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After SXSW, here’s a roadmap for how the tech industry can change the world this year | Brian Reich | 2,016 | 3 | 20 |
The SXSW Interactive Festival once again attracted thousands of the smartest, most creative and passionate people to Austin for discussions about the latest innovations in technology, media and design. The most notable attendee this year was President Obama, who used his Keynote Conversation on the first day to implore attendees to apply their expertise to solving the most complex challenges facing our society. More than ever before, SXSW featured discussions about improving civic engagement and how to use technology to help better the world — from helping assist the 60 million refugees around the globe to increasing voter participation here in the United States. Now, as the thousands of attendees return to their daily lives, we must make sure that the important discussions continue and real progress is made. President Obama went to SXSW wanting to connect with the people who are shaping the digital environment, and who understand best how to influence behavior and drive actions. He called on them to put their qualifications to work helping to figure out ways to get more people engaged in meaningful ways, explaining, “We cannot solve the problems in government and we cannot solve the problems that we face collectively as a society unless we, the people, are paying attention.” The president’s message resonated — the best and brightest could be heard in the days that followed talking about how to answer the call and get involved. But the reality of what it takes to solve these problems — and the difficult task of coordinating efforts between government, the private sector and nonprofits — was very clear. Each sector brings unique expertise and important perspective that, when combined, create an environment where durable solutions can be developed. But there are also obvious disconnects when it comes to how the expertise and resources from one sector might be combined with another. The potential for progress and innovation is at risk of being squandered. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can absolutely re-imagine our approach to solving complex problems and change the way we think about how to use technology to better the world. More importantly, we have most of the tools and expertise that we need — we just have to put them to work in some different ways. That starts by getting organized. Here are the first key steps: If we expect to tackle these massive problems, we need to do a better job bringing different groups of stakeholders together. Sure, we have platforms and tools that encourage information sharing and facilitate collective action. But, we all know how hard it is to truly collaborate. Nobody wants to cede control, and it’s hard to admit that someone else’s idea might be better. Instead of looking for consensus, let’s think more like a network and act like a team, working interdependently while being fully committed to a single result, sharing ideas and looking for ways to make our collective efforts go much further. There are currently dozens, maybe even hundreds, of different projects in the United States alone hoping to address different parts of the global refugee crisis. There is no master list or map of that ecosystem. Nobody is volunteering to keep track of the chaos or manage potential partnerships. Instead, many projects find themselves competing for limited resources, directing attention toward lesser priorities and generally clogging up the system. We can do a better job sharing information and connecting the dots, eliminating inefficiency and ensuring progress is being made. When considering how to build a new product, the most crucial step is conveying the concept clearly so that designers and developers know what exactly they need to build. Without that vital information, it’s unlikely that anything of value can be created. The same is true when developing or utilizing technology in a humanitarian crisis. The same clear specifications are needed. Instead of creating a special “humanitarian” effort, recognize that product design or development requires the same thinking and approach no matter what population you are serving or problem you are trying to solve, and apply your best thinking, and best practices, accordingly. It’s no secret that some of the most talented people on the planet are spending more time and energy maximizing return on investment for a tech startup instead of driving positive change in our society. And it will continue to be that way until we re-imagine how the private sector, nonprofits and government can work together to collectively help solve pressing global issues. We don’t need to invent a whole new way of doing things; we simply need to do a better job applying what we already know to this important set of problems. As the president noted, “these are solvable problems, but it’s not a matter of us passively waiting for somebody else to solve it.” Take this as your invitation to step in and disrupt the way we solve crucial issues that shape the future of our nation, society and humanity as a whole. |
These are testing times: mavericks vs. ice people | Jon Evans | 2,016 | 3 | 20 | One of my earliest engineering jobs, before I fled hardware in favor of the (relative) ease and lucre of software, was in chip design. I remember being shocked when I learned just how much of the processor in question was devoted to test circuitry. I thought, Oh, how young and incredibly stupid I was. The practice of engineering soon teaches one that, after hydrogen, the universe is composed largely of condensed mockery of one’s previous assumptions. This is true even when, as with software, the capricious vagaries of physical reality have already largely been abstracted out. Murphy was indeed an optimist: it’s not just anything that go wrong; it’s factors you couldn’t have imagined as relevant to your problem space triggering a series of cascading disasters that leave you regretting that your parents ever met. So what do we do? We practice defense in depth. We follow the . We “ as if the person who ends up maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live.” We practice agile ( agile, not cargo-cult agile) development. And most of all, we write tests. Right? …Yeah, well, that’s the idea. For my day job at I do a lot of interviews, and almost every junior developer I talk to assures me that they’re about testing. And yet, for my day job at I am often called in to help rescue clients who come to us with an existing code base — and you know what we rarely, if ever, see in them? That’s right: functioning, updated tests. I don’t necessarily blame them. You can make a strong case that , as is , and modern app development (especially Android) is pretty messy too … and bosses / clients are always pushing devs to go faster, and the natural assumption is that if you have to cut corners to get something done, the test corner is the first to go. Everyone of course will get in line to condemn that as the kind of false economy that might save you a week in the short term but will soon wind up costing you months. And everyone is right. But here’s the thing that turns so many devs away from testing: testing is almost as bad — sometimes even worse — than testing. Even when junior developers write tests, they treat it like dental work, something painful to be dealt with as quickly as possible; so they grab a test harness that seems to fit whatever frameworks they’re using, write — or automatically generate — some unit tests, and move on. Ah, unit tests. 2 unit tests. 0 integration tests — The Practical Dev (@ThePracticalDev) Unit tests clutter up your project, increase its cognitive load, create dependencies that have to be changed when the code change … and very rarely, if ever, find a bug that wouldn’t be unearthed by some well-written end-to-end integration tests. Sure, if you’re writing an autopilot, you want 100% code coverage. But pretending that tests don’t also have implicit costs, both one-time and ongoing, is sheer denial. Like so much of engineering, it’s a trade-off, a hunt for the sweet spot; and for most projects, optimal testing is decidedly maximal testing. And “end-to-end” is often, well, flexibly defined. Automated user-interface testing is notoriously difficult. In my experience, like a dog that does arithmetic, while its mere existence may be impressive, its real-world results are rarely all that useful. As a result it’s very hard to bolt on end-to-end testing to a site, service, or app not designed for it from the ground up. (But at least load testing has gotten a lot easier over the years; loader.io, especially, is great.) The developers I interview tend to say — cautiously, because they know it sounds like heresy twice over — “Well, testing is important, but you have to be about it.” Yes indeed. It’s true that development today feels like dining at huge buffet of undercooked dishes; which flawed and half-baked framework would you like to use today? But in the end it’s the mindset more than the materials that leaves tests unwritten, or left as half-hearted unit tests which haven’t been updated to match the code in months. So many development teams call themselves “agile” these days. So few actually are. (So many think that having a daily standup makes them agile. It is to weep.) As this Sauce Labs (PDF) indicates, as an industry, we have a long way to go. (I don’t agree with its definition of agile — I don’t agree with fixed definition of agile — but its overall trends seem correct.) It’s easy, and correct, to castigate the maverick developers who cut corners to race against time, fail to design for testing, fail to write tests, and leave the next poor dev to come along with whole icebergs of technical debt. But at the same time, their urge to , to quote young Facebook’s famous motto — to iterate and — is an admirable one, even if, in especially pathological cases, it can lead to heavy PHP use. (I kid, I kid.) The thing is that it’s correct to castigate the , the ones who believe in deep consideration and careful analysis and test-driven development, which are good in theory, but who are also, all too often, the ones who crank out reams of worthless unit tests so that they can claim they have 90% code coverage, who jettison actual agile mindsets in favor of becoming “Certified Scrum Masters,” whose horror of venturing into the unknown leaves them paralyzed. In a perfect world we’d have both the mavericks the ice people, each respectfully pushing the other to do better. I’ve worked on a few teams that were balanced in this way; they were excellent. But all too often each side pays mere lip service to the other. I would have hoped that, as an industry, we’d have done better by now. |
null | Shelly Kapoor Collins | 2,016 | 3 | 2 | null |
Israel’s desert city of Beersheba is turning into a cybertech oasis | Dennis Mitzner | 2,016 | 3 | 20 |
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion famously said that the future of Israel lies in the Negev, a desert located in southern Israel. Ben Gurion’s prophetic words ring true today as Beersheba, Israel’s southern capital, is morphing into a tech oasis. The military’s massive relocation of its prestigious technology units, the presence of multinational and local companies, a close proximity to Ben Gurion University and generous government subsidies are turning Beersheba into a major global cybertech hub. Beersheba has all of the ingredients of a vibrant security technology ecosystem, including Ben-Gurion University with its and , and the presence of companies such as EMC, Deutsche Telekom, Paypal, Oracle, IBM, and Lockheed Martin. It’s also the future home of the INCB (Israeli National Cyber Bureau); offers a special income tax incentive for cyber security companies, and was the site for the relocation of the army’s intelligence corps units. “All in all, projections are that 20,000-30,000 cyber and related jobs would be created in Beersheba over the next 10 years,” said Yoav Tzurya, partner at , an Israeli venture capital firm with a cybertech accelerator in Beersheba. The commercial sector has teamed up with military intelligence agencies and BGU to fight increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks. “As an ex-intelligence leader in the IDF Intelligence Corps, I started my own company to help organizations leverage military intelligence methodologies to address some of the most pressing cybersecurity challenges including the security operations skills shortage and the deafening noise-to-signal challenge of cyber threats,” said Amos Stern, co-founder and CEO of , a cybersecurity threat analysis company and ex-Army IDF Intelligence Corps Leader. The nearby Ben Gurion University is pumping out skilled labor for multinational companies next door. “Ben Gurion University plays an obvious and important role here. The tight collaboration with major industry firms, such as Deutsche Telekom, EMC, and IBM, makes the BGU cybersecurity program a very strong and practical one,” said Stern. Stern says that the practical and theoretical experience of BGU graduates is unique and the graduates of BGU are often alumni of Israel’s intelligence units. “I’ve found BGU cybersecurity graduates to be well-aligned with this focus, bringing more than just a theoretical understanding of cyber. They bring a professionalism that’s very valuable when you’re looking to solve the real-world challenges of today’s business, “ said Stern. Feeding the burgeoning ecosystem, the army is investing billions of dollars in relocating most of its intelligence units to Beersheba and these units tends to have large budgets for state-of-the-art technology. “It’s no wonder why companies like RSA, Lockheed Martin and others have decided to reside there as well. Another important factor is that upon finishing army service, people graduating these units have the option to continue working in their field of expertise in Beersheba rather than having to move to Tel Aviv. In addition, the government has also approved benefits for companies relocating their employees to Beersheba in order to expedite building this cyber security ecosystem,” said Tomer Saban, cofounder and CEO of , a digital forensics company based in Israel and Silicon Valley. The coworking space WeWork opened a branch in Beersheba in January, an indication that the influx of startups is in full swing. WeWork, known for its presence in big cities seems to have made an exception in its big-city strategy by launching a branch in the desert. “We believe that many exciting and innovative companies will develop and emerge here in the next few years. We are also finding that many companies are relocating to Beersheba and we are here to offer them a suitable solution,” said Ronnie Ceder, general manager of WeWork in Israel. Beersheba’s cybersecurity hub has also piqued the interest of Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York City who vistied the hub earlier this month to inspect the burgeoning cyber security hub and to talk to students, researchers and startup entrepreneurs. Giuliani is following a long line of politicians who are eager to benefit from Israeli cybertech know-how. In February, The United Kingdom and Israel announced an agreement to deepen co-operation to tackle cyber-attacks. British Cabinet Minister Matt Hancock launched a new academic engagement in the emerging area field of cyber-physical security, which includes Israeli experts meeting leading UK academics with a strengthened relationship between the Cyber Emergency Response Teams of both countries, on the British government’s website. “The UK’s world class companies and universities combined with Israel’s cutting edge technology and entrepreneurial culture is an unbeatable combination, “ said Hancock. Israel’s unusual startup culture is a product of seamless cooperation between different actors. The cross-pollination between military, academia and private sector comprise the key ingredients of Israel’s coastal successes, with the country’s desert capital Beersheba now following suit. |
Jury awards Hulk Hogan $115M in sex tape lawsuit against Gawker | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | A Florida jury sided today with wrestling star Hulk Hogan (real name Terry Bollea) in his lawsuit against Gawker. — $55 million for economic injuries and $60 million for emotional distress. That’s even more than the $100 million that Hogan was seeking, and the jury’s scheduled to return Monday to deal with punitive damages on top of that. Gawker founder Nick Denton and former editor Albert J. Daulerio were as well. The lawsuit centered on a sex tape between Hogan and the wife of his then-best friend, radio DJ Bubba the Love Sponge, which Gawker published in 2012. Gawker argued that its decision to publish was protected under the First Amendment and that Hogan had made his sex life a matter of public discussion. Hogan countered that the video was not newsworthy, and that there’s a distinction between Hulk Hogan the character and Terry Bollea the man — and it was Bollea’s privacy that Gawker allegedly violated. We’ve reached out to Hogan’s legal team for comment. In a statement, Denton said:
Given key evidence and the most important witness were both improperly withheld from this jury, we all knew the appeals court will need to resolve the case. I want to thank our lawyers for their outstanding work and am confident that we would have prevailed at trial if we had been allowed to present the full case to the jury. That’s why we feel very positive about the appeal that we have already begun preparing, as we expect to win this case ultimately. Gawker announced plans to to Columbus Nova Technology Partners earlier this year, a move that it said would . |
How international startups are supporting New York City | Ramphis Castro | 2,016 | 3 | 18 |
Immigrants make up in the U.S., which is the highest percentage the country has seen in more than 100 years. Now let’s put this into perspective: in the U.S. are immigrants — almost triple the percentage of immigrants in the country. Many immigrants are pushing innovation in the U.S, aiding the country economically with their ventures. According to , one-third of all venture-backed publicly traded companies between 2006 and 2012 had at least one foreign-born entrepreneur. The companies have a combined valuation of $9 billion. At the same time, current immigration laws are a huge roadblock to many entrepreneurs’ successes. There’s no such thing as a startup visa like there is in other countries. Zoom in on , and companies are making a big impact on the startup ecosystem. It’s these foreign businesses and entrepreneurs that are leading the way in ’s ecosystem, and propelling its tech scene into success. Yet even in , one of the most diverse cities in the world, there is a growing anti-immigrant sentiment. ’s tech scene now employs 300,000 people. That’s about the same as the Silicon Valley. The tech growth is so prevalent, in fact, that former mayor Michael Bloomberg created the , which maps out , events, workspaces and tech jobs around the . Those active in ’s startup industry know entrepreneurs and companies seriously contribute to the ’s tech ecosystem. They’re hosting events, making investor introductions and providing business opportunities to younger company counterparts, so the global entrepreneurs will flourish and progress the . , which invites companies with a focus on Latin America, and , are two of the many groups that host events and provide support for entrepreneurs wanting to bridge the American and tech ecosystems. is another organization that brings established to to build partnerships with and U.S. firms. As does , by providing with one week of intense training in order to access markets. The program has accelerated more than 500 global companies. Even the Canadian government wants to help their entrepreneurs make it south of the border. selects high-potential early-stage digital media companies to set up shop in for four months. Here, the companies are mentored and receive business contacts in order to strengthen investor networks, lands big clients and explore future expansion into . Countless more organizations are bringing resources and jobs to , helping to fuel the local economy. It’s important we also not forget the contributions that foreign founders and tech companies are making to this growth in . boasts successful companies founded by foreign entrepreneurs, including , founded by Yaron Galai and Ori Lahav from Israel, that filed to go public at a $1 billion valuation. co-founded by Aditya Julka from India, sells fine art, collectibles and jewelry. It has raised $44 million in funding, and by just the second quarter of 2015, Paddle8 had already sold $25 million worth of product. It’s also well-established tech companies that are moving to the . , which offers instant messaging software for offices, is and brings a wealth of technical talent with them. The company was founded by Stewart Butterfield of British Columbia and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. , the music streaming service from Stockholm with more than 24 million active users, opened a office in 2013. In making the point to come to , the company brought more tax revenue and jobs with them. When Spotify first arrived, it employed 150 people. When it moved offices in 2014, Spotify added 130 engineering jobs. The office is Spotify’s second largest (the company’s main headquarters is still in Stockholm) and proves ’s tech ecosystem is a rapidly growing and desired hub for cool, -age and successful tech brands. The growth of ’s startup scene is due in part to the success of these . However, for talent to do this, the immigration laws need to work in their favor. Current immigration laws are a huge roadblock to many entrepreneurs’ success. As an example of this, there’s no such thing as a startup visa like there is in other countries. ; however, it didn’t pass into law. The issue is so prevalent, in fact, that in February, University of (CUNY) that helps immigrant founders obtain uncapped H-1B visas. With the program, founders use their expertise to contribute to university research and programs, but also spend time working on their . However, startup founders shouldn’t need to pass through loopholes to unleash their growth in . To make sure we have the political willpower needed to make immigration reform work, we need to change the sentiment toward foreign entrepreneurs. The last thing , and the United States, needs is for foreign tech companies to take their businesses elsewhere. We need to seriously recognize the importance that foreign have, as well as their ability to support ’s economy. |
Jack Dorsey says Twitter is keeping its 140-character limit, but maybe don’t get too excited | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | Has Twitter reversed course on plans to increase the character limit on tweets? That’s what you might think when reading of , but I’m not convinced that there was really a big change of heart. You may recall in January that Twitter was looking at a “10,000 character limit for tweets.” That didn’t mean, however, that epic tweets might just pop up willy nilly in your timeline — instead, only 140 characters would appear as usual, but you’d have the option to click and expand to see more content. Dorsey by saying that the 140-character limit is “a beautiful constraint” and that Twitter “will never lose that feeling.” At the same time, he pointed out that users often share screenshots of text on Twitter, in part to get around the character limit, so he asked, “What if that text … was actually text? Text that could be searched. Text that could be highlighted.” — Jack (@jack) Then, jumping ahead to this morning, to talk about Twitter’s 10-year anniversary — but first, host Matt Lauer asked him, “One hundred and forty characters. The limit: Is it staying? And if it’s going away, when?” “It’s staying,” Dorsey replied. “It’s a good constraint for us, and it allows for of-the-moment brevity.” You’re not changing anything? We’re changing a lot. We’re always going to make Twitter better. But still 140 characters. 140 characters. In other words, yes, there will still be a 140-character limit on tweets. But what about embedding more text in tweets, the same way we can now embed images and video? Well, they didn’t discuss that at all. Maybe Twitter will do it, maybe it won’t, but Dorsey didn’t rule it out in this interview. So did we really learn anything new? I guess if you were really worried that the 140-character limit was going to disappear completely, then yes, you can breathe a little easier. But otherwise, it sounds like Dorsey delivering the same message that he did in January. |
This system instantly edits videos to make it look like you’re saying something you’re not | Greg Kumparak | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | Once upon a time, a photo of something was enough to believe it was real. Sure, you’d have to deal with the occasional Big Foot hoax, but for the most part, those who had the time or talent to create believable fakes were in the minority. Then came the age of Photoshop. Edits and fakes are prolific enough that “FAKE!” has become the default; a dubious photo is presumed fake unless proven otherwise. We’re not to that point with video. Fake videos exist in droves, obviously, but editing a video to be something it’s not introduces a bevy of challenges not found in the editing of a single still frame, and generally requires considerably more time and talent to do right. People will still yell “FAKE!” but it’ll be a quieter yell. As your Facebook feed probably proves, moderately well-faked videos have a much easier time finding believers. That might not be the case for long. The video up top shows a work-in-progress system called Face2Face (research paper ) being built by researchers at Stanford, the Max Planck Institute and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. The short version: take a YouTube video of someone speaking like, say, George W. Bush. Use a standard RGB webcam to capture a video of someone else emoting and saying something entirely different. Throw both videos into the Face2Face system and, bam, you’ve now got a relatively believable video of George W. Bush’s face — now almost entirely synthesized — doing whatever the actor in the second video wanted the target’s face to do. It even tries to work out what the interior of their mouth should look like as they’re speaking. It’s not pixel-perfect yet — even in the relatively low-res clips we’re shown, there’s an uncanny valley effect of something being not quite right. But hot damn is it impressive (and, well, more than a little spooky) even in this early stage. Why spooky? Technology like this will serve to make video less inherently believable. The video’s use of politicians as the editing target is pretty self-aware. In that regard, political hoaxes will hit a lot harder when it’s a video instead of a ‘shopped picture being forwarded around. Don’t freak out too hard, though. Hoaxes have existed in every medium throughout history. This tech isn’t widely available beyond its researchers just yet; the uncanny valley challenges in stepping from “somethings-kinda-off” to pixel-perfect infallibility aren’t small ones. Just remember that, just like photos before it, being on video doesn’t mean it’s real — and that gets a lil’ bit truer each day. |
2016 Honda Civic: autonomous features for $20K | Kristen Hall-Geisler | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | When that 20 manufacturers had agreed to include automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems as standard equipment on all new cars by 2022, many people noted that plenty of cars you can buy right now have this technology on board. You might think that in 2016, this is expensive equipment available only on luxury cars, but the would beg to differ. The system is available for $1,000 on any trim level of the humble yet popular sedan’s latest version. Now, this is not automated driving. You’re not going to sit in the driver’s seat of your $20,440 2016 Honda Civic and take a nap while it drives you to work. But you aren’t able to do that in a or an yet, either. What we’re working with right now is known as advanced driver assistance systems, or ADAS. Honda Sensing is a pretty typical example of what these technologies include: Engineers use the sensors and cameras that are becoming more common on cars to enlarge the safety bubble around your car through technology. In the case of Honda Sensing and AEB, radar and a camera scan in front of the Civic. If a collision seems possible, it alerts the driver via Forward Collision Warning with sound and a visual cue. If the driver doesn’t react quickly enough, the Collision Mitigating Braking System kicks in and can bring the car to a full stop. The system is sensitive enough to differentiate between another vehicle and a pedestrian, a key step toward fully autonomous driving. It’s not yet a self-driving car, but the new Civic sedan does keep track of where you are in your lane on the highway. If you start to drift from the center without using your turning signal, the car will gently steer you back into place. If you leave your lane without a signal, you’ll get audio and visual warnings to bring your attention back to the road. And when you’re creeping along for your morning commute, the sensors will lock onto the vehicle in front of you and follow at a safe distance and speed so you don’t have to lurch forward and mash the brake every three seconds. Honda’s Chris Martin says the company is able to offer this advanced level of ADAS as a $1,000 option (it’s standard equipment on the Civic Touring sedan) because they’ve been rolling it out across the company’s lineup for the past two model years. “Once you commit in higher volume,” Martin says, “the cost comes down.” You’ll also find Honda Sensing in the CR-V, Pilot and Accord. Honda Sensing is about more than taking steps toward driverless cars. Honda has set a goal of reducing collisions in its vehicles by 2020 and being collision-free by 2050. A side-effect of that goal may be the ability to nap in your 2040 Honda Civic. |
Meter Feeder lets you ditch coins and codes, pay for parking with GPS | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | Parking tickets actually earn cities less money than when people pay the meters like they should. The problem is that even new meters that let you pay by phone or credit are such a hassle that people don’t use them — and hope they don’t get caught. But Y Combinator startup has built a way to pay for parking that is easier for citizens, cheaper for cities and works with old-school meters. Meter Feeder simply detects your location via GPS and lets you pay for however long you need to park by entering your license plate and saving a credit card or using Apple or Android Pay. Meter Feeder only needs to know which price zone you’re in, not which exact spot. Existing meters will still work, but cities can add a sticker telling citizens about the option to download Meter Feeder. You can easily extend your time whenever you want or when you get the “five minutes left” notification. No need for coins, figuring out which parking space you’re in or writing down a specific meter’s code. The small processing fee Meter Feeder tacks on is worth the convenience. Parking enforcement officers get equipped with a Meter Feeder tablet. Using quick auto-complete search for license plates, they can check if a car has already paid. If not, they can instantly print a ticket with the included mobile printer. The tickets show a QR code that can be used to easily pay fines online. Meter Feeder’s founders James Gibbs and Dan Lopretto tell me they came up with idea after meeting up with a friend who had “tickets exploding out of her purse.” They say they just want “to make the world of parking less painful.” More big cities are switching to credit and mobile-enabled meters that aren’t nearly as awful as the old coin-only ones. Companies like PayByPhone, Pango and ParkMobile make the payment systems, while t2, Duncan and United Parking Safety handle enforcement. But many smaller cities often can’t afford these intensive hardware updates. For example, a town with 250 spots would have to pay around $100,000 to revamp their meters, says Loprietto. But it would cost merely $3,000 to enable Meter Feeder. The only thing the cities pay for are the enforcement kits, which come out to about $1,500 each for the 7-inch tablet, printer, paper and Internet connectivity. Big cities could see cost savings too. San Francisco is now using automatic license plate scanners that can cost tens of thousands of dollars each, and still take five seconds per plate scanned. Punching in the first few characters of a license plate with Meter Feeder takes the same amount of time, but is way cheaper. Plus, expensive license plate readers don’t get at the root of the problem: parking is so annoying to pay for that people don’t, risk a fat ticket and often get away without paying the city anything. On the contrary, Gibbs says that when cities equip Meter Feeder, “Ticket revenue starts to go down because it’s so easy to pay that people are less willing to take chances. Even people going into the dry cleaning place tap one button and don’t worry about getting a ticket. But the level of compliance goes up, and the city makes more money.” In one town outside of Pittsburgh, parking revenue for the city quickly soared by $10,000 after signing up for Meter Feeder. A study showed cities that allowed credit card payments for parking saw a 50-100 percent increase in parking revenue, even with the reduced number of tickets issued. Meter Feeder is now growing its deployments by 10 percent a week. The startup is bootstrapped, but plans to raise money after YC Demo Day next week. Eventually Meter Feeder would like to get into helping people find available parking spots, but only in a way that doesn’t encourage phone use while driving. And it knows self-driving cars could eventually change its business, but the founders see it as an opportunity most big players in parking won’t be nimble enough to adapt to. No one likes paying for parking or those pricey tickets, but cities need the revenue to maintain roads and other infrastructure. could make the whole situation less ridiculously frustrating. |
SoundCloud confirms its deal with Sony Music, paving the way for its subscription service’s launch | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | Streaming music service SoundCloud today that it has finalized a deal with Sony Music, confirming this week citing sources who claimed the deal had finally been done. The deal will increase the number of songs listeners can access via SoundCloud and will allow Sony Music Entertainment artists to make money off of their tracks hosted on SoundCloud’s service, the music startup says. SoundCloud already had forged similar deals with other music publishers, including an agreement with Merlin – which represents some 20,000 indie labels – , as well as a deal with . It also forged a deal with Warner Music . Sony, however, is a notable addition, as the world’s largest music publisher. Sony had already ironed out agreements with rival music services like Spotify and Pandora, but not yet SoundCloud. “With more than 110 million tracks on the platform, the addition of [Sony Music Entertainment]’s repertoire will make SoundCloud even move vast and diverse,” SoundCloud via its blog post this afternoon. According to the company, Sony’s roster will “soon” be available to listeners, but it didn’t give an exact timeframe. (Sony, as you may recall, from SoundCloud last year.) Meanwhile, the company also touted what this means for SME artists, or those on affiliated and distributed labels like The Orchard and RED Distribution, saying that they’ll now be able to generate revenue via SoundCloud. These artists will have access to SoundCloud’s promotional tools as well, plus analysis and data to help them in building relationships with fans, the company noted. Ahead of this deal, SoundCloud had been investing in more tools for creators on its platform, , a dedicated app which allows them to share their sounds and tracks, interact with fans, and track their performance on SoundCloud’s network. With the addition of Sony, SoundCloud is shaping up to be a more viable competitor in the world of music streaming services, as it can now say it has deals with all three major labels, and reaches a community of over 18 million artists. This also paves the way for SoundCloud to introduce its subscription service – something the and others, , leaked the deal on Thursday, ahead of the official confirmation, saying also that Sony will receive stock in SoundCloud and has been invited to participate in the startup’s next funding round. However, SoundCloud declined to comment at the time. |
Gillmor Gang LIVE 03.18.16 | Steve Gillmor | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | Gillmor Gang – Dan Farber, John Taschek, Keith Teare, Kevin MArks, and Steve Gillmor. LIVE recording session has concluded for today. Gillmor Gang’s Facebook page G3’s Facebook page |
Your optimized brain: Exploring the frontier of neurostimulation | Dr. Daniel Chao | 2,016 | 3 | 18 |
