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Project Orion: Say Media’s Plan To Tailor TypePad Into Its CMS And Become The Conde Nast Of The Web | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 14 | I finally caught up with CEO Matt Sanchez today, after his of tech blog ReadWriteWeb. He wouldn’t confirm the (he didn’t deny it either), but he let slip something else which sheds light on Say Media’s overall strategy. Internally, they call it Orion. It is a professional, modern content management system (CMS) specifically tailored to handle everything “from content creation to how ads appear,” says Sanchez. Usually, content and ads are controlled by different systems. The focus will be on creating a streamlined, “beautiful experience” which Sanchez describes as “having an art department in a box.” It will have a “smoother interface,” support for multiple contributors, social sharing and analytics on the backend to help editors better program their sites. It will also work across mobile and Web from the get-go. ReadWriteWeb will move over to Orion with a redesign in the first quarter. Orion is a customized version of TypePad (which Say Media last year—TypePad proper will continue to be supported as a subscription blogging platform). Orion will become the content engine for some of Say Media’s owned-and-affiliated properties. There are now 16 of these sites spanning Tech (ReadWriteWeb; Gear Patrol; Gdgt; TechDirt; SplatF; Android & Me), Style (Xojane; Fashionista; Honestly…wtf; Red Carpet Fashion Awards), Food (Serious Eats; Food52; The Kitchn; Amateur Gourmet), and Living (Remodelista; Dogster). All will have the option to move over, but won’t be required to. The idea is to create a premium experience both with editorial and advertising. All the sites will have a look, and pages will have one high-impact ad. This strategy is similar to AOL’s Devil Ads paired with premium editorial. “We can keep moving vertical magazines onto that printing press,” says Sanchez, hinting at more acquisitions to come. “Our thesis is that professional publications has evolved where there will be a massive consolidation.” If you think about it. The blogging industry started with FM Publishing, which offered advertising scale across many niche properties. But FM didn’t own those properties, and when they got big enough, they started selling their own ads (this is exactly what happened with TechCrunch, which originally was an FM-affiliated site). Sanchez wants to provide more than just the ads. He wants to provide the publishing platform, help with events, and much more. “This is Conde Nast,” he says, but for the Web. |
Facebook Launches Suggested Events Feature Based On Checkins | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 22 | We’re creatures of habit. We go where we’ve already gone. That’s why Facebook’s new feature I just discovered is so powerful — it knows where we’ve been thanks to our checkins. Replacing the old Friends’ Events sub-tab of the home page’s Events bookmark, Suggested Events helps you discover things to do that take place at venues you’ve checked in to, that friends are RSVP’d to, that are hosted by Pages you Like, or a combination. The feature could reduce the need third-party event discovery apps, and get more people out of their houses to attend concerts, club nights, and conferences. [ : Facebook tells me it is testing the feature, though it has now been rolled out to the entire user base. A spokesperson also says suggestions can be based on the music you listen to through Open Graph apps, which can help improve recommendations for those who checkin via Foursquare or don’t share their location at all.] By promoting offline interaction, Suggested Events should quiet critics who say Facebook weakens real human relationships and leads people to sit at home. It has huge potential to generate good will for Facebook and make the service seem even more indispensable. If you go to a great show, have a fun night out with friends, or meet someone new at a suggested venue, your perception of Facebook’s value to your life will undoubtedly improve. Sure, you should branch out and find new places to go, but new events at your favorite places are still unique experiences. The feature exposes you to events that are relevant and that you might drag friends to, even if you weren’t invited to them and don’t have friends already RSVP’d. “What should I do tonight?” is a very prevalent question lots of startups are trying to answer. Just this month we covered the launch of for real-time discovery, and that’s a “Pandora for live events”. Established players include and , the latter of which closed a huge $50 million funding round and also your Facebook friends are going to. But the problem with these services is that they can’t produce as relevant suggestions because they don’t automatically know where you spend your time, which is a proxy for what type of events you go to. Facebook’s Suggested Events adapts to your preferences. I go to lots of concerts, and Facebook effectively knows this because I check in to the venues or the events themselves thanks to a added last year (possibly to collect data for this). Now, Suggested Events recommends me concerts taking place at my favorite venues. The music industry stands to gain a lot from the feature, since concerts are thrown frequently, and occur at Places people commonly check in to. If you’re in college, Suggested Events might recommend parties at campus dorms, whereas professionals might get clued in to meetups or conferences at local convention halls they visit. The feature also alerts you to Events hosted by Pages you Like, which could encourage more venues, performers, or production companies to officially host the events they throw. One day the feature might be able to show events where a band I Like was mentioned in the description. With third-party apps you enter your preferences or upload them via Facebook Connect, but then also have to remember to visit. Facebook’s new native event discovery feature makes finding fun things to do a seamless part of every day browsing. That means more outings, more moments, more memories. And you know where you can display the photos, checkins, and status updates about those memories? . |
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Paul Graham: SOPA Supporting Companies No Longer Allowed At YC Demo Day | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,011 | 12 | 22 | At this point internet companies have protested H.R. 3261, the (SOPA) in . Held by many to be the worst thing to ever happen to the Internet if it passes, SOPA would makes it really easy for copyright holders to force sites offline that they think are offending, among other things. While the judiciary vote has been delayed until next year, revealing the companies who support the act was released yesterday, and many startups, such as Reddit, have begun to drill down into like domain provider GoDaddy. The company boycotts have on Hacker News, where user Solipsist posted a link to the list with the comment, “While I understand your sentiments towards SOPA, are you really going to distance yourself from all of these companies?” To which YCombinator founder and investor replied, “Actually that’s exactly what I thought when I saw the list yesterday. Several of those companies send people to Demo Day, and when I saw the list I thought: we should stop inviting them. So yes, we’ll remove anyone from those companies from the Demo Day invite list.” Disinviting offending companies to ? That takes, um, guts. Graham told me in a followup email that he was indeed serious and had just given the list of SOPA supporters to the people in charge of the Demo Day invites, “I don’t know exactly which companies had people on the list. But I know which will now: none of them.” When asked if that boycott extended to investors in those companies, Graham responded, “Several of the companies on the SOPA list have venture arms. I encourage startups to boycott them. We’ll certainly encourage all the startups we’ve funded to.” The rationale? “If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?” The next YCombinator demo day is scheduled for March 27th, 2012. You can read through our . So which companies on the SOPA list are being denied YC invites? Well no one except Demo Day organizers knows for sure, but as BI’s Matt Rosoff , Comcast/NBCUniversal’s Comcast Ventures has a stake in YC company and listed companies like CBS Disney, GoDaddy, News Corp., Sony, Time-Warner, and Visa have all made tech investments in the past. |
TinTin iPad Art Book Blurs The Line Between Books, Movies, And Apps | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 22 | If you are a big TinTin fan, you probably know that Steven Spielberg’s opens today in theaters. But if you are a big fan, there is also a companion coffee table book called “The Art of The Adventures of TinTin.” But don’t get the . Get the instead. It has all the same art work, plus a whole lot more—3D models of the characters and vehicles from the movie that you can spin around, HD video clips, and immersive 360-degree experiences. (Watch the video below for a run-through of the app’s features, with an intro by Spielberg). The app was published by HarperCollins in partnership with , one of ‘s startups (part of his operating company), which is the developer that provides the technology platform. All of the artwork comes from , Peter Jackson’s motion-capture art and special-effects studio, which is effectively the author of the book. (This would be amazing for ). It has all sorts of immersive features. “You blur the line of what is a book and movie because all of these images become movie clips,” says Segal. “The whole book becomes a treasure trove you are exploring.” For instance, you can “scrub” some of the illustrations to fade between the original comic book and the artwork for the animated movie. Every image is a separate element on the page which can be tapped and seen in full-screen. My favorite part is there are a few places, like TinTin’s room, that are complete 3D spaces. You can tap into those images and move the iPad around like a window into this other world. Depending where you point the iPad, using the gyroscope, it shows different parts of TinTin’s room, or the captain’s cabin. Although the app was produced by taking the same Adobe file that was used to create the print book, that was just a starting point. It took Holopad about another month and half to add all the extra immersive elements. “It was very clear to us that what we had to do was not an enhanced e-book,” says Shane Norman, director of interactive marketing at HarperCollins. The TinTin iPad app will be the first of many such projects. “I definitely see it as a model for how we treat an interactive book,” he says. I’ve said this before, but digital books and magazines are best thought of as apps. Segal has similar views on the . Tablets are a new software-defined medium. As such, an iPad book they requires more than just text and images, and maybe some video. [youtube=http://youtu.be/ITU5PEja-LI]
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RIM Denies BlackBerry 10 Delay Allegations: Claims Are “Uninformed” | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 12 | 22 | I’ll admit to lobbing a few mortars at RIM (alright, maybe more than a few), but it looks like things may be even worse than expected. that RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis lied about the the reason their first BlackBerry 10 devices would be delayed even later into 2012. Lazaridis said during RIM’s that they were waiting for a specific dual-core LTE chipset to be available before their new BlackBerrys would see the light of day in late 2012. It was a strange announcement, considering that RIM has never really fared well in the specs arms race, although they I don’t blame them for trying. What I do blame them for is dragging their feet when it comes to innovation, but that’s a story for another time. The chipset situation may have been a ruse, if BGR’s high-level source is to be believed. According to him, the real situation behind the delay is even more dire — the devices in question may not even exist yet. ”RIM is simply pushing this out as long as they can for one reason,” the source said. “They don’t have a working product yet.” It’s a serious accusation to level at RIM, and if it’s true, then they may have already sealed their own fate. Or did they? RIM has just now weighed in on these claims, and their response is pretty much exactly what you’d expect. When it comes to the notion that the company’s first new BlackBerrys are essentially vaporware, RIM flatly denied the rumor: “As explained on our earnings call, the broad engineering impact of this [chipset] decision and certain other factors significantly influenced the anticipated timing for the BlackBerry 10 devices. The anonymous claim suggesting otherwise is inaccurate and uninformed.” There we have it, straight from the horse’s mouth: it’s a parts problem. The release goes to say that the chipset in question is “required to deliver a world class user experience” and that “any suggestion to the contrary is simply false.” Of course, even if the claims were true, RIM wouldn’t broadcast the news of their failure to every media outlet with a pulse. They’d do — well, they’d do exactly what they’re doing now. They would deny everything, and (hopefully) get in gear behind closed doors to make sure none of this gloom-and-doom forecasting ends up being right. Ultimately, I doubt that either side is offering the entire truth. points out that the leak could be the work of a disgruntled RIM employee, and RIM’s PR team would do their best to manage a situation like this before it led to another crisis for an already-beleaguered company. Things inside RIM may be even worse than we know, but if they can succeed in delivering a user experience that’s worth waiting for, all of this he-said-they-said business will have been for nothing. Let’s just hope the longer wait pays off. |
YouWeb’s MoviePal Wants To Be The Shazam For Watching Movie Trailers | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 22 | A new startup is launching out of incubator YouWeb today that aims to make watching movie trailers more social. , an iOS app, allows you to watch movie trailers and share them with friends. The MoviePal app allows you to watch movie trailers via your phone. The app sources trailers from YouTube, Flixster and other video sites that post trailers. But in case you don’t want to filter through all the trailers available and listed, you can use a Shazam-like feature to tag a movie trailer that you are watching on TV or in the movie theatre. Instead of having to sort through all the available trailers in the app, you can press a button on the app, wait 10 seconds for it to analyze and ID, and then save the trailer for later. MoviePal identifies a trailer, much like Shazam does to recognize music. You can also see which movies are playing in a theater near you, and the app will keep track of the movies you want to watch and alert you when a movie you tag comes out in theaters. From the app, you can watch the trailer again, share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter and set a time to meet up to go to the film once it opens. MoviePal says it is targeting the $4 billion dollar movie trailer advertising industry to make it more interactive and social. MoviePal is the brainchild of YouWeb EIRs Suneet Shah and Rohan Relan (who is YouWeb founder Peter Relan’s nephew). MoviePal faces competition from YC-backed |
Stream TV Networks Introduces Ultra-D: Glasses-Free 3D Conversion Tech | Jordan Crook | 2,011 | 12 | 22 | The biggest hindrance to consumer adoption of 3D technology thus far has been a lack of content, and price, of course. While I can’t vouch for their price tags quite yet, it would seem that Stream TV Networks has come up with some new 3D technology that could make that whole limited content thing much less of an issue. How, you ask? Well, for one thing the new Ultra-D tech converts 2D content to 3D. But it gets better. Not only will that content be brought over to the third dimension, but you won’t have to wear any clunky glasses to enjoy it. Ultra-D technology also converts 3D content to autostereoscopic ( glasses) 3D. It also works with just about any format, from Blu-rays and DVDs to PC games to cable and satellite content, and all the conversion is done in real time. Stream TV Networks, under the Ultra-D brand, has 3D-capable products coming out for TVs, converter boxes, tabs, PCs of all shapes and sizes, smartphones, and even digital signage and picture frames. The technology also allows for the user to customize the 3D effect, letting users increase or decrease the real-time 3D rendering effect. Products will be announced at CES, and we’ll be there to keep you in the loop. ‘Til then, pop on those glasses. |
Avatron’s Air Dictate App Makes Siri Take Notes On Your Mac | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 12 | 22 | Perhaps best known for the iOS app, is at it again with new a iOS dictation app called (what else?) Air Dictate. But of course, Avatron wouldn’t just cook up a straightforward dictation app — there’s a twist. Instead of just taking your voice input and transcribing it into a file on your iDevice, it actually syncs with your Mac and dumps the interpreted output into your text field of choice. As long as both devices are on the same wireless network, the connection yields quick and (mostly accurate) transcriptions. According to Avatron, these accurate transcriptions have Siri to thank. Even though Apple has yet to release a public API for their intelligent agent, Avatron has seemingly whipped up their own way to interface with Siri, and the results are pretty impressive Setup is dead simple — download the $.99 app , and install the free on your Mac. Once the two apps are paired up (a process which takes no more than a few seconds), you’re ready to get your gab on. Transcriptions were surprisingly accurate, although it does have a tendency to stumble with similar sounding words (“he’s” vs. “is,” for example). A little extra focus on enunciation should clear that up fairly quickly, though. Is this going to replace your fancy Dragon Dictation setup? Probably not, but if you’ve already got your share of Apple devices laying around, there are far worse ways to go. |
Duolingo Teaches You A Language While Helping Translate The Web (And Could Be Google’s Next Purchase) | Leena Rao | 2,011 | 12 | 22 | has a pretty impressive track record when it comes to Google acquiring his companies. Not many entrepreneurs can count two exits to the search giant. Google acquired von Ahn’s ESP Game, which crowdsourced people to look at images and label them to improve image search, in 2005 and renamed it . In 2009, . And now, von Ahn’s , , is finally launching in private beta. von Ahn explains to me that computer language translation is a broken system. It can be very expensive to pay for quality professional translators to translate web applications and pages on a large scale. That’s the problem Duolingo is trying to solve. von Ahn’s solution is to help people who want to learn a new language while also helping websites translate their copy. Duolingo 100% free language learning site in which people learn by helping to translate the Web, and companies can get quality translations for less. From the learner’s standpoint, Duolingo provides the ability to learn a language in exchange for translating copy. So if you are looking to learn Spanish, Duolingo will give some easier sentence to translate, and you can translate the sentences in Spanish into English. If you don’t know a given word, you can hover over it to get the translated word. The more you learn, the more complicated the translations are, says von Ahn. In order to quality check each translation, each sentence is translated by multiple people. People actually vote on which translation is best, and Duolingo throws in some wrong translations in these tests to weed out people who are poor translators. In terms of monetization, Duolingo hasn’t finalized an exact plan for web publishers.. But von Ahn is leaning towards providing free translations for creative commons content, and paid translations for everything else. He tells me that he feels Duolingo has a “compelling learning experience,” and already early users are testing as well as language learners who took Rosetta Stone online classes. For now, the site is in private beta but will be rolling out additional invitations soon. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyzJ2Qq9Abs&w=560&h=315] |
Gratitude Scales. Take A Few Seconds To Say “I Love You” | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 25 | Tell someone they’re special, remind them you care, share a memory, say “I love you” — it’s easier than ever. Thanks to mobile devices and social networks, love is becoming more scalable. Tweet or status update how you’re thankful for their friendship. Text, Skype, message, or email how their support has meant the world to you. Wall post, @reply, +1, upvote the people who make your life more fun. In just a few seconds, you’ve strengthened your relationships and made someone’s day. Today, everyday, take a moment and tell them. We stand above a bottomless well of gratitude. Say “thank you” to a hundred friends and you still won’t run out. It’s now so quick and inexpensive to communicate across long distances, the only limiting factor is our spirit. Sure, texting 20 friends in a row with the reasons you love them can be a mental work-out. But imagine doing it by phone, by letter, in person? A digital sign of gratitude is no replacement for a real hug. It’s a complement for use when our loved ones are out of reach. 20 years ago it would be nearly impossible to tell 100 people you love them in a single day unless you saw them all in person. Now, between face-to-face conversations and embraces, you can tell those far away that that they’re still in your heart. Through technology we can increase . A mass text is better than nothing, but a even a short yet heartfelt, personalized message will make someone feel extra warm and fuzzy. “Happy Birthday!” says you care, but it can also say you’re fulfilling some self-imposed duty, absolving yourself of guilt. It doesn’t take much extra effort to call up a shared experience or some advice they gave you. Then they’ll think “hey, he really cares”. If you have a little money to spend, you can send someone a . If you don’t, lets you send texts, calls, and receive voicemail at no cost. and let contact people without evening knowing what device or service they’re on. My favorite? Drawing someone a ridiculous portrait and posting it to their wall — the less artistic the more endearing. On some days like today, Thanksgiving, and birthdays, the real challenge is remaining present, being here now, avoiding interruption. Don’t sacrifice a great moment to check that buzz from your pocket. Consider waiting for a natural break, til after dinner, once you’re alone, then share and reciprocate. Our devices only detract if we let them. With will power and compassion, they can help us express our feelings like never before. |
TechGrinch Was Not Impressed By Google’s “Jingle Bells” Doodle | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 25 | When I visited Google.com this morning, I was as excited as the kids sprinting from bed to tree. But all I found was a lump of sonic coal. Oh joy, after months of Christmas music, I get to hear a one more time? *sigh* But wait, is it a game where I guess how to play the song on the colored keys? No. Can I remix it and make my own song using the tones? Nope. Can I at least share something to the legion of strangers who’ve added me to their Circles on Google+? Well there was no readily available permalink, and the metadata wasn’t changed so sharing Google.com into G+ didn’t produce a doodle preview. Why the high expectations? I was impressed with the Thanksgiving doodle, mostly because . Considering the fledgling social network needs users and content, I thought that was a wise move. The Polish doodle the day before offered a sci-fi comic puzzle game. The Father’s Day doodle was a useful PSA to call your Dad. And the was the pinacle of awesome, featuring mustachioed bears riding bicycles. Today we got a crummy elevator music “Jingle Bells”. I would have settled I would have settled for some 8-bit tones, a more expansive light show, or something actually interactive and not just triggered. In previous years, the Christmas doodles have been . This one built me up with its shiny buttons but didn’t follow through. Maybe children were more elated. Oh sorry, am I being an overly entitled TechGrinch? Normally , this is just some constructive criticism. I know the doodle is a delightful little service Google does out of the goodness of its 30,000 hearts. I’m sure it has plenty else to worry about and should be permitted an occasional flop. Still, Google needs loyalty and good will right now. It should be looking to make fanboys and fangirls out of all of us, because it’s launched some ambitious products in verticals with powerful incumbents. If services like Google+ and Google Currents are going to challenge the Facebooks and Flipboards, Google needs people to love it. Ask any parent — on Christmas Day the stakes are high. Google just got the 6 year old a big shiny box with a pair of socks in it. When it comes to holiday doodles, Google should either keep it simple, or really make it shine. TechGrinch signing off. |
A Few Tips For Developers On How To Get Hired By A Startup | Rip Empson | 2,011 | 12 | 25 | Not everyone is cut out to work for a startup. It involves a lot of hustling, a lot of nail-biting, pizza-eating, sleeping at your desk, tears, failure, confusion, and on and on. And wearing your startup’s t-shirt. All the time. That being said, it can also be extremely rewarding and, with all the cash flying around Silicon Valley (and beyond), aspiring entrepreneurs are flocking to startups. So, say you’re one of those people who is champing at the bit to go work for a startup, what do you do next? Well, , or in the event you’re not quite ready to grow a mustache, you can check out , and, hey, Justin Kan has even if you don’t have a lot of experience. But what about the programmers and developers out there looking to work at startup? Is no one thinking about them?!? Today, we’re offering a small slice of holiday cheer thanks to , the platform that provides marketers with testing and targeting services for their websites (and ), as the startup has put together an infographic that offers a few tips for programmers who are looking to toss their talents into the startup ring. Developers want to shoot for the top, and Facebook, Twitter, and Google are highly coveted places of employment for programmers for a reason; of course, the harsh reality is that not everyone is going to work at these companies, nor do all developers want to work at these companies. ( .) Opting to go work for an early-stage business means hard work and sacrifice — and doesn’t always offer competitive salary/benefits — but it can mean more freedom, more of a say in the direction of a company, and the chance to disrupt the old and be a part of building the new. There are tons of places to find jobs, including cool , there are incubators, startup networking events and , hackathons, and more. ( ) Developers can showcase their best work and hacks on , or go build something awesome with a favorite startup’s API to offer prospective employers a taste of what they would do were they to get hired. Startups are looking for programmers willing to take initiative, those who display creative thinking, and those work well with others (on deadline). Do those and you’re well on your way. That being said, be careful of when talking about yourself. As much as we all like ninjas, a plastic sword, geeky interests (and familiarity with Java) do not a ninja make. . Without further ado, check out Monetate’s infographic below. And to all the hearty programmers and developers out there, please chime in with your expert tips. This is by no means complete. |
Rooted MotoACTV Brings Web Browsing And Angry Birds To Your Wrist | Chris Velazco | 2,011 | 12 | 25 | Fitness watches are one thing, but how about a fitness watch that lets you play a few levels of Angry Birds in between wind sprints? Motorola’s debuted alongside the Droid RAZR not too long ago, and one developer has finally taken it upon itself to unleash its full potential. The hack comes courtesy of developer , whose past endeavors include the and the (ill-fated) . While he’s best known for his software projects, he’s quite the hardware buff too — before working getting to work on a root process, he felt the need to tear the thing apart first. Unlike some of the other Android-powered watches we’ve seen pop up in recent months, the MotoACTV actually sports a half-decent spec sheet. During the teardown, Wade found a 600 MHz OMAP 3630 processor and 256 MB of RAM, which provides enough oomph to handle nearly everything Wade threw at it. After he managed to finagle the Honeycomb launcher and Market access onto the little guy (check the video below), the end result was a compelling lilliputian Android tablet. I’ve got to admit — I always thought that the idea of a fitness-focused Android watch would be a tough sell, but between Motorola’s and Wade’s new root method, the MotoACTV is shaping up to be a pretty tempting buy for fans of wearable tech. If you already own a MotoACTV and you’re itching to make your MotoACTV all that it can be, Wade has posted a tutorial for rooting the device Happy hacking! [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiAAlmyHa1Q&w=640&h=480] |
How To Use Anyone’s Face As A Facebook Chat Emoticon | Josh Constine | 2,011 | 12 | 25 | Emoticons no longer have to be anonymous smiley faces representing simple emotions. Facebook Chat now lets you use the profile picture of any user, official Page, or event on the service as an emoticon. That means you can make one out of your best friend, Chuck Norris, Justin Bieber, Barack Obama or anyone else. This opens up a whole new way to express complex emotions. Here’s how to do it: You can send these custom emoticons from the web or mobile, but they’ll only display as photos on the web. When viewed through a Facebook app or mobile site they appear as their bracketed string. Similarly, you can’t use them in status updates, wall posts, or comments yet. They appear pretty small, but you can hover over the photos to view the username it belongs too. Community Pages, those that aren’t owned by anyone and that display a Wikipedia entry, can’t be used. Not so excited about other people using you as an emoticon? Tough luck. Profile pictures and usernames are public, so this doesn’t technically violate privacy and there’s no way to opt out of having your face used. For a long time, Facebook only had one custom smiley. The code :putnam: would . Now you can replace verbs, nouns, and adjectives with whoever represents them best. As our writer John Biggs described yesterday, you can use , and spawned a thread full of codes for faces and alphabets. The emoticon has evolved. |
Former heads of NSA and Homeland Security unlikely Apple supporters in encryption battle | Ron Miller | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | At a panel discussion today at Apple found two unlikely allies when the former heads of the NSA and Homeland Security threw their support behind encryption technologies. , who was the head of Homeland Security under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and who helped author the USA Patriot Act, and former NSA head both expressed strong support for encryption technology during a panel called “ .” Chertoff was a surprisingly spirited advocate of encryption suggesting at several points during the discussion that weakening it could put the economic engine driven by the Internet at risk, while placing an undue burden on the private businesses who are charged with making sure that information flows smoothly and safely on the Internet. “If we ask private sector to be in control of security, then we have to allow them to have tools to carry out that mission,” he said. Further, he worried that weakening encryption could limit technological development. “We need to make sure that as technology develops that policies and rules and laws don’t stifle technology,” he said. He believes that trust fuels the Internet’s economic engine and that weakening that trust puts those economic benefits at risk. “If you lose trust, you get to a tipping point where people flee to something else,” he said. As that happens, we could inadvertently fragment the internet as different countries go their own way in the name of privacy. “If we don’t come to an agreement with the majority of the world [around privacy], we could end up with multiple internets and lose the value of an interconnected world,” he said. Meanwhile Mike McConnell, former head of the NSA, who is currently senior executive advisor at Booz Allen said if he were advising the FBI on the Apple case, he would tell them that they chose the wrong test case. Instead of bringing the case to court, McConnell suggested a more reasoned approach — forming “a legislatively directed commission of leading experts to have an informed dialog with all clearances [required] to make reasonable recommendations.” He believes that the public and Congress lack the expertise to make informed decisions about cyber security matters, and that by bringing together a group of experts, it could help Congress make more informed decisions. Consider that two men who once advocated limiting privacy in the name of security are strongly defending encryption technology and suggesting that weakening it puts the entire Internet at risk. It seems that Apple has some powerful if unlikely allies when it comes to supporting encryption as a way of protecting data on the Internet — and that’s certainly an unexpected outcome of this debate. |
San Bernardino DA claims Syed Farouk’s iPhone may house ‘cyber pathogen’ | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | that his agency isn’t aware of what data is contained on the iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Farouk. on any meaningful information lying on the device. Yet, on Thursday, the San Bernardino District Attorney speculated that the phone may house a “dormant cyber pathogen” that threatens the county. The DA’s comment represents the first time that any law enforcement agency has said publicly what may be on the phone, which the FBI has ordered Apple to open. But it is wildly unclear exactly what is meant. “The iPhone is a county owned telephone that may have connected to the San Bernardino County computer network. The seized iPhone may contain evidence that can only be found on the seized phone that it was used as a weapon to introduce a lying dormant cyber pathogen that endangers San Bernardino’s infrastructure,” Michael Ramos, the San Bernardino County District Attorney, wrote in a filing ( ) . “Cyber pathogen” isn’t a common term. In fact, it’s a phrase that has never been used in conjunction with system threats. Ramos, , is referring to the possibility that there is a dormant virus is on the device which, if released, could wreak havoc on San Bernardino’s IT network. The problem with that scenario — which we are paraphrasing because the term “cyber pathogen” is meaningless — is that it doesn’t make sense, as Jonathan Zdziarski, an iOS security researcher frequently cited in the FBI-Apple battle, . If the device does contain malware, as the DA appears to be suggesting, that would mean that it has been jailbroken and therefore the authorities do not require Apple’s assistance to get inside it. “Fagan’s statements are not only misleading to the court, but amount to blatant fear mongering. They are designed to manipulate the court into making a ruling for the FBI, and in my opinion are egregious enough that Fagan should be held in contempt just for filing what amounts to a crazy apocalypse story,” Zdziarski summarized. that San Bernardino county distanced itself from the filing — “the county didn’t have anything to do with this brief. It was filed by the district attorney,” a spokesperson said — while the District Attorney’s office provided the publication with a vague statement claiming that there is “compelling governmental interest” to gain access to data on the phone. FBI Director Comey previously argued that authorities wish to gain access to the data in order to leave no stone unturned in the quest for evidence and information, although he admitted that it is unclear whether there is any data related to the shooting, in which 14 people lost their lives, housed on it. Salihin Kondoker, whose wife Anies Kondoker survived the attack, last week filed a friend of court brief siding with Apple in the case. In it, Kondoker argued that Farouk is highly unlikely to have used the device to plan the terrorist act since all San Bernardino county staff were aware that their employer had access to it and its contents. to enable access to the device on account that such a move sets a dangerous precedent for the future since it involves creating backdoor software that would undermine the privacy and safety of “millions.” |
When capital prefers venture over public markets | Matt Oguz | 2,016 | 3 | 3 |
