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Longreads Goes Social With Community Picks And Aims For Sustainability | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 9 | If you’re a fan of reading long-form content online, you probably already know what is. If not, you should. It’s the best way to find content between 1,500 and 30,000 words . And today they’ve upped the discovery element a bit by making it more social. “Community Picks” is of the Longreads website which scans Twitter for the most tweeted (and retweeted) Longreads articles. It then displays these on the website ranked by either most popular or newest. This adds another layer of stories on top of the traditional stock of Longreads editors’ picks. “This is a new breed of community-powered curation,” founder Mark Armstrong says. “We thought it was important to give the community new ways to share their own personal picks. We feature 3-5 story recommendations per day, and roughly 80 percent of them are generated by the community on the #longreads hashtag. And thousands of stories have been shared on #longreads over the past two years,” he continues. With this new feature also comes profiles for members. If a member has ever tweeted out a #longreads link, they will show up and be compiled on this page. In other words, this is a sort of Longreads reading list. “Everyone is a curator now — and just like we enjoy looking through at other people’s bookshelves when we go to their house, there’s something wonderful about getting a sense of a person’s personality through their #longreads #lists. We hope to feature these individual tastes and continue to serve as a discovery engine for great storytelling and outstanding curators,” Armstrong says. Longreads has another feature they’re unveiling today as well: a subscription model. For , users of the service will be able to get early access to new features while supporting the service they love. And if you subscribe for a year, you get a Longreads mug too. Armstrong is quick to note that these subscriptions are totally optional and the service will always remain free. This is just a way to help ensure the service is sustainable as well. This idea follows what partner has been . Partner also uses a subscription model. Armstrong notes that Longreads has come a long way in its two years of existence, when it started out as a Twitter account. Last October, when the website was unveiled, that account had roughly 7,000 followers. Now it has over 23,000 and support from publishers like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, GQ, Time, and ProPublica. |
Without The Labels, Google's Music Locker Service Will Look Like Apple's Ugly Sibling. Again. | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 5 | 9 | : Moscone Center, San Francisco. Google’s Vic Gundotra is pacing the stage, rolling off one new awesome Android feature after another. There’s Fro Yo, the new version of Android that does laps ( ) around iOS. And then for a real a-ha moment: a sneak peek at Google Music, a service that would let you purchase songs from your desktop and ‘push’ them to your phone wirelessly, among other things. It was billed as a preview and no firm date was given, but nobody guessed we’d be waiting for a full year. But there were delays, deals didn’t get worked out, and Google was beaten to the punch by Amazon’s Cloud Drive, which . This evening the WSJ that after a year of (failed) discussions with the labels Google will finally be launching a music service tomorrow at Google I/O — and it’s very similar to Amazon’s, which also doesn’t have approval from the labels. I spoke with Google’s Jamie Rosenberg, head of digital content and strategy for Android, who confirmed the news. And while he says that Google will improve on Amazon’s offering in many ways, one month from now I’m guessing it will look significantly less impressive. First, the basics. As with Amazon Cloud Drive, Google’s music service will work by uploading your music library to servers, then streaming that music to whatever PC or Android device you’d like, giving you instant access to your library whenever you have an Internet connection. Uploads will be handled by a small downloadable client available for both PC and Mac. There will be a Flash-based web player (which will work with ChromeOS), and the music service is baked into the Music application on Android versions 2.2 and higher, which can also store songs locally. It’s invite only for now — Google I/O attendees will get an invite, as will users with the Verizon version of the Xoom. Google isn’t talking pricing, but the initial test will store up to 20,000 songs for free (Rosenberg says the limit is based on number of songs, not gigabytes). It sounds good on paper, but there are a few hurdles. The biggest is the upload process: after signing up and installing the native app, you’ll be prompted to start uploading your music library. Nobody likes having to upload gigabytes of content. It may not be — Google’s client will actually upload the songs you’re most likely to listen to first to minimize the pain — but there’s still the mental hurdle of letting the upload run for a full day or two. And, unlike Amazon, you won’t actually be able to purchase any music through Google’s service. This will not be a huge deal (if you leave Google’s desktop client running in the background it will automatically upload any new songs to the cloud) but it’s still frustrating. I think Android users will be happy to start using the service that launches tomorrow. It will be good, and significantly better than Amazon’s Cloud Drive because of the native Android integration and some tweaks to the user experience (the phone will intelligently cache songs it thinks you’ll listen to, for example). But Apple is rumored to be announcing its competing cloud service at WWDC in June, likely with full cooperation from the labels — which could make all the difference. Instead of having to upload your thousands of MP3s, iTunes may be able to simply check your (much smaller) database file and recreate it online using a central repository of music (in other words, no huge uploads). The technology wouldn’t be new — Lala, which Apple in 2009, was doing that years ago. It’s just a matter of hammering out the deals with the labels. And really, I can’t imagine Apple launching a service that tells its users to sit back and wait a couple of days. Instead, you’ll fire up the new version of iTunes, check a box saying you want your iPhone and iPad to have access to all of your content, and bam — users won’t have to learn what an online locker is, their stuff will just be where they want it. Will this have a negative impact on Android sales? No — aside from third-party apps like DoubleTwist, Android has never offered an easy way to manage your music, so this is a step up. But for anyone who is on the fence choosing between the two operating systems, it’s another win in the iOS column. For what it’s worth, Rosenberg says that Google looks forward to launching additional functionality in Google Music. But the centralized database of content that would enable near-instant library uploads is something that the labels need to sign off on. And something tells me they aren’t going to be very pleased with tomorrow’s launch. |
Double-Barrelled Pneumatic Water Cannon Makes The Greatest Noise Ever | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 9 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qWmWmc4hV0&w=640&h=390]
To be honest, the performance of this pneumatic cannon isn’t blowing me away — but the noise it makes is cracking me up. Can you spare fifteen seconds to watch the video? I knew you could. Granted, I’m not really an expert on this kind of thing. It’s actually pretty awesome that you can put this stuff together from off-the-shelf parts. , complete with circuit diagrams and such, so if you feel like duplicating (or trying to improve) the design, have at it. . [via ] |
Shutl raise £650,000 from Hummingbird Ventures and mystery European postal provider | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 5 | 9 | , an on-demand delivery platform that aggregates transportation carriers to enable them to deliver in short time windows, has taken a £650,000 ($1m) investment round from Hummingbird Ventures and a European Postal Group of some description, but they are not saying which. Shutl has recently been piloting its service with Argos, a leading multi-channel and high street retailer in the UK. Shutl plans to use the investment on building a sales team, expanding its platform and looking at international markets. Barend Van Den Brande, Managing Partner of Hummingbird Ventures says Shutl has a “disruptive proposition.” An 90 minute delivery time is admittedly quite disruptive and numerous dotcom-boom era startups, like Kozmo and Urban Fetch, could not achieve this even with millions in VC backing. Shutl was formed by Tom Allason, previously founder of eCourier.co.uk. Founded in late 2008, Shutl was initially bootstrapped by its founder with just £50,000, which was later matched by the rest of the team. It received £500,000 from a group of investors led by Simon Murdoch and Big Bang Ventures in October 2009 and £400,000 follow-on from these investors in August 2010. Allason tells us sales have grown average 89% month on month in the first 12 months since first delivery (March ’10). |
Pneuborn Robotic Babies Will Claw At Your Dreams | John Biggs | 2,011 | 5 | 9 | The store downstairs from your apartment specialized in junk. Its owner was a small man, his face sagging and acne scarred, his front shirt pocket bulging with a pack of Marlboros and his hands always, always fiddling. He died a week ago and his shop has been locked since. At night you hear a baby crying through the floor. A mewling, a squeal, silence for an hour, maybe two. You stare in the near dark at a stain on the ceiling, straining to hear the noise again. There it is. A baby’s cry.
The man downstairs had no relatives. You bought a few things from him, an old Atari 2600 that still worked, a 23-inch LCD monitor. But now his store is shut and the crying is keeping you up. Is it a doll, broken and wailing on its last gasp of battery? You’re going to have to check if you want to keep your sanity. You know a way in. The back window. It’s always been open. You lift it and a crush of long chain monomers, grease, and dust, the carcinogenic smell of technologies obsolete and obsoleting, wafts out at you. There’s also something acrid, like burned wire and hair. You push yourself over through the window and hear a rustle in the empty, cramped shop. Boxes of gear tower over you and you can’t see more than a few feet without your vision being occluded by a case from an old Magnavox or the guts of a dead radio. Further in. No alarms here. He never believed in them. He said he didn’t need them. Further in. Suddenly, you hear the cry. It is so realistic, so close that you nearly scream. To your left is a box marked “Pneuborn 7II/13.” The cries are coming from inside. You lift the lid, weak light streaming in from the alley behind the shop. Suddenly, two metal hands reach out and grab your neck. The thing is heavy, about as big as a 13 month old baby. It pushes you down and clinging to its leg is a 7 month old robot, the one that is screaming the loudest. “Feed! Feed!” the bigger one cries. “Feed!” “Fee,” squeaks the littler one. You soon discover they run on batteries powered by human blood. Measuring the size of a 7 month old infant, Pneuborn-7II was built to study the relationship between motor development and embodiment. It is 80cm (31″) tall, weighs 5.4kg (11.9 lbs), and has 26 degrees of freedom actuated by 19 pneumatic muscles. Notably, the robot’s spine has three pitch and yaw joints that allow it to rotate, flex, and extend. It is fully autonomous, containing a micro controller, battery, air valves, and an air source (compressed C02 cartridge bottle). During long experiments, air can be provided through an external compressor.
The researchers implemented a learning algorithm based on central pattern generators with an optimization method, which was able to generate successful crawling forward motions. They were able to accomplish this despite the robot’s lack of sensors or sophisticated artificial intelligence. Central pattern generators (or CPGs for short) are a type of neural network that are often used in robotics to create rhythmic motions that are especially useful for simple locomotion such as crawling or rolling over. |
Attention 'Dear Sophie'-Inspired Parents, You Can't Actually Create A Google Account For Your Kid | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 5 | 9 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vkVHijdQk&w=630] — Steven Levy By now you’ve probably seen or about Google’s warm and fuzzy ‘Dear Sophie’ commercial, which debuted last week and aired during a coveted spot on Saturday Night Live this weekend. In the commercial, which was inspired by a true story, Sophie’s dad Daniel sends her emails about the special moments in her life like her first birthday, Father’s Day and the birth of her sister, as well as general dad silliness like clips titled “Giggles.mov.” While the emails are addressed to Sophie, and the author refers to her in the 2nd person, (“You wanted to name her ‘Salt.'”) it is actually to create a Google account for your kid, or anyone who is not over thirteen years old. One frustrated Dad emails: When I asked Google about whether the “Dear Sophie” ad is actually against the Google TOS, a representative explained why it was exempt as follows, “This story is about a father who opens a Gmail account and uses the web to communicate with his daughter from birth into the future. This story is not about a parent opening a Gmail account for his child to use; our system will block users identified as under 13 years of age from opening an account.” Okay there you have it web savvy parents, as long as you open a Gmail account in order to “use the web to communicate with [your kid] from birth into the future” you’re fine. So set the age on the Gmail account to a hundred or something, capisce? |
CMU Study Confirms: Teens Like Virtual Stuff | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 9 | Studies like this may seem slightly… well, obvious to you (informed reader) and me (lonely blogger), but the fact is that no matter how clear things like “yeah the kids these days love Facebook” seem to us, they do need to be studied and quantified , or else they’re just intuitions. In this case, the common knowledge (to us) that teenagers value their Facebook pictures and Xbox achievement lists the way my generation valued its 3×5 prints and annotated Nintendo Powers is being put to the test. (though with a sample size of 21, it’s not exactly universal), yes indeed, young’uns do place a high value on their virtual items. Because so much of this new generation’s social life is online, physical goods are indeed at a disadvantage, since they can’t be tagged, commented on, and shared. An interesting question raised by the researchers: if the value of, say, a tagged and commented photo is in the metadata, the contributions from friends and so on, is the permission of the “collaborators” necessary for deletion or modification? After all, they had a hand in making it as valuable as it is. And then of course there’s the question of who owns the rights to the photo in the first place: who took it? Who uploaded it? On whose account? With whose connection? Using what service? And so on. But that’s a study for another day. The study was performed by researchers at the and the there at CMU. |
AdGenesis Aims To Be The Match.com of Video Advertising, Pair Brands With The Right Viewer | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 5 | 9 | As online video advertising continues to grow, and expands to mobile, brands are looking for ways to get more bang for their advertising buck, and viewers continue to yearn for and expect video advertising that is more personalized, targeted, and relevant. And obviously the same is true for brands and advertisers — they, too, want to be able to customize their ad experience to reach consumers that they know will care about their products. So, as technology and the web tools we use on a daily basis continue to get smarter, so should advertising, right? , a New York-based video advertising startup, wants use the dating, or match-making game, to make the serving of video advertising a more intelligent arrangement. It hopes that its service will bring consumers and brands together for a rewarding, lifetime relationship of loyalty and happiness — not just in a marriage of convenience. In other words, the startup is a white label video advertising platform that partners with publishers to match branded content to a large network of eager, opt-in customers. And, today, the startup today announced that it is launching a new API that will enable Web and mobile publishers to deliver stand-alone video advertising service to their perfect user. As we all want to be rewarded for having to sit through advertising, the service naturally incorporates a points, badges, and rewards into a program that gives viewers incentive to watch the video, and, in turn, giving advertisers the satisfaction of knowing that they are reaching their target consumer — and that those consumers are actually watching their videos. So, how does this all work? In the case of publishers, they tell AdGenesis what type of consumer they want to view their video, based on demographics, future purchase intentions, interests, hobbies, and so on prompted by AdGenesis once a publisher joins the service. They then provide AdGenesis with a video, be it 15 seconds to 10 minutes-long, which then loads the video into their system. Based on the data AdGenesis has gathered from its 4 million registered users, it then notifies consumers with corresponding interests via SMS or email that they’ve been “matched”. Let the swooning begin. These viewers then watch the video, on-demand on mobile or desktop, and confirm that they’ve watched the video in its entirety by entering 2 digits that are overlaid in the video’s content. If the viewer doesn’t enter those digits, the advertiser doesn’t pay. If they do, then the brand pays once for that unique view, but only once, even if the viewer watches the video 80 times. The advertisers are then asked to present some kind of reward to the viewer for watching the video. This can be credits on AdGenesis, which viewers can later redeem for gift cards, etc, or the brand can enter the viewer in a contest to win a trip to Hawaii, or offer discounted coupons, and so on. For the consumer, AdGenesis is totally free to join, it’s opt-in, so you’re not forced to do or see anything you don’t want to, and the more you tell AdGenesis about yourself, the more targeted the ads it serves you become, and the more videos you watch, the more rewards you earn. It sounds a bit like being in a focus group or being paid to do medical testing on a new line of shaving cream, but AdGenesis has become very popular among coupon clippers and aggressive savers. Four months from its launch, AdGenesis has served 1.6 million viewed-videos and generated more than 150K click-throughs to advertiser websites, Facebook pages, etc. Online video has not been a particularly successful source of click-through rates, and many advertisers have become wary of it, because it’s hard to measure the ROI of video advertising. (Same as it ever was.) AdGenesis, on the other hand, has been demonstrating a fairly impressive click-through rate (an average of 11 percent), which is much higher than the average of about 1 or 2 percent, according to AdGenesis CEO Richard Smullen. AdGenesis has also announced a partnership with PARADE Magazine, the first publisher to launch with the full array of AdGenesis’ functionality, and Smullen tells me the startup has several big partnerships in the pipeline, both on the publishing side and the rewards/points side. With many, many advertisers struggling to come to terms with significant spend on advertising campaigns without tried-and-true measures of customer retention, click-through, etc., advertising loyalty solutions are popping up across the Web. AdGenesis is an interesting take, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the match-making, brand-dating game proves to have some traction. After all, I’ve always wanted to date Nike. Check it out. |
World Record Set For Most Flashes Used In One Picture: 300 | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 9 |
This world record, confirmed by Guinness (they know of such things), is even more impressive to me, seeing as I can’t even get single flash unit to work properly. These guys synced up to light a picture at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. The picture above shows the setup, but I believe that’s just the portrait for the record page. If they set the record just taking a picture of themselves setting the record, that would be ridiculous. More is forthcoming, including some behind-the-scenes stuff on how to power and sync such a ridiculous number of strobes. [via ] |
Ion's Go Pad, A Foldable Gamepad For Nintendo Emulation On The Go | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 9 |
One of my favorite things to do on long flights is play through old games on an emulator. Got five or six spare hours? You can beat , and tackle a few dungeons in between naps and salisbury steaks. But the best gamepads (Xbox 360, Logitech) are often bulky. Here’s a foldable one for your consideration. It’s not like it’s the only compact gamepad out there, but it is pretty compact, and the removable, telescoping USB cord is a good option. This thing actually got announced at CES, but it’s only just now shipping. At $20 it’s really not a bad deal as long as you don’t need an analog stick — handy for N64 stuff. , or wait for it to show up at Amazon or Best Buy. |
StylistPick appoints ex-Marie Claire editor as co-founder before competitors turn up the heat | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 5 | 9 | As the competition looks set to turn up the heat, , the fashion buying site , has appointed ex-UK editor of Marie Claire, Juliet Warkentin, as Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder. Most recently, Warkentin was Content Director at style trend analysis firm WGSN, while prior to this she has also held the role of Internet director at Arcadia Group (Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Topshop and Wallis). Founded in 2010 and originally seed-funded by Stefan Glaenzer and Robert Dighero of , and , Stylistpick is a fashion buying website for shoe and accessory shoppers but with a neat twist to the buying club model: Customers signup to StylistPick and are asked to take a short quiz to “identify their fashion profile”. Then each month they receive tailored recommendations for fashion items such as shoes and bags via a monthly-subscription, which includes the items themselves. It’s also a model that is strikingly similar to in the U.S., which is funded to the tune of $23 million and is also said to be planning on entering the UK later this year, while the infamous Samwer Brothers are thought to be cloning the subscription model, possibly via their existing property , a European Zappos clone. That’s perhaps not surprising: the shoe market in the UK alone is estimated to be worth £8 billion ($13 million) per-year. On that note, StylistPick membership is said to be doubling month-on-month, although the company doesn’t say what that figure is. |