From Hercules to Superman, humankind has always been fascinated by characters who defy the natural limits of the human body. Scientists haven’t yet figured out how to give us flight, but we know that increased cognition, strength and motor function are all possible using . This technology, which carefully applies magnetic or electrical energy to the , can make us stronger, faster, smarter and more agile — if not quite superheroes. products are finally reaching the consumer market, although the secrets of the trade are still relatively unknown outside of specialist circles. Since ancient times we’ve known that electrical current can be healing and regenerative. The first-century Roman physician Scribonius Largus treated headaches with electric torpedo fish. Benjamin Franklin reportedly used an 18th-century stimulation (DBS) in the 1980s, which involves the implantation of tiny electrodes directly into the . DBS generators delivered timed stimulation pulses that can successfully treat Parkinson’s disease, tremors and dystonia, a disease characterized by uncontrollable and often painful muscle spasms. They have now evolved to more sophisticated systems where the generator has the capability of sensing signals, analyzing and deciding whether to stimulate the . Though safety and efficacy of implanted systems have been proven through rigorous FDA clinical trials, surgery is not appropriate for the majority of people who could see therapeutic benefits from the technology, so less invasive devices were developed. In transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a magnetic coil over the scalp induces an electrical current in the . TMS has been shown to be effective in treating migraines and major depressive disorder, but the device is cumbersome and can only be administered in a hospital by a trained professional. Enter tDCS, or transcranial direct current stimulation. Developed with the intent to treat a range of neuropsychiatric conditions, it applies a constant current to the surface of the scalp, priming neurons to fire more easily and produce a stronger, more synchronous signal. Because it doesn’t actually cause neurons to activate, tDCS is considered one of the safest types of non-invasive stimulation. It also has a relatively simple setup, and can be self-administered outside of the hospital setting. You might be thinking — OK, this stuff sounds pretty cool. But is it just for medical applications? Where’s the part about turning into Superman? tDCS generates a lot of excitement (and its own massive section on Reddit) because it has been shown to improve cognitive and motor performance in healthy brains, too. A study on learning and memory showed that participants using tDCS were able to master new piano chords 40 percent faster than the control group, showing accelerated motor skills learning. A month later, the subjects still showed the learning gains, meaning that the tDCS helped create durable motor memory. tDCS has also been shown to significantly improve strength and force generation. Recent research in a group of crossfit athletes found that just two weeks of tDCS allowed the athletes to lift five percent more weight across all lower-body-focused sets during training. Other research found that athletes who paired tDCS with training achieved 12 percent gains in explosiveness. Neurotech is now a hot market, with dozens of companies developing devices to modulate mood, generate energy or promote relaxation. Some target the sports industry, pairing motor cortex stimulation with athletic training to accelerate athletic performance. Others target mood centers by stimulating cranial nerves on the forehead and neck. has also been strategically adopted by the military to enhance training in Special Ops. Is consumer neurotech cutting-edge technology? It has been studied for decades, but only recently has there been consensus that it is a safe and effective treatment, and now there are easy ways for consumers to use it. Mood may be difficult to measure, but strength is easily quantified. A 12 percent gain in muscle power doesn’t come from imagination. As more adopters demonstrate the power of training the to train the body, has the potential to become a part of every professional athlete’s warm up, because they can’t afford to give up that edge. And it’s not just for the pros. For weekend warriors who start to track accelerated gains in skill and strength after using , tDCS devices could become as commonplace as step counters. The addressable market for could reach $10 billion. Sports, fitness and medicine are already huge industries, but the potential for improved learning touches every aspect of our lives. From remembering names at a dinner party to becoming fluent in a new language, everyone wishes they could learn a little faster. Ultimately, one device could have the ability to stimulate any surface region of the cortex, unlocking potential in the human and body in an unprecedented way. What were once Herculean feats may become everyday human activities. |
Coach gives tutors and other freelancers tools to build an online business | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | If you’re a tutor looking to offer your services online, a startup called aims to give you the tools you need. CEO Spencer Fry created a similar platform, in some ways, when he co-founded , which offers designers and artists an easy way to showcase their portfolios online. He said there’s a bigger challenge with Coach, though, because there are more pieces to the product. So what is Coach actually offering? It includes a website builder, an online payment system, a public calendar for scheduling, publishing tools for supplemental content, a customer database for tracking students and the ability to get support from Coach team members and other users. On their own, none of these features might sound particularly unique, but Fry suggested that no one has brought together “the business tools and the marketing piece” in this kind of package. “We think of it as a hub of your business that allows you to do everything you need to do, kind of a Squarespace meets a Square,” he said. Fry also emphasized that Coach is an “open platform.” In other words, this isn’t about building a single marketplace for tutors and students, but rather giving tutors the tools they need to connect with students on their own websites. At the same time, he said it could eventually become “more of a marketplace” in the sense that it will help its users find new clients. And while Coach is ostensibly aimed at online tutors, Fry said it’s already being used by a broader range of customers, including personal trainers, therapists and developers — as well as his girlfriend, a writer who’s teaching a course on copywriting. Basically, it could be useful for anyone who wants to do hourly work, promote themselves and collect payments online. Coach currently makes money by charging a transaction fee on payments. In the future, Fry said it will also introduce a paid plan with features like custom domains. You can read more about Fry’s vision at with his investors at Notation Capital. (Other backers include Mike Karnjanaprakorn of Skillshare, Jack Groetzinger of SeatGeek and Jeremy Hitchcock of Dyn.) |
Sexism is still a thing at Microsoft’s GDC party | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | Microsoft hired a bunch of women wearing very little clothing to dance and socialize with people at the company’s official Game Developers Conference after-party last night in San Francisco, . It’s crazy that Microsoft would so blatantly sexualize women — for a few reasons. For one, don’t tech companies realize that it’s not okay to do that anymore? Over the last couple of years, conferences have gotten better about not using “booth babes” to get people to check out their products. Secondly, Microsoft hosts a women in gaming luncheon every year at GDC. Thirdly, Microsoft CEO said Microsoft is “very focused” on diversity, and even welcomed Rev. Jesse Jackson’s push for inclusion in tech, he said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting in December. He also noted that Microsoft has deployed unconscious bias training to more than 100,000 employees. Someone — or several people — at Microsoft clearly have not received the memo that it’s not cool to be sexist. “At Xbox-hosted events at GDC this past week, we represented Xbox and Microsoft in a way that was not consistent or aligned to our values,” Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, said in a statement to TechCrunch. “It was unequivocally wrong and will not be tolerated. I know we disappointed many people and I’m personally committed to holding ourselves to higher standards. We must ensure that diversity and inclusion are central to our everyday business and core values. We will do better in the future.” Women, of course, are free to wear whatever the F they want to wear. What’s problematic is that Microsoft chose to throw a party that clearly caters to heterosexual men by hiring women as objects of sex. “THIS is why we have a shit rate of women in games,” Kamina Vincent, who attended the party, . “Because these fucking boys clubs that make people unwelcome. Fuck you.” She , “I’m not blaming the women. They’ve got their job for whatever reason. But fuck you Microsoft.” cited a workforce that is 73.1 percent male, 59.2 percent white, 5.4 percent Hispanic and 3.5 percent black. the internal memo Spencer sent to employees regarding the party. Here’s what it said: How we show up as an organization is incredibly important to me. We want to build and reflect the culture of team Xbox – internally and externally – a culture that each one of us can represent with pride. An inclusive culture has a direct impact on the products and services we deliver and the perception consumers have of the Xbox brand and our company, as a whole. It has come to my attention that at Xbox-hosted events at GDC this past week, we represented Xbox and Microsoft in a way that was absolutely not consistent or aligned to our values. That was unequivocally wrong and will not be tolerated. This matter is being handled internally, but let me be very clear – how we represent ourselves as individuals, who we hire and partner with and how we engage with others is a direct reflection of our brand and what we stand for. When we do the opposite, and create an environment that alienates or offends any group, we justly deserve the criticism. It’s unfortunate that such events could take place in a week where we worked so hard to engage the many different gaming communities in the exact opposite way. I am personally committed to ensuring that diversity and inclusion is central to our everyday business and our core values as a team – inside and outside the company. We need to hold ourselves to higher standards and we will do better in the future. |
I tried out Nike’s self-tying shoes, the HyperAdapt 1.0 | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few days with the folks at Nike, who were showing off a whole bunch of new and upcoming products at their Innovation for Everybody event. was the HyperAdapt 1.0 — namely, self-tying shoes. Nike had already toyed with the idea of emulating by with star Michael J. Fox. HyperAdapt, however, is set to be the first mass-production shoe with these capabilities, and it’s scheduled for release during this coming holiday season. I got try on the shoes myself, at least for a few minutes. It’s fun but also surprisingly normal to feel them automatically tightening around your feet. (And the sound the laces made as they adjusted themselves made just as strong an impression.) They tightened — they were pretty comfortable, so I only fiddled with the settings to see if I could. Nike also showed off app that’s meant serve as your main entry point to the Nike world — Nike’s Nikki Neuburger described it as “the all-access point to unlock your potential.” It includes a feed of personalized content, as well as the ability to shop, find nearby stores and connect with experts and other Nike services. |
Get ready for the new iPad | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | Rumor has it that Apple is about to introduce a successor to the iPad Air 2 at . According to , the device could move away from the $499 entry-level price. Next week’s 9.7-inch iPad could start at $599 with 32GB of storage. There are a few reasons why Apple would make a more expensive iPad. First, according to Gurman’s , Apple isn’t releasing an iPad Air 3. The new 9.7-inch iPad should be considered as a smaller . The device should be much faster than its predecessor and support iPad Pro accessories. So you can expect the Apple Pencil to work with the new iPad, as well as keyboards taking advantage of the smart connector, such as Apple’s own . It’s unclear how Apple is going to name the device. When Apple announced the iPad Pro, the company didn’t update the iPad Air. The iPad Air 2 was released in October 2014 and could use a specs bump, especially now that Apple has enabled multitasking and split view. And you may remember that the $499 iPad Air 2 only comes with 16GB. With this year’s new iPad, Apple is going to switch to 32GB, mitigating a bit the price bump. There will be more expensive options with LTE and 128GB of storage. The company will also likely keep the old iPad Air 2. It’s unclear whether the Air 2 is going to get a price cut. So there you have it, the latest news from the rumor front. While Gurman is usually right, we’ll still have to wait until Monday to see what Apple really has in store. And yet, it’s a bit intriguing that Apple is choosing to raise the price on the mainstream iPad. In the most recent quarter, iPad sales year-over-year. Arguably, Apple didn’t update the iPad Air, which could have hurt the sales numbers. But it’s been an ongoing trend for a couple of years now. Apple is trying to turn the iPad into its own category with its own ecosystem. Instead of thinking of the iPad as “a bigger iPhone” running more or less the same version of iOS, Apple has been differentiating the iPad, and the iPhone with and the iPad Pro and its accessories. Now, the iPad is a more capable device, and Apple wants to capitalize on these differences. The only remaining question is whether there is a market for this kind of devices. With the iPad Pro, Apple has made a clear statement — the iPad could be the future of computers. The company is willing to try new things and give this a real shot to see if people are on board with this vision. |
Sony’s PlayStation VR headset bundle will cost $500, pre-orders start March 22 | Jordan Crook | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | Earlier this week, that its PlayStation VR would be available for the low price of just $399. Given that competing VR headsets like the Oculus are at least $200 more expensive, people were pretty excited about it. In fact, purchases of the PlayStation camera went up 3000 percent on Amazon (Move controllers went up 1000 percent), according to . Turns out, interest in the Move controllers and Camera following the announcement makes a whole lot of sense, given that Sony just announced that those items are necessary to use the PlayStation VR headset on the majority of its compatible games. This morning, Sony announced the price of the bundle (complete with the Sony Camera and Move controllers, and the VR Worlds collection of mini games) for $500. Sony explained that the Camera is required for positional tracking, and that most of the games require Move wands in order to play. The Camera’s MSRP is $60, while the Move controllers cost $50 each. That said, Amazon is listing the Camera at $44 and the Move wands at $24, so the PlayStation bundle costs about the same as you’d spend buying the items individually. Still, Sony’s VR headset (even with the more expensive and necessary bundle) is a cheaper experience than competing products, like the Oculus Rift (starting at $599) and the HTC Vive (starting at $799). That said, you’ll also need the actual PlayStation console, which adds another few hundred onto the price tag. Pre-orders begin March 22. [via ] |
Chatfuel lets publishers — and anyone — build bots for messaging apps | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | Chat bots are one of the hottest tech topics of the year. Inspired by trends from Asia, messaging apps like and have adopted bots — automated accounts from third partners like publishers and brands — to serve users news, entertainment and other information inside the chat experience. Facebook has seemingly observed these developments. that the social network giant is gearing up to open its Messenger to third party bots soon, while — from Quartz — that adopted the bot style for delivering the day’s important headlines. Chat has become the center of the smartphone universe, so it makes sense that bots are being used to deliver information in a convenient and engaging manner. But how do brands or media companies get started and create a bot? That’s where , a company that’s currently going through Y Combinator, is looking to make its mark. The company is currently focused primarily on Telegram, which is the only chat app to open its bots to all. It has created bots for the likes of and — ! — but, beyond focusing on media, it has a self-service platform anyone can use. Thus far, that’s been used to make over 120,000 bots which serve over five million users. It’s more than just basic bots that simply send information to users based on offering them two kinds of responses. Chatfuel is a little more intelligent. Its bots serve up news, lets users narrow down on topics, and even just ask questions about items or people in the news. , for example: The goal of the bot is to help you stay on top of the topics and stories you care about the most. You can subscribe to different topics, authors or sections of the site, and the bot will send you news articles from TechCrunch about the things you are interested in the most. For example, I’m subscribed to news about Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. Chatfuel was founded by Russian entrepreneurs Dmitrii Dumik and Artem Ptashnik last year. The company has 12 staff across offices in Moscow and San Francisco, and it earned the backing of Russian Internet Yandex — ‘The Google Of Russia’ — which led its most recent funding round. “If you look at mobile apps, it all started as a simple concept that has evolved into something sophisticated today,” Dumik told TechCrunch in an interview. “Messengers are bigger than social networks now. “[Publishers] can engage with a user on the web or via an app. [They will] consume content and leave, there’s no way to follow-up with them, while apps are expensive to get users to install, and few people install apps — distribution is broken.” Bots, Dumik believes, can provide a more engaging experience and may grow to be as important as the mobile app today — just more convenient and light for users. Yandex led an undisclosed round for Chatfuel in February of this year, which included participation from Y Combinator and angel investor , formerly of Google/YouTube. Other backers include 500 Startups, The Knight Foundation and angels (VR at Google) and , all of whom invested in January 2015 before Chatfuel, first known as Paquebot, launched. Its chat bots may be limited to Telegram, but Dumik — who spent time with Procter & Gamble in Russia before being bitten by the entrepreneurship bug — is optimistic that Chatfuel’s canvas will widen significantly soon. “Facebook Messenger is the driver,” he said, in reference to to third party bots imminently. “When it opens everyone else will have to follow, others will have to follow even if they don’t want to because this will help them retain their audiences.” While the bot and messaging space has oodles of potential, Dumik said, the rules of the game and operations are still to be defined. “Bots aren’t like apps, right now there’s no clear understanding how this particular use case should be done,” he explained. “It’s exciting that you have to creative a user experience that has never existed before — a new platform that operates with different rules. We have cool tech we can use, how do we figure out how we put it all together so it all works together?” Dumik added. Also still to come is making money. Right now, Chatfuel isn’t monetizing its service and nor does it have immediate plans to. The main goal for now is to increase its partners, make the AI that powers its bots smarter, and wait for other platforms to open. Chatfuel recently raised money and, with Y Combinator’s demo day coming next year, the startup isn’t out to raise money like many others in the batch are. It is, however, on the look out for investors who can provide strategic value for the future of its business. Chatfuel has been on a hiring spree lately, most notably bringing in Andrii Iaroshevskyi, who spent five years at Yandex where he led image search, and it is open to adding more high calibre talent to boost the business. |
Grammy-nominated rapper Wale discusses technology, startups, and social media | Fitz Tepper | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | I recently sat down with Grammy-nominated rapper to talk about his views on technology, social media, and the music industry. Like most artists, Wale has a dedicated following on all major social media platforms, and has an interesting perspective on how each one gives him a different relationship with his fans. He is also a pretty avid gamer, and uses video games as a way to unwind after recording or producing in the studio. We also discussed the current state of the music industry, and why the shift to streaming doesn’t necessarily have a large financial impact on him. Watch the video above to hear more about Wale and his technology interests. |
Progress lets you visualize your weight loss by taking perfectly aligned daily selfies | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | For those who struggle with their weight, one of the more challenging things to deal with beyond, of course, the lifestyle changes that have to accompany any attempts at weight reduction, is our inability to see our own progress. Because weight loss is often very slow and incremental, many get frustrated with a perceived lack of results and then give up. A new application called wants to solve that problem, and does so with a simple solution. According the app’s creators, they too, were familiar with the problem at hand. Going to the gym just didn’t seem like it was paying off, and the result was a loss of motivation to continue, they tell TechCrunch. What was needed was a way to actually visualize how the body changed from the beginning of a weight loss journey over time. Of course, one way people try to document changes like this is by taking photos of themselves. But these photos aren’t always truthful. People change poses, their posture is different, the lighting is harsher or softer, and other factors may come into play as well. These variations between photos can make you look better or worse, over time, but hide the true changes underway. With Progress, a new app designed for iPhone, you take a selfie every day to see how your body is changing. But what makes this an improved experience over the DIY method is that the app will show you a faint version of the previous day’s photo so you can stay perfectly aligned in between days. In addition, the app integrates with Apple’s HealthKit to combine weight tracking, too. That is, if you use a smart scale that’s HealthKit-enabled, this data is automatically sent to the app so you don’t have to enter in manually. After you use the app for 15 days, Progress lets you create a short time-lapse video showing how your body changed from day one to today. If you choose, you can share this video with friends, or you can just keep it for yourself as a reminder to keep up your hard work. Progress competes with a number of other weight loss trackers on the App Store, like SnapTrack, Fitness Progress Photos, Selfit, Fitstream, Transformation Suite Progress, and many more. But unlike some in the space, which are focused on the weightlifting community or users’ broader health, Progress is only about being able to visualize a body’s transformation. And it does so in a well-designed, but also super quick and easy way. The app is a , but will eventually offer “pro” features via in-app purchase. |
YC-backed Perlstein Lab continues their rare disease drug discovery | Jay Donovan | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | , or PLab as it is also known, continues to hone its automated drug discovery platform and presents its latest iteration Wednesday March 23rd at . The platform they created helps the bio startup focus on finding cures for rare diseases rather than common ones. This novel approach is different from most Big Pharma labs and is thus one of their differentiators. What is an “automated drug discovery platform?” I asked this to PLab founder and and he summarized for me. First of all, it is important to know that, according to Perlstein, there are about 7000 diseases classified as rare and 95% of these have no FDA approved cure. This is PLab’s area of focus. This is a much different model than Big Pharma which usually focuses on more common illnesses where the research ROI stands to be much greater. Of these 7000 rare diseases, about half are caused by a single broken gene. These are usually inherited diseases and affect children. PLab focuses on single broken gene diseases initially because they are obviously less complex and easier to approach. Using a molecular apparatus known as a CRISPR—which Perlstein likened to a command line editor for animal genomes—PLab alters the genome of test animals (yeasts, flies, worms, fish and sometimes mice) to mimic the broken gene disorder…to essentially, make them ill. Because many of these animal are small, even microscopic, PLab can have large numbers of them to test against. Then, using an automated platform, they apply thousands of chemical compounds to these animals to see which compounds are effective at reversing or bypassing the loss of the broken gene’s function. In this way they can rapidly and effectively test for cures. [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRYWLFWS3-4&feature=player_embedded] Using these complex animal types is key to effectiveness according to Perlstein, and differentiates their lab in many ways from Big Pharma, who often focus on cellular tests in petri dishes rather than live organisms. I did have to ask Perlstein what he thought the general public might think about their animal testing. He responded by saying that they prioritize by the least complex animals first—yeasts, worms, flies and fish—an only move up to mice if necessary. However, he indicated that even when testing on mice becomes necessary, they are not doing anything differently from many Pharma companies out there that also test on mice. The second future phase they have planned is to add a predictive learning model to this automated platform that will become faster over time and generate many more insights more quickly and efficiently. So that’s an extremely simplified version of how their technology works. How they plan to enter the market revolves around two main business models which could be summarized as Lead Gen and Accelerator. In one model, they plan to operate as sort of a scout or lead generation partner to larger pharmaceutical companies. For example, when the ROI makes it much harder for a big pharma company to dive into research on a rare disease, PLab could use their intellectual property to be the research partner and to efficiently determine a reasonable disease to target. Then they hand off the results to the larger company to conduct clinical trials. They are currently discussing partnerships now. To bolster this, PLab has calculated a market size of $1 million per person afflicted. A second, more radical model, involves ultra-rare diseases. These are diseases that afflict less than one person in a million. These are diseases that larger pharmaceutical companies definitely don’t focus on. However, many of the families of the afflicted are already raising funds on their own to contribute to research. In this business model, PLab will work directly with these patient families. Each disease would spin off as a separate research-based startup company focused on that disease. PLab would take a cut of the business they help accelerate. PLab was already quite busy before joining Y Combinator and had already raised a total of $2.5 million from several investors including Retrophin and their infamous ex-CEO . However they have severed all ties with Skreli and are not linked with him any longer. PLab has also raised another $1 million convertible note via Slow Ventures. UPDATE: Slow Ventures only invested $500,000 on the $1 million convertible note. The other $500,000 on the note is a mix of angels and existing investors. |
CoreOS takes its Clair container security tool out of beta | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | CoreOS the first preview of , a tool that scans Docker containers for security vulnerabilities, last November and today, with the , it is ready to take the beta label off the service. Given that developers often rely on pre-packaged containers — or regularly recycle the same ones — ensuring that the software included in them is safe to run is only going to get more important. And this isn’t even about malware but simply about out-of-date packages inside these containers that have known security vulnerabilities that a hacker could exploit. CoreOS’s own research, based on the containers in its , shows that about 70 percent of the vulnerabilities it detected could be fixed by simply upgrading the packages in the container. “Updating to the latest versions of installed software improves overall infrastructure security, which is why we deemed it important to analyze container images for security vulnerabilities as well as provide a clear path to updates mediating those issues that Clair uncovers,” the company argues. “Container images are often infrequently updated, but with Clair security scanning, users can identify and update problematic images more easily.” CoreOS says it has added a number of changes to the tool since it first announced it. These include making the whole service more extensible and an improved REST API, for example, but Clair 1.0 also provides users with more details about each of the detected vulnerabilities. |
Evernote’s founding CTO Dave Engberg is leaving in May; new wave of execs announced | Ingrid Lunden | 2,016 | 3 | 18 | We’ve been documenting decline in the last several months, and today comes two more waves of news that speak both to how the company continues to be in turmoil, but is also trying to rebuild itself. TechCrunch has learned that , the company’s founding CTO, is leaving the company in May. The news comes at the same time that CEO Chris O’Neill — himself a — several new execs. They include new heads of product, marketing, brand, design and China. The company . Evernote — once a billion-dollar “unicorn” with in funding, but more recently by investors — has lost focus, faced a of exec and a of unprofitable product closures that included Evernote’s , most of the apps, and its app. Engberg has been there through the good and the ugly. He was part of the team that originally built the first Evernote app in 2007 (he notes he built it “with a few friends” in his ). And it’s hard to underestimate his involvement with the startup. His current responsibilities include the groups running Platform Engineering, Operations, IT, Security, and R&D. He also built the infrastructure and teams that handle Support, Developer Relations, and Analytics. Alongside this blow are some sigs of how Evernote is trying to rebuild its company. is coming on to lead product management. He was most recently VP of Product at VMware, where Evernote says he started the cloud management product line. He replaces , who left in August last year and is now CPO at Navdy. Raymond Tang is going to head Evernote’s China business, where the company now has 16 million registered users for Yinxiang Biji, its country-specific service. Tang has taken over marketing, and he’s actually already been at the company quietly for 100 days, O’Neill notes. He is a Skype and Silver Lake alum. Alongside him, is joining as head of brand, having cut his teeth at places like HP. They replace , who left in December 2015 and covered both roles. was appointed new head of technical operations, where he will be putting a bigger emphasis on cloud computing. Combined with Wrobel’s experience, it looks like Evernote is making some moves to go deeper into enterprise software. , who has worked at Motorola, is heading up Evernote’s design team. , who had been head of design for product, is still at the company but now in a different role, as UI designer and creative director. Other design moves at Evernote include , who was the lead designer on brand and senior product designer, who is now at Airbnb; and , who also departed last year. Finally, joins as head of people operations. |
The real cost of robotics | Dmitry Slepov | 2,016 | 3 | 27 |