Market movements in the technology sector — particularly in SaaS tech companies — are causing a stir among investors. It’s always a challenge to estimate valuation ranges for publicly traded companies such as LinkedIn, Salesforce and Workday because these calculations require assumptions of growth. Twitter is another beast. Some people get obsessed about enterprise value; others focus on the gross margins or multiples of R&D spendings of these companies in an effort to come up with a reasonable explanation of what’s happening. Investors are trying to draw parallels between these publicly traded companies and private venture-funded companies, but a number of differences exist between these two types of investment opportunities (or “asset classes,” as we refer to them in fund lingo). Let’s review some major differences between investing in stocks versus venture capital. When we invest in private companies, the capital we infuse makes a big difference for the company — or at least it should. After a seed round, a startup becomes a bona fide company. After Series A, it becomes a contender. In public markets, with the exception of activism, equity trades make no difference for the company’s activities and margins. So if a market correction does take place and the stock plummets, the investor loses value significantly — and that’s value the company did not earn operationally to begin with. In venture investing, every dollar invested should make the company better. So if I were to put my money to use, why would I invest in stocks just to be at the mercy of ? Private equity and sovereign wealth funds agree with this notion (that’s why we saw more unicorns last year). In public markets, you can buy and sell equities and their at any time. In the venture capital world, we don’t have that luxury. We buy into a company at some point, and we must exit at another point. The exit generates either a profit or a partial or full loss. But within the confines of a fund, we want to keep the invest-to-exit period as short as possible, regardless of whether we profit or not. If we profit, we boost our . If we lose, we cut our losses quickly and move on. We don’t hold long positions in portfolio companies due to our fund mandates. And because the deals inside a venture capital fund are finite, a fund itself must be finite — and it is. Deals in venture come sequentially and often in bursts, and a deal today will not be available tomorrow (unlike the public markets where one can buy and sell any security, any time). Deal flow and access to deals are vital for VC firms. So, at any point, the challenge in venture capital is to choose the most favorable deal in the current set of deals in the pipeline, which will soon change. And choose we must. We’re constantly running out of time inside the fund, because we have a set investment period. Therefore, another problem emerges: How many deals should we invest in, and how big should the checks be? One shortcut is to invest in as many of them as possible, which would create high visibility in the marketplace, but the check sizes will be small, and the returns probably won’t move the needle. Another solution is to invest in x number of companies per partner, which is even more arbitrary. It’s actually a difficult stochastic problem, and understanding return distributions, the nature of the deal flow, the overall size of the fund and the investment horizon are some of the parameters that would go into solving it. If we invest in stocks, we can buy derivatives contracts to hedge our bets. Those are like insurance for which we pay a premium, and we are covered if the market moves against the direction of our bet. We can do this on both the long and short side. We can’t really do it for our VC bets, other than, perhaps, shorting the . So if you make a bet, you’re stuck with it. In VC, there’s no leverage — but that’s a good thing. We invest only if we have capital in the fund. Therefore, our losses are capped at the investment level. One wrong bet in a leveraged scenario in the public markets can wipe out a fund several times over. Public market stocks are correlated to one another because of the existence of their historic returns. We don’t have this situation in VC, so won’t apply, which makes portfolio formation much more complex. Meanwhile, the path to liquidation has changed for VC. Before, the path to liquidity was to go public or sell to a larger company. Now, it is via private sales to sovereign wealth funds (SWF) or private equity. Institutional funds have built tremendous amounts of capital that are sitting on the sidelines. There has been a surge in the number of “ ” establishments (mainly in the last two years). Capital is being funneled to a number of new investment vehicles that have a high level of thirst for advanced, and often exotic, investment products. The most recent sale of is just one example. (The value of Prince Bin Talal’s 34.9 million Twitter shares has shrunk by about $500 million since last October, when ). Capital is moving around investment vehicles in different ways than before; right now, it is liking venture capital. Is venture capital immune to macroeconomic events such as fluctuations in GDP, inflation or unemployment rates? Of course not. A sizeable decline at the institutional level will necessitate portfolio rebalancing. When that happens, the influx of capital into the venture capital industry typically declines, thereby causing investment activity to drop. However, VC-funded firms are founded on the premise that they will disrupt existing markets by introducing innovative products and services, which depends less on capital and more on talent. So a correction should actually lift venture returns in the long run, particularly if it hits certain sub-verticals like SaaS. It would then be easier for newcomers to recruit talent away from incumbents. These corrective declines in the stock market work to the benefit of venture-funded firms and the VC industry, as long as they are not catastrophic. Capital is moving in all sorts of directions right now (other than the stock market). Let’s just hope that more of it finds its way into venture capital. |
Watch Georgia Tech’s Guthman Musical Instrument Competition | John Biggs | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hKux_89nng] Called the X-Prize for music the pits multiple musicians and makers against each other at Georgia Tech’s Ferst Center for the Arts. A group of judges including Jazz great Pat Metheny will pick their favorites and you, the viewer, can jam along on your desk. The entrants include a unique , a huge sheet of , and an . All of the entrants are doing some amazing stuff in the musical space and it will be fun to see them perform. You can watch the event live at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific. |
Box, Google, Facebook, Microsoft come out in support of Apple in amicus brief | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | While most leaders in the tech industry are standing behind Apple, some government officials, and politicians including Donald Trump, have called upon Apple to comply with the FBI’s data requests. The case has yet to be resolved in the courts — with potentially significant ramifications, weighing in on the Apple security debate will continue to be a priority for tech companies in the coming months. |
It’s the end of “euphoric times” for custom app developers | Ashwin Ramasamy | 2,016 | 3 | 3 |
For the first time in about eight years, we saw a decline in the small business customer base of app developers (in terms of revenue and per-project value). The primary reason cited is the rise of white labels and SDKs. “Uber for X” toolkits have indeed become a force to reckon with. Small businesses increasingly rely on “ready to use” frameworks rather than opting for custom development. In early 2015, I wrote about how and that developers expected a 25-50 percent increase in the usage of SDKs in the development of apps. That has come true. If there is one thing that third-party app development agencies should watch out for in 2016, it’s the strong headwinds from SDKs and white labels. At least 80 percent of the organizations we surveyed consider apps to be critical for customer engagement/support and revenue growth. Apps are no longer a mere “brand presence” strategy for enterprises. Even large enterprises that have a thing for custom development have started appreciating the need for tools that play nice with their incumbent IT landscape — and many SDK providers have matured to address that need. Where does the SDK onslaught leave custom app developers? A vast majority of undifferentiated app development vendors will face issues with growing their top and bottom lines. That said, both small businesses and large enterprises need a new category of app development vendors that are micro-service integrators. App development is becoming a commodity, but the know-how of running an app business isn’t. That’s where app developers can build their sustained competitive moat. Between 70-80 percent of enterprises we surveyed shared their intent to retain an agency for deployment, scaling and app management. User analytics and app analytics are other areas where demand far outstrips supply of specialist agencies. We said this in early 2015: App development agencies that become full-service app management consulting firms will survive and scale. For the rest, the proverbial winter is coming — and there won’t be a spring that follows. App development rates have been holding steady across the world. U.S. and Western Europe command the highest per-hour rates. Continental and Eastern Europe, along with India, command premium low-cost country rates. New supply markets like Indonesia, Vietnam, etc. are cheaper bases, supplying primarily the Chinese and Singaporean demand. One exception to this trend is that the rates of super-specialty dev agencies that specialize in building SDKs or have very popular apps/games in their portfolio have been able to increase their premium. We saw a 10-20 percent increase in the top rates. We saw more agencies charging upwards of $175 per hour in the U.S., $40 per hour in India and $60 per hour in Eastern Europe. These are agencies that started as app developers and have since become full-service consulting firms. SDKs and white labels are big. The re-allocation of budgets from custom development to “ready frameworks” has saved time and cost. So, the price of an SDK has not been a key factor for adoption of an SDK. The same goes for the brand. Features, scalability, ease of use and integration are the most important criteria when it comes to choosing an SDK. With no clear winners in many categories, and an evolving development landscape, decisions on SDKs are made from the perspectives of “product roadmap” and “technology” rather than “commercials” and “brand.” The recent shutting down of Parse by Facebook would accentuate the buying community’s preference for independent tool makers with a strong product vision. Click for the full report. |
This investor has ‘hundreds of millions’ of dollars to sprinkle around US-based VC firms | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | is the investment advisory arm of Shengjing Group and the largest global fund of funds in China. It also has millions of dollars to invest in U.S.-based venture capital funds, it says. This year. Right now. It’s a very different message than VCs are receiving from many other institutions, judging by our recent conversations with these backers, called limited partners. According to a variety of sources, the many brands talking with LPs include Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures, Eight Partners, True Ventures, and First Round Capital (to name but a handful). But some investors aren’t happy with the founder-friendly approach that many VCs have taken in recent years. As one investor told us earlier this week, speaking on background: “A lot of VCs have ‘returns’ but they’re mostly unrealized; it’s not like they were pumping these [portfolio companies] out [onto the public market] as soon as they could. And now the IPO market has collapsed.” Erik Lassila, a longtime VC who is now the U.S.-based managing partner of Peakview, understands his peers’ frustration. There’s a big — and often costly — divide between paper and realized gains. But as part of an organization that plans to invest $1 billion in venture funds — including “hundreds of millions of dollars” in the U.S., a smaller percentage in Israel, and the rest back home in China — Lassila doesn’t have to worry about VCs’ mistakes in recent years. He’s working with a “blank slate,” as he puts it. He also notes that the “bar is very high right now for Series A and Series B deals.” Indeed, Lassila, whose office is on University Avenue in Palo Alto, has already made commitments to six funds, including the newest funds of Menlo Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, and Foundation Capital. Now, Lassila is looking around at other places to park his capital and working to spread the news that “professionally managed Chinese capital has come to the U.S. for the long term.” (In reality, money has been leaving the country at a since last year.) Peakview’s capital comes from high-net-worth individuals; local development funds; and insurance companies, which were given the green-light to invest overseas for the first time in 2012, though some remain to do so for fear they’ll be punished harshly over poor performance by the China Insurance Regulatory Commission. Asked if Lassila is seeing pushback over concerns that Peakview’s funding could be impacted by China’s turbulent economy, he acknowledges that the “macro economy will have ups and downs” but notes that “great wealth has been created in China and Chinese investors are keen to diversify internationally.” Despite the outflow of capital from China, Lassila also argues that “most Chinese institutions have less than 1 percent of their assets invested overseas, so these international investments have a long runway to grow before reaching any kind of balanced portfolios.” Venture firms may decide it’s worth working with Peakview either way. In addition to cold hard cash, foreign investors often provide needed diversification to a venture firm’s investor base; having money from an economy that doesn’t move in strict lockstep with that of the U.S. can come in handy in a downturn. Peakview is promising VCs another perk, too: to help their portfolio companies bridge networking gaps between the U.S. and China. “A GP will call me and say, ‘Our portfolio company received an investment offer from XYZ Ventures in Shanghai. What’s its reputation? What kind of resources does it have?'” says Lassila. Conversely, he adds, “Chinese companies will tell us they want to form a partnership with a top U.S. firm to invest in whatever field. We can help them pick the right partner.” Peakview isn’t paid for its consulting services, says Lassila. It’s just “something we do for our family.” Whether the services are enough to get Peakview into every top fund it would like remains to be seen. But Peakview’s pitch could certainly be music to the ears of the many VCs who are back in the market in 2016 — and would happy to join its brood if it means getting their newest funds raised. |
Comparably launches Glassdoor competitor for salary data | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | The Santa Monica-based startup says its site will make it easier to find whether or not your salary is competitive amongst industry peers with the same level of experience. The self-reported data can also be sorted by gender, helping to highlight pay discrepancies. In addition to gender and years of experience, compensation data based on region and company size will also be included. There is also information about startup salaries based on how much venture capital has been raised. “We all know that the old school data companies that provide data for this are very inaccurate,” said Eric Chin, partner at Crosslink. Chin said he invested in Comparably because he believes in the team and also because he believes “the whole HR recruiting and talent space has major opportunity for disruption.” |
ICX Media raises $2.5M to connect video creators with publishers and marketers | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | , a Washington, D.C. startup promising to help video creators find an audience and make money, today that it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. The company was founded by Michael Avon, Tom MacIsaac, Steve McCord and Joey McCord (pictured above). Three of the four co-founders previously worked together at mobile ad company Millennial Media, where Avon was chief financial officer, Steve McCord led technology and Joey McCord led product. (AOL, which also owns TechCrunch, .) Avon is ICX’s CEO, and he explained that the company aims to address some of the big challenges facing the current generation of digital media creators. “It’s very easy now, just to post a video on YouTube or Facebook, but it’s very difficult to actually find an audience for that video in a sea of content,” he said. Avon also compared the current landscape of online video creators to the app developers who worked with Millennial — the vast majority, he said, had “no idea how to monetize their content,” and in essence outsized the monetization process to Millennial and its competitors. So he sees ICX fulfilling a similarly important role for those creators, primarily by helping them find media companies and brands who can help promote and monetize their videos. And from the other side, those publishers and brands are hungry for video content, and they might be looking to syndicate a creator’s existing videos or to commission something new. In some ways, the description sounds similar to marketing companies (such as ) that connect brands with social media influencers. However, Avon said he sees those services as possible partners rather than competitors. “We look at marketing as just as piece of what we do,” he said. “Again, what we’ll likely do is partner with one or more players out there. We see this as an end-to-end platform for helping the creator find collaborators.” During our conversation, Avon repeatedly emphasized the comprehensiveness of the ICX platform, as well as the data and analytics that it provides to creators. And when he talks about working with video creators, you might be thinking of big YouTube stars, but he said, “That’s probably the type of star that we’re least focused on right now.” “We’re looking at the thousands, the tens of thousands of independent creators who either want to be YouTube stars, Facebook or Amazon stars, who need to find an audience, who are at the very early stage,” Avon said. And while he’s not claiming that he can turn every one of them into big celebrities, he said ICX can help them grow their audience and make a living. The funding was led by Phil Herget, former co-managing partner of Columbia Capital, with participation from , including Vubiquity CEO Darcy Antonellis; former Neustar executives Jeff Ganek, Robert Poulin and Mark Foster; and AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley. |
null | Erick Schonfeld | 2,011 | 12 | 22 | null |
The singularity is never coming, but it’s already here | Ben Narasin | 2,016 | 3 | 3 |
When I heard Ray Kurzweil present the concept of the singularity to a small group at TED, the idea that computing power advances would ultimately allow thinking machines to advance beyond humans’ ability to advance them, and eventually allow us to “upload” our own consciousness into an eternal ether, I was so smitten I committed to living long enough to live forever. I even practiced caloric restriction for several years. Although many things can improve life expectancy, caloric restriction is the only one to have been proven to extend life span — and every life-extending drug experiment attempts to duplicate its effects. Over time, I came to realize that while the parts of Kurzweil’s concept will likely happen for machines, it won’t happen for me. Even if we can map the electrical signals of my brain (if one were to assume that the brain is the totality of my being, which I do not), the ultimate eternal life that that process would create would not be mine, but rather a replica of me — or a digital variant of that replica. I was originally thinking of living in a Sony Aibo dog for a bit to see how that went. The me, the me typing these keys and thinking these thoughts, would still rot and die like everyone that came before me, and every non-digital one that comes after. I cannot predict whether I would treat that other digital me as a son I wanted to see prosper after I was gone, or as a competitor for my life’s experiences and values I might conveniently find a way to delete out of jealousy or spite. But the fact that my own biological life would still travel an improving but ultimately finite path convinced me the singularity was not for me. But for non-organic entities, aka companies, the singularity has already begun. It has begun through the combination of the unlimited data plume the digital age has created, and the enhanced computing power of layered neural networks: aka big data and machine learning. We are just beginning to see companies create systems that will ultimately outsmart the people and companies that created them, and create nearly unpredictable and unprecedented value in doing so. The singularity of the computing company is upon us. Here are two recent glimpses of what I’ve seen that convinced me. One of my portfolio companies has a business model of working with Fortune 500 companies to marry their internal data silos to public data stores to unearth learnings and value. Recently, a major insurance player expanding its property insurance business to include commercial buildings wanted to refine its underwriting procedures. In mapping the company’s records to public records against individual properties, it unearthed an interesting insight. A surprise predictor of claims for commercial buildings turned out to be, wait for it… boiler maintenance, records for which are public. I asked the founder who pointed us to boiler record data; was that something we thought of or something the insurance company suggested? The answer was neither; the machines figured it out. I later talked to the largest re-insurer in Europe who had a long history in property insurance who confirmed this was something they had learned over time, yet our systems learned it in an instant. I visited another company recently that uses machine learning to map images to diagnose disease states. The company inputs medical images and lets the machine learn the patterns. For their first disease state they outperformed an expert panel three to one, and with dramatic reductions in false positives. Dammit Jim, that’s impressive. The opportunity for machines, over time, to diagnose with high accuracy and de minimis risk of error the illnesses from which we suffer, is both a staggeringly huge financial opportunity and an exceptional human good. Venture has been excited about machine learning and big data for some time, but the companies we have seen so far are, regardless of size, at best the Version 1s of early day efforts. Consulting businesses and analytics enhancers that advance a past paradigm are interesting, but the opportunities of the future are insane. The singularity of the company is starting, driven by the computing power and data harnessed and focused by talented entrepreneurs with missions to achieve — missions, which with the singularity, may be greater than any we have embarked on before. |
Facebook Messenger adds music, starting with Spotify song sharing | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | First came the with Uber, and now Facebook Messenger is launching “its very first music integration” with Spotify. Inside the Messenger “More” section in chat threads, all iOS and Android users will now find a Spotify option. Tap it and they’ll be shuttled into Spotify’s app where they can “Search for something to share.” Once they select a song, artist or playlist, they’ll be popped back to Messenger with the option to share the photo of the cover artwork. When a friend taps that photo, they’ll be bounced over to Spotify to listen. The Messenger team also if you want to know what they’ve been listening to fuel the app’s growth to 800 million users. Spotify already has its own internal sharing option for sending songs straight to friends. It also connects with email, SMS, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. But now when you’re on Messenger discussing a song you fell in love with or an artist coming to play a concert, you can easily pop over to Spotify and back to share. Many Messenger and Spotify users rely on screenshots or just typing out a song name to share it with a friend. That causes extra friction that might lead a recipient to never actually listen. With the Messenger sharing, there’s no extra typing necessary. If Messenger can become a richer social layer connecting Spotify users, it could inspire deep conversations about music, boosting its engagement. That generates platform lock-in and potential monetization opportunities for Facebook. And for Spotify, Messenger will provide virality that could help it fend off Apple Music and convince more non-streamers of its value. |
Docker acquires Conductant as it looks to help businesses run large-scale systems | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | Docker today that it has acquired Conductant, a small startup that focused on orchestration. While you have probably never heard of Conductant — and as far as we can see, the company doesn’t even have a web presence and has never received outside funding — this acquisition brings a lot of talent to Docker. Conductant was founded by and David Chung. While at Twitter, Farner’s team built what would later become the project. Aurora is a scheduling system that ties into the Mesos framework, a service that helps abstract individual servers away so developers and admins can treat clusters just like they would individual machines. Aurora currently orchestrates the majority of machines inside Twitter and a number of other firms. Farner, Chung and John Sirois will join Docker. The team has extensive experience in building and working with large-scale, mission-critical systems at Google, Twitter and Zynga. Docker says the team will work on creating a commercial distribution for Aurora (which would compete with the likes of Mesosphere) and integrating Aurora with Docker Swarm. The company says it is also looking at integrating Aurora as a component of the Docker stack. According to an internal memo we received, the team will also work on a number of internal systems at Docker. These include a project that will give every Docker employee a Docker-based sandbox to work with instead of having to set up individual AWS accounts. In doing this, the team will dogfood some of the above-mentioned projects (and has apparently been doing so for the last few weeks since the acquisition officially closed). “This project will help us reinforce an essential aspect of Docker DNA: we must ALWAYS be experts at operating our own software,” the internal memo reads. “That is how Docker was invented in the first place: by drawing from our operational experience at Dotcloud. There is a virtuous circle between development and operations that is essential if we want to be credible as a vendor of infrastructure software.” |
Facer brings its popular watchface customization utility to Apple Watch | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | A popular smartwatch customization platform for Android, , has today made its way to and Apple Watch. While there are already dozens of utilities on the App Store that allow users to better personalize their Apple Watch’s home screen, Facer stands out because of its sizable collection of free watchfaces, range of exclusive content, which also includes premium brands and its web-based watchface design tool. You may already be familiar with Facer, thanks to its earlier support for Android smartwatches where it has been as of the top applications for watchface creation. That app has grown its community to hundreds of thousands of users, the company says. (Google Play data confirms this, showing the app has between 100,000 to 500,000 downloads.) A month ago, the Android application received an update, which brought a lot more content to the platform beyond what was previously available, adding thousands more free watchfaces as well as officially licensed faces from brands like Garfield, Betty Boop and Popeye. Those faces and more are now available for Apple Watch, too. [gallery ids="1286239,1286238,1286237,1286236,1286234"] In addition, the Apple Watch application supports the ability to view the latest images from your Instagram or Tumblr feeds as your watchface. Other themes and channels are also available, including those from partners like Unsplash, Superfamous, Gratisography, Vecteezy, NASA and others. Or, if you prefer something more educational, the app offers flashcard-style faces that with every flick of your wrist can help you learn the constellations, new languages or about the planets in our solar system. What’s also interesting about the Facer platform versus a number of the watchface creation utilities available currently is that it offers a way to create and share your personalized watchfaces from the web. With a design tool at , you can drag and drop onto an HD canvas text, shapes and images from its online library. However, you can do more customizations for Android watch faces, the company’s website notes, as Apple limits editing to wallpaper only. The app is the latest launch from Little Labs, . That is, instead of focusing on building out a suite of mobile applications for iOS and Android, Little Labs builds apps for smartwatches and wearables. The company, founded by at team with backgrounds in mobile (including Jamdat Mobile and EA), last year raised $3 million from NEA, Lightspeed Ventures and Lowercase Capital, among others. In addition to Facer, includes a bite-sized slots game for Apple Watch as well as The Martian Game, built for the Oscar-nominated movie. Facer is a free download [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og_3Eo1k-LI] |
Neumob hires Netscape, Google veteran Jim Roskind as CTO | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | Jim Roskind , which recently raised , helps developers speed up their apps with the help of a combination of a content delivery network and a number of network optimization techniques. The company announced today it has hired as its CTO. While Roskind may not be a household name, he is a tech industry veteran with a resume that’s beyond impressive. In the 1990s, he co-founded Infoseek and later became chief architect at Netscape where, among other things, he developed Netscape’s Java security model. He later became a VP and CTO for technology development at AOL, and — after a few stints at a few startups — joined Google in 2008. There, he architected , Google’s UDP-based transport protocol that now powers of all requests from Chrome to Google’s servers. In total, Roskind’s name appears on 125 U.S. patents and he has four degrees from MIT, including a PhD in EECS with a focus on Data Communications Networks, and Distributed Processing Protocols and Algorithms. After eight years at Google, though, Roskind decided it was time to try something new — and especially something focused on the mobile space. Roskind tells me he loved doing QUIC at Google, but while QUIC was focused on the browser, Neumob is focused on apps. In Roskind’s view, apps are pushing away the browser. “QUIC services the browser to server infrastructure problems very well,” Roskind told me. “And it has proven very helpful there. But there are broader questions and Neumob focuses on making apps go faster.” He also noted that while Google “does everything in the world, Neumob focuses on a single problem.” |
RingCentral opens its WebRTC API to developers | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | RingCentral, which focuses on providing VoIP services to businesses, today the of its WebRTC-based API and for developers. RingCentral’s one-year-old , which helps developers integrate business communications (including voice, text and — for the older generation — fax) into their business processes, already handles about one million API calls every day, and it saw a 50 percent increase in API requests from third-party developers in the last quarter of 2015. Now, the company has decided to also open up a WebRTC-based API, as well. WebRTC, which is now built into most modern browsers, allows for plugin-free voice, video and text chat right from the browser, but because of some inherent limitations to the protocol, you still typically need a service that can manage connections for you. As RingCentral’s VP of platform products David Lee, told me, the company believes that now is the right time to back WebRTC. “If you look at browser adoption statistics, the market share of browsers that do not support WebRTC is rapidly diminishing,” he said. “This reflects an industry realization that WebRTC is a high-quality standard that’s here to stay. Chrome, Firefox and now Edge all support WebRTC natively, which makes the non-supporting browsers like IE (which Microsoft is retiring anyway) and Safari lesser concerns moving forward.” He also noted that even though users have adopted RingCentral on the desktop and mobile, “we often see demand for an ‘installation-free’ communication experience.” Because most of the company’s users already use web-based applications to manage their businesses, being able to offer them a WebRTC-based solution is a natural step for the company. For the time being, though, RingCentral’s new API only supports voice. Lee tells me that video is on the company’s radar, though. “Our usage and demand today lean more heavily toward voice and messaging, but we do plan on offering video support in the future,” he said. “Keep in mind, video conferencing is a key feature of Meetings — we just haven’t opened the API as of yet.” Access to the API will be included in RingCentral’s Office accounts and users who make calls over it will incur the same cost as for calls placed through the company’s other services. You can now apply for access to the API . |
Evertoon wants you to build funny 3D cartoon videos on your phone | Matthew Lynley | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | Niniane Wang video — a short animated film of two creatures poking fun at the iPhone — on YouTube and was thinking of all the ways a video like that could be more customizable and personalized. It also helped spark the idea for her to start , launching today that makes it easy to make short, personalized films that users can share to networks like YouTube or Twitter. The films definitely have that vibe as the original iPhone vs Evo video, but can be much more active and lively than just two characters sitting there and talking. “I’ve always been interested in Pixar, but it’s so far out of reach in terms of making [a film], but i have stories i want to tell,” Wang said. “But I’m not going to do live action and get people to act with me. I’m not gonna be a vine start and talking to the camera for minutes. Most people have the dream of being a director, but it’s not feasible.” Users upload a photo they want to sit on top of an avatar, which can be pretty much anything, from a photo of themselves to in one case a photo of Peyton Manning. Then, they set up the choreography of the scene by typing in various emojis: a thumbs up makes the avatar give a thumbs up, and a fist emoji makes them punch each other. They then upload a background photo and record their voice for the videos. “At first I was asking people to type out the word, and then someone said, ‘why don’t you have people do the emoji. people love emojis,'” she said. “And a picture says a thousand words, instead of dealing with spelling errors and typing things out. It would be harder to type out the exact name of that facial expression.” All of this is done through a mobile interface, making it easy to put together a film and share it on a network like YouTube quickly from wherever an idea strikes. The goal was to make it feel like iMessage, with the process of putting in emojis and recording a voice, Wang said, making the interface feel familiar and easier to use. If feels at times like an ultra-simplified version of Shockwave Flash back in the day — which sought to make animations like these easy to make, but in the end was also extremely clunky. Wang said she wanted something that was much, much simpler than Flash, that would free users from worrying about things like camera angles and careful planning. There are other modern tools for making short animated films like the ones that come out of Evertoon, like Source Filmmaker. But again, those tools can be complex, and Evertoon’s goal is to be fast, lightweight and simple, Wang said. Source Filmmaker was partially an inspiration for Evertoon, she said, in both the sense that she wanted to be able to do something similar but wanted it to be easier. “Obviously [the challenge is taking] something complex like moviemaking and boiling it down to something simple,” Wang said. “We’ve had to refine and refine it, at first it was easy to be overwhelmed, but we really simplified it to this point now. I hope that people will use this, we’ve seen people go from a toy, where they make characters punch each other, to slapstick humor and then to more sophisticated humor where they’re poking fun at the Oscars.” Evertoon has raised $1.7 million in venture financing. |