Gillmor Gang 5.9.11 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 5 | 9 | The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — inaugurated a new kind of Gillmor Gang. To the undisclosed, it looks the same: silly chat, mangled technology disruptions, and dead air. To the more clueful, who recognize we’re entering a new age of social media, the intersection of social monitoring and proactive brand creation tools spells big trouble for old media and their thin-skinned attacks on the realtime enterprise. As @scobleizer describes Rackspace’s move to Chatter, you get the idea that social media is not just the province of the Ashton’s and Lady Gaga’s, but a million personal clouds that resonate with accumulated authority and credibility. Mainstream media can play a role here; @borthwick describes the velocity with which a New York Times reporter validated the Bin Laden story . @jtaschek reminisces about the speeds and feeds days of recognizable software giving way to micro-authority and pushrank. |
Shoefitr: You Know, For Shoes | John Biggs | 2,011 | 5 | 9 | allows you to find a shoe that is similar in size and shape to a pair of shoes you already own. For example, say you’re into Nike Free Runs but they discontinued the model you like. You tell Shoefitr and, using the site’s 3D scanning system and shoe database, it finds a pair that matches the size and shape of the shoe you like. The 3D scanning system is based on the same systems used to scan feet for orthotics. They’re currently using the service at but I suspect folks like Amazon and Zappos will soon be on the bandwagon. There is, after all, nothing more frustrating than getting a pair of running shoes and finding they pinch or warp in the wrong places. Another interesting aspect of this is the start-up story and how the founder’s first idea failed.The creator, Matt Wilkinson, first tried to scan people’s feet in stores and, discovering that putting too much hardware in a store was a recipe for disaster, he scaled back and instead began giving recommendations based on known variables scanned in from existing shoes. The service ensures that your choice isn’t too big or too small and when you leave a brand you trust it finds similar shoes from similar brands and, most important, it assesses the size differences in the different shoes and advises you which pair to buy. The savings come as customers pick – and buy – shoes they know will fit them, thereby reducing returns. |
Evernote-Rival SpringPad Now Supports Honeycomb And Offers Offline Access Via Chrome Web App | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 5 | 9 | Evernote rival is announcing support for Android Honeycomb tablets and is also debuting offline access via its popular chrome web app. Similar to Evernote, Springpad serves as a multi-platform digital notebook. The service allows you to jot down notes, save websites, images and more. Springpad will then categorizes your saved content, and allows you to share your notes, set reminders and more. The app goes a step farther to analyze your content and then serve you alerts to relevant news, offers and deals. The app’s semantic data technology allows you to save products, books, movies, recipes and more, and automatically get enhanced information, including price drops, local availability and coupons. The support for Honeycomb includes features such as optimized display for the larger screen size and configurable widgets to create, save and view their notes for immediate access on the tablet homescreen. The app delivers cross browser and app sharing making it easy to save information from other sites and apps. Springpad’s Chrome web app, which is ranked as one of the top 20 most popular apps in the Chrome Web Store, allows users instant and universal access to their Springpad account, even when offline. Honeycomb tablet support is significant for Springpad because the app’s growth has been fueled by mobile adoption. Nearly half of its users are using its Android app and a third are using Springpad via an iOS device. Evernote has around 9 million users now and SpringPad just passed the mark so the startup definitely has a ways to go. But the company’s ability to add intelligence to notetaking and possibly monetize off of users with personalized deals, content and more could help boost usage. |
The Unannounced Looxcie LX2 Hits The FCC Database | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 5 | 9 |
The hit with the scene to a skeptical crowd — Wha, you put a camera in a Bluetooth headset? Why? But it seems things must have went well for the company, as what appears to be the next generation camera just hit the FCC. The LX2, as it’s called , seems be a slightly redesigned unit, and appears to have an integrated USB port. Despite being labeled a Bluetooth 2.1 headset, it actually doesn’t look like a headset at all — more like a desktop-type unit. Presumably it will still work similarly to the first generation by streaming video through a smartphone’s data connection. That’s where the fun ends, though. The FCC docs are bound by a confidentiality agreement so the user manual along with internal and external photos are hidden from the public’s view for 180 days, which also sort of means the LX2 will be announced before then. |
Google: Chrome OS Only For Notebooks Right Now | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | Although we recently heard tell of a running , Google isn’t in a hurry to acknowledge that its browser OS is coming to tablets. I can’t blame them, either — with Android numbers increasing and Chrome OS unproven, it’d be foolish to dilute the market with a second tablet ecosystem. So they’re officially limiting it to for now. , Google’s Sundar Pichai said: Chrome OS is a computer model designed with various form factors in mind, but we are entirely focused on the notebook form factor for now. We have no other plans at this time. The touchscreen testbed seems to contradict that statement, but at a big company like Google they’re definitely thinking and testing months and years ahead of time, so “no other plans” really just means “plans could change.” Once they roll out Chrome OS in earnest, though, I think we’ll see an understandable divide between . It’ll take a while and both products continue to evolve, though, so let’s just wait and see. |
Suunto Elementum Terra All Black Watch Is All Black | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 31 |
This is just a new color variation on from Suunto, but damn is it a looker. The all-black casing and negative display make for a stealthy look, and it retains all the sweet functions of the other, less handsome designs. The Terra has an altimeter, barometer, 3D compass, and a number of other features useful for mountaineering. Not that I’m going to be mountaineering any time soon, but maybe if I wore this watch, people would think I’m capable of it. Or not. [via ] |
Signs Of Twitter's Photo Hosting In The Wild | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | More details have emerged since we on Twitter’s photo-sharing service, namely that Apple’s new will probably come with a baked in Twitter image sharing feature. A tipster informs us that one trigger happy Apple iOS designer has already released a test link into the wild (which we’ve seen but are not replicating here). The tipster clued us into a http://a0.twimg.com/status_photos/ URL that appeared in his timeline, and then quickly disappeared. While Twitter has hosted individual profile images on http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/ for quite some time, the /status_photos/ appendage is new, or relatively so. A little finds three more signs of this: A posting photos on March 30th, a Google cache of the protected Twitter office account posting on March 31st, posting photos yesterday and a Tweetmeme cache of Twitter designer Coleen Baik posting from her account, with the original tweet nowhere to be found. If what we’re hearing is correct and the service is just a simple uploader to S3, then the above /status_photos/ links seem to make sense. However we’re expecting that these will eventually get reformatted to something cleaner, like Twimg.com/3dkd for example. Update: Looks like the web images are hosted on Photobucket (not S3) and the URL for web at least is We’ll have to wait until Monday to see what the images look like on iOS mobile. |
On iCloud, Baby | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | Apple did something really odd today. Something they almost never do. They the agenda for the keynote of one of their events, WWDC, taking place next week. Yes, they probably did this in an attempt to set expectations — read: no new iPhone coming — but in doing so, they also managed to do something even stranger: they outed a completely unreleased product. iCloud. So what is iCloud? Apple only states that it’s their “upcoming cloud services offering.” Of course, a number of other details have been rumored for months now. I figured it was a good time to break down what we know — or what we think we know about what’s coming. . I’ll do a bit more. The talk about Apple’s cloud strategy really began when it was revealed that they were building in North Carolina about a year ago. That datacenter only recently was completed and brought online. And it’s thought that Apple poured over $1 billion into it. At 500,000+ square feet, it’s something like five times larger than Apple’s other datacenters. And yes, it is believed to be the main hub for iCloud (though they are thought to be building another large datacenter in California as well). The most talked-about aspect of iCloud is definitely the music portion of it. Because Apple has been negotiating with the music industry for — and because rivals Google and Amazon have as well, a number of things have leaked about this service. Right now, it’s believed that Apple either has three or all four of the major music labels for a service that would allow Apple to stream music from their servers to users’ computers, iPhones, iPads, etc. Unlike Google and Amazon (which don’t have the label deals yet), Apple’s service will apparently allow a program (likely iTunes) to analyze a user’s computer and see what songs they have on their hard drive. Those songs would then be mirrored in iCloud — meaning no uploading would be required, a important detail. Another potentially huge detail is the talk that Apple’s deal with the labels may even in users’ iCloud. This means that music obtained through other means (read: piracy) may still work with the system. That would be a big win for Apple, and one you can bet they’re paying for. But not so fast. While the label deals are signed (or will be this week), Apple still apparently does not have the publisher deals signed. While generally less talked-about than the label deals, the publisher deals are still vital for a full-fledged service. Apple may be able to get these done this week as well, or it may take a little while longer. After years of being pushed over, it seems the publishers are than usual this time. that Apple’s plan was to launch their cloud music service at their annual music event in the fall. But now that we know for sure that iCloud is being formally unveiled at WWDC, it seems likely that they will at least mention it there, and probably preview it. But that doesn’t mean it will be ready to go. In fact, it may require iOS 5 (I have no actual details here, just thinking out loud), which also isn’t due until late summer or early fall (though it too will be shown off at WWDC). One other potential wildcard: what if Apple unveils a version of iTunes that works fully in the cloud — as in, in the web browser? has persisted for years. And while iTunes the desktop app will undoubtedly still be required for a long time to come for iDevices, iTunes in the cloud could offer some basic functionality, such a music-streaming over the browser. Earlier today, about Apple’s hopes that the movie and television studios will also get on board with their iCloud offering. Unlike the music side of things, there hasn’t been much stated about this side of the coin. But it’s arguably even more important. , I’ve been complaining about the Apple has in place with regard to iTunes and films/television shows. The issue is that they take up way too much space on hard drives. If these services were as popular as Apple hoped, everyone would run out of hard drive space very quickly. There needs to be a cloud solution here. Sandoval notes that while the sides are talking, and some are thought to be close, there are some big holdups. One is the idiotic HBO rule (where movies can’t be on sale online when they’re being aired on HBO). This rule is a hold-over from a different era and should be eliminated. But that’s Hollywood. Another issue is, of course, piracy. Sandoval quotes Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes as talking favorably about a cloud solution for movie storage, but only with the Ultraviolet system in place. For those unaware, Ultraviolet is a new form of DRM that is backed by all the major studios and several device manufacturers and content sellers. Unfortunately, Sandoval leaves out one key detail: . They have their own DRM system that they’d prefer to use. This is going to be a hold up — especially with studios like Time Warner. They have to know that if they back Apple and UV, it will undercut the latter. So do they try to force Apple on board with UV? That probably won’t work too well. Presumably, iCloud will replace MobileMe (which itself replaced .Mac and iTools). At its most basic, MobileMe is storage space in the cloud (on Apple’s servers) and a syncing service. A main front-facing version of this is iDisk. This system currently works fairly well, though for whatever reason, it’s not nearly as seamless as other third-party options like Dropbox. One can only assume that Apple will try to remedy that with iCloud. While there haven’t been many hints of it yet in OS X Lion, don’t be surprised if iCloud is tightly intertwined into the new OS. As well as iOS 5. And expect the other MobileMe services (email, calendar, address book, Find my iPhone) to make the leap over the iCloud as well. And don’t be surprised if the most basic ones become free — more on that below. And what about this: what if Apple offers developers some storage space on iCloud for their own apps? This could allow them to use Apple’s services rather than another third-party like Amazon S3. It’s pure speculation, but it doesn’t sound so crazy, does it? One element that could get a larger revamp is the Gallery functionality currently baked into MobileMe. Some of it is good right now, but most of it is too clunky. While we know that Apple is going with to easily tweet out pictures (among other things), they likely want a better solution of their own as well. A revamped Gallery offering could do this. One thing we’ve been hearing whispers about is that Apple is thinking about how best to share moments (pictures and images) with those people close to you. Think: Path instead of Flickr. Apple could do this via a new photo-sharing app, but it would probably be easier to bake it into the Photos app. There would then be a web-component to this, obviously. Along those lines, another element that there have been whispers of for a while is a location service that Apple could offer. Think of it as “Find my iPhone” but for people. In other words, it could be something like “Find my child”, or “ “. There hasn’t been a lot of talk about this in recent weeks, but Apple was definitely working on something in this space. It could be a part of iCloud or it may not. Another aspect of Apple’s current cloud services that is often overlook is . While it’s been out there for a while, Apple has never felt comfortable enough to truly tout it (it’s actually still in beta — very Google-like). Maybe now’s the time. We just saw the iWork suite of apps come to the iPhone today, so perhaps Apple is gearing up for more of a push in this direction. If they want to keep up with Google Docs as well as continue to compete with Microsoft Office, Apple will have to do this sooner or later. Another aspect of iOS 5 that some talk about is the Siri integration. , and is believed to have put that team to work on some new, cool services for iOS 5. Some of those may be based in iCloud, some may not. But one piece of underlying technology, created by Nuance, is definitely believed to be a part of iCloud. Ever since the Siri acquisition, Apple is believed to have been in negotiations with Nuance on everything from an acquisition to a big-time partnership agreement. It’s now believed that and could be announced at WWDC. , Nuance software is already running on Apple’s servers in their North Carolina datacenter. It’s believed that Apple could offer third-party developers access to this technology (which may or may not happen at WWDC). This could well be a vital part of the backend of Apple’s iCloud strategy. that the notification system in iOS is getting completely revamped in version 5. Apple famously took their time building their current Push Notification system — it took them about a year to complete it for iOS 3, months longer than anticipated. The current system leaves a lot to be deserved and a revamping will be much welcomed. Presumably, this will now run over Apple’s new cloud infrastructure as well. A lot of developers would love more control over these notifications as well. One element of iOS that has been very underwhelming has been Game Center, Apple’s iOS gaming network. Right now, it’s little more than a leaderboard with a clunky system to play games with other users. Might Apple use iCloud to turn the service into a more worthy Xbox Live and PSN competitor? A wildcard for iCloud is if Apple will finally offer the ability to activate devices without tethering them to a computer? If that’s the case with iOS 5, it may also rely on Apple’s new server system. Also interesting could be app syncing, which you can do now, but it’s more of a manual process through the App Store. This would bring iOS closer in functionality to Android in this regard. The big question about iCloud from a consumer perspective will be around pricing. Right now, MobileMe is $99 (or $149 for a family pack) for a year. For individuals, this includes 20 GB of space spread over all the various services. That won’t be nearly enough space if iCloud is to include music storage — let alone movie/TV storage. But remember too that with mirroring, Apple isn’t actually storing many copies of individual songs for users. Instead they’ll have one (or a few) central repositories that users will access depending on their ownership rights. This will keep the costs lower for Apple and, in turn, for users. Apple likes to keep things simple. Because of that, it seems unlikely that they’d offer a many-tiered plan for iCloud pricing. Instead, I suspect they may have two (or three) options. At the base may be a free option with Calendar, Address Book, Bookmarks, iBooks-sync, Find my iPhone, maybe even email. Above that may be a paid option at the $99 price point, or slightly higher (perhaps monthly?). This would presumably include iCloud music and perhaps more iDisk storage. Maybe they’d have another tier if they can get the movie/TV studios on board. If Apple were to offer developers space in iCloud to use for their apps, this would likely have a different pricing structure, that could be tier-based. The fact that Apple is unveiling iCloud alongside major revamps to their two flagship OSes (iOS and OS X) suggests deep ties to those two OSes. And the fact that this is taking place at WWDC suggests that Apple will have plenty of new things for developers to work with in the cloud. It still seems pretty likely at this point that all of this will just be a taste of what’s to come. This will be Apple previewing services for developers to begin to help guide them how to utilize these new tools. Don’t be surprised if new builds of both iOS and OS X Lion are released to developers with iCloud integration as well. Final releases for consumers would come later (in the summer for OS X and in the fall for iOS). The fact that Steve Jobs will be on stage for the unveiling seems to speak well for the state of iCloud. There’s no way he lets Apple repeat the disaster that was the MobileMe roll-out. He must think iCloud is a winner right off the bat. We’ll be there next week covering all of this live. |
Eric Schmidt's Gang Of Four: Google, Apple, Amazon, And Facebook | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | Every technology era has its four horsemen driving growth and innovation. In the 1990s it was Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, and Dell. Today, there is anew “gang of four,” as Google chairman Eric Schmidt puts it. They are Google (of course), Apple, Amazon and Facebook, and they are behind the consumer revolution on the Internet today. Not only are all four companies “growing at incredible rates.” Schmidt notes that all four are together worth about half a trillion dollars, they are all platforms in their own right, and they are all basically spreading their power where before there was only one company who had such influence: namely, Microsoft. But “Microsoft is not driving the consumer revolution,” Schmidt notes (although they still do well in the enterprise). The Gang of Four compete and cooperate in various ways, but each has its own strengths: search (Google), social (Facebook), commerce (Amazon), and devices (Apple). Although relations with Apple are not as cozy as when he sat on its board, he notes that Google just with Apple. As far as Facebook is concerned, Schmidt says “Facebook has done a number of things that I admire. For years I’ve said we’ve missed something, which is identity.” Facebook is the first generally available identity system that works across much of the Web. Schmidt argues that “the industry would benefit from having an alternative.” Obviously, he wants Google to be that alternative. Also he tries to position Google’s upcoming social features as ways “to make our own products better” rather than trying to go straight up against Facebook. Schmidt made his remarks at the D9 conference. |
Social Loyalty Platform PunchTab Raises $850K | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | , a startup that offers a social loyalty platform for consumers and publishers, has raised $850,000 in seed funding from Mohr Davidow Ventures, Embarcadero Ventures, and angels Venky Harinarayan, Anand Rajaraman, and Nick Sturiale. PunchTab is the brainchild of founder PunchTab allows publishers to give reward points to users who check in to a site or blog every day. Visitors, which authenticate via Facebook Connect, can earn points for Facebook comments, WordPress comments and Facebook likes. Once a publisher rewards a user, the visitor can redeem the reward through the PunchTab rewards catalog. The startup says the integration is simple, only requiring a publisher to add a few lines of code. So far over 350 websites have integrated PunchTab into their sites. Philip Seyfi, owner of Japanese language instructional site, NihongoUp.com, says his 40,000 members have responded well to his business’ new loyalty program created with PunchTab. The company reported a 15% increase in Facebook fan page Likes in the first few days of implementation. |
Google's Eric Schmidt: We Just Renewed Maps Partnership With Apple | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | Today during a keynote interview at , Google Executive Chairman (and former longtime CEO) made a key announcement: Google has recently renewed its partnership with Apple over mapping and search. In other words, don’t look for a new version of Maps on iOS at next month’s WWDC. So, why is this important? Apple has long shipped every iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad with a Maps application powered by Google. It’s great (though arguably not as good as its Android counterpart). But Apple and Google are competing fiercely in the mobile market, and every time someone runs a search using Maps from an iOS device, Apple is handing Google a little more data that could be used to further improve their local products. Apple is rumored to be working on its own map service — it’s even that’s it’s building an improved traffic database — but it sounds like we won’t be seeing that yet. This is in line with a report from last week. |
