oversee $740 billion in revenue, and $252 billion in profits. That’s if the company doesn’t grow an inch, which isn’t likely. So, play Next CEO Bingo with caution, but play all the same. This comet won’t come around again for quite some time. |
The War For Your Wrist | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | The past decade has seen the consumer electronics war grow more furious and more personal: your living room is a battlefield, as are your desks and your pockets. Now, more than a year-and-a-half since the Pebble (née Allerta) team saw its e-Paper smartwatch concept shatter a $100,000 Kickstarter funding goal, gadget purveyors of all stripes are vying for a spot on your wrist. As I write this, a Jawbone UP24 is lashed to one of my wrists (being mindful of all the steps I’m taking) and a Pebble just buzzed on the other. We unabashed nerds have embraced the smartwatch age with open arms and open wallets, but what’s been going on since those heady days of mid-2012? The buzz around wearable second-screen tech has been enough to inspire players both small and massive to enter the fray. It used to be that you couldn’t check out the new projects on Kickstarter without basically tripping over scads of smartwatch concepts — some were neat, some seemed more than a little shady, but all of them were meant to capitalize on the notion that using our amazing pocket computers of the future didn’t make consuming information easy or frictionless enough. And of course, bigger players are itching to make their market on a growing market, too. Don’t take this as a completely comprehensive list, but Pebble, Martian, Samsung, Sony, ZTE, Fitbit, Basis, Neptune, Metawatch, and Qualcomm are all companies that have either already let their smartwatches loose on the world, or have confirmed that they’re working on a smartwatch. Qualcomm is a particularly interesting example, too — it’s best known as a semiconductor maker, a chip slinger whose wares are obscured by shells of plastic and metal, but its new TOQ smartwatch is slowly making its way out to media outlets and average joe consumers in exchange for $350. Meanwhile, LG, Dell, Apple, and Google (which, remember, is still very distinct from Motorola) are strongly rumored to have wrist-worn gadgets under development behind closed doors. That list features the world’s most prominent consumer electronics players, and it under represents all the upstart companies who think they can deliver their own gadgets faster and better than their lumbering rivals. If smartwatches are going to be as disruptive as so many companies believe they will be, at least one of them is going to have to strike a chord with a wide consumer audience in a big way. But which combination of price, performance, and PR is going to make that happen? In a Google Hangout with , Motorola Mobility CEO Dennis Woodside confirmed that it was working on a wrist-worn gadget of its very own (probably the purview of the new “world-class wearables design group” it’s been slowing putting together). What was more interesting than that tacit confirmation was Woodside’s candid — if clipped — exposition on the potential pitfalls that come with dramatically trying to augment what the concept of a watch entails. “There’s clearly gonna be something that changes on your wrist, how it works and what exactly it is is something our teams are working on hard,” Woodside said. “Whatever it is, it has to compete with what works now.” He added later that the wearables team has been given a set of challenges to surmount, too: “We can’t have something fragile, we can’t have something that needs to be charged everyday. You’re going to have to have some functionality that’s just killer otherwise why spend the money on yet another product.” If that last bit sounds a little “well, duh” you’re probably in good company. That said, the approaches that smartwatch makers have taken vary wildly. At one end of the spectrum you have watches like the Martian, which looks almost completely like a something your father would wear albeit with small text displays and the ability to heed voice commands. One the other end are devices like the hefty Neptune Pine which basically shrinks an entire smartphone down to the point where it (sort of) fits around a human arm. The rest of the pack hovers somewhere between those extremes, making for a smartwatch market that’s both crowded and tough for average consumers to grok. Speaking of consumers… There’s also the little issue of how many people would actually want to own a smartwatch, an accessory that, at worst, mimics what your smartphone can already do and, at best, augments it substantially. What few sales figures announcements out there point to some slowish uptake though: Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky , nearly 100,000 of which were sold after the Kickstarter campaign officially closed. That means they were moved through the Pebble website, and through AT&T and Best Buy Stores — they’re all good outlets to move units, but they all seem to have plenty of the units in stock now which could represent slackening demand after the initial rush. And of course, there’s Samsung. After rumors that it had sold a scant to users began to bubble up, Samsung publicly insisted that it shipped . Of course shipping units to stores and selling units to end users are two entirely different beasts, so the actual number of people walking around town with Galaxy Gears on their wrists remains frustratingly vague. Bear in mind, those are two of the most prominent smartwatch players out there right now. At this point it seems all too possible that the number of smartwatches that get churned out could exceed the number of people who find any sort of value in them. |
null | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 30 | null |
Fly Or Die: Nexus 5 | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | The is the latest generation of Google’s Android software, KitKat, come to life. The hardware itself isn’t super glamorous, with a simple 5-inch display and a matte black backside, but the software more than makes up for what can be a bland appearance. The 1080p display is quite nice, at 445 ppi, and the Snapdragon 800 processor under the hood keeps things snappy and smooth. But perhaps most important is the Nexus 5 camera, which has been upgraded in the software department to take truly beautiful photos. Plus, the Nexus 5 charges wirelessly. Chris Velazco, our resident mobile geek, and John Biggs weigh in on the Nexus 5 in this episode of Fly or Die. But ultimately, the decision is yours. Is the Nexus 5 worth your time? Let us know in the comments. |
Square Teases Some Kind Of Announcement For Monday On Vine | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | Square has a cryptic teaser on Vine that suggests it’ll show us… something on Monday. There’s little about the short video that offers any clue about what could be revealed, except that it fits in a balled fist. But maybe it’s conceptual, so it would technically “fit” anywhere. IT’S A MYSTERY. [vine url=”https://vine.co/v/hQ5gIwbbnKQ” width=680 height=680] An intriguing possibility is that Square is somehow going to update its credit card dongle for smartphones, which has remained unchanged since its introduction in 2009. The design is iconic at this point, so it’s not really clear what they could change in a gen 2 product to really add value without changing things up too much. Two more interesting possibilities based only on observation of the company so far come to mind, however: Square could be getting into chip-and-pin readers as it continues international expansion, or (and this is more of a fantastic theory) it could be building iBeacon transmitters to take advantage of Apple’s new tech to help give its merchant users another option for in-person marketing. iBeacons and their ability to deliver hyper-local alerts and updates to shoppers in brick-and-mortar or shared retail settings, as at a flea market or festival, seems a very worthwhile addition to Square’s storefront software offerings. Based on the other iBeacons transmitters I’ve seen, one would definitely be palmable like the mystery thing in the video above. In the end, whatever Square plans to show off tomorrow remains a mystery, but we’ll be watching Vine to see if it’s anything worth actually caring about. |
Let It Full-Bleed | MG Siegler | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | Load up your favorite tech blog. Or almost any blog, really. There’s a good chance it looks like shit. There’s a better chance that the reading experience is even worse. And we put up with it, day in and day out. Why? Because that’s where the content is. Enter . While there are as to what exactly Medium aims to be, there is no question that it’s already a beautiful product. As a writer, it’s evolving into exactly the tool I want to use when writing. It started with a focus on the fundamentals: words. Now the product is wrapping those words in an obvious trapping that has long been under-appreciated in writing: images. I think back to when I was a kid and would sit for hours mesmerized by a magazine. Was it the writing that had me so engrossed? Sometimes. But sometimes it was the visuals. And more often than not, it was a combination of the two. Somehow that symbiotic relationship was all-but destroyed as content moved onto the web. Sure, there are some newer players out there now that are trying to bring back some elements of this relationship, namely the properties ( ). And yes, all the traditional magazines have been ported (often quite poorly) into apps for iOS and Android. But Medium is the first product I’ve seen that opens up the tango of words and images to all. During my tech blogging days, people used to ask me why I would always use images from films in my posts — even when the content seemingly had little to do with the visual. The answer is pretty simple: those images create an immediate bond with the reader, even if they don’t realize it. Maybe about a fairly obtuse tweak Google was implementing to increase the speed of a product. To some people, that’s interesting. To others, nothing could be less interesting. But to most people, they weren’t sure if they should care, and as such, few read such stories. So that’s where you have to get creative. Hook them with a headline, and keep them with they can relate to — say, something from Top Gun vaguely related to what was being talked about in the post: speed. Boom. And that’s just one, albeit sort of gimmicky, way that images can augment words. As you’re undoubtedly aware because you’re a human being, sometimes visuals can be 100x more powerful than any words. And again, I think back to my favorite magazine experiences: words with the right images can be 1,000x more powerful together. Sadly, the main way most of us see visuals next to text these days is in the form of an advertisement. Not only does this form of visual not augment the reading experience, it makes it roughly 10,000x worse. One problem is that we’re no longer talking about beautiful, Mad Men-esque advertisements. We’re talking about flashy banners, tiny squares, or ugly links. And unlike in magazines, those hideous ads sit right next to the content you’re reading — sometimes even embedded within it! So I applaud Medium’s move to take us back to a time where words and images were far more complimentary — and in some cases, inseparable. And I hope it spurs the development of more content and tools that are presented to us as if images aren’t a complete afterthought. Just compare reading thus far to reading something like this: Or this: Or this: Or this: Or this: Or yes, this: This is why people miss the glory days of RSS (maybe the only reason). You could argue that this is one of the main reasons to use Pocket or Instapaper (they strip out a lot of the gunk). Hell, Apple even felt the need to build a “Reader” feature into its Safari browser. Think about how ridiculous that is for a second. A web browser needs a feature to make it easier to actually read on the web. . |
Heyday, The New Journaling App, Reminds Me That I’m Kind Of Boring | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | When I met Siqi Chen, founder and CEO of the startup behind a new journaling app called , a few weeks ago, he said he’d built an app that offered a “more holistic” approach to tracking your life on your iPhone. Well, , and since then, I’ve been testing it out to see whether Chen was right. My initial conclusion? First, this is a journaling app that I’m actually going to stick with. Second, I need to get out more. It helps, I suppose, that I got to hear Chen lay out his case for using the app. He said it’s meant for people who have wanted to keep a physical journal but never managed to find the time or motivation to do so consistently — and I’m guilty as charged. With Heyday, that journal gets created automatically from the data and content that’s on your phone — that’s your location and your camera roll for now, but Chen said he plans to add other data sources, and eventually to build “the ultimate artifact and story of your life.” There are other apps and that automatically track your location and allow you to add photos, but Chen argued that Heyday is less location focused and, as mentioned above, more holistic. One example is the fact that Heyday, unlike the other apps, doesn’t really track when you’re going from place-to-place — it only cares about where you are when you’re in transit. (That reflects a different focus but also helps Heyday save battery power.) AWhen we talk about using the content on your phone, Heyday can even reveal your activity before you installed the app, based on the photos in your photo roll. Of course, that means you need to have stored old photos on your phone, and I haven’t (I usually upload mine to Facebook or Twitter and delete them after a couple of weeks). It also means random photos (the selfie that can out blurry, perhaps, or the receipt that you photographed for your expense report) will show up as well, but it’s easy to delete them. And obviously it’s more useful if you take plenty of photos — when I was out with friends on Saturday (which, along with Saturday night, is basically the only time with interesting content, because it’s the only time I did something interesting) I found myself reminding myself to take more photos than I normally would have. Which brings up the point that Heyday isn’t going to have much to say if you’re not really doing anything. For most of last week, for example, I was just at home or at the office, and today, I lazed around my apartment, so my Heyday journal for those periods is pretty much blank. But maybe the fact that the app makes me feel vaguely guilty about staying in is a good thing? Chen also emphasized Heyday’s approach to privacy — basically, there’s no sharing within the app itself, but you can choose to share individual updates on Facebook, Twitter, and email. In contrast, .) (There was a snafu on the privacy front after the launch, when Heyday accidentally emailed everyone on its waiting list but failed to bcc them, which meant, in the company’s words, that “the email address you used to sign up *on our waiting list* was exposed to all 997 emails on our waiting list.” However, Heyday noted that no accounts were compromised and that it would be implementing “a two-person rule on all future newsletter sends.”) Just to be clear, when I say that I’ve been using the app for the last few days, I basically turned it on and left it alone, and then I opened it today to find that, yes, there was a pretty accurate representation of what I’ve been up to. So by that standard, it works pretty darn well. I should also mention that Hey, the startup behind the app, has raised $2 million in funding from Google Ventures, Spark Capital, CrunchFund (which, like TechCrunch, was founded by Michael Arrington), SV Angel, and others. You can . |
Beatport “Bloodbath” As Dance Music Startup Lays Off Engineers | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | “These guys will trash the office if we don’t send someone there”, Beatport worried, so it flew HR to its San Francisco office to fire the whole engineering team there, a source tells TechCrunch. Multiple sources confirm the 88-person startup laid off large sets of engineers in SF and Denver this week. [Update: Beatport has confirmed the layoffs.] SFX, the dance music juggernaut that acquired in February, is axing teams that weren’t making money. and is best known for its popular online dance music store Beatport Sounds that lets DJs download high-quality tracks for use in their concerts. But it also runs a number of other products including Beatport DJs, a social network where artists can connect with fans, Beatport Play, where DJs can download song stems for remixes, and the , where DJs can sell whole mixtapes. Yet now, a source tells us “[SFX] is not concerned with anything but the store. It was crazy. It was a fucking bloodbath for sure. Some of the people laid off were working there for almost ten years.” Those include six engineers in SF — essentially the whole office. That’s why the Denver-based Beatport was considering firing the employees over a conference call, but decided to send human resources representatives to SF. The company worried employees would destroy the office if not supervised. Meanwhile, multiple sources report that the startup has let go of around 20 employees in Denver, including the majority of the engineering team there. Two other music industry sources say Beatport was still operating at a loss after on $12.1 million of revenue. However, our sources confirm a vague but Thursday from dance music web tv channel and news site , as well as a by former Beatport employee Eric Marcoullier who noted that “devs, sysops, and PMs” were among the Denver employees let go. Marcoullier also trying to find the fired Beatporters new jobs, which is nice considering the holidays are coming up. We’re currently awaiting a response from Beatport and SFX regarding the layoffs. Update: SFX has confirmed the layoffs in a statement to TechCrunch: “With the additional resources provided by SFX, we are making significant new investments in Beatport and focusing on providing the best possible experience for our users – the DJ, the producer, the labels and the entire Electronic Music Culture community. To allow us to adapt and improve our service, it was necessary to make some organizational changes. We have closed our San Francisco office, reorganized our engineering team, and cut some positions in Denver. Beatport has always been about innovation and connection and these moves allow us to focus on that. With the recently announced acquisitions of PayLogic and Arc90, this refocus on maximizing Beatport as the definitive site for everything related to Electronic Music is indicative of our commitment to igniting the simmering Revolution of this astounding movement, Electronic Music Culture. We look forward to unveiling a number of exciting new technology initiatives in 2014.” Left at Beatport is just a skeleton team to maintain some of its non-store departments that lost their main work force. It’s possible that SFX will shut down some of the products that weren’t pulling in enough money, such as Beatport DJs and maybe Beatport Play. The remaining squad is said to be led by the . Originally, SFX planned to have Beatport’s team run engineering for the whole corporation, but now it seems its recent acquisitions including Arc90, marketing agency FameHouse and commerce platform Tunezy will be in charge. The push to cut the fat from Beatport comes shortly after its in October. SFX priced shares at $13 but they’ve fallen to . “New leadership, new direction” a source tells us about SFX’s plans for Beatport. “Once they went public, they started looking at the finances” and decided the SF engineering office and much of the Denver engineering staff weren’t critical. Apparently SFX’s focus will be on ticketing and events going forward. SFX owns a slew of electronic dance music (EDM) concert promoters including Made Event which runs Electric Zoo, and Disco Donnie Presents, which puts on dance music shows and festivals around the world. SFX seems convinced the live music business is more lucrative than recorded music, which has become harder to sell in the digital age. At least Beatport’s laid off workers got significant severance packages, especially long-time team members, which should carry them into early next year, though this compensation is conditional on the employees not discussing the circumstances of the layoffs. But the details are out now, so we’ll have to see how SFX’s investors react and what the EDM giant does next. It can be a cutthroat business turning youth culture into corporate earnings. |
In Praise Of The Holiday Book | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | It has to be one of those cold, half-light afternoons. A radio in the house mumbling something low and steady — Click and Clack or the news. The snow might be fresh, might be coming, might not come for weeks. The heater kicks on in the basement and the warmth balloons up through the rooms, a fog of comfort along the floor. Those are the afternoons perfect for reading. When I was serious about my reading, I’d gather 10 or 15 books from the library and scoot through them in rapid succession, dumping the books that got boring, finishing the books that caught my fancy. I got through most of Vonnegut on those afternoons, a lot of Bradbury. I read Richard Powers and lot of fiction that I couldn’t quite follow but liked the sound of. I read a lot of Stephen King. A lot. This is a paean to that crepuscular time between two and six, that four hours of daylight on a few very specific days, when the book makes perfect and absolute sense. Maybe the days between Christmas and New Year’s or maybe some mid-winter weekend when you have little to do and can afford to laze and read. Those afternoons happened all year round, to be sure, but the holiday book is a better book. It’s new, perhaps, freshly unpacked, or maybe it’s a discovery you found on your visit home from college or away. Maybe it’s an old friend or maybe it’s a stranger. Maybe it smells of the basement, a mix of mulch and mold, or maybe it smells like new paste. Either way, it wants us to open it. Soon it won’t smell at all. Soon it will be all bits. If there’s anything to recommend the purchase of paper bound to cardboard, it’s in honor of the holiday read. There is nothing like it, I think, and it made lovers of the written word out of many of us. The ways books change our brains are myriad, almost as myriad as the ways we’ve been changed by our electronics. But I like to think the slow saunter through a broke-spine copy of changes us in ways Reddit and 24/7 news sites can’t. That squib of glue and pulp changes how we think, how patient we are, how much we fall in love with the world and its wonder. A Kindle loaded with books is the next best thing, sure. But it’s a cold comfort, isn’t it? That glass and plastic and bright light? The opening scene of , when Bastian escapes to the attic to read his secret stolen book, is a formative image for me. It’s that mix of running, rain, fear, excitement, and wonder that defined my winter reading jags. It defined the narrative that said when I opened this strange new tome I’d meet characters from across the universe. Imagine Bastian doing the same thing today — somehow stealing an ePub, side loading it onto a Nook, pressing power — and the drama isn’t there. Maybe someday it will be, but not now. So as we roll into the season of quiet afternoons and long dark evenings when the weather gets nasty and there’s no reason to take to the streets, when the apartment or the ranch or the duplex gets warm and and there are no appointments, and the books are there like old friends waiting for a visit, then visit them. We owe it to the book not to forget. For no matter how fast memory fades, the written word, stamped on old paper, is still the best repository for the world we’ve ever created. |