Failed Powa Technologies fire sale: Ben White, Greenlight Digital divvy up and buy U.K. assets | Ingrid Lunden | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | One more chapter in the messy story of Powa Technologies, the payments startup that last raised money at a but rapidly sank into the deadpool on a flimsy raft of vaporware. Today, accounting firm Deloitte announced that it had secured two buyers for two parts of Powa’s U.K. business. Neither of them was Thompson Investments, the firm that was when Powa first filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.K. in February. PowaWeb is being sold to Warren Cowan and his digital agency Greenlight Digital. And PowaTag has been sold to a consortium led by Ben White. Deloitte would not comment on the details, but it looks like it is the who had been a founding partner at VC firm Notion Capital and is himself an entrepreneur, having founded and sold MessageLabs to Symantec. As part of the deal, some 69 jobs are being transferred to the new organizations. Andy Muldoon will retain his role in heading up the PowaWeb team within Greenlight Digital. The fate of the non-U.K. parts of the business is still unknown. The company, before it went into administration, employed some 310 people. Deloitte says it is not disclosing the prices paid for either part of the business, but it was a clear fire sale. It also noted that the release that noted Thompson as the buyer was put out prematurely by Dan Wagner himself before a deal was done. “Given the precarious financial position of the business, we have had to run an accelerated and focussed M&A process, quickly zeroing in on the key likely purchasers after our recent appointment,” said Rob Harding, Joint Administrator who led on the sale, in a statement. “We are delighted to have secured a sale for the business preserving a significant number of jobs and wish Ben White, Greenlight Digital and the respective management teams every success in taking the businesses forward… This has been an extremely challenging time for many including the group’s employees and management. We would like to specifically thank them and the legal advisers involved (Hogan Lovells, Linklaters and Akin Gump), for their help and support in successfully concluding the deals.” Powa had a colorful history and was built by serial entrepreneur Dan Wagner with big ambitions, of TechCrunch . They included the launch of a Square-clone mobile payments service ( ) and an elaborate marketing platform based around QR codes and augmented reality ( ). The company also ran into some very bizarre conflicts, such as the one involving Square issuing a cease and desist for Powa using Square marketing materials, . And it often made claims that turned out to be regarding actual customers. It was the latter that seemed to , with little in the way of incoming revenue to offset the costs of growing an e-commerce business and perhaps even building the products that Powa claimed that it had already built. Powa Technologies had raised $175 million in its life from investors that included Wellington Management. Wagner himself has an interesting history, including the sale of an analytics company for $500 million to Thomson Reuters many years ago. It’s perhaps because of this that the emperor was able to convince investors and others that . |
imDown’s mobile entertainment network focuses on one-minute vertical videos | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | Thanks to smartphones and the rise of apps like Snapchat and Periscope, vertical videos have gone from being an annoyance to a and often preferred video file format. That shift has inspired a number of startups to focus on the medium, in an effort to carve out a niche in YouTube’s shadow. The latest to join the fray is , a mobile-first entertainment network designed for full-screen vertical format videos less than a minute long. According to co-founder and CEO Jose Llorens, the startup first had tried to build out a crowdsourced community from scratch in L.A. before realizing it needed to have a presence in mobile video before moving forward with real-time, location-based video sharing. However, that larger idea is still on the longer-term roadmap, he says. Instead, with the imDown application for iOS, the current idea is to offer a network where creators can form communities that help them get discovered. Of course, at first glance, this sounds a lot like the video efforts from other social apps, like Vine, Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. But Llorens believes imDown’s support for one-minute videos will help to differentiate it from Vine, whose six-second time limits are too short. Meanwhile, larger social networks are not really about forming video communities, but rather about sharing information or connecting friends. [gallery ids="1286186,1286185,1286184"] Upon launch, imDown will point users to channels around specific categories of videos, like “Adrenaline,” “Funny,” “Music,” “Festivals,” “Adventure,” “Creative,” “Sports,” “Food” and more. There are even niche channels for topics like cats or dogs, epic fails, surfing and others. Each channel includes a range of videos on the topic, and allow users to mark favorite videos, share to social media and follow the creators. “We care about simply providing people with a more immersive way to use video as a form of communication around specific categories of interest. Whether that be sports, adventure, or a specific location is up to the community,” explains Llorens. “With the rise in mobile video consumption, we’ve set out to build the most user-friendly experience that allows people to easily discover and share entertainment they care about without it having to disappear,” he says. The company’s next step will involve having creators build their own channels on the app where subscribers are allowed to add their own videos. However, the channel admin will retain control, and will be able to block users, remove videos, set the channel to public or private and more. This sort of collaborative means of building a following would be unique to imDown, but it’s unclear if creators would want to dilute their brand by allowing outside contributions. Time will tell. If the video community takes off, Llorens says imDown will license its app to creators — basically setting up creators with their own app where they can release content, like their music, for example. With its emphasis on vertical video, the app somewhat competes with other startups like and . L.A.-based imDown is co-founded by developer Tyler Rice, who met Llorens at a hackathon in Miami. Prior to imDown, Llorens founded a lifestyle fitness brand called LiveFit and contributed to Elite Daily. He’s also one of a small group of Hispanic entrepreneurs in the tech industry, he notes. The startup is backed by a million in angel funding and is a full-time team of three. imDown is [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp55E6604u0] |
LinkedIn open-sources its WhereHows data discovery and lineage portal | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | LinkedIn today open-sourced , a meta data-centric tool the company has long used internally to make it easier for its employees to discover data the company generates and to track the lineage of its datasets as they move around its various internal tools and services. Now that almost every modern business creates massive amounts of data, simply managing how all this information flows across an organization becomes virtually impossible. Sure, you can store it in a data warehouse, but at the end of the day, you end up with a large number of datasets that are very similar, or different versions of an original dataset, or information that has been transformed so it can be used by different tools. The exact same data also often ends up in multiple systems, just with different names or maybe version numbers. In the end, how do you know which dataset you should work with when you are building a new product (or maybe just an executive report)? This, LinkedIn’s Shirshanka Das and Eric Sun told me, was the problem the company was facing. So the team developed , which functions as a central repository and web-based portal for keeping track of what happens to data in a large company like LinkedIn, or even a smaller one that has to deal with lots of heterogeneous data. At LinkedIn, WhereHows currently stores data about the status of 50,000 datasets, 14,000 comments and 35 million job executions. The company says all of this data relates to information that covers about a 15 petabyte footprint. LinkedIn is a big Hadoop user, but the tool can also track data from other systems (think Oracle databases, Informatica, etc.). WhereHows gives developers access to both an API and a web interface that allows employees to visualize the lineage of a dataset, annotate it and more. As Das and Sun noted, LinkedIn has a long history of open sourcing products that aren’t part of its core competency. The idea here is to encourage conversation; as the large big-data ecosystem adopts this and similar tools, the company eventually benefits from this, as well. Similar to a lot of other companies I talk to, LinkedIn also notes that open source helps it elevate its engineering brand, which in turn makes recruiting easier. |
Want to compete with Salesforce? Buy Marketo | Vik Singh | 2,016 | 3 | 4 |
There are several enterprise players that want a share of Salesforce’s business, but just aren’t making headway by knuckling up against the company’s dominant, entrenched SaaS CRM offerings. Rather than competing head on, a smarter approach for these businesses is to “front door” Salesforce, instead. By acquiring , a competitor could get into Salesforce’s accounts, then, over time, work themselves down the funnel and leverage better integrations with Marketo in order to eventually displace Salesforce. Marketo’s strategic foothold in the enterprise and its current market value relative to potential acquirers like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and even Salesforce make this a great time to buy the leading marketing automation vendor. Many industry watchers overlook the mission-critical role Marketo plays in its customers’ go-to-market operations. The majority of Marketo’s 4,000 customers also use Salesforce, but the marketing automation system has access to more data about the funnel than its CRM counterpart. Marketo can sync bi-directionally with Salesforce, capturing all the data stored there, while also holding top-of-the-funnel lead behavior data that doesn’t get stored in CRM. Hence, it has access to an invaluable superset of data about a company’s potential and existing customers. This is the data platform for which developers should want to build apps. There’s a lot of potential for Marketo to do more with its LaunchPoint platform and replicate the success Salesforce has seen with the AppExchange’s community of killer apps (including Marketo). For example, an acquirer could tie Marketo with its cloud offerings to provide an even broader set of data (i.e. Salesforce + Marketo + the acquirer’s data) and build a competing developer platform. Bundling a cloud infrastructure solution like Azure, AWS, Heroku or Google Compute with Marketo would also help the system scale better. Because marketing is multi-channel and more data-driven, companies are collecting thousands to millions of events from their website activities, which are instrumented with Marketo landing pages and forms. A better cloud environment would enable improved reporting, better performance and faster workflow triggers than you can get with . Additionally, having both a CRM and Marketo in one product portfolio would drive faster and more sizeable deals, similar to the strategy Salesforce employs with Pardot. Let’s also consider the rest of the marketing automation landscape. When you compare Marketo’s go-to-market approach against competitors like Eloqua, Pardot and HubSpot, it has a distinct advantage. Marketo is the only vendor that started out by focusing on the mid-market and is steadily moving up-market — a strategy that’s been proven successful time and again by market leaders like Salesforce, New Relic and others. Marketo’s competitive positioning against Eloqua has been that it is faster and slicker. While Eloqua first established the marketing automation category, and is known to be more powerful and better for complex environments (although that gap is closing), it is considered more difficult to set up than Marketo. It’s really hard for Eloqua to compete against Marketo, because offering more advanced functionality perpetuates a cycle of further complexity, but transitioning to a “faster and slicker” solution risks alienating big customers and power users. Marketo’s smart strategy has led to more deals and more customers, despite entering the market after Eloqua. At the other end of the spectrum, HubSpot focuses on selling to much smaller companies, and offers a self-service solution as opposed to deep CRM integration. Interestingly enough, HubSpot offers CRM for free with its marketing automation, which is a great way to compete against Salesforce in the lower end of the market. Of course, Salesforce’s Pardot offering sits somewhere in the middle. There have been many improvements to the platform, but based on what customers are saying, Pardot is still behind Marketo when it comes to feature functionality. From a financial perspective, this would, of course, be a sizeable acquisition. Marketo has generated . Despite this track record, the market is really dinging its value, which is likely because of the company’s unprofitability, leadership changes, uncertainty around SaaS products, etc. Marketo’s enterprise value is currently $640 million plus $110 million in cash, and if you factor in a 25 percent premium, you’re looking at a price tag of just under $1 billion. Although that certainly isn’t chump change, I’d argue that the market is favoring large, profitable software companies — many of whom have plenty of cash for an acquisition of this nature. Marketo, on the other hand, is trading at an of only 3x enterprise value to revenue, while other like Zendesk, New Relic and Salesforce are at 6-8x multiples, even in this market. This low multiple undervalues the strategic value of Marketo, one of the few SaaS companies with thousands of customers on five-figure annual contracts. Marketo has one of the most extraordinary ramps we’ve seen since Salesforce in terms of year-over-year revenue, growing from $1 million to $209 million over the past 10 years. The company’s incremental revenue is 2x its incremental sales and marketing spend in recent quarters (while it has also kept R&D costs roughly flat). Looking at incremental annualized billings this year over sales and marketing spend from last year, Marketo’s “ ” is 0.54, which means that each customer pays for itself in less than two years. It’d be better to see a payback of under 12 months, because many of its contracts have annual commitments. And given the amount of upfront work there is to set up a marketing automation system, it is reasonable to assume that a Marketo customer will stay on for at least a year and roll into a second year commit — paying back their associated sales and marketing spend. According to my calculations, if Marketo dedicates more than a quarter of its sales force to going after the enterprise, it can bring this payback down to one year, which would significantly reduce burn and improve sales efficiency. Even though Marketo’s unprofitability has grown at the same rate as revenue, the company is still only burning about $6 million a month. And when you divide its revenues by 4,000 customers, average annual contract values (ACVs) look to be around $40,000, which feels low given the scope of the platform. Marketo should be seeing more success with moving up-market. A large acquirer with stronger footholds in big companies would help it sell into that enterprise segment. By joining forces with one of the software giants to enhance its offerings, Marketo could boost upsell rates and ACVs, as well as close its profitability gap. All of this demonstrates Marketo’s attractiveness as an acquisition target. If you want to make headway in the CRM or analytics space, you need a solid marketing automation system — the ultimate gatekeeper of the funnel. It’s the perfect trojan horse for tapping into CRM and co-existing with Salesforce. A Marketo acquisition could be a great defensive move for Salesforce, but it would be messy culturally, given its competing ExactTarget/Pardot products. On the other hand, companies like Microsoft, Oracle and SAP are competing with Salesforce in the CRM game. If you’re one of those major players, you’ve got to ask yourself — how often do you get an opportunity like this? |
PayPal makes money every time you use Uber, Airbnb | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | PayPal has been going through some big changes since separating from eBay last year. The company recently introduced a and is now monetizing its popular peer-to-peer payments app, Venmo. Already with 18 million users, PayPal is expanding its checkout to 120 new countries. And they are doubling down on Braintree, which powers the mobile transactions on Uber, Airbnb and StubHub. TechCrunch sat down with senior vice president Bill Ready to find out about what’s in store for PayPal, and why he’s not worried about Apple Pay. |
Kissmetric’s Hiten Shah on VC funding vs bootstrapping and how to determine founder ‘grit’ | Harry Stebbings | 2,016 | 3 | 4 |
What’s it like being the founder of two wildly successful startups, advisor to Linkedin and Automattic and a prolific angel investor with Buffer and Mattermark? shares a glimpse in our latest interview. We discussed the pros and cons of VC funding compared to bootstrapping your startup, the implications of financing and self-funding and how Hiten’s time in the startup world has affected his investing. Hiten also delved into how he decides which startups to advise, what the most counterintuitive advice is for startups and why he asks founders “What is your earliest traumatic memory?”
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Legal battles loom as technological ubiquity creates tensions between privacy and security | Vivek Wadhwa | 2,016 | 3 | 4 |
The battle between the FBI and Apple over the unlocking of a terrorist’s iPhone will likely require Congress to create new legislation. That’s because there really aren’t any existing laws that govern these technologies. The battle is between security and privacy, with Silicon Valley fighting for privacy. The debates in Congress will be ugly, uninformed and emotional. Lawmakers won’t know which side to pick and will flip-flop between what lobbyists ask and the public’s fear du jour. And because there is no consensus on what is right or wrong, any decision they make today will likely be changed tomorrow. This is a prelude of things to come, not only with encryption technologies, but everything from artificial intelligence to drones, robotics and synthetic biology. Technology is moving faster than our ability to understand it, and there is no consensus on what is ethical. It isn’t just the lawmakers who are not well-informed; the originators of the technologies themselves don’t understand the full ramifications of what they are creating. They may take strong positions today based on their emotions and financial interests, but as they learn more, they too will change their views. It takes decades, sometimes centuries, to reach the type of consensus that is needed to enact the far-reaching legislation that Congress will have to consider. Laws are essentially codified ethics, a consensus that is reached by society on what is right and wrong. This happens only after people understand the issues and have seen the pros and cons. Consider our laws on privacy. These date back to the late 1800s, when newspapers first started publishing gossip. They wrote a series of about Boston lawyer Samuel Warren and his family, which led his law partner, and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, to write a Harvard Law Review article, “ ” which argued for the right to be left alone. This essay laid the foundation of American privacy law. It also took centuries to create today’s copyright laws, intangible property rights and contract law. All of these followed the development of technologies such as the printing press and steam engine. Today, technology is progressing on an exponential curve; advances that would take decades now happen in months. Consider that the first iPhone was released in June 2007 and has evolved into a device that captures our deepest personal secrets, keeps track of our lifestyles and habits and is becoming our health coach and mentor. It was inconceivable just five years ago that there could be such debates about unlocking this device. A greater privacy risk than the lock on the iPhone are the cameras and sensors that are being placed everywhere. There are cameras on our roads, in public areas and malls and in office buildings. One company that it is partnering with AT&T to track people’s travel patterns and behaviors through their mobile phones so that its billboards can display personalized ads. Billboards will also include cameras to watch the expressions of passersby. Cameras often record everything that is happening. Soon there will be cameras looking down at us from drones and in privately owned microsatellites. Our TVs, household appliances and self-driving cars will be watching us. The cars will also keep logs of where we have been and make it possible to piece together who we have met and what we have done — just as our smartphones can already do. These technologies have major security risks and are largely unregulated. Each has its nuances and will require different policy considerations. The next technology that will surprise, shock and is gene editing. CRISPR-Cas9 is a system for engineering genomes that was simultaneously developed by teams of scientists at different universities. This technology, which has become inexpensive enough for labs all over the world to use, allows the editing of genomes — the basic building blocks of life. It holds the promise of providing cures for genetic diseases, as well as creating drought resistant and high-yield plants and new sources of fuel. It can also be used to “edit” the genomes of animals and human beings. China is leading the way in creating commercial applications for CRISPR, goats, sheep, pigs, monkeys and dogs. It has given them larger muscles, more fur and meat and altered their shapes and sizes. Scientists demonstrated that these traits can be passed to future generations, thereby creating a new species. China sees this as a way to feed its billion people and provide it a global advantage. China has also made progress in creating designer babies. In April 2015, scientists in China revealed that they had tried using CRISPR to edit the genomes of human embryos. Although these embryos could not develop to term, viable embryos could one day be engineered to cure disease or provide desirable traits. The risk is that geneticists with good intentions could mistakenly engineer changes in DNA that generate dangerous mutations and cause painful deaths. In December 2015, an international group of scientists gathered at the National Academy of Sciences to call for a moratorium on making inheritable changes to the human genome until there is a “broad societal consensus about the appropriateness” of any proposed change. But then this February, the British government announced that it has experiments by scientists at Francis Crick Institute to treat certain cases of infertility. I have little doubt that these scientists will not cross any ethical lines. But is there anything to stop governments themselves from surreptitiously working to develop a race of superhuman soldiers? The creators of these technologies usually don’t understand the long-term ramifications of what they are creating, and, when they do, it is often too late, as was the case with CRISPR. One of its inventors, Jennifer Doudna, wrote a in the December issue of Nature. “I was regularly lying awake at night wondering whether I could justifiably stay out of an ethical storm that was brewing around a technology I had helped to create,” she lamented. She for human genome editing to “be on hold pending a broader societal discussion of the scientific and ethical issues surrounding such use.” A technology that is far from being a threat is artificial intelligence. Yet it is stirring deep fears. AI is, today, nothing more than brute force computing, with superfast computers crunching massive amounts of data. Yet it is advancing so fast that tech luminaries such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking worry it will evolve beyond human capability and become an existential threat to mankind. Others fear that it will create wholesale unemployment. Scientists are trying to come to a consensus about how AI can be used in a benevolent way, but, as with CRISPR, how can you regulate something that anyone, anywhere, can develop? And soon, we will have robots and become our companions. These, too, will watch everything we do and raise new legal and ethical questions. They will evolve to the point that they seem human. What happens then, when a robot asks for the right to vote or kills a human in self-defense? Thomas Jefferson said, in 1816, “Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.” But how can our policymakers and institutions keep up with the advances when the originators of the technologies themselves can’t? There is no answer to this question. |
Andreessen Horowitz talking with investors about a new, $1.5 billion fund | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | The Sand Hill Road venture firm is in the thick of fundraising and talking with investors about a fresh $1.5 billion fund, according to several sources who note the fund could always close at a higher number. It was almost exactly two years ago that the firm closed its forth, multi-stage venture capital fund, Andreessen Horowitz Fund IV, with . The money also comes on the heels of a $200 million fund that the firm called the AH Bio Fund, a vehicle that’s being used to invest in mostly early-stage startups at the intersection of computer science and life sciences. Altogether, Andreessen Horowitz, which launched in June 2009, has so far raised $4.35 billion, including three previous funds. The firm declined to comment for this story, but it’s easy to imagine that even Andreessen Horowitz – considered one of the top venture firms in the world — isn’t finding fundraising quite as easy as it has in the past given uncertainty in the broader market. Though it will undoubtedly reach its target, the young firm is looking for capital at a time when its own investors may not be feeling terribly flush. As Chris Douvos, a limited partner with Venture Investment Associates, , “LPs are definitely yelling at VCs to put some ‘moolah in the coolah.’” Institutional funds “give out money [to VCs] expecting it will come back with profits in a reasonable amount of time,” said Douvos. “When it doesn’t, we can’t put more money into the asset class because a.) we’re at the top of our allocation [to venture capital and b.) we’re out of money.” Indeed, the firm looks to have spent recent months preparing to woo investors, including by in the car-sharing company Lyft in December. As the WSJ reported earlier this month, both Andreessen Horowitz and early Lyft backer Founders Fund sold some of their shares to Saudi Arabia’s Prince al-Waleed bin Talal and his Kingdom Holding Co. (Taking money off the table and making distributions to LPs is a decision their fellow investor Fred Wilson more venture firms should be doing more frequently.) Andreessen Horowitz has also been shifting its staff around quite a bit. It marked its big move into biotech not just with that $200 million fund but by bringing aboard longtime Stanford professor as a new general partner. The company also hired TrialPay cofounder last summer as a general partner. And last week, it brought aboard a ninth general partner in , the cofounder and CTO of Nicira, a software defined networking company. (Nicira was an early bet for Andreessen Horowitz and ranks among its to date.) Meanwhile, general partner — and IronPort Systems cofounder — Scott Weiss announced last month that he will on behalf of Andreessen Horowitz. (Weiss said he wanted to spend more time with his family.) Despite its maneuverings, Andreessen Horowitz could be caught a bit flat-footed by a market turned rocky. Though it has seen many of its investments marked up wildly over time, much of that appreciation remains on paper, as at other firms. Andreessen Horowitz led a late 2013 round in the bitcoin exchange Coinbase, for example. The company’s valuation wasn’t revealed at the time, but in January of 2015, DFJ led a in the company, presumably providing a nice mark-up for Andreessen Horowitz in the process. (The company, which isn’t quite four years old, remains privately held.) In 2012, Andreessen Horowitz also led a $100 million Series A round in Github, the now-eight-year-old, San Francisco-based online repository for software code. The deal was done at a reported . Last summer, still-private Github raised $250 million led by Sequoia Capital at a reported valuation. Like its peers, Andreessen Horowitz has also made some bets on companies whose trajectory once moved in a straight upward line and have since encountered slowing growth and, in one case, even bigger problems. The firm led two rounds in the location-based tech company Foursquare, for example, leading Foursquare’s Series B and its Series C round at a valuation of roughly $640 million. But Foursquare, which announced another $45 million in funding last month, saw its in the deal. Andreessen Horowitz also led of funding for the human resources software company Zenefits in 2014. TechCrunch reported at the time that the company had a pre-money valuation of , which suggests Andreessen Horowitz may still do well by the company. That bet looks less certain than it once did, however. Though Zenefits went on to obtain a , things have since. (New CEO David Sacks is busily trying to restore confidence in the company, including resorting to an on Twitter yesterday about Zenefits’ formerly .) Even a turnaround at Zenefits won’t be enough for one top LP, who told us privately this week that Andreessen Horowitz is the “poster child for valuation insensitivity,” and called the firm’s move into healthcare a “real sign of desperation.” Of course, the high-profile firm has always had its share of detractors as well as adherents. We’d hazard a guess that plenty of other investors are clambering to get into the firm’s newest fund before the door shuts. Said another LP who talked with us about the firm and some of its recent transitions: “They have such a large organization that it necessarily has to be a little hierarchical in terms of how much deal process you lead and how much autonomy you can enjoy.” Andreessen will probably “always have some [staffing] changes, because there are a lot of talented people there who have a lot of options.” |
SpaceX successfully launches SES-9 into GEO but crash lands rocket on drone ship | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | Today at 6:35pm EST, SpaceX successfully launched the SES-9 communications satellite into Geostationary orbit (GEO). Launching the SES-9 payload was the primary goal of today’s mission, but many had their eyes back on the ground for what would have been the first successful landing of a rocket on a drone ship in the ocean. Unfortunately, however, the rocket landing was unsuccessful. Rocket landed hard on the droneship. Didn't expect this one to work (v hot reentry), but next flight has a good chance. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) SpaceX had repeatedly set expectations low for this particular rocket recovery attempt. Characteristics of today’s mission made rocket recovery more difficult for a couple different reasons. First, the speed of this particular rocket was considerably faster than previous landing attempts. Second, the landing attempt was made on a floating drone ship at sea rather than on a stable platform on land, which is how SpaceX’s first successful rocket recovery was . Rocket speed was greater because the mission required SpaceX to send its payload into GEO, which is about 100 times higher than Low Earth Orbit (LEO) where other SpaceX payloads have been placed. SpaceX’s last rocket recovery attempt, made in January, was on a mission that sent a satellite into LEO and therefore required a lower speed. That landing was also , but the rocket did soft land on its target and only fell over because one of the rocket’s support legs failed to lock upon touchdown. Drone ship rocket landings are also inherently more difficult than land-based recovery attempts, but for certain missions – like the one today – that’s the . As seen in the video above, the live stream of the drone ship landing cut out just as the rocket appeared in the video. SpaceX has experienced challenges with their drone ship video connection in the past as well. The video feed requires a constant satellite connection and because the drone ship is constantly moving that connection is hard to maintain. As the rocket comes in for landing, it can shake the drone ship, making it even harder to maintain this connection. Two earlier launch attempts on February 24 and 25 were scrubbed because of concerns with SpaceX’s super-chilled liquid oxygen propellant. A third launch attempt on February 28 was delayed due to safety reasons because a boat strayed within range of the launch site. If anything were to happen to the SpaceX vehicle after launch while the rocket was over the water, it could potentially be extremely dangerous to boats within a specified range. After the boat had moved and it was safe to launch, SpaceX began launch procedures, but aborted in the final seconds of countdown because of a low thrust sensor alarm. Launch aborted on low thrust alarm. Rising oxygen temps due to hold for boat and helium bubble triggered alarm. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) A fourth launch was scheduled for March 1st, but upper winds were too high to launch. With SES-9 safely placed in GEO, the fifth time was a charm and today’s mission by all accounts was a success. According to Musk, SpaceX’s next mission will have a better chance for a rocket recovery. |
TechCrunch went skiing with a drone | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | Because of its impeccable safety record, Cape is currently the only FAA-approved company that’s to fly drones close to people in locations other than a closed set. Yet the opportunity is still highly regulated. Select ski areas let Cape Productions film skiers, but only in areas away from crowds because the drone still has to stay at least 500 feet from anybody who is not directly participating in filming the video. or structures that would protect them from a malfunctioning drone. The Cape crew uses DJI drones (an Inspire 1, in this case), which they have programmed using their own proprietary software. The drones are programmed to stay away from obstacles and follow skiers on their paths. They are not allowed to fly directly over a skier’s head. Cape and says its footage helped Lindsey Vonn pinpoint what caused her injury. They have also captured mountain biking and other action sports. Launched last year, Cape has already received $10 million in venture capital from New Enterprise Associates, The Commercial Drone Fund and others. |
Want an Echo Dot? Here’s how to bypass Amazon’s restrictions and order one today | Matt Burns | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | Amazon is making it difficult to . But there’s still a way, and it’s really easy to nab your place in line for the new mini Echo. Better hurry, though. Amazon could close this loophole at any moment. To pre-order the Echo Dot: It’s that easy. This little workaround was discovered by Dwight Churchill, a product manager at Localytics. Generally, Amazon wants you to order the device using Alexa, found in the original Amazon Echo or the latest version of the Fire TV. But what if you don’t have one of those devices? Amazon won’t let you order the Dot, likely in an attempt to limit pre-order sales for supply chain reasons. The Dot seems like the Alexa device to buy. It lacks the high-quality Bluetooth speaker found in the Echo or Echo Tap, but it can plug into an existing speaker setup and still respond to voice commands and control home devices or announce the weather forecast. If ordered today, the Dot will arrive around April 22nd. |
13 TechCrunch stories you don’t want to miss this week | Anna Escher | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | This week we went hands-on with a few awesome gadgets (including the Fitbit Blaze and the Meta 2 AR headset), Slack introduced voice calling and one of Google’s self-driving cars got into a minor accident. These are the stories to catch you up this week. [facebook url=”https://www.facebook.com/techcrunch/videos/10154028617157952/” /] We went , a $949 augmented reality headset with a near 90-degree field-of-view. Zenefits or 250 people, with the layoffs largely concentrated in the company’s sales division. Just as , voice calling . It lets you start a private Slack Call or launch a conference call in a channel that anyone can join with a click. Natasha Lomas , corporate VP and head of its Creative Labs team of product designers. Sarah Buhr reviewed the . It has a built-in heart monitor and sleep-tracking capability and allows you to leave your phone behind for a nice walk or jog. But its clunky design is something people may not be able to get past. (a Bluetooth-enabled portable speaker with Wi-Fi and Alexa operating system) and the $90 Dot to the Echo family. Google’s self-driving car got into a — while the AI was driving. It’s a fringe case that makes building self-driving cars so hard. The , and it’s 50 percent faster, has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and an eye on the IoT. Google Maps added its , so now iPhone users can route their way to a gas station or restaurant ahead of their final destination. GoPro acquired . The company spent $105 million on the two companies combined. Google rolled out a pilot program that introduces — and it involves leaving your phone in your pocket. It’s called , and it’s a way to basically connect your phone with a point-of-sale system using the sensors on your phone. Contributor Gene Hoffman reminisces about the time Netflix was initially written off by the major Hollywood players as a dumping ground for content that nobody cared about — and just how far it has come — in In , Jon Evans argues that the startup gold rush of the last 10 years is over. |
