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Bitcoin’s Value Falls 10% As Faltering Mt.Gox Exchange Continues To Implode | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | Mt.Gox , and get back to the Bitcoin community and its users today. It , but didn’t open up withdrawals, or set a firm timetable as to when users might be able to get their currency off the exchange. In response, the price of Bitcoin on Mt.Gox has cratered, again. It now rests . That’s down from around $260 the day before. Users are betting more heavily now that their Bitcoin on the exchange is never coming back. This turbulence has not left the larger Bitcoin market unmolested. According to the , the dollar cost of a Bitcoin has shed around 10 percent of its value today, falling from $625 to $560. Mt.Gox, previously trading at around a 50 percent deficit, is now trading at one-fifth the regular price. Why would Mt.Gox bring down the value of Bitcoin on other exchanges? The failure of Mt.Gox highlights what sort of risk unregulated markets might entail. And in frankness Bitcoin has been on a slow deflate tip all year. The average Bitcoin price spiked over $900 in January, before settling into a pattern of decline. For now, enjoy some irony (screenshot taken today): |
White House Unveils Patent Protections, Including Crowdsourcing, To Help Find Prior Claims | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | The White House for Congress to enact new intellectual property laws. President Obama to go after so-called “patent trolls,” businesses that hoard legal ownership over inventions but don’t actually produce products. The latest series of executive orders is aimed at helping small businesses fight patent lawsuits, give expanded resources to the US Patent and Trademark Office, and help limit the scope of what can actually be patented. Perhaps the most novel announcement today is a proposal to crowdsource the search for prior patents. As civil liberties organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation , “Right now, it is very difficult to find prior art — previous inventions and published ideas that cover a claim — especially for vaguely worded software patents.” The patent office is understaffed, and there’s no good public utility to comb through all the ideas that may already have a patent. The White House’s newly formed crowdsourcing initiative is currently asking for proposals for how the public can organize previous patent claims in an easily searchable manner. One such initiative already in place is “ ,” an open forum for people to ask questions about intellectual property and get (hopefully) expert answers. Most of the other initiatives are about arming the public with knowledge and legal resources. A Santa Clara University study that nascent startups are especially susceptible to well-heeled patent trolls who take advantage of complicated laws to intimidate small businesses. “Unsuspecting retailers, consumers, small businesses, and other users of products containing patented technology have increasingly found themselves targeted by letters alleging patent infringement and demanding money,” notes the White House statement. So the patent office is organizing a toolkit of information to help small businesses make sense of their legal options. Additionally, it’s giving more training to patent examiners to spot “functional claims,” which assert intellectual ownership over the idea of an invention rather than its specific application of an idea. It’s hard to overstate how damaging functional claiming abuse can be. Stanford Law’s Mark Lemly has argued the Wright Brother’s aggressively broad patent over flying technology prevented the emergence of the airline industry. “It was not until the government stepped in in 1917 and required the Wrights to license their patents that airplane innovation really took off,” he writes [ ]. Ultimately, broad changes to patent law — and what types of ideas can be “owned” — is in Congress’s hands. But, at the very least, President Obama is making good on his promise to protect the startup community. |
Steve Jobs Is Getting A Postage Stamp | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | There are few canvases harder to find yourself portrayed upon than the US postage stamp. Unless you’re a state bird, a beautiful wild flower, or a historic/cultural icon, it’s pretty unlikely that your mug will ever act as proof-of-payment on a piece of mail. Joining the ranks in 2015: the late Steve Jobs. According to a obtained by , Steve Jobs is set to get a limited release stamp in 2015 alongside the likes of Johnny Carson, Elvis Presley, James Brown, and an as-of-yet unnamed group of Science Fiction writers. The Steve Jobs stamp is listed as “In Design” — so there’s no image of what the actual stamp will look like just yet. The one pictured above is, of course, just a quick mockup. I’m intentionally leaving this post sans commentary. Except for this: Few people did more to crush the US Postal Service, but okay “ : Steve Jobs Is Getting A Postage Stamp ” — B.J. Novak (@bjnovak) |
King’s Forthcoming IPO Shows That Mobile Gaming Is Staggeringly Large, But Mature | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | The $1.8 billion in annual revenue that the Candy Crush Saga-maker earned last year was about $600 million or $700 million more than the whisper numbers I had been hearing at the end of 2013. It signals just how large free-to-play mobile gaming has become compared to older parts of the gaming industry, which deliver titles as finalized, packaged goods at $60 a pop. Just to put some of those figures in perspective (with help from some longtime industry observers): King’s ‘gross bookings’ last year were about 85 percent of Nintendo’s last reported annual gross sales from software, The company had 93 million daily active players, or about 17.5 times as many PlayStation 4s as Sony as sold to date, , who used to head up EA’s digital strategy and sat on the board of the other European mobile gaming phenom Supercell. So there we have it. Traditional console players like Sony and Nintendo continue to be disrupted by the new platforms of Android and iOS, which are simultaneously cannibalizing audiences for older hardware platforms and expanding the market to a new generation of casual gamers. King is now one of two game developers that have produced a $1 billion free-to-play mobile title after Japan’s Gung-Ho with Puzzle & Dragons. But is it all so rosy? It looks like top-line revenue growth is stagnant or slowing not only for King, but also other top-grossing game makers. King’s overall revenue declined to $602 million in the last quarter of the year from $621 million the previous quarter. This is also extra notable because the holiday season is usually a strong one for mobile game makers. , as consumers are gifted new iPhones, iPads or Android devices. So King’s top-line revenues declined quarter-over-quarter in what is usually a stronger season for game developers. And they’re not the only ones. Supercell, the Finnish gaming company behind two other top-charting hits Clash of Clans and Hay Day, also reported earnings this month. , which is also extraordinarily impressive considering that they finished 2012 at $101 million in annual revenue. But that number isn’t that much larger than the annualized $716 million run rate that the company was at in the first quarter of last year, when it said it made $179 million. And this is before Supercell added Android titles, which should have more than doubled their potential user base in the fourth quarter. It just makes it obvious that revenue for the very top-grossing games is not growing as fast as it used to in previous years. Overall, Apple’s app store sales , around double the . Where does that leave King’s potential investors? The business is certainly cash rich. The company made $568 million on $1.89 billion in revenue last year. But 78 percent of King’s gross bookings came from mega-hit Candy Crush Saga. Like every other gaming company in the business, King will argue that it has a good strategy for hit-proofing itself from the volatile nature of the gaming industry. The company has developed about 180 different games or so over the last decade. It tests these titles on a cohort of “hardcore casual” players that frequent its web-based portal. King originally started with a destination site, but mined its historical library of titles to make a rather late, but successful transition to the Facebook platform and mobile devices. In the early days of the Facebook platform, Zynga and other social-gaming titans were running off, making hundreds of millions of dollars a year while King was supporting a small casual gaming portal. In the end, this Achilles’ heel of an independent gaming site turned out to be an advantage as Zynga’s almost monopolistic power over distribution on the Facebook platform eroded. That web destination is like King’s private, little lab or petri dish for new IP. But just as investors will be making a bet on the company, King is making a risky wager itself. It is choosing public markets at a time when other leading mobile gaming companies like Supercell and NaturalMotion have chosen the M&A route. Supercell chose to insulate itself from the fickleness of the public markets by selling slightly more than half of itself to Japan’s Gung-Ho for $1.53 billion last year. Meanwhile, NaturalMotion decided to sell to Zynga earlier this year for about a half-billion dollars. Will public investors be patient enough to see King through its inevitable high highs and low lows? Only time will tell. |
null | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 5 | null |
Viki To Launch In Japan, 5 Months After Acquisition By Rakuten | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | , a streaming video platform that crowdsources translated subtitles, will launch a tomorrow. The announcement comes five months after Tokyo-based Rakuten , which is based in Singapore. In a press release, Rakuten said: “The launch is a natural transition of the company’s acquisition by Rakuten in September 2013, and marks the first step in Rakuten’s move to bring together Viki’s global content, language and community-first DNA to expand the scope of Rakuten’s $16 billion digital content and e-commerce business.” Japanese viewers can use Rakuten IDs (which is similar to Facebook Connect) to log onto Viki Japan, which will have free TV shows and movies from around the world. translated into Japanese. These include “Boys Before Friends,” an American remake of “Hana Yori Dango,” a popular Japanese manga. Other offerings include Korean drama “20’s,” Chinese shows like “Group of Women” and Colombian telenovelas such a “Broken Promises.” The service’s premium version, called Viki Pass, will cost 400 yen (about $3.99) a month, and supports ad-free and HD video streaming across multiple devices, along with exclusive content. Rakuten said it will continue to bring Viki, which is already used by viewers in 200 countries, to new markets. The service now has three billion video streams and its users have translated more than 450 million words so far. This announcement is the latest one in that has included the acquisition of Viber for $900 million; a $3.5 million investment in image recognition startup ViSenze; and the opening of its first European R&D center. Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani has said that he wants the company to “become the world’s No. 1 Internet services company.” |
YouTube Gets Google’s Card Design And Puts Stronger Focus On Playlists | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | is rolling out a new design to its users that takes its cues from the “card-like” design Google uses on many of its other web and mobile apps. The aim of the redesign, Google tells me, is to emphasize playlists by putting them front and center in the left sidebar. In addition, however, the company also center-aligned the site to make it look better on any screen and give it a “feeling similar to the mobile apps you’re spending almost half your YouTube time with.” This move allows it to easily employ the card look, which is clearly the main organizational metaphor for any Google product these days. As part of this design tweak, YouTube also added new icons to the sidebar and introduced a new persistent menu button next to the YouTube logo in the top-left corner of the screen that will bring up the guide with playlists, subscriptions and everything else that’s usually in the sidebar. Overall, the site looks a bit fresher and brighter now and — thanks to some tweaks in the typography — quite a bit more readable. As part of the emphasis on playlists, Google now shows you all of the playlists you have created and those from channels you liked in the sidebar. In addition, it now highlights playlists on YouTube channels with a new playlist tab. For those who want to create playlists, YouTube is also making it easier to do that. When you make a playlist now, YouTube will pop up a new page that lets you organize your videos. The new design starts rolling out today, though it may take a few hours or even days before every user will see it. |
Content Creation Startup Tackk Expands Its Visual Library With 500px Integration | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | is announcing that it has partnered with photo-sharing startup and making a wide variety of photos available to Tackk users. Tackks are basically pieces of content combining text, images, video, and other media. The company but it now it “allows anyone to create anything, and share it anywhere.” And the content tends to be visual. CEO Kyle Stalzer told me that 94 percent of Tackks have an image near the headline. With the new integration, users aren’t just limited to the photos on their computer, and they don’t have to scour the Internet for the right image. Instead, there’s a search box in the Tackk content-creation menu that allows them to search the entire library of images on 500px and add them to their Tackks for free. (Tackk and 500px are both backed by ff Venture Capital.) The service automatically adds credit for 500px and the photographer. Stalzer suggested that particularly since Tackks can be shared on social networks and embedded anywhere, this is “an opportunity for them to market their photography.” Although the company is only announcing the feature now, it has actually been available on the site since mid-January, and Stalzer said it has been used for everything, including class projects, greeting cards, and daily photo galleries. You can find out more in , which I’ve also embedded below.
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Former Motionloft CEO Jon Mills Arrested By The FBI | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | Jon Mills, the founder and former CEO of real-world analytics startup , has been arrested by the FBI, the bureau has confirmed. The arrest follows allegations that Mills lied to investors about an acquisition of his company, all while spending lavishly on private jets, expensive dinners, and parties with celebrities. In late December, we detailing how friends and other contacts had written a series of checks to invest in Motionloft in the first half of the year. Sources tell us that later in the year, Mills had bragged to them about an acquisition of the company, a claim that ended up not being true. That didn’t stop Mills from going on a series of expensive trips with friends, according to our sources, even booking private jets and a penthouse suite in Las Vegas for one particularly extravagant weekend that involved a private performance by R&B singer Miguel. But at the same time that Mills was partying in Vegas and at music festivals like Coachella, things were coming undone at the company he was seeking investment for. We have learned that behind the scenes, morale was low and Motionloft was having trouble paying its bills. Beginning as early as March 2013, payroll was slipping regularly, with Mills offering up cashiers checks and even handwritten checks as payment to employees. According to one source who had been employed at Motionloft, the company even had some of its furniture disappear one day, although it’s unclear if it had been sold or repossessed. Things came to a head after a Vegas trip in November, in which several of the friends who invested in Motionloft began to question when they would get their piece of the acquisition. But after questioning investor and board member Mark Cuban, they were told that there was no acquisition in place. Things have been relatively quiet since December, but today two of our sources reached out independently to tell us the FBI had arrested Mills. A representative from the local FBI field office confirmed that Mills had been arrested yesterday “without incident” and that he is scheduled to appear in District Court Friday morning. The US Attorney’s Office issued the following about Mills’ arrest yesterday. There’s also a copy of the . (PDF) SAN FRANCISCO – Jonathan Edward (“Jon”) Mills, the former Chief Executive Officer of a San Francisco-based technology company, has been charged with wire fraud, announced United States Attorney Melinda Haag and FBI Special Agent in Charge David J. Johnson. An affidavit filed by FBI Special Agent Brian Weber alleges that Mills, 30, of San Francisco, falsely represented that Motionloft, Inc., a company he founded and served as its CEO, was going to be acquired by Cisco, Inc., and that Cisco already had paid a good faith deposit of millions of dollars toward that acquisition. According to court documents, one victim invested $210,000 relying on Mills’ claims that this victim would obtain shares in Motionloft in return and huge profits when the acquisition closed. Mills allegedly made these false representations just days before Motionloft’s stockholders terminated him as CEO on or about December 1, 2013. According to court documents, representatives of Cisco and Motionloft’s largest investor have both stated there was no possible acquisition of Motionloft by Cisco. Furthermore, court documents reflect that Motionloft’s largest investor has been contacted by several victims of Mills, and that Mills has claimed he is trying to pay back those victims. Mills was arrested yesterday in San Francisco, and he made his initial appearance in federal court in San Francisco this morning. Mills is in custody, at least until his next scheduled court appearance, tomorrow, February 21, 2014, at 9:30 a.m. before the Honorable Maria-Elena James, United States Magistrate Court Judge in San Francisco. The maximum statutory penalty for wire fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1343, is 20 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, plus restitution. Any sentence following conviction, however, would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C. § 3553. Authorities believe there are several additional victims of Mills’ alleged fraud. Anyone with information about Mills should contact the FBI in San Francisco at 415-553-7400. Doug Sprague is the Assistant U.S. Attorney who is prosecuting the case with the assistance of Rayneisha Booth. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Please note that a criminal complaint contains only allegations against an individual and, as with all defendants, Jonathan Edward (“Jon”) Mills must be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. It’s probably worth noting that the investor who was allegedly defrauded is not one of the people I spoke with as part of my , nor someone they knew directly. Also, that the investment made by “J.D.” came after the events that led my sources to believe that they had already been defrauded. |
SV Angel-Backed Benchling Is Modernizing Software For Biotech Labs | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | After the last two decades of consumer Internet and mobile innovation, is biotech or bioinformatics the next wave? There are a handful of San Francisco-based startups that cross the bridge between the worlds of biotechnology and computer science. is one of them. Backed with about $900,000 from YCombinator, SV Angel, Founders Fund’s angel investing fund, Draper Associates and other angels, the company offers DNA editing and analysis software to biotech labs and researchers. With the entire team coming from MIT with skills in both computer science and biology, they’re competing against older, more cumbersome software solutions in the space. “The quality of software is holding back innovation in life sciences,” said Sajith Wickramasekara, the company’s CEO. “In bio software, the people who code it are disconnected from the work that’s actually being done. So it ends up being crap.” The company’s team includes engineers who have done stints at Twitter, Palantir, Google and Facebook. Their research experience covers genetics, neuroscience, and synthetic biology. He added that researchers collaborate by e-mailing files or using Excel spreadsheets, which is tedious. While the company is starting with DNA editing software, Benchling’s longer-term mission is to ultimately create an app store for life sciences. “We imagine a lab where all the hardware will talk directly to Benchling’s platform. So that when scientists carry out experiments, they won’t need to write anything down, which would cause errors.” For every kind of data a biotech lab could produce, Wickramasekara envisions cloud-based software that would simplify the design, analysis and sharing of that data. Their second product will interface with imaging machines to analyze pictures from gel electrophoresis experiments So far, Benchling has 2,000 academics using it and 10 different for-profit companies. They don’t charge academic researchers, but enterprise deals usually cost anywhere from $50 to 100 per person. Already, researchers are using it to make yeast produce petrochemicals without oil, produce new antibiotics and even perform computation with bacteria. Wickramasekara thinks the market opportunity is huge. Costs for full genome sequencing are falling faster than Moore’s Law would suggest and companies like . These lower costs will produce an immense wealth of data that will have to be studied. Not only that, there is the emerging field of synthetic biology, which will give rise to all kinds of new designs for biological organisms and parts. As Benchling picks up more customers, their repository of data will grow and they’ll make it easier for users to search a researcher’s publicly shared data. They’re not the only ones in this space too. Another startup, Transcriptic, . They’re a little bit different than Benchling, as Transcriptic operates a “software and robot-enabled remote lab,” which performs studies and trials on contract for other researchers. |
HP Posts Modest FQ1 Beat With Revenue Of $28.2B, Adjusted EPS Of $0.90 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | Today after the close, HP a slight beat in its fiscal first quarter, including net revenue of $28.2 billion, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.90. Investors had expected $27.19 billion in revenue, and $0.84 in per-share profit, excluding items. HP’s revenue fell 1 percent year over year in the period. How might that be a beat? Well, if people expect your firm’s top line to contract by 4 percent, that’s a fine figure to have. HP’s non-GAAP earnings per share were up 10 percent, and its GAAP earnings per share were up 17 percent. For its fiscal second quarter, HP forecasts that it will have earnings per share of $0.85 to $0.89 (non-GAAP). Analysts $0.89. HP is flat to down in after-hours trading, perhaps on that weakness. After a difficult in 2013, HP has turned in . I agree with that this is indicative of current CEO Meg Whitman’s . Now, to PCs. Here’s HP’s line item on its personal computer business: Personal Systems revenue was up 4% year over year with a 3.3% operating margin. Commercial revenue increased 8% and Consumer revenue declined 3%. Total units were up 6% with Desktops units down 3% and Notebooks units up 5%. This jives with what we might have expected: Stronger commercial PC demand is more than making up for weakness among consumers. Microsoft’s , as you recall, told a similar story. Printing revenue slipped 2 percent. According to Whitman, HP “is in a stronger position today than we’ve been in quite some time.” I agree. |
Service That Lets You Order Food Naked, GrubLess SeamHub, Quietly Files For IPO | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | In May of last year, we — two of the largest players in the online and mobile food delivery space and “arch rivals” — were coming together as part of a blockbuster merger. My, how fast they grow up. Not nine months later, the merged food-ordering giant has begun to take the next step in its development. The this morning that GrubHub Seamless (really, not “GrubLess”?) has confidentially submitted a filing for what would be their initial public offering. It’s not clear when exactly the company will take their business to the public markets, but WSJ’s report puts it in the first half of this year. Given what we’ve heard from sources, this sounds about right and would make a lot of sense. After all, both Seamless and GrubHub were rumored to be considering potential IPOs and talking to banks on their own, with reports on GrubHub’s interest in an IPO going as far back as 2012. The merger minted the largest company in the online food delivery space by a long shot, accelerating those efforts. Together, they have raised $135 million in venture capital, and while the companies have declined to share their current revenue figures, the reports from early last year said that Seamless was projected to do over $100 million in revenue in 2013. Our conversations with sources confirmed those expectations, and our approximate projections put GrubHub’s revenue growth in the same ballpark. In terms of coverage, the combined organization offers online food ordering and digital menus for over 28,000 restaurants in over 600 cities, as well, according to the latest numbers. On the one hand, this means that GrubHub Seamless is going to have no problem finding underwriters for its IPO, nor should it require too much friction raising big money leading up to the initial offering. In terms of the IPO market, while it dried up a bit after Facebook’s flop, it’s been heating back up thanks to Twitter et al. If Chegg had no problem raising $180 million-plus at a billion dollar-plus valuation given the problems it’s had making money and the perceived shriveling of its market, it’s not a stretch to imagine GrubHub Seamless outpacing that. Meaning, although it’s pure speculation at this point, don’t be surprised if the online food ordering company raises over $250 million at a multi-billion-dollar valuation. On the other hand, this means that, because GrubHub Seamless has less than $1 billion in revenues, under new U.S. securities laws, it can confidentially file for a public offering with regulators. The company declined to comment on the IPO rumors, but the only thing that’s really in any potential doubt here is the issue of “when.” There’s really little doubt this company is going public at some point in the next 12 months. Stay tuned for more. |
Hubub Raises $8.5M To Be The New Home For Conversations On The Web | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | On the web, no one can hear you converse – or perhaps they can, but it’s not terribly easy to surface them and have a sustained, engaged dialogue around any particular topic. Threaded comment streams do this to some extent, as do forums, message boards, and even social networks like Facebook and Twitter. But none do thematic or topic-based discussion well, according to ‘s founders, hence the need for the startup. Toronto- and New York-based Hubub launched in beta quietly late last year, and today it’s announcing its $8.5 million Series A round of funding. That money will help the company scale and add more engineering talent to its team to continue to build product, founder and CEO Peter L. Corsell explained to me in an interview. But it’s mostly business as usual, as the startup continues its mission of trying to build on what was started with the online forum, but never really improved since. “Specifically what really gave us the idea was that we were watching the Egyptian protests, in the latter part of the Arab Spring and we looked at the way people were using Facebook and Twitter, which was both inspiring and novel,” Corsell explained in an interview. “Yet it occurred to us that there was also an unmet need to give a tool to rapidly convene passionate, engaged communities around a topic of interest.” Thus was Hubub born, which is designed to build these communities, where users can jump in and contribute the best content, be it user-generated or collected from the best of the web, around specific topics. Hububs (the individual topic nodes created) are user-generated and user-curated, but there’s also a degree of automation where you can view auto-collected content around certain keywords, too, making this effectively an aggregation search engine, too. “When you think about the future of search broadly, I see it bifurcating between what I would think of as more tactical queries where you have a question and there’s one right answer or a small finite pool of good answers,” Corsell said. “The other type of search is, if you Google for example ‘what were the most searched for terms in 2013,’ it’s topics: It’s ‘iPad,’ it’s Bengazi,’ it’s ‘Kate Middleton.’ What excites me about Hubub is as the community matures, it becomes a really great place to go to immerse yourself, in articles, in photos and videos and more.” Other efforts attempting to build conversations around specific topics haven’t always fared too well: Branch nabbed a decent exit to Facebook, but even big league efforts like Google Wave fizzled quickly, and as Corsell himself notes, there hasn’t really been anything between the legacy (read: outdated) model of forums and the too fast-paced, stream-based vision of Twitter that manages to keep things on topic over a sustained period, with real back-and-forth. Corsell thinks Hubub has the right mix of media, polls and sentiment analysis to make a real impact, and he says early traction backs up that belief. I’m still not sure that there’s a real need for this kind of platform between the existing social media giants, but Hubub’s investors in this round, which include a number of private investors, are definitely betting that there is. Hubub plans to launch its mobile client within the next few weeks, too, which could have a big impact in terms of validating the model. |
