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US Gov Alleges Chinese Hackers Compromised American Companies To Steal Trade Secrets | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 19 | Remember the that from inside of China, presumed to be tied to that country’s military? Today the U.S. government of “unit 61398,” indicating that actors from the group “conspired to hack into computers of six U.S. victims to steal information that would provide an economic advantage to the victims’ competitors, including Chinese state-owned enterprises.” The indictment comes at a difficult time for the United States government, as the NSA has been for interdicting shipments of hardware to foreign customers, not to mention espionage that has a (the Department of Commerce is, according to Glenn Greenwald, an NSA “ “). Pot calling the kettle and all that, the U.S. government has a few specific allegations that are worth reading: Right about the time SolarWorld was rapidly losing its market share to Chinese competitors that were pricing exports well below costs, these hackers were stealing cost, pricing, and strategy information from SolarWorld’s computers. And while Westinghouse was negotiating with a Chinese state-owned enterprise over the construction of nuclear power plants, the hackers stole trade secret designs for components of those plants. The DOJ calls the actions “criminal.” That’s correct, but sticky given that the now politely infamous NSA leaker Edward Snowden has that the NSA engages in “industrial surveillance,” and a (page 48) revealing of a week’s worth of PRISM activity indicates that collected information included topics such as “energy” in Mexico, “trade” in Israel, and “oil” in Venezuela. The Chinese government has , which also involve Alcoa and the U.S. United Steelworkers union. Whatever the case, government powers hacking private and publicly owned companies for economic edge distorts the global market and could very well lead to a resting state of constant cyber warfare that would only leave us all less secure. The Department of Justice promises to “pursue” those who “steal our intellectual property, no matter who they are or where they reside.” |
Taking Lots Of Selfies Is Not A Mental Disorder | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | Have you heard? The American Psychological Association says that taking an excessive amount of . But of course this claim, which predictably spread like Kardashian wedding news on social media channels this weekend, is completely . It was the hoax we all wanted to be real. It was vindication that certain annoying people in our lives who post non-stop pics of themselves and flood our Facebook feeds with them were, in fact, crazy. But not only is “Selfitis” , claiming that it’s a negative behavior may actually be a blow to who hold that the selfie is young female empowerment. Selfie proponents assert that labeling the practice as a disorder is just one more way to call women crazy for being proud of themselves. Constantly posting self-taken pictures on social media is an annoying practice to many, and . Over at Jezebel, writer Erin Gloria Ryan says taking a ton of selfies is a — a that only proves how wrapped up in ourselves we’ve become in this great online mess. But certain feminist circles argue that selfies could lead to helping young women stand out and have more confidence later in life. The discussion and #feministselfies tag even for a hot second late last year. Feminist online news site also rebuffs the notion that selfies are an anti-social behavior. It affirms instead that they’re about empowerment for women, particularly when it comes to battling unrealistic ideals, helping with body acceptance, and empowering women of color. In a Today “ , over 65% of young women surveyed said selfies gave them more self-confidence. Slate’s Rachel Simmons asks us to consider the selfie as “a tiny pulse of girl pride—a shout-out to the self.” It’s something boys are often encouraged to do and girls are often discouraged to do in modern society. Even beyond the disorder discussion is the fear that young women don’t understand how they come across with up-close “ ” and cleavage shots plastered all over their Instagram feeds. Again, Simmons chimes in on this with a reaffirmation that the selfie is young female empowerment: Pity the teenage girl. As with sex and hooking up, we assume there is only one motivation, and it’s a bad one. Girls are perennial victims and the culture always perpetuates this. …All girls sext because they’re clueless and stupid—not because some have figured out how to leverage the tools of social media to play at sex without having it. And all girls post selfies because they’re desperate for others to fill the beauty-affirmation void left by a ruthless media. Wash, rinse, and repeat. Okay, some “Selfitics” may actually have a problem. Teen Danny Bowman (the son of two psychologists) confesses that . He said the obsession led him to suicidal thoughts and an attempt on his life because he couldn’t get the pictures quite right. However, Bowman seems to be the extreme exception. Some might even say he had something closer to body dysmorphic disorder versus whatever we’d call the selfie disorder. It’s easy dismiss those who post a lot of pictures of themselves on social media as bonkers. But could it be that this is just attempt at marginalizing young women for doing anything that upsets societal norms? |
Retro Is One Of The Most Beautiful Instagram iPad Viewers | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | Despite being , still hasn’t come out with an iPad app. This has allowed several developers to step into the breech and offer their own tablet viewers for the popular photo-sharing app. Some of the most popular ones include , , and . In order to step up to the competition, a bootstrapped Singaporean startup called has retooled its Instagram iPad viewer . The new version of the app, which is now available in the App Store, is now one of the best viewers for casual browsers and Instagram power users (including people who use it for marketing) alike. Retro, which was featured in App Stores in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, stands out by offering several viewing modes as well as notifications whenever you get a new like or comment, something that most other Instagram iPad viewers lack. Jason Dinh Ba Thanh, the co-founder of Tiny Whale, tells TechCrunch they hope to add push notifications soon, too. The app is free to download, but an upgrade allows viewers to add multiple accounts and download videos and photos to their devices. The app offers three viewing modes, including a single column mode that is similar to Instagram’s own news feed, a grid mode, and a mosaic mode similar to Pinterest that allows you to focus on individual pictures while allowing you to view thumbnails in the background, which is the most popular viewing style, says Retro designer Louis Nguyen. The app’s statistic feature lets you keep track of how many comments and likes photos have received, which is handy for managing accounts if you use Instagram for marketing. “We feel that other Instagram apps on the App Store don’t take into account different use cases that users might have and fail to utilise all the real estate the iPad screen has to offer,” says Nguyen, who adds that the Retro was designed to make it as easy as possible to switch between different viewing modes as well as multiple accounts with intuitive gestures. For example, you can pull down a pop-up window or photo viewer to close it or swipe left and right to go back and forth between pics. To try Retro, |
You Talkin’ To Me? — London’s App Car-mageddon Is Underway | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | Protests by London Black Cab drivers outside Hailo offices. Protests by taxis in Paris against Uber. In some case is taking place across the globe as private car hire apps and taxi apps gradually start to eat away at the long-controlled taxi and private car markets. What does it look like on the ground, what is the long game being played, and when you’re a driver what choice will you have? For, clearly, the stakes are high. Uber is now worth $17 billion, making it more valuable than Airbnb, Dropbox and Chinese handset maker Xiaomi – all valued at over $10 billion so far. That’s the view of sources taking to the WSJ yesterday, and it now means Uber is probably looking for far more than the $500 million it’s said to be raising. Uber was valued at $3.5 billion a year ago. And even if most have raised far less funding than Uber, one cannot overlook the rash of Taxi apps that have proliferated across the planet in the last few years. GetTaxi (based out of Israel) raised $52M. Lyft $250 Million in April. And of course, there are many more. Out of them, perhaps only Hailo, which has raised $125.1M, has caused consternation for Uber in the major city market of London. Of course, it’s unfair to compare private car hire apps with taxi apps — but increasingly they are attacking similar markets in a sort of pincer movement. Last week London became the scene of angry exchanges between Black Cab drivers and Hailo, after it was leaked that Hailo was applying for a license to service private “mini cabs”. Cab drivers yelled “Scab” outside the offices, and the police were called to break up scuffles. But if you look under the hood at the substance of what is going on, you find two different trajectories of the companies concerned ultimately converging on both the driver and the rider. First, some numbers. Central London is a city of 10 million people. By some estimates there are around 60,000 cabs, taxi and cars for hire in London. Of that only around 10% are linked to a dispatch system or operator. For example, the long established Addison Lee (which has its own app) has a 6,000 strong fleet. These drivers were once summoned first by phone call, but now by app and largely on account. Then there are the Black Cabs. There are around around 24,000 black Cabs in London and most of them are driven by drivers who have spent a year of their lives memorising the 25,000 winding medieval streets within a six mile radius of Charing Cross station. In no other city on the planet will you find taxi drivers like this. Although there were several apps prior to its arrival, the persuasive combination of Hailo’s three original Black Cab-driving founders — Russell Hall, Gary Jackson, and Terry Runham — together with entrepreneurs Jay Bregman, Ron Zeghibe, Caspar Woolley, has proved potent enough to capture 500,000 Hailo accounts holders in London. For its part Uber has been filling out its offering in London from the high to the lower end of the market. That is to say, from Uber Lux down to Uber X. Uber Pop – the P2P Lyft competitor – is not here yet, but is running in Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Brussels and Milan. Uber claims ‘X’ is 30-50% cheaper than a London Black Cab – you get a Black Prius. But no, they say, we’re not undercutting the market. My personal experience chimes with this. Mini cabs are cheaper than Black cabs, but are rarely available on apps with any traction. Uber has a healthy amount of stock in the system. And flip open your Google Maps app in London these days and – if you have the Uber app installed already – you will see a little Uber logo when you look for directions next to Walking and Driving. The notable thing here is the absence of any competitor app. As Ron Zeghibe, chairman of Hailo, pointed out to me, competition law may have “something to say” about that down the line. Though for now, Hailo is not sweating this development. Yes, Uber has been trying it’s Stateside gimmicks in London – delivering kittens, ice creams . This may seem like cleaver wheezes, but it’s a clever test of a future delivery infrastructure, which hints has Uber’s ‘other’ . But what has gotten the London market though is not the delivery of ice-cream, but Hailo applying for a private car licence on top of the service it delivers to Black Cab drivers. ‘Till now Hailo has been exclusively for Black Cabs. Black-cab drivers argue – with the law – that it is illegal for private ‘mini-cab’ cars vehicles to be fitted with a taxi meter. This is their beef with Uber, and, if Hailo is successful in extending this to private cars, this will be their beef with Hailo too. But hold your horses. Zeghibe puts it thus: “People want a choice.” Meaning, for Hailo to compete it will have to start offering cars on its app which go up the food chain to the Mercedes S-Classes and BMWs which some people – read: business people – want to ride in. So while Black Cab unions hurl insults at Hailo, in fact it’s about creating a class of vehicle in the app that is never likely to compete with the all-conquering Black Cab. And right now all the private car app competitors have exec cars (Mercs, BMWs, Jags). Even smaller, tiny, cab apps most people in London have barely heard of now do corporate work. So to be credible and maintain competition, Hailo needs to move into this market. So, Hailo was not being duplicitous in its application for a private license – it simply needs to be able to offer more than a Black Cab to compete against both Uber and the Addison Lees of the market. London, however, is unique. Londoners are in emotional hock to the trustworthy Black Cab drivers who understand its medieval streets. Out there in the wilds of Milan, Paris and Rome, it’s a different story. Cab drivers there do not offer the same kind of service – many will have to look on a map when you give directions. So in many respects the cab drivers there – unlike in London – have not put themselves in a position where they can easily defend what they do. There are too many anecdotes to mention about Paris in particular. Here’s a recent Facebook post by (reproduced with permission): “True story: Arrive in Paris. Find cab, put bags in. Cab had a third row seat so 6 yr old son is excited to sit in the back. I smile at the driver as I pull down the seat and say “you just made his day”. He opens the trunk (how nice of him, I think, let him climb in through the back). Instead he takes our bags out and tells me he can’t be bothered by our antics and to find another cab… Oh I miss you Paris Cabbies. Back to Uber and Chauffeur Prive… — feeling annoyed at Paris Gare du Nord.” Parisian drivers are doing themselves no favors. Once a car is tracked by GPS, has SatNav and is connected to an app, it’s just another marketplace. Perhaps this explains why — as Uber’s Jo Bertram, London General Manager at Uber, explained to me — Uber is so interested in the rating a driver gets, not the frequency with which they use their app. It’s the driver that is the one differentiator here. Clearly, drivers with the best ratings by riders are the sought-after commodity – this is the only way an app platform can tell one driver from another, whatever service they are on. And it’s those best drivers that may ride what I like to call Hailo’s ‘Trojan Horse’ into the business market. Hailo, of course, doesn’t call it that. “London is special. In London we’ll always be led by Black Cabs, but that doesn’t mean our customers don’t deserve choice;” explains Zeghibe. What does he see in a year’s time? Perhaps, he explains, a Black Cab driver, equipped with that incredible Knowledge of London’s streets, choosing to do part of his work in an Mercedes S-Class driving round London’s business men and women. All on — of course — the Hailo app. So while Uber is portrayed internationally as the brash kid, smashing down the walls of old incumbents, could it instead be that Hailo, working with local licensed Taxi firms, plays a much longer game with the most experienced drivers? It’s a tantalising thought. For its part, Uber continues to fight it’s wing of the pincer movement on the old world. As Western Europe manager Pierre Dimitri tells me, “We see a hugely regulated industry. We’re not surprised there’s competition.” As he says, drivers are already facing the possibility of using more than one app depending on what their ‘mode’ is. For while the ‘hardware’ of the cars that drives you around might be different, it’s the ‘software’ of the driver that varies. In that environment, drivers face a future where the collective bargaining on the old world no longer applies. Are you a good, well-rated driver? Do you know your way around the city? Do you prefer being a taxi or a chauffeur? Will you let the kids ride in the third seat at the back? Then pick your app. Or the app will pick you. |
Bitcoin Rallies As Allegations Of Trading Irregularities Swirl | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | It’s been a torrid few days for bitcoin, the now globally known cryptocurrency. A price rally kicked off that has, over the past week, pushed the value of bitcoin up by around 25 percent. Trading near the $580 mark, bitcoin is still down around 50 percent from its record, late-2013 highs, but the life that it’s showing could once again bolster consumer interest in the stuff. Interestingly, bitcoin transaction trading isn’t up. In fact, daily bitcoin transactions have settled into a consistent range of between 50,000 and 75,000 per day, . While transaction volume is flat, total traded bitcoin is up sharply on major exchanges. So, we’re seeing about the same number of transactions, with each trading event involving more bitcoin. Here’s the one-month chart (Via ) of volume — bitcoins bought and sold, not the numerical tally of total transactions — from major exchanges (Coinbase is excluded): And, from the same source, a one-month price chart. See if you can spot the line-up: The rally itself comes at a soul-searching moment for the bitcoin. A recently called the ‘Willy Report’ alleges that bot accounts on the Mt.Gox exchange led to massive price inflation last November, the month that saw bitcoin reach its all-time record highs. Here’s he key excerpt from the report, detailing how the supposed bot ‘Willy’ executed massive transactions: So basically, each time, (1) an account was created, (2) the account spent some very exact amount of USD to market-buy coins ($2,500,000 was most common), (3) a new account was created very shortly after. Repeat. In total, a staggering ~$112 million was spent to buy close to 270,000 BTC – the bulk of which was bought in November. So if you were wondering how Bitcoin suddenly appreciated in value by a factor of 10 within the span of one month, well, this may be why. Not Chinese investors, not the Silkroad bust – these events may have contributed, but they may not have been main reason. But more on that later. There has been pushback since, with some arguing that Chinese bitcoin markets were in fact . Other criticism has that one or two trading accounts could not have influenced so large a global market. As b , I’ve kept a closer eye on bitcoin transaction volume than its current dollar conversion price. If the bitcoin network is growing — the key metric of expanding adoption, in my view — transaction volume should rise. That would imply greater implied potential utility per coin, thus increasing their value. Which usage metric do we care more about? Transaction volume, or total bitcoin traded? Both, really, but I think that rising raw transaction volume itself would point to more pedestrian usage of bitcoin — not everyone is going to buy or sell several bitcoin at once, and, as bitcoin fans are trying to tie the cryptocurrency into normal life, we should expect to see rising numbers of small purchases if they are succeeding. Whatever the case, rising bitcoin sales and a rally mean that big dollars are buying into the cyrptocurrency. |
Home Alone? | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | Connected devices company , now , has been lauded — mostly, it must be said, by the tech press — for turning its attention to the utilitarian devices in your home. The ones no-one loves. The no-frills, (usually) beige plastic devices that squat on the wall or ceiling of your home doing one thing and one thing only, and thus ungraciously limiting possibilities for interaction. How dare they be so boring! Nest has been praised for seeking to make them ‘smart’. Make them feature-full and full of fancy. For beautifying the beige. “Artfully designed, connected up with your smartphone, and full of features that work better than what it wants to replace,” is how we described the Nest Protect update to the plain old smoke alarm/carbon monoxide detector when it launched in last year. Since then the Protect has . Indeed, just , details of a recall of all 440,000 sold devices came out — the safety snag being a ‘wave to dismiss’ gesture feature that apparently runs the risk of being triggered unintentionally — meaning a genuine alarm could be inadvertently switched off, leaving the occupants of the ‘smart connected home’ to choke in their beds. Ok, I’m painting absolutely the there. But the risk stands, hence the safety recall. Boil it down further and the risk is of a fancy feature interfering with core functionality. Which does sort of underline why these sorts of in-home, safety-focused devices might actually be so 1.0 in the first place. Perhaps being focused exclusively on one function isn’t so dumb after all if your core functionality is to ensure the safety of human life? (Related: the tech Nasa used for the Moon landings in the 1960s would be considered hilariously basic by modern standards. But it still got them to the Moon. And back.) The point is, fancy gestures or soothing voices that inform you your house is burning down, are, well, pointless frippery — if, y’know, your house is burning down. A device that declaims: “GET THE **** OUT NOW!” might have been more tonally appropriate — but is still just as unnecessary when all that’s required is a reliable, high pitched, continuous electronic scream to wake you up before you die. Emphasis on the word . And, well, death. I’d argue the Nest Protect’s additional features even go beyond pointless frippery. Really this is just sexy marketing hoping to lift additional dollars out of consumers’ pockets for a device that — at its best — should go entirely unnoticed. Unless you are unlucky enough to need to notice it. A device that it must be said is (normally) incredibly cheap to buy — thanks to mass production. Which is amazing. Myriad lives are being saved because of this (apparently) basic utilitarian device. What’s so dumb about that? If Nest had focused time and energy into, say, seeking to make incremental improvements on the sensor tech inside smoke alarms so they become even better at judging the density of the particulate matter in the atmosphere and thus become fractionally less likely to trigger from a harmless slice of burnt toast then they wouldn’t have garnered so much press. But they might have actually have made a better smoke alarm. But their focus was way more fuzzy than that. They were trying to engineer the ’emotion’ of smoke alarm interaction. (“We wanted to create something really emotional. Something that people could really like and embrace in their home, not just buy because the government tells them they have to,” was how ). Which, frankly, doesn’t sound quite so essential as detecting fire. Or maybe that’s just me. Throw in the fact Nest is now owned by advertising behemoth Google and more potential fuzziness arises — wending its way like a snaking tongue of smoke betwixt core functionality and business strategy. Just last week an SEC filing emerged in which , such as thermostats (Nest of course also makes a smart thermostat) and refrigerators and car dashboards and glasses and watches. (They did, admittedly, miss smoke alarms off the list. But perhaps ads telling you how refreshing a certain branded drink might be at the moment your house is burning might be a step too far, even for an overreaching ad giant.) Now it should be said that Google quickly put out a statement qualifying the SEC filing thus: “We are in contact with the SEC to clarify the language in this 2013 filing, which does not reflect Google’s product roadmap. Nest, which we acquired after this filing was made, does not have an ads-based model and has never had any such plans.” But notice they only specify that does not have an ads-based model. Because they can’t very well say that Google does not have an ads-based model. Since Google is the biggest advertising outfit on the planet. So, sure, Nest’s ‘beautified’ connect home devices might be expensive enough to be protected from the crude intrusions of adverts thrusting their marketing messages right inside your home — but make no mistake: other, cheaper ‘smart connected devices’ running Google software won’t be. (Fadell made this point in a quote given to : “Nest is being run independently from the rest of Google, with a separate management team, brand and culture. For example, Nest has a paid-for business model, while Google has generally had an ads-supported business model. We have nothing against ads — after all Nest does lots of advertising. We just don’t think ads are right for the Nest user experience.”) So while Google may not actually be planning to make all of the in-home and other hardware devices in that SEC filing list itself, it’s certainly planning on pushing its eyeball-seeking tentacles inside as many connected devices as it darn well can. And it probably has to. Looked at from the perspective of its ad-focused business model, Google needs to deliver ads where the eyeballs are, and as more and more types of devices in and around our person get connected up and become ‘smart’ (for smart also read: ‘capable of displaying ads’), the eyeballs are likely to shift off of their current fixated focus on the phone. That splintering of our attention makes Google’s transformation into an advertising octopus — i.e. an entity pushing its tentacles into all the terminals/devices we spend time looking at — a future imperative for its business. This could, of course, get insanely dystopic. Falling in love? Think of all that time you spend gazing into the eyes of your beloved. That’s time not spent looking at adverts! So what if on-eyeball advertising real estate becomes a thing — whether that’s via Glass or smart contact lenses or VR headsets. Is that the apple of your beloved’s eye? Or the Apple logo? Better take a closer look… And as for driverless cars, they transform a former driver who needed to keep eyes on the road into a pair of fancy-free eyeballs, just a-waiting to be grabbed with eye-catching digital stuff as the robot-car autonomously delivers them to their destination, perhaps routing in the odd detour, here and there, to put them in proximity to particular eateries that have paid for in-car ads. And so on, and on, and on. So here’s the thing: is your current thermostat (or smoke alarm or fridge or car dashboard) dumb enough that you’d be happy to trade its beige modesty for a garish box that chirps at you that now it’s 23 degrees you might like to try the latest branded sugar water? Or pipes up to say you’re just passing McDonalds and there’s a deal on extra large fries? To me that all sounds a lot more life-intrusive than having to push a few buttons to reset a ‘dumb’ device now and again. The dumb devices are at least honest about their intentions, even if interacting with them is a bit boring. Something being a bit boring sounds like an incredibly small price to pay for the welcome peace of not being marketed at. The future of connected devices which Google’s tentacles are groping towards is a place where devices have an ulterior motive. Where devices are HAL. Sure we have some of those devices now, in our pockets, but there’s something far more invasive about pumping ads into the essential tech infrastructure of your home. Or directing it into wearables that live on your actual person. It crosses the fucking line. If all devices are designed to socially engineer human behaviour with the motive of maximizing corporate profits we are no longer in control of the devices; the devices are in control of us. Image via Flickr by The best defense against Google the ad-serving octopus will be owning devices that don’t require your eyeballs on them more than they have to be. Devices that are smart/stupid enough to just get on with stuff without the need for or scope for fancy interactions. That are beige enough to blend in, rather than trying to catch your eye. Devices much like this: Whether these kind of ‘dumb’ devices will end up being more expensive — for the privilege of not doubling up as an ad-terminal — remains to be seen. (Assuming, that is, we’ll still be able to buy devices that are so ‘dumb’.) In the mean time, take a good look at that beige button-clad box you’re hating on right now — because it might end up a luxury item in future. Being as, y’know, it doesn’t try to dictate how you live your life. Doesn’t seem quite so boring now, does it? [ via Flickr by ] |
Fly Or Die: Microsoft Surface Pro 3 | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | Forget everything you thought you knew about the Microsoft Surface tablet, as the latest generation of the Windows-powered is a clear step up from the Microsoft slates of yore. In terms of specs, the 12-inch tablet packs a Core i7 processor, and is thinner, lighter, and more powerful than anything Microsoft has put on the table. The also sports a brand new kickstand, that levels out at different angles to give you a lap-mode, and a new keyboard and pen. All in all, it’s a beautiful device that many are putting in the ring with the MacBook Air, but can it handle the pressure at that price? When John and I took a look at the Surface Pro 3, we set up two camps. I’m unsure if the tablet could truly take the place of a lifestyle predominantly lived with a lightweight powerful laptop (a Macbook Air) and a smaller tablet (an iPad mini). As a tablet, 12 inches still feels a bit too large, and I am still unsure that the Surface can handle my daily computing needs. As a companion to a home desktop user who loves Windows, it might be a much easier sell. John, however, feels that the Surface Pro 3 is a solid option if you’re in the market for this type of in-between device, as it’s powerful enough to play as a laptop and compact enough to take on a plane. |
Rap Genius Drops Co-Founder Following Elliot Rodger Manifesto Annotations | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | Rap Genius, the startup that wants to “annotate the world,” sees the departure of co-founder Mahbod Moghadam today, owing to Moghadam’s ill-advised annotations on the rambling manifesto of Elliot Rodger. , injuring 13 and killing seven, including himself. In a , co-founder and CEO Tom Lehman describes how Moghadam’s missteps would have been met with decisive action were he a community member, and says the co-founder is no exception. Moghadam’s annotations were pointed out by , in which writer Jordan Sargent identifies some of the particularly horrible comments left by the Rap Genius co-founder on the document. Those include a disgusting, misogynistic guess from Moghadam that Rodger’s sister is “smokin hot” and compliments on the writing style of the killer. Lehman in the blog post today says that the Rap Genius team debated even uploading the mostly incoherent manifesto on the site, but in the end opted to do so because “understanding the psychology of people who do horrible things can help us to better understand our society and ourselves.” The images of the annotations (since removed) from Sargent’s post are below: [gallery ids="1007389,1007390,1007391"] Yesterday, Moghadam responded to the Gawker article with an apology, saying “I was fascinated by the fact that a text was associated with such a heartbreaking crime, especially since Elliot is talking about my neighborhood growing up. I got carried away with making the annotations and making any comment about his sister was in horrible taste, thankfully the rap genius community edits out my poor judgement, I am very sorry for writing it.” He’d also previously said that a removed in October of last year was responsible for some his more objectionable behavior. While the official line is that Moghadam resigned, it is likely that he was asked to leave by the company following his actions over the weekend. . Lehman’s own comments in his blog post seem to confirm this, as he states in his closing paragraph that he “cannot let” Moghadam “compromise the Rap Genius mission.” Former CTO and co-founder Lehman is taking over the CEO role, and fellow co-founder Ilan
