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Pandora should revive Rdio as pay-for-what-you-want streaming | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | Music listeners are cheapskates. Few will pay Spotify or Apple $10 a month even to stream almost every song ever. Meanwhile, radio services like Pandora hardly scrape by on the meager ad rates after they pay out royalties. So if Pandora wants to resuscitate the battered corpse of last year, it can’t just be another unlimited monthly subscription. The opportunity is somewhere between free and $10 a month, and between unpredictable radio and full on demand. If Pandora’s smart, it will build a micropayment-based or limited-access streaming service akin to a social game where you pay to unlock extra content. See, Pandora already has a huge user base of — it’s just not able to monetize them very well with radio. That led its stock price to sink 12 percent after its most recent And the experience isn’t great either. Sure, if you don’t care exactly what you listen to, Pandora’s personalized algorithmic radio is easy to turn on and not have to mess with. Not everyone wants to play DJ all the time. But when you fall in love with a song, you want to listen to it again. The fact that “radio” doesn’t allow this is merely a repercussion of old broadcast technology on the AM and FM airwaves where it started. Spotify and Apple tried to solve this by building radio features into their paid services, commoditizing Pandora by turning it into just a feature. But the price isn’t right for everyone. Back in the CD era, the average listener bought one or two $16 discs per year. They listened to the free FM radio, discovered music they loved and bought it so they could listen to it without ads whenever they wanted. But they didn’t have to spend $100+ a year for access to everything else. If Pandora can mimic that user behavior, it could build a successful micropayment streaming service on the ruins of Rdio. Before Rdio went bankrupt, one of its last-ditch efforts was the . It gave users instant access to up to 25 songs per day, plus ad-free radio with unlimited skipping. Pandora also offers its $0.99 Pandora One Day Pass, which lets users remove ads for $1 for 24 hours. Whether it’s called “Pandora Select,” “Pandora Instant” or “Pandora Now,” some kind of mashup of these services could prove a popular upsell with the radio service’s listeners. Imagine hearing a song you love on Pandora and instantly being able to buy the option to listen to just that song on demand forever? Or grabbing a day pass to unlimited on-demand streaming? Or adding the song to a small on-demand playlist you can switch to in Pandora for a cheap monthly fee? Rather than thinking of this as Rdio 2.0 or a separate app, think of it as Pandora’s bridge into on demand. Alongside concert tickets sold through its , Pandora would gain another lucrative in-house product to sell in its ads. Not only could it boost the company’s ailing business, a limited on-demand option could make the Pandora listening experience complete. |
Microsoft is bringing SQL Server to Linux | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | , Microsoft’s flagship relational database product, is now in the form of an early private preview, with a full launch planned for mid-2017. Until now, SQL Server was strictly a Windows product, but as Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s executive vice president of its cloud and enterprise group, writes today, the company has decided that it’s time to bring it to Linux as well. “SQL Server on Linux will provide customers with even more flexibility in their data solution,” Guthrie writes. “One with mission-critical performance, industry-leading TCO, best-in-class security, and hybrid cloud innovations — like Stretch Database which lets customers access their data on-premises and in the cloud whenever they want at low cost — all built in.” Microsoft says it plans to open up access to SQL Server on Linux as it gets closer to general availability. Today’s announcement comes three days ahead of Microsoft’s planned . Guthrie says Microsoft plans to announce a number of new features around , including better in-memory database, R, and data warehousing support, as well as new mobile apps for business intelligence. Microsoft says it currently uses the SQL Server 2016 codebase to power more than 1.4 million SQL databases in its Azure cloud. SQL Server 2016, which is currently available as a public preview, will become generally available later this year. Not too long ago, today’s announcement would have been unthinkable. Over the last few years, though, and especially under its new CEO Satya Nadella, the company has started to open up more of its services and put a stronger emphasis on open source. Today’s announcement also fits into Microsoft’s overall emphasis on hybrid deployments. Microsoft already runs Linux in its cloud and recently a major partnership with Red Hat, for example. If it wants SQL Server to remain relevant, it needs to bring it to more platforms — including those that it previously regarded as competitors. On Linux, after all, products like MySQL, MariaDB and PostgreSQL are also vying for a very similar slice of the market. |
Prompt debuts “a command line for the real world” | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | In a world suffering from app overload, the Y Combinator-backed startup introduces a different way to interact with services, make purchases or even control “Internet of Things” devices — all by way of text-based interface. The application, which can be used via SMS, Slack or the web, lets you text to do things like request an Uber, change the temperature on a Nest thermostat, get directions, track flights or packages and a lot more. The company was started by Tom Hadfield, who experimented earlier with his startup Fetch, . That service, a competitor to things like , and , could be seen as the precursor to Prompt, as it also focused on making tasks easier by allowing users to simply text to get help with things like buying products or making travel reservations, for example. Fetch closed last summer after raising $3.05 million. According to Hadfield, the service grew quickly with very high retention and engagement, but the team couldn’t find a scalable business model. With Prompt, that original idea has been transformed. Instead of interacting with a concierge-type service, Prompt offers automated assistance across categories, including commerce, home automation, information and productivity. That means you can text to order an Uber or a Domino’s pizza, get directions, check your flight, read the news or get the weather, find a business on Yelp, get a recipe or manage your IoT devices like WeMo switches, Hue bulbs, Rachio sprinklers or Nest, among other things. At launch, there are already a ton of integrations, including Uber, AngelList, Bitly, Etsy, Foursquare, Google Maps, IMDb, WhoIs, Merriam-Webster, Hue, Powerball, NYT, Weather Channel, Wikipedia, WeMo, XE.com, Wolfram Alpha, Yahoo Finance, Yelp, Zillow and many others, just to give you an idea. Several more are in the works, including access to CrunchBase, Domino’s, Evernote, Gmail and Google Calendar, PayPal and Wunderlist. You can access a directory of Prompt commands on www.promptapp.io, or by texting /list to 650-666-2299, if you want to see them for yourself. “We learned from Fetch that when users know exactly what they want, users love text interfaces because it’s quicker and easier than loading an app,” explains Hadfield. “Like many people, I believe conversational interfaces will change the way we interact with the world around us. There’s an entire ecosystem to be built, akin to the App Store in its scale.” Also like the App Store, Prompt is open to third-party developers. Its Chatbot Development Kit (CDK) allows developers to build chatbots in 30 minutes with 30 lines of code. The company plans to offer chatbot hosting, analytics and payment processing in the future, we’re told. To use , you text your query to the service. However, you have to use a specific syntax to make the queries work — just like you would if using a command prompt. (Hence the name, and the tagline “the command line for the real world.”) For example, if you wanted to request an Uber, Prompt tells you this is the method: @uber: Send “@uber from [pick-up] to [destination]” to get a fare estimate, and then follow the instructions to link your Uber account and confirm the ride request. Example: @uber from YCombinator to SFO At times, using Prompt could allow for quicker interactions with various services than what’s otherwise possible. As another example, ordering a Domino’s pizza gets a lot easier with Prompt: @dominos large Hawaiian Writing that in Slack is definitely quicker than having to spend minutes navigating through six checkout screens in the Domino’s mobile app. Changing the temperature on Nest is easy, too: @nest 73 Or checking the weather for your zip code: @weather 94107 That being said, the inability to interact with Prompt using natural language could hinder its adoption among a more mainstream user base, even if it helps it to gain a devoted following among the more technically inclined. (Hadfield says the team is building out the natural language processing to make the commands “less brittle.” However, the service is still focused on this “command line”-like interaction.) [gallery ids="1287426,1287425,1287424,1287423"] In the future, the plan is to make some of its commands “premium,” meaning you would pay to add them to the service. The company will also take a commission on commerce transactions that take place in Prompt. And the team is working on integrating Prompt with Telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE, Viber, Skype and HipChat, and — for real geeks — a command-line utility, says Hadfield. Prompt is backed by Y Combinator, Social Leverage Group, Capital Factory and Stuart Levinson. Though Prompt is a completely new company from Fetch, all Fetch investors are involved. The startup is now in open beta. To test it out, you can visit or text “Hi” to 650-666-2299. |
4chan founder Chris Poole will try to fix social at Google | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | Google never “got” social. For all the resources thrown at it, Google+ just never quite felt human. But luckily Google just hired the guy behind 4chan — a site that epitomized the good, the bad and the ugly of humanity on the Internet. Chris Poole (screen name: MOOT) started 4chan in his bedroom at age 15. In the 12 years since, he built it into a 20 million active user image-sharing community around topics ranging from cosplay and cute animals to anime porn and the notoriously uncensored anonymous channel /b/. 4chan is weird But after his other startups ran out of money, Poole from operating 4chan last year and . That made him one of the smartest free agents in social tech. While Google probably won’t force him into a suit and tie, Poole now has a much more corporate job: He’ll be working under , VP of streams, photos and sharing. According to a source, Poole moved across the country for the job and has been there a week already. Poole was apparently attracted by the inherently nerdy culture Google fosters. He writes: “When meeting with current and former Googlers, I continually find myself drawn to their intelligence, passion, and enthusiasm — as well as a universal desire to share it with others. I’m also impressed by Google’s commitment to enabling these same talented people to tackle some of the world’s most interesting and important problems.” Poole didn’t respond to multiple attempts to contact him regarding clues to exactly what he’ll be working on. There is a lot to do, though. Chris Poole , with its free storage and powerful search, is the first thing the search giant has done right in social for years. Poole could teach Google how to build a community around the product, not just a user base. The company’s been experimenting with social apps for college kids, like one for hanging out in person called And Poole knows tons about anonymity, a space that’s been in recession since . There are plenty of people who can build a social product. But after many interviews with Poole, I can confidently say he truly gets the sociology behind why people use them. It’s that understanding of emotion, not just algorithms, that Google needs. |
Google Photos adds support for Live Photos on iOS | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | Google Photos, the service that allows you to back up, organize and search across all your photos and videos, has just rolled out a notable update on iOS. The iPhone and iPad application now supports Live Photos, the introduced with iOS 9 and the newer iPhone 6s and 6s Plus devices. That means you’ll now be able to store, view and organize your Live Photos in the app, even after they’ve been deleted from your Camera Roll on your device. After your Live Photos have been uploaded to Google Photos on iOS, you’re able to Force Touch on the image (hard press) in order to see them animate, just as you could when viewing them from the native Photo Gallery on iOS. The images are also designated with the “Live Photo” icon at the top of the screen, so you know they are not just a static image. However, if you download the Live Photo from Google Photos back to your device — such as through iCloud Photo Sharing — it is no longer animated. But if you save a backed-up Live Photo to the Camera Roll, it should then still be playable (animated) in the Apple Photos app. Based on quick tests, it appeared that the feature may be retroactive — Live Photos taken last month before the update this afternoon now appear as Live Photos in the Google Photos app. (Google has now confirmed this.) Google Photos is not the first third-party service to add support for Apple’s specialized image format. Others, including and , also allow users to post and share Live Photos. In addition to Live Photos, the latest version of the Google Photos iOS app introduces new app navigation that Google says will reduce the time it takes “flipping hamburger menus.” And the app will reduce its cache usage when your iOS device is low on space. The update is on the iTunes App Store. Live Photos support on iOS is here! Get the update: — Google Photos (@googlephotos) |
The long road ahead: Obama’s cybersecurity action is a step toward change | Mark Weatherford | 2,016 | 3 | 7 |
President Obama’s recent announcement of the creation of the made waves across government and tech audiences, as it proposed a $19 billion budget to bulk up cybersecurity across the U.S. government and the private sector. While the announcement seemed abrupt to many, it has been a long time coming — and gives the president the power to highlight cybersecurity issues before he leaves office. From the start, I think we have to give the president a lot of credit — he has done more to advance cybersecurity than all previous administrations combined. Of course, while much of this is due to the simple fact that cybersecurity has become the issue du jour, the Obama administration has been fairly proactive throughout the past seven years in advancing the cybersecurity conversation. When I was at the Department of Homeland Security, the White House was a strong supporter of Senators Lieberman and Collins’ Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which, while not successful in getting a Senate hearing, certainly laid the groundwork for much of the legislation we’ve seen in the past three years. It’s fitting now that toward the end of his administration, President Obama is kicking off serious security measures that could change the face of the U.S. government, and cybersecurity in general. That being said, this is the start of an uphill battle to ensure that CNAP’s main elements — budget, establishing a federal CISO and the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity — are executed in a way that actually helps the government’s current security situation. It pains me greatly to say it, but this budget increase is likely not enough. Especially for the infrastructure overhaul, the $3 billion bump is probably more of a down payment on updating the antiquated infrastructure — which is at least partially responsible for the recent OPM and IRS security incidents. Further, the allocation of the rest of the proposed funds is potentially concerning. Each federal agency has its own budget, its own cybersecurity priorities, its own IT infrastructure, its own security requirements, its own CISO and, most importantly, its own culture. This means funds are rarely spent in the most consistent and efficient manner. But the most obvious question around the proposed budget is whether Congress will approve it. Given the lack of cooperation between the Executive branch and the Legislative branch over the past few years, I’d say it is a huge question mark — they are already saying that the President’s budget will not be considered. It’s a shame. The appointment of a federal CISO is a matter for which managing expectations is important from Day One — and Day One was when CNAP was announced. For instance, the CISO will not have the operational authority of most traditional CISOs; rather, he or she will have a policy-based position with (hopefully) broad responsibilities for all federal agencies. The challenge will be how much practical authority will come with the role. Responsibility is one thing, but having the authority to carry out actions is an entirely different issue. One measure of how much gravitas the president expects out of this role is how much authority it has over budgeting and spending. My hope is that the government appoints an experienced CISO from the private sector and backs him or her up with a competent staff of policy and budgeting experts who are willing and authorized to do things that may shock bureaucrats. There have been dozens of commissions, boards, councils, working groups, etc. over the past decade. Most of them have provided valuable insight and advice, though I’m not sure we have a good measure for how much of it was followed. For example, the report by the CSIS Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency was released in December 2008, providing a comprehensive roadmap of recommendations. However, I think you would find that not many of the recommendations have been ingested. This commission has the potential to be successful, but in addition to including recognized policy experts, it should be populated with a sprinkling of nationally recognized cybersecurity leaders, because there is a difference between what sounds good on paper and what actually works in the trenches. Trying to cram too much into one initiative provides the potential of getting bogged down, and CNAP is already close to falling prey to this. One thing that would have tremendous impact on the government’s ability to provide better cybersecurity services among federal agencies would be to begin moving operations out of the D.C. metro area. The cost of living in D.C. is incredibly high, and there is far too much competition for cyber talent between federal agencies and defense contractors. There are established federal centers around the country with excess capacity and, more importantly, located where people actually want to live. In areas like Colorado Springs, CO and Pensacola, FL, there are a number of military facilities, which is a great place to recruit cyber talent leaving active duty. Regardless of location, the timing couldn’t be better — or worse. It reminds me of the old adage, “When’s the best time to plant an oak tree? A hundred years ago.” If they can get a strategy underway now, it could begin building momentum and perhaps minimize the growing pains of the new administration in January 2017. Ultimately, time is the enemy and the greatest challenge to the success of CNAP. There’s just not enough of it, and the government thrives on inertia. People who have never worked in Washington, D.C. simply can’t comprehend how disabling the bureaucracy is and how it works against a sense of urgency. With only 11 months left in the Obama administration, this initiative needs to get moving immediately to have any chance of success. Some of the things included in this initiative, such as requiring agencies to identify and prioritize highest-value and most-at-risk assets, are what the security industry calls table stakes. While the announcement created some initial momentum, now they need to ride that wave and immediately establish some markers to measure regular success. |
Survey says 25 percent of smartphone owners have downloaded ad blockers | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | Mobile marketing company is releasing , where 24.6 percent of survey respondents said that they’d downloaded an ad-blocking app or browser. The company says it surveyed nearly 4,000 smartphone owners in the United States and Europe, and it found that adoption is growing quickly — only 2.4 percent of respondents said they’d downloaded an ad blocker in the previous four to six months, whereas 7.8 percent said they’d done so since November 2015. Tune is projecting that ad blocking could reach 80 percent of smartphone owners by the third quarter of 2017. Some caveats here: This is a survey asking people about what they’ve got on their phones, rather than data directly from their phones. (In fact, 21 percent of respondents said they weren’t sure if they’d installed an ad blocker.) Plus, it’s still very early, with last fall, so I’m not sure these impressive growth rates will continue. And, as the report notes, just because someone has downloaded an ad-blocking app doesn’t mean they’re actually using it. The report also looks into the demographics of ad blocking, but it doesn’t point out any overwhelming trends. Yes, ad blockers “skew slightly to young and middle-aged adults,” but there are folks older than 65 who say they’ve installed one. Similarly, men, Android owners and Europeans seem to be a bit more likely to try an ad blocker, but it’s only a difference of a few percentage points. “People want to block ads because most mobile ads today are annoying and disruptive,” said Tune CEO Peter Hamilton in an emailed statement. “Much of the responsibility lies with the publisher who can choose the best ways to monetize with their advertising partners. Consumers will allow ads if the experience is actually entertaining or helpful.” The Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group for online advertisers, released its own “ ” today, which suggests that publishers take a “DEAL (Detect, Explain, Ask, and Lift or Limit)” approach to ad blockers. You can . |
Agency Geek launches with a new way to find branding, marketing and PR help | Jonathan Shieber | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | Finding a good public relations firm is one of the toughest things for a small business. People are constantly asking me for references. Well, ask no more you column-inch seekers, because now there’s , a new online service that purports to algorithmically match service agencies with prospective clients (basically they have a search tool for small businesses to find the proper representation). Someone should have done this sooner. Basically, a user fills out a questionnaire about their industry and the type of services they’re looking for, and the algorithm matches that user with the appropriate advertising, marketing, branding, web development or digital agency that they’re looking for. As company founder Zach Pardes said in a statement, “We’re living in the golden age of tech and automation, and still agencies and prospective clients form relationships quite by accident.” It’s free for the business to post a profile and agencies pay for one of . All offer a profile listing for the agency, an ability to respond to proposal requests and on-platform communication with their potential customers. |
Enflux, a smart body-tracking workout outfit, launches on Kickstarter | Matthew Lynley | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | There’s a new body-tracking workout outfit that looks to compete with the likes of and other workout-tracking sensors that’s launching on Kickstarter today. , a Y Combinator-backed company, is for its sensor-laden workout outfit (that can even go in a washing machine). And it’s basically all thanks to a series of running injuries CEO Doug Hoang suffered in the months following his work on sensors for racing cars. “it was really talking with [my co-founders] at the same time, they have extensive experience in exercise,” Hoang said. “‘You can do this,’ they said, so I had these motion sensors we developed, I could strap them to my legs that measure yaw, pitch and roll. I didn’t even have a car back then so it was a little misalignment of the problem, but when I started training for triathlons it was like, ‘this is the next big thing.'” Enflux’s equipment consists of a shirt and pants that are loaded with sensors that track your form as you work out. The goal is to help people get the right form down and serve as a sort of personal trainer that works on your smartphone. There’s an avatar on your phone that lets you review your exercises, as well as a series of stats that help you understand whether or not you’re getting the exercise right. There’s going to be a big challenge for Enflux: the tech is about a year out from shipping, including getting the full sign-off on its patents. That could open the door for other competitors to beat the company to the market with similar — and potentially superior — products. But Hoang, with a background in engine design, says the approach of each company is a little different. Originally the equipment consisted of a bunch of strap-on sensors that sit on your body, but now those sensors are being placed into an actual shirt and pants. They sit pretty tight on the body, and Hoang says the equipment has around a two-week battery life. There are ten sensors in total that sit around the body to translate movement to a smartphone app that then records all that. The company is working with around 500 personal trainers to help establish a baseline of the right form and style of workouts, and the company continues to add new exercises with the help of those personal trainers and experts. Over time, it’ll also collect data on how people exercise and tweak the process to better tailor exercises to people with different styles and body types. All this is designed to be focused on your form and give you feedback in an attempt to prevent injury and help people progress in their training. Many runners can probably relate to Hoang and find this useful: knee injuries are among one of the most annoying problems that can keep you off the trail, and it can sometimes be prevented by other exercises and fixing running form, Hoang says. The other goal is that the company wants to begin partnering with other services — ones like, potentially, MyFitnessPal — to better integrate with the whole fitness and health experience. Right now Enflux doesn’t have any specific plans, but hopes to “play nice” with other services, Hoang said. Enflux is going up against some serious competition — especially for a product that’s still a year from launch. Athos, another smart apparel company, , most recently in a round led by Social+Capital. And there are other trackers . Atlas, too, ran a successful campaign on Indiegogo . One interesting note is that Hoang will be moving to Taiwan in order to better manage the complicated relationship that hardware companies often have with manufacturers. For example, the first shipment of sensors that they received weren’t working because they just weren’t getting the spec exactly right in production. Hoang will be a mobile CEO, which may be challenging for the company, but likely necessary in order to ensure that the process goes smoothly. “It’s always gonna be like that, because we’ve failed often and they know the tech well,” Hoang said. “That’s why we’re putting this a year out is a year out of making small tests of every process we go through before we do the full order.” |
Lyft follows Uber in opening up its API to third-party developers, starting with Facebook Messenger | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | Lyft is now allowing third-party developers to build on its platform, starting with Facebook Messenger today. Uber opened its API to third-party developers announcing a partner integration in December, which allowed Messenger users to order or schedule an Uber and let their friends know they are on their way via the integration since that time. The Lyft-Messenger integration is pretty much the same as Ubers and it would seem Lyft is late to the party, but Lyft counters it hired the team leading this partner integration a mere six months ago. The team has been quite busy since coming on board, according to Lyft team lead Vishay Nihalani. The fuzzy pink rideshare unicorn announced a Slack partnership in October and a with both the Chinese equivalent Didi Kuaidi and India’s Ola. Nihalani, who came to Lyft about 10 months back, now plans to take the company from a transportation app into a transportation platform. He’s working with his team to integrate the ride exchanges promised within Didi and Ola and to make many more partnerships functional using the Lyft API. “The goal is to make Lyft ubiquitous across a constellation of apps and services and to provide our passengers with access to transportation wherever our passengers are,” Nihalani said. Like Uber, Lyft says it is currently working with “thousands” of developers in various stages on the platform. So what will we see with the Lyft API? A Lyft spokesperson tells me the focus is on messaging, transportation and international travel. Uber’s third-party partners have enabled customers to schedule a , glean incidents, order an Uber or grab a ride using United’s smartphone app. Messenger seems to be a natural fit for both rideshare companies hoping to gain market share everywhere. Friends and groups can use it to let each other know they are on their way or to schedule a ride for the other person. Lyft tells me it has also rolled out an integration with the London-based . No plans for Lyft to launch in the U.K., according to the company, but it does see potential with the app in New York City, where CityMapper . The big apple is a target market for Lyft and the company has taken great measures to study transportation here so it also seems to b a natural fit with Lyft’s API plans. Xerox, RideScout and GlobeSherpa have also partnered with Lyft using the API. Lyft is rolling out Messenger integration in 11 cities, including San Francisco, New York, Miami, Atlanta, Nashville, Austin, Washington D.C., Denver, and more. The service will be available to all Messenger users throughout the U.S. next week. |
Ben Horowitz backs rapper Ryan Leslie’s SMS commerce startup Superphone | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | Ryan Leslie gave every fan his phone number. It’s (646) 887-6978. But instead of a million unwanted phone calls, it’s making him money and giving him deeper intelligence about his listeners than anyone in the music business. That’s why A16z’s Ben Horowitz, Betaworks, and more investors just put a $1.5 million seed round into Leslie’s startup Disruptive Multimedia. It’s turning the SMS-based CRM and direct sales tool called that Leslie coded himself into a product any celebrity or creator can use to galvanize and monetize their audience. “We’re building a way for artists to own their relationship with their fans,” Leslie tells me. Beyond his own hip-hop and R&B recordings, producing for artists like Snoop Dogg, Cassie and Usher. “What I started to find was that social networks were anti-social networks,” the musician says. With platforms like Facebook and Twitter proving unreliable ways to reach fans, and the mobile generation sidestepping email, Superphone builds a bond on the most powerful piece of contact information: the phone number. There’s now 2700 Superphone private beta clients across verticals, including musicians like Lil Wayne and Kevin Jonas as well as authors like Bonin Bough. For a fee based on how many text messages they send plus a 5 percent tax on e-commerce payments, they know exactly who each of their fans are, how much they’ve spent, and can send them personalized messages and sales offers. Leslie says “I think there’s a crazy correlation between how often you contact your customers and how much you earn from your customers.” Here’s how Superphone works. Celebrities and other clients can distribute a special phone number connected to their Superphone account. Any time a fan calls or texts it, or buys something on one of their online stores and fills out a form, they get a welcome message prompting them to provide some personal info. That could include location, biographical info, or any data type the client wants to segment their audience by. Superphone creates a next-generation phone book that’s actually more of a customer relationship management tool. For now it’s a web tool but the Superphone team hopes to have native apps available in the next few weeks. The Superphone dashboard lets clients view charts and graphs of who is paying for what so they can hone in on their most important fans. Via Twilio’s SMS service, clients can send marketing and sales messages to any cross-section of their fans. That could be everyone for a new album release or a simple thank you, ones that live in a certain city to promote a concert, or only ones who’ve spent over $100 for a special event invite or exclusive VIP opportunity. Those messages can include Shopify or other sales links where fans can store credit card info or instantly make purchases. Leslie now has 40,000 fans in his Superphonebook. When he booked an extravagant New Year’s Eve concert at a castle in Vienna, he was able to invite his highest-paying fans in Europe to attend. He sold 200 tickets at $1,700 a pop in 48 hours — all through Superphone. Meanwhile, he has a “lifetime album” where people pledge to pay $1 to $100 each time he releases a song so they’re the first to hear it. Ryan Leslie Not too shabby for a product Leslie built v1 of two years after working though Codeacademy’s tutorials. Thanks to a glowing recommendation from Bevel’s Tristan Walker, Leslie connected with famed investor and lifelong hip-hop enthusiast Ben Horowitz who agreed to lead his seed round. Now that $1.5 million has closed with participation from a long list of funds and angels [MOOR & MOOR AB, Betaworks, Anxa Holding, Donald Katz, Keith Smith, Linda Bernard, Anthony G. Aguila, Base LV Tech, Judge Ventures, Kofi Kankam, Nnemdi Kamanu Elias, Robert T. Melvin, Babel, Shanti Kandasamy, BPG Fund, Jennifer Byrne, Radiary Creations, LLC, Taj Clayton, RPM, Sherrese Clark-Soares, Mychal Kendricks, Williams Anderson Investments, Monami Entertainment, Galvanize Ventures, and Transmedia Ventures.] Next, Leslie will be hiring out the development team. He says “the long-term vision is to take AI and machine learning and add that intelligence layer on top of any messaging platform because it’s the conversations I think are the most valuable.” While everyone else buys ads, plays nice with the press, and, blasts out social media trying to reach fans, lets creators simply talk to the directly like they would any of their friends. |