How Facebook Can Supercharge WhatsApp | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | will “operate independently” doesn’t mean Facebook won’t put its 6,000-employee muscle behind its . We’ve heard a lot about how WhatsApp will save Facebook from losing the international messaging war, but sources close to the parent company tell me it actually did a lot to help Instagram. Here are the ways you can expect it to do the same for WhatsApp. [Update 2/24/12 10:30am PST: At Mobile World Congress, that WhatsApp will remain autonomous but will have access to Facebook’s services and infrastructure as I describe below. He also mentioned that Facebook’s financial support means WhatsApp can focus on growth instead of having to monetize sooner in a way that could hamper growth.] Instagram CTO Mike Krieger apparently wasn’t sleeping much in months before his company was bought by Facebook. In two years, Instagram had grown to 27 million registered iOS users before launching on Android where it picked up 1 million more in the first 24 hours. Krieger was known to spend late nights fighting server fires to keep Instagram from going down like the Hindenburg. With just a dozen total employees, he didn’t have much help. After the acquisition, Krieger could suddenly call on Facebook’s massive, world-class engineering team for help or guidance. When I saw him a few months after the deal, he’d regained his youthful glow and looked like he’d been sleeping more. Now imagine what life’s been like for WhatsApp co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton. I’m gonna go on a hunch and say “stressed”. Over the past few months their service grew to serve 450 million users with , each one supporting 14 million people. In that during his often-missed kickboxing class “Every few minutes Koum sits down for a break, slipping the gloves off and checking for messages from Acton about WhatsApp’s servers.” Well lucky for them, the cavalry has arrived. WhatsApp will be able to draw on Facebook’s engineering know-how and team if their code breaks or servers stumble. That could help prevent outages and make WhatsApp work even faster, even if it doesn’t get slapped with a Facebook logo or any other design changes. At over 6,000 employees and rapidly growing, Facebook knows a lot about recruiting. It’s far from perfect, considering when the two applied to work there around 2008, and it’s seen some brain drain since the IPO. Still, the company has feelers out around the world looking for top talent. Facebook can now pitch potential recruits a spot at WhatsApp. Sure, the upside potential is diminished now it’s already been acquired, but Facebook’s HR team can tempt people with the chance to work on an app serving almost a half a billion people. Considering Facebook spent $19 billion to acquire WhatsApp, I’d bet it’d be willing to pony up to pay for high-profile poaches from other companies, or even smaller talent acquisitions to bring in whole teams of great staffers. Facebook’s deep pockets could change the game for what was a lean startup. And some of that fresh blood could come from within Facebook itself. Instagram was able to to help it kick off its advertising effort as Director Of Business Operations (though she’s since left for Snapchat). Facebook’s star mobile product manager to become its Director Of Product. When top talent at Facebook gets a bit restless, they could inject some excitement without leaving the family by hopping to WhatsApp. At moments in Instagram’s history, it’s had serious spam problems. Comments with scam links, hacked accounts posting spam photos, fake followers doling out likes in hopes of a follow-back so they could spam you more. Before it was acquired, it photos to its feed, and chose not to have a web presence that would invite spammers. Thankfully Facebook had extensive experience fighting spam. It managed to in 2010 according to former CTO Bret Taylor. In late 2012 it kill off . Sources tell me Instagram got “plugged in” to Facebook’s spam prevention team, to help it Instagram began blocking spam comments posted to multiple photos, quickly squashed the , and was able to to posts from other apps. For WhatsApp, Facebook’s spam fighters could help it banish malicious users and stop hackers before they steal control of people’s accounts. The intimate nature of mobile messaging makes spam messages especially annoying. No company is 100% spam-proof, but thousands of extra Facebook engineers with domain expertise should surely get WhatsApp closer to that goal. Facebook’s growth to 1.23 billion users is no accident. There’s a dedicated to the science of adding and retaining users. They have a whole office lined with international flags and screens showing growth figures. The have become hallmarks of Facebook’s development style, as former member . They do intense A/B testing on every feature, often pushing dozens or even hundreds of different versions of Facebook to different users through a system called to measure which changes are beneficial. There’s intense funnel optimization to boost signups, get users onboarded, keep them engaged, and get them back if they lapse. Facebook even provides a totally different experience for new users designed to get them enough friends to fill their feed before they see the standard interface. Plus there’s internationalization to make sure the app is translated into every language and available on any type of phone. Facebook’s growth team threw fuel on Instagram’s fire, helping it rocket from 27 million iOS registrations and a few million Androiders to the 150 million-plus active users it has today. It could give WhatsApp a similar boost. Already at 450 million users and 1 million more signups per day, WhatsApp hasn’t needed Facebook’s help, but now it can have it if it wants. And I expect it will. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Koum said yesterday that not monetization but growth is WhatsApp’s top priority. As we wrote yesterday, its own Messenger was too far behind in the global messaging race, so expanding that worldwide footprint across devices is crucial. When Facebook says it’ll keep its hands off, that’s more about product direction and external branding than what happens under the hood. After paying so much to wrestle WhatsApp away from Google, you can bet Facebook will do whatever it can to help it trounce SMS and the other chat apps, even if users are none the wiser. |
Problem In Tinder Dating App Leaked User Locations | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | Tinder, one of the hottest dating apps, is making headlines for more than making matches. A security firm, IncludeSec, recently revealed a major problem in Tinder’s app that could allow hackers to accurately pinpoint users geographically using high school math. Tinder is used to find people in your area looking to meet, date, or even hook up. Users pick potential matches based mainly on looks although each profile has a user-currated page. It presents a picture of a fellow Tinder user with a relatively near location. Like that person? Swipe her picture to the right for a potential date. Not interested? Swipe left. And all while supposedly hiding everyone’s exact location. These sorts of apps are designed to be relatively anonymous, but after a bit of digging, the security company discovered that the app was releasing telemetry data that, when used to triangulate a user, can display the location of that user to within 100 feet. The full exploit is explained and demonstrated in the video above. This is the second time such an exploit was discovered. A similar vulnerability appeared in July 2013. Tinder has quietly fixed the problem, according to a statement provided by the company yesterday. Tinder is also not aware of anyone using the latest exploit. And that’s the issue. Anyone can be a hacker. Anything that an API can be used for, it will be used for. The engineer that implemented that code clearly was under the impression that it was safe. Companies big and small obviously do not roll out code that can be maliciously exploited. The company’s goal is to make people happy, not sad. App makers have the responsibility to provide its users with a relative amount of security. This is especially true if your app is about meeting people around you based on their picture alone. It’s likely that Tinder didn’t publicize this exploit and fix in order to save face. The company was already recovering from and probably didn’t want users to question it, again, about security. Tinder is not alone here, although this particular exploit could have ended especially badly. From Target’s to an to hackers, data security will continue to be a rolling issue. It’s a company’s responsibility to protect its data for the sake of its users. And when a breach happens, because they will continue to happen, transparency is the best policy. The only question left is which app is going to leak data next? At TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin (video below), Tinder founder and CEO Sean Rad didn’t reveal exact user counts, but instead mentioned the app sees 3.5 million matches and 350 million swipes a day. (About 30 percent of those are the right swipes that indicate interest.) And the app has seen 30 billion swipes and 300 million matches total. |
Real-Time Mobile Analytics Platform Amplitude Takes On Flurry & Mixpanel | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | , a Y Combinator-backed mobile analytics service aiming to take on the likes of Flurry and Mixpanel by offering advanced features at more competitive prices, is officially making its public debut today ahead of YC’s Demo Day. And the company has actually gone through this process before, as it turns out – it’s the same team from the , which was in the YC Winter 2012 cohort. Explains Amplitude co-founder Spenser Skates, Sonalight did “decently” well, reaching hundreds of thousands of downloads, and some number of paying customers, but it never really became a mainstream success. However, the team, as a part of the process of building their own mobile app, had also spent a lot of time creating their own tools for analytics in order to examine their data in custom ways. Other developers in Y Combinator were soon asking for that same product, after getting a look. So the team pivoted from Sonalight, and built what’s now called Amplitude. Things got off the ground around a year and a half ago, says Skates. “We looked at the market, and we knew a lot of other mobile companies were really unhappy with what they had for analytics,” he explains. Companies would begin with something free like Flurry or Google, then work their way up to advanced, but expensive services like those from Mixpanel or other enterprise-level players. But Skates thought they could do something better by building a more developer-centric service, and one that was focused on mobile only. Today, has grown to around 30 business customers using its platform (via its open source SDK), and has a reach of around 20,000 applications, thanks to an integration with the Corona Labs SDK. But the service hadn’t been available for public sign-ups until now. What makes Amplitude different is not only its strict focus on mobile, but also on delivering real-time analytics for things developers need to track like funnels, segmentation, monetization, and more. Plus, it does so at a lower cost. This is especially important for new launches, says Skates. “If you’re launching a product, you need to know right away if it’s succeeding or failing. You don’t want to wait 24 hours for the data,” he says. Another feature that makes Amplitude stand out is that it offers direct database access to the raw data. That is, developers can connect directly to its servers and type in a SQL query on the raw data itself, and then analyze the data in any way they want, or pull it into Tableau, for example. It’s this feature in particular that’s attracted several ex-Zynga employees who are now running their own mobile startups. A few notable customers include former Zynga GM , now of ; former Zynga VP now of ; plus of ; ; ; and others. Skates says that Amplitude has been attracting customers who have “experienced the pain” of using other mobile platforms, as well as those who are looking for the advanced feature sets without the higher costs of using something like Mixpanel. Mixpanel’s Mixpanel The company offers a freemium service, with that range from $299 to $1999 per month up to enterprise pricing. Today, Amplitude is growing at 30%-50% month-over-month in terms of data collected, and is seeing around 8 billion events per month (or around a third of what Mixpanel does, Skates notes). San Francisco-based Amplitude is a of four full-time, including co-founder and CTO Curtis Liu. The company still has a small amount of angel investment from its Sonalight days, but is not discussing its funding plans at this time. |
Namecheap Is In The Middle Of A DDoS Attack | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | If any of your favorite sites don’t seem to be working right now, don’t panic — it’s not just you. Namecheap, the host of some 3 million-plus domains, is reporting that they’re currently undergoing a Distributed Denial Of Service attack of unknown origins. If that sounds like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo to you, here’s all you need to know: a Distributed Denial Of Service (or DDoS) attack is, generally, when an attacker floods its target with so much traffic that it’s unable to respond to legitimate requests. Namecheap, a company that helps make it so that you can type URLs (like WhateverWebsiteHere.com) instead of IPs (like 192.168.0.1), is currently facing an attack like this, making it quite hard for them to do their job. The attackers appear to be focusing on some of Namecheap’s primary DNS servers. As a result, many domains that are hosted on Namecheap will be unable to resolve, and other features that rely on their nameservers (like email) might not work. The company is actively battling the attack, and are hoping that they’ll have everything locked down within the next hour or so. In the meantime: if your domain is hosted on Namecheap and is having difficulties resolving, Namecheap recommends . Namecheap tells us that the situation now seems to be under control. See their full response to this attack below. Namecheap gained many a fan back in 2011, when the company launched a campaign called in response to competitor GoDaddy’s then-support of the controversial . This, along with many other pressures, eventually lead for the bill. Here’s the official response and breakdown of the attack from Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall and VP Matt Russell:
Today is one of the days that as a service provider who strives to deliver excellence day in and day out, you wish you never had. At around 15.55 GMT / 11.55 EST, a huge DDoS attack started against 300 or so domains on our DNS platform. Our DNS platform is a redundant, global platform spread across 3 continents and 5 countries that handles the DNS for many of our customers. This is a platform meticulously maintained and ran, and a platform that successfully fends off other DDoS attacks on an almost-daily basis. Today, however, I am compelled to announce that we struggled. The sheer size of the attack overwhelmed many of our DNS servers resulting in inaccessibility and sluggish performance. Our initial estimates show the attack size to be over 100Gbps, making this one of the largest attacks anyone has seen or dealt with. And this is a new type of attack, one that we and our hardware and network partners had not encountered before. We responded with our well-practiced mitigation plan while also enabling our backup system for those with affected domains. It took us around 3 hours to fully mitigate the attack, working closely with our hardware and network vendors. At this moment in time, 99% of our services are back to normal. I’d like to take this time to apologize to those customers affected. I also wish to iterate that we will learn from this attack and come back stronger, and more robust. We are bringing forward a key DNS infrastructure enhancement program that will see us massively expand the size of our DNS infrastructure and our ability to absorb and fend off attacks like these. We remain firmly committed to delivering the absolute best service possible to our loyal customers. Richard Kirkendall
CEO |
Twitter Announces Its Marketing Platform Program, A Rebranding Of Its Ads API | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | Twitter a year ago today, allowing advertisers to run their campaigns through API partners like Adobe and Salesforce. Now it’s — the Twitter Marketing Platform Program — as well as . Why the change? In , Twitter says, “We expanded this network of partners beyond advertising alone, and today we’re pleased to introduce a new name for our entire suite of partners.” (It’s not totally downplaying the Ads API’s role on the program, though, as you can see in the badge to the left.) The Marketing Platform Program is part of . Building this kind of partner ecosystem has been a big part of Facebook’s ad strategy, too. As for the new website, it’s basically a showcase (or, as Twitter describes it, a “marketplace”) for the various partners. Twitter uses the announcement blog post, to highlight partners too, quoting both and — for example, SocialCode says it ran a Promoted Tweet campaign for “a national network sitcom” and increased retweets by 60 percent. |
Groupon Skyrockets After Hours On Q4 Beat With Revenue Of $768.4M, EPS Of $0.04 [Update: Following Enthusiasm, Investors Turn Sour] | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 20 | Today after the close Groupon its financial performance, including non-GAAP earnings of $0.04 per share on revenue of $768.4 million. In the , Groupon had revenue of $595.1 million, earning $0.02 per share. For the fourth quarter reported today, Groupon to earn $0.02 again, on sharply higher revenue of $719 million. The fourth quarter is, of course, a cyclically strong period for the commerce-facing company. During regular trading today, Groupon picked up more than 1.5 percent, beating an up market. Following its earnings beat, Groupon is up a massive 13 percent. On a GAAP basis, Groupon lost 12 cents per share. What caused the massive gap between GAAP earnings per share and non-GAAP? According to the company, “stock compensation, acquisition costs and the impairment of a minority investment in China.” That’s reasonable. F Looking year over year, for the fourth quarter, Groupon’s revenue rose 20 percent, with the company citing strong holiday shopping as a core reason. All told, a solid quarter for Groupon. Mobile is increasingly important for the firm, which it noted, saying that in the final month of 2013, “nearly 50% of global transactions were completed on mobile devices.” For that month, Groupon was truly a mobile company. It will be interesting to see how that ratio changes moving into the first quarter. What’s ahead? Groupon forecasts that it will have revenue in the period between $710 million and $760 million, and lose between 2 and 4 cents (non-GAAP) per share on the back of costs stemming from its recent purchase of the Korean company Ticket Monster. |
AWS For Life Science? With $4.1M In The Bank, Transcriptic Wants To Reinvent Scientific Research And Bring Labs Into The Cloud | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | As a biomedical engineering student at Duke, Max Hodak became intimately familiar with the sterile tedium of life in a research lab. Like many others who’ve wasted hours of their lives in white coats, he found the fact that most labs still look and operate as they did thirty years ago frustrating. Beyond the fact that many labs are disconnected and aren’t networked, research itself remains a manual, hands-on process, involving a lot of moving small amounts of liquid from one tube to another or handling petri dishes. Watching researchers spend so much time waiting around to use one machine or another, and navigating a manual process where mistakes are both easy to make and costly, Hodak came to the conclusion that labs could use a little automation — and a few more robots. A programmer since age six, the biology student decided to engineer a solution and give life sciences its own, custom version of Amazon Web Services. The result is , a startup and service provider that aims to make the day-in-day-out process of wet lab biology research faster, cheaper and more accessible. Basically, Transcriptic is Science-as-a-Service — or, in other words — a software and robot-enabled remote lab, which uses automation and control technology to perform studies and trials in less time than your average bear, er, Contract Research Organization (or CRO). In today’s life sciences, CROs are the only option for those in need of third-party support for clinical testing and research, and, as such, now represent a multi-billion dollar industry. With its technology and services, Transcriptic is, in a way, looking to play the role of CRO 2.0 and reverse the traditionally lengthy sales process, slow turnarounds and high prices endemic among the industry’s incumbents. Part of Transcriptic’s big goal is the total virtualization and automation of the life sciences research funnel, in particular its infrastructure, and the startup has collected its own fleet of robotic equipment, machines, high-powered microscopes, incubators and centrifuges in its Menlo Park lab to help it do just that. With money being tight in the early development, the team cobbled together this equipment, buying much of it on the cheap, and re-writing software for the machines that enables them to be controlled via its automated command system. However, in spite of its virtualization mission and the fact that submitted protocols are handled by its “automated workcells,” Transcriptic is not without its human components. Transcriptic has a team of “qualified PhD scientists and engineers” to oversee the “functionality of the workcell through internal controls and monitoring,” the company says. In reality, the robot to human ratio is closer to 50:50, Hodak says. Instead, the lab, company or researchers that want to run their experiments through Transcriptic send them detailed instructions on what they want to test for, control for, and so on. The startup plays no role in the design, interpretation or analysis, and doesn’t control environmental parameters other than temperature and humidity. Although it does offer to work with companies to debug and figure out the right approach to make projects work, the founder says. Then, after experiments are completed, the data shows up in the user’s dashboard, and Transcriptic mails them their samples. As of now, the company offers packaged services for cloning and mouse genotyping experiments, as well as growth curve analysis and safe freezer storage via its biobanking program. Each service is priced differently, with most based on a pay-as-you-go-style system. Cloning includes a base fee, while the others are priced “per reaction.” The idea, in Hodak’s conception, is to bring both the cloud computing and the pricing schema of the enterprise software and SaaS markets to science, and in so doing, significantly undercut the prices of the traditional CROs. The other motivator for the Transcriptic founder is to enable biology and life science to focus on the part of it that humans control — creating hypotheses, doing analysis and designing experiments — while leaving the manual leg-work to robots and technology. Of course, all of the above is much easier said than done. After all, when you get down to it, biology research, cloning, genotyping, and experimentation in every area in between is all about precision. Reliability, and producing trustworthy, reliable results is key. Furthermore, for some, the manual tasks inherent to testing, tweaking and experimenting are an important part of the process, and many scientists (especially those over a certain age) are loathe to the idea of outsourcing the research process — especially to a startup. In part, the latter point explains why, at least in the early-stages, Transcriptic has been finding more ready converts among grad students and younger members of the scientific community, who, Hodak says, quickly understand the company’s value proposition. That being said, even if “younguns” make up the core of its user base, it’s not as if these younguns are bottom of the barrel-type scientists or working out of labs one might find on Breaking Bad. Today, Transcriptic counts researchers at Stanford, Caltech, UCSD, Harvard, MIT and the University of Chicago among its customers. Certainly, the startup still has a battle in front of it to convince scientists they can trust a startup for fast, reliable and affordable results, though its case can improve as it collects more data, the founder says. Plus, when you get down to it, what lab wouldn’t like to be able to run more experiments in less time? By making this (theoretically) possible, and by pointing to the larger, macro trend of medical and life science companies and processes moving to the cloud, the core concept becomes less frightening. These are among the selling points Transcriptic has been using to curry favor among venture capitalists as well — a group that is apparently in need of some serious convincing these days when it comes to life science investing. that life sciences lagged behind most industries as a recipient of venture investment in 2013 — both in terms of the amount invested and the number of deals. In a sign of validation for the biotech startup, while VCs are shying away from life science investment, Transcriptic quietly closed a $1.2 million round of seed financing in 2012, which was led by Google Ventures, with support from Founders Fund’s seed investment vehicle as well as angels one doesn’t typically find on a biotech investor roster, like Mark Cuban and Naval Ravikant. And now, with a business that Hodak says has been doubling every month since October, investors are going against the trend and doubling down on Transcriptic. The startup added another $2.8 million in this week in a round led by IA Ventures — with IA’s Brad Gillespie joining its board — along with additional support from Google Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Data Collective and Boost.vc. The round brings Transcriptic’s total funding raised to date to $4.1 million. With the new capital under its belt, Transcriptic has big product plans in its sights, and although Hodak declined to share too many details, it looks as if the startup is moving to expand its services and research coverage. On top of that, Transcriptic is eager to grow its team and invest in more equipment. Life Sciences hardware can be a hard sell for some VCs, but the company has managed to remain lean (like building a freezer for $8K which Hodak $400K retail) and, if it’s able to follow through (even in part) with its mission to help change how research is done, has big implications. Plus, as Transcriptic’s “About Us” page reads: “We want seed incubators to fund biotech companies composed of two graduate students and a laptop, not social-local-mobile photo-sharing apps.” For supporters of life science — and, hey, science in general — that’s a goal that’s easy to get behind. For more, find |
Cloud Security Startup Elastica Comes Out Of Stealth With $6.3M From Mayfield | Pankaj Mishra | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | , a cloud security startup launched in 2012, is coming out of stealth mode with $6.3 million in Series A funding from the Mayfield Fund. The startup is also that offer real-time threat detection and even post-incident forensic analysis. As more enterprises embrace SaaS and other cloud-based services, they are increasingly feeling the need to have a different approach to security beyond just traditional firewalls. This shift means over $2 billion annual market for cloud security vendors like Elastica. As , the highest growth is forecast to occur in cloud-based tokenisation and encryption, security information and event management (SIEM), vulnerability assessment and web application firewalls. Elastica joins a fast growing club of cloud security startups promising to combine data science and in some instances even machine learning tools to help companies and employees secure SaaS data. There’s huge investor interest in the segment and some of the biggest names in the enterprise software world . Elastica was founded in 2012 by Rehan Jalil, former CEO of WiChorus, which was . |
Rakuten Opens Its First European R&D Center In Paris | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | Rakuten, the Japan-based Internet services company, . Called the Rakuten Institute of Technology, this is Rakuten’s third R&D center in the world. The other two are in Tokyo, with 40 employees, and New York, with 10. Rakuten’s Paris R&D center will combine with its big data group there, adding a total of 20 new employees to its Paris office this year. The center’s opening comes a week after Rakuten , as part of a bid to “become the world’s No. 1 Internet services company.” In a statement, Rakuten said that its Paris R&D center will focus on projects to “support the development of the global e-commerce industry,” including data analytics, fraud detection, recommendation systems, image processing, user interfaces, and “‘the online to offline’ transition in e-commerce.” Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani said in a press release that: “Our aim globally is to empower retailers and merchants to sell online, and to do this we must keep up with consumers’ browsing and buying habits – online, on mobile, via social and any other channels that they may want to use in their purchase journey. That’s why we’ve increased the size of our global research team, so they can work on bringing the next big thing in e-commerce to market, with our support.” |
Atlanta’s Got The Fever For Early-Stage Deals | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | Atlanta’s investment community thinks early-stage deals in the region are just peachy. As the TechCrunch Express this evening, folks can expect to see an investment scene that’s been holding steady since 2010. Deals in the “peach state” have remained pretty constant, according to data from , with the number of deals hovering in the 90-100 investments per year range since 2010.
What has changed is the stage in which investors are putting their money to work. Investors in Atlanta — and Georgia more broadly — have moved from doing more late-stage investing to priming the investment pump with earlier stage, angel, seed, and Series A deals, according to the CrunchBase data.
The most active investors in the city and around the state remain the big local firms like and , but national players like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, and New Enterprise Associates have all done at least three deals in the Coca-Cola capital.