Before we begin, I feel compelled to make an important disclosure: I love robots! Robots are cool. To me, robots are cooler than people, who are only cool occasionally. I especially love industrial robots: They help us “make” things. Now please allow me to make an obvious observation: Like me, many folks think robots in general, and industrial robots in particular, are very cool. Some of these folks hold high offices in various business enterprises, where they broadcast their love for robots into their working environments. The media’s current infatuation with industrial robots and automated manufacturing has these guys whipped into a frenzy. I know how they feel, because I feel the same way. How else can you feel after watching a video showing the production of motors for Dyson vacuums? The video is sexy as hell — shiny machines executing a complex dance in perfect unison. It’s a city full of wonders, completely devoid of boring humans. The conclusion is inescapable: Sir James Dyson must be the overlord of robots. That is, until you see the video on how Tesla Model S is made. Another professionally put-together report from the land of (almost) no workers. There are many videos like that, and the media is rebroadcasting them with enthusiasm. This leads me to this question: Why the renewed interest? Robots were perfectly capable of automatically manufacturing complex things decades ago. Just look at industries with products that can’t be directly handled by humans: The semiconductor industry, where the product is too small for human hands, has been building vast automated facilities since the IC revolution began and the American auto industry started to fill factories with robots back in the 1970s. Why is the media taking such an interest now? Because today, the robotics industry has a set of fresh economic and political messages: Although all of the above are true to some degree, the simplicity of media coverage distorts the real situation. After watching numerous videos showing cool automation in action, it would be easy for you to get the wrong idea about how much effort it takes to automate . I will argue, based on my own and my peers’ experience, that a lot of folks imagine the process of bringing a robot onto their production floor as, literally, bringing a robot in. You buy a robotic arm, you install that robotic arm, you’re done. It’s hard to blame them. Robotic manipulators are what they see in videos. If you hear the words “industrial robot,” what pops up in your mind? The arm! Get one or a couple of these and you are on the way to your company’s automated future. If only it was that simple! Let’s look at what it takes to create a typical manufacturing cell that assembles something. We start at the moment when you decide to acquire a robot… Because you know that you definitely need a robotic manipulator, you start your purchasing or your mental journey from getting that arm. So you buy an ABB, KUKA, Toshiba, EPSON or some other brand you saw at the robotics trade show you visited recently. Depending on the brand, your outlay for the arm is perhaps $30,000-60,000. Despite the high cost, that arm is literally… an arm. No torso. No wrist. No fingers. No eyes. And no brains (I’ll get to this later). Next, you find out that you can’t simply install your robot on any desk. No. It must be a heavy-duty, purpose-built pedestal. These things have enormous weights; they are expensive, too — expect to spend several thousand dollars. But wait, there’s more. Your robot needs a cage… unless it’s one of those new collaborative robots like UR-10 from Universal Robots. Because they are allowed near people, they move like yoga instructors, putting you to sleep in the process. If you care about doing things fast, you’ll buy a speedy robot — and it will have to be caged. The cage will need to come with some safety equipment, like an emergency stop button, safety sensors and so on. Chalk up several more thousand dollars for the cage and all that safety stuff. Next, you’ll need to take care of something called an “end effector.” That is the part that attaches to the business end of your robotic arm and allows it to do useful things. End effectors vary, from grippers with fingers for holding things to vacuum heads to electric screwdrivers to an endless array of specialized contraptions. Chances are you won’t find any suitable end effector for your application, so someone will have to build you one. Budget a lot of money for this part of your project. Human hands are extremely versatile and can do thousands of different jobs. Not end effectors. Your robot will probably have to be equipped with several end effectors for handling different production steps. This will involve the use of a so-called tool changer. It’s just like in Japanese cartoons. One moment that giant robot holds a bazooka, the next it’s a ray gun. With a tool-changing system, like the one made by ATI-IA, your robot will be able to quickly change between, say, an electric screwdriver and a suction gripper. The bad news is that tool changers are so expensive that adding such a system will easily cost you around 30 percent of what you paid for your robotic arm. Next, you’ll need to think about giving that arm of yours some ability to sense. Most robots don’t come with “force feedback.” They boldly go where you tell them to go, no matter how many things get smashed along the way. A typical robotic arm with a gripper is about as sensitive as a crab claw (no offense to crabs). A force-sensing accessory will solve that, to a degree, but it will also set you back several more thousand dollars. Wait, you aren’t there yet. Now you need to think of a way to hold your “parts in production,” i.e. parts that your robot will be working on. Humans come with two hands. We can hold a screwdriver in one hand and secure the part on which we are working in the other. Try doing any kind of assembly using just one hand. You won’t get very far. Well, that’s the situation your robot will be in, constantly, unless it’s one of those cute two-armed ABB Yumi robots (there is nothing cute about their price; you can buy two or three one-armed servants for the price of one Yumi). So, in order to hold your “parts in production” in place, you’ll need to come up with fixtures and contraptions that are unique to whatever it is you are manufacturing. There are many ways to do this stuff. For example, my company supplies a construction system called UniQb. You can quickly build one-off fixtures and rigs using its “beams.” This part of your project may not be very expensive (in comparison to everything else), but it will consume quite a bit of time. This step handled, you will need to think of how your robot will get the parts to work on and output the fruits of its labor. Robots can’t (yet) run to the warehouse and cart back a bunch of parts. You robot is like a master craftsman sitting in the middle of a studio. Everything must be brought to it. For small parts, such as screws, you will need to install “screw presenters” — machines that “offer” screws in the right orientation. Larger parts will need to come on conveyor belts or some other means of transportation. Alternatively, you can assign a worker who will service the robot while contemplating a philosophical question: “Who works for whom? Does the robot work for me or do I work for the robot?” The next step is to equip your mechanical monster with eyes. With the exception of the aforementioned Yumi, which, in the appropriately mutant fashion features eyes on its hands, most robots arrive at your doorstep completely blind. You will need to install a vision system consisting of one or more cameras and a processing unit. You will also need to arrange ideal lighting conditions: Cameras are not like human eyes. Too bright or too dark, and the system won’t work. Also, robots mostly see in 2D. There are some new 3D vision systems on the market, but these are still prohibitively expensive. A good vision system will cost you several thousand dollars and a lot of trial and error until you get it to work right. Also, don’t forget about electric power and air supply. Many robots will require “industrial” power (not the power available “on tap” from your wall outlet). Your system will almost certainly use vacuum grippers or something else that requires “air.” Robots don’t come with compressors. You will need to buy and install one. More $$$ spent. Are we there yet? Nope! All this extra stuff you now have around your robot will need to be hooked to a single control system that opens and closes valves, activates servos, senses the position of things and so on. Such jobs are typically accomplished with programmable logical controllers (PLCs) or embedded computers. Last but not least: programming. This part is particularly fun. You will need to teach your robot how to do anything useful. Hello, disappointment. We all grew up watching Star Wars, so we automatically attribute some intelligence and magical powers to our mechanical helpers. Forget it. Robots are not smart. In fact, they are plain dumb. You will need to teach your robot literally every tiny little move. There is virtually no self-learning. Expect a lot of labor. You will be trying, adjusting and, when you thought you were done, you’ll find yourself coming back to adjust some more. All these steps I’ve outlined require you to be a very skilled professional in a multitude of disciplines. Chances are that you aren’t — and even if you are, it’s unlikely you have time to deal with all this complexity. This is why you will probably hire an integration company to put the system together for you… for a price tag that is twice higher than the sum total of all the parts involved. In the end, you will look at that robotic arm you started your journey with and realize that the arm is but a tiny part in the long list of equipment that had to be provisioned, installed and configured in the name of your automation project. You see now what it took Sir Dyson and Mr. Musk to fill their factories with hundreds of robots? They approved oceans of work, hundreds of thousands of hours of human planning and design and tens of millions of dollars in equipment costs. And now for the worst part… Here it comes. Da-dah! These futuristic production lines you see on TV and YouTube are mostly built to handle . Change the product, and you need to redesign your production line. You don’t just tell your robot to “stop doing this thing and start doing that thing right from tomorrow morning.” You start “retooling” — and retooling is expensive and time-consuming. The U.S. auto industry with its futuristic robots learned this the hard way, while the Japanese (whom we firmly associate with robots) did not go overboard and simply stayed with lean production teams of human workers. Take heed! Before embarking on your automation journey, count how many years of human salaries you will be able to pay by NOT investing into your smart robotic manufacturing cell. Have I just put you off robotics? I hope not! Like I said at the start of this conversation, I love robots! Robots are cool. There are many excellent reasons to use them. We humans are unpredictable and difficult, and as time goes by we become less and less inclined to take on factory jobs. Automation is coming, and robots will eventually take over our production lines. I just want you to know that today’s real-life robots are nothing like what the media makes them out to be. Proceed with caution (and deep pockets). |
Dell reportedly near closing the sale of its IT services unit to Japan’s NTT Data | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 27 | is reportedly finalizing the sale of its IT consulting unit to for $3.5 billion. , the deal, which will help Dell pay down debt from its , may officially be announced today. If the sale goes through, it will help NTT Data, a subsidiary of Japan’s NTT, grow its business in the United States. Like SoftBank, another Japanese telecom giant, NTT has expanded internationally through a series of acquisitions and investments, most notably in the U.S. and India. Dell’s current IT services unit was . This is slightly less than the price it is now asking from NTT Data, but according to Reuters, that is because some of its operations will not be included in the sale. Dell is also looking to offload two of its other businesses, Quest Software and SonicWall, for a total of $4 billion. Its debt from the EMC Corp. deal, which is awaiting approval from EMC shareholders, is $43 billion. |
Review: The ProDrone BYRD | Signe Brewster | 2,016 | 3 | 27 | in drones is growing more sophisticated. The industry is improving so quickly that major new features are released every year, if not every few months. If a company wants to sell to the increasingly savvy entry-level quadcopter space, it needs to build a drone that can do more than simply fly. In an attempt to stand out, the new quadcopter built by relies on an unusual gimmick: foldability. The quadcopter’s arms and legs tuck up to its body, dramatically reducing its size and making it possible to drop it into a backpack. The Standard version of the drone has a 25-minute flight time, passable 1080p camera and $750 price tag that put it in line with popular entry-level hobby drones like the DJI Phantom 3 Standard. The upgraded Advanced and Premium models of the BYRD tack on advanced features like a 4K camera and a “follow-me” mode where the drones autonomously follow their user. As I flew the drone over the course of several weeks in San Francisco, it quickly earned my trust. It became clear this is more than a foldable gimmick. This is a reasonably priced drone that covers all the basics with ease. I don’t own a car, so flying a drone in the Bay Area inevitably involves a trip on public transit. You haven’t made enemies until you ride a bus at rush hour with an enormous hardshell rollercase wedged between your knees and the person next to you. The BYRD’s controller features shortcut buttons that let you command the drone to autonomously land or take off. The next step is to connect the drone via Wi-Fi to the ProDrone ProFlight app, which can be downloaded to and devices. ProDrone recommends using a tablet, so I brought along a Nexus 9. The BYRD has a nifty device holder that attaches to the top of its controller and adjusts to hold any screen size. The app’s main flight screen allows you to do just about everything except steer the quadcopter. There are buttons to command the drone to take off or land itself, or you can input an autonomous flight path. Most of the screen is taken up by a live stream of the camera’s view. As a result, the most important buttons to note are the photograph and video icons. Photos and videos stored on the drone’s micro SD card can be viewed from another page in the ProFlight app. Overall, I liked the placement of buttons within the app. I found myself using the autonomous return-to-home button almost every time. Takeoff has always been one of the most exciting parts of drone flight, so I left that to myself. With the exception of my very first flight, the camera live stream was just that — a live stream. Generally I fly quadcopters with a GoPro, the app for which has a noticeable lag. It acts as more of a preview; use it to set your shot, but don’t rely on it for an accurate view in the moment. With the ProFlight app, I found myself making regular corrections to my flight trajectory. If you’ve ever flown a drone with a first-person-view headset, you know how natural this can feel compared to piloting the drone from your view on the ground. You can also access the stream across several devices if you’re working with a cinematographer or just want to share the view. As useful as the ProFlight app is, I gladly returned to the BYRD’s controller for its most basic functions. The drone comes with that standard quadcopter controller: One stick causes the BYRD to ascend, drop or turn, while the other flies it forward, backward or to the side. The controller also has a toggle that allows you to pick between several flight modes. You can fly while relying on the quadcopter’s positioning intelligence or go totally manual, which is better for agility. The controller has some nice additions in the form of pre-set and programmable shortcut buttons. Like on the app, there are buttons for autonomous takeoff and landing, plus to snap a photo or begin filming. Once I learned the controller by touch I favored these buttons over the app. The quadcopter’s GPS and visual positioning systems are effective even on a windy day, so you can focus on cinematography instead of tricky piloting. Trust is key when you’re flying a photography-focused drone. If winds are buffeting your supposedly GPS-locked drone across a field, then your flight is going to be more about controlling the quadcopter than getting the perfect video. Flying an unreliable drone is stressful, not joyful. Thankfully, the BYRD fell into the reliable category. It combines its GPS with vision positioning to lock itself into position when the pilot lets go of the controls. I like to put this to the test at San Francisco’s Crissy Field — a long and totally open green space that runs right up to the bay. It sits at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, which is a notoriously windy area. Lesser drones tend to bounce up and down as the wind overtakes their tiny propellers. Gusts of particularly strong wind drove the BYRD to the side, but otherwise it remained in place. It also liked to lose altitude if the wind picked up while it was hovering at fewer than 10 feet, but above that it didn’t have problems. My comfort level grew high enough to cruise up and down the field for some panoramic shots of the Golden Gate Bridge and distant downtown San Francisco. Like any photography drone, the BYRD will not win any agility awards. But it is responsive. If you lurch the controller sticks, the quadcopter will lurch in response. It’s up to the pilot to develop some finesse with their fingers to get smooth shots. The BYRD Standard’s 1080p camera feels lackluster compared to other options on the market, but you can always swap it out for a GoPro or DSLR. In an era when our phones have 4K video, the ProDrone BYRD’s 1080p, 16-megapixel camera merits a “meh.” The Premium version of the drone comes with a 4K camera, which is in line with any high-end consumer drone. But as long as you don’t need ultra-HD video, the Standard BYRD’s 1080p video should be fine. If you’re interested in upgrading the BYRD Standard’s camera, its included gimbal is detachable and replaceable. The company also makes a gimbal built for GoPros and will soon offer attachments for DSLR and mirrorless cameras. I don’t trust myself as a pilot nearly enough to strap my DSLR to the bottom of a drone, but for serious aerial cinematographers, this will be a welcome feature. Just be aware that it will reduce the flight time to 12-15 minutes. One benefit the included camera has over a GoPro is that its footage looks fairly good straight out of the drone. GoPros tend to produce dull, dreary video that needs some post-processing. The BYRD’s footage looked bright and well-exposed. I never once touched the camera settings on the ProFlight app. But sometimes the camera got a little overeager when it adjusted to different lighting conditions. When I flew the drone in the general direction of the sun at Crissy Field, it created a flickering effect. The dappled sunlight created by trees caused the camera to rapidly bump its exposure level up and down, creating video that is unusable. I had to adjust by flying at a higher altitude, where the drone met direct sunlight instead of light filtered through trees. It’s difficult to pick a drone to buy. Just a few years ago, DJI’s Phantom line was the only type of drone that offered the total package for beginner hobbyists: reliability, a relatively low price and a decent app. Today, almost every drone entering the market has those things. And so the question turns to your intended application. Great, you want to take pictures. But do you want to be able to toss your drone into the air to fly without having to use a controller? Are you looking for a tiny wingspan or a big one? Do you need something you can shove into your backpack while you snowboard to the edge of that epic ravine? If that final question is yes, then the BYRD could be the right choice. The Standard version I flew combines a passable camera with trust-inspiring flight positioning. It’s rare to see a foldable body on a drone of this caliber, so if that’s your No. 1 priority, go with the BYRD. The Advanced and Premium models’ follow-me modes will make them even more appealing to extreme and casual athletes alike. However, the quadcopter innovation cycle is still turning. In the time since ProDrone announced the BYRD late last year, DJI revealed the : a $1,400 quadcopter that autonomously avoids obstacles. It could mean a huge reduction in crashes and embarrassing bloopers. It’s a new bar, and within a few years it wouldn’t be surprising to see it come standard in every hobby quadcopter. That doesn’t mean you should overlook the ProDrone BYRD Standard. It’s a great option in the current drone landscape, especially at the $750 price point. Just don’t be shocked when the drone your friend buys next year can fly circles around it. |
Longtime VC Michael Goguen was just hit with an explosive lawsuit | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | Michael Goguen, a longtime partner at Sequoia Capital who joined the tony Sand Hill Road firm roughly 20 years ago, has been named in an extraordinary that accuses him of sexually mistreating a woman he met in 2001, then refusing to honor a financial arrangement they made in more recent years to keep her from suing him. Filed in San Mateo County court earlier this week, Goguen is accused of having abused the plaintiff, named Amber Laurel Baptiste, “sexually, physically and emotionally for over 13 years.” More centrally, states the complaint: When Baptiste “could no longer tolerate his behavior,” Goguen signed a contract to pay her $40 million “as compensation for the horrors she suffered at his hands.” But “after paying her $10 million, Mr. Goguen refused to honor the rest of his agreement.” Baptiste, who was born in 1980 according to legal documents, could not be reached for comment. Her attorney, Patricia Glaser of the L.A.-based litigation firm GlaserWeil, is traveling in Israel, according to her office; she has not responded to an emailed request for comment. Goguen’s attorney, Diane Doolittle, the co-chair of the national trial practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, meanwhile wrote us a statement tonight, saying: “On Monday, we will be filing a legal cross-complaint against [Baptiste] alleging extortion. The cross complaint will include an enormous amount of evidence, and cite contemporaneous emails and texts, that will help paint a full and complete picture of this entire matter. We will rely on all of this evidence to mount the most vigorous defense possible in court.” Either way, Goguen looks to be out of a job suddenly. Reached earlier tonight for more information, a Sequoia spokesman wrote us that, “We first learned of these claims yesterday. We understand that these allegations of serious improprieties are unproven and unrelated to Sequoia. Nevertheless, we decided that Mike’s departure was the appropriate course of action.” In Baptiste’s complaint, she is described as a “victim of human trafficking since she was 15.” It says that she was “brought to America in 2001,” “sold as a dancer to a strip club,” and that shortly after her arrival, she met Goguen at a Texas strip club and was soon submitting to his “constant sexual abuse” and “relying on his promise that he would help her break free of the human traffickers who held her in perpetual debt.” Continues the complaint, “Unbeknownst to Ms. Baptiste, Mr. Goguen was a worse predator than the human traffickers who were keeping her in bondage.” Some of the accusations against Goguen — with whom Baptiste had a sexual relationship for 12 years and across his three former marriages, says the complaint — are highly graphic. Among them, the complaint states that in “late 2011, Ms. Baptiste discovered that Mr. Goguen had infected her with several high risk strains of the Human Papillomavirus (” HPV”), putting her at risk of various cancers, including cervical cancer, which could require a hysterectomy and prevent her from being able to bear children.” Another alleged action left Baptiste “bleeding and alone on the floor of a hotel room in a foreign country,” says the complaint. Eventually, it states, Baptiste and Goguen struck on a financial arrangement. In 2012, when Baptiste “discovered she had contracted several high-risk strains of HPV,” she “confronted Mr. Goguen, her only sexual partner at the time.” Later, it states, Goguen “agreed to pay Ms. Baptiste’ s expenses as compensation for the sexual abuse and infection she contracted from him.” The complaint states that Goguen “paid her expenses for roughly a year, until mid -2013 when he refused to continue the payments.” Baptiste was then “forced to hire an attorney” and “prepared to sue Mr. Goguen for the years of physical abuse, emotional trauma, and damage to her health.” After receiving the draft complaint, it continues, Goguen instructed her to fire her attorney and used his attorneys instead to draft a settlement agreement that arranged for him to pay $40 million to Baptiste in four equal payments. Which leads us to the crux of the lawsuit (and, we’d hazard to guess, Sequoia’s decision to part ways with Goguen). The complaint states that Goguen paid the first of the four $10 million payments to Baptiste on May 30, 2014 — then he stopped. Rather than write another check, it states, “On or about 21 December 19, 2014, Mr. Goguen sent a letter to Ms. Baptiste refusing to make the second payment, purporting to rescind the contract, and claiming the Settlement Agreement was null and void as procured under extortion.” Baptiste is seeking the enforcement of that settlement agreement, along with attorney’s fees and other compensatory damages. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but Goguen had evidently done very well financially as a partner at Sequoia. A about a home of Goguen’s on Whitefish Lake in Montana applauded him for providing $10 million to local law enforcement crews so they could purchase two state-of-the-art helicopters. He reportedly spent another $10 million on a trail system in Whitefish. Expect to hear much more about the case Monday morning when the countersuit of Goguen is filed. You can read the full suit . |
The 50-year digital relationship | Sam Jeffers | 2,016 | 3 | 27 |
I occasionally meet people who think the Internet is going to go away someday. Yes, some of its pieces do move around a bit. Bye, Friendster! Hello, Peach!* But its core benefit — your ability to find any information, any time and to build around common interests at any distance — aren’t going anywhere. Ever. Why would we choose to lose that? It has fundamentally altered the way we see and think about humanity — for the better. Given this, here’s a thought experiment worth considering: How might you use to build a with someone? If a 25- old comes to your website today, gives you their email address and says “I want to be part of what you’re doing,” how do you give yourself a shot at them still being involved (ideally more so) in 2066 (when they’ll be 75)? It turns out that the means of delivery, the things the Internet has let us do over the last two decades or so, give us a good clue as to what will need to remain consistent in your program (or whatever it ends up being called) over the next half century. Twenty-five ago you told your story through a broadcast ad (if you were lucky enough to have the money), a piece of direct mail or, most likely if people wanted the entire story, that beautiful mass-market piece of communication — the annual report. In other words, your story was pretty static, and in relatively few people’s hands. Today, it’s much more accessible — people learn your story through a website (yours and Wikipedia), a video or a post shared into their Facebook timeline by a friend. Using the phone in their pocket they instantly discover what you’re all about and how they feel about your work and, in so doing, build their mental model of your purpose and brand. from now, someone might be able to simply think about your organization to access your story, but the core remains the same. How are you telling people about your work in a way that resonates emotionally and rationally? How are you recognizing the role that I, the customer or supporter, am playing? How are you personalizing the content to make it relevant to my interests and choices? How am I going to get a truly great experience from your organization? Twenty-five ago people might have filled out a coupon in a magazine to receive a catalogue, only to fill out another coupon to order, to then wait 4-6 weeks for dispatch of the item they were after. In 2016, that sounds like a pretty awful experience, but it matched the expectations of the time. Today, everyone can use platforms to take all sorts of actions — buying, donating, advocating, sharing, joining with others to achieve a shared outcome. Over the , it has become exponentially easier to do these things, and people’s expectations of being able to do them easily increases accordingly. Within the decade, you’ll likely simply ask a assistant to make happen what you want to happen (see Siri, Alexa or the fridge that orders milk when you run out). It’s a world where the user experience is barely separate from the originating thought; tell your personal assistant you want to give £25 to an organization or buy a product and it happens, with the payoff practically instant. If you’re not tracking the race to simplicity that’s happening across the market, your competitors are. If you’re not meeting the dramatically increased expectations of your supporters and customers, you’re losing out in the short term, and losing altogether over the next five decades. Alongside getting information and taking action, the third major shift the Internet has brought about is the ability to create and maintain ongoing at any distance that are engaging and enticing, relationships that help people get into the world of all the things you do. In the past, you might have received an annual update. Or a piece of direct mail that told the story of the latest campaign an organization was running. Or you’d see that new campaign on TV or in print. This constitutes a of sorts, but only going in one direction — with no opportunity to listen or respond, or show your relevance to the world around you as it unfolds. Today, social and email are great building channels, particularly when, as well as telling the story of your ongoing progress, you’re sharing your success with customers and supporters by giving them the credit they deserve. You’re inviting them in, letting them collaborate with you and helping them discover others who care about the same things and giving them the means to build with each other. And these platforms allow you to do it with increasing degrees of personalization at scale, using demographics, behavior, psychographics and context to do what people do entirely naturally: relate to others. The future likely has you doing ever more of this, and using technological aids such as artificial intelligence to do it ever more accurately. The Internet has fundamentally and permanently changed the conduct of our with one another and the organizations with which we interact. Those who understand this, or are working hard to learn how it affects them, will take an advantage long into the future. Regardless of how the Internet is transforming our lives, there are some timeless truths about building that should always be minded. A has its ups and downs, its good days and bad. But it also has at its core the essence of what it means to be human: being honest and authentic, sharing love and pain and growing as one to achieve something great. If a has these things, it sticks together, through thick and thin, through analog and , all the way to 2066. |
Astronaut Scott Kelly will retire from NASA next month | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | After his nearly year-long on the International Space Station (ISS) and 20 years of service with NASA, Astronaut Scott Kelly will retire from the agency, effective April 1st. “This year-in-space mission was a profound challenge for all involved, and it gave me a unique perspective and a lot of time to reflect on what my next step should be on our continued journey to help further our capabilities in space and on Earth,” – Astronaut Scott Kelly In total, Kelly flew in space 4 different times, beginning with a trip to service the Hubble Space Telescope in 1999. With his final flight, Kelly broke the record for the most cumulative time in space for an American with a total of 520 days. The world record for this feat is held by Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka for his whopping 879 days achieved over 5 spaceflights. When Kelly returned from his mission on March 1 , he was immediately required to complete an hour-long physical test, much like an obstacle course, in order to analyze his general condition. Health of astronauts once they’ve come back to Earth is a high priority because spending an extended period of time in a weightless environment is hard on the human body. Without the heavy downward force of gravity, astronauts can experience muscle atrophy and bone loss, among other problems. A post shared by (@stationcdrkelly) on Astronauts often experience back pain, for example, because their spines will elongate in weightless conditions. During Kelly’s time spent in orbit, he grew about 2 inches taller. Growth spurts occur because the vertebrae in our backs act like a giant spring and are able to be stretched and compressed. Under the force of gravity, our vertebrae are coiled tightly. On the ISS, where the astronauts feel weightless, spines have the ability to elongate up to 3 percent of their total length. While Kelly was about 2 inches taller during his time in orbit, he returned to his normal height within a few days of his return. I'm back! — Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) Now that Kelly is back on Earth, a new phase a research and analysis begins. The purpose of the One-Year Mission was to study the medical, psychological and biomedical challenges a human would face during long-duration spaceflight. And although Kelly will be retired, he’ll continue to participate in a number of research studies in the months ahead. On Instagram, Kelly revealed that the post-flight analysis has already begun. A post shared by (@stationcdrkelly) on Part of the reason Kelly was selected for the One Year Study was because his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, is also an astronaut. During Scott Kelly’s time in orbit, his brother Mark Kelly was down on Earth acting essentially as a control subject. A post shared by (@stationcdrkelly) on The two twins have been participating in NASA’s in which 10 different investigations are already underway. Using a combination of pre-flight, intra-flight, and post-flight data, these investigations are comparing the brothers on the molecular level in addition to their physiology, microbiology, behavioral health. Results from these studies will help scientists understand how humans change when they spend an extended period of time in outer space. This knowledge will support the initiative, through which NASA plans to send humans to the red planet in the 2030s. The dangerous amount of time astronauts must spend in the harsh, radiation-filled environment of deep space coupled with the technology required to get there makes a potential human mission to Mars a difficult challenge. Traveling to Mars would take astronauts up to 9 months, and that doesn’t include time in orbit, on the Martian surface, or the equally long trip back to Earth. “Our universe is a big place, and we have many millions of miles yet to explore. My departure from NASA is my next step on that journey.” – Astronaut Scott Kelly With the One Year Study and the Twin Study, NASA hopes to move the needle and bring the scientific community closer to solving the human side of this long-duration spaceflight challenge. |
5 housing communities changing the way we live | Brad Hargreaves | 2,016 | 3 | 11 |
Living communities and the people who build them are unique, but they share many common threads: a mix of private and community spaces, a set of shared rules and a commitment to friendliness and warmth rather than the anonymity and awkwardness of a typical residential high-rise. Changing the way people live together is an incredibly difficult but high-reward proposition; several groups have pushed the boundaries into the communities of the future. Here are a few: Spread across the Georgia countryside, Serenbe first opened in 2004 and is now home to 400 residents. Described by The New York Times as an “experiment in New Urbanism,” Serenbe offers a mix of country homes and townhomes, as well as a 25-acre organic farm, coffee shops, farmers’ markets, art galleries and regular events. Far from being soulless exurban sprawl, Serenbe is redefining what a master-planned community can become. What started as a hotel and resort has turned into an artists’ colony and way of life: #maderaslife has more than 11,000 posts on Instagram alone. Surfers, creatives and foodies escape for a week or months to the village in the Pacific hills of Nicaragua. Guests are invited to live together in shared rooms or book their own private cabanas, providing a variety of options for diverse lifestyles and budgets. The culture is all about sustainability, surfing and living at your own pace. Adult summer camps are back in vogue, and many adults are making the summer camp circuit a part of their yearly routine. Perhaps the most well-regarded of the camps is Camp Grounded, a completely sober weekend without access to any form of technology. It has two unique rules: You can’t talk about work and you have to pick a new name. Somewhat unique to living communities, Camp Grounded has robust corporate and team offerings; they’ve worked with companies ranging from Airbnb to Yelp to Tom’s Shoes to help their employees relax and disconnect. YesNomads is a curated Facebook group of more than 500 global nomads who move fluidly from places like New York City to Los Angeles to London to Berlin to Tulum to Ibiza to Jackson Hole and back. Trust is high, rent is pretty reasonable and house swapping is encouraged. Summit is invitation-only, but once you are invited you have a home away from home at Powder Mountain, where you are transported into a world of engaging speakers, organic meals and meaningful conversations. Originally started as a destination event series for entrepreneurs and creatives (and still most well-known for their Summit at Sea series), Summit is now building a permanent community in Utah dedicated to “innovation, entrepreneurship, arts, and altruism.” These programs are creating their own variations of community — some free-spirited and open, others more focused and exclusive. But all of them are doing something outside the norm, appealing to people who have soured on the status quo and desire a more nomadic, more creative lifestyle. |
DoorDash says its new service fee isn’t really a new fee | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | Consider this a public service announcement for customers. In the coming weeks, you’re going to start seeing something new on your bills — a service fee. However, a spokesperson for the food delivery service said it’s not a new fee, and the total cost won’t change. Instead, it’s a new way to present the fees you were already paying. While some restaurants pay DoorDash a commission for each delivery, others don’t, and when you order from the ones that don’t, DoorDash charges you a little extra. Previously, DoorDash incorporated that extra cost into the price of each menu item. So the prices in DoorDash were different from the ones you’d see in the restaurant, but you knew exactly how much you were paying. Now, in response to customer feedback and internal testing, the company will just show you a separate fee (which will vary from restaurant to restaurant). That DoorDash spokesperson sent me the following statement: We built DoorDash around the principles of transparency, choice, and value and we have recently been testing a change to the DoorDash check-out flow that breaks out restaurant service fees separately. With this change, menu prices on DoorDash will be the same as those in-store and customers will have more transparency about fees associated with their order. We plan to release this update in the coming weeks and believe this change will make the DoorDash experience even more compelling for everyone. Okay, end of PSA. You can go back to if you’re into that kind of thing. |
Snapchat has a secret team possibly building a pair of smart glasses | Lucas Matney | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | Snapchat has been known for some bold (and perplexing) moves in regards to content features, attempting to revamp event marketing through Stories, redefine journalism through Discover and rethink the selfie through Lenses. They’ve tackled software features, but now they may be looking to master hardware. When you’re valued at $16 billion… why not? A report from details a crop of hirings from major augmented reality groups like Microsoft’s HoloLens, PTC’s (formerly Qualcomm’s) Vuforia and eye-tracking tech maker Eyefluence that point to Snapchat’s possible development of a pair of smart glasses. The company showed interest in augmented reality during the last hype wave surrounding Google Glass. Vergence Labs, which produced a pair of glasses equipped with an embedded camera, was by Snapchat for $15 million in March of 2014. The acquisition accompanied a larger $50 million acquisition of Scan.me, a QR code-scanning/creating technology that would later manifest itself it the company’s feature. Snapchat did not openly advertise these acquisitions then, details of it were leaked in the Sony data hack in December of 2014. It was an especially odd-sounding move then, but fast-forward a couple of years past the acquisitions and the company has added a few billion dollars to its valuation, as well as a variety of mainstay features like its Discover tab and geofilters. Vergence Labs’ camera-equipped Epiphany Eyewear The real question is whether Snapchat is using these hires to attempt to learn more about augmented reality tech and more effectively adapt its platform for usage on smart glasses or whether the engineering folk are actually just building glasses with the goal of a consumer release. Sophisticated consumer gadgets might make zero sense for Snapchat at the moment, as their current consumer products include a , a and a . Admittedly, for most people, Snapchat in itself makes zero sense, so this could perhaps be very on-brand for them. That being said, I’d definitely suspect the company is focusing more on looking at technologies to more effectively optimize AR technology for its apps. The employee from Eyefluence (who recently left) in particular is interesting as the eye-tracking company . In an interview with in January 2014 (just a couple of months before the Vergence Labs purchase), Thomas Laffont, the managing director of Coatue (which led Snapchat’s $50 million Series C), spoke a bit about the platform’s relationship with interfaces on AR devices. “People haven’t thought about use cases on new computing platforms,” said Laffont. “In one tap you take a photo, one more and you can share it. Imagine [the difficulty] trying to post on Instagram from a Google Glass device.” Input for augmented reality is kind of a shit show right now, with most companies experimenting with a wide variety of hand-tracking, eye-tracking, motion-tracking and head-tracking tech to control their devices. If Snapchat can use their AR-minded team to make advances in furthering the ease of content absorption on the platform, there would be some obvious benefits to the company moving forward. |