Verizon settles with FCC over “supercookie” ad targeting, will pay $1.35M fine | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | The Federal Communications Commission that it has reached an agreement with Verizon Wireless. The FCC says it’s been investigating Verizon’s use of Unique Identifier Headers (more commonly known as “supercookies,” which serve as a permanent identifier that tracks user behavior even after you’ve deleted your cookies). Investigators found that the carrier has been using supercookies for ad-tracking since December 2012 but didn’t disclose this until October 2014. As a result of the settlement, Verizon won’t have to stop using supercookies, but it will pay a $1.35 million fine. (Keep in mind that for its most recent quarter.) It’s also required to ask users to opt-in before sharing this data with third parties, and to obtain “either opt-in or opt-out consent” when using the data for its own ad targeting. Verizon’s ad ambitions have probably expanded recently thanks to its acquisition of AOL (which owns TechCrunch) — the company has already said that it A Verizon spokesperson sent us the following statement: Verizon gives customers choices about how we use their data, and we work hard to provide customers with clear, complete information to help them make decisions about our services. Over the past year, we have made several changes to our advertising programs that have provided consumers with even more options. Today’s settlement with the FCC recognizes that. We will continue to give customers the information they need to decide what programs and services are right for them. |
You can now sign up for Google’s Project Fi cell service without an invite | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | You can now sign up for , Google’s first foray into offering its own cell phone service, without an invite. The service, which , was an invite-only project until now — though getting an invite wasn’t . Starting today, anybody in the U.S. can simply sign up for the service without having to jump through any additional hoops. To promote the service, Google is also making its phones available for $199 — that’s $150 off its current retail price — for the next few months (assuming you buy and activate it through Project Fi). With Fi, which runs on the networks of T-Mobile and Sprint — depending on which one offers better receptions in a given area — customers pay a base fee of $20 per month and then an addition $10 per GB of data. If you overpay for your data in a given month, the service simply refunds you the difference. Unlimited domestic calls and texts, WiFi tethering, (3G) data coverage in 120+ countries, as well as international texts are also included in the plan. Google says more than 15 percent of its customers have used Project Fi abroad already. The biggest drawback, though, is that Fi is only supported on Google’s own Nexus phones (the 6P, 5X and Nexus 6). There have been reports that it also works with a few other unlocked phones, but your mileage may vary (and you won’t be able to switch between networks). Fi also works on a number of LTE-enabled tablets, including the LTE versions of the current Nexus tablet line-up, as well as a number of modern iPads and Samsung tablets. |
Sonos will layoff employees as it adapts to changes in the music industry | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | In a , the CEO of speaker and home audio maker said the company will lay off employees as it adjusts to changes in the music industry by focusing on paid streaming services and voice control. John MacFarlane, who co-founded Sonos in 2002, wrote: “We know the future is one where paid streaming and voice control play significant roles, and we’re committed to running a sustainable, profitable business so that we can fund innovation in these and other areas for decades to come. These last few weeks have been tough for everyone at Sonos. We’re a tight bunch, so saying goodbye is particularly painful. But I know that making these changes is the right thing to do for Sonos as we look to the future.” Sonos makes wireless sound systems that connect to an app integrated with major music streaming services, including Apple Music, Spotify, and SoundCloud. Sonos products have become popular for their ease of use and ability to connect multiple speakers, but it is facing more competition as large tech companies like and offer their own wireless home audio products. In his post, MacFarlane said Sonos is “doubling down on our long-held conviction that streaming music is the dominant form of consumption now and in the future,” but also added that as more consumers adopt products like , voice control will play an important role in the company’s future. “Alexa/Echo is the first product to really showcase the power of voice control in the home. Its popularity with consumers will accelerate innovation across the entire industry. What is novel today will become standard tomorrow,” MacFarlane wrote. “Here again, Sonos is taking the long view in how best to bring voice-enabled music experiences into the home. Voice is a big change for us, so we’ll invest what’s required to bring it to market in a wonderful way.” In an email, a Sonos representative said: “Like many high growth companies, Sonos constantly evaluates its workforce to ensure we have the skills and talent to lead us to the next series of milestones. Our opportunity has never been greater as the transition to streaming accelerates. We’re in a terrific position to continue delivering great listen-out-loud experiences at home now, and in the future.” |
Amazon leases 20 Boeing jets to speed up deliveries | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | ’s logistics arm is taking a big step forward by leasing a fleet of Boeing 767s that will ship packages to customers in North America. , an air cargo transportation provider, said that Amazon has agreed to lease twenty of its planes for 5-7 years. The announcement confirms reports from late last year that Amazon wants to operate its own cargo planes, which allows it to take more control of its fulfillment process away from third-party logistics providers like FedEx, the USPS, and UPS, save money, and potentially . ATSG said it will release further details about the agreement in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. , it costs about $600,000 to $700,000 to lease a new Boeing 767F for a month or $300,000 to $325,000 for converted passenger planes. If it’s successful, however, operating its own air cargo fleet can help Amazon reduce its shipping costs, which were $8.7 billion in 2014, a 31 percent increase from 2013. According to Vice, Amazon has , moving cargo from Wilmington, Ohio (where ATSG is headquartered) to airports in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Tampa, Oakland, California, and Ontario. Other steps Amazon has taken to build its in-house logistics network in the United States include buying and Being able to guarantee customers extremely quick deliveries is essential to Amazon’s business as it competes with other e-commerce companies and on-demand startups like by offering services such as Amazon Prime and Amazon Fresh. The company is also busy working on its international logistics. In January, its China subsidiary was , which will make it easier for Chinese merchants on its platform to send packages to the U.S. |
India’s Ola shutters its on-demand food and grocery ordering services | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | Ola, the homegrown company rivaling Uber in India, has closed its food and grocery ordering services less than . and were Ola’s first non-transportation services but they were not nationwide, available in just a handful of tier-one cities. Both were always billed as pilot programs that could be killed off, and now confirmation has come today, one week after that the services would be closed on account of costs and lower than expected interest from users. “As we strengthen our focus on building mobility for a billion people, we are drawing these two experiments to a close and taking learnings from these to serve you better in the time to come,” Ola, which , . Uber, which is widely acknowledged to be trailing Ola in India, pioneered the idea of on-demand services within a transportation app. The company offers UberEats, which will soon be , in the U.S. but so far Uber hasn’t offered similar options in India or other global markets. in India this month. Those services could, over time, build out a fleet of bike drivers that could support on-demand services in India. In Indonesia, for example, Sequoia-backed Go-Jek operates a range of on-demand services thanks to a fleet of more than 200,000 drivers. But it remains to be seen if the margins and potential gains are worth a move, particularly when Uber and Ola continue to burn through money competing with each other. For now, the on-demand experiment is over for Ola, but there are plenty of companies solely focused on the space — such as and , and . |
Let’s actually make America great again | Matt Oppenheimer | 2,016 | 3 | 9 |
As the Internet and global commerce speed the flow of information, and as products and services for American consumers can be built in and delivered from just about any country in the world, there are fewer and fewer incentives for companies to locate their businesses here. But there is one competitive advantage we have that is driving global businesses to locate and create jobs here in America: Our talent. Businesses will follow talent wherever it goes in the world, and, fortunately for the United States, when people vote with their feet they want to come here. Unfortunately for us, we turn away many of these people; in doing so, we help our competitors land the talent they need to compete against us. U.S. immigration policy could create a more capable and efficient workforce, a fairer distribution of wages and more humane treatment of migrant families. Instead, our policies harm our economy by making the United States less competitive, and they threaten the livelihoods of millions of immigrants. The United States turns away more than half of all foreign-born PhDs graduating from U.S. universities in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields — precisely the workforce we need most to compete in today’s industries. We are educating, then turning away, our most critical assets that would help us remain competitive in the global marketplace. Why do we do this? Business leaders I work with agree we are being deceived by fear, uncertainty and doubt (also known as “FUD”). Our immigration policy is defined by the vocal fringe of both political parties. The real economics of immigration are trumped by emotions swirling around the issue. Valuable data about immigration is obscured by rhetoric. Politics, emotions and rhetoric have obscured the true impacts of immigration and lead to a broken immigration system. I’ve seen the terrible effects of our immigration policy in my business. When I started a mobile finance company that lets people use smartphones to send money to friends and family in other countries, my co-founder was forced out of the United States to get his H-1B visa processed. Here was a leader with unparalleled technical and business skills, and my country sent him to India for months of delays after he had completed a master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University and helped build another technology startup before ours. I flew to our U.S. Consulate General in New Delhi and camped outside the door of the immigration office for hours while I watched everyone, including the top-ranking official in the office, drowning in paperwork and appointments. I called anyone I could. Finally, my state senator helped me find 15 minutes with the right person at the consulate, who then helped me process a work visa to allow my co-founder to return to his home in the United States and build our company. Today we employ nearly 75 people in the United States, with new job openings every month. Our overwhelmed public servants aren’t to blame for our faulty immigration system. According to recent news coverage, a decade-long project to digitize 95 immigration forms, costing more than $1 billion, has brought just one of those 95 forms online, with a single new online fee payment option. The project, originally budgeted at $500 million, is projected to cost upwards of $3.1 billion when complete in 2019 (six years behind schedule). Like my co-founder, my customers have shown me the first-hand effects of fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding migrants. Millions of migrants use services like mine to send their hard-earned wages from developed to developing economies. In fact, their voluntary transfer of money triples the sum of foreign aid budgets to the same developing economies. These migrants, spending time away from their families, working, are flattening our world while a leading presidential candidate in the U.S. calls for mass deportations of 11 million immigrants. On this he says, “We have no choice.” Yes we do. Fear, uncertainty and doubt maintain the status quo, but we cannot improve and evolve by maintaining the status quo. We need comprehensive immigration reform to create a flatter, more equal world. The first step in comprehensive immigration reform is cutting through the FUD. U.S. immigration policy has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960s, and only about 7 percent of all U.S. green cards are given for economic reasons. By 2018, America will face a projected shortfall of more than 200,000 advanced-degree STEM holders. We are sending away the supply of STEM-educated immigrants who would meet this demand. A quarter of all Americans who have won Nobel Prizes have been immigrants, even though immigrants make up just an eighth of the population. And this isn’t just a high-skilled issue. Immigration helps power our farms, our hotels, our restaurants, our laundromats and businesses from all sectors that drive the U.S. economy. Finally, look at our history: We are a nation built by immigrants, fueled by cities and towns developed by immigrants, with vital services staffed by immigrants. Immigration is woven into our national fabric. Why would we let fear, uncertainty and doubt undo the stitching? Improving our immigration policy doesn’t just sound right to my peers who are founding companies in the United States, and it’s not just a humanitarian effort — evidence shows it will make our nation stronger and more competitive at every level in every industry. It’s time to recognize and cut through the political fear, uncertainty and doubt that are clouding our view of this issue. |
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Bullish: Curation and filter bubbles with Product Hunt’s Ryan Hoover | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | After years of tweeting back and forth with Product Hunt Founder Ryan Hoover, I finally met him IRL when he came in to talk about curation with me for Bullish. “In a world where we’re having so much being created, whether it’s apps, chrome extensions even music, books, podcasts, etc. there’s a greater need for curation,” Hoover told me. Meanwhile, everyone has different interests and the context around how you discover things can change the way you perceive the value or experience that content, Hoover said. Taking music as an example, you might appreciate a song more if a close friend recommends it versus an algorithm displaying it prominently on your screen. That said, there’s value in both algorithmic and human-driven curation. “There’s no perfect balance,” Hoover said. “Algorithmic is not the be all end all. Socially driven curation is not the be all, end all.” We also chatted about the filter bubble, and getting trapped inside of it. On Twitter, your feed is based on who you follow, and the people you follow likely have similar interests and opinions. “The risk is over time we start building better and better algorithms and so you actually only see a subset of things that are only really confirming your own bias, potentially,” Hoover said. “That’s a really fascinating trend and also a risk in the long term evolution of how we communicate and how we socially interact with people.” Watch the full episode to hear more about curation. |
Oculus announces new social features to help personalize VR experiences | Lucas Matney | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | If Oculus has its way, the virtual reality space may grow to be the next major social space for far-flung friends to dive in and hang out. Starting tomorrow, users on the Gear VR platform will be able to create their own user profiles and search for friends by username who they can interact with in virtual space. The company announced in a an effort (very similar-sounding to one from AltspaceVR) called Social Trivia, which will allow you to hang out with buddies’ avatars in a social space and compete in trivia battles. Users will also be able to create VR chatrooms of sorts with Oculus Social where they can watch videos together from Vimeo or Twitch. It was just a couple of weeks ago that Facebook (parent-company of Oculus) CEO Mark Zuckerberg detailed the work that the company was putting forth on social VR and the potential he saw for interactions in the virtual space. “…pretty soon we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes as if you’re just there right there in person,” Zuckerberg told an audience strapped into VR headsets at last month’s Samsung Galaxy Unpacked event. Alongside this launch, Oculus announced a new multiplayer game that makes use of some of these new social features. , the multiplayer adventure game, is now available on the Oculus Store. Band together with up to four people to conquer goblins and demons in arena battlefields. Use integrated voice chat to talk and strategize in real time for co-op action. It wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the post how these features will translate to Oculus’s Rift product launching later this month, but users can undoubtedly expect to see interactions taking advantage of Oculus’s access to both high-end and mobile VR. With Samsung’s latest to get Gear VR in the hands of more consumers, the importance of social VR will only grow more critical in connecting existing users of the mobile VR headset. Additionally as the quantity of content in the Oculus Store increases, the need for user reviews beyond 5-star rating system has become more apparent. Today, Oculus introduced written user reviews. Not only is this a great way to leave feedback for other users, it also increases dialogue between users and developers on what VR consumers are desiring. The company also detailed that later this month they’ll be releasing developer tools to “make it even easier to create more incredible social VR games and apps.” |
Editas biotech stock drops by 26 percent over CRISPR patent dispute | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | Gene editing outfit has been one of the most successful tech IPOs of 2016 so far, with shares skyrocketing up 130 percent shortly after the company’s public debut. But the stock has now plummeted in after-hours trading over concerns it might not be able to legally use the technology it’s built upon. Some on believe the drop to be part of a correction, but it’s likelier due to an increasingly nasty battle over the rights to the breakthrough genome editing technique used by Editas. Two of Editas founders, UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna and the Broad Institute’s (BI) Feng Zheng, are credited with pioneering , a gene-editing technology that has radically advanced the biotech industry. Editas uses this technology to develop therapies to treat humans at a genetic level. Those with a genetically induced cancer would be able to receive treatment to snip out parts of the faulty gene sequencing using this technology, for example. Though Doudna is listed as one of the founders of the company, she left Editas two years ago to create the competing Caribou Biosciences in Berkeley, California. However, BI filed for the CRISPR patents for Zheng and was originally awarded the rights to them. UC filed with the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board two documents last week claiming rights to the tech, leading to what say has caused the plunge in Editas’ stock today. The stock is still way up past 70 percent from its IPO — likely due to the high-profile roster of its many investors, including Bill Gates and Google Ventures — but the legal dispute is a definite setback for Editas that could lead to further complications down the road. We’ve reached out to Editas for comment and will be sure to update this article if and when we hear back. |
Facebook 360 content finds a new virtual home on Oculus Video | Lucas Matney | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | Zuck announced last month that Facebook would be to Gear VR to improve experiences. Now, the company is giving users a crazy amount of personalized content to check out with direct Facebook integration. Oculus today that the Oculus Video app on Gear VR would be incorporating a new Facebook video tab that lets you connect your Facebook and Oculus accounts to bring personalized info — based on who you’re following — to your VR content absorption experience. By integrating personal info from Facebook, this is a massive first step for parent company and child that will be sure to give individual VR users a more custom experience across virtual reality verticals that will undoubtedly grow beyond social video going forward. The feature will allow users to not only view and browse VR content but will actually allow users to share videos directly to Facebook from the Gear VR while in the headset. Actions like responding to the feature with a Reactions emoji are also coming “in the coming weeks.” These changes come as Oculus is already looking to increase the social nature of user experiences in VR with allowing people to hop into VR spaces with friends and interact together. Whether mobile VR becomes the next content absorption platform for Facebook to tackle is anyone’s guess at the moment, but the company is definitely looking to utilize its Oculus platform more to expand social interactions in virtual reality. |
Here’s a video of the least interesting self-driving car accident ever | Greg Kumparak | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | Back on February 14th, Google’s self-driving car to occur while the car’s AI was in control. The Associated Press managed to get footage of the accident from the bus’ own cameras and… well… it’s (fortunately for all involved) about as mundane as the made it sound. At one point, the bus driver appears to stop eating a sandwich. Thankfully, no one reported injuries in this accident. Google says they’ve already addressed the logic that allowed the accident to happen. |
Square beats its fourth-quarter revenue expectations | Matthew Lynley | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | Square, which has been on a bit of a run lately, posted a quarter where it beat revenue estimates and saw its shares pop slightly after it reported its fourth-quarter earnings. This was Square’s first time reporting quarterly earnings as a public company, and it looks like the results weren’t that bad, aside from a miss on earnings expectations. Square reported an adjusted loss of 20 cents per share on revenue of $374 million. Analysts were targeting a loss of 13 cents per share on revenue of $343 million. The company reported $299 million in transaction revenue in the fourth quarter of 2015, up 47 percent year-over-year. Following the report, Square shares rose as much as 5 percent in extended trading, which, after a run in the past weeks, has placed it well above its IPO price of $9. Gross payment volume, another monitored stat for the company, increased 47 percent year-over-year to $10.2 billion. There are two million active sellers on Square’s platform, the company said in its earnings report. Square’s report today is adding to its increasing momentum as it moves into the first quarter of the year. In the past month, shares of the company have rebounded by more than 30 percent, sending it back above its IPO price of $9. Investors are clearly showing more confidence in the company as it looks to continue growing its point-of-sale business and expand into new markets with services like Caviar. The company also launched Square Cash, a Venmo competitor for exchanging cash with friends quickly. The company said at the end of the fourth quarter it received 350,000 pre-orders for its new card reader, as well. While Square continues to grow, it’s still losing money. Recently, investors have been thoroughly rewarding profitability over growth, but it seems that the rate at which Square is growing is enough to keep investors happy. The theory, it would seem, is if Square decided to pull back and focus on profitability it would be able to build a strong business. Starbucks transaction revenue was $47 million on breakeven gross profit for the fourth quarter of 2015, which was a result of renegotiated processing rates that started in October 2015. That’s a good sign for the company, as the Starbucks deal placed some downward pressure on it when it reported its financials in its initial public offering. [graphiq id=”khdJpxyF6eN” title=”Square-A (SQ) Stock Price – 90 Days” width=”600″ height=”492″ url=”https://w.graphiq.com/w/khdJpxyF6eN” link=”https://www.graphiq.com” link_text=”Visualization by Graphiq”] Still, the company’s valuation sits well below the last valuation it had before it went public, now worth around $3.9 billion compared to its $6 billion private valuation. We’re parsing through the earnings report and will update the story as more information comes in. |
Box soars 13 percent on earnings beat | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | Cloud storage company reported after the bell on Wednesday, sending the stock in after-hours trading. Better-than-expected results brought the stock slightly above the $14 barometer from last year’s . Fourth-quarter revenue was $85 million, a 36 percent increase from the same period last year and above analyst expectations of $82 million. Full-year revenue came in at $303 million, up 40 percent year-over-year. The company reported an adjusted loss of 26 cents per share, better than the 29-cent loss that Wall Street was forecasting. CEO Aaron Levie said that customer wins, including AIG, Bain Capital and Home Depot helped the company achieve fourth-quarter gains. The company says it has a paying customer base of 57,000 businesses. “ Levie tells TechCrunch. “ Competitors are watching Box’s stock performance closely as an indication of investor appetite for the industry. Future IPOs and valuations will be partially contingent on Box’s success. “We always want the numbers to come out strong, despite competing with them,” said Vineet Jain, CEO of Egnyte. “Whether we like it or not, they are a proxy for our space.” Box closed Wednesday at $12.55, with a market cap of $1.5 billion. Shares have been down 34 percent in the past year. [graphiq id=”4cZzINcX2EB” title=”Box Inc. (BOX) Stock Price” width=”600″ height=”618″ url=”https://w.graphiq.com/w/4cZzINcX2EB” link=”http://listings.findthecompany.com/l/339705/Box-Inc-in-Los-Altos-CA” link_text=”Box Inc. (BOX) Stock Price | FindTheCompany”] |
Stowaway Cosmetic’s Chelsa Crowley on her “right size” makeup empire | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | is a startup taking on the by selling pint-sized lipsticks, blushes and foundations direct to consumers. and her co-founder started the company after realizing they never used up all their makeup before it expired. Crowley had an extensive background in the cosmetics industry working for Mac and Bobbi Brown and decided to do something about her dilemma. Both founders were no strangers to the startup world, however. Crowley’s husband Dennis founded Foursquare and she says many of her friends were already running their own startups in and around her New York City home base as well. “So I had a better sense of what I was getting myself into and it’s also why I had to really think about it,” Crowley (who, by the way, has the most beautiful, luminous skin up close) told me on a recent visit to the San Francisco TechCrunch video studio. Stowaway has so far raised $1.5 million in venture capital and the brand launched a subscription service in September 2015. The products have also so far received in the cosmetics industry – two for packaging and two for product formulation. As mentioned above, Crowley recently sat down with me in TechCrunch’s video studio to tell me about the future of the business and why she thinks her tiny idea has an advantage over some of the bigger cosmetics companies. Click on the video above to watch that interview. |
SXSW goes apeshit for on-demand startups | Jordan Crook | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | It’s a tough world out there for on-demand startups — confusion around the W2 vs. 1099 conversation, tough margins, and customer service are but a few of the initial obstacles for these companies. Add in the necessity of huge amounts of up-front capital and it’s an uphill battle at best. But trust me, the on-demand economy will survive and eventually prevail, and 2016 might just be the year they do it. At SXSW, where the tech world eats and drinks far more than they conduct business, the community tends to fall in love with a specific trend. Sometimes these trends last longer than others. Last year, it was live video broadcast with Meerkat, and past year’s brought us the likes of Foursquare, Twitter, and not-yet-forgotten Highlight. Though the on-demand space has been trending for years now, it seems that companies both large and small are looking to make a splash at the festival. , the seasoned veteran in the space, is launching a partnership with to let festival-goers buy their newest looks on-demand, delivered in 45 minutes or less. This isn’t the first time Postmates has offered clothes on the platform — after all, Postmates delivers . However, Postmates is making a clear run at the SXSW crowd this March. Then there’s , a smaller Postmates competitor who is partnering with the festival itself to deliver food. The company will deliver food from SXSW’s SouthBites Trailer Park, with food from vendors like East Side King, Veracrus, and Chi’lantro. The service promises delivery in 35 minutes or less with a flat $5 delivery fee. Favor, based in Austin, is now available across 19 cities and has targeted tier-two markets that Postmates and Uber aren’t already in. , another on-demand company that provides on-demand customer service, is launching a program at SXSW. Service “Wizards” will be available via the app to do things like wait in line or reserve a spot for you at a popular venue. But SXSW as a conference is also going heavy on the on-demand content. In a panel called “On-Demand Everything”, McDonald’s, Luxe and Groupon are participating in a panel discussing how all companies, not just on-demand service providers, can use technology to make the customer experience that much more convenient. Another panel, called Partners for Successful On-Demand Grocery Delivery, includes Whole Foods execs and Instacart’s head of BizDev Nilam Ganenthiran. In short, expect to see a lot of on-demand promotions, partnerships, and special discounts at the festival in Austin this year. |
Finding financial health in the gig economy | Rob Levy | 2,016 | 3 | 9 |
