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BSkyB Invests $350,000 In Early-Stage Immersive Video Startup Jaunt | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 24 | (called BSkyB) has in , an early-stage startup that captures and displays 360 degree video content. BSkyB said that the new partnership will give it “additional insight into developments within the field.” Though Palo Alto-based Jaunt’s placeholder site currently offers no information besides “stayed tune,” the company has been . Its current team already has an impressive pedigree and includes , who also launched ; CTO Arthur van Hoff, who previously held the same position at ; and VP of engineering , whose resume includes a stint as a senior software engineering manager at Google. Jaunt’s says its technology “combines computational photography, statistical algorithms, massively parallel processing, cutting-edge hardware and virtual reality.” For Sky, Jaunt fits in with a series of investments it has made in video-related startups. For example, back in May 2013, it in TV streaming platform , one year after joining several other investors, including News Corporation, Menlo Ventures and Globespan Capital Partners, . Other investments include digital media platform , in a partnership that Sky said could , as well as social media specialist , which Sky |
null | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 12 | 6 | null |
Healint Wants To Make Life Better For Stroke Patients | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | Mobile health tech startup wants to make life better — and safer — for patients suffering from neurological conditions like strokes, epilepsy and migraines. Their first product, Android app , is an emergency alert system triggered by shaking a smartphone. You can help its development by signing up for the app’s . The startup has received early funding from JFDI.Asia’s accelerator program, as well as individual investors in India, Europe, Japan and Singapore. It is currently seeking pre-seed funding. JustShakeIt is designed to let people who are at risk for strokes and other conditions send an alert to their caregivers by shaking their smartphones, which sends an SMS and email blast to designated recipients with the user’s real-time location. The company hopes to log at least 5,000 active usage hours on each of the 10 Android smartphone models they are currently testing to maximize the app’s reliability. JustShakeIt completed its close beta testing round by 50 active users earlier this year. The app uses Healint’s machine learning algorithms and data sourced from users to continuously improve the reliability of the app. Strokes can affect a person’s ability to speak, see and move, so JustShakeIt was designed to be operated with one hand. The app runs in the background and works without needing to unlock the smartphone. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sj3GJ2PAro&w=480&h=360] The team’s tasks during public beta testing include ruling out movements that can accidentally trigger the app, so users can keep their smartphones in their pocket or bag without worrying about false alarms. Low battery consumption is also key; JustShakeIt is designed to run in the background, but use less power per day than the equivalent of a five-minute phone call. The status of the public beta, with current test results for each Android smartphone, is . The startup says they are ranking which devices collect the most accurate data so they can recommend certain smartphones to patients. Though its products will be available for users around the world, Healint is headquartered in Singapore because the country’s high smartphone penetration rate and gives the startup a good test market. Healint’s team all have backgrounds in the pharmaceutical or med-tech industries. CEO and co-founder , is also the founder of Asia’s , a group for people in the pharmaceutical, med-tech and bio-tech industries. Veronica Chew, Healint’s CMO and co-founder, was a global project manager at . Lead researcher Edouard Amouroux, is a data scientist who focuses on behavior modeling using Agent-based modeling methods, which help simulate social interactions. For Cadiou, Healint’s mission is personal. “My father had two strokes and we saw that there was a need to be able to make life simpler and safer for those types of patients and work better with doctors,” he tells me. The startup has collaborated with neurologists and neurosurgeons from hospitals in Singapore including Mount Elizabeth, Gleneagles, Raffles and Tan Tock Seng, as well as patients, to get product design feedback. Healint uses sensors in smartphones instead of wearable tech devices because people are used to carrying a mobile phone with them everywhere, Cadiou explains. “You cannot ask a patient with a neurological condition to wear a lot of sensors because that changes his behavior,” he says. “You have to find a way to measure the patient’s quality of life without changing his behavior massively. You have moments where they forget their Fitbit, for example, so you have a chunk of missing data, which is a huge problem in terms of data quality.” Healint is currently developing tools that can help stroke, epilepsy and migraine patients keep track of their movements and warn them if their health is at risk. Before joining Healint, Amoroux worked on a project in France that made it possible to detect when Alzheimer’s patients needed extra care based on how they were consuming electricity in their homes. The startup hopes to create products that are just as easy to use for patients and caregivers. For example, the startup is currently working on a tool that can “intelligently display all possible symptoms and warning signs before you have a migraine,” says Chew. “Neurologists sometimes give patients a paper diary but there are things that you can record and things that you can’t. You might remember that you slept five hours last night, but you can’t remember how much you slept last week. We’re looking for more intelligent ways to collect data for patients.” Other data that Healint’s migraine tool might track include the frequency of headaches during weather fluctuations or the efficiency of certain medications and treatments. For caregivers, Healint’s tools can collect data that shows how active patients are or how much they sleep. Its founders say that balancing the privacy of users with their safety is a major goal. For example, tools focus on tracking movement, not location. “For example, I know when my father wakes up, and I can see if he woke up, so I don’t worry. I can also see if he woke up during the night,” says Cadiou. “But you can choose who sees the information. We don’t want people to be pressured by relatives into giving too much information, so we don’t take too much.” |
Apple Patents Integrated Heart Rate Monitor For Smartphones, Hover Touch Sensors | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 24 | Apple has been issued a couple new patents by the USPTO today (via ), including one for hover touch sensing, the likes of which we’re starting to see rolled out in Android-powered devices lately like the Samsung Galaxy S4. Another patent issued today covers an embedded heart rate monitor that could add one more sensor to the iPhone, with potential for biometrics and fitness apps. The touch and hover patent describes a means for detecting when a person’s finger is near to, but not actually in contact with, a touchscreen device. It outlines ways in which hover input can be used to issue commands to a device, with those screens outputting an electrical field to help determine the position of a user’s finger. But the system is about more than just the kind of hover controls that other OEMs have implemented to relatively little effect: Apple describes how the system can be used to offer more effective and accurate errant touch detection. The hover field could help a mobile device better identify which touches were meant to actually spark an action, and which were accidental or incidental to something else. Apple already does some touch rejection with the latest iPads and their thinner side bezels, and with palm rejection in some apps, but this could theoretically help improve the performance of any accidental touch detection. The patent also describes a method for better dealing with changing weather and environment conditions when it comes to accurate touch detection. It would work by allowing touch devices to take a baseline reading when conditions are optimal, and then detecting via sensors when conditions change and tweaking touch detection settings slightly to modify and improve accuracy when, say, the weather gets cold. In general, Apple seems to be looking at hover touch tech as more of a supplementary tech than something that will find expression in actual interface design. As for the heart rate monitor, Apple’s patent describes a sensor found in the screen bezel or other conductive portion of the device that could read EKG data. You could imagine it going into the conductive metal ring around the Touch ID sensor in the current iPhone 5s design, for instance, which would be fitting also because of similar function between the two sensors. Apple’s patent for heart rate monitoring sensors describes ways they might be used to identify a user according to their unique biometric information. The fingerprint sensor in the iPhone 5s serves a similar purpose, but paired with a heart rate sensor, it becomes less of a convenience factor and more about secure identification. As always, don’t expect to see these Apple patents go into devices immediately, but they do provide an interesting look behind the curtains at Apple’s R&D efforts. Two-factor biometric security would definitely put Apple even more in the lead when it comes to device-based security, and improving touch screens and their performance will always deliver benefits. And Apple already leads the pack in that regard, too, according to . |
Indian Music Streaming Startup Dhingana Faces An Uncertain Future After T-Series Pulls Its Licensing Agreement | Pankaj Mishra | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | Indian streaming music startup Dhingana faces an uncertain future after T-Series, its biggest music label partner, said it will not be renewing their licensing agreement. Soundbox reported last week, and T-Series president Neeraj Kalyan confirmed to TechCrunch, that the company will not renew the license set to expire for nearly 8,000 songs from Dhingana’s catalogue. “We were not able to see much traction in the service and secondly we couldn’t agree on the commercials and both parties thus decided to part ways in an amicable manner,” said Kalyan. However, it looks more like a near-death experience for the music service and not an imminent shutdown. Dhingana CEO Rohit Bhatia said that any new developments will be shared this week. He declined to comment on whether Dhingana will indeed shut down. Any recovery from T-Series ending its licensing agreement would depend on whether Dhingana can overcome the hurdles of poor ad rates, rampant music piracy, and rising costs of supporting its free service in the country — issues facing every streaming service in the country. Dhingana is among the top-funded music startups in India. It raised $7 million in Series B funding in October last year from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Inventus Capital Partners and Helion Venture Partners. that Dhingana is in the process of restructuring its operations. Dev Khare of Lightspeed declined to comment on Dhingana, and executives at Inventus Capital (another investor in Dhingana), also refused to comment. Another source, a music industry executive familiar with Dhingana’s negotiations with T-Series said Dhingana didn’t agree to the music label’s commercial terms and more importantly, was running out of money. “T-Series’ exit is a trigger, but Dhingana’s problems are much beyond that,” this person said over the weekend. Earlier this year, India’s largest e-commerce company , its digital music store, citing piracy and complex payment mechanisms among the top reasons for the decision. Whether or not Dhingana shuts down, being a pure-play streaming music startup in India is going to get tougher for sure. There are some big challenges facing both the free streaming and the pay-for-download models in India — music piracy is clearly the toughest to battle, with most consumers still preferring to download free music from illegal sites like Songs.pk. The other challenge is that most big music labels demand stiff fees for awarding any digital music rights apart from the per-stream cost for each of the songs. The recent Bollywood hit Chennai Express for instance, sold music rights for an estimated $2 million. The music labels want bang for their bucks and they cannot achieve that by being too generous in their commercial arrangements with the streaming services. The Holy Grail for all these music startups is to reach a scale where they are more comparable with a Spotify. But as the CEO of one of the music startups in India told me over the weekend, becoming a Spotify will require very deep pockets, enormously patient investors and, above all, an industry where more consumers are willing to pay for legal music downloads. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. India’s media and entertainment industry loses about $4 billion every year due to copyright infringement. Telecom operators like , and aggressive Internet platforms like YouTube on the other, are threatening to hit these pure play music startups very hard. on top of what it already offers is set to put more pressure on advertisers to increase their ad spending with Google. So will other music-streaming services face this ‘loss of faith’ from music labels? Gaana.com (backed by Times Internet Ltd) and Saavn (the Spotify for Indian music), continue to survive and even expand their services, thanks to the deep pockets and some innovative business models. Their success (so far) also reflects that the digital music scene in India may not be so gloomy after all. Gaana has around 7.5 million monthly active users. “We have started to convert free users into paid ones, but our primary goal today is to build the habit of using Gaana before piracy, and we are confident over time of converting free users into paid ones,” he added. Saavn CEO Vin Bhat told me that despite challenges of music piracy and competition from Google’s YouTube in getting a bigger share of the ad market, there’s a large addressable market in India. Already, almost half of Saavn’s 11 million monthly active user base is from India, and it’s growing. Kalyan of T-Series added that it will continue to work with Saavn, Gaana and others, as these platforms continue to show good traction. “The streaming business has to slowly move from free economy to paid economy as sustainability of ad-supported revenue model is a big question mark. Free music is a very dangerous thing, and we would not like our next generation grow up believing music is for free,” Kalyan said. |
Yes, It’s Real: Tim Draper Gives Details On Ballot Initiative To Make Silicon Valley A State | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | Silicon Valley is no stranger to unusual ideas, and today the world got to witness another: noted investor Tim Draper is proposing a ballot proposition to . There were obviously a lot of questions raised by Draper’s “ ” proposal after we first broke the news last Thursday, so the man with the controversial plan held a press conference this afternoon. “The status quo is just not going to work,” said Draper. “The existing breadth of industry and various interests in California is untenable.” Draper’s ballot proposition itself breaks California into six entities: Silicon Valley, West California, Jefferson, South California, Central California and North California. Other than Draper’s desire to decentralize Californian governance, we really didn’t know how it would all go down until today. So, here are your burning questions answered: “We allowed great flexibility” for individual counties to finely tune the rough outline of the six different territories, Draper said during the press event. He expects the citizens to crowdsource many of the ideas around water rights, a new state flag, and other official duties. Each state is supposed to get two senators, this would add 10 more to Congress (five additional states total). So, presumably, federal authorities will have to buy more chairs for the Senate floor, and also completely shift around the tight two-party balance that the Senate has maintained for over 200 years. “They’ll be nervous about change,” says Draper, who thinks government will eventually accept a better governed region. Draper is bootstrapping his own political brainchild. “I will make sure it gets on the ballot, he said. This can cost millions of dollars and there’s no big partners yet on board. But Draper says he’s seen a lot of grassroots interest. There’s still a lot of process questions that have to be worked out. What happens after it passes? Who’s in charge of creating new governors, redrawing congressional districts, and distributing natural resources? Draper couldn’t answer these in great detail, because they’ll supposedly be answered over the next several months. When Draper first proposed this idea to me at the , I had my doubts. But, yes, this is in fact happening. Six Californias. Draper expects to hold another press conference when he gets a million signatures. |
Apple Reportedly Acquires Note-Taking App Catch, BroadMap Talent | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | Two more Apple acquisitions have reportedly been unearthed today by . The first is of Catch, a that was likely acquired back in July, and the second is BroadMap. The BroadMap acquisition seems more complicated, however, as the company maintains that it still exists and operates separately from Apple, despite much of its staff having moved to Apple according to their LinkedIn profiles. Apple issued a , but it only contains its boilerplate response to these requests, which is essentially a non-committal ‘we make acquisitions but we don’t talk about them’ comment. Ordinarily, that’s enough to consider the acquisition confirmed: Apple generaly won’t discuss anything at all in cases where there’s smoke but no fire. But this time, BroadMap took the unusual tack of denying an acquisition outright via its official Twitter profile (since removed). Still, at least seven former BroadMap employees now list Apple as their employer on LinkedIn, and all departed the company around March of 2013. So what’s the deal? It looks like this may have been a case where Apple acqui-hired without the “acqui.” According to Geographic Information Systems specialist and blogger James Fee, , but it continues to exist as a separate entity, licensing the tech it sold Apple and reselling that to current clients, which include Nokia, Nielsen, MapQuest and others according to BroadMap’s website. My theory in this case is that BroadMap had a number of longer-term existing contracts in place with clients that would’ve made termination of those deals expensive and messy for Apple. Better to gut the company of its talent, keep BroadMap alive in name only as a delivery vehicle for tech that Apple now owns but licenses, and keep it staffed with a skeleton crew to make that happen (with new developments around geo software from the team that built it going directly to Apple, without a requirement to share). In other words, it’s an acquisition in practice, even if it ultimately turns out that it isn’t technically an acquisition. As for Catch, 9to5Mac says it’s working on iOS software. Its app resembles Google Keep, and if Apple is looking to build out better functionality in Reminders, Notes and its audio recording apps, this is likely a good team to have in pursuit of that goal. Catch also released an enterprise collaboration tool just before shutting down, which could help Apple with its relatively new push toward greater business market appeal. We’re still looking for more specifics related to these deals and will update if we find any additional information. |
Apple’s New Mac Pro In Pictures: Beauty And The Beast | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | Apple has a brand new Mac Pro with an all-new, bold design that’s assembled at . It’s easily among the most bold and unique designs of a Mac in recent memory, bringing to mind equally mould-busting creations like the G4 Cube and the original ‘flowerpot’ iMac. It’s also got a distinctly Darth Vader vibe, and with its unique removable outer casing, that impression comes across even stronger. [gallery ids="933796,933793,933797,933791,933788,933789,933790,933792,933785,933786,933787,933794,933795,933798,933799"] We still have to take the new Mac Pro through more testing before we can deliver our full review, but first impressions are that this thing absolutely leaves any other current Macs in the dust in terms of loading, rendering and processing speed. It’s also extremely quiet, and actually produces a small amount of updraft from that exhaust port in the top, which is funneling air from its ‘unified thermal core.’ It’s a futuristic machine with futuristic good looks, and while I wouldn’t advise using it in the conditions pictured above, the currently frozen wastes of Toronto make an excellent backdrop for this demon machine. Stay tuned for our full review and more thoughts about Apple’s first new Pro desktop computer in many years. |
Silk Road 2 Still Running After Moderator Arrests | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | The Silk Road 2, a hidden website modeled on the original Silk Road contraband marketplace, is regrouping as the users and single remaining moderator prepare for a Christmas lockdown. The group faced a setback when US and Irish authorities arrested moderators Andrew Michael Jones, Gary Davis, and Peter Philip Nash. A final moderator, Cirrus, remains on the site. The arrests happened in conjunction with the shut-down of the first Silk Road and are probably unrelated to the new version. The site is currently “closed” to orders and will reopen after Christmas on the 28th. On the 22nd a moderator named Defcon allowed the site to remain open twelve more hours so users could withdraw funds. Defcon wrote: “Make no mistake – Silk Road is not dead, the marketplace is not compromised, and it will return after the break regardless of how this plays out,” wrote Defcon. New markets that use , including , are on the rise. Users and admins claim that that they are ostensibly safer than the Tor-based Silk Roads. It is, as they say, business as usual on the DarkNet. |
Jack Dorsey Joins Disney’s Board Of Directors | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | The Walt Disney Company just that Jack Dorsey (co-founder and CEO of Square, as well co-founder and chairman at Twitter, as if you didn’t know) has joined its board of directors. “Jack Dorsey is a talented entrepreneur who has helped create groundbreaking new businesses in the social media and commerce spaces,” said Disney CEO Robert A. Iger in the release. “The perspective he brings to Disney and its Board is extremely valuable, given our strategic priorities, which include utilizing the latest technologies and platforms to reach more people and to enhance the relationship we have with our customers.” The company’s tech bets in the past few years have included the acquisition of gaming companies and . But presumably Disney’s interest in technology goes beyond any one area of the company. Plus, of course, it acquired Pixar back in 2006, a company that had its roots in technology, even if it wasn’t exactly a startup. The deal brought Apple’s Steve Jobs to the Disney board and made him the company’s largest shareholder — so this is another way that Dorsey is following in Jobs’ footsteps (who he ). also includes Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and John S. Chen, former CEO at Sybase. Dorsey, meanwhile, has become one of the best-known executives in the tech industry and the startup world, with not just looking at his achievements at Twitter and Square, but also asking what he’s doing next (for one thing, ). He to the Disney news in a tweet, where he quotes Walt Disney himself: “I only hope we don’t lose sight of one thing—that it was all started by a mouse.” |
AllCast Gives Your Android Device AirPlay Video Powers And Streams To Other Devices, Too | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | Android app , and is now available as a full version for all to try out. There’s a free version and a paid license, so you can find out if this Swiss army knife of media streamers for Google’s mobile OS works for you. It accomplishes the impressive feat of letting you stream from your Android phone or tablet to the Apple TV, or any other AirPlay-enabled devices you may have. This is pretty much the dream app for anyone heavily invested in Apple’s accessory ecosystem but looking to make a switch to Android. The current version only supports video and image streaming, but it works as advertised, and the developers promise music support is coming soon. All of my AirPlay speakers showed up as available devices, as well as my Apple TV, and the interface presents a simple two-step process where you just pick your streaming destination and then choose the media you want to stream (the app automatically scans your phone for compatible file types). Unlike with native AirPlay, content has to be played from the AllCast app itself to work, but it also supports DLNA streaming and will broadcast to Roku, Xbox One (and Xbox 360), Samsung and Panasonic Smart TVs and any Google TV device. Chromecast, Google’s tiny streaming dongle, isn’t supported, but AllCast says the ball is in Google’s court to enable that as of right now. It’s still early days for AllCast, even though it’s stable enough for a 1.0 release, so you might have to relaunch the app to get it to work properly with your target stream destinations and if you throw it into landscape during playback you might lose control over play/pause functions. But once it gets properly set up, it just works, and it’s amazing how good it feels to be able to get the content on your Android tablet or smartphone up there on the big screen using devices you already own, instead of having to look around for something with Miracast built-in, or going directly to Google for a Chromecast, even if that is only 30 bucks. |
The BeatBuddy Pedal Lets You Build Beats With Your Feet | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | This is something I never knew I wanted: it’s called and it’s basically a crowdfunded guitar stomp box that allows you to cue up and play drumbeats through your amplifier. That means you can run this in line with your guitar effects and add some undistorted, funky fresh breakbeatery, making yourself into a formidable and frightening Voltron-like all-electronic band. And who doesn’t want that? It’s essentially a drum machine in a pedal and is, according to the team, the first of its kind. You activate various fills and patterns with your foot and you can do a lot of offline editing on your computer. A knob turns the tempo up and down. The team has blown past its goal of $75,000 and is now hovering at $111,000. The early bird pledge is $150 for a pedal, and they expect to ship by April. It’s a fairly simple system. You can trigger drumbeats by tapping the pedal to the tempo you want and you can also tap the pedal to add fills and alternate between verse and chorus. You can prepare MIDI beats that you can then load onto the device or just use the pedal’s 200+ built-in sounds. 3. Hold pedal down to begin transition beat 4. Release pedal to end transition and go to next song part (e.g. verse to chorus) 5. Use footswitch to add accent hits. Accent hits are customized to the song part (e.g. hand claps for verse, cymbal crashes for chorus) 6. Press pedal twice to stop beat with ending fill (or 3 times to stop immediately) It also comes with , a drum-tracking program. The Miami-based team is led by David Packouz, a guitarist and songwriter. While there are plenty of ways to get drums onto your red hot rock-and-roll tracks, this one looks to be the most fun and it would be great if Union Square buskers used this to drown out their endless caterwauling of Brown Eyed Girl. Just sayin’.
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Analysts Expect 3D Printer Shipments To Grow Ten Times Before 2017 | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | Hardware are estimating that 3D printer shipments will grow 10 times in the period between now and 2017. Printers, once the provenance of hackers and engineers, will soon be household commodities. “Print is extending beyond output on media to the creation of an actual object, and that presents incredible opportunity,” quoth Keith Kmetz, VP at IDC. “While traditional print technologies are facing maturity, 3D printers will see worldwide unit shipments grow by 10 times over the forecast period, and worldwide hardware value will more than double in the short term.” IDC cites the move by HP to enter the 3D printing market in 2014 as well as Konica Minolta’s agreement to distribute higher-end 3D printers. Add in the mid-level players like and upstarts like and and you have a robust market. Furthermore, patents controlling the process of laser sintering are set to expire in 2014, thereby opening up new possibilities for the new home 3D printer. Because patents often discourage the small manufacturer from exploring a particular technology, this patent expiration should improve things considerably in the metal and plastic printing front. O brave new world, That has such printers in’t! |
Google’s Cloud Platform Gets Billing API To Help Developers Monitor And Analyze Cost | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | The cloud makes it easier for developers to run complex applications, but all of this convenience often comes at the expense of being able to easily track cost. Today, Google is making it to monitor and analyze how much running an application on its Cloud Platform costs. Currently, the only way to get this data is through the Google Cloud Console. That works, but what if you want to build your own tools to monitor, analyze and – maybe most importantly – optimize cost? The new Billing API now allows developers to programmatically access usage and cost estimates so they can include this data in their own internal dashboards and tools. This isn’t real-time data, though. Once a day, the information is stored as a JSON or CSV file in a Google Cloud Storage bucket and from there, it is accessible through the or Google’s command line tools. Amazon, it is worth noting, also offers a very similar tool for getting billing data from its Web Services. The AWS uses Amazon’s S3 storage service to save a CSV file with billing data that developers can then access from their own apps. Clearly, there is demand for this information. and others are currently building their businesses on top of the fact that most cloud services feature rather complicated billing schemes (just ask anybody who is building apps if they fully understand their bills). It doesn’t look like Google or Amazon are about to release similar services anytime soon, so until then, it’s up to developers to either use a third-party service to analyze their usage data or to build their own tools. |
D-Wave CEO Vern Brownell On Quantum Computing And Tackling Tech’s Big Problems | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | So when D-Wave CEO Vern Brownell was in San Francisco recently, I invited him to come by TechCrunch headquarters to give us an overview of D-Wave and talk about the company’s past, present, and future. Being that TechCrunch doesn’t always deal in the realms of quantum mechanics and superconductors, it was a longer chat than we usually have for videos — but I think all 17 minutes are worth it, as Brownell is a very thoughtful interviewee. I especially liked his parting sentiment, on the subject of the current Silicon Valley startup environment and his hope that more founders, engineers and especiallly investors will start to go after difficult problems. This bit starts at around 16:10: “My one kind of disappointment I might have… there are very few investors today who are willing to invest in world-changing technologies, and it’s really going to have a large impact on the world. Not that game companies and other great companies like Twitter and Facebook don’t change the way we all operate. But there’s a real lack of ground-breaking kind of research and things that take more than a few years to develop, and hardware companies, and things like that. It’s kind of disappointing to see. I hope the pendulum swings back the other way at some point, where it becomes more in vogue to do more of this science-based research, because it’s really important for us to transform science into technology.” To hear Brownell talk about how quantum chips work, the controversy D-Wave has faced, the potential of turning quantum computing into a cloud service, bridging the worlds of academia and business, and much more, watch the video embedded above. |
Inside ZenPayroll’s Sprint To Reimagine The Way You Get Paid | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | things in life that are more boring than payday. Every couple of weeks, working stiffs get an envelope with a jumble of numbers on a plain white background that is meant to show them how much they’ve made over the course of the last pay period. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Which is why a few months ago, payroll startup ZenPayroll spent a week redesigning the way it communicated with its users on payday. ZenPayroll is a two-year-old company that wants to change the way that people get paid, simple as that. It does that on both sides of the equation, first by making it ultra-easy for employers to do payroll, and secondly by improving the actual experience of getting paid for employees. Most small- and medium-sized businesses today don’t have a good system in place for doing payroll. Indeed, according to ZenPayroll CEO Joshua Reeves, the vast majority do it manually, which ends up leading to mistakes and fines levied against them for accounting disparities. ZenPayroll has built a system where they only need to put in employee information once and then the platform takes care of all recurring payments, while making one-time bonuses or hourly wages also easy to enter. But the company saw an opportunity to also improve the experience for employees. After all, payday hasn’t fundamentally changed in a long time. A lot of people today get their pay direct-deposited into an account and never even look at their pay stub. And if they do, they’re greeted with something that looks like this: Boring, right? “Today, payday is an impersonal, transactional event,” Reeves told me. So the company set out to change that, and to make the notification that an employee receives about their pay an actual enjoyable experience. To do that, ZenPayroll borrowed the idea of running a Over the years, the investor’s design team has worked to perfect the art of the design sprint process, in which startups are asked to quickly re-examine and re-build their products over the course of just five days. Google Ventures runs a bunch of design sprints with its portfolio companies, providing a structure for them to participate in ultra-fast iteration. The process was born out of Google’s own internal efforts to quickly redesign various products over time, and the venture arm now does about 30 sprints with startups it’s invested in per year. The typical design sprint takes place over five days, during which the teams go through five distinct steps to development. Day 1 is all about , Day 2 is about , Day 3 is about to go forward with, Day 4 is about , and Day 5 is for by showing the prototype to others. For some startups, Google Ventures takes a more hands-on approach to design sprints. Since ZenPayroll has its own design team, the GV folks mostly lent a helping hand in structuring the process. For ZenPayroll the goal was to change the relationship that employees had with the boring pay stubs that they get every week. “With this project we knew we wanted to empower the employee, and to make their payday something that’s unique to ZenPayroll,” Reeves said. That meant making it something employees could actually celebrate, instead of just filing away with other boring paperwork, never to be seen again. In a strange sort of way, it’s the constraints of the design sprint that enable more creativity, Reeves told me. “When you have fixed time periods… that lets you move forward without getting caught up in individual details,” he said. In the case of ZenPayroll, the constraints meant both, as well as making quick decisions about what to include and what not to. In the first step, the team spent an entire day — one-fifth of its allotted time — just doing as much research as possible to find out what’s wrong with current pay stubs. That might seem like a lot, considering how little time the team had, but it helped to inform the next part of the process, which was to set down as many ideas as possible for how they could fundamentally change what payday looked like. For PR Lead Steffi Wu, who was part of the design sprint team, the diverge phase of Day 2 — in which the team puts down as many ideas as possible on Post-Its — was the most important part of the process. Or at least the most fun. “We thought about ‘What are the possibilities of payday?'” she said. “Now it’s horrible and banal, but what are ways that we can make it happy and rewarding?” To change that, the team set about trying to make getting paid a ritual that actually makes people happy. Part of that ritual and delight was simply providing a more visual, more beautiful way to show the breakdown of an employee’s salary and where all of a person’s money went as part of its email notifications. A number of people don’t even bother looking at their pay stubs, but ZenPayroll hoped that by making them easier to understand, it would increase the likelihood that they’d open their payday notifications. Another way that the company tried to delight users is by providing them with fun facts about the amount of money they made. Like this one: All in all, ZenPayroll hopes to continue iterating on the way that it communicates with users. After all, as Reeves told me, being a software-based company means always seeking to make your product better. “When we think about the idea of how you build software — you’re never done with that process,” he said. “There are always ways to get better, and there are always ways to improve the product.” And now that it’s been through the design-sprint process once, ZenPayroll is a lot more likely to use it the next time the company is ready to re-imagine one of its products. |
Tribune To Acquire Sony Audio Recognition Unit Gracenote For $170 Million | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | Global consumer electronics conglomerate Sony is getting a tiny bit leaner with the sale of Gracenote, a business unit that provides audio recognition and metadata solutions to a number of device manufacturers and media companies. Tribune will spend $170 million to buy out Gracenote in a deal that is expected to close in the first quarter of 2014, and will combine it with Tribune Media Services (TMS). The sale comes five years after Sony acquired Gracenote in a deal worth $260 million. Gracenote was founded in the late 1990s to provide audio fingerprinting technology to the music industry at a time when record labels were seeking to curb massive piracy of digital songs. Formerly named CDDB, the company transitioned its business to provide technology that would recognize which songs were being played on digital music players and programs, and provide metadata like artist and album information associated with those tracks. Today, Gracenote has metadata for more than 180 million tracks and is used to power information retrieval for music services like Apple’s iTunes, Rhapsody, Spotify, and Xbox Music. Its database gets more than 550 million lookups each day, which adds up to more than 16 billion each month. While much of the overlap in Tribune and Gracenote clients is in the video world, music will continue to be an important part of the company’s overall business. Over the last 15 years, Gracenote has built a steady business around recognizing what music users are listening to on their laptops and through streaming media services. More recently, however, it has gradually expanded to support video services, as well. It turns out that the same type of automatic content recognition (ACR) software that could be applied to music could also be used to identify what’s happening on TV. Gracenote has been applying that technology in a few areas: first to help enable dynamic, personalized ads to viewers based on user profiles, and second to power second-screen, social TV apps. In the former case, Gracenote is working with TV manufacturers like LG to provide ACR capabilities, while also partnering with video ad companies to dynamically insert ads. It’s also trying to get networks and brands on board to begin offering more personalized ad messages. In the latter case, the company has offered up its APIs to third-party application developers who want to know what’s playing on the TV and serve up appropriate content around that. One example is Zeebox, which was named as a customer early this year. In both cases, Tribune will combine Gracenote with TMS to help power its entertainment metadata services. The companies had already been partners, with the TMS data set integrated into Gracenote’s video offerings. For Sony, the sale comes as it attempts to reduce costs and refocus its efforts around hardware and manufacturing. The parent company announced a quarterly loss of nearly $200 million in October and reduced its full-year earnings outlook as a result. Sony has been making cuts in its media business, and has come under pressure from investor Daniel Loeb to spin off the entertainment unit. Getting rid of Gracenote, which provides technology not just to Sony, but to a number of its competitors in the consumer electronics world, therefore makes a bit of sense. In the short term, I’ve been told that not much will change for the Gracenote team. As a business, it operated largely independently from Sony as a parent organization, and it will continue to operate as a standalone business unit as part of TMS. Over time, however, the companies will look for synergies that could bring them closer together. |
BlackBerry Reveals Its BlackBerry Live Developer Event Is Dead For 2014 | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | BlackBerry isn’t hosting its own big annual conference this year, the company (via ). The event has been called various things, including BlackBerry World, and BlackBerry Live once the World name became what BlackBerry called its mobile app store and things got confusing. This is the first year since 2002 that BlackBerry hasn’t held one of these big events, and it’s a sign of the change taking place at the company under new CEO John Chen. Chen was forthright and free when discussing his plans for the company at the recent investor call and meet-and-greet with reporters following BlackBerry’s disastrous Q4 2014 results. He laid out his plans and his new division of BlackBerry’s lines of business in lots of detail. He also talked at length regarding , which will essentially see it take a back seat to hardware design and creation, allowing BlackBerry to focus more exclusively on the software side of the equation. The company said this move will allow it to focus on running a number of smaller, more targeted events throughout the year, aimed at specific audiences. BlackBerry Live was more of a general wrap, similar in many ways to Apple’s WWDC and Google’s I/O, in that while much of it is aimed at developers, it also gives the executive team a chance to trot out their plans for the year on stage and reveal them to an appreciative audience. BlackBerry cancelling this event feels like a particular blow to its devices plans. These events are often the perfect place to showcase hardware, and former CEO Thorsten Heins talked future hardware plans at the last one, hinting at what would eventually become the Z30 (as well as some kind of hybrid computing device that never materialized). Ditching the big annual event decreases the opportunity to build hype around devices, but BlackBerry is clearly moving in a direction where device hype isn’t quite the priority it once was. Chen said that BlackBerry remains committed to devices, and the Foxconn partnership is the first step towards making it sustainable and successful again, but I still see it as a side bet. Chen was careful to note that while the Foxconn deal is something he agrees with, he wasn’t the one who put the wheels in motion on that arrangement. It started under previous management, though he did help architect it. Devices isn’t the focus for Chen or the company going forward, in my opinion, and dropping the big splashy annual event is another sign that BlackBerry has more important things to worry about than making phones that are off the pace of the global smartphone market. |
Samsung’s Newest Ad Is Pretty Much The Worst | Greg Kumparak | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | Worried that none of their recent commercials would take home that coveted “Worst Ad Of The Year” trophy, Samsung has swooped in with one hell of a last minute entry. It’s like Samsung wanted to give us all a Christmas present. But instead of giving us socks, or candy, or a puppy, Samsung gave everyone a big ol’ box of cringe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8nJKWJTsUg Like any masterpiece of cinema, the spot leaves the viewer with questions to consider post-viewing. Watch the commercial above, then join us below for some of our favorite bits: – If a stranger asks “Want to see something cool?” on a ski lift, is the answer ever anything but “No”?