AI is closer than we know | Christoffer O. Hernæs | 2,016 | 3 | 11 |
Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest subjects these days, and recent advances in technology make AI even closer to reality than most of us can imagine. The subject really got traction when Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and more than 1,000 AI and robotics researchers signed an open letter last year. The following month, , the most advanced autonomous UAV ever created; there are currently 40 countries working on the . Those in the defense industry are not the only ones engaging in an arms race to create advanced AI. Tech giants Facebook, Google, Microsoft and IBM are all engaging in various AI-initiatives, as well as competing on developing digital personal assistants like Mark Zuckerberg even wants to create to run his home. At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos it was stated that which will as we know it and cost . Robots are no longer limited to traditional blue-collar jobs, fully automated assembly lines and high-frequency trading algorithms. for automation, and robots are replacing in the financial industry. These examples follow strict repetitive rule-based routines, and a machine easily can perform them without any human interaction. However, a recent development is the beginning of a new era of AI, in which AI can perform complex tasks and must no longer rely on pre-programmed rules for decision-making. Robo-advisor services like are rising in popularity, and the hedge fund industry is launching . The co-head of one of these funds predicts that that no human investment manager will be able to beat the computer. But how is it possible for AI to operate autonomously without any human interaction? Machine learning, one of the fundamentals behind AI, was defined by as the science of getting computers to learn and act without being explicitly programmed. This technology is integral in the development of self-driving cars, and speech and image recognition, as well as solving some of our most challenging tasks, like . Machine learning has its roots in statistical pattern recognition, and is fundamental in many everyday applications and services, like spam filters and web search algorithms. The fundamental aspect of machine learning is letting the computer program learn from examples. To accelerate machine learning development, Google released its which led to . Deep learning takes the concept of machine learning even deeper (pun intended), and can model complex non-linear relationships consisting of many layers. Deep learning is often mentioned interchangeably together with , which can be viewed as a biologically inspired programming paradigm that enables a . Deep learning is considered the technique we apply to learn in neural networks. Quantum computing is the latest and hottest in AI development. Google states they have in collaboration with NASA a quantum computer that is 100 million times faster than a traditional computer. The D-Wave 2X could theoretically complete calculations within seconds to a problem that might . However, Google states that quantum computing might not be suitable for deep learning. While traditional computers rely on bits that are either 1 or 0, a quantum computer is based on qubits that can hold a superposition and be both 1 and 0 simultaneously. This state enables quantum computers to crunch data at an exponential rate. While quantum computing , it could revolutionize the field of optimization in . The road to true artificial intelligence is not paved with a single discipline, but rather a collection of specialized subject matters, techniques and theories that together interact to create some form of intelligence. I have limited this post to include only a selection of the technologies and techniques applied in AI research and development. For further insight, I recommend looking into and (even though I still hold a grudge against Prolog for making me feel too stupid to really understand how it works when I played around with it many years ago). |
What Obama said about encryption and tech’s double-edged sword at SXSW | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | “[Technology can] empower individuals to do things they could have never dreamed of before, but also empower folks who are very dangerous to spread dangerous messages” President Barack Obama said today. Obama took the stage at South By Southwest to discuss how technology could be used to enhance civic engagement. But the end of his talked ended up focusing on . He noted that the government shouldn’t be able to get into people’s phones “willy-nilly” but that there will need to be “constraints imposed” on privacy to keep people safe. He sat down with Evan Smith, CEO and Editor in Chief of The Texas Tribune after grabbing lunch at Torchy’s Tacos. US President Barack Obama orders during a stop at Torchy’s Tacos on March 11, 2016 in Austin, Texas. Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images Obama opened his talk by outlining three ways that tech can improve our country: Obama explained that “The reason I’m here is to recruit you all..The most important office in a democracy is the office of citizens”. He went on to establish a theme of his talk that by activating tech talent and bringing them inside the government to fix its software, real progress can be made. For example, engineers from Google and Facebook have already done stints trying to straighten out the messy, inefficient government systems. “You don’t have to do it full time. You don’t have to run for office yourself. But whatever your field is there is a way for you to engage and participate to take this democracy back in ways we haven’t seen in a very long time” Obama urged. US President Barack Obama speaks during a South by Southwest Interactive with Texas Tribune editor Evan Smith (L) at the Long Center for Performing Arts in Austin, Texas on March 11, 2016. Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images Fighting the war for the hearts and minds of potential terrorist recruits was one way Obama said the tech sector could assist the government. “Figure out how we can reach young people who might be vulnerable to extremist messages” he asked. “Tell us, based on data and algorithms you’re working with on a daily basis to sell products, what is it that’s going to penetrate here?” Back at home, the President said making voting more accessible is critical. “We’re the only advanced democracy in the world that makes it harder for people to vote. I hear laughing but it’s sad” he explained. When asked what’s preventing online voting in Texas, Obama said it’s not because it’s insecure, but “it’s because the people who are governing the good state of Texas aren’t interested in having more people voting.” Obama briefly lightened the mood by repurposing a popular meme that mentions him. The phrase “Thanks, Obama” is typically used on the Internet to jokingly blame the President for mundane, day-to-day problems he has nothing to do with, like spilling soup on yourself. But instead, when talking about how despite opposition from republicans, he’s cut the unemployment rate, he said with a smile “Thanks, Obama” to thunderous applause. The day’s last question was about “How you balance the need for law enforcement to conduct investigations with citizens to protect their privacy”. Obama noted he was unable to directly address the on-going legal battle in which the FBI is trying to compel Apple to help it access the encrypted iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter to gain evidence. However, he gave a lengthy treatise on how the balance should be struck. You can , but the most important quotes were: “We recognize that just like all of our other rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc, going to be some constraints imposed to ensure we are safe”. “I am of the view that there are very real reasons why we want to make sure the government can not just wily-nilly get into everyone’s iPhones or smartphones that are full of very personal information or very personal data.” US President Barack Obama (R) speaks during a South by Southwest Interactive at the Long Center for Performing Arts in Austin, Texas on March 11, 2016. / AFP / Mandel Ngan “We also want really strong encryption… [though] there has to be some some concession to the need to be able to get to that information somehow.” “I suspect the answer will come down to how can we make sure the encryption is as strong as possible, the key is as strong as possible, it’s accessible by the smallest number of people possible, for a subset of issues that we agree are important.” Essentially, Obama does believe that law enforcement and government should have ways to access encrypted data when absolutely necessary, but that that should be done in a way to minimize risk of a backdoor falling into the wrong hands. US President Barack Obama waves as he and Texas Tribune editor Evan Smith (L) arrive for a South by Southwest Interactive at the Long Center for Performing Arts in Austin, Texas on March 11, 2016. / AFP / MANDEL NGAN |
Obama: ‘We don’t want government to look into everyone’s phones willy-nilly’ | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | Encryption with a backdoor accessible to very few in important situations is what President Barack Obama says he suspects is the answer to the digital privacy versus security debate. That contradicts the position of many in the security industry who believe that would inevitability lead to abuses of such a backdoor. While speaking today at SXSW, Obama said he could not comment directly on the Apple-San Bernardino shooter case, but gave these remarks on the larger issue surrounding the about penetrating encryption. Here are Obama’s full remarks on the matter: “All of us value our privacy, and this is a society that is built on a Constitution and a Bill Of Rights and a healthy skepticism about overreaching government power. Before smartphones were invented and to this day, if there is probable cause to think that you have abducted a child, or that you are engaging in a terrorist plot, or you are guilty of some serious crime, law enforcement can appear at your doorstep and say we have a warrant to search your home and can go into your bedroom and into your bedroom drawers to rifle through your underwear to see if there’s any evidence of wrongdoing. And we agree on that because we recognize that just like all of our other rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc, , secure and living in civilized society. Technology is evolving so rapidly that new questions are being asked, and I am of the view that that are full of very personal information or very personal data.” US President Barack Obama waves as he and Texas Tribune editor Evan Smith (C) arrive for a South by Southwest Interactive at the Long Center for Performing Arts in Austin, Texas on March 11, 2016. / AFP / MANDEL NGAN Obama went on to note that concerns about the government encroaching on privacy were heightened by the Snowden revelations, but also joked that TV crime shows have exaggerated the powers of law enforcement. But getting serious again, he said: “What makes it even more complicated is that because part of us preventing terrorism or preventing people from disrupting the financial system or our air traffic control system or a whole other set of systems that are increasingly digitized, is that hackers, state or non-state, can’t get in there and mess around. So we have two values, both of which are important. And the question we now have to ask is if technologically it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system where the encryption is so strong that there is no key there, there’s no door at all? And how do we apprehend the child pornographer? How do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot? What mechanisms do we have available that even do simple things like tax enforcement? Because if you can’t crack that at all, and government can’t get in, then everybody’s walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket. Rather than only give his own perspective, Obama acknowledged the risks of a backdoor being misused, but said those risks can be mitigated with the help of the tech community. Now what folks who are on the encryption side will argue is any key whatsoever, even if it starts off as just being directed at one device, could end up being used on any device. That’s just the nature of these systems.That is a technical question. I am not a software engineer. It is, I think, technically true, but i think it it can be overstated. So the question now becomes, we as a society, setting aside the specific case between the FBI and Apple, setting aside the commercial interests, the concerns about what the Chinese government could do with this even if we trust the US government, setting aside all these questions, we’re going to have to make some decisions about how we balance these respective risks. I’ve got a bunch of smart people sitting there talking about it, thinking about it. We have engaged the tech community aggressively to help solve this problem. My conclusion so far is that . So if your argument is strong encryption no matter what, and we can’t and shouldn’t make black boxes, that I do not think strikes the balances we’ve struck for 200 or 300 years and it’s fetishizing our phones above every other value. And that can’t be the right answer. How we design that is not something I have the expertise to do. Obama concluded by urging us to address this problem now in a rational way rather than waiting for a catastrophe to force us into clumsy action. I am way on the civil liberties side of this thing…I anguish a lot over the decisions we make in terms of how we keep this country safe, and I am not interested in overdrawing the values that have made us an exceptional and great nation simply for expediency. But the dangers are real. Maintaining law and order in a civilized society is important. Protecting our kids is important. And so I would just caution against an absolutist perspective on this. Because we make compromises all the time. You know, I haven’t flown commercial in a while. But my understanding is that it’s not great fun going through security. But we make the concession. It’s a big intrusion on our privacy, but we recognize it as important. We have stops for drunk drivers. It’s an intrusion but we think it’s the right thing to do. We do have to make sure, given the power of the Internet and how much our lives are digitized, that it is narrow, and is constrained, and that there’s oversight. I’m confident that this is something that we can solve. But we’re going to need the tech community, the software designers, the people who care deeply about this stuff to help us solve it. Because what will happen is if everyone goes to their respective corners and the tech community says ‘Either we have strong, perfect encryption or else it’s Big Brother and an Orwellian world,’ because the people who understand this best, who care most about privacy and civil liberties, will have disengaged or taken a position that is not sustainable for the general public as a whole over time. Obama essentially played both sides of the argument, identifying the need for privacy, but admitting that some limitations are required to keep Americans safe. Pushing for backdoors goes against the perspective of many tech insiders and security advocates. Weakening core security of phones could make them vulnerable if the backdoor were ever misused by the government or stolen by hackers or a foreign state. Yet refusing to compromise encryption in any way now could lead to disastrous legislation in the future. Expect this to be a debate that will rage for years to come. |
GenZe 2.0 electric scooter brings electric power to the people | Kristen Hall-Geisler | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | , the India-based manufacturing giant, wants to offer more people the chance at a cleaner commute. The electric scooter carries one person, a couple big bags of groceries, and a price tag of just $3,000. As a former scooter commuter myself (on a 50-cc gasoline-powered bike), I was eager to take the GenZe 2.0 on a weekend-long test drive. Electric vehicles have a lot of appeal – they use no gasoline, they emit no greenhouse gasses, they’re quiet, and they recharge as easily as your phone. But they’re expensive. A , without including tax credits or five years of fuel cost savings, starts at $75,000. A starts at $29,010. Even an electric motorcycle like the race-tested is $20,000. There’s a certain income level required to get away from gasoline. That’s why the GenZe 2.0 is so special. GenZe has a shop on a busy thoroughfare in Portland, Oregon, where I picked up my test scooter. I was shown how to unlock the scooter via password using the weatherproof touchscreen, and how to unlock the removable battery. Then I put the kickstand up and headed out onto the street. Besides merely driving the scooter, there are several things to play with on the 7-inch screen, preferably in your driveway or at a stop light. There are three programmed driving modes: Safe, for newbies; Econo for maximizing battery power; and Sport for a little extra zip. Advanced users can set individual parameters, like the regenerative braking system, to their liking for more aggressive performance or better battery management. The GenZe gets about 30 miles per charge, which I found to be true no matter how I drove it. That’s in part because not even the Sport mode overcomes the scooter’s 30 mph governor. It’s enough for getting around town, which is the point of this scooter, but it is frustrating to feel the motor spin up and then just kind of settle at 30 mph. But 30 mph is good enough for most city streets, which is exactly the kind of driving the GenZe is designed to do. You could easily commute to work and home in an urban area at 30 mph or less, and probably using one 30-mile charge. But if you need more range or your parking space is nowhere near an outlet, that’s where the removable SmartPack battery comes in. Unlock it and slide it out. The battery is really heavy, but the handle is padded. It’s fine for a short carry to the nearest 110-volt outlet, and it fully recharges in about three and a half hours. GenZe gets groceries I took the GenZe grocery shopping to test the capacity of the zip-top Back Bay mounted behind the seat. It easily fit two large canvas shopping bags full of food—no squashed loaves of bread or crushed tortilla chips. There’s also a charger built into the cargo bin for cell phones and laptops. The seat is large and comfy, though as a short rider, I did have to move forward quite a bit when waiting at red lights to get my feet solidly in contact with the ground. The GenZe has a solid feel, and like most electric vehicles, it is nearly silent. It’s not speedy, but it is fun and surprisingly versatile for city dwellers. And the $3,000 price tag reaches Mahindra’s goal of putting an electric vehicle within reach of more people globally. |
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Gillmor Gang LIVE 03.11.16 | Steve Gillmor | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | – John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Daniel Ilkovich, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor. Gillmor Gang on Facebook Connect with our other show – G3 – on Facebook …and |
The New York Times acquires influencer marketing agency HelloSociety | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | The New York Times is expanding its native ad studio with the acquisition of , a digital marketing agency owned by Science, Inc. Los Angeles-based Science both invest in startups and builds its own companies. It launched HelloSociety (which it fully owned) back in 2012 as . Since then, it’s broadened beyond Pinterest to platforms like Instagram and YouTube, as well as that connects brands with influential social media users who can help promote their marketing efforts. HelloSociety currently has more than 1,500 influencers in its network. The companies say that the agency’s “tools, talent and approach” will become part of T Brand Studio, . (Media companies aren’t the only ones wanting to move into this industry — last year.) In the acquisition release, Times CEO Mark Thompson said T Brand Studio doubled its revenue in 2015 compared to 2014. “We now want to accelerate its development and broaden the range of creative and marketing services that we offer clients from content ideation and creation to distribution,” Thompson said. “The reach and results-driven tactics of HelloSociety are the ideal complements to our strategic vision for the future of T Brand Studio.” The companies say it was an all-cash deal, but they did not disclose the price. : I spoke to Sebastian Tomich, The Times’ senior vice president of advertising and innovation, to learn more about the deal. He said that at T Brand, there’s been “a lot of demand for our services beyond the walls of the New York Times,” including some experiments with influencer marketing. And while Tomich claimed he wasn’t “actively looking” to acquire a company in this area, HelloSociety was appealing for a number of reasons, including the leadership of CEO Kyla Brennan. The plan is to continue operating HelloSociety as an independent business with Brennan at the helm, while also looking for ways to integrate the two organizations. “This will lay the foundation of what T Brand will do in the social space going forward,” Tomich said. He later added, “There’s a broader vision to help brands think more like programmers and less like advertisers. We see T Brand playing a crucial role in that space.” |
Watch Obama address the tech community at SXSW live right here | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhFibpHSJFE While most people think about hashtags, marketing stunts and when they hear about the Interactive part of SXSW in Austin, this year is going to be a bit different as President Barack Obama is about to give a keynote. The event should start at . We have a live team on the ground waiting for the president as we speak — Obama is right now. Our team is going to cover all the important updates in Obama’s speech and give you commentary. According to , Obama wants to tell attendees that technology can be used to solve some of the country’s issues, such as voter turnout and civic engagement. Silicon Valley executives have been key fundraising partners when it comes to Obama’s presidential campaigns. Since then, he’s regularly met tech CEOs over his two mandates. But the FBI (with the support of the government) is also fighting against Apple right now in the . It’s going to be interesting to get his take on this issue. You can check it out live via the White House’s official stream above, and stay tuned on TechCrunch.com for ongoing coverage of . |
Instacart cutting wages for shoppers starting March 14 | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | Instacart, the $2 billion grocery delivery startup that recently , has slashed pay for its drivers and shoppers in major markets like San Francisco and Los Angeles, Here’s a nugget from the email, obtained by TechCrunch, that Instacart sent to shoppers in the SF Bay Area: Instacart is a growing company. From time-to-time, based on order volume, efficiency, and delivery costs, we need to evaluate the rate that we offer shoppers. By making these adjustments, the Instacart community will be better positioned to grow together. Your success is important to us and we recognize that the Instacart community can only be successful if you are successful. We’re working hard to help you fulfill the largest number of orders possible while creating a great experience for customers. These efforts are designed to help you become more efficient and, therefore, earn more. Instacart notified the shoppers earlier this month, saying that people who collect pre-packed bags from grocery stores will earn $1.50 per drop-off, which represents a 63 percent cut. Previously, drivers made $4 for doing the same task. For full-service shoppers — those who shop make deliveries — they will make $7.50 per delivery and 25 cents per item collected, or $2.50 per batch, whichever is greater. They will also receive 100% of the tips. Before, full-service shoppers would make $10 per delivery plus half the tips. “They try to rationalize that you get the tips, but people don’t always tip,” Rita, an Instacart worker in the San Francisco Bay Area, told TechCrunch. The new payment structure goes into effect Monday, March 14. “We have made some recent rate changes to reduce variability in how much shoppers earn, and we are constantly innovating to help shoppers get more orders,” Instacart said in a statement to TechCrunch. “After these changes our shoppers will earn, on average, an effective rate of $15 to $20 per hour, which is both in line with historical levels and strongly competitive within our markets.” Here’s the full text of the email: Subject line: Instacart: Upcoming Payment Rate Changes for Full Service Shoppers Full Service Shoppers, This email is to notify you that Full Service Shopper payment rates will be changing on . We believe that open communication is really important, so we want to share with you what changes we are making and why. Please read this email for further details.
Instacart is a growing company. From time-to-time, based on order volume, efficiency, and delivery costs, we need to evaluate the rate that we offer shoppers. By making these adjustments, the Instacart community will be better positioned to grow together. Your success is important to us and we recognize that the Instacart community can only be successful if you are successful. We’re working hard to help you fulfill the largest number of orders possible while creating a great experience for customers. These efforts are designed to help you become more efficient and, therefore, earn more. Here are some of the improvements we have made recently and will continue to develop: – Streamlining the Shopper App to remove unnecessary clicks and screens – Improving scheduling and routing to reduce time in your car and idle time – Adding store locations and modifying coverage areas to reduce driving distances – Improving the catalog to reduce time spent on replacements – Improving the communication flow between you and customers regarding replacements / refunds – Increasing deliveries per batch – Offering shadowing opportunities for Speed and Accuracy tips and tricks
Beginning the rates below will be in effect. Based on historical data we expect average hourly earnings to remain in line with what Instacart shoppers have earned in the past, with top shoppers still having the ability to earn $18 – $20 per hour. As always, earnings will vary based on order volume, order size, and tips which is often a direct result of how efficiently and accurately the order is shopped.
Full Service – Non-Costco Orders – Per Delivery: $7.50 – Additional Commission (per batch): $2.50 total or $0.25/item, whichever is greater – Tip: 100% – Example: On a 20 item order with $7.30 tip, a shopper would make: $7.50 for delivery + $5 item commission ($0.25 * 20 items) + $7.30 tip = $12.50 + $7.30 tip = $19.80 Full Service – Costco Orders – Per Delivery: $10 – Additional Commission (per batch): $2.50 total or $0.50/item, whichever is greater – Tip: 100% – Example: On a 20 item order with $9.00 tip, a shopper would make: $10 for delivery + $10 item>commission ($0.50 * 20 items) +$9 tip = $20.00 + $9.00 tip = $29 Full Service – Completing Delivery-Only Orders
– Per Delivery: $1.50 – Tip: 100% – Example: On a triple delivery batch, with $6.50 tip on Delivery A, $9.00 tip on Delivery B, and $13.00 tip on Delivery C, a shopper would make: $4.50 + $28.50 tips = $33 for the three deliveries – A $12.50 hourly guarantee inclusive of tips will remain in place for new shoppers for their first 20 batches You may have questions and we want to be available to you to answer these questions and address any concerns. Please email Shopper Happiness at shoppers@instacart.com with follow-up questions. We appreciate your understanding and continued focus on delivering the best experience to your customers. –
Instacart Shopper Team
shoppers@instacart.com |
Riff wants to replace YouTube for TV show reaction videos | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | YouTube is a beautifully weird world full of surprises. It turns out there’s a big community of TV show and movie reaction YouTubers out there. have hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of views. And yet, it seems like YouTube isn’t the right platform for these kinds of videos due to copyright laws. Meet , a New York-based startup that has found a neat way to help these YouTubers provide a better experience. Riff is like an on-demand Twitch, but for TV shows and movies. Right now, YouTubers can only , talk in front of their cameras without showing the actual movie or TV show, or simply take a risk and . But if YouTube’s algorithms think you’re infringing copyright laws, your video is taken down and you get a warning. You could end up being banned in no time. Max Stoller and Matt Renaud thought there should be a better way. Seeing YouTubers making jokes in real time, laughing and crying makes these reaction videos compelling for hardcore TV show fans. You get attached to your favorite commenter. So the Riff team broke down reaction videos into its core elements — the actual TV show, movie or anime episode, the reaction video and comments. Then Riff separated the reaction video from the copyrighted material. And this is where it gets interesting — the service uses your Netflix account to play a TV show and movie, and display reaction videos right next to the copyrighted material. Right now, Riff only works on desktop as you need to install a Chrome extension to synchronize everything. You first install the extension, then pick a reaction video and the two videos start in seconds. Front and center, your browser plays a TV show episode or movie. Riff adds a reaction video with someone reacting to what you’re seeing at this very second, as well as a comment column. What if it’s a loud scene and you can’t hear the reaction part? You can turn the volume down on the TV show part. What if you want to skip ahead? Everything stays perfectly in sync. And the best part is that it’s perfectly legal. Riff is an elegant client-side solution that doesn’t rely on any API. Your computer just plays a Netflix video with another video on top of it. You’re already paying for a Netflix subscription, so it would be the same if you would play a video on Netflix.com and start a reaction video in another browser window. Riff just makes the experience much better. Riff has a lot of potentials as YouTubers can tell their followers to watch full reaction videos on Riff. I can see some YouTubers showing abstracts on their channels and telling everyone to click and watch the full thing on Riff. While the service is quite new, it seems like there are already hundreds of reaction videos, with some on board. You can browse by movie, TV show or creator. Now, Riff will have to convince this community of YouTubers to make the switch. The company would like to integrate with live content so that you can see someone react to a political debate or the Super Bowl. It’s going to be a long and windy road as Riff will have to find the right content provider and build a robust infrastructure for live streaming. |
White House draft policy wants federal agencies to find open source religion | Ron Miller | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | By now, the advantages of open source are there for all to see. When you give people access to the underlying code, good things happen. People find bugs and security holes. They make it better. They adapt it to different needs. They . It’s become so ubiquitous in the private sector that the government has begun to see the light too. Today outlining the Obama administration’s plans to bring open source to the government too. In the White House’s draft vision, government agencies will be able to share code and improve efficiencies over time, saving one agency from reinventing the wheel when another has already done the work. It’s not a defined policy yet, just a launching pad for discussion. As Scott wrote in the blog post “we’re releasing for public comment a draft Federal Source Code policy to support improved access to custom software code.” In other words, it is a starting point towards instituting a government-wide open source policy. Open sourcing code used across government projects doesn’t necessarily mean the policy will require releasing all of the code to the public — think of it as semi-open — but even a portion of that code, an amount not specified will be open sourced to the public too, where presumably it could drive interesting use cases and even new businesses. “This policy will require new software developed specifically for or by the Federal Government to be made available for sharing and re-use across Federal agencies. It also includes a pilot program that will result in a portion of that new federally-funded custom code being released to the public,” Scott wrote in the blog post The policy is not just about sharing code though. It also would also instruct agencies to use open source pieces to build the software itself whenever possible, as is already happening on some projects today, according to Scott. If the White House can succeed in moving this along, and assuming it survives the transition to the next administration, code sharing is a sensible approach, which ultimately could encourage innovation and even new businesses using technology that originated in the government using tax dollars. That would seem to be an approach on which people, regardless of party or politics could agree. |
Microsoft targets Evernote users with software that makes it easy to switch to OneNote | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | Microsoft today a new tool that will make it easier for users of Evernote’s note-taking service to make the transition to rival application OneNote, a part of the Microsoft Office suite. The “ ,” as the software is called, aims to address the switching costs that can hold back users from making a move to a competing platform. Microsoft even goes for the hard sell here, reminding OneNote potential customers that the app is free on all devices, while Evernote Premium is a $50 per year product. Of course, Microsoft didn’t point out that Evernote has a free tier. But the company did jab at Evernote’s cost, saying that if you want to shell out $50 per year for office productivity software, you could just pay a little more ($70/year) for Office 365 Personal, which includes not only OneNote, but also Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, and Access. Unfortunately, the new migration utility doesn’t work on all platforms just yet. Microsoft says you’ll need a PC running Windows 7 or later in order to use the tool. However, once your Evernote notes are imported to OneNote, they will sync across to all your other devices – including Mac, iOS and Android. You’ll also want to have Evernote for Windows installed on that PC to make the transition process speedier. However, the company added that a tool for Mac users is already in the works, and will be released in the “coming months.” OneNote and Evernote are similar products in terms of their note-taking functionality. Microsoft’s product offers users a free-form canvas where you can mix text, images, documents, handwriting, audio, video and more, the company says. Meanwhile, Evernote offers tools for collecting media and storing it alongside text and other content, too, though it tends to be used more for things like checklists, and saving snippets from the web. Evernote has also has tried to transition more into the team collaboration space with features like work chat, and increased security for business users. This competitive move comes at a time when there are concerns about Evernote’s future. The startup has seen a number of high-profile exits in recent months, including in December that followed last year’s shifting of co-founder and CEO . Evernote also in 2015 and killed off its , Skitch (except Skitch for Mac), Clearly and Pebble Watch apps. Just last month, as well. With the company in transition, Microsoft’s timing is apt – it can potentially target users concerned with Evernote’s stagnant state, and those worried about its longevity. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZZae5NKcPM] |
Amazon Alexa can now pay your Capital One bill | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa, embedded in devices like the Echo speaker and Fire TV, is today taking on a new role: she’s now a banking assistant, too. announced this morning the rollout of a new “skill” (like an app for Alexa-powered devices), which will allow consumers to do their banking by voice, including checking balances, reviewing transactions, making payments, and more. To use the this voice-activated service, Capital One customers have to first to their Amazon device via the Alexa mobile application, then connect their account by providing their username and password. The Alexa app is available for Fire tablets, iOS and Android. Afterward, they’ll be able to manage their finances through their Amazon device, be it the Amazon Echo, or Fire TV. For example, explains Capital One, customers could then ask Alexa questions like: “Alexa, ask Capital One for my Quicksilver Card balance.”
“Alexa, ask Capital One for recent transactions on my checking account”
“Alexa, ask Capital One when is my credit card payment due?”