This Stun Gun-Equipped Armored Glove Is Worthy Of Judge Dredd | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 31 |
Although I can picture a battalion of shield-faced riot police wielding these against a terrified populace, the concept really is too “life imitates sci-fi” to pass up. The is an armored gauntlet with a 500,000-volt stunner protruding from the back of the hand, with room for any number of other weapons of self defense. It was invented by a cameraman (and apparently friend of Kevin Costner) who thought it would just be a practical way to introduce defense tools to one’s arsenal while keeping one’s hands free. It weighs under three pounds and presumably will stop any number of melee weapons from hitting your actual arm. The bulge is actually empty, waiting for other devices to be implemented: GPS, cameras, and so on. , though no price or anything yet. Expect to see it on Blackwater (or Xi, whatever they’re called) type mercenaries and private security groups soon. And on Kevin Costner’s bodyguard. [via ] |
Vudu Taps Peter Gabriel's The Filter To Power Its Movie And TV Recommendations | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | You may know as the startup bringing high definition movie rentals and rent-to-own services to set-top boxes like PlayStation 3 and the Boxee Box. And most TVs and Blu-ray players. Vudu the second streaming service to receive its own dedicated button on remote controls, following Netflix. You may also know , the British rocker who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a part of Genesis. Also the man responsible for . What you may not know is that Gabriel is the front man and lead investor in a rapidly proliferating recommendation service called . Or that today The Filter is officially announcing that it has been tapped by Vudu to power its recommendation engine. The Filter is already providing its recommendation technology to an impressive list of clients, including Sony Music, Nokia, Comcast, Warner Brothers, NBC — and now it’s added Vudu’s huge library of HD movies to the list. As my colleague Mike Butcher , The Filter’s main business model involves becoming a white label personalization engine for mass audiences. As such, it needs partnerships like these to prove that its technology is able to scale into the billion-request level. Today’s announcement is further indication that the UK-based business is well on its way, considering it currently reaches more than 200 million unique users across multiple devices. Through the new partnership, The Filter will offer Vudu subscribers a personalized video-on-demand experience based on customers’ previous viewing habits. The service is a little bit Amazon, a little bit Last.fm, and a little bit Netflix, serving its users with recommendations that are based on purchase data, consumption data, combining a wide array of statistical and rule-based analysis with artificial intelligence techniques that both learn and forget — all in an effort to provide smarter recommendations while protecting user privacy. In the case of Vudu, The Filter’s recommendation engine will generate targeted and timely video recommendations from Vudu’s selection of streaming movies and TV shows. And seeing as the competitors in this space, Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube included, collectively reach a massive audience and are trying to differentiate their services in an effort to provide the best streaming movie (and movie recommendation) option, The Filter is becoming a big part of the conversation. Vudu was acquired by Walmart last year ( ), as a play into the Internet-ready TV sales market, so The Filter may now count Walmart as a channel through which to reach new users. And Walmart is, well, a larger-than-average corporation, that may one day sell its products (beyond movies and TV shows) through a service like Vudu, using The Filter to recommend everything from movies to a new pair of pants. Or a new rifle. Look out! |
Zynga Channels Settlers Of Catan In New Social Combat Game Empires & Allies; Debuts In 12 Languages | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | Social gaming giant Zynga is launching its latest game tomorrow—Empires & Allies, the company’s first strategy combat game. Zynga is going big with this launch, debuting the game on Facebook in 12 languages (CityVille only in 5 languages). Zynga says this is the gaming company’s most social title to date. Empires & Allies, which is the company’s first title to be launched out of Zynga’s Los Angeles studio, is set on a sprawling multi-island game board. The game itself is a cross between FarmVille and CityVille in terms of the layout and overall feel. There are two main parts to the game. First, players aim to build a island-nation by arming themselves against enemy forces and preparing for battle. Second, throughout the game, players build army units, recruit friends, and encounter allies and villains as fight their way across enemy-held territories on the quest to defeat the final villain. It’s sort of like Risk meets CityVille meets Settlers of Catan. Once you secure you island, you begin to strategically place your housing units, community buildings, military bases, and farms with reinforcements against invading enemies. As you build your empire of Islands, Scarlett, a female personal military advisor will help advise you within the game. Empires & Allies also introduces 30 other characters that help guide play and reveal plot secrets along the way. “The Raven” is tyrant who wanted his pet mascot to be an eagle. You’ll also fight “Captain Krunsch,” an old school seaman who relishes taking out his enemies with his bare, arthritic hands. Of course, what makes Zynga’s game social is the ability to play and interact with your Facebook friends within the game. Empire & Allies allows you to build up your troops, recruit your friends and send them out to invade in-game villains. You can also visit your neighbors’ empires to help them secure more energy, decorations and collectible items, and gain Honor Points along the way. And you can enlist your neighbors help in combat to quickly finish off enemies with special attacks. For the first time in a Zynga combat game, you can actually fight your friends and choose to invade your neighboring friends’ empires to collect Infamy Points. Friends who are not invading you or a threat will have a red heart next to their icon and friends who are threats will have a gray heart. While this is one of the few combat games for Zynga (Mafia Wars is also considered a combat game); Empires & Allies is definitely not for the hardcore gamer. As I wrote above, it combines elements of combat and hardcore gaming with more mainstream, casual components. Amer Ajami, executive producer of Empires & Allies at Zynga, says the focus of the game of combining social gaming with elements of combat gaming. He says the game is deinitely not for the hardcore gaming crew, and is designed to appeal to a wide audience. “We’re focused on bringing our players a new form of entertainmen and a strategy game is definitely a new playground for us. Play is in everyone’s DNA, and this game lets you have fun and get creative by choosing your own destiny, building a nation and eventually, conquering the world, ” says Ajami. One aspect of the game that Ajami says is worth noting is that it is significantly more social than any of Zynga’s previous games. Many of the social gaming interactions, such as fighting against your friends, are new to Zynga’s games, says Ajami. Another question I had for Ajami was whether the game would appeal to both women and men. Ajami says that Zynga’s goal with Empires & Allies was to appeal to both genders. In fact, I’m told Empires & Allies is a hit with Zynga’s female employees. Empires & Allies will be available at in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Turkish, Malay, Traditional Chinese, Korean and Norwegian tomorrow. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MvxoVPXQTw&w=560&h=349] |
Amazon's Android Appstore Gets Another Huge Exclusive: Plants vs Zombies | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 5 | 31 |
If you were among the first wave of people to buy an iPad last spring, there’s a good chance you spent a lot of time playing one game in particular: Plants vs Zombies. PopCap’s smash hit was one of the first games on the iPad and it did extremely well, and it’s also seen a lot of success on the smaller iPhone/iPod Touch form factor. Now, some 16 months after its release, the game still ranks #27 on the App Store’s list of top paid apps. It’s not Angry Birds, but it’s easily one of iOS’s most popular games ever. And today, finally, Android fans are getting a chance to smack down some cartoonish undead. The application just launched on Amazon’s Android Appstore, and you can download it (it’s free today, and will be $2.99 starting tomorrow). Oh, and you won’t find it on the official Android Market for another two weeks. Unfortunately it isn’t currently optimized for tablets, but it should still work fine. The launch is a big deal for two reasons. First, Android gets another AAA game title, giving users one less reason to look longingly at their iOS counterparts. And it’s also another big marketing push for Amazon’s Appstore, which is a direct rival of Google’s official Android Market. Amazon’s Appstore in March, offering users a slightly different experience from Google’s official Market. Apps on Amazon’s store are all tested to ensure a baseline level of quality, and Amazon also provides recommendations and steep discounts on some apps. These are great features and it’s nice that Google has some competition when it comes to app distribution, but Amazon has its work cut out for it. The Amazon store takes advantage of the fact that Android is an open OS — through a process called sideloading, you can install any application you want without requiring Google’s approval. To access the Amazon store, users visit from their phones, then download and install the store client from there. Unfortunately the process is a bit cumbersome — you have to dig through your Android settings and tap a checkbox that allows for installation from “Unknown sources”, complete with a warning that you are potentially exposing your phone to more malicious applications. Most users aren’t going to bother with this unless they have an incentive to. Which is why Amazon is working with developers to offer exclusives like Plants vs Zombies and Angry Birds Rio — and they’re also giving away one application free every day. This is a good tactic for building early traction, though in the longer term Amazon will need to work out partnerships so that its Appstore comes pre-installed on devices (it will obviously come pre-installed on whatever Android devices ). Because no matter how many neat games Amazon offers exclusively, that “Unknown sources” check box is a big hurdle. This isn’t the first grade-A title that made waves on the iPhone and was later ported to Android: Doodle Jump has been available since March 2010, Angry Birds arrived last fall, and Flight Control came out in April of this year. |
TDK Shows Off Transparent Bistable OLED Mobile Display | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 31 |
The transparent wars are yet to begin, since everyone is still prepping their devices, but that doesn’t stop the big guys like and from throwing a little PR party every once in a while to let you know they’re still on the task. Today TDK released info on a new display, the , that’s a bit different from the rest. Many of the transparent displays we’re seeing are ; this one is a “PMOLED,” utilizing a passive matrix instead of an active one. It’s similar to the way e-ink works, but still requires power to fluoresce, so don’t go expecting month-long battery life on these things. But for color e-readers the tech could result in some serious power savings. Will we see this screen on any devices soon? I doubt it. It’s too small for most consumer devices, and AMOLED is more than likely the next generation of small displays. But TDK is a big company and this is just the tip of the iceberg — a photo-ready version of something that has a dozen other variants. We’ll hear about more soon enough. |
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Zinio Comes To Honeycomb | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | The popular virtual magazine marketplace has arrived on Android 3.0, bringing its stable of titles (including Rolling Stone, Popular Mechanics, and Us Weekly) to the likes of the and . The Android tablet market may not be anywhere near the size of the , but they’re getting in there early and putting their foot in the door. As a tablet-warming gift, you get two dozen free/sample magazines from their most popular lines if you download the app before June 15. What do you have to lose? |
Samsung Starts Production In New OLED Display Factory | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | Despite ’s ongoing with , the South Korea-based manufacturer had good reason to celebrate this Memorial Day weekend, as its long-awaited 5.5-Gen OLED display factory is starting production. Many thought that factory production would be delayed after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March, but Samsung managed to get its new factory up and running two months ahead of schedule. The new factory will manufacture much larger glass substrate sheets with an initial capacity of 24,000 per month. The factory will build up output throughout 2012, which should make screens more cost-competitive. Samsung’s new factory can also employ the laser-based LITI production method, which will make high-res AMOLED displays (300ppi) more wallet-friendly per panel. This is certainly good news to Samsung, whose smartphone is basically flying off shelves. Hopefully the new factory will be able to keep up with the serious demand for the ultra-popular second-gen Galaxy smartphone, especially since the Galaxy S III is likely already in the works. [via ] |
Watch: The Daily Gets The Lowdown On What It's Like To Be A Startup At Disrupt NYC | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAll0QSEBw8] There were a lot of stellar startups at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC last week, and unfortunately, there could only be one set of finalists and one winner. Of course, that doesn’t mean that those companies that didn’t make the final heat aren’t worthy of some love. The Daily followed the entrepreneurs behind three Disrupt NYC battlefield competitors, , , and through their unique experiences at Disrupt. They came by plane, train, and automobile, fought some nerves, endured some ups and downs, but in the end were exposed to a host of eyeballs and launched successfully. While judges were tough on some of the companies, the entrepreneurs gained some valuable feedback, and will no doubt use that advice to achieve future fame and glory. From butt art on the iPad to location discovery and spending tracking, these three companies proved that you don’t have to take home the Disrupt Cup just to be noticed. Check out TechCrunch’s coverage of the three startups live from Disrupt NYC below: |
ViewSonic Officially Unwraps ViewPad 7x Android Tablet | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | Along with an aluminum roll pad laptop protector, a USB-ported alien doll IM notifier, and of course, Intel’s new Ultrabook notebooks, the trade show in Taipei also gave us our first look at ’s new ViewPad 7x tablet. As with any unannounced device, we’ve heard a few rumors surrounding the ViewPad specs earlier this month, but now we have a full run-down on ViewSonic’s upcoming slate. The ViewPad 7x runs , powered by a dual-core Tegra 2 processor, with HSPA+ connectivity. Hopefully, ViewSonic has plans to get an Android 3.1 update to users post-launch, but we’ve heard nothing official on the matter as of yet. The ViewPad 7x sports a 7-inch LED display with 1024 x 600 pixels of resolution, rear and front-facing cameras, and an HDMI-out port. Unfortunately, no word yet on pricing or availability. [via ] |
Path Lands Another Ex-Facebooker To Run Ops | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | It’s something that isn’t too quick to talk about, but it’s impossible to ignore: his new startup, Path, is becoming quite the gathering ground for ex-Facebook employees. Of course, Morin’s reluctance to establish the connection probably has to do with the fact that he used to be the head of Platform there, and still has close ties to the company. But the small startup just hired its fourth ex-Facebooker today. And the latest is a pretty big one, considering he had been at Facebook over four years. Matthew Welty will be Path’s new Head of Operations, Morin tells us. Welty had been an operations engineer at Facebook for the past four-plus years. For some perspective on how long he had been there, when he joined in April 2007, Facebook had 20 million active users. Today, they’re about to hit 700 million active users. And when Welty joined Facebook, Morin was just gearing up to launch Platform. Now Morin will be Welty’s boss in this new venture. Welty decided to leave Facebook a few weeks ago, and approached Path about an opportunity. “Welty is a world class leader in technical operations, we are excited he chose to join Path as his next step. He will be key in ensuring that Path is always available to our quickly growing user base and that our infrastructure continues to scale with quality in mind,” Morin says. Welty follows Nathan Folkman, who joined Path from Facebook . Interestingly enough, Folkman used to be Head of Operations at Foursquare (and is the only employee to leave Foursquare so far). The team that Google has for is getting stronger. |
WHO Assessment Puts Cell Phone Use At "Possibly Carcinogenic" | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | The World Health Organization has just released the findings of a major literature review by leading scientists in the fields of cancer and radiation. Their conclusion? We need more data, but it’s looking as if wireless communications are, at the very least, not carcinogenic. The only positive data were deemed too “limited” or “inadequate” to permit the group to say there’s a definite link, though they saw fit to give it a , “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” Does this change much? Not really — “possibly” isn’t “probably” and it sure ain’t “definitely.” The reason they’ve classified it in this way is because of a lack of evidence. There are studies going on that can show links here and there, and there are correlations, but more long-term, large-scale studies need to be done in order for health officials to be able to say anything with confidence. Unfortunately, such studies are expensive, time-consuming, and difficult to design; over 10 years, so many environmental variables change that isolating one as a carcinogen is extremely difficult. Think you’re at risk? Don’t hold your phone next to your head all day, or keep it in airplane mode when you’re not using it. But don’t forget you’re by the things. , though the details will be released separately online and in the July . |
Twitter Getting Photos In Order Ahead Of iOS 5 Integration | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | Yesterday, that Twitter was on the verge of launching their own photo-sharing service. That report has since been confirmed , who happens to work for All Things D, which is hosting a conference where Twitter CEO was planning to announce this news. So, yeah. “Sources familiar with the matter.” Confirmed. And now we know a bit more. First of all, this move is a direct assault on services like TwitPic and yFrog. With Twitter Pictures, you’ll be able to upload from Twitter.com and the clients and you’ll get a nice, tidy URL that links to your picture (and a small thumbnail may now appear in your stream). We’ve heard that this might use the twimg.com URL that Twitter has used internally for a long time, but that’s not certain yet. And while it’s a direct assault on longstanding ecosystem players, we’ve also heard that Twitter did the right thing and reached out to these guys quite a long time ago. Specifically, we’ve heard that in January, Twitter sat down with a few of the major players to let them know their intentions to move into the space. Presumably, those guys will move into more white-label offerings now (maybe even with Twitter’s help in some way), rather than die off. So why is Twitter doing this? After all, the service is famous for having difficulties staying up as they scale — why get into the image business? Well, for one thing they may be using Amazon S3 to host the files rather then do it on their own servers. But more importantly, this is another move by Twitter to be more fully in control of their product. Some may point to the revenue that yFrog and others pull in from ads as playing into this, but that money is likely negligible to Twitter. It’s about owning the product. And they may have a very good reason for doing that right now. We’ve heard from multiple sources that Twitter is likely to have a big-time partner for such a service: Apple. Specifically, we’re hearing that Apple’s new iOS 5 will come with an option to share images to Twitter baked into the OS. This would be similar to the way you can currently share videos on YouTube with one click in iOS. Obviously, a user would have to enable this feature by logging in with their Twitter credentials in iOS. There would then be a “Send to Twitter” option for pictures stored on your device. Apple today that they plan to show off iOS 5 for the first time at WWDC next week, confirming . Now you see why Twitter would want to get this picture service out there ASAP. And why they’d want their own service. No word on other photo players — namely Facebook and Flickr — also being baked into iOS 5. But Apple does have deals with both of those companies for iPhoto, so it would make some sense. More to come, I’m sure. |
With 2 Million Downloads Under Its Belt, Appsfire Raises $3.6 Million Series A | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | There are literally hundreds of thousands of iPhone, iPad and Android apps to choose from, and yet finding good apps is far from easy. App discovery and recommendations is a fertile niche where a few startups are fighting for mindshare. After being downloaded more than 2 million times, app discovery startup closed a $3.6 million series A, led by French VC firm (Appsfire is based in Paris and Tel Aviv, and was co-founded by Ouriel Ohayon, who used to be the editor of ). Appsfire crossed 1 million downloads in February, and then the 2-million mark in May. Ohayon says its various apps for the , Android, iPad, and kid’s apps is generating 3 million leads to app developers each month. Appsfire lets you share your favorite apps with your friends via the web, your mobile device, or . Previously, in February, 2010, company raised a from a group of French angel investors including Marc Simoncini (CEO of dating site meetic.com), Jacques-Antoine Granjon (CEO of Vente-Privee.com), Xavier Niel (CEO of French ISP Free), and entrepreneur and angel investor Jean-David Blanc, as well as Lerer Ventures. |
NVIDIA Releases $99 3D Vision Wired Glasses For Your Friend | John Biggs | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | If you have a 3D gaming rig, the biggest problem you have is showing it off. You can either run the game wear the glasses and then say “I swear, it’s 3D!” or you give your friend the glasses and show him or her what to do and then you can’t share in the joy. This either ends in violence or sobbing. Your choice. Now, however, your friend can wear these super cheap $99 glasses with a USB cable. All you have to do is plug them in and you can both watch things in 3D at the same time. Bang. No sobbing. You do still require a full 3D Vision set-up including IR dongle. The glasses are available in June.