On Mobile, The Location Arrow May Finally Be Pointed In The Right Direction | Semil Shah | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | TechCrunch From time to time on Twitter, I’ll unknowingly dip my toes into contested waters. There are some debates which run deep, like strong ocean currents. Occasionally, I muster up the courage to write about my personal preference for iOS over Android (as well as vis a vis others), or to write about how native mobile apps will provide the consumer touchpoint that matter, while the web as we know it will . This week, I may have stumbled onto another one: The debate around whether mobile consumers, at large, are ready and willing to allow some applications the right to persistently grab their location. A few days ago, I : “ ” Turns out I was wrong, and the situation is a bit more nuanced. I don’t have stats for the following, but play along. At least on iOS, when users onboard onto the platform itself, most seem to allow Apple to grab location from time to time, such as when Siri is activated, or when taking a photo, as well as more periodically so that Apple can provide both generalized and signification location change APIs to developers. At the app layer, it seems consumers are growing more comfortable with allowing applications to access the GPS sensor, including those apps which ask to do so persistently. “Persistent Location” (or “Ambient Location”) presents a complicated case. Again, I don’t know how to prove this, so I rely on intuition, which tells me those who work in startups, technology, and mobile are aware of the battery costs associated with “always-on” GPS apps, and it may be that the early adopters are the ones to out such apps but are also more cognizant of the costs. On the other hand, the majority of iOS users may not be aware of how to kill active apps running in the background, how to manage which apps can access their GPS in settings, and so forth. And, to be fair, mobile developers continue to improve their app’s own battery management, using Apple’s APIs to grab location during active use or periodically throughout the day. Certainly, it’s easy to see why developers salivate over having location always on — the ability to collect more user data, an opportunity to send more and contextual notifications, and the chance to predict user behavior in ways. About 18 months ago, I about how various apps grab user location either implicitly or explicitly, and suggested that few apps in the market, if any, offered consumers enough value or benefit to warrant the battery cost associated with ambient location permissions. At the time, my belief was passive or ambient location data collection would be hindered by battery concerns, but now I wonder if we are right on the cusp of an app which gets to scale with ambient location permissions. In fact, some of the app developers I know (those with deep location experience) seem to think we are right at this juncture, which is exciting, and they themselves are seeing promising percentages of users going along for the location ride. In particular, apps likes , recently launched , and a bunch currently in stealth about to hit the market. So, there we have it. We will have to wait and see how app makers and the market responds, but with better battery optimization techniques, better location APIs, and a potential divide between early-adopter techies (who fight to preserve battery at all costs) and the normal consumer, who may not care to manage settings or know how to, the stage may be set. Of course, the onus ultimately falls on app developers to create something which not only justifies the API calls, but also creates enough value for users to engage and re-engage with the app beyond just data collection, organization, and presentation. And, as it is with all things, the market here will also decide if this is indeed the time ambient location enthusiasts have been waiting for. That once-dreaded location arrow in the top-right status bar, whether full or greyed out, may quite well be a thing of the past. / |
Evntlive Could Help Yahoo Fix Its Broken Video Experience | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | This week, Yahoo continued with its prolific acquisition strategy with a one-two punch picking up companies working on video — a sign that, while some of its acquisitions have been basic talent grabs, at least a few of them have a very specific focus to them, concentrating on fixing its . The move taps not just into how Yahoo hopes to build up its audience of users who spend more time with Yahoo, but also subsequently tap into premium advertising served alongside it. First the basics. On Friday, Yahoo announced its purchase of , a virtual venue and concert hall for live and on-demand music. with plans to re-define the way people engage with music online by creating a scalable platform to host live, streaming concerts — from sold-out arenas to intimate clubs. Just days before, it had made another video buy, acqui-hiring the team behind ( in a raw deal for early employees). The app, among other things, aimed to make it easy people to video mashups by providing tools that allow users to remix their existing content by adding music, effects and to share with friends. EvntLive’s goal was to support its live, streaming concert venue with a curated, searchable library of shows for fans that may have missed the live concert, which would then be supported by social media integration, premium content (like behind-the-scenes video), a database of information about artists and an eCommerce marketplace where fans could purchase stuff from their favorite bands. While live, online music has attracted many startups over the years, it has yet to produce a definitive platform, partly due to the many obstacles inherent to the music industry, its resistance to digital technologies, and the slow, painful sea change that has fundamentally reshaped the music business over the last five years. Nonetheless, EvntLive saw an opportunity to be take advantage of the new distribution, marketing, recording and manufacturing models making their way into the music world, and be the first to combine streaming video, live music, social networking and eCommerce in one music platform. The startup’s potential appeal was also boosted by some veteran leadership and talent from both the music and tech industries, starting with people like Judy Estrin. Estrin, who served as EvntLive’s Executive Director, began her career working with Vint Cerf’s research group at Stanford University — the same one that played a central role in the development of the Internet. She has founded seven technology companies, served as the CTO of Cisco Systems and held board positions at FedEx for 20 years, Sun Microsystems for eight years, and currently sits on the board of The Walt Disney Company (a position she’s held since 1998). Troy Carter, who represents artists like Lady Gaga and John Legend, served as both an advisor and investor, and EnvtLive had raised $2.3 million in capital from a long list of investors. Those included people like “Father of the Internet” and Google exec, Vint Cerf, Mayfield Fund partner and Glooko Chairman, Yogen Dalal, former Intel exec Dave House, Tapjoy President and CEO Steve Wadsworth, among others. Neither Yahoo nor EvntLive are revealing the terms of the deal, but EvntLive has revealed that its platform will be shut down. Compared to other video-centric acquisitions Yahoo has made, like Ptch and Qwiki, which had both been around for quite some time, EvntLive launched less than a year ago. So, in that sense, the exit-and-shutter result may leave some of its early supporters with a bad taste in their mouth. It could be that EvntLive found more friction in the music industry than it had expected or that perhaps adoption didn’t take off as quickly as it had hoped. But when we caught up with Judy Estrin today, she told us that, while it was a difficult decision for the team to make, the opportunity to be part of a bigger company and have access to the resources that come with it, won out. As a result of the acquisition, Yahoo will now be able to use the startup’s technology throughout its digital media, video and music products, which, in turn, gives EvntLive access to a much larger network and audience than it might have reached on its own. Plus, though the team started out by focusing on music, the idea was always for EvntLive to become a platform for a wide variety of events, she said. With Yahoo, EvntLive will likely have that opportunity. However, it is worth noting that neither Estrin, nor co-founders David Carrico and Alex and Jonathan Beckman will be joining Yahoo. While it’s an early end for EvntLive, things are just beginning for Yahoo. EvntLive, following recent acquisitions like Ptch and Qwiki, is further evidence that Yahoo is getting serious about investing in and fixing its video technology. In a world where video and digital entertainment are thoroughly dominated by Netflix and Google-YouTube ( , in fact), it’s easy to forget that companies like Yahoo used to contend in the space. But over the years, the company’s video products and technology have been left in the dust by the Hulus and Netflixes of the world. That was put into stark relief . The event, which was streamed live via its streaming video tech, “Screen,” was unwatchable. The video cut out and was hicuppy throughout. As a result, to reserve some of its seemingly endless M&A budget to buy better video technology. Not saying that Yahoo heard those pleas, but this summer, for the first time, Marissa Mayer began publicly talking up the company’s plans in video. Building a better video platform has become a top priority, , adding that video would be a “primary area of investment over the next year.” What’s more, Yahoo made the unprecedented move to broadcast its second quarter earnings call live this year. And just look at and homepages. They’ve improved over a year ago, but they still need a lot of work. Why would you visit those instead of YouTube, Hulu or even, gasp, Aol for video? [Disclosure: TechCrunch is owned by Aol, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still think it’s a joke a lot of the time.] Or Spotify for music? On the video front, Adding SNL was a big move by Yahoo and, in the end, if you have the content, licenses and contracts, then people will come anyway while you fix the tech and the design. But, really, isn’t the question whether Yahoo should even be trying to compete with Netflix, Hulu and Amazon for the rights to stuff like SNL’s archives in the first place? Arguably, that’s a more significant question than the degree to which it’s behind Tech Company X or Y in video, etc. Although, clearly, , Yahoo is indeed serious — both about fixing video and competing with, well, someone. Aol, most likely. If Yahoo is looking to Tumblr to have a connection to younger audiences, Couric is something different. Because, for most people under 50, adding Katie Couric as an anchor won’t make a difference to their viewing habits. Services like EvntLive and Ptch sit apart from content grabs: their technology and services can be used across all of them. While we know that EvntLive will be joining Yahoo’s video team and that its homepage now includes links to Yahoo Screen and Yahoo Music, both Yahoo and its new aqui-hires have remained mum about how they plan to improve and modernize these products. (Beyond just making sure that streaming video means video.) It’s very likely that this plan is still evolving and may not even be clear on that as of yet. But Estrin has told us in the past that the team had a lot of pride in the engineering team and technology infrastructure it had built behind its virtual concert hall, and there’s no doubt that Yahoo needs it. It still has a long way to go in both video and music. Although hope and confidence are returning for investors and analysts, looking at the gap between Yahoo and other tech leaders in music, video (and a number of other arenas) it’s hard not to wince. It’s going to need all the EvntLives it can get. |
Windows 7 Handily Bests Windows 8 And 8.1’s Minute Market Share Gains In November | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 1 | November was not a good month for Microsoft’s Windows 8.x operating system according to , with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 collectively gaining a mere 0.05% points of market share during the period. Windows 8 fell 0.87% to 6.66% global market share. Windows 8.1 managed to grow by 0.92%. The total gain of 0.05% is a weak figure. The main competitor to Windows 8.x, Windows 7, spanked its homegrown rival in November. As The Next Web’s , “Windows 7 grabbed 0.22 percentage points (from 46.42 percent to 46.64 percent). In November, Windows 7 thus managed to gain more share than Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 combined.” That 0.22% is more than four times the aggregate growth curve for Windows 8.x during the month. Ouch. Now, enterprise upgrade cycles to Windows 7 continue apace, something that isn’t in itself a knock against Windows 8 and Windows 8.1; Microsoft has encouraged companies to continue their existing Windows 7 transitions, in part to help kill off Windows XP ahead of its death date next year. Still, to see the combined Windows 8.x family essentially fail to grow a month after the release of Windows 8.1 is disappointing for Microsoft. As the inimitable , Windows 8.1 is doing a decent job supplanting its predecessor: So how have those free upgrades gone? After one full month, Apple and Microsoft have successfully convinced roughly 30 percent of their respective installed bases to upgrade. (The exact numbers: 28.4 percent for Windows 8+, 33.9 percent for OS X 10.6+.) However, Windows 8.x has had another full month of sales in the market, and instead of Windows 8.1 growing quickly ahead of Windows 8’s decline in the period – which would indicate strong upgrades, and sales – Windows 8.1 supplanted Windows 8’s decline, either signaling weak upgrades or slow sales. Or both. This shifts even more weight onto December for Microsoft: Can it move enough computing units both of its homegrown tablet line and via its OEM partners to continue growing its download base, and thus keep up its efforts to attract the ever key developers whose attention it has long lacked? A caveat to all of this: There could be slippage in counting between Windows 8, and Windows 8.1, with users upgrading during the month, and perhaps not being tallied, or even counted incorrectly. We’ll know more in a month. That aside, 0.05% is what we could call unch, and that’s not good for a platform that needs to grow. |
Here Are The 38 Startups Pitching At TechCrunch Moscow Today | Mike Butcher | 2,013 | 12 | 8 | today features a whole pitching to enter the final on , which features the main conference. You can catch the pitches live today on the but here’s a run-down of al the companies, as they describe themselves. The Startup Alley features over 70 startups that met the requirements of an exhibition participant, being less than 3 years old, and having raised no more than $3M investment. (LDV Capital) is MCing the Startup Pitches. The TechCrunch Moscow event partners are and . Follow TC Moscow on and . You can also follow the .
A cloud music storage and streaming service targeting owners of large music collections to enjoy their music over Android, iOS, WP8 devices. Our storage system helps to upload music to the cloud 30 times faster, save space and lower costs. Songs can be uploaded to the cloud from iTunes, Winamp and different devices. Folders and subfolders structure are preserved. Music can be listened even without internet access. We offer 3 Gb for free and $25/year unlimited. Sign up right now!
Special application that includes unique computer vision algorithms. It utilizes a video sensor to scan the space in front of a digital display or a showcase, detects human faces and tracks their position. At any given time 27 faces detects from all potential viewers only those who were looking directly on the screen, recognizes their gender and age group. Collected data is anonymously transmitted in encrypted form to a central server for storage and analysis.
Music tech company, providing digital publishing solution and platform for music and visual artists to jointly publish, share and monetize their music and art on mobile and connected devices. We turn music, images, text and metadata into a beautiful application called 3plet. 3Plet is a mobile music album and artist-centric sales and communication channel, new industrial standard for music album releases.
A platform that integrates all available Advertising Networks (AN) by means of parsing and API methods. Our aim is to provide a system that facilitates the maximization of revenue of publishers. It allows controlling, customizing and making A/B testing any AN from a single interface. It relieves from most of the routine work and the necessity to change promotional codes on a site while changing an ANs.
Platform for e-commerce in B2B segment. It enables e-commerce, procurement of products and electronic document flow between suppliers of products, online shops and offline retailers. Agora accommodates more than 2000 companies from different industries. Geography includes all regions of Russia and CIS. Our solutions simplify the time-consuming processes and minimize costs. Agora is an electronic instrument for procurement and marketing needs.
Cutting-edge mobile application that makes transferring content from your phone easy and fast, almost like sharing air. You can conveniently send and receive contacts, photos, or videos to and from your friends with a simple point-and-shoot of your smartphones. The Airlike app also creates a personalized account for each of its users, allowing you to carefully choose what you would like to share. Sharing content is almost effortless with Airlike.
A set of tools for recruiters: browser plugin + search engine, allowing any company to quickly find IT-specialists which are the “best fit” for the company. It allows searching through multiple Internet-sources and unites profiles of a candidate into a “consolidated profile”. AmazingHiring gives an ability to “score” a candidate before interview – based on both: qualifications and “culture fit” for a particular company; ranking search results appropriately.
Framework for mobile applications development with 100% of common codebase between iOS, Android, Windows. Unlike HTML5-solutions, Appercode provides native interfaces, comparable with the development for each platform individually, but 3 times faster. From May to December 2013 Appercode earned $50k in test sales, won a $60k grant from Microsoft, won the largest Russian tech startups contest Generation S ($80K), and released the product in 10 countries.
Platform that allows to crowdfund mobile apps/games launch marketing. Applicatix is a way to publish a finished app/game. It combines advantages of self-publishing and working with traditional publishers. The platform gathers money from crowd investors, giving them a share of future app/game profit in return and then uses that money to market this application. Traditional marketing used at pre-launch and unique marketing quests are added after the application launch.
We automatically convert Facebook and VK communities into iOS and Android apps, resulting in new pages, m-shops, magazines, company pages and intranet-apps. Features: instant App Store and Google Play publishing; free converting to the mobile audience; automatic content generating, YouTube channels, Instagram feed. New features for communities: retention, monetization, m-commerce.
How to get to the airport? Where to find the check-in? Where to go while waiting for a flight? These are just a few of the problems happening at your stay at the airport, especially if you’re there for the first time. AviaShopper-the first mobile Guide for airports around the world! Due to special technology supporting the information up–to-date, AviaShopper makes it easy to navigate and to spend time with pleasure in every airport, as well as to solve a lot of tasks for the traveler: buy tickets, booking hotels or taxi.
Relationships are deeds. You do good deeds every day, even though you don’t notice that sometimes. You surprise your friends, inspire your colleagues or just help someone. Those who have been touched by that may mark your deeds in Beens. Your deeds build your Beens Index. Beendex shows how good you are in a single number. Something that sets you apart. Get surprises, emotional benefits and a better job. Become better and get more.
First mobile financial applications Store, compatible with EasyFinance Platform API. Apps are created by independent developers, checked and certificaticated by EasyFinance and its partners, that guarantees user’s financial data security and safety. Apps deployment in BestFinApps enables developers to access to 150 000 auditory, use ready cloud technologies of EasyFinance Platform and to profit from users as well as from corporate clients.
Innovative solution for Boards, Committees and other governing bodies, which facilitates planning and conducting onsite, provides history and access to related issues, tracks why certain decisions were taken and how they have been implemented, generates meeting minutes. BoardMaps improves corporate governance, involves users in the meeting preparation stage, shows required actions with intuitive interface, allows remote and absentee voting, available in local or cloud hosting.
A secure, simple and convenient tool for making instant payments and micropayments directly from any bank account without the need for Visa/MasterCard (or other such plastic!). Payments are made using mobile phone of any generation and/or NFC sticker.
How much does the Product or Service really cost? Connect2me claims that it costs exactly the sum that other users are ready to pay for it right now. Accumulating the user`s money rates for particular products or goods, Connect2me offers the Sellers to agree with the offered average price. If one does not agree with it, there definitely comes another one whom it suits perfectly well. Lowering the margin vs sales turnover growth. What will the members of the market choose?
We eliminate workplace time waste. You are the boss and you don’t want employees shopping online or browsing facebook for your bill. We can help you to stop it. Our software tracks usage time of unproductive sites and programs. We provide you with an exact number of wasted hours for departments and individuals. Our software is specially designed for medium businesses and enterprises.
We turn data into competitive advantage by means of state-of-the-art Data Mining. Enterprises discover new opportunities for accurate trend prediction, uncover valuable customer information and reduce their risks. We will make your business smarter!
Online service that allows landlords to find the ideal tenants. To rent out your apartment, register on the website, upload the photos of your apartment and invite tenants to whom you would like to rent. When a tenant agrees, you will see each others contact and from there on come to an arrangement. Realtor free. Therefore, with the help of Dream- roomer you can find tenants that will perfectly suit you and you them. Find the tenant of your dreams!