Even – – has come in to get comfortable with some Southern technology firms. Kutcher is a backer of the Georgia-based Bitcoin startup . Other rising stars in the venture firmament, such as Andreessen Horowitz, have Georgia on their minds through its investment in , which raised $11 million in Series A funding to prevent phone-based con artists from defrauding unsuspecting rubes. Among later-stage investments has drawn to loan working capital to online merchants that sell via e-commerce platforms like , , and . |
Snapchat Hires Googler, “Pisses Off” His Googler Friends | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | This morning ephemeral messaging app Snapchat that it had poached a Googler, in addition to an Amazonian and a Facebooker. The company will be bringing Google App Engine director on board as VP of Engineering. The announcement in the WSJ, however, did not sit well with Magnusson’s former colleagues at Google App Engine, specifically this line: “Part of his new job at Snapchat will be building technology infrastructure in-house so that the company can begin to lessen its reliance on partners like Google, [Snapchat co-founder Bobby] Murphy said.” Snapchat is a huge App Engine success story. The fact that Snapchat, an app with crazy growth and image sharing, hasn’t ever fallen over like so many startups do when they scale, is a Thus the suggestion that Magnusson left App Engine to help Snapchat migrate off of it is apparently causing some issues back at the Mountain View ranch. Magnusson himself comments on the Wall Street Journal article: For the record, the quote “Part of his new job at Snapchat will be building technology infrastructure in-house so that the company can begin to lessen its reliance on partners like Google, Murphy said.” is (a) not what Bobby said, (b) not really a focus of my job either. Thx WSJ for pissing off all my old Google friends. A more correct statement is that we’ll continuously evaluate alternatives, and likely over time develop more infrastructure ourselves, in particular in specialized areas of our apps. Google is a great partner, and the success of Snapchat would simply not have been possible without Google Cloud, and we expect to work closely together. Period In the comment, Magnusson softens the quoted statement from “lessen the reliance on [Google App Engine]” to “expect to work closely together” while “evaluating alternatives” and implies that Murphy was misquoted. The “piss[ed] off” part of the comment echoes what we’ve heard is the general App Engine reaction to the tone of article; it would be like if someone from WordPress joined TechCrunch to help us migrate off of WordPress. And framed it as such. The WSJ has edited its post, and out the line about Snapchat weaning off its reliance on Google App Engine. Snapchat, in an email, calls the entire situation a “misunderstanding.” |
White House: Without Net Neutrality, The Internet Would Be An Inaccessible “Toll Road” | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | In case you wondered whether the White House , the President’s Chief Technology Officer, Todd Park, in support of net neutrality. “Absent net neutrality, the Internet could turn into a high-priced private toll road that would be inaccessible to the next generation of visionaries,” wrote Park about the contentious law that will allow Internet service providers to charge more money for some websites. Park was responding to 105K people who signed an on WeThePeople to prevent ISPs from charging websites different rates for different speeds. The AT&Ts and Verizons of the world could make a pretty penny by charging services, such as YouTube, to increase the speed of their websites. Major tech companies and civil liberty organizations fear that it would snuff out the savvy little guy who can’t afford the high prices, thereby ending the meritocracy of a net neutral web. Last month, a circuit court an important provision for the Federal Communication Commission’s jurisdiction over the law, potentially threatening the existence of net neutrality. Netflix, which stands to be hit the hardest by a change in the law, in support of net neutrality after the court’s decision. The FCC says it’s working on a potential solution that could withstand further court rulings. The president’s support could provide some cover as the FCC tries to maintain its role over this issue. , but responding to the official White House petitions is a nice sign that the executive branch is taking direct democracy seriously. According to the White House pledge, any WeThePeople petition that gathers more than 100K signatures will get an official response. Some petitions are months old, however, leaving critics to question whether the petition system is being taken seriously. This goes to show that the White House can answer easy questions, like net neutrality, much faster. It does, however, take longer to figure out whether the president wants . |
Mayfield Raises Second, $108 Million Fund To Back Startups In India | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | Mayfield Fund has announced that it has closed its second , totaling $108 million raised to invest in startups in the region. Mayfield India II is managed by Mayfield India II Management, including the firm’s managing director , and partners Vikram Godse, and . The fund itself focuses on early-stage investments in India, and invests between $2 million and $8 million in companies targeting the infrastructure sector, tech and tech-enabled services, and the consumer middle class in the country. “While the macro-economic climate has varied since we started investing in India in 2006, we have learned that India continues to present valuable opportunities to technology and non-technology investors,” Chaddha explained. “Two of our key takeaways are that tech-enabled infrastructure solutions can create great value, and lifestyle and entertainment products aimed at the consumer middle class can grow into universal brands.” Mayfield’s current investments in India include Amagi Media, Centum Learning, Genesis Colors, India Property, Matrimony.com, Securens Systems, Sohanlal Commodity Management, Tejas Networks, and The Beer Café. In total, the Mayfield India team has invested in over 20 Indian companies in the past, of which seven have had IPOs and another five have been acquired. It seems that the first fund has Mayfield India I totaled raised in 2008. Mayfield also raised $365 million for its last main fund, XIV, in 2012 and currently has $3 billion under management. Accel Partners also |
Dear Car Makers: Please Hire People Like This | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | The interfaces in modern cars are, with rare exception, awful. It’s almost absurd, really. The car is one of the most expensive things that people buy for themselves. It’s massive. It’s got a power supply that lasts for days… and yet, it’s one of the least “smart” devices in our lives. A three-year old tablet headed for the recycling bin puts the stock interface in most cars to shame. The operating systems are slow, and often bug-riddled. If there’s a touchscreen, it’s almost certainly a crappy, low-res screen using yesteryear’s touch technology. Worst of all, they’re . Over the last few years, touchscreens have become fairly standard in many new, mid-range lines. Which is great! The problem? Manufacturers didn’t really go about it right. Rather than seizing the opportunity to design something entirely new around touch, they just took all of the physical, oh-so-pressable buttons they once splayed across the dash and crammed them onto a touchscreen. Haptics? Sensible, spatial design? Whatever, we’ve got a touchscreen! Shiny! As a result, actions that once required but a pinch of muscle memory (like, say, changing the station) now require you to take your eyes off the road entirely, lest you blindly jam your finger into the wrong button in that flat sea of glass. Voice control is a strong contender here — perhaps more so than in any other space, really. But that’s yet another place where cars are lagging. As Google’s voice recognition approaches an almost terrifyingly accurate level, I’m still finding myself angrily shouting at my 2014 model car while it fails to figure out which of six possible commands I’m saying. Thankfully, both Apple and Google have realized the massive space to be won here, and are actively working to take the manufacturers and their terrible design work out of the mix. It won’t happen overnight — but in just a few years, interacting with our cars should be a whole lot less awful. In the meantime, let us all drool over this just-posted concept video by , whose LinkedIn profile lists his last job as being a product designer at Cue — the team behind the titular Cue personal assistant app that was acquired by Apple . [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVbuk3jizGM&w=854&h=510] Is it perfect? No. Amongst other things, it requires users to learn and memorize how to control an interface, rather than working in a way that they can discover naturally. Is three fingers A/C control or audio source control? But we need more of this. We need more smart people thinking about how we interact with our cars, especially as touchscreens become more and more common. When we’re steering what is essentially a 2-ton metal missile down the street, shouldn’t be a dangerous decision. |
Advertisers Not Thrilled With Apple’s Practice Of Protecting Its Users’ Data | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | Apple has a lot of knowledge regarding its users, which it uses to improve its services and offerings, including names, addresses, locations and purchase histories. But what it doesn’t do with that data is share it with advertisers very freely. That makes Madison Avenue very mad, according to a new detailing why Apple, and Amazon (which operates in a similar manner) aren’t having an easy time of building their respective advertising businesses. Apple might come out ahead of its competitors on data, if it would share. That’s a telling quote from the piece, which refers to the quality of Apple’s information, which is “one of the best” according to a former Apple software manager and one of the key architects of iAd’s data-measurement platform. But what it reveals to its advertising partner is next to nil; rather than offering a cookie-based ad-tracking and targeting mechanism, it essentially requires partners to tell it what kind of audience it needs to reach, and then trust that Apple will handle the rest, AdAge says. And it’s well worth noting that Apple prioritizes customer privacy here over a big potential upside in ad revenue. As Apple itself notes on its , advertising partners get access to analytics and performance reporting, as well as customized campaign creation with either automatic or manual targeting options, which include factors like geography, gender, age and specific user preferences. But what it doesn’t do is hand over the keys to all that data and let advertisers plug into it directly with their own data-mining and targeting software. That’s not standard for the ad industry and that’s likely the reason a few Madison Avenue feathers are ruffled over their approach. Of course, Apple’s approach is in keeping with its overall goal of maintaining customer satisfaction. Happy customers are customers who know their sensitive data is protected and used responsibly. The iAd logic is clear: Apple offers to drive engagement, as well as provide granular reporting and easy campaign tweaks to capture a better rate of return on investment, but it isn’t willing to draw back the curtain to make that happen (nor is that even required, the company would likely argue). Apple has caused discomfort before in an established industry in the process of maintaining its relationship with its users intact: When it rolled out the iPhone, carriers had to give up their role as an intermediary between phone manufacturer and end user, as Apple refused to allow the kind of bloatware and service/goods delivery portals that had provided revenue streams to carriers for years. This is a similar reimagining of an established way of doing business, but one that I’d argue will ultimately prove just as beneficial for the average consumer. Advertisers, too, seem to be willing to admit the value of Apple’s system. A number of top advertisers are on board with the platform, after all, and some have been since the start. The platform has a reach of over 600 million users worldwide, with unique advantages in terms of audience segmentation. Just like with carriers, the upside is too big to ignore, and that could ultimately help contribute to an industry shift. |
Kimono Is A Smarter Web Scraper That Lets You “API-ify” The Web, No Code Required | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | A new Y Combinator-backed startup called wants to make it easier to access data from the unstructured web with a point-and-click tool that can extract information from webpages that don’t have an API available. And for non-developers, Kimono plans to eventually allow anyone track data without needing to understand APIs at all. This sort of smarter “web scraper” idea has been tried before, and has always struggled to find more than a niche audience. Previous attempts with similar services like or , for example, . still chugs along, but it’s fair to say that the service has long since been a priority for its parent company. But Kimono’s founders believe that the issue at hand is largely timing. “Companies more and more are realizing there’s a lot of value in opening up some of their data sets via APIs to allow developers to build these ecosystems of interesting apps and visualizations that people will share and drive up awareness of the company,” says Kimono co-founder Pratap Ranade. (He also delves into this subject deeper in ). But often, companies don’t know how to begin in terms of what data to open up, or how. Kimono could inform them. Plus, adds Ranade, Kimono is materially different from earlier efforts like Dapper or Needlebase, because it’s outputting to APIs and is starting off by focusing on the developer user base, with an expansion to non-technical users planned for the future. (Meanwhile, older competitors were often the other way around). One of those was Airpapa.com, a website that told you which movies were showing on your flights. This ended up giving them the idea for Kimono, as it turned out. To get the data they needed for the site, they had to scrape data from several publicly available websites. “The whole process of cleaning that [data] up, extracting it on a schedule…it was kind of a painful process,” explains Rowe. “We spent most of our time doing that, and very little time building the website itself,” he says. At the same time, while Rowe was at Frog, he realized that the company had a lot of non-technical designers who needed access to data to make interesting design decisions, but who weren’t equipped to go out and get the data for themselves. With Kimono, the end goal is to simplify data extraction so that anyone can manage it. After signing up, you install a bookmarklet in your browser, which, when clicked, puts the website into a special state that allows you to point to the items you want to track. For example, if you were trying to track movie times, you might click on the movie titles and showtimes. Then Kimono’s learning algorithm will build a data model involving the items you’ve selected. That data can be tracked in real time and extracted in a variety of ways, including to Excel as a .CSV file, to RSS in the form of email alerts, or for developers as a RESTful API that returns JSON. Kimono also offers “Kimonoblocks,” which lets you drop the data as an embed on a webpage, and it offers a simple mobile app builder, which lets you turn the data into a mobile web application. For developer users, the company is currently working on an API editor, which would allow you to combine multiple APIs into one. So far, the team says, they’ve been “very pleasantly surprised” by the number of sign-ups, which have reached ten thousand*. And even though only a month old, they’ve seen active users in the thousands. Initially, they’ve found traction with hardware hackers who have done fun things like making an airhorn blow every time someone funds their Kickstarter campaign, for instance, as well as with those who have used Kimono for visualization purposes, or monitoring the exchange rates of various cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and dogecoin. Others still are monitoring data that’s later spit back out as a Twitter bot. Kimono APIs are now making over 100,000 calls every week, and usage is growing by over 50 percent per week. The company also put out to showcase what the platform can do. The current business model is freemium based, with that kicks in for higher-frequency usage at scale. The Mountain View-based company is a team of just the two founders for now, and has initial investment from YC, YC VC and SV Angel. [vimeo 82849382 w=500 h=281] |
Roku Adds Cable App Showtime Anytime To Its Content Lineup | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | today announced another big cable network is making its content available on its streaming video devices. This time, , which will enable cable viewers to login and catch up on previous episodes of shows like Homeland, Ray Donovan, Dexter, and Nurse Jackie through a new Roku Channel. Showtime Anytime can be downloaded on Roku devices now, with service available to subscribers of AT&T U-verse, Brighthouse, Cablevision’s Optimum TV, DIRECTV, Grande Communications, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon FiOS. |
Bitstrips Is Raising $15 Million | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | Bitstrips, an app for building personalized comic strips, is raising a hefty Series B. We’ve heard from sources familiar with the matter that is taking the lead. The deal hasn’t yet closed, so the amount isn’t confirmed, but we’re hearing that the Toronto-based company is looking to secure $15 million. This would bring Bitstrips’ total funding to $18 million. Bitstrips launched back in October of 2013 and took all of two weeks to hit the No. 1 spot for free applications in the App Store. The service lets you create an avatar of yourself using an easy-to-use composer. Once your main character is complete, you can be the star of your own comic thanks to hundreds of pre-set situations and elements, including facial expressions and backgrounds. Bitstrips also lets you connect with your friends on Facebook, develop avatars for them, and include them in your comic strips (shareable to Facebook, of course). The company pushes out new comic options every day, but with the explosion in user growth over the past few months, scaling is likely becoming an issue, which explains why the company is raising such a large sum just a few months after its last round. In mid-December, Bitstrips confirmed a investment from China-based Horizons Venture. At the time, the company announced it had hit 30 million avatars in two months. We’ve reached out to Bitstrips and KPCB for comment, but neither firm responded. |
On-Demand Food Startup SpoonRocket Brings Its $6 Meals To San Francisco | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | , the Y Combinator-backed startup that hopes to provide healthy, fast, and cheap meals to hungry customers, is now available in San Francisco. Or at least, part of San Francisco, for a few hours a day. The startup , offering up meals for $6 each before taxes and tip. The service is also designed to be ultra-fast, delivering food generally within 15 minutes of an order being placed on its website or through its mobile app. How does it do that? To start, SpoonRocket has a limited number of options to choose from every day — just two, in fact. And its meals are actually kept in heaters that are driven around in SpoonRocket-owned vehicles, making sure they’re delivered hot and fast to people who order them. It’s been pretty successful in its initial markets, and is now delivering thousands of meals a day. And so it’s time to expand. Before you get too excited about SpoonRocket’s entrance into San Francisco, however, there are a few caveats: First, it’s only available in the SOMA neighborhood to start. That’s great for TechCrunch’s core audience of downtown engineers, but it’s kind of a bummer for the folks who live and work pretty much anywhere else in the city. Second, the service is only launching with lunch for the time being. So hungry folks in SOMA who don’t have other lunch plans between 11:00 and 2:00 will be able to use the service. (Usual hours in the East Bay are between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m.) I tried out the service today just to see what it was like. SpoonRocket generally offers one vegan or vegetarian option and one heartier, meat option every day. Today I got to choose from: I ordered both, just to test them out, and was amazed to find that the food was delivered within seven minutes of ordering. About two minutes before delivery, I got a phone call alerting me to pick up the food from a car outside. I walked out, and was able to grab my meals immediately. The food itself was pretty good, and actually a great value considering it was only $6. Considering I regularly eat meals at my desk, it’s likely that I’ll be using the service frequently on days that I can’t get out of the office. Anyway, for SpoonRocket, launching in just one particular neighborhood of San Francisco and expanding from there follows what it’s done on the other side of the Bay Bridge, which has been fairly successful. Starting out in just Berkeley and Emeryville, it later expanded to Oakland and Albany. The company plans to add more neighborhoods and longer hours over time, as demand scales. |
Selfie360 Turns Your Face Into A Gif | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | What’s better than a selfie? A selfie that is a gif. Meet Selfie360, the newest, and most aptly named, app from the . After building an app that , the Cycloramic team leveraged the technology in a brand new way. A narcissistic way, you might say. The Selfie360 app gives you three options for a selfie: portrait, panorama, or full. Portrait lets you create a shorter gif of your beautiful mug, which is automatically reversed within the feed. Panorama lets you hold the phone yourself, spin in a circle, and show off your face from every angle. Finally, “Full” lets someone else take the selfie of you by circling you like a tiger on the hunt. All three are fun. Once you’ve posted your selfie, it’s double-checked by a human to ensure it doesn’t include any genitalia or drugs or things that are illegal, and then it goes live on a public feed. You also have the option to share to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and a number of other social networks. For now, the feed is public for all Selfie360 users, but founder Bruno Francois tells me that the team will eventually add a follow-based structure to the app, letting you curate your own feed. The team will also add likes, hashtags, Search, direct messages, and geo-location. There are a number of apps that capitalize on our obsession with our own faces, including Instagram and FrontBack, but Selfie360 is the first that mixes selfies and gifs. It’s a lethal, lovely combination. To check out the Selfie360 app, visit the iTunes store by clicking . |
AT&T Releases Transparency Data On Government Requests For Customer Data | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | Today AT&T in concerning government requests for its customer information. Verizon released similar data in January. A host of technology companies have done the same. In 2013, AT&T received between 2,000 and 2,999 National Security Letters, impacting 4,000 to 4,999 customer accounts. Verizon, for comparison, received “between 1,000 and 2,000” National Security Letters in the same period. In the first half of 2013 (as , there is a Department of Justice limit on what they can disclose in this specific context) AT&T received somewhere between 0 and 999 requests under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for user data that impacted between 35,000 and 35,999 accounts. Non-data requests under FISA were fewer than a thousand, and impacted fewer than a thousand accounts. Verizon and AT&T are quite similar in terms of the quantity of requests that they field from the government. AT&T had 301,816 self-titled “Criminal & Civil Litigation Demands” in 2013. Verizon had “approximately 320,000 requests for customer information from federal, state or local law enforcement” in the same year. In related news, the NSA is expected to report proposed reforms to its telephone metadata program this week. Also, James Clapper, current Director of National Intelligence, : “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will. Had we been transparent about this from the outset right after 9/11—which is the genesis of the 215 program—and said both to the American people and to their elected representatives, we need to cover this gap, we need to make sure this never happens to us again, so here is what we are going to set up, here is how it’s going to work, and why we have to do it, and here are the safeguards… We wouldn’t have had the problem we had.” Increased disclosure, reform ideas, and something close to contrition? Be still my beating Snowden. (Not that any of the above is sufficient. But progress of a sort is progress, and we’ll just have to win by inches on this.) |
12 Of The Top 15 Data-Using Countries Are Predominantly On Android, Mixpanel Says | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | In their first annual global mobile data report, analytics firm reveals that Android is the originating platform for the lion’s share of app data generated from the top 15 countries as measured by active mobile usage. 64 percent of all the mobile data from the top 15 data generators came from Android devices, and only three of the top 15 have a primarily iOS-using population. The top data producers are Spanish-speaking countries, Mixpanel found, and in countries with Spanish as their native tongue, Android is even more strongly represented, accounting for 74 percent of all data generated by apps. France, Japan and The Netherlands are the only three countries on the list where iOS has a clear majority, and only one country (Thailand) shows a pretty much even split between the two platforms. App data usage obviously isn’t the only way to measure platform and app engagement, but it does provide an indication that users are opening and using the software on their smartphones to communicate with the web. There are some valuable takeaways in this data for mobile devs, too: Specifically, it paints a picture of a mobile app market where Spanish localized titles have the potential to gain a lot of traction in terms of usage. Another measure of app traction, and one potentially closer to developer hearts, is mobile revenue. , according to Distimo, with much of that growth driven by Android. Primarily Spanish-speaking countries don’t yet appear on Distimo’s Top 10 countries as listed by app revenue, however. So while Android may be exploding in those emerging markets in terms of usage, that isn’t necessarily leading to big monetary gains for developers targeting those regions just yet. |
Whisper, The Sequoia-Backed Secret Sharing App, Makes A Move Into TMZ Territory | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | , the popular anonymous social sharing startup that’s from venture capital giants including Sequoia Capital, may have just gotten its big break into celebrity gossip territory that’s typically dominated by the likes of TMZ and the National Enquirer. Neetzan Zimmerman, the Gawker alum for his midas touch in driving online traffic, promoted what appears to be the startup’s first A-list celebrity gossip scoop (Zimmerman he has vetted the rumor). Zimmerman was to serve as Whisper’s first ever editor in chief. Vanity Fair chickened out, so Whisper got the scoop: An anonymous source says Gwyneth Paltrow is cheating. — Neetzan Zimmerman (@neetzan) While this particular bit of news is about as shallow and silly as it comes, in a larger way it reveals Whisper’s potential strategy for staying relevant in the notoriously fickle social app space. One of the chief criticisms lobbied against Whisper by those who have not caught on to the app is that it’s hard to really get worked up about the deep dark secrets of people you don’t know. But when the salacious secrets are about rich and famous people, they start to be a bit more interesting. Now, this is not totally uncharted territory. Formspring launched as an anonymous Q&A forum, caught on like wildfire with teenagers and early-adopting tech types, raised in venture capital, and into the celebrity space. Ultimately, though, Formspring ended up . But these things are all about execution and timing — Facebook prevailed where Friendster failed, after all. Right now, Whisper is tapping into something really fascinating, and potentially very disruptive to the media powers that be. |
Watch Ukrainian Police And Protesters Clash In A Live Stream | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | The revolution will be live-streamed. , tens of thousands of citizens have taken to the streets to protest the policies of President Viktor Yanukovych, who is accused of close ties with the Russian government. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_LFrMcoEm4] Technology has had a unique role in the Ukrainian protests, both to the benefit and detriment of activists. Last month, , “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance”. As for the live-stream, It is unclear what kind of impact International social media has on the success of these kinds of protests. Twitter and other networks garnered world-wide attention for the 2009-2010 “Arab Spring” Middle-East uprisings. But, , social media has a subdued role. |