Zechory will stay on to help run the company. Moghadam responded to TechCrunch’s request for comment by simply linking to the post by his former co-founder Lehman. We’ve contacted Lehman for more info, and will update with any response. Moghadam also tweeted the following: Founded in 2009, Rap Genius is a lyrics and text annotation site that allows users to add explanations for song lyrics, news, historical documents and more that are hosted on the site. Other users can hover over snippets of text to view the annotations. A in late 2012 put the startup in the spotlight. Ever since, though, the company’s founders have found themselves getting into trouble. Moghadam infamously told Mark Zuckerberg “suck my d*ck”, and hasn’t been shy about his drug use when interviewed. Rap Genius co-founders (from left): Tom Lehman, Ilan Zechory, Mahbod Moghadam Because other song lyric sites were filled with pop-up ads and ringtone scams, Rap Genius’s relatively user-friendly site climbed in Google search results. Rap Genius currently sees 21.2 million global monthly uniques and 41.5 million global monthly visits (though these third-party measurement services aren’t always accurate). But some said the company had gotten its prominent search rank — and subsequent traffic — by using spammy tactics to get blogs to link to its annotations in order to aid its Google PageRank. Google caught the startup red-handed and drastically demoted its placement. The Rap Genius founders apologized and detailed the technical lengths they went to remove or disavow the fraudulent links, and in its results. These incidents created a sour perception of Rap Genius and Moghadam, especially amongst many in the tech industry, priming the swift backlash to the co-founder’s inappropriate annotations of Rodger’s writings. Rather than uncharacteristic, Moghadam’s comments may have been seen as the last straw. Rap Genius’ large casual user base may not hear about — or care about — the scandal. However, the incident could make it tougher for Rap Genius to hire top talent or raise more money, because of the latest stain on the company’s reputation. |
Samsung Wearable Patents Feature Circular Face, Gesture Controls And Image Recognition | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | Samsung has a group of new patent applications it filed recently related to wearable tech (via ), and these could describe an initial foray into Android Wear, which Samsung has said it would support in addition to its Tizen-powered Gear devices depict a device with a circular face, much like the one featured in Motorola’s Android Wear-powered Moto360, and can work with a variety of hand gestures to trigger the activation of different tasks and features. The patents talk about how you could move your wrist to call up different features, or tap on the screen to interact with remote controls for devices around your house. The device would also display the time when at rest inactive on your wrist, and it would be laden with sensors, including an optical one for monitoring pulse. The smartwatch would also be able to be worn in other locations, including around the neck as a pendant, in a pocket, or on a keychain if the wrist-mounted paradigm doesn’t necessarily strike a chord with consumers. One interesting tidbit is the ability of the smartwatch to recognize barcodes, images, objects and do optical character recognition (plus translation) for printed text. This could be a good use case for wearables, since it means instantly pointing a device you have at hand at something and finding out more about it. It removes a step from smartphone-based object recognition, and might help that tech become more generally useful. This wearable patent blitz doesn’t necessarily indicate a product roadmap, but it does show that Samsung is seriously ramping up its R&D efforts in this area. The Korean company was among the first to jump for smartwatches, and is already selling its second generation Galaxy Gear line of hardware. It’s not surprising to see it move so quickly to push the category further, but it still remains to be seen whether any developments in this space will light a fire under consumers. |
On The Set Of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” | Samantha O'Keefe | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | Thanks to an unlikely series of events, I, a civil/environmental-engineer-turned-tech-media type, found myself on the set of HBO’s Silicon Valley last fall, serving as a consultant to HBO, which was trying to recreate a TechCrunch Disrupt in a Hollywood (well Culver City) studio. You probably don’t realize the insane amount of work that goes on before the actors show up in the studio. Sure, a show like Mad Men takes a lot of work to accurately portray those times, but a Silicon Valley tech conference? That’s easy, right? Wrong. In the weeks leading up to my visit, creative directors, set and costume designers, assistant producers and a variety of other HBO and TechCrunch staff came together to recreate Disrupt SF 2013. No detail was too small, from the color of the tablecloths in the Startup Alley, to the exact digital files we used to print signs, to the card stock used on the name badges, to the design of the volunteer T-shirts, to the fake wooden pillars that were built to replicate our San Francisco venue, the Design Concourse. HBO went so far as to use TechCrunch’s usual printer for all the materials and to hire TechCrunch’s attendee registration firm to set up a replica registration area. The actual Disrupt Cup, which we award to the winner of the Startup Battlefield, was shipped and used in filming. All the background screens were playing real footage from the conference. If you think you saw a shot of Aaron Levie onstage, you probably did. Also in the Alley were about 15 real companies who exhibited in Startup Alley at Disrupt SF 2013. Of course, there were also about 45 fake companies that HBO generated to fill out the set, some with such ambitious goals like “Do It Yourself Surgery.” [gallery ids="1003762,1003768,1004381,1003767,1003766,1004380"] With all the intensive preparation, I was eager to see how the venue turned out. I arrived just in time to deliver the real Disrupt programs for the actors to use in filming the opening scene at the conference. I was given a chair behind the director and producers. Occasionally I was asked things like, “Do the speakers wear their name badges on-stage?” “Are there chairs at the Startup Alley tables?” And other such mission critical details. Not a bad view… I met a guy, my TV writer alter ego, Dan O’KEEFE, an assistant producer and writer, who was kind enough to explain the ins and outs of the goings on. (Dan also happens to be one of the writers of the Seinfeld episode on Festivus). When the set is finished, the crew sets up cameras from one vantage point, extras are brought in and given background direction, stand-ins do a few run throughs of the shot. Actors then show up and do as many takes as necessary to get the scene right. Then the whole process begins again from a different vantage point. All in, a scene that lasts a few minutes can take a few hours to shoot. Our illustrious Battlefield emcee, Jason Kincaid, was also on hand to moderate the Battlefield scenes. A post shared by (@techcrunch) on “It was totally surreal, like some kind of drug trip that gave me déjà vu every five minutes,” Kincaid says. “They had the real Disrupt signs, the name tags — even the stage itself felt right. Of course there were differences. More cameras and hairspray than I’m used to, and there’s a lot of repetition in the production process, with the same scene being shot from multiple angles. I remember asking Mike Judge how I should sit in my chair, and he said to sit how I usually sit, and I had a minor existential crisis. I decided to try to keep my back straight, this being TV and all.” Hopefully the audience at Disrupt is a bit more engaged than HBO’s…Though not filming scenes in the Pied Piper house at the time, I was able to poke around the set and see the company’s “live, work space.” A common practice for startup companies, HBO replicated an actual Silicon Valley house and added all the signs of startup life, including stacks of video games and leftover Ramen in the kitchen sink. [gallery ids="1003765,1003764,1003763"] Now, almost six months after this experience, it’s bizarre to watch the event play out on screen. If you’ve watched our previous coverage of Silicon Valley, it may come across that the actors have on the tech scene. As for the writers and crew, they’ve done their homework. |
The iPhone Is Still The Best Smartphone | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | I see a lot of phones in my work here at TechCrunch, and I’m genuinely impressed with where the average level of quality is at compared to where it was even just five years ago. I’ve seen Android mature so much in that time that it’s amazing – but for all the work Android OEMs have done in terms of narrowing the gap with the iPhone, which had a considerable lead on any competitors early on, there’s no question that Apple’s smartphone is still the best one out there. Why is now the time for this friendly reminder? We’ve just seen basically every major Android OEM unleash their new devices, for one. And there are other factors, too; my girlfriend finally came back to the iPhone fold after a brief foray into Samsung territory, for instance, and my father just declared that he’s going to stop carrying a standalone camera while traveling in favor of just using his iPhone 5s, which is a huge deal for a lifelong photography enthusiast. The iPhone’s camera remains one of its hard-to-quantify advantages over the competition – on paper, there are many Android cameras that should fare better, but consistently the iPhone manages to take the best pictures of any integrated mobile device shooter, with a minimum of fuss required on the part of the actual photographer. Other advantages of the iPhone over its newer competitors include consistency of experience (various Android skins and modifications still mean that apps behave differently depending on what device you’re using), portability of the device (monstrous screens are attractive while in use, but for the majority of time, your phone is still in your pocket), and build quality. And even though the iPhone 5s came out last fall, it shows no signs of being unable to handle the latest in software and web technologies in terms of performance. I’m sure this opinion will have its detractors, but I’m equally sure that some switchers will quietly acknowledge in their heart of hearts that I’m right, and that despite the lure of the novel (which seems to occur more frequently as the pace of tech development speeds up), Apple’s smartphone tech still shines above and beyond the newer efforts of its competitors. |
Apple Said To Be Prepping Smart Home Software Platform For WWDC Reveal | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | Apple is going to make a big play in the connected smart home space, according to a new report from the . The company is planning a platform that would turn its iOS devices, including the iPhone, to control their smart home devices, doing things like controlling lights, security systems and connected appliances. This platform would be built into the iPhone, centralizing control rather than spreading it over multiple third-party apps, the FT says, and it’ll be shown off at WWDC next week. It’ll incorporate not only the iPhone and iPad, but also the Apple TV, the report claims, which will get an update to its hardware later this year. Combined, these will allow users to do things like set lights to turn on automatically when they enter their home, for instance, or turn on their security systems when they leave the house. The system would work like Apple’s “Made for iPhone” program with third-party hardware, per the FT, allowing accessory makers like Dropcam, Nest and Philips to get their connected home devices certified to work with Apple’s central automation platform. The FT compares this to AirPlay, CarPlay and iBeacon, and the implication is that it could work with Bluetooth LE for some of the automation functions. It also notes that some analysts have predicted NFC inclusion in the next generation of iPhone, which could work well with this kind of smart home approach. Apple entering this space could mean bad news for startups like SmartThings that already offers similar services, but it could greatly speed up the adoption of smart home devices by consumers. Smart home tech is still in its infancy in terms of broad consumer use, despite increasing buy-in by legacy home appliance companies like Philips, Honeywell and more. Google has also already declared its intention of focusing on Internet of Things and smart home tech, so it makes sense that Apple would move aggressively to stake a claim here, too. We’re also expecting to see new versions of iOS and OS X at WWDC next week, and this and many more exciting announcements will likely be revealed on Monday at their keynote on June 2, if they are indeed going to come to pass. We’ll be there live to bring you the news as it happens. |
Messaging 2.0 Is Now Over | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | revolution is now quickly coming to a close. With , Daum Communications, we are witnessing the end of the rise of mobile-focused independent messaging startups that started just five years ago. Only Kik Messenger remains standing independently, although there are a slew of ephemeral messengers like Snapchat that are coming in the next generation (more on that in a minute). Before we dive into the details of Messaging 2.0, it’s important to understand the context of where this market started. Given the network effects intrinsic to communications apps, it is not surprising that they arrive in waves. Internet portals ruled the first generation of messaging apps, with companies like AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft each developing their own eponymous apps. AOL came out with its app in May 1997, while Yahoo and Microsoft followed in 1998 and 1999, respectively. In China, the popular messaging app QQ was launched in 1999 by Tencent, the large internet conglomerate. Due to the lack of distribution channels outside the major companies, few startups managed to grow their userbase. The only exception was Mirabilis’ ICQ, which was launched in November 1996. However, in a deal worth $286 million at the time plus earnouts (note: AOL is the parent company of TechCrunch). AOL Instant Messenger would dominate the market for the next decade, and never faced serious competition until the rise of Facebook. During that period, only Skype would become popular among users, after it launched its video communications product in August 2003. Like ICQ, it was quickly sold to a major internet company, this time to eBay in September 2005, in a massive $2.5 billion transaction. It was later spun out again, and sold to Microsoft in September 2011 for $8.5 billion. Messaging is a deeply competitive space, and founders that miss the window of opportunity to start their companies are quickly left behind. The first crop of apps all targeted the desktop as their key platform, while the next generation focused on mobile. Among this second generation of startups, Kakao, Viber, and Kik all started within a few months of each other in 2010, with only Whatsapp launching a bit earlier in May 2009. Compared to the 1990s, startups were mostly ahead of their large internet competitors this time around. Tencent, NHN, Facebook and Apple introduced their messaging products WeChat, Line, Facebook Messenger and iMessages during the course of 2011. Google Hangouts, which brought together a number of Google’s previously-released communications products, was launched later in May 2013. All of these products were responding to two key trends in technology: social networks and smartphones. Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter demolished the power of internet portals to command users’ attention. Back in the 1990s, the fastest way to get adoption was through the massive portals, since that was where users first visited when using the web, helping AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft to lead that generation. Today, distribution is far more open, allowing companies like Whatsapp and Viber to find a niche around incumbent players and profit handsomely from it. In addition, smartphones – most notably Apple’s iPhone and Blackberry – upended the messaging market by allowing people to more easily send messages from mobile devices with bigger screens, better interfaces, and the elimination of triple-tap keyboards. Users already had a full social network with their phone book, allowing standard SMSs to work exceedingly well against traditional IM products like AOL’s. The only issue was price. SMSs were (and in some cases, remain) a key profit center for mobile operators, a product which costs almost nothing for the operator yet costs consumers several dollars for tiny “buckets” of messages. The second generation mobile messengers were essentially free for end users, causing adoption to soar rapidly to combat these fees. Today, . All of these messaging startups have had tremendous growth, each picking up hundreds of millions of users in what could possibly be the fastest growing group of apps in the history of computing. Collectively, they have more than 1 billion users, not accounting for users who use multiple networks. Just like ICQ though, these startups sold quickly to the established internet companies. This year, , , and now Kakao has announced it is merging with Daum. Thus, a revolution that started just a few years ago has now mostly finished. For these platform companies, there is an obvious need to engage forcefully on mobile, where consumers have transitioned from traditional online portal sites. Perhaps the most interesting difference between the first and second generation of messaging apps is the cosmopolitan nature of the second group. Viber, Kakao, WeChat, Line, Kik, and Skype were all developed outside of the United States, from Canada and Europe to Israel and Asia, falling in the tradition of ICQ, which was an Israeli company. Due to this geographic diversity, they have been able to engage users through more culturally-attuned designs, leading many of them to have clear regional borders in their adoption. Whatsapp, while based in Mountain View, has consistently had a much wider userbase overseas than in the United States, although its popularity appears to expand globally. This is a major point not to be overlooked by founders and investors obsessed with Sand Hill Road and the Creamery in SoMa. Here is a group of startups that all banked on the same underlying trends in the market, and almost every single one of them has been valued at almost a billion dollars (as mentioned before, Kik remains independent). This doesn’t mean that Silicon Valley is irrelevant – Whatsapp’s acquisition was the largest in history, of course. However, if it wasn’t clear before, it is certainly clear now from this set of companies that the Valley, and the United States more generally, no longer has a monopoly over the most successful startups. All of this talk of messaging has avoided the elephant in the room: Snapchat. The extraordinarily popular ephemeral messaging app continues to grow rapidly, and is currently ranked 11th in the Apple App Store. of a possible acquisition by Facebook, such plans have not materialized. Ephemeral messengers like Snapchat, as well as anonymous apps like Whisper, Secret, and Yik Yak are two new breeds of messaging apps that are trying to respond to social networks by offering theoretically safer spaces to express thoughts by ensuring that messages are either not saved or not attached to a particular author. While I have at times , it seems clear that there are many users who want this openness to express their feelings. Is ephemeral going to be Messaging 3.0? What about anonymous? It is too early to tell, but one thing is certain: we are primed to witness the next war in Messaging 2.0. The top internet companies in the United States now have their own messaging services, and many in East Asia do as well. The sole exception is Amazon, which despite its range of devices and tablets, has tended to focus more on media consumption than on social networking (shared highlights and recommendations from Goodreads aside). Perhaps the ecommerce giant will purchase an ephemeral messenger so that it can disappear messages as easily as . Regardless, for startups, this messaging revolution has now been broadcast. |
Flipkart Raises $210M In New Funding From DST Global And Returning Investors | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | , India’s largest e-commerce company, announced today that it has raised $210 million in a new funding round led by DST Global, with returning investors Tiger Global, Naspers, and Iconiq Capital also participating. The announcement comes on the heels of last week’s news that Flipkart will acquire online fashion retailer . The new funding brings Flipkart’s total . The company currently has 18 million registered users and 3.5 million daily visitors, but it faces stiff competition from other companies, including and , as they strive to pull ahead in India’s ecommerce market, which is expected to grow seven times to $22 billion in the next five years. Snapdeal , just before the Flipkart-Myntra deal was confirmed, that it has secured another $100 million in funding, bringing its total raised so far to more than $400 million. Snapdeal recently acquired fashion discovery site . |
#YesAllWomen Shows That Misogyny Is Everyone’s Problem | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 5 | 26 | If the actions of the UC Santa Barbara shooter last week , then the Web is also where we turn to grieve and try to process something that is truly incomprehensible and horrifying. Since news of the murders broke, #YesAllWomen has remained one of the top trending topics on Twitter. Originally in reaction to the , #YesAllWomen has given people of both genders a forum to reflect on how misogyny impacts their lives. because I really shouldn’t have to carry my keys in between my knuckles while walking home from the bus stop. — Nadia (@ieatdumplings) Because society is more comfortable with people telling jokes about rape than it is with people revealing they have been raped — Leah Meyerhoff (@LeahMeyerhoff) when a 16 year old girl was raped and assaulted by 2 boys, the media pitied the “bright young boys” and their “ruined future” — (@nialljameshoran) because, as a man, I have never been harassed on the street, but my female friends are harassed on a daily basis. — Justin Dennis (@JustinDennis4) Editor: Domestic homicides not newsworthy bc they happen all the time. Me: Aren’t they newsworthy BC they happen all the time? — Jennifer 8. Lee (@jenny8lee) because i bet every woman reading through the tweets finds more than one that hits a little too close to home. — maya livio (@mayalivio) In response to #YesAllWomen, other Twitter users created #YesAllPeople, which sparked a debate about whether or not the new hashtag trivializes violence against women. wtf ? is far more inclusive and loving. People need to stop pretending that the issues of only one group matter. — Aella (@Aella_Girl) IMO I think women and men should not be afraid to talk. These issues do not affect one group. It happens to both. — Samantha W. (@SuushiSam) Because is trying to silence women and trivialize their struggles God forbid we speak out against male privilege — Valerie (@ValerieGauvain) The hashtag is necessary. completely misses the point, while pacifying defensive men. — Lara (@Larawithabird) Though I can see the appeal of #YesAllPeople, I side with the users who say that the hashtag #YesAllWomen is needed. When we live in a culture that dehumanizes one half of its population because of their gender, it diminishes us all. The stories shared through #YesAllWomen show us that misogyny is not just a problem for women, but for everyone. One of the reasons I feel so strongly about this is because #YesAllWomen brought up several memories for me which I had tucked away in the back of my mind. At the time these things happened, I was hurt, but now I feel sad for everyone involved. BC a classmate called me a slut in 3rd grade and another said he was going to “slit my clit” in high school. We were CHILDREN. — Catherine Shu (@CatherineShu) My Mom’s friend telling her in earnest that men don’t date girls who wear glasses when I got my first pair. I was 7 years old. — Catherine Shu (@CatherineShu) When I was a young girl, I directed my anger at the boys who bullied me and at my mother’s friend for saying something stupid. But what had these boys, who were just 8 and 14 years old, endured as they were growing up to think it was okay to call their classmate a slut or threaten her with genital mutilation? What problems were they channeling into their sexism? My mother’s friend was an intelligent and hard-working woman, but what did it say about her own sense of self-worth that she believed a pair of eyeglasses brought down my market value when I was still years away from being old enough to date? If we don’t acknowledge the role sexism and violence against women played in Elliot Rodger’s twisted thinking—a mistake many news outlets made in their initial reporting on the crime—it means any reflection we do about the tragedy is in vain. #YesAllWomen does not exclude men or blame them. It highlights problems that are endemic to our society, not an aberration. By sharing our stories, perhaps we can also find a solution. As a man, I don’t hate the tag for existing, I hate that it has to exist. We can do better. — Jim Allen (@jimallen) Because recognition of human dignity elevates all of us. — James Van Der Beek (@vanderjames) Shoutout to the amazing men/women participating in for making me feel like I could finally speak up. I needed tonight. Thanks.💗 — Jessi Smiles (@jessismiles__) |
How TheFamily Is Reshaping The French Tech Ecosystem | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | is raising up to $2 million from angel investors and . It’s an open round — so far investors have committed $1 million. Given the overall interest around the funding, the company should quickly max out its round. Today’s news is also a good opportunity to take a step back and tell you why TheFamily has been key in improving the French tech ecosystem for the past year. TheFamily is raising money using its own open source financing documents, AIR. It’s the French equivalent of convertible notes, by TheFamily and SB Avocats. There is a simple reason why the company is raising money right now. Many people in the French startup scene want to access TheFamily’s deal flow, and, at the same time, the accelerator wants to start managing startup investments. The team wants to create AngelList-style syndicates and manage the deals. It means that TheFamily will be leading or co-leading seed rounds in French startups inside or outside of the accelerator, will receive 20 percent in carried interests and won’t take any management fee. Business angels who invest in a syndicate won’t get a board seat or won’t even have a say after investing in a company — they have to trust TheFamily. Moreover, the accelerator is ready to co-invest with more traditional VC firms — there will be plenty of opportunities for French VCs. “We legally can’t let external investors participate in a syndicate with us, so we needed to make them investors in TheFamily first,” partner and co-founder Oussama Ammar told me in an interview. By investing in TheFamily, you are legally allowed to participate in syndicates with TheFamily. One of the first companies who will received funding from TheFamily’s investment arm will be local delivery startup . These individual investors are TheFamily’s godfathers. They range from successful French entrepreneurs to fundraisers, investors, accountants and more. The full list is embedded at the end of this post. “We can accept up to 500 godfathers,” Ammar said. Index Ventures was an existing investor and absolutely wanted to put more money on this round. The VC firm invested $150,000. Contrarily to what was reported at the time, TheFamily only raised $300,000 in its previous round, including $100,000 from Index Ventures. The team considers today’s round as an extension of last year’s seed round. But enough with the technical terms and numbers. Seeing what TheFamily has done for the past year is even more representative than what it is currently building. I have been lucky enough to profile many of the most successful startups who are accelerated at TheFamily. In exchange for a 3 percent stake, these entrepreneurs get access to events, classes, contacts, mentors and more. , , and are all part of TheFamily with 122 other startups. TheFamily is also a major startup event organizer in France, with , occasional events, a big , or a for aspiring entrepreneurs. It’s an important part of the company’s strategy — it’s a very scalable model (you need one speaker to talk to hundreds of people), it puts some startups on the accelerator’s radar, it creates a network of influential people around the company, and it’s a good revenue source to cover salaries and expenses. And then, there are the weird experiments. TheFamily hasn’t shied away from trying new things, and some of them failed. For example, the accelerator a countryside startup castle. I have yet to visit this castle. “We tried a billion things over the past year,” partner and CEO Alice Zagury told me in an interview. “We killed some of them, we kept others. But one thing is for sure, we will keep killing bad ideas.” Zagury’s motto could be Facebook’s motto, “move fast and break things.” The huge Haussmannian house where the startup is now located is a testimony of that. When the lease expired for its previous office, the team could have looked for a slightly bigger space. Instead, they chose the hard path and aimed for a bigger space — it’s magnificent. Even though it was expensive, TheFamily created the Saturday school and sold every available spot in just a couple of weeks to cover the rent. Finally, TheFamily’s greater goal is probably what gets people excited about the company. It’s not just an accelerator, it’s an ecosystem lobby. From an American point of view, France isn’t a startup-friendly country. Arguably, this is all right now. But co-founder Nicolas Colin plays an essential role when it comes to talking with officials and making these changes happen faster. What’s good for TheFamily is good for every other French startup. When I asked about TheFamily’s future, I got an ambitious answer — it even sounded overambitious. This tiny French accelerator, which was just an idea 18 months ago, is now shooting for the stars. “All these people will guide us to our significant Series A round in 18 months,” Ammar said. “The main question is whether we will raise $5 million, $10 million or $20 million. After the Series A round, we will go global. If we build TheFamily’s infrastructure in 20 countries, we can become the global Y Combinator for the rest of the world.” Antoine Brachet, CEO at Netvibes
Antoine Remazeilles, Entrepreneur
Arthur de Catheu, Co-founder of Finexkap and Qilaqila
Bertrand Bigay, CEO at Murat Conseil et Investissements
Bruno Jacquemin, Managing Director at CCI du Loiret
Carl de Bouchony, Founder of Medicoclic.com
Duc Ha Duong, CEO at Officience
Fabien Potencier, CEO at SensioLabs
Fabrice de Gaudemar, Growth Capital investor, member of the Executive Board at Eurazeo
Francois Le Pichon, Founder & Creative Director at Steaw
Frédéric Montagnon, Founder & CEO at Secret Media Inc. Ex Codanova, OverBlog, Nomao, Ebuzzing.