“Alexa, ask Capital One to pay my credit card bill.” Alexa will use your pre-linked funds to pay the bill, and will simply pull up your account information and reply to your questions for the other items. Of course, this is the kind of skill you probably only want to add to your home device, not one in a shared environment or workplace, for obvious reasons. And even then, it does raise questions about how secure and smart it is to allow Alexa the ability to access your finances – especially considering that the voice technology is still in its early days and far from foolproof. Earlier this week, for instance, there were reports of and resetting a user’s connected thermostat to 70 degrees because it heard its name in a radio program that was playing near its speaker. Then there’s the matter of parent company Amazon’s stance on security technologies in general that may need to be considered. As Apple fights for user privacy rights with the U.S. Government, it was revealed that Amazon had quietly removed device encryption from its Fire OS mobile operating system. The company only that decision after user outcry. That said, if convenience outweighs risks – and frankly, it should not but often does – you might want to give the Capital One skills app a try. |
13 TechCrunch stories you don’t want to miss this week | Anna Escher | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | This week, Facebook made a selfie filter app acquisition, Google surprised us with the Android N preview and we ate bugs. Yeah, seriously. Silicon Valley is eating bugs now. These are the tech headlines you don’t want to miss this week. Google unexpectedly — and it’s available as an over-the-air update. Google says the company wanted to release the preview to get more feedback from developers earlier in the process, and get the final N release into the hands of device manufacturers this summer. Awhile ago, to supercharge its animated selfie filters. Now Facebook has made an image-filtering acquisition of its own to keep up the messaging pace. MSQRD adds filters to your smartphone videos. Transform your selfies with the MSQRD app http://on.tcrn.ch/l/B75f Posted by on Thursday, February 11, 2016 The controversial went live, and it has a plan to profit from negative reviews. The app was described as a “Yelp for humans.” That is, you can sign up to leave reviews of anyone you know — from co-workers and bosses to exes and friends. When Slack announced , the startup signaled a move into the territory of Microsoft’s Skype. We heard from a source that . Apparently, Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella were among those unconvinced by the idea, with Gates pushing instead to add more features to Skype to make it more competitive with Slack in the business market, said our source. . This particular form of cyber threat involves malware that encrypts the data on your personal computer so you can no longer access it. Afterwards, the hackers request that you pay them in order for you to retrieve your files. Facebook announced last month that it would be to Gear VR to improve experiences. Now, Oculus that the Oculus Video app on Gear VR would be incorporating a new Facebook video tab that lets you connect your Facebook and Oculus accounts to bring personalized info to your VR content absorption experience. This will give individual VR users a more custom experience across virtual reality. Amazon’s logistics arm took a big step forward by in North America. More and more people are using ad blockers. Mobile marketing company Tune released saying that or browser. Google made it so that you can now sign up for , the company’s first foray into offering its own cell phone service, . Jordan Crook wrote about the massive impact social media has on the presidential election, and poses the question: In honor of International Women’s Day, Megan Rose Dickey rounded up We , a $699 device that allows you to walk through virtual reality while wearing a VR headset. Run away from reality with the Virtuix Omni http://tcrn.ch/1puOqxW Posted by on Tuesday, March 8, 2016 Silicon Valley produces some truly weird food concepts — like lab-grown hamburgers and Soylent. The latest experiment comes from . Yeah, you heard that right. They just raised a $4 million Series A, so we tried them. |
NASA’s next Mars mission scheduled for May 2018 | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | NASA that it will send its next lander to Mars, known as the Mars lander, in May of 2018. The mission was originally on schedule to launch later this month, but a technical issue found late last year put the InSight launch on hold. The new launch date comes as great news to the InSight team because there was a possibility that the technical issue would not be resolved in time and the mission would be cancelled altogether. InSight, which stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations Geodesy and Heat Transport, is an international mission designed to help us understand how rocky planets, like Mars and the Earth, formed and evolved. Using two science instruments on board, InSight will collect seismology and temperature data from deep beneath the Martian surface. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has worked with France’s space agency, the Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Space Agency to design the scientific instruments. The InSight science team also includes researchers from 11 different nations. “The quest to understand the interior of Mars has been a longstanding goal of planetary scientists for decades. We’re excited to be back on the path for a launch, now in 2018.” – John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate In December 2015, a technical problem was identified in one of the two scientific instruments. The seismometer instrument, provided by CNES, requires a sealed vacuum to operate properly in the harsh Martian environment. During tests, the seismometer functioned properly, but engineers identified leaks in the vacuum in which it operated and were unable to quickly identify a sufficient resolution. Today, engineers believe they’ve finally found a solution to the leak. The additional time leading up to the 2018 launch will allow the InSight team to redesign, build and conduct qualifications of the new vacuum enclosure. “The rework of the seismometer’s vacuum container will result in a finished, thoroughly tested instrument in 2017 that will maintain a high degree of vacuum around the sensors through rigors of launch, landing, deployment and a two-year prime mission on the surface of Mars.” – NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Delays like this can take an expensive toll. NASA that the cost of the two-year delay is currently being assessed with an estimate expected in August of this year. In addition to cost concerns, InSight’s delay and additional budget requirements may negatively affect other programs in NASA’s planetary science program. Ultimately, however, with $525 million already invested in InSight, it’s a sigh of relief to many that a solution has been found and a new launch date set. NASA’s next big Mars mission in the queue is the rover, which consists of seven different science instruments and is estimated to cost around $1.9 billion. Robotic Mars missions like InSight and Mars 2020 fall in line with NASA’s “ “, the agency’s initiative to develop the capabilities and knowledge required to ultimately send humans to the red planet. |
Your favorite accelerator programs, ranked | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | For the fifth year in a row, biz school professors Yael Hochberg of Rice University and Susan Cohen of the University of Richmond have ranked the many accelerator programs now up and running in the U.S. as a way of helping making sense of which are worth the time, effort, and, often, equity that founders give them. It’s no small undertaking. According to their findings, there are currently 160 accelerators in operation, representing year-over-year growth of around 50 percent dating back to 2005, when pioneer Y Combinator first came on the scene. Some have come and gone. In fact, many outfits don’t survive more than a couple of years. Yet there are often upstarts to replace them, a growing number of which are corporate programs. (Research from Hochberg and Cohen show that 26 such corporate accelerator programs sprung up last year, compared with one or two back in 2011.) You can see above which programs rank most highly overall. We talked with the professors yesterday to find out how they ranked everyone, and what the difference between platinum, gold, and silver really means. YH: They give us information about every company and every round about their graduates dating one-, two- and three-years out [from their current cohorts], which is a granularity [of information] that you can’t get elsewhere. And they’re willing to give it to us because we don’t do anything commercial with it. We just do this as a service to the community. Once they’ve shared the data — which they do confidentially; we sign non-disclosure agreements — we can benchmark them against other accelerators whether or not they [are ranked at or near the top of the heap]. The benefit for them is knowing they’ll at least get back data that’s useful to them. Full disclosure — this year we supplemented our prior years’ YC data with publicly available data. We didn’t get a spreadsheet from them this year. They have told us that they prefer to be considered a seed fund and not to be called an accelerator. But technically they meet our definition and if we didn’t include them — which was the case last year by their request — it would be . . . odd. SC: We talk with graduates who provide qualitative information about each program, either positive or negative, to understand the relationships that accelerators have with their alumni and to assign them a net promoter score. We also create a total index score to get to a composite number based on five categories: valuation, fundraising, exits, survival, and satisfaction. YH: Because TechStars and 500 Startups [and their ilk] are great programs and they aren’t statistically different. What we’re finding instead is it’s very hard to distinguish [between them] because their results are similar. SC: Some programs here that have been featured over time have been consistently in the top of the rankings. Plug and Play [of Redwood City, Ca.] is a new entrant; it hadn’t given us data in the past. HealthBox is also new. SC: There’s a bigger difference between bronze and silver than there is between gold and silver. Achieving gold is something to be proud of. But these are all top, top, and top programs, not top, middle, and bottom programs. YH: Yes. We’re at the point where we’re past saturation. A lot of small independent accelerators that have popped up, and we expect that many will disappear in a couple of years. You really have to figure out a good financial model. I think even the most successful [accelerators] are still figuring it out. SC: The number of what we’d call private or independent accelerators already seems to be slowing. You’re seeing some consolidation in the industry, which isn’t surprising. But we’re seeing more and more corporate accelerators opening, which has been interesting. TechStars run a lot of corporate accelerators, for example. Everyone is taking a different tack. YH: We’ve never had any kind of monetization in mind. We collect data under blanket non-disclosure agreements and we get [that data] because we keep it confidential. The payoff for us is knowing what to tell our students when they ask us about these programs. SC: If we were better entrepreneurs, maybe we wouldn’t be academics. [Laughs.] |
Cyan Banister joins Founders Fund as partner | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | Cyan Banister, a renowned angel investor and startup founder, has joined . She’s the 11-year-old firm’s first female investing partner. According to a , investors at the San Francisco-based outfit now include its billionaire cofounder Peter Thiel; cofounder Ken Howery; managing partner Luke Nosek; managing partner Brian Singerman; partner Geoff Lewis; partner Scott Nolan; and Banister. The company also employs an associate, Zachary Hargreaves; principals Trae Stephens and Napolean Ta; and a chief scientist, Aaron VanDevender. Banister has more years of experience as an investor than some of the firm’s other members. As a venture capitalist, however, she’ll presumably have more money to plug into startups. Indeed, Founders Fund announced just Friday that its sixth fund has closed on in capital commitments. Like many of those affiliated with Founders Fund, Banister is both a founder and former operator. In 2007, she launched an online platform for pin-up photography. She also held a variety of manager roles at the messaging and email security company IronPort Systems, which Cisco acquired for in 2007. Together with her husband, Scott Banister, an IronPort cofounder, Banister has made of angel investments over the years, including in Space X, Uber, and DeepMind Technologies, acquired by Google for in early 2014. Their track record is sufficiently impressive that the Banisters won Angel of the Year at the ninth Crunchies ceremony, hosted in San Francisco last month. “Angel investing is a team effort,” said Banister, who on stage to accept the award. “We wouldn’t be where we are today without our friends, fellow investors, entrepreneurs who send us deal flow, and also companies that allow us to be on their journey.” |
Uber announces a more immersive ‘Ride Request’ option for third-party apps | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | to let third-party apps add the ability to order a car last year, but today a more feature-rich option that it is specifically targeted at developers in Asia. The company has unveiled a ‘Ride Request Widget’ which it claimed is an easy way to add Uber’s native features into a third-party app. In particular, Uber said the widget is developed to work in places with limited internet access — in line with conditions in China, India and other parts of Asia — with “all local payment options” supported. If the ride request button is a minimalist option for developers, the Uber’s widget is the full shebang — it’s basically a mini version of the Uber app for third-parties, right from booking, to wait and drop-off. The goal is simple: to make it easier to hail an Uber — if your favorite apps integrate ride requests then you don’t even need to open the Uber app to get a ride. Uber has offered its API in Asia for some time, but it said this new release came about after it talked to developer partners in India, China and Australia “to learn how they engage with the API and what tools they need to be successful.” “One of the things we heard from Chinese developers specifically is that they love the easy deployment and smooth handoff to the Uber app, but in certain cases they’d like to deeply integrate the Uber rider experience into their own apps without investing heavily in a custom Uber API implementation,” the company added. The idea of jamming another company’s app into your app might not appeal to many Western developers, but there’s certainly evidence that a approach to apps has taken off in parts of Asia. WeChat, China’s most popular app, has integrated a number of features from popular apps to . Uber is blocked on WeChat, , but the widget at least allows other developers to mimic the immersive style that WeChat has popularized. In India, a market where overseas brands hold some cachet, Uber is trailing , but the widget might help it in its quest to narrow that deficit. The widget is targeted at India and China, two markets where Uber has invested countless billions to take on dominant local rivals, but it will be available to all developers worldwide from the middle of April. The terms are the same as the ride request button: Uber will pay developers $5 for each first-time rider they refer, but they are prohibited from including hooks to rival services in their app. |
Planday, the workforce management solution for shift-based businesses, scores $14M Series B | Steve O'Hear | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | , the Danish startup that offers a cloud-based “shift planning” solution for various types of businesses that employ a flexible workforce, such as restaurants, hotels, stores, call centers and gyms, has scored $14 million in Series B funding. The round was led by new investor Idinvest, with participation from existing backer Creandum, which round, in addition to SEB Private Equity, and angel investor Arthur Kosten (co-founder of Booking.com). Notably, Just Eat CEO, Klaus Nyengaard, is also an investor in Planday. Meanwhile, CEO Christian Brøndum tells me that the new capital will be used by the company to scale in the Nordics, U.K., Germany and U.S., and to help it become a “central player” in the SaaS eco-system servicing part-time workers and businesses. “Thus, partnering with other leaders in our industry is a huge focus area for us going forward,” he says. This will include Planday further integrating with software offerings that service shift-based businesses, including payroll providers, find and hire services, and Epos technologies. “Employees use Planday to communicate with their workplace and colleagues on an everyday basis,” explains Brøndum. “Via the app the employee receives messages, notifications and reminders, and they can easily communicate and swap shifts with co-workers with matching skills and availability. They can also bid on open shifts, matching their skills, competences and seniority level, and see their expected and actual salary for the month.” In turn, the upside for employers using Planday is that they can more easily “create and maintain the optimal schedule,” taking things like staffing needs, budget, employee availability, and workforce regulations into account. “Planday automatically checks up on all these variables when creating or changing the schedule,” he says. And although direct competitors include the likes of and , like many SaaS-based startups, Planday’s biggest competitor is still cited as “pen and paper, spreadsheets and calculators”. “Our analysis shows that more than 80% of the small and medium sized businesses rely on these manual and time consuming solutions,” Brøndum said at the time of the company’s Series A. “However, more and more businesses are changing to modern SaaS software like Planday. Over the next five years we foresee a landslide from manual solutions to SaaS solutions.” That “landslide” appears to have at least started. The company says it has grown 100 per cent year-on-year, a metric that translates into 100,000 end users — that is, shift-workers active on its platform — in 24 different countries, and roughy 2,000 companies as customers. Its team has also grown to more than 80 people spread across Planday’s five international offices. |
Amazon bans the sale of rogue USB-C cables | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | There’s good news in the fight against rogue USB-C cables, some of which have with smartphones and laptops, after Amazon tightened the regulations around the type of cables that it sells. The online retail giant has added non-compliant USB-C cables to its list of items prohibited for sale on its website, which already includes pirated DVDs and non-compliant electrical products. reads as follows: Any USB-C™ (or USB Type-C™) cable or adapter product that is not compliant with standard specifications issued by “USB Implementers Forum Inc.” In other words, at last, non-compliant USB-C cables, which can damage or shut down a device entirely, will be banned from sale on Amazon. This is a policy update though, and Amazon will need to police its seller community and shut down any who continue to offer dodgy cables. This small but important update was , the Google engineer who has raised awareness of the dangers of faulty cabling after . Leung was tasked with testing USB-C cable compatibility with the Pixel and, among many things, he within the OnePlus type C charging cable and has generally championed increased vetting and standards. USB-C is good news for consumers and companies alike because it helps standardize the very different kinds of ports and adaptors that tech firms have traditionally used for their products. But low quality and cheap cables have flooded the market, causing more harm than good by frying laptops and phones so that they can’t be used again. Finally, it seems that major distributors like Amazon are waking up to the issue and clamping down, but there’s plenty more to be done as Leung noted. This is “really great news,” he said of the Amazon update, “but we all have to continue to be vigilant and call out any bad products we find on Amazon and other stores (both online and brick and mortar) as we find them.” |
Apple strikes a deal with MLB to put iPads in dugouts | Fitz Tepper | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | The MLB is taking a page from the NFL’s playbook and to use during games for the 2016 season. But, instead of Microsoft Surface Tablets, the MLB has made a deal with Apple to provide all 30 MLB teams with iPad Pros to use. The iPads will give coaches the ability to get historical game statistics, pull up video from previous games, and even simulate potential pitcher-batter matches, . Notably, the data on each team’s iPad will be proprietary to each team, and not taken from a central, league-wide database. This means that teams will still be able to use their own data and analytics to gain a competitive advantage – Apple will just help them access this information in an easier and more interactive way. In terms of device specifics, teams will be issued the larger, 12.9 inch iPad Pros, which will be fitted with custom cases donning each team’s logo. The software will be driven by a new custom app called MLB Dugout, built in-house by MLB’s Advance Media Division, with help from Apple developers. The deal seems to be structured similarly to the NFL-Microsoft deal, where the devices act as both as an advertising tool and a legitimate coaching aid. But, it remains unseen whether MLB will struggle from the same growing pains that the NFL had when making the shift from paper to digital play books. In fact, Apple that most NFL teams still used iPads behind the scenes, due to technical difficulties with the Surface Tablet. Apple has confirmed the deal to TechCrunch. |
What’s trending in the IoT space | Bernard Moon | 2,016 | 3 | 29 |
Our team has been active as investors in the of and hardware space over the past two years. We have read pitches from hundreds of companies, met with dozens, read hundreds of research reports and spoken with various experts. We have invested in six IoT/hardware companies from our global seed fund and seven from our startup accelerator. With this accumulated knowledge, we decided to create an easy to read overview for others to get up to speed on this trending space of IoT. ; the following is a summary of what we learned. Our view is that there are five major battlegrounds for IoT and hardware innovation and market growth in the consumer space: connected homes, wearables, healthcare, robotics and drones and transportation. For this article, I’ll cover three sectors (two consumer and one industrial): connected homes, healthcare and industrial IoT. Within the connected home, we have identified three primary entry points to influence consumers and control the connected home: security, central appliances and home hubs. These are the current battlegrounds between incumbent corporates, new corporate entrants and startups. is the leader of the fragmented home security market. This $6.7 billion market cap company with $3.5 billion in revenues has 25 percent of the residential market and 13 percent of the SMB market. Comcast has been working to penetrate this market since they have such a huge installed base with over 54 million homes. From startups and former startups, there are low-cost solutions such as Google’s , (Smart Lock), and . In central appliances, whether thermostat or smart refrigerators, these companies are seeking to bring the conveniences of online connectivity to daily household tasks or functions. Simplicity and ease of use is important for these plays to build trust and expand their presence into other parts of the household. Other targeted areas are sprinkler systems, washers, lighting, power meters and others. There are various approaches to the home hub market, with focus ranging from audio features to advanced home controls. With the shut down of Quirky/Wink and the slow uptake of other options, it seems most consumers still do not have a compelling reason to purchase such advanced devices. SmartThings, acquired by Samsung, has the benefit of being housed now with a larger entity since this is long-term battle for the home. We’ll see how this market develops in . With the emergence of IoT devices, the healthcare industry will benefit from always-on connectivity, increased data and information and decreased unnecessary interactions between healthcare professionals and patients. Complementing the rise of IoT in healthcare, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that approximately 500 million smartphone users around the world will be using a mobile medical app this year. This number is expected to grow to 1.7 billion smartphone and tablet users by 2018. From hospitals testing “smart beds” to connected electrocardiograms and connected patient badges, there are endless efficiencies that the of can provide to hospitals, doctors and many other players in the healthcare ecosystem. We believe it is too early in the innovation cycle to choose or rank the greatest impact that the of will have on the healthcare industry, so here are just a few of the areas we have identified: Even though the promise of tele-medicine has been discussed since the first boom 20 years ago, we really believe it is here. No, really. Where IoT can really make an impact is improved patient monitoring, especially remote patients, because single in-patient costs can be more than $1,800 per day. IoT can dramatically reduce these costs. From supply chain management of drugs to consumer safety to “smart pills,” there are many areas where IoT can eliminate fraud and waste and improve the lives of patients. With increased connectivity of glucose monitors, heart monitors and so many other tracking devices, there are bound to be new discoveries from the data we collect, analyze and benchmark against patients around the world. We only expect the amazing to occur when IoT in healthcare is ubiquitous. Industrial IoT has the potential to be bigger than the consumer space. With more than 13 billion connected devices in the world and millions more coming online every week, the amount of data we are collecting is amazing. From street signals to manufacturing plants to construction cranes to jet engines, the aggregate data companies collect will be overwhelming and exciting as they try to figure out what to do with it and how best to analyze and apply the knowledge gained. There are three current areas of innovation and growth in the industrial IoT space:
This might be the most critical aspect of industrial IoT because gathering all the data from millions or billions of sensors is useless without insights and learning. Most of the IoT space is relatively unsecured, so this is a high priority for private and public sector leaders. From Jeep hacks to baby monitors, people have been shown how unsecure connected devices really are. While very early, the potential of sensor-driven computing is enormous. Think Google Now for manufacturers, industrial robots and smart cities. It could be an automated world beyond our current imagination. Overall, we believe it is an exciting time to be an investor and entrepreneur in the of and hardware sector. From improving our homes to improving healthcare to making our jobs more efficient, these are areas that will truly improve the quality of our lives. |
A rant about why Snapchat 2.0 is no disappearing teen fad | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | Add me on Snapchat at “JoshConstine” or scan this QR Snapcode with the app’s camera
With today’s launch of , Snapchat wants to be your phone. Here’s a list of the new features: |
Spotify raises $1 billion in debt with devilish terms to fight Apple Music | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | On-demand streaming music is inevitable, so Spotify is taking whatever fuel it can get to win the race against Apple. Whoever can sign up customers faster to consume their data and network effect could earn money off them for a long, long time. So it makes sense that Spotify would be willing to raise money at ugly, exploitative terms now for a better chance at earning those riches later. Today Spotify raised $1 billion in convertible debt from TPG, Dragoneer, and clients of Goldman Sachs, as first reported by . By raising debt rather than equity, it doesn’t have to worry about poor signaling from a down-round raised at a lower valuation than the $8.5 billion it set in June 2015. Spotify confirms the news is true, and TPG tells me “This financing gives them the strategic resources to further strengthen their leadership position.” The money will be spent on growth and marketing. If Spotify doesn’t perform well, some aggressive deal terms could cost it a lot of money. TPG and Dragoneer get to convert the debt to equity at a 20% discount of whatever share price Spotify sets for an eventual IPO. And if it doesn’t IPO within the next year, that discount goes up 2.5% every extra six months. Spotify also has to pay 5% annual interest on the debt, and 1% more every six months up to a total of 10%. And finally, TPG and Dragoneer can sell their shares just 90 days after the IPO, before the 180-day lockup period ends for Spotify’s employees and other investors. This all could screw employees if Spotify has a bad year vs Apple Music, since the deal gives these late-stage investors cheaper shares and early sale advantages. Then again, employees’ stock is only valuable in Spotify succeeds, and it needs this cash to do so. [Update: If Spotify can grow its value significantly and the IPO goes well, the discount and early sale terms won’t be that bad. Arguably, it’d be better than raising money with equity now that would be would worth a lot more later if Spotify does well. A source familiar with Spotify’s finances tells me it still had €570 million still in the bank, so there was no gun to its head to raise this money. Apparently it wanted to raise through debt because it believes this year will go well. What the debt does provide Spotify is opportunities to make acquisitions. With SoundCloud and Pandora in the dumps, Spotify could potentially make a play to bring more independent music or radio listeners into its music empire.] Why would Spotify agree to these aggressive terms? Because it’s competing with the most well funded company in history: Apple. Many people around the world don’t even understand that on-demand streaming exists. Companies selling it will have to undertake expensive advertising campaigns to educate consumers and sign them up before someone else does. They’ll also have to forge relationships and strike deals with top artists to get exclusive or early access to their music. Plus, having the money to potentially acquire other music companies like SoundCloud or Pandora could give Spotify a leg up in the fight. None of that comes cheap, though. So Spotify signed a devilish deal. |
null | Scott Maxwell | 2,016 | 3 | 11 | null |
eBay acquires Cargigi to expand its eBay Motors team, improve tech for auto dealers | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | Ebay announced this afternoon that it’s acquiring an auto industry technology company known as , a large provider of advertising and marketing services on a number of popular free classified websites, like Craigslist and others. Deal terms were not revealed, though eBay described the acquisition as “small.” Cargigi’s team of 30 will join eBay, and the product itself will replace eBay’s Dealer Center. The full integration is expected to be finalized by the end of 2016, eBay tells us. The company says that it’s interested in using the technology Cargigi developed to help onboard auto dealers’ inventory onto eBay’s website. In addition to replacing eBay’s own Dealer Center product, Cargigi will help enable eBay to “build out its structured data capabilities for the vehicles industry,” said eBay in an announcement. Over time, more functionality will also be added. But more immediately, dealers will have access to analytics they didn’t before. Though not a consumer-facing brand, Cargigi had developed technology that helped dealers more easily get their ads in front of online users, including tools that help market autos on Craigslist and other websites, through postings and ads, as well as on other social media, like Facebook and YouTube. Dealers also could access analytics to see how well their ads performed, plus use tools to monitor competitors, manage their own inventory and enhance the photos used in their listings. The startup itself was founded in 2009 by Tony Hoang, whose previous automotive data collection and marketing company CDMdata Inc. was acquired by Kelley Blue Book. Hoang and Cargigi’s team of 30 will now join eBay Motors as a result of this deal. “After making a significant impact on the automotive sector early on, Cargigi quickly became one of the top classified marketing service providers for thousands of dealerships nationwide. As Cargigi has continued to scale, it has remained singularly focused on innovating and creating great products,” said Tony Hoang, who also served as Cargigi’s CTO, in a statement. “With the company’s strong automotive DNA, Cargigi has evolved into a vertical support platform for major automotive classified websites globally. As an integral part of the eBay Motors vehicles business, Cargigi will bring greater value to its U.S. sellers and enhance the experience for eBay vehicles sellers,” he added. For eBay Motors dealers, eBay says this means they’ll be able to more easily grow and manage their business, the company reports. The company declined to disclose how many dealers use eBay today to sell their autos, as well as how many customers were using Cargigi prior to the acquisition. TechCrunch understands that Cargigi won’t actually be shut down as a part of this deal, meaning its other dealer services will remain available after the team joins eBay. |
Seven things to watch for at Strata + Hadoop World 2016 in San Jose | Josh Klahr | 2,016 | 3 | 29 |
With Strata + Hadoop World kicking off, it’s always fascinating to step back and look at the contents of the sessions as a way of understanding what’s happening in the world of big data. For those of you who have attended this conference for the more than five years that the event’s been kicking, you’ve likely seen it transform from an arena for software developers experimenting with open-source technologies to one of the more important enterprise software conferences — where a mix of developers, executives, vendors and professional services providers come together to share and learn about the most recent developments in the space. As a quick way of trying to figure out “What’s Hot” at this year’s conference in San Jose, I did a quick (and extremely unscientific) analysis of the top terms that showed up in the list of training classes, keynotes and presentation sessions throughout the week. After filtering out the obvious terms (Hadoop, data, analytics, Apache), there were some clear topics that rose to the top, as shown below: There are a few key things that jump out after looking at this particular view of the data that I suspect indicate key trends that are happening in the industry overall. While Hadoop adoption is still several years ahead, Spark’s growth in the big data ecosystem has been significant. Both technologies are here to stay, with Spark being adopted for a broad set of use cases, including pipelined data processing and parallelizable data-science workloads. In the chart above you will see terms like “streaming” and “real-time” along with “kafka” and “confluent” (a commercial distribution of Kafka). Now that enterprises have had success with batch loading and processing of data in their production Hadoop clusters, there is increasing focus on real-time data ingestion, processing and analysis. As revealed, enterprises are more focused on rolling out Business Intelligence use cases on Hadoop, ahead of investing in data science (despite the continued media assertion of ). Data visualization and self-service remain a key investment area, even in the world of Hadoop. Notably missing from the top terms and topics at Hadoop World is SQL-on-Hadoop. In previous years, starting with Hive and moving on to projects like Impala and SparkSQL (along with a number of other commercial SQL-on-Hadoop products), there was intense focus on these technologies. But SQL-on-Hadoop has become a “must have” in the Hadoop toolkit and has entered the mainstream. As our recent revealed, these engines are now ready to support large-scale analytical SQL workloads. An interesting item that made the top terms list is “alluxio,” which is the recently renamed Tachyon project. Alluxio is a virtual distributed storage system, and it has a memory-centric architecture that enables data sharing across clusters at memory speed. For SQL-on-Hadoop engines, this can mean faster query times and increased performance, as as they adopted Alluxio to speed up their analytical data processing. Many IT organizations have made big bets on Hadoop as their next-generation data platform, and are migrating workloads from legacy systems like Teradata to lower-cost and more scalable environments. For these organizations it is critical to show their Hadoop investments paying off in the form of production clusters being adopted by core business functions, such as Business Intelligence. Amazon and Microsoft both show up on the list. Despite a slow start in the Hadoop space, Microsoft is making significant inroads in the big data space, offering services like HDInsight (which is available to run on Linux!). Amazon continues to make great strides with their big data offerings, with the ever-increasing adoption of Redshift complementing already popular services like S3 and EMR (Elastic MapReduce). |
Facebook, Apple, Google, other tech CEOs demand North Carolina repeal anti-LGBT law | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Equality NC just released a letter addressed to North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, urging him to repeal the provisions of House Bill 2. H.B. 2 . More specifically, it forces transgender students in public schools to use bathrooms and other facilities that are inconsistent with their gender identity. The legislation passed last Wednesday, with McCrory signing it into law that night. The letter (pasted below) includes signatures from more than 80 CEOs, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Chad Griffin, president of the HRC and Chris Sgro, executive director of Equality NC, will deliver the letter to McCrory’s office on Thursday morning. They’ve also requested a meeting with Governor McCrory on Thursday. “Discrimination is bad for North Carolina, bad for America, and bad for business,” Griffin said in a release. “These business leaders are speaking out because they know this attack on lesbian, gay, bisexual and especially transgender North Carolinians isn’t just morally wrong — it also puts their employees, customers and North Carolina’s economy at risk. For the sake of all North Carolinians, Governor McCrory and the General Assembly must act now to repeal this heinous attack on fairness and equality.” “Equality is a core value at Salesforce and we are committed to protecting our employees and customers from discrimination. HB 2 is an attack on equality, specifically the LGBTQ community, and it creates a discriminatory environment in North Carolina. Salesforce joins companies like Bank of America, IBM, Dow, the NBA and many others in opposing HB 2, and we strongly urge the legislature and Governor McCrory to repeal this law.” This letter comes just one day after Georgia Governor Nathan Deal . The veto came after Salesforce, along with other companies, threatened to stop doing business in the state. Here’s the text of the : Dear Governor McCrory, We write with concerns about legislation you signed into law this week, House Bill 2, which has
overturned protections for LGBT people and sanctioned discrimination across North Carolina.
Put simply, HB 2 is not a bill that reflects the values of our companies, of our country, or even
the overwhelming majority of North Carolinians. We are disappointed in your decision to sign this discriminatory legislation into law. The
business community, by and large, has consistently communicated to lawmakers at every level
that such laws are bad for our employees and bad for business. This is not a direction in which
states move when they are seeking to provide successful, thriving hubs for business and
economic development. We believe that HB 2 will make it far more challenging for businesses
across the state to recruit and retain the nation’s best and brightest workers and attract the most
talented students from across the country. It will also diminish the state’s draw as a destination
for tourism, new businesses, and economic activity. Discrimination is wrong, and we believe it has no place in North Carolina or anywhere in our
country. As companies that pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming to all, we strongly
urge you and the leadership of North Carolina’s legislature to repeal this law in the upcoming
legislative session. Sincerely, Karen Appleton, Senior Vice President, Box
Brandee Barker, Cofounder, The Pramana Collective
Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce
Chip Bergh, President and CEO, Levi Strauss & Co.
Michael Birch, Founder, Blab
Ed Black, President and CEO, Computer & Communications Industry Association
Nathan Blecharczyk, Cofounder and CTO, Airbnb
Steven R. Boal, CEO, Quotient Technology Inc.
Lorna Borenstein, CEO, Grokker
Brad Brinegar, Chairman and CEO, McKinney
Lloyd Carney, CEO, Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
Brian Chesky, CEO, Airbnb
Ron Conway, Founder and Co-Managing Partner, SV Angel
Tim Cook, CEO, Apple
Dean Debnam, Chairman and CEO, Workplace Options
Jack Dorsey, CEO, Square and Twitter
David Ebersman, Cofounder and CEO, Lyra Health
Jared Fliesler, General Partner, Matrix Partners
Joe Gebbia, Cofounder and Chief Product Officer, Airbnb
Jason Goldberg, CEO, Pepo
Alan King, President and COO, Workplace Options
Kristen Koh Goldstein, CEO, BackOps
Mitchell Gold, co-founder and chair-man, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams
John H. Graham IV, President and CEO, American Society of Association Executives
Logan Green, CEO, Lyft
Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator
David Hassell, CEO, 15Five
Charles H. Hill III, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Human Resources, Pfizer Inc.
