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Google Adds Full Restaurant Menus To Its Search Results Pages | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | Here is a : if you ask it to find a restaurant menu for you, it will now often just show you the menu right on the search results page. Try this for a search like “show me the menu for fogo de chao” and the menu will be right there. As far as I can see, this doesn’t work for every restaurant yet and it’s unclear where Google is getting this data from. Right now, the number of supported restaurants also seems to be limited. Most of my attempts to trigger the menu listings were actually unsuccessful, so your mileage may vary. The searches that did work tended to be for restaurants that are also listed on , so chances are this is where Google is getting its data from. The only way to trigger this feature right now is to type (or speak) “show me the menu for [restaurant name].” Just typing “menu [restaurant name]” doesn’t seem to do anything right now. This feature was first spotted earlier by earlier this month, which also suspects AllMenus.com as the source for the data. At the time, Google said it was just one of its many tests. Today, however, it made it official with a . Given that restaurant websites are often quite antiquated (and many still have an annoying Flash intro), having the information you need right on the search results page is pretty cool (when it works). I don’t know how sites that in showing you restaurant menus feel about this addition, but once Google adds more restaurants, I’m pretty sure I’ll use this feature pretty regularly. |
Miley’s Lawyers Want “Flying Cyrus” Off The App Store | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | Israeli company has been asked by Miley Cyrus’s legal team to remove “ ,” currently the fifth most popular free iPhone application in the U.S., from the iTunes App Store, we’ve learned. According to Cyrus’s lawyers, “Flying Cyrus” infringes on their client’s rights, and represents an “unauthorized use” of Cyrus’s name and trademarks. The game, for those unfamiliar, is one of the many popular “Flappy Bird” clones that have after the original was , who claimed he couldn’t handle the attention of having a viral hit. Variations of that addicting, but frustrating simple game have since skyrocketed to success, as users went in search of alternatives. In Talo Games’ particular clone, the “Flappy Bird” in question was replaced by a blond girl’s floating head, which bounces in between wrecking balls, instead of the green pipes the little bird had once tried to avoid. In an interview with earlier this month, Talo Games shared that the “Flying Cyrus” game had surpassed a million downloads since its mid-February release. Today, Talo Games’ creator Tal Dahabani tells us that “Flying Cyrus” has reached 5 million downloads. Dahabani and his lawyer have confirmed to TechCrunch that they received complaints from Cyrus’s lawyers, and are currently trying to resolve the conflict. A representative for Miley Cyrus replied “no comment” when reached about this matter. Players of “Flying Cyrus” may have noticed it’s been updated in recent days – it no longer has the same artwork and icon . Now the girl looks a bit more generic, it seems. : : Erez Mizrachi, whose firm Furth, Wilensky, Mizrachi, Knaani represents Talo Games and several other startups based in Israel, clarifies that Cyrus and team are not “suing” Talo Games at this time, but have rather requested that the company stop infringing on Cyrus’s rights by removing the game from iTunes. “We truly hope that we will not get to any lawsuit, and believe that there is no reason to get there,” Mizrachi states. Talo Games has denied all claims against it so far, and is in the process of explaining to Cyrus’s legal team that the application was “always intended to constitute a parody,” and is “one of many other similar parodies” appearing elsewhere for public consumption, including on YouTube and in the App Store. “My client believes that achieving the right balance between freedom of expression (i.e. parody) and respecting another’s IP rights is the real challenge, and he really believes that in the current situation this is exactly what he did,” Mizrachi adds. Talo Games has a few other titles in the App Store, and to distribute its applications, too. And while the “Flying Cyrus” game may be Talo’s biggest hit, the company is additionally known as the developer behind the free version of “Red Bouncing Ball Spikes,” which has also spent time in the top 10, and is now the No. 20 most popular free app on iTunes in the U.S. That’s another interesting story, as it turns out, since a paid version of that game, based on the same GameSalad template, reached the App Store’s Top Charts, as well. (The paid version came from a different developer . Talo Games’ followed the paid release by introducing a free variation). As for what will happen to “Flying Cyrus,” that’s still to be determined. It’s up to the lawyers to try to resolve the situation for now. But if the game were to disappear from iTunes, at least consumers . |
Gillmor Gang Live 02.28.14 (TCTV) | Steve Gillmor | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | – Dan Farber, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Live recording session has concluded for today. |
With Mt.Gox In Flames, A Lesson: When Building A Company, First Do No Harm | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | The has sent shockwaves through the early-adopting tech community. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins have been lost, and account holders are justifiably angry about their missing balances. It is easy to heap blame on Mt.Gox’s founders and call this a once-in-a-lifetime calamity, but the context behind the company’s demise is far more pernicious and occurs far more frequently than it should in the tech community. Users today take incredible risks when starting to use a product, risks that they don’t appreciate when they click on a trial button or download an app. System reliability is often assumed when it is unwarranted, and data integrity and loss prevention is rarely guaranteed. Worse, we make little mention of the beta status of new services, misleading users to believe that the product they are using is far less risky than it appears in the glossy product pages. In no other industry would companies be able to get away with this, and if we don’t change things fast, our exceptional absence of regulation may become part of the past. The Mt.Gox saga lays bare a dirty little secret of Silicon Valley: the users of our products are our test subjects. We experiment with them, we A/B test on them, we fail them, sometimes repeatedly. My own data has been overwritten, modified, deleted, leaked, and deleted again by early startups. Multiply by the multitude of services we all use in our daily lives, and suddenly it can seem that every few days something is going wrong. Even early-adopting tech users are starting to become wary. As this week, “I’m not excited by the prospect of installing an app on my phone these days. It’s more like a vague sense of impending dread, with my finger shakily hovering over the uninstall button the whole time.” He is not just talking about system reliability, but also the corrosive business models that encourage data to be leaked to any number of revenue-generating affiliates. When I installed a few weeks ago, I hesitated for several days when it asked for complete access to my contacts, an ironic notion given its anonymous functionality. While the company has done nothing to abuse my trust, it is the ecosystem that is encouraging this level of cynicism. There is plenty of blame to go around for the state of affairs. It starts with founders who take a lean startup approach and attempt to hoodwink customers into believing that their software is far more developed and stable than it actually is. How many times have we heard about the “100 year startup” that gets talent-acquired a mere 14 months after its existence? We also need to look toward VCs and other investors who demand steep growth profiles even at the expense of core business operations. Startups should always be building the proper foundation for a long-lived company, even if that means a slightly less intense focus on growth. Part of the problem is that technology startups are very different from other kinds of new ventures. Due to the lock-in nature of software and services, users often become reliant on a product very shortly after signing up. Unintentionally, their data starts to accumulate, and they may develop processes with the service that are difficult to transition to another system. Every company needs to deeply protect their customers, and yet, we see startups like Mt.Gox act so completely cavalier with customer information. Furthermore, many users are still living with a software mentality, because the software they purchased in the past works for years. Most of the world does not upgrade all of their software in lockstep with the latest product releases. That is one reason for the success of cloud services, but it also remains an Achilles’ heel – the company behind the service needs to survive in order for the service to continue functioning. My elementary school was still using computers from the late 1980s without too much hassle, but today, a company failing literally means it is no longer available to me. To be fair, startups are necessarily experimental — more art than process. There are going to be hiccups, as there are in any new business as the team determines the best fit for a product in the market, or the right pricing structure. Large corporations are also not immune to these problems. Apple deserves some serious blame between and of the past two weeks. Google’s last year was also quite damaging to many news junkies. But at least in that case, Google created sufficient lead time with its shutdown that other startups like were able to make the transition relatively seamless. Few startup users enjoy such convenience. There are ways to avoid these outcomes. An easy one would be to take an open approach to data, ensuring that customers and users are always allowed to export their data. That open approach should also follow through in a startup’s communications, which should clearly indicate the expected reliability and guarantees of a service. Startups that are more advanced should begin to think through service-level agreements that guarantee certain levels of uptime, data integrity, and data-loss prevention. By making a lot of the reliability statistics key performance indicators for the company that are also contractually binding, a founder can set a high and consistent bar for service. More simply, though, we need to commit to a founder culture in which we first do no harm. We owe nothing less to the early adopters of our software. Such a commitment does not have to come at a cost. WhatsApp was the largest acquisition of all time, and it . There is incredible opportunity for the next generation of startups to take reliability as their given, and for founders to prepare to build for the long-term. As users increasingly use services that fail their expectations, they are going to become more and more educated about what services to use, and which to avoid. |
These Tire Caps Change Color When Your Car’s Tire Pressure Gets Low | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | Quick! How’s your car’s tire pressure? Don’t know? Better go check. Which, if you’re like most people, means going out, kicking the tire, saying “seems good” and forgetting about it until something is clearly wrong. Here’s a damned clever alternative: tire caps that change color when the pressure gets too low. While easily forgettable, tire pressure is actually kind of a big deal. When it’s too low, you’re wasting gas (low tire pressure = extra tire touching the ground = extra friction) and potentially overheating your tire. When it’s too high, you’re screwing up your traction and making it harder for your car to come to a stop. Either way is bad news. Using a spring-loaded mechanism tucked inside of a sealed housing, a ring around the core of the cap changes from red, to black, to yellow depending on your tire’s pressure. Red means too low; yellow means too high. When the cap is black, you’re good to go. One catch, though: these things have to be tuned for your tire’s optimal PSI before they leave the factory, which means if you want to swap them onto a different car or you buy different tires, you might need a new set. The company claims they can tune the cap to any PSI level, but it can’t be changed post-production. And what about thieves? Back in high school, a bunch of kids I grew up with would snag each other’s tire caps for fun on a regular basis (Lamest prank in the world? Quite possibly. It was a small town. There wasn’t much to do.) Surely, a cap that’s quite a bit snazzier than the standard 2 cent plastic plug would make for an easy target? The company is aware of it, and is working on that. For now, there’s a hex nut at the base of the cap that can be tightened to make it tougher to steal without a hex wrench — but that’s not exactly a huge barrier. They’re prototyping a model with a more complicated locking mechanism, but they’re not yet sure how much they’d need to raise (beyond their original $20k goal) to get it done. The price varies a bit depending on how many you want (Two for a motorycle? Four for a car?), but at $30 for a four pack, they come in around $7 or 8 bucks a cap. RightPSI set out , and has raised nearly twice that since launching the campaign around two weeks ago. If they hit that $40k mark, they’re pledging to add a glow-in-the-dark option for folks who want to strap these on their bikes. Either way, they expect the caps to start shipping in July.
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This Week On The TC Gadgets Podcast: All MWC Everything | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | Reporters are drunkenly finding their way home from a long week in Barcelona, where the Mobile World Congress conference yielded a number of exciting new phones and tablets. Most notably, Samsung launched the , Nokia launched a new line of Android/Windows Phone hybrid devices, and we finally got up close and personal with the . We discuss all this and more on this week’s episode of the , featuring , , , and . Enjoy!
We invite you to enjoy our every Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern and noon Pacific. And feel free to check out the TechCrunch Gadgets Flipboard magazine right .
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Intro Music by . |
A Year From Launch, Skillshare Lands $6M From USV, Spark To Double Down On Its Project-Based, Online Classes | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | launched in 2011 to give those interested in continuing to learn outside the classroom a place to get real-world skills from both online and offline classes. Over the past year, the New York-based startup has moved towards the massive, open online course approach, connecting subject experts across industries with anyone looking to “get their learn on” through interactive, video-based lessons. Skillshare’s growth has accelerated since, with over 100K paid enrollments in over 500 classes, while the platform’s most successful teacher made over $100K on Skillshare in 2013 — a number which Seth Godin has since broken thanks to . With monetization starting to pick up and its course catalog continuing to expand, Skillshare is looking to double down on its online lesson platform in 2014 by adding more courses (particularly in business, design and tech), extending student support and by finally taking its platform mobile. To do that, the startup is adding some more coin to its coffers, with $6 million in new funding in a round co-led by Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. The new investment brings Skillshare’s total capital to $10 million. With its project-based and skills-focused approach to online learning, Skillshare is now part of a growing set of companies leveraging the advances in video and communications technology to make continuing education accessible to and affordable for the masses. However, unlike video-based education platforms like Lynda.com, CreativeLive, Khan Academy and Curious, for example, Skillshare claims it’s on a short list of companies offering lessons that are both live interactive, as well as courses that are more project-based and allow students to learn at their own pace. The idea, says co-founder and CEO Michael Karnjanaprakorn, is to create a learning experience in which students are able to get face-to-face time with teachers via online office hours and focus on learning through completing projects and receiving peer feedback — not by digitizing the lecture hall or learning for the sake of earning a badge. Skillshare wants to capitalize on the growing demand for skills-based learning content, thanks to the ever-changing and increasingly competitive (and technical) job market. To lower the barriers to entry and attract those looking to add new skills to their CVs, Skillshare operates as an open platform — meaning that anyone can submit an application to bring their classes (or subject expertise) online. The platform allows teachers and subject experts to design classes and projects for their students to complete live or at their leisure, along with the ability to add supplemental content, from syllabi to relevant lectures, while allowing students to participate in discussions, submit projects and receive feedback on their work. With new capital under its belt, Skillshare is also looking to boost student engagement by making its platform, and the learning experience itself, more social. To avoid making students feel as if they’re learning in a vacuum, the startup recently launched an activity feed to give students the ability to track teachers, other students, as well as skills and projects from across the platform to see what people are up to and keep tabs on how others are using the platform. The goal, over the long term, is to build a more active social community, where students are given more opportunities to get to know each other and build relationships with actual people, rather than just breeze through a week-long course and move on. With greater community interaction and engagement, the stickier the Skillshare experience becomes, or at least that’s what the team is hoping. |
Reddit To Give 10% Of Its 2014 Ad Revenue To Non-Profits Picked By Its Users | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | Do you block the ads on sites you love? Would you be less likely to do that if you knew a chunk of ad revenues were going to a good cause? That’s (at least part of) the thinking behind a new idea that reddit — a site that’s so big at this point I honestly feel like explaining what it is on TechCrunch would be stupid — is playing with. At the end of 2014, they’ll be donating 10% of their yearly ad revenue to non-profit organizations picked by the community. “But wait!” you say. “Is reddit even profitable yet?” Nope — but they’re close. Close enough that they’re comfortable giving away 10% of the ad money they take in, even if that means it takes a bit longer before they’re breaking even. Says reddit CEO Yishan Wong in the comments of the : We’re getting closer to closing the gap. Yes, doing this will widen the gap again but people are right: we think this is good for non-profits AND we are working to increase ad revenue by more than 11.1% anyhow. So it’s less about a numbers game as it is trying to align things even more between ads and the will of the community, because we want to have the right business model. Also found in the comments? An overwhelming number of people complimenting Yishan on his historically correct use of the word “decimate” (as in, to kill off one in every 10 soldiers, a form of self-punishment used by the Roman Army) in the post’s title, “Decimating Our Ads Revenue”. Because this is reddit we’re talking about, and reddit loves it some grammar. Now that I’ve mentioned grammar, I’ve made at least 200 grammar mistakes in this sentence alone. At the end of the year, reddit will ask the community for their votes on which non-profits should get the cash. From there, it’ll be distributed (based on percentage of votes) to the top 10 suggestions. To keep trolls from poisoning the good will well, reddit is putting in a few sanity checks: they’ll only give money to verified non-profit 501(c)(3) organizations, and they’re reserving the right to nix any suggestions. |
The Ring Input Device Puts Gesture Control And Home Automation On Your Finger | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 28 |
There was once a rumor that Apple would actually use a ring device for input to an Apple television. Neither of those gadgets exist yet, of course, but trying to fund a finger-based wearable that could enable the kind of controls envisioned in that Apple flight of fancy. The Ring is a hardware device that resembles an ordinary (if slightly chunky) ring, filled with sensors and electronics to give it the ability to control devices and render input. It can enable gesture controls, of the kind you’d get with a Wii remote, for instance, as well as text input by drawing letters in the air, gesture-based authorization for finalizing payments, and transmit alerts from connected devices via a built-in vibration motor and onboard LED. That may sound familiar, since the that made its debut at our TechCrunch Battlefield competition this year at CES in Las Vegas has similar aims. The Ring is much further along, however, and even demoed at our , where it took top honors. The Ring is currently in its sixth iteration, and has moved from something you’d barely call wearable, to a ring available in six finger sizes that resembles the average class ring in terms of dimensions. Sensors on board can detect even the smallest finger movements, according to Ring’s creators, and the gadget works with preset gestures for common controls (calling up messages, playing music or activating the camera), plus you can configure your own custom gestures using the companion app. There’s also a pre-set alphabet for text and number entry, and it can pair directly with other Bluetooth 4.0 devices that are compatible with its software, or to any Wi-Fi or IR capable device via a hub accessory that receives commands from the Ring itself and then passes those on. For mobile payments, it enables direct payments using either GPS location data or iBeacon to restaurants, retail stores and others with compatible systems, and you can even enter the amount with your finger by drawing on air to complete the transaction. Plus, you can make a quick checkmark gesture to approve set amounts typed in by the merchant. Access to even more integration and other software will be made available via various developer tools, including an Open URL scheme that allows a gesture to call up a specific web address on a connected devices, JavaScript integration, and SDKs for both iOS and Android software. Eventually, the plan is to house all Ring-enabled apps in a central software store, accessible via your mobile device or computer. The Ring is currently compatible with iOS and Android devices with Bluetooth 4.0 support, and Windows Phone software is also in the works. The campaign raised over $200,000 of its $250,000 goal in its first day on Kickstarter, and offers single unit pre-orders starting at $165, with a projected delivery date of July, 2014. That means it’ll come just in time to serve as a wedding band for late summer unions, if you want something that’s functional as well as fashionable. |
Meet Rebump, The New Worst Thing About Email | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | Email is probably the bane of your life. There is too much of it, and there’s a special hate reserved for people who selfishly fill your inbox with balderdash. Email is broken because it’s far easier to send someone a message that creates work for them than it is for them to do that work. So you can quickly make the lives of people worse, at little cost to yourself. Today, not responding to email is implicitly stating that your note was not important enough to warrant a response. That’s appropriate! Not everything everyone thinks or says merits a response. What we want in life is less, not more email, right? Yet a startup called has found a way to make email even worse. How is that possible, you ask.? Well, Rebump is a service that automatically re-pings people — via email, of course — that haven’t answered your original message. It will keep doing so until you get a response. Note that this implies that your initial email was both worth reading, and worth replying to. In reality most email fails both tests. So, Rebump is essentially a brilliantly passive aggressive way to force people into responding to you, In practice, this is how the company explains itself: Yes, it made me nauseous as well. Actually I can see this working in practice: By the 7th follow up I reply to your note. With a congenial “fuck off.” I guess if that is what you want, then great. I get that Rebump is trying to offer a service people will find useful, but if that utility comes from degrading everyone else’s life, it’s net negative for humanity. If you are friends with someone and they don’t respond to your note, maybe they are busy. Maybe call them. Maybe let it slide, because you are not the most important thing in their life. Don’t use this. Don’t abuse their already overstuffed inbox. I don’t care if Rebump calls them “friendly follow-up messages.” This is a friendly heads up that people will hate you if you Rebump. |
Lerer Ventures To Join Us Onstage At Disrupt NY | Samantha O'Keefe | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | We’re thrilled to announce today that the entire partnership will share a stage at Disrupt NY. Lerer Ventures is one of the most prolific venture capital firms in New York City, and its partnership is unique. Started by father and son Ken and Ben Lerer, the team also includes former HuffPo CEO-turned-Lerer Ventures managing director Eric Hippeau and Jordan Cooper, CEO of Wildcard. This will be the first time the entire team will be speaking together on our stage. Lerer has made investments in more than 175 companies, including Warby Parker, Rap Genius, BirchBox, betaworks, Makerbot, Everlane and BuzzFeed. Though the firm has a strong media backround, it invests in companies of many areas of interest, choosing to focus on what their founders bring to the table, rather than a specific vertical. Lerer leverages the combined strength of two generations: Ken and Eric bring their breadth of experience and Ben and Jordan tap into the leading edge of New York’s startup culture. We’re looking forward to finding out more about each of their roles behind the scenes and what happens when father and son disagree. Join us at Disrupt NY to learn how the Lerer investment perspective has changed, what new spaces are lighting investment watchtowers, and what’s in store for the NY startup scene. Has the father and son’s more political project had the impact they’d hoped? And what are their goals for the recently funded animal news site ? are currently available for Disrupt NY and are on sale until March 8th when they will jump in price by $250. There are also for startups to exhibit, sponsor and pitch at Disrupt. applications are due Thursday, February 27 at 5 p.m. |
Apple Made Over $1B On The Sale Of Around 10M Apple TV Units In 2013 | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | Apple’s TV business still consists only of an over-the-top streaming media box, and not a proper TV set despite longstanding rumors that kind of hardware was on the way – but it’s showing impressive growth nonetheless. The company sold approximately 10 million Apple TV units last year, according to estimates based on figures Apple CEO Tim Cook offered up at the annual Apple shareholder meeting today. Apple made over , Cook explained during the meeting with investors, which translates to sales at or around 10 million units, as noted by Asymco’s Horace Dediu. With just over 5 million units sold in 2012, that makes Apple TV the company’s , according to the analyst, with around 80 percent year-over-year growth. https://twitter.com/asymco/status/439465818867634176/photo/1 The growth of Apple TV could be ascribed to any number of factors; there wasn’t a major hardware revision last year for the streaming box, but Apple did add a wealth of new content sources through new partnerships with media companies. 2013 also saw a significant increase in Netflix subscribers, which could have helped its fortunes as that’s a key part of the Apple TV’s consumer appeal. Apple still hasn’t fielded any television set hardware, but another observer points out that the Apple TV business on its own is now around 1/4 of the entire U.S. flat-panel TV industry, which means there’s probably little incentive for it to join that relatively small race. Rumors suggest we’ll see refreshed Apple TV hardware coming this spring from Cupertino, and a deal announced today where seems to indicate Apple is indeed clearing stock to make way for something new. With a refreshed streaming box and more services than ever, we could see 2014 growth for Apple TV beat even last year’s significant upward trend. |
Language-Learning Platform TutorGroup Raises $100M From Investors Including Alibaba | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | English-learning platform announced that it has raised a $100 million Series B round from investors including Chinese Internet giant , Singaporean investment firm , and . TutorGroup says it plans to use the funding to grow its business in Asia and expand in the Americas. Its massive Series B will help TutorGroup compete with online-learning platforms like . Duolingo is also another potential competitor, though the free learning platform’s . This latest round of funding brings the total TutorGroup has . Launched in 2004, TutorGroup’s international headquarters are in San Francisco and its main products are VIPABC and TutorABC, which are geared toward English-language students in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. TutorMing, on the other hand, is for people who want to learn Chinese. The company connects 2,000 teachers in 30 countries with language students through real-time class sessions. TutorGroup’s technology platform has allowed it to scale up by automatically recommending class size, learning pace, and course content. TutorGroup says that it expects the adult English language-learning market within China to grow 25% annually and reach more than $21 billion by 2015. In China alone, the company expects sales to experience a triple-digit annual growth rate in the next few years. In a statement, J.P. Gan, the managing partner of Qiming, said: “TutorGroup has experienced incredible growth since the last round of funding nearly two years ago. They are the online language learning leader across Asia, and their technology and platform are perfectly positioned to help them expand their lead and further scale, not just in Asia, but in the Americas as well. We look forward to our continued relationship with TutorGroup, as they become the world’s leading online education platform.” |