– Did he just kill someone? Pretty sure he just killed someone.
– Ey pree lady.
– “Check this out. I know I just met you literally 15 seconds ago, but I took 64 pictures of you.”
– Oh god why is he watching this video in a club who does that
– Why is she calling him? She walked away from him. Seriously, she just walked out of frame less than 2 seconds ago. Maybe they’re both crazy.
– “Where’s this music coming from?” “From my phone, which I placed like 20 feet away for some reason”
– Jiggle fist pump. Perhaps Samsung is just a master troll. Maybe. I hope. |
Camera360, One Of China’s Most Popular Photo Apps, Now Focusing On International Growth | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | Build by Pingguo, a startup based in Chinese tech hub Chengdu, is already one of the world’s most successful photo editing apps with over 180 million users in more than 200 countries who take about 80 million photos each day. But it has faces strong competition from other photo editing apps like and , all of which are aimed at users who want more advanced editing features than filters. So Camera360 is now focusing on its target growth markets, which co-founder and marketing director Gary Gu tells me include India and countries in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. Gu says that Camera360 is sometimes referred to as the “Instagram of China” but there are key differences between the two apps. For one thing, Camera360’s focus is on photo taking and editing, not sharing, a space the startup has no plans to enter. Instead, its goal is to provide editing functions that “put art in your hands,” as Camera360’s slogan says. The company has four apps: the free Camera360; HelloCamera, a paid version with more features; Movie360 for making videos; and Pink360 for selfies. In total, its editing suite includes more than 100 functions. Nifty features that make Camera360, the company’s flagship product, standout include its “EASY” camera, one of eight cameras in the app. EASY auto-detects what kind of scene (nightlife, scenery, portrait, etc.) you are photographing and automatically applies an effect so you can skip the editing process. Its apps are already a hit in its home country, but Pingguo is preparing to release a major update for Camera360 next month as it expands its sights to the rest of Asia. Gu says Camera360 wants to take advantage of the strong adoption of smartphones and social media in countries like Thailand, where . Pingguo currently monetizes through advertisement partnerships that are tailored to the Chinese market. Instead of using banner ads, for example, the company creates sponsored features like themed frames that are tied into the release of movies or fashion products. In order to compete with other photo-editing apps, however, Camera360 is looking at additional revenue streams. Gu says the company plans to offer cloud services so users with don’t have to store photos on their mobile devices, a selling point for users with limited memory on their mobile devices. Providing cloud storage will also let Camera360 tap into the big data market, though Gu says that user privacy is protected because the company doesn’t look at the content of each photograph. Instead, it gathers data based on where each photo was taken, where users opened the app, and what kinds of devices and operating systems they use. In China, Pingguo plans to start rolling out a printing service so people can order albums, calendars, T-shirts and other physical products. “In the U.S., Shutterfly has been very successful, so I think that market opportunity is huge. By giving our users this service, we can provide them with a complete photo-taking experience,” says Gu. Orders will launch in China first before Pingguo gradually localizes the service for other markets. Another revenue source for Camera360 is its software development kit, which is offered to “premium” partners, and API. Companies that already use Camera360’s SDK include major Chinese tech companies like Tencent and Xiaomi, as well as Nokia, which has added its photo-editing features to its Lumia 925 and Lumia 1020 models, both of which have sold well in China, Indonesia, Thailand and India. Gu says that he hopes his company will score even bigger partners next year. “Our goal is for international companies, like Yahoo’s Flickr and Twitter, to start using our SDK,” he says. |
MaxStone Kickstarts A Remote iPhone Shutter For Digital Cameras That’s Also A Bluetooth Tracker | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 23 | [kickstarter url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/702400282/maxstone-iphone-your-camera width=640] A new Kickstarter project is hoping to combine some popular recent gadget trends with commonly sought after DSLR and pro photography features for a Bluetooth gadget that’s unique and more versatile than most in the same category. It’s , and it’s a smartphone controlled camera shutter, Bluetooth device locator and remote smartphone shutter trigger all in one. The MaxStone is a small device powered by a single watch battery that you affix to your camera via a simple loop strap. It attaches in touch a way that it covers the camera’s shutter button, and hands down a small, pebble-like main body in front of your camera’s IR sensor. This actually contains an IR blaster that connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, so that you can remotely trigger the camera’s shutter from your device. It’s a lot more low-tech than using Wi-Fi or something like that, but it means MaxStone is much more broadly compatible with a range of camera brands and models. You can use the MaxStone apps to either trigger the camera’s shutter instantly or via time delay, or program it to take photos at intervals for time-lapse photography spanning nearly a full year, according to MaxStone’s Kickstarter page, and maintaining operation even if your phone is powered down or loses connection. It can also handle video start/stop recording on some models of camera. [gallery ids="933629,933632,933631,933630"] That alone would be pretty impressive in a device that’s priced at a $29 pledge to start for backers, but it also offers a Bluetooth proximity alarm sensor, which makes it possible to set a location gate so that you can receive alerts if you move away from your camera, or whatever else it’s attached to. It can also be used the other way, to located your phone, thanks to functionality that allows it to trigger an alert on your device when you press the MaxStone button. Finally, it can operate as a remote shutter for your iPhone camera, too, which is crucially important for the selfie generation. The MaxStone was created by Will E and Lia Zhang, a husband and wife team who did the original prototyping and design. Radio engineer Will Griffith helped refine RF communications, and Shawn Han developed and continues to build the MaxStone iOS app. The New York-based team is seeking $50,000, and has raised around $6,500 already, with 59 days left in their campaign. Should everything go as planned, they plan to ship the MaxStone by March, 2014. I have yet to plunk down any cash for a lost-and-found style Bluetooth tracker, but MaxStone’s versatility and price point might make it the first such device I do back, and yet that’s not even its main function. The team here has the right idea though: bundle a number of smart device features that make sense together, and suddenly people have more than one reason not to look elsewhere or pass on the idea altogether. |
How Smule’s Jeff Smith Got A Ph.D. While Running A Startup | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 15 | You hear about graduate students who , but I guess that would be too easy for Jeff Smith. He co-founded and serves as CEO at , the startup behind social music apps like Ocarina and Magic Piano. At the same time, he recently received a Ph.D. in computer-based music theory and acoustics from Stanford. Smith and I spoke earlier this week about being a full-time graduate student and a startup executive (not to mention the father of three children) since 2008. One of the questions that we kept dancing around during our conversation was: Why the heck did he feel the need to do this? Apparently that’s a question that came up at Stanford, too. Smith recalled that during his Ph.D. qualifying exam, a committee member asked him, “Why are you here?” Smith had to admit that he wasn’t interested in teaching or becoming an academic researcher. So why? “I’m really interested in music,” Smith said. “I want to study music. I want a formal program.” You might think that Smule’s investors weren’t thrilled about Smith’s academic commitments either, especially since his co-founder Ge Wang is also an assistant professor at Stanford. However, Smith said it was never a serious point of contention — though investors would bring up the issue in an “indirect” way, by asking, “How do you feel about things? Are you committed?” Board member David Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners (his other investments include LifeLock, LinkedIn, and Reputation.com) told me that that Smith’s dual careers never gave him pause. “I’ve backed founders who are bipolar and pregnant and had all kinds of distractions and impairments,” he said. “In general, if I can find an entrepreneur who is brilliant and passionate and honest, we’ll work around the other stuff.” Cowan added that running a number of other startups (including Tumbleweed Communications, which went public) helped bolster investor confidence — not to mention the fact that Smule is having what Smith called a “transformational year,” setting a sales record of $2.4 million last month. “That’s one of ways to tapdance around it,” Smith said. “It’s one conversation if things are going poorly, and another conversation if it’s up and to the right.” Plus, Smith’s Ph.D. research was closely tied to his work at Smule — as he explained it, he looked at large sets of data, including user data from Smule, to understand how cultural differences lead to different styles of musical performances. (His dissertation was titled “Correlation analyses of encoded music performance” and you can and .) Smith compared his work to composer Béla Bartók, who did important research into European folk music. “I wanted to pick up where Bartók left off and see if we could begin to understand culture through a very different lens …. through the lens of art,” he said. “At least as far as the data goes, the answer is yeah, we can.” For example, Smith said that his dissertation allowed him to analyze the extent to which different types of Western music have permeated China, as you can see in the embedded document below.
At the same time, I wondered if the research might also undercut the big vision for Smule that Smith and Wang have both laid out for me at different times — that music can be a form of communication that transcends language and culture. “It’s quite complicated,” Smith said. “There is this universal expression of music that we’re seeing across the globe, but there’s a lot more nuance, there’s a lot more diversity of interpretation. It’s
a little less transcendent than I might hope it might be, but there’s still these common things that are binding people together.” Discovering some of those common things actually allowed Smule to improve its products, he added. One of his findings: When people don’t know a song very well, they tend to play more quickly at the phrase boundaries, something that’s exacerbated in Smule’s Magic Piano app because the app tries to follow the pace of the player. By slowing the app down at those boundaries, Smith said the company saw a significant improvement in how many users would actually complete a song. And yes, Smith said the time commitment of both roles could be a challenge. Apparently, any free time went to completing his dissertation, and he recalled sitting in the stands of his daughters’ athletic events and typing away (as you can see in the photo at the top of this post). His laptop, he said, was “attached to me wherever I went for a few years” — he was on his computer so often that he started learning special back exercises to deal with the strain. He also took vacations with the goal of getting more work done. So how did it all turn out? Well, he got his Ph.D., and his professor Jonathan Berger told me in an email that there was “no negative impact on quality of work on either side.” “Despite my initial trepidation — Smule fueled Jeff’s intellectual pursuits, just as his creativity
as a scholar and composer helped make Smule what it is,” Berger said. Still, Smith admitted that his choice had its costs. “At some level this whole thing is irrational, and I concede that it’s not something anyone should do,” he said. “It took a toll. I’m pretty tired.” And now that he might actually have some free time, Smith told me, “I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.” |
Metail, The UK Virtual Fitting Room Startup, Raises Further £2.6M As It Stretches London’s Tech City | Steve O'Hear | 2,013 | 12 | 15 | , the UK-based virtual fitting room startup, has raised £2.6 million in “growth funding”, as it gets ready to move into a new 6,000 square foot converted warehouse on the periphery of “Tech City” in East London. The new investment — its first institutional funding — was led by New World Private Equity Partners, with participation from Stefano D’Anna and John Gleasure, co-founders of Perform. It brings total funding for Metail to £5.4 million, having previously raised £2.8 million from friends and family, angel investors, and via a TSB R&D grant. Metail’s virtual fitting room is , which enables a clothes shopper to upload a photo and dial in a few basic measurements to create a virtual representation of themselves, known as a ‘MeModel’, so that they can ‘try on’ garments virtually. A user only has to create their MeModel once as it’s portable across supporting sites. The startup then makes money by taking a commission on every purchase that comes via its virtual fitting room. It boasts a decent (and growing) customer base that includes Tesco, Warehouse and the Shop Direct Group in the UK, SingTel (via its e-commerce platform) in Asia, Zalando in Germany, and Dafiti in Brazil. The latter two are Rocket Internet companies, which, given the Samwer brothers’ obsession with execution, perhaps speaks to the validity of Metail’s B2B proposition. Its virtual fitting room solution claims to boost a clothes retailer’s bottom line by increasing customer conversion — seeing how an outfit will look fit is an attractive consumer proposition — and by reducing return rates. In a statement, Ben Bommert, Director of Special Operations at Dafiti, says customers using MeModels on its site, “buy and retain 6% more products than customers who don’t use the technology”. It’s also testament to the way Metail’s business model is aligned with the interests of the online retailers it sells to. That’s because it doesn’t charge an upfront fee for its technology and the work carried out to visualise each garment, and only generates revenue if it helps to actually shift more product. That requires its virtual fitting room solution to scale for itself and its partners — a major retailer like Zalando photographs 3-500 items of clothing per-day — something that Metail founder and CEO Tom Adeyoola tells me the startup has made a lot of progress on over the last year. He says they’ve managed to half the costs of visualising each garment, partly by ensuring that the photography aspect happens as part of a retailer’s existing workflow — Metail provides a specialised photography rig and the required training — while the photographs taken are tagged and pushed to the cloud to enable its tech to extrapolate different garment sizes and fit based on a single sized item. It’s this technology that is being continually refined at Metail’s Cambridge-based R&D and technology base, headed up by co-founder Duncan Robertson, one of seven PhDs within the company. Adeyoola says the aim is to get this cost down to a few dollars per garment, and at the same time improve the consumer-facing proposition so that more shoppers create and use a MeModel, which in turn will help drive up revenue. To that end, the startup has recruited “fashion industry veteran” Sarah Walter as Chief Creative Officer. Walter has held senior positions at a number of major UK fashion media and high street brands, both in editorial and comms, such as Vogue, Bazaar, Marie Claire, New Look, and River Island. Metail has also been . In December last year it began partnering with the UK television broadcaster ITV as part of a fashion segment on the channel’s day time show This Morning. Viewers are invited to style the two models featured in the show via a virtual wardrobe and fitting room powered by Metail. The most ‘liked’ looks are then paraded by the models on the catwalk at the end of the program. Of course, the company doesn’t operate in a vacuum. There are a plethora of startups attempting to solve the problem of how to try on clothes online, with various approaches that range from to using a previously bought garment for future purchases. Competitors include , , , , , , and . Metail will see 2013 out with a staff of 40, up from 27 at the start of the year — growth that has required the company to seek a new London HQ. As part of today’s announcement it’s named New Loom House, in Whitechapel, as its new 6,000 sq ft London premises, meaning the startup is moving out of the Old Street area in East London that’s been as “Tech City”. However, another way to look at it is that the synthetic boundaries of Tech City are naturally expanding as more startups and even larger technology companies take root in the area, a trend that Adeyoola tells me is pushing up rent, which, along with lower business rates, is making the adjacent borough of Tower Hamlets a more attractive proposition. Specifically, he says that rent has typically gone up from £12 per-square foot to £40 as landlords play startups off against each other. By relocating ever so slightly further afield Adeyoola says he’s been able to redistribute some of that potential outlay to make Metail’s new London home “the kind of space we want”. In addition, he says that Whitechappel has excellent transport links to Cambridge, where Metail has its R&D base. |
Too Different, Not Different Enough: Why Instagram Direct May Fail | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 15 | My friends aren’t using , at least not yet. I’ve received just two IGD messages since it Thursday. In the meantime, over 20 close friends I regularly message with elsewhere have posted publicly to Instagram, and I’ve received about 60 Snapchat Snaps from 18 different people. It’s obviously early, but right now, I’m more inclined to bet against Instagram Direct than on it. Yes, this is all anecdotal, but I have a few theories to back it up. It’s not that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I’ve seen pretty strong adoption of Instagram Video in my network. It’s that you can’t teach an old dog to be a cat. Instagram found a place in our hearts as an app for broadcasting moments. Take a photo (or later a video) and share it publicly, and specifically, to people who follow you. Now Instagram wants us to use it for private sharing. Take a photo or video and send it to one person or a small group. Those are entirely distinct species of communication. Convincing a userbase to break their ingrained behavior pattern and use an app for something completely different is a tough sell. And it’s a lot tougher if that “something different” is actually “something you can do elsewhere”. If I want to share a photo with a few friends, I can text it, email it, or Facebook message it. These each let me get friends’ reactions and have a conversation around the photo. In fact, they’re all more flexible than Instagram Direct in that I can reply with another photo — the absence of that feature is my biggest gripe about IDG. It also suffers from a creation interface that’s too slow for sharing to such a limited audience. Filtering and adding a witty caption bog down the flow, making Instagram Direct too time intensive to be a rapid-fire visual communication tool. And of course, if I want to private message someone a photo or video, I can Snapchat them. Snapchat has carved out a purpose and following with — something that’s actually different. I can’t send a photo that disappears with any other major messaging service, so I go to Snapchat when I have something silly or racy to share. Last week I argued that . It may still be a product Instagram have to try to capture as much total usage time as possible and box out competitors like Twitter and Snapchat. Direct may find a niche userbase that could grow as it iterates and starts to feel it better in the app. Again, it’s still early. And by “fail” I mean not capture a big portion of private photo sharing the way Instagram’s main product captured a big portion of public photo sharing. In its initial execution, Instagram Direct seems like a tacked-on alternative to broadcasting instead of a spacial complementary backchannel. Rather than letting you easily communicate back and forth with photos like a conversation or talk about photos already shared publicly, Instagram Direct messages are more like private posts with comment reels that don’t feel totally natural. Rather than providing an experience you can’t get anywhere else, it’s currently just another way to do the same. Instagram changed photography by attaching a social network to the camera itself. Instagram Direct hasn’t because we’ve had a phone attached to our cameras for a while now. |
Aereo Founder Explains Delayed Expansion Plans | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 15 | [tc_5min code=”518050251″] Streaming TV startup has had a big week. The company agreed to take an arduous legal battle with major network broadcasters . To discuss the move and the growth of the company, we sat down with , CEO and founder. Regarding the decision to move ahead with the Supreme Court, Kanojia expressed that Aereo is fully confident it operates within the law. So far, the company has won out twice as broadcasters pushed for preliminary injunctions, accomplishments that only further validate the company’s position. A win in the federal courts would put the legality of Aereo to rest, and simultaneously destroy the obstacle posed by Aereo clone FilmOn. FilmOn is currently operating in California and Washington DC, two of the toughest markets for copyright disputes, and has lost lawsuits in both of them. Because FilmOn has claimed to operate in a similar manner to Aereo, Aereo risks being taken down with the ship in those markets. That said, the decision to push for a federal decision (especially after a few major wins) makes perfect sense. But Kanojia did admit that the lawsuits were expensive and distracting. Still, that’s not the reason he gave for slower expansion than promised. At the beginning of the year, Aereo pledged to hit 18 new markets by the end of 2013. A little later, the company extended that promise to 22 markets, but has only gone live in 10 markets over the year. Kanojia says that Aereo should launch in a few more before the end of January 2014, but that setting high goals is one of the benefits of being a private company. Instead, it was technical difficulties moving Aereo technology (which has always been used indoors) to rooftops in new markets, as well as the steps to get outdoor-friendly technology regulatory approval. |
The Shifting Ways In Which We’ll Interact With Mobile Apps | Semil Shah | 2,013 | 12 | 15 | TechCrunch ‘Tis the season to reorganize the apps on my iPhone. With iOS 7 and the shift from spotlight search to swipe-down-to-search for apps, I’ve noticed my app behavior has changed a bit, as it’s become easier to search for apps with the new UI and therefore less important where the app is located on my phone. For instance, the Amazon app is buried in my Shopping folder (on my second page of apps), but if I need the app, I just swipe down to search. This shift got me thinking about other ways I’d like to search for, launch, and interact with mobile apps, so I came up with this list — let me know what you think and if I’m missing any: I didn’t realize this until yesterday. I’ve kind of given up on Siri, but maybe I missed the memo here, so I’ll give it another whirl. I’ve been using folders on my second page of apps, and as a rule, don’t keep any more pages of apps. As a result, my second page is all folders, sorted by category, and some of those folders contain nine or more apps. This isn’t perfect but confines my iPhone to two screens of apps and becomes less important as I search for apps and/or enter them via push notifications. Again, “where” an app sits on my phone becomes less relevant if the app’s push notifications are engaging and/or require me to do something inside the app. Now that I can launch the camera, alarm clock, and a few others via Control Center, I’ve bunched all of Apple’s native apps into one folder on the second page, as I don’t use them often. This is just for iOS. Certainly, there is more creativity and innovation happening around contextual presentation of apps on Android. I have two pages of apps: My home screen, which has 20 apps plus the bottom bar, with no folders, and then the second page, which is all folders. I’d like a control in settings to have the OS dynamically arrange apps on my home screen which I spend the most time in based on my usage data. What if the OS could predict, based on my location, time of day, usage patterns, and other inputs what apps I wanted to use at specific times, or even by what angle I was holding the phone at? On the lock screen, much like a push notification, it could present a floating row of apps it may think I’d like to use. (This is akin to what companies like are creatively doing on Android today, where such advances are currently possible.) Right now, push notifications are like tweets, short messages. Some of them, like native SMS with a picture, preload the images. What if push notifications increased in format size? For instance, consider a push notification from Twitter which points to a tweet that contains a picture, but in this new UI, the picture is presented in the lock screen alert. This is one area I’d like to see Apple conservatively open up so developers can become more creative about the format of a notification, even though they ultimately want users to be inside their apps. I really hope this happens sooner. App silos mean productivity can take a hit without seamless multitasking. A simple example is toggling between mail and calendar. There are more apps I’d probably visit if they were integrated with complementary apps, though I realize developers don’t have full control here its hard to identify a few apps to integrate with, as those integrations cost precious development time. I’ve been thinking it would be convenient to interact with some apps just through the lock screen, without having to dive into the app. SMS is the best example. I often just want to reply to a text with a one-word letter or emoji, but I have to swipe it open, launch the app, and then reply. Why not just allow me to type in the lock screen from the push? I don’t know what Apple has in mind for iOS, but gestures like swipe-down-to-search give me confidence they’re thinking about their UI and keeping tabs on what folks are experimenting with on Android right now. While all of the suggestions I’ve laid out sound nice, none of them are deal breakers for me to switch. I need to be clear about that distinction. And, while some of them may be better experiences for me, as a user, some of them could present issues for app developers. For instance, if some of these changes happened, users would potentially go inside apps less, and for apps that are based on addressable minutes and other attention-based metrics, these types of changes could present harsh realities about just how much time someone needs to spend in an app. / |
Oculus VR Raises $75 Million To Help Bring Virtual Reality Goggles To The Masses | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | The road to immersive virtual reality has been a long and strange one — it was fodder for wide-eyed futurists and engineers for years before it became painfully clear that the sorts of experiences we hoped for were limited by the feeble hardware available at the time. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. It was revealed earlier this evening that Irvine, CA-based raised a whopping $75 million Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Spark Capital, Matrix Partners and Formation|8 to help launch the consumer version of its oft-hyped Rift virtual reality headset. Sadly, the company has declined to talk about its valuation, but we’ve also learned that A16Z’s Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon will be joining the company’s board. Let’s put that hefty round in perspective: Oculus nabbed some $2.4 million from a Kickstarter campaign that saw over 9,500 backers earlier this year, and it locked up a this past June. I’m told that there’s still a decent chunk of that Series A capital left over, by the way. The company felt that it needed to supercharge its widespread consumer launch as well as flesh out what CEO Brendan Iribe calls the “full platform” through developer outreach/support and content publishing. To call this hefty round a vote of confidence in Oculus’ highly-accessible vision of virtual reality seems like an understatement, but Iribe doesn’t seem surprised. As far as he’s concerned, the Oculus headset is the right device with the right software support at the right time. “Oculus has really invigorated excitement around VR,” he added. “This time it’s really going to work.” And it a lot of ways it really does. Even strapping on an early developer version of the device is like peering into a completely different world, and the consumer model that Oculus is aiming to push out the door soon has managed to do away with the sort of latency issues that kept the original version from feeling as immersive as it could. The end result? An bit of tech that has the potential to feel downright magical. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAC5SeNH8jw&w=853&h=480] It’s honestly a little hard not to get wrapped up in Iribe’s enthusiasm and surety, but the platform that the Rift stands atop is arguably more important than the components crammed into a hefty headset. After all, a pair of goggles that lets you experience 3D worlds isn’t going to be worth a whole lot if there aren’t any worlds available for it. So far the Oculus Rift has been a hit among developers — 42,000 dev units have trickled out into the wild and the startup has repeatedly pointed to its close relationship with game developer Valve and its (relatively) new CTO John Carmack as proof of the Rift’s gaming bonafides. While the Rift has become somewhat synonymous with gaming, Iribe is quick to point out that the implications for a highly immersive device like this one extend far beyond just fancy new first-person shooters. “This is not just a fun alternative game console,” he noted. “It’s going to apply to medicine, architecture, communications — way beyond just gaming and entertainment.” So what’s next on that virtual horizon? Iribe was hesitant to point at specific potential partnerships, but he did indulge in a bit of sci-fi-inspired blue sky thinking: he thinks that in “a decade or two” we’ll be able to put on a pair of VR glasses and see other users as though they were right in front of you. |
Zuli’s Smartplugs Turn Your Phone Into The Proximity-Based Switch For The Connected Home | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 15 | [kickstarter url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zuli/zuli-smartplugs width=640] A recent Kickstarter project called the makes each of your power outlets intelligent thanks to Bluetooth low-energy, along with remote control from a smartphone, proximity triggering and scheduling, too. It’s sort of like what you maybe have been hearing about with Apple’s iBeacons, where retail can sense a shopper’s specific location within a store and provide different content to their devices based on where they are, but for at-home use with your existing electrical appliances. Zuli’s Smartplugs can detect when you walk into or out of a room, and trigger customized actions based on what you want them to do in either case. That means you could have your computer, desk lamp, space heater and more turn on when you enter your office, for instance, or have everything but the radio turn off when you leave home for the evening. The Zuli Smartplugs also work in tandem with one another, creating a Bluetooth mesh network to let them communicate with each other. A minimum of three outlets is required for accurate location tracking within a home, according to Zuli, but even without that the gadget can still be used to monitor your energy usage and manage smart scheduling and instant control of power outlets. The Zuli has a lot in common with existing products like the Belkin WeMo Switch, but that product also requires a Motion accessory separately to use the location-based automation. Zuli’s option is also more cost effective through the Kickstarter campaign, as it offers a three-pack starter kit for $135, while Belkin’s WeMo outlets are $60 each, as are the motion kits separately. [gallery ids="930969,930968,930967,930970,930966"] The Zuli team is made up of electrical and firmware engineers working out of the San Francisco area, and that team includes people who’ve successfully put out consumer product in the past, so they stand a good chance of getting this done. If you’re at all into connected home devices, this definitely looks like a useful addition to a collection of things like the Philips Hue set of connected bulbs or Nest’s smart thermostat. Production is set to kick off in January, should Zuli meet its $150,000 funding goal (it’s nearly to $100,000 already, so it likely will) and the team anticipates shipping in June 2014. There will be a beta program launched first to make sure everything goes right, and that’s also accessible to Kickstarter backers at certain levels. |
Workout App Fitstar Gets An Overhaul As It Shows Promising Paid Sign-Up Metrics | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | The app may be killing the workout video star. , a Google Ventures-backed company , just and is bringing their work to a much larger audience through a new iPhone version. Earlier this year, the company to create a workout app with personalized routines. These programs didn’t need any specialized equipment and could be done inside someone’s home or on the road. Now that they’ve gotten some preliminary data and some promising stats on sign-ups, with a 10 percent conversion to paid subscriptions, they’ve made some touch-ups. Those include a new design for iOS 7, and more explanations and animations so that users can pick up moves easily. In the new version of Fitstar, there’s now an opening video. Then users go right into a fitness test, where they answer some personal questions that help the app come up with a personalized routine. If they stay as free users, they get access to a basic routine and a limited number of workouts per week. After that, there are four paid programs including the Daily Dose, which is a quick workout every day; Get Lean, which is a cardio-focused workout for weight loss; the introductory Get Moving program, and the Get Strong program. Fitstar changed its pricing options, because they found that users often wanted to switch up their programs in the middle. Now there’s a one-year pass that is $49.99 a year that lets users traverse all the different programs. The pricing options are simplified with two choices of $4.99 a month or the annual subscription. Now that they’ve nailed the numbers better, CEO Mike Maser said that Fitstar can start to spend on marketing in a ROI positive way. “We didn’t know whether we were going to be subject to app store economics. Were users only going to be willing to pay $2?” he said. “We were really happy to see that that’s not how things have gone. When we came out with a $30 version [the original annual pricing], it became our #1 seller.” He added that north of 10 percent of users are converting to paid subscriptions, which is much higher than the standard 2 percent rate or so that you see in the gaming world. The company is also racking up partnerships with activity trackers like Jawbone, so that user activity data can be fed back into these platforms. And they’ve added social features like the ability to challenge a friend to an immediate workout. While Fitstar has one app at the current moment, expect more in the pipeline that might target other types of workouts like Pilates and yoga. The reason the company hasn’t jumped to it yet is because they needed to fine-tune the personalization algorithms and the business model. “The technology we’ve developed can be applied to anything from yoga to running,” Maser said. The company from Google Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Floodgate. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppbbdh9jfdg&w=560&h=315] |