Frédéric Bouleuc, Partner at Andre & Associes
Frédéric Lasnier, CEO Pentalog, Serial Entrepreneur, Startup investor
Georges Klenkle, CEO at Degetel
Grégory Pascal, Co-Founder and COO at SensioLabs. Co-Founder and CEO at Extreme Sensio
Guillaume Teboul, Associate Director at Financiere Cambon
Laurent Kratz, Experienced ICT Entrepreneur, CEO at NEOFACTO and Business Angel Investor
Marc Rougier, Founder and President at Scoop.it
Maxime Garrigues, Managing Partner at X-PRIME
OCP Finance, early-stage investment firm
Olivier Roland, Author and CEO at Les Editions Roland
Pascal Mercier, Managing Partner at Global Equities Corporate Finance
Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier, Head of Western Europe at Saxo Bank
Rumeur Publique, Public Relations and Communications
Serge Alleyne, Founder & CEO at Tok Tok Tok
Stéphanie Delestre, CEO & Co-founder at QAPA
Sylvain Zimmer, Founder at Pricing Assistant, Jamendo, dotConferences.eu
Tritan Vyskoc, Angel Investor
Yanai Zaicik, Startup Investor and Advisor |
Google To Announce Finalists For Bay Area Impact Challenge | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | Tomorrow, Google will announce the 10 finalists for its , its latest effort to give back to communities in Silicon Valley and the greater Bay Area. For the next 10 days, anyone can visit the website to vote for their favorite nonprofit among the group. According to the Bay Area Impact Challenge site, finalists were selected based on four criteria: community impact, innovation, scalability, and feasibility. Here’s the list of nonprofits that you’ll be able to vote on starting tomorrow: – “ – “ – “By providing libraries of high quality children’s books and read aloud workshops to underserved communities, Bring Me A Book inspires reading aloud to children, the most important factor in determining a child’s future success in reading.” – “The vision of The Health Trust is to make Silicon Valley the healthiest region in America— for everyone. Our work includes direct services, grant making and policy advocacy. It organized under three initiatives: Healthy Eating, Healthy Aging and Healthy Living. Our work also includes Destination Home, a public-private partnership galvanizing our community to end chronic homelessness in Santa Clara County.” – “Every year in the United States, half a million young people drop out of high school. Most of these young people drop out because they’re bored. Knowing this, BUILD addresses the crisis with a four-year, hands-on entrepreneurship training and college preparation program that makes school engaging and relevant—and consequently motivates students to succeed.” – “When hardworking families can’t get car loans or own homes, they turn to payday lenders and check cashers to make ends meet. High cost fringe financial services trap people in a cycle of debt, preventing hardworking families from realizing their true economic potential. ” – “EO offers comprehensive employment services exclusively for people with criminal records. CEO’s model is based on a highly structured program of life skill education, short-term paid transitional employment, full-time job placement and post-placement services. ” – “ – “ – “SubArt will reinvent the experience of subway riders by transforming BART and MUNI metro stations into public art galleries.” On June 3, the company will announce the top four nonprofits, who will each receive a $500,000 grant, support from Google, and access to a co-working space. In addition, 21 other nonprofits will receive smaller grants. The Bay Area Impact Challenge follows Google’s recent efforts to improve its image in the region. Back in March, the company committed $600,000 to on , a platform where teachers can list projects that they need funding for in their classrooms. Before that, to let youth between the ages of 5 and 17 ride MUNI for free for two years. All told, the company has given nearly $60 million to nonprofits in the Bay Area over the last three years. You can see the advisors Google brought in the evaluate submissions to the challenge below: |
Fab Lays Off One-Third Of Global Headcount, Slashing New York City Staff | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | The day of reckoning has come for Fab’s New York City office, where it is expected to have widespread layoffs due to yet another change in the company’s business model. The layoffs will affect about a third of the company’s global staff, but will be limited to New York staff. After previously morphing from a social networking site to online flash sales, now the design-focused e-commerce site is betting that its will make for a more sustainable business over time. But that model isn’t as labor- or cost-intensive, from the perspective of sourcing and promoting various third-party goods, and so many of the people who worked those jobs are expected to be laid off. TechCrunch first reported a beginning two weeks ago, and company execs spent the intermediate weeks laying out a plan for its new business model. After a with his top brass, CEO Jason Goldberg was expected to propose the plan to the board for a vote today. In an email, Fab told NY employees not to come into work during their usual hours, but that staffers would each have individual meetings set up. The company plans to lay off 80-90 employees in the NY office, which is a third of its global staff. Fab released the following statement: We are seeing great success in our recent private label initiatives and customized furniture launches—and we are aligning our global team to support that direction. We have every confidence in our path ahead. |
ROLI’s Radical Musical Keyboard Attracts A $12.8m Series A Round | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | The , is a completely new type of keyboard musical instrument. It has soft rubber keys which can bend and shape a tune, the way you can bend the strings on a guitar. It’s a genuinely radical departure from normal keyboards. Check out the video below to see what I mean. That’s all great, but these are not usually considered investable technology products. All that changes today as the Seaboard’s maker, , has secured a $12.8m (£7.6m) Series A financing, led by Balderton Capital (investors in LoveFilm and Kobalt Music Group), alongside FirstMark Capital (investors in Pinterest and Shopify), Index Ventures (investors in Sonos and SoundCloud), as well as strategic investor Universal Music. Getting this musical theme here? It’s one of the largest ever investments in a music hardware company, and ROLI founder and CEO, Roland Lamb, says the capital will be used to scale production capacity to meet demand for the keyboard, and accelerate the product roadmap. For the Seaboard is but the first in a line of music hardware and software products that ROLI now plans to make. In particular it plans to leverage its sound engine Equator, which could be applied to any number of 3D devices and instruments. And it’s this that has gotten the investors hot under the collar. Lamb, who studied Classical Chinese and Sanskrit Philosophy at Harvard, has lived in a Zen monastery in Japan, and worked as a jazz pianist. He invented the Seaboard in 2009 while studying design under Ron Arad at the Royal College of Art, developing the prototype in his spare room before receiving angel funding for ROLI in 2012. ROLI’s team has now gone from three people to 33 today. “This is a Multi touch and 3 dimensional product. This is just the beginning,” he says, hinting that ROLI will be coming up with a bunch of new devices built around their technology. Daniel Waterhouse of Balderton says ROLI is “further evidence of the unique fusion of skills that can be found building a new generation of technology companies in London.” He thinks this kind of technology just would not have been built anywhere else – and he may well be right. |
JD.com Prices At $19, Higher Than Its Initially Proposed Range | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | JD.com, fresh off rumors that its IPO is massively oversubscribed, , higher than its initially proposed range of $16 to $18 per share. The pricing indicates market appetite for shares in the Chinese company that is analogous to Amazon. As , Amazon is down steeply so far this calendar year. The JD.com pricing comes right after Weibo its first quarter financial performance, which slightly beat expectations. That firm is off 8 percent in after-hours trading due to lower-than-expected forward guidance. JD.com will commence trading tomorrow morning under the ticker symbol “JD.” In 2013, JD.com had , a net loss of $8 million, and a net loss attributable to its shareholders due to preferred stock costs of $410 million. That was its smallest net loss on a per-share basis in several years. On a non-GAAP basis, JD.com had adjusted income of $36 million in calendar 2013, and free cash flow — again, non-GAAP — of $376 million. We’ll have more in the morning when the stock starts to trade. A weak offering could harm the current IPO windows, and especially slow Alibaba’s impending IPO. |
Weibo Drops 5% After Reporting In-Line Q1 Revenues Of $67.5M, Better-Than-Expected $0.03 Loss Per Share | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | This afternoon Weibo reported the , including revenue of $67.5 and non-GAAP earnings per share of -$0.03. The market had expected the company to lose 5 cents per share on revenue of $67.45 million. The company, up more than 6 percent in regular trading, has fallen around 5 percent in after-hours trading. The company’s revenue figure for the quarter represented a 161 percent year-over-year increased. However, the company’s GAAP net loss exploded a similar 146 percent to $47.4 million in the period. It’s non-GAAP net loss was, unsurprisingly, a more modest $4.8 million, down 74 percent from the year-ago period. Weibo’s user ship grew slightly more than a third in the past year, with monthly active users — 143.8 million — up 34 percent, and daily active users — 66.6 million — up 37 percent. Why is the stock taking a beating? Massive GAAP loss aside, Weibo indicates in its report that it expects “between $74 million and $76 million” in second-quarter revenue. That’s below street estimates, , of $77.85 million for that period. So the market expects faster growth than what the company is promising. Weibo, which went public at $17, is trading post-report at just around $19 per share. It spiked as high as $24.48 in its brief life as a public company. The firm . At the end of the first quarter, Weibo had cash, equivalents and short-term investments of $466.2 million. Expect that figure to spike on its next report as IPO incomes will then be counted. The company burned through $18.2 million in cash to fund its operating activities in the quarter. Weibo is a quickly growing social firm that still trades at a premium to its recent offering price. Investors, however, anticipated faster future acceleration than the company is willing to promise. |
New Tunepics Social Network Is Like Instagram With A Soundtrack | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | [gallery ids="1005910,1005909,1005908,1005907,1005906,1005905,1005904,1005897"]
If you mashed up Instagram with music tracks, what would you get? A timeline of pictures from friends with evocative soundtracks that stimulate the ears as well as the eyes? Perhaps even tug at the emotions? That, at least, is the hope of , a new social network that does just that. With this , users can feature a song with every image they share. The tracks are pulled from the Apple store (35 million songs) and are in fact song previews rather than the whole tracks. If users decide they like the song enough to buy it form Apple, Tunepics will get affiliate revenues from those sales. TunePics is the brainchild of Justin Cooke, founder of innovation agency innovate7 in London, and has been built by AKQA, the London interactive agency. It’s Cooke’s hope that Tunepics will be a “magical and cinematic celebration of people’s lives that touches all of our senses .… With Tunepics, everyone can create a soundtrack to their life.” Indeed, using the app is akin to scrolling past auto-playing videos in Facebook, except these are pictures with music. But this is a little more than the launch of an app. Some major celebrities and brands have signed up to use the app, including Airbnb, AllSaints, Asos, Dazed, Jamie Oliver, Kate Bosworth, Michael Polish, Paul Smith, Tracy Anderson, will.i.am and others. On Tunepics you don’t like or retweet; instead, you attach an emotion to a tunepic using an ‘emotion wheel’ – selecting a colour to represent the impact of what you’ve seen, felt and heard. You can add an array of filters to photos, including weather effects like sunshine, rain, snow, raindrops or a rainbow (DOUBLE RAINBOW!). Users can also ‘re-tune’ (share) a tunepic that they love back onto their own feed, alongside standard social functions such as ‘likes’ and comments. All this data is captured so you can see how people are reacting to your content, showing how many people are, ‘dancing’, ‘inspired’ or ‘happy’ about a tunepic. Thus, Tunepics hopes to show what an entire country is feeling and listening to at any moment. Now, while other apps have tried this — (also from the UK) and are just two — it’s the ability to see user feedback in this way that sets TunePics apart. Plus, of course, it’s celebrity endorsement. Of course, there is a sort of Trojan Horse inside this. Since Tunepics drives engagement around music, it may be able to send a song into the charts if enough people attach it to their pictures and then end up buying it. |
May 22 Is Bitcoin Pizza Day | John Biggs | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | Four years ago this week, on May 22, 2010, a BTC fan and programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz offered 10,000 Bitcoins – about $40 at that time – for two Papa John’s pizzas (pictured above). He wrote: A volunteer in the UK ordered the pizzas (which explains why he ordered the execrable Papa John’s) for $25 and sent them to Hanyecz, thereby kickstarting the trade of bitcoin for pizza (and other commercial goods). For a brief while, in 2013, those pizzas were worth $6 million a piece and even now they’re worth a cool $3 million each. The UK delivery person, if he or she kept the coin, made one of the best trades in the history of commerce. Since that fateful night, Bitcoin has powered everything from Overstock.com to the Silk Road (and funded a play about the , bought , and now there’s even a Bitcoin ATM in the D hotel in Las Vegas. In short, BTC is everywhere. What will you do on Bitcoin Pizza Day? Try to order a pie with Dogecoin? Send petition Domino’s to accept Auroracoin? Or will you pour out a few Satoshis for poor Hanyecz who got out a bit early, before the gold rush. “I’d say I ended up on top,” he told . Perhaps he did, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for being a bit peckish one spring evening and changing the world. |
The White House Throws Its Weight Behind Weakened NSA Reform Bill | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | In the wake of that the USA FREEDOM Act had been that it has lost sight of its initial goals of limiting NSA mass-surveillance, the Obama Administration today that it “strongly supports” its passage in the House. Citing “strong bipartisan effort,” the White House says that the bill “ensures our intelligence and law enforcement professionals have the authorities they need to protect the Nation,” while also prohibiting “bulk collection through the use of Section 215, FISA pen registers, and National Security Letters.” Critics of the bill in its final state point out that, while it does address Section 215 concerns, other important parts of the law are not dealt with. The EFF : We are glad that the House added a clause to the bill clarifying the content of communications cannot be obtained with Section 215. Unfortunately, the bill’s changed definitions, the lack of substantial reform to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, and the inability to introduce a special advocate in the FISA Court severely weakens the bill. New, broader definitions have some worried that bulk collection will continue, even if the USA FREEDOM Act passes. The EFF continues: “Congress has been clear that it wishes to end bulk collection, but given the government’s history of twisted legal interpretations, [the new] language can’t be relied on to protect our freedoms.” The administration goes on to call for “swift” passage of the bill in the House and “urges the Senate to follow suit.” Whether the act will be improved in the Senate to address these concerns remains to be seen. When the branch of government that is undergoing external reform welcomes the proposal at hand, it’s slightly uncomfortable. The act should be voted on tomorrow. |
null | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 5 | 19 | null |
There’s A New Segway And It Has Three Wheels | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | Is a Segway still a Segway if it has three wheels? Meet the , a Segway with three wheels designed for mall cops everywhere. The new model forgoes the traditional two-wheel, auto-balancing setup for a more stable and robust three-wheel arrangement. It’s for security forces such as mall cops and police officers who need the added stability, extra storage and, well, respect afforded by this more beastly model. It’s always been hard to take police officers seriously as they cruise around dainty Segways — more Paul Blart: Mall Cop than Walker, Texas Ranger. This model, however, at least looks the part of serious police work. The Segway failed to change the world in the ways its creator Dean Kamen promised. The general populus are not zipping around car-less cities on auto-balancing wonders. Instead, the product dived into niche markets, namely city tours and security forces. The SE-3 retails for $11,999 and is powered by multiple rechargeable Lithium-Ion batteries that can be charged at any standard electrical outlet or swapped out for replacement batteries. It’s designed to be more visible to deter criminals as much as apprehend them. While Segway boosts it’s very maneuverable and sports a tight turning radius, chances are it’s not going to replace traditional Segways in Segway polo leagues. |
The Oculus Rift Is Coming To Chuck E. Cheese | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | We can all agree Chuck E. Cheese is a great place to get shoddy pizza and various diseases. But! Are you willing to risk contracting the flu or meningitis to try the Oculus Rift? The children’s play place is rolling out the Virtual Ticket Blaster Experience at 29 locations including Dallas, San Diego, and Orlando over the next six weeks. In the game, players will step into an enclosed booth, don an Oculus Rift VR headset and attempt to snag virtual Chuck E. Cheese tickets simulated to be blown around the booth as if there was a fan. You know, like those money/ticket machines found at roller rinks and bowling alleys. “Kids today have unprecedented access to game consoles and tablets,” said Roger Cardinale, president of Chuck E. Cheese’s owner CEC Entertainment. “Our challenge is to deliver an experience not available at home, and there is no doubt virtual reality does just that. Oculus Rift technology is the next frontier in the gaming industry, and we’re thrilled to be able to say it’s part of the Chuck E. Cheese’s lineup.” Oculus has yet to ship a production headset yet. It’s unclear at this point what version Chuck E. Cheese is going to utilize but it really doesn’t matter. Even early models demonstrated virtual reality better than anything previously on the market. And soon average Americans will be able to experience the wonder that is Oculus Rift for just a couple of tokens. |
Recalled Nest Protect Smoke Alarm Will Return To Sale In Weeks | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | Google’s Nest, by way of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, has issued a recall notice covering all 440,000 Protect smoke alarms sold over fears that the alert will fail to sound due to a false triggering of the “Wave” feature, which disables the sound with a gesture. The recall was detailed on the website this morning. Though the report states that “about” 440K units will be recalled, it also says that “t This marks the that began back in April when Nest first disclosed that the Wave feature was not working as advertised. At the time, Nest halted sales and offered refunds, while instituting a plan to update existing Nest Protect units to disable the Wave feature automatically. A Nest spokesperson told TechCrunch that “nothing has changed since our initial announcement last month and in fact, we’ll be bringing Nest Protect back on the market in a few weeks.” Nest notes that current customers can continue to use their Nest Protects once the Nest Wave feature has been disabled via software update, as was the case initially. “Even with the Wave feature disabled, the Nest Protect Alarm will continue to perform its essential safety functions, monitoring for increased levels of smoke and CO, and alerting users via voice alerts and Nest app alerts (if set up) as soon as there is a potential issue,” says Nest. Nest would not comment on the number of Protects sold so far. “At Nest, we conduct regular, rigorous tests to ensure that our products are the highest quality,” said Nest CEO Tony Fadell at the time. “During recent laboratory testing of the Nest Protect smoke alarm, we observed a unique combination of circumstances that caused us to question whether the Nest Wave (a feature that enables you to turn off your alarm with a wave of the hand) could be unintentionally activated.” In a , Nest provided instructions to disable the Wave feature for users whose Protect smoke alarms were not connected to the Internet. So, this is not a physical recall so much as a software update alert, but the CPSC filing formalizes the fact that people can get their updates or full refunds as they choose. Both of those options were originally offered by Nest in April. Nest made other news today: A Google filing in December hinted that the company could be looking at ways to show ads on devices like thermostats. Google later , stating that this filing did not reflect the “current roadmap” for Nest or other Google products. |
True[X] Raises $6M More As It Tries To Enlist Big Publishers For Its Interactive Ad Platform | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | Interactive ad startup is announcing that it has raised $6 million in additional funding. CEO Joe Marchese told me that the money was an extension of that true[X] raised in 2011 (back when ), and that it came from existing investors Pinnacle Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Jafco Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures. He added that having the extra cash will allow true[X] to pursue its goals more aggressively, particularly when it comes to recruiting big-name publishers to its ad platform. In Marchese’s words, the goal is to move the industry away from the “willfully negligent packaging and repackaging of worthless impressions,” so he’s specifically looking for publishers who “favor quality over volume.” (You can read more about his thoughts on the online ad industry, which he compares to the subprime mortgage industry, .) Likely useful in those efforts will be — James Murdoch (News Corp. executive and son of Rupert Murdoch), Jonathan Miller (former CEO of AOL, which owns TechCrunch), and Mich Mathews (former chief marketing officer at Microsoft). So what is true[x] actually offering? Well, there are some sample ads halfway down , but the gist is that they start as regular display and text ads, then users can click on them to open up a full-screen experience with video and interactive capabilities. (The company also provides data around time spent with the ads, impressions, social sharing, brand awareness, and more.) True[X] advertisers include American Express, Best Buy, and Jack in the Box. Asked whether he plans to raise a bigger round soon, Marchese replied, “You know, we weren’t going to do this [funding] at this time, so it really depends on how fast everything goes.” |
ZeniMax Sues Oculus And Palmer Luckey | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | Who would’ve thought being acquired for $2 billion dollars would earn you a few enemies? Following up on legal threats over the past few weeks, ZeniMax — the parent company behind id, Bethesda Games, and a few other studios — has officially filed suit against Oculus and Palmer Luckey. Their claims? Oculus stole trade secrets. The problem, over-simplified: legendary programmer John Carmack left id (which ZeniMax acquired in 2009) to work for Oculus, after ZeniMax says they spent “tens of millions of dollars” researching virtual reality and the technology involved. When sideways shifts like that happen, lines get blurry. And when the lines are blurry and a $2B buy-out goes down, people get angry. When this suit started bubbling up a few weeks ago, Oculus quickly released a statement declaring that “ZeniMax has never contributed IP or technology to Oculus.” On Twitter, meanwhile, Carmack proclaimed that none of the work he did at Zenimax was patented, and that Oculus uses “zero lines of code” that he’d written previously for Zenimax: No work I have ever done has been patented. Zenimax owns the code that I wrote, but they don't own VR. — John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) Oculus uses zero lines of code that I wrote while under contract to Zenimax. — John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) This one will probably take a while. I wrote about the history of Oculus, including Palmer Luckey’s fateful introduction to John Carmack, . The lawsuit filed by ZeniMax has no merit whatsoever. As we have previously said, ZeniMax did not contribute to any Oculus technology. Oculus will defend these claims vigorously. |
Google Plans Low-Cost, High Quality Wi-Fi Networks For Small- And Medium-Sized Businesses, Report Says | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | Google is apparently planning to offers subsidized, , The Information reports, alongside software to help greatly improve the quality of the Wi-Fi experience at places like doctors’ offices, restaurants, gyms and more. The hardware would be the only cost involved, as it would use the businesses’ existing Internet connections, unlike the Google-provided Wi-Fi networks running at Starbucks businesses across the U.S. The plan is to get better Wi-Fi in the hands of these businesses in order to get more users working on Google apps and services, which ultimately means more customers spending more time engaging with Google’s money-making products, even when they’re away from their usual home and work Wi-Fi networks. This is the same team behind Google Fiber, the search giant’s high-speed net and TV service, which is being trialled in select markets across the U.S., The Information reports. A key feature of said network would be that it could remember a user based on their Google account login, and set them up on any other Google-controlled Wi-Fi network anywhere in the world automatically. This so-called Hotspot 2.0 feature would help in terms of clearing up the onerous task of signing in to new networks every single time. And for Google, it means getting users more friction-free access to their Google accounts and services, which has obvious benefits in terms of its ad recommendation engines and products. Google ultimately wants to blanket the world in connectivity, because that’s the best way for it to grow its user base and get its products in front of as many people as possible. The company announced its last month, which helps with its ambitious Project Loon – bringing Internet connections to remote corners of the globe. This SMB Wi-Fi project isn’t quite as fantastic in scale, but if real, it has the same aim: make it so as many people as possible can use Google products as much as possible, as often as possible, as easily as possible. We’ve reached out to Google for confirmation or more info, and will update if we hear back. Google had no comment on this report. |
Giphy Taps Alphaworks For The Final $100K In Its $2.5M Series A | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | Giphy, the betaworks-backed search engine for gifs, is today opening up a slice of its on the equity crowdfunding site Alphaworks. is a site run by Nick Chirls, in collaboration with betaworks, that lets accredited investors within a startup’s community invest a small amount of funding to get a cut of equity. It follows a similar model to Kickstarter or Indiegogo, in that it’s a self-serve model for the investors/backers, but Alphaworks obviously has more t’s to cross and i’s to dot in terms of regulation. Alphaworks has already facilitated rounds for and , and is now moving to help Giphy closed an oversubscribed Series A. The whole purpose of Alphaworks is to let community contributors feel like they own a stake in the products they live, making Giphy a great fit for the platform. In a perfect world, once legislation permits, anyone will be able to fund their favorite startups on the platform without having to be an accredited investor. But that waits on legislation. Giphy with investment predominantly from betaworks, along with Lerer Ventures, RRE Ventures, and CAA Ventures. The $100,000 being raised on . |
Xbox One’s June Update Will Finally Fix Two Of The Console’s Most Annoying Shortcomings | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | Everybody celebrate! Or, at least, Xbox One owners, celebrate! Two of the Xbox One’s most frustrating quirks are being swept away come June. First up: auto sign-in is coming. As it currently stands, even if you only have on the machine, you have to either: sign in manually, or plug in the Kinect and hope it successfully recognizes you (which it often won’t.) It’s a small thing, but it’s a decision that has never made a lick of sense. Next up: external hard drive support. Oddly, unlike with the 360, Microsoft doesn’t mention a hard drive size… but a , instead. If you want to plug a drive into the One, it’ll need to have a capacity of at least 256GB. In the screenshot below, Microsoft demonstrates the new external drive support working with drives as large as 4 terabytes. Some bad news, though: for now, the only functionality mentioned alongside external hard drives is game storage — not media playback. So if you’re one of those people (like me!) who liked to keep some music/video content on an HDD plugged into your 360, it’s not clear yet whether or not that’ll work. Also coming in the June update: – You’ll be able to display your real name alongside your Gamertag to select people if you so choose. You pick who you share your name with, be it friends, friends of friends, or a small, pre-selected group. (Anyone want to bet how long it’ll be before there’s some parental backlash about this?) – Better TV control through the SmartGlass app – OneGuide (Microsoft’s TV-Guide-esque app for people who hook their set top boxes into their Xbox Ones) is rolling out in Canada, UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy It feels silly to say this, but I’m really most excited about that auto sign-in. It’s not the (trivial amount of) time it saves me that matters, it’s that I don’t have to think about what a silly design decision they made . Alas, there’s not much mentioned in terms of an ETA for this update beyond “sometime in June.” |
Spotify, Please Chill With The [Censored] Music | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | Spotify is a magic music box. It’s [Censored] an amazing tool. I like to [Censored] people that the $10 I send it each month is the [Censored] money I spend. Having access to such a massive catalog of tunes on every device I own is the [Censored] knees. But Spotify has an [Censored]-interface issue that makes using it occasionally incredibly frustrating to use: Censored music. Actually, it’s not [Censored] music that is [Censored] fault, really, it’s the inability to make the damn stuff go away. Fire up, say, the [Censored] discography, and start to shuffle. I just landed on “Beautiful.” Eminem : “I’m just so [Censored] depressed, I just can’t seem to get out this slump.” [Censored], Marshall. Having edited music is just [Censored] by me. But please, please let me turn it off. I’m not a child. I don’t want the half-[Censored] versions of tracks that I know by [Censored]. It’s off-putting. There is no Spotify setting to say, “Hey, I’m an [Censored], please don’t make me [Censored] to the versions of songs that my parents would have preferred me to hear when I was in middle [Censored] because they think that bad [Censored] are sins.” It should have one. What’s the point of having a magic music box if it consistently [Censored] broken [Censored] of the music you know and love? Spotify told TechCrunch that the ability to turn off [Censored] music is something that it is “looking into.” [Censored] |
Whistle, The ‘FitBit For Dogs’, Adds GPS Features To Make Sure You Never Lose Your Pet | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | The new product, dubbed , uses both GPS and sub-GHz cellular technology to add on-demand location monitoring to Whistle’s flagship activity tracking gadget that syncs with iOS or Android devices. It’s a logical addition, as Whistle’s core product seems best suited for pet owners who aren’t always physically with their dogs while they’re out and about — people with big properties, or who use dog sitters or walkers, for instance. The gadget, which is on presale now, will cost $129 and charge a $5 per month GPS service fee. While pet GPS trackers are not exactly new, the company is touting WhistleGPS as having the smallest form factor and longest battery life of all the pet trackers on the market. According to Whistle, some 10 million pets are lost every year, so the potential impact here is pretty sizable. TechCrunch TV producer , who is a proud , sat down with Whistle’s co-founder Ben Jacobs to see the new device in person and find out more about what it does. Check that out in the video embedded above. |