With $225M Raised Across 400K+ Campaigns, DonorsChoose Is Using Data To Illuminate Educational Inequity In The U.S. | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | There’s a lot of debate swirling these days over the best and most effective ways to fix the U.S. education system. With high costs, disappointing outcomes and high drop out rates now rampant across age groups, at the very least, it’s become clear that something needs to be done. Many circles are looking to technology and young tech companies to help fill the gap, improve learning and get the system back on track. While help in the world of education technology usually takes the form of for-profit software startups, a company of a different shape has been quietly making an impact by using the power of the Web: Thirteen-year-old, non-profit crowdfunding platform, . Back in December of last year, my , an online charity that aims to make it easy for anyone and everyone to give money to classrooms in need and help make a difference in education. The idea for DonorsChoose originated back in 2000, when founder and former New York City public school teacher, Charles Best, began noticing that, while fellow teachers had ambitious ideas for both their students and their schools, few of them had the funding to follow through with their plans. The need gave rise to a crowdfunding platform that enabled anyone to donate as little as $1 to a classroom in need and receive the same kind of feedback, transparency and choice that is “traditionally reserved for someone who gives millions,” . Though that might sound corny or wish-washy, it’s this philosophy that has helped DonorsChoose stand out over the years, as the company has focused on building out and supporting a teacher network — a network that has grown in loyalty over the years and now helps the company review project requests and compile thank you packages. When people look back at the company’s progress in 20 years, the founder said that he wants DonorsChoose to be seen as a “pioneer of peer-to-peer philanthropy” and as a platform that helped unleash teacher innovation.” While growth has been gradual and the road far from short, that goal is becoming increasingly realistic. , the Best said that, since founding, DonorsChoose has raised a total of $225 million for more than 400K projects. In turn, he estimates that those donations have helped more than 175K teachers and over 10 million students. While transparency and keeping to a strict teacher-first policy has helped it grow, Best also attributes the platform’s progress to its remaining neutral in the increasingly intense back-and-forth over the best way to fix education. You won’t find the company taking a side on the issue of reform, nor whether it’s best accomplished through top-down efforts or through unions and teachers. Instead, the company has focused on solving the most immediate and pressing needs in schools at the present moment. It’s won many supporters for this approach, and by its efforts to help bring discounted 3-D printers and Chromebooks into U.S. classrooms, or helping to finance AP classes for STEM education subjects in districts that can’t afford to do otherwise, for example. Over the long-term, DonorsChoose also thinks it can become a pioneer in peer-to-peer, education-focused philanthropy by leveraging its growing reservoir of data to help paint a clear picture of inequity and bureaucracy within the U.S. education system. With every campaign, the platform gains more data on what schools need, what areas of the country need the most help, and why they’re struggling to get help. that by aggregating this data and putting it onto a clear map, the requests for funding (i.e. the campaigns) will help “create a pointillist portrait of educational inequity in America.” Not only that, it could start to uncover answers to key questions like, how much taxpayer money going to education is actually, directly helping students? And if it’s not helping students or getting to classrooms, why not and where’s the disconnect? “With so much data floating through our sites, we are hoping to give our donors the ability to spot the trends and connect the dots,” the founder . While partnering with companies is a key part of DonorsChoose’s role in the educational landscape, Best is increasingly intent on creating easy-to-understand trend reports and having the platform act as a sort of distribution network to share that insight into the system. “If a district is getting a relatively high per-student spending rate and there are many requests from that district for basic supplies such as paper and pencils,” the founder says, then “that will tell us that too much of that money is never leaving the central office.” While the U.S. education system is changing and changing fast, the decision-making hierarchy along with educational spending — whether local, state or federal — remains slow and opaque. DonorsChoose probably can’t illuminate and change the entire landscape overnight with a few infographics, but its data can provide a meaningful window into how the system works, and where it’s failing. |
UPDATED: Fin, The Bluetooth Ring That Turns Your Hand Into A Wireless Controller, Hits Its Funding Goal | Catherine Shu | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | Back at CES in January, , the Bluetooth ring that went on to become one of our Hardware Battlefield finalists. Fin, which turns your hand into a wireless controller for smartphones, TVs, and other connected devices, just . Now Fin is aiming for its stretch goal of $150,000, which will make the ring available for a discounted price to visually impaired people. Fin is worn on your thumb and has a tiny optical sensor that detects movements, allowing you to send commands to connected devices with a few swipes and taps of your fingers. As TechCrunch’s Greg Kumparak described when he wrote about the device’s prototype in January, you can turn down your phone’s volume by swiping your thumb down your index finger or skip the current track by swiping your thumb across the palm of your opposite hand. In the future, creator RHL Vision wants to use biometrics to assign a different behavior to each segment of your finger, basically turning them into buttons. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx3zWHS8amA&w=640&h=360] Fin is one of the coolest wearable devices out there because it makes you look like you have magical powers. But the ring is also very useful, especially for people with visual or motor impairments. RHL Vision says that Fin can potentially help more than 285 million visually impaired people interact more smoothly with technology. If it reaches its stretch goal, the company will make its ring available for $59 to blind people. To get a sense of a visually impaired person can use Fin, take a look at this video, in two users talk about how Fin helps them control their smartphones and tablets without struggling to see controls on their touchscreens. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi7evaeOSCs&w=640&h=360] |
Dragdis Takes Its Simple Drag-And-Drop Bookmarking Service Out Of Beta | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | Bookmarking just got interesting again. , a slick Chrome extension that lets you quickly save anything, including text, photos, videos, links and more just by dragging and dropping, is now taking its service out of beta, and introducing support for a number of social networks and cloud services. The idea behind the tool is to be as simple as traditional bookmarking, but instead of “starring” a URL, you just drag and drop whatever it is you’re trying to save to a folder in Dragdis. After installing the extension in your browser, you’ll have access to a sidebar where you can access your folders and selected apps, like Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Google Drive, Evernote and Pinterest, for example. This sidebar isn’t showing all the time, of course – it pops up when you select an item on the web and start dragging it to the right side of your screen (hence the name, “Dragdis”). The Lithuanian-based startup was founded back in 2012 by first-time entrepreneurs, Domas Sabockis (Marketing), Karolis Malcevičius (Design) and Eugenijus Jusas (Engineering). Sabockis explains he got the idea for the service while working in an ad agency as a creative, where he was constantly losing images, videos, links he found on the internet. After trying 50 or so different tools and not finding one he really liked, he decided to quit his job to build Dragdis. “There are plenty of tools helping you organize either photos, videos or links, but none of them focus on easing the actual process of ‘moving around’ all of this stuff,” says Sabockis. “You either have piles of things, or you have to make multiple clicks to save things in specific folders (think ‘Save as’),” he adds. With Dragdis, you can move anything you find on the web into a folder with a simple motion. To some extent, you could argue that Dragdis is a competitor to other content saving services, like Evernote or Pinterest, Sabockis admits. But because the tool now supports letting users save content to those sorts of services by integrating them into its sidebar, it’s really more of an add-on for those platforms. The company first raised €14k while participating in StartupHighway accelerator, and later added another €200k in seed investment from Practica Capital in order to get things off the ground. During its private beta, launched last year, Dragdis grew its user base to over 17,000. Now it’s opening up its doors to allow anyone to sign up. Longer term, the company is thinking of building in advertising around its service help generate revenue, but for now the company is focused on its official launch. Interested users can sign up . [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLEAA_tIpbY] |
A Networking Protocol For Labor | Danny Crichton | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | The core advancement of the Internet was the capability to move information very quickly across a decentralized network of nodes. That advancement was predicated on the development of protocols like HTTP, SMTP and Bitcoin that codified how such data should move to accomplish our tasks. Despite this level of progress, we continue to lack the ability to request labor over the web using a standardized protocol. It’s not for lack of trying. was one of the first attempts to aggregate freelancers online through a bidding marketplace, all the way back in 1998. was launched in 2005 to create a processing infrastructure for work units that could be easily handled by humans but were difficult for computers to process. Newer startups like have tried to take the lessons of these pioneers and make labor marketplaces more approachable. We need to do better than this if we want to create a more globalized and efficient talent system. Today, seeking out and hiring workers remains one of the most onerous tasks for many companies, from startups to the largest Fortune 500 corporations. Why shouldn’t requesting work be as easy as requesting a page from a web server, or moving money through the web with bitcoin? That sort of simple protocol is what I am proposing here. While many labor tasks can be complex and consuming, we can simplify our thinking by breaking the of work into three different types of information. Inputs are all the data, information, and knowledge that a laborer needs to accomplish a task. The output is the desired work product. And in between, there is some sort of communications feedback loop to connect the worker to the requestor to handle clarifications or to send other messages. Essentially, we are connecting workers (“servers”) to employers (“clients”) together using a medium of exchange. Requests for work could be handled in a way not unlike DNS – our communications stack could route our request as it learns more information and gets feedback from the network. This allows the network to remain decentralized and flexible, while adapting to changes in labor. Let me give an example. Let’s say you have an article you want to publish, but first you want it revised by a professional editor. Editors, who could be anywhere in the world, are available on this labor network and might be independent, or part of a larger “association server,” which aggregates similar types of workers. I can send a request out over the network with a payload that includes the text of the article, the language of the article, the type of work I am looking for, the timeline for editing, my price, my quality level, and any additional information I feel is relevant (I’ll talk about type and quality more later). We connect to several central labor servers, learning where such editors are located and what their prices will be. When our software finds a match, we establish a connection and the work is completed on the schedule I defined. To define work types, our protocol would need a type system similar to MIME to reduce “work” into fundamental units, while allowing our classification to adapt to new types of work as appropriate. Laborers could then register their qualified work types with open work servers to federate their availability across the network. Another issue here is developing a reputation system that would ensure that both buyers and sellers have the information needed to make careful business decisions regarding work quality. One option may be to save work outcomes as a sort of “blockchain,” so that others can see the entire history of work that was processed and requested by nodes in the system. One problem that existed for years in this sort of design was around payments – how could we ensure that remuneration would arrive once the work was complete? Now, with the advent of Bitcoin, we have the underlying protocol necessary to be able to both guarantee availability of funds, and to ensure that work is compensated once complete. These are the building blocks for a work protocol. Like most protocols, simplicity here is a priority, as is keeping the possible states to a minimum. From here, we can build ever more complicated work arrangements, by composing work units together, by allowing new kinds of servers to offer services unavailable through the protocol (buffering, scheduling, etc.), and by allowing the client software to interact through the network in an open way ready for experimentation. There are a number of lessons we need to glean from the first generation of labor marketplaces in order for a labor protocol to be effective. First and foremost, we need to develop a robust set of classifications to handle outcomes consistently. Unlike HTTP, where we have basic status codes like 200 and 404, this work protocol needs to have a significantly greater spectrum of statuses to match the more complex outcomes of work. We have learned repeatedly from initial labor marketplaces that most work requestors hate the bidding process. This is why companies like Uber take the choice away from you – ultimately, a taxi has to go from point A to point B, and as long as the driver can do that, the requestor shouldn’t really care who the driver is. The price of that taxi ride is already locked in. However, that doesn’t allow laborers to choose their prices, which is inflexible to the vast types and quality of work that could be requested on the protocol. The way to avoid this is to allow customers to set the price and quality for work, and allow the network to do its own routing. That could mean that there are no workers available, much like accessing a website might return a 404 error code. If this happens a lot, the client software could be designed to suggest prices based on historical data. Regardless, both employees and employers should be able to independently set their rates, and work should flow most efficiently for the level of quality a requestor desires. While this was an imaginative sketch of a potential technological system, many of the ideas behind it already exist in areas like supply chain management and on-demand workforces. Indeed, one possible interpretation of this is that we are simply converging on the next stage of the labor economy, one that is more Internet-native than LinkedIn or oDesk. There are, of course, key concerns to be addressed. Many of these are policy related, such as issues of health insurance, taxes, retirement savings, etc. Others are more in the domain of the protocol. How do we handle complex work where descriptions of the work are dense? How can we handle complaints? How do we ensure that the protocol allows workers the freedom to be innovative and creative, within labor classifications that are designed for machines? There are no easy answers to these questions. Nonetheless, an efficient labor network would allow both employees and employers to get work done more easily and efficiently while reducing barriers. Much as how the Internet allows information to travel faster, and Bitcoin allows payments to be handled easily, a work network could allow us to build more liquid economies with stronger employment prospects. Hundreds of new businesses could be built on top of such a protocol. And that might be just the kind of technology that can make the world a more equitable and profitable place for everyone. |
70,000 People Are Playing Pokemon Collaboratively – And You Can Watch Live | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | There are things on the Internet that we humans were not built to understand. Over on Twitch, the largest platform for livestreaming esports and other gaming content, 70,000 people are playing Pokemon in unison and the world is watching. The host cooked up a script that takes game commands from the stream’s chat interface, and feeds them into the game itself. So, people are shouting LEFT, RIGHT, and so forth in some sort of virulent cacophony to control the little Poke hero. Right. The Internet is strange, but this is hilarious. You shouldn’t be working, so enjoy:
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Despite Protest, The USA Freedom Act Remains In Holding Pattern | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | Coming off a — both offline and off — that sent tens of thousands of emails and phone calls into the United States Congress, it appears that the USA Freedom Act hasn’t budged on Capitol Hill. According to The Hill, . Despite the recent protests dubbed “The Day We Fight Back” that argued in favor of the Act, Congress hasn’t yet changed its mind in terms of action when it comes to the NSA; Legislators appear to be waiting for the administration to nod its head one direction or the other on the bill. As The Hill’s wrote today: In the House, Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) seems to be waiting for the Obama administration to take a formal position on the USA Freedom Act, authored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), before scheduling a markup. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) wants to see what recommendations Attorney General Eric Holder and top intelligence leaders make by a March 28 deadline set by President Obama. With both chambers apparently in a holding pattern, it is not clear what immediate impact the protests had. This is of course not surprising; anyone expecting massive, and immediate change was hoping for too much. If you need a quick primer on the USA Freedom Act, . (Don’t worry too much over the name of the bill. Yes it’s rah-rah, but in this case, not ironically so.) TechCrunch recently spoke to , the co-founder and the executive director of the on the protests, a conversation during which he noted that at one point, the day of protest was kicking 5,000 calls per hour into Congressional offices. His take on the potential impact of the prior day’s protest: What impact may the day’s protests have? In Timm’s view, the effort will perhaps encourage Congress to debate the USA Freedom Act, and oppose Senator Feinstein’s , which in his view would “legalize mass surveillance.” According to Timm, the “USA Freedom Act has the best shot of real reform.” Given The Hill’s reporting, I’d warrant that the protests had the warmest of reactions in its simple volume. But that appears to be it. TechCrunch spoke again with Timm, who indicated optimism for change: It’s a shame Congress is not moving quicker on an issue that clearly means a lot to millions of Americans across party lines. However, it’s not a matter of if, but when. Section 215 of the Patriot Act expires in 2015, so lawmakers are going to have to tackle this issue eventually. And the closer it gets to election season, the more this issue will affect midterm elections, so it’s in Congress’ best interest to address it sooner rather than later. Immediate change is elusive. But with the continued drip of revelations from the Snowden files, pressure still mounts. Bulk collection is no trivial matter. Keep in mind, as Snowden has said, that bulk collection is . And to contravene other drivel, . Food for thought, but if you were waiting for a time to speak up, now would do just fine. We’re in the waiting moment, but continued noise could help tip the scales. |
Send In Your Questions For Ask A VC With Next World Capital’s Ben Fu And Translink Capital’s Jay Eum | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | This week, we have two VCs who will be joining us in the studio (separately) for Ask A VC— Next World Capital’s Ben Fu and Translink Capital’s Jay Eum. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or and we’ll ask them during the show. At Next World Capital, Fu recently helped lead Datameer’s funding and is a board member of the company. Prior to joining Next World Capital, Fu was mostly recently a Principal with Scale Venture Partners, where he helped originate the firm’s investment in Box and uTest, and also worked closely with HubSpot, RingCentral, BrightRoll, and Jaspersoft. Prior to his six years in venture capital, he was a Senior Sales Engineer at Symantec and IMlogic, and worked in technical sales roles at Akamai. Eum is a co-founder and Managing Director of TransLink Capital and has backed Carbonite (NASDAQ: CARB), Chartboost, Enterprise DB, Livescribe, nWay, Peel, Quixey, SoundHound, and YuMe (NYSE: YUME). He is also responsible for supporting TransLink’s portfolio companies with their customers and partners primarily in Korea. Most recently, Eum was the head of Samsung Ventures America, the venture investment arm of Samsung, and helped lead their U.S.-based investments. His investments at Samsung Ventures include AnalogTech (NASDAQ: AATI), Athena Semiconductor (acquired by Broadcom), Continuous Computing (acquired by RadiSyS), DivX (NASDAQ: DIVX), InPhi (NASDAQ: IPHI), Intellon (NASDAQ: ITLN), MontaVista (acquired by Cavium), Pure Digital (acquired by Cisco), Sandbridge (acquired by Qualcomm), SiBeam (acquired by Silicon Image), Techwell (NASDAQ: TWLL) and Teknovus (acquired by Broadcom). Jay also led investments in GCT Semiconductor and Intematix. Please send us your or put them in the comments below! |
PIXEL Brings Old School Video Game Art To Life In Your Home | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 17 |
Take your old Lite-Brite and turn it up to 11. Add Bluetooth, tuck in animation support, and let people draw their designs via smartphone. What do you get? Something like PIXEL. The (aptly named) PIXEL is a display built specifically for showing off pixel art. A pixel art photo frame, if you will. Want an animated loop of Sonic tapping his foot atop your mantle? Sure. An endless chain of Marios coming out of a pipe in your bathroom? Okay! Want Pac-Man to waka-waka around the screen until the end of time? Hell, why not. When you want to change up the photo, you’d just pop open the app on your smartphone and draw away. Want to do something a bit more complicated — like animation? Make your design in your favorite editing app, then transfer it to the PIXEL over USB or Bluetooth. If you’re drawing a still, you’d send it a PNG; if you’re doing animation, you’d send it a GIF. PIXEL has raised $20,000 so far, having originally set their goal at just half that. This is actually the version of this product — the team raised $50k for a slightly-less-pretty version back in early 2013. If you’re able to squeeze in and grab one of the few remaining early-bird deals, a fully assembled PIXEL will set you back $260. After those are gone, the rest will go for $300. Alternatively, you can save a few bucks by opting for the DIY Kit version at $220 — but it’s a bring-your-own-soldering-iron type of thing, so make sure you know what you’re getting into. If you’d told me a few weeks ago that I’d soon be wanting a pixel art photo frame, I’d have responded by saying “What the hell is a pixel art photo frame?” Two weeks later, I’m trying to figure out pixel art photo frame I want. Just last week, Darrell , a strikingly similar concept that has raised $60k on Kickstarter with nearly 3 weeks left in its campaign. PIXEL and Game Frame are parallels in many way, but each has its own strengths. Game Frame comes with art from the much-adored pixel artist , while PIXEL comes with art from 10 different artists. PIXEL has a higher resolution (1024 pixels vs. Game Frame’s 256), but Game Frame uses some clever optics voodoo to make each individual LED into a massive, evenly-lit square pixel. Each ends up having its own totally different visual style. I’ll take either. Or both. Yeah, I’ll take both. (If you missed the link above, you can ) |
Fly Or Die: Beats Music | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | is the latest of many streaming music services to hit the scene, pulling from some of the best parts of competing products to offer an excellent internet radio experience. Once you offer up some likes and dislikes on various artists and genres, Beats then offers four separate menus for finding something to listen to. The first is a “Just For You” tab that uses the information you’ve given to determine good playlists for you. Then, there’s the “Sentence” which works almost exactly like Songza, asking you to fill in a mad lib-style sentence with what you’re doing and how you feel. “Highlights” shows popular and trending playlists and a final search tab lets you search for playlists based on genre or artist. The playlists themselves are really great — definitely on par with what you get from Songza or iTunes radio — as Beats compiles the playlists using real humans, not algorithms. That said, it’s a semi-expensive service considering the competitions’ pricing. Beats Music costs $10/month, with a free week-long trial to get you started. It’s an interesting entrant in the crowded space, but not sure it’s worth a $120 investment each year. |
Fly6 Cycle Camera Lets Drivers Know It’s Watching Them So They Drive Better | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | In London’s accident & emergency hospital departments, among some more black-humored staffers, cyclists are colloquially known as ‘organ donors’, or so the story goes. Running the gauntlet of HGV lorries and angry four-wheeled commuters is no joke though. Many urban cyclists in the U.K. capital and elsewhere already arm themselves with helmet cameras with the aim of capturing footage of dangerous driving they encounter on their commute — a quick search for ‘ ‘ brings up some 346,000 results on YouTube. But strapping on a helmet cam is generally a passive use of the technology with no clear flag for drivers that they are being filmed (unless they specifically know what to look out for). And therefore little chance of positively influencing driving behavior before the bad stuff happens — i.e. by making motorists take more care around cyclists in the first place. One recent example of a technology startup we covered aiming to do more to flag up cyclists’ presence on the road, and therefore positively influence the behaviour of the vehicles around them, is the laser-light projecting — which took part in TC’s CES battlefield back in January. And recently pulled in . Well, here’s another attempt to get drivers to drive better, this time from an Australian startup that’s currently raising funds for its device, the , on Kickstarter. The is not using projected light to flag up the cyclist’s position to drivers, but using flashing lights to draw attention to a prominent camera lens incorporated into a bike taillight, to let drivers know they are being filmed and therefore police their behaviour for the better (or so they hope). The device incorporates an HD camera lens into a red taillight that attaches to the seat post of the bike and has a ring of flashing LEDs that are designed to draw the driver’s eye to the camera lens. The Fly6 philosophy: drivers that know they are being watched behave better. Whether that ring of lights is a clear enough signal to drivers that the bike ahead of them is effectively a mobile CCTV unit remains to be seen. But the Fly6’s designers have drawn a fair amount of interest on Kickstarter, passing their $95,000 AUS funding goal, with more than $158,000 AUD raised from some 1,110 backers so far and still 20 days left of their campaign to run. Early bird price-pledges have been bagged, with the device now started at $129 AUD, with an estimated shipping schedule of May. The Fly6 will ship with an 8GB micro SD card, to allow for two hours of continuous recording until a looping function kicks in and overwrites previously recorded footage in 15 minute chunks. If you want to be able to record for longer, a 16GB micro SD card will allow for around fours’ hours; and a 32GB card eight (although that exceeds battery run time). The Fly6’s lithium ion battery is rechargeable via USB and apparently good for 5+ hours of runtime. Does the Fly6 accurately capture number plates? It can but it’s not guaranteed, say its makers — it’s dependent on road/weather conditions etc. But really, the primary point of the camera is to avoid the need to harvest any number plates by making drivers think twice about cutting up cyclists in the first place.