Deepak Chopra Talks About Mindfulness And The Future Of Government | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | Deepak Chopra believes we can have it all. Through a melding of science and spirituality, this author, guru, and speaker has worked tirelessly to create new methods for mindfulness. He shared a few with us at TC HQ where we got the opportunity to talk about the future of democracy, the global citizen, and our own ability to control aging and health. It’s definitely a lot to handle at once but hopefully his message of “be in the now” is helpful for the frantic entrepreneur trying to do 50 or a hundred things a minute. “Multitasking is the only skill that gets worse with practice,” he said. I think we’d all tend to agree. Chopra is also expanding into online classes beginning with . By using a MOOC platform called he’s been able to create and charge for a class on handling aging – making it one of his first real forays into the online education realm. One of the coolest ideas he discussed was a networked method for sensing the mood of huge groups of people and allowing for a unique method for voting on global questions. We’re going to have a longer event with Chopra later this month, but until then, enjoy his thoughts on the future of humans and humanity. |
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The World’s First Carbon Fiber 3D Printer Is Now Available To Order | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 2 | 18 | Just in case you have $4,999 lying around and have a hankering to print in carbon fiber, the for pre-order. When first announced last month, the Mark One was going to be available to order in March, but today is your lucky day. Named aptly for its creator, Gregory Mark, who also owns Aeromotions, this desktop printer debuted at SolidWorks World 2014 in San Diego. After seeing the expense and time currently associated with carbon fiber manufacturing, Mark started down a path that eventually ended up at the Mark One. “We took the idea of 3D printing, that process of laying things down strand by strand, and we used it as a manufacturing process to make composite parts,” he told Popular Mechanics. “We say it’s like regular 3D printers do the form — we do form and function.” The printer can not only lay down carbon fiber, but also fiberglass, nylon and PLA. Of course, only one at a time. The printer employees some pretty nifty advancements, too, including a self-leveling printing bed that clicks into position before each print. For a few dollars more, the company also offers a Mark One Developer Kit Pre-order that puts your order at the front of the line and includes a few extras, including more Kevlar and two extra beds. |
Camera360’s Latest Version Is Streamlined But Packed With Features | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | , which now claims more than 250 million users, is one of the world’s most successful photo apps. But Camera360 still faces plenty of competition from other apps like and and . Its latest version, which is now available for both and users, combines a streamlined flat design with new features that help users save data, an important point as Camera360 targets growth in emerging markets. In previous versions of Camera360, its eight camera modes and more than 100 effects, including filters and frames, were pre-installed. For casual users, sifting through all these features was time-consuming and confusing. So the app’s developers decided to reduce the number of pre-installed features on the app and move the rest to Camera360’s in-app Camera or Effects store, where they can be downloaded for free. By turning cameras and features into plug-ins, the team has made Camera360 customizable and faster loading. The startup will also keep pushing out new options to the store, including several paid features as part of its monetization plan. Camera360’s update also lets you make an account in the app’s Cloud Service to store photos, including ones that you haven’t finished editing. As a big fan of photo apps, I don’t mind using several on a single snapshot. I might take a photo on Camera+, add filters and overlays in Afterglow or , put it in collage using or , or play with ‘s blended effects. Camera360, on the other hand, is designed to be an efficient and powerful one-stop shop for people who aren’t as addicted to photo apps as I am. The latest version of Camera360 comes pre-loaded with its four most popular camera modes. “EasyCam” automatically detects the type of photo you are taking (a flower closeup or night scene, for example) and adjusts camera settings. “Effects” lets you chose from several filters and preview them while composing a shot. “Selfie” is a quick alternative to Camera360’s , with filters that are supposed to flatter skin tones (hint: “Light” is best for subtly smoothing out blemishes and shadows, while “Glossy” is the filter for you if you want your selfie to possess an unearthly, ethereal glow). Of the optional camera plug-ins, I think the most useful are “MultiGrid” for making collages and “LowLight,” which works very well for shooting on cloudy days or indoors without a flash. |
What Can Indian Startups Learn From The Facebook Acquisition That Didn’t Happen | Pankaj Mishra | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | was not the only acquisition Facebook was chasing in India last year. , a social media analytics startup that had raised $3.5 million in Series A from Inventus Capital Partners and Nexus Venture Partners in November 2011, was approached by Facebook in October last year. But by December, the acquisition talks were stalled. After several months of negotiations, Salorix investors, its founder and Facebook couldn’t agree on the acquisition price. And finally, few weeks ago, Facebook poached the startup’s founder , leaving investors with few staff staring at an uncertain future for Salorix. A Facebook source confirmed Santanu’s new role at the company after looking at internal directory of employees. Madhusudan Therani, the Salorix CTO, also seems to have quit according to his LinkedIn profile that jobs. Two back-to-back acquisitions by Facebook in India would have really helped. Currently, Indian ranks quite poor on M&A exit returns, as . “First of all, there is a real danger of many Indian startups giving away too much equity (50% and even more) during very early stages of funding,” one of the persons familiar with the Salorix episode told me. By the time Salorix closed a bridge financing round of around $0.5 million after its Series A funding last year, the founders had given away in excess of 50% equity. And since a startup like Salorix is valued far cheaper than its counterparts in the Valley, raising subsequent rounds of funding with lesser and lesser equity becomes very tough. A bunch of investors and founders I spoke with over the weekend said a typical Indian startup can expect anywhere between $70,000 to $100,000 per head in acqui-hire transactions. The same is around $2 million per person for a Silicon Valley startup. These figures are of course subject to the profile of buyer and the quality of talent. “Secondly, even the investors need to understand what can be a realistic exit in India, especially for a startup that’s not any big disruption in the space,” he added. But investor expectations cannot be blamed solely for what happened. Even the management failed in execution and delivering on their promise of building sustainable revenue streams. It all started when Google first showed interest in the startup. “There was too much focus on finding an exit, especially after Google showed interest very early last year,” one of the persons familiar with the talks told me. “After Google backed out, Facebook logged in, and that ensured the same pattern of not focusing on business, product,” he added. “However at the back of their minds, each one is trying to get answers to some questions without necessarily disclosing it to each other,” said Ranjan. So what happens to Salorix next? As the Little Eye Labs acquisition has shown, there’s growing interest from Facebook, Google and Yahoo in acqui-hiring from India, but the expectations of the investors need to be aligned better. These little acquisitions mean a lot for the country’s nascent startup ecosystem where exits in any form are rare, and hard to come by. |
No, Google’s Sundar Pichai Didn’t Say Android’s Openness Makes It Less Secure | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | This morning at Mobile World Congress, Google’s discussed Android’s security and the impact of its ‘openness’ thereof. A quoted Pichai as indicating that Google’s Android operating system was, to quote of the comments, “not designed to be safe, it was designed to be open.” Naturally, something of that nature caused a stir. Google admitting that Android is inherently insecure due to its core tenet of openness? Unsurprisingly, that’s not what Pichai actually said. In fact, he made the opposite point, arguing that Android’s openness actually makes it more secure, not less. Android was built to be very, very secure. The thing that you’re seeing is because Android is an open platform, many people can ship Android in many different ways and so there are some partners when they ship devices, they have an older version of Android. And sure you can have a security vulnerability there, but that doesn’t mean Android isn’t secure. We go to great lengths–the depth of work in Android to make it secure; the depth of work done by Google Play…Google Play automatically scans and verifies thousands of applications for malware. We track data on this. It’s state of the art in terms of what we do. What you see across the ecosystem…people will ship good phones and keep them updated…you will have some phones that will not be updated. That’s where we see issues. Not Android at a fundamental level. Pichai’s point that the fragmentation caused by OEMs shipping outdated — and thus intrinsically less secure software — leads to non-Google-sourced insecurity is fair. He’s asking that the security quality of up-to-date Android be compared to iOS. That’s not to say that Pichai isn’t trying to have it both ways. If the openness that he heralds helps keep the most recent Android build secure, , the openness of Android is both positive and negative. Thus, OEMs and carriers are making Google’s security work harder by selling phones with old code, and then failing to provide brisk updates. Apple’s un-open platform handles its own updating, making platform fragmentation roughly a non-issue for iOS. In response to another question, Pichai doubled down on the issue of updating: And finally, Pichai discussed why Android might be a larger target for abuse. Studies have indicated that . This matters as Android now occupies in a great many ways the old market position that Windows held onto for decades, that of being in terms of unit volume. Windows got dinged for years because if you wanted to hack the most users, you went to where most of them were. Then: Windows. Now: Android-ish but still Windows as well. (Android is larger than iOS, but that alone can’t fully explain why Android is targeted orders of magnitude more often than iOS. Other factors exist. So, we shouldn’t let Google throw its hands in the air, shout “we’re so popular,” and give them a pass.) Here’s Pichai: Want to exploit lots of phones? Attack the tighter controlled platform with smaller market share, or the larger, more open platform that has fragmentation issues leading to material weakness? |
Now Serving 4M Downloads Daily, The Windows Store Has Grown 135% Since October | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | Buried in its MWC slides, Microsoft announced that it now serves 4 million application downloads daily from the Windows Store, the application marketplace for Windows 8.x. Four million downloads per day works out to 120 million per month, or around 1.4 billion per year. The number essentially slipped past the larger media radar — props to ! — which means even though a few days have passed, we have work to do. (Previously, Microsoft listed detailed download information for the Windows Store on the developer portal. Once I , Microsoft , and then . The company promised to keep developers up to date regarding the Windows Store. Thus far have been produced in the nearly three-month intervening period. But I digress.) The last month for which we have full data was October, prior to the holiday sales cycle that is critical for the PC market. So, we have pre and post data to compare. To refresh your memory, here were the numbers Microsoft published, that have since been redacted (my math work; what was provided was siloed): So, In October the Windows Store did a touch over 51.1 million downloads. Compared to the current pace of 4 million per day (implied monthly total: 120 million), you can quickly calculate that the Windows Store has grown its downloads by since October. That’s more than 100 percent growth in less than a half-year. Better than you expected? I’m also surprised by the figure. So much so I and reconfirmed the number with Microsoft. iOS’s App Store is still approximately a bajillion bigger than the Windows Store. Last June, iOS reached the . That’s a lot. But what makes the Windows Store figure interesting is not that it is a large number in comparison to what Apple has put on the scoreboard; instead, it’s evidence that the Windows 8.x platform actually can deliver app download figures of scale, making it potentially interesting to more developers. I doubt there is a certain concrete threshold for Windows 8.x that it must cross to be taken more seriously, but breaking the nine-figure monthly download rate likely matters, if only symbolically. |
IAC-Backed Skyllzone Launches A New Fantasy Sports App That Lets You Play “The Machine” In Quick, Byte-Sized Contests | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | Spurred on by its entry into the digital and mobile age, the fantasy sports world is booming. From the fact that a hilarious and increasingly popular is about to enter its sixth season to Yahoo’s in fantasy sports products as part of a new mobile strategy that , the signs are everywhere that fantasy sports is turning into big business. Another potentially impactful development has been the recent entry of Barry Diller-led media giant, , into fantasy sports. The company, which now owns sites like About.com and College Humor and has seemed increasingly focused over the last few years on acquiring or incubating its way to owning the online and mobile dating markets with Match.com, OkCupid and Tinder, decided to place a bet on a fast-growing fantasy platform built by a company called . Now led by Match.com CTO and GM , Skyllzone was founded in 2009 by a group of friends and fantasy fans who were on a mission to remove as many of the traditional requirements (or barriers) traditionally native to the fantasy experience as possible. Like private leagues limited to competition among friends or co-workers, the potential for injuries to ruin a season, or having to collect money from the league yourself should you win, for example. The team’s first production aimed at addressing fantasy’s UX friction was , a website and (later) a mobile app that allow gamers to play against a single opponent or hundreds, competing in free leagues or for money — in daily or weekly matches. Since launching in 2010, DraftStreet has become one of the most popular daily fantasy sports platforms on the Web, due in part to its being one of the first sites to offer the ability for players to earn points. By playing in either free or for-money games, DraftStreet allows players to accumulate points or credits based on their performance, and to later exchange those credits for contests or prizes at their leisure. The site also gained traction based on both its reputation for paying out prizes and winnings quickly and reliably, and for offering user-friendly interfaces. While these “qualities” may be expected parts of the user experience in other industries, in 2010, the fantasy industry was still experiencing digital growing pains and relied on simple ports of the offline fantasy model into an online interface. Fast forward three years, and on DraftStreet and the team behind it. With support from IAC, Skyllzone is back with its second production, a mobile-focused continuation of its mission to create multi-platform, user-friendly products that bring daily and weekly gratification, and quick pay-outs to fantasy sports. While these traits have been key to expanding and improving the fantasy sports user experience on the Web and mobile devices both in general and for DraftStreet, its second product wants revolutionize the market with some new technology. With the launch of , Skyllzone’s new fantasy sports app joins a surprisingly short list of mobile-first fantasy products. The app uses the company’s patented technology to enable users to play on their own schedule and without committing to an entire season. Initially available for iOS, and slated to arrive on Android in the coming months, Fan vs. Machine’s core innovation, according to Skyllzone, is that it is one of the first apps to allow users to instantly to compete against the computers in day-long contests. While the company plans to apply its technology to each of the major sports, Fan vs. Machine is exclusively focused on fantasy basketball. The free-to-play gameplay enables users to instantly snake draft, compete against the computer and earn cash prizes for beating Skyllzone’s Watson. For those unfamiliar, a snake draft is a type of draft in which positions within the draft reverse after each round and is considered one of the “fairest” drafting models. In other words, if you draft first in the opening round, you’ll draft last in the next round, and first again in the third round, and so on. The app uses Skyllzone’s proprietary, patented game technology that enables users to play against computer teams, which are controlled by its algorithms for draft strategy and pick selections. Competing against the computer allows speedy draft pick selections and aims to take the friction and time usually involved in your regular old human snake drafts. Meaning: Drafts can usually be completed within 5 minutes, which is refreshing. And, naturally, playing in a fantasy league against a computer means that you get to take your time, playing on your own schedule without having to commit to a full season, while your opponent’s picks (i.e. the computer’s) happen instantly. Skyllzone Chairman Mike Presz believes that the company has created a “new way to play” fantasy sports with Fan vs. Machine, and no other mobile product offers a computer-automated fantasy experience. The team is hoping that the app can appeal to both casual and hardcore fantasy gamers alike, and that the experience makes for an easy transition into the world of daily and weekly games that have become popular through DraftStreet, FanDuel, DraftKings and others. That being said, Skyllzone co-founder and product lead Michael Vu admitted that there’s plenty of room for improvement as far as the app’s algorithm is concerned. Beta users have found the computer to be pretty competitive, he said, and most find it a workable balance, though, nevertheless the team is still “going to make it more competitive,” he said. Admittedly, even for someone like me who is far from being a fantasy basketball veteran, the app and gameplay experience are pretty easy to navigate. Users compete in a league with nine other teams, each of which are auto-drafted by computers and compete with you in one-day contests. Naturally, as part of the game, each team drafts one center, three guards, three forwards and two utility players. What makes it interesting is that each of the nine teams being drafted by computers has a different strategy in the draft, which, based on your past experiences, may make Fan vs. Machine’s style way more compelling. However, the one potential void: You don’t make any transactions or moves. Instead, you just kick back and watch the games. The app uses a simple scoring grid consisting of positive points with a three-pointer equating to one point, a made free throw being a 0.5 point and so on. If you accumulate the highest points, you win your league, and if you win your league, the app pays out $20 and if you beat everyone, you win an additional $200. For fantasy fanatics who believe that the best or most fun part of playing is the draft, then getting to experience that multiple times a week will be a welcome change and make Fan vs. Machine’s appeal pretty straightforward. That and not having a time limit, needing to coordinate drafts with friends, reach consensus or be judged for picks. Then, every week, the app offers contents in which you can win cash and you don’t have to pay money to enter. If any of that sounds appealing, then Fan vs. Machine is worth the free download — and, uh, free entry. Going forward, the Skyllzone co-founders said that their top priorities are going to be improving the app’s algorithm to make the computers more competitive, expanding the Fan vs. Machine model to other professional sports and boosting its social layer and leaderboards. With the first and last of those being at the top of the list. All in all, if Tinder revolutionized dating by creating an addicting mobile user experience and by eliminating awkwardness, then you might say Fan vs. Machine is attempting to do the same for fantasy sports. With just two products, whether or not you fall in love with them, the team gets credit for pushing to expand the gameplay experience in fantasy and for reducing some of what many would consider the traditional barriers to entry. Just as with Tinder, if you’re a purist and not under 40, then it may seem superficial, and for fantasy purists, Fan vs. Machine could feel the same. But who doesn’t love drafting multiple times a week, right? For more, find Fan vs. Machine |
Hulu Says Sayonara, Sells Off Japanese Unit To Nippon TV | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | Video streaming site is doing away with its Japanese subsidiary, the company , selling the unit to Nippon TV. The sale might mark the end of the company’s international ambitions, as Hulu focuses more on its catchup TV service in the U.S. Hulu has been operating in Japan since 2011, when it service there. Over the years, the company had amassed a huge content library, which include more than 13,000 video assets from 50 different content partners. When it first became clear that Hulu was , it seemed like that market might be the first in many new international markets that the company looked to expand into. It was, after all, around the same time that Netflix began its own international expansion. And such a move would give content owners new revenue streams from licensing their content in foreign markets. But after that first international launch, Hulu more or less stayed put. Over time, Hulu apparently found that the Japanese unit wasn’t core to its long-term plan to offer up streaming, ad-supported video from U.S.-based content partners. And that maybe the business was more valuable to someone else — in this case, Nippon TV. In a blog post, new Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins wrote: “We have now reached a point in the growth of the business in Japan where we feel the best path forward is to sell the company to a strategic buyer. I’m announcing today that Hulu’s Japan business is to be acquired by Nippon Television Network Corporation (Nippon TV), who will assume the day-to-day operations and management of the business at the closing of the transaction.” According to the blog post, Hulu will continue licensing its brand and content to the Nippon TV, and it appears that the company will also provide some infrastructure services to the new owner as well. But with the change in ownership, Japanese users will also get access to more content, as the broadcaster will bring on a wide range of its own TV shows onto the Hulu Japan site. “In addition to assuming the day-to-day management of the Japan business, Nippon TV will be adding popular Nippon TV titles to the service,” Hopkins wrote. For Hulu, the decision may have come as the company moves to focus more on its U.S. operations and double down on becoming the TV Everywhere home for broadcast TV. While it continues to add paid subscribers to its $7.99 Hulu Plus offering — now at — it’s also working on getting more broadcast content available through authentication deals with networks and distributors. That should come as little surprise, especially since Hulu’s owners 21st Century Fox, NBCUniversal, and The Walt Disney Company have committed an additional . Also since of the company. Nevertheless, with $1 billion in revenue in 2013 and no signs of slowing down, Hulu’s not going anywhere in the U.S. It just might not be going anywhere internationally, either. |
Gaming Veterans Start Midverse To Bolster App Marketing, Engagement on Android | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | Riz Virk and Mitch Liu have been through pretty much every wave of the shift to free-to-play mobile and social gaming. They had an early mobile gaming hit called Tap Fish ( ). They . Virk was also an early investor in Tapjoy, which became one of the better-known players in app distribution. Now they’re back at it again with , a new company focused on acquiring and engaging users in Android apps. Virk calls this company the “next evolution” in app marketing and user retention. What Midverse is doing is reminiscent of “offer walls” that were popular a couple years back on iOS where users would download apps in exchange for virtual currency. But this is a more sophisticated solution. In new network, Virk and Liu are focused on a metric called “Cost Per Quality Engagement.” Users get more game rewards if they successfully finish a number of tasks across games in the network. That incentivizes them to keep playing beyond the download. Virk says games in the network have seen their average earnings per user per day increase by 25 percent on Google Play and the Amazon app stores. “I was frustrated with the high cost of getting users and I wasn’t great users,” Virk said. “They would probably not come back on Day 2.” So he tried to create something that would get players coming back to games several days after the initial download. Midverse is competing with a whole range of app marketing networks including video-based ones like AdColony, Vungle and Applifier. Then there are the giants like Facebook, which has built its own formidable app install advertising network. The company has raised $6.5 million from firms including IDG Capital Partners, Signia Ventures and IDG-Accel China. |
California Court Rules In Favor Of Using Cellphone Maps While Driving | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | Good news, Californians. You can now, once again, use Google Maps on your phone while driving. That is, legally. Until , map use was in a shady legal gray area. This comes two years after a Fresno, Calif., man was ticketed for looking at a map on his iPhone while stuck in construction. He was looking for an alternative route. As you do. The cop issued the $165 ticket under a law that prohibits listening and talking on cellphones while driving. The man thankfully challenged the law and won. The 5th District Court of Appeal reversed the ticket on the ground that the law specifically limits the use of “listening and talking” without the use of a hands-free device, but does not apply to other uses of the phone. Next up, Californian man challenges traffic ticket issued for playing Threes while driving. |
After Being Acquired By Yahoo, Personal Assistant App Donna Shuts Down | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | We knew the day was coming, but it’s probably worth pointing out all the same: Mobile personal assistant app Donna will cease working tomorrow, about one month after the company behind it — Incredible Labs — was . In an email to users, the anthropomorphic app said she was “retiring as an assistant,” and “mov[ing] on to new adventures.” As a result, the app will no longer be sending push notifications to users reminding them to leave anymore. So if you’re a Donna user, it’s time to start looking for a new mobile assistant or smart calendaring app. May I suggest ? Here’s the text of the Donna email: Hello [XXXX]! As you may have heard, my team is soon headed off to Yahoo to start a new chapter. I’ve decided it’s time for me to move on to new adventures as well. Tomorrow, Friday February 28th, I’ll be retiring as an assistant, so I won’t be sending you notifications to remind you when to leave anymore. I will be permanently deleting your account information, as well as all calendar data you shared with me. For more information, please read our Jan. 30 announcement: http://blog.don.na/2014/01/30/donna-and-yahoo/ It’s been a pleasure working with you! Donna |
Awesome Netflix/Fitbit Hack Detects When You’ve Fallen Asleep, Auto-Pauses Your Movie | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | Done right, internal hackathons are awesome. They encourage company developers to build all the crazy stuff that they’d normally never dabble with, be it for lack of time, fear that their co-workers/bosses would think they’re nuts, or because their ideas are just too far from “the company vision” or whatever. When all that’s on the line is bragging rights and beer, people build surprisingly awesome stuff. Like this hack from Netflix’s internal 24 hour Hack Day. It uses the data from a Fitbit to determine when you’ve fallen asleep while watching a streaming movie, and pauses your flick at that spot: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMKDEH8KTak?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360] But wait, there’s more! Here are a few other entries that Netflix opted to share — no word here on who won. lets you build multiple playlists (instead of having one big queue), and skip back and forth between movies/shows without going back to browse. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIjOS2BG9vs?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360] is a keyboard for typing out search queries on consoles, allowing for much faster input over the oddly-common linear keyboard found on most consoles. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfS4zmryYo4?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360] lets your friends temporarily use your Netflix account on their own devices when they’re at your house, and automatically logs them off when they leave [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8sA7ON7Q3o?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360] lets you lock down your profile on a shared account with a 4-digit pin, so that your friends/kids/burglars can’t screw with your queue: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHrY4f0Y9U4?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360] Any and all of these would make damned fine additions to Netflix’s feature set*. Seriously. Give them to me. Alas: We should also note that, while we think these hacks are very cool and fun, they may never become part of the Netflix product, internal infrastructure, or be used beyond Hack Day. [* You know what else would be a damned fine addition to Netflix’s feature set? An API that isn’t awful and/or , so that people outside of Netflix could build awesome things.] |