New Wired Model Delivers Same Award-Wining 3D Vision Quality and Features with Sleek New Design, Making Full HD (1080p) 3D PC Gaming More Affordable TAIPEI—May 30, 2011— COMPUTEX 2011—NVIDIA today announced a new addition to the NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ product family: NVIDIA 3D Vision wired glasses. The new glasses make the world’s best 3D PC experience more affordable at $99 (U.S. MSRP), and offer the same award-winning 3D quality and features of 3D Vision wireless glasses. NVIDIA 3D Vision wired glasses, which feature NVIDIA’s advanced active-shutter technology, allow gamers and 3D enthusiasts to access the broadest selection of high-quality 3D content available today, including more than 525 full-HD 3D games, Blu-ray 3D movies, and streaming 3D video from YouTube and 3DVisionLive.com. NVIDIA 3D Vision wired glasses also support more than 65 different 3D Vision monitors, notebooks, and projectors, giving users complete flexibility in configuring their 3D Vision PCs.
NVIDIA 3D Vision wired glasses include a 10-foot USB 2.0 cable for direct, easy connection to a 3D Vision PC or notebook. This makes it ideal for LAN gaming events and iCafe gaming centers, as it does not require batteries and the cable can easily be secured to a PC with an optional computer lock to minimize theft. “3D Vision provides gamers and enthusiasts with the world’s largest ecosystem of 3D products and features,” said Phil Eisler, general manager of 3D Vision at NVIDIA. “3D fans have been waiting for more affordable glasses, and we’re expecting our new 3D Vision wired glasses to hit the sweet spot for them.” NVIDIA 3D Vision wired glasses are expected to be available beginning in late-June 2011 from the NVIDIA Store, as well as from leading retailers and e-tailers. For more information about 3D Vision visit www.nvidia.com/3dvision. |
RIM Could Lose Top People As Shareholders Revolt | John Biggs | 2,011 | 5 | 30 |
Reuters is reporting that wonder twins, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, could be out at RIM as shareholders continued to watch the company falter in the smartphone and revenue race. The expectation is that an group of activist investors could make a move to control the company and make changes at the top. On investor saw the pair as “taxed for time” and under pressure to perform even as they were left behind.
As a I wrote a few weeks ago, . They want to be “popular” but they are perceived as straight-laced and uptight. Even as about “unfair” lines of questioning shareholders are more than likely to hold him to an even higher standard and, as he fails to deliver, knock him out of the driver’s seat. Here’s hoping. |
Disrupt Backstage Pass: Google's Marissa Mayer Talks Serendipity (And Dodges The Apple Question) | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | Last week at TechCrunch Disrupt, Google VP of Location and Local Services took the stage for an interview with our own Michael Arrington, where they discussed everything from Google’s mobile growth to Mayer’s investment strategy. A few minutes after the interview, I had the chance to ask her a few more questions about Google’s approach to mobile and local. It’s only been a few weeks since I interviewed Mayer about Google’s to local, but I still had plenty of questions. The first thing I asked: what happens if and when Apple decides to swap out the Google Maps application that ships with every iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad in favor of something that it built in-house (Apple has confirmed that it’s working on an improved , and has also quietly acquired some mapping-related startups). Unsurprisingly, Mayer mostly skirted the question — instead she pointed out how huge Google Maps’s audience is, with some active users on its Mobile products alone. She also mentioned some of the innovations that Google has made recently with Maps, including the new vector-based tiles that require 1/100th the data (the iOS version of Maps doesn’t take advantage of this feature). Next, I asked if there were any technologies coming up that would help phones more accurately determine your location. Because while the Wifi/GPS combo works pretty well in most places, reliability takes a nose-dive whenever you’re in a dense city like NYC. Mayer says that the Wifi hotspot database that Google has been building out will help with this, because it will improve over time. This is one reason why Google is going to be pushing users to explicitly check-in using Latitude — in addition to providing a new channel to engage with consumers, these check-ins also help Google improve its database. The system may not know your exact GPS coordinates, but if if someone with the similar signals previously checked in at In-N-Out Burger, there’s a good chance that’s where you are. Mayer likens the system to the powerful spell checker that often pops up in Google search. Finally, I asked about serendipitous suggestions on mobile phones, which Mayer has previously said she’s excited about. Mayer says that she thinks we’ll see these “inside of a two year horizon”. The UI for what these suggestions will look like is still TBD, but it sounds like initially they’re be pronounced rather than subtle. |
Twitter Close To Acquiring AdGrok | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | We’re hearing from multiple sources that Twitter is in talks to acquire Y Combinator-backed key word bidding platform , in a deal that is less than $10 million. It’s still unclear where exactly they are in the closing process or whether this is a tech acquisition or an acqui-hire. AdGrok itself on Google AdWords; Perhaps Twitter could find some use in this for its own Promoted Trends/Tweets? Twitter seems to be in acquisition mode, most recently on pro-client Tweetdeck. Fun fact about this particular grab: The last person Twitter corporate development executive was AdGrok co-founder Argyris Zymnis. Co-founder Antonio Garcia-Martinez has yet to return my calls. Garcia-Martinez has changed his title on his Facebook profile to Product Manager at Facebook. I have no idea whether this means Facebook won some acquisition battle or that Garcia-Martinez left the rest of the AdGrok team independently. In any case we’ll find out soon enough. |
The Next 6 Months Worth Of Features Are In Facebook's Code Right Now (But We Can't See) | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | A few days ago, at their headquarters. The topic of the talk was pushing changes — bug fixes, new features, product improvements, etc. Every day, Facebook engineers push hundreds of these; some big, some little. Most of the 600 million-plus users never notice a thing. And apparently, we’re even less likely to notice changes due to a special feature Facebook has. The “Everyone But TechCrunch Can See This” feature. As Facebook engineer Chuck Rossi details around minute 23:00 in the video, Facebook has a tool they call “Gatekeeper” which allows them to be in control of who can see what code live on the service at any given time. As Rossi points out, right now on Facebook.com there is already the code for Facebook is going to launch in the next six months and beyond! It’s the Gatekeeper which stops us from seeing it. And I do mean “us”. While some of the Gatekeeper parameters are obvious — filter by country, age, data center — one is really interesting. “One of my favorite ones is an ‘everyone except people from TechCrunch can see this’,” Rossi says. He’s serious. What Facebook has done is likely just put all of our personal profiles on a list of people never eligible to see hidden code. Of course, . But it’s also the same type of feature that allowed them to with us, even though no one else could see it. Funny stuff. We appreciate Facebook’s attention to detail in keeping us out of their code. Of course, now they’re really asking for it. Do they really think you can’t make a fake account on Facebook? Sure… Stay tuned for the next six months of features coming from Facebook… The whole talk is excellent and worth watching, we’ve embedded it below. |
Twitter Is Launching Its Own Photosharing Service | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | Twitter has been completely about where developers should stake a claim, with Twitter Platform Lead warning the ecosystem to stay away from building “ Well if Sarver stays true to his word the and of the world can just give it up now. According to multiple sources, Twitter is on the verge of announcing its own built in Twitpic competitor. Like tomorrow, if things go according to plan (naturally this post might change that). This shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone, as photosharing is the next logical step of Twitter expanding its in app experience. It’s basically grabbing at low hanging fruit. Twitter is flinging money around; It just spent $40 million on power user client Tweetdeck which represents 13% of its userbase. It’s only natural that they would spend more resources on photosharing, especially considering how much and that images were the crux of the success of competitor Facebook. I’ve got no details on what exactly the photosharing URL shortener will be if any (Twitter has owned for a long time) or what the Twitter for Photos product will look like. Just that it’s coming, soon. And if they’re smart they’ll put ads on it. |
Pew: A Quarter Of American Internet Users Have Placed Phone Calls Online | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | Pew Internet, a think tank that regularly publishes research reports about technology, has released a new study today showing the steady growth in using VoIP and phone services online. According to the organization’s report, a quarter of American adult internet users (24 percent) have placed phone calls online. That amounts to 19 percent of all American adults. On any given day 5 percent of internet users are going online to place phone calls, says Pew. And Pew says that usage has grown significantly from a few years ago. For example, Pew found in February 2007 that 8 percent of internet users (6 percent of all adults) had placed calls online and 2% of internet users were making calls on any given day. At various points during the 2000s, Pew held similar surveys and found that at most about a tenth of internet users had ever used the internet to place calls and the daily figure never rose above 1 percent of internet users. Pew also broke out its findings by demographic as well. Internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 years of age had the highest percentage of users who made calls online amongst age groups, with 27 percent of the age group reporting that they’ve made calls online. In terms of household income, 37 percent of users whose household income is above $70,000 have made a phone call online, compared to 13 percent for users whose household income is less than $30,000. Considering Google’s presence in the market, and Microsoft’s of Skype, we know the big players see strong potential in the market. But it’s certainly interesting to see data on just how common internet calling and VoIP services have become. |
Rumor: Is This The (Buttonless!) Nexus 3? | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | This story is about as shaky as they come, but we figured we’d pass along the details for anyone out there lookin’ to get a quick fix of Memorial Day mobile news. To be honest, the whole thing rings up a bit strange. From the questionable source and blurry photo to the take down request (which almost never, ever happens in this industry; companies generally play dumb and publicly ignore leaks, as acknowledging them legitimizes them), I wouldn’t get too attached to this device just yet. |
null | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 5 | 31 | null |
Samsung Readies 4G LTE Galaxy Tab, Galaxy S III Prematurely | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | As ’s wait to launch onto the market, Samsung mobile boss J.K. Shin is already filling us in on forthcoming tablets from the South-Korea based company. In an interview with Dow Jones Newswires, Shin spilled that the company plans to release a 4G LTE-capable version of the Galaxy Tab later this year. In other words, you’re yet-to-be purchased Galaxy Tab 8.9 or 10.1 will be old news later this year, so patience will certainly be a virtue when it comes to slate shopping. Shin also mentioned that the third installment to the Galaxy S line (what we assume will be called the Samsung Galaxy S III) will debut in the first half of 2012. The Galaxy S smartphones have been wildly popular here in the States, overseas in Europe and especially in South Korea. No doubt we’re excited about the third-generation Galaxy S smartphone, and a 4G -capable Galaxy tablet from Samsung sounds pretty sweet, too. What I can’t seem to understand is why Samsung would let us in on the fact that our cool new gadgets will be obsolete in the next few months. [ via ] |
What Is This Mysterious HTC Windows Phone 7 Handset? | Greg Kumparak | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | It sure looks a like the HTC Trophy (really — pretty much identical), but given the little mention of a 12 megapixel photo option (the Trophy tops out at 5) in the picture behind the jump, this is definitely looking like something new.
In most cases like this, we’d call “Photoshop!” — but this one comes from the notorious , which is a name we’ve come to mostly trust for things like this. |
Breakfast with Butcher in Berlin – Come meet TechCrunch Europe | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | Ever since my first and I’ve been keeping on this city as I travelled around Europe covering startups and the scene to anyone who would listen. But since then it’s quite clear that a couple of things have happened. The whole European scene has improved massively. There are now startup events, activity and fundraising across Europe in an ongoing manner. Sure, it’s not Silicon Valley (I’m sorry, but who cares?) – in fact we should really be comparing ourselves to our own progress, not to other places. And the news is good. The ‘Valley Virus’ has spread, and Europe is now starting to boast some amazing startups. But something else has happened too: big clusters. And the two biggest clusters right now are London (which we are pretty adept at covering) . Yes, Paris remains significant, but it’s a close third behind those cities (hey, shoot me, it’s just my opinion). So to that end – and I’m glad – I plan to increase coverage of the Berlin/German startup scene. I’ll be doing a couple of things to do that. I’ll be visiting more frequently (so if anyone has a spare apartment lying around let me know!) I’m also currently trying to convince Berlin Partners to bring us over more frequently than AOL’s expenses account will allow… But to kick things off slowly I’m holding two breakfasts. This Wednesday (1st June) from 8am to 10am and Thursday 2nd June form 9am to 10am at , I’d love to meet any startups who want to come and swap business cards over coffee. If you can’t make those then fear not – we have other plans… After that I’ll try to divide my time between the two cities (in between the rest of Europe, of course) for the next few months, to get under the skin of what is going on here. See to you there. |
The Roundabout Tapes – Frameblast aims to be the Google for TV and video archives | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | Continuing our series of interviews with companies in the Silicon Roundabout area of London (we’re calling this ), we interviewed . Clearer is a specialised tech/media consulting company but is also doing a startup. The soon to launch Frameblast is aimed at SOHO companies who want to handle video in a smarter way along the lines of Media Silo. Companies can upload their archives into the cloud and use it like a Google search engine for their archive, with tags galore. The ex-Joost team is also working with the The British Parliament on transforming its handling of its huge video archive from a modern approach – as opposed to an older, more broadcast way of doing things. |
Airbnb Has Arrived: Raising Mega-Round at a $1 Billion+ Valuation | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | According to several sources is in the process of closing a whopper of a funding round: $100 million or more at a $1 billion-plus valuation. The round is being lead by , and includes participation from , say our sources. That’s a big increase from the company’s last funding round of , which included Sequoia Capital, Greylock, SV Angel, Ashton Kutcher and Youniversity Ventures (Kutcher that he’s an investor in AirBnB at TechCrunch Disrupt last week). The company, which launched via Y Combinator, has raised just $7.8 million to date. No surprise, it was a hotly contested deal. The service has exploded, growing more than last year and booking 1.6 million night stays in other people’s homes to date. On any given night in New York there are more people staying in homes via Airbnb than there are rooms in the biggest hotel in Manhattan. Airbnb has become the sleeper hit of the startup world. It’s one of those companies plenty of well-heeled investors passed on in the early days, because they thought no one would want to open his or her home to strangers. Out of twenty angels he pitched in 2008, founder Brian Chesky said half didn’t return his emails and most of the others told him it was an awful idea. Even Paul Graham hated it, but he liked Chesky and backed him hoping he’d change the company. TechCrunch’s own hotel expert Paul Carr was a too. Now, the fear of missing another Airbnb is palpable in the Valley, and one of the reasons GetAround became the darling, of our Disrupt conference this week. Earlier in the week, I sat down with Airbnb founder Brian Chesky to talk about this reversal in fortune and how the business is going, although at the time we hadn’t heard the details of the deal he was busy negotiating. Check it out below. |
Cloud Sherpas Upgrades Google Apps Management App With New Features | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 5 | 8 | a Google Apps reseller that also helps enterprises migrate to and manage the productivity suite, is announcing a milestone today and is upgrading its offering with a number of new features. Cloud Sherpas not only helps companies migrate and transition over to Google Apps but also provides additional tools, called Sherpa Tools, to make the productivity suite more useful. For example, the Directory Manager provides administrators with an interface for creating, retrieving, updating and deleting in-depth profile information for end users, shared contacts and groups. With Cloud Sherpa, users can also import and export contact information in bulk and add instant messaging features. SherpaTools for Google Apps has been installed by over 16,000 domains representing three million Google Apps users worldwide, making it one of the most installed applications in the Google Apps Marketplace. The company has also upgraded SherpaTools with new features including new admin delegation, end-user provisioning, and privacy tools and will unveil these at Google’s developer conference Google IO, this week. One of the major new features added to SherpaTools is the concept of constituencies. Now help desk workers with partial admin responsibilities can now be restricted to helping users within their constituent bases only. For example, an admin who is responsible for supporting an organization’s Engineering department may not have access to users in the Finance department. Additionally, organizations that buy their Google Apps licenses from Cloud Sherpas directly now have the ability to instantly purchase additional end-user licences via SherpaTools. And SherpaTools now supports the free version of Google Apps. Sherpa Tools has raised to date. |
Ever Wanted Your Very Own Airplane? | Scott Merrill | 2,011 | 5 | 8 |
If you want your own airplane, you could do like my neighbor, Bruce, and build one yourself. Since I moved next to him last July, I’ve watched this thing develop from a bunch of sheet metal into the aircraft you see above. Bruce tells me he’s spent about two years, and upwards of $9,000, building this thing. It’s always been his dream to fly a plane that he built. If you don’t think you could trust any airplane you built to be safe, you could always buy an Icon A5 Light Sport Aircraft. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNqg5nu__Y4&w=560&h=349] , founded in 2005, “is bringing flying to the masses with a sexy plane that breaks the mold on everything the industry has come to expect over the past 50 years.”
Since the FAA’s dramatic regulation changes in 2004 created the new Light Sport Aircraft category, ICON Aircraft’s sole purpose has been to bring the freedom, fun, and adventure of flying to all who have dreamed of flight. With these groundbreaking FAA rules solidified, ICON believes that consumer-focused sport aircraft can do for recreational flying what personal watercraft did for boating. ICON’s sport aircraft are not only designed to deliver an amazing and safe flying experience, but also to inspire us the way great sports cars do. After years of development with some of the world’s best aerospace engineers and industrial designers, ICON Aircraft has released the first of its line of sport planes, the ICON A5. The A5 is a bold yet elegant design that communicates beauty, performance, safety, and most importantly… fun.