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TrackDuck – A Tiny Web Site Build Tracking Startup – Appears To Be On A Roll | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | Web development can be a complicated process which can go on too long because so much of the time is spent on really poor communication and mis-understandings. Project managers, designers and developers have to approve lots of detail while also incorporating feedback. is a visual feedback and issue tracking startup for small and mid-size organisations and freelancers, with backing from Helsinki’s . And it just won the startup competition at the conference in Riga, Latvia, after also winning the Login Startup Pitch Challenge . It would seem this very early stage startup is on a roll. With TrackDuck clients provide feedback directly in the web site right where they are. TrackDuck needs only a few clicks to leave feedback, theres no installation or learning how to use new software. Other pitching teams in competition included: : a marketplace for unused airline tickets for travelers
GrowOn: The smartest devices for growing eco vegetables
: your online neighborhood
: Collaborative storytelling + Vine = StoryRoll The TechChill Baltics saw over over 300 startups, investors and eco-system participants witness teams pitching to a panel of VCs. The day last week began with Infogram . |
Microsoft Launches Smart Visual Studio Add-On For Code Snippet Search | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | Whether you are a seasoned programmer or a beginner, chances are you spend a lot of your time looking for code snippets on Stack Overflow and similar sites. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, after all. Now, a team from Microsoft Research in Cambridge wants to streamline this process and bring it into the IDE. The team today the , which directly integrates code snippet search for C# (with other languages coming later) into Visual Studio. What’s important here is that this isn’t just a basic search tool. Instead, you can ask queries using natural language (“how to read files line by line”). The tool’s language processing and search is powered by Bing, and everything runs on Azure. The team has indexed snippets from , , and . All the snippets in the index were automatically checked to ensure they compile, but in the search, the algorithms also look at votes from the given community that the snippet comes from and other quality signals. The best thing, though, is that it doesn’t just copy and paste the snippet into the code, but it will also try to modify the code to fit the variables you already use in your own code. Even if you don’t have Visual Studio installed, you can try a web-based version (with a slightly different interface) . As , a senior researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge and , a post-doc researcher who worked on this project with Hamadi, told me, having your own variables in the code makes it far easier to read the code, as most programmers who have ever copied and pasted a code snippet can probably attest to. For single-variable queries, the tool is about 70 to 80 percent accurate in picking the right variable. For snippets with two variables, it’s at just over 60 percent. Unsurprisingly, it also tends to perform better, the more common the question is. Hamadi believes the tool will appeal to all levels of developers, but he thinks that beginners will definitely benefit from it, because it will make it easier for them to learn how to use a language, as well as very advanced programmers, who can quickly determine which snippet will work best in their code. In Microsoft’s internal tests, programmers who used the Bing Code Search add-on were over 60 percent faster in solving a battery of coding exercises than those who used regular web search. As for the partnerships, Stack Overflow’s VP of engineering told me that he doesn’t expect this integration to hurt its traffic. Every snippet, he noted, will also show a link to the original source, and he expects that developers who want to dive deeper into the code and see the comments and discussion around the snippet will continue to be active in the Stack Overflow community. For the time being, the team considers this tool an experiment, but if developers react positively to it (and it’s hard to see why they wouldn’t), it may just become a built-in Visual Studio feature. Over time, the team also plans to support more languages. C# is obviously a very important language for Microsoft and has a very active developer community (and the Stack Overflow community, for example, has historically been very .Net-centric anyway). Looking ahead, it’ll be interesting to see where Microsoft takes this technology. Taken to the extreme, you could maybe even start programming using just natural language queries in the long run. Hamadi hinted that Microsoft has more planned for the technology that the team developed.
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null | Romain Dillet | 2,014 | 2 | 28 | null |
Through Its Network Of Mentors, HackHands Offers Live Help For New Programmers | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | With sites like and , there are plenty of ways to learn programming and get help online — but there’s nothing like a live human being who can answer your questions and look at your code, according to the co-founders of a new website called . One of those co-founders, Forest Good, described the site as an “Uber for programming” — in other words, it allows you can get programming help at the moment that you need it. The company has built out a global network of mentors, so Good said you should be able to visit the site at any time, describe the problem that you’re facing, and then get connected to a mentor within 15 minutes. The two of you are connected via video chat (powered by TokBox), and you can also work on the code together in a collaborative text editor (or just share the relevant screen on your computer). Good said that there’s a “spectrum” of users that HackHands is targeting. On one end, there are people who have never coded before. On the other end, there are people who have just graduated from a programming bootcamp. Wherever they are on that spectrum, they’ll probably have moments when there are concepts or problems that they can’t figure out on their own, so they’ll appreciate talking to an expert. For now, HackHands is focused on Ruby on Rails, and Good said all of its mentors are vetted based on both their communication and programming skills. (“I have a personal relationship with all of our experts, and we have some plans to scale that as well,” he said.) Co-founder Geraldo Ramos said the goal is to offer something that’s both fast and affordable, with easy-to-understand pricing. HackHands charges $1 per minute for each session, although there’s a five-minute grace period where either party can back out without any charge — if, for example, the expert realizes that they can’t help with a specific problem or topic after all. Customers will also be able to tip based on their satisfaction. To offer further incentive for expert participation, HackHands will create leaderboards where the most active mentors are both celebrated and financially rewarded. HackHands was created by , a web development agency that trying to move to more of an incubator model — if HackHands and subsequent projects are successful, 6PS plans to spin them off into separate companies. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXSqxFzqrKw&w=560&h=315] |
Microsoft Partners With DocuSign To Bring eSignatures To Office 365 | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | Microsoft and eSignature service today announced a long-term partnership that will make it easy for Office 365 subscribers to submit and sign documents without leaving Microsoft’s Office apps. This new solution, the two companies announced, will be available in the early next month and was built on top of Microsoft Office platform. will be integrated into Outlook, Word, SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server 2013. This means that Office 365 and SharePoint admins will be able to add the service remotely for all of their users, and the tool will also be integrated with the Azure Active Directory, so there is no need for a separate sign-in to use DocuSign from within Microsoft’s applications. All the documents will be stored on OneDrive for Business (formerly SkyDrive). Overall, this is a pretty straightforward integration, but it does make choosing Office a bit more easy for companies that rely heavily on DocuSign. For Microsoft, it is also an opportunity to talk about the ecosystem of applications that exist around its Office suite. “Leading partners like DocuSign are building apps on the Office platform to help our customers get more value directly from their most highly used applications,” said John Case, the vice president of marketing for Microsoft Office, in the announcement today. |
Pan-European Rail Travel Booking Service, Loco2, Gets Renfe On Board For Full Spanish Coverage | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | Pan-European train travel booking startup, , will add another chunk of coverage to its website tomorrow, when a partnership with Spanish state-owned rail carrier Renfe goes live — enabling users to book any Spanish rail tickets via the service and print them at home. This also applies to advanced discount fares, known as Turista Promo, supporting potential ticket discounts of up to 70%. Prior to the partnership, some Spanish rail journeys were already bookable via Loco2 but only as postal tickets and at higher prices. “This makes an extra 1,605 stations fully bookable on Loco2, unlocking Europe’s largest high-speed rail network (1,400km),” says Loco2 co-founder Jamie Andrews. Loco2 was started back in 2006, but the business of hammering out agreements with rail operators to get access to booking systems has been a work of years. The situation is gradually improving, helped by EC regulation aimed at opening up the market — ergo, more startup businesses are cropping up to tackle the problem of making it easier and cheaper for people who want to travel across European borders to do so. Loco2 exclusively focuses on rail travel, having an eco-travel ethos — its name is shorthand for ‘low CO2’ — but there are multiple startups applying the same sort of single ticket booking website approach to multiple modes of travel (i.e. not just rail travel), such as , and , to name three. Loco2 continues to push its ‘ride only on rails’ approach. Last November it for all train operators — meaning U.K. users could book tickets for rail journeys into continental Europe starting from their local train station. With the Renfe partnership it says it can now sell train tickets for journeys in “roughly a dozen countries” in Europe — albeit, Andrews concedes it still has “ It terms of comprehensive coverage, Loco2’s tally is four European countries’ rail networks. “We now offer comprehensive coverage for the U.K., France, Germany and Spain (our closest rival is , which currently offers just France and Germany),” he adds. Adding Spain — a popular European tourist destination — to its roster should obviously help it to continue growing traffic. Compared to the same time (February) last year, Andrews tells TechCrunch it’s seen an increase in traffic of around 380% — using an annual monthly comparative measure to correct for the inevitable seasonality of travel. Next up, he says it’s planning to improve its coverage in Belgium and the Netherlands — “to better service popular routes such as London-Amsterdam”. “We’re also working on improving the timetable data returned in search results so that sophisticated pan-European itineraries (e.g. London-Moscow) can be served in search results even if we’re not capable of selling tickets for such routes immediately,” he adds. As it picks up speed on the coverage front, Loco2 also just closed another angel round — bringing its total funding to date to £1 million — and appointed ex-lastminute.com board member, as a non-executive director. The U.K. startup had previously raised a seed from low carbon traveller , back in 2009, and also secured angel investment via the in 2011. |
Buildit Is A New Hardware Accelerator Based In Estonia | Steve O'Hear | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | Europe has gotten itself another hardware-based startup accelerator; this time Estonia is flying the hardware flag. Focusing on hardware in combination with software, is a new 3 month accelerator program based in Estonia’s Tartu Science Park, plus a 1 month Seedcamp-style investor “roadshow” in the U.S., China and UK. It’s currently accepting applications for its first batch of 6-12 teams, while the program will run from April – June, 2014. Buildit includes the usual mix of mentoring, product and business development. It cites mentors from companies such as ABB,z, Ericsson, and Nokia; local startups and ; and research institutions Stanford, Berkeley, and Tsinghua. Startups can apply from anywhere, though there is particular emphasis on Eastern Europe and Russia. Teams must compromise at least 2 members and preferably have (or be close to) a working prototype. In return for entering the program, Buildit invests €15,000 for 5-10% equity. Other perks include free open office space during the program at , access to prototyping facilities via Protolab (offering things like precision mechanics, mechatronics and 3D design and prototype production services), prototype testing with end-users in a “Living Lab” setting via , and “free and discounted services” from various partners, including server space, licenses, development tools, design services, testing facilities, marketing services, legal, accounting and banking services, interns, etc. The program is founded by an unnamed engineering bureau (founded by Aleksander Tõnnisson), Tartu Science Park, and Baltic Innovation Agency. It’s also being supported by EU-funded VC SmartCap. Naturally, Estonia’s GrabCad, which has been for a while now, also gets a mention. As we’ve noted before, while software bootcamps still dominate the accelerator scene, dedicated hardware accelerators (and/or hardware arms added to existing programmes) have been cropping up, fuelled by crowdfunding sites and cheaper electronics component costs. Examples include China-based ; Flextronics’ backed ; Startupbootcamp run , the U.K.-based IoT accelerator (now merged with TechStars); and a joint and programme aimed specifically at accelerating , to name a few. |
Tidy Organizes Your Smartphone Photos Into Albums With Just A Swipe | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | A new application called wants to help you better organize the photos you have stored on your smartphone, by grouping them into albums by time, distance, or even by “shapes,” meaning type of photo – panoramas, squares, screenshots, portrait or landscape, for example. The app doesn’t do the groupings automatically, but rather offers an interface that lets you drill down into your photo library, choosing the photos you want to separate out into their own albums using search filters. For example, you can tap on the “time” filter to pull out photos grouped by hours, 6 hours, days, weeks, months or by year. A “location” filter, meanwhile, lets you pull out photos that are 500 m, 1 km, 100 km, or 1000 km away from you. (Yes, metric units – Tidy is built by covworks of South Korea). Tidy uses photos’ metadata to make these groupings initially, but you can then swipe on any individual group to turn it into an album that can be further customized. You can also swipe left to archive the photos in an individual group, similar to the way you swipe to archive email in an app like Mailbox, perhaps. Tidy’s albums can be 3 or 4 columns wide, or you can designate a “collage” style which looks more like something you’d make with Pic Stitch, for example. Once the album is created, you can favorite photos, add memos, or share individual photos via mail, SMS or social media. You can also move a photo to a different album, set which photo should lead the album, copy photos, or assign them to a Contact. Unfortunately, there’s not currently an easy way to share an album in its entirety with another user, which is something of a miss, but maybe a temporary one. In a future release, Tidy will add themes, an album backup and sync service, and support for collaborative albums you can build with others. Presumably, some of these features will be premium upgrades. Tidy comes from , a web and app development company from South Korea which has created a number of mobile apps for photo manipulation and management, including things like Uface, Pictory, Toonface, ColorManager Cam, and more. Most of Covworks’ team members have worked for internet companies in Korea, including Naver and Cyworld, for example. Over the past two years, the company has published 12 apps. Tidy itself is free download on and . [vimeo 83381237 w=500 h=281] |
Player.me Wants To Be The About.me For Gamers, But It’s Going To Be Tough | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | You’ve heard of About.me for profile pages. Well, there are plenty of gaming communities out there, but hopes to be the “about.me for gamers”. Obviously is a pretty big competitor but it would appear Player.me is trying to create a more open network that links to social more broadly. The new privately funded gaming social platform launches in private beta today to give gamers and
games a one page online profile and centralized feed of updates. Sean Fee, Player.me Co-Founder and CEO told me: “We’re creating a nice one page landing page for gamers and the ability for them to follow them on Player.me and get all their updates…not just the ones they post on our platform. So they get their twitter updates, facebook posts, YouTube videos and other streams.” Features of Player.me include a page which can features social feeds and plans to incentivise players with early access to new games. Fee says the company is currently in discussion with “a number of gaming companies and indie developers to create partnerships” that will give value to all platform members. Unfortunately, Player.me is going to have a tough time of it cutting through the enormous amount of noise in the gaming world. An other sites have got there first. It wants to be the Pinterest for games… It’s not to say this strategy can’t succeed, but unfortunately big investors that can help a company scale are not very excited by “This For That” plays, . |
Plant-Based Food Startup Hampton Creek Foods Raises $23M Round Led By Horizons Ventures | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | It looks like investors think there’s a big opportunity in ‘ mission of creating tasty, affordable alternatives to animal-based foods — the company is announcing that it has raised $23 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Hong Kong businessman Li Ka-shing’s investment firm Horizons Ventures, with participation from Jerry Yang and AME Cloud Ventures, Ali and Hadi Partovi, Jessica Powell of Google, Scott Banister, and Ash Patel. Previous backers Khosla Ventures, Collaborative Fund, and Kat Taylor and Tom Steyers’ Eagle Cliff also invested in the new round. “Technology enables everyone to have more options to better our future together,” Li said in the funding release. “To keep up with all the demands for the growing global population, we need to be more efficient, more environmentally friendly, and have more quality and affordable choices.” As the quote implies, eggs are one of the key foods that Hampton Creek is trying to replace. I actually about a year ago where I got to see the labs where different plant-based alternatives are developed and the kitchen where those alternatives are tested — and as you can see in the taste test at the end of the video below, I had a hard time telling the difference between cookies using traditional ingredients and the ones using Hampton Creek’s egg replacer. Morgan Oliveira, the startup’s communications director, declined to share any sales numbers, but she did say that Hampton Creek is in the process of rolling out its products with six Fortune 500 companies. ( website currently touts the fact that Just Mayo is available at Whole Foods.) Other goals include launching next month and its Just Scramble product this fall. We’ve written about Hampton Creek as part — other companies doing something related include . When I asked Oliveira about why this is happening now, she said: I think people are starting to realize the way most food is produced doesn’t align with our values. They’re realizing that a lot of food is produced in a way that is bad for the environment, people, and animals. And that it’s just not a sustainable model. At Hampton Creek we also think that it’s incredibly unfortunate that the healthy choice is always the more expensive and inconvenient choice and we have made it our mission as a company to change that. The company has raised $30 million total. |
Anonymous Messaging App Blink Arrives On Android | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | , a mobile application that allows users to send each other self-destructing messages, has now . The app, which first , lets you share text, photos, videos, sketches, and even voice messages with your friends, though the company has found that the majority of its users are using Blink for “ephemeral” texting purposes. The app competes with a growing number of anonymous and/or private messaging apps, like Snapchat, , , , , and others. Like many in this space, Blink doesn’t require that you use your “real” identity on its service – your username can be anything you choose. Today, 65% of registered users on Blink are anonymous users, and 85% of messages sent on the app were sent by anonymous users. Plus, 69% of users return to the app after their first use, which is more than decent engagement. The company behind Blink was founded by ex-Googler Kevin Stephens and Michelle Norgan, and was originally focused on a location-based social service called Kismet that grew in popularity around the , when apps like Highlight and Banjo were all the rage. But Kismet never really took off, and as the location-based trend itself died down, the team decided to repurpose the technology for mobile messaging with Blink. “We want to let people be as anonymous, disconnected, and “off the grid” as they choose to be,” explains Stephens. “Whereas nearly all mobile messaging apps require a user to verify their phone number or confirm their identity in some way, the vast majority of our users prefer to remain anonymous,” he says. To date, Blink has seen around 100,000 downloads, but what’s interesting are the app’s demographics. Though around 51% of the app’s user base is in the U.S., the next largest market Blink serves is the Middle East (15.4%), and nearly all of that group is from Saudi Arabia. Blink’s traction in the Middle East makes sense, says Stephens, given how scarce privacy and anonymity are there. But he was also surprised that the service was taking off in that market, as it didn’t yet support Arabic. “We believe a fair number of the anonymous users in the Middle East are ex-pats working overseas,” Stephens says. Blink will now cater to this market in particular with localization to Arabic, and pro features that will be particularly relevant to businesses or ex-pats overseas who are concerned about anonymity and privacy. For instance, Blink will begin exploring more professional use cases – like wiping the messages off an employee or contractor’s phone when they’ve finished a job. The new app is now available for download on Google Play, or . |
Congratulations, Crunchies Winners! Kickstarter Wins Best Overall Startup | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | It was a night for the ages. At the 7th Annual Crunchies Award show, Kickstarter beat out CloudFlare, Snapchat, Twitter and Uber, and walked away with the Crunchie for Best Overall Startup. Chris Sacca won the Crunchie For Angel Of The Year, Dropbox’s Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi won Founder of the Year, and Tinder took home Best New Startup. At the start of the show, John Oliver proclaimed, partly in jest, there are no losers at the Crunchies. “All the companies nominated are not losers,” Oliver states as only he can, “there are only companies that just failed to win.” We’re proud of all the nominees and applaud all the crazy innovations that startups and founders are constantly developing.
Apple A7 Processor –
Bitcoin –
Node.js
low-cost satellites
Project Loon
– Winner
– Runner-up
– Runner-up
– Winner
– Winner
VSCO Cam
Vsco Cam – Runner-up
– Runner-up
– Winner
– Winner
– Runner-up
Exposure by
– Winner
– Runner-up
– Runner-up
– Winner
– Runner-up
– Winner
– Runner-up
– Winner
– Runner-up
– Winner
– Runner-up
– Winner
– Winner
– Runner-up
– Runner-up
Edward Snowden’s NSA Revelations – Winner
StopWatching.Us
& – Runner-up
– Winner
( ) – Winner
( )
( )
( )
( ) – Runner-up
& (Dropbox) – Winner
(Tumblr)
(Box) , & (CloudFlare) – Runner-up
(Wanelo)
(Amazon)
(Twitter) – Winner
(Uber) – Runner-up
(Yahoo!)