Google Redesigns Hangouts For iOS, Adds Video Messages And Animated Stickers | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | Google today launched a new version of its . This new version is the first to be fully optimized for iOS 7, with a new loading screen and menus, cleaner look, different typography and a couple of new features, too. It’s no secret that Hangouts is now one of the more important products in Google’s portfolio. While it grew out of the Google+ projects, Hangouts has now found its way into many other Google products and it’s likely among the tools the company will focus on going forward, especially as the mobile messaging wars are now starting to heat up after the by Facebook. Besides Hangouts, Google also today released a very small update to . The only major change here is that you can now choose multiple preferred modes of transit when you plan your routes. |
Investors Yawn Following Salesforce’s Q4 Earnings Beat With Revenue Of $1.15B, Adjusted EPS Of $0.07 | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | Salesforce its fourth quarter and full fiscal-year 2014 financial performance today. In the fourth quarter, the company had revenue of $1.15 billion, up 37 percent year-over-year. On an adjusted (non-GAAP) basis, Salesforce earned $0.07 per share. Analysts had expected $0.06 in adjusted earnings per share and revenue of $1.1 billion in revenue. On a GAAP basis, Salesforce lost $0.19 per share in the quarter. For the full year, Salesforce had top line of $4.07 billion. Importantly, Salesforce its fiscal 2015 revenue guidance to between $5.25 billion and $5.30 billion. On the low end of that measuring stick, Salesforce would grow its revenue by under 30 percent during the year, indicating percentage growth deceleration. Despite beating expectations for the quarter and raising its guidance for the current year, Salesforce is down a fraction in after-hours trading. This could be due to the fact that analysts had that Salesforce would have revenue of $5.2 billion in 2015, making the news that guidance was being skewed higher only matching expectations; you rarely get rewarded for that on Wall Street. The following charts contains the full Salesforce 2015 projections: The company also announced that its long-time CFO, Graham Smith, will retire at the end of the company’s fiscal first quarter of 2015 (March). |
Mojang In Talks With Warner Bros. To Make A Minecraft Movie | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | Mojang game studio founder Markus Persson, who was the main creative force behind worldwide indie game hit Minecraft, revealed via his Twitter account today that his company has been in discussions with Warner Bros. Studios to make a movie based on the popular world-building sim. Someone is trying leak the fact that we're working with Warner Brothers on a potential Minecraft Movie. I wanted to be the leak! — Notch (@notch) Persson says he “leaked” the info to beat another leaker to the punch, which is a pretty hilarious way to announce something. A Minecraft movie makes a lot of sense, especially in light of the success of the recent Lego movie, and in light of the fact that there are now (it now appears on virtually every platform, including mobile and home gaming consoles), and that the game had sold over 14 million copies as of the beginning of this month. In short, people like Minecraft, and people will also probably like a Minecraft movie. So, dollar signs in studio executive eyes, etc etc. People are already vying for casting, but obviously we need the venerable Nicholas Cage as a Creeper. Shortly after Persson tweeted the leak to beat the other leak, the other leak appeared, from . The report says that Warner Bros. acquired the film rights to the game, and that it’ll be a live action version, with a lot of interest already from writers, directors and more. Lego movie producer Roy Lee is spearheading early production efforts, the report adds. |
Apple Explains Exactly How Secure iMessage Really Is | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | Millions and millions of people use iMessage every day. But how many people know what’s going on behind the scenes, or what happens to a message once you send it? Maybe a handful. Up until now, the vast majority of what we knew about iMessage’s inner workings came from reverse engineering and best guesses. This week, however, Apple quietly released a document that breaks it all down. If you know your stuff when it comes to cryptography, you can The iMessage bit starts at page 20, but there’s all sorts of crazy interesting stuff regarding cloud keychain and hardware security packed in there too. If you don’t know much about crypto, I’ll try to break it down a bit below. I admittedly have plenty of gaps in my crypto knowledge, but I’ve triple-checked this with people who know considerably more about this topic than I. Before we dive in to the deeper stuff, you’ve got to understand one overarching concept at play here. It’s a fairly standard concept in the tech world, but it’s not something that most people ever have to think about. It’s called public-key cryptography. To over simplify it: imagine you have a mail box. This box has two keys. One key lets you drop mail into the mail slot, and one key lets you take mail out. The input key and the pickup key are different; one can never be used to replace the other. You can give away a million copies of your input key, and no one could use it to do anything but put mail . Unless they find a copy of your pickup key or find a weakness in the way your mailbox was designed, your message is safe. This is the thinking behind public-key cryptography. Your “public key” is like the mail slot key. You can share it with the world, and anyone can encrypt messages to send to you. But the public key only works in one direction. Once a message is encrypted, that public key can’t be used to decrypt it, or reverse the encryption. Once encrypted, your key (the mail pickup key, in the analogy above) is the only way (barring exploits/brute force with a supercomputer) to restore the message to its original readable form. Simple answer: they don’t. You’ve actually got one set of keys for each device you add to iCloud, and each iMessage is encrypted independently for each device. So if you have two devices — say, an iPad and an iPhone — each message sent to you is actually encrypted (AES-128) and stored on Apple’s servers . Once for each device. When you pull down a message, it’s specifically encrypted for the device you’re on. Too long, didnt read? Basically: Unless Apple is omitting something or there’s some backdoor tucked into their many-layers-deep encryption (which, while unlikely, ) they really read your iMessages without a fairly insane amount of effort. Sure, they could theoretically brute force their way past your private key. Or they could scrap the entire system and replace it with something with glaring security holes, and hope no one notices. But the same could be said for service where someone else is even temporarily storing your messages — when you’re putting things into a black box, even if you think you know exactly how that black box works, you’re trusting that the black box hasn’t changed. And if Apple intends on ever lurking through your iMessages, they’ve made it pretty damned hard for themselves. As some have pointed out, there are, in fact, potential points of failure in this security model as detailed. For example: because Apple is encrypting messages/data once for each device and has control over the key infrastructure, they may (if, say, by court order) be able to throw another public key into the mix— thereby allowing messages sent to you after that point to be read by whoever has the corresponding private key. |
Cool People Play Their Music With An Electric Plasma Spark, Not A Normal Speaker | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 27 |
How do you listen to your music? Headphones you say? Sometimes on an Airplay or Bluetooth speaker? Oh. That’s pretty cool. I just listen to mine on plasma. Dancing electrical sparks that leap between two electrodes and produce a small amount of ozone. No big deal. Just, you know, how cool people do. Actually that’s not how I listen to music, but it could be if I back the . The project hasn’t been live for 24 hours, and yet it managed to raise more than its $10,000 goal, and the amount keeps climbing. What it offers clearly appeals to a particular crowd, and that’s probably the group of people who like amazing science projects and DIY physics experiments, which should be everybody. The ARC takes advantage of a property of an electrical arc, which can “ionize and compress the air around it to play music,” without any drums or vibrations like those you’d get from a standard speaker, which uses electromagnets to produce sound waves. The whole array is housed in a wood case, and the entire build-it-yourself kit is available to backers for only $89. A clear acrylic case that displays the inner workings costs $119, and an assembled version is $225. All kits are expected to ship in July. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOlUqbNO-Ok?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360] If you’re feeling a sense of deja vu, it’s probably because a previous Kickstarter project also promised a plasma speaker kit to backers. That one was funded, but created by a different group, and it was prone to early burn out. The new ARC project is the product of two of the members of the team behind the original, but they’ve refined the design considerably to make sure it can withstand the test of time. Seattle-based (consisting of Matt Chapman and David Stoyanov) are the brains behind the ARC, and they’ve created other projects including a DIY radiation detector. Their goal is essentially to bring affordable, cool physics projects to market in a way that’s accessible to everyone. As for the ARC, it works with input from basically anything that can output to mini stereo, so your computer, phone or media player should work fine. Plus it’s got a handle, so it’s relatively portable. For general use, a Jambox or something might be more practical, but impressing your physics geek friends while also entertaining them with smooth jams will probably require an ARC. |
Groupon’s Stock Rises Following Positive Analyst Comments About Future Growth | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | Groupon’s stock picked up more than 3 percent in regular trading today following positive analyst comments regarding its future growth potential. Deutsche Bank a positive rating on the company, which throughout the day. It neared a 5 percent gain midday, but pulled back mildly in later trading. Following its most , Groupon took a pounding, falling from more than $10 per share to a flat $8. Its stock fell under the $8-dollar mark the next day. The reiterated analyst note of positivity is therefore a ray of light for the company, especially given that Deutsche Bank after speaking to the firm. Groupon beat both revenue and profit expectations in the fourth quarter of 2013, but low growth promises, especially relating to current year profitability, were disappointing to investors. Groupon’s stock initially soared as investors saw the raw revenue and EPS figures, but cratered when they dug deeper and saw the projections included in the report. |
Surf Air Founder Wade Eyerly Steps Down, Replaced By Former Frontier Airlines CEO Jeff Potter | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | The management team has hit a bit of turbulence, with founder and CEO Wade Eyerly officially stepping down, according to an email sent out to members. He’s being replaced by someone who has had experience both in the membership and airline industries — former Exclusive Resorts and Frontier Airlines CEO Jeff Potter. Founded in 2011, Surf Air provides a membership-based private jet service between Palo Alto, Monterey, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles. The idea was that members would pay a monthly fee for an all-you-can-fly service between any of those points. In 2012, the company from investors like Anthem Venture Partners, and saw participation from NEA, TriplePoint Capital, Siemer Ventures, Baroda Ventures, Gilad and Eytan Elbaz, Rick Caruso, Jeffrey Stibel, Mike Walsh, Paige Craig, Aviv Grill, and Bill Woodward. We had heard rumors that the management shakeup was taking place a few weeks ago, but the membership-only airline officially acknowledged the change to its members in an email earlier this week. Despite having 430 paying members, the company was having trouble raising a new round of funding, according to a source. That might have been due to problems in the company’s operations. One member we talked to said that some of the airline’s scheduled flights were regularly overbooked, while other legs ended up running empty. The management change is apparently being made to improve that, with the help of Potter and some folks who better understand the logistics of air travel. In addition to the new CEO, the airline announced that Anthem Ventures EIR Sudhin Shahani is taking over the role of executive chairman. Jim Sullivan, who had previously served as VP of Flight Operations for Frontier, has joined Surf Air as SVP of Operations. The shift also comes as Surf Air is adding new stops for its flights, including Las Vegas and Truckee, Calif. For what it’s worth, Surf Air isn’t the only startup in the airline industry to have run into hard times. BlackJet, the so-called , has also had problems . I’ve just spoken with Potter, who’s given me his view on Surf Air and his new role there. He compares his joining Surf Air to the time in which he joined Frontier. At the time, it was an incredibly small, one year-old company that ended up growing to reach about 80 destinations throughout the U.S. when he left. That experience will be useful not just from an operational standpoint, but in helping Surf Air to expand into new territories. “On the operational side, it’s not only that Jim [Sullivan] and I have spent our careers in aviation,” Potter said. “Both Jim and I were at Frontier at a very similar stage to where I’m joining Surf Air. I helped support that growth from an operational perspective.” He said that the business and the model are both sound, and that he’s excited about the membership component as well as the aviation component, based on his previous experience. He also said he’s confident that Surf Air will be able to complete its next round of fundraising and move forward from there. “I joined a company at a time where we are going through a round of fundraising,” he said, but added, “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have confidence that we would fulfill that. We’ve met with various parties and believe those conversations are going very well.” And I just got off the phone with Eyerly, who confirmed that he handed in his resignation from the company and the board this morning. “If you can get a guy like Jeff to run an airline with three aircraft then you have to do that,” Eyerly said. He added that after three weeks of trying to figure out what his role would be, he ultimately decided to step down. He’ll still have his ownership in the company, but will no longer have a day-to-day role. “After some reflection, I discovered that I liked being a builder,” he told me, and that he was looking to start something new. But for Eyerly, after taking the company through three rounds of funding and growing it to have more than 65 employees, he said it was a “bittersweet moment” to leave the company which is growing up fast and ready to scale up even faster. The email sent to Surf Air members is below: Dear Surf Air Members, Surf Air began the journey to revolutionize air travel in 2011, just three short years ago. Since that time, not only has Surf Air exceeded all expectations in disrupting the travel experience, it has resonated with you as members, which is reflective of the high renewal rate we’ve seen since inception. Wade Eyerly created a vision that, along with his leadership and passion, has evolved into the innovative company that now serves over 430 members. We want to personally thank Wade for his tireless efforts to bring us to this point. With a solid foundation now created, as is the case with many companies during the early chapters of their inception and growth, the time has come for us to take the next step in the evolution of Surf Air. We are pleased to announce that along with upcoming funding, there are some key management additions with deep experience that will drive the next stage of our development. To help lead this transition, Sudhin Shahani is taking the role of Executive Chairman. Sudhin will initially be focused on the investor and funding aspects of the company but he will also play an integral role in the long-term strategic direction of Surf Air. In addition, we are pleased to announce that Jeff Potter has become our CEO. Jeff’s experience both in the membership club sector as well as the aviation sector fits the characteristics we need to scale Surf Air profitably and continue to improve the member experience. Jeff was CEO of Exclusive Resorts, the world’s largest luxury membership vacation club, and also served as CEO of Frontier Airlines, a major airline. Finally, Jim Sullivan has joined the company as SVP of Operations. Jim has a long, storied history in aviation and at one point was VP of Flight Operations for Frontier Airlines. Prior to that, he held management positions as Director of Flight Training and Director of Process and Procedures. During his career as a pilot, he has achieved more than 18,000 flight hours. We want to again thank Wade for all he has done to make Surf Air what it is today. We are extremely excited for the future and welcome the new leadership team as we begin the next step to grow Surf Air into the company we all know it can become. We thank you for your ongoing support to our services – we commit ourselves every day to ensure that we are delivering you the best air travel experience possible. We look forward to continuing to lead the evolution of air travel and enhancing our services to continually meet your needs. Along those lines, tomorrow, we are thrilled to be announcing some great news that we are confident will create a lot of energy and excitement! Please look for the news early in the morning and we hope you’ll be as excited as we are at the beginning of this next chapter! Regards, —
Surf Air Member Care |
Keen On… Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers In The Age Of (Nearly) Perfect Information | Andrew Keen | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | How do we decide what to buy? According to and , the authors of , we used to make buying choices based on brand. It was guesswork, they say. And often we were duped by sexy advertising campaigns that presented bad products in a good way. And then the Internet came along. Simonson and Rosen say that the Internet age is one of (nearly) perfect information in which we can research the quality of anything – from hotels to cameras to cars to apps – online. Quality wins, in our Internet age, they say. Rather than basing our purchasing decisions on brand, we can read 50 reviews online and then make a much more educated decision on what we should buy. This is great news for entrepreneurs, Simonson and Rosen say. There are much lower barriers to entry, particularly for start-ups without large marketing budgets. So a company like Asus, they say, can successful get into the notebook and tablet business without a massive marketing budget. But what about Apple, I asked. What happens to a company with both really great products and great advertising in an age of (nearly) perfect information? |
8tracks Reaches 8 Million Monthly Active Users, Launches Xbox 360 App | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | Music startup just released a new for the Xbox 360. Live Gold subscribers will be able to play 8tracks playlists for free on their consoles. In other news, the service just reached 8 million monthly active users, representing 30 million hours of music streamed per month. As a reminder, its competitor announced during its that its users now stream 4.54 billion hours of audio per quarter. It represents 1.51 billion hours per month. Overall, 8tracks remains a very small music service compared to heavyweight Pandora. But, according to comScore, 8tracks has a younger audience. Forty-eight percent of its American users are aged 18-24. Advertisers always want to find new ways to reach this young demographic, and 8tracks could be a good platform for this purpose. , and are other popular services for young people in the U.S. The new app on the Xbox 360 will allow you to do everything that you would do in the app or on the website. You can browse human-created playlists by genre, activity and mood. You can like a mix to find it later, follow other users and more. 8tracks is also available on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Windows 8 and more. 8tracks has been around for more than five years now. It has raised $1.5 million so far and has kept a small team. The key differentiating element is its human-generated playlists. Using the service is like digging through countless mixtapes. You can browse by genre and mood to find the right mixtape for you. And of course, you can create your own mixtape. Many competitors have come and gone, but 8tracks is still here and growing. |
Snapchat Hacked By Fruit Smoothie Enthusiast | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | If one of your friends randomly sends you a photo of a smoothie on Snapchat, don’t go to the URL on the picture. It’s a hack that has affected several accounts, as a . Wired writer Joe Brown . A Snapchat spokesperson told him that the startup did not see any evidence of “brute-force tactics,” and that someone had likely gotten a hold of his email and password and accessed his account on the first try. Snapchat told us: “Yesterday a small number of our users experienced a spam incident where unwanted photos were sent from their accounts. Our security team deployed additional measures to secure accounts. We recommend using unique and strong passwords to prevent abuse.” The spam looks like this (once again, ; it sells weight-loss supplements, if you really must know). Thanks eveybody I’m definitely visiting snapfroot — dan jacovelli (@danjacovelli) This is the latest of several high-profile hacking incidencts Snapchat has suffered. Back in December, that wanted to call attention to Snapchat’s security flaws. In response, but hackers found workarounds within a few hours. A few days ago, a security researcher that could allow hackers to crash your phone through Snapchat. While Snapchat’s security flaws have been getting a lot of attention recently, it’s worth noting that you should try not to use the same usernames and passwords for multiple sites and apps, and be very wary of third-party services that ask for your Snapchat information. |
Fast-Growing Duolingo Caps Off A Big Year With The Crunchie For “Best Education Startup” | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | Language learning software has never been particularly “sexy,” nor have its makers managed to produce a bounty of memorable user experiences, for that matter. While it might not be quite ready for the former, Duolingo is fast-becoming the poster child of a new generation of language learning products that are actually enjoyable to use, and able to combine fun with function. In December, Apple named Duolingo the “iPhone App of the Year” for 2013, which, along with its nearly 9 million active users, seem to indicate that its gamified, mobile language learning formula is working. And last night, the startup capped off its banner year by taking home the Crunchie award for “Best Education Startup” of 2013. While CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA and Duolingo founder Luis Von Ahn wasn’t able to make it to the Crunchies this year, Duolingo’s new head of communications, Gina Gotthilf, was there to accept the award. We caught up with Gotthilf backstage to ask her a few questions about Duolingo’s success and where it’s headed next. As to Duolingo’s origins, the language learning app owes its design and original concept to von Ahn and his student, Severin Hacker, who developed Duolingo as the basis for a translation service while learning a language. Today, this is has become a key point of differentiation for Duolingo in the increasingly-crowded world of language learning. Rather than forcing its users to memorize phrases, sentences or words, the app turns to the Web, literally, to provide fodder for students to learn by translation. As users proceed through its lessons and programs, they translate the Web, reading and listening to the language as presented by real, native speakers. The app leverages video clips, images, sound bites and other interactive prompts to help students memorize and remember important words and concepts. The other key to Duolingo’s success, especially among the millenial crowd, is its use of gamification, allowing students to earn points as they proceed through its lesson plans, docking students “lives” when they make mistakes. Get too many wrong and Duolingo makes you start over. The app monitors your progress as you go, keeping tabs on which words and concepts you struggle with, serving its lessons accordingly. Today, Duolingo has added a total of six languages, including English, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, and French, and more are on their way. Just like von Ahn previously did with reCAPTCHA, the original idea behind Duolingo was always to use it as the basis for a translation service where Over time, Duolingo expects to turn this into a tool where businesses can order paid translations from Duolingo’s users. Currently, the service only uses its web app to show these real-world texts from blog posts, news articles and WikiPedia entries, but in the near future, the iOS app will also integrate these features. It’s worth noting, though, that Duolingo will always remain 100% free for those who want to learn a language. As von Ahn stressed, this means there will be no ads, no freemium model and no “five-easy-payments” plan. The combination of the language learning and translation service, von Ahn says, is “a mutually beneficial arrangement for both parties: students receive a high-quality, completely free, language education, and organizations are given human-quality translation services.” Duolingo, however, appears or produced many memorable experiences for that matter. Duolingo, the fast-growing language learning service, the increasingly popular online language learning service, announced one of its most ambitious projects to date |
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen: Fed Has No Authority To Regulate Bitcoin | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 27 | If you were worried about the Federal Reserve trying to step in to regulate Bitcoin, breathe easy: Its leader doesn’t think that the Fed has the authority to do so. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen was : “The Federal Reserve simply does not have authority to supervise or regulate [B]itcoin in any way.” She went on to call Bitcoin “a payment innovation that is taking place entirely outside the banking industry.” Her remarks, made today before the Senate, will help set the tone for potential future regulation of Bitcoin. In Yellen’s view, : “it certainly would be appropriate, I think, for Congress to ask questions about what the right legal structure would be for virtual currencies that involve nontraditional players.” Bitcoin has recently taken hits following the . However, it’s worthwhile to keep in mind that the core abstract for Bitcoin is its lack of government control and regulation. Recently, Senator Joe Manchin . Warning that “Americans will be left holding the bag on a valueless currency,” the Senator “is calling for either strict regulation or an outright ban” on Bitcoin. Other countries have towards cryptocurrencies, so the option isn’t beyond the pale. |
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Social Commerce Site Tapiture Raises $2.25M In Seed Funding | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | , a site where users can share content and buy related products, is announcing that it has raised $2.25 million in seed funding. That amount consists of $1.25 million in new capital, as well as a $1 million convertible note from last year. The funding was led by JUMP Investors, with participation from Barry Sternlicht, Herb Simon, Brad Keywell (Lightbank), Brian Lee, Sam Bakhshandehpour, Dave Leyrer (Boulevard Capital), Happy Walters, Hilary Swank (yes, ), Dwight Howard, and Amar’e Stoudemire. Jump’s Randall Kaplan, who was also the co-founder of Akamai, is joining the board of directors. When I , it was a “Pinterest for Men” site launched by Resignation Media, the company behind humor site . Since then, however, Tapiture has spun out as an independent company, and it’s not just aimed at men anymore (a point that was emphasized in an email from a company spokesperson). The site now describes itself as a place to “access millions of your favorite things” and says it has 3 million unique monthly visitors, as well as 100 million monthly pageviews. “Tapiture’s traffic and revenue growth proves that consumers are looking for a new avenue to discover and share unique content – whether related to personal style, art, design, travel, food, or entertainment,” said CEO John Ellis in the funding release. “This infusion of new capital will allow our team to aggressively pursue our market and merchant expansion efforts as we shape the future of social commerce.” |