The A5 starts at , and if you order today you won’t take delivery of yours until 2015 at the earliest. Maybe you better off taking your chances on a plane you build yourself. Of course it’s free to . |
Whoworks.at Shows You Who In Your LinkedIn Network Works At The Sites You Visit | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 5 | 8 |
Finally there’s a reason for young people to use ! If you’re having trouble keeping track of where your friends work in this current , was made for you. Just download the and it will let you know who in your LinkedIn network works at whatever site you’re currently browsing in Chrome, whether it be Facebook, Google, TechCrunch or some stealth startup. It is amazing. When you click on the button at the right of your Chrome toolbar, your first 1st degree LinkedIn connections will show up first, followed by your 2nd and 3rd level connections. You can also toggle the extension to view people who have been recently hired or promoted at the company you’re visiting. I’m not kidding, this is a godsend if you’re a recruiter or a . Creator John Britton, who is also a developer evangelist at , plans on integrating Whoworks.at with other services including Facebook and Rapportive, which was the inspiration behind the service. Interestingly enough, Whoworks.at doesn’t use a public LinkedIn search API (non-existant despite ), but instead finds its connections through the searchbox on LinkedIn that auto completes company names. Says Britton on his future plans, Ooh, Facebook integration … For those of you who can’t wait, invites for the first 250 TechCrunch readers are available . And if you don’t make it in time you can sign up like a mere mortal for the beta . Don’t worry, they’re pretty fast to respond. |
By Way Of Lawsuit, The Location FUD Creeps Up On Android As Well | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 8 | About a week and a half ago, I wrote a post being spread. Due to some real, but minor issues (which have ) Apple was at the center of this. Then the focus immediately seemed to . If Apple is “watching you” with the iPhone, Google must be as well with Android devices, right? Sure — if you’re a paranoid looney who doesn’t really understand what the situation is. Naturally, that group includes the United States government. In an effort for some lawmakers to attach their names to these highly publicized complaints and companies, they’ve called upon executives to testify before Congress. On , those companies will head to a panel in Washington to answer questions. In other words, Congress will be getting a Location 101 briefing. As I noted in the previous post, the press certainly isn’t helping with any of this FUD — and may actually be more than a bit to blame for it. After the Apple FUD started spreading, who else but The Wall Street Journal started digging into Google’s location approach as well. The shocking discovery? An email from a Google project manager to co-founder Larry Page stressing how important it is for Google to have their own location database for Android. WHOA. Wait, you mean they’d like to maintain and control a technology that is vital for making location services work on their devices? Stop the damn presses. Naturally, WSJ used the headline “ ” which led to a thousand subsequent headlines in other publications who read it in the intended nefarious way. This just in: Google wants to know where you are at all times. And your kids. And your grandparents — that’s essentially how these stories are set up to read. To flesh out their article a bit with a quote from an industry expert, WSJ brought in Ted Morgan, the CEO of Skyhook Wireless, who gave them a juicy (but not really juicy) quote about, again, how important owning a location system is to Google. No. Shit. The choice of Skyhook’s CEO to bolster the argument is questionable at best. Skyhook is currently suing Google for interfering with existing wireless contracts and patent claims (both of which are noted in the article). In fact, that lawsuit is the reason these internal Google emails came to light in the first place. Just a couple days ago, this very same lawsuit was the basis of a ReadWriteWeb article due to the Skyhook suit. Regular readers of TechCrunch will know that no one gives Google more shit for than I do. At best, I view it as pure marketing nonsense. At worst, I view it as a way to . But the claims made in RWW’s article are a joke. It is absolutely true that Skyhook got a “ ” in court last week when a Massachusetts Superior Court judge dismissed Google’s request for a summary judgment. But that only means that the discovery phase of the lawsuit will continue instead of being thrown out. And the only reason Google filed a request to have it thrown out is because of another ruling from this past December when Skyhook filed for a a preliminary injunction. That request was denied by the court and the judge had some less than favorable things to stay about Skyhook’s case in the process — hence, Google filing to have the suit thrown out. We’ve embedded that document, which is public, below for your viewing pleasure. The RWW argument is framed around Morgan’s argument that Skyhook is upset because they were led to believe that Android would be an “open” platform. Now they’re being squeezed out as Google pushes their own similar technology. All of this, naturally, is now being framed in a nefarious manner from the location collecting and entrapment perspective. What’s left out in all of this is what the court found in December. Namely that while Google does want their partners seeking to be certified as “Android-compatible” to use their location services, they’re open to those partners using Skyhook’s as well — provided they work as advertised. Further, according to the documents, it was Skyhook, and not Google, who were saying that they can be the service collecting location data from Android devices. Not surprisingly, Motorola rejected this and terminated the contract (which they had the right to do because of a clause that locked them into Skyhook services unless it interfered with existing contracts — like the one they had with Google). There’s a lot more along these lines in there (seriously, read it if you’re interested in this topic). And after looking the facts presented at the time over, the court stated that, “As the record stands thus far, in the Court’s view, the platiff’s showing is not strong.” Skyhook is suing Google for tampering with these deals, but in these documents it seems pretty clear that Google was willing to work alongside Skyhook, but Skyhook was not willing to do the same. And it was the partners that ended the deals as a result. Again, discovery is ongoing and we’ll see where this eventually leads. But it’s simply unfair right now to twist this as a case against Google being “open” and as FUD for location in general. The arguments with regard to location suggest that Google, like Apple, are out to get you by tricking you into sending them this data. That’s simply not the case. These companies need these location databases or half of the services you know and love on your smartphones would be crippled — or would not work at all. And future services that will alter our lives for the better would stop springing up. I’m sure that will be the case these companies make before Congress next week. A granny tracker app is not hidden, running in the background on either the iPhone or Android phones. [scribd id=54740703 key=key-ehu0fy1vwwvpxn4tyaj mode=list] |
Unfair and unbalanced | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 5 | 8 | Digging out from under a mountain of stuff this weekend, I’m hopelessly behind. Disclosure: I work at salesforce.com, doing amazing things I can’t say anything about. Apparently, the tech press is abuzz with controversy about Mike Arrington’s continuing success at actually saying what he thinks. Disclosure: I am a big fan of everything Mike does, and particularly his skill at reinventing the media. I should be considered completely biased in that regard, and you should discount everything I say accordingly. Looking back over the past week of TechCrunch, several themes emerge. First, there’s an amazing amount of nothing going on by Apple, Google, and that company up north with the Windows thing. Apple is apparently moving toward going cloud big time. Disclosure: I love everything Apple does, and therefore am completely biased toward its products, strategies, and even idiosyncrasies like auto-replacing “its” with “it’s” even when it never means “it is” approximately 97 percent of the time. Google is apparently getting ready to not announce anything about its social media strategy at its developer conference this week. Disclosure: I love Google and everything it does, just not as much as Apple. So when I say Android i’m really thinking iOS, and when I say AirPlay I’m really meaning AirPlay. We gave my brother Dan an Apple TV for his birthday, and are enjoying his attempts to integrate the box into his all Android all the time environment. Particularly amusing is his conjecture on the availability of the Remote app in the Android marketplace. This past week was the first week where I literally never took my laptop out of its bag. Instead, I lived non-stop with the iPad, using the WordPress app to edit a typo in last week’s column, the Concur app to make a meaningless dent in my expenses backlog, and doing amazing work at salesforce.com throughout the rest of my waking hours. FaceTime and Skype kept me in the loop with family and friends, and yesterday I rented the episode of Grey’s Anatomy my father in law erased while taping Jeopardy. A word about renting: I love renting shows for 99 cents and having them never touch a hard drive except for the brief caching period where Apple TV uses its “storage” to stage the show locally. I also love how Apple TV does the same thing when I use AirPlay to push a recorded show from my iPad to the big screen, saving battery time on the iPad once the show is cached. As more and more of my media consumption flows through the iPad, every little bit of battery conservation makes an increasing difference. Somehow in the last few months of iPad living, my years of aversion to renting and preference for “owning” have inverted. I used to value the illusion that a book was mine to control, where the digital version was constrained and ephemeral. Disclosure: I’m about to make a Beatle reference. I love the Beatles and so does Apple. If I type beatles on the iPad it autocorrects to Beatles; try typing android and see what happens. So I bought or was given the John Lennon autobiography by Philip Norman a few years ago. I read it in fits and starts, right up until someone (maybe me, maybe not) spilled coffee on it and saturated the first third of a very long book. I spent an hour separating the pages and drying them individually so as not to lose too much of the narrative. Then the iPad arrived, I downloaded the book from the Kindle app, and never touched the paper version again. Moral: you own the print version as in You Break It You Buy It. I own the coffee-stained stuck-together pages where John met Paul and decided to bring him in even though he would ultimately take over and spend weeks on Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. I read about this on the iPad. Today the world is about catching up and staying connected. Push notification is the mechanism that controls our access to information, defines the state we left ourselves in when last we connected, and maintains the new illusion of ownership — of ideas, trends, responsibilities, and commitments. In a world where bandwidth is the new gasoline, we rely on graceful failover as something more secure than the physical reality it used to emulate. Today the cloud is more real than the services it wraps. When the cloud breaks, we realize it becomes more secure as a result. Every tweet is a disclosure of who, what, and where we are. Every @mention, a disclosure of who we care about, and why. Every time I see somebody doubt 140 characters is enough to communicate, I laugh. Disclosure: I am the sum of my conflicts of interest. My biases make me who I am. People who live in glass houses should invest in Windex. |
null | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 5 | 30 | null |
Here's The Guy Who Unwittingly Live-Tweeted The Raid On Bin Laden | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 5 | 1 |
Yesterday ( on Twitter) was just “an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains”, specifically , northern Pakistan. The IT contractor and graduate of Preston University also says he’s a ‘startup specialist’ on his . But today he will become known as the guy who, while live-tweeting a series of helicopter flypasts and explosion, unwittingly covered the US forces helicopter raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound. And he . Here’s a selection of his Tweets: [Update: it looks like was there too, read on for more] |
Sony Says PSN Services Will Resume Shortly, Offers Apology | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 1 | As the initial hysteria (mostly justified) surrounding the PSN breach subsides, more measured estimates of the damage are appearing, but more serious questions are becoming relevant. It’s still too early to be sure what the extent of the damage is, but the early and sensational estimates (propagated before Sony announced relevant numbers) seem to be giving way to a more complex, nuanced look at the damage. A few people have claimed suspicious activity on their accounts so far, but there doesn’t seem to be any systematic fraud going on – on the other hand, it isn’t easy to immediately leverage 10-15 million credit cards. Sony that it will be reestablishing access to “some” PSN and Qriocity services this week, with a focus on access to account details, online play, and access to purchased media. Other services should be online within a month. As far as restitution, Sony is offering a month of Playstation Plus and Qriocity Unlimited for free, plus a free PSN download, currently unspecified. Security is, of course, being “enhanced.” That would likely be enough to compound for an ordinary extended outage, but this was more than a glitch. Sony will likely get rougher handling from an investigation of their security practices than from frustrated customers. An unofficial poll showed that a good number of gamers seemed to be resigned to sticking with PSN in some way — giving up the platform would be too great of a sacrifice for the huge number of consumers who, while angry, were likely only put out rather than affected materially by the breach. Sony will be making various ways to re-secure and audit your account available, and has said they will pay any fees associated with, say, credit card cancellation and reissuing. They also implied they will provide a secure “out” for users who want to just cut and run. As we noted on Friday, Sony has who, let’s hope, will lay their hands on the hackers responsible for the breach. But for every eye looking out for the hackers, there’s one looking hard back at Sony, who may be partially liable. While the criminal acts perpetrated by the hackers certainly deserve investigation, the other side needs a look as well — the primary question being not how did someone gain access, but why was so much data accessible via any method at all? There are allegations going around that Sony was running outdated Apache servers, and that employees with no clearance were allowed within the physical firewall. Who knows but these may be true? At any rate, it’s clear that the databases containing personal information were , and although Sony denies the credit card numbers were accessible, its careful wording seems to imply that the data was indeed taken. An official, independent investigation is almost certainly underway already (it being such a high-profile incident; indeed, the FBI is already involved), but it will take some time before any real results can be announced. Too little is known (or rather, too much of what is known is on questionable authority) for any kind of estimate of damages, and any criminal charges will have to wait as well. in advance of the facts, as they so often are, but if it’s done properly it will not rely on technical details, but rather Sony’s responsibilities to its customers as custodians of privileged information. Even if Sony were to prove elsewhere that it met reasonable standards for security, the response to the the breach seems to have been sluggish, even if what they say is true and they were unaware of the extent of the damage until a week after the event. The greatest damage may be less easily quantifiable, though no less serious. It’s the damage to Sony’s brand. Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Google (among other competitors in Sony’s many markets) have managed to go for years with no such catastrophic breaches — there have been some, to be sure, but the PSN breach is nice and easy for everyone to understand and judge, and the scale really is remarkable. I don’t want to say something like “it’s the beginning of the end for Qriocity,” but it may be that this evolving service is too weak at this stage to survive such a serious blow. It won’t help the launch of their , that’s for sure. And consumer trust, so difficult to measure, will only go down, at a time when a litigious and beleaguered Sony desperately needs good PR. Regardless of the actual material damage of this debacle, it looks likely to be an ugly year for Sony. |
The P2P Evolution | Semil Shah | 2,011 | 5 | 1 | Many years ago, after graduating college, I came home before moving to NYC, wondering how I would scrounge together the money for the first month’s rent and security deposit so my friends and I could all live together in the Big Apple. I had one month to get the cash, and instead of going out for traditional, hourly-wage work, I decided to go through all of my old stuff and throw it on . In those days, I got online through dial-up, would have to mail a hard copy of the pictures to interested buyers, and would ship items to auction winners only when their check arrived by mail and cleared into my bank account. In one month, I got rid of winter jackets, sports equipment, and baseball cards to the tune of $7,000, tax free, enough to buffer the move to NYC. A few years later, when I moved to San Francisco, it was to the rescue, helping with initial sublets, furniture, stereo equipment, and the odd jobs I did to soften the transition. Without knowing it, I was stumbling through life fueled mainly by a (P2P) network and economy that helped me connect supply and demand, as well as time and money. Instead of using consignment shops or hosting a garage sale, or instead of buying new items in a traditional store, I buffered my moves to NYC and SF primarily fueled by P2P networks. That was P2P 1.0, anchored by eBay and Craigslist, networks that have connected billions. And, while these companies continue their march, we are already into the next peer-to-peer evolution: P2P 2.0. Unknowingly at the time, I was exposed to the thought a few years ago in graduate school, when my classmate, , came up with the idea for a “Netflix for used clothes,” which has morphed into venture-backed , a P2P network connecting parents to trade gently-worn baby and kid clothes, goods that are very expensive to buy new. Another success is , a peer lending site connecting lenders with borrowers primarily for refinancing credit card debt or small business loans. Today, P2P 2.0 is in full-swing, and that’s putting things lightly. breakout began as an ad-hoc solution for the founders to earn a little extra scratch during a convention when tight hotel supply provided an to rent out air mattresses in their apartment, with the added touch of breakfast. The result today is a rapidly growing company and brand that aims to connect those who seek space with those who need it—you can rent boats, treehouses, and even castles. Airbnb has been so successful that it’s spawned a handful of international copycats and motivated the likes of , a P2P car-sharing network. The newest entrant into the P2P space is the concept I’m most excited about: . The founder, being taller than average, realized prior to boarding a flight in economy class that he would be willing to pay someone on the same flight to swap for an exit row seat. That moment gave to Zaarly, a new service that will leverage a mobile device’s location to connect those who demand something to those who can provide it. Imagine busy New Yorkers with disposable cash demanding something immediately, delivered right now: “Zaarly it.” The Zaarly concept connects time and money in the P2P vector, just like eBay connects sellers and buyers. All of this activity in P2P 2.0 is now possible because of advancements in location sensors in mobile devices and social network platforms. The time is ripe for even much more advancement in P2P ideas, leveraging today’s technologies in new ways. Even as consumer-focused entrepreneurs work to build the next solutions, they are raising money on P2P services like , which connects fundraising entrepreneurs with seed stage capital and has shaken up the early stage investing game. connects individuals and businesses with “task runners” that provide an outsourced task service, and is an eBay for trading free stuff, where site users earn and spend credits. (Many others are also emerging, please add them .) During all these P2P transactions, companies like , , and leverage mobile phones to help drive payments. For instance, buyers and sellers can trade data by bumping their phones together, where Bump technology the movement from the accelerometer and pairs two users together. Square connect buyers and sellers using a credit card and mobile device. A merchant can charge a customer for goods or services by using the Square reader attached through a device’s audio jack to read a buyer’s credit card (like a cassette tape) and transmit the signal to help complete the transaction. (Surprisingly, not many others have yet fully the phone’s audio jack or accelerometer, making Square, Roam, and Bump standout.) The driving force behind all of this P2P activity is the fact that today’s technologies make many more types of transaction possible between average consumers by finding an equilibrium between time and money, supply and demand. Transactions once locked up and never realized now create entirely new economies, free of established brands and fat middle-men. In a world where everyone is rushing to drive all commerce online, some P2P solutions sprinkle a dose of humanity into the transaction. Will P2P services keep bringing more of this human element, personalization, and discovery into the foreground? Will services like , which provides a personal meal service, create a welcome alternative to nuking frozen food for dinner? It will be fascinating to see what new types of businesses are built on top of these P2P engines, and what traditional businesses they will disrupt. The U.S. economy, struggling its way slowly out of a major recession, will only benefit from a continuous flow of new ideas to help connect people and keep things going. And, the potential for these services overseas is just staggering, especially within cultures that already have strong informal economies baked into their DNA. So big, in fact, that the simple desire to swap airline seats or find a reasonably-priced place to crash during a convention could create, accelerate, and fortify new informal micro-economies in the far corners of earth. |
First Credible Reports Of Bin Laden's Death Spread Like Wildfire On Twitter | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 5 | 1 | http://twitter.com/#!/keithurbahn/status/64877790624886784 If the Twitterverse is to be believed, President Obama is about to announce the death of terrorist and 9-11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden, in an impromptu announcement broadcast on and TV this Sunday night at 10:45 EST. The news actually hit Twitter before the President’s broadcast; CNN’s Steve Brusk first that the briefing was National Security-related at around 7:25pm PST. of the imminent announcement of Bin Ladin’s death came from Keith Urbahn, the Chief of Staff for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who .” CBS news producer Jill Scott then confirmed the rumor shortly afterward Both Urbahn and Scott’s tweets were re-tweeted hundreds of times and Twitter itself experienced of 4,000 tweets per second (The Brian Stelter has a of how the news broke ). The President’s monumental news comes poignantly enough on the 8th anniversary of George Bush’s ceremony. Well it looks like the mission was finally accomplished. Unsurprisingly, “Osama Bin Laden” is now a Twitter What’s amazing is that the news is already out before the President has even spoken. The White House keeps pushing back the announcement, but CNN and the confirmed that Bin Laden was killed, with CNN adding the detail that the event took place in a mansion outside of Islamabad, Pakistan. The President has confirmed that Bin Laden was killed in an operation today in the city of Abbottabad, Pakistan (not Islamabad), after a firefight executed by a small team of US Human Ops troops. Apparently, Twitter user @ ( accidentally the actual Abbottabad raid. These tweets from wrestler/movie star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson are also interesting to note. Hmm … So what happened here? https://twitter.com/#!/stevebruskCNN/statuses/64875698829017088 https://twitter.com/#!/brianstelter/status/64880224164261889 https://twitter.com/#!/jacksonjk/status/64879954264997888 https://twitter.com/#!/andylevy/status/64881911440486400 https://twitter.com/#!/k_mancklp/statuses/64882985278779392 |
Yes, There's An Apple "Castle" In The Cloud | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 1 | Yesterday, French site into the latest developer preview build of OS X Lion and found something interesting. Buried in the code are references to a service named called “Castle”. Given the context of one of the mentions — “upgrade from MobileMe to Castle” — this led most to assume that the name referred to Apple’s upcoming cloud service overhaul. We can now confirm that to be the case. As , Castle is in fact the internal nickname of Apple’s new service which many are now calling “iCloud” in the press (thanks to ), we hear. But here are a couple other tidbits about the service from a naming perspective: the original nickname was “Newcastle”, but that got shortened to “Castle” at some point recently. And the actual shipping name of the product may still be up in the air. At the very least, it is still being called “Castle” internally for the moment. And yes, , this service will be unveiled at Apple’s WWDC event in June. On Friday, AppleInsider that Apple had begun testing iCloud internally with new versions of iOS and OS X. From what we’re hearing, that is true, but again, the name still being used is the Castle codename — hence, the references in the code. Still, given Apple’s quick move to scoop up iCloud and the branding consistency, we wouldn’t be surprised if iCloud is definitely the front-runner for Castle’s eventual name at this point. With WWDC fast approaching, Apple is going to have to make the call soon to get to work on the branding. |
Nintendo 3DS Takes Over The Jet Blue Terminal | John Biggs | 2,011 | 5 | 1 | Now this is a great idea: has rented a few spots in the Jet Blue Terminal at JFK (I can’t confirm they’ve done this elsewhere but I’ll ask). They have folks on hand to show off the device and there are plenty of chairs and 3DS devices for kids and, presumably, the adults in charge of their care, to use.