(Tesla Motors & SpaceX)
– Runner-up
– Winner
– Winner
– Runner-up |
Tech Industry, Activists Talk Past Each Other At The Crunchies | Kim-Mai Cutler | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | Inside San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall was a packed hall with hundreds of tech’s well-to-do in ties, slacks and cocktail dresses for the so-bad-it’s-good awards show, . Outside, there were about 50 protesters, beating drums and awarding toilet plungers as trophies to activists posing as Ron “The Con” Conway and Marissa Mayer for . While both sides called for solutions, it seemed like the activists and the tech community were largely talking past each other, not with each other. Here’s what each had to say: Ron Conway, the hyper-connected angel investor and “Godfather of Silicon Valley” who has delved into politics recently by founding advocacy non-profit , pull out a call to action. “I want to make sure every person in our region has an opportunity to be part of the new economy. We may not agree with everything the protesters outside have to say, but they do represent anxiety over a widening income gap. My message tonight is that we — — must be leaders in tackling the challenges of housing, transportation and education.” He went on, “We are in this together. Our entire city is in this together.” Conway had a couple big goals for the tech community this year. First, he wants tech companies to donate 1 million hours of community service to the region. (Salesforce is already projecting 125,000 hours of service this year.) He also wanted 1,000 companies to join Marc Benioff’s 1-1-1 effort, where they donate 1 percent of their equity to form a foundation by the time they IPO, 1 percent of their employee hours to community service and 1 percent of their product (if applicable). He also mentioned two new efforts where tech companies will able to “adopt” a school, and respond to requests for help from the principal or teachers. “We’ll let the educators tell us what to do,” he said. There are already non-profits around like DonorsChoose, which lets donors respond to specific requests from teachers for help with funding trips or materials, and MissionBit, where developers can teach free after-school programming classes to San Francisco high school and middle school students. Another effort from Sf.Citi is a matching program where tech companies can donate their extra office space to local San Francisco non-profits. “Many non-profits are being pushed out of their offices because of costs,” Conway said. In a report last year from the city’s budget and legislative analyst, there are about 6,000 non-profits in the city of San Francisco. In the last two years alone, commercial rental rates have risen by 32.8 percent per square foot, according to the report. About one-third of the non-profits the city surveyed last fall said their leases would be up at the end of 2013, . Meanwhile, the protesters outside focused on two issues: 1) displacement of longtime San Francisco residents because of rising rents and Ellis Act evictions and 2) a call for tech companies to pay more in taxes to the city. Tony Robles, who came from San Francisco’s and whose family has lived in the city for five generations, wanted help from the tech community to overturn the Ellis Act at the state level. “My family has lived through many waves of displacement. We’re from communities that are under attack,” he said. “If you’re an elder living on a fixed income, and you’re evicted, you’ll have nowhere to go.” The Ellis Act was originally designed for landlords to go out of business, but housing activists say it is being abused in San Francisco by real estate interests who evict longtime rent-controlled tenants in favor of bringing in new, more affluent tenants at higher market rates or turning these units into tenancies-in-common or condominiums. Ellis Act evictions rose 170 percent to 116 in 2013, from 43 in 2010, according to an . Activists say that case numbers might be four or five times higher because tenants with little ability to protect themselves like illegal immigrants get pressured into taking under-the-table Ellis buyouts. Overturning or amending the law is a politically challenging task, however, because it only drastically affects two rent-controlled markets in the state: San Francisco and Santa Monica. That may not create enough political will to overcome the powerful real estate lobby in Sacramento. Nevertheless, state senator Mark Leno is by allowing cities more flexibility to regulate Ellis Act evictions. Robles’ wife Lisa Gray-Garcia, an editor at Poor Magazine, also for people in the tech community, including: taking public transportation instead of the private shuttle buses, urging employers like Google, Apple and Facebook to stop offering the buses and spending a percentage of their wealth to buy back housing for the elderly and low-income residents who have been evicted. The second issue frustrating activists was the Twitter tax roll break, which protesters claimed cost the city as much as $600 million in foregone revenues, according to a flyer they passed out. In 2011, the city’s Board of Supervisors voted to offer companies with at least $1 million in payroll taxes a partial exemption from the city’s tax if they moved to the Mid-Market area. Twitter and other tech companies like Spotify, One King’s Lane and Zendesk took the deal. At the time, Twitter was threatening to leave the city, in part because payroll tax was the only one of its kind for a city in the state of California (especially the part where the city taxed employee stock options). The city subsequently reformed the tax to focus on a business’ gross receipts, instead of their payroll size. That new tax structure will be eased in over the next few years. Opponents of the tax exemption say the city has potentially foregone tens of millions of dollars in revenue from those employee stock options. But proponents of the exemption say Twitter and other growth-stage tech companies could have moved slightly south, meaning San Francisco would have missed out on these business taxes entirely. (Many of their employees probably would have continued living in San Francisco too, which means there would still be pressure on the city’s housing market.) San Francisco’s chief economist Ted Egan in base revenue from the company for the city over six years. With unemployment also dropping by half from 2010, San Francisco was able to close a $124 million budget deficit last year, But activists still took issue with taxes, saying that the tech industry has to do more to preserve the city’s socioeconomic diversity and combat a widening income gap. “There’s a new industry in town and it’s got a lot of money. We have to work for new possibilities in closing the wealth gap,” said Kathy Lipscomb, a Noe Valley resident who has lived in San Francisco for 22 years. “There were 1,600 millionaires created by Twitter. We need money for low-income housing and teachers.” Lipscomb added that she didn’t necessarily blame individual tech workers. “Many people in the tech community are very sincere,” she said, adding that she has a nephew-in-law who works for Salesforce. “It’s very nice to give computers. It’s very nice to give time. But what we need is for CEOs to pay their taxes.” |
Kickstarter Wins The 2013 Crunchie For “Best Overall Startup” By Leveling The Maker Playing Field | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | The category was CloudFlare is a silent partner to the modern content delivery system of the Internet. Snapchat is a young but powerful entry into the consumer Internet market, and Twitter has enabled global real-time conversations without any filter — for better or for worse. But Kickstarter has done something special in the possibilities that it’s opened up for makers of this and future generations. It has democratized the production of hardware, movies, software and other creative endeavors — allowing individuals unprecedented ability to make what they dream outside of the corporate combine. Its ability to tap funding sources who eventually become its consumers have turned funding models upside down. The company simultaneously fostered a sense of ownership and community around product development and acted as a way for makers to open up about the successes and setbacks of transforming a product from idea to execution. In 2013, Kickstarter had pledge $480 million with 19,911 successfully funded projects. That marks up to over $13 million pledged per day spread out over the year. That compares to $320 million in 2012 and $100 million in 2011, so it continues to illustrate the desire of people to be directly involved in helping makers to make. Late last year, the company announced that co-founder Perry Chen would step down as CEO and move to a chairman role — to focus on big picture guidance. Co-founder Yancey Strickler has stepped into the CEO slot and is considered by many to be the perfect choice to take on that challenge. The act of making has never been more accessible or more transparent, and Kickstarter has a lot to do with that. The next few years will be interesting ones for crowdfunding and we’re sure they’ll be in the mix. |
Dropbox’s Cloud Storage Kings Drew Houston And Arash Ferdowsi Win Founder Of The Year Crunchie | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | You know you’re doing something right when Silicon Valley rock stars are ditching cushy jobs at Google and Facebook to join your startup. This year’s Founder Of The Year Crunchie goes to the talent magnets at Dropbox, CEO Drew Houston and CTO Arash Ferdowsi. From an MIT dorm room to rejecting huge acquisition offers and their , Drew and Arash have built the cloud storage service into one of hottest ventures in the world. You can get a feel for Drew’s candid style from my Disrupt on-stage interview with him last year. In 2013 alone, Dropbox grew from 200 to over 500 employees. It acquired popular email app Mailbox plus teams from startups like , , and . Dropbox threw its first and product in anticipation for an enterprise sales push. To fund that and new storage innovations, Dropbox is said to have raised a hefty with investors trying to bet even more on the company. Still, the real reason Drew and Arash won this award is for the company culture they’ve created. Employees love how their CEO sets clear goals but gives people the freedom to achieve them in their own ways. Meanwhile, Arash focuses on the details, pushing employees to a high standard of excellence. I’ve heard tales of the CTO sending emails at 3am when things break…like whatever caused that last month. Both are said to be highly approachable, giving the emerging giant the feel of a much more intimate company. That’s critical when building towards a big but nebulous vision of a world where our data is always at our fingertips. Drew and Arash faced stiff competition in the Founder Of The Year category from other finalists like fellow storage king Aaron Levie of Box; Tumblr’s David Karp who sold the company to Yahoo; web performance phenom CloudFlare’s Matthew Prince; Michelle Zatlyn and Lee Holloway; and e-commerce fire starter Deena Varshavskaya. But Dropbox’s founders have done something truly impressive. Together, they’ve turned something as dull sounding as cloud storage into an inspiring place to work. That’s because they see past what their product does to what it means. Dropbox isn’t about saving people’s files, but protecting their cherished memories.
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Peter Fenton Named “VC Of The Year” At The Crunchies | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | Benchmark’s Peter Fenton just won the award for VC of the Year at the Crunchies. Fenton is probably best-known for backing and continuing to serve on the board of Twitter, which . He’s also an investor/board member at Yelp, New Relic, Hortonworks, Zuora, and Polyvore, among others. (If that didn’t keep him busy enough, he also serves as a board member for the San Francisco Opera and the California Academy of Sciences.) Last year saw , as well as , with Fenton joining the board. I’ve embedded a video of Fenton talking about his investment strategy backstage at our Disrupt Europe conference below. The award was presented by GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner and Gigaom senior writer Derrick Harris. Also nominated were Jim Goetz from Sequoia Capital, Reid Hoffman from Greylock Partners, Bill Maris from Google Ventures, and Bijan Sabet from Spark Capital. |
Early Twitter Investor Chris Sacca Wins Crunchie For Angel Of The Year | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | In the year in which Twitter went public, it’s hard to bet against one of the company’s earliest and most influential investors. Which is why it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that founder has won this year’s Crunchie for Angel of the Year. Sacca put some of the earliest money into Twitter, betting on the micro-blogging platform during its Series A round of financing. But he was also instrumental in helping late-stage investors like and to through secondary sales, buying up shares from earlier investors and vested employees. All of which is why Sacca edged out Baseline Ventures founder , Harrison Metal founder , former Square COO and current Khosla Ventures partner , and AngelList founders & in the category, which was presented by Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose and TechCrunch’s Josh Constine. While Sacca’s win this year is mostly due to his involvement in Twitter, he hasn’t slowed down investing in hot startups since then. He was also an early investor in Uber, Twilio, and Instagram, for instance, and more recently put money into fancy coffee shop Blue Bottle Coffee and Ev Williams’ new publishing platform Medium. |
null | Mike Butcher | 2,014 | 2 | 17 | null |
Snapchat Wins ‘Best Mobile Application’ At The 2013 Crunchies, Award Disappears In 10 Seconds | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | This year’s best mobile app is Snapchat, at least according to the 2013 Crunchies Awards. The ephemeral photo and video messaging app beat out a tough crowd this year, including Mailbox, Tinder, VSCO Cam and WhatsApp. This is Snapchat’s second Crunchie, since it won for its speedy early user growth. Snapchat began in 2011 at Stanford, and the service took off, finding purchase not just among the usual early adopter crowd, but also with mainstream users. Snapchat was reportedly sending 400 million messages per day as of November, which is 8 times the volume of snaps that were being sent as of the end of 2012, when it won its fastest riser award at our show. Co-founder Evan Spiegel accepted the award for the startup from TechCrunch writer Greg Kumparak, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Yahoo SVP of Mobile and Emerging Products Adam Cahan. The winner last year was Google Maps, which vaulted into the top spot based on its long-awaited release on iOS after it was removed from the default set of pre-installed applications by Apple in iOS 6. Snapchat has indeed won the moment, and is riding high enough that Spiegel famously turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook for the app. So far, it seems like it’ll accrue a lot more than just 10 seconds of fame before it flames out, but it’ll be interesting to see how it plans to mature as a business from here. |
Edward Snowden’s NSA Revelations Win Crunchie For Biggest Social Impact | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | Tonight at , Edward Snowden’s massive leak of NSA material won the Biggest Social Impact category. Besting rivals like Code.org and CrowdTilt, Snowden’s successful efforts to demask the mass surveillance undertaken by the National Security Administration on both global and United States citizens has ignited a worldwide discussion surrounding privacy and the proper role of government. That Snowden won, therefore, is no surprise. This is doubly true among the tech-heavy bent of Crunchies voters. The technology industry itself has been a target of the NSA’s work through programs like and others. , an NSA effort to tap the data lines between Google datacenters on foreign soil, is just one example of how tech companies have come under the larger cloud of the state. Naturally, Snowden wasn’t able to pick up the award in person. Other groups nominated in the category were , a protest group against surveillance; , an effort to help kids learn to code; , a group funding tool; and , a crowdfunding platform working to bring healthcare to the underprivileged. The pace of revelations from the Snowden trove has slowed in recent weeks, but the impact of what he shook loose from the United States government has led to government inquiry, lawsuits and just, perhaps, real coming change. |
Oculus Rift Takes Home The Crunchie For Best Hardware Startup | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | It’s hard for me to imagine a hardware startup that is more exciting, more fascinating, and that has more potential to ripple out into a million amazing things than Oculus and their Rift virtual reality headset. Many of you, it seems, would agree. After weeks of voting, our readers and this community have chosen Oculus VR as the Best Hardware Startup of the year. As has been said many a time, Hardware is . Though the barrier to entry is lower than it’s ever been, the creation of new hardware is still a field that most don’t enter. It makes sense, then, that the competition here was incredibly fierce. Oculus’ fellow nominees in the category: While Oculus shipped an early, developers-only version of their headset last year, they’ve yet to release a consumer-ready version (or even announce an official date for one). And that’s just fine. This is a case where “Screw it, Ship It” simply does not apply; where it’s not just to hold the product close until it’s at a point of perfection, but where that is the . The reason they haven’t released a retail product is not for lack of talent, interest, or funding. It’s because they get it right the first time, and they know it. This concept — virtual reality in the home — is one that science fiction has promised us for decades. The available technology is where it’s becoming feasible — and when it does, Oculus is positioned to pave the way. Industry legends are to be a part of it. The most in the gaming world has pledged their R&D resources to them. Developers around the world are already building apps and concept demos for the device, knowing full well that consumers won’t have their hands on it for months to years. If Oculus can’t pull this off, I’m not sure anyone can. Congratulations, Oculus. We’re all excited for the next few years. |
Watch The 7th Annual Crunchies Award Show Right Here | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | The Super Bowl. The Winter Olympics. The Grammys and the Academy Awards. ‘Tis the season for live spectacles, and as such, I’m pleased to welcome you to the 7th Annual Crunchies Awards where TechCrunch, Gigaom and VentureBeat join together and award the best technology of 2013. To start, we have John Oliver hosting, who is sure to delight and surprise as always. Plus, we have some star-studded presenters handing out the 20 awards, including those for Best Technology Achievement, Fastest Rising Startup, and CEO of the Year. Who will walk away victorious? Obviously, you have to stay tuned to find out. Enjoy!
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Radiator Labs Is Crowdfunding Cozy, A Smart Radiator Cover | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | Radiators are amazingly old technology and steam heat, while oftentimes charmingly anachronistic, is also horribly inefficient. Luckily, Radiator Labs is working on , a radiator cover that turns “dumb” radiators into smartphone-controlled climate systems. The system is fairly simple: a cover traps the warm air generated by the radiator inside a box and a fan releases the air as necessary. While folks in charge of their own thermostats won’t find much use for the system (except to improve heating efficiency), apartment dwellers often suffer from heating overkill and are forced to open windows in the winter to stay sane. Landlords, especially in New York, like to simply keep the boilers running all day and night rather than worry about cold tenants. The Cozy, then captures that potentially wasted heat and lets you control it with far more efficiency. Writes the creator, Dr. Marshall Cox: I’ve seen a prototype of the system and it looks exciting, especially for apartment dwellers. They’re running and are looking for $100,000. An early bird Cozy costs $249. While it will definitely reduce the number of shorts-wearing tenants in the winter, Cozy seems like a great way to take back some control of your shared space.
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Here Are The Tech Companies Goldman Sachs Wants You To Meet | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | The isn’t the only star-studded tech event in town this week. On Tuesday kicks off its “Technology and Internet Conference” and the attendees read like a who’s who of the industry biggest and brightest public and private companies. Goldman’s tech version of hot-or-not includes presentations from Marissa Mayer at ; Sheryl Sandberg and David Ebersman from ; a venture capital perspective from and Joe Lonsdale from ; and a send-off with John Chambers from Cisco. (Anyone taking bets on whether he talks about the “Internet Of Things”?) I’m not sure all of Goldman’s calls may be spot on. With Klout, Path, and Quora slated to talk about “The Future Of Social Networking,” calling that panel the ghosts of social networking’s past might be more accurate. Here’s a link to the full agenda: Among all of the startups that Goldman has invited to the event, are a few that have the benefit of also being backed by the financial services giant. , , , , and are all presenting – and all have raised money from Goldman within the last few years, according to data from CrunchBase.
As t from 2012 noted, Goldman picked up the pace of its venture investments in the wake of Facebook’s public offering. And now those investments may begin to yield dividends as the remains wide open. Goldman backs these kinds of startup companies companies through a variety of investment vehicles including its private equity funds, the firm’s own balance sheet, and through its private wealth management arm which invests on behalf of the firm’s clients. The list of its investments is by no means complete, because so much of what the firm does is subject to disclosure regulations and the privacy wishes of its well-heeled clientele. Representatives from Goldman Sachs declined to talk specifically about the firm’s venture investment program. |
Let’s Go, New Orleans: We Want You At Our Meetup Next Week | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | Hey, NOLA. What’s up? Listen, we have a problem. While we know that is a startup hub and we’re already oversold in Georgia and , we’re having trouble filling seats in your home town. While we’re happy to come down for some hurricanes and dark and stormys, how about we have a few dozen more people show up? so we can get an accurate headcount for next week. These events are part social gathering and part pitch-off competition where startups or makers have 60 seconds to pitch their company or product to local VCs and TechCrunch editors. These products must currently be in stealth or private beta. Remember, we’ll also have a pitch-off and we’ve already picked 15 great startups. We will have 3-5 judges, including TechCrunch writers and local VCs, who will decide on the winners of the Pitch-off. First place will receive a table in Startup Alley at the upcoming TechCrunch Disrupt NY; second place will receive two tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt NY; and third place will receive one ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt NY. General admission tickets are available for $5 and grant the holder a couple of beers and entrance into what will surely be a fantastic night. Buy them below. |
Bitcoin Wins Best Technology Achievement But Satoshi Doesn’t Show | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | Eyewitnesses at the Crunchies tonight reported seeing a shadowy figure hiding in the eaves of the opera hall, watching the proceedings with a gimlet eye. Perhaps, in light of the Best Technology Achievement going to Bitcoin, Satoshi himself was lurking in the gloom? GigaOm’s Tom Krazit and Khosla Ventures Keith Rabois awarded the prize to Satoshi stand-in Peter Vessenes, Chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation. After less than four years of steady growth, the cryptocurrency is now top-of-mind for most of the Valley as everyone – from to – are looking into how to monetize the blockchain. Since no one person made bitcoin (or did they?) the award goes to the idea and the hard-working men and women around the world who are maintaining, mining, and improving the BTC protocol. It’s also an exciting time for economists who have suddenly become useful again as they try to explain the vagaries of currency pricing. Now that bitcoin is almost mainstream, it seems like it’s here to stay. We’ll keep you posted if Satoshi swings down on a chandelier and grabs the award from Vessenes hands. |
If You Watch One Video Of A Robot Playing Air Hockey Today, Make It This One | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | As a fan of robots, videos, and pucks, I was mesmerized by this project. It’s a a cool 3D printer hack that allows you to play a robot in a rousing game of air hockey. The system uses a computer vision component to see where the pucks is, send it back to the opponent, and even set up shots when it loses. The creator wrote that his daughter loved air hockey and wanted someone to play with. Instead of helping her make friends, he used parts of a 3D printer and a PS3 Eye connected to a PC to handle video capture and analysis. You can .
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjzSeOg8oTs#t=81] |
What’s Going On With Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox? | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | Mt. Gox, one of the original Bitcoin trading sites, has shut down its withdrawals system, citing problems related to (more on that shortly). Mt. Gox that this problem has forced them to shut down their withdrawal services: “We apologize for the sudden short notice. All bitcoin withdrawal requests will be on pause, and the withdrawals in the system will be returned to your Mt Gox wallet, and can be reinitiated once the issue is resolved.” So what happened? Put simply, Mt. Gox has been suffering from a sort of hack that makes its transactions vanish, allowing aggrieved customers to come back and ask for their money again. In fact, however, these vanished transactions are properly processed and the customer is paid twice. To explain it without going into too much detail, transaction malleability means that transaction – 1 bitcoin sent from Mt. Gox to User A, for example – could be changed so that Mt. Gox wouldn’t be able to track that the transfer ever happened. The transfer as it stands is added to the blockchain, the ledger of all bitcoin transactions, and User A gets the BTC. BTC transfers are actually chains of data leading back to the original coin in question’s “birth.” Each transaction has its own ID or hash which is based on the data inside the transaction – the recipient and the sender in most cases. These IDs are unique. A renegade node can modify the transaction, whenever it sees certain data pass through the network. This modified transaction still says Mt. Gox sent User A 1 BTC, is still a valid transfer, but has a completely different hash. This new, modified transaction essentially cancels out the previous transaction (if the renegade node is fast enough to spread its data to the confirming nodes) and Mt. Gox doesn’t have any way of proving that the transaction occurred because it records transactions based on the hash. User A goes back to Mt. Gox complaining they didn’t get their cash and the exchange has no recourse but to send another payment… and another… and another. At least that’s how this would work in theory. In practice there is no absolute way to tell if this is widespread abuse. Mt. Gox is definitely losing money — you don’t just shut down your customer’s accounts on a whim — but the bitcoin community is up in arms saying that Gox is foolish for not maintaining its own unique method for identifying its own transfers. Writes , “All these dipshits needed to do was to write their gox-specific tx id as a message on the transaction. They already know the recipient address, so if someone tried to say that they didn’t receive their funds, it would be completely trivial to look at the recipient address, and find the transaction with the gox-specific tx id attached at the time their system said that they sent the tx.” In short, Mt. Gox should have a better accounting system. Many major players are calling Mt. Gox’s claims and alarmist at worst. As a result of this shutdown, exchange trackers have removed Mt. Gox from their listings citing the spread of fear, uncertainty, and doubt by Mt. Gox admins. Bitcoin fell to a low of $572 and rebounded to about $670 today. No one is happy with Mt. Gox. “Bitcoin is in a period of transition, and Mt.Gox represents the sort of boot-strapped legacy infrastructure the market has left behind. Unnecessary and confusing panics like this are yearly occurrences, the one thing Mt.Gox has going for it is momentum and name recognition,” said Adam Levine, Editor-in-Chief at “How much value remains in that name recognition is dubious at best, that’s been the case now for over a year.” Whether the exchange returns to full capacity at this point is in question. One of the oldest and may have just pulled its own plug. Further Reading
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Tech Billionaires Made Up 75% Of 2013’s Most Philanthropic People Under 50 | Gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | Young tech billionaires gave generously in 2013. , only 4 were under the age of 50 and 3 of those were in the tech industry: Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan (Facebook, $992M), Pierre and Pam Omidyar (Ebay, $225M) and Sergey Brin and Anne Wojcicki (Google, $219M). The one non-techie philanthropist joining their youthful brethren are , who made their billion in finance. Zuckerberg, who led the pack with nearly a billion in charitable donations, is for his $100M gift to Newark’s public schools and, more recently, stock given to The Silicon Valley foundation. Technology IPOs have been churning out an impressive number of millionaires, many of them quite young. Twitter’s recent IPO, alone, created . Facebook, too, around 1,000 millionaires and billionaires, including the fresh-faced co-founders who boostrapped the site in Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room. Notably absent from ‘s list are super-philanthropists Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who had pledged barrels of cash in previous years. Both Zuckerberg and eBay founder Pierre Omydiar have also invested heavily in political organizations. Zuckerberg gave roughly $50 million to his . Omydiar is giving $250 million to a new civil liberties-oriented news organization, which , last night. See the full list . |
Microsoft May Dole Out More Free Storage To Users In OneDrive Rebrand | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | Microsoft will soon rebrand its SkyDrive cloud storage service OneDrive. The currently reads “Coming Soon.” It now appears that there is more to the coming OneDrive rollout than a simple name change. According to leaked , Microsoft will roll out a number of incentives for users in an effort to boost their usage of the service, and bring their friends aboard as well. Microsoft declined to comment. SkyDrive, Microsoft’s current and soon-to-be-renamed cloud storage service, provides users with 7 gigabytes of free storage. Presuming that Microsoft maintains that level of free storage in OneDrive, users will be able to pick up a total of 15 gigabytes of capacity, given that the new incentive structure will allow users to agglom another 8 gigabytes to their account. 5 of the 8 potential gigabytes will come from referrals: 500 megabytes per referral, up to 10. And, OneDrive will reward users who link their phone’s camera roll to OneDrive with another 3 gigabytes of storage. Users can create the link either through the OneDrive — currently SkyDrive, of course — iOS and Android apps, or with the built-in function that exists in Windows Phone. All this is unconfirmed with the company, but mirrors similar methods employed by the rival storage firm Dropbox, meaning they are unsurprising and almost proven tactics. Why would Microsoft want to get people to automatically upload their photos to OneDrive? Increasing user buy-in to the service not only boosts the service’s total revenue and use, but also draws potential oxygen from competitors. And given the importance of cloud storage to Microsoft’s larger services vision, anything to bolster that effort is worthy. We’re seeing a decline in the cost, and price of delivering a gigabyte of cloud storage. As Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and Microsoft vie for both consumer and enterprise market share in the space, expect more of this sort of effort. |