India Raises Concerns On Bitcoin’s Credibility, But Doesn’t Call It Illegal Yet | Pankaj Mishra | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | Bitcoin traders are having a everywhere, and India is no exception. After that saw several Bitcoin exchanges emerge in India, the Reserve Bank of India last year. Now, Raghuram Rajan, the RBI’s new governor, has reiterated the central bank’s concerns about the credibility of Bitcoin. Addressing a technology conference in Mumbai earlier today, Rajan said there are ambiguities about who controls the value of Bitcoin. “As a currency, I do worry a little bit when the underlying (value) fluctuates tremendously. One of the values of a currency is stability and the extent (to which) a currency is target of speculation as opposed to primarily a means of exchange,” he said, addressing a conference organized by technology industry body Nasscom. I do think we have to understand the role of virtual currencies and how they will interact with the paper currency that you have…There are questions that need to be asked, one of them being, who will maintain value? Can we have confidence in unseen, unknown centres who maintain the value of the currency, or an algorithm that will maintain the value of the currency – we need more credibility there “There’s nothing illegal in accepting Bitcoin — the RBI will take more time to come up with clarity,” Kumar added. Highkart and other Bitcoin traders in India say they are following all banking regulations prescribed by the RBI, leaving no room for any illegal activities. A major concern for policymakers and regulators about Bitcoin is that it could be used for money laundering and other illegal activities. The Bitcoin traders, however, say that such concerns apply to any currency. For its part, the RBI is not ruling out a future for Bitcoin in India yet. “I don’t want to say that there is no future for these virtual currencies. I think it’s a process of evolution, but for now all we’ve done is express the kinds of concerns we have about it, without determining in any which way what we intend to do,” Rajan said earlier today. Even as countries such as India and Russia think of , the virtual currency is mainstream now. Bitcoin was named at the Crunchies yesterday. |
IBM’s Watson Group Makes First Startup Investment In “Social Health Management” Pioneer, Welltok | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | Remember ? Yes, the artificially intelligent, question-answering computer system developed by IBM that like they were a couple of kindergartners. Watson. ( .) While IBM has since looked expectantly to Watson to become its next cash cow, it appears the brainy computer is still . To fix that, the Watson Group, a new business unit “dedicated to the development and commercialization of cloud-delivered cognitive innovations” — in other words, it’s really called the “Put Watson To Work Fund.” The company said at the time that it would invest $1 billion in the Watson Group to be used to broadly for R&D, to help bring Watson’s technologies to market and pay for his crippling junk food addiction. In and of itself, IBM’s sizable investment reflects how much potential they still believe Watson and his side projects could have. However, IBM also set aside $100 million of that whopping total to put towards venture investments in the startup ecosystem that the company says has begun to build a new class of “cognitive apps” based on Watson’s beautiful mind, er, technology. With its bring-Watson-to-market projects now flush with capital, IBM’s big plans for the Jeopardy-winning computer system are beginning to take shape in the form of a new personality with horrible bedside manner: Watson. Today, further evidence of Watson’s slow plunge into healthcare arrived in the form of the Watson Group’s first venture investment, which saw it take the lead in the $22.1 million Series C financing of social health management startup, . Since emerging in 2009, Denver-based WellTok has been on a mission to provide businesses with better ways to incentivize their employees to actually participate in (and engage with) company wellness plans. The startup offers a suite of Web and mobile social media-based solutions, as well as a social health management platform, to help health plans “consumerize” their services. In other words, by leveraging the ease-of-use, accessibility and cross-platform functionality now available in so many consumer-facing products, Welltok wants to help providers, and companies themselves, improve the user experience of their health plans and the health of their employees. For Watson Group and IBM, the interest in Welltok is simple: Healthcare and healthcare applications are where they believe Watson can potentially have the biggest impact. In part, IBM is betting that the computer system’s technology could herald a new era of predictive analytics in healthcare. In other words, by instantaneously scanning millions of studies and academic records, for example, Watson’s technology could allow doctors to quickly find better treatment options for their patients. The investment is also meant to support the Watson Group’s existing partnership with Welltok, through which the two companies are building a new Watson-enabled application called “CaféWell Concierge.” The application will expand on Welltok’s health optimization platform and flagship product, CafeWell, both allows company health manager to more easily organize the ecosystem of available health and wellness solutions and provide access to a consumer-facing social health platform. The consumer platform side of CafeWell, for example, enables health plans to offer premium reductions to employees that exercise and take actions that lower their “Body Mass Index.” With its new capital, Welltok plans to finish the development of its new, Watson-powered “Concierge” product line, which will allow users to ask questions about their health conditions and activities and receive personalized answers, along with guidance in the form of “intelligent health itineraries.” Welltok will then leverage Watson’s technology to learn which itineraries and rewards prove most effective in helping users reach their health goals, enabling it to refine Concierge’s recommendations and answers as it goes. The round, which included participation from the startup’s existing investors like Emergence Capital, InterWest Partners, Miramar Venture Partners and Okapi Venture Capital, brings the company’s total capital to just under $50 million. About $40 million of its total capital has come in the last nine months, in April. Combined, the company said that the new investments will enable it to expand its addressable market to encompass a greater share of the whole healthcare ecosystem, from accountable care organizations and population managers to health plans and systems and insurance brokers and exchanges. For IBM, the investment in Welltok represents another step forward in its efforts to push Watson’s technology deeper into healthcare — and the search for commercial applications. A handful of healthcare companies and organizations were among the short list of Watson’s early customers, including players like WellPoint, a health insurer which was using IBM’s tech to determine whether or not the treatments being requested by doctors met with patients’ insurance policies and company guidelines, for example. Ultimately, through these kinds of applications, Watson’s increasing presence in the space could have big long-term implications for healthcare. So, while Welltok is the Watson Group’s first investment in digital health (and first investment overall), it very likely won’t be the last. |
Facebook’s Sandberg And Ebersman Say They’re Not Planning To Flood The News Feed With Ads | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | Judging from , Facebook’s mobile ad strategy is paying off, but CFO David Ebersman said that doesn’t mean you’ll see an ever-increasing number of ads in your News Feed. Ebersman and COO Sheryl Sandberg spoke this evening at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, where they were asked about the amount of ads that Facebook shows to its users. Ebersman replied that the company saw last year that mobile ads don’t just “continue to perform really well for marketers” but also have “a limited or negligible impact on engagement,” as shown in part by user surveys. At the same time, he suggested that Facebook won’t increasing the quantity of mobile ads as it did in 2013. Even though “the number of ads in the News Feed is an important variable,” it’s not only one the company focuses on. He said Facebook will also be experimenting with things like the size and position of the ads: “All of this goes into trying to find the right balance.” More broadly, Sandberg argued that Facebook is “by far the best mobile ad product out there today,” because it allows advertisers to reach a broad audience while also targeting specific users. And The key to growing that ad business, particularly among big brand advertisers, is measurement. “We’re not TV, we’re not search, we have to prove it.” Sandberg said. Not that she’s complaining: “We should earn every dollar. Sandberg added that in the past, Facebook could tell advertisers about how many people saw and engaged with the ads, but more recently, the company has been showing ad results “all the way through to ringing the cash register” at a physical store. For that kind of tracking, and has analyzed more than 100 campaigns. Facebook’s advantages on mobile give it “a really big opportunity, as long as we can continue to scale the measurement.” Beyond advertising, the pair was also asked about Facebook’s goals for the next 10 years. ( .) Ebersman said more immediate goals include improving Graph Search so people can use social data to find the information they need. The big challenge of the decade, on the other hand, will be “wiring up” the billions of people in the world who are not yet connected to the Internet. ( to work on this problem.) [ ] |
Cloud Accounting Company Xero Adds A New Chairman, Director, And CEO Of North America | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | New Zealand-based cloud accounting software company Xero is looking to step up its game in the U.S., and to do so it’s boosting its board and senior management ranks. That includes adding former Microsoft and GM CFO Chris Liddell as non-executive chairman of the board, bringing on HP exec Bill Veghte as director, and hiring former PayPal exec Peter Karpas as its CEO of North American operations. Let’s start with Liddell, who has led the financial operations of a couple of major heavy hitters. In 2010, as Vice Chairman and CFO of GM, Liddell led the company through a $23 billion, and had previously served as SVP and CFO of Microsoft from 2005 through 2009. He replaces Sam Knowles, who has resigned as Chairman today. Then there’s Veghte. Based in San Francisco, he runs HP’s Enterprise Group as Executive Vice President and General Manager. Prior to that, he was at Microsoft, where he served as Senior Vice President for Windows Server. Finally, Karpas will be heading up the company’s North American operations, after joining Xero from PayPal. There he served as VP and GM of North America for Small and Medium Business. He had also previously held several senior roles at Intuit. Xero, which trades publicly in New Zealand and Australia, has also raised a fair amount of private money to invest in expansion into the U.S. and other markets. Most recently it from Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures and Matrix Partners. That brings total amount raised to $230 million. |
CEB Acquires Indian Talent Analytics Startup Talent Neuron for $15M | Pankaj Mishra | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | , the U.S.-based member advisory company Indian talent analytics startup, , for around $10-$15 million. This is the third acquisition in the talent management space for CEB, which , and . Talent Neuron was incubated by , a management consulting firm based in Bangalore, two years ago. Since then, the startup has acquired many customers who are paying for big data, analytics solutions focused on talent management and planning. Talent Neuron has its own predictive data model that forecasts talent related trends across important markets in the world. In a recent report, the startup analyzed talent shortage in the Silicon Valley and said for every 100 people moving in, there are at least 120 moving out. Two of Zinnov’s co-founders — Vijay Swaminathan and Vamsi Tirukkala — leveraged the consulting firm’s existing knowledge and connections to start Talent Neuron. When I contacted Pari Natarajan, one of the Zinnov co-founders and its CEO last week, he declined to talk about any potential deal with CEB. Officials at CEB had not responded to my query on whether a deal is in the making. Talent Neuron makes a good example of how to incubate an idea using existing knowledge within a company. And while it’s not unusual for companies based in the Silicon Valley to incubate and hive off ideas from within, such events are a rarity in Indian ecosystem. This is clearly worth learning from, especially for India’s biggest software outsourcing companies who are struggling to identify the next big thing, beyond commoditized software development and maintenance. Over past few years many talent management and planning platforms have been launched that take advantage of big data analytics to offer customized solutions to customers ranging from Microsoft to even industrial giants such as ABB and General Electric. Investors are beginning to see opportunity in this space. As we wrote last year, Spire, a big data startup based in Bangalore that helps customers manage current and future talent requirements using a contextual search engine, . In fact, Talent Neuron was looking to raise its Series A before the CEB started talking, one of the investors who looked at Talent Neuron told me. |
Oculus VR’s Co-Founders On Winning A Crunchie, Getting To Launch Day, And Their Favorite VR Apps | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | Are you excited about the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset? Because a whole lot of folks are. So much so, in fact, that the tech community picked Oculus VR of 2013 at the 7th Annual Crunchies Awards — and that’s without the team even having shipped their first consumer-ready product. I grabbed two of Oculus VR’s four co-founders as they walked off stage for a quick post-win interview, and we talked about everything from the challenges ahead to pretending to be a chicken. Co-Founders Brendan Iribe and Nate Mitchell were quite humble both on-and-off camera, repeatedly sharing how surprised they were to have won. Their surprise is perhaps understandable; this category was easily one of the most well-rounded and competitive of the evening, with each of their fellow nominees — Square, SmartThings, Sonos, and 3D Robotics — seeming just as likely to win as the next. So what challenges lay ahead for Oculus? They’ve still got to finalize their retail hardware (having launched an early, rough version of the headset for developers/early adopters last year), and are working hard on making the (occasionally motion-sickness inducing) experience more comfortable for all — but they seem quite confident that they’ve got those bases covered. From here, they say, the biggest challenge is to keep the community rallied behind the device, building the virtual reality experiences that will really sell this thing in the end. |
NSA Protest Day Drives More Than 200K Emails And Calls To Congress | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | A planned day of protest against the NSA’s surveillance efforts called “ ” got off to a strong start. So far, more than 69,000 phone calls have been placed to Congressional representatives, along with more than 140,000 emails as part of the effort. In-person protests are planned, as well, both in the United States and abroad. The day’s work is also focused on pushing for the passage of the USA Freedom Act, which would curtail the NSA’s surveillance activities. For a quick primer on the USA Freedom Act, . Today’s push is somewhat reminiscent of the of two years ago, in which websites big and small blacked out their pages in anger against the proposed legislation. Sustained furor beat the bill back. As TechCrunch , while the public does appear to be making noticeable noise, the Internet industry itself is more muted in its protest. That’s to say that Internet companies have done nothing. Several took legal action to demand the right to share with the public the number of national security requests for user data, . Google today , and also called for reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. So while we might not be seeing a wave of protest today as before, there is a sustained pushback afoot in opposition to the current state of government surveillance. TechCrunch spoke to , the co-founder and the executive director of the , regarding today’s protests. Last night at the Crunchies, Timm in his absence. Regarding response among the public to The Day We Fight Back, Timm stated that reaction has been “great” with the effort “averaging 5,000 calls into Congress per hour” at one point. What impact may the day’s protests have? In Timm’s view, the effort will perhaps encourage Congress to debate the USA Freedom Act, and oppose Senator Feinstein’s , which in his view would “legalize mass surveillance.” According to Timm, the “USA Freedom Act has the best shot of real reform.” You can watch the rising tally of phone calls placed and emails sent . Other corporate interests are supporting the day’s protests. Microsoft gave them a , stating that “further reform is essential for our customers, our company and society at large – not only to help ensure the right balance between privacy and security, but to demonstrate our understanding that without liberty, we do not have security.” Also signed onto The Day We Fight Back’s website are Mozilla, Tumblr, the EFF and the ACLU. Every tech company? No, but between Google Microsoft and the others, hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap have expressed their discontent. When the activists are on the side of corporations, or, more precisely, some corporations are on the side of the protestors, perhaps real change is possible. |
The Flappy Bird Craze Continues – Now Appearing As HTML5 Web Games | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | The proliferation of Flappy Bird clones following the abrupt departure of the game from iTunes has reached an all time high. The Apple App Store and Google Play – even the Pebble Appstore – are now filled with clones of the game. Phones with the original game still installed are . There are now 81 Flappy clone developers (hello, “Flappy Penguin”, “Ironpants”, “Clumsy Bird”, “Flappy Bee” etc ) out there, and the list is growing. The success of the app appears to have sent Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen into a depression, and he now longs for his old . He pulled the simple but addictive game from the App Store and Google Play on Sunday. However there is now a way to play the game without even having to download it to a phone. is playable straight from within a mobile browser or on a desktop. It’s appeared on a site listing other simple games. Unlike many clones the game also looks exactly like the original, as per Nguyen’s twitter reply last week saying anyone could make an HTML version of his game, just before the Flappy craze exploded: No doubt other web versions will follow, but for now the Flappy Bird craze is nowhere near slowing down. |
We’re Hiring! TechCrunch Is Looking For A Product Leader | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | We rarely do this but we want you to work for us. We’re looking for an SF-based Product Manager to help lead the site into the 22nd century using best-of-breed tools, HTML codes, and the magic of programming. And we need that person right now. Here’s what’s up: The product leader of TechCrunch.com should have considerable experience with the key product and technology aspects of a media website, including publishing systems (preferably WordPress but not a requirement), video, advertising systems, audience development (SEO, usability, recirculation), and page performance. Growth and analytics are the key focus for the role, and candidates should have strong knowledge and experience in tracking digital media analytics as well as devising, executing and tracking growth strategies across the full spectrum of growth-oriented efforts, from recirculation, to SEO, to product refinements and syndication. In addition, the successful candidate should have the experience to define and lead, and in some cases juggle, small as well as major projects, ranging from wholesale redesigns to performance improvements and bug database management. Project management experience is a must. The management requirements of the role are complex, and include managing the dev team and outside contractors, while working with stakeholders at TechCrunch, notably the editorial, events and advertising groups. Strong candidates will have experience balancing their own expertise and experience with the inputs from all these groups, always keeping the best user experience, traffic growth and advertising requirements in mind. Stellar communication skills and a cool head are critical. You can apply . Get cracking! |
Now Seeing 600M Swipes Per Day, Tinder Looks Serious About Expanding Beyond Dating | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | , the simple and addictive matchmaking app that launched just 16 months ago at a University of Southern California party, took home the Crunchie award for best new startup last night. I pulled aside Tinder’s co-founders Sean Rad, Justin Mateen, and Jonathan Badeen for a brief interview to discuss the massive success the app saw in 2013 and its outlook for the future — and the trio made it very clear that Tinder has some big plans for its next chapter. Tinder first caught fire with hookup-minded young people on American . But recent months have seen the app’s scope expand significantly: “We’re really focused on international growth right now,” Mateen said, noting that Tinder has added 1 million new users in the UK in the past two months alone, with solid growth in Brazil as well. Tinder has also seen more diversity in terms of age, he said, noting that early on more than 90 percent of Tinder’s user base was between 18 and 24, but today that age bracket makes up just 50 percent of the app’s users. Tinder’s expansion plans don’t stop at adding new countries and age brackets. CEO Sean Rad has made it very clear in recent months that he believes Tinder’s core technology could be used for , and last night, he dropped some strong hints that we could see Tinder stretch much further beyond the dating space very soon. Rad said: “We’re all about connecting people and creating an introduction, no matter what the contexts are. And solving the problems that you face when you meet somebody new. The problems that we’re solving are universal, whether you want to meet somebody for romantic purposes, or for a business relationship, or a friendship, you’re put in this position where you’re either a hunter going after a relationship and you feel rejected and you put yourself out there, or you’re being bombarded and people are coming after you, and you feel just overwhelmed. Tinder’s all about filtering through that noise and just letting people who want to communicate with each other communicate. …We’re launching something very soon that will answer some [more ] of the questions.” It seems that a more buttoned-up version of the Tinder experience is on its way. On the surface it may seem like a stretch for the same technology that connects drunken dorm room hookups to be used to set up a job interview — but at its core, all of these interactions are about human communication. And Tinder’s founding team first built a before pivoting into the matchmaking space, so there is already a history there of them playing a bit more in the business space. It will be interesting to see exactly what shape Tinder takes on next. Watch the video embedded above to hear Rad, Mateen and Badeen talk about Tinder’s growth so far and plans for the future. |
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Twitter’s Web Presence Might Soon Break Away From The Vertical Timeline Flow | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | There’s a new Twitter redesign making the rounds, first spotted by , and it changes things considerably. Tweets no longer flow vertically in a single column like they do now, instead they spread out with a tile-style layout similar to what you might expect from a Pinterest or . A separate new feature offers pop-up notifications with fields for easy replies for direct messages sent through the platform, and similar notices for RTs and favorites. The features are being seen separately, but if both are implemented you start to get a picture of a future where Twitter moves away from its mostly single column, simple look to a richer, more complex presentation that offers up additional information, but in a way totally alien to what users are used to from the social network. Twitter’s more magazine-style web layout would make for a media-friendly product that better highlights images and video, but at what cost? The feed then becomes somewhat unhinged from its original, linear and mostly chronological design, which is bound to affect interaction. There’s also a “View more photos” link which suggests more of a rich media discovery play in the works. These may seem like small changes, but the way people use Twitter are tied deeply to its design. A single column of chronological tweets enforces a fundamentally ephemeral quality to Tweets published by users – they are born and live only briefly, quickly pushed down by other posts being put out. A multi-column spread increases the lifespan of Tweets, in a way similar in theory but different in execution to how the new Twitter practice of bubbling back up conversations attached to @-replies keeps back-and-forth engagement more top of mind. The new pop-up notices are likewise tools designed to drive engagement, and seem to be implemented in a way that’s genuinely useful. It’s comparable to how OS X handles iMessages now, giving you the chance to respond instantly instead of having to actually wade into the app itself. There have been some complaints already on Twitter, including some comparing this new vision for Twitter to Facebook, but as evidenced by the company’s most recent financial results, the social network needs to ramp up growth, and playing with interaction design could be the way to appeal to a wider audience. Of course, as always, this particular Twitter design is just a test as of right now, and the company’s doesn’t always predict that will roll out widely. |
Revel Systems Adds Native Bitcoin Transactions To Its POS Offering | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | Hey do you like Bitcoins? Yeah. I thought you might. Well you can use all those coins to buy things at stores running -powered point-of-sale terminals starting right now, as the company has rolled out native support for transactions made using the very much in-vogue cryptocurrency. Previously, Revel customers could accept Bitcoin transactions using third-party plugins, but now it’s integrated as an optional payment method directly into the platform alongside LevelUp, PayPal, cash and credit. The reason behind the integration is to provide its users with access to all the latest payment methods, according to Revel co-founders Lisa Falzone and Chris Ciabarra, and Bitcoin has been a request from a decent number of its clients. “If you actually search ‘Revel’ and ‘Bitcoin’ prior to this release, you’ll see a lot of our clients were already accepting it through our third-party access button,” Ciabarra explained. “But it is double-entry. That’s why we decided to create this integration so that it’s single-entry and you don’t have to worry about it. We had potential clients asking for a POS that could accept Bitcoin, so it’s convincing new clients to come on board who aren’t a Revel customer yet but who are using Bitcoin.” The integration is already being used by some active Revel clients, and they’ve already accepted Bitcoin payments at locations across the country. Ciabarra said that so far, they’ve noticed that grocery stores have seemed to be the most interested in offering Bitcoin as a payment option. It has a number of advantages for merchants and retailers, he notes, including an absence of transaction fees and the lack of exposure to the risk of payments not clearing. Regardless of whether Bitcoin sizzles or fizzles, Revel wants to offer its clients whatever payment means it can, Ciabarra says. And if it does take off, being the first POS provider to support it could pay big dividends later on. |