Reid Hoffman, Chairman, LinkedIn
Robert Hohman, Cofounder & CEO, Glassdoor
Drew Houston, CEO, Dropbox
Chad Hurley, Cofounder, YouTube
Dave Imre, Partner and CEO, IMRE
Dev Ittycheria, President & CEO, MongoDB
Laurene Powell Jobs, President, Emerson Collective
Cecily Joseph, VP Corporate Responsibility and Chief Diversity Officer, Symantec Corporation
David Karp, Founder and CEO, Tumblr
Travis Katz, Founder and CEO, Gogobot
Brian Krzanich, CEO, Intel
Joshua Kushner, Managing Partner, Thrive Capital
Max Levchin, CEO, Affirm
Dion Lim, CEO, NextLesson
Shan-lyn Ma, CEO, Zola
Marissa Mayer, President and CEO, Yahoo
Melody McCloskey, CEO, StyleSeat
Douglas Merrill, CEO, Zestfinance
Dyke Messinger, President and CEO, Power Curbers Inc.
Hari Nair, Vice President and General Manager, Orbitz.com & CheapTickets.com
Michael Natenshon, CEO, Marine Layer
Alexi G. Nazem, Cofounder and CEO, Nomad Health
Laurie J. Olson, EVP, Strategy, Portfolio and Commercial Operations, Pfizer Inc.
Bob Page, Founder and CEO, Replacements, Ltd.
Michelle Peluso, Strategic Advisor and former CEO, Gilt
Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google
Mark Pincus, Founder and Executive Chairman, Zynga
Hosain Rahman, CEO, Jawbone
Bill Ready, CEO, Braintree
Evan Reece, CEO, Liftopia
Stan Reiss, General Partner, Matrix Partners
John Replogle, CEO, Seventh Generation
Virginia M. Rometty, Chairman, President and CEO, IBM Corporation
Dan Rosensweig, CEO, Chegg
Kevin P. Ryan, Founder and Chairman, Alleycorp
Bijan Sabet, General Partner, Spark Capital
Julie Samuels, President, Engine
George A. Scangos, PhD, CEO, Biogen
Dan Schulman, President and CEO, PayPal
Adam Shankman, Director and Producer
Gary Shapiro, President and CEO, Consumer Technology Association
David A. Shaywitz, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, DNAnexus
Ben Silbermann, CEO, Pinterest
Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer, Microsoft
Arne Sorenson, President and CEO, Marriott International
David Spector, Cofounder, ThirdLove
Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO, Yelp
Bret Taylor, CEO, Quip
Todd Thibodeaux, CEO, CompTIA
David Tisch, Managing Partner, BoxGroup
Nirav Tolia, Cofounder and CEO, Nextdoor
Kevin A. Trapani, President and CEO, The Redwood Groups
Ken Wasch, President, Software & Information Industry Association
Bob & Harvey Weinstein, Co-Founders and Co-Chairmen, The Weinstein Company
Mark Zuckerberg, Chairman and CEO, Facebook |
Experts think the IPO window could finally bust open in the second quarter | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | , the IPO research firm, has published a of this year, and, as you might expect, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. For starters, it notes the U.S. IPO market hit the lowest levels in the first quarter since the financial crisis of late 2008. It notes that not a single deal priced outside of the health care sector (which we’d flagged for you in this ). It also notes that of the eight deals that managed to price and collectively raise $700,000 million, the companies’ performance was largely propped up by their venture backers, who bought shares during and after the IPO. There is, however, a silver lining. Echoing a conversation we’d had last week with another IPO expert — founder John Fitzgibbon — Renaissance Capital Principal Kathleen Smith told us today that a handful of pre-IPO companies could soon inject new life into the torpid IPO market. Our chat has been edited for length. KS: It doesn’t mean they aren’t doing well, but it means there’s concern about their liquidity. Their tradable float is small — even smaller than their deal size would suggest. KS: It has long helped to get the deals done. But we’ve seen the percentages increase quite a bit. It used to be that [VCs] would [buy up] 15 percent of the [IPO and post-IPO] shares; now it’s more like 40 percent, and I’d say it began ticking up over the last 24 months. In one recent deal, [for the gene editing company] Editas, insiders bought 67 percent of the float. The goal in going public is to establish a valuation publicly that either helps other companies to understand them and perhaps buy them at that accepted valuation, or to raise more money down the road, which most [biotech companies] need to do, even though most [generate] capital from the IPO. KS: We’re expecting some IPO icebreakers. The overall stock market has been getter more stability. Following some big rollercoaster rides last August and in January, it’s less volatile. An index of ours that tracks [companies that have gone public] in the last two years is still down for the year but it’s had strong outperformance since February; it’s run up almost twice the S&P 500. It tells you about investor comfort and suggests [new issuers could have a more favorable reception]. KS: Nobody is marketing right now. And we don’t know until the minute a company files a prospectus with terms that they’re going to move forward. But we think we should be seeing companies start to move forward in the next couple of weeks. Everyone is watching BATS Global Markets [which is the second-largest stock-exchange operator by market volume, and planning a at an IPO this quarter]. Others that everyone is watching includes [the cycling chain] SoulCycle, which is profitable [and filed to go public ]; MJM Growth Properties [a real estate investment trust that filed to go public ]; and US Foods, a big food distributor [that filed to go public ]. KS: There’s more of a slowdown there. Companies have been able to stay private and many are still losing money; their business models aren’t completely formed. I do think investors will be more interested in tech IPOs, but companies will have to show that they’re profitable or close to profitability. KS: For sure, absolutely. That will make investors feel more confident. Some companies won’t get the valuations they wanted. But being a public company is very valuable when capital is drying up. For one thing, enterprise [customers] don’t worry as much whether a company is going to be around. Take [the storage company] Box. Even though it may have had a , it has more financial strength now than maybe Dropbox, which has been the bigger private company and maybe should have been out there already, too. |
Razer takes aim at game streaming community with Ripsaw capture card | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | Long ago, when capturing video of the game you were playing was something only pros and highly motivated gamers (the term had not its current currency and was, at the time, pejorative or at least belittling) attempted to do, and with as little glory as attended such vocations and avocations at the time, there was special hardware just for doing so. And really, there has always been ever since — but with live-game streaming becoming a disturbingly large business sector, the time has come for this niche hardware to enter the limelight it never enjoyed. is far from the first, but it leapfrogs the competition nicely and takes aim at a growing population of streamers who are willing to pay good money for an easily set up solution with industrial-strength capabilities. Capture cards sit in the middle of your audio and video streams, capturing the media in real time and broadcasting it via services like Twitch and YouTube before passing it on to your screen and speakers. There are internal and external solutions, and Ripsaw is the latter. That allows it to be connected easily to not just a streaming PC, but to any current-generation game console (and a few of the older ones, as well). This plug and play compatibility alone sets it apart from some of the competition, and the ability to capture in 1080p at 60 frames per second sets it apart from the rest. Razer offers its own microphones and other accessories, as well, of course, but unless you want to keep a consistent green and black color scheme, the standard A/V ports will accommodate whichever peripherals strike your fancy. You’ll still need a beefy PC to push the pixels and polygons through at the proper pressures, and USB 3.0 is mandatory. The $180 price tag puts Ripsaw somewhat above the popular options out there, but for now the 1080p/60 streaming alone might make it worth the price. Expect a lot more activity in this category over the next year — there’s blood in the water, and the arrival of Razer may be the tail nip that signals the beginning of a feeding frenzy. : , the Ripsaw is in fact a rebranded AverMedia Live Gamer Extreme, a model that came out last year but which I missed when comparing to other capture boxes. The price and features are the same, so buy whichever you like. |
Will capitalism survive the robot revolution? | Zoltan Istvan | 2,016 | 3 | 29 |
Economic experts are trying to figure out a question that just two decades ago seemed ridiculous: If 90 percent of human jobs are replaced by robots in the next 50 years — something now considered — is still the ideal economic system to champion? No one is certain about the answer, but the question is making everyone nervous — and forcing people to dig deep inside themselves to discover the kind of future they want. After America beat Russia in the Cold War, most of the world generally considered to be the hands-down best system on which to base economies and democracies. For decades, few doubted ’s merit, which was made stronger by thriving globalization and a skyrocketing world net worth. In 1989 — when the Berlin Wall fell — the world had only . Now, according to Forbes, there are 1,826 of them in . Despite growing riches, when banks collapsed in 2007 during the , the world stepped back and wondered aloud if a more nuanced approach to economic progress was needed. These doubts of 21st century helped set the stage for an economic paradigm shift just starting to appear — economists observing jobs not just disappearing to other countries, but disappearing off the face of the Earth. The culprit: robots and software. At first, the warnings of this weren’t very loud. After all, economies and companies thrive because of modernization, which includes upgrading with new tech to make and save money. But in the last year, a growing chorus of people are beginning to see a tipping point, maybe a decade in the future, where tens of millions of jobs may be lost in as short as a five-year period — which would be many more times the jobs lost during the Great Recession. Already today, there are countries trying out driverless trucks to deliver goods. Truck driving is one of the most prevalent jobs in America, with about 3.5 million . What we do if they are replaced with vehicles that don’t need human intervention to get on and off a highway to deliver goods? Of course, they are just one occupation amongst many — like waiters, bank tellers and even librarians — that might no longer require humans in the very near future. says this is the nature of the competitive economy. However, those jobs that are replaced never be regained, and truck drivers and waiters not easily find other jobs. Some likely need to be provided for by the state, otherwise grown men and women surely pick up Molotov cocktails and show the world a thing or two about worker revolutions. The only difference between this and other historical revolutions is they won’t be alone. This time it’s not a problem of the rich versus the poor. , everyone’s job be at stake, even that of my wife, who trained 19 years in college to become a practicing Ob/Gyn — and still today has $100,000 in school debt. But machines deliver babies and remove cervical cancer better than people. And software do taxes more efficiently than accountants. And articles be crafted better by news aggregating software than living, breathing journalists. Everyone, including even the , is at risk of being outperformed by a machine — and eventually being jobless and without income. So, now that we know we’re all going to lose our jobs, what system can make it so humans still be happy and live better without employment? Clearly, it’s not . Whichever system we choose have to incorporate an improving standard of life for people and society. For this reason, I tend to support a as one way to desire robots to take our jobs but not leave the world poor. However, that doesn’t really say what happen to economies after the is really underway. Some people have said a prevail once robots take all the jobs — an economic system that favors technology pampering humans all day long. Communism is a historically loaded word that few people like (including myself, a longtime entrepreneur). Additionally, it insinuates being chained to community and social service, something I think our individualistic-minded world may scoff at. The 21st century has made people feel more entitled than ever, and, frankly, with so much amazing innovation humans have come up with, we deserve it. We deserve to be pampered by technology. We deserve to never again work a day in our lives if we don’t want to. We deserve not to be bothered by government or society if we’re not bothering others. And we deserve to pursue lofty dreams instead struggling to earn a handful of dollars. In fact, I doubt money even this century. If anything, in the future, only knowledge have tradable value — the knowledge to create better machines, software and experiences from technology. Around this time — surely before 2075 — the be possible, a point where people connect themselves to artificial intelligence and essentially disappear into a sea of growing and organizing information. Then it’s anyone’s guess what happens to the world. However, back to reality here in 2016: Whatever economic system does prevail in the next 25 years, it won’t be like anything we thought of before. Karl Marx and Adam Smith simply did not account for what indefinite labor would mean to a new world increasingly reliant on microprocessors and 1s and 0s for its every step forward. Whatever happens, it’s probably best to keep an open mind about the future and new economic models. Many of us are running on a financial treadmill right now, trying to get ahead and realize the of riches and the good life. But in the future, the American Dream may be more about discovery of our newly acquired transhuman possibilities and enjoying the technology that has made our modern lives so simple and easy. I think I can get used to that. |
Women aren’t the only ones who feel they’re not paid fairly in tech | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | , the Glassdoor-like platform for self-reporting employment and compensation data, has released some data around culture at tech companies. Within a couple of weeks of launching, over 2,000 people have submitted data around what it’s like working at their respective companies in tech, if they believe they’re paid fairly and if they’re satisfied with their equity stake. The platform allows you to sort by location, the stage of company, money raised, years worth of experience and gender. “When we talk about the gender pay gap, it gets lumped into one big category,” Comparably co-founder and CEO Jason Nazar told me. “But I think what is interesting is when you start to see how compensation data and sentiment breaks down by what your job is.” Regarding fair pay, 53% of men in operations roles believe they’re paid fairly versus the 36% of women in operations roles. In finance roles, however, a higher percentage of women (58%) than men (47%) believe they’re paid fairly. I couldn’t help but raise my left eyebrow at the stats suggesting over 50% of men in tech marketing, admin and finance roles don’t believe they’re paid fairly. Is it a matter of feeling entitled or do they have some legitimate reason to think that? Women, on the other hand, have a legitimate reason, based on factual data to believe that they’re not paid fairly. Women make 78 cents for every $1 a man makes. For women of color, that figure is even lower. African-American women earn 64 cents for very $1 a white man makes, and Hispanic women make 56 cents per dollar earned by white men. What would be really interesting is seeing how accurate these fair pay perceptions are with reality. But, before Comparably combines the compensation data with culture and perception data, the company wants to collect more data so that it can attain statistical significance, Nazar said. “However the numbers actually play out, if an employee or set of employees feel a certain a way, it’s something that needs to be addressed,” Nazar said. “Otherwise, it’s going to be a problem.” In the near future, Comparably will offer data around other industries, as well as enable people to sort through compensation and culture data by race. Comparably . Below is a gallery of culture data Comparably collected around fair pay, having a close friend at work, satisfaction with equity compensation and mentorship at work. [gallery ids="1298739,1298740,1298742,1298741"] |
Instagram needs editing tools to make new 60-second videos tolerable | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | Most people are terrible at shooting video. Any longer than 15-seconds and it will probably be boring. That’s why Instagram capped videos at a quarter-minute when it launched the feature in 2013. Yet today it for user-shot or uploaded videos. That’s why I have a hunch that Facebook and Instagram are preparing to launch a more powerful set of video editing tools so that you can make minute-long clips that are actually interesting. While some worried that videos would be interruptive and clumsy in the sleek Instagram photo feed, people have warmed up to them. Instagram says video viewing time grew 40% in just the last 6 months. Meanwhile, Instagram started to make some solid revenue on video ads that it launched in 2014. First they were . Then 30 starting in September, then . But since they were so much longer than user videos, they might have felt unnatural to watch. Letting users post minute-long videos could make the longer ads blend in better. Basically, people like video in Instagram, and longer user-generated videos make it easier for Instagram to make money on the medium. So how does Instagram make people want to watch each other’s 60-second videos? My bet is by finally offering some of the video editing tools found elsewhere. As of right now, all you can do to edit a video in Instagram is add multiple clips, trim the lengths, add a filter, toggle sound or stabilization, and select a cover frame. The list of popular editing features it lacks is lonnnnnnng: These tools could inspire people to go beyond the “point, shoot, pan, done” amateur clips you see today, and become true instavideographers. These more polished reels could hold people’s attention when more dopamine-inducing photos are just a flick away. Instagram could potentially release video editing tools as a side app, adding to its wildly popular roster that includes Hyperlapse for timelapses, Layout for collages, and Boomerang for GIFs. That would keep the core app clean and give the tools plenty of room to breathe in their own space. Alternatively, it could bury them in the main Instagram app. That’s what Instagram did when it released granular photo editing tools beyond its normal filters so you could adjust contrast, warmth, shadow, tilt shift in more.. They all got rolled up and hidden away behind the wrench icon to not distract or slow down novice photo sharers Honestly, Facebook needs these tools even more than Instagram. It’s outdated. Facebook’s video tool doesn’t even allow multi-shot tap-to-record, filters, stabilization, or cover images. . That’s despite video viewing becoming insanely popular on Facebook, growing an order of magnitude to over in the same time period. Everyone seems to know mobile video is the future, especially Facebook and Instagram’s users. If the social giant wants us to watch longer and longer clips, it needs to let us spice them up. |
FTC files false advertising lawsuit against VW | Kristen Hall-Geisler | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | This morning, the filed a lawsuit against , charging that it “deceived customers with the advertising campaign it used to promote its supposedly ‘clean diesel’ VWs and Audis,” according to the . As I’m sure you recall, these are the vehicles that were caught cheating on emissions tests in October 2015. The lawsuit seeks damages for any Americans who bought or leased one of the Volkswagens or Audis from 2008 to 2015. It also asks that Volkswagen not deceive consumers anymore, a lesson it seems they’ve learned in the past six months. The FTC says that Volkswagen advertised its diesel vehicles as being low-emissions, environmentally friendly cars that would retain their resale value. More than half a million Americans thought that sounded pretty good and purchased or leased diesel VWs and Audis over those seven years. In particular, the lawsuit notes that these cars were advertised as being “50-state compliant,” meaning that they would pass emissions tests everywhere in the country, even in the toughest states, like California. And they certainly did pass those tests, but not honestly. When the cars detected that they were being tested for emissions in the lab, which is the usual way they’re tested, a few lines of code changed the way the engine behaved to emit fewer pollutants. When cars were driven on the road, the engine would optimize for performance and sacrifice emissions. When they were tested on the road using probes in the tailpipe, nitrous oxide emissions were as much as 35 times the standard, as discovered by the with help from . The lawsuit charges that this was an unfair practice. You probably know if you’re one of the consumers affected, but in case you’re unsure, the lawsuit covers 2009 through 2015 Volkswagen TDI Jettas, Passats, and Touaregs, plus all Audi TDI vehicles for those years. The average price of these vehicles was $28,000, and the FTC is suing for compensation for anyone who purchased one of these vehicles at any price. |
The future of interactive music is here, courtesy of Jeff Buckley | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | For his most recent cover of Bob Dylan’s Just Like a Woman, ‘s creative team has pulled out all the stops. Dropping today is an interactive music video with a gabazillion possible iterations for the viewer to explore, creating a unique listening experience every time. Not too shabby for an artist who shuffled off this mortal coil almost 20 years ago. Can I just say… It’s a bloody exciting time to be a music lover. Between the creative videos by , the novel, way of launching a new song by Justin Bieber and, of course, , there’s no shortage of creativity and innovation. You and I is a collection of tracks found in Sony Music’s archives, most of them virtually unheard for the past 20 years. In Buckley’s new video, the listener can click on various panels of the video’s scrolling animation to change the story. Interesting enough on its own, but not all that innovative — Then, about 15 seconds into the video, kick it up a notch, and start giving the viewer choices about the music itself as well, making it possible to create a remix on the fly, as the track is playing. How very cool, and how Jeff Buckley. The listener can choose to create a bare solo performance featuring little more than Buckley’s voice, or go all in, with piano accompaniment, full orchestration, and even a backing choir. Dylan’s song-writing magic means that Just Like a Woman is multi-layered out the wazoo, and the magic of the interactive video, of course, is that it becomes possible to guide the listener towards one meaning or the other; the fully-orchestrated version sounds profoundly different than the stripped-back vocal version — and all the varieties in between give the listener new ways to hear the song, and new ways of exploring the music. If you break out the calculator, you’ll find there are over 16,000 different music combinations that can be created, and the record company will gleefully tell you that if you look at all the different animated cells to alter the story, you end up with a mind-boggling number of different combinations. A sexdecillion, in fact, which is a one, followed by 51 zeros. In other words, watching all the possible combinations of Buckley’s song will take you of years. So, er, good luck with that. The video will be available as an iOS app as well, and includes an option at the end to create a movie poster poster with all the cell combinations chosen by the user, which can be shared to your friends. And to your enemies, for that matter. So, are you ready to fall into a music hole for a few hours? Excellent. Grab a beer, and let’s go:
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Lyft gets back to Zimride roots with Lyft Carpool | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | Back in 2007 co-founders John Zimmer and Logan Green envisioned a new kind of mass transportation carpooling system connecting riders and drivers across the nation. They called it . But it turned out a lot more people wanted to get around the city than wanted to go the distance and the parent company was supplanted with something pinker and fuzzier a few years later. now wants you to take a ride back to its Zimride roots with . Doesn’t Lyft already have a carpooling service called Lyft Line? It does! Sort of. Line will take you and a bunch of strangers across town for a few bucks, like a carpool, but the ride would be much more expensive if you wanted to go from the Marina to Mountain View, for example. Rival service Uber doesn’t care if you want to go to Smitten Ice Cream on Octavia or Rick’s in Palo Alto using its version of Line, UberPOOL. The cost may be exorbitant to get you down the 101, but it will take you there ($38.80 from TechCrunch HQ, in case you were curious). But price seems to be a for riders in choosing between rideshare services. Lyft Line hasn’t gone beyond city limits for that reason, Lyft tells TechCrunch. So just how far is Carpool willing to take us right now? You may have noticed all these location references have been within the Bay Area. That’s because this is where Lyft’s new offering will serve for the time being. Lyft teamed up with the California Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and its , with whom Lyft a partnership, to pair riders up with drivers headed the same way on their daily commute. The ride cost will be about $4 to $10 each way, depending on the distance – about the same as a trip down to Mountain View from the city if you first take MUNI and then hop on Caltrain. But Carpool could potentially save about an hour of time, depending on traffic conditions. The rideshare company Carpool in December and has since gathered data from potential carpoolers before going live today to determine the busiest commutes. Those who’ve driven anywhere in Silicon Valley will probably not be shocked to find the 101 haul from San Francisco down the peninsula is the number one requested commute. Lyft says that knowledge and some other data about when and where commuters need rides most will help create match efficiency within the app. The service has the potential to also cut down on CO2. Emissions are a problem far beyond the Bay and an economical route relieving a portion of your carbon footprint may be enticing to at least a few green-friendly Lyft riders. But carpooling isn’t a new concept – it’s been around since the 1970’s – and there are plenty of other carpooling apps in Silicon Valley. I to Uber and Lyft awhile ago. It doesn’t seem like we need another one. But Lyft has an advantage the others don’t, says Lyft’s director of transportation policy Emily Castor – brand recognition. “We now have a very mature marketplace. Millions of people in the Bay Area have used our service. Millions of rides have happened through the platform and brand recognition as well as an install base of users who are familiar with our app,” Castor told TechCrunch. “We believe that will position us to be more successful.” Carpooling isn’t for everyone – some people really like the idea of getting a personal driver to themselves. But Green’s and Zimmer’s goals have been pretty clear from the start of their journey – provide efficient rides, cheaply. Uber may come up with something similar beyond POOL soon (the two seem to come up with right around the time the other announces something). But, for now, Carpool provides Lyft with one more affordable form of transportation in the rideshare race. |
Google Fiber’s latest innovation is a landline | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | Google Fiber may be the holy grail of Internet service for many, but many people still rely on landlines for everyday communication purposes or emergency use. In order to allow its subscribers to sever connections with the old local ISPs and telecoms completely, Google home phone service for Fiber subscribers. For $10 a month (phone not included, alas), will do all the things you (well, not , TechCrunch reader, but others) have always done with a landline — which is mainly make and receive phone calls. Google sweetens the deal with some advanced features (possible because the service lives in the cloud) that seem most likely to be used by people unlikely to have a landline, but I’m sure they will be welcome nevertheless. Fiber Phone features unlimited calls to the U.S., call filtering and blocking, voicemail transcription, and call forwarding to your mobile so you don’t miss that telemarketer. It may seem an anachronism, but if Google aims to be the main or even sole conduit for communication in the areas it is expanding to, it does have to offer this. Otherwise, some (say) CenturyLink subscriber is going to fail to switch because they’d rather keep their phone and have one bill, in spite of poor speeds and service. No word on where Fiber Phone will appear to start, but “over time” it should be available in all Fiber-powered cities. You can sign up for updates . |
Apple teams up with Cookie Monster to sell you on hands-free Siri | Matthew Panzarino | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | If I had to choose a sound to identify the second year of my daughter’s life it would probably be one of the collaborations between Sesame Street superstar Cookie Monster and one of the hot pop stars of the day. Although “ ” will never win any lyricist awards, it was catchy, taught patience and provided the kind of cultural crossover that has kept Sesame Workshop and Sesame Street relevant for over 45 years. Today, Apple is airing a new iPhone commercial that similarly taps into Cookie Monster’s enduring appeal to promote the hands-free Siri functionality of the iPhone. In a spot that is very reminiscent of the on YouTube (that can’t be an accident), Cookie Monster uses Siri to help him bake some cookies, and helps him pass the time doing his least-favorite thing: waiting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCbWyYr82BM It’s a cute spot that hits some great buttons and is clearly aimed at parents who have their hands full of one thing or another pretty much 24/7. Apple has worked with the Sesame Workshop over the years — there are many iPad and iPhone apps, for instance. But the involvement goes way back to when the then-called Children’s Television Workshop . I remember playing those games myself actually — my favorite was Big Bird’s Special Delivery. Though stars typically get compensated to work in commercials, the funds from this spot will no doubt funnel into the organization’s continued programming and services for kids, which my daughter will appreciate. |
SpoonRocket finds a home with Brazil-based iFood | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | SpoonRocket, the on-demand food delivery startup that in the U.S., has a buyer. That buyer is Brazil-based , a food delivery platform looking to dominate the on-demand economy in Latin America, as well as other emerging economies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. iFood, which has raised nearly $62 million in funding from Latin American commerce platform and British take-out company , has been on an acquisition tear in the last couple of years, having bought Brazilian food delivery competitors like Central do Delivery, Papa Rango and Alakarte. SpoonRocket is the company’s 15th acquisition in two years. iFood plans to use SpoonRocket’s logistics platform to optimize delivery times and order tracking, improve the restaurant-to-customer experience and continue expanding throughout Latin America. Right now, iFood is seeing 1.5 million orders a month and is profitable. Back in June, when Just Eat invested in iFood, . News of this purchase comes as a bit of a surprise, given that just yesterday, that it tried to get someone to buy the company, but the acquirer abandoned the deal. That apparently left SpoonRocket with iFood, which had been in talks with SpoonRocket for a couple of weeks, iFood CFO Carlos Eduardo Moyses told TechCrunch. “They were looking for a buyer to keep it alive in the U.S., but they could not get it together,” Moyses said. As part of the acquisition SpoonRocket, iFood will work with SpoonRocket’s CTO to help develop the company’s technology into iFood’s platform. It should take about two to three months to fully integrate SpoonRocket’s platform into iFood’s, Moyses said. “We are very happy to have found a home for our technology with iFood,” Tsui said in a release. “Even though SpoonRocket did not work out, I do believe we have one of the best food delivery systems in the world and it is amazing to see it live on through iFood.” |
Why Latin American economies are turning to bitcoin | Sonny Singh | 2,016 | 3 | 16 |
The economic prospects for America in 2016 are grim. With political instability in some of the region’s largest as well as a general slump in prices in oil and other commodities, businesses and consumers are facing a depression and, in the case of Venezuela, economic collapse. The crash of the Chinese stock market has severely hurt the economy, as well — China is the No. 1 commercial partner for several countries in the region. Many Americans are to as a solution, and the recent crises seem only to have accelerated adoption. Last year, adoption of the digital currency broke records in America. Payment processor BitPay in mid-2015, but the most notable growth took place toward the end of last year. merchant transactions finished the year having from the beginning of 2015. Other key figures from Brazil’s ecosystem showed . Exchange trading in Mexico in 2015. In America, the country most known for is Argentina. And while Argentina has had the most enthusiasts per capita, that may be starting to change. Brazilians and Venezuelans also have good reasons to adopt — holders in 2015 that performed more than 400 percent better than the Venezuelan Bolivar, more than 92 percent over the Brazilian Real, more than 65 percent over the Mexican Peso and more than 41 percent over the Argentine Peso. The crisis facing did not begin in 2016. Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil ended 2015 with serious economic problems, including huge inflation rates — as high as , and . The problems started in previous years, and administrations are continuing to impact these . The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts a 720 percent inflation rate for Venezuela during 2016. The Brazilian economy has entered a recession that, according to the will be the longest since 1930-31. Argentina’s Minister of Finance in Argentina predicts a minimum of 25 percent inflation, and estimate that 2016 inflation could be as high as 38 percent, with a 30 percent devaluation of the Argentine Peso against the U.S. dollar. As the crisis deepens in America, some governments are tightening capital controls. The Brazilian government has over the payments sent out of the country (including remittances, tourism expenses and other services) that increases costs to 25 percent (and up to 33 percent). There are other major problems for businesses and consumers making both cross-border and local payments: settlements can take weeks and cost more than 10 percent. has proven to be a solution for many of the problems caused by inflation and subsequent capital controls. And while workers and merchants have turned to first as a hedge against devalued local currencies, the technology is beginning to find a number of practical applications as a payment method. While it may seem like an unlikely success, ‘s growth has a precedent in America’s rapid Internet adoption. While the share of web users in America is still small compared to that of developed countries, . The region’s social media users almost quadruple its share of web browser users, showing how important mobile e-commerce and social networks are becoming for the general population. Since 2014, Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp have been the main networks that have benefitted from that growth in America. users make up 38 percent of WhatsApp’s user base, while users make up 20 percent of Facebook’s global user base. Argentinians and Brazilians are among the . As more Americans become used to the freedom and global connection that web technologies like social media provide, will continue to be an attractive alternative to payment systems built for a pre-digital world. The election of Argentina’s new President Mauricio Macri represents a political shift in Argentina after 12 years of government by the Kirchner family. Macri’s government has already shown signs of welcome for adoption. Macri is because of his social media presence, and it was through his Facebook profile that he talked about his meeting with BitPay investor Sir Richard Branson, as one of the most interesting activities of the billionaire. Macri was the mayor of Buenos Aires before he became president, and it was during his term that the city government organized in Buenos Aires in July 2015. The city has also endorsed the announced in Bank Magazine, stating that “due to our monetary history and because we rapidly adopt alternatives to the Argentine Peso, we play an important role in ‘s popularity.” The buzz in Argentina also hasn’t gone unnoticed by local politicians. It was the country’s youngest mayor Martin Yeza who that his mid-term agenda will include implementation and regulatory approval for the popular ridesharing platform Uber. Embracing would be a big step forward in the path toward the economic freedom objectives of this government, which has already ended the “cepo” capital controls created by the former administration. Macri’s government has also , among other important liberalization efforts. While it isn’t clear if the Brazilian and Venezuelan governments will respond to in the same way, will be front and center in the changes the Argentine government is making to counter the economic crisis. Although usage is growing rapidly in America, it still faces several obstacles. E-commerce hasn’t yet had the same impact in America as it has had in the larger markets of North America and Europe. While some Americans distrust their own currencies, they’re not all ready to use in day-to-day transactions or rely on it as a store of value. Another challenge to adoption is the friction for consumers to buy and sell . There are few large exchanges or wallets in the markets where is picking up the most steam, and transferring money to exchanges outside of America is difficult. While Mexican and Brazilian users have a growing base of exchanges with Bitso, MexBT and Volabit (Mexico) and Mercado , FoxBit and Bitcointoyou (Brazil), Argentina and Venezuela’s exchange resources are still limited. America stands out as a land of opportunities for in 2016. It won’t be interest that drives adoption but real need, and Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico and Argentina may turn out to be the best countries for pushing into the mainstream. |