So, you’re cruising down the highway with your latest fare, making money whenever you choose to turn on your engine. But that 1099 economy you’re so fond of should come with a warning: Steep Drop-off Ahead. Why? Because with the gig economy comes an entire set of income volatility issues — and if you’re not being smart about it, the state of your financial health could be impacted. In today’s economy, the old-economy dream of financial stability through gainful employment has simply been thrown out the window: Things aren’t easy for people with your basic 9-to-5 job, but gig economy workers have even more responsibility to manage their financial health. In short, you’re on your own. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the very same technology that is driving the apps and companies of the 1099 economy is also being harnessed to create new tools to manage and improve your own financial health. ( is simply your ability to have a functioning day-to-day financial system that helps you deal with emergencies and pursue your dreams, whatever they may be.) So what should you be doing? Check out these technology innovators that are helping to support financially healthy habits for 1099ers. The first thing you need to do is figure out where you stand financially. For a long time, the only way to do that without an expensive financial advisor was by checking your credit report, but that only tells a fraction of your financial story. You need the full picture of your financial health, and there are some great new tools to get that. If you’re a USAA member, try their . If you’ve got a KeyBank account, get your financial wellness score through their partnership with . If you don’t have one of those, get your free score at or (still in private beta), or take the or the quiz (recently featured in their prime-time ). None of these are perfect, but they’ll give you a pretty good idea of where you stand. And while your credit score is only one piece of the puzzle, it can’t hurt to also check out your score for free at , , or . Your 1099 employer probably won’t offer you a 401k or a savings plan, but almost every bank will let you set up automatic transfers from your checking to savings account. If you’re worried that that might leave you in the lurch on a slow week, let computers decide when to save for you. (which is part of our ) will analyze your finances and make small savings for you, automatically over time, that you won’t even feel — until one day, you’ve got a nice chunk of change waiting for you. , and also offer different takes on the same idea: Take the thinking out of saving. This might be the toughest part about being a 1099er: Your paycheck changes month to month, but your bills don’t. Here again, technology can help solve some of the problems it created. will analyze your financial inflows and outflows and figure out what your “even” paycheck should be (think of it as roughly the average of your overall pay picture). Then you get that amount every week — effectively ironing out uneven cash flow. Have a good week, and Even puts a little extra into savings for you. Have a slow winter full of blizzards, and Even withdraws from your savings automatically, or even gives you a little credit if you need it to get by. Another great tool for handling cashflow is . They track your work hours and will make you small advances on your paycheck for work you’ve already done but for which you haven’t been paid. It’s a low-risk bet for them, so they make it free for you (they just ask for a tip, instead). I don’t have the space here to get into the additional tools you’re going to need for managing your tax burden, figuring out your own healthcare and making sure you have all the insurance you need. But I’ll close with this: . These unicorns will never grow their mighty horns if their drivers, task rabbits, shoppers and cleaners are stressed out by bill payments and car repairs. They might not offer health insurance, but many of the tools mentioned above could easily be offered through an employer at relatively low cost. Case in point: Uber started offering to some potential drivers who need a car but have less than stellar credit. This brings more drivers to Uber and offers more flexible financing options to their drivers. There’s even talk about an that would allow drivers to get paid daily instead of weekly. So while you’re out there on the open road of the gig economy, don’t forget to get a financial health tune-up every 5,000 miles or so. You may be on your own, but help is just a tap away. |
Nom.com, a foodie-focused live video network from YouTube’s Steve Chen, launches with $4.7M | Ingrid Lunden | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | We’ve heard relatively little from Steve Chen since he with Chad Hurley, his co-founder at YouTube and more recently Avos. It turns out that alongside some , he’s also been quietly working on a new startup: , a live, interactive video community for foodies that presents a mix of professional cooks alongside an open-ended platform that will let anyone direct, produce and host “your own food show.” Co-founded by YouTube’s first head of engineering Vijay Karunamurthy — who is taking on the role of Nom’s CEO (with Chen as CTO) — Nom is launching publicly today. But in the background, over the past several months, Nom has been quietly building up a network of contributors. “Collaboration is key for us at Nom,” said Karunamurthy in a statement. “We worked with an incredible group of chefs, makers, and creators to build the site and app they would want to reach an audience live.” Names involved from launch include Corey Lee (who is also an investor; more on that below), and Master Sommelier Yoon Ha of Benu in San Francisco, Pastry Chef Joanne Chang, Tim Hollingsworth of Otium in downtown Los Angeles, Hubert Keller in Las Vegas, and Michael Tusk of Quince in San Francisco. You can find these and other creators in Nom’s page, where people post a mix of stills and videos. And indeed, Nom has been raising money. Back in September, Nom Labs, as the parent company is called, , and today it confirmed to us that it’s raised a Series A of $4.7 million. In addition to Cheryl Cheng of Blue Run Ventures, who is named on the SEC filing, the investor list is full of other big names, including Google Ventures’ managing partner David Krane (but GV itself), WI Harper Group, Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, PSY (of megafame), actor Jared Leto, 3-Star Michelin chef Corey Lee and American restaurateur Ming Tsai. Nom is based around a confluence of a couple of the bigger trends in online media today. The first of these is a learning from Chen’s first huge startup and traffic magnet, YouTube. Now owned by Google, the video network based its business around user-generated content from day one, but in more recent years one of the big mainstays of that content has been high-wattage YouTube stars, who have attracted enormous audiences around series of videos that are often of a humorous but also factual and how-to nature. Add to that the new emphasis on live broadcasting, not just on YouTube but also large social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat. (For a company like Google that has struggled to build a lot of traction in social media, YouTube is not only popular fodder on other social networks, but the conversations between viewers and creators on those video pages are the closest thing to social that Google has going for it.) In keeping with that how-to element, Nom promises to give viewers an opportunity to “learn from their favorite chefs, brewmasters, grillmasters, baristas or bloggers, and interact directly with them as they stream live.” The second trend is in regards to the subject matter. If digital media today is all about images, and specifically video, food has been one of the popular mainstays in that vertical. It’s telling that one of the most popular new launches from Buzzfeed has been its Facebook-only Tasty series of short how-to cooking videos, commanding millions of views; and that one of the early and still most popular use cases for Instagram is for taking pictures of food. “Nom is a place for food lovers,” said Chen in a statement. “If you’ve ever snapped a picture of your dinner, Nom is for you. If you have a food blog and want to connect with a bigger audience, Nom is for you. If a restaurant kitchen is your office, Nom is for you.” In addition to tapping into existing trends, Nom is also looking to raise the bar on what it is that you can do in video creation for user-generated content, and in particular live UGC. There is an interface that lets creators upload and mix videos, photos and GIFs in their live broadcast; a two-way interaction tool by way of a nodelay 2way chat; and the ability to use multiple cameras if you are so technically inclined, useful to toggle between face shots and close-ups of the food. Along with Krane’s investment, Google Ventures confirmed to us that Chen will be staying on in a role as an . When Chen originally joined the investor group in 2014, he told us that part of the reason was to tap younger founders’ minds — essentially steeping himself in new startup thinking to feed into Nom, so to speak. “Chad and I have always been on the inside of one company, so the opportunity to start from higher up across multiple industries and talk to the people at the forefront of the future… that’s something that is exciting and alluring to me…It’s a very different time from when we started YouTube, before the iPhone and the cloud were so in play.” |
null | Lucas Matney | 2,016 | 3 | 7 | null |
Google+ now gives verified profiles, early access to new features to some Collections and Communities users | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | A few months ago, Google Google+ away from being a basic social network and put a focus on instead. To reward the most interesting and active users on its service, Google today launched the program. Google says that since it launched the redesigned Google+ in November, the number of Collection follows has more than doubled. This means more people on Google+ now use these new features — though it doesn’t necessarily mean the number of Google+ users is also up. With Create, the company wants to give some of its best users a chance to get in front of a wider audience on Google+. This includes a with featured collections, for example. “We want to celebrate these inspiring creators, provide a place for them to collaborate with others, and amplify their unique voices,” the Google+ team writes today. “ Create members get a verified profile, early access to new product features, a private channel with the team, and new opportunities to get their content in front of the right audience.” The idea here is obviously to reward those users who bring the most value to the platform. How does Google decide who should be included in this program? “We’re looking for people who have both a passion for their subject, and also put great effort and craft into their posts,” Google product manager Daniel Raynaud tells me. “Our hope is to continually evolve the program to accommodate participants around the world, that represent varying interests and passions. Magical things happen when you bring together musicians, craftspeople, athletes, photographers from around the world.” |
Julie Desk, the email-based virtual assistant that helps you schedule meetings, picks up €600K funding | Steve O'Hear | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | , the French startup that’s developed a “virtual assistant” to automate the email back-and-forth typically associated with scheduling meetings and appointments, has picked up a further €600,000 in funding. The investment comes from , the VC firm that counts a number of prominent French entrepreneurs as board members, including Frederic Mazzella (Blablacar), Thierry Petit (Showroom privé) and Olivier Mathiot (PriceMinister). SIDE managing partner Renaud Guillerm, who co-founded Vide Dressing, joins the board of Julie Desk. by the same company behind , the now shuttered app that attempted to make it easier for friends to plan events together, Julie Desk is an “AI-driven” service for scheduling meetings. Similar to U.S. competitor , it shuns the need for a separate app and instead uses the humble CC: field in your email client as its interface. Simply CC “Julie” at the start of or during an email thread with the person you want to schedule a meeting with, and, in theory, the virtual assistant will take care of the rest. This includes offering up potential meeting times — pulled in from the various online calendars supported — confirming the agreed time and place, adding it to your schedule and sending out the appropriate calendar invites. Furthermore, all of this takes place via email, using human-friendly language, as if Julie is a real person. And, actually, sometimes Julie is a real person. That’s because, in some ways, the service is still employing a hybrid model, with its AI being underpinned by human supervision. “Any email produced by the AI is quality checked by a human before sending, so that we make sure that there are no mistakes and the best quality comes out of Julie,” co-founder and CEO Julien Hobeika told me in an email. “If something comes out wrong from the AI or simply if the AI can’t produce an answer to a request, the human operator can take over and answer manually. Our clients are business oriented people, they don’t want to waste time and money correcting AI that picked up a word wrong, we do that for them.” Perhaps human overlords are the future of AI after all. Now that doesn’t sound quite so scary — or does it? |
Google joins the Open Compute Project | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | Google today that it is joining the (OCP), a five-year-old founded by Facebook and a number of other companies that aims to drive IT infrastructure development forward through open source hardware. For Facebook, for example, this has meant open sourcing how it builds some of its servers and other data center hardware. Over the last few years, Google also shared about how it powers its data centers, but now it has also signed on to work with Facebook and others to work on the OCP Open Rack project, for example. This project aims to bring 48 volt power distribution to data center racks. Google says it has been working on 48V rack power distribution since 2010 and, in the process, it found that it was 30 percent more energy-efficient that its previous-generation 12V systems. “As the industry’s working to solve these same problems and dealing with higher-power workloads, such as GPUs for machine learning, it makes sense to standardize this new design by working with OCP,” Google technical program manager John Zipfel writes in today’s announcement. “We believe this will help everyone adopt this next generation power architecture, and realize the same power efficiency and cost benefits as .” The company says this is only a first step in engaging with the OCP. A Google spokesperson told us that Google plans to continue to explore “additional OCP project areas for future engagement, such as management software, and storage disk drives for .” As Google , it’s especially interested in improving the state of disk drives in the data center, for example. It’s worth noting that Google isn’t the only company making OCP moves today. Microsoft, which joined the project in 2014, also today that it, together with Arista, Broadcom, Dell and Mellanox, is to the project. |
Cisco bringing advanced search to Spark platform with Synata acquisition | Ron Miller | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | announced it has purchased , a search startup that allows users to search across on-premise or cloud repositories simultaneously. Cisco plans to integrate the Synata technology into its (which should not to be confused with ). While Cisco usually reveals purchase prices, because it was under $100 million, it chose to keep this one to itself. Cisco’s Rowan Trollope writing said Synata gives Cisco an enhanced search experience it’s been, well, searching for and been unable to create completely itself. While it was able to solve a hard problem of encrypting search queries, the index, the content and delivering results back to the user; it wanted this ability to search across repositories it lacked. Synata gives Cisco Spark that. “It gives us the ability to search indexed third party content sources with a single pane of glass. We want to have incredible search. We want to improve the search we have today. The Synata guys have the technology to help us do that,” Trollop told TechCrunch. The other thing that Synata will give the Spark platform is graph search, which could be extremely valuable in a communications platform because you can search across the index and the connections people have made with one another while interacting across the platform. Cisco’s Rob Salvagno writing t was also excited about the possibilities that Synata search technology is bringing to the company and how it will integrate with Cisco Spark. “Their search technology will also work within Cisco Spark’s unique approach to end-to-end encryption in the cloud, which makes them a great fit for our team. Like us, they prioritize cloud development that allows customers to have privacy and control of their data at all times,” he wrote. In a note , Synata CEO Pat White indicated that the company officially shut down two days ago and that the entire team and its intellectual property were now part of Cisco. Synata was founded in 2012 and has raised a modest $1.45 million, . The Spark communications platform is a collaboration tool that provides a way for teams to communicate and collaborate on projects like Slack. There are versions for iPhone and Android, Mac and Windows and a web version too. Cisco also announced it was launching a $150 million fund to encourage third party developers to build applications, bots and integrations on top of the Spark platform. |
Google surprises with early preview of Android N | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 9 | the today. And to make things even easier for developers — and adventurous users — the preview is available as an over-the-air update. The expectation was that Google wouldn’t start talking about until its in May. Instead, it decided on a very different approach. , Google’s SVP for Android, Chrome OS and Chromecast, writes (yep, Medium and not Blogspot) that the team decided it wanted to release the preview earlier in order to get more feedback from developers earlier in the process and get the final N release into the hands of device manufacturers this summer. Google’s calls for five preview releases and a final release in Q3 2016. “As we look to the next release of , , you’ll notice a few big changes aimed at you as developers: it’s earlier than ever, it’s easier to try and we’re expanding the ways for you to give us feedback. We hope these changes will ensure that you are heard and reflected — that’s what makes stronger,” Lockheimer writes. He also notes that this early release will help developers add support for the new features in Android N. Google stresses that this release is very much a work in progress. Google will probably add a few more features over time, but for now, it is talking about just a few of the highlights of this new release (and chances are we’ll find a few more after we install the preview). Among the changes in Android N are improved notifications. Using “ ,” for example, means developers can now allow their users to reply to incoming notifications right from the notifications shade. Developers can now also bundle notifications from the same app together. For the first time, Android will also offer a . Apps that support this will be able to run side-by-side with other apps on both tablets and phones (and developers can set the minimum allowable dimensions for their apps). Multi-windows support is something users have long asked for — especially on tablets. Google’s own Pixel-C, for example, would make a far better productivity device with this feature. Besides a basic side-by-side mode, Android N will also offer a picture-in-picture mode so video apps can play in the corner on Android TV devices, for example. With Android Marshmallow, which is currently only running on , Google introduced its Doze feature, which puts a device into a deep power-savings mode when it’s stationary for a while. In Android N, Google is pushing this concept a bit further by allowing Doze to also save more battery power when the screen is turned off. In addition, Google says it continues to work on making Android less memory-hungry and making apps that run in the background work more efficiently. One other new aspect of Android N that developers can look forward to is improved Java 8 language support. Thanks to this, developers can now use the Android Jack compiler to use features like lambdas, which reduce the amount of boilerplate code they have to write. This is available for all versions of Android from Gingerbread up, but Android N developers will also be able to use default and static methods, streams and functional interfaces. If you don’t mind things not working or randomly breaking, Google will let you for an over-the-air (OTA) update (though as a Google spokesperson told us, that link won’t go live until later this afternoon). That is, of course, if you own a Nexus device. The update is available for Google’s Nexus 6, Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Nexus Player, Nexus 9 and Pixel C devices. The one missing device here is the older Nexus 5. Once you’ve updated your device, Google will also continue to push new updates to it as they are released. In addition to the OTA updates, Google will also continue to make system images for all of the supported devices and the Android emulator available. Given that Marshmallow isn’t even on 3 percent of devices yet, it’s a bit of a surprise that Google seems to be in a bit of a rush to get Android N out. Chances are, though, that there are still a few more user-facing changes in this preview of Android N, as well, and that the next couple of releases will bring new features, too. For now, however, Google is putting the emphasis on just a few new features for developers. The one thing the company definitely isn’t revealing yet, though, is what dessert/candy that the ‘N’ will stand for once it releases the final version. I’m going with ‘Nutella,’ given that Lockheimer’s post says he’s “nut tellin’ you yet.” |
New Model 3 will extend Tesla’s reach into India, Brazil and other global markets | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | . — $115 million in deposits and $4 billion in potential sales — before it had even been unveiled, but another interesting point to note is that it will be Tesla’s first to be sold in India, Brazil and other notable international markets. The company just massively increased its potential sales by adding pre-orders in India (population 1.25 billion), Brazil (200 million), in addition to South Africa, South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Ireland and potentially others. I say potentially others because the expansion is based on a tweet from CEO Elon Musk — given Twitter’s 140 character limit, there could be more countries that Musk wasn’t able to fit into his message. (We’ve checked in with Tesla to ask exactly which new countries it will sell in.) Adding several more countries to Model 3 order page tonight. Check for details, but will include India, Brazil, SA, SK, NZ, Sing & Ireland. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) In line with that, Musk also said that Tesla will more double its number of stores to cover over 440 locations across North America, Europe and Asia by the end of 2017. The Model 3 will be Tesla’s most affordable car — indeed the deposit is just $1,000 — so it will be fascinating to see how it is received in price sensitive markets like India and Brazil that have huge populations. Since the car won’t go into production until next year, there’s no instant answer and there’s a small window for other automakers to introduce competition. As with any electric car, Tesla’s tempered by its charging infrastructure in each country — you don’t buy an electric car if finding places to charge it will be problematic — so the company will need to work on adding enough stations in these new countries, too. There’s no clear date for when the vehicle will be available in new markets. , Tesla said that, once the car is ready, it would begin fulfilling orders in the U.S. first, before moving on to Europe before tackling other regions. “It is not possible to ship to all regions simultaneously because regulators in each part of the world have slightly different production requirements. Staggering deliveries in this way also allows us to provide the best possible customer experience,” the company explained.
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Google is getting rid of the physical debit cards linked to its Wallet payment service | Catherine Shu | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | Google is bidding “smell ya later!” to its Wallet Card, the physical debit cards linked to Google Wallet accounts. In , the company said it plans to focus instead on the Google Wallet app, which with a new focus on online peer-to-peer payments. People who hold a Wallet Card won’t be able to add money to it after May 1 and the cards (and recurring transfers set up with it) will be canceled on June 30. Android Pay will also stop accepting Wallet Card payments. Google Wallet Cards launched in 2013, back before contactless payment services like Android Pay and Apple Pay were available. Even then, however, the idea of linking a physical card to a digital wallet seemed somewhat retrogressive. As , the Wallet Card didn’t work as a “universal” card that would replace all the other plastic in your wallet (a ), and was a lot more useful for Google than users because it let the company get yet more data about consumer spending habits. Google’s decision to turn Wallet into a peer-to-peer payments system (which lets people send money to each other using just their email address or phone number) means it is more aligned with trends in the digital payments space, but also puts it in competition with a roster of other similar services, including , , , , and . In its announcement, Google said it will redesign the Google Wallet app and add new features “in the coming months.” |
Government report details Theranos quality control issues | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | A government report released late Thursday accuses of producing inaccurate test results, of failing to meet its own lab standards and hiring unqualified personnel. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service visited Theranos’ main facilities in Newark, California last November and found the one drop blood test startup’s machines produced wildly inaccurate test results – including one for cancer detection, according to a of the report put out by the Wall Street Journal. The newly released 121-page report, by the WSJ details quality control issues – including the failure to meet Theranos own standards. According to the report, erratic test results were frequent when tested in July 2014, and from February to June of 2015 on Theranos’ proprietary blood test machine Edison. One example – a test to measure a hormone affecting testosterone levels failed 87 percent of the time when run on Edison. Between June 1st and September 21st, Theranos failed to properly hire and train qualified people to run the machines, allowed unlicensed workers to review patient test results, failed to follow manufacturer’s instructions on equipment and did not have a proper, written protocol in place to calibrate the machines to maintain accuracy, according to the report. It is unfathomable Theranos would be allowed to run test results for the public during this time. and these new details provide an inside look at some very real issues surrounding Theranos as a company, particularly around its code-named Edison technology – the supporting reason for the company’s $9 billion valuation. But there weren’t many details released at the time of the federal health agency’s inspection last fall. CMS declared at the time Theranos’ practices posed “immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety,” and gave it 10 days to fix the problems or face a fine of up to $10,000 per day. Safeway has since pulled out of a potential partnership with the company and Walgreens has stopped testing at its Palo Alto, California location and is reportedly working to cut ties with Theranos at its 40 clinic locations in Arizona. We also found Theranos for its sole FDA-approved Herpes test though it had advertised differently. And we found the blood test startup was outsourcing lab work to several other places, including ARUP in Salt Lake City, Utah. Theranos has submitted a plan to CMS to correct the problems, including hiring a new lab director in its Newark facility and says it will be taking “corrective action” for test results not meeting the standard. “We’ve made mistakes in the past in the Newark, CA lab, but when the company was made aware of the deficiencies we have dedicated every resource to remedy those failures,” Theranos spokesperson Brooke Buchanan told TechCrunch in a statement. Buchanan also says Theranos will “continue to work with CMS to ensure every issue has been fixed completely.” |
This is Tesla’s Model 3 | Greg Kumparak | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | And there it is. After years of speculation, the Tesla Model 3 has been unveiled. We’re live in Hawthorne, CA, where the company has just shown the car for the very first time. [gallery ids="1300820,1300821,1300824,1300828,1300791,1300749,1300748,1300752"] |
Tesla Model 3 preorders surge past the 150,000 mark | Fitz Tepper | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | Preorders broke the 150,000 barrier, according to Tesla’s own tracker at the launch event. , the car designed to bring Tesla to the masses. The car will start at $35,000, compared to the Model S and X which can easily run close to $100,000. On stage, Elon said that 115,000 people had already preordered before the car had even been unveiled. This means the electric car company just took in $115M in deposits, and four billion dollars in potential sales. While not all of these pre-order will convert to sales, it’s still a staggering number for a car company that barely produced 50,000 cars throughout all of last year. Tesla began taking preorders in stores this afternoon, and many stores had lines wrapping around the block. Longest line EVER — Tesla (@Tesla) And, online preorders, which were supposed to open as the car was unveiled, was moved up an hour to 7:30pm PT to prevent the servers from overloading due to live stream viewers and pre-orderers both hitting the site at the same time. Online ordering at will now open at 7:30pm Pacific to ensure no server overload. Presentation still at 8:30. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) |
Meeting cybersecurity challenges through gamification | Ben Dickson | 2,016 | 3 | 31 |
When it comes to cybersecurity issues, we always seem to be dealing with either shortages or excess. Everywhere there’s talk of how in number, size, severity and cost, and there are always too many new security holes, vulnerabilities and attack vectors that need to be fixed. On the other hand, there’s a to fill vacant posts. We never seem to have enough tools to deal with new threats and malware that are sprouting on a daily basis, and there’s not enough data to make smart assumptions and decisions (or in some cases, too much data and too many false positives to find the real threats). And among employees, staffers and executives in firms, associations and agencies is always at abysmal levels. With the dark shadow of constantly looming on the horizon, both government agencies and private firms are always looking for new ways to meet the challenges and overcome the many shortages the cybersecurity industry is facing. One of the growing trends in this regard is the use of gaming software, the element of competition and simple rewards programs to help find security holes, educate about cybersecurity issues and recruit talent to plug the skills gap that is riddling the industry. Here’s how security firms are using game mechanics to address some of their most serious issues. Though the concept of gaming is not new in the cybersecurity industry, it’s so far been mainly used in the domains of education and scouting for talent. Day-to-day security practices and procedures in businesses and agencies continue to be carried out in the traditional way, and they often are perceived by employees as excessive, cumbersome and unnecessary measures that can be ignored and overlooked when in a rush to meet critical deadlines and finish overdue tasks. , a cybersecurity firm that offers a namesake data loss prevention (DLP) platform, intends to challenge this norm by of firms and organizations. The idea was first introduced by Mark Stevens, Senior Vice President of Global Services at Digital Guardian, during a presentation at the . Stevens presented DG Data Defender, a cost-free gaming system that can help companies turn their average employees — arguably one of the greatest risks to the protection of data — into their greatest security assets. The idea behind DG Data Defender, as explained by Connie Stack, Chief Marketing Officer at Digital Guardian, is “to encourage organizations to engage every employee in their data security programs using gamification principles.” Most traditional DLP solutions are centered on identifying and preventing non-conformant behavior, and reporting it to security team members, managers and supervisors. The gaming approach suggested by Digital Guardian addresses not only the bad behaviors, but also the good behaviors: Employees are rewarded when they abide by the rules and punished when they break them. For instance, users receive printable badges upon first, tenth and hundredth email sent without triggering a policy. Scoreboards are used to present DLP leaders among employees to create a positive spirit of competition. Eventually, continued use of good security practices will earn employees prizes, such as e-store gift cards. “This gives users a more positive data security experience,” explains Stack, “and it encourages them to handle sensitive data correctly in the future to earn even more rewards/badges — effectively becoming a force multiplier for the security team.” Digital Guardian plans to implement the DG Data Defender gaming concept as a policy pack for its DLP solution in the future. The cybersecurity talent gap is a great problem. Not enough people are entering the cybersecurity workforce, and most firms and organizations are faced with vacancies. According to the , there’s currently a global shortage of one million IT security pros, a number that is bound to rise as high as 1.5 million by 2019. Another by Information Systems, Audit and Control Association (ISACA) shows that most organizations are having trouble filling cybersecurity jobs, which leads to greater vulnerabilities and higher data breach risks. , a U.K.-based organization, has been trying to tackle this shortage through in which players face simulated threat situations they must prevent through the use of their cyber skills. “We’ve seen that traditional recruitment methods, used in other industries, just don’t work in cyber security,” says Stephanie Daman, CEO of Cyber Security Challenge U.K. “However, there is a noticeable pattern between gamers and those that show significant skills in the industry.” The organization uses , a gaming environment designed to find, test and recruit cyber talent. “It’s a 3D immersive platform that brings the games together with a virtual world in which candidates can interact with each other and with industry experts to gain knowledge and skills and build their networks,” Daman explains. The qualifying rounds are carried out on the online platform; top players are invited to play challenges hosted by the competition’s sponsors. “Competitors are assessed not only for their technical abilities, but also for their communication, presentation and teamwork skills,” says Daman. Winners are offered a host of career-enhancing prizes and lucrative job opportunities at large tech firms and government agencies, such as GCHQ, Northrop Grumman and BT, some of the main sponsors of the event. Cyber Security Challenge U.K. provides an opportunity for anyone with coding and IT skills to prove their mettle against security incidents. The winner of November’s final competition, which involved thwarting a biological attack, was a 38-year-old network engineer for a car dealer. Human error and lack of awareness continue to be the main contributing forces to successful data breaches. A considerable number of security incidents occur because employees and staff members in handling data, and organizations are thus risking their reputation, customer trust and, eventually, their bottom lines. Research conducted by suggests firms are suffering from cyberattacks because their staff are either not provided with cybersecurity training or the training they receive isn’t effective in changing employee behavior regarding information security. , a global consulting firm, intends to remedy this situation by teaching cybersecurity through its game, , which allows senior executives and board members to deal with real-world cybersecurity situations by competing against each other, playing as either the attackers or defenders. Attackers must choose their tactics, methods of attack and skills, while defenders must develop defense strategies by investing in the right technologies and talent to respond to the attacks. David Burg, Global and U.S. Cybersecurity Leader said, “The idea of Game of Threats came after a desperate need to educate Boards and C-Suite, who have little technical expertise. The game allows you to think like a hacker, and serves as a good education tool on cybersecurity — that’s why they play as both sides.” Game of Threats and more recently . The game is played for up to eight hours at a time by finance auditors, compliance employees and C-suite and other boardroom executives, so they each get a taste of the battle their cybersecurity team faces every day. Game of Threats was PwC’s first shot at gamification, but given the success, the company plans on using the concept in other areas. “We’re considering games for financial crime and also crisis management in general — anything such as a product recall or a natural disaster,” says Richard Bergman, PwC’s cyber partner. “It helps companies to understand how well prepared they are. |