BlackBerry Reveals Project Ion, Its QNX-Powered Effort To Underpin The Internet Of Things | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | BlackBerry is mostly discussed in terms of its slow decline in the global smartphone market, which it once pioneered. But it acquired QNX in 2010, and that would provide the basis not only for its BlackBerry 10 smartphone operating system, but also for the platform underlying a huge percentage of in-car infotainment systems. BlackBerry envisioned QNX extending to a still-wider range of devices to underpin the growth of the Internet of Things, and now it’s formalizing those efforts under its . Project Ion consists of multiple efforts designed to promote Internet of Things development, including a secure application platform based on QNX designed to gather data from across a range of devices and operating environments; relationship building between partners, carriers and app developers; and strategic partnership with industry organizations including the Industrial Internet Consortium and the Application Developers Alliance. Ion’s goal is to give businesses access to the new kinds of insights that can be derived when every aspect of their business is a connected, data-gathering device. This includes stuff that BlackBerry already manages through its MDM efforts, like mobile devices and computers, but it also now includes sensors scattered throughout the factory floor, environmental and weather measurement devices, smart refrigeration units and transport vehicles, and so on. IoT is a market with some of the highest growth potential around, in part because it crosses verticals: it’s just as applicable for a large-scale industrial facility as it is in a multinational hospitality chain. Others see and desire this carrot, of course. Google is one of those, and the search giant has clearly identified IoT as an opportunity to further extend the reach of Android, as revealed most recently in an SEC filing today. But what Project Ion aims to do can work hand-in-hand with Android acting as a default OS for individual connected devices; BlackBerry seems to want to be the connective tissue in a larger IoT nervous system – think less a and more a framework for the local electric company to analyze, track and better serve a web of those connected homes. Is IoT the magic bullet for BlackBerry as it transitions away from the consumer market? Hard to say, as it’s a nascent market yet and it remains unclear exactly what it will provide partners, device makers and network operators. But if its in-car computing business is any indication of where it might be headed, then this could be bright spot in BlackBerry’s otherwise cloudy outlook. |
Samsung’s Head Of Mobile Design Resigns After Galaxy S5’s Poor Reception | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | Samsung Electronic’s head of mobile design, Chang Dong-hoon, following criticism about the Galaxy S5 smartphone’s lack of pulchritude. Though the Galaxy S5’s design did not actually , its looks and textured plastic back were roundly lambasted by reviewers. “I think I audibly let out a sound that was something along the lines of ‘aaaahuughhhh’ upon seeing the shimmering dimpled gold back of the Galaxy S5,” wrote , summing up many reviewers’ reaction to the device’s appearance. Other Samsung smartphones have also been described as ugly. For example, some users felt that . Meanwhile, the Galaxy S4’s , especially considering that it is one of Samsung’s pricier flagship models. Despite their perceived lack of beauty, Samsung , widening its lead over Apple. During that quarter, it also attained a 29.6% share of the global smartphone market, compared to Apple’s 17.6%. But Samsung with its phones, thanks in part to heavy spending on marketing. In April, it also in South Korea, the first time it has ever done so for a flagship phone. Samsung said Chang will be replaced by Lee Min-hyouk, Samsung’s vice president for mobile design. Chang, who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, offered to leave the company last week, but will continue to oversee Samsung’s overall design strategy. In a statement, Samsung said: Vice President Min-hyouk Lee has recently been promoted to Head of Design Team within the Mobile Communications Business of Samsung Electronics. The realignment enables Executive Vice President Dong-hoon Chang to focus more on his role as Head of Design Strategy Team, the company’s corporate design center which is responsible for long-term design strategy across all of Samsung Electronics’ businesses, including Mobile Communications. |
Google Ventures Leads $130M Series B In Cancer Data Startup Flatiron Health | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | , a startup that organizes real-time oncology data to help cancer patients and doctors, has raised $130 million in Series B funding led by , with participation from , , and angel investors. Part of the capital will be used to acquire , an electronic medical records company. The funding, which , is significant for Google Ventures because it represents the firm’s largest investment so far in a medical tech startup, . Other health tech companies Google Ventures has invested in include , which is building a searchable archive of DNA information, Foundation Medicine, which uses big-data to analyze tumors; and hospital discharge and readmissions tracker . Flatiron Health was founded by Zach Weinberg and Nat Turner, who also launched Invite Media, an advertising tech platform that was acquired by Google in 2010. In a statement to TechCrunch, Google Ventures general partner Krishna Yeshwant said, “Cancer will likely touch all of us at some point in our lifetimes, either as a patient or as the family or friend of a patient. Flatiron has pioneered a way to learn much more about cancer, so that we can improve the way we care for patients and treat the disease. It’s rare to find a team of the caliber assembled by Flatiron Health that combines pragmatic insights from the healthcare industry with the deep technical insight of the IT industry. They are working on one of the biggest problems in healthcare, and their progress has been nothing short of stunning to date.” Flatiron Health, which launched in 2012 and is currently in beta, collects information by connecting cancer treatment center around the world on its cloud-based technology platform, with the goal of allowing researchers, physicians, and patients to learn from aggregated data collected from millions of cases. It hopes that this will allow doctors to provide better care and enable patients to make data-driven decisions. There are currently between 500 to 1,000 oncologists using Flatiron’s data platform, Turner told the WSJ. Acquiring Altos, which is used by 1,300 medical professionals, will give doctors access to Flatiron’s database as they enter new information into medical records. Altos’ 60 employees will join Flatiron after the acquisition is completed, and Flatiron Health also plans to hire up to 30 more staffers, mostly engineers, by the end of this year. |
“Lyft Plus” Launches In SF With Tricked-Out SUVs In SF That Cost 2X [Update: Confirmed] | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | Lyft’s forthcoming premium SUV service will cost twice as much as normal Lyfts, but comes with extra perks, says a Lyft contractor who refused to be named as the plans are still private. I of Lyft’s competitor to Uber SUV earlier this month before Lyft released a for the service. Now I have more details on what the luxury Lyft experience will be like. [ : Lyft has now , confirming my report here that Lyft SUVs will cost about twice as much as standard Lyfts, hold six passengers, feature diamond-stiching leather interiors and ground effect lights (though not necessarily red ones) installed by car shop West Coast Customs, offer phone chargers, and they’re launching in San Francisco. New information includes that the program is called Lyft Plus and is launching today with plans to roll out to other cities beyond SF soon. The SUVs have 20-inch sport wheels and will feature a small, brushed steel mustache on their front grill, not a big pink furry one. Passengers will have access to Spotify Premium while aboard. A photo of the Lyft Plus SUV can be seen above. I’ve changed my headline from “Lyft’s New SUVs Are Tricked-Out But Will Cost 2X”, but everything else in this article remains unchanged unless noted.] You can watch a promo video for the new service below: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVPy-2tqIn4] Lyft’s SUV program will initially launch in San Francisco [Update: It launches today]. The cars will be white Ford Explorer SUVs from 2012 or newer. Drivers will supply their own vehicle that Lyft will take and reupholster with black interior leather and “diamond”-colored stitching. They’ll also have red ground-facing accent lights on their exterior that will illuminate when passengers get out of their SUVs to simulate a red carpet exit. These lights might be Lyft’s way to replace the furry pink mustache, which doesn’t really fit whole the upscale vibe. [Update: Lyft Plus SUVs will feature a small silver mustache on their front grill. They’ll also have white LED ground effects, not red as I had heard.] Our source says the cars may also have other special features like charging ports for smartphones in the back, or even iPads to play with, but they weren’t as sure of this detail. For reference, Uber recently distributed these USB charger seat hangs (apparently bought from Delta) to their SUV drivers in New York. What we do know is drivers will get a $750 bonus per month for their first year, but must drive a minimum of 35 hours per week. For the first few months, Lyft will forgo its typical 20% commission from the fares passengers pay so drivers get 100%. The hope is the extra money will lure drivers to the SUV program. After that, the 20% tax will kick back in. Lyft SUV will cost passengers twice the standard rate. If you double the SUV would come out to $5.50 pickup + $2.70 per mile + $0.54 per minute with a “safety” fee added. You can compare that to in SF: $15 pickup + $3.75 per mile + $0.90 per minute. For a 2 mile, 10 minute ride, Lyft SUV would cost $16.30 + fees, while Uber SUV would cost $31.50 + fees. So Lyft would be significantly cheaper, especially for fast rides without traffic. Uber SUV’s high per minute rate stacks up when stuck in gridlock. Maintaining a sizable discount versus Uber SUV could be a draw for Lyft’s cutesy clone. Users will sacrifice some legroom in the back row, and the power of commanding a glamorous black and silver tank with a professional chauffeur. While Uber’s Escalades and Navigators fit 7 passengers comfortably, Lyft’s Explorer fit 6 and it’s cramped in the back row. It’s unclear whether there will be a buyback program to let drivers sell their cars if they want to stop driving. Exactly when the first SUVs will is unknown as well. [Update: It launches today, 5/8/2014]. The real question will be whether Lyft can merge its friendly style with a premium price point and fancier rides. Though it might repulse those wanting an elite car service for one or two people, Lyft may find its sweet spot with playful party buses. |
And The Winner Of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2014 Is… Vurb | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | , tough road, but it’s finally time to crown the winner of the Disrupt Battlefield. This year’s batch was truly awesome. Twenty-seven startups took the stage to present. The six finalists were , , , , , and . It was an amazing batch with multiple hardware startups, innovative business models and good engineering. But only one could take home the Disrupt Cup. All these startups made their way to the finale to demo in front of our final panel of judges, which were (Betaworks), (Sequoia Capital), (Andreessen Horowitz), (Yahoo), (SV Angel), and (Union Square Ventures). And now, here it is, meet the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2014 Battlefield winner. Vurb is a web and mobile contextual search engine. When you type a query in Vurb, you get everything you need without having to leave the search engine. The company is rolling out search for Places, Movies, and Media. It will soon launch search for add People, Startups, and others. For example, if you search for a film, you get a trailer, showtimes, reviews, a link to watch the movie on Netflix, the IMDb score and more. Fred Wilson made some heated comments on stage. “This problem is a bitch, you won’t solve it, and it will kill you,” he said. But it looks like the company managed to convince the other judges. You can read more of our Vurb coverage . ISI Technology is developing a smart water heater, the Model 1. It’s not sexy, but it’s useful. The device can provide immediate, infinite and temperature auto-stabilizing hot water. It has a WiFi connection and a smartphone app. You can call it the Nest of water heaters — ISI Technology is tackling a huge market. It can also extend or turbocharge your existing water heater. The Model 1 costs $399. You can read more of our coverage . |
Greylock’s Lilly: Tech’s Landscape Is Unfair In An Invisible Way To Women | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | Ah, that perennial issue — women in tech. Solving it is so intractable and talking about it can be thankless because readers get emotional without arriving at pragmatic solutions. It requires multiple layers of intervention all the way on up from the toys and cultural icons we present to young girls, through encouraging computer science education in high school and on up through pressuring the industry leadership to bring more women onto company boards and into VC firms. The issue came up again on a panel this morning at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York where Leena Rao asked top-tier investors from firms like Sequoia and Greylock about how to bring on more women into venture capital. There were four firms on the panel. Greylock, a top-tier fund that backed Facebook and LinkedIn, has one female associate, but no more senior female investment partners. Sequoia, one of the most storied firms in the Valley, similarly has no female investment partners, but it does have female partners on its services team heading up events, marketing and human resources. Spark Capital has a female director of community, but its general partners are male. Then there was Shana Fisher, who started her own firm called . Fisher, who has backed Pinterest, Makerbot, Vine, and Refinery29, said that before she started High Line, she did have conversations with established firms. But her profile didn’t match what they were looking for, so she started her own firm instead. “People were looking for a certain kind of person which I don’t think I am,” she said. “Firms need to broaden their mind about what the right kind of person looks like. You need to consider people with really rich and varied backgrounds to get more women into the tech industry.”
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Both Alfred Lin, , and Greylock’s John Lilly, , said they needed to do more. But it was hard for them to offer specifics beyond saying that the pipeline of women with a mix of entrepreneurial or operational experience and a technical background was not big enough. Lin said to stay tuned for something on Sequoia’s front. “We need to recognize that the landscape is so unfair in such an invisible way,” said Lilly, who pointed to this really interesting post that DFJ venture capitalist
SV Angel, All the wrong ratios, and no good answers. |
Zennström — Going Global Outside The Valley, We Were ‘Too Eager’ With Fab | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | Despite being quite a self-effacing person, it’s clear Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Skype and now a VC with his fund, is actually something of a rebel. He has consciously chosen to build a portfolio outside of North America and looks for great companies almost anywhere else. Zennström co-founded Skype, which he sold to eBay for $3.1 billion in 2005, later re-acquiring it and selling it to Microsoft, for $8.5 billion in 2011. That takes quite a resolute person, especially if you are also in the middle of creating a venture firm that has made more than 60 investments and last year – mostly from limited partners outside the U.S. – to focus on Europe, Japan, Brazil, Turkey and China, amongst others. Zennstrom is known for keeping his distance from the tech communities on the West Coast, and even the East Coast. So at TechCrunch Disrupt NY we wanted to find out why he thinks like that, when so many seem to do the exact opposite. For starters, yes, he occasionally gets a ribbing about buying and selling buying Skype but, as he says, he wanted to create a company for the long term. “In the early days we didn’t know if we’d survive against big players like Microsoft,” he says. So when it came up for sale again, he was eager to get it back. He wanted to build a company that would last for a long time – so he wanted to continue the journey. That’s not something most founders would say today. Is he motivated to work outside the Valley for any particular reason? Well, he says, he’s from Sweden, which is small. That gives you that mindset to build internationally. That’s what Atomico is all about: “If you have something that works, you go international.” The sweet spot for Atomico is in the growth stage – choosing a company that starts off focused on one market but now wants to expand. Unpacking that, he pointed out that while technology marches on, how people do business in markets like Latin America and Japan does not change nearly as fast. If at all. So this is something Atomico brings to the party. Surely this can be reproduced? Just hire people to expand internationally? He emphasises his team’s experience, which is hard to just reproduce or buy-in. “You can’t just fly in and do business development in these markets.” With much of his team being ex-Skype – for long time the only Western company to break China – he’s got a lot of experience. But, I asked, this international growth strategy has not always worked. Atomico in home decor startup Fab.com, which then set on . But since then Fab has famously withdrawn its local operations from Germany and then the rest of Europe, , despite still service some market remotely. Fab is now almost certainly below its $1bn valuation of last year. “Sometimes,” he admitted, “we’ve been too eager to help companies expand.” Leaving that statement there, he also cited Wrapp – a Swedish startup in social gifting. “We had a plan, then competition came up.” Rocket Internet aggressively launched against them in multiple markets. “We expanded before the product was ready.” He admitted Joost also fell this way. It was the wrong time – as content owners went with Hulu and others. In addition, streaming music, where his Rdio portfolio company plays, has also met stiff competition from Spotify. “Spotify has done an amazing job,” he says. But Atomico is also an investor in Supercell. Last year Japanese telecoms and Internet giant Softbank and its subsidiary Gungho Online Entertainment acquired a 51% stake in the Helsinki-based mobile gaming company for $1.53 billion. International expansion can clear work for Atomico. But surely there is a problem with games companies that sometimes become one-hit wonders? How can they be Abba, not Biz Markie? “Supercell has been great at building a skill set around building more than one game – it’s not luck it’s skill,” he says. “It comes back to people – recruiting amazing game developers.” Ultimately, he says, Alibaba’s IPO this week shows that you can not only build great companies everywhere but also great exits can come from everywhere. To back that up, his team has produced research to the effect that over the past 10 years some 44 ‘billion dollar’ companies were created in Silicon Valley, 18 in China, but outside those markets 55 were created in the rest of the world. He’ll always be known for Skype, but what about Microsoft’s curation of Skype? He says he backs Founders. Once Gates stepped down, “Microsoft became less relevant”, he says. Is Microsoft over? “It’s a challenge and an interesting period, they need to focus on product and innovation. They haven’t for a long time. Office, etc. will become less relevant. Pivoting into the cloud, and mobile – they are not there yet in either. They are behind.” If Gates going has badly affected Microsoft, then would he try to keep his founder entrepreneurs in place for as long as possible? That’s his ambition – even when they scale. “Success is about the great founders. You can fall in love with the opportunity not the founder and that’s when you probably shouldn’t invest.” Niklas is also a keen yachtsman, and has won three Mini Maxi World Championships and one TP52 World Championship with his yacht racing team Rán. Does he want to be remembered as a founder, investor or sailor? “My ambition is to drive change. And maybe not take the obvious route. With Atomico, we want to help build the international ecosystem – London, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, wherever – that’s my objective.” No doubt along the way, he’s also learnt not to be ‘too eager’. |
Beloved Image Sharing Site MLKSHK Saunters Off Into The Sunset | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | There are only a handful of sites that I visit every day aside from TechCrunch. Among those was the lovely, lightweight , which is set to shut down on September 1st. MLKSHK got so many things right for me. It’s nicely designed and provides an honest transaction when you visit. You go there to look at an image and the image loads first without a bunch of crap being shoved in your face. There’s a unique community with its own language and sense of humor and it was always enjoyable bouncing around the site each day for a couple of minutes. Because of the variety and community, I’ve been encouraged to check out movies, books, cultural stories and history that I had never been exposed to in any other arenas. The shutdown is voluntary, and its creator Andre Torrez laid out the reasons yesterday. Among those reasons were a failure to monetize in a way that would support the site in an ongoing fashion. Torrez notes that he’d be willing to sell it but only if they were the ‘right fit’. As it’s one of my favorite sites on the web, I thought I’d reach out to ask a few more questions about the site and its shutdown. : What were some of the things you tried to monetize that you felt wouldn’t work, and why? Our initial plan was to make a place so good that enough people would pay for it and we could just keep doing it forever. We had a chance to take a different route than so many other sites had taken so why not try it? We used our own money for six months and when it became apparent that we weren’t going to get there in time we started looking at other options. I was a co-founder of Federated Media and its CTO so I know the ad business well enough to know our traffic was not at the level to make sense with ad banners. We very briefly worked with a couple of advertising networks over the years and either the content of the ads or the amount of the checks meant that it wasn’t going to be a worthwhile option. I even wrote a way for members of the community to put their own ads on the site. We also received varying degrees of shady offers to put bits of tracking code on pages which wasn’t interesting to us. I’d feel complicit if MLKSHK showed you an ad for underwear you had been looking at on some other site. That wasn’t what we were about. I spent a year at as their Head of Product which gave me a chance to play with a lot of ideas, but ultimately it wasn’t going to be enough to get us to a place where I could give the site the attention it needed and work a full-time job. : What would constitute a ‘good fit’ for a buyer? : Someone who has the same beliefs about community as us and the resources to keep doing what we were doing. If we don‘t find someone it’ll be a shame but we’ll be OK with it. We went in with our convictions and we get to go out with them. I always wanted a chance to do that and I will certainly do it again if the opportunity comes up. Our first goal was make a nice place that people wanted to keep coming back to. Anyone who wants to buy the site would have to respect that goal; which means they’d need to have the resources to give the site what it needs. We’re not interested in seeing all the goodwill bled out of it for a profit. : People seemed to create uses for MLKSHK which would then grow into collectives of people. What was one of the surprising ways that people used the community that you loved? : Someone tweeted at us after our announcement that they loved MLKSHK because “people took pictures of food they made, not food they had just ordered” and when I read that I remembered the day that started happening. An early and frequent user named Jer started posting images of food he had from his own side business, . It not only inspired people to buy his spice rubs, which I think was the original point, but it prompted people to start photographing their own attempts. That was the beginning of the where people post pictures of food they’d made. I think MLKSHK was a safe place to share things like that because we didn’t have the judgemental, drive-by commenters waiting to pounce. We all thought of each other as friends and the images we chose to share reflected that. : What’s the most popular shake of all time? : TonyB’s Friday Dance Party is the . Every Friday animated GIFs and videos pour in of people dancing. It was a nice end to the week and one of my favorite shakes on the site. People would sit at their desks and just funnel stuff in and riff off each other with images. : What was your favorite shake? : The one my . Having the internet on hand while raising kids is such a blessing. Throughout the day she will drop interesting things into his shake and then later we’d sit and look through it and it would spark conversations about physics or animals or starting points to research on Wikipedia. He’s five so he’s a pro at asking “Why?” and so I love that I can answer nearly every question or admit that it’s something nobody knows. : Do you think that there is still room for sustainable ’boutique’, independent, ‘conscientious’ community sites, or are the ‘bigs’ sucking the air out of the room? : Definitely! Look at Andy Baio’s Kickstarter for . Only an hour in and he has already passed the halfway point. The economics of building sites are getting so small and the ease of building something is always increasing. I’ll take the blame for not being clever enough to figure out the answer for MLKSHK, but I know there are smarter people than me who will and have built sustainable and conscientious sites. The flood of tweets and email I received after announcing MLKSHK’s closing was honestly not surprising to me. I know we did a good job at our primary goal and I know we can do it again. Image Source: , |
Ad Tech Company Marin Software Names David A. Yovanno As Its New CEO | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | , maker of tools for managing online ad campaigns, is announcing a new CEO — David A. Yovanno, a . Co-founder Chris Lien has served as CEO since Marin was founded in 2006. He’s moving to the role of executive chairman, but the company said in that he “will continue to be actively involved day-to-day.” The company started out as a management system for search advertising, and it has since expanded to include display, social, and mobile adds as well. (it’s significantly below its $14 IPO price). “Marin’s record results for the first quarter demonstrate our tremendous market opportunity and momentum,” Lien said in the release. “Now is the right time to bring in Dave, who has more than 20 years of operating experience and strong digital marketing expertise.” The announcement came at the same time as , in which the company reported revenue of $22.8 million and non-GAAP loss of per share of 21 cents. |
Tesla Slips Despite Beating Estimates In Q1 With Non-GAAP Revenue Of $713M | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | It’s to be a . Today despite beating non-GAAP revenue and non-GAAP profit expectations, Tesla is in after-hours trading. The company $713 million in non-GAAP revenue and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.12. Both figures were ahead of the street’s expectations of $699 in non-GAAP revenue, and $0.10 in non-GAAP earnings. (There are 44 mentions of ‘non-GAAP’ in Tesla’s . The company of course also releases GAAP figures, but I do find its public-facing use of adjusted numbers humorous.) What were the GAAP numbers? Quite different. The company’s first-quarter revenue total Tesla lost $49.8 million in the quarter on a GAAP basis, or $0.40 cents per share. In the first quarter, Tesla delivered 6,457 Model S cars, and built 7,535. The company also did not change its guidance of 35,500 Model S deliveries. Why is the stock down? It isn’t too clear, but it could be that investors aren’t excited by the new $2 billion in convertible notes that could have imparted future dilution. That and GAAP losses and a market in a decline could be enough. Want to reconcile the company’s GAAP and non-GAAP numbers? We can do that: Criticism of its . Also, Tesla admitted that it has “material weakness in [its] internal control” regarding its “financial reporting.” That’s not something that you want to hear. Groupon had a similar situation back when it was a newly public firm. Material weakness is a stern phrase that is employed when the apple cart is no longer sitting on its wheels. So I’d keep a closer eye on its GAAP revenue and how quickly that figure rises, as well as other numbers. But given its quick expansion, the market appears mostly willing to allow Tesla to push its non-GAAP revenue figures as much as it allows other firms to push non-GAAP earnings per share. And as , Tesla is still up over 30 percent this year. |
Pst! Secret’s Android ETA Is “Two To Three Weeks” | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | , the anonymish app that’s enabling iOS users to thrill their own friends and people in their social circles by saying stuff freely, without having their own identity attached to the information they are sharing, is coming to Android in “a few weeks”. The ETA for the Secret Android app was revealed backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, by the founders David Byttow and Chrys “A couple of weeks. Two or three weeks in the best case. We’re working as hard as we can,” said Byttow. “We have such an amazing team working on this.” Interestingly the Android app will not be a direct clone of iOS, with Byttow noting that it will be used as the testing ground for some new features. That makes sense if you want to experiment without disrupting an existing engaged user-base built up on one mobile platform. It also makes sense to tailor an experience for different user groups — and Android and iOS are two of the biggest distinct user groups in tech right now. “We’re looking for Android not to be a clone of the iOS version but to actually lead some new features that we’re working on,” said Byttow. The pair kept schtum on exactly what new features they have in their pipeline. But in a previous Disrupt interview they hinted that . “We have some new features that we’re working on that are really exciting that we’re not ready to talk to about yet,” they said. Other than Android, the pair said they are working on expanding the reach of Secret — with that international expansion doubtless fueled by their . Secret launched in its first global markets, including the U.K., . “We’re looking at non-English speaking countries, different cultures,” the pair told They were also asked again about the problem of anonymity encouraging negativity/bullying — a topic that is likely to follow them wherever they go, as the app gains more users, some of whom will inevitably end up being mean. Hell, that’s just . argued that the prevailing option about anonymity encouraging people to be meaner than average is a “huge misconception” — claiming that the amount of trolls on anonymous or pseudonymous platforms and identity platforms are “the same”. “People should focus on all the good things that happen because all this stuff that you see as negative it exists on every social network,” he said. “But what you don’t see on other social networks is the type of forthcoming and openness and honesty that people are doing on Secret, and the conversations that happen around that — and that should be the focus of these conversations. That’s what Secret is changing.” They argued that the app is actually encouraging people to offer “positive support” to friends in distress. “We see such an overwhelming amount of [positive support], that people feel like they’re connected to their friends in a very unique and different way, much different than something with identity and then much different than something like [anonymous app] where you’re talking to a stranger.” “We hear a lot of stories about people actually meeting offline,” he added. “I think it’s making people’s lives a lot better and richer.” “People group us together with Yik Yak and Whisper and it’s our job to pull out of that grouping, and be our own class of communication,” added Byttow. |
Anova Updates Their Sous-Vide Device For The Smartphone-Toting Cook | John Biggs | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | Another day, another cooker. Anova, a company I’ve covered before, has announced the , a precision circulator/heater that uses your phone to cook delicious sous-vide meals in a hot water bath. They’ve surpassed their The original Anova was a self-contained device with temperature and time settings right on the machine. The new system will let you fine-tune them on a phone and also schedule cooking times so it can get started when you’re not at home. Unlike, say, the , the Anova clips to the side of any standard pot and allows you to cook things in plastic zipper bags instead of vacuum-sealed plastic. The new Anova will cost $169 – far less than fully-featured sous-vide machines. The creator, Jeff Wu, has been building circulators like this one for years and launched his first device in 2013. This update adds some much-needed smarts to the standalone appliance and looks to be as usable as the previous version. This market is still wide open. While you would expect to see sous-vide machines in retail from major makers, I haven’t seen a single one so far and it’s great that these guys are filling that gap. As a guy who loves a nice sous-vide steak, I’m happy they’re here.