Now With 25M Monthly Users, Social Photo Startup We Heart It Partners With Teen Vogue & Others | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | Lots of companies spend large amounts of money and time trying to attract the lucrative but elusive young demographic. So when something organically emerges as a trend-setting app for young people, it can be a pretty special thing. Take , the photo-oriented social network seems to have hit a sweet spot. The service, which I’ve described before as reminiscent of Pinterest in functionality with a dash of Tumblr’s youthful appeal, now has 25 million monthly users, which represents a 25 percent boost from the number of monthly users when it announced its $8 million Series A raise. And many of those users are young. In an interview this week, CEO Ranah Edelin said that some 80 percent of We Heart It’s user base is under the age of 24, and more than 50 percent of the users are in their teens. We Heart It is fielding three billion page views a month now, and serving over 60 billion images on a monthly basis. A big reason for this success, Edelin says, is that We Heart It has a fresh feel compared to many other social sites. “Teens want a place they can call their own, a place that isn’t already inhabited by Aunt Sue and Uncle Frank,” he said. We Heart It also says that it’s a safe space in regards to the cyberbullying that often plagues apps used by teens. “Another one of the things we hear loud and clear from our users is that We Heart It is a positive and supportive community and service where people are free to express themselves without backlash and repercussions.” Now, We Heart It wants to take advantage of this growth trajectory to make some moves toward revenue. Today the company announced that it has formed a new “partnership program” with youth-oriented publishing names including Conde Nast’s Lucky and Teen Vogue that will add a “heart this” button to certain content pages, along with other integrations. Right now, there is no monetary aspect to the partnerships, but Edelin says that down the road this kind of partnership could lead into money-making opportunities. “The conversations that we’ve been happening with [potential partners and customers] is a lot of fun. I tell the story of the service and let them know who the users are and the numbers, and there’s a lot of itnerest in being a part of that,” Edelin says. He added, though, that We Heart It is going to take monetization slowly. “We have to be smart about which choices we make.” |
TechCrunch TV’s Goodbye To The Blue Background | Felicia Shivakumar | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | It’s no secret that many viewers were getting tired of the blue bubble background in TechCrunch TV videos (it had a good run, but after nearly three years, we were too.) So over the Thanksgiving holiday, the TechCrunch TV team picked up some hammers, saws, and glue guns and gave our humble studio a DIY fashion makeover. Our main goal was to update our sets to be a little more clean and modern. We also wanted to give each show a unique style and look so that loyal viewers can instantly see the difference between an episode of and an episode of . This TCTV team project reminded us that we still have some scrappy startup in us. As videographers, it’s not often we find ourselves covered in paint or drilling through brick. Turns out that we had to do things the wrong way a few times before we got it right. Admittedly, our new studio sets are by no means perfect, but we’re happy with the results overall. We still have some design, camera, and lighting tweaks to finish. TechCrunch TV episodes shot on their new sets will start rolling out over the next few weeks. Until then, here’s a few pictures of what those might look like. Ask A VC Crunchweek Founder Stories Keen On |
Guitar Hero Creators Tackle Fitness Equipment Next With Goji Play | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | Treadmills. They’re just so monotonous, no? It’s a challenge to keep your mind off exhaustion or muscle fatigue, so many gym users turn to TV shows or books to distract themselves. But even that may not be enough to make exercise less of a chore for regular folk. So Charles and Kai Huang, , got the band back together and started . Today they’re launching Goji Play, which is a set of exercise equipment-friendly game controllers that lets you play games while on a treadmill or a bike. “One of the things we learned back in our days working on Guitar Hero was really how great games can immerse people and inspire them,” Huang said. “And that’s not only have to fun but also to get more active. We really are all about active gaming and so after we moved on from Activision, we started to have this interest in health, fitness and wellness.” The idea and the video below may look pretty goofy at first glance. But if you think about it or actually use the product, Goji Play ends up being a decent mental distraction. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq0xYMjA_24&w=560&h=315] “Most people think of workout equipment as boring and monotonous,” Huang said. “You’re basically staring at a wall for 30 to 60 minutes. So we really wanted to change that experience and make it more fun using our expertise in making great games.” Huang is taking the same hardware-meets-software approach with this bootstrapped company. For $99 a set, there are two wireless game controllers, each with Velcro straps to attach them to a whole range of exercise equipment from treadmills, stationary bicycles and elliptical machines (see below). A third piece is an activity tracker to see how quickly you’re moving, which gives more power to your characters inside games. What you’ll need is an iPad, iPod Touch or an iPhone. On those devices, you can access Goji Play’s library of games, which are takes on classic genres like boxing, through the Goji Play app. While you’re running on a treadmill, you can hold the two controllers and speed a ball down a runway or knock out a boxing rival (see below). The apps aren’t limited to gaming either. There’s a Goji Reader app, which makes it easy to scroll through content and news using the game controllers. (That’s so you don’t have to constantly swipe an iPad or hold a book open while reading.) Each unit handles multiple players, so one set works for an entire family complete with their own fitness goals, favorite games, social profiles, and more. The company is retailing the product to consumers now on and on , but they have some unannounced retail partnerships and it’s possible that they could work with gym chains as well. Goji Play is bootstrapped with six people in the Bay Area and six in Austin. |
Microsoft Is Bringing Its BUILD Developer Event Back To San Francisco In April Of 2014 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | Both and were able to secure screenshots of the post, indicating the location and time of the event before it was taken down. That Microsoft is hosting the event in San Francisco for the second time running is no accident. Though I have repeatedly asked the company to return to this city, I doubt that my requests and constant jokes concerning mud, a certain tent, and an awkward visit to Microsoft’s campus mattered either. Instead, I think that the use of San Francisco as the location of its developer event for the second time in a row simply underscores that Microsoft understands that it has lost an entire demographic of developers, and that to win them back it has to play in their backyard. Also it’s just reasonable to host your developer event where your competitors do: Apple and Google don’t host I/O and WWDC in this city for no particular reason. Last year BUILD, like the other two conferences, sold out, though Microsoft later released another tranche of tickets. I heard rumors that they had expected to sell slightly more before doors opened, all told. Whatever the case, the event went well. Microsoft, working to unify its various platforms under a pat Windows aegis, has to better convince developers that its platform is worth building for. So, back to San Francisco it comes. |
Twitter Reverts Changes To Blocking Functionality After Strong Negative User Feedback | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | : Twitter has reverted the changes to blocking functionality that it made earlier today. After the changes, an outpouring of negative user feedback appeared on Twitter, blogs and other services. We hear Twitter executives began hashing this one out in internal discussions almost immediately after negative sentiment started to rise and that an emergency meeting was held to discuss the changes. Twitter obviously made these changes for a reason, and both statements given to us by Twitter and things that we’ve heard indicate that there were many requests made to eliminate the ‘blocked’ notice. Specific accounts of reprisals in response to a blocked person being notified of being blocked spurred this change. But at this point it appears that at least some re-thinking of the feature is in order, and Twitter appears to be choosing to roll these changes back for now until it can come up with a system that works for the majority of users. Either way, Twitter deserves some credit for responding quickly and decisively to revert what was obviously a very unpopular change. Here is Twitter’s , courtesy of VP of Product Michael Sippey: Earlier today, we made a change to the way the “block” function of Twitter works. We have decided to revert the change after receiving feedback from many users – we never want to introduce features at the cost of users feeling less safe. Any blocks you had previously instituted are still in effect. In reverting this change to the block function, users will once again be able to tell that they’ve been blocked. We believe this is not ideal, largely due to the retaliation against blocking users by blocked users (and sometimes their friends) that often occurs. Some users worry just as much about post-blocking retaliation as they do about pre-blocking abuse. Moving forward, we will continue to explore features designed to protect users from abuse and prevent retaliation. We’ve built Twitter to help you create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers. That vision must coexist with keeping users safe on the platform. We’ve been working diligently to strike this balance since Twitter’s inception, and we thank you for all of your support and feedback to date. Thank you in advance for your patience as we continue to build the best – and safest – Twitter we possibly can. Original article follows: Twitter has introduced a that is materially different from the one that they’ve had in the past. Blocked users can now see your tweets while logged in continue to follow you on the service, allowing potential harassers or abusers to continue to track your updates on the network, even though you’ve explicitly blocked them. This greatly reduces the effectiveness of the block functionality on Twitter and opens the door for those who have been harassed or stalked on social networks to have their updates monitored more easily. Blocked users can now retweet your tweets, fave them and RT them while logged into their account. TechCrunch spoke to Twitter about the changes, and the company says that the change, which does not notify or alert the person you’ve blocked in any way, was done to prevent a scenario of retaliation. The company said that they had seen situations where users, once they discovered that they had been blocked — because they could no longer view tweets or interact with tweets — would find other ways to attack or harass the blocker or even be spurred to greater abuse. Twitter says that another reason for the change is to better communicate to users that ‘blocked’ does not mean ‘invisible’ and that your information is still public. This new method means that the only way to prevent someone from following you or interacting with your tweets is to make your account completely private. This will prevent anyone you block from seeing your tweets. While we doubt Twitter had anything but good intentions here, changing blocking because a blocker might be antagonizing or inciting someone they’ve blocked just by blocking them will likely not sit well with victims of harassment. It’s worth noting that you could previously view the public tweets of users that had blocked you while logged out of the service — and by visiting a profile page. But now they can do it while logged in interact with them. If you’ve blocked them, , but others will, and those you have blocked will still be able to fave tweets, for instance, and see those in a list of tweets that they’ve faved. This new blocking method is more of a mute filter that prevents you from seeing any tweets or interactions from a blocked follower. But those interactions still happen. In some ways, this new method is actually a more accurate picture of what happens with a Twitter account when you block someone. They could always see your tweets and manually RT them to their followers by copying and pasting text. Now, however, they can do so within the constructs of Twitter — you just cannot see them. Though their followers and anyone searching for your name can. Twitter notes that those tweets may also show up in your searches. Here is the current blocking policy: Twitter also notes the following: If your account is public, blocking a user does not prevent that user from following you, interacting with your Tweets, or receiving your updates in their timeline. If your Tweets are protected, blocking the user will cause them to unfollow you. And here’s the policy: If your Tweets are public (i.e., not ), they will still be visible on your public profile page to anyone, regardless of whether they have a Twitter account or not. We send notification to a user when you block them, but because they will no longer be able to follow you, they may notice that they’ve been blocked. The changes to Twitter’s policy may indeed prevent some immediate knowledge that a user has been blocked, though they didn’t get a notification before and still won’t get one now. It could cause a lag between the time that they get blocked and when they realize it — but the scenario by which this could retaliation once discovered gets blurrier. Many Twitter users who have been abused and who undergo continuous harassment on Twitter — especially women — will likely not be pleased that their tweets can now be easily favorited and re-tweeted within the confines of Twitter’s platform. Yes, their tweets were never truly private because Twitter is a public service — but a policy that makes it easier to interact with tweets and add commentary to them (even if it’s not visible to you, personally) seems like it’s missing the point. |
Bots Now Reportedly Account For 61.5% Of Website Visitors | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | In 2012, just over half of all Internet traffic came from bots and, according to the from security CDN service , this year the number has increased to 61.5 percent. At first glance, this sounds like this means the number of nefarious attacks is up, but Incapsula actually notes that the bulk of growth in this number is due to what it calls “good bots.” Visits from certified agents from search engines and similar tools increased from 20 percent to 31 percent, for example. According to Incapsula, many search engines have lately increased their sampling rates. In addition, the SEO tools that try to help websites rank higher once they are crawled, also now often visit sites more often than ever before. About a third of bots, the company argues, are malicious, but thanks to Google’s Penguin update making comment spam relatively useless as an SEO technique, the number of spam bots has decreased from 2 percent in 2012 to just 0.5 percent this year. What’s up, though, is the number of bots that try to impersonate a real use. Incapsula believes most of these are “automated spy bots, human-like DDoS agents or a Trojan-activated barebones browsers.” One thing to note here is that Incapsula gathered this data by looking at stats from its own 20,000 customers. The companies that sign up for the kinds of security services the company offers may not be exactly representative of the Internet as a whole. Not every site, for example, has to deal with regular DDoS attacks and needs Incapsula to mitigate these. Still, the company’s data clearly shows that the number of bots is on the rise, though the numbers for your own site will likely be quite a bit different. |
Google Says That Despite Changes, Marketers Can Still Track Open Rates In Gmail | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | A recent change to the way that Gmail displays images will have an effect on marketers, but it won’t be as dramatic as others have suggested, according to a Google spokesperson. The company that when Gmail users open an email with images, they’ll no longer have to click the “display images below” button to actually see the pictures. Instead, those images will just load automatically. Seems like a nice-but-minor improvement, right? Maybe for consumers, but not for marketers, . The issue is that (as Google notes in its blog post) the pictures are now loading from Google’s servers rather than the senders’. Ars writes: E-mail marketers will no longer be able to get any information from images — they will see a single request from Google, which will then be used to send the image out to all Gmail users. Unless you click on a link, marketers will have no idea the e-mail has been seen. While this means improved privacy from e-mail marketers, Google will now be digging deeper than ever into your e-mails and literally modifying the contents. But a Google spokesperson I emailed said that’s not entirely correct. (The spokesperson declined to be quoted.) Instead, they said marketers who track open rates through images will still be able to do so — indeed, they suggested that the data might be more accurate now since open rates will count users who read the emails but don’t load the images. What won’t get tracked, however, is other user data like users’ IP address. So this seems to do more to protect privacy without leaving marketers totally in the dark. Email marketing company MailChimp in its blog post on the subject: Using cached images is a fine idea for Gmail, but it has the potential to mess with open tracking for ESPs. Fortunately, MailChimp can still detect the first request for the open-tracking pixel. This won’t interfere with the count of “unique opens” you get in your reports, but it could prevent us from seeing multiple opens per subscriber. … In Gmail’s announcement today, they said image caching allows them to securely turn on images by default. Image caching still lowers our ability to track repeat opens, but turning those images on means we’ll be more accurate when tracking unique opens. At least, theoretically it should work that way. |
YouTube Opens Up Live Streaming And Google+ Hangouts On Air To All Verified Accounts | Ingrid Lunden | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | Bring on the school holiday pageants, local baseball games and armchair poetry slams… YouTube today that it is expanding its live video services to the masses. Everyone who has a verified account can now stream live video on YouTube, and verified accounts can now create a . The company today has not given an update on how much take-up the live service has seen overall, but big-name, high-profile live events have proven to be major draws on the platform. The Red Bull Stratos Mission, for example, . Live events give Google a way to complement the role it plays as the archive of the long-tail and keeper of viral clips. “Appointment” viewing around live events presents specific kinds of advertising opportunities and helps YouTube position itself more securely as a TV alternative. Whether that positioning can work in the context of long-tail content that may not attract that many concurrent users is another question. On the other hand, it presents particular opportunities for hyperlocal advertising that complements Google’s pitch as a one-stop marketing shop for smaller businesses. The YouTube live video service has been in a “beta” mode for the last year, with selected accounts in specific categories like , , , given the facility for live streams. The service was extended to in August of this year. Before that, the . YouTube says all verified accounts in are now eligible, regardless of the number of followers. The feature is getting rolled out internationally over the next few weeks. Those who are interested can check to see if it’s been turned on for them . Your status will also indicate when it’s been turned on. This service might drive more YouTube users to go through the process of verifying themselves on the platform — thereby giving Google much more data on how people are using the service, and to suggest things to you in particular. Similarly, the other feature getting announced today could help Google drive more users to Google+. The Google+ Hangout On Air, which lets users create two-way video broadcasts, is another way to drive more usage to Google+. You can launch a Google+ Hangout on Air directly from the . “This gives you a simple way to reach your fans live and is the ideal way to to invite participants to join your show,” writes Satyajeet Salgar, product manager, and Tim James, software engineer, in their . Image: |
Whiskey As A Service In San Francisco: Instacart v. Lasso | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | Procrastinating party throwers in San Francisco have options to toss together a soirée in short order. Let me restate that: You can have whiskey delivered all but into your glass without the need to put pants on. Launching today is a company called , which will deliver high-end meat, cheese, wine, and booze to your apartment in a few hours’ time. But Lasso isn’t the first company in San Francisco capable of providing you with Whiskey as a Service (WaaS). , the popular grocery-delivery service, is back to the booze game, which presents us with a conundrum: So which should you use to get your tipple on? Lasso has a decent, if limited selection of whiskeys to choose from. As you expected, it has Bulleit (both rye and bourbon), Glenlivet 12 year, and Jack Daniels. On the lower end you can get Evan Williams, and more towards the top – comparatively – Macallan 12 year. However, only 17 options are at your disposal. Heading over to Instacart, it’s hard to directly compare the two services, as Instacart will bring you booze in San Francisco from four different stores, including its own Instacart Plus option. So, we’re really comparing what Whole Foods, Safeway, and Costco have compared to the brand-new, smaller, and higher-end Lasso. Instacart Plus has 25 whiskey bottles up for sale, Safeway has 59, Whole Foods has zero, and Costco has 7. This means that when it comes to raw options, Instacart blows Lasso away. Still, Lasso and Instacart are different services with ostensibly distinct goals. Let’s keep looking. Let’s compare Bulleit’s bourbon, Glenlivet 12 year, and Jack Daniels to get a feel for the list price differential between the two services [Whole Foods is redacted given that it’s not into the whiskey game on Instacart’s platform]: Given the disparities between what is offered around the various stores, it’s hard to line up a one:one:one:one comparison, but I think that we can see a reasonable trend that Lasso’s booze prices are either commensurate with the competition, or better. Far better, in the case of Bulleit when compared to Instacart’s offering. So, if Instacart has better selection, and Lasso is a bit better on pricing, we turn to delivery to get our hands around which service you should use to get your cirrhosis on. Because Lasso is new, it’s not charging for delivery at the moment. This is incredibly dangerous for us in the public, as it lowers the marginal cost of single malt. Instacart, an established company with what appears to be settled unit economics, isn’t leaning on short-term strategies such as free delivery to grow its customer base. So for the moment, Lasso is cheaper than Instacart when it comes to delivering your booze. For example, 1.75 liters of Jack Daniels at Lasso will set you back $36.99, with no delivery costs, and tax of $3.24. Total tally? $40.23. That same bottle will cost you $42.59 through Instacart, not including $3.99 in delivery costs, and $3.73 in tax. (Also, if you don’t tip your Instacart delivery person you are a bad human, so that’s another $3 through the app. But you would tip your Lasso delivery person the same amount in cash, so the cost balances out.) So, the tally comes out to $50.31 on Instacart against $40.23 on Lasso, disregarding tip. Until Lasso starts to charge for delivery, which it will in the future, on some whiskey bottles it looks like a deal. Instacart’s far greater selection, however, might be worth more to you than the price delta. — San Francisco, there are two mobile services that will deliver you booze. Stand proud. This is what being lucky feels like. |
CrunchBase Reaches Agreement With People+, Announces New Terms Of Service | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | Following , the company behind startup database , CrunchBase is new terms of service. CrunchBase data will now be available through . CrunchBase President Matt Kaufman also told me, “People+ has agreed to operate under our revised Terms of Service,” which presumably ends the legal fight. (Conflict of interest alert: As the names imply, CrunchBase and TechCrunch have always had close ties, and we’re part of the same team at AOL.) The dispute arose when CrunchBase tried to stop the startup from using its data, suggesting that People+ was just creating a copycat competitor. The position taken by People+, and then by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, was that CrunchBase had the right to decide who accesses its data through its API, but People+ had the right to continue using the data it had already collected, because it was licensed under Creative Commons. Put another way: The CrunchBase team ended up looking like it didn’t really understand how Creative Commons worked, or at least that’s what the vast majority of online commentary suggested. But like I said, it seems like the legal situation is resolved, and the new terms will hopefully prevent similar conflicts in the future. As I understand it, the big change is that the data is only available under Creative Commons for non-commercial use. If the use is commercial, you’ll need to get a license from CrunchBase. This is how Kaufman explained the change in an email: Our position is that the old terms made that clear, but EFF and People+ argued that you cannot leverage Creative Commons while attaching additional terms (found in the TOS and license) to Creative Commons. It’s a “spirit” vs. “letter of the law” debate with no resolution. The new terms make our position unambiguous. Meanwhile, People+ co-founder and director of product Kate Scisel told me: We have been overwhelmed and thankful for the support of EFF and the tech community particularly Hacker News and some of the original team who created CrunchBase. We are thrilled with the outcome and are looking forward to continue growing our product and the company far beyond this controversy. |
Aereo Says “Bring It On” As Broadcasters Push Case Into The Supreme Court | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | Aereo, a TV streaming service backed by media mogul Barry Diller, is in the middle of a fierce legal battle. The company uses remote, miniature antennas to pull free over-the-air signals from broadcast networks like Fox, ABC, NBC and 27 others, delivering the stations to customers’ connected devices for $8 per month. Not surprisingly, broadcasters and media executives are not pleased with these methods and have tied the company up in legal battles. In New York, major broadcasters like ABC, NBC, Fox and others have taken their case to the Supreme Court, and have asked the court to appeal decisions made by the lower circuits, which ruled in Aereo’s favor. Today, however, Aereo has filed a response with the court, agreeing with the opposition’s petition for the Supreme Court to hear the case. The company released this statement today: As it turns out, the anti-Aereo crowd is having a tough time winning in court. , Aereo was hit with two separate lawsuits from major broadcasters like PBS, Univision, Fox, NBC, and ABC in the Southern District Court of New York. The judge against Aereo. When the same networks brought that decision to an appeals court, they refused to reconsider the decision. Then, Hearst (which happens to be an ABC affiliate) filed a similar lawsuit in Boston after the company rolled out service in that market. The court , nor did it grant Aereo’s request to move the lawsuit to the New York courts, where Aereo had already received a favorable ruling. And in what is becoming an obvious pattern, Fox Broadcasting Co. against Aereo in Utah just after the service landed there. Aereo was built with a specific ruling in mind, a . In a case a few years ago, a similar question was brought up by broadcasters who weren’t fond of Cablevision’s remote DVR service, which stored recorded and on-demand content in the cloud rather than on the customers’ box set. The court eventually sided with Cablevision, which has been a determining factor in Aereo’s current legal battle. With this latest filing in the Supreme Court, the broadcasters are trying to have the Cablevision precedent overturned. So again, why would Aereo agree to have this case heard on a federal level? Well, it partially comes down to one billionaire. Heir to the Coca-Cola Hellenic shipping and bottling company, is a media entertainment mogul who owns companies such as Channel 3 Dish Networks in California and Nevada, Channel 8 Los Angeles, and KILM Channel 64 Los Angeles. He also happens to be the founder of a company called FilmOn, . FilmOn claims to offer Aereo-like technology, though that has yet to be confirmed or clarified by anyone. Still, the broadcast networks are equally displeased with the streaming TV company’s existence and have filed lawsuits against FilmOn in California and Washington D.C. In the California case, the networks didn’t investigate into FilmOn technology beyond what David had claimed, which was that his technology was “Aereo-like.” A decision is currently pending on that case in the Ninth Circuit. In the conspiracy theory version of this story, Alki David is secretly working with the networks to purposefully lose lawsuits and be deemed illegal by markets who have historically been strict on copyright issues. That way, Aereo (which is on the record as being similar to FilmOn) would be banned in those markets. In the non-paranoid version, Alki David is simply a competitor who is throwing stones in the road before Aereo. Either way, David’s FilmOn has left Aereo no choice but to go federal. If FilmOn didn’t exist, Aereo might be able to enter into California or D.C. or other markets with a few W’s on the record, making individual lawsuits easier to win. But if FilmOn continues to lose on a case by case basis, things get much more difficult for Aereo. With a win in the Supreme Court, lawsuits against FilmOn or any other “Aereo-like” technology will be irrelevant as Aereo will be deemed nationally legal. Aereo had plans to expand to 22 new markets by the end of 2013, and has only made it into nine of them. But with all the legal fuss, the delay makes sense. Perhaps with a win in the Supreme Court, 2014 will be a smoother year for the disruptive TV startup. |
Twitter’s Expanded Photo Timeline Comes To The Mac App Along With Refreshed Design | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | Twitter’s Mac app, once thought dead and gone, got an to bring it in line with the web and mobile apps in a few ways. The new expanded photo timeline makes an appearance, as does a new tweet detail view, refreshed profiles and an overall design bump. The photo timeline will be the most immediately evident change in the new Twitter for Mac, though there have been design updates throughout the app. Any photos using Twitter’s own photo sharing service will show up in large preview form, just like they do on mobile. This actually works quite a bit better on desktop than it does on mobile, as there is more screen real-estate to play with. The photos jump out at you, and do still reduce information density — but that’s probably just fine for the majority of Twitter users that likely don’t use it as a personal news ticker. You can toggle the expanded images off in the Mac app, just as you can with the iOS app. This option does not exist on the web client. The new Twitter for Mac also gets a refreshed icon, which was much needed as the old one was a point-of-least-resistance update of the old one. The updated iconography continues throughout the app, with the new DM icon making an appearance as well. There’s a new profile view which displays photo headers now, too. Twitter for Mac also gains support for viewing, though not creating custom timelines. Alas, there is no support for photos in DMs, a feature Twitter just rolled out this week. The tweet detail view now has a numerical representation of retweets and favorites, as well as a visual representation of the avatars that interacted with it. You’ll also get the conversation happening around a tweet in this new view. The detail view is fairly information rich, which is good, but when you enter a conversation, the view presents the last tweet you clicked on as the top one, with no indicator that there might be some above it. I get that this is an attempt to place you at the point in the conversation where you’re ‘reading’, but it makes it hard to see that there is more to it, especially if you’re reading a reply sent hours after the conversation. The web view, for instance, places it in the center of a reply stream, with size indicating that it’s the current tweet. As it stands, the convo view loads fairly slowly, and makes you scroll immediately to reveal the full discussion. As we’re on a desktop, I’d love to see all of the white space used to present you with the whole conversation at once. There also seems to be something weird going on with the scrolling physics in Twitter for Mac. It doesn’t accelerate or coast as long as it should and it feels a bit too resistant. Other than that, the update looks to be a nice one that continues to give users of the Mac something to be thankful for. There was plenty of reason to think that Twitter would not continue to update its native app for the Mac, and instead rely on the web version completely. That wasn’t true, thankfully, and we’re seeing Twitter continue to iterate on it — which is great. I’d hate to see them forgo the desktop completely, and today’s update looks like a pretty nice indication that they’re not doing that yet. Image Credit: |
Why I’m Crowdfunding My Book | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | I like to write. A lot. I write a lot for TC, and then when I’m done here, I like to write and most recently, . I just finished a novel – and “finished” is a very loaded term when it comes to writing, but let’s say I’ve completed the story – and now I’m crowdfunding it. I’m going to write about my experience here on TC because I’ve been an avid supporter of both crowdfunding and new publishing paradigms for years but I’ve never put my money where my mouth is. So here goes. I just launched my and with the help of a few friends it got off to a good start. I’ve hit $1,600, mostly in paperback sales, but I got one whale who paid $500 to appear in the next book in the trilogy. I almost worried that I priced the campaign too high. I’m looking for $8,000 to publish the book mostly because I’d like to get some economies of scale if I’m able to sell a few hundred print copies (and maybe a few more electronic copies.) In retrospect I should have shot for lower, but I’ve seen that $8,000 is about the advance you get for a first-time fiction book these days and I wanted to see if a relatively lucky dude could make that on his own. In order to recreate the full publishing experience, I wanted to aim for something close to that to see if I could actually “earn out,” as they say in the business. It’s a bold experiment that could backfire. I’ve also discovered that social media is awful for sales conversions. My posts have been retweeted and tweeted to millions of people (I got a shout out from , which was amazing) but I don’t think I’ve gotten a single bite from someone I don’t know personally. Like the grumpy dad who funds his daughter’s crowd funding project on Portlandia, this is mostly a friends and family round.