Don’t hand over EV charging in Northern California to PG&E | Scott Mercer | 2,016 | 3 | 31 |
Northern California has become a test bed for electric vehicle charging. It’s no accident; the region is home to more electric vehicles and EV charging stations than anywhere else in the country. Like other innovative industries, the EV charging models, products and services that prove successful over time will scale around the state, the country and the world. EV charging companies compete to provide tailored EV charging equipment and services — based on different business models, hardware, speed, parking management and networking capabilities — to large employers, local governments and retail outlets. And those organizations have the power to set prices to incentivize drivers’ behavior. That’s why a proposal from PG&E is so deeply troubling. The utility wants to insert itself right in the middle of the booming electric vehicle charging market in Northern California. It’s seeking approval from the California Public Utility Commission for broad control over the market in a way that will crowd out private investment, stifle innovation, and harm customers. The CPUC should either reject or substantially revise this proposal. PG&E is seeking monopoly authority over EV charging in northern California. Under PG&E’s scheme, it would put in place 7,600 charging stations across northern California, and ratepayers would foot the bill. But here’s the rub: the proposal would cost ratepayers triple what it costs the private sector, and it is three times as large as the CPUC has called for. What’s worse, PG&E would have sole authority to determine which companies can participate in the program and the rates they would charge. And for the fastest, most innovative charging stations (DC Fast Chargers), there would be absolutely no competition. This is a recipe for disaster. There’s no question that PG&E has a significant role to play, and we all share the vision of a vast network of charging stations across the region. But how we achieve this is critically important. Like other utilities in the state, PG&E should provide the basic “make ready” infrastructure — bringing wires, and conduits to parking spaces around the region. Then, electric vehicle companies could compete based on speed, quality, networked capabilities and a range of features. Ultimately, the goal is to have an EV charging infrastructure in place that accelerates the shift away from fossil fuels and toward clean electricity. The full potential of EV charging has yet to be realized. But that’s why it is so important that one utility — which doesn’t have innovation in its DNA — shouldn’t have the power to dictate how the market works. As the California Public Utilities Commission considers how to resolve this case, we urge it to preserve customer choice by ensuring a competitive and innovative market. We look forward to working closely with the utility, so it can focus on providing safe and reliable electricity service, and we can focus on developing products and services that make it possible for California to remain the leader in electric vehicles and electric vehicle charging. |
Reddit’s missing ‘warrant canary’ suggests classified data requests from feds | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | Reddit issued its Thursday morning, listing the amount and type of data requested by various authorities. There’s plenty of interesting info, but perhaps most interesting is what’s there: the site’s “warrant canary.” Regular data requests via subpoenas or court orders are more or less public information, and can be tallied up and reported: this many search warrants, this many subpoenas, and so on. But there are also requests that are the opposite of public: National Security Letters. These come with built-in gag orders: it’s illegal to even say that you’ve received one, much less what it was about. There’s a loophole, though: even the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act can’t prevent you from saying you’ve never received an NSL. And Reddit’s 2014 transparency report : That language, however, was gone from 2015’s report. Without breaking the law, Reddit has announced that it has received an NSL or similar such order. This disappearing language is what’s known as a “warrant canary,” a sort of one-time warning that yes, the feds are playing hardball. (Strictly speaking this one could be called an NSL canary, but the phrase isn’t quite as clicky.) The absence of the NSL language was quickly noticed, and user slyf pointed it out. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, AKA spez, responded in short order, saying that “even with the canaries, we’re treading a fine line.” Later in the same thread, in response to speculation that an NSL had been received, he added that “I’ve been advised not to say anything one way or the other.” That’s as much of a confirmation as anyone is likely to offer without calling down the black helicopters. That’s not to say Reddit caved — or didn’t cave — to the feds. NSLs can be fought, and even , but until a court decides the letter is no longer binding, it’s a serious crime to even talk about it. Reddit has publicly joined companies like Twitter, Automattic, and Google in asserting that it is a first amendment right to be able to report having received an NSL. Several of those companies recently in a lawsuit filed by Twitter against the U.S. government — specifically, in response to the government’s motion to dismiss the case. The whole business is shady and a bit confusing, but with luck greater and more comprehensive transparency is forthcoming — or perhaps a leak on one side or the other will force the issue. As for the rest of the Reddit report, the general trend is upwards: 98 requests for user information, up from 55 the previous year, though a similar amount (about 60 percent) were accommodated. A handful of requests from various countries to take down posts, to which Reddit responded largely by blocking those posts from being viewed by users in those countries. Of DMCA takedown notices there were many — too many, it seems, for Reddit to list properly. The report only notes that (as an example of the volume it was dealing with) it received 190 takedown requests during January and February, and complied with 5 percent of them. Spez also fielded a few questions regarding Reddit privacy policies, confirming that yes, they occasionally read private messages when there are reports of spam or threats of violence. He also gave some poignant advice on how to respond when users tell mods to take down posts or comments: |
Snapchat was wonky or down for some but it’s back now | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | Snapchat wasn’t working correctly for many users, with Stories failing to load or snaps not sending. [Update 5:10pm PST – Snapchat appears to be back for most users after several hours on the fritz{ The outage comes just days after Snapchat released its big that brought stickers and other new features, but possibly more traffic than the service could handle. showed an increase in problem reports over the past few hours. Users also appeared to be having trouble logging in or connecting to the server. In some cases, some features worked while others didn’t, and some users were unaffected. A live outage map shows particularly high reports of Snapchat having been down in North America and Europe, though that’s also where Snapchat is most popular. Now that Snapchat is back, check out my video rant about why it’s no fad, plus a demo of the new features. |
Sorry, Oculus, but HoloLens gets my money | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | The battle between headsets you strap to your heads is being brought to a rolling boil this week, as Microsoft’s and both start shipping to customers. Being the lover of cutting-edge tech that I am, you’d expect I’d be in lust with both technologies, but it turns out that isn’t the case. HoloLens did something to me that Oculus never managed to: It made me think I was leaping into the future with glee and great abandon. The two devices are similar in that they’re both screens you attach to your head like a Frankensteinian experiment in man-meets-machine. That is where the similarities end. Most importantly, there are very different use cases for both: Oculus’ virtual reality (VR) is for storytelling experiences, gaming and, perhaps, if you feel particularly iron-stomached, or two. A HoloLens is like wearing a heavy set of sunglasses attached to a headband. Which is why it’s really curious that it’s so easy to forget they are even there. HoloLens, on the other hand, is the poster child for augmented reality (AR). It’s essentially a more high-tech version of where Google Glass crashed and burned — but instead of trying to forcibly insert a computer where it doesn’t belong (ahem), the HoloLens has a slightly different remit: Unlike the ill-fated Glass, it’s not a wear-it-all-the-time piece of kit. While the $600 Oculus Rift is far cheaper than the $3,000 HoloLens Dev Kit, the latter has a full computer built into the headset. Conversely, Rift needs to be tethered to a beefy gaming computer that can do the heavy lifting on the graphics side. You don not to spend the $2,400 difference on the computer to drive the Rift, , and at that point, the price difference seems moot. It’s not even sort of about the money, however; the biggest problem I have with Oculus is that I just don’t see the point. Watching a movie is a shared experience, which is lost when you have a mask strapped around your face. I haven’t the time for gaming. And while show that there is definitely something to be gained from VR, it’s not something I’d necessarily seek out — and definitely not if I have to drop $2,500 or more on a kit in order to explore it. It was against this backdrop that I let someone jack me into the matrix with a HoloLens hanging off my face: I fully expected to hate every second of it, but I was wrong. And I was hooked. Hooked beyond words. This is tech that makes sense for people who don’t want to lock themselves away from the world, who want technology to enhance, improve and, indeed, augment their lives. The Microsoft Hololens demos showed that AR can be social, collaborative, and in the real world. More importantly, you forget that you’re even wearing it. There’s no way of explaining how fast you’ll get used to the world suddenly having a layer of data over it. Within 20 minutes of putting the device on for the first time, it felt completely normal. Natural, even. Those little red things are speakers, pointing at your ears. Not wearing earbuds or earphones helps the device stay curiously unobtrusive. At one point, there were six of us, all wearing HoloLenses, interacting with the same 3D model and each other in real time. One of Microsoft’s babysitters walked over and asked, “So, where is the Energy Portal.” I looked over at him, frowned and was wondering what the hell was wrong with him. “It is I snapped, pointing. It was at that point that I caught myself, realizing he wasn’t wearing a HoloLens, and so obviously had no way of seeing where the portal was. That was the exact moment that I realized why AR makes so much more sense than VR: Being in the real world is natural, even if it has digital doo-dahs floating about in your field of vision. Being in a fully artificial world isn’t. One of the challenges HoloLens is going to have to continue to face is that when you’re wearing one and interacting with things that nobody can see, you look like someone who’s three marbles short of a full set of wits. Take the HoloLens demonstration at the Build conference, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NQ39e4fdoo Yes, the people wearing the HoloLenses in the video look like absolute imbeciles. There’s no way around that, but once you’ve tried it, you won’t how you look. A crucial thing to keep in mind is that, unlike Google Glass, this device isn’t really designed to be worn when you’re out among people: That’s not what it is for. You wear it while interacting with the real world in controlled settings, such as an office or — more likely — a design studio. To me, the magic of this technology is at the intersection where the real world and the augmented world meet. I have no interest in completely immersing myself in a faraway wonder world, but a piece of kit that can change the world around me, today, for $3,000? Sign me up. At Build, the future just sort of leapt out at me, unexpected and unannounced. I’m sold. VR is nifty and all, but I still haven’t had anyone give me a compelling explanation for what it is . AR is a very different story, and I can’t wait to see what the next chapter brings. |
This neural network ‘hallucinates’ the right colors into black and white pictures | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | The machine overlords of the future may now, if it pleases them, eliminate all black and white imagery from the history of their meat-based former masters. All they’ll need is this system from Berkeley computer scientist Richard Zhang, which allows a soulless silicon sentience to . It uses what’s called a convolutional neural network (several, actually) — a type of computer vision system that mimics low-level visual systems in our own brains in order to perceive patterns and categorize objects. is probably the most well-known example of one. Trained by examining millions of images of— well, just about everything, Zhang’s system of CNNs recognizes things in black and white photos and colors them the way it thinks they ought to be. Grass, for instance, has certain features — textures, common locations in images, certain other things often found on or near it. And grass is usually green, right? So when the network thinks it recognizes grass, it colors that region green. The same thing occurs for recognizing certain types of butterflies, building materials, flowers, the nose of a certain breed of dog and so on. Examples of Zhang’s colorizing process compared with other systems and the original color versions (right). , Zhang describes this recognition and color assignment process as “hallucination,” and really, the term is apt: It’s seeing things that aren’t actually there. It’s actually quite similar to the way we humans would colorize something: We compare the shapes and patterns to what we’ve seen before and pick the most appropriate crayon (or hex value). The results are naturally a mixed bag (as the results of AI systems frequently are), and the idea of colorizing Ansel Adams’ photos is repellent to me (they look like Thomas Kinkades; Henri Cartier-Bresson likewise fares poorly), but really, it’s hard to call them anything but a success. Zhang and his colleagues tested the system’s efficacy by asking people to choose between two color versions of a monochrome image: the original and the fruit of the neural network’s labor. People actually chose the latter 20 percent of the time, which doesn’t sound like much, but is in fact better than previous colorization efforts. The paper has plenty of technical info, but also lots of interesting examples of how and when the system failed, when it was most and least convincing, and all that. Check it out (and some of the other papers it references) for fresh conversation fodder to share with your computer vision expert friends this weekend. |
Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman on getting acquired by Microsoft | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | Microsoft in February its plans to acquire the cross-platform development platform ; the deal closed about two weeks ago. Even though the ink on the contracts has barely dried, Microsoft already made Xamarin the center of attention at its annual Build developer conference today by its plans to roll Xamarin into every Visual Studio tier, including the free Community Edition version. After the keynote, I had a chance to sit down with both Xamarin CEO and co-founder and Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Visual Studio to talk about the acquisition. Xamarin and Microsoft always felt like natural allies. Over the years, the companies’ relationship only grew stronger, so the acquisition didn’t really come as a major surprise. As Friedman, who co-founded Xamarin with Miguel de Icaza, told me, the acquisition discussions with Microsoft started in earnest around the middle of November 2015 and he signed the term sheet in the early morning on January 1. Over the course of the discussion, Friedman and Liuson stressed Microsoft’s support for open source as one of the reasons Xamarin is such a good fit for the company. “That attracted us a lot,” Friedman said. “Satya [Nadella] and Scott [Guthrie] have made huge changes and the vibe, the personality, the perspective, the energy of Microsoft are so exciting to us right now. That was a huge attraction to us — being part of this new Microsoft, being part of this recognition that we are in a multi-platform world, this cloud revolution.” While Xamarin long stressed that it wasn’t really for sale, Friedman argued that what also attracted him in this deal was the ability to reach more developers. “We had a very healthy, exciting, stand-alone business that we loved running, but when you have the opportunity to make your code open source and free and available to hundreds of times as many developers, it’s hard to pass that up,” he said. He also stressed that after having met Nadella, Liuson and other members of Microsoft’s executive team during an offsite meeting a few weeks ago, he felt even better about the acquisition. “I was really surprised, to be honest,” he said. “Even already having this optimistic viewpoint that lead me to doing the acquisition, I wasn’t expecting the level of talent, passion, optimism, cooperation, and enthusiasm that I saw among Satya’s and Scott’s top team.” He also noted that he doesn’t think “the public reputation of Microsoft, even though it has improved, has caught up to the reality of what’s going on inside Microsoft.” Judging by Friedman’s comments, Microsoft decided to add Xamarin to Visual Studio — including the free Community Edition — pretty early on in the discussions, and Friedman noted that this only helped make the deal more appealing to the Xamarin team, which will, with a few exceptions, make the transition to Microsoft even as Xamarin keeps its SF headquarters. So what’s on the roadmap for Xamarin going forward now that it has open sourced many of its tools and has officially become part of the Visual Studio ecosystem? Friedman and Liuson told me that a deeper integration with Visual Studio (which already features lots of Xamarin support) is an obvious next step, but they also stressed that Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing services and its DevOps services are other integration points for Xamarin, as well. “Azure is an incredible service,” Friedman said. “We will provide deeper integration between Xamarin and Azure so developers can more easily build cloud-connected apps. You want a consumer-grade frontend and a scalable, global cloud backend and we now have the pieces to make that happen.” Xamarin’s , which lets developers remotely test their apps on a bank of hardware devices, also makes for an easy product to integrate into the likes of Visual Studio and Microsoft’s DevOps and application life-cycle services. Friedman noted that the company plans to continue to invest in the service (though he hinted that the name may change over time). With Xamarin Studio for the Mac, Microsoft now owns a Mac-based IDE. When I asked Liuson about what the company’s plans are for that, she noted that Xamarin is a powerful brand and that the company plans to stick with it, “but over time, we’ll see what happens.” And, as Friedman added, “If Xamarin could over time earn the honor of representing Visual Studio on Mac, that would be great.” At this point, though, it looks like the Xamarin brand isn’t going away anytime soon. Friedman also tells me that Xamarin will expand its Xamarin University offering, which offers both live and online training for developers, to “cover the rest of the mobile stack.” In addition, he noted the company hopes it’ll also be able to foster an even more active open source developer community under Microsoft. “It’s rare that you get an acquisition to align all of the four stakeholders in the company. For us, that’s our investors, employees, products and customers,” Friedman said. “For each of those, you see huge advantages — and now that the plot has been unveiled a little bit, you can see why this is so beneficial. For our customers, to have Microsoft standing behind the product upon which they are basing their mobile strategy is a huge benefit.” Both Xamarin and Microsoft are obviously still in their honeymoon phase, but given that the two companies already worked so closely together before, they both clearly knew what they were getting themselves into. Friedman and Liuson seem extremely optimistic about how well the merger will play out and so far, it looks like it will also benefit both Xamarin’s and Visual Studio’s users in the long run. |
DraftKings and FanDuel strike a deal with NCAA to suspend all college contests | Fitz Tepper | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | DraftKings and FanDuel, the two largest providers of daily fantasy sports in the U.S., have simultaneously announced that they reached a deal with the NCAA to temporarily suspend college sports on both platforms after tournament ends. While the contests weren’t necessarily a large portion of each platform (NCAA contests constitute just ), they didn’t sit well with the NCAA, who are traditionally very protective of using student athletes for profitable purposes. For example, the league doesn’t allow for-profit entertainment companies like EA Sports to use individual athletes’ names in their video games. Plus, having cash prizes depend on the performance of student athletes undoubtedly led to ethical considerations as NCAA athletes aren’t allowed any form of payment or sponsorship while they are still enrolled in school. In statements given to TechCrunch, both companies expressed they hope to work with various state legislatures and let them decide how to define the future of daily fantasy sports. As a refresher, Virginia recently became the first state to , and more than 20 others are in the process of writing similar legislation. In the below statement, DraftKings reiterated their hope for a legislative-based solution: “We have decided to indefinitely suspend college sports on the DraftKings platform after the conclusion of this week’s college basketball games. There are many passionate DFS players who love college sports, but after a productive dialogue with the NCAA, their member institutions, and lawmakers, we feel that this is the best path forward for the industry at this time. We continue to see tremendous support for fantasy sports in legislatures across the country, with nearly 30 states advancing thoughtful and appropriate regulations for fantasy play. As an industry leader in consumer protections, we will work closely with the NCAA and lawmakers on a carve-out for collegiate sports in any proposed regulatory framework moving forward. DraftKings is committed to ensuring that fantasy sports players are able to continue to play these skill-based contests that bring them closer to the sports that they love.” – DraftKings Similarly, FanDuel noted that states like Indiana have already passed sports laws with carve-outs barring amateur sports contests, and expressed hope that other states will follow. The NCAA’s home state of Indiana and our home state of New York were two of the first states to take up this debate. Indiana has passed and New York is considering fantasy sports laws that protect consumers, protect the right to play fantasy sports, AND contain carve-outs stating fantasy contests involving amateur sports are barred in their states. The Massachusetts Attorney General issued regulations with a similar carve-out. We supported all of these efforts, and going forward we will actively support bills containing the same provisions. We are pleased that we can work together with the NCAA on smart regulations for the fantasy sports industry. – FanDuel Spokesperson |
Tesla will unveil the more affordable Model 3 tonight. Here’s where to watch. | Greg Kumparak | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | After two years of rumors and rampant speculation, Tesla will unveil the Model 3 tonight. At a target price of $35,000 before government incentives, the Model 3 is meant to be Tesla’s first car affordable by those of us (read: most of us) who can’t drop $70-$100K on a Model S or $80-$130K for a Model X. Besides that price target, there’s not much else we know. No one outside of Tesla is even 100 percent certain what it looks like. Tonight that changes, and they’re streaming it all live. Care to follow along? In a nice change of pace from the industry norm, Tesla isn’t tucking the livestream away on some hard-to-find URL nested five clicks deep on their site, or making you dig around for it on Facebook. Instead, they’re throwing it right on their homepage, We’ll be at the event, bringing back the news as fast as we can — so tune in tonight for all the details. The unveiling is scheduled to kick off at 8:30pm Pacific… but Tesla things have a tendency to start a bit late, so plan accordingly. |
Flex is a tampon alternative you can wear during sex | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | Things can get messy if you have sex on your period, so many couples avoid it. But The Flex Company wants to replace outdated pads and tampons with a sleek, disc-shaped blood blocker. Flex can be worn during sex to prevent making a mess. The Flex discs are disposable, can be worn for up to 12 hours and even come in a stylish little packet. They’re doctor-approved to be hypoallergenic, BPA-free and they won’t cause toxic shock syndrome. Flex will open for pre-orders in April and ship in September. 20,000 people have already signed up to try it. Eventually they could be sold in stores, though the price isn’t public yet. For now, you can register on for a free sample. “Flex is so shockingly comfortable that women tell us they forget they’re on their period while they’re wearing it,” CEO Lauren Schulte says. Flex wasn’t planning its big media push until August, but I thought it was the stand-out company from the Y Combinator startup accelerator’s Fellowship Virtual Demo Day. The by Amplify.LA. In her pitch, Flex’s Schulte explains “We’ve built a product that allows couples to increase their opportunity to have sex by 23 percent. The great tragedy of people avoiding sex on their period is that this is really the time when women want it most.” That’s why 25 percent of its trial signups are from men! While TechCrunch’s female writers didn’t love how Flex’s marketing hinges on the idea that periods are gross, some said they’d try it. Flex will have to compete with SoftCups, a well-distributed brand with a similar product, though one that doesn’t focus on portability or sex. |
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Beatie Wolfe shows off her NFC-powered musical jacket | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | The days of CDs and vinyl might be (mostly) over, but singer-songerwriter is making music physical again, in a very literal way. Wolfe stopped by the TechCrunch New York office to show off her jacket designed by Mr. Fish, who also like David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Not only does the jacket look pretty spectacular — it also uses NFC technology, so someone can tap it with their phone (uh, if she’s wearing the jacket, maybe ask permission first) and bring up a page showcasing Wolfe’s new single “ .” She’s also turned her album into — tap your phone on a card and you can listen to one of the songs on the album. “I just wanted to bring back — or sort of revive — the best of that tangibility, that storytelling and that sense of ceremony that I experienced as a kid,” she said. “But make people that were streaming and downloading from iTunes and all of that, make them really want to engage with it.” |
Whistle’s ‘Fitbit for dogs’ acquired by Mars Petcare | Katie Roof | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | “Whistle is excited to join the Mars Petcare family. This opportunity connects the industry’s global and technology leaders, enabling a new era of pet care,” the company tells TechCrunch. “Mars Petcare and Whistle shared a core belief around the importance of pets in our lives, and we look forward to connecting nutrition, healthcare, and technology to improve the lives of pets and their families.” Mars owns popular pet brands including Pedigree, Whiskas and Iams. Whistle’s GPS Pet Tracker makes it easier to keep tabs on your pet’s fitness, with a collar that monitors steps: Know if your dog walker gave Fluffy a good workout by checking in with Whistle’s connected app. Whistle’s activity trackers help you set your pet’s fitness goals, track progress and compare stats to other similar dogs. The location-sharing could also help you find your dog if it ever gets lost. Whistle itself has made some acquisitions, The team is based in San Francisco. |
How creative thinkers can thrive in a regulated industry | Elad Benjamin | 2,016 | 3 | 31 |