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Layer Raises $14.5M, Hires iMessage, Facetime Pioneer Andy Vyrros As CTO | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | Communications platform for mobile and web apps and winner has raised $14.5 million in Series A funding from Homebrew, AME Cloud Ventures (Jerry Yang’s investment vehicle), CrunchFund, Fuel Capital and other investors. At the same time, it has announced a key hire: Andy Vyrros, a former engineering head at Apple who led the development of iMessage and Facetime, is now CTO. We’re hearing from sources that Layer’s valuation post-money was in the mid-$60 million range. Layer is a that can be added to any mobile app by adding fewer than 10 lines of code into the mix. Once that Layer code snippet has been placed in an app via an SDK, users will be able to send text, voice, and video messages, and share files across different applications. We’ve compared the service to a Stripe for communications. The startup also offers a set of open source components called the Layer UI kit which work with the SDK, allowing developers to quickly build out specific user interface features, like an address book or a message sorter. In addition to making it easy for app developers to add messaging to apps, Layer also wants to eliminate developer concerns surrounding infrastructure or how to manage scaling. The grand Layer vision involves support for web apps, too, but for now the team is releasing an SDK for iOS and Android developers. For background, the company was founded in March by Tomaž Štolfa, founder of vox.io, and Ron Palmeri, who previously launched a number of companies as managing director of Minor Ventures, including Grand Central (now Google Voice), OpenDNS, Scout Labs and Swivel. Palmeri is also the founder of MkII Ventures, and co-founder of TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2011 runner-up Prism Skylabs. The company also recently brought on former Apple engineering lead Andy Vyrros as CTO. At Apple, Vyrros led development of iMessage and Facetime. Though still in private beta, Layer expects to roll out to a larger number of developers. The company has ambitions of being the go-to framework for adding text, video, voice and other services into apps. Clearly investors are betting on the fact that developers want simple SDKs, and ease of use but without sacrificing security and scalability. If Layer can add that with a few lines of code, then that’s a win for developers. |
Hover Adds Gestures And Touch To Your DIY Electronics | John Biggs | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | hackers rejoice: you can now add touch sensitivity and gesture controls to your tiny electronics projects, something that could add some very compelling user experience tweaks to existing projects. Called , the $39 board is basically a capacitive touch sensitive PCB with a small controller built in. Interestingly, you can also wave your hand over the sensor to actuate it, allowing for all sorts of fun with Kinect-like motion interaction. Since it connects to Arduino you don’t need much processing power to handle the interaction and, more importantly, the system is compact and easily embeddable into different projects. Built by and Jonathan Li, the product is shipping in the next few weeks and looks to be ready to use out of the box. It uses a 3 volt power supply and can fit on a standard breadboard for prototyping. While it might be hard to figure out a use for this right now, I could imagine a musical toy using gestures or a robot controller with touch sensitive surfaces. It’s a nice piece of solid, cool technology. [vimeo http://vimeo.com/94026132] [vimeo http://vimeo.com/94027460] |
Yahoo Is Doubling Down On Mobile — Again | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | to Yahoo, mobile was everyone’s hobby. It was no one’s job,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer told Michael Arrington on stage today at . Ever since Mayer joined Yahoo in July 2012, mobile has been one of the company’s main focuses. And it turns out that the company is doubling down on mobile once again. “Mobile is doubling on every traffic metric we have,” she said. But it doesn’t mean that Yahoo’s mobile strategy is already successful. Yahoo ended 2013 with in Apple’s top 100. In other words, producing massive mobile hits is a long and difficult process. That’s why Mayer promoted to be in charge of all things mobile. If things go well, it will be because of him. If they don’t, it will also be his fault. Centralizing everything like that could make things more difficult, but Mayer doesn’t see it this way. “Every organization has a drawback,” she said. “I was talking to Eric Schmidt — there are some companies that go back and forth between a functional and divisional organization. In the end, it doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t spend too much time reorganizing.” So now that Yahoo is going with this centralized strategy, the company hired a lot of mobile developers and designers — some of them thanks to acquisitions. “I asked how many people do we have working on mobile engineering, they said ‘like a hundred.’ And I asked: ‘like an actual hundred, or like 60 rounded up to 100 to make me feel better?'” There are now 500 people working on mobile working under Cahan. And the company has a clear mission statement when it comes to mobile. “We put Adam’s team together, it’s going to be a 2-year experiment,” Mayer said. “We have a tremendous set of app developers and app designers. We want to build the best mobile apps in the industry. I will revisit in two years about how we want to run it moving forward.” “We want to be the world’s digital daily habit,” Mayer said. And having people spend more time in Yahoo’s apps fits pretty well. In Mayer’s Yahoo, there are three areas of focus: search, mail and digital magazines. And the company released new design-oriented apps, such as Yahoo Weather, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo News Digest. “Last year was the year we began making our investment in mobile,” Mayer said. “We were really proud of the new Yahoo News Digest, the new Yahoo Mail. You could see that engagement picked up. We think we’re making big strides in mobile. But we think there’s more to do.” In particular, the News Digest app is an interesting example. “To Adam’s credit, I didn’t want to launch [Yahoo News Digest] because I didn’t think it was in our core applications.” Then, the company used the app internally (dog-fooding, as we call it). “People just loved it. 40 percent of people who download the app use it every day.” So Yahoo will keep iterating on these apps and release new apps. It will also try another strategy — serendipity. One of the things that works quite well on desktop is that people go to yahoo.com to check their emails and end up reading Yahoo News. “We want that serendipitous experience,” Mayer said. “We want to make our apps a little bit more fully featured.” In the next generation of Yahoo apps, you will be able to check your emails, read news and check the weather in a few swipes. And then, there is Tumblr. Mayer thinks that Yahoo didn’t overpay for Tumblr, which it for $1.1 billion. Now, Tumblr comes with sponsored content. But the user base is apparently reacting pretty well. “48 percent reshare sponsored content — it’s so good,” Mayer said. Tumblr will also play an important part in Yahoo’s mobile strategy. Tumblr’s mobile team has always been really good at design. Mayer considers Tumblr as a communication tool. It will be one of the apps that will end up in the top iOS apps. “Those communication tools like Tumblr and Yahoo Mail will be among the top apps,” she said. [gallery ids="999751,999752,999753,999754,999755,999762,999763,999764,999765,999766,999767,999783,999784"] |
null | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 21 | null |
Zillow Posts A Loss Due To Ad Expenses, But Q1 Revenue Up 70 Percent To A Record $66.2M | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | Real estate marketplace Zillow Q1 earnings this afternoon, with revenue for the quarter increasing by 70 percent to a record $66.2 million from $39 million in the first quarter of 2013. GAAP loss per share was $0.16 in the first quarter of 2014 with non-GAAP net income per share coming in at $0.02 in the first quarter. Analysts expected to post a loss of for the quarter. Due primarily to planned increases in advertising expenses, GAAP net loss was $6.3 million in the first quarter of 2014, compared to GAAP net loss of $3.7 million in the first quarter of 2013. “The first quarter was a terrific start to 2014 with record traffic, revenue and results that exceeded our expectations and strengthened our lead in the category,” said Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s CEO. “A key driver of Zillow’s success lies in attracting audience and delighting our users with great products and services. In March, traffic hit a new high of 77 million monthly unique users as mobile usage more than doubled year over year, and April just broke that record, attracting 79 million unique users. “We’re continuing to ramp our marketing investment, and plan to be firing on all cylinders through the busy spring and summer home shopping season, which also helps increase value and opportunity for our agent and broker partners.” Marketplace Revenue, real estate revenue and mortgages all grew in the quarter. Display Revenue increased 62% to a record $12.9 million from $7.9 million in the first quarter of 2013. As Rascoff explained above, traffic to Zillow on mobile and web hit a record in April with nearly 79 million monthly unique users, an increase of 50% year-over-year. During the first quarter of 2014, visits to Zillow via a mobile device nearly doubled year-over-year, and in April 2014, more than 460 million homes were viewed on Zillow via a mobile device, which equates to 178 homes per second. Zillow Mortgage Marketplace saw 5.8 million loan requests submitted by borrowers, up 29 percent year-over-year. Immediately following the conference call, Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff will participate in a live Q&A session via Twitter co-hosted by Internet analysts Ron Josey, JMP Securities, and Michael Graham, Canaccord Genuity1. Anyone may participate in this Twitter conversation by using the hashtag #ZEarnings.
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Marissa Mayer Explains Yahoo’s New Video Strategy | Billy Gallagher | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | Speaking at Disrupt New York, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer explained the strategy behind the company’s new . “Can you tell me what Yahoo is?” TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington asked, bringing up the old question of whether Yahoo is a tech or media company. Mayer argued that this dichotomy doesn’t matter, and that Yahoo needs to focus on building products that people love and delivering value. When Arrington mentioned Yahoo’s new “Netflix-style” video content, Mayer lit up, quickly discussing two new video series. Mayer said the video budget will be relatively stable year to year, and that the company is just “using it in a different way.” “Last year we produced 86 different series,” Mayer said. “None of whom you’ve ever heard about because it was sort of a failed branding exercise.” The company will now have fewer series, which will be branded and focused around its new Digital Magazines, and two new shows, called “Other Space” and “Sin City Saints.” [gallery columns="1" ids="999806,999805,999804,999803,999802,999784,999783,999767,999766,999765,999764,999763,999762,999756,999755,999754,999753,999752,999751"] “Now we’re doing fewer things that are bigger and have a slightly larger chance of success,” Mayer said. Starting on July 1, Yahoo will also be working with Live Nation to stream a live concert every day for a year. |
Kloudless Makes Connecting Apps To Multiple Cloud Storage APIs Easier | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | At last year’s Disrupt NY, its service for easily moving data between email and various clouds. That, however, was just the first stage in the service’s evolution. Returning to the stage at Disrupt NY today, CEO and co-founder Eliot Sun announced the launch of that allows developers to easily connect their apps to multiple cloud storage services like Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, SugarSync or Google Drive. In its earliest stage, Kloudless was “just” a plug-in for connecting email services to cloud storage services. But while building that first version of the service, the team quickly realized that all of the APIs it was trying to work with were quite different from each other, which made their integration complex and time-consuming. Based on this experience, the team then decided to create a simpler solution for developers faced with the same challenge. Sun wasn’t quite ready to call this a pivot, so he settled on calling it a “fast-tracked evolution.” The Berkeley, Calif.-based company now has eight full-time and five half-time developers. As Sun told me, what often happens today is that developers only integrate a single storage service into their apps — often Dropbox — because it’s too hard to build integrations with a wide range of services. Even though SugarSync has millions of paying customers, for example, very few third-party services actually support it. The new API quietly launched a month ago and Sun told me today, over 2,200 developers signed up for the service within the first month of going live and today, over 2,500 businesses like National Geographic, Roche, BBVA and Twitter are using its products and services. In addition, Sun today announced exclusive partnerships with Barracuda, Bitcasa, Citrix and Egnyte. “Working with Kloudless enables developers to innovate more quickly on applications that work with Bitcasa,” says Jon Chang, Director of Partner Programs at Bitcasa.”This is valuable for developers and our platform ecosystem.” Premium plans for the API start at $15 per month, but to celebrate today’s launch — and Kloudless’ return to the Disrupt stage — the team is giving 100 TechCrunch readers $250 in credit for using the service. All you have to do is sign up for Kloudless using . |
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg Talks Funding, Investing And The Future Of WordPress | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | CEO today took the stage at for a wide-ranging chat with our co-editor Alexia Tsotsis. During the conversation, he touched upon everything from raising the company’s latest funding round to the future of WordPress’ backend interface. Talking about WordPress’ $160 million funding round — which the company announced earlier this week — Mullenweg noted that even he himself didn’t know what to do with this much money for open source software. When investors asked him, he said, he didn’t really come up with a good answer, either. What he does know, however, is that he wants WordPress to run an even larger chunk of the web going forward. “We still have 70 percent of the web to go,” he said. “The software could be a lot better,” he admitted. With more users moving to touch, he especially stressed that WordPress needs a better interface for touch. Mullenweg, who regularly drives through San Francisco in his 1998 Chevy Lumina despite the fact that he owns the majority of Automattic, deflected any questions about him becoming a billionaire. “I don’t think that anybody should count,” he said. As an investor himself, Mullenweg said that he doesn’t really have a strong investment thesis. Instead, he invests in the products he uses himself and open-source applications and marketplaces. He also seems to have a strong interest in e-commerce and even argued that if he were starting a business today that wasn’t a content-centric company, he would probably look into building an open-source e-commerce platform. [gallery ids="999726,999727,999728,999732,999731,999730,999729,999733,999735,999736,999737"] As far as competition like Medium, which is getting quite a bit of mind share lately, Mullenweg doesn’t seem all too concerned. “Their editor interface is great,” he said. “But I think we can do a next version of it.” He also noted that even as many publications now create their own content management systems, those companies are content companies and don’t spend all of their day thinking about how to make their content management systems better. “We think about how to make WordPress better all day,” he told the audience. “We do try to strive for excellency.” While he wouldn’t say much about what’s next for WordPress specifically, he did point at a project called “ ,” which is a major rewrite of the WordPress backend and editing interface. He also hinted that the iOS 8 editing tools will allow the company to provide a mobile interface that is “much, much better.” Besides mobile, the company also plans to focus on Jetpack — its tool for bringing cloud-hosted features from WordPress.com to self-hosted WordPress blogs. Indeed, he believes that as cloud providers get better, more people will host their own WordPress sites. While WordPress.com hosts 50 percent of all WordPress sites today, he believes that number could be as small as 5 percent in a few years. |
Knotable Hopes Its Alpha Will Fix The Email Headache | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | Email, email, email. It’s the bane of our life but it’s also incredibly necessary. But out of the hundreds of emails you might get a day, perhaps only 25 are actually really, really important to you. These are the conversations that you look out for, nurture and really put a lot of effort into. They are key projects. But email gets in the way. You have to send multiple replies, you have the cut and paste and re-edit in order to get your information across. And it’s a huge, time-consuming issue. Many startups have tried to table this, perhaps by reinvention the clients or doing something weird with threading. Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, , a new entrant thinks it has the answer. And they say they’ve actually been working on this for a year. They are starting alpha signups today and folks who say they saw Knotable on TechCrunch and promise to help make something great will get invited early. So how? With you log in and get a username. When you are in your normal email client and you want to break out an email conversation into a thing on knowable, you start a ‘Pad’ by moving a thread from email through the Chrome extension or tagging in Gmail. You do this via three ways: you’ll cc Knotable or connect Gmail or people just reply on their email into your replies. In Knotable you can edit stuff, add people, highlight key points, drop in content, and use actions that do more than words would do in email. You can email create a checklist, a deadline or get people to vote. But it’s important to note that while YOU may be using Knotable, the person you are interacting with does NOT have to be on the platform. All they see are your email replies sent from inside Knotable. But if they want to super-charge their interactions, they can also join. That’s important for those who just want to use email. What are the key differentiators between them and other players? Well, this is not chat, IM, slack, IRC, Yammer, etc. It’s also not project management like MS Project, Basecamp. It’s also not better “email” like Mailbox, Gmail, Yesware or Streak. Google Wave is perhaps the closest analogy, though, frankly I could never work our Wave, and Knotable seems way easier. Co-founders Amol Sarva and Edward Shenderovich (also investor and chairman) say that in the same way that Gmail transformed our experience with email by taking it from individual messages to conversations, Knotable takes conversations further, into shared spaces. You can then share information across spaces, merge and split things, clean up, comment on stuff, add deadlines, checklists and all kinds of apps. Think dropbox for key threads. Other things like files, or meetings, or professional contacts which you might move out to dropbox or calendar or Linkedin Knotable works like this. It was founded by Amol Sarva (CEO and cofounder of Knotable, and VirginMobile USA and Peek, the simple smartphone, and advisor to Fon) with the help of Edward Shenderovich (Chairman of Knotable, founder of Kite Ventures and formerly head of strategic development at SUP/Livejournal). I’m told the platform was inspired by a few sessions with Stepan Pachikov, then a bit too much vodka at the Russian Samovar with Edward and Amol. The company has raised $1m from investors and customers. Investors including Bloomberg Beta, Tom Glocer, Masoud Kamali and customer including the newly public 2U. Advisory group is a good group from New York: Anil Dash, Khoi Vinh, Ross Mayfield from Slide and Socialtext, Lars Kluge ex-CTO of Kitchensurfing, and Andrew Rasiej from NYTM. https://vimeo.com/94070332 |
Facebook Is Down For Many | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | Facebook’s website is down for many. The voluminous , and , are pretty plain: For many, Facebook is not working at the moment. Young services are infamous for having extensive outages. Twitter, for one, when small, was down chronically. Facebook going down, given how mature it is as a platform and public company, is a larger issue. Developers take heart, however, as the Facebook Platform : I’ve reached out to Facebook for context as to what caused the downtime. The issue is keeping many from logging into their accounts, them being marked as “temporarily unavailable.” It appears that someone in Menlo Park isn’t having a very good Friday. |
Marissa Mayer Explains Why Yahoo Is Undervalued | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | On stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, Yahoo CEO pushed against the narrative that Yahoo is worth nothing. The company has a market capitalization in the tens of billions, but it’s been pointed out that if you add up the value of its stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba, the company could be valued at something approaching zero. Asked by TechCrunch curmudgeon-emeritus Michael Arrington if she agreed with that analysis, Mayer, unsurprisingly, did not. Stating that the numbers are for investors to sort through, she indicated optimism in the core of Yahoo, and argued that Yahoo is undervalued. Is that reasonable? Perhaps. Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba is . That figure could go up depending on how Alibaba prices its IPO. Yahoo’s Yahoo Japan stake is worth around $9 billion. Yahoo’s total market cap is $34.4 billion today. (Of course, Yahoo will have a if it sells those shares. So, the actual value of the investments should be mentally slimmed by that margin.) In her early remarks, Mayer spoke warmly of the company she helms, stating that the company is now “executing” better, and is operating more strongly than in the past. She said that she was surprised at how many talented people were on staff when she arrived. The lingering question with her strategy as CEO to pursue mobile doggedly will produce financial momentum, is starting to become answered in the affirmative: Yahoo’s last quarter’s earnings showed a — ex-TAC revenue, of course — on a year-over-year basis, partially on the back of 430 million mobile monthly active users. One time event or start of a trend we can’t be sure yet as that history hasn’t yet been written. It’s fair to say that if Mayer is correct in her vision, and the ship is starting to turn, Yahoo could in fact be quite undervalued. It’s always odd for a company to be valued at less than its cash and equivalents position when its business is profitable, something that could occur if its market cap remains roughly flat and Alibaba picks up momentum once public. Or put another way, it’s becoming harder to argue that the core parts of Yahoo are worthy of having negative market cap value. Yahoo is down more than 6 percent in regular trading, joining a that have taken a beating today. [gallery ids="999751,999806,999805,999804,999803,999802,999787,999784,999783,999767,999766,999765,999764,999763,999762,999756,999755,999754,999753,999752"] |
As Mobile Roars Ahead, It’s Time To Finally Admit The Web Is Dying | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | While have been heated, few commentators seem to be targeting their invective at the real underlying bubble: the World Wide Web itself is crumbling. Like any outmoded technology, the Web is rapidly losing users as it fails to adapt to disruption from mobile apps and continues to perform poorly – despite incredible optimization efforts – due to a bloated software architecture built of hacks on top of hacks. It had an unbelievable 25-year run, but I think it’s time to admit that the product is reaching its last throes. Just to be clear what we are discussing, is a collection of protocols (namely, HTTP) and hyperlinked documents (built using HTML) that allow users to easily produce and consume content. Since HTTP is a standardized protocol and HTML is a markup language, the Web is platform-agnostic and usable on any device that can connect to the Internet. A key result of this design is unprecedented openness – through hyperlinks, users can connect their content to any other page without seeking permission. Beginning in the early 1990s, this system would transform the world for the next 15 years, becoming the key vehicle for information and content dissemination across the globe. But as demands increased for quality, security, and control, the Web started to buckle. Its incredible growth forced it to expand far beyond the designs of its technical specifications into areas like asynchronous server communications and local data storage. As smart devices arrived at the end of the last decade, it became increasingly clear that the Web had found its competitor. And then it lost. Here is a startling fact: for all but the most mundane applications, it is easier today to create a rich application using XCode or Eclipse than it is to develop a comparable app on the Web. With the libraries offered by iOS and Android, software engineers have extensive standardized resources to build great experiences for users, and both platforms have reached sufficient maturity that documentation is plentiful and APIs are fairly consistent. The Web has tried to compete with the “mobile web” concept, but like so many responses to technology disruption, this one seems too little, too late. Building an engaging application with HTML5 on mobile is unbelievably challenging, even with a host of libraries downloaded from GitHub to simplify the process. Mozilla’s expansion into the space is a decent start, but with on their smartphones than on the Web through a PC, such efforts are becoming moot. Even if you get a mobile web application running, its performance will pale in comparison to natively run, compiled code. , mobile web apps have little hope of ever competing since mobile hardware is fundamentally resource-constrained, and JavaScript’s interpretive nature can never be optimized to match native performance. From the user’s perspective, compiled apps are easier to discover, seem more natural, and perform better. It’s truly a sad moment, given that we are sacrificing so much of the Web’s best qualities for proprietary native apps. There is no way to construct URLs to apps, nor any method to hyperlink to specific content within an app container, a concept called “deep linking.” New libraries are harder to build given the closed nature of the iOS platform, and . That means source code for apps isn’t visible for modification or improvement, deeply cutting down on the speed on which new techniques are propagated across the development community. In short, independent developers are being harmed in the race to ensure that the largest enterprises can control their brand’s online experience. Openness could have been the key competitive angle for the Web. Yet the stories over the past two years about the NSA’s Internet surveillance program have completely undermined that argument for consumers. Now, with the potential of the FCC gutting its net neutrality policy, even the ability to equally access information online is at risk. To a degree, we only have ourselves to blame. When websites started blocking links connecting to their content and companies began walling off more of their data to non-members, the development community became instrumental in making openness an empty phrase. While the Web may be dying, its core objectives live on. I remember when my family bought our first modem. It was 28.8kbps if I recall, and the Internet back then was deeply confusing. We bought a book which listed all the major websites, since search engines were still embryonic. It was a simpler time. Table HTML tags were the only means for laying out webpages, as . Given the speed of the modems back then, the Internet was mostly textual, with a design aesthetic that was creatively chaotic if not the most usable. It was inviting and open. We need to return to this kind of world again, and the only way we are going to get there is to rebuild our stack from the bottom. In short, we need a literal “Web 2.0,” a new edition that brings back some of the critical features that have been removed in our race to build better Internet applications. What would a new Web look like? For one, it would make very different assumptions about users and their habits. It would assume multiple devices and a cloud-based infrastructure, and so it would handle synchronization services fundamentally as part of its protocols. It would assume two-way communications between the client and the server and thus could natively handle push communications. It would simultaneously have better facilities for handling identity online, while also providing better anonymity. Like the expansion of the United States to the West, the Web started as a world with an open mindset and local, flexible rules. Over time, fences appeared, property was divvied up, and society became more process-driven to protect the property people already had rather than to ensure the best possible development of the future. For the internet to evolve, we need to move away from the technologies that are slowly degrading and infantilizing our experience, and strike a new path toward a world where the Internet once again is open and free. |
Manilla, The Hearst-Backed Service For Managing Bills, Is Shutting Down On July 1 | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | Account management startup says that it will be shutting down on July 1. We received several tips about the shutdown today, then when I visited the site and tried to sign up, I was directed to , which says that the service will continue to operate as normal until June 30. After that, users will no longer be able to upload new documents, and it will not retrieve any new data, though documents will still be stored on and downloadable from Manillauntil September 30. “This was a hard decision given that, over the past three years, Manilla has won many awards and has been well supported by its valued user base but was unable to achieve the scale necessary to make the economics of the business viable,” the company wrote. Manilla in February 2011 with the promise of giving users a single website where they can pay their bills and manage their accounts (and access them on mobile apps as well). The service . Manilla also partnered with AOL, which owns TechCrunch, to last year. The company said that all the account credentials that users had entered into Manilla (so that it could connect to other services) will be deleted on July 1, as will all other data aside from un-downloaded documents. |
Ask A VC: Google Ventures’ Rich Miner On Android Growth And More | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, Google Ventures’ Rich Miner joined us in the studio to talk about Android’s massive growth, and more. Miner, who was the co-founder of Android and helped lead the development of the Android platform and ecosystem at Google following the acquisition, talked about his view on “alternative” Android outgrowths, app discovery, and much more. Check out our interview with Miner above. |