I’ve also chosen to price my ebooks at or around Amazon prices simply because selling them for $4 or even 99 cents doesn’t seem like a solid decision, especially this early in crowdfunding. The paperback book price should allow me to break even on the printing but I am afraid of the hardback version pricing, although everyone has assured me that printing is not as drastic an expense as I thought. What I’m really excited about, oddly enough, is producing a special edition of the book for backers that will be more a work of art than a hardback. Although I don’t believe in the future of print, it sure is fun to hold a nicely done book, and I hope to offer that to my backers.
I did a very straightforward video with a DSLR and a nicely lit room. I also had our own Bryce Durbin help with a few illustrations for the book, which has really added a great deal in terms of personalizing the product. The kind folks at gave me a few pointers, including the suggestion that readers want to know, personally, who they’re pledging to. To that end I added a bit about my inspiration and some personal history. This is actually quite frightening. Throughout my tenure at TC I’ve become increasingly supportive of the little guy. I don’t like the Sonys and Random Houses of the world, I like the mad tinkerers who create , , and out of whole cloth without huge budgets or even much experience. This is the era of the informed amateur making it big, at least in hardware, software, and media. Instead of waiting to turn pro in some cubicle farm somewhere or slaving away namelessly on a trunk novel, amazing people are doing amazing things in their basements and garages. I’m realistic about this. It’s a novel aimed at young adults but I hope it will appeal to older folks as well. I’ve seen only a few sales in the few days the campaign has been live and I honestly have no idea how this will end. I know I’m very lucky. I get to talk about my project to a huge audience and I’ve also been lucky to have a fairly large social presence online. But I know this will be hard. I’ll be posting intermittent updates over the next forty-five days and then, if I’m funded, post what I learned while getting a book published from the comfort of my keyboard. If you have any specific questions drop me a line at john@beta.techcrunch.com or tweet me. Until then, here’s hoping the world doesn’t hate what I made. You can read more about my project, as I post updates, . |
Google-Backed Email Privacy Petition Gets 100K Signatures, But Will It Work? | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | Google put its significant digital soapbox , reaching the difficult 100,000 signature threshold today. Google, along with a host of civil liberty groups, hopes it will pressure the administration into back legislation to require a warrant for email spying (“ “). Given the White House’s history addressing tech-related issues on its petition platform, there’s a decent chance it could actually influence law. Or, as the White House often does, completely ignore the request. Here’s how both scenarios could shake out. It’s helpful to think of , the official White House Petition platform, as an extension of the press corps. With enough signatures (currently 100K), the unwashed masses get to ask officials a question in public. Just like a question from the press, it can be completely dodged, but, on occasion, could lead to meaningful reform. So, for instance, when a bazillion netizens successfully gathered enough petitions for their time-honored goal of legalizing pot, the administration pretty much parroted Obama’s response to the same question: “Thanks young people for electing me, but no, I’m not legalizing pot.” Or, more officially, they Obama’s answer from a Barbara Walters interview. In fact, in the beginning, administrators dodged petition requests so often, it eventually had to respond to with the following: “Actually take these petitions seriously instead of just using them as an excuse to pretend you are listening.” The White House often treats its signature process like an ugly Christmas sweater — a completely uninvited gift that is reluctantly acknowledged and then promptly buried in a back closet somewhere. WeThePeople is a deliciously subversive tool in one regard: it gives the administration cover when it actually wants to change a law. For instance, it’s unlikely that a high-profile, politics-obsessed White House press corps reporter would use his opportunity to ask President Obama about a ban on unlocking cellphones. Turns out, however, the issue is super popular among America’s geeks, both inside and outside the White House. So, when a successful WeThePeople petition on the topic came across the administration’s desk, , for the first time, its support for changing a regulation to allow consumers to take their cellphones across different wireless carriers. Thanks to the petition, the Federal Communications Commission will likely legalize cellphone unlocking . The wonderfully geeky coup was repeated announced a whopping $100 million for opening public access to federally funded science research. Perhaps many of these geek changes were never made because it’s never been popular with the mainstream press. In fact, the White House press corps is so tech-averse, , . WeThePeople gives geeks a voice. Electronic Communications Privacy Act reform is a borderline geeky issue: it relates to changing a 1986 law, which was written before email was stored in the cloud. The issue was given a adrenaline after the FBI spied on General David Petraeus’ saucy email messages to his mistress. Attorney General Eric Holder to support requiring a warrant to spy on emails, so there’s a convenient stew of public press and official support brewing for change. There’s no timeline when the administration has to answer the petition. In all likelihood, it will wait until President Obama’s gives its recommendations. Then, just maybe, Obama will stand atop the Google-backed WeThePeople petition to announce his support for email spying reform. |
Ad Tech Startup TellApart Hits $100 Million Revenue Run Rate | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | may not be a household name, but if you spend time shopping (or window shopping) online, you have probably come across its technology. The Burlingame, California-based startup helps online retailers precisely target relevant ads to customers based on in-depth user data — so if you’ve ever clicked on an ad for a pair of shoes that seem like they were made for you, TellApart may very well have been responsible. TellApart, which drove nearly 1 percent of all Cyber Monday e-commerce in the United States this year, is powered by some serious technology. And it turns out that it has also been making some serious money in the process. TellApart is now operating at a revenue run rate of $100 million per year, according to CEO and co-founder . The company, which was founded back in 2009, now has 50 employees and has comfortably profitable operations. In fact, TellApart hasn’t raised outside funding since its round back in June 2011. It’s an impressive performance, particularly at a time when it sometimes seems like the words “startup” and “revenue-generating” hardly ever appear together — let alone “profit.” So it was a pleasure to have McFarland stop by TechCrunch headquarters to talk about hitting this milestone and the lessons learned along the way. He was accompanied by , the Greylock partner who has worked with TellApart since McFarland and his co-founder started working on the concept as Greylock entrepreneurs-in-residence. Watch the video embedded above to hear about how TellApart’s technology sets it apart from others in the field, how McFarland avoided the trap of becoming an “entrepreneur-in-reticence” in the early days of TellApart, the importance of the VC-founder relationship, and more. |
Contextual Lockscreen Cover Hits Google Play Boasting Less Battery Drain And 100 More Upgrades | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | is bringing its situation-aware lockscreen to more Android users today after its six weeks ago. It’s to Android 4.1+ users in the US, Canada, and Europe. Cover’s 100 new improvements include cutting down battery drain and being better at detecting if you’re in your car, at home or at work so it puts the right apps on your lockscreen. “The big question I had personally was whether users would understand the concept of the lockscreen” Cover founder Todd Jackson tells me about what he’s learned from its thousands of beta testers since October. “Turns out they do. We were specifically focused on building a lockscreen rather than a launcher. They like the flexibility of being able to use Cover with other launchers.” Steamrolling over a user’s existing customization was sticking point that hurt . By acting as an interaction layer that floats on top of a user’s Android homescreen, Cover has found people more willing to adapt to how it radically alters their lockscreen. for the full-rundown of how it works. To recap, though, can recognize when you’re at home, work, or in you car, and shows you the apps that fit that situation. The suggestions are based on crowdsourced data at first, like that people often use Dropbox at work and Netflix at home, but Cover learns what you use in these situations too and adapts its lockscreen shortcuts. Cover’s Peek feature lets you quickly look inside your apps, and its fast-app switching drop-down menu makes it a breeze to bounce back and forth between maps, messaging, or what have you. You can watch our quick Cover demo and my interview with Jackson in the video player below. To get people to surrender the most visible part of their phone to Cover, it had to make some improvements. “Cover is a different app than most apps. Most you just forget about” Jackson tells me, noting there’s little risk to one more download. “Cover? You either love it, or you hate it and you uninstall it. When you’re building an app that replaces a core aspect of their phone, the quality bar is really high” says Jackson. That’s why Cover used the Android’s beta system. Jackson admits it wasn’t perfect, as it created friction to downloading Cover on its big launch day. Some users griped about having to use Google+, or never visited their G+ profile so they missed their invitation to download Cover once it was their turn. But the app just wouldn’t have been ready for prime time without the detailed feedback and bug reports the Android beta testers offered. Cover discovered that the number #1 thing people cared about was battery life. Jackson explains, “The beta helped us learn what are people’s thresholds. For most people, if Cover is responsible for more than 5% of their battery usage, they’ll uninstall it, so we worked really hard to get it under 5%.” Other improvements include more accurate motion sensing algorithms for detecting you’re in your car, KitKat compatability, more stable app peeking and switch, new tutorials for how to use app switching and operate Cover with pincode security turned on, more customization, and the ability to share your Cover set up to Facebook/Twitter/Google+. Another frequently requested feature was the recommendations of apps other people use at home, work, in the car, or with their headphones plugged in. That validates a big potential business model for Cover in app discovery. It could potentially charge other developers to have Cover suggest their app. That could create a route for Cover to make good on the from investors including First Round Capital courtesy of Josh Kopelman, Harrison Metal, Capital, Max Levchin, and Keith Rabois. Now that it’s , Cover can test its might versus other lockscreens like , , , and more. With time, it might take on a whole additional weightclass of competitors. Jackson says “A lot of users are actually asking us to build a launcher” which would pit Cover against , , , and others. But Jackson is convinced there will be enough users for everyone. “It will be an interesting space to watch the next few years as Android gets better and the phones get better, appealing to a higher market. The Android pie itself is growing really huge. People are just starting to realize they can customize their phone. I think a handful of the startups you mention are all going to do really well.” Cover and many of these launchers and lockscreens are shockingly different interfaces than people are used to. People fear what they don’t understand, creating a barrier to adoption. But we all need to come to grips with the fact that screen after screen of app folders may not be the best way to organize a phone. There’s a swirling sea of apps out there. The next wave of mobile won’t be about adding more, but using context to help us navigate between them.
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Birdi Will Warn You When You’re Breathing Nasty Air | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | Although the Chinese government believes that we all know it also can kill you. That’s why Birdi is so interesting. It’s a dedicated air quality sensor that hides out on your wall, looking to all the world like a simple smoke detector. However, instead of telling you about something is imminently killing you, it tells you about the smog that is slowly killing you. The team is asking for $99 for the early bird Birdi. They are working closely with PCH International’s , a hardware-only accelerator based in San Francisco and led by Brady Forrest. This is one of the first companies to launch out of the group. Birdi can sense multiple environmental factors including temperature, CO2 level, carbon monoxide levels, as well as standard smoke. It also senses humidity and particle density, which is important in smoggy locales. It will notify you when it’s out of power and all of the sensors connect to your phone via a contract-free web service. This means when the Birdi senses a problem you get a notification on your iOS or Android phone and you can track statistics over time. The group has hit $10,000 in pledges out of a $50,000 goal. It’s led by and Justin Alvey and is based in New York. They write: I’ve been seeing more and more of these standalone air quality sensors and it’s quite interesting. Because smog is a problem even in areas where there is little visible evidence of heavy pollution – and especially considering the conditions in Shanghai and Beijing, it makes a lot of sense to start thinking about air quality as a worldwide problem. Hopefully the Birdi can save us before we cough our way to an early grave.
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Ask A VC: DFJ’s Josh Stein On What He Looks For In Early-Stage Investing | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, DFJ Managing Director Josh Stein joined us in the studio to talk about his investing strategy, and much more. Stein, who has backed and invested in Box, Chartbeat, LendKey, Selligy, SugarCRM, Swell, AngelList, Redfin, Tremor Video, and Twilio, explained that DFJ is often the first institutional money in a startup. At that stage, Stein talked about what he looks for in an entrepreneur and an idea, speaking specifically about Box’s Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith, as well as Redfin’s Glenn Kelman. He tells us, “It’s about great people who are motivated less by money but by wanting to change some problem and are really persistent. It’s really hard to build a startup so we want people who are going to stick with it.” Check out the video above for more. |
Yahoo CEO Mayer Apologizes For Mail Outage That She Says Affected 1% Of Users | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | After a week of Yahoo Mail outages that began four days ago, CEO Marissa Mayer has posted an . In it, she gives some details about the issue, which was apparently related to a hardware failure — and says that the issue affected 1% of Mail users. “For many of us, Yahoo Mail is a lifeline to our friends, family members and customers,” reads Mayer’s apology. “This week, we experienced a major outage that not only interrupted that connection, but caused many of you a massive inconvenience — that’s unacceptable and it’s something we’re taking very seriously. ” The issue began on December 9th late in the evening, when a hardware outage alerted the engineering team to an issue with storage that served 1% of Yahoo’s users. The issue, says Mayer, was a ‘particularly rare’ one. Mayer also notes that a confusing ‘scheduled maintenance’ error which some users had seen during the emergency was in error. Mayer says that, as of this afternoon, Yahoo has restored access to ‘almost everyone’ and delivered the queue of messages that was held up from being delivered. IMAP access has not been completely restored, nor has the complete inbox states of users with folders and ‘star’ statuses. So if you log in to your inbox and see that stuff still missing, it’s theoretically coming. Yahoo says it will be reaching out to individual users on the status of their inboxes. “Above all else, we’re going to be working hard on improvements to prevent issues like this in the future. While our overall uptime is well above 99.9%, even accounting for this incident, we really let you down this week,” Mayer’s note concludes. “We can, and we will, do better in the future.” The outage began suddenly and has gone on for an extremely long period of time, especially for a critical service like email. We , noting that the issues were affecting small business owners. “Yahoo is so overwhelmed they cannot answer phone calls or reply to emails,” one user told TechCrunch. “I’ve been on hold for hours and hours since last Sunday, spoke twice to a real person who in both instances sent me to another number that is absolutely unreachable.” “They have shut down the websites of countless businesses. The last person I talked with [via phone] acknowledged they have no idea how many people they’ve impacted.” While we found Yahoo’s , and to carry over some nice design cues from its mobile efforts, not everyone felt the same. Many users were irritated by its changes and the loss of some well-liked features. Yahoo Mail SVP of communications products Jeff Bonforte also that noted that the majority of internal Yahoo staffers had not yet switched to the new Mail product. And just yesterday, Yahoo’s , going offline and remaining so for several hours. Yahoo and Mayer have faced criticism over how they handled this outage, with All Things D’s Kara Swisher . Mayer also published a brief update to her with the title Yahoo Mail restored and a link to a help doc, but the restoration had not in fact been completed. |
Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s 43-Day Assault On The Patent Troll | Contributor | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | Just over a week ago, the House passed the (H.R. 3309), an innocuous-sounding bill that contains sweeping changes to U.S. patent law motivated in large part by “the troll problem.” Here’s what you need to know about patent trolls: I once defended an international restaurant chain that trades in , in a matter. That actually happened — and more than once. Absurd patent assertions are legion, and many are left scratching their heads with one hand, demand letter in the other, asking, “why me?” The patent troll sometimes goes by the less pejorative label, “NPE” or “non-practicing entity.” The distinction between troll and NPE is a fine one since not all NPEs are trolls (a university might be an NPE but not a troll), but let’s use “NPE” to be consistent with prevailing usage. NPEs (the bad ones) are undeniably a problem. By one , companies that have been targeted by NPEs spend $29 billion a year in direct costs, with $83 billion a year in lost wealth, an amount that the authors concede is conservative. So Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) took action. The House Judiciary Committee has taken a renewed interest in NPEs, and on October 23, Goodlatte introduced the Innovation Act, a wide-ranging patent-reform bill aimed at making it more difficult for NPEs (the bad ones) to operate. What’s notable is that the act made it from committee introduction to full vote in about 43 days, which is fast for any piece of legislation. Patent attorneys still talk about the 1952 Amendments (some of us are not good dinner party company) because we don’t do this very often, and for good reason. Patent law is one of the more complex areas of the law and when you tinker with that law, even with the best of intentions, sometimes you break things. When I was 10 my parents had a Sony Betamax VCR that I decided to “fix.” We upgraded to VHS the next day. Best of intentions. For that reason, changes to the Patent Act tend to be slow and deliberate, and include hearing the opinions of a wide range of those that will be affected. The last major change to the patent system, the , took almost six years to come together, but it failed to rein in abuses by NPEs. The act includes a number of provisions that intend to make it difficult for NPEs to operate, either by increasing costs or risk or requiring a more detailed pre-suit investigation. Some of the more controversial points include making the loser pay the other side’s litigation fees, requiring far more up-front technical detail in support of the infringement claim, and halting all discovery until after the court interprets the patent claims. The act also provides for staying a case against customers where there is a pending action against the manufacturer, and requiring transparency of ownership of the litigated patent. A few NPEs are notorious for playing a hide-the-owner shell game. The act includes a number of cleanup changes to the 2011 . Sometimes you need to fix what you . We’re looking at you, 112th Congress. With this much money at stake, there are of opinions in the room. The Hon. Paul Michel, the former chief judge of the Federal Circuit (the court in charge of hearing nearly all patent appeals) was succinct in his criticism, saying that the act will “punish the innocent to corral the guilty, without really addressing the bad behavior of the guilty.” The American Intellectual Property Law Association (a 15,000-member trade group of lawyers, judges, USPTO employees and the like) published an to the House leadership calling for a balanced approach that preserves the rights of traditional patent owners and preserving the discretion of the courts to manage the cases before them. The Federal Judicial Conference, American Bar Association, and IEEE, among others, all voiced their concerns to the Committee. These “nays” say that the best long-term fix to the problem is to improve the quality of patents issued by the USPTO by fully funding the office and not diverting fee revenue to other agencies (the USPTO sometimes takes in more than it spends). In the other corner (the “yays”) is a roster of tech heavyweights that includes Apple, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, Microsoft, Oracle — companies who bear the brunt of abusive NPE litigation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a stalwart defender of free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights, called the act “ ,” making the world harder for trolls and “safer for true innovators.” Companies with an Apple-sized litigation budget may be less concerned with more expensive access to the courts, something that would be felt most by small inventors, small businesses, nonprofits, and the like. So who’s right? NPE litigation is a very real problem for companies both large and small, and it’s a drain on the economy. With the stakes so high, getting this right should be the first priority. In his testimony before the committee, David Kappos, the former head of the USPTO (who is now in private practice), questioned the urgency in the room: “Caution also calls for us to ask: is the building on fire? Do we have an emergency that requires immediate action? No. The building is not on fire.” The concerns of the leading alliance of patent practitioners, the former head of the USPTO, and former chief judge of the nation’s highest patent-specific court should cause everyone to stop for a moment and consider whether this is the best approach. In a laudable attempt to discourage abusive NPE litigation, the act increases costs for everyone and ties the hands of the judges who are at the front lines of the problem. Everyone, not just Intellectual Ventures and its subsidiaries, are discouraged and inhibited from availing the resources of the federal courts. Meanwhile, next door in the Senate, the has been introduced. The act ( ) lacks the fee-shifting, loser-pays, and discovery limitation provisions of its House counterpart, but keeps a version of transparency of ownership and invokes the FTC in the fight. A press release from Sen. Pat Leahy D-Vt. (and a sponsor of the act) voiced the same concerns as Judge Michel and the AIPLA so this might take a while. Hearings begin December 17. |
As The Microsoft CEO Race Tightens, The Company’s Satya Nadella Sits In The Spotlight | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | Ford’s Alan Mulally was going to save Microsoft from obsolescence through his storied leadership and management skills. Until he wasn’t. For a hot minute Qualcomm COO Steve Mollenkopf was on the list. Until he, too, was not — . As before Qualcomm hung a “hands off” sign around its executive: “Mollenkopf is on a list of several candidates who are under serious consideration [….] [the] list also includes Microsoft executive Satya Nadella and other outside candidates.” What’s interesting is that, through several rotations of CEO bingo, Nadella has managed to remain a leading candidate, as others fell in the stakes. AllThingsD’s , for example, that incoming executive president Stephen Elop has seen his fortune slip: Elop was considered the top contender (by me, at least), after Microsoft bought the mobile phone division of Nokia. But — for a variety of reasons — he soon fell behind two other internal candidates, Bates and Nadella. Nadella, in the meantime, is on something of a media tour, about his vision for cloud computing and the future of Microsoft. He also gave an . You can divine this flash of face time as a comically timed fluke, but Microsoft’s board must be watching to see how Nadella performs with a far bigger spotlight on his back. And how is he doing? Well, Nadella’s a nerd, which is a pretty good thing at a technology company. He’s certainly warm in person, at least in my experience. That said, he does speak like what he is: An experienced technology executive working on cloud computing. Apart from his core domain, Nadella can meander a bit. His talk at LeWeb included an answer about Xbox that made me giggle: Recently, Xbox One shipped, and we have Forze Motor 5, and there’s this one feature of it which is just stunning, right, so you are playing, you are racing, [and] it’s learning how you race, it creates a digital avatar, that then on behalf of you, races with others, and you get points for it. Nadella manages to look at the new Xbox One console from a data analytics perspective. Later on he did discuss the console more holistically, but it was a humorous way to start his thoughts. With his technical chops all but unimpeachable, Nadella’s prowess is less-proven prowess with consumers. During his time working with the Online Services Division, he had surface area with consumers, but it certainly isn’t the bulk of his experience. However, the simple answer to that argument is that if it were perfectly acceptable for Mulally to not be a technologist, the fact that Nadella might not be a hep cat about phones doesn’t matter. One interesting facet of the most recent Microsoft is that anyone who steps in to lead the company will find a competent leader at each of the company’s divisions (how competent in each case is your own value judgment). So, as Mulally would have had to lean heavily on his captains to run the ship, Nadella simply being better at cloud than Xbox isn’t much of a critique. While Microsoft turns over Nadella in its head, we in the public get to enjoy watching a company select its next head, a person that is widely expected to serve for a decade. It’s no small choice, which I believe is why Microsoft gave itself a full year to make the choice. Some are , which I don’t understand. To get a person of the caliber that Microsoft wants — needs, even — takes time. People with resumes that strong are in short supply, and have an annoying tendency to be currently employed. Nadella would make a fine Microsoft CEO in my estimation, but there are others who could also find success in the role. For now, the 44-year-old Nadella’s public profile has never been larger. |
Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | You’re in luck today, true believers! We have four exciting robots that will eventually enslave and/or eat us. Each one is more beautiful than the last, thereby allowing us to be lulled into a false sense of calm while these robots slowly dismantle our society, or morals, and eventually our organic matter. First up is the Stingray 500 drone, a quad-rotor air machine with some surprising features. The has corrective pitch programming that keeps it from flipping all over the place while you fly it. A central motor controls all four rotors and it uses a unique flight controller that keeps it upright and can even help it land without power. While the standard quadcopter design is just fine, I think this coupled with a flame thrower will really heat things up when the robots force us into relocation camps in the American hinterland. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnGhEInTXYc&feature=youtu.be] How about this exciting video of things to come? Created by , this dystopian video shows us what will happen when the robots get too smart for their own good and start to interact with angry humans. The robots will surely die the first few times… and then they’ll stop dying. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgLkWT246qU] Next we have the . This robot will help NASA conquer space and may even become the robot that conquers us. NASA scientist Nicolaus Radford offers a tour of the new robot and I certainly hope he has endeared himself to the the robots enough to, perhaps, in the end become their human collaborator. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE-YBaYjbqY] Finally we present a video from that shows us the future of meetings, art appreciation, and dating. Why is it special? Our own Samantha O’Keefe is working with the robots to reduce the amount of time we have to spend in art galleries! It’s OK, Sam, we understand: it only makes sense to work with our future masters because maybe you’ll get an extra protein ration when they finally take down all world religions and governments! Until next time, humans, keep your powder dry.
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Widespread Apple App Store Search Rankings Change Sees iOS Apps Moved Over 40 Spots, On Average | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | Apple has again tweaked its iOS App Store algorithms, and the changes have brought about widespread search ranking changes across both iPhone and iPad devices. That’s rankings, to be clear – meaning where an app is returned when a user searches for a particular keyword, like “music” or “banking,” for example, in the App Store. In other words, it’s not “ranking,” as in where an app lies on the App Store’s top charts. The change was first spotted by app marketing tools provider , which keeps a close eye on factors that would affect App Store Optimization, or ASO as it’s often called. (Basically, that’s SEO for mobile app store search). The company says the change occurred between 12/11 and 12/12, and is affecting both iPhone and iPad applications. The average ranking change they saw was 41.5 positions, which is 8 times the normal ranking change seen on an average day for iPhone results. Typically, the usual daily change is around 5 positions, for comparison’s sake. The search ranking changes on the iPhone seem to be larger than those seen during the iOS 7 release (see bar chart below), which was also significant. And it’s affecting mainly App Store search rankings, as noted above, not the top charts, though this is now under investigation. Some examples (see charts below) show the impact this has had on various popular apps for search terms including “banking,” “home,” “music,” and “travel.” Here you’ll see that some apps have moved only a little, while others quite a bit. For example, Pandora went from 8 to 5, following the adjustment, while Rdio moved up from 96 to 53. Meanwhile, under travel, Hipmunk jumped up from 58 to 34, and Hotwire went from 116 to 66. The charts have further examples, and these charts themselves are just a small sampling of MobileDevHQ’s tests, which involved 30,000 keyword searches. As the company further dug into the data related the keyword rankings, they also found that: And : Of course, Apple continually makes adjustments to its App Store algorithms, but it’s not as common for it to make a large-scale change that move apps around this much in terms of App Store search results. However, we’ve seen Apple focus on making its App Store search better in recent weeks – for example, that the App Store’s search engine had begun correcting for misspellings and other “fat finger” typos and mistakes. And in the past, we’ve also seen , in addition to just download volumes and velocity, for instance. What we don’t know right now is Apple is doing this – is it part of a larger test on its part to shift how a weighting factor works in its search rankings? Is it in response to a particular problem that Apple is now trying to correct for, as has been common in the past? (Apple’s algorithms often change when publishers learn how to game its results.) By spot checking the results over time, it appears that the changes have so far been sustained, MobileDevHQ reports, which would point to a more permanent algorithm change, and not a test. As more data rolls in, we’ll add it here. |
Gillmor Gang Live 12.13.13 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | – John Taschek, Dan Farber, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. |
Founder Stories: Meet The Young Makers And Educators Behind The Menlo App Academy | Contributor | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | First, this installment features the youngest entrepreneurs to be on our show, Max Colbert & Matthew Dillabough, who founded back in 2011 when they were only 12 years old. The Academy focuses on teaching students between grades 6-9 how to develop applications for Apple’s iOS. In about two years, the Academy has completed roughly 15 classes and taught close to 150 students. Wow. Second, in this discussion, Colbert and Dillabough share more of the backstory of how they started The Academy, beginning with noticing their friends also wanted to learn how to code. With a busy schedule of school, sports, and other activities, the founders somehow find the time to grow enrollment, market both online and offline, and did their part to fulfill their mission of helping kids have the option to be exposed to computer literacy. Additionally, the duo talk about the subtle dynamics created when kids teach other kids (as opposed to adults teaching kids), and the importance of communicating with all of their team members as the number of teachers grows. Most striking, to me, is the calm maturity both Colbert and Dillabough hold. Their intentions are pure, at a time in our country where our school children should (I believe) be exposed to literacy with machines and computer science to be better prepared for tomorrow’s world. |
Want To Win A Crunchie? Nominations Close Sunday | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | Every year the , our annual awards show, defines what it means to be a startup. We bring the scrappiest, hard-workingest, and most amazing startups onstage and celebrate them at one of the most amazing events of the year. But we can’t celebrate if you’re not nominated. Time is running out to your favorite startup, founder, CEO and technology of the year. We’re closing nominations on December 15, so please hurry. Co-hosted by TechCrunch, VentureBeat and GigaOm, the annual “Oscars of Tech” celebrates the best of the past year. But it’s you, the tech community, that nominates who among us will be most deserving to take the stage at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco on February 10th. Included in the 20 categories are the Best Startup, Best Design, and Angel of the Year with GitHub, FiftyThree, and Chris Dixon taking those top prizes home last year, respectively. New for 2013 is the Best Health Startup in which we will recognize the company that best epitomizes the future of medicine. Nominations will close on December 15th, 2013 at 11:59PM PST. General admission tickets .