Protect your city from evil Shadows! Dusk Rift is urban fantasy online game where powerful vampires, lycans and shadow hunters unite to protect shops, restaurants, schools and universities in Moscow, New York, Tokyo and other cities across the world. Gameplay is a blend between ultra popular Candy Crush Saga, innovative Ingress and modern MMORPGs with multiplayer battles. Monetization is free2play: premium account, powerful combat boosts and fashion items. Soon on iOS/Android/WP and web.
Customer-facing SaaS platform for the restaurant industry. Restaurants directly connect with customers using a network of real-time, integrated services. Restaurants can manage their business more effectively and make more profit. For users, FoodRock is an E2E (end-to-end) mobile app which makes every dining experience more convenient and more personal.
Unique synergy of extensive database, marketplace and media channel integrated into one of the best specialized social networks. Not only video games fans can develop their community of friends, but also online stores, vendors and media have the option start their accounts in order to get in touch with potential customers. Our strategy is to provide the end user with definite service. You are GameWelcome!
GBooking is like Amazon for the services market: it allows consumers to search, compare and book services on the web, like car, medical and beauty care. Our algorithms calculate discounts during weak business hours and publish them on partner sites, thus increasing the customer reach and converting tens of thousands of leads into real customers. We integrate with search engines, online catalogs, coupon sites, CRM and CMS systems, empowering them with our optimization and booking widget.
The GSA mCommerce SaaS/ecosystem helps eCommerce become mCommerce. For the large percentage of non used mTraffic it provides automatic generated native android, iOS, html5, and tablet APPs, 2.5% peer2peer payments and a loyalty system as well as mMarketing to iShops. GSA monetizes with ads, subscriptions, acquiring, and affiliate marketing. Revenue sharing reduces marketing cost. Cooperations with CMS generate thousands of Apps. Plans for the near future: pushes, SmartTVApps, and augmented reality.
Digital loyalty program. In each store we set up Getsy iPad, customers download the Getsy App or get the physical Getsy card, checkin his QR code through the in-store iPad each time they buy something, earns points and get special rewards.
We came up with how it is possible to give gifts in a new way: easy, fast and cool. Giftboard is a mobile app that allows you to give a real gift in less than a minute knowing only the phone number or gift id of the recipient. You can give your friend a cup of coffee with the best wishes of a good day or congratulate a colleague on his birthday being on a business trip in another city. Giftboard make it possible to give presents every day not only on holidays.
An outlet and a consignment store of new and pre-owned luxury clothing, shoes and accessories at affordable prices. Glamcom.ru provides a simple and safe online service which redefines the format of consignment retail for both buyers and sellers. HR VALUE
SAAS solution for online recruiting, which solves the problem of low efficiency of mass internet recruitment. HRMarker automates the process of screening resumes, reducing the original set of candidates. Service is self-learning system that learns by analyzing of HR specialist process action. In this way, a knowledge base is formed, that allows to recommend the required information to the next user without using search engine, but through the base of recommendations.
Device that connects your apartment’s intercom with your smartphone. Guests that dial the intercom can be viewed on your smartphone or tablet and you can chat with them. iKtotam records your visitors and saves video and audio data to cloud storage. As well Connector lets you open the entrance door to your guests with a single tap on your smartphone. Instantly respond to visitors or ignore them. Connector helps you keep your home and the ones you love safe.
We help parents choose reliable, educational applications for children, and provide them convenient reports on progress and achievements. Applications for Kid Erudite undergo a rigorous selection process by teachers and child psychologists. We select the best applications and build a coherent and comprehensive educational system. We will develop applications to cover any gaps in the curriculum with our developers team for platforms iOS, Android, WindowsPhone, and Windows 8.
LifePay provides admission of the credit card payments on smartphones with full guarantee transaction security anywhere you have the Internet access. All you need is cardreader, connected by audiojack to a smartphone (based on iOS,Android or WinPhone) and preinstalled LifePay app. Cardreader is free – we subtracted only a 2,7% percentage of each transaction. Operation’s safety meets the requirements of PCI DSS. All of the statistics are accounted in the personal office.
LIGHTPACK
Open-source device, which lightens your computer or TV screen to strengthen the presence effect. The device needs to be mounted on your TV or computer screen and to be connected to your PC, Mac or HTPC via USB. The software analyses what you currently have on the screen and sends this information to the Lightpack device which in turn lightens the surface behind the screen with matching colors using the RGB-LEDs available within the Lightpack device.
A service that helps people organize their health. Now the user can already find a doctor or clinic, to register in online reception, to receive information on diseases and recommendations on who specializes in them, and much more. Website and application available.
TV guide for you and your friends. Information for over 200 channels in 100 different regions. See what’s showing on TV- a brief description, list of actors and the information about them, related tweets, schedule of the following episodes, and much more! Set reminders so that you won’t miss your favorite showб share shows with your friends and discuss them in the chatrooms.
Cloud healthcare platform that captures and securely stores patient medical data from any source or provider allowing integrated healthcare delivery. It is a fully featured ecosystem for the private healthcare market that facilitates the collaboration of all the major players – clinics, patients, CROs, employers, insurance companies, and medical device vendors. Today, the platform serves more than 100,000 patients across Russia.
Textile treatment liquid. It is a simple and inexpensive way to make your favorite gloves compatible with touchscreens. We have invented it for all touchscreen device users. So there is no need to take off your gloves answering a call or a text message anymore. MediaGloves is a transparent liquid, unnoticeable when dry, safe for both glove and skin. Inventing mediagloves is our way to create something new something different, make our world a better place.
Multifunctional SaaS service for automation of business activities of microfinance institutions (MFIs). Allows managing the full cycle of microloans from application for a loan to collecting overdue arrears. Service built on Windows Azure cloud infrastructure and requires no additional software or hardware costs, provides an intuitive user-friendly interface and allows MFIs to start work with minimal financial and time costs.
Telecom & IT service based on a wristband for on-line health control. It automatically monitors heart rate, falls and skin temperature. If your relative feels bad you will be alerted by an SMS or call; it works as a mobile phone. User health statistics are available in an on-line account. Research proved our service fits the existing need of millions of people in Russia and other countries. We hope that TechCrunch will help us find the right partners to expand our outreach and serve more people.
Universal and convenient service for swapping and trading used games and accessories for consoles. How the project operates is simple: gamers create a virtual shelf with the games they are offering and they may ask each other for specific games to trade. As the project has a geolocation feature, all gamers see games that are available in their neighborhood. Then the only thing they have to do is to set up a meeting. This service is already accessible in all CIS countries.
Service for tracking parcels. It tracks sites of postal and courier services and shows information for all of user’s parcels. OhMyDelivery also allows online stores to integrate tracking of order status directly in user’s account. In addition to this, service will allow to collect feedback about the quality of goods and delivery from users. The application is available in the AppStore.
Frequently, you are waiting before you’ll be served in most of mid-range restaurants. Average waiting time in Russian restaurants is 20 minutes. You can miss your plane or meeting and you don’t control this time. Using Order King you can place orders directly from your smartphone or tablet. And it will be served directly to your table. Also you can pay for your meal and give tips with your smartphone.
Playzum’s mission is to provide a platform that gives gamers the ability to socially interact with other users and friends on gaming achievements, game recommendations. Cool Features: Easy access from any device, Game-based check-in, Social game guide with recommendations and reviews, Game friend finder.
Collective buying platform of the furniture, building materials, tools and sanitary ware. Allows the retail buyers get the wholesale price. This is possible through buying directly from the manufacturer without extra charges of distributors and stores. When buying directly from the manufacturer the Collective buying participant saves up to 40% in construction and 70% in repairs. We use original strategy for group buying China’s model – self-organized and execute. Warehouse clubs function.
Billing and management platform for cloud services (SaaS, IaaS). Service providers (xSP) use RentSoft to reduce costs and increase cloud services sales. RentSoft provides such features as recurring and metered billing, cloud service marketplace, client area, services automation, invoicing and payment processing, event notifications, promotions and bundles, statistics, ERP integration, affiliate program.
Cloud service that keeps online threats at bay. We will ensure your internet surfing is safe and comfortable, with annoying ads, porn, dangerous websites and other sources of trouble securely blocked. At home or on the corporate network, on computers or mobile devices – anytime, anywhere you are guaranteed the best experience and protection from cybercrime.
Bonus loyalty program for small and medium enterprises (SaaS). The program is installed in the venue and works on an iPad. Each venue that uses SkyPort has its own bonus program (similar to frequent flyer’s program) tied to the industry specifics of the venue. Gamified process of bonus accumulation enables venues to promote certain services, increase average spending and reward their best customers with extra bonuses. Already works in beauty salons, medical centers, fitness-centers and shops. TAG & FIND
Turns any smartphone or tablet into a professional RFID scanner. Its main use is to find assets, or sound an alert if they are out of range. Replacing the back-cover of your smartphone, it works with RFID stickers and a mobile application. Our lightweight stickers can attach to any object, and need no battery. We offer businesses a professional cloud-based ERP platform, fully integrated with RFID scanning, for hands-free inventory management, effective items location and loss prevention.
If you’re young and ambitious in Russia, you need to interact with people and ideas elsewhere. Right now, that’s tough. Talkster will change this. We set up conversations between bright, curious people. They’re in English, over Skype, last 45 minutes and cost Russians $15. On the other end are British students. For them, Talkster represents a challenge: can you strike up a conversation with a stranger? Russians pick the conversation topic beforehand and rate their chat straight afterwards.
A mobile blogging platform that will turn the way how people blog upside down. Today, blogging is hard, time consuming and desktop based. We are making the whole process easy & mobile, and what’s important more beautiful without any extra skills required. With Telller everyone can really start blogging or improve their current blog. Telller will be launched as an iPhone app with a content mirror website later in 2013.
Mobile social network for event visitors and organizers. Services for event attendees: Finding an event, Finding travel- & roommates, Finding new friends, Making appointments. The event app features agenda, address, twitterwall, geolocation services. Event organizers get: Finding or creating events, Customized app, Scheduling appointments. Free on Android and iOS.
This cartoon messenger is a cross platform messaging service with a twist. It turns your text messages into funny animations. For example, you can choose your character and make it throw a cake at those of your friends. After you have exchanged several messages you can watch the whole dialog as a cartoon.
A unique and ready-to-use credit facility even now engaged in partner sales all over Russia. This is a tool for work with b2b customers interlinking business and banks. Such service has been developed for professional market – real estate agencies, realtors, travel agents, insurance agents, car dealers, and tenant builders. Unicom24 is a fully free service, online access to 30 banks, uniform customer profile, assured feedback, and chance to make money out of every credit provided.
A solution that allows users to receive loans right at home. The development of our unique software allows integration with any online store, providing reliable technical platform. The project received more than 70M RUR of investment, which allowed us to create a high-tech service, to attract major partners and to become one of the leaders in online lending market. Currently the service has more than 100 partners.
Multifunctional navigation system projecting augmented reality content right in front of the driver. Thanks to cutting edge technology it expands the boundaries of conventional driving making it safer, more efficient and enjoyable. The route is graphically represented as an AR line repeating the motion path. It lets you track information simultaneously while driving, without eye movement and refocusing. Interacting with urban infrastructure the system enlarges it with digital content.
WESTUDY.IN
Unique educational project providing an opportunity to get online counseling on all your admission questions with our experts – students and graduates of foreign universities from top-300 universities worldwide. It also provides an extensive database of 3000+ educational programs all over the world, internships and volunteer programs.
A platform for collaboration and knowledge management helping small and medium sized teams to achieve their goals with 50% more productivity. User experiences based on neuroscience and gamification underpin a supportive communication and collaboration environment. It invites to celebrate daily achievements invested into teams’ goals and to praise heroes. This personnel engagement tool helps to analyze who contributed most to which goals, what was discussed, and what appealed to the team. |
I, Drone | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 1 | Let’s ignore, for a moment, all of the obvious problems with a . Let’s ignore the fact that . And let’s ignore the fact that a 10-mile range isn’t much when it comes to underserved rural areas and is a jungle of potential snags and snares in urban, populated areas. Let’s ignore the fact that, unless you’re having Amazon deliver something to your secluded place on Martha’s Vineyard, having a robot drop paperback books on your house sounds like a mess. Let’s ignore the possibility that a drone falls on a person and gives him or her an Amazon Prime haircut. Or worse, let’s assume for a moment that the FAA allows Bezos to pull this off. Let’s figure out how and where Amazon can pull this off. First, we know that Amazon has the manpower. They have a team of customer service experts on call 24/7 waiting for you to click the button on your Kindle Fire HDX. that they ramped up this massive operation in a few weeks and the customer service reps didn’t even know what they were preparing for until launch. Amazon can throw people a problem in a second. Next we have companies like that are building . Presumably every Prime drone has to be completely manned and include some sort of emergency return system, but a human brain supplemented with a robot brain means a far smoother ride. Add in a simple robotic eye like and you’re basically as accurate as a Predator drone, albeit one loaded with copies of Diary Of A Wimpy Kid and not Hellfire missiles. Finally, we know that Amazon has plenty of last-mile problems and wants to expand. This is the ultimate solution for those. This addresses the “where” of the question. Clearly Amazon isn’t going to fly these things in Manhattan. Instead, they will open brand-new markets for the retail giant. A truck can pull into a rural hamlet and send out five or six drones in a few hours. They can spread out, like so many reverse honey bees, depositing their payloads and returning to the nest. It saves Amazon millions on shipping, it opens up new markets, and it improves their perception in the areas where delivery saturation is low. I can get Amazon stuff delivered overnight in Brooklyn but in some cases that’s far harder than Amazon would like. These drones are the ultimate in cost savings. We’ve got to hand it to Bezos. This isn’t anything new – remember the ? – but that Bezos is behind it catapults it well into the realm of possibility. Drones, as a tool, are very powerful and very smart. Amazon, as a company, is even more powerful and even smarter. It’s a match made in (dare I say it?) lower altitudes. |
Amazon Is Experimenting With Autonomous Flying Delivery Drones | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 12 | 1 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98BIu9dpwHU&w=853&h=480] Between launching a charity-friendly buying program, announcing Sunday deliveries, and gearing up for the first wave of frenzied holiday shoppers, Amazon has been busy these past few weeks. But that didn’t stop CEO Jeff Bezos from spending a decent chunk of time talking to Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes about something, well, new. 60 Minutes has been more than happy to tease the unveiling with a clip of Bezos leading Rose into a room to show him that elicited an “Oh my God!” from the veteran TV journo. The exclamation seemed to stem from a place of pleasure rather than worry, but the segment just aired and the truth is out. So what did Bezos have up his proverbial sleeves? drones that could feasibly be used as autonomous delivery vehicles. To hear the chief executive tell it, those electric drones — or “octocopters” as he referred to them — could make for delivery times as low as 30 minutes. Naturally, the size of those drones means there’s a strict upper limit to how much cargo they can carry, but Bezos says they can carry packages of up to five pounds for round trips as long as 10 miles. Thankfully for Amazon, that means nearly 86 percent of the items that it carries can be lashed onto one of its sky-bound couriers. Just don’t expect to see one of them land on your doorstep any time soon. The FAA still hasn’t given its blessing to domestic drones yet (though it just recently laid out its vision ), which means the earliest that Amazon will be legally able to bring Prime Air online is in 2015 — a launch window that Bezos says is “optimistic” at best. There’s also no word on what company (if any) Amazon is working with to develop its fleet of drones, but at this stage, there’s no shortage of players eagerly working to bring drones into the world of business. The rest of the report didn’t shine too much additional light on what makes Amazon tick, though it did afford us mere mortals a closer look at how its gargantuan fulfillment centers work. They’re stunningly large models of efficiency — the one 60 Minutes toured was 1.2 million sq. ft. and the workers packing products into parcels were able to do so with remarkable speed. Sadly, since the segment was filmed over the span of a month, there’s no official response on that took aim at Amazon UK for warehouse working conditions that could potentially cause “mental illness and physical illness”. |