10 Senators Blast FCC-Proposed Internet ‘Fast Lane’ Net Neutrality Rules | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | Ten U.S. Senators, including Sens. Wyden, Warren, Franken, and Booker, today to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in opposition to his proposed rules-changes to net neutrality that would create so-called Internet ‘fast lanes.’ As we’ve covered a half-dozen times, the proposal cuts at the heart of net neutrality’s bent on non-discrimination, by allowing by allowing preferential throttling of internet traffic. This distorts the market. The senators seem to completely understand this. Their letter addresses the proper concerns and, eloquently, pushes back against the narrative that Wheeler himself has continued to advance. It’s worth noting that several FCC commissioners have called for at least a delay of the vote on the changes, which could take place on May 15th. So, we’re racing towards the deadline here. Here are the key paragraphs from the letter: The first paragraphs deal well with the core issue at hand, paid prioritization, while the last segment elides the validity of peering agreements by which ISPs can elicit fees from content companies for access to their network. Netflix has written in opposition to peering agreements, precisely at the same time as it has signed two of them. In its view, ‘weak’ net neutrality preserves pack non-discrimination, while ‘strong’ net neutrality would also ban peering agreements. The above letter certainly amps the pressure on Chairman Wheeler to recant his bent to vote as quickly as possible on the rules. Wagering a guess: If the vote is delayed, the rules as so-far detailed won’t pass. It’s taken some time, but the noise of the pushback has finally reached the tenor and strength required to cause change. You and I don’t have squat for power, but a senator does, and ten in unison is more than slightly noticeable. |
Jawbone’s Newest Investor Is Rizvi Traverse | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | Back in February, that Jawbone was nearly finished raising a $250 million round of funding led by , the investment firm that has backed Twitter, Square, Flipboard and a number of others of late. While Jawbone’s CEO and founder Hosain Rahman declined to comment on the round on stage at Disrupt NY this past week, he did reveal in the interview below that Rizvi Traverse is now an investor in the company. The the entire round is not yet closed (apart from the amount from Rizvi Traverse), because it is a rolling close, sources tell us, but we’re hearing that Rizvi Traverse Management’s co-founder Suhail Rizvi is joining the company’s board. Similar to the February report from Re/code’s Kara Swisher, we’ve also heard from sources that the round is in the $300 million range and the valuation is around $3.3 billion. Our sources say that there are multiple parties are showing interest in the round, including top tier investors from various asset classes (early stage as well as late stage, and public company investors). We also hear that Jawbone is considering taking more than $300 million in funding because of the interest. Not counting this recent round, Jawbone has raised more than $275 million in venture capital, along with $100 million in debt and equity financing. A new round of funding would certainly give Jawbone the financial capital to continue to go deep on its fitness tracker, the UP, as well as double down on its connected speaker, the Jambox; and potentially expand to new hardware and software products. During our conversation this past week, Rahman talked a lot about how he thinks the future of connected wearables is to allow a user to interact with their connected devices and connected homes. “Tomorrow is all about more information, more signals, more understanding of yourself, but then taking all of that and really crunching it,” he said. “Taking all that data, contextualizing it for the use and turning it that into understanding which leads to data [is the goal].” We contacted Jawbone, who declined to comment on the specifics of the funding. |
Gillmor Gang Live 05.09.14 | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | – Robert Scoble, Josh Miller, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. |
PrintToPeer Networks Your 3D Printer So You Can Build Your Own Bot Farm | John Biggs | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | Calgary-based is a crowdfunded project aimed at networking open-source and commercial 3D printers in one location or around the world, thereby allowing users to send jobs to distant printers. It’s not something you’d think you’d need, but if you harken back to the old days of central laser printers, you can understand the value of having one expensive, high-maintenance printer queuing jobs in some basement rather than placing a power-hungry printer on every desk. Founded by twenty-somethings Tom Bielecki, James Thorne, and Kaz Walker, the company is part of the GrowLab accelerator in Vancouver. The system uses a Raspberry Pi to send jobs to the printer. “All you really do is attach the Raspberry Pi to the 3D printer via USB and it works,” said Bielecki. “3D printers are just too difficult and slow to use, so we knew that by making it easier this technology could be accessible to anyone and people would print more often. We’re big fans of automation and abstraction, so fixing fragmentation in 3D printing with a common platform lets us–as software developers–start to build apps with real-world uses. We really can’t wait to see how developers use the API to bring tangible experiences and rewards to their software,” he said. The platform works with Makerbot and Marlin 3D compatible printers and allows you to send STL object files, the common file format used by most printers, to the Raspberry Pis. The system then slices the object and sends it out to the printer. A printer manager shows which jobs are printing now and you can set it up to send notifications when each print is done. The system also supports remote camera viewing of print jobs. As a 3D printer owner who does not relish the inevitable trek up my stairs just to confirm if a print has finished, those features alone are worth the price. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eDw8PLPJuYY] PrintToPeer will be an open-source project but you can buy a Raspberry Pi, camera, and the software on an SD card for $140. The company is allowing They are looking for $15,000. “There are several companies locking down 3D printing with DRM and walled gardens, but these tactics are just plain bad for consumers. Customer lock-in comes from a fear that if you give users a choice they will abandon your platform, but that’s what drives us to innovate, and to have a great user experience,” said Bielecki. “3D printer software has been neglected while everyone focused on 3D printer hardware. It’s really painful to use. And with 3D printers coming into schools, it’s never been more important than to share the 3D printers on a network.” |
Monegraph Uses Bitcoin Tech So Internet Artists Can Establish “Original” Copies Of Their Work | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | People don’t want to buy copies of art, they want the original. And that’s been a huge problem for artists who create digital works that are easily copied. No scarcity means no market, so artists can’t make ends meet. But , short for “monetized graphics”, uses cryptography to bring meatspace scarcity to online art. Here’s how Monegraph works. Artists can visit the Monegraph site and sign in with Twitter. Then They submit the URL of a digital image they’ve created. In return they receive a blockchain key and value they can store in a NameCoin wallet, similar to how they would store bitcoin. This is their digital deed, a unique claim of ownership to the piece of art. If someone else submits the same image, Monegraph detects that it’s already been claimed. Monegraph also tweets out an announcement of the ownership to commit it to public record. Once a creator watermarks an instance of a digital art piece as the original, they can then share copies however they want. The piece can be redistributed or remixed, and the artist can watch as it takes its own viral course knowing they haven’t lost control. If they wish to sell the piece and the rights to it, they can sign the Monegraph deed over to a buyer. Monegraph was originally created for the Rhizom Seven On Seven conference. In that sense, it’s as much a piece of art itself as it is an artist’s tool. Below you can watch the video of Monegraph’s creators and demoing the technology at this week’s TechCrunch Disrupt NY conference. When oil painters sell their work, the value proposition to the buyer is clear. They’re purchasing the expression itself. There is no other copy. Someone could photograph the painting, but the buyer owns the source. Ideally, Monegraph could equip digital artists with a similar value proposition. “Sure, people are copying and sharing my image all over the web, but you can own the original.” Actually convincing the public or the art buyers that owning the cryptographic key to a digital piece’s deed actually means they own the artwork may be more difficult. Standard Creative co-founder and meme artist tells me “ Digital art canvas and gallery startup ‘s co-founder Zach Verdin agrees the idea of Monegraph is important, but contends it might not suddenly make creators wealthy. “Digital artists make most of their money working for brands, and ad agencies, so the space where digital artists can make money on their own, and for themselves, is still relevantly nascent.” With time, though, we’ve seen other mediums like film and music grow to have enormous industries built around their intellectual property rights. Monegraph could empower tomorrow’s meme artists to at least receive the credit they deserve while still using free Internet distribution to delight the world at large. |
This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: Disrupt Hardware Rocks Our Socks | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | This week, TechCrunch was consumed by Disrupt NY 2014. It was an amazing week, and made even better by the appearance of three hardware companies in our Disrupt Battlefield finals. , an inkjet printer hack that prints out makeup, wowed the audience. ISI Technology reinvented the water heater with the , and focused on making hearing enhancement devices accessible to everyone. We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the featuring , , and . Have a good Friday, everybody!
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Gearing Up To Raise More Capital, TrackVia Is On Pace For 100% Revenue Growth In 2014 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | After booking 50% revenue growth in 2013, is looking to grow its top line 100% in 2014. The company is on track to meet that benchmark, it told TechCrunch. is an interesting company, selling a product that lets companies quickly build mobile applications for their employees to use. Instead of hiring an application development team internally, TrackVia helps firms quickly build and deploy apps plugged into their information streams, for around $25 per-seat, per-month. TechCrunch has covered the company throughout its earlier phases, including its and rounds of capital. But now the company is worth another look, given its place inside the larger SaaS world. After that sell software to other businesses, it appears that the market is taking a moment to breathe. That shouldn’t impact TrackVia, given that it doesn’t plan to raise more capital until later this year, and, as it told TechCrunch over several interviews, only wants to raise around $15 million for its Series C. Why so little? In the era of for companies selling software as a service to large companies, TrackVia could likely pick up more if it wanted to. The firm, however, indicated that $15 million or so is their sweet spot when it comes to their needs and their valuation, and through obvious implication, their current . The new capital, when raised, will be aimed mostly at growth, with around 60 to 70% of the funds mentally earmarked for sales and marketing according to the firm. It’s actually to its benefit that TrackVia is looking to raise in the third or fourth quarter. Given , it might be able to command a higher valuation once the public markets untangle themselves. Dropbox, another company that vends SaaS products to large companies, , giving it more time if it wants before it goes public. TrackVia targets companies with between 100 and 1,000 users, the market spot where its offerings make the most sense. Smaller firms likely don’t need in-house mobile apps, and at some point the economies of scale work against a per-seat deal when you could hire your own team. The average company using TrackVia builds 3 apps. The company is not profitable. In a written comment, TrackVia indicated the following: “We’re a growth-based, SaaS business with industry-leading SaaS metrics, which means we’re investing heavily in our growth and expansion. As they say, we’re hitting the ‘gas pedal.” That’s the current norm. Other similar companies looking to quickly grow are not profitable. Some are seeing the end of the tunnel, however, such as Egnyte, which by the fourth quarter. The new question is when do you ease up on the “gas pedal” and book profits? I was recently told the old paradigm required a firm to accrete 8 quarters of profits before it could go public. That’s no longer the case, and we’re still writing the new rules of business engagement. TrackVia likely hasn’t yet hit its growth apex on a dollar-rate basis. How efficient TrackVia can be with its next round will be interesting. What sort of ROI it can derive from the new dollars, across several time frames, will help us better understand SaaS itself. Box for its losses, managing to spend more money on marketing than it brought in in revenue. SaaS advocates poo-poo such concerns, pointing out that spending heavily to purchase — essentially — annual recurring revenue (ARR) is more efficient than it looks using a GAAP microscope. Maybe. With TrackVia, it’ll be interesting to see how it deploys future capital, and how quickly. The company told TechCrunch that it has no thoughts on being acquired or going public. It’s very premature for the latter, certainly, but it’s not something that the company hasn’t thought about, I’d wager. (Egnyte has been about this, disclosing its revenues and plans to go public in 2015. Nexmo has also been in discussing the financial metrics of its business.) Regarding its product, TrackVia is looking to improve its integration points with other data sources to help its customers build more useful applications. TrackVia isn’t too interested in pursuing professional services as a large part of its revenue. The company told TechCrunch in a sit-down interview that if “it doesn’t lead to recurring revenue, you shouldn’t do professional services.” The company would, with some established customers, be willing to lend a hand however, it indicated. A final thought: who’s scared of TrackVia? Your filled-in blanks is their potential acquirer list. |
Fab’s Future Could Be Decided In The Coming Weeks | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | Design-focused e-commerce startup has fallen on hard times over the last year, going through and along the way. The company has raised from investors that include Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, Mayfield Fund, Atomico, Menlo Ventures, and others. But it’s gone through a violent boom-and-bust cycle, as it has pivoted multiple times — most recently from . According to our sources, its product and business roadmap could change yet again, as key executives and the board are holding meetings over the next few weeks that could determine the company’s future. Next week, Fab CEO Jason Goldberg is expected to have several all-day meetings with senior members of his staff, which has been dubbed the “J+ Team.” That group consists of EVP of Operations John Wu, SVP of Design Kiel Mead, SVP & General Counsel Fabio Silva, SVP of E-Commerce & Marketing Alex Do, SVP of Product Eric Price, GM of Soft Home/Home Essentials & SVP of Licensing and Wholesale Jerry Haggerty, SVP of Product Design Evan Clabots, General Manager of Personal Accessories Renee Wong, VP & General Manager of Hard Goods Ian Hardman, Vice President of Global Logistics and Customer Support Jacob Letendre, VP People and Culture Renee Harper-Lee, VP of People Operations Martin Paul, Senior Director, Business Intelligence & Analytics Larry Cohen, and Director of Financial Planning Analysis Pierre Coker. The meetings, which are on Goldberg’s calendar from 9-5 on Tuesday through Friday, follow a previous round of discussions Goldberg had with the J+ Team a few weeks ago. Afterward, word leaked out that the company . According to one source, Goldberg and team are currently contemplating several different operating plans for Fab. The meetings are being held to narrow down those plans, which Goldberg could present to the company’s board of directors the following week. Sources say Fab will likely focus more on its own private-label products, continuing to move away from third-party partnerships and sales. It’ll sell more Fab-branded home goods, including furniture, textiles, and home accents. ( An earlier version of this story said Fab would focus exclusively on private-label products, but another source tells us that Fab would continue to work with third-party vendors.) As a result, the company could close or rent out its U.S. warehouse to a third party. Fab plans to unveil a number of these new products at a press event on May 15, even as key executives are holding internal meetings that could determine the company’s future. It’s important to note that Fab’s strategic direction has yet to be finalized. That said, we’ve heard from multiple people that whatever is decided, U.S. operations are likely to be drastically reduced in the process. Sources tell us the company could downsize to as few as 20-40 employees in its New York headquarters. At an internal meeting last week, Goldberg told staff members that nothing had been confirmed but that the company was making the strategic decisions necessary to extend its runway through 2017. In the meantime, we’ve heard buyers and planners have been taken off any projects that extend beyond June 2014, which has led many to assume that their categories will soon be axed. There’s a chance that will happen… but ultimately it will be up to the board to decide. A representative from Fab declined to comment for this story. |
Despite Furor, Proposed Net Neutrality Changes Appear Headed For A Vote | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | The rising furor regarding proposed changes to net neutrality has so far a vote next week on proposed new Open Internet rules at the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) monthly meeting on May 15th. Several FCC commissioners have for the proposals in question, even . It didn’t work. At question is the idea to allow ISPs to sell faster access to consumers to companies that have the cash. This would create a ‘ ‘ for some content, rebalancing the market away from the small the new and the poor, in favor of incumbents and ISPs. FCC Chairman has repeatedly indicated that his concept wouldn’t allow ISPs to treat normal content poorly, meaning that the ‘normal’ Internet experience for firms that couldn’t afford for better service . However, you can easily track the profit incentive for ISPs, and thus deduce that they would be directly rewarded for helping the large by delaying investment in the small — allowing for pay-to-play fast lanes is in fact a . Are we being alarmist? After more than 100 tech companies sent a letter to the FCC in opposition to the proposal, the Huffington Post came up with : “Basically Every Big Internet Firm Signs Letter Against FCC’s Net Neutrality Plan.” Correct. TechCrunch spoke to , former entrepreneur and current venture capitalist with , about Chairman Wheeler’s proposals. He responded with a written comment: The latest proposal from the FCC on net neutrality now adds another impediment to the already challenging fund-raising environment for digital media startups. I don’t know if either of my startups, Spinner and Crackle, would have successfully raised funding or more importantly been viable businesses if this new proposal had been implemented then. Other venture capitalists have , indicating that the FCC’s decision could have a material, and immediate impact on investment in companies that would be put at a disadvantage if the proposed rules were put into place. That sounds tautological, but sometime we can allow tautology to cover us to point out obvious truths. (What we’re saying here — unironically — is that in economics and market economies, incentives matter. Groundbreaking, I know. Someone alert Piketty.) I spoke to another venture capitalist on the condition of anonymity who indicated that the proposed rules wouldn’t harm enterprise-level companies, but would impact high-bandwidth companies, and especially video-facing firms. Again, hardly surprising, but good to repeat out loud. It isn’t clear how the vote will go. Public comment is now over. As : “Due to the FCC’s transparency rules, the agency must stop accepting public comments on an item one week before that item is set to be discussed at an open meeting.” But sustained public comment is always impossible to ignore, even if heard through unofficial channels. The set of rules proposed by Chairman Wheeler would change the framework of the Internet. This vote matters. |
Media Temple Expands Its WordPress Hosting Features With Backup Service And Git Integration | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | more than 20% of websites, and given this huge market, it’s no surprise that the number of specialized hosting services for WordPress sites also continues to grow. Media Temple is one of the latest companies to join the fray, launching its just . Today, it’s expanding this service with a number of new features, including new backup and restoration tools, Git integration and a new WP theme the company exclusively commissioned for its service. Media Temple’s backups service will allow customers to restore snapshots from any of the last 30 days. It’s worth mentioning that Automattic, the parent company behind the , also offers for self-hosted sites. Plans for that service start at $5/month for daily backups and a 30-day backup archive. Having a built-in solution, however, makes life a bit easier for Media Temple users and allows the company to compete with other dedicated WordPress hosting services like which also often offer similar tools out of the box. Besides the Git integration for easy version control, Media Temple now also allows users full remote server access via SSH for their WordPress sites. The new theme, the company tells me, was designed with photographers in mind. This is Media Temple’s second exclusive WordPress theme. Another small but useful feature the company is quietly launching next Monday is the ability to buy WordPress hosting without the need to attach a domain name to them. This, the company says, it meant to give professional website builders more flexibility. http://player.vimeo.com/video/94532811 |
Style-Focused Community And Shopping Service Polyvore Arrives On Android | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | , the style-focused community whose members of outfits and accessories to Pinterest, has now arrived on Android. The app follows the company’s by roughly a year and a half, indicating, perhaps, its largely female user base’s preference for iPhone and iPad when working with their fashion creations. The company today sees 20 million uniques per month, and says that over 3 million of its members have since downloaded the iOS version of Polyvore. Despite the long delay in between mobile platform releases, the Android app is not quite feature complete with its iPhone counterpart. We’re told that while, for the most part, the features are the same on Android as on iOS, Polyvore had to prioritize some over others in order to “get the app in the hands of our users faster.” That means the company’s decision to finally address its Android user base was a more recent one, clearly. The new app does offer the key parts of the Polyvore experience, however, including the ability to discover creations from the community, swipe to browse through sets and products, “like” items that match your interest, build your own sets with an included Editor function, shop the styles you like, plus connect with friends and receive their updates. And the missing features are minor things – like, for example, you can’t put embellishments or backgrounds in the Editor when creating sets, and the search feature doesn’t let you search for members – that sort of thing. Though the company recently made the foray into with , the community has earned its reputation as a fashion community, and that today remains the service’s primary use case among its members, who are 77% female, based on what they’re sharing to Pinterest and elsewhere on the service. But the Android app will also allow members to put together beauty and room ideas, in addition to outfits. The new app is on Google Play. |
Dattch, The Dating App For Queer Women, Launches In LA | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | , the far more sophisticated version of Tinder aimed exclusively at queer women, is today launching in Los Angeles with some updated features. Dattch is currently operating in the UK and San Francisco, with New York next on the list. The app requires Facebook sign-in, verifying that only women are on the app. And unlike Grindr and Tinder that have a more flat, attraction-based approach to matching people, Dattch goes a bit more in-depth. Users can add as many photos to their profile as they want, and are encouraged to update it the same way they would on other social networks. When two users match, they are opened up to messaging. In January, Dattch tweaked one of the app’s main features, “Would You Rather?”. Originally, women who played Would You Rather? would be given two images of random things, like an ice cream cone or a slice of watermelon, and were told to choose between the two. Based on the answer, other women who shared interests would be surfaced as potential matches. After the update, the team got rid of the middle man, so to speak. Now Would You Rather? shows users two girls to choose from, and users who both choose each other are then allowed to start chatting. Since switching up the feature in January, Dattch users have played more than 150,000 times. Dattch has plans to continue expanding in the U.S., with New York next on the list. However, Dattch promises to open up in any new market the day that they receive 2,000 requests for the app in that area. Dattch, based out of the UK, has raised $160k in funding, according to . To learn more about Dattch, head over . [gallery ids="1000533,1000532,1000531,1000530,1000529,1000528"] |
Netflix Learns From Past Mistakes, Increases Prices The Right Way | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | When you make a really big mistake, the best possible outcome is that you learn from it and never make it again. It would seem Netflix has done that, based on sent out Friday about the company’s pricing plan. The price of the streaming service is going from $7.99 to $8.99 for new customers, but existing Netflix subscribers will stay at the $8 price point for the next two years. The of its service, things weren’t handled quite so well. Originally, Netflix’s entire service — including streaming and DVD rental — were all under one umbrella. The whole package cost $9.99. Then, in 2011, as the company’s instant library grew in popularity and size, Netflix unbundled the services. Streaming users would pay $7.99, and DVD renters would also pay $7.99. But if you wanted both, you suddenly went from paying $10/month to paying $16/month, a 60 percent price hike. The company’s explanation of this was unclear and poorly executed, and the move resulted in from which it took a while to recover from. Here’s to clear communication and rewarding brand loyalty! Well done, Netflix. [via ] |
ZTE Is Selling The $99 Open C Firefox Phone Exclusively On Ebay | John Biggs | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | If you’re into open source, unlocked phones that cost less than a month of phone service, take note. Manufacturer ZTE is selling their first Firefox OS phone on , a price that should make it a great choice for folks looking for a solid phone with a solid pedigree and an actually open OS. Preceded by the original , released in the U.S. last August, the new Open C features a slight spec bump and is $20 more than the original Open. The specs are still pretty chintzy. The 3-megapixel camera and 1.2Ghz processor are poky at best and it comes with 4GB of on-board memory which is enough for a few apps and maybe a Rush discography. The real draw is Firefox OS which is, unlike Android, a completely open-source solution. The OS is sort of a last gasp for Mozilla and, like the failed phone, has become a darling of the open source community. The Open C runs the latest which features adaptive app search (you type in “Cafe” and see apps that will help you find a cafe). It also has the features expected of any major smartphone OS. What is it missing? A license fee and Google’s own lockdown mentality that makes Android ostensibly open until manufacturers want to use the Google Play store or any of Android’s proprietary features. In China, where open source phones are popular but many Google services are locked down, Firefox OS makes perfect sense. And, at $99, it’s a bargain anywhere in the world. |
Intel Pays Up To $30M For A Personal Assistant Platform From Ginger Software | Ingrid Lunden | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | has Siri, and now has Ginger. The chipmaker has made one more acquisition to bolster its advanced computing and artificial intelligence holdings: it has purchased selected assets, and hired talent, from Israel’s in the area of natural language processing tools and applications. Those assets include a platform for third parties to create , for a price believed to be up to $30 million. Ginger Software, backed by investors like , will continue to operate as an independent business focusing on its remaining business: intelligent grammar and spell checking software. This is not the only change afoot at Ginger: the company recently saw its chairperson, Soffer Teeni, to head up Facebook Israel. Rumors of the deal were first reported by Hebrew publication , and now we have confirmed them directly with Ginger Software and Intel. “Intel acquired natural language processing tools and applications assets from Ginger. Along with the aforementioned assets, Intel also hired some Ginger engineers associated with this business,” a Ginger spokesperson told me. “On May 8, Intel acquired natural language processing tools and applications assets from Ginger Software, and it is hiring up to 16 engineers associated with this business,” an Intel spokesperson further elaborated. “We are not disclosing details about how Intel might use the Ginger Software technologies at this time and we are not disclosing terms of the deal. Please note – We’re acquiring the assets and engineering team associated with Ginger Software’s natural language processing tools and applications. We aren’t acquiring Ginger Software’s Grammar and Spell Checker.” Among the 16 that are going are Ginger’s founder, CEO and Chief Scientist of the Personal Assistant business of the company, . She is an NLP expert, and this is her fourth exit: among the others was a role as co-founder and CTO of the NLP company Agentics, which was acquired by Mercado Software. The group also includes natural language processing wiz , who was the VP for R&D of the Personal Assistant business. Breakstone, from what we understand, was also the first consultant hired to work on Summly — the summarizing app acquired by Yahoo, with its young founder Nick D’Aloisio now heading up Yahoo’s News Digest efforts. Karov explains the decision to split the business and sell the personal assistant part to Intel like this: “Ginger had two separate business units, each of them had a different technology, target market, and CEO (I was the CEO of both units until 6 months ago Maoz joined to manage the English as a Second Language, and I moved to manage the Personal Assistant only),” she says. “The first business – English as a second language was not for sale. It has a commercial consumer product with many mobile and desktop users, and our plan is to use the proceeds from the personal assistant asset sale in order to continue and improve our products, and scale up Ginger. We also plan a big release of a communication product for native English Speakers. The innovative NLP technology for sale was managed and developed by a separate team that I led.