Google Wins Right To Lease Moffett Field, Will Restore Hangar One | Frederic Lardinois | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | Google’s executives have long operated their fleet of private jets out of NASA’s Moffett Field thanks to a long-standing deal with the U.S. government, but it looks like Google is ready to expand its presence at the Silicon Valley airfield. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and NASA today that Planetary Ventures LLC, a shell company Google occasionally uses for its real-estate deals, has been selected as the preferred lessee for Moffett Field and Hangar One. The iconic will be rehabilitated under this proposal. Google’s executives – through H211, an LLC that operates their jets – had previously to work with NASA to revamp the hangar, but was rebuffed by NASA at the time. Just a few years ago, the Navy stripped the toxic panels from the structures outside and, currently, only its skeleton remains. Under the new proposal, Google will “rehabilitate and maintain the historic integrity of Hangar One and the Shenandoah Plaza Historic District.” Google will re-skin Hangar One, upgrade the existing golf course and also create a public use and education facility on the airfield. “Hangar One was the landmark of Silicon Valley well before the rise of today’s high-tech titans. Naming a lessee is a testament to GSA’s commitment to providing the best value for the agency’s federal partners and the American people. NASA’s partnership with the private sector will allow the agency to restore this treasure for more efficient use,” the GSA’s Dan Tangherlini said in a canned statement explaining the decision today. It’s worth noting that today’s agreement just means NASA will now negotiate the lease terms with Planetary Ventures/Google, but given Google’s deep pockets and interest in the project, it seems unlikely that this project won’t proceed. H211 is also currently involved in a project to expand the $82 million . It’s not clear if today’s announcement will change any of these plans. Google itself, it is worth noting, has no direct relationship with H211. In the past, H211 has been widely criticized for getting tax cuts on the jet fuel it purchased at a discount from the government, and, unsurprisingly, ‘s Privacy Project Director John M. Simpson today noted that “This is like giving the keys to your car to the guy who has been siphoning gas from your tank. It is unfairly rewarding unethical and wrongful behavior. These Google guys seem to think they can do whatever they want and get away with it – and it’s beginning to look like that is true.” |
Strevus Raises $ 5.6 Million For Financial Compliance Software | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | With new compliance requirements looming , startup software developer has raised $5.6 million for its risk and compliance service. The company raised its first institutional round from lead investor Blumberg Capital and U.S. Venture Partners after picking up seed investments from a who’s who of the technology community, including BlackBerry CEO ; , the Yahoo CFO; and former Oracle CMO . “The world has changed quite a bit with the financial service meltdown, and regulatory compliance is the resulting fact in today’s world,” said Strevus Chief Executive Ken Hoang in an interview. Think of Strevus as a monitored and managed networking tool to ensure compliance with new and existing regulations for financial services firms that are going to start taking effect this year. “Compliance is not a competitive advantage today. The government is picking off [financial services firms] institution by institution,” Hoang said. The first market that Strevus is looking to address within the alphabet soup of new and updated compliance requirements being issued by the federal government is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. FATCA targets tax evaders in the U.S. who aren’t properly reporting overseas financial accounts, and foreign financial institutions who bank for U.S. taxpayers or foreign entities in which U.S. taxpayers hold a majority stake, according to the IRS’s website. San Francisco-based Strevus is currently working with a handful of banks on its managed platform, which operates as a networking tool and an industry Rolodex — as well as a compliance offering. “It’s similar to Box with a LinkedIn functionality,” said Hoang. “We’re enabling customers to reach out to others and bring their data in.” Strevus will sell its service to both buy-side and sell-side firms. On the buy side, the company is targeting banks and financial services firms with assets ranging from $250 million to $1 billion. On the sell side the customer base is the top 20 banks, said Hoang. A subscription to the Strevus service costs a sell-side customer starting at $100,000, according to Hoang. |
Stealthy Security Company Apprity Raises $8 Million | Jonathan Shieber | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | The stealthy business security company Apprity, launched by two former Oracle employees, has raised $8 million in its first institutional financing. For its first venture round, Apprity turned to seasoned security technology investors Promod Haque, a senior managing partner at Norwest Venture Partners, and Gaurav Garg, a founding partner of Wing Ventures. The last time these two investors came together on a deal, the result was the tech security darling FireEye, which held its initial public offering in September 2013, nine years after its launch. “The reality is most traditional approaches involve a perimeter-centric mindset, whether it is proxy-based or server-based,” said Apprity’s Chief Executive Rohit Gupta, who previously worked as VP of Products in the identity management and security group at Oracle. With the new funding, Apprity is going to make a huge hiring push around its engineering and research and development teams, Gupta said. “Close to 98 percent of our projected spend is in core engineering and research.” For NVP’s Haque, the decision to back Apprity’s vision was a function of the previous experience of the two founders. “With the many years of experience that these gentlemen have, it gives them a very interesting vantage point to assess the weaknesses of other systems and build something different.” What that different product is, neither Haque nor Gupta would say, but Gupta did say that the research the company is doing “centers on the ability to go into much deeper and finer levels of granularity researching threat patterns in the cloud.” Businesses want to trust but verify when they move to the cloud, according to Gupta. Whatever tools Apprity is developing must be designed to handle the verify component, because as billions of dollars worth of cloud-based software subscriptions show, companies are already putting a lot of their trust in the cloud. |
Facebook’s WhatsApp Acquisition Leaves Snapchat Hanging | Billy Gallagher | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | With Facebook’s massive earlier today, any possible marriage between Facebook and Snapchat appears to be dead. WhatsApp co-founder and CEO, Jan Koum, will join Facebook’s Board of Directors as part of today’s acquisition deal. At first glance, it seems like Acton doesn’t really understand Snapchat’s appeal or value proposition, which is very, very strange given that he has created one of the world’s most successful messaging companies. What’s far more likely is that Acton understands Snapchat perfectly well, and is throwing a few jabs at one of his main competitors. But are these barbs just competitiveness, or does Acton actually think so little of Snapchat? And how will Acton’s and Koum’s feelings toward Snapchat affect a potential future acqusition now that Koum sits on Facebook’s Board? Zuckerberg tried once to directly clone Snapchat and failed. If he isn’t able to purchase Snapchat, or no longer wants to at the price, perhaps Facebook will try to develop its own take on ephemerality. Apps like Whisper and Secret have taken off by allowing users to post anonymously, just as Snapchat is making content ephemeral. People clearly want a different way to share content besides merely posting on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook needs to find a way to provide that to its users. Google, which for Snapchat, would still make a ton of sense for both companies. And Tencent, which , would also be an interesting match. That’s about it. Snapchat doesn’t seem keen on selling any time soon (although ). The company would likely have to struggle with growth or monetization, or have repeated issues with security or lawsuits to seriously consider accepting an acquisition offer. Based on its trajectory to this point, and its substantial pile of cash, it seems unlikely that Snapchat would sell until at least 2015. The company could continue its insane growth and eventually go public. It could falter, lose popularity, and flame out or sell for an unremarkable sum. But the third route, a top dollar acquisition to a major company, just became a lot less clear. |
How Things Change | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Four years ago, Brian Acton was looking for a job. His job at Yahoo, where he’d filled many engineering roles over 11 years, had come to an end. He was networking with recruiters: networking with recruiters, venture capitalists, playing ultimate frisbee — Brian Acton (@brianacton) He met with Twitter. Twitter said no: Got denied by Twitter HQ. That's ok. Would have been a long commute. — Brian Acton (@brianacton) He met with Facebook. Facebook said no: Facebook turned me down. It was a great opportunity to connect with some fantastic people. Looking forward to life's next adventure. — Brian Acton (@brianacton) So he and Jan Koum, a colleague from Yahoo, set out to do their own thing. Today, . Life is crazy. |
Kik Founder On Facebook Buying WhatsApp: Mobile Messaging Now “Table Stakes” | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Mobile messaging consolidation is coming fast and heavy recently, with the and today’s . Another contender in the space, Waterloo-based Kik, has also seen good traction and growth (though admittedly not on the level of WhatsApp). Kik founder and CEO Ted Livingston tells TechCrunch that this is a clear message that, well, messaging is the new black, in case it wasn’t clear before. “It’s $16 billion clearer that we’re now in the age of the mobile messenger,” he explained to me in a conversation on his company’s platform. “Now for the fun part: What comes after chat? What does identity mean for mobile? How do you build the best platform? These are questions Kik has been thinking about for four years.” I asked Livingston what he thinks this means for WhatsApp, which has been a constant rival for Kik since 2009, when both companies were originally founded. Under Facebook’s stewardship, it can probably go one of two ways, he said. “Is this YouTube or Myspace?” he asked, referring to two acquisition stories that went in very different directions. YouTube, acquired by Google in 2006, continued its growth and exists as a very successful, mostly standalone property that has monetized fairly successfully. Myspace was acquired by News Corp in 2005 for $580 million, only to be sold in 2011 for just $35 million after users fled the platform in droves. It’s a good question, but one that Livingston doesn’t see any answer to yet. WhatsApp and Facebook both claim that the messaging app will continue as usual, acting as a distinct company with its . That could help it follow YouTube’s example to continued growth, rather than Myspace’s downward trajectory. As for what it means for the industry in general, Livingston says it’s simple. “Having a popular mobile messenger is simply going to become table stakes for competing in the mobile era [among big tech companies],” he said. While some, like Apple, have already achieved this with products including iMessage (and to some extent, Google with Hangouts), there are plenty of companies out there that still need to figure out their mobile messaging play if they want to remain relevant as purveyors of social products, including Yahoo. Livingston says this doesn’t change how Kik will approach its own product, however. If anything, it only serves to reinforce that they had the right idea to begin with. “We’ve been working on how to turn a messenger into a platform for the last four years,” he said. “If anything, this just validates our roadmap.” As to what that roadmap entails, in an effort to bring content inside the network. Kik is an obvious target for acquisition at this point in the mobile messaging space despite its smaller user pool. I asked Livingston whether they’re looking around for suitors, and whether they actually received any offers today. He had “no comment” on that second question, but was more willing to share on the first. “We saw this before, when Facebook bought Beluga and Skype bought GroupMe,” he answered, before getting a bit philosophical, and thus managing to avoid delivering a straight answer. “This is going to be one of the most valuable races of the mobile era. What a privilege [for us] to have the opportunity to take part in it.” |
Zuck Says Ads Aren’t The Way To Monetize Messaging, WhatsApp Will Prioritize Growth Not Subscriptions | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Facebook won’t be throwing its advertising weight behind its like it did with Instagram. But WhatsApp also won’t be focusing on rolling out the $1 a year subscription fee it currently charges in some countries. Instead, with the financial security Facebook brings, it will dedicate itself to growth. Monetization was the big topic on after Facebook announced it acquired WhatsApp for a . That’s , and it reserved $3 billion in restricted stock units to retain the startup’s employees. But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, CFO David Ebersman, and WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum all said that won’t be a priority for the next few years. And when the time does come to monetize aggressively, it won’t be through ads. “Our explicit strategy for the next several years is to focus on growing and connecting everyone in the world,” Zuckerberg said. Currently, WhatsApp has a strong presence internationally with 450 million monthly users, but it’s a fragmented market with many competitors. , Facebook’s CEO explained. ”Once we get to being a service with 1 billion, 2 billion, 3 billion people, there are many clear ways that we can monetize.” Zuckerberg bluntly stated “I don’t personally think ads are the right way to monetize messaging.” Beyond WhatsApp, that could mean Facebook doesn’t plan to use ads to monetize its own Messenger app, either. That makes sense, as the highly personal and intimate nature of messaging would cause ads to stick out like sore thumbs. The comments on the call reiterate a point that Koum has made in the past. In a , he argued, “Advertising isn’t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought” — it also means that companies have to mine user data. (When asked about the age of WhatsApp’s users on the call, Ebersman couldn’t say, because the app doesn’t ask for that data.) Koum made a similar commitment today in his , writing, “You can still count on absolutely no ads interrupting your communication.” Eventually, Zuckerberg wants the WhatsApp team to turn the app into “a really great business,” not just a great product, and he described the current subscription model as “a promising start.” Still, during the call, analysts repeatedly asked for more details about WhatsApp’s existing subscription business. in after-hours trading at one point, though are now down just 2.64%, likely because investors couldn’t see why Facebook would spend so much on something not earning much money. But Koum suggested that the app could have “5 billion users potentially giving us money,” so, “We’re not really concerned about monetization today.’ Ebersman added that “some users in some countries” have paid subscriptions, but he said expanding those subscriptions is “not a priority.” Trying another angle, an analyst asked about the breakdown between paid and free users, and Ebersman repeated that it was “not a top priority” and said, “As they roll this out country by country as they choose, I’m sure we’ll learn more.” “We’re confident that over the long run WhatsApp will deliver returns for shareholders,” Ebersman said. Right now, the two companies are willing to delay making money off WhatsApp to ensure it becomes the dominant mobile messenger around the world. Putting a dollar price tag on it could drive users to competitors that are free to download, like WeChat, Kik, KakaoTalk, and Line. And therein lies perhaps the biggest advantage to being acquired for WhatsApp. Facebook makes plenty of money from advertising in its main app and website. That money unshackles WhatsApp from polluting its product with ads or slowing down growth with a subscription fee. Instead, it can drive full-speed towards getting to 1 billion users. |
Sequoia’s A Big Winner In Facebook’s WhatsApp Acquisition, With Its Stake Worth About $3 Billion | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Facebook today announced its . Obviously WhatsApp has a lot to cheer about, having grown to 450 million active users over the course of the last five years. But from a pure venture perspective, the purchase represents another huge win for Sequoia Capital and partner . ( After talking with more sources, we’re able to provide more context around WhatsApp’s funding history and Sequoia’s involvement.) While the only funding that WhatsApp had publicized was the led by Sequoia, the company had raised two subsequent rounds of financing, including an unreported $50 million Series C round. Sequoia led both of those subsequent rounds, investing about $60 million in WhatsApp over the years, which added up to a total ownership stake in the high teens, I’ve been told. The deal is the , which also clearly puts it in the early lead for the biggest single venture return this year. In a , Goetz said it’s been a privilege to work with the WhatsApp founders. “It’s been a remarkable journey, and we could not be happier for these talented underdogs whose unshakeable beliefs and maverick natures epitomize the spirit of Silicon Valley.” Of course, WhatsApp isn’t the first company Sequoia had invested in before being acquired by Facebook — it led a just days before the photo-sharing app was acquired. But it’s by far the biggest. Assuming Sequoia owns almost 20 percent of WhatsApp, its stake is now worth about $3 billion in cash and stock. The deal by itself could provide more than a 2x return on the the initial WhatsApp investment came from, and represents a 50x return on its investment in the company. In an interview a few hours after the deal was announced, Goetz highlighted the international appeal of the app. While it’s not as well known in Silicon Valley circles, the app has huge engagement with users around the world. “If you were in Spain of Brazil, most of the population there is interacting with WhatsApp multiple times a day,” Goetz said. Saying that he expected the app to become a household name in the U.S., Goetz pointed out that it has nearly half a billion users, and “is likely to touch a billion or more in the not-too-distant future.” With that user growth also comes engagement, which Goetz believes is the highest amount in the ecosystem. And the fact that WhatsApp makes money — and has for years. “When we invested in the Series A, they had already paid income taxes, which is rare for a company at that stage,” he said. It’s a huge deal for Sequoia, and in a strange way the WhatsApp acquisition might even be considered the firm’s revenge on Facebook for a pulled on the partnership. Once upon a time, he pitched while in his pajamas, reportedly out of spite for . Big surprise, Sequoia never invested in Facebook. But it seems to have made a ton of money off the social networking giant after all. |
Facebook’s $19 Billion WhatsApp Acquisition, Contextualized | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Facebook just announced it’s , a global messaging platform with 450 million MAUs, for approximately $19 billion. It’s one of the biggest tech acquisitions since HP bought Compaq for $25 billion in 2001. It means that WhatsApp, which raised a comparatively measly $8 million since its 2011 launch, is now worth nearly $20 billion. Remember the good old days, when we all raised our eyebrows at the ? Or Lenovo purchasing ? Simpler times. Since $19 billion is a ridiculously large amount of money to wrap our heads around, we decided to compare that to other ridiculously valuable things, companies and people. Enjoy, friends! The above figures are calculated using the following metrics: The full $19 billion dollar value of the deal, which takes into account RSUs to be given to employees following its closing; and market capitalization of other companies sourced from Google Finance at close — not taking into account after-hours performance. In this way, we compare fair market rates for comparison companies, and the complete cost of the deal. |
Facebook Stock Falls 5% After Hours Following WhatsApp Purchase [Update: Now Down Only 2.64%] | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Facebook today announced that it will acquire WhatsApp for a combined $16 billion in cash and stock. WhatsApp’s employees pick up an additional $3 billion in restricted stock units as part of the deal. Wall Street investors are seemingly not pleased and have sent Facebook’s shares down 5 percent in after hours trading. They could be worried about potential dilution stemming from the deal. Instead, it’s likely that investors are displeased that Facebook bought growth, perhaps because it had to. User growth, that is. If Facebook has to spend so heavily to acquire user growth, its own core strengths of ubiquity, and high engagement are implicitly under stress. [Update 5pm PST: During a call to investors, and pull the share price up a bit so it’s now only down 2.64 percent in after hours trading. They discussed how WhatsApp would focus on growth rather than monetization. Zuckerberg said ads were not the right way to monetize messaging services, and Facebook CFO David Ebersman noted that WhatsApp will not prioritize further roll out of the $1 a year subscription fee it currently charges in some but not all countries.] Here’s Facebook itself explaining why WhatsApp is worth the tectonic sums it is deploying to purchase it: WhatsApp has built a leading and rapidly growing real-time mobile messaging service, with: – Over 450 million people using the service each month; – 70% of those people active on a given day; – Messaging volume approaching the entire global telecom SMS volume; and – Continued strong growth, currently adding more than 1 million new registered users per day. Large number of monthly actives? Check. Huge daily engagement? Check. Big growth? Check. Facebook continues to grow at acceptable levels. Over time, the company’s key metrics have become increasingly financial. Twitter has yet to make a similar transition, naturally. Facebook, though, is a maturing product that investors continue to expect much from in terms of both user and financial growth. There is a tension there. When you are valued at growth multiples, any wobble in your user expansion rates implies that your cash flows may be dramatically overvalued at current multiples. And that’s when investors hit the no button and step out. Twitter learned this the hard way in its last quarter when a surprise profit and revenue beat didn’t stop investors from dumping its shares due to weaker than expected 3.9 percent sequential quarter user growth. So Facebook likely wanted more growth, especially in mobile and non-U.S. markets, and spent $19 billion to get some. Facebook’s splintering into various apps makes its usage levels harder to gauge. Instagram, WhatsApp, and stand-alone Facebook apps — there are more of those on the way — make what being a ‘Facebook Monthly Active User’ somewhat doughy. But, it will be hard for anyone to complain about Facebook’s user growth with the twin engines of Instagram and WhatsApp on board; you simply have to dilute what your mind thinks of as a ‘Facebook experience’ to get there. Call it reinvention by spare parts. Final kicker. Yes, the deal is incredibly expensive. But, unlike with Instagram, WhatsApp has revenue (for shame!). Its subscription fee of $0.99 per user per year after their first year means the company has non-trivial top line. It isn’t hard to see the company with a nine-figure revenue, and at 1 million new users per day, that figure could tip up nicely. Expensive, but not ludicrous. |
Super.cc Launches To Bring Calendaring Into Your Email Inbox | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | You know how you spend multiple emails trying to set up a meeting time, and a meeting place, and once it’s all done you then have to leave your email and head into your calendar and add an entry and it’s a big first-world problem? Well, now you don’t have to, thanks to the beauty of . The product adds an automated way for busy people to add events to their calendars without having to bounce through different browser tabs, or opening up a mobile app and entering things in manually. Because, I mean, who’s got time for that? To do so, you simply sign up for the service. And then, once you’ve connected it to your calendar, you can forward whatever email exchange you have to add@super.cc, and the service will automatically add it to your plans. On the back end, Super.cc has algorithms that are designed to parse emails and determine exactly what needs to be put in your calendar. Date and time, of course, and who you’ll be talking to. It can also send invites to other participants based on the info provided. While a lot of the work is done with technology, Super.cc also has a QA team that is there to monitor and correct errors before calendar invites end up being sent out to others. The whole thing was built by Michael Galpert, who was previously one of the founders of Aviary and decided to take a shot at improving personal productivity a few years ago. The whole thing grew out of his plans to build , which was designed to create a sort of virtualized personal assistant, for a monthly subscription. The problem with that was that not everyone was comfortable with the whole idea of having an assistant. At least they didn’t know what to do with it. Instead, making calendaring easier seemed like a better way to attack the problem. For now, Super.cc is free, and in my experience, really useful. In the future, Galpert says he will consider potential paid features for users who need more power features. |
Apple And Tesla Had A Spring Fling | Greg Barto | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Reports are out today in , and just about publication, that Apple be in preliminary talks to buy electric automobile manufacturer Tesla. With the mobile phone and tablet markets becoming increasingly competitive, Apple is interested in expanding to other markets to increase growth. But would Apple want to buy a company valued at $25 billion at closing? With nearly $160 billion in cash, money probably wouldn’t be the primary hurdle Apple won’t clear. In fact, Apple could be the only company capable of thinking about it. An acquisition like this makes sense for Apple as it would satisfy their need to enter new markets with tremendous growth potential. Tesla has been on a tear recently, with strong stock growth and car sales YoY. Tesla has released two cars so far — the Roadster and the Model S — and its crossover model, called the Model X, will begin deliveries later this year with new-reservation deliveries due next year, according to its website. Its stock is up nearly 500 percent from a year ago and investors couldn’t be happier. Tesla has also scored well with , tying the highest score ever given to a car and pioneered to make the Tesla affordable. The speculation comes from a meeting that happened last spring between Elon Musk and Apple M&A executive Adrian Perica. However, most analysts have said it’s unlikely a merger is in the works, and instead point to a potential partnership around the in the past. As much as we’d like to believe the Apple experience could be coming to the automobile industry, it doesn’t make sense for Tesla at this point. Do you want to see Jony Ive designing cars in the near future? |
Yik Yak Is An Anonymous Messaging App Aimed At College Campuses | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | What happens when you combine anonymous messaging with college campuses? You get 100,000 users in three months. knows all about it. The startup was launched by two Furman University students, Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington, aiming to connect people through anonymous, location-based posts. Within a five-mile radius, the poster can choose to share with the closest 100, 250, or 500 Yik Yak users. For $.99, users can share with 1,000 people, 2,500 for $1.99, and 10,000 for $5. We caught up with the founders at last night’s , and they confirmed the app is mostly used to gripe about things, people, places, classes, and/or anything else gripe-worthy. You can choose to show your general location, and from what I can see, there’s no moderation for someone who uses actual names in posts. In other words, I could post on Yik Yak that my boss John Biggs picks his nose and no one would stop me from sending that out to a maximum of 10,000 nearby Yik Yak users. Obviously, bullying issues abound. The company has among various colleges, who feel the app violates anti-bullying rules. As it stands now, posts are deleted when two or more users mark the content as inappropriate, or if someone screenshots offensive content and emails it to Yik Yak. “We’re working on trying to find technical solutions to prevent app abuse by high schoolers, the blocks that we currently have in place aren’t working as well as we’d like them to,” said Buffington. “One thing that we have seen on the college front is that the longer a community is around the more mature and constructive it becomes. So we think that lends to some promise for the anonymous or semi-anonymous app realm.” But despite these issues, the app has seriously picked up steam. In three months, with launches on five major southern campuses, the app already has 100,000 monthly active users. More than 15,000 messages go up each day. Obviously, Secret and Whisper aren’t the only ones cashing in on our love of anonymity. Currently, the app is being used at University of Georgia, Ole Miss, Clemson, University of Virginia and Wake Forest, and the team has plans to head up the east coast to schools like Penn State, Boston University, NYU, etc. “We’ll let our competition battle it out in the Valley while we continue to gobble up schools on the East Coast,” said Buffington. For now, the app already offers in-app purchases to expand reach, but sees an opportunity to run local deals, discounts and ads. But for now, the focus is growing the user base. Yik Yak has seen investment from Atlanta Capital in the form of a $20,000 convertible note. |
Facebook Buying WhatsApp For $19B, Will Keep The Messaging Service Independent | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Facebook is purchasing messaging giant WhatsApp for $16 billion in cash and stock, according to a . The deal is being cut for $12 billion in Facebook shares, $4 billion in cash and an additional $3 billion in RSUs for employee retention. A termination fee is attached to the deal that would cost Facebook $1 billion in cash and $1 billion in shares if the deal fails to pass regulatory muster. Facebook has , detailing the reasoning behind the acquisition, as well. The post notes that WhatsApp will continue to operate independently and retain its brand. In addition, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum will join Facebook’s board. Facebook notes that WhatsApp has over 450 million MAUs, with 70 percent of those active each day. In a staggering comparison, Facebook also notes that the messaging volume of WhatsApp approaches the SMS volume of the entire global telecom industry — and that it’s adding 1 million users a day. “WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO in a statement. “WhatsApp had every option in the world,” Zuckerberg to his Facebook page, “so I’m thrilled that they chose to work with us. I’m looking forward to what Facebook and WhatsApp can do together, and to developing great new mobile services that give people even more options for connecting. I’ve also known Jan for a long time, and I know that we both share the vision of making the world more open and connected. I’m particularly happy that Jan has agreed to join the Facebook board and partner with me to shape Facebook’s future as well as WhatsApp’s.” WhatsApp message volume growth is still accelerating. Has probably now overtaken SMS. — Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) Jan Koum, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO, said, “WhatsApp’s extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide.” Facebook specifically calls out its deal with Instagram as a template for how it will deal with WhatsApp: Facebook fosters an environment where independent-minded entrepreneurs can build companies, set their own direction and focus on growth while also benefiting from Facebook’s expertise, resources and scale. This approach is working well with Instagram, and WhatsApp will operate in this manner. WhatsApp’s brand will be maintained; its headquarters will remain in Mountain View, CA; Jan Koum will join Facebook’s Board of Directors; and WhatsApp’s core messaging product and Facebook’s existing Messenger app will continue to operate as standalone applications. In a post on the WhatsApp blog, : Here’s what will change for you, our users: nothing. WhatsApp will remain autonomous and operate independently. You can continue to enjoy the service for a nominal fee. You can continue to use WhatsApp no matter where in the world you are, or what smartphone you’re using. And you can still count on absolutely no ads interrupting your communication. There would have been no partnership between our two companies if we had to compromise on the core principles that will always define our company, our vision and our product. The note about no advertising is interesting, as that’s obviously Facebook’s primary method of monetization on its main platform — and now Instagram. WhatsApp will also keep its subscription fees, which amount to $1 per user after the first year of use. WhatsApp investor Sequoia has about the acquisition, specifically its very large valuation. The company notes that it only has 32 engineers — making the ratio 1 engineer to every 14 million users. It processes 50 billion messages a day across seven platforms. The image above is a note that Koum keeps on his desk, outlining the focus of the company on building a ‘focused messaging experience’. Sequioa’s Jim Goetz says that founder Koum’s time growing up in a communist country shaped how he developed WhatsApp. “Jan’s childhood made him appreciate communication that was not bugged or taped. When he arrived in the U.S. as a 16-year-old immigrant living on food stamps, he had the extra incentive of wanting to stay in touch with his family in Russia and the Ukraine,” says Goetz. “All of this was top of mind for Jan when, after years of working together with his mentor Brian at Yahoo, he began to build WhatsApp.” Goetz also calls out the 450M user number and the fact that it has spent exactly $0 on marketing and doesn’t even employ a PR person or marketer; its growth all coming from users. WhatsApp only employs around 50 people total. At 32 engineers, that’s . Facebook currently boasts 556 million mobile daily active users, and . One particular reason Facebook could be purchasing WhatsApp is to bolster its International footprint — as . TechCrunch had previously heard about some abortive acquisition talks in late 2012. Facebook is .