The Amazon Future | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 1 | Jeff Bezos revealed something that truly would revolutionize e-commerce and online ordering, should it become widely used: that could deliver 86 percent of the goods Amazon ships to customers today (packages under 5 pounds), in less than 30 minutes in many cases. That would be a huge change to business as currently conducted by the Amazon giant, and it would mean the end of retail as we know it. I’ve had the pleasure (read: horrendous displeasure) recently of having moved house, which as just about anyone knows, is one of the most massively inconvenient things you can do. This was made trickier because it was partially intercontinental, and I’d need a lot of new stuff at the new place including basics like a bed and a kitchen table. What was different this time, compared to when I’ve moved before with very little in the way of personal belongings, was that Amazon was the answer to many problems I’d previously had about how to get a lot of stuff to a new place in a densely populated urban location very quickly. An automated fleet of Amazon delivery drones makes that even more painless, and greatly simplifies the process of stocking a new place with everyday items like cleaning products, toiletries and all the other random minutiae you forget about when you’re thinking about the big things like couches, TVs and kitchen appliances. And in theory, based on what Bezos revealed tonight, you could even get some of that stuff, like toaster and kettles, winged to you on robot winds, too. Would this really be “revolutionary?” Already, you can get much of this stuff delivered to you by a good-old-fashioned human, usually within a day or two depending on your area and whether you’re willing to spring for Amazon Prime or expedited shipping. But in the world of home delivery and retail, the difference between getting something within 30 minutes and within a couple of days is not insignificant; in fact, it’s massive. When I do still shop retail instead of Amazon, the only real reason that I do so is because I need (or think I need) the item immediately. Amazon’s pricing is better in almost every case, and there’s no worry about whether something is in stock or not, and there’s no compromising about models or the type of item you’re after. If Amazon can promise all of that, combined with a delivery system that essentially beats a round-trip journey by car to the nearest Walmart, then consider it bye-bye brick-and-mortar for me, and, I suspect, for a considerable portion of the population, too. Of course, there’s a mountain of regulatory red tape to wade through before Bezos and Amazon can fly knick-knacks to you with remote-controlled octocopters, so traditional retail has some time to figure out how to respond to this new challenge. But heck, maybe teleporter tech will move even quicker and the Bezos Beam will provide instant gratification for all our petty consumer desires before we manage drone delivery. |
Microsoft Should Be Worried About Google’s Chromebooks | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 12 | 1 | , Google’s cheap ChromeOS-based, web-centric laptops. Why is Microsoft worried about Chromebooks? Because it can see the writing on the wall. For many mainstream users, the operating system they use is slowly becoming irrelevant, and even though Chromebooks are not right for everyone, they are slowly becoming a real alternative in the low-end laptop market. Microsoft wants you to believe that you can’t do anything with a Chromebook when you’re offline. That’s just at this point. Sure, Chromebooks make more sense in an always-on environment (which is where most people use them), but nobody is stopping you from playing Angry Birds while you’re offline. Indeed, while Microsoft specifically calls out Angry Birds as the kind of thing you can’t do on a Chromebook, Google would be more than happy if you from its Chrome Web Store and . Microsoft says you can’t play Call of Duty or Age of Empires on a Chromebook, and that’s fair enough. But you’re not going to enjoy playing Call of Duty on those that Microsoft highlights on its , either. There may never be a Microsoft Office for ChromeOS, but there’s a pretty good version of it available courtesy of Microsoft itself. You can’t do Skype, but Hangouts isn’t bad either. There’s no iTunes, but if you’re online, the works just as well as the desktop app. At this point, it’s clear that Google and its hardware partners are in the Chromebook game for the long run. Google found an attractive niche for these devices in the education and low-end laptop market and it’s slowly building on this momentum. The first versions of ChromeOS were indeed too limited and I could never quite recommend them to anybody. Ever since Google switched to a real window manager, however, and started adding more offline capabilities, Chromebooks started making more sense for everyday use. The Cr-48 pilot program launched three years ago. At that time, ChromeOS was exactly what Microsoft describes in its Scroogled campaign: an underpowered laptop that offered little else but the ability to surf the web and get annoyed at its . Today, it’s a pretty capable laptop, even if it’s not right for everybody yet. In three years, it could become a real challenger for Windows, especially as the modern web slowly catches up to apps. |
YourFreeProxy Is Caught Installing A Toolbar That Mines Bitcoin On The Sly | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 1 | Today in “Things Your Tech Service Shouldn’t Do” we present YourFreeProxy from Mutual Public AKA We Build Toolbars, LLC. The company, which offers proxy servers for routing around firewalls and censorship, has been secretly using its tool to mine Bitcoin using their customer’s computer. This “feature” even . [blockquote]COMPUTER CALCULATIONS, SECURITY: as part of downloading a Mutual Public, your computer may do mathematical calculations for our affiliated networks to confirm transactions and increase security. Any rewards or fees collected by WBT or our affiliates are the sole property of WBT and our affiliates.[/blockquote] While I suspect they’ll change this once they all wake up from their Thanksgiving slumber on Monday to a swirl of Internet invective, given the processor power required to mine Bitcoin and potential for system degradation, this is a massive affront to the user and a clear abuse of the freemium model. In fact, that they saw a 50% increase in processor usage when they installed the “toolbar.” WBT uses the program jhProtominer run by Monitor.exe to do its dirty work and you can’t delete it thanks to traditional malware persistence techniques. “In my opinion, [they] have gone to a new low with the inclusion of this type of scheme, they already collected information on your browsing and purchasing habits with search toolbars and redirectors,” writes Malwarebytes’ Adam Kujawa. “They assault users with pop-up ads and unnecessary software to make a buck from their affiliates. Now they are just putting the nails in the coffin by stealing resources and driving user systems to the grave.” The worst thing, in my opinion, is that mining software could soon be flagged as malware, a problem that could reduce its availability in some settings. In short, it’s bad for everybody, even these WBT scammers. |
WaterField’s Staad Is A Durable And Gorgeous Low-Profile Backpack In Leather And Canvas | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 1 | There have been so many permutations of the standard backpack at this point that it’s hard for a bag maker to come up with an original spin that adds anything to the formula. WaterField, a San Francisco-based manufacturer with a reputation for quality, has done an admirable job with their new . The Staad is a handsome backpack with a waxed canvas or ballistic body, trademark orange WaterField lining and a large weathered leather flap in black, brown or tan. The company shipped me out both the ‘slim’ 15.5×12” and ‘stout’ 16×14.25” models to try out, but most of my impressions will be of the stout version, as that’s the one I wore out and about for a few weeks. The stout model is set up for a 15” laptop but I used it with a 13” MacBook Air. The laptop pouch features a single side that’s softly lined, but provides a nice centrally aligned placement for good weight distribution. There’s another pouch stacked right on top of that one that fits a full-size iPad or Air quite nicely. Along with the laptop and its power adapter, it comfortable fit my Nintendo DS, a compact 4/3 Olympus camera and lens an iPad charger and other miscellaneous batteries and cords in the large main compartment. There are only two other pockets in the interior, left and right of a unique central zipper. I used the two pockets to fit a smartphone and cable each, or a phone in one and my iPhone backup battery pack in the other. They could also be good cord keepers. I found myself wishing the back had additional interior storage, but as I’m trying to travel lighter and lighter, it wasn’t a major deal. Something to consider if you like to keep your stuff all compartmentalized though. WaterField offers a bunch of different kinds of gear and cable pouches, so one or two of those might be in order. The pouches span the width between the zipper and the edge of the bag, and are about a hand deep. Nicely wide and not deep enough to make it hard to fish stuff out of the bottom of. The central zipper splits the bag open like a fruit peel about half-way down the front, where it stops just above the flap clasp. I’ve never seen a backpack open quite like this. It’s interesting to get used to at first but actually makes it easier to get down into the depths of the bag without having to unpack everything from the top down. It’s also likely that this was done because the bag is narrower at the top with a wider ‘butt’ down at the bottom. There are a few interesting byproducts of this design, some more beneficial than others. Because the bag is thin at the top and fat at the bottom, it lays very close the natural curve of your back, with the straps sewn to the top edge just behind the front flap. This makes it extremely low profile which, I’d guess, was the whole point. This is awesome when you’re ducking through crowds or trying to navigate gaps in public transportation. I found it almost never hit or got caught on stuff when I was traveling with it on my back, something I’ve always had issues with while using other backpacks, even though I didn’t carry much more with me. However, the unique design of the bag makes it less than suited to air travel. The interior storage is distributed across the back, rather than out. This is fine when it’s on, but if you’re on a flight trying to find a place to put it, the Staad can be a bit too wide. The width is especially evident when you’re trying to find space under an obstructed seat. Most seats had enough left-to-right room, but I encountered some where either the seat supports or the configuration of the floor panels made it almost impossible to wedge the bag under there. And, on some smaller planes it was simply too wide for the overheads (though that’s a lot of bags these days). Which brings us to the external pockets. They’re fine, on the whole. Small beaded zipper pouches that should be weather resistant, but are very easily accessible to those looking to get into them when you’re not looking. Conversely, I found it very hard to open them myself without removing the back from my back. That’s kind of a bummer when it comes to things like storing your boarding passes or Passport when traveling through airport security. I typically keep my Passport in an interior coat pocket or front pant pocket while out and about, but I like to have it in my bag for easy in-and-out along with tickets and boarding documents while I navigate security. And because the flap covers all but the front pockets, your choices are limited. The pouches on the back of the bag do not fit a Passport at all, and if you have paper tickets, you’ll have to fold them to get them in there. so I’d love it if they were a bit longer. Not a huge deal, but something to consider if you’re a frequent air traveler. Also, it’s not TSA compliant, so you’ll have to pull your laptop out of the bag at security. The entire bag exudes quality of craftsmanship from top to bottom, and was extremely comfortable, no matter what I had in it. The straps were wide enough and well configured for the size of the bag and the potential weight. The one construction quibble I had was that the main clasp on the front of the bag is a ‘vintage’ arrangement that feels a bit like some WWII-era bag latches, but with a plastic retaining pin. I got used to it after a while, but it’s not a standard configuration, and the plastic assembly feels a bit out of the place amongst the handsome scuffed leather and waxed canvas on the front of the bag. The Staad is a fantastic option for a light duty backpack that should last you many years. As with most of WaterField’s stuff, it’s an investment that should pay off with a lot of years of service. , which is a bit above average but not crazy for a high quality bag that should only look better with age. |
Sold To Telefonica For $207M In 2009, Now-Neglected VoIP Provider Jajah Is Shutting Down | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 12 | 1 | Chalk up another casualty in the consolidation of Internet voice services. Nearly four years to the day after getting , VoIP provider has announced that it is shutting down, effective January 31, 2014. Registered users of Jajah.com (its web-based service that provides a price-reducing VoIP bridge between two landline or mobile numbers) and (which assigns local numbers to international contacts) started to receive notifications of the closure this weekend, with details of for refunds. We’re embedding a copy of the note below, which is also posted on its website. The note doesn’t explain why the service is shutting down. We have reached out to Telefonica for more clarification (which we have now recieved, with the update below, noting that while Jajah is closing, the backbone is alive and kicking.) My guess is that it was probably due to a couple of reasons. The main one is that the service simply was not growing — not in terms of new products, nor new users. The second one is that Telefonica has been pursuing other ways of using VoIP to pick up more users, namely with mobile apps like . That left the consumer-facing part of Jajah more or less neglected and underdeveloped. Just how ignored was Jajah? Most pages on Jajah’s site now redirect to an announcement of its closure. But if you go to its (at least at the time of this writing), it’s still live, and frankly surreal. The last two months of entries, from March to May 2013, provide a nearly-daily run-down of a hole for a parking lot(?) getting dug next to Jajah’s Mountain View headquarters. Yes, a hole in the ground. The entries have mundane headlines like “Very substantial activity” and “Looks like one more level down” with equally dull pictures to match. (The one I’ve used to illustrate this post was called “More reinforcing”, which seems particularly ironic when you consider that the exact opposite appeared to be happening to Jajah itself.) The message: nothing of any interest whatsoever going on at Jajah, and no one seems to notice or care that that’s the case. The entries prior to that record a couple of employee trips to South America. Before that, the last product announcement was from 2011, when . It’s a whimper of an ending for Jajah. Founded originally in 2005 by Roman Scharf and Daniel Mattes (who then went on to found payments company ), it was from the likes of Sequoia, Intel and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Venture. Jajah was once viewed as a real against the likes of Skype and Vonage. Part of that was because Jajah actually offered VoIP alternatives that easily integrated with what people already used to make calls. While Skype required users to download an app — and then it worked within that app, with Jajah, users only had to go online to enter their number, and that of the number they were calling. That then provided a VoIP bridge between two basic landline (or mobile) numbers, reducing the price of the call in the process. Hype and interest in Jajah , after . Rumours swirled that Telefonica, Microsoft and Cisco were all eyeing up the company for a price between $200 million and $400 million, with reports of some 25 million subscribers and growing. (Interestingly, Microsoft did get its VoIP service in the end with Skype.) Ultimately, the sale to Telefonica was at the low end of that range, and for what turned out to be 15 million users. And the spin on the deal was not so positive. At the time, we wrote: “The sale was not a happy affair for everyone involved, however. The deal was largely driven by Jajah’s investors, particularly . We hear CTO has left the company because he and his engineering team in Israel didn’t get treated the same as their counterparts in the U.S. In these types of deals, not everyone ends up winning. Jajah turned out not to be the next $1 billion company in Sequoia’s portfolio.” Still, it seemed like a strategic fit for Jajah to go to Telefonica. And on Telefonica’s side, it looked like a bold move by a staid, incumbent carrier to propel itself into the future of telephony. Alas, perhaps Telefonica wasn’t really ready to take such a disruptive leap at the time, or perhaps the tech wasn’t really there for that leap, or perhaps something else. The bigger picture is that today, Skype is enormous, and there are dozens of other alternatives out there that do things like connect your voice calling up seamlessly with people who you message. And besides all that, we all now get hundreds of minutes thrown in with our mobile phone plans. As is customary when a telephony service shuts down, its users have the right to put in an appeal to the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC needs to authorize the discontinuation of the service, “unless it is shown that customers would be unable to receive service or a reasonable substitute from another carrier or that the public convenience and necessity is otherwise adversely affected.” Given that there are a number of other VoIP as well as non-VoIP services available today, offering this option to customers seems like more of a formality than an actual possibility to keep the service going. Dear Jajah Customer, You are receiving this email because you have registered a Jajah.com
or Jajah Direct account. As of January 31, 2014, Jajah will no longer offer any Jajah.com or
Jajah Direct services to its users in the United States or elsewhere. This means that, as of January 31, 2014 you will no longer be able to
make any calls through Jajah’s website or using any Jajah Direct
numbers you have set up. You will be able to continue using your account in the normal way
until this date however it is important to note that as of January
31, 2014 it will not be possible to add new funds to your account or
make any calls or send SMS. Users who wish to apply for a refund of any balance remaining on
their account prior to the service closing may do so by submitting a
request at the support page,
. After requesting a refund, your account will be closed and refund
processed within 30 days. If you do not receive a refund you may contact Jajah at
no later than January 31, 2014 and, if
necessary, you may be asked to provide PayPal account information to
which Jajah can post the credit.
Jajah will not be responsible for providing refunds except as
provided above. Thank you for having been such a valuable Jajah.com user. Jajah
200 West Evelyn Ave,
Suite 120,
Mountain View,
CA 94041,
USA Note Regarding FCC Application to Discontinue Domestic Service The FCC will normally authorize this proposed discontinuance of
service unless it is shown that customers would be unable to receive
service or a reasonable substitute from another carrier or that the
public convenience and necessity is otherwise adversely affected. If
you wish to object, you should file your comments as soon as
possible, but no later than 15 days after the Commission releases
public notice of the proposed discontinuance. Address them to the
Federal Communications Commission, Wireline Competition Bureau,
Competition Policy Division, Washington, DC 20554, and include in
your comments a reference to the § 63.71 Application of Telefonica
Digital, Inc., d/b/a/ Jajah. Comments should include specific
information about the impact of this proposed discontinuance upon you
or your company, including any inability to acquire reasonable
substitute service. from Telefonica: Jajah’s technology and expertise continues to represent the core of Telefonica’s communications capabilities. Fully integrated into Telefonica Digital, Jajah is the key VoIP network platform for the Group and its engineering teams are behind innovative products such as TU Go, International Favourites, International Extras and Global Friends. Since the acquisition in 2010, we have significantly invested to grow and reinforce the Jajah team in Israel by over 70% and earlier this year it was re-named Telefonica Digital Israel. As part of a re-focusing of resources to support future products we will be closing Jajah’s legacy direct to consumer services, including Jajah Direct and Jajah.com. Customers can continue using the services until January 31st 2014 or can request a refund of any credit on their account. The closure will ensure that all of the Jajah capabilities and resources are focused on developing and supporting the new communications services we plan to bring to our customers. The closure of Jajah Direct and Jajah.com has no impact on communications services offered by Telefonica Operating Businesses, such as TU Go or Global Friends, and it has no impact on our presence in Israel which continues to represent the bulk of our communications engineering capabilities.