Apple looks to Google’s Cloud Platform as it diversifies its infrastructure | Ron Miller | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | : |
Oculus shows off first-look of Minecraft for Gear VR and it’s mehhh | Lucas Matney | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | in all its blocky glory is setting up shop on mobile virtual reality on the Samsung Gear VR. I had a chance to demo the game at an Oculus media event during GDC in SF this week and there was a decent amount of hype surrounding the wildly popular game making its mobile VR debut. Microsoft is already set to launch a version of the game for the Rift sometime this spring. My VR Minecraft experience left a bit to be desired. Gameplay takes place in full VR and cinema modes and requires an external bluetooth gamepad, which does give the mobile headset a substantially beefy gaming feel. I will say that Gear VR is probably not a good platform on which to start playing Minecraft if you’re not used to the way the game operates. When it comes to porting existing game experiences to virtual reality, one of the toughest things to do is nail camera angles, and this title was largely hit or miss in that regard. The camera moves in jumpy ticks, so there are no smooth transitions, despite having a gamepad that should easily let you move the camera the way you desire. The most bothersome feature of the game is the lazy way they chose to add inventory and health menus to float in space in front of you. It doesn’t work that well and, unless you have the headset positioned on your face, it’s pretty impossible to read any of the info as it’s far too small. Full VR mode is oddly a bit disorienting despite the fact that it’s such an iconically basic blocky game, but there was something odd-feeling about it. Cinema mode is the most comfortable to play through, but, as with other games, there’s the nagging feeling that playing in 2D is a waste of the platform. It was fun to experience such a major title on Gear VR, and its launch speaks to the clout Gear VR is earning as an actual piece of gaming hardware. But porting the same experience of console VR to mobile VR is a pretty dangerous move here. Hopefully the teams at Microsoft can make some updates before there is a full release on the Oculus store. |
Munchery’s chief customer experience officer leaves company | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | Munchery, the on-demand meal delivery startup with over $117 million in funding, has lost Pascal Rigo, . Rigo had formerly spent three years at Starbucks as SVP of food, after the coffee giant bought La Boulange, the bakery chain Rigo founded in 1996. Rigo resigned because he didn’t share Munchery’s strategy for growth and “vision” for the future anymore, . When Rigo joined Munchery in October, he told me his goal was to make Munchery’s delivery bags as iconic as the Starbucks cup. Ultimately, as Munchery’s first-ever chief customer experience officer, he was in charge of every aspect of Munchery that had a touch point with the customer — from working with chefs to make sure the food was good to developing new programs. Under Rigo’s leadership, , which are designed to serve two people and takes just 15 minutes to cook. What’s next for Rigo? Well, he plans to focus on his family and La Boulangerie, the group of six bakeries in the San Francisco Bay Area he opened last year, according to Eater SF. Rigo’s departure happened at an interesting time, given that Munchery’s competitor SpoonRocket shut down yesterday, and it’s other competitor, UberEATS, . “The entire Munchery team thanks Pascal for his many contributions to the company, a Munchery spokesperson told TechCrunch via email. “Under his leadership and direction, we have elevated our menu offerings – most notably through the launch of our Ready-to-Cook line of meal kits – brought on new chef partners and laid the foundation for exciting projects, soon to be announced. La Boulangerie will continue as a key supplier of Munchery’s breakfast and dessert options, with Pascal remaining an important business partner to the Munchery team.” |
US Senate bill would give FAA 2 years to create rules for delivery drones | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation today the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill. In to the bill filed by Senators Heller and Cantwell, the Senate committee instructs the FAA to create rules for delivery drones within the next two years. It’s worth noting that the bill is still working its way through the Senate and should hit the floor for a final vote next month. While the original version of the reauthorization bill for commercial drone operators, this amendment asks the FAA to create a set of rules that would allow Amazon, Google and others to use drones for delivery purposes. “Not later than 2 years after the data of enactment of this section, the Secretary of Transportation shall issue a final rule authorizing the carriage of property by operators of small unmanned aircraft systems for compensation or hire within the United States,” the amendment reads. Thanks for championing delivery amendment in FAA bill. Great for future customers! — Amazon Policy (@amazon_policy) Under these rules, the FAA would have to establish a certificate for drone operators who want to use delivery drones, including those who want to operate commercial — and highly automated — fleets. The amendment also calls for this certificate to be performance-based and safety-focused. For the most part, this is what Amazon, Google and others that want to get into the drone delivery game have been requesting. Amazon’s proposal, for example, would create different tiers of drones based on their on-board safety features. Only those that can fly in a fully autonomous mode would be allowed for delivery operations, for example. |
Nike just unveiled the first real power-lacing sneaker, the HyperAdapt 1.0 | Fitz Tepper | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | It’s finally here. After teaming up with Michael J. Fox to on Back To The Future day in October, Nike has finally announced a mass production shoe that will feature real-life power laces. Meet the . Announced today at the Nike Innovation Summit, the HyperAdapt 1.0 will be the first shoe to take advantage of Nike’s adaptive lacing (self-tying) technology, which the company is touting as an entire new platform for sneakers. [gallery ids="1292792,1292793,1292794,1292762,1292800"] This means that one day your Jordan’s, Air Max’s, and FlyKnit shoes could all be built on top of Nike’s adaptive lacing platform. But before we get ahead of ourselves, lets take a closer look at how the shoe will actually work. In the launch announcement, Nike touted the self-tying shoes as a way to reduce a typical athlete concern, distraction. So, to save wearers time, the shoes will automatically tighten as soon as you step into the shoe. “Your heel will hit a sensor and the system will automatically tighten,” explains Tiffany Beers, the project’s technical lead. “Then there are two buttons on the side to tighten and loosen. You can adjust it until it’s perfect.” The shoes will launch during the 2016 holiday season, in three colors. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet, but the company said that it will only be available for sale to members of , their new all-in-one product and events app. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=z7Cyv3cvIxY |
Bullish: What’s driving the maker movement | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | The maker movement is hot. Worldwide, there are about 2,000 maker spaces and 26 percent of cities in the U.S. have them. I sat down with Inventables CEO Zach Kaplan to learn about what’s driving the movement and where it’s headed. “I think it’s a bunch of things,” Kaplan said. “One, access to all these technologies is getting super cheap. It used to be you had to spend thousands on software and thousands on hardware.” The culture is also really starting to come to life because the Internet makes it super easy to learn about building things yourself via sites like and , Kaplan said. Be sure to watch the full episode to learn more about the maker movement. |
Human Ventures turns ‘normals’ into founders | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | A number of startup studios are in the midst of a years-long experiment, providing back-end assistance, office space and mentoring to talented, ambitious people in order to create a startup with them, often based around their expertise. was the first to try it, opening its doors in New York roughly . Others, including , a San Francisco-based firm with an office in New York; , based in L.A.; and Chicago-based are among many newer models, each with their own twist. , which opened its doors in New York roughly a year ago, thinks it has struck on a model that can work, too. The outfit was founded by entrepreneur Joe Marchese, who’d to 21st Century Fox for $200 million in late 2014. But Marchese is just the largest among a group of mostly New York-based angel investors who are investors in Human Ventures. Indeed, the now six-person firm, which has raised an undisclosed amount of money, is largely run by CEO Heather Hartnett and Megan O’Connor, who joined the firm last May as its chief growth officer. They aren’t longtime startup veterans. Hartnett ran business development at the venture firm City Light Capital and, before that, worked in philanthropy, including at the David Lynch Foundation. O’Connor also worked previously in nonprofits, including as a development director at both Pencils of Promise and Goods for Good. That they’re comparative outsiders is kind of the point of Human Ventures, though, which is looking to seize on people’s skills in a way that puts them on an entirely new, and hopefully more fruitful, career path. Harnett and O’Connor are expert at fundraising and networking, for example, which a recent dinner in San Francisco helped to underscore. Held at one of the city’s smallest (and therefore, hippest) restaurants, two popular VCs rubbed elbows — literally — with four product leads from top Internet companies, along with several rising-star founders, an angel investor, a reporter, and O’Connor, who helped organize the evening. The events are a regular occurrence, suggests O’Connor, who says Human Ventures often organizes intimate gatherings, including on behalf of its investors. Such relationships will be central to Human Ventures’s success. As Harnett sees it, New York is a very different ecosystem than San Francisco, where far fewer people imagine themselves as entrepreneurs, even in a day and age when founders are so widely celebrated. “People who’ve worked in large companies and who want to work in really early-stage companies need help in bridging the gap,” Hartnett says. “They might not feel comfortable making that leap on their own despite their industry expertise or being really great at product.” Meanwhile, she says, Human Ventures promises them access to its “human network, which we’ve been developing for a long time.” It enables them to “help entrepreneurs get started really fast, as well as provide them with strategic relationships to help them fill in the gaps.” Human Ventures is clearly still evolving. Thought it’s involved with six startups, it has launched just three at its Union Square offices and alas, they’re all in stealth mode. (One, an app to help freelancers get paid, sounds particularly interesting.) The others include , a digital concierge service that Marchese had invested in previously. (Part of his stake was transferred to Human Ventures when he founded it.) Human Ventures also holds a stake in , a marketing and advocacy firm for issue-driven films that predates Human Ventures but with which it’s working to develop digital products. Human Ventures also helped put together the founding team of , a new payments platform, with fellow startup studio Expa. (Current is currently located at Expa’s offices.) All of its startups democratize access to premium experiences in some way, shape or form, says O’Connor, adding that half were started by first-time entrepreneurs. As for what Human Ventures asks in return from those companies it helps build from the ground up, O’Connor says its ownership stake can range from 10 percent to just under 50 percent, depending on its level of involvement. “We don’t want a conveyor belt formula,” she says. “We do want founders coming in who will own the majority of their business.” If Human Ventures can get a bigger bite later on, that’d be okay, too. Sounding very much like the company builder and investor she has become, Hartnett tells us: “Right now, we’re investing off our balance sheet to fund our companies, but the near-term goal is to raise a fund and keep [our pro rata] stake in them as they grow. The platform was created to help companies, but [our] value later [will be] financial.” |
Steve Wozniak discusses his inaugural Silicon Valley Comic Con | Fitz Tepper | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | Last week I sat down with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to hear about his newest creation, . The event, which will be held this weekend at the San Jose Convention Center, will play host to celebrities like Michael J. Fox, William Shatner and Stan Lee. Woz and his team expect almost 30,000 attendees throughout the weekend. The convention will also feature some technology elements, like an Oculus showcase and an area where app startups can demo their technology. Watch the above video to hear more from Woz on why he decided to found the event, and why he is so excited about it. Tickets are still on sale, and can be purchased on the . |
The Apple Watch hack: Bringing design expertise to reinvent the wearable | Kevin Young | 2,016 | 3 | 16 |
I bought an six months ago. This was no casual purchase. As an Apple fan, a watch collector and with more than 20 years of experience in the design innovation space, I had extremely high expectations of the purchase. While I have enjoyed the stylish Apple Watch’s features and functions, I have occasionally felt frustrated with the overall experience, for two, admittedly personal, reasons. First, the Apple Watch won’t continuously monitor my heart rate. Because of a history of heart disease in my family, I keep a close eye on my health. Tracking my heart rate over the course of days and weeks would provide me with beneficial longitudinal data. The Apple Watch is designed to measure a user’s heart rate whenever the Workout App is launched, but otherwise won’t record it when one moves, which is exactly when I want to measure it (I realize this saves battery life, but I’d be happy to recharge throughout the day to have this functionality). Second, it’s hard to fit the Apple Watch into my aesthetic life. As a guy who has collected watches for more than 20 years, I was disappointed that wearing my Apple Watch meant not wearing my other timepieces. I’ve tried to wear both the Apple Watch and a watch from my collection simultaneously, one on each wrist, but it was uncomfortable…and I felt like a tech nerd (no offense to tech nerds — I am one, but sometimes I try to hide it). So I saw this as an interesting design challenge, similar to the kind I frequently face in my day-to-day work. This time, however, I was both the designer and the consumer. Could I find a way to wear the Apple Watch daily, gather continuous heart rate information and still wear my other watches? I’ve had significant experience designing both medical devices and consumer products, so I was hoping to employ this knowledge in creating my solution. My first thought: The body of the Apple Watch can be separated from its band. That might be the kernel of a solution. This watch body “engine” module could potentially be relocated on the body without the use of the watchbands. Next came a four-step design process: Determine if the Apple Watch’s heart rate monitor would work when worn on other parts of the body. I created a series of quick hack models to see what would happen if I wore the watch on my ankle, shoulder, forearm and abdomen while running. The Apple Watch successfully monitored my heart rate when worn on my ankle, shoulder and forearm — but not my abdomen. This is likely because relies on reading the flow of blood, and there is insufficient “visible” blood flow around the abdomen. Figure out where on my body to wear the watch engine. I quickly saw that there weren’t many options…especially because I wanted to be able to view the watch screen at all times. My ankle and shoulder had inherent visibility — and screen-access challenges. I settled on my upper forearm. In this location, I could wear the watch engine discretely, underneath a long-sleeved shirt. It would be invisible with sleeves rolled down, yet accessible when needed. Devise a process for attaching the Apple Watch to the forearm. There was no easy way to attach it to my forearm. The Apple Watch bands weren’t long enough to encircle the forearm, and even if they were, the screen was improperly oriented for viewing. This meant that the Apple Watch band connection points probably couldn’t be used to hold it to the forearm. Prototype. Knowing that the Apple Watch body module would effectively read my heart rate on my forearm, I began creating wearable prototypes that would hold the watch to my forearm. In the end, I built four prototypes. A skin-safe clear adhesive leveraged from medical products (Tegaderm) covers the watch body. The advantages are that it’s easy to apply and it holds well to the arm. The disadvantages are that the adhesive looks creepy on the skin and the Apple Watch screen is a little hard to see through the adhesive. The watch body is held under clear film pocket in a plastic frame and a flexible fabric strap is added to secure the watch body to the forearm. The strap worked well and the watch body can easily be inserted and removed, but it looks over-designed and bulky on the arm. A clear watch body case is attached to a flexible strap (brought forward from the second prototype). The Apple Watch snaps into the case and it holds the watch body in the proper orientation. This provides a more traditional look — like a smartphone-holding exercise strap — and it’s comfortable and easy/quick to put on and take off. However, this configuration limits use to only the forearm (and maybe ankle); ideally I’d like a solution I could wear on other parts of my body. A clear watch body case is attached to a flexible fabric patch. A medical skin-safe adhesive (from the first prototype) is applied to the underside of the patch. The watch body snaps into the clear case. The advantages are that it’s easy to apply, holds well to the arm and can be used in multiple locations on the body. There are no disadvantages. Working in the design industry, we regularly do what we call Resonance Testing: giving our prototypes to consumers to understand which target attributes resonate with them. This testing process isn’t about finding a statistical winner. Rather, it focuses on concept evolution — carrying forward only the most successful aspects of each idea. Although this test of the Apple Watch engine was an N of 1, I followed a similar approach, evolving each concept and brining the best attributes to the subsequent concepts. In the end, the fourth prototype, the Apple Patch, most effectively fit my life. What was it about the Apple Patch? The watch body, which was held in place by a clear plastic case attached to a skin-safe adhesive patch, allowed me to wear it unobtrusively while also wearing one of my favorite watches from my collection. It also allowed the flexibility to wear it in different locations on my body. The patch could also be customized with various colors and patterns. So this redesign allowed the Apple Watch to continuously feed me information about my heart rate, just as I desired. In fact, I’m rolling up my sleeve and looking down at my Apple Watch as I type this, and can report that my heart rate is 58. The Apple Watch hack provided two good lessons: Although experiential prototyping and testing is core to any designer’s approach, I was excited by how quickly I was able to evolve and improve the design by creating informal testing models. It made me further appreciate the importance of this agile-like approach to innovation and failing forward fast. Consumers have unique needs and companies should support and encourage in the products and services they create. As the maker movement and at-home 3D printing grows, it will be even more important to empower consumers to be part of the design and innovation process. |
Microsoft partners with Commonwealth of Virginia, Dominion on 20 MW solar project | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | Microsoft today that it is partnering with and the to build a 20 megawatts solar energy plant in Virginia. Microsoft — like its competitors AWS, Google and others — has long been investing in renewable energy projects. Most of these investments focused on powering its data centers. Microsoft’s new deal is different, however, and a first for the company. The idea here is to partner with the government of Virginia and Dominion to build this solar energy plant and then immediately retire “these green attributes to maximize the positive environmental impact overall.” By doing this, Microsoft gets to “claim the green attributes of a brand new solar project constructed by Dominion” and use the project to satisfy its own sustainability goals. The green attributes here include the renewable energy certificates generated by the project, for example. The new 20 megawatts solar farm should generate enough energy to power about 5,000 homes. Virginia will purchase the energy from the project to serve its own state agencies. “Through these kinds of partnerships with states and utilities, Microsoft can provide the long-term certainty needed to expand the amount of renewable energy available on the grid,” Microsoft’s chief environmental and cities strategist Rob Bernard writes today. “We are excited that through this project we have created a viable new public-private partnership model for the company and look forward to expanding on this new approach.” It’s worth noting that Virginia Dominion’s plans for building this solar farm last October because it hadn’t considered third-party market alternatives. This new project, too, still has to get regulatory approval. The partners are not disclosing how much they are investing in this new venture. When Dominion first proposed this plant, though, the company it would cost about $2,350 per kilowatt. A Microsoft spokesperson, however, told me that “this project is part of Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to renewable energy and our carbon program which the company invests over $20 million/year on.” |
This team has built adorable tiny backpacks for pigeons to track air pollution | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | It’s time to take wearable devices to the next level. and have teamed up for an interesting experiment. What if pigeons could fly around London with tiny backpacks to measure air pollution during peak hours? I’m not sure if they were drunk when they thought about this idea, but 10 pigeons are currently flying above London for the next 3 days to do just that. The is wearing custom-made backpacks that are as light as a feather. These backpacks monitor ozone, volatile compounds and nitrogen dioxide as well as the location of the pigeons. And they are adorable. Our patrol are all roosting and we're signing off for tonight. Goodnight London – see you in the morning! — Pigeon Air Patrol (@PigeonAir) These aren’t your average pigeons. The team is working with and his racing pigeons to make sure that they are up to the task. A vet is also checking the pigeons regularly. And if you live in London, you can follow the Pigeon Air Patrol and ask them for the latest pollution reading in your area. Plume Labs has been working on pollution prediction for a while. With the app on iOS and Android, you can see the current pollution in your area and get a forecast for the next 24 hours. It works for hundreds of cities around the world. It’s like a weather app, but for air pollution. The company is using open data from existing weather stations but plans to extend its data points using wearable devices. While pigeons make for a great marketing stunt, the company is already working on clippable pollution measuring devices for… you know… humans. The Imperial College London plans on with Plume Labs for a research project called E-Plume. This time, 100 human Londoners will track their daily exposure to air pollution to understand pollution hotspots and patterns. “The idea is that we can build a ‘Waze for pollution’ thanks to this data from our users,” Plume Labs co-founder and CEO Romain Lacombe told me. The Plume Air Report app already tries to predict pollution, but it could be more accurate with more data points. Plume Labs started a to support the research project. Backers get to take part in the human experiment later this year. Our backpacks measure Nitrogen Dioxide, Ozone and other volatile compounds in the air as we fly. — Pigeon Air Patrol (@PigeonAir) |
AliveCor unveils Kardia Band, a medical-grade EKG band for Apple Watch | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | A medtech startup called today unveiled what may be the first medical-grade EKG band for the Apple Watch, , pending its FDA clearance. The product is intended to help wearers detect cardiac arrhythmia conditions that can cause stroke, as well as indicate whether your heart rate and rhythm are normal. The band works with an accompanying Apple Watch application, which automatically processes the data from the sensors in the device, as well as allows its wearers to record voice memos which are sent along with the EKG to their doctor. These voice memos can help doctors better determine what was happening at the time the EKG was recorded, like whether the patient was feeling heart palpitations, if they had just ingested caffeine, or if some other external factor could have contributed to the situation. In addition, the voice memos feature could also be used to track other things that need monitoring, like what you’ve eaten that day or how much time you spent exercising. Meanwhile, the Kardia Apple Watch app also integrates with Apple’s Health platform to allow for analysis of EKG data along with other health factors that may have been recorded elsewhere, including exercise, caloric intake, and more. The new product is the latest to emerge from AliveCor, a medical technology company working to product FDA-cleared EKG technology for mobile devices. (previously AliveCor Mobile ECG), is a $99 standalone device that adheres to the back of your smartphone or tablet. You can press your fingers on it to take a reading, which would also be analyzed by the accompanying mobile application. The Kardia Band, as the newer product is called, instead puts its sensors directly onto a fairly stylist and sporty looking Apple Watch band. You then press on the band with your thumb to take a reading. The company says that it’s expecting to receive FDA approval for the band later this spring (its 510k clearance), at which point the product will become available for sale. Pricing and further availability information has not yet been released, given its pending status. “Kardia Band for Apple Watch represents both the future of proactive heart health and the introduction of the Wearable MedTech category,” said AliveCor CEO Vic Gundotra, the ex-Googler best known for from the ground up. Gundotra joined AliveCor in November, following his departure from Google, but was not one of the original founders. “These combined technologies give us the ability to deliver personal reports that provide analysis, insights and actionable advice for the patient and their doctor,” he added. The San Francisco-based startup is backed by in outside investment from Khosla Ventures and others. While the new product is largely aimed at those who have a need to detect AF, the most common form of cardiac arrhythmia and a leading cause of stroke, it could also be used by anyone interested in learning more about their health. Of course, whether or not the product will make sense for this wider audience will ultimately depend on the price point AliveCor settles on. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=958dfGnTvK8] *Stayed tuned for TechCrunch’s video demo of Kardia Band in action. |
Google’s latest mobile search algorithm update makes having a mobile-friendly site even more important | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | If your site isn’t easy to use on mobile, Google penalizes it by ranking it lower on its mobile search results pages. To give publishers even more of an incentive to offer mobile-friendly pages, Google today announced that, in May, it will the importance of having a mobile page, and sites that are not mobile-friendly will than before. As the company noted when it first this as a ranking signal last year, the basic idea here is to give mobile users a better search experience. Thankfully, most publishers have heeded the call and now offer pretty decent mobile pages. Google started this effort by simply marking sites with a badge that it considers mobile friendly. A few months later, it started using this as a ranking signal, too. Speed has long been one of Google’s obsessions, and over the course of the last few months, the company also , which makes sites load even faster on mobile. While it today, it does prominently feature AMP pages. Chances are, it will start doing so in the future, though, and over time, it will then increase the importance of using AMP just like it did with its first efforts in ranking mobile-friendly sites higher. Google offers that let you figure out whether your site is currently considered mobile-friendly and Google’s Webmaster Tools feature a that highlights “mobile usability errors” on your site, too. |
Jawbone doubles down on its allegations against Fitbit | Matt Burns | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | For nearly a year Jawbone and Fitbit have been in the courts and Jawbone just threw down new allegations. In a motion to amend the original filing, Jawbone wants to add a new defendant to the case that formerly worked at Jawbone but defected to Fitbit, bringing a host of confidential information along with her. Last May, Jawbone brought a suit against Fitbit recruiting employees who plundered confidential information on their way out. Then, just a week prior to Fitbit’s IPO in late May 2015, Jawbone filled another suit against Fitbit regarding patent infringements. Fitbit fired back in September and October with three separate patent infringement cases and lodged a complaint with the International Trade Commission. Now, some ten months later, the companies are still at it, and Jawbone has updated its filling to include new information and context surrounding the new products released by Fitbit. Jawbone’s updates contends that Fitbit’s latest products contain “hallmarks of Jawbone’s proprietary technology, and thereby indicate that Jawbone’s trade secrets have already been put to use by [Fitbit]” The court filing gives the following examples: Jawbone contends that only after poaching the former Jawbone employees named in this case, did Fitbit start to appreciate that fitness trackers need a more complete understanding of the user and the company would have to develop different more sophisticated sensors than what Fitbit was currently using to gather this additional information. Indeed, whether by coincidence or not, Jawbone’s allegation matches the timeline of Fitbit’s product releases. Before announcing its latest products at the beginning of 2016, Fitbit was on a dry spell of sorts. The company had not announced a new product since October 2014, and it was over a year before that, in October 2013, had Fitbit announced the Fitbit Force, which was eventually recalled. The lawsuit indicates that Fitbit started recruiting Fitbit employees in early 2015, eventually getting some to switch teams several months later. Fitbit’s next products would then be announced some eight months later. In the updated filling, Jawbone names a new defendant in the case. Weiden had access to the “precise confidential information and trade secrets developed by Jawbone that Fitbit sought to obtain.” Specifically, prototypes of an unreleased fitness tracker product including electrical and mechanical designs and costs along with the design schematics for Jawbone’s custom printed circuit boards, the material used in constructions, and manufacturer’ yield rates, lead times, timetables and schedules. Jawbone alleges that several of the employees Fitbit successfully recruited kept confidential Jawbone information. The defendants certified that they had in fact returned all the confidential information prior to leaving Jawbone, but later, according to the recent filling made by Jawbone, through a court ordered forensic analysis, the defendants still had procession of no fewer than 335,191 additional files containing or constituting confidential Jawbone information in USB storage devices, external hard drives, smartphones, cloud storage account and personal email accounts. In the case of Weiden, Jawbone says, she emailed confidential documents from her Jawbone email account to her new Fitbit account. Fitbit’s legal counsel points out that they already revealed the additional files back in December, and Jawbone is attempting to spin the situation away from what is actually happening. The firm’s full statement on this matter is below. Here is a brief timeline of the events as they’ve unfolded between Jawbone and Fitbit: “The antitrust counterclaim filed by Jawbone in one of the pending Fitbit patent suits outlines how Fitbit’s recent patent cases against Jawbone are baseless and filed to thwart competition. The counterclaim also highlights Fitbit’s campaign to misappropriate Jawbone’s most important assets – intellectual property and trade secrets – as part of its unfair competition,” the company said in a statement. “Jawbone is determined to move forward with the anti-trust case, its trade secret case in California Superior Court and its International Trade Commission Complaint for which a hearing is scheduled for May 9, 2016. Jawbone believes that when all of the evidence is weighed, the remedies and damages Jawbone is seeking will be granted – including, in the ITC matter, the injunction to prevent virtually all of Fitbit’s wearable products from being imported into the United States.” Jawbone’s latest attempt to bring additional baseless trade secret claims comes on the heels of it suffering another defeat in its similarly meritless patent litigation against Fitbit at the ITC. Recently, the ITC judge ruled that two of Jawbone’s patents are ineligible under case law settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, and only two of its original six patents remain at issue in that case. We believe Jawbone’s latest request to file yet another amended complaint indicates desperation due to its inability to compete in the market and its setbacks at the ITC. Just like the other claims asserted in this litigation, the additional claims Jawbone seeks to assert are unsubstantiated and based on gross mischaracterizations of the events that occurred months ago. |
Local deals site LivingSocial lays off 280, over 50% of staff, outsources customer services | Ingrid Lunden | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | More bad news for , the beleaguered commerce platform that competes with the likes of Groupon in offering deals on events and services local to its users. Today, LivingSocial announced that it would lay off 160 employees, and over the next two months, it will shut down its customer services operations in Tucson, AZ, accounting for a further 120 people — bringing the total to 280. LivingSocial will be outsourcing call center duties to an unnamed U.S.-based service provider, which the company says is based in New Jersey. This is the latest round of cuts under new CEO Gautam Thakar, who joined the company in and has been trying to shift the company, , away from its declining business in daily deals. The aim of the move is to get the company to a break-even point on that legacy business, which is based around vouchers for services and events, while also putting it into a stronger position to work on its newer business based on card-linked offers for specific verticals. Thakar in the past has referred to this as LivingSocial’s “experience marketplace.” “Early customer adoption of our card-linked product has encouraged us to shift future investment from our voucher business,” said Thakar. “As a smaller organization, we will focus on scaling our card-linked offer initially in the restaurants category, before adding other categories in the future. While it is never an easy decision to say goodbye to talented colleagues, we believe that we are now in a more stable position to invest in the next phase of our journey.” The company has been , and most recently laid off . LivingSocial has launched a couple of products around the card-linked concept, in beauty and . Restaurants Plus, as the latter is called, has expanded to Washington and San Francisco from an early trial in Atlanta, and it lets customers “reserve” an offer by entering their payment card details (or those linked in their existing LS account). The offer is redeemed when the customer presents that payment card at the venue. It also gives the merchant more flexibility in how it can moderate the offers. While LivingSocial is moving away from daily deals, it’s interesting to see that its longtime rival, Groupon, is doubling down and keeping these as a cornerstone of its business — with more modern improvements. Just yesterday, the company a revamped platform for merchants, which included a new iPad app to help retailers create, market and redeem daily deals. LivingSocial has raised to date but has not brought in any new funds since February 2013. |
null | Ingrid Lunden | 2,016 | 3 | 29 | null |