As we all know, they can’t sell the so this gives parents on their way to various destinations something to sic the kids on while they enjoy delicious beverages and, more important, it gives late adopters a chance to understand the device on its own terms. Which other technologies would benefit from this sort of marketing? Android tablets? 3D TVs? Fleshlights? Have you seen these in your local airport? |
OMG/JK: Insert Pun About Storms In The Cloud Here | Jason Kincaid | 2,011 | 5 | 1 | We’re back for a new episode of OMG/JK (in HD!). This week the news has been all about private data — Google and Apple have been accused of tracking your every move (they aren’t), and Sony has revealed that 77 million user accounts were compromised (this, unfortunately, is true).
Tune in to find out where things stand now, and where to get the best deal on your tinfoil hat. Here are some recent articles that are relevant to this week’s episode.
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You Think Pitching Your Startup Idea Is Hard? Watch These Kids Do It | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | Around eighty entrepreneur hopefuls gathered at NASA AMES last week to pitch their ideas for breakthrough technological products, with the hopes of gaining the funding to make their dreams a reality. But this wasn’t part of the application process for a new fangled startup accelerator program, and the teams weren’t comprised of Valley visionairies in their 20s and 30s but rather high school kids between the ages of 14-18. To compete in the , each team of high schoolers had to create a business plan, technical report, graphical representation and elevator pitch for their product, presenting their invention to a panel of judges for 10 minutes. All in all 27 finalists competed in the Aerospace, Clean Energy and Cyber security categories to win $5,000 and the community support and mentorship to develop their product commercially. While their peers were pitching on stage, I interviewed ten of the most promising teams about their product vision, what it was like to be so ambitious at young age and their thoughts about young entrepreneurship. Three of our interviewed teams went on to win the competition ( , and ) but every participant won in the long run as they got to spend four days at NASA surrounded by other nerdy kids excited about changing the world. From Ouroboros (a team focused on a “perpetual nutrition system” or a mechanism that would turn organic human waste into compost that can be used to grow crops) to S.A.R.A. (safe word activated mobile app designed to stop sexual assault by notifying the police) the level of professionalism and passion exhibited by these students was impressive. And more importantly, none of their ideas was on this list of Hooray for the future. ( in the video above, wants to use natural sunlight to reduce lighting costs.) is a composting system for human waste. wants to create a smartphone app that acts as a heart rate monitor for the elderly or others with cardiac issues, reacting to heart rate irregularities by alerting emergency contacts if there’s an issue. built a solar powered fan, because many on their Montezuma Creek Indian reservation actually built a light weight, market ready electric car. wants to make glasses for augmented reality. is an iPhone app designed to respond in the case of sexual assault. is building a mobile app that lets users easily notify their friends when they need a safe ride. wants to build a space scaffolding structure designed to provide astronauts with privacy. is a mobile phone charger that runs off of the kinetic energy created from human movement. |
Flash in the Pan | Steve Gillmor | 2,011 | 5 | 1 | The news from NBC/Universal/Comcast is that the cable giant has finally made deals with both ABC and Fox to carry selected shows on their on-demand service. This is big news for the iPad set, because all four major broadcast networks are now available in a single service, on the iPad, without Flash. Across town we hear talk of hardware acceleration linking up with Android to make Flash finally usable on every other device. This would be a good thing for Flash fans, who can make the argument that more devices will work with Flash than won’t. But in the new world of network broadcasting, the show’s over for Flash. Nobody cares what makes the picture dance on the screen, just that it does. Instead, we care whether it streams or it doesn’t. Live streaming may seem to be about Ustream v. YouTube, about watching the Wedding or GaGa or whatever trending stream is hitting your push notification buffer. But it’s also about your own personal broadcast stream, formerly known as the telephone. Video calls are finally here, and the broadcasters who dither too long about iPad streaming will be in the same kind of trouble Microsoft is in with Windows. The same way that we don’t care about Flash, we don’t care about the distinction between streaming phone calls and on-demand shows. One is about some idiot wasting your time, and the other… Same thing. The same dynamics that Comcast has finally ratified are moving into the phone call. Cable subs are up for those who support iPad access, down for those who don’t. Time Warner and Cablevision softened up the studios, and Comcast came in and closed. Similarly, FaceTime softened up the carriers by introducing a service that obliterated the need for international plans. Those of us who switched to Verizon are out of luck until iPhone 5 anyway for a global phone, so the calculation on a trip to Europe is to get a throwaway phone for the trip from the airport to the hotel and WiFi. And before you say that FaceTime doesn’t work over 3G, Skype video does. The next time you Update All on your iPhone, you’ll see what I mean. On this week’s Gillmor Gang, Danny Sullivan suggests it’s an extra download and besides people don’t want to have to put on makeup to answer the phone (I’m paraphrasing, or just trying to embarrass Danny gratuitously, or maybe myself for carrying blush at all times.) Twitter is an extra download for now, but the second they jump on video calls using their directory this will be a feature not a hassle. When the smaller market of international travelers becomes enamored of video calls, we see another Netflix-style hockey stick. WiFi becomes a differentiator for choice of hotel and event venues, for coffee shops and restaurants, for sporting events and rock concerts. All of a sudden your phone and tablet becomes your portal to personal and professional incoming pings, a push notification router filtered by your business and location rules. How long did it take for Comcast to make this deal? Time Warner released its iPad software less than two months ago, were sued by Comedy Central a week later, and were fast followed by Cablevision as though to say, no we really mean this, 10 days after that. It became clear in a New York minute that people wanted more stuff for their new iPad 2’s, and oh wait, iPad 2’s have a camera. Then ABC, the last of the original big three, capitulates to Comcast, and oh, wait, that’s Steve Jobs’ network. Why would Jobs want to play the Disney card now, except for the fact that iPad 2 sales are going to skyrocket once the pipeline recovers from not being able to make them fast enough. You only have to experience a Skype video call once to want FaceTime to work over 3G, and Skype is softening up the carriers just as they move off flat rate to a profit center for streaming. You may not have been paying attention to the 5 gig limit before now, but the Comcast on-demand steaming at home and Skype push notifications on the go will stoke demand, as it were. Apple already is making the case for a Comcast moment with the carriers by rudely interrupting Skype calls when a carrier call comes in. The Skype call is put on hold (at least on Verizon) and you have to cancel the push notification and decline the incoming call before returning to your video call. Perhaps Jobs is looking for some competition from AT&T to differentiate from Verizon as they have done with simultaneous call and data. Perhaps the lure of selling a higher priced video cap will close the deal. Android has a real problem here that Google is attempting to fix by offering on-demand video over YouTube. Android’s video service is just now making its way into some builds, but the combination of pro and amateur streaming video offered by Apple will be hard to overcome. Not that it needs to be, because compatibility between the two major platforms will come at the cost of paving over Flash permanently. |
Apple May Not Have Bought Nuance But… | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | This past November, the blogosphere was briefly set on fire when a comment Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak made in passing stated that the voice recognition company . Wozniak quickly came out and that comment, and most believed that he had simply confused Nuance with the company he mentioned right afterwards, Siri — a company that Apple in April 2010. But as it turns out, Wozniak’s comment, whether he knew it or not at the time, may not have been as off as it seemed. Apple has been negotiating a deal with Nuance in recent months, we’ve heard from multiple sources. What does that mean? Well, it mean an acquisition, but that is looking fairly unlikely at this point, we hear. More likely, it means a partnership that will be vital to both companies and could shape the future of iOS. For those in the know, this shouldn’t be too surprising. Buried under all the original bluster about Apple/Nuance was a very important fact: Siri relies on Nuance technology for its services. While they initial used Vlingo after launch, Siri quickly switched to Nuance for a number of reasons — one being that both came out of Stanford Research Institute, the other being that Nuance is just considered to be better. They used Nuance up until the Apple acquisition, and in fact, they’re still using Nuance right now. This matters because as we first reported in March, Siri technology is . By extension, that means that Nuance technology will be a big part of iOS 5. Well, unless Apple ditches them and goes with another option — but again, Nuance is considered the best. The other big player here getting praise is Google. But well… Yeah. The other option is for Apple to build the technology themselves. And some they may be thinking about that. But to get to where Nuance is today it would take a long, long time. Perhaps more importantly, it’s well known in the industry that Nuance holds key patents for their technology and is very aggressive in protecting them. Even Apple would have a hard time dancing around this if they did go it alone. (As an interesting sidenote, you may wonder how Google has been able to develop their technology while dancing around Nuance’s patents?Well, it certainly helps that Mike Cohen, an original co-founder of Nuance who worked there for 10 years, went on to create the voice-recognition technology for Google. If anyone knows how to navigate those waters, he’s the guy. And it has worked.) So why doesn’t Apple just bite the bullet and buy Nuance? Well, for one thing, the company is very expensive. Nuance is a public company whose stock just so happens to be near its all-time highs. At the time of the original Apple/Nuance talk, their market cap was around $5 billion. . And it would take considerably more than that for Apple to buy them. Of course, as we’re all well aware, Apple has the cash to do that. With $60 billion or so lying around, a Nuance deal would make a dent, but Apple would still have more cash than just about every other company after such a deal. The bigger issue, it seems, is that Nuance are very hard bargainers. After Apple acquired Siri, they had to renegotiate deals with all of Siri’s partners to ensure the service remained alive and vital. That was easy to do with most of them (companies like OpenTable, for example). But one held out. And from what we hear, they’re still holding out. Guess who? Nuance CEO Paul Ricci can be as hard of a negotiator as Apple’s own Steve Jobs, we hear. And so there has been a standoff, and negotiations have been ongoing for months. Again, from what we’re hearing, all types of possibilities are still on the table, including an acquisition. But again, that’s not as likely as an expansive licensing agreement at this point. In buying Nuance, Apple would immediately screw over several other competitors that use the technology and it would bolster their position. And given what Google has been building, it seems unlikely that the government would have a big problem with the buy. It would also give Apple something they always desire when possible: complete control over the technology on their devices. But those who know Apple, and Jobs in particular, will know that they’ll be damned if they’re going to overpay for something. And they’d have to for Nuance. Much of Nuance’s value is derived from the licensing deals they have in place, and if Apple bought them, those deals would dry up. Apple would have to think of it as a strategic investment rather than a value play. So maybe instead they do an expansive licensing deal now and perhaps quietly work on their own stuff in the background — sort of like what they did with . (And what they’re now believed to be on the verge of doing to Google for maps.) But that’s pure speculation on my part. Regardless, the fact remains that Apple needs Nuance for what they’re believed to be working on for iOS 5. And while the OS isn’t likely to appear until the fall, , it is likely to be unveiled or talked about with developers at WWDC next month. You’d think Apple would want to have any deal with Nuance to be done by then. And the truth is that Nuance needs Apple too. Not only are they also threatened by Google, but Nuance technology is simply not very meaningful without apps that utilize it like Siri. And many of those apps are appearing guess where: iOS. While Siri has been categorized by many as a voice recognition service, that’s not actually the case. Technically, that element is on Nuance’s end. Siri are the ones that do the cool stuff with the transcriptions Nuance creates. Nuance, of course, knows this and has been trying to expand their offerings into the “brain” end of things. And it should surprise absolutely no one that they had tried multiple times to acquire Siri before Apple eventually did. That’s not to downplay Nuance though. As one source puts it, “voice recognition done is actually non-trivial, and although it is just ‘input’, you win or lose on it.” In other words, both sides need each other. Nuance needs Apple. And Apple needs Nuance. “I think voice recognition is going to become more and more a big part of these machines. Apple’s probably thinking the same way,” Wozniak said immediately before he dropped the Nuance bomb last November. From what we’ve heard, Apple is indeed thinking that way. And so are many others, including main rival Google. Nailing this on the technology side of things is going to be very, very important. So while Wozniak may have misspoke, he may have done so with slightly more knowledge than he let on. Expect to hear a lot more about Apple and Nuance soon. : |
Ringbow Adds A Clickable D-Pad To Your Tablet, But Is That Something We Want? | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 6 |
I wrote a while back about , and of course the lack of buttons and such makes for a different UI from the start. But would you say your tablet this thing? My concern is that instead of a UI that focuses on native usability (i.e. natural gestures, working within the limits of direct interaction), we’ll get one that mimics PCs. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have complex interfaces on our tablets, but I don’t think an accessory like this is the way to go about it. |
Intuit's GoPayment Cuts Transaction Fees, Pricing Now More In Line With Square | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 5 | 1 | Inuit’s reader, which competes directly with is about to become more attractive to small businesses. The company has made the decision dropped the transaction fee ($0.15 per transaction) for both new and existing customers for Visa, MasterCard and Discover cards, both swiped and key-entered as well as qualified and non-qualified transactions. The move will go into effect on Monday. two years ago, GoPayment offers a complimentary app and credit card reader to allow small businesses to conduct charges via their smartphones. GoPayment is available for iOS, Android and Blackberry phones. So now, businesses using the mobile payments reader will only pay a flat 2.7 percent fee of a transaction for any swiped cards. Intuit will charge 3.7 percent for both key entered and non-qualified transactions. This is surely a competitive move against Square, which (which was $0.15) recently in favor of a flat 2.75 percent fee for all transactions. One important fact to note—Intuit will still charge the transaction fee for transactions using American Express but this is something the company is working on negotiating. Square does not charge a fees for transactions on Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express. For higher credit card processing volume (recommended for more than a $1,000 per month), Intuit is continuing to charge a $12.95 monthly fee but has dropped the set transaction charge of $0.30. The per transaction percentage remains at 1.7 percent for cards swiped; and 2.7 percent for key entered. Mobile payments is a competitive space and it’s hard not to notice some of the attention Square has been getting from both and . Because of this, companies like Intuit have to up the ante to remain competitive and attract businesses. For example, Intuit the offer of a free version of its GoPayment reader indefinitely. Square’s readers have been free for some time now. Chris Hylen, VP and general manager of Intuit Payment Solutions said this explaining this change in pricing: While Square is growing fast, as more and more businesses are looking for innovative, inexpensive and painless ways to accept credit cards, Intuit’s reader does offer a compelling product. The company reports that it has seen a nearly 700% increase in the number of people signing up for GoPayment each week compared to the beginning of the year (driven in large part its free swiper offering). Intuit declined to reveal exactly how many users are signing up per day vs. a year ago. And GoPayment users are processing in excess of $15 million a week using GoPayment and related services. These services also include payments from the Web and through QuickBooks using a GoPayment merchant account, so it’s unclear how much of that $15 million is coming through the readers themselves. Intuit says GoPayment users have processed more than $3 million in a single day over the past month as well. For basis of comparison, Square just revealed that it is processing in transactions per day and $66 million for the first quarter, but COO Keith Rabois says forecasts that this number will triple in Q2. The other competitor in the space, VeriFone, has yet to eliminate the ($0.17) associated with its payment product. But with pressure from both Square and Intuit, that may change soon. |
For The High-Tech Naturalist: LeafSnap Identifies Leaves Using Your iPhone's Camera | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCpR4JTEy4c&w=640&h=390]
This is just plain fantastic. The app for iPhone identifies any leaf you take a picture of, as long as it’s in their library. Right now it’s limited to trees native to the Northeastern US, but they’re working on expanding that. The best part is it’s free! Hopefully this will get me to finally learn the names of the trees around here. All I know is “pine” if it has pine cones and “not pine” if it doesn’t. The app is a collaboration between Columbia, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institute. Thanks, guys. Man, this is the best reason I’ve heard of yet to get an iPhone. Luckily it’s coming out for Android and iPad this summer. It’s free! [via ] |
Report Has Conde Nast Following Hearst's Example On iPad Starting Next Week | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | We on Wednesday about how publishing giant Hearst has agreed to Apple’s iTunes-delivery terms for its magazines, and will set a standard price of $2 per month or $20 per year. It seems , if the NY Post’s tipster is correct. Odd, since it recently said it’s its tablet stuff. Strangely, is said to be their first offering. I’m guessing that’s because it’s not graphics-heavy and requires little in the way of layout work. The real question is: without a print edition, how will I be able to make clear to people around me that I’m reading ? [via ] |
The 'Father' of Iranian blogging, jailed for 19 years, reappears on Facebook | Mike Butcher | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | Hossein “Hoder” Derakhshan, widely regard as of Iranian blogging, has reappeared online on his . He’s recently posted an album of new images titled including titled “Gradually getting ready for a new life”, which was added 3 hours ago (it’s 18.25 in London right now). Derakhshan was previously arrested in 2008 and eventually sentenced to 19.5 years in prison in September last year by the Iranian authorities under the usual trumped-up charges related to “collaborating with enemy states”. Noted blogger Jeff Jarvis has previously described Derakhshan as ‘showing his world how to blog’ after creating bridges between Persian and English-language communities in Iran and Canada, where he had dual citizenship. Since the mid-90s, he has been advocating the use of the internet as a means for social and political reform in Iran. Derakhshan had been an active Iranian pro-democracy blogger since 2005, but his blog, has been offline for some time. Back in April this year he was briefly allowed prison leave but went back behind bars shortly after, to Human Rights House of Iran. It’s to be hoped that Derakhshan is now out of jail for good. We’ve reached out to him for confirmation and details of what’s happened. UPDATE: We’ve since learned he’s on a very short leave from Evin – this is the prison he was sent to. |