|
Fly Or Die: The Ostrich Pillow | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 1 | With travel ramping up over the holiday season, we thought it wise to bring you a taste of Ostrich. The , to be exact. It’s a clever little pillow that slips over your head and covers everything but your nose and mouth. Though it doesn’t offer much by way of neck support, you can lay your head down and slip your hands in the holes on the top for a nice desk-style nap. The one major caveat: it’s $75. For a pillow. For a frame of reference, I bought the best possible neck pillow I could find before flying to Germany last year and it was $50. Still, the Ostrich Pillow could come in handy for someone who travels constantly happens to be allowed to take naps at work. Of course, most work buildings in which naps are allowed come with facilities to do so, but the Ostrich pillow is a nice way to keep out light and have a nice nap, even when sitting up. John, not surprisingly, is unimpressed. He thinks the impaired vision and lack of neck support make the Ostrich pillow uncomfortable. He may be right, but he’s also not using the pillow correctly, either. I, on the other hand, give this baby a fly if used in the right circumstances. If you’re addicted to napping and have $75 to burn, go for it. Otherwise, you probably don’t need this. |
Black Friday Desktop E-Commerce Spending Rose 15 Percent To $1.2B, Amazon Was The Most Visited Online Retailer | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 12 | 1 | We heard that record numbers over the weekend, and today an actual amount that was spent on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Black Friday 2013 (November 29) saw $1.198 billion in desktop online sales, making it the season’s first billion-dollar day and heaviest online spending day to date, up 15 percent from Black Friday 2012. Thanksgiving Day (November 28) rose 21 percent increase over Thanksgiving Day last year to $766 million. comScore says that for the holiday season to-date, $20.6 billion has been spent online, marking a 3 percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. But comScore cautions that the 2013 holiday shopping season is shorter, so the numbers may be skewed. Interestingly, comScore is also differentiating desktop spending vs. mobile spending, which should also reach record amounts. comScore reports that 66.1 million Americans visited online retail sites on Black Friday using a desktop computer, representing an increase of 16 percent versus a year ago. Amazon, unsurprisingly, ranked as the most visited online retail site on Black Friday, followed by eBay, Walmart, Best Buy and Target. Spending on Apparel & Accessories is seeing a surge this holiday season, ranking as the leading product category to date, accounting for 28 percent of online spending. This is followed by Computer Hardware (19 percent), Consumer Electronics (7 percent), Consumer Packaged Goods (5 percent) and Shipping Services (5 percent). Because comScore is counting desktop, and doesn’t seem to be incorporating mobile, it’s still going to be interesting to see what mobile engagement and spending looks like by the numbers. IBM said that mobile traffic grew to 39.7 percent of all online traffic, an increase of 34 percent over Black Friday 2012. Mobile sales reached 21.8 percent of total online sales, an increase of nearly 43 percent year-over-year. On Black Friday, PayPal was reporting a 121 percent increase in global mobile TPV compared to Black Friday 2012 and a 99.24 percent increase in global mobile shoppers compared to Black Friday 2012. And of course, we’ll look to see how spending increases this year tomorrow, which is Cyber Monday. This day usually produces billion-plus sales for retailers. Stay tuned. |
“Hello Santa” Offers A Memorable, But Pricey, Video Call With A Real-Life Santa | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 12 | 1 | Want to FaceTime Santa? There’s an app for that. A new video chat app called “ ” offers you and your child a one-on-one with the jolly ol’ elf himself, and for once, it’s not a pre-recorded video. For those who are sick of standing in half-hour or longer lines only to have their kid freeze up, balk or cry when it’s finally their turn to sit on Santa’s knee, Hello Santa can be a great alternative. There’s no time limit on the call itself, allowing mom and/or dad a chance to aid in conversation, instead of shouting at their kid from next to the elf manning Santa’s photography station. This live visit from Santa does not come cheap, however, as some early, frustrated App Store reviews point out. “$14.99 a call not worth it,” writes someone who signed their review “Don’t waste your time…” I think that’s a little unfair. Because the app also offers you a keepsake video of your child’s call to Santa, you have to think of it as being something that’s more along the lines with those yearly photos of your child with Santa that you order at the time of an in-person visit at the mall. With those price points in mind, a $15 call makes a little more sense. But that’s not a price everyone will be able to afford, especially during the holidays where priority number one are the gifts to buy, and, after all, an in-person visit with Santa is still free if you forgo the professional snapshots. The Hello Santa app is the first product from a company called “ ,” which was started by a team that’s worked together for years at Deesea, a consulting firm they founded which has done work for Universal Music, Public Storage, Booz Digital and others. The full team includes enterprise tech consultant Dorian Collier (CEO), Founders Institute grad Jordan Lyall (COO), Sri Lankan entrepreneur Sam Dassanayake (CTO), former CMO and Chief Evangelist from Viddy Evan White (CMO), and MySpace alum (and X Games judge!) Robert McKinley as Creative Director. Oh, and of course, Ed Taylor, a Santa who has appeared in television, parades and magazines since 2004, and who has played Santa for Microsoft and Mattel in the past. (And yes, his beard is real. He looks legit.) As Collier explains, the idea for the app came naturally: his kid kind of suggested it, in fact. “Jordan and I both have kids in the Santa believer age,” he says. “My son is used to using FaceTime with family, and a few months ago he asked ‘Daddy, can I call Santa?’ After not finding a good company offering this service at scale we decided to jump in with both feet,” he says. I can also confirm that Hello Santa is one of the better “call Santa” apps on the App Store, as many offer only static images, pre-recorded clips, or just have really Santa’s on staff. Before “Hello Santa,” I had been using “ ,” which gets the job done for just $1.99. But there are only so many times you can call the “naughty line” before your kid will begin to wonder why Santa always says the same thing. Using the Hello Santa app was fairly simple. If Santa’s around, you can call him immediately, but you’re more likely going to have to schedule your call for a particular date and time. Here, you can fill in some information about your child to “prep” Santa for their visit, including name, age range, and any other special notes you want to include. When Santa calls, he will greet your child by their name, which adds to “magical-ness” of the experience. And if you don’t have an iPhone or iPad, you can make the “Hello Santa” call from your Mac or PC instead. Be aware that “Hello Santa” was not without its glitches at first, which is harder to digest at a $15 price point. The app crashed on me once during the call scheduling process (not the live call) and one of two test calls failed to include the video. For what it’s worth, this is a product that’s barely two weeks old and problems are to be expected. And in the case of the missing video, the company provided users with a second call and video for free, which is really the best they could do. As someone used to testing early stage apps, the glitches aren’t surprising – but the mainstream market the company is pitching will not be so tolerant, so the team needs to get their, um…. …together fast. I should note, however, that the second time around, everything worked as expected. The L.A.-based team raised a small (under $200K, ongoing) seed round in convertible notes to get through its first season and prove the business model. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vOBSVPjOYI&w=640&h=360] |
A Tweet About Mobile That Took On A Life Of Its Own | Semil Shah | 2,013 | 12 | 1 | TechCrunch I’ve been with mobile startups like Uber and Snapchat, among others — but not for the standard reasons. Yes, they’re both great products and ideas, but the one aspect I found most with Uber and Snapchat is its users never directly interact with the web. Even Instagram, Twitter, and other fast-growing mobile-focused products can be touched through the web browser. Over the weekend, I tweeted out a thought along these lines which turned out to be slightly inaccurate, and it somehow initiated an incredibly rich discussion and debate about what the proliferation of mobile devices and native applications may hold for the future of the web. Here’s what I on Friday: “ .” If you and open the thread, what you’ll see are many replies and different conversations kicked-off from the original tweet. It’s quite awesome and worth scrolling through. Now, a few days later, some reflections and observations: First, I was not precise with my use of words in that tweet. Snapchat, Uber, and other apps do in fact “need” the Internet. What I had intended to tweet was that Uber and Snapchat users don’t need to interact with a website in any way whatsoever. With Uber, just download an app, register, upload a credit card, and you’re on your way. With Snapchat, pictures are not published to other networks or as static website pages (such as Instagram). Second, based on the thread of replies and conversations from Twitter above, it’s worth pointing out again the difference between the Internet and the web — the Internet is a network infrastructure that connects many computers to each other, where information travels over the network through a variety of protocols, while the “web” is a way of accessing and sharing information over the network using the HTTP protocol. This was a good reminder for me to be more careful with these terms, as it’s too easy to use both words interchangeably from a consumer point-of-view given how popular they are in our vernacular. Fourth, speaking of the mobile gatekeepers — how this all shakes out on iOS versus Android presents complex scenarios. For now, Apple has little incentive to move developers away from native apps, and consumers continue to prefer native apps. And, if the “ ” takes off from Passbook, that will create another mobile interaction unit which harnesses the Internet yet where a consumer never directly touches a website. The story may be different on Android — for one, Google may have an incentive to keep users interacting with the web on mobile, as their business model and data sets are tied to browser activity and the search paradigm, and two, Android can be and is being altered (or “forked”) by other device-makers, where HTML5 could present information in native-like ways or where apps are and deep-linked to one another and users can navigate through a mobile web without friction. (All of this can change, as well, if another device or OEM hits the market and captures consumers’ heartstrings.) So…one tweet turned into an incredible, two-day conversation and learning experience about the Internet, the web, and mobile apps. And while the distant future always remains an unknown, for now and the foreseeable future, I’d have to stand by the spirit of my original tweet — that is, when one steps back to think about the potential for a company like Uber or the sheer growth and scale of a communication tool like Snapchat, it remains a fact that those users are not directly touching a website. Yes, I know, they’re using mobile software that communicates with the Internet, but the larger point is that the web — as an interface — may not be used by the next billion people who are set to come online. Put another way, as mobile devices proliferate exponentially, many new users’ first online experience will likely not involve any direct interaction with a website. Yes, I know some apps will have wrappers and other users will search for information and end up in a mobile browser, but the growth of and appetite for services like Uber and products like Snapchat to clear shift — a shift developers, UX designers, large corporations, PC manufacturers, venture capitalists, and even Wall Street recognizes: mobile is the key touchpoint in the network. In a fierce competition for consumer attention, native experiences — not reincarnations of a website on a mobile device —- is what most consumers prefer. For the majority of today’s consumers and for future generations , the world of websites will likely seem a distant planet, something they may learn about in school but one that may in their day-to-day lives. / |
STI Buys Chalkable For $10M To Bring Its Educational App Store And Learning Platform To K-12 Schools | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | With entrepreneurs beginning to wake up to the huge demand for better learning tools, and the opportunity for technology to remove some of the long-standing barriers within the system, startups have begun to flood into the education market. As a result, venture investment has begun to flow into education, and with a new crop of entrepreneurial and engineering talent emerging, established players are . In October, with its acquisition of math instruction company, TenMarks, and a new month brings another first-time buyer and another EdTech acquisition, as . STI is the 30-year-old maker of education data management solutions for K-12 schools, which focuses its suite of products on Student Information Systems, parent-teacher communications and reporting, among others. With its acquisition of Chalkable, STI is yet another example of an veteran education player looking to keep pace with the demand for more accessible and user-friendly learning tools by injecting new talent and technology into its ranks. As a result of the deal, all nine members of the Chalkable team will be joining STI, and Michael Levy and Zoli Honig, the startup’s CEO and COO, respectively, will stay on as directors of STI’s new Chalkable team. Unlike some startup acquisitions, Chalkable’s product will remain active and, according to a source with knowledge of the deal, will be combined with technology from other acquisitions pipeline and STI’s SIS product, iNow, to give the company a revamped, modern product. As part of STI’s move to become a more modern (and visible) EdTech company, it hired a new CEO and COO, both with decades of experience at K-12 education and technology companies to help lead the charge. This also means that STI appears ready to put some capital to work to inject new talent, as we hear from sources that the company paid around $10 million to acquire Chalkable. The 500 Startups grad with a platform that aimed to serve schools both as an app store and as a learning management system, serving 50+ institutions before it was acquired. The startup launched with $1.3 million in funding from 500 Startups, Expansion Venture Capital, former Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelley and former Facebook mobile platform lead, Luke Shepard, among others. Chalkable aimed to solve a nagging question among schools, parents and students: “Where do I go to find web-based learning tools on the web?” The amount of apps, content and digital learning tools on the Web and mobile devices is growing fast and is fragmented across an array of different sources. Chalkable set out on a mission to offer an aggregated resource for teachers and parents to find these tools, which, until the recent entry of Google (with Google Play for Education) didn’t exist for online education content. The app store listed top education apps from a litany of resources across the Web, making it easy to search and discover quality content and click to buy. Backed by its basic learning management system, it allowed teachers to pull in student data and accounts from platforms and services like Khan Academy, Dropbox and Google, putting apps downloaded through the store and class data in once place. While the idea has a lot of appeal, the road can be tough for startups operating in the K-12 market, because so much of school spending has traditionally been controlled by administrators at the district or state levels. The sales process can be long and is often mired in bureaucracy, and growth was measured for Chalkable (as it is for most) for this very reason. Naturally, with a model like Chalkable’s, the more teachers have control in the decision-making process where the budget is concerned, the more freedom they have to choose and purchase apps — and the more revenue Chalkable sees as a result. Chalkable partnered with STI at first, but given STI’s much larger footprint as its services are now used by 5,000 schools across the U.S. and serve over 1.5 million students, an acquisition made more sense in the end. With STI’s state contract in Alabama, Chalkable now has the opportunity to sell into every school in the state and, for a startup with a useful service that may be growing a bit of moss, that’s an opportunity that’s an opportunity that’s too good to pass up. And for STI, Chalkable now allows their institutional customers to bring more modern, consumer-friendly and techy tools — the kinds that students use every day outside the classroom — into the learning process. In turn, it allows teachers, together with students, to create personalized “play lists” of learning content and personalized app experiences tailored to each member of a class. “STI is continuously searching for ways to bring state-of-the-art education tools to our students, teachers and parents,” new STI CEO Derek Dunaway said in the company’s announcement. “The tools available through the Chalkable platform will increase the access our students have to highly relevant educational content and allow teachers to personalize instruction through customized apps that are recommended for each student’s level of learning.” |
Facebook Videos Now Auto-Play On Mobile, Expect Video Ads Soon | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | FB could look a lot more like TV soon. While Vine and Instagram Video are booming, you don’t see many people natively uploading videos to Facebook. But now Facebook is bringing auto-play for native videos to all users after the feature in September. And it’s just the beginning of a huge push to put Facebook in motion. Previously, any video uploaded to Facebook directly or shared to the News Feed from Instagram would appear the same as YouTube videos — locked behind a play button. While the conscious decision to stop scrolling for, open the video player, wait for it to load, and watch might not seem like a big deal, it may have been too much of a time and effort investment for some. If people don’t watch videos, they don’t get likes and comments that encourage friends to upload more, and they might skip uploading them themselves. But after spotting an auto-play video in my feed yesterday and asking Facebook, the company confirms is now internationally rolled out to most iOS and Android users and will reach all of them soon. Facebook tells me it’s still testing this feature on desktop and doesn’t have schedule for when it will roll out there. On mobile, auto-play gives natively uploaded Facebook videos and ones shared from Instagram an advantage: you don’t have to think about playing them, they play themselves. At first they’ll play in-line even as you scroll, but with no sound. If you tap them, they expand full-screen and the audio kicks in. Videos uploaded to third-party sites retain the old click-to-play-format. I’ve found the new design to be quite pleasing. As I wrote when Facebook’s auto-play style was first unveiled, it feels a bit like the moving photos in the Harry Potter newspapers. If you d on’t want to watch, you can scroll by with little disruption. This isn’t Myspace, Vine, or Instagram where auto-play sound is suddenly going to bombard everyone around you. If you’re not sure if you want to watch, you get a little preview. Maybe the thumbnail was dull but motion shows the video is actually exciting. A little animated audio levels icon clues you in to there being sound to be heard, though. You can watch silently if you don’t have headphones or privacy, but if you want the full experience, you can tap and the video plays instantly without a loading delay. To respect users who don’t want to burn data, Facebook has added a that lets you only auto-play videos if you’re on WiFi and not on cellular data. It’s found in your phone’s Facebook settings on iOS and the Facebook app’s settings on Android. When Facebook started testing auto-play, it was upfront about looking for ways to give the feature to marketers as well as users. “At first, this feature will be limited to videos posted by individuals, musicians, and bands. We’re doing this to make sure we create the best possible experience. Over time, we’ll continue to explore how to bring this to marketers in the future.” I would bet we’re going to hear some news about this soon, either just before or after the New Year. Facebook recently starting letting developers put , but those don’t auto-play. Maybe they will eventually, though. For advertisers, auto-play videos could make their ads a lot more noticeable. Most people wouldn’t volunteer to watch a video ad (cool movie trailers aside), but if it’s already playing and looks compelling, they might watch or even expand it to include sound too. Facebook is a fan of consistency, so video ads might have a very similar user experience to organic videos. Because they’re more captivating, Facebook could potentially charge a lot to show video ads. Back in September, Facebook could charge between $1 million and $2.4 million to distribute a 15-second video ad for a day. Facebook raked in , and video ads could give that number a significant bump in Q1 and Q2 2014. Finally, we might start to see a landslide of ad spend previously devoted to television coming online, as the Facebook format would be relatively familiar (though possibly with no sound unless clicked). The question remains whether users will freak out about video ads. on my last piece about them and general sentiment has been quite wary of what video ads will do to the Facebook experience. If they’re the most eye-catching things on the social network, they could seem quite annoying. AdAge says Facebook might cap video ads so users don’t see more than three a day. Striking the right balance will be critical, though surprisingly, Facebook found that showing static photo ads in the News Feed . And if you’re thinking to yourself, “AdBlock Plus, bro”, that’s up to you. Personally, I think ads are the , funding free products we rely on. But they’re a nuisance unless well-targeted, so hopefully Facebook can keep video ads relevant to the viewer. Otherwise I’d expect a lot of people to look for ways to banish them from their feed. The secret to making people swallow video ads might be getting them to shoot mini-movies themselves. If there were more user generated videos on the site, the ads would blend in. The problem is, right now Facebook’s video creation tool is painfully outdated. Unlike its Instagram Video product, there’s no way to shoot multiple shots in a single video, no editing, no stabilization, no cover image, and no filters. That means videos shot with Facebook often look pretty crummy. Crummy videos get few likes, so people don’t shoot them, so no one sees them, so no one thinks to shoot them… It’s time for Facebook to modernize its video creation tool. It could easily port in the Instagram Video features, maybe with a better tagging interface since Facebook is more about friends. It also has like recording video as soon as your camera is open, recognizing and tagging faces or locations, and detecting audio and visual cues like saying “that’s beautiful” to select a cover image thumbnail or create anchors for navigating around within a video while watching. These features could make it much more fun to shoot and view Facebook videos, which could fill the feed with them and camouflage the video ads. And even if the native creation tools stay the same, a better watching interface could make a big difference. Right now there’s no real way to discover and watch Facebook videos in bulk. A Facebook “channel” that showed your friends’ videos back-to-back (perhaps with clips from Pages and advertisers mixed in) could be an addictive lean-back experience. Better video viewing could pit Facebook in more direct competition with YouTube. So basically, Facebook has a huge opportunity to step up its video…game, and auto-play on mobile is just the first step. Photos fueled Facebook’s popularity back in its early days. As it turns 10 years old in 2014, we’ll see if video can give it a second wind. |