A Thousand Words About A Shaving Kit | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | gone from oil trading to hawking shaving cream in six years. As an economics major at Stony Brook University in Long Island, Walker — who was at the top of his class — became enamored by New York City’s flagship industry: finance. “I knew I wanted to try it,” he said. Walker liked how quantitatively the finance industry defined success. “In trading, your performance is objective; you look at your profit and loss statement at the end of the day, and you know that you’ve succeeded.” While being a trader on Wall Street was literally a way out of Queens, it eventually lost its luster, and Walker then followed the traditional finance career path of applying to business school, getting into his only choice, Stanford, where he encountered the startup scene for the first time. He got as far away, literally, from Wall Street as possible. “It really was the future of the world,” he told me over the phone about his first impressions of the tech world,” and I had to be a part of it. I hustled my way through the Valley,” he said, referring to lead at Foursquare, where he brought in the American Express deal among other things, and how it shaped him. He still views Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley as one of his inspirations. “Dennis at Foursquare is the brand,” he said, and that’s why the company has come this far. “That’s the one thing that’s really stuck with me, as [Walker’s mentor] has said, ‘You gotta do the thing that you’re uniquely positioned to do, otherwise you’re going to be roasted pretty hard.'” This mentality explains Walker’s latest endeavor, a startup that he likens to a Proctor & Gamble for black people. Walker and Co is opening up direct orders of its inaugural product this week: , a shaving system that is uniquely suited to men with coarse, curly hair. The product will start shipping regularly on Monday. It is also launching its redesigned , which provides for men who haven’t shaved this way before. Walker touts Bevel as the world’s first “end-to-end shaving system.” For an initial $59.95 a month and $29.95 each additional month, Bevel customers receive a set of 20 blades, a weighted holder, a shaving cream brush, primer, and an aftershave lotion. The kits contain a 90-day supply (60 blades in a replenishment kit), which amounts to about 90 shaves at a cost of a dollar a shave. When asked what he viewed as his closest competition, Walker did not bring up or , or other VC-backed subscription shave services. Instead he mentioned razor alternatives like electric clippers and depilatory creams and, yes, a credit card, because black men have “just given up on putting a razor to their face,” he says. “All of [the alternatives] are just really bad,” he sighs. Bevel is a single-blade razor, and Walker is really passionate about how is really the best strategy for shaving. He is deeply skeptical about multi-blade razors. “The fourth blade cuts the hair beneath your skin. The fifth blade will lift your skin, and the sixth blade will make you breakfast in the morning,” he jokes. “All the irritation comes from the extra blades,” he adds on a more serious note, bringing up the fact that, in clinical trials, participants have seen a 40 percent reduction in irritation after using the single-blade Bevel razor for four weeks. Walker argues that the proliferation of multi-blade razors is due to a razor-industry patent war. He holds that because you can’t patent single-blade razors, there’s no incentive for incumbent companies like Proctor & Gamble to invest in the best solution. There’s no patent on single blades. “If you can market [your six-blade razor] as the latest and greatest you can charge more for it. ” I tried Bevel over the weekend and did not cut myself. It’s pretty simple and it made me feel special even though I am not the target market — yet. Bevel’s design and packaging are beautiful, illustrating a dignity and sophistication that represents the next step in the evolution of black shaving products. It’s aspirational. Typical store brands targeting African American consumers. “We create products for mass” that’s what large companies say. But we say “mass will look very different in 20 years Walker has raised $2.4 million from , , , Floodgate, , , and angels like William Morris partner Charles King, Livingsocial co-founder Aaron Battalion, rap artist NAS, and Elizabeth Corrigan formerly of Bliss and LVMH. “You have an entrepreneur who understands the customer base that he will serve very well, and out of that comes authenticity,” according to investor . “I believe he will be able to serve his target customers better than a big company trying to market to that demographic.” “If I can map someone with [Tristan’s] attributes to a problem that they can uniquely solve, that’s my job.” Suster, who has known Walker since the latter was at Stanford, is excited about the potential for expansions. “I don’t know what direction he’ll take, whether it’s perfumes or soap, but you can build an amazing brand targeting people of color with products that are specifically designed for them.” Walker holds that the future of Walker and Co will not be limited to men, and will not be limited to shaving. He’s interested in digging deeper on other specific issues like Vitamin D deficiency. “Our vision right now is to make health and beauty simple for people of color,” Walker says. “In 20 years, we should be making health and beauty simple for everyone.” |
Thrive Capital Founder Josh Kushner On The Power Of Oscar | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | Last week, we sat down with Thrive Capital founder Josh Kushner at Rock Health’s Digital Health CEO Summit in San Francisco, to talk about his venture into the healthcare industry through the launch of . Kushner co-founded Oscar to take on the world of health insurance, and to actually create a better, more modern, consumer-friendly health insurance company. In the video above Kushner talks about how Oscar is changing the way consumers interact with the insurer through data mining, better customer service and more. The company, which only offers insurance plans in New York for now, has “thousands” of customers and has “tens of millions” of dollars in annualized revenue since its launch last year. Oscar also just raised $30 million in funding from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst Partners and others. For background, Kushner founded Thrive in 2010 and since inception has raised $200 million. The firm’s investment include Instagram, Warby Parker, Codecademy, Spotify, Nasty Gal, Makerbot and ResearchGate. Check out the video above for more! |
Dropbox Outlines Its Principles For Handling Government Data Requests | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | Joining other leading technology firms, Dropbox the number of national security requests it received in the preceding 12 months for user data of its customers: 0-249. While Dropbox the recent legal change that allows it to disclose that number in increments of 250, it stated in a blog post today that the now allowed for reporting is still too vague. This, it decried, is especially true of company that “receive only a handful of requests or none at all.” The implication here, only obfuscated in the legal sense, is that Dropbox receives very few national security requests, and is irked that it has to report, in essence, ‘no more than 250’ when the actual number is likely far lower. Yahoo, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Microsoft regarding the government’s requests for their user date. Dropbox, in addition to the release of its modest number of non-law-enforcement requests for data, of what it describes as “principles” regarding how it will handle government data requests. The company intends to contest for the ability to disclose more information regarding government requests, treat all users the same, regardless of their location, and fend off so-called “blanket requests” for data. The takeaway from the above is that technology companies were willing to go to court to fight for more transparency, won, but are yet to be satisfied with the larger regulatory framework that guides the intersection of technology and government. Google this morning, by way of one example, for increased reform, citing specifically the woefully outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act which in its current form provides little to no security to the email content of private citizens. Today marks a timed wave of protests under the banner “ ,” which Mozilla and other technology companies and privacy groups have commended. While the public in its view regarding the NSA, the issue of surveillance, and where to draw the line — allowing the false dichotomy for the moment — between privacy and security, the technology industry is increasingly in-step: The government has gone too far, and the status quo is unacceptable. It’s almost enough to make you hopeful. |
The Dash Builds Wearable Fitness Sensors Into The Headphones You’re Using Anyway | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 11 |
We’re finally starting to see some real consolidation around wearable tech, and Kickstarter project is a great example of that trend in action. It’s a pair of Bluetooth in-ear headphones that also offer up performance tracking via in-built health and body sensors. With passive noise cancellation, pass-through audio transparency when you need it, and an ear bone transduction microphone, these really do seem like gadgets that take existing gadget real estate (everyone uses headphones at some point) and make the most out of it. The Dash gets rid of wires entirely, offering instead a pair of completely discrete earbuds that can work with a connected smartphone, or completely on their own via an internal 4GB of storage for loading up your own songs directly. That would probably be enough to recommend them to athletes and active users who want to get the cables out of the way, but The Dash also has an ear bone mic that eliminates background interference, and it acts as a fully fledged activity tracker, with built-in heart rate, oxygen saturation and energy-expenditure monitoring. You can also control playback from the on-device touch sensitive surface, as well as turn off passive audio noise cancellation to fully hear your surroundings, which is handy if you’re running in a busy city. The left bud controls your activity monitoring (you can get audio updates on your current measured stats), while the right one manages audio controls, including audio volume and playlist selection. Dash creator Bragi, which is based in Munich, wants to turn the gadget into a broadly focused platform, however, with an SDK for third-party developers that allows them to reimagine what it can offer users. They see it as a communication device for emergency responders, for instance, or as an in-ear translation device for communicating in foreign languages, or as one part of a larger overall sensor system for use in medicine. It’s easy to see why The Dash has raised over $250,000 of its $260,000 goal already, given the starting price of $199 for new backers for pre-order pledges. If it works as advertised, the gadget will replace a number of different devices in one convenient, comfortable package. The team has a great pedigree; CEO Nikolaj Hviid is a former design chief at Harman, and so has experience building consumer products for the mass market. The anticipated delivery date for The Dash is October,2014, which means we don’t have long to wait to see if these really can deliver on their apparent potential. It’s not quite One Wearable To Rule Them All, but it’s getting there, and that’s welcome news for consumers overwhelmed with niche products that offer relatively little in the way of lasting value. |
Chairman Of The Bitcoin Foundation Talks The Future Of Cryptocash | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | After Bitcoin’s fine showing last night , we took a moment to talk to Peter Vessenes, Chairman of the Foundation. Vessenes accepted the award and assured me multiple times that he was not, in fact, secretive BTC creator Satoshi Nakamoto in disguise. My biggest question to him is when my mom would start using Bitcoin and why she would be interested. “It’s a great way to buy stuff on the Internet,” said Vessenes, who went on to describe how he paid a Romanian VPN almost instantly using bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies are big right now and multiple VCs at the Crunchies expected Bitcoin to be the next big thing. Whether or not Vessenes is really Satoshi is still in doubt, but we’re pretty sure the service is here to stay. |
Shutting Down Blurtt | Contributor | 2,014 | 2 | 16 | Blurtt, which in its current form back in 2012, was a mobile app that allowed you to create their own digital expressions by allowing you to choose an image, add text and share either anonymously or to your network. Now in 2014, my beloved startup Blurtt is dead and all the assets are for sale. As one of the cofounders of the company, I thought it would be helpful to walk you through the many incarnations of Blurtt and the challenges we had along the way in hope that other startups can avoid our mistakes. Ideas are a dime a dozen; the difference is in the execution. Below is a list of business models Blurtt considered, built and attempted to raise money on: Web and mobile platform that curates photography and art from individuals and you can create and send your own postcard from your phone for $1.99. Functional web platform that was live and running. We saw a new opportunity (idea No. 2) and changed the business model but needed funding to iterate and scale. Bootstrapped with investor interest but no commitments. While many postcard app startups have received funding, this is a lifestyle business. If you want to turn it into a fundable business, you need multiple revenue channels and products. The exits, if there are any, will be small. Along with our web-based Blurtt-creation tool, we created a functional self-service advertisement portal similar to Facebook Ads that allowed you to choose your target demographics, location and gender. In order to send blurtts, we required Facebook Connect, which allowed us to get your data and match you with the advertiser. At this point we turned off monetization for Blurtt and they could be sent for free. However, we had no ad partners, as advertisers wanted to see high volume, and our fixed costs (printing, mailing, hosting) started to add up without any funding or revenue. I had to shut down Blurtt. Bootstrapped. Tried to raise money but feedback we received was that no one wanted to send printed postcards, and the name “Blurtt” was not good for snail mail as “blurt” implied impulsivity. The impulsivity of expression would be lost in the mail. A startup recently launched in this space, and I think they will run into the same problems. The idea is good but you are adding an impersonal advertisement to a postcard that is supposed to convey emotion. While advertisers are trying to learn how to read and convey emotion through advertisements, it will take a considerable amount of funding and users to make this business model work. Mobile platform of micro-gifting and greeting cards. Spent most of the year raising money on this idea. We received an acceleration agreement from in Silicon Valley. The money we’d need to raise to make this happen would need to be considerable. We decided to build an MVP instead which at least addressed one of the two ideas. Raised our first $25K, which made it easier to raise more money. The MVP ended up being Idea No. 4. Mobile platform that allows you to choose an image from the web (or your camera roll) and add text over the image and share digitally. The blurtts could be shared anonymously or via your user name. The idea here was to give people a platform to use images to better convey how they truly felt. (An image is worth a thousand words.) Mobile app launched in 2012. We were featured in and for the Week alongside Angry Birds. It is hard to force a Blurtt. When we were working through the MVP it felt like “blurtting” was something one just had to get good at. Blurtt became a content-creation tool of which only 0.02475 percent of the people were actually both extroverts who wanted to share their blurtts with the universe. We came close to closing a $1 million dollar seed round. When the investment discussion turned to who was going to run Blurtt and what team was going to build it, I had a falling out with the lead investor. I raised a $120K friends and family round and built and launched an MVP using those funds. For the niche who is original, witty and creative, Blurtt was the tool for them. Some of the content people started creating and sharing was vile and not at all the vision I had for Blurtt. We could not find product/market fit but had several ideas of where Blurtt could go. I did not have enough funding to iterate real-time. Blurtt started to fizzle away but I was going to give it one last shot. I have a Joan of Arc complex so the only time I will give up is when they burn me at the stake. We launched Blurtt (idea No. 4) in March 2012, and by September 2012 it was obvious that we were not getting the traction we needed to raise money. I convinced one of my business classmates to let me live with her in New York City as I tried to find a technical co-founder (i.e. free developer) who could help me with Blurtt. At this point, I had my bags packed and I went to say goodbye to the team I had hired to help me build my MVP, a product development company in Dallas called Dialexa. Co-founders Mark Haidar and Scott Harper said, “You can’t just leave Dallas. You are way too smart and too talented to be sleeping on floors and couches and begging people to help you. We will take over Blurtt and you become the product manager and you can work for us.” After making zero salary for two years, managing $120,000 to build a product that might have taken any other person 2-4x that amount to build, I accepted Dialexa’s offer. I joined Dialexa and we were all happy that Blurtt was getting another chance. But I started to feel burned out. I was Blurtt’s fearless leader, but the problem with burnout is that you become hopeless and you lose every aspect of your creativity. I would stay awake at night thinking about Blurtt (what to do with it, punishing myself for my mistakes, thinking about the people who hurt me along the way and said I did not meet the “pattern of recognition for success” in the Valley). I’d go to work feeling tired and exhausted. I was burning the candle at both ends. If I had not had two to three years of battle wounds to recover from maybe I could have bounced back quicker, but I was spent: emotionally, physically, financially and mentally. Taking venture money is not the end all, be all. I remember getting asked questions like “Is this a lifestyle business?” like it was a bad thing. The reality is VCs look for big exits so they don’t want to invest in your multi-million-dollar venture even if you’re making millions. I kept on changing the vision to appeal to investors so I could chase the bigger dollars so I could build the startup I really hoped to build. In the end, the passion and magic was lost. Do not launch a startup if you do not have enough funding for multiple iterations. The chances of getting it right the first time are about the equivalent of winning the lotto. Remember why you started this in the first place and never lose sight of it, because once it becomes something you are not happy doing — you shouldn’t be doing it. I wanted to change the world by giving people a way to express their true emotions. |
With $770K In Seed Funding, Playbasis Wants Businesses In Asia To Gamify | Pankaj Mishra | 2,014 | 2 | 16 | , a Thailand-based gamification startup that helps companies engage with customers and employees through cool rewards and social games, has raised $770,000 in seed funding from Ardent Capital, 500 Startups and Axis Capital. The startup plans to use this funding to expand its footprint in Asia this year. Gamification — the idea of adding game elements to services so younger users are attracted to them — hit the peak of last year, followed by warnings from the research firm that . Playbasis and several others including and believe there’s money to be made, as large and mid-sized customers seek newer ways to engage with their target audience who are mostly the millennials. Already, these gamification startups count Ford, Toyota, T Mobile, Marriott, Samsung and AmEx among their customers. “I don’t think gamification is a fad,” Robert Zepeda, founder of Playbasis said. “I think the lines between productivity software and entertainment software will only continue to blur. Foursquare, Waze, Duolingo, Line, and even Facebook are already incorporating gamification techniques such as scoring, leader boards, virtual currencies, virtual goods/stickers, etc.” With around a dozen staff, Playbasis is hoping to become profitable this year. The startup’s SaaS-based platform leverages big data analytics at the back end that helps offer newer features on-the-fly. Its current customers include Accenture, Playboy Thailand, TMB Bank and True Corporation. Gamification startups such as Playbasis are aspiring to become a part of a customer’s overall social CRM and engagement budgets by combining big data insights with machine-learning algorithms. But this transformation will mean going beyond just doling out badges and points to enhance user engagements. I spoke to some state-owned and even private banks in India to understand what they think of gamification. A senior IT executive at one of the biggest Indian banks told me there’s huge interest but was unsure if his bank would set aside budgets for gamification. “We are looking at gamification increasingly to woo younger employees of our corporate clients. We found that many of them are buying products from other banks despite having salary accounts with us,” this executive told me. For now, gamification is generating good interest among enterprises in South Asia, especially in countries such as India where smartphones are increasingly shaping the way new technologies are being embraced. Employers such as the and several Indian banks are building apps that combine game elements with serious enterprise applications. In that sense, the consumerization of enterprise applications is catching on. But doling out badges and points are not going to be enough for gamification to make a big standalone enterprise impact. “We feel that the longer a company works with us and our platform, the value we can bring compounds over time. We can collect massive amounts of data for our customers and offer a social CRM tool as well,” Zepeda said. The big question facing gamification startups is whether they can sustain the initial interest and turn that into a revenue-generating engagement in the long term for enterprise customers. And this shift will also determine whether some of them can become billion-dollar startups on their own, or become a high-valuation acquisition target for large enterprise software companies such as SAP and Oracle. |
Basis In Acquisition Talks With Everyone | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 2 | 16 | Looks like Google might be ticking off a box on , or someone else might be. , the company behind the Basis Health Tracker Watch, is on the market, according to two people familiar with the matter. We’ve heard that the company has been shopping itself around over the past few weeks and has spoken to Google, Apple and possibly Samsung and Microsoft about a potential sale. The price we’ve heard for any possible activity is “sub-hundred million,” which could mean a small return for investors like , and , who have into the company. The alternative to an acquisition for Basis would be a long-sought-after C round of funding, say those people. Though its market share is unclear, the company would be an interesting buy for any of the big four mentioned above. Google, which Nest, is gunning to be the frontrunner in both the AI and hardware spaces. It is also said to be working on as an entry into the consumer hardware market. Apple, too, is rumored to be keeping , while Samsung’s smartwatch, has already hit the shelves, leaving much to be desired from a design perspective. Microsoft would be the dark horse in this race, with only the Kinect to boast of in the wearables department. Of all the fitness trackers available currently, Basis is said to be the most accurate in its data collection and reporting, but the most clunky with regards to design. A generous parent company could give it the chance to experiment with a more-streamlined, Jawbone or Fitbit-esque product without it having to go through the pains of raising another round of capital to support R&D. Basis representative Damon Miller has responded, “Our focus is on building the most advanced health tracker on the market. As a matter of policy, we don’t comment on rumor or speculation.” |
Ok Google | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 16 | I also went to see a screening of over the weekend, a 2013 documentary about Google’s controversial book-scanning project. The only person Google made available for the film was Amit Singhal, a Google VP and the head of its core ranking team. In the movie, Singhal doesn’t actually mention Google Books, but instead he talks about how the Star Trek computer was a major influence on his research. That, plus Google’s challenge to use voice commands whenever possible, made me think a bit more seriously about Google (and arguably Apple and others) have recently been doing around voice recognition and natural language processing. In the early days of voice recognition and Apple’s Siri, talking to your phone or computer always felt weird. There’s just something off about talking to an inanimate object that barely understands what you want anyway. The early voice recognition tools were also so limited, it took Zen-like focus on your pronunciation and ensuring that you more or less stuck with the approved commands to get them to work. Just ask anybody who has voice recognition in their cars how much they enjoy it (just don’t ask anybody with an older Ford SYNC system, they may just Solving those kinds of hard problems is what tends to motivate Google, though. As I noted a few months ago, one of Google’s missions is to build the , and to do that, it has to perfect voice recognition and – more crucially – the natural language processing algorithms behind it. What Google’s voice commands enable you to do on the phone (and in the Chrome browser) today, is pretty impressive. Ask it “Call Mum” and it will do that. It’ll open web pages for you, answer complex questions thanks to Google’s massive repository of data in the Knowledge Graph, set up appointment and reminders, convert currencies, translate words and phrases, and send emails and texts. For voice searches, it’ll just speak back the answers. That’s something few companies can replicate, simply because they can’t match Google’s Knowledge Graph. More interestingly, though, many of these actions draw you into a short conversation with your phone. “Call Alex.” “Which Alex?” “Alex Wilhelm.” “Mobile or home?” “Mobile.” “Calling Alex.” The fact that this works, and that Google can even often recognize pronouns in extended conversations, is awesome. For now, though, this still feels weird to me. I’m not likely to use it in public anytime soon, and using it when I’m alone in my office feels even stranger. I’m guessing that kind of hesitance will wear off over time, just like video conferencing felt weird at the beginning and now we’re all used to video chats on Skype, FaceTime and Google Hangouts. Maybe the computer from “Her” is indeed and the natural language processing and all of the other tech that drives Google’s voice commands and search today will surely form the kernel of the artificial intelligence systems the company will one day build. It’s no surprise Google the stealthy artificial intelligence startup DeepMind a few weeks ago. Its founders have long been interested in AI and Larry Page is rumored to have led the acquisition of DeepMind himself. Back in 2000, Page once that he believed “artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google.” The company continues to go down this path, and many of the researchers at Google’s semi-secret X-labs seem to have a strong interest in AI, too. The ideal user interface for working with these systems is probably speech. My experiment with only using voice control for a day pretty much failed, however — not because it didn’t work well, but just because I just don’t feel like talking to my phone most of the time. |
A Low-Key Launch Can Still Bring Long-Term Success. Y Combinator Is Living Proof | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 2 | 16 | Blackwell reviewing applications for the first YC class in 2005 But it’s worth remembering that a splashy launch doesn’t always bring long-term success. In fact, some of tech’s strongest startups, apps and organizations started out . Take . YC Demo Day is now one of the buzziest events in Silicon Valley — but in a really fascinating onstage interview with at the earlier this month, YC co-founder discussed the more humble early days of the seed accelerator when it first launched in 2005. Livingston said that at the first YC Demo Day back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, eight startups launched to a room with only “15 to 20 investors” in attendance. “Some of them were legit, and some of them were just rich people we knew and said, ‘Can you please come?'” she said. “But we knew we were on to something.” She went on to explain how they knew they were on to something, and the key that kept Y Combinator growing from those early days (this bit starts at around 9:45 in the video embedded below this post):
“It wasn’t that hard because people cared. And that’s an important thing to remember… the eight people we funded cared, you know, and some of the investors who funded them cared, and it was slowly growing. , who’s one of the YC partners who invented Gmail, gives this great advice which is, ‘It’s so much better to make a few people love you, than a lot of people just like you.’ And that is just so true, with whatever you’re doing. And that’s what it was for us. A few people loved us, and we just sort of just grew from there. So even though reporters didn’t love us, they wouldn’t return my phone calls and could care less that we were doing this new way of funding, we just moved on. We didn’t need them.” Livingston’s comments are a great reminder that while launch day can be an important milestone, and getting early press can be valuable, it’s not everything. You can watch the entire interview with Jessica Livingston and Derek Andersen in the video embedded below — it was a great conversation. The comments excerpted above start at around 9:45. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMZZPiJrBo0]
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TC Droidcast Episode 22: Nokia Goes Android While HTC Plays The Customer Care Card | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 16 | On this week’s Droidcast, me and Chris Velazco get tough on smartwatches, but first we discuss device plans and other infertile hybrid animals, and HTC’s renewed commitment to customer care and how that might affect its fortunes. Finally, we talk a bit about Chromecast, Google’s mobile-to-big screen media streamer and its new SDK. Long story short, we know a lot about Nokia’s unreleased Android phone except for why it exists; ; and Google has made the Cast SDK part of its most recent stable release of Google Play services, so we should see a slew of apps offering up support for that home theater companion.