We plan to continue and broaden the original business of Ginger and get to hundreds of millions of users. We don’t plan to sell the Ginger business.” As for the price, Calcalist pegged the price at between $20 million and $30 million. Later, tech blog put the price at between $10 million and $20 million. We’re continuing to dig and see if we can find out more on this front. The deal is an interesting one for Intel, in that it builds on other investments and acquisitions that the company has made into the area of advanced computing — a nebulous area that includes not only artificial intelligence and how users can interact with computing devices but new frontiers in what forms those computers may even take. Among the made by the company in the last seven years, several recent additions in this same vein include wearables company , gesture control specialist , and natural language processing company . It seems like the value of these kinds of acquisitions is two-fold for Intel: the IP can be used by the company in the development of chipsets for future generations of hardware where functions like these may be standard. But on the other hand, the company can also use the tech in itself as a service to sell to third parties (think here not of phones, but new ‘hardware’ like connected cars, home monitoring systems, and so on); perhaps even to use in products itself. With Apple yet (and perhaps never?) to release APIs for Siri-like services in apps, the idea of a really useful, working personal assistant platform open for anyone to create their own customised version of such a feature remains something of a holy grail. |
GE Buys Wurldtech To Beef Up Internet of Things Industrial Infrastructure Security | Ron Miller | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | This morning General Electric announced it had completed a deal to buy , a Vancouver-based cyber-security firm that protects big industrial sites like refineries and power plants from cyber attacks. GE VP and world technology head, Bill Ruh told me that they intend to leave Wurldtech as a wholly owned subsidiary. The newly purchased company will create security solutions for GE products while continuing to support other customers as well. Ruh says part of the motivation for the deal was to protect sensor networks increasingly being built into these systems from attack, but Wurldtech provides a broader security solution that protects important infrastructure like industrial grids and oil refineries from a variety of computer attacks. Wurldtech CEO Neil McDonnell told me they take a two-pronged approach to security. First, they do testing to discover vulnerabilities in the system and they certify sites that are secure. Secondly, they provide specific security solutions around a system such as a substation or pump. McDonnell said that part of the problem in these situations is that these are not IT people, so they don’t necessarily understand security from that perspective. That means these systems might not be patched on a regular basis as they would be inside an IT organization. GE’s Ruh said that they are calling this Operational Technology security as a way to differentiate it from traditional IT security. Rue explained as they began looking at this issue, they realized that these industrial infrastructure systems are vulnerable to cyber attack from a variety of angles. For instance, a wind turbine farm might be susceptible at the turbine, on the control systems across a wind farm or on the grid distributing the electricity. As these systems become much more intelligent, using software and sensors to help operators run them more efficiently, GE realized there was an ‘Internet of Things’ security angle here as well. Ruh said the same changes that have been having an impact on the consumer internet over the last decade are beginning to reach even the industrial world of manufacturing and infrastructure, and just as the internet changed how we distribute and monetize consumer goods like music and books, it will have a similar impact on the industrial area, as well. As Ruh explained this shift won’t change who builds jet engines or gas turbines, but lots of services and software will develop around how you manufacture, distribute, monetize and manage these larger systems. This is a foundational change for these industries from not using technology to suddenly becoming much more intelligent with sensors feeding big data to operators of these systems. Wurldtech gives them a way to sell cyber security services to these companies as they go through this transformation to these more intelligent, data-driven systems. GE did not announce a purchase price. |
null | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 5 | 7 | null |
Is Some Tech Too Addictive? | Nir Eyal | 2,014 | 5 | 31 | Addiction can be a difficult thing to see. From outward appearances, Dr. Zoe Chance looked fine. A professor at the Yale School of Management with a doctorate from Harvard, Chance’s pedigree made what she revealed in front of a crowded audience all the more shocking. “I’m coming clean today telling this story for the very first time in its raw ugly detail,” she said. “In March of 2012 … I purchased a device that would slowly begin to ruin my life.” At Yale, Chance teaches a class to future executives eager to know the secrets of changing consumer behavior to benefit their brands. The class is titled “Mastering Influence and Persuasion,” but as her confession revealed, Chance was not immune from manipulation herself. What began as a research project soon turned into a mindless compulsion. Chance admits she has a weak spot for games, at times, playing until it hurts. “I have had problems with video games,” Chance tells me. “Basically, I can’t have any video game on any computer or phone or anything that I own because the first day that I have it, I just stay up playing it until my eyes bleed.” But during her presentation, Chance was not confessing her addiction to a video game. She was admitting her dependency to something much more benign but which had nonetheless controlled her mind and body. “They market it as a ‘personal trainer in your pocket,'” Chance said. “No! It is Satan in your pocket.” Chance was referring to a pedometer. More specifically, the . Admittedly, having rabid users is not a problem most companies face. The much more common dilemma is the opposite: a lack of customer engagement. However, Dr. Chance’s story brings up an ethical dilemma for companies seeking to change user behavior — is there ever too much of a good thing? Although addiction is most often associated with physical dependencies and controlled substances, behavioral addictions can be just as powerful and destructive. Gambling addiction for example, haunts an Americans and is formally recognized in the . Behavioral addictions can wreak havoc on people’s lives and millions suffer from problems related to online gaming, pornography, and other digital dependencies. Even when companies build products intended to help their users (like a gamified pedometer) there is potential for abuse, which begs the question: What responsibilities do companies have to protect users from themselves? Should companies like Facebook and gaming apps take measures to counteract the addictive properties of their products? If so, how? Having written , I’m often asked about the and I believe it is time to take ethics seriously. The trouble is this: The attributes that make certain products engaging also make them potentially addictive. There is no way to separate the fun of gaming, for example, with its potential for abuse. Social media is exciting principally because it utilizes the same that make slot machines compelling. Spectator sports or television watching, enjoyed by billions of people, share common traits with the primary function of illicit drugs — they provide a portal to a different reality. If what we’re watching is engaging, we experience the high of being mentally elsewhere. For proof, just visit your local sports bar during a big game. Instead of watching the match, watch the people. Look at the fans’ faces. Watch as the flickering images on the screens transport them across the digital cables and satellite signals to a different place. During the most exciting parts of the game, when their eyes stare with laser intensity on what is about to happen, they’ll be in a state similar to what cultural anthropologist and MIT professor Natasha Dow Schüll calls, “the zone.” Though Schüll used the term to describe what drives gambling addicts, the zone defines the same exhilarating mental state experienced through other mediums. To be clear, games, spectator sports, and social media are wonderful things. Few of us, myself included, would want to live in a world without them. These forms of entertainment provide harmless fun for the vast majority of people who enjoy them. However, each also has a potential dark side. Dr. Chance’s experience with the Striiv pedometer provides a telling example. According to Striiv’s CEO, David Wang, the device is meant to help inactive people get moving by collecting points as they walk. Wearers of the pedometer use their points to build virtual worlds in the company’s Farmville-like app called “MyLand” but Wang admits some people, like Chance, go overboard. As with many obsessions, it was only a matter of time before Chance went too far. At the end of one particularly active day, Chance said she received a late-night notification from the app challenging her to walk a few flights of stairs. She accepted the challenge and marched quickly down and back up the steps leading to her basement. As soon as she completed the first challenge, she received another offer — walk four more flights and the app promised to triple her points. “Yes, of course! It’s a good deal!” Chance thought. That’s when Chance says she lost control. For the next two hours she walked the stairs to and from her basement like a fitness-crazed zombie. By two in the morning, she had climbed over 2,000 stairs — far surpassing the 1,576 steps to climb to the top of the Empire State Building. It wasn’t until the next morning that Chance felt the repercussions of what she had done. The Striiv spree left Chance with a painful hangover. The incessant jarring had strained her neck making normal walking painful and her Striiv-motivated fitness goals impossible. “When the neck injury happened I had to take a break,” Chance said. “Which allowed me to finally acknowledge what my husband had been saying for a while — that I had a problem.” Though Dr. Chance’s story reveals the power technologies have on people, the fact is most people do not get hooked. According to Wang, users walk the 25,000 daily steps Chance was logging. Like most potentially addictive technologies, the percentage of users who meet the of engaging in, “continued repetition of a behavior despite adverse consequences,” is very small. that relatively few people are susceptible to addiction and that even those who do get addicted quit their dependencies when they or social context. However, there are people who can not stop, even when they want to. The current thinking among technology companies is that too much is never enough. Limitless time scrolling Facebook feeds, hours of pinning on Pinterest, days spent leveling-up in online games — there are no bounds. In the name of personal responsibility, companies leave addicts alone, never interrupting their zone-state cocoons. While a laissez-faire customer relationship is the right approach for most users, when the user is addicted — no longer in control and wanting to stop but can’t — companies should intervene. Standing idly by while reaping the rewards of users abusing their product is no longer acceptable — it is exploitation. Thankfully, and for the first time, makers of potentially addictive technologies have the power to do something. Outside of consumer tech, companies making potentially addictive products can claim ignorance regarding who is abusing their products. Makers of alcoholic beverages for example, can throw up their hands and claim they have no idea who is an alcoholic. However, any company collecting user information can no longer take cover under the same excuse. Tech companies know exactly who their users are and how much time they are spending with their services. If they can hypertarget advertising, they can identify harmful abuse. In fact, some companies have already started limiting certain features to people who overuse their sites. , the world’s largest technical question and answer site, deprecates certain features to limit use. Jeff Atwood, the company’s co-founder, was designed to not only improve the quality of content on the site but also to protect susceptible users. “Programmers should be out there in the world creating things too,” Atwood writes, making the point that he wants StackOverflow to be a utility, not a mindless distraction. Though Dr. Chance says she was able to kick her behavioral addiction to the Striiv pedometer on her own, it took physical pain to help her realize she had lost control. “The blessing of the stairs episode was the neck injury.” It wasn’t long after she realized she had a problem that Chance decided to give up using the Striiv for good. She vowed to never use the pedometer again and mailed it to her sister far away in Massachusetts. When it comes to potentially addictive products, companies should not wait for users to harm themselves. Companies who know when a user is overusing their product have both an economic imperative and a social responsibility to identify addicts and intervene. Companies have an obligation to establish what I call a, “Use and Abuse Policy,” which sets certain triggers for intervention and helps users retake control. Of course, what constitutes abuse and how companies intervene are topics for further exploration, but the current status quo of doing nothing despite having access to personal usage data is unethical. Establishing some kind of upper limit helps ensure that users do not abuse the service and that companies do not abuse their users. What do you think? Should companies building potentially addictive products have a “Use and Abuse Policy”? What else can companies do to limit abuse of their products? |
After Expanding To Android, Addappt’s CEO Breaks Down Its Growth Plans | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 31 | Mrinal Desai, founder and CEO of , is betting that people need a better way to keep their cell phone contact information up to date. Addappt, a smartphone app — and — syncs contact information between users, allowing for individuals to remotely update their data on the phones of their friends. (For a more detailed dive into how Addappt works, .) It is a replacement for your normal contact experience, but becomes increasingly useful as contacts use it, as the service can only update information from those who use the product. I sat with with Desai to dig into why he built the tool, and what its chances are of blowing up. |
Two Dots, The Sequel To Betaworks’ Dots, Is A Beautiful Monster | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 5 | 31 | My highest score on Dots — the original Dots — is 414. I achieved this respectable, albeit relatively average, score about a year ago, just after Dots was first released. When I open up the app now, I never play for more than a few tries. I can never get anywhere close to 400. I can’t even get close to . Which brings me to , the latest generation of the betaworks-backed game that came out Thursday. Talking it over with our own Josh Constine, he called it a “skinned version of Candy Crush” and he isn’t far off. Rather than focus on a scoreboard style of game, Two Dots offers a levels-based game, meaning that you never get stuck trying to beat a high score (though you may eventually get stuck on a level). The Dots franchise ran into this “impenetrable ceiling” problem (I just made that up, roll with it) long ago, which is why the company released various game modes within the original Dots. Alongside the 60-second speed trial, where in you connect as many of the same-colored dots as possible, Dots also offered “Endless” (with no time limit), “Challenges” (letting you go head to head with your friends), and “Moves.” “Moves” is by far the most similar game mode to the new Two Dots game, where users are given a certain amount of moves with which to complete a number of goals. When you achieve all your puzzle goals in far fewer moves than you were given, you get three stars for that level, along with a numeric score. The same general principle of simply connecting same-colored dots still applies, and making a square still removes all dots of that color left on the board. However, with each new world come a new set of challenges that are totally unrelated to the original Dots. TwoDots introduces two characters, Amelia and Jacques, who travel from level to level with you accumulating rewards for every win. It’s cute, I guess, and gives the user something to attach itself to while traveling through the game. Remember, Two Dots was created to attract more long-lasting gamers. Only about a quarter of the original 20 million Dots downloads are still active. That said, I could probably do without the characters. They’re slightly random, especially coming from the clean white slate of the original Dots, and the only reason I know their names is because I read through the press kit. I also have a bit of a problem with the color of the Dots, as purple and burgundy are quite similar and thus frustrating. Still, the Dots team has some of the best game designers I know of, including Patrick Moberg and David Hohusen, and that shines through in Two Dots. It’s still a beautiful app, simply far less minimalist than the previous generation. In the first world, all seems familiar. Squares are better than not, but the same mechanics from Dots are still very present. There are blockades, and oddly shaped boards, but all is as it should be. The second world is different. The mission of the second world is to sink anchors which drop down into the board. In order to do this successfully in the required amount of moves, you have to learn a pretty difficult new skill, which is to “create a bomb.” An explanation of how to do this isn’t clear in the app, at least without digging for it, but you essentially have to create a square of same-colored dots a different colored dot. This creates a bomb, which takes out random dots nearby, Minesweeper-style. [gallery columns="5" ids="1010058,1010059,1010061,1010062,1010063"] Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an amazing gamer. I did ok at Dots, have enjoyed Bejeweled Blitz, Temple Run, Angry Birds… All the big casual games, I played casually. For me, Two Dots is a bit too difficult to enjoy casually. If you absolutely get stuck on a level and can’t figure out the new auto-power-up move, you lose a life. Lose five lives, you can’t play until your lives “regenerate” (which happens each twenty minutes). And just to reel you back in once you’ve had enough, Two Dots sends push notifications telling you about your new lives. In other words, unlike Dots, you essentially have to pay for power-ups or extra moves to continue trying if, like me, you fail repeatedly. You also lose a life just for restarting or quitting a level. Boo. The app is currently the top free app in 40 countries, including the U.S., and crossed the 1 million download mark in 36 hours. The app is also currently featured in the App Store as Best New Game. (Android fans, your version of the app is coming soon.) For me, and some of the folks at TechCrunch that I’ve talked to, Two Dots is a bit too frustrating to be casual. The original Dots was frustrating in its own way, as beating your high score seem to sometimes just come down to luck, until you realized practice kind of does make perfect. So even though it was hard to progress, it was still a simple time sink that you practiced at, mindlessly. Two Dots, constantly bringing new challenges into play, is anything but mindless. But maybe people who are less familiar with the original Dots, and come at it with a fresh perspective, will find it a bit easier. Or maybe I just haven’t played enough Candy Crush. You can download the app . |
Google Receives 12,000 Requests To Be Forgotten From Europeans On Day One | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 5 | 31 | Google has officially confirmed that it received 12,000 requests to be forgotten from EU citizens on the first day that it offered the ability to do so, according to a . The requests were submitted Friday, after for users to fill out in order to ask that search results related to their name be removed from Google’s listings. The European Court of Justice ruled earlier in May that Google had to comply with a Spanish man’s request to have search results related to his name and a foreclosure on a property removed, since the man had resolved the foreclosure matter and thus argued that it should be forgotten. Google then quickly promised that it would create a form, much like its copyright content takedown request, in order to comply with the ruling and provide other EU citizens the opportunity to make similar requests. Google says it will look at each request submitted individually to figure out whether it fits into the criteria put forth by the EU court before either complying with or denying the requests from private citizens. Should it comply, the search engine operator provided no exact timeline on how long it would take for links to be scrubbed. If this pace keeps up, Google could have to devote a lot of new resources to monitoring and assessing these requests, but it’s likely that the day one total is more of a peak than something that will become consistent over time. Even so, the decision, and the resulting change to Google results and its operation, could have significant long-term effects. |
You Have The Right To Manage Your Own Online Persona | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 5 | 31 | Kids today have pretty much had their entire lives on public display from the time their mother posted their first embryo shot on Facebook. And currently there’s no way in the US to erase yourself, embarrassments and all, online. But with the rise of anonymous apps, there is a way to separate who you want to be publicly from who you are and what you think about privately. This concept has at least reached the ears of European legislators. You see, what began with a Dublin cab driver posting a YouTube video of someone ditching on paying his cab fare became a landmark ruling in Europe earlier this May that gives individuals the right to erase what they don’t like displayed about themselves publicly online. The ruling requires Google to comply with individuals’ requests to erase links that they say violate their privacy. And it’s already recieved on just day one. In the first few days after the ruling in Europe, about 1,000 requests were made to take down certain links, over half of which were of criminal convictions, according to those briefed on the requests. Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat, would probably like to go back and erase those college frat boy emails resurrected this week for all the world to see. Not defending the guy or his actions here. To be clear, having sympathy for Spiegel is sorta like having sympathy for the devil. and those emails were completely gross. But is it fair to call out the douche bro emails of a 19 year old college boy? Sure, he’s barely a few years older than that now, but this was prior to him becoming CEO of a major tech company, and, to his knowledge at the time, private emails sent to other bros. Who among us wouldn’t want the ability to erase some of the dumb things we’ve done online, especially in our youth? But, as the Secret post above eludes to, we’ve all been there, done that one thing or other that we wish we could just make go away. It’s even worse when it could potentially live on, eternally etched into the ether of the net for anyone to resurrect later. It’s most likely the reason anonymous apps are so popular with . Glass houses, indeed. The rise of anonymous apps like Snapchat, Secret, Whisper and others allow us to be who we really are, not who we want others to perceive us as, online. I, myself, have selectively posted certain things to Twitter that I would not dare post to Facebook for fear of my own mom freaking out over my political (and other) beliefs….that was at least until she discovered Twitter. And should one feel the need to reinvent themselves, to start over anew? Very difficult if old duck face cleave shots or dick pics come up. Beyond supposedly anonymous apps, there are entire services like , dedicated to helping people manage their rep online. Even certain online tools and search engines like promise to not track our online moves just to give that extra sense of security that what we do is truly our own private deal. In the words of Warren Buffett, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it.” This is especially true with the kind of information available to us online and as the youth of this generation grows up, grows out of the dick pic phase and begins to take on their adult lives. How much should be allowed to exist in the aftermath of young foibles? Should we not also have the ability to reduce those embarrassing moments and be granted permission to reinvent our own online narrative? |
This Is Your Final Chance To Apply For The TC Pitch-Offs In Austin And Seattle | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 5 | 31 | If you’re an entrepreneur in the Austin or Seattle areas, pay close attention. You have exactly one weekend to complete your application to compete in the TC Pitch-Offs, where a few lucky startups will win a chance to attend Disrupt SF in September. Applications close on Monday, June 2, and your company must be in private beta or stealth. Companies selected to participate will have exactly sixty seconds to pitch their product to an audience of the local tech community, along with a panel of expert judges including local VCs and TechCrunch editor Matt Burns. So what are you waiting for? Apply here ( and ). For the rest of you, who simply want to enjoy a night of good beer, good people, and good startups, tickets are still available. We’re hitting up and . And you should consider buying tickets now instead of waiting because the price goes up the week of the event, from $10 to $15. Make the right choice. Get tickets here ( and ). Here’s everything you need to know: The Austin meetup is on June 10, at , and will go from 6pm to 10pm. The Seattle Meetup is on June 12, at , and will also go from 6pm to 10pm. 6pm – Doors Open
7pm – Pitch-Off
8pm – Winners Announced
8:15pm – Networking
10pm – Goodnight |
null | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 5 | 9 | null |
The Five Tough Truths Of Cybersecurity Software | Ted Schlein | 2,014 | 5 | 31 | Building a successful security software company is notoriously hard to get right over the long haul. Computer security is a fast-moving target. You still need anti-virus software, for instance, but it won’t necessarily keep you safe. The same is true for firewalls, and malware detection, and spam blockers, and various other security measures. For better or worse, there is never-ending opportunity here, as the good guys race to keep up with the bad guys. The tricky part is that over time the bad guys have gotten smarter and the threats more ominous. The stakes keep ratcheting higher. Thirty years ago, we were dealing with amateurs. Now the bad actors are international organized crime groups and nation-states. In the old days, the issues were tactical. Now they’re fundamental. This isn’t just an IT issue: Target recently fired its CEO after the retailer suffered a massive security breach. Careers, as well as data, are at risk. I’ve been spending a lot of time (and money) funding new security companies in recent years, and I’ve worked in the industry myself. Along the way, I’ve reached some conclusions on how to improve your odds of success. Here is my list of five truths about the cybersecurity business: The security software entrepreneur founded * — recently sold to for $1 billion — on the thesis that no one can really stop the bad guys from entering your network. The game is no longer about prevention; it’s about detection. The average length of time it takes for an advanced persistent threat to be detected on a corporate network is now an alarming 229 days. We need to get that down to 24 hours — or one hour. Companies need early-warning systems to know they’ve been breached, but they also need the context around that intruder, including what data has been compromised and by whom, and a system to contain and fix the issue as fast as possible. Simply manning the barricades is not enough. Evildoers are going to come over the walls, under the walls, around the walls and right through the front door. You need to discover them, find out what they’re doing and stop them, and you need to do it as quickly as possible. Software from and security platform focuses on identifying behavioral anomalies in real-time. The scary truth is that network security does not work as well as we thought. That’s what leads to the fight for the endpoint — how people protect endpoints will be completely different than over the last two or three decades. attacks the problem by focusing on data protection, rather than intrusion detection. They create a secure, isolated container for each task a user performs on an untrusted network or document –- preventing malware from spreading. , likewise creates a “secure virtual container” to wall off the most vulnerable applications, like browsers, PDF readers and Office. Companies need to toughen up from the inside out. (Think M&M’s.) Sure, you need to fight off malware and viruses, and you want complex passwords and stiff security regimes. But you still won’t keep everyone out. Rather than simply erecting thicker walls to fend off intruders, which becomes increasingly impractical in highly distributed cloud-based architectures, we need to encrypt the data that attackers want. You need to encrypt data all the way to the browser, and the browser itself has to be 100 percent authenticated. But you have to hide the complexity. The whole thing needs to be seamless. As an end user, you’re not going to tolerate having to mess around with encryption keys and other complications. Companies like * are working on solving this end-to-end encryption problem. If it works, hackers will face a new challenge: they can steal the data, but they won’t be able to read it. The ramifications of security breaches are getting worse. Two decades ago, a breach was mostly an operational problem that might cost you money and time. Today, a breach is a strategic issue that could ruin your business and put your customers’ finances at risk. Global 2000 companies face an ominous issue: They can’t scale fast enough to meet growing threats. They can’t hire enough people or buy enough technology to be totally secure – they need to go outside to get help. The stage is set for companies taking new approaches to this issue. * has created an approach it calls “shape shifting” to beat hackers by turning the tables and going after the bad actors with the same kind of attacks they use on the good guys. Shape’s realization: while you can’t prevent a bot from landing on your network, you can prevent it from being effective. uses crowdsourcing techniques to keep track of threats and consider potential remedies. Rather than buy a threat feed, you get it from the universe. It’s the closest you’ll get to real-time threat detection. * takes a sort of ‘Super Friends’ approach, teaming the world’s greatest white hat hackers and applying them to your company’s security risk assessment with an automated platform. While few companies could ever afford to get that talent inside, the approach here is to let you rent them. The bottom line is that evildoers are going to get on to your network, and when they do, they’re going to cause troubles that will sometimes pose catastrophic risk. But there’s no need to panic; it’s a matter of preparation and staying vigilant when the invaders land inside the wall. Innovation in the security space is high. But there’s a lot of creativity being applied on the other side, as well. The good news for entrepreneurs is, this is going to be a never-ending battle. |
Gillmor Gang: EarPlay | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 5 | 31 | The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Dan Farber, Keith Teare, Robert Scoble, and Steve Gillmor — grow more and more convinced that Apple is in for a good time this fall. The blending of streaming with downloading promises to accelerate what may well be the takeover of the industry formerly known as the music business. Mix in the upsell of the phablet iPhone to companion earphones and the table is set for the iWatch in both jewelry and TV editions. Iovine is more than an aquihire; he seems to understand that streaming and the supposed death of the album is an opportunity to reinvent the long form the Beatles pioneered all those years ago. @stevegillmor, @dsearls, @dbfarber, @scoblizer, @kteare Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor |
The Valley Has Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself | Jon Evans | 2,014 | 5 | 31 | Silicon Valley, at its best, is a kind of insurgency. Most of the world is ruled by dinosaur bureaucrats; but as software eats the world, Valley misfits and iconoclasts, armed with razor-edge tech and contempt for the status quo, overthrow those antediluvian empires and build better ones, which light the path to a brighter tomorrow for us all… Or at least that’s the story we tell ourselves. “ .” Right? Problem is, it’s awfully hard to be a misfit or a rebel after you become The Man; and make no mistake, that’s what we are these days. As Justin Fox and Fred Turner in the : The irony is that [Silicon Valley has] entered a place of corporate dominance with a rhetoric built from an era of business insurgency … the research world that brought us computing also brought us the counterculture … a turning away from politics, a turning toward the self as the basis of political change, of social action … power to people is a really good way of ignoring the structural differences between kinds of people. Structurelessness is a problem. And it’s less of a problem when you share cultural similarities with other folks, or genotypic or phenotypic similarities. So Stewart Brand’s circle tends to look a lot like Stewart Brand. It tends to be mostly white, often male. And that’s true for many elite Silicon Valley leaders. Which we saw quantified this week, with Google’s . Tech workers at Google — which is unquestionably one of the most progressive companies on the planet; witness their release of this report! — are . Big numbers. Then Google Maps was like, "turn right on Malcolm Ten Boulevard" and I knew there were no black engineers working there — ALBLA (@alliebland) That’s race, and gender … and now let’s talk about . Specifically, of Kevin Roose by Ezra Klein in : KR: Yes, I love it. But the part it gets wrong is that if you look at who actually works in Silicon Valley now, the geek contingent – the stereotypical socially awkward hackers – is no longer the dominant phenotype of Silicon Valley. Now it’s people who are well adjusted, good looking graduates of elite institutions. It’s gone from weirdos in pocket protectors to the guys who used to go to Wall Street. I talked to one guy who’s a former Goldman Sachs guy who left to go to the tech industry who said the adage in the tech world now is “be wary when the pretty people show up.” That might explain why the , America’s longtime self-appointed arbiter of class, is (embarrassingly) these days. Meanwhile, SF’s are fighting Google buses, and by extension, the , because once San Francisco was America’s finest city for counterculture anarchists, artists, freaks, iconoclasts and malcontents, and now they’re being priced out of town. This is a little unfair; plenty of elite-school graduates in the Bay Area — I can cite multiple friends of mine — are also socially maladjusted geeks and/or counterculture freaks, who would have been as at home in the old SF/Valley as they are in the new. (But then I would say that, wouldn’t I? My own Canadian alma mater turns up on of “The Schools Where Apple, Google, and Facebook Get Their Recruits.”) Regardless, it’s fair to say that tech, once largely home to driven engineers and/or graceless geeks, is becoming the upper-class industry of choice in modern America, and, increasingly, worldwide. This is a problem. For one thing, it sure doesn’t help with diversity and/or inequality. “ ,” to quote Paul Tough of the . For another, as Roose , Ivy League graduates, as a class, frequently hate risk and are terrified about what to do next … in a lot of schools it’s these scared organization kids … They want money. They want structure. And they want respect when they tell people where they work. And Google now has that in a way the banking industry doesn’t. There’s a lot of risk aversion in that. The tech industry doesn’t need more risk-averse graduates of prestigious universities. Instead we need more of — well, you know: “The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.” The dropouts. . "We want the misfits, the failures, the ones with something to prove. We avoid the tourists" Doug Leone on strategy — Mary Minno (@marycminno) true if you're male. Female misfits who don't fall into 1-2 archetypes are terrifying to men. — sw (@sw) But the counterculture needs the tech industry even more than the tech industry needs the counterculture. No, really. It’s easy to mock SiliValley’s venture-capital-fuelled techno-utopian mindset, I know, but look around. Do you see many other genuine out there in the world today? Do you see ? Let’s face it: the status quo across most of the planet is deeply fucked up. (It’s significantly better than it used to be, granted, but that’s still not good enough.) People who have succeeded despite or because of this fact — including a disproportionate fraction of the people reading this post, no doubt — tend to minimize it, but it’s true. So what we really need is a dynamic wherein the tech industry absorbs and internalizes more and more champions of the status quo, phalanxes of risk-averse elite-school graduates raised by wealthy upper-class families, while the marginalized, the misfits, the dropouts, the weirdos, and the troublemakers increasingly begin to fear us or even . But that may be where we’re headed, culturally, at least in America … which is often a harbinger for the world. Instead we need the marginalized misfits to embrace the tech industry, now more than ever, and harness its engine of change. There are signs of hope. Hackerspaces. . Even the Valley’s deep libertarian streak, which otherwise makes me more than a little uneasy. But I’m worried that we will make less and less room for “the ones who see things differently” now that the insurgent ethos of the Valley is inexorably morphing into that of the New Establishment. : . That link will probably seem if you click through, for which I apologize; but the majority of it which is not about me is worth reading. |
New Materials Let You Bake Your Own Robot | John Biggs | 2,014 | 5 | 30 | MIT researcher Daniela Rus wants to help you bake a robot. Not out of cake batter, silly (although that would be delicious.) Instead, Rus’ project involves cutting out and “printing” plastic materials that change shape when baked, essentially allowing for self-forming objects that build themselves. The system takes a 3D CAD file and flattens it, adding creases that react to the heat. When heat is applied, the creases force the various surfaces to fold over on themselves. For example, you could create a powerful spring that can pull on objects when heated or cut out a flat robot that then turns three-dimensional in your high-tech oven. By cutting slits into a substrate of the material, you create a sort of “origami crease pattern” that heat can then activate. “You’re doing this really complicated global control that moves every edge in the system at the same time,” said . “You want to design those edges in such a way that the result of composing all these motions, which actually interfere with each other, leads to the correct geometric structure.” This project could also produce a variable resistor by opening or closing an electric component and even create metallic muscles that contract when heated or current is applied. It’s obviously still in very early stages right now but Rus and her team will exhibit the technology at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation this year and maybe, one day, our cake-like robotic servants will rise up and bake us. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1ZKV9oPsoI] |
The Lomo’Instant Blows Through Crowdfunding Goal To Bring Artistic Instant Photography To The Masses | John Biggs | 2,014 | 5 | 30 | Lomography makes weird cameras that take weird pictures – on purpose. The New York-based company is famous for their work at rebuilding old fixed-focus camera styles that produced photographs that were a cross between a Soviet-era crime scene snapshot and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s street photography. Now the company is looking to launch the , an camera that uses special lenses and Fujifilm Instax Mini Film to take cool instant photos. The Lomo’Instant looks like no other instant camera. It comes in multiple colors and styles and features multiple modes including color filters, fisheye shots, and infinite long and multiple exposures. It has a maximum aperture setting of f/8 and can go down to f/22. The early bird model costs $69 for a black or white model with wide angle lens. A pledge of $160 gets you the camera in black or white with plus fisheye and portrait lens attachments and a flash. Lomo has been at the cool photography business for a while now and this looks to be a nice addition to their line. They were looking for $100,000 but passed that into half-a-million dollar territory, a milestone that they could surpass in the next few days. The cameras should ship in November. Remember: this is a film camera so you probably have to put some thought into how you shoot. However, if you and your mustachioed friends are planning a cross-country tricycle ride to visit craft breweries, this may just be the camera you should use to document it.