So you want to change the world and help people — and you’ve started a healthcare startup. You know it will take a great team to pull it off, and you’re starting to build the initial group that will mold the company’s DNA. You’re (hopefully) spending time thinking about the kind of people, culture and environment you want to permeate the office and define your young enterprise’s DNA. This article came about after reading by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg. In the book, Eric and Jonathan talk about the kind of talent, processes and culture that Google developed over time — with the sole purpose of attracting, motivating and retaining the best talent. As I read the book, I reflected on the differences between a consumer-focused technology company and an enterprise-focused healthcare company, and how those differences might affect the people and the processes needed to succeed. All (or most) tech startups look for the same kind of people Google does — extraordinarily smart and creative engineers who can take leaps, not just incremental steps forward. Reading the book, I noticed, however, stark differences between the two industries, which made me wonder — is it really the same type of smart-creatives? Or do adjustments need to be made — and if so, which ones? How do the differences in industries affect the culture and environment in a healthcare startup? How Google Works Google focused on building a product strategy based on technical insights — technical innovations that are significantly different and create a new experience for users (not just a faster horse…). While this is true for healthcare IT startups as well, I can’t help but think about the different path that is taken from development to commercialization. Healthcare products that have direct clinical impact are regulated by the FDA, which categorizes products according to the risk they pose to patients. For patients, that is good policy. Products are placed in low, medium or high-risk categories. However, nearly all new innovation carries more risk than existing technology. “De novo,” or completely new products, face an extremely high regulatory hurdle. Many companies don’t have the capital or time required to make it — . Therefore, the name of the game for many healthcare startups is “substantial equivalence.” If a company can show that its products are only better than an existing, approved product, and therefore pose no additional risk, the regulatory path becomes significantly easier, faster and cheaper. For some companies, that can mean the difference between life and end-of-cash death. They will choose to enter the market with a “watered down” product, gain credibility and clinical evidence and only then strengthen their regulatory claim. How does this affect people and culture? Have you tried telling a team of amazing data scientists and product mangers that has spent several months developing something that you need to claim it does the same thing as the product they wanted to replace? “Are you serious!? It’s not the same! It’s not even close — it can do so much more! Why bother with such high specifications in the first place? What good is it if we can’t say what it’s really capable of?” They understand the strategy. They understand it’s a small step on the way to bigger ones. But from an HR perspective, you need to manage expectations properly and hire engineers who have a longer-term view of technology and understand the specific constraints of the industry — without mounting frustration along the way. How Google Works This might be the greatest difference between the two industries. Everything in the medical field is about process. To be compliant with regulatory bodies, each product developed must have volumes of documentation accompanying it. Every version needs its own distinct documentation from start to finish, and every new capability added to a product must pass the regulatory filter. This dynamic completely changes the decision making process. If a new version exists, companies think long and hard about when to release it, and the resources it will take to do so. Requirements, QA, validation and test procedures need to be completed for every feature of every product. This also affects tolerance for failure. Google and many other consumer tech companies strive to succeed — or otherwise fail fast in order to reach product-market fit quickly. In healthcare, the time and cost associated with releasing a product and failing is significant, which adds a healthy dose of risk aversion to the product life cycle and planning. I once read with envy how Facebook engineers release multiple versions per day, and conduct QA on-the-fly as users encounter bugs in the product. What a difference in development philosophy! And that difference is felt daily. On the one hand, companies need to keep the innovative spirit of creative-thinkers alive — allowing them to continuously improve their product. On the other hand, they know most improvements will take many months to be implemented — and sometimes certain features might not be implemented in full! How Google Works It is very unwise (at least in my opinion) to develop a medical product without understanding how and to whom you plan to sell it. Pushing your company to create a great technological product without a discussion of how you will ultimately implement it in a real clinical setting is almost surely a fast road to failure. This dynamic requires a more methodical approach to product development, similar to “traditional” methods. It is difficult to “let the engineers loose” as many consumer-focused tech companies do. It is also very difficult to “bypass” the system (think Uber). The system — for better or worse — is rigged to ensure slow adoption, for patients’ sake. From an HR perspective, this means people who are more methodical in nature and can accept a different approach. They need to be comfortable with the pace of their industry, all the while seeing some of their friends working in very different consumer-oriented product companies. At the end, we circle back to the beginning. To build a great company, you need great people. But there are many different kinds of great people out there, and, as a healthcare company, no matter how ground-breaking and innovative, you need to make sure you’re hiring the of great people. The ones who are in it for the long term, who have the patience and maturity to understand that despite the technological edge they live on, they operate in . Healthcare is an industry that moves at a slower pace; it’s built on clinical evidence and quality of care, and is less influenced by hype or trends. Those are the smart-creatives who will take you forward and help you make a positive impact on the health of millions of people. |
Microsoft’s new tools let businesses integrate Skype into their own web and mobile apps | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | Following Microsoft today unveiled two more SDKs for its Skype platform that will allow businesses and application developers a way to integrate Skype’s capabilities into their own applications. On stage at its annual Build conference, the company took the wraps off two new toolkits for developers: the Skype Web SDK and the Skype for Business App SDK. Both have the similar goal of expanding the Skype experience more broadly, by allowing third parties to leverage Skype’s larger network and feature set. With the , Microsoft is providing businesses with a set of JavaScript Web APIs and HTML controls that allow developers to build real-time collaboration into their own apps. This includes things like presence, chat, audio and video, for example. The SDK can work within any client application running in a browser, such as Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari or Firefox. The Skype for Business App SDK, meanwhile, is designed to bring Skype into a business’s own apps running on iOS and Android. , this SDK is especially useful for what Microsoft calls “remote advisor experiences.” That means things like meetings between a mobile device user and someone in a remote location — like a doctor or a financial advisor, perhaps. The idea here is that you would launch the business’s app to make that connection, but Skype would power the communications that took place between the two parties. On stage, the company demonstrated how a business could use Skype’s new business-friendly toolsets by showing an application from , a service that lets you access doctors, pediatricians and therapists in a virtual environment. During the demo, you could see how a prospective patient could book, schedule, then connect with a doctor for a real-time chat right in a business’s own application. Skype’s familiar call and hang up buttons seemed to be the only indication that it was providing the connectivity functionality for the video chat. Microsoft also noted that its SDKs were HIPAA compliant, enabling secure conversations such as those that take place between a doctor and patient. Though not demoed, another company taking advantage of the new SDKs is Smartsheet, a cloud-based enterprise work management and collaboration solution. This company is creating an add-in for its cloud applications that lets teams see presence and engage in IM conversations related to the tasks and entries at hand. Effectively, with these SDK releases, Microsoft is taking the power of Skype’s backend and turning it into something that can now be embedded in applications across devices, including desktop and mobile, and web and native applications. However, the company didn’t answer several questions that these businesses would have, including things like whether licensing and server costs are involved, or whether the Skype SDKs would support the WebRTC standard, among other things. Microsoft says that if the company is licensed for Skype for Business Server or Skype for Business Online, then there are no additional costs for the use of the SDKs. In addition, it says that the Skype Web SDK will run in browsers supporting WebRTC. As part of this release it’s also previewing support for plug-in free audio and video calls to and from Skype for Business with Microsoft Edge. |
Apply now for Include Office Hours with Sequoia Capital | Samantha O'Keefe | 2,016 | 3 | 31 | TechCrunch Include are happening on April 15th! Bryan Schreier and Bill Coughran from will join TechCrunch to provide valuable advice and feedback to startups. Launched in 2014, Include is TechCrunch’s diversity program, aimed at facilitating opportunities for underrepresented groups in tech to take their startups to the next level. The Office Hours program is part of that effort. Once monthly, TechCrunch works with VC partners to provide feedback and advice to early-stage companies. To be considered for a meeting in our April session with Sequoia, by April 7th at 6pm PT. Underrepresented groups in tech include, but are not limited to, Black, Latino, Native American, LGBT and female founders. For our first session, we’d prefer teams that are based in the Bay Area, as Office Hours will be held at Sequoia’s office in Menlo Park. Future Office Hours will be hosted in San Francisco, as well as other startup hubs. Let’s learn more about our co-hosts. — Partner
Bryan works with consumer and enterprise software companies. He is a Director of AgilOne, Clever, Dropbox, Elevate, Good Eggs, Hearsay Social, Inkling, Qualtrics, Thanx, Thumbtack, TuneIn and VarageSale. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2008, Bryan was Google’s Senior Director of International Online Sales and Operations, where he oversaw advertising sales, operations and engineering across Europe, Asia and Latin America. He also launched Google’s European headquarters and was interim President of Sales in China. Prior to Google, Bryan served in Morgan Stanley’s Technology Investment Banking Group. Bryan has a Computer Science degree from Princeton University. — Partner
Known for his leadership of innovative teams, Bill works as a coach to founders to help them build technology-centric organizations. Previously, Bill was on the board of Clearwell (SYMC) and he currently serves as a Director of Altiscale, Blue Danube Systems, Cohesity, FireEye (FEYE) and Metanautix. Bill serves as a Board Observer at Avalanche Technology and Docker. Prior to joining Sequoia in 2011, Bill was SVP Engineering at Google, on the executive committee and advisor to the founders and Eric Schmidt. Before Google, Bill was co-founder and CEO of Entrisphere (ERIC). Earlier, he was VP of Bell Labs’ Computing Sciences Research Center where C, C++, Unix, Plan 9, and Inferno were created. Bill has held adjunct and visiting faculty roles at Stanford, Duke and ETH Zurich. Bill has a B.S. and M.S. in Math from Caltech and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford. We’re thrilled to have Sequoia Capital join us. If you’re interested in attending, by Thursday, April 7th. |
Sure, why not? FBI agrees to unlock iPhone for Arkansas prosecutor | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | The FBI, which just a few days ago was attempting to convince the country of its helplessness in the face of encrypted iPhones, has generously offered its assistance in unlocking an iPhone and iPod for a prosecutor in Arkansas, the Associated Press reports. TechCrunch has contacted the prosecutor’s office for details, which for the moment are thin on the ground — but the timing seems unlikely to be a coincidence. It was only Monday that the FBI announced it had after saying for months that it couldn’t possibly do so — and that Apple was endangering national security by refusing to help. The case is the alleged murder of a couple by two teenagers, and the prosecution on Tuesday received a postponement to the trial in order to request help in unlocking the iPhone and iPod — something the lawyers . Amazingly, the FBI agreed to help the very next day, Faulkner County Prosecuting Attorney Cody Hiland told the AP. Court documents indicate that a “letter to Snapchat,” 10 pages of emails, and over 100 pages of “Facebook records” were being entered into evidence, so the defendant’s digital footprint isn’t exactly a total blank. If the unlocking process being used by the FBI is so trivial that it can be offered on short notice to anybody asking nicely, that deeply contradicts the narrative the Justice Department has been building regarding the limitations of law enforcement in accessing encrypted phones. Again, the specific details of the devices (model, OS version, etc.) are unknown, as is the exact nature of the FBI’s offered assistance. Until the court, prosecutor’s office, or defender files or volunteers further information (and we’ll be asking), this is fairly up in the air. |
‘Ryan’s Law’ proposed to allow you to cancel Comcast online with one click | Matthew Panzarino | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | Today in local news, Los Angeles Assemblyman Mike Gatto has that would allow Californians to cancel their Internet or cable services online with ‘one click’. The bill, which has no official nickname but I am hereby dubbing ‘Ryan’s Law’ for reasons that will become apparent, takes the following stance: “AB 2867 allows Californians to conveniently unsubscribe from a service with a simple click of the mouse,” said Assemblyman Gatto. “It just makes sense, that if you are able to sign up for a service online, you should also be able to cancel it the same way.” Rapid advancements in technology grant consumers a wide variety of cable, internet and phone service products from which they may choose, and while companies make it simple to buy or upgrade services, a cancellation request is usually a prolonged ordeal where customers are sometimes pressured into extending their contracts. AB 2867 provides a convenient and consumer-friendly option for Californians to remove unwanted services without a long phone call. Sounds great. Cancelling services online can be a pill. Just ask , cited in the Assemblyman’s bill: In July 2014, Ryan Block, co-host of the MVP with Ryan & Peter Podcast, released an eight minute-clip of his phone call in which he attempted to disconnect his cable services over the phone. His cancellation attempts were repeatedly blocked by the telephone representative, culminating in a very frustrating 18-minute call – an experience that many consumers have encountered. These hassles have even generated a new industry, with startups offering to handle customer service issues on behalf of the consumer, for a fee. Mr. Block is even quoted in the press release announcing the bill! “Two years ago my wife and I called to cancel our service, and as is usually the case, that call was pretty unpleasant,” said Ryan Block. “This is why we’re so excited by Assemblyman Gatto’s bill, which would finally allow most customers to be able to cancel their service online, without having to talk to someone whose job is specifically to prevent you from canceling.” You may recall , which our own John Biggs described as “Kafka-esque”. During the 18-minute call, he encountered a mental barrier of brobdingnagian proportions as the rep contorted the exchange into every possible psychic shape that did not involve allowing him to cancel his service and switch to something that actually worked. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/158720628″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /] The call went, as the kids say, viral (though not on Snapchat, which was not yet hailed as our lord and Media Savior). The result is ‘Ryan’s Law’, which could have an enormous impact on the quality of life and mental health of every Californian citizen. Not bad for Block, who was previously the Editor in Chief of the publication Engadget, which currently squats, gargoyle like, 2 floors above the chair I occupy now. After selling startup GDGT to AOL and becoming a podcaster with the ability to warp the shape of State law with the power of complaint, Block went on to found a stealth startup which has to do with bots. Now, we have a new rallying cry: Indeed Assemblyman, indeed. |
Amateur astronomers catch Jupiter’s latest impact on video | Emily Calandrelli | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | This week, two amateur astronomers released footage of an impact event on Jupiter. The separate observations, one in Austria and one in Ireland, show a brief, small flash of light at the exact same time. Phil Plait, writer for Slate, the footage revealed “very strong evidence for an actual impact.” However, he noted that what kind of planetary object did the impacting was less clear; there’s not enough data at this point to determine whether the source was a comet or an asteroid. Amateur astronomer, Gerrit Kernbauer, was using a 20 cm in Mödling, Austria to observe Jupiter on March 17 . In the description of his video, Kernbauer stated that the “seeing” that particular night was not the best, so he hesitated in processing the videos at all. It wasn’t until 10 days later when he was looking through the footage that he found a strange bright light that had appeared for less and a second. “Seeing” is a term used by astronomers to describe the sky’s atmospheric conditions. Due to changing temperatures, wind patterns, and dust particles in the atmosphere, astronomers sometimes have a difficult time stably collecting the light from stars and other objects in the sky. When atmospheric conditions are unstable, astronomers will say there are “poor seeing conditions.” This effect is why stars often appear to “twinkle.” It’s also the reason why many observatories are built at high altitudes where the atmosphere is thinner and therefore the “seeing” is generally better. When Jupiter is visible in the sky, it’s a popular object for astronomers to watch. It’s so bright that you can often easily see it with your naked eye. But for someone to catch an impact event, you’ll need the right technology, experience, and a little bit of luck. Typically, one observation of this type of event would not be enough evidence to convince astronomers of an impact. That’s because a flash of light from a telescope’s image could also be caused by a technical error or perhaps something else in the telescope’s line of view. However, a second observer also happened to be taking a time-lapse video of Jupiter at the exact same time. John Mckeon, an amateur astronomer from Swords, Ireland, said on his YouTube video that “the original purpose of the imaging session was to get this time-lapse, with a happy coincidence of the impact in the second last capture of the night.” Before the small flash in the video, you can see other objects transiting across Jupiter. These are some of the largest of Jupiter’s 67 known moons including Io, Ganymede and Europa. As the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter is no stranger to impacts. The first time scientists witnessed a collision with the planet was back in 1994 when Jupiter was by the large comet, Shoemaker-Levy 9. The impact itself was on the far side of the planet as it faced the Earth, but once Jupiter rotated a bit scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to see the impact site that Shoemaker left behind. In recent years, scientists have caught Jupiter impacts in 2009, twice in 2010, and in 2012. In addition to the impacts scientists have identified on camera, there are many that they miss. If Jupiter is hit with a small impact on its far side, or if Jupiter is too close to the Sun, it’s unlikely that a scientist will notice them. While this month’s impact isn’t all that uncommon, it particularly special that it was discovered by amateur astronomers (albeit very skilled amateur astronomers with high quality equipment). As off-the-shelf astronomy technology increases in quality and decreases in cost, we can expect more observations like these to take place all over the world. With more people pointing their telescopes up at night, detections of Jupiter impacts are only to increase as time goes on. |
Dyson’s new purifier fan purportedly tackles the problem of home air quality | Stefan Etienne | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | “Fresh air” is a concept most often associated with the “great outdoors”. Dyson is looking to make your home nature fresh by ridding it of indoor pollutants with the Pure Cool Link purifier fan. Hopefully, the engineering that went into James Dyson’s new gadget is better than the branding. The company’s proposed ingenuity is that the Pure Cool Link is a smart device, equipped with a 360° Glass HEPA filter, with connectivity via the Dyson Link app for iOS or Android. Users will be able to monitor interior and exterior air quality (via data), while also adjusting the settings on the fan or keeping history on the environment. For those who lead busy lives (or just aren’t into constantly monitoring air quality), the Pure Cool Link also has an auto mode available, which activates the purifier at different times in order to combat fluctuating oxygen quality. Dyson also claims their purifier removes 99.97% of pollutants and allergens from the air — we would definitely need to test that. The bladeless fan and air purifier goes on sale today via direct and partner retailers for $499; indeed, clean interior air can now be considered the by-product of (working) technology. It’s worth noting that similar offerings from competitors are considerably less expensive, like Coway’s air purifier ($250), and . So, there is that to consider. |
Innovation Act might be dead, but innovation lives on | G. Nagesh Rao | 2,016 | 3 | 30 |
As a former patent examiner, I recognize that the patent system, in its purest form, should protect and incentivize innovation through a limited-term contract, offering exclusive monopoly rights covering a technology, product or design element. In practice, it’s much uglier, and by no means did the Founding Fathers intend for patents to be utilized toward incremental monopolization ploys, but rather a means to serve the public as an incentive to share knowledge for the progress and benefits of science and commerce. And let’s face it, that description wasn’t the sexiest. Though the next wave of patent reform legislation may be tabled for now, if not dead entirely, steps can be taken to better apply the policies we have, thanks to the (AIA), and to ensure dated policies are functional in the new digital age. Complex disputes, such as many patent infringement claims, should seemingly require a foundational technological expertise to resolve. As AIA has sought to rectify some of these disputes through the extension of the allowance for pre- and post-grant challenges to applications, issues are still often laid at the feet of judges and juries with limited technical expertise, and the consequences are very real. In a recent , the race for control has emerged between “Big Banks” and Silicon Valley in the controversial “Business Methods” patent rights. This has resulted in a showdown creating an environment ripe for abuse and confusion that could potentially impact the third-party’s willingness to challenge patent applications. Application challenges frequently come in the form of “prior art,” which is any published evidence that the patent application covers a design or technology that is simply not new or has already been patented by another party. Prior art can come in the form of existing patents, a previous illustration from a book or even an image from a television program which aired previously. On one side of the equation, patent examiners are tasked with the often-unappreciated job of interpreting and evaluating patent applications — trust me, it can be tough and grueling. So it’s no surprise that some applicants often use vague language in their applications to avoid tipping their hands to competitors. Examiners must dig through these cryptic explanations and illustrations to not only decipher what, exactly, is at the heart of a claim, but also to determine whether the claim actually demonstrates “newness” above existing patents. This is done by reviewing prior art in a limited timeframe — an average of 20 hours — from the start to finish of a determination. There’s also the challenge of patent limits. Patents frequently cover complicated functionality (technology) or design elements, and, as a result, identifying what’s being patented requires a lot of information about what isn’t. For example, getting a patent on the cord that connects a receiver to the console of a rotary phone might require a great deal of detail about the intricacies and inner workings that make the technology work. As devices get more complex, so does the information about what goes into them. As , it’s critical for the technology industry and courts not only to get the facts straight on a patent dispute, but also to comprehend what the legal issues are from an infringement perspective; that is, to understand what is truly being claimed when a patent is violated. Considering the rapid explosion of technology in recent years, it’s not hard to imagine just what a Herculean task patent examiners face and why some applications are wrongly approved. In 2014, more than patent applications were filed. A singular smartphone typically contains more than individual patents alone, so dispute is commonplace. But even when the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recognizes a mistake and invalidates a patent, there is no guarantee those rights won’t still be leveraged against the holder’s competitors. For example, in the high-profile case between Apple and Samsung, the court awarded Apple more than half a billion dollars in restitution for infringement on a set of patents, including one that has been invalidated since. That case hinged on design patent infringement, which allows for a remedy of disgorgement of “total profits,” damages from the entire product which was deemed infringing. The patent only covered design features, like the rounded rectangle shape. Even though the USPTO has since invalidated that patent, stating it was wrongly issued in the first place; Samsung still had to pay up. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court granted review of the case in relation to the “total profits” issue, and we can now expect the Court to offer clarity and establish precedent for design patent remedies. This is not just about a case between two big companies; unfortunately, this problem may be bigger as Non-Practicing Entities (NPEs), sometimes called “trolls,” have taken notice. Recently, NPEs like VirnetX and Intellectual Capital Consulting, Ltd. (ICC) have companies like Cisco, Microsoft, Apple, LG, Sony, Samsung, BMW, General Motors, Hyundai, Volkswagen and other major electronics and auto manufacturers for allegedly infringing on their patent portfolios. For instance, ICC sued many of those companies for infringement of its 2003 utility patent covering a watch that allows users to remotely start cars. Keep in mind this watch exists only in the patent and hasn’t even been manufactured. The patent troll’s to Samsung even included infringement claims over design-patent applications, in addition to the utility claims, specifically citing the total profits awarded in the Apple case for design-patent infringement. Though the technology for the “smartwatch” entered the marketplace well after the 2003 utility patent was granted, even if eventually invalidated (possibly through presenting the as evidence of prior art), those targeted companies are currently facing litigation and potential damages. I have seen this same type of abuse happen to small, promising, innovative companies, and it’s a sad indictment of the current process when some of the most impressive innovations are legal maneuvers to game weaknesses in the current system rather than groundbreaking new products. In my career as a patent examiner, many of the patents that moved forward succeeded on a technicality, not because they showcased groundbreaking innovation. Correcting that problem, and getting the patent system back to driving creativity, will require more than a legislative fix — not that we should hold our breath. The Supreme Court’s decision to review the Apple design patent ruling could potentially lead to a recalibration of design patent damages in cases of infringement, a chance to better align our policies with modern products often containing thousands of patents. This could provide more clarity through precedent and limit the incentives for would-be patent abusers seeking total profits with questionable patents. But this alone will not correct the course. The USPTO has and should continue to refine the patent examination process and reduce the granting of weak or invalid patents. Government and court action, however, won’t be enough. Companies must resist the temptation to sue first and negotiate later; it’s time to take attorneys off speed dial. The positive impact of innovation typically relies on collaboration, particularly among high-tech companies producing complex devices. Infringement suits are frequently levied against suppliers and between licensing partners. The result of the seemingly perpetual barrage of lawsuits slows innovation through gridlock and a hesitancy to bring new products to market for fear of lawsuit liability, which can be crippling and in the cutting edge. The economic benefits of innovation are closely tied to evolving technology and demand for the new, faster and more affordable. Without cooperation, however, the status quo will reign over creativity, and the technology economy — and all those who depend on it — will continue to suffer. |
Teardown of Oculus Rift finds good design that’s somehow relatively easy to repair | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | When a new category of gadget appears, it’s understandable when the vanguard devices aren’t the most well designed, or are resistant to disassembly and repair. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case with the — to be an elegant piece of engineering that doesn’t punish the user with exotic screw types or tamper-evident seals. The Oculus Rift CV1 (consumer version one, don’t you know) is a massive improvement from the versions that I’ve tried — the early prototype years back (swathed in gaff tape) and the Crystal Cove milestone device. The teardown bears that out in a number of ways. Importantly, the pieces users are most likely to want to swap out — headphones and facepad — are easily removed, making custom replacements a distinct possibility. Deeper inside, the custom display and optical setup Oculus has created is shown for all to admire. The aspherical fresnel lenses and dual 456ppi OLED displays are cunningly designed to make you perceive an image just centimeters from your face as an endless landscape with infinite depth. Well, that’s the idea anyway — it’s up to the software engineers and environment designers to finish the job. There are lots of small solutions to fit different-sized heads, accommodate imperfect eyeballs, and generally make things as comfortable as possible for as many people as possible. Industrial designers will surely nod and stroke their beards or beardless chins upon observing some of these nicely turned mechanisms and space-saving tricks. iFixit’s repairability score of 7 reflects the fact that not every part can be easily replaced or serviced, though the most easily damaged or worn out are. Kudos to Oculus for putting together a device that embraces both ergonomics and accessibility. |
Here’s what happened at Microsoft’s Build keynote | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | The event wasn’t quite Steve Ballmer-style level awesome, but this year’s Build is showing that Microsoft is making true on its promise of kicking its support for multiple platforms up to the next level. Can’t get enough? Don’t miss . |
Sat-nav? More like stab-nav: RedZone routes you around the shady part of town | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | Most mapping companies are pretty good at getting you from point A to point B. They usually optimize for the quickest or shortest route, but rarely take into account the risks of navigating the shady end of town. , an iOS app launched today, adds a soupçon of street smarts to your navigatory efforts. Yeah, this is going to make me feel really good about moving to Oakland. Thanks, RedZone. When you’ve lived in a place for a while, you know that sometimes it’s easier to go a couple of blocks out of your way to avoid that smelly street, those pesky teenagers or that place that seems to have a lot of shootings. If you’re new in town, however, you don’t have that luxury; that’s where RedZone comes in. The app maps out its eponymous “red zones;” those parts of town with a high concentration of crime. The data in the app is in part crowdsourced, and in part obtained from existing sources of data, providing a comprehensive crime map using geo-fencing technology that combines crime data from federal, state and local enforcement agencies, news outlets and real-time crowdsourcing, as well as more than 1,400 data sources. The RedZone team claims this makes them “the most comprehensive crime map database in the world.” “We believe that RedZone’s innovative technology will allow the average person to be more aware of his or her surroundings — in real time — and will enable the user to share information with others in communities all over the world,” said , RedZone CEO and founder. When using the app to navigate, pins appear along your route signifying where thefts or violent crimes have occurred in the last three months, enabling you to avoid the areas in question. The app launched today for , and there’s an Android version in the pipeline. |