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How Oculus Plans To Be Riding High When The Virtual Reality Wave Breaks | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | was conceived just over a year ago announced its Series B round of funding late last night, with a to add to its existing $16 million Series A and $2.4 million in Kickstarter crowdfunding dollars. That company is Oculus Rift: A virtual reality headset dreamt up by Gaikai veteran Brendan Iribe and a team of other startup vets. With nearly $100 million invested, expectations are huge, but the company is ready to meet those expectations, Iribe tells TechCrunch, and exceed them with a vision of the future that blurs the line between the virtual and the real. The Rift has already managed to sell over 42,000 units prior to its consumer launch, via development kits that are admittedly rough around the edges, according to Iribe. That’s impressive enough, but it’s not what’s selling investors like Marc Andreessen and game industry legends like John Carmack on the Rift – that’s the experience provided by the next-generation prototype, which is functionally the same as what we’ll see from the first consumer device, Iribe says, but which has been used by only a few hundred people at most as of right now. Once the new prototype was perfected, Iribe got in touch with Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, to say that they’d achieved what they’d set out to do and asked how soon they could come in to see it. The combination of the prototype demonstration, and former id founder and Doom creator John Carmack explaining his vision of where he sees the entire Oculus project headed “pretty much convinced them on the spot,” Iribe tells me. Dixon and Andreessen join the fairly limited group of outside VCs with ownership stake in Oculus VR, and Iribe says that the partners and funding were chosen specifically with the intent that they should help them get to through the initial V1 consumer launch without having to go find more money elsewhere. “The point of the first raise was to build out the technology,” Iribe says, explaining what the money has been spent on so far. “We actually thought it would take us a bit longer to get to the point of where we’re at now.” But it didn’t take that long. The new Oculus Rift prototype should be virtually identical in terms of experience to the version that ships to consumers. “We got to the point where the latest prototype of this technology really is beyond even what we expected for V1,” Iribe told me. “We kind of put the hammer down and said ‘Okay, this is it, this is definitely enough to totally blow away the world and deliver our consumer, V1 product.’ We’re looking back even now on the dev kit and going ‘oh gosh, this new one is so much better.’ It is literally an entirely different experience.'” “Of the 300 people who have seen the current prototype, not a single person has come away not saying ‘That’s gonna change the world,’ and that’s really [what we needed to accomplish] in terms of delivering on the promise of the vision we’ve all had for so many years,” Iribe says. There’s a general feeling that it’s a true ‘Holy Grail’ experience in terms of immersive reality tech among those who’ve tried the latest prototype, Iribe says. I asked if I’d be able to see for myself at CES coming up in January, but he says they’re not ready to announce yet what they’re bringing to the show, and we’ll find out closer to the date. Not to read too much into it, but that does sound pretty promising for those hoping to get a sense of this new design in action. The latest hardware still isn’t close to final in terms of product design, however, Iribe adds: “It’s what we want to bring as an experience,” he said. “It’s a prototype, so it still has its circuit boards and exposed wires and all that, but the experience, meaning once you put the device on, it is what we want to deliver in a consumer product. People go in, spend long periods of time in the experience and come out and say ‘I want to do more of that.’ There’s no kind of discomfort, no dizziness, no nausea. So many of the technical hurdles have been pretty much nailed.” As for things they’re still working on the engineering side, Iribe says that there’s an increasing interest in building more advanced eye movement detection to the Rift’s functionality. “[We recently hired] a lot of vision guys, that’s a big effort for us now,” he says. “We’re really focusing on the vision side, in terms of tracking and using optical tracking and camera tracking. That’s going to be a big focus for us going forward. Over time, we want to get more of the body in the game, but right now we’re trying to get your eyes in the game, combining your vision with your head tracking.” Aside from engineering work, there’s a lot that needs to be nailed down in the immediate future. There’s figuring out how to consumerize the actual product design itself, and then ramping up the initial production run. That’s why Iribe isn’t putting a firm date on the Rift’s availability date just yet: internally, they have a pretty good idea of when to expect it to reach retailers and customers, but they’re purposely keeping tight-lipped about those projections to make sure everything’s ready when the time comes. To that end, they’re also hiring smart people aggressively in virtually every capacity, as there’s not just a hardware and software component to the Rift, but services, an ecosystem, a consumer education initiative and much, much more that all need to come together at launch. Hardware startups, especially those dealing with novel input paradigms or wearable computing, have been multiplying sharply in the past couple of years, and recently we’ve seen a number that were initially crowdfunded via pre-orders deliver their shipping consumer devices. The results aren’t pretty: while some like the Pebble have been fairly well-received (though not universally loved), others like the Leap Motion and the Ouya have sounded a sour note. Iribe admits that potential fate is a little daunting, but believes that Oculus is doing everything right to avoid the same kind of crash at the gate. “John Carmack is writing code as fast as he can, travelling as little as he can,” he said. “I think he’s back to the early days of kind of a Doom and Quake era of him being held up in a room just programming as fast as he can to make this work really well, and he tells me having more fun than he’s had in a really long time.” That likely explains why his dual roles at both Oculus and id didn’t last long, as he stepped down from the original home of Doom and Quake late last month to . Carmack is doing what he loves most at Oculus, according to Iribe, which is tackling a difficult problem that’s “right on the edge of reality.” Carmack pioneered both 2D and 3D gaming, and he’s doing the same thing all over again with the Oculus Rift, and it “really works,” Iribe says. That valuation is high enough that any prospects of Oculus Rift getting scooped up by Microsoft, Sony or any other major incumbent gaming company is slim to none, Iribe says, at least until after they deliver their initial run of consumer devices. He also says that personally, the idea of having built what they have and not releasing it themselves just seems impossible. “We feel like we have a pretty good idea of what we can sell through pre-orders, and through consumer launch, for the first six, eight or even twelve months,” Iribe explains regarding their budgeting and the amount raised, and why they don’t anticipate having to find more capital pre-launch. Extrapolating from comments he made to me, I’d suggest they’re looking somewhere in the neighborhood of one million devices for a production run funded by what’s in their existing coffers, though Iribe declined to get into specifics. He did say that they see that expanding to hundreds of millions of devices and active users sometime in the next decade or so, thanks to the long-term Oculus vision of VR beyond the confines of gaming. What we’re looking at is the evolution of virtual reality, starting with this headset. It’s going to be a little bigger than we’d all want it to be of course, and it will have its form factor challenges, but the experience inside is good enough that people are going to really enjoy it, and love going in, playing games and watching movies. And then it’ll quickly evolve, and its form factor will keep getting better; closer and closer to sunglasses, lighter and easier to wear. Very quickly, over the next decade or two, what we’re looking at really becomes about communications. Just like the smartphone now represents the primary means with which we communicate digitally, Iribe sees a future where VR supplants a lot of the same usage, so that you have a pair of sunglass-style Rift goggles that you simply slip on when you want to talk face-to-face, as if in person, with your friend halfway around the world. Our kids will laugh at stories of typing away on virtual keyboards and smiling back at grainy video into the unblinking eye of a monitor-mounted webcam, and remote business won’t be so remote anymore. In short, Oculus is taking the first step towards a world where the “virtual” in virtual reality is just a technical distinction, not a description of experience. |
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Oculus VR, Smartphone Subsidies, And Home Automation | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | With the gaming world reinvigorated by the introduction of two new consoles, Occulus has announced to bring virtual reality headsets to the masses. Meanwhile, AT&T’s CEO mentioned , which ended up being a hot topic of debate this week. And as we open our homes to friends and loved ones over the holidays, it’s worth looking at . We discuss all this and more on the TechCrunch Gadgets Podcast, featuring , , , and . Enjoy!
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Facebook’s New Offline Sales Measurement Trick Could Make Ad Clicks Obsolete | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | Facebook is for brick-and-mortar business owners to measure if their Facebook ads drove in-store sales, even if customers never clicked. Businesses can buy ads, then send Facebook privacy-safe data on who bought what, and Facebook will tell them how much people who saw the ads bought compared to those who didn’t. By providing confidence in return on investment from ad impressions, Facebook could get advertisers spending more, especially on mobile where ad clicks disrupt the user experience. Plus, the info could help marketers learn what ads actually resonate with people, which in turn helps users and Facebook by making ads in the feed more relevant and less annoying. Ad measurement might not sound super sexy, but the marketing industry is experiencing a massive leap forward in how it tracks ROI right now. Once upon a time, marketers had little idea if their ads worked. They’d buy TV or print campaigns in specific markets, and then hope to see sales lift there too. The problem was there were tons of confounding factors, and it was tough to tell if a buyer had actually seen the ad. Online advertising changed everything. Suddenly marketers could track that a user clicked an ad that sent them to their site where they made a purchase, indicating the ad worked. Unfortunately, there were a ton of limitations. If the ad wasn’t the last click before the purchase, they were hard to tie together. That led marketers to put a premium on “demand fulfillment” campaigns like search keyword ads that could be easily tracked, but this shortchanged any “demand generation” ads the user saw before that might have contributed to their purchase decision. If users only saw an ad but didn’t click, then bought something later, the advertiser may not have known that impression had an impact. Google, Facebook, and others eventually began developing ways to tell if someone who simply saw an ad later made a purchase online. But that still left the connection between online ads and offline sales in brick-and-mortar stores as a big mystery. Facebook later as well as Datalogix to let brick-and-mortar businesses upload hashed, privacy-protected lists of their customers to Facebook so they can target them with ads to keep buying.] Here’s how it works. A business collects email addresses of their customers or potential customers through online forms, requests at the register, signups for newsletters, loyalty programs, or surveys. The business then uses Facebook’s Custom Audiences targeting tool to submit the email list from their customer relationship management system in a , and advertise to these people on Facebook. When a customer subsequently makes a purchase at the advertiser’s physical location and swipes a credit card or loyalty card, or provides their email address again , the business can match the purchases to their email address. The business then submits an encrypted version of this sales data to Facebook. Facebook compares how much people who saw the ad bought versus a control group of people in the Custom Audience that it didn’t show ads to, and reports the findings to the business. The impact of being able to measure online ads’ impact on offline sales like this is massive. “I’m beyond excited” Boland tells me in complete monotone, Ad measurement guys aren’t always the most dynamic, though, so I still believe him. How will this change marketing? For example, an advertiser could learn that people who saw the ad spent 60% more than those who didn’t. That means it’s probably cost-effective to keep buying those ads. If the business runs multiple A/B tests, they could figure out which ad variant drove the most sales lift, cancel their other versions of the ad, and run more like the successful one in the future. The ability to measure ROI of impressions, not just clicks, is especially critical for mobile advertising. On the small screen, you do one thing at a time, opposed to running multiple apps and browser tabs on the same screen on the web. That means clicking on an ad on mobile is very disruptive to whatever you’re doing. You can’t just pop a tab and keep browsing. That likely discourages mobile ad clicks. But just because someone didn’t click doesn’t mean the ad didn’t affect their buying decisions. On mobile, ads like those on Facebook often take up the entire screen. They’re essentially a screen takeover. Even if you only read for a second and then scroll by, that brand name, store location, or promoted discount could stay in your brain and later get you into a store to buy something. Facebook’s new measurement technology could reveal that connection. The tool could bring in a bunch more ad revenue for Facebook. Boland tells me “We fundamentally believe that measurement drives confidence. We’re moving away from proxy metrics [like clicks] to sales outcomes. As we build real measurement solutions, they’ll spend more money digitally and specifically on mobile.” Of course, some users might find the idea that Facebook “knows” what they buy offline to be a bit creepy. But the sales data is all encrypted so Facebook doesn’t actually know who is who, and it deletes all the sales data once it’s made its reports to the advertisers. But what most people hate more is being shown crappy, irrelevant ads. Along with more money, Custom Audiences measurement could even make Facebook’s users happier. Better data on what ads work lead to more relevant ads, and more satisfied users who spend more time on Facebook. Soon, you might see fewer ads for things you never buy, and more for your favorite local stores. Advertising is easy to hate on, but it’s what lets companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter offer their services for free to everyone. And there’s a big world out there full of things you might want to buy or learn, but you’d never discover. At their worst, ads fracture our attention and clutter our vision. But when well-targeted and measured, ads can help curate the world for us. |
Obama’s NSA Task Force May Recommend Meaningful Changes | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | President Obama’s surveillance task force will reportedly recommend that a civilian should direct the National Security Agency and that it should reform its mass data collection practices. An overview of the non-binding recommendations were to and , giving the eager public a glimpse of what might be in store. Unfortunately, the headlines offer conflicting interpretations. If you bother today, you’ll conclude that the president’s spying reform task group is going to recommend a “ ” but complete “ ” of the National Security Agency, and “ ” with mass data collection, but in a way that . Here’s what we know: Last August, President Obama that a task force would review the NSA’s Internet and telephone spying practices. According to The Journal, the task force will make a few key suggestions: . Right now, that position is held by the hawkish General Keith Alexander, who says there’s on terrorist interactions than with vast spying. A civilian, in theory, might be more concerned with civil liberties. Fox News today that the Obama administration does not plan on splitting the NSA director’s position into a separate Cyber Command unit; so if a civilian does get appointed, he or she will likely oversee the controversial spying program . Instead of warehousing call records in a military database, the panel will recommend that the telephone companies hold it for safe keeping. Now, since the NSA still needs a judge’s approval to query the information, we don’t know whether this would actually reduce the number of people surveilled writes that the task force report “aligns very closely” with a bill from House Judiciary member and co-author of the 9/11-era Patriot Act, James Sensenbrenner. Sensenbrenner has been on an NSA-reform tear, claiming that the spy agency is “ ” and has supported , including the end of bulk data collection. reports, however, that “a program to collect data on every phone call made in the United States should continue, though under broad new restraints that would be intended to increase privacy protections”. There may be some nuanced recommendations to make these seemingly conflicting reports consistent. But until the actual recommendations are made public, we think it’s better that you read some other news. Or maybe this . [ ] |
New Cut the Rope 2 Game Drops On December 19, Check Out The Video Preview | Mike Butcher | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | We’ve seen the global success of games like Angry Birds from Rovio, but while the latter has $42m in funding, ZeptoLab, who is sitting on 400 million downloads of its Cut the Rope game since its 2010 launch, has taken zero external financing. That’s pretty amazing when you think about it, and this lack of funds is not holding it back from today releasing details about the sequel. will be available from 19 December for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch for $0.99, with an Android version following early next year. For the first time, players will be able to interact with main character Om Nom, with new challenges and gameplay elements across 120 levels. A new series of characters, Nommies, will help him collect candy on his way, Backdrops of a forest, junkyard, city park, sandy dam and underground all feature. Other versions get a new lift. Check out the video below: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwyCaO9J9Qw] Cut the Rope: Time Travel gets the free Wild West and the future, accessible via three stars or in-game purchase. Cut the Rope: Holiday Gift hits Android for the first time and goes free on iOS. Cut the Rope: Experiments gets new game content. And a new level pack, Bamboo Chutes, comes out for iOS and Android in December. Did we mention Om Nom gets new hats? These games are creating powerful childrens’ brands. ZeptoLab already to bring their Om Nom character from Cut The Rope into kids’ meals this year. Slovenia’s Outfit7, Australia’s Halfbrick and Finland’s Rovio, have all moved into merchandising over the past year. And the UK’s Moshi Monster has become a merchandising powerhouse, lately releasing an entire animated film. |
Social Media Analytics Company Viralheat Names Jeff Revoy As Its New CEO | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | is announcing that it has a new CEO: Jeff Revoy, whose recent roles include serving as former Chief Marketing and Product Officer at email marketing company iContact. A company spokesperson suggested that it was time for a new CEO because Viralheat is shifting its focus from small and medium businesses to larger enterprises: “Jeff has a lot of experience helping companies like iContact transition into the Enterprise space and will help take Viralheat through its next phase of growth.” They added that the previous CEO, co-founder Raj Kadam, will remain “100% active at the company,” working on sales and business development. Revoy’s includes multiple vice president roles at Yahoo, serving as chief revenue officer at ChooChee (which was, it seems, ), and the aforementioned position at iContact (which was ). Founded in 2009 and backed by mayfield Fund, Viralheat’s services include social media monitoring, analytics, publishing, sentiment analysis, and more, and it says it serves “thousands” of customers. In the press release announcing his hiring, Revoy praised Viralheat’s “easy-to-naviate monitoring and analytics tools that help large businesses succeed in a rapidly changing digital communications environment.” |
Last Minute Holiday Shopping? SixDoors Raises $600K To Courier Gifts, Well, To Your Door | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | Same-day mobile shopping app has been iterating on its idea of local product delivery since August, but only with the latest version released just weeks ago has the app really found its footing. Since the new release, SixDoors has doubled its user base, and now offers San Francisco residents a way to shop from their iPhone at over 60 local retailers and have their items delivered in as fast as 90 minutes. The company has also now closed on $600,000 in seed funding from Kima Ventures, and other angel investors, some of whom had backed founder Pascal Levy-Garboua’s earlier efforts, including founder and CEO of Vente-Privee, Jacques-Antoine Granjon, and . Levy-Garboua, who created with Thorsten Lubinski (CTO), previously co-founded virtual assistant service VirtuOz which He left the company in 2011, however, to help advise other startups. He sat on the board at Producteev (sold to Jive), for example, and helped get IQ Engines by Yahoo for $30-something million. Now, he’s focusing on a more local project with this “anti-Amazon” play. The idea, Levy-Garboua tells us, is to get people to buy from their city’s brick-and-mortar retailers. “Our goal is to support local businesses,” he says. “I’ve always admired small business owners,” Levy-Garboua adds. “I’m a city person. I love cities, and when you love cities, it’s all the stores, restaurants, cafes, and businesses that surround you that make your city interesting.” With SixDoors, users can browse through curated collection of goods, or shop by category. And in the newer release, they can also build out their own shopping list through a “gift concierge” feature which offers suggestions and ideas. There is a broad selection of products in SixDoors from a variety of San Francisco-based indie retailers, including those selling items for the home, food, drinks, gifts, as well as items for men, women and children. Clothing, though, is not a focus for the app. The process of actually purchasing the item is not too different from any other m-commerce experience, except that, after paying, you’re prompted to provide an address and time slot for accepting your delivery. SixDoors’ couriers are available from 10 AM to 9 PM to make deliveries. (The company uses its own independent contractors as couriers.) SixDoors takes a percentage of the sales and charges an additional $6 per delivery for now, even when you’re ordering from multiple stores. The delivery fee will be waived beginning tomorrow through Christmas as a part of a holiday promotion. SixDoors is also offering email and Skype gift help via santashelper@sixdoors.com. The company currently has seven employees, who also do deliveries themselves. It has partially spent the new funding as the raise took place over a longer time frame than usual, Levy-Garboua explains, saying how he made the mistake of working while raising at the same time, this go-round. Now the focus is on growing the SixDoors footprint, and managing the inbound requests from other stores interested in being on the service, too. SixDoors joins a number of other local, same-day delivery services operating in the region including , , , and others, as well as efforts from major players like , , and . However, it’s more focused on shopping for gifts, which may or may not include food or drink items. And it’s not necessarily meant for more general purpose needs like office supplies, small electronics purchases, or other things which you would normally consider among your “errands.” SixDoors is a free . |
null | Mike Butcher | 2,013 | 12 | 12 | null |
Appsfire Exits The App Discovery Business To Focus On Mobile Advertising, Native Ads | Sarah Perez | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | It’s tough to compete with the Apple App Store. , which has been in the app discovery business since its founding in 2009, is pulling all its consumer-facing app discovery apps in a week in order to focus on its mobile ad technologies instead. Says CEO Ouriel Ohayon, it’s “something we should have done a while ago.” But the company’s database of App Store data, called “App Genome,” is not going to waste. It will power Appsfire’s ad engine instead. This means Appsfire will not serve ads for those apps already installed on a user’s device. “So what we did with the app was totally useful to what we’ll do now,” Ohayon tells us. “It’s more than useful. It is what we believe will make us unique.” Appsfire detailed the changes on a company blog released this morning, where the company noted that its consumer-facing apps (iOS and Android) have reached 12 million unique users and served over 2 billion recommendations to date. Even today, the service is growing with an added 8,000 to 10,000 new users per day. Reading between the lines, that growth may not have translated into the profits needed to keep the app discovery business afloat. It may have been worth doing, but it’s not worth continuing, it seems. Early last year, Appsfire’s larger focus, and today its core business, was introduced. The company rolled out app engagement tools that allow app publishers to engage users, market and monetize their apps. The Appsfire SDK is today used by over 1,000 developers, reaching 150 million unique devices. Last month, the company , which now includes a new ad unit, which Ohayon explained at the time as being like an iAd experience without the banner. In fact, the goal with this full-screen unit is to kill off terrible banner ads altogether. Now Appsfire is working on its foray into native advertising. Its next ad unit, code-named Ura Maki (or Inside Out), will debut next week, the company says. It’s being tested in a few apps at present. Though the company is not offering a public preview, Ohayon showed us one example of the format in action. [ : Ohayon asked us to remove our description of the ad format.] Ohayon says the ad is fully native and fully integrated in the app experience without changing it. It keeps the integrity of the app while providing an immersive experience, he explains. As for the Appsfire consumer-facing app, it will continue to be maintained for existing users. But for new users, the app will no longer be available to download. |
Leaked Facebook Video Ad Pitch Deck Reveals Plans To Steal TV And YouTube Dollars | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | “Avoid saying anything negative about YouTube – leave the impression of the user experience up to them” Facebook tells its adtech partners in a leaked, confidential deck that teaches them to sell Facebook’s video ads. The 32-page document details Facebook’s plan to beat television with reach and YouTube with targeting, and spills the beans about an overhaul to video insights slated for Q1 2014. If Facebook’s plan works, it could lure in tons of ad revenue as marketers shift their focus from television to digital. The full “Facebook For Business: Video On Facebook” presentation including slides and Facebook’s notes is splayed out below. It was sent to Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer partners in late November to teach them to sell video ads to their clients. [Correction: This was sent to marketers, not presented at a meeting.] Facebook used NDAs to try to keep the presentation away from the public, but I’ve attained a copy. Facebook’s pitch for video ads breaks down to three things, as explained in this excerpt from the presentation: “On TV, advertisers don’t always know who people are, and over deliver to certain people and can’t reach other people. So advertisers end up hitting the same people over and over again with a large portion of the audience being underexposed.” Again, Facebook isn’t pulling punches here. One of the social network’s greatest assets is its trove of ad-fueling personal data. Users pour demographic and interest data into their profiles to share with friends and be found, but Facebook also leverages that data to be able to pinpoint them with relevant ads. Taking a dig at YouTube where a lot of demographic data is inferred indirectly and not always accurately, Facebook writes “In narrowly targeted campaigns, the average online reach is 38% accurate, but on Facebook, our average reach is 89% accurate.” Facebook also touts that users volunteer to watch video ads on its platform instead of being required to watch on YouTube, so the impressions should be valued higher. “When you use video on Facebook, these are chosen views – the consumers clicks to play or scrolls through to watch the video as compared to an ad on YouTube interrupting the user experience and feeling forced.” Still, Facebook doesn’t want its ad partners coming off as bullies so it explains “Avoid saying anything negative about YouTube.” Instead, partners are supposed to lay out the facts and just imply YouTube is inferior. Except that it isn’t, at least not right now. And Facebook admits that. “BACKGROUND FOR SALES RE: VIDEO INSIGHTS vs. YouTube Currently, we only report on video plays, which is a weakness compared to YouTube, which reports on video views, completed views, and average duration of view. We are working on building out our video insights to give advertisers a better sense for how videos are performing. New video insights target launch: Q1 2014. [NOTE: Video insights improvements are highlight (sic) confidential]” So by next year, Facebook’s video ad insights will be a better match for YouTube, but until then, partners are supposed to cite metrics about likes and comments, larger ad images, and a more “streamlined” post-click experience. The fact is that Television is the status quo for advertisers, and YouTube’s roadblock ads (even if you can skip them after five seconds) work similarly to traditional TV commercials. That means Facebook still has an uphill climb in selling its video ads. While users might be scared that these video ads will stick out like sore thumbs on Facebook, the company is actually in the middle of a push to bring a lot more organic, user generated video to the site. It’s now rolling out its new feature on the . Facebook mentions videos ads you “scroll through”, which could be a subtle way of noting that auto-play video ads are coming. But the big thing absent from this deck is measurement. TV and some other online ad platforms have a tough time proving that marketing spend on them generates a return on investment. Facebook may be discounting one of its most potent weapons in the ad war. Online, Facebook hooks into sales information through cookies, hashed CRM data, and . Offline, brick and mortar data providers like and Facebook’s Custom Audiences tool let advertisers see if showing someone an ad made them buy more. It may not be the platform with the biggest reach, targeting, or engagement that captures the ad dollars fleeing television in print, but the one that can best prove its ads actually work. — — . Before we dive in, I want to give you a peek at what we mean by ‘video on Facebook.’ We aren’t talking about video ads on the right column of desktop or even just in desktop News Feed – we are talking about video delivered in the palm of your hand wherever you go. Video that takes up almost the entire mobile screen and plays seamlessly in line. This is video on Facebook. There couldn’t be a better time to invest in video on Facebook. Why? Three critical components of successful marketing are aligned to drive your business results: 1. You want to be where people are. Changing consumer behavior should shape where you spend your marketing dollars. 2. You want to reach all of the people who matter to you. Facebook has unparalleled targeted reach. 3. You want to be in the most engaging digital real estate, which, as you just saw, is Facebook’s News Feed. If you want people to see your brand messages, you have to reach them where they are spending time. Consumers are changing the way they spend their time – with more and more people spending time on digital. Gone are the days when a family gathered around their TV on Sunday night to connect with the outside world. Television is no longer a guaranteed way to reach and engage your target audience To get the best perspective on the changes taking place now, it might help to go back to the 50’s That was the last time a new medium came along to capture the most time per day of people: TV surpassed radio It was such an important medium that people significantly expanded the amount of time they spent with media Source: “Mobile helps propel digital time spent’, eMarketer, July 2013 Television quickly became the focus for people, and soon thereafter the advertising industry, and it ruled for over 50 years Source: “Mobile helps propel digital time spent’, eMarketer, July 2013 In the 90’s, we saw a new shift: people began to spend time on Digital media as well And, according to eMarketer, in 2013 the amount of time people spend per day on Digital media will surpass television Source: “Mobile helps propel digital time spent’, eMarketer, July 2013 It’s important to point out that it was mobile (smartphones and tablets) that not only pushed Digital to this inflection point, but is also now the majority of time spent on Digital And once again, people are adding to the total time they spend with media as they leverage the power of mobile to remain connected to the people and things they care about throughout the day Source: “Mobile helps propel digital time spent’, eMarketer, July 2013 Looking forward, it’s not hard to imagine time spent with Digital continuing to increase, and Mobile taking an even more dominant share of that time as technology makes staying connected even easier Even if you haven’t been investing in TV to date, this data should cause you to stop in your tracks because it speaks to the fact that we’re all now operating in a new paradigm and we have to take digital seriously Source: “Mobile helps propel digital time spent’, eMarketer, August 2013 We can all relate to the shift of consumption to mobile because, for many of us, it’s now a device that is with us all day, every day. In fact, people check their phone 100x/ day and they check Facebook 10-15x/day. Facebook’s role in the shift to mobile comes to life in terms of time spent on mobile. A lot of time is spent by people on mobile with Google properties, YouTube, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Twitter and Pinterest And more total time is spent on mobile on Facebook and Instagram than all of those combined In fact, Facebook and Instagram make up 21% of total time spent on mobile. In the end, as marketers, this type of engagement gives you significant opportunities to connect with your core consumers. But, it’s not just about the engagement we’re seeing on mobile. Facebook’s scale and targeting capabilities enable you to reach all of the people who matter to you. In the US, you can reach 179M people every month. Many of these people are on Facebook every single day. In fact, you can reach 128M people every day in the US and 101M people every day on mobile. [Customize this slide with your client’s demographics] On this slide is an audience example for gamers, 18-34 in the US. It is based off of the FB BCT ‘Console Gaming,’ which includes ‘People that have liked pages related to console gaming or otherwise expressed interest in console gaming on Facebook.’ Facebook can help you access customer segments that have typically been hard or very expensive to reach. The size of our global audience coupled with our targeting capabilities enables advertisers to find audiences who they may not be able to find consistently or at scale on other media platforms. For example, on TV, advertisers don’t always know who people are, and over deliver to certain people and can’t reach other people. So advertisers end up hitting the same people over and over again with a large portion of the audience being underexposed. With Facebook, you can precisely reach the audience you want, and know that your impressions are being delivered to the right people. *Data: Network 1: 56%, Network 2: 55%, Network 3: 61%, Network 4: 59%, FB: 70% Uses Nielsen’s TV/Internet/ Mobile Data Fusion panel to measure differences in reach between Facebook (PC + Mobile) and TV networks looking at a full month of data. But, you may be wondering how to consider Facebook in relation to your investment in TV advertising. Facebook delivers incremental reach above TV, particularly for the highly coveted 25-34 demo During daytime, Facebook can increase reach above each of the major broadcast networks by 125 to 160+% among 25 to 34 year olds. During Primetime, Facebook can increase reach by 25% to 38% among 25 to 34 year olds. Key Takeaway: Content consumption has changed dramatically in the past few years — shifting meaningfully toward digital channels, particularly mobile. As a result, online, and Facebook particularly, are able to deliver audiences at a scale that allows marketers to either efficiently drive incremental reach on top of TV or execute cross media campaigns with massive reach. NOTE: Significant incremental reach among 18-24 year olds as well (see slides in appendix) Daytime: 81-95% Primetime: 56% – 78% People are themselves Facebook, which means we can deliver more accurate targeting, based on real information about our users. This also means that advertisers can deliver the most relevant and resonant messages to their target audiences. The same is true – and even more significant in narrowly targeted campaigns. In narrowly targeted campaigns, the average online reach is 38% accurate, but on Facebook, our average reach is 89% accurate. Because of this high accuracy on Facebook, businesses aren’t seeing wasted impressions like they do in other mediums. So, how will your brand show up on Facebook? Facebook News Feed puts your brand in the center of the most engaging digital real estate. The News Feed puts brands front and center for the consumer, offering rich ways to capture attention and engagement. The News Feed is a personalized newspaper – where people go to consume photos of their friends and family, news stories, and content from brands. Similar to television, mobile naturally lends itself to a linear experience, where consumers focus on one piece of content at a time. Every piece of content, whether a photo or an article or an ad, now has the opportunity to capture attention and engagement. Ads consumed in a linear format are 9X more effective than those consumed on a traditional web page, which typically contain multiple ads. The linear format can take up the full screen on mobile and provides a captive moment for marketers to capture attention. [Datalogix] When you use video on Facebook, these are chosen views – the consumers clicks to play or scrolls through to watch the video as compared to an ad on YouTube interrupting the user experience and feeling forced. MORE DETAIL RE: CENTER OF EXPERIENCE The News Feed is the main event on mobile. And, given businesses can appear in the News Feed, they can essentially takeover the entire homepage, resulting in the ultimate engagement with consumers. Our advertising units in News Feed are highly engaging given that they are equal in size and prominence as content from a user’s friends and family. They are not off to the side or secondary to the experience, but are central to the experience and delivered in a linear way. SIZE News Feed ads are 2x the the size of a 300×250 banner, and often can be full screen in mobile. STATS FB mobile Page post ads are 10-120% more likely to regularly draw attention than other ad types Likelihood that FB ads and SS regularly draw attention on mobile as compared to other ad type 10% more than Pre-roll or Mid-roll Ads 22% more than Video Ads 38% more than Banner Ads 120% more than Pop-up Ads Source: Prosper Mobile Insights, July 2012. Video ads deploy sight, sound, and motion to grab your audience’s attention in News Feed Page post video ads drive stronger performance than off-site video links given they are optimized for video views and provide a seamless experience to the viewer. Their images are also 11x larger than offsite video, ensuring your brand gets noticed. FB vs YouTube stats 16.6% of YouTube visits came from Facebook in September 2013 (comScore MyMetrix Source/Loss report, worldwide, home and work – DESKTOP) OBJECTION HANDLING RECO Clients may bring up YouTube and argue that it’s better to be on YouTube given they have access to the aggregate counter and more video views. Potential response: Yes, YouTube has the aggregate counter, but Facebook’s Ad Insights provides additional stats re: likes, comments, and shares Facebook offers a larger image in the most engaging place on the web – thumbnail takes up a lot of space in News Feed The post-click experience with native Facebook video is more streamlined than the experience when a user clicks on a link pointing to an offsite video player (see next slide) BACKGROUND FOR SALES RE: VIDEO INSIGHTS vs. YouTube Currently, we only report on video plays, which is a weakness compared to YouTube, which reports on video views, completed views, and average duration of view. We are working on building out our video insights to give advertisers a better sense for how videos are performing. New video insights target launch: Q1 2014. [NOTE: Video insights improvements are highlight confidential] The experience with Facebook native video is much more seamless than when the user is taken offsite to view a video. This experience becomes even more choppy offsite for age-gated content (e.g., from an alcohol brand) given the person must sign-in to the other app to view the video. SPEAKING TIPS GIVEN SHOWING YOUTUBE COMPARISON Emphasize the informational/ educational nature of the video Avoid saying anything negative about YouTube – leave the impression of the user experience up to them Video can be used across the brand objectives you consider for media planning. Media planning – these three happen one after the other 1.”Seed”: $50-$100/$200K hyper-targeted teaser to start generating buzz about your new product or brand campaign with your core target audience (e.g., using Partner Categories, Custom Audiences, Interests, competitor’s Interests) 2.”Blast”: $500K-$1M campaign to drive mass awareness of your new product or brand campaign to your target audience (typically over a 1-3 day period) 3.”Sustained” media: reinforce your message after the initial blast. You should tailor creative to specific audiences to drive the best results. These campaigns can range anywhere from a week to a few months. For your blast period, combine the value of video and guaranteed reach in News Feed Reach the majority of people on Facebook in one or three days with your Page post video message through News Feed Run campaigns on desktop and/or mobile Own the segment: One marketer per audience per day Guaranteed impressions to audience over 24 hours (Reach Block) or 72 hours (Target Block) Best use cases for mass awareness campaigns: Product or marketing campaign launch Drive mass awareness of a time-sensitive message Teasers to build excitement Build creative that speaks to the entire audience You can precede a blast campaign with a ‘seed campaign’ and then follow-up a blast campaign with a ‘sustain campaign.’ Achieve the lowest cost-per-view by combining our accurate, granular targeting capabilities with your compelling video messages Reach a custom cluster of people who will react favorably to a specific video creative Run these sustained, targeted campaigns in tandem with mass awareness campaigns to drive the best results Recommendations Select a thumbnail that draws people in Capture their attention in the first 5 seconds Keep creative short and sweet: no need for an entire story You can also run sustained campaigns with a mix of photos and videos, depending on your objectives and creative available. I’ve highlighted why there couldn’t be a better time to invest in video on Facebook. Be where people are – on mobile. Targeted reach – reach all of the people who matter to you Put your brand in the most engaging digital real estate – Facebook’s News Feed. Now, I want to tell you about a few brands that have had tremendous success using video on Facebook. These brands are driving business results. comScore action lift study (March 2013) analyzed 10 gaming campaigns across multiple genres – campaigns included a variety of ad units, including video. Results are compared to a holdout group. Brands can use high-quality content to build awareness To launch its new title, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Activision used Facebook ads primarily on mobile to drive video views of its game trailer at scale Objective: Increase awareness of Activision’s new console game, Call of Duty: Ghosts, with males 18-44 in the U.S. Delivered 50M impressions over a 3-day period, with majority of impressions delivered on mobile Performance 55% of US males aged 18-24 were reached over 3-day period – Reached 20M US males 18-44 and 23M people in total 85% of impressions delivered on-target, compared to industry norm of 41% (Nielsen Cross-Publisher Online Campaign Ratings) 14% lift in brand awareness among the target audience (18-44) 24% lift in brand awareness among males 25-34 OMD, Activision’s media agency, leveraged Nielsen measurement solutions to validate and compare reach efficiency across its entire digital marketing plan, as well as determine the impact Facebook messaging had on shifting brand metrics such as awareness and message recall Results 50% ahead of goal for pre-orders of the game (the company was looking to achieve 10% of its total pre-order goal by end of its fiscal year March 31, 2012 and it achieved 15%). 385% increase in people talking about this 8% increase in fans, or nearly 200,000 new fans. The Resident Evil Page now has more than 3 million fans, which means Capcom can reach 350 million friends of fans. 552% lift in viral reach for the Page Goals Working with its agency Tangible Media, Capcom wanted to engage with existing fans of the Resident Evil Page and acquire new ones: To make the launch of the new title feel like an event in a way that would generate buzz in the media and on the Internet To drive pre-orders of the game Approach [PAGES] Tangible and Capcom made Facebook the center of its campaign to create a massive event out of the announcement of the Resident Evil title on January 19, 2012, seven months ahead of the game’s actual release. Capcom created a mysterious microsite, nohopeleft.com, and Facebook Page to promote viral teaser content leading up to the official game announcement on the Resident Evil Page.The No Hope Left Page contained cryptic videos and photos featuring panicked citizens and deserted cities, which were hints for existing Resident Evil fans and engaged new fans through all of the viral sharing. [ADS] The media portion on Facebook had three main phases, all designed to create broad awareness in the gaming and entertainment community.: The first phase included a flight of Premium Ads designed to build pre-awareness and anticipation around the March 19 reveal of Resident Evil 6..: Ads included the scary videos and a poll asking people “What would you do when all is lost?” Another ad invited people to RSVP for a secret event set for March 19, 2102 Ads were targeted at Resident Evil’s large base of then 2 million fans and the broader console gaming community The second phase was designed to reveal the announcement trailer created for RE6: A Target Block to U.S. males 18-34 featured Premium Page post Ads to promote the announcement trailer, encouraging people to watch and share the video with their friends A portion of the video ads drove traffic to a custom tab on the Resident Evil Page with links to pre-order the game In the third phase, Capcom sustained enthusiasm for the game using a variety of Premium, Marketplace Ads and sponsored stories: Premium Ads featured the trailer and polls asking fans what characters in the game they were most excited for Marketplace Ads were used to grow the Resident Evil fan base and were targeted at console gamers Background Wendy’s launched a product in 2013 – pretzel bacon cheeseburger Typically run a product in a few select markets before launching across the US In test markets, saw people were obsessed with it Creative agency came up with program called Pretzel Love Songs, essentially making fun of boy bands and love song genre As people submitted their love songs, Wendy’s asked them if they could use them for advertisements The real hook was people got to be famous for a minute in a video that Wendy’s was pushing out to tens of thousands of people, primarily through Facebook – they shared these videos over time as different volumes. This was very different for their brand – typically very traditional with their marketing BUT, spoke directly to an insight – people want to be famous Performance Reach: 83M unique individuals 52.7% TV-only 23.2% Overlap 8.3% FB-only (persons 18+, Nielsen XCR reach) Typical media buy just talking about impressions and TRPs, but they were able to get MANY unique individuals Over 8% reached only through digital marketing (incremental reach through FB) 62% of Facebook-only reach was with Millennials – a big deal for Wendy’s given they want to connect with that generation Huge engagement: 5M+ video views and 1.7B total impressions Media ROI: % reach from Facebook far exceeded % of investment on Facebook What does this mean for the company? Excellent sales results and ROI They will emulate this strategy in the future b/c it worked so well Background available in Ad Week video: http://adweek.mlbam.com/video/v30927297 (22:00 – 35:00) OBJECTIVE: Wanted to boost brand loyalty and drive viewership of its Ramadan Holiday video STRATEGY: Launched a combined TV and FB campaign 4 videos showcasing banks reverence of traditional Saudi values Two Reach Blocks guaranteed that the ads reached the entire Saudi Facebook audience that logged in that day. RESULTS: Strong uplift in brand awareness generated by Facebook campaign as found through Bank Albilad’s own internal study. “Facebook increased our brand loyalty given the valued interaction between our audience and us. This platform, Facebook, was one of the main channels for such a campaign and it will remain a crucial platform for future campaigns.” Mohammed R. Abaalkheil, Head of Marcom Division, Bank Albilad Images: https://na7.salesforce.com/069A0000000eaSp |
Nextdoor Competitor Meetey Launches Its Local Social Network Internationally | Mike Butcher | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | Back in October , the startup that lets people create private social networks with others who live in their local neighborhoods, raised a new $60 million funding round boosting its cash pot to $100 million. It’s now . So as you can tell this is going to be a pretty hot space, aiming to be for our “local life what Facebook is for our social life and what LinkedIn is for our professional life,” says CEO and founder Nirav Tolia. However, others want in on this space. is a UK competitor, but only has a website. But now Tel-Aviv-based wants to do something similar to Nextdoor and today it’s expanding to over 90 countries beyond its home market in Israel and says it has hit 200,000 users. It will be interesting to watch this David and Goliath battle. The company also unveiled data from its platform that shows that on average, active users are forming 56 distinct new relationships that don’t exist on their current social graph. This suggests that current social platforms like Facebook aren’t good at real-world interactions. I mean, when was the last time you wanted your random neighbours to see pictures of your new baby? Yeah, let’s not go there… It would seem Meetey has its work cut out for it trying to go up against NextDoor, which has such enormous funding and a head start in the crucial US market. But it’s interesting that Meetey seems to push the flirting side of neighbourhoods. Could this be the Tinder of Neighbourhoods? Perhaps then next Social Media Gurus will have to become Relationship Counsellors as well. |
CrunchWeek: Instagram Debuts Messaging, Twitter’s Blocking Debacle, Snapchat Banks $50M | Colleen Taylor | 2,013 | 12 | 14 | In this episode, , and I talk about the launch of Instagram’s first ever messaging feature called and the figures announced by Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom, Twitter changing how its blocking feature works (and after a swift public outcry), and Snapchat confirming that it has closed from New York hedge fund Coatue Management, leaving out the usual Silicon Valley venture capital firms. |
Why Does Google Need So Many Robots? To Jump From The Web To The Real World | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 14 | Why does Google ? Because it already rules your pocket. The mobile market, except for the slow rise of wearables, is saturated. There are millions of handsets around the world, each one connected to the Internet and most are running either Android or iOS. Except for incremental updates to the form, there will be few innovations coming out of the mobile space in the next decade. Then there’s Glass. These devices bring the web to the real world by making us the carriers. Google is already in front of us on our small screens but Glass makes us a captive audience. By depending on Google’s data for our daily interactions, mapping, and restaurant recommendations – not to mention the digitization of our every move – we become some of the best Google consumers in history. But that’s still not enough. Google is limited by, for lack of a better word, meat. We are poor explorers and poor data gatherers. We tend to follow the same paths every day and, like ants, we rarely stray far from the nest. Google is a data company and needs far more data than humans alone can gather. Robots, then will be the driver for a number of impressive feats in the next few decades including space exploration, improved mapping techniques, and massive changes in the manufacturing workspace. Robots like will replace millions of expensive humans – a move that I suspect will instigate a problematic rise of unemployment in the manufacturing sector – and companies like manufacturing giant are investing in robotics at a clip. Drones, whether human-control or autonomous, are a true extension of our senses, placing us and keeping us apprised of situations far from home base. Home helpers will soon , help us , and assist us near the end of our lives. Smaller hardware projects will help us and . The tech company not invested in robotics today will find itself far behind the curve in the coming decade. That’s why Google needs robots. They will place the company at the forefront of man-machine interaction in the same way that Android put them in front of millions of eyeballs. Many pundits saw no reason for Google to start a mobile arm back when Android was still young. They were wrong. The same will be the case for these seemingly wonky experiments in robotics. Did Google buy Boston Dynamics and seven other robotics companies so it could run a thousand quadrupedal Big Dogs through our cities? No, but I could see them using , a bipedal robot that can walk and run over rough terrain – to assist in mapping difficult-to-reach areas. It could also become a sort of Google Now for the real world, appearing at our elbows in the form of an assistant that follows us throughout the day, keeping us on track, helping with tasks, and becoming our avatars when we can’t be in two places at once. The more Google can mediate our day-to-day experience the more valuable it becomes. Need more proof? Follow the money. Robotics is big business and analysts estimate that Boston Dynamics could be a $5 billion company in the next few years. With the right contracts and the right product mix, almost any of member Google’s current robot horde can hit nearly any market, from consumer robotics on a large scale to massive installations in manufacturing – not to mention those lucrative DARPA contracts. Will we see RoboGooglers wandering through Palo Alto this year? No way. It’s far too early. But with a bit of smarts from Google Chauffeur, the software running the company’s self-driving cars, and some better bipedal robot designs I could see Sergey and Larry standing beside their robotic assistants within the decade. Now all they have to do is make them . |
Code Literacy Doesn’t Need To Come At The Expense Of Other Skills | Klint Finley | 2,013 | 12 | 14 | This week President Barack Obama rekindled a couple of the Internet’s favorite debates: whether it’s appropriate to take selfies at funerals, and whether everyone should learn to code. As part of , Obama delivered a titled “President Obama calls on every American to learn code.” “Learning these skills isn’t just important for your future, it’s important for our country’s future,” he said. “If we want America to stay on the cutting edge, we need young Americans like you to master the tools and technology that will change the way we do just about everything.” The last time we went through this was when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg tweeted that he would learn to code as part of Codecademy’s “Year of Code” in 2012, which earned a certain amount of backlash. “I would no more urge everyone to learn programming than I would urge everyone to learn plumbing,” co-founder and CTO Jeff Atwood , suggesting that communication skills were at least as important to a well-rounded education as programming. Many other critics complained that you don’t need to learn to build an engine in order to drive a car. This time around Slate’s Matthew Yglesias , and that spreading actual literacy should be a higher priority than spreading code literacy. I’m still on the side of pushing code literacy to as many people as possible. If everyone in the country were likely to spend a significant portion of their waking hours using faucets, and Congress was likely to debate bills that had great ramifications for the future of faucet users, then I probably would say that everyone should at least learn the basics of plumbing. And I agree with Douglas Rushkoff, author of , that not knowing how to code is more analogous to not only not being able to drive, but being blind folded while you ride. And while we don’t teach all of our high schoolers how to build engines, we do generally teach them the basics of physics and internal combustion as freshman. Likewise, we can’t expect to teach everyone enough programming to build Facebook, but we can make sure as many people as possible have a general idea of how it was built. But I think we can all agree that learning programming shouldn’t detract from other educational objectives, like reading, writing and math. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to. In fact, it can be combined with other skills. Mathematics is the most obvious subject to combine with computer programming. Conrad Wolfram — Stephen Wolfram’s brother — is one of the most radical proponents. His organization, Computerbasedmath.org, calls for students to stop doing rote memorization of steps and focus instead on using computers to explore the concepts that underpin those steps. “Why get students emulating what computers do so much better (computing) rather than concentrate on imaginative thinking, analysis and problem-solving that students ought to be able to do so much better even than today’s computers?” he wrote in a blog post to rewrite the country statistics and probability coursework. But you don’t need to go that far to add a few programming exercises to an algebra or geometry course. Meanwhile, economics is an elective at most high schools, but it’s probably something more students should learn and it’s another subject that could incorporate some programming lessons. There are already books on programming for college level biology and physics courses, and they could be adapted to fit high school level courses as well. But it’s not just math and science that can be combined with programming. A class that used or to teach music theory could be a fun and interactive way to learn both programming and music. And Adam Parrish at New York University already (yes you read that right). He teaches students a bit of Python, and then sets them to work doing stuff like creating algorithmic poetry using the Twitter API. Where things could get really interesting is combining multiple subjects. My dream course would be one that taught programming, electronics, mathematics, physics and music by having students build, program and play Arduino-based synthesizers. The big idea here would be to give students early, accomplishable projects. One of the most interesting posts of the week was one by an anonymous blogger titled “ .” It’s a big problem: there’s research showing that students who think they can make themselves smarter . Those who think that they just aren’t smart get left behind. I know from experience that people feel the same way about writing, drawing and other creative endeavors. One of the best ways to combat the “I’m not smart enough” or “I’m not talented enough” phenomena would be to give students early victories, showing them that they program or that they can make music or that they can do math — preferably while teaching them something else important along the way. The hardest part of such a scheme, though, will probably be teacher training. Estonia designed a curriculum to teach computer science in elementary school last year. The first step in bringing the program to life, though, is teaching training. We’d do well to remember that in the U.S. |
CrunchBase Reveals: The Average Successful Startup Raises $41M, Exits at $242.9M | Mark Lennon | 2,013 | 12 | 14 | The CrunchBase dataset has now captured more venture exits than ever, so we decided to take a closer look at what successful startups can tell us about venture investing and the startup landscape. We found that the average successful US startup has raised $41 million and exited at $242.9 million. We also found that there is a strong correlation between larger exits and companies that raised more money, but no such relationship between the amount of time between founding a company and being acquired or taken public. Between the two types of exits, we found that the average successfully U.S. startup has raised $29.4 million and sold for $155.5 million, for investor profits of about 7.5x (if you assume 100 percent investor ownership of the company, which is never the case). Startups that went public in an IPO raised significantly more funds, but also took substantially more venture funding, and thus more dilution. The average IPO-bound startup raised $162 million before going public. Thanks to a few recent large IPOs, the average raised amount soared to $467.9 million, for a 2.9x investor return (of course, venture investors will never sell all their shares on the IPO date). The analysis includes all funded startups in CrunchBase that had an exit since 2007. As with most analysis dealing with startups and venture investing, it’s worth noting that some company information from CrunchBase may be incomplete or inaccurate, even if it’s the largest free source for startup information in the world. both took the most pre-IPO money, $2.3 billion, and raised the most through going public at an estimated $18.4 billion. raised an estimated $1.8 billion in their IPO, but also took almost $1.2 billion from venture investors before going public. Mouse over the dots below for more details.
Company age did not seem to factor into a successful exit. Acquired companies were an average of seven years old, while IPO companies went public around 8.25 years, on average. However, there was no clear trend between age and the value of either type of exit.
The venture investors with the most successful exits were led by , one of the most active investors in the last few years, along with perennial heavyweights , , and .
We compared our dataset to CB Insights Venture Capital . Not seen below is that CrunchBase has since captured 255 additional exits through Q3 and Q4 and continues to add more data points every day.
To follow the trends with startups and investors, use the latest CrunchBase data set to take a look for yourself. Download the and let us know what you find. |
The Government Really Isn’t Sure What Snowden Took | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 14 | Out this morning in is a stark tale: The United States’ intelligence apparatus has little idea what Edward Snowden took, despite spending half a trying to find out. As the full scope of what Snowden absconded with likely can’t be known, the government is forced to operate on its toes, unsure of what might be coming next. And that could be anything. From the , to , to work , to the , to , the Snowden revelations have been as broad as they have been deep. The facility that Snowden worked in was behind in its update cycle to better protect government information, an effort that kicked off following the WikiLeaks episode. That the government can’t assess what Snowden did or did not take has led to internal division inside the NSA: Is it better to buy Snowden off with a shot at amnesty? It depends, it would seem, on whether Snowden has any documents in reserve. As , current NSA boss General Keith Alexander views giving Snowden amnesty in exchange for concessions similar to hostage taking: This is analogous to a hostage-taker taking 50 people hostage, shooting 10 and then say, “If you give me full amnesty, I’ll let the other 40 go.” What do you do? Also quoted by CBS News in the same article is Rick Ledgett, an individual currently working to prevent another Snowden-like leak from happening, concerning the offering of legal reprieve in exchange for return of information: So, my personal view is, yes, it’s worth having a conversation about. I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high. It would be more than just an assertion on his part. Ledgett went on to note that his view is not “unanimous” among the agency. Does Snowden have more documents on his person or in his care that he could return in exchange for amnesty? As , maybe: [I]n October, Mr. Snowden said he had given all of the documents he downloaded to journalists and kept no additional copies. In recent days, a senior N.S.A. official has told reporters that he believed Mr. Snowden still had access to documents not yet disclosed. So, its a muddle. If Snowden is lying about what he has, he could be limiting his ability to come home, something perhaps similar to cutting off his nose to spite his citizenship. However, the idea that he has more documents could be simple spin from the government to give it moral and legal freedom to pursue Snowden as an active threat. Without the documents, the importance of his person greatly declines, which could irk the government if it wishes to continue its aggressive pursuit of the man. Like the government, we’ll find out more of what Snowden took as Glenn Greenwald, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel and others report on the revelations. The folks that claim they are smart enough to determine just how much privacy we need and deserve can’t keep their own house in order. That’s something to dwell on. |
iOS Rules The Corporate Mobile Market As Android And Windows Scrap For Second Place | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 14 | According to a , Apple continues to dominate the mobile device market among small and medium-sized businesses. During the first 10 months of 2013, Intermedia customers activated 190,000 Apple devices, 29,000 Samsung devices, and 13,800 Motorola devices. All told, Apple controlled 76% of the market in the period. As , the above data is sourced from Intermedia’s hosted Exchange service which claims around 700,000 business users, meaning the relevant sample size large enough to make the data interesting. Microsoft ended the period with vanishingly small market share, and a large percentage jump in its device volume: 93% in the first 10 months of the year. That’s somewhat good news for Microsoft, a company that is desperate to grow its share of the mobile device market. It is not hard, however, to grow your unit volume percentage when you sold few devices in the preceding period. Among small and medium-sized companies, aggregate Android market share can’t rival Apple’s popularity, totalling to under 25% of unit volume. The computing market changes as companies scale, or course. Contrasting the above is survey data from Bernstein Research out earlier this week . That study found that of CIOs issue/plan to issue Windows tablets, up dramatically from 56% six months ago, and nearly in line with iPads. Plans for Android tablet issuance lags meaningfully, and fell to 15% from 23% in our last survey. Apple remains atop the mobile pile, Windows is doing better over time, and Android remains a viable rival to Cupertino’s hegemony, but not one that can yet challenge its unit volume. Among smaller businesses, Android spanks Windows’ mobile device volume, but among enterprise-scale clients, Microsoft is collecting market momentum that could see it best Android. The dynamics of this are somewhat simple, I think: Larger companies more require new machines to slot into their existing IT infrastructure, something that Microsoft has stressed as a feature of Windows 8.1-based tablets. However, the Intermedia data paints a somewhat dire picture for Microsoft among smaller firms, a corporate demographic that it cannot afford to ignore. So the picture is somewhat plain: Apple’s iOS line of mobile devices is tectonically strong among small firms, and attractive even to large-scale companies. I’m sure your anecdotal experience confirms that. This leaves second place in the mobile device market up for Android and Windows to fight over. Just another day in the platform wars. |
null | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 13 | null |
As Software Eats The World, Non-Tech Corporations Are Eating Startups | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 12 | 14 | Netscape founder and VC titan Marc Andreessen famously wrote back in 2011 that software is steadily eating the world, disrupting industries like music, retail and more. Now large corporations in these industries are starting to eat startups. Over the past year or two, non-tech corporations have begun to actually open their wallets to arm themselves with talent and technology that can help them enter the digital and data-focused world we now live and work in. It’s no longer Google, Facebook and Yahoo that are competing to acquire the best and the brightest startups in Silicon Valley. There are plenty of corporations in retail, health, agriculture, financial services and other industries that are sending their corp-dev talent to scout out possible acquisitions in the Bay Area and beyond. Let’s take a look at some of the examples. Earlier this year, , a multinational chemical, and agricultural biotechnology corporation, . Insurer UnitedHealth Group bought health data analytics company Humedica for A few weeks ago, fitness clothing retailer Under Armour for $150 million. Office supply retailer Staples Payments processing giant First Data has acquired and in the past year. Retail giant Target has . Ford Motors The list goes on. , the website that and lets startups anonymously seek acquirers, has been seeing a strong uptick in non-tech, corporate acquirers joining the marketplace to find potential talent and startups. “Their main motivation is realizing that software is eating the world, and they have to add software talent and technologies to their products,” explained Exitround founder . On the marketplace, Mullins says that 10 percent of buyers are Fortune 500 companies and 20 percent of acquirers are publicly traded, with a good percentage of the group being non-tech companies. For many non-tech companies, Exitround is providing a compelling service by which to find startups early. Mullins says that there are increasingly more and more corp-dev execs joining the marketplace to scout for talent. But traditionally the mechanism by which acquirers found acquirees was done either through word of mouth and networking or through investment banks. But Silicon Valley is seeing more and more executives from corporations and non-tech companies visit the region and VC firms to potentially network with startups. Many Sand Hill VC firms are now holding regular events with representatives from some of these non-tech acquirers in the areas of health, retail, financial services and more. “Walmart was the earliest traditional non-tech company to figure this out,” says , Partner and VC. Walmart famously bought Kosmix in 2011 and set up a Labs group in Silicon Valley, far away from the retailer’s Arkansas headquarters. The retailer has steadily acquired more companies and technologies in its fight to compete with Amazon, including , founder of and Partner at Kleiner Perkins, believes that retail will continue to be an industry where you are seeing large companies eat software. “A lot of physical retailers saw soft foot traffic in their stores in Q3 and they are more nervous about how e-commerce is eating into their sales,” she explains. Companies like TJ Maxx, Urban Outfitters and others can easily make a $100 million to $400 million acquisition in the current market, she adds. In fact, earlier this year, Urban Outfitters , a fast-growing e-commerce site for young women. “Lots of these retailers have no commerce strategy, but startups have the potential to expand consumer reach to a younger demographic,” says Lee. David Blumenfeld, SVP of Westfield Labs, the innovation arm of shopping mall developer Westfield, tells us that the company is definitely evaluating potential acquisitions that they can bring into their Labs groups. “While Westfield itself is not a tech company, we believe that there is not a delineation between online and offline shopping, and we have to be a part of that,” he says. “We believe tech is core to the future of how products are bought even in malls.” He adds that with the company’s malls, they have the distribution (to potentially 1.1 billion people, he says), and they are actively looking for technologies they can integrate into their malls. , the co-founder of VC firm , explains that developing a deeper relationship with the customer online is a strategy that more corporations realize they need to be working on. Part of this is actually being able to connect with a potential customer where they are interacting and spending time. “Movie theaters have no idea what their customers are watching at home, and there is no personalization,” he says. He adds that he sees many of these acquisitions being under $200 million. In Under Armour’s case, the company didn’t have much of a direct relationship with the customer beyond purchase. And as a wholesaler, the clothing manufacturer needed a better way to engage with their customers. MapMyFitness is now going to be the foundation on which it plans to build a new digital training experience and mobile fitness platform. The other benefit to buying platforms where there is engagement is the data collected, which can help potentially boost sales and personalize experiences. “It shouldn’t be surprising that a mattress company may buy a sleep app,” Lee says. Sakoda agrees that data, and the technologies behind mining this data, are big tipping points for acquisitions from non-tech companies. “These companies have fallen so far behind when it comes to data collection and analysis and seeing how customers think and what pricing should be,” he adds. In the case of Monsanto buying Climate Corporation, the large agricultural giant was accessing massive weather data processing and collecting technology that could help in optimizing farming globally. “Big companies are finally waking up to fact that they needed to embrace big data yesterday,” says , the founder of , a fund devoted to backing startups in the big data space. “Now every single large company has massive amounts of data, and figuring out how to use that is complex.” This is why many non-tech companies are sniffing around big data startups. Data is a key area for content owners and publishers as well. Barin Nahvi, who works with emerging tech and new product development at Hearst Corp., says the company is looking to make more acquisitions in core technologies around data. “We’re thinking about how do we resemble a technology company more, and part of this is building platform and core capabilities,” she explains. “How to use data as a driver of content is something we are evaluating.” Nahvi says that video technologies and mobile are other key areas for a potential strategic acquisition for Hearst. E.W. Scripps, the storied owner of 19 local television stations and daily newspapers in 13 markets across the U.S., just to give the media company access to an audience that consumes their news (and video) on devices like tablets. Of course buying startups in Silicon Valley is just one part of the challenge for non-tech corporations. The next is actually being able to keep talent happy. The cultures of these companies are vastly different from Google, Facebook and the startup culture in Silicon Valley. The true test is being able to retain talent and ensure that they feel they are part of an innovative team. To that point, many of these companies have created “Labs” groups to house these acquisitions. As mentioned above, Walmart founded its own Labs group, — which has — when it acquired Kosmix. Live music giant Live Nation, and acquired two others in the past year, has also set up a Labs group for technology acquisitions. Walk explains that these companies are not just buying technologies, but also talent, and they have to be mindful of how to manage and foster that talent. “Just adding small pieces of technology doesn’t commit an organization to a new path,” he says. Adding to that, , founder of health-focused seed fund , says that many challenges come from not being able to actually deploy the technologies successfully. , the VP of product and technology for Live Nation Labs, explains that the labs group was created to house technical talent and acquisitions. He says that the labs group itself was structured to make it feel like less of a conglomerate and more of a startup. There isn’t a deep hierarchy, and Kaplan and others at the group have worked to make the engineers and other staff feel unencumbered, fast-paced and not beholden to a strict road map. Mullins says that retaining talent is now at the top of mind for most non-tech acquirers. “Most of these companies want to make sure the transition is successful and are talking with potential acquirees early on where a startup will live and who will own the technology once it is placed in-house.” At the end of the day, non-tech companies infiltrating Silicon Valley gives many startup founders additional exit options beyond a potential acq-hire from Google, Yahoo or Facebook. But the continued success of these acquisitions (and founder interest in being acquired by an outsider) will depend on how these companies pursue and view innovation and culture. And that’s easier said than done. |
Gillmor Gang: Brain Chemistry | Steve Gillmor | 2,013 | 12 | 14 | The Gillmor Gang — John Taschek, Keith Teare, Dan Farber, and Steve Gillmor — take the edge off of a slow week with a relaxed conversation about Instagram and Twitter direct messages, online anonymity, its effects on the brain, and Google’s reasons for cacheing Gmail images. Occasionally Farber disappears to throw another log on the fire. In the chatroom, Moe Glitz asks the musical question: Do Hells Angels use Facebook? Keith does the entire show from China (where he’s more than almost famous) in his underpants. The budget deal is set, the Pope outpoints Snowden, and no one complains about a little political analysis. It was that kind of week. Life surprises even when it’s not trying. @stevegillmor, @jtaschek, @kteare, @dbfarber Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
Twitter Tests New “Nearby” Feature To Surface Local Tweets From Those Around You | Alex Wilhelm | 2,013 | 12 | 14 | According to , Twitter is testing a new service called Nearby, which will display geographically local tweets to users, whether they are following the progenitor of the update or not. Nearby appears to be a test for the moment, meaning that the chance you can access it is low. But, do take a look, and post screenshots in the comments. Recent moves by Twitter to change how its blocking feature worked unleashed a from users regarding the potential impact to their privacy, and ability to get rid of those users that they found repugnant. I suspect those same folks would balk at being automatically opted-in to a program such as Nearby. However, potential foibles aside, the feature could find resonance with local marketers, providing Twitter with a fresh revenue stream to bolster its now-public financials. It should be noted that the further Twitter strays into the local space, the more pressure it brings to bear on competitors in that area, such as Foursquare, and perhaps Path. Twitter is a huge player in social, and if it were to throw that heft into local, it could siphon advertising dollars from smaller, less well-funded competitors. And of course, not all experiments live, meaning that Nearby could find a seat on the shelf, and not in your phone. |
Uber Quietly Spins Up New System Helping Riders Look For Lost Items | Matthew Panzarino | 2,013 | 12 | 14 | The car service Uber has quietly rolled out a new version of Uber Lost, the system that helps riders locate items they’ve left in drivers’ cars. The system allows you to quickly reference rides you’ve taken in order to locate it as fast as possible. After we saw some Uber service reps tweet out a link to the system aimed at riders looking for lost items we did a bit of digging. The service is now and there’s a link provided on receipts emailed to a rider after their trip is completed. That seems like a good choice as that’s likely where they’ll be looking for a support number to call about their item. Now, they can just tap the link. The system is nothing complex, it just provides you with a simple list of your recent trips, with beginning and end points to help you figure out where you were when you lost the item. Each ride entry contains the driver’s name and phone number so you can ring them up directly to ask them if they’ve found your item. The new system isn’t anything earth shattering, but it’s a nice addition to the service’s tools for riders. Having recently watched someone attempt to locate a piece of luggage left in a cab, I know just how annoying the process can be. It’s bad enough when you know the cabbie’s medallion number but it can be a real nightmare when it was a quick jaunt in a busy part of town and you have to track down the ride by time and location through the dispatcher. With the Uber system you’re presented with a way to call the driver back directly, rather than wading through the call center of a cab company and trying to cross reference time, location and cab availability. This follows on the heels of Uber shipping a series of small enhancements to its service including , with friends and . Recently, numbers from Uber’s which pointed to the company being in pretty decent shape, business wise. |
Google Buys Boston Dynamics, Creator Of Big Dog | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 14 | Google announced that they’ve acquired , creators of quad- and bi-pedal robots like and . This is Google’s eighth robotics acquisition. The company did not disclose the details of the sale. The announcement appeared in the where Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert said they would honor their DARPA military contracts although Google will not officially be a military contractor. The company, founded in 1992, has been working on standalone, gas-powered robots for the past decade. The robots are self-righting and very resilient. Robots like Big Dog can throw cinder blocks, handle rocky terrain, and run at . The man behind the acquisition, Andy Rubin, stepped down as head of Googe’s Android business in march after turning a little-known mobile OS into a juggernaut. “His last big bet, Android, started off as a crazy idea that ended up putting a supercomputer in hundreds of millions of pockets,” wrote Larry Page on his Google+ page. “It is still very early days for this, but I can’t wait to see the progress.” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jvLalY6ubc] |
Gift Guide: Our Favorite Android Phone | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 22 | Chris and I spent a good chunk of discussing some Android-centric holiday picks, but we felt that one of those choices could use a bit more fleshing out. That said, we took a moment to stop bickering and share some thoughts on Google and LG’s Nexus 5, a device that wound up being our favorite Android phone of the holiday season.