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Google I/O Developer Conference To Be Held June 25-26 This Year | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | The dates for this year’s are June 25 and 26, Google’s Android and Chrome boss Sundar Pichai just announced on (via ). The annual event offers up sessions on a number of topics of interest to developers, including how to maximize revenue from mobile apps, how best to use specific apps, and more. The registration for in-person attendance this year is being done differently – it’s not first come, first serve (or first come when the servers come back online, first serve) as it has been in years past. Instead, you submit your interest to attend ahead of time, and then applications are entered into a lottery and chosen at random. Lucky winners will get a golden ticket (not literally golden) to attend in person at Moscone West in San Francisco. Registration details will be shared next month, according to Pichai. This year, the I/O conference is only two days, compared to three full days in 2012 and 2013. The changed schedule isn’t addressed by Pichai in today’s announcement, but last year the event shifted focus back to developers and away from big consumer product news, so that could explain why it’s returning to the . Fear not if you’re left out, however: Google will live stream the entire event to those who don’t get in, and there will be companion “I/O Extended community” events taking place at locations around the world. And of course, we’ll be in attendance, bringing you all the latest from Google, which normally takes the opportunity to show off a host of new APIs at I/O, as well as still some new products and services updates, too. |
CrowdTwist Brings On Two New Board Members, Coca-Cola’s Carol Kruse And Visa’s Shiv Singh | Jordan Crook | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | , a social loyalty rewards platform, has today announced two new heavy-hitting board members, and . Kruse spent nearly 10 years at Coca-Cola, where she led the interactive marketing team as global vice president of Digital. She then went to ESPN and served as a senior vice president and then CMO. Currently, Kruse holds the position of CMO at Tough Mudder. Singh, meanwhile, works as SVP of global brand and marketing transformation for Visa and was formerly the global head of digital for PepsiCo. If you’ve ever heard of the social platforms Pepsi Sound Off or Pepsi Pulse, those were Singh’s idea. Before his stint at Pepsi, Singh led the global social media team at RazorFish for 11 years. With CrowdTwist’s focus on brands and brand engagement, these board members will surely add some extra edge to the company’s growth in 2014. Here’s what CEO and co-founder Irvin Fain had to say about it in a prepared statement: As the first company to extend loyalty programs beyond the traditional “spend and get” models, we’re helping marketers account for customer value in a truly multi-channel world including mobile, social media, online and offline spend and more—we’re not just capturing more data, we’re making data more meaningful for marketers. Carol and Shiv have both been at the forefront of innovative marketing technologies and forging stronger relationships with consumers. Their expertise in addition to Eric’s years of relevant experience will be instrumental in supporting our continued growth in 2014. CrowdTwist has raised a total of since launching out of TechStars in 2011. |
Tesla Beats In Q4 With Adjusted Revenues Of $761M, Expects 35,000 Car Deliveries This Year | Alex Wilhelm | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Today after the bell, Tesla reported its fourth quarter financial performance, including non-GAAP revenue of $761 million and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.33. In the period, the company delivered , a figure that it pre-announced in January. The company’s revenue grew 26% from the preceding, sequential quarter. The street in aggregate the company to earn $0.21 (non-GAAP) on GAAP revenue of $677 million. The company’s GAAP revenue for the period came in at $615 million. Investors appear unconcerned about Tesla’s non-GAAP/GAAP revenue split, or are perhaps simply more excited about the raw growth that the company has delivered, and continues to promise. In regular trading, Tesla was broadly down, sliding around 5%. Yesterday, Tesla hit an all time high north of $200 per share. In after hours trading, following its general beat, Tesla is up more than 11%. In GAAP terms, Tesla lost $0.13 per share on net income of -$16 million. Tesla ended the quarter with cash and equivalents of $846 million. Tesla expects to deliver 35,000 of its Model S cars in 2014, up 55% from 2013. By year’s end, Tesla expects to be able to manufacture around 1,000 cars weekly. For calendar 2013, Tesla had revenues just north of $2 billion, up around 5 times from the preceding year. Investors like what they see. |
Belkin Fixes WeMo Vulnerabilities With Firmware Update | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Fear not, owners of Belkin WeMo devices: you no longer have to lose sleep over the possibility that your smart plug will be hacked. Belkin has rolled out an update that patches the five vulnerabilities listed by FEMA’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team. This security hole affects up to 500,000 WeMo devices, and as CERT states, the vulnerability could result in anything from a fire to the waste of electricity. These holes were recently . As the press release states, the security company made several attempts to contact Belkin about the issues, but Belkin was unresponsive. So IOActive turned to CERT who also . However, per a statement Belkin sent to TechCrunch (embedded below), Belkin was in fact in contact with the security research firm prior to their public statement. Specifically, Mike Davis, IOActive’s principal research scientist, identified that through several different means, hackers could remotely access Internet-connected WeMo products, upload custom firmware, remotely monitor devices and access local networks. The update Belkin recently issued patches these holes. This speaks to a larger issue. As the Internet of things takes off, hackers and malicious coders have an increasing number of targets. It’s not inconsivable that in the near future, KitchenAid will have to issue a security patch for a toaster or blender. Belkin has corrected the list of five potential vulnerabilities affecting the WeMo line of home automation solutions that was published in a CERT advisory on February 18. Belkin was in contact with the security researchers prior to the publication of the advisory, and, as of February 18, had already issued fixes for each of the noted potential vulnerabilities via in-app notifications and updates. Users with the most recent firmware release (version 3949) are not at risk for malicious firmware attacks or remote control or monitoring of WeMo devices from unauthorized devices. Belkin urges such users to download the latest app from the App Store (version 1.4.1) or Google Play Store (version 1.2.1) and then upgrade the firmware version through the app. Specific fixes Belkin has issued include: 1) An update to the WeMo API server on November 5, 2013 that prevents an XML injection attack from gaining access to other WeMo devices. 2) An update to the WeMo firmware, published on January 24, 2014, that adds SSL encryption and validation to the WeMo firmware distribution feed, eliminates storage of the signing key on the device, and password protects the serial port interface to prevent a malicious firmware attack 3) An update to the WeMo app for both iOS (published on January 24, 2014) and Android (published on February 10, 2014) that contains the most recent firmware update |
How One Scammer Manipulated Apple’s Top Charts To Earn Tens Of Thousands Daily Using A $10 GameSalad Template | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Something fishy has been going on with Apple’s App Store top charts. No, I’m not talking about “Flappy Bird” (well, maybe too), but rather how on earth two different developers used a $10 GameSalad to send their respective apps — one , and one — into the App Store’s top charts. And more importantly, how did that paid app keep climbing the charts, earning a developer who’s clearly a well-known scammer, a lot of money? Industry insiders noticed this was happening , though has spread as the apps higher and higher in the charts. New app store insanity. 2 different developers get the same game template. 1 is free, 1 paid. same title. go figure! — Ouriel Ohayon (@OurielOhayon) The GameSalad in question is called “Red Bouncing Ball Spikes.” It’s a simple game that would appeal to those looking to ride the “Flappy Bird” wave by exploring other iOS titles that don’t require a lot of cognitive overload, but are rather designed to let you just start playing. Also, it’s kind of a terrible game. As of February 14, the free version of the game, created by “ ,” had reached the No. 73 spot in the App Store’s free charts. This is the same developer behind a number of titles, including most recently, the , “Flying Cyrus,” involving Miley Cyrus’s head and several wrecking balls. Talo Games’ developer, who was recently interviewed by Israeli blog , released his free version of the Red Ball game on Feb. 10, 2014, well after the paid version launched in December 2012. Obviously he’s just having some fun by taking advantage of the App Store buzz, not scamming. Meanwhile, the paid version of the game comes from a more controversial developer known as Mateen Pekan (which may not be his real name). His app reached No. 8 on the App Store’s paid charts as of last week. At one point, the template-based title on Apple’s App Store. #2 paid iPhone app right now “Red Bouncing Ball Spikes” is a GameSalad template — Steven Frank (@stevenf) Now here’s where things get strange. OK, . The paid app, as noted above, was released in December 2012 and only shot up to the top of the App Store after an “update” released on Jan. 30, 2014. If this makes you think of the trajectory of another recent App Store viral hit (aka “Flappy Bird” which the developer with little explanation) you’re not alone. “Flappy Bird” was actually released in May 2013, but only blew up this January. As for the paid version of the “Red Bouncing Ball Spikes” game, GameSalad forum members recalled that the developer in question, “Mateen Pekan,” has been a in the past. He has , stolen games and source code, and been banned from forums like GameSalad itself. He is based out of Canada, young, and goes by several names, including also “ ,” “ ” and . Some basic Internet research traces Mateen to as well, which is for Mooney’s Bay Computer, a computer store in Canada. Some guess this is where Mateen works, but it’s more likely he just did a little freelancing for them. He has also pushed his Red Ball game to Google Play, where it among other titles. Other game developer forums, including , have also spotted that Red Ball is the work of Mateen, and have been calling the game’s ascension in the App Store a scam. The going theory is that Mateen (or whatever his real name is) utilized a that requires you to manipulate gross sales figures by, say, using your own money. As one member on the GameSalad forum the Rank History on App Annie shows that when you compare the Red Ball paid app to others in the top 10, it had high gross sales but lower downloads. Generally, apps in the top 10 have high gross sales high downloads. To perform this scam, a developer would have to use a network of iTunes accounts to download enough copies of the game to push the game’s gross sales to $20,000. The payday comes as the app sits in the top of the App Store for multiple days on end, earning that money back and then some. What’s perhaps more concerning than the fact that a scammer has figured out how to manipulate the App Store algorithms for ill-gotten gains (it’s bound to happen), is the delayed response from Apple. This title has been climbing the charts all month, but it’s only recently been bumped out of the top 100. And how? Through direct intervention on Apple’s part? Did Apple’s algorithm just now catch this? We may never know. : Or maybe we will! We’re now hearing that Apple didn’t take any action to remove the app from the top charts directly, but rather the app fell out of the ranks on its own – maybe as people wised up as to who was behind it? Also of interest is that Mateen apparently tried to increase his gains from the scam by attempting to sell the app on , a marketplace for apps and templates. According to the listing, the game was described like so: This app is in the top 5 in overall paid apps on the app store making $10,000 a day! On Febuary 5th and 6th it was the #2 app in overall paid section with very little promotions. 50,000 downloads in less than a week. We are willing to negotiate. Maybe Mateen listed the app because he needed to recoup his investment quickly before he was totally unmasked as a scammer? He the price to $250,000 earlier this month and he tried to sell the Android version, too. Apptopia founder Jonathan Kay tells us that they had him listed as both “Mateen Pekan” and “Firoozeh Moraday.” His company decided to remove his app from their website due to the bad press and discussions regarding his history, as well as from feedback they received on Twitter. Kay adds that they’ve only pulled listings two or three times in Apptopia’s 2.5 years, which indicates how seriously they took the problem. (Unfortunately, they can’t confirm the original listing price, but at the time of takedown, it was $250K). But even though the game developer community and other third parties seem to be well aware of Mateen’s general M.O., and there are plenty of references to him being a known con artist, both and have so far allowed him to maintain listings in their respective app stores. This could be because the app hasn’t raised any flags that normally would have an app caught as being a scam, and/or because no other developers have complained using the official . Today, Mateen’s app is no longer in the top charts on iTunes, but Appsfire CEO Ouriel Ohayon, who was among the first to spot the templated-game’s rise, reminds us that a top paid app in the U.S. market can make you “tens of thousands” per day in paid downloads. And it had many days to do so: If you were suckered into actually buying this thing, get your money back from Apple. . |
null | Natasha Lomas | 2,014 | 2 | 10 | null |
The Surface 2 With AT&T LTE Inches Closer To Release | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Last October, Microsoft announced that it would roll out an LTE-enabled Surface 2 for AT&T’s network. Sometime. The announced time frame was early 2014, and, sure enough, the device has in the public FCC database, which means it’s nearing release. This will be the first Surface tablet that ships with built-in cellular connectivity. When a device hits the FCC database, it often means that it has passed the commission’s battery of testing to make sure it’s safe for consumers. Among other things, the FCC tests devices that transmit wirelessly. Some of these documents are released while others, often the docs that contain specific information, are held under confidentiality agreements for several weeks until the device is officially released or announced. Around the announcement of the LTE Surface 2, there was talk of a so-called Surface Mini with a 7- to 8-inch screen hitting the market in early 2014, as well. Info on this model is still MIA. Chances are, with a device of that significance, Microsoft isn’t going to let it hit the FCC database and ruin the surprise. |
Venmo Now Lets You Find And Pay Other Nearby Venmo Users | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | Venmo, the mobile payment app, has had a wild few years. They shook up their industry so hard that they were acquired within 4 years of launch; once by Braintree for $26.2M, and again when Paypal acquired Braintree for $800M. Their trick? Make paying your friends easy and (mostly) free. Today, they’re making it even easier: you don’t even have to be friends with the person you’re paying, anymore. Just stand near them. As it stood before, you could only pay other Venmo users if they were your “friend” on the service — a process which, though pretty quick, still required a bit of manual setup. You had to know their name, email, or phone number, for example. As of today, you don’t need to know a damned thing about the person to pay them (that is, as long as they’re on Venmo, too.) With the introduction of a new (aptly-named) feature, you just open the app, swipe to the left, and find your new friend amongst the list of Venmo users within a few dozen feet. Venmo says it’s finding other users over both Bluetooth and WiFi, calling on the same tech that powers Apple’s nascent iBeacon system (alas, that means the feature is iOS 7-only, for now. Sorry, Android users.) Need to pay back your friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend who was cool enough to put down his card for the bar tab, but can’t remember his name? Just swipe open the Nearby drawer, tap his face, and send a few bucks his way. And if you don’t want random nearby weirdos to be able to throw cash your way? You can, of course, disable the proximity features. |
MakerBot Starts Taking Pre-Orders For Their Itty-Bitty 3D Printer | Greg Kumparak | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Back at CES 2014, MakerBot : one small (Replicator Mini), one huge (Replicator Z18), and one that’s about the same size as the one they’ve sold for years (now just the “Replicator”). With a new smart leveling system and built-in webcams for monitoring prints, these new models pack a few tricks that the older Replicators don’t. Since that announcement, though, only the standard Replicator has actually gone up for sale. If you wanted the baby-bear or papa-bear model, your only option was to sign up for more info later. Good news! Sort of. If you were waitin’ for the Mini-model, pre-orders just opened up. At $1,375 (before shipping and taxes and whatnot), it’s the cheapest 3D printer that MakerBot offers by almost a grand. The catch: they’re still not 100% sure when these things will ship. They pin their launch window sometime in “Spring”, but don’t get any more specific than that. For people (like me!) who are terrible with seasons: assuming they mean Northern Hemisphere Spring, that’s sometime between March 21st and the end of June. If you’re just looking to dabble in 3D printing but the upfront cost is a prohibitive factor, the Mini looks like a pretty damned solid option. Just know that the maximum build volume is 3.9×3.9×4.9″ — so if you’re looking to print anything much bigger than a coffee mug, you’ll need a bigger box. You can find the pre-order page . |
Entrepreneurship Barbie Isn’t A Bad Idea Actually | Alexia Tsotsis | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | It’s 1992. I am ten. I want to be an advertising executive when I grow up. I am watching a TV news segment about Barbie, “ ” specifically. Teen Talk Barbie says “Math class is tough” among other things like “Will we ever have enough clothes?” and “I love shopping!”. In that TV news segment I learn that math class is supposed to be tough, and that I should care about fashion. Mattel eventually pulls that specific phrase from the 270 that Teen Talk Barbie can say. “In hindsight, the phrase ‘math class is tough,’ while correct for many students both male and female, should not have been included,” Mattel president Jill E. Barad says in a statement at the time. “We didn’t fully consider the potentially negative implications of this phrase.” We’ve come a long way. It’s 2014. Sheryl Sandberg has written I’m co-editor of a tech blog. The background on my smartphone says, Barbie ; in fact she too has a smartphone, and a tablet, which she keeps in her laptop case. Barbie is mobile first, because Barbie Mattel’s “Career of the Year.” Entrepreneurship, whatever that means, is . My tech blogging team makes jokes about entrepreneurship (startup?) Barbie. Like, alternate names considered: ‘E-commerce fashion aggregator app’ Barbie, ‘Searching for a technical co-founder’ Barbie and ‘Isn’t sure if this is a VC pitch meeting or a date’ Barbie. The jokes are very funny. They involve I’m glad people are talking about this in a humorous way. Things are funny because they are true. In an article in The Economist, female entrepreneur the economic necessity for closing the entrepreneurship gender gap, saying it would increase global income per person 20 percent by 2030. She brings up the fact that there are 126 million women starting new businesses and another 98 million who lead established ones to date. Despite these gains, the entrepreneurship myth is still largely male. We have no female Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs. Our closest female candidates, Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg, are by the media on issues a man would never have to deal with. So cool, at least the next little girl who aspires to be a boss has Barbie to look up to. We still have a long way to go. |
Sony To Close Two-Thirds Of Its US Retail Stores | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Sony today that it is shuttering 20 of its 31 retail stores located throughout the States. The 11 remaining stores are located near major markets. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. As the company’s press release states, this move is designed to place Sony in a more competitive stance. The Sony of today is in flux. It’s offloading unprofitable divisions left and right in an attempt to right the capsizing ship and sold off its PC business just last month. The company has eliminated over 12,000 positions over the last two years. These store closings will kill an additional 5,000 jobs. Sony is clearly looking for any way to reduce its liabilities and size. Even though it’s had retail stores for more than a decade, the stores never took off despite a rebranding in 2011. They used to be called Sony Style stores and were awash in Sony products. They were lifestyle stores, designed to showcase product rather than sell it. But while Sony’s retail strategy was influx in 2010 and 2011, Apple’s stores were taking off. Sony later cloned Apple stores and dropped the word Style from the name. But it didn’t work. Retail is hard. Ask Circuit City, Gateway and small town computer shops. To be successful it requires equal parts luck and skill. Sony clearly doesn’t have either. |
Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs… | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, friends, but we’ve got a few robots that will eventually take control of our lives and lead us into a bright, strange future. First up we present the “A Pruning Robot With a Power-Saving Chainsaw Drive,” by Yasuhiko Ishigure, Katsuyuki Hirai, and Haruhisa Kawasaki. What does that mean? It means it’s a freaking robot with a chainsaw that can climb trees and swing that thing around all day long. While this robot will help save lives – tree pruning with a chainsaw is very dangerous – it also means that it can eventually drop out of the trees, rise up, and protect the forests like a marauding wolverine. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS33OHscCmo] Every few weeks these days you find a great team of robots that can work together without little outside intervention. This makes them perfect for robot sports games, robot exploration, and robot hunting-killing. The robots can handle breakdowns, unusual situations, and even recover after errors. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGUHTHH-JNA] Finally we have . He’s a first aid robot that can help injured astronauts. Cool, right? He’s here to help but just remember that when power changes hands to the machines he’ll be on their side. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQpz5uwBf34] |
Apple Makes Big Improvements In iOS Management Tools For Enterprise And Education | Matthew Panzarino | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Apple has been busy in the IT department. Today, it released a slew of improvements and alterations to its large-scale deployment tools for education and enterprise customers. Some of the tweaks get way out in the weeds of deployment strategies, so they’ll only be really exciting for the actual pros who deal with this stuff. But the big picture is that Apple is looking to make deployments at enormous scales more appealing for the people in charge of purchasing and maintaining iPhones and iPads. This, hopefully, will result in more major purchases by organizations and fewer negative stories about failed management scenarios. The changes are outlined in a series of documents Apple posted on its today. These include changes to its Device Enrollment Program, Volume Purchase Program and the Apple ID for Students service. A new iOS and have been issued, updating its older versions with new options for device management. A new provides a quick cheat sheet for enterprise folks looking to utilize the tools Apple provides to mass purchase apps and roll out huge numbers of iOS devices at a time. And a new has been posted that provides in-depth details on how Touch ID and the A7’s Secure Enclave work. I’ve had conversations with IT pros and people who roll out large iPad installs in the past and they’ve mentioned that one of the things that has continued to cause Windows devices to hold some appeal is their better remote installation and configuration support. To that end, Apple has made some updates to improve that situation. Both the enterprise and education programs now have support for Mobile Device Management hands-free configuration. This ‘zero touch’ setup has been a long-requested feature for many pros, as it eliminates the need to cable up every deployed device and install a profile via Apple’s Configurator utility. The zero touch configuration allows an organization to sign up for a profile and order devices directly from Apple that come pre-configured with all of their security and configuration choices. They can then manage them directly without ever having to touch them physically. Additionally, the ability to lock these profiles to the devices means that the end user won’t be able to remove them and do what they want to the devices willy nilly. This way, the load is taken off of IT departments in the rollout phase and the user is able to customize and play with the devices without mucking up security profiles. It will also allow IT departments to easily and wirelessly conform users’ own devices to their company security policies with a simple opt-in. “The other bit that’s interesting is that DEP-enrollment now allows admins to require and force MDM enrollment on devices they own,” , Head of Computing and IT at Cedars School of Excellence in Scotland, pointed out to TechCrunch. “This is huge for schools. The lack of enforceability of MDM enrollment was — by my guess — the central problem in the now-infamous Los Angeles Unified School District ‘hacking’ scandal.” Schools in LA had deployed a large amount of iPads, but had to on their devices. This allowed the students to use them to *gasp* browse the web as they pleased and install unapproved apps on their personal units. The anarchy would not stand and the district began reconsidering its rollout — which . These kinds of high-profile flubs likely didn’t do anything to help the momentum of Apple’s organizational rollouts. This enforcement should allow customization, while preventing circumvention of IT rules. In short, it should make iPads even more attractive to these markets. The Volume Purchase Program has also gotten a nice overhaul. It’s now available in all 10 VPP countries for both enterprise and education partners, allowing these organizations to bulk buy applications for installation on bunches of devices at once. These purchases are generally offered with hefty discounts, which makes them more appealing to schools with tight budgets. In addition, VPP purchases are now able to be made via purchase orders by enterprise customers, something that was only available to IT pros in the past. Offering PO support to IT departments is going to open up VPP purchases to a huge segment that previously had no way to requisition software from Apple. In the educational market specifically, Apple has opened up the ability for students under the age of 13 to obtain their own Apple ID. After a school is enrolled, they can request IDs from Apple, who will then send a communication to the parent, who will then be guided through the registration process. The school is then notified that the student has been given consent. Though under-13 IDs were opened up late last year, the new changes open the way for students, specifically, to sign up — in a way that is . They require parental consent to sign up, for one. And these Apple IDs are limited in a specific set of ways. For instance, a student Apple ID account features limited ad tracking, doesn’t allow them to opt-in to marketing and there is no iCloud email support by default. They also do require a credit card to sign up and can notify a parent or guardian of any change in the terms of the account. These accounts convert over to a full account with all normal rights and privileges once the student reaches age 13. Apple has that details the exact process and allowances of these special Apple IDs and a who will utilize them. “I think the overarching story here is that these changes are all about making deployments scale up to genuinely massive numbers,” says Speirs. “School districts are topping out at around 50k units right now — to my knowledge — but there are obviously bigger deployments in other areas of education – and enterprise.” For now, we’ve confirmed that the Device Enrollment Program will only affect devices purchased by organizations directly from Apple. This means that schools like Speirs’, who work through retailers, won’t be able to use the program to pre-configure devices — yet. But that will likely be on the way. “I do think these are major steps forward for IT organizations,” Carl Howe, Vice President, Research and Data Sciences at Yankee Group, told TechCrunch. “In many organizations, IT spends much of its time being ‘the department of no,’ where they tell employees that they can’t do things for reasons of manageability or security. By making Apple devices more manageable and being transparent with its security, Apple is helping those IT organizations go from being the department of no to ‘the department of yes.’ And given that ease of use boosts security compliance, the fact that this can be done in ways that don’t require the end-user to do anything special (i.e., their device gets provisioned to them fully linked up to their organization, secured, etc.), it should make Apple devices even more popular in businesses than they already are.” iOS devices have gained a large amount of popularity in organizations by leveraging the bring your own device trend. If the boss gets a new iPad and loves it, the IT department will have no choice but to support it somehow. But in order to spur growth, and to keep the vaunted ease of use of iPads and iPhones intact, Apple has to continue to refine its offerings for device deployment. These changes are an attempt to keep the way that people use an institutional iOS device and a consumer iOS device as close to parity as possible. If you’ve ever jumped through hoops to configure a company-issued laptop or phone, then you know how much of a pain that can be. If you imagine doing that 50,000 times, you can see why these improvements could spur a nice surge of adoption by purchasing departments. |