Play-i Raises $1.4M From The Crowd For Toy Robots That Make Programming Kid-Friendly, Comes To Stores Near You Next Summer | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | If we’re going to prepare future generations for an increasingly technical world (and workforce) ahead, then we need to teach them computer science and engineering. To some, that may sound like a no-brainer, but to the American educational system, where nine out of ten schools don’t offer programming courses, it not. Of course, to really get students engaged and inspire that lifelong love of computer science and technology — just as it is with learning a new language — education has to start early. And it has to be fun. Learning how to code takes time and is a difficult proposition for adults, so asking kids to sit down and write a line of code (let alone learn the laws of computer science) almost seems absurd. It’s this problem that led Vikas Gupta, the former head of consumer payments at Google, to create and a couple of kid-friendly, educational robots. Joined by co-founders Saurabh Gupta, who previously led the iPod software team at Apple, and Mikal Greaves, who led product design and manufacturing for electronics and toys at Frog Design, to make programming and engineering concepts accessible to kids, who’d rather be outside digging in the dirt. The team knew that whatever solution they designed would need to be something kids would want to play with, so they created Bo and Yana, two programmable, interactive robots that look and act a lot like toys. The team raised $1 million from Google Ventures, Madrona Venture Group and others last year to build the prototypes, and today, though it’s still tinkering with details, the learning system is nearly ready for lift-off. When it comes to market next year, kids will be able to play with Bo and Yana right out of the box, controlling them through Play-i’s companion app designed for the iPad. The app presents visual sequences of actions and simple commands on the iPad that kids can then perform — like clapping, waving their hand or shaking one of the robots — that compel the robots to perform certain actions. Young programmers can get three-wheeled Bo to scoot around the room, blink his light or play a xylophone, shake Yana to roar like a lion, or have them interact with each other. Through actionable storytelling, play and music, younguns start to learn the most basic concepts behind programming, like causation. The coolest idea behind the interactive learning system is that, as kids get older, they will start to find that the commands are recorded on the app in a variety of programming languages, like Java and Python, so that concepts become more challenging as they progress. The idea is for Bo and Yana to be accessible to all ages, the level of learning is as simple or challenging as you want it to be. While the gamifying of coding and teaching programming through toys isn’t new and, is entering a market already inhabited by products and startups like Cargo-Bot, Move the Turtle and Bee-Bot, this kind of computer science education is still relatively new. The demand and the market for it is also just beginning to develop, and as education reform pushes STEM education into more schools and, in turn, schools begin to look for novel ways to teach these concepts at younger and younger ages, the opportunity will continue to grow. Although the co-founders think they’re onto something with Bo and Yana, they wanted to test the level of interest and demand among consumers. So they launched a crowdfunding campaign on the Play-i website in mid-November, and have since been pleased to find that not only was there interest, but that interest wasn’t just limited to the U.S. Over the course of its 31-day crowdfunding campaign, Play-i raised $1.4 million, five-times its goal, and $26K of that total were contributions towards robots that the company will give to schools and organizations that work with underprivileged children. The campaign saw contributions from the U.K., Canada, Germany, Australia, India and France, among others, with over 30 percent of contributions coming from outside the U.S. With over 10,000 pre-orders and plans to ship next summer, the team will spend the next six months finalizing manufacturing and distribution partnerships. Gupta tells us that they plan to sell the robots through their website and through both online and brick-and-mortar retailers, though he says those deals are still in the works. For more, stay tuned, find Play-i and Eliza’s interview with the Play-i founder below: |
Inside India’s Aadhar, The World’s Biggest Biometrics Database | Pankaj Mishra | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | India’s , also known as Aadhar, earlier this week finished capturing demographic and biometric data of over half a billion residents–the largest biometric project of its kind currently in the world. It’s been a multi-year effort not without its critics among privacy and security advocates and others. The latest development this week concerned the method that Aadhar is using to capture, store and manage the data, and the role a startup from the U.S. called MongoDB may be playing in it. MongoDB, a NoSQL database startup, last year , an independent non-profit venture backed by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. During past few days, have quoted political parties and activists, raising questions about whether sensitive data is being compromised by Aadhar, headed by the Infosys co-founder Some of the reports have linked the controversy with MongoDB. Governments across the world are , and anything even remotely associated with U.S. government intelligence agencies is enough to cause uproar. Moreover, with general elections set to be held next year, political rhetoric is at an all time high in India. Still, the timing of these allegations couldn’t have been worse, at least for the ambitious identification project, which is this year to be established as a fully constitutional authority. I took a tour of Aadhar’s offices in Bangalore, and the truth of the matter, according to officials I spoke to, is that while some have alleged large contracts that include sharing data with MongoDB, the reality is that Aadhar is using MongoDB open source code that doesn’t touch sensitive data. The meeting also offered an opportunity to understand how the biggest biometrics database on earth is functioning, and dealing with concerns of security and privacy. Moreover, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), refuted allegations of sharing Indian residents’ data with any U.S. agencies. To set the context right here about Aadhar, and what it means for a country like India, more than half a billion people have no official ID of any kind, which makes it impossible for them to receive government aids, open a bank account, get a loan, get a driving license, and so on. The database project, which is now enrolling over one million Indians residents a day, is scheduled to sign up about 1.2 billion people by the end of next year, making it the biggest biometrics database on earth. One of the biggest advantages of having a 12-digit Aadhar number is that the government can link bank accounts of the country’s poor with it, and directly transfer cash benefits and other subsidies. Already, nearly 40 million bank accounts in India have been linked with Aadhar. , more than 40% of the Indian government’s $250 billion worth of subsidies and other benefits meant for poor, will be lost to corruption over next few years. Aadhar will remove the middlemen and curb any corruption by enabling direct cash transfer to those who need government subsidies. But several think-tanks and activists including , have been raising concerns about privacy issues and even questioning the effectiveness of the entire project. I have been trying to get meetings with the officials at Aadhar to understand security aspects, progress so far and their reaction to the MongoDB allegations. They finally agreed to meet on Friday in their headquarters across the road in one of Bangalore’s southern suburbs, where both Intel’s and Cisco’s India headquarters are located. From outside, Aadhar’s technology center, which stores all residents’ data (now totalling 5 Petabytes in size) does not look like a government building at all—it could pass for as one of the buildings housing Intel or Cisco nearby. Inside, as I walked into a room with about dozen television screens in the center of it, some twenty young engineers feverishly looked ahead, typing on their computer keyboards, checking the movement of data packets storing information, the setting looked like a very sophisticated command center. The television screens they were looking at showed the journey of these data packets (each sized at around 5MB) from the time they are logged at one of the 30,000 enrollment centers around the country, through at least three stages of validation. Validation includes running duplication checks for each of the profiles to ensure there are not more than one Aadhar number for the same person. So, for every new enrollment, a ‘de-duplication’ check is done against all existing profiles, which is over half a billion currently. Srikanth Nadhamuni, a former Intel engineer who helped set up Aadhar’s technology platform in September 2010, and is now running Khosla Labs in Bangalore, tells me that these data packets are stored behind 2048-bit encryption and capable of self-destruction if any unauthorized access is attempted. So why did Aadhar engage with MongoDB in the first place and will it continue working with the startup? Sudhir Narayana, assistant director general at Aadhar’s technology center, told me that MongoDB was among several database products, apart from MySQL, Hadoop and HBase, originally procured for running the database search. Unlike MySQL, which could only store demographic data, MongoDB was able to store pictures. However, Aadhar has been slowly shifting most of its database related work to MySQL, after realizing that MongoDB was not being able to cope with massive chunks of data, millions of packets. They have already started using ‘database sharding’: a process where data packets are stored across different machines to ensure the system does not crash as volumes rise. This has helped Aadhar reduce its dependency on MongoDB and instead use MySQL for storing most of the data. Ashok Dalwai, deputy director general of the tech center, told me that MongoDB has no access to any biometric data. “We believe in using open source technologies to avoid any vendor lock-in, but that doesn’t mean we are in any way, compromising security,” Dalwai said. When contacted, a MongoDB spokesperson redirected to about the company’s funding involving In-Q-Tel. And more importantly, UIDAI started using MongoDB’s open source software much before the startup received any funding from In-Q-Tel. As this MongoDB received venture round funding of $7.7 million from Red Hat, Intel Capital and In-Q-Tel, only in 2012. Despite all the controversies surrounding it, Aadhar is on track to enroll over 1.2 billion Indian residents by end of 2014, the officials added. This will create a database of about 15 petabytes in size. Currently, the project is enrolling around one million residents in the country a day. Narayana told me that he’s confident of achieving around two million enrollments a day from next year, and that will help bring the remaining 700 million people into the database. |
Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | Good morning and how do you do? Do you enjoy all of your limbs and organs? Good! Keep them healthy because these Dystopian War Robots are sure to want them when they come to power. To begin with, we present the two-armed worker robot from . Designed to work a great deal like the now-famous , this robot will be available in 2016 and be used to help – and later harm – factory workers in their daily tasks. It can be trained to assist – and later assault – its human counterparts and is, for the time being, called “the autonomous dual-arm robot” and will later be called “My lordship.” It seems, however, that our own lovable Baxter is seeing the competition creeping up and is doing more to assimilate. For example, is offering a program for Baxter than will allow him to solve a Rubik’s Cube with nary a whimper. The robot will methodically make all the colors match – and smile the whole time – while viewers are lulled into a dull sense of safety. Then he will pounce. Oh, how he will pounce. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CbAVRd5f4o&w=420&h=315] Finally we have a charming bipedal robot from the University of Michigan. Named MARLO, this old girl can traipse around like a two-legged, high-stepping heifer until it’s time to start doing a little face stomping on the front lines of the human/robot wars. The revolution will be televised and Margo will probably be holding the camera. Until next time, wet spots, keep your eyes on the skies! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6J7kfG9JrY&w=560&h=315] |
Ask A VC: Redpoint’s Geoff Yang On What Makes A Successful Entrepreneur | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | In this week’s Ask A VC episode, Redpoint partner Geoff Yang joined us in the studio to talk about entrepreneurship, international investing and much more. Yang, who has backed a number of tech giants and hot startups over the past two decades, talked about what makes a great entrepreneur. He’s said in the past that successful entrepreneurs see patterns and opportunity where others see chaos. He talked specifically in the interview about some of the founders he’s worked with who fall into that bucket. Yang also talked about the firm’s investments in Asia and beyond. Check out the video above for more! |
Architect Bradley Rothenberg Does 3D-Printed Fashion At The Annual Victoria’s Secret Show | Eliza Brooke | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is about so much more than lingerie. Over the years the annual event, which took place in Manhattan in mid-November and airs December 10, has grown into a mega-beast of elaborate outfits, wings, glitter, and musical performances. Of course, all the images of this year’s show have leaked. One that caught our eye was of a delicate, snowflake-inspired, 3D-printed bustier. I caught up with Bradley Rothenberg, the architect commissioned to design the look, to hear about 3D printing for the human body. Rothenberg works out of a spare studio in SoHo; his team numbers one to three depending on the day. While the snowflake outfit was out on a tour of Victoria’s Secret stores, there were still a few samples of the fabric kicking around his three-person studio in SoHo. “If you 3D-print weaves, you can create a moving textile,” says Rothenberg. “The main part of our research into 3D printing is in making these textiles and making something that functions along the body.” The design is an interlocking snowflake fractal printed in white nylon 1 millimeter thick. It’s flexible and stronger than you might expect. The printing was done by Shapeways, which Victoria’s Secret had originally approached about doing a 3D printed piece for the snowflake-themed segment of the show. Shapeways’ designer evangelist Duann Scott saw Rothenberg give a talk on fractals and reached out the next day to see if he wanted to get on board with the project. That was back in May, and Rothenberg spent the next six months taking notes from VS and iterating on the code for the design. The end result was a lace-like bodice comprising an interlocking weave of snowflakes with thicker structures forming the shoulders and bustle. In order to get the piece to fit properly, they took a 3D scan of model Lindsay Ellingson’s body. “The biggest challenge I think was the resolution at which you can print and the size at which you can print,” Rothenberg said. “If we could do it even half the size, the complexity would increase infinitely more.” The team also created a pair of black wings, two musical staves held together by notes formed the wings, fanning out behind the model like ribbons. That look took about a tenth of the time of the snowflake project, Rothenberg said. Because it is a costume more than anything else, the snowflake look has a theatrically large weave. Rothenberg’s mind is on 3D printing materials that can perform like true fabrics, though. Long term there’s voxel printing on a molecular level to create fabrics that have different consistencies throughout, he said. Short term, it’s more about creating a weave. Putting a 3D printed look on the runway was a great PR move on Victoria’s Secret’s part, of course. But it speaks to how 3D printing could be used in fashion down the line. Rothenberg said that he doesn’t see himself as a fashion designer: he studied architecture at Pratt and considers clothing an extension of that discipline. When it comes to apparel it’s the technology that catches his interest. “We’re more on the tech side of things. We’re doing a line of 3D printed bags, more to show what the technology can do,” he said. He’s not alone, with designers like Francis Bitonti working on the same equation. Bitonti, one of the creators of a for Dita Von Teese, led a computational fashion workshop at Pratt this summer that had students working digitally and with 3D printing to create dresses. Rothenberg said that he’s hoping to collaborate with major fashion houses to show designers, who still cut and drape fabric, the possibilities of this technology. “I think that 3D printing has a big possibility to change the industry as a whole,” he said. “Specifically what we want to do is make wearable 3D-printed stuff available to fashion designers.” |
Flurry Raises Another $12.5M For Mobile Analytics And Advertising | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | Mobile analytics company has raised $12.5 million in new funding, as first revealed in and confirmed by a Flurry spokesperson. The company started out as an app developer before shifting its focus to analytics and then using its data for advertising. It about a year ago, and at the time, CEO Simon Khalaf hinted at a possible IPO and said the company had become cash-flow positive. Flurry told me today that 400,000 apps are using its analytics product, with 20,000 additions each month, and that it’s tracking activity from 1.2 billion smartphones and tablets. It also said that it’s working with 125,000 developers. The company has now raised a total of $62.5 million, the spokesperson said, but she declined to identify the investors in the new round. |
NSA Claims Collecting Cellphone Location Data Is Legal Under Executive Order — From 1981 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | Today the National Security Agency (NSA) discussed its program that collects billions of cellphone location records each day. The NSA targets foreign phones but also absorbs data on the phones of American citizens. “The NSA does not target Americans’ location data by design, but the agency acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellphones ‘incidentally,'” according , which broke the story concerning program based on documents provided by Edward Snowden. Given that fact, the legal defense that the NSA outlined today for the program could be viewed as underweight. The agency cites , issued by then-President Ronald Reagan in 1981. The NSA “the Agency’s EO 12333 collection is outward-facing. We are not intentionally acquiring domestic information through this capability.” The agency also has in place “minimization procedures,” according to its spokesperson. However, as the agency does collect the location data of many Americans, its defense rests on the fact that it does so accidentally. Therefore, the “collection does not violate FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act].” Citing an executive order from 1981 to legally undergird a program of immense technological complexity 32 years later may feel weak, but courts could uphold the justification. Here’s , citing the federal government in late June when news of the phone metadata program was fresh: The has told a court in Florida that the government does not secretly track the location of Americans’ cellphones as part of its massive phone surveillance dragnet, but asking experts to believe that assertion has proved to be another matter. It appears that assertion was false, as was the assertion that the NSA . The defense against the above statement, regarding the Post’s recent piece, is that the NSA only meant that it doesn’t track the location of Americans’ cellphones. However, as my colleague Greg Ferenstein : 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 . What will be interesting to see is if the legal foundation that the NSA cited today will be challenged, and if so, how sturdy it will prove. So far, efforts to force reform at the NSA through such means have been flat. |
Wisely Helps You Find Where To Shop Or Eat Based On Real Consumer Spending Patterns, Not User Reviews | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | When looking for a new place to eat, drink or shop, most people turn to local recommendations services like Yelp, Google Places or Foursquare. A new mobile application called , launching today, has a different idea. Instead of user reviews, Wisely taps into actual transaction data, allowing you to filter searches by things like popularity or average bill size. The app is the latest from a company called Glyph, which pivoted from its , which had been focused on helping you determine which credit card to use in order to earn better rewards. Explains CEO , the company found that it was difficult to get people engaged with Glyph for a number of reasons. People use their credit cards for a number of things, he says. “But we always felt like transaction data was really important, and told a story about the world we live in,” he explains. “If you’re able to view a map of how people swipe their cards, it’s a map of the economy – it tells you which places are quality, which places are popular, how expensive places are, which places are for locals versus tourists. We thought that was something valuable that didn’t exist,” Vichich says. In the new app Wisely, you can search for things like restaurants, shops or bars, for example, and see search results based on transaction data, not social mechanisms like check-ins or user rankings and reviews. However, the app isn’t only focused on the “before” side of consumer spending – it also lets you store your loyalty and membership cards for easy access during your visits and helps you understand your spending behavior afterwards, similar to something like Mint. Like Mint and other mobile money management apps, Wisely lets you set a budget and then analyze your spending over time, examining the categories of your past purchases and even where they’re located on a map – the latter an easy way to spot a possible fraudulent transaction, Vichich claims. At launch, only supports American Express cardholders, but it will include support for Chase and Bank of America by mid-February, and hopes to include support for 95 percent of transactions (credit or debit) in a year’s time. The challenge here is that for each credit or debit card brought on board, the company has to write programs to clean up the merchant data, which takes some time, the CEO tells us. The end result, Wisely hopes, will be a platform for both mobile and web where anyone can access this kind of data. “The mountain that we’re climbing is data democratization,” says Vichich. “One of our foundational beliefs is that payment data is really valuable to consumers and merchants.” For consumers, the data can help them shop, travel, and dine “wisely” (get it?), but the real business model for the service is about providing this data to merchants, which the company plans to do in time as a SaaS platform. Here, Wisely would help merchants analyze what kind of spending takes place where, and even how their own sales look when compared with those of competitors. In addition, merchants would be able to track their own customers’ loyalty in an anonymized way, and then offer their best customers some sort of reward via the Wisely platform. The merchant side of the business is something Wisely will begin to work on a bit further down the road, however. In the meantime, the small, Ann Arbor-based company has added an undisclosed amount of funding on top of its earlier $500,000 angel round. They’re expecting to close on a seed round in Q1 2014. Wisely is currently featured in the App Store under finance, and is a free . |