How to politely ask people to get the f*ck off their phones | Nir Eyal | 2,016 | 3 | 4 |
Chances are, you’ve experienced the following situation: You’re with a small group of friends at a nice restaurant. Everyone is enjoying the food and conversation when someone decides to take out his phone — not for an urgent call, but to check email, Instagram and Facebook. Maybe you’ve witnessed this behavior and found it unsettling. What do you do? Do you sit idly by, thinking disparaging thoughts? Or do you call out the offender? For years, I accepted ill-timed tech use as a sign of the times. Sherry Turkle, an author and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, diagnosed the situation succinctly: “We expect more from technology and less from each other.” I used to do nothing in the face of indiscriminate gadget use. Now I’ve come to believe that doing nothing is no longer okay. Staying silent about bad technology habits is making things worse for all of us. Paul Graham, the famed Silicon Valley investor, that societies tend to develop “social antibodies” — defenses against new harmful behaviors. He uses the example of cigarette smoking: Smoking in public became taboo over the span of just one generation after social conventions changed. Legal restrictions played a part, but a shift in the perception of smokers — from cultured to crude — laid the groundwork for public support of smoking bans. Similarly, the remedy to screen indiscretion may be developing new norms that make it socially undesirable to check one’s phone in the company of others. Like cigarettes, our personal technology use can become a bad habit. People enter a zone when they use their gadgets. Checking email or scrolling through Facebook can be intoxicating and disorienting. Tech makers design these products using the same psychology that makes slot machines addictive. The built into apps make time pass quickly, and can make people oblivious to what’s happening around them. “Most people I know have problems with Internet addiction,” Graham wrote in 2010. “We’re all trying to figure out our own customs for getting free of it.” Ironically, despite his awareness, Graham has millions of dollars into addictive sites and apps, including Reddit and the gaming companies Machine Zone and OMGPop. To be clear, I’m not pointing fingers. Like Graham, I am conflicted. My book, , is a how-to guide for building habit-forming products. I wrote the book in hopes that more companies could utilize the techniques used by Facebook, Twitter and the like to make their products more engaging. However, the byproduct of making technology better is that sometimes it’s so good, people can’t seem to put it down. The trouble, as Graham points out, is that “unless the rate at which social antibodies evolve can increase to match the accelerating rate at which technological progress throws off new addictions, we’ll be increasingly unable to rely on customs to protect us.” In other words, if we don’t build social antibodies, the disease of distraction will become the new normal. But how do we develop and spread social antibodies to inoculate ourselves against bad mobile manners? One solution is to take an explicit approach. At almost every corporate meeting I attend, someone (typically the highest-paid person in the room) starts using his or her personal technology. The behavior is toxic in many ways: It sends a message to everyone in the room that gadget time is more important than their time; it distracts people who assume the boss is sending work their way; and, perhaps worst of all, it prevents the person using the device from participating in the discussion, which means the meeting wasn’t worth having in the first place. The best way to prevent this waste of time is for someone senior to mandate a “no-screen meeting.” In my experience conducting hundreds of workshops, the discussions declared device-free are by far more productive. Setting expectations up front is equivalent to administering a distraction vaccine. In other situations, being explicit isn’t as easy. Take the dinner-party scene described earlier. Unlike in a corporate setting, no one at a dinner is the boss, so no one has the inherent right to enforce a device-free fiat. For a while, — in which people tossed their phones in the center of the table, and the person who first reached for his phone during the meal had to pay for everyone — was sort of a thing, but it never took off, because the whole exercise felt punitive and patronizing. Most people understand that using their gadgets in an intimate social setting is rude — but there’s always that one person who doesn’t. So what’s the best way to get the transgressor off the phone? Embarrassing him in front of others isn’t a good idea, assuming you want to stay friends. A more subtle tactic is required. The goal is to snap the offender out of the phone zone and to give him two options: either excuse himself to attend to whatever crisis is happening, or put away the tech. Over time, I’ve hit on one way to effectively call out someone while keeping things cordial: Ask a question. Posing a direct question does the person a favor by pulling him back while sending a clear message. The technique works like a charm. For one, the unexpected question elicits an entertaining reaction — sort of like what happens when you hold someone’s nose when he’s dozing off: He gasps and sputters. But in this case, it’s not your fault, because you, as questioner, can play dumb. “Oh, sorry, were you on your phone? Is everything O.K.?” If there really is an emergency, the person can excuse himself — but more often than not, he’ll tuck it back into his pocket and start enjoying the night. Asking a direct question and declaring device-free meetings are simple tactics that spread social antibodies. Though personal technology clearly isn’t tobacco, it’s important we know that our devices are also designed to keep us hooked. By better understanding the psychology behind our technology, we can put it in its place. Now is the time to take a stand. Fight fire with fire by sharing articles like this one on social media. Set limits, and don’t resign yourself to being ignored. The idea is not to disavow technology completely, but to encourage people to appreciate its power, and to be aware when its power over them is becoming a problem. In the end, technology should serve us — we should not serve it. |
Why browser extensions change the way we work | Rick Nucci | 2,016 | 3 | 4 |
Browser extensions change the way we work. They alter facets of your job by changing the experience of the apps on which you rely so they conform to your workflow — versus having to open 17 separate browser tabs just to complete a simple task. Historically, browser extensions were a little wild as far as how they were built. There were bad perceptions around security, and a lack of consistency in how they “plug in” to other apps. While there is still more work to do, 2015 was a huge year for this technology, proving that the benefits are compelling enough that everyone from startups to some of the biggest tech companies are building extensions to make our work lives better. To remind you what browser extensions are all about, let’s begin with Star Wars. Remember how gripped with fear our nation became over potential spoilers leaking out for The Force Awakens? In December, a was released that would automatically warn you if you were about to read something about Star Wars that gave anything away. Sick of hearing and seeing Donald Trump? will essentially block him from the Internet, at least your version of it. Are you a passive over-apologizer? will read your emails as you write them and flag words that sound weak. Those are just a few recent examples… there are tens of thousands of extensions to help in every facet of your life. Extensions for cooking, photography, learning, security, ad blocking, social apps — it’s just massive. Like many technologies that emerge in the enterprise, extensions continue to gain popularity for our personal lives, too. But that’s just the beginning… At work, extensions are now available for any job you can think of. Whether you are in development, sales, marketing, design or support, there are literally hundreds of extensions in each category. If you use Google’s standard Gmail web app, you can extend it in countless ways. Email tracking, meeting scheduling, scheduled delivery, cloud-drive integration, grammar checks, CRM, email lookups, team knowledge and sales automation are just a few examples of things you can now access without leaving your inbox. Startups like , and have raised venture capital and are building great businesses with browser extensions being a core part of their respective product strategies. 2015 saw several large companies release extensions, as well, indicating a sign of maturity for this technology. In February, Dropbox that lets you add Dropbox files to your email messages without leaving Gmail. At Dreamforce, salesforce.com’s annual tech/music fest, they launched and made a big deal about their first Chrome extension, called “SalesforceIQ for Sales Cloud” (you can see our coverage of that ). In October, Microsoft to let their Office customers create and access their docs without leaving the tab they are in currently. A lot also happened in 2015 to the browsers themselves to make the creation of extensions a more consistent experience across browsers. First, in January of 2015, Microsoft that their new browser, called “Spartan” (now called Edge) would support extensions. They continued signaling throughout the year that they would make it very simple for Chrome and Firefox developers to port their extensions to Edge. Microsoft later that Edge would be the default browser for Windows 10, and, in December, they will no longer be supporting older versions of Internet Explorer as of January 12, 2016, signaling that Edge is the future of browser technology for Windows. In August of 2015, Mozilla made a similar , stating that WebExtensions would be available in beta in March of 2016. They describe WebExtensions as “largely compatible with the model used by Chrome and Opera — to make it easier to develop extensions across multiple browsers.” So now Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Microsoft’s new default web browser will all support browser extensions, and have a strong convergence on the APIs needed to build extensions. Apple’s Safari browser made progress last year, as well. The extension development process is still a markedly different experience for the time being. However, in June of 2015, Apple of their Extensions Gallery, which most notably included a big security enhancement whereby Apple now hosts and signs all extensions that appear in their gallery. This will greatly reduce the chances of someone installing an extension that could do bad things to your computer. Let’s recap. Startups are proving businesses can get traction and funding with browser extensions being a core part of their offering. Large established vendors are releasing browser extensions of their own, and the browsers themselves are converging around a standard way to develop extensions such that they are secure and can work cross-browser with minimal effort. These are strong signals around the continued importance browser extensions play in the way we work. Browser extensions represent a new way to think about apps on the desktop. In a non-extension world, you open a window or browser tab for each app you need. You end going to two or three of them to get a job done. If you are in sales and someone wants to schedule a demo with you and get one of your case studies, you would need no fewer than three apps: your email app, your calendar and your cloud storage app to look up that case study. And that’s a simple task. Today, we live in an app-centric world, where it’s on us to open all these different things and piece together the “sub-tasks” to get that job done. It is slow, inefficient, distracting and error-prone. The extension world signals a big change here. With extensions, it’s now a job-centric world. Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, talks about “ ” and states “the current web is ‘pull-based,’ meaning we visit websites or download mobile applications. The future of the web is ‘push-based,’ meaning the web will be coming to us.” Paul Adams, the VP of Product at Intercom, also , stating, “How we experience content via connected devices — laptops, phones, tablets, wearables — is undergoing a dramatic change. The idea of an app as an independent destination is becoming less important, and the idea of an app as a publishing tool, with related notifications that contain content and actions, is becoming more important. This will change what we design, and change our product strategy.” Browser extensions are a great current example of this movement. Now when you read that same email I just described above, without leaving your inbox you can pick free time on your calendar, look up that case study, confirm it is correct, grab a link to it and send all that back to your customer in one click. This is what makes this such a big deal. Extensions flip the app model inside out; now the apps come to us based on the job we need to do. We are at the beginning of an exciting change; one that will re-think the way we work. It is still in the early stages, but these key things that happened last year are confirming that browser extensions are proving to be one of the big enabling technologies that move us toward this ultimate transformation. |
null | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 3 | null |
The Sony Future Lab could be as forward-thinking as the Walkman | Matt Burns | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | Sony is doing something unheard of in the consumer electronic space: It’s going to show off prototypes. Can you imagine Apple or Samsung doing that? Not really, no. For several good reasons, electronic companies like to keep products under wraps until they’re completely finished and the company can unveil it with many dogs and ponies. Sony’s calling this program and the first product in the program will be unveiled next week at SXSW. Called , Sony teases the device as “Free your ears, hands, and eyes. Enjoy your favorite activities to the full with a wearable device that never hinders movement.” So yeah, whatever that means. Future Lab feels like a way for Sony to soft launch various gadgets and test consumers’ reactions. Sony needs this. Over the last few years the company shed much of its excess that was slowing it down and caused it to miss out on the mobile revolution. A generation ago, Sony was the market leader in several key areas. But while Sony was building a movie studio, Apple and Samsung and Lenovo started making gadgets. Future Lab won’t cause Sony to suddenly become the king of electronics again, though it could help it regain its soul. So far the details of Future Lab are thin. It appears Sony will use it to show off new gadgets with the hope to get feedback from potential users. Kind of like Kickstarter. In the summer of 2015 Sony launched a similar service in Japan called that offered a similar service. It’s a site were Sony gadgets could be crowdfunded, thus bring them to market. Sony put five gadgets on First Flight. It’s unclear if Future Lab will replace First Flight. If done properly, Future Lab could be a big marketing win for Sony. The company might not have the market share it once did, but it’s hard to deny that its current products are not among the best designed products available. Sony clearly didn’t lose its affinity for good design. Future Lab could shed some light into Sony’s R&D labs. That’s exciting. Sony already releases some of the most wild products. I for one want to see what it doesn’t release. |
Google now uses geolocation to hide ‘right to be forgotten’ links from its search results | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | , Google today that it is making a number of changes to how it handles links it has delisted under Europe’s ‘ ‘ regulations. Instead of simply delisting links from the various regional versions of its search engine, it will now use geolocation to remove these links from all searches that come from a given region. To be delisted according to the European ruling, information must be “inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant or excessive, and not in the public interest.” Until now, though, you could still find these delisted sites by simply using instead of or The European courts were obviously of this loophole, but Google resisted making these changes. Starting next week, though, Google will use a searcher’s IP address and other data to restrict access to these delisted URLs based purely on where there are and irrespective of what Google Search domain they are using. “So for example, let’s say we delist a URL as a result of a request from John Smith in the United Kingdom,” Google’s global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer writes today. “Users in the UK would not see the URL in search results for queries containing [john smith] when searching on any Google Search domain, including google.com. Users outside of the UK could see the URL in search results when they search for [john smith] on any non-European Google Search domain.” There are obviously still ways to fool Google’s geolocation techniques here, too, as TechCrunch’s Natasha Lomas , but for the most part, these aren’t quite as trivial as simply going to . |
Rando is a random social sharing app that lets you play Russian Roulette with photos, GIFs and more | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | A new app from the developer behind the popular , promises to be the cure for boredom. , as the app is called, offers a crazy twist on our carefully curated online personas — instead of allowing you to choose a photo or GIF to share with friends, Rando will randomly pick one for you. You can also share random text quotes, then post them to Facebook or Twitter or send them via SMS. Why would you want to do this? Well, um…why not? I mean, you’ve got time to kill. It’s the weekend. Your friends can take a joke. Right? The app even features a “send blindly” mode, which is something like a digital dare — that is, a test to see if you’re brave enough to send a piece of content to a friend before you’re able to see what it is. (The app blurs the content until after it’s sent. Yikes!) In case you’re not feeling up to completely random sharing, the app additionally offers a picker mode where you can select up to three photos for Rando to choose from, as well as a way to specify that you’d prefer it to pull from your “Selfies” gallery instead. Similarly, you can pick the subject for your quote (“funny,” “pets,” “friendship,” etc.) or your GIF (“lol,” “bored,” “win,” “love,” etc.) to narrow down Rando’s selection. To be honest, Rando makes me a little uncomfortable. What exactly on my Camera Roll? Are all my images okay for sharing? Will Rando choose some wildly inappropriate GIF? Quote? Of course, you still have some control over the sharing process — even if you choose to “send blindly,” you’re the one who has to press “post” or “send” on the resulting social media post or text message. So really, if any embarrassment occurs, you only have yourself to blame. “The send blindly feature is kind of a fun, gimmicky thing,” admits Barnard. “But it’s also interesting on a deeper level. Building and testing it has forced me to think a lot about what I share and why as well as what embarrassing photos might be lurking deep in my Camera Roll,” he says. [gallery ids="1286673,1286674,1286675,1286676"] I’m not sure Rando is a sure-fire hit, but I’m curious to see what its creators come up with next. As it turns out, Rando is not just some oddball side project from Barnard. It’s the first app to emerge from his new, bootstrapped company, formed as a way for its founders to experiment with social. Among Rando’s co-creators are , and Barnard, as noted above, is best known as the independent developer behind a number of well-received over the years, including Launch Center Pro, Contact Center, Email+, Group Text+, Mileage Log+ and others. The apps are known for their high-quality design and attention to detail, and have their own devoted followings. Co-founders Hays’ and DeVore’s company has put out a including photo-focused apps like PhotoPanes and Sunlit, as well as social apps like BeerGram. Messer, meanwhile, is a product designer at , which has done work for Groupon, HomeAway and . Rando might not be a roaring success — it is kind of, well… — but it’s worth tracking the company, Modest’s, future releases. Rando is |
Apple’s best defense against the FBI is the one it can’t share publicly | Min Pyo Hong | 2,016 | 3 | 4 |
With Apple vowing to resist the FBI’s demands for an iPhone backdoor in the San Bernardino case, many people assume the company is motivated purely by principles and concern for their customers. No doubt these are key reasons for Apple’s stand, and I have great admiration for Tim Cook’s leadership on this matter. At the same time, it’s important to recognize another motivation at play. It’s one that Apple and the other tech giants supporting Cook against the FBI all share but, for understandable reasons, cannot discuss in public. Unfortunately, their silence on this topic only contributes to public confusion around what’s at stake now. To put it briefly and bluntly: The iPhone is already vulnerable to hackers around the world. So are Android-based devices and other smart-device platforms. In fact, the U.S. government is late to a party long dominated by black hat hackers working for themselves or even more nefarious parties. The FBI’s order has only brought this sensitive issue to a head. Here’s why: The iPhone already has backdoors Apple hasn’t yet closed. I’m aware of at least one instance where black hat hackers have been able to extract data from an iPhone with a recent OS by directly accessing it through critical flaws that enable a backdoor into, and data extraction from, a designated device. I cannot publicly share specific details beyond this, other than to say this breach was uncovered by a member of the hacker community. I’m also unable to confirm whether the hacking method would work on the latest iOS operating system. However, as suggested , in which Apple was able to access data on a device running an older OS, dedicated hackers are bound to find workarounds to backdoor the latest version, too. And this is just one potential backdoor among many. Indeed, there’s a veritable underground market for 0 day iPhone vulnerabilities found by hackers and put on sale to the highest bidder — or secretly kept in reserve, to use as a potential cyber weapon against Apple down the road. With these, hackers can, for instance, quietly connect and extract data from a user’s device without their knowledge, control it remotely or even spy on their daily activities. Apple has said that creating a backdoor for the FBI would put iPhone owners on a slippery slope of security intrusions. It is more accurate to say that the iPhone has been careening down that slope for quite some time. Which brings me to a related point: The U.S. government lost the backdoor race long ago. It is ironic that many in the tech community decry the FBI’s court-ordered request for an Apple-produced backdoor, because it’s the only government body to make this request to the company through official channels. Meanwhile, many foreign governments have long been secretly working with black hat hackers to create unauthorized backdoors into the iPhone, usually without Apple’s knowledge or control, seeking the ability to access documents of officials from rival governments. (Senator Bernie Sanders may not care about Secretary Clinton’s damn emails, but I can assure him that many people in the black hat underground surely do.) This raises another irony: With so many trying so hard to access the iPhone already, an FBI-ordered backdoor will only assist their efforts. Once created, black hats will surely increase their attacks on the FBI and Apple, hoping to ferret out clues to this entrance route. It is almost certain they will eventually succeed. Given all of this, it’s much easier to understand why Apple is fighting with such tenacity to prevent the iPhone’s security from becoming even weaker. A system is only as secure as its most vulnerable link, and becomes geometrically less secure with each additional vulnerability. Devices and software associated with Google, Facebook and Microsoft are just as vulnerable as the iPhone (if not more so), which I believe partly motivates the amicus briefs they have filed on behalf of Apple. A majority of Americans understandably assume the U.S. government’s demand for a backdoor is a reasonable request to make us safer from terrorist attacks. If they understood how profoundly insecure and under threat all their devices already are, I believe their thinking on the topic would instantly change. It is a final irony that the FBI has inadvertently exposed the U.S. tech industry’s Achilles’ heel — and threatens to make our devices even more vulnerable to those who wish to do us harm. |
Computer science is the key to America’s skills crisis | Linda Moore | 2,016 | 3 | 4 |
The United States faces a global competitiveness crisis that, if not addressed, will put our nation at a strategic disadvantage for decades to come. In just a few years, there will be 1.8 million jobs unfilled in our nation because we don’t have enough individuals trained with the necessary technical skills to fill them. President Obama’s budget proposal, which includes $4 billion for computer science education, is a welcome step, but, candidly, we need a national strategy to solve the fundamental challenge. Today, only one in 10 schools across the U.S. offers programming classes. This must change. Organizations like , which for biggest social impact, are stepping up to the plate and teaching students how to code. But this challenge requires a public/private partnership between government, nonprofits and the private sector. So, what should we as a nation do to address the challenge? First, every secondary school in America should be required to offer computer science, and those classes should count toward core science or math high school graduation requirements. We must also make sure there are robust and sustained programs to train and recruit high-quality computer science teachers. It’s not enough for students to use technology, they need to learn how to make it work. Second, we must ensure that computer science programs are available to students of all backgrounds, particularly to young women and students from underserved communities. Mentoring and programs that provide real-life, hands-on, project-based opportunities can inspire students to pursue computer science and STEM careers. Programs like and are working to connect students with engineers and other leaders in the technology industry. We have to ignite a spark of interest in technology so that students see how careers in STEM open the door to a world of opportunity. Third, we must ensure innovation in the classroom through the use of digital content and tools to provide individualized, data-based learning and improve educational outcomes. Today, teachers are only scratching the surface of what’s possible through the use of tablets, digital tools and rich media. We must make sure that digital learning resources and technology integration in the classroom are available to all. And, finally, there must be high-speed wireless broadband in every classroom in America within five years to ensure that the students can connect to the Internet quickly, easily and reliably. Without high-speed connectivity, digital education is only a promise. We need to make sure that students are able to put entire libraries of information at their fingertips, as well as have access to incredible science experiments and other rich media. We must recognize that computer science is fundamental. Every student in the United States should learn about algorithms, how the Internet works or how to make an app. But more important, computer science teaches kids to be problem solvers and innovators. Helping students develop these skills will benefit them in every subject, in the classroom and beyond. This won’t happen overnight; it’s a generational challenge. But we need to start now to expand the pool of students trained in computer science and the other STEM disciplines in order to find the next great American innovator and encourage millions upon millions of students to pursue careers in these groundbreaking fields. |
Link from “The Legend of Zelda” pops up on Google Maps today | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | Google has hidden a little surprise today in Google Maps for fans of “The Legend of Zelda” — the company is celebrating the release of the , “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD” for Wii U by turning Google Maps’ Pegman figure into the game’s hero, Link, for the next five days. You’ll find the Link avatar in the same spot as you would Pegman — the bottom right corner of Google Maps on the web. Google Maps’ Pegman avatar, normally a nondescript yellowish-orange-colored character, is used to help you navigate through Street View. But now when you’re in Street View mode, it has been transformed into Link. Link will also turn to face in the correct direction in the small map embedded to the left side of the screen as you move through Street View. This isn’t the first time Google has added Easter Eggs like this to Google Maps. Last year, the company , which let you play the ghost-chomping game in real-world locales. The year before, Google turned Google Maps on iOS and Android , so players could “catch ’em all!” Unfortunately for Zelda fans, it doesn’t seem like there’s much more to today’s integration beyond the changed avatar. According to the Japanese Twitter account for Zelda, the Link avatar will be present for the next five days, as the game doesn’t launch in Japan until March 10. 【トワプリHD】…マロだ。海外では今日がトワプリの発売日らしいな。その記念に、Googleマップのペグマンがリンクになっているらしいぞ。3月5日の16時59分までは確認できるから、時間があったら見てみろよ。 — ゼルダの伝説 (@ZeldaOfficialJP) “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.” 🗡 — Google Maps (@googlemaps) |
Source: Microsoft mulled an $8 billion bid for Slack, will focus on Skype instead | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | When announced earlier this week, the enterprise messaging startup signalled a move into territory dominated by the likes of . But it looks like this is not the only moment when the two company’s paths have crossed in recent times. Microsoft eyed Slack as a potential acquisition target for as much as $8 billion, TechCrunch has heard. But an internal campaign around making an offer failed to drum up support. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella were among those unconvinced by the idea, with Gates pushing instead to add more features into Skype to make it more competitive with Slack in the business market, our source says. Slack’s momentum in picking up new users — it currently has 2.3 million daily active users, 675,000 of them paying — makes it a competitive threat for others who are hoping to lead in enterprise collaboration services. It’s no surprise that as of last year, Slack had . The person at Microsoft leading the charge on Slack was EVP of applications and services . Lu, according to his Microsoft executive profile page, oversees all productivity, communications, education, search and other information services at Microsoft, and he also “sets the vision, strategy and overall direction of the Applications and Services Group,” including R&D for Microsoft Office, Office 365, SharePoint, Exchange, Yammer, Lync, Skype, Bing, Bing Apps, MSN and the Advertising platforms and business group. We understand that Lu had envisaged a Slack acquisition for as much as $8 billion, an interesting figure given some other news this week about the startup. Slack was valued at in its last announced funding round of $160 million in April 2015. However, we have heard that Slack is raising another round of between $150 million and $300 million. Our sources have pegged the valuation for the fundraise at $5 billion; others put the figure at between . You can imagine why the idea of a Slack acquisition would bring out both supporters and critics at Microsoft. On one hand, Microsoft has built and acquired a number of other companies in the area of enterprise collaboration, including SharePoint, Yammer, Lync and Skype. In other words, the tools are already there for Microsoft to build its own Slack competitor without resorting to buying the startup and integrating yet another company into the mix. On the other hand, Slack has captured mindshare in the enterprise space in a way that Microsoft and others have not managed to do. Slack’s a simple onboarding process that gets employees communicating with each other quickly. One of its key features has been the way it has integrated with so many other apps. Those who use it can quickly call in files from elsewhere with short codes to discuss or monitor the progress on projects with colleagues, or possibly a little. The platform has expanded over time with more integration-based functionality, such as ordering an or from within the app. Slack has been pushing its cred as a platform by investing into a developers’ fund and launching a new app directory at the . It celebrated its two-year birthday in and now has 2.3 million active daily users, with 675,000 paid seats. The company says it’s seeing more than $64 million in annual recurring revenue from its freemium business model. Skype itself has been adding features into its platform to enhance its functionality for consumer and business use. They include group video calling on iOS and Android, enhancing to and even a . “At Skype, we are committed to breaking down communication barriers and getting the world talking,” the company noted when it of the Slack service. “This is why we make Skype available on multiple platforms and continue to explore more ways to help you stay connected.” That may also be a way to lay groundwork for even more dynamic functionality ahead. There is another coincidental overlap between Lu and Butterfield: both worked at Yahoo at the same time. Butterfield ran the Flickr photo service that he co-founded and sold to Yahoo while Lu was EVP of engineering for search and advertising. Both Microsoft and Slack declined to comment for this story. |
Two new apps, Daycap and VideoSlam, help you create GIFs and videos to remember your day | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | Two recently launched applications, and , make it easy to summarize your day in the format of videos or GIFs, which can then be shared out to social media. Do you these apps on your iPhone? No. Are you totally going to download them on your lunch break because it’s Friday, they sound fun, and those TPS reports can wait? The first application, currently being featured on iTunes’ “Best New Apps” section is called , and it turns all your photos from the day into a GIF slideshow that’s perfect for sharing on Instagram, Facebook or elsewhere. The idea in theory is fairly solid – it’s a way to turn all those excess photos into a clever, animated summary of your day. However, its real-world use case for the time being is somewhat limited. The problem Daycap suffers from is that it requires you to take photos while in the app, instead of allowing you to also access photos from your Camera Roll. The app would be a lot more practical if you could pull up your past photos, or if it even suggested your best photos using some sort of smart algorithm that hid those that were blurry, dark, or duplicated, for example. Still, the app itself is both simple and fun to use. [gallery ids="1286567,1286566,1286565,1286564"] In addition to snapping photos using its built-in camera, you can also add your location to the GIF, add a title using various font styles, and use an editing utility lets you delete photos you take in Daycap or save them to your Camera Roll. The app was developed by the team at San Francisco-based , which was founded by ex-Googler and ex-Microsoftie , also formerly of . According to , , and , the startup has an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Khosla Ventures, Resolute Ventures, Curious Endeavors, Marc Bell Ventures, and other angels. Daycap is a is a bit more versatile than Daycap, though that also means it has a bit more of a learning curve. As the name suggests, this app isn’t about creating GIFs, but rather videos. Similar to Daycap, VideoSlam lets you combine various photos to turn them into a fast-moving summary of a point in time. However, VideoSlam differentiates itself by allowing you to grab both photos and videos from the past, instead of asking you to record using the app. It also nicely organizes your past footage for easy access into sections like “Last Hour,” “24 Hours,” “Today,” “Yesterday,” “Last 7 Days,” “This Month,” “Last Month,” and so on. That way, you can quickly assemble a video of your moments with little effort. [gallery ids="1286576,1286575,1286574"] The app can also remind you to film by setting an alarm – something that would be useful if you’re doing a larger compilation of sorts. “More and more people are using mobile video to document their lives and tell their stories and we’d like to build the ecosystem to support them,” explains co-founder Adriaan Stellingwerff who built the bootstrapped app with Mei Olé. The team is split between Berlin and Sydney, he says. “We are currently focused on developing better creative tools for mobile video with VideoSlam and Kinomatic, a pro video camera app we launched in 2014,” Stellingwerff adds. “In the longer term we aim to go beyond tools to address the other big challenges storytellers face – primarily distribution and finding (niche) audiences.” The company may also offer VideoSlam hosting as a means of generating revenue in the future, the co-founder tells us. VideoSlam is free, with in-app purchases ($3.99), [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFf41-L9PY4] What’s interesting about both these applications is that the hint at the need for more tools that can help us look back on our lives, including our photos and videos, and do so more quickly. That speaks to a problem that hasn’t really been solved. Because smartphones have made it possible to record a nearly unlimited amount of footage, we’re overwhelmed with the output and now tend to treat photos and videos as disposable creations. We share them, then forget them. Elsewhere, many photo and video archival services today try to re-create the concept of the photo album for a digital age – organizing everything by date and time. Other efforts, like Timehop, Facebook’s “On This Day,” or Google Photo’s “Rediscover this Day,” attempt to surprise us with a brief look back at a single day from a prior year. These new apps, meanwhile, are attempting to re-imagine how we can explore the past. Whether they make a lasting impression themselves, of course, remains to be seen. |