Intro music by Direct . |
As Mt.Gox Implodes, Rival Bitcoin Exchanges Remain Surprisingly Stable | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 16 | Watching the gyrations in the price of Bitcoin has been the past several days. However, unlike with prior busts and races, the price of Bitcoin has . This has led to the Bitcoin market itself becoming siloed. Bitstamp, BTC-E, and Mt.Gox of Bitcoin from their exchanges for varying amounts of time due to a potential exploit. Both Bitstamp and BTC-E have . Mt.Gox, the first to force users to stop removing Bitcoin from its exchange, remains closed in that regard. This had led the cost of Bitcoin on Mt.Gox to fall dramatically. Sitting around $900 , following previous highs north of $1,200, Bitcoin is now worth under $300 on Mt.Gox, where it has traded in recent hours on the low end of the $200s. Those who own Bitcoin on the exchange are betting that Mt.Gox won’t be able to solve its problems, and that their deposits are not secure; they are willing to let their Bitcoin go for far below-market rates. And that’s the most interesting part of this. Bitcoin, widely mocked as immature, starry-eyed, unstable, and far-fetched — often by myself, it must be said — is enjoying something akin to price stability on exchanges. Even following two of its largest exchanges suffering from technical issues, and a once-important exchange implode publicly. This shakes out in the following way: Those who believe in Bitcoin have continued to do so — just not on Mt.Gox, really — even in the face of public shaming through potential technological weakness, and the effective death of Mt.Gox itself, a once high-flying member of the larger Bitcoin fabric; who will trust it now? So, we can take the above to mean that Bitcoin, despite painful setbacks, remains mostly stable in terms of its market price on exchanges that are fully open. Would that have been the case six or 12 months ago? I think not. |
Stack Overflow Goes Down, Programmers Around The World Panic (It’s Back Up Now) | Colleen Taylor | 2,014 | 2 | 16 | , the coding-focused Q&A site that’s proven to be an essential tool for professional and amateur programmers alike, had an approximately hour-long outage Sunday morning that affected a number of users. According to Stack Overflow’s parent company Stack Exchange, the cause was against its . The issue has been “partially mitigated” and the site is back up and running now, Stack Exchange says. Reports of Stack Overflow’s outage started to hit Twitter and at around 11am Pacific Time Sunday, and continued for about an hour. The panicked (and often humorous) notes of programmers who were unable to access the site during their planned Sunday coding sessions show just how valuable the service is for so many people: down. — NerdSchnupperluft (@1337luft) Well, stackoverflow is down. Might as well pack it in and take the day off. — Jeff Pickett (@pickett) https://twitter.com/adamjstevenson/status/435133630541594624 stackoverflow is down. my career is on hold. — John Rodley (@rodley) Came to work on a Sunday and Stack Overflow is down EVERYBODY PANIC — Vineet Shah (@vineetshah) Now that the site is back up and running, though, anyone who was secretly relieved at the prospect of getting a “snow day” away from coding will probably have to find another excuse. https://twitter.com/Undo_SE/status/435141703364657152 We’ve reached out to Stack Exchange for more details on the DDoS attack and the resulting outage and will update with any information we receive. |
Google Acquires SlickLogin, The Sound-Based Password Alternative | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 16 | SlickLogin has been acquired by Google, just five months after . Word of the acquisition is confirmed by a notice on the , where they say that they’ll be joining Google in their efforts to “make the Internet safer for everyone”. We’ve also confirmed this news with Google. Exact details of the deal are still under wraps. As always, we’re digging for more. The idea behind SlickLogin was, at the very least, quite novel: to verify a user’s identity and log them in, a website would play a uniquely generated, nearly-silent sound through your computer’s speakers. An app running on your phone would pick up the sound, analyze it, and send the signal back to the site’s server confirming that you are who you say you are — or, at least, someone who has that person’s phone. Or, to get more wordy… here’s how I put it : As a user, you’d go to whatever SlickLogin-enabled site you’d like to log in to. Tap the login button, hold your phone up close to the laptop, and you’re in. SlickLogin can use a bunch of protocols to start verifying your phone’s position: WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, visual markers like QR codes, and of course, GPS. Their self-dubbed “secret sauce”, though, is their use of uniquely generated sounds intentionally made inaudible to the human ear. Your computer plays the sound through its speakers, while an app on your smartphone uses the device’s built-in microphone to pick up the audio. The service was built to be used either as a password replacement, or as a secondary, Two-Factor authentication layer on top of a traditional password. The company rolled their product into a small, closed Beta after debuting it at Disrupt, and hadn’t yet opened it up to everyone when they were acquired. So who are these guys? What about security — if you managed to record someone else’s login sound, could you login as them later? I answered all that and more back when the company first launched, so check out for that. |
An iPhone Loyalist’s First Few Weeks With Android | Semil Shah | 2,014 | 2 | 16 | TechCrunch A year ago, I wrote a post titled “ .” Recently, I purchased a Nexus 5 as we develop and begin the , and I wanted to share some of my initial user experiences carrying phones on both mobile platforms. What I want to focus on in this post are the elements of the Android experience I enjoyed and the elements of the iOS experience that I missed — what I don’t want to focus on is the “Android is better” or “Android sucks” debate. Now, with that disclaimer out of the way…The last time I really spent time on Android was in the Spring of 2011. That was a frustrating experience for me. Now with a brand new Nexus, it’s a new world. The larger screen is enjoyable for reading Pocket and watching YouTube videos. Notifications are easier to . The integration of Google Services makes things significantly easier. I found it easier to multitask and switch apps on Android. Having Google Now just up and running is obviously nice. I have but haven’t fiddled enough with it yet. My personal favorites so far are products which can only be built on Android: and . Cover, as many of you already know, is a lockscreen app which leverages sensor data from the handset and predicts which apps users may want at specific times. It’s surprisingly good at presenting me with the app I want to use at a given time. One of the great attributes of Cover is it reduces the time to get into an app and the cognitive load of sorting through apps. While our phones are cluttered with apps we rarely use, Cover intelligently elevates the apps we engage with most-often. As Cover spreads, it will reward apps with organic daily active engagement. Aviate is similarly elegant, a new homescreen interface with tons of cool options. (I’m also excited to try , , , and any other apps you could recommend.) The slightly-smaller form factor for typing. The retina screen, of course. The responsiveness of the touchscreen glass. There are many apps (especially from startups) that just won’t be on Android for a while, as it’s more efficient for small companies to build new products and experiences going iOS-first. I also like that there’s no “back button” on iOS — that was a confusing element for me on Android, as I don’t think of going back to a previous screen on mobile (seems more like a browser), though I can see how some may like this. I’ve been carrying two phones for the last few weeks, largely for work but I’m enjoying experimenting with the new device and operating system. Recently, I started to think — what would it take for me or other iPhone users actually switch, to actually give away or sell my iPhone and just carry around this Nexus 5. Here’s what I came up with: Some will bolt for Android out of curiosity for something new, some will prefer cheaper and/or more flexible data plans, some will find all the apps they need on Android, some will want a bigger screen, or the ease of Google’s integrated services, or and so on. As killer apps like Google Now improve, these type of native anticipatory services may be enough to bring iOS users into Android. Or, since Android provides developers with more root access and data collection capabilities, app makers may create an entirely new mobile experience that’s both not possible on iOS and also vital to users. (That said, with like , the same could be said of Apple’s mobile platform — and, therefore, what we’re more likely to see is increasing divergence in the type of mobile experiences between Android and iOS.) Now, assume Google Glass becomes a consumer-level success – that entire phone-to-glass experience could end up being better powered by an Android, though Google can continue to write great iOS software and across platforms, even if the functionality is limited or not as well-integrated within iOS. On Twitter last night, Android’s killer app opportunity may be Bitcoin wallets after Apple’s moves to some Bitcoin apps, though wallets could be open to more attacks. It’s a provocative thought, no doubt, and one that we shouldn’t dismiss. Or, maybe this isn’t about one platform versus another, but more about two platforms peacefully coexisting and preserving choice and competition for the benefit of consumers. Let’s hope that’s the case. |
Sailfish OS Maker, Jolla, On Questing For Scale In The Age Of Android | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | “It’s not every day that a new mobile operating system is born,” says Jolla’s Marc Dillon preaching to a congregation of the curious from atop a stool at ‘s booth at the . This is the world’s largest mobile industry gathering. The show which annually transforms Barcelona into a city of suits and queues and shiny things. It’s a soapbox sales pitch from the new kid on mobile’s block. And it looks really good. The Jolla booth is sizeable, sited in MWC’s first (if not its main) hall, and buzzing with interested visitors when I drop by. Dillon tells TechCrunch he’s getting up on this public soapbox once a day to introduce the Sailfish mobile OS to potential owners and partners. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind the scenes this fledgling smartphone and OS maker is taking a lot of meetings. “All of our schedules are full for this week — and a lot of them came to us,” Dillon tells me, now sitting on a stool to talk to TechCrunch. “We didn’t go out seeking partners to have meetings with, they came to us.” “There’s been everything from OEMs and carriers and ODMs and other kinds of technology. There’s been a huge amount of developer interest here on the stand, people from all different kinds of genres of applications and deep, even low-level, developers and things closer to the hardware,” he continues. “The innovation is interesting. The things that we didn’t deliver at the beginning that people just do anyway. Like, we didn’t deliver a wi-fi hotspot in the beginning — and somebody just went and created one and now we’re integrating it into the platform. “These guys over here did an Other Half that has sensors and an RGB display that changes colour depending on things and you can answer the phone by waving your hand over it, and mute it by waving your hand over it. People are just doing this because they want to, and because they believe in what we’re doing.” Last year with a similar Sailfish sales pitch for the carrier community and beyond. The difference was then he had to talk about what Jolla to do, not what it’s done. A small anonymous cubicle, way off the beaten track and reserved for press and partner meetings, was its only physical presence at MWC 2013 — about as far as you could get from the bright lights and conference hoards. Inside this featureless cube, only a handful of Jolla-branded stickers and Dillon’s determination stood out from the beige environs. A year on, Jolla’s brilliantly lit booth is shouting loudly about what this startup has achieved in the past twelve months: its on sale, “It’s been really rewarding to know that we’ve done something right,” says Dillon, looking around at the booth bustle. “The most rewarding thing is that people keep coming, and they’re very interested and they keep coming back.” “Two years ago we were three guys on the floor here, and then last year you saw where we were, and then this is amazing. I’m really pleased with the change,” he adds. “The key to us for scalability is different kinds of partners, so we’re talking to operators constantly,” he says. “They’re coming to us. I’m expecting some great thing there. We’re also doing things with brands and other things that give us additional reach. But we’re definitely going to be in shops this year. Lots of operators.” “The OEMs have gotten really squeezed now because [on Android] it’s exactly the same user experience so all they can do is price-point or luxury — adding more cores and shiny things or pushing the price down,” he adds. “We’re trying to provide a high end experience that is scalable to low end devices and high end devices and different form factors.” The two smart covers aren’t quite ready for the prime-time yet — with content still in development — but are due for release in the first half of this year. “There’s no other manufacturer in the world that is going to let you rebrand their device and sell it along with it,” says Dillon, showing TechCrunch a glimpse of this work in progress. Another, potentially much more significant expansion strategy for Jolla is that it’s planning to release its Sailfish OS as a free download — to let Android users reflash other OEMs’ devices with its software. Again, this will happen in the first half of this year, with support for a few select devices coming initially, before access gets opened up more broadly. This a strategy to drive the volume of Sailfish users — and thus ultimately to attract more developers to underpin and nurture the Sailfish ecosystem. “One of the keys to application developers is volume,” says Dillon. “So this [Sailfish download initiative] is one thing that’s going to entice a lot of developers to come on board — the fact that the volume is going to grow. “This Sailfish initiative is going to be my focus this year — to make sure that Sailfish is available to get into as many people’s hands as possible.” An Android launcher is also coming to give people a taster of Sailfish, ahead of any full reflash. “That’s kind of a springboard for us, to be able to show more people what our capabilities are and to give them an opportunity to try the gestures, and to understand there’s a bit of a learning curve,” says Dillon. How large an opportunity does Jolla see for Android owners to fully reflash their devices with Sailfish? “[Reflashing] is exceptionally common in China, just as one example,” says Dillon, pointing to Xiaomi’s journey from ROM maker to fully fledged smartphone maker as an example of the appetite mobile users can have for change. “So we’re looking at — there’s a hundred million at least potential, and even a few percent of that is already a tremendous thing for a company like us,” he adds. Talking of China, that country was an early focus for Jolla — with being one of its earliest wins. However, since then, things have gone a little quiet on the eastern front, with no concrete launches as yet (although Hong Kong is now apparently imminent). “We’re still working a lot in China,” says Dillon when asked about goings on in the market. “I don’t have any specifics there but… we have a lot of people that are going there constantly.” Why the delay with launching into that market? “A lot of it has to do with there are so many different opportunities, making sure that we understand what the best ones are has been more difficult maybe than we expected,” says Dillon, after a moment collecting his thoughts. “There’s a constant stream of change that goes through China, so making sure that we do the right things, with the right partners there is what we’re spending the time on.” Where did Dillon hope to be at this point when Jolla started out on its journey? (Lest you forget, the origins of Sailfish and Jolla were a handful of MeeGo engineers leaving Nokia to carry on building the platform that it was abandoning in favour of Windows Phone. So it’s more than a little ironic that to built a new .) “It’s a really interesting, for me, combination of confidence that we’re going to make it, but there’s a huge amount of things that are going on all of the time — there’s managing tens of thousands of pieces of work it takes in order to do this, and dealing with a huge amount of partners. And there’s so many variables — but I couldn’t have imagined it would be like this,” says Dillion, evidently struggling to square the circle of being a small force thinking big. “That we would actually have such a big beautiful presence [at MWC] with a really beautiful device that is getting better all the time. Our fourth software update is really amazing, I’m really proud of it. I always believed that we were going to do it but it completely overwhelmed my expectations with what we actually achieved. I always knew we were going to get the device out, and for half a year I said there’s nothing we can do to stop it, and then all of a sudden it’s way bigger than what I expected.” The fourth Sailfish update (coming this month) will bring a raft of updates to the platform — nearly doubling the number of features in the camera software, and also bringing general general performance improvements (including to the Android app runtime); along with core stuff like support for landscape orientation of text-based content. Notably, the fourth update will also include usability tweaks — in the form of extra signposts — designed to help Sailfish users understand the gestures required to navigate around the UI. Dillon said this is a result of Jolla listening to feedback from early adopters and reviewers. As I noted in my of Jolla’s device last month, Sailfish’s gesture-heavy navigation can be confusing for newcomers, especially those accustomed to icons and buttons — which is pretty much all smartphone users now. So it’s great to see Jolla building in a little more hand-holding to help bridge the usability gap between established mobile methodology and brave new world order. “We made a lot of improvements in the latest software,” says Dillon. “We took a lot of feedback there. Not only did we make it a lot more consistent but also we provide clues to the new user so they can have more understanding. “One example is people always swipe down — and for us that’s close, so we put a lock from the homescreen to let them know they’re closing the device. Or locking it, if they have lock enabled. And when you have an application open it very prominently tells you you’re closing the application [by displaying a large cross icon over it] — because that was one thing people were getting confused about.” “It still boils down to left right, up and down. And left and right are basically the same most of the time, and scrolling everybody already knows… but we’ve taken it really seriously and we’ve done a lot of work on it,” he adds. “We went through every single application to make sure they work in a consistent manner and we’re adding little clues all over the place to make sure that a new user gets a better experience. We also found a lot of people who were trying the device or reviewing the device weren’t going through the tutorial. So we’ve made a lot of improvements there, and we’re trying to encourage users to go through the basics a little bit.” As well as taking feedback, Jolla is also open to — and openly listening out for — ideas for future features from its community of users. “There’ve been a lot of ideas about things to do with the Other Half — like glowing different colours… so instead of just having different colours, what if it’s just clear and it changes colour all of the time, or it gives you some information,” says Dillon when asked what sorts of ideas the community is coming up with. Such cool sounding hardware add-ons for Jolla handsets are likely to have to be built by other startups (or brands) at this point, though, rather than by Jolla itself — being as its core focus is, as it has to be, on spreading the Sailfish platform as far and wide as it can. There are plenty of sobering examples of failed or faltering mobile platforms to illustrate how ecosystems really need developers to survive, and developers go where the volumes are. And/or where the money is. Hence Jolla’s focus on trying to scale Sailfish with all the help from others it can get (it is also drawing on the Android ecosystem, via app compatibility, rather than trying to shut it out entirely). That’s why it’s designed its hardware, software and business models to be extensible by others. Even its hardware Other Half is a platform . The priorities that we have at the moment [are] Sailfish and creating partnerships. What’s most important to me now is that we continue to build a user base, continue to build partnerships and enablers for those.” So where, then, does Dillon want Jolla to be this time next year — at MWC 2015? “I think next year we’re going to have a lot of different partners on the stand, we are going to have our devices in a lot of other companies’ booths, and I believe that we are going to have a lot more good stories to tell,” he says. “I would like to see some operators, carriers, and brand houses being able to use Sailfish as a platform to help their business, and also to work with our business.” And with that, Dillon is off again — to mingle with the people who are busy getting to know Sailfish. And to keep on thinking bigger. |
E-Cig Maker NJOY Raises $70 Million | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | Puff puff pass the $1 billion valuation because e-cigarette maker NJOY has raised $70 million from Brookside Capital and Morgan Stanley Investment Management, at least according to a . The company’s early investors included Sean Parker, Peter Thiel, and . Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, the company previously raised $75 million in June, 2013. NJOY’s products are now in over 90,000 retail locations. The company offers the cigarettes, which are single-use, in packs of three. Users can return eight of the cigarettes (once they’re empty and uncharged) in exchange for one e-cig. According to PCMag they have a “chemical taste [and] aftertaste” but have the “highest nicotine content among eCigs tested.” The company also offers a rechargeable system but is pushing the single-use devices more actively. Vaping has risen in popularity. Smokers are adopting e-cigarettes as a safe alternative to smoking ( ) and companies like Blu, NJOY, and are taking advantage of this perception. As the data rolls in we’ll see where well-funded companies like NJOY fall. Until then, e-smoke ’em if you e-got ’em. |
A Few Thoughts On Free Windows | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | Hot damn, changes. and reported on a story that, at first blush, sounds downright strange: Microsoft may . Microsoft selling Windows to OEM partners is even more entrenched than apple pie is to Americanism. No more of that? It’s almost unthinkable. However, once you get past the oddity of the concept, it can make sense if you approach it properly. Let’s do this in a section-list format for brevity: Microsoft has made billions selling Windows to consumers through its OEM partners. It now also sells Windows to consumers on devices that it builds. This means it has new ways to monetize a New PC To Consumer. The era in which Microsoft made the bulk of its Windows income is not now. Windows OEM revenue is falling. If it weren’t for corporate PC sales, the top line that Microsoft derives from Windows would be in even faster decline. And those dollars are more based on the end of Windows XP than market appetite for new computers and Windows itself. Zero-cost OS competition poses a real, if yet un-material, threat to Microsoft. Chromebooks can sell for less because they don’t include an OS fee to Google. Windows-based devices need to compete on price, and given razor-thin OEM margins, Microsoft puts hardware firms in a tough spot; if you can make more per device selling Chromebooks over Windows-based laptops, what are you going to spend more time working on? Microsoft, noticing that pressure, is said to have on lower-cost devices. This helps OEMs, and lowers — possibly — the consumer price of Windows-based devices. If Microsoft is lowering the price of Windows in a specific context, what would it look like if the company stopped charging for it altogether? At the moment, it would be a financial catastrophe for the firm. OEM revenues totaled more than $5 billion in Microsoft’s most recent fiscal quarter. So what can Microsoft do? Move in steps. Name another Microsoft product that it is transitioning from a single lump payment to a new revenue model. Office. And that’s going pretty well. But instead of deleting the traditional Office SKUs from its lineup, Microsoft is instead letting the past ease over to the future at its own pace. This brings us to Windows With Bing. Paul Thurrott has a on how Microsoft could afford to release a version of Windows for free. It would have to generate at least its OEM fee, perhaps over no more than a two- or three-year basis. Possible? Perhaps with a combination of search revenues, OneDrive storage fees, advertising in Bing apps, and so forth. But for those various revenue streams to be able to reach parity with a direct OEM fee will take time. It’s worth noting that Microsoft is working to move the monetization of Office to a direct-fee service. You use it, you pay. With Windows, the idea appears to be different: Use Windows, and you get it for free; we’ll make the money up from you along the way. Microsoft can’t afford to give away Windows yet. But once the above-listed revenues become mature, it can. There is a gaping time gap betwixt the two. Microsoft didn’t ax standalone Office SKUs, allowing Office 365 to grow without too much pressure. It is similarly likely that the company will introduce very targeted free Windows 8.x SKUs to both test, and prove that it can recoup lost OEM incomes to itself, and investors. 100GB of OneDrive is 50 bucks a year. That’s what Microsoft got for a Windows license, if scuttlebutt is accurate. That points to a future in which Microsoft might be able to eat off services and give Windows away for free. Philosophically, does that lower the importance of Windows at Microsoft? In a sense, but I think that we should start to think of Windows not as a software layer on top of hardware, but instead as the layer between devices and services. You know, that new Microsoft business model. |
null | gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 11 | null |
TSA Reportedly Demands To Inspect Man’s Luggage For Bitcoin [Updated] | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | Davi Baker wasn’t quite sure how to comply with . Baker had found himself in a testy exchange with airport security personnel during an enhanced screening, and they wanted an additional search of his belongings. “We saw in your bag and need to check,” he recalls the TSA agent saying in a lengthy about the ordeal. The problem is, of course, is a completely digital currency; it’s like if Delta banned you from traveling with your Facebook profile. Baker was admittedly snarky in response, asking “What did the Bitcoin look like?”, thinking it would be impossible to describe a nonexistent physical object. The agents had a response: the alleged Bitcoins looked like tokens and since they told him it was illegal to travel with more than $10,000 in cash, the probe was warranted. It might be easy to mistake this request for simple ignorance, but one of the security agents, according to Baker actually had a grasp on some Bitcoin facts. When Baker asked how much he thought his alleged tokens were worth, the agent responded, “It fluctuates all the time.” That’s very true: the digital currency has become notorious , on top of being a tool for purchasing illicit goods. Whatever the legality or contorted logic of the added inspection, it appears there’s a knee-jerk negative reaction to the notorious currency. The TSA was not immediately available for comment on this story. . [ ] |
Google Sets Example By Trying To Offset Perils Of SF Gentrification | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | While San Francisco’s gentrification issues aren’t solely caused by the tech boom, the tech industry should aim to help the communities impacted by the influx of money and people it has brought to the city. Yesterday’s donation by Google is a great example of looking out for one’s neighbors. Google has given that provides SF kids free bus passes to get to school, after-school classes, and work. Let’s be blunt. A lot of people in SF and the Bay Area are mad at the tech industry. They’ve seen rents and prices for local goods and services rise as more high-paid tech workers move in. The cushy commuter shuttle buses provided to SF employees by South Bay tech giants like Google, Apple and Facebook have become a lightning rod for this angst. have blocked them and shattered their windows. But as I see it, tech didn’t cause this problem, but it exacerbated it. And that doesn’t mean it’s not responsible for fixing it. Increasing rents stem from poor city planning and a mired bureaucracy. Though it was obvious that the tech industry was growing, the city didn’t build more apartments across the income spectrum. An average of just have been built each year, while flocked to the city over the past decade. When there were movements to develop more residences, their construction, citing that taller buildings would ruin the skyline and city’s character. What they didn’t say was that by constraining the availability of housing, their own property values would increase. San Francisco shot itself in the foot (or the gut depending on how severe you see the problem) by failing to increase the number of places to live in the city limits. Other smaller cities in the Bay are compounding the problem by to be built near the tech giants’ campuses. Meanwhile, the regional transit system is unreliable, slow, and with inconvenient stops. Both push people to SF. In the end, it’s the city governments and organizations that have caused the lack of housing supply. The only way to really alleviate the problems of gentrification . But the tech industry delivered the demand that turned these issues into a . Tech companies settled in the Bay to take advantage of the venture capital and talent centered around Stanford and Berkeley. But an increase in consumer technologies and the fast-moving landscape led to a younger workforce willing to trade shorter commutes and more living space in the quiet South Bay suburbs for the culture, community, and nightlife of San Francisco. In the tough fight for top talent, the tech giants began offering shuttle buses to recruit people who wanted to live in the city. This further increased the demand for housing in SF, and filled the city with people able to afford to pay more for everything. Low supply and high demand led to skyrocketing rents and costs for basic staples, especially in neighborhoods closer to the South Bay like the Mission, SOMA, and Noe Valley. While those with tech salaries can endure the high prices, others in the city can’t. Long-time residents, service workers, and artists are feeling the squeeze of gentrification. The worry is that as they’re pushed out, the city could become a culturally soggy monoculture. Things got worse as greedy landlords took advantage of the to evict rent-controlled residents so they could jack up the prices for new tenants. Widely publicized of gross intolerance and classism by certain technology workers combined with all these issues to create a general anger towards the entire industry. Many of the tech giants and their executives are serious philanthropists. But often times, they’ve focused on data-driven giving where their dollar can have the most impact. That might mean fighting malaria or providing education and job opportunities overseas. Those are all big problems, but for the most part tech didn’t play a part in causing them. Meanwhile, Google, Apple, Facebook, and startups of all sizes are having a direct impact on the standard of living of the people who live next to their employees. Sure, they to local businesses, but they also make things more expensive for locals. That’s why I believe tech companies and their teams should re-focus on what I call hyper-local giving, or philanthropy that benefits people in the immediate proximity of their employees and offices — the people they’re impacting. And that’s why I think Google’s support for Free MUNI For Low-Income Youth is an initiative that other companies should look to. It falls in line with undertaken by companies like Square and ZenDesk, and non-profits like and . By paying for free bus tickets for these kids to get to school and work, Google is helping them stay engaged with their education, support themselves, and gain the skills necessary for employment tomorrow. If a student can take the bus across town to attend an after-school program or internship, they’re more likely to discover their professional passion, become an expert in their field, and find a job that could afford them the freedom to live where they want. It’s also a way for Google to compensate the city for allowing it to use public bus stops for its private shuttles. Unfortunately, law prohibits the city from just charging private companies a significant fee for this privilege, revenue that could fund other initiatives that offset gentrification. Instead, the city can only charge them enough to fund a program for…charging them for using the bus stops. The , so with the Bus Donation, Google’s just giving directly to other initiatives that need funding. San Francisco residents are rightly frustrated that we don’t pay more to use city bus stops,” Google . “So we’ll continue to work with the city on these fees, and in the meantime will fund MUNI passes for low-income students for the next two years.” Will Google’s donation fix gentrification? No. And in fact, it really just addresses one of the symptoms rather than attacking the root. But it’s a step in the right direction and an example other tech companies could follow. Meanwhile, it’s good to see the . Regardless of industry, the goal of all San Franciscans should not be to assign blame for who caused problems, but to cooperate to find solutions. Big companies can make big hyper-local donations and . And individual employees can donate too, volunteer for worthy causes, support independent local businesses, and try to be compassionate towards their fellow humans. The city’s a lot more fun when no one has to hang their heads. |
If You’re Going To Watch One Video Of A 3D-Printed Clock That Writes The Time, Make It This One | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | The machines. They are learning. The Plotclock is a small, 3D-printed clock that forgoes the traditional gears and springs for servos and an Arduino microcontroller. It writes the time. And then erases it. Then writes the time again, continuing forever even though the white board will quickly descend into a smudgy mess of partially erased ink. It’s a simple device: One servo lifts the pen from its dock while the other two controls the arm movement. The instructions are served from an Arduino single-board microcontroller. The rest is magic. , all the files for the Plotclock are available on Thingaverse and GitHub. You can make this small device yourself or parlay it into a larger display that uses massive arms and a classroom-sized white board and sell it to some startup for part of their seed money. More projects like these will appear as the price of 3D printers and microcontrollers drops. The consumer electronic market is quickly becoming a maker’s paradise thanks to the rise of small-scale manufacturing. No longer do aspiring makers have to turn out shoddy prototypes handcut with a Dremel. Near-production-ready models can now be printed and assembled in basement workshops. The future is here. |
Ask A VC: Merus Capital’s Sean Dempsey On The Role Of Corp Dev And More | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, Merus Capital’s Sean Dempsey joined us in the studio to give us an inside look at corporate development, and how that translates into investing. Dempsey was previously a Principal of Corporate Development at Google, where he helped lead the acquisitions of YouTube, Android and Postini. He also spent over six years at Microsoft in the Corporate Development team. Between Microsoft and Google, he led over 100 acquisitions and investments. We chatted about the big acquisitions (i.e. WhatsApp), as well as some of the smaller acquisitions that end up being meaningful to a company. And Dempsey shares his thoughts on the similarities and differences between Google’s acquisition of YouTube and Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp. |
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