Beeline Bikes Is Like A Homejoy Or Uber For Bike Repair | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | While there are thousands of small, independently owned bike shops across the country and in bike-friendly cities like San Francisco, it’s still a pain to bring your bike in for a tune-up. There’s scheduling, and then there’s the hassle of not having a bike for several days. That’s why Peter Buhl, a former longtime partner at BlueRun Ventures who served on the boards of companies like PayPal, had been thinking about a way to address this problem for the past 15 years. He started , which is kind of like an Uber or Homejoy for bike tune-ups. They have mobile vans, outfitted with all kinds of parts (see below) and trained mechanics that can fix up many bikes over the course of a day. The nine-person startup has three initial vans and the plan is to cater to startups and tech companies up and down the peninsula and in San Francisco. They’ll also do house calls to families as well. The price for a basic tune-up is $80, but they’ll discount it to $65 with multiple bikes. Each tune-up takes about 30 to 45 minutes and they have concierge levels of service for higher-end bikes. They’ll also do other services like bike fittings and overhauls. “Our goal is to be the virtual bike shop for all the tech companies here,” Buhl said. “This works in cycling dense areas down on the Peninsula and in the Bay Area.” He estimates that the local Bay Area market alone is worth about $6 to 10 million per year, but if you expanded the concept nationally, it could be worth $100 million. Beeline becomes yet another services or logistics startup like Uber, Homejoy, Exec, Postmates, Instacart and others, that use mobile devices and the web to coordinate large networks of service providers. Unlike some of these other companies, Beeline does not rely on contractors. It wholly owns its vans, and the mechanics are full-time employees, although they would be open to exploring a franchising model if they expanded nationally. The company has raised a half-million dollars in seed funding from 15 angels including IronPort founder Scott Banister, Canaan Partner Deepak Kamra, Like.com founder Munjal Shah, BlueRun Ventures partners Jonathan Ebinger and John Malloy and Brian Nesmith. |
Gift Guide: Five Kitchen Gadgets Your Foodie Will Eat Right Up | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | More food is consumed during the holiday season than at any other time. But that’s the thing with food; you can’t stay full forever. And so these gadgets, services and tools should serve your food-friendly loved ones quite handily. We’ll cover a range of products, including an ingredient-delivery service, a magical scale that measures the nutrition of your food, and one very special ice cube. Everyone from a master chef to a home cook should have a blast with this gift guide, so let’s waste no more time and crack some eggs. If you know or love a health nut, the Prep Pad is an easy, thoughtful gift. It’s a Bluetooth-equipped scale that measures the weight of your food its nutritional value, which is then relayed to the user through an app. Simply input the type of food you’re weighing, or scan the barcode, and see a pie chart of the nutrition you’ll be consuming. With an aluminum frame and a paper composite surface, which can be hygienically wiped down, the Prep Pad can handle any mess in any kitchen, and is accurate with the weight measurement to boot. It’s got a heavy little price tag attached, at $150, and it doesn’t ship until February, but it is worth the wait (ha!) and the cash for a chef obsessed with health. You can pick up the Orange Chef Prep Pad . Budding caffeine addicts are just one gadget away from a full-blown addiction. Meet the single-cup Coffee Brewer from Gamila. Single-cup coffee makers are becoming more popular, but those machines cost a pretty penny and take up a lot of space in the kitchen. But what if you could combine the single cup coffee maker with French press coffee-making techniques a thermos to transport the coffee in? That would be pretty amazing, right? Well, that’s the Impress. It’s kind of a pain to clean, as you need to scoop out the grounds and such, but it manages to keep 14 ounces of coffee warm for hours. Pick one up . Grocery shopping, to some, is the worst part of cooking. takes the guess work leg work out of grocery shopping and cooking a nice meal. After a visit to the Plated website, you can shop around between various meals, ranging from things like Garlic-Herb Pork Chops with Roasted Sweet Potato Mash, Korean-Style Short Ribs with Asian Slaw and Sushi Rice, or vegetarian classics like Autumn Root Vegetable Chili with Cornbread Croutons. Users are given everything they need, including ingredients and directions (but not cookware), to make an excellent meal and a fun experience. For $10/month, you can buy a membership that brings the price of a meal down to $12/plate, with a minimum of four plates per week. Otherwise meals are $15/plate with a minimum of four plates in one week. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmaC37dUFsk&w=640&h=360] This is a design project that first on Kickstarter and is now in a number of different packages. Anyone who enjoys a nice glass of whiskey on the rocks or simply hates a watered down drink should enjoy these stainless steel ice cubes. They stay at the bottom of the glass and hold temperature pretty well without watering down the drink. They even come with a handsome case you can slip into the freezer. They’re also able to bring down the temperature of hot beverages more quickly, and then be removed. They’re a nice conversation starter to have around the house, and come at a reasonable price. Worth considering for a boss. The Egg Minder is a product out of Quirky and GE that brings a little intelligence to the dairy section of your fridge. Bad eggs are the worst, and the Egg Minder aims to make sure you never experience them again. The smart tray indicates which egg in the tray is the oldest via LED lights, while a wireless connection to your smartphone keeps you in the loop on expiration dates. If you’re running low, you’ll get a push notification. Even better, you can check how many eggs you have and when they go bad from the grocery store. The Egg Minder costs |
Bitcoin Value Loses Its Mind As Trading Lags On The Mt.Gox Exchange | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | Bitcoin is acting up at the moment. Following a steep decline that saw the currency trade at prices not seen since late November, trading of Bitcoin on the Mt.Gox exchange has . It has fallen into a pattern of that end and begin in a very tight, specific trading range. The following is a chart using one-minute ticks to track the price of Bitcoin on the Mt.Gox exchange for today: Trading on Mt.Gox is also seeing massive delays, with the current lag listed as almost 40 minutes. So, I doubt that anyone has an idea about what is going on. Other Bitcoin exchanges, such as are displaying similar prices for the currency, so the trading price on Mt.Gox isn’t itself too batty. Instead, current trading patterns themselves are inscrutable, unless we presume some sort of algorithmic allergic reaction to current trading lag. In the meantime, if you can get your trades through, there is likely a decent arbitrage possibility at play, though trading lag times could make any such activity incredibly risky. Coinbase has Bitcoin at $848, and Btc-e at $865. The currency was yesterday. Bitcoin: Still not that mature. While Bitcoin works through whatever bug or issue is causing its current trading pattern, we need to keep in mind the broader context of the current market position of the currency. A recent decision by the Chinese government to from trading in the currency cut at its potential to become a global repository for value outside of the control of nation states. Today, news that Baidu has is pushing the currency’s value down. To lose a company like Baidu at once lowers the inherent utility of Bitcoin, and also directly contravenes the narrative that Bitcoin was starting to find wide integration into the world of e-commerce, thus granting it legitimacy, and perhaps improved stability. Chinese demand has been a key supplier of recently robust demand for Bitcoin, comprising an increasing percentage of Bitcoin’s trading volume. If that driver slips, so too could the value, and market interest in Bitcoin. Bitcoin has fallen from over $1,200 since the Chinese news cycle broke. That’s a steep decline — about 30 percent — in a few days. The question now becomes what will bring upside back to Bitcoin? |
Gillmor Gang Live 12.06.13 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | – John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Doc Searls, Dan Farber, and Steve Gillmor. Like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/GillmorGang |
Microsoft Really Doesn’t Want You To Buy A Chromebook | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wAgB5J1gSQ About a week after posting its , which features the cast of “Pawn Stars,” Microsoft is now back with a second video. But instead of revisiting the humorous approach of the first one, the company has brought back its regular man-on-the-street routine for the second. In this video, Microsoft Evangelist Ben Rudolph is tasked with walking the streets of Venice, Calif., to ask people if they would rather have a Chromebook or a Windows laptop. No surprise — nobody wants the Chromebook. Obviously, everybody he asks either needs Photoshop, Illustrator or a Microsoft Office app. None of these run on a Chromebook (assuming you leave out Microsoft’s Office Web Apps. “If that doesn’t have the capability to run Microsoft Office, it’s kind of useless to me,” one lady tells Rudolph. As in the first ad, Microsoft also plays up the fact that ChromeOS is meant to be online most of the time, conveniently forgetting that there are plenty of offline ChromeOS apps available by now. Instead of a cheap Chromebook, the ad tells viewers, they should rather buy an Asus T100, 10.1-inch Windows 8 machine with a detachable touchscreen. “This one is the same price, about $300 bucks,” Rudolph says. Actually, try . And running Photoshop and Illustrator on it won’t bring you much joy either. The people on the street are obviously wowed that they can detach the screen and turn it into a tablet, though people haven’t exactly been lining up to buy convertible laptops so far. Given that Chromebooks make up about 1 percent of the PC market, Microsoft is mostly increasing mainstream awareness of these devices with its ads, as The Verge’s Tom Warren . Despite this low market share, Microsoft clearly sees Chromebooks as a threat, though, and chances are we’ll see a few more of these videos over time. |
YC Alum MobileWorks Aims To Make Acquiring Users Easier (For A Price) With LeadGenius | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | Startup founders, especially those up to their necks in product development, don’t always have the head for building the kinds of customer bases required to keep their business afloat. That’s where Y Combinator alum comes in. It first raised funding for its approach to building a virtual, on-demand workforce, and now it’s trying to bring that distributed team to bear on another weighty problem: building up a user base. Long story short, MobileWorks CEO Anand Kulkarni is trying to offer user acquisition as a service with a feature called (though I think we can all agree that UAaaS doesn’t have a great ring to it). If you’re a company looking to drum up some new users, the process seems simple enough — you shell out your monthly fee depending on the level of support you need and let the LeadGenius team do its thing. That “thing” naturally involves plenty of conversations. “They’ll come to us and talk about where they found their first users and what they look like,” Kulkarni explained. “From there we discuss where to find reproducible sources of users.” Once that team has dug into the meat of a business, they’ll start trawling sources like LinkedIn, Kickstarter, and even CrunchBase in search of leads that could stand to benefit from a client’s offerings. Of course, much of that legwork can be invisible to the company that requested it — LeadGenius handles some of the initial outreach and qualification so in the end that client company gets leads to try to seal the deal with. Kulkarni says a “good number” of LeadGenius customers are startups like Firebase and Zenefits; considering MobileWorks’ background, it comes as little surprise that many of its users are fellow Y Combinator companies. There are some key larger clients in the mix too, though thanks to some pesky NDAs I can’t name names — one is a notable player in payments and the other is a prominent e-commerce entity. But there’s a fine line between reaching out to a third party for assistance and dumping the job on them entirely, and MobileWorks isn’t ready to cross into that new frontier just yet. For now, the onus of actually making those crucial sales still falls on the client. “We’re one step short of sales as service,” Kulkarni noted. He added that a more sales-centric push may not be completely out of the question, but at this point it’s more a question of feasibility than ambition. After all, how much work does it take to make a virtual salesperson as fluent and engaging as an in-house one? Too much to make it worth MobileWorks’ time right now, but there are other startups trying to bridge that very gap. The folks at SwipeGood took a stab at baking small, frictionless donations to charity into every credit card transaction before pivoting last year to offer tools and on-demand sales teams to young companies. |
Former Square Wallet Lead, Google PM Raise $1.2M For Secret (Which Is A Secret) | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | David Byttow, the former technical lead for Square Wallet, and Chrys Bader-Wechseler, a former Google product manager at Google+, Photovine and YouTube, “Nothing is a secret these days,” Bader-Wechseler said, declining to comment on his startup or the round. Byttow designed the infrastructure for Square’s partnership with Starbucks, and was a previous technical lead at Google+. Bader-Wechseler after creating a photo app called Treehouse and a video service laced around Twitter called Vidly. He Google’s competitive entrant into the photo-sharing space, and he joined the Google+ effort. We hear the seed round includes investors like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Google Ventures and KPCB, but Bader-Wechseler declined to comment or confirm any of that. |
National Geographic Offers Up Over 500 Maps Through Google Maps Engine’s Public Data Program | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | Google is launching an initiative to let organizations share their map data with the public, via Google’s Maps product and cloud-based infrastructure, and today partner in the project and shared some info via the official Google Maps blog. The partnership will mean that more than 500 reference and historic maps will now be available to browse as an additional layer on Google’s digital Maps engine. This will let National Geographic explore interactive models complete with annotations that should help the archives come to life more effectively, and really animate issues of environmental change or provide education on important events throughout history. At a very basic level, this also makes available to many what was once hidden away in archival storage, visible only to those few historians who sought it out. It’s not just about making things available free, however: National Geographic’s Frank Biasi, Director of Digital Development for NatGeo’s Maps, says there’s an added opportunity in that they can license or sell high-res and print editions of any map they make available through Google’s public data initiative, driving revenue back to the organization to support their nonprofit efforts. Cartography may seem like fairly well-covered territory at this point, but combining the old and the new like this could be generative of very interesting comparative studies. Plus, putting them in front of more eyeballs means more potential for discovery by a wider pool of researchers, amateur and pro alike. After all, it never hurts to double check. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj7RlQdF25A&w=854&h=510] |
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Moto X, Drone Hacks, And Gift Guides Galore | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | Happy Friday, lovers. is upon us, which is why we spend a good chunk of this podcast discussing smart gifts to buy your friends and loved ones. But that didn’t stop us from chatting up the , or the that turns one drone into the leader of an aerial army. Listen in to all this and more on this week’s episode of the , featuring , , , and . Enjoy!
We invite you to enjoy our every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right .
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With $1.5M In Angel Funding, byUs.com Wants To Provide Better Recommendations For Important Service Providers | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 24 | There are tons of recommendation sites out there, but for services where the stakes are much higher than a meal–like pediatricians or financial advisors–a lot of people still prefer referrals from friends. But that’s a challenge if you are, for example, new to an area. New site wants to mimic the way word-of-mouth referrals work by providing an invite-only platform where people can find recommendations for medical professionals, general contractors and childcare from a personalized network of friends and associates. The site is currently taking signups and plans to launch its Bay Area beta version in early 2014. Its founders describe byUs.com as a “next-generation ,” the subscription-only reviews site that was founded in 1996 and currently has 2.4 million paid members, because both focus on service providers where there is a “high cost of failure” (including nannies, pediatricians, general contractors and wealth advisors),” co-founder and CEO Jonathan Bunt told me in an email. byUs.com wants to differentiate from Angie’s List and other recommendation platforms, however, by combining its reviews with a “proprietary natural recommendation processing engine on the backend” that it says helps increase the relevancy of recommendations while protecting the privacy of individual users. The site recently raised a $1.5 million angel round from 40 individual investors. While the amount of participants is unusually large, co-founder and CEO Jonathan Bunt says it fit into the site’s community-building strategy. “We distinctly avoided institutional capital as the benefits each aspirational advisors/investor who is motivated to be an active user and bring his/her community and connections to the site far outweighs a few investors writing big checks,” he says. Angel investors include Charlie Cheever, co-founder of ; Colin Evans, co-founder of ; Ariel Poler, former chairman of ; Ed Baker, ‘s head of growth; former CEO of eHarmony Jeremy Varba; and Dixon Doll, the co-founder of . byUs.com was created by Bunt, who launched and sold humble Brands Inc., which makes the sleeping aid , and co-founder Brad Stroh, a serial entrepreneur who founded consumer finance startups in 2002 and in 2005. In order to get an account on byUs.com, you need to be invited by an existing member. Once on the site, you can see recommendations for service providers from friends and share connections; ask for recommendations and get real-time responses from people in relevant to you; and write your own recommendations. The site uses its own algorithms to connect people with a wider network beyond their friends. This means that instead of getting recommendations from everyone your friends know, you only see ones from people who live in the same area or have worked with service providers you need. “byUs.com is about users sharing private recommendations with trusted friends and shared groups, which most social networks don’t do a great job of currently,” says Bunt. The site will remain free for users and plans to monetize by partnering with selected providers who want to market their services to friends and connections of their existing customers. |
I’ve Learned To Love (Wearables) Again | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 24 | As a dedicated watch nerd, I felt that smartwatches were, on the whole, awful. A watch was a watch – if made correctly and correctly handled it’s a miracle of technology in its own right. The movement, the face, the metals, the design – all of these came together in a beautiful whole. There was nothing extraneous in a good watch, and most watch nerds know this. So when watches like the , the Galaxy Gear, and the came out, I was skeptical at best. Who needed these little wrist computers. Am I Dick Tracy in need of constant contact with base? I have enough screens in my face, I don’t need my watch to ping me with new emails. I was wrong. What changed? The Pebble got so much better. Before the Pebble could bring you text messages and had intermittent connectivity to your email account. I have a huge email box and I get about 400 emails a day. I needed more email notifications like I needed a hole in the head. In fact I turned my notifications on my iPhone and even removed the unread badge from the mail icons. I just couldn’t handle the crush. So a watch that reminded me that I had 1,000 unread emails was not something I wanted. Then the new PebbleOS appeared in November. People raved. I almost didn’t upgrade. I had put the Pebble on my desk, uncharged, and figured it would join my SPOT watches and Palm Pilot watch in the box o’ dead smartwatches. Then, on a whim, I plugged it in and updated. I went to the Pebble app to find out how to add my email inboxes again and found nothing there – just a tutorial on how to update my notifications to make them appear on the Pebble. While I was busy grump using about how stupid wearables were, these . Suddenly all the notifications I cared about appeared on the watch screen. Things I wanted to see I could see, things I didn’t want to see were hidden. This very basic change – from firehose to à la carte – was immensely valuable. I wear the Pebble regularly now. Sometimes I wear the Pebble on one wrist or one of my mechanical watches on the other. I’ve learned to depend on the Pebble in a way that I never have with other wearables. It is at once exhilarating and freeing. That’s when wearables get good: when they become part of our lives. Google Glass, as charming as it is, is still too wonky for daily use by non-die-hards. Wrist computers and phones – devices that have been with us for years – are still too big and battery-hungry. The Pebble, like the Fitbit before it, is just right. I always counted wearables out. I never thought they’d become useful. But now, when facing a brave new era in notification technology, I’m cowed. Smartwatches make perfect sense, and they will only get better. I want something that can do it all. I want the Pebble to measure my heart rate, my sleep patterns, and my steps. I also want a more vibrant notifications system, with different methods for different people. I want more standalone features – maybe world time – and I want the battery to last a little longer. But, in the end, I’m really pleased. Pebble has finally turned the corner and I think competitors aren’t far behind. In the immortal words of Farmer Hoggart, “That’ll do, Pebble. That’ll do.” |