Former NSA and CIA Director General Michael Hayden to appear at Disrupt NY 2016 | Ned Desmond | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | If you’re looking for a supremely qualified intelligence figure to talk to about the current state of technology, policy and intelligence, you could do worse than retired four-star Air Force General Michael Hayden. Hayden has held the two top intelligence roles in the US government, Director of the NSA (’99-’05) and CIA (’06-’08) and, post 9/11, presided over some of the most controversial changes in intelligence gathering and direct action in U.S. history. General Hayden is an active commentator on the defense and intelligence scene, and recently in its dispute with the FBI, which took many by surprise given his former roles as an aggressive proponent of surveillance measures to combat terrorism. He has also weighed in on the political front by noting that US military forces would not follow potential president Donald Trump’s orders if they were deemed unconstitutional. He recently published, “ ,” his reflections on the nearly 10 years at the top of the U.S. intelligence department during a time when threats to U.S. security and subsequent responses took strange and lethal new forms. General Hayden will join us at Disrupt NY to talk about the threats to U.S. security and whether we should place our trust in unbreakable cryptography or the warm bosom of law enforcement. will take place in Brooklyn for the first time ever this year on May 9-11, 2016. We’ll be right across the river from Manhattan in Red Hook, at the . In addition to onstage panel sessions and fireside chats, Disrupt NY will also feature Startup Battlefield and Startup Alley. competitors pitch their companies live and onstage to innovators, investors and influencers in the tech community. TechCrunch identifies emerging companies to demo and compete for a prize of $50,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup, which was previously won by Mint.com, Yammer, Fitbit and Dropbox, among others. Startup Alley offers another way for early-stage companies to gain exposure with a setup that encourages both exhibiting and networking, and provides high visibility. You can . Additional speakers and agenda details will be announced between now and the show. Stay tuned! is one of the most anticipated technology conferences of the year and we expect around 3,000 attendees. |
There’s more to early-stage funding than VC money | Homan Yuen | 2,016 | 3 | 5 |
Good companies will always get funded. If that’s your company, it’s important to make sure you have the resources to keep it alive long enough to get funded. Murmurs of a looming downturn in venture capital are pressuring more companies to preemptively begin fundraising, whether or not they have gained sufficient traction to justify their stated valuations. In the race to store dry powder before the checks dry up, too many companies are attempting to raise too much, too early and at too high of a valuation. Unfortunately for these founders, many investors are well aware of market sentiment and are pulling back, waiting for valuations to fall. This is creating a vicious cycle for entrepreneurs that will force many of them to increase dilution, and possibly face the dreaded down round, from which few startups have recovered. Prior years of relatively easy VC money seem to have led to an ecosystem-wide amnesia about the purpose of VC investment. VCs want to see their money go toward accelerated product and technology growth and value-add milestones. VC money is not for early proof of concept — leave that to angel investors, friends and family. As the global economy cools down, it will take an increasingly long time to complete a round. Fortunately, there are a number of sources of non-dilutive capital that entrepreneurs can leverage to keep their companies afloat — if you know where to look. Keep in mind, these sources require planning and foresight, and often are not obtained at a moment’s notice. Below are some options to consider. Government agencies, such as DARPA, ARPA-E, NIH and NSF, are well-known sources of funding for academic research, but they provide startup grants, as well. Many of these funds are earmarked specifically for clinical trials or prototyping and product development, and can provide critical funding to build significant traction and hit major technology and product milestones before seeking the next round of VC money. Other grants will fund the setup of manufacturing processes and reliability testing. Many government grants also come with fringe benefits: When my company, Solar Junction, received funding from the DOE, we were able to access national laboratory resources as part of the program. If your company has licensed technology from a university or laboratory, check to see if the entity has any programs or processes to provide startup grants (as cash or in-kind services) — after all, they want the IP to succeed in going to market. Before accepting grants, be careful about when and where additional technology development occurs. Make sure your IP has been filed or disclosed, or use the funds for engineering and product scale-up to avoid competing ownership claims. For seed-stage companies, consider applying to pitch or business plan competitions. These programs offer prizes ranging from $5,000 to as high as $250,000. Many of them are targeted to promote entrepreneurship in a specific group, whether it’s a university, minority group, emerging sector or geographic region. A small proportion of these competitions also serve as applications to accelerator programs — make sure to read the fine print to see whether the prize money being offered is actual cash and does not take equity; that’s an investment, despite what the marketing states. As the economy continues to slow, federal, regional and local government entities will increase support for job creation activity and allocate increased support for small businesses. Many cities will provide grants to startups that bring jobs to a specific sector. Some of these grants come with requirements that you hire a certain quota of local residents for a set period of time; in many cases, that number is closely aligned with your existing hiring plan. In some cases, this support comes in the form of tax breaks. While it’s not money up front, sometimes that tax return break can end up making a huge difference to your bottom line. Although not free money, small business loans can sometimes be preferable to giving up more equity in the short term. If protecting your team from early dilution wins out over future burn, consider the following options. The Small Business Administration offers startup loans up to $250,000 at some of the lowest interest rates on the market. Special loans exist for minority entrepreneurs, as well. Aciom is another nonprofit lender, providing microloans up to $30,000. “Peer-to-peer” lending platforms have recently emerged as another financing option for small businesses. For the cost of a small origination fee and interest, sites like Prosper and Lending Club allow you to borrow up to $35,000 from complete strangers. Whichever source you choose to pursue, start this outreach and research early, long before you need it. I speak from hard-won experience as a co-founder of Solar Junction, which we led through two cleantech boom and bust cycles before exiting in 2014. While the check sizes might seem small in comparison to the seven-digit-plus rounds that have closed in the last 18 months, it can be a godsend when your team is facing an unexpected cash flow crunch. It’s always easier to get more money when you already have plenty in the bank. |
Can you take the Internet out of the Internet of Things? | Daniel Myers | 2,016 | 3 | 5 |
The Internet of Things and the Internet might seem inextricably linked, but, increasingly, there are questions centered around how IoT devices should work with one another — and what happens when the Internet connection goes down? Users also are concerned with the privacy implications of having their data stored on a corporation’s servers, and they don’t like having an Internet connection as a potential point of failure. These reactions are rational, but reminiscent of online shopping circa 2000, which, ironically, might now be than shopping in physical retail stores. To understand why device makers are relying on an Internet connection and cloud services, we need to look at how our IoT devices work. We need to understand data sources, processing, device to device communication and, ultimately, how one device can leverage another device. As a maker of climate control devices, there are only a few critical sources of data: humans, their environment (indoor and out) and energy utilities. There are humans who have a desire to be comfortable, which boils down to having a certain air temperature, radiant temperature and humidity, among other things. Humans live in a variety of geographies, meaning there are often large differences between what they like inside and actual outdoor conditions. Imparting comfort into a space with a large indoor/outdoor difference takes energy, and because energy is subject to supply and demand forces, using it intelligently means understanding its price at any given time. Let’s distill these down to some concrete data sources. Phones, as arguably today’s ultimate wearable, are a source of data, including location, both macro level (at home or away) and micro level (in a particular room for more advanced systems like ours). They also provide information from human input, accelerometer movement and, in some cases, their microphone. Sensors provide environmental data (indoor and outdoor) about raw physical conditions and, often, because of cost and power constraints, have little-to-no processing onboard. In our case, temperature, humidity, ambient light and more all give a digital view of what is going on in a space. There are external sources of data, as well, like electricity and gas rates from utilities, or weather conditions observed by third parties. Already, you can see cases where a system at home can operate most ideally with offsite data sources: phones reporting their location when you run out to get groceries, weather from Yahoo and utility rates from PG&E, for instance. This raw data leads to the next question of where it should be sent and how it should be used. All this data needs a place to go. Although you could host a server farm in your home, you probably don’t want to invest in one — economies of scale dictate that Amazon will be much better at it, and configuring your router to accept data pushes alone is the stuff of consumer tech nightmares. An always-on, scalable cloud, redundantly backed up on Amazon, is much better than virtually anything you might practically have in your home. But what about processing? Something needs to take your physical GPS location, understand how it relates to your home’s location and translate that into how long it will take you to get back if you left now. It needs to combine this with information about how long it takes to make your apartment comfortable in different weather conditions, then adjust the set point accordingly. This logic is complex, and only gets more complicated when you add more data sources from sensors and context (time of day, sunlight, etc.). Again, you could host a server at home that processes this, but a server must exist for each IoT device or needs to host “apps” for each device in the home. One might argue this is precisely what smart hubs do (or should do), but as numerous hubs have cropped up, is it practical for every device maker to build an app for every hub just so that it can consume data from external data sources? Effectively, the storage space on a smart hub is 0 compared to an infinitely scalable database on a cloud service, and you often want your processing in close proximity to your data to avoid wasteful data transport. Sure, you don’t need temperature data every second, but think about the amount of data coming from your Dropcam and how much processing is needed to turn that video stream into actionable notifications and triggers for automation. And what about how devices talk to one another. Does it really make sense for every device to have a Wi-Fi chip in either itself or in a gateway, or should all devices route through some always-connected gateway? Based on the growing number of “standards,” varying power, range and data rate requirements, it’s evident there is likely not going to be any sort of IoT topological convergence. This is because, in some cases, a device simply needs to report its proximity to a phone (think ), or because a device operating in a challenging RF environment struggles with higher frequency radios used by Thread or Zigbee and are not the ideal technical selection. In many cases, a gateway and a variety of sensors makes total sense. But unless that gateway has overwhelming market penetration and support for a wide variety of protocols, it’s a hard sell for a device manufacturer to place a bet or choose sides when they can now buy $1 Wi-Fi chips and produce their own gateway for between five and 10 dollars. So what does this mean? Does every flick of a light switch need to go to the cloud and come back down to turn on your light bulb? Of course not. It means manufacturers will still continue to preference HTTP integrations instead of offering Intranet of Things solutions, and it means sane fallbacks and behaviors are needed for when your Internet connection is interrupted. Internet companies need to meet -support levels more than ever, and it means perhaps there is a case for a second Internet connection in the home (like many businesses already have). It means the Internet of Things will not exist sans the Internet. |
3 signs you’ll soon be attending a coding bootcamp at your college | Drew Sing | 2,016 | 3 | 5 |
It all started as an alternative to the traditional college education. Now they’ve caught the eyes of deans across the country. Coding bootcamps have been a trending topic in higher education as their focus on job readiness and generous starting salaries has garnered the attention of both college students and career switchers — but those aren’t the only groups that have taken notice. Colleges are seeing the success of coding bootcamps as well, and are now looking to leverage their ability to get students skilled-up on technical subjects. Coding bootcamps are the fast-track education option for those interested in becoming a web developer. Originally created to fill the demand for skilled web developers in today’s tech economy, what was once a niche industry has proliferated the general higher education space as a whole, and can now be seen as a competitor to universities. Coding bootcamps are now helping address other in-demand technical careers as well, such as data science and analytics. In 2015, reported that the coding bootcamp market grew by 2.4x, to an estimated 16,056 graduates. To put that in context, it’s estimated that there were 48,700 computer science undergrads in 2014. As traditional degree-granting universities begin understanding the value that coding bootcamps are providing by specifically teaching to the skills demanded by the economy, education will be changing in big ways in 2016. Here are three things colleges are doing about coding bootcamps right now… Colleges are now forming partnerships with coding bootcamps to provide students with a more technical education. , the liberal arts school out of Boca Raton, Florida, is now allowing their students to partake in approved courses for course credits. For example, Lynn University is issuing a semester’s worth of credits for students who complete a 16-week program at General Assembly, a skills bootcamp that raised last September. Lynn University’s first group of students are already underway with their courses at General Assembly. “It’s important that our students are well prepared in the skills that are demanded by the job market,” says Gregg Cox, the Vice President for Academic Affairs at Lynn University. “Even if some of our students don’t become coders, in today’s world, being technical will help in any career.” Lynn University isn’t the first school to partner with a coding bootcamp. Last year, out of Saint Paul, Minnesota partnered with the coding bootcamp . In 2013, , a bootcamp that offers web development data science in eight cities across the United States, partnered with the University of New Haven to offer a master’s degree in data science. Within the last three months, colleges such as Northeastern, Rutgers and the University of Central Florida have decided not to partner with bootcamps. Instead, they’ve chosen to launch their own, in-house bootcamp schools. Northeastern’s program is an eight-week bootcamp that teaches students core data analytics skills. The school is currently in its second cohort in Boston, and recently launched in Seattle, Charlotte and Silicon Valley. “The thing that differentiates a university is that it implies quality,” says , Level Founding Director and Northeastern’s VP of New Ventures. Northeastern is a top 50 university that is the first of its kind to offer this immersive style of learning. Students can rest assured that our bootcamps will be held to the high standards of our university.” announced its own coding bootcamp last October, which is set to start on the will launch its 24-week coding bootcamp at the end of March. Wharton alums Edward Lando and Abhi Ramesh developed a for their alma mater after seeing a need to provide coding skills to undergrad and MBA students. Their coding bootcamp specifically fits into the summer breaks of UPenn students, which offers a viable alternative to the traditional summer internship. Students will become programmers and gain a better understanding of the skills required to land a career in tech. The recent activity of college bootcamps is an interesting one, as not all of these programs offer college credits. Course credit or not, the allure of bootcamp-style training associated with a university that employers recognize may appeal to some students. Colleges are equipped with the resources to provide a coding bootcamp education, but it will be interesting to see what outcomes these university bootcamps expect from their students, as they’ll now be competing with the ranks of established coding bootcamps like , and . On October 14, 2015, the Obama Administration announced a pilot program called ; Educational Quality through Innovative Partnerships. If a college applies and is approved for participation in the EQUIP initiative, they will be granted the opportunity to partner with a coding bootcamp or MOOC (Massively Open Online Course, such as or ) and provide the enrolling student with financial aid and college credit — two things coding bootcamps can’t do. This pilot could be a huge game changer in bootcamp education, as both federal aid and course credit have been near impossible for bootcamps to get approval for. This has led to each program having to establish their own scholarships and focus strictly on job outcomes, not credentials. As of October 14, 2015, colleges can now apply for EQUIP. If a university is approved, it will allow them to curate programs of study from one or more providers of post-secondary education and training. There have not been any announcements of approved schools under the EQUIP pilot. Yet. To receive priority consideration, secondary institutions were required to apply by Dec 14, 2015. Granted that it will take time for the Department of Education to vet applications, an announcement should be expected sometime this year. With universities now keenly aware of the coding bootcamp movement, it will be interesting to see how each college approaches the more technical, skills-based education that has made coding bootcamps so successful. Will colleges partner with bootcamps, develop their own programs or find a different alternative as students demand more applicable skills for STEM jobs? With a few schools taking the initiative so far, the space is young and worth keeping an eye on — by both students and college administrators. The speed at which universities decide to integrate a bootcamp education into their offering will depend on a variety of factors, such as faculty buy-in and department approval. Non-accredited college bootcamps may be the first step in helping get bootcamps in the door. Even though colleges are still the gold standard for higher education, it’s important to respect how recognized coding bootcamps have proven their ability to efficiently maximize the time and energy of students to net financially viable careers. Soon the coding bootcamp narrative will no longer just be “should I attend a coding bootcamp?” With the involvement of colleges, prospective students will begin asking “which college’s bootcamp program fits with my higher education needs?” |
Oh, the places you can go with Google Street View | Anna Escher | 2,016 | 3 | 5 | Google Street View uses in-house data-capturing tech that lets you see the world from the comfort of your own device. GSV allows us to see not only photos of certain gems on the planet, but provides new perspectives that only its cameras can capture. Here are some of the most interesting projects Google has brought to Street View. Google launched imagery from the in Jordan (also one of the seven wonders of the world), marking Google’s fifth Street View project in the Arab world.
Google partnered with photographers, skiers, mountaineers, climbers and runners to build up this of 360-degree , the highest mountain in the Alps. You can also visit the with Street View. The is the most-visited tourist attraction in Hamburg, Germany.
You can even walk in the footsteps of giant Galápagos tortoises, now that Street View cameras made it to the Galapagos Islands. The main idea here was to support the ongoing conservation efforts and scientific studies. Not too long ago, it looked like on the islands were in danger of going extinct, but today the population is growing again thanks to conservation efforts.
Last year, Google a batch of that lets you off the Cook Islands, dive with parrot fish or in American Samoa. This is .
Google partnered with the National Park Service to bring imagery from .
Google even lets you . Street View cars capture tons of data and the company publishes them on Google Maps regularly, so you can see how certain areas have changed over a few years. Google street view also lets you go to exotic locations like the [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5kmKO_gGsc?feature=player_embedded] Most of us will never get to see the Iditarod race in person, but you can now experience a part of the 1000+ mile dog sled race across the vast wilderness of Alaska
Did we miss any? Where are your favorite places to virtually travel to? |
Gillmor Gang LIVE 03.05.16 | Steve Gillmor | 2,016 | 3 | 5 | – Dan Farber, Frank Radice, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Gillmor Gang on Facebook Connect with our other show – G3 – on Facebook …and |
The Dark Ages of Austin startup capital | Richard Bagdonas | 2,016 | 3 | 5 |
An Austin-based venture capital firm recently offered my company $400,000 for 40 percent of its equity. This was one week before their counterpart in the Bay Area offered $2 million for 20 percent of the same company. Nothing had changed in that week, and both received the same pitch and deck in the weeks prior. The dent is still noticeable from where my head hit my desk after reading the first firm’s offer. Mouth-agape, I found myself holding in a chuckle and a tear. While I can dismiss this sort of discrepancy as an “Austin investor thing,” many young entrepreneurs fall victim to it. My belief is that the fundraising problems that Austin entrepreneurs are facing include both the age of the funds at Austin’s venture capital firms and the limited number of investors who can invest $500,000. This article’s information is based on my conversations with partners at venture capital firms in Austin, Boston and San Francisco; conversations with entrepreneurs funded by Austin, Boston and San Francisco firms; and research on . Venture capital firms in Austin publicly state that they invest in seed-stage companies; but, as you will see, a small percentage of each fund is allocated to seed-stage investments. The sweet spot for venture capital firms are adolescent-stage companies with financials that show accelerated growth, which reduces the overall risk of picking a winner out of the batch of companies. Over the past year and a half there has been a noticeable change in the way Austin’s venture capital firms are vetting seed-stage companies. I spoke with one general partner of an Austin venture capital firm who said that they publicly talk about seed-stage investing, but rarely do so — and only when the industry is super hot and the team is coming off a previous big win. This boils down to my hypothesis on Austin venture capital funds. When I say “fund,” I don’t mean the venture capital firm itself, but the from which they are investing. The longer a fund has been live, the more conservative and risk-averse the general partners become. raised $75 million in 2013 for Fund IV to invest in Austin companies. A trend emerged in their . In 2014, they were heavily invested in seed rounds for companies like The Zebra for $1 million, Favor for $660,000 and The Zebra again for a $4.5 million seed investment. Three seed-stage deals and five later-stage deals (37.5 percent / 62.5 percent) Five seed-stage deals and six later-stage deals (45.5 percent / 54.5 percent) Four seed-stage deals and 11 later-stage deals (26.7 percent / 73.3 percent) Zero seed-stage deals and one later-stage deal (0 percent / 100 percent) In 2015, their number of seed-stage investments (as a percentage of all deals funded that year) dropped by almost half, and the number and size of Series A, B and C investments increased, culminating with The Zebra taking down a $17 million Series A in January of 2016. That one investment accounts for 22 percent of the firm’s $75 million fund. closed a . We are now almost two years into their fund and, during that time, they have invested more than $46 million. This leaves just 57 percent of their fund to invest over the next five years. Two seed-stage deals and five later-stage deals (28.5 percent / 71.5 percent) Two seed-stage deals and four later-stage deals (33.3 percent / 66.7 percent) Zero seed-stage deals and zero later-stage deals (0 percent / 0 percent) LiveOak’s typical seed stage is $500,000; their average later-stage investment hovers around $5.2 million, with some being $10 million or more. They need to leave some “dry powder in the chamber” for follow-on investments, and only (general partners) Venu Shamapant and Krishna Srinivasan can know how much is left for early-stage startups when their follow-on investments have been earmarked. closed its doors and in 2015, yet their indicates they are still opportunistically investing. It shows $36 million in follow-on rounds in January of 2016 alone. This should not be seen as a glimmer of hope for entrepreneurs wanting to pitch JT and the gang, but rather as the firm spending its last few fund dollars on what it perceives will make for quick returns to their fund investors. When a fund is young, CrunchBase shows that the general partners appear to make more [riskier] seed-stage investments because the partners have a longer time to wait for those companies to mature and/or exit. In my talks with entrepreneurs who received funding when these Austin funds were very young, the number of meetings to get the partners to agree to fund the company was two to three. Now I am hearing that it takes six or more meetings before a yes decision is made. This indicates that the general partners are taking more time to ensure they can better determine their risk, which leads to a slower overall funding process. It is rare that a general partner will come out and tell you no. Most will say they need more information; determining whether that is a subtle no or really an ask for more information is the bane of my existence as an entrepreneur. Austin’s funds have less money available for early-stage investments because later-stage deals have eaten up a lot of the fund. The amount of equity required to fund an early-stage company seems to be going up. As you read above, I saw a significant ask by an Austin venture capital firm, but it isn’t just me reporting this trend. I have been told by other entrepreneurs that they have been asked for more equity than they were expecting. These are not the run-of-the-mill first-time entrepreneurs, but seasoned entrepreneurs exiting one company and starting another. The remainder of fund factor drives valuations lower, and it is important for every entrepreneur to know how old the fund is prior to talking to the general partners at the firm. Austin is the land of acquisition. Over the years, we have had some big exits, but they are a very small percentage of the total number of exits. Most importantly, the big exits have added very few investors to the pool. Austin has become the R&D lab for the west and east coasts, wherein acquisitions take out the company before it can have a massive exit. It is these acquisitions that put some money in the pocket of the founders, but not enough to drive significant investment from them. When exits are small, the founders leave with a smaller amount of cash. It is this cash that breeds new angel investors and subsequent venture partners. There have indeed been some bigger wins. Look to the Deep Eddy Vodka acquisition as one. This was a quick exit for Clayton Christopher after his win for Sweet Leaf Tea. It, in turn, and was a great win for Austin. But it created only one. The Home Away acquisition was another win that created some great investors. But these are few and far between when compared with other centers of technology innovation. Companies are apparently raising money from a lot of individual investors. Loop and Tie . It seems ludicrous that a company would have to go to 52 investors for $2.6 million. That is $50,000 from each investor. Sadly, the $50,000 mark is a big investment for many investors in Austin. Many of the angel and seed-stage investors I have talked to put $50,000 a year into startup companies. Not just one company, but all combined. Some investments are in the $10,000 range; others are in the $15,000 range and $25,000 range. Very few will write a check to one company for $50,000, as it eats up a big portion of their total dollars available for investment that year. As an entrepreneur, it is important to know the investment landscape prior to seeking investment. I have had to fly to the Bay Area to get funding for several of my companies. This is partly because few Austin investors understand SaaS platforms and maximizing your company’s valuation in the Bay Area is easy. But mostly it’s because of the relatively large investor pool. Many pundits have opined about this year being the time of the real actual businesses building interesting technology (RABBIT). As with any advice, take it for what it’s worth. Spend 88 percent of your time building your business and 12 percent of your time raising money. By taking your executive team out of the game for significant amounts of time to raise money, your company may suffer from declining fundamentals, which will hurt your valuation in the end — no matter who invests. |
null | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 4 | null |
On the war between hacker culture and codes of conduct | Jon Evans | 2,016 | 3 | 5 | Did you know that a Code of Conduct war is underway in the world of open-source software development? I realize that this sounds ridiculous. Codes of Conduct boil down to: “a) don’t be an asshole, b) this is how we define ‘asshole’ around these parts”. Who could argue with that? And yet this has become eruptively controversial — and with good reason. A quick rundown of the recent history can be found in Model View Culture’s “ .” (If you find MVC too left-wing, , but the former has much more actual information.) Briefly, progressive activists are trying to persuade open-source communities to adopt Codes of Conduct such that: They establish the ground rules for interactions between participants. They outline enforcement mechanisms for violations. They serve as a signaling mechanism, a way of broadcasting the intent of organizers or maintainers to create safe spaces for the full participation of members of the community regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, or physical ability. But most importantly, they codify the aspirations and values of a particular community A widely adopted CoC is the , whose preamble notes: Meritocracy also naively assumes a level playing field … These factors and more make contributing to open source a daunting prospect for many people, especially women and other underrepresented people So far so good! …But the (most) controversial thing about these codes is that their remit actually extends the communities in question. That MVC piece refers to “the so-called Opalgate incident, in which transphobic tweets by an Opal maintainer on Twitter led to a heated discussion about the appropriateness of his continued representation of the project.” In true open-source style, this was raised as — — and I think :
The personal views of a maintainer, as long as they are not influencing in a discriminatory way the contributions accepted in a project, should be off-limits for discussion IMHO
sums up the debate here. Should communities accept people who hold repugnant views, as long as they don’t express them within that community? Or should they be expelled, because it’s assumed that their views influence their community work in a negative way, or because their presence makes other people feel unsafe? Personally, answers make me feel deeply uneasy. Humans are messy, complex, and contradictory; human interactions are that squared; the results are so complex and context-sensitive that they often need to be judged on a case-by-case basis, rather than by any hard-and-fast rule. (See also: the insanity of “ ” rules. See also: Oberlin’s a professor who blames Israel for 9/11.) Last year the wacko neoreactionary Mencius Moldbug, also known as Curtis Yarvin, was at which he was going to give a technical presentation that had nothing to do with his wacky neoreactionary views. As David Auerbach put it in :
Since the content of Yarvin’s talk was not the problem but other beliefs the thinker held, then anyone who holds problematic beliefs is now up for removal […] When it comes to gatherings like Strange Loop and scholarly venues in general, we should draw the lines for acceptable speech as widely as is feasible, because people have a terrible habit of being wrong […] one strength of science is its ability to … foster productive discourse between people who would hate each other discussing any other subject.
Some–few–people are irredeemable assholes who, wherever they go, need to be met by the banhammer. You can certainly make a case that both Moldbug/Yarvin and the transphobic Opal maintainer fall into that group. But surely an ideal Code of Conduct would actually try to “foster productive discourse between people who would hate each other discussing any other subject,” at least to the extent possible, rather than be geared towards expelling from the conversation anyone who has expressed an unacceptable opinion in any forum anywhere. I am reminded of Meredith Patterson’s “When Nerds Collide: My intersectionality will have weirdos or it will be bullshit.” I’ll give her the last words here:
Having a community they built wrested away from them at the first signs of success is by now a signaling characteristic of weirdohood. We wouldn’t keep mentioning it if it didn’t keep happening. I’m not claiming that’s entirely rational, because fear isn’t rational, but it sure does explain the response to being told that our culture is broken and must be adapted to accommodate the very people who rallied it into being by shunning us from theirs. We’ll start to feel less defensive when we get some indication — any indication — that our critics understand what parts of our culture we don’t want to lose and why we don’t want to lose them.