16GB $349
32GB $399
4.95-inch, 1080p IPS display
Quad-core Qualcomm 800 chipset @ 2.26GHz
2GB RAM
2,300 mAh battery
Ships with Android 4.4 KitKat
8MP rear camera, 1.3MP front-facing camera
Google’s new Nexus 5 phone, made by LG, is a little more understated in design than the Nexus 4 that preceded it. But it has design harmony with the Nexus 7 tablet, and its outer shell is more function than flash, with a matte rubberized case back that won’t slip and slide all over the place like the Nexus 4 was prone to do. Unlike the Nexus 4 — which was ostentatious in its own little ways — Google and LG apparently strove to dial back the design of its smartphone hardware to the point where there’s honestly not that much to talk about. It’s solid and monolithic. It looks like a pint-sized Nexus 7 from behind. If you’ve got a black N5 there’s a chance your volume rocker will wobble in some mildly annoying ways. The speaker (yes, singular) is, sadly, pretty pitiful and the software didn’t help matters earlier on there. Google has started pushing tweaked versions of the phone through the pipeline that have enlarged grille holes for the mic and speaker though, so last-minute Christmas shoppers should benefit from some mild (if necessary) design tweaks. And the subtler design of the Nexus 5 has another added benefit – showcasing that gorgeous full HD 4.95-inch display. The display is one of the Nexus 5’s strongest features and the one that’s been complimented most often by strangers and friends who’ve asked me about the phone. LG continues to produce a display that’s far superior in terms of color rendering and accuracy than most of the other ones provided by Android smartphone OEMs, including the very capable HTC One. It’s impossible to discern individual pixels on the screen, too, thanks to very high PPI, and auto-brightness for the screen works somewhat better than it does on most previous Android phones, although I still find this is an area where Apple has managed to far outstrip its Google-powered rivals. But all of these physical accoutrements only tell part of the story. Some will call the look “boring” without raising anyone’s hackles, but the better word is “unobtrusive”. Nexus 5 isn’t so much a star in its own right as it is a window that looks out over Android 4.4 KitKat and the updates that have already been issued to further polish the experience. What’s really impressive about the Nexus 5 is that it begins to approach the point where you don’t think about Android software anymore, thanks in large part to KitKat, version 4.4 of Google’s mobile OS. KitKat doesn’t change how Android works very dramatically, but the changes it does bring make using it feel a lot more intuitive. Swiping left to access Google Now, for instance, is a much more natural and easily discoverable action for users new to Android than swiping up from the home screen button, which isn’t even a physical button to begin with. Other small tweaks like the integration of Google’s search database information to populate caller ID information about incoming calls are similarly amazing, if minor additions. In the short time I’ve been using my Nexus 5, I’ve had a surprising number of opportunities to make use of this aspect of KitKat, and it’s made it much, much easier to do the kind of required call screening that you benefit from if you’re working as a tech reporter. Once Google flips the switch on the Google+ integration to identify incoming callers based on the phone numbers they make public on their profiles, this will get a lot more useful, too. It’s also worth noting that Google has talked up some neat features that will add to the overall KitKat experience. Perhaps the biggest? The search giant will soon start rolling out mobile search results that — that could make for both richer search results and a push for better quality Android apps because of the potential for exposure. For better or worse though, it’s often the Nexus 5 launcher Darrell spoke of that causes the device to stand out from the crowd — even if your, say, Moto X gets the KitKat treatment, the experience will be obscured a smidge by the lack of that launcher. Is that going to be a dealbreaker for people? Hardly, but it’s a fine reminder of the importance Google puts on its Nexus-class devices. People have complained about the Nexus 5’s battery life, but I did not find it to be offensive. Did it impress me? No. Battery life on the Nexus 5 is simply adequate — it can usually get me through a work day — and shouldn’t really be a huge factor in your buying decision unless you’re seeking something that really packs an unusually outsized amount of usage time between charges. The one really disappointing thing on the Nexus 5 is camera quality: it’s an improvement over the terrible camera in the Nexus 4, but not a significant one. Nexus devices are so far behind on IQ that any of Apple’s iPad tablets can produce superior pics. Also, the software interface for actually using the camera is no good, and KitKat has done nothing to change that. Whoa there, friend. I’m just about right there with you on the Nexus 5’s camera: despite the inclusion of and Google’s own crowing about camera quality, I’ve found the photo quality is nothing to right home about. It’s far from lousy, but it’s readily outclassed by some of the competition. And to be quite honest, I’m ready for these smartphone players to start pushing boundaries that really matter. I’d argue there’s an upper limit to how big a screen can get before it finally tiptoes over the line of ridiculousness (the Nexus 5 thankfully avoids that line just fine). And cameras, useful though they may be, are purely supplementary to the smartphone experience. But batteries? That simply to be the next big frontier. Motorola’s the most prominent company looking to push the battery boundary, but if Google is going to use the Nexus line as a sort of ideal for what Android devices can be, pumping up longevity could be a great signpost for the rest of the industry. This Nexus is a smartphone that impresses at first use, but that actually grows on you with time. It’s already surpassed the HTC One as my favorite Android device, and its design, while at first seeming somewhat forgettable, has become really appealing with continued use. At first I was tempted to call this “the best Nexus phone yet” before I slapped that repugnant urge out of myself. Of course it’s the best Nexus phone. But is it worth your money? My answer is an big yes — it’s not perfect, but it’s great out of the box and Google and LG have shown that they’re committed to making the entire package better as needed. |
Amazon Drones: As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap | Jon Evans | 2,013 | 12 | 14 | As a drone hipster — I wrote an about a drone apocalypse a — I watched the techosphere’s reactions to Amazon’s that it was experimenting with drone delivery with a mixture of amusement and despair. Almost everybody is thinking so . Jeff Bezos must feel : “I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.” The naysayers were out in force. “Even if the Feds Let Them Fly, Amazon’s Delivery Drones Are Still Nonsense,” ‘s Marcus Wohlsen. Dan Lyons reacted to the piece with a condemnation of “the credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes,” again complaining that drone deliveries are “years away.” ‘s James Bell as “little more than a publicity stunt,” and added: “what happens when next door’s kid decides to shoot the drone with his BB rifle?” And “hot air” and compared it to an April Fool’s joke. What is with these people? Do they moonlight as stock analysts who only care about the next quarter’s results? Do they have no vision at ? Do they not care about anything unless it will directly interact with them tomorrow, or at the absolute latest, next year? They’re the same ilk who, I’m sure, claimed that credit cards would never work, that merchants would never adopt them, that people would not use them, that fraud would make their use untenable. I’m choosing that as the analogy because drones lost to birds and BB guns will be treated in exactly the same way credit-card providers treat fraud today: as an acceptable loss in the context of that enormous business. Yes, drone reliability will need to improve, and bad weather will be a problem. Yes, regulatory roadblocks need to be hurdled. Yes, the logistics of drone delivery need to be fine-tuned. No, you won’t see drones arriving at your doorstep anytime soon; Amazon drone delivery will presumably begin with small pilot projects delivering to organizations that own their own buildings. To quote Bezos himself: The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need to say, ‘Look, this thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighborhood,’ But at the same time, “Technically it is totally feasible,” MIT aeronautics professor R. John Hansman. Which may explain why and are testing drone delivery too. (But remember; nonsense! hot air! nothing but a publicity stunt! Sigh.) Yes, the cost to Amazon will be extremely high, to begin with…but in the long run, this isn’t merely about delivering the goods you buy. In fact that service might wind up as a mere loss leader. As usual, John Robb — you might remember his DroneNet idea, which I wrote about — has a more clearly farsighted view of what’s really going on here: Amazon's long term vision re: drones — to build a drone "cloud." A platform that millions of businesses can build on. — John Robb (@johnrobb) This isn’t about supplementing UPS; in the long run, this is about them — and FedEx, and the Post Office — with Amazon Delivery Services. After all, once you’ve got an Amazon Skyport on the roof of your business, or your apartment building, and once their reliability has been established, why would you only use it to packages? Why would you ever go to the post office or wait for UPS pickup again? On the other hand Bezos’ dream might well be delayed, or even quelled, by an on drones in private hands. No, really. I’m not talking about , although that will be a problem. What I’m worried about (and have been for some time; it’s what my drone novel is about) is drone . Because after a drone packed with Semtex targets its victim’s GPS coordinates or license plate and blows them up, you’ll have one hell of a time trying to trace it back to its sender. Oh, and drone , too; you can expect fleets of them to be flying north across the Rio Grande in the next decade, full of drugs. And if many of them are intercepted, well, that’s just acceptable loss, again. Drones will decouple criminals from their crimes, and there’s precious little that the authorities can do about that. I expect the widespread rollout of Amazon’s delivery drones to be delayed not by fundamental technical or logistical problems but by an inevitable backlash. One which, some would argue, politicians of all people should have seen coming, for “ ,” it is said, “so shall ye reap…” Boy, if only everyone talked about drones this much when they killed children. — David Weiner (@daweiner) Goddamn hippies. RT : Deliver books, not bombs. — Drunk Predator Drone (@drunkenpredator) Wikimedia |
Q&A Platform Answers.com Raises More Cash, Buys Customer Experience Analytics Company ForeSee For Over $200M | Leena Rao | 2,013 | 12 | 22 | Q&A platform is announcing a big acquisition and fundraising tonight–the company is buying customer experience analytics company and just raised $300 million in new funding in equity from existing investors, including Summit Partners, TA Associates, AFCV and others; and in debt from SunTrust Robinson Humphrey and Silicon Valley Bank. We’ve heard that Answers paid north of $200 million for ForeSee, which raised around $20 million in funding. It’s an interesting move for Answers, which has had a complete turnaround in the past five years. Answers originally only operated a community-generated Q&A site at Answers.com, and was a public company. In 2011, Answers was was by AFCV Holdings, a portfolio company of Summit Partners, for $127 million in cash. AFCV subsequently delisted Answers and took the company private. At the time, shareholders were unhappy with the terms of the deal, claiming it undervalued Answers.com, and tried to block the sale, which eventually went through. Answers was also hit with a round of layoffs in June 2011. In 2012, the company took another minority investment, this time from private equity firm TA Associates. With new leadership, Answers began evolving its approach and decided on a platform strategy, explains CEO David Karandish. Basically, Answers wants to be more than just a Q&A destination, and realized that its future lied in providing Q&A content on other sites, such as retail sites. In the quest to dominate this space, Karandish has been quietly acquiring a number of companies over the past year, including , , and a few others. Last year, Answers attempted to buy About.com from the New York Times Co. for around but lost the bid to IAC. Karandish tells us that this acquisition of ForeSee enables Answers to provide a full suite of solutions that span the customer life cycle, from optimizing customer acquisition via valid question and answer engagement to analyzing the customer experience to predicting future customer behavior. ForeSee helps businesses evaluate the success of their customer touch points. Its clients include half of the Fortune 100, half of the top 100 internet retailers, half of the top 10 banks, and nearly every US governmental organization. Since its inception, the company has captured more than 100 million customer experience responses (we ). Once Answers integrates ForeSee, Answers will be able to offer businesses the ability to embed question and answers relating to their products and experiences on their sites, and measure customer engagement and service. This is all available via a SaaS product. As for Answers, Karandish says subscription revenue now accounts for 50 percent of the company’s revenue. The company is generating 8 million new answers per day and counts 180 million registered users. And sales are $160 million for 2013, up from $20 million a few years ago. 2014, adds Karandish, will be spent integrated ForeSee, and readying the company for an eventual IPO. If Answers can be the go to Q&A, and customer experience management platform for retailers and other online sites, the company could indeed turn itself around and defy many of the challenges it has faced in the past. Static Q&A Sites (ie ) have started to fade away in presence on the web, but Answers has a potentially interesting strategy to monetize and increase engagement. In this case, execution of this plan and continued growth will be key to the company’s success when (and if) it goes public and endures public investor scrutiny. |
Teleza Turns Your Mobile Device Into A Dual-SIM Powerhouse | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 22 | When I was in Shenzhen last month I met James Sung, the guy who brought us original and turned countless iPod Touches into iPhones. Now you can do the same thing, but wirelessly. His new product, called , costs $129 and is styled like a high-end cigarette case. It comes in silver and gold and features a built-in battery. It connects to your device via Bluetooth and has buttons to control audio level and a camera remote for selfies. The Teleza is quad-band GSM compatible. It has two SIM slots can can also act as sort of a speakerphone for your calls, ostensibly allowing you to use it like a handset. It also works with Android. He’s shipping the devices after Christmas. While dual-SIM phones are a dime-a-dozen in China, they’re fairly rare over here. I’ve slowly discovered the value of a local SIM card as I travel the world, allowing me, at the very least, to have a local phone number. This device saves you from having to SIM unlock your phone during your travels or buying a new, unlocked phone. |
Everything You Wanted To Know About The Giant Elance, oDesk Merger & Ensuing Backlash (But Were Afraid To Ask) | Rip Empson | 2,013 | 12 | 22 | Earlier this year, that their companies would be joining forces in a blockbuster merger. Already two of the biggest names in online food-ordering, the prospect of a combined “Grubless” sent ripples through the market. Once upon a time, these kind of massive private mergers only happened once in a blue moon, but those were different times. Last week, the online employment industry became the latest victim of this kind of blockbuster consolidation, as that, pending regulatory approval, will see their two companies unite into the new online freelancer marketplace to be reckoned with. Like Seamless and Grubhub, up until pen hit paper, oDesk and Elance were considered rivals in the world of online staffing, but unlike the former, the response to the oDesk-Elance merger has been, well, less than positive. While visions of strategic synergies and competitors running for cover danced in the heads of company executives, the scores of freelancers who use oDesk and Elance to find work or hire support don’t seem ready to break out the pom-poms. Angry customers let their opinions be heard en masse on , while . so did the announcement . In short, the consensus among oDesk and Elance users is that both sites are separated by some fundamental differences and that any integrations to result from merging the two platforms will significantly reduce their usability and overall value. Many said, for example, that they use the platforms exclusively and had a long list of reasons why they chose to use one and not the other. One commenter, Moonsis Mansor, commented on both Elance’s Facebook pages, saying that he had used both platforms and thought the merger needed to accomplish three key items to be successful: And that being said, he continued on , if oDesk’s product were to be favored more after the merger, he would likely go elsewhere. The main gripe that surfaced again and again about oDesk centered around its reputation as favoring low-cost labor at the expense of quality. In other words, an anything-goes approach in which oDesk eschews a minimum rate — with some freelancers offering to work for as low as $1/hour or $0.50/hour — and a model that favors the client at the expense of the freelancer. Ultimately, the most frequently-expressed concern seemed to be that, were the marketplaces ever to merge, oDesk freelancers would undercut pricing and dilute the quality. Another commenter on Elance’s Facebook page said, in no uncertain terms: Of course, representatives from both Elance and oDesk were quick to assure users in social feeds and in comment sections of blog posts that the two companies planned to “continue to operate as separate, independent services … [and that] … as usual, and there are no planned changes to the fees.” The companies both pointed users to an FAQ section they added to their sites to address and flesh out specific questions about the merger. One important point to note is that, in the wording of the FAQ, while it says that both companies will continue to operate as separate entities, they would do so “for now.” Those can be two very powerful, qualifying words, especially for the seemingly unhappy masses. When I caught up with Elance CEO Fabio Rosati and oDesk CEO Gary Swart after the announcement and asked them about the backlash, both opted to explain the reaction as a function of the fierce loyalty that each user base has to its platform of choice. In fact, Rosati expressed pride in this loyalty and said that a certain amount of backlash should be expected as a result. the Elance CEO told TechCrunch. In other words, rather than reflexively force the two businesses to become one entity across the board, which would be like forcing a square peg into a circular hole in many respects, the CEOs said they want to operate two micro businesses under one collective umbrella. Furthermore, instead of focusing on the “traditional” where merging companies might promote synergy, Rosati reiterated the language in the FAQ, saying Elance and oDesk would look to create synergies from their investments.” With their combined financial resources and audience, it becomes a matter of finding areas where that bigger balance sheet can support investments that benefit both platforms, both models and both companies. On the one hand, this kind of thinking makes sense. There are ways to avoid forcing the issue, especially when the gulf between the two appears to be wide — at least in some respects. And, yes, one could say that the display of frustration among users is a heart-warming show of loyalty and that change is frightening and a small group of loyal and vocal dissenters will always react emotionally to the prospect of that change. Having gone through several TechCrunch redesigns, I can say that I’m familiar with this kind of adverse reaction to change, even if some of it may have been justified. However, on the other hand, when this many users not only perceive but delineate some significant differences in the use cases, models and potential value of the two companies, there’s usually some truth to it. Which then begs the question, are the companies better off? Well, after the torch-and-pitchfork crown poked so many holes in oDesk, it seems they, at least, may be better off. And certainly, if their ambition is to build the next Google or Facebook-sized platform for freelancing and hiring, then they’re a lot closer today than two weeks ago — at least on paper. But, , unless oDesk/Elance can figure out a way to rely less on algorithmic matchmaking and more on building human trust and human relationships, it won’t matter whether they go forward as two companies or one. The prevailing model at work in staffing marketplaces needs to be optimized by, say, making it easier for employers (or clients) to connect with their regular and most trusted freelancers — or by giving freelancers the potential to, over time, be able to turn hourly gigs into full-time gigs (and incentivize clients to hire their favorite freelancers). To a certain extent, it’s okay if the Elance and oDesk merger isn’t seamless right away, or that the synergies aren’t perfect, and maybe now together they can attract bigger customers and clients. In the end, whatever shape it takes, the company will have to prove that the new version has the ability to bring more business into the marketplace — and to its freelancers. After all, in 2013, the average freelancer on Elance and oDesk made less than $100. Yes, there are ways to explain away that stat, and that will work for awhile, but those “8 million registered users” between the two companies aren’t going to stick around for less. For more, find oDesk’s and Gary Swart’s . |
Fly Or Die: Instagram Direct | Jordan Crook | 2,013 | 12 | 22 | [tc_5min code=”518062004″] As you may have already figured out, Instagram has launched . It lets users send a photo up to 15 people without publicly broadcasting that photo to their entire following. Recipients can like the photo and participate in live chat underneath it. So, what do we think? Well, on one side of the argument it makes a lot of sense for Instagram to launch a private messaging feature. Competitors like Snapchat and Twitter are focusing in on direct messaging as a way of communication while Facebook and Instagram get left behind in public broadcast mode. However, Instagram may not have differentiated itself enough from competitors to get users excited about a feature they have been using elsewhere. There’s also the school of thought that the smartphone itself is the do-it-all machine, and apps are to have their own individual use cases without trying to do too much. We split down the middle on this once, but agreed on one thing: Instagram Direct isn’t original at all. |
Partnership With Chinese App Store Shines A Light On The Hidden World Of Jailbreak Groups | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 22 | Jailbreak releases for new iOS products are major events. In the early years, release teams would celebrate major holidays with a new jailbreak or SIM unlock and millions of anxious users would rush for the latest software. Much has stayed the same – the excitement, the rush to jailbreak. But something has changed: jailbreaks have become big business. Take . After launching an iOS 7 jailbreak users found that, on computers with the language set to Chinese, the program automatically installed a program called TaiG (Tai-Gi or Tai Chi). This Chinese app store offered Chinese-language apps but a little something extra, as well: pages and pages of cracked, pirated games. The group made “around a million dollars” in placement fees for adding TaiG to Chinese iPhones. While the actual number is currently unknown, my source explained that the rumors were true and that the fee was well within that “order of magnitude.” The , for their part, responded online to allegations that they had been paid to put pirated app stores on users’ phones. “We are very upset that despite our agreement and review by their team, piracy was found in the store. It was not acceptable and they have been strenuously working to resolve the problem in good faith, and have removed all instances of it that we have brought to their attention,” they wrote. “The jailbreak works and people should use it,” said , creator of , a popular “feature store” that allows users to shop for tweaks and updates to their iPhone’s OS. “The thing that bugs me [about TaiG] is there’s tons of piracy in it. We’re not about piracy. It used to be that if you wanted to pirate you did have to jailbreak. That’s no longer the case. But people still look at us we’re those pirate assholes,” said Freeman. Jailbreaking is a business now. Saurik himself makes a living off of having his app installed on jailbroken phones and the Evasi0n team, among others, make money selling space in their apps. In short, things have come a long way since the lone hacker spent time cracking iOS in his spare time. What does the TaiG partnership mean? Very little, in the long run. Even George Hotz aka Geohot, a well-known early iPhone jail breaker, attempted to sell his own jailbreak technique to unidentified buyers for to a commercial customer. In the end, Evasi0n released theirs for free, heading potential for-pay jail breakers off at the pass. That they made money for adding TaiG, in fact, should be immaterial. That the TaiG app store contains pirated material, however, is another matter entirely. Now that jailbreaking is a business, people want to get paid, but not this way. “They do good work and I think they deserve money for it,” said Freeman. |
Apple Announces Deal To Bring iPhones To China Mobile Starting On Jan. 17 | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 22 | Apple and China Mobile that they’ve reached an agreement that will see the iPhone 5s and 5c launch on the China Mobile’s 4G and 3G networks early next year. Pre-registration is supposed to begin on December 25, with phones actually available on January 17 of next year. “China is an extremely important market for Apple and our partnership with China Mobile presents us the opportunity to bring iPhone to the customers of the world’s largest network,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in the release. China Mobile says it has more than 760 million customers. Apple has since 2011, and reported earlier this month that . According to , China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan collectively account for 39 percent of the global smartphone market, with Apple ranking fifth in the region’s smartphone sales. R.W. Baird analyst that a deal could lead to 12.5 million to 30 million more iPhone sales. Another sign that Apple is working to expand in China was for the first time. The release says that the deal will “give a big boost to the development of China’s homegrown 4G/TD-LTE technology,” and that more details about pricing will be released at a later date. |
The Crowdfunder’s Dilemma | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 22 | My crowdfunding campaign is fully funded now and I’m preparing metrics and other measurements to help us both understand some best practices for crowdfunding. But, until then, I wanted to comment a bit on the problems facing crowdfunders when it comes to marketing and sales. I’m a writer and it’s almost as if I’m naturally averse to self-promotion. That is exactly the wrong way to be. It’s fortunate that so I won’t have to go into much of the how-to. Instead I’ll address the conflicting problems facing shy crowdfunders who may find themselves at the precipice of self-promotion. First off, remember that you are mostly selling to friends and family, at least in the beginning. They will support you no matter what happens. The vast majority of my pledges are from people I’ve met or count as friends. I’ve also discovered that social reach – posts to people who know of me or I’ve met in passing – are weak drivers to success. For example, take a look at this very cursory analysis from , a social media analytics service. The top supporters, on the upper right, are close friends who have done their absolute best to get the word out. So I have a lot of these “golden influencers” or whatever you want to call them. What should I do with them? In short, I have to sell to them and then sell to their friends. And just writing that line pains me. Modern crowdfunding is about relationships. If you have a lot of them, you will be successful. If you only have a few, you will not be successful. These relationships can be geographically local or worldwide, but they have to be close. As “if you can’t hit 5% of your goal within your private network, you are probably in a bad spot.” I’d say I sold 50% to friends. I think hometown projects – efforts to open a new green hackerspace or coding dojo or bakery in a certain city – are great examples of this. If no one knows you in town as the guy who makes great cakes, you’re probably sunk. So here’s the dilemma: I like to treat relationships, online or off, as spin-free zones. I’ve never been “in sales” per se, so I’ve never had to milk my network to get something done. As a writer for some fairly big sites I’ve always depended on the work to bring the audience. This is obviously a false correlation – the outlets I’ve written for have always been amazing in their own right – but it’s how I went about my business. I didn’t care about SEO, for example, because I trusted Google to be a beneficent god. That is another wrong way to be. Sadly this attitude is one of the main reasons writers love publishing houses. Because publishers can throw a whole team of people towards distribution and PR – and, sadly, this team is increasingly shrinking for most authors – they mask most of the hard work and selling that goes into a successful launch. Unfortunately, when you depend on this network you will find yourself disappointed. The majestic houses can only do so much and each new book is a laugh in a crowded room and easily swallowed up by the next conversation. They’ll through millions at big blockbusters but pennies at the next literary novel. I don’t want to be about marketing but it looks like it has to be. As a crowdfunder or a modern author or a modern maker you must be ready to sell. I created a 5,000 name email list that I use sparingly to hassle business acquaintances and those interested in my work. I post to social media as much as I can, although, as evidenced above, the return is limited. I change my tone from silly to serious when I talk about this work and those who know me as that jerk from the Internet now know me as that jerk from the Internet who is flogging his book. I am, at this point, a small businessman handing out fliers on the street corner. To the serious artist marketing is seemingly unsavory. But friends, let me tell you: serious artists are the best marketers. Whether it’s by ensconcing themselves in a scene or become the mouthpiece of their genre or style, all the best artists have been carnival barkers for Product Me. There are still ways to become popular without word of mouth and endless boosterism, but that’s far harder than it seems. It’s akin to my own sense that my work grew organically – it didn’t. It grew through the quiet push given it by the platforms on which I wrote. The Pebble didn’t get big because Eric Migicovsky posted his Kickstarter and hung out in Canada waiting for riches. It got big because of outreach, media contacts, and traditional marketing methods. So what am I doing on that front? I’m looking for opportunities to offer interviews or commentary on crowdfunding to other outlets. I’m reaching out to book bloggers. I’m also just making things up as I go along. I need to grow the potential audience for the book. I think of this as sort of a reverse bullseye of sorts. At the center of the bullseye are friends and family. Further out are “fans” – people who like you. Even further are strangers interested in what you’re selling and this is dwarfed by the rest of the world. We should all be able to hit the bullseye without trouble. Everything else is far harder. The results are startling and heartening. For example, my buddy , wrote me a nice note when he found out about my funding. I hope he doesn’t mind me posting it here. “No need to reply, I know you’re busy,” he said. “Just wanted to say congratulations … I’m always thrilled when I see people finding cool ways to fund the creation of awesome new literature.” This makes me feel good and it shows that my efforts, however self-promotional, are at worst a minor nuisance. I respect Clive and his work and it’s great to hear from him in the context of something I’m working hard to build. That he hasn’t yet unfriended me is probably more a tribute to his patience than my skills at sales, but it’s nice to know he’s paying attention. . 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. |