Scientists create living ‘insect-computer hybrid’ with user-adjustable speed and gait | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | Circuit diagram for the cybrid beetle. “Nature’s ready-made robot platforms.” That’s how a new paper from researchers at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University describe insects — it’s excellent shorthand for the level of “playing god” we have attained, whether you find it fascinating or abhorrent. Of course, aside from simply demonstrating man’s mastery over creation, this type of work is immensely important in fields ranging from entomology and neuroscience to prosthetics engineering. The paper, , describes a system for controlling an insect nervous system that goes considerably beyond the likes of and other, more scholarly efforts. “To the best of our knowledge, this paper presents the first demonstration of living insect locomotion control with a user-adjustable walking gait, step length and walking speed,” reads the abstract. Previous work has created cockroaches and spiders that can be spurred into motion and even steered, but using a more high-level style of control: inducing what amounts to an irresistible urge to walk forward, rather than causing limbs to move of their own accord, style. The new study successfully demonstrates the latter, though in a somewhat limited fashion. The remote-controlled beetle takes a (carefully measured) step. The insect is a giant flower beetle, ; its huge body makes attaching leads easier (just try it on ). The team first closely observed the muscles and tension patterns involved in various types of movement using motion capture and good old dissection, then wired up those muscles and stimulated them with pulse-width modulated signals generated on a nearby (but not on-beetle) microcontroller. Only the front two legs were wired for the purposes of this experiment, which limited the types of locomotion available, but the researchers note that two-legged gaits do occur naturally in hexapod creatures. The process of innervating the leg muscles with preset rhythms was highly successful, write the researchers, and the results advance the state of knowledge in the more traditional fields of insect behavior and anatomy, as well as showing the viability of this technique in the creation of an “insect-computer hybrid robot.” Such chimerae have numerous advantages over man-made robots of a similar size and build, which the researchers list with relish — you can almost hear the pens scraping on grant requests to investigate things like using insect legs instead of 3-D printed ones, or powering the hybridizing implants via energy harvesting in the animal itself. It’s creepy, sure. But it’s also deeply fascinating and, with a little more work, eminently practical. Research is already underway to equip cockroaches with directional microphones and tracking units, allowing them to skitter through a disaster area, compelled artificially to move toward the voices of trapped humans. And why deploy a $10,000 drone when a dragonfly with a $100 cybridizing backpack tapping into its nervous system will do? No doubt the latter possibility is attractive to deep-pocketed funding agencies like DARPA, which is why they are almost certainly already writing checks to those pursuing it and options like it. Incidentally, , by Feng Cao, Chao Zhang, Hao Yu Choo and Hirotaka Sato, is very readable, even without much technical knowledge — check it out and be amazed. |
Branch.co raises $9.2 million to bring financial services where banks don’t go | Lora Kolodny | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | San Francisco-based , or Branch.co, raised $9.2 million to bring digital financial services to mobile phone users in Sub-Saharan Africa. led the Series A round. Branch’s free-to-download Android app is a kind of “branchless bank for the next generation,” says founder and CEO Matt Flannery. The app asks users for permission to access and analyze data stored in their phones, like how much money they spend each month on a mobile plan, or who they call most often. From this data, Branch.co learns and predicts who is likely to be a good borrower, and can give users a credit line from $2.50 to $500 in about 10 seconds. The app works without asking users for a credit history like they’d need to get a credit card from a traditional bank. Branch.co employs a team of six data scientists and engineers in San Francisco, with a larger team of 30 employees in Nairobi, Kenya. Its app is gaining popularity with people who are sole proprietors and entrepreneurs, especially farmers, drivers and merchants, Mr. Flannery said, who can borrow as little as $2 up to a few hundred dollars to repay within a few days or a few weeks. Previously, Flannery co-founded and was Chief Executive Officer of the non-profit lending platform Flannery said he chose to create Branch.co as a for-profit business because philanthropic fundraising can be a huge distraction for tech companies. And top engineering talent is attracted to organizations that offer competitive salaries and benefits, unusual for a non-profit. “Our service is already reaching the middle class in Kenya,” Flannery said, “But I’m building this with the intention that it will serve everyone much the way that Twitter started out as a thing that people used at South by Southwest, but ended up playing a big role in the Arab Spring.” The Series A investment marks two firsts for Andreessen Horowitz: It’s the first deal managed by General Partner Alex Rampell since he joined the firm, and the fund has never backed a U.S.-based company that serves Sub-Saharan Africa as its primary market. Rampell said, “Lots of entrepreneurs try to do things with financial services for un-banked or under-banked people in the U.S. and Western Europe, but this need is nowhere near what it is in the developing world.” Even with apps like Square, Venmo, Apple Pay or Tilt available domestically, less than one-third of smartphone users in the U.S. said in a survey published last year by the Federal Reserve ( ) that they made a payment via mobile phone. By contrast, a majority of people who have mobile phones in Sub-Saharan Africa make payments with them as a going concern, especially via remittance platforms like M-Pesa. Plus, smartphone adoption is on a meteoric rise there. estimates Sub-Saharan Africa will add more than 400 million new smartphone connections by 2020, bringing the installed base to more than half a billion at that point. Andreessen Horowitz was joined in the Series A investment by Branch.co’s earlier seed backers, and Flannery plans to use the funding on hiring and to roll out Branch.co in and beyond Kenya. |
Citizen scientists, you can now DIY your own DNA analysis with Bento Lab | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | Want to know if you have the “athlete gene” or if you’re actually related to the weirdos who claim you as a family member? Get your collection tubes ready, citizen scientists, DIY DNA analysis kit is here and ready for the in-home lab. Normally you’d order a kit somewhere like 23andMe, spit in a tube and mail it off for results in six to eight weeks. However, the London-based Bento Lab claims to be the first DIY DNA lab you can use to test anywhere. It’s small enough to fit in a backpack and can analyze DNA from saliva, hair, animal tissue and even beer or wine. How it works: You collect a sample and place into the centrifuge in the middle of the product for DNA extraction. A PCR machine on the right-hand side then copies the genes and a gel unit allows you to then visualize the DNA. The type of equipment needed is usually very expensive and requires DNA experts to run the various machines, but the Bento Lab is roughly the cost of a PC at $793 USD — affordable enough to test a variety of products that could cost hundreds of thousands to farm out to a lab service. Bento Lab is on Kickstarter and has already more than doubled its crowdfunding goal, with 22 days to go, and the team behind it has support from the U.K.’s Royal Academy of Engineering, Makerversity, Imperial College SynbiCITE and UCL Advances. The lab includes the Bento Lab kit, as well as pipettes, reagents, cotton swabs for collection, an instruction booklet and a connected community. Bento Lab also mentioned creating an app to connect citizen scientists and allow the sharing of research and discoveries in the future. Some of the suggested experiments you can run on Bento Lab include: The personalized lab has already been used in beta testing all across the world. Find out a bit more about this cool DIY genetics lab by watching the video below: |
Imgur’s Sarah Schaaf on building online communities | Megan Rose Dickey | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | This week on Bullish, I had the pleasure of sitting down with the queen of Imgur, a.k.a. Sarah Schaaf, head of community at Imgur. We talked about IRL communities versus digital communities, what it takes to build and sustain virtual communities and the role these places have in our society. “At this point, people are finding their people and finding their homes online,” Schaaf said. “Online communities give people a place where they can be vulnerable or where they can information share with like-minded people, and it’s sort of a place where maybe they haven’t found that in real life, so they’re able to identify online a little bit better.” With online communities, people from all different walks of life are able to connect over both shared and differing opinions. That means these types of communities can easily go in either a positive or negative direction, or both, depending on the day. “It’s definitely important to have a vision for your community as you’re creating it,” Schaaf said. “If you don’t want it to be a place for harassment, you should set guidelines and be the change you want to see in your community.” Scroll up to the top to watch the full interview. |
Quora’s first acquisition is Arab Spring instigator’s Q&A site Parlio | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | “Ex-con” isn’t normally something you find on a founder’s resume. But Google employee Wael Ghonim went to jail for sparking the Egyptian Revolution. Now he might be wearing some golden handcuffs instead, as just became ‘s first . Parlio’s goal was to spread knowledge — a similar objective to Quora. But rather than focusing on canonical answers like its acquirer, Parlio sought to host civil discussions that let people hear both sides of an argument and come to their own conclusions. Parlio also hosts dedicated Q&As with experts and public figures similar to . Ghonim explains the motive behind Parlio, saying “We were concerned about how today’s social media experiences are designed to favor broadcasting over engagement, posts over discussions and shallow comments over deep conversations.” Now Ghonim and the rest of his founding team will be joining Quora. Users won’t be able to post on Parlio any more starting today, but all published content will live on, and may be republished on Quora. Members can download their content for the next 30 days. Ghonim entered the spotlight in 2011 after using social media to call fellow Egyptians to protest in the streets. He’d previously started a Facebook Page called “We Are All Khaled Saeed” in support of a man tortured to death by the nation’s police. After using the Page to organize rallies against President Hosni Mubarak, he was secretly imprisoned, and became a hero to the movement upon his release. Back in the US, Ghonim founded Parlio in 2014 with from Betaworks, Founder Collective, Marissa Mayer, Wesley Chan, and other angels. Parlio has lit up recently with discussion of the , , ISIS, and Cuba. You can watch an interview with Ghonim and TechCrunch’s Sarah Buhr below. Parlio’s team could help Quora figure out how to encourage participation from people who might not necessarily have definitive answers to its questions. Making Quora more approachable for the average web surfer could boost view time and help Quora earn revenue once it starts showing ads. Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo commented that “We think Parlio has enabled great conversations with experts and fits well with our mission to share and grow the world’s knowledge.” Many wrote off Quora as a nerdy, niche knowledge base. Small potatoes. But it’s proven to be the little startup that could. The upvotable question and answer app just hit and is finally preparing to earn some revenue through advertising after 7 years of riding its venture capital. Now Quora will have the talent needed to keep it fresh and bustling with discourse, and avoid becoming some dusty encyclopedia. |
Is Tony Fadell In Nest’s Way? | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | Last week, we witnessed something fairly remarkable. A major Alphabet executive — Nest Labs CEO Tony Fadell — publicly shamed the cofounder and employees of Dropcam, the connected camera company that Nest had acquired in 2014 for $555 million. In an in The Information, Fadell said that he didn’t think Dropcam cofounder and CEO Greg Duffy had “earned” the right to report to him directly. Fadell also explained away an exodus of Dropcam staffers by suggesting they were subpar. “A lot of the employees were not as good as we hoped,” he told The Information. It was “a very small team and unfortunately it wasn’t a very experienced team.” Fadell may have been reacting to comments by Duffy, who painted a highly unflattering portrait of Fadell in the same article. However, Fadell’s comments and his poor performance underscore what an ill fit Fadell is for Alphabet and why Alphabet needs new leadership at Nest. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, of course. Nest was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in January 2014, a feat that earned Fadell . Worried about competition and in awe of Fadell, who’d created the iPod as an Apple SVP, Duffy concluded that selling was his smartest play when Nest came knocking that spring. Despite what seemed like a handsome payday for everyone involved with Dropcam, the bet soon looked like a poor one. As I in November 2014, not only did Duffy’s beloved VP of marketing almost immediately leave Nest over an apparent culture clash, but numerous employees I interviewed, along with scathing write-ups by former employees on Glassdoor, pointed surprisingly to trouble. “Everything revolves around the CEO,” wrote one Glassdoor reviewer at the time. “It’s a dangerous mix of cult of personality and Stockholm syndrome. Comments like ‘[Fadell is] the next Steve Jobs are not uncommon, while people proudly say things like ‘I’m used to Tony screaming at me.’” It wasn’t just the different management styles of Fadell and Duffy, whose organization was one-eighth the size of Nest and who was well-liked by his employees. There was suddenly an inability to get anything meaningful done. One Nest employee described to me a “huge meeting culture, to the point where anyone at the director level or up spends their entire day in meetings, many of them duplicative meetings about the same subject, over and over to the point where a lot of people have complained.” Things remain much the same 16 months later, suggests The Information, whose report says Nest’s culture of micromanagement has more recently led the firm to plaster its offices with the phrase “Step Up” to ostensibly encourage lower-level employees to take more initiative. Duffy wouldn’t speak with me back in 2014 when he was still working for Fadell, but having left last fall to start something new, he isn’t holding back from sharing his experience now. He confirmed to The Information that he was embarrassed by Nest’s products and that he’d called Fadell a “tyrant bureaucrat” to his face. In the wake of Fadell’s comments about Dropcam employees to The Information, Duffy further to defend those engineers. In the same post, he also called out Nest’s management for “fetishizing only the most superfluous and negative traits of their mentors.” Asked yesterday and today to comment for this story, Nest declined. Certainly, it has seemed at times like Fadell is playing at Steve Jobs — with whom he worked closely — in ways that seem very contrary to how Alphabet runs its other operations. Fadell couldn’t be further apart from Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, who is widely reported to be humble and team-oriented to a fault, or from Alphabet CEO Larry Page, who often wanders through academic conferences and engages in tête-a-têtes with prominent scientists (without assuming they ). Even Google Ventures CEO Bill Maris has jokingly said that he merely as a venture capitalist. Fadell acknowledged the cultural differences between Google/Alphabet and Apple after Nest was acquired, telling an in 2014 that Apple had a “much more hierarchical structure, and the communications structure was very understood,” while at Google, “everyone could just talk to everyone and learn about everything, and there was much more transparency.” “I’m not saying one is better than the other,” Fadell continued at the time. “But it’s very different. The very first day, when the [Nest] deal was announced, I got all these various individuals from inside Google saying, ‘Oh, congratulations,’ and ‘I want to work with you,’ and ‘Is there something we can help you with?’ And at Apple, it was very structured. It wasn’t like you were going to send a message to Steve for any reason and say congratulations and flood his email box.” One can understand why Google wanted Nest to spearhead its hardware efforts. As a private company, Nest had come up with its beautiful, signature thermostat and was presumed to have much more up its sleeve. Fadell is reportedly friends with Page. Not last, one of Nest’s investors was Google Ventures, which likely made the arrangement a little more attractive for everyone involved. Yet from the outside looking in, Nest has seemingly devolved from a revolutionary outfit to an iterative one. Though the company currently manufactures three products — its thermostat, a smoke alarm, and its Nest cam (via its Dropcam acquisition) — it has repeatedly delayed product releases and disappointed its customers, particularly given the billing that Nest’s products receive. In one of the more visible cases of customer dissatisfaction, a New York Times reporter said in January that a software bug drained his Nest thermostat’s battery, a discovery he made only when his infant in the middle of the night. Nest’s smart smoke alarm has also been by software glitches. In the meantime, says The Information, Google has moved forward on similar efforts, including its and a to create a competitor to Amazon’s Echo. That Google has done so without Nest’s involvement must be demoralizing to Nest’s current employees, who were presumably drawn to the challenge of helping Nest become one of the world’s great hardware companies. But there’s reason for even more concern going forward: Fadell has created a culture that’s increasingly unlikely to attract the world’s best engineers, which has always been the top priority for its parent company. (Google, in stark contrast, is consistently ranked as one of the .) If Alphabet wants to maintain its feel-good reputation, it may be time to part ways with Fadell, or at least to demote him. He’s now had more than two years to prove himself. What Fadell has shown instead is that he’s unable to get out of his own way — or Nest’s. |
Microsoft is bringing bots to Skype — and everywhere else | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | Microsoft’s recently launched, A.I.-powered bot Tay may have embarrassed the company when , but Microsoft hasn’t given up on the future of bot development. It’s just getting started. At Microsoft’s annual Build conference in San Francisco today, CEO Satya Nadella unveiled the company’s plans to bring the world of bots to “conversational platforms” – meaning not only Skype, but also other communications tools like Slack, Outlook, LINE, and more. News of the bots’ unveiling was previously reported by , but today’s onstage demonstrations revealed how bots, including Microsoft’s own virtual assistant Cortana, aim to help pave the way for the future of communication, productivity, and interactions with businesses and brands. In Skype, the company showed off rich Cortana integration which put the assistant directly into the app where she could help users do things like identify the persons, places and things in your messages, underline them, and then display more info in a card-like interface when clicked. She is also able to help you perform a variety of tasks, like adding items to your calendar, booking travel or hotel rooms, or even pre-populating conversations to friends with text. What’s interesting about Cortana’s integration in Skype is how it has a larger understanding of everything you’re chatting about and doing – it’s not just focused on the single task at hand. For example, in the demo shown today, Cortana was able to figure out that the user was attending a conference referenced in a personal chat with co-worker, block calendar and travel time for the event, and then even proactively introduce a hotel bot into the conversation to suggest hotel rooms. The Westin bot, then, popped up, displayed a variety of room choices with image thumbnails and pricing. In two steps, the hotel room was booked and the information was added to the user’s calendar automatically. And because Cortana understands a user’s connections, she also suggested that the user message a friend who lived in the city – and even helpfully wrote some of the message text to the friend on the user’s behalf. The . This includes a way for users to test Skype Bots and offer feedback. As a side note, Skype for Hololens went live today, too, but without bot integration. Though Cortana is Microsoft’s leading “bot,” it’s just one example of the future of bots, in Microsoft’s vision. The company also unveiled a larger agenda aimed at helping developers build their own bots for Skype and elsewhere. The company launched the first-ever , which lets brands, businesses and other third parties create their own bots that can work on Skype, seamlessly integrating into users’ chats. These aren’t just text bots, as many of the SMS-based virtual assistance startups we’ve seen so far – Skype bots can introduce both audio and video experiences, the company said. One example of this is Skype Video Bots, which offer a different take on video calling – basically, you can Skype call a bot in a virtual environment. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyKYBei9D08] For Microsoft, bots aren’t just a handy feature to help get more people using Skype, or taking advantage of its Bing-powered assistant Cortana. Skype is used by over 300 million connected users each month, the company reminded conference attendees, but the potential for bots scales far beyond Skype’s user base. According to Nadella, bots are the next applications – and they make using technology to interact with businesses and services easier for many users who are confounded by the numerous mobile apps available today, or who are frustrated by navigating the endless sea of websites. Bots work better because you simply talk to them, using natural language. “We want to take that power of human language and apply it more pervasively to all of the computing interfaces and computing interactions,” he explained. “Bots are like new applications that you converse with – you’re not really looking for multiple applications, or pages and pages of websites,” he said. Nadella then introduced , which lets developers build intelligent bots that work anywhere users are – text/SMS, Skype, Slack, Office 365 email, and more. The company is , giving us a brief peek at a few bots it had created itself. This includes a BuildBot which helps attendees navigate the conference itself; a Bing News bot and another Bing Image bot, both that help you navigate the web with bots; a caption bot which understands images; and a Bing Music bot that search for YouTube, Vevo, LyricFind and more for songs. Bots “represent a huge opportunity to write new types of applications,” Nadella told developers, adding that bots will be “core – like .NET was – to all apps going forward.” Preview Bots are available now in the latest versions of Skype for , , and . And the . |
ACLU map shows locations of 63 ongoing phone-unlocking cases | Devin Coldewey | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | In case you thought the in San Bernardino was an isolated incident, around the country where the All Writs Act has been used to justify an order to unlock a smartphone. A total of 63 cases are shown; nine seek to compel Google to unlock a phone, and the rest are being brought against Apple. (Incidentally, this statistic in itself may yield interesting data when scrutinized: Is it because of iPhone population, or security standards, or lagging Android updates, or what?) At least 70 cases exist where Apple or Google were ordered under All Writs to unlock a phone. during a hearing on the topic in October when a federal prosecutor was detailing the frequency with which the companies complied. The ACLU dug around and turned up the 63 shown on the map, but that’s by no means the total count. Of course there are in which Apple revealed it was involved, and more could be lurking that were filed privately. “We definitely don’t think that this collection of cases is comprehensive — it’s just what we’ve been able to find by searching public court records,” wrote the ACLU’s Josh Bell in an email to TechCrunch. “There are almost certainly other ones that didn’t come up in our search, as well as cases that the government is keeping secret because they’re under seal.” The orders relate to a variety of alleged crimes (often “war on drugs” related) and the phone involved is of varying importance; the ACLU has helpfully linked to the court order for each case when available, though no responses from the companies being ordered are included. In many cases Apple or Google may have dutifully complied without infringing on a user’s rights, if the phone was not encrypted and password-protected and the warrant was all in order. This extensive and nationwide backlog of cases where All Writs has been used as a lever to pry open phones rather belies the feds’ assertion that it is a tactic of last resort. And even in the extreme case of that argument, when a backdoor into an encrypted device was supposedly the only way for the FBI to get at some critical data, it turns out the feds . It’s enough to shake anyone’s faith in the government’s ability (or inclination) to successfully navigate the world of tech and encryption — if there was anyone left with faith to shake. |
Moovit expands accessibility features for blind users | Kristen Hall-Geisler | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | It’s easy to get caught up in the new, cool thing aspect of transportation tech and apps, but there’s some real social benefit and freedom to be found here. Take, for instance, latest upgrade. The public transportation app recently added features to make it easier for blind users to take transit using and integration. The app launched worldwide in 2013 and now covers transit in 800 cities with 35 million users. It uses data from public transportation systems and live user updates to help people plan for the quickest, nicest routes. Users can report on everything from packed buses to clean subway platforms to help other users pick the best routes for getting where they need to go. Now, users with Moovit 4.10 and either TalkBack or VoiceOver can hear what button or icon is underneath their finger as it hovers over the screen. One of the developers of the latest version, Adi Kushnir, is blind, and he noted in a press release that the ability to plan a trip ahead of time is crucial for those with limited eyesight. The integration allows users to explore routes and times before leaving home or work, adding a level of confidence and independence for travelers. Another issue blind travelers often have to deal with is hearing—or more likely, not hearing—stop announcements while in transit. Sometimes the announcements are skipped altogether, and even if they do go out over the bus or train’s speakers, they’re garbled or drowned out by noise. That’s why this version of Moovit includes Get Off notifications to let riders know when to disembark. If you can’t hear the usual announcement over the chatter of your fellow passengers, though, how will you hear an app? Already taken care of—there’s a distinct vibration for the Get Off notification so users won’t miss a stop. By the way, this works for everyone, not just the visually impaired. Get Off starts notifying you a few stops ahead of time, giving you time to finish that chapter and make your way to the door. Developers spent six months working on the integration, and they’ve still got more to do, said Moovit’s CMO Alex Mackenzie Torres in an email interview. “This is just the beginning of our work to make the app more accessible, and we will continue to take user feedback into consideration about how to make future versions even easier to use.” |
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Launching a new service, fragrance subscription provider Scentbird feathers its nest with $2.8 million | Jonathan Shieber | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | the subscription-based service for perfumes and colognes, has added another $2.8 million in venture funding to its $1 million seed round as it launches a new service that expands beyond the subscription model. The Y Combinator alum, headed by Mariya Nurislamova, picked up a gaggle of new investors willing to throw more seed-round funding at the soaring scent company. The new service from Scentbird allows folks to buy individual 8ml cartridges of perfume and cologne without a subscription and with immediate shipping. It’s an alternative to adding a scent to a subscriber’s monthly queue. The New York-based company has a $6 million run rate and has managed to ship more than 300,000 samples since its launch at the in 2014, with the goal of giving men and women a new way to discover fragrances they may love. The company’s business model offers customers access to a 30-day supply of more than 450 fragrances delivered right to their door for just $14.95 per month. The company also encourages its customers to create a scent profile and add content like reviews to the website. That approach has attracted the attention of notable angel investors like Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, Michael Seibel of SocialCam, Tikhon Bernstam of Parse and Casper’s Philip Krim, and funds including Eclipse Ventures, Vaizra Investments, FundersClub, Scrum Ventures, SGH Capital and Ludlow Ventures. Latching onto the moniker as “ ,” Scentbird, like its rival , is hoping to grab a piece of the roughly $40.1 billion global market for fragrances. While both companies are trying to push into the perfume and cologne market, they differ in their approach. Nurislamova’s Scentbird hews to brand names, while Scent Trunk is more artisanal, relying on a network of independent fragrance makers. The new seed investment will be used to continue the rapid pace of growth and work on building out more product offerings from the platform. In addition to the subscription services, Scentbird has begun selling gift boxes of assorted smells to match different personality types that have been selected by the company’s tastemakers and curators. And, there’s now a full-size fragrance purchasing option, so customers can buy their favorite smells with a $15 discount — when they buy through Scentbird’s site. Ohanian was an early supporter of the company when it launched its first offering for men upon its graduation from Y Combinator. The Reddit founder about the male version of the service on Product Hunt, calling it the “Dollar Shave Club for cologne.” |
Expa opens up Expa Labs giving companies $500K in funding | Jordan Crook | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | Startup studio has today announced the close of a $100 million fund that will go toward both Expa Studios and Expa Labs, a new incubator. Investors in the fund include Garrett Camp, TPG founder David Bonderman, Li Ka-Shing and Solina Chau, Google board member Ram Shriram, RIT Capital Partners, Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, HP CEO Meg Whitman, Ace & Company, Kees Koolen and SV Angel. Expa Labs will act as an incubator outside of the traditional Expa Studios model, with six applicants receiving six months of office space in either SF or NY, as well as $500,000 in funding. Expa Studios espouses more of the traditional startup studio model, where founders are recruited and ideas are born in-house for new startups to work amidst other entrepreneurs and investors to create new products and services. Expa Studios has already built companies like Drip.fm, which , as well as Operator, Spot.com, and Reserve. Expa Studios will continue on, with the that they have a few exciting new projects to unveil soon. Meanwhile, Expa Labs will start accepting applications now, with selections to be announced by May 17. You can learn more about Expa Labs . |
Why the Oculus Rift won’t go the way of Google Glass | Eric Rachlin | 2,016 | 3 | 30 |
On a recent episode of our we spoke about the VR industry with Matt Hartman, director of seed investments at . When evaluating VR companies, Hartman looks for whether the company is delivering a “10X experience.” Ultimately, can you deliver 10 times the value of comparable offerings with your solution? For VR companies, the vision of their given solution may not be flawed, but is the technology, cost and timing right for consumers?