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MIT spin-out Thunkable hopes its drag-and-drop app builder can be a money-spinner too | Natasha Lomas | 2,016 | 3 | 5 | Bagging lots of users is a challenge one of the startups in Y Combinator’s 2016 winter batch is worrying about a bit less than the average. The two-man strong founder team of is coming from the rather more comfortable position of already having fostered a community over four million strong — thanks to the drag-and-drop app builder interface they helped developed at MIT some five years ago. And while they don’t yet have all those millions of users locked into their new tool, they do have some 50,000 people signed up about month after launching their free app builder. And a clear path to encourage over more of their old users — and bring on new ones too. So why the fork of the original MIT project now? The success of meant it had outgrown the resources afforded it within academia, say Thunkable’s co-founders Arun Saigal (CEO) and WeiHua Li (CTO). Hence the decision to seek to commercialize the core technology under a new name, building atop the MIT open source code with new features they hope will also support their intention to monetize down the line. (To be clear, Thunkable’s code will not be open source, although they say they do hope to take in community contributions in future.) While MIT App Inventor’s original target was educators and students, offering a free learning tool to lower the barrier of entry to coding, the pair say the success of the software — which has been used to make some 13 million apps at this point, and garnered 4.3 million registered users — called for spinning out of the academic setting. “The original goals of App Inventor were basically make a tool to teach people to code. So our lab that we worked in at MIT invented a lot of drag and drop programming tools — we worked with Scratch, Lego Mindstorms, tools like that,” says Saigal. “From there it started growing, quite a bit. Mainly in education first and then a lot outside of education.” When App Inventor’s growth hit around 300,000 monthly active users the team decided to take stock by surveying the users to ask who they were and what they were using it for. The result was a surprise: they found the majority (over 50 per cent) were not in fact educators — a realization that let them to consider the potential of transforming an educational resource into a business. In fact, says Saigal, they discovered all sorts of people were using the software to build all sorts of apps — from individuals wanting to make an app to control a connected LED light in their own home all the way up to enterprises using it to put together apps for their sales teams. The team at MIT was also fielding more and more feature requests from App Inventor users. But did not have the resource to serve all the requests. So both demand and potential for growth were clear. “We saw that there was this huge range and actually a majority of our users were not in education. And our users started sending us ‘hey can you build this?’, ‘can you build that?’ — obvious things, monetization or the ability to add in Google Maps or something like that. And these weren’t features that were ever within the scope of App Inventor,” says Saigal. “It was at that point that we realized A) we weren’t supporting the users as well as we could and B) this had evolved way past what we initially imagined… It had evolved into the largest app creation tool for non-programmers that was out there. ” Other app builder tools do already exist of course, including the likes of and . There’s also the outsourcing route for companies to hire external devs or dev studios to build apps for them. The latter option can be expensive, though. While existing app builders aren’t always that accessible to non-developers, the pair argue; some level of coding knowledge may still be required. The claim for Thunkable is that who can use a computer can build an app, says Li — simply by slotting together the blocks of code it uses to simplify the programming process. “We’re a tool for anybody and everyone who wants to build apps — from the non-developer to the highly skilled developer who wants to do something quicker and easier,” adds Saigal. “There are two parts to our tool,” he explains. “The first part is the designer and what that is is basically you can drag and drop the UI of your app. So if you say hey here’s my screen I want a button, I want a text field, I want these sensors and I want an image, ok great. “Then the second part is the blocks language. This is a programming language that our group invented — it is a programming language in the sense that if you click a button you have drag the ‘when button.click’ block. So there is a programming language there but at the end of the day it’s meant to be for people who don’t necessary know how to code but have a sense of logic.” [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSdryUBwUOo&w=640&h=480] “It is the same concept [as coding] but it’s much more English-friendly, it’s much more logical and straightforward than writing in Java or whatever other language it may be,” he adds. “In the old fashioned [programming languages] you need to type in. In our block language you’re just already building it — you can just see it, you can just use it. That’s the beauty of using block programming language,” adds Li. “Also it’s grammar error free. Basically you just piece the blocks together. You don’t have to worry about typos.” “If the blocks fit together, it compiles, it builds, it works. If they don’t fit together it doesn’t work,” adds Saigal. “You can drag and drop the blocks, or you can type in words and if you start typing in words the blocks exist. If you’re not sure what to do and you type ‘button click’ the ‘when button.click’ block will pop up. And so you can think through thoughts and the blocks almost fill themselves in.” Another advantage over competing app builders that Saigal claims is that apps built with Thunkable’s software are fully native, rather than being web apps. So can work offline and are able to make use of specific mobile hardware features such as GPS and NFC. And while Thunkable does offer some templates for people who want a little more structure to get started it is not limited to just building template apps — unlike some competitors. There is also no need to download an SDK to build apps on Thunkable. The software works in the browser, and includes other features designed to appeal to a broad user-base — such as the ability to live test the app being built on the user’s Android phone. “We have a live development feature where you can connect your phone to your browser and as you’re developing actually see your app running live on your phone,” says Saigal. “That’s one of the things people love because as a new developer you’re looking for immediate gratification.” Given Thunkable’s jumping off point is a strong community built off of free software, the pair say the plan is to keep offering a free version (Thunkable is currently entirely free) for the foreseeable future. Monetization will come via a freemium route, building a tiered pricing model on top of the basic free version. They say they will likely be charging users for certain extra features, with different pricing tiers based on whether the user is an individual, a SME or a large enterprise. Thunkable is not just App Inventor with a new name; they have already added some new features to the platform too. Additions include extra sample apps and templates; support for Google Maps; and enabling Android’s Material Design features (which they say, again, the MIT team never had the resources to support). “You come to the site there are obvious UI improvements [with Thunkable vs App Inventor]. The buttons, the color scheme, all that kind of stuff we’ve improved. And then past that probably a couple of the largest features that we’ve added are that at MIT we did not support any of the new Android design stuff,” says Saigal. “Thunkable supports Material Design and the new UIs, the ripple effects, things like that. That was a big upgrade for our users. It’s very simple to transfer your projects over and they would say ‘wow my app looks way nicer with no extra effort’.” The team is also offering stepped up support — so is responding (currently for free) to “every email… every chat that we get online”. “That’s been one of the biggest things that we offer — actual human support to work through your problems with you,” he adds. The types of features Thunkable might start charging a monthly subscription fee for in future could be for monetization capabilities for apps built with the platform, perhaps charging individuals $5 to $10 per month for that. Right up to much more premium, enterprise options — with much higher monthly subscription fees attached — such as the ability for an enterprise customer to have a white label version of an app that lets them host their own data and includes support for specific enterprise software. In terms of the timeframe to flicking the monetization switch on, they say it’s going to be “sometime in the next year”. Although the priority right now is building out the product and growing users, they add. Keeping the App Inventor community on side is going to be essential to scaling the business, given that a four-million strong user-base was able to be sustained by just two dedicated MIT staff. How was MIT able to support so many users with so few staff? Community power users chipped in a lot of help with support on the forums, says Li. And since having strong customer support is a key plank of Thunkable’s proposition then scaling as a business without needing to hire very large numbers of support staff will be more easily achieved if they can likewise nurture a strong and engage community to pull with them. What will happen to MIT’s App Inventor? It’s not entirely clear at this point, but it looks like development on that project may well wind down in future, with Thunkable picking up the baton. The startup has been funded by a $120,000 seed from YC so far, which the co-founders reckon will see them through the rest of the year — and they say they are in no hurry to raise another round at this stage. As well as using the funding to hire more staff to help scale the business, they are working on building an iOS version of the product — which currently only supports building Android apps. An iOS version has become possible since Apple open sourced its programming language, Swift, , according to Saigal. It also wasn’t possible before given MIT’s limited resources. “People have been asking for the iOS version for years and we’re finally investing the time and resources in,” he says, adding that the hope is to have an early version of this ready towards the end of the year — and a full version launched this time next year. Beyond adding iOS, the longer term goal for Thunkable is to evolve the tool so it supports collaborative app development — much like Google Docs allows multiple people to easily work on documents together, according to Li. “That’s our long term strategy,” he says. “How to make a tool to enable or empower our user, empower people to build tools collaboratively. “I think that would be a really powerful incentive [for young people] to learn coding or just by sparking ideas — turning their ideas into mobile apps. Or even something beyond that — that we don’t know yet.” |
Amazon says it will bring device encryption back to Fire OS | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 5 | Less than a day after it emerged that device encryption support for its Fire OS devices, the U.S. firm has flip-flopped and said that it will restore the feature. Yesterday we reported that Amazon will continue to encrypt data transfers from Fire tablets to external servers, but content stored locally on Fire OS devices would not be protected in the same way. That situation will only be temporary, however, Amazon said. “We will return the option for full disk encryption with a Fire OS update coming this spring,” a spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch via email. Amazon actually made the decision to drop on-device encryption some time back, claiming that it was a feature that few of its users took advantage of, but it only came to light this week. The move is naive at best, or down-right irresponsible at worse, since the overwhelming majority of customers are unlikely to be aware of the feature, let alone its importance to them and their personal information. , removing on-device encryption means that law enforcement agencies and other authorities can easily obtain a user’s information or data right from their device. That’s exactly the kind of situation that , stressing that the FBI order to open the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters sets a dangerous precent that tramples on privacy and safety for “millions” of users. Over the past week, Apple’s fight has gained the support of a range of tech companies and figures — — and, somewhat unexpectedly, , both of whom made public statements in support of encryption technology. |
AT&T will launch online-only packages for DirecTV this year | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | In an effort to appeal to cord cutters, AT&T will that allow users to stream DirecTV online without an annual contract, satellite dish, or set-top box. The plans—called DirecTV Now, DirecTV Mobile, and DirecTV Preview—will be available in the fourth quarter of this year. AT&T when it acquired DirecTV for $48.5 billion. It already allows current DirecTV subscribers to access programs online, but the three new services may help it attract new customers who don’t want to bother installing and paying for cable because they already stream most of their movies and TV shows through platforms like , , and . While it’s difficult to count exactly how many people have started ditching pay TV services for over-the-top streaming media, a , 8.2 percent of former pay TV subscribers they surveyed had gotten rid of their pay TV subscriptions, with many citing increasing fees for cable and satellite services as their main motivation. AT&T hasn’t revealed how much its DirecTV streaming plans will cost or if they will be zero-rated so people on AT&T Internet plans with data caps can watch unlimited video. One option, DirecTV Preview, is free and will be supported by ads, with a limited sampling of DirecTV programming. In its announcement, AT&T said that more than 60 percent of its network traffic is video and that it already delivers more than 60 million streams and downloads to its TV customers every month. The WSJ , however, that AT&T lost a net 26,000 video customers last quarter as it struggled to convert customers from its to DirecTV after the merger. |
Uber and Ola launch motorbike taxi services in India | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | Bangalore is the setting for the latest showdown between Uber and its fierce India-based rival Ola after both companies launched motorbike taxi on-demand services in the city. Ola, which is backed by Tiger Global and has an alliance with Lyft and other Uber rivals worldwide, rolled out its pilot service last night, while the arrival of UberMoto, which last month, this morning. “A primary painpoint in India is congestion,” Anand Subramanian, director of marketing communication at Ola, told TechCrunch in an interview. “Bikes are a very popular mode of personal transportation, there are millions on the road in India, and they are a faster way to go from point A to B.” Grab, Ola’s partner in Southeast Asia, has operated motorbike taxis for more than a year and Subramanian said that it helped provide advice for Ola’s service, which has been “months” in the making. Subramanian didn’t reveal figures — the service has just launched — but he said demand is already high. Ola, he added, is aiming for a three- to five-minute pick-up time for passengers, each of whom will be given a helmet by their bike rider as standard. Initially, Ola is initially using registered and “trained” motorbike taxi drivers, but it plans to open the service up for others in the near future. Uber has already opened its service up to interested motorbike owners in Bangalore, potentially giving it an early advantage. Although Ola’s service is available across Bangalore, but Uber’s is initially operational in central parts of the city only. Speaking at last month’s launch in Bangkok, the company said it has also mandated helmets for passengers while, like Ola, insurance is held by the bike rider, much like the setup for its regular cars. There’s not much to choose on price between the two services right now. Uber is charging a minimum of 15 INR, with a base fare of 15 INR and then 3 INR per kilometer or 1 INR per minute. Ola is 2 INR per kilometer and 1 INR per minute, with a minimum fare of 30 INR. With margins this low, the services are designed to operate at scale, Subramanian said. “This is so much more [that just journeys, there’s] potential to reach many millions more users, and motorbikes fit in with our mission of building mobility for one billion people in India. The operating cost of a bike is far lower than a car and [though trip prices are low,] What kind of services could a fleet of bike taxis prompt? Subramanian wasn’t specific and neither was Uber when we talked to the company about UberMoto last month, but a large number of bike drivers could act as a logistics layer to enable a range of non-ride services, such as on-demand deliveries, on a national scale. Ola already has grocery and services, but they are limited to major cities and — — the grocery service, at least, could close down. Margins could be significantly higher and service response time quicker with a larger pool of drivers on standby. Likewise, for Uber, which offers on-demand services worldwide but not in India, a large number of bikes on-demand could unlock new opportunities in the country. Indonesia is the best example of what motorbike taxi services can aspire to be. , a company backed by Sequoia and is frequently billed as ‘the Uber of motorbike taxis,’ has more than 200,000 drivers and, beyond shuttling passengers around Jakarta’s clogged roads, it offers food, grocery and document services. That’s hugely useful in bustling, congestion-ridden Asian megacities like Jakarta, Bangkok or Bangalore. Indonesia-based Go-Jek offers food delivery services among other things |
Dwolla fined $100,000 for misrepresenting its data-security practices | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | Online payment processing startup has been hit with a $100,000 penalty by the . The CFPB, a government agency, said in a that Dwolla misrepresented the safety of its data-security practices. Dwolla launched in December 2010 and is a competitor to PayPal and other online payment networks. Its technology allows users to send money to one another without paying money transfer or bank fees. According to , the startup has raised $32.45 million in equity funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, CME Group, and Union Square Ventures. The CFPB claims that Dwolla “did not adopt or implement reasonable and appropriate data-security policies and procedures governing the collection, maintenance, or storage of consumers’ personal information” from its launch to at least September 2012. In a and posted after the CFPB levied its fine, Dwolla did not directly reference the bureau, but defended its data-security practices before detailing some of its data protection and encryption measures: “Since its launch over five years ago, Dwolla has not detected any evidence or indicators of a data breach, nor has Dwolla received notification or complaint of such an event,” it said. “We’ve continuously matured our data security practices since that snapshot in time and have never been more proud of our information security, procedures, and technologies.” This is the first time that the CFPB, which was created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010, has fined a company for data-security reasons. Dwolla sent us the following statement about the case: Dwolla is glad to have come to a resolution with the CFPB regarding its investigation. Dwolla understands the Bureau’s concerns regarding the protection of consumer data and representations about data security standards, and Dwolla’s current data security practices meet industry standards. The CFPB has not found that Dwolla caused any consumer harm or created the likelihood of any consumer harm through its data security practices. This is consistent with the fact that since its launch over 5 years ago, Dwolla has not detected any evidence or indicators of a data breach, nor has Dwolla received a notification or complaint of such an event. During this time, Dwolla had many other layers of data security practices and technologies in place that were not found to be deficient, which we believe helped to prevent harm to consumers. We’ve never been more proud of our information security policies, practices, and technologies, and have gone to great lengths to implement them up, down, and across the company. The data security assessments that are part of the settlement will validate that implementation process. We are confident in the capabilities of our system and welcome the opportunity to demonstrate it to the market. |
Weebly expands beyond easy-to-build websites, adds easy-to-build marketing emails | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | isn’t just for building websites anymore — it recently launched , a platform for building marketing emails. CEO David Rusenko said this is actually Weebly’s second big expansion, after adding an e-commerce platform. But at least e-commerce is, y’know, part of a website. Why move into emails? “Email marketing is the number two concern for small businesses behind their website,” Rusenko said. Sending those emails should be a “no brainer,” especially since the Direct Marketing Association has reported that . However, Rusenko said that more than half of Weebly users aren’t taking advantage of existing email marketing tools, because “it’s confusing and hard for them.” So Promote allows them to build those emails using the same drag-and-drop tools they use to build their websites. Despite the simple interface, Rusenko insisted that Weebly Promote “compares very well to anything out there,” with features like the ability to import your contacts, create custom segments, use ready-made templates and view instant analytics. If you need more help, you can also sign up for a consultation with Weebly’s experts. And it’s already being used by small businesses. Chris Beresford, founder of sunglass retailer , said he built an email in 20 minutes, sent it to everyone in his contact list and saw sales spike 600 percent in 48 hours. Weebly Promote is currently limited to users of the existing Weebly platform, but the plan is to make it available to everyone soon. Pricing starts at $8 a month. “We’re super, super passionate about trying to build this complete platform for people to be able to start businesses,” Rusenko said. |
Smart mattress cover startup Eight raises $6M | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | , the startup , announced today that it has raised $6 million in seed funding. The company makes a smart mattress cover that can track your sleep, change temperature (the temperature can even vary across different parts of the cover) and send data to other Internet-connected devices. It says it has sold 6,000 units through crowdfunding and pre-orders. Co-founder and CEO Matteo Franceschetti said many of those pre-orders come from people who don’t want to wear sleep-tracking devices: “A lot of people using wearables don’t want to use wearables in the night. We are the complementary device that they were missing till now.” Eight’s next step is to actually fulfill those preorders, which it plans to do this spring before making the smart cover generally available in the summer. The new funding comes from Y Combinator, Yunqui Partners, Azure Capital, Cota Capital, Comcast Ventures, Vast Ventures, Stanford University (through its StartX incubator), Galvanize Ventures and YC partner/Scribd co-founder Jared Friedman. |
Chase down those ZZZ’s with new Sleepfulness app | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | If you’ve ever looked at meditation and thought “that stuff just sends me to sleep,” you may just be onto something. , better known for its successful mindfulness and meditation app , recently released . The new app helps you pull the plug on yet another long and horrific day, and dispatches you off to slumberland. “A good night’s sleep means you have a gentler, brighter, and more focused day,” says Rohan Gunatillake, the executive producer of the app. “Sleepfulness brings the tried and tested techniques of mindfulness to this important aspect of our lives.” As you might expect from an app that’s all about peacefulness and calm, the design is very well thought out, and — dare we say it — zen through and through. The app itself is free, and comes with 10 tracks. If you want more, you’ll have to cough up some cash to access a wider toolkit of torpidity. Additional content packs cost $2.99 each, and include a choice of a “relieving stress” pack, a “softening anxiety” pack and a “working with pain” pack. Stress, anxiety and pain? Sounds like it’s the perfect companion if you’re in the process of building a startup. In addition to helping you sleep, the app is designed to help explore mindfulness, and it builds up analytics to help discover why Mr. Sandman keeps skipping your apartment in the evenings. The apps are available now for both and . |
What Lending Club’s falling share price means for the P2P lending sector | Mike Lobanov | 2,016 | 3 | 2 |
, the largest P2P lending platform in the U.S., has seen its share price drop by more than 50 percent since December 10; the price per share on the NASDAQ Stock Market (current price per share will vary). So what is the reason for such a precipitous decline in the share price of the world’s leading P2P lender, and what does it tell us about the ? The table below shows the company’s financial condition in (the data available at IPO), and . Because Lending Club reports for Q4 of the preceding year only in February of the subsequent year, only Q3 2014 data were made available to the investors at the date of IPO, so we compared Q3 2014 indices with Q3 2015 indices. As the table above shows, the company’s business volume has doubled over the past year, and its net income has become positive. This is what makes the fintech sector so attractive: Because financial transactions can be conducted completely online, lenders’ net income margin can reach and exceed 30 percent. In my view, the share price fall has many causes that exist far from the company’s performance indices. Let’s explore the most important of these causes. The , one of the largest P2P platforms in China, was in fact a classic Ponzi scheme, with approximately has had a significant impact. The actions of the Ezubao management who have been arrested did material damage not only to the platform’s investors (according to the Chinese and American media reports, investors’ losses reached $7.6 billion), but also to the sector in general: In response to the news that Ezubao was a financial pyramid, Lending Club share prices fell 8 percent. , a subsidiary of and the first public P2P platform in China, suffered a 29 percent fall in share price because of the news. However, for companies like Lending Club, or , the risk of fraud is much lower thanks to a much more sophisticated regulatory environment. Where the SEC and FCA are closely monitoring the activities of P2P lenders, this was . Furthermore, in the U.S., the maximum granted loan amount is $35,000 (compared to unlimited on the Ezubao platform), and the likes of Lending Club must maintain up-to-date data on the returns of loans granted through the platform. It is possible that when recently announced it was selling around a billion loans purchased through Lending Club, it had a knock-on effect on share price. In reality, the situation in Santander has little to do with the P2P market: The bank had a very large consumer lending portfolio, and the bank incurred substantial losses from them, but these losses were not associated with the loans purchased through Lending Club. When news broke that from Santander, and the transaction was carried out with a premium to par value of the loans, it confirmed that Santander lost no money from Lending Club loans. It appears that Lending Club loans are OK, but the bad taste still lingers, and Lending Club shares were impaired, despite the fact that nothing bad has happened. Quite the contrary: Lending Club’s credit quality turned out to be better than expected when issuing loans, because the loans issued at par were paid above par. Companies’ share price slump often attracts legal companies in the hope of making money from “investor rights protection.” Once Lending Club’s share price fell significantly below the IPO price, several immediately declared an investigation on the accuracy of Lending Club’s communications with its investors. regarding a number of platforms, such as Lending Club, Prosper, SoFi, CircleBack Lending, Affirm, Avant, OnDeck Capital, CAN Capital, Kabbage, Funding Circle, Bond Street, PayPal, Square and Fundbox, also serves for these legal companies as an indirect invitation to start an investigation. The reason for the request has not been disclosed, and no action has been taken by the regulator. In my opinion, such investigations against Lending Club (when even the subject of an investigation is not clear), will carry no long-term threat to the company business, and, in the end, lead nowhere (except for, perhaps, a boost to lawyers’ income). Nevertheless, the news, again, had a significant negative impact on Lending Club share price. In a recent two-month span, twice: Once caused by a rise in the U.S. Federal Reserve System rate, and once more in order to assess loan risks more precisely. The total raise for December and January made up 0.57 percent on the average among the loan grades (see more detailed in the table below). Analysis of the rise, by Lending Club advisors (largely misunderstood because there was no proper legend to the graph they provided), said The fact that the purpose of the graph was to show that some of the loans have higher defaults compared to others, while in general Lending Club loans perform on track, was not properly addressed. That caused another 7 percent drop in Lending Club share price, although there is nothing to be afraid of as the loans actually perform as they should. Lending Club issued a about that, but the bad taste lingered. During the last couple of months we’ve seen more and more posts that risks to the economy are growing and the P2P sector will be mostly affected. Even the former chairman of FSA, Adair Turner, warned in an about the risks of P2P lending during periods of economic instability. Though listening to ex bosses of FSA might be useful in some occasions, I prefer sticking to facts. Risk profile of P2P loans originated by Lending Club and Prosper are very much similar to risk profile of credit card loans. And as experience tells us (rather than assumptions), . Overall, most fears about the company and the P2P sector are actually farfetched, and in the course of time, and with growing understanding of the sector by an increasing number of investors, these fears will be allayed. In my opinion, we can expect another year of considerable growth of business volumes and capitalization for such companies as Lending Club, Prosper and other P2P platforms. However, recent events have just led to a perfect storm, impacting the share price of one of the P2P sector’s leading stars. |
Dot & Bo to help startups with office design | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | In an industry where nap pods and slides are commonplace, a comfortable work atmosphere has been considered a critical component for hiring at tech startups and corporations, and San Francisco-based Dot & Bo is looking to capitalize on this market opportunity. “We’re launching a new service specifically targeted toward small business as well as larger enterprise clients that are looking for help and design advice,” founder and CEO Anthony Soohoo tells TechCrunch. The Dot & Bo team tested out the service with local coffee chain Philz Coffee and decided to expand the program. Dot & Bo says it plans to work with interior designers and furniture dealers to create fashionable work environments at affordable pricing. Companies will be able to lean on Dot & Bo stylists for design advice and the team will aim to make the decorating process more efficient. Founded in 2013, Dot & Bo is backed by Trinity Ventures and Oak Investment Partners. |
HBO will launch streaming services in Brazil and Argentina this year | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | HBO announced today it would be expanding its streaming footprint with the launch of standalone streaming services in Brazil and Argentina, which are set to go by year’s end. These join the , also before year’s end, as well as the network’s streaming services that are live now in nine countries worldwide (U.S., Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Colombia, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore). News of the South American expansion was unveiled today at Morgan Stanley’s Tech, Media and Telecom Conference, where CEO Richard Plepler detailed the network’s various efforts with its over-the-top services, and responded to questions about the performance of HBO NOW in the U.S. The company, as you may recall, was criticized earlier this year for having Plepler again reiterated that HBO is investing in content that will appeal to the streaming demographic, including programs from Jon Stewart and Bill Simmons. He also pointed to the network’s deal with Vice, which will provide a nightly newscast to HBO NOW viewers. When these shows launch later this year, HBO will increase its marketing push for HBO NOW, the CEO said. “When that comes on this summer and into the year we will start marketing accordingly, using a lot of that content to attack what we think is a real opportunity in the digital space,” said Plepler, as by Variety. “We have not turbo-charged the direct marketing as much as we will in the coming months.” Plepler also confirmed that HBO will remain under the Time Warner umbrella instead of being spun out, and announced that HBO and Summit Entertainment extended their exclusive output agreement through the end of 2022. He emphasized the importance of this agreement and of theatricals to HBO, adding that Summit films like “Divergent” and “John Wick” were top performers on the streaming service. The company also has licensing deals with Universal, Fox and Warner Bros. And though, like Netflix, HBO heavily invests in original programming, movies are still a big draw for HBO subscribers. “Movies represent over 75 percent of viewing on HBO, 71 percent across all platforms, 62 percent of on demand usage, and 40 percent of our subscribers only watch movies,” . The announcement of HBO’s streaming service expansions comes shortly after rival Netflix’s game-changing move to make its service available across the globe. The company had announced at CES in January that it was including India. That immediately made Netflix more of threat to newcomers like HBO NOW, whose pricier service is still largely dependent on top titles like “Game of Thrones” to attract an audience. However, HBO has been working to revamp its image a bit in recent weeks, as it expands its catalog to better compete with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and others. In addition to soon bringing in more millennial-friendly programming options and those aimed at cord cutters, it also targeted a more mainstream audience by launching this year. This section now includes Sesame Street and other titles from Sesame Workshop, and was introduced alongside features for parents like a “Kids Lock” setting and other parental controls. |
Microsoft will soon offer a HoloLens emulator for developers | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | Want to develop for Microsoft’s HoloLens mixed-reality platform but don’t want to pay ? Until now, it looked like you were out of luck, but as Microsoft , you will soon be able to use a to write your applications, even if you don’t own the actual hardware. The emulator, as well as all of Microsoft’s other developer tools for HoloLens, will become available before March 30, the shipping date for the first batch of HoloLenses. Using the emulator, developers will be able to test their apps in simulated rooms and using keyboard commands, a mouse and an Xbox controller. By default, the emulator will come with spatial maps for two different bedrooms, a living room and a great room layout. Developers will also be able to use HoloLens to scan their own rooms, then use them in the emulator. The emulator will run in its own Hyper-V virtual machine, and, as far as the apps are concerned, they won’t know whether they are running in an emulator or on the real hardware. The standard tool chest for building “holographic apps” hasn’t changed since Microsoft first walked us through the process . You’ll need Visual Studio and a working knowledge of . To help developers prepare for the release of HoloLens, Microsoft also today a video tutorial, as well as other documentation. |
Apply now for TechCrunch Include office hours with Emergence Capital | Samantha O'Keefe | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | Another chance to in TechCrunch Include Office Hours is here. On March 18th, Santi Subotovsky and Alison Wagonfeld of Emergence Capital will join TechCrunch editors to provide advice and feedback to startups. Launched in 2014, Include is TechCrunch’s diversity program, aimed at facilitating opportunities for underrepresented groups in tech to take their startups to the next level. Office hours are part of that effort. Once monthly, TechCrunch works with its VC partners to ensure that founders of all backgrounds have an opportunity to build connections with top investors. To be considered for a meeting in the Emergence Capital session , by Wednesday, March 9 at 6 p.m. PT. Underrepresented groups eligible for office hours include but are not limited to black, Latino, Native American, LGBT and female founders. Office hours will be held at TechCrunch’s offices in San Francisco unless otherwise specified. Introducing our co-hosts. is General Partner at Emergence Capital. Prior to joining Emergence, he was founder of e-learning company AXG Tecnonexo. He currently serves on the boards of several companies, including Civitas Learning, CrunchBase, High Alpha, Tophat and Zoom. Additionally, he is also a founding board member of Puente Labs, an organization that finds and selects the best founders of high potential growth companies from Latin America and helps them scale their businesses globally. , Operating Partner at Emergence Capital, joined the company in March 2013. At Emergence Capital she uses her knowledge and experience to help companies on marketing, strategy, talent/recruiting, and resource development. She works closely with companies like Textio and Insightly and was named one of the “Most Influential Women in the Bay Area” in 2014 and 2015. Prior to joining Emergence, Alison served as the executive director of the Harvard Business School California Research Center and Co-Founded QuickenLoans where she served as Marketing Director. We are looking forward to having Emergence Capital join us for Include Office Hours this March. If your startup focuses on enterprise solutions, Emergence Capital may be who you want to connect with. |