Nickelodeon Vets Debut BatteryPOP, A Kid-Safe, Kid-Programmed Online Network | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | YouTube may be a popular destination for kids, but parents know that it’s not a kid-friendly one. One innocent video of Elmo singing leads to others of him . That’s why two Nickelodeon vets have created – an online and mobile destination where children ages six to eleven can safely browse through cartoons, comedy, music videos and more, sending their favorites to the top of the heap by “popping” them – a mechanism which could one day pave the way to make batteryPOP a farm league for the major networks, like Nick or the Cartoon Channel, for example. The idea for batteryPOP comes from Greg Alkalay and Taso Mastorakis, who spent years at Nickelodeon on a variety of projects, including writing on-air promos, handling creative advertising, and working with content creators, among other things. The two met several years ago, when they were both tasked with “Nick Extras,” a team that worked to fill breaks in between shows with “bumpers” – original content like animations or other low-budget videos with real kids, or kids and graphics combined. “What we were seeing is that there was a lot of interest from viewers to watch these little bumpers. They were getting a lot of buzz on messages boards. We were seeing retention over commercial breaks go up,” says Alkalay. “Our taste for short-form content started there, and when Nickelodeon stopped doing them, we wanted to do more.” The two discussed the idea for some time, earnestly beginning in 2011. By the next year, Alkalay was ready to take the leap. The two had gotten to the point where there were so many ideas, so many content creators struggling to find traction on YouTube, and so many who were stuck in the development process with networks, that it made sense to help them by building a service that could connect an audience of children with that unseen content. An audience which they understand very well, in fact. Alkalay spent 12 years at Nick, and Mastorakis was at Nick owner Viacom for seven. There are currently around 30 creators on batteryPOP, and 50 or 60 hours’ worth of content. Kids can also “charge” a video which will allow them to follow that show, in order to receive updates on their profile, and even interact with the show’s creators, in terms of giving feedback. On mobile, the company has partnered with Weeblets on a pair of mobile apps for and , but these, the founders explain, don’t offer the full experience of the batteryPOP website. They do, however, plan to release their own mobile and tablet apps in early 2014, built in-house. Unlike some other “curated” video collections aimed at children, like or , only around half of batteryPOP’s content is sourced from sites like YouTube or VEVO. The other half is original content batteryPOP hosts itself, and sourced through the founders’ long-established industry connections. “Through popping – sharing [videos] on their personal page – we hope to help creators build an audience around their content, so we can kind of act like a minor league for the networks,” explains Alkalay. “You saw it happen with that web series Fred that got popular on YouTube, and then Nickelodeon picked it up. I think that’s really just the beginning of what’s going to start happening,” he says. Longer-term, batteryPOP would like to take a small percentage of any deals they help establish between TV networks and videos that “pop” on its network. But in the immediate future, the company is working on production projects for brands to generate revenue. These videos will also be added to batteryPOP’s site, and marked as sponsored. They may also later activate advertising, after reaching a certain level of users. BatteryPOP won’t be the only online network of sorts competing for projects that aren’t making it to TV for whatever reason, though. Other “networks” like Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Instant Video are also moving into original programming, some of it aimed at children – like Netflix with its new Marvel superhero , or Amazon with its , greenlit by viewers. But batteryPOP’s advantage is not only its singular focus and content pipeline – it’s also free. New York-based BatteryPOP is currently bootstrapped, with some friends and family funding in tow. Next year, the company may raise a round of outside funding. |
The Consumer Electronics Startup Show | Matt Burns | 2,013 | 12 | 24 | scope of the Consumer Electronics Show is unfathomable for the uninitiated. CES has been called a cesspool. It’s been called a shitshow. And those descriptions are accurate. It’s a clusterfuck of consumer electronics companies, big and small, vying for attention. That’s why TechCrunch attends. For the 2014 show, which is just two short weeks away, TechCrunch is, for the first time, breaking out its Startup Battlefield event from Disrupt. Called , this startup competition has been tweaked and reworked to focus on, and celebrate, the brightest and most promising unlaunched hardware startups. And what better place to host it than CES? CES is the largest startup show in the world, and to say that it takes over Las Vegas is not hyperbolic. The city is consumed by CES: Nearly every hotel room is booked; almost every conference room is used. For every Samsung and Microsoft, there are at least 100 smaller companies — the best and brightest of which often do not have an official spot on the CES show floor. For years, CES has been held at the Las Vegas Convention Center. This massive facility has four exhibition halls nearly large enough to hold air shows within. But in recent years, with the LVCC bursting at its seams, the show expanded next door to the Hilton, The Venetian and Palazzo. If that’s not enough, companies and startups often save a bunch of cash, forgoing the traditional CES experience and rent suites in other casinos. Then there are hackathons, press events, and more lame parties than one can possibly attend. CES is not for us, the press or the average consumer. It’s a show for buyers and exhibitors. It’s a show for innovators and salespeople. It’s a show for the consumer electronics industry. Yet, year after year, the tech press shows up with trailers and broadcast booths, attempting to boil down this overly complex show to a consumable morsel. TechCrunch attends CES not to reblog press releases and help Samsung announce its latest tablet. We attend the show to find the next big thing. For 2014’s show, we’re sending more writers, editors and video personnel than ever before. Our broadcast booth is bigger than last year’s. And I’ve created more CES planning spreadsheets than I would like to admit. We’re even holding a startup competition this year. Just like its Startup Battlefield counterpart, our will pit startups against each other for a chance at a $50,000 cash prize. We have amazing judges and 16 companies from around the world. This happens twice a day at our broadcast booth. Show up to watch it in person ( ) or follow along live thanks to Ustream. I predicted 2013’s show to be the year of the gadget startup. And I was dead-on. It was the first CES of the modern era without Microsoft. Nokia, Dell and HP were skipping the show. The year before that was the noisiest CES in recent memory. CES was headed into a wall. But startups saved the show. Over the last few years gadget startups have risen in prominence. Once hampered by long development cycles and poor designs, thanks to crowdfunding and understanding venture capitalists, hardware startups can now operate nearly as lean as web-based companies. Best yet, countless startups have risen out of the ashes of the consumer electronic wasteland to help consumers turn ideas into companies. As John , 2014’s CES will be the year of the maker. Planning this year’s CES was a daunting task. There are just so many companies within TechCrunch’s scope of coverage attending the show. Best of all was scanning the map of the show floor and spotting companies like GoPro and Parrot, once tiny companies, doing the show big with sizable booths in prominent locations. If you or your company are headed to CES, we would love to talk. Stop by our booth in the LVCC Central Plaza to watch the live interviews, shows and competitions. We’re the booth circled in red . The folks behind CES, the CEA, fully understand that the show is on the cusp of turning into something different. They have made moves to make the show more accessible to smaller companies, creating special venues to better suit the needs of the startup. Of course adding more exhibit space does not address the bloated feeling of CES. As before, it will seem overwhelming and excessive but still exciting and magical in its own special way — especially to the startup attending CES for the first time. [Photos via ] |
Fly Or Die: Singtrix | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 24 | [tc_5min code=”518056176″] is the personal karaoke machine of the future. Instead of being limited by karaoke-friendly, vocal-free tunes, Singtrix lets you erase the vocal track from any song in your phone or tablet, effectively expanding your library from a few songs to anything you can download. And that’s not the best part. Singtrix uses special audio technology to filter your voice with a number of different special effects. You can sound like you’re singing in a choir or drop your voice down to match Barry White’s. When you hit the “hit” button, Singtrix automatically harmonizes your voice with four copies of your voice, making you sound a lot like a rock god. We had a total blast playing around with this thing, which is a really great option for the kid who doesn’t want an Xbox or is too young for an iPhone. Two flies. |
TC Cribs: TellApart Turned An Old Auto Shop Into A Golden Land Of Tech (And Champagne) | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 12 | 24 | There are a few extra special Christmas gifts that can’t be wrapped and don’t quite fit under the tree — love, family, happiness… and new episodes of , the TechCrunch TV show that takes you inside the doors of the tech industry’s hottest companies to see what day-to-day life is like for the people who work there! In this special holiday-themed Cribs episode, we headed to , the customer data technology startup headquartered just 16 miles south of San Francisco in Burlingame, California. TellApart is doing some gangbusters business — the company is profitable and that its annual revenue runrate crossed $100 million — so it’s no surprise that its offices are pretty sweet. And who better to give a tour than Josh McFarland, TellApart’s founder and CEO who also led the entire project of designing its office, transforming an old auto shop into a gleaming modern startup HQ. Check out the video embedded above, and I’d encourage you to watch until the end: TellApart has a pretty amazing ritual it observes for every big business milestone it has, and fortunately a filming of Cribs made the cut. I won’t spoil the surprise, but it involves a saber and a bottle of champagne, and it is a pretty festive thing to behold. |
This Gift Box Only Unlocks When You’re In Exactly The Right Place | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 12 | 24 | We didn’t plan it, but it seems that this week is “Mystery Gift Box” week on TechCrunch. First we had , a tightly secured titanium box that can only be opened after a certain amount of time. Now, we have its spiritual brother: the GPS AdventureBox, a box that locks itself down until the recipient makes it to a specific place. Built to power many a fuzzy-wuzzy lovey-dovey scavenger hunt, the idea is simple, but friggin’ adorable: take a wooden box. Strap an LCD display to the lid, along with a single button. Tuck a GPS-enabled Arduino board inside to act as the brain, and wire it up to a locking mechanism to keep the whole thing locked tight. Once your recipient receives the box, the display on the lid will give them their first clue (something like “Go to where we first kissed”). When they go to that spot and push the button, they’ll get their second clue. Go to clue spot #2, get another clue — and so on. Once they eventually solve the final clue, the lock automatically flips open and the contents are revealed. The route and its clues are programmed in by the gift giver themselves, by way of a super simple Google Maps-powered . For each step in the hunt, you can set a location, the clue that’ll lead the way there, and a distance tolerance anywhere from 5 feet to 1000 miles. You could have a scavenger hunt that leads your friend all across the city, eventually leading them to a concert hall — and inside the box? Bam! Tickets to the show! Giving your kid a car on their 16th birthday? Lead’em all around until they eventually end up back at their own home, their new ride parked in the driveway. Box pops open — BAM, it’s the keys. The bad news: it’s , so it’s not actually available just yet. With that said, the campaign is about to click past its goal at the time this post was written, so it’s looking pretty feasible. Given that it’s a relatively small run with fairly complicated components, this thing doesn’t come super cheap: an $80 pledge gets you a DIY box that you’ll need to solder yourself, while a $135 pledge gets you a pre-built box with delivery targeted for some time in February of 2014. Yeah, you’ll want to get that box back when the hunt is over. Lets just hope that your scavenger hunt doesn’t lead you anywhere that might require a flight — this one could be pretty tough to explain to the TSA. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du8tJaxxo-U&w=640&h=390] |
Rap Genius Apologizes For Not-So-Genius SEO Spam Tactics | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 12 | 24 | Those lovable rascals from are stirring up trouble again. But this time it’s not for controversial statements they’ve made — instead, the company came under fire for spammy SEO tactics. Yesterday, following a looking for blogs interested in participating in the company’s affiliate program, Y Combinator alum John Marbach recounted an in which he was asked to post a series of links to Justin Bieber song lyrics in exchange for “MASSIVE traffic.” That tactic, which Marbach euphemistically referred to as a growth hack, reminded many people of old-school Google bomb SEO practices. And it led Google webspam head Matt Cutts to say the search engine was . Rap Genius has since , and is pleading for leniency from Google webspam team. The startup says that the affiliate program is a small part of its SEO strategy — so small, in fact, that Rap Genius believes it should easily be able to get rid of any unnatural links that have appeared as a result of its so-called affiliate program. Stuff like, for instance, . “[We’ll] discourage things like this in the future. We are also getting in touch with the relevant site owners individually to request that they remove any such links. Just to be clear, this is an not a widespread practice, and it should not be too difficult to stamp out. But Rap Genius also used the occasion to call out its so-called competitors in the music lyric game — sites like AZLyrics.com, Metrolyrics.com, Lyricsfreak.com, Lyricsmode.com, Lyrics007.com, and Songlyrics.com. In each case, Rap Genius shows how those sites seem to be involved either in massive link exchanges or potentially paying for links from other sites in an effort to boost SEO from Google. But in the witch hunt that was spurred by what seems like a pretty minor and insubstantial portion of Rap Genius’ overall SEO juice, all parties involved seem to be ignoring what really makes the site’s search engine ranking work. Rap Genius says its main objective is to “create an amazing experience for users and hope they prefer us to all other lyrics sites and link to us.” All of which might be true. But as [h/t ], a large portion of Rap Genius’ overall traffic likely comes from users searching for individual song lyrics. “What sets Rap Genius apart from the thousand other lyric spam sites rife with pop up ads is that they’ve figured out how to exploit this tendency. The annotation format gives them a good excuse to create a standalone page for each individual line, which maximizes their presence on search engines.” Of course, those annotations wouldn’t be possible without the community. We reached out to the Rap Genius folks and they said they’ll be working 100 percent on the community/annotation focus from now on. Co-founder Ilan Zechory writes: We messed up here, which is why starting today we are 100% focused on the SEO strategy that has gotten us the best results: building an amazing product and community. It’s also the strategy we execute most effectively – we believe Rap Genius provides the highest quality lyric search results, and it’s not even close. For example, check out Rap Genius’ annotated edition of Justin Bieber’s “Confident” – as of today 67 different fans have contributed annotations! Our goal is to bring about a world where everyone searching for lyrics gets a rich, interactive, knowledge filled experience, rather than a flat spammy one. |
In A Post-Amazon World, E-Commerce Site Wayfair Wants To Win At Selling Home Goods And Furnishings | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 12 | 24 | Taking on Amazon when it comes to e-commerce can be a futile effort. There are only a handful of e-commerce companies that have successfully been able to build a billion-dollar-plus business in e-commerce (without having physical stores) in a post-Amazon world. Zulily is one of those companies. Another one, which has stayed relatively under the radar, is Boston-based . Wayfair, founded by college friends Niraj Shah and Steve Conine in 2002, was and rebranded as Wayfair in 2011. Shah and Conine are serial entrepreneurs, having sold their first company, Spinners, to iXL in 1998. What’s impressive about Shah and Conine’s company is that it has quietly been able to create a solid, $1 billion business around selling home goods and furniture online and will likely IPO in the next year or so. Instead of appealing solely to a high-end market, Wayfair focuses on the mid-market, competing with the Macy’s, Overstocks, Target, Bed Bath and Beyonds of the world. In addition to the Wayfair.com destination, the company also operates a One Kings Lane-competitor, Joss & Main (which focuses on high-end furniture), as well as a modern furniture site (think CB2 or Design Within Reach) called AllModern. As Shah explains to me, the company hasn’t focused on pursuing massive press attention to flaunt big-name backers, even though Wayfair counts early Twitter backer Spark Capital, Battery Ventures, HarbourVest Partners and Great Hill Partners as investors. In fact, for the first nine years of operation, the company was bootstrapped. In 2011, Wayfair did decide to raise funding to expand aggressively, and took $200 million from the investors named above. The site now has 7 million home products available for purchase from a fulfillment network of 8,000 suppliers across 12,000 brands. And Wayfair is seeing $1 billion in order volume, which translates into $900 million in sales for 2013. That’s up from $600 million in sales from 2012. One drawback to ordering on Wayfair is because of its fulfillment network, and because it is shipping furniture, it can take days or even weeks to receive an item. But unlike Target or Macy’s’ online sites, Shah says, Wayfair actually pays attention to merchandising and has been utilizing technologies such as and more, to help engage consumers. In fact, the company employs over 300 data scientists and engineers to help use these data points towards increasing personalization and engagement. To be fair, the Targets and Walmarts of the world are starting to realize that design, personalization and technology can only help them increase sales, but these companies tend to move slowly. Home and furnishing spend is a $200 billion market in the U.S. alone, and only 5 percent of this spending is online. As e-commerce continues to grow, Wayfair’s share of this will, too. Right now, Shah estimates that Wayfair has around 1 percent of all home furnishing spending online. Amazon has expanded into new territories like fashion, wine and grocery, but he isn’t afraid of the e-commerce giant growing into the home furnishings territory (via Amazon’s Quidsi acquisition, it operates a home furnishings and supplies site Casa.com). In fact, Shah believes that home furnishings, jewelry and fashion are the only areas in e-commerce where there is room for a number of large companies. That’s because, he explains, the consumer is looking for uniqueness in these categories vs. electronics, books, household supplies, grocery and more. With the company’s growing sales, it’s of no surprise that Wayfair was one of the companies at Goldman Sachs’ Private Internet Company Conference in Las Vegas in November. Many of the companies invited to present are the ones bankers want to keep their eye on — and potentially represent in a public offering in the future. For Wayfair, an IPO may not be too far off. Shah has about his intentions to go public. The company also recently brought on former Warner Music Group Vice Chairman Michael Fleisher as CFO. It’s clear that 2014 will be a pivotal year for the company. Investors will be looking for continued growth, and other large retailers will be trying to up their technology game to increase their share of online dollars spent on home furnishings. But for a company that was relatively unknown two years ago, Wayfair’s growth and ascent is impressive. Stay tuned. |
Prediction: The Government Will Put The NSA In Check | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 24 | Up until a few months ago, President Obama probably didn’t worry much about the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program. After all, Congress had approved it, courts oversaw it, and a — even after the leaks were reported. But, now that every major branch of government is calling for reform, , I predict far more transparency and a partial end to mass spying is coming. To be sure, the future of the NSA is mostly in the president’s hands: it’s controlled by the executive branch and Obama wields veto power over any pending legislation. But looking at the president’s history with government programs and his own , we can bet that the big overarching change is that . In other words they’ll need to prove that all their programs are worth the risks, which implies more transparency, oversight, and limited access to data. Obama is, despite everything, a government transparency pioneer. His first major initiative, the , designed an entirely new way to track federal spending online. Before that, one of his first major executive orders was the creation of the Chief Technology Officer, who . In a cringe-worthy folksy analogy, Obama said that the American people deserve to verify the NSA programs, similar to the way he used to invite his wife into the kitchen to verify that, he, in fact, washed the dishes ( ). To that end, he’ll likely release the gag order on tech companies who wish to post the number of users being spied on through their platforms. For programs that cannot be made public, members of Congress will quit getting , which has made it quite inconvenient for them to attend briefings. The mass collection of telephone and Internet data is really what sets off America’s hair-trigger anti-authoritarian rage. Obama’s task force recommended that telephone companies be the gatekeepers of data, which the government can request with judicial oversight. The NSA maintains that sophisticated data mining helps it unearth terrorists who exploit every new app, messaging channel, and website as a cavern to cloak dangerous collaboration. But it with access to classified reports that the NSA’s fancy data-mining tools actually work. From now on, the NSA will likely have a quarantined sandbox of data from telephone and tech companies to explore. The more bad guys they catch, the more data they get. But, no more wanton authority to hoard every 0 and 1 they want. Obama has been a fierce defender of ; a principle that will likely replace the intuition of war hawks as the basis for intelligence strategy. Engineers the world over were furious that the that could prevent government spying. Unfortunately, everything from from malicious hackers. Obama’s a fan of believing ; one weak link threatens us all. Access to private data will be significantly limited. Congress has already proposed from thousands of future Edward Snowdens, who had disturbingly high-level access to spy on Americans. While some decried this move as a cosmetic change, it’s the rogue workers that were the most likely cause of real harm, like . Critics are wrong to paint Obama as anti-privacy — he’s privacy . Like many innovators in Silicon Valley, pioneers of transparency and new media typically focus on the good that comes from more information, and tend to ignore the unintended consequences. In fairness, the NSA , but it’s building up the capacity for disturbing levels of power. Democracy and tyranny have always balanced on a knife’s edge; as Obama ends his presidency and looks to a possible future Republican administration, he’ll agree to rein in the NSA’s power. |
Fly Or Die: Nokia Lumia 1520 | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 24 | Nokia is now basically the defacto Windows Phone handset manufacturer, and the Lumia 1520 is its latest effort. The big, big full HD 6-inch display sets it apart from any previous Windows Phone device, and puts it into a rare class of device even among Android phones, whose screens can also get pretty darn huge. The screen is great, but the phone is a crime against nature. Or at least, that’s my side of the story. Chris predictably sees it differently, because he’s blind. Of course, there are some arguments in favor of the gargantuan device, but they melt away when you try to wrangle one in a human-sized hand. You can probably predict how the chips fall given that description, but watch for the Christmas sweaters, and stay for the verdict. |
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