“Uber could have existed a decade ago, but you would have had to text in your latitude and longitude coordinates,” says Hartman. “The trouble in figuring that out was a much bigger challenge than just raising your hand and hailing a cab.” Delivering value at scale may be the biggest challenge early VR hardware may face. We’ve seen this before with other products, such as Google Glass. On June 27, 2012, Google’s Project Glass was at . Developers, consumers and businesses were infatuated with the endless possibilities presented by Glass. It was on this day, at the climax of the Glass phenomena, where one of the more awesomely over-the-top demos ever conducted occurred at Google I/O (their annual developer conference). During this demo, into the conference hall of the keynote to rousing applause. After the conference, the hype lasted another year, until April 15, 2013. This was when, for $1,500, Google started delivering prototypes to qualifying participants as part of their Glass Explorer program. It was at this moment that the hype ended and reality kicked in. Glass may have changed the conversation about head-mounted displays, and likely paved the way for consumer augmented reality, but all this came at a cost. Glass was too expensive for the mass consumer, had a limited ecosystem and developed a negative public perception — the birth of the “glasshole.” Ultimately, Glass still could have a promising future, but its initial failure can be a critical lesson for the VR industry and, more specifically, the widespread adoption of premium VR headsets such as Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. Similar to VR now, Glass had strong early hype, but failed to deliver essential use cases that would have made it crucial to our everyday lives. VR may be in a similar inflection point. However, there’s one approach that could make VR more widely adopted because it can be introduced through something you already own — your smartphone. VR could use this as a bridge to wider adoption — something Glass failed to do. In the short term, Oculus and others should double-down on mobile-powered VR experiences to reach a larger audience and deliver a 10X experience. At $1,500, Google Glass was too costly for the average consumer. Premium VR headsets, like Oculus Rift and , can be just as expensive as, if not more than, Google Glass. To pre-order an , there’s an upfront cost of $600-$800. However, what’s not advertised is the cost of purchasing a new gaming desktop (or graphics card) that you’ll likely need to push all those pixels. When considering Rift, there’s also the additional cost of purchasing the Oculus Touch controllers when they arrive (Rift currently uses an Xbox controller). When you take all this into account, plus the cost of purchasing additional content, many can expect to pay upwards of $2,800 just to get started. By contrast, — powered by a Galaxy smartphone and an Oculus app — is only $100. — powered by a broader selection of smartphones — is only $15 ($29 for the ). And unlike the Rift or Vive, which requires an additional investment of a $2,000 gaming PC, mobile VR leverages something most consumers already own — a smartphone. Here’s one reaction to the Oculus Rift price: These lower-tier, lower-cost alternatives present a huge market penetration opportunity for both premium VR manufacturers and the overall VR industry, the kind of opportunity that Google Glass lacked during its introduction. To capitalize on VR’s accessibility through smartphones, Oculus is wise to play in both camps, and should continue to expand its partnership with Samsung and others to continue to make their mobile VR experiences shine. Not only was Google Glass tasked with the challenge of introducing consumers to a new idea, but it also had to convince consumers to buy new unproven hardware. This circumstance created a high barrier to entry for consumers and significantly reduced the probability of it going viral. VR, on the other hand, is being introduced through a medium that’s become ubiquitous in our everyday lives. With the Gear VR or Cardboard, smartphones can double as VR platforms that are always with us. And because these devices by default are mobile and widely accessible, this increases the probability of consumers sharing relevant apps, advocating through word-of-mouth and wholly embracing these experiences. “App distribution [for the Rift or Vive] may look similar to iPad-only apps,” said Hartman. “If you’re only looking at your iPad once every evening or once every other evening it starts to reduce the ability for these apps to go viral. Similarly, the chances of you downloading an app when you are in ‘VR mode’ are much lower than just downloading an app for an experience powered by a smartphone.” Typical consumers purchase new computers every three years, game consoles every five and new televisions every seven. If you’ve just dropped $1,500 on a first-generation Google Glass, how quickly will you upgrade? Probably not for at least a few years. And while the same can be said about a new Rift or Vive, VR has a champion with a much quicker product refresh cycle. Smartphones refresh every 18 months. This means that the propensity for Gear VR or Cardboard to quickly iterate and reach a broader audience over a shorter period of time is more likely. This ultimately will propel the entire industry to new heights and pave the way for premium players like Oculus. Google Glass aside, there are other challenges unique to premium VR headsets. One of them is actually tracking your movement. With Rift or Vive, this is done with an “outside in” approach, which uses separate laser towers to track your movement. The alternative is an “inside out” approach, where the headset uses sensors built into the device to see and track the world around you. This summer, devices like — which contains a depth sensor that can measure the distance of objects — will use an “inside out” approach to help resolve problems like occlusion and navigation for Cardboard-like headsets. This enables future smartphones to do a variety of clever things, such as navigating indoor environments or converting your home into a within which you can roam freely. Without question, VR will deliver game-changing experiences well beyond gaming. The most important thing, however, is to ensure that enough barriers are broken down to justify them. This is why, in the short term, smartphone-powered VR is so vital. Because it empowers everyday consumers to casually enjoy the magic of VR with little to no investment. Smartphones will become the conduit that leads to the widespread adoption of premium VR headsets and experiences. As a result, it would be wise for VR companies to invest more heavily in mobile platforms to broaden their reach and ensure a 10X experience. |
Google’s new Destinations feature lets you plan trips right from its search engine on mobile | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | Google is making it easier than ever to plan a trip or vacation with that lets you look up destinations, complete with flight and hotels prices, right from its search engine on a mobile phone. “Google Destinations” is triggered by certain searches — such as “Spain surfing,” “New Zealand hiking,” or “Colorado skiing” — and can also be found when a user searches for a specific country, state, city or other destination. The service is only available on mobile — Google explained that saying it saw a 50 percent spike in travel-related questions on mobile devices last year — but, beyond convenience, is intended to offer discovery, too. Destinations includes activity suggestions, in the form of curated itineraries, for an initial 201 cities worldwide. So, if you want to visit a new place but aren’t 100 percent sure what to do there, Google hopes to give you some ideas and convince you to book that ticket. On the subject of bookings themselves, Google Destinations sends users to airline websites to complete their purchase, but it does offer some nifty features before that step. In addition to estimating the cost of a flight and hotel, it allows users to switch their travel dates to help show when prices are at their lowest, or the cost at a particular time of the year. There’s also an ‘Explore’ tab to give you a snapshot of the weather at each destination, an important factor when planning a trip. Google Destinations is initially available in the U.S. and a handful of other countries. From our time using it, we found it to be quick and useful. It remains to be seen if people will pay for large ticket items spontaneously via their phone, but Google created Street View — like nobody’s business — and now acting on your travel urges just got a lot easier. If nothing else, Destinations is a far better way to fill five minutes of downtime on the bus than Candy Crush. |
Skype is killing its smart TV app | Jon Russell | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | Skype, the Microsoft-owned video calling service, has quietly announced that it will no longer offer an app for smart TVs starting in June. Confirmation of the shutdown comes via — — which explains that smartphones and tablets have proven to be a more popular platform for Skype users. Over the years, users have changed the way they use Skype, with the majority accessing it from a mobile device – including when in the living room. We want to make sure we prioritize delivering the best possible experience to the platforms our users are asking for, which is why we’ve decided to focus our efforts in other areas while supporting key functionality on Skype for TV for as long as possible. Skype became available for smart TVs back in 2010. The app was — such as those from Samsung and LG — and available to download on many others, including models from Sony, Panasonic and Sharp. As someone who had used it in the past, I found that the app didn’t quite deliver on its promise — which sounds great in theory. The service was somewhat unreliable and tricky to set up, whereas picking up a phone or tablet and launching an app is second nature to people these days. Plus, there are many more video calling options, including nearly every popular messaging app and Apple’s own FaceTime service. Skype’s smart TV app will no longer receive updates after June 1, but those who have already downloaded it can continue to use it. There’s no confirmed date for when the app will cease to work, but it is living on borrowed time. |
How the tiny startup Phantom Cyber scored big at RSA | Mahendra Ramsinghani | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | |
Meet Tovala, a smart oven that aims to perfectly cook ready-made meals in under 30 minutes | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | is a new startup out of Y Combinator that came up with what they hope to be a less expensive alternative to professional combination ovens. The Tovala is a smart oven that can bake, boil and steam meals at up to 550 degrees Fahrenheit in 10 to 30 minutes. The meals come prepackaged from Tovala or can be made using a crowdsourced recipe platform. Tovala utilizes a combination of dry and wet heat cooking technology instead of microwave technology to quickly cook food and get the right overall temperature for each meal. You can cook several different types of foods such as chicken, rice and asparagus in the same unit at the same time, for example, using Tovala’s technique. The team’s first product is up on , starting today, and has already raised the lion’s share of it’s $100,000 goal from several hundred backers. Tovala will initially sell for $199 for early Kickstarter supporters and eventually cost $349 retail. That might seem like quite a bit to pay for a table top cooking device, but it’s a fraction of what combination ovens used by professional chefs go for. The real money-maker will be in the prepackaged meals provided by Tovala. Each package can feed up to four people, are made from scratch in the Tovala kitchen, and consist of 400 to 800 calories per serving. Tovala is also working on a recipe library that will include meals with special diet restrictions such as paleo, vegan and gluten-free. Tovala’s co-founders David Rabie and Bryan Wilcox tell me the startup’s master chefs will provide up to six different meal options on a weekly basis. And just like all the new-fangled connected kitchenette of things, Tovala hooks into your smartphone using an app to keep track of your cooking time. Just scan the barcode on your prepared meal, open up the oven and pop it in then hit a few buttons as per the instructions to heat it up and keep track of it on your cellphone. I got to try a few bites and test out the Tovala myself with co-founder David Rabie. Check out the video above to see this smart oven in action. |
New rules for hiring executive candidates | Dana Stalder | 2,016 | 3 | 8 |
When CEO Jess Lee was looking for a CFO, she found everything she wanted in Cheryl Dalrymple: incredible experience, shared values about how to run a company and immediate personal rapport. Yet, despite both women recognizing they could form a strong team, when Lee offered her the position, Dalrymple decided it was too early in her search and turned down Lee. For entrepreneurs in the current market, that scenario is probably familiar. As a top The best senior talent, especially, is being courted by everyone, and have plenty of choices. The amount of time and effort required to a senior is surprisingly high; many founders underestimate this and lose they could have closed. But because a strong management team is one of the most proven ways to ensure startup success, it is worth the investment. At Polyvore, Lee didn’t take no for an answer. Her combination of persistence, transparency about the company’s business model and flexibility around a schedule and the role itself were ultimately what persuaded Dalrymple to join the company. “Jess talked me into consulting with Polyvore, and she was trying to me the whole time. It turned out to be a good move — as I got to spend more time with her and the rest of the company, I saw Polyvore progress with respect to user growth, the business model, and revenue, and ultimately I felt very comfortable joining the team,” Dalrymple explained in a recent conversation. Dalrymple’s case is a great example of how the fiercely competitive dynamics of the current market have transformed , my partners and I believe that out-of-date assumptions about at startups are putting many entrepreneurs at a disadvantage. After recent conversations with several entrepreneurs and top recruiters — and drawing on our collective experience hundreds of while in operations and in VC — we’ve identified a number of best practices underlying a successful . , and it needs to start early. Unless you already have a well-known brand, the very best are almost certainly going to need a lot of selling on why they should even talk to you. Once you’ve done this initial selling work, you have to pull off a tough balancing act: gathering information about them to determine if they are a good fit, while also continuing to sell. The solution to this is to turn the interview into a selling act. This requires that you replace the police investigator type of questioning with a genuine interest in who they are and how their life has progressed. The conversation has to unfold in a natural way, with replacing typical interview questions. Most people like to talk about themselves and their achievements, so this isn’t that hard. The key is responding very positively to elements of their story, with smiles, encouragement and interest. Now more than ever, is very similar to selling customers. You need to not only understand what matters to them and how they’re thinking about you, but also build a personal connection. Finding a job is a personal choice — every candidate wants to go to a place where they’re excited to join the team. Personal drivers, family situation, location and other factors always impact a candidate’s decision. Find out what matters to them: a particular kind of work challenge, the quality of relationship with their boss, the ability to learn something , time with the kids, a flexible commute, exposure to the board of directors, etc. All of these can be addressed when you know what matters most. And don’t underestimate the role a spouse or significant other plays. If they’re important to the process, find a way to include them. When another Matrix portfolio company was recently trying to a CRO candidate, the team knew a long commute would be an obstacle. So the offer included a vehicle allowance as well as a monthly commuting bonus and rideshare benefit that the company ultimately decided to extend to all employees. That combination of flexibility and understanding of the candidate’s personal needs was a key factor in the successful . When Jess Lee reached out to Cheryl Dalrymple with a second offer, she FedEx’ed the offer letter to Dalrymple’s vacation hotel along with a bouquet of flowers and a personal note. In the note, Lee expressed how much she valued the strong and rare connection she and Dalrymple shared and told her that she was confident they would do amazing things together as a team. Tailoring the offer and including these kinds of personal gestures can be incredibly powerful in the hands of a founder who is sincere and genuine about them. Yet, in our experience, this tactic is underutilized across all sizes of company. Throughout the interview process, stand out from your competition by showing that you truly value getting to know them and are committed to making your company the best fit for them. Be prepared to show your commitment by meeting on site and off site, outside weekday work hours and on weekends. Drive to meet them if you need to, and be open to talking over coffee, lunch, dinner or drinks. These encounters outside the workplace allow you to develop a deeper connection and, as a bonus, give you more data on the candidate’s fit with the company. The current environment rewards startups that recruit aggressively, yet, at the same time, exhibit patience and humility and make an effort to truly understand the candidate’s needs. We know of one leading company where an candidate withdrew late in the process to take a counteroffer because his family had compensation and work-life balance concerns. Rather than give up, the CEO drove to the candidate’s neighborhood, hunkered down in a cafe and spent several hours trying to persuade the candidate’s spouse to meet for coffee. When they finally met, the was able to talk very openly and convince the spouse the offer would not erode the family’s quality of life, and the company closed on the offer. How and when you talk about compensation matters. Recruiters often advise companies to early in the process do a gut check on compensation and probe on expectations. For hires, this can be a mistake, and can derail the whole process. Use benchmark data to understand the general bands top executives at startups are earning. But know that the compensation you end up offering will vary significantly based on the individual needs of your candidate. Then make the early interviewing process all about getting to know the candidate and screening for fit. Once you’ve determined the candidate is the best person for the job, have a standalone compensation discussion. This is not the time to present an offer or negotiate. Rather, let the candidate know that this conversation is about identifying what they need and value most so that you can put together the best offer possible. Gather information about the candidate’s current compensation, compensation history going back at least two years and expectations for an offer. Probe for what types of compensation the candidate finds most attractive — each person has their own preference for cash or stock options, for example. If you are working with a recruiter, use them as an intermediary to find out what the candidate desires. The recruiter can also be a great person to help move their expectations if they are unrealistic or outside of what you can afford, and they can do some of the negotiations, as well. The recruiter has the benefit of being able to talk about other comparable offers. When you know your candidate’s expectations and what they value, you can put together a very compelling offer. This also means you don’t have to compete solely on cash and be driven out by a higher cash offer. Instead, you’ll be able to use all the tools in your toolbox. For instance, sometimes a location allowance, a tailored vacation schedule, flexible work hours, a work-from-home option or a personal gift sent with the offer can mean more than a little more cash or equity because recognize that you truly understand who they are and what they value. When this process is done well, you will already know before you present the offer that it is going to work, thereby avoiding the difficult situation where you provide an offer that is too low. You need to be prepared to walk through the specific value of your equity offer. While you understand intimately your company’s value, outside likely won’t. Don’t be afraid to show the money with pencil and paper — it’s worth them understanding that it’s more complicated than a simple X shares at $Y IPO is worth Z, and they’ll appreciate you sharing details that matter to their decision. In some cases you’ll want to create a spreadsheet for the candidate that details why it’s believable that this grant is going to be worth $X, Y years from now — and what must be accomplished to get there. You also need to be ready to address specific concerns the candidate may have. Let’s face it, joining any one particular startup is risky and want to be sure they are making the right choice. Great founders use strong arguments and sound data to assuage any concerns the candidate may have about the opportunity cost of making the wrong choice. “The best founders do what the best recruiters do, which is spend a lot of time war-rooming the potential objections a candidate may have,” explained a top recruiter we spoke with. “They create such a compelling, fact-driven vision for their company’s future, they direct the candidate to focus on the value they will be able to create instead of the potential risks.” How does this “war-rooming” work? Together with your team, list the candidate’s stated goals and desires, and show this job and work situation are a great fit for those. List their potential objections and concerns, and use data to craft counter-arguments. Get specific — draw on market conditions, business and platform opportunities, your company’s financing and why your solution and team will be the one to win — and make the compelling value proposition far more provocative than the downside. In our experience, your VC can also be really effective in selling your company. Your team and your investors are obviously on the same page as far as reaching a good outcome for your company. Venture capitalists also do a lot of — more so than the average at a startup — and can offer to an independent view of the company. -level appreciate this interaction and often feel that having a relationship with an investor board member going in is a huge plus. The is a critical part of a . The current market rewards entrepreneurs who understand that closing the right candidate is always about more than checking boxes on a spec list. Take the time throughout the process to show you are genuinely interested in them as a person. Understand your candidate’s personal drivers and tailor a package to their needs. Think of out-of-the-box, personalized touches to make the candidate feel special. Most of all, be prepared to invest the time and effort required in today’s highly competitive environment to get the person you want. |
Google ordered to hand over names of fake reviewers in Dutch court case | Ingrid Lunden | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | Fake reviews have been an occasional and frustrating by-product on sites like and for years. But a recent case in the Netherlands highlights how one company affected by them fought back. A nursery in Amsterdam has against Google in a civil court in the city this month, in which Google was not only forced to take down several negative fake reviews that appeared on Google sites, but also disclose the details, such as IP addresses, of the people who posted the reviews in the first place. It looks like this is a groundbreaking moment of sorts: The lawyer for the nursery, Paul Tjiam of Simmons & Simmons, believes this is the first time that the search giant has ever been forced by a court to reveal contact and registration details of fake reviewers. Google so far has no comment on the case. “We’ve received the ruling and are reviewing it but nothing else to share at this time,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch in an email. The nursery (whose name was withheld in the ruling) filed its suit against Google after it received harassing reviews for more than six months. The reviews, which were posted via Google+ and visible when you searched for the nursery on Google Maps, claimed among other things that the nursery was harming children. According to Tjiam, the nursery had initially contacted Google directly to request the reviews be removed saying they were not authentic — providing proof that they were copy/pasted from other websites, as well as posted with profile pictures copied from other people. But Google would not take them down, claiming that reviews posted on Google+ fall under freedom of speech and that reviews being negative or anonymous are not justification enough to take them down. So the nursery took Google to court. After the judge in the case, CM Berkhout, determined that the reviews were indeed fake and damaging, he mandated Google take down the reviews anyway. It seems from the court documents that the requirement to provide details about the reviewers was made so that the nursery could confront the reviewers in a court of law, should it choose to do so, to dispute the reviews. “The judge balanced the interests of privacy against the interest of reputation (of this nursery). However, it considers the interests of protecting the reputation more important than the interests of Google to the interest of privacy of the Google Reviewers,” Tjiam told TechCrunch. As the “largely unsuccessful party,” Google also was ordered to pay some nominal fees in the case. These include While the case appears to be a landmark ruling — it’s the first time that Google has been required to provide contact details and IP addresses for Google reviewers — it also highlights the challenges for a search platform like Google when navigating questions of freedom of speech and more recent developments that touch on user privacy. The ongoing “ ” mandate in Europe, where Google and other search engines are removing links that people request to be removed if “inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant or excessive, and not in the public interest,” have proven to be tricky waters for the company amid its default position of making the world a more searchable place. Asked if he feels that revealing IDs can set a dangerous precedent, Tjiam said the he believes that it’s the current process that is flawed. “Fake reviews is a huge problem on the internet. It cannot be stopped by only removing these fake reviews, that is a band-aid solution,” he said. “It is important that you will get to the source of the problem. Operators of review sites, such as Google Maps with its Google Reviews option, should take more responsibility for their own tools…. Again, this only goes insofar it relates to cases were the reviews are patently unlawful and damaging towards others and are written and posted by anonymous persons. For the record: this is of course different for people who are posting reviews based on own experience and facts.” He also pointed out that Google didn’t manage to act even when the nursery went through the correct process to try to remove the bogus reviews. “In this case, Google took no responsibility, even when it was confronted with the fact that its own policies were evidently violated. The Dutch court also rightfully indicated that Google did not comply by its own policy, as Google explicitly allowed Google Reviewers using pictures they took from the internet from other persons and thereby pretending they were someone else.” He said that one of the pictures of a supposedly Dutch parent of a nursery child was actually of an Americans who had passed away; her original picture was discovered by his legal team on “In my opinion, it was stunning that Google allowed this, as the practice of using someone else’s profile picture without consent is unlawful and infringing on portrait rights (not only in the EU, but also in the US!) and it only helps fake reviewers to hide behind a ‘trusted face.’ Hopefully, this decision will make Google rethink their own policies and the way they enforce their policies.” In terms of what kind of a precedent this case will set, it’s yet to be seen how and if the position will be taken up in Europe and further afield. Tjiam notes that in the U.S., a direct action against Google ordering it to provide contact details of reviewers is legally impossible. “As far as the Netherlands is concerned, this is big (and good) news for especially the smaller businesses who are being harassed via Google Reviews,” Tjiam told me in an email. “As with the ‘right to be forgotten,’ this decision will be used by smaller businesses to trace Google reviewers posting fake reviews,” he predicts. “As regards the EU, there is no doubt that others will use this decision in their respective jurisdictions. In media and IP related matters, attorneys constantly refer to judgments that were rendered by other (mostly West) European courts.” Asked about the wider implications outside of Europe, Tjiam notes that “The Netherlands and its court decisions are…often a front runner of what other courts will decide in the coming years.” Of course, for most — perhaps all? — jurisdictions, it is “unthinkable” that Google would be ordered to provide IP addresses and contact details of Google reviewers, he notes. “However, the problem of fake reviews and the damage done by fake reviewers, especially in respect of small businesses, is getting more and more attention.” Ultimately, what this case could do is shed more light on potential ways to moderate and remove illegitimate reviews in a more efficient way. Google and other sites have been in the past as a breeding ground for fake reviews, and in some cases Google has even that aims to reduce the amount of review spam in the world. Others, have taken legal action against reviewers to deter others from doing the same. |
Spot launches to help users share recommendations on local gems and travel tips | Anthony Ha | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | , a startup that says it can help you find “the best places in the world,” is launching to the public. The company emerged from “startup studio” . It’s also announcing today that it has raised $2 million in seed funding from Expa, SV Angel, Ram Shriram, Tim Ferriss, Fenwick & West and others. When , he said the app would provide recommendations for the best spots in your hometown or whichever city you’re visiting. And it’s not just relying on reviews shared within the app itself. It’s also pulling data about how locations get discussed elsewhere on the web — as Groesbeck put it, “We’re trying to do for the real world what Google has done for the web.” When you open the app now, you can see recommendations nearby for food, coffee and drinks. Open a specific profile and you’ll see basic info like hours and location, as well as “expert reviews” from sources like Zagat and Thrillist. You can also save locations and add them to lists. And there’s a strong social component, where you can follow other users and see which friends have saved a given location. Those lists may be more important than you think — Groesbeck said that during beta testing, the team discovered that it’s “a core part of the experience.” “Some of our most engaged users are making lists that are more narrative than transactional; they’re more stories than just a grouping of spots,” he said. (You can see some featured lists on .) While Spot is only available on iOS for now, it’s . |
Gigwell rescues concert bookers from PDF hell | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | It’s dumbfounding how an industry as huge as live music still relies on a patchwork of backwards, outdated technologies. Word document offer letters, PDF riders, endless back-and-forth emails, spreadsheets, physical checks. Fax! It makes the whole process a headache that takes forever when organizers could be focusing on making the experience better for attendees and making performers more money. One guy got so sick of it he coded his own solution. . The Y Combinator startup offers a complete concert booking software suite that handles everything from asking artists to play to paying them. If Gigwell takes off, it could do more than streamline booking for big agents. Gigwell could grow the live music revenue pie for artists, who make 70 percent of their income from concerts. That’s because if Gigwell makes it easy enough for anyone to book a show, there’ll be fewer artists pinching pennies in basements and more making the big bucks on stage. Jeremie Habib was a SaaS sales guy who loved to throw events. Then a few years ago some friends offered him a chance to invest in a new nightclub in San Francisco called Audio, and he began helping them book DJs. That’s when he discovered just how horrible the process was. “It blew my mind,” Habib tells me. “It took 85 emails back and forth to book a DJ for $3,000. A lot of wasted time.” But thanks to Y Combinator and $1.3 million in funding from Beatport’s Eric Marcoullier, StyleSeat’s Dan Levine, Texan fund Sava and some more angels, Gigwell has arrived to save people’s sanity. Habib spent the first six months researching what the industry needed. Now Gigwell is being used by booking agencies like Diplomats Of Sound and Surefire, as well as Robot Heart, the coolest camp and events company to come out of Burning Man. With Gigwell, they can make a centralized database of all their industry contacts. Its flexible contract builder makes it simple to punch in all the necessary information to hammer out a deal, then electronically sign the documents. Agents and promoters can transfer money using credit or debit cards, PayPal, or bank wires right through the system, rather than having to write physical checks, or visit a bank or Western Union. Thanks to Gigwell’s analytics, agents can see which artists are performing best in which markets, and keep track of all their tours. The Gigwell mobile app lets them vet offers and make travel itineraries on the go. Rather than having all this data in a million places, it can all live together in Gigwell. The startup’s SaaS model is priced by the seat, from $33 a month for one agent to $479 for a 20-person agency, plus a small 0.05 percent to 3.9 percent fee on payments to cover transaction costs. Eventually Gigwell hopes to expand to handling booking for speaking gigs, conferences and any other talent contracts. Breaking the ingrained behavior patterns of booking agents will be tough. But it’s a tight-knit industry, so if one agency gets on board and loves it, Gigwell could spread quickly. Despite all the talk about streaming royalties, recorded music isn’t where artists earn their money anymore. It’s on the road. If can democratize access to talent, musicians might get more opportunities to strut their stuff for our enjoyment, and our dollars. |
The future of work is 5 billion customers looking for a good job | David Nordfors | 2,016 | 3 | 8 |
you about the largest business opportunity the world has ever seen. It’s larger than the entire world economy today and it is about to happen right now. Here are the facts: According to Gallup, 5 billion people are of working age. 3 billion earn money in some way, most of them want a job with steady pay. But only 1.3 billion have one — and out of them, only 200M, or 13%, are in their job. What’s more, for every engaged worker, there are two who hate their job. This is the sad state of the global workforce that creates $75 trillion dollars of market value each year. Human capacity is the world’s most underutilized resource. Coit Tower Mural photo courtesy of Flickr/ . All people have special interests and capacities that have no known market, until today that is, if entrepreneurs will find ways of turning them into inspired, high-performance teams and buyers and sellers who make each other satisfied. Coit Tower Mural photo courtesy of Flickr/ . This is the market opportunity for the innovation-for-jobs ecosystem. Today, with smart use of selective marketing, like Facebook or Google ads, applying matchmaking algorithms like the ones used by Match.com and others, smart startups can become the shaping, branding and marketing agencies of the working customer, helping her to earn better, in more meaningful ways. Today, more companies help people spend better. People can’t spend more than they earn, so it’s a limited market. If they instead helped people earn better, applying the business model “I earn when you earn”, the limitations disappear. The opportunity is limitless. Serving the earners is the defining market, serving the spenders will be the consequential one. We are seeing the beginning of a revolution in strengths finding, education, matchmaking, HR and the creation of opportunities in a long-tail labor market. chapters by selected i4j Leadership Forum participants, edited by : , , , , , , , , , , , Philipp Schmidt, , and . |
Google is using machine learning to teach robots how to grasp random objects | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | Using your hand to grasp a pen that’s lying on your desk doesn’t exactly feel like a chore, but for robots, that’s still a really hard thing to do. So to teach robots how to better grasp random objects, Google’s research team . The standard way to solve this problem would be for the robot to survey the environment, create a plan for how to grasp the object, then execute on it. In the real world, though, lots of things can change between formulating that plan and executing on it. Google is now using these robots to train a deep (a technique that’s all the rage in machine learning right now) to help its robots predict the outcome of their grasps based on the camera input and motor commands. It’s basically hand-eye coordination for robots. The team says that it took about 3,000 hours of practice (and 800,000 grasp attempts) before it saw “the beginnings of intelligent reactive behaviors.” “The robot observes its own gripper and corrects its motions in real time. It also exhibits interesting pre-grasp behaviors, like isolating a single object from a group,” the team writes. “All of these behaviors emerged naturally from learning, rather than being programmed into the system.” Google’s researchers say the average failure rate without training was 34 percent on the first 30 picking attempts. After training, that number was down to 18 percent. Still not perfect, but the next time a robot comes running after you and tries to grab you, remember that it now has an 80 percent chance of succeeding. |