WhatsApp adds support for document sharing, but only PDFs at launch | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned mobile messaging service that recently hit , is today rolling out a much-anticipated feature to its apps on iOS and Android devices: document sharing. Though the company hasn’t yet made an official announcement, a number of WhatsApp users have seen the feature pop up alongside other sharing options, like photo or video sharing, contact sharing, or location sharing, for example. The feature works similarly on both iOS and Android devices. In a chat on Android, you tap the attachment icon then press the new “Document” icon that appears. (To make room for the option on the pop-up window, WhatsApp compressed “Photo” and “Video” sharing options into one “Camera” option instead.) On iOS, you tap the arrow icon in the chat then pick “Share Document” from the menu that appears. At launch, users are able to select documents from cloud storage services including Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud Drive, and others, but the feature is unfortunately limited to only PDF files at this time. In some cases, WhatsApp won’t even display the other file types that are present on the cloud storage service you pick, so as to limit user confusion. However, the app did let me pick an Office document saved on Google Drive, but then failed to share it, instead offering an error message about the unsupported file type. If the recipient hasn’t upgraded to the latest version of WhatsApp, document sharing won’t work either, we found in tests. (The app will tell you that the contact has to “update WhatsApp to receive documents.”) When shared, WhatsApp displays a file preview of the PDF, notating also the number of pages, file size and type. The fact that it has dedicated a field in the message window to display file type is a good hint that other file formats will be supported in the future. Even with the limited functionality available at present, document sharing could help to boost business use of WhatsApp’s messenger app, given how prevalent PDFs are in the professional world. That fits in with WhatsApp’s larger agenda, revealed earlier this year, which sees the company increasing its focus on its business customers. CEO Jan Koum said in January that WhatsApp would begin testing more commercial services, including those that Document sharing makes sense in this larger context of business-friendly features. Of course, the feature will have direct consumer benefits as well for things like sharing flyers, e-tickets, scans, and other PDFs of a more personal nature. And because WhatsApp has been invested in end-to-end encryption on its network, the documents shared on its service will be protected. The feature is arriving now on both iOS and Android, though not yet Windows Phone. |
Slack voice calling arrives on desktop | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | Slack was being cheeky when yesterday it said “very, very soon”. Today the new “Calls” feature starting rolling out on Slack for desktop and on the Chrome browser. It lets you start a private Slack Call or launch a conference call in a channel that anyone can join with a click. And in keeping with Slack’s lighthearted style, once you’re chatting, you can send visual emoji reactions that appear overlaid on your profile picture to others on the call. Slack confirms to me that the feature is currently rolled out to less than 50% of users. Team admins can check if it’s available to them and . Slack already offered integrations with voice calling apps like Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom, and Bluejeans, but those required a separate installation and were quite clunky by comparison. Slack Calls just need to be enabled by your team’s admin, are super easy to use, and blend naturally into the Slack experience. Slack says that video chat is also in the works, which it first announced last year after acquiring . But now it’s on the official roadmap, though the company plans to get voice chat rolled out on all devices first. First, you’ll have to the latest version of Slack for desktop and make sure your team’s admin has . You’ll then see a phone icon at the top of your one-on-one threads and channels. Tap the phone icon and a Slack Call pings your private message partner with a pop-up window beckoning them to answer. Once you’re in a call, you can change your microphone settings (unlike Skype which makes you set that before a call) or add more people to the call. Slack didn’t bring all its emoji along, but the Smiley-face button reveals a few you can tap to silently let Call partners know how you feel. The emoji pop up on top of your profile picture in the corner. It’s like a visual nod over the phone. They say something you agree with, and you hit the heart or smile so they know without interrupting them. On channels, hitting the Call button prompts you name the call and then wait for others to join. Your channel partners will see a button to join in the text thread so anyone available can quickly jump on. And just for giggles, tapping the main avatar in your call causes it to pulse satisfyingly. When I yesterday, she told me the use case for Slack Calls was that “If I’m DMing someone in Slack and we want to switch to have a quick voice conversation, it addresses that problem.” Now she’s issued this statement, saying “Our mission at is to make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive. Voice calls are a valuable form of team communication, and so a natural fit for , and why we’re already seeing great usage of third-party apps that offer calling options. For customers who already use services like Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom, and Bluejeans, it’s easy to initiate a variety of calling features from within , but for customers who need a simple solution for voice calls with members of their team, this new feature will make more useful. We’re looking forward hearing
feedback from customers testing the beta, and are eager to get this feature in the hands of customers in our mobile apps soon. Platform thinking is in our DNA, and we’re actively exploring ways to integrate third party services, like calls, more deeply into our product.” Apparently voice calling was one of the most heavily requested options from Slack’s 2.3 million daily active users and 570,000 paid subscribers. Yesterday’s customer conference and the release of hotly anticipated features could help boost Slack’s momentum as it reportedly looks to raise at least another . By becoming more of a full-service communication suite rather than just a text chat tool, Slack might be able to convince more companies to pay for it — especially because businesses might already be spending money to have voice chat. Slack Calls could threaten Skype and Google Hangouts, which increasingly feel inconvenient. |
Cisco to acquire Leaba Semiconductor for $320 million as buying spree continues | Ron Miller | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | Cisco continued its buying spree today as it announced its intention to acquire Israeli chip designer for $320 million. Cisco sees this acquisition as a way to bolster its hardware catalog with highly advanced chip technology. “By combining Leaba’s semiconductor expertise with the Cisco engineering team, we will accelerate our plans for Cisco’s next generation product portfolio and bring new capabilities to the market faster,” Rob Salvagno, head of Cisco’s M&A and venture investing team announcing the purchase. When the deal closes, the Leaba team will report to Core Hardware Group, led by Cisco senior vice president, Ravi Cherukuri, according to the blog post. The company actually doesn’t even have a shipping product yet, R Ray Wang, founder at Constellation Research told TechCrunch. “They haven’t even finished their prototype. This is an acqui-hire for next generation semi-conductor [technology]. Think networking at the chip level,” he said. This is not the first time the Leaba founding team has launched and sold a cutting edge chip production company, , an Israeli business publication. The founding team, which consists of CEO Eyal Dagan and CTO Ofer Eini sold . Today’s news comes just the day after , a cloud hybrid services management platform for $260 million and just about a month after . Cisco is walking a fine transformational line here. On one hand, the purchase pattern suggests that the company is trying to pivot from its networking hardware roots to a business centered around services as the CliQr and Jasper Technologies would suggest. Much like IBM, Cisco is looking to the future and trying to use its cash hoard to make strategic purchases to help speed up that transition. At the same time, it’s not quite ready to give up completely on its hardware roots and purchasing a leading-edge semiconductor company suggests that it is still looking to a future where it can continue to lead in the networking hardware space. |
3 gadgets not quite ready for prime time | Gideon Kimbrell | 2,016 | 3 | 2 |
It’s 9 p.m. and you’ve finally gotten the kids in bed, leaving just enough time to prepare for tomorrow. You head into your home office and flick on the light, which also happens to be a Bluetooth speaker. The bulb reads out your schedule for the next day, and you realize you’re supposed to take a snack to your daughter’s class party. You hop into your flying car, lift off and jet to the grocery store. Cupcakes are always a hit, but do you really want to deliver piles of pure sugar to a class of already hyperactive eight-year-olds? You pull out your phone and scan the sweets to see just how bad a sugar high they’ll cause. According to the app, the chemical makeup is even worse than you thought. Feeling charitable, you spare your daughter’s teacher a massive headache and opt for wheat crackers, instead. If flying cars and personal assistants that live inside your light bulbs sound far-fetched, think again. The high- apps and devices that debuted at this year prove we’re living in the future. Let’s look at how these products are set to — or reshape — our worlds. Sengled broke new ground in the smart light bulb industry by combining a bulb and Bluetooth wireless speaker in the new . It detects fire alarms and babies’ cries and allows you to browse the Internet and check your calendar without needing your phone. The Sengled Voice functions as a voice-controlled personal assistant, and it takes up far less space than personal home hubs like the Amazon Echo. The is another excellent product, but Sengled pushes the envelope more than most companies. The Voice is the only smart bulb that can act as an assistant, and the company also makes bulbs that work as wireless repeaters. Whether the Sengled Voice takes off remains to be seen. Mass adoption will depend on the quality of the voice recognition software and whether the price point is accessible. Sengled has the potential to add upgrades to future Voice incarnations, such as a camera that turns the bulb into a baby monitor, which would give it more appeal. But as home automation accelerates, so will these types of devices. In the same way that smartphones made independent GPS systems redundant, the Sengled Voice and other smart bulbs will eliminate the need for standalone speakers and other devices, potentially redefining the home experience. Advances in piloted drone technology have just about turned science fiction into reality. debuted its short-range flying vehicle at CES, and is already developing an even more advanced model. Thanks to hobbyists buying drones in recent years, cost and technology barriers have dropped and made room for more sophisticated models. We won’t see drivers take to the skies en masse before the Federal Aviation Administration regulates this unprecedented industry, but it’s only a matter of time before more companies manufacture these cars. EHang’s car and other flying-vehicle developers are not only paving the way for a new type of travel, but they’re also driving debates about the safety and legality of self-piloting systems. Google continues to face in its automated-car development, and the broader industry needs to educate lawmakers and the public about the benefits of self-driving machines. To do that, EHang and other companies need to emphasize safety features, such as multiple emergency failovers and manual overrides in case systems crash. EHang must also incorporate advanced radar technology into its designs so the drone can avoid collisions, as well as increased battery life. The current EHang model gets 23 minutes of flying time before needing to charge, which isn’t useful outside of hobby flying. While automated aerial vehicles won’t become commercially viable for some time, automated ground cars saw significant progress in the last year. debuted a new system at CES that enables cars to “communicate” with nearly everything around them — devices, traffic lights and even pedestrians. This kind of assisted driving technology is the next step toward fully driverless cars, which may only be a few years away. The DietSensor scanner stands in a class all its own, which is likely why it won the in software and apps for . It’s the first product that enables users to learn the chemical makeup of their foods by . The app relies on near-infrared spectroscopy to analyze the molecular components of different foods, then generates a nutritional report for users. Rémy and Astrid Bonnasse with the Israeli company Consumer Physics as a way to help their daughter, who has Type 1 Diabetes, manage her diet. If future versions can scan more complex foods, the scanner could become a valuable tool for people with precise nutritional needs and users who simply want more information on what they eat. The technology needs further development before it’s ready for the mainstream market, as it can’t yet provide data on complex items like sandwiches and burritos. But it signals the increasing power consumers will gain in understanding exactly how healthy certain foods actually are, regardless of what their manufacturers claim. Automated, integrated tools are the trends to watch for in and beyond. Smart home development, in particular, will increase as the concept becomes more common. With a look toward the future, these innovations are simplifying our lives and introducing new possibilities for how we eat, travel and manage our responsibilities. |
GoTenna, the startup that lets you text without cell signal, raises $7.5M and launches with REI | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | , the device for people who want to stay connected when they don’t have cell signal, has found a natural launch partner — outdoor equipment retailer REI. Daniela Perdomo, goTenna’s CEO and co-founder, told me that REI has signed on to be the startup’s exclusive retail launch partner. For the next three months, the only place you’ll be able to buy goTenna, aside from the goTenna website, will in REI stores nationwide (where they’re getting prominent placement, as you can see in the New York store photo above) and . GoTenna has created a lightweight device (1.8 ounces) that uses Bluetooth technology to pair with your smartphone and then generates long-range radiowaves to connect with other goTenna devices. That means you can send text messages and share your location (via pre-downloaded maps) even when you don’t have a cell connection. It’s not just for use in the great outdoors, but that’s probably the most obvious use case, so REI seems like a natural partner. In a press release, REI category merchandising manager Egan Whitley described goTenna as “an innovative solution for groups and friends who still want to stay in touch via text during their outdoor adventures.” The startup is also announcing that it has raised a $7.5 million Series A led by Walden Venture Capital, with participation from MentorTech Ventures, BBG Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Wareness.io, Cellular One founder Kenneth Horowitz and Howard Finkelstein. (BBG, which stands for “built by girls”, is a subsidiary of Verizon, which also owns TechCrunch.) Perdomo said the funding will allow her to expand the 13-person goTenna team (well, 13 plus interns). For one thing, she said she’s been “almost a one-person marketing operation,” so she’ll be expanding that part of the company. At the same time, goTenna will also continue to invest in product development, particularly improving the existing hardware through updates to the software and firmware. Perdomo also talked about the consumer response that she’s seen since . She told me that at this point, goTenna has sold “tens and tens of thousands” of devices. “It’s not about using it every day,” she added, but rather making sure it’s useful “when it’s your only choice,” like when a group of friends goes into the woods and they need to stay connected. Perdomo also said customers are discovering new uses: “People might buy it for skiing and then realize, ‘Oh, I can use it for traveling abroad.’ Or they might buy it for hiking and then keep it for emergencies.” GoTenna currently costs $199 for a pair of devices. Looking ahead, Perdomo said this is just the first goTenna device, and will ultimately serve as “the basis for a whole stack of technologies that we are developing — firmware, networking protocols, software, hardware addresses — that addresses the need for totally resilient, bottoms up communication infrastructure.” The post has been updated to correct the description of how goTenna works. |
Plane is a new ‘social icebreaker’ app from the founder of Cupple | Steve O'Hear | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | is a new social app from Tim Allison, who previously founded Cupple, the relationship app by YC alumni Pair (which since re-branded to Couple and was to Life360). Born out of Allison’s own frustrations, after he moved countries, Plane is pitching itself as a ‘social icebraker’, and lets anybody post a short location-based message — called a ‘Signal’ — to be read by other users in the same city. You can reply publicly to a Signal, which disappears after 24 hours, and optionally swap ‘social cards’ and exchange private messages. In other words, Plane mixes features from Twitter, Snapchat and Facebook, and also crosses over with something like Yik Yak, the location-based social app popular on university campuses. Allison tells me the idea was initially conceived to serve the needs of expats, but since being soft launched in Copenhagen two months ago is already resonating with a wider group of users. “We’ve found that the ‘expat’ group is increasingly hard to define,” he tells me. “People live, work and love all over the world and operate in all sorts of ways.” Plane is built on the premise that when travelling to a new city it’s hard to break the ice, unless you already have an established network. Instead you’re largely left with the option of signing up to a bunch of dating apps or joining a noisy Facebook or Meetup group. “I worked for 12 months commuting in and out of Switzerland every week and working on a large international campus,” explains Allison. “Whilst actually living in the city during the week it was really difficult to break the ice with new people and actually find out what was going on. I don’t want to use dating apps, most expat forums are quite old-fashioned and for a lot of people, ‘meetups’ can be quite daunting.” To that end, Plane focuses on the city you are in and lets you share Signals to a community of users around you. The intention was to do away with selfies or other profile photos — the app is almost exclusively text-based — and because public messages expire Allison says there is less pressure to compose the perfect Signal. “We’ve found users express themselves with a certain freedom and creativity you might not find on a more visual and permanent based network,” he adds. Of course, like any social app, Plane will need to scale quickly to benefit from much-needed network effects. Right now, a day after fully launching, the London stream is fairly barren. That said, the startup has already raised an undisclosed round of angel funding. I understand that Plane’s backers include Hampus Jakobsson, who previously founded The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), the mobile User Interface company that BlackBerry in 2010. |
No More Voicemail is an app that kills voicemail so callers have to text you instead | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | Voicemail is The idea of phoning someone then leaving a rambling message when they don’t pick up in the age of instant connectivity, where friends, family, colleagues and others can be easily reached with a text. Voicemail is so over, in fact, that large corporations like and have ditched the service entirely. If only consumers had the same option. Well, thanks to a new app simply called they now do. Available for both iOS and Android devices, is a clever solution to the voicemail problem. Today, if you want to actually deactivate voicemail, you would have to contact your carrier and explain that you don’t want the service. That’s a hassle in and of itself. And if you ever want to turn voicemail back on for any reason, you’d have to call the carrier again to re-enable it. No More Voicemail offers a different solution. The app isn’t actually disabling voicemail per the carrier – it only seems like it is. Instead, No More Voicemail uses the conditional call forwarding feature on your phone to send your unanswered calls to a virtual number that will just ring and ring. This is the same concept that’s used today in other legit third-party voicemail apps like YouMail or Google Voice, expect it ditches the idea of offering a hosted voicemail system. Calls won’t be shuffled off to No More Voicemail’s third-party system until you reject or ignore the call. That means you’re able to pick up calls normally when you have time to talk. But if you choose to not take a call, the callers will just hear the phone ring forever, the company claims. Eventually, callers should get tired of waiting for voicemail to pick up and will hang up. (Then hopefully text you instead!) The process of setting up No More Voicemail is straightforward. You’re provided an activation code to copy and paste into your phone’s dialer, which you then call to make the necessary changes. [gallery ids="1285666,1285667,1285668,1285669,1285670,1285671"] In practice, I found that this process failed the first time I tried it, then succeeded on the second go-round. When testing this further, I declined an incoming call, but found that the phone didn’t ring indefinitely as promised, but rather rang a bit then automatically disconnected the call. Sadly, that’s far from perfect. But even if it’s a little buggy, it prevent my voicemail from picking up and taking the call on my behalf. And I’m hopeful these kinks will get worked out over time. (I’m using an iPhone 6s running a beta build of iOS on T-Mobile, so it’s possible that I’m not the best test subject, I should point out. Your mileage may vary!) Disabling No More Voicemail uses a similar process as activating the service. This worked as advertised in tests. The app is the latest creation from TelTech Systems, a company that has released a number of telecommunications apps over the years. It’s probably best known for TrapCall, on blocked incoming calls, or its earlier SpoofCard Caller ID spoofing service. “We think voicemail is a thing of the past and that it just makes life a little easier to never have to worry about checking and returning voicemails,” explains TelTech partner on Special Projects, Nate Kapitanski. “If it’s important, people will text you or message you on one of the various messaging apps,” he says. No More Voicemail is supported on all the major carriers at launch, including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and US Cellular. The app is a free download on the and |
Video: The father and son VCs behind the new LocalGlobe seed fund | Mike Butcher | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | Robin and Saul Klein are the ‘father and son’ VCs behind the new LocalGlobe seed fund ( , , ). Just recently they in online mortgage advisor . It’s likely to be among the first of many. Saul has been actively involved founding and investing in over 100 tech companies in London since at least 1994, Robin for, well, a little longer. We decided to meet up with them and get an idea of how the fund will operate, what it’s like working with family, and where LocalGlobe plans to sit in the London and European investor ecosystem. Saul admits he is more “conceptual”, says Robin, while Robin says he is more analytical. And they are both bullish about the Internet economy and startups, despite the global volatility in the market right now, and the potential downturn of some so-called “unicorns.” In particular, Saul Klein is a passionate about London as a centre for investing across Europe. So much so that he’s written a . He says London is “so firmly on the map for startups and scale-ups.” These include the fact that UK GDP is top 5% globally and growing; Internet as a percentage of national GDP is at the top of the G20; London speaks 300 languages; the UK is the largest market other than the US and China for all major tech companies because of the UK consumer’s higher propensity to be mass-market early adopters of technology; Meanwhile, London has inherent and deep institutional strengths across both public and private sectors. But let’s face it, a London-based VC would say that wouldn’t they. Still, it’s hard to argue with the empirical facts on the ground, with over £30bn of new value from the likes of ASOS, Betfair, JustEat, King, MoneySupermarket, Paysafe, Sophos, Rightmove, Markit, Mimecast, Worldpay and Zoopla. Emerging stars include Deliveroo, Farfetch, Funding Circle, Shazam, Transferwise, Worldremit plus Skyscanner and FanDuel, admittedly in Scotland. They are joined by Citymapper, Datasift, Huddle, Improbable, Lyst, Moo, OneFineStay, Secret Escapes, Songkick and Swiftkey. As Saul says, the fact that US tech firms have so much money on their balance sheets right now, that to acquire European tech startups is potentially a great opportunity. How do they think they will compete in the market against many new seed funds? They aren’t worried about the competition “given the supply [of great startups] is so great” says Robin. Plus they plan to take a co-operative approach to investing with other funds in Europe. It’s fair to say that this long-time double-act is going to be around for some time longer in Europe. |
Aerial imagery service TerrAvion adds data services | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | There has been a lot of hype around using drones in precision agriculture, but for the time being, using regular planes outfitted with specialized cameras is still a more cost-effective way to cover wide swaths of land. YC-backed made on using planes for aerial imaging for precision agriculture; after a few growing seasons, it’s now expanding its service by also adding a layer of quantitative analysis on top of its images. TerrAvion currently covers a number of major growing regions, including areas in California, Oregon, Washington state and the Great Plains. As the company’s CEO and co-founder Robert Morris tells me, it has now also set its sights on the wine-growing regions of Spain. Morris argues that TerrAvion alone currently covers 100x more acreage than the whole drone industry, while offering a very similar resolution at a comparable (or better) cost point. Traditionally, TerrAvion has provided growers with lots of imagery, but now it’s adding a statistical layer on top of that based on its own image analysis. “We now process a bunch of statistics that most growers want,” Morris said, and noted that it would usually take an in-house geographic information systems specialist to process this data, but for now, TerrAvion is offering this new service, which it calls Digest, for free. “Basically, Digest takes what does best — giving growers a comprehensive up-to-date picture of what’s happening on their farm, allowing them to take immediate action — and brings this into the quantitative realm,” Morris told me. “Visual control revolutionized indoor manufacturing. Now is not only making that possible in agriculture, but we’re also putting a quantitative layer on top of that visual control. Farmers can then take this data and reuse it across any other service. “Growers are very sophisticated as tech integrators,” Morris said. “Because of this, they are much more sensitive to things like being able to reuse data and having the choice to change IT providers.” |
Grab, Uber’s biggest rival in Southeast Asia, signs deal with conglomerate Lippo Group | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 20 | Singapore-based has just scored a new ally in its battle against and other on-demand ride apps. The company, which claims to be Southeast Asia’s leading ride-hailing app, announced a strategic partnership with , one of Indonesia’s largest conglomerates. Known for its real-estate holdings across Asia, Lippo Group is also making forays into tech businesses. Last year it , the largest known e-commerce investment in Indonesia so far. , a competitor to Sequoia-backed , is targeting sales of $1 billion within two or three years of its launch. Grab will provide logistic services for MatahariMall. Formerly known as GrabTaxi, the , including deliveries, in addition to its original licensed taxi rides. Grab claims that one of its businesses, GrabCar, held more than 50 percent of the private car market in Indonesia at the end of last year. We’ve contacted Grab for more information about its deal with MatahariMall, including its value. “Lippo Group and Grab are both homegrown Southeast Asian companies. Technology can be a key driver of economic growth, and we are both invested in opening the digital economy to all Indonesians,” said Grab co-founder and CEO Anthony Tan in a release. “For Grab, this means using technology to help commuters navigate traffic congestion, and give drivers more sustainable livelihoods.” Grab, which is backed by investors like Didi Kuaidi (China’s largest ride app), GGV Capital, and SoftBank, is reportedly . Its rivals include Uber and Indonesia-based , both of which are also tackling the delivery/logistics space. The competition requires a lot of capital for all the startups, but one of Grab’s biggest advantages is its . |
Owners of (older) Kindles have to update their software or lose Internet connectivity | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 20 | People who have Kindles made before 2012 need to update their software by March 22 or lose Internet connectivity, . Procrastinators and people who missed the message will have to perform the unspeakably arduous task of with a USB cable to download the update manually. If you own a newer Kindle, however, you might not need to update it. Amazon says Kindle Paperwhite 6th Generation and 7th Generation; Kindle 7th Generation; and Kindle Voyage 7th Generation, which were released in 2013 or later, are exempt. Most Kindles will update automatically as long as they are turned on, plugged in, and connected to wi-fi, but if yours isn’t, check . The software update downloads and installs automatically while the Kindle is asleep. Without an Internet connection, Kindle owners can’t download books from the cloud, go shopping in the Kindle store, or any of the other fun things an e-reader is supposed to enable. |
Airbnb will open its Cuba listings to users outside the United States | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 20 | will now let travelers from outside the U.S. to book properties in Cuba after receiving authorization from the U.S. government, . Previously, only Americans were allowed to reserve the site’s . They will open to international users on April 2. Airbnb launched its , four months after the Obama administration revealed that it will begin to . The historic policy change means that , which is expected to boost tourism to Cuba dramatically because Americans no longer need licenses to visit. In fact, President Obama is , the first president since Calvin Coolidge to do so. According to the AP, Cuba is currently Airbnb’s fastest-growing market, with about 4,000 homes added since it opened listings. Other travel businesses taking advantage of the U.S.-Cuba thaw include Starwood Hotels, which to manage three Cuban hotels, making it the first American company in six decades to do so, and Marriott, which has to pursue agreements with Cuban partners. Sprint and Verizon are also launching services for tourists to Cuba. The two are the after signing deals with Cuba’s state-owned telecom. |
ServisHero, a mobile app for finding local services in Southeast Asia, lands $2.7M | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 20 | , a company that provides local services on-demand via a mobile app in Southeast Asia, has landed a $2.7 million investment led by . Founded last June, ServisHero is based in Malaysia but already the service is available in Singapore and — as of today — Thailand too. This round, which is billed as a pre-Series A, also included participation from Cradle Seed Ventures, a funded affiliated with Malaysia’s government. The premise behind ServisHero is connecting local service providers with customers, and giving customers choice from multiple merchants. CEO came upon the idea when visiting his native Malaysia after stints working overseas. (Loo worked for Groupon in China, Korea’s Memebox and Africa Internet Accelerator among other projects.) He told TechCrunch in an interview that he was amazed that mobile apps could be used to hail cars and other services, yet fixing an air conditioning unit or finding a maid is based on offline advertisements — in Malaysia many of those are attached to trees. So, after a friend suggested he should walk to a tree to find an engineer to fix his faulty air con, and go to more trees to get multiple quotes, Loo decided to create ServisHero. He rallied friends , a classmate at Oxford and ServisHero CFO, and , ServisHero CTO, and the startup was born in March 2015. The company raised undisclosed funding from telecom firm , online sales site and an ex-Groupon COO, but this injection announced today will go towards expanding its regional footprint with another launch before the end of the year. Loo told TechCrunch that the service has received over 50,000 downloads to date, and it has over 3,000 service providers on the platform. The most obvious services offered are home services — such as repairs or cleaning — but Loo said ServisHero also covers fitness (personal trainers), drivers, massage/beauty and even accounting and other services for SMEs. The goal, he said, is to provide access to all kinds of local services. What’s particularly interesting about ServisHero — beyond a beautiful app created by Pinterest engineer — is its monetization model. Service providers buy prepaid credits on the service that will allow them to bid for jobs. No credits means a merchant can’t bid and credits don’t guarantee a job will be won. That incentives them to keep costs competitive and, because ServisHero isn’t taking a cut, there’s no additional pricing layer added on. For consumers, ServisHero recommends leaving each job each job request for 24 hours to check for bids, although Loo said that very often a number of service providers have responded to job postings within hours. , this deal marks another large check from , and another investment in a startup with ambitions to scale regionally in Southeast Asia, and perhaps beyond. |
Building a smarter home | Stefanie Turber | 2,016 | 3 | 20 |
presented a highly entertaining vision of what of the future would . The animated television show anticipated a world where humans would be able to do everything with just the push of a button. In many ways, the show turned out to be prophetic; today we have printable food, video chats, smartwatches and robots that help with housework — and flying cars may even be on the way. The challenge for companies is to integrate digital technologies in meaningful ways that enhance people’s and improve their lives. Many of the innovations to emerge over the past few years have been geared toward this kind of “push-button living.” Thanks to the rise of smartphones and the proliferation of cheap sensors, it is possible to make just about any household appliance “smart” and “connected.” By 2019, However, we are already seeing that many of these connected home devices are limited in their utility and scope. Take the example of a connected coffee maker. Pushing a button on your phone to turn on the coffee maker from bed may seem convenient, but coffee makers with built-in timers have existed for years, and making coffee once you are already up is just not that much of a pain point. Are consumers really going to buy a new coffee maker and download a new app for such a minor “improvement?” The same is true for lighting. Flipping a light switch is less cumbersome than what is involved in turning on lights via an app. Moreover, consumers certainly are not going to make that kind of effort and download an app for every appliance in their home. That would be arduous to manage, creating more work, rather than less. Rather than an assemblage of devices that can be controlled from smartphones, the of the future integrate technology more seamlessly in ways that actually impart value. There be less of the smartphone in the smart home. Limiting the reliance on smartphones, and enabling the technology to recede into the background, requires three things. First, the sensors must be integrated, rather than controllable through a separate device. In the case of lighting, adding a motion sensor makes control via the light switch and via an app obsolete. The light turns on when someone walks into a room, and turns off when no one is there. The light bulb becomes an actor. Second, it require new interfaces. There are certain capabilities that smartphones provide, security, that the of the future have to replace. For example, right now people either access their using a key or, as of recently, via smart locks that are controlled from an app. In , biometrical technology enable people to get in. The surface of the door recognize members of your family through their retina or skin structure. Residents be able to communicate directly with the digitized “thing” without any intermediaries. Third, the of the future be smarter than they are today through learning algorithms. The things/devices learn the residents’ preferences and use those to predict behaviors. It not be necessary to program a light timer or a thermostat because the light already knows the residents’ movements and behaviors. Knowledge of the preferred setting enables the device to simulate your presence when you are out and automatically regulate it to your liking when you are in. Devices that adapt to users’ habits over time create a very intimate way of individualizing one’s home. The other major trend that shape the connected home over the next few decades is sustainability. Smart materials make leaner and more energy efficient. One example is smart window glass, enabled by digitized shades, that automatically darken when there is too much sun, meaning shutters are no longer necessary. In addition, become sustainable through the addition of a digital layer. Multifunctional devices serve as platforms that make single-function devices obsolete. For instance, enhancing a light bulb with sensors turns it into a security system, because the bulb can alert the security service when it senses an unexpected presence, thereby making regular alarms obsolete. People search for ways to uncomplicate their lives, or at least their , rather than the opposite. Technology is supposed to help us do that — but simply attaching a sensor and adding connectivity doesn’t automatically make a device smarter or more useful. A deep integration of connectivity and sensors applied to clear use cases finally distinguish a smart home device and service from just digitized ones. |
Entrepreneurs everywhere can now solve the problems of humanity | Vivek Wadhwa | 2,016 | 3 | 20 |