Meet Oppia, Google’s New Open Source Project That Allows Anyone To Create An Interactive Learning Experience | Rip Empson | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Google has become an increasingly active participant in the world of education, particularly when it comes to exploring the role technology can play in re-imagining the way we learn. With , for the classroom and its work , the company is expanding its presence both in traditional academic spaces classroom and outside. Google’s educational experiments continued today, beginning with the launch of its first , on how to interpret and understand online data. The second experiment, quietly announced on , was the launch of , a project that aims “to make it easy for anyone to create online interactive activities” that others can learn from. The motivation behind Oppia, Google explained in its announcement, stems from the fact that, while a growing amount of educational content is now delivered via video and SMS, much of it remains static and asynchronous. Or, said another way, digitizing a lecture or presentation isn’t enough; there is still plenty of room for improvement when it comes to the way these tools create opportunities for interactivity, dialogue and feedback. Google’s new open source project essentially aims to take the headache or mystery out of the process by providing the framework by which anyone can quickly create these types of interactive learning experiences and add them to their site. But, beyond that, Oppia also has potentially interesting implications for teachers, and not necessarily in a way that reduces their concern of one day being replaced by a robotic or holographic, AI version of themselves. In other words, Oppia works to improve the interactivity of the learning process by assuming the role of a mentor or teacher who asks questions of the learner. Then, based on how the learner responds to those questions, the teacher decides how to proceed, which questions to ask, how to give feedback and so on. , Google says that one can think of it as a “smart feedback system,” which is an attempt to begin automating how we “teach a person to fish” — to use its example. The system gathers data on the ways learners interact with whoever is guiding the exploration, and the content they provide, and shares it with authors to make it easy for them to fix problems with their lesson. Authors might log in to Oppia to find an answer that learners are providing to a question but which the system isn’t correctly or adequately responding to, for example. The “teachers” can then “create a new learning path” for the question, basing their feedback on how they would respond to the question were they actually interacting with the person in real life. Oppia then provides the feedback to any future learner responding to the question. The project also allows teachers to accept responses to their lessons in numeric, text and multiple choice formats, and offer clickable maps and code evaluators, for example. On the technical side, Google says that it’s based Oppia on an extensible framework, allowing developers to add their own inputs and extend the range of potential formats and types of responses that Oppia understands. Explorations, as Google calls the lessons users can build through its system, that are created on an Oppia server can be embedded in any web page, and embeddings can “refer to a particular version” of the exploration so that future changes don’t mess with the principle version, the company explained. In addition, users can also collaborate on creation and editing of explorations, with version control, and the system allows parameters to be associated with a learner, which aim to enable teachers to create deeper interactive experiences. Oh, and Oppia has a built in responsive UI for mobile devices, as well, . As with many Google projects of this kind, it’s not totally clear how much attention and support Google intends to throw at Oppia going forward. The project’s home page conspicuously says that Oppia is not officially a Google product, which would seem to imply that Google isn’t planning to dedicate a ton of manpower or resources to the project. Instead, the company is likely hoping that developers will assume ownership of Oppia and that the community will take over maintenance. Nonetheless, it’s still a neat tool and it should be interesting to see what becomes of Oppia in the coming months. While it is, of course, intended to be a learning tool, Oppia could potentially be applied across in a wide range of use cases, enabling a sort of expanded, extensible FAQ or feedback system for products, companies, teachers and more. More on and in Google’s YouTube explainer below: |
HTC Teases The “All New HTC One” In New Promo Video For BoomSound | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0brzd7BfM4] HTC is proud of its smartphone speakers, especially on the HTC One – but it appears to be even more proud of the so-called ‘BoomSound’ (ugh) speakers on its upcoming flagship smartphone, which it pretty clearly seems to have named the “New HTC One” unless it’s trolling hard in this new video (via ). The company is going to announce its new device at a special event in , and basically spent its entire Mobile World Congress event earlier this week hyping that launch. There have been a lot of leaks around the device, codenamed the ‘M8,’ so at this point there’s very little left to the imagination. It’s still conceivable that HTC is just using that name as a placeholder and the new flagship will be called the HTC One EXXXXTREEEMMEE or something but to me that sounds a lot like we’ll see it called the new One (not to be confused with the old One). Plus, we now know that it’ll have improved sound specs, if nothing else. HTC managed to keep some mystery in the air by pixelating the actual new One hardware in the video, which is a clever little teaser, but . In any case, we have less than a month to go before the official reveal, so all will be made plain in due time. |
Gravity’s Amit Kapur Says Personalization Is Going To “Explode” This Year | Anthony Ha | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Following of content personalization startup last month, co-founder and CEO Amit Kapur stopped by the AOL office in Manhattan to discuss where personalization technology goes from here. When Gravity was founded four years ago, Kapur said its founders thought it was “inevitable” that the web would become more personal. At the time, everything on the web was “generic” and “one size fits all,” even though “the amount of content available is exploding at scale and the screen real estate is shrinking.” Kapur pointed to Google and Yahoo as other companies investing in this area, although the “semantics” of what it’s called may change and they might not always refer to it as personalization. “The basic notion is that you should stop having to put in work to find information,” he added. “Information should understand you and actually find you. I think that, again, this is really the year that you’re going to see it explode, and for Gravity, the idea of combining with AOL is going to help us take that to scale aggressively.” In the video above, Kapur also discusses how this technology affects writers and artists, and what it’s like to be acquired by AOL. Since AOL owns TechCrunch, he even put me on the spot and asked me what I think about the company’s future. |
Workday Acquires HR Predictive Analytics Company Identified | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | After releasing , Workday has announced that it acquired , a company that offered predictive analytics human resources software. In a statement, Workday said the company’s “product development team is expected to enhance search capabilities and accelerate the delivery of predictive analytics and machine learning throughout Workday’s suite of applications.” In November 2011, Identified launched to create a better professional job search engine. The company then pivoted to provide analytics-based recruiting software. Part of the company’s was its patent-pending, artificial intelligence technology called “SYMAN,” which aims to organize the masses of disparate, incoherent professional data that lives in social media profiles in order to identify new insights into the job market. Identified raised to date from investors including VantagePoint Capital, Capricorn Investment Group, Draper Associates, Innovation Endeavors, Social+Capital Partnership and others. It sounds like Workday wants to bring Identified’s analytics technology to all of its applications. Identified also has a , so Workday will also be gaining talent in this area. |
Connected Car App Automatic Gets Even Smarter With IFTTT Integration | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | driving assistant, which combines a small hardware device with a mobile application in order to track, analyze, and even potentially improve your driving capabilities, is getting a whole lot smarter today with new support for technology. That’s the online service where you can create simple “recipes” to kick off specific actions after being triggered by an event of some kind. (The name refers to the “if this, then that” statement used to build those recipes.) In Automatic’s case, means you’ll be able to create recipes that are triggered by actions involving your vehicle – for example, the ignition being turned on or off, the check engine light turning on or off, or a trip being completed. You can also specify that these items should only be triggered when you arrive in a particular geographic region. After selecting one of these triggers as the starting event to track, you can then configure what action should come next. One suggested recipe, to give you an idea, is “text my significant other when I’m on my way home from work.” You could do a number of other things, too, like automatically alert friends via social media (e.g. Facebook or Twitter) when you’re in town or in their neighborhood, track your business trips, or even connect IFTTT with your so you could switch on your lights and heater when you pull into your driveway. Savvy parents could use the connectivity for monitoring their teen driver’s outings by alerting them to when the car is in use, and where it ended up. Automatic says that other recipes will be available in the future, too, as they become available. Those and the ones launching today can be found . Nifty. |
Google’s Project Ara Modular Smartphone Gets Its Own Developer Conference This April | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG_uwDqLsZY?feature=player_embedded] Google is not abandoning , after taking over the ambitious experimental smartphone design concept along with the Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group from Motorola. ATAP only just announced , and now it’s revealing a two-day at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Ara, for those who aren’t familiar, is a modular smartphone project that would allow users to swap out interchangeable parts to give their device a different sensor load out, a better camera, more battery power or anything else your heart might desire. You source new sensors from a store that would operate similarly to a hardware version of the Play mobile software marketplace, and theoretically upgrade your phone piecemeal instead of having to buy a brand new one every few years just for a few new highlight features. [gallery ids="964493,964494,964495"] This is the first in a planned series of Ara dev conferences for 2014, Google says, and this event will focus specifically on the alpha release of the Ara Module Developers’ Kit (MDK) which will hit the web in early April. The free platform will offer developers “everything [they] need” to get up and running building Ara hardware modules, ATAP promises. , with a $100 fee ($25 for students) covering food and a special social session. Google is approving these based on the strength of your application, so make it a good one. Ara is meant to be a one-size fits all solution for smartphones, offering anything to any potential user in the world with its range of modules. That’s a hugely ambitious goal, of course, but in ATAP’s own words, they “like epic shit,” so that aim seems within its scope. |
Samsung Galaxy S5 Breaks Records With Over 100K Pre-Registrations At T-Mobile In Under Two Days | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | T-Mobile CMO Mike Sievert is pumped about Samsung’s new Galaxy S5 smartphone: Today, the executive tweeted that Samsung’s latest flagship is a record-breaker at the carrier, with over 100,000 pre-registrations in under 48 hours since . 100,000+ pre-registrations in 2 days is a new record at !! — Mike Sievert (@SievertMike) Pre-registrations are notably not pre-sales – they represent just consumer interest in an upcoming device, not a commitment to buy. Still, Sievert says that this indicates the launch of Samsung’s upcoming phone will “be big,” according to . |
Apple Details Touch ID And The A7’s Secure Enclave In Updated iOS Security Document | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Apple has shared some information around how Touch ID and its Secure Enclave keeps information private in an newly posted to its “iPhone in Business” microsite. The new info provides an inside look at how exactly the Secure Enclave generates and communicates encrypted and temporary identification information to the rest of the system to make sure that fingerprint data is never exposed to anything beyond itself. Each Secure Enclave is provisioned during fabrication with its own UID (Unique ID) that is not accessible to other parts of the system and is not known to Apple. When the device starts up, an ephemeral key is created, tangled with its UID, and used to encrypt the Secure Enclave’s portion of the device’s memory space. Additionally, data that is saved to the file system by the Secure Enclave is encrypted with a key tangled with the UID and an anti-replay counter. The Secure Enclave portion of the A7 chip is of course responsible for handling fingerprint data collected by the Touch ID sensor. Apple goes on to detail how the A7 processor helps gather the fingerprint data, but can’t actually read said information itself, and how the exchange that takes place between the A7 and the secure enclave is encrypted to prevent any hijacking of the data at that point. Communication between the A7 and the Touch ID sensor takes place over a serial peripheral interface bus. The A7 forwards the data to the Secure Enclave but cannot read it. It’s encrypted and authenticated with a session key that is negotiated using the device’s shared key that is built into the Touch ID sensor and the Secure Enclave. The session key exchange uses AES key wrap- ping with both sides providing a random key that establishes the session key and uses AES-CCM transport encryption. As for Touch ID itself, Apple details how the fingerprint-based unlocking and iTunes purchasing authorization tech works in a completely new section of the iOS Security document. It mostly explains what users likely already know about Touch ID: When it does and doesn’t work (i.e. after a restart), but also adds a few things that might not be clear from normal use – Touch ID unlocking stops working after an iPhone 5s has been left locked for 48 hours or more, for instance, requiring a text or number-based password input. Apple also reiterates its firm “no third-parties” rule with Touch ID and fingerprint information, which is worth recalling given announced earlier for platform developers. Touch ID authentication and the data associated with the enrolled fingerprints are not
available to other apps or third parties The document also includes previously revealed technical data around the Touch ID scanner itself, which takes an 88-by-88-pixel, 500-ppi raster scan of the finger being applied, which is then transmitted to the Secure Enclave, vectorized for the purposes of being analyzed and compared to fingerprints stored in memory, and then discarded. This info, it’s worth recalling, is never transmitted to Apple’s servers, nor is it stored in iCloud or the iTunes backup of a device. Apple closes the section on Touch ID with a detailed, step-by-step explanation of how unlocking the smartphone with the tech works, which is worth a look if you’re unclear on the behind-the-scenes magic or security protections involved: On devices with an A7 processor, the Secure Enclave holds the cryptographic class keys for Data Protection. When a device locks, the keys for Data Protection class Complete are discarded, and files and keychain items in that class are inaccessible until the user unlocks the device by entering their passcode. On iPhone 5s with Touch ID turned on, the keys are not discarded when the device locks; instead, they’re wrapped with a key that is given to the Touch ID subsystem. When a user attempts to unlock the device, if Touch ID recognizes the user’s finger- print, it provides the key for unwrapping the Data Protection keys and the device is unlocked. This process provides additional protection by requiring the Data Protection and Touch ID subsystems to cooperate in order to unlock the device. The decrypted class keys are only held in memory, so they’re lost if the device is rebooted. Additionally, as previously described, the Secure Enclave will discard the keys after 48 hours or 5 failed Touch ID recognition attempts. Another new section details iCloud Keychain, the syncing service that stores your passwords for use across platforms. Apple notes the system is designed to prevent unauthorized access to iCloud Keychain stored information in the event of a compromised iCloud account, and to prevent third-party access to any passwords housed in the service. Below is an excerpt of how iCloud makes sure that keychains are recovered only by authorized users, without even actually transmitting the local iOS security code to Apple itself. iCloud provides a secure infrastructure for keychain escrow that ensures only authorized users and devices can perform a recovery. Topographically positioned behind iCloud are clusters of hardware security modules (HSM). These clusters guard the escrow records. Each has a key that is used to encrypt the escrow records under their watch, as described previously. To recover a keychain, the user must authenticate with their iCloud account and password and respond to an SMS sent to their registered phone number. Once this is done, the user must enter their iCloud Security Code. The HSM cluster verifies that the user knows their iCloud Security Code using Secure Remote Password protocol (SRP); the
White Paper 26 iOS Security code itself is not sent to Apple. Each member of the cluster independently verifies that the user has not exceeded the maximum number of attempts that are allowed to retrieve their record, as discussed below. If a majority agree, the cluster unwraps the escrow record and sends it to the user’s device. Apple has also added new information about iMessage, FaceTime encryption, single sign-on and Airdrop in terms of areas of interest to check out. If you’re a fan of learning how things work, or just want to know what steps Apple takes to protect any biometric information (and other data) it collects and transmits during normal iOS operation, the entire security document is definitely worth perusing. |
CamioCam Turns Any Web Or Video Camera Into A Smart, Cloud-Based Monitoring Device | Leena Rao | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | What if you could get an alert to your phone anytime someone left a package on your doorstep? Or, if you could track whether your elderly parent took her medication in a given day? intelligent, video-monitoring service wants to be able to accomplish these tasks and more. The startup, which is launching at the LAUNCH conference today, turns any connected camera in your home (a tablet, smartphone, computer) into a cloud-based monitoring experience. The company is founded by ex-Googler Carter Maslan who was director of product management for local Search, Maps, and Earth at the search giant. And CamioCam has raised over $1 million in funding from Freestyle, Marissa Mayer, Greylock, Floodgate, Ellen Levy, John Hanke, Box Group and others. Here’s how it works. You can connect any Wi-Fi-connected phone, tablet, webcam or IP camera to CamioCam. The cameras upload video to CamioCam whenever there is motion and proprietary algorithms analyze the motion to figure out whether the motion should be marked — basically aiming to cut down hours and hours of video into small alerts. Users will get instant alerts on their phone or email, along with snippets of the concerning video so they don’t have to go through hours of video. Users can also search or filter through the most important events. You can even get more specific alerts by selecting zones in your camera view, like a countertop in your kitchen or the baby’s crib, and you can choose which zones alert you of movement. You can have multiple zones for one camera (i.e. in a kitchen you could have a trashcan zone as well as a fridge zone). As Maslan explains, CamioCam is fast, with near real-time alerts coming roughly 7x faster than traditional cameras, and the service uses 92 percent less bandwidth than streaming services. The startup also promises fewer false positives. In terms of cost, you can use a web camera, using the CamioCam app in your browser or on an Android device for free. Beyond that, each additional camera is $9.90 per month. At the heart of what CamioCam does is basically turn a browser camera into a motion detector camera, which is allowed in part via the WebRTC. For now the startup offers an Android and web app. CamioCam will go head to head with , a favorite for cloud-based video monitoring. But Maslan believes that CamioCam provides simplicity for users because they can use a browser within a phone or tablet and don’t necessarily have to purchase outside equipment. |
Only 24 Hours Left To Apply To TechCrunch Battlefield! | Samantha O'Keefe | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Listen up, future entrepreneurial superstars! are due tomorrow, February 27th at 5pm PDT. Do NOT miss out on this once-in-a-six-month opportunity! Why , you ask? I could list for you the many ways TechCrunch will work to get your company in front of the brightest and most influential people in tech, if that would help. I’d explain that you might win $50,000, but perhaps you’d be convinced by what former participants are up to these days. For example, last year’s NY Battlefield winner Engima recently to beef up its public data-mining efforts. , launched in 2011, is busy letting you join Google Hangouts from your mobile phones and record conferences all while sharing files with ease. No? That’s not enough? Beyond the fortune and fame sure to follow you around forever after your stint on our stage, we can maybe offer you a small token of our appreciation for your to the show. I, Jordan Crook, curator of snaps and self-proclaimed voice of a generation, offer to our 2014 Battlefield Winners, the opportunity to share a selfie. Think of it: You. Me. Selfie. You see, I have quite a reputation for picking winners. Yep, I’m a winner, too. are open now through tomorrow February 27th. Questions? Hit up battlefield@beta.techcrunch.com. In selecting final contestants, we will give heavy preference to companies that launch for the to the public and press at TechCrunch Disrupt. We consider new products from existing companies to be significant. Due to the limited number of competition slots on stage, companies launching new feature sets do not qualify as launch companies. The competition will take place at Disrupt NY, but teams around the globe are welcome to submit their startups for consideration. Companies that have presented at other public launch events are not eligible for the Battlefield. If you’re choosing between launch platforms and need an early decision, please and email us at battlefield@beta.techcrunch.com and we’ll priority review your application. |
Wacom’s New WILL Project Aims To Make A New Universal Computing Language Out Of Digital Ink | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Leading digital graphics and input company Wacom has launched an ambitious new project that aims to universalize digital ink across platforms and devices. (Wacom Ink Layer Language) wants to codify digital inking around a single digital standard that will ignore any boundaries set by things like OS, hardware and cloud platforms upon current digital inking methods. So what the hell does that mean? Basically, it’s like Wacom is trying to do what HTML did for the web, but with digital ink instead. That would mean that you could conceivably create ink-based content in an application like Photoshop, and then have that information recognized, read and understood by, say, a collaboration app from a completely different developer on iOS. This could work between drawing apps, but also be used to translate signatures across software, recognize handwritten notes in various applications, and facilitate group collaboration on the same project from multiple endpoints. WILL will be made available as a set of APIs within an SDK, and supports not only Wacom pen input, but also third-party pens and styli, as well as finger-based input. It’ll incorporate secure certificate signing for identity authentication, as well, but Wacom is positioning it as a new standard for the digital expression of human creativity. A new common language around digital ink is a weird concept to wrap your head around, but in practice, it could provide a lot of benefits to anyone working with graphics tablets, or with finger-based input in both desktop and mobile operating systems. WILL is in its very early stages, but once it starts to sign some partners, we should get a better idea of the kind of potential it holds. |
null | gregory Ferenstein | 2,014 | 2 | 19 | null |
Need A Quick Answer? Pop Lets You Take Two Photos, Poll Your Friends | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Do you have trouble making decisions? Do you have to get your friends’ input on a bunch of things? Are you 15 years old? Then you might like , a new iPhone application today making its official debut, which lets you quickly ask your friends for feedback by sending them two photos. Basically, Pop is a simple voting app with a more limited number of choices compared to other social polling tools like , , , , and several others. Instead, the interface here resembles , with one photo on top and the other below. Meanwhile, the quick decision-making Pop demands is reminiscent of dating apps like or . The user experience in Pop is straightforward: You take two pictures, optionally type a question, then pick your audience, which could be “users nearby,” “friends nearby,” or “all friends.” You can also scroll through your contacts list to select individuals but because the app is lacking a search function or a decent scrolling feature, this is almost impossible to manage – at least until the contact picker gets fixed in the forthcoming app update, as promised. Or to put it more plainly, unless you get a group of friends to join you on Pop, or you’re in an area where there are a good number of Pop users, there’s not much you can do right now. Popped questions can’t be shared more broadly to social networks like Facebook or Twitter, which seems like a miss. Instead, users who don’t have the app on their phone are sent a text message that prompts them to download it. This can be a delicate area, as unwanted texts – even from friends – can be viewed as spam. But the app’s co-creator Thomas Lee says the team is working to launch Pop at local college campuses, which they see as being the target market for the app. (I’d think high-schoolers would be better, but what do I know? I’m old.) “People would usually ask people things like ‘what shirt should I buy?’ or ‘what should I wear tonight?,’ but it’s very annoying taking pictures over text or on FB messenger,” explains Lee, who built the app with Khalid Karim, and Alessia Vettese, as a part of Toronto-based ‘s accelerator program. “We wanted to build Pop out of sheer frustration for a more streamlined solution; we essentially built it for ourselves,” he says. The team threw the app together in about a month, and the first version launched in mid-February. Now comes the larger challenge: getting people to actually use the thing, which is easier said than done. But Pop is fun, simple to use, and leans heavily on elements of already popular apps, which could help give it a push. You can give it a shot yourself – it’s . |
Fred Wilson, Niklas Zennstrom, And Secret Co-Founders David Byttow And Chrys Bader-Wechseler To Speak At Disrupt NY | Matt Burns | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | . On May 5-7, the show will once again takeover The Manhattan Center in New York City. This year marks the 6th year TechCrunch has held Disrupt in New York City. And we say this every year, but this show is going to be the best yet. We’re pleased to announce that New York’s own Fred Wilson will take the Disrupt stage. The co-founder of Skype, Niklas Zennström, and Secret Co-Founders David Byttow and Chrys Bader-Wechseler will also be among the notable venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and founders that will speak during the three-day conference. There will be plenty more speakers and panelists announced as the show draws closer. are currently available for Disrupt NYC and are on sale until March 8th when they will jump in price by $250. There are also for startups to exhibitor, sponsor and pitch at Disrupt. applications are due Thursday, February 27th at 5pm. is a VC who claims to have gotten it right, more or less, on social-networking, mobile, and crowdfunding. And actually, he’s right. Fred currently practices his early-stage startup funding mastery at his own , now 10 years strong, having invested in the likes of Twitter, Foursquare, Tumblr, and Kickstarter, along with 120 other companies. Having made his mark as a VC for nearly 30 years, Fred is a veteran (and still shaper) of modern venture capitalism. And it just so happens he’s one of the rare few who can both do and teach. Fred has lectured at the Stern School of Business at NYU, and has been personally offering valuable insights every day for the past decade on his blog AVC.com, where this week he shared his thoughts on everything from the and recent fluctuation of Bitcoin, to the bigger-picture question he asks himself when he wakes up most mornings: “ ” in tech? Disrupt NY will be our opportunity to hear his answers. is known for many things – one of these is being Skype’s co-founder. As a longtime pioneer and influencer of the peer-to-peer landscape, Niklas also started Altnet, an early model of P2P commercial content promotion and distribution. Then there was the P2P phenomenon Kazaa, which he also co-founded. Niklas has remained CEO of Skype through 2007, two years after achieving what is still the largest European venture capital exit to date, having sold to eBay for $3.1 billion. In November Niklas’ firm Atomico in the growth stage, mainly with an eye for companies outside of Silicon Valley. Counting this recent raise, his firm manages $850 million. TechCrunch’s Editor-At-Large Mike Butcher will be interviewing Niklas — and if there’s one brain to pick about the global market and the art of successfully scaling, it’s definitely his. has had a major hand in the construction of Square Cash, the Starbucks Project, Wave and Google+. has been a product manager at YouTube and Google, where he was an architect of Google+. In October these two joined forces to launch their new app “ ,” the hot anonymous forum for sharing secrets. Only by virtue of working for years inside the box of traditional social media were David and Chrys able to figure out a way to think outside of it. In a few short months, Secret became the second most downloaded social networking app in a matter of days and amassed an impressive following.