Meet the 25 startups that pitched at Entrepreneur First’s latest Demo Day | Steve O'Hear | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | By all accounts, the London startup scene was abuzz with ‘s latest Demo Day today, as 25 startups — up from nine! — took to the stage to pitch their wares. The so-called “talent first” investor targets the best technical graduates in Europe and beyond to put them through a six-month program where they form teams and in turn found startups. This “ ” approach is what sets EF apart from other accelerators, while the emphasis on technical talent — 95 percent of the cohort who presented today have a technical background — is producing some very interesting results. “This could be game changing for the U.K. ecosystem,” is how one serial entrepreneur put it to me prior to the event. To that end, and , startups on stage spanned cybersecurity, AI, robots, fintech and much more. Specifically, of the fifth cohort, 45 percent are described as working on deep technology, 70 percent are B2B/enterprise products, and 16 percent are hardware (see the full list below). Meanwhile, EF made a number of additional announcements today, as it looks to further scale up the programme now that it feels the model has been proven. Along with , the investor will be extending its six-month programme to 12 months, underpinned by a new fund to support graduating startups during subsequent funding rounds. , Wendy Tan White and Joe White, angel investors and founders of website builder Moonfruit (sold to Yell in 2012 for $37 million in cash), are joining Entrepreneur First as General Partners. They were both previously EF Venture Partners, and I know from my own discussions that Wendy Tan White has always been very bullish on EF’s unique approach. “We’re not an accelerator — that model is broken,” says Entrepreneur First co-founder Alice Bentinck in a statement. “We back talented individuals pre-team, pre-idea to create startups from scratch. We create companies that are focused on defensible technology that capitalises on the technical skills of the cohort. The companies coming out of the programme are incredibly impressive, especially when you think that only six months ago, they simply didn’t exist.” |
The world’s top VR director Chris Milk will wow us at Disrupt NY | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | New mediums mint new rock stars, and for virtual reality it’s Chris Milk. From surreal dreamscapes to #BlackLivesMatter protests to Jordanian refugee camps, he’s created some of the most mind-bending and inspiring VR experiences yet. I knew he was the real deal when I got hit by a train that turned into a thousand birds in a vision he designed. As the founder and creative director of VR storytelling company , Milk has worked with Apple, Vice, The New York Times, and more. He made his name concocting music videos for Kanye West, Arcade Fire, , Jack White, U2 and Johnny Cash. Now Milk turns headsets like Oculus into allowing us to gain new perspectives on the world and new compassion for those with whom we share it. And during , Milk will give attendees a peek at the possibilities that lay ahead for virtual reality. Cinema. Gaming. Documentary. Art. All are confronting new frontiers in VR. Milk will be our navigator. His work has already been shown at MoMA and the Tate Modern museums. But what are the opportunities for the next generation of VR directors and businesses? We’ll discuss what needs to happen for VR to escape the tech demo phase and start delivering more than novelty. He’ll address how storytelling techniques must change to unlock the choose-your-own-adventure potential of VR. And we’ll dig into what tools and content styles are ripe for investment or development. Plus, there may be a surprise or two in store for the audience. Get your to stay on the cutting edge of the next big computing platform. |
Controversial people-rating app Peeple goes live, has a plan to profit from users’ negative reviews | Sarah Perez | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | , the people-rating application that lets its users rate and review anyone, is not or , as many suspected following the media backlash surrounding the unveiling of the company’s intentions last fall. even called the app “terrifying,” given that the app didn’t plan to allow users to opt out of being reviewed — a feature that remains in the version that launched this week. With the app’s debut, the company is trying to present itself as having a more positive aim and image, with gestures toward anti-bullying and settings for hiding unwanted recommendations. However, there are still valid concerns that the company is planning to profit by selling access to the hidden negative reviews left on its platform. the Calgary-based startup comes from Julia Cordray and Nicole McCullough — both non-technical founders who outsourced the app’s development to . The app was described as a “Yelp for humans.” That is, you can sign up to leave reviews of anyone you know — from co-workers and bosses to exes and friends or even local service pros. McCullough’s LinkedIn profile said she was inspired to create Peeple as a means of vetting people, like contractors, babysitters or neighbors. Of course, services for rating professionals and businesses, including Google’s business reviews, Yelp, ZocDoc, Angie’s List and others have existed for some time. Peeple’s differentiator was that it wanted to venture into the personal space, as well. It was unclear at the time if the founders were genuinely naive of the problems such an app could incite, or if they were smartly playing up the “all press is good press” angle to encourage viral buzz about the service. But when the app didn’t launch as expected in late 2015, it was written off as vapor and simply forgotten. Now Peeple has actually gone live. [gallery ids="1288235,1288234,1288233,1288232,1288231"] In a press release, the founders wrote of how much they were harassed following the bad press the app received, which they said was “ironic” as the complaints involved concerns about the potential for cruel bullying, threats and abuse that could take place on its platform. The company also said it made several changes in light of those concerns, including giving users full control over what goes on their profile, offering the ability to deactivate their profile and more. The company noted, too, that “no one can add you to the app” — making it sound as if being reviewed on Peeple is an opt-in experience. That’s not entirely true, however. says you can still write “recommendations” (i.e. reviews, but not necessarily positive ones) for anyone who’s not on the app, then choose to invite that person to join Peeple. In other words, even if you’re not participating, someone could write your review. Sure, that review might not be public, but it exists in a digital format on the company’s servers. If you choose to join Peeple, you can decide which reviews appear on your profile. The concerning aspect to Peeple is that it’s considering offering access to these hidden and negative reviews as a paid subscription. Called the “Truth License,” Peeple says that paying users would be able to read anything that has been written about a person, whether or not the person published the reviews on their profile. Or, to sum up: Peeple’s plan is to profit by selling access to everyone’s negative reviews. Co-founder Cordray clarified to TechCrunch that the Truth License is not actually live, but is something the company is as a future feature alongside other in-app purchases like in-app search credits, gifts and personality testing. That being said, the fact that it’s on the table at all — and promoted in the company’s press release — should give users pause for concern. Not only that, but the company doesn’t seem to have a solid plan to proactively prevent cyber bullying through the service. Its terms apparently prohibit things like “profanity, bullying, health references, disability references, confidential information, mentioning other people in a recommendation that you are not currently writing a recommendation for, name calling, degrading comments, abuse, derogatory comments, sexual references, racism, legal references, hateful content, sexism” and more. But Peeple’s Terms are hard to read, as they’re only linked to in the app itself, and are several pages long. should give you an idea of what Peeple is really up to, noting that: and that by joining, “ Um, no? In practice, it doesn’t seem that Peeple plans to actively police users on the service, either. Asked what Peeple would do if someone violated the terms by creating a fake Facebook account (that is, for the sake of publishing negative reviews without being associated with them directly), Cordray responded that the fake accounts would be removed. But, she added, “keep in mind we ask for your help in combating this by reporting and blocking users.” And let’s remember that to block and report users, you have to be a user — which mean you’ve agreed to Peeple’s terms. In short, it appears the plan is to handle abuse claims, much like larger social services like Twitter do (and struggle with) today. But for a service that involves providing a blank slate for the sole purpose of letting users write people recommendations, not having some basic, automated moderation system in place to at least block profanity and other keywords is either a glaring oversight or an intentional (and callous) decision. If the latter, it’s likely one that’s designed to beef up the company’s private database of bad reviews marked for sale. I mean, this whole thing is in such bad taste that even though the app is live, it’s hard to believe that we’re still not being trolled here somehow. (Unfortunately, it’s impossible to test the app without agreeing to Peeple’s onerous Terms, so we chose to opt out. Though a fake Facebook account would allow for testing this app safely, creating that account would violate Facebook’s terms, which we are declining to do.) One possible spot of hope is that (i.e. Section 14.1 of its Review Guidelines), so it’s possible that the company will actually step in at some point to ban Peeple from its App Store. Peeple is live on the iOS App Store for the time being. (TechCrunch is choosing to not provide a direct link.) |
For less than $1,000 you can now pull up your entire genome on your smartphone | Sarah Buhr | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | was one of the first companies to sequence the entire human genome for less than $1,000 in 2015. It’s now taken that technology a step further by delivering the results of your entire genome in an app. To put in context just how radical this is, consider the first attempt at whole human genome sequencing required to produce in 2001. It wasn’t until 2007 when the first commercially available human genome sequencing came onto the scene for a fraction of the cost, at . The promise of whole human genome sequencing for less than $1,000 was somewhat of a catchphrase in the scientific community. Most consumer DNA companies still only give you specific sets of what’s in your DNA using gene panels. You can get about 60 test results from gene panels using , for example. But for $999, Veritas says its product will deliver the whole shebang to your smartphone. The cost includes test results and the benefit of genetic counseling to help you decipher what those results mean for your health. So someone with a genetic predisposition for breast cancer or Parkinson’s disease will get a heads up and information on possible courses of action. For instance, Angelina Jolie found out she carried the same breast cancer gene BRCA-1 as her mother and opted for a double mastectomy before the disease had a chance to develop. Harvard genetics pioneer George Church co-founded the company and first made whole genome sequencing available to about 5,000 participants in the Personal Genome Project (PGP) at . Church believes the price point and easy access will make whole genome sequencing the new standard. “Now that the whole genome is this accessible, it will replace all genetic tests … because it all genetic tests, and much, much more,” Church said. That might cause trouble for some companies hoping to cash in on the progress we’ve made. Genetics providers have run into trouble with the government for providing test results dealing with health conditions in the past; one of the biggest, 23andMe, had to pull back and work on approval from the FDA for a couple of years before being allowed to provide test results for certain health conditions. Veritas runs its tests in a CLIA-certified lab and requires an order from your doctor first before sequencing your genome, so it may be okay here, but things could still go wrong. We aren’t able to modify human genes just yet ( ) but you can see where this is going. The lower cost and ability to access the results of your own DNA could lead to a greater demand from the public and break down the laws preventing genetic engineering as medicine. While some might see that as the trigger leading to some dystopian scenario, I’m excited to see where this type of technology leads us, and the lives it can possibly save and even improve. |
Come meet our writers at TechCrunch’s SXSW party and panels | Josh Constine | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | Don’t just drunkenly wander around SXSW. Meet amazing people and catch an unforgettable concert at . Between 2:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on Saturday March 12, join us at at The Palm Door at . Only 2 blocks from the convention center! Register or below to attend for free. A half-dozen TechCrunch writers and editors will be there to chat with you over a free drink while supplies last. Come tell us about your startup, investments or crazy scheme to take over the world. We’re extremely excited to present a performance by , a dance rock wizard who uses video game controllers and live drums to make heartfelt, propulsive music. It’s something like The Postal Service meets Skrillex. He’s on at 3:30 p.m. and his shows are a must-see. Plus there’ll be an evening indie dance DJ set by . The event is now and tickets will not be available at the door. Thanks to for sponsoring the event, and for hosting. We’re still accepting sponsors. Just email sponsors@beta.techcrunch.com to inquire. And check out these SXSW panels featuring TechCrunchers: |
Olive branches, rubrics and the state of faster payments in the U.S. | Jordan Lampe | 2,016 | 3 | 8 |
The nation relies on systemically important market infrastructures. As you may have guessed, these engines of economy are designed to resist change. That’s not a bad thing. A certain amount of insulation protects us from the whims of fads and provides the cornerstones of the economy, like banking, finance and commerce — a confident foundation from which to build their systems. However, if overprotected by market forces, regulation or a host of other reasons (which we’ll get into later) an infrastructure can become incompatible with the economy — silently creeping, unconsciously informing and passively confining the systems and opportunities built on top of it. This is the case with America’s bank transfer infrastructure today. Called the Automated Clearing House, it looks healthy on paper. The underlying system, which exists to move money from Bank A to Bank B, processed a record $40 trillion in 2015 — continuing an upward trend of nearly 7 percent growth in transactions from the previous time in 2014. New systems, like Dwolla, Stripe and others, have made it faster to access, given it greater functionality and simplified end-user experiences, helping developers and businesses leverage the network and its ubiquitous low-cost payments in ways never before possible. Initiatives, like Same-Day ACH coming in 2016 and 2017, hope to make bank transfers faster than ever. Unfortunately, the core of ACH, a 540-page operating book/guidelines, is still soundly rooted in the needs, terminology and technical considerations of the banks that formed it during an era that gave us Disco (and “DYN-O-MITE!”). When it was established, the term “information technology” wouldn’t be coined for a few more years, and the other everyday technologies, like the World Wide Web, APIs and iPhones might as well have been unicorns and hoverboards back in 1974. Fast-forward to today and we can see how these systemic problems manifest themselves: two- to three-business-day wait times due to risk-based holds (hell, even one-day wait-times are arguably too slow), delays involved with the 80-some return and correction codes, propagation of insufficient funds and overdrafts, lack of modern abstraction and authentication, difficulty in accessing and supporting ACH operations and an over-reliance on expensive card and wire schemes, just to name a few. Its pure usage, for the most part, has been ruled out in the online retail world, instead pigeonholing our national bank transfer system to only a handful of viable use cases (e.g. payroll, recurring payments, stored value services, etc). The lack of meaningful modernization can be blamed on a host of reasons: over-regulation, lack of central payment authority in the U.S., incentives provided by more profitable systems and schemes, entrenched interests, scorned rivals, revenue loss, etc. Mix in conscious, deliberate and formal standards processes — like commenting periods, road shows and votes (supramajority required, of course) — needed to change anything and you’ll find plenty of opportunities for filibustering, personalities and rabble-rousing. Until a few years ago, asking the industry folks to get together in the name of patriotic duty was like saying, “Hey, Tom and Jerry, get over it.” That is, until about eight months ago. At the urging of the Federal Reserve, more than 300 experts and stakeholders — from Uber to Ripple, Wells Fargo to Walmart — voluntarily stood up . Call it self-preservation in the face of an evolving economy or nationalism in the name of global competitiveness, the group’s objective was to put aside its differences and identify approaches for a new and more modern payments system for the United States. Since then, those of us on the task force have spent countless hours with each other on email, in conference rooms and on phone calls, debating words, like “credit push,” “real time,” and “accessibility;” receiving history lessons on Check 21 and ACH services; and educating each other as to the new possibilities of technology (after all, new words, like APIs, cryptography and connectivity could help solve new and old problems around monetization, security and distribution). We did this not because we were linguists, master debaters or history teachers, but because we knew that our words would help define the infrastructure that would define the rules that would define the processes that would define the technology that would define the capabilities of the next great payment system of the United States. In eight months, we reached a milestone that hasn’t been done in more than 40 years: an . Explicitly, the 31-page, 9,500-word document: 1) represents the desires and expectations from payment stakeholders for a faster payments system, and 2) will serve as a rubric for system proposals to satisfy during the next phase of the initiative. Implicitly, the criteria is a new lexicon for payments in the 21st century, providing a glimpse into the functionality, capability and benefits needed for economic participants (including, “you, the reader”) to confidently understand, discuss and plan for a faster payment infrastructure. For example, this infrastructure would be much more developer-friendly with easier and more modern access and authentication scopes. For banks, it would provide a platform for value-added services and improved decision making, and would place payments back at the heart of a financial institution. Merchants would benefit with a system rewarded for improving automation, lowering costs and fighting fraud more efficiently and effectively. Consumers would be able to engage with new business models, services and control never before possible. The improved safety, speed and efficiency offered by this new lexicon will lift all boats. This is a watershed moment for payments in this country, but we are far from done. More than 35 nations have created or are implementing modern, real-time, low-cost, ubiquitous bank transfer systems. They’ve had the luxury of a government mandate; ours is voluntary and market-led. Our next step is to submit and evaluate the systems that satisfy this criteria. The process will go through 2016 and in 2017. In the meantime, developers, entrepreneurs, businesses and consumers will play a powerful role in creating visibility for the existing problems and maintaining momentum. So go talk to your bank, payment provider, your mother, anyone and let them know the problems facing your platform, business model or end users. Go demand a better infrastructure. |
littleBits’ new STEAM kit for students emphasizes invention | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | We are of here at TechCrunch. The company, which raised $44.2 million last year, offers a number of that teach kids (and grown-ups) about programming and electronics — and lets them get creative with their new skills. Today, the company introduced its . STEAM adds “Arts and Design” to STEM’s science, technology, engineering and math, and so it’s no surprise that the focus of this new set is on invention and designing. The set, which is now available for pre-order, will cost $299.95 and ship by April 22. This new set is squarely aimed at schools (unlike littleBits’ kit, for example) and littleBits will also who want to use it in their classrooms. Using this new kit and the 72-page that comes with it, students will get to build their own version of a basic , a gizmo to track their daily habits and , among many other projects. The kit itself includes 19 different parts, including light and temperature sensors, a buzzer, a servo motor and LED lights. There are also 49 accessories (think USB adapter, wheels, servo mounts, etc.). At almost $300, this is probably not the best set to get started with littleBits at home (the is probably the better option there). For schools, though, this offers a nice all-in-one package to get students excited about technology. “ wants every student to have the technology literacy and problem-solving skills to create their own inventions, whether it’s a device to assist someone with a disability, an arcade game or a new household gadget,” littleBits founder and CEO Ayah Bdeir said in today’s announcement. “We’re working with educators to provide a way for anyone, regardless of their technical ability, to bring STEM and STEAM into the classroom in a highly impactful and engaging way.” The company says the New York City Department of Education will use these new sets for grades 2-5 in its Summer in the City STEM program. |
null | Haje Jan Kamps | 2,016 | 3 | 30 | null |
Subleases spike in number as SF startups downsize | Connie Loizos | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | In January, office rents in San Francisco those of New York to become the most expensive in the country. Two months later, there are signs the San Francisco may not maintain its dubious position for long. The biggest indicator: There’s suddenly 1.7 million square feet of sublease space available in San Francisco, up more than 50 percent from 1.1 million square feet in November, according to , a commercial real estate services and investment firm. That kind of jump in four months’ time suggests ripple effects from a funding slowdown that stretch beyond a small but . If the trend isn’t giving local landlords flashbacks of the late 1990s, it may soon. The Bay Area’s real estate market enjoyed a historically active 2015, with San Francisco accounting for the world’s highest rent growth at , according to brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. (Oakland saw the third biggest jump in rent nationally, said the brokerage.) The last time San Francisco surpassed New York in price per square footage, says CBRE, was 2000, the same year the tech market famously peaked, then abruptly imploded. Of course, today’s volatility in the public tech sector pales in comparison to the tech market nosedive that followed the dot-com boom of 16 years ago. The slowdown in venture investing isn’t as sudden or severe, either, making it “too early to tell” if the economy has turned in a meaningful way, says Colin Yasukochi, director of research and analysis at CBRE. Still, says Yasukochi, “There are definitely signs of change. It’s mostly a question of how severe they are, and how they evolve.” Bay Area brokers, landlords and tenants appear to be in a kind of discovery stage at the moment. On the one hand, despite the dramatic increase in subleased space that’s become available, new tenants aren’t seeing a huge discount, which is usually an indication of a weak market. “It depends on how long the lease is — one, two or five years or more — in terms of cost,” says Yasukochi. “But if you compare a good quality sublease space to a good, quality space direct from its owner, you’re seeing maybe a 10 percent markdown.” It’s when discounts rise to 30 and 40 percent that a market is officially in trouble, says Yasukochi. Yasukochi says another clue that the market is holding its own centers on commercial real estate development, which has been booming in recent years and continues unabated for now. “I haven’t seen developers stop their projects yet,” says Yasukochi, who began tracking the real estate industry in 2000. “Most of the buildings that are under construction right now are fairly well under way, and the one office building in downtown San Francisco that’s just starting construction appears to be going ahead with its plans.” According to , four commercial properties were completed in San Francisco in the fourth quarter alone, opening up 1.2 million square feet of new space to the market. Notably, all the newly completed construction was pre-leased, with tenants scheduled to take occupancy during the first half of this year. Yasukochi says that we’re also “not really seeing landlords trying to increase rents and otherwise tighten terms for tenants,” which is a clear sign of nervousness. That may be starting to change. So suggests Evan Combs, a San Francisco-based adviser at , a corporate real estate advisory firm that helps tech startups land the right space and which began to observe the increase in subleased property in the third quarter of last year. Combs says that while “we haven’t seen landlords shifting their pricing plans yet,” he and his colleagues have registered more “landlords now trying to tie up their vacancies. If they can lock someone in for five to seven years,” they’re going to do it. CBRE’s Yasukochi also notes that the real estate market typically lags the broader investment market by half a year. That could mean that if the market going to get squeezed, that shift is around the corner. “When the stock market peaked in April 2000, the real estate market reacted six months later,” he says. “The same thing happened [following the financial crisis of] 2008. Whether this market peaked last July when the Nasdaq hit , or it effectively peaked in the fall or later” — possibly when mutual fund investors began their private company holdings — is an open question, Yasukochi notes. Either way, he says, “I’ve got to imagine that any new [building] starts this year will be scrutinized much more.” Plainly, so will the amount of space that tech companies need to make it through this year, given a mostly shut IPO market and investors who are thinking harder about each check they write. Such reassessments aren’t so terrible, particularly given the that startups had begun to offer their employees. Let’s face it; there’s less pressure to build an office slide when everyone else is cutting back on spending. The growing amount of subleased inventory is undoubtedly welcome news for nascent tech companies, too. While startups “still request those personal touches– they all want the communal kitchen and the game room,” Combs says, startups have also grown “more opportunistic.” Though subleases aren’t coming at a huge discount (yet), young companies are still benefiting from entering into places that other tech companies previously occupied. “The infrastructure is in place,” says Combs. “These offices require less build out. That [equates to] cash flow preservation,” and at a time when startups appear to need it the most. |
Pinterest opens up its ads manager tools to smaller and medium-sized businesses | Matthew Lynley | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | Pinterest that were previously unavailable for smaller businesses as its portfolio of advertising products — and revenue potential — continues to grow. All these tools continue to give smaller and medium-sized businesses new opportunities to manage advertisements on Pinterest. Around three-fourths of the content on Pinterest comes from businesses already, and these kinds of tools help them better get the right ads in front of the right people to drive conversions. And, of course, if smaller and medium-sized businesses are buying more ads, it drives more to Pinterest’s top line. Pinterest’s ads manager gives potential advertisers the tools that have already been available to partners for bulk-editing campaigns and more closely monitoring the success of those campaigns, as well as the ability to buy ads with a credit card to other advertisers on Pinterest as opposed to more complex mechanisms. “First and foremost we want to build an ad platform that provides value to Pinners and is additive to the experience,” monetization product manager Nipoon Malhotra said. “We wanted to maximize the value they’re returning to partners. There’s a few other things which come into that, we’re building this for small and medium-sized businesses, wanted to make sure the platform is easy to use and is optimized for them. The results for them you see kind of speak for that. In addition to releasing the ads manager, Pinterest is releasing some new tools for advertising targeting. First, the company is expanding the number of interests that advertisers can target against — there are now 420 of them that allow Pinterest advertisers to drill down their campaigns and make them better target potential customers. They can also target keywords in addition to interests, in the hopes of catching them at different moments in time at which they are considering purchasing things. Malhotra expects advertisers to use a mix of all these tools in order to create better advertising campaigns. “Obviously every partner’s situation is unique but we do believe all these combinations help them maximize their impact on the platforms,” he said. That’s important for advertisers because Pinterest users in particular are sort of wandering around the service at a wide range of moments in their lives: discovering new content, searching directly for it (which contains some level of intent that the user is looking for something to purchase), and eventually saving and potentially converting to a customer. It’s that full stack of moments in time that makes Pinterest so attractive to advertisers compared to say, Google, which is good for intent-based advertising. “Pinners plan and discover ideas early on our platform compared to other platforms,” Malhotra said. “Christmas starts in august as opposed to December. The half-life of a pin on the platform is about [three and a half] months.” The company is also introducing what’s called customer database targeting, in which Pinterest advertisers can upload a customer database and then use that data in order to create a profile of people they want to advertise against. They can then run campaigns against those profiles, giving them an easier way to figure out what kinds of users they want to advertise against. Above all this, the Malhotra says the company has dedicated teams to ensure that the quality of advertisements continue to remain high as more and more advertisers have an opportunity to deploy their campaigns on Pinterest. “We’re gonna continue to invest so that Pinners are connected with the right partners,” he said. “We also have multiple teams [like engineers that work on ad relevance] inside the company [dedicated to that.]” These tools may seem incremental at times, but all of these launches are for good reason: Pinterest only in recent years began rolling out advertising products, and has steadily been growing its revenue stream. Malhotra said that Pinterest’s revenue grew five-fold between 2014 and 2015. This one in particular, however, opens up a whole range of tools to the larger advertising ecosystem, making it one of Pinterest’s bigger ad launches. Pinterest offers a wide array of advertising tools, ranging from ads that advertisers can pay for depending on the engagement of the pin (from expanding the size of it all the way to clicking through and making a purchase) to its own spin on video advertisements that run a short clip as users scroll down on their feeds. That’s made the platform increasingly attractive to advertisers, who have been waiting for Pinterest to give them full access and tools to manage their campaigns on Pinterest. |
Google renames its satellite startup, Skybox Imaging, to Terra Bella and adds focus on image analysis | Frederic Lardinois | 2,016 | 3 | 8 | Google today that it is renaming Skybox Imaging, the satellite startup it in 2014, to . More than just a name change, though, the company says this switch is also about showing that Terra Bella is not only about putting small imaging satellites into orbit, but also about analyzing subsequent images. “As proud as we are to have played a leading role in developing satellite technologies, we have realized that our vision extends far beyond boxes in the sky,” Skybox founders Dan Berkenstock, John Fenwick and Ching-Yu Hu write today. “As Google revolutionized search for the online world, we have set our eyes on pioneering the search for patterns of change in the physical world. In order to focus firmly on the future, we’re pursuing that vision under a new name — Terra Bella.” Having access to Google’s other geospatial data sources and machine learning capabilities, the founders say, means the company will now be able to provide services that will go beyond making its raw imagery available. What exactly these new services will look like, though, remains to be seen. The team — as well as a Google spokesperson — only wanted to say that we should stay tuned for more news to come in the next few months. It’s worth noting that the team is quick to point out that Terra Bella will continue to build its own spacecraft. Terra Bella says it is currently working on “more than a dozen satellites” that will launch over the next couple of years. |
HomeHero wants to work with hospitals to connect in-home caregivers to seniors | Matthew Lynley | 2,016 | 3 | 1 | CEO Kyle Hill spent a lot of time building technology for his parents that would help them find better service for their aging family members — who were around 2,000 miles away across the country. So, , he decided to bet the company on a new idea around that. That’s why he launched , which is now partnering with hospitals to connect home care providers to patients, and is launching a mobile application that helps people monitor the health of their family members that are under the care of providers hired by HomeHero. The company is also following the steps of other startups by converting its contractors to full-time employees with salaries and benefits. HomeHero has been working on the program for about 6 months, Hill said, which helps manage hospital discharges and connects them to HomeHero caregivers. In most cases, Hill says, seniors leaving a hospital don’t necessarily need highly skilled nurses to care for them — they just need someone around the house to help out by managing their diet or installing bars in the home. So it gives hospitals an incentive to find the best in-home caregivers to reduce their risk of readmission and the overall cost of care. Originally a direct-to-consumer app that connected families with a marketplace of caregivers, HomeHero is now expanding its reach beyond the consumer-facing aspects of in-home care providing in what seems like an attempt to stave off the competition. That’ll be important going forward, as the space heats up and other competitors emerge. If HomeHero can get in front of patients before other services, it has a better shot of securing a client for its in-home care service. “You look at it as a shift from Dropbox and Box, where Box was focusing on a lot more of the enterprise, we’re doing something similar with hospitals,” Hill said. “We’re not abandoning our direct-to-consumer business, but we see an opportunity to partner direct with these health systems.” Hospitals are incentivized to help prevent repeat hospitalizations. So the challenge here is to try to reduce readmissions as much as possible, which means using technology to detect when a patient is at risk. One way HomeHero does that is by asking caregivers a series of questions that are customized on a per-patient basis — such as asking whether they are noticing any weight gain or loss — to determine whether or not it needs to intervene with more highly skilled care. Of course, there are others in this space, including that builds a mobile application that connects families with home care providers. Hill says that HomeHero offers connectivity with both consumers and hospitals, which will better encourage the use of HomeHero over other services. “We do everything in our ability to keep them safe and keep them happy, and a lot of times we’ll hold onto that patient for years to come where they’re no longer at risk to readmission,” Hill said. “Even if it’s being paid out of pocket we develop a really good relationship with that family. You can look at it like a lead generation service.” The eventual goal is to hopefully work directly with insurance providers, which could help cover the cost of a service like HomeHero in order to reduce the risk of hospitalization — which can be costly to insurance providers, Hill said. HomeHero . |
How I built a hoverboard company and then blew it up | Khaled "Tito" Hamze | 2,016 | 3 | 1 | introduced to Hoverboards while watching Shenzhen Uwheel Technology Co., Ltd * I guess it’s better than my original name and logo for the company. Music Video: Logic – Young Jesus (Explicit) ft. Big Lenbo TC Disrupt San Francisco 2015 A post shared by (@logic) on There are a couple of things that are guaranteed to happen if you start a hoverboard company. You will be tagged and sent every single video that has anything to do with hoverboards in it. Everybody will tell you where they have seen it for cheaper and still want to buy yours below cost. You’ll have friends tell you those are the lamest things they have ever seen anyone on, yet they can’t but have the biggest smile once they finally try it out. Also, did you know they |
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