Not long ago, all of the major innovations came from big research labs in the West. And Silicon Valley not only built the core technologies but also the best applications of these. This is where all the amazing advances happened. We no longer have a monopoly on disruptive innovation. The cost of building world-changing technologies has dropped exponentially and made it possible for entrepreneurs anywhere to solve the grand challenges of humanity—and . One technology promises to bring quality medical diagnostics to the five billion people in need. I know there are many others. Earlier this month, I went to the Peeragarhi Relief Camp in New Delhi to see Swasthya Slate in action. This is a pilot project for 1000 free medical clinics that Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, . I was completely blown away with what I saw. The device performed medical tests, including blood and urine, within minutes for 1/100th of what we pay in the U.S. And it integrated into a patient management and AI-based diagnosis system designed for use by minimally-trained front-line health workers. In the one hour that I was there, I witnessed a woman’s life possibly having been saved. Rupandeep Kaur, 20 weeks pregnant, arrived at the clinic looking fatigued and ready to collapse. After being asked her name and address, she was taken to see a physician who reviewed her medical history, asked several questions, and ordered a series of tests including blood and urine. These tests revealed that her fetus was healthy but Kaur had dangerously low hemoglobin and blood pressure levels. The physician, Alka Choudhry, ordered an ambulance to take her to a nearby hospital. All of this, including the medical tests, happened . The entire process was automated — from check-in, to retrieval of medical records, to testing and analysis and ambulance dispatch. The hospital also received Kaur’s medical records electronically. There was no paperwork filled out, no bills sent to the patient or insurance company, no delay of any kind. Yes, it was all free. The hospital treated Kaur for mineral and protein deficiencies and released her the same day. Had she not received timely treatment, she may have had a miscarriage or lost her life. This was more efficient and advanced than any clinic I have seen in the West. And Kaur wasn’t the only patient, there were at least a dozen other people who received free medical care and prescriptions in the one hour that I spent at Peeragrahi. The costs only $600. It the size of a cake tin and performs 33 common medical tests including blood pressure, blood sugar, heart rate, blood hemoglobin, urine protein and glucose. It also tests for diseases such as malaria, dengue, hepatitis, HIV, and typhoid. Each test only takes a minute or two and the device uploads its data to a cloud-based medical-record management system that can be accessed by the patient. This was developed by Kanav Kahol, who was a biomedical engineer and researcher at Arizona State University’s department of biomedical informatics until he became frustrated at the lack of interest by the U.S. medical establishment in reducing the cost of diagnostic testing. He worried that billions of people were getting no medical care or substandard care because of the medical industry’s motivation in keeping prices high. In 2011, he returned home to New Delhi to develop a solution. Kahol had noted that despite the similarities between medical devices in their computer displays and circuits, their packaging made them unduly complex and difficult for anyone but highly skilled practitioners to use. They were also incredibly expensive — usually costing tens of thousands of dollars each. He believed he could take the same sensors and microfluidics technologies that the expensive medical devices used and integrate them into an open medical platform. And with off-the-shelf computer tablets, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence software, he could simplify the data analysis in a way that minimally-trained front-line workers could understand. By Jan. 2013, Kahol had built the device and persuaded the state of Jammu and Kashmir, in Northern India, to allow its use in six underserved districts with a population of 2.1 million people. It is now in use at 498 clinics there. Focusing on reproductive maternal and child health, the system has been used to provide antenatal care to more than 22,000 mothers. Of these, 277 mothers were diagnosed as high risk and provided timely care. Mothers are getting care in their villages now instead of having to travel to clinics in cities. At my request, a newer version of the Slate, , was tested last month by nine teams of physicians and technology, operations, and marketing experts at Peru’s leading hospital, Clinica Internacional. They tested its accuracy against the western equipment that they use, its durability in emergency room and clinical settings, the ability of minimally trained clinicians to use it in rural settings, and its acceptability to patients. Clinica’s general manager, Alvaro Chavez Tori, told me that the tests were highly successful and “acceptance of the technology was amazingly high.” He sees this technology as a way of helping the millions of people in Peru and Latin America who lack access to quality diagnostics. The opportunity is bigger than Latin America, however. When it comes to health care, the United States has many of the same problems as the developing world. Despite the Affordable Care Act, or 10.4 percent of the U.S. population still lacks health insurance. These people are disproportionately poor, black or Hispanic, and 4.5 million are children. As a result, they receive less preventive care and suffer from more serious illness — which are extremely costly to treat. Emergency rooms of hospitals are overwhelmed by uninsured patients seeking basic medical care. And when they have insurance, families are often bankrupted by medical costs. We surely need free health clinics like the ones in New Delhi—with instant diagnosis capabilities and free medicines—in East Palo Alto and parts of Oakland and San Jose. It is sad to see the poverty and exclusion there. And we need these in all over America. But the real opportunity to disrupt the U.S. healthcare system itself. When I go to my cardiologist for cholesterol tests, for example, he takes a large sample of my blood, sends it to the lab, and calls me back 2- with the results. And he charges my insurance company a couple of hundred dollars. With the Swasthya Slate they did the same test with a single drop of blood —and gave me the results immediately. This cost Rs. 12, that is 18 cents. I would love to have one of these devices at home and be able to visit my doctors via Skype. Despite what has become possible, the problems that entrepreneurs in the developing world face is that even the people in their own countries don’t believe that they could have Einstein’s in their midst. The lesson is that world-changing innovations are happening everywhere now. People in the developing world understand the problems of humanity better than we do. Perhaps it is time for Silicon Valley to start looking abroad for innovations that will better the world. |
Mattermark raises $7.3M at a $42M valuation to expand its B2B search and analytics tools | Ingrid Lunden | 2,016 | 3 | 20 | , a startup that mines and crunches public Internet data to provide investors, sales teams and others with search tools and other business intelligence, has raised another $7.3 million in funding — a Series B round that values the company at $42 million. The new cash injection will be used to hire more talent; and to keep expanding the product with better analytics for more categories of business users — or, in the words of CEO and co-founder Danielle Morrill, “unlock the web for modern professionals.” This latest round brings the total raised by Mattermark to $18.4 million, and it comes from investor and new backer , with participation also from previous investors. There have been that have backed the startup to date. The fact that a small army of VCs has backed the startup fits with the company’s earliest incarnation. Founded in 2013 as a pivot from , Mattermark initially made a name for itself providing signalling data to investors — specifically tech investors. VCs still make up a large part of Mattermark’s business — some 44% of all revenues — but that has been evolving over the last couple of years. The company today has “over 500” customers, with some 50 of them from public companies, Morrill tells me. There are dozens of BI tools on the market today, from startups like Birst through to products from tech giants like and (and others, like TC’s own affiliate , which also has ambitions to make its own mark in the space). Mattermark’s unique selling point is that it focuses not on a company’s internal data, but on the much larger pool of data exists on the public Internet — a vast trove of information, but one that has been a challenge to tap for most companies in any kind of an automated way because most of the data is unstructured. Much like Google organises the web for a wide variety of searches by consumer users, Mattermark has been trying to do the same for professional, business-focused users. It says it uses techniques like distributed web crawling, deep neural networks and natural language processing to essentially reorganise and order the public Internet. It then uses that information to build profiles of companies — of which there are about 1.5 million today in its customer-facing database. Data covered in these profiles include details like web traffic, inbound links, employee count, social media followings, news mentions, key executives and more. (As a point of comparison, when I wrote about Mattermark’s , there were 1 million companies in its database. Morrill says there are actually more than 1.5 million being tracked but these have not “graduated” to a high enough quality of coverage to be listed.) But if Google’s job as a search engine is essentially done after you hit “search”, Mattermark aims to take the search and discovery chain further and deeper. Customers can, in turn, use this database to ask questions either about specific companies or about trends that might cut across a number of them. (Example: “Show me all companies in the Bay Area who have raised their Series A in the past 6 months and have grown their employee count by more than 50%.”) Mattermark today charges $6,000 for a single user license per year to start, with pricing breaks for larger accounts. Customers using enterprise integrations like Salesforce, Excel, and the API have packages starting at $50,000 per year. The company has been on steady growth path, booking $1 million in revenue in 2014, $2.4 million in 2015, and generating nearly $300,000/month today. It’s not yet profitable but says the focus is very much on getting to breakeven — a goal that may have been less emphasized in years past but is becoming increasingly more talked-about these days. To that end, three specific roles Mattermark looking to fill are VP of Sales, Sales Director, and Sales Development Manager. On that note, it’s interesting that Mattermark actually signed the term sheet when it still had 14 months of runway left. “The market made me nervous,” Morrill, who — in building Referly and now Mattermark, has also carved out a for herself as a straight-talker on the subject of startup life. “When Foundry offered us attractive terms and an amount of dilution we could live with we felt the best choice was to take it and save months of fundraising hassle,” she added. “I didn’t think it made sense to take the risk that 15 months of hard-earned growth might not mean much soon, or that we might need to double the company yet again just to get the same valuation in 12 months that we could get right now.” Indeed, the declining value of annual recurring revenue is a trend that, ironically, Mattermark itself has been noting and . |
The death of Instagram for brands | Steve Feiner | 2,016 | 3 | 20 |
Earlier this week Instagram updated its news feed algorithm. Posts will no longer appear in chronological order and instead be sorted “based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting, and the timeliness of the post.” What this means is that Instagram will choose what to surface and when – essentially mirroring Facebook’s news feed. This change is being spun as a way to optimize a user’s feed, when actually it grants Instagram the power to control ad content. “On average, people miss about 70 percent of the posts in their Instagram feed,” says Kevin Systrom, the co-founder and CEO of Instagram. “What this is about is making sure that the 30 percent you see is the best 30 percent possible.” While this certainly is true, make no mistake, Instagram is about to do this for monetization. Facebook, which owns Instagram, just announced . While Facebook’s growth rate has , maintaining that growth is not simple by any means. By applying Facebook’s historical growth rate, it needs to produce an incremental $2 billion in growth next quarter and another $3 billion in growth in this quarter next year. In the most recent earnings call, Facebook’s CFO mentioned “core Facebook is really driving the top line”. This growth is being driven by an , not an increase in user growth. Can this growth continue to be driven by core Facebook? Facebook needs to grow an incremental $3 billion more in this quarter next year. If we apply historical user growth numbers, of 13 percent that would mean average revenue per user would need to increase 33 percent. Can Facebook continue to do that given that Facebook has already increased and U.S. & Canada growth by nearly 5x since Q1 2012? How much further can Facebook average revenue per user growth grow before that too reaches a saturation point? So this places an importance on monetization in new areas such as Instagram. According to eMarketer, Instagram revenues hit $600 million in 2015 and are Surely this will not be driven by user growth as a 149 percent growth in users would equate to nearly 600 million new users just in the next year. Here’s where Instagram comes in. Over the past few years, thousands of brands have joined Instagram after realizing that it is the . What happens when Instagram begins to monetize? The path of least resistance would be to follow a path similar to Facebook and limit organic reach — we have . So what happens to brands that have heavily invested in creating wonderful content on Instagram? While larger brands have the marketing budget to pay for what was once free media, blogshops and other small businesses may not be so lucky. Consider this your wake up call, because if your business relies heavily on Instagram as a channel, customer acquisition is about to come with a hefty price tag instead of a perfectly edited photo. |
Twitter looks back at the evolution of Twitter Ads | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 20 | As part of the flurry of retrospectives , the company is also looking back at the history of advertising on Twitter. Granted, that probably doesn’t give you the same nostalgic twinkle as but, like it or not, it’s still an important part of the company’s story. So in , Joel Lunenfeld, vice president of sales strategy, looks back at “10 ways marketers have changed with Twitter.” Many of the trends Lunenfeld points to should be pretty familiar if you’ve been following Twitter, or social media advertising in general. There’s a discussion of real-time marketing, another focusing on a new wave of online creators and a third looking at the increasing importance of mobile. There are also nods to the future, with things like live video combined with new devices giving us and helping users take flight (and discussing air quality) with . Perhaps the most important point, though, is the first one: “authentic brand voice.” Marketers have used Twitter to get looser, friendlier, even weirder — and while , I’d much rather have a genuine-seeming interaction with a brand on Twitter than just getting the same marketing message as everyone else. Lunenfeld writes:
When Clayton Hove that a bird had “crapped on a Smart Car” and “totaled it” in 2012, Smart Car USA with a hilarious graphic proving he must be mistaken. When Kit Kat the gauntlet to Oreo and challenged them to a game of Tic-Tac-Toe, Oreo quickly responded, creating love for both brands. This type of brand interaction didn’t exist before. This isn’t covered in today’s blog post, but it’s also worth noting that Twitter is making the case for the effectiveness of the social approach in conjunction with more traditional marketing. For example, it recently worked with media agency Starcom and to show that |
Will apps become the next disability lawsuit target? | Frank C. Morris, Jr. | 2,016 | 3 | 20 |
Apps have become a driver of the economy. According to the website, leading app stores offer around four million apps. App users are able to engage in commerce, access content and connect with for-profit and not-for-profit entities of every kind and description. If space was the final frontier for Captain Kirk and the Enterprise, digital-app experiences are the heavily explored frontier for a host of entities. Because apps are a key link between the public and a business, the accessibility of apps to individuals with disabilities, especially those individuals who are blind or have low vision, is unfortunately likely to become the newest contested cyber battleground for claims under the (ADA) and similar state and local laws. A little background may be helpful. The year 2015 marked the ADA’s 25th anniversary. It also marked a year in which well over 40 lawsuits were filed alleging that the websites of notable companies or organizations — such as The National Collegiate Athletic Association, J.C. Penney, Sprint Corporation, Hard Rock Café International, Red Roof Inns, Huntington National Bank and even the U.S. Small Business Administration — violated the public accommodations provisions of the ADA and similar laws by not being accessible to individuals who are blind or have low vision or other disabilities. The DOJ has launched investigations, including of website accessibility, against the Newseum in Washington, DC and the (home court for LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers). There have also been with other entities, including Florida State University and the University of Montana. While the tsunami of website accessibility investigations and cases continues to rise, a new wave of claims may be about to confront the apps of many organizations. It is rare today that businesses, including healthcare and life sciences companies, as well as cultural institutions and other nonprofits, do not tout the availability of information and transactions that can be accessed and performed through an app. Indeed, special benefits are often offered to those who “download our app.” As apps, including those for telehealth and other businesses, continue to proliferate and evolve, it is highly likely that the ADA claims plaguing websites will boldly attempt to go to the newer frontier of apps. Insight into potential disability claims against apps may already be seen in DOJ settlements, such as with online grocer and , which have required making an app accessible to individuals who are blind or have low vision. Claims against apps, however, will have to overcome a legal argument that apps as a cyberspace phenomenon are not covered by the ADA. The ADA prohibits discrimination in the full and equal enjoyment of public accommodations on the basis of disability. The ADA defines a “place of public accommodation” as a facility whose operations affect commerce and that falls within the 12 types of establishments identified by Congress in the ADA. The ADA, however, passed in 1991, does not specifically address access to websites and apps and, to date, courts are split on whether websites qualify as “places of public accommodation” under Title III of the ADA. Some courts have held that in the absence of a brick-and-mortar presence or a close connection or nexus with a brick-and-mortar entity, the ADA does not apply to a website. Other courts have found that the ADA includes as public accommodations the owners and operators of all facilities, whether in physical or electronic space, sometimes finding a website to be an extension of a physical public accommodation. In addition to the lawsuits noted above, certain enterprising law firms have sent scores of demand letters to numerous entities, such as national retailers, financial services firms, hospitality companies, cultural nonprofits and healthcare entities, alleging that their websites violate the ADA. It is not hard to foresee the attempt to extend such litigation threats to apps, even if there is little or no law as yet holding that apps are “places of public accommodation” under the ADA. Today, businesses with apps and app developers focus on fast loading, easy navigation, reliable and speedy performance, the prevention of freezing, crashes, security and privacy breaches and software bugs. Any failure on these issues leads to bad app store ratings and adverse social media attention. Add to these problems the possibility of an active advocacy community taking to task an app that can’t be effectively used by individuals who are blind or have low vision or other disabilities and the impact on a business and its brand can be both swift and significant. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the DOJ has still not promulgated standards for accessibility of websites and apps and only projects (at least) website standards for 2018. Businesses may want to work with experienced legal counsel knowledgeable in accessible technology issues who can facilitate the testing of existing apps for comparison with the most frequently referenced accessibility standards and to discuss potential strategies for providing accessible apps under what should be the protection of attorney-client privilege. Counsel can arrange for testing existing apps for comparison with, for example, WCAG 2.0 and Section 508 (of the ), as well as an app’s usability by screen readers, including those which are often built into mobile devices. After a review against such guidelines (which are frequently cited by the government and disability advocates despite the lack of federal regulations), an assessment can be made by the business, with counsel’s advice, if steps to enhance accessibility of existing apps would be appropriate. Similarly, as new apps are being developed, accessibility can be considered in the design plan, again, with counsel playing a role to maximize the ability to assert confidentiality under attorney-client privilege. Taking such steps before any actual or threatened litigation should greatly enhance a business’s ability to defend against such claims. It’s likely an apt time for businesses and other public accommodations and app developers to consider appropriate legal strategies to avoid becoming disability discrimination litigation targets, even as the law on websites and apps continues to develop. |
Now the cloud wars (really) begin | Aaron Levie | 2,016 | 3 | 20 |
Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM, presciently After years of investing in their own Today — like Watson envisioned — we now see a time when only five to ten “computers” (or clouds) may For all of The undisputed leader in the space, which just celebrated its 10 year anniversary, For all of the back-and-forth between Microsoft, Amazon, Google and others over the past couple of years, we’ve only seen the most nascent battles in a multi-decade war for the future of the cloud. In hindsight, Amazon kicking off the cloud wars isn’t as unlikely as it seemed at the time. Most reacted to Amazon’s Web Services initiative as an intriguing experiment by the online bookseller, but certainly not fit for anyone but hobbyists But what Amazon What followed are the various twists and turns that occur in any new industry just starting to take form Amazon, like any good first-mover, reliably delivered more capabilities, at lower prices, in more regions, and just kept gobbling up more of the market. Overnight, Google unlocked their un-matched technical arsenal –driven by years of success building out Google Search, Gmail, Youtube Now with the right leadership in place, Google can solve many of the missing aspects of their cloud efforts: packaging up the right technology offerings, building out a broader developer ecosystem, and having the patience to work with slo Even in a matter of weeks, it was rumored that The first phase of this war will be fought based primarily on pricing and performance. Even looking over the past few years, But the next phase is where the cloud will get really interesting. Competing on price is a game that any business strategist laments, and the big players in the cloud are no exception. For Microsoft, that margin will come from premium enterprise software and services, and driving more and more synergies between its combined offerings. Amazon will likely find itself in a spot not too foreign to its core business, by competing with low cost offering This is not a winner-takes-all game, but it will be an aggressive battle for the hearts and minds of every developer and enterprise on the planet. What we do know is computing costs will continue to drop by orders of magnitude and offerings will be launched to solve some of the most fringe but vexing problems in IT. |
Lessons from starting a company during the last downturn | Alex Bard | 2,016 | 3 | 20 |
I started my last company in mid-2009, just as the market was beginning to recover from the fallout of the financial crisis. In the past several years, surrounded by fast-growth startups with sky-high valuations, many of us forgot what the downturn felt like. Today, things are changing. Again, we’re facing economic uncertainty on a global scale — the S&P 500 began 2016 with its since 2008, and for companies like LinkedIn and Tableau show that the tech industry is no exception. The last recession taught me that challenging market conditions offer advantages, like less competition and better access to talent. My co-founders and I recognized an opportunity, and explored dozens of ideas for a new business before landing on a customer service tool for small and medium businesses. We built into a successful company and were acquired by Salesforce in 2011. As tech funding begins to dry up and the markets waver, entrepreneurs need to adjust their approach. The lessons I learned from starting a company after the last economic meltdown apply today: Don’t get caught up in growth-at-all-costs without considering the following… We chose to pursue the idea for Assistly because we knew it solved a real problem. Businesses need to invest in customer support no matter what — you’ve probably heard that than to acquire a new one, and we’ve found that to be true. In any economic cycle, but especially a tough one, you don’t want to do something sexy; you want to do something foundational. If you create something people need, you’ll thrive when the markets are low, as well as when they’re high. In 2009, we needed to bet more conservatively than we might have in 2013 or 2014. Ultimately, it was a smart decision. Many of our other ideas would have involved more risk: unproven market fit, a learning curve for our founding team and considerably more capital from outside investors. In that climate, we couldn’t afford it. Our founding team had domain experience in customer service. We’d all worked in the industry in some capacity, and we knew how to monetize the product. We could hit the ground running, which meant less time spent learning on the job and making costly mistakes. This baseline gave us more runway (and confidence) to get started in a tough cycle. We surveyed the market to create a prototype and identified the clothing brand as our ideal customer; they’re tech-savvy, they take pride in their customer support organization and they’re active on social media. As it turns out, their needs were significantly different than what we’d imagined. We worked closely with them to rebuild a core part of the product, then began to roll out this version among other early customers. Once we had 10 major customers on board, including Twitter and Yelp, it was time to raise money. Over three months, we met with more than 30 VCs and got ~30 “no”s before our first “yes.” We heard a variety of reasons for passing, many of which contradicted each other. Most investors seemed shell-shocked by what had happened in 2008; they just weren’t ready. True Ventures eventually said yes, in part because one of their partners had worked with me at AOL. Even with this relationship, it was difficult to secure a $1.7 million Series A — a sum that in 2014 would have been considered a seed round. It was huge for us. Phil Black, True Ventures’ founding partner, asked us right off the bat how much of the $1.7 million we planned to burn, so we created a plan for curbing spending. We hired conservatively and carefully planned the unit economics of the business: the revenue and costs associated with each user. We released our beta version three months after funding and started to charge for the product shortly thereafter. We quickly saw revenue growth. When there’s a surfeit of venture capital in the marketplace, as we saw in 2013 and 2014, founders have more leverage when it comes to fundraising. The result is fast growth, high burn rates, bigger funding rounds and inflated valuations. In a volatile market, like the one we’re seeing today, startups need to break even — or at least have a realistic plan to get there — before continuing to grow. In a tough economic climate, positive cash flow is the best leverage you can bring to an investment conversation. You’re more appealing to investors, and you don’t need outside investment to survive. You can fuel your growth with revenue rather than with venture capital, and that means you have more control over the future of your business. Product-market fit and profitable growth are the biggest factors I consider when investing in a company or working at one. They’re a large part of the reason I joined , an email marketing provider that the founders successfully monetized, with no outside investment, for more than 10 years. The past eight years have underscored the cyclical nature of the economy — and the need for businesses built on fundamentals rather than growth-for-growth’s-sake. |
Review: Nikon’s D5500 lacks charm, but shoots fair photos | Stefan Etienne | 2,016 | 3 | 20 | DSLR is often an oxymoron. DSLRs tend to be full of enough features to frighten off newbies and, depending on price, enough bells and whistles to keep you busy for weeks. So is the new Nikon D5500 entry-level? After a few glances and general fooling around, I quickly realized the Nikon D5500 has many of the specs found in a better class of camera. After all, this is a DSLR originally released back in 2015, but image quality only gets marginally better year to year — it’s more about focus speeds, lens selections and color compositions that determine what’s worth your assortment of Benjamins. Speaking of which, it’s time to figure out what this camera really is: it’s specifications time. The Nikon D5500 is built using the run-of-the-mill DSLR reinforced (carbon fiber) plastic and leather-esque accents seen on nearly all of their D-series cameras. After being exposed to this sort of aesthetic for years, it eventually becomes lackluster, but that is not to say that the D5500 is an entirely unattractive camera. Smooth corners and red rubber accent near the camera grip is an icon of Nikon DSLRs in recent years. The beefy figure and assortment of buttons might even intimidate amateur or new photographers. For example, you have your run-of-the-mill playback, directional, exposure, view mode, menu, focus lock, exposure and delete buttons, but Nikon also has an info button, button, individual zoom-in/zoom-out buttons, drive mode, function and flash buttons — and that’s all excluding the two extra switches on the 18-140mm VR lens: vibration reduction on/off, or manual/autofocus. There is a lot going on here, evidently. Aesthetically, the D5500 is definitely more serious than your smartphone camera or the silly point-and-shoot camera you used to whip out at family gatherings — this is a , . But this isn’t a pro-level camera, either. For someone unfamiliar with some more advanced camera functions, the D5500 could appear as if it’s a terminal designed to control a reusable rocket, but that just isn’t the case. What this actually means is that Nikon has crammed way too many buttons onto the D5500, in too many places. I’ve used pro-DSLRs that have a similar number (or fewer) of physical inputs, but they were grouped in areas that made them easily accessible when shooting with the camera to your face. The D5500’s button layout makes it seem as if I must learn that the most indiscriminate movement of my fingers will trigger some sort of function — and that might not always be beneficial to my shot. So, it turns out Nikon’s offering is decidedly entry-level DSLR, with some exception to the number of megapixels at the photographer’s disposal. That being said, there’s nothing inherently wrong with owning an entry-level DSLR in a sea of highly capable mirrorless cameras. However, purists might say otherwise, and a first-time “serious camera” owner might not even care. In the end, using the D5500 is both a task and artistic expression, which I’ll get right to. When describing the usage experience of a camera, sometimes I like to use scenarios. They paint an image of the camera’s capabilities in the setting, but also truly tell me whether or not I like using the camera (subjective) and if it delivers crisp images under specific device and environmental settings (objective). So, I took the D5500 downstairs, down the block and into the street near my dorm at Claremont Avenue, near Riverside Park. Thankfully, a cycling race had closed down a few sunny blocks, and the riders made passes every few minutes or so. Perfect action-shooting conditions. The second scenario was all about shooting a subject. So, I took a subject, made him my model and shot photos of him on an overcast day. Simple enough, no? The third, and final scenario that I’m illustrating in the example gallery here features some basic urban shots, just to give a taste of what it’s like to whip out the D5500, taking pictures of things seen. Generally, the D5500 did a fine job of staying in focus (39-point AF!), with not too much grain or overcompensation — but that was only because of my use of custom shooting inputs (exposure control, use of scene modes or other things). Meaning that it’s not bad to leave this DSLR in “auto” mode; you won’t be getting the most out of it if you do, but that goes for any DSLR camera, really. Also, you must realize the limitations of a cropped sensor (APS-C) versus that of a full-frame (usually slightly more expensive), and that while you’re giving up coverage area, you might also be giving up on skill building. And that’s more akin to your taste in photography. A few moments captured by the D5500 below. They illustrate a few of the photo characteristics it has. [gallery link="file" size="tc-article-featured-image-wide" ids="1293888,1293889,1293333,1293334,1293347,1293298,1293890,1293297" orderby="rand"] What about the 1080p HD video, you ask? Well, the D5500 isn’t going to make you the next Casey Neistat, though you can definitely get a decent shot in a pinch. However, the stereo mic won’t cut it for wind noise (a given, really) and the focus is not as quick to the task, either.
It is worth noting, though, that the mobile app is a bit plain and there are myriad buttons (in too many separate places). You need to learn about ISO, shutter speed, aperture, exposure and all the other things that making shooting with a DSLR (or a mirrorless camera) that much more difficult, but also more rewarding. Basically, the auto mode renders crisp and clear, but not engaging or otherwise interesting photographs. As for recommending the D5500? I can, on the grounds that you’re willing to know how to use the buttons. However, if you are in the market for a camera that costs more than $1,000 and want something compelling — hardware that enamored you, even if you have no shooting experience — the D5500 might make you kvetch. |
Inside the Starburst-sized box that could save the Internet | Michael Pozmantier | 2,016 | 3 | 20 |
Cybercrime is costing us millions. Hacks drain the average American firm of , and, in the resulting panic, companies often spend to resolve a single attack. It’s time to face facts: Our defenses aren’t strong enough to keep the hackers out. But there is hope. Companies can encrypt data so that what is stolen remains useless to the attacker. However, right now, most forms of cryptography can be broken with the right tools — but what if there were a development in the works that change the game completely? At , scientists have taken the first step toward exactly that. It’s a device the size of a candy, which fits on a small circuit board the size of a video card. that unassuming exterior is a crazily fluctuating quantum light field — the quickest and most reliable true random number generator ever made. Most people don’t know it, but they use random numbers every day when they use the to log into websites, send emails and shop, among other instances. They’re a key component of the mechanism that makes websites with “https” in the URL more secure than ones with just “http,” for instance: on an “https” site, your computer uses random numbers to encrypt its messages to the server, so it’s harder for hackers to intercept them. Random numbers are also applied in different ways to protect everything from the credit card number you input on Amazon.com to top-secret files at the NSA. When I first heard about the quantum random number generator, I didn’t understand its significance, either. I was on my first trip to Los Alamos, in 2012, to identify technology being developed in the lab that be licensed to private industry — part of my job as Program Manager at the (TTP) program in the Department of Homeland Security. At that time, I was given a briefing more focused on quantum key exchange, a different and even more complicated technology than the quantum random number generator. Beth Nordholdt and Richard Hughes, then-co-leaders of the Los Alamos quantum communications team, had little time to prepare for my visit and decipher how to distill more than 20 years of research into terms a newcomer to the worlds of quantum physics and cryptography would understand. They dropped phrases like “Diffie-Hellman protocol” and “quantum entanglement” until my head spun. Random number generation was only an afterthought. On my next visit, a year later, the importance of the quantum random number generator became much more clear. Beth and Richard showed me their then-current prototype, which was around the size of a microwave (much more compact than their original refrigerator- prototype, which I hadn’t gotten a chance to see the year before). And they explained what difficult cryptographic problems the device solve. Once I understood what they were working on, we selected them for the next class of TTP. Most cryptography systems in use today employ keys: long strings of random or near-random numbers. This includes the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols that “https” sites use to secure user data. SSL and TLS open a secure connection to a server using a pair of keys: one publicly known, and one that’s private and secret. If the digits in the public key aren’t random enough, hackers can use it to predict the digits in the private key and gain access to floods of personal information. That’s why generating good keys is so important. And the longer your key, the stronger the encryption; when you hear someone refer to “256-bit encryption,” they’re referring to encryption that uses a key 256 digits long. You can also make a key stronger by increasing its entropy: the randomness of the digits within it. Because true randomness in the world is hard to come by, keys are generated by so-called pseudo-random number generators: devices that “stretch out” the entropy of a smaller, truly random “seed” sequence. A true random number generator is what generates that seed sequence. Random number generators have been built that extract entropy from almost everywhere: atmospheric data, radio waves, even the movement of wax blobs in a lava lamp. (That last technique worked well until one night a janitor switched off the lamp, and the supposedly random number sequence became a string of straight 0s.) Most sources of entropy are more mundane. Intel chips usually have built-in random number generators that take their entropy from electrical “noise” the chip. A Linux kernel tracks chaotic events on the computer itself, like the time between clicks of a mouse or strikes on a keyboard. In any case, the computer or server will pool all that random information into a reservoir of entropy that the system dips into — for instance, when generating digital signatures or keys. Only, unfortunately, this reservoir of randomness isn’t always as random as it seems. For instance, if there isn’t enough network traffic on a server, its Linux kernel’s supply of entropy may be depleted over time. Nor are hardware random number generators like Intel’s necessarily better. A hacker can affect the electrical “noise” a chip by messing with the temperature your computer or its power supply. Local radiation and other naturally occurring phenomena can decrease its entropy, too. Moreover, it’s extremely hard to test whether outputs of systems are really random. The digits of pi pass every known statistical test for randomness — but they’re of course completely predictable. These factors make quality control for random number generators extremely difficult. That’s why the quantum random number generator was so innovative. It’s based on natural processes that are always random, by definition. Even environmental factors like a change in temperature or a burst of radiation won’t make quantum fluctuations lose their entropy. They’re incredibly reliable sources of randomness and, what’s more, a random number generator based on them runs extremely quickly. (This is what allows , the company that now markets the technology commercially, to offer sufficient entropy to supply whole data centers.) It’s the wave of the future — one that will soon be making everything from online shopping to driverless cars a little bit more secure. |
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