Esteemed Mobile Developer Joe Hewitt Leaves Facebook | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | Notable mobile developer has left Facebook to pursue independent projects related to HTML 5 development. From : We had heard that he was working on Facebook into Android after he quit the iPhone team over with Apple’s policies. Hewitt was responsible for creating Facebook’s iPhone app, which is currently the most downloaded iPhone app of all time, and before the existence of the App Store he created an iPhone website that was also widely admired among the developer community. Hewitt has been with Facebook for four years, so why leave now? Maybe he thinks it’s the right time to help the web move towards HTML 5? Or maybe the terms of his Parakey deal (Facebook’s ) have fully vested? Here’s Mike’s interview with Hewitt Facebook in 2007. When I asked him both these questions on the phone after this post went up, Hewitt said, “Yes, to the former.” He also tells me that his Parakey co-founder is still at the company, and on a leave of absence, despite to the contrary. |
Sleek Audio And 50 Cent Part Ways | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | You might remember that , purveyors of fine headphone goods, were teaming up with 50 cent to produce a new pair of wireless over-ears. Why not, right? All the other audio guys are teaming up with rappers, so they had to just to stay competitive. But the honeymoon’s over. Sleek Audio and G-Unit productions (Fitty’s licensing company) are . And the headphones? “We will be re-evaluating our Wireless Hybrid over-the-ear headphones at a later date.” |
iPad 2 Gets A Big Launch In Beijing | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 6 |
has taken some great pictures of the launch at the Beijing Apple store. My favorite part? The official scalping area, where people who bought up all the stock can sit and wait for disappointed buyers to come out and buy for a markup. I have to say, though, for a city as big and dense as Beijing, I kind of expected even people than this. Regardless, Apple’s hot little tablet sold out in a few hours. Maybe because they let scalpers buy like 20 each?! [via ] |
Google Appears To Be Testing A Sparse, Ugly New Results Page | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | Whoa there tipsters, slow down. We’ve just been bombarded with tips coming our way that Google has rolled out a new-look search results page. Scanning Twitter, it looks like there are in fact a lot of people seeing this. And boy is it ugly. I mean, it’s great that Google appears to be trying to clean up the look of the results page, which has gotten pretty cluttered over the years as they add more and more types of information and snippets. But the new design is too sparse. And the colors are too soft. It looks like Bing on a bad day. The weirdest thing about the test is that it actually gives you much less information on the screen. This will require users to do more scrolling and paging through results to find what they’re looking for. You’ll also notice that main result links are no longer underlined. And each result is separated by dotted lines (though there appears to be a version without the lines too). Undoubtedly, this is just a bucket test (which Google likes to do quite often), as not all users are seeing this. But this is clearly a big test judging from the number of tips we’re getting and the tweets. We knew Google was really interested — just not this much. |
Source Claims Next-Generation Xbox Incognito In EA Offices | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 6 |
: , calling this story a “total fabrication.” Makes sense. Of course, it would make sense if they were trying to keep a secret. With their next console in June, there’s a little pressure being put on and . Sony, of course, has other things to worry about right now, but some think that Microsoft will use this lead time to put together something relating to its next console. In fact, one source claims that the next is already out there, just in disguise. They know because . Now, two things strike me as unlikely about this. First, who’s to say this isn’t just a with integrated updates like support and so on? It’s packaged like a normal PC, so might it not just be that as well? I mean, I don’t think the tipster is an idiot or anything. I’m just saying a little mistaken information goes a long way towards creating rumors. There are a number of things it be, and to characterize it as a next-gen system might be taking it too far. More importantly, though, I don’t think Microsoft would rush the announcement just to take the wind out of Nintendo’s sails, especially since their main competitor is really Sony (the “ gamer” market). Even if the system is to launch in 2012 ( ), E3 2011 would be too early to give the game away. They’ve emphasized that the Kinect is adding a year or two of life to the system, and I doubt they’d hamstring themselves by making a premature successor announcement just to hassle Nintendo. But do I believe there’s next-gen stuff at EA? Sure. I bet Microsoft has finalized some ecosystem-level stuff and has sent it to the majors in order to give them plenty of time to develop for launch. But I’m guessing the actual silicon won’t be settled for another year at least. [via ] |
Readius Foldable E-Reader To Be Resurrected | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 6 |
Remember the Readius, an with a foldable screen? Vaguely? The last we heard of this device was , so we were pretty sure it was kaput, but apparently the company has been bought and the project funded. The focus of Polymer Vision has always been flexible displays, and they were certainly among the first to show off such a thing when we heard about the Readius in 2007. Since then, many companies have started looking into it &mdsah; just a couple days ago we posted about . The new device is… well, actually, there isn’t a new device. Not yet. What you see at the top of this post is just a concept. For the life of me, though, I can’t figure it out. First, I don’t know why you would want it to fold up into a candybar . And what’s with the two screen sizes? It can’t be both. Folding is one thing — is another (though it may also depict a couple different devices). It’s also full color, while the first was a passive monochrome display. The final design will probably be nothing like this, but now that they’re out of stealth mode, we may see a real device later this year or at CES. Folding is definitely one of the more interesting features e-readers could add, so I’m looking forward to see if they can pull it off. |
Inventables: For Your Weekend Fun | John Biggs | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | I remember poring over as a wee lad but I doubt old Milt has rubber glass, oil-absorbing polymers, or conductive foam sensors in his bag of tricks. That’s where Inventables comes in. These guys are a one-stop shop for wild materials and scientific tools and I’m kind of salivating just going through the lists of items. For example, who doesn’t need a or a The stuff ranges from a few dollars to a few dozen dollars so you and the kids can churn through a few of these a month and have a blast learning about science and her many splendors. |
T-Mobile Lost Nearly Half A Million Subscribers Last Quarter | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | Trouble looms on the horizon for T-Mobile as carrier hemorrhages subscribers. The first three months of 2011 , and even including off-contract customers, they’re still a hundred thousand in the red. Meanwhile the competition is seeing healthy boosts: AT&T is looking at a net positive of two million subscribers, and the newly available iPhone is giving Verizon’s financials a boost as well. Poor T-Mo isn’t doing so hot. What does this mean for the proposed buyout by AT&T? Arguably it works in AT&T’s favor, as they could be seen as doing the struggling carrier a favor by picking it up and spreading the risk out. That’s for regulators to decide, however, and who knows what may happen in the next year? My question is, do they have enough to keep buying the T-Mobile girl new dresses? I sincerely hope so. |
Organizing Offline: Zenergo Launches Social Network For Real World Activities | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | Who needs another social network? Maybe you, friend. Admittedly, the social networking space is packed with so many players, it makes the mind reel. Across the Web, it seems like a new social network is born (and dies) every day. There are niche social networking sites for everything you can imagine. The knitting and crochet community , as do gamers, pet-lovers, and bowlers. Some of these specialized networks have significant traffic, and while Facebook Groups continues to evolve, it seems that there may still be room for social networks that revolve around shared interests, and specific groups and activities. It’s also true that more and more companies are becoming interested in leveraging online activity and interaction to create meaningful connections, relationships, and services offline. The examples are endless. It’s for these reasons that , an activity-based social network that launches today, still believes there’s room to succeed. Founder and CEO Patrick Ferrell co-founded SocialNet.com (a dating website) with , who, as you may know, went on to join PayPal’s founding board of directors and co-found LinkedIn. After SocialNet, Ferrell went on to found , which became GamePro Media and was later sold to — as well as several others. Based on his experience as an entrepreneur, Ferrell told TechCrunch that he continues to come back to the idea that people naturally gravitate toward — and get more value out of — social circles that involve those who share similar activities and interests, and that, at the same time, people are spending more time in their virtual worlds but wish they could take that value into the real world. And that the perfect solution hasn’t yet been found. So, for the last 2 years, Ferrell and his team have been building an activities-focused social platform that enables people to engage more deeply with their real world hobbies and friends. Their target is wide, as Zenergo hopes to cater not only to those already involved in a sport, hobby, or interest who want to connect with new or existing like-minded people based on location and by experience-level, but busy parents looking for an online organization system — and single people looking for new friends, groups and events that specifically match their lifestyle and social interests. Zenergo may be over-extending itself by casting its net wide, but the startup hopes to combat this by giving its users access to all the social tools that other networks provide, like photos, invitations, calendars, groups, contact managers and friend finders. All on one website. Yeeha! One thing that came as music to my ears: Let’s say you’re an avid golfer, and you create a golf group where you’re connecting with new friends over your favorite course, planning tee times and so on, while right next store the bass fishing and Sudoku groups are doing the same thing. You might assume that with all these disparate interest groups in one place, you’d find chaos. And if you’re like me, you want to keep the various circles you create around your hobbies separate and distinct. Zenergo enables this kind of focused interaction — or, if you want to integrate your various interests, you can overlap them as well. And what’s more, Ferrell assures me, Zenergo intends to be a resource for people who want to go out and actually play golf, rather than sit around and yap about Tiger Woods. So, you can use Zenergo local runner’s group, for example, to post an invitation to a Saturday trail run, or find a tennis partner. Wine aficionados can publicize, organize and expand events. You get the idea. As for how the site will make money, Ferrell tells me its approach is similar to that of LinkedIn. Initially, it will be ad-supported, but will likely soon begin offering premium benefits and features. Zenergo also announced a partnership with the Silicon Valley & Monterey Bay Area Chapter of , which is using Zenergo to recruit and organize team members. Having raised $1 billon to support blood cancer research and patient services, Team In Training is The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s endurance sports charity training program for marathons, half marathons, triathlons, and hiking adventures. The social network hopes to leverage partnerships with charities and non-profits to attract activists and do-gooders as well, giving them a place to organize events and fundraisers. Obviously, there is plenty of competition in the activist networking space, as there is for each niche category, but by bringing them all together in one place, Zenergo may be onto something big. Or not. You be the judge. Check ’em out. |
Thanks For The Dead Scorpion, Acura (Plus A Pulse Smartpen Giveaway!) | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | Press kits are always good fun and Acura sent out a massive display for . It’s supposed to be some sort of hero aptitude test but it’s really just a cardboard box containing random crap. The highlight is test #3 in which you’re suppose to reanimate a scorpion with an included sugar cube and then battle it until one of us dies. Well, the scorpion came with a broken tail and after nervously waiting a few minutes for the little guy to wake up with just the sugar cube, I added a bit of water. That didn’t work. I think I won. Anyway, the kit also came with an Acura-branded . Why? I don’t know. But it can be yours! For free! I just need your help with something. It’s easy. Here, follow me. I need your help deciding what movie to go see this weekend. The choices are or . Leave a comment below with your opinion and I’ll pick a winner at random, which will also decide the movie I’m going to waste $40 bucks on. Official rules: |
Strolling through "Nigeria's Best Buy" (A Photo Essay) | Sarah Lacy | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | LAGOS, NIGERIA– I’m in Lagos to speak at an event and decided to come a week early to check out the country’s tech and entrepreneurship scene. Apparently Arrington thought when I told him this. But he should know by now, I don’t need a lot of arm twisting to visit a country of 150 million people chaotically surging into modernity. Where there’s that much opportunity, there’s always entrepreneurship. Nigeria has fascinated me for the last few years: It has the largest population of any country in Africa. It has abundant natural resources, most notably oil. And it has a ton of potential outside of oil. According to the World Bank the non-oil economy has grown at 8% per year for most of the last decade. The problem is employment hasn’t budged and the country has fifty million unemployed young people. Those are the official figures, but people in the country tell me it’s actually much higher than that. That helps explain why Nigeria is more known in the West for 419 email scams than its vast economic potential. Simply put: Nigeria is a nation desperate for more entrepreneurship, but there are some significant challenges for local entrepreneurs and foreign investors. More on the good and the bad in a future post. A lot more. One story includes guys with machetes. But let’s talk about Nigeria’s tech appetite first. Like anyone else they lust for that new, new thing, and many of them go to a place called “Computer Village” to find it. It’s the Nigerian answer to Shenzhen’s SEG Electronics Market, a crammed, multistory building that holds booths and booths of nearly any component and hardware knock-off you can imagine. SEG is simultaneously thrilling and horrifying for techies, summing up why China is so central to the Valley’s modern gadget boom and why its low-cost, copy-cat goods are such a threat at the same time. You know you are getting close to SEG, because the street hawkers stop pitching you massages and start offering up illicit copies of Windows. In Lagos, we could tell we were getting close to Computer Village because of the rows of parked trucks of busted out boom-boxes, televisions and other has-been electronics being fixed and rehabed for parts. Hawkers try to get your attention with a sound that’s a combination of a kissing-noise and a hissing noise. It surrounds you as you walk through Computer Village, making you feel like you’re either walking past a rowdy construction site or a den of snake charmers. That’s a good way to describe the sales tactics too. Nigerian tech entrepreneurs I’ve spoken with this week have complained that many of the developers who apply for jobs are too book-trained; that they lack that raw creative problem solving or as the Indians call it. Jugaad is core to what makes startups able to thrive within constraints and outperform giants. And as you’ll see from the photos below, it’s on full-display in Computer Village. They’ve got hardware: Software: Nigerian Geek Squad: Printer cartridge refills: And the app store: |
Investors Cough Up $1.6 Million To Dine With Grubwithus, The Brilliant Social Dining Service | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | The idea behind is an awesome yet simple one. You browse for a restaurant you’d like to go to in a certain city and buy a ticket for your meal at a set price. But the key is that others do this as well, all with the intention of meeting new people over dinner. And when you’re buying your ticket, you can see who your dinner buddies will be. Yes, it’s sort of like Groupon meets Meetup. And yes, it’s brilliant. So it should be no surprise that a long list of prominent early-stage investors have decided they’d love to back Grubwithus. The service, which launched out of Y Combinator last year, has just raised a $1.6 million round. Who’s at the funding table? , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and . Alongside the funding, the company is also highlighting two different types of dinners: charity dinners and raffle dinners. And the first two they’re doing are with investors Andreessen Horowitz and NEA. For , which takes place a Tamarine in Palo Alto on May 18, you’ll have to bid to win a dinner with John O’Farrell and Scott Weiss (two of the general partners). The proceeds from the bidding will go towards Second Harvest Food Bank. The 10 highest bids will win seats at the table (and the bidding will close 24 hours before the event). is a raffle one. Essentially, anytime you book a meal on Grubwithus you’ll get a ticket. These tickets can then be used to enter to win access to the NEA meal — the more tickets you have, the better chance you have of winning the random draw. If you do win, you’ll be asked to pay the $35 set fee for the meal at Reposado in Palo Alto. Currently, Grubwithus operates in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, DC, and Los Angeles. Boston and Seattle will be opening very soon, co-founder Eddy Lu tells us. The biggest city remains Chicago, as that’s where the service first started, he says. The team is currently 8 people, but with the new funding they’ll be looking to hire quickly. And they’ll need to, as Lu realizes the competitors and clones will come quickly. One such competitor is , which . Lu also envisions expanding the idea of Grubwithus into other verticals and use cases. That makes sense given the obvious business model. Grubwithus has actually been making revenues since day one, Lu notes. They take a percentage from the restaurants they work with. “Restaurants love us because we want to create sustainable relationships with them and tell them to make sure they still make money using us,” he says. “Users also use Grubwithus for social utility, not financial utility, so it’s a bunch of high-quality users coming into these restaurants, not deal-hunting cheapskates,” he continues. You can probably guess which services he’s alluding to with those statements. |
Armor Games Releases Sequel To Crush The Castle, Siege Hero | John Biggs | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | Remember ? Although the upstart has overshadowed their glory, was one of the best “throwing stuff at stuff” games on the iPhone and iPad. To that end, the company has decided to create , a more cartoonish sequel to the more realistically violent CTC. I haven’t played it yet but I hear it’s fabu!
The game will be available on the iTunes store next Tuesday but I can get you a copy right now. All you have to do is Tweet me at or email me at john at crunchgear.com with the subject like “SEIGE ME.” Mention what version you’d like, iPad or iPhone, and I’ll give five to the twooters and five to the emailers, first come first served. UPDATE – Just gave them all away. Thanks for playing! |
Airship! This Bulbous Craft Could Launch In 2013 | John Biggs | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | Good morrow! Welcome to the world of the future! We present to the public a Miraculous and Orotund Airship for the conveyance of people, cattle, and cargo from All Points On the Earth To All Others! How does this Majestic Airboat Fly? Through the Miracle Of Helium, a Safe Gas that will bear aloft almost any Great Mass. The Original Problem of many Airships was the maintenance of Bouyancy. As said ships burned Fuel, the ship would fall or rise in accordance to the Laws Of Gravity. Using a System called Control Of Static Heaviness, this Aircow can Fly and Rise Without Issue, coming to rest at any point on the Earth for passengers to disembark.