In Africa, Watson’s sister Lucy is growing up with the help of IBM’s Research team | Jake Bright | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | IBM Research Africa is entering its third year in Kenya. The blue chip company opened its Nairobi lab in 2013, launching a $100 million initiative to create a Watson-inspired tech platform that finds “ to the continent’s grand challenges.” Three years out, Watson’s African equivalent—Lucy—is shaping up and IBM’s Africa research facility is more defined in structure, team, and projects. Lucy, named after the fossil ancestor , is more of a system than a sci-fi super machine. “Lucy is many things, but it’s not just one talking computer in a room,” said Dr. Kamal Bhattacharya, Director of – . “We are using Watson related technology and analytics to develop solutions to African problems.” Jeopardy fans remember Watson as IBM’s talking computer that wowed viewers by beating the show’s . Behind Watson becoming America’s first non-human game show celebrity is what IBM calls : combining machine learning and artificial intelligence with human interaction. Speaking with TechCrunch, Bhattacharya described a core component of Lucy as “externalizing all these capabilities on the cloud,” referring to computing network of enterprise technologies accessed by devices, PCs, laptops, or wearables. The aim in Africa (as simply as I can interpret) is to create a problem solving framework connecting Lucy’s computing capabilities to teams of talented IT professionals. That’s what IBM Research Africa has been doing, assembling the staff, hardware, and partnerships. The company will expand Lucy later this year, opening its South Africa based lab in Johannesburg, according to IBM External Relations Leader Jonathan Batty. On the computing side, IBM’s Africa labs are equipped with the company’s latest cloud enabled IT infrastructure, including power servers, mainframes and hundreds of terabytes of data storage. “Via the cloud, IBM’s researchers are able to share and access data from across Africa and around the world,” said Batty. On the team level, IBM Research Africa has about 35 from all over the world in Kenya: “PhDs from technical fields, computer sciences, engineering, environmental science etc.,” according to Bhattacharya. The Nairobi lab also has a staff of “about 35 software developers and trainees from local universities” and 20 interns from African and around the world. On the execution side, IBM Research Africa has launched problem solving groups around issues such as education, infrastructure, health care, and economic inclusion. Partners include African universities, telcos, hospitals, tech startups, and the Kenyan . In Nairobi, IBM Research scientists are working with Kenyan authorities to improve waste collection by creating digital route maps and smart sensor enabled garbage trucks. An IBM team has also set up pilot “telephone farms” in Kenya equipped with sensors that stream data on crop variables (e.g., soil moisture levels), analyze it, and send it back to farmers on tablets and mobile phones. In 2015, IBM’s Africa lab shaped a program with the Kenyan government and a local university to improve the country’s metrics on the World Bank’s index. “We came in with some clear expectations of what needed to be done,” said IBM’s Bhattacharya of initial projects. “But there’s also been an understanding that we have to experiment to find the key drivers to make a difference in the African context.” Underlying much of Lucy and IBM Research’s problem solving mission in Africa is as a basis for more accurate solutions. The availability of accurate data on the continent remains a . Many times the reliable figures that inform corporate and government decisions in advanced economies are simply not there. For example, 2014 and ’15 statistical exercises in countries such as and revealed tens of billions of dollars in off-the-grid economic activity that has gone uncaptured in GDP calculations for years. In the larger context, IBM Research Africa’s “solving grand challenges” approach could be a harbinger for bigger changes on the continent. As suggested in this , it signals tech’s potential role in disrupting development in Africa. Many of IBM’s African problem designations are evocative of the development field— the decades-long aid-agency and NGO driven campaign to solve Africa’s long-standing socio-economic issues. More of IBM Research’s Lucy related work is connecting to IBM’s business consulting lines, which have presence in . “The lab is opening up a lot of opportunities. We are engaging both the public and private sector. Some of our partnerships and solutions require different skillsets that our business units have, so many times we are working jointly,” said Bhattacharya. In Africa, yesterday’s development problems could be today’s commercial tech opportunities. The 21 century equivalent of Peace Corps volunteer could be working as an intern in one of IBM’s Africa research labs. |
Super hot Korea gets a new startup fund | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 16 | Korea is sizzling, and the fact isn’t lost on or its backers. The early-stage venture firm, with an office on Sand Hill Road and in Seoul, has just raised an oversubscribed $110 million fund to invest exclusively in the country, the second fund of its type for Altos, which raised its last Korea-focused fund with $60 million in 2013. (The firm has also raised four U.S.-focused funds over the last decade.) It’s easy to understand LPs’ enthusiasm. Korea boasts the world’s , with more than 50 million inhabitants and GDP per capita of roughly , according to the World Bank. Its inhabitants are entrepreneurial, with of the population self-employed versus 10 percent in the U.S. Korea also has among the world’s fastest and mostly broadly deployed broadband. Also very notably, Korea has produced more than a dozen internet companies worth more than a billion dollars over the last decade or so, including the web search giant , a now publicly traded company valued at $17 billion; the web search company , formed when Korean internet firm Daum merged with domestic messaging app company Kakao in a $2.9 billion deal in 2014 (it’s now valued at $5.5 billion); and , whose mobile apps business was valued at during its most recent funding round in December. Yesterday, we talked with Altos Ventures managing director Anthony Lee to get a better picture of what’s going on, and how his firm is going to invest its new fund. AL: About 10 years ago. We started seeing this opportunity that was very much overlooked in many ways. Everyone knows the country for LG and Samsung, but there are now a lot of very real, billion dollars companies, and there’s almost zero Western capital in those companies. Many bootstrapped themselves. They were almost entirely missed by VCs in Silicon Valley. AL: There’s now a domestic VC market, investing $1.5 billion annually in all sorts of things, from internet stuff to hardware, movies, medical, and manufacturing. We’re seeing a lot more foreign attention now, too. At the later stages, you’re seeing Chinese hedge funds, Japanese corporates — Softbank invested in [our portfolio company, the e-commerce startup] last year. Goldman Sachs is coming in. Blackrock also in Coupang in late 2014. At the earlier stage, you’re also starting to see, Japanese, Chinese, and more U.S. investors start to venture over there. AL: Yes. Korean venture has been more merchant banking and corporate in its nature, meaning it invests for very quick returns. The government is a large LP in many funds and they’ve [accordingly been] optimized for lower risk. We sometimes find ourselves pushing companies in the direction of growth and not profitability. At the same time, of the 30 companies we’ve invested in there, we’ve only had one loss. It’s a bit emblematic of the way Korean entrepreneurs work. They hate to fail. AL: Most are institutional investors from North America and Asia. Maybe a quarter comes from Korean entrepreneurs, foundations, and internet companies. AL: It is. Korea was home to the first social network, ; the first virtual goods, online games . . . I remember being there in 2000 and watching full-motion video on its subway cars. People have large phablet-style cells phones and often more than one phone as Korea is way ahead in 4G penetration, so what people do on their mobile devices is way ahead of us in the U.S. More than half of e-commerce happens on the phone. [Editor’s note: in the U.S., that percentage is .] There’s this other really interesting layer where Korea used to be perceived as a really backward kind of country, but it has gone from debt recipient to donor. It’s industrialized so quickly that it’s actually now known for its cultural exports. Korean dramas are popular through Asia. Korean cosmetics are huge — there are more cosmetics companies in Korea than in the U.S. It’s really become a bit a trend setter. Half of our investments are focused on companies that can become big category leaders within the country itself. The other half are global companies that happen to be run by Koreans. , for example [a photo application for Android that lets users add filters to their snapshots], is one of the top apps in Europe and Latin America and it’s based in Seoul. As for different areas, we’re very interested in fintech in Korea. There aren’t efficient mobile payments platforms there yet. They don’t have peer-to-peer lending. So those are two places where we’ve met bets recently. We’re also very interested in healthcare IT. Korea has a very advanced healthcare system. And we’ve interested in mobile entertainment. One thing we’ve seen recently are far more sophisticated mobile games that we’re used to playing on the Xbox. AL: There hasn’t been a big rush of supply of capital, so valuations haven’t gone out of whack. Deals are on an order of three times less than in the U.S., and burn rates are also much lower. So it’s not only more reasonable to invest in a company, but the companies are more reasonable to run. AL: Actually, the companies are starting to look more like Silicon Valley companies. All the entrepreneurs speak English. They all read TechCrunch and they know what SV companies look and act like, and so to compete for talent, they start to adopt those kinds of things. In fact, Google has these entrepreneurial campuses and opened its first Asia-based center and [stepping inside it], you would think you were in Mountain View. AL: Our term sheets are exactly the same here as there. We don’t want to be taking advantage of the fact that there’s less capital there. We compete on the basis of offering a plain, standard, Silicon Vally term sheet; we even published it publicly to educate the ecosystem there. The entrepreneurs are very savvy. Many are Western educated and many have worked for large Western internet companies. On any day, hundreds of startups are flying between the two countries. We see them in our offices all the time. |
Samsung Pay just launched in China, but already faces fierce competition | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 28 | Samsung Pay is now available in China, about . According to the China Internet Network Information Center, . Unsurprisingly, Apple and Samsung consider China a top priority for their mobile payment services, but they face an uphill climb for users. Apple Pay and Samsung Pay already have to compete with Alibaba’s Alipay, which , and Tencent’s WePay. Alipay and WePay are , so any new online payments service is going to find it difficult to woo new users. Furthermore, both Apple and Samsung have seen their smartphone sales . Both Apple Pay and Samsung Pay are partnered with China UnionPay, the bankcard association that until . It still processes the vast majority of the country’s card transactions, however, and claims 260 million users. Samsung Pay will initially support cards issued from nine Chinese banks before adding six more banks. In China, Samsung Pay is currently available on the maker’s flagship models—the Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+, and Galaxy Note5—but may be supported by “additional mid-range models in the future,” the company said in a press release. |
Homebrew’s Satya Patel on his firm’s investment thesis and how startups should approach investors | Harry Stebbings | 2,016 | 3 | 28 |
Still, some firms, and their partners, are managing to do it well. And Satya Patel at is a perfect example. Further, the two investors have a bottom up thesis on the market. “Technology is a great democratizer,” says Patel. “It’s impacting individuals, groups and industries now in a way that it hasn’t historically, because it’s gotten more flexible, more accessible, less expensive.” Since the firm’s first investment in Clementine — a joint effort between Patel and Hunter Walk — which was sold in 2015 to Dropbox — the firm has a continuously changing set of criteria but strong beliefs in their core thesis. “We have strong beliefs, weakly held,” Patel continues. “we’ve got principles… that are kind of immutable, that we stick by in terms of our investing. But in terms of what the criteria that we think about — those are always changing and morphing, and hopefully improving.” For startups, the key to raising funds from Homebrew (or more broadly) is to establish emotional resonance with potential investors. Patel outlines two types of emotional resonance. It’s either the personal story of the founder — and the connection they make with the investor. Or is it the mission itself for the company. “The founder and the mission are the two things that can establish emotional resonance early on,” Patel advises.
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A new accelerator report suggests that independent work is most effective | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 28 | Today, a $2.3 million private-public partnership called the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI) is releasing its , in collaboration with Village Capital, a seed-stage accelerator that operates development programs for early-stage entrepreneurs around the world. Led by the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), the goal of GALI is to determine how effective accelerator programs really are and how to develop best practices in different regions, given there are roughly 500 now dotting the globe. In fact, one of the biggest questions it is trying to address is whether accelerators work as well for developing-world entrepreneurs as they do for those in the developed world. In ways, it’s a little soon to be releasing anything. GALI, whose new report examines 15 Village Capital programs, is just nine months in the making. Though it’s an interesting data set — the report examines the performance of entrepreneurs who were enrolled in those Village Capital programs from 2013 to 2014 against those who applied but were not accepted — it’s a very limited one. Still, it claims to see some signals that might help entrepreneurs who are weighing whether or where to join an accelerator. For one thing, it says that participants in the Village Capital program saw outside investment that dwarfed those of rejected entrepreneurs — by eight times. In a call last week, Randall Kempner, the executive director of ANDE, said researchers weren’t yet sure if that disparity owes to better entrepreneurs being accepted by Village Capital; by entrepreneurs creating better companies because of their learnings at Village Capital; or whether by working with Village Capital, the entrepreneurs enjoyed a halo effect from its brand, thus making it easier to attract outside funding. The report also finds some interesting programmatic differences between the highest versus the lowest-performing Village Capital programs, including that the highest-performing programs emphasized more time for independent work. Specifically, says the report, the percentage of time spent working on-site or remotely with other entrepreneurs or mentors in the program (versus time when the founders work on their own) was 53 percent of the time for the highest-performing program, versus 83 percent for the low-performing programs. In another potentially interesting twist, the report says that Village Capital’s highest-performing programs spent less time working on finance, accounting, and formal business plan development and more time on presentation and communication skills, networking, and organization structure and design, suggesting it makes sense to spend more time on softer skills. The reports’ authors acknowledge that the study they’re releasing today is far from conclusive. In fact, it features as many predictions as it does findings. But certainly, its effort is worth watching. As explains Saurabh Lall, research director at ANDE and one of the report’s lead authors, “There’s been a tremendous proliferation of accelerators and incubators around the world, but while exciting, we’re concerned that we don’t have a good sense of whether they do a good job at supporting entrepreneurs in emerging markets. From our perspective, [this work] intends to help us answer: do they work, under which circumstances, and which programs are more likely to work for certain entrepreneurial segments.” “We want to be truth tellers,” adds Kempner. “There hasn’t been nearly enough research done in this space, so a lot of people can say a lot of things that may or may not be true. We think we’ll eventually have enough information that we will.” For much more, you can view both an executive summary as well as the full report . |
Oculus Rift is amazing, but you probably shouldn’t buy one | Lucas Matney | 2,016 | 3 | 28 | The Oculus Rift has been a long time coming. After delays upon delays, customers finally started receiving their Rift consumer units today, and Oculus will continue working to fulfill pre-orders of their virtual reality headset which is currently back-ordered until July. I’ve spent what is likely an unhealthy amount of time strapped into the Rift experiencing its brand of VR and am generally impressed though I don’t think it is a good investment for most people. Watch the video above for my thoughts on whether it’s worth the $599 price tag and what else you’ll need to buy to even get it running. In case you missed it, check out my of the Oculus Rift. |
Shootlr lets you take a ‘someone-elsie’ | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 3 | 28 | What do you call it when you have an app that lets your friends take a photo of you, using your own phone? It’s not a selfie… It’s not a portrait… Let’s call it a today launched an iOS and Android app that is attempting to take this brave new frontier of photography to the masses: an app that enables you to compel your friends to take a selfie for you, from the comfort of your smartphone. The Shootlr app will implore you to take a selfie when one of your friends ask for one. The app works like this: You remember that it’s been a while since you’ve seen a photo of your friend Sasha, and you send a photo request to her. A notification buzzes on Sasha’s phone; when she opens the app, a timer immediately starts its three-second countdown. At the end of the countdown it snaps her photo, then shares it with you. And, of course, you can probably expect a Shootlr request in return. The question burning on your mind is whether or not this can become the next Instagram of Snapchat… I can see the app having a certain appeal — selfies on demand from your closest friends is undeniably an interesting pitch — there’s definitely something jarring about the concept of the app, related to being on the receiving end of a photo request. “Is the timing of the Shootlr request inconvenient?” says Onno Spek, founder of Shootlr, touching on my main doubt about the app. “Just dismiss the notification.” At least you can decline to have your photo taken, I suppose, but given how much people fret over getting their selfies , the notion of being forced to break out the to share your beautiful self with the world is, well, a bit creepy. In the app’s promo video, for example, the use case is to encourage someone to take a selfie when they’re out on a run, which… I don’t know about you, but I know that I definitely don’t look my best when Runkeeper has yet again beaten me to within a fraction of an inch of my life, dripping with sweat, wishing for a swift and merciful death. I guess the app can be seen as a curious hybrid between taking selfies when you feel like it and replying with a photo whenever someone asks you for one on Snapchat. Nifty? I suppose, but I’m really not sure what the problem is that the company is trying to solve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYqwGe2FJYU |
Justice Department drops lawsuit against Apple as FBI has now unlocked Farook’s iPhone | Romain Dillet | 2,016 | 3 | 28 | unlocked Farook’s iPhone 5c involved in the San Bernardino shooting using an alternative method that didn’t involve Apple. Given this new development, the Department of Justice is dropping the case. The government has been evasive about this alternative method and didn’t provide additional details. The filing is very succinct. “The government has now successfully accessed the data stored on Farook’s iPhone and therefore no longer requires the assistance from Apple Inc. mandated by Court’s Order Compelling Apple Inc. to Assist Agents in Search dated February 16, 2016,” U.S. attorney Eileen M. Decker and assistant U.S. attorney Tracy L. Wilkison wrote. : Apple has supplied the following statement to TechCrunch: From the beginning, we objected to the FBI’s demand that Apple build a backdoor into the iPhone because we believed it was wrong and would set a dangerous precedent. As a result of the government’s dismissal, neither of these occurred. This case should never have been brought. We will continue to help law enforcement with their investigations, as we have done all along, and we will continue to increase the security of our products as the threats and attacks on our data become more frequent and more sophisticated. Apple believes deeply that people in the United States and around the world deserve data protection, security and privacy. Sacrificing one for the other only puts people and countries at greater risk. This case raised issues which deserve a national conversation about our civil liberties, and our collective security and privacy. Apple remains committed to participating in that discussion. After five weeks of intense back and forth between Apple and the Department of Justice, the two parties were supposed to face off in a courtroom in Riverside, California. But last week, the FBI declared at the very last minute that it might not need Apple’s help after all. The Department of Justice asked to . Apple didn’t object, and the hearing was postponed. The Justice Department was supposed to file an update before April 5 to say whether the FBI could access Farook’s iPhone. With a week to spare, the government filed the following today:
In February, was made under . But the All Writs Act doesn’t work if there’s an alternative remedy. So the government had to justify that only Apple could unlock this iPhone. That’s why the government is dropping the case. Now that the FBI has found a successful alternative to Apple’s intervention, the All Writs Act doesn’t work, making the original request invalid. And of course, now that the FBI has Farook’s data, there is no case in the first place. The San Bernardino investigation will follow its course. The mysterious third party who helped the government remains unidentified and the government doesn’t have to disclose this alternative method. Apple will certainly ask for more details about this new exploit so that the company can fix it in future iOS releases. But at this point, it’s unclear whether Apple will get additional details about this exploit. According to , the Department of Justice said the method only works on this phone in particular. But it’s hard to believe this argument as there’s no reason the FBI wouldn’t be able to unlock other iPhones 5c running the same version of iOS 9. Moreover, if the FBI found a software exploit, this exploit should work with all iPhones running on this version of iOS 9 (and most likely the current version of iOS, iOS 9.3) — . It’s like the government wants to make sure it can ask Apple to unlock other phones in the future. All the last developments in this case are blurry. If I try to recap, the FBI is working with an unidentified third party using an unknown method to unlock an iPhone with unknown data. We don’t even know if the FBI actually unlocked Farook’s iPhone. What if the Justice Department was pessimistic about the case and thought it was better to postpone and then drop the case than setting a precedent in favor of privacy and Apple? Either way, this is still a win for Apple. Apple has resisted the government’s request because the company thought it would set a precedent and it would become a slippery slope. Over the past few years, and especially with , Apple has made its devices and services more secure by design. It is the best way to keep the government away as Apple can’t just use a secret key to unlock its iPhones — that key didn’t exist before the iPhone 5c case, and still doesn’t. Apple also wanted to avoid creating a backdoor that would render all iOS devices vulnerable to hackers and foreign governments. A backdoor for the FBI would have been as useful for other organizations, as well. Now let’s step back for a minute and reflect on the government’s course of actions in this case. Going forward, it’s going to be hard to trust the government when it comes to encryption issues as the government has insisted for months that it was impossible to unlock this iPhone without Apple. The government was either negligent or blatantly lying. The All Writs Act is a serious matter and the government shouldn’t have used it without exploring all options first. And if the government was trying to set a precedent and leverage a terrorist attack to make Apple comply with a privacy-invading request, then it’s a shameful strategy. |
Watch us unbox and poke around the Oculus Rift for the first time | Greg Kumparak | 2,016 | 3 | 28 | The Rift is here! The Rift is here! After years of build up and pre-release developer kits, the first deliveries of the consumer version of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset started arriving this morning. Lucas and I got to spend time with the Rift over the past few days ( ) — and, though we rarely do unboxings these days and a gnarly cold was making my nose so stuffed up that I could hardly speak, we figured this one was worthy. It’s a damned fine box with a whole lot of goodies crammed inside. Join us as we take our first steps into this crazy new future we’re in, won’t you? (P.S — we figured out what that mystery tool at the end of the video is for: removing the headphones.) |
Revisiting Brian Eno’s ‘The Studio as a Compositional Tool’ | Dylan Eller | 2,016 | 3 | 28 |
In 1979, Brian Eno gave a lecture at the inaugural New Music America Festival in New York on a very Brian Eno-ish topic. Titled “The Recording Studio as a Compositional Tool,” it is most definitely worth a or a . In the lecture, Eno discusses the ever-evolving relationship music has with technology, beginning with the invention of audio recording. “It was not only a technological history, or a technological series of changes,” he explains. “There was also a change in concept of what music was for.” From the first melody ever hummed, or the first rhythm ever patted, until the late nineteenth century, music existed as a fleeting, ephemeral experience never to be replicated. Memories, with all the malleability we now know them to have, were the sole records of musical events. This concept is incredibly alien to someone with instant access to the millions of songs available on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, YouTube, Amazon Prime, SoundCloud, Bandcamp or any other streaming service. Music is inconceivably more available to people of today’s world than it was 120 years ago, 50 years ago or even 10 years ago. This has changed the role music plays in society, as well as our personal lives. Eno qualifies the effects technological advancements have on music into two categories: changes of degree and changes of kind. The one with lesser impact, as you may have guessed, is a change of degree. These are typically changes for the sake of convenience. The move from tube to solid state amplifiers, for example, is a change of degree. Not a lot changed. If a change of degree is the difference between Texas Hold ‘Em and 7-Card Stud, a change of kind is the difference between poker and building a house of cards. It changes the game completely. The shift from music as a temporary, irreplicable experience to a recorded one that can be revisited is a change in kind. It has forever changed the way people think about, make and listen to music. With nearly 40 years between the current date and the delivery of Eno’s lecture, many changes of kind have occurred that weren’t born in time to be covered, but are game-changers nonetheless. Two of the major changes of kind Eno covers are multi-track recording and overdubbing. Multi-track recording allowed, for the first time, parts of a recording to be mixed without needing to physically change their relative location to a microphone. You could make the sound of someone brushing their teeth louder than a drummer. Overdubbing allowed sounds to added after the initial recording had taken place. For the first time, one person could play every instrument on a song. Two big changes of this gravity have occurred in the past few decades. One is the mass availability of home recording equipment and distribution tools. The other is the introduction of our current “on-demand” culture, where any song is available to listen to at any time. Both of these have changed how creators and listeners alike understand music. They change music’s function in our lives. The exclusivity of recorded music for its first century of existence begs the question: How many great songs were never recorded and subsequently forgotten forever? If an artist didn’t have a record deal, there was very little chance they would have the opportunity to record any of their songs in a studio. It was just too expensive. Landing a record deal, of course, heavily relied on creating marketable music, but more often than not, innovations in music don’t originate in marketable ways. This changed when basic tape recorders and home computers became widely available and affordable to the public. The approval of a record executive was no longer necessary to record an album, and the definition of a recording studio was broadened. Anyone could make an album practically anywhere, creating a distinct DIY recording ethic. Now services like SoundCloud, Bandcamp and YouTube function as platforms for these artists to distribute their music at little or no cost. The means to record practically any combination of sounds, as well as find an audience to listen to them, are accessible to anyone with a relatively small amount of money and a little tech know-how. Many artists are seeing this as an opportunity to leave major labels for smaller, independent ones, self-releasing their music or . Of course, the very technology that makes all this possible is also responsible for new aesthetic choices, as well. The digital manipulation of sounds has become ubiquitous. Effects and plug-ins utilized in a digital audio workstation, or DAW, have almost entirely replaced analog recording tricks, speeding up the process of getting the precise sound desired by the producer. The added dimension of a visual display has also shifted the paradigm of creating music. Much like Eno’s description of tape making music a physical, manipulatable thing, visual elements of music software give it more of a sense of putting pieces together like a puzzle, allowing for slight variations to be tried in order to find the right fit. When recording technology became widely adopted in the late nineteenth century, music became a replicable experience. The same performance could be listened to again and again with no variation. Now, with instant access to practically any existing recording through streaming services, music hosting sites and Internet piracy, the effects of this replicability are infinitely exaggerated. It’s no longer necessary to dig through record bins to find a song you haven’t heard in forever. The song can come blasting out of your speakers within seconds of you starting your search. This, for a lot of us, changes the function of music in our lives. While we still put on music we like just for the enjoyment of hearing it, most of the music we consume functions as filler or background noise while we work or do another task. If we don’t like a certain song, we skip it. Sometimes we use services like Pandora to choose the music for us. This has led artists to try creative new ways of releasing music in an attempt to draw attention from the blur. , , , , and have all been used to bring attention to artists’ new albums. It’s reached the point where the release and promotion for new releases has become an art form in itself. While these factors don’t necessarily directly affect the in-studio composition process that Eno discusses, they are linked to the shifts in the way we think about creating and listening to music. Much like the invention of multi-track recording, overdubbing and sound recording in general, the ability to produce and distribute music to be accessed instantly by anyone has greatly altered the entire paradigm of recorded music once again. Trends spread rapidly and new developments are expanded on almost instantly. Just as innovations in , , , or really any other field have picked up incredible momentum in the ever-connected world, small steps forward in the creation of music have been replaced by frequent leaps. |
Turning your idea into a funded company | Adam Quinton | 2,016 | 3 | 28 |
The cost of entry to the startup world has decreased dramatically in the last decade. We’re now at the point where the tools that were once only available to enterprise users have made their way the hands of everyday users. Access to bleeding-edge innovation is no longer limited to an elite few. This transformation has been called the consumerization, or democratization, of tech. The performance of computers has soared as technologists realize and surpass Moore’s Law. Today, ubiquitous smartphones pack power that would have been inconceivable to early computer pioneers. Consider this: A single Apple iPhone 5 has 2.7 times more processing power than the 1985 Cray-2 supercomputer. Free tools like Google Docs, Skype and Dropbox have collapsed the cost of “getting stuff done.” At the same , computer- and cloud-based services offer affordable and infinitely scalable ways to run websites and web applications, meaning there is rarely a to buy hardware beyond a laptop. The result? Investors are considering ideas from folks who don’t have built-out engineering teams or heavy-duty, costly hardware, both of which were once essential to making a startup happen. The key role of the venture capitalist in the past was to provide entrepreneurs the initial capital they needed to take a concept to a prototype or trial phase, often with material up-front investment before a product even reached customers. Investors weren’t looking for a minimum viable product (MVP) straight out of the gate, because getting to that stage could take millions of dollars and years of effort. The democratization of tech has created an environment where more people than ever have the chance to turn their ideas reality at low — though not quite zero! — cost. Now an individual with an can build a basic MVP cheaply and quickly. On the other hand, as the cost of entry has collapsed, competition has grown more fierce and expanded from local or regional to global. Inevitably with the explosion of startups came an aggressive winnowing down of the also-rans. The entrepreneurs who are succeeding understand this shift in the landscape and pitch accordingly. They know that early-stage investors today typically won’t pay to develop an MVP. You’ll to do that on dime, unless you are the lucky recipient of “friends and family” backing. Professional investors expect to see the product in action before they part with their cash. Entrepreneurs also to demonstrate traction in their pitches. That means they to show that real users are using the product and that there are early signs of potential for a much bigger market opportunity. That investors look for early indicators of success should surprise no one; but, positive outlook is not the only criterion. The product is still worthless to investors if they don’t believe the can scale rapidly. In turn, a pitch needs to go beyond the MVP and early success to lay out how the entrepreneur plans to grow the business, fast. The most vital aspect of this overview is the customer acquisition strategy. Expect to hit a roadblock if you can’t answer the question of how product will grab users, and at what cost. Particularly in this hot app market, entrepreneurs should brace themselves for a tough road ahead. Be prepared to get close with rejection and isolation. Starting is a lonely venture — the outcome rests on two shoulders alone. Ninety percent of startups fail and, given the volatility of the industry, even established companies may encounter hardship. While there isn’t a cap on good ideas in Silicon Valley, it’s important to keep in mind just how much noise you’ll be going up against. Self-care is just as important as nurturing business. It takes a certain amount of resolve, bordering on stubbornness, to pour material and emotional resources creating a real product from an . But like any resource, emotional energy is finite. Take to recharge — read for fun, exercise, eat well and get lots of sleep. Talk to someone about the challenges you’re encountering, whether that person is a friend, family member or another founder whom you trust. If you want to as a tech entrepreneur, the MVP is the key step to getting off the ground. There are many free resources that can help you along the way. Training programs like General Assembly are geared toward teaching entrepreneurs new skills, while meetups are a great way to meet peers. We’re also seeing more accelerators and incubators provide space, cash and mentoring to turbo-charge entrepreneurships. Competitions like the offer non-technical innovators the opportunity to have an app designed and developed completely for free. It boils entrepreneurship down to business savvy and an . So, who has the most to gain from the democratization of tech? Anyone starting out, between jobs or even a more seasoned individual feeling trapped in corporate life. In short, everyone! If you’ve ever wanted to venture out solo, this moment is as good as any. As an investor, I can’t wait to hear more of ideas. |
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