For Holiday Shopping, Mobile Apps Bring Out My Inner Grinch | Semil Shah | 2,013 | 12 | 22 | TechCrunch Every week for this column, I write about something related to mobile technology or apps. It would be only natural, then, for me to devote at least one column to the intersection of mobile and commerce, especially during such a festive time of year. I’ll state upfront that I don’t particularly love the hecticness of holiday shopping — the overcrowded stores, the same holiday songs on an endless playback loop, and the quintessential Black Friday stampedes. As I result, I try to take care of all shopping online. If you’re reading this, you probably feel the same way. Up to this year, I’d complete 99% of shopping via Amazon, but this holiday season, I wanted to see what the state of consumer mobile apps were on the market. The result, I must admit, brought out my inner “ .” Now, in this year-end season of “Best Of” linkbait articles, it would simply be routine for me to list out “The Best Mobile Shopping Apps of 2013 (Besides Amazon and eBay).” The only problem with this approach, however, is that I’m not confident enough native apps exist to actually fill out a list. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying, “ ” Yes, I’ve tried them all, and I will admit, they’re all quite good in their own way, but something about the overall experience, for me personally, is just not quite right for holiday shopping. Perhaps it’s the limited screen size of a mobile device, or the lack of excitement at a flash sale for branded goods, or the inability to test the texture and quality of a non-branded item, or the checkout experience — whatever it may be, mobile certainly affords convenience to holiday shopping , but I didn’t find any apps which created a new shopping experience. For those who know exactly what they want, the Amazon and eBay mobile apps likely provide 90% coverage, which may be why the rest of the shopping apps contain some discovery mechanism, either through a vertical approach, curation, or marketplace dynamics. I won’t be a for the entire post, as I do have a heart — at times. The Etsy app is fantastic for finding unique items in an age when every family member could likely receive the same suite of gifts courtesy of Amazon Prime. I’ve heard female friends remark they’re addicted to the shopping experiences inside Threadflip and Poshmark, and these companies’ growing stats seem to verify those claims. I’ve used Jetsetter and Gilt for a while, but those properties often surface branded items which I already know about at discounted prices. I tried to get into Fab and Fancy, and while these apps are beautifully designed, I found them to provide information without enough context or, frankly, to serve up items that sometimes feel could be 50-100x marked up in price. This is just me, perhaps it works for the majority of folks. My critiques aside, I know legions of others are likely to disagree with me. I don’t blame them. These apps I’ve cited above are all very good, especially when one factors in the reality that a good portion of larger, billion-dollar retail franchises produce and ship outdated or unusable native apps — or worse, don’t even have native apps at all. I was surprised to learn this, that multi-billion dollar companies with consumer commerce business models haven’t invested in native mobile experiences. And, well, this is why I wrote this post, ultimately, because I believe with all tricky little issues around mobile e-commerce, the business model risks associated with them (inventory risk, thin margins, and low valuation multiples), and the few incumbent native apps in this category, big opportunities remain for designers and developers to create entirely new shopping experiences that go beyond convenience and Instagram-feed-like image-based discovery. Etsy, Poshmark, and Threadflip are a step in a new direction, a direction I welcome. Maybe by next holiday season, those new apps will have arrived, or existing ones will create more holiday-specific experiences as the year ends. Or by next next year, wireless beacons in retail stores may help augment in-store offerings in creative ways. Who knows, but what I do know is it’s so early, and I’m 100% certain next year someone will breakthrough with another offering that is not Amazon or eBay, and I can’t wait to try it out. Happy Holidays to all of you, and happy shopping, too! / |
Such Hack. Many Dogecoin. Very Disappear. So Gone. Wow. | Catherine Shu | 2,013 | 12 | 25 | Dogecoin, the virtual currency that was named after a silly meme but , suffered its first hacking incident today, with users losing an estimated 21 million Dogecoins. The incident was confirmed by Dogewallet after users reported disappearing Dogecoins on . In an email, Dogewallet told us: The hacking incident was extremely unfortunate for the Dogecoin community and all members of the Dogecoin community. We’re trying out best to make sure users can retrieve their lost Dogecoins. Dogewallet is currently in the middle of refunding users, and several million Dogecoins have already been refunded today. Refunding users is our priority because we too want to see Dogecoin grow, not only because it’s backed by the best community of any digital currency, but because it also has the greatest potential to completely overtake and topple Bitcoin. This is exemplified by the community reaching out to help create a system for . Lastly, we’d like to remind everyone to please use offline wallets as a means of storing any significant amount of Dogecoin. Online wallets are more convenient for new users and offer people the ability to learn about and use the currency immediately, but offline wallets offer the greatest security. Dogewallet promised to fully refund all lost coins and has temporarily shut down its site. Angry users, however, are created a new Reddit account to respond to complaints and (link via Google Cache). Each Dogecoin is currently . Together, the stolen Dogecoins are the equivalent of about $12,000, which is not a massive amount, but still a loss for users who spent a lot of time accumulating the virtual currency. In its Reddit post, Dogewallet said that they are “currently looking at logs and have found thousands of attempts to hack our systems.” The hacker gained access to Dogewallet’s filesystem and modified its send/receive page to send coins to a static address. Along with , the Dogecoin incident is a reminder that all online wallets are vulnerable to hacking. “We’re incredibly sorry to all users who lost funds from the attack. Please use offline wallets as online wallets are meant for new users who aren’t using them as storage of coins. Offline wallets are more safe and secure than any online wallet due to possible attacks that can originate from anyone, anywhere,” Dogewallet posted on Reddit. |
Google Wants To Build The Ultimate Personal Assistant | Frederic Lardinois | 2,013 | 12 | 25 | Google Search is changing rapidly. Given the company’s love of small, rapid-fire updates, its sometimes hard to keep track of where the company is going, but earlier this month, at the conference in Paris, Google Engineering Director Scott Huffman presented a pretty compelling overview of the direction Google is taking in search. Here’s the gist of it: Google knows our expectations of what a search engine should be able to do is quickly changing. The old “ten blue links” search results page is quickly going away for something far smarter that, according to Huffman, will resemble a personal assistant more than the search tool Google that launched over fifteen years ago. Indeed, that’s what Huffman considers Google’s goal: creating the ultimate personal assistant. The next generation of search, he said, is all about making “all your tasks as you go through the day simpler and quicker.” That also means that in a large number of cases, you will interact with Google on something that may not even have a screen. The car, he believes, is prime real estate for the Google Search of the future, where you simply interact with the search engine and then engage in a conversation with Google. The living room, too, he believes is a place where Google should just work. That may be on a large screen, but maybe also just through microphones and speakers that wait for your “ok Google” command. That interaction with Google will be in the form of a back-and-forth conversation, something the company has been working on for a while now. Thanks to its , Google has become significantly better at understanding its users intends and it is already able to use voice recognition for at least a that is able to work with pronouns (and that’s really the first step in making conversations with computers seem natural). It’s not exactly the Star Trek computer, but it’s a clear first step in the direction Google is taking. Google Now currently handles 38 languages and knows about more than 18 billion facts and their connections. That – more than its search index alone – is what will create the Google of the future. The ultimate assistant, however, needs to be able to do more than just carry on a conversation, though, Huffman stressed. It also needs to be proactive and that’s where Google Now comes in. By knowing about your habits, travel bookings, OpenTable reservations and everything else that can be found by , Google Now is already pretty useful. Looking ahead, I would expect Google to continue to build on top of this platform and open it up for developers. Huffman acknowledges that Google is working on this, but there are “lots of tricky questions” the team has to deal with first. How, for example, can Google make sure that notifications from a third-party service are really important? (I would argue that users can figure this out for themselves, but Google likely wants to take a more pro-active role). Given all of this, the next generation of Google Search may be more about how third-party developers can get their information into the Knowledge Graph and less about Google’s algorithms into ranking their pages a bit higher than their competitors’. |
iOS 7 Untethered Jailbreak Now Available | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 22 | A team of iOS programmers called have jailbroken that latest iPhone/iPod/iPad operating system, iOS 7.0.4. Jailbreaking allows uses to install home-brew software and run unapproved apps from the . The jailbreak takes “5 minutes” and works on Windows and OS X. Users at have expressed dismay that this jailbreak came too early – many are worried it won’t work on the next few releases including the major 7.1 that they expect in coming months. Most are reporting that the jailbreak works seamlessly on devices that support iOS 7.x. Interestingly, this with fears that the iOS 7 jailbreak had been secretly sold to a third party who would monetize it. Traditionally most jailbreaks have been free but even offering a jailbreak for a brief window on a paid site could be a very lucrative proposition. That is clearly no longer the case. As with all jailbreaks please remember two words: be prepared. Backup your data and prepare to spend a few hours on a bricked phone if things don’t work correctly. The process has gotten much better over the past few years but there could be bugs. Also remember that this is a jailbreak, not a SIM unlock. This will not allow you to move from carrier to carrier, only install home-brew software. |
What I Want For Christmas From Each Major Tech Company Next Year | Darrell Etherington | 2,013 | 12 | 25 | Here’s my wish list. I realize it’s too late for this year, but I’m hoping the companies are already planning for next year, and this way they have all of 2014 to deliver. Many of these are pretty big asks, I admit, but the companies in question have pretty deep pockets and access to world-class resources. So how about let’s all deliver.
Skype is terrible on every platform, and yet I’m cursed to use it every day. It delivers in VoIP pretty reliably, but not as reliably as you might imagine given its origins. Also, it’s terrible at text-based chat communication, and key features like group chat are locked behind a paywall, even though I already pay the company a bunch annually for Skype Out, Voicemail and Skype In numbers.
I’m really hoping that the and force management to reconsider licensing properties for other mobile platforms, because if so, stroke of genius. Let’s have Mario, Pokemon, Donkey Kong, etc., on iOS and Android, and we’ll give you lots of money in exchange.
Google Glass doesn’t make any sense to me, and continues to make less the more I learn about it. I’m sure this will be greeted with ample fanboy froth and fury, but honestly, any resources Google has devoted to this project would be better used to help make Android on smartphones and tablets less something you check interminably and more a seamless part of your everyday life. Glass’ goals are fine, in other words, but focus on the platform people will actually use.
I love the idea of , I just hate the painstakingly gradual rollout. I also understand there are a lot of moving pieces and it’s going to take time to get things right, but selfishly, I want the same company I count on for most of the rest of my shopping to solve the remaining inconvenience of grocery shopping, too.
It’s crazy to even consider, but I actually miss the endless stream of baby pictures and pointless posts lamenting some minor mundane inconvenience a friend from high school had during the day. , but that’s not what I want it to be. I’m at the age where I’d actually appreciate the quaint sentimentality of an old friend posting their kid’s first crayon drawing, and ironically FB’s trying to mature past that.
DMs want to be more than they are, and . I want more of that, and I think this is one gift on my list that I’ll actually get in 2014. Here’s hoping I don’t regret asking in the first place.
Apple, you’ve been working towards this for so long, but you keep the Retina Air just out of reach, just on the horizon. The MacBook Air now has tremendous battery life, and is , but the screen on the 13- and 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro just blows it out of the water. The Retina MacBook Air is the Holy Grail of personal computing, so let’s make that happen. Those are my wishes: Some are selfish, some are realistic, some are definitely not going to happen; all are what I’d genuinely like to see coming from the major players in the tech space in 2014. Oh and maybe some socks, most of mine are looking pretty threadbare. |
AdEspresso Raises $500K To Make Facebook Ad Optimization Easy For Small Businesses | Anthony Ha | 2,013 | 12 | 25 | , a startup offering Facebook ad tools for small and medium businesses, is announcing that it has raised its first outside funding, a seed round of $500,000. The company focuses on ad optimization, namely finding the most effective combination of text and images for your ads. It says that customers upload possible images and text for the ads, then AdEspresso will test out different combinations and track the performance based on metrics like clicks, leads, and sales. For example, the company says it could tell an advertiser, “This picture for Female from 18 to 24 is performing 40% worst than your campaign’s average. Stop displaying it now!” The idea of testing and optimizing different ad “creative” isn’t new, but CEO Massimo Chieruzzi said there aren’t many companies offering a product targeted at SMBs advertising on Facebook. Similarly, he acknowledged that there are plenty of social ad companies out there, but he said most of them aren’t really direct competitors ( ). AdEspresso spun out of an Italian ad agency but has moved to Silicon Valley to participate in the 500 Startups incubator. The company says it spent about a year developing the product before launching an open beta six months ago, and it’s on-track to sign up 5,000 advertisers by the end of 2013, with nearly $900,000 in ad spending managed so far. While there’s still more work to be done on the product, the biggest item on the AdEspresso to-do list is probably making money — Chieruzzi said he’ll be implementing a business model that charges customers between $49 and $299 a month based on ad spending (customers can also use the product for free if they spend less than $2,000 a month). He also said that while AdEspresso is now headquartered in Mountain View, he plans to keep the technical team in Italy. The funding, meanwhile, came from 500 Startups, Atlantic Capital Partners, and various angel investors including and . |
The 2013 Year In Review In Review | Ryan Lawler | 2,013 | 12 | 25 | It’s a holiday, which means it’s time to fill a post with meaningless reflections on things you thought were interesting about 2013. Try to be comprehensive, but don’t rack your brain. After all, it’s extremely unlikely anyone is near a computer today, let alone scanning the tech blog sites for fake news masquerading as a thought piece. Start off with something like: “So what happened this year?” You know, just to kick things off. Begin with how 2013 was the year in which being viral trumped being true, since you’ve over the last few days and it’s a controversial topic right now. Segue into how certain sites have mastered the art of capturing reader attention while at the same time providing little lasting value. Assert your opinion about how that is likely to change or continue on into the future. Either one is right. You won’t believe the joke you’ll make about an Upworthy-esque headline. Talk about how getting fired for Tweeting is the new getting fired for blogging… and how with Medium, Ev Williams has maybe created the most perfect vehicle for allowing stupid people to write stupid things that will get them fired. Don’t forget to talk about how 2013 was the year in which we as a society — and by society you mean people like yourself with few real interests — became aware of something happening in a place we barely knew existed, thanks to the power of social networks. Opine about how it was also the year in which we all rallied around a cause thanks to social marketing, leading to a barrage of half-hearted, sympathetic Tweets. Mention something about how big mobile was this year. Talk about it in terms that people who got excited about “The Internet” in 2000 might understand. Throw in something about tablets. Discuss what the teens are doing, and how what the teens are doing impacts the way marketers think about what marketers do. (Somewhere in there, toss in an amusing personal anecdote.) Even if you don’t think it’s true, write at length about how 2013 redefined the way that we thought about wearable computing and how sensors are making us smarter, fitter, happier. Guesstimate that trend will continue for years to come. It’s doubtful people are still reading, but write a saccharine ode to how technology as a whole is improving the lives of people in ways that were totally unexpected, even just 12 months ago. Express excitement for the prospect of what is to come, and wonder aloud what kind of things will be on next year’s Year In Review. End with kind tidings for whatever holiday people might be celebrating and add a vague nod to the upcoming change in calendar year. Photo Credit: via and via |
Apple Slapped With $667K Fine For Trying To Influence Taiwanese iPhone Prices | Chris Velazco | 2,013 | 12 | 25 | Chances are that if you’re reading this, you didn’t recently buy an iPhone in Taiwan. As it happens, that may be for the best — according to a published earlier today, Apple has been fined NT$20,000,000 by Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission for attempting to influence iPhone sale prices. That may like a lot, but the reality is considerably less dramatic — that figure only works out to about $667,000. The price tag for further noncompliance raises the stakes a bit more though, as Apple would have to shell out an additional NT$50 million (~$1.6 million). Pretty soon we’ll be talking about real money. As the story goes, Apple insisted on signing off on iPhone pricing plans for three of Taiwan’s largest telecom companies — Chunghwa Telecom (far and away the biggest of the lot), FarEasTone Telecommunications, and Taiwan Mobile. Under Taiwanese law, those companies should be free from any sort of corporate interference once they have purchased the rights to distribute said iDevices from Apple, which sadly doesn’t appear to be the case. The WSJ’s report goes on to note that Apple has the option to appeal the commission’s decision, but at this point there’s no word if the company plans to avail itself of that option. I’ve reached out to Apple for comment, but seeing as how it’s Christmas, I’m not holding my breath for a speedy response. Now if we’re being honest, this isn’t the first time a major smartphone player has been caught playing hard and fast with Taiwanese law. Samsung has also been party to its share of legal imbroglios in Taiwan in 2013, as it kicked off the year by getting slapped with a fine for running ads claiming that its Galaxy Y Duos smartphone had an autofocusing camera with a flash. It didn’t. Samsung also came under fire later that year for crafting a that saw paid flacks attack Taiwanese competitor HTC’s products online. And the kicker? The campaign probably wasn’t even necessary. I’ll gladly admit to being a fan of HTC’s wares, but there’s no denying that company is still facing its share of financial woes. If we’re being totally honest, the sorts of fines that get levied on these tech titans are unlikely to cause any lasting shift in behavior. Let’s not forget that Apple has something like $150 billion (probably much more) tucked away neatly in its cash reserves. Naturally, Samsung too is well-equipped to absorb regulatory fines as it gets hit with them — revenues for the chaebol as a whole continue to account for nearly a fifth of South Korea’s GDP, with a considerable chunk of that coming from its lucrative (and prolific) consumer electronics division. Let’s consider that Samsung astroturfing case again. As adroitly pointed out when this all went down, the NT$10 million fine doesn’t amount to much more than a rounding error when you consider that Samsung’s 2012 marketing budget weighed in at a whopping . Did the whole rigmarole actually work? Who knows. What is clear though is that some very prominent companies seem to think it’s easier — and perhaps more lucrative — to say sorry and take a (very) mild financial drubbing than it is to play by the rules in the first place. They might not be wrong. |
Open Thread: What Will You Give The World This Year? | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 25 | Maybe it’s the ham and biscuit brunch talking, but here’s something we’ve never done: an open thread. To celebrate our new Facebook commenting system, I’d like you all to start sharing what you’d like to give the world this Christmas. Is it your start-up? Is it a new hardware project? Is it a great idea? An event you’re planning? Share it here and let’s have a nice, free-for-all Festivus of self-promotion/happiness/good wishes. I’ll keep my eye on this thread and follow up with you folks in 2014. Happy Festivus! [Image via ] |
Google Destroys Rap Genius’ Search Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam, But Resolution In Progress | Josh Constine | 2,013 | 12 | 25 | Google hit back hard today after it learned lyrics site had been using dubious SEO tricks to attain top spots in search results. Now RapGenius.com doesn’t appear on the first page of results for a search of “Rap Genius,” and popular queries like “Jay-Z Holy Grail Lyrics” don’t bring up the startup like they used to. [Update: But the two companies are working on a resolution.] Founded in 2009, Rap Genius is a lyrics and text annotation site. It lets users provide their own explanations for song lyrics, religious texts, legal documents, images, and more that other users see when they hover over snippets of text hosted on the site. The startup lept into the limelight when it received a led by Andreessen Horowitz . Known for their foul mouths and outrageous behavior, the Rap Genius founders had been riding high over the last year as their site climbed to prominent and lucrative slots in Google search results. For a sense of how ridiculous these guys are, check out our onstage talk at TechCrunch Disrupt NY where founder Mahbod Moghadam apologizes for telling Mark Zuckerberg to “suck his d*ck”. But earlier this week, Rap Genius invited bloggers to join its “Rap Genius Blog Affiliate” program. , the founder of email filtering startup Glider, emailed in asking for details, and Rap Genius offerered to tweet links to his blog in exchange for him placing a series of links to Rap Genius’ Justin Bieber lyrics on his blog. The links were designed to trick Google into giving Rap Genius better result rankings on searches for lyrics to songs from Bieber’s new album — sure to be popular searches this season. Marbach then revealed Rap Genius’ unscrupulous tactics by publishing the email it sent him in a widely read , prompting Google’s webspam czar Matt Cutts on Hacker News, “We’re investigating this now.” in an open letter to Google, asking for the entire lyrics site category to be examined, implying shady SEO tactics were common amongst its competitors. That apology doesn’t seem to have gotten it very far, as Google this morning practically swept Rap Genius out of its search results. Previously, Rap Genius was appearing at the top or close to the top of search results for queries of popular rap songs and the word “lyrics,” for example “ .” It would even sometimes appear high in simple searches for artist and song names. Now, you won’t find Rap Genius for that query until the fifth page of results, likely further than anyone would look. For evidence of how serious the punshment is, adding “ ” to the end of that query actually makes Rap Genius appear even deeper down the results on the sixth page. And just to make sure it was clear, Google banished RapGenius.com to the bottom of the of searches for “Rap Genius.” Becoming practically unsearchable could be a huge hit to Rap Genius’ business, which depends on Google search referral traffic. Without that traffic, it will be much harder to grow its user base, collect new annotations, and potentially monetize with ads down the road. Whether Google’s reaction was too tough is a matter of opinion. Gaming search results with spammy SEO tactics is certainly deplorable, but wiping Rap Genius off of top result pages for queries that include its own name is pretty harsh. Whether the startup deserves it or should get a lighter punishment depends on your perspective regarding the sanctity of Google search results. We’re awaiting a response from the Rap Genius founders, and have been promised a statement shortly. : Rap Genius’ founders have provided this statement, indicating they’re working with Google on being returned to better search result rankings: “We are working with Google right now to resolve this. They’ve been really great, helping us identify changes we need to make, even on Christmas. We’re working on it as fast as we can, and expect to be back on Google very soon. It sucks to be off Google for us and for the thousands of our community members who have worked so hard to create what’s often the best search result. We hope everyone who reads this will take a little time out from their Christmas and head to Rap Genius and sign up so you can contribute your knowledge on your favorite subjects – becoming a member of our community makes the site way more fun. Merry Christmas” Looks like Rap Genius and Google might come to some compromise where Google restores at least some of the startup’s search result ranking juice in exchange for it cleaning up its act. However, at least some of the decreased visibility is likely to stick around for a long time, impeding Rap Genius’ business. We’ll have more details on the outcome of the talks as soon as possible and we are awaiting a response from Google. |
Evasi0n Jailbreak Group Drops Pirate App Store TaiG | John Biggs | 2,013 | 12 | 25 | In a short letter to the jailbreak community, the they are refusing to distribute , a Chinese app store released alongside an iOS 7.x jailbreak. that the app store contained hundreds of pirated apps. Evasi0n said they “dropped the ball” and that the TaiG partnership was a mistake. They also reverse-engineered the software to assess how TaiG handled user privacy, finding that the software sent no private data and that the software sent unique identifiers in encrypted form. Noted confirmed that Evasi0n was to receive at least $1 million from TaiG, although the actual sum was not disclosed. The group has also announced that they are not accepting cash from TaiG: |
Stanford Researcher Proves NSA Can Probably Identify Individuals From Phone Records | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,013 | 12 | 25 | The National Security Agency that intelligence officers are only collecting the phone records of millions of Americans, safely omitting their actual names from analysis. But a Stanford researcher, Jonathan Mayer, that he and his co-author could easily match so-called “meta-data” to individual names with little more than a Google search. “If a few academic researchers can get this far this quickly, it’s difficult to believe the NSA would have any trouble identifying the overwhelming majority of American phone numbers,” . Using a crowdsourced public database of voluntarily submitted phone records, MetaPhone… We randomly sampled 5,000 numbers from our crowdsourced MetaPhone dataset and queried the Yelp, Google Places, and Facebook directories. With little marginal effort and just those three sources—all free and public—we matched 1,356 (27.1%) of the numbers. Specifically, there were 378 hits (7.6%) on Yelp, 684 (13.7%) on Google Places, and 618 (12.3%) on Facebook. What about if an organization were willing to put in some manpower? To conservatively approximate human analysis, we randomly sampled 100 numbers from our dataset, then ran Google searches on each. In under an hour, we were able to associate an individual or a business with 60 of the 100 numbers. When we added in our three initial sources, we were up to 73. The science of identifying people from supposedly anonymous databases has become a game for academics. Last year, a group of researchers that they could identify individuals from a DNA database of their relatives and public demographic information. On the more invasive side, other researchers could the sexual preferences of Facebook users from pages they “like”. “Even if you think you’re keeping your information private, we can learn a lot about you,” said Jennifer Golbeck, a University of Maryland computer scientist who conducts research similar to the one used to identify Facebook users. Statistically, it’s not hard to do. There are only so many short, 31-year-old Jewish writers in San Francisco (actually, come to think of it, there are probably a lot of people like me in this city). While an algorithm may not be able to identify every single person, it can dramatically narrow the search to the point where it’s easy for a determined person to find the information they need. People may about whether or not government agencies should have private information, but let’s not pretend they can’t learn anything they want from what information they have. |
Was Your Twitter Password Just Reset? Don’t Panic — Twitter Screwed Up | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 3 | 3 | Over the last hour or so, there’s been a big spike in the number of folks reporting that Twitter had sent them an email asking them to change their password for security reasons. What was going on? Had Twitter been hacked? Were these emails real? Was this some mega phishing attempt? Yes, the emails were real — but no, you weren’t being hacked. Someone at Twitter just hit the wrong button somewhere, triggering an onslaught of password reset emails to go out to people who didn’t actually need them. Your account likely wasn’t ever in any danger (unless, of course, you actually being hacked and the timing was an unfortunate coincidence.) “Twitter believes that your account may have been compromised by a website or service not associated with Twitter,” read the original email. “We’ve reset your password to prevent others from accessing your account.” In a fittingly short statement (as in, it’s 140 characters), Twitter had the following to say about the resets: We unintentionally sent some password reset notices tonight due to a system error. We apologize to the affected users for the inconvenience. So, good news: you weren’t hacked. Bad news? You probably have to reset your password before you can log back in. Could be worse, right? |
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