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Virgin Galactic Deal Gets Them A Bit Closer To Sending You To Space | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 5 | 30 | It’s been a good week for space travel. Just last night, SpaceX — their very first spacecraft capable for carrying astronauts (as opposed to just cargo) to the stars. They expect to be shuttling astronauts back and forth to the International Space Station by 2017. That’s great for astronauts and all, with their many years of rigorous training… but what about you — the mere humble would-be explorer of the stars? Good news! Kind of. Depending on your definition of “mere” and “humble”. Virgin Galactic — as in, the space travel arm of Richard Branson’s many-tentacled Virgin empire — has signed an agreement with the FAA that’ll eventually allow them to launch commercial passenger spaceflights from US soil. There are a few catches, though. Catch 1: they’re not exactly talking about sending people to the moon, here. Virgin’s spacecraft, the SpaceShip Two, has a max altitude of 68 miles above the earth’s surface. While that’s plenty high enough to say you’ve reached “outer space” (in fact, you’re about 6 miles above ) and you’ll experience a good 6 minutes of weightlessness (and really, until we can reach other planets, isn’t that what most people are looking for?), you’re still a few hundred miles short of, say, the ISS. Catch 2, and this one is a biggy: current ticket prices are upwards of $250,000. But that price will drop eventually..right? Probably? Maybe? The just-signed deal primarily just locks in a bunch of safety/airspace agreements between the FAA and Virgin for commercial flights launching out of New Mexico. It’s not a green light to start making routine commercial flights just yet — but it’s a big step forward. Virgin Galactic says they’re still hoping to launch their first commercial flights by the end of the year. Be right back — cashing in the ol’ change jar. |
This Algae Battery Could Power A Tesla With 200X The Charge | Sarah Buhr | 2,014 | 5 | 30 | In a small lab, near a lake at the edge of West Berkeley, sits the prototype of what could revolutionize battery power as we know it. The secret to this power? Algae. OK, just hang with me here. has already been done on algae’s possible power capabilities. Prototype creator Adam Freeman says this new kind of battery, the one he’s working on, could power even a Tesla. And he says it could do it 200X greater than the current lithium-based battery used today. He’s created a research company called alGAS that aims to prove just that. Freeman says the algae battery also charges faster and lasts longer than current ion batteries used in, say, your cell phone, iPad… or a Tesla. As Freeman explains, paper-thin fibers in algae provide an easier surface for ions to get through, resulting in a charge in as little as 11 seconds, not minutes or hours. Here is how a current battery charges, using lots of what we currently mine or, worse, : Though there isn’t much by way of illustration to show how this works for algae, Ryan Bethencourt, founder of the Berkeley BioLabs, was able to send me this brief video that explains the process: Previous tests prove algae has a charge and could theoretically work as battery power, but what’s not known is how much of a charge and how much of it will be needed to power, say, a car. Freeman believes he’s figured out the answer. What he needs now is the funding to bring it into mass production. Those materials currently used in ion batteries (cell phones, etc.) — 95 percent of which are shipped from China — are hard to extract. This makes them quite expensive. Tesla pledged to use , which does cut the cost. Still, it’s got to be more than what it costs to grow and use algae powered batteries, right? Right, according to Freeman. He says he only needs $1,500 for the prototype and that he can have his algae battery ready for mass production for a mere $5,000 by this summer. The implications for this go beyond cars. In theory you could power your entire house. Yes, a living, breathing algae plant could make your house “go.” A French biochemist already powered a with the stuff. What makes Freeman’s prototype different from previous tests is the use of a bio-safe polymer. The polymer is a critical element that binds the fibers together to create a better interaction with the electron charge. While the prototype is still basically just a bunch of jars full of algae on the shelf of some lab, the potential, according to Freeman, is very big. “Think of driving your car on a living battery that charges in seconds with a battery that costs almost nothing and is actually good for the environment.” |
As Software Eats Up Jobs, Startups Need To Consider Ethics Of Marketplaces | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 5 | 31 | Anger can be a deeply chilling emotion when coursing through politics, and we have witnessed our fair share of it over the past few years. In San Francisco, , and demanded . Nationally, we have seen the frustration of millions across the country through the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. More ominously, far-right parties had , with many voters expressing discontent over the direction of the continent. It’s easy for us in the startup world to choose to be ignorant about these changes in our society. Frankly, political protests and debate isn’t generally relevant in our day-to-day work, since building startups is about engineering, product management, marketing, and sales. Politics has little value, except for startups in spaces like Bitcoin or healthcare that directly target regulated industries. Today, . Founders seem to understand that, given the interest I have heard from them over the past two years in several dozen different conversations. And really, how could they not? While we talk enthusiastically about disruption, we all understand that there is someone on the other side of our product’s efficiency who might well have been automated out of a job. We haven’t had successful labor marketplaces until recently, but now we have several, and dozens more that hope to find gold. That means we have thousands of people across the United States and globally who rely on the startup community for their paychecks. As our influence has grown though, we have failed to take a leadership role as a community in ensuring that our marketplaces are ethical for workers. , there is increasing tension between the progressive vision laid out by startup founders, and the desires of workers to avoid displacement and poverty. However, we do have an opportunity to set the tone for the rest of society. We can choose to build our businesses in ways that are more fair than existing companies, which can put us again in a positive light. One of the challenges when discussing policies and politics in the startup community is that our values often don’t have to be defined to build our businesses. Many of us come from an engineering or technical background where a focus on pragmatism in the search of solutions is the key to success, not philosophical discussions of right and wrong. Few engineering programs require a rigorous examination of the ethics of our work, and those that do have courses usually keep them light. Unfortunately, engineering is deeply political. Our products interact with our society, and thus, society’s politics become our own. Think of the way that some social networks require real names, or that a labor marketplace pays all of its laborers as contractors, or that an enterprise sales platform builds for large companies over small businesses. None of these, necessarily, has a positive or negative valence. But all of these decisions have a political import. Given that political nature, I think it is worth the effort to debate more openly about what exactly workers should expect from our marketplaces. I realize that developing a series of values for startups approaching the labor space is fraught with danger. There is incredible diversity in work that can be done through labor startup services, and thus, any set of values is likely to have exceptional cases. Nonetheless, I feel it is appropriate that there at least be some guideposts to think about when designing a labor marketplace, or using the labor of anyone as part of a startup. I have developed four such guideposts, which I hope can spur more discussion about what labor marketplaces can do for laborers. It is clear that we need a wider debate, although there doesn’t yet exist a good forum for this sort of discussion. The first principle is around stability. People need stability in their jobs in order to plan for the future and properly budget. Many startups like labor marketplaces or even large service businesses like fast-food chains place the burden of business instability on the laborers themselves, by forcing them to forgo income in times of diminished revenue. That might work well for the bottom line, but businesses also have the aggregate power to absorb the vagaries of the market for their workers. When designing payment systems, we should find ways of cushioning workers from the market where possible. The second principle is around identity and credit. As our economy has become more specialized, it has placed increasing emphasis on the skills and experience of our workers. Getting credit for our work is key to our success, as it increases our likelihood of finding other work and therefore ensures our long-term economic stability. Yet, some startups don’t allow workers to get any credit for their work. Instead, the worker is meant to be an anonymous figure who does work behind the scenes. This is deeply unfair, and unnecessary. Workers should always be acknowledged for what they do, and should benefit from the success of their work as much as the startup. The third principle is around due process and fairness. Many startups engaging with workers use reputation systems to build fair marketplaces. Yet, the rules for these marketplaces often are mercurial or completely non-existent. Workers may be fired without cause for any reason, and there are few protections. While there are no unions for these workers, we do have a responsibility to ensure that people have the opportunity to hear complaints and improve their performance. The fourth and final principle is around advancement. Too many startups create class distinctions between their workers in the field and the workers in their headquarters. Part of that, I am sure, has to do with the notion of “building culture” that is so important for founders. But that distinction between workers on one side and startup talent on the other can be toxic and ultimately deleterious to a startup’s growth. As great performers are identified, consider ways of providing them more responsibility. For instance, a top worker may understand how to use a startup’s platform better than almost anyone else, and could be an excellent product manager to improve the product with their unique vantage point. Regardless of the path, startups should move beyond rigid castes to create ways for everyone in the company to contribute more value. Beyond these four values, there are others that are obvious yet deserve repeating. Companies should promote diversity, ensure safe workplaces, provide grievance methods through human resources, and others required of all employers in the United States. It goes without saying that we in the Valley have not always lived up to these minimums, and we must. Building a set of values for our labor marketplaces is important because it gives founders building their businesses a reference on best practices. I have introduced four initial values, but don’t expect these to be comprehensive or complete, but included them because they are among the first choices a new founder has to make in building a startup that uses labor. Certainly, some startups do particularly well by these values, while others could definitely improve. Either way, they provide the means of thinking about how to support a strong labor force while building a great business, and I hope to see more discussion of this in the future. |
OoberDocs Will Now Sync Your Incoming Email Attachments To Google Drive | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 30 | , a neat little tool built and , has expanded its feature set to include support for Google Drive. The service, which puts a copy of all incoming email attachments in your preferred cloud storage system, launched with initial support for Dropbox. In an email, founder John McBride informed TechCrunch that today processed its 10,000th file upload. The company’s user base remains modest but growing. The service sees its volume decline on weekends, and increase on weekdays, implying that it’s mainly used for business. The team previously told TechCrunch that they intended to charge business users a low, yearly fee for the product in the future. According to McBride, support for OneDrive will be added in June, and Box in July. The user interface of the product — admittedly rough when I first used the tool — will be getting what the company describes as a “facelift” to become more “user friendly.” It’s always fun to see a hackathon project become something more. I’ll check back in with the company in a few months to see the impact that expanding the number of cloud storage providers it supports has on its growth. |
House Republican Efforts To Curb FCC Authority Mirror Cable Industry Lobbying | Kyle Russell | 2,014 | 5 | 30 | A by Rep. Bob Latta would “limit” the FCC’s ability to regulate the telecom industry by prohibiting it from classifying broadband as a public utility under Title II of the Communications Act. Latta’s argument against regulating broadband as a public utility is that it would create “uncertainty,” reducing the incentives that cable providers and telecommunications companies have to further invest in their infrastructures. From My legislation will provide all participants in the Internet ecosystem the certainty they need to continue investing in broadband networks and services that have been fundamental for job creation, productivity and consumer choice. […] Reclassification would heap 80 years of regulatory baggage on broadband providers, restricting their flexibility to innovate and placing them at the mercy of a government agency. These businesses thrive on dynamism and the ability to evolve quickly to shifting market and consumer forces. Subjecting them to bureaucratic red tape won’t promote innovation, consumer welfare or the economy, and I encourage my House colleagues to support this legislation, so we can foster continued innovation and investment within the broadband marketplace. This mirrors the language used by Comcast and the rest of the cable industry in their lobbying of the FCC. In a letter to the FCC arguing against a Title II reclassification on Wednesday, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, which represents a number of large cable providers including Comcast, Charter, and Time Warner, compared the potential outcome of a reclassification to the United States’ vastly underfunded public infrastructure: Indeed, in other contexts where the government has imposed public utility-style regulation, such an approach has led to chronic under-investment in basic infrastructure. One need only examine our nation’s ailing public infrastructure to appreciate the potential dangers to the continued expansion and growth of broadband networks. The contrast is striking when one compares the crisis in public utility infrastructure with the dynamism and stable investment in broadband Internet services. In a separate letter to the FCC from May 12, Comcast also focused on the “disruptive” effect reclassification would have on investment: Any effort to upend that settled legal framework—which has been supported by Commissions and Administrations led by both parties—would be enormously disruptive: It would deter the many billions in additional investment required to connect all Americans and to continue increasing speeds, while subjecting the industry and the Commission to years of debilitating litigation and resulting uncertainty. Just ten years ago, the Commission and the Department of Justice expressly recognized these risks and went to considerable lengths to avoid the imposition of common carrier regulation precisely because “[t]he effect of the increased regulatory burdens” likely would have been to prompt ISPs to “postpone or forego plans to deploy new broadband infrastructure, particularly in rural or other underserved areas.” It’s difficult to predict what effect reclassifying broadband under Title II would actually have on infrastructure investment across the telecom industry. As , it should also be noted that Rep. Latta has received a significant amount of campaign funds from the “cable & satellite TV production & distribution” sector. According to , Latta received $51,000 in contributions in 2012-2013 from companies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon, nearly five times more than the $11,651 average received from the sector by members of the House of Representatives. |
deviantART Makes Its Case For Administering The .Art Domain | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 5 | 30 | Online artists’ community is hoping to , and it recently sent a letter to ICANN (the organization responsible for managing top level domains) laying out its perspective on the stakes in the decision. The letter also presents deviantART’s case for why it deserves a “community designation” in the application process, saying: “We are on the cusp of an extraordinary opportunity with the simple use of a single word: a virtual place within the Internet for the arts and a virtual palace to the arts built site-by-site by millions of artists and art institutions each with an individualized artistic contribution gathered around the simple namespace of ‘.ART.’” The letter adds that if the domain is exploited commercially, “it will only occasionally and haphazardly designate the arts themselves. It will not be a welcomed location for the arts.” That may seem like an unusual argument coming from a for-profit business, but deviantART has created a new subsidiary called Dadotart (apparently that’s standard procedure when applying to manage a new top level domain), and it says it would create a policy board of “artists and art institutions” that would establish the standards for when the .art designation can be used. deviantART says ICANN is currently deciding whether it deserves the community designation, which would give it priority in the application process. The initial signs may have not been entirely positive, as the letter states: “We believe preservation of the arts is at risk based upon the results of the initial community evaluations made by ICANN that clearly disfavor their approval with a resulting and evident bias towards commercialization.” If you aren’t familiar with deviantART, the site showcases digital art, traditional art, photography — sometimes original and sometimes inspired by existing media properties — and it says it has 31 million registered users. (Software company .) , a network of art professionals, is also applying for a community designation, and although the applications can’t be combined, deviantART says the two groups support each other’s applications and would be involved in policy issues if either gets awarded the domain. Anyway, you can and (sort the list by “string’). And here’s the full letter: [Submitted to ICANN May 21, 2014 by deviantART on behalf of its applicant, Dadotart, Inc., for the .ART gTLD] SAVE DOT ART ICANN has a choice: it can promote the arts or destroy their common identity. “.ART “ can become an authentic Internet address for the arts and represent its community. We are on the cusp of an extraordinary opportunity with the simple use of a single word: a virtual place within the Internet for the arts and a virtual palace to the arts built site-by-site by millions of artists and art institutions each with an individualized artistic contribution gathered around the simple namespace of “.ART.” The .ART gTLD can become a touchstone of world culture and contribute transformative vision across all boundaries. But left to pure commercial exploitation, .ART will stand as a complete failure. It will only occasionally and haphazardly designate the arts themselves. It will not be a welcomed location for the arts. The impact of the worldwide abuse of a beloved term through disjointed, disorganized, and random designations – – completely irrelevant to its meaning and associations – – would be an irretrievable tragedy. There are two applicants for .ART, which have elected community designation, DeviantArt and e-flux who mutually support each other’s applications. Eight other, purely commercial, entities and individuals have chosen to oppose or stand in the way of that joint effort. We believe preservation of the arts is at risk based upon the results of the initial community evaluations made by ICANN that clearly disfavor their approval with a resulting and evident bias towards commercialization. DeviantArt has over 31 million registered members and an audience exceeding 60 million unique visitors a month all drawn to the arts. It is one of the top 150 Internet sites in the world measured by traffic. E-flux is a network of over 100,000 art institutions and professional artists, curators, and practitioners. DeviantArt and e-flux are committed. We stand prepared to convene a Policy Board of the most passionate and essential artists and art institutions to first debate and then establish standards for the use of the .ART address. As representatives of the community of the arts, we are prepared to initiate a gTLD for the arts, by the arts, and with the arts. We call upon the ICANN Board to intervene on behalf of the arts. We ask the Board to recognize the .ART gTLD’s unique and substantial value as a world cultural monument and to dedicate its management to trusted, proven organizations that have introduced and guided the arts to the World Wide Web since its inception. We call upon ICANN to set aside its unlimited and seemingly unrestrained commercialization of the Internet name space and embrace the opportunity that it hardcoded into its guidebook for applicants to self-identify as a community. ICANN must choose to promote the arts rather than destroy their common identity. We call upon the Government Advisory Committee to the ICANN Board to safeguard the arts as a universal human right in its shared culture. We call upon the GAC to insist upon the recognition of valid community interests in the assignment of gTLDs by ICANN’s management in line with the GAC’s own requests to ICANN at the Singapore meetings held in March of this year. And through DeviantART we call upon the world community of the arts to make itself known and rise to the defense of its own integrity and good name. #savedotart #deviantart |
CrunchWeek: Google’s Self Driving Car, Apple Buys Beats, And Founders Misbehave | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 5 | 30 | In case you had missed it, today is Friday, which means it’s time for another spin of the round table as , and sat down to dig into what happened this past week. Google’s cute , Apple’s , and the controversial topic of , either in the past or present were our topics. Tune in every week to hang with a rotating, and roving cast of TechCrunchers riffing on what’s hot, and what’s not. |
Tradeshift Takes Over All The Invoicing For The UK’s Health Service | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 5 | 30 | E-invoicing platform has landed a partnership with a company that processes transactions for the UK’s NHS, one of the biggest public-sector bodies in the world. The NHS Shared Business Services will be using the Tradeshift platform instead of processing 30,000 paper invoices daily. Tradeshift has made a speciality of winning big corporate clients including DHL, the French government, Intuit and others. It means UK hospitals, GP surgeries and pharmacies will connect with hundreds and thousands of their suppliers using the Tradeshift platform, in theory reducing the time suppliers face for payment. The NHS Shared Business Services processes around $154 billion worth of NHS payments each year. Tradeshift’s competitors include San Francisco-based Taulia, Ariba, Basware, Coupa Software, OB10 and Dublin-based Senddr. |
Meet Raptor, The New Running Robot That Will Smother Your Soul In Fear | John Biggs | 2,014 | 5 | 30 | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lPEg83vF_Tw] Another day, another bipedal robot that will eventually run you down and crush you! This new robot, called the Raptor, can run 26 miles an hour without falling over and even jump over obstacles. The robot, created by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, has a balancing tail and blade legs to help keep it bouncing while remaining upright. It is almost as fast as the , the fastest robot in the world. The best part of the video, recorded by researchers Jongwon Park, Jinyi Lee, Jinwoo Lee, Kyung-Soo Kim, and Professor Soohyun Kim, is how the Raptor reacts to objects in its path. Because the tail helps balance the robot on the run, it takes foam obstacles in stride, jumping over them or even leaning to the side to let them pass. No word yet on when the Raptor will be commercially available to hunt down and destroy your puny human body. |
Style Jukebox Raises Seed To Stream Your Own Music Collection | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 5 | 30 | has raised undisclosed seed funding from Central European early-stage fund to boost its cloud music-streaming service. The cloud part is that you upload your personal music files collection and then use Style Jukebox to stream it into your device wherever you are. There are of course other services like this, though not all have the same amount of apps. Aiming to be a ‘Hi-Fi sound quality’ service, Style Jukebox now has apps for iOS, Android, Windows and Windows Desktop. It’s free to access 1,000 of your songs up there in the cloud, but after that you’re asked to pay. With a few hundred thousand users, this is not a startup about to go huge any time yet. However, the Romanian-based startup has managed to partner with local telecom operator Vivacom to free streaming to its 3G users |
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