So far, the world has only gotten a small taste of David and Chrys’ keen insights on shifting social media trends, particularly the increased imperative of anonymity and the emerging phenomenon of the status/share “disavowal” in a post-Snapchat world. Disrupt NY will be one of their first public conversations since the launch of their app. These two guys are likely full of secrets themselves, and not only secrets to social media success, but they also seem to have a few ideas about the general direction of the social media culture at large. |
Threadless Launches An iPhone App, Takes Its E-Commerce Shop Mobile | Ryan Lawler | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Crowdsourced e-commerce company has existed on the web seemingly forever, connecting T-shirt and hoodie wearers with interesting designs submitted by members of its community. Now it’s taking its shop and its design voting platform mobile with , enabling customers to let it know which designs they like the best and to instantly buy those that are already available. The idea behind Threadless’ business is pretty straightforward: Users of the site submit their designs, potential customers vote on them, and the best end up going into production to be sold online. Over the years the company has had more than 300,000 designs submitted, of which it’s printed about 3,000, according to founder Jake Nickell. And for some of its most popular designs, the company has expanded from printing designs on other goods, including coffee mugs, bags, iPhone covers, and other accessories. But it was all web-only. And while it’s got a pretty responsive mobile web site, there’s nothing quite like having a native app to browse and shop new designs. The launch of the iPhone app, which was built by , marks the company’s first big step into mobile, and it’s a pretty sleek example of what an e-commerce shop can look like on a smartphone. The shop has a grid of available products and designs, which can be zoomed in on to get more information and see more photos of the product in question. Users can then pick a size and add to the cart direct from the product screen, or look at other products with the same design. But the shop is only part of the app — it also has an area where customers can let Threadless know which designs they would actually like to buy in the future. In the Vote section, users can give a thumbs-up to hopefully get a product printed, leave comments for the designer, and to share the design out to other social networks. When a user votes on a product, the app also lets users know when the designer submits other designs they might like and should vote on. For Threadless, the new iOS app is just the first new mobile product it has in the works, according to Nickell. It also has an app called that it’s looking to release soon, which would enable customers to produce their own custom designed, on-demand t-shirts. The Type Tees app follows a similar concept that Threadless had tried a few years ago, in which users could pick a saying, pick a font, and then submit them for possible printing. The idea worked for a while, Nickell told me, until the company ended up being overwhelmed with text-based designs. Type Tees will let Threadless users create their own custom-printed shirts with funny sayings, as long as they’re willing to pay a small premium over its existing prices. Threadless continues to experiment with new business models, recently making investments in crowdsourced design companies like and . But adding new products to complement its existing business should help it grow over time. |
Google Now Launcher Comes To Play Store, With Always-On ‘Ok Google’ And Swipe For Now | Darrell Etherington | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Google reconfigured the Android home screen launcher somewhat with the Nexus 5, but that redesign didn’t make its way out to other Nexus or Google Play Edition hardware when they received the Android 4.4 KitKat update. Today, Google has released the new (via ) to bring that modified home screen goodness to a wider audience. Note that I didn’t say “to everyone”; Google has made this available only to other Nexus devices and Google Play Edition handset owners for now, limiting access to people with Android hardware that’s essentially running the stock version of its mobile OS. It’s perhaps a little sad for users outside the “stock” experience pool, but the good news is that there’s not too much changed. You’ll see a different dock, without any line separating it from the rest of the home screen, as well as other slight visual tweaks. But there are some significant changes in the way the OS works, as well. For instance, saying “Ok Google” at any point with the phone unlocked and on the home screen will initiate a Google search, just like how that works on the Nexus 5. Also, swiping left from your ‘main’ home screen (the one which used to be your central one) will now open up Google Now, instead of exposing yet another home screen panel. Nexus and Play Edition device owners running KitKat can download this now and replace their default launcher with the app. Hopefully, Google sees fit to expand this to other Android handsets in the future, too, if only because the “Ok Google” always on voice commands are genuinely pretty useful. |
BarkCare Brings On-Demand, In-Home Veterinary Care To NYC, And Soon, San Francisco | Sarah Perez | 2,014 | 2 | 26 | Bark & Co., the doggie-themed technology company that currently offers a subscription service for dog treats and toys called , is expanding its service in New York. Last month, the company quietly launched on-demand vet appointments where customers can order a vet to come to their home as easily as they order an Uber or some lunch. Previously, BarkCare existed as a subscription-based service allowing dog owners to chat with vets on the phone or via video chat. That service grew to a few hundred customers, but, explains Bark & Co. co-founder and COO Carly Strife, the company was limited in terms of the legalities surrounding diagnosing over the phone. Plus, she adds, “we saw pretty quickly that people wanted the vet in their home, to really be able to do the full service – not just diagnosis, but get tests, prescribe medicine – all the things you would do with the new veterinary practice.” The new service, which is currently available in Manhattan and Brooklyn and is scheduled to hit San Francisco in March, is meant to replace the earlier BarkCare product. Though the phone-based version of BarkCare is not entirely shut down, Strife says no new subscriptions are being sold. One of the big use cases for a vets-on-demand service is for the more routine “well visits,” like when it’s time to re-up on a dog’s rabies vaccine, for example, or to get all the vaccines a new puppy requires. Vets can also diagnose minor, non-emergency ailments, like small cuts, rashes, and other concerns a dog owner may have that warrant an in-person look. The company found that the majority of vet visits (around 85 percent) are those that can be handled in the home. Anything that’s an emergency, or requires sedation, would be an exception, of course, but the BarkCare vets carry with them the typical vaccines and other commonly prescribed medicines, like topical creams. For those medicines they don’t have on hand, Bark & Co. has partnered with Best Pet Rx, a medicine delivery service used by local vets, that brings the prescription to the customer for no extra fee (beyond the cost of the medicine itself). In New York, BarkCare had been contracting with just two vets who could handle anywhere between 5 to 8 appointments per day, each lasting anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. Currently, the vets move around the city via mopeds or public transportation, but the company is planing to have a “BarkCare” branded bus. It has also expanded the number of vets on the service to five, and is looking for more. Bark & Co.’s plan is to eventually take a percentage of those fees, but those prices are not yet set in stone. When the business expands to the San Francisco Bay Area in a few weeks, the company is planning to cover the entire city and some surrounding areas, including Oakland and elsewhere in the East Bay. A BarkCare app will also be made available, which pet owners can use in addition to setting up appointments via the web or phone. The convenience of the service is obviously a big selling point, but Strife adds that it’s nice for the “patients,” too. “We felt like no one really asked the dogs when they decided how veterinary care was going to work,” she says. “We tried to optimize the service around what it is the dog would want – which is not going to the vet.” Bark & Co.’s other businesses have been doing well, so far, with its BarkBox service growing 10 times in 2013 to 160,000 customers. Its content portal called , meanwhile, sees some 2 million+ unique visits monthly. And so far, BarkCare vets have made over 500 house calls since the mid-January launch. The company also claims a $25 million revenue run rate. NYC-based Bark & Co. now has 45 employees, and Strife says that BarkCare is only one of the many expansions the company has planned. “One of the things that’s core to our business is ‘social good,’…things we can build and develop to help more dogs to be adopted and rescued out of shelters,” she hints. More news around what’s next will arrive sometime in the next month or so, we’re told. |
Visionect Is A Low-Cost Platform For Building E-Paper Applications | John Biggs | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | Building hardware projects has become immensely simpler thanks to and Raspberry Pi. But scratches a far more-intersting itch: e-paper interface design. At its core the device is a very simple cased or uncased e-ink reader. It consist of a very simple, waterproof device with an e-ink screen and allows programmers to build HTML5-based applications that can be pushed directly to the platform. Built as less of a dev kit than a thin client system, you use the Visionect screen as sort of a dumb terminal for your web projects although the system does allow for complex app development. It should cost about 240 Euro when it launches. The Slovenian Team added a 120Mhz processor which powers the very basic terminal features of the device. Most of the heavy lifting, then, is done on the Visionect servers and pushed to the devices as needed. It’s an interesting strategy – cheap hardware and a focus on cloud services – and I suspect it could catch on in situations where an e-ink interface would be ideal due to environmental concerns. In other words, don’t think of this as a denuded Kindle but instead a Star-Trek-esque flat control panel that is weatherproof and won’t be overpowered in sunlight. |
Facebook Tests Mobile “Highlights”, A Cheat Sheet To Your Friends’ Lives | Josh Constine | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | Facebook said there were just big fixes in its it released yesterday, but actually there’s a big new feature it’s testing called Highlights. Inside the People tab you’ll see Highlights including friends’ Life Events and people you’ve interacted with recently. If you’re bored of News Feed and want to know what do next, Highlights could lead the way. Or you might just never use it. Also released yesterday was a featuring a new integration with the core app for all users, despite the update’s What’s New listing just bug fixes. If you shortcut from Facebook to Messenger by tapping its icon in the tab bar, you’ll see a “Touch To Return To Facebook” notification bar at top that lets you instantly switch back. As Facebook moves towards more of an with companions like Messenger, allowing for seamless switching back and forth will be important. But the bigger deal is the new People tab, which is currently available to just a subset of iOS users. Previously, the Requests tab in the tab bar at the bottom of Facebook for iOS just opened up Friend Requests and People You May know. Now called “People”, the tab includes the subtabs Everyone, which displays all your friends in alphabetical order, and History, which shows a reverse chronological list of people you’ve interacted with through messaging, liking posts, and other actions. The latter is somewhere between a simplified Activity Log and a reminder of who you might want to continue conversations with. But the first and default tab in People is Highlights. It starts with new Friend Requests up top, though it hides old ones you’ve left in limbo under a See More button. Next is a panel of Friends With Birthdays Today, a duplicate of what’s in the Events section of the app. After that is the most interesting part of Highlights: a list of recent Life Events from friends such as a new romantic relationship, starting a job, moving, graduating, or anything posted through the Life Events creator. If you don’t care about seeing the BuzzFeed articles and random photos your friends fill the News Feed with, this part of Highlights could give you a quick way to catch up with important milestones in friends’ lives. Beyond Life Events is Friends With Upcoming Birthdays so you can plan to actually send them a heartfelt message instead of a shallow “HBD!” wall post. Then there’s People You’ve Contacted, which is quite similar to the History tab. And finally there’s a seemingly endless list of People You May Know. With so much overlap between the Highlights and History subtabs as well as the Events section, I’d expect some of this to be redesigned or cut before/if the People tab is rolled out to everyone. Still, Highlights is a fascinating alternative take on the News Feed that focuses on people, communication, and big moments instead of the day-to-day ephemera. As Facebook’s feed moves more towards news sharing and public-facing content, it’s good see a feature dedicated squarely to connecting us with our friends’ lives. After all, that was Facebook’s original mission. |
Meet Hyv, A Startup That Can’t Wait For Phone Unlocking To Be Made Legal | Contributor | 2,014 | 2 | 21 | . On Tuesday, the House of Representatives will vote on legislation on phone unlocking (H.R. 1123). In January 2013, a decision by the Librarian of Congress made it a crime to unlock your phone, with either civil or criminal penalties. Since that time, the resale market has been significantly impacted and websites have shut down that offer unlocking services. In the following month over 114,000 Americans signed a White House petition demanding that this decision be reversed and supported , one of the largest online protests since SOPA/PIPA, and then legislation was introduced that has passed committee. This legislation cannot be passed soon enough for , an entrepreneur who is attending Johns Hopkins University. Koren is not your typical college sophomore. After completing his first year at Johns Hopkins, as an intern at Intel, he won a hackathon for designing an iOS application for distributed big data analysis. That app is the basis of an ambitious startup that he claims may solve some of our society’s most vexing problems, such as providing better weather forecasting and even advanced cures to cancer. Koren can be seen here running for student president with a Gangnam Style campaign video: Koren won for student president but chose to resign to pursue his new venture. He believes that his startup has the potential to revolutionize big data analysis and change how each of us uses our smartphones. As more Americans are accessing the Internet through their smartphones, web-enabled applications are the new hot commodity in the startup community. Millions of Americans, and soon billions around the world, access the Internet through their phones. Koren saw this as a big opportunity to network those devices into one large networked supercomputer. According to Koren, with such a large networked supercomputer able to utilize the resources of thousands or even millions of devices, it would have “the power to solve society’s most computationally demanding provisions.” As Koren optimistically explains it, , the company that he co-founded with , “will revolutionize the way we view and utilize big data.” In other words, each of our smartphones is a relatively powerful device, more powerful than the components that got us to the moon and back, and if many of these devices can all be networked together to operate as a supercomputer, it can create an extremely powerful parallel processing operation. What could be done with such a massive parallel processing supercomputer? A whole lot. As Koren explains: Whether we want to better forecast weather patterns, improve the accuracy of medical diagnoses, track the virility of Flappy Bird or analyze financial trends, we have no efficient way of processing the information. Supercomputers aren’t cutting it. They’re a black hole of energy consumption, require hundreds of millions of dollars to build and maintain and are quickly (within half a decade) usurped as new generations of processors are released. Fully understanding our world’s data requires an alternate, more efficient method. Koren envisions this massive networked supercomputer finding cures for cancer through efficiently distributed protein folding and empowering others to perform advanced genomic research. He explains that “by using the excess processing capabilities in mobile devices, we can crowdsource available research; together, we can actively contribute to a progressive global community.” Hyv may be able to create a massive parallel processing supercomputer to solve big problems, but it may also invigorate the entire mobile app ecosystem. Currently phone apps have essentially two ways to monetize their products. They can charge either for the applications or their services ( e.g. Uber), or they can give away their services for free and make money through advertising or data acquisition (e.g. Pandora, Facebook, Flipboard, Tinder, Instagram, Snapchat). But historically, obtaining significant money through advertising on a mobile platform has been tough, there is less screen real estate for advertisements, often users are less willing to engage with advertisements on their phone and advertisements can also use precious data. Hyv may offer a third model of monetization that could benefit future mobile applications: It could allow users to install an app and, in return, allow for some of their phone’s processing power to be used and sold to compensate the app creator. This form of monetization could supplement advertising revenue to allow new apps to be delivered for free to the consumer. Does potentially solving some of the world’s most vexing problems and creating entire new mobile app ecosystems sound amazing? Well it was good enough to take first prize with Intel’s hackathon, and now six months later, they are testing a working prototype to ensure Hyv’s efficiency, security and effectiveness. Their idea on using many phones to operate together is not entirely original, but Koren thinks that they have solved the problem. Hyv has analyzed data in battery performance, data usage, computation speed and other key metrics. But a month ago, they hit a roadblock — one that, unlike previous barriers, they couldn’t control. In order for Hyv to test its technology, it needed to use it on multiple devices and with multiple carriers. In particular, they are paying attention to how much data usage their software would require from users. Hyv needs to take its devices, unlock them, and test them from one carrier to another. In so doing, the company would still fulfill its contractual obligation with their carriers, continuing to pay month to month, but would be able to see how Hyv operated on each network. As Koren explains it: For two college students, bootstrapping and developing this colossal product out of our dorm rooms, cross-carrier performance analysis proves too financially demanding. Having the ability to simply unlock our mobile devices would remove our dilemma. Due to the ban on unlocking and unlocking companies, however, we aren’t able to legally do this. After the campaign on cellphone unlocking, under severe pressure from the FCC, phone carriers agreed to a series of voluntary to allow their customers to unlock their devices in certain circumstances. But since Koren was still under contract for a subsidized device, those voluntary principles didn’t apply. So when he contacted his carrier for permission to unlock the device, while still keeping his plan with the carrier intact, they told him no. Below is an excerpt of that conversation (emphasis and “[AT&T]” added for clarity): I’m developing a piece of software that requires me to test across several different carriers. However, I’m on a tight budget and can’t buy devices on each carrier. Is it possible to unlock my phone and switch it to different carriers for testing purposes?
I understand that your situation Alex and I really appreciate it. Let us check on the account.
We can request for unlock purposes thru online.
How is that done?
Have I paid for my device in full?
How much did you get the device [for] Alex?
I believe I payed around $300 for my Galaxy Note 3
I understand Alex! It means that you g[o]t it in a full discount price.
So am I eligible for an unlock?
Let me explain it Alex! Since your account is still under contract, the process of unlocking your device will not be possible.
Oh, I understand. Once the contract is over, then I can unlock my device?
Yes that is correct Alex!
Which would be October of 2015, correct? Thus co-founders Alex Koren and Sheldon Trotman are stuck. They would like to continue paying their AT&T bill but also be able to test their devices, including the Galaxy Note 3, on another carrier. And until the law is changed, they can’t do so without facing potential legal liability. While it should be noted that not all phones are compatible from one carrier to another, many phones and tablets are. While AT&T may not like that he’s taking his device from one carrier to another, that should be between Alex and his carrier, it shouldn’t be a federal, civil or criminal matter – but under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and as a result of the decision by the Librarian of Congress, today it is a federal matter. While many in the tech community often follow a mantra of asking for forgiveness rather than asking for permission – copyright law is not something to be so cavalierly disregarded; many copyright scholars believe that unlocking could place Hyv in potential criminal liability of up to five years in prison and a $500,000 fine. While Hyv’s situation may seem unique, many startups launch as apps. Presumably, Hyv’s situation of needing to test its app across platforms is not a unique problem; rather, it is a problem that affects many app creators – which is often college students just like Koren and Trotman. One reason there has been so much entrepreneurship in this sector is because the barrier to entry has been so low, but the restriction on phone unlocking creates a brand new barrier to entry for no cognizable reason. This week, Congress will have the opportunity to vote on short-term legislation, H.R. 1123, which would allow for consumers to unlock their devices until the Librarian rules again in October, 2015 (see my here). This legislation would help entrepreneurs like Koren, Trotman and millions of consumers. Additionally, permanent, bipartisan, widely supported legislation has also been introduced, H.R. 1892, which would make these fixes permanent and provide certainty to the private sector. On Tuesday, the House of Representatives on legalizing phone unlocking, an issue that affects millions of consumers but also potentially small businesses like Hyv. “This ban, on behalf of the carriers, is standing in the way of our ability to make a significant contribution to the progression of our global society,” Koren says. “For many, the ban on unlocking phones is an inconvenience at most. For us, it has inhibited our ability to bring about positive change.” |
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