Created by a man of Slavik descent, one Igor Pasternak, the system pushes bouyant Helium into tubes when not necessary, thereby reducing the Weight that is pushed up into the Air. Using a Condesnor and some Tubes, the COSH Airhorse will allow Helium to increase and decrease as is Necessary to the Flight of the Craft. Does this mean that You, Dear Reader, will ride on such a Craft before the year is Through? Don’t Bet On It, Friend, but instead thank the heavens that such a monstrosity does not scare your cattle and children as it Rises Over Your Hovel. |
Introducing Your TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield Finalists | Michael Arrington | 2,011 | 5 | 24 | have battled it out in front of a live audience and judges over two days at TechCrunch Disrupt: New York. Tomorrow at 3:30 EST six of those startups will show their stuff again in front of a new set of judges. One of them will take home the and $50,000 in cash. These are the finalists, in alphabetical order, based on judges’ scoring: 1. (Israel) ( ) ( )
2. (San Francisco) ( ) ( )
3. (Israel) ( ) ( )
4. (San Francisco) ( ) )
5. (New Orleans) ( ) ( ) (audience choice/startup alley)
6. (New York) ( ) ( )
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Kobo Touch Vs. New Nook In Specs | Devin Coldewey | 2,011 | 5 | 24 |
We’ll soon have both of these new e-reader devices for review, but a quick comparison seems in order since they’re so similar on paper. Both are going to be available in early June, and both promise a frills-free touchable reading experience. How do they differ? Let’s run down the specs in this chart:
*Kobo unofficially supports images, CBZ, CBR, rtf, HTML, and txt
**Battery life is not a standardized measurement (Kobo has the right idea with total page turns, though) So the $130 is slightly smaller and lighter, while the $140 supports images and supposedly has that great battery life. Then there are the intangibles. Which has the nicer interface? Which has social features you’ll actually use? There really isn’t much to decide on here. What matters is the in-hand feel, the speed and ease of the touch operation, and the readability of the text, which depends on the rendering engine as well as the screen. No clear winner on specs means it’s down to the real review. We expect to have these devices in our hands during the next couple weeks, and we’ll be sure to compare them very closely. |
Pics Or It Didn't Happen: The Dell XPS 15z Vs The MacBook Pro | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 5 | 24 |
I’m a few hours late to this party thanks to , but damn, the Dell XPS 15z is a blatant MacBook Pro ripoff. I’m all for companies taking notes on competitor’s products but it seems like Dell failed to do anything but simply copy almost every notable design cue of the MBP. It had to be deliberate. The MacBook Pro is an iconic design and save the contoured design of the the XPS 15z, I can’t find anything worthwhile that’s different. It’s like Dell looked over Apple’s shoulder and copied everything, then changed a few answers so it would be so obvious. They even copied one of Apple’s wrong answers.
Let’s start on the left panel. Most of the ports are lined up in a row besides the audio input and output ports are on the opposite side. The battery meter is in the same location with the same convenient, but strangely larger button. Dell even copied Apple’s worst design decision of placing the only two USB ports right next to each other, so close that you can’t plug in dongles or flash drives along side cables. The similarities are even more clear when you open the lid thanks to a resesed backlit keyboard with color contrasting keys flanked by two rectangle speaker grills. Sure, that sort of discribes a good deal of PC notebooks, but it screams MBP clone especially when the black bordered screen is considered, too. I’m anything but an Apple fanboy. My main computer is a PC and I use a Droid X. Hopefully those admissions will grant me a little leeway when I state that companies should look to Apple. They should be leaning on one of the most profitable CE companies. But not like this. No doubt at least some people will buy the new XPS 15z just because it looks like a MBP but from where I sit, I cannot see how Dell improved upon Apple’s long-used design. Price doesn’t count since this notebook starts at $999. The XPS is slightly thicker, arguably worse looking, and only a touch lighter. What am I missing, Dell? [Thanks for the bottom left pic, CNET. See their review .] |
Hackathon Hacker Builds Working iPhone-based Torrent Streamer | John Biggs | 2,011 | 5 | 24 | Carnegie Mellon student and a future Google intern Sohail Prasad built a working torrent streamer at this weekend’s TC Hackaton and demoed it to us today after tweaking a few things. The product will be available soon at and Sohail is trying to figure out a more, shall we say “legal,” use case for the product. The app allows you to grab a torrent link, pass it to the interface, and then begin streaming the video instantly. We saw it work at Disrupt but, obviously, he wants to assure you and the MPAA that he means no harm. You can sign up for the beta or you can see the product in Sohail’s demo video below. |
Amazon Fires Back With $164 Kindle 3G With Offers | John Biggs | 2,011 | 5 | 24 | is now offering the , originally $190, for $164 with “offers.” This new version integrates 3G wireless alongside Wi-Fi, something the new pointedly does not have. This new version will also include offers aka advertisements, allowing you to see a bit of flimflammery with your regularly scheduled ebook. The Kindle Wi-Fi with offers costs $114, twenty dollars less than the Wi-Fi Nook. Both are available now. Same features as latest-generation Kindle 3G – free 3G wireless, Pearl E Ink display, up to two months of battery life and more – plus sponsored screensavers and money-saving special offers SEATTLE—May 24, 2011—(NASDAQ: AMZN)—Last month, Amazon.com introduced Kindle with Special Offers, a new member of the Kindle family that gives customers access to money-saving special offers. Just five weeks later, Kindle with Special Offers became the bestselling member of the Kindle family in the U.S. Today, Amazon announced that it is now making special offers available for Kindle 3G. Kindle 3G with Special Offers is available starting today for only $164 and ships immediately. At just $164, Kindle 3G with Special Offers is the lowest price of any 3G e-reader, and includes the latest Pearl electronic ink display. Learn more about the entire Kindle family, including the $114 Kindle with Special Offers and the new $164 Kindle 3G with Special Offers, at www.amazon.com/kindle3G. “Kindle is the bestselling e-reader in the world. It’s been just six weeks since we introduced the new $114 Kindle with Special Offers, and already customers have made it the bestselling member of the Kindle family,” said Jay Marine, Director, Amazon Kindle. “In response to customer requests, we’re now making these money-saving special offers available for Kindle 3G. You will get all the features readers love about Kindle 3G – free 3G wireless, global wireless access, Pearl electronic ink display that’s easy to read even in bright sunlight, access to over 950,000 ‘Buy Once, Read Everywhere’ Kindle books – all for just $164 – the lowest price for any 3G e-reader.” Special offers that will be available in the coming weeks include:
· $10 for a $20 Amazon.com Gift Card – customers loved this offer, so we’re making it available again in time for Father’s Day
· Save up to $500 off Amazon’s already low prices on HDTVs with a unique 20% discount on 200 HDTVs from brands including Sony, Panasonic, LG, and VIZIO
· $1 for a Kindle book, choose from thousands of books including Water for Elephants and the Hunger Games trilogy
· Spend $10 on Kindle books and get a free $10 Amazon.com Gift Card Kindle 3G with Special Offers includes all the same features that helped make the third-generation Kindle the #1 bestselling product in the history of Amazon.com: Free 3G wireless , no annual contracts, no monthly fees
Global 3G coverage means books in under 60 seconds in over 100 countries and territories
Paper-like Pearl electronic ink display, no glare even in bright sunlight
Lightweight 8.7 ounce body for hours of comfortable reading with one hand
Up to two months of battery life with wireless off eliminates battery anxiety
Kindle Store with over 950,000 books – largest selection of the most popular books
Seamless integration with free “Buy Once, Read Everywhere” Kindle apps for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry and Windows Phone Kindle 3G with Special Offers is available for immediate shipment to customers in the U.S. at www.amazon.com/kindle3G. |
Server Density scores Angel funding and rolls out 'app store for sysadmins' | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 5 | 24 | After its initial funding from pan-European seed fund and incubator , , the server monitoring tool, has secured £135k in an Angel round from Christoph Janz, Qamar Aziz, Kyle McGinn and . The new investment will be used to accelerate growth through “several new projects.” To that end, the UK startup is also announcing its new “ ” at today’s MongoDB conference in San Francisco. Essentially it’s a plugin marketplace for customers of Server Density’s server monitoring service enabling developers to sell (or give away) their plugins that extend and add specialist features to the functionality of the company’s core product. Like similar monitoring services, Server Density makes it easy for system admins to monitor the performance of servers, get alerted to issues before they (hopefully) become an issue and receive status updates. Along with its browser-based version, the company offers mobile versions via dedicated apps for iPhone, iPad and Android. Founded by David Mytton, Server Density’s customers include companies such as Intel, Motorola, University of Oxford, Duckduckgo, about.me and The New York Times. |
Video: Check Out BlaBlabLabs' 3D Body Scanner/Printer At TC Disrupt | John Biggs | 2,011 | 5 | 24 | and (along with some help from ) set up an amazing exhibit at Techcrunch Disrupt. Essentially, it’s a 3D scanner/printer that grabs a 3D copy of your body and then prints it out into a 3-inch high figurine. It is, in short, magical. Two members of the BlablabLab group have manned the gear all day and they’ve scanned quite a few attendees, presenting them with a finished figurine in about 15 minutes. The system uses three Kinect sensors that creates a 3D cloud of points and then the pair cleans up the figurine and adds smoothing and webbing to keep small parts from breaking off. They tried to scan me but they ran out of plastic for my Vladimir Harkonnen-like rotundity. Check out the video above for a closer look at the hardware and process. |
Frooly sets up shop as a local Etsy for indie stores in the UK | Steve O'Hear | 2,011 | 5 | 24 | launches out of beta today as a market place for local boutique and independent stores from the UK who want to set-up shop online. It’s similar in some ways to with its focus on “luxury, handcrafted and unique sellers” but in this case certainly aimed at merchants who already operate off-line but need a low barrier to entry to entering the world of e-commerce. The service isn’t restricted to arts and crafts either but includes food and other local produce. Naturally, the site also offers social media tie-ins, helping these independent and local stores gain greater word-of-mouth exposure. While for users of the site, frooly offers a degree of personalisation in that it will attempt to learn your shopping habits and aggregate offers from the stores and products featured on the site overall to your particular taste and, presumably, location. To that end, frooly plans to roll out more aggressively city-by-city in the UK in a similar strategy to say Groupon. During its beta period, frooly says that it has added more than 1,000 stores across the UK, attracting 25,000 unique users a month with an average value of £27 per-transaction. For shops wanting to get in on the action there is a free version, while a range of premium offerings add features such as higher-priority listings and a lower commission per-sale. The Sheffield, UK-based startup is funded by its two founders – to the tune of £900k ( ) – from money garnered from their previous businesses. It was also at Seedcamp London earlier this year. |
Amazon, Please Do Not Make The Kindle Touchscreen | Matt Burns | 2,011 | 5 | 24 | I’m a big fan of my Kindle DX. It’s literally my favorite gadget. I love the form factor, the large screen, the relatively good battery life and the keyboard. Amazon could eliminate any of those items and my love would still be just as strong. The Kindle DX is perfect in my eyes. It’s so perfect that just the thought of Amazon ditching the buttons in favor of a touchscreen pains me as deeply as The Road. That’s the trend now: touchscreen e-ink screens. Within the last 24 hours, and introduced models with new touchscreen e-ink displays. It’s a fantastic step in low-power consuming displays with really quick page refreshes and battery life. The new Nook has a 2-month battery. All good. Even the touchscreen is great technology with good-enough sensitivity. But I don’t want it in my next Kindle. The beauty of e-ink screens is text looks fantastic. It looks just like text — or it’s the closest thing to paper print as technology gave us yet and the latest Pearl screen is awesome. But I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to wipe my screen or worry in any fashion about the screen. True, e-ink screens aren’t LCD screens. They don’t have a glossy overlay that naturally sucks the oil out of my fat fingers. E-ink screens are generally finger-friendly. Still, why do I want to control the device with the screen? In many ways this is BlackBerry versus iPhone. Touchscreen versus keypad. But it’s not the QWERTY keypad that I necessarily I care about. It’s the thought processes involved that are naturally inherent with touchscreens. They need to be cared for differently. Suddenly a screen protector is a must-have accessory. You’re going to be touching and prodding it after all. Of course companies like Kobo and B&N needed this step. They needed something to make them fundamentally different from the Kindle. Touch control is, well, different for these companies but actually old news for the e-reading market. The Sony Reader Touch came out in 2009, which wasn’t exactly a blockbuster hit. I just worry that a touchscreen will cause the Kindle to ditch its luddite charm. Even my grandma is comfortable with my Kindle. People understand buttons and I’m not saying the human race as a whole is too dumb to grasp the concept of a touchscreen. But there is certainly a sub-set of users that are hesitant to embrace the technology in their much loved device and I’m a card carrying member. |
Kohort Is Group Management Done Simple, Yet Robust | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 24 | Groups are all the rage right now. Facebook is focusing on them. Google is thought to be focusing on them. GroupMe, Beluga, etc. The fact that so many companies are focusing on them shows a common belief that they’re extremely important. , a new service launching today at in New York, believes this as well. They just believe that everyone else has failed at them so far. One reason is that Kohort believes the grouping features for most of these services are tacked-on. With Kohort, it’s the central feature. And it goes deep. Kohort allows for hierarchical groups, so groups can have as many subgroups as a user would like. And there are Channels — groups of groups that can be created to better organize things. Users can subscribe to these Channels based on their interests. The best way to think about Kohort is probably Google Groups meets the more modern grouping features. In that regard, it’s a bit like the recently , but Kohort aims to be about more than just conversations as well. With that in mind, Ning or Meetup may be closer — or, wait for it, the now defunct Google Wave. The revenue play is to have sponsored groups and well as premium groups. But the vast majority of Kohort groups will always be free and supported by ads. In April, Kohort round from IA Ventures, RRE, and others. Here’s their presentation
SF: What’s the model? A: It’s free and prosumer. SH: From free to $99 a month is a big step. A: If you have a group that has less than a large amount of users, it’s free. SH: How do you compare this to Ning? A: There are a lot of players in the space. But we have more features. SF: Yeah a lot of competitors. A: Again, we have a lot of features. And we made it social. SF: How do you make it social? A: Groups in the real world interact. But that’s tough online. Usually it’s a phone call, we give you more tools. SH: Even though you’re freemium, is your heart with the big groups? A: We think this serves everybody. From big groups to to small organizations. |
CodeGuard Is A Simple Time Machine For Your Website | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 24 | Today at in New York, the winner of the audience award was . The idea can be summed up simply: “We are a time machine for your website,” notes their founders. Essentially, they allow you to automatically and simply backup your FTP data so that if you need to revert your website to some earlier version. CodeGuard does this by taking a snapshot of your FTP data over and over again. Then if you need to go back, you easily can. Yes, it’s a lot like the Time Machine feature built into the Apple OS X software. But whereas that’s for data found on your desktop, this is for data found on a server elsewhere. “We consider ourselves website protection to the rest of us,” the founders note. Similar solutions exist in corporate environment, but not really for regular people to use. It’s built using GIT, but for the masses. Here’s their presentation.
SF: Enterprise self-server? A: Right now we’re targeting medium and small businesses and bloggers. SH: This is for people who run their websites on what platforms? A: Good question, we’re going to roll out on a bunch of platforms. Right now it’s FTP. RE: How many sites currently? A: Probably 60 now just testing. RE: Pricing? A: Free if you site is 250MB or less. Up to 1GB it’s $10 a month. And we go up from there. RE: Acquiring users? A: We’re partnering with providers. RE: Backend? A: Right now we just have a dedicated server. If and when we get bigger, we’ll invest in scaling. RE: So not the cloud? A: While that’s great for many things, probably not the best solution here. |
null | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 5 | 6 | null |
Apple Looking To Set Up Shop In NYC's Grand Central Station | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 5 | 24 | has a habit of setting up retail stores in iconic locations all over the world, much like the ones at the Louvre in Paris, under the Pearl Tower in Shanghai, and in London’s Covent Garden. Even though the Big Apple already enjoys four Apple stores, Apple’s location-based habit has yet to be satisfied as the tech giant is rumored to be setting up shop in New York City’s landmark Grand Central Station. According to the Wall Street Journal, the newest flagship location will be a part of Apple’s Apple Store 2.0 retail overhaul, which also includes outfitting employees with and implementing larger interactive display screens. The new location should take over 15,230 square feet currently occupied by Metrazur Restaurant, set to close July 1. We have yet to receive any official word from Apple on the new location, nor have we seen any timeframe for a store opening. [via ] |
A Watch Created In 1969 Could Sense Heart Attacks… But Wait, There's More | John Biggs | 2,011 | 5 | 24 |
In 1969 a young inventor patented a unique heart-attack-sensing watch that used the wearer’s pulse to regulate the time. That’s right: there are no quartz crystals or tuning forks in here. The system senses your pulse and shows information on two registers – the standard, optimal time and a dial that runs faster or slower depending on the user’s current heart-rate. You’d then be able to tell if your heart rate was too wild or unsustainable and could help you avoid heart attacks. There is also a unique alarm that goes off when you’re experiencing arrhythmia. In short, it will tell you when you’re having a heart attack. But the best thing? The very best thing? The inventor of this device was Herbert Zeppo Marx AKA “The Handsome Marx Brother.” After Zeppo left the group he became an engineer and began a company called Marman Products that, in addition to the watch, made the clamp that held the Fat Man nuclear bomb in its bay. You can see the full patent and here’s Zeppo and Groucho hamming it up in . [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v3etuIw-aM&w=640&h=510] |
Tracks Is Sort Of Like Color For Normal People | MG Siegler | 2,011 | 5 | 24 | Of all the written about the heavily funded , there is no denying that it’s confusing to a lot of people, at least at first. Updates have helped this a bit, but the app relies so much on technology in the background, that it almost seems as if you’re doing something wrong when you’re using it. , a new app launching today at in New York, offers similar photo clusters done on the fly. But it’s much, easier to understand. The examples the team gives for uses range from a pub crawl with friends to a family vacation. You and the people with you (who have to be explicitly invited into a group, rather than Color’s automatic method) create picture albums on the fly. These are called Tracks. And these tracks are then viewable both in the app and on the web in a beautiful, optimized experience. To me, the latter is something that has always interested me about Color. The idea that you can share the pictures you and your friends take clustered together onto the web. But Color does not have a good mechanism for finding those pictures unless you explicitly share them and then remember that link. Tracks makes this concept much more digestible. Also cool is the map view, which shows the path of your Track. (Not to be confused with your Path, the other photo-sharing app.) And Tracks smartly angle themselves towards another trend in mobile photos: physical photo books. Companies like and have been working on this, but they leverage other sites’ photos. Tracks is an all-in-one solution. Here’s their presentation
JC: Do you have to use your app or Instagram? A: Great question. We pull from photo libraries, so many of your Instagram photos are there. JC: Other services? A: Yeah, photos are just the beginning. RE: What gives you the confidence that using Facebook won’t kill this? A: Tracks is like a living ongoing experience. That’s part 1. The other part is the other members — not everyone wants this on Facebook. Right now this is just a private experience. SH: Why no text? No captions? A: That will come. We wanted to get something super simple out there. SF: Do you have a login? A: Yes SF: I think you should test the Facebook login. A: We tested it, but people didn’t want it. SF: SMS? A: Also on the roadmap. RE: Revenue model? A: We have a few ideas. We think brands could be big. But the initial focus is on engagement. JC: Initial engagement will be tricky. You should learn what the others have done. A: I completely agree. But Facebook and Twitter are lower than a personal invitation. |
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